iinvj.'wm BX 5098 . H8 1923 Hunter, Aylmer Douglas T. England's reawakening * ENGLAND’S REAWAKENING Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2019 with funding from Princeton Theological Seminary Library https://archive.org/details/englandsreawakenOOhunt A few \ words on the history of Anglo - Catholicism , and its attitude to¬ wards the prospect of a future reunion BY AYLMER HUNTER ( M.A . Oxon, Baryister-at-Law, Innev Temple) PREFACE BY His Grace The Duke of Argyll NEW YORK : E. P. DUTTON AND COMPANY, 681 FIFTH AVENUE. PREFACE The author of this work has asked me to say a few words in preface to it. I had the pleasure of reading it before I left London, and it struck me that it might be of more than passing interest to many who, whatever their chief interests in life may be, are probably interested in what is one of the subjects of the day — the Anglo-Catholic Movement, which, whilst it has received such an impetus from the con¬ ditions left by the Great War, is but the orderly and perfectly natural development of that wonderful awakening of the Church which the Oxford Movement of the early part of Victoria’s reign initiated, no little of whose strength is now to be found in the sister University of Cambridge. At the time of the death of the last Arch¬ bishop of Cologne (Cardinal Hartman), the Cologne Post , in a fine passage, pointed out how “ the great Sees of Western Christendom are to-day our closest and most living link with 6 PREFACE the past that made Europe and made us. Dynasties have risen and fallen, three empires crumbled before our eyes but as yesterday, but the dynasties of the bishops of Europe con¬ tinue. This is no time for commonplaces on the newness, the modernity, of kings compared to the majestic line of the bishops of Rome, but it is well to remember that all up and down Western Europe such lines so deeply rooted in the past of men survive and bind us with our forefathers.” It is increasingly felt by many that one of the chief agents in the pacification of the bickering nationalisms of Europe should be the Catholic Church, and that this result will be immensely hastened when the divisions between the Eastern and Western Patriarchates, and our own separation from the Western Church, shall have been healed or, at the least, so modified that intercommunion will be ren¬ dered once more possible. For whatever future may be in store for the ancient Patriarchate of the East and the other auto¬ cephalous Churches linked closely or loosely to it (after the present period of its atrocious PREFACE 7 and despicable persecution in Russia is over) it is impossible not to see how far more firmly the Patriarchate of the West under the bishops of Rome interpenetrates the various nation¬ alities in her obedience, whilst in others, such as Holland, she (owing to the existence of Modernism, a general loosening of doctrinal standards and actual unbelief amongst Cal¬ vinists and Lutherans), is recovering her once- lost ground in a manner which a century ago would have seemed impossible. Seekers after some supra-national authority have, according to their mental bias, turned to a League of Nations, or to an international communistic nightmare such as has led to the undoing of Russia, whilst all the time at their very elbow lies that vast organisation, the Catholic Church, with its roots like the Ash Ygdrasil of Norse mythology, striking deep into the pasts of every Western race in pos¬ session of all those historic sanctions which no new-born League can be possessed of. For no one, not even the most temerarious, should presume to lay aside the experience, as stored up through the centuries, of the Church. 8 PREFACE The Rev. E. M. Milner-White, of King’s College, Cambridge, in his excellent paper on Christian Unity in the Report of the First Anglo-Catholic Congress, 1920, has pointed out that “ unity ” is a deeper and a different matter, “ and is not the same thing as reunion or inter¬ communion.” He points out the fact of a deep underlying, actually existing unity between Rome and Canterbury now , which is so dangerously under¬ estimated and misunderstood, that he wants to emphasise it. “ For it is a living power which has survived the starvation and isolation of three centuries, and daily grows stronger.” First, as he points out, “ there is the unity of history. The Church of Rome and the Church of England start with 1,500 years of identical history, an identical tradition. Both com¬ munions value this past with a right and splendid pride ; both use it, both habitually do that wise and unpopular thing, look back. . . . For us, as for Rome, this coincident past is a beloved teacher and guide.” He touches on various other points of unity, such as the character of our respective PREFACE 9 liturgies both staunchly sacramental, both capable of carrying, “ if desired, an essentially similar ceremonial.” “ Now the influence of liturgies tells over long spaces of time with amazing power. They represent and guard and mould through the centuries the deepest holiest moments in the life of Holy Church. These moments Rome and we share every day.” Later on in his paper Mr. Milner-White reminds his readers of an historical fact which is far too frequently lost sight of, viz., “ That the Church of Rome, a few years after the Reformation in England, radically reformed herself ; that is to say, the whole Western Church submitted to a Reformation not only in England, although in point of time England had a slight lead. Every Christian communion in existence, except, perhaps, the Eastern Church, is a ‘ reformed ’ one.” As Figgis has said in his Civilisation at the Cross Roads (pp. 212-13), in speaking of the Mass : " There are elements in the doctrine, in the devotion, in the ritual, even in vestment and 10 PREFACE gesture which sway us with the accumulated force of all the generations who have used them and help us to share in ‘ the long result of time.’ ... A man who takes part in a high celebration of the Eucharist is a witness and a sharer in the unity of history. In this worship he is carried back through many ages, breath¬ ing climates older than the Christian, and he, a modern, is at one with primitive man and also has the promise of the future. ... In England in the past we have been too ' pro¬ vincial/ and we do well to lend all honour to those who are striving to restore in all their touching and immemorial beauty certain age¬ long notes of Catholic faith, notably those which have to do with the Communion of Saints. All this may be held with the widest allowance for difference in local custom and national feeling, no less than for the individual tempera¬ ments, which are not intended all to emphasise the same aspects of faith and worship/’ Argyll. Inver ary Castle , Argyll. On the Feast of S. Gorcanwald Bp. Conf., 1923. (April 30.) FOREWORD The following few pages are not written by a scholar, and they are not intended primarily for scholars to read. They are intended for those laymen of the Church of England (to whom the comprehensive soubriquet of “ man in the street ” has been for some strange reason applied) who have not the time nor inclination either to wade through long ex¬ cerpts from the Early Fathers, or to analyse the workings of those European polities which paved the way for the Elizabethan Settlement ; and yet are puzzled by the attitude of that powerful body in the Church to-day which is called Anglo-Catholic, but which they regard either as a half-hearted compromise between Romanism and Protestantism or else as a dangerous innovation tending rapidly Rome- war ds. They are intended to show that the Cathol¬ icism of Anglicans is not a compromise with doctrine, but a conformity with truth ; not a 12 FOREWORD sudden innovation, but a historic revival ; not a breach with the traditional Christianity of England, but a continuation of the tradition of her baptism by S. Augustine — a tradition which, centuries before the manufacture of Protestantism or the development of Ultra- montanism from which Romanism, as it is defined to-day, traces its evolution, bound all Christendom together in a common religion, commanded and ordained by its Divine Founder, which, from its universal character, came to be called Catholic, and which it is the aim of the Anglican Catholics to restore. This aim may be likened to a golden thread running through the tangled skein of con¬ troversy. The man in the street is frankly bored by controversy, and feels it is time that the skein were unravelled. It is not so much that he is bored by the birth at Bethlehem as puzzled by the attitude of Christians towards it. Instinctively he wants to get back to Bethlehem — to discover the manger for him¬ self ; but he has been told to seek it in so many different places that he is tempted to abandon the search as hopeless. FOREWORD *3 He had, indeed, almost done so — when there happened an interesting historical interlude ; Moscow elected to take the matter in hand, and sent out a clarion call to Christendom. “ Bethlehem no longer exists ! ” it trumpeted ; and for the moment this seemed to simplify matters. But Moscow was not contented with that : in order to demonstrate more clearly that Bethlehem was not, it proclaimed a violent war upon Bethlehem. “ Face facts ! ” was its ukase to the man in the street ; and when he found himself confronted by the fact of Christ, it told him that it was not a fact but a fable. When he found himself confronted with the fact of civilisation, it told him that it was a fact which must be destroyed. When he found himself confronted with the task of destruction, it told him that he could not destroy the fact until he had first of all destroyed the fable. But this was too much for the man in the street : if Bethlehem was the pivot on which civilisation still rested, it must have some place on the map after all. If it were 14 FOREWORD impossible to upset the fact of civilisation until one had first got rid of the fable of Christ, it seemed to him that the fable must be greater than the fact — that the paradoxes of a dog¬ matic negation were as bewildering as the controversies of an affirmative faith. This is the problem to-day of the man in the street : if he is to profess a faith which must be affirmative, by what authority is he to affirm it ? And if he is prepared to accept such authority, how is he to be sure that it is divinely appointed ? It is only the confident belief that he who seeks will ultimately find ; that, if he be single- minded enough to inhibit all cynicism, the Holy Spirit will guide him into all truth ; and that in the meantime the Divine blessing will sanctify his seeking, which can justify the writing of this little book. For, when on a subject such as this, one rushes into print, one’s responsibility before God must be very great. Aylmer Hunter. London , April , 1923. England’s Reawakening “The Reformation in England was mainly a domestic affair, a national protest against national grievances, rather than part of a cosmopolitan movement towards doctrinal change. It originated in political exigences, local and not universal in import, and was the work of kings and statesmen . . . rather than divines. ... Its effect was to make the Church in England the Church of England — a national Church.” In these few words the chief causes and tendencies of the English Reformation are aptly summarised. They are to be found on pp. 478-79 of Vol. II. of the Cambridge Modern History , a compendious work in twelve vol¬ umes, planned under the editorship of the late Lord Acton, a great historian, an erudite scholar, and a son of the Holy Roman Church. A few pages later, in reference to the so-called Elizabethan Settlement, we read : “ One point is clear. The Henriquan Anglo- 15 16 ENGLAND’S REAWAKENING Catholicism was dead and buried. ... In distant days its spirit might arise from the tomb ; but not yet.” How, why and when its spirit did arise it is the object of the following few pages to show ; and I cannot see why the admission that, for a space, its body was regarded as dead and buried can, in the light of Calvary, be thought to cast any doubt on its truth. Indeed, the very phrase, “ the Henriquan Anglo-Catholicism ” must sound strange to those who condemn this Catholicism as modern in its growth, and roundly abuse it as un- English in its tendency. Modern it is not ; un-English it may be : but so, for the matter of that, was Christ. Bethlehem was far from the sound of Bow bells ; and Henry, though possibly in some degree by marriage akin to them, can hardly, I think, be reckoned among the Modernists. Yet before Henry was, this Catholicism was ; and if for a space it was entombed with him, we must remember that its Founder was accounted dead also, and rose again on the third day. But before we consider this Catholic ENGLAND’S REAWAKENING 17 Christianity, what laid its spirit, and what raised it up again, let us look for a moment at Christianity to-day. I suppose most people in Europe, and a few millions out of it, call themselves Christians ; and that at once raises the question — the most perplexing question of modern times — What is a Christian ? Mr. Chesterton says, some¬ where : “Sometimes a Christian means an Evangelical. Sometimes, and more recently, a Christian means a Quaker. And sometimes a Christian means a modest person who thinks he bears a resemblance to Christ/5 Nearly two thousand }Tears ago the question was asked, “ What is truth ? 55 To-day, and in much the same spirit, the question is being asked, “ What is Christianity ?” Sometimes rather cynically ; sometimes, and more often, a little bit wistfully ; sometimes by the atheist, sometimes by the agnostic, this question is being asked a thousand times a day. And, as a rule, the reply is given : “ Well, you see, my view of Christianity is this . . .” And then, if he be in earnest, the inquirer retorts : “ But I don’t want your view of Christianity ; B i8 ENGLAND’S REAWAKENING I want to know what Christianity is” The poor little Christian finds himself cornered ; and that being his standpoint, he can only reply : “I can’t tell you more of Christianity than Christianity as I view it. If you want anything more, go to the Bishop of London and get his views, and to the Bishop of Liver¬ pool and get his, and from among them all form your own.” Then the atheist, if he be also a logical atheist, will remain in his atheism, or turn his attention to the study of Buddhism. And I don’t see how anyone can have the presumption to blame him. Now, if Christianity is true, Christianity is Truth ; and that being so, it is something concrete, definite, and unchangeable. It is something big outside ourselves — positive, and very, very definite, to which we can turn for help and guidance in shaping our daily lives. It is not something vague and pliable within ourselves which can be shaped to the individual inclination and temperament. Christianity is greater than man ; man is not greater than Christianity. The Christian did not create Christianity (though several have ENGLAND’S REAWAKENING 19 had shots at various forms of it), Christianity created the Christian. And when people talk of their view of Christianity, and Jones’s view of Christianity, they unconsciously imply that Christianity is this faith for this person, and that faith for that person, and something quite different for somebody else. In other words, that it is the man who moulds the Faith, not the Faith that moulds the man. But Christianity is a concrete whole, and must be viewed as a concrete whole. We hear a great deal about viewing Christianity from different angles, as though that can change the character of Christianity. Christ in New York is just the same person as Christ in London or Saskatchewan ; or (by analogy) if an astronomer in New York sees the Great Bear, he sees the Great Bear ; when he sees it from London he does not think it a little Bear, or from India that it looks like a lioness. And when people talk of viewing Christianity from different angles, they mean that they concentrate their view on different angles of Christianity. They see the part, and they think they understand the whole. But they 20 ENGLAND’S REAWAKENING don’t. They do not even understand the part, for the whole meaning of the part is the way it falls into line with the whole. It is like trying to weave a science of botany from a study of only English plant-life. For a science is a universal thing, and Christianity is the greatest of all the sciences, and Christianity is universal. Now a Catholic means simply an adherent of a universal and visible Church, which he believes to have been founded, and its constitution outlined, by Christ Himself. He believes that the value Christ placed on its conception is emphasised and exemplified by the number of times He referred to His Church, or Ecclesia, as recorded in the gospels. He believes that unless Christ had intended a visible Society, He would not have insisted on its membership being instituted by visible rites. The con¬ ception of the Invisible Church, dwelling with¬ in the hearts of mankind, so dear to the minds of Calvin and Zwingli, though rejected by their followers, is hard to reconcile with the fact that in all Christ’s parables regarding the Church, His similes are always of a visible ENGLAND’S REAWAKENING 21 nature. (Men do not, for instance, have nets, or grains of mustard seed dwelling in their hearts.) He believes that Christ endowed His disciples and their successors with an unequiv- ocable and ever-living mandate ; and since the work of the Church was clearly not limited to the lifetime of Christ, he cannot see why the powers or authority conferred on the disciples should be deemed to be limited to their life-time either. He believes that Christ’s words, “ Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world,” is a guarantee that the true and united Church shall be preserved from false doctrine ; and the very fact that the man who neglects to hear the Church is to be regarded as a heathen and a publican, presupposes that the Church will tell him the truth. It seems, indeed, somewhat derogatory to the Godhead to assume that an all-merciful Providence will condemn a man for not listening to the voice of the Church if that voice is liable to be impregnated with error. Thus, to the Catholic, the authority of the Church is of vital importance ; and since true authority can only proceed from unity — from 22 ENGLAND’S REAWAKENING the whole body, and not from one limb as distinct from another, far less from one limb as at war with another, to the multiplication of divers conflicting authorities — it follows that unity must be the paramount Catholic ideal. And this ideal, I venture to think, is in its practical efforts towards realisation more ap¬ parent on the Anglo-Catholic banners which the great Orthodox Church of the East have long since grown to recognise and respect, than anywhere else in the Christian world. Look at Protestantism ; look at Romanism. The one, while doing lip-service to unity, renounces that authority which alone can preserve it ; and the other checks all approach to unity by maintaining that an authority usurped in 1871 was, by some peculiar process of retrospect, imposed on all Christendom by Christ Himself I But before I go any further let me make it quite clear that when I say the papal authority was usurped, or when I say anything else which I may find it necessary to say with regard to the Papacy in the past, I do not intend any¬ thing to be taken as personally, or in any way, offensive to his holiness Pope Pius XI., ENGLAND'S REAWAKENING 23 who, as Cardinal Ratti, was so universally beloved. All, indeed, who had the privilege of knowing him, either personally or by repute, regarded him with the greatest veneration and esteem, and his elevation to the highest office in Christendom was looked upon as the dawn of that great and ever-increasing hope — the hope of reunion. When I speak of the usurped authority of the Papacy I mean, as I hope to show in more detail later, that the conception of Papal Supremacy, which led the way to the doctrine of Papal Infallibility, has caused in practice a certain amount of rightful episcopal authority to be transferred from the bishops to the Pope, in that the exercise of such authority requires at certain times fresh powers from the Pope ; even more, as Lord Halifax so clearly points out, than the de fide teaching of Rome would seem to warrant. And so we look round on a divided Christen¬ dom — divided more sorely, perhaps, than ever before — until it almost seems as though God were angry, and, as once before He withdrew to Mount Sinai, so now He had withdrawn His 24 ENGLAND’S REAWAKENING authority from the Church. And yet we know His authority is there all the time, if only her members would join hands and receive it ; for in unity alone is it to be found. But before the Church of England can preach unity to a divided Christendom she herself must cease to be divided ; and happily, in the last half-century or more, a realisation of this, and of the Catholic nature of the Church has been steadily gaining ground. Churchmen feel, with an ever-increasing intensity, that although in the last four hundred years it has been im¬ possible always to use Christian and Catholic as synonymous terms, as it once was, the great historical truth remains that the fulness of Christianity, the plenitude of spiritual grace, the application to one’s daily life of the part by a knowledge of its relation to the whole, must always be synonymous with Catholicism. So often, for some reason, exception is taken to the word " Catholic.” Churchmen are asked why they must needs call themselves Catholic ; why they cannot be content with the simple word “ Christian.” They are very content with the word " Christian ” — though ENGLAND’S REAWAKENING 25 not always so content with the strange mean¬ ings applied to it — but the Christian ideal, surely, is to make Christianity universal ; and Catholic merely means universal. For fifteen hundred years after the death of Christ Catholicism was understood to mean the unity and universality of Christendom. A Catholic was a member of the universal Church, and because of its Universal character he came to be called a Catholic. He still calls himself a Catholic, for if the membership is not so universal as it once was, he feels that it should be. The ideal is the same, but the processes of history have retarded its fulfilment. There is no space here to go in any detail into those processes. The causes which led to the disruption of Christendom are a matter of history, and from history we are at liberty to form what view we will. Some think it was due to the corrupt state of the Church from the fourteenth century onwards ; others that it was due to the arrogance of the Re¬ formers in precipitating a breach. It may, however, be very reasonably doubted whether either of these views, as distinct from the 26 ENGLAND’S REAWAKENING other, can be historically justified. There were undoubtedly faults on both sides, as there have been in every dispute in history. The primary cause was, no doubt, the errors creep¬ ing in to the corrupt Roman hierarchy ; but it is not possible altogether to discount the impatient precipitancy of the Reformers. That in the matter of morals the Reformers had a good prima facie case against Rome cannot be doubted. By the most moderate it must be admitted that the private lives of the Roman hierarchy were ill in accord with the faith they professed. Even at that date the Vatican claimed sole jurisdiction over faith and morals, and once opportunity was given to throw stones at the morals, it was a very short step towards criticising the faith. All attempt at reform from within was steadily resisted, and the extravagances of the Vatican continued unchecked. To cause a breach in the Church, however, be¬ cause certain of her chief officers were leading un-Christian and immoral lives, and so, by their example, degrading the Christian life of the community, though doubtless to earnest- ENGLAND’S REAWAKENING 27 minded men a powerful temptation, can never pass muster as a justification. The Pope was human ; his office divine. Individual delin¬ quencies could not detract from the sanctity and authority of that office. To confuse the two was bad theology ; and on the laurels of this very logical argument the Vatican was perfectly contented to rest. The Reformers, however, asserted that there must be some¬ thing radically wrong to render such an anomaly possible ; that what were regarded as merely individual delinquencies, deplor¬ able enough in such high spiritual office, were subversive to doctrine as well as to morals ; that the Faith was being prostituted to facilitate such delinquencies ; and Martin Luther, at that time a devout son of the Church, quoted the “ sale of indulgences ” as a case in point. There can be no doubt that in the preceding centuries the conception of an indulgence had undergone a complete change. From the perfectly logical theory that the Church had the power to remit or commute canonical penances which the Church had in the first 28 ENGLAND’S REAWAKENING place imposed, had been evolved the idea of a Tresaurus Meritor urn, or treasury of merits. In this, it was claimed, were stored the in¬ exhaustible merits of Christ, and the super¬ fluous merits of the saints, which the Pope had power to dole out to the faithful. Hence the idea of a substitution of merits ; and this substitution, it was held, was not necessarily confined to this life. People believed that by “ buying an indulgence ” they were actually purchasing a remission of punishment in the world to come ; and from the thirteenth century onwards an indulgence a poena et a culpa was generally believed to free the sinner not only from the temporal punishment but from the actual guilt of sin. The fact that indulgences were so assidu¬ ously farmed under the Medici Pope, Leo X., whose pontificate was notorious for all the extravagant pomp and love of display which had always characterised the Medicean rule, certainly lends colour to the Reformers' conten¬ tion that the private life of the Pontiff had a very direct bearing on the religious life of the people at large. ENGLAND’S REAWAKENING 29 Be this as it may, however, it is a significant fact that the doctrine of indulgences, as in¬ terpreted by Rome, is rejected to-day, outside her jurisdiction, by Catholics both in East and West ; as is also the doctrine which the Popes, in the teeth of strong opposition and in defiance of the ruling of previous Councils, had by this time succeeded in establishing, and with which the Reformers joined violent issue — that the authority of the Church is vested in the Pope, independent of Councils, and that all Councils must necessarily be subordinate to him. Whether or no the Reformers realised that the establishment of Papal Supremacy was paving the way for a subsequent decree of Papal Infallibility, at this distance of time it is im¬ possible to say. The fact that the Ecumenical Council of Constantinople in the seventh century expressly included Pope Honorius, over forty years after his death, in the anathema directed against the Monothelite heretics, gives a clear indication that, at that time at any rate, the Pope was not regarded as superior to Council ; and the dissentient 30 ENGLAND’S REAWAKENING minority in the Vatican Council of 1870 ad¬ duced this as an argument against Infallibility. The de Unitate Ecclesice of Cyprian made it clear that the primacy of the Pope was only a primacy inter pares on the grounds that the bishops possessed an inchoate divine right to share in the government of the Church ; and it is worthy of remark that this divine right of the episcopate our Ecclesia Anglicana, through¬ out her long history, has always respected. On the Continent, however, it is idle to deny that the gradual aggrandisement, if I may use that word, of the power of the Papacy caused a corresponding diminution in the powers of the Episcopate. The very require¬ ment that for the continued exercise of Epis¬ copal Authority fresh powers have periodically to be applied for to the Holy See is tantamount to an admission that such Episcopal authority is deemed to be derived directly from the Holy See, instead of being inchoate in the Episcopate by divine prescription. It is convenient, I think, to refer to this matter in this place, and at the risk of an¬ ticipating, I do so with some emphasis because ENGLAND’S REAWAKENING 31 I feel it is one of the difficulties in the way of reunion which has to be faced, and, that being so, there is no use in glossing it over. The primacy of the Pope as first bishop in Christendom, by right of his descent from blessed Peter, Anglicans with one accord would gladly recognise ; and, by a parity of reasoning, there should be little hesitation, I think, in regarding His Holiness as the Church’s visible head, in so far as he was the Church’s official mouthpiece. If, in course of time, the Infallibility decree can be interpreted to mean that, after the whole Church in Council has found agreement on some grievous matter, the Pope’s subsequent official pronouncement to Christendom shall be accorded the stamp of infallibility, there seems no reason why the decree of 1871 should any longer stand in the way of reunion. It is, indeed, on lines such as these that I believe reunion will ultimately be reached. So many of the difficulties that divide us from Rome lend themselves so readily to readjust¬ ment — old truths clad in new language to meet the growing needs of Christendom — that 32 ENGLAND’S REAWAKENING one feels that the rightful position of the Episcopate will be found capable of readjust¬ ment also. There would, for instance, have to be some guarantee that Anglican bishops should retain undisturbed and undiminished that power and authority which we believe resides in the Episcopate as an inchoate divine right, and that there should be no danger, in course of time, of their becoming mere func¬ tionaries under the Pope. That this should have happened on the Continent, however, is hardly to be wondered at. It is the inevitable result of that gradual policy of over-centralisation which was so clearly evident in embryo in the centuries directly preceding the Reformation. And yet as late as 1430 the Council of Basle had con¬ firmed the decree sacrosancta of 1415 in which the Council of Constance had proclaimed that a general council assembled in the Holy Spirit, and representing the Catholic Church Militant, derived its power immediately from Christ, and was supreme over everyone in the Church, not even excluding the Pope. It will be seen, therefore, that in point of ENGLAND’S REAWAKENING 33 time Papal Supremacy was almost as novel a conception at the time of the Reformation as Papal Infallibility is to-day ; and although in a short sketch of the history of Anglo- Catholicism a discussion of the controversies which heralded the continental Reformation must for the most part be out of place, the few points of contact which exist between the attitude of the Reformers and the attitude of Anglican and Eastern Catholicism to-day makes a brief reference to those respective attitudes relevant. In the matter of indulgences, and in the question of the rightful allocation of authority, it must be admitted that the Reformers had a very good case ; and on these grounds their further contention that the abuses in conduct were in danger of involving errors in doctrine is certainly plausible. And if one can assume that they were so far justified, they would undoubtedly further have been justified in refusing to be associated with a hierarchy which they maintained had fallen into error. All they had to do was to affirm, as so large a part of Catholic Christendom affirms to-day, c 34 ENGLAND’S REAWAKENING that the Roman See was in schism, and remain quietly where they were. Their position then in the Church would have been clearly estab¬ lished : either Rome was in schism, or they were ; but in either case both were part of the Church. Unfortunately, however, they went further. Not content with reforming, they tried to create. They left the Church and founded sects, forgetting that only Christ can found a Church. Their activities were greatest in Germany, although France did not escape the arrogance of Calvin. We, in this country, were more for¬ tunate : though the record of those dark days does not leave an Englishman room for much pride. Yet whatsoever sins we committed, and God knows we committed enough, we did not commit the sin of apostacy — we did not secede from the body of the Church, although for the space of three centuries many of us be¬ haved very much as if we had. But, in order properly to understand what follows, it is necessary to get a right per¬ spective of Henry VIII.’s quarrel with the Pope. Whatever view we may take of Henry’s ENGLAND’S REAWAKENING 35 morals (and from the standpoint of his cynical contemporaries, even in this respect his chief offence was that he took very good care that he should be found out), there can be no doubt that he never regarded himself, and never intended himself to be regarded, as anything but a Catholic. Leo X. had conferred on him the title of “ Defender of the Faith,” and doubtless he thought that he defended it admirably. The quarrel which raged round his divorce, of which historians have made so much, was not a theological quarrel with the doctrine of the Church, but a personal quarrel with an unaccommodating prelate. He had wanted to marry his deceased brother’s widow, and Julius II. had been most obliging. Now in turn he wanted to get rid of her, and Cle¬ ment VII. proved suddenly obdurate. A dispensation had been granted in the one case : why should a dispensation be refused in the other ? Julius’s dispensation, granted on the con¬ venient assumption that the former marriage had never been consummated, Rome has made 36 ENGLAND'S REAWAKENING valiant efforts to justify. But two facts stand out clear. Even in that cynical age it was generally regarded as a distinct violation of canonical law ; and like so many other dis¬ pensations, obtained at that time with a like facility, the fact that it was granted at all was due solely to the dictates of political ex¬ pediency. Julius had troubles enough nearer home without wishing to incur the enmity of Henry ; so he stretched a point, and gave him a bride. But political expediency is a fickle jade. Having thrown Henry happily into the arms of his first bride, it did all in its power to obstruct him from his second. Principle was suddenly called into play — principle at the point of the bayonet. Before Clement could help Henry to get rid of Katharine he had to reckon with her nephew, the Emperor Charles ; and as Charles held Clement prisoner in the Castle of St. Angelo, it was not, perhaps, a very propitious moment. The Roman contention that Henry’s in¬ famous petition for divorce struck against the impregnable rock of S. Peter, sounds very well. ENGLAND’S REAWAKENING 37 The fact that the Emperor’s artillery was at the same time striking against the less im¬ pregnable bricks of St. Angelo may, of course, have been mere coincidence. If all such petitions had been treated likewise, one would be inclined to say that it was. That the Petrine rock should suddenly become impregnable under the custody of Clement, when it had proved so resilient under the custody of Julius, no doubt was irritating. That the same rock, under the same custody, should be impregnable to Henry, and at the same time resilient to Margaret, his sister, probably was even more irritating still. Margaret, that evil Queen of the Scots, secured her divorce from Angus with the greatest of ease, and it was only the eleventh- hour intervention of her son, King James, which prevented her third marriage, with Methven, being dissolved by Rome. And although all cases of marriages dissolved by papal dispensation have been carefully filed, and justification from the canon law filed with them (the compilation must have taken theolo¬ gians some time), one can quite understand 38 ENGLAND’S REAWAKENING Henry being angry. Indeed, it is difficult to get away from the fact that whenever ex¬ pediency favoured a dispensation, justification from the canon law was always forthcoming ; but whenever, as in this case, compliance would be dangerous, expediency found a convenient backing in principle. And even in the matter of Henry’s divorce, the cor¬ respondence of the time shows clearly that Clement would gladly have yielded the prin¬ ciple if he had not been compelled to yield to the Emperor. It is impossible, of course, to defend Henry’s morals, but one is forced to admit that his anger was human. He saw, and his vision was the vision of a united nation, that the Pope’s claim to spiritual supremacy was, at that time, merely a cloak for political interference.1 The Papal 1 The subsequent attempts of Mary, Queen of Scots, to usurp the throne of England is a case in point. How¬ ever much on sentimental grounds we may regret her execution, there can be no doubt that on political grounds Elizabeth was justified in giving her reluctant consent to it. Indeed, the very fact that her consent was so long delayed, and was given in the end as reluctantly as it was, does Elizabeth the utmost credit. On moral grounds there are many who argue that Mary Stuart was better out of the world than in it, and maintain that an English jury would have given a similar verdict ENGLAND’S REAWAKENING 39 Supremacy, though from time to time enforced in this country, had never been regarded as de fide by the Ecclesia Anglicana in the same way that it was gradually being accepted on the Continent. The reason is not far to seek. On the Continent the papal claims were sup¬ ported by the temporal power. The sharpness of the pontifical sword commanded respect in her case to the one lately given in the case of Mrs. Thom¬ son ; but since Mary, being a Scottish queen, could in no way be subject to the civil law of England, all such hypotheses must necessarily be irrelevant. The sole case for Elizabeth was that Mary coveted the throne of England, and her continued existence was a perpetual menace to it. How real this menace actually was is shown by the fact that there are some people to-day who assert that Mary, not Elizabeth, was in the rightful line of succession — and this, presumably, because the Pope had declared Elizabeth to be illegitimate. This, in retrospect, is highly significant, showing, as it does, that the English people's fear of papal interference in the political life of England was not merely the out¬ come of a distraught imagination. By the law of England Elizabeth was the legitimate daughter of Henry VIII., and, as by law established, his rightful successor to the throne of England. She was as much our Sovereign Lady the Queen as King George is our Sovereign Lord the King. If the Pope did not choose to recognise her, that was his affair. But if he chose to take it upon himself to declare her illegitimate, and so incite an alien queen to usurp her throne, it seems rather illogical to condone that queen's action and condemn those who exacted the penalty she had to pay for it. Equally illogical it is to call the English people un¬ reasonable or wicked for thinking it politically expedient to keep the Pope at a respectful distance. It was merely the instinct of self-preservation. 40 ENGLAND’S REAWAKENING for the pontifical tiara. In the reverberation of European wars, in the exchange and mart of European politics, the Papacy was in a position to command concessions. But Eng¬ land was protected by her island coast. Yet, even on the Continent, at various times and with varying success, Catholic princes had resisted papal aggression. Henry’s attitude, then, was no new de¬ parture. When he asserted that an Italian prelate could have no jurisdiction over Catholic England, he merely, in so far as the independence of the episcopate was concerned, relegated the Pope to his rightful position. When he insisted on his being referred to as the Bishop of Rome, he was reverting to the earliest historical precedent. Clement also reverted to historical precedent (though not such an early one) when he excommunicated Henry in the same way that his predecessor had ex¬ communicated John. But the historical prece¬ dent went no further. John had been in¬ timidated by fear of France, and that is where Clement miscalculated : he confused a sub¬ mission to fear with a submission to faith. ENGLAND’S REAWAKENING 41 But Henry, although a despot, was, perhaps without knowing it, more truly representative of the popular will than the craven John could ever have been ; and, with all his faults, he was no coward. He snapped his fingers, none too politely, in the face of the Pope ; he freed his people, and especially the episcopate, from an authority which he maintained was usurped, and ordered their Catholicism to continue, in its essence, unchanged. Whether he was right or whether he was wrong, there can be no doubt that he had a united nation behind him. Whatever his mistakes — and he made many — there can be no doubt that he had had great provocation ; and the practically unanimous popular acclamation of his act shows that it was a provocation shared by the whole realm. To say that all the faults were on one side is ridiculous ; to apportion the blame with a strict nicety of fairness is well-nigh impossible, and in a work like the present quite out of place. But, without wishing to vindicate Henry VIII., or enter into a profitless defence of his actions, even where those actions were 42 ENGLAND'S REAWAKENING clearly defensible, one can safely rely on history as a witness when one states definitely that the regrettable quarrel between Henry and the Pope in no way robbed Ecclesia Anglicana of her birthright of faith or her heritage as a part of the great Church Catholic. The Henri quan Anglo-Catholicism, indeed, was in its inception in accordance with the earliest religious tradi¬ tions of the country. That gradually it be¬ came more and more diluted with Protestantism was, as the Cambridge Modern History so justly says, the work of politicians rather than of divines. But it was chiefly the work of a Roman Catholic queen. At the time of Henry's death England could still be reckoned as a Catholic country ; and followers of the Continental Reformation had to choose between silence and the stake. That his successor should have been a young and delicate boy, at the mercy of unscrupulous guardians, was a national calamity. Yet the first Prayer Book of Edward VI. was essentially a Catholic compilation. That the second Prayer Book was not so happy was due to the corrupt influence and political machinations ENGLAND’S REAWAKENING 43 of Northumberland, who was so utterly callous on all matters connected with religion that, after doing his best to Protestantise the Prayer Book, he died professing himself a Roman Catholic in a belated attempt to escape the scaffold. But the spirit of Catholicism was still so strong in the instincts of the people that it is doubtful if this compilation would have stood the test of time, and formed the basis of the one which replaced it in Elizabeth's reign, if, in the meantime, the country had not been subjected to a martyr¬ dom, tyranny and oppression which made it hail the Elizabethan Settlement as a charter of freedom from a bondage unbearable. It may sound a paradox, but it is none the less a truism, that the introduction of Pro¬ testantism into the Church in England was not, in the main, the work of the Protestants. That almost incredible feat must be placed primarily to the credit of Rome. It was Mary, not Cranmer, who kindled such a torch in this country that it would never be put out. And that torch branded on the hearts of her people such a detestation of Rome, and all 44 ENGLAND’S REAWAKENING things connected with Rome, that it is perhaps not to be wondered at that, in the blind passion of their reaction, they had not in all things a just discrimination. History has been hard on Mary Tudor, as history will always be hard on those who make their memory a thing of fear ; and so, with the inevitable swing of the pendulum, biographers now vie with each other in their zeal to white¬ wash her. Elizabeth, we are told gravely, burnt as many, if not more people than Mary — utterly regardless of the fact that the former had over half a century to do it in, whereas Mary reigned only for six short years. That is the whole difference beween a battle and a massacre. And yet this poor woman’s life was such a tragedy, her upbringing provides so many extenuating circumstances, that one wonders why a mistaken sense of chivalry should produce in her defence such pitiable paliatives. Most of us, I suppose, are familiar with that grotesque fable, so characteristic of a certain type of propaganda, that the Church of England was instituted because Henry VIII. ENGLAND’S REAWAKENING 45 wanted a new wife ; and Mary doubtless was schooled to believe that her mother was put away because Henry wanted to change his religion. The true reason that he did not in any way want to change his religion, but that he wanted very much to change his wife, and so secure a male heir to the throne, though not in itself a more laudable motive, nor one likely to find favour with Katharine's daughter, would not perhaps have been so calculated to inspire her with that insensate bigotry and bitterness against the opponents of her mother’s religion which was destined to dominate her whole life. This bitterness was augmented by her every environment, until it grew to be a positive obsession. The persecution to which she was subjected during her brother’s minority, though mild in comparison with the persecution she subse¬ quently meted out to others, was scarcely conducive to softening this bitterness ; and her cold-blooded husband, Philip of Spain, did all in his ill-omened power to quicken it. And so this embittered, disappointed, un¬ loved and unlovely woman — bigoted, and 46 ENGLAND’S REAWAKENING barren of all human sympathy ; cruel, and yet in a fierce way conscientious — devoted a reign of six years to burning men’s bodies in order, as she believed, to save their souls. Whatever excuses may be offered, however extenuating the circumstances, the harm she did both to her cause and her country is incalculable. If the word “ Calais ” was branded on her heart when she died, “no popery’’ was branded on the hearts of her people. In letters of blood she signed the death-warrant of her faith in this country, and the only sovereign who attempted to reimpose it again was exiled before he had measured quite half her reign. So much for Roman Catholicism ; but what of the Henriquan Anglo-Catholicism ? Certainly, as the Cambridge Modern History says, its spirit was laid in the tomb ; but was there a chance left to it of resurrection in the future ? In other words, did we follow the Continental Reformers and secede from the Church ; or did we, despite the many errors into which we fell, still remain a part of the great Church Catholic ? When we consider the Elizabethan Settle- ENGLAND’S REAWAKENING 47 ment the truth is forced upon us that the reaction against Rome, inevitable though it was after the preceding reign of terror, was accompanied by a reaction against much else that was Catholic ; and so violent was the swing of the pendulum that the Maryan bishops reaffirmed the Roman allegiance of the previous six years, and departed in a body. But it so happened that some of the bishops who had been bishops in England when the Church was undivided remained bishops in England when England was divided from the more powerful part of the Church in Rome. Thus it was possible to carry on the episcopate without any breach in the apostolic suc¬ cession ; for the machinery was there ready to hand. It is obviously impossible here to investigate detail in the rights and wrongs of the con¬ troversy, still from time to time resuscitated in certain Roman quarters, regarding the validity of A\nglican orders, Archbishop Parker’s consecration, the Nag’s Head fable, and the like. Rome, it would seem, is the only part of Christendom to-day which has 48 ENGLAND’S REAWAKENING any scruples about admitting that our orders are valid ; and even among our Roman brethren there is reason to believe that these scruples are by no means unanimously held. The great Orthodox Church has long since, in her relations with Anglicans, very practically shown that she, at any rate, entertains no doubts in the matter ; and one can only hope that the recent pronouncements from Con¬ stantinople 1 and Jerusalem will be followed by a similar pronouncement from Rome. There is, however, abundant literature on both sides for those who are interested in the question ; and anyone who still entertains doubts on the subject would do well to study it. 1 On July 22nd, 1922, the Holy Synod of the (Ecu¬ menical Patriarchate in Constantinople passed a Declara¬ tion (the Declaration of Constantinople) accepting the validity of Anglican orders. The (Ecumenical Patriarch, Meletios IV, thereupon sent an encyclical letter to the other patriarchs, a translation of which was published in full in the Church Times on September 8th, 1922. The concluding paragraph ran as follows : “ Our Holy Synod, therefore, came to an opinion accept¬ ing the validity of the Anglican priesthood, and has decided that its conclusion should be announced to the other Holy Orthodox Churches, in order that occasion might be given them also to express their opinion, so that the mind of the orthodox world on this important question might be known.” As a result of this letter, Mgr. Damianos, Orthodox ENGLAND’S REAWAKENING 49 I will, then, merely say in passing that since England, unlike Scotland, still preserved the Episcopal form of government, and with it all those sacerdotal offices which alone can make an administration of the sacraments possible, the care taken to preserve these offices would seem rather purposeless unless accompanied by an intention that they should be valid ; and since the machinery was clearly there where¬ with to hand on the Catholic continuity un¬ broken, there is, quite apart from the historical evidence to that effect, a strong presumption that this machinery was brought into play. History affords us ample evidence that it was, but even if history were silent on the subject, Patriarch of Jerusalem, has since sent a communication addressed “ To His Grace the Archbishop of Canterbury, First Hierarch of all England, our most beloved and dear brother in our Lord Jesus Christ, Mgr. Randall,” which was received by the Archbishop in March of this year. In the course of this letter His Holiness states that “ the Holy Synod of Our Patriarchate . . . after examining this question under our presidency from all its aspects, resolved that the consecration of bishops and ordination of priests and deacons of the Anglican Episcopal Church are considered by the Orthodox Church as having the same validity which the orders of the Roman Church have, because there exist all the elements which are considered necessary from an orthodox point of view for the recognition of the grace of the Holy Orders from Apostolic Succession. ” D 50 ENGLAND’S REAWAKENING I should still maintain that, in the absence of evidence of any contrary intention, it is for Rome to rebut this presumption by proof to the contrary ; and this she has not so far succeeded in doing. Our continuity, then, with the old Church remained unbroken ; the only breach was with one schismatic part of it which has usurped to itself, as a part, an authority which we main¬ tained could only be vested in the Church as a whole. Our priests remained true priests, and our bishops remained true bishops. The sacraments were safeguarded to us ; and there seemed no reason why the religious life of the people should not continue as before the Maryan interregnum. The pity is that history will not let us leave it at that. The intentions were so good — the results so bad. Mary Tudor had burnt into us such a hatred of Rome, which was only equalled by our loathing of Spain, at that time Rome’s most active secular champion, that by an almost unavoidable concatenation of ideas we looked from the Spanish Armada to the Spanish Inquisition, from the Spanish ENGLAND'S REAWAKENING 51 Inquisition to the Roman See that sanctioned it, from Roman Catholicism to Catholicism generally — and vowed that we would have none of these things. And because Rome was more powerful, and Roman Catholics more plentiful, we got it into our muddle-headed English minds that anything Catholic must necessarily be pa¬ pist. Rome was Catholic, therefore Catholic was Rome : we lumped them together, and loathed them both. We not only stripped ourselves of the errors of Rome, we stripped ourselves of many of the truths of Catholicism. From the fear of being forced to believe too much we fell into the fallacy of believing too little. It almost seemed, indeed, as though we had fallen out of the frying-pan into the fire ; but in reality that puts it just the wrong way round : we left the fire and fell into a very hot frying- pan — not a comfortable place into which to fall. But where the fire would have consumed us, the frying-pan only singed us — singed us of many of the truths of Catholicism. The spirit of this Catholicism did, it is true, make one or two spasmodic and ineffectual attempts to raise itself from the tomb into which 52 ENGLAND’S REAWAKENING Mary had relegated it ; but the history of the country did not give it a chance. On the devastating details of that history, where space is so circumscribed, it is impossible to dwell. One cannot explore every inch of the road : one can only point to a few of the milestones. And those milestones stand out clear, recording a strange conspiracy of circumstances of which it is sometimes said in extenuation that they helped to make England what it is. It may be doubted, however, whether this is alto¬ gether a cause for rejoicing. The Crom¬ wellian visitation ; the martyrdom of Arch¬ bishop Laud ; the juxtaposition of Roman Catholicism to European politics ; the illogical, but, considering what the country had suffered, the not-altogether-unnatural, belief that any spiritual trend in the direction of Catholicism was but a cunningly-devised stepping-stone towards the dreaded political domination of Rome ; a fresh taste of the perils of such domination under James II. ’s ill-starred reign ; liberation in the person of a Protestant prince, who, having freed England finally from the thraldom of Rome, as his grandsire had freed ENGLAND’S REAWAKENING 53 Holland from the cruel yoke of Spain, brought all the stern traditions of a Protestant house, the redoubtable house of Orange-Nassau, to the English throne which he shared with a Stuart queen ; and then a long dynasty of Hanoverian Protestants — all these things mili¬ tated against us, until it would seem that only by a miracle could the spirit of Catholicism rise up again. And then, quite suddenly, the miracle happened — if, indeed, one can account it a miracle that when God has deposited His Truth in a Church, no power of man can cause it to perish. Its manifestations may be obscured for a space, and in England they most certainly were ; but this must almost inevitably be the case when religion is so inextricably interwoven with politics, and when a country passes through those political vicissitudes which for so long reacted on the religious life of England. It is true that we did not use all the sacra¬ ments that were our heritage, and those which we did use we did not understand ; but it is also true, and so significant that it cannot be 54 ENGLAND’S REAWAKENING regarded as mere accident, that as soon as the political position of the country was more stabilised, and the fear of Rome had receded a little more into the background — as soon, in a word, as the religious life was free to take its course without reference to international complications and alliances — the spirit of Catholicism emerged from the tomb where it had been keeping such an anxious and im¬ patient vigil. For three hundred years that vigil was kept ; and then, getting on for a century ago, a movement began in the University of Oxford. Of the men of that movement — Pusey, Newman,1 Keble, and many others — it 1 The great service which Newman rendered to the Anglican community is apt to be minimised in the light of his subsequent defection to Rome ; but this is illogical, and very unjust. It has been said, indeed, that to the end he remained an Anglican at heart. The statement is sweeping, but like many of its kind, it contains within it a modicum of truth. Whatever brand of Catholicism Newman’s was, it very definitely was not the Catholicism of the Ultramontane Romanist : it was pre- tridentine rather than post-tridentine, and as such it certainly bore a closer spiritual analogy to the Anglican attitude than to the Roman. Newman’s outlook was pre-tridentine, but his environment was post-tridentine ; and this possibly explains the fact that though as an Anglican his intellect was free, as a Roman he found it continually in fetters. Those fetters imposed by an intolerant authority, even ENGLAND’S REAWAKENING 55 is not necessary to speak ; their work speaks for them. That movement was called the “ Oxford Movement ” ; now it is something much more than a movement, and something very much greater than Oxford. It may almost be called England’s Reawakening. Very briefly, and in popular phraseology, this was its argument : Every member of the Church of England repeats every Sunday, piously, in the creed : “ I believe in the Holy Catholic Church.” It seems rather incon¬ sistent that, when he comes out of church, he should damn Catholicism, and call himself a Protestant. But the trouble lies very much deeper than that. The individual Churchman when he was a prince of the Church, his spirit revolted against. In his own words, it “ puts a great obex upon my writing ” ; and he likens this constant interference with his opinion to “ the pat of a lion’s paw.” " This age of the Church is peculiar,” writes Newman ; “in former times, primitive or medieval, there was not the extreme centralisation which is now in force. If a private theologian said anything free, another answered him. . . . Now, if I as a private priest put anything into print, propaganda answers me at once. How can I fight with such a chain on my arm ? It is like the Persians driven to fight under the lash ! There was true private judgment in the primitive and medieval schools ; there are no schools now, no private judgment (in the religious sense of the phrase), no freedom, that is, of opinion. There is no exercise of the intellect.” — Life of Newman, by Wilfred Ward, vol. i., p. 588. < 56 ENGLAND’S REAWAKENING may call himself Protestant as much as he likes. He may, if he chooses, call himself a Pragmatist. But that cannot prevent the Church he belongs to being, by continuity and sequence, an integral part of the Great Church Catholic. Because the Reformers disassociated them¬ selves, very rightly, from the errors and excesses of the Medicis and Borgias in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, why should they also have disassociated themselves from the teaching of S. Francis of Assisi in the twelfth ? That teaching and doctrine had continued unchanged from the earliest recorded times, as we can read for ourselves in the extant writings of the Early Fathers. There is not a denomination calling itself Christian which does not look back with reverence and wonder to the piety of the lives in the primitive Church. Is it not possible that the piety of their lives was in some measure due to the truth of their doctrine ? They were clearly very much nearer to the time of Christ in the second and third centuries than we are to-day. Is it not possible, also, that they were nearer to the mind of Christ than ENGLAND’S REAWAKENING 57 either the Reformers of the sixteenth century or ourselves of the nineteenth ? But, we are told, living so long ago, they must necessarily have been ignorant and superstitious men — nearly as ignorant as the disciples of Christ. If we, in our modern evolution and wisdom, have progressed so far from them, we must still further have pro¬ gressed from Christ. If the century we live in is the standard of faith, Christ was clearly behind the times. But if we believe that God, and His incarna¬ tion in Christ, is behind the times in a different sense, is the Precursor and Creator of all time, must we not, in all honesty and humility, reflect upon the history of the Church which He founded ? The Sacrifice 1 of the Mass, for ex¬ ample, the Sacrament of Penance, are these things necessarily wrong because we have grown 1 That the Mass or Holy Eucharist was from the earliest times regarded in the light of a sacrifice is abun¬ dantly clear. It is twice referred to as such in the Teaching of the Apostles, as also it is by S. Justin Martyr (c. 150), who points out the parallel between the Jewish oblation of fine flour and “ the bread of the Eucharist which Our Lord gave us to offer for a memorial of the Passion ” (Dial. 41). Some fifty years earlier the place where this Eucharist service wTas held had been described by St. 58 ENGLAND’S REAWAKENING too cultured to believe in them as these ignorant early Christians taught them ? Can we not restore Catholic practice to a Church that is, in its essence, Catholic ? Such, briefly, was the aim of the Oxford Movement : an attempt to restore this unhappy country to the Faith which, in common with the rest of Christendom, it had cherished unchanged for centuries before Rome, mainly through political ambition, had fallen into error in one direction, and we, partly as a result of a too- violent reaction from Rome, and partly as a result of fear, had fallen into error in another. And there can be little doubt that everything which the Oxford Movement claimed for the Church in this country finds full justification in that Church’s history. Ignatius as the " place of sacrifice ” ; and from the fourth century onwards the service itself was known generally throughout Christendom as “ the Mass.” But to explain the inner meaning of this, or, indeed any other Catholic doctrine, is the work of theologians ; and by theologians the whole doctrine of the Mass has been treated exhaustively. As a layman, writing for laymen, I merely wish to emphasise that the sacrifice which to-day, in the Mass, every Catholic priest offers to God throughout the whole world, is identical with that to which, in the second century, S. Irenaeus referred as “ the new oblation of the new covenant, which the Church, receiving from the Apostles, offers to God throughout the whole world ” (Vol. iv., chap, xviii., p. i.) ENGLAND’S REAWAKENING 59 People to-day, however, seldom trouble to read Church history, partly, no doubt, because history bores them (which, though unfortunate, is quite understandable), and partly because the}7 do not realise that although religion is of course primarily a thing of the heart, it is also, to some extent, a thing of the head. History is so prosaic they say, but religion is a spiritual thing ; how, then, can the two have any connection ? Yet Christ is Himself a historical fact ; the Church which He founded is a historical development ; and we, as heirs by descent from that Church, are in the faith we profess no more and no less than a historical fulfilment. And if certain modern theologians had carried their contempt and ignorance of all things historical to its logical conclusion, none of us to-day, in this twentieth century, would have heard the interesting historical scandal that, nearly two thousand years ago, a strange person walked along the shores of Galilee and called Himself the Son of God. Now I think the most present and paramount ideal of the leaders of the Oxford Movement, 6o ENGLAND’S REAWAKENING as it is with their Anglo-Catholic descendants to-day, was the ideal of unity — one fold and one Shepherd. We look upon the Church as the Body of Christ, and we see it divided limb from limb. Some limbs have cut them¬ selves off from the Body, and so are robbed of much of their strength. Others, although still a part of the Body, are so eaten up with the twin diseases of error and schism that half their strength is eaten up too. And this not only causes weakness to the Body but it prevents outsiders coming to the Body, and partaking of the bread of eternal life. God speaks with one Voice, not with a dozen. Christ ordered His disciples to go out into all nations and spread the message of His King¬ dom, and if this message is delivered in a dozen different voices, which is the unfortunate heathen to believe ? He often ends by be¬ lieving none of them. How this unity is to be effected is the problem which to-day, more, surely, than ever before, is exercising the thoughts of all earnest- minded men ; it is only about the methods upon which they differ. It well may be, ENGLAND’S REAWAKENING 61 though one does not lay this down with any certainty of prophecy, that before we can have reunion with outside Christendom, we must first have unity in our own camp ; and this is what the Oxford Movement paved the way for. It is premature yet to say that it has succeeded ; but if we look at the work of the Anglo-Catholic congresses and conferences we must admit that it has made very great strides. But one point must be made clear. The object of the Oxford Movement was not to make the Church of England Catholic. It is Catholic, and it always was Catholic, and nothing can make it anything else. Its object was to make all Churchmen realise the true Catholic character of the Church they belong to. Once that realisation is brought home to Churchmen, all matters of doctrine fall into line like fingers in a well-fitting glove. It is idle to talk about matters of doctrine dividing us : what divides us is our different conceptions of the constitution and character of the Church itself. And for that reason I do not intend to discuss our so-called doctrinal 62 ENGLAND’S REAWAKENING differences, except in one passing reference to the Sacrament of Penance. And I only mention this because I think the two conflicting attitudes towards it are illustrative of the two conflicting attitudes towards the Church — assuming, of course, as I have assumed throughout, that by the Church is meant a visible society founded by our Lord Jesus Christ, to which by some outward and visible sign its members pledge their whole-hearted allegiance, and of which Ecclesia Anglicana claims to be a part. For some reason or other exception is taken to the Sacrament of Penance more strongly than to any other Catholic doctrine. So often those members among us who call themselves Protestants say in effect : “We are willing to accept all your claims, but we cannot agree to auricular confession. Cannot you, in your turn, meet us half-way, and give this horrible practice up ? The Bible says there is one Mediator between God and man, the Man Christ Jesus ; and we honestly feel that in the confessional the priest comes between you and your God.” Our reply to this can only be : “ We dare ENGLAND’S REAWAKENING 63 not give up this thing, for we hold it to be a fundamental truth of Catholicism ; and the very fact of your asking us to do so shows that you do not accept our claims, for you are asking us to run counter to the whole united authority of the Church. You don’t feel, do you, when you eat your meals that your fork comes between you and your food ? If you were an aboriginal, and had never seen a fork, you might perhaps find it a cumbersome weapon. But that is hardly the fault of the fork. The absolution of the priest simply sanctifies our repentance, and transcends our sorrow into a sacrament. It is just as useful, in its way, as the fork : for man, in the first place, created the fork, but God created the Sacrament of Penance. “It is quite true, as you say, that S. Paul tells us that there is one Mediator between God and man, the Man Christ Jesus. And so there is. But if you take a text quite literally, and apart from its context, you can prove anything. Yet you yourselves do not take even this text quite literally. You would surely, if a friend were to ask you, mediate 64 ENGLAND’S REAWAKENING between him and his God, if you like so to put it, by remembering him in your prayers ? It is rather hard, is it not, to accuse us of not taking a text quite literally if you happen to disagree with us, when you yourselves do not take the same text literally when you happen to disagree with the text ? “ We dare not give up the Sacrament of Penance when the whole authority of the Church would damn us. You say the Church is wrong. We can only reply with all humility that we think the Church is less likely to be wrong than you are. But even taking it on its lowest ground, the Church has really a very good case. Christ said to His disciples : ‘ Re¬ ceive ye the Holy Ghost : Whosesoever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them ; and whosesoever sins ye retain, they are retained.’ Christ would hardly have given His disciples this power if it had been wrong for the laity to take advantage of it. “ But, you argue, although Christ gave it to His disciples, He did not intend it to go any further ; and this, quite apart from the fact that the world to-day has just as much ENGLAND’S REAWAKENING 65 need of remission from sin as it had in Christ’s day, shows how fundamentally we disagree : for we believe that what Christ ordered then He ordered for always ; that He gave His Church her constitution for all time — and that no man has power to alter it.” This, I think, illustrates the fundamental difference between the Catholic standpoint and the Protestant. The Catholic affirms the authority of the Church, the Protestant denies it. The Catholic maintains that Christ founded His Church, and gave to it a constitution which remains the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever. The Protestant maintains that although Christ founded the Church — and he claims to belong to it — its constitution and practice can change down the ages, and that the con¬ stitution mapped out by the Elizabethan politicians had power to override anything that preceded it ; and that its intention was different from anything that had. While there are these two different con¬ ceptions of what the Church of England is, it is impossible to find agreement about what the Church of England may do. Complete unity 60 ENGLAND’S REAWAKENING within her ranks can only be reached when the Oxford Movement has permeated them throughout ; but the Anglo-Catholic position is clearly established. And just as the existence of authority is the root of our disagreement with those Catholics in the Church of England who deny they are Catholics, so the seat of authority is the reason for our disagreement with those Catholics who owe their allegiance to Rome. Anglo-Catholicism denies, as the Eastern Church denies, that authority is vested in the person of the Pope as distinct from the whole body of the Church in council. We affirm, on the contrary, that the only true authority resides in the Church as a whole, and that its expression is through her representatives at oecumenical councils, although, I think, there could be no objection to authority, so pro¬ ceeding, being promulgated to Christendom, at His Holiness’s discretion, by the Pope as the Church’s official mouthpiece. Con¬ sequently, except on some interpretation such as this, we are unable to accept, in its present form, the Papal Infallibility Decree of 1871. ENGLAND’S REAWAKENING 67 We regard that decree as the logical outcome of Rome’s steadily-growing trend towards Ultramontanism, which, since the Council of Trent 1 in the sixteenth century, has done more perhaps than anything else to keep her isolated from the rest of Christendom, and which found its expression during the nine¬ teenth century in the person of Pope Pius IX, His syllabus complectus prcecipuos nostra cetatis err ores, which his successor, Leo XIII., 1 That the Council of Trent betokened a reformation as revolutionary in effect, though different in scope, in the Church of Rome as the one which preceded it in the Church of England, is a fact so significant that it has eluded the vigilance of many historians. Yet the Roman Catholic historian, Acton, whose works have not yet, so far as I know, been placed on the Index Expurgatorius, wrote over three centuries later : “ The Council of Trent imposed on the Church the stamp of an intolerant age, and perpetuated by its decrees the spirit of an austere immorality.” Those who are familiar with the lives, say, of Erasmus and the Caraffa Pope, Paul IV., will see in their respective attitudes the vide divergence of outlook between pre¬ tridentine Catholicism and post-tridentine Romanism ; and between the two there is a great gulf fixed. Erasmus, who with full authority of Church and Pope, was the accredited champion of the Catholic Faith as against Protestant innovations in both cis-Alpine and trans-Alpine Europe, preached a tolerant Catholicism, which, by allowing men free access to education and knowledge, would ultimate ly guide them into all truth. Caraffa was the exponent of the Inquisition and the Index, and by that Index the works of Erasmus were subsequently banned. These two attitudes form a just parallel between the attitudes of Anglicanism and Romanism to-day. And the one is pre- iridentine ; the other post-tridentine. 68 ENGLAND'S REAWAKENING was at pains to uphold, shows clearly the retrograde influence this ultramontane ten¬ dency had exercised. One short passage may be quoted as sufflcient to illustrate its reactionary scope : “ The Pontiff never can be, nor ought to be, reconciled with progress, lib¬ eralism, and modern civilisation.” Yet this Pontiff, who regarded progress, liberalism and modern civilisation as evils with which he could have no truck ; who, in a pontificate which lasted for thirty-two years, quarrelled with all the principal countries in Europe and forfeited thereby his temporal power, suc¬ ceeded in inducing the Vatican Council to vote to him, and his successors, an unqualified Infallibility in supreme pronouncements in doctrine, an immediate and sovereign juris¬ diction over all the pastors and laity in the Church, and a supreme and unimpeachable arbitrament in all matters appertaining to faith and morals. Further, the documents of the Vatican Council clearly show that the Infallibility Decree was intended only as a stepping-stone to a further decree that the doctrine of ENGLAND'S REAWAKENING 69 temporal power should be regarded as a re¬ vealed article of faith. Fortunately, however, Pius's pontificate came to a close before this preposterous paradox could be imposed upon Christendom : it was easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven, yet it was to be impossible for the faithful to enter that kingdom unless they sought to see Christ’s vicar upon earth imbued with temporal power — a power resurrected upon all that medieval pomp and richness of possession which were in such flagrant opposition to the teaching of Christ, and the poverty and humility of the first bishops of the Church. Quite apart, therefore, from our objections to Papal Infallibility as at present interpreted, on theological grounds, that it is discounted by the earliest historical precedent, and is a violation of the true Catholic conception of the rightful position of authority, it will be seen that it is, in itself, exceedingly dangerous. It puts, without any safeguard or check, too much power in the hands of one man, whose pronouncements, with the best of intentions, 70 ENGLAND’S REAWAKENING must necessarily be coloured, as in the case of Pius, by the tendencies of his own individual temperament. That a pontiff, who professed so stern a detachment from all matters con¬ nected with modern civilisation, should claim to be the supreme arbitrator over the faith and morals of modern civilisation is an anomaly which there is no need to emphasise. Further, the doctrine, as interpreted at present, tends to be subversive of unity, and is, in many men’s minds, perhaps the greatest stumbling-block that lies on the road to re¬ union. If authority is only to be found in the See of Peter, there is only authority for those, however few they may become, who are in communion with the See of Peter ; or, to express the same proposition in slightly dif¬ ferent terms, certain beliefs would ipso facto become obligatory upon the whole of Christen¬ dom which Rome herself only regarded as de fide over eighteen hundred years after the death of Christ ; and although many Anglicans find little difficulty in accepting the doctrine, for instance, of the Immaculate Conception, they hesitate to regard it as an article of ENGLAND’S REAWAKENING 71 faith, for they feel, in the light of the con¬ sidered opinions of S. Bernard and S. Thomas, that if all “ conscientious objectors were to be regarded as heretics, they would find themselves in such excellent company. But if authority is to be found in the whole Church in council, there is every inducement for Christians to join hands, and summon such a council. And when one thinks of a council so summoned, and looks at the elec¬ tions of some of the Popes of the past, it is difficult to refrain from invidious comparisons. Clement II., Damascus II. and Leo IX. were appointed directly by the Emperor, a secular prince : their subsequent acceptance by the rightful electors was a mere farce, and followed as a matter of course. From the year 1059 onwards a right of veto by secular princes was officially recognised, which was at various times exercised by the governments of France, Spain and Austria. Towards the close of the last century the late Emperor Franz Josef availed himself of it, and opposed, on political grounds, the election of Cardinal Rampollo, after he had already 72 ENGLAND’S REAWAKENING received a certain number of votes. He had not been elected Pope, it is true, but the fact remains that however many votes he had received, however much the Holy Spirit might have guided the deliberations of the College of Cardinals, it was impossible for him to have been elected Pope so long as the Emperor of Austria possessed the right of veto, and chose to exercise it. It requires, indeed, a good deal of casuistry to sustain the belief that for something over nine hundred years (for the secular veto was abolished by that same Pius, who owed his elevation to S. Peter’s see to it), God should have chosen, as the sole vessel of His divine revelation, the political nominees of the various warring princes of Europe. On the question of authority, then, Anglo- Catholicism joins issue with both Romanism and Protestantism. Its attitude, far from being a compromise, is in conformity with pure and unadulterated Catholic tradition. Its justi¬ fication is in the history of the great Church Catholic, and its claims find confirmation in that Church’s records. ENGLAND'S REAWAKENING 73 But it may very reasonably be asked, does this recapitulation of ancient controversies get one any nearer to the ideal of unity ? Can any profitable purpose be served by digging them up from the graves of history, and burdening men's minds with them anew ? Painful that delving must necessarily be, for it reveals in its hideous negation of charity what is perhaps the saddest side of human nature — human nature which, while seeking in the service of religion to be transcended and sanctified by the spirit of the divine Nature, yet is seen all down the ages, on the Anglican side no less than on the Roman, to falter and fall and become a stumbling-block to many. Painful it is to look back on these things, and some may think that it is equally profitless. And yet, after the most earnest and prayer¬ ful thought, one is, I think, forced to the conclusion that it is impossible ever to find agreement in the future, if one deliberately shirks the divisions of the past. With the shame and sorrow which is born of humility, Anglicans do open penance in confessing that there have been many grave errors in their 74 ENGLAND'S REAWAKENING own past history. Can they, then, be accused of pharisaical criticism, or a lack of courtesy towards their Roman brethren, if they try to point out, as temperately as possible, that there have been irregularities in their history also ? If Anglicans believe that there have been mutual mistakes and mutual misunder¬ standings — that as Protestantism has been to the Church of England, so Ultramontanism has been to the Church of Rome — is it not, indeed, their paramount duty to do their best to make clear their grounds for believing that the fault has not been wholly on the Anglican side ? Let us be quite practical about the matter. I am writing, as I have said before, primarily for those among my fellow-Churchmen who have not, perhaps, yet had the opportunity of realising the true nature of their Catholic heritage. Assuming, then, that having dragged them through this sea of controversy, they are now in a better position to appreciate the means of grace which their Church provides, and, casting aside the last lingering relic of doubt, to look forward with us to that wider ENGLAND’S REAWAKENING 75 horizon of the unity of Christendom, I would ask them to pause for a moment and consider, if Anglicans, by a too-courteous reticence, are content, in so far as Rome is concerned, to let their case go by default, what is the only remaining alternative ? Instead of the one Fold and one Shepherd which our blessed Lord prayed for — two great rival Churches in Christendom. Anglicans hoping vainly for concessions from Rome, and Rome hoping, equally vainly, that all Anglicans will make ultimate submission to her. And what exactly is involved in this last proposition ? The Church of England ceases to be. Such part of the British constitution (and incidentally the monarchy as at present established) as owes its validity to the Act of Settlement is unconditionally scrapped. And all members of Ecclesia Anglicana are com¬ pelled to deny, what Lord Halifax says he would rather die than cast a doubt upon — the very reality of the sacraments which they have received all their life, as well as God’s pur¬ pose with regard to the Church of England. No one who has read his Call to Reunion — 76 ENGLAND'S REAWAKENING and it is one of the primary purposes of these pages that those who have not done so may do so now — can, in the wildest flight of his fancy, attribute to Lord Halifax the bias of blind bigotry with regard to Rome ; and yet he tells us that the Church to whose service he has dedicated his whole life, he would gladly lay down his life to defend. And there can be little question but that his example, in this respect, would be followed throughout the length and breadth of our land. I lay stress on this point because one cannot help feeling that the number of English people who are received each year into the Church of Rome may encourage her repre¬ sentatives in this country to believe that the Church of England is a moribund Church, and that in course of time, by sheer process of elimination, our Church will die a natural death. And, if this be so, the Vatican, hearing these glad tidings from London, may prefer, very reasonably, a future surrender than strive to work for a present rapprochement. But, believe me, this is not the case. Re¬ union with Rome, Anglicans desire ardently, ENGLAND’S REAWAKENING 77 but so certain are they of God’s purposes and promises with regard to their Church, that they will never welcome even unity over that Church’s dead body. To admit such a possibility for a moment can only be to encourage hopes in¬ capable of fulfilment, and to postpone still longer the ideal of reunion. Quite apart, indeed, from the divine right of Ecclesia Anglicana, if, for the sake of brevity, I may use that expression, I do not think that a Church which, by voluntary contribution alone, receives in one year over ten million pounds from a people impoverished by a great war can possibly be diagnosed as in a dying condition. On the surface, at any rate, it seems scarcely credible that their sole motive in making these donations was to defray the expenses of their Church’s funeral. But it is not only with Rome that Anglicans seek reunion : we want unity all round. We want it with the great Orthodox Church of the East ; and in this matter the events of the last twelve months have exceeded the op¬ timism of the most courageous of prophets [see footnote, pp. 48, 49]. We want it, most 78 ENGLAND’S REAWAKENING vitally, in our own ranks ; and, with the spread of the Anglo-Catholic movement, this is steadily gaining ground every day. And we also want it with the Scottish Presbyterians, and with the English and American dissentingbodies. But we do not believe that a polite and spas¬ modic exchange of pulpit is likely to promote the reunion of Christendom any more than a political co-operation can be established by a Liberal inviting a Conservative to lunch. Neither do we believe that Christian reunion is in any way expedited by individual members of the Church of England seceding and joining the Church of Rome. Without in the least impugning the good faith of those who do so, one cannot but feel that, impatient of the difficulties that lie nearest at home, they are, by a rather fussy exertion of their own private judgment, trying to take a short-cut to their own salvation — trying to precipitate, for their own selfish requirements what, for the majority, can only be attained by patiently waiting upon God’s good providence. For, however many, or few, her members may be, Ecclesia Anglicana can never die. ENGLAND’S REAWAKENING 79 From time to time the Holy See and responsible members of various Catholic countries have, quite spontaneously, attributed to the British people many sterling Christian qualities. Is it conceivable that these qualities are accompanied by a black blindness of heart which is destined to preclude them for all time from partaking fully of the central truths of the Christian Faith ? Is it possible that a nation which, from outside testimony, is said to be so generously gifted is doomed, in the eyes of the Holy See, to remain for ever a heretic people ? Would not all Christendom, and Rome herself, be immeasurably the gainer if it were made possible in the near future for those gifts to be placed as unreservedly at the council-tables of a united Church as they are being placed to-day at the council-tables of European politics ? The world, weary after a great war, is crying aloud for peace and good-will as between in¬ dividuals and as between nations. Is the great Christian Church, through which this divine message is delivered to mankind, alone to hold back from contributing to its fulfilment ? So ENGLAND’S REAWAKENING One must, indeed, be cynically minded if one can believe that determined and repeated efforts between Anglicans and Romans to find some basis of future reunion should in the end be barren of all results. It would perhaps be too much to expect that they would be able to see eye to eye with each other over their respective interpretations of past controversies. But by seeing in a clearer perspective the different historical and political difficulties which mutually consolidated their different standpoints, they would surely each gain a better understanding of how logical, as viewed from those standpoints, their respective in¬ terpretations of those controversies appeared. And, without in any way sacrificing the truths of Catholicism, it might thus be possible to find some basis of agreement for a joint revision of the past definitions in which those truths find their expression. Truth, we know, is the same down the ages, and the truths of Catholicism are the same down the ages ; for truth is absolute and cannot change. But language is relative, and can, and does, change. Many terms which ENGLAND'S REAWAKENING 81 were current a hundred years ago, to-day have become practically meaningless. Many ex¬ pressions which are constantly in vogue to-day, future generations will find unintelligible. Why, then, should a proposed revision of the definitions of doctrine be thought to impugn the doctrines defined ? What is a definition of doctrine, after all, but an attempt to bring the infinite truths within the comprehension of the finite mind. Yet definitions are very necessary, just as all definitions must necessarily be imperfect. And to say this is not to cast any slur upon definitions : it is merely another way of saying that a definition can only be a via media between the divine revelation and the human comprehension. The message is divine : but it can only find expression in human language ; and for such a purpose language must always be inadequate. The doctrine of the Trinity is defined in the Athanasian Creed ; and although all Christians believe in the Trinity, no Christian yet has ever understood it. Some people, by denying that the Trinity exists, others by upbraiding F 82 ENGLAND’S REAWAKENING the Athanasian Creed, seek to explain away the limits of their own comprehension. But for the Christian the explanation is very simple, and is to be found in two simple and self- evident facts. One is in the axiom that the part is not greater than the whole — that the infinite cannot be embraced in the finite ; and the other is in the relativity of language. And since it is only through the medium of language that apprehension can in any measure be granted to mankind of the truth which God has deposited in His Church, with the promise that it shall abide in her always, one cannot but believe that man’s apprehension of this truth would be quickened by a revision of the definitions with which it is clothed. For just as truth is ever the same, man’s apprehension of truth develops and grows. And in the de fide teaching of Rome herself, there is nothing to stand in the way of such revision ; indeed, it is expressly laid down that a Pope has power actually to alter what another Pope, among his predecessors, has decreed — as Cardinal Mercier lately explained to his flock, in his pastoral letter to his diocese, ENGLAND'S REAWAKENING 83 on his return from the election of Pope Pius XI. Just imagine what it would mean to Christen¬ dom if His Holiness the present Pope should see fit to take the courageous step of summoning a conference to discuss the possibility of such a revision, and invite the Anglican bishops to take part in it ; and it is clearly within his power and his province to do so. It is hard to see, since neither side would be committed to anything in advance, why such a step should be deemed in any quarter to be prejudicial. Certain it is that the prayers of the faithful would whole-heartedly go out to it : and consider for a moment what that would mean in itself. A world-wide inter¬ cession for this one great purpose ; every Catholic Church in Christendom, at the same time and with the same intention, offering up their prayers at the one great sacrifice ; all Christendom joined together in a unity of prayer that they soon should be joined in a unity of doctrine ! Are we, indeed, of so little faith — we who profess belief in the efficacy of prayer — as to prejudge the issue, 84 ENGLAND'S REAWAKENING and insinuate in our hearts that God, to whom all things are possible, would find it impossible to answer this prayer ? But, to look on the brighter side of the picture, suppose in God’s good providence this petition were granted, the vista unveiled so transcends human language that mere words seem unworthy to convey it significance. One great universal reunited Church ; one great international Moral Tribunal ; one Faith, one Lord, one Baptism for all ; one ever- living voice of authority, explaining and ex¬ pounding God’s purposes with regard to the destinies of mankind ! But is all this merely a pretty picture, an idealist vision, a theorist’s dream, which, even if it actually saw the light of accomplishment , would be quite out of touch with the practical needs of a material world ? Or is it something which, by binding men together in a close corporate fellowship, by demonstrating the spiritual and practical significance of those three great Catholic virtues which, after faith, the world stands perhaps in most sore need of to-day — the virtues of charity, humility, ENGLAND’S REAWAKENING 85 simplicity — would contribute very really to that peace on earth and good-will towards man which, by leagues of nations here and conferences there, all statesmen are striving so earnestly to attain ? It is clearly im¬ possible to argue the matter : each in his own conscience must find his own answer. Yet, to those who understand it, the Catholic Faith is pre-eminently practical ; and since its practical fruits are so much the same, whether the Catholicism be labelled Roman or Anglican, surely the Tree of Life which breathes through¬ out the great Church Catholic would make a much deeper and wider appeal ; surely man¬ kind would more readily partake of those fruits if it ceased to be at conflict in its various branches. And what, after all, are those fruits ? We have talked such a deal about the truths of Catholicism that perhaps it would not be out of place to conclude these reflections with a brief consideration of their meaning in practice. As the rules of perspective are to the artist, so these truths are to the Catholic, for they teach him to gauge everything which happens 86 ENGLAND’S REAWAKENING within the world by some positive standard which exists outside the world ; to weigh everything that happens and compare it to that standard, and consider why and in what direction it is not conformable to that standard. They teach him to separate the sin from the sinner : to love the sinner while loathing his sin. They make him seek after charity, humility, simplicity. And they do more even than that : they teach the true meaning of words such as these, showing as a signpost, what, by long desuetude, is daily in danger of degenerating into a shib¬ boleth. Take charity first. We forget, I am afraid, the sounding brass and tinkling cymbal, as we mouth the word, and put our hand in our pocket ; for charity is not a self-righteous patronage. Neither is charity being so senti¬ mental in forgiving our neighbour his sin that, in order to show there is no ill-feeling, we join with him in committing it again. Charity is separating the sin from the sinner : loving the sinner, and yet at the same time loathing his sin. We are told to love our neighbour, but ENGLAND’S REAWAKENING 87 we are also told to eschew unrighteousness. Are we, then, not to condemn the sin just because our neighbour happens to commit it ? If we commit it ourselves (as we probably do), if the whole world commits it, the sin is still just as much of a sin. We all sin, and most of us repent ; is it, then, really inconsistent to go on loving our neighbour because he also sins and repents ? Or is it uncharitable to condemn the sin because this time it is our neighbour who happens to commit it ? The injunction to judge not that we be not judged refers to the sinner, not to the sin : for our neighbour is of God, his sin of the devil. Charity is love — love of God, and love of our neighbour ; but you cannot have any¬ thing without its converse : you cannot pos¬ sibly have love of God unless you have also hatred of evil. Human love is but a corollary of divine love, and love of our neighbour is not necessarily inconsistent with a loathing of the sin which our neighbour commits. Charity is a mystical sense of proportion ; and this, if rightly understood, is the whole meaning of the Church’s marriage laws. And the fact 88 ENGLAND’S REAWAKENING that being evil we try to be good, and never succeed, is the whole paradox of Catholic mysticism. Then humility. Its perversion is illus¬ trated in Uriah Heap. Its truest explanation, I think, is seen in the expression, “ bowing to authority/’ Man is by nature an egotistical animal, and that egotism is most apparent in what has been termed the snobbery of the intellect. To the average man, by far the hardest sacrifice, as a rule, is the sacrifice of his private opinion ; for opinion is the fruit of the intellect. In secular matters opinion is to some extent regulated by law and convention. In countries such as England and France certain ebullitions of conduct or conversation are penalised very definitely by the law of the land. In any club, or social group, certain contraventions in speech or behaviour of the established usage are penalised by social ostracism. But in religious matters alone, it would seem, opinion is accorded the latitude of licence. And consequently, in matters religious, man’s natural egotism finds its outlet. ENGLAND’S REAWAKENING 89 Man’s intellect can evolve anything it likes, and there is no limit to the lengths it may go. The God who created the intellect, the intellect frequently creates for itself. Private judg¬ ment walks through the streets unbridled — sincere, honest, conscientious, no doubt, but lacking all approach to humility. For true humility suspends private judgment and, making the supreme sacrifice of egotism, lays it on the altar of the Church’s tribunal, crying with Tertullian : “I believe, because it is impossible ” — or interpreted in more modern language : “I can’t quite understand it yet, but I am young, and the Church is old, so probably the Church knows better than I do.” That, for members of the Catholic Church, is what humility means to a man. And lastly, simplicity. Catholics are fre¬ quently attacked on the ground that they have departed from the simplicity of the primi¬ tive Church, and lost themselves in a jungle of dogma. It altogether depends on what one means by simplicity; it also depends on what one means by dogma. People are saying everywhere to-day, “ Oh, do let’s be simple, 90 ENGLAND’S REAWAKENING we are tired of dogma ! ” as though there were a feud between the two. They do not say, “ Oh, do let’s drink, we are so thirsty — but for Heaven’s sake let us abolish glasses ! ” The very extolling of simplicity is an expression of dogma — the great dogma that simplicity is good. Every opinion we express on religion at all is a dogma, and when accepted by the consensus of universal opinion, as approved by authority, it ceases to be a dogma and becomes a doctrine. It is just as dogmatic to say the Church is wrong, as it is dogmatic to say the Church is right. That there is no God is a doctrine of Atheism ; that it is the fool who saith in his heart, There is no God, is a doctrine of Christianity. S. Francis of Assisi was dogmatic enough, yet he was so naive and so simple in his daily life that many a Protestant delights to read of him. We are told that he heard Mass when he could, and made his confession ; he sang with the birds, and babbled with the brooks, and called the trees and the beasts his brothers and sisters, and looked on all nature as one ENGLAND’S REAWAKENING 91 family in God — " Brother Sun, Sister Moon, Brother Wind and Sister Water.” I do not think anyone will deny that this was simple, though the Moderns may say that it was the act of a simpleton ! But just as we have lost the meaning of dogma, so we have lost the meaning of sim¬ plicity. If a man wants to lead the simple life to-day he thinks he must feed exclusively on carrots. If he does, it is perhaps an appropriate diet for him ; for he does not see that it is much less simple to scour the country in search of carrots when carrots art out of season, than to eat meat when meat comes along, and drink wine when wine comes along, and thank the good God who gave them both. That is far more simple, and just as dogmatic ; simple because he does not worry about them, he just enjo}7s them ; and dogmatic because it is clearly impossible to give thanks to God with¬ out first of all a very dogmatic insistence that there is such a Being as God to be thanked. This, and very much more than this, is something of the influence which the Catholic Faith, in its practical application to the daily 92 ENGLAND’S REAWAKENING life, exercises upon one’s attitude of mind. The same for Romans, the same for Anglicans, and the same for members of the Orthodox Church. For Catholicism is universal, and can no more be confined to the jurisdiction of Canterbury than it can be confined to the jurisdiction of Rome. Far be it from Anglicans to presume to claim, as Rome, I believe, still attempts to do, that true Catholicism must exclusively be confined within the limits of their own dioceses. And I do not think that the Anglican cause will suffer because her spirit in this respect is more Catholic. Let Anglicans, then, continue to foster that spirit, and fortified by the prayers of the faithful, do all in their power to further reunion. Anglo-Catholicism has a great history and a great heritage, and I have attempted to say something about them both ; yet if I were asked to define Anglo-Catholicism, precisely, I do not think I could do it. If I were asked to say roughly what it is, I think I should say (and it only repeats and epitomises the foregoing pages, if I say so now) that it is the Catholic Faith, uncorrupted by Rome, which existed ENGLAND'S REAWAKENING 93 in this country for centuries before the re¬ verberations of the continental Reformation, the tyranny of a Roman Catholic queen, and the instability caused by political vicissitudes, nearly succeeded, but, thank God ! not quite, in consigning it for ever to the limbo of lost things. I should say that Catholicism is the spiritual democracy of the ignorant ; Christ in His Church is the Good Shepherd who supplies their wants ; and the very best Catholic is a very bad Christian — saved only by the faith that is born of humility. In the words of the old Scottish song : “He prays that the faith of the dying thief may be granted through grace unto him." THE END PRINTED BY THE ANCHOR PRESS, LTD., TIPTREE, ESSEX, ENGLAND. Date Due Jg 4 PRINTED IN U. S. A.