The fourfold difficulty of Anglicanism, or, the Church of England tested by the Nicene Creed in a series of letters


Cbe

‘ jfourfolb difficult?
of

HngUcanism:

OR,

THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND
TESTED BY THE NICENE CREED.

IN A SERIES OF LETTERS

BY

VERY REV. J. SPENCER NORTHCOTE, D.D.,
Provost of Birmingham.

>
;

'

SECOND EDITION.

LONDON:
PUBLISHED FOR THE AUTHOR BY

THE CATHOLIC TRUTH SOCIETY.
Office: 18 West Square, S.E.

Dep6ts: 21 Westminster Bridge Road, S.E. ; 245 Brompton Road,
S.W. (opposite the Oratory); 23 King Edward Street, E.C.

;

28 Kijig Street, Melbourne, Australia
; St. Xavier’s College,

Calcutta
; 32^ Church Street, Toronto, Canada ; The Catholic

Publication Society Co., 9 Barclay Street, New York.

Price Sixpence.



Bound Volumes—0 'o Shilling each.

Papers read at the Manchester 'nference,
1889. [ 1890.

Papers read at the Birmingham Confer^ nee,
Publications of the Society. Vols. I.—XIlV

This series contains all the larger issues of the Society, as
nearly as possible in the order of their appearance.

The Church of Old England : Vols, X. & II.
The Alleged Antiquity of Anglicanism. By

the Rev. Sydney F. Smith, S.J. wrapper.)
Fifty Catholic Tracts : a selection from the Leaflets

published by the C.T.S. (boards.)
The Ministry of Jesus. By the Rev. R. F.

Clarke, S.J,

Book of Descriptive Readings to accompany the
Catholic Truth Society’s Slides for Magic Lantern
(wrapper).

Father Perry, the Jesuit Astronomer. By
Aloysius L. Cortie, S.J. (cloth gilt, extra, >s.; fancy

boards, is.)

Science and Scientists. By the Rev. John
Gerard, S.J.

Stories of the Seven Sacraments. By L. E.
Dobree.

Jesuit Biographies—Vol. I.
Catholic Biographies. Vols. I.—VI.
The Catholic’s Library of Tales and Poems.

Vols. I. and II.
The English Martyrs. Vols. I. and II.
Lourdes and its Miracles, By the Rev. R. F.

Clarke, S.J. (paper 6d.)

The Life and Letters of Father Damien.
(cloth gilt, extra, 2 s.

;
fancy boards, is.)

At Ober Ammergau in 1890. By P. J. O’Reilly,
(cloth extra, 2 S.

;
fancy boards, is.)

Tenpence.

Gleanings for Saints and Sinners about St.
Mary Magdalen. By Fr. Pius Cavanagh, O.P.
(paper 6d

)

Catholic Truth Society, i8 West Square, London, S.E.



TVt(3 2^)fc

Zbe

jfoucfolb Difficult?
of

Bngltcantsm:

OR,

THE CHURCH OF ENGLAN'D
TESTED BY THE NICENE CREED.

IN A SERIES OF LETTERS

BY

VERY REV.
J. SPENCER NORTHCOTE, D.D.,
Provost of Birmingham.

PUBLISHED FOR THE AUTHOR BY
THE CATHOLIC TRUTH SOCIETY.

Office: 18 West Square, S.E.
Depdts: 21 Westminster Bridge Road, S.E.; 245 Brompton Road,
S W (oppose the Oratory); 23 King Edward Street, E C
28 King Street, Melbourne, Australia; St. Xavier’s College,
Calcutta; 3

2|
Church Street, Toronto, Canada; The Catholic

Publication Society Co., 9 Barclay Street, New York.



mmmd



CONTENTS.

Page

INTRODUCTORY. v

LETTER I.—Means of Learning Christianity I

LETTER II.—Marks of the True Church ... ... ... 6

LETTER III—Unity 9

LETTER IV.—Want of Unity in the Church of England ... 16

LETTER V.—Unity of the Roman Church ... ... ... 23

LETTER VI.—Sanctity... ... ... ... ... ... 34

LETTER VII.—Sanctity in the Roman Church 46

LETTER VIII.—Catholicity 54

LETTER IX.—The Church of England not Catholic ... 62

LETTER X.—Apostolicity ... ... . ... ... 7

6

LETTER XI.—Objections considered 87



, J ; :



INTRODUCTORY.

I suppose that the death of the dear and venerable
Cardinal Newman has set many an old man reviewing
his own religious history during that memorable autumn
of 1845, when the religious world in England was
startled by the announcement that “Newman had gone
over to Rome.” I had been acting for eighteen months
as curate to a High Church clergyman in the North of
Devon, where we had daily service and all that was
then considered characteristic of the Anglo-Catholic

party in the Establishment. I now obtained leave from
the Bishop (of Exeter) to retire from active duty for a
while; and, under his Lordship’s direction, proceeded to
study Barrow and Leslie on the Roman question. I
soon discovered how inconsistent they were in their use
of principles, arguing on High Church principles against
Dissenters and on Low Church principles against Rome.
I communicated this impression by letter to the Bishop,
sending him at the same time extracts from a sermon
which I had preached on the 2nd Sunday in Advent,
1844, and in which I had contrasted the methods of inter-
preting Scripture adopted by Anglicans and by Dis-
senters. I had no suspicion at the time that I was
wielding a two-edged sword, but it now dawned upon
me that an impartial use of the same principles would
justify many Roman doctrines which I had been wont
to denounce. This communication soon involved me
in a brisk correspondence with his Lordship. In my
third or fourth letter I specified the supremacy of St.
Peter as a subject of which I found quite as much proof
in Holy Scripture as of the necessity of Infant Baptism
or the Divine Institution of Episcopacy. I received the
following reply :

—



VI Introductory.

Bishopstowe,

4th Jan., 1846.

1. The Church of England does not teach that it is
“to be required of any man that either the fitness or
blessedness of Infant Baptism or the Divine Institution

of Episcopacy should be believed as an article of the

faith or be thought requisite or necessary to salvation.”

2. Secondly, both those articles are capable of being

proved by Scripture.
Therefore your argumentum ad hominem does not

appty*
Farewell, I wish I might still subscribe myself your

Brother, as I still feel towards you,

Your faithful friend,

H. Exeter.

This letter was a revelation to me. Could it be then
that nothing more than a private interpretation of
Scripture stood between English Churchmen and Bap-
tists? or Presbyterians and Episcopalians? Or did the
Church of England claim a right to exercise an economy
in her ministry of the Word, knowing certain doctrines
to be divinely revealed, yet not proposing them to the
faith of her children?

I now found myself face to face with the following
problem : should I abandon the principles upon which
I had hitherto held and taught the doctrines of the
Church of England, or should I carry them out to their
legitimate development by submission to Rome ? I could
not hesitate long in my choice between these alternatives,
and a few days later I was reconciled to the Catholic
Church. I wished to publish my correspondence with
the Bishop of Exeter, but was prevented. Six months
later, I published the following letters, partly in justifi-

cation of the step I had taken, but chiefly with the hope
of inducing others to follow my example. They were
answered by Rev. W. Gresley, Prebendary of Lichfield,
Rev. A. H. Hosmer, and two or three more. They
received other, and to me more gratifying answers, from



Introductory. Vll

persons with whom I had no previous acquaintance, but
who had derived more or less help from them in their
search after Catholic Truth. They are republished now
in the hope that they may have similar effect at the
present day. Certainly, whatever may be the worth of
their argument, it has not been enfeebled by age. Much
has since happened within the Church of England, but
not with the result of improving her unity.
When these letters were first published, it was pointed

out by one of my critics that the Church of England did
not use the word holy in her version of the Nicene Creed.
The history of this singular variation from the Roman
I have never investigated, neither have I thought it
necessary to disturb the frame-work of my argument
because of it. She has retained the word holy in the
Apostles’ Creed, and therefore is as much bound to
recognize Sanctity as one of the notes of the true Church
as if she had retained it in the Nicene Creed also.
The bulk of this little pamphlet remains the same as

when it first appeared, but certain retrenchments, ad-
ditions, and other changes have been freely made in
many parts. I need hardly add that it makes no
pretension to being a complete treatise on the subject in
hand

;
it only professes to deal with it in a popular way

and with a special view to the difficulties and prejudices
of the ordinary Anglican mind.

J. S. N.
The Presbytery,

Stoke-on-Trent.

Christmas, 1890.



-

' & .



Ube

jfourfolb 2Hfftcult£

of BnoUcanfsm.

LETTER I.

What means did Our Lord take to secure the
perpetual transmission of His teaching to man-
kind? Answer to be found in His own words in
the Gospel, and in the facts recorded in the Acts
of the Apostles and the Epistles.

My dear
You wish me to tell you what were my

reasons for becoming a Catholic, or (as you some-
what strangely express it) “for joining the Romanist
Schism in this country;” and you assure me that you
make this enquiry, not to gratify a mere idle curiosity,
still less with a determination not to be convinced, but
with a real practical purpose and an honest desire of
knowing the truth. Hitherto you have professed the
same form of Christianity that you learnt from your
parents, but without having particularly examined into
the authority on which it rests. Recent circumstances,
however, have somehow awakened your mind, and made
you look into the grounds of your belief, and the result
has been to raise grave doubts. The question has

B



2 Fourfold Difficulty of Anglicanism.

taken firm hold of you
;
you recognize its deep import-

ance; you see that it may be a question of life or
death—I mean, of life or death eternal; you are resolved
to look into the matter with all seriousness, and to act in
accordance with the result of your examination, be the
consequences what they may. Under these circum-
stances, instead of entering at present into the details of
my own conversion, I think I shall better comply with
the spirit of your request, by laying before you some
general grounds on which, as I believe, you and all
others ought to join the Roman Communion likewise.
How shall we begin our enquiry ? What form shall it

take?
Practically, the question before you comes to this:

Who is the appointed teacher of Christianity ? what are
the appointed means of learning it? Now, we are all
agreed that Jesus Christ, our Lord and Saviour, came
down from heaven not only to die for us on the Cross,
not only to purchase for us by that death the forgiveness
of our sins and all the means of grace, but also to teach
us all truth, to show us what we must believe, and what
we must do in order to gain the kingdom of heaven.
This is so universally acknowledged by all sects of
Christians that we need not waste any words to prove it.
We have next therefore to ask what means did our Lord
adopt in order that you and I, who live more than 1800
years after His return to heaven, should learn the same
truth as He Himself taught? Let us look into the Bible,
which both of us revere as the Word of God. We
read there that Jesus chose twelve of His disciples,
whom also He named Apostles, and that He sent them
to preach the kingdom of God. After His resurrection,
He breathed upon these men, imparting to them the
gift of the Holy Ghost, and making them partakers
in* His own Divine Mission, saying: “As the Father
hath sent Me, I also send you.”*
When He was just now about to leave this earth and

ascend into heaven, He said to these same Apostles:
“All power is given to Me in heaven and in earth;

* St. John xx. 21,



Means of Learning Christianity. 3

going therefore teach ye all nations, baptizing them in
the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy
Ghost; teaching them to observe all things whatsoever
I have commanded you, and behold I am with you all
days even to the consummation of the world.”*

These words of our Blessed Lord make it quite plain
that if we had been living in those early days of the
Church’s history, and had wished to know anything
about Christ’s teaching, we must have gone to one or
other of these Apostles, and we should have been per-
fectly safe in believing every word they taught, because
of our Lord’s promise that He would be with them, and
other promises to the same effect. To listen to one of
these apostles would have been the same thing as to
listen to the voice of God Himself, according to those
other words of Christ, “He that heareth you heareth
Me,” t and again, “He that receiveth whomsoever I
send, receiveth Me, and he that receiveth Me, receiveth
Him that sent Me.”f

This would have been the state of things if we had
lived ten, twenty or forty years after our Lord’s Ascension,
as long as any of His Apostles remained upon earth.
But how would it have been if we had lived fifty or a
hundred years later, or supposing we had lived in some
town or village which the Apostles never visited? The
Apostles were but men, they were not able to go every-
where, neither were they going to live for ever. What
provision was made for those generations of men who
would never see any of the Apostles themselves ? We
should certainly have conjectured from the words of
our Lord’s last promise to them, which have been al-
ready quoted, that the Apostles were to last till the end
of the world, if not in their own natural bodies, yet in
their super-natural office ; if not themselves, yet others

succeeding to their places and inheriting their privileges.
But in this letter I do not wish to leave anything to

conjectures, or even to reasonable inference. I mean as
far as possible to go by the plain testimony of the

* St. Matt, xxviii. 19, 20. f St. Luke x. 16.

X St. John xiii. 20.



4 Fourfold Difficulty of Anglicanism.

Scriptures in all that I shall say. What then do the
Scriptures tell us as to the question before us? What
happened as a matter of fact after our Lord’s Ascension?
At first the Apostles, having filled up their number by
the election of Matthias in the place of Judas, managed
all the affairs, both spiritual and temporal, of the new
society. Presently, finding this too much for them, they
shifted the burden of temporalities to the shoulders of a
new set of officers called deacons. By and by the
Church is thrown open to the Gentiles

;
and shortly

afterwards, under the immediate direction of the Holy
Ghost, Saul and Barnabas were set apart for the work
of the ministry by a ceremony which included fasting
and prayer and the laying on of hands.* These
men go about preaching the Gospel in various places,
founding new churches or congregations of the faithful,
and in every church they ordain priests or elders—we
will not stop now to dispute about their right name
or precise functions; we will only remark that prayer
and fasting are again mentioned in connection with these
ordinations.

St. Paul, writing to his beloved son Titus, tells him
that he had left him behind him in Crete for this
very purpose that he should set in order the things that
were wanting, and in particular that he should ordain
priests in every city. What was to be the duty of these
priests? One part of their duty certainly was to
teach, For St. Paul, writing to Timothy, another
well-beloved son, whom he had desired to remain at
Ephesus, as he had desired Titus to remain in Crete,
tells him that he had done so in order that he might
“ charge some not to teach differently from what they
had been themselves taught;”! and after exhorting him
again and again not to neglect the grace that is in him,
which was given him by prophecy with imposition of the
hands of the priesthood, he gives him the following
charge : “ The things which thou hast heard of me by
many witnesses, the same commend to faithful men
who shall be fit to teach others also.” J

* Acts xii. 2. f Tim. i. 3. f Tim. ii. 2.



Means of Learning Christianity. 5

Here then we have had set before us four or five links
in a chain of divinely appointed teachers. Has that chain
ever come to an end ? First, we see God the Son sent by
His Heavenly Father, then God the Son sends twelve
men with the very same Divine mission He had Him-
self received : God the Holy Ghost too, Himself sent by
the Father and the Son, sends other men on the same
mission and with the same authority. One of these
men sends others, amongst the rest Timothy and Titusr
and he charges them to hand on the same commission
to faithful men who shall be fit to teach others also.
Had you and I been living then, and had we desired

to learn the true doctrine of Christ, is it not clear that

we should have had to go to one of these men and listen
to his teaching and that we should have been perfectly
safe in doing so? Nay, more; that we could not then
have learnt the Christian religion in any other way. For,
as you very well know, Jesus Christ did not leave one
single document behind Him. When He left this earth,,
not one single sentence of the New Testament had been
written. Neither do we find among His directions to
His apostles one single trace of any command to them
to commit His divine doctrine to writing. Moreover, we
know, as a matter of fact, that thousands of men and
women embraced Christianity, and believed in it unta
salvation, and died in the faith of Jesus Christ, who had
never heard of, and much less seen, any inspired Gospel,
or inspired Epistle, or any book of the New Testament.

Observe how exactly this tallies with St. Paul's account
of the generation of faith in the hearts of those who
receive it. He first lays down the general proposition
that “ whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord
shall be saved," and then he goes on, “ How shall they
call on him in whom they have not believed ? or how
shall they believe him of whom they have not heard ?
and how shall they hear without a preacher? and how
shall they preach unless they be sent?"* And he concludes
“ Faith then cometh by hearing, and hearing by the
word of Christ : ” the word of Christ spoken or preached

* Romans x. 14.



6 Fourfold Difficulty of Anglicanism.

as he has just said. And this also agrees with what
the same apostle has said in another place, “It pleased
God by the foolishness of our preaching to save
them that believe."* And elsewhere he repeats more
than once that he has been appointed a preacher, an
apostle, and a teacher of the Gentiles.
Two things are clearly established by these sayings of

St. Paul, that in his day at least the teaching of Christi-
anity was to be by preaching, and that the preachers
were to be sent. Has this law ever been revoked? And
if so, when and by whom? Has there ever been a time
since the days of St. Paul when there was not a body of
men on earth claiming to be thus sent? Is there such a
body of men now ?

LETTER II.

If two rival bodies claim to be the Church
established by Christ, how is the true to be
distinguished from the false ? According to the
Nicene Creed, the true Church must be One, Holy,
Catholic, and Apostolic.

You tell me that I have taken unnecessary trouble in
laying a foundation for our correspondence; that the
same foundation has been long since firmly laid in your
own mind; for that you were brought up in the High
Church school, and therefore had never tried to form a
creed for yourself from your own private reading and
interpretation of the Bible, but had received it from the
Church of England in which you were born, as from a
divinely-appointed teacher. Moreover, you had been
taught to believe that the Church was a visible body to

*
I Cor. i. 21.



Marks of the True Church. 7

which “the Lord added daily such as should be saved

*

that it was so near and dear to its Divine Founder as
to be called by His Apostles His spouse and His very
Body, and so important in its relations to ourselves, as to
deserve to be called by the same inspired writers “the
pillar and ground of the truth.” f You are quite prepared
therefore to answer in the affirmative the question with
which my last letter concluded. You readily admit that
there is a visible body upon earth, founded by our Lord
for the diffusion of His truth, and the one appointed
channel whereby grace is conveyed for the restoration of
fallen man, and that it is therefore wicked and dangerous
presumption, either wilfully to separate from this body, or
wilfully to continue separate from it. Your difficulty is
of another kind. You ask, how you are to recognize this
body, for you find yourself in the presence of two bodies
equally earnest in claiming your allegiance, yet opposed
to one another in many matters of great importance.
Now I think you will not deny that the Church must
have certain outward signs or tokens whereby it may be
distinguished from false rival societies : God has surely
set some plain indications of His presence upon that
body, which is really His, and in which He vouchsafes
to dwell, that so strangers may be drawn towards it, and
all His sheep be gathered into one fold. The question
then arises, What are these signs and tokens, the outward
and visible notes of the One True Church ?

Both you and I publicly declare, in one of the sacred
symbols of our faith, that we believe in One, Holy,
Catholic and Apostolic Church

;
it must be fair then to

test our respective claims to be considered members of
God's Church by this simple rule—to which communion
do these notes most unequivocally belong, to yours or
to mine? the English or the Roman?
And this method of inquiry is the more satisfactory,

because the notes here spoken of are easily intelligible,
and also answer entirely to the natural sense and judg-
ment of our own minds. It is obvious to all, that Unity
must be a characteristic of Christ's Church, because that

* Acts ii. 47. f I. Tim. iii. 15.



§ Fourfold Difficulty ofAnglicanism.

Church is the depository of God’s revealed truth, which
must needs be one with itself, everywhere and always
the same; Sanctity, because the very purpose of Christ’s
coming was “to destroy the works of the devil, and
purify to Himself a peculiar people, zealous of good
works

;
” Catholicity

,
because we are told, that in Christ

“ the wall of partition is broken down ; ” the new covenant
was to be, not like the old one—local, national, and
limited—but “ a light to lighten the Gentiles,” as well as
“the glory of His people Israel;” and Apostolicity

,

because thus only can we be sure that its doctrines and
sacraments are really those which Christ taught and
instituted, if we know it to be the true representative, by
direct succession, of that body of Apostles who received
them from Himself, inheriting therefore that Divine
warrant of their commission, “As My Father hath sent
Me, even so send I you,” together with the promise of
perpetuity, “ Lo ! I am with you always, even to the end
of the world.”

Another advantage in this line of argument is its
broad, general character, which saves me from being
entangled in any examination of details; in truth, such
an examination would be very difficult, if not wholly
impossible, because I am ignorant of your present position
in this matter. English High Churchmen differ so much
from one another, and from themselves at different times,
that I really do not know what are the precise points in
“Roman doctrine” which you now consider to require
an apology, what you are ready to concede, or what you
would pass by as unimportant: eg., one clergyman
concedes the cultus of the saints, but cannot believe in
purgatory; another holds purgatory to be both ancient
and reasonable, but cannot conceive why we should pray
to those who were once our fellow-men, and so on through
a graduated scale of opinions, from those who have but
recently learnt to question whether Rome be really
Antichrist, to those who claim to hold (or, less confidently
not to reject) all Roman doctrine.

This, then, is the plan which I propose to follow: to
enquire which communion, the English or the Roman,



corresponds most faithfully to the description of Christ’s

Church set down in the Nicene Creed, of “One, Holy,
Catholic and Apostolic Church.” Let me hear that you
do not object to this, that you do not consider it unfair
or unreasonable, and, in my next letter, I will enter at
Once on the consideration of the first of these tests

—

Unity.

The Church of England is not at one with other
Protestant bodies, nor with the Catholic Church,
nor with herself. Vital importance of the points
at issue. Examples.

In considering the point of Unity as it concerns the
Established Church of England, it cannot but be fair to
look on that Church in the character which you yourself
assign to it—that, namely, of a National Church, forming
a part of the One Church Catholic. Looking upon her,
then, in this point of view, we are naturally led to enquire
how she stands in relation to the other National Churches,
which, with her, according to this theory, make up the
Catholic Church, and with which we should therefore
expect her to be one, in “ origination,” in “hope,” in
“charity,” in “discipline,” in “sacraments,” and in
“faith; ” in which six points, according to your Bishop
Pearson, the unity of the Church consists. Now, of these,
the unity of “origination” and of “hope” may be claimed
alike by all Christians of whatever denomination : but can
it be said that the English Church, as a body, is one with
other Churches even in the unity of charity ? and is it not
a fact almost too obvious to mention, that, in point of
discipline and sacraments, in point ot faith and doctrine,

f

LETTER III.



i o Fourfold Difficulty ofAnglicanism.

there is no one Christian society in the world, excepting
only her own offshoots and dependencies, with whom she
is in communion? In former years, indeed, there was a
boasted union of all the Reformed Churches, the Church
of England among the rest. “Blessed be God,” says
Bishop Hall,* “there is no difference in any especial
matter betwixt the Church of England and her sister
Churches of the Reformation; we accord in every point
of Christian doctrine without the least variation; their

public confessions and ours are sufficient convictions
to the world of our full and absolute agreement. The
only difference is in the form of outward administration,
wherein also we are so far agreed, as that we all profess
this form not to be essential to the being of a Church,
not seeing any reason why so poor a diversity should
work any alienation of affection in us one towards
another.” Such was the tone and temper of the English
Church for many generations after the Reformation

;
and

I suppose a very large proportion of her people, her clergy,
and bishops, still in some sense make common cause
with the Protestant Churches of the Continent : such, at
least, was the temper indicated by the proceedings in
the matter of the Jerusalem bishopric, some forty years
ago, in the course of which the Prussian government was
allowed to declare without contradiction, that the English

Church, “ both by origin and doctrine, is most intimately
akin to the German Evangelical Church;” and the
Bishop of London, preaching about the same time before
the King of Prussia, exhorted his hearers “not to think
or speak more uncharitably of other National Churches
(i.e., the Lutheran, &c.) than the fathers of their own [the
English] had spoken.” The same spirit also is manifested
in the proceedings of the more recent Pan-Anglican
Synod at Lambeth, where the right hand of fellowship
was held out to Protestant nonconformists at home.

Still, however, the English Church cannot be said to
be in communion with any of these; and, on some
important points of discipline and doctrine, she is at
variance with them all. This, indeed, you, and those

* A.D. about 1640. Peace-Maker, vol. viii. p, 356.



Unity. ii

who think with you, would be only too ready to admit

;

you would indignantly repudiate all suspicion of unity
between the Church of England and the Protestant
communions; your theory being, that those national
bodies are cut off from the Catholic Church, while the

English communion, on the other hand, is a branch of
that Church, the Roman Church (under which general
name are included, be it remembered, besides the Roman
Church strictly so called, the several National Churches
under its obedience) being another branch, and the
Greek Church a third : so that, in spite of all seeming
differences, there is a real vital unity between the English
and Roman communions, so close, that they may be
considered branches of the same tree, “ parts” of the
same “vineyard.”

But, my dear friend, is this anything more than a
theory—a theory on paper, contradicted by the experience
of three hundred years? Is not the Church of England,
in point of fact, out of communion with the Church of
Rome? Nay, does she not denounce that Church, re-
pudiate some of her doctrines, charge her with idolatry,
and even call her by the name of Antichrist ? * And,
on the other hand, does not the Church of Rome utterly
deny the claim of the Church of England to be of the
Church Catholic, and excommunicate all her bishops,
clergy, and people as open heretics and schismatics?
“ These two branches not only have no formal or visible
fraternity, union, or communion as churches, but re-
ciprocally denounce each other as false, heretical, and
Antichristian. We speak not of the writings, speculations,
tracts, or opinions of individual ecclesiastics, but of the
established and authorized documents of each of these
would-be Catholic Churches, all of which confessedly
go to the denial of the Christianity, Apostolicity, and
Catholicity of the other.” f This is evidently the
language of one who is neither an English Churchman
nor a Roman Catholic

; but it is also the language of
common sense, honesty, and fairness. And, with these
facts before us, I am at a loss to conceive how any one

* In the Homilies. f Eclectic Review.



E2 Fourfold Difficulty of Anglicanism.

can seriously maintain the existence of vital arid essential
unity between the two communions.

It would not be necessary to mention the Greek
Church, except that it is sometimes spoken of as a
possible thing to bring about “friendly relations” be-
tween it and the Church of England. But it is manifest
that, in point of fact, not only is there at present no
communion between them, but that, in every doctrine
and practice in which the English Church differs from
the Roman, except, of course, the one question of the
supremacy, she differs also from the Greek Church;
therefore, it is mere unreality to pretend that she finds
in the East a sympathy denied her by the Churches of
the West.

But, it may be said, all this is too true; and yet this
unhappy severance of England from the rest of Christen-
dom is so far from being a token against her, that it is
the consequence of her fidelity to the truth. She is
separated from the Churches in the Roman obedience,
because those Churches still obstinately adhere to the
corruptions with which time has overlaid the pure faith
of the Gospel; while she, on the other hand, having
once participated with them in the same corruptions,
has nobly arisen and purified herself, and now holds the
faith in its primitive simplicity, as it was taught in the
early ages of the Church. And she is separated from
the other Protestant bodies because, when she thus cast
aside her corruptions, she still faithfully adhered to the
Apostolic type of doctrine and discipline, retaining as
much of the system of the existing Church as was con-
formable to that type; while they, on the contrary,
formed to themselves a new religion, which they pro-
fessed to draw straight from the Bible, and which is
utterly without sanction in the records of Christian

antiquity. Thus, it may be said, she stands alone, as
a necessary consequence of her position ; she is the one
middle point of truth between contending errors. This

is no small pretension, representing, as it does, the
Church of England in the character of the single con-
fessor for the truth in the face of all the Churches of



<

" Unity: .13

Christendom, alone “ faithful found among the faithless/'
Surely, a Church, venturing on so bold a position as
this, ought, one would think, to bear some very marked
tokens of her calling to an office, which, as all must
admit, it requires little short of inspiration to fulfil : and
as, while error is diverse, truth can be but one, the
especial mark for which we should naturally look in this
sole champion of the truth, would be unity in herself.

But what is the condition in this respect of the Church
of England? Is it not confessed on all hands, and
bewailed the most loudly by the most devoted of her
children that, on some of the most fundamental questions
of the Christian religion, there exist in her “ notorious

doctrinal oppositions, not mere differences, not shades
of opinion, not open questions, but downright, flat,
patent contradictions that she allows “one set of men
to preach one doctrine, and another to preach its logical
and consequential contradictory.” This contradiction
is so palpable, that the most uneducated have been
heard to express their surprise, when a change of teachers
has not brought with it a change of doctrine : and I
suppose you could hardly find ten consecutive parishes
in any part of the country, or name a single large town,
where the same doctrines are taught from every pulpit.
It has even been found necessary sometimes to furnish
a bishop with a theological chart of the parish in which
he was to preach, that he might know where to speak,
and where to be silent

$
in order to bribe him into silence

in one Church on all “controverted subjects,” he was
reminded that in another, a few hundred yards distant,
but in the same parish, he would have full scope for
preaching what he liked—that is, what he considered to
be exclusively the true and pure Gospel. Look at the
rival streams of theological literature daily pouring from
the press

: pamphlets, magazines, and newspapers, tracts
against tracts, sermons against sermons. Look at the
rival societies formed for the purpose of disseminating
doctrines so entirely contradictory, that the one party
denounces as a “ soul-destroying heresy” what the other
proclaims to be “ the very commencement and basis



14 Fourfold Difficulty of Anglicanism.

of the Christian life;” the one puts forth as “the sum
and substance of the Gospel ” what the other does not
hesitate to characterize as an “awful delusion” and a
“snare of the devil.”
The fact of this absence of unity in the English Church

is so glaring and unquestionable, that it is not necessary,
in order to establish it, to look into the details of her
disunion : at the same time, it is a fact of such importance,
that it ought not to be glossed over, as it sometimes is,
by a sort of general formula, “ acknowledging and
deploring the existence of differences,” without an attempt
to realize the extent of those differences and their
fundamental character.

It is true that many would represent them as one
doctrinal disagreement, which others endeavour to mag-
nify into formidable proportions. But what is that one
doctrinal disagreement, and what does it involve? Is
it not concerning the cardinal doctrine, so to speak, of
the Christian system, the nature and mode of man’s
justification ? Surely, then, the question at issue between
"the two contending parties in the English Church is
nothing less than this, what the true Gospel really is

;

for only consider how many subjects of Christian doc-
trine stand, more or less immediately, in necessary
connexion with the doctrine of justification—original sin,
the freedom of the human will, Divine grace, faith,
repentance, good works, sanctification, assurance of
salvation, purification after death ; all these must needs
be understood in senses wholly different, nay, some of
them received or rejected altogether, according to the
different views on this point. Further, only to mention
at present one portion of this great subject, the mode
of justification, it has been well said, that the whole tone
of a man’s religious character depends on his belief con-
cerning the sacraments, and it is manifest that it must
be so through every stage of his life. What can be
more opposite, for instance, than the condition of child-
hood, with and without the belief in baptismal regenera-
tion? In the one case, the child is taught to consider
himself as cleansed from original sin, as in the favour



Unity. 15

of God and in possession of His justifying grace, which
gives him power to do his duty acceptably, and which
he, on his part, is bound, by doing his duty, and by
using every appointed means, to cherish and to guard.
In the other, he is taught to consider himself as still a
child of sin, under the wrath of God, and to look upon
justification as a blessing which may or may not one
day be his

;
while, at the same time, he is told that

“good works done before the grace of Christ are not
pleasant to God,” * nor even make him “ meet to receive
grace

;
” so that one does not see what spring of energy

there can be within him, nor even what motive for
exertion is suggested to his mind.

In the parish in which I was born and spent the first
fifteen or sixteen years of my life, the Rector not only
preached against the doctrine of a new birth in baptism,
but also deliberately changed the words in the baptismal
office which asserted it, and substituted other words of his
own devising. Mr. Bennett, the well-known clergyman of
Frome, asserts that the same thing was frequently done
with impunity by evangelical clergymen, but the Bishop
of Exeter, Dr. Philpotts, prosecuted my Rector for so
flagrant a breach of discipline and succeeded in having
him deprived of his office and benefice for three years.
The rev. gentleman spent some of this time in preaching
in the Calvinist chapels in Switzerland; and at the
expiration of his sentence returned to his parish, roasted
an ox on the village green and proceeded to use his own
prayers in administering the Sacrament of baptism as
before. He was allowed to do so in peace until the day
of his death.

In the year 1844 a document was published in the
papers signed by about 200 persons, of whom about two-
thirds were clergy, which among other heretical pro-
positions included the following : “ Ungodly persons
have neither been born again of the spirit nor justified,
although they were baptized in infancy.” And “ There
is no scriptural authority for affirming that our Lord is
present with His people at the Lord’s Supper, in any

* Article xiii.



! 6 Fourfold Difficulty of Anglicanism.

other manner than that in which He is present with them
whenever they meet together in His Name: and His
Body and Blood are verily and indeed taken and
received by them at that ordinance by faith, just as
they are verily and indeed taken and received by them
whenever they exercise faith in His atoning Sacrifice.”
I never heard that any of those who signed this docu-
ment was prosecuted on a charge of false teaching.
Some years later Dr. Philpotts refused to induct into

a living a clergyman who denied the doctrine of
baptismal regeneration. The case was fought out in
the Ecclesiastical Courts and carried to the final court
of appeal, which decided that clergymen of the Estab-
lished Church were at liberty either to teach or to deny
that doctrine according to their own good pleasure.
And this state of things still continues.

Such, then, is the subject on which the Church of
England is divided into two parties, as we have said,
absolutely antagonist; and, if she differs upon this,
on what practical point affecting the Christian life of her
children can she be said to speak unanimously and
distinctly?

LETTER IV.

Historical causes of the internal disunion of
the Church of England. Inconsistencies of her
formularies.

I rejoice in your candid acknowledgment of the fact
of disunion in the English Church, and of its extent, that •

it is “a rent to the very foundation;” though, at the same
time, you plead that such disunion is not inherent in her
essence, but only an accident, which proper ecclesiastical



Want of Unity in Church of England. 1

7

discipline would remove. Be this as it may; that you
confess the fact is enough for my present purpose; for I
am only concerned to prove that, from whatever cause,
the Church of England has not that essential note of the
true Church, Unity; and this you have fully admitted.
And, before I examine^the plea you have put forward,
let me just entreat you to weigh well the extent of this
admission. What is it to confess that a Church has not
unity of doctrine, but to confess by implication that she
has not the true faith, or at least that she has it not for
the practical benefit of her children? For, supposing
that one ofthe antagonist systems within her be the truth,
and, even further, that her formularies sanction that
system rather than the other, still, how are the simple
and uneducated to know which it is, if they hear both
alike taught by her accredited ministers ? It is vain to
refer such to the Prayer-book, telling them to judge for
themselves whose teaching is most in accordance with
what they find there; this is to require from them what
they have not mental training sufficient to enable them
to do, while it encourages them also to place themselves
in an attitude of mind, surely most undesirable, that of
judges over their teachers. To the multitude, the
teaching of the Church is, and always must be, the
teaching of the individual clergy; if then these are
divided, how are the people to learn the truth ?

Only meditate upon this, which you cannot but admit,
and then determine whether, considering that the
teaching of the faith is one main office of the Church, a
body which does not teach any distinct creed can be of
the true Church.

But,—to turn to the examination of your plea,—do
you honestly believe that unity would be the result of
improved ecclesiastical discipline in the English Church ?
Are you not too painfully conscious that the adminis-
trators of that ecclesiastical discipline are not themselves
of the same mind ? Surely, while the rulers of the Church
themselves are thus disagreed, an augmentation of their
power (which I suppose is involved in your idea of
improved discipline) would only tend to aggravate the

c



1

8

Fourfold Difficulty of Anglicanism.

evil. For, what would it be but simply a hardship, if the
bishops were enabled by such augmented power to
silence their dissentient clergy, unless, at the same time,
their own opinions could be brought into harmony?
Again, it is surely idle to seek for unity by strengthening
the executive authority of the Church, until there are
some means of ascertaining what her mind really is. Is
there, at present, any one legitimate exponent of her
doctrine recognized as such by all parties ? If we quote
the charges of the bishops as samples of her teaching,
we are told that all these together will not make up the
voice of the Church :—the decisions of a Convocation
reckon for nothing:—the highest judge in an Eccle-
siastical Court gives now a judgment seeming to tend
in the Catholic direction, now another swaying back into
Protestantism; and in both instances, parties are found
to deprecate such decision being in any way attributed
to the Church. Nay, if the Queen, the Supreme
Governor of the Church herself, in concurrence with the
Primate of all England, holds out the right hand of
fellowship to heretical and schismatical bodies in the
East, sending a Bishop to Jerusalem, who fraternizes with
Lutherans or Nestorians;—even this, we are told, is
in no sense the act of the Church of England. Surely
the fact that so great changes must take place in the
system of the English Church, before increase of
discipline would give her unity, is an argument against
your plea that her disunion is a mere accident; for that
which it would require a remodelling of her whole
constitution to rectify, must be something, at least, very
intimately interwoven with her essence; and, indeed, the

annals of the last three hundred years, that is, of the
whole term of her separate existence, are enough to show
that, if division be not inherent in her system, it is an
“accident” altogether “inseparable” from it.

But, in truth, that the real cause of the mischief lies
deep in her very essence is too manifest, whether we
study the history of her origin, and the formation of her
various symbols and offices, or her theory as stated in
her own articles. There has been within her, from the



Want of Unity in Church ofEngland. 1

9

very first, a contest between two irreconcilable principles,
the Catholic and the Protestant; each of these has wrung
from her what sanction it could; and utter inconsistency
has been, of course, the result. Hence, she presents for
the acceptance of her children Calvinist Articles side-by-

side with a Catholic Prayer book; and of the two parties
who have always been struggling to obtain the exclusive
mastery with her, one has uniformly taken the Prayer-
book, the other the Articles, as the key-note in their

respective attempts to harmonize the conflicting portions
of her formularies. That portions of her formularies are
conflicting, each being taken in its obvious sense, none,
I believe, attempt to deny ; and many, who desire nothing
more than to submit in unquestioning obedience to the
teaching of their Church, feel the inconsistency very
painfully. For instance, the Catechism teaches that
“The Body and Blood of Christ are verily and indeed
taken and received by the faithful in the Lord’s Supper.”
These words are plain and not anti-Catholic

;
but how

can they be reconciled with the declaration at the end
of the Communion Service, which, apologizing for the
practice of kneeling at that Sacrament, says that thereby
no adoration is intended, for that “ the natural Body
and Blood of our Saviour Christ are in heaven, and not
here ” in the consecrated elements ? I have myself known
young persons, who have been taught to understand the
Catechism in its obvious meaning, greatly perplexed by
this declaration, not knowing which of the two to receive,
but feeling it quite impossible to receive both. Again,
the 2 1st Article teaches distinctly enough, that “General
Councils may err, and sometimes have erred, even in
.things pertaining unto God;” and yet, by the laws of
the English Church, not only is that to be adjudged for
heresy which “hath been so adjudged by the authority
of the Canonical Scriptures,” but also, “ by the first four
General Councils.” Again, in the preface to the Ordina-
tion Services, we are told that “from the Apostles’ times
there have been three orders of ministers in Christ’s
Church but, in the Articles, the definition of a Church
seems to have been purposely framed so generally as to



2o Fourfold Difficulty ofAnglicanism.

include all the Reformed Churches of the continent,
without any reference to an apostolical succession of
bishops, or to the existence of these three orders as

essential. The same may be said of the ambiguous
language of the 23rd Article, and the apologetic
tone of the 36th, on the same subject. So nothing can
exceed the definiteness of the doctrine contained in the
Baptismal Offices and in the Catechism on the subject of
Baptism, yet those who deny that doctrine, appeal, not
without plausibility, to the 27th Article, which, speaking
of that Sacrament only “ as a sign of Regeneration, or
new birth, whereby, as by an instrument, they that
receive it rightly are grafted into the Church,” may seem
to agree with the Evangelical party, who assign its
efficacy rather to the virtue of prayer unto God, by which
it is accompanied, than to its own sacramental power.
And, if we turn from the authorized formularies of the
Church of England to the writings of her standard divines,
our perplexity is increased ; it is true there are catenas

of “Anglo-Catholic” Doctors, carefully drawn up, and
exhibiting a tolerably consistent view of Christian doc-
trine, in an unbroken series from the Reformation to the
present day; but there are equally perfect catenas,
beginning in some instances even with the very same
names, and, at any rate, dating from the same era, of
quite a contradictory character; and who is to decide
which is the truest representative of the mind of the
Anglican Church ? for there is nothing to give a stamp
of weight and authority to the one, which is wanting to
the other. This is a very important consideration, and too
notorious to be called in question ; indeed, it is acknow-
ledged by yourselves. “ It would be easy,” say the
Editors of a series of “Tracts of the Anglican Fathers,”*
“ for disputants of all varieties of opinion within the pale

of the Establishment, to find ancestors in heterodoxy.”
“ Many heresies have been maintained, and many
dangerous positions asserted, by divines of the Anglican
communion.” “Among the vast masses of the old
divinity, almost every shade of error will find its advocate,

* Vol. I. Introduction.



Want of Unity in Church ofEngland. 2

1

and the natural effect upon the minds of those who
examine but superficially, will be a despair of tracing any-
thing like unity in our Church writers.”

Such, then, is the fact. The Church of England has
been, from the very beginning of her existence, disunited,

as she is at present : and it seems to me, that if you look
into her own statement of her position and claims, you
will be compelled to acknowledge that nothing but such
incongruity in practice could result from a theory so
contradictory and self-destroying. Look, for instance, at
her assertion, that “the Church has authority in con-
troversies of faith;” and then at the limitation, which
immediately neutralizes this assertion : “ And yet, it is
not lawful for the Church to ordain any thing that is
contrary to God’s word written, neither may it so expound
one place of Scripture that it be repugnant to another.”
And again, “ the Church, besides Scripture, ought not to
enforce any thing to be believed for necessity of salvation.”
Now, as it seems to me, the assertion of “authority in
controversies of faith,” and these subsequent limitations
taken together, must at last resolve themselves into this
dilemma : If the assertion means any thing, the limitations
mean nothing

;
if, on the other hand, the limitations have

a meaning, then the assertion has none. To explain
myself : the declaration that the Church may not ordain
any thing contrary to Scripture, nor expound Scripture
so as to make it repugnant to itself, necessarily supposes
the existence of some party wherein resides the power of
determining whether, or not, she does the things thus
prohibited; or, in other words, of being her judge. If
this be so, it is manifestly the said party, and not the
Church herself, which has really authority in controversies
of faith. And, who is this supreme judge? It cannot
be Scripture itself, as some say, for Scripture is the law
to be expounded; neither can it be Catholic Antiquity,
as others pretend, for that is also a mere written document.
In fact, this tribunal of last resort, at whose bar the Church
is tried, can be none other than the private judgment of
each individual. This is, as we know, the recognized
Protestant principle, and perfectly intelligible

;
but then,



2 2 Fourfold Difficulty ofAnglicanism.

what becomes of the Church’s authority? According
to this theory, her children receive her teaching, not

because it is hers, but because it accords with their view
of what is taught in Scripture

;
if it did not seem to them

so to accord, they would be bound to reject it, and she
has no right to blame them for so doing

;
for if they

plead, as many do plead, that they consider her teaching,
on this or that point, to be contrary to Scripture, or even
“besides” it, she has, according to the hypothesis, nothing

to reply; for her children are her legitimate judges, and
from them is no appeal. If it be said that the Church
herself is the sole judge in her own cause, then the
limitations we have quoted seem to me to be without
meaning : for no Church, however corrupt, would confess
of herselfthat her decisions were contrary to God’s written
word. In fine, if assertion and limitation are both to
stand, I do not see how they can be construed into any-
thing but this: that the Church rests her claim to
authority on her right interpretation of the Word, and
then puts forward her authority as the guarantee that her
interpretation is right.

But, further, is not the very fundamental principle of
the Church of England’s position itself a suicidal one ?
Her existence, as a separate body, can only be vindicated
by the assertion, that the churches from which she has
separated herself have corrupted the truth

;
and thus she

distinctly declares, in one ofher articles, that the Churches
of Jerusalem, Alexandria, Antioch, and Rome have
erred, and that “ not only in their living and manner of
ceremonies, but also in matters of faith.” Now this, of
course, establishes the principle that national Churches
may err in matters of faith; and therefore the question
may well suggest itself to an English churchman, “ If
a national Church may err, how can I be confident that
my own Church, standing as it does alone, protesting
against all the other Churches of Christendom, has a

special immunity from thus erring ? ” and, surely, if there
be no such special immunity, it would be more probable
(on a primfr facie view), that the one Church of England
should be in error, than the several Churches of Italy,



Unity of the Roman Church. 23

Spain, Austria, France, and others, united as they are
in one faith and one communion.

I am fully convinced, then, and would fain convince
you, that the disunion you bewail in the Church of
England is inherent in her very essence, as it has been
her distinguishing mark from the beginning. You know
that she has never presented a consistent front, except
in her opposition to the doctrines of the Church of Rome ;
and even this negative unity, this agreement in disagree-
ment, she is now fast losing. It has been with her as
with the Donatists of old: “Sicut Christum dividere
conata est, sic ipsa a suis quotidiana concisione divi-

ditur.”*

LETTER V.

Unity of the Roman Church universally ac-
knowledged; even made a subject of reproach to
her. Internal consistency of all Catholic doctrine.
Past conflicts between Jesuits and Jansenists,
Ultramontanes and Gallicans no real objection
against the unity of the Church.

Having entered thus fully into the state of the English
Church with respect to Unity, it is fair to apply the same
test to the Roman Church

;
but much need not be said

to prove that she can bear the trial, for the fact of her
unity is admitted, as far as I know, by most Protestant
divines, though they often endeavour to trace its existence
to some unworthy cause. Thus, “ The boasted unity of
the Church of Rome is the result of the negation and
abandonment of private judgment

;
it is the effect of that

implicit belief, which brings the mind into bondage to

* S. Aug. de Agone Christiano, § 31.



24 Fourfold Difficulty of Anglicanism.

the decisions of fallible men. In one word, it is not
union founded in truth but in error.”

*

And again : “ It
is a union merely artificial and mechanical; a unity
resulting in innumerable instances from accident, custom,
and authority.” “ The system of Roman Catholic unity,”
says Blanco White, j

“
is but an arbitrary contrivance

;

”

“ the effect of blind submission to a silencing authority
and I could quote passages to the same effect almost
without number. Another, and not an unimportant
class of writers, conscious of the difficulty, seek to escape

it by disparaging and making light of Christian unity
altogether. Thus Leslie denies that there is any stricter
unity in the Church than in the world

;
and maintains

that, as there is a “ unity of relation, of humanity, and
of common principles,” which all the nations upon earth
still retain, even amid the fury of war, so the unity of
the Church consists in that common Christianity wherein
all agree, a unity which can never be lost.J Others,
again, bid us look for the unity of the Protestants in the

depths of their spiritual life; thus wisely carrying the

question into a region beyond the cognizance of human
faculties. Barrow too propounds a theory on the subject
of unity, and enumerates the several duties which flow
from it; (the non-fulfilment of which, however, by his
own communion, proves her, according to his theory, to
be no part of the Church Universal,) and then proceeds
to enquire, § whether that stricter unity, which the Church
of Rome insists upon, is necessary by the design and
appointment of God. Of course he decides in the
negative

;
but the inquiry itself is sufficient to show that

the unity of the Churches in the Roman obedience is at
least something stricter and more real than is even
professed elsewhere.

But, if we look at the one point only of unity in faith,
where, I would ask, will you find in the Roman Church

* Errors of the Church of Rome, by Rev. R. Meek, 1834, p. 7.
See also Mr. Gresley’s “ Theory of Development,” &c., p. 11.

t Evidence against Catholicism, pp. 109, ill.

i Works, vol. 3. p. 12, 13. Ed. Oxford, 1832.

§ Unity of the Church, sect. 8. vol. 3. p. 212. Edinburgh, 1841.



Unity of the Roman Church. 25

anything at all like those differences of opinion which I
have pointed out in the Church of England? You
know well that they do not exist: that the Catholic
priesthood, from Great Britain to New Zealand,—now,
as when Protestantism sprang into being,—at all times
and in all places, speak, as with one voice, one and the
same unalterable faith. You will not find some Catholic
congregations believing in the real Presence, and others
rejecting it : some priests commending prayers for the
dead, and others protesting against them : some persons
practising confession, and others denying the absolving
power of the priest. Variations of practice you may
indeed discover in different Catholic countries, but no
diversity of faith. Seasons, degrees, and rules of fasting,
for instance, may differ according to climates or physical
capabilities, but you will find no Catholics denying the
obligation to fast in some way or other. There may be
more public demonstrations of love and honour to the
Saints and the Blessed Virgin in Spain, for instance, than
in England

;
but the doctrine of the communion of saints

is precisely the same, and expounded in the same terms,
throughout the Catholic world. In a word, the same
faith is believed and professed everywhere, though its
outward expression may and must differ, according to
the taste, habits, earnestness, moral and intellectual
capabilities, that is, the whole character of those who
receive it.

But it is scarcely needful to say all this: for, to
establish the fact of unity in the Roman Church, it is
really enough to appeal to the common opinion of her
enemies concerning her. Is she not universally dreaded
as a subtle and dangerous conspiracy : and what con-
spiracy could be more than contemptible without unity?
Is not her polity everywhere spoken of as the “master-
piece of human wisdom

;
” and could it be such, if its

fruit were division? You yourself, and others of my
friends, bear unconscious testimony to the same truth,
by your complaints that you can no longer look upon
my words and deeds as my own; because, in the case
of all Roman Catholics, you find it quite impossible to



2 6 Fourfold Difficulty ofAnglicanism.

distinguish between the working of the individual will,
and that of the system. Many go further still, and
believe that a man’s moral being undergoes a complete
transformation when he becomes a Catholic: that the
virtues which have been wrought into his character by
previous good habits—habits, it may be, which have
been years in forming; nay, even those instinctive
perceptions of right and wrong, common to him with
the whole human race—are blotted out in a moment,
all his personal responsibilities being merged in the one
absorbing duty of obedience; and that, too, as it is
believed, to a power which contradicts his natural
conscience, calling evil good and good evil

;
but which,

nevertheless, by some mysterious attraction, sucks him
into itself, stripping him of his personality, and making
him a blind organ of its will. The falsehood and
absurdity of this belief you are as well aware of as
myself; but real and intense indeed, and manifest to
the world, must be the unity of that body of which such
things can be believed, in which the individuality of
many millions is supposed to be thus merged and
annihilated.

In reply to this it is sometimes urged that, however it
may be now, unity of faith has not always been a
characteristic of the Church of Rome

;
that, in former

days, there were disputes and divisions upon Christian
doctrine between the Jesuits and the Jansenists, Galli-
cans and Ultramontanes, etc. In answer to this I
would say, it is undoubtedly true that there was con-
siderable disagreement on Christian doctrine between
the Jesuits and the Jansenists, just as there was between
the different parties in the Arian disputes of the fourth
century, or in the Nestorian and Eutychian controversies
of the fifth. And as long as these dissensions lasted, so
long the unity of faith was to a certain degree impaired,
or, to speak more accurately, was for a while obscured

;

but, by-and-bye, in all these instances alike, the Church
uttered her voice, and the false doctrine gradually
withered and died, or, if it still lived, it was no longer
within her pale. That disputes, such as those alluded



27Unity of the Roman Church.

to, were to be expected beforehand as likely to occur in
the Church, nay, as from the nature of the case almost

inevitable, I think a moment's consideration will dispose
you freely to admit. The Gospel, it is true, is a divine
message, yet, as the language in which it is conveyed is
human, questions may naturally suggest themselves,
almost without end, as to the real import of that

language : as, for instance, from the brief and mysterious
announcement, “The Word became Flesh," three “wide
questions," as it has been well said, * at once open upon
us: what is meant by “the Word," what by “Flesh,"
and what by “became:" and inquiries of this kind have,
as you know, from time to time arisen within the
Church, in the shape of conjectures or hypotheses, more
or less supported by Scriptural and traditional evidence.
These have gradually gained ground and attracted
notice, until the Church has felt herself obliged to
pronounce judgment upon them, and thenceforward,
according to her seal of sanction or anathema, such
opinions have been either incorporated into the Catholic
creed, or denounced as contrary to it: and those bodies,
which, spite of such anathema, have still clung to the
proscribed opinions, have gradually become external
and hostile to the Church. There may have been a
longer or a shorter struggle, but at last the victory of
the Church has been manifest and complete; the
enemies once detected and expelled, never again rise up
to trouble her; they are “gone out from her" for ever;
and the increased distinctness of her creed, which is the
result of the conflict, prevents their ever finding a home
in her again.

Such has been the ordinary law of progress and decay
in all heresies. But can you in honesty bring forward
a dispute which has died away without leaving a single
practical hindrance in the path of Catholic believers, as
in any way parallel to the divisions in the English
Church? These are as rife now as they were at the
beginning, and on the very same points. Although the
two systems of doctrine struggling within her are abso-

* Newman’s Essay on Development, p. 97.



2 8 Fourfold Difficulty ofAnglicanism.

lutely antagonist, and therefore, if she have a distinct
creed, one of them must needs be hostile to it; yet no
authoritative voice has denounced either as heresy : and
if, as you contend, the Puritan system is the alien, it is
so far from being subdued, that, (spite of the experience
of the 17th century, and the recent movement in the
Catholic direction) we are told by persons well qualified
to give an opinion, that, even at this moment, there is
nothing to prevent Puritanism again getting the upper
hand, and remodelling the Church of England.* Can
it be said, in the same way, of Jansenism, Lutheranism,
or any other heresy that has been once condemned,
that there is danger of its overrunning the Church of
Rome?

It is still less to your purpose to refer to the differences
which existed between Gallicans and Ultramontanes.
These did indeed disturb for a while the peace of the
Church but never broke her unity, because they turned
upon a point which had not yet been defined. Both
parties were agreed that the Church is infallible, and
that the Roman Church is the Mother and Mistress of
all Churches, but they disputed whether this infallibility
resided in the head of the Church or in the body, or in
both. This question was discussed and settled in the
Vatican Council of 1870, and now all Catholics are of
one mind and of one heart on this matter in the world-
wide unity of the infallible faith. It is true indeed that
a certain number of persons, especially in Germany, led
by a few professors and warmly patronized by certain
statesmen, have refused to accept the decision, but
henceforth they remain as much cut off from the Church
as did the Arians after the Council of Nice.

It is manifest, then, from the mere sensible testimony
of facts, that in this essential characteristic of the true

Church, Unity, the Roman communion stands out in
distinct and unquestionable superiority; and that superi-
ority will appear more striking and important if we
briefly examine into the inward principles or causes

* Mr. Gresley’s “Real Danger of the Church of England,” pp.
29, 34, &c.



Unity ofthe Roman Church. 29

from which it springs. All Catholic doctrine, as held
by the Roman Church, has been the result of one
continued law of growth, and has therefore the unity of
nature and of life: its development has been like that of
the Church itself, “the least of all seeds, but, when it is
grown, the greatest amongst herbs,” or like the growth of
grace in each individual soul, “ first the blade, then the
ear, after that the full corn in the ear.” Thus, the seed
of all Catholic theology may be said to be the one great
truth of the Incarnation; “the Word became flesh, and
dwelt among us;” “perfect God and perfect Man, yet not
two, but one Christ;” this is the centre round which every
detail in the whole cycle of Catholic doctrine moves in
harmonious sympathy

;
this is the one fundamental idea

on which is based the edifice of faith—or rather the
vivifying principle which, by animating every individual
part, binds all together into one living whole. That the
essential doctrines of the mediation and the atonement
flow immediately from it, is obvious to all, even from the
letter of Holy Scripture itself; and deeper reflection will
show us that it has a no less real and necessary connection
with the nature and efficacy of the sacraments, with the
doctrine of a visible and infallible Church, with the
intercession and invocation of saints, with the especial
prerogative of the blessed Virgin Mother, with the
veneration of relics, and every article of the Catholic
faith. All these are most intimately interwoven with it
and with each other ; the same theandric principle, as it
is called by German theologians, runs through them all,
and distinctly marks them as parts of one indivisible
whole. And, because the more harmonious the mechan-
ism of a system, the less will it bear rough handling

;

therefore, those who once presume to subject this divinely-
constituted creed to a critical examination, choosing this
portion and rejecting that, soon find that they have
loosened the whole fabric of belief in their mind, and that,
if they will be consistent, and not rest in broken theories,
they must go on to the denial of Revelation itself. The
biography of Blanco White is a melancholy instance of
the truth of this remark

;
so are the lives of many other



30 Fourfold Difficulty of Anglicanism.

apostates, all demonstrating, by the sure testimony of
experience, that there is no trustworthy resting-place to
a logical mind between obedience to the Catholic faith
on the one side, and infidelity on the other. Testimony
to the same truth has been borne by the experience (only
in a contrary direction) of many recent converts

;
they

first received the doctrine of baptismal regeneration, and
then were gradually led to feel its incompleteness without
the sacrament of penance, and to see the “ logical neces-
sity” of belief in purgatory ; they were taught to acknow-
ledge the real presence, and soon felt that adoration of the
Host was involved in that acknowledgment; and so on,
through many close and subtle links, until at length they
embraced, in theory at least, the larger portion, if not the
whole, of the Catholic creed, before they recognized the
authority of the Catholic Church; and this because,
throughout the whole length and breadth of the Catholic
system, there is the strictest logical coherency of each and
every part. Nay, the history of the English Church bears
testimony to the same truth

;
when she separated from the

Universal Church, though she deliberately rejected much
of its doctrine, yet she meant to assign certain limits to
the working of the spirit of scepticism which she had thus
evoked : but what has been the result ? She wished to
cast off what she called Romish superstition

;
her children

have also “ cast off that reverence and obedience which
the law of God requires.” * She purposed to discontinue
the Catholic practice of invocation of saints and angels

;

her children have “lost all practical feeling of the
communion of saints, and, like the Sadducees of old, have
learnt almost to forget or deny the existence of angels or
spirits.” She dreaded “too great an exaltation of the
Sacraments;” her children “deny or explain away the
doctrine of baptismal regeneration.” She objected to the
“abuses of the Mass;” her children have been led to
“ degrade the holy sacrament into a mere sign of a thing
absent.” She rejected the supremacy of the pope

;
her

children have been led into a practical disregard of
episcopal authority : and so on, in the same way, through

* Mr. Gresley’s “ Theory of Development,” &c. p. 15, 16.



Unity of the Roman Church . 3i

every detail of Christian faith and practice. Nay, the
very doctrine of the Incarnation itself has become the
subject of unhallowed disputations or secret disbelief:
“ Arianism was taught with impunity in our communion
in the last century/’ is the confession of an English
clergyman ;* and a late Regius Professor of Divinity in
the University of Oxford publicly professed his belief that
two-thirds of the clergy were (unconscious) Nestorians.
Now, as we have before said, to this logical coherency of
the Roman system of doctrine, that of the Church of
England forms a melancholy contrast : so far from the
holding one of her doctrines making it necessary to hold
all, some of them are so incongruous that belief in one
absolutely precludes belief in another

;
for instance, if a

man heartily receives the doctrine of justification by faith
alone, he cannot in earnest believe in baptismal regenera-
tion, nor the real presence in the eucharist, nor, indeed,
in the sacramental principle at all; which belief the
Church of England nevertheless inculcates in her liturgy
as undoubtedly as, in her articles, she enforces the doctrine
of justification by faith.

Another, and not less important, cause of the unity of
the Roman Church is to be found in her living and
energetic authority. It has been well said, that “ firmness
of belief can only be produced by the recognition of
some outward and permanent teaching authority;” an
authority which shall determine the limits within which
doubt or speculation may have scope, while it keeps the
sacred deposit of the faith whole and undefiled. Such
an authority is the Catholic Church to her children; and
she has no shrinking, no hesitation in enunciating her
claim to be such. She stands forth fearlessly as the one
representative of her Lord on earth, the sole living ex-
ponent of His will, and the dispenser of His gifts

;

indefectible, because the promise standeth sure, “ I will
be with you always even to the end of the world;” infal-
lible, because inspired by the Spirit of Truth ; and
bearing on her standard the awful denunciation, “ He
that despiseth you despiseth Me.” That such authority

* Rev. J. F. Russell :
4 4 Judgment of the Anglican Church. ”



3 2 Fourfold Difficulty ofAnglicanism.

belonged to the Apostles, none, I suppose, will question

;

and that same authority the Church claims as her own,
by virtue of her succession from them. From her,
therefore, the Catholic receives the faith, even as she
received it from God, not making himself its judge, not
criticising its details, nor submitting them to any test of
his own choosing, but in full unhesitating confidence, as
from an inspired teacher; “the faith ” to him is not an
opinion of his own mind, it is something out of himself,
positive, dogmatic, complete, and immutable; and his
reception of it is not an act of eclecticism, but of faith.
That this recognition of an infallible authority must

necessarily result in unity of doctrine, is obvious to all

;

and it is equally obvious how greatly the state of the
English Church contrasts in this particular with that of
the Roman. We have already remarked on the hesitating,
self-contradictory way in which she asserts her authority;
and how little that authority is recognized by the majority
of her children, you yourself would be the first to
lament; but you would not perhaps be so ready to
admit, that the language used on this subject by the
school to which you belong is quite as subversive of
the principle of Church authority—at least, as that
principle is understood by Catholics—as any of which
you complain in the evangelical party

;
not only do you

speak of your bishops with contempt, and of your articles
as a tyranny, to be evaded until it can be thrown off

;

but you talk of infusing this or that spirit into the
Church, of introducing into her such and such doctrines
and practices, nay, of “Catholicizing” her, as if the
Church were a passive thing, to be moulded at your will,
instead of a living power, instinct with the spirit of wis-
dom—as if her children were the channels of God’s truth
to her, not she to them.

But enough has been said on the subject of unity : I
will only remind you, in conclusion, that the Church in
which, as we have seen, it has no place, consists of a
single nation; while that Church, of which it is the
striking characteristic, is composed of many nations,
peoples, and languages, diverse in all beside—some of



Sanctity. 33,

them in this world’s interests hostile to each other—but
all one in her

;
“ out of many nations one people,” sub-

mitting to one discipline, governed by one head, holding
the one faith, in unity of spirit and in the bond of peace.

Sanctity a more invidious subject of comparison.
Different types of sanctity recognized in the
Anglican and Roman communions. Sanctity of
Religious Orders. Self-sacrifice the basis of
sanctity. Newman's conversion specially attri-
buted to the attraction of this note of the true
Church.

Having said thus much on the subject of Unity, we
next come to the consideration of Sanctity, as the second
test of the true Church

;
and this I feel to be a harder

task, both because it is a point on which comparison is
more invidious, and because the test itself, from its very
nature, is more difficult of application : and yet I cannot
consent to pass it by unnoticed, because the testimony
borne in favour of the Church Catholic, by the lives of
her saints, appears to me at once the most winning and
the most convincing that can be adduced : and it is,
moreover, to this note of His Church more especially,
that our Lord Himself seems to direct our attention :

—

“ By their fruits ye shall know them.”
In claiming this note of sanctity, however, as the

exclusive possession of the Roman Church, I do not, of
course, mean that there is nothing which might be called
by that name to be found in the Church of England

:

sanctity, unlike unity, admits of degrees, and I should

D



34 Fourfold Difficulty ofAnglicanism.

suppose that there is no body of Christians among whom
does not exist something which, at least, seems akin to
it. But what I do mean is this, that there is in the
Roman Church a living energy, bursting forth from
time to time in words of power and wonderful deeds

;

manifesting itself now in this man, now in that, by the
heroic exercise of supernatural virtues; now darting
upwards to the very throne of God, now spending itself
in some enterprise for the good of man; embodying itself
in all varieties of outward form, as ages roll along and
circumstances change, but always essentially the same,
always living, plastic, and creative : and this is what we
mean when we speak of sanctity.
Now I appeal to yourself to judge, whether a spirit

such as this has ever found a permanent home in the
Church of England, or whether her very excellencies
have not borne altogether a different character, a
character cold and common-place in comparison, and,
if I may venture to say it, “of the earth, earthy.” But
since this must seem to you an invidious saying, I had
rather borrow the language of one of your own brethren,
which, in the main, expresses what I mean. “ Ours is
the Church of Walton and Herbert, not of Athanasius and
Ambrose

;
and truly we have been born into a beautiful

inheritance. Our fathers have bequeathed to us the
appreciation of a kindly and a holy spirit; a spirit of
affectionate unobtrusive meekness, of considerate friend-
liness, of calm cheerfulness

;
and these are in their

measure not only appreciated but realized amongst us
But not content with thankfulness, we have

been boastful of this grace of ours
;
we have spoken of

it as if it were the only form of Christian love, as if no
man could have any other line of action than to be frank
and amiable, to marry and bring up a family, to be
neighbourly to his equals, and active in relieving want,
&c whereas there are a whole class of expressions
in the New Testament, which, though surely they do
not condemn the English Church, yet seem somehow
not to have received their natural development in it...

We seem afraid of these. We are anxious judi-



Sanctity. 35

ciously to point out that in these days, when Christianity
is rich, men of large possessions are not called on to sell
all they have; when it is established, to leave fathers
and wives; that when Christianity is protected from
injury, there is no expediency in remaining single; when
it is triumphant, no reason why we should not laugh
now Within our own Church, we are careful to
soothe enthusiasm, and somewhat helpless in directing
it.”*

This account of the English Church is confirmed by
the fact, that, whenever a spirit more akin to that of the
Roman Saints has for a moment shot forth within her, it
has been gazed at or shrunk from, as a portent strange
and full of danger : and it has either died out at once
for want of aliment, or has burnt its way through her
enclosures, devastating as it went, and has spent itself at
last among the thorns in the wilderness. Look at the
history of the many secessions from her bosom; how
often have they been originated by some ardent mind,
full of zeal for God, which, if it had found in her a
mother's sympathy and a mother’s gentle discipline,
would have learnt to temper all that was extravagant,
and to condense enthusiastic feeling into devoted service;
but which, finding instead of such sympathy and guid-
ance nothing but cold rebuke and utter uncongeniality,
has burst forth, breaking all bonds, and so its energies
have run to waste, working for the most part evil rather
than good. Even at the present day, does it not grieve
one to the heart to see the immense religious power, so
to speak, awake and energizing in this country, and yet
accomplishing nothing, and worse than nothing

;
like

giant strength, without eyesight to direct it? Remember
the early struggles of Wesley; or, confining your view
to the present time, consider how many of the fanatical
sects daily springing up in this land have really been
engendered by a sense of spiritual misery, and a longing
for something more real and intense—for something of
inward devotedness and outward service, more worthy of

* British Critic, January, 1838. See also Macaulay’s Essays, vol.
3- P- 237.



36 Fourfold Difficulty of Anglicanism.

the Christian calling. And this is especially true of the
poor

;
if they are awakened to any acute sense of the

realities of eternity, where do they fly for sympathy and
succour? Not to the Church of England; but almost
invariably to some religious association out of her pale,
where they find more to satisfy their cravings. You can
hardly deny that the spiritual life which exists among our
poor has been kept alive mainly by the exertions of the
dissenters, and that among them if anywhere in Protest-
antism, we must seek for a spirit of zeal and self-devotion
akin to that of the Catholic saints. Akin to it, I say,
inasmuch as it is a zeal for God : but yet how different
in its character ! Zeal, in the Catholic Church, though
cherished with the tenderest sympathy, and nursed up to
its fullest development, yet in its outward working is
subject to strict rule, and exercised in a continual discip-
line, not only of austerity and self-restraint, but also of
humility and obedience; the Church claims as entire
submission from her most gifted as from her meanest
children; and how beautiful a character of steadiness
and refinement is thus wrought into the minds of the
ardent and influential you need only read the lives of her
saints to discover. You know how seldom the two
qualities of really burning zeal and humble obedience are
found together in the Church of England; and even
when they do exist thus blended, still in some way or
other we cannot but feel that something is still lacking
of the splendour and completeness of Catholic sanctity.
The fact that there is a real difference inspirit between

Rome and England is one, which, even while I was an
English Churchman, I felt I could not deny: and it is
freely acknowledged by many who are still in your
Communion: indeed, I cannot believe that any unpre-
judiced person, who has really studied the religious
biography of England and Rome respectively, of the
last three hundred years, can have any doubt upon the
subject. It is sometimes, however, objected, that the

Catholic and Anglican standards of holiness being
confessedly different, it is not fair to try the holy men of
one communion by the standard of the other: for that,.



Sanctity. 37

if, instead of the Catholic, we take the Anglican rule as
our measure, Hooker, Andrewes, and Ken are to be
preferred to St. Charles Borromeo, St. Francis de Sales,

or St. Vincent de Paul. In answer to this suggestion,

I can only express my conviction, that, whichever of the
- various qualities enumerated in Holy Writ, consecrated
by our Lord’s example, or exhibited in primitive practice,
you may select as tokens of sanctity, the Roman Church
will be found to possess them both far more abundantly,
and in greater splendour than the English. Whether
you look to the contemplative life of Mary, or he more
active service of Martha;—whether your type of Christian
sanctity be the missionary zeal of the Apostle of the
Gentiles, or the love of Christ which burned in the breast
of Peter;—the purity of him who leaned on his Lord’s
bosom, or the penitence of her who bathed His feet with
tears ;—the austerity of the Holy Baptist, or the charity
of the Son of Consolation;—be it which it may of all
these, you must now seek its transcript elsewhere than
at home. For which of her missionaries can the Church
of England pretend to compare with St. Francis Xavier,
or the noble fathers of Paraguay ? Which of them have
sealed their testimony with their blood, like the heroic

preachers of the faith, who won the crown of martyrdom
during the tremendous persecution of the 17th century
in Japan? or those thousands who even during the last
few years have passed from fearful tortures in Cochin
China, to join the white-robed army in heaven ? Which
of the very holiest of her children can we conceive “rapt
to a Seraph,” and brought into mysterious communion
with the Passion, like St. Francis of Assisium? Which
of her specimens of youthful piety belongs to at all the
same order of spiritual life with the angelic purity of St.
Aloysius or St. Stanislaus? In austerity and penitential
discipline, she would not even challenge a comparison;
for that is, as you know, one of the points on which she
considers the Catholic temper of mind to be morbid and
overstrained, striving “to wind itself too high, For sinful
man beneath the sky ;” and yet the saints of the first four
centuries (to which period she professes to appeal as a



38 Fourfold Difficulty ofAnglicanismt

standard), exceeded, if possible, in severity of penance,
those of the mediaeval Church.

It is, I suppose, in practical love to man, that is, in the
various branches of Christian alms-giving, that you
would be most disposed to claim equality with the Roman
Church; but, on this point, without pursuing the com-
parison between individuals, or insisting on that peculiar
character, which, as I think, distinguishes the philan-

thropy of the Catholic Saint from that of other men, just
in the same indescribable way that heroism is distinguish-
ed from ordinary valour,—it is sufficient to take a more
general view, and to look at the numbers, both of men
and women, whom the Catholic Church presents to us,
not singly, but grouped as it were in masses, each under
the shade of some holy institute, wholly consecrated by
vow, and for life, to works of mercy. And here a com-
parison naturally suggests itself, between the Churches
of Rome and England, which, I fear, will sound invidious,
but which strikes my own mind so forcibly, that I cannot
forbear calling your attention to it; I mean, as to the
principles which they respectively assume as the basis of
their calculations in organizing any extensive plan of
beneficence

;
the Catholic Church, in such cases, appeals

to self-devotion, the Protestant to self-interest. To
explain myself: although it is fair to say, that the sums
collected in England for charitable purposes are spoken
of with admiration even among Catholics, and though
very many individuals voluntarily devote to charitable
employments all the time they can command, yet the
Protestant Church dares not reckon on absorbing, for a
permanence, the whole time and energy of any but paid
agents,—while the Catholic Church, on the other hand,
reckons on indefinite numbers, eager to spend and be
spent in her service, and only waiting for her to point
out to them a fitting object for their zeal.

For instance: you remember the great movement
made a few years ago, by some excellent individuals,
in the National Education Society; one object of which
was the establishment of schools for the training of
parochial schoolmasters

;
you must have heard it pro-



Sanctity. 39

phesied, that the scheme would fail after all, because
- young men educated on the scale proposed, would be
able tp obtain much more lucrative situations in other
departments than they could as schoolmasters, and
therefore it would not be “ worth their while” to adhere

to their original destination. How this difficulty has
been met, I do not know; but its having been so gener-
ally felt is an exemplification of what I mean. When
a parallel movement took place in the Roman Catholic
Church, towards the end of the 17th century, to meet
the need then felt of more extended machinery for
Christian education, it issued' in the founding of a new
religious order, the Frkres des Ecoles Chretiennes,

which at the time of the French Revolution numbered
12 1 houses, and continues in vigorous operation to the
present day. And thus it has ever been : besides the
great Orders so well known throughout Christendom,
whose services to the cause of literature and science,
and indeed of improvement generally, during the middle
ages, are now universally recognized,—those of St.
Francis, St. Dominic, St. Augustine, and the most ancient
and fruitful of them all, the noble order of St. Benedict,
there were almost countless associations, all formed on
the same basis of self-devotion, called into being by the
passing exigences of the times; some of which, there-
fore, have passed away, now that their work is done,
while others still remain. You cannot glance ever so
superficially at the history of the mediaeval Church,
without finding that as one want arose after another
in that age of struggle and progressive civilization, it
was thus met. For instance : when that dreadful disease,
called St. Anthony’s fire, first broke out in Europe in
the nth century, a nobleman of Dauphin^, whose son
had been attacked by it, and, as he believed, miraculous-
ly restored to health, founded the Order of St. Anthony,
for the purpose of tending those who were suffering
under it. The ravages of leprosy, in like manner, called
into birth the Knights of St. Lazarus : from the per-
secutions endured by the Christians in the East, arose
-the Military Orders. A noble pilgrim, returning one



40 Fourfold Difficulty of Anglicanism.

day from the shrine of St. James in Gallicia, fell among
bandits, on the height of a desolate mountain in Au-
vergne

;
he escaped from them unhurt, and in fulfilment

of a vow made in the hour of peril, instituted an associa-
tion for the protection of future pilgrims; built a
religious house on the spot, with a church dedicated to
the Blessed Virgin, and established there a community,
consisting of knights, sworn to drive the robbers from
the neighbouring forests, and to escort travellers on
their way, of priests, of lay-brothers, and other servants,
and of a sisterhood of religious ladies, devoted to attend-
ance on the pilgrims, and^on the sick poor. The Order
of our Lady of Mercy was founded for the redemption
of captives from the infidels; and it was one of the vows
taken, and in many instances actually fulfilled by its
members, that, if money should fail them for this pur-
pose, they should sell themselves into slavery as a
ransom. I well remember some 40 years ago what
praise was bestowed on one of your clergy for having
caused prayer to be made in his church for a poor
criminal about to be executed: but, there has existed
in Rome, ever since the year 1488, a brotherhood called
the “ Arcbi-Confraternitk di S. Giovanni Decollate,”
whose duty it is, not only to pray for such persons

- continually both in life and death, but also to visit them

. in their prison, to administer to them all the consolation
which their condition admits, to prepare them for death,
to accompany them to execution, to give them Christian
burial within their own cemetery, and to take care of
their widows and orphans. Madness too, that most
dreadful of all calamities, has been remembered by the
charity of the Church. At the time of the Reformation,
perhaps in consequence of the great excitement which

then prevailed, this malady seems suddenly to have
increased to a fearful degree

;
and at that very time, St.

John of Grod founded an Order especially destined for
its relief, the success of which was wonderful, for the
Christian love of those devoted brethren anticipated the

discovery of modern science as to the efficacy of a
soothing treatment. Thus, their hospitals were sur-



Sanctity. 41

rounded by extensive grounds, and care was taken to
provide all possible variety of gentle recreation for the

sufferers. A touching story is told of a visit paid by the
Superior of the Order to a wretched maniac, who was
kept chained in one of the underground dungeons, used

at that time for such purposes by the civil power, and
who was said to be unapproachable. The holy brother
insisted on being let into his den, and immediately
embracing him, and stroking him gently with his hand,
contrived to let him know that he was come in love.
The poor maniac, melted in a moment at the voice of
kindness, became passive as a child; allowed himself
to be clothed, and, to the astonishment of all, walked
away, leaning on the arm of his deliverer

;
and in a year

that man was restored to his family in health and peace.
I cannot refrain from adding yet another Institute,

.
still more interesting to ourselves, from the fact that it
has sprung up in our own times and that one of its latest
efforts has been to found an establishment in our own
neighbourhood. I allude to the Little Sisters of the
Poor, who began just 50 years ago in St. Servan on the
coast of Brittany, opposite to St. Malo, in the persons
of a young seamstress, who was not quite 18, and a poor
orphan girl who was hardly 16. These girls were intro-
duced to one another by their Confessor, a young
curate of the parish utterly destitute of means. Under
his guidance they were trained in a life of religious
discipline, though still following their ordinary vocations

;

in the world for the space of two years. At last he
bade them take care of a blind old woman living in their
neighbourhood, to whom they therefore devoted their
spare time. Next, the old woman and the girls them-
selves lived together in the attic of a very humble
house. Space will not allow me to enter on the history
of the full development of the Institute; a most interest-
ing account of it may be read in a tract published by the
Catholic Truth Society; suffice it to say, that when I
visited their Noviciate and Mother House in France
some 20 years ago, I saw some six or seven hundred
novices assembled together under one roof: that at



'42 Fourfold Difficulty of Anglicanism.

this moment there are about 260 houses of them scatter-
ed over every part of the world, containing upwards of
4,000 Sisters, providing comfortable homes for upwards
of 30,000 aged poor of both sexes.

These are only a very few specimens from an almost
countless number; but they are sufficient to illustrate
what I have said, that the Roman Catholic Church may
safely reckon on finding among her children self-devotion
sufficient to carry out her designs of mercy. And as her
pious institutions are based on a higher principle than
parallel ones elsewhere, they are, in consequence, much
more efficient in their operation. " Catholicity,” says a
Protestant writer, “has made more eager and systematic
aggression upon the moral and physical ills of poverty,
—has shown more sympathy with poverty,—has given
away more, and done more for charity’s sake, in each
successive year of its existence, than some wealthy Pro-
testant establishments in each successive century of
theirs : with its brotherhoods and sisterhoods of mercy,
it gives a basis of permanent institution and uniform
religious principle to beneficent impulses, which by
Protestants are commonly left to the energy of each
passing generation and the necessities of the hour, and
often die out for lack of an efficient organization.”
We have hitherto only considered the religious orders

with reference to Christian almsgiving, but we must not
forget that some of them were instituted for purposes yet
more exalted. The love of man in the Catholic Church
is but an off-shoot, as it were, from the Love of God

:

and to the more immediate exercise of this higher love,
many of her holy fraternities and sisterhoods are con-
secrated. That there is nothing in the English Church
in any way parallel to the contemplative orders, is
admitted on all hands; and Protestants escape the
difficulty by denouncing those orders as dreamy and
useless, and a mere encumbrance on the system to which
they belong. But, on this point, let us refer once more
to those standards which the Church of England ac-
knowledges,—Scripture and primitive practice. Surely,
we shall find in both enough to teach us that there is a



Sanctity. 43

hidden life of prayer, and praise, and mystical com-
munion, which, in its higher degree, is the privilege of

those who, for its sake, renounce all besides. We read
in the Gospel of continuing in fastings and prayers night
and day; of forsaking father and mother, wife and
children, for Christ

;
of bearing the cross daily

;
of selling

all that we have
;
of being dead to the world ; crucified

with Christ; buried with Him; and all these sayings of
Holy Writ we know that the early Christians understood
literally, and faithfully practised : that they continued
instant in prayer night and day : that they gave up their
possessions, and relinquished all their nearest ties,
stripping themselves of every thing personal, that they

might no longer live in themselves, but in Christ: and
many of them, as we know, long before the system of
monastic life was organised, fled to the deserts that they
might be, without distraction, rapt in the love of God.
Think of St. Macarius, St. Anthony, St. Ephrem of Syria,
and the Egyptian anchorites, and then ask yourself for
a moment—were those holy fathers now to revisit this
world, where would they find sympathy ? Would it be
in that Church which pours forth at this day, as she has
done from the beginning, her swarms of holy contem-
platives, or in that which, in the course of three hundred
years, has had one family (that of good Nicholas Ferrar)
devoted to perpetual psalmody; and is only now
beginning to attempt the revival of religious houses, for
purposes of active works of charity, none, I believe, for
prayer a.nd contemplation.

But you will say, that the destruction of these blessed
institutions was no act of the Church of England, but,
on the contrary, a fierce exercise of royal tyranny and
oppression, of which she was the victim, and the effects
of which she has no power to remedy, and that it is hard
she should be upbraided with her calamity. But, my dear
friend, if she were really Catholic, she could and would
have remedied it long ago. The mere dissolution, in the
reign of Henry VIII., of the religious communities then
existing, though it involved the confiscation of their
property, and the overthrow of their dwellings, could not



44 Fourfold Difficulty of Anglicanism.

have destroyed the monastic spirit. If those feelings
and desires to which the conventual system alone supplies
satisfaction, had not, from some cause, been annihilated
at the same time, they would soon have re-appeared on
the surface of your history, in the form of new or revived
religious institutions. Consider the recent destinies of
the Church in France. In 1790, the religious houses
were dissolved, churches and abbeys destroyed, whole
communities slaughtered, their goods confiscated, estates
sold, and the very name of the Christian faith proscribed
throughout the land : now, until the renewed persecution
of quite recent date there were more than 35,000 monks
and nuns once more discharging their conventual duties
as zealously, and as fully according to the spirit of their
respective institutes, as at any period prior to the
Revolution : there are even a larger number, we are told,
of the more severe Orders than there were before: it is the
same in Belgium

;
it would be the same everywhere

throughout the whole Catholic world
;
even in our own

country, in spite of the systematic oppression under
which Catholics so long laboured, the spirit of self-devo-
tion has not been crushed out of them

;
and the rapidly

increasing number of monasteries and convents bears
witness to the vigour of its life.

Surely these things, if true, are very important, and
ought to be well considered in weighing the respective
claims of the Roman and English Churches to the note
of sanctity :—if in every form of Christian holiness the
saints in the Roman communion stand pre-eminent; if
there be in that Church a spirit of self-devotion lacking
to the other;—if, since England broke herself off from
the rest of Christendom, the “ more excellent way ” has
been practically unheard of within her communion,
while, during the same period, in the churches of the
Roman obedience, hundreds and thousands, both men
and women, have lived in prayer and contemplation, or
have devoted themselves to the exercise of charity in
every varied form ;—surely we ought not long to hesitate
in judging which of these two communions is the genuine
representative of that family, of whom it is written,

—



Sanctity. 45

“the multitude of them that believed were of one heart
and of one soul ; neither said any of them, that aught
of the things which he possessed was his own, but they

had all things common.” *

P.S.—Whilst writing this letter, there has fallen into
my hands the very striking article communicated to the
Guardian newspaper on occasion of Cardinal Newman’s
death, from the pen (it is said) of the late Dean Church.
He considers the “ultimate key to Newman’s history to
have been his keen and profound sense of the life, society,
and principles of action presented in the New Testa-
ment.” “ He could not see a trace in English society of
that simple and severe hold of the unseen and the future
which is the colour and breath, as well as the outward
form, of the New Testament life.” “The English
Church had exchanged religion for civilization,” “but at
least the Roman Church had not only preserved, but
maintained at full strength through the centuries to our
day, two things of which the New Testament was full,
and which are characteristic of it, devotion and self-
sacrifice. The crowds at a pilgrimage, a shrine, or a
‘ pardon’ were much more like the multitudes who
followed our Lord about the hills of Galilee—like them
probably in that imperfect faith which we call supersti-
tion—than anything that could be seen in the English
Church. And the spirit which governed the Roman
Church had prevailed on men to make the sacrifice of
celibacy a matter of course, as a condition of ministering
in a regular and systematic way, not only to the souls
but to the bodies of men, not only on the priesthood,
but on educational brotherhoods and sisters of the poor
and of hospitals. Devotion and sacrifice, prayer and
self-denying charity, in one word sanctity, are at
once on the surface of the New Testament and
interwoven with all its substance. He recoiled from
a representation of the religion of the New Testament
which to his eye was without them. He turned to

* This, and all the other passages from Scripture which are
quoted in these Letters, are taken for obvious reasons from the
Protestant version.



46 Fourfold Difficulty of Anglicanism.

where, in spite of every other disadvantage, he found
them.”

Thus, according to this writer,—one, be it remembered,
who had more than ordinary means of knowing the
truth,—the absence of the note of sanctity in the Angli-
can Communion and its presence in the Roman, was the
special attraction which drew this holy soul from the one
communion to the other.

LETTER VII.

Superiority of Catholic spiritual writings.
Devotion of the Catholic poor and of Catholic
worshippers generally. Alleged immorality and
infidelity of Catholic countries.

The mention of the contemplative orders, with which
my last letter concluded, naturally brings to the mind
the subject of religious books, which I must not omit to
notice, because the unquestioned superiority of the
Roman to the English Church in this particular, is a
fact deserving serious consideration. “ Why cannot any
of you write with feeling and unction such as this?”
asked James I. of his bishops, when he had read the “ In-
troduction a la vie devote,”* sent to him by Mary of
Medici.

The private devotions of Archbishop Laud borrrow
largely from the prayers of Catholics,—the devotions of
Hickes and Cosin are formed on their very model : some

* A translation of this, “ adapted to the use of the English
Church,’ ’ was licensed by Archbishop Laud’s chaplain. See an
interesting letter in Laud’s Autobiography, p. 219.



Sanctity in the Roman Church . 47

of the most valuable portion of Jeremy Taylor’s works are
1 founded 9 on the “ great moral writers of the Continental
Church,—using their very words and terms of expression,
giving their advice and their cautions.” In fact, the
chapter on Meditation, of which this was especially said,
is little more than an analysis of the scheme of the
Spiritual Exercises, that all but inspired composition

of St. Ignatius Loyola, which has been “ wonderfully
blest in the conversion of tens of thousands.” Bishop

Wilson recommended the use of the Spiritual Combat :

—

Thomas k Kempis has been edited even by some of the
Evangelical party : and Fenelon is almost as familiar to
Protestants as to Catholics themselves.

We read in the life of a late prominent member of your
clergy (Rev. A. H. Mackonochie) that “he seemed fairly
to have absorbed the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius,
and two or three other Catholic Ascetical works, and that
they supplied very frequently the plan of his retreats,

missions, and courses of sermons, or the frame-work of
simple meditation,” and there is reason to believe that the
same might be said with equal truth of a considerable
number of your High Church clergy. Long ago it was
found worth while to publish a series of translations from
the works of our Ascetical writers, “adapted to the use of
the English Church,” and in the preface to some of the
earlier volumes, Dr. Pusey wrote that “in contemplation
and self discipline ” (i.e., in the whole of religion practical
and devotional, objective and subjective) “the spiritual
writers of foreign churches have, as yet, some obvious
advantages over our own.” Fifty years have passed
away since these words were written. Is there any
token that the balance of advantage is inclining to the
other side ?

Thus far we have spoken of sanctity only in its higher
degree; and on that we might fairly rest the whole
question, because, as Aristotle says, “ that kind is alto-
gether best, whose excellence or pre-eminence is best

;

”

but it may be more satisfactory to you if we pursue the
comparison further, and consider the respective religious
condition of the multitudes whose vocation lies in the



48 Fourfold Difficulty of Anglicanism.

world—that is, of the main body of each communion.
It is obvious, however, that to enter into so vast a subject
with anything like detail would be far beyond the com-
pass of a letter. I will only make one or two remarks
upon it.
The first thing which struck me when I began to

frequent Catholic Churches was the intense devotion of
the half-clad paupers, the very beggars, who are in daily
attendance there : there is something in the expression
of their faces, especially when they approach the Blessed
Sacrament, utterly unlike anything I had ever before
seen in real life, and only reminding one of the pictures
of Catholic Saints. If you could witness this for yourself,
and contrast it with the almost total absence of the very
poor from your public worship, and especially from your
communions, I think you could not doubt which of the
two religions takes deepest root in the hearts of the poor;
and, considering that “to the poor” more especially
“was the Gospel preached,” there is surely a strong
presumption that the Church of the poor is the Church
of Christ. This fervour of devotion, however, though
most striking in the poor, seems equally to pervade all
classes, and indeed is acknowledged on all hands as a
marked characteristic of Catholicism. Hear the remarks
of a Presbyterian traveller on this subject : * “Catholicism
has certainly a much stronger hold over the human
mind than Protestantism; the fact is visible and un-
deniable, and perhaps not unaccountable. The fervour
of devotion among Catholics, the absence of worldly
feelings in their religious acts, strikes every traveller who
enters a Roman Catholic Church abroad In no
place of worship do we witness the same intense abstrac-
tion in prayer, the same unaffected devotion of mind. ...
The public mind is evidently more religionized than in
Protestant countries;” and he then proceeds to enquire:
“ Why should such strong devotional feeling be more
widely diffused and more conspicuous among people
holding erroneous doctrines, than among us Protestants
holding right doctrines ?” which very perplexing problem

* Laing’s Notes of a Traveller, pp. 430, 448, &c.



Sanctity in the Roman Church. 49

he at last solves thus: “Our belief is the working
of

iudgment, theirs of imagination; and in this way we

must account for the undeniably greater devotional

fervour of Catholics than of Protestants.”

Here you will probably bring against me the so often

alleged immorality of Catholic countries
as compared

with our own, on which, therefore, it will be
necessary to

say a few words before we bring this subject
to a close.

I must, however, premise that, even if
this charge be

true I cannot consider it a fair objection
against the

sanctity of the Church. The character of a Church,

surely, can only be judged of by the conduct
of those who

receive her teaching, and in the main obey her
precepts

;

for to charge upon any system the failures of
those who

upon every point run counter to its principles,
were to

blame a physician for the death of a patient who refused

to take his medicines, and pursued a regimen
absolutely

contrary to the one he had prescribed. Besides,
the

Church on earth is not triumphant, but militant ;
the

very object of her existence is to
fight against evil,

wherever it is to be found ; and that it is to
be foun

within her own camp, is no more than her Lord
warned

her to expect: “Many are called, but few chosen;
the

tares and wheat must grow together until the
harvest

;

the good and bad fish are in the same net;
and it is

written that “ It must needs be that scandals
come. A

man born in a Catholic country is called a Catholic
in

consequence of his baptism; but to be a Catholic,
that is,

to submit one’s self to the Catholic system,
must he in all

cases an act of the individual will. There
can be no

mistake about it in the Catholic Church—a man must

be either obedient or disobedient; and if
he disobeys

distinctly and consciously, that is, systematically
and

deliberately, he as really rejects the Catholic
Church as

if he became a Mahometan or a Pagan; and none
ol his

sins ought in fairness to be ascribed to her,
nor himseli

reckoned any more among her children, but her
enemies.

That such a one may fall into frightful depths of
wicked-

ness, I can easily conceive ; and if the Roman
Catholic

Church be, what I believe her to be, the one
Church ot

E



50 Fourfold Difficulty of Anglicanism.

God, and the sole depositary of His sacramental grace,
one would rather expect that those who have rejected
“so great salvation” would be more abandoned of God
than those whose privileges have been less, for we are
told that where the Gospel of God is not the “savour of
life unto life,” it is the “savour of death unto death.”

But is it a fact that so-called Catholic lands are more
immoral than our own?
The moral condition of England is at this moment a

subject of such deep and sorrowful anxiety to all thought-
ful persons that I need not quote any fact or authorities
in illustration of it; but I must be allowed to add, that I
have been assured by Italian priests resident in this
country, that the villages and small towns, in which they
find themselves located here as missionaries, present a
picture of sin and sensuality such as they had never
witnessed—such as does not, in fact, exist—in the
villages of their own native country

;
and that it is a task

of exceeding difficulty to awaken in the minds of some
of those who become converts anything like an adequate
sense of the enormity of their past guilt.

But, it may be said, whatever be the state of the case
as to morals, it is certain that open infidelity is much
more common in Catholic countries than it is here.
This I can easily believe

;
and it is what I should rather

expect from the more stringent character of the Catholic
system, both as to faith and practice. If a Catholic
once lets go his belief in any one of the doctrines of his
Church, he soon finds that in rejecting one he rejects all,
because, in rejecting any, he has already lost his faith in
the authority on which he holds all, that is, the Church

;

a Catholic, in embracing any form of Protestantism
subverts the fundamental principle of his Christian life
quite as much as if he became an infidel at once

;
and

therefore it is this open form, which his unbelief very
often assumes; and, even if he begin by holding some
Protestant creed, he generally strips it, sooner or later, of
everything dogmatic, and ends (as recent instances have
miserably exemplified) in discarding all positive belief

whatever. Among Protestants, private judgment as to



Sanctity in the Roman Church. 5

1

the sense of Scripture, not Church authority, is generally
recognized as the rule of faith

;
therefore, a man violates

no principle in changing from one sect to another, and
may explain away from his creed all that makes too large
a demand upon his faith, without ceasing to call him-
self a Protestant; and it is well known how convenient
a resting-place is in fact afforded by Socinianism, to
those who, but for it, would be professed unbelievers.

From this difference between Catholicism and Protes-
tantism it may surely be expected to result, that those
who “have not faith, 1” under the one system will alter
Christianity to suit their own mind, and under the other
will reject it altogether, because they find it unalterable.

Then, again, in practice; there is little comparatively in
Protestantism which requires self-sacrifice; a member of
the Church of England, for instance, may be thoroughly
irreligious at heart, and yet feel nothing in the system of
his Church grievous enough to rouse him to the exertion
of publicly renouncing it. To fulfil his ordinary social
duties, and even to attend public worship and go through
the customary round of religious observances, can be no
great hardship to him ; and as long as he does this, none
dare call him an infidel, and he may never be led to
think enough on the subject of religion to be altogether
conscious to himself that he is such; but, if this person
had to fast for the forty days of Lent, to kneel at the
tribunal of penance, and there confess his most secret
sins, and crave the blessing of absolution, he would soon
find himself, as it were, forced into a position of open
rebellion

;
and it is, I believe, because the Catholic rules

of practice are thus searching and stringent, and enter so
minutely into the details of daily life, that they are

absolutely intolerable to the love of indulgence, and
especially to the pride of the worldly heart

;
and therefore

in Catholic countries, the opposition between the Church
and the world is far more distinct than in England.
How deadly is the hatred borne by the infidel party to
the Church in Catholic lands, is sufficiently shown by
those recent works of Michelet, Sue, and others, with
translations of which our English press is teeming; but



5 2 Fourfold Difficulty of Anglicanism,

to me this seems only a testimony that the Catholic
Church is the true representative of that “rock of offence,”
concerning which it was said, “ on whomsoever it shall
fall, it shall grind him to powder.” It must not, how-
ever, be forgotten that there have been seasons in this
country when infidelity has been almost universal, at
least among the higher classes. Bishop Butler says of
the state of things in his own time, “it is come to be
taken for granted, by many persons, that Christianity is
not so much as a matter of inquiry, but that it is now at
length discovered to be fictitious; and, accordingly, they
treat it as if, in the present age, this were an agreed
point among all people of discernment, and nothing re-
mained but to set it up as a principal subject of mirth and
ridicule.” Is there no reason to apprehend a similar evil
in the present day? Before taking leave of this subject
of Sanctity* I must say a few words about those whom;
we call canonized saints. You know that from time ta
time the Church adds to the number of these, holding
up to our imitation or veneration the lives or deaths of
certain persons who have specially distinguished them-
selves in the service of God. One of your own clergy
(Dean Perowne, now Bishop of Worcester) has lately
called public attention to this practice of the Church
of Rome and contrasts it with the absence of any
corresponding act in the Church of England. “The
Church of Rome,” he says, “is so far right, for she adds
freely to her lists. Her perpetual canonization is a
witness to the consciousness of a living Church, that the
spirit of God has not ceased to work within the limits of
her pale. We speak of a St. Bernard and a St. Anselm.
Why do we not speak also of a St. Martin Luther and
St. John Wicliff?” He does not grudge the aureole of
sanctity awarded to St. Francis of Assisi, St. Vincent
of Paul, or even Sir Thomas More, but he would fain
see the same conceded to a large number of individuals
whom he enumerates, but of whom I will only name the
first and last triplets : Ridley, Cranmer and Latimer,

—

Thomas Chalmers, Norman McLeod and Livingstone.
He does not give any hint as to the mode of procedure,.



Sanctity in the Roman Church. 53

by which he would have these Protestant canonizations
conducted ; whether the names should be submitted to
universal suffrage or the right of voting be an exclusive
privilege of the clergy; whether, when the decision is
arrived at, it should be embodied in an Act of Parliament
or in a Statute of Convocation, &c., &c. But I should
wish you to know that in the Roman Church, at least, the
process which ends in canonization is a very long and
serious one. The popular voice may have something to
do with it in the first place; rumour is spread abroad that
such a person has lived and died in the odour of sanc-
tity, as we say. A judicial enquiry is set on foot by the
Bishop of the place, evidence is taken on oath, and all
materials for arriving at a true judgment diligently
collected. Then the work is removed to the centre of
the Catholic Church, the See of Rome, when the whole
business is enquired into from the very beginning with
all the minute precautions attending a severe judicial
investigation. Every detail of the individual's life is en-
quired into, to ascertain that it has been in all -things
conformable to the rules of Christian duty. Every scrap
of his writings, if he was an author, is minutely scrutin-
ized to ascertain that they are in all things conformable
to the rule of Christian faith

;
it must be proved that he

has practised the Christian virtues in an heroic degree,
&c., &c. And even when this has all been settled
satisfactorily, the Catholic Church does not presume to
enrol the name of any among the company of the saints,
until, in the words of St. Augustine, * “ She has been
persuaded thus to honour them by some trustworthy
tokens from God;" and among these, one with
which she now never dispenses is that of miracles.
I fear most Protestants will turn away with scorn from
the very mention of miracles, since they are wont to
assume, though one cannot see on what grounds, that all
alleged miracles, excepting only those mentioned in
Scripture, must necessarily be false. Catholics, on the
other hand, read and believe many wonderful and
mysterious things spoken in Holy Writ of God's Saints.

* De Civ. Dei lib. I. cxxvi.



54 Fourfold Difficulty ofAnglicanism.

They know that our Lord declared that supernatural
signs would follow them that believed, that they should
do greater works than He Himself had done. They
know too, that as a matter of fact many of them wrought
miracles; many had visions and revelations from the
Lord

;
handkerchiefs and aprons were brought from the

body of an Apostle, fraught with miraculous powers of
healing; there was virtue in the very shadow ofan Apostle,
and evil spirits were cast out by the name of Jesus.
Knowing also that Christ has promised to be with His
Church all days, even to the end of the world, they do
not count it strange that she should manifest from time
to time the same signs of His presence as He certainly
vouchsafed in the beginning. With what jealous and
scrupulous caution she examines any miraculous report
submitted to her judgment in order to satisfy herself
that it is trustworthy, all Protestants who have had
opportunity of observing bear witness, and it is among
Catholics a proverbial saying, that it is next to a miracle

to prove a miracle at Rome. Surely this subject ought
to be calmly and carefully investigated, for if God thus
speaks and we refuse to hear, will not Tyre and Sidon
rise up against us to condemn us at the last day?

LETTER VIII.

Catholicity. Importance of the title in the
opinion of the ancient Fathers. Title usually
given to the Roman Church, which is Catholic in
fact as well as in name. The English Church only
national : confined to English-speaking peoples.
Catholicity and nationality contrasted.

I think that I have now shown to the satisfaction of
really candid enquirers, that the first two notes of Christ’s



Catholicity. 55

Church, Unity and Sanctity in its only proper sense,
belong to the Churches of the Roman obedience, not to
the Established Church of this country. The third note,
Catholicity, we might almost leave to be adjudged by
the unpremeditated confession of our adversaries them-

selves ; for the name of Catholic is the common title by
which we are known throughout the world; and the
members of every religious denomination whatever, so
far as I know, excepting only the Irvingites and a small
portion of yourselves, agree in conceding it to us without

dispute
;

whilst, on the other hand, one of your own
bishops has publicly disowned it for the Church of Eng-
land, or at last condemned the continual use of it as
“an affectation and others of your clergy are
allowed, without protest, to teach concerning the habit

of “talking of a Catholic Church” at all, that it is a
“ contractedness, ” and of “boasting in English parti-
alities as Catholic doctrine,” that it is “a wretched
littleness.”! Under these circumstances, it is not difficult
to conjecture what would have been the judgment of
ancient Catholic doctors between us. “ All heretics wish
to be called Catholic,” says St. Augustine,! “yet if any
stranger ask, where do the Catholics hold their assembly,
no heretic dare point to his own church or chapel.”
“The word Church,” says St. Cyril, § “is applied to
different things, and therefore the faith has delivered to
thee, by way of security, the article, 4 And in One Holy
Catholic Church/ that thou mayest avoid the wretched
meetings of the heretics, and ever abide with the Holy
Church Catholic, in which thou wast regenerated. And
if ever thou art sojourning in any city, enquire not simply
where the Lord's house is, nor merely where the Church
is

,
but

,
where is the Catholic Church ? For this is the

peculiar name of this holy Body, the Mother of us all,
which is the Spouse of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Only-
begotten Son of God.” These passages are very

* The Bishop of Worcester, in 1846.
f Mr. Bickersteth’s Sermon, May 5, 1842.

t Cont. Epist. Manich. iv. Tom. viii. p. 269.
§ Catech. Lect. xviii. p. 252, Oxford Translation.



5 6 Fourfold Difficulty ofAnglicanism.

striking; and might well be considered conclusive. But
their applicability to us is sometimes disputed, because
we are also called Roman Catholic

;
and it is moreover

objected that there is something contradictory and self-
condemning in this title, as though it represented a
particular branch of the Church as equal to the whole,
as itself the Catholic Church. To this it may be
answered, first, that we call ourselves, and are quite as
commonly called by others, simply Catholics, without
any qualification at all; and secondly, that it is mere
ignorance or wilful misrepresentation to attach any such
meaning as that I have mentioned to the title in ques-
tion, because everybody knows that the Roman Catholic
Church is not one particular or national Church, but
a union of very many national churches, as of
Belgium, Austria, &c., and indeed of Churches from
among every people in the whole world, where Christi-
anity itself is known. All these agreeing together, and
holding communion one with another, in the unity of
doctrine and the bond of peace, make up the Catholic
Church, which, because it acknowledges the principality
of the apostolic see, is also called Roman, just as St.
Jerome and others, for the same reason, not unfrequently
designate the faith of the Catholic Church simply as
“ the Roman faith.”

Catholicity, however, is something more than a word
and a name; it is also a fact; a real quality or character
whose presence or absence in any body of Christians
can be easily ascertained; let us therefore examine it
somewhat more attentively. “The most obvious and
most general notion of the word” (Catholicity), says
Bishop Pearson, “ consists in the diffusiveness of the
Church, grounded upon the commission given to the
builders of it: ‘Go, teach all nations/ ” Which, then, is
the most diffused, the Church of Rome, or the Church
of England? Let us hear the testimony of an able
Protestant writer upon this question. * “ The Reformed
churches were mere national churches. The Church of
England existed for England alone; it was an institution

* Macaulay’s Essays, Vol, 3. p. 236.



Catholicity. 57

as purely local as the Court of Common Pleas. The
Church of Scotland, in the same manner, existed for
Scotland alone. The operations of the Catholic Church,
on the other hand, took in the whole world. Nobody
at Lambeth or at Edinburgh troubled himself about
what was doing in Poland or Bavaria. But Cracow and
Munich were at Rome objects of as much interest as
the purlieus of St. John Lateran.”
The truth of this statement is abundantly confirmed

by the actual condition of Christendom. An English
churchman cannot find himself quite at home in spiritual
matters even in Scotland or America; for in the one
Church he will find a liturgy containing, as it is said,
doctrines against which his Church at home protests

;

and in the other, a repudiation of the Athanasian creed,
which, as he has learnt, “ ought thoroughly to be
received and believed

;
” and if it be thus with respect

to communions which are mere offshoots from your own,
what shall we say of every other part of the world, where,
as you well know, there are no Christians at all, except-
ing here and there congregations ofyour own countrymen,
who by holding communion with you, will bear witness
to your Catholicity. It is not strange then, that those
clergy who are alive to the real state of things, should
seek to discourage any of their flock from travelling into
foreign countries; they may well fear, lest, oppressed by a
sense of their spiritual loneliness, such travellers should
presently crave admission into a Church, Catholic in fact
no less than in name

;
a Church whose members, like

the Christians of old, if furnished with proper creden-
tials from their bishop, may travel through the world
from east to west, and from north to south, and be
received to communion with their brethren in any part
of the globe.

I know it will be objected here, that, though the Roman
Church is certainly more extensively diffused than the
English, yet she too has her limits; she is not really and
truly Catholic, because she is not in communion with the
Greek Church in Russia, nor with the Eutychians in
Syria, &c.; but this is an objection which was answered



58 Fourfold Difficulty of Anglicanism.

for us by St. Augustine* nearly 1500 years ago: “ The
Novatians, Arians, Patripassians, Valentinians, &c.,” he
says, “do not, as you justly observe, communicate with
us. Nevertheless, wherever they are, there is the Catholic
Church, just as she is also in Africa, where you (the
Donatists) are; but not wheresoever the Catholic Church
is, there are either you, or any other of the various heresies

:

whence it is sufficiently apparent which is the tree
extending its branches with abundant fruitfulness over
the whole earth, and which are the broken branches that
have no life from the root, and are lying and withering
each on its own ground.”
These last words are full of meaning : for, in truth, if

there be a special characteristic of the English Church, it
is this of “ lying in her own ground ;” it has even been
her boast from the beginning. The real struggle at the
Reformation, as a high-church writer declares, was
“ between this island of the free on the one hand, and an
Italian priest on the other and, if we read the history
of this country for several centuries previous to that event,

we shall see that it was at all times the policy of the
government to loosen as far as possible the tie ofobedience
which bound their Church to Rome, and to disengage her
from all foreign influence whatever—in a word, to
nationalize her; that, being thus unsupported from with-
out, she might become a mere appendage to the state,
and so be the more helpless in the hand of the civil power.
This design, so often frustrated, was at last, as we all
know, too fully accomplished

;
and, since that period, the

Church of England, instead of bewailing the loss of
Christian brotherhood, has gloried in her separation; even
at the present day one of her spiritual rulersf recommends
that “ the nationality of the English religion be secured

by some energetic protest;” and it is surely on this
principle only (that of religion being a national matter),

that you can denounce us as “the Romanist schism in
this country,” while acknowledging us to be Catholics
elsewhere, as though there were some mysterious spell in

* Contra Cresc. Don. lib. iv. 75. Tom. ix. p. 794.
f Bishop of Oxford, May 16, 1846.



Catholicity. 59

British soil, whereby a priest who says Mass at Calais, a
devout Catholic in the morning, is transformed into a

rebellious schismatic when he sings vespers in Dover in
the evening. But, if Catholicity be a note of the Church*

how is it possible that nationality should be such likewise?
Are not the two principles absolutely antagonistic ? Sure-
ly, when the wall of partition was broken down between
Jew and Gentile, nationality ceased for ever to be the
mark of God's people ? The Church was to be a new
kingdom,—the kingdom of God

:
gathering into herself

all nations, and kindreds, and people and tongues ; not
that the nations thus gathered should continue so many
independent bodies in the things pertaining to Gcd; but
that they should all become “ one body," animated by
“one spirit;" “one fold under one shepherd;" one
“ grain of mustard-seed," which should expand into a
great tree; one stone, “cut out without hands," which
should fill “the whole earth." Now, without entering
into the question of the necessity of a central point from
which this unity of the Church must emanate, and in
which its supreme authority must reside, thus much at
least is manifest, that, if the Church is to be thus one
whole, the sovereignty of that whole over its parts must
necessarily be absolute

;
and their union with it and with

one another indissoluble. It cannot therefore be lawful
for any one of them to stand out alone, to fence itself
round, as it were, from the rest, and to commence a
separate existence. What says St. Cyril on this subject?
“ While the kings of particular nations have bounds set to
their dominion, the Holy Catholic Church alone extends
her illimitable sovereignty over the whole world."* How
little recognition of the independence of national Churches
do we find in the practice of the early Church. We read
that every church was obliged to “communicate with
every other church all over the world in all holy offices,
in order to preserve the communion of worship one entire
thing throughout the whole Catholic Church, without
division or distraction." The Council of Nice, “ in order
that all things might be done alike in all dioceses," made

* Catech. Lect. xviii.



6o Fourfold Difficulty of Anglicanism.

a canon, contrary to the practice of some, prohibiting
genuflection in public worship on Sundays and during
the Paschal season : the same holy synod declared it a
thing “ unlawful” that there should be any diversity of
practice among Christians touching the time of the
celebration of Easter

;
and ever afterwards the opposers

of that decree were commonly censured as heretics or
schismatics. The fourth council of Carthage, held before
the end of the fourth century, decreed that any who
should make a practice of fasting on the Lord’s Day,
should not be considered a Catholic. Surely the holy
bishops who were assembled at those councils would not
have long hesitated in denying the title of Catholic to a
national body severed, like the English Church, from the
“ Universal brotherhood” in faith, in discipline, in sacra-
ments, and in communion ?
And not only is this principle of nationality repugnant

to ancient practice, but it is, at the same time, fatal to
the very existence of the Church which adopts it. The
Church of England, for instance, began with separating
herself from the Church Universal, and rejecting both
doctrines and sacraments which were received throughout
Christendom

;
then, immediately placing herself in the

position of the Church from which she had revolted, she
claimed submission from her children, and denounced as
schismatics all who dissented from her. But, on what
plea could she justify her departure from the Universal
Church, which would not equally justify her children in
departing from her? If she be Catholic in spite of her
separation, why may they not continue Catholic, though
separated from her ? If it be said that Catholicity lies
in the episcopate, each separate bishop being the centre
of unity in his own diocese, and so, in some sense,
himself an entire Church, then at least her bishops may
separate from her, or rather from each other, and there
may be as many Churches as dioceses. Supposing, for
instance, the Bishop of Calcutta, with some other of your
foreign bishops, or two or three of your bishops at home,
should join together in a new communion, casting off the
authority of the Archbishop of Canterbury, as he once



Catholicity. 61

cast off that of the Pope, and remodelling the doctrine
and discipline now received in the Church of England
according to what they may consider a purer and more
primitive type, what would prevent a communion thus
established from being as Catholic as that which it had
left ? It is manifest that the principle of the independence
of national Churches and their completeness within them-
selves, to be consistently held, must be grounded on that
of the civil supremacy, thus making the institutions of
the Church follow those of the world ; and this theory
many of the English divines unhesitatingly adopt

;
laying

it down, that “ every people under one prince, or at least
of one nation, using the same language, civil law and
fashions, should be united in the bands of ecclesiastical
polity and Barrow* presses this principle so far, as to
consider “ the voluntary consent or command of princes ”

as a sufficient reason for “ adhering in confederation”

even to the Roman Church. Indeed, as all heresy
and schism, being the fruit of individual pride, have
“ tended to insulate man, and to reduce every thing by
sub-division;” so the main principle of Protestantism
has been well described,f as

“ National independence,

—

the proper expression of the temporal element of society,
—in opposition to the idea of a sacerdotal religion,
supreme and predominant over all temporal power.”
But that Church has a feeble hold over the consciences
of men whose most powerful claim to their obedience is,
that it is the religion by law established

;
for there are

few who take so high a view of civil government, as to
believe it to be the commissioned and infallible interpre-
ter of God's holy Revelation. How different is the
strength of that Church whose whole system is pervaded
by Catholicity, as by a force unseen, yet by living energy,
where the voice of every national Communion, of every
Archbishop, of every Bishop, of every Priest, nay, of

every individual in any way commissioned to teach, is
the voice of the whole Church; and therefore where
every local authority, which in itself would be as nothing,
is irresistible in its derived power.

* Unity of the Church, in fin. f Ranke’s History of the Popes.



62 Fourfold Difficulty of Anglicanism.

Thus then the case stands :—the English Church is a
mere national communion

;
a “ branch,” as she is fond

of terming herself, but a “ branch” into which no sap
flows from any other branch, nor from any main stem ;

—

a branch utterly cut off, and lying, as has been said, “on
her own ground;”—while the Roman Church, on the
other hand, is as a tree which filleth the land

;

“ the hills

are covered with the shadow of it; and the boughs thereof
are like the goodly cedar trees:” of her might the
ancient Father* speak, as he spoke of the Church in his
own day :—she is a “ rich and fruitful vine with many
branches, and the varied tresses of many a tendril : not
everywhere indeed having large clusters, not having
every grape full swelled

;
some have suffered from the

winter-cold, others from the rough hail, others from the
burning heat of summer; one bud is studded thicker
with shoots, another is stronger, another cleaner : one
bursts forth into fruit, another only into exuberance of
leaves; yet is she everywhere a vine, in every part
beautiful.”

LETTER IX.

Church of England claims to be Catholic on the
plea that she teaches Catholic doctrine. This plea
shown to be, 1. insufficient

;
2. false. Its falsehood

demonstrated in four instances, her teaching on
the Holy Eucharist, the Sacrifice of the Mass,
prayers for the dead, and the cultus of the Saints.

You say that in my last letter I did not state the one
real ground on which the Church of England rests her
claim to Catholicity, viz: agreement in Christian doctrine

* St. Pacian, Ep. iii. sect. 50. See Oxford Translation, p. 360.



Church of England not Catholic. 63

with the Catholic Church of the early centuries. You
say that she holds the three Catholic Creeds, the

Apostles’, the Nicene, and the Athanasian; and that on
all points, not specified in those Creeds, she throws

herself on the consent of all the Catholic doctors of the

first four or five centuries; that the Church of that
period being Catholic, the Church of England, perfectly
coinciding with her in belief, must needs be Catholic
also; that the Church has no right* to impose new
articles of faith, that the Roman Church has imposed
Transubstantiation, Purgatory, Intercession of Saints,

Veneration of Relics, &c., which were unknown to
primitive times; these doctrines therefore she repudiates

as Roman, while she accepts all that are Catholic.
Now, before we consider whether the Church of

England can really bear this test, let us briefly enquire
whether it is a fair one in itself; for, though Anglicans
are apt to assume this as self-evident, yet serious
objections seem to lie on its very surface ; for, if this be
indeed the test by which we must determine a Church’s
Catholicity, then Catholicity is not that simple and
obvious note of the true Church which one would
expect it to be from its being put forward in the Creed,
and which St. Cyril, St. Augustine, and others, represent
it; since the common consent of all Catholic doctors
can only be gathered by one deeply read in Ecclesiasti-
cal Antiquity.

And further: if the Church has no right now to

* It is sometimes said that the Council of Ephesus, in its seventh
Canon, distinctly prohibited any further development of the
Christian creed, as though it were possible for the Church in any
age so to limit the power of the Church in all future ages, as to
deprive her of the privilege of defining articles of faith against any
new heresy that might arise. The occasion of the canon in
question (a subtle attempt to impose a Nestorian creed), its very
language, the manner in which the same law was afterwards
expressed by the third council of Constantinople (“ any newly-
invented phrases, to the subversion ofthose things already defined,”)
no less than reason itself, sufficiently determine the sense of the
canon. Moreover, if it be interpreted otherwise, how does the
Church of England justify her use of the Athanasian creed, or of
the Filioque in the Nicene?



64 Fourfold Difficulty of Anglicanism.

require as a guarantee of Catholicity any thing beyond
the acceptance of the Creeds of the first three centuries,

what right had she in the days of Macedonius, for
instance, to require more than the Nicene Creed as
originally drawn up

;
or, in the days of Arius, to require

more than the Creed of the Apostles ? Nay, if you deny
her all power of explaining, or in any way amplifying,
what she has once enunciated, the original profession of
faith (as accepted by Philip from the Ethiopian), ought
to have been left in its simplicity, and “ I believe in the
Lord Jesus Christ,” should have been for ever a con-
fession distinct enough to declare a man a Catholic;
for it cannot be denied that each additional article of
the Creed was necessarily a means of narrowing the
limits of the Church by excluding some. Many, as you
know, hold that the Church overstepped her prerogative
in dogmatizing at all ; and this is an intelligible
opinion : but to allow her that power at one period, and
to deny it her at another, seems altogether unreason-
able.

You will answer me that the Church was Catholic,
and of infallible authority, so long as she continued One,
but that when the Greek Church broke off from her, her
inspiration, her authority, and her Catholicity passed
away together; or rather were shattered into fragments,
a portion abiding with the one Church, and a portion with
the other; so that after that separation, we have no
means of knowing what is the real mind of the collective
Church except by looking back to the records of the
time when it was One. In reply I would only say, that,
in thus representing Catholicity as of a divisible nature,
you destroy its very idea, at least as it was understood
by the early Fathers. It is always spoken of by them,
as, like Unity, an inalienable note of the true Church,
and of it alone

;
so that to suppose the existence of two

separate bodies, both in an equal measure Catholic, and
neither such altogether; or to suppose that the true
Church has at any time suffered, or is capable of suffering,
a loss of Catholicity, or that Catholicity admits of degrees
at all, would be, in their opinion, to suppose a contra-



Church of England not Catholic. 65

diction. In fact, your theory plainly interpreted is simply

this : that Catholicity has ceased for the present to be a

note of the Church, that is, that the promises of Christ

to her are, for the present, suspended ; which is a belief

so repugnant to the letter of Scripture, so contrary to the

expectation of the early Church, and so very distressing
in itself, that it requires stringent proof.

But, you will say, look at the fact ; here is a manifest
division in the Christian world; the Eastern churches

and the Western are out of communion ; and what reason
have I to determine that Catholicity inheres exclusively

in either of these branches, so that the other is cut off

from it? It would be beside the purpose of this letter to
enter into any proof of our own belief on this subject

:

but the case, even as it appears on a primhfacie view, is
one which deserves your serious consideration. There
is, as you well know, one portion of the Church, and one
only, which claims to be, in an especial sense, the seat
of her vitality; in which vitality, if we may trust the
language of the ancient Fathers, Catholicity is included as
an essential element. Now, surely, that there should be
one portion of the Church more vital than another cannot
be considered as otherwise than antecedently probable,
whether we look to analogy, or to the nature of the case.
Consider, for instance, the structure of the natural body,

to which the Church is so often compared in Scripture.
We know that we may lose several limbs, all organs of
sense, and even the greatest part of our bodies, and yet
remain the same living agents that we were before; while,
on the other hand, there are parts which we cannot lose,
without at the same time losing life. And further, we
know that perpetual existence is guaranteed to the
Church by the promise of her Lord; and—considering
that her Body is of vast extent, and subject, as history
demonstrates, to sundry changes and the lopping off of
many and important limbs—we cannot see, humanly
speaking, how the fulfilment of this promise can be
adequately secured, except there be some one portion of
her substance in which, by the appointment of God,
vitality is indissolubly inherent. This antecedent proba-

F



66 Fourfold Difficulty of Anglicanism.

bility would of course go for nothing, if there were no
corresponding claim made; but such a claim being
made, it is surely a corroboration of it; and the fact
that all parties would allow—a centre of Catholicity
being once admitted—that it can be none but Rome,
ought, in fairness, to be considered a further corrobora-
tion

;
neither ought the present recognition of her claim

by so many national churches to be altogether without
weight.

It is usually urged by Anglicans as altogether con-
clusive, that in the earlier ages there was no consciousness
in the Church of any central point, in which her life thus
especially resided; but, even supposing this true, it does
not seem to me to decide the question, because it may
have been God’s will that experience alone should dis-
cover to His Church this secret of His counsel

;
it may

be only experience which has taught us what parts of
our body are vital

;
and if indeed—as some Protestant

authors have said—it was her immunity from heresy,
when one Church after another had been corrupted by
it,—the wisdom of her decisions, as prelates and people
appealed to her from far and near;—her missionary
zeal and miraculous success,—which gradually led to the
recognition of the Church of Rome as that centre of
vitality,—I cannot see how this impugns her claim to be
such of divine right.

In point of fact, however, we need only the admissions
of Protestant controversialists themselves to show us,
that it is a deceit to pretend that, in those centuries to
which the English Church appeals as her standard, there
are no traces of the Roman supremacy; there may not
be sufficient irresistibly to confute us, if we set out with the
assumption that her claims are certainly false

;
but more

than sufficient to convince us, if we set out with the belief
that they may be true. It would be dwelling too long
on this subject to give many instances; but what I have
mentioned in a former letter, that the Catholic faith is
often simply designated the fides Romana

;

the well-

known address of St. Ignatius (almost in the apostolic
age) to “the Church which presides;” the saying of St.



Church ofEngland not Catholic. 6/

Irenaeus, “ that Church to which all others must resort,
propter potiorem principcilitatem that of St. Cyprian,

that “ error in faith, or misbelief, can have no access to
it;” that of St. Gregory Nazianzen, that “ ancient Rome
hath the right faith from of old, and always retains it, as
it becometh the city which is mistress of the whole world,
always to hold the full and entire faith the letter of St.
Jerome, requesting the pope to tell him with which of
three rival bishops in Syria he should communicate,
because, “If any one is united to the see of Peter,” he
says, “he is mine;” the almost axiomatic saying of
St. Ambrose, Ubi Petrus, ibi ecclesia

;

the confident

appeal of Optatus even to the Donatists, that they could
not deny that “whoever resisted the chair of Peter was
a schismatic;” all these and many other passages which
might be adduced, tend strongly to the confirmation of
the Roman claim. I know that it is possible to evade
the force of these passages taken singly; at least it has
been attempted, and in some instances with better suc-
cess than in others; but how it is proposed to overthrow
their full cumulative force, when connected and combined,
I know not

;
certainly it is impossible, upon any grounds

of reasoning which would be considered trustworthy and
safe in practical matters of common life. Thus too the
promise to St. Peter, “on this rock I will build My
Church,” must have had some distinct meaning at the
moment when it was spoken by our Lord

;
if indeed there

were nothing in the present state of the Christian Church,
which seemed to answer to it, then it would be natural
to conclude that meaning to have been something
mysterious and hidden

;
or to explain it, as some do, of

St. Peter not personally, but merely as a type of the
collective Apostolate; but, as there is a wonderful fact
which does entirely answer to it, to regard it as other
than a prophecy of that fact, is to deal with it in a way
quite contrary, surely, to any general principle of inter-
pretation recognized by any party.
Now that Rome makes the great claim in question,

with something at least to be said in its corroboration,
while the Greek Church claims nothing of the kind, I



68 Fourfold Difficulty of Anglicanism.

must think an important feature in the case; more
especially, as the test of Catholicity, which I quoted in

my last letter from St. Augustine, is applicable here also

;

inasmuch as in the regions of the East are many Churches
in the Roman obedience, but none in Western Europe
who own allegiance to the East. This is surely enough
to prevent your laying it down as self-evident, that when
that unhappy severance took place, a portion of the
Church’s Catholicity was torn away; it rests clearly
with yourselves to show why this particular secession
really divided the living Body of Christ, when you do
not pretend that the previous schisms of Arians, Nesto-

rians, or Donatists, had wrought any such fatal injury.
You must also consider (what no one pretends to

dispute) that the Greek and Roman Churches are and
have been ever since their separation, fully agreed on
almost all the points of doctrine and practice, in which
the English Church considers the Roman to have de-
parted from primitive teaching; and therefore we may
fairly conclude that they were agreed on the same points,
previous to their separation; it follows from this, that

the whole Church, then (according to the theory we are
considering) undeniably Catholic, because one and un-
divided, was nevertheless (according to the same theory)
uncatholic, inasmuch as it had departed from primitive
teaching; yet you admit that, so long as the Church
continued One and Catholic, so long she continued
infallible

;
how then came this infallible Church to de-

part from primitive teaching, that is, to fall into error ?
And further, as the Greek and Roman Churches both
taught error, and were therefore uncatholic, it follows
that from the close of the primitive period (whenever
that was) until the birth of the present English Church,
there was no Catholic Church whatever. Now it certainly
requires strong evidence to convince one of this

;
to make

one really believe that Catholicity, after living and
energizing in the Church for three, four, or five centuries,
fell, as it were, into a charmed slumber, and continued
thus spell-bound age after age, until, when ten or eleven
centuries had passed away, she was suddenly discovered



Church of England not Catholic. 69

and awakened by the touch of some master hand in this
happy island.
Having thus examined whether the test of Catholicity

to which you appeal is a fair one, it remains to consider
whether the Church of England can really abide it
successfully. You will not, I think, deny that to make
out her claim to Catholicity on this ground, you must
prove that in the main and on the whole she approximates
more nearly than the Church of Rome to identity of
doctrine and practice with the primitive Church. No
one will question the fairness of this statement; I have
even put it more favourably for the English Church than
strict justice requires; for considering her position

relatively to Rome, a very strong case of identity on her
own part, and discrepancy on that of her antagonist,
ought surely to be made out, in justification of her having
thrown off an authority acknowledged for centuries, and
severed herself from the rest of Christendom.

But do you really believe that, as a whole
,
her system

is more congenial than the Roman to that of early times ?
that the Saints, or the ordinary Christians, of the first,

second, third, or fourth centuries, if permitted to revisit

earth, would find themselves more at home with you
than with us? Take the respective systems of each
Church; their dogmatic formularies, articles of faith,
creeds, catechisms and homilies; their liturgies, hymns,
prayers, religious observances and ceremonial, keeping
of fast, and festival, all that pertains to outward
worship

;
take too their inward spirit, as exhibiting itself

in their spiritual books, their institutes, the life and
conversation of their children, with much else that might
be named; and then say which, both in outward
semblance and inward spirit, is most resembling the
Church of our fathers. I do not think any honest
enquirer, Catholic or Protestant, would hesitate for a
moment what answer to give. When, however, this
appeal to antiquity is made by Anglicans as aggressive
against Rome, you well know that it is never done by
thus comparing the, systems as a whole, but by bringing
forward this or that doctrine as taught by the Roman



jo Fourfold Difficulty of Anglicanism.

Church, and asserting (generally from the negative
evidence of silence), that it was not so taught in earlier
times. And even in these details they have not dealt
fairly by us, for they have generally contented them-
selves with pointing out what they conceive to be a
discrepancy between the Roman and primitive doctrines
on some particular subject, without examining whether
the English doctrine on the same subject be more or less
like the primitive than is the Roman.

Take, by way of example, the doctrine of the holy
Eucharist. Anglicans say, the adoration now paid to
the Host has no sufficient warrant in early times; that
the festival of Corpus Christi, for instance, was not
instituted, nor the doctrine of transubstantiation definitely

taught, until the 13th century; therefore, the Roman
Church and the Primitive are at variance on this point.
But does the teaching of the English Church on this
same point agree better with antiquity? In what
authorized document, in what Christian Father do we
find that, in kneeling at the communion, “ no adoration
is intended

;
” that it is “ contrary to the truth of Christ’s

natural body to be in two places at once
;
” that “ it is

in heaven, and not here,” as we are formally instructed
by her rubric

;
or that it is a mere figure, and not in

any literal sense the body and blood of Christ, as the
great mass of her children believe? How can this
teaching be reconciled with what St. Cyril * says,
“ Since He has Himself declared and said of the bread,
This is My body, who shall dare to doubt any longer?
And since He has affirmed and said, This is My blood,
who shall ever hesitate, saying that it is not His blood?
He once turned water into wine in Cana of Galilee, and
is it incredible that He should have turned wine into
blood ? What seems bread is not bread, though bread
by taste

;
and what seems wine is not wine, though the taste

will have it so, but the blood of Christ. This bread is
bread before the words of consecration (verba sacrament-
orum) but when the consecration has come, from bread
it becomes the body of Christ..... It was not the

* Catech. Lect. xxii. Oxford Translation.



Church ofEngland not Catholic. 71

body of Christ before the consecration, but I tell you
that, after the consecration, it is straightway the body
of Christ. He spake, and it was made; He commanded,
and it was created.. Wine and water are put into
the chalice, but it becomes blood by the consecration of
the heavenly word.” Or to turn to the ancient liturgies,
which are now so well known among the clergy of your
school, with which of them can the rubric we have
quoted or the common belief of English churchmen be
brought into harmony? If we look deeper into this subject,
and consider the doctrine of the Eucharistic Sacrifice,
that, as you know, is not only utterly disbelieved by
your people, but was formally and advisedly expunged
from your prayer-book, after having been for some time
retained, has been repudiated by a decree of one of your
ecclesiastical courts, and is condemned in one of your
articles, which declares that “the sacrifices of masses, in
the which it was commonly said that the priest did offer
Christ for the quick and the dead, to have remission of
pain or guilt, were blasphemous fables, and dangerous
deceits : ” yet in the ancient liturgies, to which I have
alluded, mention is made of the “ unbloody sacrifice.”

St. Cyril* says, “ When we offer to God our supplica-
tions for those who have fallen asleep, though they be
sinners, we offer up Christ sacrificed for our sins,
propitiating our merciful God both for them and for
ourselves;” “believing that it will be a very great
advantage for the souls for whom the supplication is put
up, while that holy and most awful sacrifice is presented.”
St. Augustine too

: f
“ It is not to be doubted that by the

prayers of holy Church, and the saving sacrifice and
alms which are expended for their souls, the dead are
aided, that the Lord should deal more mercifully with
them than their sins have deserved. For this tradition
ofthe Fathers the Universal Church observes, that for them
who have deceased in the communion of the body and
blood of Christ, when they are commemorated in their
proper place at this sacrifice, prayer be made, and it be

* Catech. Lect. xxiii.

t Horn, in Nov. Test. I22s Oxford Translation, p. 385.



ft Fourfold Difficulty ofAnglicanism.

announced that that sacrifice is offered for them also.”
So also St. Ambrose* bids us not doubt “ but that angels
are present round our altars when Christ is immolated.”
But I need not multiply instances

;
you know yourself

that you cannot turn to a page in the writings of the
Fathers, without finding much more to the same effect.
The question, then, seems to me to be this: “If the
present Roman Catholic Church differs from the early
Church, as Anglicans assert, by having defined the mode
of our Lord’s presence in the holy Eucharist, and by
paying to Him thus present more frequent and fervent
adoration, the English Church, as we have seen, differs
also, but in another way; by speaking doubtfully, at
least, concerning the real presence itself, where the early
Church spoke with unmistakable distinctness; by being
cold in her homage to that blessed mystery, where the
early Church was full of intense devotion; by treating
the altar in God’s house with no especial reverence, nay,
by partially, if not entirely suppressing its very name

—

whereas, in primitive times, it was the very central spot
of the Christian’s veneration: and I leave it to your own
honest judgment to determine which of these two
“differences” is the greater, and with which of the two
communions our fathers in the faith would feel most
sympathy. I cannot myself doubt but that St. Augustine,
for example, would seek one of those places of worship
where he would find the “tradition of the Fathers”
universally observed; where he would hear it given out,
day after day, almost in his own words, “Your prayers
are requested for the soul of

,
who died last night,

and for whom the holy sacrifice of the Mass will be
offered up to-morrow.”
Or let us take another example from the doctrine

which is so vividly present to all Catholic minds during
the month in which I write, the doctrine of Purgatory.
It is said that this doctrine was not known in its present
definite form to the earliest ages of the Church. Yet
every one who is at all competent to give an opinion on
the matter must acknowledge the literal truth of the

* Expos, in Luc. I. 742. 28. Ed. Venet. 1781.



Church of England not Catholic. 73

following testimony given by the Protestant Dean
Plumptre in his recent work on the spirits in prise n.
Prayers for the dead, he says, “ went up with no faltering
voice—in no indistinct accent from the Church of the first
ages. In every form, from the solemn liturgies which
embodied the belief of her profoundest thinkers and truest
worshippers to the simple words of hope and love which
were traced over the graves ofthe poor,* her voice went up
without a doubt or misgiving, in prayers for the souls of

the departed .... From East and West, with a consent
which is at least as strong as that in favour of infant
Baptism, they rose up in the assemblies of the faithful,
and from the hearts of mourners. They were associated
all but indissolubly with the rite which was thought of
as the highest act of worship and intercession, as a com-
memorative and eucharistic sacrifice, and whatever else
they implied, however undefined may have been the theory
which supervened or the emotions out of which they
rose, they at least bore their witness to the continuance

of sympathy, communion and interdependence between
the living and the dead, to the belief that the state of the
latter was one of discipline and progress. The prayers
of the faithful might hasten their progress upward, or
make them more capable of the Divine compassion, or
help them to a higher or earlier place in the first resurrec-
tion, or mitigate in some mysterious way the keenness
of their pain.” Now contrast with this the teaching and
practice of the Church of England during the whole
period of her existence. If she has not absolutely
forbidden prayers for the dead, she has at least never
inculcated them, but has allowed the millions of her
children who have passed out of this world to lose what,
according to the teaching of the early .Church, would
have been of incalculable benefit to them.

If we carried on our examination through all the^details
of doctrine in which the Church of England differs from

* I do not know why these words should be inserted, the rich and
poor were for the most part buried promiscuously, and the same
epitaphs are found upon the graves of both. See “ My Visit to the
Catacombs,” p. 113.



74 Fourfold Difficulty of Anglicanism.

the Church of Rome, the result would be the same
;
we

should find in the Roman system, at most, the expansion,
in the.Anglican the absolute contradiction, of the primitive

idea. I will confine myself to one more example which
shall be taken from the invocation of Saints and
veneration of relics. Compare the teaching of your
Church upon these subjects with the following narrative,
taken at random from many told by St. Augustine in one
of his most celebrated works :* “ There was a certain old
man in this our town of Hippo, called Florentius, a
religious man and poor, maintaining himself as a tailor.
He lost his garment, and had not wherewithal to buy
himself another; wherefore he prayed with a loud voice
to the twenty martyrs (whose memory is much honoured
among us) that he might be clothed. Some mocking
youths, who happened to be present, laughed at him.

As he walked on in silence, he saw a great fish
cast on the shore, which he took and sold for 300 pieces
of money to a certain cook named Catosus, a good
Christian, telling him what had happened. The said
cook, cutting up the fish, found inside it a gold ring, and
straightway, melted with compassion and struck with awe,
he restored it to the man, saying: ‘ See how the twenty
martyrs have clothed you.’ ” He gives also many instances
of miracles wrought at the intercession or by the relics of
St. Stephen

;
one of which was the conversion of a man

of rank named Martial, whose daughter and son-in-law
were Christians, but who was himself hostile to the faith.
After many vain attempts to convince him, once, when
he was sick, his son-in-law repaired to the shrine of St.
Stephen, and there, after having prayed for his conversion
with great fervour, took one of the flowers from the altar,
and laid it on his pillow while he slept. Before dawn, he
suddenly awoke and called for baptism. These are only
specimens from a great number ofsimilar narratives, which
he gives at length

;
but I think they are enough to show

us where the sympathies of that ancient Father would find
a home on earth : not, surely, with those who, while they
read with interest of the “ glorious cloud of witnesses”

* De civ. Dei, lib. xxii. c. 8. s. 9.



Church of England not Catholic. 75

belonging to the old covenant, sever themselves utterly

in spirit from the saints, martyrs, and confessors of the
new

;
thus, looking back on that long space of eighteen

centuries which lies between us and our Lord’s Ascension
as one unpeopled waste; but rather with those who may
be seen from time to time lying prostrate before the altars
while the choir, in plaintive litanies, call on our glorified
brethren to pray for us to their Lord and ours.

I forbear from mentioning further instances, though I
am persuaded that, the more you examine, the more you
will see cause to agree with the judgment once expressed
by a dignitary of your Church,* that “ primitive Christian-
ity was nothing more nor less than modern popery ;”
neither am I proposing what I have already adduced as
proofs of the doctrines of the Roman Church, for this is
not my present object, but only to show that, if the
primitive type does not exist in the Roman Church,
neither does it exist in the English

;
and to leave it to you

to judge which of the two systems is most akin to it, and
whether the English Church can fairly make out her claim
to Catholicity on the ground you state. For myself, I can
only say, that even my partial acquaintance with the
writings of the Fathers, long before I was a Catholic, had
brought before me many startling passages which I found
hard to reconcile with English teaching, and had produced
in my mind a general impression of strangeness and
incongruity, and a painful feeling that I was not in entire
sympathy with the ancient days; whereas, now, the
acceptance of Roman doctrine has given a meaning and
consistency to what were before floating incoherences, or
even positive perplexities, in my creed—which, neverthe
less, I had derived entirely from that source to which my
own communion directed me, the teaching of the Primitive
Church. It has also given me, as it were, the key
wherewith to open the secret treasures of Holy Scripture,
and it has made me feel, whether I read the Acts of the
Apostles or the writings of the Fathers, that I am really
in the same Church with them—the Church alike of all
ages, as of all places, One, indefectible, and Catholic.

* Archdeacon Middleton.



/6 Fourfold Difficulty ofAnglicanism.

LETTER X.

Apostolicity. Several serious flaws in the
evidence for the Apostolic succession of Anglican
Orders. Jurisdiction of Anglican clergy from the
Crown, not from the Church. Her doctrine not
derived by succession from the Apostles.

The fourth and last note of the true Church which we
have now to consider, Apostolicity, you fearlessly claim
for the Church of England

;
because, as you say, her

present bishops derive their orders, through an unbroken
succession, from St. Augustine and his brethren, who
were themselves of undoubted apostolical descent

;
and

you say, further, that this claim is tacitly acknowledged
even by Rome herself, inasmuch as she has never formally
declared the English orders invalid.

Now, this whole question is much too intricate for
either you or me to enter upon in anything like detail.
But, with respect to this last assertion, that Rome has
not pronounced upon the English orders, even if it be
true in the letter, the impression which it conveys is
certainly false

;
for has she not pronounced upon them

to all intents and purposes, when every clergyman of the
Church of England who embraces the Catholic faith, and
desires to become a Catholic priest, is required to be
ordained de novo and unconditionally, just in the same
way as any lay candidate? This is, at least, a practical
decision on the question

;
and that Rome has so decided

is a fact which, I think, ought to have some weight even
with you, when you remember that she has no interest
in denying or representing as doubtful the orders of those
communions which have separated from her, because,
according to her theory, such separation is in itself

enough to constitute schism; and, moreover, that she
does acknowledge the validity of orders in the Greek
Church, the Armenian, and other schismatical or heretical



Apostolicity• 17

bodies in the East, so as not to require re-ordination from

any of their priests who return to her obedience. This
ought in fairness to suggest to you the enquiry, whether
there be not some special flaw in the English succession,
discernible to her experienced eye, which renders it
nugatory.

To enquire minutely what this law is, would be a long
and dreary business. I shall content myself with jotting
down a few facts, some or all of which may perhaps be
new to you. First, it is extremely doubtful whether
William Barlow, who consecrated Parker the first Pro-
testant Archbishop of Canterbury, ever himself received
Episcopal consecration—I must even go further and
say, that it is almost certain that he did not. For:

—

j. There is no evidence that he ever did.
2. Catholic controversialists, writing within five years

of Parker's consecration, boldly asserted that he had not
received any lawful consecration. And those who
answered them did not attempt to prove that he had.

3. It is notorious that Barlow, like Cranmer himself,
held that Episcopal Consecration was not necessary, that
appointment by the king was amply sufficient to give
them full authority.

Secondly, in King Edward's time an entirely new
service was prescribed both for the ordering of priests
and deacons and for the consecration of bishops. In
the consecration of bishops the form of words which was
substituted for the ancient form, made no mention of the
office to which the candidate was promoted

;
indeed, it

was such as might have served with equal propriety for
the ordination of a deacon, or even the confirmation of
a layman. This defect was supplied, as you know, in a
new ritual introduced in the time of Charles II. But
this remedial measure came a hundred years too late.

Thirdly, during the whole of these hundred years
Episcopal Ordination was not accounted a necessary
condition for holding office in the Established Church.
It was by the Act of Uniformity passed in 1662, that
persons not episcopally ordained were for the first time
made incapable of holding benefices in the English



/8 Fourfold Difficulty ofAnglicanism.

Church, and so lax had been the practice in this matter
up to that time, that Clarendon, the historian, says that
as many as 2,000 ministers who had never received orders
but in France or Holland, yet possessed benefices with
cure of souls and other ecclesiastical promotions in
England, resigned their offices in one day, rather than
take orders by ordination from a bishop.

Fourthly, it is by no means certain that some of your
bishops and archbishops were ever baptized, and if they
were not, they were incapable of being made bishops.
One was an Anabaptist, another was only baptized by a
Presbyterian minister, and Anglican bishops and others
who have witnessed the way in which baptism is
administered by Presbyterian clergy, are so doubtful of
its validity that in dealing with converts to Anglicanism

they are in the habit of re-baptizing them conditionally.
This by no means exhausts the series of doubts and

difficulties which surround the question of Anglican
orders, but enough, surely, has been said to destroy that
unreasonable confidence which so many Anglican writers
assume with reference to their validity. Valid orders
are necessary for the validity of all the Sacraments
except baptism, and in such a momentous matter*
therefore, there should be no room for doubt. I know
some persons are content to shelter themselves behind
the defence of your orders published by Courayer; but
you ought to know that his book was authoritatively
condemned as soon as it appeared, and that its unhappy
author died a heretic even upon the cardinal doctrines
of the Trinity and the Incarnation.

I will not examine any details of the defence, because
it is only my purpose to show that the Apostolic descent of
your bishops is at least not a simple, clear, and incontro-
vertible fact; that there are grave difficulties connected

with it, which none but men of eminent ecclesiastical
learning are at all able to grapple with—perhaps even
they unable to overcome.

And if, instead of limiting the enquiry to the mere
validity of orders, we extend it to spiritual jurisdiction, it
becomes more complicated still; yet this is of course



Apostolicity. 79

included in the idea of Apostolicity ; otherwise there might

be two rival churches in the same place, both Apostolical,
because both having the succession—which you would
be the first to deny. What, then, is the condition of
the Church of England in this particular? Whence
St. Augustine, to whom she must look as the founder
of her hierarchy, derived his jurisdiction is universally

known. No one ever attempted to deny that he came
straight from Rome, sent as a missionary by St. Gregory
the Great'; that, so soon as he found that the people

were likely to embrace the faith, he went, according to
the commands which he had received from the holy
father, Gregory, to ^Etherius, archbishop of Arles, and
was by him consecrated bishop over the nation of the
Angles

;
that pope Gregory sent him the pall, and wrote

to him to the effect, that he should consecrate twelve
bishops, who should be subject to his rule; that he should
send a bishop to York, who, in case of that city and
neighbourhood receiving the faith, should ordain other
twelve bishops; and the letter continues,* “not only
those bishops whom yourself shall consecrate, or those
who shall be consecrated by the bishop of York, but also
all the priests in Britain you shall hold subject to you,
by the will of our God and Lord Jesus Christ,” &c.
Nothing can be more explicit than this; no other source
can be mentioned whence St. Augustine drew his spiritual
jurisdiction, but only the Apostolic See: surely, then, the

bishops of the present Church of England can scarcely
pretend to be the inheritors of that jurisdiction, when
they repudiate the authority of the See by which it was
originally conferred

;
for if, as the English Church teaches,

“the bishop of Rome neither hath, nor ought to have,
any jurisdiction in this realm of England,” then he had
no power to confer any on St. Augustine; and if that
original grant was nugatory, all that flows from it must
be nugatory also.

And, in fact when we read the history of the Reforma-
tion, we find that a principle was at that period
introduced into the English Church, by which her claim

* Bedae Hist. Eccl, I. c. 29,



80 Fourfold Difficulty of Anglicanism.

to obedience was rested on a basis totally different from
that of Apostolical descent. In 1535, Henry VIII. issued
out “letters of inhibition,” forbidding, by his own supreme
ecclesiastical authority, the archbishops and bishops to
exercise those things which belong to his own jurisdiction,
“and thus,” says an impartial historian of your Church,*
“all episcopal jurisdiction was laid asleep, and almost
struck dead by the Regale during the king’s pleasure.” The
same historian had told us, in the preceding page, how
the archbishop of Canterbury began to make his
metropolitical visitation, but did not “venture upon this
branch of jurisdiction without the king’s license, for now
the bishops could do little without an authority from the
crown.” In fact, the bishops had already taken out a
commission in the following terms: “Whereas all
authority ofjurisdiction, and indeed jurisdiction altogether
as well that which is called ecclesiastical, as that which
is secular, emanated at first from the royal power, as
from the supreme head,” &c. And in the beginning of
king Edward’s reign, new commissions of the same tenor
and form were again taken out by the same bishops;!
and the commission for Cranmer’s archbishopric is thus
expressed: “ We will that thou shouldest take our stead in
the manner and form below mentioned, and shouldest be
licensed to ordain within thy diocese of Canterbury.” Thus
the power of ordination, and all other branches of eccles-
iastical jurisdiction, were to be conferred by the king, and
to be executed “in his place and name and by his autho-
rity.” Later still, in Queen Elizabeth’s reign, “ the whole
compass of Church discipline was again transferred upon
the crown;”! and archbishop Parker did homage in
these words: “I, Matthew Parker, D.D., acknowledge
and confess to have and to hold the said archbishopric
of Canterbury, and the possessions of the same entirely,
as well the spiritualities as temporalities thereof, only of

your majesty and crown royal ; ” to which document is
added as an appendix: “We also, whose names be
under written, being bishops of the several bishoprics

* Collier iv. 297. 254, &c. f Collier, v. 179, &c.

4 X Ifc>id.
vi. 224. ix. 331,



Apostolicity. 8r

within your majesty’s realm, do testify, declare, and
acknowledge all and every part of the premises in like
manner as the Right Reverend Father in God, the
archbishop of Canterbury, has done.” In a word, the

Church of England, at the period of the Reformation,
distinctly recognized the civil sovereign, not merely as

the supreme governor, but also as the sole fountain of
ecclesiastical jurisdiction : so that, to use the words of
Lord Coke, “ all the Church’s laws are aptly and rightly
called the king’s ecclesiastical laws of England;” or, as
Lord Chief Justice Hale has it, “ her jurisdiction is from
the crown, and her laws are under its laws—lex sub
graviore lege.” Heylyn, in his history of the Reforma-
tion, says that the result of the legislation of this period

was “to make the bishops no other than the king’s
ministers only, his ecclesiastical sheriffs, as a man might
say, to execute his will and dispense his mandates.”
Now what was the admission of this principle, but a

distinct relinquishment of all claim to authority as derived

from the apostles, and an acceptance of it at the hands of
a power altogether different? a breaking off, in fact, of
the Church of England from that Universal Church of
which the successors of the apostles are the appointed
rulers, to make it a mere appendage to a particular state,
with the crown for its source of jurisdiction and centre of
unity; thus subordinating the ecclesiastical to the secular,

the spiritual to the natural, the divine to the human
;
and

in suitable accordance with this beginning the Church of
England has faithfully persevered ever since.

Subserviency to the State has been one of her most
prominent characteristics

;
it has been a living energetic

principle, growing and spreading itself abroad unchecked,
and producing all those moral consequences which one
would have naturally expected from it.

Well might the good Bishop Andrews pray to be kept
from “ making gods of kings 1”*

You will answer that, be this as it may, the Roman
Church is, after all, in this country an intruding Church

;

that the whole English Church accepted the Reformation

* Prec. Quot. p. 190. ed. 1827.

G



82 Fourfold Difficulty of Anglicanism,

under Queen Elizabeth, and continued conformable until
the famous bull was issued in 1570, when a certain party
detached themselves from it; that the National Church
continued its succession of bishops unbroken and in
undisputed possession of the ancient sees, while the
Roman party, in process of time, gathered round certain
foreign priests and bishops, sent from Rome with no
English sees, who are therefore in the position of intruders,
they and their faction having separated from the National
Church, not it from them.
Now, in the first place, it cannot be truly said that the

whole English Church did receive the Reformation, seeing
that, when the oath of supremacy was tendered in Queen
Elizabeth’s reign, every single bishop

,
excepting one only

,

refused to take it, and were all, in consequence, ejected from
their sees. Surely this protest of her episcopate, together

with their consequent deprivation, seems much like the
death-pang of the English Church

;
or rather like those

mysterious sounds, “ Let us depart,” which boded the
approaching downfall of the ancient temple in Jerusalem.
The convocation too had drawn up a Catholic profession
of faith, which was subscribed by both Universities, and,
together with a protest against the royal supremacy,
presented to the House of Lords

;
and though the inferior

clergy, for the most part, afterwards conformed, yet it
must be remembered that, by so doing, they broke their
vows of canonical obedience to their bishops. Moreover,
very many of them only conformed provisionally, as it
were, hoping that things would take some favourable
turn

;
and not a few went so far as to continue saying Mass

in private, while they used the communion service in
public. Perhaps, too, you are hardly aware how far the
compliance of the nation was the result of coercion and
violence; nor by how stringent a system of persecution,
the Catholic spirit was crushed down in this country for
many generations. As early as 1560 (that is, ten years
before the bull in question was issued), a penalty of £20
a month (equal to something like £250 in the present
day) was already exacted from all who were not present
at worship after the established form : and an act had



83Apostolicity.

been passed, that if any one should say or hear Mass, he
should, for the first offence, forfeit all his goods ; for the

second, suffer banishment; and for the third, death. In

1563, the emperor Ferdinand wrote letters to the Queen,
respecting the sufferings of the English Catholics ; and
indeed many families had been obliged to fly the kingdom

;

many noble persons had been thrown into prison, and
before the end of her reign, more than 120 priests, besides
laymen and women, had suffered martyrdom for their
faith. You can scarcely call such a forced compliance
as this was, an acceptance of the new religion.

But, even if it were otherwise, even if it were true that
the English Church had accepted the Reformation, yet
this could not in any way affect the Apostolicity of the
Roman Church in this country: for suppose a National
Church should become Arian, for instance, all its bishops
and clergy to a man heading the apostacy, and that the
See of Rome should send forth bishops and priests into
that land to reclaim its people to the ancient faith

;
find-

ing it convenient, moreover, to send them not as an
established hierarchy, but as a missionary Church “ in
partibus infidelium,” I am sure you would not yourself
doubt that such a Church would be the Apostolic Church
of the land, though without the ancient sees

;
and suppos-

ing further that the Pope had waited for a while unwilling
to interfere prematurely, and hoping that the National
Church would recant its errors, and return to the com-
munion of the faithful, surely this would in no way alter
the case. It is idle then to deny the Apostolicity of
the Roman Church in this kingdom, simply on the ground
of intrusion

,
when you must know that the question

between us lies very much deeper. It is mere unreality
to talk of the English and Roman Churches as rival
communions, with no important point at issue between
them, but that of rightful jurisdiction in this country;
for, if the Roman be a true Church anywhere, she is the
only true Church here; for such she is, according to her
own theory, and if that theory is false, she is a false
Church everywhere. The two Churches are antagonist
bodies, representing antagonist principles, and holding



84 Fourfold Difficulty of Anglicanism.

antagonist systems of faith
;
and, therefore, laying aside

all question of succession or jurisdiction, they cannot,
here or anywhere, be both Apostolical.

For you will readily admit that the apostolical succes-
sion is not only the channel of sacramental grace, but
also the guarantee for the faithful transmission of all
Christian truth, and that therefore the maintenance of
Apostolic doctrine is one inalienable mark of an Apos-
tolic Church; in fact, were it otherwise, the Jacobite,
Eutychian and other heretical communions are all
Apostolical Churches. Now in this particular, the case
of the Church of England stands thus : she cannot claim
Apostolicity on the ground of a regular transmission of
Apostolic doctrine from bishop to bishop within her fold

;

since, as she would herselfallow, her present bishops teach
a doctrine on many points diametrically opposed to that
which was taught by St. Augustine, from whom they
profess to derive their commission to teach, and by his
successors for many centuries : more especially as this
discrepancy is not the result of silent and gradual change,
but of a sudden convulsion, one set of bishops teaching
the doctrines they had received from their fathers, and
their immediate successors denouncing that system as
corrupt, and teaching another absolutely contradictory to
it. The Church of England, therefore, is either herself
not Apostolic, or she is the only Apostolic Church in the
world, since there is none other with which she agrees
in doctrine. In a word, even if her orders and spiritual
jurisdiction were admitted, her claim to Apostolicity
must still be judged by her possession or lack of the
other notes of the true Church ; if she be One, Holy,
and Catholic, and have besides an Episcopate deriving
orders and jurisdiction from the Apostles, then she must
be Apostolic also ; but if any one of those other notes is
lacking to her, the possession of such an Episcopate
cannot of itself make her Apostolic.

If, however, we would determine, by the simple light
of reason and common sense, which Church may rightly
claim the title of Apostolic, as the true representative of

the Church of the Apostles, we must recall to our minds



Apostolicity 85

an idea which is almost forgotten by English churchmen
in general, and which even those of your school have
scarcely considered with the attention it deserves : I mean
the idea of the Church as a kingdom. You know that many
who recognize the Church as the treasure-house of divine
truth for the instruction of the faithful, and of divine grace
for their justification, overlook its further claim to be at
the same time the treasure-house of divine power for their
rule and governance. Yet all acknowledge that our
Blessed Lord is not only the Prophet and Priest of His
people, but also their King; and you, at least, would not
shrink from confessing His Church to be His perfect
representative upon earth. And further, a moment's
reflection will remind us how uniformly it is spoken ofin
Scripture, not as a literature, or a philosophy, or simply a
religion, but as a kingdom . As such it appeared in the
vision of Nebuchodonoser, side by side with the great
visible kingdoms, which have successively held dominion
over the world ;—it was foretold of our Lord that “the
government should be upon His shoulder,” that He
should “ sit on the throne of His father David,” and that
“of His kingdom there should be no end;”—in the Psalms
and Prophets the Church is set forth as a kingdom into
which all nations should flow, and before which all the
powers of this world should bow down to the very dust

;

nay, the Jewish Church, in which the Christian Church
existed in embryo, was itself a kingdom

;
and when our

Lord sent His Apostles forth to preach the gospel, they
preached, saying, “ The kingdom of heaven is at hand;”
—as the “kingdom of heaven,” He Himself sets it forth
in all His parables;—and St. Paul constantly speaks of
it as the “kingdom of Christ,” “the kingdom of God's
dear Son;”—moreover we cannot but see, that in the
Apostolic times it was a compact and visible society,
governed by its own rulers and its own laws, gathering
into itself “the elect” from divers nations, and altogether
independent of any of the powers of this world.
Now if, as the Anglican theory would have it, the

Church in each nation has really no necessary depen-
dence on the Church in any other nation, but is a part



86 Fourfold Difficulty of Anglicanism.

and parcel of the constitution of the realm, and hangs
on the throne as its supreme authority, in what sense can
the Church be called a kingdom ? and, if it be not a
kingdom, why is it always so represented in Scripture ?
Of course, if nothing existed, answering to the “sure
word of prophecy,” if the Church were everywhere thus
merged in the State, one should conclude that the obvi-
ous meaning of Scripture in this matter is not the true
one

;
but you know well that there is a kingdom claiming

to be this “kingdom of heaven;” a kingdom whose
internal polity is the wonder of mankind; whose reproach
it is in the eyes of the world, that its rulers have humbled
to the dust the pride of princes; which has undergone
many vicissitudes, and risen again living and triumphant,
as “fated not to die;” nay, of which its very enemies
feel that it has within it the principle of enduring

existence. Hear the testimony rendered by one of them,*
and then judge whether this be not the kingdom, which,
as the prophets speak, shall “stand for ever.” “The
proudest royal houses are but of yesterday, when com-
pared with the line of the supreme Pontiffs;—the
Republic of Venice is modern when compared with the
Papacy ;—and the Republic of Venice is gone, and the
Papacy remains ;—the Papacy remains, not in decay,
not a mere antique, but full of life and youthful vigour.
The Catholic Church is still sending forth, to the farthest
ends of the world, missionaries as zealous as those who
landed in Kent with Augustine, and still confronting
hostile kings with the same spirit with which she con-
fronted Attila. She saw the commencement of all the
governments, and of all the ecclesiastical establishments
which exist in the world, and we feel no assurance that
she is not destined to see the end of them all. She was
great and respected before the Saxon set foot in Britain.

She may still exist in undiminished vigour, when
some traveller from New Zealand shall, in the midst of a
vast solitude, take his stand on a broken arch of London
Bridge, to sketch the ruins of St. Paul’s.”

* Macaulay’s Essays, vol. 3. p. 207.



Objections Considered. 87

LETTER XI.

Objections to Catholic doctrine irrelevant to the
argument of these letters one or two of them,
however, considered and answered. General
Summary and conclusion.

I have thus endeavoured, with all fairness and truth,
to test the English communion by those four notes of the
true Church, which are set before us in the Nicene
Creed

;
and I think I have proved that to neither of

them can she successfully lay claim ;—that so far from
being One, either with the rest of Christendom, or with
herself, her alienation from every other communion and
her internal discord are proverbial; that the spiritual life

in its higher forms, in which alone it deserves the name
of Sanctity, is unknown to her; that so far from being
Catholic, it is her very boast that she is national; and
that, instead of ruling with an Apostolically-derived
authority, she has professedly received her jurisdiction

from the English crown. I have also endeavoured to
produce some proofs that there is a Church, and one
only, to which all these notes apply :—whose Unity is
the marvel of the world

;
which teems in every age with

multitudes walking in the varied paths of Christian
perfection; which embraces in her wide bosom all
nations, peoples and languages, countless in numbers and
unrivalled in extent

;
and whose sway, transmitted from

hand to hand, is derived from no earthly potentate, but
from the Prince of the Apostles, who received it from
Jesus Christ Himself.

It only remains then to say a few words in answer to
some of the main objections which you urge against the
argument I have used, or rather against the conclusion
to which I would bring you.
You say, in the first place, that, whether or not the

four notes we have been considering really apply to
Rome, still there are difficulties in her doctrines which
you cannot get over, because some of them appear to



88 Fourfold Difficulty of Anglicanism.

you to be “ plainly unscriptural.” Now surely, such an
objection is inconsistent with the admission which you
made at the beginning of your belief in a visible Church,
the authorised exponent of Divine truth

;
you professed

to have no doubt as to the existence of such a Church,
and only to desire to find out whether it is the Church
of Rome or the Church of England. To attempt the
solution of this problem by an examination of their
respective systems of doctrine, is in fact to prejudge the

case, to suppose ourselves already in possession of that
very truth which it is their office to impart. Our duty in
the matter must be simply to examine the various
outward tokens or other credentials which they can
respectively allege, and when we have determined from
these, to the best of our judgment, which of the two is
the Church of God, to receive the instructions of that
Church with glad and unquestioning docility. The
legitimate office of private judgment is to choose our
teacher; when it pretends to decide on the matter
taught, it oversteps its province, and nothing but confusion
and uncertainty can be the result. For, after all, when
you call Roman doctrine unscriptural, you are necessarily
comparing it, not with scripture itself, but with your own
interpretation of scripture. The Church of Rome admits,
as fully as you can do, the inspiration of the holy volume,
but she claims to be its sole infallible interpreter; she
contends, moreover, that all or nearly all her doctrines
are to be found therein, if not on the surface, open to
any casual observer, yet latent and discoverable to the
eye of faith

;
if not in their minute details and present

systematized form, yet in their broad general principles :
she has set the seal of her authority on a large body of
interpretation, which she has gathered, from age to age,
from the meditations of her learned doctors and holy
contemplatives

;
and it is to this sanctioned interpretation

that you oppose your own.
Surely, if the outward testimony in favour of Rome be

strong, as you admit that it is, it is something of a risk to
withhold your obedience on a ground such as this

;
you

can hardly think it safe to trust your own mind as the rule



Objections Considered. 89

of Scriptural interpretation : more especially as you must

be conscious how greatly your views of Scripture have

changed and developed from time to time; how many

important doctrines you once overlooked, which now seem

to you so plainly written in its pages that you wonder
you

did not see them before; doctrines which you received

originally perhaps from some other source, but of which

you find more and more confirmation in your Bible every

time you open it : so that you can hardly be sure that, as

your inward light increases, you may not see that doctrines

which you cannot yet discover in God’s Word are

nevertheless there. Can then such a shifting rule as the

individual judgment of each man be a safe rule of faith ?

Will not one person be able to solve difficulties and

reconcile contradictions more fully than another ? and is

every one to stand on different ground, each following

his own view, according to their respective success in

making all things consistent? or would not this be at once

destructive of the very possibility of unity? You must

know too from history, and perhaps from experience, that

if you once admit private interpretation of Scripture,

controversies can have no end: that, even in the days of

the Apostles, the Word of God was combated out of the

Word of God; and that, ever since that time, in all

discussions conducted on this principle, there has been

“ but one learned (or unlearned) interpretation opposed

to another, man standing against man, and the Bible on
both sides.” Moreover, you yourself repudiate the

principle in arguing with Dissenters ; you do not hold them

justified in separating, or continuing separate, from the

Church of England because many of her doctrines appear

to them contrary to the plain word of Scripture. Yet,

wherein does their case differ from yours? Nay, is not

the case of both too parallel to that of the infidel, who says

that, whatever may be the weight of external evidence
adduced in favour of Christianity, its system of doctrine

appears to him so strange and unreasonable that he

cannot receive it. Truly I cannot but think that the

temper of mind which now leads men to withhold their
obedience from Rome, while acknowledging the strength



go Fourfold Difficulty of Anglicanism.

of the outward testimony by which her claims are
supported, until they are satisfied as to every particular
of her doctrine, would also, if Christianity were now
preached to them for the first time, hold them back from
Baptism, until they had investigated and distinctly con-
vinced themselves of the truth of each individual article
of the faith. In both these cases, it may be that they are
unwittingly excluding themselves for ever from the
knowledge which they desire, because the very obedience
which they thus withhold may have been appointed by
God as the one condition of its attainment.

Moreover, as Newman once wrote to a friend of mine
who was consulting him on an historical difficulty that was
perplexing myself : “ When we have lost our way we
mount up to some eminence to look about us,” but a man
who begins with considering objections, “ plunges into the
nearest thicket to find out his bearings. A man ought
to begin by taking large and broad views of the subject,
instead of entangling himself with particular questions.”

This is precisely what I have attempted to do for you
in this series of letters.

And yet once more; are you quite sure that you rightly
apprehend the doctrines to which you object? What
means have you taken to ascertain their real import, and
the relative positions they occupy in the Roman Creed ?
Have you studied Catholic catechisms and other theo-
logical works, listened to Catholic sermons, or consulted

Catholic priests? I think I may venture to assume that
you have done none of these things

;
but that your

impression of Roman Catholic doctrines has been taken
mainly from the representation given ofthem in the works
of Protestant controversialists. Many will not even listen
to what is said on this subject by their own nearest friends
and relations who have become Catholics. Yet what
would they think of the sincerity of a Socinian or other
dissenter, who, denouncing the doctrines of the Church
of England as unscriptural, should refuse to hear what any
Anglican clergyman has to say in explanation or defence
of them, and should persist in listening only to the
interpretation given of them by the minister of his own



Objections Considered. 9

1

persuasion ? The dread of personal influence which has,
in so many instances, raised a barrier between the
Catholic converts and their late most intimate friends,
seems to me altogether inexplicable on any acknowledged
principle of candour or justice.

But you say further, that Roman doctrine is not only
contradictory to Scripture, but also to natural conscience.

This would indeed be a fearful objection, if it were true :
for if there were upon earth a system, endued like the
Roman with wisdom, power, and fascination, which
friends and enemies alike acknowledge as superhuman,
and yet using that power and wisdom to inculcate a body
of doctrine contradictory to conscience—how could we
deem of such a system otherwise than as the organ of our
great enemy ? but you do not pretend that, in the main

,

the Roman system contradicts natural conscience,
because you admit the pre-eminent holiness of her saints,
the blessedness of her religious institutions, and even the
excellence of the moral training which she affords to all
her children: surely, then, you ought to feel that the
chances are, that, if any of her doctrines appear to you
thus repugnant to conscience, it is because you misunder-
stand them. “ Doth a fountain send forth at the same
place sweet water and bitter?”
You do not specify the doctrines to which you object;

I can only surmise that you allude to that which author-
ises the invocation of saints, because there is no other
about which I can even conceive your so feeling. Let
us, then, look at this doctrine fairly for a few moments,
and consider whether you are not deceiving yourself in
supposing that your objections to it spring from con-
science, and also whether the objections themselves are
really such as ought to outweigh the external evidence
which we have adduced in favour of the Roman Church.
You say that it offends your natural sense of right and
wrong to offer to your fellow-men the same homage which
you offer to Almighty God. In this all must agree

;
the

only question between us is, whether the homage which
Catholics pay to the saints is the same which they pay
to Almighty God

;
and this, being a question of fact, is



92 Fourfold Difficulty ofAnglicanism.

in no way within the cognizance of conscience. We
contend, moreover, that the fact is otherwise

;
that the

very matter of our prayers to them (being an entreaty
that they will pray to God for us) distinctly recognizes
their position as creatures like ourselves, absolutely de-

pendent on Almighty God, only higher in His favour,
because sinless and in His more immediate presence.

: But, you will say, to pray to saints at all, with whatever
intention, is in itself idolatrous, because, by so doing, we
ascribe to them omnipresence, which is an incommuni-
cable attribute of the Deity. Here, again, the question
becomes one simply of fact—namely, whether or not
there is reason to believe that God permits any of His
creatures to be so far partakers of His omnipresence as
to be ubiquitous to us, or at least, in some way or other,
capable of communicating with us, though not within the
sphere of our senses

;
and it is clear that the point must

be decided by some other faculty than conscience, since
conscience confessedly cannot pronounce any judgment
as to the existence or non-existence of a fact, but can
only direct us as to the moral duties or obligations which
arise out of that fact. Thus, if the fact that the saints
and angels have the power of hearing our prayers and
interceding for us with God, were in any way made cer-
tain to our minds, conscience might then determine
whether or not we ought to ask their intercession

;
and

I cannot but think that conscience would decide in favour
of such a practice, or at least would in no way condemn
it. We all eagerly ask the prayers of those of our
friends whom we love and revere, and as we know that
the prayers of “the just made perfect” must needs be
more acceptable than any that can be offered here, it
would surely be but a natural instinct to ask for such in
our behalf, if we were once assured that we are heard by
the saints above as readily as by our friends on earth.
To say that by so doing we trench on the office of the
One Intercessor is idle, for, whether we ask the interces-
sions of friends on earth or in heaven, the principle is
the same.

But let us look for a moment into the question of



Objections Considered. 93

fact, and consider whether or not the idea that the saints
may hear us is contrary to reason. In the first place, we
know by experience that beings, not absolutely omnipre-
sent, may yet be relatively so—as, for instance, you
yourself might be ubiquitous to an anthill ; and what
proportion the capacities of glorified spirits bear to those

we at present possess, we have no means of even forming
a conjecture ; and, in fact, to attempt to argue concerning

them from anything we know of our own, is as though
a caterpillar should apply the laws of its own being to
that of a butterfly. Because by the laws of nature certain
limits are imposed on our powers of perceiving, does it
follow that the perceptions of disembodied spirits are
subject to the same laws? What a cloud of mystery
enwraps even our present selves ! so that, when we specu-
late for a moment on those powers of perceiving
and communicating which we daily exercise, we are at
once compelled to confess ourselves “ most ignorant of
what we are most assured;” how utterly inscrutable then
to us, in this our embryo state, must be the whole subject
of spiritual existence; and how idle it is to argue upon
it, as if we understood its nature or its laws 1 The facul-
ties of the spirit on its liberation from this body of clay,
may be suddenly developed to an extent utterly beyond
our present powers of conceiving.

I read not long since in the life of the late eminent
oculist and Protestant philosopher, Dr. Hinton, what
harmonizes so well with what I am saying, that I
cannot refrain from quoting it: “We mistakenly think
that the difference between the heavenly state and ours
depends upon the loss and taking away of something
we now possess. I think the difference consists wholly
in an addition to our present faculties—I cannot think
(I speak not of my feelings but of the hardest and
severest thought)—that spirits in heaven are lost to
earthly things, or feel or think them less

;
rather it must

be that they then truly grasp them and learn to estimate
their worth.... It must be that the sympathy is intensified,
not diminished; made perfect, not chilled....We must
remember that we are under illusion, they are escaped



94 Fourfold Difficulty of Anglicanism.

from it; we are diseased, they have been restored to
health. Can this diminish love or dry up the fountains
of pity? Or if it did, how could this be heaven?”
Many another Protestant thinker has felt and said the

same thing; surely, then, it cannot be pretended that
there are any solid grounds in reason for considering it
impossible that the saints may hear our prayers?
And if we turn to Scripture, we find it distinctly men-

tioned that the angels are in some way present with us

;

we are told that they are “ ministering spirits, sent to
minister to such as shall be heirs of salvation ;” that
“ there is joy among the angels over one sinner that
repenteth ;” and practically most Protestants believe in
the ubiquity of evil spirits, who are after all but fallen
angels

;
and if angels are thus present with us, why not

saints ? In a parable of our Lord, spirits are represented

as conversing with each other even across the great gulf
which separates Abraham’s bosom from the place of
torment, and we are told in the last book in the Bible,*
that the souls of the martyrs have knowledge of what
passes upon earth.

I can readily understand, however, that these con-
siderations from reason, and even these indications from
Scripture, may not appear to you sufficient in themselves
to sanction the practice of invocation

;
that you may feel

the need of some authority explicitly to assure us that we
have a right, as Christians, to the prayers of the whole
family, in heaven, as well as on earth, before we venture
to claim such a privilege; that to address the saints
without such an authority may seem a rash and overbold
intrusion into the secrets of the world unseen; and I
cannot but fancy it may be some feeling of this sort which
makes you say that invocation of saints is against your
conscience. But though it may be against your con-
science to practise it without authority, it does not follow

that it would be against your conscience to practise it
under authority

;
for instance, if Almighty God should

speak to you as He did to the friends of Job, commanding
you to ask. the prayers of His servants in your behalf, it

* Chap, vi. io.



Objections Considered. 95

would not then be against your conscience to do so ; and

just such an authority to her children is the Catholic

Church, nay, the self-same authority, for she is to them
the voice of God on earth. If, then, it be the want of
authority which makes you feel that the practice of in-
vocation would be sinful in your own case, that feeling
is no argument against the Catholic Church, because if
you were once (on other grounds) convinced of her
authority, it would pass away. That she sanctions what,
unsanctioned, would be wrong, simply because unsanc-
tioned, is no more than is true of Christianity itself. What
soul would dare, without authority, to place herself in

those dear and intimate relations with her God, to which
the religion of Jesus entitles her; through the blood of

Jesus we have access to the most holy place, where we
should otherwise be aliens and intruders.
You will say, perhaps, that, though an accurate state-

ment of the doctrine in question is harmless, and its
practice by people of education not idolatrous, yet that
its tendencies are mischievous, and that it is sure to be
misapprehended by the ignorant. But to this the answer
is obvious : every revealed doctrine may be said in like
manner to have dangerous tendencies, because, if it were
taken out of its proper place, magnified into undue pro-
portions, and made the arbitrary centre of a theological
system, it would necessarily result in evil; the very doc-
trine of the Unity of the Godhead, thus severed from the
rest of the Christian system, has had its development in
pure Theism

;
it is the Socinian objection to the doctrine

of the Trinity that it tends to Polytheism
;
in the minds of

some heretics the Divinity of our Lord has absorbed His
Humanity

;
by others the error has been reversed

;
it is

idle, then, to talk of dangerous tendencies in this or that
Catholic doctrine, until you have duly considered its
relations to every other part of the Catholic system. It
‘is. most true that the invocation of saints would be fraught
with dangerous tendencies, if it were transplanted into
Protestantism

;
with us it has its proper place, and finds

all the corrective which it needs in other doctrines and
practices no less stringently enforced. As to its being



g6 Fourfold Difficulty of Anglicanism.

rightly understood by the poor, I can only say that it is
most clearly stated in the Catechisms which they learn,
and in point of fact it would be a far less difficult task to
find five hundred English churchmen either grossly ignor-
ant or heretical on the subject of the Trinity, than to find
one Catholic whose devotion to the Blessed Virgin, or
any other of the saints, can really be called idolatrous.
You must allow me to say further, that it is manifest

to Catholics that one cause of the instinctive dread with
which Protestants seem to shrink from praying to the
saints is, that they have no idea of any higher worship
than prayer, to God Himself. Now, the supreme act of
adoration with which the Catholic Church approaches
Almighty God is the Christian sacrifice, in which she
offers up to Him the body and blood of His dear Son.
This, as the meanest Catholic knows, is the especial
honour which may not be given to another

;
he knows

as well as St. Augustine* himself, that though “he must
celebrate the memories of the saints with religious solem-
nity, both that he may be excited to follow their examples,
and also that he may become a partaker in their merits
and be benefited by their prayers, yet he may not build
an altar to any of them, but only to their God, though
still in their memory “neither may a priest be conse-
crated, nor sacrifices offered, to any but the Lord our God.”

But you sum up all your objections by saying, in con-
clusion, that even if you were convinced that the Roman
Communion is in every respect superior to the English,
you should still feel that you had no right to choose a
Church for yourself on the ground of such superiority

;

that your allegiance is due to the Church of your baptism

:

and that you cannot help giving great weight to the fact
that it is not by your own will, but by the Providence of
God that you are placed where you are

;
whereas, if you

change your position, it must be by a decided act of your
own, dictated by your own private judgment, and there-
fore involving a tremendous responsibility.

All these objections, my dear friend, are based on an

* Cont. Faust. Lib. xx. Tom. viii. p. 544. D. De Civ. Dei.
viii. 27. Tom. vii. p. 350. B.



Objections considered. 97

assumption of the very point in dispute, or rather on a

misconception of the scope of my whole argument. I am
not urging you to forsake one communion and select
another on the ground of its ideal superiority ; neither is

it for the sake of Unity, Sanctity, Catholicity, and
Apostolicity in themselves, that we have been examining
whether they belong to Rome or to England, but because
they are tokens of something beyond themselves. When-
ever you recite the Nicene Creed, you declare your belief
in One Church (not two), which Church you further
define as being Holy, Catholic and Apostolic; andtherer
fore what I have endeavoured to set before you is,—not
that these four qualities being in themselves beautiful, the

Body in which they exist must be more beautiful than
that to which they are lacking, but that as, according to
your own confession, they are the appointed notes of the
True Church, you are bound to acknowledge the Body
in which they are found to be the True Church

;
and as

Unity is one of those notes, you are bound to denounce
every other Body, whatever its pretensions may be, as no
Church at all. The question then is, not which is the best
Church, but which is the true Church

;
all our enquiries

must concentrate themselves on this one point ofauthority.
To talk of the Church of your baptism is simply to beg

the question: for what is the Church of your Baptism?
According to the teaching of the Universal Church ever
since the days of St. Cyprian, every person receiving

Baptism rightly, whether at the hand of priest or layman,
man or woman, Catholic or heretic, is baptised into the
Catholic Church

;
so that when any, who from ignorance

or perverseness have strayed from her pastures either by
schism or by any other sin, are by God’s grace reclaimed

;

she receives them, not as strangers come to her for the
first time from the land of the enemy, but as lost sheep
returning, to their own fold, as the son in the Gospel,
“ who was dead and is alive again, who was lost and
is found.” Surely, you do not yourself look on your
Baptism as something purely local and national

;
you do

not consider that one baptized by a Presbyterian or a
Wesleyan, would forsake “the Church of his Baptism”

H



98 Fourfold Difficulty of Anglicanism.

by becoming an Anglican ; the true Church, wherever
that be, and no other, must needs be to every Christian
the Church of his Baptism

;
she is his real mother, to whom

all his affections are due, though it may be that a stranger
stole him from her even in his cradle, and has brought him
up in ignorance of his royal descent and rightful heritage.
Labour then to discover the true Church, and in her you
will have discovered the Church of your Baptism.
When you say further, that you dare not leave your pre-

sent position because you are placed in it by Providence,
you are using an argument, which, I doubt not, keeps
back numbers from joining the Roman Church

;
numbers

too, I fear, who are not all like yourself still in serious
doubt, but of whom many are almost, if not altogether,
convinced of the validity of her claims : it is an argument
too which easily insinuates itself into the mind, because
the feeling in which it originates bears the semblance of
humility, resignation, and obedient waiting upon God

:

but when we come to examine it, as an argument, we
see at once that it is worth nothing. In the first place,
it proves too much ; if you would be wrong in joining
the Roman Church because you find yourself at present
out of it, a convert from any religious system to any
other must be wrong also : for there are none who may
not consider themselves to have been placed where they
happen to be by Providence. All the early converts to
Christianity itself belonged to some system or other—the
Jewish converts to one which they knew to be Divine.
And, in the second place, it begs the question

;
for if the

Church of Rome be the true Church (which is the very
point in dispute), it is absolutely impossible that it should

be the will of God that any should continue, knowingly,
in disobedience to her

:
just as though all men are not

made Christians in their infancy, yet you cannot doubt
that it is the will of God they should become so if they
have the opportunity* It is, of course, no argument
against the truth of the Church of Rome, that we were
not educated within her pale ; neither is it any excuse
for our refusing to acknowledge that truth, if it is by any
means brought home to our minds : and if we do ac-



Objections considered. 99

knowledge it, and yet say that we will remain external to
her, and do our duty where we are, surely we are
entangled in a subtle form of self-righteousness, going

about to “ establish our own righteousness,” instead of
submitting to the “ righteousness which is of God by
faith.” Thus we are still brought back to the single
question, into which everything in this matter resolves
itself: Which is the true Church?
The fact is, you wish to escape from the responsibility

of making a choice, but that cannot be
;
you can no more

put from you this responsibility, than you can cast off
your own identity

;
the choice you must make, and what-

ever it be, you must make it at your peril. You are
keenly alive to the risk on the side of submitting to the
Church of Rome, but is there not an equal risk in reject-
ing her? Nay, considering the magnitude of her claim
as compared with that of the Church of England, is not
this risk incalculably the greater? For it is foolish to
imagine that you do not yourself personally reject her,
by passively acquiescing in her rejection by your fore-
fathers. Now that the question has been by God’s
providence brought before your mind, if you refuse to
submit to her, you do reject her as distinctly, deliberate-
ly, and wilfully, as if you had led the revolt against her
three hundred years ago. Any how, whether you submit
or refuse submission, it is equally the act of your own
will, the result of your own private judgment. Before
you stand two rival claimants, each announcing herself
to be the Herald of the Most High

;
and it is binding

upon you, as you would save your soul, fairly to examine
their respective claims and to decide between them

;

and that, without any regard to the accidents of your
birth and education, or indeed to anything whatever
but simply the merits of the question itself ; and when
you have so decided, you are bound to act on your
decision without reserve or delay.
And now, my dear friend, I must conclude. Show

me any other more trustworthy tokens than those we
have been examining, whereby the true Church of God
may be known, and which belong to England rather



ioo Fourfold Difficulty of Anglicanism.

than to Rome; or else, consider these well, and follow
them faithfully wherever they may lead you. Shrink
not back because of any evil report which you may have
heard, and which the enemy of your soul will not be
slow in suggesting to you; say not with Nathanael, “ Can
there any good thing come out of Nazareth?” unless
like him, you are ready also to “ come and see.” If you
do this, then, like him, will you be rewarded—O how
abundantly! He came, and instantly recognized “the
Son of God, the King of Israel ;” and in like manner,
she, who now seems to you as that despised Nazareth,
will, it may be, when you have once entered within her
walls, shine forth as the city of the Apocalypse, of which
it is spoken, that “ the glory of God doth lighten it, and
the Lamb is the light thereof.”
You will not, I know, receive our testimony

;
I do not

ask that you should, excepting only as a corroboration
of the outward testimony of facts; I only desire to
balance our experience—an experience in my own case
of nearly half a century—against your suspicions. Yours
are impressions arising from vague hearsay

;
you know,

concerning the Church to which we have submitted
ourselves, that in this, country “ it is every where spoken
against ;” we know that we have found in her the hidden
treasure, the pearl of great price; that she hath given us
the bread of life and the oil of gladness; that she hath
poured into our souls that peace which passeth all
understanding; in a word, that we have found in her a
home, such as we never found elsewhere, a counsellor, a
friend, a guide, a mother; and it is because we so value
these blessings, that we are loud and earnest in our
entreaties that you may be made a partaker in them.
“ Forbid us not,” says St. Augustine,* “ forbid us not to
seek thee

;
this prohibition is agreeable to that perverse-

ness whereby we were separated, not to that charity
wherein we are still brethren

;
we seek our brother and

make intercession to God for him, not saying, ‘ Master,
speak to my brother that he divide his inheritance with
me/ but ‘ speak to him that he may share mine/”

* In Ps. xvlii. Enarr. ii. 6. Tom. iv. p. 121. C.



Sixpence each.

The Catholic’s Temperance Library. VoL I.
Stories for Christmas.
Gradus ad Fidem : or, the Logic of Faith.

By Rkne F. R. Conder, B.A.
The Catholic’s Library of Tales, Vols. I—III.
The Catholic’s Library of Poems. Vols. I. & II.
Jesuit Saints of 1888 .
Fr. Henry Garnet and the Gunpowder Plot.

By J. H. Pollen, S.J.
Prayer; Confession; Holy Communion. By

Mgr. de Segur. 6d. net.

The Pope and the Bible. By Rev. R. F. Clarke, S.J.
Revenge : a Tale. By F. B. Lord.
A Few Flowers from St. Francis’s Garden.

Fourpence each (cloth), in wrapper, Id.
A Simple Prayer Book. (160th thousand.)
Visits to Jesus in the Tabernacle.
A Little Book of Indulgenced Prayers.
Marfa Magnificata. By the Rev. R. F. Clarke, S.J.
The Holy Angels. By the same.
Requiescant in Pace. By the same.
The Great Truths. By the same.
The Sacred Passion. By the same.
Resurrexit. By the same.
The Sacred Heart of Jesus. By the same.
The Holy Infancy. By the same.
The Hidden Life. By the same.
St. Joseph. By the same.
Veni Sancte Spiritus. By the same.
Humility : a book for Lent. By the same.
The Children’s Ballad Rosary. By John

O’Hagan, M.A. [book for children.
Little Helpers of the Holy Souls: a November

Threepence each.
Father Cuthbert’s Curiosity Case. By the

Rev. Langton G. Vere.
How to Con verse with God. From the French

of Pkre Boutauld, S.J. (Paper cover, id.)
A Way of assisting at Holy Mass. By the Rev.

G. R. Kingdon. (Paper Jd.)
Scenes from the Life of St. Benedict. Drama-

tized by a Benedictine Nun.

Catholic Truth Society, 18 West Square, London, S.E.



Twopence each.
Eight Lectures on the Position of Catholics

in England. By Cardinal Newman.
One Penny each.

The Conversion of England. By the Bishop of
Salford.

The Blessed Sacrament the Centre of Im-
mutable Truth. By Cardinal Manning.

The Old Religion in England. By Rev. P. Lynch.
Before and after Gunpowder Plot. By E.

Healy Thompson.
What is the Bible ? By the Rev. W. H. Anderdon,
Confession to a Priest. By the same. [S.J.
The Church and the Bible.
Before and After the Reformation.
A Voice from the Dead; Being a letter to an

Anglican Friend, by the Count de Montalembert.
The Continuity of the English Church. By

Very Rev. Canon Croft.
The Popes and the English Church. By the

Rev. W. Waterworth.
Was Barlow a Bishop? By the late Sergeant Bellasis.
189: or, the Church of old England protests.

By the Rev. J. D. Breen, O.S.B.
The Faith of the Ancient English Church

concerning the Holy Eucharist. By the
Very Rev. Provost Northcote.

The Faith of the Ancient English Church
concerning the Blessed Virgin. By the same.

Henry VIII. and the English Monasteries.
By Cardinal Manning.

The Church of Old Wales. In six parts:

—

Part I.—The First Ages of Faith.
Part II.—The Age of Saints.

Extracts from the Writings of St. Irenseus on
the Church, the Primacy, and the Apos-
tolic Tradition. Edited by C. F. B. Allnatt.

Archiepiscopal Jurisdiction. By the Rev. John
Morris, S.J.

The Mass. By B. F. C. Costelloe, M.A,
The Church Catholic. By the same.
Church Defence—Three Series.
Questions and Answers.

The Catholic Truth Society, 18 West Square, London, S.E.

Printed at the Catholic Reformatory School, Market Weighton.