^-^M 
 
 
 
 14?f SC?iS£<^ESI 
 
 '^^'*A 
 
 ^m'^' 
 
 >■— : 
 
 
 
 

 
 L I E) RARY 
 
 OF THL 
 
 U N IVLRSITY 
 
 or ILLINOIS
 
 // 
 
 The Churclfs £^ehetfdr the 
 Crown's Creed f 
 
 W^ 
 
 A LETTER 
 
 THE MOST REV. ARCHBISHOP MANNING, 
 
 ETC., ETC. 
 
 BY 
 
 EDMUND S. FrOULKES, B.D, 
 
 AUTHOR OP " CHRISTENDOM'S DIVISIONS." 
 
 " First cast out the beam out of thine own eye, and then shalt thou see clearly to cast 
 out the mote out of thy brother's eye."— vS. Matt. vii. 5. 
 
 FIFTH EDITION, 
 
 LONDON : 
 
 J. T. HAYES, LYALL PLACE, EATON SQUARE, 
 NEW YORK :— POTT & AMERY,
 
 N.B. — A few verbal corrections occur in this edition, that 
 sJioidd have been made previouslij : and in two or three i^laces 
 about as many words, enclosed in brackets, have been added, 
 to make the sense plainer. 
 
 ion iou : SwiFi & C'i>., Ecgent Press, 55, King tStreet, Kegent Street, W.
 
 A LETTER 
 
 &c. 
 
 My Lobd Archbishop, 
 
 I take the liberty of putting the question to 5^011 in your official 
 capacity, which forms the heading of my letter, and I invite 
 public opinion in this country to weigh dispassionately whatever 
 answer you may be pleased to return to it, or else to draw such 
 conclusions from your silence as the nature of the case may 
 suggest, should you resolve on letting it pass unheeded. 
 
 It is not, however, solely by any means on account of the 
 exalted position which you occupy that I address myself to you. 
 We were neither of us born or bred in the Communion in which 
 we now are. The evidences which determined you to embrace 
 the Communion of the Church of Eome, for the most part 
 determined me likewise. You preceded and I followed : yet I 
 neither followed you nor any one else blindly, as a party leader. 
 According to the best of my judgment, I followed truth whither- 
 soever it led me, and by whomsoever it was suggested. Still, I 
 should be the last to deny — why should I not be always proud to 
 acknowledge ? — the many difficulties that I had unravelled for me 
 in my searchings after truth continually by yourself, by the 
 inimitable lucidity and high-souled earnestness of your discourses 
 as a preacher : and by the noble example of devotion and self- 
 sacrifice which you exhibited as a servant of Christ, in acting to 
 the uttermost up to what you believed to be true. The result 
 of it all was that ultimately my convictions led me to follow in 
 
 B
 
 ( 2 ) 
 
 your wake; though there are still others, whose profound learning, 
 and honesty, and piety, I have never for one moment ceased to 
 respect equally with your own, as deliberately convinced as ever 
 of the righteousness of the position abandoned by us as unten- 
 able so many years ago. I was far from undervaluing their 
 testimony, even when I subscribed to your own in preference : 
 and once removed to our new abode, I must confess my course to 
 have been deliberately the exact opposite to what I believe yours to 
 have been ever since. You, and very many more probably, seemed 
 to have joined the Eoman Communion not only pledged never 
 to find fault with it, but to see with its eyes, hear with its ears, 
 understand with its understanding, stand or fall by its judgment. 
 Your argument, I presume, would be that the Church of Eome 
 claims to be infallible : that you submitted yourselves to it as 
 such, in the fullest confidence that its decisions can never mis- 
 lead you : that they are God's voice speaking to you, which you 
 are bound at the peril of your salvation never to mistrust, much 
 less dispute. I joined the Eoman Communion on other grounds, 
 and was accepted. Practically, no doubt, the Church of Eome 
 claims to be infallible, and anybody who concedes, is dearer to 
 her than anybody who disputes, her claim : but I was never 
 required to profess this on entering her Communion, and perhaps 
 might never have entered it, if I had been. " Sanctam catholi- 
 cam et apostolicam Eomanam Ecclesiam, omnium ecclesiarum 
 matrem et magistram, agnosco," a medieval phrase, of which I 
 knew the full historical value, was the uttermost to which I gave 
 my adhesion. And I said to myself on that occasion, if she is 
 really infallible, she can stand much more searching criticism 
 than the one wliich I am leaving for her sake, on behalf of 
 which no such claim has ever been made. For I considered 
 that after the extreme rigour with which the claims of the Church 
 of England had been examined by us all, it would be the height 
 of disingenuousness in us to shut our eyes to any weak points of 
 the system that we were embracing in preference, should any 
 such exist. I felt that if I found the claims of the Church of 
 
 vuifOj 

 
 ( 3 ) 
 
 Kome to be thoroughly in accordance with facts, I should ever 
 afterwards regard her with tenfold reverence from having verified 
 them myself. If they were true, analysis, impartially conducted, 
 could only confirm them : if they were false to any extent, or 
 exaggerated, I conceived we should be bound in common honesty 
 to tell our friends that we were to that extent, in reality, no 
 better off than we had been where we were before. But till I 
 had actually been received into communion with Rome, it was 
 my own impression, and I was assured by members of the 
 Roman Communion over and over again, that I could never 
 judge of her system at all fairly or adequately : and this was one 
 of my chief reasons for embracing it when I did. Afterwards I 
 resided in various countries where it was dominant, and studied 
 its worship in town and country, comparing them with what I 
 had abandoned for it at home. Then I returned and set myself 
 to work to improve my previous knowledge of its history in past 
 ages, and its relations with other Churches : paying especial 
 attention to the causes which had produced estrangement between 
 it and them for a time, or till now. All this has been my constant 
 employment for the last dozen years or more : so that I cannot 
 be said to have drawn my conclusions hastily. Now this occupa- 
 tion, and the temper of mind which is the fruit of it, whether you 
 approve of it or not in those who have become members of the 
 Church of Rome, you certainly seem to wish to encourage in those 
 who are still members of the Church of England. You criticise 
 their system, and invite their criticising it under your guidance. 
 You appeal to them as men of fairness and honesty to listen to 
 you, and to take to heart what you say. Should they find it to be 
 trae, then your advice to them is to abandon a Communion 
 against which so many objections exist which they cannot answer j 
 for another which you represent to them as infallible — I refer 
 more particularly to your well-known, and most persons will 
 admit, appositely-timed, letters on the CroA\ii in Council — " The 
 Crown in Council on the Essays and Reviews : " and ''The Con- 
 vocation and the Crown in Council." Whether you ever received 
 
 B 2
 
 ( 4 ) 
 
 any reply from the ''Anglican friend" to whom they were 
 addressed, I am miable to say : but I presume that when you 
 wrote you must have contemplated the possibility of his rejoining, 
 and that you were prepared to attend to any counter statement 
 coming from him in the same spirit of candour and impartiality 
 in which he had been invited to listen to you : that in the event 
 of his succeeding to retort the difficulty with which you had 
 pressed him, you would not have been above looking it full in the 
 face, and endeavouring to explain it to his satisfaction : or else, 
 if you felt obliged to admit that it could not be explained 
 satisfactorily, you would never have condescended to have re- 
 course to any subterfuge that you would have condemned in him, 
 but would have confessed yourself answered. Allow me, there- 
 fore, for the time being, to personate your Anglican friend : con- 
 ceive that it is he who speaks : imagine him accredited to speak 
 in the name of all those whom you have addressed through him 
 as well as his own, and to rejoin as follows — 
 
 " I might admit every word that has fallen from you on the 
 power exercised amongst us of the Church of England by the 
 CroAvn in Council, without being the least obliged to follow 
 you to your deductions from it, for this simple reason, that 
 ' two blacks don't make a white.' There has been, and is, 
 too much of the ' Crown in Council ' by half, if all that I hear 
 is true, in your Communion as well as our own. In my humble 
 opinion, we may fairly claim to have learnt our lesson from 
 you, to have copied the example which you set us in our 
 infancy, and to have faithfully followed out your own principles, 
 according to the circumstances in which we were placed. I 
 will not inquire whether, in virtue of the well-known Sicilian 
 monarchy, the descendants of King Eoger have not, or at least 
 might not have, exercised the same authority ' in all causes, 
 and over all persons, ecclesiastical as well as civil,' by favour 
 of the Pope, that the descendants of Henry VIII. have ever 
 succeeded in exercising, in spite of the Pope : but answer me 
 this one question honestly. The creed which you and the
 
 ( 5 ) 
 
 Archbishop of Canterbury recite still in common at each cele- 
 bration of the Lord's Supper, is it the Church's Creed or the 
 Crown's Creed? I will tell you the grounds which have con- 
 vinced me irrevocably that it is the latter. I have read some- 
 where, and seen the original authorities cited at length in proof 
 of it, that this is its history. There were two forms of this 
 Creed rehearsed and authoritatively promulgated by the Fourth 
 (Ecumenical Council: the Nicene, and the Constantinopolitan. 
 In neither of them, in the article relating to the Holy Ghost 
 and His procession, are those words found, ' and from the 
 Son.' The Council went on to say in its formal definition that 
 this Creed, as it had just been rehearsed, ' explicitly taught 
 {iKSiBdaKet), the perfect doctrine (to reXeiov), concerning the 
 Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.' Besides asserting this dog- 
 matically, 'the holy and (Ecumenical Council' — I am quoting 
 the exact words in each case — ' decreed that it was lawful for 
 nobody to propose, that is, compile, put together, hold, or 
 teach others, another faith. Those who dared either to put to- 
 gether another faith, or produce, teach, or deliver another symbol 
 to any desirous of returning to a knowledge of the truth from 
 Hellenism, Judaism, or any heresy whatsoever, were, if bishops 
 or clergy, to be deposed: if laymen, to be anathematised,' all 
 which was recited word for word, and re-affirmed with equal 
 solemnity — creed, canon, and definition alike, — ^by the Fifth and 
 Sixth Councils in succession. And could their meaning admit of 
 any doubt, it could be shewn by reference to every contemporary 
 writer or writing that deals with it, to amount to this : that not 
 a word was ever to be taken from or added to this Creed, as it 
 then stood, and, with the single deviation above-mentioned, 
 stands now. Most explicit on this head was the oath taken by 
 the Popes themselves. According to the earliest form preserved * 
 in their * Liher Dhmiiis,' as it is called, every Pope on his elec- 
 tion swore to preserve unmutilated the Decrees of the first five 
 Councils, and, in a subsequent clause, of the sixth as well, 
 * Migne's Patrol., torn. cv. p. 40.
 
 ( 6 ) 
 
 * nsqne adunum apicem^ — to teach all they taught, and to condemn 
 all they condemned. By this, he was pledged a fortiori to their 
 Creed, ' usque ad iinum apicem,' in the same degree. ' Si 
 wretcr luce cdiquid agere prcESumpsero, vel ut prcssumatur per- 
 misero, eris m'llii (Deus), in ilia terrihili diejudicii depropitiiis' 
 was the imprecation which he was made to pronounce on his own 
 head, in the event of his proving faithless to his obligations. I 
 call especial attention to these words, because I find them can- 
 celled in the Pontifical oath of the eleventh century ; and by that 
 time, though the innovation had received several checks in its 
 progress, I find all the Churches of the West, with that of Eome 
 at their head, using the Creed of which I have spoken, with those 
 words added to it, ' and from the Son.' But I look in vain for 
 any canon or definition of any General Council authorising or en- 
 joining their insertion. I look in vain for any Papal Encyclic, 
 such as that which emanated from the reigning Pope when the 
 Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin was made a dogma, 
 proclaiming that they had been, or explaining why they had been, 
 inserted with his full sanction. On the contrary, I find from 
 authentic history, that they were first introduced into the Creed 
 by stealth, and ultimately maintained there by force ; the power 
 striving for their introduction being pre-eminently that of the 
 ^ Crown in Council,' and the power resisting it that of the 
 majority by far of the contemporary Church, backed by the Pope, 
 to say nothing of all the previous (Ecumenical Councils to which 
 they appealed. You will correct me, if I am guilty of any 
 historical mis-statement. I find, then, that its original intro- 
 duction was due to a king, named Keccared, of a barbarous, and, 
 till then, heretical race in Spain, who, a.d. 589, in the act of 
 abjuring Arianism, promulgated the Creed in question ignorantly 
 or wilfully, with this addition, at the head of the bishops of his 
 dominions, many of them neophytes from Arianism like himself. 
 No pope could have taken the lead more in the doctrinal as well 
 as the discipHnary enactments of this Council, the third of Toledo, 
 than the king did then. Nobody conversant with its acts can
 
 ( 7 ) 
 
 deny this. Such was what may therefore be called the lay- 
 baptism of the new clause. So obscure was its origin, that it 
 was not so much as noticed at the sixth Council, where the Creed 
 was once more promulgated in the exact form settled by the 
 fourth Council, as if nothing had happened. But in the eighth 
 century, just before the seventh Council met, the Emperor 
 Charlemagne — I say emperor by anticipation — happened to be 
 on extremely bad terms with the Imperial Court of the East. 
 More than this, the brother of the new Patriarch of Constanti- 
 nople, S. Tarasius, who took the lead at the seventh Council, 
 was a prisoner of war in his hands, having been captured in a 
 hostile encounter with his forces in Italy. The Council, how- 
 ever, met A.D. 787, legislated, and was confirmed by the Pope, 
 who forwarded its decrees, as well as his own approval of them, 
 to Charlemagne. Charlemagne, fired with rancour against the 
 East, immediately set about composing a work to refute them ; 
 and when it was ready for publication, summoned a Council at 
 Frankfort of all the bishops of his dominions, at which the 
 decrees of the seventh Council were formally repudiated, and his 
 own work, which he, with the assistance of his theologians, had 
 written against them, approved. This work he forwarded to the 
 Pope, who had confirmed them. One of his principal charges 
 against them was, that the Council enacting them had been silent 
 or ambiguous on a point which he deemed it his duty to prove to 
 the Pope at great length, namely, the Procession of the Holy 
 Ghost from the Son ; in other words, that while it had received 
 a profession of faith from the new Patriarch, in which procession 
 through the Son was affirmed, it had said nothing at all on that 
 subject in its own Creed, with which he was therefore dissatisfied, 
 as wanting the addition which had been made to it in Spain by 
 King Keccared. 
 
 " What defence the Pope made for S. Tarasius we need not 
 pause to inquire : but this is what he says in reply to the objection 
 urged by the monarch against the Creed. 
 
 We have already proved the di^sdne dogmas of this Council 

 
 ( 8 ) 
 
 irrepreliensible, as the works of the principal of the holy Fathe 
 iihunclantly testify. For should anybody say that he differs from 
 the Creed of the above-named Comicil, he risks differing (or 
 seems to differ), with the Creed of the six holy Councils : inas- 
 much as these Fathers spake not of themselves, but according to 
 what had been holily defined and laid down before : as it is 
 written in the book of the sixth holy Council, amongst other 
 things, ' This Creed had been sufficient for the perfect knowledge 
 and confirmation of religion . . . for concerning the Father, 
 Son, and Holy Ghost, what it explicitly teaches is perfect.' 
 
 *' I ask you, my Lord, as a plain-spoken Englishman, whether 
 
 it would be possible to conceive the Creed of the Church more 
 
 deliberately impugned by the Crown in Council in the teeth of 
 
 the Pope ? I am persuaded at all events that there has been 
 
 nothing approaching it in the history of the Church of England 
 
 since the Reformation. Charlemagne, as the mouth-piece of the 
 
 Council of Frankfort, composed of his own subjects or alKes, 
 
 took formal objection to the Creed of the Church, as it then 
 
 stood, and had just been promulgated for the fourth time by a 
 
 General Council confirmed by the Pope, because in the article 
 
 defining the procession of the Holy Ghost it wanted those words 
 
 ' and from the Son : ' and the formal answer of the Pope thus 
 
 appealed to was, that its explicit teaching was perfect, though it 
 
 wanted those words. 
 
 *' Yet the ^ Crown in Council,' we must conclude, was more 
 intimately versed in theology than either the Church in Council 
 or the Pope, for it carried its point after all — either this, or the 
 Church of Rome in adopting those words submitted to its dicta- 
 tion : for there is no other alternative. Still, for some time 
 matters remained as they were : Charlemagne seems to have 
 taken no further action in public for the moment, though he went 
 on using tlio addition of King Reccared in singing the Creed in 
 his own chapel. Whether it was at his instigation or not that 
 some monks of his empire carried it afterwards to Jerusalem, 
 and deliberately made a parade of it in one of the Eastern
 
 ( 9 ) 
 
 Patriarchates, where they had obtained a footing, is perhaps 
 uncertain, though far from improbable. Two things are certain : 
 1, that the Easterns at once detected and unanimously condemned 
 the innovation ; and 2, that the monks excused themselves, as 
 far as the Creed was concerned, by pleading that it was so sung 
 in the Imperial chapel. This had the effect of reviving the 
 discussion, which the Emperor, if he had not contrived him- 
 self, lost no time in coming forward to settle in his own way. At 
 the head of his bishops once more, he expounded what he con- 
 sidered to be the orthodox doctrine on the subject in question to 
 the Pope, and this time it was a Pope greatly beholden to him — 
 Leo III. — and ended by requesting to have his adopted version of 
 the Creed authorized. This time the Pope admitted his doctrine 
 to be correct, but would have nothing at all added to the Creed. 
 
 * As I understand, then,' rejoined one of the Imperial deputies, 
 
 * your Paternity orders that the clause in question be first 
 ejected from the Creed, and then afterwards lawfully taught and 
 learnt by anybody, whether by singing, or by oral tradition.' 
 
 * Doubtless that is my desire,' returned Leo: 'and I would 
 persuade you by all means so to act.' That the Pope had great 
 misgivings as to whether his instructions would be obeyed, is 
 evidenced by his having the Creed subsequently engraved in 
 Greek and Latin, icithout those words, ' and from the Son,' on 
 two silver shields, and hung up in the most conspicuous place 
 of his church, *j97'o cauteld orthodoxce Jidei,' as he said himself, 
 and not merely that the Creed might remain intact. That his 
 misgivings were well founded is proved from what ^neas. Bishop 
 of Paris, reported about fifty years after : namely, that the whole 
 GaUican Church chanted it every Sunday in the form for which 
 Charlemagne had contended. Previously to this, its admirers, 
 in endeavouring to import it into Bulgaria, had elicited a much 
 more angry protest from the East than when it was first tried 
 at Jerusalem. But, meanwhile, the party that had twice dis- 
 obeyed Kome in retaining it, had made themselves so useful to 
 Rome in other respects that they had disarmed her opposition.
 
 ( 10 ) 
 
 Two centuries more, and Rome herself conformed to their Creed, 
 silently and clandestinely : no decretal, encyclical, or synodical, 
 announcing her adhesion. The thing was done in a corner, 
 and hut for a curious liturgical writer of the Western Empire, 
 who went to see his sovereign Henry II. crowned at Rome, 
 A.D. 1014, by the Pope, nobody could have guessed when it 
 occurred. Berno therefore records what he witnessed with his own 
 eyes and ears : and being engaged himself in a work on the 
 Mass, he would naturally be very particular in his inquiries when 
 he came to Rome, of all places, how things were done there. 
 Now his account is that, ' up to that time the Romans,' that is, 
 the Church of Rome generally, ' had in no wise chanted the 
 Creed after the Gospel : but that the lord emperor Henry would 
 not desist, till with approval of all he had persuaded the apostolic 
 lord Benedict to let it be chanted at High Mass.' There has 
 been a vast amount of learning expended on this passage, but 
 the only Creed chanted at Mass in the West then being the 
 interpolated Creed adopted by Charlemagne, it stands to reason 
 that no other could have been pressed upon the Pope by the 
 Emperor. Hence, whether or not it had been in use there 
 previously, it w^as now for the first time ordered to be chanted at 
 High Mass there after the Gospel, as it had long been elsewhere 
 throughout the West, in deference to if not by command of the 
 Emperor. Benedict had been restored from exile by Henry the 
 year before, and therefore was pledged on every account to 
 consult his wishes, yet it seems to have cost him a struggle to 
 give way on this point. 
 
 " Thus Reccared inaugurated the addition : Charlemagne pa- 
 tronised it : and Henry II. got it adopted by the Popes themselves. 
 When this had been done, the pontifical oath was changed. 
 Later Popes of course shrank from imprecating a judgment upon 
 themselves, according to the terms of their oath, in case they 
 failed to keep the decrees of the General Councils enumerated in 
 it, 'usque ad unum ajncem,' when they felt they had notori- 
 ously failed to do so by the Creed. That clause was accordingly
 
 ( 11 ) 
 
 struck out. In the corresponding clause^of the oath that was 
 afterwards taken by them — the way in which Cardinals are 
 mentioned in it associates it with the well-known decree of 
 Nicholas II., 1059, respecting the Sacred College — they are 
 made to say simply, 'May God be merciful to me in" that awful 
 day if I do my diligence to keep all these things sworn to by 
 me.' Had it been intended to intimate that they had been now 
 and then forced to do otherwise, it could not have been differ- 
 ently worded. 
 
 " How, after this, the Creed used by us both in our Liturgy can 
 be called the Church's Creed, and not the Crown's Creed, I am 
 at a loss to comprehend : how Eome can, after this, be exculpated 
 from the charge of having succumbed to the ' Croion in Council,'* 
 infinitely more than England, I should be pleased in all honesty 
 to learn from you. For this, as I presume you would admit, is 
 no mere matter of ' antiquarian research ' or * dreary specula- 
 tion.' The formal definitions of the Church are still as obligatory, 
 still as dogmatically correct, as when first promulgated. And 
 one of them, repeated by a series of General Councils in the 
 same words, says that what the Creed taught explicitly with 
 reference to the Trinity was perfect when it was without those 
 words, ^ and from the Son.' Now, to contend that there can be 
 any further explanation of that which is explicitly perfect already, 
 is to deprive words of their obvious meaning and to insult com- 
 mon-sense. The majority by far of the Church was with 
 Adrian I. and Leo III. when they defended the uninterpolated 
 Creed against Charlemagne : the majority by far of the Church 
 was against Benedict VIII. when he yielded to the threats or 
 persuasion of Heniy 11. The same majority of the Church 
 broke off communion with the Pope tor abandoning, and finally 
 submitted to be annihilated and cut off from the face of the earth 
 itself, sooner than abandon the Creed of the Church for that 
 of the Crown. I am utterly unable to see where the parallel 
 fails in principle. Eeccared, Charlemagne, and Henry II., pre- 
 scribed a Creed for the West, at least as much as Henry VIII.,
 
 ( 12 ) 
 
 Edward VI., and Elizabeth, prescribed one for England. Subse- 
 quent acceptance cannot alter tlieir origin in either case : and 
 whether one consisted in a compound word of four syllables, and 
 the other in thirty-nine articles, embodying six hundred proposi- 
 tions, the fruits were the same ; a schism in each case followed, 
 and both schisms are still in force. When the West separated 
 from the East, the East constituted the majority of the Church 
 by far ; when England separated from Eome, the majority of the 
 West by far sided with Rome. Thus it came to pass that Rome 
 was literally paid back in her own coin. Adding to the Creed of 
 the Church produced one schism : subtracting from the Creed of 
 the Church of Rome another. The Reformation was at once the 
 avenger and the logical offspring of the schism between the East 
 and West. The West became a prey to disunion, split into 
 fragments, and had its own Creed questioned, retributively for its 
 conduct towards the East, which it trampled on for upholding the 
 Creed of the Church. Then if Anglican orders are denied by 
 Rome, Western orders may be confronted by Creed, Canon, and 
 Definition of the fourth, fifth, and sixth Councils : by their defi- 
 nition affirming their creed to be perfect as it then stood : by 
 tlieir Canon ordaining that any bishop or clergy substituting 
 another creed for it as it then stood should be deposed. Unless 
 this canon is to be construed in a non-natural sense, I cannot see 
 that there is much to choose between Anglican and Roman orders : 
 as to this day its operation must extend to every bishop and 
 priest in the West using the Creed of Reccared and Charlemagne 
 instead of that of the Church. If its operation has become 
 obsolete, it is because the power of enforcing it has passed away : 
 in other words, because the executive of the Church is defunct, 
 neghgent, or unable to act. Let me add a few words on the 
 nature of the Canon. For some time past a misconception has 
 been prevalent respecting this Canon which has impaired its 
 force. People have spoken of it in general as the seventh 
 Canon of the Council of Ephesus, and thei-efore regarded it as any 
 other Canon of a General Council ; and with neither more nor less
 
 ( 13 ) 
 
 reverence. This account of it is far short of the truth. It was 
 indeed first promulgated at Ephesus, but it was not intended to 
 apply to any but the original form of the Nicene Creed then, that 
 form alone having been used there, as we learn from the ' Acta.' 
 And it came seventh in order of the Canons passed there. But 
 it was re-enacted under very different circumstances at the 
 Council of Chalcedon, where it appears no longer among the 
 canons, but immediately follows the definition. The Nicene 
 Creed in its original form, and the same Creed in the enlarged 
 form given to it by the Council of Constantinople, having been 
 both recited and authoritatively placed on the same footing by 
 the Council, the formal definition of the Council was then 
 appended to them, and to it this Canon. Thus a new rank was 
 given to it, which the fifth and sixth Councils alike confirmed. 
 It ceased to be a canon in the ordinary sense of the word, and 
 became a dogmatic canon, of as permanent and universal obliga- 
 tion as the definition itself to which it was appended : just, for 
 instance, as the judgment appended by the Nicene Fathers them- 
 selves to their Creed. ' Those who say there was a time when 
 He was not,' and so forth. As well might the Popes have con- 
 sented to any modification of these clauses as of this Canon. 
 
 " There is one more point in connection with it that I would 
 fain submit for your more special consideration before I conclude, 
 namely, what justification can you and your subordinates plead 
 for your modern practice, so directly opposed to this Canon, of 
 requiring all who come over to you from Anglicanism to recite 
 and testify their acceptance of the Creed of Pope Pius, when 
 this Canon, as binding as ever on the whole Church, ordains 
 expressly, that persons coming over to the Communion of the 
 Church, from any heresy whatsoever, shall have the Nicene 
 Creed, and no other, proposed to them for their acceptance? 
 Every time you violate this injunction, you incur the penalty 
 denounced against such by the Church that has lost her voice. 
 This is surely something like living in a glass house yourself, my 
 Lord — I beg you will excuse the metaphor — is it not ?"
 
 ( 14 ) 
 
 Such, then, is the answer which I conceive Anglicans might 
 fairly make to yom* letters on the *' Crown in Council" — by 
 publishing them you must have intended them for more than 
 one — and I give publicity to it both on their account in order that 
 they may adopt it if they think fit, and on my own, to satisfy 
 the dictates of my conscience whether they adopt it or not. For 
 I feel it imperative to state publicly to them and to you how 
 materially my inquiries into this one question have modified my 
 estimate of the Roman claims, and though the re-union of 
 Christendom, which has been the dream as well as the prayer and 
 study of my whole life, seems absolutely looming in the distance, 
 I desire to record my solemn conviction, that it cannot be, that 
 it ought not to be, till material guarantees have been secured 
 that Rome shall never again be what she has been, and to some 
 extent still is : so irresistible to my mind are the evidences that 
 it is her conduct, more than anything else, which has divided 
 Christendom — her conduct since she became a Court as well as a 
 Church — not her faith, but her policy for the last thousand 
 years, dating from her endowment under Charlemagne. Eminent 
 saints and doctors of the middle ages, if they mean anything, 
 have asserted as much : I have nothing to do but adopt their 
 language : their denunciations were loudest when they were by 
 no means levelled against the particular vices of this or that Pope. 
 S. Bernard is not attacking his old pupil Eugenius, when he tells 
 him in unvarnished language of the '* murmurs and complaints 
 of the Churches " of his day.* " They cry loudly that they are 
 mutilated and dismembered. . . . Abbots are exempted from 
 bishops, bishops from archbishops, archbishops from primates or 
 patriarchs. Can this be good in theory : can it be excused in 
 practice ? . . . Can you possibly think it lawful for you to dismem- 
 ber the Church, confound order, disturb the boundaries which your 
 fathers have set ? If it be just for each to preserve his own rights^ 
 how can it accord with justice to take from a person what belongs 
 to him ? You err, if you think that your Apostolic power, as it is 
 * De Consid. iii. 4.
 
 ( 15 ) 
 
 the highest is the only power ordained by God. . . . Your power 
 is by no means the only power from God : there are likewise 
 intermediate and still lower powers — and as they are not to be 
 separated whom God has joined, so neither are they to be made 
 one whom He has divided ? " *'I remember once," says John 
 of Salisbury, "going as far as Apulia, to see my lord Pope 
 Adrian" — his countryman and ours, the English Pope — 'Svho 
 had admitted me to very great intimacy, and I passed nearly 
 three months with him at Beneventum. In the course of 
 conversation, of which we had at least the average amount that 
 friends usually have, he asked me frankly and earnestly what 
 men thought of him and of the Church of Eome. I told him in 
 reply, very candidly and explicitly, the evil things which had 
 come to my ears in the provinces. For, as was said by many, 
 the Roman Church, which is the mother of all Churches, exhibits 
 herself to the rest rather in the light of a step-mother, than of 
 
 a mother As for the Roman Pontiff, he is a universal 
 
 oppressor, and well-nigh past endurance That is what is 
 
 said by the people, most holy Father, since you ask me to tell 
 you what people say."* 
 
 "0 Pope," exclaimed the great prophetess of the north by 
 revelation, after three more centuries had passed: "thou art 
 worse than Lucifer, more unjust than Pilate, more of a foe to 
 me than Judas, more of an abomination to me than the Jer/s 
 themselves. "t Not that she was speaking of the vices of 
 any one Pope in particular, but of the Papacy, such as it was 
 then. I could fill pages from medieval writers of approved 
 name to the same effect. What they meant, and what with his- 
 tory before us we cannot venture to contend they denounced 
 extravagantly, were the principles and practices of a system 
 known and stigmatised as the Court of Rome, for this was its 
 head- quarters, which had clearly been inaugurated under Charle- 
 magne and his successors, parties to the "donation," and had 
 
 * De Nugis Cur. vi. 23. 
 
 t Mausi, torn. xxx. pp. 715—18, with Cardinal Turrecremata's comments.
 
 ( 16 ) 
 
 usurped precedence of the self-denying mould and pastoral gifts 
 inherited from S. Peter. Their sway was no sooner established, 
 than bad Popes found themselves omnipotent to do mischief, and 
 the best Popes comparatively powerless to do good. Eugenius 
 III. had not commenced, and he was impotent to resist, the 
 changes in the constitution of the Church so bitterly denounced 
 and deplored by S. Bernard. 
 
 All this I knew, and had well considered long before I joined 
 the Eoman Communion, as my books testify. I thought then, 
 and am doubly convinced now, after reading ecclesiastical history 
 through again as a Koman Catholic, that if ever there was a 
 justifiable revolt from authority, it was the revolt we call the 
 Eeformation : and most certainly had it been a revolt from a 
 mere secular power, like that of the United States of America 
 from England, I for one should never have dreamt of trans- 
 ferring my allegiance from the Anglican to the Eoman Com- 
 munion, any more than I suppose any citizen of the United 
 States in his sober senses would now dream of transferring his 
 on principle to the British Crown. But all Scripture told me 
 that there should be but one Church : and all history told me 
 that a Primacy from time immemorial in that one Church 
 belonged to the see of Eome : all history told me, moreover, 
 that from the foundation of the see of Canterbury to the 
 Eeformation, the Church of England had been one with 
 Eome, had voted freely and deliberately for the doctrine and 
 discipline upheld by Eome, including the supremacy of the Pope, 
 for centuries ; and was at least as responsible for the corruptions 
 that had accumulated in the middle ages and precipitated the catas- 
 trophe of the sixteenth century, as any other of the Churches in 
 communion with Eome on the continent. Hence, it certainly 
 seemed to me that the Church of England liad done wrong in 
 separating from the body of which she had been so long a 
 foremost member, and affecting to care for nothing so long as 
 her own boat got off safe, instead of standing manfully by her 
 colours, and assisting by every means in her power to bring the
 
 ( 17 ) 
 
 old ship safe into port. At all events what excuse was there for 
 our continued isolation ? If I could trust to the Eonian Catholic 
 divines of this country, whose teaching I took to be faithfully 
 reflected in a work entitled the '' Faith of Catholics," reprinted 
 in 1846, for the third time, by a living dignitary, since promoted, 
 and dedicated to the late Bishop Walsh, I felt there was nothing 
 in the Roman Catholic system now, to which I could not honestly, 
 and would not willingly subscribe, for the sake of breaking down 
 the barriers that estranged us from the Churches abroad, with 
 which our forefathers had lived and died in happy communion. 
 It may be that I trusted those divines too implicitly : it is not 
 long since I heard the term '^minimisers" applied from the pulpit 
 by a living preacher, who may be supposed your mouth-piece, to 
 those who believed no more : though it would be difficult to pro- 
 duce any Roman Catholic catechism in use throughout England 
 in Vvhicli more was taught. But this by the way. More intimate 
 acquaintance with the Continental Churches, and a much more 
 searching investigation into the merits of the schism between the 
 East and West than I had ever been able to give to it before, has 
 modified my views on the whole cpiestion considerably between 
 England and Rome. Let me begin with the last first. 
 
 To the facts, which some pages back I put into the mouth 
 of your Anglican friend, you will doubtless remember my 
 calling your attention privately just twelve months ago. Your 
 only reply to me, so far as they were concerned, was that 
 they were ah-eady known. This I construed as an admission on 
 your part that I had stated them correctly. But if so, what 
 other inference can be deduced from them, than that for the last 
 1,000 years the Roman Communion has been committed to the 
 use of a Creed which is not that of the Church, but of the Crown ? 
 I do not say therefore to the use of a Creed which is heterodox. 
 On the theological question involved in it I would wish to speak 
 with becoming reverence : but thus much is certain, that the 
 addition which forms its distinguishing feature was made and 
 had been in use many centuries before any Pope judged it allow- 
 

 
 ( 18 ) 
 
 able, much less necessary: many centuries before theologians 
 in the West had agreed amongst themselves whether the terms 
 *' mission " and " procession " were distinguishable. Doubtless it 
 has since found able defenders : but among them there are scarce 
 two who give the same account of it, historically or doctrinally : 
 and some of them are neither consistent with each other nor 
 with themselves. Others, in arguing for it against the Easterns, 
 have grievously mis-stated facts, and numberless passages have 
 been adduced in support of it from the Fathers, either wholly 
 spurious or interpolated. I know of no parallel to it in this 
 respect in any religious controversy, before or since. If the 
 Athanasian Creed was not expressly coined for this controversy* 
 it was employed in this controversy first as a polemical weapon. 
 At Florence, where the whole question of the Creed was gone 
 into formally for the first time, the number of spurious passages 
 adduced on the Latin side stands out in painful contrast to what 
 was produced on the Greek side, in which even modern criticism 
 has not been able to discover a single flaw. In the Florentine 
 definition itself there is one clause which runs as follows : " We 
 define that those explanatory words, ' and from the Son,' were 
 to the end that the truth might be elucidated, under the necessity 
 which existed then, lawfully and with good reason added to the 
 Creed." The history of this clause is that it was urgently 
 required by the Pope, who was present, and presided in person, 
 as urgently resisted by the Easterns, and only conceded on the 
 express understanding that it was not to prejudice their own use 
 of the Creed in any way. What it means has yet to be shewn. 
 Admit it historically, and it binds us to affirm that those words 
 were '•' lawfully and with good reason added to the Creed " two 
 centuries before Rome was so much as consulted on them : four 
 centuries before she received them herself. Admit it dog- 
 matically, and what follows ? I take my stand on the definition 
 of the fourth, fifth, and sixth Councils, and affirm the explicit 
 teaching of the Creed on the Trinity perfect, as it stood then : 
 namely, without those words, " and from the Son." This makes
 
 ( 19 ) 
 
 me deny by implication all that this clause asserts : for how, I 
 repeat, can explicit teaching which is perfect, admit of any 
 further explanation ? I must assert the contrary to this, or get 
 over its obvious and genuine meaning in some shifty way, to be 
 able to attach any dogmatical value to the Florentine clause : or 
 else I must fall back upon the history of the Florentine clause 
 once more. S. Antoninus, afterwards Archbishop of Florence, 
 who was present at the Council, and a great canonist, says of 
 those words, *' and from the Son," emphatically : ''It is certain, 
 nor is it to be believed that they were added unless by some 
 Pope or Council, for who else would have presumed to have added 
 them ? albeit by what Pope or Council is by no means certain." * 
 It seems hardly possible to doubt that the Florentine clause was 
 framed on this hypothesis, and must be regarded accordingly, 
 now that the facts are known. S. Antoninus, we may be sure, 
 never contemplated our believing what we know to be not fact. 
 The remainder of the definition, good and excellent as it is, in 
 reality left the main point untouched. That is to say, it explained 
 and harmonised the arguments by which the Greeks and Latins 
 had defended their respective views since the schism, accommo- 
 dated their views to each other, and ruled what should be taught 
 in future by both : but it had not a word to say on what had been 
 the doctrine of the Whole Church before the schism commenced : 
 when Council after Council had declared the explicit teaching of 
 the Creed on the Trinity to be perfect, as it stood then. To 
 this Mark of Ephesus had called the attention of the Council in 
 the most formal manner, by reciting their acts : but here pre- 
 cisely the definition stopped short, as if by instinct or from 
 design, and said nothing. So far from determining the relation 
 which the two forms of the Creed, the old and the interpolated, 
 bore to each other — to the amazement, as we are told, of the 
 ambassadors from England who came to the Council — it neither 
 recited nor alluded to any Creed at all, much less promulgated 
 either form as the Creed of the Church. It abstained from 
 * Chron. P. III. tit. iii. c. 13, § 13. 
 
 c 2
 
 ( 20 ) 
 
 affirming them identical : it abstained from pointing out how they 
 differed : it gave no directions of any kind about their use. If 
 the use of the old Creed was not interdicted for the future, 
 neither was the use of the interpolated Creed enjoined. In con- 
 clusion, as if to ■ stamp the whole business — as if to typify the 
 union between the Creed of the Crown and the Creed of the 
 Church that had taken place — both Emperor and Pope subscribed 
 to the definition of faith side by side, a prodigy without parallel 
 in the annals of (Ecumenical Councils, before or since. 
 
 Therefore, my Lord, with the facts of this controversy before 
 me, I find this conclusion inevitable : that whether absolutely 
 inerrant or not in matters of faith herself, Rome has abundantly 
 proved, during the last 1,000 years, that she can be a most negli- 
 gent, hesitating, fickle, self-seeking, hypocritical guide to others, 
 even where the Faith is concerned. Such, at all events, has been 
 her conduct by the Church's Creed ; each epithet describes it at 
 each stage : the last, the worst. Sad presage for the re-union of 
 Christendom, in a General Council presided over by the Pope, that 
 the only General Council [of the East and West] over which a Pope 
 ever presided in person should have been the only Council ever 
 convened exclusively for restoring union to the Church — I am 
 using a phrase of the Pope who held it — and this the Council of 
 Florence under Eugenius IV. ! Of all Councils that ever were 
 held, I suppose there never was one in which hypocrisy, dupli- 
 city, and worldly motives, played a more conspicuous or dis- 
 graceful part. How the Council of Basle was outwitted, and 
 Florence named as the place to which the Greeks should come : 
 how the galleys of the Pope outstripped the galleys of the 
 Council, and bore the Greeks in triumph from Constantinople to 
 a town in the centre of Italy, where the Pope was all-powerful : 
 how they were treated there : and why they were subsequently re- 
 moved to Florence, would reveal a series of intrigues of the lowest 
 order, if I had space to transcribe them ; unfortunately, they were 
 too patent at every stage of the Council for the real objects of its 
 promoters to admit of the slightest doubt. Between John Pal^o-
 
 ( 21 ) 
 
 logus and Eugenius it was a barter of temporal and spiritual gains 
 from first to last. One had his capital to guarantee from attack : 
 the other his position in Italy to establish. Each hoped to be 
 victorious through the other, Eugenius over the Basle fathers, 
 Palaeologus over the Turks. The more sailors and soldiers the 
 Pope promised, the greater submission the Emperor engaged to 
 extort from his bishops to the teaching of the Latin Church. 
 Three cardinals solemnly notified to the Emperor what succours 
 he might expect from the Pope when the union of the Churches 
 had been accomplished, just as he had succeeded in getting all 
 his bishops but one to declare for it. There would be ships and 
 money to take them home: three hundred soldiers for the defence of 
 their capital to be maintained there at the cost of the Pope. Two 
 galleys would remain on guard there at his cost likewise. When 
 the Emperor had need of ships of war, the Pope would supply 
 twenty, and maintain them for him at his own expense for six 
 months. And in case the Emperor should need help by land, 
 the Pope, by Christ, would do his utmost to get Christian nations 
 to send an army to his assistance." When union was imminent, 
 the Emperor said : *' The time draws near : we must be thinking 
 of our departure." The Pope replied, '^ I have seen to it already 
 and will see to it. I sent a captain all in good time to prepare 
 ships, and should anything else be needed for your return, I will 
 give orders for it at once : meanwhile, take this paper from me, 
 and when you have read it, let me have your reply." lliis was 
 the definition ; not, indeed, in the precise shape in which it 
 passed : but ships and money were to be forthcoming when it was 
 signed. Such were the preliminaries to the joint declaration of 
 the two Churches on the Procession of the Holy G-host, trans- 
 lated literally from the Acts of the Council. Shall I avow it, my 
 Lord ? my blood curdles as I transcribe them : but the worst is 
 not told. Eugenius, the only Pope who ever presided over [such] 
 a General Council in person, what does history say of his general 
 character — of the holy zeal exhibited by him while the Council 
 for re-uniting Christendom was sitting, or in conciliating adhesion
 
 ( 22 ) 
 
 to it after it was over ? One might have expected antecedently 
 that his presence and example would have influenced the Council, 
 as no other Council had ever heen influenced before, for good. 
 '' Eugenius," says his most partial biographer — I am quoting from 
 Ciaconius, *' was esteemed constant in adhering to his engage- 
 ments, unless he happened to have promised anything which it 
 were better to recal than to perform." He was exchanging angry 
 censures and excommunications with the Council of Basle, all 
 the time that he afl'ected to be promoting union at Florence with 
 all his might. "Alas," exclaimed the great Archbishop of Pa- 
 lermo, one of his own cardinals subsequently, " what kind of 
 union will this turn out, fraught at its very commencement with 
 so much discord and scandal to the Latin Church ?" Never were 
 forebodings more fully justified by the event. Blondus, the 
 Pope's secretary, is lost in wonder at the vast sums of money 
 expended by his master in conciliating the high dignitaries or 
 indigent prelates of the Greek Emperor with presents — Syropulus, 
 one of the num^ber, less scrupulously calls them bribes — and in 
 maintaining, at no less cost, his own army simultaneously, at the 
 head of which, operating against Nicholas Piccinino, Philip of 
 Milan, or Francis Sforza, petty chieftains of some rival factions, 
 was John Vitellius Vitelleschi, cardinal of Florence and Latin 
 patriarch of Alexandria. Such were the interests to which the 
 Pope found time to attend, and such the ministers to whom he 
 consigned their execution, while the Council of Florence was 
 sitting. Before the Council was over, Vitelleschi was suddenly 
 seized and put to death, without any trial, by his orders. " Such 
 is the fickleness, and such are the vicissitudes of human aff'airs," 
 says the cardinal's biographer, "that he who was treated to-day 
 with scorn and contumely, was two days before ordering 
 about everybody, and disposing of everything at pleasure, within 
 the domain of the Church ; governing Rome, the patrimony, the 
 duchy, Campania, the coast, and whatever else belonged to the 
 Church." Let us hear who succeeded him. Lewis, Archbishop 
 of Florence— the city in which the Council was still sitting—
 
 ( 23 ) 
 
 Patriarcli of Aqnileia, made cardinal, we are expressly told, not for 
 aught that he had done at the Council, but for having defeated in 
 battle Nicholas Piccinino. '' He," says his biographer, " merited 
 the love of Eugenius to that extent hy his military prowess, that he 
 became first Bishop of Dalmatia, then Archbishop of Florence, 
 finally Patriarch of Dalmatia, being the first Venetian who had 
 ever held that See." Eugenius, a true-born Venetian, was fond 
 of his race ; and when they had approved themselves good 
 soldiers— anything, alas ! but the soldiers of Christ — they me- 
 rited his exceeding love. The culminating distinction reserved 
 for his fellow-townsman was to succeed the patriarch of Aquileia 
 as commander-in-chief of the papal army ; and the first thought 
 of the new patriarch of Aquileia on entering upon ofiice was not to 
 keep Eugenius to his engagements to the Grreek Emperor of 
 succouring him against the Turks, but to engage the Pope in 
 hostilities against his own rival in adventure, Francis Sforza, 
 whom from that time forth Eugenius, acting under the advice of 
 his commander-in-chief, the archbishop, bent all his energies to 
 crush, writing at the same time to Constantinople with the utmost 
 assurance to tell Constantino Palaeologus, the brother and heir 
 of John, that it was the supineness of the Emperor in carrying 
 out the terms of the union, and nothing else, that had delayed his 
 fulfilling his engagements to him. The Greeks had agreed to 
 the Florentine definition, and left Florence on the understanding 
 that they might retain their own rites and their own Creed : it 
 was not till Eugenius thought he could tell Europe that they had 
 conformed to the Roman rite — we have this in his own words — 
 that he condescended to aid them as he had promised : and even 
 then, Hungary, not Constantinople, was his uppermost thought. 
 
 Such, therefore, we learn from history, was the conduct of the 
 only Pope who ever sat at the head of a Council, all through the 
 time when he was sitting and acting as such, in the only Council 
 that ever met exclusively for re-uniting Christendom. Now, what 
 guarantees have we, my Lord, or can we have, that the same 
 conduct may not be displayed again, while the same system re-
 
 ( 24 ) 
 
 mains in full force? The personal holiness of the reigning 
 
 pontiff may be some security while we are blessed with it, but it 
 
 may be laid in the grave to-morrow : and against this, strong as 
 
 it is, there is the undying system, which has always proved 
 
 immeasurably stronger than any Pope, when its interests were 
 
 threatened. Are^there not papal Zouaves to be cared for as well 
 
 as bishops, and papal territory to be thought of and battled for, 
 
 as well as dogma ? And have we never read of Pius IX. himself 
 
 anxiously negotiating with a Protestant premier for a supply of 
 
 7,000 or 8,000 muskets of light calibre for his civic guard, which 
 
 he thought imperative, but was unable to pay for, and unwilling 
 
 to procure from *' Naples, Turin, or Austria" just then?* Nobody 
 
 would contend that Pius IX. was indebted to the system for his 
 
 many virtues : and history shews that Eugenius could not have 
 
 acted in most cases as he did, had it not been for the system. 
 
 Therefore, by all who are praying and hoping for the re-imion of 
 
 Christendom in a corporate sense, Eugenius at the head of the 
 
 Council of Florence cannot be scanned too closely. Look at his 
 
 acts there in the practical light in which alone the men of this 
 
 age will ever be disposed generally to regard them. Of what 
 
 conceivable advantage can his presence be said to have been to 
 
 the Council ? Did it prevent hypocrisy, deceit, and secular 
 
 intrigue from reigning there : rather was it not the prime cause 
 
 of their reigning there, to the confusion of all the good and learned 
 
 men on both sides ? They prayed and argued to little purpose 
 
 under such a head. Can his presence have been as much as a 
 
 negative safeguard against error ? This is probably the utmost 
 
 that can be conceded : and even this admits of some question, at 
 
 least as long as the proposition inserted in the definition at his 
 
 instance remains unreconciled with history, or with previous 
 
 dogma. Meanwhile, the main point in the controversy was never 
 
 explained at all : though it had been waiting seven hundred years 
 
 for a settlement, PoHcy, that was as old as the controversy, 
 
 forbade this. 
 
 I pass from questions of Faith to questions of Morals, — for on 
 
 * Gni^^ot's Last Days of Louis Philippe, p. 321.
 
 ( 25 ) 
 
 both Eome claims to be infallible, — and once more I limit my 
 criticisms to the Rome of the last 1000 years, and to her trust- 
 worthiness as a practical guide. How has duty to man — the 
 suum cuiqiie of political justice — fared at her hands ? What 
 we have heard from S. Bernard already may help to determine 
 this. ^^ Abbots are exempted from bishops, bishops from arch- 
 bishops, archbishops from primates or patriarchs. Can this be 
 good in theory, can it be excused in practice ? Can you possibly 
 think it lawful for you to dismember the Church, confound 
 order, disturb the boundaries which your fathers have set ?" I 
 used to estimate those words very differently ten or twelve years 
 ago from what I do now. I used to consider S. Bernard and all 
 other complainants of his stamp in the middle ages indirectly 
 responsible for the evils which they denounced, as having con- 
 sented in themselves or in their forefathers to the system out of 
 which they flowed. That system could never have thriven, or 
 become possessed of any coercive power, without their aid or 
 acquiescence. The Papacy could never be said to have made 
 conquest of mediaeval Europe by force of arms. It took root, 
 because the soil was congenial : its fruits were tasted, and found 
 palatable. When it had been proved beneficial to the body 
 politic in general, or rather incomparably better than anything 
 else that offered to men then, it was encouraged by all. It had 
 its abuses unquestionably : all honour to its supporters for their 
 candour in denouncing them : still in estimating their language 
 I could not honestly shut my eyes to the fact that they clung to 
 the system under which they lived, were parties to it in practice, 
 and never dreamt of exchanging it for another, thus proving that 
 it existed in the main, abuses excepted, with their full concur- 
 rence. I also remembered that there were numbers amongst 
 ourselves who could be eloquent on the evils of parliamentary 
 government, and dwell forebodingly on the omnipotence of the 
 House of Commons, without at all meaning to assert that any 
 one of our constitutional changes had been brought about illegally, 
 without in any sense wishing to go back to what we had been 
 under the Tudors or Plantagenets.
 
 ( 26 ) 
 
 Subsequent investigations have shewn me the one-sidedness of 
 this explanation. It contemplated the West either as the whole 
 Church, or else as competent to modify the discipline of the 
 whole Church at will to suit its own predilections or well-being. 
 S. Bernard, by his mention of patriarchs, had evidently travelled 
 beyond the limits of the West for his facts. His words therefore 
 — '' Can you possibly think it lawful for you to dismemher the 
 Church, confound order, disturb the boundaries which your 
 fathers had assigned them" — had a deeper and a wider meaning 
 than I had assigned them formerly. He preferred a charge 
 with which my ears had long been familiar in another application. 
 The West had a perfect right to alter its own ecclesiastical polity, 
 so far as the constitutions of the whole Church permitted. This 
 was precisely the liberty claimed for themselves by the champions 
 of the Church of England at the Keformation. But the West 
 had no right at all, in legislating for itself, to innovate upon the 
 existing and unrepealed ordinances of the whole Church. This 
 was precisely the charge brought against the Church of England 
 by the late Archdeacon Wilberforce, and which I for the time 
 thought unanswerable. Therefore, admitting the allegations of 
 S. Bernard to be true to the letter, with what face could I deny 
 the Church of Rome to have been a much greater offender than 
 the Church of England so far — a much greater offender, because, 
 claiming to be the executive of the whole Church, she ought to 
 have been the first to enforce, the last to contravene its existing 
 statutes ? The question remained, how she had carried her 
 point ? This, of course, S. Bernard could not have answered. 
 The Church of England had taken advantage of the Eeformation 
 to carry hers, and a schism between her and Rome had been the 
 consequence. I now asked how far the conduct of Rome in this 
 respect could have contributed to the earlier schism between the 
 East and West, and I am bound to say that history replied with 
 twice the clearness and twice the sternness that it had previously 
 replied in the case of the Creed. History deposed in short unhesi- 
 tatingly that Rome rose to the eminence which she occupied in
 
 ( 27 ) 
 
 the thirteenth century when at her zenith — and from which in 
 the Providence of God she has been gradually, but surely, de- 
 scending ever since — most unrighteously, as concerns the Church 
 — the whole Church I mean — by fraud and force : by the weapon 
 of the weak, and the weapon of the strong, alternately put into 
 her hand, and employed by her as legitimate, for the spread of 
 her own power, to the dismemberment and destruction of the 
 Church at large : the most striking specimens of each kind being 
 the Pseudo-decretals, including of course the Pseudo-donation, 
 and the Crusades. By these means, her bishop aspired to become 
 Patriarch of the whole Church as well as Pope. I must find 
 space for a few words upon each. 
 
 1. No certain proof, to the best of my belief, has been dis- 
 covered as yet, that the pseudo-decretals and pseudo-donation 
 were manufactured at Kome, or by order of Rome ; for all that, 
 Rome stands committed to them no less than if she had done 
 both, as we shall see. They purported to embody the formal 
 teaching of her earliest pontiffs. She must have known from the 
 first therefore, or been able to ascertain, whether they came from 
 her archives or not : yet she studiously forebore from inquiring, 
 and said nothing. It was enough for her that their genuineness 
 came to be generally believed in, that they favoured her 
 aggrandisement, and could be employed with decisive effect 
 against those who contested it. She cared nothing for the 
 palpable contradiction between them and the acknowledged Canons 
 of the whole Church which she was bound to uphold and enforce. 
 As this is just the point which has been eluded hitherto by the 
 apologists of the pseudo-decretals, it will need unfolding at some 
 length. 
 
 That what is called the '^ Code of the Universal Church" was 
 in existence as a collection at the time of the fourth Council is 
 established by Justellus and others indisputably from the manner 
 in which a book of Canons was referred to there in the ninth and 
 eleventh Actions, canons being in each case cited from it as the 
 83rd and 84th, 95th and 96th, according to the exact numbering
 
 ( 28 ) 
 
 which they bear there now. For the same reason it can have 
 been no other collection that was authoritatively confirmed by the 
 first Canon of the same Council in these words : '' We pronounce 
 it to be fit and just that the canons of the holy Fathers made in 
 every synod to the present time be in full force-"* To these subse- 
 quently the Council appended its own : all of which down to the 
 28th were passed unanimously : and this I omit on the ground 
 that it was never confirmed by Eome, the old rule being, as we 
 are told by Socrates, Sozomen, and Theodoret, all of them 
 Greeks, that no canons could be passed without the consent of 
 the Pope. The code of the Universal Church therefore down to 
 this 28th Canon of Chalcedon is unquestionably binding on the 
 whole Church still, and always has been, except in cases where 
 it can be shewn to have been modified by subsequent legislation 
 of equal authority. Now in this code there is no mention what- 
 ever of the See of Rome, as a supreme power, or even ultimate 
 court of appeal, though its primacy is implied throughout. Hence 
 when the subject of its appellate jurisdiction came before the 
 heads of the African Church in the fifth century, among whom 
 was S. Augustine, their deliberate finding, which they reported 
 to the Pope, and on which they acted themselves, was, that '' the 
 Nicene decrees plainly committed both the inferior clergy and the 
 bishops themselves to their own metropolitans : having most 
 wisely and justly provided that all things shall be determined in 
 the very places where they arise : for that the grace of the Holy 
 Spirit will never be wanting in every province, whereby equity may 
 be prudently discerned and constantly maintained by the ministers 
 of Christ, especially when every man has liberty, if he be 
 offended with the determination of his judges, to appeal to a 
 provincial, or if need be to a general Council." The African 
 bishops confine their remarks to the Nicene Canons, not feeling 
 themselves under the circumstances called upon to examine 
 more : but nobody who has studied the remaining canons com- 
 prised in this code could maintain that its regulations, on the 
 * I adopt Mr. Johnson's translations : J^ade Mecuvh vol. ii. p. 41, et seq.
 
 ( 29 ) 
 
 subject of appeals, as it stood then, could have been stated more 
 fairly. Since then indeed the Sardiaan Canons authorising 
 bishops in extreme cases — and bishops alone — to appeal to the 
 Pope, which were then unknown to the African Church, have 
 been received in the East and West alike : yet against them we 
 must always remember is to be set the 9th Canon of the fourth 
 Council, and therefore one of this code to which Rome is bound 
 — allowing that ** if any bishop or clergy should have a dispute 
 with their metropolitan, they may apply to the exarch of their 
 diocese, or else to the throne of Constantinople, and have their 
 case tried there/'' More persons are thus authorised in this 
 code to appeal to the See of Constantinople than in the Sardican 
 Canons themselves to Rome. And except on this one subject of 
 appeal, jurisdiction in all its branches is both explicitly and 
 rigorously restricted to the local boundaries in force then, and 
 never to be enlarged. The consent of Rome to the 28th Canon 
 of Chalcedon was emphatically refused and persistently withheld 
 on these grounds. The 2nd Canon of Constantinople is to 
 this day a standing witness against the See in whose interests the 
 28th of Chalcedon was framed: ''Let not bishops go out of their 
 diocese to churches out of their bounds : but let the bishop of 
 Alexandria, according to the Canon, administer the affairs of 
 Egypt, and the bishops of the East the affairs of the East only, 
 with a salvo to the ancient privileges of the Church of Antioch 
 mentioned in the Nicene Canons. ^ . . And let not bishops go out 
 of their dioceses to ordinations, or any administration, unless 
 they be invited. And by the aforesaid Canon concerning dioceses 
 being observed it is evident that the provincial synod will have 
 the management of every province, as was decreed at Nic8ea. 
 The Churches amongst the barbarians must be governed according 
 to the customs which prevailed with their ancestors." 
 
 This Canon was occasioned by the irregular proceedings of the 
 Patriarch of Alexandria ; it may be said to embody the spirit of 
 the whole code. Another Canon, the 8th of Ephesus, occasioned 
 * The 17th Canon is to the same effect.
 
 ( 80 ) 
 
 by the attempts of the Patriarch of Antioch upon the indepen- 
 dence of Cyprus, is not less worth our attention and runs as 
 follows : — " Our fellow-bishop Keginus, beloved by God, and 
 Zeno and Evagrius, most religious bishops of the province of 
 Cyprus, with him, have publicly declared an innovation contrary to 
 the ecclesiastical laws, and the Canons of the holy Fathers, and 
 ivhich touches the liberty of all. . . . The holy General Synod 
 hath therefore decreed that the rights of every province formerly, 
 and from the beginning, belonging to it be preserved clear and 
 inviolable, and that ancient custom prevail : every metropolitan 
 having power to take copies of the things now transacted for his 
 own security. But if any one introduce a regulation contrary 
 to the present determination^ the holy General Synod decrees that 
 it he of no force. ''^ 
 
 To that extent were the Fathers of the Third Council per- 
 suaded that unity in the Church would be much more im- 
 perilled by superseding ancient and immemorial rights to secure 
 system, than by leaving a few isolated bishops here and' there 
 independent of any ecclesiastical superior, and '* autocephali," to 
 discourage innovation. I pass straight from these canons to the 
 pseudo-decretals and pseudo-donation,* that the contrast between 
 them may be seen more readily. For instance, S. Anacletus in 
 an encyclic addressed to the faithful is made to say : — " Should 
 more difficult questions arise, or should the case be one of high 
 importance, or concern bishops of high standing, let them be 
 referred, in case of appeal, to the Apostolic See ; for this the 
 Apostles appointed by command of our Lord, that all greater and 
 more arduous questions should be brought before the Apostolic 
 See on which Christ founded His universal Church." And again : 
 *' The Apostolic See was appointed by the Lord, and no one else, 
 head and hinge of all the Churches : and as a door is swayed by 
 its hinge, so, by disposal of the Lord, all Churches are swayed 
 as this holy See may dispose." Or, as Constantiue in his pseudo- 
 donation is supposed to have decreed, " We decree and ordain 
 * Migne's Patrol., vol. cxxx.
 
 ( 31 ) 
 
 that it — the Roman See — should have dominion as well over the 
 four principal Sees of Alexandria, Antioch, Jerusalem, and Con- 
 stantinople, as over all the Churches of God in the whole earth 
 besides : and that its pontiff for the time being should be supe- 
 rior and prince of all the world, and all things necessary to be 
 ordained for the worship of God, or for the faith of Christians, 
 to be regulated by his judgment." 
 
 Where have we a syllable, my Lord, of all this in the genuine 
 code of the Church : and can it be gainsaid for a moment to 
 which of these two theories of jurisdiction — that of the pseudo- 
 decretals, or that of the code — the development of the Papacy 
 was due, or that it was not effected literally by ''disturbing the 
 boundaries assigned by the fathers," as S. Bernard says, among 
 which are, conspicuously, the canons to which I have called 
 attention ? If the universal jurisdiction claimed by the Roman 
 Pontiff in the middle ages was not based on the authority of the 
 pseudo-decretals, why were they so constantly cited in its support ? 
 Where is the law of the whole Church that either attests or 
 sanctions it ? 
 
 Local synods and local churches cannot undertake to legislate 
 for the whole Church, much less repeal what the whole Church 
 has ordained. Concordats with kings, a fortiori, can do neither* 
 Is it credible, that the Papacy should have so often appealed to 
 these forgeries for its extended claims, had it any better au- 
 thorities — distinctive authorities — ^to fall back upon ? Every 
 disputant on the Latin side finds in these forgeries a convincing 
 argument against the Greeks. "To prove this," the universal 
 jurisdiction of the Pope, said Abbot Barlaam, himself converted 
 by them from the Greek Church, to convert his countrymen-— 
 "one need only look through the decretal epistles of the Roman 
 Pontiffs from S. Clement to S. Silvester." In the twenty-fifth 
 session of the Council of Florence the provincial of the Domini- 
 cans is ordered to address the Greeks on the rights of the Pope, 
 the Pope being present. Twice he argues from the pseudo- 
 decretal of S. Anacletus : at another time from a synodical letter
 
 ( 32 ) 
 
 of S. Atliaiiasiiis to Felix : at another time from a letter of 
 Julius to the Easterns ; all forgeries. Afterwards, in reply to 
 objections taken by Bessarion, in conference, to their authority, 
 apart from any question of their authenticity, his position in 
 another speech is ^Hhat those decretal epistles of the Popes 
 being synoclical -epistles in each case, are entitled to the same 
 authority as the canons themselves." Can we need further 
 evidence of the weight attached to them on the Latin side ? 
 Popes appealed to them in their official capacity as well as private 
 doctors. Leo IX. for instance, to the pseudo-donation in the 
 prolix epistle written by him, or in his name, to Michael Ceru- 
 larius. Patriarch of Constantinople, on the eve of the schism. 
 Eugenius IV. to the pseudo-decretals of S. Alexander and Julius, 
 during the negotiations for healing it, in his instructions to the 
 Armenians. But why, my Lord, need I travel any further for 
 proofs, when in the Catechism of the Council of Trent, that has 
 been for three centuries the accredited instructor of the clergy 
 themselves, recommended authoritatively by so many Popes, 
 notwithstanding the real value of these miserable impostures 
 having been for three centuries before the world — I find these 
 words :* ^' On the Primacy of the Supreme Pontift', see the third 
 epistle (that is, pseudo-decretal) of Anacletus " ! Such is, 
 actually, the authority to which the clergy of our own days arc 
 referred, in the first instance, for sound and true views on the 
 Primacy; afterwards, when they have mastered what is said 
 there, they may turn to three more authorities, all culled like- 
 wise from Gratian, which they will not fail to interpret in accord- 
 ance with the ideas they have already imbibed. Nor can I refrain 
 from calling attention to a much more flagrant case. On the 
 Sacrament of Confirmation there had been many questions raised 
 by the Reformers calculated to set people thinking, and anxious 
 to know the strict truth respecting it. On this, the Catechism 
 proceeds as follows :t 
 
 ** Since it has been already shewn how necessary it would be 
 * De Ord. Sacram., § 40. f § 5.
 
 ( 33 ) 
 
 to teach generally respecting all the Sacraments, by whom they 
 were instituted, so there is need of similar instruction respecting 
 Confirmation, that the faithful may be the more attracted by the 
 holiness of this Sacrament. Pastors must therefore explain that 
 not only was Christ our Lord the author of it, but that, on the 
 authority of the Roman Pontiff S. Fabian (the pseudo-decretal 
 attributed to him, that is). He instituted the rite of the chrism, 
 and the words used by the Catholic Church in its administration." 
 Strange phenomenon indeed, that the asseverations of such 
 authorities should be still ordered to be taught as Gospel from 
 our pulpits in these days, when everybody that is acquainted 
 with the merest rudiments of ecclesiastical history knows how 
 absolutely unauthenticated they are in point of fact, and how 
 unquestionably the authorities cited to prove them are forgeries. 
 Even Estius says, ''Plcrique ojnnantur Apostolos hi conferendo 
 aonfirmationis Sacramento, cJirlsmate nunquamusosfu'isse,'' ihoiigli 
 in his day men still believed in the genuineness of the pseudo- 
 decretals. Absolutely, my Lord, with such evidence before me, 
 I am unable to resist the inference that truthfulness is not one of 
 the strongest characteristics of the teaching of even the modern 
 Church of Piome : for is not this a case palpably where its 
 highest living authorities are both indifferent to having possible 
 untruths preached from the pulpit, and something more than 
 indifferent to having forgeries, after their detection as such, 
 adduced from the pulpit to authenticate facts ? Jealous enough 
 they may be that what they teach should be believed as true : 
 that it should be in strict accordance with actual truth is 
 another point, to v/hich with the evidence before me I must 
 suppose them callous. This, again, strongly reminds me of a 
 conversation I had with the excellent French priest who received 
 me into the Roman Catholic Church some time subsequently to 
 that event. I had as an Anglican inquired very laboriously 
 into the genuineness of the ''Santa Casa : " and having visited 
 Nazareth and Loretto since, and plunged into the question aneAV 
 at each place, came back more thoroughly convinced than
 
 ( 34 ) 
 
 ever of its utterly fictitious character, notwithstanding the pri- 
 vileges hestowed on it by so many Popes. On stating my 
 convictions to him, his only reply was : "There are many things 
 in the Breviary which I do not believe myself." Oh ! the 
 stumbling-blocks of a system in the construction of which 
 forgeries have been so largely used, in which it is still thought 
 possible for the clergy to derive edification from legends which 
 they cannot believe, and the people instruction from works of 
 acknowledged imposture ! Let us hope that this will be one of 
 the very first questions ventilated at the ensuing Council. 
 
 2. A few words on the Crusades, and I sum up. My thesis 
 is that they completed the ecclesiastical aggrandisement of the 
 Papacy by force. Various judgments have been formed of them 
 from their having a social and political, as well as ecclesiastical 
 side, from their having been espoused by so many good as well 
 as bad men, from their having been commenced in enthusiasm 
 though they ended in crime. But view them in what light we 
 please, they could never have taken place without the Pope, and 
 therefore, for good or for evil, he stands committed to them in 
 every sense. Now even socially and politically, I contend they 
 were productive of much greater calamity to mankind than good, 
 but ecclesiastically beyond dispute they entailed as much ruin on 
 theEeligion and Church of Christ as the worst that has ever befallen 
 either under the Turks. Socially, they carried but little religion 
 or virtue with them into the East apart from chivalry : which those 
 who remained there soon lost from tyrannising over those whom 
 they had come to set free : while those who returned deluged 
 Europe with their vices. Very different were the commodities 
 imported into Europe by the fugitive Greeks from Constantinople 
 when it fell under the Turks. Merchants, peacefully trading 
 with the East, would have supplied our ancestors with all the real 
 improvements supposed to have been derived through the Cru- 
 sades, at less crime by half. Politically, the Crusades proved a 
 fatal mistake for humanity, let alone true reHgion. It has been 
 often set to the credit of the Popes that they saved Europe from
 
 ( 35 ) 
 
 the Turks. History says that they opened the door by which 
 the Turks came in. It is certain that the Latins proved the 
 ruin of the Greek Empire much more than the Turks. Had the 
 Greek Empire been left to itself, or helped honestly, it would have 
 barred the Turks from Europe to this day, and preserved all the 
 civilization, population, and Christianity contained in it for man. 
 But ecclesiastically, that is, in the province of all others apper- 
 taining to the Popes as Heads of the Church, I can discover no 
 redeeming feature whatever in the Crusades from first to last. 
 The combination of the cross with the sword demoralised all 
 orders alike. Under their influence Christian bishops became 
 generals of armies and shedders of blood in hand-to-hand 
 conflicts with spear and shield. What was attempted by all 
 after their first burst of enthusiasm was over, was to subjugate the 
 Churches of the East to that of Kome in a way opposed to the 
 canons immemorially and universally received by the Church. 
 The Easterns were trampled upon for maintaining their rights, 
 ejected from their churches as far as was possible, and supplanted 
 by a rival hierarchy wherever the Crusaders conquered. The 
 researches of the late Sir Francis Palgrave go far to prove that 
 they actually set out with this object : some of the first letters 
 written home by them to the Pope who organised them shew, 
 at all events, that the idea dawned upon them with their first 
 success. ^'As for the Turks," say they, "and Pagans, we have 
 overcome them : but the heretical Greeks and Armenians, 
 Syrians and Jacobities, we cannot overcome. Only come over 
 to us, and complete that which you have commenced with us, 
 and the whole world will obey you."* Now this was exactly 
 what Innocent III. completed on the capture of Constantinople 
 by the Franks and Venetians. Of all breaches of the canons 
 in ecclesiastical history, it would be difficult to find one more 
 flagrant than the act of Innocent in consecrating Morosini Pa- 
 triarch of Constantinople, his own ''venerable brother," as he had 
 styled him but a short time before, John Camater, the rightful pa- 
 
 * Baluz. Miscel. iii. 60, ed. Mansi. 
 
 D 2
 
 ( 36 ) 
 
 triarcli, being alive, and expelled by force, without any previous 
 trial or inquiry. The excuse for Innocent is that he believed 
 in the genuineness of the pseudo-decretals, and was acting in 
 accordance with other established precedents of might made 
 right. But his own letters testify to a mind in perpetual conflict 
 between his own better feelings and the requirements of his 
 office. He had excommunicated the Venetians already for having 
 invaded Christian territory : he is subsequently found accepting 
 their conquests, and with his own hands consecrating their 
 nominee. What a plight for one calling himself Head of the 
 Church to be reduced to by his worldly ties ! To have to consent 
 to the desolation by fire and sword of what was then infinitely 
 the largest and most flourishing part of the Church by the other 
 in contempt of his own orders : to look on while the ancient 
 landmarks of the Church were one after another uptorn by 
 violence : and then, by accepting a share of the spoils himself, 
 to identify not himself merely but his See for ever, with the 
 outrageousness of the whole proceeding ! What frightful hy- 
 pocrisy, what downright profanity for this ever to have been 
 designated a Crusade, a holy war, a war waged in behalf of the 
 life-giving Cross ! Who can possibly believe in a God of justice, 
 and doubt His holding the Papacy heavily responsible for all this ? 
 My Lord, there is a solemn document before the world— I 
 may say one of the solemnest — addressed to us all without ex- 
 ception, of which the meanest is therefore justified in requesting 
 explanations, should it contain anything hard to be understood, 
 or beyond his ken. I confine my request to the following passage : 
 " Kno^^'n unto all are the unwearied cares wherewith the Roman 
 pontiffs liave laboured to defend the deposit of faith, the dis- 
 cipline of the clergy, and their education in sanctity and doctrine, 
 as well as the holiness and dignity of the matrimonial state, 
 have promoted more and more the Christian education of both 
 sexes, and have studied to provide for and to cherish religion, 
 piety, and good morals : to defend justice, and the tranquillity, 
 order, and prosperity of civil society." If this assertion is to be
 
 ( 37 ) 
 
 understood cle jure, as a declaration of what the Eoman pon- 
 tiffs ought to have done in all ages, nothing could be more true : 
 but if de facto, as a declaration of what they have done for the 
 last thousand years, the history of the Crusades alone would 
 suffice to determine the extent to which the reverse is more true. 
 Further comment is needless. 
 
 What, then, are the conclusions ensuing from the facts which 
 have been adduced ? First, that although Rome may have never 
 erred from the Faith in point of dogma, she has trifled with it on 
 one point in practice so often for the last thousand years, that 
 her conduct has been a stumbling-block to others, and occasioned 
 a division of the Eastern and Western Churches on doctrinal 
 grounds. Secondly, that by allowing the primitive code of the 
 Church to be stealthily supplanted by a new code based upon 
 forgeries, which she herself accepted without examination, and 
 endeavoured to make binding upon others by violence, she has 
 occasioned a division of the Eastern and Western Churches on 
 disciplinary grounds : in other words, that it is to the flagrant 
 unfaithfulness and injustice of her governmental policy, both as 
 regards doctrine and discipline, that secession from her Com- 
 munion has been, and is still, due. 
 
 I am not aware that any demur to this conclusion, in theory, 
 can be raised even by maximisers. But I will begin with what 
 I trust I may designate without offence the high orthodox. In 
 a Review, stated on its title-page to be " Par les Peres de la 
 Compagnie de Jesus," and therefore committing the whole So- 
 ciety to its contents, I read, exactly two years ago this month, 
 as follows, in a paper on the pseudo-decretals.* '^ Cette nouvelle 
 discipline " — that of the pseudo-decretals, what he had just called 
 "k reforme pseudo'lsidorienne ! ! ! — etait bonne assurement." 
 It would have been difficult for the writer to have said otherwise, 
 for the reasons he gives — '' Adoptee par S. Nicholas en 865, par le 
 huitieme concile cecum enique en 870 " — not received by the East — 
 * Etiules Religieuses, No. 47, p. 392.
 
 ( 38 ) 
 
 " confirmee imr le conclle de Trent en 1564, elle est depuis neuf 
 sikcles le droit commun dans VEglise Catholiqite.'' ! ! ! Have I 
 said more than this, namely, that our existing system originated 
 with, and is based on, the pseudo- decretals ? To his infinite 
 credit, the writer adds, " Mais I'ancienne discipline etait honne 
 aussi, puisque, pendant les hnit premiers siecles, I'Eglise n'en 
 avait point connu d' autre ... La nouvelle discipline pouvait par 
 consequent etre utile : elle n'etait point necessaire. Ce qu'il est 
 impossible de justifier et meme d'excuser, c'est le moyen employe 
 par le pseudo-Isidore pour arriver ii ses fins. Le mensonge de- 
 meure toujours un mal, meme lorsque celui qui en use se propose 
 un bien. Non faciamus mala lU veniant bona. Et que Ton ne 
 vienne pas nous dire : il n'ya pas un imposture, mais seulement 
 malentendu. Que Ton ne rejette pas la meprise, dont le monde 
 Chretien a ete la dupe pendant sept siecles, sur un concours de 
 circonstances independantes de la volonte du pseudo-Isidore. 
 Non, il y a eu de sa part mensonge prcmedite." In fine: " Les 
 fausses decretals n'' ont produit que du mal.^^ Aye, but whose 
 business was it to see that Christendom should not have been 
 duped and damaged in this way, and to have said *' non pos- 
 sumus" a thousand times before they allowed it, instead of be- 
 coming active parties to it themselves ? However, it is admitted 
 on all hands that Popes may make " serious mistakes" as 
 Church-governors. " To every Pope," said the Duhlin Review, 
 in July last, " appertains the office on the one hand of teaching 
 the Church : on the other hand, of ruling and piloting her. It is 
 admitted by all Catholics without exception that a Pope may 
 make serious mistakes in exercising this latter office, though they 
 well know that on the whole he obtains most special assistance 
 of the Holy Ghost in its execution." Certainly, nothing but 
 ''the most special assistance of the Holy Ghost" could have 
 j)revented their " serious mistakes" from becoming more serious, 
 or overruled the effects of their misrule so as to exhibit the entire 
 dialogue between our Lord and S. Peter on a well-known occasion, 
 interpreted by the light of events in the clearest manner. Doc-
 
 ( 39 ) 
 
 trinal inerrancy was promised by our Lord to S. Peter, standing 
 at the head, and speaking in the name, of all the Apostles, in 
 reply to a question addressed to them all, and not to him alone. 
 His successors, down to the President of the Council of Florence 
 himself, have acknowledged, as I shall point out presently, that 
 they have never spoken in the name of the whole Church since 
 the schism. The very first time S. Peter essayed teaching on his 
 own judgment, afteo' his confession, and apart from the rest, he 
 was told by our Lord authoritatively : *' Thou savourest not the 
 things that be of God, but those that be of men." The other 
 Apostles, therefore, had they followed or upheld him in what he 
 then taught, would have done wrong. In the same way, admit- 
 ting all the doctrinal inerrancy possessedbyS, Peter to have been 
 bequeathed by him to his successors, as it has not plainly pre- 
 served them from allowing the Creed of the Church to be inter- 
 polated at the will of kings uncanonically : from upholding 
 forgeries as authentic testimony : from perpetrating the most 
 iniquitous acts themselves, under cover of their authority, and 
 citing them in proof of some of the gravest points in their own 
 distinctive teaching respecting the Sacraments, unsupported by 
 other testimony, it cannot follow from the mere possession of 
 this gift by them ever so completely, that corporate union with 
 Rome can never be maintained too dearly, or that disunion with 
 Eome may never have been a duty. The Popes are not to be 
 followed where they have erred, any more than S. Peter : there- 
 fore, when they made fellowship with their errors indispensable 
 to fellowship with their See, so that one could not be maintained 
 without the other, the only course left was to abandon both. 
 Unerring faith is necessary for the Church, but it is not all that 
 is necessary — honesty, justice, truthfulness, meekness, and self- 
 denial, are among the determining principles that bind Christians 
 together, as well as their faith. Unerring faith must govern in 
 conformity with all these, or it must cease to govern. It cannot 
 bear its possessor harmless for moral obliquities of what kind 
 soever in the conduct of the body politic : it will but serve to
 
 ( 40 ) 
 
 enhance the guilt of its possessor, like the prophetic gift of the 
 high-priest who condemned Clirist ; and ceasing to govern, it 
 must cease to speak, for it is tied to speak at the head and in 
 the name of the whole hody. The lungs are in the body, though 
 the mouth is in the head : therefore, when separated, neither can 
 utter in the same sense as when united : not that their sepa- 
 ration need in the corporate sense be fatal to their vitality. Every 
 truth which they had enunciated infallibly when united might be 
 retained equally by both after they had parted company, and both 
 might be preserved from error in their isolation by a special 
 providence, till their re-union. Both too might speak, and speak 
 the truth equally, but what they said would not be beyond question 
 or revision. It might prove as true as any of the most infallible 
 truths ever promulgated, but not having the promise of infallibility 
 attached to it under the circumstances under which it was uttered, 
 it would require that plenary confirmation which union alone can 
 ensure. 
 
 This theory, besides harmonising with facts which it is impos- 
 sible to gloss over or dispute, receives additional countenance 
 from the action as well as the language of the Popes since the 
 schism, and explains existing phenomena much more reasonably, 
 as I shall hope to shew, than any other. In general, the action 
 of Rome has been prompt, peremptory, and decisive, almost to a 
 fault ; bold almost to rashness ; unhesitating almost to arrogance : 
 she seems intent on impressing people with nothing so much as 
 her own self-sufficiency : her utter inability to commit a mistake 
 of any kind, or be in the wrong. Contrast this with her extraor- 
 dinary shiftiness and indecision on the two Creeds, the old and the 
 interpolated. When has she ever affirmed them to be doctrinally 
 the same : what, according to her, is the exact difference between 
 their respective professions on the Procession ? As to their use, 
 we can only go back to ground already traversed. Leo III. for- 
 l)ade tlie use of the interpolated form. His successors winked at 
 it, and ended by adopting it themselves : still, they doubted about 
 enforcing it on those who clung to the old form. Gregory X.
 
 ( 41 ) 
 
 read the letters of the Easterns at the Second Council of Lyons, 
 begging to be excused using the interpolated Creed, without 
 answering them : but the Creed was thrice chanted there in that 
 form exclusively notwithstanding. Innocent V., who succeeded 
 him, was imperative that the " MZiog?te " clause ^' should not be 
 omitted on any account by them in chanting the Creed." 
 Nicholas III. went further, and added that " as unity of faith 
 could not consist with diversity in those that professed . . . 
 therefore, the desire of the Eoman Church was, that it should be 
 chanted uniformly with the additional clause by the Greeks as 
 well as the Latins." This was, in effect, deciding that the old 
 form of the Creed should be superseded : but it was never 
 carried out. When the subject was revived at the Council of 
 Florence, Rome was more diplomatic than she had ever been 
 previously. No Creed at all was recited there : nor was any hint 
 dropped whether both forms conjointly, or one without the other, 
 should be considered the Creed of the Church. These various 
 policies having to be reconciled with each other, it was at length 
 ruled by Clement YIII. and Benedict XIV. successively : " Grceci 
 credere tenentur etiam a F'llio Spiritum S. iirocedere, sed non 
 tenentur iwomintiare, nisi suhesset scandal am." I am indebted 
 to you, my Lord, for directing my attention to this position more 
 particularly. Let us see how it would have read in the mouth 
 of S. Athanasius. " Ariani credere tenentur FUium Homouslon 
 esse cum Patre, sed non tenentur pronuntiare, nisi suhesset 
 scandalum.'" The Alexandrine fathers, a.d. 362, under S. 
 Athanasius, probably went greater lengths in condescendence 
 than any Council before or since : but to the extent of 
 allowing the ^Nicene Creed to be recited by heretics without the 
 very word inserted in it to confound their heresy. Pope Liberius 
 himself, had he been present, could not have induced them to go ; 
 What then ? Were Clement VIII. and Benedict XIV. either of 
 them disposed to be lukewarm with heresy ? I think not. The 
 true meaning of their decision must be that in their inmost souls 
 they were far from considering the Greeks heretics. How, indeed,
 
 ( 42 ) 
 
 could they, seeing that at the Council of Florence the representa- 
 tives of the Eastern Church sat, debated, and subscribed on the 
 same terms as the Western ? There had also been a passage in 
 the original decree passed at Basle for inviting them thither, de- 
 liberately cancelled, because the word "heretics" or ''dissenters" 
 had crept into it unawares, as was said, in speaking of the Greeks. 
 Further, on what grounds had the Councils of Lyons and Florence 
 themselves been summoned? As Gregory X. puts it: — ''Because 
 of his extreme bitterness in beholding the rent of the Universal 
 Church foreshadowed in the net of Peter the fisherman, that 
 brake for the multitude of fishes which it enclosed : we do not 
 say divided as regards its faith . . . but notoriously and lament- 
 ably divided as regards its faithful members." Or, as Eugenius 
 IV. told his envoys : "It is for the union of the Western and 
 Eastern Church, so long and ardently desired by us, that you are 
 sent;" or, as he told the Greeks when he despaired of union : 
 '^In what shall we be benefitted if we fail to unite the Church of 
 God?"* It was in strictest conformity with this view that the 
 Council of Florence was to have been accepted on both sides, 
 had it succeeded, as the Eighth (Ecumenical Council : the title 
 under which its acts were literally first published in Latin, 
 A.D. 1526, in the Pontificate of Clement VII., and under which 
 Cardinal Pole still speaks of it in his work of so mucli interest to 
 us all, " The Reformation of England," dated Lambeth, 1556. 
 And now, in our own days, there is the Letter Apostolic of Pius 
 IX. " to the bishops of the Churches of the Eastern Rite " not 
 in communion with him, containing the following sentence, of 
 which the ink is scarce dry : — " We conjure you to come to this 
 General Council, as your 2^redecessors came to the Second Council 
 of Lyons, held by the blessed Gregory, our predecessor of vene- 
 rated memory, and to the Council of Florence, celebrated by om* 
 predecessor of happy memory, Eugenius IV. : that, thus renewing 
 the bonds of ancient affection, and recalling to life that ancient 
 peace, the heavenly and blessed gift of Christ, which in the course 
 
 * I have collected many more sucli passages in Part II, of my book, 
 Y. pp. 259—61, and 337—40.
 
 ( 43 ) 
 
 of ages has become lost to us, we may make the serene bright- 
 ness of longed-for union shine resplendent before all, after being 
 sadly clouded, and after the painful darkness of long-lived dis- 
 cussion." 
 
 If the Easterns are invited to come to this General Council as 
 their predecessors came to the Councils of Lyons and Florence, 
 the inference is inevitable that his present Holiness equally 
 throws himself into the sentim^ents of his predecessors, and 
 adopts their language. That is to say, Pius IX. beholds, and 
 has acted on beholding, the same spectacle that caused Gregory 
 X. so much anguish — the rent of the Universal Church fore- 
 shadowed in the net of Peter the fisherman, that brake . . . not, 
 indeed, divided as regards its faith . . . but notoriously and 
 lamentably divided as regards its faithful members : and his 
 object at the forthcoming Council will be what Eugenius IV. 
 assured the Greeks his was, *'to unite the Church of God" in 
 that sense. Therefore, not less inevitably, the formal teaching 
 of the Popes, ever since the schism began till now, has been that 
 the Church is divided as regards her members, and that there are 
 Churches forming part of the Catholic Church, which are, and 
 have been for ages, out of communion with their See. The 
 Popes, indeed, have never practically said this of any Churches 
 but the Eastern, and of the Eastern but those communicating 
 with "the Patriarch of Constantinople ; still, in admitting thus 
 much, they most unquestionably concede that what we call the 
 Roman Catholic Church has not constituted the whole Church, 
 nor they themselves consequently spoken at the head of the 
 whole Church, since the schism. To an impartial observer it 
 would appear as though they were far from feeling easy them- 
 selves under the circumstances : far from certain, that if their 
 title-deeds were examined into, their de facto position might 
 not be shaken : unable to divest themselves of the idea that the 
 Easterns had not been wholly to blame for withdrawing from their 
 Communion, nor were chargeable with heresy for withholding their 
 assent to the adoption of the '' Filioque " clause. Else, why not 
 have summoned a General Council long since to condemn them
 
 ( 44 ) 
 
 as heretics, instead of inviting them to a General Council again 
 and again to discuss doctrine under their presidency ? 
 
 To the West, where they ruled by patriarchal as well as papal 
 right, they might well be supposed to have adopted a more con- 
 fident tone since the Reformation ; but the closer it is scrutinised 
 the further it is seen to be from unhesitating and decisive. Those 
 who had renounced their Communion were invited to the Council 
 of Trent not to be condemned, but to be heard. If Luther was ex- 
 communicated twice, the Confession of Augsburg has never as yet 
 been anathematised: if Queen Elizabeth was deposed, the Council 
 of Trent had abstained deliberately from affirming that the bishops 
 who had been consecrated in her reign and at her bidding were 
 no bishops. Even the Thirty-nine Articles escaped censure. 
 Hence, ever since the Council of Trent separated until now, 
 attempts have been made continually, whether successful or not, 
 to reconcile the Confession of Augsburg and the Thirty-nine 
 Articles with its decrees. Anglican Orders, if they have not been 
 recognised in practice, have never been declared invalid, still less 
 the grounds of their invalidity set forth. It might be said that 
 all this has been the effect of moderation and paternal tenderness 
 on the part of the Popes : there can be little doubt that it has 
 commended itself to their policy; still, as one of the most warmly 
 debated points in modern times has been the power of the Popes 
 and their true relation to the Church, who can fail to be struck with 
 the absence of any formal assertion on their part that the terms 
 "Catholic" and '' Roman Catholic " are strictly convertible — 
 with the fact that they have never striven to appropriate the term 
 '' Catholic," pure and simple, to their own Communion, but have 
 commonly called it themselves, and been content that it should 
 be called by others, the Roman- CathoHc Church, as being its 
 strict and adequate title. No doubt they have never failed to 
 assert the doctrine of their own headship by divine right over the 
 whole Church in the strongest terms, and the teaching of all 
 those who obey them has always been that the Catholic Church 
 has a visible Head upon earth, under Christ, called the Pope :
 
 ( 45 ) 
 
 still all such teaching, read by the light of their own admissions 
 respecting the Eastern Church, is seen to be but a declaration of 
 what ought to be, not of what is : a picture of the ideal or of the 
 primitive, not of the actually existing Church. Where, indeed, is 
 the part of Christendom seriously purporting to call itself the 
 Catholic Church in these days? Roman-Catholic, Angio-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 qualification, 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 Sacraments might be frequented 
 with profit outside the pale of the Roman Communion. Is this 
 confirmed by experience ? My Lord, my own experience, which 
 is confined to the single Communion in which you formerly bore 
 office, 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 Communion — 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, fre- 
 quented 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 
 re-ordained in the Church of Rome; a ceremony, therefore^
 
 ( 46 ) 
 
 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 heen 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 frequent 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 shortcomings. 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 con- 
 firmed in this conviction as I have grown older, that the Sacra- 
 ments 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 experiences of my own soul. 
 My Lord, I have always been accustomed to look upon the Sacra- 
 ments as so many means of grace, and to estimate their value, 
 not by the statements of theologians, but by their effects on 
 myself, my neighbours, 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 Communion in instituting
 
 ( 47 ) 
 
 comparisons between members of the Church of England and 
 members of the Chm^ch of Kome generally, and between our 
 former and our present selves in particular; or between Chris- 
 tianity 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 Eome than in 
 the Church of England, admitting the dispositions of those who 
 frequent them to be the same in both cases, is not merely pre- 
 posterous, 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 af&rm that you, for 
 instance, 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 G-ospel truths, when you embraced the Koman 
 Communion ; or that all those graces which you exhibited pre- 
 viously 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 hypo- 
 thesis, you must have lived ever afterwards. In the same way 
 there is no ordinary person in his sober senses who could affect 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 Westminster 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 paro- 
 chial sermons, hailed as a masterpiece on their first appearance, 
 have just burst forth into a second spring. People say that the 
 sermons which ci-devant Anglican clergymen of note fpreached 
 formerly read so much more natural than any that they have 
 since delivered from Roman Catholic pulpits. They argued im-
 
 ( 48 ) 
 
 partially, 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 exag- 
 gerated : or else punctilious and reserved : weighing each word 
 as if they were repeating a task : always artificial, never them- 
 selves : 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 
 themselves and the cause they advocate, which cannot fail to 
 strike the most ordinary listener ; their words no longer carry 
 the moral argument (rjOcKr) irlcrTi^) witli them that they once did 
 even among their followers : and the judgment of public opinion on 
 them is that they are vapid and destitute of force by comparison. 
 What people say of those generally who have become Roman 
 Catholics in England of late years, is that they have deteriorated 
 as a body rather than advanced. The foremost of them have not 
 progressed in any perceptible degree — perceptible by others, 
 that is — beyond the high standard to which they had attained 
 before, as their lives, their writings, and their sermons testified : 
 others, every allowance being made for the peculiar trials to 
 which they have been subjected, have notoriously descended to a 
 lower level of Christianity since they became Roman Catholics, 
 from that in which they had been working previously ; and some 
 have been driven from their moorings — in appearance at least — 
 altogether. All this I hear said : and as far as my own experi- 
 ence goes, it is quite true : and for the life of me I cannot infer 
 anything else from it than that sacramental grace is equally 
 derivable from the same ordinances in both Communions, accord- 
 ing to the dispositions of those who frequent them, and is not
 
 ( 49 ) 
 
 more indefectible in the one than the other. What I have Heen 
 of Eoman 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 favour : 
 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-serving, charitable, conscientious, refined, intelligent : and 
 I could discover nothing idolatrous or superstitious in their 
 worship, nor anything at variance with first principles in their 
 daily life. At home or abroad I was equally surprised to find 
 them so different from what my traditional informants had 
 described them, with so much to admire where I had supposed 
 there was so much to reprobate. But afterwards — when my 
 first emotions consequent on this discovery had subsided — when 
 I came to ask myself the question, are these, then, 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 father and mother would have compared with the 
 best of them in all the virtues ordinarily possessed by Christians 
 living in the world and discharging their duties conscientiously 
 towards God and their neighbours, 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 
 Koman Catholic children if they were blessed with no worse 
 fathers and mothers than mine. Then I have, or have had, rela- 
 tives and friends in numbers, members of the Church of England, 
 whose homes I will undertake to say are to all intents and pur- 
 poses as thoroughly Christian 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 distinguisliing them 
 from average specimens of the Anglican body. For a calm, 
 unpresuming, tiniform standard of practical Christianity, I
 
 ( so ) 
 
 have seen nothing as yet amongst ourselves in any country 
 superior 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 witnessed on earth. 
 It was a privilege to have witnessed it. It was not far from 
 Brackley. You may have known several such yourself. On 
 describing 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 Con- 
 tinent — our family prayers, 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 a fervid discourse, expatiate to a fashionable congregation 
 in Paris on the many lessons of piety which they had to learn 
 from their separated brethren on the other side of the Channel. 
 " Such, too, was our general practice," he said to me in a private 
 conversation, " before the Revolution : and we hope to recover it : 
 but as yet there are few families where it exists." Of my 
 countrymen he observed, "Leur bonne foi est acceptee pour leur 
 vraie foi." I took this explanation entrust 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 Sacraments 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 CathoHc Church are indebted likewise for all the progress 
 tliey 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 adminis- 
 tered in the Church of England but one were shams : and all 
 administered in the Church of Rome, without ex(?eption, realities,
 
 ( 51 ) 
 
 how comes it that we are not incomparably more exalted charac- 
 ters om-selves than we were formerly : or that Roman Catholic 
 comitries 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 degree to which the thing exists, not 
 whether it exists at all, which is in question. I have abeady 
 spoken of the eloquent sermon I heard preached in Paris, in 
 which the Christian practices of my old friends in England were 
 held up for imitation. The preacher himself had a history of 
 his own hardly less eloquent. He had quitted the cure of one 
 of the most important churches in Paris to found a religious 
 community for the purpose of raising the tone of the French 
 clergy. What had impelled him? Simply, the extremely 
 devout demeanour of two ci-devant Anglican clerg}^men lately 
 become Oratorians, whom he had watched saying their masses at 
 one of the altars in his own church from his confessional. Cer- 
 tainly they could not have said a Roman Mass before they became 
 Roman Catholic priests ; but for all their preliminary training in 
 piety they were beholden as certainly to the Communion which 
 they had just quitted : so that they who had been educated in 
 Anglicanism were the means of suggesting to a Roman Catholic 
 priest in France how much room there was for improvement in 
 the training of his fellow clergy. I have another anecdote to 
 tell of the same kind from what happened to me when in Spain 
 much more recently. I spent the latter part of Lent, including 
 Holy Week, at Seville : and had looked forward to the ceremonies 
 immediately preceding Easter there with no small interest. But 
 when the time for them arrived, I never saw services more 
 coldly conducted or more scantily attended, and ceremonies less 
 productive, in appearance at least, of any devotional feelings. I 
 returned from them each time pained and scandalised. About 
 the middle of Holy Week I fortunately had occasion to go to my 
 banker's ; and on entering I found a priest there waiting like 
 
 E 2
 
 ( 52 ) 
 
 myself to be served. Something induced me to accost him in 
 Eno-lish, on his replying to me in the same, we soon entered 
 warmly into conversation. He tm-ned out to be a young priest 
 who had " served his time "at the Brompton Oratory, though 
 not a native of England. I confided to him what I thought of 
 the services. He expressed no surprise : on the contrary he 
 dissuaded my going again to the churches I named. '^ Come to 
 our church," he said, '' and I think you will see things done as 
 they ought to be, and a very different style of congregation." I 
 went and found it all as he had told me. There was life in the 
 services, earnestness in the celebrants, devotion in the wor- 
 shippers. The Brompton Oratory, that heart-stirring creation of 
 old Oxford and Cambridge men, had sent out missionaries to 
 evangelise Seville. Nobody who had frequented and compared it 
 with the churches all round could dispute its claim to be the 
 beginning of a new order of things there. As I am in Spain 
 already, I may as well go on. From Seville I proceeded to a 
 small village in the neighbourhood of the Sierra of most primitive 
 description. There I remained several months. There was 
 early Mass most mornings of the week : but I seldom, if ever, 
 saw any but women at it : and these rarely more than from ten 
 to twenty. But on Sundays at High Mass, the church, which Avas 
 of considerable size for a village church, was crammed full of 
 men and women, the former thronging the choir as far as it 
 would contain them, where I sat myself. I took some pains to 
 examine, but I never could discover anybody, man, woman, or 
 child, in the whole congregation who used a book besides myself : 
 and whatever may have been their inmost feelings, which I do not 
 pretend to decipher, the countenances of the men bespoke nothing 
 but listless apathy. Vespers were invariably attended by the priest, 
 one cantor, and myself: in all, three, and to the best of my 
 remembrance, never more. There were no evening services of 
 any description while I was there. The only spark of devotion 
 I ever witnessed — and I record it with as much pleasure — was 
 that now and then I used to see parties of four or five women
 
 ( 53 ) 
 
 sitting outside their doors in the cool of the evening reciting 
 their chaplet. 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 neighbours 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 relationship that we understand by it. I could only 
 therefore account for the average respect that was paid him on 
 the supposition that such things were not uncommon. Altogether 
 I quitted this village feeling strongly that there was certainly 
 not more real Christianity practised in it than in my own native 
 parish in Wales, if so much : that the Welch there were better 
 educated and more intelligent in their devotions beyond com- 
 parison than these specimens of Andalusia, and that the clergy- 
 man there could not at all events have a woman sitting at the head 
 of his table who was neither his wife nor his relation. Yet this 
 was a country that had remained exclusively Koman Catholic 
 since its release from the Moors. From the south of Spain I 
 proceed to the garden of France, the heart of Tourraine. There 
 I passed some time pleasantly enough at a country house, 
 long before I joined the Koman Catholic Church : yet I studied 
 its workings then with no less interest. As there was no 
 Anglican church within reach, I accompanied the family to the 
 parish church, from two to three miles off, just about the distance 
 of my own at home. Church-going was confined to Mass on 
 Sundays, high or low : Low when any of the family communicated, 
 which was never oftener than once a month ; High Mass other- 
 wise. This was the only public service, to which anybody, 
 speaking generally, went in the neighbourhood : and that over, 
 everybody met, gossiped, and promenaded up and down the 
 village till the carriages were ready to take them home. This 
 was precisely the custom of my own neighbourhood : but with 
 this difference, that most of the gentry came to church twice on 
 Sundays, and some of them likewise to occasional services during 
 the week in Lent, Advent, or Christmas-time. There was one
 
 ( 54 ) 
 
 circumstance connected with my Sundays in France, there or 
 elsewhere, which I shall not easily forget. I was always asked to 
 the best parties, and to the best hunting or shooting, on Sundays : 
 and being a keen sportsman in those days, it was no small act of 
 self-denial in obedience to my Anglican principles to forego the 
 latter. AVell ! the finest ''battue" to which I ever had a chance 
 of going was at an historic chateau not far from where I was 
 staying in Tourraine, where, by the way, the church stood just 
 outside the grounds, and the lady of the chateau, to her credit be 
 it spoken, attended Mass daily : the usual congregation, however, 
 being lierself and the acolyte, besides the priest. As this battue 
 was on Sunday, I declined it equally and went to church. Im- 
 mediately before the Gospel — just in time to save Mass, that is 
 — a bustle was heard outside the building which made the con- 
 gregation look up : and presently the principal actors in the 
 "chasse" entered, leaving their guns, dogs, and game Avith their 
 retainers in the porch, who were thus corporally present. With 
 the last Gospel they had disappeared to resume their sport. I 
 thought then, and still think, that so far we did things in reality 
 better in England a hundredfold, notwithstanding that appear- 
 ances were kept up there. I could fill a volume with anecdotes 
 to the same effect, all gathered from personal experience during 
 my travels abroad in most parts of Europe and round the 
 Mediterranean : but I can only find space here for one more, 
 which I select from the point of comparison still being with my 
 own native parish in Wales. This parish was a Vicarage from 
 which the Incumbent drew £150 a year or thereabouts, and a 
 dignitary of the Mother Church of the diocese 4^1100 or ^1200 a 
 year. The Ecclesiastical Commissioners have since removed 
 this grievance — a practical grievance it was — and have subdivided 
 the parish. Passing one summer at Porto di Fermo when it was 
 Papal territory, I frequented the church there, which was always 
 well attended by both sexes, on week-days as on Sundays, and 
 was greatly edified by the earnestness and devotion of the parish 
 priest, I inquired what his salary was, and was told, and if I
 
 ( 55 ) 
 
 remember right he confirmed it to me with his own lips, that it 
 amounted to no more than ^80 or two thousand francs. The 
 Cardinal Archbishop, some of the parishioners told me with 
 much warmth, was in the enjoyment of what we should 
 call the great tithes: ''and we never see him," they added, 
 "except as he passes to or from his villeggiatura in the neigh- 
 bourhood where he spends his vast wealth." I cannot, of 
 course, vouch for the entire accuracy of their statements, I only 
 know that they described it as a gross abuse : and were them- 
 selves amongst those most constant at church. Possibly this 
 grievance may not exist now. 
 
 To come to my conclusions. The conviction impressed upon 
 me by what I have heard and seen at home and abroad is that 
 English Christianity — 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 genuine, and for ordinary pur- 
 poses as beneficial, as what is found in other nations — France, 
 Spain, and Italy, for instance — so that either it is produced, fed, 
 and nourished by all the Sacraments, as theirs is : or else, pro- 
 duced, 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 Sacraments, 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 geographically : its 
 peculiarities are of a piece with the national character, itself 
 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 lan- 
 guage, and of uprightness and manliness in conduct : and a stilJ 
 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 disposition to criticise, too little faith in the Unseen, As
 
 ( 56 ) 
 
 a general rule, Roman Catholics are weak where Anglicans are 
 strongest, and strong where Anglicans fail. Such results are due 
 to the system in each case, shewing imperfections in each. 
 Anglicans may he compared with Roman Catholics in this 
 country, as hoys 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 Universities of 
 Paris, Munich, or Padua. Fundamentally, their faith and prac- 
 tice is the same : but they have been formed after different models 
 in both. I trust the day is not far distant when the religiously 
 minded in both Communions will insist on associating together as 
 brethren, and learning from each other as Christians, and com- 
 bining for works of charity without distinction of nations. Too 
 long — much too long — have they been kept in ignorance of each 
 other, and thus prevented improving each other, through prejudice. 
 The two points on which alone I notice any sensible difference 
 between my own devotional practices in former days and now, 
 are praying for the souls of the departed and invoking the saints 
 in glory. Both practices I can unhesitatingly pronounce from 
 experience to be full of comfort and profit, of elevating and puri- 
 fying influences : I am sorry for those who live in ignorance or 
 neglect of them : and I can hardly imagine any person who has 
 tried them in a spirit of faith honestly abandoning them. Still 
 every fresh page I read of Church history in the 14th and 15th 
 centuries convinces me more and more of the awful profanity 
 that had attached to both in those days, and as even in the 
 Roman Catholic manuals of devotion I use myself there are fre- 
 quent hyperboles of language that I could never adopt, and 
 should desire to see cancelled above all things,* I cannot consider 
 
 * I instance but one such, p. 29 of our Vade Mecum, " lioly Virgin Mary, 
 Mother of Mercy, xtrcservc me this night from all evil, whether of bockj or souV 
 The meaning of course is, "Pray God to preserve me." How much more would 
 it have cost to have had this printed in full : or how much longer time would it 
 take to say? I must add that I constantly hear sermons [up and down England] 
 on S. Mary that are little more than legends, drawn from the Apocryphal 
 Gospels, or no better source.
 
 ( 57 ) 
 
 the excessive caution of the Church of England altogether 
 directed against a thing of the past, and without excuse now. 
 Words employed in non-natural senses are dangerous stumbling- 
 blocks in any Communion. Our own liturgical offices were care- 
 fully weeded at the time of the Council of Trent, and contain no 
 such extravagances. It would be well if we were never on any pre- 
 text allowed to exceed their measured language in our private 
 forms. Neither our liturgical forms, indeed, as they now exist, 
 any more than our private forms, embodying such devotions, 
 were known to the primitive Church : and therefore the lack of 
 them in the Church of England, however much to be regretted* 
 on all accounts, cannot affect the essence, though it may impair 
 the tenderness, of the Christianity taught and imbibed there. 
 I am therefore satisfied that the Christianity taught and imbibed 
 there differs in no fandamental quality from that with which I 
 have been conversant since joining the Roman Communion. I 
 am morally certain that I have frequented the same Sacraments in 
 both with profit : consequently I feel that I could die equally well 
 in the one or the other : and can see no reason for changing from 
 one to the other except on secondary grounds, or unless driven to 
 it. '^ When they persecute you in this city " — of Israel, that is — 
 *'flee ye into another" was not said for the Apostles alone. 
 In conclusion, it is my firm persuasion still — indeed much more 
 so than in 1853, when I published my first book* — that should 
 Christendom ever be re-united, it will go down to posterity as 
 having been brought about mainly by those who had been born 
 and educated in the Church of England. 
 
 With these convictions, it may seem superfluous in me to add 
 my belief that having been ordained priest in the Church of 
 England, I am a priest still. But I desire to state this explicitly 
 because of the disparagement lately cast upon Anglican Orders 
 on general grounds by a great name amongst us. To the his- 
 torical argument he will have nothing to say : therefore I will 
 only remark on it, that having examined it thoroughly, I am as 
 * Called the " Connter-Theory," pp. 212—23.
 
 ( 58 ) 
 
 convinced of its tenableness as of anything of the kind in 
 Church history. And as to the form, on which he is equally 
 reserved, I can only say that either the Anglican ordinals in use 
 now or formerly must be allowed adequate, or else most of the 
 primitive forms — to say nothing of those still used in the East — 
 must be pronounced inadequate. On jurisdiction, I need not 
 reiterate what I have said already, or am about to say. ''Who 
 is the custos of the Anglican Eucharist?" is his chief difficulty. 
 " Could I, without distressing or offending an Anglican, describe 
 what sort of custodes they — the Anglican clergy — have been and 
 are to their Eucharist ?" My Lord, it is anything but my inten- 
 tion to excuse or extenuate the scandalous irreverence that pre- 
 vailed shortly before our own 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: Papavero culpam et poenam," 
 and the like. But, taking our own views 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 precautions taken whenever the Pope celebrates Mass 
 most solemnly, 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 coutumede faire I'epreuve 
 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 
 an Prelat-Sacriste. Quand celui-ci I'a recu, le Cardinal-diacre 
 prend de nouveau I'une des deux qui reste : et apres I'avoir fait 
 toucher interieurement et exterieurement au calice et a la patene, 
 il la consigns au Pr^lat-Sacriste, qui doit la consommer aussitot, 
 ainsi que la premiere, le visage tourne vers le Pape. Le troisi^me
 
 ( 69 ) 
 
 et derniere liostie est employee pour le sacrifice. Le Cardinal 
 prend les burettes du vin et de I'eau, en vers' un peu dans la 
 coupe, que lui presente le Prelat-Sacriste, dont ce dernier doit 
 boire immediatement le contenu."* 
 
 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 Eeformation. So that 
 notwithstanding our high views of it, the worst known profana- 
 tions of it have been amongst ourselves. 
 
 I admit 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 
 favourably as I do now : because I regarded it as the effect of 
 schism — wilful 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,t and am far from intending to re- 
 tract all that I said then : but having since discovered the general 
 system of Church government in which England, in common with 
 all other Western nations, had up to that time acquiesced, to have 
 been based upon forgeries, and opposed to the genuine code of 
 the Church, I as unhesitatingly recognise 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 
 -svinds every link of the false chain that had enthralled it hitherto, 
 to return to the letter and spirit of those genuine canons, stamped 
 with the assent of the whole Church, and never repealed. Sup- 
 posing this done, even the act of S. Augustine and his companions 
 in establishing the jurisdiction of the patriarch of the West over 
 this island is found illegal, having been declared null and void by 
 anticipation in the eighth Canon of the Council of Ephesus 
 already quoted : " So that none of the bishops most beloved by 
 
 ♦ L'annee Litnrgique, p. 158. + Christendom's Divisions, pp. 198 — 223,
 
 ( 60 ) 
 
 God do assume any other province that is not, or was not 
 formerly and from the beginning, subject to him, or those who 
 were his predecessors. . . . But if any one introduce a regulation 
 contrary to the present determination, the Holy General Synod 
 decrees that it be of no force." It is idle, or worse than idle, to 
 assert that S. Augustine found England subject to Kome when he 
 arrived : and it is quite true that he accomplished its subjection 
 two centuries and a half or more previously to the publication of 
 the pseudo-decretals ; but it is no less true that its subjection 
 was accomplished in the teeth of this canon, as well as of the 
 protest* of the native episcopate that he found in possession. It 
 may well be doubted whether S. Gregory was ever properly made 
 acquainted with their prescriptive claims : in any case, what was 
 then effected with his sanction was precisely what S. Leo the 
 Great informed the East the canons would not allow of his con- 
 ceding to the Constantinopolitan patriarch Anatolius at the 
 fourth Council. The wily forger of the pseudo-decretals had his 
 eye upon all such '^ accomplished facts" in the West when he 
 compiled his code, and either founded his maxims upon them or 
 else sought to legitimatise them by the high authority which he 
 claimed for his maxims. Both, therefore, necessarily belong to 
 the same category : neither can one possibly stand without the 
 other. Anglican divines have long cited this ordinance of the 
 Council of Ephesus in proof of their canonical independence of 
 the jurisdiction of Rome : but they ought in fairness to have 
 acknowledged themselves at the same time bound by the Sardican 
 canons, that British bishops assisted in passing, admitting and 
 regulating appeals to the Pope. This, I conceive, will be found 
 to be the true limit of what is due to the Pope from England, 
 according to the genuine law of the Church. The primatial See 
 of England, whether at Caerleon or elsewhere, was originally 
 independent and autocephalus, and never should have been made 
 amenable to his jurisdiction as patriarch, w^hether for consecration 
 or any similar purpose. 
 * Given in Cave, Church Govt., p. 251, from Spelman's Concil. Brit,, a.d. 601.
 
 ( 61 ) 
 
 I am well 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, you will scarce 
 accuse me of being influenced by personal 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. Neither is it against individuals nor yet systems, 
 but abuses and perversions of systems, that I wage war. 
 When I was in the enjoyment of a Fellowship at Oxford we were 
 all living in the hourly neglect of statutes which every one of us 
 had sworn to observe, and I was one of those who demanded that 
 either those statutes should be repealed formally, or else kept 
 honestly. Still as our breaches of them had accumulated gradu- 
 ally, and become law insensibly, how could I have laid the blame 
 of them on the existing or immediately preceding generations of 
 Heads and Fellows, and reviled them, as unprincipled or dishonest 
 men ? In the same way I mean neither disrespect nor disafiec- 
 tion to the living authorities of the Eoman Catholic Church, 
 when I draw attention to the undeniable fact that they are daily 
 violating the law of the Church. What I criticise has been the 
 work of centuries, commenced ages since, and what all of them 
 together, were they ever so righteously minded, could not possibly 
 change all at once, still less make perfection. Again, what I 
 criticise is not the faith of the Popes, but their governmental 
 policy, and that only since they became temporal princes as well 
 as bishops, and not before. Their court and see having been all 
 one for practical purposes since the establishment of the former, 
 it would be vain to attempt drawing the line between them, 
 especially as it is their joint action upon the Church, not upon 
 empires or men in general, to which the verdict of history is most 
 adverse. I am well aware, and have frequently spoken, of the 
 services rendered by Kome to the nations of Europe, morally, 
 socially, and religiously, in promoting their civilisation, in many 
 respects a most up-hill task ; and for these 1 am inclined to
 
 ( 62 ) 
 
 think there are some arrears of gratitude still due to it from 
 Europe, and perhaps never likely to be settled, though I suppose 
 none benefited more largely by their achievements in the middle 
 ages than the Popes themselves. But when I contemplate 
 the divisions of Christendom, past and present, and search his- 
 tory for their origin, I find it is the conduct of the Popes, more 
 than anything else, for the last thousand years, in governing the 
 Church, which has divided the Church. First of all, they allowed 
 crowned heads to tamper with the Creed of the Church, if not to 
 the unsettling of her faith, at least to the dividing of her house- 
 hold. Secondly, they allowed a spurious code to be brought into 
 gradual use, without troubling themselves to refer to their own 
 archives for proofs of its origin, and ultimately to overlay and be 
 taken for the genuine laws of the Church. Thirdly, they coun- 
 tenanced one part of the Church, then in a minority, making war 
 upon, and taking possession of, not merely the temporalities, but 
 the ecclesiastical revenues and sees of the other part of the 
 Church, then in a majority, to the ruin of Christianity, and 
 triumphing of the Crescent over the Cross in those parts eventually, 
 whence the Gospel had first sped. They countenanced all this, 
 because it brought gain and aggrandisement to themselves and 
 to their see, conformably with the maxims of the false, but in 
 opposition to the maxims of the true code. Fourthly, as I have 
 proved elsewhere,* they put off reforming the Church in their own 
 patriarchate by fair means, till Providence permitted that it should 
 be done by foul. Such is the verdict of history upon their con- 
 duct as Church governors since they became princes. I am far 
 from pretending to have brought to light any facts that are not 
 well known, though I may have grouped them together in 
 one focus. 
 
 This being the case, my Lord, I ask how it is that there is not 
 
 the slightest allusion to these facts in the invitations which have 
 
 been issued to the forth-coming Council ? Rome has spoken : 
 
 but I can discover nothing in what she has said like a confession 
 
 ♦ Christendom's Divisions, Part I. pp. 128 — 153.
 
 ( 68 ) 
 
 of sins, or of the justice of God in punishing them — expressions 
 of regret for the past, or promises of amendment in future. 
 All Christendom has gone astray save she. Of all institutions, 
 the Popedom alone stands erect : has never erred on any subject 
 whatever, has never been otherwise than what it is now : has 
 preserved its integrity, as well as its faith, unsullied. It alone 
 has never caused divisions, or driven Christians into revolt : it 
 alone has never done anything for which it has cause to blush or 
 repent. ^' I am and none else beside me ... I shall be as a lady 
 for ever : I shall not sit as a widow, neither shall I know the loss 
 of children." — Babylon loquitur, non Jerusalem. Three hundred 
 years ago there was a Pope who spoke differently, and told men 
 the truth. With what general applause, and sympathy of the 
 good and earnest in all lands, would such candour as his have 
 been reciprocated, had it been copied in what we have just heard ! 
 ^'You will also say," continued Adrian VI. to his legate, 'Hhat 
 we frankly admit that Cod has permitted this judgment to fall 
 upon His Church for the sins of men, chiefly priests and prelates 
 of the Church . . . We know that in this holy seat there have 
 been many enormities, now for some years past, and abuses in 
 spiritual things, excesses in what has been ordained, all things 
 in short perverted . . . Wherefore, it is necessary that we should 
 aU give glory to God, and humble our souls before Him, and see 
 each one of us from whence he hath fallen." 
 
 An invitation to a general humiliation might well have preceded 
 invitations from the Pope to any Council for re-uniting Christen- 
 dom. Again, in inviting people to a Council for that purpose, 
 was it wise to insult them ? The Easterns are adjured to come 
 to it as their predecessors came to the Councils of Lyons and 
 Florence : but to each of these Councils the authorities of the 
 Eastern Church received a formal invitation, designating them 
 by their respective titles, and at the Council of Florence sat 
 and deliberated with Western bishops upon equal terms : nor was 
 it till they were gone, that deputies from the descendants of 
 heretical bodies — Nestorian or Monophysite — were introduced.
 
 ( 64 ) 
 
 All bishops of the Eastern rite, no matter what their ante- 
 cedents, arc placed in the same category by Pius IX. : for 
 what purpose, unless to deter the most considerable from coming, 
 it would be difficult to say. In the same way, non-Catholics, 
 that is to say, non-Roman Catholics, are treated as a rabble 
 without guides, a flock without shepherds, indiscriminately : as 
 though all had been equally bereft of organisation, and all alike 
 were devoid of intelligence. Yet part of this rabble has lived 
 under episcopal government for 300 years, and every endeavour 
 was made to get bishops sent from it to the Council of Trent, 
 and it knows something of the controversy between it and Rome, 
 to say the least. Then what of its mighty offshoots in the New 
 AYorld and in the Colonies? Altogether the latent " animus " 
 that unprejudiced persons would be likely to detect in both invita- 
 tions is, that they should be declined — declined in order that, the 
 Council being confined to those beholden to the Pope for their 
 mitres, his prerogatives might be secured against losing, even if 
 they should not gain, anything by its meeting. 
 
 If it is otherwise — if Rome is sincerely bent upon re-uniting 
 Christendom — the whole thing lies in a nutshell, and is in fact 
 already done. Two maxims honestly carried out would alone 
 suffice for re-uniting Christendom. The first is ancient and 
 well known : "Nullum tempus prsescribit Ecclesicie." This is 
 apt in general to be applied to Church lands and endowments. 
 It must apply with infinitely more force to Church laws, accepted 
 everywhere, that have never been repealed. No mere disuetude 
 can make thenr null and void. The other maxim has recently 
 been chosen in this controversy for their motto by a learned 
 body, to whom I am never tired of confessing my obligations, 
 the Society of Jesus in England — ''Peace through the truth." 
 If they will only bring their immense influence to bear in 
 enforcing this maxim wherever falsehood is proved, one of the 
 first consequences will be that the False Decretals, and all that 
 has been founded on them, will go to the wall. I have already 
 quoted the opinion of their learned brethren on the other side of
 
 ( 65 ) 
 
 the water, to the effect that this spurious code supplanted the 
 discipline that had reigned paramount in the Church up to that 
 time, and is the basis of the discipline that reigns now. Let it be 
 repudiated honestly, therefore, and the ancient discipline of the 
 Church will once more be revived in full force. Let us see what 
 effect this would have on the divisions of Christendom. First, 
 in accordance with the dogmatic canon appended to the definition 
 of the 4th, 5th, and 6th Councils, the Nicene Creed would cease 
 to be used in any but the form in which it existed then. I need 
 hardly remind your Lordship that as it existed then, the article 
 in dispute was couched in Christ's own words : '' Who proceedeth 
 from the Father " — His words that we have presumed to improve 
 upon in the form we use — By returning to them, we should, 
 in reality, be but deferring to Him. This, alone, would do 
 away with the principal ground of strife between the East and 
 West. Secondly, Rome would be confined, for ordinary juris- 
 diction, to the original bounds of her patriarchate according to 
 the 8th canon of the Council of Ephesus, in other words, to the 
 Continent of Europe : but she would receive appeals from 
 England and the rest of the West according to the Sardican 
 canons. Appeals from the East would be carried to Constan- 
 tinople, in conformity with the 9th and 17th canons of the Council 
 of Chalcedon. Thus the principal ground of strife between 
 England and Rome would be removed on the one hand, and all 
 intermeddling by Rome with the affairs of the East on the other. 
 Latin patriarchs of Greek sees would be out of the question. 
 A General Council, with the Pope in the first, and the Patriarch 
 of Constantinople in the second place, would be the last 
 resort — as the African bishops told Pope Celestine was the 
 true purport of the Nicene canons — for all alike. Thirdly, 
 what is of infinitely more importance to Christians generally, 
 desirous of living in peace and charity with their brethren 
 all the world over, no profession of faith would be required 
 from any seeking to be admitted to Communion in any Church, 
 but the Nicene Creed, according to the solemn import of the
 
 ( 66 ) 
 
 canon with which we commenced. When it was passed, all 
 the modern controversies on grace had been anticipated by the 
 followers of Pelagius, and there had been questions raised about 
 the sacraments and rites of the Church similar to those amongst 
 which we live. And still the language of that canon is most 
 emphatic — '' Those coming over from 2vhatsoever heresy to the 
 communion of the Church, are to be made to subscribe to the 
 Nicene Creed and no other." The Creed of Pius IV. might be 
 retained as discipline for the clergy, but it could no longer be 
 imposed on the laity. Plain Christians might therefore traverse 
 the world with no other passport to the Sacraments of the Church 
 in all lands than the Nicene Creed. 
 
 Christendom is one before God, and de jure, so long as 
 these laws form part of the code of the Church, and are not 
 repealed. It is only disunited de facto, because they are 
 infringed, and the executive of the Church is indifferent, or else a 
 party, to their infringement. If Rome is really the executive of 
 the Church, as she claims to be, is really desirous of unity, 
 she has nothing to do but bestir herself to bring herself and all 
 others to observe the laws. I have heard some persons assert 
 positively that she will never be capable of this effort till she 
 has been both disestablished and disendowed. May they be false 
 prophets ! 
 
 I have the honour to be, 
 
 My Lord Archbishop, 
 
 Your obedient and obliged servant, 
 
 E. S. Fr, 
 Octave of S. Edmund, 1868, 
 
 London: Swift & Co., Regent Press, 65, King Street, Regent Street, W,
 
 • '^'■■•^: 
 
 
 ^ ' \ 
 
 i^fir^i 
 
 
 ^rf^i.l;:':,:.^;.',::/..