Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Discourse volume 1.djvu/300



Catholic church, and most if not all the minor Protestant churches, claim superiority over Reason, Conscience, and the religious Element in the individual soul, assuming dominion over these, as the State justly assumes authority over the excessive passions and selfishness of men. Now since the former are not, like the latter, evils in themselves, the Church, to justify itself, must denounce them either as emanations from the devil, or at best as uncertain and dangerous guides. The churches make this claim of superiority, either distinctly in their creeds and formularies of faith, claiming a divine origin for themselves, or by implication, in their actions, when they condemn and blast with curses one who differs from them in religious matters, and teaches doctrines they disapprove. In virtue of this assumed superiority the Christian Church, as a whole, denies what it calls “salvation” to all out of the Christian Church—excepting some of the Jews before Christ—though their life be divine as an angel's. How often have Socrates and that long line of noble men who do honour to Greek and Roman antiquity been damned by hirelings of the Church! The Catholic church denies salvation to all out of its pale, and in general each church of