StrangJamesJ
1847 11 11
Catholic Discussion
Gospel Herald
Vol 2
No 34
pp 145-146
Tags: MAAP Documents, Strang James J., Catholic Discussion, Gospel Herald, 1847,
0163
Gospel Herald, 11 November 1847, volume 2, number 34, pp 145-146
Catholic Discussion
Answer to Mr. Rafferty. – No. 6.
(Continued from last week.)
“United together by the profession of the Same Faith.”
In my last number I showed the consequence which, according to the Scriptures,
should befall the church of Christ from a want of the priesthood which God set therein. I
also showed that, according to the constitution of the Roman church, it was defective in
that priesthood. It behooves me now to show that those consequences have actually
befallen that church.
I shall therefore show that, as children; they have been tossed to and fro with
every wind of doctrine till they have lost the faith committed to the saints, as well as
departed altogether from the foundation of Christ and the Apostles. What, sir, is the first
and most important fact to ascertain in determining the truth of the divine mission of
Christ and of the christian religion? What is the grand fundamental truth upon which
hangs the authority of the christian religion? What is the foundation stone of the
christian faith? It is that Jesus Christ came in the flesh as the Messiah, in Fulfillment of
the Word of God by the Jewish Prophets. And that fact is most Distinctly and Explicitly
Denied in the Creeds of the Roman Catholic Church. The very confession of your
creeds is a denial of the faith, and a proclamation that Christ is an imposter and
christianity a lie.
The whole course of prophecies was that the Messiah should come of the seed
of Abraham, of the tribe of Judah and of the lineage of David. And the mass of
testimony by the Apostles was that he did thus come. Not so the Catholic church.
Ashamed of his parentage in the times of the decay of Hebrew royalty, and unwilling
that the founder of their church should be the son of a poor carpenter, they have
resorted to the heathen fable of children begotten of gods on beautiful women, and filled
all their books and creeds with a story, fit only for heathen mythology, of the liason of
the God of heaven with a Hebrew peasant girl. The Apostolic creed runs,” I believe in
Jesus Christ, God’s only Son, our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of
the virgin Mary.” I quote also from the Poor Man’s Catechism, page 28, 30, 31, 32: –
“Q. What is the signification of the name Christ? A. The anointed. Q. What mean
those words, His only Son our Lord? A. That he is by nature the only Son of God the
Father, born of him from all eternity; and that he is our Lord and our God.
“Q. What means the incarnation? A. It means that God the Son, the second
person in the blessed Trinity, was made man. – Q. How was he made man? A. He
assumed human nature, a body and soul, like ours, which subsisted together with the
divine nature, in one and the same person of the Son of God. Q. When was he made
man. A. At that instant when he was conceived in the womb of his blessed mother, the
Virgin Mary, when she gave her consent, saying, Behold the handmaid of the Lord, be it
done to me according to thy word.
“Instruc. – The unity and trinity of God whereby we understand that one and
same divine nature subsists in three persons, really distinct; and the incarnation of the
Son of God; whereby the two natures, divine and human were united in one person, are
mysteries of mysteries; and two principal mysteries of the Christian faith; and the
ground-work upon which our religion is built.
“So great and incomprehensible is this mystery, that we have all reason to say
with St. Paul, O! depth of the riches and wisdom of God! how unsearchable are his
judgments, and his ways beyond finding out!! Why should we doubt or fear to submit to
all the other mysteries of the Christian faith, while we have this before our eyes, and
believe it, that God the Son was made man, was born of a woman, lived in poverty,
suffered and died as man, even the death that was due to sinners.
“Q. How was he conceived? A. Not by human generation, but by the power and
virtue of the Holy Ghost. Q. When was he conceived? A. At the instant the Virgin Mary
gave her consent, saying, behold the handmaid of the Lord, be it done to me according
to thy word.
“Instruct. – The conception of our blessed Savior was purely a work of God,
beyond our comprehension. It was all miraculous, full of mystery; far different from the
ordinary conception of other men, by human generation: his conception was the
immediate work of the Holy Ghost, and not of any man. That his body was formed by
the substance of his mother, is indeed a natural thing, for all men are in like manner
formed; but that a virgin, who never knew man, should conceive a son; that his human
nature should subsist in a divine person; that his mother, remaining a virgin, was also a
mother of God, mother of man, are mysteries beyond the reach of nature, and capacity
of our understanding, and peculiar to none but himself.”
Now if this account be true, Christ was not of the lineage of David. Jewish
genealogies are always reckoned in the male line; never in the female. Moreover if we
should reckon in the female line, we have not one iota of evidence that Mary, the
mother of Christ, was of the lineage of David, nor even of the tribe of Judah. Two of the
evangelists, Matthew and Luke, have given the genealogy from Abraham to Joseph, the
Husband of Mary, for the especial purpose of showing that in the Male Line Jesus Christ
was a literal descendent of Abraham, Judah and David. If the husband of Mary was not
the father of Christ, what have we to do with his genealogy? And for what purpose was
it written? Matthew begins his gospel, “The book of the generation (genealogy) of Jesus
Christ, the son of David the son of Abraham,” and concludes the genealogy, ver. 16,
“And Jacob begat Joseph, the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus, who is called
Christ.” Why is this, if Joseph did not beget Jesus? How is this, his genealogy, if Joseph
is not his father? How is it evident, as Paul says, “that our Lord sprung out of
Judah,”Heb. vii. 14. If it does not appear by these genealogies, neither of which runs to
Mary, but both to Joseph? – Ah! Would Paul dare thus in writing to the Jews boldly
assert that Christ was of the tribe of Judah, if the doctrine had then gone forth that
Joseph was not his father? Aye; would not the Jews of answered, “how is it evident that
he came out of Judah? wherein does it appear? By what line did he descend from
Judah?”
(To be continued.)