1 •'<<^^^ ^L,"*^ <::^ rccKL c: -^ ::^<: < '^-^Ssu :^0 ^^ ^ ''<-'<: ^^•S- 41^ •J^Cf -.* ^^^ <^< -^ * '■ *^_* ^c-^ ' '^c^ ' «o^::::".< < Y OF CONVOCATION. 33 at Ephesus, and to the faithful in Christ Jesus " — " To all the saints in Christ Jesus which are at Philippi, with the bishops and deacons " — " To the saints and faithful breth- ren in Christ which are at Colosse " — " Unto the Church of the Thessalonians which is in God the Father, and in the Lord Jesus Christ:" — "James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ, to the twelve tribes which are scattered abroad, greeting:" — "Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, to the strangers scattered throughout Pontus, Galatia, Cappa- docia, Asia, and Bithynia, Elect according to the fore- knowledge of God the Father, through sanctification of the Spirit, unto obedience and sprinkling of the_^blood of Jesus Christ." In all but three of these the salutatipn was, expressly, and in those three, by im|)lication, not to the corporate body of the Church, but to the individual members. What right^ then, had the Church, or any portion of it, in its corporate capacity, to keep back any part of the precious deposit with which it had been put in trust — the inspired written tradition — from those to whom it was addressed ? Was it not felony in a post-office clerk, the servant of an earthly monarch, to keep back a letter ? and was it any less than felony in a servant — head, as he claimed of the other servants — not clerk, but Postmaster General — of the King of kings ? Did not the Apostle expect as a matter of course that the Epistle to the Komans would be read among the Eomans, the Epistles to the Corinthians among the Corin- thians, the Epistle to the Ephesians among the Ephesians, &c., and was it not his intention that those epistles, as also all the others, should be read beyond their several immediate spheres? and did he not, therefore, taking the first for granted, in writing to the Colossian Christians, make pro- vision for the second by charging them,* " When this epistle is read among you, cause that it be read also in the Church of the Laodiceans ; and that ye likewise read the epistle * Col. iv. 16. 2* 34 AFTERPIECE TO THE from Laodicea " ? And was not one of Ms epistles, in one of the passages alre^ady cited, expressly addressed not merely to the Corinthian Christians but to "a^Z tliat in every place call upon the name of Jesus Christ our Lord f " Nay, did not the Apostle, in the very first epistle he ever wrote, as if in pro- phetic anticipation of what had since come to pass, say to the Thessalonian Christians, "I charge you {bpiu^o^l adjure you,) by the Lord that this epistle be read to all the breth- ren ? "* And if the Epistles, much more the Gospels, and the Acts of the Apostles, which were less " hard to be un- derstood." And as to the Old Testament, did not the Apos- tle say to the Komans, in express reference to it, " Whatso- ever things were written aforetime were written for our learning, that we through patience and comfort of the scriptures might have hope ? "t And did he not commend S. Timothy in that " from a child he had known the holy scriptures which were able to make him wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus ? "J Really, it was to him simply astounding that a Church that claimed to be the mother and mistress of all Churches, should thus go in the very teeth of the teaching of an apostle whom she claim- ed as one of her founders. Casula. There is no occasion for his astoundment. The Church is but discharging her function of '' steward of the manifold grace of God ;" giving milk to babes, and reserv- ing '' strong meat " for " them that are of full age." Kayeo, I suggested as much, but he said, That did not meet the question fairly and squarely. What he objected to in the Church of Rome was not that she gave milk to babes but that it was not the " milk of the word " that she gave to them — at any rate, not the ''sincere^ milk of the word," and that, in consequence, they did not " grow there- by,"! but were kept in perpetual minority, and that minor- * 1 Thes. v. 27. t Rom. xv. 4. :}: 2 Tim. iii. 15. § Sine cera, without wax ; originally applied to pure honey, and after- wards to any unadulterated substance. || 1 Pet. ii. 2. COMEDY OF CONVOCATION. 35 ity made the pretext for the perpetual withholding of strong meat from them. That was not the stewardship of the Apostle. S. Luke had informed us of the object with which his gospel and, by parity of reasoning, the other gospels, had been written, to wit, that Theophilus, and, in him, all theopJiili — friends of God — might know the certainty of those things wherein they had been catechized {Karjjxv^^^)' The Bible was for Christian not heathen men. The office of the Catechism was to prepare the way for the Bible, not to take the place of it. " Whom should he teach knowledge ? and whom should he make to understand doctrine ? them that were weaned from the milk, and drawn from the breasts."* What the Apostle had said of the man and the woman,t might with equal propriety be said of the Bible and the Church. Neither was the Church without the Bi- ble, neither the Bible without the Church. Each was the complement of the other ; intended to be so by the divine author of both: and what God had joined together let not man put asunder. Casula. So he would put the Bible into the hands of the " unlearned and unstable," in the face of the declaration of S. Peter that they will pervert the hard places to their own destruction, — in the face of Dean Primitive's long list of such perversions ? Kayeo, Not at all. He would have all, he said, so train- ed by the Church, through her appointed agencies, the min- istry, the sponsorhood, the family, from the begioning, that when they had grow^n up there should be no " unlearned and unstable " ones among them : that they should all have been brought, to use the language of the Ordinal, { " unto that agreement in the faith and knowledge of God, and to that ripeness and perfectness of age in Christ, that there should be no place left among them, either for error in reli- gion, or for viciousness in life." * Isai. xxviii. 9. 1 1 Cor. xi. 11. X Form and Manner of Ordering Priests. 36 AFTERPIECE TO THE As to the " long list of perversions," they were the Dean's own, and he must be very " primitive " upon whom they could be palmed off. Take the three " examples " with which it wound up. " Each," we were told, though there was hardly occasion for telling us, " was unique of its kind : There was the example dogmatic ; the example critical, and the example evasive." To begin with the latter : " At an Archidiaconal meeting in a small town in Wilt- shire," on " a Friday," the " discussion at dinner," the en- tertainment being " both ample and succulent, including a haunch of venison, to which all had done justice" most scrwpuloudy ^ " turned," very naturally, " upon fasting ;" whereupon " an incumbent of the school of Mr. Kidds, hard pressed by various texts, and especially by the express words of S. Paul, from which there was no escape" did nevertheless escape by affirming that " Paul was a young man when he enjoined fasting, and probably became more scriptural afterwards." That was the- (theoretical) example evasive. He would match it with a practical one. When he was a resident of Richmond, Virginia, twenty-six years ago, an acquaintance of his, from whom he had the statement, was invited with a few others to dine, on a week-day in Lent, with the then Roman Bishop of that Diocese, and finding the dinner "both ample" and savory, if not "succulent," including fish stewed in claret, fell to, and like the Wiltshire clergy, did justice to it, — out of compliment, of course, to his host ; at the same time remarking, " Bishop, this may be a fast to you, but to me it is as good as a feast." Casula. That is a pretty story. Kayeo. So is the other. Casula, That may be. But evidently he was quizzing you. Kayeo, No ! He said he would be qualified to it,* which Father Kayeo, it will be seen, sometimes makes use of provincialisms in such cases, the verbal accuracy of what he reports, is not to he inferred. When one is in Rome, one is very apt " to do as Romans do." COMEDY OF CONVOCATION. 37 is more than Dean Primitive Tvould to Ms^ I am thinking. But I have not yet got through with the Wiltshire meeting. It reminded^him, he said, of yet another meeting, — a " min- isters' meeting," as it was called, — in Danvers, Massachu- setts, some two himdred years ago, where venison was like- wise on the bill of fare. Glrace had just been said, and the host was beginning to carve, when one of the guests, re- marking on the fine appearance of the haunch, asked where it had been obtained ? The host replied that it was a pres- ent from a friendly Indian ; to which Pomp Shorter, the black waiter, added — what his master was not aware of — that it was killed " last Sabbath " by the Indian himself. Here was a dilemma. Was it lawful to eat meat that had been killed on the Sabbath ? It was a knotty point ; but your Puritan, like your Jesuit, was a skilful casuist : so they were not long in coming to the conclusion that the meat might be eaten, since grace liad 'been said over it, but that the Indian should be flogged for killiag it on the Sabbath. Casula, A very sage conclusion. , Kayeo. So much for the '' Example evasive.''^ — Next came the '' example critical,'''' the substance of which was that at " a parish meeting in the north of England, presided over by a clergyman of great repute," the question of " contro- versy " coming up, one clergyman " strongly objected" to it, on the ground that it " quenched charity and led to no practical result ;" whereupon another loudly declared him- self in favor of controversy as productive of a clear under- standing of gospel truth ; " for did not Paul say, that ^without controversy, great is the mystery of godliness,' and could he more clearly imply that with controversy all the mystery vanishes ? " This reminded him of the hard-shell Baptist preacher whom he had read of, or dreamed of, who argued from the " divers washings " (literally, " baptisms ") spoken of by the Apostle,* that a man must " dive," i. e., " be im- * Heb. is. 10. 38 AFTERPIECE TO THE mersed," to be baptized. He rather thought that in both cases, so far as interpretation was concerned, nobody was hurt. Casula. Now we come to the " example dogthaticy^^ Kayeo, That, he said, brought to his remembrance a "controversy" between a priest of the Church of Rome and a priest of the Church of America — scene, the Infirmary in Lombard Street, Baltimore — time, a little more than twenty years ago. The American priest had been, like Simon's wife^s mother, " sick of a fever, "t but was, at the time re- ferred to, convalescent. The Roman priest, visiting the In- firmary to minister to some parishioners, and learning who he was, made his acquaintance, in the hope of converting him. The consequence was several interviews, in one of which the subject of Transubstantiation came up. The Roman priest began by remarking that the words. This is my l)ody^ like all the words of Holy Scripture, were to be interpreted literally. Oh, said the other, you couldn't teach him anything on that point ; he understood all about that. " Literally ? " ^ Of course^ they were to be interpreted liter- ally ; how else should they be interpreted ? What was lan- guage given for if it wasn't to be interpreted literally ? how, on any other hypothesis, was a plain man to get at its meaning ? Of course it was to be interpreted literally. Our Lord understood this, and he worded his declarations ac- cordingly. When He said, I am the Door^ He meant that He was a real door, just like the one which he (the Roman priest) had just come in at — which had swung on its hinges to admit him ; no difference between them ; none whatever. When He said, / am the Way^ He meant that he teas a real way, such as carriages were driven on, and heavy loads *'' The Twenty-eighth Article pronounced that the Catholic (!) doctrine of the Sacrament of the Altar is ' repugnant to the plain words of Scripture.' Now the plain words were : ' This is my body.' Consequently, when our Lord said : ' This is my body,' the plain meaning of His words was : 'This is not my hodj.''— Comedy, p. 32. t St. Mat., viii., 14 ; St. Mark, i. 30 ; St. Luke, iv. 38. COMEDY OF CONVOCATION. 39 drawn over ; no doubt of it ; none in the least. When He said, / am the Vine, He meant that He was a real vine, such as grows in the woods, and the fields, and bears grapes ; nothing could be plainer, to a plain comprehension. And when He said to Peter, Get thee hehind me, Satan, He meant that Peter icas the Demi, and that the Pope was his successor. Casula. A plague on the fellow ! If he goes on in that way, he'll turn the whole Comedy into a Farce. Kayeo. That is what he is after, and he seems in a fair way to do it. Casula. Still, he has not answered the argument of the " example dogmatic." Kayeo. He said he saw no argument in it, but a transpa- rent fallacy ; so transparent that if he didn't wonder that the Dean did not see through it, it was because he had no doubt whatever that he did see through it, but thought the groundlings wouldn't. They must be very low groundlings if they didn't. I agree with him on that point, and as you are no groundling, I am sure that you see through it ; if you don't /'ll furnish you with a pair of spectacles. If you were to say, The doctrine of Universal Salvation is " repugnant to the plain words of Scripture," and a Uni- versalist were to add, " Now the plain words are. As in Ad- am all die, even so in Christ shall all he made cdive,^'' — thinking thereby to convict you of absurdity — would you not say to him. You numskull l"^ Haven't you sense enough to see your own nonsense ? Must a doctrine, to be repugnant to the plain words of Scripture, be repugnant to all the plain words of it. If I say of a certain flower, it is ofi*ensive to me — meaning that its odor offends my nostrils — and, on an- other occasion, still speaking of the same flower, it is charm- ing — meaning that its beauty charms my eye — do I thereby say that it is not offensive to me ? Such would be your answer to the supposed " example * Father K., not being a Jesuit, can't stand such logic, any more than Pascal could stand the pouvoir p7vchain of The Company. 40 AFTERPIECE TO THE dogmatic " of the Universalist ; such is my answer to the " example dogmatic " of the Dean, which hasn't half the plausibility of the other. Really, it makes me feel cheap to answer it. I am ashamed of such logic, and of you for even reporting it. Shakespeare, it is true, sometimes introduces a fool into his Comedies, but never such a fool. It only shows that you are not Shakespeare. Casula. I don't claim to be ; Shakesides is all I aspire to. Kayeo. To shake the sides of fools, is '' no great shakes," to my thinking. Enough of the Dean, and his logic. To come back to O'Kaye. Dr. Candour, he said, claimed a passing notice. He ob- jected to the taking of the Councils and the Fathers as lielps to the interpretation of Holy Scripture — and it was only as lielps that they could be legitimately taken — that the " pri- "cate reading " — that was, the individual's own reading (or interpretation), in distinction from the Church's reading, — " of the records of the early Church " was " the same in principle " with the ^'-ptrivate reading of the Bible ; with this advantage to the latter, that every one can read the Bible who can read at all, but not one person in a million can read the Councils or the Fathers." If those who could read the Bible could not, in the same way — to wit, in a translation — read the Fathers, it must be because they were so voluminous and expensive. But this objection did not apply to the " Apostolic Fathers," all of whose writings might be comprised in half a dozen volumes of the size and style of the Comedy of Convocation^ PeopWs Edition^ Price 25 Cents. Mr. Lawrence Kehoe, General Agent of The Catholic Publication Society^ had come out, in the fly-sheet of the January number of The Catholic World ^ with a " Bulletin," • in which, among other things, he said, " It is our intention, therefore, to issue editions, printed from new type, on good paper, done up in paper covers, of all our own publications, COMEDY OF CONVOCATION. 41 and to place them at a price cheap enough to make it an object for the reverend clergy, religions societies, and the laity to purchase them in quantities for distribution. "The success of this experiment will depend on the sym- pathy and cordial cooperation of all Catholics. We are gratified in being able to state that our former appeals of this kind, with reference to ' The Comedy of Convocation ' and ' Gropings after Truth,' have been generously responded to ; and if the 'present one is met in the same spirit, we pledge oursehes that the complaint hitherto made a'bout the cost of Catholic 'booTcs shall not de heard again^ Mr. Kehoe was evidently desirous of doing good. Let him come out, then, with a " People's Edition " of the Apostolic Fathers, Ignatius, and Justin, and Pope Clement, and the rest. There could be no risk in undertaking it. All good Catholics would rather read the Epistle of a Pope whose name was in the book of life,* than the Comedy of an excommunicated heretic, a member of the Convocation of Canterbury. And what a treat was in store for them. It made his mouth water to think of it. They could find all about Pur- gatory, and Transubstantiation, and the Immaculate Con- ception, and Devotions to the Blessed Virgin and the Saints — Private, of course, in the case of the latter, for they were as yet only Beatified ; they must wait two hundred years, and then be Canonized, before Public Devotions could be addressed to them ; and the Church, too, must wait all that time, before her Public Devotions could be complete : the Blessed Virgin, by a happy Asswwption, was saved that long waiting. All this they would find in those Early Fathers for they were Catholics, and the " Catholic " Church never changed (except, of course, in the number of her objects of Devotion, which was ever increasing). Be- sides, they lived in the Martyr Age of the Church, before Devotion to the Virgin and the Saints had grown cold. * Phil., iv. 3. 42 AFTERPIECE TO THE Hence the frequency of their allusions to it ; out of the abundance of the heart the mouth spake. No wonder the Anglican Doctor disliked them, and especially the ^^ private reading " of them. He seemed to have a special grudge against that word ^^ private^'' for he had emphasized it re- peatedly. Yet it was a good word, though it was some- times found in bad company. Private opinion^ taken up at random without investigation, was the right of no one ; but private judgment^ formed with the help of all the means within reach for arriving at a correct conclusion, was not only the right but the duty of every one. The Catholic Publication Society appealed to it, in the 'broadest sense^ in sending forth a ''^ PeoijWs Edition" of the Comedy; that was, if they meant it for argument : and if they did not, they appealed to private prejudice— a proceeding which was anything but commendable. Nay the Church of Kome her- self, in one of her most solemn Offices — that of the Conse- cration of a Bishop — appealed to private judgment : " Do you believe, according to your intelligence and the capacity of your perceptive faculty (pr^ thinking faculty)^ the Holy Trin- ity," &c.,^ was the question she put to the Bishop elect, be- fore the laying on of hands ; certainly, there was nothing that went beyond that in the English Ordinal. Furthermore, every convert that had gone over to her in England, and in the United States, had gone over as the result of his private judgment or private want of judgment. Dr. Candour had assured us that " it was a fact that many Anglicans, like Dr. Ives, an American Bishop, were con- verted to the Roman Church, chiefly by the study of the Fathers and the Councils. These converts argued that the ancient writers required a living interpreter equally with Holy writ. They argued^ did they ? What right had they to argue ? * '' Credis, secundum intelligentiam, et capacitatem sensus tui, sanctam Trinitatem, Patrem, et Filium, et Spiritum Sanctum," &c.—PontiJicale Bomanum^ p. 89. Mechlin^ 1845. COMEDY OF CONVOCATION. 43 What was arguing but private judgment ? And then the funny way the Fathers converted them ! — ^not by teaching them that the Koman Church was the true Church, but by teacMng them — nothing; whence they drew the inference that the Fathers couldn't be understood without " a living interpreter/'* meaning, thereby, a living dogmatizer. They couldn't understand the Fathers, so they came to the con- clusion that nobody else could : certainly, a very modest conclusion on their part. Gasula. He is right about its being private judgment that brings us converts, but that is no recommendation of it ; for it works boHh ways, and the Church loses more members than she gains by it. Kayeo. I am afraid that is so.f But it is time that we come to the " Professor of Theology." Gasula. Yes ! Let us hear what O'Kaye said of Tiim. Kayeo. He said that many of his points were but repeti- tions and enlargements of those of the preceding speakers, and need not be again considered ; but there were two or three that required touching on. The " Puseyite " motto, we were told, was " L'Eglise, c'est W6>i;" the "Catholic," on the other hand, " L'Eglise, c'est nous.'''' The " French- man " who said that, and, evidently thought he said a very smart thing, would very likely have to unsay it after the * Wherein is a living interpreter better than a dead one, unless you can consult him, either personally or by letter, when you are in doubt about the meaning of your author ? And if air the readers of the Fathers consult the Pope or his ^'Professor of Theology," or ''Professor of His- tory " (whichever of them is the interpreter), whenever they are in doubt, how is he to attend to them ? not to say that they ought to consult him even when they are not in doubt ; for their not being in doubt doesn't prove that they are right. In this respect, the interpreter who lives only in his works, has the advantage over the other, in that, if, as is usually the case, his comment accompanies the text of his author, the reader of the one is apt to read the other also, and to find thereby, not unfrequently, that where he had thought he understood the text he had in fact mis'ander- stood it. t See Note C. 44 AFTERPIECE TO THE oecumenical Council next December, and say, in place of it, L'Eglise, c'est le Pape, Casula. I hope so. Kayeo. I don't. It is hard enough to explain the " ISTew Dogma," of 1854, and more than one of the eleven Older ones of 1564, without having another new one to bother us. The next point of the Professor of Theology was, that " but for the assiduous care with which, through more than a thousand years, the Roman Church preserved and mul- tiplied the manuscripts of Holy Writ, neither he (Mr. Kidds) nor any other Protestant could have known that there had ever been a Bible at all ! " As if there were no Greek Church ! As if the greater number of the most valuable manuscripts of the Original Text (to say nothing of the Ancient Versions) had not come lo us from the East, since the Reformation ! As though the Jews had not, with far more '' assiduous care," " preserved and multiplied " the manuscripts of the Old Testament ! In truth, had it de- pended on the Roman Church alone^ it was, to say the least, doubtful if there woul have been, at the Reformation, a sin- gle Greek or Hebrew copy in existence. For had she not constituted the Latin vulgate the standard of appeal,* and were not the Douay and the Rheimish versions made from it ? Of what use, then, on her theory, could the Original Text be, but to convict her standard of numerous inaccura- cies, and thereby give aid and comfort to the heretics ? The next point was the Professor's reply to the charge of Mr. Kidds that " the Roman Church forbade the Bible to the people ;" to wit, that she did ''just the contrary. She com'pelled the people to hear the Gospels and Epistles read from the pulpit every Sunday morning." Yes ! in Latin ! They might as well be read in Grebo, so far as nine-tenths of the hearers were concerned. Really he knew not which to admire most, the cool assurance of the Professor, or the candor of the Count De Maistre, who said, " As to the peo- * See Note D. COMEDY OF CONVOCATION. 45 pie, if they didn't understand the words, so much the bet- ter. Kespect gained by it, and intelligence lost nothing. He who didn't understand at all, understood better than he who understood wrong."* Casula. Vive De Maistre I Kayeo, For my part, I prefer S. Paul, who says, " I thank my God, I speak with tongues more than ye all : yet in the church I had rather speak ^yq words with my understand- ing, that I might teach others also, than ten thousand words in an unknown tongue." And then, as if with the " Savoy- ard sophist " in his eye, immediately adds, " Brethren, be not children in understanding ; howbeit in malice be ye children, but in understanding be men."t But to return to the Professor. "Was Mr. Kidds ignorant that Roman Catholics confi- dently quoted the Bible, from Genesis to Revelations, against Protestant doctrines ? Did he know that Cardinal Bellarmine quoted more than fifty texts in proof of Purga- tory ?" How could he, seeing the number the Cardinal quoted was exactly twenty-one — neither more nor less ? — " and that others quoted more than a hundred in defence of their confidence in the Blessed Virgin ? " As the Professor hadn't condescended to tell us who those " others " were, there was no means of verifying his statement ; if he had exaggerated in the same proportion as in the other instance, the number was just forty-two. Probably these were as convincing as the twenty-one of the Cardinal, of which lat- ter only one — that about being saved so as by fire — was even plausible ; and that one S. Chrysostom (whose mother tongue was Greek) interpretedf as teaching everlasting pun- ishment : while their works should be consumed, they should be always burning — -preserved in the fire, or by the fire, from being burned u;p. Evidently S. Chrysostom saw no Purgatory in it. For the rest, he would cite the first three, in the order of * See Note A, 42. 1 1 Cor. xiv. 18-20. X Homily on 1 Cor. iii. 15. 46 AFTEEPIECE TO THE their occurrence in the Old Testament, and from them, all might be judged of; it would be enough to give chapter and verse for the remaining seventeen. " They took their bones and buried them under a tree at Jabesh, and fasted seven days." This fasting, according to the Cardinal, was for the souls of Saul and Jonathan ! " O Lord, rebuke me not in thy wrath ; neither chasten me in thy hot displeasure." " Wrath " meant hell ; " hot displeasure," purgatory. " We went through fire, and through water " — through purgatory, and through baptism — " but thou broughtest us out into a wealthy place."* To return again to the Professor : " Was anything more plain to the Papist than the declar- ation to Peter : ' Upon this rock I will build my church V " The Emperor Eudolph was a " Papist," yet according to the inscription on his diadem, as interpreted by the Count De Maistre, also a " Papist," the Rock was Christ.t " Was anything less ambiguous to him than the words : * This is my body ? ' Anything more decisive than the announce- ment : ' It is a wholesome and holy thought to pray for the dead ? ' [Archdeacon Jolly here observed to a neigh- bor, that the Church of England, as a quiet way of getting rid of this ' unscriptural ' text, ordered it to be left out, when it occurred in the Lesson for the day !] " The archdeacon must have been particularly "jolly" when he he made that " observation," for it was an unmiti- gated WHOPPER. The passage referred to was 2 Maccabees xii. 45, and in the whole Calendar of the Church of Eng- land, although there were Lessons from Tobit, and Judith, and Wisdom, and Ecclesiasticus,' and Baruch, and Susan- nah, and even Bel and the Dragon, there was not a single * 1 Sam. xxxi. 13; Ps. xxxviii. 1, Ixvi, 12; Isai. iv. 4, ix. 18; Mic. vii. 8, 9 ; Zech. ix. 11 ; Mai. iii. 3 ; Tobit iv. 17 ; 2 Maccabees xii. 394-5 ; Matt. v. 22, V. 25, 26, xii. 32 ; Luke xvi. 9, xxiii. 42; Acts ii. 24 ; 1 Cor. iii. 12-15, xv. 29 ; Phil. ii. 10 ; 2 Tim. i. 16, 18 ; Rev. v. 3. t See Note A, 50. COMEDY OF CONVOCATION. - 47 Lesson, or part of a Lesson, from either of the Books of the Maccabees. Casula. That can't be so. Kayeo. It is so, for I have examined the whole Calendar from beginning to end, and there is not the shadow of a foundation for the archdeacon's observation ; it is a wanton and deliberate falsification, and if, when it is brought to their notice, as O'Kaye said it should be at once, Mr. Law- rence Kehoe and the Catholic Publication Society do^not apologize for it publicly, and suppress it in all future issues, they will make' themselves wanton and deliberate falsifiers. Even as it is, if the charge were against an individual, they would be liable in heavy damages for slander. Casula, You are getting warm about it. Kayeo. Is there not a cause ? That the whole work should have suspicion cast upon it by so gross and wanton a fabrication ! And that, though the most glaring, is not the only, false assertion, as O'Kaye was careful to remind me, in citing the words of the Professor, " Instead of one In- fallible Pope, — who at least was never known to reverse the dogmatical decisions of those who had gone before him," and adding that, for brazen impudence, it would be hard to find their parallel ; for who did not know that Leo IL, by his official confirmation of the Decrees of the Sixth General Council, "reversed" ex cathedra the "dogmatical decis- ion " of " Honorius the Heretic " — so the Council called him — in behalf of Monothelism. The Count De Maistre and his confreres might wriggle and squirm* till doomsday, but there was the fact, and there it would remain ; for though * See a specimen of the Count's wriggling, Note A, 30-34. Those who would see the proof that the decision of Honorius was a "dogmatical " one will find it in a pamphlet by P. Le Page Renouf, a writer of the Roman Church, published in London, last year, under the title of The Condemna- tion of Pope Honorius^ and with the motto, 'Avddeiia 'OvopLGj AlperiK(j. In fact, the Count himself, in another part of his book, yields the whole claim, by admitting that both Liberius and Honorius, though pure in mor- als, have need of apology on the score of dogma.—See Note A, 85. 48. AFTERPIECE TO THE they might strike it out of the Breviary,* they could not strike it out of history. But, not to speak of Liberius, who was claimed to have subscribed to^ Arianism under duress,t though the Breviary charged him with consenting to it,| the " decision " of Leo III. — verily there was more than one " Lion in the way " of the pretensions of modem Rome — against the addition of the filioque to the Creed (which was shown to be a " dogmatical decision " by his following it up with causing the Creed in its Constantino- politan form, without the filiogue^ to be engraved in Greek and Latin on two plates of silver, and set up in the Church, as a security against alteration), was afterwards " reversed," and that reversal had been kept to by all the popes now for more than three-quarters of a millennium, Pius lY. having, in 1564, " dogmatically " and categorically sanctioned the innovation, by imposing it as 'part of the old Greedy along with his eleven new Articles, upon all the " beneficed Clergy of the Roman Church." Casula. That is a long-winded sentence. Kayeo, It has taken the wind out of your sails. The next, and only remaining, point made by the Profes- sor was the difference of opinion existing in the Church of England, and tolerated by the Church, or at least by the Privy Council. The distinction was well taken, as the case of Colenso showed, whose condemnation had been pro- * '' Till the 17th century the Eoman Breviary spoke of the confirmation by Pope Leo n. of the holy Sixth Sjmod ' in which were condemned Cy- rus, Sergius, Honorius, Pyrrhus, Paul and Peter, qui unam voluntatem et operationem in Domino Jesu CJiristo dixerunt vd prcedicaverunt.'' [Who maintained that there was but one will and operation in our Lord Jesus Christ.] The name of Honorius is no longer to be found in the Breviary ; the other names are still retained."— i^enoz^/", Condem. of Honorius, p. 6. t See Note E ; also Note A, 30. X " The Martyrology of Ado (14 Aug.) speaks of St. Easebius, ' qui prsesente Constantio, cum fldem Catholiccam constantissime defenderet et Liberium Papam doleret Ariance perfidise consensisse,' &c. These words occur in other mediaeval martyrologies, and they were formerly in the Ro- man Breviary, from which they were only struck out in the sixteenth cen- tvonYy—Berwuf, p. 44, Note. COMEDY OF CONVOCATION. 49 nounced by the Church in no doubtful tones, her sentence having gone forth, His lyishoimck let another take. But here the Privy Council had stepped in and said, The temporal- ities of that 'hishoprick let not another take. In this there was no trespassing on the province of the Churcli : it was .clearly a case for the State to decide, notwithstanding points of doctrine or discipline were incidentally involved ; just as they were in the cases between the two wings of the Con- gregationalists decided by the Courts in Massachusetts forty years ago ; just as they were in the case between Bishop McQuaid and certain laymen of his diocese,"^ decided but the other day, and decided against the Bishop. t In none of those cases could exception be legitimately taken to the jurisdiction, whatever might be thought of the character of the decision in any or all of them. Gamla. There is no doctrine involved in the decision against the Bishop. Kayeo. That might be, he said, or it might not be : it mattered not to the argument. The trouble grew out of the attempted removal of the pastor by the bishop : for aught that appeared in the reports that he had seen in the papers, it might have been for heresy ; and it was equally true that it might have been for something else : it made no differ- ence; the jurisdiction attached in the one case as undoubt- * " A scene occurred in a Roman Catholic Church at Auburn, N". Y., on the 21st. The Bishop having removed the old pastor and appointed a new one in his place, the congregation refused to allow him to oflEiciate. Some of the most prominent members led him from the altar out of Church, and compelled the Bishop to follow him. The affair is not likely to end with- out further trouble."— i?02^?i(^ Table, Feb. 27. i- Telegraphic Despatch to the Associated Press : " The Auburk Church Diffcultt.— ^?/5wm, N. T., February 25.— The trial of several leading members of the Catholic Church of the Holy Fam- ily, for disturbing divine worship on Sunday last, resulted in their acquit- tal, the jury being out but a few moments. '' The complaint was made by Bishop McQuaid and Rev. M. Kavanaugh, ejected from the Church on Sunday morning, the congregation refusing to listen to them." 3 50 AFTERPIECE TO THE edly as in the other. The Count De Maistre, speaking of the Greek Emperors lording it over the Popes, had said that the Church ought not to refuse to an obstinate civil sover- eignty anything that produced only inconveniences.* Now deprivation of temporalities was only " an inconvenience," though sometimes a very grave one. If in any instance the Privy Council had meddled with spiritualities except as they involved temporalities, it had, sq far, enslaved the Church to the State ; but, as the Count had said in another place, " Among Catholics even, had we not seen the Galli- can Church humiliated, fettered, enslaved by high magis- tracies ? "t The Count's remedy — enslavement to the Pope — was worse than the disease ; for the State did set some limits to its encroachments in spirituals, but the Pope set none to his. Casula. But the charge is that the Church herself, even when not hampered by the State, tolerates differences on points of doctrine. Kayeo. Yes, he said, the Church of England tolerated differences of opinion on points of doctrine, and so did the Church of Eome. As Ffoulkes, one of their own writers, said, " Even the decisions of the Council of Trent failed to put down controversy upon points of detail which it had left open — no less than the Confession of Augsburg. There were Molinists and Jansenists, Galileans and Ultramontanes, amongst Catholics : to be set against Arminians and Contra- Eemonstrants, Puritans and High Churchmen amongst Protestants."J Casula, But those differences were not on matters of faith. Kayeo. They l)oi'e on matters of faith. The controversy between the Molinists and the Jansenists involved differences of opinion on the effects of baptismal grace as great, to say the least, as those of High Churchmen and Low Church- * Note A, 43. t Note A, 44. t Christendom's DivisionB, p. 171. COMEDY OF CONVOCATION. 51 men. That between the Franciscans and the Dominicans was on a subject that had in our own day been made an article of faith ; and that between the Ultramontanes and the Gallicans was expected to be brought to an issue in the com- ing (Ecumenical Council. Fortunately, the result, if no ac- cident happened to the Atlantic Telegraph, could be promul- gated nearly simultaneously throughout Christendom. In 1854 it was not so : the decree that went forth on the eighth of December, was over threeweeks in crossing the water ; the consequence was, the members of the Roman Communion in the United States actually kept their Christmas without knowing what the Faith was ! One word more, and he would have done with the Pro- fessor. The picture of Dr. Pusey and Mr. Jowett, Brother Ignatius and Mr. Bellew, Archdeacon Denison and Dr. M'Neile, was evidently drawn in convenient obliviousness of the old adage about people in glass houses. Let any one who doubted its applicability in the present instance turn to Mr. Ffoulkes's work already referred to — it was advertised on the cover of the " Comedy " as a " Catholic Book " — and read pages 231-233. He would cite a single sentence : '' As if the persecution of all orders by the State was not bitter enough, one order attacked another with such viru- lence, that upon one occasion the writings of Father Baker, one of the most spiritual of 'all the converts of that date, were proscribed, as containing 'poisonous and diabolical doctrine.' " Really, he must say such imputations were very unseemly in the members of an infallible Church with an infallible earthly Head. When the Church of England claimed to come within that category, he would answer for her, she would authenticate the claim by securing a mechanical har- mony of opinion, or rather, noii-ojnnion^ among her mem- bers; — the only harmony infallibility of the Roman type eould secure, as was proved by the late troubles of Bishop McQuaid: the Holy Family — that was the name of the 52 AFTERPIECE TO THE Aubtirn Church — could be made a " Happy Family " not even as Barnum's was — by the fear-inspired repression of in- stinctive antipathies. " Every kind of beasts, and of birds, and of serpents, and of things in the sea, was tamed, and had been tamed of mankind ; pnt the tongue could no man tame,"* — not even an infallible Pope, with an infallible Church behind him. But enough of the Professor. Dr. Easy came next, and he was easily disposed of. His office of Prolocutor — for he seemed to have taken the office upon him, to the prejudice of the real incumbent — led him occasionally " to submit," as Father Weninger saidf of S. James at the Council of Jerusalem (Acts xv. 13-21), " some disciplinary remarks." Anything in them in the way of ar- gument had been anticipated by the other speakers. His Easiness, therefore, need not be disturbed. Bequiescat in pace I Casula, O'Kaye evidently knows who need attending to and who do not. Kayeo. The next in order was Archdeacon Jolly's propo- sition to change the answer to the question in the Cate- chism, " How many sacraments are there ? " from " Two only, as generally necessary to salvation " to " Two only, 2i^ form- erly necessary to salvation, but one of them not so necessary now as it used to be ;" and Dean Blunt's amendment to "the proposition, " Two only, as equally -z^Tinecessary to salvation, but baptism to be viewed as rather an impediment to salva- tion than otherwise." He would propose a substitute for both the amendment and the original proposition, so as to adapt the answer to the use of Rome : How many sacra- ments are there f Four-and-a-lialf only^ as generally neces- sary to salvation ; the other half ^^ formerly " in much esteem^ lut '''not so necessary noio as it used to ^^."t Besides these, one * S. James iii. 7, 8. t See Note F., 1. $ Cardinal Bona acknowledges that " always, everywhere, from the very first foundation of the Chm-ch to the 12th century, the faithful always com- COMEDY OF CONVOCATION. 53 other"^ necessary to a j^avt of mankind for the salvation of the rest^ and onef not necessary at alL^ dut decidedly " an impediment to salvation f^ for which reason^ the Clergy^ who had so many other impediments, might not receive it, lut only give it to the laity, ivho having so few impediments in comparison witb the Clergy, could afford to run the risk of this additional one. But whether the Clergy could afford to "he thus accessories lefore the fact, was somewhat questionable.''^ " Thou shalt not put a stumbling block before the blind." " Thou shalt in any wise rebuke thy neighbour, and not suffer sin upon him. "J: Gasula. When he talks of half a sacrament, he forgets the declaration of the Creed of Pope Pius that "under either kind alone, Christ is received whole and entire, and a true sacrament." Kayeo. No ! he does not forget it ; but he remembers the declaration immediately preceding it in the same article of the Creed, that " a conversion is made of the whole sub- stance of the bread into the Body, and of the whole sub- stance of the wine into the Blood," and he sees, as a man of sense, that if the whole substance of the bread is converted into the Body, no part of it can possibly be converted into the Blood. Hence he very properly takes the declaration you cite, in a pickwickian sense.§ Casula. The answer cited from the Anglican Catechism represents the two sacraments of the Church of England as only generally necessary to salvation. It follows that she •does not hold them to be absolutely necessary. municated under the species of bread and wine : " and that " at the begin- ning of that century the partaking of the cup began gTadually to go out of use." '' Semper-enim et ubique, ab ecclesise primordiis usque ad s^eci- lum duodecimum, sub specie panis et vini communicarunt fideles : coepit- que paulatim ejus saeculi initio usus calicis obsolescere." — Bona, Rct, Li- turg. L. ii., c. 18, n. 1. See Bingham, J.7^^'^g. xv. V. 1. — The disuse was first decreed by the Council of Constance, June 14, 1415. * Orders. t Matrimony. % Lev. six. 14, 17. § It will be observed that Father Kayeo here speaks against his own Church. In this he but follows the example of the merry Comedians. Evil communications corrupt good manners. 54 AFTERPIECE TO THE Kayeo. That is an unwarranted inference: "generally necessary " means necessary to men generally, to the genus liomo^ to mdjikind. This was a common meaning of the word two hundred years ago, and it is still so used by the mathe- matician, who, when he speaks of a particular proposition as true of triangles generally^ means, of all triangles, — of the genus triangle. Casula. Does she hold their absolute necessity, then ? Kayeo, No ! She says they are necessary to the salvation of man, just as you or I would say that food is necessary to the life of man, which nobody will pretend to dispute, though men have been knowTi to live for da^^s, and even weeks without it. She admits exceptional cases, and so does the Roman Church. Peter Lombard says that " God has not tied His grace to the sacraments."* S. Thomas (on baptism) says that " to adults living under the law of na- ture, faith alone was sufficient ; since even now it is suffi- cient to him who does not from contempt neglect the sacra- ments ;"t and (on the eucharist) that " necessity dispenses mth the sacrament.''^ The Bull Unigenitus condemns the proposition of Quesnel (on S. Luke x. 35, 36) — the 29th of the 101 — that " grace is not given outside the Church."§ In fact, there is a general consent on that point. Casula, Well, let that pass ; and let us return to O'Kaye, and Archdeacon Jolly, with his Society for Tceeping alive the corruptions of Popery in the interests of Gospel truths and his Anglo-Metropolitan and General Superstition Repelling Asso- oiation. Kayeo, Archdeacon Jolly was welcome to the compan- ionship. He (O'Kaye) preferred to take up the sophistries * '' Qiiibus (sacramentis) non alligavit potentiam suain Deus."— >S'e?i^., Z. iv., dist. 1, §4- Clomp, dist. iv. § 5. t '' Quantum ad ddultos in lege naturae sufficiebat sola fides ; cum etiam modo sufliciat el qui non ex contemptu sacramenta dimittit."— ^. 2, Art. 6. X "Articulus necessitatis sacramentum excludit.'" — Q. 3, Art. 3. § "Nulla extra ecclesiam conceditur gratia." COMEDY OF CONVOCATION. 55 of Archdeacon Chasuble, and show their flimsiness : — " If the Catholic Church were not infallible at one period of her existence, — for example, when she decreed the Canon of Holy Scripture, — what assurance," we were asked, "had they, or could they have, that they possessed the true Bi- ble? Saints had differed widely about it, so widely as to reject books now admitted to be canonical, while they ad- mitted others now rejected as spurious. In the fourth cen- tury it was still an open question, till, at length, it was finally decided by the authority of the Church. If the Church were not infallible, what was the decision worth ? " In reply, he would remark, first, that the " worth " of a de- cision depended on its accuracy, and not on the infallibility of him who rendered it ; and, secondly, that, in the case in hand, there was no "decision" properly so called. The Canon rested on the " authority " of the Church, as the fact of the battle of Marathon, or of Actium, rested on the " authority " of history. " It was allowed," said Westcott, " even by those who had reduced the genuine Apostolic works to the narrowest limits, that from the time of Ire- ngeus the New Testament was composed essentially of the same books as we received at present, and that they were re- garded with the same reverence as was now shown to them."* It " rested on no authoritative decision " simply because "none was needed." The Councils of Laodicea and of Carthage, one hundred and fifty years later, " intro- duced no innovations, but merely proposed to preserve the tradition which had been handed down ;"t and these were merely provincial councils — that of Laodicea, " in fact only a small gathering of clergy from parts of Lydia and Phry- gia."J In the Council of Mce, which was prior to these, and in all the other (really) General Councils, the Canon was never discussed or acted on ; it was taken for granted. There needed no infallibility, in the Roman sense. The Prov- * History of the Canon, Cambridge (Eng.), 1855, p. 8. tid, p. 490. $ Id., p. 498. 56 AFTERPIECE TO THE idence of God authenticated and perpetuated (as might have been inferred a prioo^i it would) what the Spirit of God had inspired. The logic w^hich proved the infallibility of the Church by the declaration of Scripture, and then turned round and proved that Scripture was Scripture by the declaration of the Infallible Church, might do at the Vatican, but it would not do elsewhere. Casula, The fellow is hard to please : he is always deny- ing your premises, or picking a flaw in your argument. Kayeo. It is a bad habit he has got into, owing to his bad bringing up : if Mother Church — stepmother he was so irreverent as to call her ; he never knew a mother, he said, younger than her daughter, but he had known a step-mother to be so ; and a step-mother Eome had proved herself, in more senses than one : Jerusalem was our mother — the Vision of Peace; not Rome — the daughter of Mars,* and the incar- nation of brute force — if Mother Church had had the hand- ling of him with the help of " neighbor Dominic and his red-hot pincers," she would have taught him better man- ners : but we must get along with him as we can. To pro- ceed with his criticisms. What had been said of the Canon of Scripture, was equally applicable to the " building " of creeds, and the " constructing " of liturgies, and whatever else was neces- sary to the security of the Truth : the Providence of God might be safely trusted to uphold the Ark of God, without the help of a presumptuous, because unbelieving, Uzzah. The Archdeacon could not see how a fallible Church (mean- ing, fallible in the modern Roman sense,) could be a Teach- ing Church, it " having," to adopt Dean Critical's way of putting it, "no infallibility, and therefore no divine author- ity." It was equally hard to see how a fallible Bishop could be a Teaching Bishop, or a fallible Priest a Teaching Priest. Yet S. Paul laid it down as one of the qualifications of a * Xaipe [jlol Ta)/^?7, dvyarep "Aprjog \ COMEDY OF CONVOCATION. 57 Bishop that he should he " apt to teach,"* " holding fast the faithful word as he had leen taught^ that he might he able by sound doctrine both to exhort and to convince the gainsay ers ; "t and he gave in charge to S. Timothy, " The things that thou hast heard of me among many witnesses, the same commit thou to faithful men, who shall he able to teach others also."]: Besides, Archbishop Spalding, of Bal- timore, and Bishop Domenec, of Pittsburgh, fallible as they were acknowledged to be, undertook, nevertheless, to inter- pret Infallibillity itself, uttering itself through an Encyclical and Syllabus^ and condemning no less than eighty Proposi- tions. " When Leibnitz, corresponding with Bossuet on the great question of the reunion of the Churches, demanded, as an indispensible preliminary, that the Council of Trent should be declared non-oecumenical, Bossuet," we were told by the Count De Maistre, *' justly inflexible on that point, declared to him nevertheless that, to facilitate the great work, they could go back on the Council lyy way of explana- tion. Let it not be wondered at, then," added the Count, " if the Popes have sometimes permitted them to go back on their decisions 'by way of explanation^^ How Archbishop S. and Bishop D. " went back on " the Pope in the instance referred to, might be seen in the Appendix to the Comedy of Canonization. He would cite a . specimen, and refer me to the said Ap)p>endix for the rest, and to the authorities there given. The Pope, in the Encyclical., less than ^yq years ago, had said, as translated in the Dublin Beview^ April, 1865 : " Against the doctrine of Scripture, of the Church, and of the Holy Fathers, they do not hesitate to assert that ' That is the best condition of Society, in which no duty is recognized as attached to the civil power, of restraining, by enacted penalties, offenders against the Catholic religion, except so far as the public peace may require.' " This the Pope declared to be a ." totally false idea of social govern- ment ;" and he added that those who held to it did not * 1 Tim. iii. 2. + Titus i. 9. :}: 2 Tim. ii. 2. § See Note A, 22. 8* 58 AFTERPIECE TO THE fear " to foster that erroneous opinion, ^ * * ^ called by our predecessor Gregory XVI. an insanity, viz., that ' liberty of conscience and worships is each man's personal right, which ought to be legally proclaimed and asserted in every rightly constituted society,' " &c. On this, Archbishop S., "in his Pastoral Letter which published the Encyclical to the faithful " in the United States, "went back" after the following fashion : "To stretch the words of the Pontiff, evidently intended for the stand-point of Euroi3ean Radicals and Infidels, so as to make them include the state of things established in this country, by our noble Constitution, in regard to the liberty of conscience, of worship, and of the press, were manifestly unfair and unjust. * * * Therefore their action " — that of the framers of the Federal Constitution — " could not have been condemned or even contemplated by the Pontiff, in his recent solemn censure, pronounced on an altogether different set of men with a totally different set of princi- ples." And Bishop D., " in a Pastoral proclaiming the Jubilee for his Diocese," in this wise : " By no means, venerable and beloved brethren, does the Pope condemn the religious toleration or freedom of con- science which we " — the members of the Roman Commun- ion ? — " enjoy in America • * --{^ * No, no, the Pope does not condemn any just, fair, and reasonable toleration, or freedom of worship." It reminded him of Captain P.'s " explanation." Meet- ing Mr. E., an Israelite acquaintance, one day, the captain said to him, among other things : You ought to hear our minister, Mr. B. (Unitarian) ; you agree very well : he don't believe that Christ is God, and you don't believe that Christ is God. You'd like him, I'm sure; come and hear him. Mr. E. said he would. Accordingly, on the following Sun- day he was found sitting in the captain's pew. But, as ill luck would have it, Mr. B. preached on the crucifixion, and COMEDY OP CONVOCATION. 59 expressed himself very strongly on the part the Jews took in it. Returning home Mr. E. said to Captain P., What did yon invite me to come and hear B. for ? he abused the Jews shamefully. Oh, said the captain, with a little lingering of the quarter-deck about him, he didn't mean you, gentlemen Jews ; he meant those watch-selling sons of ^ ***** * \ — gQ with the Pope's Encyclical, He did not mean you, gentlemen '' Radicals and Infidels " of the United States ; he meant those watcli-selling Radicals and Infidels of Europe ! Casula. Very fairly put ! Why couldn't the Archbishop let the Encyclical speak for itself, and not make such a milk-and-water mess of it ? Kayeo. Why need there have been an Encyclical that re- quired explaining ? If the Pope did not mean to include the American "Radicals and Infidels," why couldn't he say so ? and if he did mean to include them because he thought they were like the European ones, why couldn't he have in- quired about them of the Archbishop, before committing himself to an infallible Encyclical ? He could have told him how unlike they were ; as unlike as two peas ! Will it be said that he did mean to include the American " Radi- cals and Infidels," but not the framers of the Constitution ? The obvious answer is, that if lie didn't mean to include their icorlc — that part of it, that is, that secures liberty of conscience — then he didn't mean to include anything at all. The plain truth is, the Encyclical &-pi[)TOYes of religious lib- erty so far as it is a liberty to be subject to the Pope; so far as it is a liberty not to be subject to him, it disapproves of it. Casula. You have hit the nail on the head, this time. Kayeo. To come back to O'Kaye. '' How," asked the Archdeacon, " could there be a revelation from God to man, — unless there existed a living authority upon earth to teach man infallibly what that revelation was ? " How, he would ask in reply, could that be a revelation, which required an '' authority " to teach man what it was ? in other words, to 60 AFTERPIECE TO THE re'Geal it ? Revelation shone, not, indeed, in its own light, but in the reflected light of the Sun of Righteousness. The Pope held up his farthing candle to help us see the Moon ; but instead of helping us it hindered *Us, by partially blind- ing our eyes. The candle might be the better light for him who couldn't see, or didn't want to see, beyond his nose ; but for one who sought to take in the whole landscape, the moon was decidedly superior. Again : " The notion of a fallible Church, founded by an infallible God, was," we were assured by the Archdeacon, " an absurdity and a contradiction." If so, the notion of a fallible man created by an infallible God, was " an absurd- ity and a contradiction." Therefore, Adam w^as infallible. And as an infallible man could not beget a fallible man, any more than an infallible God could create a fallible man, it followed that we were all infallible ; as indeed, we must be (as he had already shown),* to make the Pope's infallibility of any use to us. Casula, He is always choking me off with a comparison. Kayeo. Yes, he forgets that comparisons are " odorous," and that the odor, in the present case, must be, to you at least, anything but a pleasant one. There was but one other of the Archdeacon's points that required notice — the Diabolical Millennium^ so called. "When the Anglican homily gravely asserted that the whole Church of God — the home of the saints and martyrs — had been ' sunk in the pit of damnable idolatry by the space of nine hundred years and odd,' it made the heart sick to think that they were themselves the heirs of the very men who had uttered such stupid profanity." The precise words of the homily were, " by the space of eight hundred years and more;" but "eight hundred" did not come quite near enough to his " millennium," so he must needs add another hundred. But let that pass. The Archdeacon's object evi- dently was to discredit the statement of the homily by a *P. 11. comeJdy of convocation. ()1 reductio ad dbsiirdum^ that was to say, by suggesting that if the statement were true, the Church had become . extinct. Unfortunately for the argument, the language of Holy Scrip- ture on the Idolatry of the " Church of God — the home of the saints and martyrs " — was equally strong. The whole history of the chosen. people was full of it, as might be seen in the Books of Judges and Kings ; it was summed up in the twentieth chapter of Ezekiel : " In the day when I chose Israel, * * ^ I g^id unto them, * * * defile not yourselves with the idols of Egypt. * * .* But they re- belled against me, * * * neither did they forsake the idols of Egypt " (verses 5, 7, 8). "Yet also I lifted up my hand unto them in the wilderness, * * ^^ for their heart went after their idols" (vv. 15, 16). "When I had brought them into the land ^j^ * * there they presented the provocation of their offering" (v. 28). "Are ye polluted after the manner of your fathers ? * ^ "^ ye pollute your- selves with all your idols, even unto this day " (vv. 30, 31) ; and in the thirty-second chapter of Jeremiah (vv. 28-31) : " Behold I will give this city into the hand of the Chaldeans, * * "^ with the houses, upon whose roofs they have of- fered incense unto Baal, and poured out drink-offerings unto other gods, to provoke me to anger. For the children of Israel and the children of Judah have only done evir before me from their youth : for the children of Israel have only provoked me to anger wdth the work of their hands, saith the Lord. For this city hath been to me as a provocation of mine anger and of my fury from the day that they built it even unto this day ;" viz., the year 590 before Christ : to which year, reckoning from the beginning of the Exodus of the children of Israel out of Egypt, 1491 B.C., was exactly nine hundred years and odd^^ And as to the entireness of the corruption, it was to be read in the earlier chapters of those same prophets, and especially in the beginning of the " vision of Isaiah, which he saw concerning Judah and Jeru- * The Chronologies differ, but onlj^ hy a few years. 62 AFTERPIECE TO THE salem," one hundred and fifty years before: "The whole head is sick, and tlie whole heart faint. From the sole of the foot even unto the head there is no soundness in it ; but wounds, and bruises, and putrifying sores." Such was the picture of the Church of God, especially in the seventh and eighth centuries B.C., as drawn by the pen of Inspiration : such was the picture of the Church of God in " those terri- ble ninth and tenth centuries," and " thirteenth and four- teenth centuries," after Christ, as drawn by Roman histori- ans themselves.. " We might say, literally^'''' said the Count De Maistre, " asking pardon for the familiarity of the ex- pression, that toward the tenth century the human race, in Europe, had gone crazy. * * * To defend the Church from the frightful deluge of corruption and ignorance, there was needed no less than a power of a superior order, and entirely new in the world, — that of the Popes. But the Popes themselves, in this unhappy age, paid a fatal though passing tribute to the general disorder. The Ponti- fical chair toas 02:)pressed, dishonored and Moody.'''' The Count went on to complain of the " bad faith which insisted with so much asperity on the vices of some Popes, without saying a word on the frightful dissoluteness which reigned in their day;" and added that he had " always had, with regard to that sad epoch, a thought that would absolutely give utter- ance to itself. When courtesans all-powerful, monsters of licentiousness, and wickedness, profiting by the public dis- orders, got possession of power, disposed of everything at Rome, and bore into the chair of S. Peter, by means the most culpable, either their sons or their lovers, he (the Count) denied most expressly that those men were Popes."''' If they were not Popes, where, on the Roman theor^^, was the Church ? If they were Popes (and he believed the Count was tlie only one that had ever doubted it), then indeed was "the whole head sick." As to the Count's apology for the Church, from the corruption of the times, what was this but * See Note A, 45-47. COMEDY OF CONVOCATION. 68 an acknowledgment that "the salt," which should have prevented that corruption, had itself " lost its savor V ISTor was the Count the only one who admitted the awful corruption of the Church. In the Council of Constance, which deposed three rival Popes, Gregory XII., Benedict XIII., and Alexander Y., and put Martin Y. in their place, the assembled fathers, in their third session (March 25, A.D. 1415), declared that "they would not separate till not only the schism had been healed, but the whole Church, head and members, reformed in faith and mannersy'^ Adrian YI. declared to Chieregato, that " in that holy seat there had been many enormities then for some years : abuses in spiritual things, excesses in what had been ordained — all things, in short, perverted ;" that the " disease" had "found its way from the head to the members;" that they, the " prelates," had all " turned aside every one to his own way ;" and that there had not been " for a long while any that would do good — no, not one."t "Behind and besides all this," said Ffoulkes, "there was the undeniaNe fact of im- mense corruption in the Church, so great and manifold as to shalce tlie helief of men in lier divine credentials. Luther both saw and felt it."t De Maistre admitted as much by speaking of the " immense chapter of reform " in the pro- ceedings of the " Council of Trent."§ Gasiila. But the charge was idolatry, and there is nothing of idolatry in all this. KoAjeo. That was true, but did not affect the argument, which was two-fold : first, that if the idolati-y of the chosen people did not affect the being of the Jewish Church, then neither did the idolatry charged by the homily, if true, affect the being of the Christian Church ; and secondly, if the acknowledged "immense corruption" of the "head and members," in other words, of the whole body, from the sole of the foot to the head, " in faith and manners," did not affect the being of the Christian Church, then neither did * See Note H,, 7. t Note H, 8. 1:Id., 9. § Note A, 84. 64 AFTERPIECE TO THE the idolatry charged by the homily, if true, affect its being. "Whether it was, or was not true, was a matter of opinion. About the acts on which the charge was grounded, there was no dispute : the homily charged that those acts involved idolatry; those who engaged in them denied the charge. Much might be said, and had been said, on both sides. As the merits of the question, however, did not affect the argu- ment, they need not now be entered into. The last of the speakers in Convocation was Dr. Candour. His objection, in reply to the Archdeacon, "that it was a defective arrangement that mfallibility should have existed in the purest ages, when Christians were of ' one heart and one mind,' and consequently had less need of it," was as well taken as the Irishman's objection to the sun as com- pared with the moon, that he shone in the day-time when we had no occasion for him. According to the Roman theory, Infallibility was the cause of the unanimity among the early Christians ; according to Eoman ijractice, as illus- trated in the case of the " new dogma," it was not a cause at all : it put off its decision till there was nothing to de- cide ; sometimes, as in the case referred to, leaving its exer- cise in abeyance for six hundred years. Again. "The promise to guide the Church into ^ all truth,' " the Archdeacon was represented as maintaining, "had reference only to the integrity of truth, l)eforei\iQ mission of S. Augustine to England, and aftei' the publica- tion of the ^ Tracts for the Times.' " It had reference to neither, for the simple reason that there was no such promise. There was a promise to " the eleven disciples" that the " Spir- it of truth " should guide them into all truth,"^ and in another part of the discourse, the way in which he would do it was specified, namely, by " teaching them all thinojs, and 'bringing all thing 8 to their rememtrance whatsoe'Der He {Christ) had said unto them^-f That this promise, if made to the Church at all, — and it was only by implication that it was even sup- * S. John xvi. 13. tid., xvi. 26. COMEDY OF CONVOCATION. 65 posed to have been made, — was confined to the Church of the Apostolic Age, Some of whose members had seen and heard the Lord, was certain, since its fulfilment to the post- apostolic Church would be a physical impossibility ; it was not within the sphere even of omnipotence to make a man remem'ber what he had never known. The post-apostolic Church needed no such promise ; it had only to " keep, by the Holy Ghost, which dwelt in its members, that good thing which had been committed to it,"* namely, "the faith,'' which, as S. Judas not Iscariot assured us, had been " once for all delivered to the saints."t This was the teaching of S. John himself in his First Epistle, written when the Apostolic was giving place to the post-apostolic age : " Ye have an unction from the Holy One, and ye know all things. ^ ^ ^ Let that therefore abide in you, which ye have heard from the beginning. If that which ye have heard from the beginning shall remain in you, ye also shall con- tinue in the Son, and in the Father. ^ ^ * The anoint- ing which ye have received of Him abideth in you, and ye need not that any man teach you ; but as the same anoint- ing teacheth you of all things, and is the truth, and is no lie, and even as it hath taught you, ye shall abide in Him."]; Two things only were wanting to the "integrity of truth" in the Communion of Saints, — in other words, to its conti- nuity in time and place, so far, at least, as salvation was concerned, — namely, the objective truth handed down in the Church, from the beginning, and the subjective disposi- tion toward the truth, wrought in the hearts of the faithful by the anointing of the Holy Ghost ; where the former was lacking, the salvation of the individual was in peril ; where the latter was lacking, his salvation was impossible. — The Eeverend Doctor's "twelve hundred years" between S. Au- gustine and the Tracts for the Times, " during which all Christians obstinately believed the supremacy of the Pope, the oflice of the Mother of God, and the Mystery of Trans- * 2 Tim. i. 14. t Jude 3. $ 1 John ii. 20, 24, 27. 66 AFTERPJECE TO THE substantiation," beat the " Diabolical Millennium " out and out : it was enough to make a well-in:P5rmed Roman Church- man grin, and a Greek Churchman laugh outright. Had the Doctor never read the history of the Council of Flor- ence ? He would find an admirable compendium of it in Ffoulkes's Christendom'^ s Dimsions, Part ii. Let him turn to page 352, and read what was there written : "After sub- scribing (to the Decree concerning the filioque)^ they (the Greek Bishops) returned to the Emperor,* who entertained them for a time with marked smiles and courtesy. Then without giving them the least hint or warning of his inten- tions, he sent a deputation of them — ten in number, of whom Syropulus " (the Greek Historian of the Council), " was one — with Bessarion at their head, to the Pope, whom they found sitting in state surrounded by his bishops and cardinals. A notary was present. 'Bessarion without hesi- tation — for he had been well primed " by the Emperor, " beforehand — commenced making a profession of the doc- trine of transubstantiation in the name of his brethren. '• Notary, write that down,' said Cardinal Julian. It was written down, and is preserved ;t but no more was said of it. The artifice was too transparent. The Emperor for once had been too abrupt ; but as the decree was signed, he thought he was safe ; and it certainly had no effect what- ever on the results." — Now, why was Bessarion "primed" by the Emperor to make a profession of transubstantia- tion in the name of his brethren, if the doctrine had, as the Doctor asserted, been held by them ever since the mission of S. Augustine to England, that was to say, more than eight hundred years ? and why did there come from that " priming," even then, only a flash in the pan ? Was the Canon, that had been so long in their possession, * He had come with them from Constantinople, to transfer them, body and soul, to the Pope, on condition of the Pope's securing to him, from the Western Powers, men and means for his defence against the Turks ; and he was now at work for the fulfilment of his part of the bargain. ^ t " Colet (a Roman authority), tom. xviii., p. 540." COMEDY OF CONVOCATION. 67 rusty? Evidently, "the Mystery of Transubstantiation " had not been " obstinately believed " by some Christians dur- ing the 1200 years. — As to the " office of the Mother of God," if it was an office that involved her immaculate con- ception, it was not " obstinately believed " by the Greeks, nor "oery " obstinately " by S. Bernard, who, in the very middle of the 1200 years, wrote a letter in which he " obsti- nately " maintained that there was the same necessity for the immaculate conception of the Virgin's mother, and grandmother, and great-grandmother, and great-grand- mother's great- grandmother, Rahab and Thamar included, all the way back to mother Eve ! Then for the " supremacy of the Pope " — it was a queer kind of supremacy (to say the least) which the Greeks had " obstinately believed " for the last 400 years, to say nothing of the preceding 800. — It wouldn't do. The Doctor must try again. And he had tried again, and with as laughable a result as before : "In the Roman sense, which, at least, was rational and intelli- gible, it (' Catholic ') meant the absolute oneness in doctrine and discipline of all the Churches which compose the Cath- olic communion." Casula. He has passed over that part about " the promise that the ' gates of hell ' should ' never ' prevail against the Church." Kayeo. That, he said, secured the perpetuity of the Church, but not its infallibility, any more than its impecca- bility. Now no one denied that the Church had existed from the beginning and that it would exist to the end. — But to come back to the declaration, just cited, about the " absolute oneness in doctrine and discipline." When he read it last, he thought he would ask the Doctor a few questions ; but the GJiurchma^ (Hartford, Ct., March 6,) had saved him the trouble : "Now we wish to ask whether to the ' submitted Greeks,' so called, the Greek liturgy is not allowed ? We wish to ask whether a status precisely that of a married clergy in every thing but the marriage service 68 AFTERPIECE TO THE is not tolerated through the whole of South America, Mex- ico, and Guatimala ? We wish to ask if in certain branches of the Oriental Churches which have submitted to Rome, the marriage of the clergy has not been allowed? We, desii'e to learn if it has not been represented by Roman ecclesiastics, in a position to hiow, that the appi'o aching Council would debate the modification of the celibate rule ? If we are mistaken upon these points, we have only to say that we have been misinformed. We were also under the impression that Pope Julius did direct Cardinal Pole to reconcile Bishops ordained by Edward's Ordinal without reordination, and that another Pope was not unwilling in Elizabeth's time to allow the use of the English Prayer Book." On that last point the Churchman was certainly right in its impression. Pope Pius lY., in a letter to Queen Elizabeth, dated May 5, 1560, and sent by the hand of Yincentius Parpalia, did offer to " confirm the Prayer Book." * Nor was this an exceptional instance. Innocent III., in a long letter to Morosini, the new patriarch of ConstantinoiDle, in answer to the fourth of his queries, said : " You have asked for instruction of the apostolic see, respecting the euchar- istic rite, and that of the other sacraments ; whether you should allow the Greeks to celebrate them in their own way, or compel them to adopt that of the Latins — to which we reply briefly, that if you cannot get them to change, you may tolerate them in their own rite, till the apostolic see shall have decreed otherwise on more mature deliberation." t The Fourth Lateran Council, held under the same pope, decreed, in its ninth canon : '' Since in many parts, within the same state and diocese, people of different languages are mixed up together, having different rites and usages under the same faith, we enjoin strictly that the prelates of such states or dioceses should appoint proper persons, who should, according to the differences of those rites and tongues^ cele- * Heylin, Hist. Eliz., London, 1670, p. 131. t Ffoulkes, C. Z)., Part ii., p. 209. COMEDY OF CONVOCATION. 69 brate Divine service for them and administer the sacraments of the church, teaching them both by word and example." * " Nevertheless, " wrote Innocent lY., to his legate, A. D., 1254, " as some of the Greeks have returned to their duty to the Apostolic see, and have been for some time past heeding and obeying it reverently, it is both lawful and expedient, by toleratiug their rites and customs, as far as we can before God, to retain them in their obedience to the same 5 * hc h^ The Greeks may use their own office" (of the eucharist), " but not celebrate before their matins are over, nor later than the ninth hour, * * * Married priests may hear confessions, and impose penances." t " If you can manage," said Alexander lY., to his legate, the bishop of Orvieto, A.D., 1256, "to get the Greeks to assent to other terms more advantageous and honorable to the Eoman church — more adapted to the work of reconciliation — do not be in too great a hurry to propose the foregoing, still less to ac- cept them. But if you find that you cannot possibly do better, then accept them discreetly, (!) as you may judge ex- pedient, in our name and that of the Roman church." \ One of these "terms" ran thus: — " 7. In questions of faith, the pope to give his opinion, as he may see fit, before all others : to be received, by all others obediently, provided it contains nothing contrary to the institutions of the gospels or of the canons." Why here was the very thing that Dean Criti- cal,§ following the Count De Maistre,|| thought he found in the Sixth of the Thirty-nine Articles. He was mistaken ; for the Church, in that Article, w^as laying down the rule for herself as teacher, not for those whom she taught ; but here there was no mistake : for the seventh of the " terms " laid down the rule for the bishops and others to be guided by in determining whether an " opinion " given by the Pope in a matter of faith was to be " received " by them. ISTo wonder Alexander wanted his legate to " get^"^^ if he could * Id., pp. 222. 223. t Id., p. 24T. t Id., p. 251. § Comedy, p. 25. !l Note A, 83. 70 AFTERPIECE TO THE " manage " to do it, " other terms, more advantageous and honorable to the Roman church." " In the very same moment, with the very same pen, with the same ink," et cmtera. Casula. He has disposed of the " absolute oneness " as to " discipline," but not as to " doctrine." Kayeo. , He thought the Seventh '' Term," above cited, struck at it ; but, not to mention that, — nor the First Canon of the Fourth Lateran Council (at the beginning of the thir- teenth century), " affirming the procession of the Holy Ghost from the Son as well as the Father," * nor the Creed of Clement lY., (in the middle of that century), with its six "additional articles," one affirming purgatory, and another the supremacy of the Pope,t — " a new creed twice in fifty years," to use the words of Ffoulkes { — there was the Creed of Pius lY. with its eleven additional articles, and the Creed of Pius IX., with its one additional article in esse, and half a dozen more, perhaps, in posse ! Really, when he con- templated the Candid Doctor's " absolute oneness in doctrine and discipline " in the light of these unquestioned and un- questionable historical facts, he felt like saying with S. Gregory, and the merry archdeacon, " Give me leave to be merry on a merry subject." The First Scene had now been disposed of, with the ex- ception of the " Branch-theory," and that would be more conveniently considered after the question of Orders. He proposed therefore, with my consent, to adjourn the discus- sion till the next day, when he w^ould be happy to see me in " his own hired house." * Foulkes, C. Z)., Part ii., p. 220. t Id., pp. 262, 263. X Id., p. 263. COMEDY OF CONVOCATION. 71 SCENE II. — A Scene loitliin a Scene — O'Kaye's Library. In other respects as in Scene I. Kayeo. Calling, the jiext clay, according to appointment, I was shown into O'Kaye's Library. Unlike '' Dr. Easy's Drawing-Room," it was a place suggestive of hard work and hard fare. I saw in it no portraits of the Misses O'Kaye, for the very satisfactory reason that no Mistress O'Kaye, as I afterward learned from one of his neighbors, had ever crossed the threshold. But what surprised me most, I saw but few books, and those of recent date. He had had the misfortune to lose his library by fire some ^yq years ago. It was a very serious inconvenience, for, oftentimes, as he would be writing, he would have to lay down his pen in mediis rebus and go two or three miles to consult some one of the many public or private libraries to which by the kindness of his friends he had access. When, at my request, he had undertaken to read the Comedy a second time and to give me his opinion of the argument, not thinking it right, the example of the Comedy to the contrary notwith- standing, to deal in random assertions, he had sought, where facts were drawn in question, to fortify his statements with an impregnable rampart of authorities. And here let him say, once for all, that whatever allega- tions of importance he had passed over, were of the very class of random ones just hinted at ; and he proposed to leave them unnoticed till such time as their anonymous, and therefore irresponsible, and thence reckless and unscrupu- lous author or sponsor should condescend to give chapter and verse for them — which, for his part, he did not believe he (or any body else) could do in a single instance. He had caught him in a right -out fib where he had had the temerity to give chapter, if not verse: he was justified therefore in taking all that he had given neither for, as a tissue of his 72 AFTERPIECE TO THE own manufacture. With this broom, then, he swept away, at one stroke, all the " cobwebs to catch flies " (how much better to have set a " trap to catch a sunbeam ") which this industrious and persevering spider had spun out of his own bowels on his entrance into the drawing-room. Gasula. The web has caught a wasp, this time. Kayeo. Be it so : but a wasp, even with legs entangled, is more than a match for a spider, any day. The subject of the drawing-room discussion was the valid- ity of Anglican Orders, and the Professor of History, or rather, — for the Archdeacon had evidently made a mistake in the title of the chair, — of Romance^ had the floor — he begged pardon — rthe ottoman ; * and certainly he was as ignorant on the subject as an Ottoman, or as romancing as a Eoman. His first objection to the " Ordinal of Edward YI." was, that " that form '' was '''"uewP The same was true of the Roman " Pontifical," which had not always been what it was now. His next objection was that " it did not t con- tain one word of Episcopal consecration ; " and yet, if he had read that Ordinal, he Icnew that it opened with, " Most reverend Father in God, we present unto you this godly and well learned man to be consecrated UsJiop; " — that the Lita- ny forming a part of the Ordinal ended with this prayer : " Almighty God, giver of all good things, which by thy Holy Spirit hast appointed dwe7's 07'ders of ministers in thy church ; Mercifully behold this thy servant, 7iow called to the worlc and ministry of a NsJiop;''^ &c., — that the "Form," J with the rubric immediately preceding, ran thus: "Then the Archbishop and Bishops present shall lay their hands upon the head of the elected Bishop, the Archbishop saying, * " The Professor of History rose from an ottoman, and then, in compli- ance with a general request, stood upon ity— Comedy ^j). 73. t The italics are the Professor's. X The v/ord ''Form" has two senses: in the broad sense, it means the whole Ordination Service ; in the restricted or technical sense, which is the one in which it is here used, it is confined to the words accompanying the laying on of hands. COMEDY OF CONVOCATION. 73 4 Take the Holy Ghost, and remember " &c. The rest as in the present English, and American, Ordinal; — that after that, came the following rubric : "Then the Archbishop shall proceed to the communion, with whom the new conse- crated Bishop with others shall communicate." Gasula. The Professor did not mean that the Ordinal " did not contain one word of Episcopal consecration," but that " the form " — namely, at the imposition of hands — did not ; those are his very words. Kayeo. No, those are not his very words ; the words are, " that form." Even if they had been, " the form," they would have been ambiguous, and calculated, not to say, intended, to mislead ; but as they are, there is no ambi- guity in them. Take the whole sentence as it stands : — " Thus, with respect to the Ordinal of Edward VI., which had been recently discussed in certain public journals, he could not seriously advise his reverend friends to argue that, because that form was new^ it was therefore necessarily Catholic." * " Tliat form." What form ? The form just mentioned^ namely, the Ordinal^ whose very title is, The Form and Manner of making^ ordaining^ &c. The demonstra- tive '' that," as plainly and necessarily has reference to the word " Ordinal," as the relative, " which ; " it cannot possi- bly have reference to any thing else. Even if it could, it would help the Professor's veracity but little, and that little at the expense of his logic. As the sentence stands, it would be to the point if it were true ; as you just now rep- resented it as standing, it would, in your interpretation of it, be true, but not to the point ; for neither does the (restricted) form in the Koman Pontifical contain " one word of Episco- pal consecration." Gasula. I should like to see you undertake to make that out. Kayeo. O'Kaye made it out for me. First, he took down Abp. P. R. Kenrick's Validity of Anglican Ordinations * Comedy, p. 74. 74 AFTERPIECE TO THE Examined. Second Edition, (containing a Reply* to Dr. Evans). Philadelphia, 1848; and opening at page 194 put it into my hands. I read as follows : " As the Church has not defined what part of the cere- mony of ordination is that called the ' form,' theologians have enjoyed on this subject a speculative freedom of opin- ion which does not at all interfere with the observance of the whole rite prescribed in the Roman Pontifical. " Having premised this, I shall state the opinion which appears best sustained by argument ; namely, that the form of ordination consists in the prayer which accompanies the second imposition of hands in the ceremony of ordaining priests, and the prayer ' Propitiare ' in that for the consecra- tion of Bishops." Having read thus far, I returned the book to O'Kaye. He then handed me a copy of the Roman Pontifical^ beautifully rubricated, and full of engravings illustrating the various ceremonies. Its title ran thus : " Pontificale Romanum dementis YIII. ac Urbani YIII. jussu editum, inde vero a Benedicto XIV. recognitum et castigatum. Cum additionibus a sacra rituum congregations adprobatis. Pars Prima. Mechlinise. P. J. Hanicq, summi Pontificis, S. Congregatipnis de Propaganda Fide et Archiep. • Mechl. Typographus. M. D. CCC. XLY." Turning to the Forma " De Consecratione Electi in Epis- copum," I found, on page 95, the following : '' Then the Consecrator and the assisting Bishops touch the head of the person to le consecrated^ with both hands, saying : '' Take the Holy Ghost." t The very words of Edward VI. 's Ordinal. * Dr. Evans replied to this in 1851, and so effectually that the Abp. did not venture on a rejoinder. It is a pity some of the smaller fry hadn't his discretion. t " Deinde Consecrator et assistentes Episcopi amhahus manibus caput Consecrandi tangunt dicentes : '' Accipe Spiritum sanctum.'" COMEDY OF CONVOCATION. 75 t " Which having been done, the Consecrator standing, his mitre having been laid aside, says : " Be propitious, O Lord, to our supplications, and from the horn of sacerdotal grace inverted over this thy servant pour upon him the efficacy of thy benediction. Through our Lord Jesus Christ," &c.* On page 101 is the anointing of the head of the Bishop Elect.\ On page 108 is the anointing of the hands of the Bishop ElectX Then follows : " And making with his right hand the sign of the cross three times over the hands of the Bishop J^lect^ he says : " Li the name of God the Father, and the Son, and the Holy ahost,"§ &c. Up to this time, you will observe the candidate is called, not Bishop, but Bishop Elect, notwithstanding the prayer "Be propitious," .which Abp. Kenrick thinks is the "form," occurs thirteen pages back. Next we have the Prayer : " The God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has willed that thou shouldest be raised to the dignity of the Episcopate," &c.|| And then the rubric : " The foregoing things having been thus gone through with, the Consecrated Bishop joins both hands," &c.^ Here, for the first time, we have him declared consecrated. * '' Quo facto, Consecrator stans, deposita mitra, dicit: " " Propitiare, Domine, supplicationibns nostris, et inclinato saper hunc famiilum timm comu gratiaj sacerdotalis, bene»f«dictioiiis tuae in eum effunde yirtiitem. Per DominTim nostrum," &c. + '' Caput Electi." % " Palmas Electi." § " Et producens manu dextera ter signum crucis super manus Electi, dicit : " " In nomine Dei Pa»fitris, et Fi»filii, et Spiritus 4* sancti," &c. 11 " Deus, et Pater Domini nostri Jesu Christi, qui te ad Pontificatus sub- limari voluit dignitatem, ipse te," &c. *[ '' Praemiesis itaque expeditis, Consecratus jungit ambae manus," &c. 76 AFTERPIECE TO THE Now whichever of the foregoing we take for the " form," there is not in it, any more than in that of the Ordinal of Edward YL, " one word of Episcopal consecration." Gasula. Even if that is so, it doesn't help the matter, for the form for ordaining Priests in Edward's Ordinal is cer- tainly invalid, and as " the episcopate is but the plenitude of the priesthood " a man must be a priest before he can be made a bishop. Kayeo. That is a point I found made by Archbishop Kenrick,* and I called O'Kaye's attention to it. In reply, he called my attention to a question of Mr. Ffoulkes. I told him I had heard, since my former interview with him, that Mr. F. had b«en put in the " Index." He was not sur- prised at that, he said : it was a way that Rome had of dealing with those she could not answer. It was a way she had, I said, of securing her children from contamination, and every father that was worthy the name sought to secure his children in a similar way. Yes, he . said, while they were children ; but he sought at the same time to train them to a Christian manhood ; whereas Rome sought to Icee'p them children — contrary to the exhortation, already cited, of S. Paul :t " Brethren, be not children in understanding : how- beit, in malice be ye children, but in understanding be men." But if Rome thought to shield herself, in this way, from the damaging revelations of " Christendom^ s JDivis- ions^'''' she was reckoning without her host ; her attempted suppression of the book was a confession that she could not answer it ; he should continue therefore to cite it as author- ity : it was the same now, as when the " Catholic Publica- tion Society " advertised it, only last year, on the cover of the Comedy, as a Catholic Book ; if the Society didn't know what was Catholic, so much the worse for them : it would account, perhaps, for their publishing the Comedy. But to return to the question : ^' Where," asked Mr. Ffoulkes, "had the Church pre- • * Validity, &c. , p. 189. 1 1 Cor. xiv. 20. COMEDY OF CONVOCATION. 77 scribed any one form by default of which episcopal," or, he might have added, priestly, " ordination was rendered in- valid?"* Quien sahiaf That there was some "form," some where, in the Pontifical — in the office for the ordina- tion of priests, as well as in that for the consecration of bishops — was a natural, and not very violent, presumption ; but what it was, and where it was, not a Koman of them all, not even the Pope himself, with all his infallibility, could tell. S. Somebody t thought it was this ; Archbishop Ken- rick| thought it was that ; Peter Dens § thought it was the other. And he (O'Kaye) agreed with Peter Dens : he was satisfied it teas " the other. '''' But about the form in the Or- dinal of Edward YI. there was no doubt. It was the form of the oldest Ordinal extant — that by which S. Peter was ordained — and ran thus : — " Take the Holy Ghost ; whose sins thou dost forgive, they are forgiven ; and whose sins thou dost retain they are retained." If S. Peter was a priest, then so far as the " form " was concerned — and it was the form only that was here in question — those ordained by the Ordinal of Edward YI. were priests also. If those words would not suffice to make a priest " after the order of " S. Peter, he would like to know what words would ? I sug- gested to him the words of the Pontifical : " Receive the power to offer sacrifice to God, and to celebrate Masses for the quick and the dead." To that suggestion he had three objections : first, that Archbishop Kenrick, as I had already seen, did not thinh that those words were the " form ; " sec- ondly, that Bellarmine was sure they were not the form, for the form was inseparable from the imposition of hands,] * Note H., 22. t See the quidam in the next note but one. X See the citation already given. § " Satis convenit inter authores, Impositionem Manuum sub hac forma, 'Accipe Spiritum Sanctum,' esse Materiam, cui quidam addunt imposi- tionem codicis Evangeliorum super caput Ordinandi."— 2Vac^. de Ord, Petri Dens, torn, vii., p. 47, Dublin, 1832. II " Convenit inter omnes, materiam esse aliquod signum sensibile, for mam antem esse verba, quae dicuntur, dum illud signum exhibetur- * * * ScripturiB passim tradunt pro symbolo extern© Ordinationis 78 AFTERPIECE TO THE and here the imposition^ if any, was of a very diiferent kind, the words being accompanied solely by the " porrection of the instruments," or, as an Anglican would phrase it, the delivery of the chalice and paten ; thirdly, that the theory brought in a new " Diabolical Millennium," worse, to some apprehensions, than the old one of the Homily ; for he chal- lenged the whole Church of Eome with the infallible Pope at the head of it, to show a single instance in which the words in question were used in ordaining a priest " by the space of" the first "nine hundred years and odd ;" so 'that here we had, on the theory that those words were essential to the conveyance of priestly power, " the whole Church of God — the home of the saints and martyrs " — '^ sunk in the pit of damnable " unpriestliness, for the first half of its en- tire existence ! Casula. Archbishop Kenrick has another objection to the Ordinal of Edward YI., to wit, that it means the words about remission and retention of sins in the Protestant sense,* and therefore means to make a Protestant and not a Catholic priest. Kayeo. That is true, and I pointed it out to him. When the Archbishop, he said, would be so good as to tell him what the Protestant sense was, and what a Protestant priest was, he would tell the Arphbishop whether the Ordinal meant the words in the Protestant sense, and the priest to be a Protestant priest. Of one thing he (the Archbishop) might be sure, namely, that it did not mean the words in the Tridentine sense, or the priest to be a Tridentine priest. And of another thing he might be equally sure, namely, that it did mean the words as they were meant in that grand old Ordinal of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ — Manus Impositionem. * * * Manus Impositio est pars Sacramenti essentialis ; non enim gratias promissio facta est cseremoniis acciden- tariis, sed essentialibiis. * * * Idemprobo ex traditione Pontificum et Coiisiliorum.'"— D^^Sacr. Ord.^ lib. i., c. ix., col. 1284 ; Colon. ^ 1619. (Quoted by Wolcott on the Ordinal.) * Validity, &c-., p. 189. COMEDY OF CONVOCATION. 79 grand in its simplicity — and to make every one that it or- dained just such a priest as S. Peter was, and no other. Casula. How did he meet the accusation that " Charles II., one hundred and twelve years after the new form began to be used, pronounced it invalid by substituting another in its place ? " Kayeo. He met it by a denial. There was no substitu- tion (except of the word ^'Eeceive " for the word " Take," which latter word had then come to be commonly used in an active sense), but only an addition. The earlier form ran, " Take the Holy Ghost : whose sins," &c. The later form ran, " Receive the Holy Grhost for the Office and Work . of a Priest in the Church of God, now committed unto thee by the Imj)osition of our hands. Whose sins," &c. The addition of these words, we were told, " pronounced " the earlier form "invalid." The words " Receive the power to offer sacrifice to God, and to celebrate Masses for the quick and dead," were the only ones addressed to the Candidate for ordination to the priesthood in the Church of Rome, over and above those of the Ordinal of Edward VI., that could by any possibility be supposed to " express the nature of the power conferred : "* did the addition of these to the Roman Ordinal less than a thousand years ago, "pro- nounce " that Ordinal " invalid " for the first " nine hun- dred years and odd ? " Really, for a Professor of History, the objection was ineffably silly. Casula, He has passed over two of the allegations. Kayeo. Ko, it is you that passed them over. 'They pertained not to the validity of Orders, but to juris- diction ; and jurisdiction, in England, as in France, and, in fact, in all countries where the Church was established, held of the State. The first allegation, or rather, insinuation, was that be- * " This form (of the Ordinal of Edward VI.) is, then, insufficient : it does not express tlie nature of the power conferred, and this is an essential defect.''— Kenrick, Validity, Sc, p. 189. 80 AFTERPIECE TO THE cause the Ordinal was " annulled " in the reign of Queen Mary, it must have been illegal in that of Elizabeth. None but a Professor of Roman manufacture, and manufactm-ed, too, out of very " raw " material, would have ventured on such an insinuation ; and even he didn't venture to assert it outright, for he knew that the annulment in the reign of Queen Mary was by act of Parliament, and that it was re- stored by act of Parliament in the reign of Queen Eliza- beth. The second allegation was that " Queen Elizabeth, labor- ing under the temporary impression that she was Almighty God, ' dispensed with all causes and doubts of any imperfec- tion of the same.' " Where the Professor got the clause he professed to quote, he had not condescended to inform us. Neither had he put us in a position to determine what " same " referred to. If it referred to the Ordinal the alle- gation was not true ; if to anything else, it was not to the point. What Queen Elizabeth really undertook to do, was given by Archbishop Kenrick (in the text of his work) in English, and (in the Appendix) in the original Latin of the Queen's Mandate : " Supplying nevertheless by our supreme royal authority, from our own mere motion and certain knowledge, if in those things which you shall do according to our mandate, or in you, or in your condition, state, or faculty, for the ac- complishment of the foregoing, there be anything wanting, or to be wanting, of what is required or necessary in this case hy the statutes of this realm^ or Ixy the ecclesiastical laws — the circumstances of the time and the necessity of the thing so demanding it."* The " necessity " which this dispensation was designed to meet was this : according to law, three bishops in posses- sion of Sees were required, to confirm the election of a bish- op, as also to consecrate one. When Elizabeth came to the throne, several of the Sees were vacant ; the rest were filled * Validity &c.,p. 39. COMEDY OF CONVOCATION. 81 with bishops in communion with Rome, not one of whom would have anything to do with confirming and consecrat- ing Parker, whofti the Queen had caused to be elected to the vacant See of Canterbury by the Dean and chapter thereof. The Queen therefore undertook to dispense with that pro- vision of the law which required the confirming and conse- crating bishops to be in possession of Sees, and accordingly issued her mandate (containing the dispensing clause just cited from Kenrick), *ithorizing Barlow, formerly Bishop of Bath ; Scory, formerly Bishop of Chichester, and Cover- dale, formerly Bishop of Exeter (all of whom had been de- prived of their Sees under Queen Mary), and Hodgkins, once suffragan of Bedford, to confirm the election of Par- ker, and then to consecrate him. Three months before this, she had sent a mandate to Tunstal, Bourne, Pool, Kitchin, Barlow, and Scory. As the first four of these were in pos- session of Sees, if they consented to confirm and consecrate Parker, as it was hoped they would, there would be no need of a dispensation. Accordingly that first mandate con- tained none. This of itself showed that the dispensation had nothing whatever to do ^ith the Ordinal, or with the validity of the Orders of the Consecrating Bishops. In fact, there was no controversy at that time about the valid- ity of the Ordinal, as was proved by the fact that those who had been ordained by it under Edward, and conformed un- der Mary, were not required to be reordained."^ It was de- fects in jurisdiction only, that were sought to be supplied ; now jurisdiction was solely a human arrangement, and, as sucH, subject at all times to the control of the human law- making power, and no Professor of History who had a rej)- utation to lose, would venture to assert the contrary. He had now disposed of all the allegations and insinua- tions in the paragraph on page 74. In answer to the insinu- tions in the short paragraph next following, he referred me to Lingard (one of our own historians) and Ffoulkes, ex- * Heylin, HM. JRef.—Hist. of Qiieen Mary, p. 36. 4* 82 AFTERPIECE TO THE tracts from whose works he would hand me, and I could yerify them at my leisure.* Gasula. Did you verify them ? Kayeo. I did ;, and they bore him out in his allegations in refutation of the before-mentioned paragraph on page 74, and disposed, also, of the other paragraph. Proceeding to the allegations on the next six pages, two of them — that which charged cowardice on " the early Anglican bishops," and that about the infrequency of Communion — he disposed of, so far as they bore on the argument, by certain extracts which he would' hand me, and which he had no doubt I should find satisfactory.f The rest of the allegations, in- cluding the disjointed fragments on page 79 for which, for a wonder, chapter and verse were given, had no weight whatever /<97* the purijose for loJiich they were hrought /(xrward. Statements thrown out in the heat of controversy by indi- viduals as such, could not be weighed against the deliberate and well-considered utterances of their former ofiicial acts. This was the dictate of common experience and common sense. Against the alleged declarations, then, of the Angli- can Reformers in disparagement of Orders and Succession he would set, as, to even the commonest apprehension, abso- lutely conclusive of the whole controversy, the admitted fact that the Preface to the Ordinal was written by Cran- mer, and was sanctioned and ratified by his associates ; and that ran thus : " It is evident unto all men diligently reading the holy Scripture and ancient Authors, that from the Apostles' time there have been these Orders of Ministers in Christ's Church : Bishops, Priests, and Deacons. Which Offices were ever- more had in such reverend Estimation, that no man might presume to execute any of them, except he were first called, tried, examined, and known to have such qualities as are requisite for the same ; and also by publick Prayer ; with Imposition of Hands, were approved and admitted there- * See Note H, 18-35, t Note E, aijcl Note H, 14, 15. COMEDY OF CONVOCATION. 83 unto by lawful Authority. And therefore, to the intent that these Orders may be continued, and reverently used and es- teemed, in. the Church of England; no man shall be ac- counted or taken to be a lawful Bishop, Priest, or Deacon in the Church of England, or suffered to execute any of the said Functions, except he be called, tried, examined, and admitted thereunto, according to the Form hereafter follow- ing, or hath had formerly Episcopal Consecration or Ordi- nation." Any one who, in the face of this solemn declaration, could seriously maintain a presumption against the continuity of Anglican Orders, from the alleged, and perhaps (for he had not troubled himself to verify the accuracy of the citations, as they had no earthly bearing on the argument) actual, ut- terances of individual Anglican Reformers, had need that some one teach him " which be the first principles " — the veriest elements — of reasoning. But how, it might be asked, came those Reformers to give forth such utterances ? The key to their course might be found in one of the citations from Hooper : " The Jews had sacraments as well Us we, and yet never brawled about them as we do." — They were disgusted with the everlasting dinning into their ears the outside of the Church, as though it had no inside. The homely proverb of our ancestors re- minded those who were too much enraptured with the ex- ternal of the human form divine that ''beauty was but skin deep ;" which was certainly true, as Apollo no doubt found out when he flayed Marsyas. Now there were those who were for flaying the Church, to get at the holiness beneath ; on the other hand, there were those who seemed to look upon her as all skin ; no bone, and muscle, and sinew : no heart, and mind, and soul, and strength ; no quickening spirit. Or, to change the figure, there were those w^ho seemed to think Dress was everything, and who therefore went on piling upon her pannier upon pannier, flounce upon flounce, furbelow upon furbelow, of rites and ceremonies, till she 84 AFTEKPIECE TO THE looked more like a bedizened harlot than like the chaste bride of Christ, and wanted little of being smothered in her lendings. No wonder those who found her gasping, and succeeded in stripping off the cumbrous additions, when they saw the reviving influence of the fresh air upon her, came nigh going on with the disrobal, and leaving her shiv- ering in the cold, without clothing enough to keep in the vital warmth. One extreme begat another. The real won- der was that the English Reformers should, in their public, official acts, have kept so closely as they did to the old, Catholic way in which the Fathers walked in the beginning, and found rest to their souls. No doubt, as the Count De Maistre said, it was " the English good sense," that " pre- served the hierarchy ;"* but surely the hand of God was in it. Casula. They did more than merely speak, in the heat of controversy, against the altar. " The greatest English prelates, including Eidley, ordered every Catholic altar to be pulled down and utterly defaced." t Kayeo. Yes, they did what Hezekiah did to that type of Christ,! " the brazen serpent that Moses had made," when he saw that " the children of Israel did burn incense to it."§ The old, catholic altar of the " unbloody sacrifice " had be- come the new, Tridentine altar of a bloody offering, and was leading men away from the " one oblation once offered " — the " full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice, oblation, and satisfaction, for the sins of the whole world," ||— to the " blasphemous fables and dangerous deceits " of the ^' sacri- fices of Masses, in the which it was commonly said, that the Priest did offer Christ for the quick and the dead, to have remission of pain or guilt,"ir and must, therefore, like the brazen serpent, be '' broken in pieces," and the original im- bloody altar — the only altar ever known to the Greek Church — brought back in its place. * Note A^ 19. t Comedy, p. 79. X St. John iii. 14. § 2 Kings xviii. 4. 11 Communion Office. 1 Article xxxi. COMEDY OF CONVOCATION. 85 From the altar to the " sacrament of the altar," the tran- sition was natural, and accordingly the Professor went on to speak of " the manner in which the Lord's Supper had no- toriously been administered for centuries " and of " the details, often absolutely grotesque, of such celebrations in their English communion ;" but was careful not to commit himself by specifying even a single instance. — He would offset the charge — and an offset was all that was required of him by the argument, even if the charge were specific and authenticated; for the object of the Comedy was to dispar- age the Church of England, as compared with the Church of Home — he would offset the charge by the question of Mr. Ffoulkes : "Is there or has there been any tale of irrever- ence towards it amongst Anglicans, comparable for horrors with the history of poisoned chalices and poisoned Hosts amongst ourselves formerly, the extent of 'which is made patent to this day by the special precaution taken, whenever the Pope celebrates mass most solemnly, that no such harm may befall him."* And now we came to an assertion most extraordinary for a History Professor even of Eoman manufacture. " There was literally," we were told, '- no example in ecclesiastical history, previous to the formation of the English Church, of any controversy on the subject of Orders ! " — If the refer- ence was to the " formation " eighteen hundred years ago, the assertion was extraordinary in its simplicity ; if to the reformation three hundred years ago, it was extraordinary in its boldness, made, as it was, in the face of the historical fact, of which Mr. Ffoulkes (who, if not a Professor, was — what was better — a Possessor of History) could inform him, that " the Greek Church, as distinguished, however, from that of Eussia, invariably reordained, and even rebaptized any — though they might have received all their orders im- mediately from the Pope — who came over to it from the West."t But perhaps the Professor meant to quibble on * See Note H, 32, 33. t See Note H, 25. 86 AFTERPIECE TO THE the word " controversy ;" the Greek Church did not '' con- trovert " Roman Orders ; it only denied them ! Next we came to the " candid admissions " of the validity of Anglican Orders by " several distinguished Romanists." They were altogether too candid to suit the Professor. " There was Courayer, who wanted to vex the community from which he was already falling away, and who at last died an infidel." Of course, his book was of no account, for was not the very writing of such a book a " falling away " from his " community ? " And then that he should have thought to '' vex " them ! Why ! was not their position towards the Anglican claim one of serene indifference or even of contempt ? Did not De Maistre say that " to know that the Anglican religion was false, there was no need either of researches, or of argument ? that it was judged by intuition? that it was false as the sun was luminous? that you had only to look at it ? that the Anglican hierarchy was isolated in Christendom^ and that no sensible reply could be made to this last observation ? "^ — The truth was Father Courayer Icnew his men ; he knew that under this affectation of nonchalance there was an uneasy irritability ; that the Anglican hierarchy was a thorn in their side ; and that they would give half the patrimony of S. Peter, and mortgage the other half, to be able to satisfy reasoning men that the Anglican claim to continuity of Orders was ground- less. Hinc ilia mxatio. It was very wrong in the young cub, thus to vex the tiger ; for " brother brindle "t never vexed the cubs — if they were of the right stripe. But Courayer was not the only vexing cub. There was Dr. Lingard, the historian. Of course, he was " falling away," too ? No, he lived and died in the Roman Com- munion. Some other way, then, must be found*of disposing of him. So, we were told that he " had been cited as admit- ting, with more or less hesitation, the purely historical side of the question of Parker's consecration." — No honest man * See Note A, 82. t Coleridge, Sancti Dominici Pallium. COMEDY OF CONVOCATION. 87 ever cited Mm in that way. It took a Professor of Roman manufacture to do that. The words of Lingard were :* " The facts that are really known are the following. * * Barlow, Scory, Coverdale, and Hodgkins, suffragan of Bed- ford, confirmed the election on the 9th (of December, 1559), and consecrated Parker on the 17th. * * * Qf this con- secration on the lltJi of December^ there can le no doubty-\ — Yerily, a Professor of History, who could call this a " half- admission," " with more or less hesitation," ought to be ashamed to hold up his head in decent society. — So diamet- rically opposite to the Professor's representation of it, and so convincing withal, to a fair-minded member even of the Eoman communion, was the narrative of Lingard, that Mr. Ffoulkes did not hesitate to introduce a long citation from it with these words : " Now on the fact of Archbishop Parker's consecration — and of all beyond him in the series there has never been any question at all — I cannot imagine there being two opinions. * * * . and who amongst ourselves can pretend to have tested it more fully than Dr. Lingard ? I quote his results.''^ To return to the Professor : " He knew that some of his friends professed to see the hand of Providence in the fact, that the Council of Trent had not expressly condemned their Orders. They were per- haps not aware that the Council was within an inch of do- ing so, and was only restrained by a most urgent appeal from the Spanish ambassador, who represented that the condition of English Catholics was already nearly intoler- able, and that the superfluous declaration would only irri- tate their oppressors, and bring fresh misery upon them. This argument wisely prevailed." — So! When ''the early Anglican Bishbps," being " in mortal fear of the brutal Tu- dor sovereigns," ^' sacrificed their own convictions of truth * Vol. vii. pp. 293, 294 : Philadelphia, 1827. t See Note H, 21, 22, where will be found the full account from Lingard. X See Note H, 20. m AFTERPIECE TO THE from cowardice," "they were pitiful traitors;" but when the Fathers of Trent did precisely the same, they only acted " wisely ! " Verily, a Munchausen Professor had need have a long, memory — long enough, at least, to reach six pages. His didn't reach six lines ; for he went on : " But there was to be a new Council next year, and from information which had reached him, he had not a shadow of doubt that it would not only decide that point, but a good many oth- ers ;" and yet he had called such decision, only five lines before, " superfluous :" when the decision was attended with danger to the adherents of Rome from the " brutal Tudor sovereigns," it was "superfluous;" when the danger ceased, the superfluousness ceased with it ! He to talk of coward- ice ! Called he this backing his friends ? The Trent Fath- ers owed him small thanks for such backing. They were much more beholden to Waterworth, according to w^hom the " declaration," though urged by Pope Pius, was opposed on the ground, much more creditable to them, "that it was certain that Bishops did not depend on the Pope as regards order — that it was doubtful whether they depended on him as regards jurisdiction."* But he had not done yet with the Munchausen Professor (begging Munchausen's pardon) : " Even if Parker's ordination could be proved (he had already proved it by Courayer, and Lingard, and Ffoulkes, all of them of the Roman communion), and Edward's Or- dinal cleared of every doubt (he had cleared it), and a mul- titude of other questions connected with the subject (which existed only in the Professor's invention, and not one of which even he thought of enough consequence to be so much as named by him) lose their gravity (of which they had none to lose), no progress would have been made towards estab- lishing the claims of the ^;r^s^?i(^ generation of Bishops and clergy. Thei?' case was still worse than that of Elizabeth's much afflicted spiritual pastors. The extreme uncertainty * See Note H, 18. COMEDY OF CONVOCATION. 89 of Baptism during the whole of the Puritan period, to speak only of that epoch (an uncertainty that had no exist- ence outside the forgetive brain of the Professor, as every one familiar with the writings of the Puritans, and es- pecially with their manuals of instruction, such as the Westminster Assembly's two Catechisms, knew, and as was proved by the fact that those of them who came over to the New World, soon made Massachusetts too hot for Eoger Williams because of his antipgedo-baptist notions, and, a hundred years later, to guard against the danger of large numbers growing up unbaptized in consequence of the strin- gent rule which required, one, at least, of the parents to be a communicant, as a condition precedent to the baptism of the child, adopted, in place of the rule, the ' half-way cov- enant ') ; nay, the positive contempt in which that sacrament was held by whole generations of English Protestant di- vines, and the utter indifference with which it was adminis- tered (not a single instance of which contempt and indiffer- ence did the Professor condescend to produce, though if the ' whole generations ' were but two — and that was the smallest plural number — there must have been more than thirty thousand such instances, for there were sixteen thousand parish priests in England at that time) ; the want of inten- tion in hundreds of consecrating Bishops to confer sacerdo- tal powers, and in thousands of the clergy to accept them (which want, if by ' intention ' was meant public intention, as shown by the nature and circumstances of the transaction^ was a Munchausenism of the Professor's, and if private, not to press the question how he found it out, was predicable, for aught he knew, or could know, to the contrary, of any one that could be named of all the baptisms from the death of John the Evangelist until now — a consequence in which the Roman Church was as much concerned as the Anglican) ; the alleged fact (alleged by whom ?) tlfat at least one Arch- bishop of Canterbury (which one ? not Becket ? not Pole ?) was known to have died unbaptized {known to whom ? who 90 AFTERPIECE TO THE saw him unbaptized ?) and the extreme (im) probability that many (any) others had been in the same case ; lastly, the out- rageous incongruity of pretending to make a Catholic Bish- op, as the Ritualists spoke, out of a man who rejected all Catholic doctrine, and spent his whole life in reviling it (which outrageous incongruity, by the changing of the last ^Catholic ' into Roman — which was what the Professor meant by it — and the keeping of the first ' Catholic ' to its true sense — which was what he didii't mean by it — would become outright congruity) ; these were grayer subjects of reflection to those who affected to derive English Orders from the Ro- man fount, than any merely historical difficulties." If that was so, if the " historical difficulties " were really less grave than these, they could hardly have gravity enough to keep them from flying off' to the ''limbo of things lost upon earth." But he had not yet done with Munchausen : " They had first to prove that Parker was really consecra- ted ; (Lingard had done it for them ; and if he had not, the Professor had saved them the necessity by declaring, as he had just now done, that the difficulty of proving it was less grave than half a dozen other difficulties which he specified, not one of which, as any man of common historical infor- mation, and common sense, could see, had any gravity at all) ; then to consider whether Barlow had either the tst.11 or the power to consecrate him. (Lingard had ' considered ' both questions and answered both in the affirmative.) Next to account for the fact that all England believed the whole thing was a sham (ah ! there the Professor was too hard for him, and too hard for Mr. Ffoulkes also*), which Eliza- beth's characteristic decree frankly confessed, by trying to repair it." (TYvq repairing had reference not to the validity of the consecration, but to its legality — two entirely distinct things. Some thought the consecration of Bishop Wilmer to the See of Alabama, during the war, illegal because it had * See Note H, 24, 25. COMEDY OF CONVOCATION. 91 not receiTecT the consent of a majority of the Bishops and Standing Committees of the Church in tlie United States, of which they considered the Diocese of Alabama a part ; but they never dreamed of questioning its validity.) " Then they must deal with the fact, that all the Keformers (yes, all)^ and their immediate successors, were not only ill-affect- ed towards the Apostolic Succession, but did every thing they could to discredit it, (particularly by putting forth in the Preface to the Ordinal, already cited,""'' the ' discrediting ' declaration that it was ' evident ' that the three ' Orders ' had been handed down uninterruptedly ' from the Apostles' time' to their own day, and been 'evermore' had in ' rev- erend Estimation,' and that, ' therefore, to the intent that ' those ' Orders ' might be ' continued^ and reverently used and esteemed^ in the Church of England, no man ' should be ' suffered^ to execute any of the said Functions, except ' he had had 'Episcopal Consecration, or Ordination'; thereby)^ clearly proving that they neither attached any importance to it, nor imagined that they themselves possessed it. (!) They must reconcile their deep hatred of the (Eoman) doc- trine of (a bloody) sacrifice with their ordination of a priesthood (they did ordain one, then, after all), whose chief function it was to offer (the Christian and Catholic) sacrifice (of prayers and praises, of alms and oblations, of body, soul, and spirit, — a ' reasonable service ' ; not 'cery hard to ' recon- cile '). They must explain also why, if Edward's Ordinal w^ere valid, Anglicans need have been so anxious to change it, a hundred years after it had become too late to do so with any possible result. (They would do so with pleasure, provided the ' Congregation of Rites,' which might natu- rally be supposed to be familiar with the subject, would first explain, as coming up first, in the order of time, for explanation, why, if Peter''s Ordinal were valid, Romans need have been so anxious to change it, and that, too, in the vital point of the ' power to offer sacrifice and to cele- * P, 82. 92 AFTERPIECE TO THE brate Masses for the quick and dead ' — nine hundred years and odd after it had become too late to do so with any possible result ; and he would j)iedge himself that the Anglican explanation should be as satisfactory as the Roman.) They must refute, when they had accomplished these preliminary difficulties (what did the Professor mean by accomplisliing a difficulty?)^ the really irresistible reasons for belie^dng that a yast number of English bishops and clergy must have lived and died unbaptizecl, and were therefore perfectly incapable either of receiving or giving ordination, or any other Christian rite. (He would ' refute ' these ' irresistible reasons,' and he would do it by confront- ing them with the testimony of Newman, and Manning, and Ffoulkes ; * against that testimony they would be of as little effect as was that famous ' ii'resistible ' of the Schoolmen, when it met an ' immovable.' What was the consequence to the irresistible we had never been informed ; but he had always understood that the immovable — didn't move.) And when they had arranged all these (mathematical) points (which had position — and therefore admitted of being ' arranged ' — but not magnitude) to their own satis- faction, they would have to consider, finally, (so there was &Jinis, after all ! he was beginning to think that Munchau- sen was going to give us a ' story without an end,') what object Providence could have in view in creating w^hole generations of ' priests ' (after the order of S. Peter, and S. Paul, and S. John,) who neither wished to be (Tridentine ' priests ') so (called,) nor believed that they were, nor ever consciously performed one single act belonging to the (Tridentine) sacerdotal office ! " He would take time to consider that. It would come up again at the Greek Kalends. — To conclude : " If the Archbishop of Canterbury were to become a Catholic to-morrow, an event which they had no reason to anticipate, he would be welcomed by the Roman Church as an English married gentleman, who was * See Notes H, 30 ; and 1, 1. COMEDY OF CONVOCATION. 93 tired of playing a farce, and had come to save his soul in the Christian Church. Such was the fact." — True, for once ! And if the Pope of Rome were to become Orthodox to- morrow, an event which they had no reason to anticipate, (for Ephraim seemed joined to his idols), he would be wel- comed by the Greek Church as an Italian bachelor, who was tired of playing a Comedy, and had come to receive (in ad- dition to the four — five, if he aspired to the priesthood — which, in his ignorance, he had thought he had already received) the sacrament of Matrimony — a " means of grace " which he had hitherto deliberately and wilfully neglected — and save his soul in the Christian Church. Such was the fact.'^ — The Professor was now done with. Yes, I said ; done with, and done for. Casula. Dean Blunt is not done for. Kayeo, You have passed over Dr. Easy's long speech, with Jolly's and Theory's suggestions, and Primitive's protest. You were right in passing them over, for there is nothing in them. Casula. Nothing of argument. Kayeo. ISTo, nothing approaching argument. — To pass to Dean Blunt : "He thought that no adequate proof had ever been given, or could be given, of the integrity of their succession. The evidence which centuries had failed to complete would never be completed at all." The dean didn't give them time enough by half. It took eighteen hundred and fifty-four years to "complete" the evidence of the Immaculate Conception. That of the Supremacy of Peter was not yet " completed." Some thought it would be, next December, but he had his doubts about it ; it didn't begin till more than half a century after the birth of the Blessed Virgin, and it might not therefore be completed for half a century to come. The disputed part of the Anglican Succession had run as yet but three hundred years ; it ought to have at least another three hundred, for * See 'KoiQ H, 25, in an. 94 AFTERPIECE TO THE every one knew how much clearer the evidence of a fact became, the farther you got from it, either in space, or in time. Meanwhile, it would be only neighborly in the Pope to do as he had done in the other cases — recognize the Suc- cession (not as an Article of Faith, but) as a fact, pending the completion of the evidence ! Let this be done, and, his word for it, it would be completed to the satisfaction of all, in less than half the three hundred years. But, said the dean, " it was surely a fatal note against their High-Church friends, that they had always been occu- pied in vindicating their Orders ; " always, that was, for the last three hundred years. Was it a fatal note, then, against the Pope, that he had always been occupied in vindicating his Supremacy, for more than three hundred years ? If not, why not ? But there was yet another point that puzzled the dean. He could not see how those who called the Roman priest- hood "the spawn of Antichrist," and the Roman Church " the harlot of Babylon," should be so " anxious " to prove an " unbroken connection with Rome.*' It " was as if a man should contend proudly for a pedigree derived through countless generations of felons." And why not, if the title to the inheritance depended on it ? Did not S. Matthew "contend" for the pedigree of our Blessed Lord through the- incestuous Thamar, and the harlot Rahab ? * But there was no need of " contending " for the Roman portion of the pedigree : the inheritance came to them in a double line — an earlier, and a later ; and certainly the earlier title was not the inferior. The succession was derived from S. John, through the Church of Gaul, to the old British and Irish Churches, of dotJi of which the present United Church of England and Ireland, with its offshoots — the Scottish, and the American, was the unbrolceii continuation. As on a for- mer, and memorable, occasion, that " other disciple did outrun Peter, and came first to " t those islands : but Peter * Gen. xxviii. 12-26 ; Josh. ii. ; S. Matt. i. 3, 5 : t S. John xx. 4. COMEDY OF CONVOCATION. 95 followed afar off ; and being older, and therefore more infirm of muscle and wind, was five hundred years in coming up with him. And when, seventeen hundred years later, the inheritance in Us fulness was to be " transmitted to another country speaking the same language — descendants, in short, of the mother country," again that other disciple did out- run Peter ; and again Peter followed afar off, and he had ever since been " sitting with the servants " — all honor to him for that — " to see the end.'"^ But the servants them- selves were deserting him, at the rate of two hundred thousand a year, the Universe said, ^' of the 'best Catholic stock that ever received Ijajptismy t That last remark was true, every word of it. The Irish race was a religious race, pene- trated and permeated with faith in the unseen ; it had never yet been sceptical, and he had no fear that it ever would be. But Patrick was beginning to think for himself, and the first thought that occurred to him was that the money he paid his priest ought to bring him something more in return than the merest rudiments of an education (if even that) in this world, and a " good hope through grace " of getting into purgatory in the next, where, for want of money left behind him to pay the priest for praying him out, — the priest having got all his money before, — he must remain till he paid the uttermost farthing; and when, poor fellow, would that be ? — He could not help thinking that if those who had the rule over him could educate Protestants in the higher branches at a low rate, in the hope of converting one in ten, or one in a hundred, they might at least give as good an education to their own flesh and blood. He had a laudable desire to rise in the social scale ; or, at least, that his children might rise ; and he saw that, to that, a good education was a condition precedent ; and when he saw fur- ther, as he was beginning to do, — and disestablishment, by removing one cause of prejudice, would quicken the process, — how he had been imposed on by a spurious catholicity ; * S. Matt. xxvi. 58. t See Note C. 96 AFTERPIECE TO THE that the Anglo-Irish Succession had come straight down from S. Patrick through Hugh Curwin, Archbishop of Dub- lin ; * and that that other Succession, which had enslaved him, and eaten out his substance, was a modern schismatical intrusion ; he would come back to the old Church of S. Patrick — "the home of the saints and martyrs," and wonder how he had ever been inveigled from it. Gasula. There is no cause for wonder. It was the " scurvy sauce " he was " served " by the English Govern- ment, and which he naturally connected with the new order of things, that brought him back to us. Kayeo. He was served as scurvy sauce under Henry YI., and a good deal scurvier under Edward lY.t But let that pass. To return to O'Kaye : — The HibernicorRoman Suc- cession was not the only modern schismatical intrusion : the Anglo-Roman was another, equally schismatical, and more modern, as Archbishop Manning, and the very title and date of his Archiepiscopal See, could testify. Why, it was born, as it were but the other day, and had not yet come of age. — I suggested that it spoke for itself. — Yes ! to its shame. It was begotten in cowardice, conceived in iniquity, brought forth in sin, and christened in schism. Why didn't the Archbishop claim the old title ? Was he "in mortal fear of the brutal Tudor sovereigns ? ". What said the Munchausen Professor to that ? He to talk of cowardice ! And where was Pius lY. during the first seven years of Queen Eliza- beth's reign ? and Pius Y. during the next three ? Gasula. Trying to correct the queen and get the people back to their old moorings. Kayeo. Yes ! and when, in spite of all the purringj of "brother brindle," she would not be converted. Presto change ! " Then began Peter to curse and to swear." And what did he gain by it ? Curses^ like cMckens^ the old prov- * See Note H, 23. t See Note K. X '' Dearest daughter in Christ," was the beginning of the letter already referred to. COMEDY OF CONVOCATION. 97 erb said, came home to roost^ and his came home with a ven- geance.* England had never forgotten that cursing, and never would forget it while she was England. The Catholic World, in its article on Protestantism a Failure,^ had said : " Admitting that there " (viz., in the " central see ") " was the Catholic Church, the only question to be settled was, Which was that see ? Reduced to that point, the contro- versy was virtually ended. There was and never had been but one claimant, Rome had already claimed it, and no- body in the world pretended or ever had pretended that it was any other." — To apply that argument to the case in hand. Which was the Church of England at the time that Pius V, was letting loose that wild Irish bull of his ; or rather, cross between Roman and Irish ; like English bulls, too, and American bulls, in this, that a scarlet rag was all that was wanting to set it off fiill tilt, but unlike them in that it ran from the rag, not toward it ? The question an- swered itself. There was and never had teen during all those ten years hut one claimant — the Church presided over by Parker, and which had come down to our day in an unbrok en succession of Bishops oMd Sees. Either that was the Church of England, or there was no Church of England during those ten years. Would Pius lY. say that ? What sort of a shepherd was he, then, during those last seven years of his Pontificate, to leave those poor sheep of his, all that while, to the English wolf ? Not the good shep- herd ; for " the good shepherd giveth his life f^r the sheep. But he that is an hireling, and not the shepherd, whose own * '' ' We know,' said Urban VITI. to Cardinal Borgia, ' that we may de- clare Protestants excommunicate, as Pius V. declared Queen Elizabeth, and before him Clement YII. the King of England * * * Henry VIII., but with what success ? The whole world can tell : we yet bewail it in tears of blood. Wisdom doth not teach us to imitate Pius V. or Clement Vn. * * * ' ''— Ffoulkes, C. Z>., Part i. p. 230, where it is cited as, " Quoted by Mr. Simpson in B}). UUathorne and the Rambler (Williams & Norgate, London, 1862), near the end. (From a contemporary Report preserved in the State Paper Office, Charles I., Italy, Bundle 24)/' | t Jan., 1869. p. 515. 5 y» AFTERPIECE TO THE the sheep are not, seeth the wolf coming, and leayeth the sheep, and fleeth ; and the wolf catcheth them, and scatter- eth the sheep." What said the Munchausen Professor to that? He to talk of cowardice! Poor Pius I Shut up within his patriarchate — that "pent up Utica" of a "whole boundless Continent " — by " the brutal Tudor sovereigns," and "pestered in that pinfold" by those pre-dogmatite heretics, the Dominicans — pestered into it by the one, and pestered in it by the other — what could he do but leave the Anglo-Roman hierarchy in abeyance, and the Franciscan dogma in expectance ? Another Pius, the Mnth of that name, born in a happier age, and under more favorable aus- pices, would quail the impious. Viderat inmensam tenebroso in carcere lucem, Terribilesque Deos scelenim, Mariamque futuram. The fulfilment did not equal the expectation. The Dogma had been proclaimed : the rest was still in abeyance. A hierarchy had, indeed, been established, but not the hierar- chy, as the very names of the new sees, Westminster, Bir- mingham, &c., testified : the Bishop and the Archbishop had a succession ; but the sees were Brummagem — the arch- bishop's as well as the bishop's. For nearly three hundred years, a straggling " bishop in partibiLS,'^'' here and there, had sufiSced; separate, solitary links. Now, at length, we had a chain,''' a catenation, but not a concatenation ; at any rate, not a " concatenation accordingly.''^ — The see of Can- terbury was a historical fact ; it had been in existence more than twelve hundred years. If a former Patriarch of Con- stantinople had never heardt of it, so much the worse for that functionary! The Patriarch of Rome, he rather thought, had heard of it. It was in existence after the death of "Bloody Mary," for its Roman occupant sur- vived his Royal Mistress several hours. It had never been extinguished by Church or by State, by Pope or by Parlia- * See Note I, 2. t Comedy, p. 65. COMEDY OF CONVOCATION. 99 ment ; it was therefore still in existence. Who, then, was the rightful occupant ? Reduced to that pointy the controversy was mrtually ended. There was hut one claimant^ and nobody 'pretended that there was any other. If this argument of the Catholic World was good for the See of Kome, it was equally- good for the Sedens of Canterbury. Gasula. I don't think much of that argument of the Catholic World^s any way. Kayeo. The argument is well enough ; it is the premises that are mistaken, as O'Kaye remarked at the time. The mistake, he said, grew out of a misapprehension of the "branch theory," which was, after all, a very simple theory — too simple, it seemed, for the Comedy or the Catholic World., to comprehend. The word " branch," according to the latest edition of Webster., had six meanings : " 1. (Bot.) A shoot of a tree or other plant ; a limb ; a bough growing from a stem, or from another branch or bough. " 2. Any arm or part shooting or extended from the main body of a thing, as a smaller stream running into a larger one, or proceeding from it ; a ramification. ' Most of the branches or streams were dried up.' — W. Irving. "- 3. Any member or part of a body or system ; a distinct article ; a section or subdivision : a department, as of sci- ence. ''Branches of knowledge.' — Prescott. "4. Aline of family descent, in distinction from some other line or lines from the same stock ; any descendant in such a line ; as the English or the Irish branch of a family. ' His father, a younger branch of the ancient stock.' — CarewP The other two were merely technical. Worcester gave five meanings : "1. The shoot or bough of a tree; a limb. " 2. The offshoot of anything, as of a stag's horn, a can- dlestick, a river, a family, &c. '' 3. Any distinct article or portion ; a section ; a subdi- vision. 'The several branches of justice and charity.' — Til- lotson.'''' 100 AFTERPIECE TO THE . The other two were technicaV. Leaving out the first and the third meanings, as inappli- cable to the subject, he would call my attention to the sec- ond of Worcester^ which was divided into two — the second and the fourth — in Webster, The division was well founded, for the meanings were entirely distinct, the first of them being literal, the second figurative. There were two classes of literal meanings, the original and the transferred. These were specified as such in the Latin-English Dictionary of An- drews, founded on the Latin- German one of Freund. Under the word " ramus " would be found, first, the original " lit- eral " meaning, A branch, bough, twig; then the " transferred " literal meaning, A branch of a stag's antlers, A branch of a mountain chain, (&c. ; and, finally, the tropical meaning, A branch of consanguinity. The second of these meanings was as literal as the first ; the branch of a stag's antler was as literally a branch as the branch of a tree ; as a consequence, the unity of the trunk and its branches was visible in the same way in the one as in the other — visible, namely, to the bodily eye : you could see where the branch joined on to the trunk. On the other hand, the unity of a family, a na- tion, a race — the joining on of the branches to the parent . trunk — was visible to the mental, not to the bodily, eye, be- cause the branches were figurative, not literal, branches. Now the unity under consideration was of this latter kind. The Church was one as the Eace was one : you got at its unity as you got at the unity of the race — by tracing it back to its source. The French Church, the English Church, the Kussian Church, branched off from the Second Adam, pre- cisely as the French people, the English people, the Russian people, branched off from the First Adam ; to wit, by indi- vidual births — in the one case, " of the flesh," — in the other, " of water and the Holy Ghost :" and the birth was as real, and the relationship as real, in the latter case as in the for- mer. — Thus, then, by the simple stating of the branch theory, he disposed of the whole argument of the Comedy and of COMEDY OF CONVOCATION. 101 the Catholic World, That argument was valid only against a theory of their own and Dr. Ewer's imagining — the antler theory, as it might fitly be termed. They had undoubt- edly brought that stag to bay, and the whole Boman hier- archy, with the laity at their back,* were in at the death. They were welcome to their enjoyment. Tray, Blanche, and Sweetheart might give their lungs full play, till they found out their mistake, or barked themselves hoarse, whichever first happened. The ingenuous Doctor (Candour) supposed an advocate of the branch theory setting out on a foreign tour, and asked "Did he leave Dover an Anglican, and disembark at Calais a Roman Catholic ?" He might as well have asked. Did he leave Dover an Englishman, and disembark at Calais a Frenchman ? There was as much sense in the one question as in the other. — Then, toe, his supposition that members of the same family must necessarily feel alike, think alike, speak alike, was decidedly ingenuous ; as if brothers never quarrelled ; as if the older ones, or those who pretended to be the older, never sought to domineer over the younger ! And, again, that magnifying of itself by one of the collateral branches, into the trunk from which all the rest originated — "French," "Spanish," "Austrian," " doubtless, in a very real sense, ' branches ' of the Roman trunk ;" — and if one de- murred to that, " This was the way in which the branch spoke to the trunk ! " Upon what meat had this our Caesar fed, That he had grown so big ? He might as well imagine all mankind descended from Cain, and the oldest male descendant in the direct line from that first fratricide, universal monarch : it would be a fit pendant to the hallucination which imagined the (alleged) oldest male descendant in the direct line from S. Peter uni- versal bishop, and his church the universal church ! — The *" PeopZe'5 Edition. Price 2^ Cents ! ''^ 103 AFTEKPIECE TO THE Catholic World, in the article before referred to,* made the very boldness of the claim the proof of its justness. "No Protestant sect," it said, " has ever had the audacity to claim tp be itself alone the visible Catholic Church of the Creed." For once, the Catholic World was right. It was reserved to the Papal sect (for just so far forth as it was Papal, it was but a sect, and at least a century and three- quarters younger than the ISTestorian) to mount to that sub- limity of impudence. Brass was the current coin of Rome in the olden time, and brass was evidently still current there. Indeed, so flush were they of it, that it could hardly be all their own : a part of it must be ces alienum. They w^ere " trading on borrowed capital," and such, General Jackson said, " ought to break." — The Catholic World^ in its criticism on Dr. Ewer's " illustration of the Catholic Church,"t of- fered us brass for sterling coin. Me (O'Kaye) would decline it, as ancient Pistol declined the supposed brass of his French captive, and in language as emphatic though not quite so highly seasoned with Triclentine expletives. Dr. Ewer had compared the Catholic Church " to a tree," its trunk " one and entire " for the first eight feet above the ground (each foot representing a century), but " somewhere along the ninth foot " branching into " two main limbs," the " Greek " and the " Latin ;" the latter branching again, "six feet further out," into two, the " Anglican " and the " Ro- man." The comparison was a lame one, as he would pres- ently show ; his first business was with the Catholic World'' s criticism of it : " Then there is no present living trunk, but branches only. Branches of a trunk that has ceased to live can be only dead branches." Would the critic be so good as to explain how" the first eight feej: of the trunk would keep on living if the trunk kept on shooting up as one trunk into the sixteenth foot and thence into the nineteenth but would cease to live if " somewhere along the ninth foot" it began to shoot into two main limbs ? What sort of a *P. 506. tP. 513. COMEDY OF CONVOCATION. 103 tree was that which by the very act of putting fortli branch- es killed the trunk? Was it not the nature of a tree to put forth branches ? And what sort of a tree was it which grew up for eight hundred years — and that was Dr. Ewer's tree — all trunk and no limb ? What would S. xiugustine have thought of a comparison which should have likened the Church of his day to the trunk of a tree four feet high wdth never a bough or a branch ? Would he not have opened his eyes wide at the " illustration V And if, by way of making it clearer, it should have been added that when the trunk got twice as old and twice as high, it would part into two limbs, one like the trunk, and the other not a little un- like it, would he not have opened his eyes loider f And would he not have said to himself. What sort of looking tree will it be in the tenth century, with a trunk eight or nine feet high, and two limbs one foot in length each ? — So much for the antler theory — the theory that took the term " branch " in the transferred literal, ir^tead of in the figurative meaning. But the Catliolic World had another theory. Dr. Ewer had declared that the church was an ^' organism." Now, " an organism," said the Worlds "is a living body;" and "in every living body or organism, there is and must be — as the older physiologists, and even the most recent and eminent * * * have proved — an original, central cell, from which the whole organism proceeds, in which its vital principle inheres, and which is the type, creator, originator, and director of all its vital phenomena. * * * This primitive cell or germ is never spontaneously generated, but is always generated by a living organism which precedes and deposits it according to the old maxim, omne vivum ex {>??(?."* Suppose we granted all this, and — what was quite another matter — granted its applicability to the case in hand, where was this central cell to be found ? In " the Chair of Peter," said the Catholic World. '' This organic central cell produces not many organisms, but one only. So the chair * P. 508. 104 AFTERPIECE TO THE of Peter, the central cell of the church organism, can gene- erate only one organism. Christ has one body and no more."* Yery true : and therefore there could be but one original, organic, central cell. Now the Church was the the body of Christ, as Mankind was the body of Adam. The original central cell of the church organism was there- fore in the Second Adam, as the original central cell of the race organism was in the First Adam. The former was no more in Peter than the latter was in Cain. Still less was it in the chair of Peter, that was, the perpetuated office of Peter, — perpetuated, namely (for, said the Catholic World, the Apostolic See cannot be separated from the Sedensf), in the persons of his successors ; for an original central cell in a succession perpetuated by derivation was an absurdity. The derivative central cells were not one, but many, and (to borrow an expression from mathematics) of many orders. The derivative central cells of the first order were — in the race organism — in Cain, Abel, Seth, aneople liJce 2^riest.f " He could not conceive S. Paul or S. John starting on a nuptial tour, accompanied by the ' latest fashions.' " * See Note H, 34. t Hos. iv. 9. 116 AFTERPIECE TO THE That " accompaniment " was rather hard to conceive of, . inasmuch as the ladies of those days had but one " fashion," and that an early one. The " nuptial tour " might be hard to conceive of, too, for Ae reason that it was probably the invention of a later age. He was inclined to think it was nof yet a hundred years old : our fathers took their brides home at once, as did the Orientals in the time of our Lord. But there was no difficulty in " conceiving " of the " Prince of the Apostles " as a married man, for he certainly had a "wife's mother," and therefore must at least have Jiad a wife ; and S. Paul hinted not obscurely at his having one in his day, and taking her about with him. " Have we not power to lead about a sister, a wife {a6e?^,(})yv ywaiKo), as well as other Apostles, and as the brethren of the Lord, and Ce- phas ? "* He was aware that the Anglo-Roman version au- thorized by " James, Archbishop of Baltimore " translated it (after the Yulgate) " a woman a sister," but he was equally aware that, to do that, it had to invert the order of the Greek, for, as S. Paul wrote it, it would not bear such a rendering. Professor Ornsby's Note, in Cardinal Mai's Greek Testament (Codex Yaticanus), Dublin Edition, referred us to dvSpeg adeA^oi^ Acts vii. 2, et passim, as a like construction ; but, instead of being " like," it was just the reverse, as was also yvvalKa xhpoA)-) S. Luke iv. 26, " a woman a widow." In every instance of this appositive construction in Greek, the defining noun came last. It was a law of the language. Hence the early Greek Fathers so interpreted the passage ; as did also Tertullian, one of the earliest of the Latin Fathers : " It was lawful," he said, " even for Apostles to marry, and lead about wives."t But gradually another in- terpretation grew, up among these latter, and from it arose " that objectionable custom in the Church, that presbyters should have female attendants {mulieres subintroductce) in- * 1 Cor. ix. 5. t "Licebat et Apostolis nubere et uxores circumducere."— i)6 ^a;^or^. Cast, c. 8. COMEDY OF CONVOCATION. 117 stead of wives " — a custom condemned by Epiphanius,'** and forbidden by the Council of Ancyra.t There was an- other passage of S. Paul's that was misinterpreted by the Roman authorities : — A bishop then must be blameless, the husband of one wife, h* ^ * one that ruleth well his own house, having his children in subjection with all grav- ity. * * * Let the deacons be the husbands of one wife, ruling their children and their own houses well."| " Of one wife," i. €., said Professor Ornsby, " must not have been married more than once. Compare ch. v. 9." He had " compared " it, and found that it was against the Profes- sor's interpretation. It read, " having teen the wife of one man " {yeyowld) ; whereas, in the passages in question, it was, "56 the husband of one wife " {elvai^ eaTCdaav). When the Apostle meant " having heen/' he said so ; and when he meant " te" he said so : had he meant " have heen," in the passages in question, he would have said, yeyovevai, instead of elvac ; yeyoviroxjav^ instead of iaruaav. He thanked the Professor for calling his attention to " ch. v. 9," for it prov- ed incontrovertibly that the Apostle contemplated, as a part of his arrangement for the Church of Ephesus, " bishops " having a wife and children, and actually living with them.% And what the Apostle thus contemplated, was originally carried out in the whole Church, though restrictions were put upon the contracting of marriage after ordination. As to the supposed incompatibility of marriage with the priestly character, and the superiority of the single to the married state except as giving (to those who could receive it) II opportunity to " attend upon the Lord without distrac- tion,"1[ it was a Marcionite heresy, and all the special plead- ing of the Count De Maistre couldn't make anything else of it.** It was condemned in anticipation by S. Paul.tt It * Haeres Ixviii. t Canon xix. % 1 Tim.iii. 2, 4, 12. § See note I, 3. 11 St. Matt. xix. 11, 12. ^ 1 Cor. vii. 35. '' For the evil is not in the cohabitation, but in the im- pediment to the strictness of life."— St. Chrysost., Horn. xx. in St. Matt, ** For a specimen of this special pleading, see Note A, 55-70. ft 1 Tim. iv. 1-5. 118 AFTERPIECE TO THE was condemned by the Fifth of the " Apostolic Canons," which enacted that ^'A bishop, presbyter, or deacon shall not put away his wife under pretext of religion. If he does, he shall be separated from communion ; and if he persevere, he shall be deposed." It was condemned by the Council of Gangra — a council received by the whole Church — the Fourth Canon of which anathematized " those who separate themselves from a married priest, as though it were not right to communicate in the oblation, when such an one minis- ters." And when, in the following year, it sought recogni- tion in the Council of Nice, it was unanimously repudiated ;* and it had been repudiated in the Glreek Church from that day to this : only the Roman Church could be brought to cast such a slur on the " Prince of the Apostles." The Pope was all the time talking about the patrimony of S. Peter, but said nothing of his matrimony. Holy Scripture, on the other hand, spoke repeatedly of his matrimony, but said nothing of his patrimony, unless we might include under that designation his nets,t his shipj (which was a small fishing craft), and half a house ;§ and these he forsook to follow Jesus. Silver and gold he had none.|| " Nor could the i^iagination picture, in its wildest mood, the majestic adversary of the Arian emperor attended on his fight up the Nile by Mistress Athanasius." Perhaps not. But it required no '' wild mood " of the imagination, but only a very tame humdrum exercise of that faculty, to ^'picture" Mistress John XXIII., Mistress Inno- cent YIII., Mistress Alexander YI., and a hundred thousand other Mistresses^ in Jifty thousand parsonages, in the middle and the South of Europe, in the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fif- teenth centuries. He was not dealing in random assertions ; he meant what he said, and a good deal more. If I doubted, I had only to consult the twenty -first chapter of Mr. Henry C. liQ2i^ Historical Sketch of Sacerdotal Celibacy, 8vo. pp. 601, Philadelphia, 1867. He would read me an extract or two : * Socrat., H. E., Lib i. c. 11 ; Sozomen, H. E., Lib. i. c. 23. + St. Matt. iv. 20. % St. Luke v. 3. § St. Mark i. 29. i] Acts iii. 6. COMEDY OF CONVOCATION. 119 " There can be no denial of the fact that notorious and undisguised illicit unions, or still more debasing secret li- centiousness, was a universal and pervading vice of the Church throughout Christendom." — p. 345. " The records of the Middle Ages are accordingly full of the evidences that indiscriminate license of the worst kind prevailed throughout every rank of the hierarchy. * * * The abuse of the awful authority given by the altar and the confessional was a subject of sorrowful and indignant de- nunciation in too many synods for a reasonable doubt to be entertained of its frequency or of the corruption which it spread throughout innumerable parishes." — pp. 352, 353. " What were the influences of the papal court in the next century may be gathered from the speech which Cardinal Hugo made to the Lyonese, on the occasion of the depar- ture of Innocent lY. in 1251 from their city, after a resi- dence of eight years — 'Friends, since our arrival here, we have done much for your city. When we came, we found here three or four brothels. We leave behind us but one. We must own, however, that it extends without interrup- tian from the eastern to the western gate ' — the crude cynic- ism ot which greatly disconcerted the Lyonese ladies pres- ent."— p. 356. For the original latin of this speech, as given by Mathew Paris, he referred me to the foot note in Mr. Lea's book. He would now read me an extract from the appeal of Maximilian H. to the Council of Trent, first handing me the Latin original that I might compare his translation with it: * " For who does not see and deplore, that even among Catholic priests throughout Germany and the realms and dominions of his imperial majesty, and the serene Prince Charles, Archduke of Austria, almost none or at any rate among many scarcely one real celibate was to he found; but al- most all * * '^ were notorious keepers of concubines, * See Note H, 10, n. 120 AFTEKPIECE TO THE or even secretly married ; nay that the greater part were not content with one concubine, but kept several at a time." In this way they were but following the example set at the Vatican. " The latter half of the fifteenth century," said Mr. Lea, " scarcely saw a supreme pontiff without the visible evidences of human frailty around him, the unblush- ing acknowledgement of which was the fittest commentary on the tone of clerical morality." (pp. 358, 359.) The prophecy put into the mouth of a Dominican by Mapes, tw^o hundred years before (Lea, p. 304), was having its ful- filment : Habebimus clerici duas concubinas : Monachi, canonici, totidem vel trinas : Decani, prselati, quatuor vel quinas : Sic tandem leges implebimus divinas. Verily, what the Count De Maistre said of the human race in Europe in the tenth century,* might be said with equal, if ^ not greater truth of the priesthood in the fifteenth: it had, '' literally " " gone crazy." But what drove it crazy ? How came such priests, not to say men, to be possible ? " They were the natural product of a system which for four centuries had bent the unremitting energies of the Church to securing temporal power and wealth, with exemption from the duties and liabilities of the citizen. Such were the fruits of the successful theocracy of Hilde*brand, which, intrusting irresponsible authority to fallible humanity, came to regard ecclesiastical aggrandizement as as a full atone- ment for all and every crime. That the infection had spread even to the ultimate fibres of the establishment could readily be believed."t But why was a system that had produced such results still kept up ? For two reasons. First, because its uphold- ers thought that they were succeeding at last in so effectually " driving out nature with a fork " that it wouldn't " keep * See Note A, 45. t Lea, p. 359. COMEDY OF CONYOCATIOJiT. 121 coming back." In proof of this, they pointed to the state of things in the more enlightened countries of Europe and in the United States. But to what was this state of things owing ? Partly to '^ the wholesome restraints imposed by a jealously hostile public opinion " originating outside of the Roman Communion, and the "liability not only to the municipal law, but to the rigor of the canons mercilessly enforced by prelates who felt that their church was on pro- bation," and partly to the comparatively small proportionate number of clergy to laity in these countries and hard work of the priesthood thence resulting, and consequent " few temptations for those whose faith and resolution did not fit them to endure all its privations and fulfil all its duties." * But in the States of the Church, where, fifteen years ago, one in every eighty-two of the population was vowed to celibacy, — a proportion ten time as large as in France, — according to Edmund About, " chastity in a churchman was a quality sufficiently uncommon to attract special attention to its possessor." t In Spain, it was hinted not obscurely by Mr. Ffoulkes, there was a similar condition of things : " From Seville I proceeded to a small village in the neigh- bourhood of the Sierra of most primitive description. There I remained several months. * * * The priest was affable and intelligent ; and seemed anxious to promote education : but he was a good deal mixed up in the secular affairs of his neighboi!?rs as well : and the honours of his house were always done by one who went by the name of his ' cugina,' { but I was laughed at for supposing it meant the relation- ship that we understand by it. I could only therefore ac- count for the average respect that was paid him on the sup- position that such things were not uncommon." § In Central and South America, where the Roman Church had had exclusive and uninterrupted possession for three * Lea., pp. 558, 559, t Id., p. 560. t Cousin (female). § Letter to Abp. Manning, Am. Ed., pp. 67, 68, 6 122 AFTEKPIECE TO THE hundred years, *' with no hostile public opinion " within a thousand miles of it to keep it in check, matters were still worse. If I wanted an instance, it should be forthcoming. Here he handed me a book bearing the title, " What I saw on the West Coast of South and North America, and at the Hawaiian Islands. By H. Willis Baxley, M.D. Kew York : D. Appleton & Co., 1865.^' Dr. Baxley, I may remark, is a Baltimorean, well-known to the Archbishop and the rest of our clergy there as an unimpeachable witness. It was as Special Commissioner of the United States, in the years 1860y 1861, and 1862, that he visited the places in question. In his preface he says, " among other things noted are the doings of certain religionists. This has been done with the freedom and candor demanded by the importance of the subject. ''I Bpeak not of inen''s creeds— they rest between Man and his Maker— but of things allowed^ Averr'd and known— and daily, hourly seen.' "' Turning to page 14B, I learned, to my astonishment , that in Lima, a city having, according to the Statistical Tables in Mitchell's Atlas^ in 1860, a population of but 55,000^ there were in 1858 '* one thousand seven hundred and ninety- three priests, exercising ecclesiastical authority, and perform- ing religious functions "—one priest to every thirty inhabi- tants ; that is to say, one man in eDery seven Dowed to celibacy. — Further down on the same page is the following : " If priests, taking vows of chastity and devotion alone to God, perjure themselves, obey the lusts of the flesh, and scatter their illegitimate offspring abroad, with the sole self-deluding merit of not disowning them, thus giving the brazen lie to their profession, it is to be expected that in both lying and lechery they will find imitators among those whose temporal purity they should guard, and whose eternal welfare it is their solemn duty to promote. The unblushing boldness with which clerical debauchery stalks abroad in COMEDY OF CONVOCATION. 123 Lima, renders it needless to put in any saving clause of declaration." On the next page is the following : "If the Bishop of Arequipa will turn to the ^weak and beggarly elements of the world,' if he cannot, like his great predecessor S. Paul, ' contain,' but must obey the carnal desires, ' let him marry ' as he is commanded by the Apostle, like an honorable man and consistent Christian, and not prove a stumbling-block to his more scrupulous brother. And let him not encourage the frailty of depraved disciples by a shameless example of licentiousness made public by his procurement of separate apartments in Lima for his seven concubines and his thirty-five illegitimate children, during his absence on a mission to the Roman head of the Church ; who, if rumor speak truth of his virtues, would spurn him from his presence if aware of such scandalous libertinism." Turning over a leaf, I came to this : " That it may not be supposed that I am looking at what is passing around me with prejudiced eyes, and coloring first impressions of novelties too highly, I will quote at some length from ^A Travers VAmerique du Sud^ par F. Dahadie. Paris, 1859.* This French traveller, himself a Eo- man Catholic, but evidently not one whose sense of religious duty inculcates the sin of compromising the lofty character and capacity for good of that Church, by concealing the wickedness of unworthy disciples, says : ' The religious pro- cessions of Lima are actually converted by profane women into Carnivals of Venice — ridiculous, absurd masquerades ! The ceremony loses its sacred character ; the tapadas abso- lutely making or refusing assignations with those proposing ; the assistants absolutely compressing the waists of the tapadas more frequently than they say their prayers. * * Lima is the heaven of women, purgatory of men, and hell of asses. * ^ * Women consider a husband only as he may contribute to their love of dress and indulgence ; interest with them is the only motive of marriage.' " 124 AFTERPIECE TO THE And, two pages further on, to this : " Mons. Dabadie continues : ' In the streets of San Fran- cisco ' (Lima), * opposite the monastery of that name, a kind of barracks is found contaning quite a population apart from the rest. There, lives a class of women and children, whom (who ?) one would think came in a direct line from gypsies, if their complexion did not show a variety of a thousand shades from white to black. These women are the acknowledged mistresses, and the children the progeny of the monks of the higher order ' (what sort of monks I thought, must those of the lower order be), ' who visit them at all times, and pay them a stipend according to their means ; meagrely, for the expulsion of the Spaniards from the country has impoverished the convents." " La casa de la(s) monjas " — the house of nuns — as the people ironically call it, is a real Gomorrah. The clerical protectors of the tenants who inhabit it, iDillingly mistake the chambers^ not having the weakness of the laity of teing jealous of each other. Do not suppose that we are amusing ourselves in speaking ill of the monks of Lima. Observe them on a festival day of great sanctity, either in the procession or in the churches, and you will hate proved their bare-faced licentiousness. In tedious ceremonies, brothers who have no active participation in the service, go out of the temple and smoke in the adjacent cloister, under the portico of the church, or on the sidewalk, amusing themselves with trifles. It is shocking to find them in the processions, when bearing the cross, (?) banners, aud candles, having no respect for their robes, nor for the sainted images they carry, nor for religion, nor for decencies demanded by the occasion. They shut both heart and ear to the sacred songs which ascend towards heaven. They smile at the women, who flutter about like butterflies, as the cortege is passing along ; cast lascivious glances at them, and address to them words of double meaning. On returning to the church, two lines of monks are often formed at the portal, through which the COMEDY OF CONVOCATION. 125 crowd pass into the interior, and there too they indulge themselves without restraint in jest and sarcasm, compli- ment and repartee ; alluring complaisant Christian senoritas, white, black, or copper-colored, and addressing to them shameless gallantries ; the spectator, I will not say religious, but merely of proper delicacy, turning away in disgust from such unblushing libertinism. These abominations among themselves they are the first to expose, for in their stated elections for superiors of convents, such is the bitterness of rival aspirants and their partizans, that they publicly charge against each other infamous transactions, making known the number of their concubines and illegitimate children, and crimes which society Tias deemed it necessary to erect penitentiaries to punish.' " Such is the testimony on Peruvian morals and religion, of a French traveller, happily free from the imputation of sectarian prejudice." Here I closed the book and handed it -back to O'Kaye. I was satisfied, I said, that the Hildebrandean system had as yet succeeded in "driving out nature" only in the more enlightened countries of Europe and in the United States and British America; but as it had succeeded in those countries, why might it not yet succeed in the rest of Europe and in Spanish America ? It might, he said, on the same conditions, one of which was the letting in of the non-Roman Communions to compete with it ; but that the Pope consid- ered worse than the disease ; and besides, it would take it two hundred years, as it had done in central Europe, to accomplish its work. And when it was accomplished, what had we ? A system which by the very condition of its existence was precluded from " possessing the land ; " for it could exist in purity only under the constant surveillance of a hostile public opinion. Such being the case, it would have been abandoned long since but that Tri dentine Roman- ism would have gone with it. This was the second reason he had reference to. The Count De Maistre was right when, 126 AFTERPIECE TO THE referring to the " scandalous concubinage " formerly existing, lie said, " There wanted only a blunderhead to annihilate the'''' {Tridentine) ^^ priesthood^ by proposing the marriage of priests as a remedy for greater evils." * The case of the Janizaries was in point. " The Janizaries of the Porte were Christian children, recruited by the most degrading tribute which tyrannical ingenuity had invented. Torn from their homes in infancy, every tie severed that bound them to the world around them ; the past a blank, the future dependent solely upon the master above them ; existence limited to the circle of their comrades, among whom they could rise, but whom they could never leave ; such was the corps which bore down the bravest of the Christian chivalry and carried the standard of the Prophet in triumph to the walls of Vienna. Mastering at length their master, they wrung from him the privilege of marriage ; and the class in becoming hereditary, with human hopes and fears disconnected with the one idea of their service, no longer presented the same invincible phalanx, and at last became terrible only to the effeminate denizens of the seraglio."t The celibate priesthood were the Janizaries of Rome : the Tridentine Church could never be Catholic, with thera ; it could never &6, without them. So much for "Mistress Athanasius." He thought the less the advocates of Rome said about Mistresses the better. " Only the other day, as he came through France, he read in a French journal the martyrdom of nine French bishops and priests at once in Corea. Did any one suppose that if they had been married, they would have coveted the crown of martyrdom ?" {Comedy^ p. 106.) Why not ? Did he never read, in Eusebius,J of Phileas, Bishop of Thmuis, and Philoromus, who had to be " urged^ in the persecution under Diocletian, to have pity on their * See Note A, 48 ; also 69, where the Popes are called the " realinstitutors of the priesthood." f Lea, pp. 19, 20. X L. viii. c. 9. COMEDY OF CONVOCATION. 127 wives and children, and, for their sakes, to save their own lives " ? Did he never hear of John Rogers, whose wife " with nine small children, and one at the breast," followed him to the stake, in the reign of bloody Mary ? Perhaps even Pope Liberius,* if he had had a wife like Kidds's t might have coveted the crown of martyrdom. As it was, he certainly did not in that point violate the tenth com- mandment. " ' If your clergy were true priests,' he had been told, * they would display the supernatural virtues which accom- pany a divine vocation'" (p. 107). " He should not like to judge unkindly, but they had, as a class, a dreadfully unsu- pernatural look" (p. 111).' He should not like to judge unkindly, either; but, some- how or other, he could not help thinking that Simon Peter when, only a few days after he had received his great com- mission in the very words in which every priest of the , Church of England for the last two hundred years has re- ceived his,J he said, " I go a fishing," had " a dreadfully un- supernatural look;" and he could not help thinking, fur- ther, that when the other disciples said, " We also go with thee," they had '' a dreadfully unsupernatural look," too. And this impression of his in regard to Simon Peter was confirmed by the conduct of that disciple after he had got stripped to his work ; for if he had then that supernatural look which was here supposed to be the inheritance of his alleged successors, why, when he " heard that it was the Lord " that had just spoken to them, did he " gird his fish- er's coat unto him ?" On the other hand, he had no doubt that the Bishop of Arequipa and the priests of Lima had a dreadfully natural look. Father L * * * * was a very different man ; but he would like to see Mm look in the glass and then read with a grave face all that bosh about the Roman clergy having a more supernatural look than the non-Roman. Very * See I^ote E. t Comedy, p. 113. X St. John, XX. 22, 23. 128 AFTERPIECE TO THE possibly ^^m^ Roman priests did, sometimes^ hsiYe a dread- fully supernatural look. He should not wonder if Father Kavanaugh had, when he was so unceremoniously walked out of church by " some of the most prominent members " of the Congregation " of the Holy Family," and if Bishop McQuaid had, when he was compelled to follow him ; or if not then, at any rate, when, a day or two after, he went to law about it, " and that before the unbeliever," and was as unceremoniously walked out of court as he had before been out of church. One thing was certain. If Roman bishops and priests were not " men of like passions "* with the rest of mankind, then they were not successors of "the Apostles Paul and Barnabas," and of the fishermen, Peter, and An- drew, and James, and John. " You are always tempted to think : ' These are men who have never received the Sacraments, and in w^hose face there is no reflection of the Sacramental Presence'" (p. 111). a i rj^^Q grace of Orders does not appear in them, therefore they are not validly ordained.' He believed he was not de- ficient in courage, but he never heard this argument without trying to change the conversation" (p. 107). No woi^der. No sensible man would wish to listen to such nonsense. Whoever told the Rev. Athanasius Benedict that the validity of Orders depended on the appearing of the grace of Orders in the Ordained, was evidently trying to see how much the gapi,ng neophyte could swallow. The Council of Trent could have told him better.! "A common divine vocation, accompanied by special gifts for a special object, must necessarily create, as it had ac- tually done in the vast Roman communion, an order of men moulded exactly according to the same type, teaching everywhere the same truths, and ruling their thoughts and lives by the same standard" (p. 120), "recipients of the same mysterious and constraining grace, flowing directly from ^'0/LLOL07Ta6e~cg avdpQKot.—^^ts xiv. 15. t Sess. xiv. De Poenit. c. 6. COMEDY OF CONVOCATION. 129 the august rite of ordination, and infused into the soul by a special divine operation, expressly to produce a uniform habit of mind and heart, and a uniform conception of reli- gious truth" (p. 135) ; "from the beginning, a supernatural caste, * * * clothed, by the transforming grace of Orders, with angelic purity and virginity" (p. 137).* Now, about the " type " of the Eoman priesthood all over Europe in the three centuries immediately preceding the Reformation, and in Spanish America at the present day, there could be no doubt ; yet the Comedy assured us that " in the vast Roman communion " the whole priestly "order" were " moulded exactly according to the same type." He did not believe it. He did not believe that the Roman priesthood in the United States were moulded exactly ac- cording to the same type with the Roman priesthood in Spanish ximerica. Neither did he believe, on the other hand, that they were " a supernatural caste, * * * * clothed, by the transforming grace of Orders, with angelic purity and virginity." That they were an unnatural caste — made such by their peculiar discipline — he had no doubt : just as little had he, that, in this, they were not the success- ors of the Apostles. As to "a uniform conception of reli- gious truth," &c., that was all in your eye : either it was not uniform, or it was not a conception, but only an intro- susception of what was neither read^ marlced^ learned^ nor inwardly digested?''^ To talk of three or four thousand priests — that was the number, he believed, of all sorts, reg- ular and secular, in the United States — thinking alike, was to talk nonsense : either they didn't think, or they differed from one another as much as S. James did from S. Paul, and S. John from both, and S. Peter from all three ; and how much that was, the most cursory reader of the New Testa- ment could not fail to see. " How can a Church which formally denies that ordination * See Note A, 66, 67. t Collect for Second Sunday in Advent. 6* 130 AFTERPIECE TO THE is a sacrament either pretend or desire to possess Roman Or- ders, which the Roman Church affirms to he a sacrament V How could a man who formally denied that a " greenback" was a dollar either pretend or desire to possess a . C/>ii^6^ States greenback, which the United States affirmed to he a dollar ? Really, it was extraordinary that such stuff should pass for argument among men trained as the Roman priesthood were in dialectics ! But the truth was, it didn't pass for argument with them, but they thousjht they might succeed in palming it off for argument upon the readers of the Comedy. It showed what sort of material they thought they might hope to make converts out of. He wished them joy of such converts. Yerily, there was, in some people's estimation, a good deal in a name ; especially, when it was made to bolster up a claim. " It was well known," said the Count De Maistre, " that those Churches (the oriental) called themselves orthodox, * * * What Church did not think itself orthodox ? and what Church allowed the title to others that were not in communion with it ? A large and magnificent city of Europe offered an interesting practical exemplification to which be called the attention of all thinking men. A rather contracted space contained within it Churches of all the Christian communions. You saw there a Catholic Church, a Russian Church, an American Church, a Calvinist Church, a Lutheran Church ; a little further on, you came ,to the Anglican Chui-ch ; only a Greek Church, he believed,, was wanting. Ask, then, the first man you met, Wher3 is the Ortliodox Church ? Each Christian would direct you to his own ; a great proof already of a common orthodoxy. But if you asked. Where is the Catholic Church? All would answer : There it is! and all would point to the same. A great and profound subject of meditation ! " * * See Note A^ 79. COMEDY OF CON VOC ACTION. 131 Very profound ! Going, as did most of the Count's phil- osophical remarks upon the Eoman Church, and other Churches, all the way through from the upper to the under side of the surface ! — The Count got that direction, how to find the- Catholic Church, from S. Cyprian, who gave it as — what it wo,s in his day, but what it had long since ceased to be — a 'practical direction. When Father Hewit, nearly a quarter of a century ago, went to Eome, as the popular phrase was, that was to say, to the Church of Rome, he published in a pamphlet his reasons for the step. When three or four years before, he came to the Church of the United States, he did not trouble himself to put forth his reasons for so doing ; it was a step whose propriety seemed so obvious to him as to require no justification: perhaps he might say, now^ that it was so slight a step as to require none ; he thought it a very long stride then^ and so did his father, j udging from his energetic remonstrance with a dis- tinguished prelate for Ms part in the transaction. — But when he went further and fared (spiritually) worse, he thought the step required apologizing for; hence his pamphlet. Among the reasons that he gave was, that he had but followed this direction of S. Cyprian's. Father Hewit was perplexed, and troubled, at the time, or he would have seen that the direction was no longer a practical one. He (O'Kaye) had too high an opinion of his (Father H.'s) ability to believe for a moment that he had now any confi- dence whatever in that argument. Even then, if he had reflected, he would have seen that it was a two-edged sword, and therefore dangerous on a back-handed stroke. If he had gone into almost any New England village having three or four places of worship — and the number of sucl^ villages even then was not small — and asked the first Baptist, Meth- odist, Trinitarian-Congregationalist, Unitarian, Universalist, Where is the Orthodox Church F All would have answered : There it is I and all would have pointed to the same, to wit, the Trinitarian-Congregational. A. great and profound sub- ject of meditation ! 132 AFTERPIECE TO THE Speaking of names, there was one about wMch the Cath- olic World^ in the before-mentioned article on Dr. Ewer, was very much exercised. " The Anglican Church," it said, " or a considerable portion of it, would, if it could, like to get rid (he supposed the writer meant, would like to get rid^ if it could) ^ of the name of Protestant^ and assume that of Catholic^ He (O'Kaye) should like to get rid of the name Protestant, and also of the name Episcopal ; not, however, for the reason that the Catholic World supposed, but be- cause they were superfluous. For the same reason, he should not like to assume the name of Catholic; in this respect, he was a y ax j unassuming man. If it lay with him, he would follow the model of the Mother Church, as she followed that of Holy Scripture, and call the Church at Whose altar he ministered, what she had always been de jure^ what she was slowly but surely becoming de facto^ the Church of the United States, Of course, the Catholic World would laugh, and it was welcome to laugh its fill ; and more, if that was n't enough : it would be cynical in him to grudge it that harm- less amusement. But which Church would laugh by and by ? The one that wins, he rather thought. And which that would be, he had no doubt. He had spent as yet not quite half his life in her communion, and, within that time, she had nearly quadrupled in numbers and more than quadru- pled in influence. Hence the affectionate interest, the Catholic World took in her fortunes — two articles upon her in one number. " In regard to other Christian denomina- tions," it said, (Article on the Gerieral Convention^ p. 467), " the Episcopal Church is singularly unfortunate. It has communion with no other body of Christians in the entire world." — Well, and was n't the Papal Church in the same " unfortunate " position ? With what " other body of Christians in the entire world " did it have " communion " ? Where, then, was the " singularity " ? " In like manner, when a church isolates itself from all COMEDY OF CONVOCATION. 133 the world by claims which everybody else on earth denies to it, there is something of the ridiculous in its position, and, while we may be pained, we are at the same time amused" {Id.^ p. 470). Exactly so. And as every Communion calling itself a Church (the Papal not excepted), by the very fact of its separate existence, "isolated itself" from every other by claims which they " denied to it," it followed that in every such separate organization there was to those outside of it, except the few who might be looking thoughtfully toward it, " something of the ridiculous in its position." If the Roman Church could stand the " ridiculousness," he rather thought the Anglican could too. And now, he had a confession to make. As the Catholic World had been exercised about the name of the Anglican Communion in the United States, so he had been exercised about a name for that of Rome. He had often wished that there were a word bearing the same relation to Boman that Anglican bore to English^ and Galilean to French^ and which would therefore be acceptable to both sides in a controversy like the present. He believed he had found it at last. In looking over the Triennial Catalogue of Harvard University for 1866, on page 169, under the head of AliM Instituti et Honor arii^ and under date of 1861, he came upon the fol- lowing : Johannes-Bernardus Fitzpatriclc^ S.T.D.^ Sanctae Bostoniensis Ecclesise Episcopus, A.A.S. Here it was. The Holy Boston Church I Could anything be more admirable ? The wonder was that it had not oc- curred to him before. For was not Boston the " hub of the universe ?" And where should the central sell be, if not in the — nave ? The only obj action to the name he could think of was that it might make Baltimore, and New York, aad the other archi episcopal sees, jealous. But what if it did? Who would ever talk of the Holy Kew York Church, where 134 AFTERPIECE TO THE " many of the best seats " were '' invariably rented by wealthy Protestants, not because they had any active pref- erence for Catholic doctrine [he should think not ; they would go elsewhere if they had], but solely because they found the services less dismal than their own."* In other words, having no religion that they cared for, and being debarred from the opera on Sunday, they went to — what was the next best — that Church which, while excommuni- cating opera-singers and other stage-players eo nomine^ hired the said excommunicated opera-singers to do the music for the unexcommunicated worshippers ! Whether these latter on account of the throng of worldlings attracted by the spectacle^ kept their pews under lock and key, as was done in the Cathedral in Baltimore formerly, and, he presumed, still, though it was many years since he had been inside of it, and then only on a week-day, when there was no service going on, he could not say. He was glad, however, to learn from Archdeacon Jolly that ^' in England, there was still too much dislike to Popery to allow of such a diversion^ One more extract, and he had done with the Comedy : *' The English Church declares of Holy Order, as of Con- firmation, ' it is not a sacrament,' and therefore cannot confer sacramental grace, but is a purely human ceremony, con- veying nothing whatever but a license to preach, and the honorary title of Reverend"! ! (p. 118.) Blot — th, and last Casula. Has he got through. ? CKaye. Yes ! He has had it all his own way, for the last half-hour : you have said nothing. Casula. Because nothing could be said. As to the argu- ment, I shouldn't mind that; but it is not pleasant to be written down an ass. O'Kaye. Not very. But you'll get used to it after a while. Besides, you have the consolation that it is you that have done the writing. He has only stripped the lion's skin * Comedy, p. 127. COMEDY OF CONVOCATION. • 135 from off your ears, and forced you to a new kind of auric- ular confession ! For my part, his argument has convinced me, and I have come to bid the Pope good bye. So I will now say good- bye to you, wishing you, as the Archbishop did Gil Bias, all manner of prosperity, and in your next work of fiction, a little more taste ! NOTE A. EXTRACTS FROM THE WORK OF THE COUNT DE MAISTRE ON THE POPE. 1. ''Les verites theologiques ne sont que des verites generales, manifes- tees et divinisees dans le cercle religieux, de maniere que Ton ne sauroit en attaquer une sans attaquere une loi du monde. 2. " L'infaillibilite dans Tordre spirituel, et la souverainete dans Tordre temporel, sont deux mots parfaitement synonymes. L'un et Tautre expri- ment cette haute puissance qui les domine toutes, dont toutes les autre& derivent ; qui gouverne et n'est pas gouvernee, qui juge et n'est pas jugee. 3. " Q,uand nous disons que I'Eglise est infaillible, nous ne demandons pour elle, il est bien essentiel de I'observer, aucun privilege particulier; nous demandons seulement qu'elle jouisse du droit commun a toutes les souverainetes possibles, qui toutes agissent necessairement comme infailli- bles ; car tout gouvernement est absolu ; et du moment ou Ton pent lui re- sister sous pretexte d'erreur ou d'injustice, il n'existe plus. 4. '' La souverainete a des formes differentes, sans doute. Elle ne parle pas a Constantinople comme a Londres ; mais quand elle a parle de part et d'autre a sa maniere le bill est sans appel comme le fetfa. 5. "II en est de meme de I'Eglise : d'une maniere ou d'une autre, il faut qu'elle soit gouvernee, comme toute autre association quelconque ; autre- ment il n'y auroit plus d' aggregation, plus d'ensemble, plus d'unite. Ce gouvernement est done de sa nature infaillible, c'est-a-dire absolu^ autre- ment il ne gouvernera plus. 6. "Dans Tordre judiciaire, qui n'est qu'une piece du gouvernement, ne voit-on pas qu'il faut absolument en venir a une puissance qui juge et n'est pas ^ugee ; precisement parce qu'elle prononce au nom de la puissance su- preme, dont elle est censee n'etre que Torgane et la voix. Qu'on s'y pren- ne comme on voudra ; qu'on donne a ce haut pouvoir judiciaire le nom 136 AFTERPIECE TO THE qu'on voudra ; toujours il faudra qu'il y en ait nn auquel on ne puisse dire : Vous avez erre. Bien entendu que celui qui est condamne, est toujours mecontent de Tarret, et ne doute jamais de I'ihiquite du tribunal ; mais le politique desinteresse, qui voit les choses d'en haut, se rit de ces vaines plaintes. II salt qu'il est un point oti il taut s'arreter ; il salt que les lon- gueurs interminables, les appels sans fin et rincertitudes des proprietes, sont, s'il est permis de s'exprimer ainsi, plus injustes que rinjustice. 7. "II ne s'agit done que de savoir ou est la souverainete dans I'Eglise ; car des qu'elle sera reconnue, il ne sera plus permis d'appeler de ses deci- sions." — Du Pape. Par rAuteur des Considerations sur la France. 8econde Edition augmentee et corHgee par rAuteur. A Lyon, et a Paris, 1821. — Vol. i., pp. 2-4. 8. " Tout nous ramene aux grandes verites etablies. II ne pent y avoir de societe humaine sans gouvernement, ni de gouvernement sans souve- rainete, ni de souverainte sans infaillibilite ; et ce dernier privilege est si absolument necessaire, qu'on est force de supposer I'infaillibilite, meme dans les souverainetes temporelles (ou elle n'est pas), sous peine de voir Tassociation se dissoudre. L'Eglise ne demande rien de plus que les autres souverainetes. quoique elle ait au dessus d'elles une immense superiorite, puisque T infaillibilite est d'un cote humainement supposee, et de Tautre divinement promise." — Id., pp. 198, 199. '' C'est la meme chose dans laj^ratique d'etre infaillible, ou de se tromper sans appel."— /c?., p. 346, n. 9. ''Or, s'il y a quelque cbose d' evident pour la raison (?) autant que pour la foi, c'est que TEglise universelle est une monarchic." — Id., p. 4. 10. " La forme monarchique une fois etablie, I'infaillibilite n'est plus qu'une consequence necessaire de la supr ematie, o\ii>lvit6t, c'estlameme chose absolument sous deux noms differens. Mais quoique cette identite soit evidente, jamais on n'a vu ou voulu voir que toute la question depend de cette verite ; et cette verite dependant a son tour de la nature meme des choses, elle n'a nullement besoin de s'appuyer sur la theologie."— /c?., p. 7. 11. " C'est en efi'et absolument la meme chose dans la pratique, de n'etre pas sujet a I'erreur, ou de ne pouvoir en etre accuse." — Id., p. 8. 12. "Les respectables prelats qui crurent devoir resister au Pape, a cette derniere epoque,[celle du concordat, pendant la revolution fran9aise,] pen- serent que la question etoit de savoir si le Pape s''etoit trompe : tandis qu' il s'agissoit de savoir s''il falloit dbeir quand mertie il se seroit trompe, ce qui abregoit fort la discussion."— /c^., p. 26, n. 13. " II s'agit de savoir * * * s'il y a une puissance dans I'Eglise qui ait droit de juger si le Pape a hien juge, ei quelle est cette puissance ?" —Id., p. 128. 14. " Allez dire a Rome que le Souverain Pontife n'a pas droit d'abroger les canons du coucile de Trente, surement on ne vous fera pas briiler." — Id.,i». 123. 15. " Que veulent dire certains theologiens fran9ais avec lenrs canons f Et que veut dire, en particulier, Bossuet avec sa grande restriction qu'il nous declare a demi-voix, comme un mystere delicat du gouvernement ec- COMEDY OF CONVOCATION. 137 clesiastique : La plenitude de la puissance appartient a la chaire de 8. Pi- erre ,' MAIS nous demandons que V exercise en soit regie par les canons ? Qiiand est ce que les Papes ont pretendu le contraire ?'' — Id.^ p. 126. 16. ''II y a done qiielque chose entre Tobeissance purement passive, qui enregistre une loi en silence, et la superiorite qui T examine avec pouvoir de la rejeter. Or, c'est dans ce milieu que les ecrivains gallicans trouveront la solution d'une difficulte qui a fait grand bruit, mais qui se reduit cepen- dant a rien lorsque on I'envisage de pres. Les conciles generaux peuvent examiner les decrets dogmatiques des Papes,— sans doute pour en penetrer le sens, pour en rendre compte a eux-memes et aux autres, pour les con- fronter a Tecriture, a la tradition et aux conciles precedens ; pour repon- dre aux objections; pour rendre ces decisions agreables, plausibles, evi- dentes,a I'obstination qui les repousse; pour enjuger^ en un mot, comme PEglise gallicane juge une constitution dogmatique du Pape avant de I'ac- cepter. A-t-elle le droit de juger un de ces decrets dans toute la force du terme, c-est-a-dire de Taccepter ou de le rejeter, de le declarer meme here- tique, s'il y echoit ? Elle repondra non ; car enfin le premier de ses at- tributs c'est le bon sens." — Id.^ pp. 136, 137. 17. '' L'obligation imposee au souverain Pontife de ne juger que suivant les canons, si elle est donnee comme une condition de Tobeissance, est une puerilite faite pour amuser des oreilles pueriles ou pour en calmer de rebelles."— /c/., pp. 177, 178. 18. " Je terminerai cette partie de mes observations par une nouvelle citation d'un theologien IranQais ; le trait est d'une sagesse qui doit frapper tous les yeux. 19. '' ' Ce n'est,' dit-il, ' qu'une contradiction apparente de dire que le Pape est au dessus des canons, ou qu'il y est assujetti ; qu'il est le maitre des canons, ou qu'il ne Test pas. Ceux qui le mettent au dessus des can- ons. Ten font maitre, pretendent seulement qu'il enpeut dispenser ; et ceux qui nient qu'il en soit au dessus des canons ou qu'il en soit le maitre, veu- lent seulement dire qu'il n'en peut dispenser que pour Tutilite et dans les necessites de TEglise.'* < 20. " Je ne sais ce que le bon sens pourroit ajouter ou 6ter a cette doc- trine, egalement contraire au despotisme et a T anarchic. "—/t?., pp. 182, 183. 21. " Quant aux hommes qui, par naissance ou par systeme, se trouvent hors du cercle catholique, s'ils m'addressent la meme question : Qu''est-ce qui arretera le Papef je le repondrai : Tout ; les canons, les lois, les cou- tumes des nations, les souverainetes, les grands tribunaux, les assemblees nationales, la prescription, les representations, les negociations, le devoir, la crainte, la prudence, et par-dessus tout, Topinion reine dumondey- ^Id., p. 193. 22. "Lorsqu', au commencement du siecle dernier, Leibnitz, correspon- dant avec Bossuet sur la grande question de la reunion des Eglises, deman- doit, comme un preliminaire indispensable, que le concile de Trent fut de- * Thomassin, Discipline de I'Eglise, tom. V. p. 295. 138 AFTERPIECE TQ THE Clare non-CBCumenique ; Bossuet justement inflexible sur ce point, lui de- clare cependant que tout ce qu'on peut faire pour faciliter le grand oeuvre c'est de revenir sur le concile par vote (T explication. Qu'il ne s'etonne done plus si les Papes out permis quelquefois qu'on revint sur leurs deci- sions par vote cT explication.'''' — /c?., p. 138. 23. " Lorsque Pascale defend sa secte contre le Pape, c'est comme s'il ne parloit pas ; il faut Tecouter lorsqu'il rend a la suprematie du Pape le sage temoignage qu' on vient de lire. * * * Lorsque saint Cj^prian dit, en parlant de certains brouillons de son temps : lis osent s' addresser a la chaire de S. Pierre^ a cette Eglise supreme ou la dignite sacerdotale apris son origine * * * ^. Hs ignorent que hs domains sont des hommes aupres de qui Verreur ri'a pmnt d'acces., c'est veritablement saint Cyprien qu'on entend; c^est un temoin irreprochable de la foi de son siecle. 24. ^' Mais lorsque les adversaires de la monarchie pontiflcale nous citent, usque ad nauseam., les vivacites de ce meme S. Cyprien contre le Pape Etienne, ils nous peignent la pauvre humanite an lieu de nous peindre la sainte tradition. C'est precisement Thistoire de Bossuet."— /<:/., pp. 75, 76. 25. ^'Au reste, malgre les artifices infinis d'une savante et catholique condescendance, remercions Bossuet d'avoir dit dans ce fameux discours, que la puissance du Pape est une puissance supreme ; que . . . / que . . . ; que . . . ; que ....,* que , . . . / que des Vorigine du christianisme, les Papes out ToujouRS fait profession., en faisant observer les lois^ de les ob- server les premiers ; qu'ils eniretiennent V unite dans tout le corps ^ tantot par d'injlexibles decrets, et tantot par de sages temperamens ; que . . . ; que . . . . ,• que . . . ; que . . . ,* que la marque la plus evidente de V assistance que le St. Esprit donne a cette mere des Eglises, c'est de la rendre si juste et si moderee, que jamais elle n'ait mis les bxcbs parmi les dogmes.''"' — Id.., pp. 129-131. 26. " Bercastel, dans son Histoire ecclesiastique, a cependant trouve un moyen tres ingenieux de mettre les eveques a Taise, et de leur conferer le pouvoir de juger le Pape. Le jugement des eveques, dit-il, ne s'exerce point sur le jugement du Pape, mats sur les matieres qu'il a jugees.'' (/) "De *nianiere que si le Souverain Pontile a decide, par exemple, qu'une telle proposition est scandaleuse et heretique, les eveques fran9ais ne peuvent dire qu'il s'est trompe {nefas) ; ils peuvent seulement decider que la propo- sition est edifiante et orthodoxe. 27. '''Les eveques,' continue le meme ecrivain, 'consultent les memes regies que le Pape, Tecriture, la tradition, et specialement la tradition de leurs propres Eglises, afin d' examiner et de prononcer, selon la mesure d'autorite qu'ils ont re9ue de Jesus-Chx'ist, si la doctrine proposee lui est conforme ou contraire.' (Hist, de TEgl. tom. xxiv., page 93, citee par M. de Barral, no. 31, p. 305.) 28. " Cette theorie de Bercastel preteroit le flanc a des reflexions severes, si Ton ne savoit pas qu'elle n'etoit, de la part de Testimable auteur, qu'un innocent artifice pour echapper aux parlemens et faire passer le reste." (!!!) —Id., p. 137. 29. " Je me bornerai a citer quelques lignes du docte archeveque Mansi, COMEDY OP CONVOCATION. 139 coUecteur des conciles ; elles prouveront peut-etre, a quelques esprits preocupes, Qu'ils est quelque bon sens aux bords de ritalie. 30. " ' Supposons que Libere eut formellement soiiscrit a rarianisme (ce qu'il n'accorde point), parla-t-il dans cette occasion comme Pape, ex cathe- dra f Quels conciles assembla-t-11 prealablement pour examiner la ques- tion? Sil n'en convoqua point, quels docteurs appela-t-il a lui ? Quelles congregations institua-t-il pour definir le dogme ? Quelles supplications publiques et solennelles indiqua-t-il pour invoquer I'assistance de TEsprit- Saint ? S'il n'a pas rempli ces preliminaires, il n'a plus enseigne comme maitre et docteur de tons les fldeles. Nous cessons de reconnoitre, et que Bossuet le sache bien, nous cessons, dis-je, de reconnoitre le Pontife ro- main comme infaillible.'' * 31. '' Orsi est encore plus precis et plus exigeant.t Un grand nombre de temoignages semblables se montrent dans les livres italiens, sed Greeds incognita qui sua tantum mirantur.'''' — Id.^ pp. 150, 151. 32. '' Si Honorius avoit vecu a Tepoque du VI. concile, on Tauroit cite ; il auroit comparu, il auroit expose en sa faveur les raisons que nous employ- ons aujour-d'hui, et bien d'autres encore, que la malice du temps et celle des hommes out supprimees Mais, que dis-je? il seroitvenu presi- der lui-meme le concile ; il eiit dit aux eveques si desireux de venger sur un Pontife romain les taches kideuses du siege patriarcal de Constantinople : 'Mes freres, Dieu vous abandonne sans doute, puisque vous osez juger le chef de TEglise, qui est etabli pour vous juger vous-memes. Je n'ai pas besoin de votre assemblee pour condamner le monothelisme. Que pourrez- vous dire que je n'aie pas dit ? Mes decisions suffisent a I'Eglise. Je dis- sous le concile en me retirant." (!!) — Id., p. 160. 33. "Apres cela j'avoue ne plus rien comprendre a la condamnation d'Honorius. Si quelques Papes ses successeurs, Leon II, par exemple, ont paru ne pas s^elever contre les heUemsmes de Constantinople, il faut louer leur bonne foi, leur modestie, leur prudence surtout ; mais tout ce qu'ils ont pu dire dans ce sens n'a rien de dogmatique, et les faits demeurent ce qu'ils sont. 34. " Tout bien considere, la justification d'Honorius m'embarrasse bien moins qu'une autre ; mais je ne veux point soulever la poussiere et m'ex- poser au risque de cacher les chemins. "—/(?., p. 162. 35. " La foi catholique n'a done pas besoin, et c'est ici son caractere principal qui n'est pas assez remarque, elle n'a pas besoin, dis-je, de se replier sur elle-meme, de s'interroger sur sa croyance et de se demander pourquoi elle croit ; elle n'a point cette inquietude disertatrice qui agite les sectes. C'est le doute qui enfante les livres : pourquoi ecriroit-elle done, elle qui ne doute jamais ? * " Sed itd non egit ; non definivit ex cathedra, non docuit tanquam omni- um fldelium magister ac doctor. Ubi verd itd non se gerat, sciat Bossuet^ romanum Fontijicem infallibilem a nobis non agnosci. Yoyez la note de Mansi, dans Touvrage cite, p. 568." t '' Orsi, tom. L, lib. III., cap. XXVI., p. 118." 140 AFTERPIECE TO THE 36. "Mais si Ton vient a contester quelque dogme, elle sort de son etal naturel etranger a toute idee contentieuse ; elle cRerche les fondemens du dogme mis en probleme; elle interroge Tantiquite." — Id.^ p. 12. 37. "Jamais aucune institution importante n' a resnlte d'une loi, et plus cette institution est grande, moins elle ecrit. * * * L'institution vegete ainsi a travers les siecles. Crescit occulto velut arbor cevo: c'est la devise eternelle de toute grande creation politique ou religieuse. Saint Pierre avort-il une connaissance distincte de I'etendue de sa prerogative et des questions qu' elle feroit naitre dans I'avenir ? Je Tignore. Lorsqu' apres une sage discussion, accordee a Texamen d'une question importante a cette epoque, il prenoit le premier la parole an concile de Jerusalem, et que toute la multitude se tut,* S. Jacques meme n'ayant parle a son tour du haut de son siege patriarcal, que pour confirmer ce que le chef des apotres venoit de decider (!), S. Pierre agissoit-il avec ou en vertu (^'une connoissance claire et distincte de sa prerogative, ou bien en creant a son caractere ce magnifi- que temoignage, n'agissoit-il que par un mouvement interieur separe de toute contemplation rationelle ? Je Tignore encore." t — Id., pp. 133, 135. 38. " La plante est une image naturelle des pouvoirs legitimes. Consid- erez Tarbre : la duree de sa croissance est toujours proportionelle a sa force et a sa duree totale. Tout pouvoir constitue immediatement dans toute la plenitude de ses forces et de ses attributs, est par cela meme, faux, ephe- mere et ridicule. Autant vaudroit imaginer un homme adulte-ne." — Id., p. 345. 39. "L'Eglise gallicane n'eut presque pas d'enfance; pour ainsi dire, en naissant, elle se trouva la premiere des Eglises nationales et le plus ferme appui de T unite. "—/c?., Discours Preliminaire, p. xxvii. 40. "L'Eglise catholique pouvoit etre representee par une ellipse. Dans Tun des foyers on voyoit S. Pierre, et dans Tautre Charlemagne : TEglise gallicane avec sa puissance, sa doctrine, sa dignite, sa langue, son prosely- tisme, sembloit quelquefois rapprocher les deux centres, et les confondre dans la plus magnifique unite." 41. " Mais, 6 foiblesse humaine ! 5 deplorable aveuglement ! des prejuges detestables que j'aurai occasion de developper dans cet ouvrage, avoient totalement perverti cet ordre admirable, cette relation sublime entre les deux puissances. A force de sophismes, et de criminelles manoeuvres, on etoit parvenu a cacher au roi tres-cliretien Tune de ses plus brilliantes pre- rogatives, celle de presider (humainement) le systeme religieux, et d'etre le protecteur hereditaire de T unite catholique. Constantin s'honora jadis du titre (Teveqtce exterieur. Celui de souverain ijontife exterieur ne flattoit pas Pambition d'un successeur de Charlemagne ; et cette emploi, offert par la Providence, etoit vacant ! Ah ! si les rois de France avoit voulu donner main-forte a la verite, ils auroient opere- des miracles ! Mais que pent le roi \ovsqiie les lumih^es de son 2:)6uple sout eteintes .^ II faut meme le dire a * Acts XV, 12. t " Quelqu'un a blame ce doute ; mais comme je declare expressement n'y point insister, je me crois en regie. II me suffit de repeter ma profes- sion de foi : Bieu me preserve d'etre nouveau en voulant etre neuf ! " COMEDY OF CONVOCATION. 141 la gloire immortelle de Tauguste maison, T esprit royal qui Tanime a sou- vent et tres-heureusement ete plus savant que les academies, et plus juste que les tribunaux."— /cZ., Disc. Prel. pp. xxxii, xxxiii. 42. " Quelle idee sublime que celle d'une langue universellepourFEglise universelle! * * * Eien n'egale la dignite de la langue latine. * * * Le terme de majeste appartient au latin. La Grece Tignore. * * * Chez nous, c'est le sacrifice qui est le veritable culte ; toutle reste est acces- soire : et qu'importe au peuple que ces paroles sacramentelles qui ne se prononcent qu'a voix basse, soient recitees en fran^ais, en allemand, etc., ouenhebreu? * * * Quant au peuple proprementdit, s'iln'entend pas les mots, c'est tant mieux. Le respect y gagne, et 1 intelligence n'y perd rien. Celui qui ne comprend point, comprend mieux que celui qui com- prend msi\r—Id., pp. 202, 203, 207, 209. 43. ''Les empereurs grecs, dont la rage theologique est un des grands scandales de Fhistorie, etoient toujours prets a convoquer des conciles, et lorsqu'ils le vouloient absolument, il falloit bien y consentir ; car TEglise ne doit refuser a la souverainete qui s'obstine rien de ce qui ne faitnaitre que des inconveniens."" — Du Pape^ Vol. i. p. 22. 44. " Parmi les catholiques meme, n'avonsnous pas vu TEglise gallicane humiliee, entravee, asservie par les grandes magistratures, a mesure et en proportion Jw5^6 de ce qu' elle se laissoit foUement emanciper envers la puis- sance pontificale? '''—Id,, p. 99, Note. 45. " On pent dire, au pied de la lettre, en demandant grace pour une expression trop familiere, que vers le X. siecle le genre humain, en Europe, etdit devenufou. * * * * Pour defendre I'Eglise contre le debordement affreux de la corruption et de Tignorance, il ne falloit pas moins qu'une puissance d'un ordre superieur, et tout-a-fait nouvelle dans le monde. Ce fat celle des Papes. Eux-memes, dans ce malhereux siecle, payerent un tribut fatal et passager au desordre general. La Chaire pontificale etoit opprimee, deshonoree et sanglante ; mais bientot elle reprit son ancienne dignite ; et c'est aux Papes que Ton dut le nouvel ordre qui s'etablit. 46. " II seroit permis sans doute de s'irriter de la mauvaise foi qui in- siste avec tant d'aigreur sur les vices de quelques Papes, sans dire un mot de Teffiroyable debordement qui regna de leur temps. 47. " J'ai toujours eu d'ailleurs, sur cette triste epoque, une pensee qui veut absolument se placer ici. Lorsque des courtisanes toutes-puissantes, des monstres de licence et de sceleratesse, profitant des desordres publics, s'etoient emparees du pouvoir, disposoient de tout a Rome, et portoient sur le siege de S. Pierre, par les moyens les plus coupables, ou leurs fils ou leurs amans, je nie tres-expressement que ces hommes aient ete Papes. Celui qui entreprendroit de prouver la proposition contraire, se trouveroit certainement fort empeche." *—/<:?., pp. 282-284. * " Quelques theologiens que je respecte m'ont fait des objections surle paragraphe qu'on vient de lire. Peut-etre je pourrois le defendre ou I'ex- pliquer, mais je serois mene trop loin : j'aime mieux prier tout liomme et tout pouvoir a qui il deplaira, de I'efiacer sur son exemplaire. Je declare I'abdiquer." 142 AFTERPIECE TO THE 48. " Cependant I'empereur d'Allemagne vendoit publiquement les bene- fices ecclesiastiques. Les pretres portoient les armes ; * un concubinage scandaleux souilloit I'ordre sacerdotal ; il ne falloit plus qu'une mauvaise t§te pour aneantir le sacerdoce, en proposant le mariage des pretres comme un remede a de plus grands maux. "—/(?., pp. 288, 289. 49. "Depuis trois siecles, I'histoire entiere semble n'etre qu'une grande conjuration contre la verite." — /c?., p 363, n. 50. '' La diete de Forcheim ayant depose en 1077 I'empereur Henri IV., et nomme a sa place Rodolphe, due de Souabe, le Pape assembla un concile a Rome * * *, et I'election de Rodolphe fut confirmee. C'est alors que parut sur le diademe de Rodolphe le vers celebre : " " La Pierre a choisi Pierre, et Pierre t'a choisi." t— /c?., p. 338. 51. " L'Eglise a done seule Thonneur, la puissance et le droit des mis- sions ; et sans le Souverain Pontife, il n'y a point d' Eglise. * * * ^ peine le Saint Siege est affermi que la sollidtude universelle transporte les Souverains Pontifes. Deja dans le V. Siecle ils envoient S. Severin dans la Norique," Sdc—M. torn. II. , p. 18. 52. " ' Voila, disoit le grand Leibnitz, * * * la Chine ouverte aux jesuites, * * * . Sous le regne du roi Guillaume, it s'etoit forme une sorte de societe en Angleterre, qui avoit pour objet la propagation de TEvangile : mais jusqu'a present elle n'apas eu de grands succes.'^ 53. " Jamais elle n'en aura et jamais elle n'en pourra avoir, sous quelque nom qu'elle agisse, hors de Tunite ; et non-seulement elle ne reussira pas, mais elle ne fera que du mal ; comme nous Tavouoit tout a I'heure une bouche protestante." — Id. pp. 21, 22. 54. " Le christianisme qui agissoit divmement, agissoit par la meme raison lentement ; car toutes les operations legitimes, de quelque genre qu'eltes soient, se font toujours d'une maniere insensible. Partout ou se trouve le bruit, le fracas, Timpetuosite, les destructions, etc., on pent etre sur que c'est le crime ou la folie qui agissent." — Id. pp. 28, 29. 55. " C'est une opinion commune aux hommes de tons les temps, de tons les lieux et de toutes les religions, qu'il y a dans la continence quelque chose de celeste qui exalte VTiomme et le rend agreable a la divinite ; que par une consequence necessaire, toute fonction sacerdotale, tout axite religieux^ toute ceremonie sainte., s' accorde peu ou ne s'accorde point avec Vusage meme legitime desfemmes. 56. " Le pretre hebreu ne pouvoit pas ^pouserune femme repudiee, et le grand-pretre ne pouvoit pas meme epouser une veuve. § Le Talmud ajoute qu'il ne pouvoit epouser deux femmes, quoique la polygamic fiit permise * " 'II n'y avoit peut-etre pas alors un seul eveque qui crut la simonie un peche.' C'est le temoignage de S. Pierre Damien cite par le docteur Mar- chetti, dans sa critique de Fleury. (Tom. I., art. L, § IL, p. 49)." t '' Petra (c'est Jesus-Christ) dedit Petro Petrus diadema Bodulpho.^^ X " Leibnitzii epist. ad Kortholtam., dans ses ceuvres in 4to. pag. 323. — Pensees de Leibnitz in 8to. torn. L, pag. 275. § " Levit. xxi., 7, 9, 13. COMEDY OF CONVOCATION. 143 an reste de la nation ;* et tons devoient etre jmrs pour entrer dans le sanc- tuaire."— /c?. pp. 42, 43. 57. " L'anti quite ne dit point a Thomme qui pense a s'approcher des autels : Examinez-vous bien. Si vous avez malheureusement tue, vole, con- jure, calomnie, difame quelqu' un, retirez-vous. Non. Des qu'il s'agit des dieux et des antels, on diroit qu'il n'y a plus qu'un seul vice et une seule vertu.t 58. *' Jerusalem, Memphis, Athenes, Home, Benares, Quito, Mexico et les huttes sauvages de TAmerique, elevent done la voix de concert pour proclamer le meme dogme."— /c?., p. 63. 59. " II n'y a pas d'exageration dans cette assertion de I'abbe de Feller : * Qu'un demi-siecle de paganisme presente infiniment plus d'exces enormes qu'on n'en trouveroit dans toutes les monarchies chretiennes depuis que le christianisme regne sur la terre.' ":{: — Id. pp. 64, 65. 60. '* Qui ne seroit frappe de la decision d'un homme si bien place pour voir les choses de pres, et si ennemi d'ailleurs du systeme catholique ? 61. " Quoiqu'il m'en coutat trop d'appuyer sur les suites du systeme contraire, je ne puis cependant me dispenser d'insister sur rabsoluenullite de ce sacerdoce dans son rapport avec la conscience de Fhomme. * * * 62. " L'anatheme est inevitable. Tout pretre marie tombera toujours au dessous de son caractere. La superiorite incontestable du clerge catholi- que tient uniquement a la loi du celibat. "—/<:?. pp. 75-7T. 63. "Alexandre VI. aima la guerre et les femmes ; en cela il fut tres-con- damnable, et pour trancher le mot, tres-criminel, a raison du contraste avec la regie, c'est-a-dire avec la sublimite de son caractere qui supposoit la saintete ; mais transportons-le a Versailles, il ne tiendra qu' a lui d'etre Louis XIV., justement celebre aussi par ses talens, sa politique et sa fer- mete et qui aimoit, comme i'autre, la guerre et les femmes.''— Id., p. 80. 64. " On cite I'Angleterre : mais c'est en Angleterre surtout que la degi'a- dation du ministere evangelique est le plus sensible. Les biens du clerge Bont a peu pres devenus le patrimoine des cadets de bonnes maisons, qui s'amusent dans le monde comme des gens du monde, laissant du reste A des chantres gages le soin de louer Dieu. 65. " Le banc des eveques, dans la chambre des pairs, est une espece de hors-d'oeuvre qu'on pourroit enlever sans produire le moindre vide. A peine les prelats osent-ils prendre la parole, meme dans les affaires de reli- gion."— /^, or the doctrine of Christ, from which the first converts were dispensed. If the primacy of the see of Rome was a fundamental part of the polity of the Church, why were the rights of metropolitans and patriarchs defined first, and when the Church was one, while those of the papacy remained in suspense till there was a rival to contest them. Above all, how has it happened that the unity of the Church was never impaired while its destinies were under the control of the emperors, but rent almost immediately, from the time that they began to be more exclusively con- trolled by the popes ? Obviously enough, it is not every theory of develop- ment that will reconcile th«se contradictions." — Christendom's Divisions ^ pp. 27, 28. 2. " In its very divided state, it attests the want both of a supreme head upon earth, and of one head, to be one again. 3. "I am recording a fact, not advocating a principle, in making this statement. I sincerely believe myself, that a church without endowments, without civil privileges, perfectly detached from the world, hotly persecu- ted from time to time, without any distinctions of precedence amongst its ministers outside the sanctuary, without any supreme head in or out of the sanctuary but One, who is there worshipped in faith as ever present, is the loftiest and most evangelical idea of a church by far ; and that, to a certain extent, this was actually exhibited in the Church of the Fathers — at least of the three first centuries. But I greatly doubt whether this is not a church more fit for the cloister, and one to which the world would never have been drawn or belonged."" — Id., p. 35. 4. " To what scandals did that meeting, which was to have come off be- tween Gregory XIL, and Benedict XIII., at Savona, give rise— so humilia- 156 AFTERPIECE TO THE ting to their mutual supporters, tliat the cardinals of both obediences combined in holding the Council of Pisa to get rid of them both ? What a phenomenon was that Council, assembled without a head; and to this day neither approved nor reprobated, as Bellarmine says, though Alexander v., was indebted to it for his election ! ''—Id., p. 132. 5. '' The Council of Pisa was convened, as I have said, by no pope at all ; the Council of Constance deposed the pope by whom it was convened,* as well as his rivals." t— /c?., p. 133. 6. ''The Emperor Sigismund, who was present at the Council of Con- stance, in A. D. 1424, heard three popes deposed: and one, who was neither priest nor bishop, X elected unanimously to the highest post in the Church." —Id., p. 83. 7. '' Martin V., who in his first Bull speaks of ' the canonical deposition of his predecessor by the definitive sentence of that council,' was himself elected conditionally ; for in its third session (March 25, A.D. 1415), the assembled fathers had declared that they would not separate till not only the schism had been healed, but the whole Church, head and members, reformed in faith and manners."— /cZ., p. 133. 8. '' 'We know that in this holy seat there have been many enormities now for some years : abuses in spiritual things, excesses in what has been ordained — all things, in short, perverted. The very things alluded to by that blessed pontiff (Chrysostom) are those which we have mourned over in Alexander YI. ; nor is it surprising, if disease should have found its way from the head to the members— from supreme pontifts to other prelates of inferior grade. All of us prelates, that is ecclesiastics, have turned aside every one to his own way ; nor has there been now for a long while any that would do good — no, not one. * . * * Still, let no one wonder if he should not see every defect or abuse removed by us at once ; for the disease is too deep-seated — not simple but manifold and complicate — whose cure can only be attempted step by step ; and what is most serious and danger- ous must be taken in hand first, lest, wishing to reform all things simulta- neously, we throw all things into confusion.' ^'—Instructions of Adrian VI. to Chieregato, ap. Raynald. Contin. ad Baron, A. D. 1522, § 10.— Id., pp. 145, 146. 9. " Behind, and besides all this, there was the undeniable fact of im- mense corruption in the Church, so great and manifold as to shake the belief of men in her divine credentials. Luther both saw and felt it." — Id., p. 127. 10. " In themselves, these decrees (of the Council of Trent) on reforma- tion are one and all of them excellent. It is not for what they contain so much as for what they do not contain, that any reasonable exception to * Alexander Y. t Gregory XII., and Benedict XIII. + '• ' Otto Colonna, * * * who took the name of Martin Y. * * was seen mounted on a white horse caparisoned with scarlet : he was clad in the pontifical robes, with the mitre on his head, although he was as yet neither priest nor bishop. * * * The next day he was ordained deacon, the day following priest, and the third day bishop.' Rohrbacker, E. H. vol. xxi. pp. 169, 170." COMEDY OF CONVOCATION. 157 them can be made. Compared with the acknowledged abuses* which they were designed to remedy, their tone is much more deprecatory than threat- ening. Against the teachers of false doctrine the number of anathemas pronounced by the Council is upwards of 130; against evil doers a:id mal- pratices of all sorts it is under 12." — Icl.^ pp. 163, 164. 11. ''Even the decisions of the Council of Trent failed to put down con- troversy upon points of detail which it had left open— no less than the con- fession of Augsburg. There were Molinists and Jansenists, Galileans and Ultramontanes amongst Catholics ; to be set against Arminians and Con- tra-Remoustrants, Puritans and High Churchmen amongst Protestants."— Id. p. 171. 12. "Just while Mr. Aymon was holding these conferences in Paris, we find Fenelon addressing a secret memoir to Clement XI., t with whom he was continually corresponding, in which three French cardinals, two arch- bishops, twelve bishops, all the Dominicans, all the Benedictines in France, the discalced Carmelites, the French branch of the Oratory, learned men among the Capuchins and elsewhere, are charged with secret or avowed Jansenism. ' There are some good bishops left, to be sure,' he adds ; 'but the greater number, hesitating and uncertain, range themselves blindly on whichever side the King may take.' 13. " So matters went on, getting worse and worse, till under the Re- gency they had grown incorrigible. * * * The Bull ' Unigentus ' added to the ferment which it was designed to put down. Five years from its publication in France, the Galilean Church had all but separated from Rome, possibly to form a coalition against Rome Avith England."— /<:?. pp. 178,179. 14. " Of the other canons (of the 4th Lateran Council, under Innocent III., A.D. 1215) * * * the 21st has proved to be the all-important one. It enjoins the faithful of both sexes and mature age to make their confes- sions once a year to their own priest, and communion at Easter at least." —Id. p. 82. 15. '' In illustration of what is here advanced let me refer to the whole of that earnest and instructive chapter, headed ' The History of Communion,' in the work on Communion^ by Father Dalgairns, particularly from p. 170 ; *" Let me illustrate this by a single instance. * * * Ferdinand I. reopened the question in February, 1564 (see Raynald, A.D. 1564, Nos. 28-32) ; and on his decease, Maximilian II., indignant that it should have been withheld through Philip, reenforced his demand by this appeal to facts : ' Quis enim non videt et deplorat, inter Catholicos etiam sacerdotes per German iam regnaque et dominia Coesarese majestatis, ac serenissimi Principis Caroli, Archiducis Austrise, nullum ijro'pe cad certe inter- multos vix unum reperiri, qui vere coelibatum agac: sed omnes fere, neglectis et spretis sahiberrimis sacrorum conciliorum et canonum vete- rum et novorum constitutionibus, quarum plane uullus amodo usus nee cura est, notorios esse concubinarios, vel tacltos etiam maritos ; quinimo plerosque non una concubina contentari, sed plures simul alere ; multos etiam propter solius coelibatus necessitatem ad alteram partem deficere ; nonnullos etiam semel ductam repudiare, et toties quotie:= aiiam subdu- cere solere, cum maximo animarum suarum discrimine, et laicorum scan- dalo.' (Cardinal Granvelle's Papers^ ed. Weiss. Paris, 1S49, 4to., vol. ix. p. 426 et seq.) " t A.D. 1705, Rohrbacker's Hist, de VE. vol. xxvi. pp. 462-3. 158 AFTERPIECE TO THE where, speaking of the great Lateran Council of A.D. 1215, he says : * It was precisely then, when the world was at her feet, that the Church was compelled to enact penalties against her children who did 7iot communi- cate once a year, and to limit her commands to an Easter communion, be- cause she durst not require more.'' " — Id. p. 95, n. 16. " 'All that it is permitted to me to say is, that it behoves us to pray, and pray fervently : for, in the confusion and laxity into which all ranks have fallen, it is not human wisdom or prudence that can suffice to rees- tablish all things in their proper and normal position. The Omnipotent arm of God is indispensable. Among pastors there is a very small number indeed animated with a real zeal for the salvation of souls. Religious es- tablishments are all of them more or less relaxed : there is little or no ob- servance of rules or of obedience to be found among them. The state of the secular clergy is something deplorable. On every ground there should be a general reform amongst ecclesiastics, in order that hereafter some check may be opposed to the immense corruption of manners that one sees amongst laymen.' "—(Letter of S. Alphonso Liguori to Cardinal Castelli,* A.D. 1774.)— /c?., pp. 175, 176. 17. " It was the system that was corrupt : and its corruptions were too deep-seated for the best andholiest of men— sovereign pontiffs though they were, or were supposed to be, over and above — to stem. It defied alike the zeal of Innocent XI., the spotless character of Innocent XII., the pious as- pirations of Benedict XIII., and the colossal erudition and indefatigable exertions of perhaps the wisest Pope that ever sat — Benedict XIV. From the acts of the Lateran Council of A.D. 1725 alone, we may judge of the low level to which matters had fallen. Their principal aim was to enforce the observance of the decrees of the Council of Trent, not by Galilean France but by Ultramontane Italy. It would appear from their language that even the profession of the creed of Pius IV. had very generally ceased to be exacted from ecclesiastics of high and low degree, on their admission tD benefices ; and that in many quarters no diocesan seminaries had been established, or diocesan synods held, in conformity with what Trent had ordained. * * * all the energy of a Hildebrand would have scarce suf- ficed now." — Id. p. 174. 18. "Pius IV. in vain importuned the Council of Trent, while treating of legitimate bishops, to declare 'that the bishops assumed and created by or under Elizabeth were not lawful bishops. 't Strong opinions had been already expressed, in that very session, ' that it was certain that bishops did not depend on the Pope as regards order— that it was doubtful whether they depended on him as regards jurisdiction. '$ And no decision was ever come to by the Council on that head."§— /c?., p. 200. 19. " 'Were it permitted to establish degrees of importance amongst * " This remarkable letter I can find nowhere but in the extracts given, torn. xi. pp. 273-5, Hist, de VEglise de Berault-Bercastel, par M. le Baron Henrion— where it is said that a good deal of it has beeii suppressed from delicacy."— 7tiJ., p. 176, n. t Sess. xxiii. Waterworth, p. ccxvii. X Id., p. ccxiv. § Id., p. cclii. COMEDY OF CONVOCATION. 159 things of Divine institution,' he says, ^ I sliould place the hierarchy before dogma— to so great a degree is the former indispensable to the mainterjance of the faith. One may cite in favour of this theory a splendid experience which for three centuries has been conspicuous in the eyes of all Europe : I mean the Anglican Churchy tvhich has preserved a dignity and weight absolutely foreign to all other Reformed Churches entirely because the Eng lish good sense has preserved the hierarchy.'' ''* — Id. p. 200. 20. "Now on t\i.Q fact of Archbishop Parker's consecration— and of all beyond him in the series, there has never been any question at all— I can- not imagine there being two opinions. It is as w^ell authenticated as most, and better than a great many, facts accepted as such ; and w^ho amongst ourselves can pretend to have tested it more carefully than Dr. Lingard ? I quote his results : 21. " ' Six theologians and canonists were consulted, who returned an opinion, that in a case of such urgent necessity, the Queen possessed the power of supplying every defect, through the plenitude of her ecclesiasti- cal' — it is not said spiritual — 'authority as the head of the Church.' In conformity with this answer a commission with a sanatory clause was is- sued, and four of the commissioners — Barlow, the deprived Bishop of Bath, and Hodgkins, once suffragan of Bedford (who had both been consecrated according to the Catholic Pontifical), and Scory, the deprived Bishop of Chichester, and Coverdale, the deprived Bishop of Exeter (who had both been consecrated according to the Reformed ordinal) — proceeded to con- firm the election of Parker, and then to consecrate him after the form adopted towards the cIosq of the reign of Edward VI. A few days later, Parker, as archbishop, confirmed the election of two of those by whom his own election had been confirmed— of Barlow to the see of Chichester, and of Scory to that of Hereford ; and then assuming them for his assistants — for three bishops were requisite by law — confirmed and consecrated all the other prelates elect. t *De Maistre, Lettre a une Dame Eusse, vol. ii., p. 285., Lettres et Opus, ined. t ''Hist. vol. vi., p. 17, 8vo., ed. 1849. Note C, in the Appendix, has as com- plete a review of the whole proceeding as could be wished. It shows, first, how the legality of Parker's consecration was subsequently affirmed by express Act of Parliament ; secondly, how the Nag's Head fable origin- ated, and its utter improbability ; thirdly, it proves the fact of Parker's con- secration, and the whole manner of it, from Parker's own Register, his pri- vate diary, and a Zurich letter, dated Jan. 6, 1560— from all which it appears that it took place on Dec. 17, 1559 ; then, fourthly, it points out the nonex- istence of any record of Barlow's own consecration; yet shows that to be no valid objection; lastly, and fifthly, it points out the more formidable difficulty, whether the Lambeth rite was of itself sufficient to constitute a Christian bishop ? What actually was done was, ' omitting part of it ' (that is, of the ordinal then used), ' they consecrated the new archbishop in the following manner — Placing their hands upon his head, they admon- ished him tlius", "Remember that thou stir up the grace of God which is in thee by imposition of hands, for God hath not given us the spirit of fear but of power, and of love, and of soberness." How. it was asked, could this monition make a bishop ? It bore no immediate connection with the episcopal character.' Here, if at all, is contained the real objection. But the whole office should be read through : it is a different form, certainly, 160 AFTERPIECE TO THE 22. " Was it the effect of accident that two of the consecrators should have belonged to the old, and two to the new rite ; and that Parker should have afterwards selected one of the old and one of the new rite as his assist- ants ? I venture to add these further considerations to what I have appended from Dr. Lingard in the note. Coverdale and Scory had, it is true, been consecrated according to the Eeforraed ordinal : but their consecrators were Cranmer and Hodgkins, who had been consecrated according to the Pontifical. Whatever the form used may have been in either case, it is to be presumed that those who were true bishops themselves intended to make those whom they consecrated exactly what they had themselves been made by consecration — or true bishops. And where has the Church pre- scribed any one form by default of which Episcopal ordination is rendered invalid ? Jurisdiction is another point on Avhich, as we have seen, the Coun- cil of Trent itself shrank from pronouncing even in their case. * * * 23. " One more circumstance remains to be noticed which, apparently, from that now in use in the Church of England ; yet even so, ought not the existing form to be held as evidence of the intention of the other? Com- pare the existing Book of Common Pimyer with the Two Books in Edward yi.'s reign (Oxtord, 1841), pp. 417-22." The part between single commas in the above note isLingard's language as given by Ffoulkes ; the remainder is Ffoulkes's abstract of Lingard's statement. The following account is from Lingard himself; it will be found in the ISTote at the end of vol. vii., pp. 293, 294, First American, from the last London edition. Philadelphia: Eugene Cummiskey, 1827: '•The facts that are really known are the following: The Queen, from the beginning of her reign, had designed Parker for the archbishopric. After a long resistance he gave his consent ; and ^ conge d'elire was issued to the dean and chapter, July 18, 1559. He was chosen Aug. 1. On Sept. 9 the queen sent her mandate to Tunstal, Bishop of Durham, Bourne of Bath and Wells, Pool of Peterborough, Kitchin of Llandaff, Barlow, the deprived bishop of Bath under Mary, and Scory of Chichester, also de- prived under Mary, to confirm and consecrate the archbishop elect. (Rym. XV, 541.) Kitchin had conformed: and it was hoped that the other three, who had not been present in Parliament, might be induced to imitate his example. All these, however, refused to othciate ; and in consequence the oath of supremacy was tendered to them (Rym. xv. 545) ; and their refusal to take it was followed by deprivation. In these circumstances no conse- cration took place : but three months later (Dec. 6), the queen sent a sec- ond mandate, directed to Kitchin, Barlow, Scory, Coverdale, the deprived Bishop of Exeter under Mary ; John, Suff"ragan of Bedford ; John, Sufira- gaii of Thetford, and Bale, Bishop of Ossory, ordering them, or any four of them to confirm and consecrate the archbishop elect ; but with an addition- al clause, by which she, of her supreme royal authority, supplied whatever deficiency there might be according to the statutes of the realm, or the laws of the Church, either in the acts done by them, or in the person, state, or faculty of any of them, such being the necessity of the case and the ur- gency of"^the time (Rym. xv. 549). Kitchin again appears to have declined the oflice. But BarloV, Scory, Coverdale, and Hodgkins, suftVagan ot Bed- ford, confirmed the election on the 9th; and consecrated Parker on the 17th. The ceremony was performed, though with a little variation, ac- cording to the ordinal of Edward VI. Two of the consecrators. Barlow and Hodgkins, had been ordained bishops according to the Roman pontifi- cal, the other two according to the Reformed Ordinal. (Wilk. Con. iv. 198.) Of this consecration on the l\th ol December, there can be no doubt: perhaps in the interval between the refusal of the Catholic prelates, and the performance of the ceremony, some meeting may have taken place at the Nag's Head, which gave rise lo the sior}-." COMEDY OF CONVOCATION. 161 can never have crossed the mind of Dr. Lingard. Hugh Ciirwin, Arch- bishop of Dublin, had been appointed to his see by Queen Mary, having been consecrated according to the forms of the Pontifical in S. Paul's Church, London, on September 8, A.D., 1555. Now he it was who conse- crated, in A.D. 1562, what may be called Elizabethan bishops for Ireland.* Can it be supposed for a moment that he would not have been summoned to consecrate Parker, had those six theologians and canonists who were consulted imagined themselves to be in any real difficulty for valid conse- crators? * * * 24. " Thus, that Parker was consecrated, and that those who consecrated him were believed at the time to be canonically competent to do so, and that their intention must have been to confer episcopal ordination, is I think no more than we are bound to concede. And is there any one point in History, from that time forth, when the Church of England either doubted of the true character of her episcopate, or lost it, or was indifl:erent to its preservation as such? Plainly no such case has ever occurred. On the contrary, it has never ceased to be her special boast from the first : she has continually been asked to impart it to others who had it not ; and in one case it has been actually transmitted to another country speaking the same language — descendants, in short, of the mother-country, through one of her off'shoots. * * * 25. " Whatever others may have thought of it, in the mind of the Church of England there never can have been any doubt of the regular and un- broken character of its own Apostolical Succession, and of its intrinsic value, from the beginning. The grounds on which its orders have been denied in practice by the Roman Catholic hierarchy from the first — no less —have never been authoritatively declared. As for the mere practice of doing so, there might be set over against it the practice of the Greek Church, as distinguished, however, from that of Russia, which invariably reordains, and even rebaptizes, any — though they may have received all their orders immediately from the Pope — who come over to it from the West:'— Id., pp. 201-206. 26. " S. Thomas, in the third part of his elaborate work,t has not failed to consider the question whether heretical, schismatical, and excommuni- cate priests have power to consecrate the Holy Eucharist ; and his reply is in the affirmative. Those who have been ordained within the Church have received their power lawfully ; which afterwards, however, should they be separated from the Church by heresy, schism, or excommunication, they can no longer exercise lawfully. Those who have been ordained thus sep- arated, have received their power unlawfully, and any exercise of it is unlawful. Their consecration of the Holy Eucharist is therefore a true consecration ; but it is Unprofitable, and not without taint of sin, analogous to the case of those who have been unworthy communicants. 27. " One or other of these, clearly, was the formal position of those four bishops who consecrated Parker ; and of Parker still more, who was con- * Sir James Ware's Hist. vol. 1. p. 94, ed. Harris. t Sum. Theol. p. iii. q. Ixxxii. art. vii. 163 AFTERPIECE TO THE secrated by them. The fact of their separation from the Church is no less patent than that they had deliberately embraced that state with their eyes open, for the reign of Mary was only just over. Their orders, unimpeach- able as they may be in point of succession, were as indisputably given and received in schism in point of fact. There can be no such thing, not merely with reference to the Church, but to the organization of society generally, as schism, if theirs was not." — Id.^ pp. 222, 223. This last paragraph Mr. Ffoulkes has since recanted, as will be .seen by the first of the following extracts from his Letter to the Most Rev. Arch- bishop Manning, a pamphlet of eighty-four pages (Amer. Ed.) bearing the title of " The Church's Creed or the Crown's Creed," — the former being the " creed of Nicsea and Constantinople without the 'Filioque,'" the latter " that of the Spanish Reccared and the Frankish Charles, containing the addition": 28. " I adijiit that up to the time of my inquiring into the true causes of the earlier schism between the East and West, I was not prepared to look upon the position of the Church of England as favorably as I do now ; be- cause I regarded it. as the efi'ect of schism — wailful and deliberate schism — on her part in separating from the communion to which she had been so long bound, and over which, with the full concurrence of her clergy and laity for ages, Rome ruled supreme. I expressed this unhesitatingly three years back in the first part of my book, and am far from intending to re- tract all that I said then ; but having since discovered the general system of Church government in w^hich England, in common with all other west- ern nations, had up to that time acquiesced, to have been based upon for- geries, and opposed to the genuine code of the Church, I as unhesitatingly recognize the right — nay, the duty paramount — of every local church to revolt against such a concatenation of spurious legislation as this, and scattering to the wdnds every link of the false chain that had enthralled it hitherto, to return to the letter and spirit of those canons, stamped with the assent of the whole Church, and never repealed" (pp. 75, 76). 29. "I am w^ell aware, my lord, that this last inference of mine must cut at the very root of your position in England, should it prove correct ; but as I have lived in the investigation of these questions for the last twenty years and upwards, j'-ou will scarce accuse me of being influenced by per- sonal considerations in getting to their final solution. On the contrary, my wish is to give everybody the fullest credit for a sensitive conscience that I claim myself" (p. 77). 30. '> Where, indeed, is the part of Christendom seriously purporting to call itself the Catholic Church in these days ? Roman Catholic, Anglo- Catholic, Episcopal, Orthodox, or Presbyterian, all in their degree seem influenced by some hidden spell to abstain from arrogating to themselves or attributing to each other the epithet of ''Catholic" without qualifica- tions, as it is applied to the Church in the Creed. Test existing phenomena by this theory, and the results are plain and Straightforward. One of its logical results would be that the administration of the Christian Sacra- ments might be frequented with profit outside the pale of the Roman com- munion. Is this confirmed by experience ? My lord, my ow^n experience, COMEDY OF CONVOCATION. 163 which is confined to the single communion in which you formerly bore ofiice, that of the Church of England, says emphatically that it is ; and there is no canon or ordinance that I know of forbidding me to maintain it. You have preceded me yourself in expatiating on the workings of the Holy Spirit in the Church of England with your accustomed eloquence, and have not hesitated to attribute to its members many graces in virtue of the sacrament of Baptism which you allow they administer on the whole validly ; but there you stop. I feel morally constrained to go further still. If I had to die for it, I could not possibly subscribe to the idea that the Sacraments to which I am admitted week after week in the Roman com- munion—Confession and the Holy Eucharist, for instance— confer any graces, any privileges, essentially difi"erent from what I used to derive from those same Sacraments, frequented with the same dispositions, in the Church of England. On the contrary, I go so far as to say that, comparing one with another strictly, some of the most edifying communions that I can remember in all my life were made in the Church of England, and administered to me by some that have since submitted to be reordained in the Church of Rome ; a ceremony, therefore, which, except as qualifying them to undertake duty there, I must consider superfluous. Assuredly, so far as the registers of my own spiritual life carry me, I have not been able to discover any greater preservatives from sin, any greater incentives to holiness, in any that I have received since ; though in saying this I am far from intending any derogation to the latter. I fi-equent them regularly ; I prize them exceedingly ; I have no fault to find with their administration or their administrators in general. All that I was ever taught to expect from them they do for me, due allowance being made for my own short- comings. Only I cannot possibly subscribe to the notion of my having been a stranger to their beneficial effects till I joined the Roman communion, and I deny that it was my faith alone that made them what they were to me before then, unless it is through my faith alone that they are what they are to me now. Holding myself that there are realities attaching to the Sacraments of an objective character, I am persuaded, and have been more and more confirmed in this conviction as I have grown older, that the Sa- craments administered in the Church of England are realities, objective realities, to the same extent as any that I could now receive at your hands ; so that you yourself therefore consecrated the Eucharist as truly when you were vicar of Lavington, as you have ever done since. This may or may not be your own belief; but you shall be one of my foremost witnesses to its credibility, for I am far from basing it on the experi- ences of my o^vn soul. My lord, I have always been accustomed to look upon the Sacraments as so many means of grace, and to estimate their value, not by the statements of theologians, but by their effects on myself, my neighbors, and mankind at large. And the vast difference between the moral tone of society in the Christian and the pagan worlds, I attribute not merely to the superiority of the rule of life prescribed in the Gospels, but to the inherent grace of the Sacraments enabling and assisting us to keep it to the extent we do. Taking this principle for my guide, I have been engaged constantly since I joined the Roman 164 AFTERPIECE TO THE communion in instituting comparisons between members of the Church of England and members of the Church of Eome generally, and be- tween our former and our present selves in . particular : or between Christianity in England and on the Continent ; and the result in each case has been to confirm me in the belief which I have expressed already, that the notion of the Sacraments exercising any greater influence upon the heart and life in the Church of Rome than in the Church of England, ad- mitting the dispositions of those who frequent them to be the same in both cases, is not merely preposterous, but as contrary both to faith and fact, as is the opinion that the Pope is Antichrist and the man of Sin. My lord, there is no person in his sober senses who could affirm that you, for in- stance, began to be a devout, earnest, intelligent follower of Christ, an admirable master of the inner and the hidden life, a glorious example of self-sacrifice, a deep expounder of revealed mysteries and Gospel truths, when you embraced the Roman communion ; or that all those graces which you exhibited previouslj'- in the sight of men could be deduced from the one rite which you received unconsciously as a child, counteracted by all the bad and unwholesome food on which, according to this hypothesis, you must have lived ever afterwards, 31. "In the same way there is no ordinary person in his sober senses who could afi'ect to discover any fundamental change for the better in you, morally or religiously, now from what you were then. There are some, on the contrary, to my knowledge, of your existing flock who profess that they have not half the liking for the sermons which they hear you deliver as Archbishop of Westminister that they have for the dear old volumes which you published as Archdeacon of Chichester, as fresh and full of fragrance to their instincts as ever. And I have heard the same said of another, whose parochial sermons, hailed as a master- piece on their first appearance, have just burst forth into a second spring. People say that the sermons which ci-devant Anglican clergymen of note preached formerly read so much more natural than any that they have since delivered from Roman Catholic pulpits. They argued impartially, then, as men whose sole desire it was both to get at the truth, and uphold it at any cost : they never feared looking facts in the face, and were as little given to exaggerate those that made for them, as to keep out of sight or evade by subterfuge those which they could neither excuse nor explain. They were never tired of confessing their own sins or shortcomings. In a word, their tone was frank, honest, and manly. Now, they may preach with the same energy, but it is as though they preached under constraint or dictation. Either they are high-flown and exaggerated, or else punctilious and re- served ; weighing each word as if they were repeating a task ; always artifical, never themselves : as if committed to a thesis, which they must defend at all risks, and to which all facts must be accommodated, or else denied. Hence, do what they will, there is a distinction between them- selves and the cause they advocate, which cannot fail to strike the most ordinary listener ; their words no longer carry the moral argument (^^^/c?) TCLGTLg) with them that they once did even among their followers ; and the COMEDY OF CONVOCATION. 165 judgment of public opinion on them is, that they are vapid and destitute of force by comparison " (pp. 57-62). 32. "My lord, it is anything but my intention to excuse or extenuate the scandalous irreverence that prevailed shortly before our ow^n days, and I fear is not extinct yet, amongst Anglican clergymen in administering the sacraments of the Church ; but I cannot shut my eyes to the fact that it followed naturally from their low views of them, and that their low views of them were precipitated by the audacity that centuries ago was not afraid to say of the Eucharist, ' Sacerdos creat Deum ; ' of penance, ' Deus remittit culpam ; Papa vero culpam et poenam,' and the like. But, taking our own view of the Blessed Eucharist into account, is there or has there been any tale of irreverence towards it amongst Anglicans, comparable for horrors with the history of poisoned chalices and poisoned Hosts amongst ourselves formerly, the extent of which is made patent to this, day by the special precaution taken whenever the Pope celebrates mass most sol- emnly, that no such harm may befal him — 'Avant qu'il arrive' — I am quoting from a well, known precis of the ceremonies at Easter in Rome — " on a coutume de faire-Pepreuve des especes de la maniere suivante : Le Diacre prend une des trois hosties qu'il a mises en ligne droit sur la patene et la rend au Prelat-Sacriste. Quand celui-ci Ta recu, le Cardinal-diacre prend de nouveau I'uue des deux qui reste : et apres Tavoir fait toucher interieurement et exterieurement au calice et a la pateno, il la consigne au Prelat-Sacriste, qui doit la consommer aussitot, ainsi que la premiere, le visage tourne vers le Pape. Le troisieme et derniere hostie est employee pour le sacrifice. Le Cardinal prend les burettes du vin et de Feau, et vers' un pen dans la coupe, que lui presente le Prelat-Sacriste, dont ce dernier doit boire immediatement le contenu.' * 33. '• Such perversion of the life-giving sacrament to destroy life, as had to be specially guarded against in this way whenever the Vicar of Christ pontificated, is absolutely without parallel in the annals of the Anglican Church since the Reformation. So that, notwithstanding our high views of it, the worst known profanations of it have been amongst ourselves " (pp. 74, 75). ''What I have seen of Roman Catholics myself, since joining their Church, all points to the same conclusion. Till then, I knew them only by report, which, founded on prejudice, was far from being in their favor ; and I was horrified to find how shamefully it had misrepresented them. I found them— I mean the educated classes— all that in a general estimate members of a Christian Church should be : God-serviug, charitable, con- scientious, refined, intelligent; and I could discover nothing idolatrous or superstitious in their worship, nor anything at variance with first princi- ples in their daily life. At home or abroad I was equally surprised to find them so difierent from what my traditional informants had described them, with so much to admire where I had supposed there was so much to repro- bate. But afterwards — when my first emotions consequent on this discov- ery had subsided— when I came to ask myself the question, are these, then, * L'annee Liturgique, p. 158. 166 AFTERPIECE TO THE the only true Christians that you have ever known in life ; and till you con- versed with them, had you never conversed with a true Christian before ? I can scarce describe the recoil that it occasioned in me ! Why, my own fa- .her and mother would compare with the best of them in all the virtues or- dinarily possessed by Christians living in the world, and discharging their duties conscientiously towards God and their neighbors, in, through, and for Christ. ' All for Jesus,' was as much their motto as it could be of any parents in Christendom ; and well indeed would it be for all Roman Cath- olic children if they were blessed with no worse fathers and mothers than mine. And I have, or have had relatives and friends in numbers, members of the Church of England, whose homes I will undertake to say are to all intents and purposes as thoroughly Chi'istian as any to be found elsewhere; and it would be sheer affectation or hypocrisy in me were I to pretend the contrary ; or else to claim for my own friends and relatives any peculiar excellence distinguishing them from the average specimens of the Angli- can body. For a calm, uupresuming, uniform standard of practical Chris- tianity, I have seen nothing as yet amongst ourselves in any country supe- rior to that of the English parsonage and its surroundings ; go where I will, I am always thrown back upon one of these as the most perfect ideal of a Christian family ; a combination amongst its members of the highest intelligence, with the most unsullied purity and earnest faith I ever wit- nessed on earth. It was a privilege to have witnessed it. It was not far from Brackley. You may have known several such yourself. On describ- ing the ' daily round ' of Christian life in the English Church— such as I had been accustomed to from a child — to the excellent priest who received me into communion on the Continent — our family praj^ers, our grace before and after meals, our readings of the Scriptures, our observance of Sunday, our services at church, our Sunday schools — what did he do but mount his pulpit the Sunday following, and embodying all that I had told him in fervid discourse, expatiate to a fashionable congregation iu Paris on the many lessons of piety which they had to learn from their separated breth ren on the other side of the Channel. ' Such, too, was our general prac- tice,' he said to me in a private conversation, ' before the Revolution : and we hope to recover it : but as yet there are few families Avhere it exists.' Of my countrymen, he observed, ' Leur bonne foi est acceptee pour leur vraie foi ' I took this explanation on trust at the time, but have since given it up as inadequate. For if it be said that faith and integrity of purpose make members of the Church of England what they are without the Sac- raments in mature life, by what argument, I should like to know, can it be proved that it is not to their faith and integrity of purpose solely that members of the Roman Catholic Church are indebted likewise for all the progress they make ? The only test of the efficaciousness of the Sacra- ments appreciable by common sense, lies in their influence upon conduct. If, therefore, it were capable of proof, as distinct from assertion, which it is not, both that all the Sacraments administered in the Church of Eng- land but one were shams ; and all administered in the Church of Rome, without exception, realities, how comes it that we are not incomparably more exalted characters ourselves than we were formerly ; or that Roman COMEDY OF CONVOCATION. 167 Catholic countries on the Continent are not incomparably more penetrated to the core with Christianity than England? Both these points, I dare say, might be affirmed by some ; but they are denied, and I maintain with much more reason, by others ; and therefore at best it can only be the de- gree to which the thing exists, not whether it exists at all, which is in question " (pp. 62-65). 35. '' To come to my conclusions. The conviction impressed upon me by what I have heard and seen at home and abroad, is that English Chris- tianity — by which I mean that of members of the Church of England in general, I cannot speak from experience of any other — is as good and gen- uine, and for ordinary purposes as beneficial, as what is found in other na- tions — France, Spain, and Italy, for instance — so that either it is produced, fed, and nourished by all the Sacyaments, as theirs is ; or else, produced, fed, and nourished by a single Sacrament, it penetrates society and forms character to the same extent as that which has the support of all the Sac- raments, and is no less efficacious for good in most other respects. It may be isolated, but such is the position of England politically as well as geo- graphically ; its peculiarities are of a piece with the national character, it- self having its weak as well as its strong side ; its shortcomings, historically traceable to the sins of our forefathers in no small degree. Among the strong points attributable to its influences are a strong love of honesty in intention, of truthfulness in language, and of uprightness and manliness in conduct ; and a still stronger abhorrence of falsehood and treachery to engagements in every form. Its virtues belong mostly to the practical and domestic order. Its weak points are too great self-reliance, too much dispo- sition to criticise, too little faith in the Unseen. As a general rule, Roman Catholics are weak where Anglicans are strongest, and strong where An- glicans fail. Such results are due to the system in each case, showing im- perfections in each. Anglicans may be compared with Roman Catholics in this country, as boys brought up at a public school in England, with boys brought up at a private school or else at home. Anglicans may be compared with Roman Catholics abroad as men educated at Oxford or Cambridge, with men educated at the University of Paris, Munich, or Padua. Funda- mentally, their faith and practice is the same ; but they have been formed after different models in both (pp. 70, 71). NOTE I. 1. " The Church of England has been the instrument of Providence in conferring great benefits on me ; had I been born in Dissent, perhaps I should never have been baptized ; * * * As I have received so much good from the Anglican Establishment itself, can I have the heart, or rather, the want of charity, considering that it does for so many others, what it has done for me, to wish to see it overthrown ? I have no such wish while it is what it is, and while we are so small a body. Not for its own sake, but for the sake of the many congregations to which it ministers, I will do nothing against it. While Catholics are so weak in England, it is doing 168 AFTEEPIECE. ? our work ; and though it does us harm in a measure, at present the balance is inour favour."— Newman, Apologia^ pp. 322, 323; Amer. Ed. 2. '' I trust that all European races will ever have a place in the Church, and assuredly I think that the loss of the English, not to say the German element, in its composition has been a most serious evil. And certainly, if there is one consideration more than another which should make us English grateful to Pius the Ninth, it is that by giving us a Church of our own, he has prepared the way for our own habits of mind, our manner of reasoning, our own tastes, and our own virtues, finding a place and thereby a sanctification, in the Catholic Church."— /c?. p. 291. So then it was Pius IX. that gave Father Newman and his co-religionists a Church of their own. Of course, they had none before. Verily, as old Chaucer hath it, Murder will out ! , 3. '' He says that I teach that the celibacy of the clergy enters Into the definition of the Church. I do no such thing ; that is the blunt truth. De- fine the Church by the celibacy of the clergy ! why, let him read 1 Tim. iii.: there he will find that bishops and deacons are spoken of as married. How, then, could I be the dolt to say or imply that the celibacy of the clergy was a part of the definition of the Church ? " — Id. p. 308. 4. " Neither did I say that ' Sacramental confession ' was a ' note of the Church.' Nor is it. Nor could I with any cogency have brought this as an argument against the Church of England, for the Church of England has retained Confession, nay. Sacramental Confession. * * * If that form" (in the 'Visitation of the Sick') "do^s not contain the profession of a grave Sacramental act, words have no meaning."— /c?., p. 308. NOTE K. [From Sir James Ware's History of Ireland. Dublin : 1705.] By the Parlianient at Trim, Henry VI, 1447. " That every Man Shave his upper lip, else to be used as an Irish Enemy." "That the Sons of Husbandmen and Labourers should follow their Fa- ther's Calling. Under Edward IV., 1465 : "For making it lawful to kill Thieves or Kobbers, having no Men of good Name in English Apparrel in their Company." " For the Irish within the Pale to wear English Habit, take English Names, and Swear Allegiance." — p. 74. The Parliament of Dublin, held (1475, Edward IV.) by W. Sherwood, Bishop of Meath, Lord Deputy to the Duke of Clarence, gave " Leave to any English-man damnified by any Irish-man not amenable to law, to reprize himself upon the whole Sept, or Nation."— p. 75. Henry VIIL, chap. 10: '•^^ All this year " (tenth of Henry VIII.) " Ireland was peaceable." Or, as it is phrased in the marginal Index, " Ireland pretty quiet this year."— p. 65. r3*((7^^' i < r <: cr < < r^< ^<~ ^ CC c^ <5C ; c r ^ c .< CIc c