Posted on 10/14/2008 6:36:15 PM PDT by stfassisi
It would be unjust to say that the misfortunes of his family and the bitter private money quarrel between himself and the local hierarchy was the main driving force of Calvin's attack. He was already on the revolutionary side in religion; he would perhaps have been in any case a chief figure among those who were for the destruction of the old religion. But whatever his motive, he was certainly the founder of a new religion. For John Calvin it was who set up a counter-Church.
He proved, if ever any man did, the power of logic_the triumph of reason, even when abused, and the victory of intelligence over mere instinct and feeling. He framed a complete new theology, strict and consistent, wherein there was no room for priesthood or sacraments; he launched an attack not anti-clerical, not of a negative kind, but positive, just as Mohammed had done nine hundred years before. He was a true heresiarch, and though his effect in the actual imposition of dogma has not had a much longer life than that of Arianism yet the spiritual mood he created has lasted on into our day. All that is lively and effective in the Protestant temper still derives from John Calvin.
You know, I would never even consider posting something that demonstrated the decay, demise, and incorrectness of the Catholic Church, because I know that millions of good Americans happen to embrace that faith and that’s their business. But, when I’m subjected to this hateful and insulting anti-protestant filth just by viewing the news threads, I have to say something. I’ll pray for you, I know that you and the writer of this crap are only the product of an indoctrination that doesn’t allow free thought, only the worship of a man-made system rather than G-d. I suggest you read “Windswept House”, by Father Malachi Martin, a Catholic priest. He said that every event he depicts in the book is real, including the Satanic ceremony conducted in the Vatican during which a child was raped on an altar. Remember that, and then you might understand the true source of the pedophile “problem” currently being experienced by the “Church”.
Go back and read Justin the Martyr, Ireanaeus, Athenagoras, Tertullian. Then tell me whether the Catholic Church of 1700 or the Protestants of 1700 were closer to the truth, as written by people who actually knew the 12 Apostles or were schooled in the Christian faith by their closest students.
Go back even further and read how the catholic church adopted pagan rituals from the old empire.
The Protestant Creed: Every Man His Own Pope.
The heretical protestants denied the real presence of Christ-body,blood soul and divinity of Christ in the Eucharist.
Every single early church father believed the Eucharist is literally Christ WITHOUT ONE SINGLE EXCEPTION.
Here are some examples
“For not as common bread and common drink do we receive these; but in like manner as Jesus Christ our Saviour, having been made flesh and blood for our salvation, so likewise have we been taught that the food which is blessed by the prayer of His word, and from which our blood and flesh by transmutation are nourished, is the flesh and blood of that Jesus who was made flesh.” Justin Martyr, First Apology, 66 (A.D. 110-165).
“He acknowledged the cup (which is a part of the creation) as his own blood, from which he bedews our blood; and the bread (also a part of creation) he affirmed to be his own body, from which he gives increase to our bodies.” Irenaeus, Against Heresies, V:2,2 (c. A.D. 200).
“Then, having taken the bread and given it to His disciples, He made it His own body, by saying, ‘This is my body,’ that is, the figure of my body. A figure, however, there could not have been, unless there were first a veritable body. An empty thing, or phantom, is incapable of a figure. If, however, (as Marcion might say,) He pretended the bread was His body, because He lacked the truth of bodily substance, it follows that He must have given bread for us. It would contribute very well to the support of Marcion’s theory of a phantom body, that bread should have been crucified! But why call His body bread, and not rather (some other edible thing, say) a melon, which Marcion must have had in lieu of a heart! He did not understand how ancient was this figure of the body of Christ, who said Himself by Jeremiah: ‘I was like a lamb or an ox that is brought to the slaughter, and I knew not that they devised a device against me, saying, Let us cast the tree upon His bread,’ which means, of course, the cross upon His body. And thus, casting light, as He always did, upon the ancient prophecies, He declared plainly enough what He meant by the bread, when He called the bread His own body.” Tertullian, Against Marcion, 40 (A.D. 212).
“He likewise, when mentioning the cup and making the new testament to be sealed ‘in His blood,’ affirms the reality of His body. For no blood can belong to a body which is not a body of flesh. If any sort of body were presented to our view, which is not one of flesh, not being fleshly, it would not possess blood. Thus, from the evidence of the flesh, we get a proof of the body, and a proof of the flesh from the evidence of the blood. In order, however, that you may discover how anciently wine is used as a figure for blood, turn to Isaiah, who asks, ‘Who is this that cometh from Edom, from Bosor with garments dyed in red, so glorious in His apparel, in the greatness of his might? Why are thy garments red, and thy raiment as his who cometh from the treading of the full winepress?’ The prophetic Spirit contemplates the Lord as if He were already on His way to His passion, clad in His fleshly nature; and as He was to suffer therein, He represents the bleeding condition of His flesh under the metaphor of garments dyed in red, as if reddened in the treading and crushing process of the wine-press, from which the labourers descend reddened with the wine-juice, like men stained in blood. Much more clearly still does the book of Genesis foretell this, when (in the blessing of Judah, out of whose tribe Christ was to come according to the flesh) it even then delineated Christ in the person of that patriarch, saying, ‘He washed His garments in wine, and His clothes in the blood of grapes’—in His garments and clothes the prophecy pointed out his flesh, and His blood in the wine. Thus did He now consecrate His blood in wine, who then (by the patriarch) used the figure of wine to describe His blood.” Tertullian, Against Marcion, 40 (A.D. 212).
“He once in Cana of Galilee, turned the water into wine, akin to blood, and is it incredible that He should have turned wine into blood?” Cyril of Jerusalem, Catechetical Lectures, XXII:4 (c. A.D. 350).
“Having learn these things, and been fully assured that the seeming bread is not bread, though sensible to taste, but the Body of Christ; and that the seeming wine is not wine, though the taste will have it so, but the Blood of Christ; and that of this David sung of old, saying, And bread strengtheneth man's heart, to make his face to shine with oil, ‘strengthen thou thine heart,’ by partaking thereof as spiritual, and “make the face of thy soul to shine.”” Cyril of Jerusalem, Catechetical Lectures, XXII:8 (c. A.D. 350).
“Then having sanctified ourselves by these spiritual Hymns, we beseech the merciful God to send forth His Holy Spirit upon the gifts lying before Him; that He may make the Bread the Body of Christ, and the Wine the Blood of Christ; for whatsoever the Holy Ghost has touched, is surely sanctified and changed.” Cyril of Jerusalem, Catechetical Lectures, XXIII:7 (c. A.D. 350).
“Let us then in everything believe God, and gainsay Him in nothing, though what is said seem to be contrary to our thoughts and senses, but let His word be of higher authority than both reasonings and sight. Thus let us do in the mysteries also, not looking at the things set before us, but keeping in mind His sayings. For His word cannot deceive, but our senses are easily beguiled. That hath never failed, but this in most things goeth wrong. Since then the word saith, ‘This is my body,’ let us both be persuaded and believe, and look at it with the eyes of the mind. For Christ hath given nothing sensible, but though in things sensible yet all to be perceived by the mind...How many now say, I would wish to see His form, the mark, His clothes, His shoes. Lo! Thou seest Him, Thou touchest Him, thou eatest Him. And thou indeed desirest to see His clothes, but He giveth Himself to thee not to see only, but also to touch and eat and receive within thee.” John Chrysostom, Gospel of Matthew, Homily 82 (A.D. 370).
“You will see the Levites bringing the loaves and a cup of wine, and placing them on the table. So long as the prayers and invocations have not yet been made, it is mere bread and a mere cup. But when the great and wonderous prayers have been recited, then the bread becomes the body and the cup the blood of our Lord Jesus Christ....When the great prayers and holy supplications are sent up, the Word descends on the bread and the cup, and it becomes His body.” Athanasius, Sermon to the Newly Baptized, PG 26, 1325 (ante A.D. 373).
“Then He added: ‘For My Flesh is meat indeed, and My Blood is drink [indeed].’ Thou hearest Him speak of His Flesh and of His Blood, thou perceivest the sacred pledges, [conveying to us the merits and power] of the Lord's death, and thou dishonourest His Godhead. Hear His own words: ‘A spirit hath not flesh and bones.’ Now we, as often as we receive the Sacramental Elements, which by the mysterious efficacy of holy prayer are transformed into the Flesh and the Blood, “do show the Lord's Death.’” Ambrose, On the Christian Faith, 4, 10:125 (A.D. 380).
“Rightly, then, do we believe that now also the bread which is consecrated by the Word of God is changed into the Body of God the Word. For that Body was once, by implication, bread, but has been consecrated by the inhabitation of the Word that tabernacled in the flesh. Therefore, from the same cause as that by which the bread that was transformed in that Body was changed to a Divine potency, a similar result takes place now. For as in that case, too, the grace of the Word used to make holy the Body, the substance of which came of the bread, and in a manner was itself bread, so also in this case the bread, as says the Apostle, ‘is sanctified by the Word of God and prayer’; not that it advances by the process of eating to the stage of passing into the body of the Word, but it is at once changed into the body by means of the Word, as the Word itself said, ‘This is My Body.’” Gregory of Nyssa, The Great Catechism, 37 (post A.D. 383).
True faith is the assurance of salvation.
Those who assert they can never have assurance of salvation, testify to their lack of faith.
LOL
“You, there! Unscrambled that egg! Quickly, now!”
Next of course you will tell me about apostolic succession; does such a line of succession pass through murderers and bastard-makers?
Go back and discover that it was the Catholic Church that you're calling pagan along with devout Catholics such as Saint Athansius who gave you New Testament canon and your Bible.
This would mean your Bible was given to you by people you call pagans.
What sort of God would do such a thing?
"You MUST be born again"- Jesus..
It's impossible to correspond to a hate monger gnostic with unhistorical facts
I wish you well in your search.
From the op: “nor, but for Calvin, would Communism be with us as it is today”
But for the original corruption of the Catholic Church, we wouldn’t have had Calvin, sooooo....
Pope John XI (the “probable”bastard son of a Pope who became a Pope during the “reign of the harlots”)
Date of birth unknown, became pope in 931; d. 936. He was the son of Marozia by her first marriage with Alberic; some, taking Liutprand and the “Liber Pontificalis” as their authority, assert that he was the natural son of Sergius III (”Johannes, natione Romanus ex patre Sergio papa”, “Liber Pont.” ed. Duchesne, II, 243). Through the intrigues of his mother, who ruled at that time in Rome, he was raised to the Chair of Peter, and was completely under the influence of the Senatrix et Patricia of Rome. To strengthen her own power Marozia married her brother-in-law Hugh, King of Provence and Italy, whose reign in Rome was so tyrannical that a strong opposition party sprang up among the nobles under the leadership of Alberic II, the younger son of Marozia. This party succeeded in overthrowing the rule of Marozia and Hugh; Marozia was cast into prison, but her husband escaped from the city. In this way Alberic became ruler of Rome, and the pope, who suffered by his mother's fall, now became almost entirely subject to his brother, being only free in the exercise of his purely spiritual duties. All other jurisdiction was exercised through Alberic. This was not only the case in secular, but also in ecclesiastical affairs. It was at the instance of Alberic that the pallium was given to Theophylactus, Patriarch of Constantinople (935), and also to Artold, Archbishop of Reims (933). It was this pope who sat in the Chair of Peter during its deepest humiliation, but it was also he who granted many privileges to the Congregation of Cluny, which was later on so powerful an agent of Church reform.
And if he was, then what of his admitted children, and his lifelong history of bad behavior, as seen here:
Catholic.com entry on Alexander VI , quote "A stern Nemesis pursued him till death in the shape of a strong parental affection for his children."
Tell me, is the site Catholic.com also the site of "hate monger gnostics" who repeat "unhistorical facts" ?
God has put me on the bench in terms of carrying the flag in such arguments.
However, folks who fail to understand that
HE HIMSELF will be dealing with such wholesale balderdash
are in for some serious surprises.
they’ll get it sooner or later
The Gospel According to Mary Magdalene
Americanism, Then and Now: Our Pet Heresy (encyclical of Pope Leo XIII)
Heresies then and now: ancient Christian heresies practiced in modern times
The Plain Truth About The Baptist Bride Heresy
Balthasar, Hell, and Heresy: An Exchange (is it compatable with the Catholic faith?)
Heresies then and now: ancient Christian heresies practiced in modern times
The Rev. John Piper: an interesting look at "heresy vs. schism"
Pietism as an Ecclesiological Heresy
Arian Heresy Still Tempts, Says Cardinal Bertone (Mentions Pelagianism As Well)
Catholic Discussion] Church group stays faithful (to heresy!)
An overview of modern anti-Trinitarian heresies
Christian mavericks find affirmation in ancient heresies
Where heresy and dissent abound [Minnesota]
Gnostic Gospels - the heresy entitled "Gnosticism."
The So-Called ‘Gospel’ of Judas: Unmasking an Ancient Heresy
Benedict XVI Heresies and Errors
The Heresy of Mohammed (Chapter 4, The Great Heresies)
for later
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