The Assumption of Mary
By G. H. LANG.
[The following can be
found in the author’s book, - Pictures and Parables, pp. 104-109.]
Before leaving this parable [i.e.,
of The Leaven and the Meal] we will consider
a few more instances of the hiding of leaven in the meal by this Woman.
The Godhead. The Catholic creed avows the orthodox doctrine of the
trinity of Persons in the one God. In
practice, however, the glorification of Mary makes her the chief object of
devotion. In the first period of
the
Atonement. The Church avows that the sacrificial death of Christ is
indispensable to our salvation; but this is vitiated by the doctrine that this
salvation is obtained through the sacraments, and these require the priest for
effectual administration.
The
Catholic creed admits the Divine origin of the Old and New Testaments, but this
is corrupted by the recognition of the Apocrypha also. Moreover, before the official Catholic creed
admits the Holy Scriptures it requires the avowal of a steadfast assent to and
acceptance of alleged apostolic traditions. And to the acknowledgment of the Scriptures
the promise is appended not to interpret them save
according to the unanimous consent of the Church Fathers. As these in fact are not unanimous on doctrine
no interpretation of Scripture by the individual Catholic is possible. Thus does leaven vitiate the meal. Tradition is made the more important, and
the Word of God is made of none effect.
Purgatory. In my commentary on Hebrews it is shown (ch. 13) that Scripture
warns that an unsanctified believer is liable to the parental chastisement of
God [before and]
after death, with a view to his being fitted for the Millennial kingdom. To this salutary teaching the Catholic
Church adds the fundamental error that
this purification is necessary to final salvation, whereas the blessed truth is
that this is dependent solely upon the
atoning death of Christ relied upon by faith.
To
false doctrine on this matter the Church then appends the further falsity that its priests can help the sufferer through
and out of purgatory by their masses, thus greatly strengthening the grip of
the priests on their dupes [deceived
followers] and
their money.
(12)
The Assumption of Mary. [On p. 187 of
G. H. Lang’s commentary on Hebrews is written:-]
“It is worth deep and full inquiry whether it be not the case that the whole system of Roman theology, and
each dogma separately, has some element of truth at its heart, truth
perverted and corrupted, but there. It
is to be doubted whether any one of those dogmas is undiluted error. That Church has been pre-eminently the woman
that has hid the leaven of error in the meal of truth; but the meal is there. If this is so, it is to be expected that in
even their doctrine of purgatory there is an element of truth.”
Here
is a theme worthy of some competent evangelical theologian and historian. A reviewer remarked upon the paragraph just
quoted that - "there is true insight here, but the statement goes too far:
what element of truth lies at the heart (for example) of the latest Dogma, that
of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary?"
The
answer affords a useful illustration of the feature here discussed.
The
history of this dogma begins with an early legend that almost immediately after
the death of Mary Christ appeared, with His angels, and caused her soul
to be reunited with her body and she was carried to heaven.
The
legend appeared in the third or fourth century and was attributed to Gnostic or
Collyridian heretics. The latter worshipped the Virgin Mary as a
goddess and offered to her cakes as a sacrifice. The book that preserved this story was for a
while rejected by the Church and was officially condemned as heretical by a Decretum attributed to Pope Gelasius A.D. 494. By
a series of forgeries in the names of John the Apostle, Melito,
Athanasius, Jerome, and Augustine, and further by the
adoption of the Gnostic legend by some accredited teachers, writers, and
liturgies, it became accepted by the Church in centuries 6, 7, and 9 (see Smith’s
Dict. of Christian Antiquities, ii, 1142, 1143).
But it remained only a "pious tradition"
[which nevertheless ought to be accepted] down to A.D. 1950, when it was
exalted to being a Dogma which the faithful are bound to believe at peril of
the soul.
Here
is a clear denial of the Dogma of Papal Infallibility, for what was condemned
as heretical in 494 was affirmed as Divine truth in 1950.
Thus
the lowly Mary, the mother of Jesus, and of His brothers and sisters
(Mark 3: 31; 6: 3; John 2: 3-5; Gal. 1: 19),
was metamorphosed into the Perpetual Virgin and impiously exalted to be the
Queen of Heaven with the blasphemies which are attached to her, as in the
instance cited above where she is placed between the Father and the Son in
adoration, and as when she is set forth as the tender-hearted Intercessor, who
pleads for sinners at the hands of her harsh and unwilling Son.
Thus
the pagan Queen of Heaven, as owned at first by the heretical Collyridians, was adopted by the
The
reader may think the reviewer justified in questioning whether there can be any
element of truth in this blasphemy. Yet
going back to the original form of the legend, its essence is this: That immediately
after Mary’s death, by a descent of the Lord from heaven with His angels, her
body was re-quickened by reunion with her soul, brought from
The
error mingled with the truth was that the
event had already taken place in the case of Mary, and this paved the way
for the disastrous corruptions mentioned.
If the apostles had taught the early church that all
believers go to heaven at death this would of necessity have applied to
Mary and there would have been neither need nor room for inventing a special
legend so as to get her there. The
fact of the legend about her in particular shows the apostles had not so
taught.
The Place of Dead Saints. Let it now be much observed that, according to the legend
Mary’s soul did not at death go to heaven above, but was carried by angelic
agency to Paradise.
This
shows that down to that time (cent. 4) it was held that believers at death went
where Lazarus went at his death, and by the same angelic agency; "he was carried by the angels into
Abraham’s bosom"
(Luke 16: 22). This was the current description of
Upon
this the learned Bishop Pearson, in his monumental treatise on The
Creed, writes on Article V as follows:-
This hath been in the later ages of the
church the vulgar opinion of most men ... But
even this opinion, as general as it bath been, hath neither that consent of
antiquity, nor such certainty as it pretendeth. ... The most ancient of all the fathers, whose writings are
extant, were so far from believing that the end of Christ’s descent into
hell was to translate the saints of old into heaven, that they thought them not
to be in heaven yet, nor ever to be removed from that place in which they were
before Christ’s death, until the general resurrection. ... Indeed, I think there were very few (if
any) for above five hundred years after Christ, who
did so believe Christ delivered the saints out of hell as to leave all the
damned there; and therefore this opinion cannot be grounded upon the prime
antiquity, when so many of the ancients believed not they were removed at all,
and so few acknowledged that they were removed alone. ... But there is no certainty that the patriarchs and the
prophets are now in another place and a better condition than they were before
our blessed Saviour died; there is no intimation of any such alteration of
their state delivered in the scriptures; there is no such place with any
probability pretended to prove any actual accession of happiness and glory
already past.*
[*
Griffith Thomas’ discussion in The Principles of Theology (66-72)
I feel to be inadequate and faulty. It
is to be remembered that Pearson uses "hell"
in its older sense of hades,
the place of the dead not in its present common sense of final punishment, ‘the lake of fire’.]
This opinion that believers at death go to heaven
and glory is worse in its nature than the doctrine of the Assumption of
Mary. That doctrine did at least
include the resurrection of the body as prerequisite to ascent to heaven; this
other opinion dispenses with resurrection as a preliminary to translation to
the presence of God. In this
particular the one was scriptural, the other unscriptural, and in scope and
influence the latter is the larger error, for the one applied to Mary alone,
the other affects myriads of believers.
Its practical effect is to make resurrection
unnecessary, for the saint has already reached the goal and the highest
state possible, the glory of God.* In essence this is much the
same as the error of Hymenaeus and Philetus, that "resurrection
is past already," and its moral effect is similar, even to diminish
faith as regards a living expectation of resurrection at the coming of the Lord,
even in those who sincerely aver belief in the last doctrine.
[* William
Tyndale urged this argument against the Catholic, Sir
Thomas More, who asserted that Christians go to heaven at death (Reply to
Sir T. More, Ch. viii, 118).]
Now
that which lessens in the Christian the keen desire for the coming of the Lord
is injurious. It works alongside of the
error that the church is to convert the world in this age, which error gained
ground at the same time that the hope of the Lord’s return ceased to be
generally held by Christians.
The Sovereignty of the Saints. Scripture teaches that it is the purpose of God that
Christ shall be King over all the earth (Ps. 2;
Dan. 7: 13, 14; Matt. 25: 31; etc.). Included in that purpose is the plan that those
who will form the church of the firstborn ones, those who conquered in
the present wars of the Lord, shall share the sovereignty and glory of Christ
(Matt. 19: 28; Luke 22: 28-30; 1 Cor. 6: 2, 3 ; Rev. 2: 25-28; 3: 21; etc.).
This
high prospect the
Out
of this perverse and ill-timed application of the truth grew the rank and
poisonous weed of Papal Supremacy. The Pope claimed to be king of kings, lord
over all rulers and peoples, and to have authority to depose sovereigns and
absolve a king’s subjects from their due allegiance to him. As Viceregent for
Christ it was his to live in more than royal splendour and luxury.
This
corrupt and civilly corrupting leaven, this
evil political theory, is still held firmly by that Church, and is yet
to be realized when the Harlot Church shall for a short time sit on and direct
the Scarlet-coloured political Beast, the kingdom of Antichrist (Rev. 17).
Annually,
in mock imitation of the blessed Lord having washed the feet of the apostles,
the Pope washes the feet of twelve beggars. But, as Bengel said, it would show more true humility were he to wash the feet of
one king.
The blessed hope of the return of the Lord was a
vital part of apostolic doctrine. Whatever
diminishes it in the heart of the believer is of the nature of leaven, a
corrupting of truth by an admixture of err! Here each who abhors the Woman has to fear and
watch lest he to spread leaven. The
Roman 'Church is not the only agency that has done this work of the Evil
One.
These
instances of the work of the Woman and the leaven against the truth will
suffice. The serious lesson of the
parable is that this process having early commenced in the sphere of the
kingdom of heaven will continue to work until the consummation of the age, so
that the coming Lord has Himself raised the question whether "when the Son of
man cometh shall He find the faith on the earth?" (Luke 18: 8).
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