Thousand.] 

REPEY 
,) 

TO 

'THE BISHOP OF RIPON'S ATTACK 

ON 

'THE CATHOLICCijURCH: . 
• r 

BY A LAYMAN. 
, AUTHOR OF "THE COMEDY OF CONVOCATION." 

, PRICE SIXPENCE. 

'PUBLISHED BY 
THE SHEFFIELD CATHOLIC ASSOCIATION, 20, PARADISE SQUARE, SHEFFIEL~. 

SOLD BY 

BURNS AND OATES, PATERNOSTER ROW, AND PORTMAN STREET. LmmoN; 

R. WASHBOURNE, PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON; 

, w. B. KELLY, 8, GRAFTON STREET, DUllLIN; , 
. AND 

T. RODGERS, "HALLAM?HlRE" STEAM PRESS" CHANGE ALLEY dORNER, SHEFFIELD. 

1874. 

[Entered at $tatiol1C'rs' Hall.] 





REPLY 
TO 

THE BISHOP OF RIPON'S ' ATTACK 

ON . 

THE CATHOLIC CHURCH. 

BY A LAYMAN. 

'fo ux1ufla vfl{;JJ' 7rOAA01}(;; otiurpfljJEl/, 7rOAAOVt; fit; aBufllUl' 
ii{3aAfJl, 7rOAAOVt; fit; (nrrraYflov, rovt; 7r'aJlra~ hfliit; fit; 
;'\inrflv' Kctt f7rtjLOJlUt; vJlwv' fUTl.V h O'nl.O'L~. 

. St. Clement's First Epistle to the Cori1ttltians. 

PUBLISHED' BY 

THE SHEFFIELD CATHOLIC ASSOCIATION, 20, PARADISE SQUARE, 

SHEFFIELD. 
1874. 



Imprimatur. 

~ ROBERTUS EPISCOPUS BEVERLACENSIS. 

De!ctdtfled 
~.--~ 



The Bishop of Ripon has preached a Sermon 
in his Cathedral against the errors of the Catholic 
Church. Hi~ Lordship's sermon is the most satisfaCtory 
answer to the positions which he himself takes up. He 
says that "mistakes in religion may lead to conse-
quences fatal to the soul's salvation;" and then he 
proceeds to revile that sole authority which can prevent 
men from making mistakes. He speaks of "the neces-
sity of some fixed standard of appeal;" and then argues 
that no such standard of appeal is to hle found on the 
face of the earth. He asks, "Whom can we trust?" 
And then, having stated that we cannot trust the 
Church, he shows conspicuously that we cannot trust 
him. "H uman opinions are proverbially uncert<l:iFl 
and fluCtuating," very truthfully observes his Lordship; 
after which he goes on to elaborately prove that Pro-
testant opinions are human. This is .the sort of 
reasoning to which we are daily accustomed from the 
modern apostles of Protestantism. It is no fault of 
the Bishop that he cannot discourse upon authority 
without being inconsistent and illogical; because his 
position obliges him to make assertions which are 
negatived by sense and by faCt. To be a Protestant is 
to be necessarily inconsistent; nor can we help feeling 
compassion for the champions of a heresy which is 
without parallel in the kingdom of fallacies. 

To attempt to "answer" the Bishop would be to 
atte mpt to write a book; since he touches on a score 
of different s ubjeCts-every one of them involving much 
thought. It will suffice that we merely sketch the kind 
of criticism we should offer, were we gravely to under-
take .such a task. . 



4 

The Bishop breaks a lance with -tradition; not 
seeing that in doing so he is really undermining his own 
position as an Anglican Protestant. He will have it 
that traditions, apostolical and ecclesiastical, are com-
paratively of very little importance; while he him self 
would interpret every word of the Scriptures solely by 
his Protestant traditions. He speaks of those traditions 
in the Catholic Church which" plainly contradict God's 
Word;" the extreme plainness of their cOr:J.tradicticm 
being found in the fact that the whole Catholic Church 
thinks the contrary. Moreover, the Greek Church, and 
many Oriental sects, hold that the "plainness" of 
these very doctrines of Scripture is in their sense of 
acceptation, not the Bishop's. He says that "the 
greater part of these peculiar . dogma~ of the Roman 
Catholic Church "-which, however, with the exc epti on 
of two or three, are also the peculiar dogmas of the 
Greek Church-" rest upon the authority of tradition, 
and tradition alone ;" whereas every Catholic child, who 
has been properly instructed, can quote chapter and 
verse for every dogma . And here the Bishop gives a 
forcible illustration of the utter untenableness of his 
theory. ' He admits that the change of the Sabbath, .· 
from the seventh to the first day of the week, is certainly 
a matter of tradition; but he gets over this by asserting 
that "the essence of the observance is the same , 
whether it be the first day of the week or the seventh ." 
Was there ever a more unwarrantable assumption? 
So that it belongs to us to teach God what is the 
" essence" of His Commandments, and it belongs to 
Him to obey our instructions. Of course, every Catholic 
knows that the Church has no power to change one , 
i6ta of God's Commandments; and that it is solely 
because the apostolic tradition is of equal weight with 
the Gospels and the Epistles, that therefore the Church 
accepts that tradition, as conveying the unwritten word. 
In those forty days when our Lord was upon ' earth, 
after He had r~sen from the de a d, as well as upon those 
innum erable occasions when, before His .death, .He was 



5 

alone with His Apostles, it is certain that He gave 
secret instruCtions to the Apostles, which instruCtions 
are but shadowed in the Scriptures. The Church, being 
the inspired mistress of truth , is the sole keeper and 
interpreter of these traditions. She cannot go wrong 
in regard of the traditions , because she has the Holy 
Spirit to guide h er. If the Church could teach the 
smallest fragment of heresy, in regard of th e written or 
the unwritten Word, sh e would be human, like Pro-
testantism, a pretender and imposter, worthy of nothing 
but contempt. But the Bishop of Ripon affirms of the 
Church that she is a human- that, is a fallible-institu-
tion, and yet that sh e may change God' s Commandments . 

. He says that it bel ongs to man to decide what is the 
" essenc:e" of a commandment; and that though God 
commanded the seventh day to be kept, man has the 
right to keep the fir st. Man has not the ri ght to do 
any such thing . Unless the Apostolic tra dition in 

\ regard of the ch ange of the day rest upon a divine 
Commandment, the change of the day is impiety; and 
since it is from tradition alone that we know of the 
commandment, it follows that the tra dition is of God. 
In other words, if the tradition is not Apostolic, the 
Commandment can not be of force. And we have ·110 
means of judging of the a postolicity of the tradition, 
save only the authority of the Church. vVe do not see 
how to evade the conc1usion.<lI'< 

Here pass we for a moment to another statem ent 
of the Bishop, which is sy mp athetic in po sition with t he 
last. The Bishop finds fault with the Cath olic R ule of 
Faith,-without however sub stituting another; and 

* T he lat e Rev . J oh n Keble p reach ed a se r mon i n Wincheste r Cathedral, durin g th e year 
18~7 1 o n t he im p ortance of th e Apos t oli cal Tradition. Taking fLlf his text the words: "That good 
thm g whi ch was com m it ted unto t hee keep by the H oly G host t hat dwellet h in us," Mr. Keble 
t h us lucidly reasoned :-

"If we will be impartial, we cannot h ide from ourselves t hat H is Unwritten W ord. if it can 
be any how authen t icat ed, must necessarily demand t he same reve r ence from us as His \¥ritten 
Word;.a~d for the very same reason , because it is H is Word .... I do not see how we can be 
w r ong In Infe r ri ng, from these and similar passages," (Mr . Keble had been quoting su;;h passages as I 
H \OV h er efo re, brethren, stand fas t , a nd hold the t raditions ye have been t augh t, whether by wo r d 
or au; .epis tl e "). " that the faith once for all delivered to the Sain t !;, in other words, Aposto li cal 
TradItio n, was divinely aopointed in the Church as t he t ouchs to ne of Canoni ca l Scripture itself. .. 
I n~ed ha r dly remi nd you of the unquestioned h istor ical fact, that the very N icene Creed itself, to 
whI ch perhaps of all formu la! we are most i ndeb t ed fo r a sound belief i n a p roper D iv inity of the 



6 

urges th at practicafly, the Cath olic rule of faith r enders 
the Scriptures a dead letter: 

"The Roman Catholic, whoever he m ay be, 
is forbidden t o interpret a single vers e of S cripture 
except as the Church has interpreted it, and exc ept 
as he finds it to be according to the unanimous 
con sent of the fathers. But I say with out hesita -
tion th at the unanimous consent of the fathers is a 
phantom which eludes every att empt to reach it. 
You can never dis cover it. You ca n never possibly 
find where it is . You can never be sure th at you 
have that un animou s conse nt, without which the 
Church of Rome prohibits you to interpret a single 
vers e of God' s Holy W ord." 
All this we should be dispos ed to agree to, in the 

sense in whi·ch the Bisho p intends it. It is a bs olutely 
impossible for any private individual to form complete, 
infallibl e appreciation of all the te a ching of all the 
Fath ers on all doctrines. But this is not wh at the 
Church m eans to t each. What the Church teaches is 
this: that a con se nsus of the Fathers on any given 
doctrine is a determining point in h er teaching; and 
that since the Church is the sole mistress of truth, it 
belongs to her to interpret the Fathers . Here and 
there a Father might be wrong; as where St. Cyprian 
got wrong upon Baptism, but sub s equently submitted 
to right te a ching. In s uch case, the Church, being 
judge of all doctrine, would correct a doctor where he 
might happen to be in error, and he would submit to 
the Church. Where the Church has not defined a 
particul ar truth, it is op en t o th eolo gia ns to discuss it ; 
but where the Vicar of God has set his seal on a truth, 

Son of God , eve n th is Creed h ad its origin , not from Script ur e , but fr om traditi on . Th e 300 
B is hops who j oi ned in the promu lgation did not profess to have coll ected i,t Ollt of the Bi ble, but 
simply to express the faith-which each of t h e m h ad found in t he Ch urch which h e repre ~ 
s en ted-received by tradition from th e Apostles. . . T he very writ ings of the Apostles were to 
b e tried first by tradition, befo re they could be i ncorpo r ated into t h e canon. Thus t he Sc ri ptures 
th emselves, as it were, do homage to t he t radition of the Apostles; and desp isers t herefor e of that 
t radi tion t ake part , inadvertently or profanely, wit h the desp isers of the Scripture it self." 

The Bi shop of Ripon says that tradition is condemned" ten tim es" in the Bible. W e know 
not to what passages he alludes . But certain it is that where tradition is fals'e it is condemne d; 
as cert ain as that, whe r e it is t r ue, it is approved. There m ust be false .tradi ti ons , a s t h er e must 
be fals e pro phets, fa lse churc hes , false pr iest s, false bishops . 



7 

there is an end for ever of discussion. The Fathers 
were the first to recognise this principle, the first to 
submit where there had been margin for controversy, 
but where now there was no province but to obey. St. 
Cyprian is one of the happiest of examples. " All 
heresies and sc~isms," he energetically teaches, "have 
sprung from a disregard of the one Priest and Judge, 
to whom Christ has delegated His power. For if, in 
compliance with the instruCtions of our Lord, every 
member of the Christian community yielded a docile 
obedience to the Representative of God, the unity of the 
Church would never be rent." This was the teaching 
of him who had differed, though but temporarily, from 
the spirit of the Church. So that a " consensus of the 
Fathers" must be always taken as meaning a consensus 
allowed by the Church; since the grains of false teaching, 
among the bushels of truth, must be winnowed by 
inspired authority. But 'the position of the Bishop-
that because it is impossible for individuals to deteCt 
these small grains for themselves, therefore it must be 
impossible for the Church-is a position which, while 
true in its first part, is lamentably false in its second. 
Truth is a deposit in the Church, it is subjeCt to the 
attacks of human craftiness, and must sometimes be 
opposed by even heresy; but it is just here that the 
Church has her mission, to separate the wheat from the 
chaff. Most true is that remark of the Bishop-that 
for every Catholic to be obli ged to wade through 
decretals of Popes, folios of bulls and of councils, 
endless chronicles of the disputes of the 'schoolmen, is 
a thing so utterly impraCticable, that if the rule of faith 
imposed such a condition, it would impose what scarcely 
any could perform. But the Church does not require 
anything of the kind. She says to her people: I am 
the mistress of truth; and when I teach, I am preserved 
from being deceived; therefore trust to Me to do for you 
what you canflot do for yourselves; since the promises 
are made to Me, not to you.-But see here what con-
fusion the Bishop encounters, in denying the Catholic 



8 

rule of faith. The Church is not competent to fix the 
teaching ofthe Fathers-so says the Bishop of Ripon-
but Protestants are competent, each one for himself, to 
fix the whole teaching of the Scripture. The Church 
is not competent to decide what the Bible teaches, any 
more than to decide what the Fathers taught; but every 
Protestant is competent to judge the Bible and t he 
Fathers, to summon both to the bar of his opinions.-
And at this point we would call attention to one of the 

_broadest illustrations of the hopeless fall acy of this 
position. We know that High Churchmen affect to obey 
the Fathers; that they boast obedience to that now 
silent voice, which they imagine they still perfectly 
understand. They interpret the Scriptures by the 
Fathers; they judge the Church of England by the 
early Church; they submit, or they rebel, according to 
their private interpretation of certain writings of certain 
primitive authors. These men, then, do that for them-
selves, which the Bishop says the Cath olic Church is 
utterly incompetent to do for them. They are the self-
constituted authorities to judge the Catholic Church, 
the writings of everyone of the ancients, the Church of 
England, the Greek Church, the Bible, ecclesiastical 
history, and tradition. More than this, they judge all 
living authorities, throughout the whole of professing 
Christendom.-But the Bishop of Ripon belongs perhaps 
to another school. He takes what he call s the Bible 
for his rule; that is, he takes his private interpretation, 
for his sole guide in faith and in morals. Now it is 
obvious that the main difference between the rule of 
faith of Low Church men and the rule of faith of Hi gh 
Churchmen or Ritualists is that Low Churchmen limit 
their popedom to th e Bib le, whereas the others extend it 
over antiquity. Both take themselves as sole interpreters 
of their teachers; only each elects his teacher for 
himself, before he pn')ceecls to judge him. This is 
practically shown in that passage of the Bishop's sermon, 
where he treats of the" Apocryphal" Scriptures: 

" Blended with the Scriptures in the Roman 



9 

Catholic rule of faith, there ' is the Apocrypha . . We 
of the Church of England altogether object to 
placing the Apocrypha on a level with the inspired 
Word of God. The Jews, from whom we received 
it, never regarded the Apocrypha as inspired 
at all. The books of the Apocrypha were not 
written in pure Hebrew. They are never once 
quoted by our Lord, or by the Apostles in the New 
Testament. For the first four centuries of the 
Christian Church they were not received as forming 
any part of the inspired Word of God. They do 
not claim to be inspired, and they teach doctrines 
which are repugnant to God's Word. From the 
Apocrypha you may defend suicide, you may defend 
lying, you may defend purgatory, you may defend 
salvation by works. We object on these grounds 
to allow the Apocrypha to be placed on .a leveJ 
with the Word of God, as forming any part 
whatever of that rule of faith by which our religious 
belief is to be guided and determined." 

N ow the Bishop forgets that he authorises his 
clergy to read the "Apocrypha" in their churches j 
consequently, "lying," and" purgatory," and" salva-
tion by works," might be urged on the authority of the 
Bishop. Moreover, the Church of England, of which 
the Bishop is a pillar, affirms that the Church reads the 
Apocrypha "for example of life and instruction in 
manners j" so that the Bishop has the misfortune to 
differ from his Church on the real character and merit 
of these books. Perhaps he will tell us that some parts 
of the Apocrypha are true, while others are distressingly 
false. Well, to judge one's own teachers is so essen-
tiallya principle of the whole system of " Protestant 
Christianity," that we can never be surprised at any 
example of its practice which we meet with in the 
history of that sect. Yet it must be remembered that 
the" Apocryphal" writings are vouched for, in regard 
of their inspiration, by the same authority whi~h vouches 



10 

for the Gospels; so that if the Church be wrong in regard 
of the Apocrypha, she may be wrong in regard of the 
Gospels. It was not until the end of the fourth century 
that the canon of the Scriptures was fixed; the third 
Council of Carthage and a decretal of Pope Innocent 
being the authorities which set the matter at rest. 
Before that time, numerous Apocryphal prophecies, as 
well as numerous Apocryphal gospels and epistles, had 
found more or less favour with the learned; some in-
sisting on the authenticity of books which at Carthage 
w@re. pronounced to be spurious; others rejeCting some 
of the really inspired books which at Carthage were 
1?'Fonounced to be genuine. And it is at this p(')lint we 
would a.sk a question of Protestants, which, it very 
seriously concerns them to answer. If the same 
a-nthority which gave judgment on the Epistle to the 
Hebrews, and on six other books of the New Testa-
ment, gave judgment on the canonicity ofthe Apocrypha, 
how comes it that this judgment is binding in the on,e 
case, but is not binding in the other? If the same 
a':lthority which decreed the canonicity of " Revela-
tlons/~ and of five books in pafticular of the Old Testa-
ment, decreed also the canonicity of 'Judith' and 
'Tobias,'-which, we presume, .the Bishop of Ripon 
l'ejeCts,-why accept the authority in regard Qf the 
former, but rejeCt it in regard of the latter?' Is it not 
mani.l'~st that if the Church was not infallible on a part, 
s·he c . hId not be infallible em the whole; or, conversely, 
that irthe Church was not infallible on the whole, she 
could not be infallible on a part? Either accept the) 
il'lfallibility of the Church, as settling the canon of the>' 
S.criptures; or rejeCt it,-and then away goes authority', 
and all possibility of knowing the truth. 

But we cannot leave this subjeCt without stilt 
further investigating the rationale of the ChristiaFl's· 
f-ule of faith. 

There needs no argument to show that without aPl! 
external authority-an authority external to the Scrip-
tures-canonicity can never be vouched j since it would> 



-be simply. absurd to say that the Scriptures guarantee 
their own limits or exactness. Take one example out of 
many. The Church of England has rejected the Epistle 
of St. Barnabas, who is called "Apostle" and "full 
of the Holy Ghost," but has accepted the Gospels of St . 
,Mark and St. Luke who were not of the number of 
the Apostles. On what authority has she ventured to 
.do this? Is she plenarily inspired to set apart an 
apostle, and to throne in his place a disciple? Or i's 
she plenarily inspired, in this nineteentH century, to 
know whether an epistle was really ' written by St. 
Barnabas, or by some one affecting his name? She 
cannot possibly know anything about it. The time ~is 
too far back to summon data to our aid; to , judge a 
,matter that Was long since out of court. So, again: 
What warrant have Protestants for positively asserting 
that certain books wen; really written by certain authors; 
that Phebe did not alter the Epistle to the Romans, or 

' Tychicus ,the Epistle to the Ephesians; ,that all the 
'Gospels and all the Epistles, in size, words, and stops, 
'are what they were,when they issued from their authors? 
They have positively no warrant whatever. ,The 
Epistle to the Hebrews-like many other of the 
Epistles-was from the earliest times subjected to doubt; 
so that Origen could only write: "If I were to give my 
,opinion, I should say that the thoughts are the Apostl~ 'sj 
but that the wording and construction are the work of 
some one else." Thus, take away the infallibility of 
the Church, her infallibility in judging tradition, and you 
take away the certainty of the canonicity of those 

• Scriptures which have been volumed for many hundreds 
of years. As the Archbish op of Westminster has ob-
served: "The schism which rent' England froth the 
Divine Tradition of Faith rent it also from the source 
of certainty." And so profoundly has this truth b'een 
realised by many of the most erudite Anglicans, that 
they have gone so far as to admit the infallibility of the 
earlier Councils of the Church. They have felt that the 
creeds would be wOl;th nothing at ,all; unless t~e 



I 2 

,authority was infallible which c,ompiled them; and that 
an infallible canon is an absolute impossibility, without 
an infallible Church to decide it. It was argued by 
Hooker, and admitted by Chillingworth, that the Scrip-
tures cannot bear testimony to themselves; that is, to 
the range, to the complement, of the" Bible." We 
are at the mercy of tradition, judged by the Church; 
and without tradition and the Church we are nowhere. 
"I should not believe the Gospel itself," wrote St. 
Augustine, "if the authority of the Church- did not 
oblige me to do so." And he only wrote what common 
sense must approve. Yet there still remains the question 
which it is impossible to answer-but which must be 
,answered by every Protestant: "If the Church ' was 
infallible when she decreed the canon, why.is she not 
infallible still ?" 

While, if from the difficulties of the canon, we come 
to those of the translations, there is plenty to make 
Protestants, unhappy. The translations of Tindal, of 
Coverdale, of Queen Elizabeth's Bishops, were so dan-
gerously corrupt and misleading, that a new version 
was ordered by King James; and there are learned 
persons in our own day who contend that the last 
version is replete with even serious faults. 

And, if from the translations we advance to the 
interpretations,-what a maze, what chaos is here; 
coofusion compared to which the confusion of Babel 
was serenest unanimity and concord. So that it comes 
to this, to put the matter very briefly: Protestants have 
thl~ee difficulties to get over, before they can make good 
their theo'ry. (r) If the Church was not infallible when 
she decreed the Canon of the Scriptures, we have only 
a fallible Canon; and if the Church was infallible when 
she decreed the Canon she must be infallible still. (2) 
The translation of the Scriptures is a ' question of 
'scholarship; and not one person in ten thousand is a 
scholar. (3) The interpretation of the Scriptures is a 
most critical matter, more critical even than the traris-
lation. So that the Canon, the translation, th~ 



13 

interpretation, of the Scriptures form three great diffi· 
culties for the Protestant. Anyone of these difficulties 
must be fatal to his theory: all three make the theory 
phenomenal. 'if< 

Yet one more observatiqn we are forced to make, 
before leaving this question of Scripture. 

Protestants do not sufficiently bear in mind, in 
their controversies with the Catholic Church, that the 
reign of the Holy Ghost began at Pentecost ,-after our 
Lord had ascended into Heaven. If they bore this in 
mind, they would not mock Church-authority, which is 
the voice of the Holy Ghost upon earth. It was not 
long before the time of His crucifixion when our Lord 
addressed those words to His Apostles: ." I have many 
things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. 
Howbeit, when He, the Spirit of Truth, shall come, He 
shall lead you into all truth." What those "many 
things" were which our Lord subsequently revealed, 
or which were revealed by the Spirit of Truth,-but 
which are not recorded in the Gospels,-we have no 
(private) ground to conjecture. There are two points 
to be borne in mind in regard of this fact-the fact of 
the reign of the Holy Ghost-(r) that much was said 
to the Apostles which is not written in the Scriptures; 
(2) that the Holy Ghost is n0W Guardian of tradition. 
With regal:'d to the first point, we can of course know 
but little. Probably the whole doctrine of the Mass, 
with many a detail of the Sacraments, were taught by 
our Lord to His Apostles, in those forty days which are 
scarcely spoken of in the Gospels, but which were not 
spent in vain on the earth. Whatever was so revealed 
was prudently handed down, but not cast like " pearls 
before swine." If it was necessary, in the first ages of 

h
. • The same difficulties are multiplied in the case .of High Churchmen by many others 

w lch are equally terrible . Th ey have· to judge for themselves: . 
(I) Which of the Bishops throughout Christendom have been orthodox; 
(2) What doctrines did they concurrently testify; 
(3) Wh,ch of the many episcopal gatherings were really legitimate councils; 
(4) Which of their decrees must be accepted; 
(s) Where were the Saints right, and where were the Saints wrong; and who were 

Saints; 
(6) W,hich of the Aposto!ica! Traditions are true ; &c., &c. 

T I
An,d, 10 addition to these difficulties, th ose we have mentioned above: the Canon, the 

rans abon, the Interpretation, of the Scriptures. J 



14-
'p'ersecution, that the early Christians should veil th'e 
Sacraments from the Pagans; if they were compelled tb 
say Mass in the Catacombs, and to keep back from even 
Catechumens a portion of those Mysteries which it 
would have been profanation to proclaim before old 
Rome; we can quite understand how secret would be 
the teaching which the early Christians would pass to 
one another. The germ of all truth is in the Gospels 
and Epistles, the substance of all that Christians must 

, ,believe; . but the precise ritual and adaptation of 
doctrine is seldom given in the inspired fragments of the 
New Testament. "He shall guide you into all truth II 
was that promise which the Catholic Church alone in· 
-herits, and which shall belong to her to the end of the 
world . The reign of the Holy Ghost commenced upon 
'earth when our :Gord departed into Heaven; and that 
the gates of hell. should never prevail against the Church, 
is the inevitable result of that reign. " The pillar and 
ground of truth" is only the pillar and ground, because 
the Holy Ghost reigns perpetually in the Church, to 
prevent the possibility of error. Outside the Church 
all is weakness; human opinion, human conflict-no 
Teacher; but inside the Church is the reign of the 
Holy Ghost, guiding the Church "into all truth.;' 
Here is the difference between the Church of God, and 
that human sect which is called the Church of England. 
It needs an occasional .Bishop to deliver private 
opinions, in order to comfort poor Ptotestants in their 
isolation; for since there is no rule of faith outside the 
Church, they must put up with the rule of opinions. 
What the Bishop of Ripon says to~day will be contra ... 
dicted by his own clergy to-morrow ; but whatever is 
said is not of the slightest .importance, since nothing 
can be said but opiniQn. Protestantism is the deifica· 
tion of opinion. It has the plausible pretext of" obey'. 
jng the Bible;" which means really obeying oneself. 

But to proceed with out'. quotations from I the 
Sermon. The Bishop sa:ys. : 



15 
" Now what are we "to say 'in regard to tradi-

tion? In the first place, I would observe this, that 
in all the early controversies ' between the heathens 
and the Christians, no appeal was ever made to' 
tradition. The appeal was invariably made to the 
Word of God. The Christians were opposed by 
the heathen on the ground of their maintaining 
doCtrines to be found in God's Word, but there was 
no allusion whatever to tradition. Next I observe 
this, if tradition only reveals what is contained 'in 
God's Word, it is unnecessary j if, on the other 
hand, tradition reveals what is l;epugnant to God's 
Word, it ought to be rejeCted." 

H ere are a number of statements, not one of which' 
is sound. That the heathen should not refer to' 
Christian tradition, in their contests with the teachers of 
Christianity, or that the teachers of Christianity should 
not refer to such tradition, ;would appear tp be probable-
from the faCt that such tradition could have very little 
weight with the heathen. '* As to the statement that" iF 
traditioo only reveals what is contained in God's Word 
it is unnecessary," we should beg entirely to differ. The 
interpretation of that Word was best understood by the 
A postles and by those who lived with them; and nothing 
could be more valuable, next to our Lord's Words them-
selves, than the Apostolic construCtion put upon them. -
While the statement that "if tradition reveals what is 
repugnant to God's Word, it ought to be rejeCted," is, 
simply a begging of the whole question; since the very 
point at issue between the Church and heretics is-what 
is" repugnant to God's Word?" F or example: CathoIies' 
hold that the Catholic dogma of the Real Presence is 
taught most literally in the Gospels. Now Catholics. are ' 
as, good judges, from even the natural point of view, of 

y ~t everyth~ng must depend on w'hat we mean by tradition ; for, of course, until the Gos pels 
wfre wntten,-whlCh was not for many years after the Ascension,-it was absolutely impossible to 
re er to th em . 'Yhen" the Lord added to the Church daily such as should be saved," it was not 
throug~ the r~q.dlng of the New Testam ent; for the New Testament did not then exist , and, if it 
had .exlsted, It coul? no~ ~ave been diffused. 1ihe truth is, the Apostles converted the h eathen 
pre~lsely as Cathohc mISSIOnaries do nOW-by the authoritative teachin~ of their divine office 
~~Isted by the \forkings of the Holr. Gho)'t. ' I 



i6 

what construction should be put upon words: a!? any and 
every kind of Protestant; to say nothing of their being 
in the Church, and therefore having the teaching of God. 
"Repugnance," then, is mere personal conception, mere 
personal bias, in a Protestant; since Catholics hold that 
the, ,Protestant heresy is repugnant to God's Word and 
common sense. We repeat that Catholics are intel-
lectually as competent to judge of the questio,n of" re-
pugnance" as are the contending sects of British 
Protestants. We have the same Scriptures, the same 
Fathers, the same scholarship; plus a good deal that 
Protestants have not, to wit, the certainty of Apostolic 
Orders; and we are convinced that the whole of the 
" repugnance" lies on the side of modern Protestants. 
So that when the Bishop goes on to remark: "To be 
cpnsistent with his belief, surely he, the Catholic, ought 
to reject whatever is revealed by tradition, which plainly 
contradicts God's Word," we answer that we quite agree 
with the Bishop; and that w~ reject false traditions as 
much as he does. Only, the very question of what 
" plainly ,contradicts God's Word" is exactly the question 
at ,issue. It is the conviction of Catholics that Protestant 
traditions, on at least a score of Christian obligations, 
" plainly contradict God's Word;" and it is to them in-
conceivable how, possessing a Bible, Protestants can 
maintain such heresies. Catholics open their eyes, in 
mute wonder and misery, when they hear Protestants 
propound blank heresies or absurdities which "plainly 
contradict God's Word." So that the Bishop must 
remember that he is not the only educated gentleman 
who has sense and information and scholarship. The 
Council of Trent was at least as good a judge of what 
"plainly contradicts God's Word" as any Protestant 
Bishop is likely to be.-And this leads to the considera-
tion of another passage in the Sermon, which consists of 
questions not answered: 

"Where will you find any authority in God's 
Word for the distinction drawn in the Roman 



17 

Catholic Church between venial and mortal sin? 
Where in God's Word will you find any authority 
for purgatory? where in that word will you find any 
authority for the celibacy of the priesthood? for the 
denial of the cup to the laity? for the doctrine of 
transubstantiation? for the sacrifice of the mass? 
for the adoration of the Virgin? for the worship of 
saints and angels? for all those legends, and miracles, 
and lying wonders which are currently believed 
among the members of the Roman Catholic Church?" 

It would be quite enough to reply to these questions'. 
Where do you find commandment in the Scriptures for 
changing the Sabbath to the Sunday; for the celebration 
of infant baptism; for Confirmation; for the reading of 
the New T estament,-as the sole rule of the Christian 
faith? It is very remarkable,-at least it should be to 
Protestants,-that there is not a text in the Bible, from 
one end to the other, for the private interpretation of the 
New Testament. St. Paul spoke of the Old Testament 
as being able to make St. Timothy" wise unto salvation," 
alluding, of course, to the sufficiency of the Old Testa-
ment as a witness to the Messiahship of Christ. And our 
Lord said to the Jews: "Search the Scriptures" (that 
was, the books of the Old Testament), "for in them ye 
think ye have eternal life ;" but He immediately proceeded 
to upbraid these very readers for being none the wiser for 
their reading. There is not a word in the Old Testa-
ment, any more than in the New, which justifies the 
Protestant theory; though there is a vast deal which 
" plainly contradicts" it. In addition to those many 
passages which point to authority, as determining the 
doctrines ·of Christianity, there are those words of St. 
Peter which warn the "unstable and the unlearned" 
(that is, the immense majority of all readers) against 
" wresting" the Scriptures "to their destruction."-But 
to proceed with our questions, in retort to the Bishop. 
Let us playfully enqt}ire-for we may be playful on this 



18 

theme-Where do you find commandment for the marriage 
of the ' dergy, for the servility of the clergy to the State, 
for such a "type" as the clergy of the Four Georges, in 
short, for a purely secular clergy? Where do you find 
commandment for the doCtrine of the Real Absence, for 
transforming a church into a reading room, for making 
the "pure" worship of God as contemptibly human as 
Queen Elizabeth's politics or theology? Where do you 
find commandment for making a Queen the Head of the 
Church, for the appointment of Bishops by a Prime 
Minister, or for episcopal jurisdiCtion through the 
Treasury? Where do you find commandment for Penal 
Laws against Catholics, for punishing with imprisonment 
the not attending" Dearly Beloved Brethren," for hanging 
priests by the score for saying Mass, and for hunting 
down all Catholics like -dogs ?* Where do you find 
commandment,-though this belongs rather to prophecy, 
and we should look for it, say, in Isaiah,-where do y.ou 
find the prophecy that, in the sixteenth century, a certain 
wicked King should arise, who, wanting to commit 
adultery, but being forbidden by the Pope, should 
straightway Protestantise the Church? We might 
imagine the Protestant Scriptures to contain such a 
prophecy as the following: Behold, in the sixteenth 
century, She most murderous King shall form an entirely 
new Church; assisted by a miserable apostate monk-
whose sole credential for his divine mission shall be found 
the faCt that he shall seduce a nun from her vows. This 

,. It is true that, in the short reign of Mary, certain Catholic priests retaliated on Protest ants 
for the persecut ion they had endured under Henry. But there is this distinction between persecu-
tion by Catholics and persecution by any kind of Protestants: that (I) Catholics were contending 
for inalienable rights, he ld in England for ten centuries i whereas Protestants were t orturing and 
hanging Catholics for refusing t o . be robbed by them. (2) The infallible might consistently force 
truth on the fallible,-that is, with s heer logical consistency; but for a new sect which was con-
fessedly fallible to persecute anybody for anything was equally malignant and ridiculous. (3) All 
Chri s tian Governm'ents, as we ll as all Christian people, held heresy to be t he greates t of crimes, 
a ga in st God as well as against the State; whereas Protestantism had just s tarted the novel 
hypothesis that heresy was a simple impo ssibility . We are not now defending persecution: weare 
merely pointing out inconsistencies.-And here we would j ust notice Mr. Glad stone's last pam-
phlet, on the subj·ect of the Vatican D ecr ees i for that pamphlet seems likely to rekindle persecu-
tif) n, by the II No Popery n cry which it inflames. Mr. Glad stone ignores the osten sible fact, that 
it is because th e State has made encroachments on the Church-greater encroachments than it has 
m ade in past centuries-th at therefore the Church is in duty compelled to issue defensive"decrees. 
When marriage and education are stripped by the State of their essentially reli gious charac-

~ teristics; when Modern Thought strives its utmost to uproot all belief, by atta cks on the foundations 
6f Faith; it i50 the duty of the Pope to warn Catholic s and Protestants against the snares which 
are set for their ruin. Not the Church , but the world, is aggressive i and Mr. Gladstone should be 
wiser than to hazard persecution, by totally inverting facts. 



19 

murderous King, having formed a new religion, by means 
of his headsmen and his jailers, shall h and it on to a 
Queen, who, by forty years' cruelty, shall perfeCt the new 
religion. The pe~ple ~hall be compelled to.adopt the new 
reliaion, by fines, Impnsonments, and hangmgs; the most 
enluring persecution ever known upon earth being proved 
necessary to enforce the Reformation. This will be that 
pure and perfeCt dispensation. which shal.l supersed.e .(in 
Britain) a thousand years of faIth, of obedIence, of Dlvme 
peace, of Divine unity, of Divine Church.-We do not 
find this stated in prophecy; though certainly in Holy. 
Scripture we do read of "the abomination of desolation," 
which, we presume, refers to the Protestant religion~ 
And here we may once more ask, is there any prophecy 
in the Scriptures, which has the following bearing: that, 
for the first fifteen centuries of Christianity, the living 
V oice of the Church should teach; but that about the 
year I450, the invention of printing should supersede 
ecclesiastical authority, and letter-press extinguish infalli-
bility ? Is it mentioned in the Gospels, that though, for 
a vast number of centuries, Christians should not be able 
to know the truth, because "the. circulation of the Bible" 
would be impossible, still, the time would come, when, 
thanks to John Gutenberg, it would be possible for all 
Christians to have a Bible? All the Christianity which 
was to precede" Art of Printing" was to be " Popish," 
"corrupt," "unscriptural," but when compositors should 
arise, and stereotype be invented, then Christianity should 
become pure. . This is not stated in the Gospels. 
And lastly: Do we read, in any part of the New T esta-
ment, that about the sixteenth century-for the first time 
in the Church's life-true Christianity should consist in 
heresies, in seCts, in divisions, in schisms; in self-pleasing, 
self-obeying, self-worshipping; in a luxurious clergy; in 
wedd!=d bishops; in the soft silken effeminacy of Anglican 
palaces, and the easy parsonage houses of married priests; 
m the refusal to obey any authority, save the authority 
of one's own private judgment; in refusing to confess, to 



20 

fast, to keep holy-day; in hating the Church, and reviling 
her Commandments, and preaching twaddle against the 
" err,ors of Popery;" in submitting to a Privy Council in 
matters of ritual, and to oneself only in matters of faith; 
in prating about the Bible, while interpreting it for 
oneself, or about the Church, while flatly disobeying 
it; in worshipping God by a service approved by 
Parliament, and in swearing to Parliamentary articles; in 
taking office from a secular Minister, and jurisdiCtion from 
a secular First Lord; in obeying Councils just so, far as 
they obey us, and in not obeying the Vicar of God; in 
inventing one's own religion, one's own creed, one's 
own" Bible," and in reducing God to the level of our 
opinions; in making Christianity the most human of 
r.eligions, because subjeCt to every man's own will: in 
shor~, in making a Christianity of one's own, just as 
one makes one's own politics or philosophy. We read 
nofhing of this in the Bible. We do read exactly the 
contrary. We read that heresy is of all sins the 
greatest-while Protestantism declares it to be " Scrip-
tural;" we read that schism is hateful to God-while 
Protestantism calls it " religious liberty;" we read that 
rebellion is worse even than witchcraft-while Pro-
testantism calls it "modern enlightenment;" we read 
that separatists make "seCts of perdition "-whereas 
Protestantism calls them" Scriptural persons." Thus, 
we fail to trace the " Scripturalness " of that institution, 
which is denominated Church of England. To our 
mind, all the heresies that were ever begotten, all the 
schisms that were ever created, all the infidelities that 
were ever conceived, are culminated and embosomed 
and deified in this last "abomination of desolation." 
It is the apotheosis of every rebellious spirit, of 
every heretic, schismatic, and arch-rebel, of every 
" principle" that has undermined faith-becaus'e it is 
the claim of the right of being a heretic. It is the en-
thronement of the divinity of disobedience. Man may 
become more degraded in rebellion, but he can never 

. become more absolute. 



21 

But to address ourselves to the questions asked by 
the Bishop. 

(I) "Where do you find any authority in 'God's 
Word," asks his Lordship with charming simplicity, 
"for the distinCtion between venial and mortal sin?" 
Well, really the question is sO idle, that it is difficult 
to answer it gravely. Does any human being, Christian 
or non-Christian, class murder with irritability, adultery 
with effeminacy, theft with over-reaching, or blasphemy 
with levity? , It is certain that the Bishop does not do 
so. He knows as well as we do that there are sins 
which "kill the soul," while there are sins of mere 
weakness or carelessness which one deep sigh may wash 
out. Children are not hang~d for disobeying their 
parents, nor is hell-fire meant for the imperfeCt. Com-
mon sense, without any Scripture at all, would tell us 
that the will, plus the nature of the sin, make all the 
difference in desert. There are scores of passages in the 
Bible, which speak of sins which quench the grace 
of God; and these sins are therefore" mortal," that is 
deadly. *' And there are scores of passages in the Bible 
which speak of the frailties of our nature, and of God's' ; 
superabundant clemency in looking lightly upon small 
(repented) sins. There are sins which "cry from the , 
ground," which, as St. Paul says, "go before men to 
judgment;" but there are also sins which are referred 
to as " infirmities;" as where St. Paul says, " For we 
have not a High Priest who cannot have compassion 
on our infirmities." The \Yord "mortal," like the word 
" Protestant," is vernacular; and the word "venial," 
like the word "Popish," is vernacular. Their senses 
are obvious to everybody. To carp at words is a weak 
thing in Protestants, who have invented a whole 
vocabulary of heresy. 

(2) "And where in God's Word," asks the Bishop, ' 
will you find any authority for purgatory?" This is another 
example of that force of " plainness" of Scripture on 

. * The Bishop, is supposed to pray, at least three times every week, "From all other deadly 
81OS, Good Lord deliver US.'l 



22 

which the Bishop equivocally insists. To a Catholic 
there are many passages in Scripture, which teach the 
doctrine of purgatory. First, the doctrine is implied in 
those very many passages which declare that nothing 
defiled shall enter Heaven. It is implied in those very 
many passages which speak of punishment for every 
committed fault. It is implied in our Lord's desce nt 
into Limbo; at least, so theologians have considered. 
It is directly taught in the Book of Macabees: "It is a 
good and wholesome thought to pray for the dead:" 
and perhaps this is one reason why his Lordship objects 
to consider the "Apocrypha" inspired. It is directly 
taught in those words of our Lord: "Verily I say unto 
thee, thou shalt not come out thence till thou hast paid 
the uttermost farthing." It is directly taught in those 
words of St. Paul, "Every man's work shall be mani-
fest; for the day of the Lord shall decl are it, because 
it shall be revealed in . fire; and the fire shall try every 
man's work, of what sort it is." The misfortune of 
Protestants is that they pre-judge the Scriptures; and 
havi ng made up their minds that a certain truth ' is not 
there, they proceed to deny its existence. It is also 
th eir misfortune that they must interpret the Scripture 
solely by the light of their own minds; since not only 
have they no Divine . Church to guide them, but each 
clergyman tells them different things. If they could . 
take the Bible as a whole,-which is solely the habit 
of Catholics; and if they had Divine Light,-which 
is solely the privilege of Catholics; they would under-
stand many things which, by the light of their own 
minds, they are quite unable to comprehend. Thus , in 
re gard of purgatory, the light which Catholics have on 
th e subjects of holines s, God's infinite justice and per-
fection, His vast gifts (in the Church) t o a Christian, 
and the paramount duty of obedience, enable Catholics 
to judge of truths by many other (relative) truths, and to 
give to each its exact place and force. But poo r Pro-
testants, jumbling all truths together, and having no 
knowledge of God beyond the human interpretation 



23 

which each one affixes to favourite texts, are at sea, and 
in a maze, on the truths of the Church, as well as at 
sea, and in a maze on her authority. How can human 
interpretation fix the sense of Divine Words, or mere 
man teach God what to believe? I t belongs to the 
infallible Church to fix the doCtrines of the Scriptures, 
because God is ever present to guide her. As one 
fragment of a broken vessel is put a poor indication of 
what that vessel would be, if complete; so the fragments 
of truth which Protest ants possess are but a poor indica~ 
tion of the whole. The Church is complete; a p erfeCt 
Divine vessel; and she judges of the whole, and of parts, 
of herself; God showing her herself and Him. 

(3) "And where do you find authority," asks the 
Bishop, "for all those legends and miracles and lying 
wonders,which are currently be1ieved among the members 
of the Romah Catholic Church?" By lying wonders the 
Bishop means false miracles. And the answer, very 
briefly, is this: False miracles are a proof of true. 
There are no true miracles in the Church of England; 
consequently, there are no false. False" legends" 
abound in the Church of England: indeed the whole 
system and pretence of Protestantism may be sum-
marized as a bundle of false legends; false legends 
corrupting history; false legends as to the praCtice of 
Catholics; false legends as to the teaching of the 
Church, and as to the spirit of its acceptance by 
Catholics. Be it remembered, in explanation of th is 
point, that protest implies positive teaching; imitation 
the existence of a type. Unless there were a positive, 
there would not be a negative. Unless there were an 
example, there would not be a copy. These truths may 
be illustrated as follows: Noone has ever thought of 
denying the infallibility of the Archbishop of Canter-
bury, because that State-official has never thought of 
asserting it; but hundreds of sdly Catholics have denied 
the infallibility of the Pope, because the Church has in 
al~ ages believed it. In regard . of true doCtrines, true 
mIracles, true traditions-traditions and legends are 



24 

very different things indeed; but we cannot go into 
that now-the Church has to be perpetually judging. 
The very raison d'etre of the Catholic Church, so far as 
her magisterium is concerned, is to distinguish the true 
from the false; just as the very raison d'etre of the 
Church of England is to confuse them both together. 

Appropriate to this subject is the whole attitude of 
heresy towards the div:ine office of the Church. It is 
the province of heresy to necessitate dogma, as it is 
its province to necessitate judgment; and therein we 
see how the power of God compels even His enemies 
to serve Him. If there had been no heresy, no spirit 
of doubt, it is just possible we might have had no creeds. 
The most splendid definitions have been urged on by 
hostility to the Written or the Unwritten Word. The 
dogma of the Immaculate Conception was at least 
hastened by the unnatural disrespect of Protestants for 
the Mother of God, and by the concomitantly feeble 
appreciation which they had of the Divinity of her Son; 
and the dogma of the Inlallibility of the Pope-the most . 
magnificent intellectual certainty with which God has 
enriched human life-:-was mainly due to that chaos of 
folly, which Protestantism calls Modern Thought . . 
Heresy has its mi;>sion-unknown to itself-to sharpen 

. the outlines of truth; and though it postpones the 
Divine operations-as, for example, the conversion of 
the heathen-it causes truth to shine out as the sun. 
These remarks on the" magisterium" of the 'Church, in 
regard of her judgment on doctrines, apply c.ollaterally 
to the "magisterium" of the Church, in regard of her 
judgment on miracles. False miracles imply true; 
false legends imply true; "lying wonders" imply true; 
but it is for the Church, not for heretics, to judge them. 

(4) As to that question of the Bishop: "Where do 
you find authority in the Scriptures for the worship of 
saints and angels ?" Ruffice it very briefly to remark, that 
the" Communion of Saints" is an impossibility for here-
tics, because they are outside the Family of God. The 
Incarnation not only united God with man; it united 



25 

man with God; and the membership of the whole 
Church in Heaven, on earth, and in purgatory, is a 
heart-s~cret a heart-truth, of purely Christian belief, 
but inconsistent with any form of heresy. "I believe in 
the Communion of Saints" has no meaning whatever 
for Protestants; any more than" I believe in th e Holy 
Catholic Church." Scripture texts would have no 
bearing for Protestants, on points which they a priori 
ignore.· 

(5) Again: the ~ishop asks: ".Where do you find 
authority for the celIbacy of the prie stho od?" Well, 
St. Paul does not speak so highly of marri age as to lead 
one to infer that he would select that state for the most 
exalted type of the Christian. He speaks apologetically 
of marriage: he doe s not speak apologetically of priest-
hood. Of marriage he can only say, "He that is 
married is divided;" and again, "He that is with a 
wife· is solicitous for the things ofthe world, how he may 
please his wife ;" whereas he adds, " He th at is without 
a wife is solicitous for the things that belong to the 
Lord, how he may please God." He also says, in 

* Since go ing to press we have read the r epo rt of a sermon, wh ich was preached on Sunday , : 
N av. I, from th e pulpit of Ripon Ca th ed ral, thou gh not by th e Bi s hop of Ri pon. I t is probable tha t 
more fo lly,rnore vanity, have been seldom compress ed in to one effort. T hus, the preacher objec ts to 
the" Ave," or 'I Hail Mary,lI on the ground th a t it is n ot a Scrip tural composi ti on ; wh ereas everyone 
s hou ld know that th e firs t half is compo sed of the ipsissima ve1'ba of Scripture , while the second half 
is a prayer for interc ession. The Archangel Gabriel mu st have been a heretic, and St. E lizabeth an 
"uns criptural " p er son, if the II Ave " is not what it s hould be. The preacher, t oo, omits the 
pri~cipal words of th e prayer, II Ble ssed is th e fruit of thy womb, Tesus," whether purpos ely or 
aCCIdentall y we kn ow n ot. Then, again, h e quotes the words of tb e "Confiteor, 1I whic h every 
Cathol ic says when confessing, as an example of "blasphemous II prayer; forgetting that a t the 
Day of J udg!f1ent-which good confess ions anticipate-all s ins of all men will be openly confessed 
b~fore all ,samts and angels of God. If it is blas phemy n ow to humble ourselves before H eaven, it 
WIll be qUIte as much blas ph emy then. But the p reacher t hinks n othing of sain t s, unl ess he h a s 
cond~scended to canon ize th em. We have seen that, in h is opinion, the Archangel G abriel was a 
h~retlc, and St. E.Iizabeth an unscriptural person; similarly h e in forms us th at" St. Ger vase , St. 
Silveste r , S~. FabIan, St. Anastasia ," we r e very sorry sai nt s." This is really exquisite as a speci men 
o f I?resumptlon:-of that comp lacency which is ready to judge everybody, from the Popes down to 
clOIstered ascetics. H e confuses me diators a n d intercesso r s, because he find s thi s conven ie",t; and 
he says St. J oh n would have done homage t o an angel, for wh ich the an gel r e buked him; whereas 
h e sh ould ~now that St . ] ohn mis took the angel fo r our L ord, and would h ave rendered n ot hom age 
but ad?ratlOn . Homage may be r endered to anyone, so m ay worship in th e natural sense; but 
adoratIon can be rendered only to God-a distincti on which Catholics understan d, W e were quite 
prepa r ed for what follows' for II th e childi sh perversene ss of Romanists " for" Rome being deaf to 
hll argu~ent." (that is, t o Protestan t preach e r s ' arguments) for th e Ch~rch being II the mother of 
14 arlots, • :' Satan\ masterpiece/' II th e mystery of iniquity." Thi s is one fruit of t he preacher's 
op~n Bible II Wh,IC? he considers II the glory o f his Church!" This is th e lan gu age wh ich he 

applhes t o th~t religIOn! which was professed by his for efather s , wi thout th e sl ightes t int ermission-
as t e An.gh can HomIlies assert-" for eight hundred years and more;n fo r wh ich in our own 
sou~ry Sir Thomas Mo re died, an~ which was the intellectual j oy of a Bossuet and a Fenelon, of 
Gt . erna!d a,nd of St. Thomas AqUInas, H e forge ts that, by such language, he accuses th e Son o f 
t hOd 0~b1In~ll1competent to fulfil His own promises , while h e accuses th e Holy Ghost of t eachi n g 
. e woe hurch 1 1...";, in stead of teaching h er" all truth." St . Jude has some words a bou t 
Ignorance and, blas~hemy, which we commend to the att enti on of this ge ntleman: "Hi au t e m 
qurecutm,quhe.q uld em Ignorant, blasph emapt ; qurecurnqueautem naturaliter, tam quam tr.uta animalia, 
norun I In IS corrumpunt ur.n 



26 

speaking even of the laity, " It is good for a man not to 
touch a woman." While of a Bishop he says, "A 
Bishop should be the husband of one wife;" that is, a 
Bishop should have been married but once; for since he 
dissuaded even the devout laity from marrying,-that 
is, those of the laity who aimed at perfettion,-it is 
impossible that he should have advised Bishops to enter 
a state, which he himself pronounced apologetic. He 
must have meant, then, that a twice married person 
was too obviously secular and world-bound to be 
accepted as a candidate for the office. And we must 
rememember, too, that in St. Paul's days, men were 
converted to IChristianity when they had attained the 
full maturity of years; so th at what is 'a question of 
" discipline" in these days was one of ,fitness or ex-
pediency in those. Be this as it may, we are at liberty 
to infer that, if St. Paul lived in these d ays, he would 
not deliberately make choice of th at state whic h he 
re g arded as imperfett. We cannot conceive of St. 
Paul, or of St. John, st arting on wh at we now call a 
wedding tour, acclaimed by bridesmaids, or toasted by 
groomsmen, or enraptured by the bride's "lat est 
fashions." There are certain incongruities at which t he 
human mind revolts; and a married apostle is one of 
them. The Church of England clergy, we know, a r e 
not apostle s ; they are laymen with the prefix of 
Reverend,-or Ri ght Reve rend, as the Prime Mi nister 
may think best. Still, eve n t hey ough t to be able to 
comprehend that a " succes so r of the Apos tl es " m akin g 
love to his congregation is a very uns eemly sight indeed. 
A popular preacher may be a cong ru ous idea, in a three 
volume novel meant for P rotes tants; but a . preacher 
whose popularity has nuptial contin gents is hardly an 
apostolic type. It is perfettIy proper, we know, th at 
the Protestant clergy should m arry-because they are 
only Protestant clergy. They are not priests in any 
sense of the word. They have no orders, jurisdittion, 
nor faculty; and they ministe r only to opinion. They 
have no sacrifice to offer, no confessions to hear, no 



27 

Mysteries to handle ?r pro~laim ... Theirs is a human 
religion; and they, ltke theIr reltgIOn, are but human. 
It was not to them that our Lord addressed the words, · 
" He that can receive it, let him r.eceive it." The case 
is the reverse with true priests. The Adorable Sacrifice 
is their daily contemplation; the Sacrament of Penance 
half their life. They are set apart for supernatural 
funCtions, and their whole spirit is far above the world. 
They are eleCted of God to be exemplars; as well as to 
teach certain truth. Theirs is a life which has little ' 
in common with the average aspirations of the laity; 
and if anything could add to the dignity of their office, 
it would be the excellence with which the.y fulfil it. 
These men are what they seem to · be; true types of 
true priests; asking nothing of their penitents which 
they do not perform; teaching by example quite as 
much as by precept ;-a holy and separate class. But 
the Protestant clergy are mere men of the world; highly 
moral, respeCtable, proper; but with no shadow of 
pretence to a supernatural character in their lives any 
more than in their teaching. Marriage is their first 
grand idea, and private opinion their second. "Mar-
riage," said Erasmus, "is the only paradise left for a 
reformed or Protestant Christian;" and certainly- with 
the exception of hatred for "Popery "- it is the only 
dogma on which they are agre~d. Curates are divided 
between rapturous sermons or what they are pleased to 
call" faith," and equally rapturous expatiations on the 
ch.ar~s of some member of their flock; and tho.ugh all 
t~IS IS .very natural and proper in them, it would be 
sl~ply mconceivable in true priests. That sp,eCtacle 
whlch.ma~es Catholics smile- the speCtacle of a wedded 
eccleSIastIc-reaches its apex of fantastic suggestive-
ness,. when a Dean or a Bishop is the example; and 
nothlI:g but good breeding prevents Catholics from 
laughmg, when they come across these highly mundane 
apo~tles. Even the Russians will not hear of a priest 
fettmg married after he has taken the first orders : semi-
oarbarous as they are, that is too much for them: but, 



28 

then, we must remember that the Russians have true 
orders.-And this leads to the consideration of the next 
question of the BisholJ: What proof is there of the 
Doctrine of Transubstantiation. 

(6) It is not likely that a "priesthood" which 
makes marriage its first element would have the faculty 
of diving deeply into Scripture. Scripture truths are 
hid, si-nce they are revealed by the Holy Spirit, and the 
Holy Spirit alone can interpret them. Consequently a 
class which is uxorious and worldly, differing from lay 
heretics in nothing but name, and in a slight change of 
dress and demeanour, could not be expected to have 
supernatural insight into the truths which lie hid in the 
Gospel. Even Catholic priests do not presume to fix 
doCtrines until God has taught the Church through His 
Vicar; yet the meanest Catholic layman is much more 
of a priest than all the Anglican Bishops put together. 
And here let it be remarked, for it is most important to 
note it, that in every case where true orders are pre-
served, as for example in the Schismatical Greek Church, 
there is preserved also the true Doctrine of the Blessed 
Sacrament; so that sacrilege has been rendered unlikely. 
But 'in the case of English Protestants, who have lost 
the succession, there was no necessity to preserve the 
true doctrine, which could have led but to impious 
counterfeit. Consequently," Dearly Beloved Brethren," 
and a commemorative communion, have taken the place 
of the Real Presence with Protestants; while the Greeks 
have preserved the true doctrine of the Blessed Sacra-
ment, concurrently with Apostolic order. 

And certainly it may be permitted to observe at this 
point, that Protestants of the school of the Bishop of 
Ripon have much more consistency on their side than 
the so-called Anglo-Catholic clergy; for to hold that 
sacrifice, consecration, or even one gift of priesthood, is 
retained by the Anglican clergy is to charge three cen-
turies of Protestants with the blackest infidelity, or with 
supreme unconsciousness of their gifts. If Protestants 
had the true priesthood, it would be impossible 



29 

to contemplate the sacrIlege of millions of their 
"Communions." Happily, everybody knows that they 
have not. 

N ow the Bishop puts three questions close together; 
and it will be better that we answer them as one. He 
wants to know what authority there is in the Scriptures 
for (1) "Transubstanti ation," for (2) "Sacrifice," for 
(3) "the denial of the cup to the laity." The answer 
to anyone is the answer to all three;. because if we 
grant the autho~'ity of t?e . Church? in determining the 
teaching of Scnpture, 1t 1S certam that the Church 
cannot lead us astray on one point any more than on 
another. But there is an answer which is also com-
prehensive, and satisfaCtory to the rational thinker. If 
Transubstantiation be true-and we will here first argue 
on hypothesis-it must follow, first, that we should offer 
Christ in sacrifice, and, secondly, that we need not 
receive the Challce. Of the first, let us say that, to 
possess Chtist on our altars, and not to offer Him to 
the Father, would be as 'impossible as not to plead 
Christ in prayer when we address the Father in Heaven. 
And, of the second, it is obvious that, if the Host be 
Very God, then is God present in each species of the 
Sacrament, that is, He is present in both. And here 
we must observe that there is something quite childish, 
something utterly inconsistent and irrational, in blaming 
the Church for depr~ciating the Sacrament, while at 
the same time blaming her for exalting it! If the 
Catholic Church teach Transubstantiation, she must 
teach that the Real Presence is complete in the Host, 
and also in each drop in the Chalice. There is no 
dividing Christ. As it was customary in the Early 
Church to give the Chalice to the very young, and also 
to the, infirm or the sick, because the Chalice, like the 
!fost, is God; so is it reasonable to give the Host by 
1tself, because the Host, without the Chalice, is . God. 
The motive of the Church in withholding the Cup is not 
one that we need now discuss. Probably reverence had 
a good deal to do with it, since the giving the Chalice 



3D 

led ta accidents; and there was alsa the desire ta pratest 
against heresy-the heresy which Pratestants praclaim. 
But, whatever the matives, we say that far Pratestants, 
wha degrade the true daCtrine .of the Real Presence, ta 
upbraid the Church far maintaining it, is irratianal, 
and even wantDnly absurd, and expases them ta be 
answered with ridicule. 

As regards the testimany .of Scripture an this paint, 
we think it is perfeCtly sufficient. We da nat presume 
ta judge the Scriptures far .ourselves; since the variety 
.of gifts, and the vastness .of requirements, which are 
necessary far even its natural interpretatian, lie .outside 
the passessian .of mast men; but, speaking prima facie, 
we shauld canclude that .our Lard's wards wauld justify 
the praCtice .of the Church. The Cauncil .of Trent well 
remarks: "He wha sqid, 'Except ye eat, &c.,' said 
alsa, ' He that eateth .of this bread shall live far ever ;' 
and He wha said, 'He that eateth My flesh and 
drinketh My blaad hath eternal life,' said at the same 
time) 'The bre a d which I will give is My flesh far the 
life .of the warld.' " Then again, when .our Lard said, 
" This da," we cannat far a mament canclude that He 
meant all men ta da what He then did; far if this were 
sa, it might belang ta all men and ta all wamen tD 
cansec rate as well as ta pczrtake. N .or fram the wards, 
" Drink ye all .of it," can we fairly infer that all mankind 
were included in the cammandment; far the "all" 
relates evidently ta the Apastles, and nat to the Chalice 
.of the Preciaus Blaad. The ward" da " is an .ordinary 
expressian, bath with sacred and secular writers, far 
" .offer sacrifice." In the Septuagint it is sa used many 
times; it is sa applied ta the paschal sacrifice; and 
that this was its meaning, in the institutian .of the Haly 
Sacrifice, the Church has taught us ta believe. Where 
difficulties .of schalarship, .of camplex eruditian, crass 
the path .of the student .of the Scriptures, it is wiser to 
trust ta the Spirit .of Gad, than ta man's judgment, far 
the right interpretatian; and we Cathalics are happy in 



not having to risk our souls on the " private interpreta-
tion of the Scriptures." But with regard to Transub-
stantiation-which the Bishop of Ripon thinks is not 
taught in any part o~ t?e ~ ew ~estam~nt-we Catholics 
are of opinion that it is simply impOSSible for language 
to teach Transubstantiation more" plainly." Of course, 
the" plainness" of Scripture, on thi.s ~oint as O? every 
other, is purely a matter. of appreClatlOn; for J~st as 
Catholics marvel at the blmdn ess of Protestants, m not 
reading the Pore:s primacy in th~ 9-ospels; ~n not 
deteCting the Dlvme office of the pnesthood; m not 
seeing the immaculateness of Mary, and her maternity 
to the whole Christian Church , from the very first word 
of the Gospels to the very last; in not tracing the 
charaCteristics ofthe Visible Church and the capitalness 
of the crime of all heresy; in not seeing how they are 
themselves condemned in the Bible-in the Old Testa-
ment as well as in the New-for that very offence which 
is singled out for punishment of an exceptional and 
terrible kind; so do Catholics marvel that the doCtrine 
of Transubstantiation is hid from even their natural 
eyes. But then we remember that there is no heresy 
of Protestantism, no outrageous parody of th·e Church, 
which is not" proved most plainly from the Scriptures," 
to the satisfaCtion and consolation of the heretic. Pro-
testants forget-to quote the Archbishop of W est-
minster-that" Holy Scripture is Holy Scripture only 
in the right sense of Holy Scripture;" and they fancy 
that anything is Holy Scripture which they are pleased 
to approve. Thus, Bishop Colenso quotes eleven texts 
of Scripture against offering prayer to our Blessed Lord; 
~nd the extremest advocates of" Romanizing " doCtrine, 
hke the extremest advocates of rabid Dissent, quote 
texts by the score for their views; and very good texts 
they (verbally) are. Exeter Hall and the Privy Council, 
Convocation and Mr. Spurgeon, Brother Ignatius and 
Mr. J o-vyett, Mr. Bennett and Dean Stanley, are all 
ready with an avalanche of texts, to bear down their 
Opponents in theology. The" plainness" of Scripture! 



" 

32 

Why, if the "plainness" of Scripture mean anything 
at all, in the Church of England sense of the word, it 
can only mean that it does not matter one straw what 
a man believes about anything.-But to return to 
our immediate theme: what proof is there in the Bible 
of Transubstantiation? "Amen, Amen, I say to you, 
except ye eat the flesh of the Son of Man, and drink 
His blood, ye shall not have life in you: He that eateth 
My flesh and drinketh My blood hath everlasting life, 
a-nd I will raise him up at the last day: for My flesh is 
meat indeed, and My blood is drink indeed:" this is 
language which leaves us no doubt, in regard of the 
truth of our belief. When the Jews took exception to 
the doctrine of Transubstantiation, our Lord merely 
suffered them to go away; confirming, however, His 
already spoken words by an equally distinct asseveration. 
Again, " Drink ye all of this, for this is My blood of the 
New Testament, which shall be shed for you and for 
many for the remission of sins," appears to Catholics to 
mean Transubstantiation. "He that eateth My flesh 
and drinketh My blood dwelleth in Me, and I in him ;" 
as also, "He that eateth of this bread shall live for 
ever," ar~ expressions which, to us, bear no other 
interpretation than such as the Church puts upon them. 
There are other passages of similar" plainness," not 
le ss strong, not less patent, than the consecrating words, 
" This is My body." And St. Paul uses language of 
much the same force, over and over again, in his 
Epistles. " Therefore whosoever shall eat of this bread, 
or drink of the Cup of the Lord unworthily, shall be 
guilty of the body an d blood of the Lord." The Chalice 
of Benediction which we bless, is it not the Communion 
of the Blood of Christ; and the bread which we break, 
is it not the partaking of the Body of the Lord ?" He 
speaks, too, of " not discerning the Lord's body," and 
he says, "We are members of His body, of His flesh, 
and of H is bones," with other passages of similar 
import. So that anyone who can say that there is no 
t.estimony in Scripture for the Ca.tholic doctrine of the 



33 
Blessed Sacrament, says what-to use the Bishop's 
langu age-" plainly contradicts God's Word." And so, 
too, of the doctrine of Sacrifice. W e have spoken of 
the probable sense of that passage, "This 'do, in re-
membrance of Me;" and since the Church takes these 
words in a sacrificial sense, as well as in a commemora-
ti ve and communicative, we are wise in following her 
teachin g. We must remember that, in the institution 
of the Blessed Sacrament, the words, not the actions, . 
are given; what our Lord may have done being left 
mainly untold; what He said being expressly written 
down. This is vastly significant and important. It was 
not the intention of the Evangelists to forestall the future 
teaching of the Church; to treat compendiously and in 
detail of all ritual; it was their , intention to summarize the 
history of Redemption, and such doctrines as were to be 
primarily of faith. Just as in regard of the Sabbath, there 
is no written commandment for the change; so, in regard of 
many doctrines, much is left to apostolical tradition. To 
the Catholic, the Blessed Sacrament being· the life of the 
Church,-the Holy Sacrifice, the Adorable Presence being 
her joys,-any doubt thrown on the doctrine of Tran~;ub­
stantiation sounds like hideous ingratitude and impiety. 
To the Protestant, whose Churches are but rooms for 
human voices, arenas for human controversy, human 
guess, the Blessed Sacrament is but an occasional com-
memoration, without even definite belief. No wonder that, 
possessing only such fragments of Christianity as they have 
borrowed from the teaching of the Church, but borrowed 
mainly to corrupt, they are unable to grasp that mighty 
Divine whole, which is the most perfect work of God 
upon earth. They read their Bibles; and when, in the 
prophecy of Malachias, they find these words, « For, from 
the rising of the sun, even to the going down, My Name 
is great among the Gentiles; and in every place 
there is Sacrifice, and there is offered to My Name a 
clean oblation," they fail to see what the Church sees-
the prophecy of the Sacrifice of the Mass. They read 



34 

of ~e~chise'dech, as offering a sacrifice, a sacrifice like the 
Chr~stian of bre~d and wine; and they read, too, that 
Chnst. was " a ,pnest for ever according to the o~der of 
Melchisedech; but they fail to see the truth whIch the 
Church sees, that this figure has reference to the Mass. 
They read those words of St. Paul, " We have an altar ;" 
but they admit not the Christian altar. Where is the 
use of a Bible, which for them has no definite teaching? 
The truth is, the Bible is a supernatural book, and is not 
to be naturally apprehended. For this reason it is that, 
in England, we have sects, which are almost beyond the 
reach of our counting; divisions in the Church of England 
which baffle computation, and "faiths" which defy all 
analysis. Protestantism rs another name for Chaos; and 
Protestants knowing this are agreed on one point-that 
they will unite in protesting against the Church. Unity 
of belief being impossible for Protestants, they compound 
by unity of protest. 

(7) And this brings us to the consideration of another 
statement of the BiShOp, which we will quote in his 
Lordship's own words: 

"I emphatically deny the boasted unity of the 
Church of Rome. Who has read ecclesiastical 
history, but must be aware of the almost numberiess 
contentions amongst Roman Catholics? Who has 
not heard of rival Popes and rival Councils? One 
Pope anathematizing what another Pope held true, 
and so with Councils. T here is uniformity, I admit, 
outward superficial uniformity, and outward alle-
giance t o one visible head, who falsely calls himself 
the vicar or vicegerent of Christ on earth, but there 
is not unity; on the other hand, I maintain that 
amongst the overwhelming majority of Protestants 
there is this deep, essential, true unity, which Rome 
has never been able to obtain, and which exists, 
notwithstanding the absence of external uniformity. 
The truth is, you may have unity without uniformity, 
and you may have visible uniform ity without unity, 
and which is to be valued most ?" 



35 

When the Bishop talks about Catholic unity, he is 
unfortunately talking about a subjeCt of which he knows 
absolutely nothing. . That unity results, first, from the 
gift of faith;· a gift which, in its plentitude, is only 
possible to Catholics, who alone possess all Christian 
tru~h. It results, secondly, from the possession of a 
definite creed, taught by infallible authority; so that a 
Catholic both knows what he has to believe, and believes 
by the Divine gift of faith. Thirdly, t,here is just as 
much liberty of opinion, on matters that are not" de fide," 
among Catholics as there is among Protestants; and it 
is one of the most striking proofs of the Divinity of the 
Church, that, while she can leave all her members to run 
wild in opinions, she can bind them in matters of faith. 
The contentions of theologians, before a truth is defined, 
prove the perfeCt liberty of all Catholics in opinions; just 
as the submission of opponents to a truth which is defined 
proves the perfeCt integrity of their faith. This double 
truth was shown during the last Council; when the few 
who had opposed the definition of" Infallibility"-opposed 
it sincerely and dutifully-submitted as ardently as they 
had opposed. Here is the diffe'rence between the Catholic 
and the heretic. The heretic cares for nothing but his 
own opinions; and neither Pope nor Council, inspired 
writer nor Saint, can turn him from his stubborn resolve. 
But a Catholic knows that he may contend about opinions, 
but mJ1st not contend against dogma; nor is there anything 
more edifying in the history of the Church than the 
submission of opponents to decree. When the Bishop of 
Ripon talks of "rival Popes and rival Councils," "one 
Pope anathematizing what another Pope holds true, and 
so with Councils," he is unconsciously touching on one of 
the very strongest proofs of the personal infallibility of 
the Popes. The Bishop's statement is of course incorreCt : 
no Pope has ever anathematized what another Pope 
taught, nor has any true Council falsified a true. But 
the events to which he incorreCtly alludes are marvellous 
proofs of the Church's belief in the personal infallibility 



of the Pope. Thus, in the case of Pope Honorius, we 
have the Council which condemned him,-not for 
'f heresy," but, as Dr. Dollinger says, for "inaCtivity" 
-declaring that "all the Apostolic Pontiffs had confirmed 
the brethren ih the faith," and that "the Roman Church 
had never turned aside from the path of truth to any error 
whatsoever," nor" had it ever been obscured by heresy, nor 
defiled by error." The language of the Council seems 
studiedly emphatic in regard of the infallibility of Popes; 
as though the Council foresaw-what indeed has been 
the case-that heretics would misinterpret its judgment. 
The_same teaching is observed, when the contentions of 
false Popes (set up by princely ambition) had been made 
to give place to obedience. The Council of Constance, 
which was mainly called to decide between the true Pope 
and shameless pretenders, taught the personal infallibility 
of the Sovereign Pontiff in language which was severely 
distinCt: "It is impossible that such a See (the Roman) 
should determine, and hold, for the Catholic faith that 
which is not the true faith." And Martin V., who was de-
clared the true Pope, issued a decree to the Council in 
session: "It is not lawful for any person to appeal from 
the Sovereign POlltiff, who is the Supreme Judge, and the 
Vicar of Christ on earth; or by subterfuge to elude his judg-
ment in matters of faith." And this decree was acclaimed 
by the Council, not one of the Bishops dissenting. Thus 
the very scandals of the ambitious have been converted 
by God into occasions for splendid out-speaking. While 
in regard of false Councils, the explanation is this : that 
no decree of any Council could be of value in the Church, 
unless ratified by the Sovereign Pontiff; so that we have 
more than one example, in the history of the Church, of 
the Pope setting aside the decisions of Councils-Councils 
not CEcumenical but local-when such decisions were not 
approved by himself. As Dr. Dollinger tells us, in his 
" History of the Church," the sole authority for deter-
mining the validity of any Council, the validity of its 
session, of its decrees, was God's Vicar, the Bishop of 



37 

Rome; and Dr. Dollinger quotes examples (which fill 
many pages) of this radical principle in the Church. 
"That the decrees of Synods regarding faith obtained 
their full force i:md authority, only by being received and 
confirmed by the Pope, was publicly acknowledged in the 
fourth century." So says Dr. Dollinger in his" History." 
While in regard of the" infallibility of the Pope, the same 
author is at pains to declare: "It was a thing unheard · 
of that the Head of the Church should be placed in 
judgment before his own subjeCts. He who was 
not in communion with the Bishop of Rome was not truly 
in the Catholic Church. It was acknowledged 
to be the prerogative of the first See in the Christian 
world, that the Bishop of Rome could be judged by no 
man." Such was the language of Dr. Dollinger, before 
he fell away from the faith. . Indeed, the whole history 
of the dog mas of the Church is the history of the de-
cisions of Popes. The Vicar of God, who, as Dr. 
Dollinger tells us, was called in the very first ages, "the 
F ather of F athers, the Shepherd and Guardian of the 
flock of Christ, the Chief of all Bishops, the Guardian of 
the Vineyard of Christ," was the sole arbiter of Councils 
as of individuals, the supreme authority over the whole 
living Church. This is the explanation of that repudiation 
of certain Councils, to which the Bishop of Ripon alludes. 
We can excuse the Bishop for:mis-reading Church history, 
since his sources are Protestant, and therefore prejudiced ;* 

* T he p rivate interpretation of history is as much a weakness of P rotestants as th e private 
interpretation of Scripture . A few Sundays ago, in the Cathedra l o f R ipon, some remarks were made 
on Ga lileo, which showed that the preacher interpreted hi story as free ly a s he interpreted the B ible. 
Granted that it is most difficult to kn ow the partic ulars of events wh ich occu rred 250 years ago, still, 
there are broad facts which a ny o ne may learn, any one who will take the tro u ble to do so. L et us 
trace the broad facts as to Galileo. 

{I} I t is to Rome that wea re mainly indebted for what is called the Copernican theo ry . ' I t was a 
Rom an Car dina l, Nico las of S usa, wh o is believed to have fi rs t pu blicly broached it, a nd who was 
rewar ded for his labours by the Pope. For ty years later came Copernicus, who delivered lectures in 
Rome b y co mm and of Pope Leo X ., held a conspicuous p r ofessorial chair, and p ublished his treatise 
on the heli ocentric theory by the command of, and by the a id of, Pau l II I. Thi s wo rk we n t fo rth to 
the world , bearing the writte n sanctio n of the Pope . Galileo was a T uscan . I n his day t he Co-
pernic an theory was taught in the lectures of the R oma n Co llege, and a lso in the Sapienza, the P ope's 
own University. B u t the ignorant pop ulace-not the Pope, nor the Cardinal~J nor the wise me n in the 
Church-took scand a l at a theo ry w hich a pparentl y contrad icted certain ve r y plai n state ments of 
Scripture. And now Gal ileo made h is ruinous mistake . Copern icus had been content to confi ne 
himself to sc ience ; but Gali leo must prove his theor y from Scripture. He was warned otT such 
g roun d by a u thority. A fr iend of P ope Urban VII I. wrote- by command of that Pontiff-to en treat 
Galil~o to desist : "You ought not to travel out of the limits of physics and mathematic!'; :you shou ld 
confin e y ourself to suc h reaso ning as Ptolemy and Cope rn icus used : theologians maintaIn that the 
interpreta tion of Scripture is their own particular care ." Bu t Gal ileo would/orce the Inqui si tion to 
pronounce judg ment on the Script u ra lness of his theory. He was again en treated to desis t, in th e 



and we can excuse him for being perfectly incompetent 
to understand the unity of the Church, because he is 
outside it, and will, we fear, remain so; but when he talks 
of "the deep, essential, true unity of Protestants,"-
are we to assume that he jests? In Ripon alone 
he will find more religions than he will find in all China 
or Persia. And the very incapacity of the Bishop to 
detect this disunion-if indeed we must take his words 
in earnest-proves his incompetency to teach. It proves 
even that he is not acquainted with the radical distinction 
between a Catholic and any kind of heretic. A heretic 
is a person who chooses for himself, instead of obeying 
the Church; and . whether he chooses one thing or 
another makes no difference whatever in the fact ·of his 

mos t fri endly, even affectionate t erms. He promised to leave Scripture alone. He subsequently 
broke that promise, in the most impetuous, even insolent manner. Meanwhile, Pope Urban VIII. 
was elevating to the very highest positions tho se who held the CQpernican theory; and, among them, 
Galileo himself, who received a pension as a reward for his labours . 

(2) It was solely Qut of reverence to the H oly Scriptures, and to avoid givin~ scandal to the 
weak, that Galileo was punished at all; and we re it not that the hatred of Popery 15 stronger than 
the love of the Bible in the hearts of the majority of Protestants, they would applaud the Church for 
her conduct. To show that the Church was not singular, in wishing to ward off this scandal, it may 
be mentioned that when Kepler, :l German Protestant, wrote a '!Jook in 1596 to vindicate the 
Copernican system, and submitted it to the Protestant Academical Senate of Tubingen, it was 
pronounced to be "damnable heresy;" and he was driven into a Catholic country to take refuge from 
Protestant wrath. Vve must remember, too, in palliation of this course, that even down to the days 
of Sir Isaac Newton the Copernican system was not proved; a nd therefore the sense of Scripture 
might well be held in abeyance in r egard of a purely astronomical point. True or not true. the 
avoidance of scandal to even one soul in the Christian Church was of far more irIlPortance in the 
eyes of go?d men tqan ,all astr~:momical points P;,lt together, , , , . , 

(3 ( The Pope did not Iss ue a 'dogma on the subJect; blft the CouncIl of the InqulsitlOl1 
passed a disciplinary judgment, to counteract the irreverence of Gahleo. To understand this it must 
be known that til the Pope is not infallible on astron omy, and therefore could not teach ex catleedra 
upon it. Neither in regard of an a stronomical theory, nor of the bearing of Scripture upon it, could 
the Pope affect to teach dogmatically, The Pope IS infallible on faith and morals, but fallible on 
everything else: so that he could not teach infallibly on a poin~ which lay outside his judicial 
inerrancy, {2) No judgment was given on the true sense of Scnpture ; only a condemnation of 
Galileo's special errors; and what those special errors were, only they can understand who have read 
through the whole of his writin~s . And how many modern,S have done this? Again, (3) the word 
"heresy," applied to these wnting s, did not mean theologIcal here~y. The Inquisition being first 
formed to judge . of heresy in doctrine, the word here:;y was ~ecessanly employed, so as to render a 
process le~al, and to enable the '.' qualifie~s" to proceed. ThiS word was lfsed, up to the time of ~he 
Reformation, to convey any oftence agall1st the Churc~; a~, where, Martl,n Luther, when speakmg 
of some prefect who did not pay tribute to the Pop.e, sal~, Suc~ Im~ertmence must always in the 
Pope's spiritual law be called heresy. 'J That G~hl;:o dId not thu:k hlm;~lf condemned, in even so 
much a s the "scientific" sense, is apparent from hiS letter, to a fnend: The re sult has not been 
favourable to my enemies; because the doctrine .of C.operm~~s ~as~ not .b~;n. de.clare.d heretical, but 
only as not consonant with Holy Scripture ;" that IS, "':'lth the pnma faCIe SI~l11~catlOn of Scripture, 
The Pope also wrote: "The Copernican system IS not co!"demned, nor IS It to be considered 
heretical, but only as rash." And, forthwith, .one of the Cardll1als, by con~mand of the Pope, issued 
a new edition of Gali leo's writings ; eliminatll1g the passages on the Scnptures, and reducing the 
theory to hypothesis, . 

(4) As to the punishment of Galileo, so absurdly exaggerate~ by adversanes, he passed a week 
in the D ominican Convent of Minerva in Rome, and four months m. the palace of the Tuscan Am-
bassador, his own particular friend. "I have for a prison," he wrote" 111 a letter which is extant, "the 
delightful Palace of Trinita di Monte." Subsequently, he wrote, ' Afterwards ~hey sent me to my 
best friend, the Archbishop of Sienna, and I have alwars e!lJoyed the. most deltghtful tranquility." 
Later he went to his own villa . in Florence, where he dIed 111 peace WIth the Church -So that the 
clemency of th~ Ch,urch in the p~nishment ,of a rebel, even of ~ne who had caused great scandal, is 
not less shown 111 thiS story of GalIleo, than IS her nurture of SCIence-apart from theology-and her 
reverence in thet reatment of Scripture, 



39 , 

being a heretic. If a man believe the truth on nineteen 
doctrines of Christianity, but disobey the Church on the 
twentieth, he is just as much a heretic as though he 
started a new religion, or preached in a Protestant 
Cathedral. Obedience to the Church is the sole test of 
orthodoxy; disobedience is the act of heresy; for in the 
mere fact that a man pleases himself in preference to 
obeying the Church, he is cut off from Catholic 
unity, and is sunk in mortal sin. ' He may preach about 
the " wonderful grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the 
quickening, enlightening influence of the Holy Spirit," 
as most heretics have done, from Valentinus to 
Spurgeon-between the Councils of Jerusalem and the 
Vatican; but as St. Polycarp said' to Marcion, who 
claimed fellowship with him, " I know thee for the first-
born of hell." The greater the heretic, the greater his 
profession of "belief in the merits of Christ;" for he 
must hide his disobedience in gushing sentiment, and 
in professing what none can deny. It is, indeed, one 
of the most comic features of heresy, that it talks as 
though heresy had just discovered Christ, and the 
Church knew nothing about Him! It is commonly 
supposed, by those who have the truth, that the saints 
and the martyrs of the Catholic Church - that is, 
eighteen centuries of saints and of martyrs-have known 
some little about "the merits of Christ," and have 
reduced that knowledge to practice. St. Ignatius and 
St. Ambrose, St. Cyril and St. Chrysostom, St. Basil 
and St. Gregory the Great, St. Bernard, St. Bonaven-
ture, and St. Thomas of Cant erbury, who were" Roman 
Catholics" to the very depth s of their souls, were men 
who could have taught Protestants a knowledge of 
Christ which at present appears to them unattain a ble. 
With them the knowledge of Christ was of faith; with 
Protestants it is only of sentiment. 'II< And anyone of 

* T he po ints of co nt ac t between fa ith and sent iment are s carcely discerni ble by P rotes tan ts , 
th ough th ey are cl ear as t he su n to Cath olics. L et us take a fa mil ia r example . In a Catholic 
church th ere is one soverei g n idea, which ove rrules eve ry relative o r auxiliary, namely, t he Prese nce 
of God . Wheth er a church be handsome o r ug ly, the deco rat ions exqu isite or abs urd, the music in 
goo d taste o r in bad , the Catho li c knows only o ne Prese nce-God. Th is is fa ith Ve1'S1lS se nti · 
m ent. Wh ereas in a Protestant chu rch , God being not present,~th e Blessed Sacrame nt being 
practically bani s hed,-the furn it ure , th e mus ic, the mise en scene (and, ab ove all, the popular 



40 

these saints, and scores of others who were like them, 
would have told the Bishop of Ripon to make haste to 
confess, to submit, and to be received into the Church. 
They would h ave told him-had they lived in our own 
day-that he was not even a sub-deacon; and that, 
just as likely as not, he was unbaptized-through the 
shameful carelessness in the administration of that 
Sacrame nt, which has been charaCteristic of the Anglican 
Church. While, in the words of our Lord, they would 
have warned every Catholic, " He that will not hear the 
Church , let him be to thee as a heathen and a publican." 
They would h ave told the Bish~p of Ripon that" St. 
Peter's Chair is the root and womb of the Church," and 
that "he who abandons the Chair of Peter cannot 
flatter himself that he is in the Church" (St. Cyprian) ; 
that "this is th e Rock which hell's proud gates shall 
never conquer;" that "in the Chair of Peter Christ 
hath pl a ced the doCtrines of truth. Those severed 
from the Communion of the Catholic Church, that is, 
not agreeing in all things with the Apostolic See, shall 
not have their names recited in the sacred Mysteries" 
(St. Augustine) ; that" whosoever in any way separate 
themselves from the unity of his faith-the Pope's-or 
his society, such are n ot able to be absolved from the 
bonds of their sins, nor to enter the threshold of the 
Heavenly Kin g dom" (Venerable Bede) ; that he who 
renders not reverently t o him," the Pope, "due obe-
dience, involves himself, as bei ng s evered from the 
Head, in the schism of the Acephali" (St. Isidore) ; 
preach er) usurp the place of the Most Holy . Thi s is sen tim ent Ve1'S1JS faith. I t is onl y of late 
years th at th a t singu la r fabr ic, denominated Protesta nt Church, has a ssu med resth etic charac -
t eri stics . Up to thirty years ago, a Protestant church was a room; contain!ng three big boxes, 
each ri s ing above the oth er, scores of hideous cowpens ca ll ed pews, a. commUnion ta ble wh ich was 
spec ia lly constructed to protes t against the presence of God, and a hon and a unicorn in playful 
combi nation between t wo tablets of J udaic commandments . Th e Protc;stant , when he entered hi s 
ch urc h , knew that God was not there; so he put his face into hi~ hat, and hi s feet on a hasso ck, 
with ost entatious declaration of Real Absence. B ut 10 a Catholic church, thoug h the sentiment 
m ay be bad, the tas t e r eally shock in g to refinement, t he music un~tted for: ~ church, and the 
auxiliaries tawdry or poor, s till then is the Rea l Presence, an~ there IS ~he DI VIne Sacrifice, with 
tru e pries th ood, true fu nction, t rue everything. The Catho.hc can sm~le at s~ortcom ings in art, 
because he has the certainties of faith . Indeed, a Catholtc Church IS earth s Heaven- to th e 
int ellec t , th ough not to the' senses . T ust as in Heaven the L ord ] esus Christ is offe ring Himself 
perp etually t o t he Father, so on earth, from th e alta r s 9f q-od, He is l?erpetu~l1y do ing th e same. 
Th e Divine Sacrifice is t he same sacrifice on earth, whIch IS offe r ed WIthou t mterval in Heaven' 
the Di vine Presence is the same Presence,' on our al tars, which is "seated a t the right hand of God !" 
All t h at nonsense which is talked from some pulpits, about "the Mass making void Chris t's 
Sacrifice ," shows that t h e preach ers are as ignorant of th e worsh ip of H eave n as they are of true 
wors hip on earth. 



41 

that" all dangers and scandals emerging in the Kingdom 
of God, especially those which concern faith, must be 
referred to your-the Pope's-apostolate ; for it is fitting. 
that the injuries done to faith should be repaired there 
where faith cannot fail" (St. Bernard); that "the 
Pope cannot err. Be{ore him who holds the 
place of Christ every knee must bend on earth, as before 
Christ in Heaven" (St. Bonaventure); with whole 
volumes of similar teaching, in all ages, all countries, 
of the Church. And if the Bishop of Ripon could get 
himself for one moment to listen to the teaching of the 
Church, he would learn why it is that heresy is a 
great crime, nay, greater than all crimes put together. 
Whereas most other sins that a man can commit 
are committed against the , Commandments of God, the 
sin of heresy is that exceptional sin which is committed 
against the Person of God; it is the direct attack on 
His Essence, His Being; it is a personal onslaught 
on God. Truth being Divine, an attack on anyone 
Divine truth is an attack on God's unity, Himself. 
To hear Protestants talk, you would imagine that 
the truth was the exclusive private property pf each 
of them; that God had nothing to do with it, save 
so far as they would allow Him, and would kindly 
consent to instruct Him. They are "liberal" with 
God's truth; which is a peculiar form of liberality-to 
be liberal with what does not belong to them. And 
they preach about" freedom in religious opinions;" as 
if freedom consisted in being in bondage to oneself, or 
to ten thousand contradictory teachers. The only 
Christians in the world who are "free," who enjoy 
unrestricted religious liberty, are the members of the. 
Catholic Church; because God being their teacher, 
they cannot believe lies, and are therefore free from the 
bondage of error. All Protestants are in bondage either 
to their private opinions-which are necessarily absurd 
because human-or to some Bishop· or clergyman of 
their sect; and they are bound hand and foot by fantastic 
traditions, latest "views," or the teaching of their 



42 . 

parents or friends. As an American writer observes: 
"There is no bondage so gross as that of Protestants 
to their, preachers, unless it be that of Pagans to their 
idols." And as a natural result of this bondage-either 
to themselves or to their preachers-they are unable to 
distinguish between the "act "of heresy, and the par-
ticular heresies they adopt. This is the case with 
the Bishop. He talks about the unity of Protestants; 
thus showing that,. in the first place, he has lost sight 
of the fact that there is such a sin as heresy; and that, 
as a consequence, he is profoundly indifferent to each 
and to all kinds of that sin. His position obliges these 
two evils. To be in communion with clergymen who 
flatly contradict him on what they deem " essentials in 
belief" is to maintain that it is a matter of perfect in-
difterence whether the clergy teach one thing or another. 
To say that there is no testimony in Scripture for the 
Mass, while scores of English clergy" say Mass," (of 

. course they do not say it, but they pretend to,) is to 
proclaim that it does not matter whether Mass is 
idolatry, or the Adorable Sacrifice of the altar. These 
High Churchmen have the same right to their private 
Christianities as any Bishop or Archbishop of their 
Church; they are clergy, are of the very same com-
munion; they live in the same disobedience to Rome, 
as to their own superiors on their fight hand or their 
left: what is to prevent them from being right, or the 
Bishop of Ripon from being wrong; and what authority 
is to judge between them? There is none. Some years 
ago Mr. Bennett, of Frome, was asked by the Arch-
bishop of Armagh, "Do you consider yourself a sacri-
ficing priest?" He replied, "Yes." When further 
pressed by these words, " In fact, sacerdos, a sacrificing 
priest?" he answered, "Certainly." Yet Mr. Bennett 
remains in cheerful communion with scores of clergy-
men like the Bishop of Ripon, who flatly deny the 
" sacerdos." So, Archdeacon Denison was condemned 
by the Archbishop of Canterbury-unjustly and absurdly 
we admit-and deprived of his Church preferments; 



43 

that is, he would have been deprived, but for an appeal 
to the Privy Council; an appeal which he had himself 
protested against in· the case of the Gorham controversy. 
The faCt is that an Anglican clergyman will remain in 
communion with anybody; and very logically too; for 
he knows that there is no real authority in his Church, 
save only private opinion. Both the High Church 
party-which judges the Early Church, the Popes, the 
Councils, the DoCtors, the Saints, Anglican Bishops, as 
well as the teaching of the Scriptures; and the Low 
Church party-which lifnits its sovereignty to the in-
fallible (private) interpretation of the Scriptures; would 
remain in communion with any arch-priest of heresy, 
because they know that their Church is but a Club. 
The" Old Catholics" have been recently invited to join 
that Club; or rather they have half invited th.emselves ; 
for everyone knows that to rebel against the Pope is the 

. first condition for admission. The" Old Catholics" 
had opportunity allowed them for repentance; the Pope 
behaved to them leniently; but at last they were cut 
off from the Church; cast headlong into the abyss of 
heresy; left friendless, alone, in the world. But the 
Church of England espied them from afar, and begged 
them to join The Club. They were heretics; that 
sufficed: their admission was a matter of course: 
accordingly, admitted they Iwere. To be sure, they held 
a few doCtrines which the Church of England professed 
to anathematize; but what could that possibly matter? 
They hated the Pope; and this was reason enough why 
two "Bishops," a Dean, and several clergy, should 
. cross the water to embrace them. What could Old 
Catholics do, in return for such kindness, but acknow-
ledge "Anglican Orders?" 0 comic aCt of gratitude! 
They had passed their lives in laughing at those orders; 
but now they found them suddenly to be true. 

Thus we get to the root of the Church of England 
~' rule of faith." And thus also we see that to disobey 
the Catholic Church is to proclaim the right of believing 
or disbelieving, without obedience to any livin g voice. 



• 

44 

Noone can possibly obey the Church of England, both 
because she professes herself to be fallible, and proves 
every hour that she is so. Noone can obey a par -
ticular ecclesiastic, because he has no more right to 
teach than any other. Noone can" obey the Bible," 
as it is called, because he is at liberty to interpret it for 
himself. In short, there is no one to obey; and conse-
quently there is no one to disobey. Heresy is therefore 
rendered an impossibility - in a mo~t certain, if 
satirical, sense; because since every man must be neces-
sarily his own teacher, he can disobey no one but 
himself. "Disobedience to self" is the only possible 
heresy that is left for an Anglican Christian. And since 
the self that may be disobeyed is a compound of 
opinions, of false traditions, false history, false inter-
pretations, ungoverned by any authority save that of 
its own will, or at the best by the private" reading" of 
eighteen centuries, it is a self which it is perhaps . better 
to disobey, than to honour with too much esteem. 
Really, we do not know how to address ourselves gravely 
to the subject of the unity of Protestants . If unity 
consist in such savage separations, that even different 
names must be given to different sects (some one 
reckons 289 within the "twelve-mile circuit" alone) ; 
if unity consist in -the belief in the M ass, as taught by 
the High Church clergy, and also in the ribald blas-
phemy and sG:orn of it, as taught by the extreme Low 
Church clergy; if unity mean both the adoration of the 
Real Presence, and its total disregard or denial; if 
unity mean the belief in priestly powers, and the con-
tempt for the apostolic succession; if unity mean the 
teaching of Dr. Pusey, and also that of the Rev. Mr. 
Ryle; if unity mean an appeal to the Councils, and an 
appeal to private opinions; if unity mean the whole 
Sacramental system as insisted on by many English 
clergymen, and that kind of Quakerism plus a Form of 
Prayer which is insisted on by about as many more; 
if unity mean that clergymen of the self-same com-
munion should ca11 one another "ungentlemanly 



45 

atheists," and yet remain in mutual serenity; in short, 
if unity mean the most prodigious disunion that was 
ever conceived by the human mind; then we must 
concede to the Bishop of Ripon that Protestants are 
united indeed. But, for our part, we do not hesitate to 
say, that it is not possible that Christianity should be 
true, if the Church of England is its only representative. 
I t is not possible that the Incarnation should be repre-
sented by a system, which, to speak vernacularly, is the 
incarnation of division. If the Sacrifice on Calvary 
have no better in memoriam than that imposture which 

, is called a "Communion-table," we say that we more 
than question the Sacrifice. If the Divine Apostolate 
have no better representatives than the reverend gen -
tlemen who are perpetually getting married, we say that 
we think lightly of the Apostolate. If the" one faith," 
which Christ died to teach, is that taught by the Bishop 
of Ripon, we have no opinion whatever of its" oneness." 
If a Christian "house of worship "-which is the anti-
type of the Jewish temple-is represented by a Pro-
testant room, in which a gentleman gets into a box, 
and preaches some prayers, and then gets into another 
box and preaches himself, we say that we decline that 
" house of worship." If adultery and murder, persecu-
tions and s~hisms,connubial reformers and apostate 
monks, are the credentials, or symbols, or founders, or 
Apostles, of the New Sixteenth Century Dispensa-
tion, we protest that we scorn that Dispensation. We 
know what Christianity must be, if indeed Christianity be 
Divine; and we know what Christianity is, because we 
have it in the Catholic Church; but Protestantism is 
no more like Christianity, than S alisbury Plain is like 
the Garden of Eden. It is the torn shreds of the 
seamless robe of Christ,-an impossible and incon-
ceivable anomaly. Happily, the robe is not torn. Men 
may be in the Church, and men may be out, but they 
cannot be both in and out. A spiritual membership 
they may indeed possess, if they be baptized, and in 
perfectly good faith; and they may be saved through 



46 

the teaching of that One Church, which it is their mis-
fortune not to know, not to love. They have the 
Scriptures; for the Church has preserved them, and 
through the Church alone do they possess them; and 
though they mutilate or misapprehend those Scriptures, 
still they cannot help learning a little. They have 
fragments of dogmas, which they have borrowed from 
the Church, and which may lead them back, if they will, 
to their home. They have the true doctrine of the 
Incarnation, taught them by the Councils of the Church; 
nor have they been able to resist the Church's 
teaching on the doctrine of three Persons in one God. 
All that they have they owe to the Church; and, as a 
great man has said, "There is not a Protestant who 
now talks bravely against the Church, but who owes it 
to the Church that he is able to talk at all." There 
cannot be a question that millions have been saved, 
through the teaching of the Church they disobeyed. 
But that obstinate determination which some Protestants 
evince-that" pravitas hcereticorum" which they cherish 
-places them . in a very different position from that 
of their innocent victims. They are guilty of l'ecklessly 
deceiving, as well as of " deceiving themselves." They 
might know the truth if they willed. Any Catholic 
priest is ready to instruct them; to hear their confes-
sions; to ease their souls of that burden of sins-which 
" obtenebrates" the intellect and conscience. But if 
they go on throwing dust into the eyes of their hearers, 
having first tried their hardest to blind themselves, their 
responsibility will be terrible indeed. "It must needs 
be that scandals come; nevertheless woe unto that man 
by whom the scandal cometh.'; St. Paul and St. Peter 
have both drawn pictures of modern Protestantism, 
which read like photographs in words. ' They are 
pictures of half England at the present day, that half 
which is negatively called Protestant. "For there shall 
be a time when they will not endure sound doctrine; 
but according to their own desires they will heep to 
themselves teachers, having itching ears." And St. 



47 ' 

Peter says, "There were also false prophets among the 
people/ even as there also shall be among you lying 
teachers, who shall bring in seCts of perdition." He 
speaks of "promising them liberty, whereas they 
themselves are the slaves of corruption." And it is 
against the teaching of these men that St. Paul expressly 
warns us, where he says, "I beseech you, brethren, by 
the name of'our Lord Jesus Christ, t h at you all speak the 
same thing, and that there be no schisms among you; but 
that you be perfeCt in the same mind, and in the same 
judgment:" just as our Blessed Lord, in His last re-
corded prayer, asked the Father that His Church might be 
"one;" for theveryreason, so urgent, so irresistible, "that 
the world may believe that thou hast sent me." (We stay 
here to remark, that one result of modern Protestantism 
has been to put back the conversion of the heathen; 
since the heathen are so scandalised by Protestant 
divisions, that they are prejudiced against even true 
priests.) The Apostles further speak of tqese false 
preachers, as "despising goverment," "hating dom-
inion;" a test by which we may familiarly recognise 
both the 'principles and the expositors of Protestantism . 

. " These are fountains witho ut water," says St. Peter, 
" and clouds tossed with whirlwinds, to whom the mist 
of darkness is reserved ." And St. Jude adds that "in 
the last time shall come mockers, walking according to 
their own desires in ungodliness; these are they who 
separate themselves, sensual men, having not the Spirit." 
And it is remarkable that whereas St. Paul granted 

, pardon to the incestuous person, he would scarcely con-
cede it to the heretic. " A man that is a heretic, after 
the first and second admonition avoid; knowing that 
he-that is, such an one-is subverted, and sinneth, 
being condemned by his own judgment." Thus, any-
thing more opposed to the looseness of Protestantism, 
to its " spiritual" luxuriousness and indolence, than the 
incisive teaching of the apostles, it is really difficult 
to imagine. "Protestants have skilfully converted 
the Bible," says ·an able Catholic writer, "into a 



huge code of self-indulgence;" and the speciality of 
the indulgence is found in the faCt that its luxuries 
are "matters of faith." Protestantism is a system of 
"indulgences." The Church-if we may, here hazard 
a pleasantry-annexes very difficult conditions to the 
gaining the smallest "indulgence;" but Protestantism 
has no condition at all, save only, "Pray believe what 
you like: if you can agree with me, you will most likely 
be right; but if you can not, then agree with yourself." 
And the laity take the clergy at their word, and proceed 
to invent their own religions. They adopt some indi-
v~dual creed; and then they run about to this preacher 
or to that, in search of their pet hallucination. With 
" itching ears" they listen to men, who begin by pro-
claiming their fallibility, and end by reviling one another. 
Then, suspeCting that some kind of unity is necessary, 
and feeling that they cannot get it among themselves, they 
all combine to "protest" against the Church. They go 
in crowds to a once -Catholic Cathedral, to hear a Pro-
testant Bishop hold forth on the" errors" of the fountain 
and source of all truth. Their own errors are oflittle im-
portance. That they cannot know the truth on any 
dogma of Christianity, save only through the Roman· 
Catholic Church, is not a fa Ct which stirs their enquiry; 
but the "errors of Popery" anyone can teach them, 

. because they are of Protestant invention. It would be 
better that an Anglican Bishop should preach on "the 
errors of Protesta ntism," and point out to his hearers 
H the abomination of de solation," which schism and 
heresy have begotten. That is the right thing for him. 
The Church of England has reached its last stage of 
hopeless fatuity and disgrace; and the only chance for its 
members to escape blank nihilism is to come bodily into . 
the Catholic Church. 

1'. Rodge rs, P rinter, "Ha llamshire" Stea m Press, Cha nge Alley Corner, Sheffield. 



iET was stated in a recent advertisement that 
the writer of this pamphlet was the author 

of the "Comedy of Convocation." This was 
correCt. But it was also stated that he was the 
author of" My Clerical Friends." This was in-
correCt. He has to regret tha,t he can claim, no 
part whatever in that admirable and delightful 
work. ' 

I t may be desirable 'to mention that the Report 
of the Sermon on which this Reply is founded was 
given in the "Ripon Gazette/, of Thursday, 
October 8th, I874. 

" 




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