The Protestant Scenario by John Henry Cardinal Newman , from The Development of Christian Doctrine
So much must the Protestant grant, that if such a system of doctrine as he would now introduce ever existed in early times, it has been clean swept away as if by a deluge, suddenly, silently, and withour memorial; by a deluge coming in a night, and utterly soaking, rotting, heaving up, and hurrying off every vestige of what is found in the Church, before cock-crowing; so that "when they rose in the morning" her true seed "were all dead corpses"- - nay, dead and buried and without gravestone. "The waters went over them; there was not one of them left; they sunk like lead in the mighty waters." Strange antitype, indeed, to the early fortunes of Israel! Then the enemy was drowned, and "Israel saw them dead upon the seashore." But now, it would seem, water proceeded as a flood "out of the serpent's mouth," and covered all the witnesses, so that not even their dead bodies lay in the streets of the great city.
"Let him take which of his doctrines he will, his peculiar view of self-righteousness, of formality, of superstition; his notion of faith, or of spirituality in religious worship; his denial of the virtue of the sacraments , or of the ministerial commission, or the visible Church; or his doctrine of the divine efficacy of the Scriptures as the one appointed instrument of religious teaching; and let him consider how far antiquity, as it has come down to us, will countenance him in it. No, he must allow that the alleged deluge has done its work; yes, and has in turn disappeared itself; it has been swallowed up by the earth, mercilessly as itself was merciless."
REBUTTAL
Yes, the Protestant (read Bible believing Christian) does grant that, and you will find that Cardinal Newman has paraphrased much of my book The Noble Army of "Heretics."
That there was "such a system of doctrine which the (Christian) now introduces" can be proved, as I have done in the afore-mentioned book, by quoting Catholic sources. There were Christians in earlier years who professed, more or less, the same doctrine we do.
These unfortunate people were persecuted and martyred before they were able to write their own histories, so a large portion of their history has been written by their enemies.
When their enemies came upon them, they were "clean swept away as if by a deluge, suddenly (and) silently. Recall the fierce persecution of the Roman Catholics who swept into the town of Torre Pellice in the Waldensian Valleys of North Italy on Easter Sunday, 1655, and put to the sword two thousand of those valiant Christians.
That they were thus martyred "without memorial" speaks of their not being able to write much of their own histories before being vanquished and thus are unknown to many Christians today. They were indeed, as Newman has written, "all dead corpses - nay, dead and buried without gravestone."
Newman then exposes his ignorance of the rightly divided Word, for he assumes that the natural prosperity of believing Israel is to be continued in the natural prosperity of the church. Those who understand Israel was an earthly people and the Church a heavenly people do not make this mistake (which is shared today by those who would preach the prosperity "Gospel.")
Then, Newman attacks what he calls a "peculiar view of self righteousness." What he means by this is hard to fathom, except that it might be a dig against the believer's assurance of salvation, which assurance was granted to him, "a peculiar person", by the Sovereign Lord Who purchased that salvation with his blood.
All of the other doctrines of God's Grace that are held dear by Christians are ridiculed by this eminent Protestant-turned-Cardinal, and in doing so he doesn't go far enough back in "antiquity." He should go to the Holy Scriptures, the foundation of doctrine, and find that all the he assails was mercilessly destroyed by papal power, but, was kept alive by hidden saints through the first 1500 years of the Church, and then given tremendous incentive by the Protestant Reformation. It is today, while still a church that is rent by schism and distressed by heresy, the company of blood bought saints that will be presented by our Savior to His Father as a glorious church, without spot or wrinkle - presented faultless before the eternal throne of Glory.