Page images
PDF
EPUB

THE

MERCERSBURG REVIEW.

JANUARY, 1851:

VOL. III.---NO. I.

CATHOLICISM.

AMONG the attributes which Christianity has claimed to itself from the beginning, there is none perhaps more interesting and significant than that which is expressed by the title Catholic. It is not the product in any way of mere accident or caprice; just as little as the idea of the Church itself may be taken to have any origin of this sort. It has its necessity in the very conception of Christianity and the Church. Hence it is that we find it entering into the earliest christian confession the Apostles' Creed, as an essential element of the faith that springs from Christ. As the mystery of the Church itself is no object of mere speculation, and rests not in any outward sense or testimony only, but must be received as an article of faith which proceeds with inward necessity from the higher mystery of the Incarnation, so also the grand distinguishing attributes of the Church, as we have them in the Creed, carry with them the same kind of inward necessary force for the mind in which this Creed truly prevails. They are not brought from abroad, but spring directly from the constitution of the fact itself with which faith is here placed in communication. The idea of the Church as a real object for faith, and not a fantastic notion only for the imagination, involves the character of catholicity, as well as that of truth and holiness, as something which belongs inseparably

VOL. III.NO. I.

1

« PreviousContinue »