The Catholic's Certitude Concerning the Way of Salvation

The Catholic’s Certitude Concerning the Way of Salvation

By Rev. Francis A. Baker

Fifth Sunday After Pentecost

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“I know whom I have believed, and I am certain that He is able to keep that which I have committed to Him against that day.” II Timothy 1:12

No one can deny that this sentiment of the Apostle is a very comfortable one. To be confident of salvation is surely an excellent and desirable thing. But the question with many will be, is it possible to attain it? Now, there is one sense in which we cannot have a security of our salvation.

We cannot have personally an infallible assurance that we are now and shall always continue in the grace of God, and shall at last taste the joys of heaven. Our free-will forbids such an assurance, and neither our happiness nor the attributes of God demand it.

But there is another sense in which a man may be said to have a security of his salvation, viz: that he has within his reach, beyond all doubt, the proper and necessary means for attaining that end; for if the means are certain, it is plain that in the use of those means he may acquire a moral certainty that he is doing those things which God requires of him, and a well-grounded hope of everlasting life.

Such a security it would seem a man ought to be able to attain. Without it the service of God must be slavish. There can be no free and generous service where there is not confidence. When one is traveling at night on a road he is ignorant of, he goes slow, he falters; but in the broad daylight, in a road he is sure of, he walks with a free, bold step.

So in religion, if we have no security that we are right, we can never do much for God. Man is not an abject being; he is erect; he looks up to heaven; he seems to face his Maker and to demand from Him to know the terms on which he stands toward Him. A confidence, then, at least of being able to secure our salvation, must be within our reach. The only question is, how is it to be attained? I answer, the Catholic has within his reach the security of his salvation, and he alone.

In order to show this to you, I must remind you of what I mean by salvation. Put out of your minds that childish idea that salvation is an external, arbitrary reward, given to some men when they die, and denied to others, as a father gives a book or a plaything to an obedient child, and refuses it to a disobedient.

Salvation is union with God. We are made for God. That is our high destiny. In God is our life and happiness; and out of God our death and ruin. Salvation is our union with God for all eternity, and, in order to be united to God for all eternity, we must be united to Him here.

Our salvation must begin here. Now, we are united to God when our intelligence is united to His intelligence by the knowledge of His truth, and our will united to His will by the practice of His love. When I affirm, then, that the Catholic alone has the means of attaining a security of salvation, I mean that he alone has the certain means of coming to the knowledge of His truth, and the practice of His will.

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III

I say the certain means of coming to the knowledge of His truth, for it is one thing to have a certain knowledge of a thing, and another to have only some ideas about it. We see this difference when we contrast the language of a man who is master of a science with that of one who has only vague notions about it. One possesses his knowledge – knows what he knows – can make use of it; while the other is embarrassed the moment he attempts to use his knowledge – is uncertain whether he is right or wrong – is driven to guesses and conjectures.

In the same way, in religion, it is one thing to have convictions more or less deep – opinions more or less probable, to be acquainted with its history and able to talk about it – and quite another to have certainty in religion, to know that one is right.

This is the assurance I claim as the special possession of the Catholic. There can be no doubt that Catholics do, in point of fact, show a much deeper conviction of the truth of their religion than Protestants. This is a matter of common observation, and the proofs of it are on every side.

Officers who come back from the army tell how struck they have been with the fact that Catholic soldiers believe their religion and carry it with them to the camp. Proselytizing societies make frequent confession of the difficulty they find in undermining the faith even of ignorant and needy Catholics.

Those who have experience at deathbeds, know that faith is found sometimes surviving almost every other good principle, and making a return to God possible. Those who are familiar with the history of the Church know that this faith is strong enough to bear the severest tests which can be applied to it; that it has often led men to despise what the world most esteems – wealth, pleasures, honor; that it sends the missionary to heathen countries without a regret for the home and native land he leaves behind him; that, in fine, it has often led men in times past, and still at this day leads them joyfully to the rack, the stake, and the scaffold.

Now, whence comes this deep and fixed certainty in religion? Is it a mere prejudice that melts before investigation? Is it a stupid fanaticism? Or has it a reasonable basis, and are its foundations deep in the laws of the human mind? I answer, Catholics have this undoubting conviction on the principle of faith in an infallible authority.

There are but two principles of Christian belief, when we come to the bottom of the matter. One is the Protestant principle, viz: that each one is to settle his faith for himself, by a study of the clear records of Christianity. The other is the Catholic principle, viz: that each one is to receive his faith from an infallible authority.

I feel as if I ought to pause here for a while to explain to you what is meant by this principle, for there exists in regard to it in some minds a misconception which does us the grossest injustice. Some persons imagine that our creed is manufactured for us by the Pope and the Bishops; that whatever they may think right and good they may decree, and forthwith we are bound to believe it. But this is an enormous mistake.

The authority to which I submit myself is something far more august. It lies behind Pope and Bishop, and they must bow to it as well as I. The Pope and the Bishops are the organs of this authority, not its source. When we speak of learning from an infallible authority, we mean that a man is to find out the truth by putting his intelligence in communication with that living stream of truth that flows down through the channel of tradition, that living word of God, that public preaching of the truth in the true Church, begun by the Apostles, carried on by their successors, confessed by so many people, recorded in so many monuments, adorned by so many sacrifices, attested by so many miracles.

Unquestionably, this was the mode in which men were expected to learn the truth in apostolic days. It would not have been of the least avail for a man to have said to the Apostles that his convictions differed from theirs. He would have been instantly regarded as in error. “We are of God,” says St. John; “he that is of God, hears us; he that is not of God, hears us not. By this shall you know the spirit of truth, and the spirit of error.” (I John 4:6)

Nor is there the least intimation in the New Testament that this principle was to be departed from after the death of the Apostles. On the contrary, we find that the Apostles ordained others, and communicated to them their doctrine and authority, that they might go on and preach just as they had done.

And we find in the early Church that whenever a dispute arose about doctrine it was settled on the same principle, viz: by an appeal to the tradition of the churches that had been founded by the Apostles. Thus, when a heresy arose in the second century, Tertullian confronts it by bidding them compare their doctrine with that of the Apostolic Churches: “If you are in Achaia,” he says, “you have Corinth; if you are near Macedonia, you have Philippi; if you are in Italy, you have Rome.

Happy Church! To which the Apostles bequeathed not only their blood, but all their doctrines. See what she has learned, see what she has taught.” Such is the principle on which the Catholic Church acts to this day. Now, while the Protestant principle of private judgment in its own nature cannot lead to certainty, while in point of fact it has led only to endless dispute, until in our own day it has ended in bringing those Divine Records, which it began by exalting so highly, into doubt and contempt; the Catholic principle, which, I have stated, is the principle of tradition, is adapted to give a complete and a reasonable certainty and assurance.

The reasons why this public tradition of the living Church has this power are manifold. They are in part natural, and in part supernatural – universal consent, internal consistency, Divine Revelation, the Warrant and Promise of Christ; all of which are so well summed up by St. Augustine, in that famous letter of his to the Manicheans:

“I am kept in the Catholic Church,” he says, by the consent of peoples and nations. By an authority begun with miracles, nourished by hope, increased by charity, confirmed by antiquity. By the succession of priests from the chair of St. Peter the Apostle – to whom our Lord after His resurrection gave His sheep to be fed – down to the present Bishop. In fine, by that very name of Catholic, which this Church alone has held possession of; so that though heretics would fain have called themselves Catholics, yet to the inquiry of a stranger, ‘Where is the meeting of the Catholic Church held?’ no one of them would dare to point to his own basilica.” (Con. Epistle Manichaeans 1:5,6)

The conviction which such considerations produce is so deep that a Catholic rests in it with the most undoubting certainty. He can bear to look into his belief, to examine its grounds; he feels it is a venerable belief. He says it is impossible that God would allow error to wear so many marks of truth.

To imagine it, would be to question His Truth, His Justice, His Power, His Goodness. And therefore, our belief in the Catholic religion is only another form of our belief in God. The foundation of that belief is deep and abiding, for it is the Eternal Throne of God.

That desire for truth which is implanted in man’s nature is not, then, given only to be baffled and disappointed – here is its fulfillment. Man is not raised to a participation in Christ of the Divine Nature, to be left in doubt of the most essential truths. To the Catholic are fulfilled those pleasant words of Christ: “I will not now call you servants, for the servant knows not what his Lord does; but I have called you friends, because all things, which I have heard from my Father, I have made known to you.” (John 15:15)

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But some one may make an objection to my doctrine that certainty about truth is the result only of the Catholic principle of faith, and say: “You do not mean to assert that Protestants have no faith at all?” A Protestant may say to me: “I acknowledge that we have among us a great deal of disunion, and a great deal of doubt, but after all there are some things that are believed by some of us, that are believed without doubt, and you will not deny it.”

No, I will not deny it. I am glad to think that it is true. But how did you come by that belief? You did not come by it on the principle of Protestantism. The truth is, that principle never has been, and never can be carried out. Thank God, it is so. Utter unbelief would be the consequence.

You have a child – a child that you love dearly. Will you wait, as your Protestantism requires you to do, till he is gown up, for him to form his religious convictions? No; if you love him, you will not. Your heart will teach you a better wisdom. You will tell him about God, you will tell him Who Christ is, and what He has done for him. You will tell him these things not doubtingly, not as if he was to suspend his judgment on them, but as true, and as to be believed then and there.

And as he looks up at you out of his trusting eyes, he believes you. But how does he believe you? On the principle of a Protestant, or a Catholic? On the principle of private judgment, or on faith in an infallible authority? Surely it is as a Catholic he believes? You represent to him the Great Teacher, and his childish soul, in listening to you, hears the voice of God, performs a great act of religion, and does his first act of homage to Truth.

His nature prompts him to believe you. Perhaps he is baptized, and then there is a grace in his heart which secretly inclines him the more to credit you, and he believes without doubting. He is a Catholic. Yes, my brethren, there is many a child of Protestant parents who is a Catholic – a Catholic, that is, in all but the name, and the fullness of instruction, and the richness of privilege.

He may grow up in this way, perhaps continue all his life in this childish faith and trust. I will not say it may not be so. But let his reason fully awaken. Let him honestly go down to the foundation of his faith and see on what it rests, and then let him remain a Protestant, and retain his undoubting assurance if he can. He cannot – a crisis in his history has come. The sun has arisen with its living heat. The flower begins to wither. It must be transplanted or it will die.

One of three things will happen: either the man, finding that he has not learned all that the Great Teacher has revealed, will go on to accept the rest and will become a Catholic; or he will learn to doubt what he has received already and become a skeptic; or he will stick to the creed he has received from his fathers or picked up for himself, and doggedly refuse to add to it, thus rendering himself at the same moment amenable to the Court of Reason for unreasonableness in what he holds, and in the Court of Faith for unbelief in what he rejects.

So true it is that all the faith there is in the world is naturally allied to Catholicity. If men were perfectly reasonable and consistent, there would be only two parties in the religious world. Protestantism would disappear. On the one side would be faith, certainty, Catholicity; on the other, doubt and unbelief.

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Nor is this all. The Catholic has not only a certain means of arriving at the knowledge of God’s Faith, but he has also the sure means of knowing what he is bound to do in order to gain salvation. Christianity is a supernatural religion, and therefore it suggests many questions to which natural reason cannot give the answer.

By what means can I be united to Christ? Suppose I am in mortal sin, how can I be forgiven? What are the precise obligations binding on me as a Christian? Now, how distinctly, how promptly were such questions answered in the time of the Apostles! When St. Paul came to Ananias to know what he was to do, the answer was given to him: “Arise, and be baptized, and wash away your sins.”

In the same way in the Catholic Church of this day, when a convert asks the same question, he gets the same answer: Seek in faith and repentance the cleansing of baptism, and you shall be joined to Christ. Do you wish to know the life you must practice? It is written in the Ten Commandments and the precepts of the Church. Do you wish to know where you will gain strength to keep these laws? In prayer and the sacraments. The Church tells you how many there are, what is their efficacy, and the conditions of their saving operation.

Are you in sin after baptism? Do you ask the way back to God? The Church tells you that sorrow for sin is the way back, and that this sorrow, when it is completed by confession, and accepted by the absolution of the priest, is a sacramental efficacy. So precise are the answers of Catholicity to the important practical questions of Christianity; and the authority which, I have already said, attaches to her words, gives ease and certainty to the conscience.

But how different is all this in Protestantism! How various the answers given to these questions by the different sects! Nay, how contradictory sometimes the answers given in the same sect! It would be odious to go into particulars on this subject, but I say what I know when I affirm that an intelligent Protestant cannot have faith in his Church, if he would; he may adopt a set of opinions and associate with those who hold them, but he cannot have faith in his Church as a Church.

It has been only recently that an intelligent member of one of the most enlightened Protestant denominations told me that the members of the Church did not seem to be satisfied with it, only they did not know whether there was any other Church in the world that would satisfy them. I say what I know when I affirm that there are young children in Protestant Churches who weep because they are told that God hates them, and they do not know how to gain His love.

That there are numbers of young men, full of generous and noble thoughts and impulses, who are utterly destitute of any fixed Christian belief; who say they would like to believe, but they cannot. That there are multitudes and multitudes who die in this land, who die without one single Christian act, and many who submit at their last hour to take part in such acts at the request of friends, and on the chance that there may be some good in them.

That there are some who openly lament that they were not born Catholics, that they might have had faith; some who rise in the night to cry to God out of the hopeless darkness that surrounds them; some who, in despair of seeing God with an intelligent faith, take up a substitute, the best of all, it is true, but still very insufficient – works of benevolence and philanthropy, and the beauties of a merely moral life; some who would welcome death itself if it would but remove their agony of doubt.

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I do not say these things, my Protestant friends, if any such are present, to mock your miseries. Far from it. I know you too well. I love you too much. I say these things to lead you to truth and peace. I call to you struggling with the waves, from the rock whereon our feet have found a resting-place. I speak to you to the same effect as Christ spoke to the woman at the well of Jacob, who was a member of the schismatic Samaritan Church.

You worship you know not what. We know what we worship; for salvation is of the Jews. You know not what you worship. Your religion is at the best one of doubt and uncertainty. We know what we worship. We are certain we are right, for salvation is of us. We are the Israelites. To us belongs the adoption of children, and the glory, and the covenant, and the giving of the law, and the service of God, and the promises.

This is the mountain of the Lord established in the last days on the top of the mountains, and exalted above the hills, into which the nations flow. O you who know not this home of peace, God did not make you to be as you are, to be tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine, to follow blind guides, to give your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy.

No, come with us and be happy. Come with us and be blessed. Come, let us go the mountain of the Lord, and to the house of the God of Jacob, and He will teach us His ways, and we will walk in His paths, for the law shall come forth from Zion, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.

Incline your ear unto me and you shall live – the life of faith – the life of certainty and hope. You shall go out with joy and be led forth with peace. Instead of the shrub shall come up the fir tree: and instead of the nettle shall come up the myrtle tree. All nature shall sympathize in your happiness. The mountains and hills shall break forth into singing before you, and all the trees of the country shall clap their hands.

VII

And you, my dear Catholics, be not indifferent to the graces God has given you, nor slothful in their use. You have it your power to make sure your salvation. About the means there is no uncertainty. They are infallible. It is of the Catholic Church that the prophet spoke when he said: “A path shall be there, and a way, and it shall be called a holy way, and this shall be to you a straight way, so that even fools shall not err thereon.” (Isaiah 35:8)

And again: “Thus says the Lord God: I will lay a stone in the foundation of Zion, a tried stone, a corner-stone, a precious stone, founded in the foundation.” (Isaiah 28:16) A way to heaven in this dark, uncertain world! A straight, a sure, a certain way! A rock under our feet under this swelling sea!

O my brethren, what blessings are these! Let them not be in vain. Be not found on the last day with your lights gone out! The just shall live by faith. Live by yours. Do you wish to advance in a good life? Your faith tells you how. Does sin wage a war against you? Your faith tells you how to meet the combat. Are you in sin? Your faith tells you how to be forgiven.

Correspond, then, honestly with this faith, and you may enjoy a firm hope of heaven, a hope not based on excited feelings, not claiming to be a direct inspiration from on high, but a reasonable hope, that will stay by you in adversity, and support you at the hour of death. Claim, then, your privilege. Assert the freedom wherewith Christ has made you free. Be not troubled or anxious all your days.

Do your part, act up to your Catholic conscience, then lift up your heads, eat your bread with joy, and let your garments be always white, for God now accepts your works. In this is the love of God perfected in us, that we may have confidence in the day of judgment. “Wherefore, be you steadfast, unmovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, for as much as you know that your labor is not in vain in the Lord.”
(1 Corinthians 15:58)

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