BX 5136 .R58 
 R±vlng-ton, Luke, 
 Dependence 
 
 1838-1899. 
 
INSECURITY 
 
 OK 
 
 THE ANGLICAN POSITION 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 in 2015 
 
 ht,tps://archive.org/details/dependenceorinseOOrivi 
 
DEPENDENCE ^XTOt 
 
 OR THE 
 
 INSECURITY OF THE ANGLICAN POSITION 
 
 BY THE 
 
 REV. luke'rivington:, m.a. 
 
 MAGDALEN COLLEGE, OXFORD 
 AL'THOR OF ' ALTHORITY ' AND ' DUST ' 
 
 LONDON 
 
 KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH, & CO., i TATERNOSTER SQUARE 
 
 1889 
 
{The ris'i!! 0/ translation and of reproduction are reserved) 
 
PREFACE 
 
 The immediate origin of the following pages will be 
 found in Chapters I. and IX., in which I have replied 
 to two attacks on my book, ' Authority.' To the other 
 numerous notices and reviews of that volume, I have 
 given no direct reply. The Catholic press gave it a warm 
 welcome, which only needs grateful acknowledgment. 
 The Anglican press has indulged in a great deal of vehe- 
 ment rejoinder, but without anything that I can call 
 solid argument. Mr. Gore's attack has been met by 
 Father Richardson's book, ' What are the Catholic 
 ' Claims ? ' — to which I would refer any reader who 
 wishes for a complete and concise reply to the arguments 
 usually advanced in favour of their position by those who 
 are called Ritualists. 
 
 The following pages deal with the historical argument, 
 which once seemed to me sound, but which I have here 
 endeavoured to show does not support the Anglican 
 position. 
 
 I wish to add to Chapter VII., on Henry VIII., that, 
 in speaking of that king as possessed of a strong will, 
 I must not be understood to speak of him as a strong 
 character. The very reverse seems to be the truth. But 
 
vi 
 
 Preface 
 
 when once his passions were enlisted in a cause, he could 
 be determined, even to madness, for the time being. 
 
 A book has recently appeared on 'The Petrine Claims,' 
 by Dr. Littledale, which contains, so far as I can see, 
 nothing new, but which seems to me to mark an epoch 
 in this controversy, and for this reason. The ' Society 
 'for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge,' — the most 
 representative society in the Church of England, with 
 the archbishops and bishops for its patrons — publishes 
 this work 'under the direction of its Tract Committee,' 
 and it is dedicated, with permission, to Bishop Stubbs. 
 And this, after a previous publication by the same writer 
 has been so thoroughly discredited. 
 
 This book opens with a statement which, with some, 
 will surely suggest a different line of thought from what 
 the writer intended. A building ' planned, in part at least, 
 ' by Pope Leo I. more than fourteen hundred years ago ' 
 (p. I ) must have more to say for itself than is to be found 
 in this book. In point of fact, the writer proceeds in 
 his second sentence to deliver himself of this shameful 
 misrepresentation. He says that ' whatever within the 
 ' sphere of faith and morals is found existing uncensured 
 ' in the Latin Obedience, must be regarded as having the 
 'sanction of infallibility at its back.' 
 
 By what logical process can the writer show that the 
 Vatican Decree involves the absurd position that the 
 attribute of Infallibility is not merely possessed by the 
 See of S. Peter, but that it is exercised in every nook and 
 corner of the world, on every sheet of paper that issues 
 from the press? What Catholic ever maintained such 
 an absurdity ? and what are we to think of a grave society 
 like the S. P. C. K. endorsing and disseminating such a 
 
Preface 
 
 vii 
 
 misrepresentation, after all that has been written on the 
 subject ? 
 
 On the second page, the writer has the hardihood 
 to quote Innocent III., when speaking of 'the Roman 
 ' Church ' — i.e. the local Roman Church — as though he 
 were using the term in its modern sense, as used by the 
 Writer of the book. 
 
 The last chapter, on the Collapse of the Papal Suc- 
 cession, besides its misrepresentation of canon law, 
 contains a redudio ad absurdum of the Anglican position. 
 It is amazing that a responsible society should set its 
 seal to such misapplied ingenuity. 
 
 One may well ask, Is it on this line of argument that 
 the Church of England places its ' dependence ' ? 
 
 I conclude with the remark that the following pages 
 are the fruit of a conviction, deep beyond words, that no 
 blessing that a human soul can receive is so great as 
 that of entrance into communion with the See of S. Peter, 
 except, and by reason, of the graces to be found when 
 within. The writer would take for his own the words of 
 those who had discovered plenty outside the gates of 
 Samaria, ' We do not well : this day is a day of good 
 'tidings, and we hold our peace.' 'I believed, and 
 'therefore have I spoken.' 
 
 S. Charles College, Notting Hill, London, W. 
 May 1S89 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 THE COUNCIL OF JERUSALEM. 
 
 Favourite subject with Anglicans, 7 — The Author of the ' Roman 
 ' Question ' selects a single sentence and ignores the rest of my 
 treatment of S. Chrysostom's evidence, 9-1 1 — He contends also 
 that S. James must be meant when S. Chrysostom speaks of 
 someone being 'entrusted with the chief rule,' 11-14— But the 
 position occupied by S. Peter generally, and in particular at the 
 Council of Jerusalem, is, according to S. Chrysostom, one of 
 authority, 14-27— Mistake of Symeon for Simon Peter, 27-2S 
 — Summary of errors contained in the pamphlet, 29. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 ' PETER HATH SPOKEN BY LEO.' 
 
 Importance of the Council of Chalcedon, 35-37— Preliminary 
 history— S. Leo defines the Faith, 39 — The Robber Synod— 
 S. Leo anxious for a Council— teaches the Patriarch of Con- 
 stantinople and the Emperor— deprecates immediate Council, 
 but consents, 40— The Synod assembles — Bows to Leo at once, 
 41 — Why S. Cyril mentioned, 42 — Leo's Tome not reviewed 
 for revision, 42-44 — The Council's sentence on Dioscorus owns 
 the authority of the Holy See, 45 -S. Cyril's name joined with 
 S. Leo's, why, 47— Emperor puts S. Leo's Tome side by side 
 with the Nicene Faith, 48— Relationship of Rome to S. Peter, 
 49- 
 
* 
 
 X Contents 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE CANON INVALIDATED. 
 
 Constantinople's ambition, 51, 52 — The 2Sth Canon of Cbalcedon, 
 its expression, 54, 55 — The Papal confirmation deemed neces- 
 sary, 56, 57 — Leo acted on the ground of his relationship to 
 S. Peter, 57-60 — Canon Bright's account unsupported, 61 —Mr. 
 Gore's citation of the Council in TruUo, 62-64. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 LIBERIUS, THE CONFESSOR. 
 
 Anglican writers on Liberius, 65, 66 — Canon Bright's admission, 
 67 — Contemporary opinion on Liberius, 68 — Sozomen's account 
 untrustworthy, 69 —Passage from S. Jerome needs authentica- 
 tion, 70 — Passage from S. Athanasius fairly doubted, 71 — 
 Liberius a great Confessor, 72 — Difficulties of supposing any 
 lapse, 73-76. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 HONORIUS DECLINING TO DEFINE. 
 
 Our Lord's human will, 77 — Honorius entrapped by Sergius — 
 Monothelism combated by successive Popes, 80 — Sixth Council 
 condemned Honorius for lack of vigilance, 81, 82 — The in- 
 errancy of the Holy See in ex faMe</ra judgments assumed, 86. 
 
 CHAPTER VL 
 
 ALEXANDER VI., THE POLITICAL ECCLESIASTIC. 
 
 Use made of Alexander's life, 88, 89 — The Homilies of the Church 
 of England, 91 — Burchard's account of Alexander, 93-96 — 
 Guicciardini's account of Alexander, 96 — Lucretia Borgia, 
 98-100 — State of things at Alexander's election, 101-103 — 
 Alexander's daily life as Pope, 103, 104 — No adequate proof of 
 his election having been simoniacal, 104-108 — The Popes of the 
 1 6th century, their greatness, no — Alexander's relation to the 
 P.apacy not that of Barlow's to the Anglican succession, 113. 
 
Contents 
 
 xi 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 HENRY VIII., THE ECCLF.SI.'^STICAL P0LITICI.4N. 
 
 The Royal supremacy a (for/r/w^, 115-I17 — Involved a fundamental 
 change, 118 — Which broke the continuity between the pre- 
 Reformationand the post-Reformation Establishment, 119-124 — 
 The new status not desired by the clergy, 1 26 -1 30 — The king's 
 divorce, the real cause shown by contemporary evidence, 
 130-134 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 ELIZABETH AND HER CLERGY. 
 
 The old religion abolished by force, 13S-139 — Ecclesiastical juris- 
 diction taken over by the queen, 141 — No diocesan bishops 
 consented to Archbishop Parker's election, 143 — The case of 
 Coverdale, 145 — The Province in prison, 147 — Goldwell, Bishop 
 of S. Asaph, 148— The Queen's exercise of jurisdiction, 149 — 
 The fruit of this later on in the case of Archbishop Abbott, 151 
 — Its immediate results, 152 -156. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 THE DECLINE OF DOGMA. 
 
 Changed attitude of English Churchmen towards Rome, 157 — De- 
 clension in zeal for Dogma, 158-161 — Misrepresentations of the 
 ' Church Quarterly Review,' 161-164 —Reviewer's accusation of 
 ignorance unfounded, ib^—VLi'i ig7ioratio elenchi, i65 — His in- 
 stances of change of teaching: (i) M. Nicolas speaks of no laxity 
 in the teaching body, 168 — (2) Father Clarke's articles reveal 
 no rift, but the contrary, 170— (3) M. Le Noir's article most de- 
 cided on the subject of hell, 173— In the Catholic Church, belief 
 in hell ( I ) rests on authority, 1 78 — (2) is balanced by authoritative 
 teaching on Purgatory, and Masses for the dead, 179. 
 
XII 
 
 Contents 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 PUSEY AND LAUD. 
 
 Extraordinary dependence placed on Dr. Pusey, 182 — Accounted 
 for by (l) his piety, 183 — (2) his chivalry, 184— (3) his industry, 
 185 — His mistakes as to the African Church, Mr. Allies' book, 
 and Archbishop Chichele, 185- 189— In controversy with Rome, 
 he loses his accuracy, igi — His erroneous theory of the Church's 
 note of unity, 192 — The Vatican decree not affected by his 
 instances of Papal contradictions, 200 — His errors as to the 
 Immaculate Conception of our Lady, 204 — Especially as to 
 Turrecremata, 212 — Archbishop Laud's misrepresentation of 
 S. Augustine, 214. 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 THE LINCOLN PROSECUTION, OR METROPOLITICAL 
 JURISDICTION. 
 
 Circumstances under which the Bishop of Lincoln is prosecuted, 218 
 — Must be some authority superior to the Archbishop, 220 — 
 Rome ^vas owned as superior, 221 — Now it is said that a Province 
 can be autonomous, and Africa is quoted as an instance, 224 — 
 The case of Africa considered, in the days of S. Augustine, 225 
 — The present position of the Anglican Establishment, 233 — 
 Toleration of contradictory teaching incompatible with the idea 
 of a Church, 236. 
 
 Appendix on S. Jerome's Letter to Evagkius . . 239 
 
INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. 
 
 A VERY influential writer in the Church of England has 
 lately challenged my accuracy with respect to the 
 translation in my book on ' Authority ' of a passage 
 in S. Chrysostom's writings. His pamphlet is entitled 
 ' A Reason for Distrusting the Rev. Luke Rivington's 
 'Appeal to the Fathers.' I have devoted a chapter 
 (Chap. I.) to the consideration of this pamphlet, and 
 have, I hope, shown sufficient cause for rebutting the 
 accusation. But there is another point raised in this 
 writer's pamphlet, to which I have only partially replied 
 in that chapter. And it is on this point that I wish to 
 make some introductory remarks. 
 
 The writer considers that from that single sentence 
 in my book he can discern the ' workings of my mind 
 ' at a great crisis.' Were it not that the writer's name is 
 such an open secret, and that his position of esteem in 
 the Church of England gives a peculiar weight to his 
 words, I should not have thought it worth while taking 
 further notice of these words. 
 
 As it is, I feel constrained to protest, even more than 
 I have done below (Chap. I.) that the single incident to 
 which he refers as giving the clue to the workings of my 
 mind at a great crisis, was of infinitely less importance 
 than two other points. 
 
 One of these, as I have said elsewhere, was the History 
 of the Council of Chalcedon. None of my reviewers have 
 
 B 
 
2 
 
 Introductory Remarks 
 
 attempted to answer my argument on that head. One of 
 them, in an article which I forbear to characterise, except 
 to say that I have never seen a more thoroughly unre- 
 strained mode of writing (I mean the ' Literary Church- 
 ' man ') even deliberately asserts that I did not write that 
 portion of my book myself How a paper, whose title con- 
 tains in it the word ' Church,' can deliberately utter such 
 a falsehood, I am at a loss to understand. I wrote every 
 word of it myself in complete solitude. It contained the 
 reason which finally weighed with me, so far as my 
 intellectual conversion was concerned. I do not see how 
 any member of the English Church can reconcile his 
 position with the history of the Council of Chalcedon. 
 Let him read, for instance. Cardinal Newman's brilliant 
 summary of that Council, or Mr. Allies' account of S. 
 Leo in his ' Throne of the Fisherman,' or Bishop Hefele's 
 account of the Council in his ' History of Church Councils,' 
 not to mention any longer accounts, and then let him 
 say to himself, ' Is the attitude of the Church of England 
 ' towards the See of Rome in any way capable of being 
 ' reconciled with the principles of Church life which we 
 ' find in vogue at the Council of Chalcedon?' But I 
 have added a few thoughts on this subject in a separate 
 chapter (Chap. II.), and therefore I proceed to a second 
 point, in reference to what the author of the ' Roman 
 ' Question ' calls the workings of my mind at a great crisis. 
 
 I have said that my idtitnate convictions were not 
 in the least due to the incident concerning the Oxford 
 translation of S. Chrysostom, but to the further investi- 
 gations which I zvas led to make. 
 
 But this is not all, and I am most anxious to take the 
 opportunity of saying something further in consequence 
 of what the author of the ' Roman Question ' has said. 
 
 The passage which he has selected for his quotation 
 from my book contains another reason for my action. 
 
Introductory Remarks 3 
 
 I did not give this in full, as indeed I should have 
 preferred giving no hint at all as to such matters, only 
 circumstances compelled me. I have said that God gave 
 me light, and that that light came through the study of 
 a particular passage of the Church's life — not, I hope, to 
 the neglect of other passages, but with special emphasis 
 on that. This is strictly true. But if this had been all, 
 doubtless I should not have acted on that light — I 
 should have dallied with my conviction, waited, and 
 tampered with this grace ; pretended that one needs 
 many more years to settle the simple question as to 
 which is God's Church ; thought it humility to doubt 
 my capacity to settle such a question at all ; listened to 
 the voice of affection, pleading for the enjoyment of 
 all the ties, and all the esteem, and the many pleasant 
 features of life, which were then mine ; and, above all, 
 perhaps I should have fallen back on the idea that because 
 I found myself where I was in God's Providence, I ought 
 to remain there — reasons, plausible reasons, one and all 
 of which, however, every Apostle had to set at nought, 
 and without the disregard of which, no heathen could 
 ever enter the Christian fold. Why did I not listen to 
 these plausible suggestions? I expressly excluded the 
 following incident from my book, but the author of the 
 ' Roman Question' by pretending that the passing incident 
 to which he refers explains ' the working of my mind at 
 ' a great crisis,' compels me to speak. 
 
 I had, then, been coming to a gradual conclusion on 
 another matter. Years ago I began to ask our Lady's 
 intercession, and shortly after that I went up to see 
 Cardinal Newman, to be received. But I was diverted 
 from my purpose. That grace was lost to me through 
 giving in to the temptation to wait. I was dissuaded 
 from all invocation of the Saints by three most trusted 
 divines in the Church of England. In 1887-8, however, 
 
 * B 2 
 
4 Introductory Remarks 
 
 I read again on the subject, and in the end of Januarj- 
 1 888 I came to the conclusion that in repudiating the 
 Invocation of the Saints we had denied an article of the 
 Faith. East and West — I mean the schismatic East, 
 as well as the Church in communion with Rome — were 
 at one on this point. Whether M. Podedonostzeff, who 
 replied to the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Lambeth 
 Conference, would consider it right to hold communion 
 with the Anglican Establishment in spite of this, I do not 
 know. "\Mien things are managed by a Procurator, there 
 is no knowing what the schismatic East might say or do. 
 But the Patriarch of Constantinople, in correspondence 
 with Archbishop Tait, pointed out the passage in the 
 Thirt)--nine Articles on the Invocation of Saints as ' sa- 
 ' vouring of noveltj-.' Certain it is that, in all her Liturgies 
 and authorised prayers, the Eastern schism holds fast to 
 the doctrine of the Invocation of Saints. And yet I had 
 been silent to the Saints for years. I had not spoken to 
 our Lady for at least seventeen years. I held that no 
 honest member of the Anglican Church could invoke 
 her aid. I know that Dr. Pusey said that ' we ' should 
 not object to the ' Ave INIaria ' or ' Ora pro nobis ' in 
 itself. But, as a matter of fact, he discouraged its use, 
 and I did the same. It became clear to me, however, 
 that this was wrong, and on the Feast of her Purification 
 I knelt down and entreated the aid of her intercession in 
 this matter of allegiance to the Holy See. I entreated 
 her to win for me, by her glorious intercession, light and 
 courage, for I knew that if I read things one way I should 
 need courage to act on my con^-ictions. I rose from my 
 knees with both. The light which our Lord then gave 
 me was too clear to make extraordinar)' courage needful, 
 or, rather, it was that hght which, coming straight from 
 Him, is accompanied by the warmth of divine love, and 
 to love, nothing is difficult. 
 
Introductory Remarks 
 
 5 
 
 Now I mention this because an important principle 
 is at stake in discussing the question of the reasonableness 
 of submission to the See of S. Peter. It is, I hold, 
 capable of rigorous proof that such submission is in- 
 finitely more reasonable than attachment to the Church 
 of England. But the act of submission belongs to the 
 supernatural, and anyone who discusses the question, 
 as though it could be settled by human reason, is deluding 
 his fellow-creatures. Reason is equal to seeing that the 
 religious body in communion with the See of S. Peter 
 alone has the notes of a Church. But something more 
 is required than the perception of this. Entrance into 
 the Church is, as the Holy Father said to me last Easter 
 Day, ' a special grace.' I added within myself, ' Yes, 
 ' and it is not of him that runneth, but of God that showeth 
 'mercy' (Rom. ix. i6). I say this because often the last 
 temptation with which the Evil One plies the soul is the 
 suggestion, ' You are not worthy.' No, indeed, and God 
 often calls those who seem the least worthy of His grace. 
 It is the mystery of predestination. 
 
 It is, therefore, in vain that Anglicans endeavour to 
 fathom the mystery of a call into the Catholic Church. 
 God calls 'things that are not ' [i.e. that are thought to be 
 nothing] 'to bring to nought things that are.' He calls a 
 Matthew or a Magdalen, and renders us no account of 
 the reason of His call. He calls them often to leave all 
 at once — some, indeed, to go bury their father — but others 
 to let the dead bury their dead, and to follow the call. 
 We who are called can least of all explain why we are. 
 We can see that certain arguments, or facts, or reasons 
 on which we once rested, have no value. But why we 
 see this so plainly we cannot say. We have to give a 
 reason for the hope that is in us, and we can give it. 
 But something we cannot explain. We only know ' the 
 ' Spirit blowcth where it listeth.' We are bound to explain 
 
6 
 
 Introductory Remarks 
 
 to others that their arguments do not hold, that their 
 defences are insufficient, and that they ought, in good 
 reason, to follow in the same track ; but that is all we can 
 do, save to pray ; and the Lord, who opened the heart of 
 Lydia that she attended to the things spoken by Paul, 
 may work the same in the hearts of those whom we 
 address. ' Therefore judge nothing before the time ' 
 (i Cor. iv. 5). 
 
Tlie Coiuicil of Jerusalem 
 
 7 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE COUNCIL OF JERUSALEM. 
 
 Kal opa ovep ^XP^" vo/xodiTridrivat on ovSfv (pvAamiv Thv vSfJuov, & 
 ndrpos fiari-yaye' t)> Si ri/jL(Tepov, Kal irdXai irapaSex^^" 'TOvto 
 oItos (pri<ri. And notice that what had to be enacted as law, 
 viz. that we have not to keep the law, Peter introduced. But 
 the domestic practice, and what had been handed down of old, 
 this he (James) speaks of. — S. Chrysostom. 
 
 There are few subjects to which an English High 
 Churchman turns more readily than to the Council of 
 Jerusalem. Travelling some years ago to the South of 
 India for two days and two nights on a stretch, I had 
 for my companion, during part of my journey, a native 
 priest. His white cassock, red cincture, red biretta, and 
 dark face, for he belonged to the South, formed a perfect 
 picture. Add to that, the exquisite politeness of the 
 Hindu, with that dash of energy which comes from ' the 
 ' spiritual washing,' the Tamil name for Baptism. It was 
 not long before we were in conversation on religious 
 matters. I remember registering an inward vow that I 
 would do nothing to disturb that good man's faith. I 
 thought that in controversy I was sure of having the 
 best of it. But this good priest's zeal could not resist 
 endeavouring to show me that if I held as much truth 
 as I did, I ought to hold more, and to hold it all on a 
 different basis. Our conversation soon turned on the 
 Council of Jerusalem. This good man, as night came on. 
 
8 
 
 TJie Council of Jerusalem 
 
 lit his lamp, and produced his Bible, and we compared 
 notes, he with his Vulgate translation of S. James's word, 
 judico, ' I judge ' — I, with my English translation, 
 'Wherefore my sentence is.' It seemed to him perfectly 
 astonishing, as a mere matter of common sense, that I 
 did not see that the prominent position in the Council was 
 held by S. Peter, and that the expression S. James used 
 was what any member of the Council might use, as they 
 severally gave their judgment on the subject in hand. 
 He closed the Sacred Volume, saying, with the most 
 perfect courtesy, something to the effect that it is an easy 
 matter to twist the Scripture. 
 
 There are texts which haunt some minds in their 
 spiritual life. And there are texts, and sometimes one 
 by itself, that return and greet you, in various ways, at the 
 various turns of your life. This text has just been dealt 
 with in the pamphlet to which I have referred, called 
 'A Reason for Distrusting the Rev. Luke Rivington's 
 ' Appeal to the Fathers.' That pamphlet selects a certain 
 passage from my book on ' Authority,' in which the 
 passage of Holy Scripture concerning the Council of 
 Jerusalem is dealt with, and its contention is that my 
 words in reference to it, viz., this passage, show the 
 ' workings ' of my mind ' at a great crisis,' and that at 
 that crisis I made a great mistake about S. Chr}-sostom's 
 belief as to the supremacy of S. Peter, especially as to 
 his position at the Council of Jerusalem in relation to 
 S. James, 
 
 In this chapter, therefore, I propose to deal with this 
 said pamphlet by the author of the ' Roman Question ' ; 
 and, in the course of my remarks on it, with the Council 
 of Jerusalem itself. 
 
 "W ith regard to the wTiter of the pamphlet I hope to 
 show (i), that he has misrepresented me, and (2), that he 
 has misinterpreted S. Chr)-sostom. 
 
TJie Council of Jerusalem 
 
 9 
 
 A Personal Matter. 
 
 I St. Afy critic has misrepresented me. — He has quoted 
 a page of my book which is introduced to explain one, 
 and only one thing, as though it explained something 
 else. 
 
 I have there stated that I was started on a certain 
 field of inquiry by an incident which occurred in my 
 missionary life in India. I had quoted a passage from 
 the translation of S. Chrysostom in the Pusey Library 
 of the Fathers against a Catholic bishop, and I discovered 
 afterwards that a certain assumption was made in that 
 translation through the insertion of a word not in the 
 original text. The assumption was that a certain pro- 
 noun necessarily referred to a particular person ; for the 
 person's name was substituted for the said pronoun with- 
 out note or comment. This was the gist of my discovery. 
 A sentence also was transposed. My plain contradiction 
 to the said Bishop's contention was based on the substitu- 
 tion of the name for the pronoun, and this substitution 
 is (no doubt unintentionally) rendered plausible by the 
 transposition of the sentence. 
 
 But it was not on this passage that I based my belief 
 as to S. Chrysostom's teaching on S. Peter's primacy. / 
 have never said this. My critic has made it appear (p. 5) as 
 if I did, by adding the last sentence he quotes from me, as 
 though it related to what had gone before, instead of to .^^^j^ 
 that which follows. After relating the incident and the p- 
 mistake in the Oxford translation, I say ' Indeed, &c. ' 
 which marks a transition to something that is coming. 
 In the next sentence, which my critic refuses to quote 
 (although I had drawn his attention to it in cor- 
 respondence), I say, ' I would ask anyone who reads 
 'this letter, seriously to weigh the following account of 
 
lo Tlie Cotmcil of Jerusalem 
 
 ' S. Chn sostom's teaching.' There is not a word in my 
 critic about this ' following account.' Yet it is there that 
 I give my reasons for holding that S. Chrj-sostom under- 
 stood S. Peter to act on this, as on all occasions, as the 
 Head of the Church under Christ. It is, then, distinctly 
 unfair to take a portion of my personal narrative only, 
 and to give people to understand, as the writer does on 
 page 9, that I based my teaching as to S. Chr}'sostom's 
 belief in the supremacy of S. Peter, ori this disputed 
 passage. Indeed he goes further; for he says, 'Mr. 
 ' Rivington rests his case on a single sentence, not regard- 
 ' ing the context.' AMiy, I have given the context, wheti I 
 come to 7ny proof! the context including, what my critic 
 deliberately (\\-ithout rhyme or reason that I can see) 
 excludes, viz. the previous Homily ! I know not how 
 to characterise this method of dealing with an author. I 
 particularly asked my readers ' seriously to weigh ' the 
 account that followed ; and it extends over fourteen pages 
 of careful reasonings in the course of which I deal with 
 the Council of Jerusalem. The worst of it is, that I had 
 already pointed this out to the writer in a private corre- 
 spondence, and I have seldom been more surprised in my 
 life than when I read his amazing misstatement of my own 
 argument repeated in a public accusation. Why omit 
 that to which I drew attention as the real proof, and 
 substitute a passage used in controversy with a Roman 
 Catholic Bishop which I was careful to say merely 
 started me on my path of inquiry, but by no means 
 supplied the material for my ultimate conviction ? 
 
 I have a right to complain of this. When I say, 
 ' Indeed, I do not see how it is possible to mistake S. 
 ' Chrj sostom's behef in the supremacy of S. Peter as 
 ' being identical wnth the teaching of Rome to-day,' and 
 proceed to say, ' I would ask anyone who reads this 
 ' letter, seriously to weigh the following account of S. 
 
TJie Council of Jcnisalci/i 
 
 II 
 
 ' Chrysostom's teaching,' it is contrary to all rules of justice 
 to take another parenthetical passage, introduced for a 
 different purpose, and, on the strength of that, to endea- 
 vour to discredit my appeal to the Fathers. And again, 
 how could the writer have written what he has, if he had 
 carefully marked what I have actually said about the 
 passage with which I shall now proceed to deal ? 
 
 For I have nowhere said that the crucial words, 
 ' invested with the chief rule,' apply to S. Peter. I have 
 observed a certain restraint in dealing with the passage, 
 and have spoken merely of a possibility. What I 
 reprehended was the Oxford translator's settling the 
 question by merely putting ' James ' without further ado. 
 Here then I might leave the question — with this simple 
 statement — that my critic is dealing not with my argument, 
 but with his own misrepresentation of it. 
 
 2ndly. Aly critic has misinterpreted S. Chrysostoiu. 
 He sets out to prove that at the Council of Jerusalem, 
 S. James held the office of ' presiding judge,' ' having 
 ' there the chief rule,' and that S. Peter (to use his own 
 words) was 'in a position of inferiority.' He considers 
 that S. Peter was ' primus inter pares ' amongst the 
 Apostles, by divine appointment (p. 16) ; but that his 
 Primacy did not include the Presidency of the Coun- 
 cil. And this he considers to be involved in what 
 S. Chrysostom says in his account of the Council of 
 Jerusalem. In the writer's translation S. Chrysostom 
 says, ' And see, after Peter Paul speaks, and none chides 
 'him. James waits patiently and does not start up. For he 
 ' (cKea'o;) had been invested with the chief rule. Nothing 
 ' speaks John, nothing the other Apostles.' 
 
 My contention was, that the pronoun ' he ' (being the 
 word in Greek which, when two people are contrasted, 
 often means the more remote, or the first-mentioned of 
 the two, and usually refers to the most prominent per- 
 
12 
 
 TJic Council of Jerusalem 
 
 son or thing, being a pronoun of emphasis) viay in the 
 above sentence, quite naturally refer to Peter. My critic 
 contends that it cannot refer to any other save James. 
 
 I may remark, in passing, that, supposing for the 
 moment that the words, ' he was invested with the chief 
 ' rule ' refer to S. James's position at the Council, and to 
 his relationship to the rest of the Apostles, as my critic 
 contends, the question still remains, by whom ^\as he 
 thus invested ? It could not have been expressly by our 
 Lord : it could only have been by the rest of the 
 Apostles. Was it, then, so arranged by the Apostles with 
 ' Peter at their head,' i.e., as Holy Scripture so often calls 
 ' the Apostolic band, by ' Peter and those that were with 
 ' him ' ? In this case the Anglican contention would gain 
 nothing by this passage. 
 
 But I proceed to show that it is in the highest degree 
 unlikely that S. Chrysostom meant ' James ' when he said 
 ' he (emphatic) was invested with the chief rule but that, 
 on the contrary, it is at least true, as I have said in the 
 passage from my book on ' Authority ' for which my critic 
 arraigns me, that it ' may quite naturally refer to S. Peter.' 
 Be it noted, then, that if the mere possibility of its referring 
 to S. Peter is established, the whole of my critic's con- 
 tention falls to the ground, and the ' distrust ' with which 
 he would inspire the public as to myself must be trans- 
 ferred. JNIy original quarrel with the Oxford transla- 
 tion was not for its saying that this emphatic pronoun 
 MAY refer to S. James, but for assuming that it must, 
 and therefore giving no hint that S. Chrysostom, instead 
 of using the word ' James,' had used a certain pronoun. 
 And the author of the ' Roman Question ' has reduced 
 the matter to this simple issue. 
 
 Now, in the first place, the words, ' For he was in- 
 ' vested with the chief rule,' must explain something. If 
 they refer to James what do they explain ? ' James waits 
 
The Council of Jerusalem 
 
 13 
 
 ' patiently and does not start up. For " he " had been 
 ' invested with the chief rule.' How can his having been 
 invested with the chief rule explain his not getting up to 
 speak ? We shall see that if it refers to S. Peter, it gives 
 a good reason. 
 
 Secondly, will anyone venture to say that a pronoun 
 which so often refers to a person more remote, and is 
 generally emphatic, cannot here be quite naturally referred 
 to S. Peter or S. Paul, who are the more remote persons 
 mentioned ! It is used once in this very Homily for the 
 more remote of two persons. 
 
 It is, therefore, impossible to say that the said pro- 
 noun necessarily, as my critic, or ' without any doubt ' as 
 Mr. Gore, asserts, refers to S. James. Such reference cbims,' 
 renders the insertion of the sentence meaningless, and is P' 
 not forced upon us by the word used. And so, thirdly, it 
 is to the wider context that we must look to determine the 
 reference. And that context we shall see furnishes us 
 with good reason for referring the words, ' for he ' (that 
 one) ' was invested with the chief rule,' to S. Peter. But 
 the immediate context suggests at least the possibility 
 of reference to Peter. For the gist of the previous 
 sentence is that S. Peter's speech had secured to S. 
 Paul a hearing which the animosity against him would 
 not have permitted. Hence S. Peter is really the promi- 
 nent subject of the sentence, and consequently the par- 
 ticular Greek pronoun would most naturally refer to him. 
 
 I conceive, then, that I am well within the mark when 
 I said that the emphatic pronoun ' may quite naturally 
 ' refer to S. Peter ; ' and that my critic is mistaken in 
 urging that the said pronoun cannot refer to anyone but 
 S. James. And this being so, the Oxford translator was 
 not justified in simply translating the pronoun Iku.vo% by 
 the word ' James ' without note or comment. 
 
 My critic seems to have been misled by the words 
 
14 
 
 Tlie Council of Jerusalem 
 
 in a following paragraph which he translates ' in high 
 'authority,' and which he looks upon as an allusion to the 
 words ' chief rule.' The former, however, seems to me 
 precisely the expression S. Chrysostom would use of S. 
 James, if he was thinking of his relationship to the con- 
 verts of Jerusalem, and precisely the word that he would 
 not use of his relationship to his brother-Apostles. 
 Whereas the expression, ' entrusted with the lead ' (the 
 true meaning of dp^^; '"^ these Homilies) is precisely, as 
 we shall see, S. Chrysostom's expression for S. Peter. 
 
 But to understand why the expression not only may 
 quite naturally refer to S. Peter, which is all that I 
 maintained in my book on ' Authority,' but also is most 
 naturally referred to him, as I am prepared to show, it 
 will be necessary to describe the situation. And so many 
 Anglicans seem to misapprehend the whole passage in 
 Holy Scripture relating to the Council of Jerusalem, that 
 it will be advisable to enter somewhat into detail. 
 
 The Council of Jerusalem. 
 
 The greatest difficulty with which the Apostolic age 
 had to deal was now in full play. The old Jewish con- 
 verts could not realise that the Law had so entirely passed 
 away as that no necessity remained for the observance 
 of its peculiar precepts. They would have welcomed 
 Gentiles into the fold, but only on condition of their 
 observing certain parts of the Ceremonial Law. S. 
 Paul's teaching and practice offended their notions of 
 what was due to the Mosaic observances. They specially 
 objected that he was not in concert with the older 
 Apostles, such as S. Peter and S. James. 
 
 S. Paul, under special inspiration from our Lord, 
 decided to go up to Jerusalem (Gal. ii.). He had 
 already, fourteen years before, been to visit S. Peter. 
 
The Council of Jerusalem 
 
 15 
 
 On that visit S. Chrysostom is most eloquent ; as he is 
 on their subsequent contention. There he insists on the 
 perfect agreement between S. Peter and S. Paul in the 
 matter of to Krjpvyf^a (the doctrine). He insists upon it J^; 
 that the contention between S. Peter and S. Paul argued 
 no inferiority on the part of S. Peter ; but that, on the 
 contrary, the scene was arranged by S. Peter himself to 
 take place publicly. By this means his more difficult 
 subjects, for whom he feared (as S. Chrysostom says) 
 lest they should apostatise, would be encouraged to give 
 in on seeing the public adoption by him of S. Paul's 
 line of conduct, which he considered the best. And 
 by way of emphasising the superiority of S. Peter to S. 
 Paul, he mentions, amongst other things, S. Paul's visit 
 to S. Peter, as showing his estimate of his position. So 
 here S. Paul goes up to Jerusalem, not to all the 
 Apostles, but the three who were in a position of special 
 authority, if one may so speak, as 'pillars.' These three, 
 S. Chrysostom says, were S. Peter, S. James, and S. 
 John : but he adds that S. Peter and S. James were, 
 again, in a peculiarly prominent position there. S. Peter 
 had been ' entrusted ' (it is the very word which occurs 
 in our disputed passage) 'with the Jews and S. James 
 was Bishop of Jerusalem ; S. Peter with the higher range 
 of duty ; S. James in ' high authority,' but not with the chief 
 rule. Their sphere of special work was so far conter- 
 minous that S. Peter had a special relation to the Jewish 
 converts, as being what S. James was not, the Apostle 
 of the circumcision, and these including S. James's 
 flock. 
 
 A meeting was held at Jerusalem to welcome S. Paul 
 and S. Barnabas. It was probably at this meeting that 
 it was found how perfectly at one they all were in their 
 dogmatic teaching as to the relation of the Law to the 
 Gospel. They added nothing to S. Paul in the way of 
 
i6 
 
 The Council of Jencsalem 
 
 instruction and information : there was nothing to add 
 (see Lightfoot on Gal. ii.). 
 
 The fifth verse probably relates not to this meeting, 
 but to immediately subsequent action. 
 
 There was then a second meeting, at which it was 
 probably decided that S. Peter should deal with the 
 dogmatic question, on which we know from Gal. ii. the 
 Apostles were perfectly at one ; and S. James was to 
 announce the disciplinary enactment which would wind 
 up the proceedings — not quite (as the Oxford transla- 
 tion of S. Chrysostom's Homily has it) 'the matter 
 ' under discussion,' for it is plural ; but rather, the pro- 
 ceedings, the business. For S. James was not implicated 
 in the disputes that had arisen, but was well known for 
 his adherence to the old Law, and, from being Bishop of 
 Jerusalem, would be a special authority with these 
 troubled and troubling Judaizers. Although not, as S. 
 Peter was, entrusted with, or invested with, the rule over 
 the whole body of Jewish converts he was Bishop of 
 Jerusalem, where the Temple was, with all the associa- 
 tions of that once holy city. 
 
 Verse 7 is thought to give the account of a third 
 meeting, when the multitude {v. 12) was also present, for 
 in V. 6 it looks rather as though the Apostles and elders 
 were by themselves. 
 
 But whether the second or the third meeting, it was 
 the occasion for S. Peter to come to the front. 
 
 Who, then, was S. Peter according to S. Chrysos- 
 tom ? 
 
 Much depends on this. 
 
 S. Peter was ' the mortal man ' ' to whom our Lord 
 ' entrusted {ivex^lpiai} the power over all things in heaven 
 ' when he gave him the keys.' 
 
 He it was of whom (perhaps in the previous Lent at 
 Antioch) S. Chrysostom had spoken as the ' head of the 
 
Tlie Council of Jerusalem 
 
 17 
 
 ' choir or band, so that, on that account, even Paul went 
 
 Horn. 83 in 
 
 ' up to see him rather than, or beyond, the rest.' This S. Joann. : 
 Chrysostom says in order to account for our Lord passing ^"^gj^""' 
 by the others, and addressing His question ' Lovest thou 
 ' Me?' to Peter. This is he of whom, in the same passage, 
 S. Chrysostom speaks as having been ' entrusted with 
 ' the presidency of the brethren,' which he says explains 
 his asking about S. John's future. This is he to whom 
 our Lord ' entrusted the world ' (again the same word as 
 is translated ' invested with ' in the disputed passage) ; 
 he it is whose tears had washed away his denial ' in order ^ 
 ' that he might become the first of the Apostles, and be Jud^os. 
 ' entrusted' (again the same word) 'with the whole world ;' 
 and again in another Homily this beautiful preacher of 
 the restorative power of penitence says that the ' power 
 ' of tears ' brought him back again to his former honour, 
 and ' entrusted him ' (again the same word) ' with the 
 ' presidency over the oecumenical Church,' 'and, what is 
 ' more than all, showed him to us as having a greater love Hom. v de 
 ' to the Lord than all the Apostles.' 
 
 This is he of whom the Saint says, ' Why did he shed 
 ' His blood? That he might win these sheep, whom He 
 ' entrusted ' {Iv^^ilpLutv, the same word again) ' to Peter 
 ' and those after him.^ The pronoun here is the same 
 emphatic one as is used in the disputed passage : 8ia tL Sacerd. 1. ii. 
 
 Ko.i TO ULfia e^e^^eev , iva ra Trpopara KTrjfrrjrai ravra, a 
 T(3 neVpo) Koi TOis /xer' eKelvov iv€)(fcpLrr€V. Cf. the disputed 
 passage e/<€tvos yap yjv rrjv ap)(r]V iyK€y(€Lpi(Tixivo'i. 
 
 Omitting several similar notices, this is he, again, who 
 was ' entrusted with the presidency over the Jews.' He Ho 
 was ' the master,' the term S. Chrysostom so often applies 
 to our Lord. This is he of whom S. Chrysostom says 
 that 'If John, if James, if Paul, if any other whatsoever, ibid. 
 ' appear doing anything great after this, still this Peter is 
 ' beyond them all. 
 
 c 
 
 p. 
 
 lorn, in 
 faciem. 
 
i8 TJie Council of Jerusalem 
 
 S. Paul considered himself, S. Chn-sostom tells us, 
 the servant 'not only of Peter, the head of all those saintly 
 ' men, but of all the Apostles,' and he 'knew what great 
 ' precedency {-poSf>La) ' Peter was to enjoy.' 
 
 These are but a few of the passages which I have 
 noted ; but they are sufficient to show how S. Chrv sos- 
 tom, who constantly uses that particular pronoun, with 
 its special emphasising power, of S. Peter, naturally adds 
 to S. Peter's name, that it was he who was entrusted 
 with a peculiar charge, beyond the rest. 
 
 A bishop, according to S. Chr^sostom (Lib. ii. De 
 Sacerd.), has an opportunity of showing his love to our 
 Lord similar to that which S. Peter enjoyed. S. Peter, 
 through the exercise of his office, was to be empowered to 
 surpass the rest of the Apostles. And so a bishop, in the 
 exercise of his, was to be able to surpass other Christians. 
 He was to be set over all the things of God, not merely 
 bodily concerns, but the interests of the soul, and thus 
 could exhibit greater love : ravra TrpdrTon; a kol tov Herpov 
 TTOtoviTa e(f>rjae Bwrjaea-Bai kol twv a— ooToAajv v—epaKovriaai 
 roi's XoL-ovs. S. Chr}-sostom continually contrasts S. 
 Peter with the other Apostles. 
 
 And now how has S. Chrj'sostom already spoken of 
 S. Peter in these \ery Homilies ? 
 
 He has already used a kindred expression of S. Peter 
 to explain his action in the first gathering of the faithful 
 after the Ascension. S. Peter, he tells us, ' acts first 
 ' with authority in the matter, as having been entrusted 
 ' with all of them' (same word as is translated 'invested') ; 
 for to him Christ said, ' And thou, one day having turned, 
 ' strengthen thy brethren.' The brethren here are clearly, 
 from the context, the Apostles. 
 
 Do we not already see what is S. Chr)-sostom's natural 
 
 ' Trpoiipos is the word used of those who presided at any meet- 
 ing in the Council of Xicsea. 
 
The Council of Jerusalem 
 
 19 
 
 epithet for S. Peter ? And he speaks of him in the 
 next sentence as constantly imitating the Master in not 
 giving his own opinion so much as that of the Scrip- 
 tures. 
 
 And continually (it must be read for it to be felt how 
 continually) S. Chrysostom is praising S. Peter for the 
 mildness with which he exercised his authority, though 
 he could be forcible. 
 
 His very shadow did what our Lord's did not — ' this 
 ' did not happen to the Christ ' — it was an instance of 
 the greater works which His own were to do. 
 
 And when he is in prison, the whole Church prays 
 for him — and why ? ^repi ra Kaipia. Xovkov rjv 6 ayoV — 
 'the struggle was now for the vital parts.' Now that S. 
 Peter's life is in danger, the ' vitals ' of the Church were 
 being attacked. Then S. Chrysostom tells us that the 
 * headship ' in Jerusalem itself lay with three, i.e. Peter, 
 James, and John, but especially with Peter and James, 
 S. Peter being the Apostle of the Circumcision, and 
 S. James in the (clearly inferior) office of Bishop of 
 Jerusalem. 
 
 And now we come to the Council of Jerusalem. 
 
 It is quite incorrect to say, as my critic does, that the 
 Homily in question gives S. Chrysostom's explanation 
 of what took place at the Council of Jerusalem (p. 6). 
 
 All his difficulties seem to me to arise from not 
 having realised that S. Chrysostom devotes two Homi- 
 lies — not one only — to this subject. Hence he misses the 
 proportion in S. Chrysostom's teaching. He makes S. 
 Chrysostom simply ' contrast ' S. Peter and S. James, 
 instead of, as he really does, also likening them to each 
 other. The virtue which my critic seems to think is 
 peculiarly ascribed to S. James, is, as a matter of fact, 
 ascribed to S. Peter in the previous Homily, and S. 
 James's exercise of it follows S Peter's. Now what part 
 
 c 2 
 
20 
 
 The Cotmcil of Jerusalem 
 
 does S. Peter take in the last of the meetings at Jerusa- 
 lem ? The Apostles (if we may trust Dr. Lightfoot's 
 and Dr. Bollinger's opinion as to Gal. ii.), had already 
 discovered their perfect unanimity on the doctrine. 
 There was therefore no room for persuading 07ie another. 
 What did S. Peter do ? 
 
 Remember S. Peter is the one, according to S. Chry- 
 sostom's uniform teaching, who was ' entrusted with the 
 Jews' (eyKe;)(£tptrr/^ei'os, see p. 1 3) and again 'entrusted' 
 (same word) ' with the presidency over the brethren,' and 
 'at the summit of all' This, we have seen, is S. Chry- 
 sostom's ordinary epithet for S. Peter, in all his writings. 
 It seems, if I may so say, to slip from his golden lips in 
 season and out of season. 
 
 But there is another description of S. Peter, which 
 S. Chrysostom begs us to bear in mind all through, and 
 to which he frequently alludes in other writings. It gives 
 an accident or consequence of his position. S. Peter is, 
 with S. Chrysostom, the one who by virtue of his leader- 
 ship brings things in, who makes the commencement in all 
 conceivable circumstances. 
 
 In his commentary on the first chapter of the Acts he 
 tells us that S. Peter 'as the one entrusted by Christ 
 ' with the flock, as the first of the band, always first begins 
 ' the speaking.^ This is the Saint's description of him : 
 ' He always begins, and that by virtue of his having been 
 ' entrusted with the care of the flock ' — the one flock. And 
 even thus early he speaks of S. James saying nothing, 
 although he received the oversight (or episcopate) in Jerusa- 
 lem. That is to say, that S. Peter begins or opens the 
 discussion on every occasion (a.p^(.Tai tov Xoyov), as having 
 been entrusted with the flock, whilst S. James, although 
 in high authority, is silent, because not in such high 
 authority as S. Peter. ' Peter,' he says, ' begins as the 
 ' very one entrusted with all ' (are airos Travras iyx^i-pi-a-Ous, 
 
TJie Coimcil of Jcrtisnlcin 
 
 21 
 
 the very word for ' invested ' in the disputed passage), ' for 
 ' to him Christ said, "When thou art converted, strengthen 
 'thy brethren.'" 
 
 But equally important is another passage in a separate 
 work, where S. Chrysostom is pointing out S. Peter't 
 superiority, in some sense, even to S. Paul. There, having 
 said that S. Peter was the real author of the whole scene 
 at Antioch, he says in reference to the Day of Pentecost, 
 oi yap hr\ tovtov fj-ovov ccXXa kol fteTO. ravra v(f) kripojv 
 ytvofxevoiy opOiofLOLTUiv ovtos uv eLij Travrcov atrios, 6 rrjv 
 dpxl]v Koi TYjv et(ToBov Trapda^div. Notice the word dpxV) 
 which has the meaning of ' beginning ' as proper to the 
 leader ; therefore in all matters after the day of Pentecost 
 we are to look on Peter as the responsible ' cause of all,' 
 and as the one who takes the lead and the initiation 
 on every occasion. This is S. Chrysostom's favourite 
 thought about S. Peter. We are now in possession, surely, 
 of sufficient material for a decision. 
 
 What does S. Peter do at the Council ? What does he 
 do, who is akvays to be thought of, says S. Chrysostom, 
 as the one entrusted with the flock, and as invested with 
 the power of initiation ? 
 
 I must repeat that it is idle of my critic to say that 
 the ' following extracts from the Homily will show S. 
 Chrysostom's statement ' of the whole matter.' We cannot 
 justly gather S. Chrysostom's opinion as to the part 
 borne by S. Peter and S. James respectively if we begin 
 by eliminating the description of the part borne by S. 
 Peter ; which is what my opponent actually does. It is 
 enough to state the idea to refute it. Now in the previous 
 Homily, S. Chrysostom draws particular attention to one 
 fact, viz. that S.Peter 'first allows the investigation' {irpOtrov 
 crvYy(tip€i t,r]T-r](Tw yevecrOai). That is precisely what we 
 should expect. He who was entrusted with the flock 
 always makes the beginning, is S. Chrysostom's dictum. 
 
2 
 
 Tlie Council of Jerusalem 
 
 Who does not see that he accordingly at once places 
 him in a unique position, and that, too, of authoritative 
 initiation ? ' He first permits the inquiry to be made.' 
 
 Then again, S. Chrysostom says that ' what was need- 
 ' ful to be enacted as law, this Peter introduced ' There 
 is exactly the same idea, that of authoritative initiation. 
 S. Peter was the one entrusted with the Jews— this is S. 
 Chrysostom's constant theme : and S. Peter was the one 
 to initiate : this is S. Chrysostom's perpetual, emphatic, 
 description of him. S. James had a special relation to 
 the Jews in Jerusalem. He was, therefore, specially an 
 authority with them. Accordingly he had to announce 
 to them the disciplinary enactment, whilst S. Peter an- 
 nounced the dogmatic principle. Both acted in concert 
 with the whole Apostolic College. 
 
 In order to recommend their principle with its prac- 
 tical application, S. James used the same mildness that 
 Peter did on other occasions. S. Chrysostom speaks of 
 S. Peter's mildness much oftener than he does of S. James's : 
 though on this particular occasion S. James had the 
 more delicate task of bringing his influence to bear on 
 the Judaizing converts, who had refused to listen to S. 
 Paul, and constantly accused him of being out of harmony 
 (see Gal. ii.) with the other Apostles, especially S. Peter 
 and S. James. Hence the way in which S. James em- 
 phasizes his own convictions, speaking of the disciplinary 
 enactment as his own conviction, his own judgment, 
 though, of course, in concert with 'Peter and the rest,' 
 as S. Chrysostom says in the beginning of his Homily. 
 
 We can now see the true translation of the disputed 
 passage. 
 
 The real subject is the effect of S. Peter's speech on the 
 multitude. Before that speech they would not listen to 
 S. Paul. After that speech all are silent : multitude, and 
 Apostles, and all. S. Chrysostom's words are, ' After Peter 
 
The Couna'l of Jerusalem 
 
 23 
 
 ' Paul spake, and no one silences him. James waits 
 ' patiently and does not start up. For he ' {i.e. that one 
 whom I mentioned before, Peter, tKilvo';) 'had been en- 
 ' trusted with the lead ' : hence the silence of all. 
 
 If apx*/ means simply rule, as, of course, it may, then 
 it would most naturally still apply to Peter. But perhaps 
 the best English equivalent for the word apxvi in this 
 passage, is really 'the lead,' for it seems most probable, 
 from the description given of S. Peter by S. Chrysostom 
 above, as the one entrusted with the Primacy, and there- 
 fore specially (as included m that) with the initiative on 
 such occasions as the present, that it has special reference 
 to that usual idea of his in connection with S. Peter, viz. 
 ' beginning.' ' Nothing speaks John, nothing the other 
 ' Apostles, but they are silent and think it no hardship. 
 ' So clear was their soul from the love of glory.' This 
 gives a real meaning to the whole passage in accordance 
 with all S. Chrysostom's teaching. S. Peter, in his opening 
 speech, speaking with authority, on the question of prin- 
 ciple, had silenced the multitude. He had commenced 
 with ruling that the Law was not to be kept as a matter 
 of necessity. 
 
 S. James was silent here, just as, S. Chrysostom notices, 
 he was on a previous occasion, and for the same reason, 
 viz. the leadership and direction belonged to S. Peter. 
 Presently he rises and deals with a disciplinary enactment. 
 He expresses his judgment, and uses an expression which 
 is exactly what ecclesiastics in Council would use. It in 
 no way implies presidency. Thus yap is fully explained, 
 and a frequent usage of iK€ivo<; is assumed. And now, 
 from want of careful study of the Homily — and I am 
 entitled, from what I am going to show soon, to say this 
 — my critic has missed the idea of the following paragraph. 
 
 S. Chrysostom now, as so often, recapitulates and 
 reverts to the beginning of his Homily. He reminds 
 
24 
 
 The Council of Jerusalem 
 
 them of what he has commented on S. James's speech 
 above. 
 
 He says : ' But let us see from the beginning what 
 ' has been said.' ' He had pre\-iously commented in full on 
 S. James's speech, so he merely refers to it now, and gives 
 it as an instance of the mildness which he has so often be- 
 fore, and even on this occasion in the previous Homily, 
 praised in S. Peter and S. Paul. He then says, ' In com- 
 ' mencing, Peter spoke more strongly, it is true,' i.e. than he 
 did afterwards. The translation given by the ' friend ' is 
 not exact S. Clm sostom does not say, IE apx^s 6 IT cVpo?, 
 K.r.X., but o.pxn^ cr4>oBp6Tepov fxev, which makes a differ- 
 ence. He then speaks of S. James speaking more mildly 
 than S. Peter did when he began his speech, S. James 
 being ' in high authority.' Authority over whom ? Not 
 over Apostles. This would be too strong an expression 
 even for the Anglican theory. It is inconceivable that 
 my critic, considering his words on p. i6, about S. Peter 
 being 'primus inter pares,' by a Divine appointment, 
 can suppose that S. James had authority over Apostles. 
 S. James's authority was over the converts at Jerusalem. 
 
 The fact is (and it is from not seeing this that my 
 critic's difEculties proceed) that the antithesis is between 
 James and the Judaizers, not James and Peter. It is 
 the Judaizers, not Peter, to whom S. James leaves to. 
 <f>of)Tixd, by which term S. Chr) sostom characterises the 
 animosity they displayed, not permitting Paul to speak 
 until Peter had somewhat subdued them. This sort of 
 thing he does not yield to, but leaves it to others, if they 
 will. It "is c-epois (not oAAois), which could hardly apply 
 to Peter, and the sentiment would be too unchristian, 
 viz. that it is the part of one in high authority to leave 
 
 ' I: is not, as my critic translates, ' what was said before ; ' not 
 TO &yb d€v iip7iu€ya but ayccBey to ilp-qfin a. There is a slight differ- 
 ence between the two. 
 
77/t' Council of Jcnisalcni 
 
 25 
 
 tlie more trying part for others. The clause upxv^ 
 concessive, not antithetic. His contention is that the 
 Apostles, unlike the Judaizers, were composed and con- 
 ciliatory, as rulers should be. He feels obliged, however, 
 to concede that S. Peter on the present occasion was a 
 little heated, but excuses him on the plea that it was 
 just 'at the commencement,' while he was indignant at 
 the bad spirit of the Judaizers, implying that he toned 
 down as he went on. 
 
 That this is his meaning seems clear from the fact, 
 (i) that S. Peter is commended for that same mildness 
 in the previous Homily, and also frequently in all the 
 homilies on the Acts ; (2) that the word m (poprcKa is 
 too harsh to describe S. Peter s speech, especially in view 
 of S. Chrysostom's estimate of it, already given ; (3) that 
 eV fji.€ydkr) SwaareLo. is a phrase quite unintelligible as a 
 description of S. James in relation to the Apostles, even 
 if the Anglican theory were correct. It is too big a word 
 for a mere president. S. James was Bishop of Jerusalem, 
 and as such in high authority over those who lived in 
 Jerusalem. He was their regular teacher, and identified 
 with them in a way that the rest of the Apostles were 
 not. My critic, on p. 6, by omitting a portion of S. 
 Chrysostom's words, gives a slight turn to the first words 
 he quotes. He makes S. Chrysostom say, 'This (James) 
 ' was bishop, as they say, and therefore he speaks last.' 
 He omits the words ' of the Church of Jerusalem,' with 
 the result of implying that because he was bishop, he 
 was president. The 8to Koi, we now see, must mean, 'He 
 'spoke last as the representative of the Judaizers.^ It was 
 his connection with them that determines his position. 
 S. Peter had laid down the principle, S. Paul had testified 
 to the outpouring of the Spirit on the Gentiles : it re- 
 mained for the representative of the Judaizers to approach 
 the subject from their side. 
 
26 
 
 TJie Council of Jcmsalcm 
 
 Again there is an inexactness in the translation 
 directly after this. The Anglican translation runs (see 
 p. 6) : ' And indeed it is wisely ordered that this (the 
 ' active) part is assigned to those,' &c. The word ' active ' 
 is, of course, an interpolation, and the interpolation is 
 misleading. S. Chrysostom means to say, ' It was wisely 
 ' arranged that those things which involved the new de- 
 ' parture in regard to legal observance — viz. the action of 
 ' Peter at Samaria (Acts x. 20) and of Paul at Antioch 
 ' {ibid. XV. 2) and elsewhere — should have fallen to the 
 ' lot of Apostles who were not to be resident in Jerusalem, 
 ' so that James who was teaching them (rov SiSda-Kovra 
 ' avTov?) could be without responsibility for what the 
 ' other two had done, although he was at one with them 
 ' in mind.' For thus S. James was better fitted to bring 
 the Judaizers round. He was a persona gratior to them. 
 He was Bishop of Jerusalem. Hence, after S. Peter 
 has hushed the voice of controversy, so that S. Paul 
 could be listened to, S. James performs the delicate task 
 of announcing the less permanent, but more immediately 
 practical part. What he said did not bind the Universal 
 Church even at that time, and did not permanently bind 
 even that portion to which it applied. It was the less 
 important part.' 
 
 All this is in exact accord with S. Jerome's account. 
 S. Jerome tells us that ' S. James and the elders gave 
 ' consent to S. Peter's opinion.' My critic objects to my 
 translating ' sententia ' in S. Jerome by ' sentence,' as 
 though it made the ' decree ' S. Peter's ; but, referring to 
 the dogmatic part of the Apostles' decision, S. Jerome 
 
 ' The expression 'and then again his authority (as bishop),' 
 quoted p. 7 and alluded to p. 8, is not in the original. The words 
 (as bishop) are the Anglican translator's, and the word for ' autho- 
 rity ' possibly means judgment, or proposition, though it may mean 
 ' the consideration in which he was held.' 
 
TJic Council of Jerusalem 
 
 27 
 
 goes on to call S. Peter 'princeps hujus decreti,' prin- 
 cipal author, or initiator, of this ' decree.' Also Theo- 
 doret says, ' Paul, who was the herald of truth, the organ 
 ' of the Holy Spirit, had recourse to the great Peter, in 
 ' order to obtain from him a decision concerning the 
 ' observances of the Law, for those who disputed at 
 ' Antioch on this subject.' 
 
 Dr. Dollinger has accurately expressed the matter in 
 his ' First Age of the Church ' : — 
 
 ' The sentence of S. James could not but have great 
 ' weight at that Synod, for S. Peter, like S. Paul, was in a 
 ' manner a party concerned in the question. S. James, 
 ' who with his comrtiunity was so faithful to the Law, was 
 ' the best and most convincing judge in this strife . . . 
 ' in that matter; and for persons who appealed unhesi- 
 ' tatingly to the example of the Mother Church ' (notice 
 this important explanation) 'the example of James had 
 ' more weight than that of Peter, just as afterwards the 
 ' Ebionites laboured to make his authority appear the 
 ' highest in the Church.' It was a weakness on their part 
 that they looked so much more to S. James, but so it 
 was. But of S. Peter, Dr. Dollinger remarks : ' He was 
 ' at the head, as always and everywhere else, in the 
 ' assembly of Jerusalem, which freed the Gentiles from 
 ' observing the ceremonial law : he opened it, and his 
 ' motion was carried, with the conditions added by 
 ' S. James.' 
 
 3. And now for the note. My critic quotes the note 
 of a friend and adopts it on p. 8. And he speaks of p. g. 
 S. Peter's ' less authoritative position,' a phrase which 
 we have seen would have been altogether repudiated 
 by S. Chrysostom. And he speaks of S. Chrysostom 
 adding of S. Peter, that he speaks not ' his own mind,' 
 but ' the mind of others,' and ' shows that this is a doc- 
 ' trine of old time.' 
 
28 
 
 T]ie Council of Jerusalem 
 
 And for this extraordinary statement he relies on his 
 friend's note. 
 
 His friend writes, 'Whatever we may think of 
 ' S. Chrysostom's comment on the use of efr^y/craTO, it is 
 ' noteworthy that he should call attention to his opinion, 
 ' that the " Head of the Church," instead of deciding the 
 question on his own authority, expressed hepoiv yviL/xrjv.' 
 
 I must call this ' gross carelessness,' for really it is 
 nothing short of that. 
 
 Why, S. Chrysostom is speaking of Symeon, the 
 author of Nunc Dimittis ! 
 
 The friend must have discovered this if he had read 
 the Homily through. It is strange that S. Chrysostom 
 should so understand it. But so it is.' It needs care 
 to interpret S. Chrysostom. But very little care indeed 
 would have detected the fact that S. Chrysostom, in 
 analysing S. James's speech, holds that he endeavoured 
 to conciliate his Jewish converts by appealing first to 
 Symeon in the Gospel of S. Luke and then to the older 
 prophets. It never occurs to him that it is Simon Peter. 
 
 Thus my critic makes two mistakes. 
 
 1. He imagines that S. Chrysostom is speaking of 
 the ' Head of the Church,' instead of the author of the 
 Nunc Dimittis : and 
 
 2. He imagines that kripwv yv(!>fir) 'the mind of others,' 
 means the Apostles', instead of its referring to Symeon, 
 in his canticle, expressing the mind of the old prophets.'^ 
 
 ' Perhaps S. Chrj'sostom wuuld have said that in Holy Scrip- 
 ture the Apostle is invariably (with one doubtful exception) called 
 2>a)v, not Su/ieoic. The doubtful exception is 2 Pet. i. I. The 
 textus receptus has '2.vp.iu>v, and so, in consequence, had Chrysostom, 
 in all probability, but S> B read Xtfituv. 
 
 - !.t'. the expression ' light to lighten the Gentiles ' being bor- 
 rowed from the Old Testament. Cf. supra: 'ETreiSi; e/ceikoj {^'2,vix€wv) 
 oirf) uiv xpovov . . . i-irdyei Kol Tra^aiav TrpocpriTeiav. 
 
TJie Council of Jerusalem 
 
 29 
 
 I think I need say no more about this pubhc attack 
 on my accuracy. Surely this is sufficient to settle the 
 question of trustworthiness. 
 
 Summary of the Argument. 
 
 Taking, then, the ' Reason for Distrusting Mr. Riving- 
 ton's Appeal to the Fathers,' by the author of the 
 ' Roman Question,' page by page, I note the following 
 errors : — • 
 
 1. On p. I he says: 'His (Mr. Rivington's) words 
 ' in reference to it ' {i.e. the above passage in S. Chryso- 
 ' stom) ' at least enable us to trace the working of his mind 
 ' at a great crisis.' But the writer does not give more 
 than one- seventh of my words on the subject he selects, 
 and those the least important part, as it only concerns 
 what suggested further inquiry, not what contains the 
 grounds of my ultimate convictions. This I have ex- 
 pressly stated both in my book (p. 58) and in corre- 
 spondence with its writer. 
 
 2. On p. 5 we read, 'The Homily alluded to ... . 
 ' gives S. Chrysostom's explanation of what took place 
 ' at the Council of Jerusalem.' This is incorrect. The 
 previous Homily gives all about S. Peter, which its 
 writer omits, and without which it is impossible to under- 
 stand the parts played by S. Peter and S. James respec- 
 tively. 
 
 3. On p. 6 : ' The following extracts from the Homily 
 ' will show S. Chrysostom's statement of the whole matter.' 
 So far is this from being the case that the extracts omit 
 an important sentence in which S. Chrysostom contrasts 
 the functions of S. Peter and S. James, saying that ' what 
 ' was to be enacted as law, this Peter introduced,' which 
 considerably affects his teaching as to S. Peter's office in 
 the Council. 
 
30 
 
 The Council of Jcnisalcin 
 
 4. On p. 6 the words ' Who performs the part of a 
 ToTs"!™"" 'teacher' is not a fair translation. S. Chrysostom is 
 
 speaking of S. James as ' him who teaches them ' — i.e. 
 the people of Jerusalem — as their ordinary teacher. The 
 translation would allow of its meaning that he was 
 teaching the Council ; and he omits S. Chrysostom's 
 words 'of the Church of Jerusalem,' which omission 
 gives a different turn to the meaning. • Cf ijifra, and 
 he interpolates ' active ' with the same result. 
 
 5. On p. 7 : 'The matter under discussion' is a 
 translation which conveys a false impression. It is tois 
 Trpa-y/xatri plural— the proceedings, the practical part. 
 
 6. To say, as on p. 8, that ' this account is clearly- in 
 'accordance with Holy Scripture,' is an assumption ; and, 
 as we have seen, is not borne out by S. Chrysostom's com- 
 ments. 
 
 7. On p. 9 it is said of S. Chrysostom that, ' He adds 
 ' of S. Peter, that he speaks not his own mind, but the 
 ' mind of others.' S. Chrysostom is speaking of Symeon, 
 not of Simon Peter. 
 
 8. On p. 9 the writer says, 'Viewing thus the whole 
 ' context,' but he has omitted one-half of S. Chrysostom's 
 account of the Council, contained in the previous Homily. 
 
 9. On p. 10 the writer says, 'But Mr. Rivington rests 
 ' his case on a single sentence, not regarding the context.' 
 I know not how to characterise this assertion. I have 
 taken all the Homilies on the Acts as the context. See 
 my book 'Authority,' pp. 61-75. ^'^d why does he 
 again omit the first word of my sentence, which shows 
 that I am passing off to the proof, to which, /;/ the next 
 sentence I earnestly ask my readers to pay attention ? 
 
 10. Again on p. 10 the writer says, 'But still this sen- 
 ' tence is so important and Mr. Rivington evidently views 
 ' it as a test of the whole question, so that it oyght to be 
 ' considered alone and separate from all other parts of the 
 
Tlie Council of Jencsalan 
 
 31 
 
 ' Homily.' I know not what to say to such an assertion, 
 except, again, that it is utterly devoid of foundation. I 
 have laid no stress whatever on this sentence by itself, 
 though I lay some stress on its mistranslation. As an 
 Anglican controversialist I laid great stress on the 
 sentence ; but in my book I have devoted fourteen pages 
 to my proof as to S. Chrysostom's teaching on the 
 primacy of S. Peter, and this sentence actually does not 
 occur at all in that proof ! 
 
 11. On page 10 the writer here admits that 'certain 
 'verbal transpositions' were made. But the 'verbal trans- 
 ' positions' constitute a 'sentence,' which was my con- 
 tention. He admits also that the word ' James ' does 
 not occur in the original, which again was my conten- 
 tion. 
 
 12. ' Simeon hath declared,' on page 11, ought to be 
 (according to S. Chrysostom) ' Symeon interpreted ' — 
 referring to the aged Symeon, and (probably) to his 
 exegesis of the prophet Isaiah in his canticle Nunc 
 Dimittis. 
 
 13. The writer says, p. 12 : 'It will be seen hovv the 
 ' " he " follows immediately after the mention of S. James, 
 'and can refer to no other.' I venture to say that no 
 Greek Lexicon in the world would assert that eVetvos 
 must refer to the last-named person. And the reference 
 to James makes the sentence meaningless. 
 
 14. There is a note to page 12 quoting S. Chry- 
 sostom's commentary on S. John xxi. 19, reminding us 
 that there he 'again speaks of James receiving the 
 ' chair of Jerusalem.' So he does. But in that passage 
 S. Chrysostom speaks of S. James having received the 
 chair at Jerusalem, as something less than S. Peter's 
 charge. I do not think unfair quotation could well go 
 beyond this ; for the question to which the writer has 
 ' ' narrowed down ' the consideration is the relationship 
 
32 
 
 The Coiinctl of Jerusalem 
 
 between S. Peter and S. James (see page 6). And here 
 is the whole quotation, to which he says the reader may 
 be referred : — • 
 
 ' He asks him {i.e. Peter) the third time, and the 
 third time gives him the same injunction, showing at 
 what a price He sets the presidency over His own sheep. 
 And if anyone should say. How then did James receive 
 the throne of Jerusalem? this I would answer, that 
 He appointed this man {i.e. Peter) teacher, not of that 
 throne, but of the world.' It is of these very words of 
 our Lord that S. Chrysostom says elsewhere, that S. Peter 
 by them was declared ' to have power and to go beyond 
 ' the rest of the Apostles.' — De Sacerd. Lib. ii. 
 
 15. p. 13. It would have helped readers if it had been 
 explained that at liAA.' tSco/Aci/ a fresh recapitulation be- 
 gins, after S. Chrysostom's usual fashion, and that it is 
 not a continuation of the same paragraph. I can see no 
 good reason for printing exactly that amount of the 
 Homily only, unless it was to bring in Symeon, whom the 
 critic mistook for Simon Peter. 
 
 16. p. 14. S. Chrysostom is not talking of the 'Head 
 ' of the Church' at all, but of the author of Nunc Dimittis. 
 
 17. kripiMv yvilifiyjv 'the mind of Others,' refers to 
 Symeon expressing the mind of the Prophets in his 
 canticle Nunc Dimittis. 
 
 18. The writer gives my quotation from S. Jerome : 
 ' S. James the Apostle and all the ancients adopted his 
 ' sentence,' i.e. S. Peter's ; and says, ' But this is not really 
 ' relevant to the question immediately at issue.' But it is 
 important as showing S. Jerome's view of S. James's 
 relation to S. Peter at the Council. He says, S. 
 Jerome, in the letter referred to, ' is not speaking of 
 ' his position at the Council in comparison of S. James.' 
 But he calls S. Peter ' princeps hujus decreti,' and the 
 decree is the very one passed at the Council ; he says 
 
TJie Council of Jerusalem 
 
 33 
 
 this in the very sentence which the writer proceeds to 
 question, only the writer omits those words ! 
 
 19. The writer compares S. Peter's relation to the 
 rest of the Council to that of S. Athanasius to the Council 
 at Nice. Such a comparison reveals a complete mis- 
 understanding of the relation of the Apostles to each 
 other in virtue of their personal infallibility. The Council 
 at Jerusalem cannot be compared to any subsequent 
 Council without mutatis mutandis. 
 
 20. On p. 16 the writer applies S. Paul's words 
 (2 Cor. xi. 5), ' not a whit behind the very chiefest 
 Apostles ' to Peter, James, and John ! But S. Paul uses 
 a word which he would never apply to his fellow-Apostles. 
 He is speaking of pseudo-apostles. He says in verse 13, 
 ' Such are false Apostles.' 
 
 21. The writer announces a belief in S. Peter's 
 primacy 'by a divine appointment,' but holds ihit it 
 died with S. Peter. 
 
 This is Tertullian's creed after he became a heretic. 
 It did not, however, in my critic's opinion involve even 
 S. Peter's presidency or superiority at a Council ! He 
 was, says this writer, in a position of inferiority there ! 
 What did the primacy involve ? He would find it hard 
 to say, I imagine. And so did I as an Anglican. I 
 therefore for a long while held, as a more logical view, 
 that S. Peter excelled the others in natural qualities only, 
 although my critic says that I never could, as a High p. ,6. 
 Churchman, have held such a view. There is no saying 
 what a High Churchnvin can hold. It is a theory held 
 to this day by Dr. Littledale in his ' Plain Reasons,' &c., 
 and it seems as though on the whole it is held by Mr. 
 Gore, though I should not like to commit myself to any 
 definite assertion on that subject. 
 
 Is it not strange that teachers in a religious body 
 should be so vague on such an all-important question ? 
 
 D 
 
34 
 
 TJic Council of Jenisalcin 
 
 It would be hard to discover what position the author 
 of the ' Roman Question ' would assign to S. Peter's 
 successor. Bishop Watson tells us that the doctrine that 
 the Pope is Antichrist is ' the pillar of the Reformation.' 
 There can, I think, be no doubt that, but for that 
 doctrine, England would never have been kept so long 
 torn from her true mother. 
 
 When I saw that S. Peter had a primacy given to 
 him by our Lord, it was not long before I saw that this 
 meant that the visible Church was to have a visible head 
 — a head, that is, in the same order of life, i.e. the visible. 
 For a visible body without a visible head is not a visible 
 body, the head being part of the body, and the most 
 important part. Without it you have only a visible trunk. 
 A head, that only lasted during the Apostles' times, seems 
 of all doctrines the most strange. Certainly I never held 
 that. 
 
' Peter hath Spoken by Leo ' 
 
 35 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 ' PETER HATH SPOKEN BY LEO.' 
 
 T/ie Fathers of Chalcedon. 
 
 The author of the pamphlet with which I dealt in the 
 last chapter, describes himself as one of those who be- 
 longed to the original Tractarian movement, but who, 
 instead of following in the steps of Newman and Manning, 
 Allies and Coleridge, Christie and Oakeley and Faber, and 
 Ward and Caswall, and a host of others, remained in the 
 Establishment and ' has lived and worked on since they 
 ' left us, upon the same lines which they taught us, still 
 ' treasuring the tone and spirit in which they wrote as 
 ' English divines.' (' Roman Question,' p. 54.) 
 
 He has now given us his ripest thoughts on the Roman 
 question — on, at least, 'some salient points ' and 'leading 
 ' details ' (Preface). ' He has earnestly desired to be fair, 
 ' to exaggerate nothing, and to avoid any hard expressions ' 
 (ibid.) 
 
 It must, therefore, be a matter of the deepest interest 
 to see what are the grounds in history and the Fathers, 
 on which such a writer (who calls himself 'an aged 
 ' priest,' and is known to be one of the most influential 
 clergymen of the Church of England at the present 
 moment) bases his view of these ' .salient points ' in the 
 question between Rome and England. 
 
 We naturally look to his view of the Council of Chal- 
 cedon, and of Leo the Great. 
 
36 
 
 ' Peter hath spoken by Leo ' 
 
 Fresh interest has been lately lent to this subject from 
 the Bishop of Lincoln's counsel (Sir AValter Phillimore) 
 having claimed the canons of the Council of Chalcedon 
 as part of the canon law of the Church of England. 
 
 The following sentence contains the above-mentioned 
 writer's view of the matter : ' The important fact remains, 
 ' as already shown in a former letter, that the Fathers of 
 ' that Council (six hundred and thirty bishops) did not 
 ' feel that any superiority of government belonged to the 
 ' Roman See on that account ' {i.e. on the ground that 
 S. Leo ' sat in Peter's chair ') ' for they distinctly refused 
 ' to accede to Leo's demands, and, against the Roman 
 ' legates, decided on giving the patriarchal dignity to Con- 
 ' stantinople, which was the point to which the Pope's con- 
 ' tention referred.' (' Roman Question,' p. 32.) 
 
 And, in the chapter referred to, the writer had said, 
 ' it has been urged against the decree, that the then Pope, 
 ' Leo, protested against it, and so saved his prerogative, 
 ' notwithstanding that the Council, after hearing this pro- 
 ' test, persisted in carrying the decree as originally framed. 
 ' But the answer to this objection is clear. The protest on 
 ' the part of Rome rested not on any exclusive privilege 
 ' claimed by it, but on the decree being, as the Pope af- 
 ' firmed, an unjust usurpation of the privileges of other 
 ' bishops, and particularly of those of the Bishops of Alex- 
 ' andria and Antioch, who were next in rank to the Bishop 
 ' of Rome, and thus contrary to the Nicene Canons. Rome 
 ' did not oppose the decree as derogatory to herself . . . 
 And Rome, at the period spoken of, claimed nothing more 
 ' than was consistent with the Church's canon law ' (p. 11). 
 
 I shall give a short summary of the Fourth General 
 Council and the Pope's relation to it. The four first 
 councils stand, in the eyes of all English Churchmen, 
 quite by themselves. They are to them a Court of Ap- 
 psal, beyond which there is, in theory, nothing save Holy 
 
' Peter hath Spoken by Leo' 
 
 37 
 
 Scripture itself. And indeed, seeing that they rightly 
 hold that the sense of Scripture is Scripture, the first four 
 Councils, determining, as they are held to do, the sense of 
 Scripture on certain points, have a claim on their atten- 
 tion which nothing else has. And the fourth Council 
 has its own peculiar claims. For it closed the great ques- 
 tions concerning the two Natures and the Divine Person 
 of our Blessed Lord ; and every Anglican holds that there 
 is no uninspired writing quite on a par with the ' Tome 
 ' of S. Leo,' which declares the final doctrine of the Chureh 
 on the mystery of the Holy Incarnation. It was of this 
 that the Fathers of Chalcedon exclaimed, ' Peter hath 
 * spoken by Leo.' 
 
 What, then, was the history of that Tome? 
 
 The Council of Ephesus, in accordance w'ith the 
 judgment of Pope Celestine,' presided over by his Legate 
 S. Cyril of Alexandria, had condemned Nestorius. But an 
 error, in some respects still more difficult to deal with, and 
 equally vital, was destined to trouble the Church. It was 
 based by its originator, Eutyches, the head of a monas- 
 tery at Constantinople, on some expressions of S. Cyril's. ^ia,^i, 
 Eventually the struggle raged round a single expression 
 'of the Saint's. S. Peter Chrysologus had urged upon 
 
 ' Pope S. Celestine sent his delegates ' to declare judgment on 
 the sentiments of the Bishop ; not yourselves to undergo a trial.' 
 They arrived too late ; but when they stated the position they were 
 .sent to assume, no dissentient voice was raised. Already the 
 Council had, in obedience to the Pope's letter, deposed Nestorius, as 
 themselves say, ' compelled through the sacred canons and the 
 letter of our most Holy Father and fellow-minister {(svWinoxjpfov) 
 Celestine.' S. Peter calls himself a fellow-elder in addressing the 
 elders to whom he writes in his Epistle. Our Lord says that He is 
 amongst His disciples ' as he that ministereth.' The argument which 
 the Literary Churclunan used in reviewing my book on ' Authority ' 
 would, if good, not simply disprove the Papal position, but estab- 
 lish the Presbyterian. It would also, applied to the gospels, dis- 
 prove our Lord's divinity. 
 
38 
 
 ' Peter hath spoken by Leo ' 
 
 Eutyches to submit himself to Rome, ' since blessed 
 ' Peter, who both lives and presides in his own See, gives 
 ' the truth of the Faith to those who seek it.' Eutvches, 
 however, was by no means prepared to submit. But S. 
 Leo entered into correspondence with Flavian, the holy 
 Archbishop of Constantinople, on the subject, somewhat 
 censuring him for not ha%-ing sooner sent the matter to 
 .^d Rome. Flavian remitted the cause at once to the Pope, 
 ilbb^c'onc. giving a reason for the delay. He also asked the Pope 
 to condemn Eutyches in writing, which S. Leo did. 
 
 The cause of Eutyches was now espoused by the 
 Patriarch of Alexandria, Dioscorus, and the Emperor 
 Theodosius was enlisted in their cause. A General 
 Council was suggested, and S. Leo consented. S. Leo 
 acted all through as S. Chrysostom represents S. Peter as 
 conducting himself, both at the election of Matthias and 
 at the Council of Jerusalem. The same eVietKeia which 
 he notices in S. Peter is displayed by S. Leo. Without 
 abating one iota of the authority with which he was in- 
 vested, he yet sought rather to secure the acceptance of 
 the truth than to moot the question of his own authority. 
 In consenting to a Council being called, S. Leo ex- 
 pressly reminded both the Emperor and the Synod that 
 there was no room for doubt on the question of faith ; 
 but that their office was to learn and spread the interpreta- 
 tion of S. Peter's confession as given by S. Peter himself, 
 i.e. the Holy Apostolic See ('tanquam ab ipso beatissimo 
 ' Petro cuperet declarari, quod in ejus confessione laudatum 
 Epp 82 and '^^^ ' ^'^^ Council was not to discuss the question of 
 9°- faith as though it were open, but to condemn Eutyches, 
 
 ' ut pleniori judicio omnis possit error aboleri.' A fuller 
 judgment, i.e. the Council's judgment, following on the 
 lines of his own, was to be, as it were, the filling up on 
 the part of the members of the irrevocable decision pro- 
 nounced by the head. It could not add to the internal 
 
* Peter hath Spokeri by Leo ' 
 
 39 
 
 value of the judgment pronounced by the head, but it 
 would manifest it, and impart an external solemnity and 
 persuasiveness in the eyes of those who were ensnared in 
 error. The bishops would, if faithful, connect them- 
 selves, or proclaim their connection, with their head, and 
 condemn Eutyches by their common judgment, or else 
 acquit hira if he recanted. (Letter to the Synod, June, 
 449.) At the same time S. Leo wrote his celebrated 
 letter to Flavian, containing a dogmatic exposition of the 
 mystery of the Incarnation — written to the whole Christian 
 world, defining the Faith as obligatory on all Christians. 
 Perhaps we may safely say that no more important letter 
 had been written to the Church since the volume of Holy 
 Scripture had been closed. The bishops of France ex- 
 pressed the sense of the whole Church when they said 
 to S, Leo, of that tome, ' Doctrinae post Deum vestrae i.ai^he.Conc. 
 'debet fidelis, ut constanter teneat quod credebat.' ' 
 
 But the Synod issued in the most disgraceful scenes. 
 Violence was used by Dioscorus, and the bishops were 
 compelled to sign the deposition of Flavian and Eusebius, 
 and the old Archbishop died in a few days of the injuries 
 he received. Eutyches was acquitted and restored to 
 his monastery. The Council was henceforth known by 
 the name of the Robber Synod. 
 
 S. Leo now pressed the Emperor and the Empress 
 Pulcheria to summon another Synod to undo the work 
 of the Ephesine catastrophe. The Emperor was un- 
 willing to move in the matter, but was anxious to induce 
 S. Leo to confirm the election of Anatolius to the 
 patriarchate of Constantinople. The Pope required of 
 Anatolius a profession of faith, and insisted on his not 
 neglecting to consider carefully his own letter to Flavian 
 containing his ex cathedra defmition of the whole mystery 
 
 ' ' The faithful owes it to your teaching, after God, that he holik 
 ' fast what he believed.' 
 
40 
 
 ' Peter hath spoken by Leo ' 
 
 of the Incarnation. He sent legates to teach the Emperor 
 the true faith, and says in a letter to Pulcheria, in re- 
 ference to Anatolius, ' And let him agree to my letter 
 ' which was addressed to Flavian of holy memory.' ' 
 
 Marcion now succeeded to the imperial throne, and 
 wedded Pulcheria. He at once expressed his willingness 
 to convene a Council at S. Leo's bidding. He uses the 
 word {a-ov aWevTovvTOi, ' with your authority or authorisa- 
 tion ') which S. Chrysostom uses of S. Peter when he 
 says that S. Peter might have acted on his own authority 
 in the election of S. Matthias. But the Pope did not 
 think there was any immediate hurrj' ; indeed, he seemed 
 still to have hoped that peace might be restored without 
 the paraphernalia of a General Council. The savage 
 Huns were already at their desolating work in Gaul, and 
 it seemed almost dangerous for the bishops to meet in 
 numbers. But the Emperor pressed the matter and the 
 Pope consented. 
 
 Let us pause for a moment. How clearly does all 
 this show who was the ruler of the Church.* Emperors, 
 patriarchs, and bishops recognise a primacy in the Bishop 
 of Rome, not of honour, but of rule. He is seen feeding 
 
 ' ' Non aspernetur etiam meam epistolam recensere.' (' Let him 
 'not disdain to examine closely ray letter.') Canon Bright softens 
 this down into ' he (S. Leo) added that his own letter might de- 
 ' serve consideration.' But the letter to Pulcheria proves that S. Leo 
 insisted on definite, positive consent to his letter on the part of 
 Anatolius. 
 
 - Canon Bright speaks of Leo being ' vexed by the promptitude 
 ' of the summons ' ; but there is no ground for this in the Saint's 
 letters. He had previously himself been forward to suggest the 
 Council, and there is no ground for supposing him to have been 
 hypocritical in consenting. Canon Bright's remark {History of the 
 Church, p. 399) that ' Leo, finding that Marcion had taken his own 
 ' line, professed to ascribe it to a pious zeal,' rests on no grounds and 
 is unworthy of the Professor. It was just an instance of that 
 €iri«//(€ia which evidences real greatness. 
 
' Peter JiatJi Spoken by Leo' 
 
 41 
 
 the sheep of Christ's flock, including archbishops and 
 bishops in the distant East, and not only feeding them 
 with the truths of the deposit, but ruling them with the 
 shepherd's crook in the name of the blessed Peter. 
 Ilot/xaivc TO. TrpofSard fiov was our Lord's injunction — not 
 only feed, but shepherd, guide, rule. And here was the 
 successor of Peter, the acknowledged Trot/myV of the 
 Christian Aad?, acting in avowed obedience to our Lord's 
 commission to Peter all over the Christian world. 
 
 In his letter to the Synod S. Leo is careful to explain 
 that the confession of faith on the ' Sacrament of the 
 Incarnation ' had been ' most fully and clearly ' declared Labbe,Conc. 
 in his own letter to Flavian. He tells them also that '-'^-"^-^s- 
 he shall preside by his legates, so that they may not be 
 ignorant of what he teaches as the ancient tradition, and 
 what he wishes to be done. 
 
 The Synod is assembled. The Papal Legate rises in 
 the midst and demands that the Patriarch of Alexandria 
 be degraded from the seat he had taken. He insists 
 on obedience, and Dioscorus retires to the middle. As 
 the Patriarch of Constantinople afterwards said to S. Leo, 
 ' Thou didst preside, as the head over the members, in 
 'those who held your place.' ' We are commissioned,' 
 said the legates, ' by the most holy and apostolic Bishop 
 ' of Rome, which is the head of all the churches, to forbid 
 ' Dioscorus sitting in the assembly or voting with it.' 
 
 At the end of this first session, the imperial commis- 
 sioners reminded the assembly of Leo's letter. MVe 
 ' have read it,' the bishops exclaimed. 
 
 In the next session, the question of the Eutychian 
 heresy came on. The Bishop of Sebastopol rose up and 
 said, ' The Archbishop Leo has given us a decree or norm 
 ' (rvTTos), which we have already signed.' The rest cried 
 out, ' That is what we also say ; the declaration given by 
 ' Leo suffices.' 
 
42 
 
 ' Peter JiatJi spoken by Leo * 
 
 It is evident from this that, so far as the Faith was 
 concerned, they considered that the question was already 
 settled. They had not come together to discuss that. 
 S. Leo's letter had settled it. 
 
 But it must be remembered that there was a further 
 question to be decided, and that was, the exculpation of 
 S. Cyril from the imputation of Eutychianism. Dioscorus 
 had rested his case on words of S. Cyril. Did Cyril, 
 then, teach what S. Leo had taught them as the true 
 Faith ? S. Cyril represented the Pope at the last General 
 Council, and his authority in Alexandria was immense. 
 Was Dioscorus right in quoting S. Cyril in his favour ? 
 
 Further, was it certain that the bishops' assent to S. 
 Leo's tome was an intelligent act ? There were bishops, 
 we know, who could not write. It was, therefore, a matter 
 of moment that they should not merely, on the score of 
 authority, acquiesce in S. Leo's teaching, true as they felt 
 it must be. Else how would they teach others ? Besides, 
 a bishop has an office to perform towards the Faith, from 
 which, if he is called to a Council, he cannot escape. 
 He has a function of 'judgment.' Bishops are 'con- 
 ' judices ' with their infallible head. And although the 
 ex cathedra judgment of the head is secure of divine 
 assistance, the Episcopate has a function and duty of 
 approbation, when called upon by the Head of the 
 Church, which is not that of a blind instrument, but of 
 an intelligent being. 
 
 Moreover, we are expressly told that there were 
 expressions in S. Leo's letter which were difficult of un- 
 derstanding to some ; so that, though they could sign 
 for themselves, they could not explain them to others. 
 Again, we also gather from the Acts that there were 
 difficulties arising from linguistic differences. Nothing, 
 therefore, could be more natural than that an intelligent 
 assent should be secured on the part of bishops who had 
 
' Peter hath Spoken by Leo ' 
 
 43 
 
 received, through their consecration, the office of judge, 
 in subordination to their infallible head. 
 
 The bishops then, at this session, avowed their 
 willingness to abide simply by S. Leo's declaration as 
 to the ' Sacrament,' or mystery, of the Incarnation. But 
 this did not satisfy the imperial commissioners. They 
 insisted upon it that the patriarchs of each diocese (or 
 larger district) should make sure that their bishops under- 
 stood what they had signed, and were about to sign, so 
 that there might be no kind of doubt about the Faith ; 
 so that no bishop would be able afterwards to say that 
 he signed as at the Robber Synod, where Dioscorus had 
 induced them to subscribe to a blank paper. 
 
 The Bishop of Sardis even then suggested that Leo's 
 letter was sufficient, and that there was no time, as there 
 was no need, to draw up any formula. 
 
 But it was obvious that S. Leo's long letter would not 
 exactly serve the purpose of a short definition, and that 
 it was important to say to the world, that S. Leo's teaching 
 was in e.xact accord with the teaching of Niciea, although 
 an expansion of it, and that S. Cyril had not taught as 
 Dioscorus had asserted. 
 
 Accordingly, the imperial commissioners pleaded 
 that they should do something more than merely exclaim 
 that they were satisfied with S. Leo's Tome. 
 
 They, therefore, read the symbol of Nicaea, and the 
 bishops exclaimed, ' It is what Cyril taught, and what the 
 ' Pope Leo believes.' They then read the Creed of Con- 
 stantinople, and S. Cyril's letters, on which Dioscorus 
 had relied, and then, Leo's letter to Flavian — and the 
 Church resounded with the cries, ' Peter hath spoken by 
 'Leo: this is what Cyril taught.' 
 
 Thus Leo occupied to them the place of Peter, and 
 S. Cyril's memory was cleared from the imputation of 
 
44 
 
 ' Peter hath spoken by Leo ' 
 
 Eutychian teaching, and Eutyches and Dioscorus were 
 convicted of unsoundness in the Faith. 
 
 The imperial commissioners asked the question, 
 ' Has anyone any doubts remaining ? ' and were greeted 
 with the cry, ' No one ! ' 
 
 But although no bishops would oivn to a doui>t, there 
 were at any rate some, from Illyria and Palestine, who 
 had difficulties. They wished to understand a little more, 
 and their wish was acceded to. It was settled that Anatolius 
 should entertain the bishops, at his own house, and that he 
 should choose out, from amongst those that had signed, 
 some who were best able to ' instruct ' those who had 
 difficulties in the matter from whatever cause. ' It was 
 ' seemly,' they said, 'to persuade all who were perplexed.' 
 Here was no question of revising the Pope's declaration 
 
 ' Hist. oftVe of faith ; it was a case of 'instruction' and 'persuasion.' 
 
 ^o'^7"and'4w.' Cauon Bright's account of S. Leo's 'judgment as to doc- 
 ' trine,' that it was ' first reviewed and then confirmed as 
 ' by a superior court,' finds no countenance in the actual 
 History of the Council. Before a document is signed, it 
 must be read and the terms understood ; and a Papal 
 decision acquires an external solemnity, and a persua- 
 siveness and facility of conviction, from the adherence of 
 the bishops. Its position is strengthened and confirmed 
 to the world at large. But it is clear that the Acts of 
 the Council negative any notion of confirmation by 
 the Council as that of a superior. Their adherence 
 strengthened the cause of the Faith, and proclaimed to 
 the world at large that they, in the exercise of a peculiar 
 prerogative, as consecrated with the unction of the Holy 
 Ghost, led the way in confessing the Faith which Peter 
 had declared by Leo. They do not say that the question 
 of faith had remained undecided until they, by their con - 
 ciliar action, had confirmed it. They nowhere act as a 
 superior court, or sit in judgment on S. Leo's Tome. They 
 
' Peter hath Spoken by Leo ' 45 
 
 seek to understand it, and to give it an intelligent adhe- 
 sion, and to see its harmony with Scripture and tradition. 
 But they act all along, as Anatolius ' afterwards described 
 their conduct, as members in presence of their head. 
 
 And now the imperial commissioners have with- 
 drawn, and the church is filled with none but ecclesi- 
 astics. The case of Dioscorus has to be decided. The 
 legates assume the presidency, and direct Eusebius of 
 Dorylaeum, the veteran champion of the Faith, against 
 Nestorius first, and now against Eutyches, to read his 
 case against Dioscorus. Then the legates issued their 
 solemn sentence. Let us remember that the Fathers are 
 not asked first to give their votes; and that the accused man 
 is no less a personage than the Patriarch of Alexandria. 
 The sentence ran thus: ' For these reasons, Leo, the most 
 ' holy Archbishop of Rome, declares by us, and by the 
 ' most holy Synod here present, and in union with the 
 ' blessed Apostle Peter ' : The legates are his represen- 
 tatives, the Holy Synod his instrument of solemn publi- 
 cation, and the Petrine prerogative of his See is the source 
 of his authority. It continues: — (Peter) 'who is the 
 ' rock and support of the Catholic Church and the found- 
 ' ation of the orthodox faith, that Dioscorus is stripped of 
 ' his archbishopric, and of all ecclesiastical dignity. After 
 ' that the most holy and great Synod will decide in re- 
 ' gard to the before-mentioned Dioscorus what shall seem 
 ' conformable to the canons.' 
 
 And echo answers 'Yes.' The Synod echoed the 
 sentence of the Pope and obediently proceeded to sub- 
 scribe the sentence of deposition. 
 
 And now the commissioners reappear on the scene 
 and ask what has been decided. Paschasinus, the legate, 
 replies that the Holy Synod preserves intact the rule of 
 faith of the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Fathers ; and that 
 ' Archbishop of Constantinople. 
 
46 
 
 ' Peter hath spoken by Leo ' 
 
 it recognises the explanation of this symbol furnished by 
 Cyril at Ephesus. But this was not all. This would not 
 meet the emergency, which demanded an application, by 
 way of expansion, to the case of Eutyches and Dioscorus. 
 This had been supplied by the teaching of the Tome of 
 Leo. Accordingly the legate went on to say that the 
 writings of the most holy Archbishop of all the Churches, 
 Leo, expounded the contents of the true faith. ' In like 
 ' manner the Holy Synod holds this Faith, follows this, and 
 ' can neither add to it nor diminish from it.' A few bishops 
 who had had difficulties declared that these had been 
 cleared up, and that they ' believed with Leo.' 
 
 It is clear, then, from the whole history so far, that the 
 Tome of S. Leo was not subjected to an examination of 
 revision. Before this examination, on which Canon 
 Bright, and indeed all Galileans and Anglicans have been 
 wont to rely, it had al)-eady been accepted by the Council, 
 and therefore, on all conceivable principles, it was beyond 
 See Jung- the rcach of revision. It was accepted as the foundation 
 Htrto'r. of the Council's exposition of faith, by a morally unani- 
 dSs.'Io, mous consent of the Fathers. It was received as the 
 rule of faith by universal acclamation, before the subscrip- 
 tion and exposition of their reasons on the part of some 
 of the Fathers. It was not, therefore, received in that 4th 
 session for purposes of confirmation or revision, but it 
 was proposed to them for their signature. It was not, 
 as I have remarked above, S. Leo's aim to emphasize his 
 own authority. His desire was to secure the acceptance 
 of the faith he expounded, as in accordance with the 
 ancient tradition. He acted as a true guardian of the 
 deposit, and secured his end. He was, as a matter of 
 fact, recognised throughout the proceedings as the ruler 
 of the Universal Church. 
 
 And when the Fathers, in the 5th session, came to 
 put forth their own profession, whilst they declare their 
 
* Peter hath Spoken by Leo ' 
 
 47 
 
 adhesion to the synodal letters of S. Cyril to Nestorius 
 and to the Orientals as containing a refutation of 
 Nestorianism (a point which needed to be laboured 
 because of the endeavours of Dioscorus to shelter him- 
 self under the name of Cyril), they join to them ' for the 
 ' confirmation of the orthodox dogma, the letter of the 
 ' most holy Archbishop Leo of Rome written to Flavian 
 ' for the extirpation of the errors of Eutyches.' They had 
 been called together to condemn Eutyches, and they do 
 it by expressing first their adhesion to the Papal exposition 
 of the mystery of the Incarnation; but they add, 'for this 
 ' letter coincided with the doctrine of S. Peter, and is a 
 ' pillar against all heretics.' Strange, indeed, that Canon 
 Bright should be able to write after all this, that ' Then 
 ' did the council sit in judgment on the Tome, and stamp 
 ' it, after due examination, with the approval of a superior 
 'authority,' when the Council is perpetually proclaiming 
 itself as simply bowing to the authority of S. Peter, 
 speaking through Leo, and giving in its adhesion to the 
 teaching, which in their 4th session they had described 
 as an exposition of the true faith. The Monophysites 
 were declaiming against the new exposition of the Tome 
 that it offended against the ancient faith; the Imperial 
 party feared that, without some declaration as to its actual 
 conformity with the doctrine of the previous Councils, it 
 would be hard to rebut the assertion of heretics, that it 
 contravened S. Cyril's teaching, as well as the Nicene 
 Faith : a certain number of bishops, however few, hardly 
 understood the mode of reconciling the new application 
 with the older statements. These were the points that 
 the Council settled. The Tome of Leo, which they 
 accepted from him as having been 'set over all {ttuo-i Anatoiius' 
 K-a^to-ra/zevos) as the interpreter of the voice of Peter,' was Leo."'" 
 in accordance with the faith of Niccea, and was not a 
 condemnation of Cyril's teaching. These were the points 
 
48 
 
 ' Peter hath spoken by Leo ' 
 
 ■which they, the proper judges, along with their infaUible 
 head, were commissioned and ready to proclaim to the 
 Christian world. They never lose sight of S. Leo's 
 special connection with S. Peter, and they never comport 
 themselves as a superior authority to his, whom they 
 afterwards call their head. 
 
 In the solemn session that succeeded, graced by the 
 presence of the Emperor Marcian and the Empress 
 Pulcheria, the points are still the same. The Emperor 
 had addressed an allocution to the Council in which he 
 said, ' God has given the Synod a combatant against all 
 ' errors, in the person of the Bishop of Rome, who, like 
 ' Peter, always so zealous, desired to conduct all the world 
 ' to God.' And now in his speech he says that the very 
 purpose for which he had convoked the Synod was that, 
 ' for the future, no one might dare to put forth concerning 
 ' the birth of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, any 
 ' other opinion than that which was taught by the Apostles, 
 'defined by the 3 1 8 holy Fathers, and witnessed to in the 
 ' letter written by the holy Pope Leo.' 
 
 Clearly they did not meet to ' review and confirm ' 
 the Tome of S. Leo, any more than to ' confirm ' the 
 Nicene Faith, but to provide that its teaching should be 
 proclaimed as the norm of the Faith. And the salient 
 feature of the whole history of the Council, in its ante- 
 cedents and issues, is the fulfilment of our Lord's 
 promise to S. Peter, 'I have prayed for thee, that thy 
 faith fail not ; and do thou, in thy turn, strengthen thy 
 brethren.' Peter spoke by Leo, and Leo shepherded the 
 flock of Christ. Peter failed in the Passion; but (i) he 
 was not then Pope, and (2) he did not then pronounce 
 an ex cathedra judgment. After Pentecost he was, as S. 
 Chrysostom says, airto? iravToiv, the responsible originator 
 of all. And S. Leo, his successor, closed the four great 
 decisions on the mystery of the Incarnation, and gave to 
 
' Peter hath Spoken by Leo ' 
 
 49 
 
 the Church that luminous exposition of the Faith, which 
 lias been called ' a clear, forcible, intelligible textbook on Bright's 
 ' both aspects of the Incarnation mystery . . . indeed one c^i'rch/'^ 
 of the most precious documents in Christian literature.' chapter."' 
 So far, then, the history of the Council discloses that 
 the principle of the Church's unity consisted, not in so 
 many autonomous provinces, who agreed in their symbol 
 of faith, but in a certain hierarchical order amongst the 
 bishops, welding them together as one body. Constanti- 
 nople, Alexandria, and Antioch, beyond all question, 
 accepted a position of subordination to the Bishop of 
 Rome. A decree not yet signed by the Bishop of Rome 
 was not considered to have reached its final stage. It 
 was not yet a decree of the one body, welded together 
 with the defined correlation of its several parts, cul- 
 minating in the Bishop of Rome, who, it will be admitted 
 universally, held at least a primacy of honour. Nicsea, 
 Constantinople, Ephesus had brought out the reality of 
 his position more and more clearly ; but it was reserved 
 for Chalcedon to emphasize this headship more clearly 
 still. 
 
 And no thought expresses itself more frequently in 
 the whole history of the Council than the peculiar re- 
 lationship in which the Bishop of Rome stood to the 
 Apostle Peter. All bishops — nay, in a sense all the laity, 
 who held the true faith — could be in a manner christened 
 with the name of Peter. When a bishop named Peter, 
 in the Council, passed over to the orthodox side, they 
 exclaimed, ' Peter has gone to Peter.' S. Augustine, in 
 commenting on our Lord's words to Peter concerning 
 his faith failing not, applies them to every Christian. 
 But just as the Presbyterian is wrong in not seeing the 
 peculiar sense in which it is applied to a bishop— as, for 
 instance, in S. Chrysostom's opening passage on the 
 priesthood — so it is a similar mistake to ignore the 
 
 E 
 
50 ' Peicr hath Spoken by Leo ' 
 
 peculiar and supereminent sense in which the name of 
 Peter is apphed to the 'holy Archbishop of Rome.' 
 
 But if S. Leo's position was due to this relation to 
 Peter, that position is evidently part of the essential and 
 Divine constitution of the Church. 
 
TJic Cano7i Invalidated 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE CANON INVALIDATED. 
 
 The salient feature of Oriental ecclesiastical life was, 
 alas ! ambition. ' New Rome,' in the days of Constantine, 
 had been the enthusiasm of the East. The Imperial 
 residence had made it a real necessity that the ecclesias- 
 tical machinery for the East should have its spring in 
 the new centre of the civil order. The local synod of 
 Constantinople, where bishops from distant parts were 
 constantly coming and going, necessarily assumed a 
 paramount position and became a centre of authority. 
 If only an Apostle had fixed his See on the banks of the 
 Thracian Bosphorus ! But the Apostles were guiding 
 the Church from Jerusalem above, and Constantinople 
 could never, alas ! become an Apostolic See. S. Peter 
 had settled his disciple Mark at Alexandria, had himself 
 resided at Antioch, and finally settled at Rome. Con- 
 sequently Rome, Alexandria, and Antioch had their 
 position of superiority from the beginning, which the 
 Nicene Fathers had recognised and confirmed as their 
 essential right. But a long series of encroachments had 
 placed Constantinople in a position of practical superiority 
 to Alexandria and Antioch. It was the Imperial ambition 
 that the New Rome should in all respects vie with the 
 old. But the Nicene Fathers, in their sixth canon, had 
 included it only amongst the other 'eparchies.' In the 
 2nd Council, however, a partially successful move had 
 
 £ 2 
 
52 
 
 TJie Canon Invalidated 
 
 been made, and Constantinople had been mentioned as 
 second only to Rome. But although the Papal legate 
 had seemed to recognise its new position, that third 
 canon never obtained oecumenical acceptance. It was 
 never inserted in the authorised collection of Church 
 canons. ' Rome and the West have never recognised its 
 ' contents,' said S. Leo to the Empress. ' It was never 
 ' brought to the knowledge of the Apostolic See,' he tells 
 Anatolius. It contained, in fact, a principle which had 
 never received the sanction of the Church. It desired 
 to give the Bishop of Constantinople ' an honorary pre- 
 ' cedence ' next after Rome, on the ground of its being 
 ' New Rome.' But this suggested the principle that the 
 Bishop of Rome owed his position to the greatness of the 
 city. Whereas the ecclesiastical rank of a see was due, not 
 to its civil grandeur, but to its Apostolic origin. Its title 
 to respect was from heaven, not of earth. Rome, accord- 
 ing to S. Cyprian, was the 'principal or ruling Church, 
 'whence sacerdotal unity took its rise,' because it was 
 the ' Chair of Peter.' The Fathers at Sardica had said 
 that it would be best to refer matters from the various 
 provinces 'to the head, that is to the See of Peter.' S. 
 Augustine had spoken of the foundations of the Church 
 having been laid in the ' Apostolic ' Sees, and Rome was 
 to him the Church, ' in which Peter sat, and in which now 
 ' Anastasius sits.' S. Leo, and S. Gregory the Great after 
 him, expressly stated the principle that the rank of Alex- 
 andria and Antioch were due to their association, the 
 one directly and the other indirectly, with tne Apostle 
 Peter. And these sees, thus connected witli Peter and 
 raised to the rank of second and third in the hierarchy, 
 had, as we have said, been acknowledged by the Nicene 
 Fathers, and their rank secured to them by a Nicene 
 canon. But Constantinople never rested ; and at a 
 meeting at Chalcedon after the canons had been drawn 
 
The Canon Invalidated 
 
 53 
 
 up, including one somewhat favourable to the claims of 
 Constantinople, and to the principles of the civil status 
 of a See conferring on it an ecclesiastical rank, 200 or so 
 of the Fathers drew up another canon. They did not 
 finally enact it in the full sense of the word ; for how 
 could the East act cecumenically without the West ? 
 They drew it up for acceptance by the Pope. This they 
 declare in set terms. It is really playing with words to 
 call their petition to the Pope to accept the canon mere 
 compliment. The circumstances were these : It was the 
 hour for the Patriarcli of Constantinople to strike ; Ana- 
 tolius was equal to the occasion. The circumstances 
 were extraordinarily favourable for his move. The See Hefeie 
 
 -■-.•11 ■ 1 • °" '5'^ 
 
 Papal legates were absent ; the sees most mterested m Session of 
 
 , . , . , , . chalcedon. 
 
 opposmg his schemes were either vacant or their occu- 
 pants absent or under his influence. Alexandria was 
 vacant, and Ephesus. Antioch was represented by 
 Maximus, the creature of Anatolius, as Hefeie calls him ; 
 and Juvenal, Patriarch of Jerusalem, was under special 
 obligations to Anatolius. Thrace was not there, and 
 Caesarea did not sign. 
 
 The canon, then, was drawn up, boldly asserting 
 the principle that the ' Fathers gave ' Rome her prece- 
 dence by reason of the Imperial nature of the city. The 
 legates, when the Council met for the last time, protested 
 against what had been done in their absence. They read 
 to the Assembly the sixth canon of Nicsea. They read 
 a version of it, which commenced with a sentence that 
 had no bearing on the controversy, and which was not in 
 the Greek version. It asserted that the said canon began 
 with saying, ' The Roman Church always had the primacy.' 
 No controversy arose on the subject. It was not under 
 dispute. Aetius,' perhaps, read the Greek version, and 
 
 ' Canon Bright (History of the Church, last chapter), speaks 
 of Aetius producing the genuine text of the 6th canon as a rebuff. 
 
54 
 
 TJie Canon Invalidated 
 
 no notice was taken of the difference. The question was 
 (i) as to the relative positions of Constantinople and the 
 two patriarchates of Alexandria and Antioch, not as to 
 the relation between Constantinople and Rome, and (2), 
 as to the ground on which Rome had acquired her pre- 
 eminent patriarchal position. The question of Rome's 
 primacy over the Universal Church did not enter into 
 the discussion. There is no trace, nor hint, of this being 
 in the minds of the bishops. There is much to posi- 
 tively forbid our supposing that such a different topic was 
 even distantly alluded to. The Bishop of Rome was the 
 Primate of the Universal Church, Patriarch of the West, 
 Metropolitan of a certain region round Rome, and Bishop 
 of Rome. The question mooted by the proposed canon 
 was wholly concerned with the question of patriarchal 
 honour. The Council of Nicaea had recognised the in- 
 stitution of patriarchs, though without the name, and it 
 was to this that Constantinople aspired, and to a recogni- 
 tion as second only to Rome. But in order to secure 
 this, it was necessary to lay down the principle that 
 greatness in the secular order, and not the fact of Apos- 
 tolic origin, determined ecclesiastical rank. The Council 
 of Nicfea had said nothing about this. It dealt with the 
 order of things already in vogue, and confirmed to Alex- 
 andria and Antioch the position they enjoyed as superior 
 Metropolitans, or Patriarchs as they were afterwards called, 
 to distinguish them from ordinary Metropolitans. 
 
 The Nicene Fathers merely based their confirmation 
 
 and says, 'To this rebuff the legates could make no answer.' 
 The Acts of the Council do not seem to bear out this version of the 
 scene. Mr. Gore (iV. C. Claims, p. 96) speaks of the legates' 
 text, as ' expressly disallowed by the East.' It was not discussed. 
 The Ballerini have given reasons for supposing that the Greek ver- 
 sion is an intercalation by a copyist, a view which Hefele favours. 
 Mr. Gore's note is altogether misleading. 
 
TJie Carton hivalidated 
 
 55 
 
 of the rights of Alexandria and Antioch on the analogy of 
 Roman rule. They said, in effect, Rome has set the ex- 
 ample of subordinating certain sees to certain others ; let 
 Alexandria and Antioch continue in their similar groove. 
 They gave no reason for thus adhering to the order of 
 things inaugurated by Rome. There was no call for a 
 reason. The bishops, therefore, at Chalcedon under Ana- 
 tolius' influence, simply made an unhistorical statement 
 when they asserted that the Nicene Fathers gave Rome her 
 patriarchal rights on the score of being the Imperial city. 
 The Nicene Fathers simply said that the ancient usage 
 should prevail. As to where or on what authority 
 this custom arose they were silent. If any Fathers had 
 really ' given ' her patriarchal rights to Rome, it could 
 clearly only have been at an cecumenical synod. But 
 Nicaea did not give them ; it found them already estab- 
 lished. And as to the principle of following in the wake 
 of secular greatness, the Fathers said nothing. The 
 Apostles did, indeed, choose the large cities for the scene 
 of their labours : but the sees thus founded by Apostles 
 in central positions acquired their ecclesiastical rank, not 
 because they were centrally situated, but because Apostles 
 founded them. It happened that Anatolius, Patriarch of 
 Constantinople, had sat next to Rome at the Council, 
 with the assent of the legates ; but the Patriarch of 
 Alexandria was Dioscorus, under accusation ; and as 
 for Antioch, it was not yet settled whether Maximus or 
 Domnus was the lawful bishop. 
 
 This 28th canon, therefore, had no positive tradition 
 whereon to rest. Indeed, it contradicted ancient tra- 
 dition. 
 
 But the Council never pretended that they had power 
 to enact a canon of such magnitude, or to stamp it with 
 cecumenicity, apart from Papal confirmation. The ne- 
 cessity of such confirmation was assumed on all sides. 
 
56 
 
 Tlic Canon Invalidated 
 
 Indeed, as it was, the canon was no more than an Eastern 
 decree, if that. No single Western bishop had signed it. 
 As it stood it had, therefore, no sort of claim to be oecu- 
 menical. 
 
 The bishops, before parting, composed a letter asking 
 for the Pope's confirmation of their canon. Canon 
 Bright speaks of their letter as 'carr)'ing diplomatic 
 'courtesy to an excess.' There is really no ground what- 
 ever for this statement. The terms which the bishops 
 use had been used, or at least their equivalents, in the 
 Council itself. They use a crucial word, which contains 
 nothing that can be called diplomatic courtesy, except 
 by a serious petitio principii. They tell the Pope, in 
 sending him their letter, that they had taken him as 
 their guide, in order ' to show to the sons of the Church 
 'the inheritance of the truth.' This was, as we have 
 seen, the sober literal truth. They speak of the Pope as 
 having been to them 'the interpreter of the voice of 
 ' Peter.' This the Council had expressly said when the 
 bishops exclaimed, ' Peter hath spoken by Leo.' They 
 speak of their business having been prosperously conducted 
 by God's grace, and through S. Euphemia (in whose 
 church they had met), and they feel that she 'had 
 ' transmitted its doctrinal decree as her own to her bride- 
 ' groom Christ by the hand of the Emperor and the 
 ' Empress.' To those, of course, who do not believe in 
 the active intervention of the saints in the life of the 
 Church, this will seem mere sentiment ; but then the 
 whole Church did believe in such a relationship between 
 the 'wayfarers' and those that had reached the goal. 
 Finally, they inform the Pope that they have sent to 
 him what they have done, alluding especially to their 
 canons, 'for confirmation and assent,' /3ey8atWtV re koL 
 (rxr/KaTaOecnv. 
 
 There is no 'excess of diplomatic courtesy' here. 
 
Tlie Canon Invalidated 
 
 57 
 
 The word they use when they ask for the Papal ' confiriua 
 ' tion '— /3€y8aiu)crtj' — is the very word used by the Emperor 
 Marcian afterwards with reference to the same necessity. 
 And the Emperor was not likely to be guilty of an excess 
 of ' diplomatic courtesy.' Further, Anatolius himself 
 writes to the Pope, and, after stating that ' the Apostolic 
 ' throne had from early times cared for the throne of 
 ' Constantinople and had ungrudgingly imparted of its 
 ' own ' (sober, crucial, most memorable expressions, coming 
 from the Patriarch of Constantinople), he proceeds to say 
 that ' the Synod and himself had transmitted that decree ' 
 (alluding to the 28th canon) 'to him for his approval 
 ' and confirmation ' (rrwatVea-t? Kat ^SeySatoriys), and he 
 adjures the Pope to give this, for 'the Apostolic throne was 
 ' the father of that of Constantinople i" 
 
 The Emperor joins in with the same entreaty. 
 
 The situation is this: Emperor, Patriarch, and Bishops 
 are, as it were, on their knees before the Pope, in entreaty 
 that he would confirm the canon which placed Constanti- 
 nople above Alexandria and Antioch, and second only 
 to Rome in patriarchal honour, and that because of its 
 secular splendour as the Imperial centre. 
 
 No need to say that they believed Leo to be Primate 
 of the Universal Church. No thought crossed their 
 minds, that even the entire East could be an autonomous 
 portion of the universal Church. No other conception 
 of the unity of the Church than as cemented by its 
 culminating point, the successor and representative of the 
 blessed Apostle Peter. No need for Leo to indulge in 
 platitudes about his own authority, thus amply recognised 
 and ungrudgingly accepted. 
 
 But the canon represented a grievous sin, which was 
 destined to affect the future peace of the Church. 
 
 Imperial influence and secular ambition were the 
 explanation of their entreaties. 
 
58 
 
 The Canon bivalidated 
 
 Without obtruding the fact of his authority, Leo 
 acted upon it. 
 
 He authoritatively blotted out the canon from the 
 decrees of the Church. 
 
 From his various letters, we can gather the following 
 motives which induced him to exercise his 'Petrine 
 'prerogative,' and annul the canon. 
 
 1. There was no sufficient reason for putting Con- 
 stantinople above Alexandria and Antioch. Secular 
 majesty was no measure of hierarchical superiority. 
 
 2. The canon infringed upon the rights of the others, 
 and was opposed to the Xicene canons, of which he was 
 bound to be the faithful guardian. 
 
 3. The decree of a.d. 381 (the 3rd canon of Con- 
 stantinople) was not oecumenical. It was unknown to 
 the West. It had never been confirmed by the Holy 
 See. 
 
 4. The canon was due to ambition on the part of 
 Anatolius, and was signed by some under undue pressure. 
 
 5. The present distresses of Alexandria and Antioch 
 were no reason for diminishing their rights, of which the 
 Pope was the official guardian. 
 
 Accordingly S. Leo -writes to the Emperor, and refuses 
 his assent. He says of Anatolius that, whilst the Imperial 
 city is not to be lightly esteemed, it cannot be made into 
 an Apostolic See. 
 
 He writes to the Empress Pulcheria, and tells her 
 that the lapse of years since the decree of ' some bishops ' 
 (at the Council of Constantinople) has not validated that 
 canon. And as for this resolution of the Bishops (the 
 28th canon), 'which is contran- to the Nicene decree, 
 ' in union with the piety of your faith, I declare it to be 
 ' invalid, and I annul it by the authority of the holy 
 'Apostle Peter.' 
 
 To the Patriarch of Constantinople, Anatolius, he 
 
TJic Canon Invalidated 
 
 59 
 
 writes that ' he should be free from pride, which was the 
 'cause of the first sin.' He tells him that the canon is in 
 violation of the Nicene decrees, so that he cannot give 
 it the seal of his consent ; that the 3rd canon of Con- 
 stantinople had never been sent to the Pope, and had 
 never been valid from the beginning. And ' the See of 
 ' Alexandria cannot be deprived of the dignity which it 
 ' received on account of Mark, the disciple of Peter, 
 ' notwithstanding the apostasy of Dioscorus ; nor Antioch, 
 ' where Peter preached, and where the name of Christian 
 ' first arose, be lowered from its rank as third.' 
 
 Now let us pause for a moment to apply the principles 
 that emerge from this history to the situation in England in 
 the sixteenth century. They are drawing up new canons. 
 Convocation has to accept a new statement concerning 
 the relation of Canterbury to Rome. It makes a decla- 
 ration of its own autonomy. Where is the Papal con- 
 firmation ? Its very purport is to do away with Papal 
 confirmation. It sunders its existing ties with its superior 
 Metropolitan or Patriarch, and thus contravenes the 
 Nicene canon. It proclaims that such relations are no 
 essential feature of the Divine institution. But here 
 even Constantinople does not venture to act in inde- 
 pendence of Rome. The entire East does not venture 
 to proclaim its own autonomy. Did the East discover 
 fresh truths as to the form of unity centuries afterwards ? 
 That would be a theory of development indeed. Here, 
 at any rate, within the period of the first four CEcumenical 
 Councils the unity of the Church is conceived of as 
 involving a relationship to the Apostolic See connected 
 with the name of Peter — pointing, in fact, to the Gospels, 
 implying its own Divine institution. The history of the 
 whole Council contains within itself the condemnation 
 of the canon itself. Certainly no precedency due to a 
 secular cause, nothing short of a sense that the relation- 
 
6o Tlie Canoji Invalidated 
 
 ship of all parts of the Church to the Holy See is that of 
 members to a head, and that this is the essential form of 
 her unity, can explain the history of the fourth General 
 Council. The Synod of Chalcedon, the Emperor Marcian, 
 and the Patriarch of Constantinople, each and all of 
 them dealt with Leo's confirmation as necessar)- to the 
 validity of the canon. 
 
 What Constantinople did was to continue its encroach- 
 ments. It never laid its ambition aside. It had been 
 the mother or nurse of all the heresies concerning the 
 holy Incarnation ; and from never conquering its besetting 
 sin of ambition, it ended in tearing itself away from the 
 Church and passing into a schism. It lost its vitality, 
 and became, as is ever the case with religious communions 
 when severed from the Holy See, Erastian to the ven- core. 
 
 But what it did 7iot do in the days of Chalcedon was 
 to deny in terms the authority of the Holy See. 
 
 Anatolius wrote to Leo to say that he yielded. In 
 doing so he acknowledged that the authority of Leo 
 was necessar}' for the validity ' of such things.' Nothing 
 more transpired concerning the canon. No further 
 appeal was made to it at that time, and it was omitted 
 from the authorised collection of canons even in the 
 East. When, in 12 15, Constantinople was at length 
 allowed to take precedence of Alexandria, it was not on 
 the score of this canon. It was for the convenience of 
 the Church that it should eventually take rank after 
 Rome. But the principle enunciated in the 28th canon 
 was censured by its repudiation. This repudiation gave 
 rise to the idea in the East that Leo had refused to con- 
 firm the definition of the Faith drawn up at Chalcedon. 
 Accordingly the Emperor wrote again to Leo to ask him 
 to signify his confirmation of that, which Leo did with 
 an express limitation to the matter of faith, to the ex- 
 clusion of the canon. 
 
TJic Cano7i Invalidated 
 
 6i 
 
 We are now in a position to consider how far we can 
 depend on the summary of the fourth Council given in 
 Canon Bright's ' History of the Church.' 
 
 Speaking of Leo he says : ' His judgments, whether as 
 ' to an individual or as to a doctrine, were first reviewed 
 ' and then confirmed.' We have seen in a previous 
 chapter that he sent his Tome to be their guide, and not 
 to be discussed except with a view to understanding it 
 and receiving it with an intelligent adhesion. 
 
 ' His version of the Nicene Canons was rejected as 
 ' corrupt.' We have seen that the legate's version was 
 accurate for the purpose in hand, and that its correctness 
 was not discussed. 
 
 ' A canon which he could not but dislike was enacted 
 ' in spite of his legate's protest, and enforced throughout 
 ' the East in spite of his own.' We have seen that the 
 canon was only enacted in the sense of being drawn up 
 for Leo's adjudication, and was dropped by Anatolius 
 and the Emperor, though the ambitious projects expressed 
 in it were secretly continued. 
 
 'And he himself was content to denounce it, not on 
 ' the ground of " S. Peter's prerogatives," but simply in the 
 ' name of the Council of Nicsea.' We have seen that the 
 negative here and the word ' simply ' are not justified by 
 the facts of the case. As the authoritative guardian of 
 the Nicene Canons, being the successor of S. Peter, he 
 insisted on their observance, and rejected a dangerous 
 innovation. 
 
 In fact, the whole circumstances do but illustrate S. 
 Leo's obedience to our Lord's precept to S. Peter, ' Feed 
 ' {i.e. govern) My sheep.' Leo governed the flock, lead- 
 ing them into the pastures of heavenly doctrine ; and, if 
 they would but have listened to his warning words, the 
 schism that eventually killed out the life of the East 
 might have been avoided. A Photius, perchance, would 
 
62 
 
 The Canon Invalidated 
 
 have been impossible, and perhaps a Luther would 
 never have arisen. And (who knows ?) a Tudor tyrant 
 might never have wrested from the Church the 'island of 
 ' Saints.' 
 
 There is one argument adduced by Mr. Gore in the 
 second edition of his ' Roman Catholic Claims ' (p. 98) 
 which I must not omit to notice. By way of showmg 
 that the 28th canon had some authority, he refers to the 
 3rd canon of the Council of Constantinople, to which 
 he says, quoting from Canon Bright, it referred back. 
 We have seen that the said 3rd canon did not acquire 
 oecumenical acceptance. He then quotes a sentence 
 from Dr. Salmon, who adduces as a proof of the Church's 
 acceptance of the 28th canon, the following fact : 'The 
 'Quinisext Council, 681, confirmed all the Chalcedon 
 ' canons without exception.' No doubt it did. But can 
 any student of history attach the smallest value to what 
 the Quinisext Council did ? Here is a succinct history 
 of that Council given in Harper's ' Peace through the 
 ' Truth,' vol. ii. : — 
 
 ' Ten years after the close of the sixth Oecumenical 
 ' Council (or the third of Constantinople, convened in 
 ' that city in a.d. 681, for the condemnation of the Mono- 
 ' thelite heresy), this assemblage of bishops was ordered 
 ' by the Emperor, Justinian H., and held its sittings in 
 ' Trullo — a hall, so called, of the Imperial palace. It is 
 ' for this reason sometimes called the Council in Trullo ; 
 ' sometimes it goes by the name of the Quini-sext, because 
 ' it was regarded by the Greeks as a sort of supplement to 
 ' the fifth and sixth CEcumenical Councils. These latter 
 ' had issued no disciplinary canons; and the Greek bishops 
 ' were summoned professedly to supply this omission. 
 
 ' For several reasons its Acts displeased the Supreme 
 ' Pontiff, and accordingly nothing would induce him to 
 ' accept or confirm them. In the first place, " the Canons 
 
1 lie Canon Invalidated 
 
 63 
 
 ' " of the Apostles," as the)' were called, had been declared 
 'apocryphal by the Western Church ; yet they were, in 
 ' its Acts, pronounced to be authentic and obligatory. 
 'And this imp?-iinatur not only embraced the first fifty 
 ' canons, but extended to thirty-five which follow in the 
 'Greek collection. Among these latter, however, were 
 ' two which taught a heresy already of long time con- 
 ' demned. In the second place, the ancient disciplinary 
 'canons concerning the celibacy of the clergy were 
 ' annulled, and a most scandalous laxity encouraged by 
 ' its decrees. In the third place, those wily Greeks had 
 ' endeavoured to gain their point about the See of Con- 
 ' stantinople, by smuggling into their Acts that same canon 
 ' which they had managed, on previous occasions, to get 
 ' inserted among the decrees of general Councils, without, 
 ' however, being ever able to obtain its confirmation from 
 ' the Pope. Fourthly, the Council had not been convened 
 ' by the Pope, but by the Emperor (alone). 
 
 'Justinian knew full well how essential it was to 
 ' their validity that these Acts should be confirmed by 
 ' the Vicar of Christ. He accordingly sent a copy of them 
 ' to Rome, and demanded that Sergius should afifix his 
 ' signature. The Pope would neither receive them nor 
 ' allow them to be read in his presence, declaring that he 
 ' would rather suffer death than confirm such errors. The 
 ' Emperor, on receiving information of the Pontiffs firm- 
 ' ness, or — as he and his courtiers would have doubtless 
 ' termed it — obstinacy, sent his first equerry to Rome with 
 ' orders to seize the person of the Holy Father, and to 
 ' bring him by force to Constantinople. It was easier 
 ' said than done. For the armies of the West heard of 
 ' the proceeding ; and as they were not inclined to part 
 ' with their Pope so easily, they concentred on Rome. 
 'The unfortunate Zacharias, the aforesaid equerry, be- 
 'came alarmed for his life, and saved the latter at the 
 
64 
 
 The Canon Invalidated 
 
 ' expense of his official dignity, by seeking a safe asylum 
 ' under the Pope's bed. Sergius persuaded the excited 
 ' multitude — for the populace en masse, some armed, others 
 ' unarmed, had surrounded the Pontifical Palace as a body- 
 ' guard of volunteers — to spare the life of the poor abject 
 ' wretch ; so they contented themselves with driving this 
 ' tool of a lawless Emperor out of the gates of Rome, 
 'amid a perfect storm of groans and execrations.' 
 
 One more unsuccessful attempt was made to get the 
 Trullan Canons confirmed by John VII. 
 
 It is not true, as Fleury asserted, that the Papal 
 legates were ever present at the conciliabulum in Trullo. 
 
 Mr. Gore and Dr. Salmon do not, therefore, gain 
 anything by their appeal to this Council. It only shows 
 the conviction, on all sides, that the Papal confirmation 
 was necessary for the validity of an oecumenical canon, and 
 that they could not obtain it for the canons in question. 
 
 And yet is there anything on which the High Church- 
 man in the Establishment rests his case more confidently, 
 than the idea that the primacy of Rome was due to the 
 Imperial greatness of the city, and not to its relationship to 
 S. Peter? And is there any passage in history on which 
 he more confidently depends for proof of this contention, 
 than on the 28th canon of the Council of Chalcedon ? 
 
 We have shown that it did not embody the mind of 
 the Church. 
 
Liberius, the Co7ifessor 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 LIBERIUS, THE CONFESSOR. 
 
 To Peter, then, our Lord entrusted His flock to be fed 
 and ruled by him, and his successors after him {rol% ixct 
 Ikm'ov). And our Lord prayed for him that his faith 
 might not fail. This was to be the law of the Church — 
 Satan sifting the rulers of the Church, as wheat, and our 
 Lord praying for Peter. Peter, in his successors, was 
 ever sure of the Divine assistance in his official guardian- 
 ship of the flock of Christ. Peter was, as the Council of 
 Ephesus called him, the rock of the Church, and, as the 
 same Council owned, he ' lives and presides ' in his See. 
 
 But did not Peter, in the 4th century, fail in the person 
 of Liberius ? The author of the ' Roman Question ' says 
 the Bishop of Rome simply and altogether failed at a 
 ' great crisis.' He ignores altogether the part that Pope 
 Julius played in the same century, in defending S. Atha- 
 nasius against the Eusebian heretics. He imagines that 
 ' Athanasius contra Mundum ' means Athanasius, without 
 even the See of S. Peter (p. 35). Whereas Athanasius 
 triumphed, standing on the ' rock.' He considers that 
 Liberius 'actually signed an Arian or semi-Arian creed,' 
 in such a way as to forfeit any claim on the ]xart of Rome 
 to have guided the Church through her difficulties in 
 dealing with the mystery of the Incarnation. 
 
 Dr. Pusey held the same. Speaking of Liberius he 
 tells us that ' Fortunatian, Bishop of Aquileia (who had 
 
 F 
 
66 
 
 Lib CI' ins, the Confessor 
 
 ' lapsed into Arianism) seduced him and constrained him 
 ' to subscription of heresy.' The quotation is from a 
 writing of S. Jerome. It is curious that Dr. Pusey should 
 have quoted only half of this sentence ; for the other 
 half shows that the writer (who was probably not S. 
 Jerome at all) was certainly mistaken in his facts. And 
 the cause given for Fortunatian's presence is a well-nigh 
 impossible one. But Dr. Pusey accepts the whole of 
 the disputed letters of S. Hilary, and so makes out a 
 dismal tale indeed. ' The fall was miserably complete. 
 ' Such a fall could not be a half-fall.' One does not quite 
 see why. Certainly Dr. Pusey goes the entire length of 
 supposing that Liberius entered into communion with 
 the Arians, repudiated S. Athanasius, and wrote piteous 
 letters to the Emperor entreating him to restore him to 
 Rome. (Pusey's ' Hist, of the Councils,' p. 170.) 
 
 Canon Bright rises to his full powers in his terse, 
 graphic description of the situation. He accepts the 
 whole programme, with, however, more caution as to 
 V what creed it was which Liberius signed. He too, 
 trusting to S. Jerome's supposed narrative, attributes 
 Liberius' fall to Fortunatian, and winds up with a sen- 
 tence which so impressed itself on my memory that after 
 an interval of twenty-nine years I was able to turn to the 
 Hist, of the very place on the page in which it occurs. 'Thus (he 
 ^hurch, p. gays), in the latter part of 357, the Roman See lost its 
 purity of faith.' 
 
 Mr. Gore, the Principal of Pusey House, following in 
 the steps of these teachers, though admitting the vindica- 
 tion of the Faith, on the part of the See of Rome, in that 
 century, adopts the same estimate of Liberius' fall, and 
 R.c. says : ' We contend that if anything in the world can be 
 ^laims, p. , certain ' (very untheological language), ' it is certain that 
 ' S. Athanasius, had he had any idea of the Bishop of 
 ' Rome being in a unique sense the guardian of the faith, 
 
Liberins, the Confessor 67 
 
 ' much more any notion of his infallibility, must have 
 ' adopted another tone in regard to his (Liberius') fall. 
 ' He must have quivered at the awful shock of finding 
 ' himself deserted by the " Holy Father " as the central 
 ' dogma of the faith.' 
 
 Now, the case of Liberius is one of those points in 
 history that have received a great deal of light during the 
 last few years. His entire history may be compared to 
 one portion of it, which meets with its proper fate in 
 Canon Bright's writings, of which I desire to speak with 
 the deepest respect. 
 
 The most serious accusations against Pope Liberius 
 are founded on certain passages in S. Hilary, especially 
 what is called his Sixth Fragment. If that fragment were 
 genuine, as Dr. Pusey assumed it to be, and also Mr. 
 Gore, in the original draft of his book on ' Roman Catholic 
 ' Claims ' (p. 45, note), there would certainly be a strong 
 prima facie case against the infallibility of the Holy See. 
 Even then, Liberius' case would not amount to an actual 
 contradiction of the Vatican decree ; but it would come 
 very near to it. 
 
 But the genuineness of these fragments of S. Hilary, 
 containing the imaginary letters of Liberius, is never likely 
 to recover from the blows that have been dealt it by 
 Hefele. 
 
 In i860. Canon Bright introduces into his text the 
 anathemas on Liberius from S. Hilary's Sixth Fragment, 
 as well as a portion of his letter from another fragment. 
 In a note he says, ' Baronius thinks these expressions 
 ' spurious, the invention of some pseudo- Hilary.' And 
 that is all. But in 1873, though he still relies on Frag- 
 ment "VI., he speaks of the authority of these fragments 
 havmg been doubted by others, ' though,' he says, ' most 
 ' writers think them genuine.' Here, then, the opening 
 for considering them spurious is somewhat wider. But 
 
 F 2 
 
68 
 
 Liber his, the Confessor 
 
 in 1881, he says of Liberius' letters, 'Pro Deifico ' (in 
 Hilary, Fragment VI.), and 'Studens paci' (in Fragment 
 V.) 'Both are probalily forgeries.' And he thinks that 
 the 'signing 'in Hist. Ari. 41 ' refers not to any doctrinal 
 formula, but to a document condemning or renouncing 
 Athanasius.' 
 
 So that we may consider that one of the most damaging 
 witnesses against Liberius has disappeared. 
 
 I propose, however, to show that altogether the fall 
 of Liberius cannot be claimed as an established fad ; that 
 if he signed anything, it could not have been anything 
 that compromised the inerrancy of the Holy See ; and 
 that, as a matter of fact, it is ' not proved ' that he signed 
 anything. More than this I do not attempt to show, and 
 this amounts only to showing that the ' fall ' of Liberius 
 is ' not proven.' 
 
 Now it is certain that the whole contemporary world 
 in which Liberius lived, regarded him as a man of ex- 
 traordinary- nobility of character, and a most zealous 
 champion of orthodoxy. There is not a varying note in 
 contemporary literature, not a single Father, not a single 
 historian, but speaks of Liberius — if he speaks of him at 
 all — as one of the most illustrious Pontiffs that ever occu- 
 pied the Holy See. His confessorship up to the time of 
 his exile, the vigour with which, according to S. Athana- 
 sius, he opposed Arianism, and stood by the Saint him- 
 self, the orthodoxy with which he ruled the Church after 
 his exile, the pride which the Roman Church took in 
 their illustrious ruler, both before, and during, and after 
 his exile, are all established by orthodox contemporary 
 opinion. And all this forms a much greater difficulty than 
 is to be found in S. Athanasius' supposed attitude of ten- 
 derness towards Liberius' supposed lapse. The difficulty 
 that is raised by those facts is how, on any known prin- 
 ciple of interpretation, to reconcile this unvarying esteem 
 
Liber ins, (he Confessor 
 
 69 
 
 for Liberius by the whole orthodox world with the notion of 
 any complicity with heresy. How are we to account for 
 Theodoret's estimate of him, containing not a word about 
 this supposed fall ? What are we to say of S. Ambrose's 
 praise of Liberius, when writing to his sister? The diffi- 
 culty has to be met, that in so many competent authorities jungmar 
 there is an utter silence about this fall, not so much as a Liiie^'"' 
 difference of opinion on the matter, no consciousness of p- 
 anything to the discredit of this illustrious Pontiff and 
 Martyr, nothing to be cleared up, nothing to be excused. I 
 put out of the question Liberius' supposed letters in the 
 ' Fragments ' of S. Hilary, since Bishop Hefele's complete 
 demolition of their genuineness. S. Hilary himself was, 
 in fact, a warm admirer of Liberius.' 
 
 The only other professed historical accounts that can 
 be quoted in favour of a fall on the part of Liberius, if 
 we except S. Athanasius (with whose account we shall 
 deal presently) are by Sozomen and S. Jerome. 
 
 Now Sozomen, in this portion of his history, is admitted 
 to be sometimes inaccurate, and he himself expressly 
 tells us that such was the confusion of accounts as to 
 the Arian troubles, that he is not to be considered a liar, 
 if he is discovered to be wrong in his narration. His 
 narrative, however, does not oblige us to believe that 
 Liberius signed anything positively heretical. The account 
 would be satisfied if we suppose that Liberius signed 
 , something which was open merely to the charge of reti- 
 cence. We know that Athanasius did not consider 
 reticence as to the word Homo-ousion to partake of the 
 nature of heresy. But, in point of fact, Sozomen's whole 
 account bristles with errors and impossibilities. It is 
 irreconcileable with that of S. Hilary on one point ; and 
 with other accounts on a second ; whilst, on a third, he is 
 
 ' See Revue des Questions Historiqites, liv. i. 
 
Libcrius, the Confesso7- 
 
 plainly wrong. It looks as if he had mi.Kcd up Catholic 
 and Arian documents, and let some of the Arian calumnies 
 creep into his account. 
 
 But what of the quotation from S. Jerome, ' he (Libe- 
 * rius) subscribed to heretical depravity ' ? 
 
 Now these words are quoted as from S. Jerome's 
 Tom. xii. ' Chronicon,' a book of which Tillemont says : ' Scaliger 
 s. Jerome. ; assure qu'il n"y a point de li\Tes, dont les exemplaires et 
 ' manuscrits et imprimes soient plus pleins de fautes.' The 
 passage in which the words occur bears the marks of an 
 addition, copied in from an untrustworthy source, the 
 preface to the Libellus precum Faustini et Marcellini. 
 Besides, we should have to suppose that S. Jerome knew 
 of the supposed lapse, at the very time when he was 
 speaking of Damasus as the successor of the Fisherman, 
 whom he followed as the authoritative exponent of the 
 Faith ; when he was speaking of the See of S. Peter 
 as the 'rock on which the Church is built, I know.' It 
 is in the highest degree improbable that S. Jerome would 
 have written as he did, if he knew that Liberius had 
 ' subscribed to heretical depravity.' Again, the supposed 
 passage from the 'Viri Illustr.' makes Liberius betray the 
 faith, ' when going into exile,' which will not square with 
 any account. 
 
 And further, the words quoted as from the 'Chronicon' 
 are not in the oldest ]\IS. of this work of S. Jerome's, 
 whilst in another important MS. there is a lacuna, with- 
 out sufificient space for this imaginary sentence. And 
 lastly, Rufinus, S. Jerome's contemporar)', can ascertain 
 nothing about Liberius having subscribed ; and Cassio- 
 dorus, having before him Socrates, Sozomen, Theodoret, 
 and S. Jerome's 'Chronicon,' and his 'Viri Illustr.' (which 
 he praises) yet has nothing about Liberius' supposed fall ! 
 
 But what are we to say of the words so often quoted 
 as S. Athanasius' ? They are : 'After a banishment of two 
 
Liberius, the Confessor J I 
 
 ' years, his courage was broken, and he subscribed, through 
 ' fear of death, with which he was threatened. But . . . 
 ' acts done under torture, contrary to the mind's original 
 ' decision, are acts of the tormentors, not of their victims.' 
 
 And there is a similar passage to this which is 
 positively inaccurate. It says that after two years Liberius 
 returned from exile, which is unquestionably inaccurate. 
 
 And yet it is difficult to believe, well-nigh inconceivable, 
 that S. Athanasius could have been mistaken on such a 
 point as this. Yet mistaken he was, if the passage is 
 really his. A visit to Sirmium would by no means satisfy 
 his words. Then, the assertion that Liberius signed in 
 fear of death does not square with the accounts of 
 Sulpitius Severus, or Socrates, or Theodoret. How 
 could they have been ignorant of this, or, knowing it, have 
 passed it over ? 
 
 Further, it is admitted that these two passages in S. 
 Athanasius which relate to Liberius' supposed fall, were, 
 if written by Athanasius, a subsequent addition to his 
 book. His Apology was finished in a.d. 352, and his 
 history before the supposed lapse of Liberius took place. 
 Could he have added these passages afterwards? It 
 would be a strange supposition ; and stranger still 
 considering that Socrates and Theodoret, writing subse- 
 quently, and making use of his account, step by step, do 
 not follow him in this supposed incident, nor even allude 
 to it; nor does even Sozomen's account agree with this 
 supposed narrative. 
 
 Nor is the passage, according to many good judges, 
 in the style of S. Athanasius; and the Saint nowhere 
 alludes to his supposed addition on so important an 
 event. The Greek is not as good as his, and the reasoning 
 is very unlike S. Athanasius'. 
 
 Again, whilst Mr. Gore is too positive in his assertion 
 as to what S. Athanasius would say, if one whom he 
 
72 
 
 Libcrius, the Confessor 
 
 considered to be, in a unique sense, guardian of the faith, 
 had subscribed to heretical depra\'ity, still there is a cer- 
 tain amount of truth in his supposition that S. Athanasius 
 might well be expected to say something more, or different 
 from what he did. But this is true also on the supposi- 
 tion of the ' pre-eminence of the See ' of Rome, which 
 Mr. Gore admits. 
 
 In short, the difficulty of supposing these words to 
 be those of S. Athanasius is overwhelming, and we are 
 justified in, at least, doubting them to be his.^ 
 
 On the whole, then, we can say with safet)' that the 
 case against this glorious confessor and martyr for the 
 faith, whom S. Athanasius so highly praises in his unques- 
 tioned wTitings, is ' not proven.' 
 
 ^Ve know for certain that the Emperor made ever)' 
 endeavour to win Liberius ; not, be it noted, so much to 
 sign any creed, as to condemn Athanasius.^ He would 
 have been quite content if Liberius would have condemned 
 the Saint on the charges of immorality which, as was 
 their custom, the heretics had brought against him. The 
 heathen historian tells us how the Emperor felt that, 
 Marceihnus, j^jj-j^Q^g]^ j^g Seemed to have gained his end by •«'inning 
 over the mass of bishops to condemn Athanasius, he 
 could not rest until he had succeeded in gaining the seal 
 and confirmation of ' that authority in which the bishops 
 ' of the eternal city surpass the rest {potiores).^ But in 
 vain. Liberius stood firm, and was banished. No scene 
 in histor}- is giander than the inter\-iew of Liberius with 
 the heterodox Emperor ; nothing would induce the old 
 man to yield. So Liberius departed — an admiration to 
 all, says S. Athanasius. He returned from exile, according 
 to the -sntness of contemporarj' literature, at the prayers 
 
 ' See also S. Liber. Ep. 13, for S. Athan. estimate. 
 ^ ' Ce n'etait pas la foy dont les grands Ariens se mettoient en 
 peine.' — Tillemont, vi. 2, 69. 
 
Liber ins, the Confessor 
 
 73 
 
 and tears of the Romans, whose attachment to their 
 Pontiff was unswerving. He returned, too, by the 
 Emperor's leave, but contrary to his wish, irapa ry]v 
 yvMfirjv (Socrates, ii. 37), which would hardly have been gozomen 
 the case if he had really condemned Athanasius, or signed 's- 
 an heretical creed. His subsequent rule was that of an 
 unbending champion of the faith. There was no recan- 
 tation, no excuse made, no question raised. The Arians, 
 we know, spread abroad the rumour that he had in some 
 way compromised the faith ; but those who care for S. 
 Athanasius' fair fame will not credit Arian calumnies 
 about the Bishop of Rome. It was not considered worth 
 while anyone's defending the Pontiff, as there was 
 nothing worth refuting. He died with the crown of the 
 martyr, and S. Epiphanius, and S. Basil, and S. Siricius 
 speak of him as ' that blessed bishop,' without a suspicion 
 of any stain on his name, and Theodoret enters into his 
 praises without alluding to any sort of lapse. The his- 
 torians Socrates and Sozomen know of the calumnies, 
 but not of any facts to support them, and S. Ambrose 
 speaks of his blessed memory and his holiness of life. 
 The forgeries, as they certainly are in S. Hilary, and as 
 they probably are in the text of S. Athanasius, and the 
 supposititious insertion in S. Jerome's 'Chronicon,' are 
 due, it has been thought, with much show of probability, 
 to the Luciferian Schismatics. 
 
 But besides all the other contemporary evidence, 
 which is not merely negative, but under the circumstances 
 assumes a positive character, what are we to say of the 
 incidental expression in the letter of the bishops, who 
 left the Macedonian sect, addressed to Liberius, in which 
 they speak of him as one who ' has always stood firm ' ? 
 This was after his return — five or six years after the 
 Council of Rimini. 
 
 To sum up. I have omitted much for fear of 
 
74 
 
 Liber ins, the Confessor 
 
 crowding my pages with too many dry historical facts ; 
 but what I have adduced lands us in this difliculty: if we 
 believe that the additions to S. Athanasius' works are by 
 his own hands and to be trusted, what explanation can 
 be given of the fact that the contemporary orthodox world 
 could speak of Liberius in the enthusiastic way in which 
 it does, with no apparent consciousness that he had 
 ever been under a cloud, or failed in his duty— that 
 there is no syllable recording Liberius' regret for his 
 supposed fall, in spite of his admitted sanctity, no sign of 
 sorrow, no confession of fault, and that he was appealed 
 to by bishops returning to the faith, as one who had 
 'always stood firm,' in contrast with themselves? And 
 all this, when the supposed lapse rests only on a later 
 addition to Athanasius' works, spoiling their unity — on 
 letters which Hefele shows have every mark of being 
 spurious— and on a passage in S. Jerome, not in the oldest 
 MS. and found in another book, or on a misapprehension 
 of the words of Socrates and Sozomen, who probably 
 record only Arian calumnies. 
 
 It will, possibly, be said that there must have been 
 something to account for the supposition, even on the 
 part of Arian calumniators. This, of course, is a 
 necessity that a Christian will be slow to admit, as we 
 know that calumny may rest on nothing. Pilate ' knew 
 ' that for envy they had delivered Him.' But there was 
 a scene at Rimini, which may afford a clue to the origin 
 of these rumours about the Pope. When he received the 
 lapsed bishops into communion, in the exercise of his 
 commission to loose, and of a forbearance which Athana- 
 sius would have praised, a Puritan spirit evinced itself in 
 the Luciferiaris, who went out, and uttered a number of 
 calumnies against Pope Damasus, and said that Liberius 
 ' manus perfidise dedit.' An incident hkethis shows what 
 was ' in the air.' It is quite possible that Liberius may 
 
Liberius, the Cofifcssor 
 
 75 
 
 have taken the same line as S. Athanasius did on occa- Jungmann, 
 
 ' Vindicia: 
 
 sion, in treating the j-^w^-Arians as friends, and this would Liberii,' 
 have been enough for Lucifcrian animosity. That he 
 went further seems to be negatived, as well by the con- 
 siderations mentioned above, as by the fact of his having 
 endeared himself in so marked a way with the Romans. 
 We know from Theodoret that their complaint against 
 Felix, whom the Emperor had placed at Rome, was, that 
 though he preserved the Nicene formula intact, he com- 
 municated freely with the waverers. ' And on this account 
 ' no one of the Roman citizens entered the church whilst 
 he (Felix) was inside.' Their enthusiastic welcome of 
 Liberius shows that they, at any rate, had no knowledge 
 of his having in any way compromised his position as 
 guardian of the Faith. 
 
 Even if Athanasius' account were certainly genuine, 
 Athanasius is himself careful to tell us that a signature, 
 under such circumstances, had no value. It would not 
 compromise the inerrancy of the Holy See, but it is difficult 
 to fit in any sort of compromising signature to the actual 
 historical setting. 
 
 One thing at least is certain, and that is, that the life 
 of Liberius, as a whole, impressed itself deeply on the 
 mind of the Catholic world, as a glorious witness to the 
 faith of Nicaea. His name is found in several ancient 
 Martyrologies, and the Greeks assign August 27 to his 
 memory. He was, in fact, one more of that long list of 
 illustrious pontiffs, who brought it about that — as Mr. 
 Gore admits, on the whole, or as we should say, all along 
 the line — 'the orthodoxy of the See of Rome was con- 
 spicuous through all the controversies on the Trinity 
 and the Incarnation' (p. 193.) The statement of the , 
 author of the ' Roman Question ' on the subject is simply 
 inexplicable, and can only be called a libel on the saintly 
 occupants of the Holy See. But Mr. Gore, with wider 
 
76 
 
 Liberius, tJie Confessor 
 
 knowledge, admits too much for his cause. And he 
 fails to see the coincidetice betNvcen our Lord's promise to 
 S. Peter and this marvellous orthodoxy of the Holy See. 
 Compare the raging heresies of the East. How was it 
 that Rome, and Rome alone, kept so clear of the heresies 
 that disgraced the See of Constantinople ? How was 
 it that Rome, in her Imperial days, always resisted, and 
 Constantinople mostly yielded to, Imperial dictation in 
 the things of God ? The only answer to be given is 
 contained in our Lord's promise to S. Peter. 
 
Honorius Declining to Define 
 
 77 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 HONORIUS DECLINING TO DEFINE. 
 
 Mr. Gore (' R. C. Claims,' p. loo) claims it as a ' fact ' that 
 the bishops of the Sixth General Council in condemning the 
 Pope, i.e. Honorius, showed that they had not even a ' rudi- 
 ' mentary idea of the papal infallibility ' and he argues, that 
 in consideration of the case of Liberius, the 28th canon of 
 Chalcedon, and the history of Honorius, the ' belief in 
 ' the universal pastorate and the doctrinal infallibility of the 
 ' Pope, can in no sense be described as part of the Catholic 
 ' faith.' He considers that he has ' demonstrated ' this ; 
 and Dr. Pusey considered the case of Honorius fatal to 
 the infallibility of the Holy See. What are the facts ? 
 
 Amongst the perfections of our blessed Lord, is that 
 of a perfect human Will, that never knew perplexity in its 
 designs, nor inconstancy in its resolves ; firm, tranquil, 
 ready, and sensitive to the faintest indications of the 
 Divine Will ; surpassing the will of angels, for they once 
 could, but He never could, swerve or falter in complete 
 and prompt obedience. This radical impossibility of 
 error was due, as S. Dionysius teaches, not to the grace 
 of unction, but to the Hypostatic union. That human 
 Will, intimately adhering to the Divine Nature, anointed 
 with the unction of substantial holiness, was personally 
 set in motion, directed, and governed in every act, 
 by the Word. In the words of the Sixth General Council, 
 ' as our body is governed and adorned, and ordered by 
 
78 
 
 Hotwrius Declining to Defi)ie 
 
 ' our intellectual and rational soul, so, in the Man Christ, 
 ' His entire human nature was always, and in all things 
 ' moved by the Divinity of the Word, as the instrument of 
 ' God.' 
 
 And it is an essential feature of the economy of our 
 redemption that there should be a created will, as well as 
 a Di\'ine, in the one Person of the SaAiour, for, as S. 
 Maximus says, 'that which is not assumed, cannot be 
 ' healed.' 
 
 But further, there is in our Lord's human Nature, 
 what is sometimes called the will of the reason and the 
 will of the senses ; but between the tsvo, there is not, and 
 there cannot be, contrariet)-. In the Agony, the will of 
 the senses expressed itself, but was incapable of disobe- 
 dience, for it was not wounded by the fall, and it was the 
 will of the Eternal Word. There was no triumph of one 
 over the other, for there was no rebellion, no faintest 
 wish that it might be othenvise. In a word, the operation 
 of the human will (with its two departments) is distinct 
 from the operation of the Di^•ine in the selfsame Person 
 of the Word, but, whilst distinct, incapable of contrariet)-. 
 
 But we owe the tradition of this fundamental truth of 
 ' two operations ' in the Incarnate Word to those saintly 
 bishops who occupied the See of Rome during the 
 greater part of the seventh centur)-. From Severinus, 
 who first condemned an Imperial edict, which favoured the 
 opposite heresy of MonotheHsm, to S. Leo II., who con- 
 firmed the acts of the Sixth General Council, Pope after 
 Pope opposed that fascinating heresy, in the exercise of 
 their supreme guardianship of the Faith. One Pope 
 failed at the commencement of the struggle, before its 
 significance was clearly seen. To what did Honorius' 
 failure amount ? 
 
 Mr. Gore would have us ignore all consideration as to 
 Honorius' personal orthodoxy and as to whether he was 
 
Honoriiis Declining to Define 79 
 
 condemned only for neglect. He dismisses these two 
 contentions with a lofty wave of the hand. But what, if 
 these very considerations are necessary to enable us to 
 understand what the Council meant by what it said of 
 Honorius ? It is like asking us to agree with him to an 
 ignoratio elenchi. He ought to be concerned with these, 
 though he says he is not ; and he ought also to prove and 
 not assume that a Council is authoritative except so far 
 as its decrees are confirmed by the Pope. Failing to do 
 this, he fails altogether. He ought to have taken the 
 infallibility as defined by the Vatican Council, not as 
 imagined by himself ; and he should have shown that 
 that is infringed by the case of Honorius ; or he fights with 
 a phantom. There must be some instance quoted of 
 Honorius issuing an ex cathedra decree, or what is the 
 use of speaking of ' the papal infallibility ' being contra- 
 vened ? But the history of Honorius, we shall see, not 
 only shows no contradiction to the dogma of the Papal 
 Infallibility, but it illustrates with special emphasis the 
 belief of the Church in that which Mr. Gore denies on 
 the strength of that very history, viz. the universal pastor- 
 ate of the Bishops of Rome, and their unique relationship 
 to the guardianship of the Faith. For if there is one fact 
 that stands out from the whole history of the Sixth Council, 
 it is surely the universal acceptance of Papal authority. 
 
 A heresy touching the Incarnation had found its way 
 into the Church, viz. Monothelism, or the teaching that in 
 Christ there was but one Will. 
 
 The Emperor dealt first with Domnus, the Pope 
 (676-8), and then with Agatho (678-82), about convening 
 a Council (the 6th) at Constantinople, under the presidency 
 of t/ie legates of tlie Apostolic See. 
 
 We have already said that the Popes were the vigilant 
 defenders of the Faith against the encroachments of this 
 heresy. After Severinus, John IV. opposed the Emperor, 
 
8o Honor ins Declining to Defiyie 
 
 with his Ecthesis. Theodorus deposed the heretical 
 Eastern prelates, and subscribed the document con- 
 demning Monothelism with a pen dipped in the chalice. 
 S. Martin incurred the Imperial displeasure in the 
 same holy cause. Vitalian was conspicuous for his zeal 
 in maintaining the dogma ; and Domnus, in his brief 
 pontificate, contributed his share in the suppression of 
 the heresy. At length came S. Agatho, so famed for his 
 sanctity and sweetness ; and Pogonatus ascended the 
 Imperial throne, fired with zeal for the orthodox faith. 
 S. Agatho accordingly held a preliminary Synod at 
 Rome, at which three French bishops amongst others 
 were present, and Theodorus and Sergius were com- 
 missioned to represent the Pope at the forthcoming 
 Council. They were to carry with them two letters, in 
 the first of which the plainest possible statement is made 
 concerning the inerrancy of the Holy See. Nothing 
 can be stronger than the assertions it contains on this 
 head. It also says : 'The Lord and Saviour of all, who 
 ' promised that the faith of Peter should not fail, ad- 
 ' monished him to strengthen his brethren, which it is well 
 ' known the Apostolic Pontiffs, the predecessors of my low- 
 ' liness, have ever faithfiiUy done.'^ He tells the Council 
 that his legates are not men greatly versed in the science 
 of the Scriptures, nor illustrious in eloquence (perhaps a sly 
 allusion to the subtleties of the heterodo.x East), but that 
 they have something better, viz., a full knowledge of ' the 
 ' tradition of the Apostolic See, as it has been maintained 
 ' by my predecessors, the Apostolic Pontiffs.' 
 
 The Council assembled at Constantinople, the Papal 
 legates presiding. These letters of Agatho were read 
 and received without demur.- The Patriarch of Constan- 
 
 ' This was more than forty years after Honorius' death. 
 ^ The Sixth Council therefore practically set its seal to the 
 principle of Papal infallibility. 
 
Honorius Declining to Define 8 1 
 
 tinople, who had wavered, was now converted to the 
 faith. The Patriarch of Antioch proved heretical and 
 was deposed. The bishops asked that the testimonies 
 of the Fathers might be examined, a privilege always 
 accorded by the Holy See to bishops. 
 
 In the twelfh Act, the letter of Sergius, Patriarch of 
 Constantinople, to Pope Honorius, which was full of 
 Monothelite teaching, was read ; and then the Pope's 
 letter to Sergius. There was nothing heretical in the 
 Pope's letter ; but he had wished such matters not to be 
 discussed, instead of reproving the Patriarch. And he 
 discountenanced the expression ' two energies ' which he 
 applied to contrariant wills in our Lord's human nature : 
 whilst really Sergius and his followers were using it of the 
 separate natures of our Blessed Lord, in which sense it 
 was vital truth. In fact, he had shrunk from defining : 
 he had missed an opportunity of exercising his infallibility. 
 
 In the thirteenth Act they condemn Sergius and 
 others, as heretics, />ure and simple — and then they add 
 a separate sentence about Honorius, in which they say 
 that he ' in all things followed the wish of Sergius and 
 ' (so) confirmed his impious dogmas.' 
 
 We must remember that Sergius had deceived 
 Honorius as to the state of things, and so got his way, 
 inducing Honorius not to condemn him, under false 
 pretences. 
 
 In the sixteenth Act they shouted anathema to 
 Honorius' name. 
 
 In the eighteenth, in an address to the Emperor, after 
 anathematising the rest, they add, separately, as though 
 there were some distinction, ' and with them Honorius, 
 ' \/ho was Ruler of Rome, who followed them in these 
 ' things,' In their letter to Agatho, they advance a 
 step further, mixing Honorius' name with the rest, and 
 say that they have destroyed with anathemas Sergius, 
 
82 
 
 Hvnorius Declining to Define 
 
 Honorius, &c. The Emperor says in his edict that 
 certain of those that ruled in the Church ' contaminated 
 ' the Churches with contagion of this sort,' and adds, 
 ' besides Honorius, who was Pope of old Rome, the 
 ' strengthener of this kind of heresy ' ; and again : 
 ^ Honorium . . . qui fuit antiquae Romse papa, horum 
 ' haereseos in omnibus fautorem, concursorem atque con- 
 '■ firmatorem.' 
 
 All through, the stress is laid on some sort of aid 
 and sanction given by Honorius, whether direct or 
 indirect, to downright heretics, without attributing to 
 him any personal heterodoxy. 
 
 Two main facts have here to be borne in mind. i. 
 Honorius issued no definition to teach the Church. 
 His letter to Sergius was kept at Constantinople and 
 brought out afterwards. 2. The Conciliar decree is 
 only of value so far as it is accepted and confirmed by 
 the Roman pontiff. 
 
 Now Leo n., a pontiff specially remarkable for his 
 holiness, his love of Holy Scripture and of the poor, in 
 confirming the decrees of the Council (for S. Agatho had 
 died), modified this particular decree, virtually deciding 
 that Honorius was not personally heretical, but that he 
 did not repress the heresy at once, as became the occu- 
 pant of the Holy See. He failed in his duty, as the 
 Superior of Sergius, the Patriarch of Constantinople. 
 So that Honorius' endeavour to keep things quiet was a 
 serious dereliction of duty, and merited censure, but only 
 on the supposition that to him belonged the care of all 
 the Churches. Accordingly S. Leo IL did not shrink 
 from condemning Honorius in the letter which he wrote to 
 the Emperor to confirm the decrees of the Council. He 
 says : ' We anathematize ' [and, be it noted, it was the ac- 
 cepted doctrine all round that all the anathemas shouted 
 out by the prelates against the Patriarch of Constantinople 
 
Honor ins Declining to Define 83 
 
 and Honorius the Pope were valueless unless confirmed 
 by the reigning Pope] — we anathematize Theodorus, 
 ' &c., &c.,'and then separately: 'Honorius, qui hanc ajjo- 
 ' stolicam ecclesiam non apostolicse traditionis doctrina 
 ' lustravit, sed profana proditione immaculatam maculari 
 ' permisit. dA.A.a Trj (SefSyjXm 7rpo8o(ria ixiavdtjvai acnriKov 
 ' -irapexoiprja-e.' The present Latin text is incorrect, whilst 
 the Greek agrees with what Leo wrote in his letter to King 
 Erwig. And, in his letter to the bishops of Spain, Leo 
 explains the case of Honorius still more fully: ' Qui flam- 
 ' mam haeretici dogmatis non, ut decuit apostolicam auc- 
 ' toritatem, incipientem extinxit, sed negligendo confovit.' 
 (' Who did not at once put out the flame of heretical 
 ' teaching, but encouraged it through his neglect.') 
 
 The whole point, therefore, of Honorius' condemna- 
 tion lies in the supposition that it was the province of the 
 Holy See to guard the Faith throughout the world. 
 
 Looking, then, to all the facts of the case, we must 
 conclude, in opposition to Mr. Gore's contention, that it 
 cannot be proved that the bishops in the Council meant 
 to brand Honorius with personal heresy, and that, if any 
 of them meant this, their wish was denied them by 
 failure of confirmation on the part of Leo H. Li point 
 of fact, the term ' heretic ' in those times was not so 
 determined as afterwards in canon law. It had a wider 
 meaning, and a Roman pontiff, who did not at once detect 
 a heresy and insist on a Patriarch of Constantinople 
 submitting to withdraw an heretical letter, would, if the 
 heresy it contained afterwards grew in the Church be 
 considered sufificiently remiss in his duty to be stamped 
 with the name of heretic. 
 
 The case, then, stands thus : That Monothelism was 
 extruded from the Church by the aid of the Holy See 
 and its saintly occupants during the .seventh century, is 
 matter of unquestioned history. But one occupant of 
 
 (i 2 
 
84 
 
 Honor ins Declining to Define 
 
 that See stained his otherwise glorious pontificate by 
 endeavouring to keep the peace, taking too kindly a 
 view of the Patriarch of Constantinople, who had led 
 him into a trap by most unworthy devices. This is a 
 fact which led to his condemnation. But it is one which 
 brings out nothing so clearly as the universal pastorate of 
 the See of Rome and its unique responsibility towards 
 the Faith. 
 
 And one must not overlook the supposition that the 
 passionate vehemence with which those Oriental prelates 
 shouted their anathemas possibly had a very human 
 motive. It was doubtless a consolation to them that, 
 whilst so many of their own number, Patriarchs and 
 Metropolitans, were tainted with heresy, they could add 
 at least this extenuating circumstance, viz. that their 
 senior Patriarch (Sergius) had been encouraged by a 
 failure of duty on the part of the Apostolic See through 
 its not nipping the heresy in the bud. Their case 
 amounted to this : ' No doubt Sergius was a heretic. 
 ' But why did not Honorius check him ? Let us condemn 
 ' them both. Anathema ! anathema I ' 
 
 And they were right. But what is the moral of the 
 history as a whole ? That the tolerance of heresy is the 
 worst of conceivable ills, and that keenness of perception 
 and zeal in the destruction of heresy is the first duty of a 
 bishop. It is dangerous ground for an Anglican to tread, 
 and Mr. Gore has warned us off it, and says he will not 
 tread it. ' We are not concerned at present with these 
 ' contentions' (p. loo). And yet the case cannot be fairly 
 judged on any other ground. It is, I say, dangerous 
 ground for an Anglican to tread, for 300 years of in 
 difference to heresy in a great portion of the Christian 
 Revelation would, were there no other grounds of con- 
 demnation, be fatal to the Anglican claim to be part of 
 the Catholic Church. When the Easterns pleaded on 
 
Ho)iorius Declining to Define 85 
 
 behalf of Acacius, their Patriarch, that he was uot 
 personally heretical, but had only connived at heresy, 
 the Roman Pontiff replied : ' Error cui non resistitur 
 ' approbatur, et Veritas cum minime defensatur oppri- 
 * mitur.' ('Not to resist error is to sanction it, and not to 
 ' defend truth is to destroy it.') Accordingly his name 
 was erased from the diptychs. The same measure of 
 justice was dealt to Honorius for his remissness m dealing 
 with a rising trouble, which he had hoped might die a 
 natural death. Few things are more beautiful in history 
 than the majestic calmness with which Leo II. corrected 
 the intemperate language of the Council, but at the same 
 time condemned his predecessor for not acting as the 
 supreme guardian of the Christian Faith. Subsequent 
 Councils and Pontiffs joined in S. Leo's condemnation, 
 but in his only, not in the language of the excited 
 bishops. Hadrian II. expressly alludes to this fact, and 
 the Roman Breviary echoed the condemnation until, men 
 perversely misunderstanding that condemnation, its men- 
 tion was in charity removed. 
 
 But, in spite of Honorius' neglect in this part of his 
 duty, we owe him a debt of gratitude in other respects. 
 We English owe him much : he it was who did so much 
 for the churches of Great Britain. The city of Rome, 
 too, owed much of its splendour to his care. He was, 
 says a contemporary writer, ' sagacious of mind, vigorous 
 ' in judgment, clear in doctrine, abounding in sweetness 
 ' and humility.' S. Maximus calls him 'great Honorius,' 
 and the Roman clergy described his virtues in a remark- 
 able epitaph. 
 
 One thing, then, Honorius never did — he never 
 taught the Church anything heretical. One failure he 
 certainly showed— a failure in detecting an Eastern 
 Patriarch's wiles, and sternly reprimanding an incipient 
 heresy. He had already gone to his Judge when 
 
86 
 
 Honor ins DccU)ivig fo Define 
 
 his cause was decided, leaving the memory of an 
 illustrious reign, which was the paramount thought 
 of his contemporaries. But this estimate of his reign 
 was, as we have seen, afterwards revoked by posterity, 
 on the ground of 'negligence' in the primary duty of the 
 Universal Pastor of the Church. Had he been more 
 diligent he must have seen that the heretics were not 
 using the phrase ' two operations ' of contrariant wills 
 in our Lord's Human Nature, as he seems to have 
 fancied, but of the two natures in His Divine Person, 
 in denying which they denied the Faith. 
 
 The result, then, of our investigation is, that neither 
 the history of Liberius, either signing a harmless document 
 or having signed none at all ; nor the abortive effort of 
 some of the Oriental bishops to get a canon passed in 
 f;ivour of Constantinople, to the detriment of Alexandria 
 and Antioch ; nor the case of Honorius, failing to rise 
 to the tremendous responsibilities of the Supreme 
 Guardian of the Faith, afford any support to the Anglican 
 theory, as explained by Mr. Gore. 
 
 On the contrary, a Council that accepted Agatho's 
 letters, asserting the inerrancy of the Holy See, cannot 
 be supposed to have stultified itself by condemning a 
 previous occupant for official heresy. It was, on the 
 other hand, natural that, accepting the truth of the 
 infallibility of that See in its formal teaching on matters 
 of faith, it should press the condemnation of one who, 
 whilst not formally teaching anything heterodox, had yet 
 failed to exercise his prerogative of Universal Pastor, by 
 not dealing summarily with an offender — even though 
 that offender was the Patriarch of Constantinople. 
 
 It is instructive to notice that Dr. Dollinger, who has 
 gone counter to other historians, of equal weight, in this 
 matter of Honorius, should have himself exhibited theo- 
 logical error on the particular doctrine which Honorius 
 
Honoriiis Declining to Define 
 
 ought to have driven out of the Church, and which his 
 successors did. He has a passage on the Agony of our 
 Lord, the crucial test of orthodoxy on this matter, which 
 would have sent a thrill of horror through Honorius, ' F!r'<t Age 
 
 ° ' of C'hri>ti- 
 
 and for which he would have been stigmatised by am'y.' Ei.g. 
 
 1 rans. vol. i. 
 
 S. Leo IL as teaching heresy, p. 54. 
 
88 Alexander VI., the Political Ecclesiastic 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 ALEXANDER VI., THE POLITICAL ECCLESIASTIC. 
 
 Few names have figured more frequently in the controversy 
 between Rome and Anghcanism than that of Alexander 
 VI. It is a name with which the Anglican conjures. 
 Can you believe the successors of S. Peter to be infallible 
 in their teaching office, when there is a Roderigo Borgia 
 amongst them ? 
 
 The first private letter that I received from England 
 after my reception into the Church contained his name. 
 When in a pamphlet I spoke of Barlow's character, to 
 show that he might be supposed capable of going through 
 the cerem.ony of consecration without having been 
 himself consecrated, Mr. Gore replied by alluding to 
 Alexander VI., asking whether he should give a life of 
 'Remarks that Popc, for, he said, 'it would be as much to the 
 p"9. ' ' point.' Of course, it would not have been at all to the 
 point, for Alexander did not start the Papacy, whereas 
 Barlow did, according to the argument, start the new 
 succession. But the name of Alexander VI. was 
 sufficient to delight the ' Church Times,' which specially 
 drew the attention of its readers to the ' neatness ' of the 
 reply. Yes, Alexander VI. ! — it is to some minds a sufficient 
 answer to all the evidences for the Divine institution of 
 the Papacy. 
 
 A recent writer, Mr. Woodhouse, has said, ' Let it be 
 ' granted that Christ deputed His authority to Peter. Let 
 
Alexander VI., tJic Political Ecclesiastic 89 
 
 ' it be allowed that the earlier Bishops of Rome were the 
 ' successors of S. Peter, possessing all the rights and 
 ' privileges with which he is said to have been entrusted. 
 ' What then ? ' 
 
 His answer is that ' the intention of Christ ' has been 
 ' frustrated by man's wickedness, and the charter of the 
 ' Papacy has been torn and cancelled.' And Dr. Littledale, 
 in ridiculous ignorance of the Church's teaching on the 
 whole subject, ends his list of the Popes with Alexander 
 VI., or rather with his predecessor. ' 
 
 It is a fact, however, that the history of Alexander 
 VI. had indirectly something to do with my own con- 
 version. 
 
 At the same time that my confidence in Dr. Pusey's 
 accuracy received a rude shock (see p. 186), I had the 
 opportunity of perusing a letter written to a friend of 
 mine under the following circumstances. My friend, an 
 English clergyman, had grave doubts about his position, 
 and he applied for assistance to one who holds a fore- 
 most place amongst English Churchmen for learning and 
 eloquence ; he was one to whom I have myself looked up 
 through life with the greatest admiration. My friend 
 had spoken, amongst other difficulties, of the following. 
 ' Can one honestly work in the Church of England while 
 ' not assenting to those articles which treat of the Seven 
 ' Sacraments, Purgatory, and General Councils, and while 
 ' disbelieving Homily which says, that "the whole of 
 ' " Christendom prior to the Reformation was steeped in 
 ' "damnable idolatry for 800 years," &c. ?' 
 
 The reply of the divine, who is certainly one of the 
 greatest ornaments of the Church of England, was as 
 follows : — 
 
 ' As for the sentence from the Homily which you 
 
 ' See Rev. P. Dichamp on Has there been a disappearance of the 
 Papacy] Art and Book Company, Leamington, id. 
 
90 Alexander JV., tJie Political Ecclesiastic 
 
 ' quote, it is an instance of the passion and exaggeration 
 ' which were natural, though not therefore admirable, at a' 
 ' period such as that of the Reformation. Unless it is to 
 ' be said that we are bound to subscribe to ever)- proposi- 
 ' tion in the Homilies, because we say that their general 
 ' teaching was useful in the times when they were written, 
 ' there can be no reason for discomfort on the score of 
 ' such a saying. For my own part I do not hesitate to say 
 ' that there are many other propositions in the Homilies 
 ' which I do not agree to ; and this, I apprehend, would 
 
 * be the case with the great majority of the clerg}-. A 
 ' series of highly rhetorical discourses cannot be turned 
 ' into a test of theological truth or error.' 
 
 I merely stop, for a moment, to point out what a 
 false conscience has been formed on such matters by 
 members of the English Church. If there was any book 
 I thoroughly detested, it was this book of Homilies. It 
 contradicted most of my teaching, and that of those 
 with whom I worked. Yet I signed an Article, giving my 
 assent and consent to it, which declared that this same 
 book ' doth contain a godly and wholesome doctrine, and 
 ' necessary for these times, as doth the former book of 
 ' Homilies, which were set forth in the time of Edward 
 ' the Sixth ; and therefore we judge them to be read in 
 
 * churches by the ministers, diligently and distinctly, that 
 ' they may be understanded of the people.' (Article 
 XXXV.) 
 
 If asked what I meant by saying that I assented and 
 consented to that Article, I should have replied that you 
 might find some truth in the book of Homilies mixed 
 with a vast amount of error and falsehood. If asked 
 whether I could ever have read these Homilies from the 
 pulpit, I should have been obliged to reply, ' Not for the 
 ' world ! ' And yet they were witten for that purpose, and 
 the framers of the Article unquestionably contemplated 
 
Alexander V/., tJie Political Ecclesiastic 91 
 
 the advisability of such an use of the Homilies. I held 
 that, though they were not true, they did very virell for 
 that period, when so little truth was held. Of course, I 
 look with abhorrence on such special pleading now, and 
 wonder how I could ever have rested content with such 
 a defence. But it was a necessity of our position. We 
 were not really teaching the same as they taught in 
 the early days of the so-called Reformation. We were 
 undoing a great part of that work. And yet if I had 
 refused to sign the Articles, which I always detested from 
 the bottom of my heart, I could not have held any 
 position in the Church of England. 
 But the writer continues : — • 
 
 ' At the same time, in order to understand the 
 ' language of the Homily, you should read for yourself 
 ' something about the state of profound corruption which 
 ' provoked it, and which explains, if it does not justify, ex- 
 ' aggeration. Read, f.^., Burchard's "Diarium." Burchard 
 ' was master of the Apostolical Palace, and a Bishop. His 
 ' account of Alexander VI. is not really open to question 
 ' on the score of accuracy. He had no motive for speak- 
 ' ing ill of the Pope, and kept his diary for his own eye. 
 'If the "Vicar of Christ" was such as he describes, 
 ' who can wonder at what happened in the century which 
 ' succeeded ? ' 
 
 Alexander VI. again ! But there is this advantage in 
 the above writer's statements, that he gives his authority. 
 
 Now let us remember that this is a defence given by 
 the person to whom, of all others, many of us have been 
 most inclined to listen in the Church of England. And 
 it is written to enable a clergyman, a teacher of truth, to 
 remain where he was. It fell like a bombshell amongst 
 the defences I had heaped up in my own mind. 
 
 I asked myself, did the lives of some of the High 
 Priests of Israel nullify the Divine institution ? Could the 
 
92 Alexander VL, the Political Ecclesiastic 
 
 life of Alexander explain the language of the Article about 
 the books of Homilies containing this monstrous assertion 
 (to be 'diligently and distinctly read to the people ') that 
 'the whole of Christendom prior to the Reformation was 
 steeped in damnable idolatry for 800 years ? ' Could the 
 life of Alexander VI. 'explain ' Cranmer or Henry VIII. ? 
 Did they even refer to it, or think of it ? Is it not the 
 SeeFroude's fact that the entire Episcopate of England, fully half a 
 EiiR. \i. century after the death of Alexa?ider VI., declared before 
 '^^ God and tnan that the Bishop of Rome ivas the successor 
 of S. Peter, and as such, the Divinely appointed Head of 
 the Church under Christ ? Did they not beg that they 
 might be allowed to pay him obedience as such? and did 
 they not undergo prison, and exile, and death rather than 
 renounce their allegiance to one who they were sure was 
 their Lord, under the Divine Head of the Church ? 
 
 Is it possible that Cranmer, whose life was at times 
 hardly more exemplary than Alexander VI. 's, had his 
 faith in the least shaken by the life of that Pontiff or of 
 any others? Nay, did not Henry VIII. himself write a 
 most able defence of the Papacy fourteen years after the 
 death of Alexander, and appeal to the common sense of 
 mankind as to whether such an institution as the Papacy 
 could have imposed itself on the world, if not backed by 
 a Divine promise, and assistance ? 
 
 Still, Alexander lived, and his life is a greater difficulty 
 to some people now than it was to his own generation. 
 When Savonarola was inhibited from preaching, he could 
 storm against the occupant of the Holy See, listening to 
 the inventiveness of Florentine calumny; but he did not 
 venture to deny the Divine character of the institution 
 itself. When Charles VIII. wanted to further his am- 
 bitious schemes, he could ignore his own lascivious life, 
 and, bad as he was, accuse his political adversary, seated 
 on the throne of S. Peter, of simony and worldliness. 
 
Alexander VI., the Political Ecclesiastic 93 
 
 But it remains true, that Alexander the Sixth's reign by 
 no means conduced towards the idea that the Holy See 
 was not the Divinely appointed centre of unity, and the 
 source of spiritual jurisdiction, to the extent that some ners 'Sixte 
 
 r ^ V. Intro- 
 
 people imagine. Men knew well enough that, as amongst duction, iv. 
 
 High Priests there could be a Caiaphas, and amongst 
 
 Apostles a Judas, so amongst Popes there could be worse 
 
 even than a Roderigo Borgia, and yet the institution 
 
 remain Divine. 
 
 But was Alexander VI. what he is so often imagined 
 
 to have been ? What is the value of Burchard's ' Diarium ' 
 
 which is so much relied upon ? And what is its actual 
 
 testimony? I can claim some acquaintance with this 
 
 diary, as edited by Thuasne, massive as the volumes 
 
 are. 
 
 The writer of the above letter somewhat confuses 
 matters by calling Burchard ' Master of the Apostolic 
 ' Palace, and a Bishop.' At the time he wrote his diary, 
 or such parts of it as he did write, he was ' Master of the 
 ' Ceremonies ' — quite an external office, which did not 
 admit him to close intimacy with the Pope in his daily 
 life. Consequently little as one would imagine it from 
 the above writer's statement, the observations on the 
 Pope's private life in his diary are rare. If one were to 
 take Burchard's 'Diarium' as a full account of Alexander 
 VI. one would have to suppose the Pope to have been 
 occupied with hardly anything but Masses and State 
 ceremonies, for Burchard was not an eye-witness of any- 
 thing else.' The two or three glimpses into Alexander's 
 private life are not those of an eye-witness. Burchard 
 was not a bishop during Alexander's lifetime ; and, 
 according to his successor in the office he held, he was 
 
 ' ' Sa fonction I'appelait a la sacristie et 4 la chapelle pontifi- 
 ' cale. . . . Personne ne lui attribue une fonction d'antichanibre.' 
 Mons. J. Fave. 
 
94 Alexander VI., the Political Ecclesiastic 
 
 ' supra omnes bestias bestialissimus ' (' more bestial than all 
 ' beasts.') This, of course, may be exaggeration, although 
 it is the witness of one who was first his colleague, and 
 afterwards his successor in office. It is hard to know 
 what to believe of that age of hes. Burchard appears, 
 from his diarj', to have been nothing worse than an 
 enipt)--headed, conceited man, and probably not of the 
 most refined character. His successor calls him in- 
 humanissimus — most unlike a man, and considers his 
 diary utterly unworthy of credit, even in the ceremonial 
 part, of which he was an eye-witness. If Burchard could 
 not be trusted on that, one feels it would be difficult to 
 trust him on anything else, and that there may be some- 
 thing in his successor's remarks, that the diary had better 
 have been committed to the flames, on the score of in- 
 accurac}-. 
 
 And have we the diar)- itself? 
 See Leo- The Original ]SIS. has not yet been discovered. The 
 
 earliest copy, confessedly only a cop)', was first published 
 and M. " 200 ycars after Burchard's death. Leibnitz had only 
 'Notfce^io- Latin and French morsels. Eccard claimed to have 
 p.Ti^"*"^ published the whole diar)- from a Berlin manuscript, 
 and confessed that it was defective. There are six dif- 
 ferent and contradictor)' copies of the diar)' in the 
 Vatican, and the chief manuscript, on which M. Thuasne 
 relies so much, does not resemble any of them in style 
 or facts. WTiere is the original ? Was it penned wholly 
 in Italian, as Bayle surmised, or wholly in Latin, or 
 partly in French, Italian, and Latin, but never in 
 German, Burchard's mother-tongue ? Whoever wrote it, 
 wrote some of it long after the events happened. Once 
 he says, ' Rescripsi diu post rem gestam.' It is, by the 
 admission of Thuasne himself, interpolated ; and I regret 
 to say that the marks of interpolation are so minute that 
 I have caught myself reading as Burchard's what is not 
 
Alexander VI., the Political Ecclesiastic 95 
 
 his, without noticing the tiny bracket, some pages before, 
 indicating the interpolation. 
 
 To what, then, does Burchard's witness amount ? 
 
 In the first place he is no witness to the supposed 
 simony of Alexander's election. The opening portion of 
 his second volume, in which the account occurs, is an ad- 
 mitted interpolation, and from Infessura, a most untrust- 
 worthy source, according to Professor Creighton. 
 
 In the second place, the glimpses of the Pope's private 
 life are rare ; and it is precisely in these that we find 
 such expressions as 'they say it is reported,' 'if what 
 ' they say is true.' And we know what Italian gossip at 
 that period meant, even from so poetical a writer as Mr. 
 Symonds. 
 
 In the third place, what are the two or three passages 
 which are most compromising to the Pope ? 
 
 One of them consists in what a Cardinal taxed the 
 Pope with being and doing, on the occasion of his re- 
 conciliation to him, which looks as if the Pope treated 
 such rumours with disdain. At the end, Burchard tells 
 us he cannot vouch for the truth of this. 
 
 Another consists of an account of a night's orgie in 
 Caesar Borgia's rooms, at which Burchard says the Pope 
 and Lucretia were both present. And the third is a 
 scene in the Piazza, which the same personages are said 
 to have gazed at in amused curiosity. 
 
 Now with regard to the orgies on one particular night 
 — the only occasion— the description simply baffles 
 belief I have no h sitation in saying, ' Believe it who 
 ' can.' Burchard does not profess to have been an ej e- 
 witness. The Pope was not well at the time, and obliged 
 to keep his room, and to absent himself from his usual 
 duties so punctiliously, so unvaryingly performed through 
 his whole pontificate. That any amount of hideous orgies 
 might go on in Caesar Borgia's rooms is perhaps credible 
 
g6 Alexander VI., the Political Ecclesiastic 
 
 enough, but that Alexander and Lucretia were present, 
 in any compromising way, requires more evidence than 
 we have. Moreover the ' confirmation ' that M. Thuasne 
 offers is most suspicious. Of the two ' confirmatory ' ac- 
 counts to which he refers, in one the fifty ' courtesans ' 
 are fifty ' ladies of the court,' and in the other, the pith 
 of the revels is reduced to dancing and laughter. On 
 another head, Burchard exhibits an entire ignorance of 
 the accusations levelled against the Pope, viz. in connec- 
 tion with Peroto, whose death he describes, but with no 
 allusion to its connection with Alexander. 
 
 The real way, indeed, to estimate Burchard's witness 
 is to read through his diary page by page, in spite of its 
 monotony, and to see what idea one gathers of his 
 master on the whole. One of the most damning passages 
 is an interpolation, which therefore ought not to have 
 been published even in brackets, and those to which 
 I have alluded come in with startling abruptness, are 
 incredible in themselves, and are not confirmed by any 
 trustworthy evidence. The mass of Burchard's diary 
 shows Alexander's life to have been one of industry, and 
 care at least as to his public devotions. 
 
 And yet it is on this diary that most of the accusa- 
 tions against Alexander have been grounded. 
 
 And now if we step beyond this diary, of which the 
 original is not to be found, and in which there are 
 unquestioned interpolations, who is the next greatest 
 authority for all that we know about this Pope ? 
 Guicciardini. 
 
 Guicciardini's history is the source whence most writers 
 (including even, in too great measure. Professor Creighton, 
 in his ' History of the Papacy ') have drawn their informa- 
 la tion And yet even Voltaire boiled with indignation at 
 Guicciardini's bad faith. He addressed him thus : 
 ' J 'ose dire a Guichardin : L'Europe est trompee par 
 
Alexander VI., the Political Ecclesiastic 97 
 
 *vous, et vous I'avez ete par votre passion. Vous etiez 
 M'ennemi du pape; vous avez trop cm votre haine.' 
 This is Voltaire's estimate of Guicciardini's account of 
 Alexander's death. The ' rehabilitation ' of Alexander 
 would be a wild and worthless task, which no Catholic 
 would attempt ; it is not required by any exigencies of 
 Catholic controversy. But we are bound to be just even 
 to a Borgia. Guicciardini seems quite to lose his balance 
 over the Popes. He even treats as bastards the children 
 of Innocent VIII., born to him in wedlock before he 
 took Holy Orders. Indeed such were his own fears as 
 to the real character of his writings, that on his death-bed 
 he said to a notary, ' Let them burn my History of Italy.' 
 The work was then only in manuscrijit. 
 
 And yet without Burchard and without Guicciardini, 
 where would be all our modern history of Alexander VI. ? 
 
 There remains Jorry, of whom Bayle says in his dic- 
 tionary that, ' selon Vossius, il avait monte une espfece 
 
 * de banque et promis une ancienne genealogie et une 
 ' gloire immortelle a tous les faquins qui paieraient bien 
 ' son travail, et il dechirait tous ceux qui n'achetaient pas 
 ' ses mensonges.' 
 
 Tomaso Tomasi is equally unreliable. He set to work 
 to blacken the Pope, and he succeeded. For ' there is 
 
 * an immortality in mendacity, which even chivalry cannot 
 ' vanquish.' 
 
 With regard to Guicciardini, we have to remember 
 that he was a child at Florence during Alexander's pon- 
 tificate, and that he was for two years ambassador at 
 the court of the Pope's supreme enemy, Ferdinand of 
 Naples. 
 
 And surely some things are beyond belief even for that 
 age. They are not so much difficulties to a Catholic, as cf. Voitaire, 
 
 1 1 •! 1 rr-it 1 r ■ 1 • 1 Xxiv. 91 
 
 to the philosopher. There are degrees of enormity which (iSoi). 
 I conceive could not have been so calmly tolerated even 
 
 H 
 
gS Alexander IV., the Political Ecclesiastic 
 
 Ro^coe's 
 ' Life of Leo 
 X.' Diss, on 
 Lucretia, of 
 which the 
 follow-ing is 
 a risume. 
 
 in that corrupt age, in the occupant of the Holy See. If 
 Lucretia had really been what she was painted by Alex- 
 anders Florentine foes — if her relations with him, to 
 say nothing of her relations with others, had really been 
 what Guicciardini and Burlamacchi and others made 
 them out to be, is it conceivable that, even in those 
 degenerate days, the citizens of Rome would have en- 
 dured to be under her government, during Alexander "s 
 absence ? 
 
 Lucretia was a woman certainly of remarkable power, 
 and probably of unsullied virtue. Roscoe has successfully 
 vindicated her honour from the foul calumnies with which 
 it has been aspersed. As Roscoe points out, Guicciardini 
 seems to have been acquainted with the Neapolitan poets, 
 who are probably the real source of all the horrible 
 aspersions on her character. A Neapolitan poet at the 
 beginning of the sixteenth centun,-, with an aim — will 
 account for anything. And Guicciardini, the friend of 
 Ferdinand of Naples, the Pope's bitterest foe, was equal to 
 retailing their unblushing falsehoods. Had .Alexander VI. 
 not taken the active part he did in expeUing the house ot 
 Aragon, the Neapolitan poets would have had no cause 
 for their exasperation, and Lucretia would never have 
 been handed down as the Messahna of the Renaissance. 
 According to Guicciardini, the Pope dissolved the mar- 
 riage with Giovanni Sforza, 'not being able to bear a 
 * rival ' ; but he ignores the significance of the fact, that 
 the Pope proceeded at once to many- her to some one 
 else. Even the attention paid to Lucretia's child is sug- 
 gestive to Guicciardini's foul mind. One charge con- 
 nected with this child happens to be refuted indirectly 
 by Burchard. Guicciardini attributes the death ot 
 Lucretia's husband to Caesar Borgia, with no foundation 
 for his statement of any kind. Any affection, however 
 virtuous in others, any death that occiu-s, is material for 
 
Alexander VI., the Political Ecclesiastic 99 
 
 Ihis ' historian's ' blackening pen. It is to be noticed that, 
 so far as Burchard's diary is concerned, this portion of 
 Guicciardini's allegation receives no kind of support. 
 There is not the most distant insinuation in that diary of 
 the life attributed to Lucretia by Guicciardini. And yet 
 there are places where one would have thought something 
 of the kind must have been mentioned, at least hinted at. 
 But not one single suspicion seems to have crossed the 
 mind of Burchard. The idea had not, it seems, as yet 
 reached Rome. 
 
 And if we believe in Lucretia's guilt, for which there 
 is not a tittle of real evidence, we must suppose, with 
 Guicciardini, that the family of Este were bribed or 
 frightened into a marriage which would have been repul- 
 sive to the last degree : we must suppose that men like 
 the Duke of Ferrara, or Alphonso, his son, distinguished 
 alike for their virtues and talents, civil and military, beyond 
 any of the sovereigns of the time, would have submitted 
 to have perpetuated their race through the contaminated 
 blood of a known and incestuous prostitute. But they 
 took her into their proud family with no sign of reluctance, 
 and for twenty years she lived amongst them, not merely 
 without reproach, but a highly e.xemplary life, rigid even 
 to severity in her religious duties, and devoted to works 
 of benevolence and piety : receiving the highest com 
 mendations from Leo X. 
 
 The testimonies she received from those amongst 
 whom she lived were quite uncommon in their character 
 and number. The testimony of Bembo, her admirer, or 
 of Ercole Strozzi, and Antonio Tebaldeo, may be con- 
 sidered comparatively worthless, though not entirely 
 without their value : but the testimony of historians like 
 Giraldi, Sardi, Libanori, Caviceo, cannot be easily set 
 aside. According to these she was a ' woman of un- 
 ' common excellence,' 'a princess adorned with every 
 
 II 2 
 
lOO Alexander VI., the Political Ecclesiastic 
 
 virtue,' 'a most beautiful and virtuous princess, endowed 
 ' with every estimable quality of the mind, and with the 
 ' highest polish of understanding'; whilst Caviceo, in his 
 ' II Peregrino,' considers that he has sufficiently praised the 
 celebrated Isabella of Este, in asserting that she comes 
 next in excellence to Lucretia Borgia, As Roscoe says : 
 ' If the most remote idea had been entertained that 
 ' Lucretia had been the detestable character which the 
 ' Neapolitan poets have represented her, is it to be con- 
 ' ceived that this author would have introduced one of 
 ' the first women in Italy, in point of rank, character, and 
 ' accomplishments, as only second to her in merit ? ' 
 
 And Ariosto — is it conceivable that he should have 
 spoken as he did, if the modern idea of Lucretia were 
 true ? He represents her ' as rivalling, in the decorum of 
 ' her manners, as well as in the beauty of her person, all 
 ' that former times could boast ' — 
 
 clari soboles Lucretia Borgia 
 Pulchro ore, et pulchris requantem moribus, aut quos 
 Verax fama refert, aut quos sibi fabula finxit. 
 
 And he says that Rome ' ought to prefer the modern 
 ' Lucretia to the Lucretia of antiquity, as well in modesty 
 ' as in beauty.' 
 
 Such descriptions would be simply the severest satires 
 if the aspersions under which she laboured had obtained 
 the slightest credit. 
 
 Lastly, there is Aldo Manuzio : — ' Your chief desire, 
 ' as you have yourself so nobly asserted, is to stand ap- 
 ' proved of God, and to be useful not only to the present 
 ' age but to future times,' and then he celebrates her piety. 
 Now, as Roscoe says, if Lucretia had ever been such as 
 x' Dksm° hten described, 'the prostitution of her panegyrists 
 
 on Lucretia. y^^z, greater than her own ; but of such a degradation, 
 several of the authors before cited were incapable.' And 
 
Alexander VI., the Political Ecclesiastic loi 
 
 ' it is scarcely possible that the flagitious and abominable 
 ' Lucretia, and the respectable and honoured Duchess of 
 ' Ferrara, could be united in the same person.' It is not 
 as if there were some break in her life, and the latter part 
 were the penitential reparation of the former. There 
 is not a trace of this. No; the honoured Duchess of 
 Ferrara is matter of reliable history : the abominable 
 Lucretia is the foul creation of writers who in other 
 matters have shown shameless mendacity. And we may 
 say to Guicciardini of his portraiture of Alexander and 
 Lucretia what Voltaire said to him of his account of 
 Alexander's death : ' Thou hast deceived Europe, and 
 ' thou hast been deceived by thy passions ; you were the 
 ' enemy of the Pope, and you have believed your hatred.' 
 
 But a virtuous Lucretia means an Alexander relieved 
 of a horrible calumny. The question suggests itself, 
 How much else is false ? To form any fair estimate of 
 Alexander we must bear in mind the state of things in 
 Italy at the time he ascended the throne. 
 
 A cruel tyrant reigned at Naples in Ferdinand I. ; 
 at Florence Piero de' Medici had succeeded Lorenzo, and 
 was soon to be shamefully treated by Savonarola ; Milan 
 was under Lodovico il Moro, who was on the eve of 
 inviting the French into Italy, whilst a wild lad ruled 
 France in the person of Charles VIII. Round about 
 Rome itself the petty States were ruled by tyrants, 
 vassals of the pontiff, continually intriguing and rebelling, 
 who gave rise to the saying, ' Better to live under the 
 ' crozier than the lance.' And in Rome itself, the Orsinis 
 and Colonnas had rendered the city almost uninhabitable 
 to respectable characters. Owing to the long sojourn of 
 the Popes at Avignon, the disorder had reached such a 
 height that no less than 200 homicides are said to have 
 been committed in the city within the two previous years. 
 Suddenly, on July 25, 1492, Innocent VIII. was reported 
 
I02 Alexander VT., the Political Ecclesiastic 
 
 dead. Amongst the cardinals was one of known industry 
 and enterprise ; of proved capacity for managing men ; 
 according to his bitterest enemy, of ' singular acuteness 
 ' and sagacity, excellent in council, and in all weighty 
 ' matters of incredible concentration of ideas and astute- 
 ' ness.' It was Roderigo Borgia. He was unanimously 
 elected, and took the name of Alexander VI. NapleSj 
 Florence, France, knew well what sort of man it was 
 with whom they had to deal. Ferdinand wept, and 
 Florence whetted the knife of calumny. 
 
 The Orsinis and Colonnas knew that their day of 
 reckoning was at hand. The sheep on whom they had 
 preyed like wolves, had a shepherd, and the shepherd 
 could unsheathe a sword as well as handle the crozier. 
 The city of Rome was thrown into a delirium of joy. 
 Men's lives were henceforth safe, anr' their conscious, 
 ness of deliverance expressed itself in the exaggeration 
 common to the time. 
 
 Csesare magna fuit : nunc Roma est maxima : Sextus 
 Regnat Alexander : ille vir, iste deus. 
 
 Never was coronation so grand as that of Alexander VI. 
 and never did a metropolis cling to its ruler more 
 faithfully than the citizens of Rome to the new Pontiff. 
 His first act was to make life safe in the streets of Rome. 
 And as in Rome, so in the States. He was prepared 
 to defend his subjects from the tyranny and disorders 
 under which they had suffered. The struggle was tre- 
 mendous, and the enmities roused in the monsters of 
 rapacity and cruelty that had settled down upon the 
 Papal possessions, can be easily imagined. Caesar 
 Borgia, the Pope's nearest relative, was selected as his 
 General ; and such was the vigour with which he fulfilled 
 his charge that, after the death of Alexander, several cities 
 were eager to remain under Caesar Borgia's protection. 
 
Alexander VI., the Political Ecclesiastic 103 
 
 Ferdinand, who had intrigued with the Pontiff's rehclHous 
 vassal, felt the strong hand of the new ruler, and Florence, 
 his ally, shared his enmity against the powerful Pope. 
 Such was the success of the new policy, however, that 
 Philippe de Commines said that, were it only for the 
 difference between government by a strong hand, and 
 government by factions, the territory of the Church 
 would be the happiest home in the world. 
 
 And what was the life of the new Pope? The 
 BuUarium, the Consistorial Acts, the Allocutions and 
 Constitutions of the Pontiff are unimpeachable witnesses 
 to his industry, watchfulness, enterprise, and sagacity. 
 The Bullarium of Alexander VI., dealing with the gravest 
 subjects, from the canonisation of S. Anselm, Arch- 
 bishop of Canterbury, to the constitution forbidding the 
 re-baptism of the Ruthenians, reveals his care for one 
 side of his office, whilst Burchard's Diary is witness to 
 his punctilious fulfilment of another side. His official 
 acts exhibit splendid energy. At one moment he is 
 giving his approbation to religious orders ; at another 
 moment he is reconciling the schismatics of Georgia to 
 the unity of the Church. He appeals for assistance to 
 prevent a French invasion of Italy : he agitates for a 
 new crusade of Christendom against the Mussulmans ; 
 he is called in as arbiter of the disputes between two 
 Governments respecting the boundary of their newly 
 discovered territories in America. In one direction we 
 find him labouring for the conversion of a colony of 
 Moors ; in another he is addressing his bulls to Cologne, 
 Mayence, Magdeburg, Treves, to prevent the perversion 
 of his flock by means of bad books. Spain appeals to 
 him, and Portugal. England asks that the bones of 
 Henry VI. may be transferred to Westminster Abbey. 
 
 For all this we have unimpeachable testimony. Such 
 was the Pope. What was the man ? This is the man 
 
104 Alexander VI., the Political Ecclesiastic 
 
 who all the while, according to Florentine histor}', is 
 indulging in orgies and foul, horrible deeds, that hardly 
 find their equal except in the annals of the old Emperors 
 of Rome ! And yet a really careful writer, Audin, assures 
 'Hist, de us that under this Pope rich and poor had equal justice 
 ^' done them in Rome, and that soldiers and citizens long 
 clung to his memory, because of his royal qualities. We 
 are told that he was sparing of sleep and sparing in his 
 diet ; at table he appeared and disappeared like a shadow. 
 It was no pleasure to dine at the A^atican, so severe was 
 the regime ; he was a man severe to himself, but kind to 
 others ; his ear never closed to the cry of the needy, his 
 heart never shrinking from chastising the evil-doer. All 
 this we know, and a contemporary writer sums up : 
 A continu- ' Happy, therefore, was Rome in possessing such a 
 t^i"a °Lyons ' Pontiff — a man whom one could rarely find otherwise 
 1512. t engaged than in reading books, or in Divine worship, or 
 
 ' the work of Christ, considering nothing so bad as the 
 ' loss of time.' And this at three score years and ten ! 
 
 But Guicciardini has given another portrait of the 
 Pope, and he has been followed by writer after writer. ' 
 Repetition often gives a fictitious value to an originally 
 false statement, and it has been so here. Guicciardini, 
 as we have said, came from Florence, and the suspicious 
 part of the whole of the darker portrait of Alexander is 
 that so much of it is given as mere hearsay, and almost 
 all of it can be traced back to Florence and Naples. We 
 have seen how grossly Guicciardini lied about Alexander's 
 predecessor, asserting that his children, born in honourable 
 wedlock before he was ordained, were his offspring after 
 he was a priest. His account, too, of Alexander's 
 death is an elaborate lie, differing altogether from 
 Burchard's. It was this that provoked Voltaire's exclama- 
 
 ' Even George Eliot, generally more careful, has acted the 
 parrot here. 
 
Alcxntidcr VI., the Political Ecclesiastic 105 
 
 tion against Guicciardini's animus. Guicciardini, again, 
 states that Alexander entered upon his pontificate by a 
 simoniacal election. And in this he is followed by all 
 Protestant historians. Even Professor Creighton, who 
 writes so much more fairly than most, follows him in his 
 statement about Ascanio Sforza. He says, ' Ascanio 
 ' Sforza's zeal was increased by the promise of the office 
 ' of Vice-Chancellor, and Borgia's palace; Orsini, Colonna, 
 ' Savelli, Sanseverino, Riario, Pallavicini, even the nona- 
 ' genarian Gherardo of Venice, all received promises of 
 ' benefices, or gifts of money.' Where is his authority for 
 all this ? The Ferrarese ambassador at Florence. And 
 who was his authority ? The Florentine envoy. Always 
 Florence ! And the specification of what each received 
 is to be found, where? In a letter of the Florentine 
 ValorL Yet, according to Valori, Alexander was unani- 
 mously elected; and nothing was heard about his supposed 
 simoniacal election, until Charles VIII., to further his 
 purpose of aggrandisement, like Otho and Henry IV. 
 before him, pretended to have scruples about the Pope's 
 election. When it no longer served that purpose, the 
 subject was dropped. I may mention that Dr. Littledale 
 seems to be unaware of the Church's teaching on this 
 subject, viz., that the electing cardinals represent the 
 Church, and the Church's acceptance of their action is 
 sufficient to validate an election, otherwise irregular. 
 But the proof of simony in this case is by no means 
 clear. The most important personage among the 
 cardinals at the commencement of Alexander's reign, was 
 Ascanio Sforza. He is said to have secured the Pope's 
 election by his personal influence, and, according to the 
 Florentine writers, followed by Professor Creighton, to 
 have been himself influenced by simoniacal promises. 
 Now we must remember that it is the promise of a gift, 
 not its mere acceptance, which constitutes simony. But 
 
lo5 Alexander VL, the Political Ecclesiastic 
 
 where is the proof of the promise ? In the important 
 case of Cardinal Sforza, the evidence utterly breaks 
 •History of down. 'His zeal was increased by the promise of the 
 toL^u!""'^'' 'office of Yice-Chancellor, and Borgia's palace,' says 
 Professor Creighton. Guicciardini tells us that he was 
 bribed by Borgia's palace. But when we come to examine 
 the statement, we find it rests on nothing. Cardinal 
 Sforza did not have Borgia's palace. It was given to 
 Battista Orsini. Some one must have had the office of 
 Vice-Chancellor ; who so fitted, from Alexander's point of 
 view, as Ascanio Sforza ? \Miere is the evidence of any 
 simoniacal prearrangement ? It is simply wanting. Pro- 
 fessor Creighton considers that the testimony of Infessura 
 is confirmed by Manfredi, and Valori. But Manfredi 
 and Valori do not confirm the important part of Professor 
 Creighton's statement. They say nothing about the 
 promise. So far from saying that Ascanio Sforza's zeal 
 '■luas increased by the promise of the office, &:c.,' as the 
 Professor asserts, Valori simply says that Ascanio Sforza 
 secured the election of Alexander (which clears Alex- 
 ander), and that beyond this ' Quello che habbi inducto 
 Aschanio non posso anchora intendere' (Burchard's 
 'Diarium,' vol. ii. p. 6io). As for Infessura's testimony, 
 Professor Creighton himself elsewhere makes a great 
 ' Historj- of admission. ' Infessura who was an adherent of the 
 vl.1. iii. p. Colonna family, and had the spirit of a republican, has 
 blackened his (Alexander's) memorj' \nth accusations of 
 the foulest crimes. These charges, made by a partisan 
 with undisguised animosity, must be dismissed as un- 
 proved.' And yet. Professor Creighton, strangely enough, 
 repeats one charge which, so far as I can ascertain, rests 
 on the authority only of Infessura and Guicciardini, 
 and seems to be mere spiteful gossip. It occurs in 
 Burchard's Diar)-, but is confessedly an interpolation from 
 Infessura. It runs thus : ' Even the nonagenarian 
 
Alexander V/., tJie Political Ecclcsiaslic 107 
 
 ' Gherardo, of Venice ' (says Professor Creighton), ' was 
 ' amongst those who received promises of benefices or 
 ' gifts of money.' But here are the facts. 
 
 In Burchard's Diary, or rather the interpolation from 
 Infessura, this good man figures as a 'certain white monk 
 ' of Venice ' (cuidam fratri albo Veneto) ' lately received 
 ' into the cardinalate,' to whom Alexander gave 5,000 
 golden ducats. This was Morfeo Gheraldo, a former gene- 
 ral of the Camaldolese, patriarch of Venice, whose pro- 
 motion to the cardinalate took place 28 years before — not 
 very recent. If any reliance is to be placed on Infegsura's 
 statement, which is not confirmed by Valori, it is easily 
 explained by the fact that the old man, being a monk, 
 would need an income, or capital to supply an income, 
 for the expenses of the cardinalate. But it is easy to be 
 inventive, when we are on the track of calumny. It was 
 necessary that Alexander should bestow on some one his 
 own office of Vice-Chancellor, when elected Pope ; it 
 was necessary, or natural, that he should part with his 
 palace, when he entered mto possession of the Vatican ; 
 It was necessary that he should cease to be Abbot of 
 Subiaco, and that some one should have the abbacy ; it 
 was necessary that some one should succeed him as 
 Bishop of Porto. It was natural that he should give 
 these and other things to those who were his friends. 
 As for the cities of Nepi, and Citta di Castello, if 
 they were in need of governors, he at once appointed 
 those whom he could trust. But the bestowal of gifts, 
 in the hands of a Guicciardini and an Infessura, be- 
 comes a promise before election ; and the desire to 
 crush an enemy suggests to an adventurous lad, like 
 Charles VIII., or to his political advisers, the charge of 
 simony. 
 
 It fell to the ground. There was probably little more 
 foundation for it than in the case of S. Gregory VII., 
 
io8 Alexander VI., the Political Ecclesiastic 
 
 against whom Henry IV. found it convenient to bring a 
 similar charge. 
 
 But we cannot forget that even Savonarola hurled 
 the charge against the Pope, after he had been inhibited 
 from preaching. There is no more piteous spectacle in 
 history than the change from Savonarola the earnest 
 preacher, to Savonarola the fanatic and political agitator.' 
 Savonarola shamefully treated Piero de Medici, and 
 Piero was Alexander's friend. Savonarola could even 
 erect a boy, like Charles VIII., into a sort of demigod 
 brought on to the scene to carr)'out the Divine purposes. 
 The man who had so rightly guarded the faithful against 
 the teaching of fanaticism by inhibiting his appearance 
 in the pulpit, became nothing but a vicious Pope, as 
 Savonarola greedily listened to Florentine tales ;^ and 
 when Savonarola and Valori came to their death in a 
 tempest of popular fury, Florentine calumny was equal 
 to attributing their death directly to Alexander VI. 
 
 I am not, however, concerned to defend Alexander 
 against all accusations. It is no part of my argument 
 that he was free from fault. That there is nothing really 
 proved against him of a compromising character, from a 
 moral point of view, during his pontificate, I am myself 
 profoundly convinced. I am aware of the Bull concerning 
 Giovanni Borgia,^ and of a single passage in Burchard 
 which seems to be confirmed by it. But we need some 
 further evidence to clear up the confusion that exists on 
 that matter. It is, however, as a Pope rather than as a 
 
 ' Burchard's estimate of Savonarola is very unfavourable, so far 
 as his attitude towards the Pope is concerned. 
 
 - For a careful estimate of Savonarola's character, see Jung- 
 mann, Diss. Hist. vol. v. p. xxxvi. 
 
 ' Although, after perusing all the Bulls relating to the Borgia 
 family, I cannot adopt Leonetti's too favourable contention, I 
 think he does give fair evidence to show that this Giovanni was the 
 son of Caesar Borgia. 
 
Alexander VI., the Political Ecclesiastic 109 
 
 man that we have to consider him, and it seems clear 
 that in that age the ApostoHc See did not suffer that 
 diminution in the eyes of men which is often supposed.' 
 The head of Alexander's offence was, after all, his de- 
 fence of the temporal possessions of the Holy See, and his 
 use of Ccesar Borgia to defend them. The defence of the 
 possessions- of the Holy See was, however, a defence of 
 the rights of property ; it was a ' magnanimous ' object 
 according to Ranke, and, appearing as he did in an 
 age when the atmosphere was steeped in falsehood and 
 calumny, and daring to rescue the sheep committed to 
 his charge from men who were ' fiends in human shape,' 
 he has been credited with a mode of life for which, so 
 far as his pontificate is concerned, there is no sufficient 
 evidence beyond the assertions of his sworn foes — men 
 who frequently not only do not vouch for the truth of their 
 statements, but do not vouch even for their own belief 
 in them. ' They say,' ' it is said,' are scattered over the 
 pages of Guicciardini, and are a favourite formula with 
 Burchard. 
 
 It cannot, then, be held with any show of truth that 
 the language of the Homilies, such as that ' the whole 
 ' of Christendom was steeped in damnable idolatry for 
 ' 800 years ' before the Reformation, is explained, much 
 less justified, by the life of a Pope such as Alexander VI. 
 It was not this that set Luther against the Papacy, and, 
 after him, Henry VIII. Let the latter answer for Luther. 
 'Formerly,' says the king, 'Luther wrote against the 
 ' Bohemians, that they sinned damnably who did not obey 
 ' the Pope.' This was after Alexander's death, when the 
 Papacy was in very different hands. Henry continues, 
 ' But I ask this : He that saw these things so short a 
 
 ' Hiibner says well, ' Alexandre VI, de triste memoire, passait 
 ' liii-meme parmi ses contemporains pour un grand pape.' — Sixtc V, 
 Introd. iv. 
 
no Alexaiider VI., tJie Political Ecclesiastic 
 
 ' while since, how is it that he becomes of opinion that 
 ' then he saw nothing at all ? What new eyes has he got ? 
 ' Is his sight more sharp after he has joined anger to his 
 ' wonted pride, and has added hatred to both ? ' 
 
 And for himself the king answers the question with 
 the greatest naivete. When the Papal Nuncio expostu- 
 lated with him in 1533, and he hinted that deeper studies 
 might make him change his opinion back to acceptance 
 Bridgett's of the Papacy, he added that that would depend on the 
 
 Fisher,' conduct of the Pope, i.e. in the matter of granting; the 
 p. 309. J . 
 
 divorce. 
 
 On the whole question S. Augustine's words should 
 be treasured. 
 
 He says : ' Our Heavenly Master so carefully fore- 
 ' warned us as to give people an assurance in regard to 
 ' bad prelates, lest on their account the chair of saving 
 ' doctrine should be abandoned, in which even bad men 
 ' are forced to utter what is good. For what they say is 
 Donat ' t^heir own ; it is of God, Who has placed the doctrine 
 ' of truth in the chair of unity.' 
 
 In the very hour when Caiaphas was plotting murder, 
 or rather Deicide, it pleased God not to deprive that 
 High Priest of the power of prophesying. ' He spoke 
 ' not of himself, but, being the High Priest of that year, 
 ' he prophesied that Jesus should die for that nation ' 
 (S. John xi. 51), on which S. Chrysostom remarks that 
 ' Grace used only the mouth of Caiaphas, and did not 
 ' touch his impure heart.' 
 
 But further (i) take the sixteenth century as a whole 
 and you have a Pius III,, who seemed to be specially 
 raised up to remove scandals ; Julius II., who, with his 
 rough address and warrior heart, had at least, according 
 to Macaulay, a 'great ' mind ; Leo X., who assisted Cardinal 
 Ximenes in publishing his Polyglot Bible, excommunicated 
 Luther, and anathematised thirty-five of his propositions 
 
Alexander VI., the Political Ecclesiastic 1 1 1 
 
 glolw ; Adrian VI., the reformer of abuses in court, 
 ' frugal, virtuous, and industrious ' in theological work ; 
 Clement VII., who was at least respected, though not 
 obeyed, by Henry VIII. ; Paul III., concerned wholly 
 with the work of Church reform ; Julius III., in fierce 
 struggle with the detestable errors of Luther ; and 
 Marcellus II., who in twenty-one days exhibited a devo- 
 tion and nobility sufficient to cause universal regret at his 
 death. Let Lord Macaulay speak for the rest. 'They 
 ' were,' he tells us, ' men whose spirit resembled that of 
 ' Dunstan and of Becket. The Roman pontiffs exhibited in 
 ' their own persons all the austerity of the early anchorites 
 ' of Syria. Paul IV. brought to the Papal throne the same 
 ' fervent zeal that had carried him into the Theatine 
 ' convent. Pius V., under his gorgeous vestments, wore, 
 ' day and night, the hair-shirt of a simple friar, walked 
 ' barefoot in the streets at the head of processions, found, 
 ' even in the midst of his most pressing avocations, time 
 ' for private prayer, often regretted that the public duties 
 ' of his station were unfavourable to growth in holiness, 
 ' and edified his flock by innumerable instancesof humility, 
 ' charity, and forgiveness of injuries ; while at the same 
 ' time he upheld the authority of his See, and the un- E^sa 
 ' adulterated doctrines of his Church, with all the stub- f^n". 
 ' bornness and vehemence [he might have said firmness 
 ' and courage] of Hildebrand. Gregory XIII. exerted 
 ' himself, not only to imitate, but to surpass Pius in the 
 ' severe virtues of his sacred profession.' 
 
 Nor must we forget Sixtus V. and all his work for 
 public peace and morals, and for the publication of a 
 pure edition of Holy Scripture. And then, after Urban 
 VI I. 's reign of a single fortnight, with his tranquil and 
 edifying death, and Gregory XIV., of stainless life, 
 and Innocent IX., with his reign of two months so full 
 of promise— the century closed with Clement VIII., 
 
1 1 2 Alexander VI., the Political Ecclesiastic 
 
 encouraging piety and knowledge in every part of the 
 Church, publishing the most accurate edition of the Holy 
 Scriptures, and surrounding himself with cardinals such 
 as Baronius, Bellarmine, and Du Perron. 
 
 And secondly, if Alexander VI. 's life was such as to 
 explain the abusive language of the Homilies, how is it 
 that it had no such effect on S. Carlo Borromeo, or S. 
 Philip Neri ? 
 
 Even if Alexander VI. had really been all that he is 
 painted by his foes, his appearance in the midst of a long 
 line of saints and martyrs could not compromise the 
 Divine original of the institution. 
 
 At the end of the fifteenth century lived a Saint of 
 the Blood Royal of France, daughter and wife of a king, 
 S. Jane of Valois. After a life of great sanctity, when 
 repudiated by her lawful husband, and, indeed, harshly 
 treated by Alexander, she founded the Order of the 
 Annunciation. She met with the usual difficulties in the 
 way of founding a new order, but at length obtained her 
 cherished wish. She applied to the Vicar of Christ, with 
 all the devotion to the Holy See which has been the 
 unvarying characteristic of the Saints, and her Order was 
 finally approved by Alexander VI. There was nothing 
 in his life that could stagger her faith in the Divine 
 institution of the Papacy. The fact is that the life of 
 the Church went on in spite of the Court of Rome,' for 
 men knew that our Lord had provided for such con- 
 tingencies, as worldly rulers : ' What they teach, observe 
 'and do ; but do not according to their works.' 
 
 When, then, to Barlow's evil life men oppose an in- 
 stance such as that of Alexander VI., they miss the point 
 of our objection. As I have said above, Alexander did 
 
 ' The corruption and laxity of discipline, nevertheless, has 
 been enormously exaggerated. See Jungmann, Hist. Diss. vol. v. 
 
Alexander VI., the Political Ecclesiastic 113 
 
 hot start the Papacy. But Barlow did, according to our 
 contention, start the Anglican Succession. 
 
 So that the argument stands thus : — ■ 
 
 It is not wonderful that God, having ordained that the 
 Pope should be elected by human means, should permit 
 the occasional occurrence of an unworthy choice. It 
 would be wonderful, when His own immediate action de- 
 termined the selection, that it should fall on a bad man. 
 It would have been amazing had Judas, instead of Peter, 
 been appointed to preside over the planting of the Faith, 
 or for Judas to have survived so as to take part in that 
 work at all as an Apostle. What we feel as an objection 
 to the Anglican system is this — that whenever a great 
 work of reformation has been required in the Catholic 
 Church, God has raised up Saints to preside over it ; but 
 this alleged Anglican Reformation was presided over by 
 a class of men whom Dr. Littledale, in his better days, 
 called irredeemable villains. But further. Barlow's wicked- 
 ness was distinctly of the kind that might lead him to lend 
 a helping hand in vitiating the Apostolic Succession. It 
 is not disputed that he was a bad man. It is on record 
 that his badness, whilst considerable in other respects, 
 took the form of contempt for the Apostolic Succession. 
 It is on record that the evidence of consecration is wanting 
 in this particular case of a bad man, who held the whole 
 proceeding in contempt. It is on record, finally, that 
 such a man was the best they could obtain to preside 
 over the function by which the succession is supposed 
 to have been passed on to the present Anglican epis- 
 copate. 
 
 I 
 
114 Henry VIII., the Ecclesiastical Politician 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 HENRY VIII., THE ECCLESIASTICAL POLITICIAN. 
 
 Next to the idea that the Council of Chalcedon laid 
 down the principle that Rome had a primacy of honour, 
 not of rule — derived from its secular position, not 
 from its relationship to the Apostle Peter — accidental, 
 and not essential to the form of the Church's unity — 
 there is no delusion that has been insisted on more 
 strongly of late years than the clerical origin of the 
 so-called Reformation. The Church in England, it is 
 contended, severed herself from Rome, and reformed 
 herself. She remained the same as of old in all essential 
 doctrine, only she taught the Faith without the incubus 
 of the disciplinary arrangement which bound her to the 
 Patriarch of the West. Some few years ago it was the 
 fashion among the highest Churchmen to deplore this 
 severance, and to denounce its method of action. It was 
 held, with Dr. Littledale, in his masterly sketch of the 
 Reformation, that ' it is not as though in a great crisis 
 ' some few mistakes were made by human weakness, which 
 * we should condone in consideration of the great work 
 'effected, but motives, actions, language, were, all alike, 
 < rotten and bad.' • 
 
 It was, however, clear that such language could only 
 lead men of decisive character to transfer their allegiance, 
 and every effort has been made of late to rest the cause 
 ' See Littledale's Lecture on Innovations. 
 
Henry VIII., the Ecclesiastical Politician 1 1 5 
 
 on a different line of argument. The line adopted by the 
 author of the ' Roman Question ' is altogether different. 
 In his chapter on ' The Separation of England from Rome,' 
 he attributes this separation, or at least far the largest share, 
 to ' the like causes which centuries before alienated the 
 
 * Eastern patriarchates ' from the Holy See (p. 20). He had 
 previously attributed the Eastern rebellion to encroach- 
 ment on the part of Rome, instead of, as is the real history 
 of the matter, to the ambitious projects of Constantinople. 
 
 He is anxious, therefore, to show that the clergy of 
 England desired a change, not of doctrine, but of rule. 
 
 There is here a slight confusion of thought. For he 
 begins by eliminating from the range of ' doctrine ' the 
 question of the relationship of the English Episcopate to 
 the See of S. Peter. And so he is able to say (p. 14), 
 
 * There was scarcely any change of doctrine in the reign 
 'of Henry VIH.' 
 
 And yet Bishop Fisher and Sir Thomas More thought 
 it right to suffer death rather than admit what they con- 
 sidered the new doctrine concerning the King's supremacy ! 
 Sir Thomas More tells us that he spent years in the exa- 
 mination of this question, and came to the conclusion 
 that the doctrine to which he was required to subscribe 
 was a departure from the teaching of the Catholic Church. 
 Bishop Fisher was acknowledged all over the Continent 
 to be the most learned and the holiest bishop in Eng- 
 land. And no sooner did Bishop Fisher see (what he did 
 not perceive at first) that the king was changing the doc- 
 trine which lay at the root of Church government, than 
 he refused to subscribe, and won his martyr's crown. 
 
 Sir Thomas More said : ' Though I would not deny' 
 {i.e. refuse) ' to swear to the succession, yet unto that oath 
 'that was there offered me, I could not swear, without 
 'the jeoparding of my soul to eternal damnation.' 
 
 Archbishop Cranmer, indeed, wanted an oath to be 
 
 I 2 
 
Ii6 Henry ]' I I I., the Ecclesiastical Politician 
 
 administered to Bishop Fisher and Sir Thomas More, 
 which would not contravene their rehgious conviction as 
 to the authority of the See of Rome, and the exact nature 
 of this oath might be suppressed, so that the pubUc would 
 hear only that they had signed, and would not know what 
 they had signed. The evidence for this duplicity is to 
 be found in Bridgett's ' Life of Blessed John Fisher,' 
 p. 277. 
 
 All this is clear proof that the most saintly bishop of 
 the day, and the most saintly layman known to English 
 history, agreed in considering that Henr)''s proposal was 
 not only a change, but a vital change, in the doctrine of 
 the Church. 
 
 Archbishop Laud says, in a formal letter to the Duke of 
 Buckingham, signed by himself, the Bishop of Rochester, 
 and the Bishop of Oxford, that ' when the clergy submitted 
 'themselves in the time of Henry VIIL, the submis- 
 ^ sion was so made that if any difference, doctrinal or other, 
 ' fell in the Church, the King and the Bishops were to be 
 ' judges of it in a National Synod or Convocation : the 
 ' King first giving leave, under his Broad Seal, to handle 
 ' the points in difference.' (' Laud's Works,' vol. vi.) This 
 was a radical change in the doctrine which concerned the 
 mode of guarding the Faith. It was substituting a rela- 
 tion between the civil and ecclesiastical powers, which 
 was the cause of most of the troubles in the Eastern 
 Church of the 4th and 5th centuries. It left the helm of 
 the ship, not in S. Peter's, but in the king's hands. It 
 led to a loss of all belief in sacramental truth. The king, 
 as Protector of the Church, separate from the See of 
 S. Peter, meant, as the event proved, liberty to teach 
 error, without the countervailing check of intercommunion 
 with the rest of the Catholic world. 
 
 When the king had the question put to Cranmer 
 'whether in the New Testament be required any 
 
Henry VIII., tJie Ecclesiastical Politician 117 
 
 'consecration of a bishop or priest, or only appoint- 
 ' ing to the office be sufficient ? ' and Cranmer rephed, 
 ' In the New Testament he that is appointed to be a 
 ' bishop or a priest needeth no consecration by the Scrip- 
 *ture, for election or appointment thereto is sufficient,' 
 we may well believe that Cranmer did not really hold 
 so monstrous a doctrine as of faith ; but that he was 
 cloaking his real sentiments and conforming his judgments 
 to what he knew, or expected, to be that of the king. 
 But that was precisely the situation. A doctrine had en- 
 tered into the Church of England which was destined to 
 shape its future : eventually the whole Elizabethan set- 
 tlement hung on it : and the Church of England is what 
 she is by reason of that doctrine. That doctrine was suc- 
 cinctly expressed by Bishop Van Mildert in the House 
 of Lords on an important occasion when, after quoting 
 the judgment of one of the greatest of Anglican divines 
 (Bishop Horsley), he said, ' Now it is manifest, my lords, 
 ' this latter power (jurisdiction), though spiritual in its pur- 
 *pose and effects, cannot be exercised by any other autho- 
 
 * rity than that of the State. The true line of distinction I 
 ' apprehend to be this — spiritual functions belong exclu- 
 
 * sively to the Church ; spiritual jurisdiction belongs to the 
 ' State as allied to the Church, and although exercised 
 ' by the Church is derived from the State.' ' Now compare 
 this with the oath taken by every English bishop pre- 
 viously to 1534. 
 
 ' I will be faithful and obedient to Blessed Peter and 
 
 * the holy Apostolic Roman Church. ... I will take care 
 
 * to defend, preserve, increase, and promote the rights, 
 ' honours, privileges, and authority of the Roman Church, 
 'our lord the Pope, and his successors.' 
 
 The words 'obedient to blessed Peter,' express a 
 fundamental doctrine — whether true or false. 
 
 ' Hansard, 2nd Series, vol, xiii, col. 696, 
 
Il8 HenTj VIII., tlie Ecclesiastical Politician 
 
 But there is another fact which seems of itself conclu- 
 sive. In 1 52 1, Henry VIII. wrote in favour of Papal Supre- 
 macy as the received doctrine of the Church of England, 
 as having been the received doctrine of the Church from 
 the beginning, and of the Church of England as part 
 of the Catholic Church. In 1533 Henry told the Papal 
 Nuncio that he had 'studied better,' and changed his 
 mind.' 
 
 Two of the most competent critics on this subject 
 that England has produced tell us exactly the same. 
 Mr. Brewer, an Anglican clergyman, says : ' Opposition 
 ' to Papal authority was familiar to men ; but a spiritual 
 ' supremacy, an ecclesiastical headship, as it separated 
 ' Henr}^ VIIL from his predecessors by an immeasurable 
 ' interval, so it was without precedent and at variance with 
 ' all tradition . . . the wisest could hardly catch a glimpse 
 ' at its profound significance.' (Introduction, vol. i. p. 107.) 
 Mr. Gairdner writes that the period from January to July, 
 1535, ' is a very marked period in the history of the reign 
 ' — the very crisis of royal supremacy, and of a totally 
 'new order in the Church.' (Preface to vol. viii. p. i.) 
 Here are two witnesses, neither of them members of the 
 Catholic Church. They speak simply as historians, with 
 knowledge such as few would claim concerning the reign 
 of Henry VIII. ; and they call his new relationship to 
 the Church, ' A headship . . . without precedent, and at 
 'variance with all tradition ' — ' a totally new order in the 
 ' Church.' 
 
 It is certain that throughout the history of the 
 English Church, the authority of the Bishop of Rome 
 had been acknowledged as of Divine institution. It is 
 easy to quote instances in which kings sought to change 
 the boundary line between the temporal and the spiritual 
 
 ' See letter of Chapuys, Spanish Calendars, iv. 1057, quoted in 
 Bridgelt's Life of Bishop Fisher. 
 
Henry I I I., the Ecclesiastical Politician Tig 
 
 of Anglican- 
 ism,' p. 34. 
 
 jurisdiction, between their own authority and that of the 
 Pope : it is impossible to produce a single instance in 
 which the authority of the latter was formally denied. 
 To be restive under authority is not to deny the exist- 
 ence of the authority ; to say ' You are master only thus 
 ' far : here my dominion begins,' is to admit that there is a 
 twofold jurisdiction. This principle was so engrained in 
 the English constitution that it was difficult at once to 
 eradicate its expression from the statute-books of Eng- 
 land. Archbishop Bancroft and his suffragans noted See F'. 
 this in their demand for a change in the wording of the Imllh s 
 ancient form of Prohibition. Before the Reformation, Amlqutfy 
 the temporal jurisdiction defended itself from encroach- 
 ments on the part of the spiritual authority by writs of 
 Prohibition, restraining the exercise of spiritual jurisdic- 
 tion within its proper limits, as it conceived those limits. 
 To these writs temporal penalties were attached. The 
 spiritual power, emanating from the See of S. Peter acted 
 by excommunication in case of encroachments on the part 
 of the temporal authority. But the spiritual authority, 
 the spiritual jurisdiction, had been assumed by the king. 
 Accordingly Archbishop Bancroft and the bishops of his 
 province, plead thus : ' Concerning the form of Prohi- 
 ' bitions, forasmuch as both the ecclesiastical and temporal 
 '■jurisdictions be now united in his Majesty (James I.), 
 'which were heretofore de facto, though not de jure'' (here 
 he denies the right of S. Peter's successor to their obe- 
 dience) ' derived from several heads, we desire to be 
 ' satisfied by the judges — whether as the case nowstandeth, 
 ' the former manner of Prohibitions heretofore used im- 
 ' porting an ecclesiastical court to be aliiid a foro regio, 
 ' and the ecclesiastical law not to be legem terra, and the 
 'proceedings in those courts to be contra coronam et 
 ' dignitatem regiain, may 7ioiv without offence and deroga- 
 ' tion of the King's ecclesiastical prerogative be continued, 
 
120 Henry VIII., the Ecclesiastical Politician 
 
 ' as though either of the said jurisdictions remained now 
 ' so distinguished and revered as they were before, or that 
 ' the law ecclesiastical, which we put in execution, were 
 ' not the King's and the realm's ecclesiastical laws, aswell 
 ' as the temporal laws.' 
 
 Here there is a clear expression of radical change. 
 It was not a question merely of giving legal effect to the 
 decisions of the Church, but something far beyond this. 
 This always existed ; but here a change is spoken of. 
 And how radical the change was may be gathered from 
 a letter of Edward III. to Benedict XII. (a.d. 1337), in 
 which he is protesting against an appeal made direct to 
 Rome over the head of the Archbishop of Canterbury. 
 It is the directness of the appeal, ignoring the Court of 
 Canterbur)' as a court of first instance, against which the 
 king protests. He says : ' The Apostolic See, although it 
 ' has been divinely established in the plenitude of power, 
 ' is not accustomed to take away the right and the juris- 
 ' diction of inferior prelates called to a participation of its 
 'care, nor to reserve, without legitimate reasons, to the 
 ' examination of the Apostolic See, causes which ought to 
 ' be heard in the localities.' There are, then, such things 
 as legitimate reasons for an appeal straight to Rome, 
 whose power is of Divine institution. Between this and 
 Henry VIII. 's doctrine there is no 'continuity.' And 
 to come further down in time, where is the continuity 
 between the doctrine of Henry VHI. and that of Henry 
 VI. ? Henr)' VI. protests against the Council of Basle 
 assuming a superior position to the Pope. And on what 
 grounds does he protest ? On the ground that the Papacy, 
 with its rights of jurisdiction, is of Divine institution. 
 Addressing the bishops as ' Reverend Fathers ' he says : 
 ' But since between you and the undoubted Vicar of 
 ' Christ, who is supported by the adherence of the cardinals 
 ' of the Roman Church and no small portion of Christians, 
 
Henry VIII., the Ecclesiastical Politician 1 2 1 
 
 ' the question is not one of fact, but of right divine and 
 ' ecclesiastical, not so easily will this fever, this sickness 
 ' penetrating, so to speak, to the very 7?iarrow of the 
 ' Christian laiv, receive its cure and removal from the 
 'judgment of the wise.' 
 
 Clearly Henry VIII. 's conduct would have been re- 
 garded by Henry VI. as ' penetrating to the very marrow 
 of the Christian law,' contravening a 'right divine.' 
 
 Let us pass from kings to bishops. S. Anselm, 
 Archbishop of Canterbury, thus addresses the bishops 
 who were under the king's influence : ' He says also to 
 ' all the Apostles alike, " He that heareth you, heareth 
 ' " Me ; and he that despiseth you, despiseth Me ; and he 
 ' " that toucheth you, toucheth the apple of Mine eye." As 
 ' we know these words to have been addressed primarily 
 ' to Blessed Peter, and in him to the other Apostles, so 
 ' we hold them to have been said primarily to the Vicar 
 ' of Blessed Peter, and through him to the other bishops, 
 ' who hold the place of the Apostles : not to any emperor, 
 ' or any king, or duke, or count . . . Wherefore let all 
 ' likewise know, that in the things of God I will render 
 ' obedience to the Vicar of Blessed Peter ; in the things 
 ' which of right belong to the earthly dignity of my Lord 
 'the King I will give faithful counsel and assistance 
 ' according to my power.' Where is the ' continuity ' of 
 doctrine between S. Anselm's teaching and that of 
 Archbishop Cranmer ? ' 
 
 But perhaps the most pertinent instance of all is to 
 be found in the conduct and words of the famous Bishop 
 of Lincoln, Robert Grosseteste. He refused to induct 
 a nominee of the reigning Pontiff, on the ground that he 
 
 ' See also Lib. iv. Ep. xiii. ' It is certain that he who does 
 ' not obey the ordinances of the Roman Pontift" ... is disobedient 
 ' to the Apostle Peter . . . nor is he of that flock which was given 
 'to him (Peter) by God.' 
 
122 Henry VIII., tJic Ecclesiastical Politician 
 
 was totally unfit. But in doing this he is careful to dis- 
 tinguish his act from that of one who denies the authority 
 which in a particular instance he forthwith resists. He 
 says that to ' the Most Holy Apostolic See all power has 
 'been entrusted for edification, not destruction, by the 
 ' Holy of Holies, our Lord Jesus Christ.' He is therefore 
 dealing with a Divine institution. And in another letter 
 he says that ' to the Holy Roman Church is due, from 
 ' every son of the Church, the most devoted obedience, 
 ' the most reverential veneration, the most fervent love, the 
 'most submissive fear.' There is no continuity between 
 this teaching and the doctrine of Henry VHI., and the 
 Convocation of 1534. Henry VI. says that, 'from the 
 ' very cradle of the Christian religion, his authority {i.e. 
 'the Pope's) has been regarded as most manifest, and 
 ' the plenitude of his power reverenced with all possible 
 'veneration.' Henry VHI. took the Papal jurisdiction 
 into his own hands, on the ground that jurisdiction 
 belonged to the king. (There was not the most distant 
 notion that jurisdiction and orders went together. This 
 confused conception of authority was an after-invention.) 
 A new prerogative was added to the Crown, and the 
 right to annex it was based upon a new doctrine. 
 
 There was, then, a fundamental change of doctrine 
 concerning the government of the Church ; and the 
 government of the Church involves the guardianship of 
 the Faith. It would be easy to point out that a great 
 deal of informal change of doctrine in other respects 
 was taking place in Henry's reign ; so that Ridley soon 
 after learnt to say, ' The Primitive Church did never use 
 ' any altar ; ' and Latimer, ' Minister is a more fit name 
 ' than priest, for that the name of priest importeth sacrifice; ' 
 and Ridley, not so many years after, could actually give 
 an Episcopal injunction that all altars should be destroyed. 
 But the change concerning jurisdiction is sufficient. As 
 
Hairy VIII., the Ecclesiastical Politician 123 
 
 was said at the time, it involved a new reading of ' Feed 
 'my sheep,' as though our Lord committed His sheep to 
 the king and not to S. Peter. In consequence of this 
 interpretation of Holy Scripture, Cranmer and his 
 fellows took out a commission from Henry VHI. to 
 discharge their Episcopal functions ; and they held (and 
 showed by their first act on Edward VI. 's accession how 
 firmly they held it) that their jurisdiction was such that 
 ' the king might recall it, and strike their character dead coiiler, vol. 
 'when he pleased.' v.pt.a'.bk. 
 
 If this was not change of doctrine it is hard to say 
 what would constitute change. It was, as I have said, 
 the change in the doctrine, affecting the very idea of the 
 unity and authority of the Church, that led to all the 
 depreciation of the Sacraments in the following reign. 
 The Church could not be one if there were such 
 things as National Churches with a king in the position 
 that Henry and Elizabeth assumed. Intercourse between 
 Churches must then be carried on between kings and 
 queens, not between patriarchs, as of old ; and each 
 'Sovereign Majesty' would have the fatal power of 
 'tuning the pulpits,' as Elizabeth boasted of doing. The 
 authority of the Church was, in fact, gone. All sense 
 of authority soon died out, except the authority of the 
 reigning sovereign ; so that Elizabeth could inform the 
 Spanish ambassador as to the religion she meant to 
 have in England. She told him it would not be precisely 
 the Confession of Augsburg ; ' it would be something like 
 it and yet different ; and in 1573 Bishop Pilkington wrote 
 to inform his friend Gualter, on the Continent : ' We 
 ' endure many things against our inclination, and groan 
 'under them, which, if we wished ever so much, no 
 
 ' De Feria to Philip II. April 29, 1559. She said also, 'she 
 'believed almost as Catholics believed.' — Froude's Hist. vol. vii. 
 p. 82, 
 
1 24 Hcjii-y VIII., the Ecclesiastical Politician 
 
 cf. Corr. of 
 Parker, 
 cccxh-iil. 
 Archbishop 
 Parker to 
 Lord Burgh- 
 ley, p. 454 ; 
 Parker 
 Society edit. 
 1833. 
 
 'entreaty could remove. We are under authority, and 
 ' cannot make any innovation without the sanction of the 
 'Queen, or abrogate anything without the authority of 
 ' the Laws.' He himself would probably have wished 
 the religion of England to be that of the Confession of 
 Augsburg, pure and simple ; but Elizabeth was deter- 
 mined, as the author of the ' Roman Question ' puts it, 
 to 'establish a High Church line for the Church of 
 'England' (p. 19), something like the Confession of 
 Augsburg, but still ' different from it.' Her bishops had 
 some of them spent a while on the Continent, and desiring 
 to communicate with the foreign Protestants found that 
 they must sign that Confession, ' which, accordingly, they 
 ' did.' Now all this high-handed action of Elizabeth (such 
 that Archbishop Parker referred to her Majesty and 
 Lord Burghley ' whether her Majesty and you will have 
 ' any archbishop or bishops, or how you will have them 
 'ordered') was the result of that vital change in one 
 doctrine in Henr)' VIH.'s reign ; and in consequence of 
 this the whole edifice of sacramental doctrine began to 
 totter ; its corner-stone was being removed ; it was break- 
 ing off from the rock, to toss about on the sea. How was 
 it that this new doctrine, which henceforward formed a 
 distinctive mark of the Church of England, was introduced ? 
 
 "WTiat was the propelling cause of this tremendous 
 change ? The Catholic contention is that Henr)- VIII., 
 to forward his own %"ile purposes of greed and lust, 
 forced it on the clerg}- and people. Hence the position 
 as eventually accepted was Erastian, and the religious 
 body lost its communion with the Catholic world. She 
 developed a brood of heresies and sects, in the midst of 
 which she floated down the stream, striking her sides 
 against the craft around her, and stricken and propelled 
 by them, without the standard of the Catholic Faith, or 
 the pilot of the Catholic world. 
 
Henry VIII., the Ecclesiastical Politician 125 
 
 Neither East nor West any longer saluted her as be- 
 longing to their common Lord. She was a craft on her 
 own line, ignored by the schismatic East, and con- 
 demned by the entire West. 
 
 The High Anglican contention is, on the other hand, 
 that she remained the same religious body, having simply 
 cleaned her face. Her exterior was changed, but her 
 inner self remained the same. The change of govern- 
 ment that took place was, they say, a return to the more 
 ancient regime of the Church. She now became primi- 
 tive, instead of mediseval. Her ecclesiastical jurisdiction 
 flowed from the metropolitical authority of the see of 
 Canterbury, originally bestowed upon it by the Patriarch 
 of the West. It was, they say, so bestowed that he could 
 not alienate his gift. He could not do as S. Cyprian en- 
 treated the Pope S. Stephen to do, viz. depose the Bishop 
 of Aries, and substitute another, and notify to him (S. 
 Cyprian) with whom he should hold communion. This 
 change of jurisdiction (we are told) was due to a desire 
 on the part of the clergy to be free from the bondage of 
 Rome ; and they accordingly solemnly and formally gave 
 their sanction to the new adjustment. There was nothing 
 in these relations to the See of Rome which rested on 
 Divine appointment ; and what bishops gave, bishops 
 could take away. Bishops it is said, originally ' gave ' to 
 Rome her pre-eminence, and bishops therefore, could de- 
 prive her of it. Consequently, when those bishops who, 
 for the purposes of consecration, had sworn a solemn 
 oath to obey the Bishop of Rome as the divinely-ap- 
 pointed successor of S. Peter in the supreme government 
 of the Church, transferred their allegiance to Henry VHL, 
 they acted within their rights. What need to consult the 
 rest of the Catholic Church ? They could act on their 
 own responsibility as a separate body, and make them- 
 selves into a National Church, independent of the rest 
 
ij6 Henry VIII., the Ecclesiastical Politician 
 
 of the Catholic world — autonomous, primitive in their 
 more simple sacraments, as thej- soon became, and 
 Catholic in their willingness to be in communion with 
 the rest of the Christian Episcopate only on their own 
 terms. This assertion of their independence was due, we 
 are told, to a gro%ving sense of the unprofitableness of 
 their connection with Rome. They had long been feeling 
 their way, and when the opportunity occurred, and Henrj-, 
 from different and less praiseworthy motives, was looking 
 also towards independence of the Holy See, they moved 
 along the same lines with different aims, and broke, with 
 good conscience, the solemn oath of obedience to the 
 See of S. Peter, which they had taken in the hour of 
 their consecration. They were, therefore, not perjured 
 rebels, nor wilful schismatics. They initiated a wholesome 
 change, which directed the wealth of the English sees and 
 religious houses from foreign purposes to the more imme- 
 diate needs of the Church at home. 
 
 Such is the High Church Anghcan contention. 
 
 But of course it is felt to be \-ital to the whole con- 
 tention that some proof should be forthcoming, which 
 will place it beyond doubt that the clergy- of the Church 
 of England did, of themselves, and not merely as reluc- 
 tant tools, sever their cormection with the Apostolic See. 
 
 A definite proof has accordingly been of late widely 
 adopted. It appears in Canon Dixon's ' Histor)- of the 
 ' Church of England,' which the author of the ' Roman 
 ' Question ' calls the ' latest and the most thorough ac- 
 ' count of those eventful times,' i.e. of the Reformation 
 period (p. 15). It is relied on by Mr. Gore, in his book 
 called ' Roman Catholic Claims,' tst edition, and it is the 
 point d'appui of my critic, the author of the 'Roman 
 ' Question.' 
 
 He holds that the cause of the rupture between 
 England and Rome was not ' Heruy's cruel and shamef al 
 
Henry VIII., the Ecclesiastical Politician 127 
 
 ' dealings in the matter of the divorce, nor the greed that 
 'devoured Church property.' It was the mercenary 
 dealings of the Roman Court that brought it about — in 
 short, the question of annates and other monetary 
 transactions. His chapter on ' the separation of England 
 ' from Rome ' is really built upon this supposition. The 
 aversion to paying annates was, he says, ' the immediate 
 'propelling cause of the Reformation' (p. 17). The 
 clergy wished them no longer to be paid to Rome. On 
 ^is account they 'indeed had themselves suggested a 
 'withdrawal from its dominions' (p. 71). 'It was,' he 
 says elsewhere, ' the immediate cause of the Reformation 
 'in England' (p. 83). And it is in the same chapter that 
 he says, somewhat sarcastically, ' I suppose our modern 
 ' converts to Rome ... do not trouble themselves with 
 ' facts ' (p. 88). 
 
 Here, then, we are at the very core of the subject. 
 What is the fact which settles the question ? Catholics 
 say Henry VIII. dragooned the clergy into acting as 
 they did. Anglicans maintain that the clergy acted 
 from a previously formed desire to move in the same 
 direction. Where are the facts to prove the Anglican 
 contention ? 
 
 Canon Dixon, Mr. Gore, and the author of the 
 ' Roman Question ' have rested this part of their case 
 on a certain petition from Convocation. If the petition 
 could be proved to be such, it would certainly be an 
 important piece of evidence. 
 
 But Convocation never did present such a petition. 
 Why did not these writers consult the journal of Con- 
 vocation ? There is no record there of any such petition. 
 There is no statement on the document itself that it had 
 any connection whatsoever with Convocation. Such a 
 petition contravenes all the evidence we have of the 
 mind of Convocation on this subject, and there is no 
 
128 Henry VIII., the Ecclesiastical Politician 
 
 fragment, not an iota, of evidence to the effect that the 
 said jxiper was ever written by any member of Convoca- 
 tion. \\'hat are we to think about ' troubhng themselves 
 ' with facts ' ? 
 
 Nay more, it is almost inconceivable that Convoca- 
 tion should have presented such a document. Look at 
 the internal evidence. Convocation must have known 
 something about the history of the great schism. Could 
 they, then, have quoted, as this paper does, the case of 
 the French king (who, of course, was Charles VI.) with- 
 drawing his allegiance from Benedict XIII. (who, of 
 course, was the Antipope, Peter de Luna), in order to 
 transfer it to the true Pope, as a ' like case ' ? The 
 blunder could hardly have come from the lips of Con- 
 vocation. Indeed, the statement, as it continues, is quite 
 inaccurate. 
 
 On what foundation, then, are we here resting ? It 
 has to be proved that the clergy of the realm were 
 desirous to check the flow of money to the Roman 
 coffers, and that for that reason they were willing — nay, 
 desirous, indeed spontaneously anxious — to forswear their 
 allegiance to the Apostolic See. But into whose hands 
 was the money to go ? Into Henr)-'s. The annates were 
 to be paid to him. Is it likely they were so anxious for 
 this ? 
 
 But there is a fact of really greater importance still, 
 which has been strangely overlooked by Mr. Gladstone, 
 Canon Dixon, Mr. Gore, and the author of the ' Roman 
 Question.' ' 
 
 It is this : the bishops opposed the Bill ! Now what 
 are we to think of all this so-called histor}- ? Of course, 
 
 ' Mr. Green is more careful in his statement, though he, too, 
 falls into the error of supposing that the said document was a 
 petition from Convocation. He says, ' Convocation was made, &c.,' 
 and so differs from the above writers. Hist. p. 329. 
 
Henry VIII., the Ecclesiastical Politician 129 
 
 what my critic, the author of the ' Roman Question,' says 
 is perfectly untrue, in the sense in which he interprets it, 
 about what one of high consideration in the Roman 
 Communion is reported to have said, a propos of the 
 V atican Council, viz. ' Thank God, we have done with 
 ' history ! ' He meant, of course, by history, the perversion 
 of history that goes by that sacred name. He meant 
 such history as I have dealt with above. 
 
 This ' petition of Convocation ' — this blundering, 
 anonymous paper which has been conjured into being a 
 petition of Convocation — is of such importance to the 
 argument that our attention is drawn to it again and 
 again. We are told ' it is impossible not to read between < Roman 
 'the lines of this remonstrance important facts as to the 
 ' state of Church feeling at the time.' ' Important facts ! ' 
 and ' this remonstrance ! ' which was never presented, 
 and, we may feel sure, was never written by any member 
 of Convocation ; which was, if anything, an intended peti- 
 tion from Parliament, and which dealt with a Bill 'which 
 was opposed by the bishops! 
 
 And in the face of this, we are told that ' modern 
 ' converts to Rome do not trouble themselves about facts ! ' 
 The author then quotes a passage from Canon Creighton, 
 which is contradicted by Mr. Brewer, who, it will be 
 admitted, at least had the facts before his eyes in his long 
 study of State records ; and he repeats the absurd idea of 
 the Pope having offered to sanction the English Prayer- 
 book of 1559 — a notion dear to many, but without facts 
 to support it, as Canon Estcourt has shown in his book on 
 Anglican Orders. Does anyone seriously suppose that 
 any Pope that ever lived would have sanctioned that Prayer- 
 book after he had read it through ? Lord Coke, the earliest 
 authority for the statement, disavowed every sentence 'Biogr. bh- 
 of his charge, in which the allusion to this supposed 
 offer of the Pope occurs. The author, in his concluding 
 
 K 
 
1 30 Henty VIII., the Ecclesiastical Politician 
 
 paragraph, says, ' I simply desire to state the fact.' I 
 thoroughly believe it. And in consequence can I doubt 
 that he will withdraw this chapter of his book ? For the 
 premiss having disappeared from the region of fact, on 
 what does the conclusion rest ? 
 
 What, then, if we really consult facts, was the secret of 
 this revolution in the teaching of the Church ? It was 
 this. Henry stood in a position of unparalleled power. 
 A man of tremendous will and unbridled passions, he 
 cast his eye on forbidden fruit, and through the disobedi- 
 ence of one, many were ruined. The nobles lay at his 
 feet, their power broken by the wars of the Roses : the 
 single power that could bid him defiance lay in those holy 
 cf. Gasquet's homes of prayer, as we now know them to have been, in 
 vuT'and those Centres of beneficent energy, into which the people's 
 th^ Monas- confidence threw their treasures, as safest there, or as a 
 
 tenes. ' ' 
 
 passport to a better world. These centres of power Henry 
 proceeded, by vile, systematic calumny and almost in- 
 credible cruelty, to root up from English soil. The bishops 
 and clergy were ruined by a single stroke of almost un- 
 paralleled audacity, and lay at the king's mercy. He had 
 subjected them all to the penalties of a prcemunire, and 
 insisted on their buying off their lives by an enormous 
 grant of money, and by owning him, in place of the Pope, 
 as the only head of the Church under Christ. There 
 are deeds which may be done in the face of day, if only 
 they are done with sufiicient speed to take men off their 
 guard. Henry struggled with Convocation, until Convo- 
 cation lay, maimed and crippled, speechless at his feet. 
 It resigned its right to meet and act into his royal hands, 
 and in so doing it sealed its doom. The greatest of 
 bishops went to the block ; the rest did that which they had 
 to repent of doing. Mr. Gore says ' it matters not whether 
 ' they repented ' (' Remarks,' p. 7). Surely it matters thus 
 far — their repentance, of which we are informed afterwards. 
 
Henry VIII., tJie Ecclesiastical Politician 131 
 
 may have saved the souls of some ; and it saves their 
 acts from being considered their spontaneous and mature 
 conviction.' 
 
 But why this hot haste on the part of Henry ? One 
 simple fact reveals the terrible secret of his importunity. 
 It sprang from his relations to Anne Boleyn. This was 
 the forbidden fruit which he had already tasted. Within 
 a certain number of months Elizabeth would be born. 
 And the Holy See had shown its hand : it would never 
 consent to the divorce of his queen. It was, therefore, ne- 
 cessary for Henry's purposes that all ecclesiastical matters 
 should be settled within the realm. Cranmer, a man who, 
 under the old regime, would never have sat on the throne 
 of Canterbury — the most abject, servile tool that ever 
 twisted and turned to the winds of royal caprice — was 
 now metropolitan. With no time to lose — with no fear 
 of another Fisher — the Tudor will prevailed. The land 
 was plunged into schism, but Elizabeth's legitimacy was 
 within measurable distance of being secured. 
 
 For all this there is proofs In 1529, the king's orator 
 at Rome, a propos of the divorce question, and the de- 
 cision of the Pope to withdraw the cause to his own 
 cognisance, threatened his Holiness that to do so would 
 involve ' the ruin of the Church and the loss of England 
 ' and France.' The French ambassador writes : ' The 
 ' Duke of Norfolk is made head of the Council ; in his 
 
 ' ' Of the learned men that were the doers thereof {i.e. the Act 
 of .Submission in 1534) 'so many as were dead, before they died 
 ' were penitent, and cried God mercy for their act ; and those that 
 ' do live, as all your Lordships do know, hath openly revoked the 
 ' same, acknowledging their error.' — Bishop of Chester's speech be- 
 fore Parliament on the Supremacy Bill (Feb. 1 559). Strype's .,4««a/.r, 
 vol. i. pt. 2, p. 408. Amongst the protesters on this occasion was 
 Kitchen, Bishop of Llandaff, March 18, 1559. — H^'Ewni,' Journal, 
 1693, pp. 23-25. 
 
 ^ See Bridgetl's Life oj Fisher. 
 
 K 2 
 
132 Henry VIIL, the Ecclesiastical Politician 
 
 ' absence, the Duke of Suffolk ; above all is Mademoiselle 
 ' Anne.' 
 
 Ludovico Falieri, the Venetian ambassador, and 
 Sigismund the Mantuan ambassador at Augsburg, wrote 
 to their respective masters about the arbitrary proceedings 
 of the king with his bishops. 
 
 His placing the whole body of the clerg)- under the 
 penalties of praemunire for having acknowledged the 
 legatine authority is matter of common historj-. What 
 he had in his mind seems plain enough, as from what 
 I have just quoted, so from what Chapuys writes to his 
 Imperial master : ' If the Pope had ordered the lady to 
 ' be separated from the king, the king would never have 
 ' pretended to claim sovereignty over the Church : for, as 
 ' far as I can understand, she and her father have been 
 ' the principal cause of it . . . There is none that do not 
 ' blame this usurpation, except those who have promoted 
 'it.' 
 
 The archives of Vienna contain a protest from the 
 representatives of nearly every diocese in England 
 against the new form of sovereignt}- over the Church, in- 
 cluding one from the Dean of Arches in the province of 
 Canterbury. 
 
 Later on Chapuys %%Tites to the Emperor : ' Among 
 ' other things contained in the libel exhibited in Parliament 
 ' against the Pope's authority, it is expressed that no one 
 ' shall appeal from here to Rome on any matter, temporal 
 ' or spiritual, on pain of confiscation of body and goods as 
 ' a rebel — which clause directly applies to the queen.' 
 
 In the same life of Bishop Fisher, from which I 
 have selected the above, occurs what the author calls 
 ' a glimpse at popular feeling.' A gentleman's servant, 
 whilst grooming his master's horse at Cambridge, falls 
 to quarrelling with the ostler about the Pope, and ends 
 by breaking the ostler's head with a faggot-stick in 
 
Henry VIII., the Ecclesiastical Politician 133 
 
 his over-zcal for the successor of S. Peter. This fiery 
 disputant tells us that he had explained to the ostler 
 that this business about severance from the Bishop of 
 Rome 'had never been if the king had not married 
 ' Anne Boleyn.' And since the ostler's head was too thick 
 to take in the plain truth, he broke it. 
 
 Such, then, was the propelling cause of the so-called 
 Reformation. As for any spontaneous desire on the part 
 of the clergy to break with the Spiritual Supremacy of 
 the Holy See, there is no evidence of it to be found. ^ 
 
 No ; probably there never was such a conspiracy of 
 circumstances, if I may so call it, as that which enabled 
 Henry VIII. to substitute his own for the Papal 
 Supremacy. The silence between Rome and England 
 through the vast legatine power wielded by Wolsey, dis- 
 pensing with the frequent calls for appeal ; the broken 
 power of the nobility, through the wars of the Roses ; 
 the impotence of Parliament, not yet developed so as to 
 formulate the people's wishes ; the appearance of a man 
 like Thomas Cromwell, destined to break the last force 
 that could resist the will of Henry, by the shameless p Cas- 
 dissolution of the monasteries ; the sudden outburst of .'Henry 
 unregulated, unbalanced learning ; the intellectual power 
 and adamantine will of the king — all concurred to favour leries.' 
 the inauguration of a despotism such as no man wielded 
 before in England, and no man will wield again. Satan 
 held high rule ; and he revolutionised the religion of the 
 land. Two things seem quite certain in the history of 
 the change : first, that it was the doing, not of the clergy, 
 but of the king; secondly, that it was not the desire see Brewers 
 of the masses, who groaned beneath the reign of terror tio",'™'*"'^" 
 which had set in. Parliament was but an instrument of yfj'/Y^ 
 registering Henry's will : Convocation was overawed, and ■''^'S"-' 
 
 ' This has been alnmdantly proved in the 'Alleged Antiquity of 
 Anglicanism. A reply to Lord Selborne,' by Sydney F. Smith. 
 
134 Henry VIII., the Ecclesiastical Politician 
 
 soon reduced to a nonentity, and a crew of politicians 
 came on to the scene, who hanged, in Edward's reign, in 
 the name of the boy-king, those who maintained the 
 CathoHc Faith ; and in Mary's reign the selfsame persons 
 hung, in the name of their devout, sickening, gradually 
 dying queen, those who maintained the Protestant 
 heresy. 
 
 Things were thus ready for Elizabeth to settle the 
 future of the Church of England, and on May 21, 1559, 
 Parkhurst (afterwards Elizabethan Bishop of Norwich) 
 writes from London to Bullinger : ' The Queen is not 
 ' willing to be called Head of the Church, altho' the title 
 ' has been offered her ; but she willingly accepts the title 
 'of Governor, w-hich amounts to the same thing. The 
 ' Pope is again driven from England, to the great regret of 
 'the bishops . . . The Mass is abolished.' ' 
 
 ' ' At present she calls herself governor — declining the higher 
 'title, that she may give it to her husband when she marries.' — De 
 Quadra to the Duke of Alva, May 10, 1559. 
 
Elizabeth and her Clergy 
 
 135 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 ELIZABETH AND HER CLERGY. 
 
 Let us see how the Mass was aboHshed. It was easily 
 extruded from the formularies of the English Church, in 
 her Prayer-book and Articles, and from the teaching of 
 the living Church, by the appointment of bishops, who 
 were true enough to the new Creed, who insisted on every 
 altar in their dioceses being destroyed, and the sacrificial 
 vestments, and various vessels and implements of Divine 
 service, being sold or broken up. The clearance of nearly 
 every holy instrument of the Divine Sacrifice, throughout 
 the land, within a few years, was wonderful. 
 
 But how was the old religion so completely, or almost 
 completely, abolished from the land? 
 
 By violence and fraud. 
 
 The author of the ' Roman Question ' protests against 
 those priests and other Catholics, who were put to death 
 in Elizabeth's reign, being called ' martyrs for the faith.' 
 Speaking of the penal statutes against Catholics, he says : 
 'They who suffered under those statutes were no doubt 
 'brave devotees, but they suffered for political offences 
 ' which could not but involve punishment, not in the least 
 ' for their "faith," except so far as their faith animated them 
 'to subvert the constitution of their country, in order to 
 ' establish an authority which the country had rejected. 
 'What one marvels at is the absolute disregard of historic 
 ' truth, and the misrepresentation of facts, that is so singu- 
 
136 
 
 ElizabctJi and her Clergy 
 
 'larly manifest in so sacred a transaction,' i.e. of their 
 beatification (p. 113). 
 
 As one who thoroughly adopts the position, which 
 this writer characterises as ' absolute disregard of historic 
 'truth,' and is prepared to defend it from State papers 
 and other public documents of Elizabeth's reign, I would 
 ask this simple question : — Let us suppose the case of 
 Christian converts in Cochin China. The Christian 
 religion is made to be treason against the State ; it is 
 forbidden by penal statutes. French priests, nevertheless, 
 give themselves up to the Cochin Mission, in order to 
 proNide these Christians with Sacraments. They are 
 caught, and put to death on being convicted of treason. 
 Will the author of the ' Roman Question ' deny them the 
 name of Martyr ? The Catholic Church does not, seeing 
 that they ministered the Bread of Life to Christian people, 
 even when to do so was treason against the ' powers that 
 ' be.' Indeed I do not know where S. Peter and S. John 
 can be ranked, if the name of ^NlartjT be denied to the 
 Catholics in Elizabeth's reign, who held on to their faith 
 in spite of the unchristian statutes that were hurled against 
 them, and to the brave priests who ministered to them. 
 
 As for the absolute disregard of historic truth, the 
 great author of the ' Constitutional Histor)- ' must share 
 the blame. For Hallam says : ' Treason, by the law of 
 ' England and according to the common use of language, 
 ' is the crime of rebellion or conspiracy against the Govern- 
 ' ment. If a statute is made by which the celebration of 
 ' certain religious rites is subjected to the same penalties 
 ' as rebellion, or conspiracy, would any man free from pre- 
 ' judice, and not designing to impose upon the uninformed, 
 ' speak of persons convicted on such a statute as guilty of 
 'treason, without expressing in what sense he uses the 
 'words? ... A man is punished for religion when he 
 ' incurs a penalty for its profession or exercise, to which he 
 
Elizahctli and her Clergy 
 
 137 
 
 ' was not liable on any other account. This is applicable to 
 ' the great majority of capital convictions on this score under 
 ' Elizabeth. The persons convicted could not be traitors 
 ' in any fair sense of the word, because they were not 
 'chargeable with anything properly denominated treason.' ^j^""!"'''"' 
 Look at some of the cases. Will any fair-minded History 
 
 ch. ill. 
 
 man maintain that Lord Arundel was guilty of treason ? 
 A letter was produced against him, but it was a forgery. 
 He was then accused of two things : of having tried to 
 leave the kingdom without license, and of having corre- 
 sponded with Father Allen. He pleaded necessity for the see Burke's 
 first, because the laws of the country did not permit him '^f^Z^^^ 
 to worship God according to his conscience ; and as for 
 the second, his correspondence was on matters of religion 
 only. He had to pay thirty thousand pounds. 
 
 Will any fair-minded man maintain that Edward Cam- 
 pion, the Oxford convert, one of the beatified, had any 
 other end in view than a strictly religious one? We know 
 how he and his associates protested their innocence, and 
 prayed for the queen with their last breath. When Eliza- 
 beth offered him an annual stipend, and lucrative church 
 livings, if he would renounce the Catholic religion, he 
 replied : ' No, Madam, not for all the honours that royalty 
 ' can offer me. I am a soldier of the Cross, and glory in 
 'going to the scaffold for the principles of my Divine 
 ' Master.' 
 
 During those fourteen years after the Spanish Armada, 
 the persecution was renewed. Sixty-one clergymen, 
 forty-seven laymen, and two ladies, suffered capital punish- 
 ment for the ' spiritual treason ' which had been lately 
 created. Liberty was generally offered to the accused, 
 provided they abandoned their religion, and took the oath ^^'I'^-j^ 
 ' declaring the queen the vicegerent of Christ.' ' During 37. 
 ' all the latter years of Elizabeth's reign,' says Hallam, ' the 
 'rack seldom stood idle.' 
 
138 
 
 Eliaabeth and her Clergy 
 
 But it was in the early part of her reign that Ehzabeth 
 mostly permitted and even encouraged the violence and 
 cruelty with which the new religion was forced on the 
 land. It is to her everlasting discredit that she allowed 
 the regular use of torture to be revived. Her sister Mary 
 had set it aside, but Elizabeth renewed it. The rack — 
 that form of examination which is a disgrace to humanity, 
 against which the Holy See invariably protested in Spain — 
 came into frequent use. The accounts of its application 
 are so horrible that I spare my readers, who may not have 
 examined this Satanic instrument. The tortures inflicted 
 on j\Iargaret Clitheroe and Nicolas Roscaroe (a boy of 
 sixteen), are almost beyond belief — would that they were 
 quite ! And (alas, for the degradation of humanity !) the 
 queen even ordered the bishops to use torture to the 
 Papists, in order to find out where or when they attended 
 ISIass. What are we to think of the heroism of the priests 
 who, nevertheless, said ]\Iass, and distributed the Bread 
 of Life ? 
 
 In all this, John AVhitgift, sometime Bishop of Wor- 
 cester, and subsequently Archbishop of Canterbury, was 
 Elizabeth's foremost adviser. This true Protestant even 
 once requested Lord Burleigh to rack a certain priest 
 ' till he gave the names of those who went to confession 
 "'to him.' Burleigh would not comply with that. On 
 another occasion this prelate publicly declared that he 
 would rather ' live in a dungeon all the days of his life, 
 ' or even die in a prison, than permit any person to practise 
 ' a re/igioft contrary to that upheld by the queen and hitn- 
 ^ se/f;' and this sentiment was enforced, not only against 
 Catholics, but against Puritans. 
 
 The penalty for saying Mass was a fine of 200 marks 
 and imprisonment : and priests were even hung on the 
 evidence of one witness, who swore that he saw them 
 saying ]\Iass, although he admitted that he could not 
 
ElisabetJi and her Clergy 
 
 139 
 
 clearly distinguish between Mass and any other Catholic 
 ceremony. 
 
 Of this I am convinced, that once the English people 
 come to know the guilelessness of Mary's character on 
 the one hand, the comparative regularity of the trials 
 under her when she was well enough to attend to business, 
 the undeserving characters of those who suffered, and 
 then, on the other side, the guile and cruelty and per- 
 sonal interest in the revival of the rack (which had been 
 then laid aside), together with the shockingly unchristian 
 end of Elizabeth, and above all the comparatively guile- 
 less character of so many who suffered in her reign — 
 once, I say, let the English people know the truth about 
 these things, they will change the epithet, which ignorance 
 and prejudice have applied to Mary, and transfer it to 
 Elizabeth. 
 
 Such, then, was the result of the change of doctrine 
 initiated by Henry VIII. and revived by Elizabeth. Let 
 us look the truth in the face, and we shall feel that Lord 
 Macaulay was not far from wrong when he spoke of the 
 Reformation as begun by a murderer of his wife, con- 
 tinued by a murderer of his brother, and completed by 
 a murderer of her guest — Henry, Somerset, and Elizabeth. 
 Compare the restoration of the Catholic Faith in the 
 Chablais by S. Francis of Sales, with Bible and Breviary 
 in hand, and his sweet ways and mortified life, with the 
 destruction of the same in England. Compare it with 
 these Satanic devices of rack and ' Skevington's irons ' 
 and iron gloves, whilst the persecuting Archbishop lived 
 like a prince, and the bishops married ; and reflect that 
 these were contemporary events ; or compare the reforms 
 of S. Carlo Borromeo, his nights upon nights of prayer, 
 his extraordinary mortification, his devotion to his people, 
 his love and devotion to the Saints, his heroic endurance 
 of persecution, and reflect that this, too, was a contem- 
 
140 Elisabeth and her Clergy 
 
 porar)- life ! I think of him and then turn to contem- 
 plate the author of the English Catechism in its present 
 form — Dean Xowell— preaching at S. Paul's Cathedral on 
 ' The propriety of killing the caged wolves with the least 
 ' possible delay,' i.e. the Cathohc bishops then in prison, 
 and ask where was the ' gentle do\-e ' ? AMiich was the 
 work of God ? 
 
 For some centuries Protestants have had history- in 
 their own hands, and State records and other public 
 documents have been practically closed. Daylight has 
 now dawned, and we are beginning to see how English 
 historj- has been a long conspiracy against facts. A^'e 
 are beginning— but it is difficult to induce people to look 
 the shame of the so-called Reformation in the face. Dr. 
 Littledale once wTOte a ver)- able lecture on 'Innovations,' 
 in which he says 'Documents hidden from the public 
 ' eye for centuries in the archives of London, A'enice, and 
 ' Simanais, are now rapidly being printed, and ever)- fresh 
 ' find establishes more clearly the utter scoundrelism of 
 ' the Reformers.' This lecture cannot now be had ; w hilst 
 ' Plain Reasons, &:c.,' a book containing almost as many 
 misstatements as pages, is distributed in great numbers 
 by the Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge, 
 under the patronage of the Archbishops and Bishops 
 of the Church of England, who in the person of their 
 predecessors were up in arms against the lecture. It is 
 to their great disgrace that they have thrown their aegis 
 over such an extraordinar)" farrago of misstatements, 
 and on one point, as Father Jones has pointed out, of 
 dishonest criticism.^ 
 
 Such is the conspiracy carried on against historical 
 facts. 
 
 But for this, it would be impossible for High Anglicans 
 to maintain that, even on their own theorj- of Church 
 ' Dishonest Criticism, by James Jones, S.J. — Hodges. 
 
Elizabeth and her Clergy 
 
 141 
 
 government, any ecclesiastical jurisdiction passed into 
 the hands of PLlizabeth's clergy. They proclaim, and 
 never tire of proclaiming, that the system under which 
 they live is in conformity with that of the Primitive 
 Church. They have erected ' Primitivity,' as they call it, 
 into a very note of the Church. Their theory involves 
 the assertion, ist, that the three patriarchates of Rome, 
 Alexandria, and Antioch did not owe their origin, as S. 
 Gregory says they did, to their relationship to S. Peter, 
 but that they were due to Conciliar provisions ; and, 
 2ndly, that the Council of Nicsea did not recognise the 
 patriarchal system as an established feature of Church 
 government. 
 
 Metropolitical authority is the highest known to the 
 Church of England, unless we include the Royal supre- 
 macy. The patriarch has faded into the distance ; and 
 the metropolitan is theoretically independent, except it be 
 of the sovereign. And yet if anything is clear in history, 
 surely it is this — that metropolitans were subject to patri- 
 archs. Now England was never erected into a patriarchate. 
 It was part of the Western patriarchate of the Bishop of 
 Rome. The whole system of the Church of England 
 would have to be altered, if that were so. The Bishop of 
 Lincoln would have to consider himself to be in presence 
 of his Patriarch, not of his Metropolitan. This, however, 
 no one supposes, and yet the Council of Nicasa and, °." 
 
 ' Council 
 
 Still more obviously, the Council of Chalcedon make the Nicaia. 
 obedience of a metropolitan to a patriarch part and 
 parcel of the ' form ' of unity in the Church. This ' form ' 
 of unity was repudiated by Elizabeth. She put things 
 back to the state in which they were in the time of her 
 father and brother. So is it expressly stated. And so 
 she ordered a fresh metropolitan to be consecrated. 
 
 But first, on what ground was Canterbury retained as 
 a metropolitical see at all ? It had been originally created 
 
142 
 
 Elizabeth and her Clergy 
 
 such by Papal authority. So far as that authority was 
 concerned, the See of Canterbury ceased to be known to 
 the Church. It was with Canterbury just as it was with 
 all post-Reformation sees according to Bossuet. When 
 asked whether he should address a certain Anglican 
 bishop as bishop of such and such a see, he replied that 
 as a Catholic he knew no such see. So Canterburj' was 
 no longer a see known to the Church. It was not re- 
 cognised as such by its patriarch, to say nothing of Papal 
 recognition. 
 
 But Henry recreated it — a measure which was ex- 
 pressly forbidden to the Emperor at the Council of Chal- 
 cedon (4th Session, October 17, 451, and Canon XII.), as 
 contrary to the law of the Church. Here are the terms 
 in which Canterbury was established a metropolitical see. 
 
 Henry begins : ' We, inspired by the divine clemency 
 'and having nothing more at heart than that the true 
 ' religion and the true worship of God should be there 
 'restored . . . have determined that on the site of the 
 ' said monastery, to the glory and honour of the Holy 
 ' and Undivided Trinitj', a Cathedral and Metropolitical 
 ' Church, consisting of one priest-dean, and twelve pre- 
 'bendaries, also priests, to ser%-e Almighty God entirely 
 ' and for ever, shall be created, chosen, founded, and 
 ' established ; and by the tenour of these presents we 
 ' really and fully create, erect, found, establish the said 
 ' Cathedral and Metropolitical Church . . . and by these 
 ' presents we adorn the same Cathedral and Metropolitical 
 ' Church of Christ with the honours and insignia of an 
 ' Archiepiscopal See, and a Cathedral and -Metropoli- 
 'tical Church.' Elizabeth put things back to the state 
 in which they were in her father and brother's time, 
 and the statute by which her supremacy was enforced 
 conferred upon her all ' such jurisdictions, privileges, and 
 ' superiorities and pre-eminences, spiritual and ecclesias- 
 
Elizabetli and her Clergy 
 
 143 
 
 ' tical, as by any spiritual or ecclesiastical foiver or ^f. sydnc> 
 '■authority hath heretofore been, or may lawfully be, ex ?Ai'ieged 
 ' ercised or used for the visitation, &c.,' and we know 'a"'',!"'!?' 
 from history that this fxcluded the ministration of sacra- p- 55 
 nients, or the power of order, and /«cluded all that be- 
 longed to the Patriarch of the West, and Primate of the 
 Church, under the term jurisdiction. This is the power 
 by which the present Archbishop of Canterbury is trying 
 Dr. King for his conduct of Divine service. 
 
 Next, even if the See of Canterbury had remained on 
 its old footing, instead of being a new creation — even, if 
 (to suppose what seems to us an absurdity) it possessed 
 metropolitical rights inalienably, so that the power that 
 conferred them (viz. the Papal) could not take them away, 
 still we would ask a further question. 
 
 By what bishops holding sees in the province of 
 Canterbury was Archbishop Parker elected ? There were 
 none who would consent to be at liberty on the terms 
 proposed. And a suffragan only acts by permission 
 of the diocesan bishop, and so far as his permission 
 extends. If he acts in defiance of the diocesan, his acts 
 are null and void. Suffragans, then, are out of the 
 question. The canons of the Council of Nictea do not 
 cover the case of a suffragan acting contrary to his 
 diocesan's permission. He would be in a state of eccle- 
 siastical rebellion. 
 
 Where, then, were the diocesan bishops of the pro- 
 vince of Canterbury (who alone could impart jurisdic- 
 tion, even on the Anglican theory) when Archbishop 
 Parker was consecrated by Barlow ? They had refused 
 to act — in other words, they protested against the act. 
 The act of consecrating Archbishop Parker required as 
 its preliminary that those who took part in it should sign 
 the oath of supremacy. They would not sign. An act, 
 therefore, requiring such a signature was in their judgment 
 
144 
 
 Elizabeth and her Clergy 
 
 an act of rebellion against the Church of God, and they 
 preferred to go to prison or death rather than take such 
 an oath. They knew what their ancestors had done in a 
 moment of sinful compliance under pressure from Henry 
 VIII., and they valued their souls too much to repeat 
 the sin. 
 
 The consequence was that there were no bishops in 
 the province, in the sense that the Council of Nicsea 
 used the term, to assist in Archbishop Parker's consecra- 
 tion. Mr. Gore's defence of Anglican jurisdiction con- 
 sists of two parts, one of which he calls the ' technical 
 ' defence.' The other, by whatever name it should be 
 called, seems to be summed up in his assertion that 
 'jurisdiction itself is regarded (from the only point of 
 ' view which can be called Catholic) as inherent in the see. 
 ' It is entered upon when any bishop is enthroned in his 
 'see in a canonical manner' (p. 155). 
 
 This is precisely what Archbishop Parker never was. 
 He was never ' enthroned in a canonical manner.' Mr. 
 Gore says further on, that ' when Parker was consecrated 
 ' it was by bishops as canonically " provincial " as was 
 ' possible under the circumstances.' The fact is that it 
 was not possible under the circumstances for it to be 
 done by any ' canonically provincial ' bishops. For the 
 circumstances were such as to preclude a Catholic bishop 
 from acting. Elizabeth had made it morally impos- 
 sible. 
 
 ' Scory and Hodgkins,' Mr. Gore says, ' were bishops 
 ' within the province.' True, but they were not diocesan 
 bishops. They were not bishops ' of the province ' in the 
 sense that the canons of the Church use the term. They 
 had no jurisdiction. 
 
 But there was Coverdale. Of him Mr. Gore says : 
 ' Coverdale, formicrly Bishop of Exeter, had been quite 
 ' uncanonically deposed on Mary's accession' (p. 159). 
 
Elizabeth and her Clergy 
 
 145 
 
 The conclusion suggested, therefore, is that he was a 
 bishop of the province. 
 
 Let us see what is the truth. ^ 
 
 Voysey was appointed Bishop of Exeter by Henry 
 VIII., and he remained in his see until the king's death. 
 He was then ninety years of age. On Edward's accession 
 he refused to help in spreading the tenets of the so-called 
 Reformation. Consequently Coverdale was appointed, 
 against the diocesan's wish, under letters patent, to aid 
 in spreading in the diocese principles that the diocesan 
 considered uncatholic. Voysey resigned, with the express 
 statement that it was ' pro metu corporis,' which, of course, 
 rendered Coverdale's occupation of his place irregular. 
 On Mary's accession Coverdale deserted Exeter and fled 
 beyond the seas. Voysey, being no longer ' in metu 
 
 * corporis,' returned to his see. About two years later he 
 died, and Turberville was canonically appointed as bishop. 
 On Elizabeth's accession he was deprived, for refusing 
 to take the oath of succession. How could the see be 
 said to be canonically vacant, or what are we to think of 
 Mr. Gore's summary, viz., ' Coverdale, formerly Bishop 
 
 * of Exeter, had been uncanonically deposed on Mary's 
 ' accession ' ? Is there a word of truth in the sentence ? 
 
 Mr. Gore has forgotten a fact which Dr. Littledale 
 brought out in his lecture on Innovations, and which com- 
 pletely disposes of some of his contentions. ' Cranmer,' 
 says Dr. Littledale, ' took out a new patent from the 
 ' Protector, to hold office at the sovereign's pleasure (an 
 ' unheard-of innovation on all spiritual claims), urging 
 ' his suffragans to do the same. Thus he had no legal 
 'ground of complaint when Queen Mary deprived him.' 
 
 ' The most popular manual in use amongst the English clergy 
 of Mr. Gore's school of thought is the PriesVs Prayer-book, where 
 Coverdale's case is as unhistorically explained as it is here by Mr. 
 Gore. 
 
 L 
 
146 
 
 Elizabeth and Jier Clergy 
 
 So with Coverdale ; he had no legal or canonical posi 
 tion, when Queen Marj-, acting under commission from 
 the Pope, deprived him. If the Bishop of Rome could 
 depose the Bishop of Aries in S. C}'prian"s time, as the 
 Saint considered he ought, he could surely depose this 
 intruded Bishop of Exeter, and clearly the legal ques- 
 tion, pace Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Gore, is settled by the 
 position assumed by Cranmer of holding his see at the 
 good pleasure of the sovereign. 
 
 Coverdale has received from Protestant historians 
 the title of 'venerable.' But he was found equal to the 
 sacrilegious act of helping to ensconce Parker in the 
 temporalities of Canterbury when the whole province was 
 in open protest against the act. It is a mysten,- ho%v 
 a man of grave character could assist a person of Barlow's 
 metier in such a tremendous act But he had already 
 innovated on the immemorial custom of the episcopate 
 to remain without the pleasures and distractions of 
 married life. Barlow describes Coverdale's wife as 
 * young, pretty, and frisky.' And a man who could enter 
 the diocese of a good old man like Voysey and subvert 
 his teaching, supported by letters patent, and end with 
 dri\^g the aged bishop out of his see — a man who could 
 then accept the position of returning to it after another 
 bishop had been canonicaUy appointed and consecrated to 
 it, and still held to it — such a man whether venerable or 
 not in other ways, could have had no respect for canonical 
 forms. He would have, of course, no scruple about 
 placing a Protestant teacher on the throne of Canterbury 
 in obedience to Elizabeth's commands, irrespective of 
 the consent of the rightful owners of the sees of that 
 unhappy pro^-ince. 
 
 AMiatever, then, Mr. Gore may mean by ' canonicaUy 
 'pro^•incial,' it is certain that no bishops of the province 
 of Canterbury, in the sense in which the Church has 
 
Elizabeth and her Clergy 147 
 
 always understood that term, consented to Archbishop 
 Parker's enthronisation at Canterbury. And by with- 
 holding their consent they deprived him of all jurisdiction, 
 save what Elizabeth, as ' governor ' of the Church, could 
 bestow, and that was, from a spiritual point of view, none. 
 
 By way of plain evidence, there is a remark of Lord 
 Burleigh's, the Secretary of State, which proves that there 
 were no provincials to give their helping hand to Arch- 
 bishop Parker's consecration — that is to say, such as 
 there were had been driven from their sees. In a paper 
 in the State Paper Office, the steps to be taken for the 
 confirmation of Archbishop Parker are given in detail. 
 One of these is that the order of King Edward's book 
 is to be observed. Opposite them Lord Burleigh wrote : 
 'This book is not established by Parliament.' Another 
 step to be taken was that letters patent were to ' be 
 ' directed to any other archbishop within the king's 
 ' dominions. If all be vacant, to four bishops, to be ap- 
 ' pointed by the queen's letters patent.' 
 
 Opposite this Lord Burleigh wrote : 'There is no 
 'archbishop nor four bishops now to be had.' They had 
 all refused the necessary oath. The one supposed ex- 
 ception is Kitchen, of Llandaff. He did not act, and it 
 is not proved that he even signed. The last we hear of 
 him is that he hesitated. A little before his death he 
 says : 'The Queenes Ma''^ of her bountiful grace tenderinge 
 ' the quyet of my conscience hath differred the renderinge 
 'of thothe [the oath] of her supremacie to my further 
 ' consideration within myself in the spending of Goddes 
 ' learnynge, &c.' He says that, although he cannot make 
 up his mind to sign it himself, he will obediently ad- 
 minister it to others, which shows the metal of which he 
 was made. The rest preferred prison or exile. They 
 did not vacate their sees. 
 
 One of those who went into exile sat in the Council 
 
 L 2 
 
148 
 
 ElizabetlL and her Clergy 
 
 of Trent. There is a curious letter of Elizabeth's extant 
 concerning him. It was Goldwell, Bishop of S. Asaph. 
 He never resigned his see. He tells Lord Burghley so 
 in a letter. To the end of his days he signed himself 
 'Thomas Asaphen.' He told the authorities at Rome 
 that he was driven out into exile, being unable to say 
 Mass or to preach, through Elizabeth's high-handed action. 
 He spoke in the Council of Trent in favour of the queen 
 being excommunicated. The queen had done her 
 utmost to induce him to sign the oath of supremacy. 
 But he bore the character of a high-minded, devoted 
 man, of austere life and great prayerfulness. The queen 
 did her best to bribe him into signing, but he was im- 
 pervious to her persuasive oiifers. He escaped being put 
 into custody, and appeared at the Council of Trent. No 
 one, then, placed over his diocese could by any stretch 
 of language be called the canonical bishop of S. Asaph, 
 except himself, so long as he lived. He died in 1585, 
 in one of the homes of the Theatine order, to which he 
 belonged, in his eighty-fifth year. Baronius speaks of 
 him as ' a man conspicuous for hohness of life, the 
 ' confession of the faith, and learning, who lately died at 
 ' Rome, to the sorrow of all good persons.' 
 
 The queen, when she heard of his being at the 
 Council of Trent, seems to have been greatly angered. 
 She wrote to her envoy in Germany (March 21, 1562) 
 saying : ' As to the first matter we think it may be that 
 ' one Goldwell, a very simple and fond man, having in 
 ' our late sister's time been named to a small bishopric in 
 ' Wales, called S. Asaph, though never thereto admitted, 
 ' flying out of the realm upon our sister's death, is gone 
 ' to Rome as a renegade, and there using the name of a 
 ' bishop without order or title, is perhaps gone in the train 
 ' of some cardinal to Trent, and so it is likely the speech 
 ' hath arisen of a bishop of England being there.' 
 
Elizabeth atid her Clergy 
 
 149 
 
 The queen here, of course, tells a falsehood. Would 
 that it stood alone in the record of her life ! 
 
 Such, then, was the dilemma in which Elizabeth found 
 herself. A metropolitan was needed, and a metropolitan 
 was made. But besides what I have already pointed out, 
 there was another symptom of the confusion into which 
 everything had been thrown. The confirming bishops 
 were unconfirmed themselves for eleven days after Parker's 
 confirmation. They consecrated Parker Dec 17, and 
 Barlow and Scory were afterwards confirmed in their 
 respective bishoprics by Parker, whom they had confirmed 
 in his before. But they had no more right to consecrate 
 an Archbishop of Canterbury than they had to conse- 
 crate one for Paris or Moscow. They had no jurisdiction 
 themselves on any conceivable theory that can appeal to 
 the canons of the Church, and that defect must still in- 
 here in Parker's successors ; time cannot cure it. Original 
 sin is not done away with by our distance from Adam, 
 but by baptism. ' Quod ab initio nullum est tractu 
 ' temporis non convalescit.' 
 
 But the queen had no hesitation as to her course of 
 action. She stepped forward in her royal majesty, and 
 cured the defect. An enabling Act was passed, and the 
 machinery was set in motion. She was her father's child 
 — a Tudor from head to foot. Not long afterwards she 
 stepped with the same royal ease into the patriarch's 
 throne with even more sublime consciousness of her spi- 
 ritual jurisdiction. She had been proclaimed 'governor' 
 of the Church of England. She would not have been 
 Elizabeth if she had not used the authority which 
 Parliament had given her. Why does not Grindal, the 
 successor of Parker in the see of Canterbury, exert him- 
 self against the Puritans with greater zeal? Elizabeth 
 suspended him. In vain did twelve of his suffragans plead 
 for him ; in vain did Convocation urge his cause. They 
 
Elisabeth and her Clergy 
 
 had to consent to fulfil his functions. Just as afterwards 
 Charles I., under Laud's guidance, suspended Archbishop 
 Abbot, and nominated, authorized, and appointed five of 
 his suffragans to act for him : ' to do, execute, and per- 
 form all and every those acts, matters, and things, anyway 
 touching or concerning the power, jurisdiction, or autho- 
 rity of the Archbishop of Canterbury, in causes or matters 
 ecclesiastical.' If this was not fulfilling the office of a 
 patriarch, in what did that office consist ? It is idle to 
 refer, as Mr. Gore does, to Byzantine emperors or 
 Frankish kings, for any parallel to this. This was a 
 settlement, a supposed reformation, a new departure, 
 which governed the course of events for three centuries 
 to come. Between this and the regime in the Eastern 
 Church under the Byzantine emperors, there was this 
 vital difference. The patriarchate of Constantinople 
 did not stand alone, as Archbishop Parker did, out of 
 communion with the rest of the Catholic world. The 
 tendency of the Eastern patriarchates to Erastianism 
 was continually being checked and corrected by the 
 action of the See of S. Peter. When no longer in com- 
 munion with Rome, the patriarchate of Constantinople 
 became a blighted, withered thing, smothered by its 
 Erastianism. From having preserved a true priesthood, 
 it never lost the sacerdotal idea, or its respect for the 
 monastic life, as England, nor did it develop such a crop 
 of heresies. But it lost its spring and power, and became 
 as still as a frozen tarn. It was an ecclesiastical petri- 
 faction. In England things were worse. The Sacrifice 
 became a ' memory,' and the priesthood a ' ministry.' 
 Decorum took the place of zeal, the wife superseded the 
 'discipline,' and the Saint disappeared. The good 
 clergyman replaced the holy priest, and obedience to the 
 law, devotion to the Pope. The daily Mass was suc- 
 ceeded by occasional administration of the Lord's Supper ; 
 
ElizabetJi and her Clergy 
 
 confession and absolution, by justification by faith, and 
 listening to a sermon. Bishops paid their annates to the 
 Sovereign instead of the Pope, and Royal Commissions 
 superseded Provincial Synods. Perhaps no more com- 
 plete proof of the entire acceptance, by the new Church 
 of England, and the nation at large, of the Erastian 
 position could be adduced than the history of Arch- 
 bishop Abbot. He had killed a man, by accident, when 
 hunting at Bramzill Park. The Lord-Keeper Williams, 
 then Bishop of Lincoln, announced the fact to the Duke 
 of Buckingham, in the following manner : ' His Grace, 
 ' upon this accident, is, by the common law of England, 
 ' to forfeit all his estate unto his Majesty ; and by the 
 ' canon law, which is in force with us (he is) irregular 
 ^ ipso facto, and so suspended from all ecclesiastical 
 ' functions, until he be again restored by his superior \ 
 
 * which, I take it, is the King's Majesty, in this rank and 
 ' order of ecclesiastical jurisdictions.' 
 
 'The King,' says Bishop Hacket, 'saw that, whether See Allies 
 ' the person of the Archbishop were tainted by this act, or Royal Supre 
 ' not, yet his metropolitical function was unsettled in many (plckcrmgf 
 ' men's opinions ; he heard that the acts of spiritual courts 
 ' were usurped, and came to no end, till sentence were 
 ' pronounced oneway or another by the supreme authority. 
 ' Therefore a commission was directed from his Majesty 
 ' to ten persons, to meet together for this purpose about 
 
 * the beginning of October.' The result of their delibera- 
 tions was, that the King appointed a Commission of 
 bishops, Andrewes being one of them, and by their means 
 ' assoiled the Archbishop from all irregularity, scandal, 
 ' or infamation, pronouncing him to be capable to use all 
 'metropolitical authority.' The royal decree runs : ' Of 
 ' our special grace, and of our supreme royal and eccle- 
 ' siastical authority,' and it frees the Archbishop from all 
 ' defect, censure, penalty, canonical and ecclesiastical,' 
 
152 
 
 Elizabeth and her Clergy 
 
 and it restores to him freedom to 'minister, enjoy, exer- 
 'cise' the entire office of his archiepiscopate. CoUier 
 (ix. 378) remarks: 'This is a wonderful relief from the 
 ' Crown ! ' and supposes ' a patriarchal at least, if not a 
 'papal authority, in the King.' No wonder that in this 
 century, the Bishop of Durham could say from his place 
 in the House of Lords : ' Now it is manifest . . . this 
 ' latter power (jurisdiction), though spiritual in its purpose 
 ' and effect, cannot be exercised by any other authority 
 'than that of the State . . . spiritual functions belong 
 ' exclusively to the Church ; spiritual jurisdiction belongs 
 ' to the State as allied to the Church, and although exer- 
 ' cised by the Church, is derived from the State,' which 
 is Erastianism pure and simple. 
 
 Such was the system which Elizabeth had the skill to 
 introduce. It was her courageous determination that 
 prevented the Church of England from being quite what 
 the rest of the Protestant world soon became. She could 
 say to a bishop, ' By God, I will unfrock you ! ' and she 
 used her determination to keep the religion set up in her 
 realm ' something like ' the Confession of Augsburg, as she 
 told the Spanish ambassador, and ' yet different from it.* 
 It was the latter half that was the difficulty. Her bishops 
 had, some of them, been abroad in Mary's reign, and 
 since they found themselves most in accord with the 
 Protestants there, as, for instance, at Frankfort, they com- 
 municated with them, but were unable to do so without 
 signing the Confession of Augsburg, ' which,' we read, 
 ' accordingly they did.' And so her bishops were to be 
 'something like ' the Catholic bishops and ' yet different.* 
 They were, above all things, to abolish the Mass, and yet 
 they were to admit in her own chapel some grandeur in 
 their functions. Elsewhere the altar vestments became 
 
 Lee on ' Tha , , , 
 
 Church ' bed-quilts, or on occasion ' a stomacher for a wench, 
 
 under Queen , , , , i mi 
 
 Elizabeth,' and the altar stones were put to 'common uses. Ihe 
 
 voL i. p. 264. 
 
ElizabctJi and her Clergy 
 
 153 
 
 people of England disliked the change. But Elizabeth 
 was fully equal to the occasion. She could boast that 
 she ' tuned the pulpits ' of the clergy whom she suffered 
 to occupy the places of the deprived prelates. Of these 
 latter Bishop Jewel writes February 7, 1562: 'The 'Zurich 
 ' Marian bishops are still confined in the Tower, and ^sfscHef 
 ' going on in their old way. . . . They are an obstinate 
 'and untamed set of men, but are nevertheless subdued 
 ' by terror and the sword.' He had already written to the 
 same Peter Martyr in August 1559: ' Many alterations in 
 'religion are effected in Parliament in spite of the 'oppo- 
 'sition and gainsaying and disturbance of the bishops.' 
 It was, indeed, a battle between the crozier and the 
 Crown, and the victory was with the Crown. And so a 
 few years later (157 1) one of her creatures — Archbishop 
 Grindal of York, afterwards Primate of all England — 
 ordered all altars to be pulled down and altar stones to 
 be defaced, and England had her rich language defiled 
 by the fearful blasphemy contained in the common phrase 
 ' hocus pocus.' ' 
 
 And what was her last treatment of her clergy ? 
 ' Many,' says Miss Strickland, ' have been dazzled with 
 ' the splendour of her life ; but few, even of her most 
 'ardent admirers, would wish their last end to be like 
 'hers.' That end was marked by a silent melancholy. 
 ' She never,' says Lady Southwell, ' lost her senses for 
 ' one moment, but was prevented from speaking on account 
 ' of a sore throat.' AVhen the Archbishops of Canterbury 
 
 ' A parody of the Latin words for 'This is My Body,' containing 
 the idea that the Consecration in the Mass is a trick and a delusion. 
 Archbishop Tillotson says : ' In all probability those common 
 jangling words, of Hocus Pocus, are nothing but a corruption of 
 Hoc est corpus, by way of ridiculous imitation of the priests of the 
 Church of Rome in their trick of Transubstantiation.'— Z'wfwritf 
 against Transubstantialion. 
 
154 
 
 Elizabeth and her Clergy 
 
 and York visited her she became offended, and told 
 ■See liurke's them ' to be off ; she was no atheist, but she knew full 
 portrait's''/' ^^'cll that they were but hedge-priests.' She died, a 
 vol. IV. < nielancholy, disconsolate, forlorn, and miserable old 
 
 ' woman.' 
 
 That she ever came to be called ' good Queen Bess ' 
 is due simply to the fact that Protestantism has long 
 poisoned the wells of history, and Protestant historians 
 have not 'troubled themselves with facts.' The author 
 of the ' Roman Question ' quotes with approval the state- 
 ment of Professor Creighton that in Henry VIII.'s time 
 'very few Englishmen at the time wished to maintain the 
 ' connection with Rome ; ' and again in reference to the 
 relation with Rome re-established under Mary : ' After 
 ' that brief experience Englishmen never wished to hear of 
 ' it again.' Mr. Brewer, after the most careful study of the 
 State documents of the period that perhaps any man has 
 yet given to them, tells us the precise contrary. The 
 people did not wish for the change, and did not like it 
 when it came. Paget writes to Somerset that ' eleven- 
 ' twelfths of the kingdom were opposed to the new-fangled 
 'teaching' (Strype, ii. no). So much for Professor 
 Creighton's statement. 
 
 And in Elizabeth's reign it was difficult to induce 
 educated men to enter the new ministry. Men called 
 the new episcopate ' Parliament-bishops ' ; cobblers, 
 tinkers, tailors had to be pressed into the service ; the 
 greed for marriage amongst the clergy could only be 
 satisfied by their being content with persons of doubtful 
 character, so adverse were respectable people to the new 
 idea of a married ministry. You read in the records 
 of the times the objections people had to attending the 
 novel services, and those objections hinged precisely on 
 the doubtful validity of the new order of clergy. In the 
 York House Books, the records of the corporation, there 
 
Elizabeth and her Clergy 
 
 155 
 
 is a list of numbers of persons who were brought before 
 the Lord Mayor in 1573, for instance, for not attending 
 church. Their answers are most significant. One gives 
 as a reason for not attending, ' It is not the Catholic 
 < Church ; ' another, ' There is no priest ; ' a third, ' There 
 ' is not the Sacrament of the altar ; ' a fourth, ' There is 
 ' neither priest nor Sacrament.' But the machinery in 
 existence, worked by a Tudor will, was equal to en- 
 forcing conformity wherever the spirit of martyrdom was 
 lacking, and martyrs in all ages are but 'few and far 
 ' between.' Conformity was achieved for a brief space, 
 but only to give way to an explosion of heresy such as 
 the world has seldom seen. Sects soon crept into 
 existence, and began to cover the land silently but surely, 
 until the endeavour to return to the slightest similitude 
 of Popery brought a successor of Matthew Parker to the 
 block. As the Protestant Melanchthon writes of his own 
 country, ' All the waters of the Elbe would not yield me 
 tears sufficient to weep for the miseries caused by the 
 Reformation' (lib. iv. ep. 100), so it might be said of 
 England, ' Not all the waters of the Thames would yield 
 ' tears enough to weep for the neglect of the poor, the 
 ' corruptness of judges, the oppressiveness of landlords, 
 'frequency of murder, prevalence of adultery and con- 
 ' sequent divorce, which the Protestant annalist Strype 
 ' sets down as sins resulting from the Reformation.' 
 
 At length an utter absence of all spiritual life came 
 over the land, once the home of saints. The Church never 
 quite died out ; no Towneley ever apostatised ; there were 
 Howards and others still true to the old religion. There are 
 villages in Lancashire that never knew the withering blight 
 of the Reformation. But the ostracism never ceased, and 
 we read now and again how in the last century men 
 went to Mass and suffered for it. In 1765 a gendeman 
 was summoned before the sitting alderman for attending 
 
156 
 
 ElisabetJi and her Clergy 
 
 Mass contrary to law, and was obliged to enter into a 
 recognisance for 400/. for his appearance at the ensuing 
 sessions of the place ('Gentleman's Magazine,' 1765). 
 
 But at length the indifference and torpor were sufficient 
 to enable the exiled priests from a neighbouring country 
 in revolution to settle here, and, as in His exile from the 
 Holy Land the Church's infant King blessed the country 
 of His sojourn, so was it here. The Christian faith 
 revived, and men saw their way back into the Church of 
 their fathers. The home of learning by the banks of the 
 Isis became the birthplace of a new progeny, born unto 
 God in the Catholic Church. The saints one by one re- 
 turned in their various Orders. They are here now at work 
 and by toil, and prayers, and sacrifices, and the Holy 
 Mass, are pleading with the Lord, Who was driven out : 
 ' Come, Lord Jesus, and with Thy blessed Mother take 
 ' possession once again of the country where Thy saints 
 ' lived and died in the communion of Thine Apostle's See, 
 ' whom Thou didst make the rock of the Church and the 
 ' key-bearer of the kingdom of Heaven under Thyself, 
 ' Who art the Rock of Ages, and Who hast the keys of 
 ' death and hell, Who openest and no man shutteth ! ' 
 
The Decline of Dogma 
 
 157 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 THE DECLINE OF DOGMA. 
 
 Some years ago, it was usual amongst High Churchmen 
 to admit that things were in evil case in the Church of 
 England, as compared with things elsewhere, but that it 
 was our duty to remain where God had placed us. Such 
 an attitude, it was urged, fostered humility ; and the ad- 
 mission only amounted to our being in outward corre- 
 spondence with our Lord in His Passion. It was thought 
 right to admit that it would have been an inestimable 
 blessing to have been born a Roman Catholic ; but as 
 we were not, our duty lay in submission to the Divine 
 decree. 
 
 Of late years this attitude has very much disappeared. 
 It is now taught that it is a comparative blessing to have 
 been born in the Anglican Branch, as it is called, and not 
 in the Roman Communion. There are, it is urged, as 
 many difficulties in the latter Communion as in any other 
 religious body : consequently ' we are better off where we 
 'are.' A good instance of this is to be found in an article 
 of the 'Church Quarterly Review' for January of this 
 year. The article deals with my book on ' Authority,' and 
 devotes a considerable portion to a passing assertion of 
 mine that the Church of England shows a want of firm- 
 ness even on the subject of hell. 
 
 Now before touching on this subject, I wish to say 
 thus much : viz. that if any words of mine should lead to 
 
158 
 
 TJie Decline of Dogma 
 
 more decision on this matter in the Church of England 
 no one will rejoice over it more than myself. I should 
 lose an argument, but I should help some souls, God 
 knows what agonies I have endured through the inde- 
 cision of the Church of England on this awful subject. It 
 was my rule always to preach on it at stated intervals, 
 and at every Mission, in Europe, Asia, Africa, and 
 America. I have received in consequence plenty of re- 
 monstrances from laymen to the effect that I ought to 
 know better than to rank this doctrine amongst the 
 articles of faith. But the real difficulty comes from the 
 teaching body in the Church of England. Besides what 
 I have mentioned in my book, is it not notorious that, 
 for instance, one of the churches in London which has 
 fought the Ritualistic battle, is now occupied by a vicar, 
 who both preaches Universalism, and writes in favour of 
 it ? The last Anglican bishop that I spoke to had been 
 greatly shocked at the prayer, ' Sancta Maria, eripe me 
 de tormentis feternis.' When I proceeded to explain 
 that this related to the glorious intercession of our Lady, 
 I found that his difficulty was quite as much with the 
 words ' aeternis tormentis,' as with her intercession. I 
 found it a matter of notoriety that he had just been 
 wounding the susceptibilities of some of his congregation, 
 and delighting the ' liberality ' of others, by his loose 
 teaching on the subject of hell. Since I wrote my book, 
 a scene has been enacted which speaks volumes as to 
 the present state of things on this subject. At the great 
 annual meeting of English churchpeople, the Manchester 
 Congress, two clergymen were asked to address, or to 
 write addresses for, one of the meetings, whose compara- 
 tive heterodoxy on the subject must have been known. 
 The address of one was read in the presence of at least 
 one Enghsh bishop sitting on the platform. A more 
 horrible pronuncia7iiietito on the subject of eschatology 
 
TJic Decline of Dogma 
 
 159 
 
 I have hardly ever read. The address was listened to 
 with impatience, but the bishop by his presence in the 
 chair secured a ' fair hearing ' for this heretical teacher. 
 This same clergyman, after sowing such seeds of doubt 
 as he could by having his paper read in the presence of 
 a bishop, retains his rectory and represents the Church 
 of England to his Yorkshire people. Who can blame 
 him ? he is within his rights. He probably sincerely be- 
 lieves that he has just as much right to teach what he 
 does, as the Low Churchman who used to teach all the 
 horrors of Calvinistic predestination. 
 
 These are surely pronounced symptoms of a disease - 
 of a disease at work at the very vitals of the system ; for 
 the health of a system which cannot repudiate this false 
 teaching on a fundamental truth must have been seriously 
 undermined. Then, am I not right in saying that the 
 Church of England is not as keen and sensitive as she 
 once was, on the subject of hell ? I do not wish to make 
 out a case. God forbid ! If anyone can show me the 
 contrary, I will gladly hear him, and rejoice from the 
 bottom of my heart. My own conviction is, and it is a 
 matter of deepest sorrow, that the Church of England is 
 steadily losing her hold of the dogmatic principle alto- 
 gether. The calmness with which heresy is endured may 
 bring peace ; but it will be the peace of torpor, and the 
 prelude of death. That fierce indignation against the 
 evil of heresy which betokens moral fibre ; that holy 
 anger which denotes that the finer sensibilities of our 
 nature have not been dulled ; where are they now ? 
 That dreadful boast of comprehensiveness, the dread of 
 bondage to dogma and discipline, are notes of a decaying 
 system, which cannot gather itself up to speak with the 
 unity of its being, and express itself as one living person. 
 
 No Catholic can see the Church of England sink 
 ever so little into dogmatic indifference, without a pang. 
 
i6o Tlie Decline of Dogma 
 
 If there were no other reason, it would treble the work of 
 the Catholic Church. The Establishment would never 
 give to the Church another Newman, or Manning, or 
 Wilberforce, or Lockhart, or Ward, or Faber, not to 
 mention a host of others whose lives and deaths have 
 edified the Church. But also, who that has friends 
 within her bosom can bear the thought of their living 
 and dying without that keen sense of the value of truth 
 which belongs to any sort of spiritual perfection ? 
 
 But I confess to a feeling akin to despair when I 
 read such an article as that which appeared in the last 
 ' Church Quarterly Review,' or remarks such as occur in 
 Mr. Gore's book on ' Roman Catholic Claims.' Mr. Gore 
 seems of the two far the most keenly alive to the evil : 
 accordingly he busies himself with defending Archdeacon 
 Farrar from the charge of heresy. The archdeacon 
 wrote a book which destroyed all belief in hell in numbers 
 of souls. The result of his book was to suggest that 
 Christendom has been wrong on that subject for ages, 
 and that he had been sent to put it right. The further 
 conclusion drawn was, that if Christendom could go 
 wrong on such a point, why not on others too ? Arch- 
 deacon Farrar professes to agree with Dr. Pusey. Yet 
 who does not know that Dr. Pusey's book would not have 
 been written when it was but for Canon Farrar's work ? 
 Again, one of the passages from my book on ' Authority,' 
 which Mr. Gore singles out for reprobation, is precisely 
 that in which I state that my decision to face the agony 
 of separation from all my friends, was due in the last 
 resort to my feeling sure that, if I did not, I might suffer 
 everlasting separation from the Author of all good. The 
 writer of the articles on my book in 'Church Bells,' 
 denies that I can have been influenced by so low a 
 motive as the fear of hell. But think what hell means ? 
 Its essence is the eternal loss of God ! and what love is 
 
TJie Decline of Dogma 
 
 i6i 
 
 that, which can bear the thought of that loss without 
 agony ? The more we love the Fountain of all good, the 
 more we shall be careful that we do not miss the vision 
 and enjoyment of His Presence throughout eternity. 
 
 But still more startling is the mode of defence adopted 
 by the ' Church Quarterly ' reviewer. I looked with some 
 eagerness to its reply; for the ' Church Quarterly Review ' 
 has for some years represented all that is best in the 
 Church of England. Its short notice of my pamphlet 
 was, indeed, most offensive in its tone ; but in an 'article' 
 one would expect to find some thought and more 
 refined expressions. The latter I found. But what shall I 
 say of the thoughtful care ? The reviezvet^s reply consists 
 of a retort ! He does not deny the fact ; but he asks 
 me a question, i.e. whether I have ' really studied this 
 ' question in connection with the history of the Com- 
 ' munion which I have joined?' He says, 'We greatly 
 ' doubt it.' 
 
 Now before answering this question, I desire to make 
 some preliminary remarks. And first, it ought to be a 
 subject of the deepest regret to the writer of the review 
 that there should be this imaginary wavering, not merely, 
 as he admits, in the Establishment, but in the Catholic 
 Church. He denies being a Universalist himself. 
 Surely, then, he must feel that the Church is simply 
 failing all round in a truth which lies at the root of all 
 belief. What of our Lord's promises ? 
 
 Secondly, his misrepresentation of my words on 
 another subject is so inexcusable, that I feel bound to 
 call attention to it. 
 
 I have said in my book on ' Authority ' (p. 5), that ' to 
 ' talk of a body without a head in the same order of life 
 ' as the rest of the body, is to use words without 
 ' meaning. An invisible body may have only an invisiljle 
 ' head ; but a visible body, to be a body at all, must have 
 
 M 
 
The Dcclhie of Dog7na 
 
 ' also a visible head. The fact of a headship is part of the 
 ' contents of the term.' Notice the word ' also.' 
 
 Now it is almost incredible that anyone who pretends 
 to deal honestly. with an author's words should quote the 
 first of these sentences, omit the second, and interpret 
 the words ' order of life ' not of the visible order of things 
 as I expressly explain them, but of the purely human 
 order. And so by thus deliberately altering my words 
 from 'visible' to 'human,' he succeeds in the jugglery 
 of representmg me to his readers as asserting that our 
 Lord is not, as Man, the Head of the Church. Why, of 
 course, I imph', and / have elsewhere said, that He is as 
 Man the ijivisidle Head. The question is, whether our 
 Lord has appointed a visible representative of Himself 
 as Head. S. Augustine says that our Lord wished to 
 ' make Peter one with Himself, that so He might commend 
 ' the sheep to him, that he might he the /lead, and bear the 
 ' figure of the body.' I have, therefore, simply said what 
 S. Augustine said. There is one Priest, and one Head, 
 but are there not visible representatives of the one Priest ? 
 But the point is, why does this writer deliberately cut 
 out my explanatory sentence, and so make me write 
 nonsense ? By what right does he say what is so trans- 
 parently false ? He returns to this charge at the end of 
 his article, when he speaks of my ' strange theories about 
 ' the a priori necessity of a purely human head to the 
 ' Church.' Strange, indeed, would such a nonsensical 
 theory be; but stranger far is the pen-ersity that changes 
 my word ' visible ' into ' human,' and ignores my express 
 statement on p. 21, 'Christ alone is the Head of His 
 ' Church.' Is it possible that one who applies himself to 
 write on what he calls the Roman question, is so little 
 acquainted with the argument, which is a commonplace 
 of Catholic theology, amongst the loci theologici of every 
 text-book in use in Catholic seminaries, as to mistake 
 
TJic Decline of Dogma 
 
 163 
 
 my plain allusion to it and to call it a 'novel theory'? 
 I assumed that my readers would be sufficiently conver- 
 sant with this ordinary argument, to dispense me from the 
 necessity of saying that it was not new. 
 
 The writer speaks of ' Father Gallwey going quite as 
 ' far as Mr. Rivington,' as though he, too, were enunciating 
 some novel theory, and as though he were denying the 
 Headship of our Lord as Man over His Church. I need 
 hardly say that Father Gallwey does no such thing. He 
 believes in a visible representative of the Invisible Head. 
 We call our Lord the Divine Head, not because He is 
 not man ; but because He is the God-man. 
 
 Another point to which I will draw attention before 
 passing on, is the first of the three points which my critic 
 takes, and on which he thinks that he vanquishes me. 
 He deals with what I have said in 'Authority,' p. 57, viz. 
 ' Either the Popes claimed what was their right by the 
 ' gift of Christ, or they were one and all impostors from 
 ' the beginning.' This is in allusion to the claim made by 
 the Popes, from the time of S. Siricius onwards, in their 
 genuine decretals, to be successors of S. Peter and the 
 appointed rulers of the Church. This they have claimed 
 all these centuries, as a matter of faith. How does my 
 critic meet this evidence ? After a very rude remark, and 
 an assertion of great superiority on his own part (p. 343, 
 penult, para.), he instances the very different claim on the 
 part of certain Popes to a deposing power. And he says 
 further on, ' The deposing power was by the sixteenth 
 ' century all but erected into an article of faith.' 'All but' ; 
 it is, therefore, no parallel case. I am speaking of what 
 WAS all along claimed as a matter of faith. And between 
 what is claimed as such, and what is not, there is a chasm. 
 The whole point of my argument lies in the magnitude 
 of the claim — the claim to be the successors of S. Peter 
 and the rulers of the Church by saints and martyrs, on the 
 
 M 2 
 
164 
 
 TJie Decline of Dogma 
 
 ground of a divine appointment. The critic has thus 
 produced no parallel. Of course, people can claim 
 things without being impostors, but the question is 
 whether we can suppose such men — such saints and 
 martyrs — to claim such a position, one after the other, 
 without their claim being presumably true. And to this 
 question the critic does not address himself. 
 
 His third point is a third misrepresentation. He 
 makes me say that ' the mention of distinguished names 
 ' is an argument which tells in one direction, and in one 
 ' only.^ Let him quote any expression of mine which bears 
 out the assertion contained in the words I have italicised. 
 He cannot do it. 
 
 I now return to his retort about the teaching concern- 
 ing future punishment. 
 
 We have seen what is, alas ! the state of things in the 
 Establishment, but the reviewer thinks that I have pro- 
 ceeded on ' the supposition that on quitting the English 
 ' Church for the Roman, a man escapes from all the special 
 ' difficulties which affect the theolog)- of our day.' I have 
 certainly given no cause, that I can see, for such an 
 accusation in the book in question. I have there shown 
 reasons for believing that the See of S. Peter is the divinely 
 appointed guardian of the Faith, the centre of unity, and 
 the source of jurisdiction ; but that is a ver)- different 
 matter. The only ground for the reviewers assertion 
 seems to be that I have said that the Church of England 
 wavers on the subject of hell. But, being in communion 
 with the See of S. Peter, does not, in my opinion, secure 
 an ' escape from all the special difficulties which affect 
 ' the theolog)- of our day." It places one within the Ark 
 of Salvation ; but even the existence of God has still its 
 own difficulties, only they are difficulties which, to those 
 who remain docile to the teaching of the one true Church 
 never amount to a doubt. But he supposes that I shall 
 
 \ 
 
TJie Decline of Dogtua 165 
 
 find similar difficulties in the way of loose teaching, and 
 the absence of discipline, in communion with the See 
 of S. Peter — that there is, in fact (for it amounts to 
 that) no such thing as a Church upon earth, to which 
 the command applies, 'Hear the Church and he speaks 
 of my 'seeming ignorance of the licence allowed by 
 ' Rome on questions of eschatology.' I don't know where 
 he thinks I have lived all my life, or how he thinks I 
 have used my opportunities of observation, which have 
 certainly been more than falls to the lot of most people ; 
 and I cannot conceive where he gained his own travesty 
 of the discipline of the Catholic Church. But I proceed 
 to answer his public challenge, when he asks me this 
 question — ' Has he really studied this question ' {i.e. the 
 subject of hell) 'in connection with the history of the 
 'communion which he has joined?' He adds— though 
 on what grounds I do not know — ' we greatly doubt it.' 
 
 I answer then, without hesitation, that I have not only 
 studied this question for years, especially since 1865, 
 in connection with the Church of Rome (to use his own 
 phrase), but I feel sure that I have studied it a great deal 
 more than he can have done himself. This is no idle 
 boast. Lacordaire's writings on this subject, of which 
 my reviewer gives a second-hand account, I know well- 
 nigh by heart. M. Nicolas, on whom he relies, with 
 whose entire work I am intimately acquainted, and whose 
 splendid chapter on hell I analysed eighteen years ago, 
 my reviewer has misunderstood ; ' and he has thoroughly 
 misrepresented the Abbe Le Noir, through (I suspect) a lack 
 of acquaintance with the theological methods of Catholic 
 writers. My answer, then, to the question thus publicly 
 
 ' It has been a favourite book of mine, and was presented to 
 me, by my own choice, by the present liishop of Lincoln, as a 
 parting gilt, when I left for missionary work in India, but I knew 
 it first in 1870. 
 
The Decline of Dogma 
 
 put, is simply this, viz.. I have studied with pecuHar care 
 the well-known Catholic writers on this subject, and not 
 only what has been written in past times, but the more 
 modern and, I think I may say, the latest expositions 
 of this doctrine. And the result is that I feel justified in 
 accusing the Church Quarterly Reviewer (i) of ignoratio 
 elenchi in dealing with my argument, and (2) of a most 
 serious misrepresentation of Catholic writers on the sub- 
 ject. For (i) I spoke in my book of recent tendencies 
 in the Church of England on the subject of hell. The 
 writer, in reply, deals only with Catholic-French writers 
 of thirty years ago, and with the way in which they deal 
 with some of the fringes of the subject. ' The French 
 ' pulpit,' he says, ' exhibited a change, not indeed in 
 * essence, but in mode of treatment ' (p. 34). If ' not in 
 ' essence,' where is the relevancy of his remarks? 
 
 Again, I deal throughout my remarks with the attitude 
 of the teaching body in the Church of England. Does 
 any man pretend that the teaching body of the Catholic and 
 Roman Church is not as decided as ever on this dogma? 
 Even the late Mr. H. N. Oxenham, so often led away by 
 his wide sympathies, deals with this subject in the most 
 trenchant manner. Few things assisted the Church of 
 England more than the articles and the book which Mr. 
 Oxenham wrote on this subject. It appeared at a time 
 when many in the Church of England were in utter dismay 
 at the sudden outburst of unbelief on this central subject. 
 The 'Church Times' had thrown its aegis over Mr. Juke's 
 book on Universalism, which was much more than 
 counteracting the effects of Dr. Pusey's famous sermon, 
 and many young clergymen were beginning to wonder 
 what was the ' Catholic ' line to take. Mr. Oxenham's 
 book, being that of a Roman Catholic, reassured them, 
 and showed them that ' the Church of Rome ' had no 
 faltering voice on that awful topic, when her least in- 
 
Tlic Decline of Dogvia 
 
 tolerant member was so decided. And does any man, I 
 
 repeat, venture to say that ' the Church of Rome ' is not 
 
 to-day as ' obstinate,' in the holy sense of that word, as 
 
 she has been since S. Jerome condemned the doctrine of jerome 
 
 Origen as involving the salvation even of Satan ? Will J""^;, 3. 
 
 the world believe you, if you assert it ? Well, the 'Church 
 
 ' Quarterly Review ' has detected a sign of change, and 
 
 the ' Spectator ' has indulged in an outburst of admiration Jan. 26, 
 
 at this particular portion of the article. I am overmatched, 
 
 it informs its readers, because my ' excellence is that of a 
 
 ' preacher, not of a theologian.' I have met with a theo 
 
 logian, and hence iinpar co/igressus. 
 
 I do not know what the 'Spectator' means by a theolo- 
 gian ; but surely a theologian must be a logician first. 
 And where is the logic of my reviewer? He is dealing 
 w ith my assertion that the Church of England is 'waver- 
 ' ing ' on the subject of hell. He retorts that 'during the 
 ' earlier half of the century' a French barrister wrote some- 
 thing about modern minds which bears upon the question 
 at issue ; and also a French abbe wrote an article in a 
 theological dictionary which shows 'wavering on the 
 'subject of hell.' And he supposes that some articles by 
 Father Clarke show that ' the discussions of the present 
 'century on this solemn theme have seriously modified 
 ' the Roman theology in many quarters.' And that is his 
 proof that the present tendency of the Catholic Roman 
 Church is the same, or nearly the same, as that of the 
 Church of England ; at any rate, sufficiently the same to 
 have supplied me with a cogent reason, if I had only 
 known it, for pausing before I entered a fold where the 
 shepherds are so remiss. He remarks upon my ' seem- 
 ' ing ignorance of the licence allowed by Rome on ques- 
 ' tions of eschatology.' 
 
 Let us, then, examine this French barrister and this 
 French Abbe and Father Clarke, whose writings, we are 
 
The Decline of Dogma 
 
 told, reveal a 'revolution' (p. 346, last line) in the teaching 
 of the Cathohc Church on the subject of hell. 
 
 Happily, in the two first cases, the reviewer quotes 
 the damning words on pages 348-350. 
 
 M. Nicolas, he tells us, ' feels compelled to declare — ' 
 we shall expect something that it must have cost him a 
 great deal to declare. It is this : * Amongst the moderns 
 ' this dogma has become the most insurmountable, I do not 
 ' say to the reason of the unbeliever, but to the faith of the 
 ' Christian ; and it is not uncommon to find souls who 
 ' could believe all the rest of Christianity, and who are held 
 ' in check in the presence of this one article of faith alone.' 
 
 Further on, it is said, still as a sign of the revolution 
 ' which has affected questions which concern eschato- 
 'logy,' that M. Nicolas did not refrain from stating in a 
 note, ' le point le plus insaisissable du dogme de Tenfer, et 
 ' qui est comme le centre de son obscurite, viz. : the diffi- 
 culty of reconciling it with the foreknowledge and good- 
 ness of God, and of leaving it as a myster}' by the side of 
 that concerning our freedom and the Divine sovereignty ' — ■ 
 (p. 349), as if S. Thomas had not done the same. 
 
 I ask, what in the world has this to do with the ques- 
 tion before us ? How does this show that the teaching 
 body of the Church is wavering ? The existence of evil 
 is a still greater difficulty to many minds ; and the doc- 
 trine of everlasting punishment is one form of that insoluble 
 difficulty. S. Augustine found the existence of evil an 
 insurmountable difficulty to many minds. Did this prove 
 that the Church was wavering on the subject ? Does the 
 Church the less teach it, because it is so insurmountable 
 to many minds ? M. Nicolas in the first passage is speak- 
 ing of the effect that the Christian conception of love has 
 had on men's minds, and the difficulty it has raised on 
 this subject of punishment. But hell is not the less 
 taught for that. ' He begins,' my critic says, ' in what 
 
TJie Decline of Dogma 
 
 169 
 
 ' may almost be called an apologetic tone.' In other words 
 he begins gently. But what, I ask again, has this to do 
 with the question before us ? 
 
 We may dismiss, then, the first reference to M. Nicolas 
 as an ignoratio elenchi. 
 
 And the same may be said of the way in which the 
 writer introduces M. Nicolas's observation that the 
 difficulty of reconciling the doctrine of everlasting punish- 
 ment with the foreknowledge and the goodness of God is 
 'comme le centre de son obscurite.' M. Nicolas simply 
 adduces this as a difficulty of the same nature as the 
 difficulty of reconciling the co-existence of the infinite 
 and finite — a difficulty, but no reason for doubt. Mr. 
 Mansel might with as much reason be accused of not 
 being quite as firm in his teaching on the existence of 
 God because he speaks of the co-existence of the finite 
 and the infinite as the riddle of philosophy since the 
 birthday of human thought. M. Nicolas shows that it 
 is not a difficulty sufficient to counterbalance the over- 
 whelming reasons for believing in hell. 
 
 And yet in this the reviewer actually discerns a change 
 of tone in Catholic teaching sufficient to justify his strange 
 assertion about the 'hcence allowed by Rome on the 
 ' question of eschatology ' — a licence which he compares 
 with the state of things I have described in the Church 
 of England. All that he has as yet adduced surely goes 
 to show that Catholic teachers set to work at once to 
 remove the difficulties that beset modern minds in the 
 way of receiving the dogma of eternal punishment. What 
 has this to do with laxity, or allowed licence, or faltering ? 
 What is it but a symptom of the desire to show that, in 
 spite of difficulties raised, it is true ? 
 
 The writer's reference to Father Clarke's articles in the 
 ' Month ' seems to me to be stranger still. He says : 'If 
 ' we have understood aright the articles of Father Clarke,' 
 
TJic Decline of Dogma 
 
 (i.e. in the 'Month' for 1882, January, February, March), 
 ' and the conversaiion of two gifted and devoted members 
 ' of the Roman Church, we should say that the discussions 
 ' of the present century on this solemn theme had seriously 
 ' modified the Roman theology in many quarters.' I 
 make bold to say that the writer has in all probability 
 seriously misunderstood the 'two gifted and devoted 
 ' members,' judging from the way in which he has mis- 
 understood Father Clarke's articles in the ' Month.' 
 Those articles announce and support the most decided 
 teaching to be found anywhere on the subject of ever- 
 lasting punishment. And they teach absolutely nothing 
 that is new. They betray a mind (if I may be permitted 
 to say so) thoroughly stored with Catholic theology and 
 Catholic philosophy, and a certain facility of expression 
 which enables the author to translate the old faith into 
 
 modern language without losing one line or shade of its 
 traditional essence. 
 
 Here are the propositions which Father Clarke sets 
 
 out to prove. I give them in his own words. 
 
 ' I. It is because God is God, infinite in all His 
 
 ' attributes, infinite in His love amongst the rest, that the 
 
 'punishment of sinners lasts for ever.' 
 
 Not much 'wavering,' or 'revolution,' or 'serious 
 
 ' modification ' here. 
 
 ' 2. Those who would limit the duration of hell 
 
 ' degrade their God instead of exalting Him ; nay, their 
 
 ' arguments tend to abolish God altogether. 
 
 ' 3. The essential evil of hell does not proceed from 
 
 ' the action of God, but from the will of man, so that 
 
 ' it may be truly said that God is not the creator of 
 
 ' hell. 
 
 ' 4. The abolition of hell would be a misfortune to 
 ' man, inasmuch as it would involve him in evils greater 
 ' than any to which he is now liable. 
 
TJie Decline of Dogma 
 
 171 
 
 ' 5 In the condemnation of sinners to eternal misery 
 ' there is no sort of injustice and cruelty. 
 
 ' 6. The objections to eternal punishment are not 
 ' based on any rational or logical argument, but on a 
 ' sentimental anthropomorphism.' 
 
 These are the propositions which Father Clarke 
 maintains, and it is to three articles proving their truth 
 that the reviewer refers us as an instance of the ' serious 
 ' modification ' which ' Roman theology ' has undergone 
 ' in many quarters ' (p. 349). 
 
 Now, in reading through these articles, which betray 
 no sign of wavering, no sort of ' modification' of ' Roman 
 'theology,' no faint semblance of 'revolution,' I noted 
 down passages in which I remember to have read argu- 
 ments similar to those used, and restated (without the 
 least plagiarism) and admirably adapted by Father Clarke. 
 There is not an argument, as it happens, which I could 
 not parallel from older writers. The arguments of the 
 first article appear in germ in Lancicius and Bossuet. 
 Those of the second are to be found in the Ignatian 
 exercises, especially in the exposition called the ' Medulla 
 ' Asceseos,' in Lenfant's celebrated sermon, which is said 
 to have staggered Diderot, in many old treatises on death, 
 and in S. Thomas, and in Bossuet's sermons on habitual 
 sin and the last day, and in S. Augustine ; that is to say, 
 that each argument as I read them reminded me of pas- 
 sages from one or other of these which I had read years 
 ago. In the last there is nothing that could, to the merest 
 tyro in theology, read like ' revolution,' or ' wavering,' 
 or 'modification.' Here, for instance, is one passage: 
 ' And the most effective feature in the picture of hell is 
 ' its eternity — for ever, never, for ever, never. Protract it 
 ' as you like, let it last for millions and billions of ages, 
 ' yet if once you let the sinner think or hope that that long 
 ' suffering will be succeeded by an eternity of happiness 
 
172 
 
 Tlie Decline of Dogma 
 
 ' (or even by an annihilation or absorption into the Deity), 
 ' you have robbed hell of its chief terror, you have opened 
 ' the door to the sinner seeking some excuse for his sin.' 
 
 Does this show any ' serious modification ' of ' Roman 
 ' theolog)- ' ? 
 
 The one sentence which the reviewer quotes can 
 actually be paralleled from ]\Iassillon himself in his 
 sermon on 'Final Impenitence.' 
 
 The writer then proceeds with another question, 
 which also has nothing to do with our subject. Our 
 subject is hell, pure and simple. It is no part of the 
 Church's teaching concerning hell that such and such a 
 number of souls will be found there. Massillon had his 
 ' opinion,' and Lacordaire had his ; but they were only 
 their opinions, as to a point that does not ^oittr/i the 
 essence of the doctrine. Pere Gratry, amongst others, 
 pointed this out in his little Catechism. Father Faber 
 held Lacordaire's opinion on the number of the saved, 
 and no one will accuse Father Faber of not ha\"ing 
 preached on hell in the most vivid and awful terms that 
 our language can command (see his Conferences). 
 
 The note on page 349 is another conspicuous in- 
 stance of the same logical fallacy of ig7ioratio elenchi. 
 Father Clarke says nothing that Pere Lenfant and 
 hosts of other writers have not said in substance 200 
 years ago. The teaching that ' all who have made their 
 ' act of submission, and persevere in it,' will (after their 
 purgatory) be classed with the Saints, is nothing new. 
 It is merely a restatement of what has always been 
 generally believed. And when the writer adds, ' But it 
 needs some explanation, as M. Nicolas has shown, to 
 reconcile it with the maxim "Extra ecclesiam nulla 
 ' " salus," ' I ask again, what has that to do with the 
 question before us ? Does not the doctrine of the Holy 
 Trinity need ' some explanation ' when we have to do 
 
The Decline of Dogma 
 
 173 
 
 with so many Unitarians in these times? But is it the 
 less taught because it is sought in every way to explain 
 it, and to show its harmonies with the deliverances of 
 our reason ? 
 
 But let us come to the writer's ' piece de resistance ' : 
 and here we have a right to express our indignation. 
 The passage contains a most serious misrepresentation. 
 
 Let us remember that the writer affects to show that 
 I was ignorant of the state of things in the Church of 
 Rome on this subject of hell, or I should have known 
 that there, too, there has been of late years some waver- 
 ing. Most people will smile at his simplicity, but I am 
 obliged to take his assertion aji grand serieux. He refers 
 then to an article by M. le Noir in the Abbe Migne's 
 ' Encyclopedie Theologique,' written in 1856. Now 
 would anyone have supposed that this wriier (whom he 
 adduces as his authority for the astounding statement, 
 that there are signs of a state of things in the Catholic 
 (Roman) Church similar to what I have described in the 
 Anglican Establishment, on the subject of hell) actually 
 holds the following as a matter of faith, viz. : 
 
 ' Le Christ viendra, a la fin du sifecle, juger les 
 'vivants et les morts ; et tous paraitront a son tribunal, 
 ' avec leur propre corps, pour recevoir chacun selon leurs 
 'oeuvres : les uns, pour leurs oeuvres mauvaises, la peine 
 'perpetuelle ; les autres, pour les oeuvres bonnes, la gloire 
 'sempiternelle' (p. 782). 
 
 'Christ will come, at the end of the world, to judge 
 'the living and the dead; and all shall appear at His 
 'tribunal, with their own body, to receive each according 
 ' to their works : some, for their evil deeds, perpetual 
 ' punishment; the others, for their good works, everlasting 
 'glory.' 
 
 Tiiis, iie tells us, is of faith ; and this sentence, to- 
 gether with another equally strong, is, he also tells us, 
 
1/4 
 
 The Decline of Dogma 
 
 constructed out of ' les expressions meme des symboles 
 ' et des Conciles.' 
 
 The only other mention he makes of ' formal defini- 
 ' tions ' occurs in dealing with certain expressions concern- 
 ing the immortality of the soul, which resemble Origen's 
 teaching, and which he tells us, though condemned in 
 substance, are not so in set terms — implicitly, but not 
 explicitly. He does not mention the Fifth (Ecumenical 
 Council in this connection ; this is foisted in by the 
 reviewer. He nowhere argues (as the reviewer says 
 he does) concerning the lost, that their ' infernal pains will 
 ' not be eternal absolutely.' This is simply a piece of false 
 accusation on the part of the reviewer, who (I have little 
 doubt) was thinking of a passage in which M. Le Xoir 
 discusses a wholly different matter, viz. the curious 
 question as to whether God could, exceptionally and by 
 miracle, take a soul out of hell. Or else he alludes to 
 the subject of the mitigation of the pains of the lost. On 
 this latter point, W. Le Noir is careful to show that his 
 own opinion in no way impinges on that which he gives as 
 of faith — viz., the everlasting punishment of the finally 
 impenitent. When he does mention the Fifth Oecumenical 
 Council it is to say, ' Parmi les quinze canons contra 
 'la theorie dOrigene attribues au cinquieme Concile 
 ' general, mais qui ne se trouvent pas dans les Actes de ce 
 ' Concile,' ii:c. 
 
 All this the reviewer twists into a shameless distortion 
 of M. Le Noir's admirable and most orthodox disquisi- 
 tion. He says that M. Le Noir argues that ' even if the 
 ' views of Origen underwent condemnation by the Fifth 
 ' Oicumenical Council, such a condemnation would not 
 ' imply the formal definition, as an article of faith, of eternal 
 'punishment, and that these infernal pains will not be 
 ' eternal absolutely.' We ought to have had chapter and 
 verse for such a statement. But it is a thorough perver- 
 
The Decline of Dogma 175 
 
 sion of the article in question. The Ablje has begun by 
 giving the definition of eternal punishment as gathered 
 from the expressions of 'les symboles et les Conciles,' 
 which we have given above. And he adopts as his own 
 the following celebrated passage from Massillon's sermon 
 ' Sur le Mauvais Riche.' 
 
 ' L'ame coupable una fois separee du corps, les 
 ' fantomes qui I'abusaient s'evanouiront ; tout Temportera, 
 ' tout la precipitera dans le sein de Dieu ; et le poids de 
 'son iniquite la fera, sans cesse, retomber sur elle-meme; 
 ' eternellement forcee de prendre I'essor vers le ciel, 
 ' eternellement repoussee vers rabirae.' 
 
 ' The guilty soul once separated from the body, the 
 ' phantoms that abused it will vanish ; all will bear it on, 
 ' all will precipitate it into the bosom of God ; and the 
 ' weight of its iniquity will make it ceaselessly fall back on 
 ' itself ; eternally forced to soar towards heaven, eternally 
 ' thrust back towards the abyss.' 
 
 Is this wavering on the subject of hell ? Again the 
 Abbe says, ' Depuis la controverse suscitee sur cette 
 'question par Origene, I'enseignement universe! de la 
 ' Chretiente orthodoxe est tellement developpe et positif, 
 ' qu'il est impossible d'y voir autre chose qu'une separation 
 ' veritablement eternelle de la categoric den bas avec 
 ' les autres.' 
 
 ' Since the controversy raised on this question by 
 ' Origen, the universal teaching of orthodox Christianity 
 ' has been so developed and positive, that it is impossible 
 ' to see in it anything but a separation really eternal 
 ' between those below and the rest.' 
 
 Could anything be clearer than this ? 
 
 And again I ask. Is this ' wavering on the subject of 
 'heir? 
 
 And once more : 
 
 ' Sur I'enfer, nous avons dit ce qu'il faut pcnser 
 
176 
 
 TJie Decline of Dogma 
 
 du point capital, celui de la distinction eternelle de cette 
 'categorie d'avec celle du del' 
 
 ' On hell, we have said what we have to think as to 
 ' the capital point, that of the eternal distinction between 
 ' this category and that of heaven.' 
 
 What he says about the theory of mitigation does 
 not touch that ' capital point ' of the permanent distinction 
 between the good and the bad in the other world, and is 
 a theory which he reminds us was held by Ravignan as 
 the traditional belief of the Jesuit Society, and was de- 
 clared exempt from censure by the Congregation of the 
 Index. 
 
 Here is, then, positive proof that the Abbe Le Noir is 
 giving us (i) nothing new, nothing which points to a 
 modern tendency, and (2) nothing which is contrary to the 
 ' capital point ' of the whole matter, viz., the everlasting 
 distinction between the lost and the saved. 
 
 The reviewer's contention is, as I have said, simply 
 a false accusation. This false statement would no doubt 
 have been repeated from lip to lip ; and done good ser- 
 vice in some Plain Reasons against joining the Church of 
 Rome. Nor can I altogether hope to have despatched 
 it. When the ' Church Quarterly ' writes like this, and 
 the ' Guardian ' praises the article, though guardedly, and 
 the ' Spectator ' calls our attention to this particular pas- 
 sage, with such admiration, even indulging in personal 
 comments, it is too much to hope that the misstatement 
 will not have a life. But there may be some who will 
 read this and feel ' Anglican defences ' are not such safe 
 things as they supposed. 
 
 Before closing this chapter I will notice two differences 
 in the attitude of a Catholic towards this awful verity, or 
 rather two different points in which he differs from an 
 Anglican in respect to it. 
 
 As an Anglican, I felt the vital character of this soul- 
 
TJie Decline of Dogma 
 
 177 
 
 subduing truth, and its close affinity with all other portions 
 of the Christian revelation. But I never could feel sure 
 that it would not be tampered with in time to come. 
 My ground of rest (and I have often expressed it to 
 others) was that there was one portion (as I then called 
 it) of the Catholic Church, which would never yield one 
 jot or tittle. The obstinacy (as perhaps in other points I 
 should have irreverently called it) of the Church in com- 
 munion with the See of S. Peter would be its safeguard 
 there. And its persistency might keep alive the faith on 
 this point amongst English Churchmen. It was at one 
 time only too likely that the Athanasian Creed would dis- 
 appear from its present position in the services of the 
 English Church. Who does not know how sanguine the 
 late Archbishop of Canterbury was about this ? He told 
 a friend of mine that but for the difficulties raised by such 
 men as my friend, it would have been done, and peace 
 (he asserted) would have been secured. Now, anyone 
 who was conversant with the currents of opinion in the 
 English Church knew well that the elimination of the 
 Athanasian Creed from her services meant the freedom of 
 her members from the necessity of asserting so plainly the 
 doctrine of everlasting punishment. It meant, too, as the 
 corollary of that, dogmatic indifference. It is, alas ! only 
 too certain that since that time, although a happy victory 
 was gained in favour of its retention, still the doctrine of 
 Universalism, in more or less pronounced forms, has gained 
 ground in the English Church. The most orthodox on 
 this point used to be those most eager to raise the ritual 
 of their churches. There are signs that this is no longer 
 the case. I have given my experience of the last place 
 in which I ministered, in my book on ' Authority,' p. 1 4.. 
 I might add that in the last place but one in which I 
 ministered, the two best preachers in the place were both 
 conspicuously unsound on this question, and one of them 
 
 N 
 
178 
 
 The Dedvie of Dogma 
 
 was a ver)- High Churchman. He heard confessions, and 
 exceeded all the rest in that place in his external rever- 
 ence. Again, few things startled me so much on return- 
 ing from India, as finding that a friend of mine, who had 
 written most violently against this same doctrine, had been 
 appointed temporarily to hear the confessions of a large 
 sisterhood. It was thought that his heterodoxy on this 
 subject would not affect his dealing with individual souls, 
 whilst in a small community to which I once belonged, 
 five, at least, of the clerg)' became Universalists. 
 
 I make no apolog)- for stating my experience on this 
 matter. My reviewer has challenged me, and in con- 
 nection with what I consider a libel on the Catholic 
 Church. I will tell him then freely what I feel in the 
 way of difference as to this matter in what he calls ' the 
 'community which I have joined.' 
 
 It is this : The truth rests on a different basis. The 
 authority that I acknowledged before was our Lord's plain 
 words, as interpreted, 'as I thought,' by the common 
 consent of the Church diffusive. But it was what ' I 
 ' thought.' I had picked out this interpretation for myself ; 
 with the help, of course, of Dr. Pusey or others. I held 
 it thoroughly. But how changed is all this in the Roman 
 Catholic Church ! There is now an indefinable, spiritual, 
 overawing something, which speaks with the same tone 
 of voice, with that same indescribable ' authorit)',' with 
 which our Lord spoke on the Mount. In other words. 
 Holy Church has a living Voice. That voice is heard not 
 only in a formula which enshrines in few words the pro- 
 position, to be asserted by the intellect, and professed 
 with the life, but it is in the very air, breathing its sweet 
 command into the marrow of one's being, and imparting 
 to the various avenues, with which it reaches the ear of 
 the soul, its own character of infallibility, its own wit- 
 ness to its divine self. The magisterium of the Church is 
 
The Decline of Dogma 
 
 179 
 
 round about us, and we feel its penetrating power and bend 
 to its slightest whisper. It is the same Lord that speaks 
 in the Holy Gospel, and in the living voice of Holy Church. 
 
 II. Another point of difference in our attitude towards 
 the subject of hell is this : We Catholics believe in 
 Purgatory and the sacrifice of the Mass. We are con- 
 tinually occupied with suffrages for the souls of those 
 whom we have known and loved. We are perpetually 
 to be found at the 'sacrifices of Masses,' in which we 
 know Christ is offered for the living and the dead. 
 Winning remission of temporal punishment or its equiva- 
 lent, for those who have died in a state of grace, but are, 
 perchance, unfit for the bliss of the Vision — this is one 
 great work of our lives. The Church is ever at it. In a 
 word, our eschatology is the basis of continuous action. 
 We do not idly, or dreadfully, or absorbingly, dwell on 
 hell. We believe in it, but we believe also in the power 
 of those ' sacrifices of Masses ' on behalf of those who, 
 though not in hell, have narrowly escaped it, as well as 
 for those who did live to God, but ever so little offended 
 His justice and merited His wrath. We know, too, how 
 one was nearly being beatified, but one thing proved 
 fatal to the Church's recognition of his sanctity. He 
 had once pronounced a final condemnation on an in- 
 dividual who died on the scaffold with the words of 
 impenitence on his lips. He went beyond the charity of 
 the Church. And so what individual is there, unless 
 it be Judas himself, for whom we would not breathe a 
 suffrage tremulous with some faint hope ? 
 
 Our thoughts, therefore, on future punishment take 
 in the great whole of those, on the one hand, who may 
 have lost their souls, about whom (whoever they be) we 
 mean to be silent, and, on the other hand, that vast 
 number who lost here much grace and merited much 
 penalty, but did not lose all. 
 
 N 2 
 
TJie Decline of Dogma 
 
 Hence the thought of hell, whilst it operates to 
 produce the fruit of holy fear in ourselves, and increases 
 our desire to save others, provokes in the same breath, 
 so to say, the thought of our duties to those who are 
 detained for their faults in the endurance of chastising 
 love. It is the daily voice of the whole Church, and 
 not the opinion of some individuals, tolerated by some, 
 denounced by others. 
 
 Two undergraduates were returning home to their 
 college in Oxford, one Sunday evening in i860, from a 
 lecture in the hall of another college, whose Principal 
 afterwards made his submission to the Holy See. The 
 lecture had been on a passage in S. Paul's Epistle to 
 Timothy, and the lecturer spoke in favour of prayers for 
 the faithful departed. One of these undergraduates 
 determined from that night to pray for the soul of his 
 mother, who was dead, and he has since been received 
 into the Catholic Church. The other expressed his 
 distress at the idea of such teaching from a clerg}'man of 
 the Church of England. His father was a clerg\man, 
 his tutors were clerg}Tnen, he had numerous friends 
 among the clergy. No one of them taught the advisability, 
 or even the legitimacy, of prayers for the dead. When 
 pressed by his friend with the argument that, whether 
 the clerg)- taught it or not, they had seen that night that 
 it was countenanced in Holy Scripture, his reply was, 
 ' But if it is true, what are we to think of our neglect, and 
 ' of the neglect of the Church of England for 300 years ? ' 
 He remained loyal to the traditional teaching of the 
 Church of England, which ignored such prayer, and he 
 was ultimately appointed bishop.' 
 
 ' One well-known passage was, doubtless, originally intended 
 by some to cover such prayers, and accepted by others as not neces- 
 sarily teaching their lawfulness. The effect of this single ambiguous 
 phrase was to stifle such prayer for 300 years. 
 
Tlie Decline of Dogma 
 
 i8i 
 
 But in ignoring such prayers all these centuries, 
 omitting them from her public services, the Church of 
 England has loosened men's hold on the doctrine of 
 everlasting punishment. Without suffrages for those 
 who are detained from the Beatific Vision through the 
 stains contracted in this life, hell must become in a 
 community at large either the detestable heresy of the 
 Calvinist, or a faint opinion — weak enough to vanish 
 before the comprehensiveness and toleration of kindly 
 hearts. The practice of prayers for the dead is doubtless 
 on the increase in the Church of England, but it tends 
 to become, not an accompaniment, but a substitute for 
 the doctrine of everlasting punishment, and it is not part 
 and parcel of her public life. 
 
 I conclude, then, that this reviewer has not proved 
 his point. As proof of a change in the Church's teaching, 
 he has simply adduced some passages from Catholic 
 writers, who teach the same as Catholic writers have 
 taught much more than a thousand years ago, and who 
 lay it down as an article of faith that the punishment of 
 the finally impenitent is perpetual and everlasting. And 
 his accusation that I had not considered the question of 
 the state of things in this matter in the Catholic, or, as 
 he would call it, the Roman Catholic, Church remains 
 unproved. 
 
l82 
 
 Puscy and Laud 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 PUSEY AND LAUD. 
 
 Hardly anj' clergj'man of a certain standing can con- 
 sider the question of submission to the Hoh' See without 
 having the argument forced upon him, ' Dr. Pusey re- 
 ' mained -w here he was : why cannot you ? ' 
 
 Dependence upon Dr. Pusey has been for some time 
 a sort of ' note ' of the Church of England. Cardinal 
 Newman ^vrites to him : 'You are not an individual ; 
 ' from early years you have devoted yourself to the estab- 
 ' lished Church, and after between forty and fifty years of 
 * unremitting labour in its service, your roots and your 
 ' branches stretch out through ever}- portion of its large 
 ' territor)-. You, more than anyone else alive, have been 
 ' the present and untiring agent by whom a great work has 
 ' been effected in it ; and, far more than is usual, you 
 ' have received in j'our lifetime, as well as merited, the 
 ' confidence of your brethren. You cannot speak merely 
 ' for yourself ; your antecedents, 3'our existing influence, 
 ' are a pledge to us, that what you may determine will be 
 ' the determination of a multitude. Numbers, too, for 
 'whom you cannot properly be said to speak, will be 
 'moved by your authority or your arguments ; and 
 ' numbers, again, who are of a school more recent than 
 ' your o\vn, and who are only not your followers, because 
 'they have outstripped you in their free speeches and 
 ' demonstrative acts in our behalf, will for the occasion, 
 
Pusey and Laud 
 
 ' accept you as their spokesman. There is no one any- 
 ' where among ourselves, in your own Ijody, or, I suppose, 
 ' in the Greek Church, who could affect so large a circle 
 ' of men, so virtuous, so able, so learned, so zealous, as 
 ' come more or less under your influence.'' 
 
 Catholics must sometimes have wondered what it 
 was in Dr. Pusey by wliich we were so fascinated some 
 years ago. I can, of course, only speak of my own ex- 
 perience, and from observation of a limited circle of his 
 admirers, those of my own standing. For myself I can 
 say that two things specially attracted me in Ur. Pusey. 
 First, his piety was of a most engaging kind. As an 
 undergraduate, I felt that he cared for that which was 
 above all controversial considerations. He cared for 
 one's soul. There were, no doubt, other tutors in the 
 Oxford of that day who cared for the souls of under- 
 graduates. But they did not show it as Dr. Pusey did. 
 The first time I ever spoke to Dr. Pusey, I felt no doubt 
 that that which was to me priceless, beyond all con- 
 siderations of honours in the schools — the perfection of 
 my spiritual life— was to him the chief concern. And I 
 never lost that feeling with Dr. Pusey. He was, I said 
 to myself, a man of prayer. All his sermons showed that 
 there was an intensity of the ' spiritual ' about him which 
 gave a peculiar charm to his voice ; his whole manner 
 was most winning. As an undergraduate, I could not 
 imagine Dr. Pusey to be wrong in anything. And yet 
 I was brought up to consider that there were some things 
 in which he ought not to be followed. As I was not 
 told distinctly what these were, I felt sure that they were 
 not amongst those things in which I did follow him. He 
 taught me to fast, and to use an imitation, however 
 feeble, of that most sublime of Catholic devotions (after 
 the Holy Mass), viz. the Rosary. He taught me to 
 
 ' Letter to Dr. Pusey on occasion of liis Eirenicon, p. 2. 
 
Pusey and Laud 
 
 confess my sins, and to tr)- to grow in grace. He led me 
 to daily Communion during the last two years of my 
 undergraduate life. 
 
 This, then, was, I believe, the first cause of Dr. 
 Pusey's extraordinary influence over us, as undergra- 
 duates, viz his piety. 
 
 The second source of his influence was, I think, his 
 chivalr}-. He had been in the wars. He had been 
 accused of nameless iniquities. I remember Mr. 
 Harriot's old nurse, who saw Dr. Pusey every day 
 during Mr. M.'s long illness, whilst cherishing a great 
 love for the Doctor, joining in the chorus of condemna- 
 tion. I had read his account of Scupoli, and knew that 
 that most beautiful book of instruction in the spiritual 
 life was written when Scupoli was under a false accusation. 
 And few men had been more thoroughly abused than 
 Dr. Pusey. But he was indifferent to it all. He went 
 on teaching just the same. He still defended and assisted 
 those good ladies who had been all but universally con- 
 demned by bishops and clerg}-. He still heard confes- 
 sions, though his bishop so strongly disapproved of 
 it, and his archbishop publicly condemned the whole 
 system of confession. We felt confidence in a man who 
 could weather a storm like that. I remember, as an 
 undergraduate, taking up a pamphlet by a clergy man who 
 had, as we called it, seceded to Rome, in which he laid 
 great stress on the fact that for so many centuries the 
 English clergy had been unconscious of their priesthood, 
 from which he argued that they could not possess it. I 
 turned in thought to Dr. Pusey : he, at any rate, believed 
 in his priesthood, and was worth a thousand, or ten 
 thousand, who denied it. It was clear to me that the 
 sacerdotal theory was the true one, and it was enough 
 for me that such a man as Dr. Pusey believed in his own 
 priesthood. But besides his piety and chivalry, Dr. 
 
Puscy and Laud 
 
 185 
 
 Pusey's industry was prodigious. I attended his lectures 
 on Isaiah and the Minor Prophets and simply marvelled 
 at his learning. Tales were rife all over Oxford, as to 
 the number of hours that he could devote to study. 
 Having made his acquaintance as an undergraduate, I had 
 the privilege of being in constant correspondence with 
 him for the next thirteen years. But the time came 
 when my confidence in his guidance in one region of 
 thought received a rude shock. Circumstances led me 
 to go more carefully into the case of Apiarius in the 
 fifth century, and the relation of the African Church to 
 the Bishop of Rome. And I felt convinced that on that 
 point Dr. Pusey was mistaken. Yet it was one of his 
 main points. It has always been one of the main stays 
 of the Anglican side of the great controversy with Rome.' 
 The so-called independence of the African Church is 
 invariably supposed to cover the case of the English 
 Church in her attitude of independence towards Rome. 
 I was possessed with that fiction of fictions, that the 
 English Church in pre-Reformation times was indepen- 
 dent in spirit, sufficiently to cover the case of actual 
 severance. For that, of course, is the point. A youth 
 may be of a peculiarly independent character, and object 
 to consulting his father on some particular point in his 
 conduct, without distantly dreaming of being indepen- 
 dent in the essentials of his life. The two things are 
 entirely different, so that the one may argue mere inde- 
 pendence of character, whilst the other may amount to 
 mortal sin. But I thought the independence of the 
 English Church in pre-Reformation times was of such a 
 nature that the severance in the time of Henry VIII. 
 was merely its logical development, and not a new de- 
 parture. And I thought that the case of the African 
 Church covered the separation of England, trusting to 
 ' See next chapter. 
 
Puscy and Laud 
 
 Dr. Pusey's presentment of the case. But at length I 
 had the same documents before me as he had. It was 
 no question of mere learning, but of forming a judgment 
 on the same documents. And it seemed to me that 
 the judgment formed by the Roman Catholic Church on 
 this question of S. Augustine and his relations with Rome, 
 was right, and Dr. Pusey was wrong. But then ' he was 
 'so learned and so good ' ; it seemed rash to differ from 
 so great a man : and if one could not depend on Dr. 
 Pusey, on whom could one depend ? 
 
 Some years later my confidence in Dr. Pusey received 
 a severer shock. I came across a letter of Mr. Allies to 
 Dr. Pusey, which dealt with the following statement. Dr. 
 Pusey says, in his ' Eirenicon,' concerning Mr. Allies : ' I 
 ' would say that his second work, after that, in despair of 
 ' the English Church on the Gorham judgment, he left 
 'the Church of England, is no real answer to this, which 
 ' he wrote, not as a partisan, but as the fruit of investiga- 
 ' tions as to whose issue he was indifferent.' I had always 
 absolved myself from reading Mr. Allies's second book, 
 relying on this statement of Dr. Pusey's. His first book 
 seemed to me quite the ablest defence ever written on 
 behalf of the Church of England, and real fairness would 
 naturally have led one to read his reply. But Dr. Pusey, 
 I said to myself, knew him well. And he had decided 
 that Mr. Allies wrote his first book with a mind open and 
 impartial, and his second in the spirit of a partisan. And 
 I was content to take Dr. Pusey's condemnation of Mr. 
 Allies as well-grounded. What was my horror on suddenly 
 discovering that (as I have since discovered in so many 
 cases) Dr. Pusey was mistaken in his facts ! Mr. Allies 
 wrote both books as a member of the Church of England, 
 and from a comfortable rectory. The first enabled him 
 to keep his rectory, and the second obliged him to quit 
 it, and begin life over again. My heart sank within me. 
 
Ptisey and Laud 
 
 If Dr. Pusey could not deal fairly with a living man, how 
 was one to trust him in regard to the Fathers of the first 
 few centuries ? If he could so misrepresent one whom 
 he had known so well, how could one trust him in regard 
 to the saints of old ? I had already read enough of the 
 Fathers to feel that there was another side to the question. 
 But it is hard to human nature to part with a long-trusted 
 guide, and it took me years. My dependence on him 
 was finally destroyed when I discovered the real state of 
 things in regard to Archbishop Chichele, about whom 
 he made such extraordinary statements a propos of 
 Archbishop Parker's consecration. He says in the 
 'Eirenicon' (p. 232) that the form used at the conse- 
 cration of Archbishop Parker, which is generally con- 
 ' sidered inadequate, was carefully framed on the old 
 ' form used in the consecration of Archbishop Chichele 
 ' a century before (as I found by collation of the registers 
 ' in the archiepiscopal library at Lambeth, now many 
 ' years ago).' 
 
 Now, considering the importance of the subject, to an 
 English Churchman, of Archbishop Parker's consecration 
 — all his sacraments depending upon it — and considering 
 that the ' Eirenicon ' is addressed to members of the 
 Church of Rome in the most public way, one would 
 expect the greatest care in the treatment of it. And this 
 passage gives the impression of learning and care on the 
 part of the Doctor. So he continues : ' The form used 
 ' in Chichele's time I could not trace further back. Its 
 ' use was exceptional, having been resorted to at a time 
 ' when the English Church did not acknowledge either of 
 ' the claimants to the papacy.' All this looks like real 
 learning. And then he adds, in his usual telling style : 
 ' It was of the providence of God that they had that 
 'precedent to fall back upon.' And then the corollary : 
 ' But the selection of this one precedent . . . shows 
 
i88 
 
 Piiscy and Laud 
 
 ' how careful Parker and his consecrators were to follow 
 ' the ancient precedents.' 
 
 AVe know from State documents that, as a matter of 
 fact, the consecrators left it in the hands of Elizabeth 
 and Lord Burleigh whether they would have any arch- 
 bishop at all. But what are we to think of this proof of 
 their care ? Mr. Bailey, as Canon Estcourt points out, 
 ' On the speaks of this as ' a very important fact.' And Mr. Bailey's 
 of'Ang'i'k-an book on Anglican orders was considered one of the best 
 
 Ordination,' i i i 
 
 p. ii6. we had.' 
 
 ' A very important fact ! ' But Chichele was not 
 consecrated archbishop at all. Ke was consecrated 
 Bishop of S. David's, and not in England. He was 
 only elected archbishop, and transferred to Canterbury. 
 
 He was consecrated by the Pope at Siena ! What 
 does it all mean ? Did they use the form at Archbishop 
 Parker's consecration which was used at Bishop Chichele's 
 installation to Canterbury ? 
 
 Canon Estcourt well remarks that ' it is impossible to 
 ' see . . . what meaning can be attached to Dr. Pusey's 
 'statement.' 
 
 But what are we to think of Dr. Pusey's accuracy on 
 such matters? Wa? not our dependence on him in these 
 questions misplaced ? I believe no one would more wish 
 to say this than himself in that other world where our 
 controversies are at an end. 
 
 But, such is the authority which he still wields, that 
 this very passage from the ' Eirenicon,' with its extra- 
 ordinary blunder, is referred to in Mr. Gore's ' Roman 
 ' Catholic Claims' in its original form (p. 74) with approval. 
 And in the enlarged form of that book a reference is 
 made to the same passage, with the suggestion of a 
 ' possible ' alternative, viz. that they borrowed from the 
 
 ' Since writing the above, I have learnt that Mr. Bailey has 
 been received into the (Roman) Catholic Church, 
 
Piiscy and Laud 
 
 Exeter pontifical. Here it is still ' Archbishop Chichele's 
 consecration.' But in the second edition Mr. Gore seems 
 to have discovered the mistake, as the word ' archbishop ' 
 is dropped, and it is ' Chichele's consecration ' — still, of 
 course, erroneous. And we are referred to the ' " Eireni- 
 'con," p. 232, as corrected by Hutton, "Anglican Ministry," 
 'p. 324,' which should be 'as refuted' by Hutton. The 
 reference ought, of course, to have been boldly with- 
 drawn, for ' as corrected by Hutton ' it is shown to be a 
 misstatement, and, therefore, does not bear out Mr. Gore's 
 supposition. 
 
 Mr. Gore has depended on Dr. Pusey, and Dr. 
 Pusey has proved, in this important matter, a broken 
 reed. It has certamly pierced his reputation. ' Dr. 
 ' Pusey's statement, as corrected by Hutton,' given as a 
 corroboration on the question connected with Anglican 
 orders, turns out to be a tissue of misstatements crammed 
 into half a page. Surely it would have been better to 
 have owned at once that Dr. Pusey was mistaken. 
 
 But this was precisely what it was so hard to induce 
 Dr. Pusey himself to do. When Dr. Pusey kept to 
 positive teaching in harmony with the Catholic Church, 
 his immense industry served him well. He could even 
 then occasionally fall into error, as in his unbalanced 
 statements on post-baptismal sin, which he in a measure 
 retracted in his sermon on absolution. But he cannot 
 be accused of inaccuracy, downright mistakes, in that 
 part of his teaching. His book on Daniel is a marvel of 
 exegetical and controversial power. His note (to take 
 a single instance) on the ' Desire of all Nations ' in his 
 Commentary on the Minor Prophets would be admitted 
 by all to be an admirable instance of fulness, and terse- 
 ness, and scholarly exactness. 
 
 But directly we turn to his controversial writings 
 against Rome, his hand seems to lose its cunning. His 
 
190 
 
 Piisey and Laud 
 
 life, too, lost its aroma to many of us. Whilst defending 
 Catholic truth he was the ' despised of men ; ' he was as- 
 sailed by every kind of calumny : he had, in a word, the 
 surest sign of acceptance in an outward correspondence 
 to his Master — the world hated him, and vented its hate 
 in the most ludicrous lies. But when he began to attack 
 Rome, the world applauded. Everything was changed. 
 His learning betrayed him ; his logic forsook him ; his 
 persistent industry took the form of what I can only call 
 a determined adherence to his own oj)inion. Probably 
 no book has appeared in the present century bearing the 
 marks of such prodigious energy combined with such a 
 list of misinterpretations, and even misquotations, as Dr. 
 Pusey's ' Eirenicon.' The misquotations are not on miner 
 points, nor some of them such that there can be two 
 sides to the question. And they were pointed out to Dr. 
 Pusey. They were publicly exposed, so far as they could 
 be (for English Churchmen are probably the only body 
 of men in this country who do not read both sides of the 
 question that most affects them), and Dr. Pusey advertised 
 a reply. He wrote to the author of the work, in which 
 his inaccuracies were exposed, one sentence : ' Have 
 patience with me and I will pay thee all' But years 
 elapsed and no answer came. Other controversial books 
 against Rome appeared, but the one book which alone 
 could clear Dr. Pusey's reputation never saw the light. 
 The accusations were made in 1866. A summary of them 
 will be found in the Preface to Harper's ' Peace through 
 ' the Truth,' 2nd series (Burns and Gates, 1874). 
 
 They, are seventeen in number, and include such 
 counts as these. Dr. Pusey has stated, in his attack on 
 Transubstantiation, that the remaining of the substance 
 of the elements after consecration was an open question 
 in the Church till the beginning of the 15th century, and 
 quotes, among others, Biel, Melchior Canus, Alphonso de 
 
Piisey a?id Laud 
 
 191 
 
 Castro, Hurtado, S. J., Vasquez, S. J., Suarez, S. J., in proof 
 of his proi)osition. Father Harper ('Peace through the 
 ' Truth,' 1st series) has shown that none of those writers 
 countenances Dr. Pusey's assertion. 
 
 Dr. Pusey has quoted Durandus, Scotus, and BassoHs 
 on the same question, in his favour ; but he has quoted 
 the opinions they refuted, as their own. They openly 
 contradict Dr. Pusey's proposition. 
 
 Dr. Pusey quotes S. Thomas Aquinas in favour of his 
 opinion, but S. Thomas Aquinas contradicts Dr. Pusey. 
 
 Dr. Pusey, in quoting Suarez in his favour, translates 
 ' Haec fuitantiqua sententia ' ' this was //^e ancient opinion ' 
 whereas the context shows that Suarez meant, ' this was 
 an ancient opinion ' related by Bonaventure. On turning 
 to S. Bonaventure we find that he expressly says it was 
 an opinion of a few (' aliquorum ') and that they were 
 ' moderns ' in the time of the Master of the Sentences. 
 So that Suarez does not mean in the least what Dr. Pusey 
 understands him to say. 
 
 Dr. Pusey quotes a number of Fathers in support of 
 his theory that when our Lord spoke of the ' fruit of the 
 'vine' in the Cenacle, He was speaking of the conse- 
 crated chalice. They have all been shown to be clearly 
 against him, except one, who seems to favour Dr. Pusey's 
 interpretation, which is directed against the doctrine of 
 Transubstantiation. But S. Hilary is only made to agree 
 by translating his words ' that fruit of the vine,' instead of 
 (as they should be translated) 'the fruit of that vine.' 
 
 Dr. Pusey's translation of S. Clement's at/za t»}s 
 a/xTreAou ' blood of the grape,' which helps to support his 
 view, is again, a mistranslation. 
 
 These are but samples of the inaccuracies of the 
 ' Eirenicon.' How different from his other writings ! 
 What a fatality seems to attend his attacks on the points 
 in which he differed from Rome ! 
 
192 
 
 Pusey and Land 
 
 By enormous industry Dr. Pusey helped to win back 
 some of the truth, which had been trampled under foot in 
 the teaching of the Establishment for centuries. He went 
 through the fire of lying assaults, and the chill waters of 
 Episcopal coldness and misapprehension, in assisting to 
 bring his countrymen back from some of the heresies in 
 which they had been involved by the terrible catastrophe 
 of the i6th century. 
 
 Meanwhile every little Catholic child knew, from the 
 dawn of reason, the truths which he thus laboriously and 
 meritoriously regained. 
 
 But the moment he began to attack the Holy See, he 
 fell into mistake, misquotation, and misunderstanding. 
 There are three points on which Dr. Pusey has certainly 
 left his mark on a whole generation of devout Christians. 
 The amount of dependence placed on him has led to the 
 wide adoption of (i) his theory of the unity of the Church 
 (2) his idea of a Papal contradiction, (3) his opposition to 
 the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception. The argu- 
 ments on which he has relied to support these can be 
 shown to be full of misstatements. 
 
 (i) His theory of unity. 
 
 There were few things on which he laid more stress to- 
 wards the end of his life than the fact, as he conceived 
 it to be, that the Catholic and Roman doctrine rested on 
 an 'a priori' assumption. He contended that it was a 
 sample of what the poet describes when he speaks of some 
 who 
 
 ' nobly take the high/r/w/ road. 
 And reason downward, till they doubt of God.' 
 
 So, he would say, a Roman Catholic begins by saying 
 ' A visible body must have a visible head.' ' Why must ? ' 
 he would reply. ' Is it not an assumption ? ' 
 
 But, of course, the Catholic argument is, that unless 
 
Ptisey and Laud 
 
 193 
 
 reasons can be shown to the contrary, the natural sup- 
 position is that, when the body is spoken of, it includes 
 a head in the same order of life ; if it is a visible body, 
 needs must be, unless cause can be shown why it should 
 not, that it will have a visible head. But Dr. Pusey went 
 on still farther, and maintained : not only is there no 
 visible head to the visible body, but that the unity on 
 which he saw that the Fathers uno ore lay such stress, 
 does not even require visible intercommunion. This, he 
 contends, would be a happiness to the Church, but is not 
 a necessity of its life. The Catholic holds that it is. 
 Even in the time of the anti-popes, people did not hold 
 that all was in such confusion that there was no visible 
 head ; but they held that there must be a visible head, 
 and therefore either this or that claimant was the rightful 
 occupant of the See, and they ranged themselves under 
 one or other, as it seemed to each most proper. The 
 misery and confusion of the time did not in the least 
 produce the theory that the visible head was no part of 
 the Divine mstitution. Such a notion never entered the 
 mind of the Saints of that troubled time. They held 
 what S. Cyprian held. The theory of a hidden unity being 
 sufficient, consisting in the participation of similar sacra- 
 ments, whilst there was no outward communion, was 
 expressly repudiated by S. Cyprian. S. Cyprian is the 
 Father to whom Dr. Pusey turned with the greatest 
 enthusiasm. He had, unfortunately, his own way of 
 interpreting one or two passages, a mode unheard of 
 until the exigencies of Anglican controversy struck it out ; 
 and he comforted himself in the belief that the English 
 Church was taking up a similar line to that adopted by 
 S. Cyprian at the time when he was teaching heterodoxy 
 on the subject of Baptism administered by heretics. But 
 S. Cyprian plainly disclaims the theory of unity, adopted 
 by Dr. Pusey, in his ' Eirenicon,' and by Canon Carter in 
 
 o 
 
194 
 
 Pusey and Laud 
 
 a well-known sermon on Unity. The latter adduces the 
 history of the ten tribes of Israel, favoured by Prophets 
 in their isolation from the centre of unity, and not, so he 
 holds, called upon to return to that centre. Their case 
 is sufficient to cover that of the English Church, who (it 
 is maintained), in her isolation and visible disunion, has 
 had her prophets. So that there may be, according to 
 these wTiters, a sufficient underlying unity preserved, 
 although there is no visible union. Now, S. Cyprian 
 happens to deal with precisely this question in reference 
 to the same history. He expressly warns us against 
 quoting the case of the ten tribes as an instance of what 
 Oxford might happen 7£/zV/^z« the Church. His words are :' When 
 
 translation of 
 
 s. Cyprian's ' the twclvc tribcs of Israel were torn asunder, the Prophet 
 p. 136 ' ' Ahijah rent his garment. But because Chris fs people can- 
 ' not be refit, His coat, woven and conjoined throughout, 
 ' was not divided by those it fell to. Individual, conjoined, 
 ' co-entwined, it shows the coherent concord of our people, 
 ' who put on Christ. In the sacrament and sign of His 
 'garment, He has declared the unity of His Church.' S. 
 Cyprian thus contrasts the twelve tribes with the Church. 
 Ten of the twelve tribes could be severed from the rest, 
 and remain part of Israel ; not so with the Church. The 
 one garment, visibly one, is the symbol of the Church ; 
 not the children of Israel, divided into two. Dr. Pusey, 
 however, has another simile. He likens the various 
 ' Churches,' as he calls them, to the streams that went 
 out of Paradise. 'They are,' he says, 'all one, though 
 ' parted.' S. Augustine considers them all out of the 
 Church, and in schism, as soon as they leave Paradise, 
 and denies that they can have the blessedness of the life 
 within. I remember, the first time (some years ago) I dis- 
 covered that S. Augustine used this simile to establish 
 exactly the contrary to what Dr. Pusey does, shutting the 
 book as though it were some bad dream. Dr. Pusey, 
 evidently, had different ideas of unity from S. Augustine. 
 
Pusey and Laud 
 
 195 
 
 Mr. Gore, in the use of this simile, follows Dr. Pusey, 
 not S. Augustine. 
 
 The gist of Dr. Pusey's theory of unity is contained 
 in his assertion that the formal unity of the Church is 
 ' not an unity of will, but an unity of nature ' ('Eirenicon,' 
 p. 51), and that 'the first and very chiefest character of 
 ' unity is not anything which comes forth from us. It is 
 ' infused into us by God ' (p. 52). 
 
 By means of this definition. Dr. Pusey endeavours to 
 exculpate the Church of England from the charge of such 
 isolation from the Catholic world as would be fatal to 
 her claim to be part of the one Holy Catholic Church. 
 
 For many years I held this theory myself. It so 
 exactly suited our case in the English Church. The 
 Church, we knew, must be one ; the Anglican Church is 
 not at one with the Roman: therefore a unity, which does 
 not involve concord, is sufficient. 
 
 I did not see what is now, to me, as clear as day, that 
 a unity of nature cannot constitute the unity of any society 
 of men. A unity of nature, i.e. of participation in the 
 nature of Adam, does not constitute the unity of human 
 society. It is its material, its preliminary, not social 
 unity itself And so a unity of nature, in the supernatural 
 order — a common participation in the nature of the 
 second Adam — is only the prerequisite, the material of 
 the Church's unity, and not that unity itself. A society ^p^glJr^'''* 
 with no intercommunion between the members is a con- '"j^. 
 
 Truth, vol.1. 
 
 tradiction in terms, and, as a rule, two names soon appear, pp- 56-7'- 
 As a society it has disappeared, and only the units, the 
 potentialities of society, remain. ' We are all one, though 
 ' we hold no communion with one another, do not believe 
 ' the same faith, and do not worship together ;' such is the 
 unity which Dr. Pusey boldly asserts to be an adequate 
 realisation of our Lord's prayer 'that they maybe all one' 
 — adequate, that is, for what is essential, though missing 
 
 o 2 
 
ig6 
 
 Pusey and Laud 
 
 the perfect fulfilment. If the unity of the Church is ' an 
 ' unity of nature, not of will,' there is no room for the sin 
 of schism, and the visibility of the Church will be com- 
 patible with visible opposition, visible separation, visible 
 disunion and discord. But such a theory as this is not that 
 of the Fathers, to whom Dr. Pusey refers. We have seen 
 that it is distinctly repudiated by S. Cyprian, in his treatise 
 on the unity of the Church. It is distinctly repudiated 
 by three other writers, on whom Dr. Pusey rests his 
 case. 
 
 Harper, I. Take, for instance, S. Cyril of Alexandria. Speak- 
 
 through the ing of the prayer of our Lord for the unity of His Church, 
 pp™68^i. he says : ' He supplicates them for the bond of unanimity 
 In joann. < and Dcacc which may conduct the faithful together to 
 
 1. xi. c. ii. 
 
 ' an unity of soul.' And again: ' This most perfect union 
 ' must be imitated by the union of the faithful in one mind 
 ' and in one soul.' And again : ' When He adds, " As We 
 ' " are one," He is evidently not bestowing on the faithful a 
 ' change of nature, but proposing what is his by nature, as 
 ' a pattern and image of the unity of will in us.' The unity 
 of the Church, therefore, for which our Lord prayed, must, 
 according to S. Cyril, express itself in union. Churches, 
 permanently separated from each other, can be no fulfil- 
 ment of this intention of our Lord's. It is idle to call 
 them one Church. They are not numerically one. The 
 Church may hold within herself for a while those who 
 are alienating themselves in their faith, but only in the 
 hope of bringing them back to the unity of the faith. 
 But the English Establishment does not stand in this 
 relation to the Church in communion with the See of 
 S. Peter. She has accepted a position of permanent cor- 
 porate separation ; and if she were a part of the Church, 
 the Church's note of unity would be gone. For that unity 
 is an unity of will as ivell as, and proceeding from, and 
 witnessing to, an unity of nature. 
 
Pusey and Laud 
 
 197 
 
 2. S. Hilary speaks of the unity of the faithful as not 
 owing its origin to unity of will. He is dealing with the 
 favourite Arian contention that the unity of the Father 
 with the Son, was a unity of will, not of nature. S. 
 Hilary's answer is practically that it is l^oth. In dealing 
 with the Arian argument, it was important to lay stress on 
 the supernatural principle of the unity of the faithful, viz. 
 the infusion of a new nature, or union with the second 
 Adam. He does not say that the unity of the faithful 
 is 'an unity of nature, not of will,' but an unity of will 
 based on an unity of nature. 
 
 But in another passage he expressly contradicts Dr. 
 Pusey's theory of unity. And there he is dealing with 
 the subject ex professo, which he was not in the above Tract, m 
 passage. He says : ' But because the body of the Church 
 ' is one, not mixed up of a sort of confusion of bodies, 
 
 * which are united in an undistinguishable mass and form- 
 
 * less heap, but by unity of faith, by the fellowship of 
 ' charity, by concord of act and will, by one gift of the 
 ' Sacrament in all, we are all one.' 
 
 3. S. Chrysostom, to whom again Dr. Pusey refers, 
 exhibits a totally different attitude towards the subject 
 of the Church's unity from that which is imphed in 
 Dr. Pusey's definition, that it is ' formally ' ' an union 
 ' of nature, not of will.' In preaching on the subject of 
 unity, in his two homilies on Ephesians iv., he speaks 
 of external unity as the natural parent and guarantee of 
 unity of spirit, although, of course, the opposite is also 
 true. He says the Apostle, after saying there is ' one 
 
 ' body,' 'beautifully adds "and one spirit," showing that Homiiy 
 ' from the one body there will be one spirit ; or that it is 
 ' possible that there may be indeed one body, and yet not 
 ' one spirit ; as, for instance, if any member of it should 
 
 * be a friend of heretics.' 
 
 What would S. Chrysostom have said of a religious 
 
198 Pusey and Laud 
 
 body which professedly and contentedly ' comprehends ' 
 within its large embrace, and admits to an equality of 
 teaching authority, Dr. Ryle and others (witness his 
 address on the ' Lord's Supper ' in its fifth edition), and 
 Dr. King? S. Chrysostom also, in the same Homily, 
 speaking of the gravity of the sin of schism, says, ' How 
 ' a certain holy man said what might seem to be a bold 
 ' thing. Yet, nevertheless, he spoke it out. What, then, is 
 
 * this ? He said that not even the blood of martyrdom 
 
 * can wash out this sin.' This was Cyprian, whom S. 
 Augustine praised for not separating himself from S. 
 Stephen, although (wrongly) considering S. Stephen to 
 be defending a matter of discipline which was injurious 
 to the Church. S. Chr}'sostom says again : ' If, on the 
 ' one hand, those persons have doctrines also contrary 
 ' to ours, then on that account further it is not right to 
 
 ' mix with them ; if, on the other hand, they hold the, 
 ' same opinions, the reason for not mixing with them is 
 ' greater still.' Such was his conviction of the heinous- 
 ness of schism. He lays it down further on : 'To make 
 ' a schism in the Church is no less an evil than to fall 
 ' into heresy.' But according to Dr. Pusey's theory there 
 cannot be such a thing as schism, as long as people 
 'are communicants,' even though within two separated 
 bodies. They would still have ' an unity of nature, not 
 ' of will.' 
 
 It is surely then nothing less than bold assertion to 
 define the Church's note of unity as consisting in one- 
 ness of nature, not of will. 
 
 And nothing but a serious perversion of Patristic 
 texts can deduce such a theory from even the Fathers of 
 the first few centuries. 
 
 According to them, the possession of a common 
 supernatural life was to be evinced to the world by a 
 supernatural unity of action. The nature thus raised by 
 
Pusey and Laud 
 
 199 
 
 the infusion of a new life is a nature of which a free will 
 is the central sovereign power. And it is the concordant 
 action of multitudinous free wills, which bespeaks the 
 illapse of some new power, enabling them thus to divest 
 themselves of their natural discordance. ' Christ gave us 
 ' peace,' says S. Cyprian : ' He bade us be of one heart 
 ' and one mind ; He commanded that the covenant of 
 ' affection and charity should be kept unbroken and in- 
 ' violate ; he cannot show himself a martyr, who has not 
 ' kept this love of the brotherhood.' (De Unitate.) 'He 
 ' who holds not this unity of the Church, does he think 
 ' that he holds the faith ? ' Of what unity is the Saint 
 speaking ? Of a unity which took its rise from a single 
 Apostle — 'a commencement is made from unity, that the 
 ' Church may be set forth as one.' From what unity was 
 the commencement made ? ' The Lord saith unto Peter 
 ' . . . Thou art Cephas, &c. To him again, after his 
 ' resurrection, He says, Feed My sheep. Upon him being 
 ' one He builds His church.' The unity of the Church 
 consists, therefore, in the union of wills under one head. 
 It is something to be held. S. Optatus, writing in the 
 fourth century, giving no argument of his own, but 
 speaking of what was admitted on all sides, and could 
 thus be pressed upon his opponent, as the admittedly 
 universal teaching of that century, says to a Donatist, 
 ' You cannot deny that you know that the chair of Peter, 
 ' first of all, was fixed in the city of Rome, in which 
 ' Peter, the head of all the Apostles, sat ; whence, too, 
 ' he was named Cephas, in which single chair unity was 
 ' to be observed by all., so that the rest of the Apostles 
 ' should not each maintain a chair to himself ; and that 
 ' forthwith he should be a schismatic and a sinner who 
 ' against that singular chair set up another.' (S. Opt. 
 contra Parm. bk. iii. c. 6.) 
 
 Now here is a simple issue. S. Optatus and Dr. 
 
200 
 
 Pusey and Land 
 
 Pusey cannot both be right in their estimate of the 
 Church's teaching concerning her note of unity in the 
 fourth century. Yet S. Optatus by anticipation provides 
 a plain condemnation of the action of Cranmer and 
 Parker, and consequently of the present position of the 
 Anglican establishment. He provides also a contradic- 
 tion of Dr. Pusey's theor}-, that the formal unity of the 
 Church consists in 'an unity of nature, not of will.' It is 
 unity under one head. And S. Optatus speaks as a 
 witness to the universal teaching of the Church in the 
 fourth centur}'. 
 
 The question that ought to be asked, is, not how is it 
 that Dr. Pusey could remain in the Church of England, 
 but how is it that he could, with the Fathers of the fourth 
 century before him, enunciate a theory which is contra- 
 dicted by S. Cyprian, S. Cyril, S. Hilary, S. Chrj'sostom, 
 and S. Optatus ? 
 
 The Church of England did, in the sixteenth century 
 — first through fear of Henrj- VHI., and by his orders, as I 
 have shown above, and next, in obedience to Elizabeth 
 — what all these Saints must have condemned as contra- 
 vening the unity of the Church. So soon as, in reading 
 the Fathers, Cardinal Newman and others came to see 
 that this was the case, they returned to the one Church, 
 the Church of their baptism, their real mother. Dr. 
 Pusey remained behind. One cause is manifest. He 
 misread those Fathers. Why he so misread, whether 
 through natural confusedness of perception, or presump- 
 tuous trust in self, or from whatever cause, it is not for 
 us to say. Suffice it, that what will excuse one man, will 
 not excuse another, and that a child will often go right 
 when the learned go astray. 
 
 (2) Next let us take Dr. Pusefs diffiadty about Papal 
 contradictions. Dr. Pusey says : — 
 
 ' I see absolutely no way in which, upon the forbidden 
 
Pusey and Land 
 
 201 
 
 ' degrees, Alexander VI. can be reconciled with Gregory I., 
 ' or how the acceptance of the Sixth General Council, 
 'which anathematized Honorius as a heretic, by Leo II., 
 'and his own individual condemnation of him, are recon- 
 ' cileable with the doctrine of the infallibility of both, in 
 'all which they pronounce, &c.' 
 
 And 'these are but specimens of the inextricable 
 'difficulties in which, I fear, the Roman Church would 
 ' involve itself by acceding to this doctrine of the Papal 
 ' infallibility, not only as to matters of faith and doctrine, 
 ' but as to matters not connected therewith, and even as 
 'to historical facts.' 
 
 In this last sentence Dr. Pusey has described a 
 doctrine which no one holds. 
 
 After the Vatican decree. Dr. Pusey ought to have 
 seen that his ' fears ' could never be realised. The 
 teaching of the Vatican decree is as follows : — 
 
 ' Faithfully adhering to the tradition received from 
 ' the beginning of the Christian faith for the glory of God 
 ' our Saviour, the exaltation of the Catholic religion, and 
 ' the salvation of Christian people, the Sacred Council 
 ' approving, we teach and define that it is a dogma 
 ' divinely revealed : that the Roman Pontiff, when he 
 ' speaks ex cathedra — that is, when in discharge of the 
 office of Pastor and Doctor of all Christians — by virtue 
 ' of his supreme Apostolic authority, he defines a doctrine 
 ' regarding faith or morals to be held by the Universal 
 ' Church, by the divine assistance promised to him in 
 ' blessed Peter, is possessed of that infallibility with which 
 ' the Divine Redeemer willed that His Church should be 
 ' endowed for defining doctrine regarding faith or morals ; 
 'and that therefore such definitions of the Roman Pontiff 
 ' are irreformable of themselves, and not from the consent 
 ' of the Church.' 
 
 Against this decree. Dr. Pusey has forged no weapon 
 
202 
 
 Pusey and Land 
 
 that can be said to have inflicted so much as a surface 
 wound. 
 
 The censure of Honorius has been dealt with in a 
 previous chapter, where it has been shown that the 
 interesting history of the Sixth General Council is at 
 least fatal to the Anglican position. It is consistent, 
 also, with the implicit belief of the Church at that time 
 in the immunity of the Holy See from error, as expressed 
 in the Vatican decree. A\'ith any other view of it, we have 
 nothing to do. 
 
 A few words will put the reader in possession of the 
 facts concerning the supposed disagreement between 
 Gregory I. and Alexander ^T. They are to be found in 
 full, in Harper's ' Peace through the Truth,' 2nd series, a 
 book which is unfortunately so exhaustive and conse- 
 quently so expensive, that it is to be feared few Anglicans 
 make its acquaintance. 
 
 Dr. Pusey's objection concerning Alexander VI. 's 
 dispensation is to be found in full in his 'Eirenicon,' 
 PP- 305. 306 :— 
 
 ' In a formal answer to an inquiry of S. Augustine of 
 ' Canterbury, "At what degree of consanguinity may the 
 ' "faithful marry, and may marriage be contracted with 
 '"step-mothers or sisters-in-law?" S. Gregory states: 
 ' " It is necessary that, in order to marry lawfully, they 
 ' " should be in the third or fourth degree," i.e. second 
 ' or third cousins ; and prohibits, on ground of Divine 
 ' law, marriage with the sister-in-law, as well as with the 
 ' mother-in-law. This was directly contradicted by the 
 ' unhappy Borgia (Alexander VI.) who gave a dispensa- 
 ' tion to marry a sister-in-law, and an aunt.' 
 
 On this case Dr. Pusey has laid the greatest emphasis. 
 We ask then, did Alexander VI. issue an ex cathedra 
 pronouncement ! If not, how does it bear on the question 
 of infallibility, as defined by the Vatican decree ? Did he 
 
Pusey and Laud 
 
 203 
 
 even issue an encyclical ? No. Did he write anything 
 on the subject? No. He gave a dispensation. He 
 signed his name. Is this an ex cathedra announcement ? 
 No one can for a moment make such an assertion. What 
 if Alexander VI., by this act of his (for it was an act, 
 rather than a decree), exceeded his authority ? If so, 
 he did wrong. And for the i, 000th time, let us repeat 
 it, that the Vatican decree does not teach the impecca- 
 bility of the Popes, but their infallibility in an ex cathedra 
 pronouncement. There need, therefore, be no difficulty 
 whatsoever about reconciling a certain dispensation given 
 by one Pope with a decision given by another. The 
 dispensation might have been wrongly given, and yet it 
 would not affect the doctrine of Papal infallibility, as 
 defined at the Vatican Council. 
 
 But in point of fact, there is no contradiction, in the 
 way of principle, between S. Gregory's prohibition, and 
 Alexander's dispensation. S. Gregory does not base his 
 prohibition on the ground of Divine law in the sense in 
 which Dr. Pusey imagines him to have done. He refers 
 to the Levitical law ; but not as being to a Christian a 
 Divine law, incapable of modification or dispensation. 
 The Church did not simply take the Levitical prohibitions 
 and accept them as authoritative in globo ; she used 
 them, but gave them such applications as, under the 
 guidance of the Holy Ghost, she saw fit. Hence a 
 reference to the Levitical code on the part of S. Gregory, 
 would not mean the same as it would on the part of 
 Dr. Pusey. Dr. Pusey's whole conception of the relation 
 of Christians to that code differs toto c«lo from that of 
 S. Gregory and the Catholic Church. Consequently, he 
 first misunderstands S. Gregory's words, and then finds 
 a contradiction between them and Alexander's act. It 
 would at best be no case of a Papal contradiction, in 
 the sense of two opposing exercises of the attribute of 
 
204 
 
 Pusey and Laud 
 
 infallibility, as defined at the Vatican Council ; but in 
 point of fact, there is no contradiction at all. S. Gregory 
 acted towards the English in one way ; Alexander 
 towards the king of Portugal, and the king of Sicily, 
 in another. We may presume that the cases were 
 different. 
 
 And why does Dr. Pusey single out Alexander, when 
 there are other similar cases of dispensation ? Was it that 
 he might bring as much prejudice to bear on the case as 
 possible ? 
 
 Here, then, is the great instance which Dr. Pusey 
 selects, and which he sees ' absolutely no way ' of re- 
 conciling with Papal infallibility. It turns out to be no 
 instance of an ex cathedra pronouncement at all, but an 
 act of Alexander's ; and such an act may be a stretch of 
 authority ; but it turns out also that Dr. Pusey has mis- 
 interpreted this expression of S. Gregory's, of which it 
 is supposed to be a contradiction. 
 
 And now (3) let us take Dr. Pusefs treatment of t/ie 
 doctrine of the Immaculate Conception. 
 
 It is certainly astonishing that any Christian should 
 object to this doctrine in itself That Mary should have 
 been born, as Eve was, without original sin, m view of 
 the coming redemption, as a fruit of our Lord's Passion, 
 which was soon to be — what is there in this truth that 
 can shock the mind of a Christian ? We are not shocked 
 at Eve being without original sin ; why at the thought 
 of Mary having been thus conceived? The distance 
 between Mary and our divine Lord is still infinite, and 
 His place in the economy of redemption is not affected 
 by hers. Her Immaculate Conception does not make 
 her the wellspring of grace in the same sense that we 
 attribute that glory to His Sacred Humanity. Her con- 
 ception did not make her what He became by His Holy 
 Incarnation — the second Adam. She is not the ' neck ' 
 
Pusey and Laud 
 
 205 
 
 in the sense in which Protestants perversely understand 
 that phrase. She is our advocate, and by her glorious 
 intercession we are assisted beyond all thought in our 
 path to Heaven. But this no more trenches on His 
 office than does the Intercession of the Saints, and the 
 manifold ways in which they help us onwards. She is, 
 indeed, beyond them all — queen of the very angels — and 
 we would infinitely sooner say what she is than what 
 she is not. But that would be beyond our purpose here, 
 and it would be beyond our powers. Her conception 
 without the stain of original sin was not her right, as it 
 was His, nor of nature, as with Him, but of grace. She 
 was of human parents, and consequently needed the 
 peculiar grace which established her in the same super- 
 natural condition as was our mother Eve. He, on the 
 contrary, was conceived by the Holy Ghost and born of 
 the Virgin Mary, and it followed that, as man, He was of 
 necessity conceived without sin. Her conception did 
 not involve any freedom from ordinary conditions on the 
 part of her parents ; it concerned herself alone. Thus 
 it is the very perversity of misrepresentation to imagine 
 that her Immaculate Conception in any way trenched on 
 His inconceivable prerogatives. 
 
 But was it not unknown to the early ages of the 
 Church's life ? No, not unknown simply, unless it may 
 be said that the Incarnation itself was unknown to the 
 three first centuries, and even the Being of God. How 
 many saints have used expressions concerning our In- 
 carnate Lord, which seemed to deny one or other aspect 
 of the mystery of His Incarnation, and which, indeed, 
 would have been a denial of the truth after the truth had 
 been defined ! How often they used language which 
 was harmless in them, but being misused by others was 
 laid aside ! What strange expressions they used even of 
 the Immensity of God ! So that, as Bishop Bull reminds 
 
2o6 
 
 Puscy and Laud 
 
 us, they might even be convicted of having erred on that 
 fundamental truth. And so, although in those early 
 times they had not sifted the meaning of their owti ex- 
 pressions nor drawn out in careful phrase their inmost 
 thoughts concerning her, whom they called the Second 
 Eve, they cannot be said to have been strangers to the 
 truth of her immaculate conception. 
 
 It is not easy, for instance, to overrate the significance 
 
 Hymn 27. of S. Ephrem's undisputed testimony (a.d. 379) : 'Truly 
 ' it is Thou and Thy Mother only who are fair altogether. 
 ' For in Thee there is no stain, and in Thy Mother no spot. 
 ' But my sons \i e. the members of the Church of Edessa] 
 'are far from resembling this twofold fairness.' And it 
 is certain from another passage that S. Ephrem meant 
 freedom from original, not merely actual, sin. Again : 
 
 ii. 327a. ' Two were made simple, innocent, perfectly like each 
 ' other — Mary and Eve — but afterwards one became the 
 'cause of our death, the other of our life.' 
 
 'Caiho'ic _ Thus ' S. Ephrem supplies an authentic commentary 
 
 ^ iaion.iry, ^ meaning of the tradition that Mary was the 
 
 'Second Eve. We may well believe, considering how 
 ' early and in what various quarters it appears, that this 
 'tradition was Apostolic. And just at the time when 
 'the doctrine of original sin becomes prominent in 
 ' Christian theology, S. Ephrem assumes without doubt or 
 ' question that this tradition implies Mary's entire exemp- 
 'tion from the cause, and supplies us with reasonable 
 ' grounds for believing that the doctrine of the Immaculate 
 ' Conception is coeval with the formation of the Christian 
 ' Church.' 
 
 It took ages to settle the exact equivalent of those 
 high thoughts which they had concerning her, so that 
 expressions may be culled from the language of nineteen 
 centuries, which are at least inexact — occasionally con- 
 trary to the truth. It was only when at length theologians 
 
Puscy a7id Laud 
 
 207 
 
 were in danger of violent difference that the subject was 
 mercifully closed, and by the Divine assistance the in- 
 fallible head of the Church decided in what terms the 
 glorious conception of our Lady should henceforth be 
 enshrined, and unity thus be secured. 
 
 And not only was unity thus secured, but the Church 
 received fresh light for her growing work. 
 
 There is a writer whom the present Principal of 
 Pusey House, Oxford, is fond of quoting in his book on 
 Roman Catholic claims — the Pfere Gratry. At the end 
 of his book he quotes with horror a prayer from the 
 Vade-mecum piorum Sacerdotum, of which Pere Gratry 
 nevertheless gives an equivalent from S. Ambrose, con- 
 cerning our Lady. But he finishes his book with a long 
 quotation from Pere Gratry, and says : ' The Abbe Gratry 
 ' is right.' Now Pfere Gratry has a most beautiful book on 
 the Immaculate Conception, in which he looks upon the 
 definition of the dogma as a glorious contribution to our 
 knowledge. I quote it both because Pere Gratry is such 
 an authority with some Anglicans, and because it is 
 worth noting en passant that those dogmas, like the 
 Immaculate Conception and the infallibility of the Pope, 
 which it is generally imagined must be ' difficulties ' to 
 Catholics, are, in point of fact, sources of special repose 
 and light. 
 
 Pere Gratry writes : ' O Queen, conceived without 
 ' sin, pray for us ! Pray that in these our days the 
 'manifestation of this mystery \i.e. of her Immaculate 
 ' Conception] may become a shining light in thy Church. 
 ' Pray that this manifestation may be such a progress of 
 ' Christian wisdom as S. Vincent of Lerins speaks of in 
 ' the same pages which warn the Christians of his days 
 ' against dangerous novelties. " Shall there never be," he 
 ' exclaims, " any religious progress in the Church of Christ ? 
 ' " Assuredly there shall be very great progress ; and who 
 
208 
 
 Pusey and Laud 
 
 ' " would be so envious of man, so hostile to God, as to 
 ' "wish to hinder it? Yes, there shall be progress in the 
 ' " faith, but no change in the faith; let, then, understand- 
 ' " ing, knowledge, and wisdom grow and develop from 
 ' "age to age, both in the Universal Church and in the 
 ' " individual soul. In the course of time the old doc- 
 ' " trines of the heavenly philosophy must be more and 
 ' " more cultivated and explained ; they can never be 
 ' "changed, maimed, or mutilated, but they must acquire 
 ' " more clearness, evidence, and precision, while they 
 ' "preserve the fulness, integrity, and propriety that they 
 ' " originally possessed." ' Pere Gratry then quotes from 
 a pious author, whose name he does not give, the follow- 
 ing words : ' There are many reasons why God willed 
 ' that the mystery of Mary should dawn by degrees, like 
 'the day. . . . One reason, as theologians commonly 
 ' say, is this : because the Church is not founded on our 
 ' Lady, but upon her Son. Therefore it was convenient 
 * that God should first make clear the truths of salvation, 
 ' and afterwards in the superabundance of His good- 
 ' ness should clear up others, which, though of less 
 ' consequence, yet raise our minds to know Him better 
 'and to love Him more ardently.' And then this wTiter, 
 who had exhibited powers of a really high order in 
 mathematics and philosophy, concludes : ' The Immacu- 
 ' late Conception of the Virgin is a truth so deep, so 
 'fundamental, and so central; it throws so strong a light 
 'on all the truths of faith, and even on all the truths 
 ' of philosophy, that its fuller manifestation will perhaps 
 ' contribute to bring about that intellectual revolution in 
 'the Christian world and in the human mind which 
 ' clear-sighted souls are looking for.' 
 
 Such was the enthusiasm with which the Christian 
 philosopher greeted the final settlement of the question 
 as to the relation between the first and second Eve. 
 
Pusey and Laud 
 
 209 
 
 Dr. Pusey dealt with this dogma with great earnest- 
 ness. He re-published Turrecremata's immense book on 
 the subject, at great expense, and sent it (so I understood 
 him to say) to nearly all the bishops of the Catholic 
 Church. 
 
 But the extraordinary thing is, that in dealing with 
 this truth, that Mary was endowed with original justice 
 at the moment of her conception, in view of the merits 
 of the coming Redeemer, Dr. Pusey will have it that the 
 definition leaves the way open for belief in what is called 
 the 'active' conception, which he defines incorrectly. 
 
 His whole treatment of the subject led Cardinal 
 Newman to say : ' It is, to me, a strange phenomenon Letter to 
 'that so many learned and devout men stumble at this 
 ' doctrine ' (he is speaking of Anglican divines), ' and I 
 
 * can only account for it by supposing that in matter of 
 ' fact they do not know what we mean by the Immaculate 
 ' Conception ; and your volume (may I say it ?) bears out 
 
 * my suspicion.' 
 
 Cardinal Newman having shown that the soul is the 
 subject of original justice, and that the Immaculate Con- 
 ception teaches that the soul of our Lady was clad with 
 that supernatural endowment (which we had forfeited 
 by Adam's sin), and as a consequence all the rebellion of 
 nature was hushed within her, Dr. Pusey perseveres in 
 saying, in his answer, that ' unless some authoritative 2nd Letter 
 ' explanation is given by the Roman Church, it seems to man.'^'p^^sT 
 ' me inevitable that under the term " Immaculate Con- 
 ception," which is to be declared to be of faith, the 
 'conception of the body of the Blessed Virgin will be in- 
 
 * eluded.' 
 
 He forgets that the definition is for Catholics ; and 
 Catholics have their definition of original sin provided for 
 them by the living Church. They are in no danger of 
 adopting some theory, which Dr. Pusey can discover has 
 
 p 
 
2IO 
 
 Puscy and Laua 
 
 been held by some one, in some past time. And it 
 betrays a painful unwillingness to be corrected, when he 
 refuses to accept Cardinal Newman's explanation, not of 
 what he believes, but of what the Catholic Church holds, 
 and to speak of it as though it were Cardinal Newman's 
 opinion. And even when the late Bishop of Orleans 
 informs Dr. Pusey of what the Church teaches, and his 
 testimony coincides with Cardinal Newman's, what can 
 be more painful than to read such a sentence as the 
 following? ' While, then, I am thankful that Mgr. Dupan- 
 ' loup and yourself still maintain the old distinction, I 
 ' hope I shall not seem to you, at least, my dearest friend, 
 ' to be presuming, if I think that in this, too, an explana- 
 ' tion, which would remove difficulties from us, would be 
 ' of service to you, if the Church of Rome wishes the 
 ' Immaculate Conception, as matter of faith, to be under- 
 ' stood of the soul only of the Blessed Virgin, and not of 
 ' her body also. Without some such explanation, I should 
 ' have feared (sic) that the belief of the Immaculate Con- 
 ' ception among you would be what to us seems the most 
 ' natural explanation of the words of the Bull, &:c.' 
 
 I forbear to comment on a passage such as this, 
 which I can only describe as painful to the last degree. 
 Dr. Pusey's ' care for all the Churches ' was uncalled for, 
 to say the least ; and is not the above passage, to put 
 it as euphemistically as possible, hypercritical and cap- 
 tious ? 
 
 cf. Harper, Another singular mistake that Dr. Pusey has made 
 through the is in the way he traces Marian devotion to a particular 
 p.'^339!' reading in the Protevangelium, viz. ' She shall bruise,' 
 where the authorised English version reads, ' It shall 
 ' bruise.' He mistakes the date at which that reading 
 appeared ; he omits to give its fair weight to the first 
 part of the sentence, ' I will put enmity between thee 
 ' and the woman,' with all the patristic commentaries on 
 
Puscy and Land 
 
 211 
 
 ' the woman,' referring the expression to Mary ; and he 
 ignores the immense Uterature on the gender of the pro- 
 noun, amongst CathoHc theologians, taking either side, 
 without feehng that the doctrine of the Immaculate 
 Conception was dependent on that word, but rather on 
 the first part of the sentence. 
 
 Still more strangely, he puts the Feast of the Concep- 
 tion several centuries later in its origin than is the case, 
 and he deals with S. Bernards opposition to the way 
 in which the Feast was introduced into the Church at 
 Lyons, as though the Feast were an entirely new thing, 
 and new in the sense that it would constitute an addition 
 to the Faith. Whereas S. Bernard dealt with it as a 
 matter that might at any time be settled either way by 
 the Holy See. The chasm between S. Bernard and Dr. 
 Pusey, in their attitude towards this subject, is immeasur- 
 able, when we consider that S. Bernard says : ' I more P'^ 
 ' especially refer this whole matter, as I do all others of 
 'the same sort, entirely to the authority and adjudication 
 ' of the Roman Church, and am prepared, if my opinion 
 'is different from it, to conform myself to its judgment.' 
 
 Further, Dr. Pusey quotes Melchior Canus, a Triden- 
 tine theologian, as saying that 'all the saints, who speak 
 ' of it, say with one voice, that the Blessed Virgin was 
 'conceived in original sin.' 
 
 It is worth noticing that before the subject was 
 thoroughly investigated, it would be quite possible for 
 anyone to use that phrase without further explanation. 
 Referring to the 'active ' conception which concerned the 
 parents, they might thus say, with S. Augustine, 'that 
 ' Mary, by reason of her descent from Adam, died on 
 'account of sin' — which every Catholic holds to this 
 day. Only a Catholic knows that Mary, though incurring 
 the debt of the original transgression, was freed from it 
 at the moment of her conception by the merits of the 
 
 P 2 
 
212 
 
 Ptisey and Laud 
 
 Redeemer. Our Lord alone did not incur the debt, 
 since He alone was conceived by the Holy Ghost. 
 
 But in point of fact, the Saints have not supplied us 
 with such a catena of doubtful theology. The words 
 which Dr. Pusey quotes as those of Melchior Canus are 
 not his, but the words of Erasmus, which Melchior Canus 
 repudiates. 
 
 Dr. Pusey also cites a bishop of the 14th century, 
 whose words, as quoted, seem to supply strong evidence 
 in his favour. It is Alvarus Pelagius. But the passage 
 was not written by him. 
 
 But of all writers, Dr. Pusey has relied most on 
 Turrecremata, the Pope's theologian, as he is described. 
 The ponderous tome which Dr. Pusey re-issued cer- 
 tainly seems, at first sight, to contain formidable evi- 
 dence against any general belief in the dogma of the 
 Immaculate Conception. 
 
 There is no known writer, according to Dr. Pusey, 
 who has more thoroughly and accurately sifted the 
 subject than this Turrecremata. He has marshalled 
 one hundred witnesses against the doctrine of the 
 Immaculate Conception, from Holy Scripture and the 
 Fathers, and Dr. Pusey has been at infinite pains to re- 
 produce his volume and analyse and verify its contents. 
 It lay hid in a library in Paris, if I remember rightly, 
 and I well remember the intense satisfaction which he 
 experienced in unearthing it and publishing it anew. 
 
 And yet, after all, what was Turrecremata's work ? 
 It was a case drawn up by him as Promotor Fidei. He 
 tells us so himself It is not necessary that a Promotor 
 Fidei should believe in the truth of the side he adopts. 
 He has to do his very best to prove it, so that each side 
 may be thoroughly represented — one side by him and 
 the other by his adversary. It is true there are signs 
 that Turrecremata did believe in the side that he was 
 
Piiscy and Laud 
 
 213 
 
 commissioned to adopt. But there is also evidence that 
 this work, which was drawn up expressly to represent one 
 side, does not express Turrecremata's mature conviction 
 on the subject. There is a book, which may be seen 
 by anyone in the British Museum, under the heading 
 ' Bridget,' that contains certain proof that nine years 
 after (1435) Turrecremata considered the full doctrine 
 of the Immaculate Conception to be in accordance 
 with Holy Scripture. It fell to his lot to promote the 
 canonisation of S. Bridget. Now, some of S. Bridget's 
 ' revelations ' concerned the Immaculate Conception. 
 She had more than one ' revelation ' on the subject. 
 Turrecremata tells us that he had read every word of 
 these ' revelations ' through with the greatest care, and 
 weighed the pros and cotis of their agreement with tra- 
 dition and Scripture. And his decision is, that they are 
 ' authentic, and full of truth, truly taught by the Spirit of 
 *God.' In one of these, our Lady says to Bridget, ' It 
 'is the truth that I was conceived without original sin.' 
 And this does not stand alone. Yet of these Turrecremata 
 says, ' Nihil continent, quod intellectum habeat adversum 
 ' Sacras Scripturae aut doctrinse sanctorum doctorum ab 
 * ecclesia approbatorum.' 
 
 Clearly, therefore, the Cardinal, on whose opinion 
 Dr. Pusey places so much reliance, came to the con- 
 clusion that the Immaculate Conception of our Lady was 
 in accordance with ' Holy Scripture, and the teaching 
 'of the holy doctors approved in the Church.' 
 
 The case, then, as put by Dr. Pusey entirely breaks 
 down. 
 
 As one who loved and admired Dr. Pusey, it is not 
 without a sense of anguish that I contemplate the 
 enormous industry which he employed in a cause so un- 
 worthy of his perseverance. 
 
 I shall conclude this chapter with a singular instance 
 
214 
 
 Pusey and Land 
 
 of similar inaccuracy in dealing with the Fathers, in one, 
 of whose work Dr. Pusey may be considered in some 
 sort the ' continuator.' I mean Archbishop Laud. 
 
 When Mr. Allies wrote to Alexander, Bishop of 
 Brechin,' telling him that he ' seemed to see facts proving 
 ' the whole Ultramontane claim,' the bishop wrote him a 
 sympathetic letter, containing this question : ' Do you 
 'think Barrow, and Bramhall, and Laud's line utterly 
 ' untenable ? I confess that even if these are weak on 
 ' first principles, they are strong in uncomfortable facts, 
 ' which would be sure to haunt one when over.' 
 
 The bishop little knew how, by the grace of God, 
 those who ' go over ' from proper motives find themselves 
 at once like one looking at a pictured window from the 
 inside, as compared with seeing only its dark, unintelligible 
 mass from the outside. He little knew how nothing seems 
 to them so strange as that they could have been under 
 the delusion of imagining they were in the Church, 
 when they were in schism. If anyone in the Church of 
 England is troubled with Barrow, let him read Mr. Colin 
 Lindsay's expose of that divine. As for Laud, here are 
 some ' uncomfortable facts ' on which he depended on a 
 most crucial question. 
 
 In his controversy with Fisher, he comes across a 
 letter of S. Augustine's, altogether condemnatory of the 
 position taken up by the divines of the ' Reformation.' 
 It is this. When the Donatists appealed to Constantine, 
 the Emperor, to obtain his support against their opponents, 
 the African Catholics, the Emperor rebuked them for 
 seeking the aid of temporal authority, and referred them 
 to S. Melchiades, the Pope. This was in the beginning 
 of the fourth century, and was an awkward fact for the 
 Anglican position. How does Laud deal with it ? 
 
 ' A Life's Decision (p. 318), by T. W. Allies. Kegan Paul, 
 Trench, and Co. 
 
Puscy and Laud 215 
 
 He is commenting upon the celebrated saying of S. 
 Augustine, ' In Romana ecclesia semper Apostolicse 
 ' Cathedrae viguit Principatus ' (' In the Roman Church the 
 ' Princedom of the ApostoHc See was ever in force,') and 
 he says : ' To prove that S. Augustine did not intend by 
 principatus here to give the Roman Bishop any power out 
 ' of his own Hmits, I shall make it most manifest out of 
 ' the very same epistle. For afterwards, saith S. Augustine 
 ' when the pertinacity of the Donatists could not be re- 
 ' strained by the African bishops only, they gave them 
 ' leave to be heard by foreign bishops ' (i.e. the African 
 Bishops gave the Donatists leave). 
 
 This is an extraordinary misrepresentation. The 
 Donatists did not wish to be heard by ' foreign bishops.' 
 But S. Augustine says they ought to have wished it. S. 
 Augustine says that if only they had referred the matter 
 outside their own province, in the way the Emperor sug- 
 gested, all might have been well. Much as if he should 
 say now : ' If you who are quarrelling on the subject of 
 ' sacerdotalism in the Church of England, would only refer 
 'the matter, not to the Queen in council, but to "foreign 
 ' "bishops," to "bishops beyond the sea," all might be 
 'well.' If the Queen, or the Bishop of Lincoln, were to 
 do what S. Augustine thought the Donatists ought to do, 
 they would refer the matter to Leo XIII. 
 
 2. Laud continues : ' And after that he ' {i.e. S. Augus- 
 tine) 'hath these words, "And yet peradventure Mel- 
 ' "chiades, the Bishop of the Roman Church, with his 
 ' " colleagues the transmarine bishops, twn debuit, ought 
 ' " not to usurp to himself this judgment, which was deter- 
 ' " mined by seventy African bishops, Tigesitanus sitting 
 ' " as Primate." ' 
 
 Here is another misrepresentation. This is, not what 
 S. Augustine gives as his own opinion, but what he 
 puts into the mouth of the Donatists, to condemn it. It 
 
2l6 
 
 Piisey and Laud 
 
 represents the error of the Donatists, according to S. 
 Augustine. The Donatists did not wish to refer matters 
 to the Pope, but thought that a synod of their own nation 
 was sufficient. S. Augustine scouted the notion of such 
 autonomy, and such a termination of affairs. Laud has 
 thus reversed S. Augustine's opinion, and rested his case 
 for the Church of England on the error of the Donatist 
 schismatics. 
 
 3. Again, in reference to the Emperor, Laud continues : 
 ' Lastly, lest the Pope and his adherents should say this 
 ' was an usurpation in the Emperor ' (Laud seems to 
 imagine that the Emperor was willing to undertake the 
 case), ' S. Augustine tells us a little before, in the same 
 ' epistle still, that this does chiefly belong " ad curam ejus " 
 ' to the Emperor's care and charge, and that he is to give 
 ' an account to God for it.' 
 
 This would be a telling defence of the Anglican posi- 
 tion, if it were true. It was not the Pope and his ad- 
 herents, but the Do7iatists, who said it was an usurpation on 
 the part of the Emperor. The Emperor took upon him- 
 self to refer the Donatists to the Pope, and they resented 
 this. S. Augustine says the Emperor was justified in 
 doing this. Why ? He does not say, as in Laud's mis- 
 translation, 'this does chiefly belong.' It is the past, not 
 the present tense. S. Augustine says that on that occa- 
 sion it ' did belong ' to the Emperor to make the sugges- 
 tion he did, for the Donatists had themselves appealed to 
 the Emperor. And since the Emperor referred them to 
 the Pope, to the Pope they ought to have gone. 
 
 Would it be possible to produce a more thorough 
 misrepresentation than this which Laud has given of 
 S. Augustine ? 
 
 See Sconce's A Douatist says, the Bishop of Rome has no business 
 
 ■ Testimonv . _ 
 
 of Ami- ' to revise the decision of a General Council. S. Augus- 
 
 Sydney, tine thiuks it would have been better for the Donatists to 
 1843. 
 
Puscy and Laud 
 
 217 
 
 have appealed to Rome. Laud's misrepresentation is 
 that S. Augustine says what in point of fact S. Augustine 
 condemned the Donatists for saying. 
 
 Is it surprising, if this was the way in which Arch- 
 bishop Laud read the Fathers, that he ' remained where 
 ' he was ' ? If, as the Bishop of Brechin said, he was ' weak 
 ' on first principles ' he seems to have been weaker still in 
 his ' uncomfortable facts.' 
 
2l8 
 
 TJie Lincoln Prosecution 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 THE LINCOLN PROSECUTION, 
 OR METROPOLITICAL JURISDICTION. 
 
 There is a general feeling that the trial of the Bishop of 
 Lincoln marks an epoch in the history of the Church of 
 England. 
 
 The circumstances are as strange as they could well 
 be. For more than three centuries and a half Rome has 
 treated the Anglican Establishment as no part of the 
 Church. There has been no difference at Rome in theory 
 or practice in regard to the Anglican ministry. Any clergy- 
 man making his submission to Rome within the last 
 300 years has been dealt with as though he had never 
 been ordained. The question was settled at the time 
 of the Reformation by contemporary Popes, and all 
 the evidence that modern times have brought to bear 
 on the question is considered to have shown that the 
 English Church is not in a position to prove herself in 
 possession of a priesthood. She has never produced, and 
 never will be able to produce, the one document that 
 would prove her succession — the consecration of Bishop 
 Barlow. Rome does not know of any doctrine of co- 
 consecrators ; it is merely a theory invented for the oc- 
 casion by the interested parties. Rome does demand 
 proof of an intention to make sacrificing priests on the 
 part of the consecrators, and none can be given. Till 
 
The Lincoln Prosecution 
 
 2ig 
 
 the day of doom there is not the remotest chance of Rome 
 ever altering her judgment in this matter. The evidence 
 is before her, and her mature judgment has been given. 
 
 Meanwhile an influential party has arisen within the 
 Establishment claiming to have the power to ' make the 
 ' Body and Blood of Christ,' and offer the Sacrifice of the 
 Altar, and dispense forgiveness of sins. Rome tells them, 
 that coidd this be proved, and could they clear themselves 
 from complicity with heresy in other matters, they would 
 still want one thing, which is vital, and that is authority to 
 exercise their orders — in a word, jurisdiction. 
 
 Jurisdiction is a dry word to English ears : it is an 
 unwelcome subject to most ' High Churchmen,' and it is 
 one on which Anglican literature is peculiarly meagre, 
 concerning which, too, the confusion that exists is per- 
 fectly astonishing. And yet it is the pivot on which all 
 hangs. If you have orders, by what authority do you 
 exercise them here, and not there ? You do not pretend 
 to be able to exercise them everywhere indiscriminately. 
 You carve out a diocese : in other words you authorise 
 a certain person to exercise his episcopal orders within a 
 certain area, and not outside of it. Bishop Stubbs says : 
 'The Bishop has jurisdiction in himself ' ('Eastern Church 
 'Assoc. Papers,' No. i). But he cannot use it until he 
 has subjects given to him. He must go there, and there 
 only, where a vacant place has been provided. vSome 
 authority must intervene and assign to him his sphere of 
 operation ; and when his sphere is thus assigned, he 
 must operate according to certain laws ; he is there to 
 teach a certain body of truth, and that alone. He has 
 authority for that, and only for that. If he goes to his 
 diocese, and uses his authority to teach Mormonism, he 
 violates the conditions on which he holds that authority. 
 He lias to see that the clergy under him teach the same 
 body of truths. He is responsible to his Divine Lord 
 
220 Tlie Lincoln Prosecution 
 
 for the way in which he fulfils his function. All agree to 
 that. 
 
 But is he responsible to no one else? Can every 
 bishop teach what he pleases, and act as he pleases, 
 without coming under the corrective authority of any 
 superior jurisdiction ? No one holds this. The superior 
 authority exists somewhere. Until the time of the 
 Reformation, every English bishop acknowledged one 
 superior authority over all, an authority believed to rest 
 on Holy Scripture. He took a solemn oath of obedience 
 to the Bishop of Rome, acknowledging him to be the 
 successor of S. Peter, and, as such, the Vicar of Christ. 
 No Archbishop of Canterbury exercised his jurisdiction 
 until he received authority from Rome. This authority 
 was conferred from the earliest days of the English 
 Wilkins, Church. The following petition went to Rome : ' Your 
 p°i99. ' devoted daughter, the Church of Canterbury, asks that 
 ' the pallium taken from tlie body of the Blessed Peter, may 
 ' be granted to its elect, who has been consecrated, in 
 ' order that he may have the plenitude of his ofifice, and 
 * for this it supplicates your Holiness with earnestness and 
 'Alleged ' Urgency.' The Pope then consecrated the fillet of white 
 ofAngUcan- wool, and it was placed over-night on the tomb of S. 
 ism, p. 8. Peter, to symbolise the truth that the grant of metro- 
 political power was a participation of S. Peter's royalty. 
 On receiving it, the Archbishop took oath that he would 
 help 'to defend and to maintain, against every man, 
 'the Papacy of the Roman Church, and the royalty of 
 'S. Peter.' 
 
 'Alleged '^^^^ Archbishop was then free to consecrate bishops, 
 
 Amiquity,' and e.xercise all metropolitical jurisdiction. His juris- 
 diction was considered as coming through the successor 
 of S. Peter from S. Peter himself. So it was an Apostolic 
 jurisdiction. And it came through S. Peter from Him 
 to whom all authority was given in heaven and on earth. 
 
The Lincoln Prosecution 221 
 
 It is said that once a Bishop of Lincoln was conse- 
 crated by his Metropolitan before the Archbishop had 
 received his pallium. The present Bishop of Lincoln 
 (supposing, for the moment, his orders to be valid) has 
 also been consecrated by an Archbishop, who has never 
 received the pallium from Rome. Compare the circum- 
 stances of each. The earlier Bishop of Lincoln was 
 consecrated by S. Anselm in the times of the anti-popes, 
 but it was not because S. Anselm did not recognise the 
 value of jurisdiction from S. Peter's See ; on the contrary, 
 S. Anselm says : ' If I, a Metropolitan, consecrated to the 
 ' espiscopate, neither seek the Pope in person, nor ask the 
 ' pallium, during the whole of my first year, I justly deserve 
 ' to be deprived of the dignity.' And this, he tells us, was 
 because the Pope was the successor of S. Peter. 
 
 How different the circumstances under which the 
 present Bishop of Lincoln was consecrated by an Arch- 
 bishop (in name, at least) who never received the pallium ! 
 He cannot ask for it : he has no connection with 
 the successor of S. Peter, who is also Patriarch of the 
 West. Archbishop Benson holds a position, on any sup- 
 position, not recognised by the Nicene Canons, for they 
 contemplated not simply Metropolitans, but what are 
 called Superior Metropolitans. The patriarchate was 
 there, though not yet the name. The English Church, in 
 losing its connection with the Primate of the Universal 
 Church, has lost its connecting ties with the patriarch of 
 the West. The patriarchate, however, although primitive, 
 is not of the essence of the Church's constitution, but 
 obedience to authority is, and the Primacy of S. Peter's 
 successor. 
 
 What has taken its place ? It is this that the Bishop 
 of Lincoln's trial may perchance force on men's attention. 
 
 There is either no jurisdiction in the Church of 
 England, or it derives from the State. 
 
222 Tlie Lincoln Prosecution 
 
 It is, however, impossible to say there is no jurisdic- 
 tion. For jurisdiction is exercised in assigning to an 
 ordained man the sphere in which he is to use his 
 ministerial capacities ; it is exercised in assigning to a 
 clergyman, who is consecrated to the episcopal office, a 
 particular diocese. Whence does this jurisdiction come ? 
 \\'as it not this very question that produced the whole 
 Tractarian movement ? It was the suppression of Irish 
 sees by Act of Parliament that produced the ' Tracts for 
 ' the Times' — that is to say, an act of ecclesiastical jurisdic- 
 tion on the part of the civil power. It was the question 
 of jurisdiction, the perception that S. Peter's See was its 
 source, that by the grace of God, led Dr. Newman into 
 the Catholic Church. It was the same question that led 
 Archdeacon Manning and Mr. Allies and Robert Isaac 
 Wilberforce into the same green pastures. 
 
 It has been the burning question every now and 
 again ; but every now and again, as lately, it is ignored. 
 It came to the front for a while through the action of 
 Bishop Gray in the Colenso case, and many of us first 
 made the acquaintance of Van Espen through Bishop 
 Gray's pamphlets. But of late years, there has been in 
 many quarters a tendency to ignore the subject. ' We 
 ' have orders, we have sacraments, what matters jurisdic- 
 ' tion ? ' has been practically the answer given to inquiries 
 about it. Then Dr. Littledale maintained that most 
 absurd of all theories — that jurisdiction has been lost in 
 the West altogether, through the supposed simoniacal 
 election of certain Popes. And so, since there is no law- 
 ful jurisdiction anywhere, what need to trouble about it 
 in England ? 
 
 The logical issue of the contention that all jurisdiction 
 has been lost, is Congregationalism. Indeed, Congrega- 
 tionalism is in one sense more intelligible than this new 
 theory. It is a more intelligible theory that our Lord 
 
The Lincoln Prosecution 223 
 
 never intended that ther^| should be any connecting links 
 between the various units, or congregations, of the Church, 
 than that authoritative jurisdiction should have existed 
 in the Church for nearly 1,000 years, and then have been 
 lost. 
 
 But, after all, jurisdiction is exercised in the Estab- 
 lishment. The Bishop of Lincoln has taken an oath of 
 
 homage which runs thus : ' I, , Doctor in Divinity, 
 
 ' now elected, confirmed, and consecrated Bishop of , 
 
 ' do hereby declare that Your Majesty is the only supreme 
 ' governor of this your realm, in spiritual and ecclesiastical 
 ' things, as well as in temporal, and that no foreign prelate 
 ' or potentate has any jurisdiction in this realm, &c.' 
 This latter portion sweeps away the Nicene canon con- 
 cerning 'Metropolitans,' or as they were afterwards called, 
 Patriarchs, with Metropolitans subject to their jurisdiction; 
 and the whole forms as plain a contradiction to the oath 
 taken by every Bishop of Lincoln before the Reformation, 
 as words could express. The continuity of doctrine on 
 this point, at any rate, has been broken. Imagine this 
 oath being proposed to S. Anselm ! Imagine the holy 
 indignation with which he would have spurned it ! 
 
 The Queen's Majesty, acting through her representa- 
 tives, has told the Archbishop of Canterbury that he has 
 jurisdiction over the Bishop of Lincoln. 
 
 Whence did the Archbishop derive his own metropo- 
 litical jurisdiction ? We have already seen that Henry 
 VIII. 're-created' Canterbury to be a Mctropolitical See, 
 and the present Archbishop took his oath to Queen 
 Victoria acknowledging her ' the only supreme governor ' 
 of the realm 'in spiritual and ecclesiastical things.' 
 
 The Archbishop, as in duty bound, has cited the 
 Bishop of Lincoln to appear before him in a court, 
 which is of first instance only. The appeal lies to another 
 court, the Privy Council. So that the Archbishop has 
 
224 '^^^^ Lincoln Prosecution 
 
 admitted the right of a higher court to determine his 
 jurisdiction in settHng how the most sacred service of 
 the Church is to be conducted. And whatever happens 
 beyond this, one thing is quite certain, viz., that there 
 will be no appeal outside the kingdom. And yet Lord 
 Halifax has said publicly that ' the sacerdotal character 
 ' of the clergy ' is at stake — that, in fact, ' the sacramental 
 ' principle ' is on its trial. The Bishop of Lincoln has 
 said the same himself. But if the Establishment be 
 indeed a part of the Church, how can such questions as 
 these be finally settled without communication with the 
 rest of the Church ? How can it be supposed that a 
 Metropolitan, even at Canterbury, can be the final court 
 of appeal on such a question ? How can authority, how 
 can jurisdiction, stop at a Metropolitan ? 
 
 It is here that Bishop Stubbs (I.e.) comes in with his 
 statement that the question of jurisdiction 'belongs to 
 ' the general subject of the supremacy claimed by the See 
 ' of Rome and the independence of national Churches.' 
 
 Yes ; this is the real cry — the independence of national 
 Churches. It was the foundation on which Dr. Pusey 
 rested his whole argument. No words better express 
 the defence given by the ordinary English Churchman 
 than a sentence of Dr. Pusey's in his ' Eirenicon,' page 66 : 
 ' England is not at this moment more independent of 
 ' any authority of the Bishop of Rome than Africa was in 
 ' the days of S. Augustine.' 
 
 No sweeter sound to an Englishman's ear than that 
 of independence, and, above all, independence of Rome. 
 And Africa, with its many saintly bishops and martyrs, 
 and its S. Augustine, in the fourth century ! To be only 
 what the church of Africa was in the fifth century is, it 
 would seem, to be well within the laws of the Church's 
 constitution. 
 
 But there never was a greater misapprehension than 
 
TJie Lincoln Prosecution 
 
 to suppose that the African Church was independent of 
 Rome in the fourth or fifth centuries. 
 
 We have already seen how mistaken Archbishop 
 Laud was on this matter. Let us see how thoroughly 
 mistaken Anglicans are now, in resting their case so 
 much on the supposed autonomy of the African Church ; 
 but, in particular, on the opinion of S. Augustine. 
 
 They refer us to the case of Apiarius. That is to say, 
 a priest appealed straight to Rome, and, for some reason 
 or other, his appeal was received, and friction ensued. 
 A Papal legate, of overbearing manners, rendered the 
 friction more acute. 
 
 But Van Espen's judgment (a writer on whom 
 Anglicans are wont to rely, even to excess) is absolutely 
 correct, viz. that ' no schism arose between the Roman 
 'and African Churches through the affairs of Apiarius.' 
 
 There are some points in the history of the whole 
 matter which seem to be invariably ignored by Anglican 
 writers. And yet they are points which alter the whole 
 bearing of the case. 
 
 One is this, that the very canons against which the 
 African bishops complained were eventually received into 
 the African code. They are found in the abridgment 
 of the African canons, by Ferrandus, in the following 
 century. Now this tends to diminish the aptness of the 
 parallel drawn between the African Church in the fifth 
 century and the English Church in the sixteenth. The 
 contention of the bishops of Africa, put in ' the light 
 most favourable to the Anglican theory, was not the final 
 judgment of the African Church. ' Respice finem ' is true 
 of a Church as well as of an individual. 
 
 Next, the whole point of the discussion between 
 Rome and the African bishops related, not to the exist- 
 ence of supreme authority in the Holy See, but to the 
 law of its exercise. It was an admitted principle on all 
 
 Q 
 
226 TJie Lt7icoln Prosecution 
 
 sides, expressly stated by Pope after Pope, that his 
 universal pastorate over the Church was to be exercised 
 in accordance with the canons. The very Pope in this 
 Ceiestin. Ep. case says to the bishops of Illyria : ' Let the ruler lord 
 
 3, apuil 
 
 Consiant. ' It ovcr US, and let us not lord it over the ruler ; as we pro- 
 'fess to keep the canons, let us be subject to the canons.' 
 Of course, the canons had been confirmed by Papal 
 authority, and to the constitutional mode of its exercise 
 contained in them, the Pope professed to adhere. The 
 principle, therefore, for which the African bishops con- 
 tended was acknowledged by the Popes, viz. that the 
 authority of the Holy See was to be exercised according 
 to the canons by which it had already bound itself The 
 bishops were mistaken as to a matter of fact, viz. the 
 authority of the Sardican canon. Again the African 
 Church had already, about forty years before, adopted a 
 principle which, if it had only been observed, would 
 have saved all the trouble. A court of appeal was pro- 
 vided by the canons, which they seem strangely to have 
 overlooked. There was no court of local appeal in use 
 at the time. The clergy were left to the cumbrous 
 machinery of a Provincial or General Council, i.e. a 
 Council of all Africa. But there should have been an 
 intermediate court of appeal from a bishop's decision, 
 more easy of access. And it was to this point that the 
 Papal legate addressed himself The complaint of the 
 African bishops was this : 'Those, therefore,' (i.e. those 
 bishops) 'who are interdicted communion in their own 
 ' provinces, ought not to be restored by your Holiness 
 '•prematurely and against the rules ; and you ought to re- 
 ' ject the priests and other clergy who are so rash as to 
 ' have recourse to you. For no ordinance of our fathers 
 ' has deprived the Church of Africa of this authority, and 
 ' the decrees of the Nicene Council have subjected the 
 ' bishops themselves to their respective Metropolitans.' 
 
TJic Lincoln Prosecution 227 
 
 The words ' prematurely and against the rules ' are 
 the important ones. The principle of appeal to Rome is 
 admitted, but it should not be premature, i.e. regardless 
 of the courts of first instance ; it should be ' according 
 ' to rules.' One rule, mentioned at once, is that the 
 court of first instance should be the metropolitical court. 
 Bishops were subjected by the decrees of the Nicene 
 Council to their Metropolitan in the first instance — a 
 principle which has been in force until the present hour ; 
 to this day an appeal goes through the Archbishop. The 
 matter is investigated by him in the first instance, and by 
 him transmitted to Rome. To be compelled to go to a 
 Provincial Council, or to a Council of all Africa, as the 
 court of first instance, as it seems Apiarius would have 
 been obliged to do, was an inconvenient mode of pro- 
 cedure. And Rome pointed out the better way, viz. a 
 certain number of neighbouring bishops, but with the 
 addition of a Papal legate. It was to this addition that 
 the Africans objected. It was not to a final appeal to 
 Rome, in cases in which an appeal was made from a 
 synod of bishops, that they objected ; but they urged 
 that those cases which could be terminated in their own 
 province should be so terminated without the assistance 
 or, as they would have termed it, the interference of a 
 Papal legate, of which they had bitter experience in the 
 overbearing ways of Faustinus. 
 
 The difference between S. Augustine's attitude to- 
 wards Rome, and that of the English Church, may be 
 seen from the way in which he dealt with the next case 
 that arose. At the very time when all this question of 
 Apiarius was under consideration, he acted as defendant 
 in the appeal of one of his suffragans to Rome. The 
 Primate of Numidia himself instituted an appeal, whilst 
 the question of the Nicene Canons was pending, in 
 favour of one of S. Augustine's suffragans, named Antony. 
 
 Q2 
 
228 
 
 The Lincoln Prosecution 
 
 S. Augustine enters into correspondence with the Pope, 
 and entreats him not altogether to excuse Antony, and 
 yet not to deprive him of his episcopal office. He says to 
 Pope Boniface : ' There are instances in which the Holy 
 ' See. by its own judgment, or in confirming the judgment 
 ' of others, has left bishops for certain offences, neither 
 ' stripped of episcopal honour nor altogether unpunished.' 
 He then mentions three cases, and says that if Antony 
 is restored without any punishment, he shall feel it so 
 deeply that he has even thoughts of retiring. But the 
 Pope decided in S. Augustine's favour. 
 
 It is clear from the way in which S. Augustine speaks 
 all through that he had no thought of barring all appeals 
 to Rome. He wished those cases that were to be ter- 
 minated in the province to be conducted without the 
 presence of a legate, as he considered that they were 
 equal to doing so, and he did not then know the full history 
 of the Council of Sardica. He did not know that the 
 canons of that Council had taken rank as an appendix 
 to the Nicene canons, and that anyhow they were part of 
 the Church's law, as they were afterwards reckoned even 
 by the Eastern Council in Trullo. 
 
 There is no thought of schism, no dream of inde- 
 pendence of Rome, as though she had no rightful authority 
 in Africa ; there is not the most distant parallel to the 
 attitude of our own unhappy countr}- towards the Holy 
 See. This is beyond question, one would have thought, 
 to anyone who has read, not mere morsels, but the 
 entire histor)-, of the relations of the African Church to 
 the Apostolic See. 
 
 There was excitement : there was a strong feeling 
 against the particular legate, and a real desire to manage 
 their own affairs to a greater extent than the presence of 
 a legate would admit. There was all this ; but it referred, 
 not to an idea of severance from the See of S. Peter, but 
 
TJie Lincohi Prosecution 229 
 
 to reserving for appeal to its august judgment only such 
 matters as could not be terminated in the province itself. 
 Africa, it has been said, was literally alive with appeals 
 to Rome. 
 
 But certain bishops wrote to Pope Celestine in the 
 following strong terms : ' They (our fathers) have ordained 
 ' with great wisdom and justice that matters should be 
 ' terminated in the places where they arise, and did not 
 ' think that the grace of the Holy Ghost would be wanting 
 ' in any province to bestow on its bishops the knowledge 
 ' and strength necessary for their decisions, especially since 
 ' whoever thinks himself wronged may appeal to his pro- 
 ' vince or even to a General Council.' These words do 
 not mention Rome. 
 
 Let us pause for a moment. From the considerations 
 adduced, it appears that the bishops are objecting to 
 complaints going straight to Rome, and leaping over a 
 Provincial or General Council {i.e. a Council of all Africa), 
 not to an appeal from such a Council. They speak of cases 
 in which it was an insult to overleap the Provincial 
 Council, and to imagine that Rome could decide better 
 without even the help of a decision from such a Council. 
 They go on to deprecate the idea that they could rely on 
 a premature sentence passed beyond the sea, where the 
 weak and old could not be summoned as witnesses. 
 And then they object to a legate being sent. 
 
 It was no question of whether under some circum- 
 stances there must be an appeal from the Provincial or 
 General Council to Rome, but whether it should be 
 irrespective of any court of first instance. 
 
 There can be no question that these bishops, if the 
 letter is genuine, wrote with strong feelings. 
 
 But S. Augustine was not of their nutnber. There 
 are only fifteen names at the head of this vehement letter, 
 and S. Augustine was not one of them. Neither does 
 
230 Tlic Lincoln Prosecution 
 
 the name of his friend Alypius, or Possidius, or of other 
 bishops who were amongst his disciples, occur in the hst. 
 Indeed, the second name in the list is that of the very 
 Bishop Antony whom S. Augustine wished the Pope to 
 reprimand, but not to punish him too severely. No acts 
 of the Council from which this letter purports to emanate 
 have yet been found. But with this letter is the Code of 
 the African Church, ' cooked for the times, as the writer, 
 ' an unknown person, gives us fair warning.' He says the 
 Council was a provincial one, which makes the matter 
 stranger still. A small Provincial Council settles an 
 affair which had been commenced in a General Council 
 of all Africa, and sends, too, a final reply to the Pope in 
 the name of all Africa ! 
 
 I have dealt with the letter as though it were genuine ; 
 but I find it hard to believe it is, not because of its 
 contents, but because of these suspicious circumstances. 
 S. Augustine certainly never enunciated the principle 
 that there was no relation of subordination between the 
 Church of Africa and the See of Rome. Look at his 
 175th Epistle, in which he tells the Pope that he sends 
 him the proceedings of a Council of Carthage, not as a 
 favour, but as a matter of duty, ' that to the statutes of our 
 ' lowliness may be applied the authority of the Apostolic 
 ' See.' Or again, see how he writes from the Council of 
 Milevis and asks for suggestions, since ' those who hold 
 ' opinions so perverse and pernicious will more easily yield 
 'to the authority of your Holiness, derived as it is from the 
 '■authority of the Holy Scriptures^ (Ep. 176). 
 
 Or again : ' Already on this cause (Pelagianism) the 
 ' decisions of the two Councils have been sent to the 
 ' Apostolic See ; thence also rescripts have come. The 
 ' cause is ended ; would that at length the error may 
 end.' 
 
 S. Augustine, indeed, makes the chair of S. Peter 
 
TJic Lincoln Prosecution 231 
 
 627. 
 879. 
 
 777- 
 
 one of the notes of the Church, says that succession 
 from that Apostle is the rock whereon the Church is \%. 7 
 founded, points out to heretics the claim to their allegiance ii. 120. 
 of that Church, which has the summit of authority through viii. 69. 
 the succession of bishops from S. Peter, appeals to the ii. 97- 
 Pope's decision as the rule of faith, approves of S. ii. 664. 
 Innocent's assertion of his universal authority as S. 
 Peter's successor, regards the Papal judgment as final, v. 645. 
 perpetually appeals to the Pope in the most humble x. 412. 
 manner, obeys his injunctions as of authority, regards his 
 authority as paternal, speaks of his pastoral care for the 
 African Church, entreats for mercy towards those with 
 whom the Holy See was displeased, and implores assist- 
 ance under perplexity. And he tells the Donatists 
 that had they only appealed to ' foreign bishops,' or 
 ' bishops beyond the sea ' (his usual phrase for the See of 
 Rome and its Council of Bishops) all might have been 
 well. 
 
 And one of the last letters he wrote enunciates the 
 same principle. It concerns a bishop, who, he considered, 
 had wrongly used his power of excommunication. He 
 adopts precisely this principle — first, a Council in Africa, 
 and, if that will not terminate the matter, then Rome. 
 
 * With God's help, I wish to bring this matter before the 
 
 ' Council, and, should it become needful, to write to the ^n^m e. 
 'Apostolic See.' How, then, is it possible to say that Ep^jo'^j 
 ' England is not, at this moment, more independent of ^j^y"^- 
 
 * any authority of the Bishop of Rome, than Africa was in ''■ 879- 
 ' the days of S. Augustine ' ? 
 
 Africa was in communion with the Popes, who 
 acted, all through, as the divinely appointed pastors of 
 the Universal Church, and after this discussion as to the 
 courts of first instance, it drew closer and closer to Rome, 
 as the Arian Vandals pressed more and more upon its 
 ' See Sconce's Testimony of Antiquity, pp. 62-75. 
 
232 
 
 The Lincoln Prosecution 
 
 fair provinces. And the Sardican Canons were received 
 into its code, and acted upon by S. Leo II., as they were 
 all over the world. 
 
 It is, indeed, to the law of action sanctioned by the 
 Sardican canon of which the African bishops were 
 somehow ignorant, and which had been bound up with 
 the Nicene Canons, as their natural extension — it was, I 
 say, to the principle of this canon that the Church owes 
 her preservation of the Christian Faith. It is common 
 to speak of ' Athanasius against the world,' as describing 
 the condition of things at one critical period. But it was 
 Athanasius supported by the Pope. It was found that an 
 observance of the principle laid down in the Council of 
 Nice, as to Provincial Councils, might jeopardise the 
 faith, if it was to be understood (as it was never meant to 
 be understood) as making such Councils final. Athana- 
 sius found himself condemned and deposed by a Council. 
 But he found his remedy in Rome. And the Sardican 
 canon in question was drawn up in view of the difficulties 
 of Athanasius. It reads thus : ' But if any one of the 
 'bishops shall seem to have been condemned in any 
 ' matter, and thinks that he has not a bad case, but a good 
 ' one, in order that the decision may be considered afresh, 
 ' if it seems good to your charity, let us honour the memory 
 ' of blessed Peter, and let letters be wTitten by those who 
 ' have given judgment, to Julius, the Bishop of Rome, 
 ' that so, by the neighbouring bishops of that province, the 
 'judgment may be considered anew, and he furnish the 
 ' judges.' And the Councilsletter to the Popegives its idea 
 of ' honouring the memor)' of blessed Peter ' still more 
 clearly. ' For this will seem best, and by far more con- 
 ' gruous, if the priests of the Lord, from each of the several 
 ' provinces, refer to the head — that is, to the See of the 
 'Apostle Peter.' The Sardican canon did not inaugurate 
 appeals to Rome. It encouraged them, and pointed to a 
 
TJic Lincoln Prosecution 233 
 
 particular mode of exercising the Pope's authority, viz., the 
 appointment of a court of neighbouring bishoi^s, under 
 the Pope's direction. 
 
 The position, therefore, of the Enghsh Church is 
 certainly not that of the Church of Africa in the fourth 
 or fifth century. 
 
 It has thought to put itself back to old times — an 
 impossibility, in point of fact. Such a position would be 
 an ecclesiastical anachronism. It would be resigning 
 all that has been gained in the way of clear perception, 
 as to the principle of authority and the mode of its 
 exercise, by the conflict of thought and the progress of 
 life in the Christian Church. 
 
 I say ' it has thought ' to put itself where Africa once 
 was ; but indeed it did not think about it. The bishops 
 in the i6th century practically said to the blessed Bishop 
 Fisher much what some bishops said to S. Anselm when 
 he opposed the encroachments of the civil power : ' Lord 
 
 * and Father, we know you to be a religious and a holy 
 ' man, and that your conversation is in Heaven. But we 
 ' are held back by our relations, whom we support, and by 
 ' many worldly cares, which we love. We cannot, there- 
 ' fore, rise to a sublimity of life like yours, or join you in 
 
 * making scorn of the world.' 
 
 They took the world with its supreme representative, 
 for their authority, and their successors can only teach 
 with authority — with the authority of a supreme jurisdic- 
 tion — what the world permits. They may tolerate higher 
 views of the Sacrament and the Ministry, but toleration 
 is not authoritative teaching. Independence of Rome 
 means severance from the Catholic world ; and a juris- 
 diction which stops with a Metropolitan is not Catholic ; 
 whilst jurisdiction which emanates from the State is 
 worldly, and not spiritual. It will never enforce the 
 dogmatic principle ; at least it will tamper with the 
 
234 ^'^^^ Liyicoln Proscciitton 
 
 boundaries of dogmatic truth ; enlarge its borders, to be 
 comprehensive ; or contract them, to be pure. 
 
 Consequently, so far as faith in 'the sacerdotal character 
 'of the Christian ministry,' and 'the Sacramental prin- 
 ' ciple,' is concerned, England has since then gone to rack 
 and ruin. 
 
 At this moment an Archbishop of Canterbury is 
 purporting to sit in judgment on a Bishop of Lincoln, to 
 decide whether he may use the ritual embodiments of 
 ' the sacramental principle.' He sits in judgment as the 
 representative of Her Majesty. He cites the Bishop of 
 Lincoln, in obedience to a decision of Her Majesty 
 expressed through the Privy Council, and tells him he 
 is accused of administering ' bread and wine ' (see the 
 Archbishop's citation) in a particular way, and dealing 
 with the ' bread and wine ' after service in a particular 
 way. The two immediate predecessors of the present 
 Archbishop have given their judgment against the Bishop 
 of Lincoln's teaching. His immediate predecessor's 
 judgment is well known. The words of his penultimate 
 predecessor are not so well known. Speaking of the 
 party to which the Bishop of Lincoln belongs, he says : 
 ' It is no want of charity to declare that they remain with 
 ' us in order that they may substitute the Mass for the 
 ' Communion ; the obvious aim of our Reformers having 
 ' been to substitute the Communion for the Mass.' And 
 again: 'The use of these sacrificial vestments is in the 
 ' minds of many intimately connected with the idea that 
 ' an essential element in the Holy Communion is the 
 ' offering to God a sacrifice of the Body and Blood of 
 ' Christ, which abide with the elements in a mysterious 
 ' manner after the act of consecration. The minister 
 ' wears the vestments at that time as a sacrificing priest. 
 ' According to this view it would seem that the most 
 ' important of this Holy Sacrament is what we offer to 
 
Tlie Lincoln Prosecution 
 
 235 
 
 ' God, not what we receive from Him. This view is not 
 ' recognised by the Church of England in her formularies.' 
 ' The Romish notion of a true, real, and substantial 
 ' sacrifice of the Body and Blood of Christ, as it is called 
 ' in the Council of Trent, entailed the use of the term 
 ' altar. But this term appears nowhere in the Book of 
 ' Common Prayer, and was no doubt omitted lest any 
 ' countenance should be given to the sacrificial view.'' The 
 Bishop of Liverpool in his recent pamphlet, on ' What is 
 ' written about the Lord's Supper ? ' (6th edition, revised) 
 says: ' I contend there is nothing in the four accounts of 
 ' the institution of the Lord's Supper to show that the 
 ' twelve disciples regarded the bread as anything but bread, 
 ' and the wine as anything but wine, when they received 
 'them from their Master's hands' (p. 15). 'In that ac- 
 ' count ' (the Epistle to the Corinthians) 'three times over 
 ' he speaks of the consecrated elements as " the bread 
 ' "and the cup," and not "as the body and the blood." 
 ' That simple fact appears to me to settle the question.' 
 And speaking of the Black Rubric, he says : ' If that rubric 
 ' does not flatly condemn the teaching of many modern 
 ' divines about the presence of Christ in the sacrament, 
 ' under the form of bread and wine, I am very certain 
 ' that words have no meaning at all.' 
 
 Such, then, after three hundred and fifty years, is 
 the condition of things under the new departure since 
 Elizabeth's days. How is it that a trial such as this 
 does not force men to see that in parting with the juris- 
 diction under which the ancient Church of England 
 lived, Englishmen have now lost, not of their own fault 
 but through the sin of their forefathers, the very idea of 
 authoritative teaching, i.e. the very idea of a visible 
 Church. For a visible Church must be numerically 
 
 ' Archbishop Longley's last charge, quoted by ihe Bishop of 
 Liverpool, p. 46. 
 
236 
 
 TJic Lincoln Prosecution 
 
 one. But how is that one, visible Church which 
 teaches contradictories ? Can our Lord teach contra- 
 dictories ? Can a Church be His representative, which 
 teaches contradictories ? Toleration will not serve the 
 idea of a Church. To tolerate opposite teaching on such a 
 vital point is to throw the matter up, and say, ' We cannot 
 ' enforce either. We have no authority to enforce one to 
 ' the exclusion of the other.' It is to sanction the root-lie of 
 the day, viz., that there is no such thing as absolute truth. 
 It is to sanction it on a point where our Lord cannot have 
 left us in the dark. Think what is involved in the 
 question as to whether our Lord is in His Sacrament or 
 not ; and then think how a religious body must have 
 renounced its raison d'etre if it cannot teach the people, 
 with authority, which is true and which is false. It is 
 not patience to put up with this persistent dallying with 
 the truth. 
 
 Ask yourself, reader, if you are one of those who 
 believe that our Lord meant what He said when He said, 
 ' This is My Body,' and yet belong to a religious com- 
 munion one half or more of which denies the reality of 
 those words — ask yourself, Why is it that Rome never 
 falters on this subject, but goes on the same, year after 
 year, only bringing out more lovingly and prominently 
 the treasure of the Eucharistic Presence ? It is part of 
 that unchanging teaching of which the great Dominican 
 spoke fifty years ago : — 
 
 ' A doctrine immutable when everj thing upon earth 
 'changes — a doctrine which men hold in their hands, 
 ' which poor old men, in a place called the Vatican, guard 
 'under the key of this cabinet, and which, without any 
 ' other defence, resists the course of time, the dreams of 
 ' sages, the designs of kings, the fall of empires — always 
 ' one, constant, identical with itself ! AVhat a prodigy 
 ' to deny ! What an accusation to silence I Therefore, all 
 
TJie Liticoln Prosecution 237 
 
 ' ages, jealous of a glory which disdained their own, have 
 ' tried their strength against it. They have come, one after 
 ' the other, to the doors of the Vatican ; they have knocked 
 ' there with buskin and boot, and the doctrine has 
 ' appeared under the frail and wasted form of some old 
 ' man of threescore years and ten. It has said : 
 
 ' " What do you desire of me ? " 
 
 ' " Change." 
 
 ' " I never change." 
 
 ' " But everything is changed in this world. Astronomy 
 ' " has changed, chemistry has changed, philosophy has 
 ' " changed, the Empire has changed. Why are you always 
 ' " the same ? " 
 
 ' " Because I come from God, and because God is 
 ' " always the same." ' 
 
 I 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 5. IE ROME'S LETTER TO EVAGRIUS. 
 
 In this letter S. Jerome says, 'If authority is sought for, 
 ' the world is greater than the city. Wherever there is a 
 ' bishop — at Rome, or at Eugubium, or at Constantinople, or 
 ' at Rhegium, or at Alexandria, or at Tanis — he is of the same 
 ' worth, and has the same priesthood or priestly power.' The 
 priestly power he defines as that of ' making the Body and 
 ' Blood of Christ.' He says that in regard to this the worldly 
 position of a bishop or priest makes no difference. 
 
 This passage was quoted some years ago in a tract on 
 'Roman Misquotations,' which has the signatures 'W. B.' 
 and ' H. P. L.' attached to it, i.e. the Professor of Ecclesias- 
 tical History at Oxford, and the eloquent Canon of S. Paul's, 
 London. It is a passage which is doing duty in various 
 quarters at the present moment. In the last of ten articles 
 on my book called ' Authority,' in ' Church Bells,' the 
 Avriter says, ' We will .... give our readers the benefit of a 
 ' quotation from S. Jerome which it may be as well to preserve 
 ' for use.' He then gives this same passage. One of the most 
 trusted spiritual guides in the Church of England, endea- 
 vouring to prove my own untrustworthiness in dealing with 
 the Fathers, also quoted this passage in a letter to prove 
 that ' Mr. Rivington entirely omits all allusion to what S. 
 ' Jerome says on the other side against the claims of Rome.' 
 
 In pomt of fact I dealt with the passage in four pages, 'Amhority,' 
 
 pp. 113-117. 
 
240 
 
 Appendix 
 
 showing how preposterous it is to quote it as having any- 
 bearing on the ' claims of Rome.' 
 
 Mr. Gore waxes quite eloquent on the unfairness of 
 Roman controversialists in not quoting this passage. In- 
 deed, he lays aside every vestige of courtesy when he deals 
 with it. 
 
 And yet I have no hesitation in saying that it is a mysteiy 
 to me what can lead anyone who pretends to the slightest 
 knowledge of the original to depend on this passage as 
 though it made against the ' claims of Rome.' 
 
 They have to maintain four things which are utterly 
 without foundation: (i) that 'city' is the same as 'see'; 
 (2) that ' worth,' or ' merit ' and ' priesthood,' or ' priestly 
 ' power' are the same as jurisdiction ; (3) that what S. Jerome 
 opposes had the approval of the Pope. There is not a 
 shadow of proof for either of these positions. But further 
 (4) it is felt by some (very naturally) to be necessar)' to show 
 that this passage was written later in S. Jerome's life than 
 his letter to Damasus, in which he speaks of consulting the 
 ' chair of Peter.' 
 
 Accordingly, Dr. Littledale, in his ' Plain Reasons agarnst 
 'joining the Church of Rome,' began by saying that the 
 passage in question was written in the year 420, the year of 
 the Saint's death, ' or some other very late period of his life.' 
 And this was important, as there were other letters rather 
 close to the end of S. Jerome's life which show that his 
 opinion about communion with Rome remained the same. 
 But Dr. Littledale incautiously gave his reason for this 
 supposed date, viz., ' because it stands nearly last in \'allarsi's 
 ' great edition.' Father Ryder, however, pointed out that 
 Vallarsi expressly says in his Preface that he put this letter 
 at the end of his collection, not because he thought it late, 
 but because, ' neither on the grounds of intrinsic probabilit)', 
 ' nor on the concordant testimony of the learned, was it 
 ' possible to assign a certain date.' Accordingly Dr. Little- 
 dale cancelled his assertion, and said, without acknowledg- 
 ment, that the passage in question was ' much later in date ' 
 than the letter to Damasus, though he gives no reason, nor 
 can any be given. 
 
 The question reappeared in Mr. Gore s book when it was 
 
Appendix 
 
 241 
 
 anonymously published, supplying the ground of a sweeping 
 accusation of inaccuracy against his opponents. In this 
 book the passage by S. Jerome is said to have been written 
 simply ' later in life.' ' But in the new form of that book the 
 passage is said to have been written ' apparently later in life.' 
 
 So we have Dr. Littledale saying first ' in the year of 
 ' S. Jerome's death,' or ' some other verj' late period of his 
 ' life,' because Vallarsi put it last. Next its date was ' later in 
 ' life' than the letter to Damasus. Mr. Gore proceeds with 
 Dr. Littledale's last assumption 'later in life,' and finally 
 tones it down to 'apparently later in life,' and refers to 
 another book of his own in which he divides S. Jerome's 
 life into Papal and anti-Papal, with no real proof, which is, 
 indeed, pure romance. His letter to his spiritual daughter, 
 Demetriades, shows that he was shortly before his death 
 thoroughly ' Papal.' 
 
 Indeed history never heard of his change of mind until 
 it was invented by the exigencies of the i6th century con- 
 troversy. 
 
 Mr. Gore supplies us with a paraphrase of S. Jerome's 
 words, which is not justified by anything in the Saint's letter. ' r. c. 
 Could any unlearned reader fail to suppose from that para- p'^,',*^^ 
 phrase that S. Jerome had used the word 'see' (of Rome) 
 and not merely 'city'? Yet this is the whole question. 
 S. Jerome refers to a local custom which was in full swing 
 when he was himself in Rome. He says he had seen an 
 instance, when at Rome, of what the deacons, who were 
 such great secular magnates owing to their fewness in 
 number, did in the absence of the Bishop. 
 
 There is not a syllable to show that Pope Damasus 
 approved of the custom. Do we not know that at the time 
 to which S. Jerome alludes in his letter, he was acting with 
 tite Pope against some of the rebellious clergy of the city of 
 Rome ? How then can a scholar venture to translate ' city' 
 by ' See ' ? So far as the words of S. Jerome's letter go^ he 
 might here be even doing his best to promote the wishes of 
 the Pope and the Holy See against a custom, by which, as it 
 seems, the deacon, in the social life of the city, took prece- 
 dence of priests. This custom had the authority of the 
 
 ' Roman Catholic Claims, orig. edit. p. 56. 
 
 R 
 
242 
 
 Appendix 
 
 city's life, and nothing else. ' Uo you quote to me the 
 ' greatness of your city, and your local custom, so that you, 
 ' merely deacons that you are, even sometimes, in the absence 
 ' of your bishop, take precedence of priests ? Look at the 
 ' custom of the wide world — it is worth more than the custom 
 ' of your city. Everywhere, as your bishop, the Pope, would 
 ' tell you, a priest is above a deacon, for he has, like the 
 ' bishop, the power of " making the Body and Blood of 
 ' " Christ." A bishop is a bishop in this respect, wherever he 
 ' is, and so is a priest.' 
 
 There is nothing more than this contained in the actual 
 words. When Mr. Gore speaks of S. Jerome being 'pressed 
 ' with the authority of the Roman See,' he is simply taking 
 liberties with the text, and with his readers' intelligence. 
 
 But further, is it conceivable that S. Jerome was prepared 
 to contradict, in so many words, the Canons of Nicsea? And 
 yet this is the dilemma in which they have placed themselves. 
 
 S. Jerome says that a bishop and therefore a priest {for 
 that is the point of his letter) is the same in respect of 
 ' worth ' and ' priesthood,' whether at Alexandria or Tanis. 
 Now the Council of Nicsa placed Tanis under the jurisdic- 
 tion of Alexandria. Therefore the Bishop of Alexandria 
 was superior to the Bishop of Tanis, except, as S. Jerome 
 says, in the common possession of the Sacerdotium. Did 
 S. Jerome contradict the Nicene Canons ? If not, what 
 bearing has the passage in question on the controversy 
 between Rome and England ? What has it to do with the 
 question of superiority of jurisdiction ? 
 
 Nothing. S. Jerome could, with perfect logical consis- 
 tency, repeat the passage in the same breath with which he 
 proclaimed the necessity of communion with the ' chair of 
 ' Peter.' Indeed, every Catholic does hold : (i) that Rome 
 and Alexandria, and Rhegium,and Tanis were equal in point 
 of a certain ' merit ' or worth — the Sacerdotium ; and (2) that 
 the See of Rome is the ' chair of Peter,' and is the proper 
 authority in settling matters of faith. In a word, Rome 
 holds to-day precisely what S. Jerome held in these two 
 letters. Anglicans misinterpret one, and oppose it to the 
 other. 
 
 If only they would ask themselves, when they imagine 
 
Appendix 
 
 243 
 
 S. Jerome to be speaking of the authority of the See, which 
 of the Popes during S. Jerome's Hfetime could be supposed 
 to sympathise with the custom that had grown up amongst 
 the city clergy, they would surely see the absurdity of sup- 
 posing that S. Jerome is speaking of the See, and not simply 
 of the city of Rome. Will anyone suppose that Damasus 
 approved of such a custom ? or that Siricius, or Anastasius, 
 or Innocent, or Zosimus, or Boniface, would have sympa- 
 thised with it ? We know enough of each of them to say 
 that the supposition is absurd. Then why speak of S. Jerome 
 being pressed with the authority of the See ? or why quote 
 the passage as bearing in any way on the jurisdiction or 
 authority of Rome ? It is the authority of a local custom, 
 which practically ignored the essential equality of all bishops 
 and of all priests, in the possession of the power to make 
 the Body of Christ. It has nothing to do with the relation 
 of superiority or subordination between the several sees in 
 point of jurisdiction. Every bishop, whether he occupies 
 the See of Rome (and governs the Church as the Vicar of 
 Christ), or whether he occupies the subordinate See of 
 Eugubium, (which was in the metropolitical jurisdiction of 
 Rome), whether at Alexandria (to which the Nicene Canons 
 secured its existing rights over the other sees of Egypt), or at 
 Tanis (which was one of the Egyptian sees) — every bishop, 
 and therefore every priest, has precisely the same power of 
 making the Body and Blood of Christ. A)id therefore a 
 priest is everywhere above a deacon. This is all that S. 
 Jerome asserts. And the worldwide way of expressing this 
 in social life ought, he says, to weigh against the bad custom 
 of one city. And, we may be sure S. Damasus, the Pope, 
 would say the same. 
 
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