s not more against God's external
authority among men than it was against the equal brotherhood of the
human race. Well done, Luther, Father Hecker would say, well and
consistently done; when you have proclaimed man totally depraved you
have properly made his religion a Cain-like flight from the face of
his Maker and his kindred by your doctrine of predestination. Father
Hecker deemed it plainly unwise to forego the advantages of attacking
such vulnerable points as the Protestant errors of total depravity
and predestination for the sake of dwelling on the Biblical and
historical credentials of Church authority. He knew, indeed, that
extravagant individualism is to this day a fundamental Protestant
error, but the waning power of its doctrinal assertion has deprived
it of aggressive vigor. There is less danger of its assault upon the
Church, Father Hecker thought, than of its sceptical tendency upon
its own adherents. To emphasize the obligation of organic unity, in
such a condition of things, was not good tactics; it was to revive
the spirit of resistance without arresting the evils of doubt.
Authority in religion has high and undoubted claims; but it is
nevertheless true that the normal development of man is in freedom.
Man is fitted for his destiny in proportion to his ability to use his
liberty with wisdom, and Father Hecker endeavored to set
non-Catholics themselves to work removing the obstacles to true
spiritual liberty which Protestantism had planted in the way.

An appeal from Luther and Calvin to the standards of rational nature,
to human virtue, to human equality, rather than to exclusively
Catholic standards, was certain of success in a large class of minds.
And this but led to the consideration of the Church's claims to
elevate rational nature and natural virtue to that divine order which
is above nature, and which is organic in the Catholic Church. Moral
rectitude is a simpler test of truth than texts from a dead book,
whose original tongues and whose perplexed exegesis are quite unknown
to the vast mass of mankind. And Father Hecker recognized that the
elementary truths of reason and the aspirations of humanity for
better things are not unknown to any man or woman; these are
everybody's personal means of testing truth. To pass them by in order
to apply the remoter test of revelation is either to admit that
Protestantism is not against the dictates of reason and man's
aspirations, or to commence the argumen