Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Discourse volume 1.djvu/322

Rh impossible for the laity to understand, except through the inspired class, who alone could reconcile its several parts.

3. The direct Inspiration of God acting on the official members of the Church; that is, on its councils, priests, and above all on its infallible head.

The Church restricted direct inspiration to itself, and even within its walls the action of God was limited, for if an individual of the clerical order taught what was hostile to the doctrine of the Church, or not contained therein, his inspiration was referred to the Devil, not God, and the man burned, not canonized. Thus inspiration was subjected to a very severe process of verification even within the Church itself. It forbids mankind to trust Reason, Conscience, and the religious Element; to approach God through these, and get truth at first hand, as Moses, Jesus, and the other great men of antiquity had done. For this the layman must depend on the clergy, and the clergyman must depend on the whole Church, represented by the Fathers or Councils, and idealized in its head. Thus the Church was the judge of the doctrine and the practice; invested with the Keys of Heaven and Hell; with power to bind and loose, remit sins, or retain them, and authority to demand absolute submission from the world, or punish with fagots and hell men who would not believe as the Church commanded. In this way it would control private inspiration. But not to leave the heretics hopeless, or drive them to violence, it assumes the right to restore them, and pardon their sins, on condition of submission and penance. The Saviour, the Martyrs, the Saints, had not only expiated their own sins, but performed works of supererogation, and so established a sinking fund to liquidate the sins of the world. This deposit was at the disposal of the Church, who could therewith, aided by the intercession of the beatified spirits, purchase the salvation of a penitent heretic, though his sins were as crimson.

The Church assumed mastery over all souls. The individual was nothing; the Church was all. Its power stood on a miraculous basis; its authority was derived from God. The humblest priests, in celebrating the mass, performed a miracle greater than all the wonders of Jesus, for he only changed water into wine, and fed five thousand men with live loaves; but the priest, by a single