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They have votes, and they use them under clerical advice. "I don't know anything about Home Rule except that we are to get all we want." Those are the very words of an enlightened and independent elector resident near Cloughmore. Never was there more simple faith, or more concise credenda. The Newcastle programme is comparatively unpromising.
The charge is this: that I, as a Catholic, not only make profession to hold doctrines which I cannot possibly believe in my heart, but that I also believe in the existence of a power on earth, which at its own will imposes upon men any new set of credenda, when it pleases, by a claim to infallibility; in consequence, that my own thoughts are not my own property; that I cannot tell that tomorrow I may not have to give up what I hold today, and that the necessary effect of such a condition of mind must be a degrading bondage, or a bitter inward rebellion relieving itself in secret infidelity, or the necessity of ignoring the whole subject of religion in a sort of disgust, and of mechanically saying everything that the Church says, and leaving to others the defence of it.
So, dear friends, on the one hand, let us remember that our religion is meant to work, that we have nothing in our creed that should not be in our character, that all our credenda are to be our agenda; everything believed to be something done; and that if we content ourselves with the simple acceptance of the teaching, and make no effort to translate that teaching into life, we are hypocrites or self-deceivers.
I am defending myself from the charge that I, as a Catholic, not only make profession to hold doctrines which I cannot possibly believe in my heart, but that I also believe in a power on earth, which at its own will imposes upon men any new set of credenda, when it pleases, by a claim to infallibility; and that the necessary effect of such a condition of mind must be a degrading bondage, or a bitter inward rebellion relieving itself in secret infidelity, or the necessity of ignoring the whole subject of religion in a sort of disgust, and of mechanically saying everything that the Church says.
Consequently, in substance it is the gift not of culture, but deliverance, and in form it is not a theory but a fact, not a system of credenda but an action, not an -ology but a power. It demands from all submission and trust. These being the characteristics, consider II. The qualifications for reception as necessarily resulting from the characteristics.
Nobody knows what are their credenda what they hold indispensable for fellow-membership, either as to faith in mysteries or in moral doctrines. Now, if they reply 'Oh! as to that, we adopt for our faith all that ever we did profess when members of the Scottish kirk' then in effect they are hardly so much as a dissenting body, except in some elliptic sense.
Having chosen to believe, he cannot be too pronounced and decisive in his faith; he will never attempt to eliminate certain articles of the credenda, and so "decrassify" his faith, for to this process, if once begun, there is no end; having donned his uniform, he will wear it, laces and spangles and all. True, he has at times his chill fits of doubt; but is not this the probation of faith?
N. B. Not every revelation requires a sensible miracle as the credential; but every revelation of a new series of 'credenda'. The prophets appealed to records of acknowledged authority, and to their obvious sense literally interpreted. The Baptist needed no miracle to attest his right of calling sinners to repentance. See 'Exodus' iv. 10. Ib. pp. 346, 7.
All creed is meant to influence conduct. If I may so say, credenda, 'things to be believed, are meant to underlie the agenda, the things to be done.
The charge is this: that I, as a Catholic, not only make profession to hold doctrines which I cannot possibly believe in my heart, but that I also believe in the existence of a power on earth, which at its own will imposes upon men any new set of credenda, when it pleases, by a claim to infallibility; in consequence, that my own thoughts are not my own property; that I cannot tell that to-morrow I may not have to give up what I hold to-day, and that the necessary effect of such a condition of mind must be a degrading bondage, or a bitter inward rebellion relieving itself in secret infidelity, or the necessity of ignoring the whole subject of religion in a sort of disgust, and of mechanically saying every thing that the Church says, and leaving to others the defence of it.
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