The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Vol. 06 (of 12): Dresden Edition—DiscussionsIngersoll, Robert Green
Religion
The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Vol. 06 (of 12): Dresden Edition—Discussions
Ingersoll, Robert Green
Free thought
power produced in perpetual and universal action, so the indefectibility
of the Church and of the faith is by the perpetuity of the presence and
office of the Third Person of the Holy Trinity. Therefore, St. Augustine
calls the day of Pentecost, Natalis Spiritus Sancti.
*St. John, xx. 21.
** St. Luke, xxii. 29.
*** St. Matthew, xxviii. 18, 19.
**** St. Luke, x. 10.
(v) St. Matthew, xxviii. 20.
(vii)Acts, ii. 1-5.
(viii) Acts, xv. 28.
It is more than time that I should make an end; and to do so it will be
well to sum up the heads of our argument. The Vatican Council declares
that the world-wide Church is the irrefragable witness of its own
legation or mission to mankind.
In proof of this I have affirmed:
1. That the imperishable existence of Christianity, and the vast and
undeniable revolution that it has wrought in men and in nations, in the
moral elevation of manhood and of womanhood, and in the domestic, social
and political life of the Christian world, cannot be accounted for by
any natural causes, or by any forces that are, as philosophers say,
_intra possibilitatem natures_, within the limits of what is possible to
man.
2. That this world-wide and permanent elevation of the Christian world,
in comparison with both the old world and the modern world outside of
Christianity, demands a cause higher than the possibility of nature.
3. That the Church has always claimed a Divine origin and a Divine
office and authority in virtue of a perpetual Divine assistance. To this
even the Christian world, in all its fragments external to the Catholic
unity, bears witness. It is turned to our reproach. They rebuke us for
holding the teaching of the Church to be infallible. We take the rebuke
as a testimony of our changeless faith. It is not enough for men to say
that they refuse to believe this account of the visible and palpable
fact of the imperishable Christianity of the Catholic and Roman Church.
They must find a more reasonable, credible, and adequate account for
it. This no man has yet done. The denials are many and the solutions
are many; but they do not agree together. Their multiplicity is proof
of their human origin. The claim of the Catholic Church to a Divine
authority and to a Divine assistance is one and the same in every age,
and is identical in every place. Error is not the principle of unity,
nor truth of variations.
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