The Catholic Church and History

REFACE The object of the author has oeen to state and summarise in a brief, succinct form the arguments drawn from History in opposition to the claim of the Catholic Church: that is, to the claim put for- ward by that Church to spea‘. with Divine and Infallible Authority. The author insists upon the point that he is not attempting a positive apologetic drawn from History in favour of this claim, but a rebutting of the evidence drawn from History op- posed to this claim. He is engaged in examining the value of the arguments drawn from History to prove that the Catholic Church has varied or erred in her teaching or has made it depend upon immoral methods, and in showing that they have no force. The little book is divided into two parts, the first dealing with the three moral arguments: (1) that the Church has made pronouncements which History can prove to be false: (2) that the Church, being proved by History to be not only material which she knew to be false: (3) that the Church, being proved by history to be not only 5 6 PREFACE organised but increasingly organised from the be- ginning of its existence, is thereby shown to be different from the simple thing which a divine insti- tution of the sort should be. Secondly, the intellectual argument, to wit, that the Church can be proved by History to be man- made, not God-made. This the author divides into two sections: (1) the Protestant argument that there was some original good message told by Jesus Christ, which the Church has gradually corrupted and from the origin of which she has deviated: (2) the general agnostic argument that the Church can be proved historically to be but one of many religions, to have grown up like any other religion, with the same illusions and similar rites and mys- teries, and is therefore man-made—which last form of attack the author regards as to-day by far the most serious.