Reasons For Becoming a Roman Catholic

Mr. Lucas begins: "It seems to me that a person who separates from the religious society in which he has been born and educated, for the purpose of joining another, which is little known to those whom he is leaving, and which, although little known, is yet much disliked, and bitterly condemned, owes it both to them and to himself to furnish some explanation of the reasons by which he has been guided. All change of religion implies a disapprobation-qualified or unqualified-of one body, and approbation of another. And, in the present case, where the Catholics are regarded with so much unfounded jealousy and blind fear by the Society of Friends, it cannot but amount almost to a duty to shew those I am leaving, that I am leaving them with the fullest sympathy, and that the Church which I have joined is deserving of far other feelings than those with which it has been hitherto regarded." After asserting that eh Society of Friends, of which he was once a member, hold that all can be proved from Scripture, Lucas states: "Fenelon believed, and all Catholics believe, that the tenets of the Catholic faith, which Friends deny, are contained in the Scripture; Baptism, Transubstantiation, Extreme Unction, Confession, Purgatory, Invocation of Saints, are all proved out of Scripture. I say, then, that it is obviously untrue that the Holy Spirit has been promised to Christians as an infallible guide, and to supersede the necessity of an outward teaching." The Protestant theory that the Bible can be the sole rule of faith is thus disproved, for it is not clear. The Church produced the Bible, the Bible did not produce the Church. Let us consider the infallibility of the Church: "When we look into the New Testament, we find this distinction clearly recognized. The guidance given to the Apostles, in their character of Apostles, is very different from that given them as private individuals. Thus we find that St. Peter errs grievously, but his language speaking authoritatively to the Church we receive as inspired. Would the authority of St. Peter's Epistles be at all affected, if it were proved that he wrote them at the very time he was weakly yielding to the prejudices of the Jews, for which St. Paul withstood him to his face. In the general assembly of the Apostles at Jerusalem, when they discussed the obligation of the Mosaic law upon the Gentiles, while the matter is under discussion, they each give their opinions as fallible men, but the moment the Church has pronounced, these fallible and frail men declare their judgment in these terms, "It seemed good to the HOLY GHOST, and to us." The right, then, of the Church to pronounce with authority is not based by the Scriptures upon the individual faithfulness of its members, but upon their character as a Church, and is a trust given them for the benefit of future ages, not for their own individual benefit."