CHAPTER V.

HERESIES.
Penisal of tlic dilTerent rituals of Secret Societies will lead to the conviction that these societies are also heret- ical^ teaching error. "lieresies,'^ says 0. A. Brownson (vol. xix., p. 2'?3), ''originate in the spirit and tendency of their epoch, and in the effort to develop the Church, and carry her, in hir doctrines and practice, along with, them. . . . The heresiarcli does not set out with ike de- liherate intention of founding a heresy. Xo man ever rises u]), and, with delil)erate forethought, says: *Go to, now, let us devise and found a heresy.' The heresiarch is the man of his times — of not for, his times — and is the one who, hotter than any other, emhodies or impersonates llieir dominant ideas and sentiments. He hegins hv tak- ing his standard of truth from the ideas and sentiments M-hich he finds generally received, and with which he is filled to overfloAving ; these, he says, are true, and there- fore tiie Church, if true, must agree with them. He then proceeds to develop the Church, to explain her doctrine and practice in their sense. But the Church cannot accept his ex])lanations; she condemns them, and commands liim to disavow them : hut he, through pride and obstin- acy, refuses, goes out from her communion, and sets up for himself. Here is the history and rise of every heresy. Study any age or nation, and you will find its -peeulinr
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heresy to have originated in the attempt to conform the Church to its determined ideas and sentinients, or to incorporate them into her teaching and practice. This is evident from the history of Gnosticism, Manichaeisni. Arianism, Protestantism, or any other heresy you may select."
As soon as the truths of the Gospel were carried be- yond the confines of Judea, Samaria and Galilee, by the Apostles and their successors, those false teachers against whom Christ had warned His followers arose. Satan, ever watchful, was determined to wage his war for the preservation of his kingdom. Open persecution arose against the infant Church, but subtle means were also employed to deceive the people. Several persons ap- peared from time to time claiming to be the promised Messiah. Philo the Jew, Apollonius of Tyana, Simon Magus, Cerinthus, and other pretenders to the Messiah- ship during the first centuries of the Christian era, claimed Pythagoras as their principal teacher. Alex- andria, in Egypt, the principal seat of learning at the time, had as teachers in its schools men who endeavored to reconcile the teachings of Paganism, Judaism and Christianity, just as it was done at the Parliament of Peligions, a few years ago in Chicago. All the heresies of the first three centuries had their origin in this so- called Alexandrian school. This school, encouraged by the pagan emperors and afterwards especially by Julian the Apostate, in order to destroy the influence of Christi- anity, attempted a fusion of all particular forms of Gen- tilism, moulded into shape as nearly like Chri>,tia.nity as might be, and intended to dispute with it the empire of the world. It borrowed largely from Christianity,
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copied the forms of its hierarchy, and many of its dog- mas. It made no direct war on Christianity and its followers; it simply denied or derided the source whence the Christian religion was obtained, and the authority which Christian faith always presupposes. It called itself "Philosophy," and its pretension was to raise philosophy to the dignity of religion, and do by it what Christianity professes to do by faith and an exter- nal and supernaturally accredited revelation. Its aim was to satisfy the ever-rccnrring and indestructible re- ligious Avant of the liuman soul, without recognizing the Christian Church, or bowing to the authority of the Xazarcne. It proposed itself as the rival rather than the antagonist of Christianity. Space does not permit me to show how the Christian Fathers of the third, fourth and fifth centuries fought against and defeated these teach- ings.
The movement of the un-catholic world to-day, how much soever it may borrow from Cliristianity, however near it may a]^])roach the catholic model, can be regarded by those who understand it only as a conscious or uncon- scious effort to reproduce the Gentile rationalism of the old Alexandrian school. The principle on which they proceed is precisely the Alexandrian. To them all re- ligions are equally true or equally false — true as parts of a Avhole. false when regarded each as a whole in itself, Take then the several religions which have been and are» mould them into a complete, uniform and systematic whole, and you Avill have the "Eeligion of the Future.'' In perfect harmony with this, you see everywhere at- tempts to amalganuite sects, to form the un-catholic world into one bod v. with a common creed, a common
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worship and a common purpose. The aim is everywhere the same as it was with the Alexandrians, the prineiple:^ and proceedings are the same, and the result, if obtained., must be similar.
The "Church of the Future," which is now to be founded, is a church, to be scientific, wherein knowledge and not humility is taught; penance and fasting are to be done away with. liike Buddhism it is to teach good- ness without a God, existence without a soul, immortality without life, salvation without a heaven, redemption without a Eedeemer. In the economy of salvation Christ is to be ignored. We are gravely told that there is no teaching or doctrine taught by Christ and His Apostles which can not be found in some of the ancient religion s^ when divested of the errors therein incorporated with it.
We must admit that the main effort of this age of un- believing progress is to trample out the supernatural, character of Jesus Christ. He is indeed in the eyes of it one of the most distinguished of human sages, an ad- mirable philosopher and a great moral teacher. It will admit that "man never spoke like Him,'^ but it ridicules the idea that He was "tlie Word made flesh."
A morbid craving is abroad which seeks to reproduce the paganism of old. Gentile life is to be flavored by the spirit of false worship, the passions of the young, the ambition of middle life and the avarice of old age.
' Secret societies are nurseries for this movement. In their rituals truth and error have been artfully co- mingled. Their teachings are varied to suit all men, of all creeds or of no creed. If you have religion and be- long to a Church, all right; but if you belong to no Church and have no religion it is all right too, because
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'religion is a personal and private affair. The teachings and maxims of the Gospel are not to be the rule of life, and from the lodge and not from the Church are men to learn "their duty to God, to their fellow-men and to themselves/' Intentionalh' or unintentionally do the lodges dispose a man to believe that if he practices the natural virtues of honesty, truthfulness, sobriety, philan- thropy, etc., then he is all that a man ought to be; and also to believe that a man can practice these virtues quite sufHcicntly by the force of his own will, that he does not need the special help which our Lord furnishes through His Church. It is quite clear that these principles would logically have the effect of not only destroying the faith of Catholics, but also all Christian faith properly so called.
In the ritual of tlie Knig-jits of Pythias we read : "The higli and impassal)lc l)arrior that hitherto separated man from his fellow men is broken down. All sit together as brothers in luirmony and love. The descendants of Abraham and the followers of the Crescent are co- mingled with those of the Cross as one happy family, knowing no diversity of creed or faitli.'' In other words : Jew, Heathen, Moslem, Christian and Hottentot, we all believe in one God. Xot only do they place all pro- fessedly Christian sects and denominations — however widely the five hundred different sects may differ from one another — on the same Ijroad platform, but they go still further. Tliey declare that ^ruml)0-Jumbo of the African and Gitchie ^lanitou of the American Indian is at bottom tlie true God, as much as the Zeus of the Greeks, Jupiter of the Romans, El or Bab-El in Babylon, Mitra in India, ^lythras in Persia, Ashura in Assyria,
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Baal in Phoenicia, and either of these as much as Jeho- vah of the Jews, or God, the Father, of the Christians.
And all this is set forth in language and terms so smooth and plausible so ^'^as to deceive if possible even the elect/^ Thus many a young man, with more benevolent feeling than actual experience, of more enthusiastic zeal than practice and wisdom, is prone to be led into these societies, is deceived and lost to the Church.
The rites, ceremonies and symbols of paganism are used, and wiU not the whole fabric of doctrine and wor- ship of paganism grow out of the use? The seed is dropped into society and what shall the fruit be? The leaven of the principles of naturalism and modern pa- ganism is given a chance to work silently and freely — till the whole is permeated. As I said in a former publica- tion, the twentieth century will witness the conflict be- tween Eome and Benares, between the j^rinciples of Christianity and Asiatic Paganism. Mohammedanism in its day tried to extirpate Oriental idolatry, but it failed. Christianity has not only to destroy both, but annihilate, also, modern paganism.