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Catholicism .
Roman and Anglican

CATHOLICISM: Roman and
Anglican • By A. M. Fairbairn
m.a. d.d. ll.d. Principal of Mansfield
College Oxford ,j£ <£ dt

NEW YORK : CHARLES
SCRIBNER'S SONS **
153 FIFTH AVENUE 1899

IV1

TO
My Friends and Colleagues
THE TUTORS OF
MANSFIELD COLLEGE OXFORD

Contents

i
PAGES
THE CHURCHES AND THE IDEAL OF RELIGION . 1-47
§ 1. Distinction between Religion and Church . . i-g
1. The Churches as means ; Religion as end.
2. Have the Churches fulfilled their mission ?
§ 2. Relation between Theology and Polity . . 9-14
I. Methods of study.
2. The idea of Religion fundamental.
§ 3. The Idea of Religion  14-22
I. Analysis of Religion.
2. Principles involved.
i. Determinative idea, the idea of God.
ii. Causal idea, God's relation to man.
iii. The religious man and society as realizing this
relation.
3. Religion lives in the light of eternity.
§ 4. The Ideal of Religion embodied in Jesus Christ . 22-32
1. The contrast with the priest and scribe.
2. Love of God and love of man.
3. The Kingdom of God and its citizens.
5. The Ideal of Christ and the Christian Churches 32-40
1. The ideal of the Anglican Revival.
2. Criticism of this as an interpretation of the religious
ideal.
3. Good ecclesiasticism, bad Christianity.
§ 6. How the Ideal is to be realized  40-47
I. The conversion of man.
2. The regeneration of the race.

II
CATHOLICISM AND THE APOLOGY FOR THE FAITH 48-93
§ 1. The Question to be discussed  48-51
§2. The need of a Relevant Apology for the Faith 51-61
I. Apologetic must recognize current principles of thought.
2. Modern doubt the creation of honest inquiry.

CONTENTS

§ 3. Deism and Apologetics in Catholic France and
Protestant England  61-72
I. Scepticism victorious in France ; Apologetics in
England.
2. Political and religious questions identified in France,
distinct in England.
3. Doubt still most radical in Catholic countries.
4. Roman Catholic apologetic for religion must be an
apologetic for the Church.
§ 4. The Anglo-Catholic Movement and Religion in
England  72-80
1. Universal influence ofthe movement.
2. The regeneration of the English Church,
3. Catholicism- Anglicized.
§5. Whether the. Catholic Apology was equal to
the need  80-93
I. The movement did a true apologetic work.
2. Defects of the apologetic.
3. The apologetic that might have been.
4. The failure of the apologetic. Ill
CATHOLICISM AND RELIGIOUS THOUGHT . . 94-140
§ 1. The Catholic Revival as the Counter-Revo
lution  96- 1 11
I. The literary, political, and religious aspects.
2. The new Catholic apologetic.
i. Theoretical : authority the basis of religion.
ii. Historical : the Church as the maker of civili
zation.
3. Irrelevance of the apologetic.
§ 2. The English Counterpart of the Continental
Revival  m-116
1. Its basis also the authority of the Church.
2. Its peculiarity its personal nature.
§ 3. Philosophical Scepticism as the Apology for
Ecclesiastical Authority .... 116-130
1. Cardinal Newman the representative Catholic apolo
gist.
2. Theism identified with Catholicism, and based on
conscience.
3. Distrust of the reason.
4. The nature of man divided against itself.
§ 4. Whether the Scepticism or the Authority be
valid 
I. The exercise of intellect beneficial to religion.
2. Submission to authority the victory of unbelief.
3. Distrust of reason an arraignment of God.

'3°- 1 40

CONTENTS

IV PAGES
CATHOLICISM AND HISTORICAL CRITICISM . . 141-204
§ 1. The Ideas of God, Religion, and the Church . 143-150
1. Two constantly opposed conceptions of God.
2. Newman's doctrine of religion false to history.
3. Man's relation to God ever less direct.
§ 2. The Roman as the Catholic Church . . . 151-156
1. The appeal of the Roman Church to the imagination.
2. Has she a right to make it ?
§ 3. Whether it be possible to conceive Catholicism
as a development from the Religion of
Christ . . . . . . . . 157-167
I. Scepticism the basis of a mechanical supernaturalism.
2. Trite and false ideas of development.
3. The historical method must begin by finding the
primary form.
§ 4. How the Priesthood came into the Religion . 167-175
1. The religion of the New Testament non-sacerdotal.
2. The introduction of the priestly idea due to the in
fluence of the older religions and the Old Testa
ment.
§ 5. How the Church became a Monarchy . , 175-184
I. No infallible supremacy known to the New Testa
ment.
2. The Roman empire organized the Church.
3. Imperial supremacy became papal infallibility.
§ 6. The Ideas which organized the System . , 184-190
1. The unifying ideal came from Neo-Platonism.
2. Affinities between Plato's Republic and the Roman
Church.
§ 7. Catholicism in History  190-198
I. The historical achievement ofthe Roman Church.
2. Its disservice to the Christian religion.
3. The significance of modern history.
§ 8. Catholicism no sufficient organ for the Chris
tian Religion  198-204
1. The supernaturalism of Catholicism marvellous, Hot
mysterious.
2. Its radical defect the want of a trite supernaturalism.

REASON AND RELIGION  205-236
§ t. The Philosophical Scepticism of Cardinal New
man  206-214
1. The reason a ratiocinative instrument.
2. It is therefore unable to construe religious truth. b

CONTENTS

PAGES
§ 2. Correlation of the Subjective and Objective
Scepticism .  214-222
1. The reason cannot find God in nature.
2. What are the axioms of religion ?
§ 3. The Dialectical Movement towards Certainty 222-226
1. Incompetence of reason.
2. Reason and religion remain apart.
§ 4. Reason and Authority in Religion . . • 226-236
1. Significance of Cardinal Newman.
2. Authority of the Church, and of Christ and the
Bible, contrasted. VI
CARDINAL MANNING AND THE CATHOLIC RE
VIVAL  237-280
§ 1. The Biography  237-243
1. Its nature.
2. Its worth.
§ 2. The Character of the Man  243-253
I. A political craftsman in the arena of faith and reason.
2. The diplomacy of his conversion.
3. The opinions of those who knew him.
§ 3. His Conversion, its Process and Reasons . . 253-260
1. Its reasons : their origin and significance for him.
2. The logical process of his conversion and its limita
tions.
§ 4. His Policy within the Roman Church . . 260-265
I. The contrast between the Roman society and its
Tractarian converts.
2. Manning's policy and aims.
§ 5. Manning as Roman Churchman under Pius IX. 265-275
1. His ideal the sovereignty of the Pope in English
Catholicism.
2. Newman's Oxford scheme.
3. The Vatican Council.
§ 6. Manning under Leo XIII. more English, less
Roman  276-280
I. Manning's later days.
2. The lessons of the Catholic Revival.
VII
ANGLO-CATHOLICISM -. THE OLD' AND THE NEW . 281-348
§ 1. The Outer Factors of the Revival . . . 284-296
I. The separation in idea of the civil and the eccle
siastical.
2. The High Church parly and the Evangelicals.
3. Romanticism.

CONTENTS

§ 2. The Makers of the Revival ....
I. Keble.
2. Newman.
3. Pusey
§ 3. The Anglo-Catholic Theory 
I. The authority of the Church.
2. The lack of historical spirit.
§4. The Anglo-Catholics and Literature.
I. Its lack of representation in poetry.
2. Its small achievement (Newman excepted) in
religious thought.
§ 5. The Anglican and the Broad Church
I. The Broad Church ideal of a National Church.
2. The way in which the Broad Church helped the
Anglo-Catholic movement.
§ 6. The Theological Idea in the Anglican Mind .
I. The doctrine ofthe Incarnation made central.
2. The influence of the new idea.
§ 7. The Theological Idea in the Church .
I. The Church conceived as " naturally of a piece with
the Incarnation."
2. The change in the idea of authority.
§ 8. The Church and the Age 
I. The Age is a trying one for the Anglo-Catholic
theory.
2. Sacerdotalism is less than Christianity.

PAGES
296-307

"THE FOUNDATIONS OF

VIII
BELIEF '

§ 1. The Statesman as Divine 
I. Historic instances.
2. Mr. Balfour's purpose.
§ 2. The Critical Philosopher as Positive Theologian
1. The defects of the criticism of Transcendentalism.
2. The criticism of " Naturalism."
3. Mr. Balfour's attitude not, like Hume's, philosophic
doubt, but doubt of philosophy.
4. Philosophic Scepticism no help to Faith.
§ 3. The Philosophy of Theology ....
I. The problem of Religion : Mr. Balfour's method.
2. What Mr. Balfour means by authority.
3. Criticism of Mr. Balfour's theory.
i. Reason must be distinguished from reasoning.
ii. Is authority non-rational ?
iii. Reason is ever modifying belief.
iv. Can psychological climate justify belief ?
§ 4. The Theology of the Philosopher

307-312 312-318 318-323 324-330 330-335
335-348

349-388
351-359
359-371

371-384

384-388

CONTENTS

IX
SOME RECENT ENGLISH THEOLOGIANS
§ i. The Cambridge Scholars and Divines.
I. Lightfoot, Westcott, and Hort contrasted.
2. What made them a School.
§ 2. The Oxford Scholars and Divines
i. Benjamin Jowett 
ii. Edwin Hatch 
I. The Bampton Lectures.
2. The Hibbert Lectures.
3. Hatch and his Critics
§3. Comparison as regards Mind and Methods of
Hort and Hatch 
1. Hort preferred silence to possible error ; Hatch the
contrary.
2. Hort read Christianity as the interpretation of the
universe.
3. Hatch confined himself to pure historical inquiry.

PAGES
389-436393-406

406-429 406-412 413-429

429-436

X
OXFORD AND JOWETT  437-481
§1. Oxford University and Colleges. . . • 439~44&
I. The end of the college is the culture of men : of
the university, the cultivation of learning.
2. Oxford in the eighteenth century : the supremacy
of the colleges fatal to both scholarship and
culture.
§ 2. Oxford and its Sons in Two Centuries . . 446-458
I. The change that came with the nineteenth century.
2. The Oxford movement.
3. Broad Churchmen and men of Literature.
§ 3. Jowett as Reformer in University and College 455-460
I. His despair ofthe University.
2. His success in the College.
§ 4. Jowett as Scholar and Thinker .... 460-468
1. His lack of interest in scholarship and dislike of
metaphysics.
2. How this separated him from Maurice, but attracted
him to Plato.
3. Comparison of Jowett and Mark Pattison.
§ 5. Jowett as Theologian and Churchman . . 468=481
1. His religious reserve.
2. His attitude to subscription.
3. His idealism in religion.
4. Jowett contrasted with Dean Stanley.
5. His persistence and its success.

INTRODUCTION
THE Studies collected in this volume may fairly
claim to be neither sporadic nor occasional
essays, but chapters of a coherent and progressive
work. While written at different times, they are
yet products of continuous reading and reflexion on
the problems they discuss. They have all been care
fully revised, here abridged, there enlarged, but they
have not been recast, nor have the notes of time and
circumstance been erased.
The natural history of a book may have no great
significance for any one except the man whose
history it is. But there are cases where, apart from
it, the true inwardness of the book may be hidden
from the reader. Now what drew the author to the
field which he seeks here in part to explore was a
double interest — a religious and a philosophical, the
one being the direct outcome of the other. On the
religious side he was attracted by the men who had
been the makers and leaders of the Catholic Revival,
by what appeared their spirit of devotion, their sin
cerity, their simplicity of purpose and honesty of
belief in an age of intellectual complexity, unrest,
and ' change. They were picturesque figures, had
xiii

INTRODUCTION

stood out from the prosaic commonplace of the
modern day ; they had loved the sound of the battle,
had known how to handle their weapons, and how to
smite and slay and not spare. They appealed to his
imagination, lived amid something of the glamour
which magnifies and adorns, and they illustrated the
heroism that can at once contend for victory and
live unvanquished amid and after defeat. He feels
as if reverence for the men who have striven and
suffered for the faith ran in his blood. The heroes of
his boyish dreams were saints, and the saints heroes
who had, by being faithful unto death, consecrated
the hills and moorlands he loves. And the Church
men he had been taught to honour were not those
who walked in prosperous places and lived in com
fort with well-trained and conformable consciences ;
but those who had been too rigorous and veracious
of soul to profess a belief they did not hold. And
when in comparative youth he came upon Newman's
Apologia, it seemed as if he had come upon a man
of the ancient heroic strain. He was blind to the
transcendent art of the book, to its apologetic pur
pose, to the imagination which had idealized its
author even to himself; he only felt the passionate
conviction of the man, his obedience to the inexor
able logic which through the intellect ruled his will.
Hence came the desire to know more intimately this
marvellous personality and the men who surrounded
him, who influenced him, whom he influenced, the ideas
and aims they had in common, the cause for which

INTRODUCTION

they suffered, and the ends for which they strove.
But with the increase of knowledge came a discovery
that qualified the religious sympathy. Why did their
spirit express itself in the way it did, assume a form
and follow methods which were not only a protest
against all that the author's heroes, saints, and martyrs
had suffered for, but a denial of their heroism and
saintliness, and a reduction of themselves to vulgar
schismatics and of their beliefs to profane heresies ?
The more the men were approached from this side,
the more the picturesque colour faded from their
faces ; and the more they appeared as victims of
sectarian spites, ill-informed, prejudiced, and violent,
darkened by qualities which neither literary genius,
nor spiritual passion, nor religious emotion and aims
could dispossess of their intrinsic meanness.
The consequence was the formulation of a most
interesting problem, though, unhappily, a problem of
an order too common in religious history : — How was
it that intellectual or even ecclesiastical differences
could so pervert the judgment as to make men unjust
to a piety so pure and noble as to be a reproof to
their own? Did not this signify a moral defect, a
blindness which could not but dim the clearness or
lessen the sureness of their spiritual vision ? And this
vexing question became still more distressing when
it appeared that their own minds were not so simple
or so lucid and constant as had seemed. Some of
the " Tracts," and books like Froude's Remains, had
much in them to shock old-fashioned prejudices : and,

INTRODUCTION

of course, there are occasions when such prejudices
ought to be shocked. But here was a moral per
versity which would not be just to good causes and
better men. And in those early years, before the
imagination had idealized the Oxford men and move
ment, when the work was rough and the weapons
were even as the work, the persons who were thus
unjust showed themselves greatly in need of the
charity which thinks no evil, judges gently, and
hopes much. The man who looks back at them
through the serener atmosphere of to-day wonders
that they suffered so much ; the man who comes
to them through the literature of the times may
well wonder that they suffered so little and prevailed
so completely. For they not only wrote with cal
culated vehemence, but they boldly practised " eco
nomies," held back what they ought to have stated,
revealed their minds and purpose as those they
wished to -lead were able to bear it ; counselled
" reserve " and other things which men they inso
lently assailed or despised would have scorned to
do. It was a point which touched the writer closely ;
it moved him then and moves him now. Men
whose saintliness was to him a matter of experience,
of whom he could not think without, so to speak,
uncovering his soul as if in the presence of the
most Holy, were too near God and too like God
to be fit subjects of opprobrium by persons who
seemed so possessed of our commoner mortal frailties.
The religious interest thus passed naturally over

INTRODUCTION

into the philosophical. Why should a mind open to
truth be insensible to justice ? Why should those
.zealous for religion judge so falsely those who were
as religious as themselves, and who may have suf
fered infinitely more for conscience' sake ? The
question was more than a problem in casuistry ; it
involved principles that carried one down to the
very roots of things — the attitude of the mind to
religion as a whole, to God as truth and as right
eousness. But though this determined the philo
sophical problem in its earliest form, it did not by
any means fix its latest. On the contrary, it has
never ceased to keep enlarging and growing in com
plexity. We are face to face with all the forces
which make for differentiation in religion, tendencies
which, by throwing the emphasis now on its intel
lectual and now on its ethical side, here on its social
and political, there on its historical and traditional
elements, create new parties and new sects. And
we have seen in our own lifetime these tendencies
produce their ancient and invariable results ; and
these Studies may be taken as a contribution to the
discussion of this subject by the help of material
which contemporary men and movements have sup
plied. The author is not so vain as to think that
his contribution is more than a very partial handling
of the questions he would fain have discussed ; but
he can say with perfect truth that he has honestly
laboured to understand the men, and to render such
an account of them, the tendencies amid which they

INTRODUCTION

lived, and the movement they helped to create and
to guide, as need shame neither truth nor charity.
He may also plead that while these Studies have
everywhere had a very positive end in view, they
have not been written with a controversial purpose.
He has not attempted, indeed, to write with colour
less neutrality, for it has not been granted to him
on such questions to feel neutral or to be colour
less. But it is a mistake to imagine that a man with
out convictions can comprehend convinced men : the
men who are best radically disqualified for criticism
being only of two sorts, (a) those who think there is
no truth worth believing or contending for ; and (/3)
those who so hold their own beliefs as to see no reason
and recognize no truth in the beliefs of other men.
From these disqualifications the writer would like,
were he at all able, to keep himself tolerably free.
In preparing these Studies for the press the author
has had frequent occasion to review his own earlier
judgments. This is a process which it is good for
a man to have now and then to undergo, especially
as it is the most excellent, because the most effec
tive, of all methods for teaching him humility. But
in the present instance he feels that as regards his
graver judgments on men, tendencies, and prin
ciples, which he can truthfully say were slowly,
laboriously, and painfully reached, he has little to
modify and nothing to cancel or . recall. In parti
cular he would specify —
(a) The conclusions reached on the part intel-

INTRODUCTION

lectual scepticism played in the development of
Newman's mind and faith. There has been in our
century no character more difficult of analysis, no
intellect at once loftier and narrower, no greater
adept at reasoning or thinker more arbitrary in
selecting and defining the premisses from which he
reasoned ; no one who was more transcendently and
transparently sincere or so acutely sophistical, or
who had in such a degree the faculty for both logical
and moral analysis and the incapacity or distaste
for the higher speculation. His passion for certitude
was equalled only by his inability to find it in any
way save by the sacrifice of his intellectual pride ; and
there was nothing in which he gloried more than
the invincible logic which drove him to what was
at once the surrender and the realization of self.
(/3) The analysis of the course and tendency of
the Catholic movement, especially in its effects on
'the mind and status of the Anglican clergy. It has
been nothing short of a calamity to the English
Church that her claims to be Catholic have been made
to turn so much on the question of orders : for it has
disturbed the whole balance of the Anglican system,
and changed the ministry from being its means of
service into being its pillar and ground of truth. The
immense emphasis which has been laid upon the
apostolic descent of the priesthood, has created a
body which can only live by every priest feeling as
if he were himself invested with apostolic authority.
They have pleaded that they were a Catholic Church

INTRODUCTION

because they had an apostolic ministry ; but it was
easier to argue that their ministry was apostolic
than to organize Catholic unity and order. The
Anglican Church is here almost the exact opposite
of the Roman. There is no one the Church of
Rome more profoundly distrusts than the indepen
dent priest, no one whose existence it has contrived
to make so impossible within its ample but clearly
drawn borders. From the humblest parish priest
right up through bishop and archbishop to the Pope
himself, the dependence of the lower on the higher
office is consistent and complete. Rome is specially
careful of the priest in the act and article of abso
lution ; it fears the confessional even while it lives
to a large extent by the powers it gives. And so
it has jealously surrounded the penitent with a
means of protection against the confessor, and it
has with equal jealousy imposed upon the confessor
limitations he may not overstep, and responsibilities
he must not forget. But the Anglican priest is free
from the canonical laws which bind the Roman, and
he can work his inexperienced will, and often does
work it, not simply within the parish or congrega
tion, but even within the more sacred sanctuary
formed by the souls of its most pious members.
For the Anglican episcopate, even more than the
priesthood, is not as the Roman. It is in a cardinal
degree civil both as to its origin and as to the terms
on which it exercises jurisdiction and discipline.
The Bishop has to think not simply of administering

INTRODUCTION

a canon law, but much more of those secular courts,
juridical in mind, lega] in spirit and in method,
civil in sanction and in source, that may be called
upon to review, modify, or even disallow his judg
ment. And as he knows he can never act as if he
were a purely ecclesiastical authority, he has become
a master m the art of inaction, which tempts the
more convinced or daring of his clergy to become
masters in the art of doing as they list. The re
sult is an episcopate burdened with administrative
functions, but almost void of authority, judicial and
disciplinary. And as if out of sheer love of an
ironical situation, those of the clergy who have
most pleaded for an apostolical episcopate as the
condition of Catholic unity, defer least to the epis
copal voice. Thus after the Primate had spoken
out with remarkable courage on the questions most
keenly debated in the Anglican Church, an Anglo-
Catholic priest, typical in his devotion, in his piety,
in his self-denial and self-assertion, wrote to the
public prints to say that it was of vital importance
to realize that these primatial charges were " merely
the words of a single Anglican, however learned,
however exalted, however revered, and cannot in
any sense bind the conscience of any other AnglN
can." And he adds, " One can hardly imagine what
the Church of England would have been to-day, if
at any other period of her existence the ipse dixit
of the Primate, or indeed of the whole Episcopate,"
had been regarded as more than "the mind of in-

INTRODUCTION

dividual prelates." It would be hard to discover
a more extreme form of Protestantism. It is indi
vidualism so pronounced as to be a personal rather
than congregational independency. For this inde
pendence of the bishop finds its parallel in the in
dependence of the parish ; the writers who have
most exhaustively proved the ministry apostolic are
least able to discover who or what the laity are,
whether they are only " communicants," or " all
baptized and confirmed persons." And so the one
clear and certain divine order in the Church is the
priesthood ; and they, emancipated from the rule of
the bishops on the one hand, and the control of
the laity on the other, are free to follow the authority
which belongs to their descent. And this is the
high Catholicism which the Anglican has realized.
(7) Since the criticism of Mr. Balfour's Founda
tions of Belief was written, Professor Seth Pringle-
Patteson has published his genial and kindly
interpretation of that ingenious book. He has said
the most and best that can be said in its defence.
But he will not misunderstand me if I claim the
right of a criticized critic to say that his essay seems
to me an excellent example of hineinerklarung,
and saves Mr. Balfour's argument by sacrificing
much of his competence as a philosophical writer.
And this appears a rather harder measure than ought
to be dealt out to so very capable a student in the
field of philosophy.
The scope of the book is not so large as the title

INTRODUCTION

may seem to suggest. Catholicism, even as qualified
by Roman, does not here denote the Church of
Rome. Its system is not here in dispute. Were it
so, the work would have been quite other than it is,
both as regards matter and form. What is meant
is the Catholicism which grew out of the Anglican
Revival — the movement, with its Roman affinities
and ideals, which began in Oxford, and has so pro
foundly modified the religious temper and practices
of the English Church and people.
It only remains to add a single word of gratitude
to the editor of the Contemporary Review, where
these chapters originally appeared, for his kind con
sent to their republication.

I
THE CHURCHES AND THE IDEAL OF
RELIGION
§ I. The Distinction between Religion and Church
r. ^ ¦ AHE people of England seem to be at last
X awakening to the truth that to have a
chiirch or churches is not the same thing as to have
a religion. Churches are, that religion may be
realized : but it does not follow that to multiply or
enlarge churches is to realize religion. On the
contrary, it is possible by having too much church
to have too little religion ; the most perfectly or
ganized and administered ecclesiasticism may but
effectually imprison the living Spirit of God. The
churches are the means, but religion is the end ;
and if they, instead of being well content to be and
to be held means, good in the degree of their fitness
and efficiency, regard and give themselves out as
ends, then they become simply the most irreligious
of institutions, mischievous exactly in proportion
to their strength. Religion is too rich and varied a
thing to be capable of incorporation in any one church,
or even in all the churches ; and the church that
claims to be able to embody it, whether for a people
I

CATHOLICISM

or for humanity, simply shows the poverty and
impotence of its own religious ideal. It is a small
thing, nay more an easy thing, for a church to make
out its historical continuity and catholicity — that is
only a matter of deft criticism and courageous argu
ment; but it is a great thing for any church to have
created or to be creating a society correspondent
to the ideal of Christ.
Now, the truth that seems to be breaking upon
the English people is this — that they have still to
set about the realization of this ideal, and that to
accomplish it they must take some higher and nobler
way than the ancient method of founding and main
taining churches. What makes us feel so distant
from the religion of Christ, is not the amount of
belligerent and most audible unbelief, both of the
critical and uncritical order ; nor the relatively, and
to many good people dishearteningly, small number
of church-goers ; nor the failure of missionary zeal
to keep pace with the increase of the population and
its aggregation in large towns ; nor the number and
quality of the bodies that describe themselves as
churches, but other no less honourable bodies as
sects ; nor the decline in the churches of the love
that seeks to emulate, and the growth of the envy
that loves to disparage ; but something more radical
than any one of these, or even than all of them — the
small degree in which the Christian ideal has been
and is the constitutive and regulative idea of the
State and society in England. We have suddenly

THE CHURCHES AND THE IDEAL OF RELIGION 3
become conscious that our legislation and civiliza
tion have been too little penetrated by the spirit of
Christ, while so pervaded and dominated by the
spirit of selfishness, that they have been making hea
thens faster and more effectually than the churches
have been able to make Christians. The people feel
that the Church, satisfied with what the State has
done for it, has failed to stand by them in their dumb
quest after a fuller justice and a fairer freedom ; and
that they but do as they have been done by, when
they forsake the society which forsook them in their
sorest need. It is easy to be indiscriminate, to
speak without measure as to the rights of property
being the wrongs of man ; but evidences, too many
to be enumerated, prove that property and privilege
have been so conceived and guarded as to help in
the production of certain great social disasters and
dangers. The idea that the men who could best
assert their rights had the most rights to assert, has
been too potent a factor in the creation of our social
order, and may yet beget a reaction of the sort men
call revolution. The converse, indeed, were more of
a Christian principle — those least able to assert their
rights have, if not most rights to be asserted, most
need for their assertion ; for the things they claim in
weakness are the duties of those in power. And as
the religion which Christ revealed and embodied is
most jealous about the performance of these duties,
the church that neglects their enforcement abdicates
its truest social function. And it is because there has

CATHOLICISM

been such neglect in England that we are face to face
with so many grave problems — political, social, re
ligious. We have in our midst outcast masses,
multitudes who have lapsed into something worse
than heathenism, into merest savagery ; and have
done so, not through lack of religious agencies, but
simply through lack of religion, the absence or in
action of the higher Christian ideals in the mind,
heart, and conscience of the body politic. The worst
depravity, because the least open to reproof or
change, is not the depravity of the individual, but of
the class or State ; and the churches, while doing
zealous battle against the less, have too much for
gotten the greater. And now it is seen that neglect
brings the inevitable retribution. Our outcast are our
lapsed classes ; and it is easier to teach religion to the
heathen than to restore the lapsed. There is less
hope of a debased civilization than of the rudest and
frankest naturalism.
The judgment expressed in these sentences may
be thought too sweeping ; yet, however much he may
be inclined to qualify it, no thoughtful Christian man
can regard the religious condition of the English
people with a light or satisfied heart. Of course, a
determined optimism can find much to say in its own
behalf. It can reckon up the sums spent on build
ing churches, supplementing stipends, founding and
maintaining religious houses and institutions, pro
secuting missionary enterprises at home and abroad ;
and may victoriously argue that these sums are so

THE CHURCHES AND THE IDEAL OF RELIGION 5
immense as to prove the spirit of faith to be a living
and zealous spirit, devoted and self-sacrificing. It
can also appeal to the multitude of beneficent agencies
and benevolent institutions worked by the churches ;
and may veraciously enough affirm that without
them the hand of charity and generous helpfulness
would be almost, if not altogether, paralyzed. I am
far from wishing either to question these facts or to
deny the inference which may be most fairly drawn
from them. ; but the point lies here : Grant the facts
and the inference to be alike true, ought they to
satisfy the Christian conscience? or ought not that
conscience — in the face of the destitution, depravity,
utter and shameless godlessness, which exist in spite
of all the expenditure and efforts of the churches —
to be filled with deep dissatisfaction ? For what do
these evils mean ? That our society is to the degree
that they exist not only imperfectly Christian, but
really un-Christian ; that, so far as they were pre
ventable, Church and State have alike been forgetful
of their highest obligations, or unequal to their
performance. To cure an evil is a less excellent
thing than to prevent it ; and few things fill the
heart with deeper pity than the thought that there
are evils which ought not to have been, and would
not have been, if the Christian religion had so reigned
as to be sovereign in this realm. This is a sad and
humiliating reflection to men who believe that
Christianity is of God, instituted by Him that His
will might be done on earth as it is done in heaven.

CATHOLICISM

Centuries indeed are little to God ; but they are
much to man. The thousand years that are but a
moment in the presence of His Eternal Being, are a
large fraction of the period allotted to humanity.
Loss of good is to it an irretrievable loss ; and the
happiness of ages to come can never bless hapless
ages that have passed and perished. And if Chris
tianity has, in the course of its history, not done all
the good it was intended to do, and therefore ought
to have done, then the result has been an absolute
loss to man ; the possible best has not been reached
by him, the best possible has not been done by it.
2. Now, one main reason why our religion meets
with so much neglect and opposition is that it has
not prevented, or remedied in the measure man had
a right to expect of it, the evils from which he suffers.
Our modern Socialisms, Nihilisms, Secularisms, and
such-like, have not lived without a cause. In the
polemical method and by the polemical spirit they
can be easily dealt with ; in the supple and dexterous
hands of an apologetical protagonist they can be made
to look void of intellectual strength, full of political
and economical immoralities. But it is a small thing
to expose their mental or moral crudities — that in no
way ends their being or prevents their rise ; it is a
greater thing to inquire, Why are they?— what are
the causes and conditions of their existence ?  for to
ask this, may be to find a way to prevent their
formation and growth. They are but symptoms of
a disease ; cure the disease, and the symptoms will

THE CHURCHES AND THE IDEAL OF RELIGION 7
cease. Now, these Nihilisms and Secularisms of
ours have been born of the sense of evils religion
ought to have mitigated or remedied, but has not.
In despair of help from their natural helper, men
have taken counsel with despair. In our anti-
religious movements there is a dangerous fanaticism,
the child of passion, not of thought. The unbelief
the churches have to fear is not a thing of the
critical or rebellious reason, but of the hate begotten
of disappointed hopes. And because the hopes were
legitimate, the disappointment is natural. The poor
were right in expecting help from religion, in believ
ing that its mission was to lift them out of their
poverty, to make an end of the charities that are the
luxuries of the rich and the miseries of the poor, and
to create a society where freedom, justice, and plenty
were to reign. But the people are wrong in making
their revolt against religion, rather than against the
causes and conditions which have hindered its
realization. What they need is, not its destruction,
but its emancipation ; to destroy it were to destroy
the only foundation on which a society, which shall
be a free and ordered brotherhood, can be built ; to
emancipate it were to set all its ideal principles free
for creative and incorporative action in society and
the State. An order that is not moral can only be
one based on force and maintained by despotism ; an
order that is moral must be based on religion and
maintained by the principles that create and work
through free men.

8 CATHOLICISM

Here, then, there is raised a question of the deepest
interest : How, or under what conditions, can religion
be made most active and authoritative among a
people ? What agencies or forms do its ideals need
that they may work most creatively and towards
completest embodiment ? This is a question not con
cerned with the relations of Church and State, but
with the far more radical and determinative relations
of Church and Religion. There are no controversies
so wearisome and infructuous as our ecclesiastical,
but no problems of so vital and universal interest
as our religious ; and here we so touch the heart
of the matter that our ecclesiastical is sublimed
into our most living religious question. In seeking
the reasons why the State, the civilization, and the
society of England are not so Christian as they
ought to be, we cannot escape asking whether
blame attaches to the churches ? Proofs of historical
continuity and catholicity are but sad playthings
for the ingenious intellect, when urged in behalf
of churches confronted by such invincible evidences
of failure as are the miseries, the sins, the poverty
and want, the heathenisms and civilized savageries
of to-day. To find the causes of this failure in
the wickedness of man, were to make it stronger
than the religion ; to find them in the religion, were
to charge it with inherent weakness. But to seek
these causes in the churches, is to ask whether they
have fulfilled their mission, and whether they have
understood the mission they were meant to fulfil ;

THE CHURCHES AND THE IDEAL OF RELIGION O,
in other words, whether they have been so possessed
with the ideal of religion as to live for it and it only,
as to interpret it in the fittest forms and speech,
and work for its realization in the best possible
ways. In these questions we have our more im
mediate problem stated.
§ II. The Relation between Theology and Polity
1. Our problem raises indeed the question as to
the polity of the Church, but not in a form that
requires here detailed discussion. We postpone to
a later chapter any attempt at historical criticism
or adjudication between the claims of the rival
systems. All that is here necessary, is to determine
the relation between the, religious ideal and the
political form, which is the vehicle or medium
through which the ideal is translated into reality.
The vital questions in religion relate either to theo
logy or polity ; and these form so real and living
a unity that the latter may be regarded as the
organism or body through which the life or spirit
of the former is expressed and realized in the field
of personal and collective history. In theology the
main matter is, how are we to conceive the truth ?
But in polity, how can we best translate it into
concrete and living forms? In theology we are
concerned with the ideal contents and aims of
religion ; but in polity with the means and methods
for their realization. If the place and relation of
ecclesiastical polity be so conceived, then its funda-

IO CATHOLICISM

mental questions will touch the ideal on the one
hand, and the actual on the other; will bring us
face to face on the one side with the idea of religion,
and on the other with the forms in which it can
best be embodied, the institutions through which
it can be most completely realized. For a polity
to fail to understand the spirit and purpose of
religion, is to fail throughout ; to succeed anywhere,
it must succeed here. To express a true theology in
a living polity is, as it were, to charge a system with
the quickening and plastic potencies that can make
man live after the mind and as the image of God.
But if theology and polity be so related, then
the one must be studied and interpreted through
the other ; because it is necessary that they in
character and quality correspond throughout. Out
of the idea of the religion the notion of the polity
ought to grow ; to find the idea is to determine the
notion. This point of view will enable us the better
either to appraise or comprehend the more familiar
methods followed in discussions on this field. These
methods, which, though distinct, do not necessarily
exclude each other, may be described as the Biblical,
the Philosophical, the Political, and the Historical ;
but each of them assumes or implies some under
lying and determinative conception which gives to
its arguments all their relevance or cogency. This
deeper conception indeed determines the method to
be used, whether one or more is to be followed, and
on which the stress is to lie. Thus the Biblical

THE CHURCHES AND THE IDEAL OF RELIGION 1 1
method, building on a large doctrine as to the Bible
and the significance of the institutions it describes,
either makes the Mosaic state the ideal which
religious men ought to seek resolutely to realize in
a hagiocracy or hierocracy ; or it erects the apostolic
churches into the perfect and permanent model
which all future Christian societies ought to copy
and reproduce. By this method the polities of Rome
and Geneva, of the Anglican and the Independent
communities, have alike been defended. The Philo
sophical method, implying an exactly antithetical
Biblical doctrine, works constructively from a given
principle or series of premisses, say the idea of law
or order, which may be made to vindicate a papal,
episcopal, or presbyterian polity, according as the
thinker conceives the monarchical, the aristocratical,
or the republican to be the most perfect form of
government, most able to create order, to exercise
and develop the noblest life. The Political method
is indifferent or even hostile to all arguments that
assume an absolute standard or permanent divine
rule, and builds on expediency and prescriptive right.
It was the characteristic creation of the eighteenth
century, which, as became an age that had lost all
faith in the Ideal, cultivated the happy optimism
that identified the actual with the rational ; and, as
a consequence, resisted all change as bad, standing
strong in the conviction that there was no proof of
right like the fact of possession. But there are many
lofty and proud spirits who hate expediency, and

12 CATHOLICISM

believe that in matters of religion the only valid
rights are divine ; and to them the historical method
has offered a more excellent and agreeable way.
They have formulated to themselves, on the one
side, a narrow theory of history ; and, on the other,
as the mental basis of all their work, a large super
naturalism, which made light of impossibilities and
turned so much of the religious society as was"
constituted on given political lines, and stood in a
given succession, into the one church of Christ. And
they have then, by the help of a minute and curious,
though not scientific or open-minded scholarship,
laboured to represent this church of theirs as in
stituted of God, governed and inspired by Him,
secured from the moment of creation till now in
continuous being and activity by the orders and
instruments, symbols and sacraments that were the
conditions of His presence and the media of His
grace. 2. Now these differences of method are not arbitrary
or accidental ; they are the result of the underlying
differences of thought or belief, of theology and the
religious ideal. As this is, so must the polity be ;
it is the men who have no religious ideal that have
no ideal of polity, who, without any preference for
what ought to be, accept what is and defend it as
altogether of man— which is to them quite as good as
being altogether of God. The men, indeed, who have
most differed in method have often seemed to agree
in end ; those who have used, and those who have

THE CHURCHES AND THE IDEAL OF RELIGION 1 3
most deeply despised, the argument from expediency
have stood often together within the pale of the same
church, exponents and defenders of the same polity.
But the association was accidental, the agreement
only apparent, masking the utmost distance and
dissonance of spirit. The church defended by argu
ments from expediency is no city of God, no ideal of
the Eternal realized in time ; the church defended by
the claims of divine right and authority must be of
divine institution and guidance, to be a church at all.
The man who sees in the church a department of the
State, and the man who regards it as a direct and
miraculous creation of God, miraculously governed,
may by the irony of circumstances be ecclesiastical
brethren ; but in the region of fundamental belief
they are absolutely opposed, their only possible atti
tude to each other being one of radical disagreement
and contradiction.
This, then, brings out the point to be here empha
sized : in all such discussions the really cardinal matter is
the underlying conception, the determinative principle
or idea, the idea of religion. The ultimate questions
in ecclesiastical polity are religious. What have to be
dealt with are not so much opposed political systems
as religious conceptions fundamentally different and
distinct. But this position involves another : the
fundamental is the creative and regulative, or consti
tutive idea. And this means that the church must
be construed through the religion, not the religion
through the church. The one must harmonize with

14 CATHOLICISM

the other ; but the creative and normative idea is the
religion, the church the created and accordant. And
the latter must agree with the former, in order that
it may be its interpreter, the agent or medium for its
realization. But this again determines the order of
our subsequent discussions : we must discover and
define the idea of religion that we may find the ideal
which has to be realized. And once we have found
it, we shall be in a position to discuss and, if possible,
determine what kind or order of polity or institution
will best work its realization,
§ III. The Idea of Religion
i. Of the idea or nature of religion an exhaustive
discussion is not here possible ; the doctrine and its
implicates must simply be stated in the most general
way. Well, then, religion is here conceived neither
as knowledge, whether described with Jacobi as faith,
or with Schelling as intuition, or with Hegel as
thought; nor as feeling, whether it be, as with
Schleiermacher, the feeling of dependence, or, as with
the author of Natural Religion, of admiration, or, as
with Mr. Herbert Spencer, of wonder ; nor as a sort
of transfigured morality, whether it be represented
with Lessing, as a species of objective conscience,
meant to hasten the birth and action of the subjective
or with Kant, as duty apprehended as a divine
command, or with Matthew Arnold, as "morality
touched by emotion." Religion is no one of these,
yet it is all of these— and something more. Each of

THE CHURCHES AND THE IDEAL OF RELIGION 1 5
these definitions is simple only so long as there is no
analysis ; but under analysis they one and all become
as complex as the very notion they seek to define.
Religion, indeed, is too large and rich a thing to
be defined by any single term or reduced to any
single element, whether intellectual, emotional, or
moral ; it too completely covers and comprehends the
whole nature of man to be denoted by a name
borrowed from a section of his experience, or from
one department of his rational activity. And so one
may say that these definitions, taken together, would
give a better idea of religion than taken singly or
in isolation. There can be no religion without
thought, for a man must conceive an object before
he can sustain any rational relation to it ; not to
think, is to be without reason,-and where no reason
is, no religion can be. Nor can it be without feeling,
for feeling, though distinguishable, is inseparable
from thought. If we think, we must feel ; if we feel,
we are conscious first of ourselves as subject, and
next of a not-ourselves or object ; and it depends on
how we conceive the object whether our feeling be
one of dependence, admiration, or wonder, or an
emotion higher and comprehensive of all the three.
Nor can religion exist apart from conduct or con
science ; for man cannot conceive himself standing
in relation to a supernatural or a supreme power,
without feeling himself constrained to act either in
harmony with it or in opposition to it, and as subject
to its judgment either of approval or the reverse.

1 6 CATHOLICISM
And this involves the direct discipline of the moral
nature and the exercise of the moral judgment.
Where the product includes in an equal degree
intellectual, emotional, and moral elements, it cannot
be traced to the sole causation of either the intellect,
or the heart, or the conscience. We must find, then,
a notion of religion large enough to comprehend these
varied elements, able also to bind them into organic
and living unity. Now, if we look out for the most
general characteristic common to all faiths, we would
say that in religion man conceives and realizes him
self not as a mere sensuous and mortal individual,
but as spirit, and conscious spirit, who has overcome,
or who is endeavouring to overcome, the contradic
tions within his own nature, and between it and the
order or system under and within which he lives.
But so to conceive himself is to be for himself not
simply a transitory detached or isolated individual,
but a unit who is a member of an organic whole, a
being with universal affinities, and relations both to
the seen and the unseen — whether the unseen be con
ceived as the magic present in a fetish, or as collective
humanity in its past, present, and future, or as an
unknown force, or as a known and living God. It is
hence not necessary that religion be theistic, to be so
conceived ; it is meanwhile only necessary to see that
man so conceiving himself and his relations is re
ligious. But so conceived, religion becomes the con
scious relation of man as spirit to the creative and
universal and regnant Spirit, under whatever form he

THE CHURCHES AND THE IDEAL OF RELIGION 1 7
may conceive Him ; in other and homelier and more
perfect words, religion is the relation realized by the
man who knows the love of God, loves God, and
feels bound to express his love in the fittest and
surest ways. Here thought, feeling, and conduct are
all contained, and stand in living and inseparable
unity. He who loves God knows God, lives in
harmony with the will he loves, and for its ends.
2. But it is necessary that some of the more sig
nificant principles implied in this position be made
explicit. i. The determinative idea in religion is the idea of
God. A religion always is as its deity is — indeed,
the former is but the latter become explicit, as it were
the explicated idea of Him. As the one is conceived,
the other must be through and through. A religion
is perfect in the degree that its conception of God is
perfect; it is the way in which a church thinks of
God that determines its religious place and power,
whether it be a standing or a falling church. And
so where God is conceived as the Absolutely Good,
as if He were the personalized moral energy of the
universe working beneficently on behalf of each and
of all, there the religion ought to be as if it were the
organized beneficence of humanity, the power that
works by divine inspiration for human good. For a
religion not to be as its God is, is to be a thing of
falsest nature, a satire on sincerity, a contradiction to
the very idea of the truth.
ii. The primary and causal relation in religion is
2

CATHOLICISM

not man's to God, but God's to man. His action
precedes and underlies ours. For Him to be is to
act; wherever He is He is active, and His action
may be silent, but is never stayed or inoperative.
Hence God's relation to man is the basis of man's
relation to God ; and religion is but man become so
conscious of this prior relation as to live in harmony
with it, as to attempt to realize the life and ideals and
ends that come through it. But this involves the
counterpart and complement ofthe first principle —
viz., that a religious man always is as his God is, an
image or miniature of Him, a form realizing in time
the thought of the Eternal, But so construed he
becomes not simply a person related to God, but a
vehicle of the divine ideas, an organ or agent of the
divine purposes. A nature that touches the divine,
and exists through it, must be penetrated and moved
by it ; but to be so penetrated and moved is to exist
and to work for ends that are God's, though they may
be ends that can only be realized through man. The
religious individual is really the minister of a uni
versal purpose, a temporal agent of the Eternal will.
iii. The function or end of the religious man is to
be a minister or vehicle of the divine purposes : and so
the function or office of religion is to qualify man for
this work. To perform it he must have a nature
more or less open to God, and stand, so to speak,
in a relation of reciprocity with Him. The worst
atheism is that which reduces all God's action in the
world to interference or miracle. The supernatural-

THE CHURCHES AND THE IDEAL OF RELIGION 19
ism which limits His grace and truth to a single
church, however universal it may claim to be, pro
fanely expels Him from nature and humanity.
There is a sense in which the highest ecclesiasticism
is the worst theism ; it lives largely by its denial or
limitation of Deity. Nature is, because God every
where acts ; religion is, because He is the ever-
working Spirit. In the field of nature He acts
through forces ; in the field of history He acts
through persons, and the persons who best serve Him
are religious men, i.e., the men who so love the divine
will as to labour to bring everything in themselves
and in society into harmony with it. Such men
know that they are not saved for their own sakes
merely, but for man's ; that to be religious is simply
to become a means for the ends of God. For God
governs man through men ; great and good person
alities are the chiefest works of Providence, the agen
cies through which it accomplishes its noblest moral
results. There is no contribution to the common
good like a good man ; through him the mind of the
race is lifted, its progress effected, something done
towards the embodiment of the divine ideas, the
realization of the divine order. It is in religion as in
music. Nature is full of musical voices, of simple
notes that sound melodiously in every ear; but out
of these the cultured and quickened imagination of
the master can create harmonies such as Nature never
has created or can create — can in his Oratorio weave
sounds into symphonies so wondrous that they seem

20 CATHOLICISM

like the speech of the gods suddenly breaking arti
culate upon the ear of man, speaking of passions,
hopes, fears, joys too tumultuous and vast for the
human tongue to utter ; or opening and interpreting
for mortals a world where, remote from discord or
dissonance, thought and being move as to the state
liest music. So in the spiritual sphere the real and
holy religious person is the master spirit, making
audible to others the harmonies his imagination is
the first to hear. In him the truths and ideas of God,
as yet indistinctly seen or partially heard by the
multitude, are embodied, become as it were incarnate
and articulate, assume a visible and strenuous form
that they may inspire men to nobler deeds, and show
them how to create a higher manhood and purer
society. For these two stand indissolubly together ;
the most distinctly personal is still a collective good,
reduces the amount of evil in the world, augments
the forces that contend against it. The better a
man is, the more he feels the burden and the pain of
sorrow, the mightier his ambition to help in the
creation of a happier and a more perfect state. And
as his most individual are still universal ends, he
must seek the help of the like-minded, attempt to
organize the good against the evil in the world.
Thus, as religious men multiply, the enthusiasm of
pity is sure to increase, the energies directed against
sin and suffering are certain to grow more victorious.
Every man possessed of the Spirit of God feels the
divine passion in the presence of sin : and so in him

THE CHURCHES AND THE IDEAL OF RELIGION 21
and his society, to the degree of their capacity, the
redeeming energies of God may be said to work.
The end of the Church is the salvation of the world,
its redemption from the pain under which it has
travailed from creation until now.
3. Let us see, then, whither our analysis of the idea
of religion has conducted us : — Religion is essentially
a relation of harmonious activity with the will of
God ; the man who realizes this relation is a religious
man, the society which exists through and for its
realization is a religious society. So understood,
religion may be regarded, on the one side, as God's
method or way of working out His beneficent
purposes ; on the other, as man's following the way
that he may fulfil the ends of God. Through religion
God creates the order, works the progress, and
achieves the good of mankind ; and His agent or
organ throughout is the religious man and society.
From this point of view, everything that makes for
human happiness and wholeness is of religion ; what
ever fears man's growth in freedom, in culture, in
science, in everything meant by progress and civili
zation, may be ecclesiastical, but is not religious.
The organized society that seeks to enforce respect
for its orders, observance of its ritual, participation in
its worship, submission to its authority by invoking
the terrors of the world to come, may be a church,
but is not a religion. The distinctive note of the
latter is that, it looks at the duties of the moment in
the light of eternity, the character and needs of the

22 CATHOLICISM

individual as in the presence of the universal and in
relation to the imperishable ; and it does this not
that it may despise time and the individual, but that
it may magnify both ; not that it may enfeeble, but
that it may enlarge and strengthen duty ; not that it
may weaken the worth of character or make light of
human need, but that it may lend a mightier import
to the one, and give a vaster reach to the other.
The men who live as for eternity, believing that the
problem of their being is, in harmony with the will
of their Creator, to work out the ultimate order and
good of the universe, live under the noblest and
humanest inspiration possible to man. And this is
the inspiration given by religion ; to have it is to
breathe the thoughtful breath that comes of a living
faith. But this idea of religion requires, as a clear
necessity, that the polity which seeks to articulate
and incorporate and realize it be a polity that allows
the religious society to live under the inspiration of
its own ideals, under the control of its own truths,
obedient to its own laws, altogether as a society
whose -energies and ends are all religious and all of
God. § IV. The Ideal of Religion Embodied in fesus
Christ
But so far the discussion has been almost purely
deductive ; and so it may be as well to confirm and
illustrate the conclusion from the inductive or histor
ical side. To discuss the abstract idea of religion is

THE CHURCHES AND THE IDEAL OF RELIGION 23
a small thing ; it is a greater to look at it as em
bodied and expressed in the supreme religious
personality of the race. In Jesus Christ what we
term the ideal was realized, perfect religion became
a living and articulate reality. Through His only-
begotten Son, God declared what He meant and
what He means man to be.
1. We must interpret Christ's idea of religion
through His life. That life was one of remarkable
simplicity, but still more remarkable significance.
There were in His day two traditional ideals of the
religious life, the priest's and the scribe's ; but His did
not conform to either. The priest's made the temple,
with its worship and priesthood, the great factor of
religion ; in the temple God was to be found, the
way into His presence was through His priests, the
method of winning His favour or obtaining pardon
was by their sacrifices. The holy man was the man
who came often to the temple and made generous use
of its priesthood, places, articles and modes of worship.
Worship conducted by authorized persons within the
sacred place and in the established way, became the
very essence of religion ; and the priesthood them
selves are our witnesses as to how completely their
ceremonial had swallowed up God's moral law. The
ideal of the scribes was different, yet akin ; it was
made up of rules, constituted by regulations as to the
doing and ordering of the sensuous things of life. It
observed days and months and seasons, was great
in fasts and alms, in times and modes of prayer. It

24 CATHOLICISM
found great merit in phylacteries and in the reading
of the Scriptures ; it was devotedly loyal to the
unwritten law, which was formed of ancient custom,
the decisions of the great synagogue or council of
their church, and the wisdom of the fathers. Know
ledge of this law was the most esteemed learning, and
the esteem was expressed in a notable way ; the man
wise enough to interpret the law made laws by his
interpretations. And so the holy man of the scribe
forgot no sacred day or solemn time, neglected no
fast, gave alms of all he had, prayed by book, wor
shipped according to rule, and otherwise toiled and
comported himself as became a man who lived by a
written and traditional code. Excellent men they
were — honest, scrupulous, faithful in the minutest
things, only forgetful that the kingdom and truth of
God were infinitely wider than their law. And here
the kinship of the ideals appears ; both could make
scrupulous, neither could make magnanimous, men.
Each had had its heroes, who had suffered, and even
died, in defence of altar and ritual, or through fidelity
to all the ordinances of the law ; but neither had
produced a man possessed of the enthusiasm of
humanity, full of holy passion for the universal or
humane moral ends of God. The man who has the
strength of fanaticism in things sacerdotal is by this
very fact made a stranger to the spirit and inspiration
of true religion.
For let us look at Jesus in relation to the priest
and the scribe. His ideal stood in so sharp an

THE CHURCHES AND THE IDEAL OF RELIGION 25
antithesis to theirs that He was unintelligible to both,
was regarded and treated by both as an absolute
enemy. In the eye of the scribe He was a religious
alien, standing outside the continuity and catholicity
of Jewish tradition and doctrine ; in the eye of the
priest He broke the unity of the order and worship
established of old by God, consecrated by law and
custom, possessed of divine authority, the very
symbol of the national life and condition of the
people's well-being. His home was in Galilee, remote
from the city of the religion where the priest was the
ruler and the sacerdotal was also the civil law. When
He visited their city the priests could not understand
Him, for His temple and worship were spiritual, His
God was a Father who made sacrifices to save men,
and did not need incense and sacrifices and burnt-
offerings to become propitious towards them. And
so they knew not what to do with Him, knew only
how to hate Him, and how to glut their hate in the
infamy and death of the cross. In the province
where He familiarly lived, the distance of the priest
and the presence of the Gentile made the atmosphere
clearer, ritual law and custom less rigid ; and so it
was more favourable to a religious development
regulated throughout by the spontaneous and normal
action of His own ideal. But here He met the
Pharisee and the scribe, and their relation to Him
was one of radical contradiction and fretful collision,
proceeding from their fanatical devotion to the
traditions of the fathers and their consequent inability

26 CATHOLICISM

to understand His spirit and His truth. In His
daily and familiar life they found none of the custom
ary signs of religion— fasting, alms, the phylactery,
stated forms and times and places for prayer, cere
monial cleanliness, punctilious observance of the
Sabbath law and customs ; nay, they found not only
these absent, but a conduct that seemed studiously to
offend— kindly speech to Gentiles, association with
publicans and sinners, unheard-of liberty allowed to
His disciples and claimed for Himself on the Sab
bath ; and the right to do all this vindicated by the
denial of the authority of tradition and the elders,
and by the assertion of His own. It was to these
scrupulous and conscientious men all very sad, even
awful ; and so they judged Him a profane person,
acting from no other purpose or motive than to
destroy the law and the prophets. As later the
Christians, too religious to be understood of the
heathen, were judged to be men without religion, and
condemned as atheists ; so Christ, without any of the
notes distinctive of sacerdotal and legal piety, was
deemed altogether impious and declared worthy of
death. 2. But to the men He called and made clear of
eye and open of vision, the real secret of His spirit
stood disclosed. They saw that the denials were the
accidents of His life ; but the affirmation of a new
religious ideal was its essence. Of this ideal the
prophets had dreamed, but He made it an articulate
reality. God was to Him what He had never yet

THE CHURCHES AND THE IDEAL OF RELIGION 2y
been to man — a living Father, loving, loved, in
whom He was embosomed, through whom and to
whom He lived. He knew no moment without His
presence ;¦ suffered no grief the Father did not share ;
tasted no joy He did not send ; spoke no word that
was not of Him ; did no act that was not obedience
to His will. Where the relation was so immediately
filial and beautiful, the mediation of a priest would
have been an impertinence, the use of his sacrifices
and forms an estrangement — the coming of a cold,
dark cloud between the radiant soul of the Son and
the gracious face of the Father. Where true love
lives it must use its own speech, speak in its own
name, and feel that it must touch and, as it were,
hold with its own hands the higher love that loved Lt
into being. And because He stood so related to the
Father, He and the Father had one love, one work,
one will, one end. To see Him was to see the
Father ; His working was the Father's. Through
Him God lived among men ; the glory men beheld
in Him was the glory of the Only Begotten, the
incarnated grace and truth. And so this love of God
was love of man ; in the Son of Man the Father of
men served His children, and humanity came to
know its God and the things in which He delighted.
The best service of God was a ministry that redeemed
from sin, a sacrifice that saved from death. The
wonderful thing in religion was not what man gave
to God, but what God gave to man — the good, the
truth, the love — the way in which He bore his sins and

28 CATHOLICISM

carried his sorrows, made human guilt an occasion
for divine pity, and the cure of hate the work of love.
What God is among His worlds Jesus was among
men. He is the mind and heart of God personalized
for humanity ; His universal ideal realized. And after
what manner did this realized ideal live? As em
bodied compassion, beneficence, truth, love, working
for the complete redemption of men. Every kind of
evil was to Him a misery from which He could not but
seek to save. Disease He loved to cure ; poverty He
pitied, doing His utmost to create the temper before
which it should cease ; the common afflictions of man
touched Him with sympathy, subdued Him to tears.
But what moved Him most was moral evil — the sight
of man in the hands of sin ; and in order to save him
from it, He took an altogether new way. He dis
missed the venerable methods and impotent formal
isms of the priest and the scribe ; and went in among
the guilty, that He might in the very heart of their
guilt awaken the love of good and of God. He did
not feel that He condescended, only that His love
was a sweet compulsion to save; they did not feel
His condescension, only the goodness that was too
pure for their sin to sully, that so thought of their
good as to win their souls for God. And the result
was altogether wonderful. The laws of the scribe and
the religion of the priest had only divided men— had
made good and evil accidents of custom, not qualities
and states of the living person, had cured no sinner,
had only created fictitious sins, the more damning

THE CHURCHES AND THE IDEAL OF RELIGION 29
that they were so false. But the new spirit and way
of Christ found the common manhood of men, united
them, made sin moral, change from it possible,
even a duty ; made religion seem like the concen
trated and organized moral energy of God work
ing redemptively through men on behalf of man.
There never was a grander or more fruitful revolution
of thought, more needed on earth, more manifestly
of heaven. He who accomplished it was indeed a
Redeemer ; through Him religion ceased to be an
affair of the priest or the magistrate, transacted in
the temple and conducted by a ceremonial which was
prescribed by law ; and became the supreme concern
of man, covering his whole life, working in every way
for his amelioration, satisfied with nothing less than
the perfect virtue and happiness alike of the indi
vidual and the race — in simple truth, God's own
method for realizing in man His ideal of humanity.
3. As Jesus lived He taught ; His teaching but
articulated the ideal He embodied in His character
and life. One thing in that teaching is most remark
able — the complete absence of sacerdotal ideas, the
non-recognition of those customs and elements men
had been wont to think essential to religion. He
spoke of Himself as a teacher, never as a priest ;
assumed no priestly office, performed no priestly
function, breathed an atmosphere that had no sacer
dotal odour, that was full only of the largest and most
fragrant humanity. He instituted no sacerdotal office
or rite, appointed no man to any sacerdotal duty,

30 CATHOLICISM
sent His disciples forth to 'be teachers or preachers,
made no man of them a priest, created no order of
priesthood to which any man could belong. Worship
to Him was a matter of the Spirit ; it needed no
consecrated place or person — needed only the heart
of the son to be real before the Father. The best
worship was obedience; the man perfect as God is
perfect was the man who pleased God. His beati
tudes were all reserved for ethical qualities of mind,
were never promised on any ceremonial or sacerdotal
condition. His good man was " poor in spirit,"
" meek," " merciful," " pure in heart," "hungering after
righteousness," " a peacemaker." In describing His
ideal of goodness He found its antitheses in the
ideals of the temple and tradition. His example of
universal benevolence was " the good Samaritan " ; its
contradiction the priest and the Levite. True prayer
was illustrated by the penitent publican, false by the
formal Pharisee. The parables that vindicated His
treatment of sinners enforced the high doctrine that
nothing was so agreeable to God as their salvation,
that the mission of the godlike was to seek and save
them. The duty that summarized all others was love
to God ; the man that loved most obeyed best — for he
could not but obey. To love God was to love man,
to love the Divine Spirit was to do a divine part, to
be pitiful, to forgive as God forgives, to bear ill and
do good, to act unto others in a godlike way that
they might be won to godlike conduct. And He did
not conceive good men as isolated — they formed a

THE CHURCHES AND THE IDEAL OF RELIGION 3 1
society, a kingdom. The citizens of His kingdom
were the men who heard His voice and followed His
way. God reigned in and over them, and they
existed for His ends, to create good and overcome
evil. The kingdom they constituted was " of heaven,"
opposed in source and nature to those founded in the
despotisms and iniquities of earth ; and also " of
God," proceeded from the Creator and Sovereign of
man, that His own high order might be realized.
Such being its nature, it could be incorporated in
no polity, organized under no local forms, into no
national or temporal system ; it was a " kingdom
of the truth," and all who were of the truth belonged
to it. It was a sublime idea ; the good and holy of
every land and race were gathered into a glorious
fellowship, dwelt together, however far apart or
mutually unknown, as citizens of the same Eternal
City, with all their scattered energies so unified by
the will of God as to be co-ordinated and co-operant
factors of human progress and happiness. Men have
not yet risen to the clear and full comprehension of
this ideal ; and the tardiest in reaching it are those
organized polities or institutions which boast them
selves sole possessors of Christ's truth and life.
The meaning of Christ's person and teaching for
our thesis is too evident to need detailed discussion.
To Christian men He is the normal and normative
religious person — i.e., the person whose living is
their law, who made the standard to which they
ought to conform, and who distributes the influences

32 CATHOLICISM

creative of conformity. Now, in Him religion was
a perfect relation to God expressed in speech and
action creative of a perfect humanity, a humanity
made through knowledge of God obedient to Him.
As embodied in Him, religion was in the presence
of sin and sorrow a holy passion, a suffering unto
sacrifice due to a love that identified the sinless
Seeker with the sinner He sought ; but in the
presence of the salvability of man, it was an enthu
siasm of redemption, the victorious working of the
Spirit that can spare no evil and can be pleased
with no good that falls short of the perfection
which can alone satisfy God. So understood, religion
is man's living in loving and holy harmony with
the will of God ; and its work, the creation of a
humanity that shall in all its persons, relations,
and institutions, express and realize this harmony.
§ V. The Ideal of Christ and the Christian Churches
Such then is the ideal of the religion of Christ ;
we have now to discuss briefly the relation of the
churches to it.
i. Our fundamental principle here is this: The
churches exist by the religion, and for it ; the religion
does not exist because of the churches, or for them.
The religion is the creative, the church the created
idea; and here, as everywhere, the law ought to
be valid, that the measure of truth for the created
idea is that it shall harmonize with and truly
express the creative. The churches must be

THE CHURCHES AND THE IDEAL OF RELIGION 33
construed through the religion, not the religion
through the churches. It is true independently
of them, but they are right only as they are in
nature and character throughout accordant with it.
Now this accordancy may be tested in two ways :
either by comparing the two ideals, that of the
church and that of the religion, or by the simple
historical inquiry, Has the church made the people
among whom it has lived fulfil, individually and
collectively, Christ's ideal, or approximate to the
fulfilment of it? The latter is a grave question
for all the churches. The degree in which they
have worked this realization is the measure of
their success ; the degree in which they have not,
is the measure of their failure.
It would lead into a region I am most anxious
to avoid, were any attempt here made at detailed
comparative criticism of the ecclesiastical and the
religious ideal. Our purpose is more positive, by
discussing the religious to show what the ecclesi
astical ought to be. Yet it may emphasize this
purpose and illustrate the idea which underlies it,
if we look in the light of our previous discussions
at the spirit and motives which produced the
Anglican revival of sixty years ago. That revival
was at its birth, distinctly doctrinal or ideal, and
though it used history to support and commend
its idea, it did so at first in faith rather than with
knowledge. The success that attended this use was
more due to a courage that walked fearlessly into
3

34 CATHOLICISM
the unknown than to any clear light of science.
When one turns to the tracts and treatises of the
period, one wonders, when regard is had to the
historical material and the method of handling it,
at the extraordinary effects they produced. Keble,
Newman, and Pusey are indeed illustrious names ;
at no time has the church of England or the
University of Oxford had names more venerated
or worthier of honour. But the work they did was
accomplished through what they brought to history,
not through what they found in it ; at least, through
what they found only so far as it was the vehicle
of what they brought. The movement they in
augurated may be described as a movement for the
recovery of the lost or forgotten ideal of the Anglican
church. They, at the bidding of conscience, worked
out the ideal from their own consciousnesses, and
then they made inroads into history, in search
of the means of realization, though their researches
and labours were, in the case of many, to have a
tragic effect upon the ideal. Still the motive or
spring of their endeavour was the wish to call into
being a nobler faith, the belief that their church
was one of apostolic descent, of continuous life,
supernatural endowment and divine authority.
In order that they might evoke and vivify this
faith, they tried to enrich the church of to-day
with the wealth of all her yesterdays, to adorn her
age with the grace of her youth and the fruitful
strength of her maturity. And so they recalled the

THE CHURCHES AND THE IDEAL OF RELIGION 35
memories of her illustrious saints and fathers, woke
into speech the long silent wisdom of her divines
and teachers, searched out and restored her ancient
treasuries of devotion, her richest and sweetest forms
for the service of God. They studied how to make
again significant and symbolical, or, as they loved
to think, beautiful with holiness, her homes and
temples of worship ; how to deepen the mystery and
enhance the efficacy of her sacraments ; how to invest
with all needed virtue and authority her orders
and her offices — in a word, how to make her live
to the eye of the imagination as to the eye of faith
arrayed in all the grace of her Lord, clothed in all
the dignity and loveliness of the historical " Holy
Catholic and Apostolic Church." The ideal was
at once winsome and majestic, well fitted to awe
into reverence and inspire with the enthusiasm of
devotion. It came like a revelation to an age weary
of a hard and pragmatic evangelicalism, with its
prosaic spirit, narrow interests and formal methods
of reconciling God and man. It appealed to the
imagination which Romanticism had touched and
quickened, doing for the church what the poetry
of Wordsworth had done for nature, and the novels
of Scott for the national history. A new notion
of religion came through the new idea, and the men
it penetrated and held were like men possessed of
a new spirit of worship, a seemlier, a more reverent
and holy sense of God. We need not wonder at
its victories; man would have been more ignoble

36 CATHOLICISM
than he is if he had remained insensible to its
charm. Happily, for human nature and progress,
there is no law more sure in its operation than
this — that a belief ennobles in proportion to its own
nobility; what has no intrinsic goodness can never
evoke enthusiasm for good.
2. But it is not enough to construe the Anglican
ideal through the notion of the church ; it is neces
sary to study and criticise it through the idea of the
religion. This is not only to change the point of
view, but it is to assume a much higher one ; for
religion being greater than the church, a rich and
sublime ecclesiastical may be a poor and mean
religious ideal. The question here, then, is — whether
the Anglican ideal did really articulate and faithfully
interpret the religion of Christ : whether it trans
lated into visible speech and living form for the
people and state of England His mind as to His
society or kingdom. Here the main point of the
problem does not relate to a great clerical and sacer
dotal corporation, instituted for the maintenance and
realization of worship ; but to a society that claims
to embody and to work for the completer embodi
ment in everything and in every one of the order and
ideas of God, of the spirit and truth of Christ. This
is a larger, grander, and harder matter than the
creation of a clerical corporation, and implies two
things : on the one side, a clear and complete com
prehension of the idea of the religion, and on the
other, a full and sufficient articulation of the same in

THE CHURCHES AND THE IDEAL OF RELIGION 37
the institutions and agencies needed to its reali
zation. Now when we analyze the principles or
elements that underlie the Anglican ideal, what do
we find ? A singularly imperfect and narrow idea of
religion, supported by an equally narrow and one
sided theory as to human nature, as to history and
providence, as to God and man in themselves and in
their mutual relations. On the one side, the ideal
rested on the twin pillars of a great doubt and a
great fear. It doubted the presence of God in
humanity, the activity and reality of His grace
outside the limits of a constituted church, and apart
from sacramental persons, instruments and symbols.
It doubted the sanity of the reason He had given,
thought that this reason had so little affinity with its
Maker as to be ever tending away from Him, its
bent by nature being from God rather than to God.
And so it was possessed of the great fear that the
reason, freed from the authority and guardian care of
an organized and apostolic church, i.e. clergy, would
infallibly break from the control of His law and His
truth. It thus made man an atheist by nature,
and so confined divine influence to artificial and
ordained channels as to make the common life, which
most needs to be illumined and ennobled by the
divine, either vacant of God or alien from Him.
And so it enriched the church by impoverishing
humanity, what it took from the one being its loftiest
ideals, what it gave to the other being but their
sensuous and baser counterfeits. On the other and

38 CATHOLICISM
more positive side, this ideal implied principles that
had no place in the mind of Christ, or any real
affinity to His free and gracious spirit. Its most
beautiful quality was its reverence ; it was possessed
by the enthusiasm of devotion ; but even here it
knew too little of His joyous and sweet spon
taneity, the glad and trustful filial spirit that loved
immediate speech and fellowship with the Father.
Then its ideal of duty was too ecclesiastical to be
His, was without His large beneficence and healthful
humanity. Its knowledge of Him was mediaeval, not
primitive ; the Christ it knew was the Christ of
mystery and sacraments, not the Christ of Nature and
of God. He did not love tradition, did not believe
in the sanctity of formularies, in the holiness of fasts,
the sin and apostasy of all who refused to conform
to the priestly law or order. And what He did not
love for Himself, He could not love for His people ;
what displeased Him in Judaism, He could not be
pleased to see crystallized round Himself. The
living man, the conscious home and son of God,
with love breaking into spontaneous speech and filial
act, was more to Him than the orderly observance of
ritual, or than the stateliest worship of the temple.
His ideal of worship was filial love expressed in filial
speech and conduct ; and this love made all places
sacred, all times holy, all service religious, all actions
duties done to the Father in heaven. There never
was a humaner or saner ideal, one that so consecrated
and elevated the whole man, so penetrated and trans-

THE CHURCHES AND THE IDEAL OF RELIGION 39

figured his whole life. Its essential elements were all
natural, and in no degree sacerdotal, traditional, or
ecclesiastical ; where man knew God as the Father
and himself as a son, worship could not but be ; not
elsewhere or in other sort was worship possible.
3. Now, it is by this vaster and grander yet simpler
ideal that the Anglican must be measured ; it must
fulfil the idea of Christ to be a true ideal for a
Christian church. We may not draw conclusions
that only a detailed comparison, running along many
lines, would warrant ; but two sayings, an Anglican
and a Christian, may be compared. Here is the
Anglican : " There is a well-known sect, which denies
both Baptism and the Lord's Supper. A churchman
must believe its members to be altogether external to
the fold of Christ. Whatever benevolent work they
may be able to show, still, if we receive the church
doctrine concerning the means generally necessary
to salvation, we must consider such persons to be
mere heathens, except in knowledge." * That is the
church's doctrine. Here is Christ's : 2 " Whosoever
shall do the will of My Father which is in heaven
the same is My brother, and sister, and mother." In
the light of Christ's doctrine the church's looks hard,
and mean, and false enough. A theory that has to
make mere heathens of some of the most beautiful
and devoted spirits that have adorned the religion
1 J. H. Newman, Via Media, vol. ii., pp. 29-30 (1877).
2 Matt. xii. 50.

40 CATHOLICISM

and promoted the philanthropies of modern times,
may be good ecclesiasticism, but it is bad Christi
anity. The difference between the doctrines is the
difference between two ideals, that of the Son of Man
and that of the Son of the church. If the Anglican
revival has sublimed and softened and enriched our
worship, it has also narrowed and hardened and
impoverished our religion. Sensuous excellence may
be the most serious of spiritual defects ; and a
political system which suppresses or misconceives
essential elements in the religious ideal wants the
most distinctive note of truth.
§ VI. How the Ideal is to be Realized
I. We return then to our fundamental principle :
The churches exist for the religion, and ought to be
as it is, agencies and institutions for its realization,
good only as adapted to this end. The character of
a religion is determined by its idea of God ; the
constitution, action, and ambitions of a church are
determined by its ideal of religion. To be unfaithful
to any element in the latter is to be without the
highest kind of catholicity, catholicity as regards the
truth. The glory of the Christian religion is its
conception of God. He is the common Father and
Sovereign, benevolent and beneficent, gracious yet -
righteous. He loves all men, and wills their good ;
hates sin and contends against it with all His
energies. He finds His highest beatitude in the
happiness of the creature, but makes holiness the

THE CHURCHES AND THE IDEAL OF RELIGION 4 1
condition of happiness. To create holiness that
happiness may be realized, is the aim of the divine
moral government ; in making for righteousness it
makes for the highest good of the universe. But
the religion that articulates this conception must
be as if it were the moral forces of mankind
organized and inspired of God, for the creation
of holy happiness and happy holiness. And the
churches that interpret the religion must have
this as their supreme end, the regnant idea that
determines the range and modes of their activities.
No element or province of good can be alien to
them ; whatever tends to bring in a more perfect
order is their proper work, whatever tends to delay
or defeat its coming is their proper enemy. They
are associations for worship : for the societies that are
to carry out God's purposes must depend on Him
and stand with Him in living fellowship and sym
pathy. But their worship is only a means, not an
end ; it is meant to create a gentler and more
reverent spirit, a holier passion of benevolence, a
more exalted moral enthusiasm, not simply to soothe
and satisfy the soul. They are homes of instruction :
for men must be informed of the truth if they are to
be formed by it. But the instruction is in order to
better living, to nobler and more efficient action in
the way of Christ and for the ends of His kingdom.
In Him all the churches find their ideal religious
person ; to create Christlike men and to realize in
society an order and law worthy of Him, is their

42 CATHOLICISM*

mission. To fulfil it they must work as He worked,
by love, by gentleness, by speaking the truth, by
creating a manhood that praises God and a brother
hood that rejoices man ; by bearing the sins and
carrying the sorrows of men till the life of sorrow
and the being of sin shall cease ; by unweariedness in
well-doing increasing the number of good men and
the quality of their goodness, so making earth in
an ever brighter degree the home of a redeemed
humanity. Churches that do not work for these ends
are not churches of Christ's religion ; those that work
for them by fittest means, and so to best issues, are
the most Christian of churches.
The range thus opened up to the activity of the
churches is immense ; it is co-extensive with the
needs of society and man. Their primary duty is to
the individual ; with him they must begin. Good
persons are the most efficient factors of good ; what
makes the most good men does the most good to
man. Now, religion has in a unique degree the
power of conversion ; we may say, indeed, it is the
sole possessor of this power. Any great ambition or
affection may exalt, or even in a sense purify, a man ;
but a man must have a certain largeness and eleva
tion of nature before he can feel it. Love of art or
science, literary, political and other ambition, may
persuade a man to live both purely and laboriously ;
but the nature to which they appeal must be already
a noble nature. The arts and sciences do not so
much elevate man as witness to his elevation. But

THE CHURCHES AND THE IDEAL OF RELIGION 43
religion has an altogether peculiar power : it can
touch the bad man, find the good in him, so possess
as to transform his nature, making him in all things
the servant of righteousness. Now, this power the
churches ought to labour to exercise in the highest
possible degree. They ought to burn with a passion
for souls, be consumed with the desire to save. This
does not mean the ambition for numbers, but the
enthusiasm for the religious change which is a moral
regeneration. To the extent that a profession of
religion does not carry with it purity, chastity, truth
— in a word, integrity of moral nature — it is an evil
and not a good. The churches must bring together
faith and conduct, translate the ideal of their Master
into the living of their disciples, if they are to live to
purpose and grow in power.
2. This, then, is their primary duty — to save men ;
but their first is not their last. Saved men are
means, not ends ; they are saved that they may save,
i.e. work out the moral regeneration of the race.
The churches that convert most men, and best use
the men they have converted, realize religion in the
most efficient way. It is the work of these men,
instructed and inspired by their churches, to carry
their high principles everywhere and into everything.
They are not to conserve the actual, but to create
the ideal, to labour along all lines that promise the
amelioration of the human lot. They may think the
world bad, but it is capable of being mended, and to
mend it is the very reason of their being. The

44 CATHOLICISM

churches ought to be the mothers of strenuous
philanthropists, encouraging their sons to labour
among the men who make crime, and against the
conditions that make criminals ; in the hospitals
where the diseased are tended, and against the slums
where they are bred ; in the charities where the poor
are helped, and against the poverty and the causes of
the poverty that make the charities necessary. They
ought to be the teachers of statesmen, and demand
that the nation, in all its legislation and in all its
conduct, home or foreign, shall follow the righteous
ness that alone exalteth, recognizing no law as good,
no action as honourable, that denies or offends
Christian principle. They ought to be the weightiest
preachers of economic doctrine, building on the
principles of Christian brotherhood and equity an
ideal industrial society, where all should work and
all work be honoured ; where wealth, without any
schemes of violent and wrongful division, should by
the action of moral laws through moral men be so
distributed as to create a State where poverty was
unknown and charity was unneeded. They ought,
too, to be the great mothers and guardians of social
purity, fearing not to rebuke the sins of class and
caste, of idleness and luxury, bending their energies
to the creation of a loftier ideal of manhood and
womanhood, a chivalrous chastity of thought and
conduct that should, were it only by the courage of
innocence, rebuke or shame into silence the lower
passions and lusts. Were the churches to forget all

THE CHURCHES AND THE IDEAL OF RELIGION 45
their sectional jealousies in the grand remembrance
of their high mission to further the common good,
were they to lose the mean political and sacerdotal
ambitions that have narrowed and materialized the
prouder and more historic of them, in a sublime
moral enthusiasm for the realization of the religious
ideal, they would become possessed of a power which
could be described only as a baptism of the Holy
Ghost and of fire. The paralysis of the churches in
the religious sphere is due to the narrowness of their
spirit and aims. They have been contented with too
little ; they need to make a reality of their faith and
its laws for the whole life of society and man.
It need not be said that this is not meant to be a
plea for an extension of ecclesiastical jurisdiction ;
on the contrary, that would seem to me a simple
calamity. Nor is there any argument on behalf of
the supremacy of the church over the civil courts in
matters ecclesiastical ; on the contrary, these judicial
conflicts but show to me the disastrous depravation
of our idea of religion. There is nothing that has so
hindered the supremacy of religion as the struggle
for ecclesiastical supremacy. The ecclesiastic is not
made by his function a religious man ; his position
rather makes him but a statesman of narrower
interests, with ambitions circumscribed by the limits
of his society. To allow ecclesiastics to rule the
nation is, as history has so often calamitously proved,
but to sacrifice the people to a class. That is the
best civil polity which secures at once perfect order

46 CATHOLICISM

and perfect freedom, the highest happiness and the
most happiness to its people ; and that is the best
ecclesiastical polity which develops, exercises and
organizes to the highest degree, in the wisest ways,
and for most beneficent ends, the moral and spiritual
energies of the religion and of the religious. And so
what is here pleaded for is the sovereignty of religion,
the reign through the reason over the conscience of
the beliefs, truths, ideas that constitute it. What is
needed to this reign is a teacher who can interpret the
meaning of a God who is a moral Sovereign, for the
whole nature, the whole life, and the whole duty of
man. Such a teacher the churches ought to be : but
to be it they must be in Novalis' phrase, here used
in all reverence, Gottgetrunkene, possessed by an un
resting and inextinguishable passion for His moral
ends, for the creation of an order that shall in its
measure fitly express or reflect His eternal ideal.
Within the Christian conception of God there lies for
the Christian religion a world of unexhausted possi
bilities. Only when it has been fully construed will
theology be perfected, only when it has been so
applied as to order and regulate the life, individual
and collective, will religion be realized. Once this
idea has become the inspiration of the church, it will
look back with shame on the days of the old eccle-
siasticism when it lived in bondage to the letter ; and
it will contrast, in large joyfulness, the freedom that
allows its people to build by spiritual methods and
through moral agencies " the City of the living God,"

THE CHURCHES AND THE IDEAL OF RELIGION 47
with the liberty they knew and loved of old, the
liberty of so manipulating the past as to make it
approve the present. Then working, not under the
belittling burden of an exhausted yet authoritative
past, but for the future and under the inspiration
of the sublimest of all ideals, they will become fit
vehicles for the religion that alone possesses the
secret for promoting without cessation human pro
gress and human good. The abstractions of Posi
tivism are potent and significant only to the studious
enthusiast ; but the moral energies of religion are for
all men engines of mightiest dynamic power. They
enlarge the individual life with universal ideals ; they
lift time into the stream of an eternal purpose
and fill it with eternal issues ; and they make the
simplest moral act great as a real factor in the
evolution of a higher order and an immortal character.
To the imagination that has been touched by the
real ideal of religion, the fervid prophesyings of our
modern Agnostics and Positivists are but the tamest
and earthliest of dreams.
March, 1884.

II

CATHOLICISM AND THE APOLOGY FOR
THE FAITH
§ I. The Question to be Discussed
IF the highest function of the Christian church
be so to interpret the Christian faith as to
secure the progressive realization of the Christian
religion, then it becomes a question of the most
vital interest : — Has any one of the many bodies
claiming the name of church proved itself to be
supremely efficient in the exposition and vindication
of the faith? On this point there may be many
differences of opinion, but as to one thing there
can be no doubt ; of all the churches in Christendom
the Roman Catholic is, in all matters or questions
affecting the faith, the most conscious of her own
sufficiency. She has proclaimed it in every possible
form, has decreed herself infallible, had tried to live
up to her decree even before she had formally
passed it, and has proudly moved among the churches,
challenging them to submit to claims they cannot
surpass and dare not attempt to rival. We assume,
of course, the sincerity of the Roman Catholic
church, and her honest belief in this the most
48

AND THE APOLOGY FOR THE FAITH 49
stupendous of all claims ever made by any society,
especially a society which at once addresses the
reason and stands at the judgment seat of history ;
and we proceed to inquire whether her behaviour
as she lives in our midst at all corresponds to her
claims. In other words, our question is, To what
extent has the Catholic movement in England helped
the English mind to a higher and more satisfactory
doctrine of religion than could have been found
outside or apart from it ? To what degree has it,
in an age, if not of denial, yet of transition and
the inquiry which leans to doubt, contributed at
once to conserve and quicken the Christian faith ;
to make it credible to living minds, real to the men
who feel that their religious beliefs are the dearest
to the heart, but the hardest to the intellect, and
the least practical or relevant to the life? These
are questions it is easy to ask, but very difficult to
discuss judicially or even judiciously ; while the most
difficult thing of all is to find a just and sufficient
answer. Underneath all such questions others still
more fundamental lie, and the principles implied
in the deeper must always regulate the criticism
and determination of the more superficial. The
writer is clearly conscious that his attitude to religion
and our religious problems is one, and the attitude
of the Roman Catholic another and very different ;
and it would be simple impertinence in him to ignore
the difference, or enforce his own canons of criticism
on the Catholic mind. He does not mean to
4

5© CATHOLICISM

judge those who have found refuge and peace in
Catholicism — indeed, he would not do so if he could.
If it has made its converts happier and better men,
it has done a work for which all good men ought
to be grateful. But the question that now concerns
us in no way relates to the sufficiency of Catholicism
for Catholics, but to the adequacy and relevance
of what may be termed its special apologetic to
the spirits possessed and oppressed by the problems
of the time. The power of Catholicism to satisfy
convinced religious men in search of the best
organized and most authoritative Christianity, is one
thing; and its ability to answer the questions and
win the faith of the perplexed and critical mind,
is another thing altogether. This is a matter we
are all free to discuss, nay, every man concerned
for the future of faith is bound to discuss it ; and
the frankest will always be the fairest discussion.
Of course, it may be said, and said quite truly,
that the infallibility of the Roman church does not
guarantee the infallibility of her ministers, doctors,
or divines, or even the moral integrity and intel
lectual sufficiency of every movement that may be
described as Catholic. This may at once be granted,
but it only reduces the significance and impairs the
competence of the infallibility which can render so
little service to those who most need it. We shall
meet this question again, and for the present confine
ourselves to the problem: — How far have thinkers
and teachers who have been either the ordained and

AND THE APOLOGY FOR THE FAITH 51
recognized ministers of an infallible church, or the
unauthorized exponents of her faith, supplied living
thought with a cogent and relevant apologetic for
religion ?
§11. The Need of a Relevant Apology for the Faith
1. In order to an intelligent discussion of this
question, it may be as well to explain what is
here meant by a relevant apologetic. It means not
a mere defence of the faith, a marshalling of
evidences, a method or process of proof, but such
a constructive interpretation and presentation of
Religion as shall make it stand before the living
reason as a coherent and intelligible thing. Evi
dences may admit of no answer, and yet produce
no conviction : if the things they are meant to prove
have no reality or adequate meaning to thought,
no concrete rationality for reason, they may be
multiplied to almost any extent without gathering
weight or begetting belief. Men lose faith in re
ligious truth not so much through a failure in its
evidences as through a failure in its relevance ; in
other words, the terms in which it has been inter
preted cease to be credible either by ceasing to be
intelligible or by falling out of harmony with the
logical basis and methods of living mind. Of course
it may not seem fair to illustrate a point by the
words of one who is but an echo of other minds ;
but the reflection in a mirror often reveals more of
the original than may be discovered by the searching

52 CATHOLICISM

scrutiny of the naked eye. Well, Mr. Lilly— -and
the remark summarizes a wonderful deal of Catholic
argumentation — meets some very grave objections
to Christianity by saying, "in the light of reason,
man has in strictness no rights against God."1 Now
that is not an answer, but a confession that no
answer can be given. It means that if there were
a sovereign being against whom man had rights,
that being would, in the given circumstances, be in
the wrong. And such a defence is the worst indict
ment of Providence. Looked at in the clear light of
reason, man has rights against God. To be made, is
to be invested with rights ; to create, is for the creator
to assume duties. I do not like such modes of speech,
but an argument like Mr. Lilly's compels their use.
I prefer to say that God's ways towards men are
regulated, not by what He owes to men, but by what
He owes to Himself. But so to conceive the matter
is to affirm, if not " man's rights against God," yet
God's high duties towards man — which means here,
that the justification of God's ways must proceed
on a far loftier and truer principle than either the
denial or the affirmation of the creature's rights,
viz., on the principle that the Divine nature is a
law to the Divine will, and that that nature is
perfect reason, righteousness and love.
A relevant apologetic, then, may be described as
one which, by the use of rational principles and
methods, satisfies the reason as to the truth

1 Ancient Religion and Modem Thought, p. 261.

AND THE APOLOGY FOR THE FAITH 53
of things it had doubted or even denied, and which
addresses it as if it were honest and reasoned honestly
concerning their truth and were constantly in search of
it. Now every age has its own mental habits, which
imply common principles, fixed processes of inquiry
and proof, and modes of apprehending and handling
questions ; and these affect man's attitude to every
matter of thought and belief. An idea like evolution,
for example, changes, not only our notion of the mode
in which nature does her work, but also the way in
which we study alike her works and her manner of
working, the methods by which we inquire into the
phenomena of life, the order and facts of history,
the appearance and meaning of man. It causes,
in a word, such a revolution in our basal conceptions
as to demand, in order to mental wholeness and
harmony, that they and their related beliefs be re
stated or reformulated. In a period of transition
faith is difficult, because religious ideas at once resist
formal change and seem to suffer more from it than
empirical or scientific ; and men hastily or fearfully
conclude that the change which is glorifying science
will abolish religion. On the one side it stands,
by its theistic idea, so related to nature as to feel
every variation in men's notions concerning the
creative cause, method, purpose or tendency ; and,
on the other side, it is by its beliefs, institutions,
and life, so related to history as to be sensitive to
every new historical doctrine, discovery, or process
of inquiry. Hence, when the cosmic idea has

54 CATHOLICISM

changed its form, while the religious has not, when
a new conception reigns in every department of
history save the religious, the chronic difficulties
between Science and Religion become to many
minds insurmountable, and they cease to believe
simply because Religion has ceased to be intellectu
ally relevant — i.e., to belong to the living and grow
ing body of truth, which at once possesses and
inspires living mind. Men so situated are men
whom no mustering of conventional evidences can
convince ; to reach or even touch them, apologetic
thought must seek to construe Religion as scientific
thought has construed nature and history. What
can make men feel at harmony with themselves and
their universe, will always be the system most open
to successful proof; what cannot accomplish this,
no mass of probable or other evidence will save
from ultimate disbelief.
It would lead us much too far to illustrate, with
all the needed detail, the principles now stated ;
but two works will show what is meant. The De
Civitate Dei is perhaps the greatest work in the
whole region of Christian apologetics. Yet its form
and argument were determined by the conditions
and questions of Augustine's own day ; these must
be understood before its significance and force can
be felt. The ideas of the time, heathen and
Christian, political, social, philosophical, religious,
its conflicts, fears, hopes, despairs, must be recalled.
The student must fill his imagination with the Roman

AND THE APOLOGY FOR THE FAITH 55
ideal of the Eternal City ; he must realize what
may be described as its apotheosis by the Latin
peoples, the degree in which it was a city at once
sacred and imperial, venerable, august, invincible,
queen for centuries of civilized man, sole mother of
the law that ruled him and the order he loved
invested with a more awful sanctity than any re
ligious city ; nay, as the embodiment of the Roman,
the symbol of a universal, religion, and of one that
out of ceaseless war had called universal peace.
Once he has made this worship of Rome live in his
consciousness, he must conceive the consternation,
the horror and shame, that must have seized the
Romans when they saw their city stormed and
plundered by the barbarians, and the consequent
indignation and hate which broke out in the Pagan
charge : — " This ruin is but the last and highest
achievement of the new religion ! " Augustine's
apology was the answer to this passion, and to the
belief by which it lived ; and the answer was as
splendid as complete. The new religion was con
ceived and represented as a new city, a diviner and
more eternal Rome, which transcended the old as
heaven transcends the earth ; which came not from
a people, but from God ; which was created not of
human ambition and hate, but of divine grace and
love ; which comprehended not a few nations, but the
race ; which produced no evil, and fostered no wrong,
but formed all the virtues and embraced all truth, — a
city destined to growth, but not to decay, whose

56 CATHOLICISM

building might indeed proceed in time, but whose con
tinuance was to be unto eternity. Beside the Civitas
Dei the Civitas Romana was made to seem a feverish
and shadowy and inglorious dream ; the ideal of the
celestial rebuked by its very divineness the poor
reality of the earthly city. The power of the apology
lay in its being a constructive presentation of the
Christian religion in a form relevant to the men
and the moment ; their knowledge of the city that
was perishing constituted the very capability to
which Augustine appealed. And so accurately does
his work in its method and argument reflect the
spirit and ideals, the disillusionment and alarms of
the times, that the man who does not live through
them and in them will never see its meaning or
feel its power.
Take, again, Butler's Analogy. It was a most
relevant book ; its relevance was the secret of its
strength, and is the secret of its weakness. On its
every page, in its every paragraph, we hear the
controversies of the time ; the freethinker, the deist,
the airy rationalist, who will have a religion without
mystery and without miracle, appear and deploy
their arguments ; but only that they may be judicially
analyzed, reduced to their true insignificance, and
finally translated into proofs tending to justify faith
in the revealed religion they had been used to
condemn. Some things Butler did once for all.
His method ; his doctrine of nature and man ; his
proof of the religious worth and work of conscience ;

AND THE APOLOGY FOR THE FAITH 57
his demonstration that religion when most accom
modated to the standard of a conventional and
unimaginative rationalism, becomes only the less
reasonable, beset with graver and more insoluble
difficulties ; the way he used the facts of life to
illustrate and verify certain truths of faith, like the
doctrines of substitution and atonement, — are now
inalienable possessions of constructive Christian
thought. Yet the strength of his argument, taken
as a whole, was due to the use of principles common
to the belief and unbelief of the day. Grant those
principles, and the Analogy is one of the most
marvellous structures of solid, cumulative, convincing
argumentation ever built by the mind of man ; deny
those principles, and while the work remains a
monument of, dialectical genius, it has lost its power
to convince. And they are explicitly denied by
systems that now confront us ; the unbelief of our
day is more radical than the unbelief of Butler's ;
and, in some degree, we have to thank him for its
being so. He showed it the necessity of increasing
its negations if it was to remain negative at all.
Hence our living apologetic must begin without any
help from those common principles which were
the basis of Butler's work ; it must get even nearer
the rock, seek a stronger and broader foundation,
if it would construct an argument as relevant to
our day as the Analogy was to his. And whatever
it does, it must not seek to relieve the difficulties of
revealed religion by deepening those that sit upon the

58 CATHOLICISM

face of nature; rather it must illumine and trans
figure the darkness of nature by the light of
revelation. Religion has need to penetrate and
exalt both nature and man with her own trans
cendental ideals, that men may have a new sense
of the value of life, and win a new heart for braver
and nobler living.
2. But now there is another point that must
be emphasized : — the need for constructive religious
thought does not so much arise from the specu
lations and criticisms of a few active intellects
without the churches, as from a common intellectual
tendency or drift which causes a shaking and
unrest, a sense of insecurity and change, within
them. This is what tempts men either to break
with the old beliefs, or to doubt them, or to demand
that they shall be clothed in new forms or that
from the old forms a new spirit shall come forth.
The churches are now face to face with the gravest
questions that have confronted Christianity since her
life began; questions not simply doctrinal, political,
or social, but fundamental and final, — whether men
are to be Christians any more, or even in any
tolerable sense theists. These questions exhale, as
it were, the intellectual difficulties which diffuse
themselves everywhere, stealing into the best dis
ciplined homes, penetrating the most rigorously
organized and jealously guarded churches, pervading
the atmosphere in which thought lives and breathes.
touching our finest spirits with the slow paralysis

AND THE APOLOGY FOR THE FAITH 59
t
of doubt, or the hesitancy which is the death of
all enthusiasm. The men have not created the
difficulties or raised the doubts ; on the contrary,
the doubts and difficulties have sought and found
the men ; they are creations of the time, and spring
from the characteristics and achievements of its
thought, its wider knowledge, its vaster outlook,
its new methods of interpreting nature and history,
its deeper insight into the way of nature's working,
and into the affinities of man and his universe.
They are utterly misunderstood when traced to an
evil heart of unbelief, or to some taint or sin of
will, or to any other source than honesty and integrity
of intellect, — the determination to be as clear and
scrupulous in the realm of spirit and faith as in
the region of experience and experiment. Scientists
who have studied nature and become so possessed
by the ideas of law and energy, continuity and
development, as to feel unable to reconcile them
with their older ideas of God and His creative
method, are men whom the churches are bound to
help to a solution. Scholars trained in the newest
critical methods, literary and historical, cannot forget
them when they turn to the study of the Bible,
and of Hebrew and Christian history; and cannot
pursue them in these fields without raising questions
they have a right to submit to the churches, and to
require the churches frankly and honestly to answer.
Mr. Lilly's vindication of the attitude of his church
to the "higher criticism" seems to me her severest

60 CA THOLICISM

condemnation. She is to "wait until the higher
criticism" has really established something certain,
and then she will consider how far the " traditional
thesis" taught in her schools should be modified
in consequence.1 There is here the abdication
of the highest functions of the church ; she ceases
to be the teacher of truth, and leaves it to men,
whom she bans the while, to be its discoverers;
and then the truths they have with pain discovered
and with loss established she will reconcile to her
tradition. In harmony with this, he — with special
reference to the question, what would happen to a
Catholic priest who should teach his people certain
critical conclusions, some of them conclusions certain
enough — says, such a one " would richly deserve
suspension," for " his business is to watch for men's
souls, not to unsettle their faith." 2 But his business
ought to be to teach the truth ; and if in the process
faith is unsettled, it will only be to the greater
saving ofthe soul. The primary right of every man
is to the truth, and the best truth his teachers
can give him ; the primary duty of the teacher,
especially of the collective teacher called the church,
is to communicate the truth, not speaking with
authority or certainty where certainty is not. A
church that is true and the infallible teacher of
truth and guardian of souls, can in no way so
well justify its claim and its being as by teaching
1 Ancient Religion and Modern Thought, p. 279. 2Ib., p. 278.

AND THE APOLOGY FOR THE FAITH

the truth to souls perplexed. These souls are seeking
the truth, and would be saved by it; but they
are simply mocked if a church says to them, " Find
out for yourself without any help from me the
truth on those critical and historical questions which
are matters of life and death for you, and, to speak
honestly, for myself also ; and then I will tell you
how this truth is to be reconciled with my 'tra
ditional thesis.'" It would hardly be possible to
conceive a more helpless or ignoble attitude on
the part of man or church. For the men whose
doubts come from brave thought and honest inquiry
have the highest claim on the best consideration
and clearest light of all the churches and all their
thinkers. Doubt never appears without reason ;
and the removal of the reason is the only real
way to the removal of the doubt. The churches
that do nothing to reach and purify the source
only help to muddle the stream.
§ III. Deism and Apologetics in Catholic France and
in Protestant England
I. Constructive apologetic is thus at once the
highest work of living religious thought, and the
common duty of all the churches. In it the Roman
Catholic must bear its part. It is too wise to trust
here to its infallible authority, matchless organization,
rigorous discipline, and jealously guarded education ;
indeed, experience has thoroughly well taught it
how little these are able to keep down the critical

62 CATHOLICISM

and sceptical spirit among its laity, or even, as
certain cases have flagrantly proved, to keep it
out from the ranks of its clergy. It is but natural
that the church which most taxes faith should
most provoke unbelief; but it ought not to follow
that the claims that most challenge criticism are
claims that can as little recognize as bear the
criticism they challenge. It is the simple and
sober truth to say that no church has begotten
so much doubt and disbelief as the church of
Rome. And she has begotten it, not by the
demand she makes on faith, but by her inability
to justify the demand. History bears here an in
dubitable and incorruptible witness. Of the Middle
Ages we need not speak ; or of the Renaissance,
when the educated intellect of Italy almost ceased
to be Christian, and became at once sceptical
and pagan ; or of the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries, with such notable figures as Giordano
Bruno and Vanini, and tendencies so significant
as those impersonated in Montaigne, Bodin, and
Charron. But we may glance at our own and the
previous century. The eighteenth was the century
of Rationalism : and it is customary to credit England
with being its nursery and home, where, as Deism,
it assumed its most anti-Christian and aggressive
form. But English Deism was, from a literary
point of view, a poor and vapid thing compared
with the Free Thought of the France whence Pro
testantism and Jansenism had been expelled that

AND THE APOLOGY FOR THE FAITH 63
the Catholicism of Rome might have it all its
own way. In England Deism had a host of obscure
writers, now well-nigh forgotten, irrepressible men
like Toland, men of mediocre ability and culture
like Anthony Collins, vulgar men like Chubb,
irritated and disagreeable men like Matthew Tindal
who conformed that he might enjoy his Oxford
fellowship and wrote anonymously that he might
relieve his conscience. But it can reckon only two
names illustrious in literature, Hume and Gibbon ;
the one embodying his scepticism in the subtlest
of English philosophies, the other distilling his into
the stateliest history in the English tongue. But
the active intellects of France, the men who give
name and character to the century, were either
sceptical or infidel. It opens with Bayle, once a
Jesuit convert, the father of critical Rationalism.
The man who stands above all others, and shadows
all beneath, is Voltaire, a Jesuit pupil. The men
who form and express the mind of Paris, then the
head and heart of France, are Diderot, D'Alembert,
and the other Encyclopaedists ; the lion of its salons
is Rousseau. And while the literature of France
was vehemently anti-Christian, the church of France
was not strenuously apologetic, as was the English
church. Here, men like Addison, most classical
and pure and elegant of English essayists ; Clarke,
most metaphysical and in logic adventurous of
English divines ; Butler, Anglican Bishop and Chris
tian Apologist, who had the utmost curiosity to

64 CATHOLICISM

know what was said, in order that he might ascer
tain whether it was true ; Berkeley, a philosopher
as lucid and graceful in style as he was subtle
in argument; Law, a man whose apologetic power
was only surpassed by his passion for the holier
mysticism ; Bentley, greatest of English scholars,
yet master of a pen that could bite as if it were
a living creature ; and many names hardly less great,
like Warburton, Lardner, Paley — made Christian
thought, even as a mere matter of literature, dis
tinguished beside Deism. But in France the power
of resistance was so feeble that no one would think
of naming the churchmen alongside the men of
letters, their most -illustrious name, Malebranche,
belonging, so far as philosophical and literary activity
is concerned, rather to the seventeenth than the
eighteenth century.
2. But it were a grave mistake to conceive the
defence of the Christian Faith, or, indeed, of any
religion, as merely a work of literature ; it is a much
larger and more serious thing. The course of the
Deist controversy in England forms an even more
remarkable contrast to the history of the parallel
movement in France, than do the men engaged in it.
The two movements were indeed closely related ; the
English was, in a sense, the source of the French
Deism. The bosom at which both were suckled was
the philosophy of Locke; but of the children the
English was the elder and formative, the French was
the younger and more imitative, though incalculably

AND THE APOLOGY FOR THE FAITH 65
the more potent. Voltaire did not deduce his Deism
directly from Locke; he learned it from disciples
less reverent and more audacious than the master.
Nothing so astonished him during his English resi
dence as the freedom with which religion was treated.
He found, just as Butler did, that unbelief was fashion
able : " Christianity was not so much as a subject of
inquiry;" it had been "at length discovered to be
fictitious." So Mr. Toland had proved that " Chris
tianity was not mysterious." "The Sect of Free
Thinkers " was the church of the wits, the synagogue
of the socially select. Anthony Collins discoursed of
their wisdom, and it needed the audacity of a Bentley
to satirize their freedom as "thinking and judging
as you find," " which every inhabitant of bedlam
practises every day, as much as any of our illustrious
sect." To him, indeed, their wise men were " idiot
evangelists"; but to Voltaire they represented letters,
culture, the men of sense. Bolingbroke, Pope's
"guide, philosopher, and friend," became Voltaire's
master in Deism ; and he went home to France to
preach what he had learned in England, with very
different results from those that followed here. In
England the victory was with the apologists ; in
France with the assailants of the faith. It was not
simply that in England Deism was intellectually out
matched, while in France it had all the superiority
of mind. The English deist, notwithstanding the
general inferiority already noted, had still men who
were, in the matter of intellect, the equals of the
5

66 CATHOLICISM

English apologist. Hume was more subtle than
Butler. Gibbon was more learned and ponderous
than Lardner or Paley. Tom Paine was a greater
master of English and of argument than Beattie.
Yet, in spite of the number and social strength of
their opponents, the apologists triumphed ; when the
century ended the Christian religion was far more
strongly entrenched in the reason and heart of the
English people than it had been when the century
began. But in France there was another story.
When the century opened it was still the great age
of Louis XIV, where the Church was as illustrious in
intellect, in learning, and in eloquence, as the State
was in regal dignity, in military prowess, and in
skilful statesmanship. When the century closed the
Revolution had come, the terror had followed, King
dom and Church had together perished. And to this
catastrophe no cause had contributed more potently
than the French movement which corresponded to
the English Deism.
Now why this remarkable difference ? To examine
all its roots and reasons would carry us much too far.
But the main reason is one which is not without its
bearing on our argument. In England the political
and social conditions were such that the religious was
not a civil question, but rather one intellectual and
ethical. The State had ceased to expect uniformity
of worship and belief, and was ceasing to enforce it
by civil disabilities and pains. The first step towards
toleration had been taken ; and Parliament had prac-

AND THE APOLOGY FOR THE FAITH 67
tically recognized that the civil and the ecclesiastical
society, the State and the Church, were not identical
and coextensive. And it so happened that the
political situation, especially as concerned the king
ship, was such as to reduce to silence the only party
in the State who could have resisted the principle of
liberty. The old High Churchman, who believed in
the divine right of the king and the duty of passive
obedience, could not preach his doctrine in the face
of the Hanoverian succession, or apply it to a
sovereign who reigned by the will of the people and
not of right divine. And so for the first time in
English history since "the spacious days of great
Elizabeth," religion had ceased to be a civil concern
and become the concern of the religious, a matter for
the reason and the conscience, for the mind and the
heart. And thus it was freely discussed, tested on
its own merits, argued for, argued against, tried by
logic, proved by evidence, dealt with as if it were of
all subjects the one most germane to the intellect, the
one thing absolutely common and accessible to all
men. And the result stands written broad upon the
face of the century : in a fair argument and on a free
field religion easily and completely won.
But the situation in France was exactly the con
verse. In 1688 toleration began its reign with Dutch
William in England ; in 1685 Louis XIV. revoked
the Edict of Nantes, and began the reign of in
tolerance. The Roman Church and the French
State were henceforward so bound together as to be

68 CATHOLICISM

in a sense one body breathing fateful breath. There
was no greater enemy of civil freedom than the
Church ; no more vigilant foe of religious liberty than
the State. Each confirmed the other in the policy
that was most disastrous to its good. And so it
happened that the free-thinking spirit which had
returned from England incarnated in Voltaire, saw
that it could not teach religion without offending the
State ; and so it had to strike at the State in order to
get at the religion which had become the very soul
of the tyrannical sway. And there was no lack of
provocation to assault. In popular feeling, dislike of
Voltaire, the mocker, has hidden from us how much
there was to justify his mockery, and what really just
and great ends it was often used to serve. We forget
that he was no mere spirit who denied, but one who
strongly affirmed where affirmation was at once most
necessary and most dangerous. He who loves free
dom ought never to forget the services Voltaire
rendered to the cause he loves. On behalf of Jean
Calas, and in the name of justice and truth, he fought
the whole collective bigotry of France, and prevailed.
He confronted a church that in the age of Louis the
Well-Beloved dared to persecute, even though so
many of her priests and princes had ceased to
believe ; and by his arguments, his scorn, his bold
mockery, he gained, almost single-handed, his
splendid victory. And here was the real reason
why in France reasonableness in religion or con
structive religious thought never had a chance, or if

AND THE APOLOGY FOR THE FAITH 69
it had, never was able to use it. The tongue of the
church was tied, she had to defend the indefensible,
and so was silent ; while the assault was delivered
against the whole broad face of two flagrant offenders
whose alliance made them appear as one : a State
that, in its anxiety to repress a liberty which the
church feared, forgot its own people; and a church
that, in its desire to sanction and support a State
which tried so hard to serve it, neglected its own
duties and was faithless to the very end of its being.
It was the civil independence of the question they
discussed that made English positive thought so
completely victorious ; it was the league of the
Roman Church and the autocratic State in France,
so mischievous to the good of both, so provocative
in both of evil, that contributed to their common and
disastrous overthrow. The policy which the church
either directed or approved was fatal to the faith its
infallibility had been invoked to define and defend.
3. And it is now as then ; it is Catholic countries
that show the most radical revolt of the intellect
from Religion, and a revolt not at one point, but at
all. In Belgium the conflict is going on under our
very eyes, political on the surface, religious beneath
it ; in Italy, where thought is most active, the claims
and dogmas of the church are handled most freely ;
even in Spain political aspirations are wedded to
ecclesiastical denials. There is no country in which
unbelief is so strong and so vindictive as in France,
so much a passion of hate, a fanaticism or zealotry

70 CATHOLICISM
against, if not Religion, yet the church that claims
to be its authoritative vehicle and exponent. The
anti-clericals of the nineteenth century are more
extreme than the encyclopaedists of the eighteenth ;
the resolute and rough-handed antagonism of the
Senate and the workshop has superseded the fine
criticism of the study, and the delicate yet well-spiced
raillery of the salon. The very priesthood is not proof
against the negative spirit ; the new political ideal
steals the heart of a Lamennais from Rome, while
German criticism turns the most hopeful pupil of
Saint Sulpice into the freest and most famed critic of
the creative Person and period of Christianity. No
church has had such splendid opportunities as the
Catholic ; everything that the most perfect organiza
tion and the complete control of rulers and their
agencies could do for her and the faith she carried,
has been done. And if she has yet allowed Free
Thought, so often in its worst and extremest forms,
to spring up all round her, it is evident that she of
all churches most needs a relevant and living apolo
getic. She must reconcile the intellects that have
revolted from her, or lose them utterly ; and the
only way of reconciliation is the way of reason and
argument. Grant belief in the papal claims, and
authority and infallibility are powerful weapons.
Create doubt or denial of them, and they are but
empty words — the speech of exaggerated feebleness.
Where they can only speak their claims, they but
provoke to ridicule ; where these claims can appear

AND THE APOLOGY FOR THE FAITH 7 1

as political or social forces, they beget the revolu
tionary and retributive fanaticism, the hate inspired
by fear, which is so distinctive of unbelief in the
Catholic countries. If, then, Catholicism is to win
the revolted intellect, it must use reasonable speech ;
and the more reasonable it is, the more irresistible
it will be. Protestantism frankly appeals to the
reason, and so is bound to persuade it ; Catholicism
must humbly lay aside its high claims, and convince
the reason before it can rule it. And so in either
case a rational apologetic is necessary, though in the
Catholic case, as there is so much more to prove, the
proof must be correspondingly great and commanding.
4. It will not, I hope, be supposed that there is
here any attempt at a tu quoque. It were an ex
pedient fit only for a poor controversialist to excuse
the weakness of the Protestant churches by charg
ing the Roman Catholic with impotence ; or to hide
the failure of the Catholic to hold or control her
peoples, by magnifying the feebleness of the Protes
tant. What is really intended is to emphasize this
point : — the burden and responsibilities of the con
flict with unbelief lie on all the churches, and no
one can say to the other, " the work is thine, not
mine " ; or, with a more petulant insolence, " it is mine,
and not thine." This duty, indeed, they have all on
occasion been forward to recognize, and we rejoice
to see men like Vives the Catholic, Pascal the Jansen
ist, Grotius the Arminian, Leibnitz the Lutheran,
Butler the Anglican, Lardner the Presbyterian,

72 CATHOLICISM
Schleiermacher the German Evangelical, and Martin-
eau the Unitarian, united in unconscious harmony
in doing for their several generations the same order
of work. Yet it is necessary to make a distinction :
an apology for Religion is not the same thing as an
apology for a church ; nay, more— the best apologies
for Religion have been in no respect apologies for
specific churches. But, while the distinction is clear,
a separation is not in every case possible. If the
church is held to be the embodiment of the Religion,
so necessary to it that the Religion were impossible
without it, then the only complete and sufficient
apology for the Religion is an apology for the church.
And this is what we have a right to expect from
Roman Catholicism ; what is an insufficient vindi
cation of its claims as a church is, from its own
point of view, an inadequate defence of the Christian
Religion. For to the Catholic his church is his
religion; the two are not distinct and separable,
but one and indivisible ; and therefore the apology
which leaves the church unjustified leaves the Re
ligion altogether condemned. That is a grave aspect
of the matter, burdening Roman Catholicism and
the Catholic with the heaviest responsibility church
or man could bear ; and it is the aspect which gives
significance to the question here proposed for dis
cussion, viz., whether Catholic thought in England
has^ given such an interpretation and defence of
Religion as to make it more true and intelligible
and real to critical and perplexed and doubting minds.

AND THE APOLOGY FOR THE FAITH 73
§ IV. The Anglo-Catholic Movement and Religion
in England
I. Catholicism in England cannot be discussed
apart from that Anglo-Catholic movement which
did so much to revive it. As to the ecclesiastico-
religious effects of that movement, there is no need
for discussion. These are on all sides visible
enough. Its ideal of worship has modified the
practice of all the churches, even of those most
hostile to its ideal of Religion. The religious spirit
of England is, in all its sections and varieties, sweeter
to-day than it was forty years ago, more open to the
ministries of art and the graciousness of order,
possessed of a larger sense of "the community of
the saints," the kinship and continuity of the
Christian society in all ages. Even Scotland has
been touched with a strange softness, Presbyterian
worship has grown less bald, organs and liturgies
have found a home in the land and church of Knox,
and some of the more susceptible sons of the
Covenant have been visited by the ideal of a Church
at once British and Catholic, where prelate and
presbyter should dwell together in unity. On the
other hand, it must be confessed that something of
the old sterner Puritan conscience against priest
hoods and all their symbols and ways, has been
evoked ; and in a sense not true of any time between
now and the period of Laud, two ideals of Religion,
each the radical contradiction of the other, stand
face to face in England, and contend under the

74 CATHOLICISM
varied masks supplied by our theological, ecclesiastical,
and even political controversies. The one ideal is
sensuous and sacerdotal, and seeks, by the way it
construes and emphasizes the idea of the Church,
to secularize the State, with all our daily activities
and occupations ; the other ideal is spiritual and
ethical, and seeks, by the way it construes and
emphasizes the idea of Religion, to transform and
transfigure the State, to sanctify all that belongs to
the common life of man. The fundamental question
is, whether an organized church which is, alike in
history and administration, not in the civil but in
the ecclesiastical sense, a political institution, — or a
spiritual faith, which is in its nature a regenerative
and regnant moral energy for the whole man, is to
prevail. And the more obvious this question becomes,
the more the issues are simplified, and men are
forced to determine whether they are to be ruled by
a church or governed by a Religion. The move
ment which has made or is making our people
conscious of this vital issue, has rendered an extra
ordinary service to the men and churches of to-day.
2. But the most remarkable ecclesiastico-religious
results achieved by Anglo-Catholicism are those
to be found within the two churches chiefly con
cerned, the Anglican and the Roman. Though so
many of the men who inaugurated and represented
the movement left the English church, yet the spirit
they had created, and many of the men they had
inspired, remained within her. And the Anglo-

AND THE APOLOGY FOR THE FAITH 75
Catholic ideal has continued to live and work with
in her like a regenerative spirit, has filled all her
sons, even the most resistant, with new ambitions,
has both narrowed and broadened her affections and
aims, has changed old antipathies into new sym
pathies, has made her devouter in worship and more
devoted alike in her practical action and ideal ends.
Rome is judged with more perfect charity, Dissenters
are judged with more rigorous severity. Unity is
loved, and historical continuity coveted, as the con
dition and channel of the most potent and needed
graces. The freedom and independence of the
church has become a watchword, Erastianism a
hated and unholy thing. The Sovereignty of the
Redeemer has become a living faith, and the symbols
that speak of His presence and work and activity
are invested with a solemn and sacramental and
even sacrificial significance ; while the acts that re
cognize His Deity and express man's devotion, are
performed with a new sense of awe and reverence.
The worship has grown at once statelier and more
expressive ; men have become more conscious of its
beauty and its power, have come to feel how com
pletely it can articulate their needs, satisfy and
uplift their souls, bring them into the company of the
saintly dead and into communion with the Eternal.
The English church has a deeper sense of sin and
a greater love for sinners, and seeks to use her
symbolism and her service to bring Christ and His
salvation nearer to the hearts and consciences of

76 CATHOLICISM

men. The Catholic ideal may be to many sensuous,
poor through the very wealth of its symbolism, a
materialized and so depraved translation of the idea
of the Kingdom, which must ever remain " of
Heaven," that it may reign over earth ; but, what
ever it may be to such, no one can deny that it has
been to the church of England a spirit of life and
energy. It is, especially when the historical grounds
on which it rests are considered, a splendid example
of the power of faith, and of the creative and trans-
figurative force of the religious imagination. From
this point of view it has, indeed, a most pathetic
side ; but its pathos need not blind us to the wonder
ful things it has accomplished, though it may make
us wonder at the power which has accomplished
them. Yet we need not wonder, for of old God
chose the things that were not, to bring to nought
the things that were.
3. And on Catholicism itself the Anglo-Catholic
movement has acted no less potently. It has
changed its spirit and attitude to the English people,
and the English people's to it : has indeed, in a sense
unknown since the Reformation, made Roman
Catholicism English. Catholic emancipation supplied
one of the conditions of the change, but the Oxford
movement, and its issues, accomplished it. What
Cardinal Newman describes as " the Protestant view
ofthe Catholic Church" is an example ofthe remark
able limitation of his genius, his inability to under
stand where he does not sympathize. The " view,"

AND THE APOLOGY FOR THE FAITH 77
though, no doubt, veraciously reminiscent, is but a
series of prejudices, all the more vulgar that they
were those of cultured men. What the true view is
does not here concern us ; only this : the English
view was very much what the course of history had
made it. Catholicism had been anti-English : in its
interests foreign potentates had threatened England,
and had tried to execute their threats ; Catholics had
plotted against Elizabeth, and against the first James ;
they had fought for absolutism under his son, had
stood by the later Stuarts, and had intrigued for their
return. Catholicism, in countries where the royal
might threaten the papal supremacy, had, by the
mouth of men like Suarez and Mariana, preached
strong doctrines as to the duties of kings and the
rights of peoples. But in the later seventeenth century
in England — where it had everything to hope from the
prince, and nothing from the people — its loyalty was
to the ruler, who promised or seemed to promise to
govern in its interests, not to the law or to the ruled.
Indeed, nothing is so indicative of the blindness which
has happened to the Roman church — and it is but a
form of the fatal intellectual incompetence which falls
upon all communities that live by an over-central
ized sovereignty — as its fatuous faith in reigning
authorities, and its inability to understand and
control that on which all authority must ultimately
rest, viz., the mind and heart and will of the people.
To this there may be the proverbial exception,
which proves the rule ; but as to the fact of the rule,

78 CATHOLICISM

the student of modern history will be the last person
to doubt. And largely because of this rule the
English Catholics lived as aliens in the -land, under
heavy civil disabilities, with the home of their
religious interest and the source of their religious
inspiration elsewhere. Time brought amelioration ;
Spain^ fell, and could launch no second Armada,
raise no army England need fear ; the Stuarts were
expelled, and France was soon too completely broken
to have either the will or the power to interfere on
their behalf. Freed from fear of invasion or rebellion,
the attitude of England changed. She became
tolerant, came to understand what civil and religious
liberty meant, celebrated — moved in great measure by
the persuasion of the men most radically opposed
to Catholicism — one memorable moment in her
process of learning by " Catholic Emancipation."
Liberty allowed a completer incorporation with the
English people, a new baptism in the English spirit, a
healthier, because a freer, profession of faith. And
this had been prepared for from within. The saintly
Challoner and the brave Milner had quickened
Catholic religious zeal ; Lingard, with notable erudi
tion and independence, had made English history its
apology ; and Cardinal Wiseman improved the new
day that had dawned by an apologetic of rare skill
and eloquence. But the foreign taint still clung to
Catholicism ; it wanted English character and breed
ing, national traditions and aspirations. Even
Wiseman was but an Italian priest, a professor from

AND THE APOLOGY FOR THE FAITH 79
Rome, Irish by descent, Spanish by birth. What it
wanted the Oxford movement gave, a distinctively
English quality and aspect. The men carried over
to Rome had received the most typical English
education, their leader was the greatest living master
of the English tongue. They had been nursed in
Anglican traditions, were, some of them, learned
Anglican divines, who could not forget their learning
or change their blood and breeding with their church,
or cancel and cast out the ancient inheritance they
had so long possessed and loved. They were
Catholics of an altogether new type ; their memories
and instincts were not of a persecuted sect, hated
and alien in England, but of a church proudly and
consciously English ; the superstructure of their faith
and life might be Roman, but the basis was Anglican,
and the superstructure had to be accommodated to the
basis, not the basis to the superstructure. Cardinal
Newman does not build on Thomas Aquinas or
Bellarmine or Bossuet ; they only supply the but
tresses and pillars, the arches and gargoyles of his
faith : his fundamental principles are those of Butler ;
he reasons when he is gravest, fullest of conviction
and most anxious to convince, in the methods and on
the premisses of the Analogy. For polemical purposes
he is all the better a Catholic for having been an
Anglican ; and, indeed, in a very real sense, he did
not cease to be an Anglican when he became a
Roman Catholic. And it is this persistence of the
primitive type that has been the strength of the

80 CATHOLICISM

derivative. Though the men went to Rome, they yet
remained English ; the principles that carried them
had been educed and developed within the Anglican
church and in its interests ; and so men and princi
ples alike tended to naturalize Catholicism on the
one hand, and to beget a patient and respectful
hearing for it on the other. People wished to believe
that men they admired and loved had acted with
reason and had accepted what was reasonable ; the
old attitude to Romanism ceased, and a public, well
disposed for conviction, invited the best efforts of men
so well able to convince.
§ V. Whether the CatJwlic Apology was equal
to the Need
i. Now, whether Catholicism has profited by this
extraordinary change, and the gains that caused it,
as much as she hoped to do, or as she might and even
ought to have done, or whether her once high hopes
have been dashed with bitterest disappointment, is
not a matter that concerns us. But here is a matter
that does — the movement that made Religion more
real and living to a large number of cultivated men
did a true interpretative and so apologetic work. It
is a blunder of the worst kind to imagine that any
one form of Christianity can be served by any other
being made ridiculous. It belongs to the madness
of the sectary, whether Catholic or anti-Catholic, to
believe that his own system grows more sane as
others are made to seem less rational. But the

AND THE APOLOGY FOR THE FAITH 8 1
Protestant ought to be as pleased to discover the
reason in Catholicism, as the Catholic to find the
truth in Protestantism ; what makes either ridiculous
makes the other less credible. For if there is differ
ence there is also agreement ; and while the difference
is in man's relation to the truth, the agreement is in
the most cardinal of the truths that stand related
to man. If Christ lives within Catholicism, He ought
to seem the more wonderful, and it the less odious to
the Protestant ; if within Protestantism, He ought to
appear the more gracious, and it the less void of
grace and truth to the Catholic. Unmeasured speech
is either insincere or unveracious ; and the worst
unveracity is the one that denies good to be where
both good and God are. Now, the movement that
made many men better Christians by making them
Catholics, did a good deed for Religion. By showing
that there was reason in Catholicism it made history
more reasonable ; it made, too, the honesty, saintliness,
intellectual integrity and thoroughness of many
schoolmen and thinkers more intelligible, and evoked
the charity that dared to love and admire where
religious and intellectual differences were deepest.
There were, indeed, more irenical influences in the
movement than the men who conducted it either
imagined or desired.
2. But when we have said ali that can be justly
or even generously said in praise of the ecclesi-
astico-religious effects of this movement, have we
said enough? England had some claim on the
6

82 CA THOLICISM

men who led it, and so had the Christian Re
ligion. England had done something for the men,
had borne, nursed, reared, educated them ; had en
dowed them with her best learning, the wealth
of her choicest teachers, the noble inheritance of
her traditions and aspirations. The Christian Re
ligion had quickened and cultivated them, had in
spired them with high faith and lofty ideals, had
given them a splendid opportunity for service and
equal ability to serve. The land and the faith that
had so entreated them, had a right to expect from
them a correspondent measure of help. They stood
at the breaking of a day that dawned with abun
dant promise of new life ; yet with the certainty of
all the difficulties new life ever encounters, and must
overcome or die. The century of hard rationalism
was ended ; its Deism, Free Thought, Encyclopaed
ist^ Materialized Religion, and Secularized Church,
had perished in revolution ; and in revolution, and
through it, the spirit of the new age had been born.
In philosophy a constructive, though critical, Tran
scendentalism replaced the subtle and barren Em
piricism that by the mouth of the sceptic Hume had
confessed that it knew not what man or nature
was, whence they had come or whither they tended.
In literature the genius of Goethe had created an
ideal of culture that seemed higher and completer
than the ideal of religion. Byron had assailed the
old moral and social conventionalisms, magnifying
independence of them into, if not the chief virtue,

AND THE APOLOGY FOR THE FAITH 83
yet the best note of the nobler manhbod. Shelley
had given clear and musical voice to the passion for
freedom and hatred of the hoary despotisms that
had hindered the progress and marred the happi
ness of man. Wordsworth had made nature radiant
with the light of indwelling spirit ; Scott had evolved
from the past visions of chivalry and nobleness to
rebuke, to cheer, and to inspire the present ; Cole
ridge had made the speculative reason and the crea
tive imagination become as sisters ministrant to faith ;
everywhere a brighter, more genial and reasonable
spirit possessed man. In politics the old dynastic
and despotic ambitions had fallen before the up
risen peoples ; they were possessed by a new sense
of brotherhood, a passion for ordered freedom, for
justice, for the reign of the law that would spoil
oppression, secure to each his rights, and require
from all their duties. In such an hour of regenera
tion and the activity of the regenerated, Religion
could not be allowed to escape change; the day
of humdrum respectability was over. It was not
enough that the church should stand by the throne,
indifferent to the character of him who filled it ; it
must feel the new spirit, and either open its heart
to it or by shutting the door against it seal its own
doom. And when the new spirit knocked at the
door of the English church, her then most potent
and active sons knew not what better thing to
do than to evoke an ancient ecclesiastical ideal to
answer and withstand it. And it was out of this

84 CATHOLICISM

appeal to a tried and vanquished past against a
living present, that the Anglo-Catholic movement
was born. It was less the child of a great love than
of a great hate, hatred of what its spokesman and
founder called " Liberalism." What he so called he
never understood ; his hatred was too absolute to
allow him to get near enough to see it as it was.
He was a poet, and had the poet's genius and
passion ; where he did not love he could not under
stand ; what he hated he held before his imagina
tion, and took a sort of Dantesque pleasure in
making it hideous enough to justify his hate. This
abhorred " Liberalism " might have had a threaten
ing front to mole-eyed prerogative and privilege ;
but the eye of the spiritual ought to have read its
heart, seen the probabilities of danger, but the in
finite possibilities of good — its hatred of wrong, its
love of justice, its desire for sweeter manners, purer
laws, its purpose to create a wealthier, happier and
freer state. And the spirit that so discerned would
have helped by bringing Religion into " Liberalism "
to make "Liberalism" religious. But John Henry
Newman saw nothing of the enthusiasm of righteous
ness and humanity that was in its heart ; saw only
its superficial antagonisms, to political injustice, to
ecclesiastical privilege, to the venerable but mischie
vous, because richly endowed, inutilities of Church
and State ; and so he faced it as if it were the very
demon of revolution, the fraudulent disguise of Athe
ism and impiety. To counteract it he did not fall

AND THE APOLOGY FOR THE FAITH 85

back on the Christianity of Christ — that was too
closely allied to the thing he hated ; but he tried
to recall the lost ideal of an authoritative church,
the teacher, interpreter, and embodiment of Religion.
His bulwark against " Liberalism " was authority ;
the organized illiberalism of a body ecclesiastical.
The ghost of a mediaeval church was evoked to
exorcise the resurgent spirit of Christ in man.
That was a most calamitous choice, the loss of a
golden opportunity for the highest service. New
man, though not the most gifted religious teacher
of the century, had in him above any man of his
day the quickening spirit, the power to search the
conscience, to rouse the heart, to fire the imagina
tion, to move the will. He was without the specu
lative genius of Coleridge ; the swift insight that
could read the heart of a mystery ; the mental hero
ism that could explore every part of an opposed
system ; the chivalry that could entreat it nobly ; the
synthetic mind that could, resist the fascination of
false antitheses and antagonisms ; the constructive
intellect that could bring into order and unity ele
ments that seemed to hasty and shallow thinkers
chaotic and hostile. But he had, in a far more emi
nent degree, the qualities that teach and persuade
men ; a concentration of purpose ; an intensity, even
as it were a singleness, of conviction'; a moral passion,
a prophetic fervour, which yet clothed itself in the
most graceful speech ; a strength and skill of spiritual
inquisition or analysis, enabling him to reach the

86 CATHOLICISM

inmost recesses of the heart and probe the sensitive
secrets of the conscience ; a humour now grim and
fierce, now playful and tender ; an imagination that
often dominated, yet always served his intellect, and
was most restrained when most indulged, its pic
tures but making his meaning more clear and dis
tinct. He had not the large charity of Maurice, the
power to read the system through the man and
make the man illustrate the system, finding the
good in both. Indeed, especially in his early days,
he could not differ without disliking : dissent from
a man's opinions rose almost into personal contempt
or even hate of the man. Nor had he the massive
and human-hearted manhood of Arnold, who ever
loved persons and humanity more than systems and
things ; while of Newman it may be said, he valued
persons only as they were the representatives of sys
tems and typical of things. Nor had he Whately's
sober integrity of mind, the English sagacity that
liked to look things straight in the face and see them
as they were. But he had as none of these had, as
no man in this century has had, command over the
English people through his command over the Eng
lish tongue ; the enthusiasm of a reformer who be
lieved in the absolute sufficiency of the reform he
was conducting; who lived, thought, spoke like a
man who had a mission ; and whose mission it was
to reclaim the people of England for their church
and their God. And the gift he had he could not
exercise without moving men ; they rallied to him

AND THE APOLOGY FOR THE FAITH 87
or recoiled from him ; his speech made disciples,
agitated his church, filled it with strong hopes and
strange fears, raised high expectations at Rome, and
made England resound with the noise and confusion
of long silent controversies. When we look into
those disturbed times, the thing that most strikes
and abides with us is, the presence and personality
of the man that moved them.
3. We may, then, represent the matter thus : —
the formative period of Newman's life, 1826- 183 3,
and the decade that followed, may be described as
a period during which men were waiting for a rele
vant constructive interpretation of the Religion of
Christ. The revolutionary forces were spent, con
structive forces were at work in every region of
thought and life ; and they neededj but the electric
touch of a great religious ideal to be unified and
made ministrant to Religion. The old monarchical
and oligarchical theories having perished, the Philo
sophical Radicals were seeking, with but poor suc
cess, a new basis for politics, that they might
determine what was the chief good ; and new methods
in legislation, that they might promote and secure
the greatest happiness of the greatest number. John
Stuart Mill had just escaped from the dogmatic Em
piricism of his father ; had been spiritually awakened
. by the poetry of Wordsworth and the philosophy of
Coleridge ; and was looking about for a faith by
which to order his life. Charles Darwin was just
beginning to watch the methods of nature and to

88 CATHOLICISM

learn how to interpret her ; and while Newman was
making verses and gathering impulses in the Medi
terranean, he was away in the Beagle exploring many
seas and lands. In the "loneliest nook in Britain,"
under the shadow of hills and within sight of moor
lands consecrated by the heroism and martyrdoms
of his Covenanting forefathers, Thomas Carlyle was
doing his strenuous best to wed the thoughts that had
come to him from German literature and philosophy,
with the substance and spirit of his ancestral faith ;
the effort taking visible shape in the egoistic ideal
ism of his Sartor Resartus, and leading him to look
into man and his recent history with the eyes that
were to see in the French Revolution the tragedy
of retribution and righteousness. Transcendental
Idealism was in full career in Germany ; Hegel and
Schleiermacher were lecturing in Berlin, the one ap
plying his philosophy to the explication of religion
and history, the other his criticism to the documents,
facts, and doctrines of the Christian faith ; while in
Tubingen, Strauss was combining and developing
the two, with results that were to break upon the
alarmed world in a certain Leben fesu. In France,
Saint Simon had developed his Nouveau Christian-
isme, pleading that Religion might be more an
energy directing all " social forces towards the moral
and physical amelioration of the class which is at
once the most numerous and the most poor " : and
Comte had begun the Cours de Philosophic Positive,
explaining how the theological and metaphysical

AND THE APOLOGY FOR THE FAITH 89
states had been passed, and the final and positive
state had come ; and what were the new ideas of
Society, of God, and of Religion on which it was
to rest. Everywhere the struggle was towards posi
tive ideas, constructive ideals, such an interpretation
of man's nature, history, and universe, as would
tend to a more perfect organization of society and
a better ordering of life. It was indeed a splendid
moment for an Apologist built after the manner of
Augustine, with his insight into the actualities of
the present and the possibilities of the future, with
his belief in God and truth, the infinite adaptability
and comprehensiveness, imperial authority and per
vasive spirit of Religion. He would have seized
the new ideas, translated them into their Christian
equivalents, realizing, elevating, vivifying, organizing
them by the act of translation. He would have
found that every attempt to find law and order in
nature, to discover method and progress in creation,
without leap or gap, violence or interference, whether
with Hegel, by the evolution of the transcendental
idea, or, what was indeed only the empirical side of
the same, with Darwin, by the gradation and blend
ing of genera and species, — was no attempt to expel
God from nature, but only to make nature more
perfectly express Him, and be more wholly His. He
would have welcomed every endeavour to read anew
the past of man, to find law in it, to discover the
affinities of thought and custom and belief — as evi
dence that men were at last awakening to the truth

90 CATHOLICISM

that the race was a vast whole, a mighty organism,
whose parts lived in and through each other, and were
bound to live each for the other and all for the whole ;
and an organism which lived and grew not simply
by intercourse and conflict with its environment, but
under the reign and for the ends of a universal
Reason, an omnipresent Providence. He would have
seen in the ambition for freedom ; for more and more
equitably distributed wealth ; for a more perfect state,
a society where the hated inequalities of the past had
ceased, and a true human brotherhood was realized — •
an ambition inspired by Christ, the direct fruit of His
humane and beneficent spirit. And he would have
hailed the love, which was even becoming a worship
of humanity, as proof that the first principles of
" the kingdom of God " were at last beginning to be
understood. And this relation to the new thought
would have determined his apology. It would not
have invoked the authority of a church that, what
ever its claims, had proved its impotence by the
inexorable process of history in the indubitable
language of fact ; but it would have said : — " This
awakening is of God, and must be accepted as His,
not dealt with as if it were the devil's. These new
ideas of order in nature and history, of social justice
and human rights, those ambitions for a larger good
which ' Liberalism ' so ill expresses, and Socialism
so badly embodies and fails to realize — are all of
Christ ; they mean that men are getting ready to
understand the idea of His Kingdom. It compre-

AND THE APOLOGY FOR THE FAITH 9 1
hends, for it created these new ideas ; into its lan
guage they must be translated, that they may find
their most perfect forms, live in the organism and
possess the energy that will enable them to do their
work. The progress of man and the Church of God
are two kindred things ; all true knowledge is know
ledge of truth, and truth is holy ; to know it is to
be made better, more like what God meant man to
be. Let knowledge grow — whatever truth science dis
covers religion blesses and appropriates ; let research,
whether as physical investigation or historical criticism,
pursue her quest ; for love of truth is love of God, and
the more we find of it, the more we know" of Him."
4. What has just been said is meant to indicate
what would have been the attitude of a really con
structive Christian thinker in face of the new and
nascent thought. He would have recognized as
Christian, and claimed for Christianity, the new
spirit, with all its nobler truths, ideals, aims. What
belongs of right to the Christian Religion ought to
be incorporated with it ; what is so incorporated
can never become a facile and deadly weapon in the
hands of the enemy. But Newman's attitude was
precisely the opposite. Change was in the air; he
felt it, feared it, hated it. He idealized the past, he
disliked the present, and he trembled for the future.
His only hope was in a return to the past, and to
a past which had never existed save in the imagination
of the romancer. What he hated and resisted he
did not take the trouble to understand, He was in

92 CATHOLICISM

this respect a conspicuous contrast to his friends
Hugh James Rose and Edward Bouverie Pusey,
especially the latter, who, in his memorable, though,
unhappily, afterwards recalled reply to the famous
sermons of the former against German Rationalism,
showed thorough knowledge of the older Continental
criticism, — though, as it turned out, the knowledge
was not his own, — as well as the chivalry that could
dare to speak the truth concerning it. But one
seeks in vain in Newman's early writings — poems,
essays, articles, pamphlets, tracts — for any sign or
phrase indicative of real comprehension of the forces
he opposed. He does not comprehend their real
nature or drift ; what reasons they have for their
being, what good they have in them, what truth ;
what wrongs to redress, what rights to achieve : he
only feels that they are inimical to his ideals. There
is no evidence that he ever tried to place himself
in the position of the philosophical radical, or the
rational critic, or the constructive socialist, or the
absolute idealist ; and look at his and their questions
through their eyes and from their standpoint. He
hated them and their works too utterly to attempt
to do so — perhaps he was haunted by a great doubt
as to what might happen if he did ; but the result
was, he resisted he knew not what, and knew not
how to resist it. As a simple matter of fact, he
resisted it in the least effectual way. He emphasized
the church idea, the historical continuity, sanctity,
authority, rights, prerogatives and powers of the

AND THE APOLOGY FOR THE FAITH 93
organized society or body which called itself here
the Anglican, there the Catholic church. The idea
grew on him ; the more he claimed for the church,
the more he had to claim ; the more he set it in
opposition to the movement and tendencies of living
thought, the more absolute and divine he had to
make its authority. The logic of the situation was
inexorable, — if the church alone could save man
from the spirit embodied in " Liberalism," then it
must be a divine and infallible church, the vicar
and voice of God on earth. But the logic of the
situation was one, and the logic of history another
and tragically different. In the past Catholic au
thority had bent like the rush in the river before
the stream and tendency of thought ; if it had had
divine rights it had been without divine wisdom ;
men and countries it had owned, it had been un
able to hold ; and for centuries the noblest life,
the best minds, the highest and purest literatures of
Europe had stood outside its pale. And what had
been, was to be. Newman went to Rome, and car
ried with him, or drew after him, men who accepted
his principles ; but the " Liberalism " he hated went
its way, all the mightier and more victorious for the
kind of barrier he had tried to build against it.
He succeeded wonderfully in making Roman Catho
lics of Anglicans ; but he failed in the apologetic that
saves the infidel, and baptizes the spirit of a rational
and revolutionary age into the faith of Christ.
February, 1885.

Ill

CATHOLICISM AND RELIGIOUS THOUGHT
THE Catholic Revival ought not to be conceived
as a mere English or insular movement : so
far as English, it was rather like a wave which reached
our shores from a larger continental flood. It took
indeed, here, a form and character of its own ; but
it would be a grave mistake to regard it as isolated,
or as simply the creation of a few able and resolute
men. That was what it seemed to many contem
porary critics, but it was nothing so accidental and
arbitrary. The men who led it were, in a sense,
spokesmen of a common intellectual and religious
tendency. The revival they effected was part of the
general European reaction against the Illumination
and the Revolution. The reaction was not simple
but complex, at once religious, intellectual and
political ; a recoil of the conservative spirit from the
new ideals that had been so suddenly translated into
portentous realities. And it was marked everywhere
by the same hatred of the eighteenth century and all
its works, embodied everywhere the same hopes and
fears, expressed the same motives and ends. On the

CATHOLICISM AND RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 95
one side stood the revolutionary theses, the rights of
reason and of man, the watchwords " liberty, equality,
fraternity " ; and these were construed not in their
high ideal sense, but through the accidents and
atrocities, the terror and ruin that had attended the
attempt at realization. On the other side the
"reaction emphasized it's own antitheses — the rights
of the community before those of the individual ;
the rights of God and of the sovereigns, spiritual and
civil, He had appointed, above those of the reason and
the peoples ; authority as the only sufficient basis
of order; and order as the condition necessary to
the highest common good. But not satisfied with
opposing antitheses to theses, it became concrete
and practical; confronted the recent revolutionary
frenzy, its passion for iconoclasm and violent
change, with an idealized mediaeval history; at
tempted to resuscitate and realize its ideals ; and
in order to this, invested the church— which was
its most splendid and persistent creation — with the
authority that was held to be alone able to revive
religion and create order, curb and turn back the
loosened and lawless forces which had achieved
the revolt. This radical contradiction, ideal and
historical, seemed at once the surest and the most
direct way to victory ; but to build a dam across a
river is not to arrest the gathering or change the
course of its waters, as the men who securely pitch
their tents in the shelter of the dam will be the first
to experience.

96 CATHOLICISM

% I. The Catholic Revival as the Counter-Revolution
The Catholic revival was the principal phase or
feature of this reaction, and the literature that was
its most operative factor may be described as the
literature of the new Catholic Apologetic.1 Our
reference to its distinctive principles and work must
be brief.
i. The reaction was a complex movement, at once
literary, political, religious. In literature it appeared
as Romanticism, in politics as legitimate and theo
cratic theory, in religion as Ultramontanism. These
three were but different phases or expressions of the
one spirit ; and they may be said to represent the
organization of the more conservative instincts
against the new agencies of progress and change.
The oneness of the spirit is evident from the ease
with which its phases melted or passed into each
other. Romanticism was a revolt against the reign
1 What is here described as the literature of the new Catholic
Apologetic, may be held as represented by the following : —
Joseph de Maistre : D Eglise Gallica?ie (Ed. 1882), Les Soirees
de Saint Petersburg (Ed. 1874), Du Pape (Ed. 1819). De
Bonald : Thdorie du Pouvoir Politique et Religieux dans
la Societe Civile, La Legislation Primitive (Ed. 1819).
Chateaubriand : Gdnie du Christianisme (Ed. 1802). Lamen-
nais : Essai sur Tlndifferetue en Mature de Religion (Ed.
1859). This literature may be said to be devoted to the
exposition of the function of Catholicism in an age of revolution,
and so represents what we have termed the new Apologetic.
Good examples of the older are :— Houteville : La Religion
Chret. prouv/fe par les fails (1740). 3 vols. Bergier : Traitd
Historique et Dogmatique de la Vraie Religion (1780). 12 vols.

CATHOLICISM AjVD RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 9y
of the classical and rational spirit in literature, with
its intense individualism, its severe sense of justice
and of personal rights. The Romantic movement
rose outside Catholicism, was indeed German in its
origin and had its source in the strenuous Protestant
soul of Herder ; but it received full development at
the hands of men like the Schlegels, Tieck, and
Novalis, who loved the realm of the imagination,
and hated the rationalism that had expelled miracle
from nature, and mystery from man, making the
universe the home of prosaic commonplace. They
disliked the cold classicism of Goethe and even the
warmer humanism of Schiller ; and said : " Poetry
and religion are one. Man needs an imagination to
interpret the universe, and he is happy only as he
has a universe peopled by it and for it. These three
— poetry, religion and imagination — are one, and are
never found singly. When man has most religion
he has also most poetry and is fullest of imagination ;
and the times when he had these three divine graces
in the highest degree were the mediaeval." And so
they glorified these times, edited their ballads and
romances, praised their ideal of life and duty, their
bravery, courtesy, devotion ; their indifference to the
market and the exchange, their loyalty to beauty
and honour and religion, their glorious Gothic archi
tecture, with the faith it at once embodied, illustrated
and made illustrious., Admiration for the past,
though it was a past that was a pure creature of
the imagination, easily became belief in the church
7

98 CA THOLICISM

that claimed it as its own ; and so Romanticism in
men like Stolberg, Friedrich Schlegel, and Werner,
passed by a natural gradation into Catholicism.
The reaction in politics was conducted in a still
more courageous and thorough spirit, for it was
directly polemical, a guerre a outrance. It was as
specifically French, or, let us say, Latin, in origin
and form, in atmosphere and purpose, as Romanticism
had been German. Authority must be made divine
if the rights of man were to be denied and his reason
subdued and governed ; but the dynastic idea had
been too rudely broken to be capable of again stand
ing up, and in its own name claiming divine authority.
Its hour of weakness was the church's opportunity ;
it alone had braved the storm, it had been shaken
but it had stood, manifestly, not in its own strength,
but in God's. In the lurid light of the anarchy Rome
was seen to have a mission ; as the seat and home of
supreme authority, in her ancient rdle of the Eternal
City, universal, immutable, infallible, she could stand
forward as the saviour of society, now gone or going
to destruction for want of its most Christian kings.
She was the church God had founded, had super-
naturally endowed and guided, had made the sole
bearer and teacher of His truth, and had graced and
crowned with an Infallible Head. Here was an
authority so awful, so august, and so inviolable as
to be alone able to end the conflict of rival rights,
and restore order by enforcing the one universal duty
—obedience, If divine authority was to rule in the

CATHOLICISM AND RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 99
State, it must be got through the church. Round
her, therefore, the broken fragments of the ancient
order crystallized; to her the resolute spirits that
headed the counter-revolution rallied with sure pre
science of her power, ideal and actual ; and called
upon the whole army of her supernatural claims and
beliefs and sanctions for help in the new crusade.
Joseph de Maistre formulated his hierocratic doctrine,
making the Papal at once guarantee and condition
the royal power. De Bonald wove the political into
the religious revelation, ascribing sole sovereignty to
God, but building upon it the Pope's, and upon his
the king's. Chateaubriand described Christian Rome
as being for the modern what Pagan Rome had
been for the ancient world — the universal bond of
nations, instructing in duty, defending from oppres
sion. Lamennais argued that without authority there
could be no religion, that it was the foundation of all
society and morality, and that it alone enfranchized
man by making him obedient, so harmonizing all
intelligences and wills. And thus the Roman
church, as the supreme authority, was conceived
as the principle of order, the centre of political as
well as religious stability ; the only divine rights
were those she sanctioned ; in her strength kings
reigned, and through obedience to her man was
happy and God honoured.
2. The Counter-Revolution thus gave Catholicism
a splendid opportunity for a new Apologetic ; sum
moned it to occupy a more important and command*

100 CATHOLICISM

ing position than it had held since the Renaissance.
The Apologetic may be described as the principle of
authority done into a philosophy which explained
the past and promised to save the present. It may
be said to have consisted of two parts, a theoretical
and an historical — the first being a vindication of
authority as the only sure basis of religion, and, con
sequently, the only solid ground and guarantee of
order ; the second being a justification of the Roman
church as it had lived and acted in history.
i. The theoretical apologetic was on the positive
side a philosophy of religion, society, and history ; on
the negative, an absolute contradiction of the modern
philosophies, the governing principles or ideas of the
modern mind. The Apologists saw that the Revolu
tion had not been an accident, but a logical issue
from the premisses of the sixteenth century ; i.e., it
was an attempt to realize" a political ideal correlative
and correspondent to the ideal of religious freedom.
The anarchy, the bloodshed, the social misery and
ruin, were held to be the direct result of the movement
which Luther had instituted ; to this, along many lines,
it had been inevitably tending ; in this, its true
character stood revealed. What appeared before the
Revolution as innocent abstractions, or speculations
that flattered human pride in the degree that they
exercised human reason, appeared after it as disinte
grative forces capable of doing the most disastrous
work. It was not a question of Catholicism against
Protestantism, but of Catholicism against the modern

CATHOLICISM AND RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 101
movement as a whole. Humanity must be turned
back in its course three centuries that society might be
saved. The literary revolt of the fifteenth century,
the religious revolt of the sixteenth, the philosophical
systems of the seventeenth, the political revolution
of the eighteenth, were all parts of a whole, successive
steps in the dread argument that had been fulfilling
itself in history. To deal with this in the most
radical way, modern philosophy, as supplying the
principles and premisses, was fiercely- attacked. It
was not necessary that it should be understood or be
treated with justice and truth ; it was only necessary
that it should be overturned and deprived of all its
spoils. De Maistre, with what in him may have been
a holy fury, but what in more worldly men would
have been delirious unveracity, assailed both the
philosophers and their philosophies, discrediting the
systems through their authors. Bacon was a pre
sumptuous and profane scientific charlatan, whose
bad philosophy was the fit expression of his bad
morality. " Contempt of Locke was the beginning
of knowledge." 1 Hume " was perhaps the most
dangerous and the guiltiest of all those baleful
writers who will for ever accuse the last century
before posterity." 2 Voltaire " was a man Paris
crowned, but Sodom would have banished." 3 Even
Herder was described as " the genteel {honnite)
comedian who preached the gospel in the pulpit
1 Soirees, vol. i., p. 442. 2 Ibid., p. 403. s Ibid., p. 243.

102 CATHOLICISM

and pantheism in his writings." 1 Lamennais argued
that the philosophies and the heresies had one prin
ciple, "la souverainete de la raison humaine," the
end whereof was universal disbelief. 8 Admit it, and
from the end there was no escape ; the inevitable
way was from heresy to deism, from deism to
atheism, from atheism to universal scepticism.
Hence, by an exhaustive process, the necessary
conclusion was reached : we must have authority if
we are to have faith ; the true religion is that which
rests on the greatest visible authority, which from
sheer lack of actual or possible claimants can be no
other than Rome. The variations of philosophers as
of Protestants proved their want of truth ; the con
sistencies and harmonies of Catholics proved their
possession of it. Authority being the creative and
fundamental principle in religion, to despise or deny
it was sin — order was Heaven's first law ; contempt
of authority was man's first disobedience. The
systems that denied it were not simply false, they
were evil ; at once causes and fruits of sin. Of sin
and its inexorable penalties, the new Apologetic had
much to say ; sin explained the revolt, the Revolution
illustrated the penalty. To end the revolt the church
must triumph ; and its victory would be the creation,
not of religion only, but of order, of a stable, . con
tented, happy society. But, as Lamennais was des
tined later fatefully to discover, if authority was to

1 SoirAs,vo\.'i.,p.2s8. 2 ' Essai stir I 'Indifference,\a\. iv., pp. 242-3.

CATHOLICISM AND RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 103
rule at all, it must rule everywhere, in both Church
and State ; if freedom reigned in either, it would
reign in both. So de Maistre saw and victoriously
argued : both authorities are of God, but the spiritual
is the higher ; the king's does not qualify the Pope's,
but the Pope's limits the king's. Power may be
limited from above, but not from below ; the subjects
may not judge the sovereign, or impose conditions on
him, but he may be judged by the Pope, and the
judge of the Pope is God. Absolute authority thus,
as political, personified in the king, confronted revolu
tion ; and as spiritual, personified in the Pope, con
fronted the Protestant reason ; and by its strength
religion was to be saved, society re-constituted, order
created, and humanity made obedient to God.
ii. But it was not enough to be critical and theo
retical ; it was no less necessary to show the fine
correspondence of the theory with history, the
speculation with fact. And so the discussion be
came historical ; the church was exhibited as the
maker of civilization, the mother of the arts and
sciences, the creator of the humanities, the enemy
of vice, the nurse of virtue, the home of all the
graces. When the Roman empire fell the church
mitigated the miseries, lessened the evils, conserved
the good that but for her would have perished in
the ruins. When the young peoples came pouring
into the older states, she received them into her
bosom, tamed them, organized their energies, built
them into a new order and new civilization. She

IO4 CATHOLICISM

protected its tender years ; hers was the arm which
turned back the Moor, the Saracen, and the Turk.
In her the conquered peoples had their true and
strongest friend ; the conquerors, a common sovereign
who ruled their fierce wills into obedience and hu
manity. The church united the divided nations,
created out of a multitude of turbulent tribes a
brotherhood of peoples, made the hostile kingdoms
become a single Christendom. Modern Europe
without the church were inconceivable ; whatever
most distinguishes her, whatever she most admires,
she owes to the church. The church has put her
stamp on the literature of every modern people ;
the drama rose out of her miracle plays ; it was
her faith that bade the first and greatest of modern
epics live, and that will not let it die. Art was
her peculiar creation ; she inspired the genius of
the builder, and he built the large faith he lived
by into cathedral and monastery ; her vivid and
fruitful imagination formed the painter, and the
wondrous beauty of his work but witnesses to the
sublimity of her spirit and the truth of her beliefs.
Her mysteries; the sacraments, and miracles that
offend the prosaic rationalism of a godless age, dis
close their true significance, their power at once
to awe, to humble, and to uplift, when seen reflected
in the mirror of mediaeval art. Science, too, the
church had made ; her sons loved, and cultivated,
and enlarged it when the world was dark, and kings
and nobles lived but for war and plunder. All

CATHOLICISM AND RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 105
beneficent and ameliorative agencies were of her
making : hospitals, charities, schools, colleges, the
laws that shielded the serf from the savagery of his
master. For all this, and kindred work, her very
constitution qualified her. The clergy had no land,
no home, no worldly affections, no secular care,
were separated to her service, consecrated wholly
to her ends, which were those of man's highest good.
Her very organization showed her to be the bearer
and organ of divine truth, throughout adapted to
secure its recognition and realization among men.
For above all stood the supreme Pontiff, the spiritual
Sovereign, source of unity, law, order, directing the
energies, formulating the judgments, determining the
faith of the church ; so much the Vicar of God as
to be His audible voice ; gifted with speech that
he might control kings and command peoples, main
tain religion, and compel obedience. What the
church had been the church would continue to be ;
she had saved Europe when Rome perished, and
would save it again even though it were out of
the very jaws of the destroyer.
3. In this outline the hierocratic Apologetic is
briefly but not unfairly or inaccurately represented.
The historical part was at once confirmatory and
illustrative of the theoretical. And so far as it was
true to history it did a needed service. It did not
indeed speak the whole truth, nay, it left much of
the truth unspoken. Its past was largely a creation
of the imagination ; or a reality so highly idealized

106 CATHOLICISM
as to have become the likeness of a vision. One
thing indeed must not be forgotten, viz., that the
objective and historical mode of viewing and re
presenting the church and its work in the Middle
Ages rose outside Catholicism ; was due to liberal
and scientific thought, not to ecclesiastical and
polemical. To it, looking only from the historical
point of view, it seemed hardly possible to exaggerate
the obligations of Europe to Catholicism. The
Catholic church in the Middle Ages had nobly
served humanity ; moderated for the old world the
miseries of dissolution, moderated for the new the
perhaps still greater miseries of organization and
evolution. But suppose we grant, not the vigorously
historical and scientific view of the mediaeval church,
but the highly imaginative and richly coloured
picture of those Catholic romances, what then ? Why,
this justice to mediaeval must not make us unjust
to modern history. The question is, not what the
Catholic church had done in the early or middle
centuries, but what it has done in the modern world.
An organization that had served and saved a society
penetrated with pagan ideas, may be little qualified
to serve a society possessed and moved by Christian
ideals. Laws good for childhood may be bad for
manhood ; what makes a man of a child is excellent,
but what makes a child of a man is evil. The
Apologists were as weak in the modern as they
were strong in the mediaeval question. In the one
case, they were eloquent and philosophic about the

CATHOLICISM AND RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 107
church and its work ; in the other, they were re
proachful and severe concerning the pride and
wickedness of man, though he was no prouder or
more wicked than the men who had been in either
pagan or mediaeval times. They did not see that
there was an absolute change in the conditions ; in
the earlier period it was the secular empire that
had broken down, but in the later the breakdown was
in the spiritual. In the days of the decadence of
imperial Rome and in those of the barbarian invasions
and the formation of the European States, the church
had indeed been an ameliorative agency and an archi
tectonic power ; but in the days of the Reformation
and the Revolution it was the church that had
fallen into feebleness and become a disintegrative
force. The Europe she claimed to be alone able
to reorganize and restore, was the very Europe
that her own hands had disorganized. Chaos had
come into the world because she had not been
able to govern it. She was in the place of the
Roman Empire, while the modern spirit was claim
ing to occupy the place that had once been hers.
The Pope was the new Julian ; de Maistre the
new Libanius. As a simple matter of fact, the
very revolt of the intellect was the gravest possible
reflection on the capacity of the church. The in
tellect had been in subjection for centuries ; to allow
it to escape implied infirmity in the ruler, deficiency
in wisdom, inefficiency of energy and will. The
claim of infallibility is a tremendous claim, not be-

108 CATHOLICISM

cause of what it requires from man, but' because
of what it demands in and from the church. In
fallibility in truth is significant when conjoined with
infallibility in wisdom ; but the one without the other
is significant only ofthe incapacity which springs from
uncorrelated faculties. And when infallibility in mat
ters of opinion is conjoined with the most pitiful
fallibility in conduct, the situation becomes worse
than absurd. To be under an authority so ill-
balanced and so badly guided where guidance is most
necessary, is like being under a creator, almighty
but not all-wise ; to possess it is, as it were, to have
the mechanical gift, the skill to make instruments ;
but not the political, the power to handle and govern
men. For if the revolt of the sixteenth century
were a sin, the men who achieved it were not the
only sinners — still guiltier was the church that made
it possible, and allowed it to become actual. During
centuries she had been supreme ; hers had been
the hands that made the men, hers the mind that
made Europe ; and if the issue of all her doings
and endeavours were the revolt, could she be guilt
less, or as wise as she must be to make her in
fallibility of any avail, or make it anything more than
an ability to do great things if she only knew how ?
But more : why had the Revolution happened ?
and why amid so much hideous terror and blood ?
Modern philosophy was not altogether or alone to
blame; neither was suppressed and expatriated
Protestantism. The men were sons of France

CATHOLICISM AND RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 1 09
France was the eldest son of the church, and the
son ruled as the church had taught him, with results
dreadful to both. The responsibility for the horrors
of the Revolution does not lie with its principles,
but with its causes ; and who will now say that to
these causes the church did not powerfully con
tribute ? But if she were a contributary cause, what
becomes of her claim to the sole ability to organize
and order the modern, because she had ordered
and organized the mediaeval world ? To be a cause
of the evil can hardly be regarded as guarantee
ing the possession of the power to cure it. The
philosophy of history is guided in its judgments by
rigorous and impartial principles. It cannot, merely
in the interest of dogma or sect, accord or deny
honour to a church ; but the honour it accords at
one period may be changed into deepest blame at
another. The very reasons that lead it to praise
the work and services of early and mediaeval
Catholicism, compel it to hold the later Catholicism
mainly responsible for evils the Revolution was
needed to cure.
If the historical doctrine was no good philosophy
of history, still less was the theoretical a good
philosophy of religion. To base religion on author
ity is the most fatal of all scepticisms. The argu
ments that prove it, prove man possessed of an
inherent and ineradicable atheism of nature. But
what is to be said on this point can better be said
later on. Enough to remark here, the new Apolo-

HO CATHOLICISM

getic was an apologetic for Catholicism, not for
Christianity. Its interest was the church, not the
religion, at least the religion only so far as identical
or co-extensive with the church. This gave to it
its two most distinctive characteristics — it was
political or sociological and historical. It was a
theory of society and the State illustrated by specific
periods and events in history. It was a speculation
as to the best methods for the creation and main
tenance of order. De Maistre, as has been well
said, was a publicist, and looked at the whole matter
from the publicist's point of view. He was a sort
of ecclesiasticized Hobbes, with the strength, courage,
keenness, directness, and, we may add, coarseness
of the original ; only with the Pope substituted for
the king. But even so, the hierocratic system had
its place, and did a not unneeded or ignoble work.
It did for the Papacy what Hobbes had done for the
Monarchy, formulated a theory of government where
order was created by absolute authority being given
to the one, and absolute subjection to the many.
Both marked the reaction that succeeded revolu
tion, though in the one case the revolution was
religious, an attempted reign of the saints ; in the
other secular, an attempted reign of reason. It was
no less characteristic that the theory opposed to
the religious revolution based authority on might,
but the theory opposed to the secular based might on
authority. Hobbes' king created the church, but de
Maistre's church created the king. Yet each is

CATHOLICISM AND RELIGIOUS THOUGHT III

explained by its occasion. The Restoration would
have been incomplete without the Leviathan ; the
Catholic revival and the Counter-revolution would
have lacked theoretical justification without Ultra
montanism. §11. The English Counterpart of the Continental
Revival
i. We must now pass from the Continental to
the English Catholic movement. The conditions
in the two cases were altogether different. In
France the Revolution had been swift, imperious,
destructive ; but in England the genius ofthe people,
their prosaic sagacity and insular pride, sobered
and disciplined by the long struggle towards com
pleter freedom, first held it at bay, then graduated
its approach, and, at last, peacefully and legally
accomplished it. Hence the Catholic revival could
not appear here as the counter-revolution, as the
source and ground of order to a disordered State ;
for order reigned, and our very revolutions had
increased rather than disturbed it. Indeed, our com
bined freedom and order had so perplexed and
bewildered the hierocratic theorists, that de Bonald
calmly dismissed from consideration the English
people, because they were, " mainly on account . of
their defects, by far the most backward of civilized
peoples," and de Maistre described our constitution
as " an insular peculiarity utterly unworthy of imita
tion." But even here the forces of change were active,
and their movement was the more resistless that it

112 CATHOLICISM
was so regulated and, as it were, so constitutional.
These forces were not simply in the air but im
manent in the English nature, embedded in the
customs and habits, laws and institutions, mind and
method of the people. They were forces universal
and supreme ; governing the men who governed.
While they appeared political, they were really
religious ; they threatened the Church even more
than the State ; they questioned the accepted prin
ciples, doctrines, facts, and authorities in religion,
much more severely than the ancient and established
customs and methods in politics. In their collective
and corporate character these forces constituted
what was termed " Liberalism," which was the milder
but more fatal English equivalent for the fiercer but
less insidious Gallican " Revolution." If, then, they
were held to be forces mischievous in character,
evil in tendency, and ruinous in result, to resist
them was a most manifest and absolute duty. But
how ? The Sovereign could not, for the Sovereign
was simply the greatest subject in the realm, the
creation of its laws ; nor could the Parliament, for
it was but the nation in Council ; nor could the
church, for the church was the people's, rather than
the people the church's. There was nothing then
to hinder the people, were they so minded, from
going so far wrong as even to abolish tbe law and
worship of God. It was necessary, therefore, to dis
cover an authority able to bridle and govern the
forces of change. God was the supreme authority ;

CATHOLICISM AND RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 1 13
the church in which He lived and through which
He worked was His visible presence ; in it, there
fore, the Divine authority must dwell. Of this
the English people had hitherto been negligent or
unconscious ; only here and there a Catholic divine
had understood and believed ; but once make it
thoroughly evident, and men, no longer ignorantly
free to believe and worship as they pleased, will
feel bound to hold the faith and obey the law of God.
This was, in brief, the genesis of the Anglican
movement. While formally and incidentally affected
by many collateral influences — the romances of
Scott, which supplied it with an idealized past, and
inspired the passion still further to idealize it ; the
speculation of Coleridge, which touched it with
mysticism, and imparted, in some degree, the gift
of spiritual insight ; the poetry of Wordsworth, which
revealed the symbolical and sacramental significance
of common things — yet it was essentially an en
deavour, in a period when political change threatened
to affect religious institutions, to find a stable re
ligious ground on which to build the faith, an ab
solute authority by which to govern the life, first of
the individual, next of the nation. It assumed that
the truth of God did not live in the common reason,
or His authority reign in the collective conscience ;
and that, without a special organ or vehicle for their
transmission and embodiment, they could not con
tinue to live and reign at all. It thought that if
the State touched even the abuses of the church,
8

114 CA THO LIC ISM

it would act profanely ; and it desired therefore to
make the church inviolable by the State. What
was needed to set a limit to the forces of encroach
ment and aggression was an authority — valid, visible,
supreme. To be supreme, it must be religious ; to
be visible, it must be a realized polity or constituted
society ; to be valid, it must have independent legis
lative and efficient executive powers. With these
attributes the Anglican church was invested, but
they were too immense for her ; she bent and failed
beneath the burden. Her weakness but set off the
strength of Catholicism. What the one church
could not bear, was the very vital principle of the
other ; she had for centuries been testifying her
possession of it to the perverse and incredulous
English people. The ancient cause of offence be
came the new feature of commendation ; and those
who felt that they could not believe and be Christian
without authority, found in her bosom the authority
they needed.
2. The English Catholic movement, then, was
distinguished from the Continental by its being more
personal and religious in character, aiming at reform
and resistance rather than counter-revolution. The
publicist view did not exist here ; the conditions did
not call for it. But what national events occasioned
in France, personal experiences accomplished in
England, though they were experiences of disquiet
in the face of forces which Europe had learned to
dread. Still the arena of action and change was

CATHOLICISM AND RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 115
mainly subjective, in minds that had feared the un
settling influence of the critical and progressive ten
dencies then active, and were alarmed for religion
in the degree that they loved it. The revolution
that was dreaded was internal, in the region of
thought and belief. Superficial readers of the
Apologia have wondered at the determinative
influence attributed to such incidents as the Jeru
salem Bishopric ; but, in truth, nothing could be
more just than the place assigned to it, or more
impressive and significant. It was not only a fact
fatal to a theory; but Newman's mind had become
hyper-sensitive, it had lost the sense of proportion ;
little things troubled even more than large ; and his
doctrine of the church had become so nearly equiva
lent to the truth of religion, that what touched the
one seemed to threaten the other with ruin and
disaster. It had become a matter of personal neces
sity that he should find an immutable and infallible
church, in order that he might have a stable and
true religion. This need was altogether distinctive
of him and the men he moved, and belongs rather
to their natural history than to the nation's. It did
not rise out of the native conservatism of the English
people, seeking to find the religious principle or con
stitutional doctrine that could best resist the tides
of revolutionary thought and action ; but it rose in
the spirits and out of the experiences of men who
believed that religion could not be saved, either for
themselves or the people, unless in the strength of

Il6 CATHOLICISM

a greater and more efficient authority than any their
church knew or could allow. Hence the English
Catholic movement proceeded from and expressed
the religious necessities of persons, not the needs of
the State or the aspirations of the people. And
what it was, it is — a thoroughly individual movement,
with less national promise now than it had at first ;
and, what we may term its fundamental principle —
an organized authority as the basis of Religion, and
this authority as embodied in the infallible church
of Rome — was formulated to satisfy these individual
needs. What we have now to consider is the validity
and constructive value of this principle, as repre
sented and interpreted by modern English, as dis
tinguished from Continental, Catholicism.
§ III. Philosophical Scepticism as the Apology for
Ecclesiastical Authority
i. Cardinal Newman1 is here, beyond question, the
1 If the subject had been Apologetics by English Catholics,
instead of, as it really is, English Catholicism as an Apologetic,
there are many men I should have liked gratefully to review,
such as Cardinal Wiseman, Dr. Ward, Father Dalgairns, a
thinker of exquisite subtlety and refinement, Mr. St. George
Mivart, Father Harper, and others hardly less worthy of
regaVd. The extensive work of the last, The Metaphysics oj
the School (Macmillan & Co., 3 vols., 1879-84), deserves a
more careful criticism than it has yet received. Its worth for
the historical student is considerable : but its polemical, critical,
and constructive parts, though most painstaking and laborious,
are of another order and quality than the expository. Thomas
Aquinas is indeed more real and intelligible in his own Latin
than in any English exposition. He is in the one case a living

CATHOLICISM AND RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 1 17
representative man, and so it is through him that we
must construe and criticise the principle. Its ac
ceptance was a necessity to his own faith ; he has
done more than any living man to make it a neces
sity to the faith of others. He is here regarded
under only one aspect, as the disciple and defender
of Roman Catholic authority, that he may be the
better and more victorious a Christian Apologist.
We have the right so to regard him. Disciples have
represented him as the foremost apologist of the
day ; his Apologia was the recognition of his own
significance, the history was the justification of " his
religious opinions." There is no man living whose
works are so thoroughly autobiographical ; they are
but various illustrations of his own principle — in
teacher, handling relevant problems, holding his own place in
history, determining much both of the form and matter of later
thought ; but in the other case he is only an adapted teacher,
not very capable of the sort of adaptation he has received,
rather lustily resisting it, justly refusing to be forced to shed
light on problems that had not emerged in his own day.
Descartes, Hume, and Kant are not to be so answered and
superseded \ their questions underlie the " Metaphysics of the
School," determining alike their possibility and worth, and
Father Harper's criticisms are incidental and verbal rather than
material and real. He must go to work in a more radical
fashion, both in the criticism of modern philosophy and the
adaptation of the schoolman, before he can effect either the dis
placement of the one or the substitution of the other. Yet we
gladly acknowledge that the increased attention, so largely due
to the present Pope, which has now for many years been paid in
Catholic schools to Thomas Aquinas is a most hopeful sign for
Catholicism.

Il8 CATHOLICISM
religious inquiry egotism may be true modesty.1
There is as much autobiography in, to mention no
others, the Sermons, 'the Discourses to Mixed Con
gregations, the Development of Christian Doctrine,
Present Position of Catholics in England, the Letters
to Dr. Pusey and to the Duke of Norfolk, and the
Grammar of Assent, as in the Apologia. Indeed, the
Apologia loses half its significance when read alone ;
it needs to be studied in the light of the works, tracts,
essays, lectures, histories and treatises, chronologi
cally arranged. Conscious revelation of self, even
when most careful and scrupulous, hides even more
than it reveals ; it is the unconscious and undesigned
that testify more truly of a man. Newman was
always supremely conscious of two beings — God and
himself — and his works are a history of his successive
attempts to determine and adjust the relations be
tween these two. This is significant ; in the heart
of this chief of English Catholics there is an in
tense individualism — indeed, it was the strength of
his individualism that made a Catholic of him. The
Apologia is the history of an individual mind ; the
Grammar of Assent is its dialectic — i.e., the transla
tion of the causes and course of the changes which
the history records, into logical forms and reasoned
processes. But this exactly defines the worth and
describes the range of Newman's apologetic work
— it is distinctively individual — first explicative of
1 Grammar of Assent, p. 384 (fifth ed.). Cf. Mr. Lilly's
Ancient Religion and Modern Thought p. 48.

CATHOLICISM AND RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 119
himself, and then cogent for men who start with his
ecclesiastical assumptions and are troubled with his
spiritual experiences and perplexities ; not for those
outside the churches, seeking for a reasoned and a
reasonable belief.
In order to a radical and just discussion, it will be
necessary to discover, if possible, Newman's ultimate
ideas or the regulative principles of his thought ; for
they determine not only his ratiocination, but his
mode of viewing things, and the kind and quality of
the arguments that weigh with him. He is by nature
a poet, by necessity rather than choice a meta
physician and historian. Truth finds him through
the imagination, is real only as it comes to him in
image and breathing form, a being instinct with life.
And so he hates the abstract and loves the concrete ;
a truth grows real to him only when it is so em
bodied as to speak to the imagination and fill it. He
is ill at ease when the discussion carries him into the
region of abstract principles ; he is happy only when
he can handle what his intellect conceives to be the
actual. For the same reason he is averse to historical
criticism. No man had ever less of the analytical
and judicial spirit, that must search and sift and
separate till the original and unadorned fact be
found. He can well understand the love that
idealizes the past ; he cannot so well understand the
love that is so bent on the truth as to be able to
analyze and sacrifice the dearest traditions and be
liefs to reach it. He loves the past which fills and

120 CATHOLICISM

satisfies the imagination, not the one dissected and
disclosed by the critical reason. Now, these charac
teristics make it a difficult, almost a cruel, thing to
attempt to reach the ultimate principles that govern
his thought. His is a mind to be handled as he
loves to handle things, imaginatively and in the
concrete, not coldly analyzed ; but unless his govern
ing ideas are reached, neither his mind nor his
method can be understood.
2. The true starting-point for the critical analysis
and appraisement of Newman's apologetic work is
the famous passage —
" I came to the conclusion that there was no medium, in
true philosophy, between Atheism and Catholicity, and that a
perfectly consistent mind, under those circumstances in which
it finds itself here below, must embrace either the one or the
other. And I hold this still : I am a Catholic by virtue of
my believing in a God ; and if I am asked, why I believe in
a God, I answer that it is because I believe in myself, for I
feel it impossible to believe in my own existence (and of that
fact I am quite sure) without believing also in the existence of
Him, who lives as a Personal, All-seeing, All-judging Being in
my conscience.'' 1
The points here noteworthy are — (i) Atheism and
Catholicism are to his own mind the only logical
alternatives ; (2) he is a Catholic because a Theist ;
and (3) a Theist, because he believes in his own
existence, and hears God speak in his conscience.
Now, in a case like this, it is a matter of moment to
see how the principle and the ultimate deduction are

1 Apologia, p. 198 (ed. 1883).

CATHOLICISM AND RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 121
related — the process by which he passes from con
science to God, and from God to Catholicism. It
may be true that "he has not confined the defence
of his own creed to the proposition that it is the
only possible alternative to Atheism " ; 1 but it is
certainly true that he believes it to be the only real
alternative, and his belief looks ever and again
through the joints and fissures of his cumulative
argument, especially as pursued and presented in
his great dialectic work. The position, a Catholic
because a Theist, really means, when translated out
of its purely individualistic form, a Catholic in order
that he may continue a Theist ; for, as Dr. Newman
conceives the matter, Catholicism, though it did not
create Theism, is yet necessary to its continuance
as a belief. " Outside the Catholic Church, things
are tending to Atheism in one shape or another." 2
The Catholic church is the one " face to face an
tagonist," able "to withstand and baffle the fierce
energy of passion and the all-corroding, all-dissolving
scepticism of the intellect in religious inquiries." 3
As Dr. Newman conceives the matter, Catholicism
is for the race as for the individual, the only alter
native to Atheism, the necessities that govern the
individual governing also the collective experience.
Without Catholicism, faith in God could not continue
to live. There is, therefore, in spite of the con-

1 Mr. Lilly's letter, Grammar of Assent, p. 500.
2 Apologia, p. 244. 3 Ibid., p. 243 .

1 22 CA THOLICISM

science, so much latent Atheism in the nature, and,
especially, the reason of man, that without an or
ganization, miraculously created and governed, God
would be driven out of human belief and reverence.
A theory of this sort may in a high degree honour
the church, but in the same degree it dishonours
God. If "the Church's infallibility" be "a provision
adapted by the mercy of the Creator to preserve
Religion in the world," 1 then the provision has been
not only, as the history of European thought testifies,
singularly .ill-adapted to its end ; but it implies a
strange defect in the original constitution of the world,
and a still stranger limitation, alike in the intensive
and extensive sense, of the divine relation to it.
The relation between Theism and Catholicism
being so conceived, the one must be made to in
volve the other ; the Theism becomes the implicit
Catholicism, the Catholicism the explicit Theism.
The question here is, not why the Theism needs the
Catholicism, but how Catholicism is involved in and
evolved from the Theism ? The questions are re
lated : for if the how can be found, the why will at
once become apparent. Yet it is necessary to hold
them distinct, for only so can we get at those ulti
mate principles or ideas we are here in search of. It
seems, at first, curious that the Theism, which does
not need Catholicism for its creation, should need it
for its continuance. One would have thought that
what existed before it, and independently of it, could
1 Apologia, p. 245.

CATHOLICISM AND RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 123
exist without it ; but this is the very thing the posi
tion will not allow. Theism must grow into Catho
licism or die, become Pantheism, or Atheism, or
something equally bad and unlike the original. If
we ask, why ? the answer is more or less rhetorical,
a survey of modern schools and tendencies of
thought ; and a comparison of their conflict and
varieties of opinion, with the certainty, harmony, and
tenacity of Catholic belief. But if we ask, how the
one involves and leads up to the other ? we shall
find that it was really and only due to the concatena
tion of ideas in Newman's own mind. What made
him, because a Theist, become a Catholic ? There was
nothing generic, or common, or logical in the process,
to give it validity apart from the assumptions and
peculiar history of the man himself.
But, to pursue the analysis, it is evident that the
answer to the question, What made him because a
Theist become a Catholic ? depends on the answer
to a still prior question, Why is he a Theist ? What
is the basis and reason of his Theism ? He tells us
that he came to rest in the thought of two, and two
only, absolute and luminously self-evident beings, him
self and God.1 But why was the being of God as
certain and luminous to him as his own ? Through
conscience, which he holds to be the theistic and
religious faculty or organ in man.2 " Were it not
for the voice, speaking so clearly in my conscience
1 Apologia, p. 4.
a Grammar of Assent pp. 105-110, 389 (fifth ed.).

124 CATHOLICISM

and my heart, I should be an Atheist, or a Pantheist,
or a Polytheist when I look into the world." 1 " As
we have our initial knowledge of the universe through
sense, so do we in the first instance begin to learn
about its Lord and God from conscience." 2 In each
case the knowledge is instinctive ; " the office which
the senses directly fulfil as regards creation," is in
directly fulfilled by the sense of moral obligation as
regards the Creator.3 It is therefore conscience not
as " moral sense," but as " sense of duty," as " magis
terial dictate," which " impresses the imagination
with the picture of a supreme Governor, a judge,
holy, just, powerful, all-seeing, retributive." i As a
consequence " conscience teaches us, not only that
God is, but what He is " ; " we learn from its infor
mations to conceive of the Almighty, primarily, not
as a God of wisdom, of knowledge, of power, of
benevolence, but as a God of justice and judgment."
" The special attribute under which it brings Him
before us, to which it subordinates all other attri
butes, is that of justice — retributive justice." 5 The
" creative principle " and the contents of religion
necessarily correspond ; the correlative of the " magis
terial dictate" within, is the dictating magistrate
without. Conscience, then, is the theistic and religious

1 Apologia, p. 241. 2 Grammar of Assent, p. 63.
3 Ibid,, p. 104. * Ibid., pp. 105-110.
5 Ibid., pp. 390-391.

CATHOLICISM AND RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 1 25
faculty ; but what of the intellect, the reason ? While
" the unaided reason, when correctly exercised, leads
to a belief in God, in the immortality of the soul,
and in a future retribution," " the faculty of reason,"
considered " actually and historically," tends " to
wards a simple unbelief in matters of religion."
The intellect is " aggressive, capricious, untrust
worthy " ; its " immense energy " must be smitten
hard and thrown back by an infallible authority, if
Religion is to be saved. Its action in religious
matters is corrosive, dissolving, sceptical.1 Hence
while the conscience creates religion, the reason
tends to create unbelief ; the one is on the one side
of God, the other against Him. Of course he speaks
of " reason as it acts in fact and concretely in fallen
man " ; but the conscience he speaks of is also the
active and actual "in fallen man." If sin puts either,
it must put both, out of court ; what does not dis
qualify the one as a witness, ought not to be used
to stop the mouth of the other.
3. But why is so different a measure meted out
to the two faculties ? The reason must be sought in
Dr. Newman's underlying philosophy. That philo
sophy may be described as one empirical and scep
tical, qualified by a peculiar religious experience.
He has a deep distrust of the intellect ; he dare not
trust his own, for he does not know where it might

1 Apologia, pp. 243-246. Cf. Discourses to Mixed Congre
gations, p. 283.

126 CATHOLICISM

lead him, and he will not trust any other man's.
The mind " must be broken in to the belief of a
power above it " ; to recognize the Creator is to have
' its " stiff neck " bent.1 The real problem of the
Grammar of Assent is, How, without the consent
and warrant of the reason, to justify the being of
religion, and faith in that infallible church which
alone realizes it.2 The whole book is pervaded by
the intensest philosophical scepticism ; this supplies
its motif, determines its problem, necessitates its dis
tinctions, rules over the succession and gradation of
its arguments. His doctrine of assents, his distinc
tion into notional and real — which itself involves a
philosophy of the most empirical individualism — his
criticism of Locke, his theories of inference, certitude,
and the illative sense, all mean the same thing.3
1 Discourses to Mixed Congregations, pp. 275, 276.
2 Mr. Froude, in a for him rather innocent way, describes
the Grammar as " an attempt to prove that there is no reason
able standing-ground between Atheism and submission to the
Holy See." — Short Studies, second series, p. 83. If he had
said — " a book intended to show how a sceptic in philosophy
could, in the matter of Religion, find no standing-ground," etc.,
etc., he would have been nearer the truth.
3 The philosophical scepticism is, of course, implicit, not ex
plicit. From the latter he has tried carefully to guard him
self; cf. Gram., 64. In this connection the paragraphs, pp. 60,
61, which the late Dr. Ward thought a veiled attack on himself,
ought to be studied : cf. Philosophical Theism, vol. i., pp. 30, 31.
The two men were alike in their religious profession, but not in
their philosophical principles. The sort of analysis in which
Dr. Ward delighted, was not agreeable to Dr. Newman ; it
savoured too much of the abstract and a priori to please so

CATHOLICISM AND RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 127

His aim is to withdraw religion and the proofs con
cerning it from the region of reason and reasoning
into the realm of conscience and imagination, where
the reasons that reign may satisfy personal experi
ence without having objective validity, or being able
to bear the criticism that tests it. And so he feels
" it is a great question whether Atheism is not as
philosophically consistent with the phenomena of the
physical world, taken by themselves, as the doctrine
of a creative and sovereign Power." This is the
expression of real and deep philosophic doubt, which
is not in any way mitigated by the plea that he
does not " deny the validity of the argument from
design in its place."1 Neither did John Stuart
Mill. We are now in a position to see why to Dr. New
man Theism involves Catholicism. It does so for two
reasons, springing respectively out of his doctrines
of the conscience and of reason. He interprets con
science as the consciousness of a " magisterial dic
tate," the echo within the breast of an authoritative
voice speaking without it ; and to him the legitimate
deduction is the organization of the authority in an
infallible church, and the articulation of the voice
through its infallible head. But the other is the
great a lover of the concrete and experimental. And Dr.
Ward's trust in his faculties and their avouchments, came
nearer a belief in the sufficiency of reason than Dr. Newman
liked to go.
1 University Sermons, p. 194. Cf. Mr, Lilly, p. 99.

128 CATHOLICISM
more imperative reason : the intellect is not to be
trusted ; left to themselves the conscience may suc
ceed at first, but the intellect prevails at last. There
is no possible escape. " Unlearn Catholicism," and
the " infallible succession " is, " Protestant, Unitarian,
Deist, Pantheist, Sceptic."1 The "formal proofs"
for the being of God may amount to " an irrefragable
demonstration against the Freethinker and the Scep
tic " ; but they are able so " to invalidate that proof"
as to " afford a plausible, though not a real, excuse
for doubting about it." And without Catholicism
the doubt is invincible. " When a man does not
believe in the church, there is nothing in reason to
keep him from doubting the being of a God."
" There is nothing between it (the church) and
Scepticism, when men exert their reason freely." 2
4. Atheism and Catholicism are then to Dr. New
man the only possible logical alternatives, because, if
we are not driven by the inner and ethical authority,
i.e. conscience, to rest in an infallible outer authority,
i.e. the Roman church, we must follow whither the
intellect leads, and make the facilis descensus Averni.
1 Discourses to Mixed Congregations, p. 283. Cardinal New
man here but repeats Lamennais. It is interesting to com
pare the agreements of the Essai sur V Indifference with the
Grammar and the Apologia. They differ in some important
respects, but in one fundamental point they agree — their philo
sophical basis for the dogma of authority is the most absolute
of all scepticism — doubt of the sanity and divine contents of
human reason. They believe in its native and ineradicable
Atheism. 2 Ibid., pp. 262, 263, 283.

CATHOLICISM AND RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 1 29

But what sort of basis have we here for Theism ? and
what sort of Catholicism have we built on it ? The
nature of man is divided, and its two parts set in
contradiction and antagonism to each other. The
conscience is " the aboriginal vicar of Christ, a pro
phet in its informations, a monarch in its peremp-
toriness, a priest in its blessings and anathemas ; " 1
but the reason is critical, sceptical, infidel, even
atheistic. This division of nature is the death of
natural proof; it is a confession that proof is im
possible. He may recognize "the formal proofs on
which the being of a God rests " ; but his recogni
tion must be criticized in the light of his fundamental
principle. It is to him entirely illegitimate. Con
science he holds to be authoritative, but not reason.
He deduces Religion from conscience, but leaves
reason to be crushed and subdued by authority.
Now to build Religion on a doctrine that implies
the radical antagonism of these two, is to make
their reconciliation impossible to Religion ; the one
must be sacrificed to the other if man is ever to have
peace. The Catholicism that achieves this may be
extensive, but is not intensive ; it may be political and
local,' but is not ideal and human ; it may be external
ized authority, but is not externalized reason. It
may include all men, but it does not include the
whole man. But more : the reason within man im-
1 Letter to the Duke of Norfolk.— Anglican Difficulties, vol.
ii. p. 248. 9

130 CATHOLICISM

plies the reason without him ; he develops into a
rational being because he lives in a rational world.
To leave the theistic contents of the reason unexpli-
cated, is to leave the theistic reason of the world
unexplored and unrecognized ; only as they are con
ceived in their correspondent and reciprocal relations
can we have a Theism satisfactory to the whole
nature of man and explicative of the system to
which he belongs. It is only through reason we find
an argument of universal validity ; but Cardinal
Newman's doctrine is the purest individualism. The
deliverance of his conscience avails for himself — can
avail for no other ; it has interest as a fact of personal
testimony, but has no value as a ground of general
belief. It is significant, too, as to the temper of his
own mind ; in his intellect as he knows it, in his
reason as he interprets it, he finds no Religion, no
evidence for the being of God : he dare not trust or
follow it, for its bent is sceptical ; and so he has to
invoke the voice of authority to silence and to com
mand. The need he discovered in history for an in
fallible church, he had first found in his own breast.
§ IV. Whether either the Scepticism or tlie Authority
be Valid
Detailed criticism of Newman's position, with
its various assumptions and complex confusion of
thought, is, of course, here impossible ; but it is hardly
possible to conceive a worse basis for a constructive
Theism, especially in a critical and sceptical age. It

CATHOLICISM AND RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 131
turns Catholicism into a new and feebler Protestant
ism, one directed against the modern movement of
mind. The Freethinker sacrifices religion to reason
in one way, by declaring that his individual mind is
the measure of religious truth ; the Catholic does it
in another way, by declaring that unless religion come
under the aegis of his church, it will assuredly perish
before the corrosive action of the intellect. Each
position is an awful degradation of religion, but the
latter is the greater ; for the intellect will not, indeed
cannot, cease to be active and critical, and what is
declared incapable of resisting its criticism is handed
over to death. There is surely a nobler Catholicism
than this, one not of Rome, but of man, based, not on
the excommunication of the reason, but on the recon
ciliation of the whole nature, intellect, conscience,
heart, will, to God and His truth.
1. In Cardinal Newman's position, those elements
that belong to his Apology for Theism must be dis
tinguished from those that belong to his Apology for
Catholicism. They are not only distinct, but incom
patible. Theism is so rooted in his being, that he
must believe in God because he believes in his own
existence ; but, on the other hand, his reason is so
inimical to Theism that if he had not become a
Catholic, he must have become an Atheist. Now,
this is an important psychological fact, a valuable
testimony concerning personal experience ; but when
it is erected into a dialectic position and elaborated
into an Apology for Catholicism, as the only possible

132 CATHOLICISM

permanent form of the Christian Religion, the matter
is altogether changed. It is then necessary to say,
the position is at once philosophically false and
historically inaccurate. To exercise the intellect
is to serve God ; Religion has been most vital
and most vigorous when the intellect was most
critically concerned with it. This is a simple histori
cal fact. In the Apologia 1 it is said : " No truth,
however sacred, can stand against it (the faculty of
reason), in the long run " : and the illustration is, the
pagan world when our Lord came. But the intellect
in the ancient world ennobled and spiritualized Reli
gion ; the period of its greatest activity in Greece
was also the period when the religious faith became
purest and strongest. The poets made its gods more
august, moral, judicial. Plato made its ideas sub-
limer, purged its mythology, transfigured the theistic
conception, made the world articulate the perfect
reason, and time sleep in the bosom of eternity. The
Stoics, by finding a moral order in the universe and a
moral nature in man, breathed a new ethical spirit
into both their religion and their race. In the ancient
world the activity of the intellect in the field of
religious knowledge was the life of Religion; and
when it ceased to be active, Religion ceased to live.
In the days of our Lord, the places where the intel
lect was most active were also the places where
Religion was most real. 1 Page 243.

CATHOLICISM AND RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 1 33
And what was true of the ancient, is true of the
modern world. The activity of the intellect in Re
ligion has been altogether beneficent ; its criticism has
been but the prelude to construction ; what has died
under its analysis has but made room for higher
forms of thought and larger modes of life. Did space
allow, illustration were easy and abundant, especially
from the highest of all regions — the action of specu
lation on the idea of God. To take the strongest
illustration, it is no paradox to say, the system of
Spinoza was, from the standpoint of the Christian
Religion, a greater benefit to Europe than any — I had
almost said than all the conversions to Catholicism in
the seventeenth century, whether of kings like James
II., or men of letters like John Dryden. For it raised
the problem of Theism to a higher platform, directly
tended to enlarge and ennoble the conception of God,
to enrich the idea of Religion, to promote the study
and criticism and appreciation of its work in history ;
placing it in a higher relation to the nature and action
of God on the one hand, and the spirit and life of
man on the other. When Newman says that, with
out Catholicism, we must proceed "in a dreadful but
infallible succession," from Protestantism through
Deism or Pantheism to Scepticism, or that " outside
the Catholic Church things are tending to Atheism in
one shape or other," he writes mere rhetoric. The
statement might be reversed ; the " infallible succes
sion " might be charged upon Catholicism with quite
as much truth and charity, or rather with more

I34 CATHOLICISM

historical warrant and justification. Pantheism was
known in the Golden Age of Catholicism, the Middle
Ages ; to it must be reckoned the systems of Scotus
Erigena, Meister Eckhardt, the Dominican, as well as
whole Schools of Mystics ; the man who revived it,
Spinoza's forerunner, if not master, was another
Dominican, Giordano Bruno. The most pronounced
modern materialism was developed in Catholic
France ; certain of its earliest masters were Catholic
dignitaries. One of the earliest martyrs to Atheism
was the pupil of Catholic Divines, the whilom priest
Vanini. The Deism of eighteenth-century England
was innocence compared with the revived paganism
of fifteenth-century Italy. The man whom Buckle
selected for special praise as having been the first to
apply the rationalist method to morals and to history,
had been a Catholic priest and preacher. Catholicism
converted Bayle, but only to make a more utter
sceptic of him ; converted Gibbon, but only to see
him recoil into completer infidelity.1 All this may be
poor enough, but it is after Newman's manner. Over
against his charge, "outside Catholicism things are
tending to Atheism," I place this as the simple record
of fact, verifiable by all who choose to pursue the
necessary inquiries — inside Catholicism things have
1 I hesitated long about Gibbon ; but after carefully weighing
the statement in the "autobiography,'' and one or two signifi
cant passages in the Decline and Fall, I determined to let his
name stand. Yet the argument does not depend on one or two
names : it represents tendencies operative through centuries.

CATHOLICISM AND RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 1 35
tended, and still, wherever mind is active, do tend, to
the completest negation. If his argument be held
equal to the proof of the need of infallibility, mine
must be held to prove its perfect insufficiency. Men
may need it, but it is not adequate to their needs ;
and an inadequate infallibility is certainly near of kin
to common fallibility. The arguments are parallel,
but the cases are not. Catholicism professes to be
able by its authority to do what history has proved it
unable to accomplish, and so is justly chargeable with
the most serious incompetency ; but Protestantism,
making no claim to authority, professing indeed to be
quite without it, may justly refuse to bear the respon
sibility of failure. Incompetency in a system like
the Roman is the most invincible disproof of claim ;
the competence that comes of supernatural gifts and
authority is no part of Protestantism.
2. But Cardinal Newman's position raises another
question, whether an infallible authority, such as he
attributes to the Church and Pope of Rome, and
exercised for the purposes he describes, would be a
help or a hindrance to Religion? Would it make
Religion more or less possible, more or less stable
and real ? Differences on such matters are, as a rule,
apprehended in their superficial aspects rather than
in their determinative principles and causes. One of
these is the idea of Religion ; it is one thing to me,
another to Cardinal Newman. The Catholic criticizes
Protestantism as if it were or professed to be a sort
of substitute for Catholicism ; but it is not this, and

I36 CATHOLICISM

never can become it. They are not simply opposites,
but incommensurables. The one represents an organ
ized and finely articulated hierarchical system, legis
lative, administrative, administered, able to compre
hend men and nations, and cover the whole life from
the cradle to the grave ; but the other denotes only
an attitude of mind or the principle that regulates it.
Catholicism claims to be a Religion ; Protestantism
cannot be truly or justly described as making any such
claim, or as seeking to be allowed to make it. It is
simply the assertion of a right to perform a duty, the
right of every man to fulfil the holiest and most
imperial of his duties, that of knowing and believing
the God who made his reason, of worshipping and
serving the God who speaks in his conscience. It is
significant as the contradiction and antithesis to a
system of collectivism, which hindered the clear sense
of personal relation and responsibility to God ; but
the creation of this sense was the work of God alone,
and its realization in Religion was due to His con
tinued and gracious activity among men. Protestan
tism is thus only an attempt to make religion
possible, to create the conditions that will permit and
require the Religion of Christ to become actual. It
implies the being of this Religion, but neither creates
it, nor represents it, nor embodies it ; only insists on
removing whatever hinders God and man, or man
and the Religion, coming face to face, that it may be
realized in and through his spirit. It may be con
strued to signify the supremacy of reason, and so it

CATHOLICISM AND RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 137
does ; but this only means the supremacy of the
truth, or, in religious speech, the sovereignty of God.
The reason, indeed, is not particular, individual,
arbitrary, but universal, law-abiding, reasonable — the
thought which cannot think without following the
laws of its own being, and cannot follow them with
out finding the truth. The whole truth may not be
found, but what is found is reality, divine and
sovereign to the man who finds it.
In a certain sense, submission to Catholicism is the
victory of unbelief; the man who accepts authority
because he dare not trust his intellect, lest it lead him
into Atheism, is vanquished by the Atheism he fears.
He unconsciously subscribes to the impious principle,
that the God he believes, has given him so godless a
reason that were he to follow it, it would lead him to
a faith without God. Now, there is more religion in
facing the consequences than in turning away from
them ; for the man who faces the consequences
remains truer to the truth, obeys the most immediate
and inexorable law of God, that given in his own
being. I can understand the man who says : " I do
not wish to be either a Pantheist or Agnostic ; but I
must be what the best thought and light within me—
beams as they are of the universal and eternal —
determine ; and if they conduct me to either Panthe
ism or Agnosticism, then to either I will go, obedient
to the laws under which I live and think." But I
cannot so well understand or admire the man who
says : " If I follow my reason, it will make an Atheist

138 CATHOLICISM

or a Sceptic of me ; therefore, I will flee for refuge
to the arms of infallible authority." There is a har
mony, and so a religion, in the one nature that is
absent from the other ; the one has faced the issues,
and knows them ; the other has evaded their touch,
and is haunted by possibilities he cannot but fear.
There is victory, even in defeat, to the man who has
dared the conflict ; there is defeat, even in the rest he
wins, to the man who, that he may keep a whole skin,
turns and runs from the battle.
3. But there is another and still deeper differ
ence, the conception of the Reason. Here the ideas
are again opposite and incommensurable. Dr. New
man's language seems to me often almost impious, a
positive arraignment of the God who gave man his
intellect. I may say, and the saying need not be
misunderstood, reason is to me as holy as his church
is to him. It is too godlike to be inimical to God;
scepticism is not the essence but the accident of its
activity. It is critical when confronted by authority
or authoritative formulae, and it ought to be critical
then ; but its history does not record the growth of
scepticism, rather narrates the expansion and eleva
tion of belief. Reason, while realized in individuals,
is universal ; while conditioned in its working, it is
transcendental in its nature and worth ; while it acts
in and through millions of natural agents, it has a
supernatural source and end. It represents law, while
authority represents the violation of law ; the one ex
presses an order instituted of God, but the other

CATHOLICISM AND RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 139
man's most violent attempt at its suspension or super
session. Hence reason is here conceived as essen
tially architectonic ; its action, where most analytical,
is always with a view to a more perfect synthesis. It
cannot realize its idea, or be itself, without being con
structive. Every attempt to do justice to it has
emphasized this as belonging to its very essence, that
without which it could not be reason. Take, for
example, Kant. He and Newman have been com
pared or rather contrasted as, respectively, the one 'the
source of modern scepticism and agnosticism, and the
other the ideal teacher of religion. But the positions
ought to be reversed ; Kant is the great teacher of
faith, Newman, in the region of the reason or the in
tellect, is the master of scepticism. Kant's reason was
architectonic, made nature, supplied the forms and the
conditions of thought by which alone she was inter-
pretable and interpreted. Reason was a latent or
implicit universe, real in its very ideality, so deter
mining phenomena as to constitute a cosmos. But
where Kant treads firmly, Newman walks feebly,
speaks of instinct and presumption, and feels as if he
dare not trust reason with nature, lest he have to trust
her with more. Kant, indeed, does not allow that the
mere or pure reason, which is equal to the interpreta
tion of nature, is equal to the cognition of God ; and
he builds, like Newman, his argument for the Divine
existence on conscience. But to him conscience is
still reason, all the more that it uses the " categorical
imperative," and his argument, unlike Newman's, is

140 CATHOLICISM

reasoned ; it is not the mere echo of a " magisterial
dictate," but is based on a universal principle, and
articulates a complete theory of moral sovereignty
and government. Kant's moral religion was at once
natural and transcendental ; Newman's is positive
and legislative. The former was inseparable from the
ideal of humanity; but the latter is institutional,
comes ab extra. Kant's position is the vindication of
faith through nature ; Newman's is the surrender of
nature to unbelief. For with Kant the practical is
not the contradiction of the pure reason ; the one is
but the supplement of the other. They are conceived
by their author not as mutually independent, still less
as opposed, but as so constituting a unity and a syn
thesis that what the one does for nature the other
does for eternity and God. But Newman finds such
a dualism in nature that he has to introduce a Deus
ex machina to rectify it. Conscience demands God,
but reason will not allow the faith in Him to live ; and
so an infallible church is called in to determine the
issue, confirm and support the conscience, and
" preserve religion in the world " by so restraining
" the freedom of thought " as " to rescue it from its
own suicidal excesses." 1 This may be a good
excuse for authority, but it is a bad apology for faith.
He who places the rational nature of man on the side
of Atheism, that he may the better defend a church,
saves the church at the expense of religion and God.

1 Apol. 245.
May, 1885.

IV
CATHOLICISM AND HISTORICAL
CRITICISM
THE criticism of the intellectual or speculative
bases of any institution is criticism of the
institution ; the reasons that are thought to justify
its existence describe its character. As men conceive
God, they conceive Religion ; and as Religion is
conceived, so is the Church. Cardinal Newman1 has
affirmed that the ultimate question between Catholi
cism and Protestantism is not one of history or indi
vidual doctrine, but of first principles. He is right,
only his principle, whether the Church be or be not
a continuous miracle, is not primary enough. A
miracle by becoming continuous ceases to be miracu
lous ; a supernatural which has descended into the
bosom of the natural becomes part of its order, and
must be handled like the other forces and phenomena
of history. Below the question as to the Church lies
this other and deeper — What is God ? and what His
relations to man and man's to Him ? or, How are we
to conceive God, and how represent His rule and
redemption of man ? It is this radical issue which
1 Present Position of Catholics in England, lect. vii.
141

142 CA THO LIC ISM
gives living interest to ancient controversies, lifting
them from the noisy field of ecclesiastical polemics
to the serener heights of spiritual and speculative
thought. Now, if the idea of God be conceived as the idea
really determinative of our religious controversies, it
is evident that the discussion in the preceding essay
as to its genesis and proofs, must be incomplete until
supplemented by a discussion as to its expression or
realization in history. These are parts of a whole,
and so absolute is the need of harmony between the
parts that we may say this : To determine the idea of
God is to fix the standpoint from which history is to
be studied and interpreted, while in the interpretation
of history we are but explicating and testing our
conception of God. If the idea of God in theology
be mean, the idea of His action in history cannot be
noble ; while, conversely, an adequate notion of His
method and movement in history demands a corres
pondent notion of His character and ends. If we
conceive Him as in the same sense and degree the
Father and Sovereign of every man, willing good to
each, evil to none, equal in His love and care for all,
impartial and universal as law, while personal and
particular as mercy, — then we cannot allow either
Him or His truth to be so much the exclusive pos
session of a given society, that its history is the
history of His mind or revelation, and of His purposes
and ways. But if we believe that He has committed
His truth, His spirit, and His redemptive agencies to

CATHOLICISM AND HISTORICAL CRITICISM 1 43
the keeping of a peculiar and pre-eminent church, then
we shall regard its history as the history of His special
action or providence, all who are without it being
judged by and through it, as if it were His visible and
articulate sovereignty. Now this, in the very degree
that it gives an exalted idea of the church, represents
a mean idea of God ; an historical institution is en
nobled, but the immensest and most august of human
beliefs is narrowed and depraved. In a true sense,
therefore, we explicate our theistic idea when we
attempt to explain not the mere phenomena of
nature, but the immense and complex procession of
forces, persons, institutions, and events, which we call
the history of man. Our philosophy of history is but
our conception of God evolved and articulated.
§ I. The Ideas of God, Religion, and the Church
1. This fundamental principle determines the point
at which our discussion must be resumed — the Idea of
Religion. This idea stands, as it were, intermediate
between the ideas of God and the Church, and their
mutual relations may be thus described : — Religion is
the realization, in the regions of thought, feeling, and
action, of the idea of God ; while the Church is the
idea of Religion articulated or built into a social
organism, whose life is lived on the field of history.
What this means will be better understood by-and-
by. Meanwhile we note, the three ideas must corres
pond in character and quality ; the Religion ever is
as the God is, and the Church as the Religion. The

144 CATHOLICISM
radical differences are those of the theistic idea ; it is
not the belief, but the conception, of God that most
decisively differentiates men. That He is, most men
believe ; where they mainly differ is concerning what
He is.
In the sphere of thought their differences are ex
pressed in the various theistic philosophies — dualistic,
monistic, transcendental, immanent ; but in Religion
they are represented by the various churches and
societies that embody distinct ideals of life and duty,
authority and obedience, worship and conduct.
Politics express fundamental beliefs — are, indeed, but
those beliefs applied to the regulation of civil life and
the organization of society. Men who are of one
faith may not be of one Religion ; they may have one
name for the object of worship, yet differ in their
notion of the object ; and to differ here is to differ
radically and throughout. There is a conception of
God that makes a great propitiatory and mediatorial
church a necessity ; and there is a conception of
Him that will not allow any such institution to stand
between Him and man. The controversy between
these antithetical notions is not of yesterday, but is
as old as Religion, dating from the moment when
men began to speak of and worship God. In all the
ancient faiths the priestly Deity was one, and the
Deity of spirit and thought another ; they might
agree in name, but they differed in nature and
character. In Judaism, the God of the priesthood
loved the official sanctities, the temple, the altar, the

CATHOLICISM AND HISTORICAL CRITICISM I45
sacrifice, the incense, the priest and his garments and
bells and breastplate, the sabbath, the new moon, the
feast, and the solemn assembly. But the God of
prophecy loved the moral and spiritual sanctities, the
living temple, the whole people constituted a priest
hood unto Jehovah, the sacrifices of the broken spirit
and the contrite heart, the law written within, the
worship expressed in obedience, the obedience that
consisted in doing justly, loving mercy, and walking
humbly with God. In India the sacerdotal Deity
was the ground and cause of caste, and the root of a
religion without morality ; while the attempt to tran
scend so mean a notion produced the philosophies,
pantheistic and pessimistic, and provoked the nega
tions which became Buddhism. In Greece the Re
ligion of the temple and the priesthood knew no
ethical Deity, and had no ethical spirit, lived by faith
in myths and legends, by the practice of mediation,
by processions and ceremonial observances, by the
grace of the oracle which men consulted when they
wished nature helped by the supernatural. But the
Deity of the Academy and the Porch was morally
beautiful, true, and good ; and their ideal of Religion
was so ethical as to be offended and affronted by the
myths and customs of the priestly order. Measured
by the standard of this order, Socrates was, because of
his faith in a purer God, pronounced guilty and worthy
of death; in presence of its moral perversions and
impotences Plato was forced to plead for a purged
mythology and a new and nobler priesthood and the
. 10

I46 CATHOLICISM

Stoic was driven to attempt to translate the ancient
beliefs into the symbols of a hidden philosophy. And
these are but typical cases, illustrating a conflict
every historical Religion has known, and the Christian
could not escape. Within it, as within every other,
two conceptions of Deity have had to contend for the
mastery ; and it is certain that the contest did not be
gin with the sixteenth century, and will not end with
the nineteenth. However much disguised as a ques
tion now in philosophy, now in polity, ecclesiastical
or civil, here as a controversy of churches, there as a
collision of peoples, yet the fundamental and deter
minative problem has ever remained one and the same
— What is God ? and what His relation to man and
man's to Him ?
2. The idea of God, then, determines the religious
ideal, Religion being but the form in which the idea
appears in the sphere of the real, and living, and
related. And in Cardinal Newman the two so
correspond as to reflect and repeat each other. His
religion is as his Theism is : both proceed from
conscience and have their qualities determined by it.
God appears as Judge, and Religion " is founded in
one way or other on the sense of sin."1 Hence, out
of the sense of sin and the fear of the righteous and
judicial God, whose absence or estrangement from
the world so pierces the soul and bewilders the reason,
he educes those mediations, priesthoods, sacrifices,
theories of future and even eternal penalties, which he
1 Grammar of Assent, p. 392,

CATHOLICISM AND HISTORICAL CRITICISM 1 47

holds to be the essential characteristics of all the
Natural Religions. Now, his doctrine of Religion is
as little true to history as we found his Theism to be
true to reason and thought. It is characteristic of
Newman that his favourite authority for the qualities
and features of Natural Religion is Lucretius, which
is very much as if one were to quote Voltaire as our
most veracious and trustworthy witness touching
the nature and action of Christianity. As a simple
matter of fact, the Religion Lucretius so hated, and
described as so hateful, was in the highest degree
artificial — a product of many and even malign
influences, of various and even hostile civilizations.
There are cycles of faiths which have sacerdotal ideas
and expiatory rites, and there are also cycles of faiths
where they can hardly be said to be known ; but
even where most emphasized and observed they do
not imply such a consciousness of guilt as Cardinal
Newman imagines and describes. Indeed, if the
history of Religions prove anything, it is that they
are not " founded on the sense of sin," and do not
regard God, primarily, as the impersonation of " re
tributive justice." It were truer to say that, as a rule
(there are, of course, exceptions), the pre- and extra-
Christian Religions are unmoral ; and that the sense
of sin is the direct creation of Christianity, including,
of course, its historical forerunner. And the older or
more natural the Religions, the brighter they are, and
the less darkened or oppressed by the consciousness
of guilt. The Vedic deities are mainly deities of the

148 CATHOLICISM

light; there is nothing that so little troubles the
Homeric gods as the austere duties of justice and
judgment. But the inaccurate psychology of the
Theism is here reflected in the inaccurate history.
Since the reason was released from all duties, and the
conscience made " the creative principle," the histori
cal Religions had to be represented as processions or
projections from the conscience. This false view of
Natural Religion is carried over into Revealed, to
the consequent darkening and degradation of both.
For Christianity is conceived to be " simply an
addition to " the Religion of Nature, the ideas of the
one being neither superseded nor contradicted, but
recognized and incorporated by the other.1 Thus as
the natural was conceived to be, the spiritual is repre
sented as being ; those features and qualities that have
been determined beforehand as essential to Religion
are transferred bodily to Christianity, and it is inter
preted through them and in their light. The idea is
not deduced from the sources, but conveyed into
them, with the result that the Religion they contain
appears only as the exaggerated shadow of the
writer's own ideal.
3. But the idea of Religion is only preliminary,
the main matter is its historical realization. Out of
many passages, we may select two to illustrate how
Cardinal Newman makes the transition from Natural
to Revealed Religion, and thence to his doctrine of
the Church, or simply to Christianity in history.

1 Grammar of Assent, p.

CATHOLICISM AND HISTORICAL CRITICISM 1 49
" Revelation begins where Natural Religion fails. The Re
ligion of Nature is a mere inchoation, and needs a complement
— it can have but one complement, and that very complement
is Christianity." x
"Revelation consists in the manifestation of the Invisible
Divine Power, or in the substitution of the Voice of a Lawgiver
for the Voice of Conscience. The supremacy of conscience is
the essence of Natural Religion ; the supremacy of Apostle, or
Pope, or Church, or Bishop, is the essence of Revealed ; and
when such external authority is taken away, the mind falls back
upon that inward guide which it possessed even before Revela
tion was vouchsafed." 2
So reason, dismissed from Natural, has no place in
Revealed Religion ; authority reigns in both. Re
ligion issues from it and ends in it ; begins in the
Divine authority speaking as an internal voice, termi
nates in the same authority externalized and made
visible in an articulate Lawgiver. It is created, so
to speak, by legislation ; and the more positive, i.e.
statutory, forensic, external the legislation is, it is held
to be the more excellent, authoritative, and adequate.
Religion becomes a matter of precept and rule,
casuistry and ritual. Conscience is the prophet and
forerunner of the church, which at once fulfils the
prophecy and supersedes the prophet. But the
1 Grammar of Assent, p. 486. It is curious how completely
Deistic is Newman's doctrine both of religion and of the
relation of the two religions, the natural and the supernatural.
He stands here exactly where the eighteenth century stood
and reproduces its limitations and distinctions with uncon
scious, perhaps, but most notable accuracy.
2 Development of Christian Doctrine, c. ii. § 2, p. 124 (second
edition).

1 50 CA THO LIC ISM

creation of the individual conscience is an indivi
dualistic religion, which has its character only the
more emphasized that it appears disguised as a
Catholicism. The false philosophy makes- the idea
of Religion defective ; the defective idea of Religion
leads to the misinterpretation of both its nature and
action in history. It is so interpreted that man's
relation to God grows ever less personal and direct,
ever more formal and mediated ; and, as a conse
quence, the historical process must represent man as
growing into, rather than out of, those symbols and
sanctions and mediations which Lessing conceived to
belong to the childhood rather than the manhood of
the race. The authority of God, with its correlative
in the dependence and obedience of man, is indeed
the essence of Religion ; but this authority, simply
because God's, can never become external, or be
embodied in Pope, or Church, or Bishop. For the
moment it were thus embodied it would be so limited
and conditioned as to cease to be absolute ; it would
have to speak in the terms and work by the methods
of a human institution rather than on the lines and
in the ways of an infinite law. If true Religion be
the worship of the Father in spirit and in truth, then
it is this worship, and not submission to Pope or
Church, that is the primary duty or true characteristic
of the religious man. And the more filial the man
the more perfect the worship ; the purer he is in
spirit the fuller he is of the truth.

CATHOLICISM AND HISTORICAL CRITICISM 1 51
§ II. The Roman as the Catholic Church
The matter then stands thus : — There are three
ideas, God, Religion, and the Church ; and these three
are so related that the second and third may be
regarded as progressive explications of the first.1
According to Cardinal Newman, conscience appre
hends God as Judge ; Religion is founded on man's
consciousness and confession of offence against Him ;
and the Church at once embodies God's authority as
Judge, and satisfies man's need of expiation. Unless
God were so apprehended Religion could not be so
defined ; and unless God and Religion were so un
derstood the Church could not be conceived as
authoritative and mediatorial. The correspondence
between the ideas of God and Religion has thus its
counterpart and complement in the correspondence
between the ideas of religion and the religious
society, the elements held necessary to the one being
represented and realized by the other. What the
religious idea declares to be needful to the pleasing
of God, must exist in the society and be provided
for by it ; what is said to be of the essence of
Religion must be possessed or affirmed by the
Church.- i. Now, if this be true, one thing is evident : the
narrower and more exclusive the religious idea, the
easier it is to find a society that has realized it ; but
the fuller, the richer, and more comprehensive the
1 Cf. ante, p. 17.

152 CATHOLICISM
idea, the less possible is it to find such a society.
A magnificent ideal for a Church may be a mean
ideal for a Religion ; what makes a Catholic institu
tion splendid may cover a spiritual and universal
faith with shame. The greater indeed ought never
to be measured by the less ; the less ought to be
studied and valued through the greater. This means :
the Church ought to be criticised and judged through
the Religion, not the Religion through the Church.
The Church is good in the degree that it articulates
and realizes the vital elements in the Religion ; bad
in the degree that it fails to do so. I freely acknow
ledge the pre-eminence of Catholicism as an his
torical institution ; here she is without a rival or a
peer. If to be at once the most permanent and
extensive, the most plastic and inflexible, ecclesi
astical organization, were the same thing as to be
the most perfect embodiment and vehicle of Religion,
then the claim of Catholicism were simply indis
putable. The man in search of an authoritative
church may not hesitate ; once let him assume that
a visible and audible authority is of the essence of
Religion, and he has no choice ; he must become,
or get himself reckoned, a Catholic. The Roman
church assails his understanding with invincible
logic, and appeals to his imagination with irresistible
charms. Her sons say proudly to him : " She alone
is catholic, continuous, venerable, august, the very
Church Christ founded and His Apostles instituted
and organized. She possesses all the attributes and

CATHOLICISM AND HISTORICAL CRITICISM 1 53
notes of catholicity — an unbroken apostolic succes
sion, a constant tradition, an infallible Chair, unity,
sanctity, truth, an inviolable priesthood, a holy sacri
fice, and efficacious sacraments. The Protestant
Churches are but of yesterday, without the authority,
the truth, or the ministries that can reconcile man
to God ; they are only a multitude of warring sects
whose confused voices but protest their own in
sufficiency, whose impotence almost atones for their
sin of schism by the way it sets off the might, the
majesty, and the unity of Rome In contrast, she
stands where her Master placed her, on the rock,
endowed with the prerogatives and powers He gave ;
and against her the gates of hell shall not prevail.
Supernatural grace is hers and miracle ; it watched
over her cradle, has followed her in all her ways
through all her centuries, and has not forsaken her
even yet. She is not like Protestantism, a concession
to the negative spirit, an unholy compromise with
naturalism. Everything about her is positive and
transcendent ; she is the bearer of Divine truth, the
representative of the Divine order, the Supernatural
living in the very heart and before the very face of
the Natural. The saints, too, are hers, and the man
she receives joins their communion, enjoys their
goodly fellowship, feels their influence, participates
in their merits and the blessings they distribute.
Their earthly life made the past of the Church
illustrious ; their heavenly activity binds the visible
and invisible into unity, and lifts time into eternity.

154 CATHOLICISM

To honour the saints is to honour sanctity ; the
Church which teaches man to love the holy helps
him to love holiness. And the Fathers are hers ;
their labours, sufferings, martyrdoms, were for her
sake ; she treasures their words and their works ;
her sons alone are able to say, " Athanasius and
Chrysostom, Cyprian and Augustine, Anselm and
Bernard, Thomas Aquinas and Duns Scotus are ours,
their wealth is our inheritance, at their feet we learn
filial reverence and Divine wisdom." But rich as she
is in persons, she is richer in truth, her worship is a
glorious sacrament, her mysteries are a great deep.
Hidden sanctities and meanings surround man ; the
sacramental principle invests the simplest things, acts,
and rites with an awful yet most blissful significance,
turns all worship now into a Divine parable which
speaks the deep things of God, now into a medium
of His gracious and consolatory approach to men and
man's awed and contrite, hopeful and prevailing,
approach to Him. Symbols are deeper than words,
speak when words become silent, gain where words
lose in meaning ; and so in hours of holiest worship
the Church teaches by symbols truths language may
not utter. And yet she knows better than any, other
how to use reasonable speech ; the Fathers and
doctors of theology have been hers. For every
possible difficulty of the reason, or the heart, or
the conscience, she has not one, but a thousand
solutions. If men are gentle of heart, and do not
like to think that all men without the Church must

CATHOLICISM AND HISTORICAL CRITICISM 155
be lost, distinctions are made as to the body and
soul of the Church, as to kinds and degrees of
ignorance, softening stern doctrines into tenderness.
If they have difficulties about Infallibility, whether
due to papal sins and blunders in the past, or free
dom in the present, or progress in the future, they
can easily be obviated by methods of interpretation
and known and noted constitutional limitations. In
the Church alone has casuistry become a science
so perfect as to have a law and a cure for every
real or possible case of conscience ; in her schools
theology has become a completed science, which has
systematized her body of truth, explicated her reason,
justified her being and her claims. And so the
Catholic Church is, in a sense altogether her own,
not only an ecclesiastical institution, but a Religion,
a system able to guide the conscience, satisfy the
heart, regulate the conduct, adjust and determine the
relations of God and man."
2. Now this sublime and august Catholicism may
well and easily be victorious in its appeal to the pious
imagination ; but it is one thing to be sublime and
august as an institution, and quite another thing to
be true and credible as a Religion. Our concern
here is not with the appeal of Catholicism, but with
its right to make it ; not with its sufficiency for the
men who grant its premisses, but with its relation to
the Religion it professes to represent and realize ;
whether it be or be not equal to its complete and
veracious representation, whether it do or do not

156 CATHOLICISM
possess energies equal to its realization in man and
society. The Catholic church did not create the
Religion, but was created by it ; and it is the func
tion of historical criticism to discover and determine
the methods and factors of the process which created
the church. The questions involved are many and
intricate, but they may be said to reduce themselves
to two : first, the historical relations of the created
institution or church, and the creative Religion ; and,
secondly, the adequacy of the institution to the inter
pretation of the Religion and to the fulfilment of its
purposes. The questions are indivisible, but distinct.
If the institution be so related to the Religion as
to be identical or interchangeable with it, the question
of adequacy is, ipso facto, settled ; though even then
the adequacy of the church to the work of a Religion
will remain to be discussed. We may distinguish
the questions thus : the one concerns the genesis of
Catholicism, how and by what historical process and
causes it came to be ; but the other concerns its be
haviour and action in history — whether it has lived
and acted as a Society which incorporates the mind
and serves the ends of Jesus Christ. The two ques
tions combined relate to what may be termed the
philosophy of Catholicism, but the former alone can
determine whether this must be held identical with a
philosophy of the Christian Religion.

CATHOLICISM AND HISTORICAL CRITICISM 1 57
§ III. Whether it be Possible to Conceive Catholicism
as a Development from the Religion of Christ
The fundamental and decisive question then is
as to the relation of Catholicism to the Religion of
Christ. The question is at once historical and com
parative — historical in so far as the connection of the
systems is concerned ; comparative in so far as the
one supplies the norm by which the other must be
measured and criticised. The Religion of Christ
must not be judged by Catholicism, but Catholicism
by the Religion of Christ.
i . The differences between these relate at once to
the form and the matter of faith, both to the political
organization of the church and the religious ideal
it embodies. What these differences are may appear
in the course of the discussion. It is enough to say
here that they are too radical to be ignored, and too
flagrant to be overlooked. Protestant writers have
emphasized them, and Catholic theologians have pro
posed various theories in explanation. These differ
ences constituted in Newman's earlier period the
supreme obstacle to his entering the church of Rome ;
and the theory by which the obstacle was surmounted
and the differences explained is expounded in the
book that marks the crisis in his career.1 The book
1 An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine, 1846
(second edition). The history of the theory of development
in Roman Catholic apologetics is a very interesting one, and
well illustrates the obligations of Catholic to what is called

I58 CA THOLICISM

stands in a sort of mediatory relation to his earlier
and later works ; in it the logic which had hitherto
governed his mind reaches its consistent conclusion,
and in it the doctrines of the later works are implicit.
Studied in their light, sentences that were enigmatical
to its contemporary critics become strangely lumi
nous. As in the Apologia and the Grammar, a
natural scepticism forms the basis and justification
of a mechanical supernaturalism. Its thesis may be
stated thus : to prove how, since reason or nature has
forsaken God and been forsaken of Him, a miraculous
and infallible church is a necessity to faith. The
philosophical scepticism determines the definitions,
gives point and force to the arguments, presents the
real, though here unformulated, alternative, Atheism
or Catholicity. "Corruption" is but a figurative name
for the " infallible Protestant succession " ; it is " that
state of development which undoes its previous ad
vances," " a process ending in dissolution of the body
of thought and usage which was bound up as it were
" non-Catholic " thought. I had meant to compare the French,
German, and English forms of this theory, and show how these
had been affected by the historical and philosophical specu
lations of their respective countries. De Maistre, Moehler,
Goerres, and Newman are well-known names; but Carove,
Gengler, Gunther, though he and his school found small favour
at Rome, and Staudenmaier no less deserve mention. The
comparative neglect that seems to have fallen on a more
remarkable man than any of these, Franz Baader, is not credit
able to the Church that owned him. The unacknowledged
obligations of Newman to French Catholic or neo-Catholic
writers, would be an interesting theme for analytic criticism.

CATHOLICISM AND HISTORICAL CRITICISM 159
in one system," "the destruction of the norm or
type." 1 Development is " the germination, growth,
and perfection of some living, that is influential, truth,
or apparent truth, in the minds of men during a suffi
cient period." 2 These definitions, which but express
the art of the logician who so frames his premisses as
to make his conclusion inevitable, mean, of course,
simply this : outside Catholicism there reigns corrup
tion, or the tendency to Atheism ; inside it, there
proceeds development, or there exists a living body
of truth, a real and expansive Religion. But the
artificiality of the definitions, their unreality as his
torical doctrines, and their insufficiency for the argu
ment, soon become apparent. For neither the funda
mental principle nor the dogmatic purpose can allow
growth to be any real or sufficient note of truth ; an
authority is needed to discover and ratify it. The
only healthy .growth is one supernaturally conducted
and authenticated, and without this authentication the
truth could not be known. For unless the develop
ment proceeded "under the eye" ofthe external author
ity, which is the only sure and unerring judge of what
is true and what is false, we should not know what to
believe and what to reject. And so infallibility must
appear to guarantee the revelation ; though, as infalli
bility can only be conceived as revelation in exercise,
the function is rather curious than convincing. And
it is still more curious that the idea of infallibility,
1 pp- 62, 63. 2 p. 37.

1 60 CA THO LIC ISM

which is the clearest as it is the most recent example
of development within the Roman church, should be
exempted from the operation of the law, and con
ceived as from the very beginning the duly consti
tuted final authoritative court of appeal in all matters
of faith. It is thus essentially a "provision" or ex
pedient for retaining God in our knowledge, and was
made necessary by the metaphysical doubt which
would, left alone, have acted as a solvent of faith.
And this simply means that God being lost from
nature and history, an artificial or mechanical, as
distinguished from ,a supernatural, method has to
be devised for bringing Him back. Newman holds
" there can be no combination on the basis of truth
without an organ of truth " ; but his organ is an organi
zation, with the natural history, the modi vivendi et
operandi proper to one. He does not say, " There
are no eternal truths " : but he does say, " There are
none sufficiently commanding to be the basis of
public union and action. The only general persua
sive in matters of conduct is authority." 1 If Religion
is to live, " there is absolute need of a spiritual supre
macy," or " a supreme authority ruling and reconciling
individual judgments by a Divine right and a recog
nized wisdom." 2 Metaphysical scepticism may seem
a curious basis for belief in what has been called the
most, supernatural form of Christianity ; but it is New
man's. 3

1 P- 128. 2 p I2?
For a more detailed exposition and criticism of Newman's

CATHOLICISM AND HISTORICAL CRITICISM l6l
2. But we have had enough of the philosophical
question, which is here of interest only as showing
the logical coherence and continuity of ideas in
Newman's own mind. We must discuss with more
care and in fuller detail the historical thesis : How
does this infallible Catholic church stand related to
the Religion of Jesus Christ ? The reply, as con
ceived by the Catholic, is, the two are one ; the
Church is the Religion. Why, then, do they so differ ?
Why do we find so many things in Catholicism that
we do not find in the Religion ? The answer of the
Catholic is — the differences are those of growth and
logical evolution ; they are notes and evidences of
life, due to the continuous and divinely guided expan
sion of the organism that came into being nineteen
centuries ago. The theory of development is thus
an " hypothesis to account for a difficulty " 1 — the
procession or evolution of Catholicism from what was
in so many respects radically unlike it, primitive
Christianity. But the theory was not simply a
method of explaining the differences between the
religion which Christ created and the church which
the Pope governs ; it was, on the one hand, an
apology for Catholicism, and on the other, for the
man who had been compelled to embrace it. The book
was in the strictest possible sense an earlier Apologia
pro vita sua. But polemical purpose is a serious
doctrine of development, and a more adequate discussion of
the subject as a whole, see The Place of Christ in Modern Theo-
l°iy^ PP- 25 ff. ' Development of Christian Doctrine, p. 27.
II

1 62 CATHOLICISM

obstacle to scientific discussion. History, as Newman
handles it, is but dialectic, a method of establishing
a dogma or making good a proposition. No man
could be less the ideal critic, or constructive historian,
than he, or be more deft in the use of historical
material for controversial ends. As he conceived the
matter, his '' Development of Doctrine " ought to
have been a philosophy, not only of Catholicism, but
of Christianity. But it is too completely without the
critical and scientific spirit to be either. What he
termed "development" was not what either philo
sophy or Science means when it uses the word. For
he refused to apply the process to the collective result,
keeping out of its hands the infallibility, which, as
the most abnormal and least intrinsic organ or faculty,
had the greatest need to be explained ; and he con
ceived the process in a merely logical rather than a
really natural and scientific way. Now, let us " grant
the principle of development, but demand that it be
philosophically stated and rigorously applied. To
speak in the current phraseology, we must have the
organism, but also the environment ; and these must be
studied and exhibited in their mutual intercourse and
reciprocal action, the elements they respectively con
tribute to the result being carefully distinguished and
appraised. The organism may modify the environ
ment, but the environment may still more radically
modify and even vary the organism. The degree
and incidence of change is not to be settled before
hand by a series of purely a priori definitions and

CATHOLICISM AND HISTORICAL CRITICISM 1 63
tests, like Newman's sacred seven,1 but by actual
observation of the process, analysis of its conditions,
discovery of its factors, determination of the path and
rate of movement."
The problem, then, as to the evolution of the
Church, the headship of the Supreme Pontiff, and his
ex Cathedra infallibility, is historical, and soluble
only by the methods of historical research, which
does not begin by a priori definitions and determina
tions of one class of growths as " corruptions," and
another as " developments," but simply observes the
process, the factors, and the results. Hence we must
do two things, (a) find the germ, viz., the body or
system of truth, in its primitive or least developed state,
and (/3) study the successive conditions under which it
lived, their action on it, its action on them. The germ
is simple, but the conditions are complex and varied.
It is a new Religion : but it lives surrounded by a
multitude of ancient Religions, on the soil, within
the atmosphere, under the light, amid the customs,
memories, manners, associations they had created. It
is a body of beliefs : but the beliefs are construed
and formulated into doctrines in cities where philo
sophy had been studied, often by men who had been
1 The " tests of true development " are : " the preservation of
the idea " ; " continuity of principles " ; " power of assimila
tion " ; " early anticipation " ; " logical sequence " ; " preser
vative additions " ; " chronic continuance " (pp. 64 ff.). These
are but so many principles of prejudgment. So independent is
he of historical method that he does not condescend to any
critical search after " the idea " that was to be preserved.

1 64 CATHOLICISM

trained in the schools, or had felt the influence of
Hellenic or Hellenistic, Latin or Oriental speculation.
The thought of the most catholic Father bears on its
face the image of his time, and the superscription of
his place. Clement, Origen, and Athanasius are men
of Alexandria, with problems that differ according to
their differing ages ; but they are as distinctively sons
of their city as Philo, Ammonius, or Plotinus. They
speak, as it were, in its idiom, and have their minds,
methods of exegesis and argument, modes of thought
and doctrinal apprehension saturated with its spirit.
In the making of Augustine Plato has been as power
ful as Paul ; and, if the Kingdom of God suggested
his ideal civitas, imperial Rome determined its form.
Then the Religion could not act and extend without
a polity ; but as it grew on the soil of Judaism, lived
in Greek cities and within the Roman Empire, first
under its ban, and then, in the very moment of its
dissolution, in alliance with it, the political type was
not uniform, but followed the model which prevailed
in its successive homes. Its base was Jewish, its
middle stratum Greek ; but its upper and final, imperial
and Roman. In its earliest form Christianity might
be described as a Religion which had stooped to use
the simplest polity ; but in its Roman form it might
be more correctly described as a polity which had
appropriated the name of a Religion. For after the
Church had lived among Jews, Greeks, and Romans,
and had affected, and been affected by, their respec
tive faiths, philosophies, and polities, penetrated and

CATHOLICISM AND HISTORICAL CRITICISM 1 65
modified as they all were by Oriental elements, it
was no longer the simple and rudimentary structure
known to the Apostles ; it had become a highly
developed and skilfully articulated organism, capable
not only of independent political life, but of imperial
or sovereign action. And so when Roman Caesar
ceased to rule the West, the Roman Bishop became
his substitute and successor. It was as organized by
the spirit and genius of the ancient Empire that Chris
tianity met the newer peoples. It thus appeared to
them the representative at once of the new Religion,
the Roman State, and the old civilization ; and so
entered into conditions favourable to further develop
ments, especially of the imperial order. The environ
ment was thus ceaselessly changing, now from internal,
now from external, now from concurrent causes ; and
its every change affected and varied the organism.
Movement is complex, development is conditioned ;
has its causes, but also its occasions j its laws, but
also its circumstances. The organism cannot be
isolated from its environment, but must be studied in
and through it. The mighty fabric of the Roman
church is a development ; no man will question it ;
but the significance of the development for the sys
tem, for Religion, and for history, must be determined,
not by a series of arbitrary tests, but by the rigorous
methods of historical analysis and criticism.
3. If, then, we follow the historical method, our first
duty will be to find the primary form, the organism
in its aboriginal state. Newman, indeed, does not

1 66 CATHOLICISM

trouble himself to discover this form ; but starts with an
imaginary picture, marked by manifold inaccuracies,
painted without the slightest reference to the sources
or what in them is material. The student of develop
ment, however, must begin at the beginning — with
the New Testament ideal of Religion. Tradition
cannot be here trusted ; literature alone can. Tradi
tion is uncertain, unfixed ; its tendency is to grow, to
mingle early and late, to throw the emphasis on the
most recent, to fuse in the heated crucible of the
imagination the marvellous and the unreal with the
actual and the real. But the written abides ; its
words do not change, do not augment the history
with fact or marvel, only become, as men grow
critical, more luminous, veracious, graphic, able to set
man, however distant in time, like an ear- and eye
witness, face to face with the things he reads. And
here our literary sources are clear, credible, truthful.
We know the first century as we do not know the
second, or even the third. The founding of the
Religion is a more legible page of history than the
organization of the church ; the earlier throws more
light on the later period than the later on the earlier.
Indeed, we may say the earlier history is written
in lines of living light. If, then, we are to follow
the only method valid in historical science, we must
begin with our oldest written sources ; on every
matter connected with the first or parent form, the
real starting - point of the evolutional process, their
authority must be held final. This is no dogma of

CATHOLICISM AND HISTORICAL CRITICISM 167
Protestantism, but a simple necessity of scientific
method, which is here, too, the method of nature and
assured knowledge. Light lies on the threshold ; it
is only after we have crossed it that the shadows
begin to thicken.
§ IV. How the Priesthood came into the Religion
1. Now, what is the New Testament ideal of
-Religion ? Its material or determinative conception
is, as we have already argued, the doctrine of God.
" He appears primarily, not, as Newman so strenuously
argued, as a God of judgment and justice, but of
mercy and grace, the Father of man, who needs not
to be appeased, but is gracious, propitious, finds the
Propitiator, provides the propitiation. His own Son
is the one Sacrifice, Priest, and Mediator, appointed
of God to achieve the reconciliation of man. Men
are God's sons ; filial love is their primary duty,
fraternal love their common and equal obligation.
Worship does not depend on sacred persons, places,
or rites, but is a thing of spirit and truth. The best
prayer is secret and personal ; the man who best
pleases God is not the scrupulous Pharisee, but the
penitent publican. Measured by the standard of a
sacerdotal Religion, Jesus was not a pious person ;
He spoke no word, did no act, that implied a priest
hood for His people, He enforced no sacerdotal
observance, instituted no sacerdotal order, promul
gated no sacerdotal law ; but simply required that
His people should be perfect as their Father in

1 68 CATHOLICISM

heaven is perfect. And so what He founded was a
society to realize His own ideal, a Kingdom of heaven,
spiritual, eternal, which came without observation;
a realm where the will of God is law, and the law
is love, and the citizens are the loving and the
obedient." The fact is too remarkable, too charac
teristic and essential to the mind of Jesus to
be described as accidental, or as due to His
assumption of these things as understood. On the
contrary we have to note His most careful and even
scrupulous abstention from the use of all terms
that could imply the continuance of any priesthood
within His Church. The abstention must have been
difficult ; indeed, nothing could have been harder than
to avoid the use of terms which were on all men's lips
when they spoke about religion. Yet the only use
He made of the term "temple" was to apply it to His
body. He never gave the name of priest either to
Himself or to any disciple. The only sacrifice He
asked man to offer was the mercy which God
loved. These abstentions therefore are express and
designed ; a priesthood with its offices was no part of
His mind and purpose. And as with His own mind,
so was it in the Apostolic Church and in the
Apostolic epistles. The people the apostles represent
and address, the society they describe, may have in
its collective being a priestly character, but is without
an official priesthood. It has " apostles," " prophets,"
"overseers" or "bishops," "elders," "pastors,"
" teachers," " ministers " or " deacons," " evangelists " ;
but it has no " priests," and no man, or body of men,

CATHOLICISM AND HISTORICAL CRITICISM 1 69
who bear the name, hold the place, exercise the
functions, or fulfil the duties of the priest, or the
priesthood, as they were known in ancient Religions.
It has no temple, save either the living Saviour or the
living man ; it asks from men no sacrifices, save those
of the spirit and the life ; it has no sensuous sanctities.
" Its Founder who, we repeat, never called Himself
a priest, stood to the priesthood of His land and time
in radical antagonism ; the writers who apply to Him
the name High Priest, and describe His work as a
sacrifice, carefully deny any similar name to any class
of His people, and decline to attach any similar idea
to any of their acts or instruments of worship. And
this may be said to represent on the negative side the
absolutely new and distinctive character of the
Religion of Christ. It stood among the ancient
faiths as a strange and extraordinary thing — a
priestless Religion, without the symbols, sacrifices,
ceremonies, officials, hitherto held, save by prophetic
Hebraism, to be the religious all in all. And it so
stood, because its God did not need to be propitiated,
but was propitious, supplying the only Priest and
Sacrifice equal to His honour, and the sins and wants
of man. In that hour God became a new being to
man, and man knew himself to be more than a mere
creature and subject — a son of the living God." 1
2. Here, then, is the aboriginal germ — a Religion
without a priesthood, or any provision for it ; as such
1 The Place of Christ in Modern Theology, pp. 48, 49.

I/O CATHOLICISM

an exception among the Religions and an anomaly
to men ; and because of its anomalous character, lay
ing its earliest professors open to the odious charge
of Atheism. But Catholicism is here the precise
opposite of this aboriginal Religion, this Christianity
of Christ and His apostles. The priesthood is essen
tial to it ; without the priesthood it could have no
existence, no Saviour present in its services, no mass,
no sacraments, no confessional ; in a word, no worship
for God, no comfort and no command for man. Here,
then, is the first point for the historic inquirer : How
and whence came the idea and office of the priest
hood into Christianity? Was it evolved from within, or
incorporated from without? Was it a latent organ or
capability legitimately evoked in the original, or was it
a foreign or superadded element due to the conditions
under which the organism lived? Without attempting
an exhaustive discussion of these questions, it will be
enough to say that the sacerdotal idea has a perfectly
distinct history of its own ; the date of its first
appearance in the Church can be fixed, its rise can be
traced, its growth measured, its action on the sub
stance and organization of Christianity analyzed and
exhibited. The New Testament did not know it, and
in the second as in the first century it is still un
known ; but the tendencies creative of it are active.
The apologists labour strenuously to explain how
Christianity, though without the sacerdotalism charac
teristic of all the then licit or recognized worships, is
yet a Religion. In the Didache the prophet has

CATHOLICISM AND HISTORICAL CRITICISM 17 1
displaced the Priest.1 Ignatius may have high
episcopal, but he has no sacerdotal ideas ; and of these
his friend Polycarp is also free. To Justin Martyr,
Christians were the true high-priestly race ; they offer
the sacrifices well-pleasing to God.2 With Irenaeus
the sacerdotal dignity is the portion of the just ; and
the sanctified heart, the holy life, faith, obedience,
righteousness, are the sacrifices God loves.3 The
choicest altar was the service of the needy ; to
minister to man was to sacrifice to God. There was
no order possessed of the exclusive right to officiate
in things sacred, exercising their functions by virtue
of some inalienable grace. The layman might
baptize or celebrate the Eucharist ; there was " liberty
of prophesying " ; the individual society or church
could exercise discipline, could even institute or
depose its officers. But as the second century ended
and the third opened, significant signs of change
begin to appear. Tertullian in Africa speaks of the
" Ordo sacerdotalis " and the " Sacerdotalia munera " ;
and describes the bishop as " summus sacerdos " and
" pontifex maximus."4 Hippolytus in Italy claims
for himself, as successor of the Apostles, the high-
priesthood ; 5 while Origen in Alexandria, though he
1 Chap. xiii. 3 ; cf. Clemens Rom. chapp. xl., xliii., xliv.
2 Dial, chapp. cxiv.-cxvii. ; cf. Apol. i. chapp. Ixvi., lxvii.
3 Adv. Omn. Haeres. book iv. chapp. viii. 3, xvii. 4 ; bk. v. c.
xxxiv. 3.
* De Exh. Cast. 7 ; De Praescr. Haer. 41 ; De Baptis. 17 ; De
Pudic. 1.
6 Refut. Omn. Har. i. Proem.

172 CA THO LIC ISM
holds to the universal priesthood and spiritual
sacrifices,1 also indicates the likeness of the new
ministers to the ancient priests and Levites.2 By the
middle of the century the hands of Cyprian have
clothed the new clergy in the dignities of the old
priesthood, and provided them with appropriate sacri
ficial functions and intercessory duties. "The develop
ment was n"ot complete, but it was begun. The ancient
ideal died hard ; reminiscences of it may be found in
Augustine, in Leo the Great, even in Aquinas, nay, in
the very Catholicism of to-day ; but they only help to
illustrate the continuity of the evolutional process and
measure the vastness of the change."3
Now, why was it that the sacerdotal element
appeared so suddenly and grew so rapidly? What
were the causes of its so sudden genesis and growth ?
In the Religion as instituted by Jesus Christ, taught
and practised by His Apostles, received and observed
by their disciples, it had no place ; and so its rise
could not be due to any process of logical and
immanent evolution, of detached and self-regulated
development. But what was not possible to the
isolated, was necessary to the conditioned organism.
The Religion was new, but humanity was old ; and, if
the new lived within the bosom of the old, it was by
a process of mutual assimilation, the new pervading

1 Homil. in Lev. ix. 9, 10 (Ed. Lom. vol. ix. pp. 360-364).
2 In Evang. Ioh. torn. i. 3 (Ed. Lom. vol. i. p. 9).
8 The Place of Christ in Modern Theology, p. 105.

CATHOLICISM AND HISTORICAL CRITICISM 173
and changing the old, but the old also penetrating
and modifying the new. " Men found it easier to
adjust the Religion to themselves than themselves
to the Religion. Their minds were not sheets of
clean white paper on which its truths could be clearly
written, but pages crowded with the records, habits,
customs, beliefs, of immemorial yesterdays ; and the
lines of the new could not but often mingle and blend
with those of the ancient writing. A Religion without
a priesthood was what no man had known ; a sacred
order on earth seemed as necessary to worship as the
very being of the gods in heaven. The temple was
the centre of the State, but it was idle without a
priesthood, and without it the oracle was dumb."1
How, then, were men, inured by age-long custom and
tradition to priestly Religions, able all at once to
construe and realize one altogether priestless ? They
were helped at first by two things : its very strange
ness, its absolute antithesis to the familiar and
received ; and, next, by its appearing as a new opinion
or belief which spread by teaching and discourse, or
as a system of philosophy and social help rather than
as an organized worship. But the more its character
as a Religion became established and defined, the
more men tended to interpret it through the old
Religions, seeking in it the elements they had known
in them.
And the historical relations of the Christian Faith,
1 The Place of Christ in Modern Theology, p. 106.

174 CATHOLICISM

as child and heir of Judaism, intensified this tend
ency. It had come to fulfil the Law and the
Prophets ; the New Testament did not exist because
of the Old, but the Old had existed for the sake of the
New. Christianity was no accident, was indeed older
than creation, had been designed from eternity, and
appeared as the result and goal of all past history ;
but it was no mere continuation of what had been,
was rather as its end, its supersession and fulfilment.
The sub-apostolic Fathers and apologists more or
less consistently maintained this, the apostolic posi
tion. They argued with the Jew, that the anticipa
tions of Christ in the Old Testament were evidences
of His truth ; and with the Greek, that the relation of
the New Testament to the Old proved Christianity
to be the result of a Divine purpose running through
the ages. But the parallel of the Testaments easily
became absolute, a forgetfulness of their essential
differences. The use of the Old to authenticate the
New tended to invest the Old with equal or even
greater authority, especially as, alongside the incom
pleteness of the Christian canon, the Hebrew Scrip
tures stood canonically complete. They were the
sacred books of Jews and Christians alike, authorita
tive for both, revered and believed by both, held by
both to be regulative of faith and conduct, affording
to both the one solid common ground of discussion
and argument. And so, as was natural, these Scrip
tures lost in historical but gained in religious and
ecclesiastical significance; became less a record of

CATHOLICISM AND HISTORICAL CRITICISM 1 75
what had been, and more a norm or principle regula
tive of what ought to be. Indeed, it is the simple
truth to say that they were a far more active and
efficient factor in the organization of the Church than
even the apostolic writings. For these latter were
but the memorials of missionaries and missionary
churches : but the former exhibited a realized
Religion, what was conceived as pre-Christian Christi
anity. The old Religion had its priesthood, the new
had its clergy, and so these two were made parallel.
Once they had been made parallel, it was necessary
to do the same for the worships ; and once they were
assimilated, the New Testament ceased to fulfil the
Old, the Old reigned in the New. And this is what
Cyprian shows us ; he represents the victory of the
older Religions, the rejuvenescence of Judaism, the
entrance of the hieratic idea into the Kingdom of
Christ, changing it into a kingdom of priests. Invet
erate and invariable association demanded and
worked the change, but the relation of the Jewish and
Christian Scriptures supplied the opportunity and
forms for its accomplishment. Without the univer
sal sacerdotalism it would not have been necessary ;
without the historical relation it would not have been
possible ; the co-existence and co-operation of the
two made it not only natural, but inevitable.
§ V. How the Church Became a Monarchy
i. The rise and growth of the sacerdotal idea in
Christianity can, then, be explained by the principle

176 CATHOLICISM

of development, but it must be development scienti
fically interpreted and historically applied. The idea
then appears as the creation, not of the isolated or
detached, but of the related organism, or simply of
the environment within which it lives and moves.
Yet this is only the beginning of the evolutionary
process. Hand in hand with the change in the idea
and functions of the ministry comes a change in its
place and in the relation which it bears to the
Church. And here, in order to see the process in its
completeness, we must study it from within as
well as from without ; in other words, in relation to
what may be termed the articulation of the organism
— or the organization of the Christian society.
Catholic polity is one, New Testament polity another;
they are not only dissimilars, but opposites. The
rise of the monarchical and imperial polity, i.e., the
Catholic papacy, within the Christian Church, is
explicable on the ground of a conditioned or natural
development, but not of one unconditioned or super
natural. Accept the supernaturalism of Catholic dog
matics, and the rise of the infallible headship does
not admit of explanation ; but apply to it the scien
tific analysis of the historical method, and it stands
explained. For what on this matter is the testimony
of the oldest literature ? There is no evidence that
Jesus ever created, or thought of creating, an
organized society. There is no idea He so little
emphasizes as the idea of the Church. The use of
the term is attributed to Him but twice — once it

. CATHOLICISM AND HISTORICAL CRITICISM lyy
occurs in the local or congregational sense, and once
in the universal ; but only so as to define His own
sole activity and supremacy. His familiar idea is the
Kingdom of God or of heaven ; but this Kingdom is
without organization, and incapable of being organ
ized ; indeed, though the ideas may here and there
coincide, it is essentially the contrary and contrast
of what is now understood as the Catholic church,
whether Roman or Anglican. Further, in the
Church of the New Testament the politico-
monarchical idea does not exist ; there is no shadow,
or anticipation, or prophecy of it. The churches are
not organized, do not constitute a formal unity, have
a fraternal but no corporate relation, have no
common or even local hierarchy ; they are divided by
differences that preclude the very idea of an official
infallible head. Supremacy belongs to no man ;
there is no bishop, in the modern sense, over any
church, or over the whole Church ; no recognition of
Rome as a seat of authority, the only holy or pre
eminent city being Jerusalem. The question as to
Peter is very significant. He may be the rock on
which the Church is to be built ; the promises made
to him may be taken in the highest possible sense ;
but what then ? There is no evidence that what was
promised to him was assured to his successors, no
evidence that he had any successors, least of all that
his successors, if he had any, were the bishops of
Rome, or that Rome in any way entered into the
thought of Jesus. Indeed, so far as the New Testa-
12

178 CATHOLICISM
ment is concerned, there is no evidence that Peter
ever was in Rome, or had any relation to it, or held
any office or did any work in connection with the
Roman church. Some things concerning him we
do certainly know — that he was an apostle of the
circumcision ; lived and preached many years in
Jerusalem ; was there a man of reputation and a pillar ;
visited Antioch, where he at first befriended the
Gentiles, then withdrew and was publicly rebuked by
Paul. That is our last clear, authentic glimpse of
him. Whether the Babylon, whence he sent an epistle
by no means either cosmopolitan or catholic, but
expressly provincial and particular, was the city really
so named or a metaphor for Rome, is a point on which
scholars have differed ; and is at least too uncertain
to admit of clear and final decision. On the other
hand, Paul's successive homes stand as full in the
light as Peter's retreat into the darkness ; from him
we know something of Rome and its church. He
addressed to it his greatest epistle, visited it, suffered
imprisonment in the city, dated . from it various
letters ; but never, either in the epistle sent to Rome
or in those sent from it, though he mentions many
persons, most of them mere obscure names to us, does
he either directly or implicitly allude to Peter. This
is a remarkable fact ; no mere conventional argument
from silence ; for Paul was a man scrupulous in his
courtesies, plain-spoken in his polemics, incapable of
omitting from his record what would have been the
most illustrious name of the local church, especially

CATHOLICISM AND HISTORICAL CRITICISM 179
as it was one he had so expressly used in his contro
versial epistles. Now, what does all this signify?
Papal infallibility, head and crown as it is of the
Catholic system, is the most tremendous claim ever
made by any man or body of men ; and so it, of
all claims, ought to have the most indubitable
historical basis. But an indubitable historical basis
is precisely the thing it wants. From the point of
view of authentic contemporary literature the evi
dence is altogether against both the primacy and
Roman episcopacy of Peter. The question is capable
of being argued only when tradition is introduced.
And the tradition, though ancient, is neither apostolic
nor primitive — can, indeed, hardly be placed earlier
than a century after the event, though it soon
becomes uniform and general. The case is arguable,
but it is no more. The tradition may be true, but it
must remain doubtful, the reasons that justify the
doubt proving the absolute unimportance of Peter
and his Roman bishopric to New Testament Reli
gion. Doubtful history is a rather insecure founda
tion for the most awful and august of sovereignties.
2. This point has been selected not for critical dis
cussion, but simply the better to illustrate the fact
that the Catholic system does not lie within the field
of apostolic Christianity. Its rise belongs to the
period when the organism was( living within its
environment, and struggling for existence against the
imperial system by following the lines of the imperial
organization. Its history cannot here be written,

l8o CATHOLICISM

though the materials for it exist — it being possible to
make every step in the process lie open to the clear
light of day. Within the Christian societies various
ideals of polity lived, Jewish, Greek, Roman ; ideals
derived from the synagogue, the free city, and the
school ; the voluntary, the industrial, or the benevolent
association ; and these were by-and-by joined by
ideals that came of Hebrew, Egyptian, and Syrian
asceticism, touched and modified by influences from
the further East. The Church was confronted and
resisted by an immense organized power ; what
unified and directed its energies contributed to its
success in the struggle. What conflict made neces
sary, made conflict easier and victory more possible,
if not more sure. Each congregation had its presid
ing officer, who soon came to represent its unity and
embody its authority ; then to act for it ; then to act
along with the kindred officers of his province or dis
trict ; then along with them to form an order or body ;
and, finally, the corporate unity, which the internal
growth had made possible, was achieved by the action
and influence of the State, the civil unity being the
condition procreative both of the ideal and the reality
of the ecclesiastical. The more the official order
became separate from the non-official, the more
sacerdotal it grew in character ; the growth of the
clerical idea within the Church prepared the way for
the entrance of the priestly, and the coalescence or
fusion of the two ideas worked a revolution both in
the Church and the Religion. The clergy became

Catholicism and historical criticism 181
the Church ; the Church the Religion ; and the Re
ligion a transformed Roman empire — with the Pope
for emperor, bishops for procurators, and the priest
hood for the magistrates and legionaries that levied
the taxes, enforced the laws, upheld the unity, .and
maintained the peace of the civilized world.
3. How it could have happened, why, indeed, it
could not but happen, that the Roman State should
so organize the Roman church as to change its Caesar
Augustus into the Holy Father, is a question of large
import, though capable of a reasonable and accurate
solution. The Emperor was Pontifex Maximus,
head of the pagan church as well as of the pagan
State. The two were identical ; the imperial will was
as supreme in religious as in civil affairs. If the
Emperor decreed that he was divine, and that his
statue must receive the honour due to a God, a man
could disobey or defy it with impunity as little as he
could commit any civil crime. It was, indeed, a
serious form of high treason ; and this was the
justification of the successive persecutions. It was an
anomaly, quite unintelligible to the ancient pagan
mind, that a man, a citizen of a State, should refuse
to do honour to the State's gods in accordance with
the State's laws or the will of its head. But this pre
cisely was what the Christian refused to do ; and
by his refusal he shocked the rulers and judges of
the ancient world, provoking them to those penal
measures we call martyrdoms, but the Roman called
vindications of authority. The system was thus rooted

1 82 CATHOLICISM

in immemorial custom and law ; but when the Emperor
was converted, a new order of things came to be.
The change that happened to the man affected the
office. He and his world assumed, though there
were noble and notable exceptions, that the imperial
power and functions shared in the conversion of
the imperial person ; i.e. he became in the Christian
Church what he had been in the Roman State, a
spiritual as well as civil head. He could in the
new as in the old act as Pontifex Maximus, call a
council, open it, intervene in its affairs, promulgate
and enforce its decrees, reward the obedient, punish
the disobedient. Hence the man who disagreed with
the Emperor was persecuted as much after the con
version of Constantine as ' he was before it. Patri
archs like Athanasius were banished or recalled,
deposed or re-instated, according to the good
pleasure of the court. Bishops became courtiers ;
intrigued for friends or against foes ; and words such
as Tertullian had applied to the severities of a pagan
Emperor, were now with more reason applied to those
of emperors who professed to be Christian. In the
East the system existed in fullest force ; but in the
West the imperial was first qualified, then balanced,
and finally eclipsed by the ecclesiastical power. In the
East the papal was no match for the civil authority ;
in the West the civil ceased to be a match for the
papal. The more the papal jurisdiction was limited
in the East, the higher grew the spiritual claims of
the Emperor; the more the Emperor forsook the

CATHOLICISM AND HISTORICAL CRITICISM 1 83
West, the more imperial became the' Episcopal Chair
of Rome. And so there was a mutual transference
of functions : the ecclesiastical was imperialized, the
imperial was ecclesiasticized. The Pope represents
an older and more august authority than the
apostolic ; he is the heir of the men who, from the
Eternal City, governed the civilized world. The
deity which was ascribed to them has, changed in
form but unchanged in essence, descended to him.
The apotheosis their State experienced, his has
also undergone. For papal infallibility is but
imperial supremacy transfigured and spiritualized.
Sovereignty is infallibility in the region of law ;
infallibility is sovereignty in the region of opinion.
The king, who is the source of law, can do no
wrong; the Pope, who defines, sanctions, and pro
claims dogma, can commit no error. Infallibility is
thus the interpretation, in the terms of forensic
jurisprudence or civil monarchy, of a spiritual head
ship, or supremacy in the realm of belief as distin
guished from conduct. It came to the Pope as the
successor of Caesar. The Catholic church thus could
not have been without Christianity, but still less could
it have been without Roman imperialism. It owes
its life to the one, but its distinctive organization it
owes to the other. The very forces that disorganized
the civil body helped to organize the ecclesiastical.
Apart from Rome, and Rome decadent — with the
imperial ideal and organism, but without the imperial
spirit — Catholicism could never have come to be. If

184 CATHOLICISM

the Latin church had passed the first five centuries of
its existence under an Oriental despotism or amid free
Greek cities, its structure would have been altogether
different. It seemed to vanquish the empire, but the
empire, by assimilating it, survived in it. The name
that distinguished the dynasty was the name of
Christ : but the form under which its power or
monarchy was constituted was the form of Caesar.
§ VI. The Ideas which Organized the System
1. So far we have been concerned with the condi
tions and process of outer organization ; but there is
a deeper and more vital question — What were the
organizing ideas ? and whence came they? Catholi
cism is not a mere aggregation of atoms, but the
articulation of an idea, the embodiment of a trans
cendental ideal. What is termed its supernaturalism
is but this ideal translated into dogma, and then
worked into a reasoned system. Its natural history
is too vast a subject to be here analytically handled,
or even touched, especially as it would involve the
discussion of the relation of Christianity to ancient
thought. The organic doctrines of Christianity and
the organizing ideas of Catholicism are different, and
distinct. The former proceed by a synthetic process
from the Religion of Christ, and can be analytically
resolved into it ; but the latter are of foreign, though
not necessarily of alien, origin, taken up into the body
of doctrine and becoming there factors of develop
ment and variation. Christianity found the world

CATHOLICISM AND HISTORICAL CRITICISM 185
expectant ; the thought it was to change began by
changing it. The philosophy it was able to overcome
as an enemy it could not so easily resist as a friend.
To forsake an error is not to be purged from it ;
though Augustine renounced Manicheism, yet his
early dualism subtly penetrates all his later thought.
And so the heresy that forced the church to formu
late its doctrine did not leave it with the old purity of
faith or simplicity of polity. Gnosticism was van
quished, but not annihilated ; its antithesis of matter
and spirit, found a footing in the new society and
modified its ideal of life, making it less surely con
scious of the unity of the secular and eternal.
Ebionitism was defeated, but the mind that cultivated
poverty for the increase of Religion lived on, and
even gained an ampler and freer field for its exercise.
Jewish asceticism, Syrian and Egyptian, did not long
survive the Jewish state ; but it did not die till its
ideas and example had touched and affected the
church. Yet these were but incidental influences;
the most plastic came from the revived philosophies,
the Stoic, Pythagorean, and Platonic. Similar ques
tions were debated in the academies and the cateche
tical schools, and their ideas and disciplines were also
akin., Alexandrian philosophy, as much as Alexan
drian theology, had its doctrine of God, of the
Trinity, faith, spiritual or allegorical interpretation,
bodily mortification, supernatural enlightenment, and
final reward ; and if the rivals did not copy, they at
least stimulated and developed each other. It is

CATHOLICISM

significant that the earlier influence was metaphysical
and theological, but the later ecclesiastical and
mystic, or political and sacramentarian. In the third
and' fourth centuries the great questions were those
touching the Godhead ; how God was to be conceived ;
how He was related to the world ; how to man, Chris
tian and heathen ; what Father and Son signified, and
what Word and Spirit ; how the One could be the
manifold, and because the manifold, be, while the
One, the All-loving and the All-efficient, the home of
all perfection and the centre of all energy. But in
the fifth and sixth centuries the great questions were
those touching the Church, its idea, orders, people
discipline, sacraments, the mystic allegories of nature
and grace. This change meant many things, but
mainly this : — Ecclesiastical organization had pro
ceeded so far, that it was necessary to find for it a
speculative basis and unifying ideal. With every
change, indeed, in the organism, there had been a
correlative change in the collective consciousness ;
the development of new organs and energies had
developed new ideas and activities ; but what was
now needed was a conception that should unite all
the parts into an harmonious and homogeneous
system. And to this result Neo-Platonic thought
powerfully contributed. Augustine came to Paul
from the study of Plato, and he more than any man
Platonized the Paul he studied and the ideal of the
Church he depicted and maintained. Synesius had
been a Christian while a Platonist, and remained a

CATHOLICISM AND HISTORICAL CRITICISM 1 87
Platonist after he had become a Christian. The
Pseudo-Dionysius represents the Neo-Platonic prin
ciples and interpretative method applied to the
"Catholic system : " symbolism reigns in heaven and
on earth, a celestial hierarchy holds the approaches to
God above, an ecclesiastical hierarchy guards and
regulates them below ; and men are graduated
according to the degree of their initiation in the holy
mysteries which at once reveal and conceal the in
effable Godhead. No book exercised a mightier
influence on Catholicism, did more on the one hand
to foster its mysticism, on the other to develop
its sacerdotalism. It moulded in an equal degree
men so dissimilar as Scotus Erigena and Thomas
Aquinas, Hugo of St. Victor and Albertus Mag
nus, Grosseteste and Dante ; and yet it was but
Neo-Platonism made to speak with the Catholic
tongue." 1
2. It is therefore due to no mere accident or
curious coincidence that so many affinities exist
between Plato's Republic and the Roman Church.
They differ, indeed, in many respects fundamentally ;
the one is philosophical and an ideal, the other is
religious and a reality ; but the kinship is manifest
enough, especially if the Republic be studied in the
Neo-Platonic spirit and method. Each reposes on a
transcendentalism that makes the actual exist through
and for the ideal ; yet so in opposition to it, that a
special order is needed to secure its realization. Each
1 The Place of Christ, etc., p. 109.

CATHOLICISM

is an institution founded for the creation of virtue or
obedience ; and has as its function and end the making
of this life the way to a better, or the discipline of its
citizens for a higher and more perfect state of being.
Each is possessed with the same sense of the august
sanctity of the whole ; the individual is nothing apart
from it, has no good save in and through and from it ;
he is altogether its, and is to have his whole life
regulated by its laws and for its ends. Each has the
same need for a sacred or special order : in the
Republic the philosopher is king, for he alone knows
the idea, or stands in the secret of God, and so is
alone able so to organize and administer the laws as
to secure its realization ; and in the Church the priest
reigns, the man Divinely appointed to speak to men
concerning God, and reconcile them to Him. In
each the idealism is the basis of a despotism : the
authority of the sacred order is absolute, the multi
tude may not rebel against the custodians of the
truth ; they must remain supreme and infallible if the
ideal is to be realized. Each has a similar attitude to
the home and family ; in the Republic the man must
be without a home that he may the better serve the
State ; in the Church the man who would be its
minister must be without family or home. The com
munity of goods in the one has its counterpart in the
vows of personal poverty, in alliance with corporate
wealth, in the other ; in each the individual derives
all his good from the whole, and the whole has com
mand over the all of the individual. These are but

CATHOLICISM AND HISTORICAL CRITICISM 1 89
the rough outlines of a parallel which might be indefi
nitely extended and minutely illustrated. But what is
significant is this : the differences, so far as ideal —
which of course is not to forget that the one system
is speculative, while the other is historical — may be
described as, in the main, those that distinguished
Platonic from Neo-Platonic thought— z>., differences
due to the penetration of the original philosophic
ideal with mystic, hierarchic, theurgic, and ascetical
elements. The Catholic church is the Platonic
kingdom of philosophers transformed into a kingdom
of priests.
The conclusion, then, is this : — The principle of
development, analytically applied to the catholic
system, proves that the parent form or aboriginal
germ — the ideal and society of Jesus — was by its
environments modified in a twofold direction. First,
from the ancient Religions, Jewish and pagan, it
received the notion of the priesthood, with all its
accessories ; and so became sacerdotal. And, secondly,
from the Roman empire, working on the material of
its primitive Judaeo-Hellenic polity, it received the
dream and function of Roman supremacy; and so
became catholic, papal, and infallible. Once it had
been so modified and developed, it became, largely
through current politico-religious speculation, pos
sessed of the organizing ideas needed to give it
intellectual consistency and completeness, making an
historical system the body of a universal ideal. But
this conclusion brings us to our second main ques-

190 CATHOLICISM

tion — the adequacy of the church or institution to
the Religion and its purposes. Adequacy may be
here interpreted in a double sense, as either historical
efficiency, or as ideal sufficiency ; or, in other words,
as adequacy for work, or adequacy to the spirit and
matter of the Religion. Something must be said as
regards each of these.
§ VII. Catholicism in History
I. There is here no desire to question the efficiency
and historical achievements of the Roman Church.
It is to us no creation of craft or subtlety, human or
diabolical, no Man of Sin, Scarlet Woman, or shame
less Antichrist, but a veritable creature of God and
manifest minister of His providence. The energies
evolved in the struggle for existence enabled it at
once to survive and be victorious. They were con
ditions of service, and as such necessary. Thus the
rise of the sacerdotal idea may be conceived as, on
the one hand, a process of interpenetration, and, on
the other, mediation and reconcilement. It is the one
because the other ; the old and the new faiths inter
penetrate that the new Religion may the better win
and master the ancient mind. Catholicism is the
interpretation of the Christian idea in the terms and
through the associations of the ancient faiths, and as
such represents on the largest scale the continuity of
Religion in history. Its work was a needed work, for
man is incapable of transitions at once sudden and
absolute ; the construction of Christianity through the

CATHOLICISM AND HISTORICAL CRITICISM 191

media of the older Religions was a necessary prelude
to its construction by a spirit and through a con
sciousness of its own creation. The absolute ideal
had, in order to be intelligible, to use constituted and
familiar vehicles ; but only that it might win the
opportunity of fashioning vehicles worthier of its
nature and fitter for its end.
The political element, again, especially as domi
nated and directed by the great organizing ideas,
had its own special function ; it mediated between
the ancient empires of force and the new empires
of the spirit. The Pope stood when Caesar fell ; and
became, in a sense higher than Caesar had ever
been — master of the world. In those days of
anarchy, when the military, legislative, judicial, fiscal,
and municipal system of the empire had completely
broken down, when the barbarians had seized its
provinces and wasted its cities, and were contending
with each other at once for plunder and supremacy,
the ecclesiastical was the only universal sovereignty
possible. And the sovereignty the Roman church
was called to exercise, it exercised, on the whole,
beneficently ; it worked for order, justice, and civiliza
tion. Its association with the empire had made it
imperial ; its religious ideal made it at once author
itative and humane. While it owed its ambition for
supremacy to Caesar, it owed its enthusiasm for
humanity to Christ. And so, while it succeeded, it did
not repeat the empire ; its sovereignty had another
basis, and was exercised by other means for other ends.

192 CATHOLICISM

The church was, in a sense Rome could never be,
" the Eternal City " ; in it eternity took bodily shape
before the eyes of men ; and so a vaster meaning
came into life, ennobling the men that lived it,
dignifying all its affairs. Men were not to it divided
into a multitude of alien races ; all were to it spirits
and immortal, responsible to it, for whom it was
responsible to God. It represented, therefore, a
new idea of sovereignty, a grander and more awful
majesty, an empire that lived by faith in the moral
and immortal worth of man, for his good and the
glory of God. To say that, out of the chaos Rome
left, it created order, is to say a small and inadequate
thing ; it created a new ideal of government, made
man another being to the Sovereign and the
Sovereign another being to man. Before it, had
been the reign of might; after and through it was
to be the reign of the Spirit.
2, It is impossible, then, to regard the history of
Catholicism as equal to the history of Christianity ;
it is at once much more and much less. It is much
more : for by many of its ideals, institutions, and
associations it represents the continuity of the ancient
and modern worlds, their kinship and community
in matters of faith and worship ; and it is much
less, for much of the best work Christianity has
done, both in earlier and in later times, has been
done without it and in spite of it. There is nothing
so little historical as the spirit that identifies
Christianity and Catholicism, or that sees in the latter

CATHOLICISM AND HISTORICAL CRITICISM 193
either the creation of Jesus Christ or the sole vehicle
of His truth. It has indeed rendered eminent
services to our race and our Religion ; these demand
and deserve our gratitude. The Catholicism of the
Catholic church is large,, but there is one still
larger, the note and possession of no church, but
of all the churches— the Catholicism of the Christian
Religion. According to it, the truth preserved by
any or each is the property of all ; the holiness or
beneficence of one is a common heritage, enriching
the whole family of the faith. The saints of
Catholicism are not Roman, but Christian ; the
achievements of Protestantism came not of protest
ing, but of loyalty to conscience and to God. And
the right attitude to both is to say : — Since they
are due to the inspiration of the one Spirit, they
belong to the universalism of Christ, not to the
specialism of the churches. From this point of
view I claim to be as much as any Catholic, heir
to all that is Christian in Catholicism ; and the
claim is not in any -way affected by either absolute
negation or qualified assent from the Catholic's side.
Whatever is of Christ in his system can be in no
respect alien to what is of Christ in me and mine,
True Catholicism must be as comprehensive as the
action of God ; whatever is less, but expresses the.
particularism of man.
But if Catholicism has served our race and our
Religion, it has also done both eminent disservice;
and this alike by what it has and what it has not
13

194 CATHOLICISM

achieved. It has impoverished Christian history,
has made it less rich and varied than it ought to
have been in ideals of life, faith, and society. The
suppression of Montanism was not an unmixed
good, indeed in many respects not a good at all ;
for in it much that was most characteristic and
primitive in Christianity died. Donatism had its
own right to be ; emphasized elements in the Religion,
Catholicism had no room for or did no justice to.
But a greater evil than the monotony it introduced
into the Christian ideal was its failure to realize
its own. It was potent in its earlier period, when
a necessity to Religion and man ; but impotent
in its later, when man, having outgrown it, needed
Religion presented in a freer form, a nobler and
more congenial vehicle. In the hands of Rome
Christianity had come so near its death that the
Reformation was a necessity to its life. The two
centuries before it had been like a desert, studded,
indeed, as all who love mysticism thankfully re
member, with beautiful oases of faith and devotion.
But the main stream of tendency within the Catholic
church did not then make for godliness. I do
not mean to reproach it with men like the Borgias ;
all churches have had their share of bad men;
and we have heard more than enough of them,
though the thing is most pitiful when wicked men
become officially infallible. But what I do mean
to say is this : Religion in the fifteenth century was
the creation of the Roman church, and Italy was

CATHOLICISM AND HISTORICAL CRITICISM 1 95
then without a Religion, or, worse, had one that
aggravated rather than lessened the evil. The Italian
states were bad, the church was no better ; the moral
depravity was encouraged by the intellectual scep
ticism; the sensuous licence was reflected in the
religious. Extenuating circumstances may be dis
covered ; the conflicts with the German emperors,
the French kings, and the free cities ; the subtle
influences of the Renaissance, Moorish philosophy,
and Jewish learning. But these neither alter nor
explain the facts. Religion was the church's province,
in it she had reigned for centuries without a rival ; yet
her infallibility in doctrine had been so mated with
inefficiency in conduct, as to result in the completest
breakdown in the matter of faith and morals Christian
Europe has ever known. The supernatural and the
natural gifts were so ill-assorted that the one did
more than neutralize the other; their joint action
made the evil of the times more inveterate and acute.
The authority of the church forbade the reform of the
church, and the act that broke her unity saved our
religion. 3. But it is impossible to end here ; modern history
is as significant as ancient. Catholics reproach
Protestants with being blind to the meaning of the
centuries that lie between the first and the sixteenth.
But there is a Roman counterpart to this Protestant
neglect. The centuries that have elapsed since the
fifteenth ended, have been without doubt the most
eventful, fruitful, momentous in the history of man ;

196 CATHOLICISM

and their history has been the history of Christian
peoples. The record of their material progress has
been a record of marvels. America has been dis
covered, colonized, peopled ; Asia has been opened
up, almost conquered and annexed ; Africa has
been explored, and is being pierced and penetrated
on all sides; and in the Australasian continent
and islands the seeds of new States have been
plentifully sown. The European States, with certain
significant exceptions, are mightier than they were
four centuries ago, better ordered, more moral, more
populous, freer, wealthier ; and the poorest of the
countries have become rich and full of comforts as
compared with Europe in the days of the Black
Death. But what part has Christianity had in the
making of modern civilization? Not much, if it
and the Catholic church be identical. The conquests
and colonizations effected by Catholic states have,
so far as order, progress, and human well-being are
concerned, been chapters of disaster and failure. The
progressive peoples have been the non-Catholic ; from
them have proceeded the noblest of the ameliorative
principles and actions of the period; They have
been the least troubled with revolution ; have had
the most happy, well-ordered commonwealths ; have
enjoyed most freedom ; have most successfully
laboured to temper justice with mercy, to make
judgment remedial, to enlarge the area of rights,
and to raise the ideal of duty. And the same
peoples have been pre-eminent in the realms of

CATHOLICISM AND HISTORICAL CRITICISM 197
thought and spirit, been most deeply and devoutly
exercised by the problems concerning man and
his destiny. God has not been sparing of His gifts
of great men to those who sit outside Catholicism.
The Elizabethan dramatists, greatest of moderns
in their own order, were the poets of the English
people in the heroic moment of their reaction
against Rome. Milton was the poet of a still more
radical revolution. Cowper and Burns, Wordsworth
and Coleridge, Tennyson and Browning, Scott and
Carlyle, represent the inspiration and aspiration of
the same people. Herder and Lessing, Schiller and
Goethe, were not products of Catholicism. The
most splendid cycle of thinkers since the Platonic
age in Greece, was that which began with Kant and
ended with Hegel, sons of Protestant Germany. It
is needless to multiply names. What we wish to
know is this — the relation of Christianity to this
whole complex movement called progress or modern
civilization. Our modern world has had more of
God in it than the mediaeval, and He is there
because of the Religion we call Christianity. But
were we to identify the Religion with the Roman
church, we should have to regard our world as
in progressive apostasy from Him. But its apostasy
means His desertion ; and a world forsaken of its
God would be poorer in its good than ours has
been ; while a God who could, even in the interests
of an infallible church, forsake any part of His
World, especially a part that had been so strenuously

198 CATHOLICISM

feeling after Him that it might know His truth
and do His will, would be less Divine than we
believe our God to be. We will not allow either
the truth or the sufficiency of the religious idea
that would deny God to any man, or make Him the
special possession of any church. For the Atheism
that denies, is less impious than the Atheism that
limits His presence, that dares in its pride to say,
" He is so mine that you must belong to me in
order to belong to Him ; and what you have of
Him is by my grace and through my act." That
vain Atheism God has in these last centuries caused
His very providence to contradict and reprove.
For it were a strange and satirical theodicy that
should exhibit God as working poverty and revolu
tion in the nations that had accepted or been
forced to accept the authority of His own infallible
church ; while sending fulness of life, and grace,
and freedom into those that had deserted and dis
owned it.
§ VIII. Catholicism no Sufficient Organ for the
Christian Religion
This brings us to the ideal sufficiency of Catholi
cism : the question whether it be a vehicle equal to
the spirit and matter of the Christian Religion, the
alone fully qualified interpreter of its truth to our
age. This is the really fundamental question, and
has been so implied in every issue raised, that in
what still remains to be said we must be severely brief.

CATHOLICISM AND HISTORICAL CRITICISM 199
i. Catholicism claims to present the completest
faith in God, and to do the amplest justice to the
mysteries of faith and the realities of Religion.
The supernaturalism on which it is grounded is
indeed marvellous, but it is not mysterious. Cardinal
Newman, using, the mysteries of nature to justify
those of the Church, says,1 "If I must submit my
reason to mysteries, it does not much matter whether
it is a mystery more or a mystery less." But it may
matter in an infinite degree ; whether it does matter
depends on the source and character of the mysteries.
The true mystery is a thing of nature ; history neither
made it nor can show how it was made ; reason finds
it and cannot elude it, for it is bound up with the
being of the reason and the system that holds and
unfolds it. But a false mystery is only a marvel, a
belief with a remarkable history ; without ground in
nature or reason in thought ; -but bound up with the
being of an institution, explicable through it, yet
helping to explain it. The mystery is at once im
manent and universal ; has its roots in the universe
that confronts man, its reason in the man that con
fronts the universe; and through it life is invested
with all its meaning and all its grandeur. But the
marvel is occasional and particular, has no meaning
apart from the institution through and for which it
exists, while the institution has no majesty apart
from it. The mystery exercises reason, but the
1 Sermons to Mixed Congregations, p. 275.

200 CATHOLICISM

marvel taxes faith ; and so, while authority may be
based on the mysteries of reason, the marvels of
faith must be based on authority. The supernatural
ism native to the Christian Religion is mysterious,
for in it nature and man may lie embosomed, com
prehended, uncomprehending ; but the supernatural
ism of Rome is without mystery, for while it is
sufficient to the needs of Catholicism, it is inadequate
to the idea of God, or the ideals of His providence
and kingdom. It has, too, a natural history of its
own ; its most transcendent dogmas need but to be
studied through their history to be thoroughly in
telligible. Belief in them may be the measure of
submission to the authority on which they rest ; but
it in no way indicates the attitude of the mind to
those ultimate beliefs which are the true mysteries of
thought and the universe. Nay, a man's faith in the
supernatural may be all the less real that his faith in
Catholic dogma is strong; it may be faith in the
church and its determinations, not in God and His
living Spirit. If God is known and approached
through the church, then it is not' so much God as
the church that is believed ; for its people can know
Him only through the terms it approves, and ap
proach Him only on the conditions it prescribes.
But to bind God to a church, and distribute and
determine His truth through its decrees, is a bad
supernaturalism ; it is to bring the Almighty within
the limits of an historical institution, and then to
argue that the limitation is credible because it makes

CATHOLICISM AND HISTORICAL CRITICISM 201
the institution so divine, justifies its claims, and
explains its prerogatives. This, I repeat, may be
marvellous, but it is not mysterious ; it may make
the institution remarkable, but it does not make
Religion divine. The more organized authority
becomes, the more exigent, imperative, imperious, it
grows ; in a word, the more it is incorporated in a
church, the more the church tends to supersede God,
and to become His substitute. The centre of gravity
Is, as it were, changed ; the church experiences a
kind of apotheosis, God suffers a sort of political
incarnation. It so holds the approaches to Him
that it is not so much in His hands as He is in its ;
and in the very degree that it possesses Him, nature
and man are deprived of His presence. The special
Theism of the church ends in a more awful Atheism
of the universe.
2. Indeed, the radical defect of Catholicism seems
to me its want of a true supernaturalism, and even
fundamental incompatibility with one. It is through
out conceived in the interests of the church rather
than in the interests of Religion and humanity.
The Catholic church is built on a conception of
Deity that is not Christ's; it dispenses His grace and
distributes His truth to those outside its pale on
terms, in modes and quantities, that involve the
negation of His holiest attributes and divinest
qualities — the scholastic distinctions which most
incline to charity being but an aggravation of the
offence. And even to those within its pale the

202 CATHOLICISM

representation of Him is imperfect : the church has
determined the idea of God ; the idea of God has
not been allowed to determine the idea and spirit
of the church. There is no Religion so generous as
the Religion of the New Testament. God as He
appears there is the universal Father, and all men
are His sons ; between Him and them no institution
or church can be allowed to stand, the only Priest
or Mediator being the Christ. The Apostles burn
with holy passion against every " middle wall of
partition," or whatever would limit the grace and
activity of God. He is the God of both Jew and
Gentile, " in Him all live and move and have their
being," " in every nation he that feareth God and
worketh righteousness is accepted of Him." In the
early Church this was the doctrine of men like Justin
Martyr and Clement of Alexandria ; but, as the idea
of the Catholic church rose, the remoter, the more
formal and circumscribed, were God's relations to men
conceived to be. The greater the emphasis laid on the
priesthood and mediation, with their associated ideas
and instruments, the less general became His influ
ence and the less immediate intercourse with Him ;
and, as He lost, the intermediaries gained in reality
to faith. The very notion of Religion Was revolu
tionized, ceased to have the spiritual immediacy, the
ethical breadth and intensity, the filial love and
peace, the human purity and gentleness, of Jesus ; and
became more akin to the ancient sacerdotal and
ceremonial worships. The great enemy of God is

CATHOLICISM AND HISTORICAL CRITICISM 203
the idea of the church and its priesthood. Nothing
has so estranged men from Him as the claim to be
alone able to reconcile Him and them. The most
clamant need of our day is to recover the religious
idea of Jesus : and the only way to recover it is to
think of God as He was declared to be by the only-
begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father.
But it may be well, before this discussion ends, that
we recall its purpose : viz., to inquire concerning, not
the truth of rival churches, but the form in which
the Christian Faith can best be presented to our age.
Religious men are face to face with serious issues,
and are burdened with grave responsibilities. The
difficulties of belief are great, but the consciousness
of them is greater ; they spring not so much from
the new knowledge as the changed estimate and
conditions of life. Men are so possessed and op
pressed by the labour needed to win the means of
living, that they have not sufficient energy of mind
to weigh or to master the deeper mysteries of life,
and so are prepared to allow either authority to
affirm their faith or criticism to dissolve it. In such
an age Catholicism may have its place, and make its
converts ; and it is no purpose of ours to take it from
them or them from it. But if it claims to be the one
real, sufficient, and relevant form of the Christian
Religion, then the truth must be spoken. Not in
and through it, is Religion to be realized in an age
of thought, in a world of freedom, progress, order,
and activity. Its doctrine of authority and the

204 CATHOLICISM

church is a direct provocation to scepticism ; its idea
of Religion is an impqverishment of the ideal that
came in the Kingdom of heaven. Faith can come
by its rights only as it fulfils its duties to reason.
And the church that alone has a right to live, is the
church that, by finding in God the most humanity,
most fills humanity with God ; and so works for the
establishment of that Kingdom which was founded
by the Son, and is governed by the Father, of man.
July, 1885.

V

REASON AND RELIGION
[To so much ofthe criticism in the foregoing essays as referred
to his philosophical scepticism, Cardinal Newman replied in a
paper entitled, " The Development of Religious Error," in the
Contemporary Review, for October, 1885. The reply was so
characteristic of the writer and of his art and method in con
troversy that, had it been open to me, I should have liked to
reproduce it here ; and also a supplement, privately printed
later, written in better temper and in a more reasonable vein.
The rejoinder, at least so much of it as concerned the Car
dinal's substantial criticism, appears in this essay.]
CARDINAL NEWMAN, in his reply to me,
has done two things — he has repudiated and
denounced what my criticism never affirmed, and
he has contributed new material illustrative of the
very thesis it maintained. He has represented me
as describing him as " a hidden sceptic," 1 and as
" thinking, living, professing, acting upon a wide-
stretching, all-reaching platform of religious scep
ticism." 2 I never did anything of the sort ; it
would require an energy and irony of invec
tive equal to the Cardinal's own, to describe the
fatuous folly of the man who would venture to make
any such charge. What he was charged with, and
1 Contemporary Review, October, 1885, p. 457. 2 Ibid., p. 466.
205

206 CATHOLICISM

in terms so careful and guarded as ought to have
excluded all possible misconception, was " metaphysi
cal " or " philosophical " scepticism. This did not
mean that he was other than sincere in word and
spirit, especially in all that concerned his religious
convictions — his good faith in all his beliefs is, and
ever has been, manifest to all honest men ; but it
meant what it said, that he so conceived the intellect
that its natural attitude to religious truth was sceptical
and nescient. Scepticism in philosophy means a
system which affirms either, subjectively, the im
potence of the reason for the discovery of the truth,
or, objectively, the inaccessibility of truth to the
reason ; and such a scepticism, while it logically
involves the completest negation of knowledge, has
before now been made the basis of a pseudo-super-
naturalism, or plea for an infallible authority, that
must reveal and authenticate truth, if truth is ever to
become or remain man's. This was the scepticism
with which Cardinal Newman was charged, and it
was held significant, not simply for his personal
history, but also for the movement so inseparably
connected with his name. And his last paper is as
signal an illustration of its presence and action as is
to be found in all his writings.
§ I. The Philosophical Scepticism of Cardinal
Newman
I. Dr. Newman's reply, then, which relates to the
single point of the philosophical scepticism, is so

REASON AND RELIGION 207
without relevance to the original criticism, save in the
way of illustration and confirmation, that it may be
well to attempt to make the real point at issue clear
and explicit. He speaks of me as having been
" misled by the epithets which he had attached in
the Apologia to the Reason."1 The epithets had
nothing whatever to do with the matter; all turned
on the substantive or material idea. The criticism
was simply an endeavour to determine, on the one
hand, how Cardinal Newman conceived the Reason
and the Conscience in themselves and in relation to
the knowledge of God ; and, on the other hand, how
these conceptions affected or regulated the movement
of his mind from Theism to Catholicism. Stated in
another forrri, the question is this : How is knowledge
of religious truth possible ? What are the subjective
conditions of its genesis and continuance? How
and whence does man get those principles which
are the bases of all his thinking concerning religion ?
and in what relations do they and the Reason, at
first, and throughout their respective histories, stand
to each other? It is the old problem, under its
highest and most complex aspect, as to the grounds
and conditions of knowledge, how it is ever or any
where possible. The older Empiricism said : All
knowledge is resolvable into sensuous impressions
and the ideas which are their faint image or copy.
There are no ideas in the mind till the senses have
1 Contemporary Review, p. 46a

208 CATHOLICISM

conveyed them in ; it is but a sheet of white paper
till the outer universe has by the finger of sense
written on it those mysterious hieroglyphs which
constitute our intelligible world. But the critical
Transcendentalism replied : The impression explains
nothing — must itself be explained : how is it that it
becomes rational, an intelligible thing? The mind
and the sheet of white paper differ thus — the paper
receives the character, but the mind reads it ; indeed
the character would have no being save in and
through the reading of the mind, lt is clear, there
fore, that we must get before and below the impres
sion to the thought, which is, by its forms and
categories, the interpreter of the impression, the
condition of its being intelligible. Without a con
stitutive and interpretative Reason, the world that
speaks to the senses would be no reasonable world.
Now, Cardinal Newman may be described as, by
virtue of his doctrine of the Reason, an empiricist in
the province of religious truth. It involves precisely
the same attitude to religion that Hume's philosophy
involved to the reality of the outer world, to causation
and to personal identity. What Hume did by means
of association, Newman does by means of authority.
The reason is, as he is fond of saying, "a mere
instrument," unfurnished by nature, without religious
contents or function, till faith or conscience has con
veyed into it the ideas or assumptions which are the
premisses of its processes ; and with religious character
only as these processes are conducted in obedience

REASON AND RELIGION 209
to the moral sense or other spiritual authority. It is
to him no constitutive or architectonic faculty, with
religious truth so in it, that it is bound to seek and
to conceive religious truth without it; but it is as
regards Religion simply idle or vacant till it has
received and accepted the deliverances of conscience,
which stand to it much as Hume conceived his
"impressions" and their corresponding "ideas" to
stand related to mind and knowledge. But, then, to
a reason so constituted and construed how is religious
knowledge possible? How can religion, as such,
have any existence, or religious truth any reality?
What works as a mere instrument never handles
what it works in ; the things remain outside it, and
have no place or standing within its being. And
hence my contention was, and is, that to conceive
reason as Dr. Newman does, is to deny to it the
knowledge of God, and so to save faith by the help
of a deeper unbelief.
I repeat, then : the doctrine of the reason Cardinal
Newman stated in the Contemporary for October is
precisely the doctrine on which my criticism was
based ; and it is essentially, in the philosophical
sense, a sceptical doctrine. But let us see how he
formulates it. Here is what may be regarded as his
earliest statement, with his later notes appended : — x
1 University Sermons, p. 55. The notes are added : for here,
as elsewhere throughout the volume, they are significant by
their very limitations. They may qualify the text, explain a
term or a phrase, protest against a given inference or result j
14

210 CATHOLICISM

"There is no necessary connexion between the intellectual
and moral principles of our nature ' ; on religious subjects we
may prove anything or overthrow anything, and can arrive at
truth but accidentally, if we merely investigate* by what is
commonly called Reason,2 which is in such matters but the
instrument.' at best, in the hands of the legitimate judge,
spiritual discernment."
Here is his latest statement, which will be found in
everything material" identical with the earliest : —
" In its versatility, its illimitable range, its. subtlety, its power
of concentrating many ideas on one point, it (the reason) is for
the acquisition of knowledge all-important or rather necessary ;
with this drawback, however, in its ordinary use, that in every
exercise of it, it depends for success upon the assumption ol
prior acts similar to that which it has itself involved, and there
fore is reliable only conditionally. Its process is a passing
from an antecedent to a consequent, and according as the start
so is the issue. In the province of religion, if it be under the
happy guidance of the moral sense, and with teachings which
are not only assumptions in form, but certainties, it will arrive
at indisputable truth, and then the house is at peace ; but if it
be in the hands of enemies, who are under the delusion that its
arbitrary assumptions are self-evident axioms, the reasoning
will start from false premisses, and the mind will be in a state
of melancholy disorder. But in no case need the reasoning
faculty itself be to blame or responsible, except if viewed as
identical with the assumptions of which it is the instrument. I
but they never either modify or alter the radical doctrine.
These notes are needed to elucidate the criticism, for nothing
has been more, helpful to it than a minute and comparative
study of them.
1 ' That is, as found in individuals, in the concrete.'
2 ' Because we may be reasoning from wrong principles,
principles unsuitable to the subject-matter reasoned upon.
Thus, the moral sense or "spiritual discernment" must supply
us with the assumptions to be used as premisses in religious
inquiry.'

REASON AND RELIGION 211
repeat, it is but an instrument ; as such I have viewed it, and
no one but Dr. Fairbairn would say as he does — that the bad
employment of a faculty was a ' division,' a ' contradiction,' and
' a radical antagonism of nature,' and ' the death of the natural
proof of a God."1
2. Now, I do not wish to be minute in my criti
cism, and argue that if reason, " in every exercise of
it, depends for success on the assumption of prior
acts similar to that which it has itself involved," then
the genesis arid very being of reason are inconceiv
able, for we are landed in the notion of an infinite
series. As to Hume man was a succession or series
of " impressions and ideas," so to Newman reason,
as mere faculty of reasoning, is a series of "ante
cedents and consequents " ; the difficulty in both
cases is the same, to find how the series began, and
how, having begun, it has developed into what it is.
But without resorting to minute analysis, we may
begin with the last sentence of the above quotation ;
and concerning it, it is enough to say, Dr. Fairbairn
never said any such thing, or, meaning what he did
and does, could have said it. His criticism referred
not to the employment of the faculty, but to the
doctrine of the faculty, which determined its use;
and this latest statement seems expressly designed
to elucidate and justify the criticism. For reason, as
1 Contemporary Review, pp. 459, 460. A few more instances
from the University Sermons, of Dr. Newman's use of the term
Reason, may be added to those he has himself given ; they
ought to be studied with the Catholic Notes, pp. 58, § 4 } 60, 61,
§ 7 ; 65, 67, 70, 73> 88, 179, 194, 195. 214. 215.

212 CATHOLICISM

here described, is condemned, in all that concerns the
higher problems and fundamental verities of thought,
to incapacity and impotence. It is emptied of those
constitutive and constructive qualities that make it a
reason ; and by being reduced to a mere ratiocinative
instrument, its very ability to handle religious prin
ciples, even in a ratiocinative process, is denied. For
the reasoning process, to be valid, must proceed from
principles valid to the reason ; but to be so valid
they must be more than deliverances or assumptions
coming to it ab extra; they must have a root in its
own nature, and be inseparable from the very being
of thought. To use principles truly, one must be able
to judge concerning their truth : and how can a reason
truly and justly act, even as a mere instrument of
inference, on the basis of premisses it neither found,
nor framed, nor verified, being indeed so constituted
as to be unable to do any one of these things?
Reason, then, can be ratiocinative only as it is con
stitutive; we must have truth of thought, that we
may know or possess truth of being. The getting
of principles is a more vital matter than the reasoning
concerning them ; and if the constitutive or formula-
tive and determinative factor be made not only
distinct from the dialectic and deductive, but inde
pendent of it, how can they ever be made to agree,
save by the subordination or enslavement of the one
to the other ? And even then they will not agree : for
the principles cannot signify the same thing to facul
ties that are not only distinct, but, as realized in the

REASON AND RELIGION 21 3
living person, without " necessary connexion." The
dictate of the conscience changes its nature when it
becomes the axiom of the reason ; the " categorical
imperative " ceases to be, the moment it is translated
into a speculative or intellectual truth. It may — nay,
it must — be true that the man who is deaf to the
voice of conscience cannot reason rightly in religious
matters ; but it is no less true that the man who
doubts or misuses his reason cannot hear or be en
lightened by his conscience. The only justification
of Cardinal Newman's doctrine would have been the
reduction of conscience and reason to a higher unity ;
his last condemnation is his distinction and division
of the faculties, for it involves our nature in a dualism
which makes real knowledge of religious truth im
possible. There is unity neither in the man who
knows nor in the truth as known. For, make a
present of true premisses to a faculty merely ratio
cinative, and they will be to it only as algebraic
symbols, not as truths of religion ; its deductive
process may be correct, but it will have no religious
character. But to a reason without religious char
acter, unable to construe religious truths for what
they really are, there can be no legitimate reasoning
concerning religion ; truth is inaccessible to it, and it
is incompetent to the discovery and determination of
truth. This is philosophical scepticism ; and if, to
avoid the logical issue, the truth denied to the reason
is granted to the conscience, and is, on its simple
authority, to be accepted as a " magisterial dictate,"

214 CATHOLICISM

then a " division," or " radical antagonism of nature,"
is introduced, which is "the death of the natural
proof" for the being of a God, and of all the primary
truths of religion. This, and' no other, was my
original criticism of Cardinal Newman : and this,
confirmed and illustrated by his latest statement, is
my criticism still.
§ II. Correlation of the Subjective and Objective
Scepticism
I. Now, this very doctrine of the reason, with its
varied limitations and applications, is the heart and
essence of the whole matter ; it is, in the proper
philosophical sense, both empirical and" sceptical. It
is a doctrine of impotence ; the reason is by its
very nature disqualified from ever attaining the
knowledge of religious truth, as religious. It is a
doctrine of nescience ; for religious knowledge is, from
its very nature, unable to get within, and be really
assimilated by, a reason which is a mere inferen
tial or syllogistic instrument. Dr. Newman is very
angry at my speaking of his " ultimate ideas, or the
regulative principles of his thought," or simply his
" underlying philosophy " ; and he declares that from
" leading ideas " and " fundamental principles " he
has " all through his life shrunk, as sophistical and
misleading." x Well, it may be so ; and if it is so,
many things that have been a perplexity to people
would be explained. But it is possible that if Dr.

1 Contemporary Review, p. 467.

REASON AND RELIGION 215
Newman had been described as a person without
" fundamental " or " regulative principles," he would
have been angrier still, and with more reason. How
ever, the matter need not be any further disputed ;
what was meant by his " underlying philosophy " is
just this doctrine which he has anew stated and
maintained. What was meant by it as a " regu
lative principle of his thought," was that it exercised
over his mind, its dialectic and dialectical method,
precisely the sort of influence he has endeavoured
to explain and illustrate. Now, what I ventured to
say before, I am by the new light the more em
boldened to repeat — that this fundamental principle
determined, in a way not written in the Apologia,
his whole inner history. He not only doubted the
reason, but he mocked and scorned all who sought
^.to enlist it in the service of religion.1 It was to him
no witness or oracle of God, but simply a servant,
1 See, for example, as applying the principles of the Uni
versity Sermons to contemporary mind and literature, the fol
lowing Essays : — Introduction of Rationalistic Principles into
Revealed Religion (1835). This is practically a review, hard
and unsympathetic, of Jacob Abbott and Thomas Erskine of
Linlathen. Apostolical Tradition (1836) ; Milman's View of
Christianity (1841), a. review of his "most dangerous and in
sidious" History; Private Judgment (1841). This, latter is,
in particular, instructive and suggestive. These are reprinted
in the Essays Critical and Historical. Another, and even
more illustrative paper, is " The Tamworth Reading-room," in
Discussions and Arguments, art. iv. This contains the famous
letters of " Catholicus " against Sir Robert Peel and Lord
Brougham.

21 6 CATHOLICISM

whose duty was to obey, and whose only virtue was
obedience. Here, from the critical year 1841, is a
significant passage, one out of many, illustrative of
how little the empirical and instrumental reason, as
he conceived it, had of God, and how little it could
find Him in the Nature it was called to interpret : —
" The whole framework of nature is confessedly a tissue of
antecedents and consequents ; we may refer all things forward
to design, or backwards on a physical cause. Laplace is said
to have considered he had a formula which solved all the
motions of the solar system ; shall we say that those motions
came from this formula or from a Divine Fiat ? Shall we have
recourse for our theory to physics or to theology ? Shall we
assume Matter and its necessary properties to be eternal, or
Mind with its divine attributes ? Does the sun shine to warm
the earth, or is the earth warmed because the sun shines ? The
one hypothesis will solve the phenomena as well as the other.
Say not it is but a puzzle in argument, and no one ever felt it in
fact. So far from it, I believe that the study of nature, when
religious feeling is away, leads the mind, rightly or wrongly, to
acquiesce in the atheistical theory, as the simplest and easiest.
It is but parallel to that tendency in anatomical studies, which
no one will deny, to solve all the phenomena of the human
frame into material elements and powers, and to dispense with
the soul. To those who are conscious of matter, but not con
scious of mind, it seems more rational to refer all things to one
origin, such as they know, than to assume the existence of a
second origin, such as they know not. It is religion, then, which
suggests to science its true conclusions ; the facts come from
knowledge, but the principles come of faith." '
1 "The Tamworth Reading-room: " Discussions and Argu
ments, pp. 299, 300 (4th ed.). To this remarkable passage
Dr. Newman has appended the following note : — " This is too
absolute, if it is to be taken to mean that the legitimate, and
what may be called the objective conclusion from the fact of

REASON AND RELIGION 217
In this passage, where statement and argument
are alike logical results of the implied philosophy
of mind, the attitude of the intellectual sceptic is
admirably stated ; either alternative is consonant to
reason, though the negative is rather the more con
sonant. If reason stands alone, the conclusion will
be nescience. It is all a matter of feeling or faith ;
if it be away, "the study of Nature" will lead to
acquiescence " in the atheistical theory " ; if it be
present, the reference will be to the being of God.
Dr. Newman elsewhere quotes a doctrine which
Hume " has well propounded," though he did it but
" in irony " : — " Our most holy religion is founded
on faith, not on reason."1 The irony of Hume
is the good faith of Newman ; while their creeds
so differ, their philosophies so agree, that if the
sceptic had ever attempted an apology for religion,
he would have made it in the manner and on the
lines and with all the implicates and inferences of
the Catholic.
2. Nature, then, had not simply to the logical and
inferential reason, but even, so far as he allowed it,
to the constructive and interpretative, no necessary
theistic meaning. As he himself says, " Take the

Nature, viewed in the concrete, is not in favour of the Being
and Providence of God " (vide Essay on Assent, pp. 336, 345,
369 ; and Univ. Serm., p. 194). But this, like the other
Catholic Notes, changes the doctrine in no material respect ;
it simply protests what the author did not wish to mean.
1 University Sermons, p. 60.

21 8 CATHOLICISM

system of nature by itself, detached from the axioms
of religion, and I am willing to confess — nay, I have
been expressly urging — that it does not force us to
take it for more than a system." x Whence, now, the
axioms of religion which were needed to make our
view of nature theistic ? As they had no ground
in the reason, they had to be given — i.e., received
on the authority either of conscience or of revela
tion. If it accepted their dicta, it was religious ; if
it was without or averse to them, it was atheistic.
This is the thesis of the most remarkable of his
University Sermons ; it comes out in his account of
what he calls the Divinity of Traditionary Religion,
which explains what is true in the various faiths, by
all men having had "more or less the guidance of
tradition, in addition to those internal notions of
right and wrong which the Spirit has put into the
heart of each individual." 2 It appears, too, instruc
tively in his doctrine of private judgment, whose
province he defines as being to exercise itself upon
this simple question, "What and where is the
Church ? " We are not to think of gaining religious
truth for ourselves by our "private examination,"
but ought only to ask, " Who is God's prophet, and
where ? Who is to be considered the voice of the
Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church ? " 3 It ob-
1 Discussions and Arguments, p. 302. The italics are his own.
2 The Arians ofthe Fourth Century, pp. 79, 80 (4th ed.).
3 Private Judgment (1841). Essays Critical and Historical,
vol. ii., pp. 353-355 (5th ed.).

REASON AND RELIGION 21 9
tained its perfect and logical expression in the argu
ment which proved an infallible authority necessary
alike to the being of religion and the church : —
" As the essence of all religion is authority and obedience, so
the distinction between natural religion and revealed lies in
this, that the one has a subjective authority and the other
an objective. Revelation consists in the manifestation of the
Invisible Divine Power, or in the substitution of the voice of
a Lawgiver for the voice of conscience. The supremacy of
conscience is the essence of natural religion : the supremacy
of Apostle, or Pope, or Church, or Bishop, is the essence of
revealed ; and when such external authority is taken away, the
mind falls back again upon that inward guide which it possessed
even before Revelation was vouchsafed. Thus, what conscience
is in the system of nature, such is the voice of Scripture, or ot
the Church, or of the Holy See, as we may determine it, in the
system of Revelation. It may be objected, indeed, that con
science is not infallible ; it is true, but still it is ever to be
obeyed. And this is just the prerogative which controversialists
assign to the See of St. Peter ; it is not in all cases infallible,
it may err beyond its special province, but it has ever in all
cases a claim on our obedience." *
Now, these are only the logical sequences in the
process which compelled Dr. Newman to hold Catho
licism and Atheism the only real alternatives ; but
the compulsion came at every point from what he
must allow me to call his "underlying philosophy,"
or simply, his doctrine, which made the reason a
mere ratiocinative faculty or deductive instrument,
by nature void of God, and never able to know

The Development of Doctrine, pp. 124-125 (2nd ed.).

220 CATHOLICISM

Him directly or for itself.1 Its knowledge of re
ligion being always indirect and inferential, "on
grounds given," the supreme difficulty was with " the
grounds " ; how to get them, then how to have them
accepted, ratified, and obeyed. They were always
giving way beneath analysis, or being departed from,
or being superseded by " false," or " wrong," or " secu
lar " premisses, which indeed ever seemed to be more
easy of acceptance than the religious : in short, his
principles of reasoning had no organic connection
with the principles of knowledge or reason. Reason
to him had so little in it of the truth, that it was
as ready to become the instrument of "the false
prophet " as of the true ; to speak for the one was
as congenial to its nature as to speak for the other.
And so its natural inability was the source and basis
of its historical hostility to religion ; the more it
was degraded into an instrument, the more it re
venged its degradation by becoming unstable, in
tractable, inimical. The more critical, " aggressive,"
or " captious " the reason became, the more imperious
had to become the authority which supplied it with
the " assumptions " or " axioms of religion " ; and,
as was inevitable, the more imperious the authority
grew, the more " rebellious " grew the reason. The
result was the one he has so well described in the
now classic passage : " He came to the conclusion
1 " The knowledge of God is the highest function of our
nature, and as regards that knowledge, reason only holds the
place of an instrument." (Note in University Sermons, p. 7.)

REASON AND RELIGION 221
that there was no medium in true philosophy be
tween Atheism and Catholicity."1 But it was the
philosophy that did it all, and on its truth depends
the validity of the conclusion. Where reason is
conceived as a mere instrument, so by nature with
out the knowledge of God that all it ever knows
or determines concerning Him must proceed from
principles given " on the simple word of the Divine
Informant," named now Conscience, now Tradition,
and now the Church, then the alternatives — absolute
authority or absolute negation — are inexorable. Nay,
more, this doctrine, as is so well illustrated by his
latest utterance, with its despair of all secular forces
and its blind hope in ecclesiastical, is doubly deter
minative : it yields the theory, on the one hand, of
the Church, and on the other of " the False Prophet,"
or " human society," by whose action " error spreads
and becomes an authority." The subjective is re
flected in an objective dualism ; the authoritative
church has its counterpart and contradiction in the
authoritative world ; each succeeds, as it has its pre
misses or assumptions accepted by the reason as data
for reasoning. And thus the notion that loses the
immanence of God from the reason, loses the active
presence of God from the collective history and
society of man. The scepticism of the theory on its
subjective side has its correlative in the false super
naturalism of the objective ; to dispossess reason of
its divine contents is to deprive man, in his concrete
1 Apologia, p. 198.

222 CATHOLICISM

historical being, of the natural presence and know
ledge of God, and to limit God's action and activity
to means that are all the more mechanical that they
are conceived and described as supernatural.
§ III. The Dialectical Movement towards Certitude
I. So far we have been concerned with Newman's
doctrine of the reason — first in its intrinsic, and next
in what may be termed its biographical significance ;
now we must consider whether it has any dialectic
or apologetic worth. He has as a matter of course
challenged my interpretation of the Grammar of
Assent ; and another critic of my criticism thinks
it " wanting in insight," and " decidedly, though not
intentionally, unjust," due to my not having thrown
myself " into the spirit of the work," or " viewed it
from within." Now, it was because the work was
criticised from the most internal of all standpoints,
the biographical, that the criticism was what it was.
The work cannot be understood alone ; it were simply
unintelligible to the man who did not know the writer
and his history. It is, in a far deeper sense than the
book that bears the title, a later — as the " Develop
ment " was an earlier x — Apologia pro Vita Sua ;
and is as remarkable for what it does not, as for what
it does state and attempt. It holds the place in
Newman's collective works that the Logic does in
Mill's. In the Logic, Mill applies his metaphysical
doctrine to the discovery and determination of truth ;

1 Ante, p. 158.

REASON AND RELIGION 223
in the Grammar, Newman uses his philosophical
doctrine to explain and vindicate the processes that
involve and justify religious belief. He explains,
indeed, his object as not " to set forth the arguments
which issue in the belief " of certain doctrines ; " but
to investigate what it is to believe in them, what the
mind does, what it contemplates, when it makes an
act of faith." x But he confesses that to show what it
is to believe, is, in a measure, to show "why we be
lieve " ; the one problem, indeed, is but the other in its
most radical form. Now, the argument from first to
last, and in all its stages, reposes on Cardinal New
man's distinctive doctrine of the incompetence of the
reason ; its inability to be more than a formal instru
ment is the keynote of the book. Reason is to him
individual; "every one who reasons is his own centre,
and no expedient for attaining a common measure of
minds can reverse this truth." 2 In discussing " first
principles," or " the propositions with which we start
in reasoning on any given subject-matter," he says : —
" Sometimes our trust in our powers of reasoning and memory
— that is, our implicit assent to their telling truly — is treated as
a first principle ; but we cannot properly be said to have any
trust in them as faculties. At most we trust in particular acts
of memory and reasoning. We are sure there was a yesterday,
and that we did this or that in it ; we are sure that three times
six is eighteen, and that the diagonal of a square is longer than
the side. So far as this we may be said to trust the mental act
by which the object of our assent is verified ; but in doing so
we imply no recognition of a general power or faculty, or of any
1 Grammar of Assent, p. 99. 2 Ibid., p. 345.

224 CATHOLICISM

capability or affection of our minds, over and above the particu
lar act. We know, indeed, that we have a faculty by which we
remember, as we know we have a faculty by which we breathe ;
but we gain this knowledge by abstraction or inference from its
particular acts, not by direct experience. Nor do we trust in
the faculty of memory or reasoning as such, even after that we
have inferred its existence ; for its acts are often inaccurate, nor
do we invariably assent to them." l
Now, it were a curious point to determine how trust
of a " particular act " is possible without trust of the
faculty that performs it. If we know a given act to
be true, we must have a standard of truth ; it is
through the truthfulness of the faculty that we know
the falsity or truth of its " particular acts." But the
significance of the passage does not lie in its in
consistencies, but in its positive doctrine. Reason is
but an instrument, a faculty of reasoning, trustworthy
in particular acts, not trustworthy throughout. Being
so restricted a faculty, we owe to it little, not even
the knowledge " that there are things existing ex
ternal to ourselves." That is due to " an instinct "
which we have in common with " the brute creation,"
and "the gift of reason is not a condition of its
existence." 2 As with the belief in an external world,
so with the belief in God ; reason has nothing to do
with either. " We begin to learn about God from
conscience." 3 " Now certainly the thought of God,
as theists entertain it, is not gained by an instinctive
association of His presence with any sensible pheno-
1 Grammar of Assent, pp. 60, 6 1.
2 Ibid., pp. 61, 62. 3 Ibid., p. 63.

REASON AND RELIGION 225
mena ; but the office which the senses directly fulfil
as regards creation, that devolves directly on certain
of our mental phenomena as regards the Creator.
Those phenomena are found in the sense of moral
obligation." *
2. Here, then, on the one hand, we have the im
potent and instrumental reason, which can never get
to God, and is to be trusted only in "particular acts"
and, on the other hand, the capable and authoritative
conscience, in which God .directly is, and which is to
be implicitly obeyed. And this dualism penetrates
and pervades the whole book : its argument may be
said to be the logical articulation of the doubt which
one faculty creates and another faculty corrects. This
curious dualism is expressed in the distinctions be
tween " notional and real apprehension," " notional
and real assent," and between " inference and assent" ;
and it underlies the cardinal doctrine of the " illative
sense." 2 That doctrine means that religion can never
be handled on universal principles by a reason that
may truly be termed universal ; but must be left to
the man so compacted of conscience and imagination
as to have a sense for religion and for the determina
tion of religious questions. If the idea of the reason

1 Grammar of Assent, pp. 103, 104.
2 It is impossible to summarize here, or illustrate in needed
detail, the significant positions in the chapters on Assent, Certi
tude, Inference, and the Illative Sense : an opportunity of de
veloping their metaphysical basis, and illustrating its bearing
on the argument, may yet be furnished. 15

226 CATHOLICISM

had been larger and worthier, or if the relation be
tween the reason and the conscience had been more
organically conceived, so that the two had appeared
as a unity, the whole argumentative structure, and
the principles on which it is built, would have been
different. As it is, religion never gets inside the
reason, nor the reason inside religion. They are but
formally related, never really or vitally connected.
Dr. Newman may have a perfect right to limit the
province and define the idea of reason in his own
way ; but then, the exercise of the right has laid him
open to a criticism which apparently he has not un
derstood, and which certainly he has said nothing to
invalidate. If the reason plays no part in the genesis
of the idea of God, it can play no part in its proof.
But this position involves the converse ; the idea of
God and the proofs of His being can never be real
possessions of the reason. They remain without it,
grounds or premisses for its dialectical exercise ; they
do not live within it, principles and laws of its very
life. The philosophy that so construes the reason as
to involve these consequences, is sceptical ; and this
is the philosophy of " The Grammar of Assent."
§ IV. Reason and Authority in Religion
i. But what significance has this extended criticism
of Cardinal Newman ? I have been warned not to
identify him with the Catholic church ; for it cannot
be identified with "any individual genius however

REASON AND RELIGION 227
great." l I never did nor ever "meant so to identify
him. The Catholic church is greater than any theo
logian, but a theologian may1 also be greater than
the Catholic church. The Fathers do not belong to
Rome, but to Christendom. Rome may have been in
them, but more than Rome was there ; elements larger
and richer than she was able to assimilate. The
earlier Greek Fathers had a nobler catholicity than
she has reached ; the men of the heroic age of the
Greek church had another and more generous an
thropology, a freer and loftier ecclesiology than hers,
Augustine, too, was greater than Catholicism ; for
while its developments have done the amplest justice
to his ecclesiastical doctrine, they have failed to do

1 Dr. Barry in the Contemporary Review, November, 1885,
p. 662. I have expressly wished to avoid making any reference
to this paper, which was notably free from innuendo and in
tentional misstatements. But in some respects it was open to
the charge of inaccuracy. The writer quite misapprehended
Kant's position, and, as a consequence, the argument which
was based upon it. He also represented me (p. 657) as saying :
— " That religion must be emancipated from the churches,
since these have, on the whole, 'become simply the most
irreligious of institutions, mischievous in the very degree of
their power.' " Now here is the rather tame original of this
rash and atrocious deliverance :— " The churches are the
means, but Religion is the end; and if they, instead of being
well content to be and to be held means, good in the degree of
their fitness and efficiency, regard and give themselves out as
ends, then they become simply the most irreligious of institu
tions, mischievous in the very degree of their power." (Cf.
anlefp. 1.)

228 CATHOLICISM

equal justice to his theological. The official theology
of Rome has more semi-Pelagian than Augustinian
elements ; the Augsburg Confession expresses in its
doctrine of sin more truly and nearly the mind of
Augustine, than the Tridentine Canons ; and Calvin
is a better and more faithful exponent of him than
either Bellarmine or Petavius. The Schoolmen, too,
are in many ways ours : they are, in the widest sense,
catholic divines : the exclusive property of no church,
but the common possession of all. Nor would I
identify too closely any modern official or apologetic
divine with Catholicism. It has its own history of
variations, as vast and quite as conflicting as those of
Protestantism ; and it would be no grateful task to
write it. The distinction between Rome and Cardinal
Newman has been explicit all through this criticism ;
is necessary indeed to its force, and was emphasized
by the contrast between the causes of the Catholic
revival in England and on the Continent. But he
was selected as the leader and representative of that
revival in the special form it here assumed ; at once
its real author and true embodiment, the man without'
whom it either would not have been, or could not have
been what it was. If it is to be understood and criti
cally appraised, it must be through the man that made
it. The causes and influences that determined his
mind belong, as it were, to its very essence — help us
to see what meaning and worth it has for the spirit
and thought of our time. He has told us by act
and speech, in every variety of subtle argument and

REASON AND RELIGION 229
eloquent phrase, that Catholicism is the only secure
and open haven for the doubt-driven and storm-tossed
soul ; that without it the faith and hope of the Chris
tian centuries must be engulphed by the rising tides
of negation and godlessness. But when we examine
the reasons for his act and for his peculiar speech, or
the bases of his argument and apologies, we find that
they proceed from as deep a scepticism as the one he
invites us to escape. He has lost God out of the
reason and the realm of the reasonable, and thinks
He is to be got back only as a Deus ex machind. To
build a supernatural faith on a natural impotence,
seems to us a suicidal proceeding. We prefer to find
God where he has not found Him, and build faith on
the sanity of a human reason which is full of God
and akin to the divine.
2. But before passing from this subject it may be
as well to allude to a question which has been made
to play a great part in this and similar discussions,
viz., in what relation does authority stand on the one
hand to religion, and on the other to reason ? It was
soberly said, as if it were a true or a relevant thing
to say, that this criticism of Cardinal Newman was an
assault " upon authority itself, considered as the basis
of revealed religion." It is not at all obvious how
even the most mordant criticism of a theory which
made the natural incompetence, or aversion of the
intellect to the knowledge of God, the apology for a
stupendous miraculous mechanism for keeping this
knowledge alive — should be an assault upon either

23O CATHOLICISM

authority or revealed religion. What is obvious is
the exact opposite : that there is no plea for authority
like that to be found in an intellect so sane and
rational and conscious of its supernatural qualities
and relations that it must seek God, feel after if
haply it may find Him. But then the authority that
corroborates and develops the native godliness of the
mind, will be very different from the authority needed
to maintain God in the face of the mind's native
godlessness. Hence it seems to me mere inconse
quence and irrelevance of thought to argue in this
fashion : " There is no argument against an infallible
Church that may not be directly turned against a
visible Christ." " If a dogmatic Church is unreason
able, a dogmatic or inspired Christ is unnecessary." x
In other words, the argument is in effect this : " If you
admit the authority of Christ, you admit in principle
the very thing you have been arguing against. Your
position, therefore, is illogical, and from it there are
only two logical issues : either, maintain your polemic
against authority as embodied in Rome, and reduce
it to consistency and completeness by denying the
authority of Christ ; or, maintain the authority of
Christ, and follow the principle to its legitimate and
complete and most august expression in the Church
of Rome."
But this argument is vitiated by two initial assump
tions — (a) that I have been arguing against authority
1 Contemporary Review, Nov., 1885, p. 600.

REASON AND RELIGION 23I
in religion. On the contrary, what has been argued
against is the paralogism which proved man's need
of authority by an elaborate demonstration of his
inability to -see or to use his sight. The blind man
cannot always choose his guides, and so may select
one even blinder than himself, with the result that
both will fall into the inevitable ditch. My argument
has been in behalf of vision, not against authority,
and a vision that can trust all the more completely
that it can see while it believes. But (/3) the second
assumption is, that the two authorities — Christ's and
Rome's — are in nature and quality identical and
equivalent. While in both cases the one word is
used, it expresses two distinct and even opposed
notions. There is no sense in which Rome is an
authority that Christ is one ; and no sense in which
Christ is an authority that Rome is one. He is an
authority in the sense that conscience is ; it is an
authority in the sense that the law and the legisla
ture are authorities. His authority is personal, moral,
living ; its is organized, definitive, determinative, ad
ministrative. The authority which springs from a
person, and is exercised through conscience, is the
basis of freedom ; but the authority of a judicial
tribunal or determinative conclave is its limitation or
even abrogation. The one presents matter for in
terpretation and belief; but the other decides what is
to be believed, and in what sense. The attribute or
essential characteristic of Christ's authority as exer
cised and accepted, is Sovereignty ; but the attribute

232 CATHOLICISM

and note of the papal authority is Infallibility. Christ
is not infallible in the papal sense, and the papal
authority is not sovereign in the sense predicated of
Christ. Christ defines no dogma, formulates no ex
cathedra judgment concerning the mode in which His
own person and the relation of the two natures must
be conceived, or concerning the rank and conception
of His mother, or indeed on any of those things on
which Rome has most authoritatively spoken ; while
the methods of Rome in enforcing her decrees are
those of a legal or judicial or institutional sovereignty.
So absolute is the difference and so emphatic the
contrast between the two authorities, that we may
say, to allow the sovereignty of Christ is to dis
allow the infallibility of Rome ; and to accept the
latter is to exchange a moral supremacy, which per
mits no secular expediencies or diplomacies, for one
legal and economical, which must be now rigid and
now elastic, as the public interests or the expedi
encies of the hour may demand. If, then, there is
to be argument from the principle of authority, it
must conduct to an entirely different conclusion from
the one offered by these crude alternatives. If we
accept authority as embodied in Rome, we cannot
admit it as personalized in Christ ; if we admit it as
personalized in Christ, we cannot accept it as em
bodied in Rome. That we admit His, is no argument
why we should admit another; but rather why no
other should be admitted, especially as that other is
entirely distinct in nature, opposite in kind, and

REASON AND RELIGION 233
incompatible in action. To seek to supplement
Christ's authority by the Church's, is to pass from
the freedom of a moral sovereignty to the bondage of
a judicial infallibility. And so the most conclusive
argument against an infallible church is a sovereign
Christ. There is thus a twofold difference between what
we may term spiritual or religious and ecclesiastical
or political authority in the matter of faith : (a) sub
jective, expressed in the agreement or correspondence
of authority and thought, rather than in the suppres
sion or contradiction of thought by authority : and
(/3) objective, the difference between Christ and the
church, making them as authorities altogether differ
ent. They can be compared only to be contrasted,
and are related as the incompatible and the mutually
exclusive. And this relation is due not to the an
tagonism of rival or opposed authorities akin in
order or nature, but to the radical difference or
essential incompatibility in character and kind of
the authorities themselves. Authority as organized,
legal, definitive, judicially and officially infallible,
embodied in an episcopate or conclave or church, is
one thing ; and the authority, personal, moral, re
ligious, which Jesus claimed, is another thing alto
gether. And the very arguments which proved the
former a violation of God's own order, prove the
latter its highest expression or manifestation. I
cannot allow, indeed, that authority in the Roman
sense of the term is " the basis of revealed religion " :

234 CATHOLICISM

but I hold, on the contrary, that the basis of all religion
is Revelation. Without the presence and action of
God in nature, through reason and on man, I could
not conceive religion as existing at all. That it
exists anywhere is to me evidence that God has been
active there, seeking man, as man has been seeking
Him. Whatever truth is at any place or any mo
ment found, comes from God, and reveals the God
from whom it comes. But all His truth comes
through persons, and the degree and quality of truth
that so comes is the measure of the persons' au
thority. Belief is not grounded on authority, but"
authority is realized through belief. Christ's words
become authoritative through faith ; faith does not
come because His words are authoritative. His
sovereignty is felt to be legitimate and absolute, be
cause His absolute truth is recognized ; and to this
recognition, authority, in the Roman sense, not only
does not contribute, but is through and through
opposed. To believe in Christ because of the
church's decrees and determinations, is to believe in
the church, not in Christ, and to accept its infalli
bility instead of His sovereignty. The authority
based on truth as believed and loved, is in harmony
with reason ; the political authority that claims to be
the basis and infallible judge of truth, is contrary to it.
And the distinction just drawn holds as much of
the Bible and the church, as of Christ and the
church. The Bible never was to Protestants an
authority in the same or even in a kindred sense with

REASON AND RELIGION 235
that in which Rome was an authority to Romanists.
The difference comes out in its most manifest form
in the so-called principle or doctrine of private judg
ment ; which means that the Bible was, by its very
nature, not a body of formal ex cathedra determina
tions, but, as it were, the home and source of the
material that was to be determined by the living
Christian spirit, as illumined and guided by the in
dwelling Spirit of God — the testimonium Spiritus
Sancti externum sealed by the testimonium Spiritus
Sancti internum. To this position the exercise of per
sonal thought was a necessity ; truth could be authori
tative only as it was believed, and belief was possible
only as the mind was convinced and satisfied. This
does not mean that men must follow an argumenta
tive process before they can believe : but it does mean
that it is always their'right, and, in certain cases, it
may be their manifest duty so to do. In saying this
we say that religion is truth, and has as truth nothing
to fear from the freest exercise of the reason, though
much to fear from the partial or prejudiced or slug
gish intellect ; that the only authority possible to it,
or. the persons who bring and realize it, is the
sovereignty that comes of its and their imperial and
imperative truth. Such an attitude seems to me the
only attitude that has living faith either in God or
religion, either in Christ or His kingdom. If I read
His mind aright, He would rather have His Church
live face to face and contend hand to hand with the
questioning and critical reason, than see it hedged

236 CATHOLICISM

round by the most peremptory and invulnerable in
fallibility. It is too wide and too comprehensive to
be so hedged in : for now, as of old, God does not
leave Himself anywhere without a witness. His
lines have gone out through all the earth, and His
word to the end of the world.
December, 1885.

VI
CARDINAL MANNING AND THE
CATHOLIC REVIVAL

"M

§ I. The Biography
R. PURCELL'S Life of Cardinal Manning^
is a book which awakens the most oppo
site feelings, and the most contradictory judgments.
Its author has been a sort of inverted Balaam : called
in to bless the Cardinal, he has yet, in the view of his
admirers and friends, cursed him altogether. Then,
his literary offences are too many and too flagrant to
allow the mere critic to speak well of his book. He
is certainly no master in the craft of letters ; style
he knows not ; order, chronology, easy and correct
reference, continuity of narrative, consecutiveness of
thought, economy in the use of material, coherence
and vividness of portraiture, are things to which he
has not attained. He is a laborious biographer, but
an inaccurate writer, manifestly unacquainted with
the religious history of our times, unable on this

1 Life of Cardinal Manning, Archbishop of Westminster. By
Edmund Sheridan Purcell, Member of the Roman Academy
of Letters. London : Macmillan & Co., 1895.

238 CATHOLICISM

account to interpret many of his own documents or
deal intelligently with the characters, careers, and
opinions of many of the persons who crowd his
pages. The book is thus difficult to read, a sore tax
on one's patience, a continual. trial to one's temper,
mocking during perusal all attempts at a fair and
balanced judgment. But when one has finished the
book, and retreated from it far enough to see it in
perspective, and as a whole, some very remarkable
qualities begin to show themselves. It is, perhaps,
rather a frank than an honest book, written by a man
whose lack of insight is redeemed by a sort of blunt
courage, guided by a rather robust common-sense.
He is anxious to be just, yet does not quite foresee
the effects of his justice. His judgments are at once
candid and naive, the judgments of a man who has
lived in a very narrow circle, has mistaken its whis
pers for the murmur of the world, and has published,
to the dismay of multitudes, the gossip it likes to
talk but does not love to print. In its light he has
studied his documents, and inquired at his living
sources ; and then he has laboriously poured out the
results in this book, which, though a marvel of cumu
lative and skilled awkwardnesses, yet leaves us with
a distinct and breathing image of its hero, who is
certainly no pallid shadow, but an actual person, all
too concrete and articulate. This is no small merit,
and rare enough in modern biography to deserve
cordial praise.
But the value ofthe book does not lie in the text

CARDINAL MANNING AND CATHOLIC REVIVAL 239
¦  ¦  1 ¦ ¦ ,  -, — .... ¦  1 .. ¦ . ,
of its author, but in the original documents it con
tains. The question as to the right or wrong of their
publication is not one for me to discuss ; what is
obvious is that access to first-hand authorities is
always a -gain to historical knowledge. Cardinal
Manning was neither a recluse nor a private citizen,
but a man who lived for more tha'n half a century in
the full blaze of the public eye. From the first he
was a conspicuous figure, the leader of an army; a
man of strong loves and intense hates, who handled
too many men, fought too many battles both in the
dark and in the day — in a word, was too much a force
working for change and conflict — to be commemorated
in a biography which should be at once innocuous
and veracious.' If his life had caused no alarm or
given no offence, it might have been edifying, but
would not have been informing ; for it would have told
us nothing of the secrets of his character, or the
springs of his conduct, or the reasons of his policy.
But he was too much the sum of certain great
moments and events to be dealt with as a delicate
plant, or hidden within the murky atmosphere 'of
circumspect commonplace. More harm is done by
the diplomatic suppression of the truth than by its
frank publication ; the one is the way of wisdom, the
other of discretion ; and the promise is that wisdom,
not discretion, shall be justified of her children.
Of course, I feel that the character of a lost leader
is not a thing to- be lightly dealt with. While he
lives his reputation is his own ; but after his death it

240. CATHOLICISM

becomes man's, every blot upon it being a stain, as it
were, upon our common good. It can never be to
the advantage of religion that any religious man
should be dispraised. The heroes of Protestantism
are no reproach to Catholicism ; the saints, the
Catholic Church reveres, the Protestant Church grows
better by admiring. There is nothing that so proves
poverty of soul as the tendency, so common in eccle
siastical controversy, to make our own plain features
look comely by darkening the fairer features of
another face. Mr. Gladstone, addressing Manning in
his Anglican days, says : " Your character is a part
of the property of the Church and of the truth in the
Church, and must be husbanded for the sake of the
association with that truth." x This is even more true
to-day than it was then, and in a larger sense than
was at first intended. In his good name all churches
share ; and any shadow of reproach that falls on him
will send a chill through the heart of all our good.
But then, to attempt an analysis of his character in
relation to his work is to do him no dishonour ; what
the man did, depended upon what he was ; and so
we study him only that we may the better watch the
evolution of a movement in which he was a potent
factor. 2. What is here termed the Catholic Revival began
with three men, whose spirit it may be said to have
incarnated : — Hurrell Froude, who was its impulsive

Vol. i., p. 269.

CARDINAL MANNING AND CATHOLIC REVIVAL 24I
force ; John Henry Newman, who embodied its intel
lectual and ethical energy ; and John Keble, who
created the atmosphere of emotion or sentiment
within which it lived and by which it was nourished.
But while these men presided over its birth, its later
fortunes were shaped within the Anglican Church
mainly by Dr. Pusey, and within the Roman Church
mainly by Cardinal Manning. The significance of
the personal factor has been recognized by every
serious student of the movement, and most of all by
its leaders themselves. The earliest expression of
this feeling is Hurrell Froude's Remains ; the most
classical is Newman's Apologia ; the largest is the
recently finished Life of Pusey ; and the latest, this
Life of Cardinal Manning, which is, in its original
documents, so largely the work of his own hands. Of
these, the Apologia has the greatest personal value,
but the least historical worth. It is neither a bio
graphy nor an autobiography, but simply what it
professes to be, a dialectical apology for a life by the
man who had lived it. The real history is not therej
but only a history idealized — all the more completely
that the ideal represents a reality seen in retrospect,
and under the transfiguring light of a superlative
ratiocinative genius, whose imagination made his
successive experiences like steps in the logical
process which led him from a dubious to an assured
and infallible faith. But a man's history is too com
plex a thing to be done into any dialectic, even
though it be the supreme feat of the most dexterous 16

242 CATHOLICISM

dialectician of his age. The mistakes, the falterings,
the lapses, the blind gropings, the ignorances, the
confusions, the unreasoning likes and dislikes which
marked the actual way of the man are lost sight of>
forgotten, or softened out of all significance ; the end
being made to illuminate the beginning rather than
the beginning to explain the end. Froude's Remains,
on the other hand, have even more historical than
personal worth. Here we see the man as he actually
lived, the circle he lived in, how they thought and
spoke, believed and acted. The men are intensely
sincere, but curiously superficial ; where most thor
oughly in earnest, there most audaciously ignorant,
full of the inconsiderate speech which came of
hatreds they were too impatient to justify and too
prejudiced to be ashamed of. In the Remains, in the
Tracts, and in the private correspondence, when we
can get it unexpurgated, the real men live ; and
history must know the real man before it can con
strue the man idealized. Now this Life of Manning
is full of the same sort of documents as Froude's
Remains. We have not all we could wish, but we
have enough to be grateful for. We have the man in
his every-day habit, in the flesh-and-blood reality of
his ecclesiastical being ; and we can interpret him in
terms we owe altogether to himself, or to the men he
worked with, and for, and through. We are admit
ted into his secret soul, we hear his solemn confes
sions or astute suggestions to the men he trusted ; and
then we have the records of the public policy which

CARDINAL MANNING AND CATHOLIC REVIVAL 243
now contradicted and now carried out his inner mind.
What this biography does, no other and later bio
graphy can ever undo ; for what gives it character is
not what the author writes, but what he publishes.
The picture is not, indeed, quite complete ; some of
Manning's most characteristic letters, written at the
crisis of his career, perished under his own hand. By
the same hand certain of his diaries and memoranda
have, as a rule at the most critical places or in con
nection with the most decisive events, been expur
gated, amended, adjusted to reminiscence, adapted to
history ; but, happily, the untouched originals reflect
the living man. And it is the man as he lived, and
not the man apologetically idealized, which explains
the history he contributed to make.
§ II. The Character ofthe Man
In attempting an estimate and analysis of Man
ning's character in relation to his work, we shall, as
far as possible, confine ourselves to the documents
our author has published. We cannot, indeed, en
tirely dismiss the author from our minds, nor would
it be just to do so. His very attitude is significant,
and has been assumed not according to his original
bias, but against it. It is apparent that he began as
an admirer, that he did not mean to be unfriendly,"
and that he believes, in the. heart of him, that his
hero could stand being painted as he really was,
warts and all. If he is to be held responsible for
the use of the materials entrusted to him, we ought

244 CATHOLICISM
also to remember that the responsibility for much in
his tone of mind and for many of his judgments, lies
with the materials themselves.
i. Well, then, looked at in the light of the docu
ments here published and the inner history they
unfold, we may say Manning's character seems,
though strong, neither subtle nor complex. Subtlety
was too little the note of his mind to be the dis
tinction of his conduct. His ends were clearly and
eagerly conceived : and his means, though often un
derhand, were, as a rule, obvious and simple, their
efficiency lying in the strength of his will rather
than in their delicate fitness. While fond of intrigue,
he was too self-conscious to hide his designs from
the observant. His characteristic qualities appear,
very early in his career. As a boy he was averse
to real and serious study * and, happily, without the
curse of precocity ; but he had ambition, claiming
as his motto Aut Cmsar aut Nullus,2 only his am
bitions were as yet neither intellectual nor academic.
He found fame at Oxford in the Union, and once
he became famous, men said, " Manning is self-con
scious even in his nightcap." 3 He " drew into his
orbit a certain number of satellites," assumed " omni
science," and " spoke as one having authority," now
and then to the disaster of his claims.4 His reminis
cences seem to show that, even in later life, he had

1 '• 27- s i. 28, 48. a i. 30.
1 The words of Sir Francis Doyle, i. 46-7.

CARDINAL MANNING AND CATHOLIC REVIVAL 245
more interest in himself than in any of his school
fellows.1 These were, in a boy, natural traits ; they
indicate a nature which by attempting to conceal
only the more revealed itself ; but the traits natural
in a boy may grow into much less innocuous qualities
in a man. Possibly Manning suffered through his
whole career from the want of an early period of
storm and stress, especially those higher and more
tragic religious experiences which do so much to
purify the character. Accident, rather than neces
sity, drove him into the church ; compulsion of cir
cumstances more than the vocation which will not
hear a " Nay." 2 He knew nothing of the fierce
intellectual conflicts which vexed the reason of
Newman, and made his sermons, lectures, and tracts
like the cries of a soul in travail. He did not enter
the ministry by the way of sorrow, and so was not
redeemed and made fit for it by suffering. Comfort
surrounded him from the first ; he glided easily into
high position ; even death was kindly, and removed
obstacles from his path ; but, while his tact is excel
lent, his intellect remains unawakened. He was a
churchman whose conduct was guided by policy,
rather than a thinker mastered by convictions. His
biographer notes with satisfaction that he served
under four bishops, and, while he agreed with none,

2 On this point there was a good deal of romancing later,
but: the contemporary evidence justifies the statement in the
text. See i. £6-97.

246 CATHOLICISM

he made himself agreeable to all, and as nearly as
possible indispensable. He behaved as one who
sympathized with the Tractarians, not as one who
believed with them ; but in the day of trial it is the
man who believes, not the man who sympathizes,
that endures. Hence came those early relations to
Newman which left no memories Newman cared to
record. Hence came those extraordinary vacillations
of policy, resented by many as duplicities of conduct,
represented by his High Church professions and
strongly Protestant charges ; his Fifth of November
sermon, and private, though rejected, visit to New
man at Littlemore ; his studied neutrality as to the
professorship of poetry, and his uneasy and, for
awhile, anxiously uncertain action on Ward's degrada
tion. To the same cause may be traced a series of
incidents less easily explained or defended. There
is his concern about the trivial personal matters of
the sub-almonership and the preachership at Lin
coln's Inn, in contrast with his unconcern about the
loss of Newman and the grave disasters it threatened
to the English church.1 But his judgment as to the
character and motives of the seceders was more
extraordinary than even his unconcern. Mr. Glad
stone asked Manning, amid the consternation caused
by the many conversions to Catholicism, what he
considered " the common bond of union, the common
principle, which led men of intellect so different, of

1 i. 310-12.

CARDINAL MANNING AND CATHOLIC REVIVAL 247
such opposite characters, acting under circumstances
so various, to come to one and the same conclu
sion." x Manning's answer, which " surprised beyond
measure and startled " his interlocutor, was this :
"Their common bond -is their want of truth." The
one common characteristic of the men was surely
their passionate sincerity, witnessed by the sacrifices
they made to conviction and conscience ; but Man
ning's answer shows not so much a want of honesty
or charity as of insight and intelligence — his com
plete puzzlement of mind as he faced conduct which
nothing in his own experience could as yet interpret.
And the same bewildered and ineffective mind is
reflected in all the correspondence of this period.
Nor, as we shall yet see, did he ever escape from
this inability. The timidity which is the mark of
certain intellectual limitations governed even his most
audacious policies. He was a political craftsman in
the arena of faith and reason, and his trust in ma
chinery was as great as his distrust of mind. This
was the root of his lifelong antagonism not only
to Newman, but to all Newman's name stood for
Catholicism never meant to the two men the same
thing ; they never were Catholics in the same sense ;
their relations were not simply those of contraries,
but of antipathies based on intellectual differences.
Their feud was not a thing of policy, or even of prin
ciple, but of nature and character.
1 i. 318.

248 CATHOLICISM
2. These mental and ethical qualities are well illus
trated in what we may term the diplomacy of his
conversion — i.e., the policy which made his outer
history in the years which preceded it so strange a
contrast to his inner or spiritual history. It is, on
any construction we may please to put upon it,
melancholy as well as "startling" to find Manning,
as his biographer says, "speaking concurrently for
years with a double voice " ; x but it was by no means
out of keeping with his character, as some of those
who had good occasion to know him understood it.
The facts stand out in the clear language of his own
diaries and letters, and in those of his correspondents.
In August, 1846, he wrote to Mr. Gladstone: "I
have a fear, amounting to a belief, that the Church
of England must split asunder."2 Entries in his
diary of the same date show what he means: the
Church of England is organically diseased, because
separated from the Church Universal and from the
chair of Peter, and is, for certain specified reasons,
functionally diseased as well.3 In an earlier month-
May — he had confessed to himself "an extensively
changed feeling towards the Church of Rome," and
most serious doubts as to the Church of England.4
In 1847 his doubts became more positive, and so do
the beliefs which look to Rome; two things which
it alone can satisfy, seem to him necessary to the
church— infallibility and the unity of the episcopate.5

1 i. 463. 2 i. 317. 3 i. 483. * i. 485. 5 i. 467-73.

CARDINAL MANNING AND CATHOLIC REVIVAL 249
In the pathetic letters, under the seal, from this time
onward to his conversion in 1851, confession of his
inward mind is made to Laprimaudaye and Robert
Wilberforce. Now, no man can handle these letters
otherwise than tenderly ; to the man who has- known
a great intellectual and spiritual crisis they will be
sacred epistles, the record of a soul's tragedy, still
agitated with sorrow and damp with the sweat as
of blood. But, unhappily, they are profaned and
shamed by the position in which they are made to
stand ; yet they must stand there if history is to
speak the truth. It was no reproach to Manning
that he should hesitate ; it would have been a real
reproach had he been precipitate. The issues were
too grave, the possibilities of mistake too many and
serious, the feelings, the hopes, the fears involved too
high and solemn, to allow a sensitive and honourable
man to be other than painfully and laboriously de
liberate. But this on one condition : that he be silent
and use no public speech that contradicted his private
thoughts or mocked his own personal experiences.
And this condition Manning did not observe, nay, he
flagrantly violated. While confessing under the seal
of secrecy his utter disbeliefs, he yet in his charges
and sermons, in his letters to penitents and friends,
spoke or wrote like a man who never knew a doubt.
While he openly, as it were in the ecclesiastical
forum, argued in July, 1848, as to Hampden, that
"no man is a heretic to us who is not a heretic to
the Church " ; that to the Church Hampden was no

250 CATHOLICISM

heretic, for it had not tried and judged him ; and that
his " public subscription of the Catholic creeds," as a
bishop, had- purged him from the charge of heresy l —
he had yet, in the March of the same year, privately
written to Robert Wilberforce : " I do believe Hamp
den to be heretical in substance and in principle. It
makes it worse to me to find that fact palliated or
doubted." 2 His public attitude was well represented
by an answer he gave earlier to Mrs. Lockhart :
" But, Mr. Archdeacon, are you quite sure of the
validity of Anglican orders ? " " Am I sure of the
existence of God ? " he replied.3 Even more signifi
cant was his conduct to Mr. Gladstone. The two
had been intimate, even confidential friends ; he had,
in the phrase quoted above, hinted his doubts, but
had found no sympathetic response, had received
instead an emphatic contradiction ; and was thereafter,
throughout what seemed the frankest correspondence
and intercourse, silent as to his secret mind till the
Gorham Judgment made a convenient season for
speech. These letters of his were returned to him,
and " had, so far as could be ascertained, been de
stroyed by the Cardinal not long before his death."
Mr. Gladstone is reported to have said, when he
heard of the correspondence, so unlike that with him
self, with Robert Wilberforce, and the destruction of
his own : " I won't say Manning was insincere, God
forbid ! But he was not simple and straightforward " 4

i ;

i. 478-9. 2 i. 514. 3 i. 449- * i. 569.

CARDINAL MANNING AND CATHOLIC REVIVAL 25 1
— a judgment which cannot be called in any sense
uncharitable. 3. It would be a radical misapprehension to regard
this diplomacy as an accident, an exception to his
normal character, due simply to the bewilderment
of a perturbed and distracted mind. The conduct
represented a real and permanent quality, as it were
a- grain or bent of nature, which came out on critical
occasions, and made intimacy with him to many
difficult, to some impossible. Thus Canon Oakeley,
who knew him both as Anglican and as Catholic,
wrote of him when "appointed Archbishop of West
minster : " I wish I could confide in him as much
as I like him." x So, too, Newman writes to Oakeley :
" The only serious cause of any distance which may
exist between the Archbishop and myself is the diffi
culty I have in implicitly confiding in him." 2 And
this feeling receives new meaning in the character
istic colour and phrasing of Newman's answer, de
clining; Manning's request for an interview in order
to mutual explanations, and, if possible, reconcilia
tion : —
" I say frankly, then, and as a duty of friendship, that it [i.e.,
my feeling to you] is a distressing mistrust, which now for four
years past I have been unable in prudence to dismiss from my
mind, and which is but my own share of a general feeling
(though men are slow to express it, especially to your immediate
friends) that you are difficult to understand. I wish I could
get myself to believe that the fault was my own, and that your
words, your bearing, and your implications ought (to have),
1 ii. 256. 2 ii. 327.

252 CATHOLICISM

though they have not, served to prepare me for your acts.
• •
" No explanations offered by you at present in such a meet
ing could go to the root of the difficulty, as I have suggested it.
. . . It is only as time goes on that new deeds can reverse
the old. There is no short cut to a restoration of confidence,
when confidence has been seriously damaged." x
No one will say that these are lightly used or
malicious words ; they evidently express a judgment
at once well weighed and reluctant. And it was a
judgment in which many shared. Soon after his
conversion, in the year 1853 or 1854, while he was
studying theology in Rome, the very man who later
became his serviceable friend at the Vatican inquired,
with evident reference to him, " half in jest, half in
earnest," " whether a man who was already manoeu
vring for a mitre would make any the worse a bishop
for that ? " 2 After he had returned to England and
begun work as a Catholic priest, the then President
of Ushaw is reported as saying of him : " I hate that
man, he is such a forward piece," 3 meaning that he
was already seeking to thrust himself through and
past his brother pawns to an important and com
manding place on the ecclesiastical chessboard.
During the Vatican Council it was said of him :
" There is no better hand than Manning's at draw
ing the long bow."4 It was characteristic of him,
too, to seek relief at the hands of the Pope from
the oath of secrecy, that he might coach Mr. Odo
1 ii. 305-6 ; see also 329-30. 2 ii. 17 note.
8 »• 79- 4 ii. 431-

CARDINAL MANNING AND CATHOLIC REVIVAL 253
Russell in the version of the Council's affairs which
he wished to reach the English Government and
public.1 The man is the same man under all these
conditions, whether it be in ecclesiastical or personal
matters : the management of Wiseman, the policy of
the Holy See, the displacement of Errington, the
control of the Chapter, or the deliberations of the
bishops : the way of Providence is made smoother
and more sure by the help of a little human diplo
macy. Diplomacy is always double-voiced : and the
ear addressed has to learn how to discern by accent
which voice speaks the more truly, or rather the less
falsely. And there are regions and affairs where it
is in place, and there are others where it is not ; and
one would think that the least suitable of all regions
was the church, and the least appropriate of all
affairs the decrees and policies of the infallible Chair.
Yet here we are made to see it prevail, with all its
hateful accessories of intrigue and cajolery, flattery of
hopes and play upon fears. And the curious thing
is, that while the diplomacy and the agent were
known, the result was accepted with a public silence
and submission which speaks of the most wonderful
discipline in the world.
§ III. His Conversion : its Process and Reasons
I. But, of course, this analysis of Manning's
methods or executive policies does not carry us very

254 CATHOLICISM

far; the man had deeper and better things in him
than can be thus reached and revealed. We must,
if possible, get down to his ultimate convictions or
fundamental beliefs, and discover both the attitude
of his mind to them and the conditions of their
validity to his mind. It is only in this region that
we can find the motives that governed him, and the
forms under which duty appeared to his conscience.
That duty did appear to him in a most imperious
form, is a point too obvious to need to be argued.
Only beliefs and motives of irresistible potency could
have forced him out of the church of England.
Every inferior motive, all that could be compre
hended under the world and the flesh, was on the
side of his staying. By going he had almost every
thing to lose, and there was no certain promise of
any compensating gain. It could not be said that
he was attracted to Rome by friendships ; for the
men who had gone before him he had no peculiar
affection, with them he had no special affinity, and
their conversion had not been a very manifest suc
cess. We must believe, therefore, that he changed
under intellectual and moral compulsion ; like Luther,
he could do no other. But this only the more em
phasizes the problem : What, then, were his reasons,
his motives ? We have no cause to doubt the truth
of his own statement—it was the ideas of the unity
and the infallibility of the church ; and the conviction
that these could be found in the Roman, but not
in the Anglican communion. But we have, in con-

CARDINAL MANNING AND CATHOLIC REVIVAL 255
sequence, a twofold problem : How did he come by
these ideas? And what did they mean to him?
He said that the idea of unity began to take
possession of him about 1835, infallibility about
1 837-38 i1 but, at first, he conceived both under forms
which upheld against Rome. The idea of unity
seemed to follow from the Apostolic Ministry and
its necessity to the Church ; where the one was, the
other could not but be. And because the Anglican
Ministry was apostolic, the Church was the same,
and so its unity was assured. The idea of infalli
bility followed from the perpetual presence and office
of the Holy Spirit in the Church ; where He abode
in the plenitude of His illuminative power error could
not be, the truth must be absolute. These two ideas
seemed, then, to him ultimate ; but they involved as
their necessary consequence the independence and
autonomy of the Church. If its unity lived in an
apostolical episcopate, and was realized through it,
then the episcopate must be a self-perpetuating body,
deriving its being from its Apostolic Source, and
holding its authority directly under its Spiritual
Head. If the infallibility was real, then the Church
must be free; for if it could not use its own voice,
but must either be silent at the bidding of the State,
or speak in terms the State prescribed, it would have
but a dumb infallibility, which were of all things the
most fatuous and impotent. But a series of incidents
1 i- 470.

256 CATHOLICISM
forced upon Manning the unwelcome conclusion that
there was within the English church no room for
the realization or exercise of his two fundamental
ideas. If there was any man both the High and
the Low Church regarded as heretical, it was Hamp
den ; but while both had the most ample will to
convict him of heresy both were powerless to do it ; ~
the strong hand of the State shut their mouths, and
placed him where it willed. If there was anything
more capable than another of disproving at one and
the same time the apostolicity of the ministry, which
was the condition of unity, and the infallibility of the
church as the home of the Holy Ghost, it was the
act of the State in putting a man so unanimously
adjudged heretical into the episcopate. The con
fusion and controversies of the time did not allow
Manning for a moment to feel free from this ubi
quitous and inexorable civil power, whose violent
hands reached everywhere, and touched at every
point his most sacred convictions. If he thought of
the episcopate as the sine qua non of unity, the State
mocked his faith by co-operating with a schismatical
body in founding a Jerusalem bishopric, and frocking
its new bishop. If he argued that the church had
the power to interpret its own creed and enforce its
own discipline, the State was at hand with the
Gorham Judgment to prove his whole elaborate
argument a series of logical illusions. By slow de
grees he found himself deprived of every alternative,
and reluctantly forced to the conclusion that if these

CARDINAL MANNING AND CATHOLIC REVIVAL 257
two ideas, as he had conceived and defined them,
were notes of the true Church, he must seek it else
where than in the church of England.
2. Such seems to have been the process, stated in
its most naked and simple form, by which Manning's
conversion was effected ; but of course it was a -much
more complex process than this. It did not move
in a straight line, but was zigzag and circuitous,
deflected by fresh currents of thought and emotion,
by new views of policy, and by the changes incident
to an agitated and distressful day. Vacillations are
not duplicities ; variations of mood are not changes of
part. There is, in the English mind, no deeper, or
more common and characteristic conviction than the
belief in the sanity of the State ; the belief in the
sanctity of the Church is not so distinctive and
inveterate. The Churchman acquires the one, but
the Englishman is born with the other. It is the
instinctive basis of his jealous guardianship of the
supremacy of the Crown which, in its essential idea,
represents the place and function of the laity in the
church. It means that, in the view of the English
people, it is they, and neither the priesthood nor the
episcopate, singly or combined, who constitute the
English church, and are the guarantees of both its
unity and continuity. And we can well believe that
this idea, though in a blind way, now and then seized
Manning, and explains some of his -most strenuous
Protestant utterances, which were visions of a larger
and more historical Church than the ecclesiastical 17

258 CATHOLICISM

mind of his day had conceived. But these were
contradicted by experiences of another order. Civil
action in the religious sphere seems, to the ecclesi
astical mind, harsh and insolent; and, in troublous
times, sensitive are imperious consciences. And
Manning's conscience was here sensitive, for his
deepest convictions were on the side of freedom for
the church, and they were quickened in suffering.
Then, again, his Continental wanderings, and long
residence at Rome, counted for much. He was, when
in a most susceptible mood, isolated from England
with all the coercive force of its traditions, social
customs, and ambitions ; and set in the very heart
of new and potent influences, which made him feel
what it was to live and worship in a Church-state
as distinguished [from a State-church. The end of
it all was that change became inevitable ; he waited
but a fit occasion, and this the Gorham Judgment
supplied ; under the shadow it so conveniently cast,
he passed from the Anglican to the Roman church.
If this analysis of the logical process of his con
version be even approximately correct, it places us
in a position to appraise its significance. Within its
limits the process was one of marked logical cogency ;
but the limits were marvellously narrow. The thing
it most nearly resembles is a procession of the blind
between two blank walls. The man argued his way
to his conclusion with the very slenderest intellectual
outfit, if, indeed, considering the problems at issue,
he could be said to have had any such outfit at

CARDINAL MANNING AND CATHOLIC REVIVAL 259
all. There was a wealth of reasoning, but a paucity
of reasons ; and it is reasons that justify, and make
a great thing mean or a mean thing great. There
is no evidence that he had even conceived what
infallibility meant ; how it had ever come to be the
attribute of one church; what the claim to it
involved ; or how the claim harmonized with its
history. In his charges and sermons, and in the
letters and memoranda here published, there are the
usual current commonplaces, now of the Protestant,
now of the Anglican, and now of the Roman order ;
but there are no signs of an awakened intelligence,
of a man thinking in grim earnest, challenging com
monplaces, getting behind them, resolving them into
their component parts, compelling them to give up
the reason of their existence, to tell why they claim
to be believed. For this man scholars have lived
and inquired in vain ; for him problems which touch
the very heart of the formulae he plays with, have
no being. He does not know of their existence, he
cannot understand the men who do know that they
are and what they mean. As a consequence, his
whole conception of religion is formal ; emptiness
and shallowness mark it from first to last- There
never was a biography of a great Father of the
church — so full of letters written in supreme crises
of his own and his church's history — that is yet so
void of mystery, so vacant of awe, so without the
traces of struggle after the everlasting rock on which
truth stands, so without the infinite yearning to-

260 CATHOLICISM

wards the light, which is as the face of God. And
this is due to no defect in the biographer, but to
the character of the original documents he publishes.
These things are not written in the mere love of
being severe, but in wonder and regret, and out of
deep conviction. The logic of Manning's conversion
was the logic of an unawakened intellect ; and as
it was, so also was his policy as a father and prince
of the church.
§ IV. His Policy within the Roman Church
I. But now we must proceed to an even more
delicate and difficult question — his policy and career
within the Roman church. And here we may be
allowed to remark that in those days a conversion
was a critical event both for the convert and the
society he entered ; and the more eminent the
convert the more critical the event, for it was the
fuller of dangerous possibilities. The Anglicans who
reasoned themselves into Catholicism knew nothing
of it as an actual and operative system. It was to
many, in a sense, a mere algebraic symbol ; they had
assigned to it a definite value, and reasoned convinc
ingly from it as a fixed quantity or stable standard.
And the danger was that the convert might find the
actual Catholicism a contradiction of his ideal, and, in
the despair of disillusionment, take some rash and
irreparable step. It is a matter of history that some
entered only to return ; it is an open secret that many
remained, among whom we may number the greatest

CARDINAL MANNING AND CATHOLIC REVIVAL 26 1
convert of them all, in discomfort, disappointment, and
despondency, even while cherishing the faith they had
embraced. But the dangers to Catholicism were as
real as those to the converts. They were, as a whole,
personalities of no ordinary kind, men to be reckoned
with. They were all men who had lived in contro
versy, and been convinced by it. Some were men of
strong characters ; a few were men of fine intellects
and ripe scholarship ; one was a man of real talent, of
strong will, and exceptional angularity ; another was
a man of rare genius. They had been nursed in
a proud and aristocratic church, had been trained in
an exclusive and conservative university ; they were
accustomed to a society which did homage to their
culture, and they bore themselves as men who took
life seriously and knew that they were seriously taken.
And it was by no means certain that the men who
had defied the authorities of their mother church
would submit to those of their adopted communion.
For within it there was much to offend and even
shock. The culture was not so fine, the tone was the
tone of a sect, with the feeling at its heart that in the
eye of English law it was mere Dissent, and that it
had lived its life apart, separated by the penal legisla
tion of centuries from the main stream of the nation.
To find themselves within a society of this kind was
no small trial to the Oxford Tractarians ; to find it a
society as much divided by jealousies and feuds as
the one they had left, was a sorer trial still. It was a
question whether the new men would transform the

262 CATHOLICISM

old society, or the society subdue the men. What is
certain to-day is that the possibilities of good which
entered with the men were, if at all, in a very doubt
ful degree realized ; while the possibilities of evil,
thanks to the men mainly concerned, were in no
small degree averted.
2. If now we continue from this point our study
of Manning, we must note two things — the mind he
brought into Catholicism and the mind he found
there. His mind we have seen in part : it was formal
rather than creative, more rhetorical than speculative,
more political than philosophical, convinced that the
cardinal notes and necessities of the church were a
political unity and an official infallibility. He was,
indeed, one ofthe least intellectual of men ; and so his
rational interests were always subordinate to his
social or political, using these terms in their proper
rather than their conventional sense. He could
understand enthusiasm for institutions, but not for
ideas. He could never have written The Idea of a
University, or The Present Position of Catholics in
England, or the Apologia pro Vitd Sud, or The
Grammar of Assent. He could not understand the
man who wrote these books ; or why they should have
such an extraordinary influence ; or why multitudes
of men who had no belief in Catholicism should so
admire their author. It all seemed to him evidence
of an "anti-Roman" spirit in Newman,1 of a proud
1 ii. 323-

CARDINAL MANNING AND CATHOLIC REVIVAL 263
intellect, unfaithful to the Holy See, exercising itself
in dialectical gymnastics to the delectation of English
Rationalism ! His eyes looked for help in an entirely
opposite quarter. The church he had entered was
the Roman, and Rome meant the Pope; and his
supremacy was the infallibility which he was in
search of, and without which he conceived the church
could not be. In practical working a complaisant
Pope was to prove a very convenient tool, and the
actual infallibility a very different thing from the
ideal. The mind within English Catholicism was very
unlike what he had anticipated. It was by no means
a united or harmonious mind, or distinguished by
anything really catholic or large. He found a laity
" without Catholic instincts," worldly, selfish, and
self-indulgent, all they cared about being "the key
to Grosvenor Square " ; yet this is not surprising,
considering Monsignor Talbot's definition of their
proper function. " What is the province of the laity ?
To hunt, to shoot, to entertain ? These matters they
understand, but to meddle with ecclesiastical matters
they have no right at all." x And the clergy were
even as the laity ; " malcontent bishops, insubordinate
chapters," everywhere " disloyalty to the Holy See,"
and " the taint of Gallicanism." The " Old Catholics "
were not inspired by " zeal for religion, for the greater
glory of God, and the salvation of souls," but by
1 ii. 318.

264 CATHOLICISM

"jealousy and prejudice against the converts." The
candidates for Holy Orders were "a shifting and
discordant body, living under no rule." He and his
principal Roman correspondent agree in the belief
that " until the old generation of bishops and priests
is removed no great progress of religion can be
expected in England." It was no wonder that, as
his biographer says, " Manning took a pessimist view
of the state of Catholicism in England," and " was at
that time a pessimist of the deepest dye." x It would
have been almost a miracle if he had been anything
else ; but much of his discontent was no doubt
disillusionment. He may have expected to find a
Catholicism which corresponded to his ideal of an
infallible church ; and he had found instead one
which corresponded to the ideas of a provincial sect,
which had suffered much from penal laws, but more
from the narrow and insulated life it had been
compelled to live. It was now that Manning's
character showed itself as it had never shown itself
before. It was not in him to submit and obey as
Newman had done, to go where he was sent, lecture
where he was told, teach or preach under humble or
under public conditions as he was required, and
redeem himself from the neglect of the community he
had sacrificed so much to enter by commanding the
respect of those that were without. Manning, on the
contrary, knew his strength, and resolved to rule, that
1 ii. 88-9.

CARDINAL MANNING AND CATHOLIC REVIVAL 265
he might reorganize what he called the " Church in
England." Catholicism was not to him, as to New
man, an ideal system, full of mystic meanings, to be
loved for the truth's sake, to be accepted as it was for
the peace it gave to the intellect, and as God's own
contrivance for keeping His truth alive in the world.
It was to him, rather, a practical system, a machine
to be worked, an agency to be made efficient and
effective, an army to be ordered and officered, drilled
and disciplined, for the conquest of England. With
splendid courage, he turned himself to this work ; and
with no less splendid audacity and the political skill
which results from a fine blending of direct strength
and adroit diplomacy, he proceeded to do it. And,
great as his success undoubtedly was, it would have
been infinitely greater if Catholicism, and if Christian
ity, had not both been more and different from what
he conceived them to be.
§ V. Manning as Roman Churchman under
Pius IX
Manning's Catholic career may be said to fall into
two periods, marked by two distinct tendencies, if not
governed by two very different ideals : the period
under the pontificate of Pius IX., from 1851 to 1878,
and the period under the pontificate of Leo XIII.,
from 1878 to 1892. All that our space permits is to
indicate the respects in which these tendencies dif
fered and their significance.
1. Manning's policy, or method of dealing with the

266 CATHOLICISM

emergency which we have just described, admirably
expressed his mind, and was adapted to the situation
as he saw it. In English Catholicism and the minds
that ruled it he had no faith. He said, its spirit is
"anti-Roman and anti-Papal," and so divided that
" our work is hindered by domestic strife." x His cure
was to increase the authority of the Holy See, to
deepen the respect for it, to make the Pope, not in
name only, but in deed and in truth, sovereign in
English Catholicism. What this meant he well knew;
it meant the success of the man who could best
please the Vatican, or who had most influence with
the men who shaped its policy. I do not say that
Manning put it to himself in this bald form ; on the
contrary, it was with him a matter of both conscience
and faith. He did believe not so much in an infallible
Church as in an infallible Papacy ; and he thought
that this signified a Pope who did not simply reign,
but governed. Also as a practical statesman he
could not but see that the one chance of making
English Catholicism cease to be local and provincial,
was by penetrating and commanding it by the mind
which dwelt at the heart of Catholic Christendom.
But the reality as he found it and as he used it was
an ironical counterfeit of the ideal ; and the marvel
lous thing in the correspondence now before us, is that
the ideal is nowhere, the ironical counterfeit every
where ; and it walks abroad naked and unashamed.
1 ii. 81.

CARDINAL MANNING AND CATHOLIC REVIVAL 267
We see Propaganda sitting in council, its decisions
anticipated, prejudiced, prejudged by its individual
members being got at, primed, and prepossessed.
We see the old Pope, potent yet feeble, shrewd and
humorous, obstinate and self-willed, yet easily suscep
tible to influence by those about his person and in the
secret of his character and foibles. We see the
chamberlain, Monsignor Talbot, a willing and astute
go-between, avid of gossip, violent in his judgments
and dislikes, jealous for the papal autocracy, yet
feeling the need of manipulating the autocrat in a
very common human way ; keeping his correspondent
informed of all that passed at the Vatican — who came,
who went, what was said, and whether doubted or
believed, or how taken ; very anxious to hear what
was going on in England that he might put things in
their proper light and proportions before the pontifical
patient. Then we see his English correspondent,
Manning himself, playing many parts, always deft,
pointed, impressive, full of schemes and suggestions ;
telling who helped and who hindered ; how this bishop
or that chapter was to be circumvented or induced
to do things they did not mean to do. It is, under
certain aspects, a deplorable correspondence : for it
unfolds a tale of sordid backstairs intrigues, is full
of hinted hates and unjustified suspicions, and the
stratagems and policies devised and followed by
those who would use the authorities at the centre
as instruments for effecting their own will at the
circumference. I do not wonder that the successor

268 CATHOLICISM
of Manning has stigmatized the publication of the
book which contains this correspondence as a crime.
To one sitting in his seat and burdened with his
responsibilities it could seem nothing else. But it can
hardly be described as private correspondence ; on the
contrary, the letters have all the value and function of
public despatches. They were written by men who
were not simply friends, but officials in a great church.
They affected the policy of a famous court ; they
determined vexed ecclesiastical questions ; and decided
matters affecting the happiness, the status, the charac
ter of some eminent and many influential men. I do
not see how they could have been suppressed, if the
biography was to have any veracity or historical
value whatever. For here we see Manning at work
on the Catholic revival ; and are led to the sources of
events which puzzled many, though they might be
open secrets to the initiated. Mr. Purcell says :
" Monsignor Talbot played no mean part in the
management of Catholic affairs in England." It
was easy " to a man of such infinite tact and skill as
Manning to gain supreme influence over Mgr. Talbot.
If Mgr. Talbot had the ear of the Pope, the tongue
which spoke in whispers was not Talbot's."1 Of
course not ; Talbot persuaded the Pope, Manning
persuaded Talbot; and so the papal policy which
he carried out in England was, while nominally
the Pope's, yet really his own.
1 ii. 87.

CARDINAL MANNING AND CATHOLIC REVIVAL 269
2. Into the forms, incidents, and developments
of this policy I will not enter : for to analyze and
describe it would be a piece of work too utterly
distasteful to be done justly or well. Any one who
wants to know how chapters were counter-worked
or superseded, how a coadjutor and designated
successor to Wiseman was, in spite of powerful
connections and the sanctions of order and custom,
unseated and set aside by the direct act of the
Pope, or as he himself, according to Manning,
described it, " II colpo di stato di Dominiddio " ; x
how bishops were sketched, discounted, outwitted ;
how the Catholic press was handled and judged
when unfriendly, and how the more important organs
were got possession of and made to speak as the
potent cardinal willed — such a one has but to study
the correspondence now published, and he will see
the whole system in operation. But there is one
event too significant to be thus passed over — the
treatment of Newman and his Oxford scheme. Into
the relations between the two men it is not necessary
to enter. Their tempers were incompatible, their
minds dissimilar, their characters different; in a
word, they were so unlike as to be mutually unin
telligible, with a sort of innate capability of inter-
despising each other. This was intensified by the
similarities of their histories, but the dissimilarities
of their fortunes. If any one man was the cause

». 95-

270 CATHOLICISM

of the movement to Rome, it was Newman. His
logic made it seem to many inevitable; and then
with a proud but reluctant humility, which, whatever
we may think of his reasons, we. can only admire,
he bowed his own lordly head, and submitted to
enter the church of Rome by the lowliest door.
And the places assigned him, and the duties laid
upon him, were such as became his submission rather
than his eminence. Manning followed six years
later, and within fourteen years he was Archbishop
of Westminster and head of the English Catholics ;
while Newman was to the chamberlain who had
the ear of the Pope " the most dangerous man in
England,"1 a man who had never "acquired the
Catholic instincts."2 Manning, too, thought him
dangerous, the type of "a worldly Catholicism,"
which would " have the world on its side " ; he con
sidered the friends who grew enthusiastic over the
Apologia as " literally playing the fool " ; 3 and
said that "the Anglicans regarded it as a plea for
remaining as they are."4
But these are not the significant things. Almost
as good a case could be made out against Newman
for his attitude to Manning, as against Manning
for his attitude to Newman. Neither shows well,
especially when they fall into amenities of the feline
order.5 What is significant is their alternative
1 ii. 318. 2 ii. 323, note. s ii. 206. * ii. 323.
5 Newman ends his correspondence relative to the pro
posed interview thus : " I purpose to say seven Masses for

CARDINAL MANNING AND CATHOLIC REVIVAL 2yl
policies as to Oxford and the Universities. Newman
proposed to found a Catholic Hall or Oratory at
Oxford, secured land for this purpose, and got the
provisional approval of his ecclesiastical superior.
He may have been guided by his instincts. He
must have yearned for Oxford as the thirsty traveller
for the well-watered oasis. There he had lived a
life he could never forget ; influence had there been
his, and honour; there he had found the friends
who were bound to him by hoops of steel ; his spirit
had quickened theirs and they had quickened his
spirit in return, making his blood run warmer and
his pulse beat faster ; in a sense, all his friendships
then and always, were made either in or through
Oxford. It was then, by a necessity of nature,
interpreted by experience, that he turned to his old
home, possessed of the feeling that where the passion
of his life had^been suffered, and its sacrifice accom
plished, there, if only his church would send him,
he could most victoriously do the work of conciliation
and conversion. And among the wise and powerful
in his church a cognate feeling prevailed. The
Anglican converts had made obvious the need of
your intention amid the difficulties and anxieties of your
ecclesiastical duties." But Manning, not to be outdone
in ironical innuendo, retorts : " I shall have great pleasure
in saying one Mass every month for your intention during
the present year." So have we heard arrogant and self-
conscious superiority, mistaking itself for piety, threaten to
pray for the soul of a meek and saintly man.

272 CA THOLICISM

English culture to the success of Catholicism in
England. It was too alien, too foreign to flourish
on our insular soil ; it wanted the sentiment, the
taste, the attitude to public and domestic questions ;
in a word, the consciousness which makes a man
English, a person capable of understanding and
being undersfood of the people. The wiser and
larger Catholics felt, too, that the more public life
and high careers in the State opened to their sons,
the more was it necessary that they should be
educated and disciplined in the schools and univer
sities of the nation ; and they no doubt also believed
that, in their freer and fuller contact with the centres
of living thought, Catholicism would give while it
got, and influence all the more that it was being
influenced. Indeed, considering the man they had,
his name and his history, it seemed as if the very
voice of God called them to go where he was ready
to lead. But this was not the view of the man
who was then shaping the public policy of Catholi
cism. The question rose in the last year of
Wiseman's life, indeed only four or five months
before his death, when the ruling mind was the mind
that was to reign after him. Manning threw his
whole weight into the opposition, used all his skill
to defeat Newman. The common and characteristic
method was pursued. Rome was fully informed of
Newman's defects; his anti-Roman tendencies; the
danger of sending him to Oxford; the danger of
indulging those who wanted him to go ; the certainty

CARDINAL MANNING AND CATHOLIC REVIVAL 273
if he went, that he would attract the sons of
rich Catholics after him, and they would be
" protestantized," " de-catholicized," in a word, made
more English and less Roman, Propaganda de
liberated. Cardinal Reisach came and investigated ;
was taken to Oxford, shown over the ground by
an opponent of the scheme ; was taken to Birming
ham, interviewed various persons, some young and
quite inexperienced, but was not allowed to see
Newman,1 who complained that he, "who had
certainly as great a claim as any one to have an
opinion, had not been allowed to give one." And
so the well-informed Cardinal was sent off, while
a following letter vouched for his competency,
saying that he had seen and understood all that
was going on in England. The affair ended in the
only way possible ; but what is even more significant
to us than the method of the victors, is their reasons.
They are reasons of alarm, of fear of both light
and freedom. They imply the most amazing dis
trust of Catholicism, of its ability to hold its own
in the face of a university which it does not itself
control. There is no sense of any special mission
to the science and education, to the intellect and
culture, of England. There is no feeling that it is
possible so to teach their youth as to enable them
to brave the fierce light which the living academic
mind casts upon all creeds ; or that it is better for

18

274 CATHOLICISM

a man to know what his opponent believes than
to grow up in ignorance of it ; or that the man
who has not understood another church has not
believed his own. The reasons are all of the
narrowest order, and where most emphasized, show
the essential uncatholicity of this Catholicism. It
must be Roman ; cannot be allowed to become
English lest it cease to be papal. Yet a system
which has no place in it for the most distinctive
and preservative characteristics of a people and a
state, is the last system that can claim catholicity
as its special attribute.
3. The event that is by many considered the
crowning success of Manning's career is the part
he played in the Vatican Council. That is a larger
question than we can here discuss. But there are
a few things that may be said concerning it. His
advocacy of the Council and its decree was typical
of his whole attitude of mind. It epitomized, as
it were, his intellectual and spiritual defects. His
religion was more political than reasonable, more
legal than ethical, more a creation of positive law
than a thing of spirit and truth. It shows, as almost
nothing else did, the extraordinary limitations of
his thought. He never saw the decree of Infallibility
as it seemed to other minds, more capable and
more learned. He rather gloried that the ignorant
and foolish had prevailed over the wise and prudent.
Here, on the one side, was he, a comparatively
recent convert to Catholicism, no scholar in the

CARDINAL MANNING AND CATHOLIC REVIVAL 275
proper sense of the term, no theologian, not well
acquainted with the history of the church or its
thought, quite without the scientific spirit, or the
ability to read with critical insight the events and
forces which had created the church he adorned ;
and with him a host of bishops from the more
backward regions of Catholicism, though, of course,
not unrelieved with some of another sort. And,
on the other side, were a multitude of great scholars,
learned theologians, lifelong devout Catholics who
knew, as he did not, the genius, the career, the
achievements, the possibilities, and the claims of
Rome. And yet their differences never appear for
a moment to start within him a doubt of his position
or policy ; and he goes forward, manoeuvring in
his own gay fashion, as if the gravest and most
tremendous of all possible questions could be settled
in the same way as the affairs of his own diocesei
And his alarmist pleas as to the need of arresting
revolution by the decree of Infallibility are, alike in
principle and in policy, exactly on the level of his
arguments against going to Oxford. The thought
or the religion that is afraid to go into the univer
sities of a country will never convince its reason
or command its conscience. The church that
expects to stop the revolution by passing a decree
which declares its head infallible, is like the child
who stands on his castle of sand and defies the
tide to rise above the rampart he has built.

276 CATHOLICISM

§ VI. Manning under Leo XIIL, more English, less
Roman
i. But his life was not destined to end in the
moment of victory. Nemesis had in store for him
something more tragic, yet better. The second
period of his catholic life came, and with it came
another mind and policy. His correspondent at
Rome passed away ; the old Pope died, and another
filled his place. With the changed men came
changed relations in Italy and in England. A new
spirit reigned at the Vatican, and the forces he
had long commanded from Westminster began to
break from his control. The change was signified
by the honour which came to Newman, connected
with which is a tale we would rather not attempt
to tell. But the effect on Manning was remarkable ;
he became less Roman and more English. He
threw himself with extraordinary energy and
enthusiasm into public and social movements. He
became more of a zealot in temperance, more
of a social reformer, more of an English states
man, forward in every public question and work
of beneficence. And he became jealous of the
very power he had once so loved to invoke
and use, saying that " I hardly know in Rome
a man, high or low, who understands the con
dition of the ^church in the British Empire."1
And as there, so here. He complained that he was

"• 743-

CARDINAL MANNING AND CATHOLIC REVIVAL 277
left alone, that " Catholics took no interest in Catholic
affairs of a public character";1 that the Catholic
clergy were "mischievously wanting" in attempts
" to share and promote the civil life of the people."
And he said that they failed because they did not
take the work of preaching seriously ; because they
had in their midst a reaction against the popular
use of " the Holy Scriptures " ; because they had no
" perception or consciousness " of the reality in the
spiritual life of England, or the meaning of the fact
that " all the great works of charity in England have
had their beginning out of the Church " ; because they
laid too much stress on " Sacramentalism," priests
being in " danger of becoming Mass-priests, or
Sacrament-mongers " ; because the clergy are too
official and have the vanity and weakness of
officialism ; and because they are too controversial
and forget the truth that " destruction builds up
nothing." 2 I have found his Hindrances to the
Spread of Catholicism in England, from which the
above points are taken, impressive and pathetic
reading. They were written in the summer of 1890,
and show how the old man was feeling as he neared
the end. The mind is more childlike, more wistful,
more alive to natural good, less strenuous for
ecclesiastical pre-eminence, full of the great con
viction that the church can conquer only through
the love and service of her sons. I am happy to
find these notes standing where they do. They
show that to the old man had come a saner and
1 ii. 714. 2 ii. 723-

278 CATHOLICISM
a nobler mind. He does not now rage at his own
people as anti-Roman and anti-Papal ; he speaks
no more of infallibility, looks no more to Italy for
light and salvation ; but feels that Catholicism has
much to learn of England, and must know and
love her virtues better before it can hope to win
her faith. We must not call the events that worked
this change tragic ; rather let us say they were the
fruits of the Spirit of grace.
2. The writing of this essay has not been a pleasant
task. Deep as is the difference which divides the
writer from Manning and his church, it would have
been infinitely more agreeable to write of him in
another strain. But the study of the documents pub
lished in this book left him no option but to write as
he has done, or not to write at all. He is grateful
therefore to be able to strike at the end a note of
cordial admiration. Manning was a vigorous ad
ministrator, a man of policies and methods, who was
determined to have work done in his own way ; but
he was not always as careful as he ought to have
been about the means he used. His early inclination
to politics was a real expression of nature ; for his
aptitudes were for the service of the State rather than
the Church, and he loved and served the Church as if
it were a State. He had the ambition that place
satisfied, and that could not be happy without place ;
power he loved more than fame, and if he sometimes
gained it by ignoble arts, he yet used it for more
noble ends. He was a man success improved ; and
when the temptations which appealed to his lower

CARDINAL MANNING AND CATHOLIC REVIVAL 279
instincts were removed, he showed in his age some of
those finer qualities of nature and character which we
miss in his strong and aggressive manhood.
With the passing of Manning the time has come
for gathering up the lessons of what is called the
Oxford Movement and the Catholic Revival which it
is said to have effected. That cannot be attempted
here and now ; but one or two things are obvious
enough. It has not done, at least as yet, for the
Roman Catholic church all that was either feared or
hoped. It has made the English people kindlier to
Catholics, but not to Roman Catholicism. For this
Catholicism has itself greatly to blame. It did not
know the time of its visitation. It doubted where it
ought to have believed, and believed where it ought
to have doubted. It sacrificed the Church to the
Papacy, and lost England through its belief in Rome
and its use of Roman methods. This book is full
of evidence that a Catholicism seated at Rome, or,
indeed, with a head localized anywhere, can never
again govern the world. To rule the Middle Ages
was a relatively simple thing ; Europe, Southern and
Western, was but a little place, homogeneous, with all
its parts easily reached, and all its forces so concen
trated as to be easily controlled. But the Christian
world to-day is another matter; vast, populous, diver
sified, full of many minds, and of minds touched with
a freedom that ecclesiastical authority cannot bind.
Government of such a world from a single centre has
ceased to be any longer possible : all that survives of
it is appearance and make-believe. For the centre

280 CA THOLICISM

must be got to do as the circumference requires ; and
so the authorities in the provinces negotiate and
intrigue at the capital, that their will may be done
there, in order that what seems its will may be done
within their borders. Then, the attitude of Catho
licism to thought is a radical weakness. The less
it can mingle with the world in the free marts of
knowledge, the less will the world mind what it says.
The authority that does not speak reasonable things,
reason will not hear. And Catholic thought taken as
a whole is a peculiarly sectional thing, apologetical,
polemical, standing outside the large movements of
modern literature and science. Within Catholicism
itself, then, there seems to us no promise of victory
over the mind, or control over the destinies, of our
people. But it is possible that forces outside the
Catholic ranks may repeat by-and-by the story of fifty
years ago. As the danger of the Low Church party
was its affinity with Dissent, the danger of the High
Church is its affinity with Rome : and affinity has a
trick of turning into identity. But one thing is certain.
The English people are, and intend to remain, masters
of their own religion in their own churches ; and they,
and not the clergy, will be the arbiters of our des
tinies. Manning found the English Catholic laity too
strong even for him, and in the other churches the
laity are — well, the English people ; and in religion,
as in other things, they are a people who have, when
the need arises, a masterful way of settling matters
according to their own mind.
- March, 1896.

VII
ANGLO-CATHOLICISM— THE OLD AND
THE NEW
THE book1 which has suggested this discussion
may be described as a new series of " Tracts
for the Times " ; but the " Times " have changed, and
with them the " Tracts." The noise of battle is not
in the new as in the old ; the writers have been born
in the age of " sweet reasonableness " ; they do not
indignantly address an apostate church, or an impious
State, but seek gently to succour a " distressed faith,"
loving the faith and pitying its distress. They
believe that " the epoch in which we live is one
of profound transformation, intellectual and social,
abounding in new needs, new points of view, new
questions, and certain therefore to involve great
changes in the outlying departments of theology."
The qualification is careful, but more easily made
than applied ; a change in the circumference of a
circle changes the circle all the same. "Theology," it
is confessed, " must take a new development " ; but
1 Lux Mundi. A Series of Studies in the Religion of the
Incarnation. Edited by Charles Gore, M.A., Principal of
Pusey House, Fellow of Trinity College, Oxford. London :
John Murray. 281

282 CA THOLICISM

" a new development," though it be of but a single
organ, affects the whole organism, all its parts in all
their relations, internal and external. "To such a
development these studies attempt to be a contri
bution." The writers are men of learning, piety,
and sincerity, "servants of the Catholic Creed and
Church " ; but they are also believers in evolution and
in theology as a living science. The combination is
excellent. " The Creed and Church " are the organ
ism, the men are its living energies, the forces and
conditions of the time are the environment ; and if
the thoughts generated in the environment penetrate,
quicken and modify the energies of the organism, we
may contentedly leave the new life to reckon with the
old restrictions.
A book like this is suggestive of many things,
especially of the changes that have happened within
the last sixty years. In 1833 the first issue of the
" Tracts " began, breathing the courage, defiance, and
furious despair of a forlorn hope ; in 1 890, the men
who have replaced the old leaders are within the
citadel, victorious, proposing their own terms of peace.
The revolution has come full cycle round, which
means the counter-revolution is at hand. It were a
curious question, why, in what is fancied to be a
critical and sceptical age, so extraordinary a revolu
tion has been achieved. Perhaps this very critical
scepticism has helped to achieve it. Sceptical are
always credulous ages ; the more radical the disbelief
in things fundamental, the easier the belief in things

ANGLO-CATHOLICISM— OLD AND NEW 283
accidental ; where faith in God is hardly possible,
acceptance of an ancient historical church may be
as agreeable as it is convenient. It belongs to the
region of the phenomenal, it lives in the field of
experience ; and so men who think God too transcen
dental for belief, may conceive the church as real
enough to be deferentially treated. The thing is
perfectly natural : what has died to the reason may
live all the more tenderly in reminiscence. Make a
thing beautiful to such persons, and it becomes attrac
tive, which is an altogether different matter from its
being true or credible. But one thing is clear, the real
cause of success has been faith ; for victories are won
only by men of convinced minds. In this case they
have been mocked, ridiculed, and have looked ridicu
lous ; but they have been in earnest, and have pre
vailed. Over them our modern Samuel Butlers have
made merry, collecting the materials for a new
Hudibras, richer than the old in the grotesqueries
of sartorial pietism, and the too consciously conscien
tious scrupulosities of the well-applauded martyr for a
rite or a robe ; only in this case the robe is not the
livery of " the scarlet woman," or the deadly splen
dours of the "Babylonish garment," but the very
garniture, the sacred and seemly vestments of the
truth of God. The situation is full of exquisite irony ;
the delusion of the old hyper-Calvinist, who was sure
only of two things, his own election and the reproba
tion of the immense multitude, becomes seemly and
sane beside its modern parallel — the superb egotism

284 CATHOLICISM

which enables many excellent but most commonplace
men to believe that their order, whose constituents
are often selected and formed in a most perfunctory
way, is necessary, to the Church of God, and has com
mand over the channels and the instruments of His
grace. If Englishmen had their old sense of humour,
the notion could not live for a single hour; and where
humour fails, so coarse a thing as ridicule has no
chance of success. For ridicule is the test of truth
only to men who fear laughter more than God. Men
like Samuel Butler see a very little way into the heart
of things — nay, do not see the things that lie on the
surface as they really are. The man who has a genius
for caricature has a bad eye for character ; he who is
always in search of the ridiculous never finds the
truth. So Anglo-Catholicism, if it is to be understood,
must be studied from within as well as from without ;
in relation indeed to the forces that created its oppor
tunity and conditioned its progress, but also as it lives
in the minds and to the imaginations of the men who
have been its chiefs and spokesmen.
§ I. The Outer Factors of the Revival
The Anglo-Catholic revival may be said to have
been in its origin the product 01 three main factors :
Liberalism, the inadequacy of the old church parties
to the new situation, and the spirit of Romanticism in
religion. The political conditions supplied the provo
cative or occasional cause ; the inability of the exist
ing ecclesiastical parties to deal with the emergency

ANGLO-CATHOLICISM— OLD AND NEW 285
supplied the opportunity ; while the Romanticist ten
dency in literature supplied the new temper, method,
standpoint, and order of ideas. Our remarks on these
points must be of the briefest.
1. It is usual to make 1833, the year when the issue
of the Tracts began, the beginning also of the
ecclesiastical revival, though for a few years before
then the waters had been gathering underground.
Liberalism just then seemed victorious all along the
line, and had effected changes that were as to the
English State constitutional, but as to the English
Church revolutional. The Deists of the eighteenth
century had died, though only to return to life as
Philosophical Radicals, learned in economics, in edu
cation, in theoretical politics, in methods to promote
the greatest happiness of the greatest number, though
the greatest number was largely middle class, and the
happiness was more akin to social comfort than moral
beatitude. The Roman Catholics, just emancipated,
were still suffering from the social proscription which
in England is the worst sort of religious disability ;
and seemed a people with memories but without
hopes, with illustrious names but without leaders,
enfeebled by having lived so long as aliens amid their
own flesh and blood. The Dissenters, strengthened
by their recent enfranchisement, and as it were legiti
mated by the State, were demanding still ampler
rights, freer education, and universities that knew no
church, and were also mustering and marshalling the
energies that were largely to determine the march of

286 CATHOLICISM

reform. The Episcopal Church was the grand bul
wark against Rome, and stood in very different
relations to the two forms of dissent, the Catholic and
the Protestant : to the one it stood as became a bul
wark, absolutely opposed ; but to the other its relation
was rather mixed. One church party was, for theo
logical reasons, sympathetic; but another was, for
ecclesiastical reasons, at once tolerant and disdainful —
feeling as to a superfluous auxiliary, which would
exist and assist without either its existence or assist
ance being wanted.
The effect, then, of the political changes had been
twofold. They had, on the one hand, broadened the
basis of the English State, made the terms of citizen
ship distinctively civil, and incorporated or affiliated
classes that had hitherto been dealt with as aliens.
But, on the other hand, they had worked for the
English church what can only be described as a
revolution. For up till now it had been, and indeed
still is, more easy to distinguish Church and State
ideally than actually ; the English constitution may be
said to have recognized their formal difference, but to
have affirmed their material identity. Parliament is,
in theory, the English people assembled for purposes
of legislation ; the English church is, in idea, the same
people associated for the purpose of worship. The
supreme legislative authority for both Church and
State is one and the same. Our great ecclesiastical
laws are, as regards source and sanction, civil; our
civil authorities appoint the men who fill our great

ANGLO-CATHOLICISM— OLD AND NEW 287
ecclesiastical offices. Civil penalties follow the viola
tion of ecclesiastical laws, and our ultimate ecclesias
tical tribunals are all civil. The Act of Uniformity
was passed and enforced by the civil power, and under
it dissent was a civil offence punished by civil and
political penalties. The same power determined at
once the books to be subscribed, the persons who were
to subscribe them, and the terms of the subscription.
The practice was intelligible and logical enough on
the theory that Church and State were, though
formally different, materially identical ; each was the
same thing viewed under a different aspect, the civil
legislature being at the same time in its own right also
the ecclesiastical. So long as the theory even toler
ably corresponded with fact, the system could be made
to work ; but once Church and State ceased to be, and
to be considered as being, co-extensive, the system
became at once illogical, unreal, and impracticable.
Now, the Acts which emancipated the Catholics and
abolished the Tests, declared that for the State dissent,
whether Catholic or Protestant, had ceased to exist ;
that to a man as a citizen, it could no longer apply
the categories of Conformist or Nonconformis ; in
other words, it might be a State with a Church, but
had ceased to be a State that was, or tried to be, a
Church. Nor did this change stand alone ; it involved
another more flagrant, if not so radical. Dissenters,
Catholic and Protestant, had not only by the State
been abolished for the State ; but they could sit in
Parliament, and perform all the functions of legislators

288 CATHOLICISM

without any irritating condition of occasional con
formity, or pledge to respect what they did not believe.
And as Parliament was the supreme Legislature for
the Church as well as for the State, it happened that
men whose distinctive note was dissent from the
church, were, by a constitutional change which en
larged and benefited the State, invested with legisla
tive authority over the church they dissented from ;
and men the church could not truthfully recognize as
fully or adequately Christian, became, by civil action
and on civil grounds, lawgivers for the very church
that refused them recognition. The anomalies in the
situation were many ; but to the State they were only
such as were inseparable from its progress out of a
mixed civil and ecclesiastical society into a society
purely and simply civil ; though to the church they
were fundamental contradictions of its very idea as
national, and as such ought to have been felt intoler
able. And the inexorable logic of the situation soon
became manifest. The Whigs were in the ascendant,
with ample opportunity to gratify their traditional
disbelief in church claims and their hereditary love
of .church lands, especially as a means of creating a
patriotic aristocracy. The Royal Commission on
Ecclesiastical Revenues was appointed, the bishops
were advised to set their house in order, and almost
the half of the Irish Sees were suppressed. The out
look was not hopeful, and in the church camp there
was rage not unmingled with despair.
2. Within the English church the old varieties

ANGLO-CATHOLICISM— OLD AND NEW 289
of thought and policy prevailed, but all were charac
terized by the same unfitness for the new circum
stances. The High Church was at its driest ; the old
chivalrous loyalties had become impossible ; and,
unexalted by any new ideal, its character had deteri
orated. ' It was like an ancient dame whose pride is
sustained by inveterate prejudices and the recollection
of conquests in a time too remote to be pleasantly
remembered. Its original theory had beert built on
the royal prerogative : the divine right of the king
had defined and determined the right of his church
to be the church of his people ; its authority within
the State was a form of his, and men could not secede
from the church without being disloyal to the king.
It was a perfectly intelligible theory, and as coherent
as it was intelligible, but then its primary premiss
was the king's divine right ; once the premiss had
been disproved or made impossible by events, the
theory ceased to be either intelligible or coherent.
And disproof had come in'the most cogent form : first,
and most disastrously in the revolution of 1688 ; next,
and permanently, in the Hanoverian succession.
But a life without reason is never a happy life : what
obstinacy keeps alive demoralizes the obstinacy by
which it lives ; and so throughout a good half of the
eighteenth century the High Church party hated the
reigning dynasty, plotted treason in its heart, and was
depraved by the treason it plotted. And when the
reconciliation came, it came not by' the theory being
so modified as to suit a constitutional king, but by an
19

290 CATHOLICISM

attempted adaptation of the king to the theory.
Now, a party out of harmony with the fundamental
tendencies and principles of a State, can never so live
within the State as to be either an efficient or a
beneficent factor in its development. The forces that
make for change are forces it does not understand,
and so cannot control. And so it happened that with
the utmost will to resist, the High Church party was
without either the strength or the faculty for resist
ance. Of the Broad Church, only this need here be said :
it was inchoate, perplexed, struggling out of its old
formal latitudinarian policy into the new spirit, with
out, however, having found for its idea a form suitable
to the century. The Evangelicals, on the other hand,
seemed fuller of energy and promise, represented
what might then have been termed the type of religion
most characteristic of the English people. On the
intellectual side it was timid, borne", formal, closed.
Its hatred of rationalism turned into fear of reason ;
it lived within its narrow tidy garden, cut its trees of
knowledge into Dutch figures, arranged its flower
beds on geometrical lines, but was careful never to
look over the hedge or allow any fresh seeds from the
outer world to take root within its borders. Yet by a
curious necessity the spirit of an age lives even in the
strongest reaction against it ; and to the formal
rationalism of the eighteenth century the Evangelical
revival owed its violently conventional theology, the
foolhardiness which could represent the relations of

ANGLO-CATHOLICISM— OLD AND NEW 29 1
God and man by a series of formulated and reasoned
abstractions. But whatever may be said of its
theology, the heart of its piety was sound ; it might
be narrow, but it was deep and genuine. Men who
did not know it, took offence at its manner of speech
touching the more awful mysteries of being, and
sneered at it as ^^-worldliness. But no piety was
ever more healthily and actively humane. Face to
face with a corruption that might appal even the
society of to-day, it pleaded for purity of manners
and created a social conscience and moral shame
where for centuries they had been asleep. In an age
which knew no duty of rich to poor, or of educated
to ignorant — save the duty of standing as far off as
possible and leaving them in their vice and filth,
passions and poverty — it awakened an enthusiasm
for their souls and a love for their outcast children,
which yet was so blended with love of their bodies
and their homes as to coin the now familiar proverb,
so characteristic of the then Evangelical faith,
" Cleanliness is next to godliness." In a time when
humanity was unknown in the prison, and a merciless
law became even criminal in its dealings with the
guilty, Evangelical, and indeed specifically Dissent
ing piety (John Howard was an Independent, Mr.
Fry was a Friend) began the more than Herculean
work of reforming the prisons and Christianizing the
law. In a period when the less civilized races were
regarded only as chattels, or as a means of replenish
ing the coffers or gratifying the ambitions or even the

292 CA THOLICISM

passions of the more civilized, the same piety — in spite
of the mockery of clerical wits, and the scorn of the
New Anglicans, who could not love the wretched
" niggers," because they " concentrated in themselves
all the whiggery, dissent, cant, and abomination that
had been ranged on their side," * in spite, too, of the
antagonism of statesmen and of all interested classes —
taught the English people to consider the conquered
Hindu, the enslaved negro, the savage African or
South Sea Islander, as a soul to be saved. And so it
created in England and America the enthusiasm that
emancipated the slave and helped to form the rudi
ments of a conscience, if not a heart, in the callous
bosom of English politics, and even in the still harder
and emptier bosom of English commerce. Nay,
Evangelical piety must not be defamed in the home of
its birth ; it was the very reverse of other-worldly,
intensely practical, brotherly, benevolent, beneficent,
though somewhat prudential in the means it used to
gain its most magnanimous ends. He who speaks
in its dispraise, either does not know it or feels no
gratitude for good achieved. Happy will it be for
Anglo-Catholicism, which we may, in contradistinction
to the Evangelical, term the ritual and sacerdotal
revival, if, once it has run its inevitable course, men
can trace but half as much of human good to its
inspiration. Great are the things it has aehieved for
the idea of the church, for the restoration, which too
often means the desecration, of churches, for the
1 Hurrell Froude, Remains, part i. vol. i. p. 382.

ANGLO-CATHOLICISM— OLD AND NEW 293
elaboration of worship and the adornment of the
priest ; but the final measure of its efficiency will be
what it accomplishes for the souls and lives of men.
But two things disqualified the Evangelicals for
adequate dealing with the emergency — their intellec
tual timidity and their want of any sufficient idea of
the church. These two were intimately related ;
their theology was too narrowly individualistic, too
much a reasoned method of saving single souls, to
admit easily, or without fracture, those larger views
of God, the universe and man, needed to guide a
great society in a crisis, or, as it were, in the very
article of revolution. They did not sufficiently feel
that the Church was a sort of spiritual Fatherland,
within which they had been born, through which they
lived, for whose very dust they could love to die.
The Evangelicals have often been described as the
successors and representatives of the Puritans within
the Anglican church, but here they were their very
opposites. The Puritan theology was remarkable for
its high and catholic doctrine of the Church, so con
ceiving the sovereignty of the Redeemer that the
body in which he lived and over which He reigned
could never be dependent on any State or subordinate
to any civil power whatever. The high Anglican
rather than the Evangelical has here been the Puri
tan's heir, though the Anglican has lowered the
splendid idea he inherited by giving it a less noble
and a less catholic expression. It was the want of
such a vivifying and commanding idea that lost the

294 CA THOLICISM

Evangelical the leadership of the Church in its hour
of storm and crisis.
3. So far, then, it seemed as if the battle against
vigorous and victorious Liberalism must be fought on
the lines so abhorred of the old High Church, the lines
of the latitudinarian utilities. Church and State were
allies, their union was due to a contract or compact,
by which the Church received so much pay and privi
lege, and the State so much service and sanction. To
argue the question on this ground was to be defeated ;
there was no principle in it, only the meanest expe
diences, profits to be determined by the utilitarian
calculus, with contract broken when profits ended.
It was at this moment that Romanticism assumed an
ecclesiastical form, and emerged, changed in name,
but unchanged in essence, as Anglo-Catholicism.
Romanticism may be described as the literary spirit
which, born partly in the frenzy of the Revolution,
and partly in the recoil from it, executed in the early
decades of this century summary vengeance upon the
rationalism of the last. It was not English merely,"
but European ; it had achieved great things on the
Continent before it took shape here. In France it
produced Chateaubriand, whose rhapsodical Ginie was
at once a coup de theatre et d'autel ; Joseph de Maistre
and the hierocratic school, with their idealization of
the Papacy. In Germany, it blossomed into the
Stolbergs and the Schlegels, who preached the duty
of a flight from the present to the past, and believed
that they preserved faith by indulging imagination.

ANGLO-CATHOLICISM— OLD AND NEW 295
Through the philosophical theologians and critical
historians in the Catholic faculties of schools like
Tubingen and Munich, as represented by Moehler
and Dollinger, it entered theology, furnishing Roman
Catholicism with a new and potent apologetic, and
the Anglican with a no less potent source of inspira
tion and guidance. Its characteristic was an imagina
tive handling of its material, especially mediaevalism
and its survivals, with a view to a richer and happier
whole of life, Rationalism was an optimism which
glorified its own enlightened age, and pitied the
ignorance and superstition of the earlier men ; but
Romanticism was an idealism which wished to tran
scend the present it disliked, by returning, either with
Wordsworth to a severe simplicity, all the more
refined that it was so rustic and natural, or, as with
Scott, to the gallant days of chivalry and the rule of
the highly born and bred. All were subjective, each
used a different medium for the expression of him
self; but the characteristic thing was the self that was
expressed, not the medium employed. The Lake
poets sang in praise of Nature, but it was the Nature
of the poet's dream, sleeping in the light that never
was on sea or shore. Scott loved to picture the past,
but his was the past of the poet's fancy ; not the hard,
grim world, where men struggled with existence and
for it, but an idealized arena, where noble birth meant
noble being ; and only a villain or a hypocrite could
lift a hand, even for freedom, against a head that was
crowned. In this use of the imagination there was

296 CATHOLICISM

more truth, but less reality, than there had been in the
cold and analytic methods of the previous century.
Rationalism, for want of the historical imagination,
sacrificed the past to theory. Romanticism, for want
of the critical faculty, sacrificed history to the past.
What one finds in the elegant yet careless pages of
Hume, is a record of events that once happened,
written by a man who has never conceived so as to
realize the events he describes ; what one finds in the
vivid pages of Scott is a living picture of the past,
but of a past that had never lived. This is the very
essence of Romanticism, the imaginative interpreta
tion of nature or history : but it is only the form
that is natural or historical, the substance or spirit is
altogether the interpreter's own.
§ II. The Makers of the Revival
1. Now it was this Romanticist tendency that was
the positive factor of Anglo-Catholicism. While the
other two sets of circumstances supplied respectively
the occasion and the opportunity, this gave the crea
tive impulse ; it was the spirit that quickened. The
men in whom it took shape and found speech were
three — Keble, Newman, Pusey. Perhaps we ought
to name a fourth, Hurrell Froude; but he lives in
Newman. He was the swiftest, most daring spirit of
them all ; his thought is hot, as it were, with the
fever that shortened his days ; his words are suffused
as with a hectic flush, and we must judge him rather
as one who moved men to achieve than by his own

ANGLO-CATHOLICISM— OLD AND NEW 297
actual achievements. The three we have named were
in a rare degree complementary of each other ; they
were respectively poet, thinker, and scholar, and each
contributed to the movement according to his kind.
Keble was a splendid instance of the truth that a
man who makes the songs of a people does more
than the man who makes their laws. His hymns are
a perfect lyric expression of the Romanticist ten
dency ; in them the mood of the moment speaks its
devoutest feelings in fittest form. This was the
secret of their power. They are without the passion
of the mystic, the infinite hunger of the soul that
would live for God, after the God it cannot live
without, the desire to transcend all media, win the
immediate divine vision, and lose self in its supreme
bliss ; rather are they the sweet and mellow fruit of
" pious meditation fancy-fed," which loves means as
means, feels joy in their use, in reading their mean
ing, in being subdued by their gentle discipline ; and
which loves God all the better for the seemliness and
stateliness of the way we get to Him. Keble learned
of Wordsworth to love nature, to read it as a veiled
parable, or embodied allegory, spoken by God and
heard by the soul ; he learned of Scott to love the
past, and seek in it his ideals. His love of God
became love of his own church, of what she had
been, what she was, and, above all, of what she ought
to be ; of her ancient monuments, her venerable in
stitutions, her stately ceremonial, her saints and her
saints' days. And by his sweet, meditative, poetic

298 CATHOLICISM

gift he made what he loved seem lovely. What
ecclesiastical polemics, parochial activity, and sacer
dotal ritual never could have accomplished, his hymns
achieved ; indeed, they not only' made those others
possible, but even necessary, creating for them that
disposition, that readiness to receive, to learn, and to
trust, which is, according to Newman, the greater
part of faith. It is by sure instinct that the name of
Keble has been seized as the name most typical of
the Anglo-Catholic revival. He caught the prevailing
sentiment, and translated it into a form at once poetic
and religious ; and by so doing he turned a rising tide
or tendency into the service of his party and his church.
But the secret of his strength may become the source
of their weakness. The man of pious and meditative
fancy may evoke the historical spirit, and make the
present beautiful in the light of an idealized past ;
but when the appeal is to history, scientific criticism
becomes the ultimate judge, and, though its judg
ments are slow, they are inexorable as those of God.
2. Newman was more rarely gifted than Keble, but
his gifts, though of a rarer and higher order, were less
pure in quality. He had in a far higher degree the
poet's temper, and more of his insight, creative genius
and passion. It was his misfortune to be an ecclesi
astic in a stormy crisis, and indeed to be of the crisis
the foremost and characteristic polemic. He had a
subtle and analytic intellect ; but dialectical rather
than speculative, discursive and critical rather than
synthetic and constructive. He had more of the

ANGLO-CATHOLICISM— OLD AND NEW 299
mystic's nature and intensity than Keble ; the
passion for God burned in his spirit like a fire, im
pelled him as by an awful necessity to the Infinite,
yet divided him from it by a still more awful dis
tance. He loved to seek everywhere for symbols of
the divine, which would at once assure him of the
Eternal Presence, and help him to gain more con
scious access to it ; yet he had the genuine mystic's
feeling that all means were inadequate, and so
divisive ; as mediative they held the spirit out of
the immediate Presence, and not only shaded but
obscured its glory. Hence he had none of Keble's
love of means as means ; he had too much imagina
tion to be satisfied with the sensuous seemliness, the
Laudian " beauty of holiness," which pleased Keble's
fine and fastidious, but feebler fancy ; what he wanted
was to stand face to face with God himself, and to
find a way to Him as sure as his own need for Him
was deep and real. But to find such a way, never an
easy thing, was to one situated and constituted like
Newman peculiarly hard. For as deep and ineradi
cable as his passion for God was his scepticism of
reason, which is, in the last analysis, the subtlest of
all scepticisms as to God.1 And it is the least toler-

1 This interpretation of Newman is admirably illustrated by
Mr. Hutton, Modern Guides of English Thought in Matters of
Faith, pp. 78 ff. The conclusion was not intended, but is only
on that account the more significant. " It is, I think, profound
pity for the restlessness and insatiability of human reason
which has made him a Roman Catholic." But the "pity" is

300 CATHOLICISM

able, because the most paralysing, to the man with
the spirit and temper of the mystic. To believe in
God, yet to doubt His real presence in the reason, is
to be impelled to imagine that what in man has most
of God is also remotest from Him, and most com
pletely out of His control ; and so the inexorable
logic of the situation forces the man, if he does not
surrender his doubt of the reason, either to surrender
all certainty and all reality in his knowledge of God,
or to end the conflict by calling in some violent
mechanical expedient, such indeed as Newman was
slowly but irresistibly driven to adopt. Whence this
sceptical tendency came in Newman's case is a
question we have already in part discussed ; but
here we may say he owed it, partly, perhaps mainly,
to native intellectual qualities, partly, to his place in
the reaction against Rationalism, and, partly, to an
author he greatly loves to praise, who possibly repre
sents the greatest mental influence he came under,
Butler. The reaction against Rationalism was in
Newman more a matter of imagination than of
reason ; and he hated and disowned its results with
out transcending its philosophy. As a consequence,
he shared in the common inheritance of our modern
English thought, that doubt of the reason which has
become in the more consistent philosophies either a
reasoned doubt, or, what is the same thing adapted
only the superficial expression of the deeper scepticism, which
so doubts " God's Spirit as revealed in conscience and reason,"
as to require an infallible institution for their control.

ANGLO-CATHOLICISM— OLD AND NEW 301
to a positive and scientific age, a reasoned nescience.
And to the difficulties or antinomies of his thought
Butler more than any man awoke him. The under
lying or material idea of the Analogy, what may
be termed the theory of the correspendence of the
physical and spiritual realms, especially when further
qualified by the influence of Keble, gave indeed to
Newman his grand constructive principle, the notion
of the sacramental symbolism of Nature ; but its
formal and regulative maxim, " Probability is the
guide of life," was more creative of disturbance and
perplexity. For to a man of his temper, mental
integrity, and theistic passion, as sure of God's being
as of his own, it must have seemed a sort of irony to
make such a maxim the judicial and determinative
principle in a religious argument. It may be said
to have formulated his master problem — How is it
possible to build on probable evidence the certitude
of faith ? or, How, by a method of probabilities, can
the existence, if not of necessary, yet of infallible
truth, be proved ? Indeed, Butler's probability, which
- was not without similar tendencies in his own case,
determined the search which landed Newman in
Papal infallibility.
We have, then, to imagine Newman, with his mystic
passion, his philosophical scepticism, and his apolo-
getical maxim, called to face the disintegrative and
aggressive forces of his time. He could face them in
strength only by maintaining his intellectual integrity ;
and from the antinomies of his thought there were

¦J02 CATHOLICISM

only two possible ways of escape, either by a higher
philosophy or a higher authority. And of these two
each was exclusive of the other. If the way by
philosophy had been chosen, then the process of re
conciliation would have been immanent and natural ;
the antitheses of the formal understanding would have
been overcome by the synthesis of the transcendental
reason. But to choose the way of authority was to
deny that any natural process of reconciliation was
possible, and to seek to silence the inward dissonances
by the sound of an outward voice; and, of course,
the deeper the dissonances grew, the more authorita
tive had the voice to be made. For many reasons —
constitutional, educational, circumstantial, social — the
philosophical way was not selected ; and Newman be
gan his wonderful polemical career a mystic in faith,
a sceptic in philosophy, a seeker after an authority
able to subdue the scepticism and vindicate the faith.
His power, studied in connection with his marvellous
literary faculty and intense religious sincerity, is ex
plicable enough ; but, regarded as a question in philo
sophical criticism, it is more complex and difficult of
analysis. No man has more thoroughly understood
the men of his age ; no man of genius ever less com
prehended the problems of his time, or contributed
less to their solution. It is remarkable, considering
his immense productivity, and the range and kind of
subjects he has handled, how few constructive princi
ples, speculative and historical, can be found in his
works. The critical philosophy he does not seem to

ANGLO-CATHOLICISM— OLD AND NEW 303
have cared to understand. Modern criticism, as re
gards both principles and methods, he never tried to
master, or even, objectively, to conceive. The scien
tific treatment of history is too alien to his spirit and
aims to be comprehended by him. His one consider
able historical work * is but an overgrown polemical
pamphlet — a treatise on the controversies of his own
times disguised as a history. His Doctrine of Develop'
ment 2 is not original ; and its thesis, so far from being
the equivalent of evolution, is its antithesis and con
tradiction. It may be logic applied to dogma, but is
not science applied to history. His most consider
able, at once philosophical and apologetical work,3
may be described as a treatise on the necessity of the
personal equation in religion : it ignores what is
primary and universal in the reason, that it may build
on what is specific and acquired in the individual.
But it is no paradox to say, those very elements of
his philosophical weakness have been sources of his
literary and controversial strength. The very severity
of the conflict in his own spirit has given him the
profoundest sense of any thinker in our day of the
perplexities of living man — the bewilderments of
thought, motive, and conscience that come of limited
and passionful being, bound by law yet in revolt
against the law that binds it. Convictions the more
strenuous that they were formulated in conflict and
1 The Arians of the Fourth Century (1833).
2 An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine (1845).
3 The Grammar of Assent (1870),

304 CATHOLICISM
have been held amid controversies, internal and ex
ternal ; a piety that is nothing less than a genius for
religion ; an intense imagination, using the instruments
of subtle dialectic, and clothing argument in speech
of wondrous grace and force, have enabled him to
address with unequalled, often irresistible, power, men
who could be reached most easily through the con
science or imagination. Such men he has awed, sub
dued, converted, though by a process that silenced or
overpowered rather than convinced the reason. And
the process he has pursued without, is but the counter
part of the process he had before pursued within.
Truth has never been to him so much an object for
quest or question as for acceptance. Intellectual
difference has been a sort of moral offence, and he
has reasoned as if the men who held the principles
he hated must themselves be odious. Hence came
what Blanco White called his " deceiving pride," and
his resolute sacrifice of old friends to new views.
Hence, too, the temper I will not call intolerant, but
so severely and logically authoritative that, to quote
Blanco White again, " he would, as sure as he lives,
persecute to the death, if he had the direction of the
civil power for a dozen years." These are the invari
able characteristics of the man who bases a faith of
authority on a scepticism of the reason. Newman,
with all that he stands for, represents the struggle of
English empiricism to remain empirical, and yet be
come imaginative and religious.
3. But the scholar of the band was as notable in

ANGLO-CATHOLICISM— OLD AND NEW 305
his own order as the poet and thinker were in theirs.
Pusey, indeed, was less a scholar than a schoolman,
these two being distinguishable thus : the scholar
loves learning, and uses it as an instrument for the
discovery of truth, while the schoolman is a learned
man who uses his learning as a means of proving an
assumed or formulated position. The scholar studies
that he may cultivate mind, develop and exercise the
humanities : but the schoolman searches that he may
find authorities to verify his axioms and justify his
definitions. The scholar aims at objectivity, seeing
things as they really were, how and why they hap
pened, whither tended, and what achieved ; but the
schoolman is throughout governed by subjectivity,
brings his system to history, and pursues his re
searches that history may be made to furnish evidence
of the system he brings. Now Pusey had the mak
ing of a scholar in him, though he never became what
he could have been. He had a susceptible, sym
pathetic,' assimilative mind, combined with a certain
largeness of nature that at once qualified him to un
derstand man and distinguished him as a man men
could trust. His famous Inquiry into the Probable
Causes of German Rationalism admirably illustrates
his mental qualities, especially the susceptible and
assimilative. It is full of his German teachers,1 their
spirit, method, materials, though all has passed through
1 For what the Inquiry owed to Tholuck, and his judgment
on the use made of his material, see Witte's Das Leben Tholuck's,
vol. ii., pp. 242, 243.
20

306 CA THOLICISM

a conservative English mind, wise and honest enough
to defend a cause by being just to the cause it opposed.
But in Oxford, Keble and Newman superseded Tho-
luck, and Pusey passed from the scientific to a local
and insular standpoint, the scholar became the school
man. What he was to the new movement Newman
has testified ; he brought to it the dignity of high
academic office and social rank, weight of character,
counsel, judicial faculty and speech, the service of
vast erudition, and reverence for the sources his erudi
tion explored. He had precisely the qualities most
needed to consolidate and guide the party. Keble's
fancy had idealized the church and its past, had
made its worship poetical, had touched its services
with fine and well-ordered emotion. Newman's genius
had filled the church with new meaning and new
ideals, his eloquence had pealed through it like the
notes of a mighty organ waking long silent echoes,
and had kindled in men a new enthusiasm for their
transfigured church. And now Pusey's erudition came
to search the Fathers and the Anglican divines for
evidence that the new was the old, and based on
venerable and invariable tradition. Keble was loved,
Newman admired, but Pusey trusted. Keble moved
in an atmosphere of reverence and emotion ; difference
in his case did not breed dislike ; the very men who
most disagreed with his theology were most subdued
by his hymns. Newman was even more feared than
admired ; the men who followed doubted, uncertain
whither he might lead ; the men who resisted disliked,

ANGLO-CATHOLICISM— OLD AND NEW 307
certain that he tended with increasing momentum
whither they did not mean to go. But Pusey had
Newman's strength of conviction without his danger
ous genius ; he was conservative not because sceptical,
but because convinced ; he loved his church in the
concrete, and he lived to prove that she embodied the
" quod semper, quod ubique, quod ab omnibus credi-
tum est." On any dubious or questioned point he
was ready to bring determinative evidence from his
recondite lore ; on any critical occasion he was no
less ready to use the pulpit of St. Mary's as a plat
form for the issue of a manifesto. And so the move
ment others created, Pusey controlled ; and in his
hands its character became fixed as a creation or
Renaissance of Romanticism conditioned and tem
pered by scholasticism.
§ III. The Anglo-Catholic Theory
1. To these men, then, the progress of events in
literature and philosophy on the one hand, and in
Church and State on the other, combined to set the
problem : How can the Church be rescued from the
hands of a State penetrated and commanded by
" Liberalism," and be elevated into an authority able
to regulate faith and conscience, to control reason
and society ? What Newman named " Liberalism " was
a single force disguised in many forms, rationalism
in religion, revolution or reform in politics, Eras-
tianism and latitudinarianism in church. It was the
spirit of change, negation, disintegration, destruction.

308 CATHOLICISM

The church must destroy it, or it would destroy the
church, and with it faith in God, godliness, religion.
To save the church, two things were necessary — to
invest it with divine authority and all the rights
flowing from it ; and to set it strong in its authority
and rights over against the apostate State on the
one hand, and the rebellious reason on the other.
With sure instinct the New Anglicans began by
assailing the Reformation. The Puritans had dis
approved and opposed the royal authority, because
it arrested and restrained the Reformation ; but the
Anglican hated the Reformation, because it had been
effected by the royal authority. In the old days,
when the king reigned by the grace of God and
through the zealous spirits of the Episcopal bench,
the Anglican had loved the royal supremacy, and
soundly punished the Puritan for denying it: but
when, in the process of constitutional change, the
royal supremacy became only the form or mask of
parliamentary power and control, which in its turn
was but the instrument of the hated " Liberalism,"
— then the Anglican became as convinced as the
Puritan of the excellence of independency.1 The
1 It is instructive to see how similar ideas under similar con
ditions demand for their expression similar terms. Thus the
earliest treatise from the High Church point of view on this
subject is Charles Leslie's ; the title runs : " The case of the
Regale and of the Pontificate stated, in a Conference concern
ing the Independency of the Church upon any power on earth,
m the exercise of her purely Spiritual power and authority."
This exactly reproduces the very idea, in what is almost exactly

ANGLO- CATHOLICISM— OLD AND NEW 309

secular arm in touching had wronged the church;
and while the men who did it, and those who suffered
it to be done, were alike reproached, she was pic
tured as the gracious mother of peoples, with her
heroic yet saintly sons, and clinging yet stately
daughters about her, creating literature, civilization,
art, and whatever made life rich and beautiful,
and remaining benignant, though forlorn, in the
midst of a greedy and graceless posterity, blind to
her beauty, and forgetful of her beneficence. But
Newman touched a higher strain ; his genius scorned
to ask aid from sentiment ; he called upon the
church to become militant and equip herself in the
armour of her divine attributes. The State might
suppress bishoprics, but bishops were independent of
the State ; they were before it, existed by a higher
right, were of apostolical descent and authority, stood
in a divine order which the State had not made and
could not unmake. And as with the bishops, so
with the clergy ; their orders were sacred, inalienable,
instituted of God, and upheld by Him. And their
functions corresponded to their authority; to them
had been committed the keys of the kingdom ; they
could bind and loose, and were by their commission
empowered to act in their Master's name. In their
their own phraseology, as to the relation of Church and State
held by those who were the ancestors of the later " Indepen
dents." Indeed, the Anglican "autonomy of the Church "is
but the Puritan independency, or rather a single aspect of it,
and the Presbyterian " Crown rights of the Redeemer.''

3IO CATHOLICISM

hands too, and in theirs only, were the sacraments,
and " the sacraments, not preaching, are the sources
of divine grace." The sacred order was the condi
tion of the church's being, and the factor of its
efficiency ; where the authorized priest was not, the
sacraments could not be ; and no sacraments meant
no church, no life communicated by Baptism and
maintained by the Eucharist. And the church
which ministered life by her sacraments, guarded,
defined, and interpreted truth by her authority ; for
to the being and belief of the truth, an authoritative
interpreter was even more necessary than an in
spired source. And this was to be found in tradition,
not indeed as collected and preserved by Rome, but
as contained in the Fathers, and as gathered from
them by Anglican scholars and divines. Rome was
corrupt, but catholic ; the Protestant churches were
corrupt and sectarian ; but the church of the Fathers
was catholic and pure; and after it the Anglican
was fashioned, and tried to walk in its light and read
the truth with its eyes. And so a proud, coherent,
and courageous theory of the Church stood up to
confront and dare the State ; to rebuke it as of the
earth, to speak to it as with the voice of heaven, to
command it to revere and obey where it had thought
it could compel and rule.
2. It is no part of my purpose to criticize the
Anglican theory ; it was the work of men who made
an impassioned appeal to history, but were utterly
void of the historical spirit. The past they loved

ANGLO-CATHOLICISM— OLD AND NEW 311
and studied was a past of detached fragments, violent
divisions, broken and delimited in the most arbitrary
way. Their canon, "quod semper, quod ubique,
quod ab omnibus creditum est," they honoured in
speech rather than observance ; the " semper " did
not mean " always," or the " ubique " everywhere,
or the " ab omnibus " by all ; but only such times,
places and men, or even such parts and sections of
times, places and men, as could be made to suit or
prove the theory. Then, for an authority to be of
any use in the region of truth, it must be authori
tative, accessible, self-consistent and explicit ; but
this authority was not one of these things — it was
only the voice of these very simple, very positive,
unscientific, and often mistaken men. Their supreme
difficulty, which broke down the transcendent genius
of the party, was to get their own church to speak
their mind ; and they were even less successful with
the Fathers than with their church. There is no
more splendid example anywhere of how completely
a professedly historical movement can be indepen
dent of historical truth. The Tractarians in this
respect present a remarkable contrast to the Re
formers. Calvin in his treatment of doctrine was
nothing if not historical ; the Tractarians in their
treatment of history were nothing if not dogmatic.
They were traditional but not historical, while the
Reformers were historical but not traditional. The
Reformers courageously, if not always thoroughly,
rejected tradition and authority that they might

312 CATHOLICISM

reach the mind and realize the ideal of the Christ
of history ; but the Tractarians, with no less courage,
tried to adapt the historical mind and bend the
historical ideal to authority and tradition. Truth is
patient, and suffers much at the hands of sincere
men ; but she always comes by her own at last.
§ IV. The Anglo-Catholics and Literature
i. What has been the result of the Anglo-Catholic
revival? If the success of a religious movement is
to be measured by its power to penetrate with its
own spirit, to persuade and reconcile to religion the
best intellects of a country, then even its most
devoted advocates can hardly say that Anglo-Catholi
cism has succeeded. While at first championed by
the greatest literary genius and master of dialectic
who has in this century concerned himself with
theology, it is marvellous how little it has touched
our characteristic and creative minds ; with these
neither Roman nor Anglican Catholicism has ac
complished anything. Take the poets, who alike
as regards period and place ought to have been most
accessible and susceptible to the Catholic spirit and
influence. Arthur Hugh Clough was educated at
Balliol, and elected to a Fellowship at Oriel in the
days when Newman reigned in St. Mary's; and he
is considered by the most competent of our critics
to be " the truest expression in verse of the moral
and intellectual tendencies of the period in which he
lived." He is fascinated by Newman and held by

ANGLO-CATHOLICISM— OLD AND NEW 313
him for a while, but only that he may learn how
little there is behind the subtle and persuasive elo
quence to satisfy a mind possessed with the passion
for veracity ; and he is driven by the recoil into the
anxious uncertainties where " the music of his rustic
lute " lost " its happy country tone,"
"And learnt a stormy note
Of men contention-tost, of men who groan.''
Matthew Arnold, son of a father who made Eng
land love breadth of view and truth in history,
studied, learned, and suffered with the Thyrsis he so
deeply yet so sweetly mourned ; like him he became
a poet, jealous of truth in thought and word, and
like him, too, faced the problem and the men of the
hour ; but he did not dare to trust as guides for the
present men too credulous of the past to read its
truths aright. Too well he learned the bitter moral
of all their arguing, and concluded : " If authority be
necessary to faith, then an impossible authority
makes faith impossible " ; and he turned from Oxford
to learn of Weimar — " The end is everywhere,
Art still has truth, take refuge there."
William Morris, formed in the Oxford of a later
day, when in the calm that follows conflict Anglo-
Catholicism reigned, could find in it no satisfying
veracious ideal of truth, of art or of life ; and he went
instead to the wild Scandinavian and distant Greek
mythologies for the forms in which to impersonate

314 CATHOLICISM

his faith and hope. Swinburne, who had the hot
imagination that easily kindled to noble dreams of
liberty and human good, could find no promise in
the crimson sunset glories which Anglo-Catholicism
loved ; and he turned passionately towards what
seemed to him the east and the sunrise. But it was
not only those younger sons of Oxford who had in
a measure " the vision and the faculty divine," that
the new Catholicism failed to touch; it touched as
little the maturer and richer imaginations of the two
men who will ever remain the representative poets
of the Victorian era. Tennyson has been essentially
a religious genius ; the doubts, the fears, the thought
perplexed by evil, by suffering, by a nature cruel in
her very harmonies, by the presence of wicked men
and the distance of a helpful God, the faith victorious
in the very face of sin and death, certain that some
how "good will be the final goal of ill," have all
received from him rich and musical expression. But
his ideals are not those of mediaeval or modern
Catholicism ; they may be clothed in forms borrowed
from a far-off world of mythical chivalry ; but it is
not a priest's world ; it is one of men all the more
saintly that they are kings, warriors, statesmen, a
world of fair women and goodly men. Browning,
who was as essentially a religious poet as Tennyson,
and indeed, though no writer of hymns, as a poet
more profoundly, penetratively, and comprehensively
religious than Keble, bears throughout in his sym
pathies — in his love of liberty, in his hopeful trust in

ANGLO-CATHOLICISM— OLD AND NEW 315
man, in his belief in God as the All-loving as well
as the All-great, who through the thunder speaks with
human voice — the marks and fruits of his Puritan
birth and breeding. But the sensuous seemliness of
Anglo-Catholicism had no charms for him ; it had
too little spiritual sublimity, stood too remote from
the heart of things, had too little fellowship with the
whole truth of God, and all the infinite needs and
aspirations of man. He had seen, too, the outwork
ing of its ideas ; had studied their action and
character in history ; and his curious lore and large
experience helped him to many a fit yet quaint
form in which to embody what he had discovered
or observed. Browning more than any man has
deepened the faith of our age in the Eternal ; but
he has also, more than any man, made us conscious
of the evil of fancying that we can transmute our
ephemeral polities and shallow symbols into the
infallible and unchangeable speech of God.
2. This failure of Anglo-Catholicism to touch our
higher literature is both remarkable and instructive.
It has had and has its minor poets, a goodly
multitude ; but even their poetry has been mainly
reminiscent and sentimental, not spontaneous and
imaginative. Indeed, this has been its characteristic
in all periods of its being ; writers of hymns, quaint,
devout, beautiful, melodious, it has always had, but
never poets of the imagination ; if it has ever taken
possession of such, it has paralyzed the poet in them,
as witness Wordsworth and his ecclesiastical sonnets.

3l6 CATHOLICISM

In this stands expressed some of its essential
characteristics. Within the rich and complicated and
splendidly dight folds of the Spenserian allegories,
there lives much of the brawny Puritan mind and
purpose. The same mind, and the faith it lived
by, made the noblest epic and the most perfect
classical drama in the speech of our English people.
No man will claim John Dryden as a religious poet,
though he forced poetry into the ignoble strife of
ecclesiastical politics, and made it the mean apologist
of royal and papal designs. Deism lisped in num
bers through the lips of Catholic Pope ; and the
Evangelical Revival inspired the gentle soul of
Cowper to verse, always genial and graceful, and
often gay. But Anglo-Catholic poetry, measured by
the Puritan, is remarkable for nothing so much as
its imaginative poverty, its inability to create a
literature that shall adequately embody the true
and the sublime. And this has its parallel in the
theology of the past half-century. Newman, of
course, stands alone — Catholic still, but Anglican
no more. Apart from him, what names represent
the most potent forces in theology and the higher
religious thought ? Of all preachers, Frederick
Robertson has most moved the mind and conscience
of this generation ; but though an Oxford man of
the time when the Tracts were at their mightiest, he
escaped from their toils with a rare love of reality,
an abhorrence of all false sanctities, a dread of all
violence offered in the name of authority to reason.

ANGLO-CATHOLICISM— OLD AND NEW 317
Frederick Maurice was a personality of rare charm,
with a soul ever turned towards the light, with a
large range of vision, and a love of love and light
that makes him the most mystical thinker of our
century ; yet his whole life was one sustained protest
against the attempt to incorporate the religion of
Christ in a sentimental and sacramental symbolism.
There has been in our generation no writer in
religious history so picturesque, no churchman so
bold in speech and in action, so possessed of a broad
and inclusive ideal of the national church as Arthur
Stanley ; but he lived and died as the resolute
antagonist of those Catholic schemes that so laboured
to sectionalize the church he loved. Of another,
though lower, order was Charles Kingsley ; but he
was in his earlier period full of generous impulses,
philanthropies, socialisms, quick and fertile at em
bodying his ameliorative dreams in attractive fiction ;
and he was possessed with what can only be
described as a great terror lest the rising tide of
sacerdotalism should drown what was most ethical
and historical in the life of the English people. If
Oxford has had within this period a scholar who
could be named a Humanist, it was Mark Pattison.
But, though he fell under the spell of Newman — and
indeed for him the spell was never broken — yet to
him the Catholic theory became ever more incredible
and false, and the system ever more mischievous in
its working, fatal to freedom, learning, and all the
fair humanities. It may, too, be allowed to me

3l8 CATHOLICISM

o

to allude to one, though the grass above his grave
is «not yet green, who, of all recent Oxford men,
most fulfilled the ideal of the scholar in theology ;
and applied in a spirit as reverent as it was
thorough the scientific method to the history of
ecclesiastical institutions. But there was no man
who so strongly believed, or was so armed with
proofs to support his belief, that Anglo-Catholicism
was utterly unhistorical, as Edwin Hatch. It is
needless to multiply names ; it is not in literature
nor yet in theology that the movement has hitherto
achieved success.1 Perhaps success here is not
possible to it ; the signal of victory would be the
sign of decease.
§ V. The Anglican and the Broad Church
But this has brought us face to face with another
and no less interesting problem, or rather series of
problems. How does it happen that the party that
has been so active and so eminent in literature has
accomplished so little in religion, while the party
that has accomplished most in religion has been less
eminent in literature? For two things seem mani
fest and beyond dispute — the decay, pointing to
1 We do not forget distinguished names in connection with
the Anglo-Catholic school. It has had, and still has, learned
historians and men of fine literary gifts ; but to have noticed
these would have taken us beyond the limits defined by our
problem. What was intended was to measure influence by the
major rather than the minor intellects.

ANGLO-CATHOLICISM-OLD AND NEW 319
approaching extinction, of the Broad Church, and
the revival and growing dominancy of the High.
It may seem more dubious to say, a main condition
of the success achieved by the High Church has
been the literary activity and efficiency of the Broad ;
but, paradoxical though it may sound, this represents
the sober historical truth. Why it has so happened
is a question we must discuss in order to get a fuller
view of the situation.
1. The same events that had occasioned the rise
of Anglo-Catholicism determined the being of the
modern Broad Church. The latter was due to an
attempt to adapt the Church to the new conditions
by broadening it as the State had been broadened.
Its fundamental notion was not their ideal difference,
but their material identity. The Broad Church has
throughout its history been dominated, though not
always clearly or consciously, by Arnold's idea, which
was also Hooker's, of the coincidence and co-exten
sion of Church and State. The idea is at once
English and historical ; it implies a far deeper sense
than the other party possesses, of the continuity of
history and the unity of the institutions created and
mantained by the English people both before and
since the Reformation. The idea underlying the
old legislation was right, but the legislation was in
spirit and method wrong, calculated to defeat rather
than fulfil its idea. What was necessary was to
realize the idea by changing the legislation. Parlia
ment had made civil rights independent of ecclesias-

320 CATHOLICISM

tical tests ; tests ought now to be so construed as to
guard rather than invade religious freedom and
ecclesiastical privilege. The Act of Uniformity had
but created division and established variety ; it was
time to attempt, by an Act of comprehension, to
legalize variety and create unity. The idea was thus,
through the State to reconstitute and reunite the
church, as by the State the church had been broken
and divided. Comprehension and relaxed subscrip
tion were to undo what uniformity and enforced
subscription had done. The Broad Church was thus
the very opposite of the Anglo-Catholic ; while the
one emphasized difference till it became indepen
dency, the other accentuated coincidence and relation
till they became identity. The primary element in
the one idea was, — the English people constitute the
English church ; the primary element in the other
idea was, — the Anglican church constitutes the
religion the English people are bound to confess
and obey. The one conceived the church as
national, able to be, only as it included and was
realized by the nation ; the other conceived the
church as of divine authority, because of divine
institution, able to fulfil its mission only by enforcing
its claims. In the one case, not establishment, but
incorporation with the State or in the civil constitution
was of the very essence of the church as English
and national ; in the other case, control of the church
by the State was held to be alien to its very idea as
a society divinely founded and ruled. The parties

ANGLO-CATHOLICISM— OLD AND NEW 321
differed in their conception of the church, but still
more in their notion of religion. To the Anglican,
in a very real sense, church was religion, that without
which religion could not be acceptable to God, or
sufficient for man ; to the Broad Churchman the two
were separable, religion being inward, spiritual, a
matter of heart or conscience, while church was a
means for its cultivation, good in proportion to its suit
ability and efficiency. In polity and dogma, ritual
and symbol, the Anglican could hardly distinguish
between accidental and essential — all was of God,
and all was sacred ; but in all these things his
opponent saw the creations of custom or law, to be
upheld or dismissed as expediency or advantage
might determine. In a word, to the one the church
was a creation of God, instituting religion ; but to the
other the church was an institution of man, though
religion was an inspiration of God.
2. Now these differences were radical, and deter
mined in each case the mental attitude and action on
all religious questions. The Broad Church attitude
tended to become critical, acutely conscious of the
inconvenience of a too positive mind and institutions
too authoritative to be capable of adaptation to the
new conditions of thought and policy. Civil legisla
tion was conceived as able to accomplish what was
impossible to it ; while the differences that divided,
the agreements or affinities that united men, were
conceived more from without than from within, from
the standpoint of the State rather than of the Church.
21

322 CATHOLICISM

Hence, there was superabundant criticism of things
positive, the dogmas which authority had formulated
and enforced, the institutions it created and upheld.
The criticism struck the Evangelical most heavily,
for his faith was of the fixed and frigid type that
most invites criticism. The Pauline Epistles were
translated into a speech and resolved into ideas that
were not his ; his theories of justification and atone
ment were assailed at once from the historical,
exegetical, and speculative points of view ; his doc
trine of inspiration was discredited and made un
tenable, and his conception of the church dismissed
as arbitrary and insufficient. But to hit the Evan
gelical so hard was to do the utmost possible service
to the Anglican. It disabled, pre-occupied, paralyzed
his most resolute adversary, thinned his ranks,
blunted his weapons, deprived him of the convictions
that give courage. Then the Broad Church criticism,
while making no impression on the Anglican, ap
pealed to the sort of minds the Evangelicals had
been most able to influence, surrounded them with
an atmosphere, begot in them a tendency within and
before which the old Evangelical formulae could not
vigorously live ; and yet it did nothing to provide
new homes or agencies for the generation and direc
tion of religious life. The Broad Church is only the
name of a tendency, but the Anglo-Catholic denotes
a party, well officered, well led, disciplined, organized,
and inspired by a great idea. The representative
men within the former have all been marked by a

ANGLO-CATHOLICISM-OLD AND NEW 323
certain severe individualism ; they have attracted
disciples, but have not formed schools. Arnold was
a man of intense ethical passion, and to it he owed
what we may call the most transcendent personal
influence of our century ; Maurice was a thinker
seeking to translate Christian ideas into the terms
of a Neo-Platonic idealism ; Arthur Stanley was a
charming irenical personality, fertile of schemes for
reconciling our divided religious society ; but neither
they nor any of their allies had the enthusiasm of the
sect. They loved a church as broad and as varied
as the English people, but would neither do nor at
tempt anything that threatened to narrow its breadth
or harass it into a prosaic uniformity. And their
positive qualities helped the Anglican even more
than their negative. They loved liberty, used the
liberty they loved, but preached toleration even of
the intolerant. They were impatient of formulae, but
patient of aggressive difference ; they resisted every
attempt to restrict freedom, but encouraged attempts
at its extension and exercise. Hence they helped at
once to create room for Anglo - Catholic develop
ments and to lessen the forces of resistance. Their
intellectual activity made the English mind tolerant
to the most varied forms of belief and worship ; which
means that they prepared the way and the oppor
tunity for the men who believed that theirs was the
only form of divine sufficiency and authority.

CATHOLICISM

\ VI. The Theological Idea in the Anglican Mind
i. But while the Broad Church was thus securing
for it an easier path and a freer field, the Anglo-
Catholics were gathering momentum and growing
more missionary and theological. The Tracts had
been mainly historical and ecclesiastical ; only in a
very minor degree doctrinal and religious. They
had been more concerned with the archaeology than
the theology of the church ; but the work of Arch
deacon Wilberforce on the Incarnation forced theo
logy to the front with most significant results. This
work is an expansion of a section in Moehler's Sym-
bolik, which, in its turn, is an application of the
Hegelian idea to the Catholic church. The idea,
indeed, is much older than Hegel, but its modern
form is due to him. Schelling formulated the no
tion : the incarnation of God is an incarnation from
eternity. Hegel expressed the notion in the terms
of the philosophy of history ; Moehler translated it
into a philosophy of Catholicism ; and apparently its
changeful career is not yet ended. It was said of
Petavius, that he so penetrated Catholicism with the
Protestant spirit that his very apology for the Catho
lic system was a victory for Protestantism ; at least
this much is true, that in handling dogma he was
the liberal, and Bull, his great Anglican opponent,
the conservative. Now if we substitute Hegelian for
Protestant, we may say much the same of Moehler.
It is curious that the fundamental idea of Moehler

ANGLO-CATHOLICISM— OLD AND NEW 325
was also the fundamental idea of Strauss,1 with this
difference : Strauss universalized, but Moehler sec-
tionalized the idea. Strauss transferred the predi
cates of Christ to Man, conceived humanity as the
Son of God, born of the invisible Father and visible
Mother ; as eternal, sinless, feeble, suffering, dying in
its members, but in its collective being risen, reigning,
immortal, infallible, and divine. But Moehler re
stricted the divine predicates to the Catholic church ;
it was the abiding incarnation of Christ, the Son of
God continuously appearing in human form among
men, with an existence ever renewed, a being eter
nally rejuvenescent. Strauss' notion expressed a
consistent Pantheism ; humanity was the incarnation
of the divine, represented the process by which the
impersonal All created persons, passed from subjec
tive to objective being, and was realized in the realm
of conscious existence. But Moehler's expressed what
we may term an ecclesio-theism, which represented
the church as the form in which God existed for the
world, and through which the world could reach God.
The church was thus conceived as arrayed in all
the attributes and possessed of all the functions of
the Son of God. The notion was audacious, and
destined to achieve victories in a field Moehler had
never dreamed of; it was adopted by Wilberforce,
though stated without the sharp precision which dis-

1 Moehler, of course, was the elder and earlier. The Sym-
bolik was published in 1832, the Leben Jesu in 1835.

326 CATHOLICISM

tinguished Moehler. The incarnation is the central
dogma of Christianity ; Christ as incarnate is, on one
side, the pattern and representative of humanity ; on
the other, the mediator between God and man — at
once the one sacrifice for sin and the one channel of
divine grace. The church is His body mystical ; to
be united to it is to be united to Him. It is, as it
were, His organized presence, exercising His functions
as Mediator and Saviour. It is impossible to tell
"whether men are joined to Christ by being joined
to His Church, or joined to His Church by being
joined to Him. The two relations hang inseparably
together." Hence the value of the sacraments :
they "bind to Him," make us "participate in His
presence," communicate to us His man's nature, in
corporate us in His body mystical, "the renewed
race " which He " has been pleased to identify
with Himself." They are, therefore, the primary and
essential means of grace on which all others depend ;
they work our unity with the incarnate Son of God,
and through Him with the Father.
2. Now the significance of this work lies here ; it
supplied the Anglo-Catholic movement with a dog
matic basis ; placed it, as it were, under the control
of a defining and determining idea. Most of the
positions had been maintained before ; what Wilber
force gave was a co-ordinating and unifying principle.
This changed the whole outlook ; the question did
not need to be debated as one of Patristic or Angli
can archaeology ; it had a philosophy ; its reason was

ANGLO-CATHOLICISM— OLD AND NEW 327
one with the reason of the incarnation. The church
was, as it were, the Son of God articulated in sacra
ments, explicated in symbols, organized into a visible
body politic for the exercise of His mediation on
earth. This dogmatic idea created the new Ritualism
as distinguished from the old Tractarianism ; and
changed the centre of gravity from a dubious ques
tion in ecclesiastical history, discussed with learning,
but without science, to a fact of faith or living re
ligious belief. Ritualism may be described as the
evangelical idea done into the institutions and rites
of a sacerdotal Church. The idea remains, and is
the same, but its vehicle is changed. To speak with
Hegel, the Begriff is translated back into the Vor-
stellung, the spiritual truth is rendered into a sensu
ous picture. Ritual is dogma in symbol ; dogma is
articulated ritual. Justification is as necessary as
ever, but it is conditioned on the sacraments rather
than on faith. Regeneration is still held, but it is
worked by an outward act rather than an inward
process. Where the pure preaching of the word
once stood, the due administration of the sacraments
now stands. To it an authorized priesthood is neces
sary ; without it there can be no Eucharist, in other
hands the Supper is no sacrament or efficacious
means of grace. In order to a valid priesthood there
must be a constitutive authority — the bishops who
stand in the apostolical succession ; and a constitutive
act — ordination at their hands. The chain is com
plete : without the apostolical authority no bishop ;

328 CI THOLICISM

without the bishop no priest ; without the priest no
sacrament ; without the sacraments no church ; with
out the church no means of grace, no mediation or
reconciliation through Christ of man with God. Two
things are essential to the church, the clergy and
the sacraments ; and of these the clergy are the
greater, for without them the full sacraments cannot
be, while the sacraments cannot but be where they
are. They are therefore in a most real sense of the
essence of the church, while the people arc but an
accident ; the clergy represent its formal or normative
authority — i.e., they arc the regulative principle of its
being, give status to the people, do not find in them
the condition and warrant of their own existence.
But, so construed, the theory is less a doctrine of the
church than of its officers ; it is not the Christian
Society or people or commonwealth constituting its
officers or priesthood, but the priesthood constituting
the people. In its Anglican form the Apostolical
Succession of the clergy, or the bishops who ordain
the clergy, is a denial of the Apostolical descent of
the Church. And so, it is not too much to say, the
greater the emphasis which is thrown upon the idea
of the clergy, the meaner becomes the idea of the
Church ; and so we may add, that here the Broad
Church has a nobler idea than the Anglo-Catholic.
To resolve the English church into the Christian
people of England is to show a right conception of
the place of the people within it ; but to resolve it
into a hierarchy or hicrocracy, with its instruments

ANGLO-CATHOLICISM— OLD AND NEW 329
and dependencies, is utterly to misconceive the rela
tion of the society and its organs.
Yet even under these conditions the evangelical
idea has proved its energy ; the men who have con
strued their church and their order through their
Christology, have been of another spirit than the men
who construed them through Patristic and Anglican
tradition as interpreted by an impossible canon.
The change is so marked, that, did we know only the
first stage of the process and the last, we could not
believe that they were moments in the life of the
same party. Ritualism, while the rilost superficial,
is the least characteristic sign of the change ; one
deeper and more real, is the supersession of the old
aristocratic spirit by one humaner and more demo
cratic. The new men are possessed, as the old were
not, by missionary zeal, by the passion to reach and
reclaim the masses, by the endeavour to make the
church the attractive home of the people, and the
people the obedient sons of the church. The re
ligious polemics of the older men were often inspired
by the intensest political antipathy to " Liberalism "
and all its works, even when these were philanthropic
or remedial. But the new men are distinguished
by a progressive spirit, which has tempted the more
forward to grapple, in the interests of the poor, with
our graver social problems, and even to help in their
practical solution. Of course the country has
changed at once with the party and because of it ;
while common tendencies have been at work in both,

33° CATHOLICISM

shaping their respective activities, and modifying
their mutual relations. The sense of responsibility
to the people, which is a tribute levied by their acces
sion to power, has, of course, penetrated what used to
be called the governing classes ; the men who serve
the State live under a more jealous criticism, and the
men who minister in the Church have become more
conscious of duties, parochial and national. But, for
the clergy, the Anglo-Catholic revival has given at
once form and sanction to this new consciousness of
duty ; it has made them, while more priestly, more
evangelical, ministers of a more ornate service,
studiously seeking to help worship by a richer sym
bolism, and to teach dogma by a more elaborate
ceremonial. Under their hands the church has be
come a new institution, more active, more aggressive,
making claims that would have bewildered or amused
the men of fifty years ago. But while merely
academic claims are heard with scorn, claims sup
ported by devoted lives, and illustrated by fulfilled
duties, are, even when doubted, patiently endured.
The clergy believe that -in their hands are the in
struments of life ; and they multiply symbols and
administer sacraments as men who possess and dis
tribute the grace that saves.
§ VII. The Theological Tdea in the Church
i. But we must now attempt to discover and de
fine in what respects the theological idea has affected
and changed the conception of the church in the

ANGLO-CATHOLICISM— OLD AND NEW 33 1

newer Anglo-Catholicism, so as to distinguish it from
the older. We may say, then, that the new men are
less Anglican and more catholic than the old, using
the term catholic in its proper and not in the Roman
sense. Their church, while no less political or in
stitutional, is more ideal ; they conceive it more
through a dogma or a philosophy than through a
fixed and provincial, or limited, tradition. The old
and the new agree in identifying what may be
described as a given framework of the church with
its essence ; they agree as to its polity, the value and
function of its sacraments, the origin, necessity, gra
dation, and succession of its orders. These things
must be, that the church may be ; whatever may be
changed or transcended, they must stand. In all its
forms Anglo-Catholicism is a theory as to the neces
sity of a specific ministry to the church, not of the
church to any ministry. But these points of agree
ment only emphasize the point of difference, with all
that follows from it. This point may be stated thus :
the determinative principle of the older men was
historical — tradition ; but the determinative principle
of the younger men is metaphysical — a doctrine.
What we may term the immanent idea is in each
case different ; in the one it was an objective model,
or specific authority — certain Fathers as interpreted
by certain Anglican divines ; but in the other it is an
underlying philosophy or theology, which penetrates
and modifies the whole conception of the Church,
and governs the methods and use of historical proof.

332 CATHOLICISM

This philosophy or theology may be conveniently
described, though by a species of synecdoche, as the
notion of the church in its Catholic or Anglican
sense as " naturally of a piece with the Incarna
tion " ;l in other words, the church is so construed
through the Incarnation as to experience a kind of
apotheosis, or to become " a new and higher mode "
of the profoundest mystery known to the Christian
Faith. The poetry in the sublime and beautiful
image of Paul, — the Church is the body of Christ, — is,
for the benefit of an institution, turned into the most
prosaic of prose. Truths that relate to the thean-
thropic Person, His sanctity, His sovereignty over
mind, His authority over conscience through belief,
become predicable of a church with a specific organi
zation, which, as continuing the work of the Founder,
is the only recognised way of man reaching God or
"God reaching man. " Access to God " is free to a
man, provided he belongs to the one body ; " fellow
ship with God " is possible " only through member
ship in the one body and by dependence on social
sacraments," " of which ordained ministers are the
appointed instruments." 2 And so the church, taken
as strictly an episcopal and sacerdotal institution,
becomes the mystical and " Spirit-bearing " body,3
created and inhabited by Christ, and possessed of all
1 Gore, The Church and the Ministry, p. 64 ; Lux Mundi,
P- 367-
2 Gore, The Church and the Ministry,'^. 93, 94.
3 Lux Mundi, p. 321.

ANGLO-CATHOLICISM— OLD AND NEW 333
the energies, capabilities, and functions of a living
organism. It may be conceived as a colossal in
dividual, whose years are centuries, whose life is
continuous, and who alone is able, by virtue of its
apostolic descent and proper administration of sacra
ments, to articulate and realize Christ's presence on
earth. 2. So much for the determinative idea translated
into an ecclesiastical and institutional form ; now a
word or two as to its action on Anglo-Catholicism.
For one thing, the point of emphasis was changed ;
it passed from the Patristic period to the church as a
unity, living, catholic, continuous. The change was,
as it were, from the idea of the law that ruled the
body, to the idea of the body that made the law.
The church in a sense superseded the Fathers, and
though Apostolic and Patristic voices are still heard
with reverence, it is less as independent authorities and
more as organs through which the society has spoken ;
they must be canonized that they may have authority.
But this change involves another. The authority the
older men appealed to was specific and concrete,
— antiquity as understood by recognized Anglican
scholars ; but the authority of the younger men is
more general and ideal, either a composite abstraction
spoken of in historical terms as " the Catholic
Church," or a series of selected opinions called " the
Catholic Tradition." By the very terms of the appeal
and the logical necessities of the situation, the
authority appealed to is masked and made but an

334 °A THOLICISM

echo of the appealing voice ; for a'n eclectic Catholi
cism is the most arbitrary of individualisms. It is but
subjective tendencies or judgments done into oecu
menical formulae. The man who speaks is for the
time being " the Catholic Church" ; the thing he
believes is " the Catholic Tradition." And under the
use of concrete terms he hides a pure abstraction,
which has nothing corresponding to it in the whole
field of history. If the usage and connotation be
carefully analyzed, we shall find that what it really
denotes is the merest " private judgment " enunciating
its own deliverances and definitions as decrees of the
catholic church. And this involves another differ
ence : the older men defended dogma by institutions,
the younger defend institutions by dogma ; which
means that the attitude of the mind to the ideal con
tents of religion and to the intellectual tendencies of
the age has changed. The old attitude to reason was
hostile, the new is friendly ; the older men had the
idea of an authority that must be obeyed, but the
younger have the idea of an authority that must be
adapted to living thought. The " Anglicans " laboured
so to organize the church after a definite ideal, that
it might the more effectually resist the modern spirit :
but the new " Catholics " endeavour so to construe
the traditional creed as to make it incorporate the
ideas of the age. The " Anglican " idea of the
church was more concrete, and its conception of
authority more defined ; while the " Catholic " idea
of authority is more elastic, and of the church, on the

ANGLO-CATHOLICISM— OLD AND NEW 335
intellectual side, more flexible — so much so, that it is
conceived as able to assimilate all new material, to
welcome and give place to all new knowledge.1 In a
word, a new philosophy, and, as a consequence, a new
theology, has penetrated the Anglican system : and,
though old terms and positions survive, the philo
sophy has just to be allowed to do its work, and the
new will not be as the old.
§ VIII. The Church and the Age
My purpose has been analytical and historical
rather than critical ; and I shall not here attempt a
criticism, either philosophical or historical, of the
theory whose growth has been described.2 But I
may venture, in conclusion, to raise two practical
points which seem to deserve discussion.
1. The church may have a message to the age, but
the age has also a message to the church. And it is
possible that in the age's message there may be most
of the voice of God. To the being and character of
the age the church has contributed ; and has there
fore its own share of responsibility for what the age
is. In every period its one clear duty is this — to
turn for living men the idealities of religion into the
realities of being. Hence the question which our age
addresses to the church may be stated thus : — Is
there any power within you that can make the Chris-
1 Lux Mundi, Preface, p. ix.
3 But see ante, pp. 167 ff. ; and the concluding chapters ot
the Place of Christ, etc.

336 CATHOLICISM

tian Faith credible to the living reason and authori
tative to the living conscience ? Are you able to
make it so to pervade the atmosphere we breathe,
and impregnate the soil on which we grow, as to be,
as if by a natural process, incorporated into our
being, or as to become the determinative factor of
our personal characters, ideals, ends, and of our
collective customs, institutions, laws ? To have such
a problem so stated is to feel rebuked and humbled.
We are in the nineteenth century of the Christian
era ; for almost all these centuries Christianity has
lived on our soil, for the greater part of them we have
been formally and ostensibly Christian. Yet we are
faced by problems which imply that there are whole
provinces of our national and social life where Chris
tianity as a religion has little place and less power,
and a multitude of minds for whom it has as a Faith
no reality, no credibility, and no authority. At such
a moment to profess pessimism were to confess to
defeat ; but to cultivate optimism were to prepare for
extinction. No man who believes in the Christian
religion can despair of its success ; no man who loves
his people can be satisfied with their state, or per
suade himself that it proves the sufficiency of the
church or churches which have been charged with the
realization of the religion. Class interests) passions,
prejudices, still reign untempered by love ; they have
grown more bitter and dangerous since they have
come to contend hand to hand, foot to foot, for the
seat of sovereignty. The rebellion arms can quell

ANGLO-CATHOLICISM-OLD AND NEW 337

may be easily ended ; but the slow revolution worked
by inexorable law mocks at arms or dynastic forces,
and can be changed into a beneficent process only by
the gracious energies of religion. Such a revolution is
even now in process ; but has religion so penetrated
the people by whom it is being accomplished that
the church can watch its completion with a light
heart and an easy conscience? Our political prob
lems are grave, but our economical are graver, and
still more grave are our social. Towards the solution
of the economical many natural factors are co-oper
ating ; the intellects and energies engaged in the
industries are, by combinations, councils, arbitrations,
and enlarged education, by securing the more equal
and equitable distribution of wealth, contributing to
the creation of happier conditions. But in the solu
tion of our social problems the supreme factor is the
religious, the factor that fashions upright, honourable,
beneficent men, that substitutes the reign of ordering
love for Rousseau's social contract or the iron hand
of Hobbes' strong man. Of all States, a democratic
most needs virtue, integrity, disinterestedness of mo
tive, sanity of intellect, and inflexibility of moral will
in its governors and guides ; but while we cultivate
politics with passion, do we not leave the creation
of the politician to chance ? Have our people been
constrained to conceive that the office of the states
man is not less sacred than the office of the church
man, and demands, because of its greater perils and
more manifold temptations, a more enlightened con-
22

338 CATHOLICISM

science and a larger endowment of grace? Few
things are more disastrous to a society than the sub
stitution of conventional for moral standards of
judgment ; and is it too much to say that the society
most purely ecclesiastical is also the most thoroughly
conventional ? Immoralities live as they have never
lived before in the public eye, and the scandals of the
West End do more to debauch the national con
science than all the sordid vice and gaunt poverty of
the East. We seem to have reached a state where
evil has more solidarity than good : rich and poor
meet together and understand each other more in
their vices than in their religion, which ought to have
destroyed their vices, root and branch. But within
the community there lives this difference : the rich
have the gift of oblivion in a higher degree than the
poor. The easy conscience of society sweetly for
gives the man who has sown his wild oats, but the
retentive memory of the people does not so readily
forget the ruin he may have worked' in the process.
These, and things like these, formulate grave problems
for the church. How have they come to be ? How
is their being to be ended ? The higher the theory
of the church the deeper ought to be the notion of
its responsibility ; the greater our idea of its power
and its function, the more sternly must we judge its
failure. Wisdom is justified by her works : but if
the works are not there, or there in an altogether
inadequate degree, what becomes of the justification ?
But the deepest and most pathetic appeal which

ANGLO-CATHOLICISM— OLD AND NEW 339
our age can make to the church concerns the ques
tion of what it is to believe. The living intellect and
the historical faith have somehow drifted, if not
asunder, jet out of relation : and where truth does not
live to the reason it can have no authority for the
conscience. The characteristic of the age is here
not so much unbelief as a want of belief, so ex
tensively and uniformly diffused as to represent a
common tendency rather than specific causes. It is
distributed through all classes, and is peculiar to
none, though it receives in each characteristic expres
sion. Among the less skilled labourers it is simply
indifference ; poverty shows no mercy to ideals,
thinking that what brings no amelioration is entitled
to no reverence. The man who with hungry mouths
to fee'd struggles with failing strength to feed them,
will not long continue to find comfort in contem
plating the beauty and sufficiency of abstract truth
The response of the poor to a religion which has no
concern or cure for poverty, is neglect of the religion.
Again, the hard-headed artisan has difficulties of
another and more varied order, and they grow with
his rather moody and defiant independence. He is
proud, sensitive to small tilings, especially if touched
with affront or condescension or disdain, and con
scious of a manhood too honourable to brook those
class and caste distinctions that are often only the
more emphasized by the circumstances and conven*
tions of common worship. Or he brings a vigorous
intellect, all the severer in its logic for being without

340 CATHOLICISM
formal culture, to bear on formulae that have survived
their occasion or lost their original sense, and yet
have in his mind continued to be identified with the
essence of religion ; and he forthwith resolves the
formulae and the religion into a series of fantastic
absurdities, which only folly or knavery or the blind
est self-interest can tempt men to believe. The
parson or preacher he regards with lofty scorn as
the mercenary impersonation of all the superstitions
he most despises ; and his most effective and offensive
weapons of assault he draws from the Old Testament
Scriptures, conceived as so inspired that every word,
character, and event is due to the direct action of
the Almighty. In the educated classes similar types
of unbelief, often in still cruder forms, are represented ;
only here fashion and current tendencies account for
more. The fleshly materialism of our gilded youth,
too gross to care for any intellectual justification, is
an utterly vile thing ; while noble purposes may live
within and speak through the reason and conscience
of the secularist artisan. The doubt that is too in
dolent to reason or to be reasoned with, or that is
indulged as a private intellectual luxury, or that is
used to give point and flavour to an otherwise vacu
ous cynicism ; the agnosticism that speaks the language
of one set, and the pessimism that repeats the for
mulas of another ; the cultivated indifference that
treats as bad form every allusion to religion ; the
culture that believes in translating dogma into the
language of the club or the coterie; the scientific

ANGLO-CATHOLICISM— OLD AND NEW 341
temper that despises religion, or benevolently deals
with it as if it were a thing for weak or dishonest
intellects, because it does not follow the processes or
attain the results of some ' science misdescribed as
exact — these and many similar phases of floating
opinion may be found in society and in literature.
They are easily over-estimated, easily under-esti
mated, and still more easily misconceived. Singly
they may be insignificant, but collectively their sig
nificance is immense. They mean that the unsettle-
ment of belief is general ; that men cannot think,
or speak, in the society of the thoughtful, without
feeling it ; that in religious matters it is true cour
tesy to assume difference, and avoid speech : and
that it is only reasonable to suppose that every new
science will be in conflict with the old faith. But
the fateful agitation is not the superficial ; it is rather
the deeper movement of thought that throws up
and throws out the bubbles and eddies of the surface.
The old conception of nature and man, of the uni
verse and its history, is breaking up ; a new concep
tion is making its way into the collective conscious
ness and becoming the regulative principle of all
its thinking ; with the inevitable result that religious
beliefs, if they are to live, must undergo a correspon
dent transformation. Our most real and radical
scientific enquiries raise questions as to creation,
the Creator and His mode of working, as to man
and his origin, the being of sin, the birth of re
ligion, the reality of progress ; our most rigorous

342 CATHOLICISM

and fruitful historical enquiries deal with the gene
sis of social and religious institutions, the evolu
tion of thought, the formation and growth, now of
mythologies, now of theologies ; the place and
composition of religious books, the appearance and
action of religious personalities ; and these in the
most inexorable way compel men, if they would
be reasonable while religious, to ask how the new
methods affect their own beliefs. The scientific
temper of to-day may be described as a passion to
explore and explain origins, and to find out the
reason and method of a thing's becoming ; and it
is so universal that no belief or institution can es
cape the enquiry, how, when, and why it came to
be. This means that the ultimate problem of a
church is not to explain the faith it has authorita
tively defined, but to vindicate the process by which
it became possessed of the authority to define it,
the competence to enforce what it has defined.
Hence the final word of our age to Anglo-Catholi
cism, and all modes of verifying theology or realiz
ing religion by authoritative institutions is this :
What claims to authenticate our most fundamental
beliefs must have nothing dubious about its own title
deeds. It is possible to speak in this way, simply because
above all other facts this fact is evident : that the
Christian religion has not been so interpreted by the
societies or churches in England whose mission it is
to realize it, as to have penetrated, possessed and com-

ANGLO-CATHOLICISM— OLD AND NEW 343
manded the English people. We are still far from the
kingdom of heaven ; and of all evidences of truth, alike
as regards a man and a society, the most infallible
is the ancient canon, " By their fruits ye shall know
them." This is not to be construed as a word of
reproach against the English church as a church.
The writer feels that there is nothing less noble or
more despicable than the mutual reproaches of re
ligious men and societies, or the memory too mind
ful of past faults, and too _ forgetful of present duties,
especially those of charity and truth. But what he
means is this, that those who claim that a given
church is the one and only divinely created and
guided church of Christ for the English people,
are not dealt with seriously unless their church be
required to have lived up to its character, and have
proved it through its works. There is no tribute to a
man or institution like the demand that he or it be
no less or no worse than his or its claims. Now, it is
not too much to say, in the face of what has been
said, that the church has not made its supernatural
character obvious by its works" ; and for an insti
tution that must be supernatural to be anything
at all, this is certainly a serious circumstance. If
its character and claims are things that have still,
after all these centuries of opportunity and endea
vour, to be proved by an argumentative and eviden
tial process, then the process must be cogent indeed,
sufficient at least to satisfy a reason both scientific
and reverent. An age which "deeply reveres good

344 CA THOLICISM

things well done, but is dubious and slow of con
viction as to high abstract claims, is a trying age
for a system or a society whose claims are mainly
abstract, and whose evidences are not very apparent
in the realm of the real.
2. If the church is to serve the age, it must be by
embodying more of the mind and ideal of the Master.
It must be the church in His sense and for His ends.
We have already seen something of the claims made
by the Anglo-Catholics on behalf of the church as
they conceive it. It is Christ's Spirit-bearing body,
"the special and covenanted sphere of His regular
and uniform operations." 1 The Church has a finality
which belongs to its very essence, •' expressed in the
once for all delivered faith, in the fulness of the once
for all given grace, in the Visible Society once for all
instituted," " and in a once for all empowered and
commissioned ministry." 2 By virtue of the first it is
the custodian and interpreter of the truth ; by virtue
of the second it possesses the Sacraments, which are
instruments for the communication of grace ; because
of the third the Church is a political unity into which
man must be incorporated to be truly and effectually
saved ; in the fourth "the instrument of unity" is sup
plied, " and no man can share her (the Church's)
fellowship except in acceptance of the offices of her
ministry." 3 Now, of these the last is the greatest and
1 Lux Mundi, pp. 312, 322.
2 The Church and the Ministry, pp. 64, 65.
3 Ibid. p. 86.

ANGLO-CATHOLICISM— OLD AND NEW 345
most essential. Though it may be argued, all are alike
necessary and distinction between necessities cannot
be drawn ; yet here this distinction exists, the apos
tolic ministry is the condition through which the other
things are ; it is primary, they are secondary and
sequent ; without it there can be no unity, no sacra
mental grace, no authoritative transmission and defi
nition of truth ; with it these things cannot but be.
Now, into this question I will not enter further
than to say : the divine right of a clergy is no more
friendly to a happy, an ordered, an efficient church,
than is the divine right of a king conducive to a free
and progressive State. To make the kingship the
constitutive factor of a State, and the clergy or the
episcopate the constitutive factor in the church, is
to degrade equally the ideas of Church and State.
And it is here justified by assigning to the clergy
a place and a function quite unknown to the New
Testament. " There is a most exact correspondence
between the ministerial office and the nature of the
religion, or the offices of the church and its essential
character. Sacerdotalism means that an office is
conceived to be so sacrosanct, and so necessary to
man's worship of God, and God' s access to man,
that without it there can be no perfect worship on the
one side, and no adequate or regular communication
of life on the other. It means that the priest, as
a priest, and not as a person, and his instruments
as his, or as used by him, are the only authorized
and divinely constituted media through which God

346 CATHOLICISM

reaches man and man God, or through which the
recognized and approved intercourse of the creature
with the Creator can proceed. Now, in the New
Testament no such ideas are associated with the
ministry, or with any person appointed to it. No
man bears the priest's name, or professes his func
tions ; the studious avoidance of the name by men
who were steeped in the associations of sacerdotal
worship is most significant ; and so is the care with
which they translate sacerdotal customs and ideas into
their spiritual antitypes. The [priesthood ceases to
be official by being made universal." The Christian
society is a priesthood,1 and the sacrifices it offers
are spiritual,2 the living man,3 the gifts and bene
ficences which are acceptable to God,4 and the praise
which He loves.5 The temple is no longer the build
ing where the priest officiates, conducts his proces
sions, and indulges in his ceremonial, but it is the
Man6 and the Society.7 The virtues enjoined are
not of the old sacerdotal sort, but ethical, inner,
human — faith, hope, love, the obedience that is so
pleasing to God because so helpful to man. " The life
of the communities is not bound by any priestly rules
or observances,8 but by the new laws of love. The
Church and its ministry, therefore, correspond through
out ; the ministry is one of persuasion, that seeks to
1 Apoc. i. 6 ; v. lo ; xx. 6. 2 I Pet. ii. 5.
* Rom. xii. 1 ; Phil. ii. 17. 4 Phil. iv. 18 ; Heb. xiii. 16.
5 Heb. xiii. 15. 6 1 Cor. vi. 19. 7 I Cor. iii. 16, 17.
8 Gal. iv. 9,'io; Col. ii. 16-23.

ANGLO-CATHOLICISM-OLD AND NEW 347
move the will through the conscience, and both through
the reason and heart; that cares in the new and
gracious way of brotherhood for the poor, the sick, the
ignorant, the suffering, the sinful, and attempts to
help, to love, to win by sweet reasonableness ; while
the Church is a society which seeks to realize the
beautiful ideal of a family of God, or a household of
faith, or a brotherhood of man. There is no place for
the priest or his office ; his sensuous sanctities are
unknown, and, instead, there is the kingdom of God,
and the endeavour to do His will. The rise of the
sacerdotal Orders is a question for later history ; it
marks a long descent from the Apostolic age, but is
certainly no thing of Apostolic descent." 1
Many questions remain which we dare not here and
now attempt to touch. The Church lives, and moves,
and has its being in Christ ; but the churches have as
conditions of their being what used to be called the
pure Word of God and the Sacraments. We are
strictly within the lines of historical truth when we
say that without the Word no church can come into
being, and without it none can continue. Every
Apostolic Church was created by the preaching of
the Word, and lived only as the creative became the
preservative agency. As to the Sacraments, we shall
only say, once they became the acts and instruments
of a priest they lost their original sense, and were
changed from the possessions and seals and symbols
1 The Place of Christ in Modern Theology, pp. 533, 534.

34§ CA THOLICISM

of the community into the appendices and articles
of an office. The most inveterate schismatic is the
person or the party that draws round himself or itself
a circle, and says, "within this is the sphere of
God's ' covenanted mercies ' ; all without is the
region of the uncovenanted. We are the Catholic
Church ; all beyond is the province of the Sectaries
and the Sects." There is nothing in all history so
intensely schismatic as this pseudo-Catholicism ; it is
the vanity of the Sectary in its worst possible form.
And those who believe that the Church of God is as
broad and as free as the Mercy of God, may well be
forgiven if they speak plainly and frankly about any
and every attempt to bind it to a provincial polity,
and to make it seem less large and less gracious than
the action of God in history has proved it to be.
March, 1890.
February, 1891.

VIII
"THE FOUNDATIONS OF BELIEF"1
THE appearance of the statesman as a theologian
is a matter of interest not only to theologians,
but also to the State. It speaks of interests which
have all the greater significance for this world that
they embrace another and larger, and of ideals which
are potent in making character and governing both
private conduct and public policy. What indeed
distinguishes the statesman from the man of affairs is
not skill in the expediencies of the moment, but the
possession of a lofty idealism. Plato has told us
that only the statesman under the inspiration of the
kingly Muse can implant in the souls he governs
the Idea, which is a divine principle, of the noble,
and the just, and the good ; while not till philosophers
were kings, and political power was wedded to
philosophy, could his ideal city live and behold the
light of the sun. Aristotle was doubtful whether
kings were an advantage to States, but he was clear
that they ought to be chosen for their merit, or
1 The Foundations of Belief: being Notes Introductory to the
Study of Theology. By the Right Hon. Arthur James Balfour.
London : Longmans. 1895. 319

350 CATHOLICISM

personal life and conduct : while the statesman might
be considered as much a lover of virtue as the
philosopher, since it was the note alike of the wise
State and wise man to regulate life according to the
best end. It is well now and then to be recalled to
the ancient idea that the State is, alike in basis and
aim, essentially an ethical society ; and that virtue
and ethical knowledge in the statesman are necessary
to order and progress in the State. Our tendency for
the moment is to substitute material for moral well-
being, to conceive comfort as the highest good and
poverty as the last evil. To be poor or to endure
hardness is to be thought incapable of being personally
happy or of contributing to the common happiness.
If Diogenes were to appear among us with his tub,
he would be told that before he could be heard or be
regarded as other than an object of charity, he must
have a more desirable dwelling, exchange his sack for
respectable broad-cloth, and demand of Alexander
not only that he get out of the sun, but actually dispel
the smoke or the fog that was intercepting its beams.
If Epictetus were to set up as a teacher of morals, he
would be assured that he could not be a philosopher
while he continued a slave, or think worthily while
his labour was another's. We ought, then, to wel
come a book which shows us that we have a states*
man who at least thinks as deeply of ethical as of
material well-being, and who spends his quiet days
not simply on brown moofs or breezy links, but in
attempting to lay anew» broad and deep and strong

"THE FOUNDATIONS OF BELIEF" 35 1
" the foundations " of the beliefs on which he con
ceives society to rest.
§ I. The Statesman as Divine
1. It does not indeed always follow that the states
man who studies theology either applies his religion
to the State or serves it by his studies. We all
remember Gibbon's1 famous aphorism as to "the
various modes of worship which prevailed in the
Roman world " being " considered by the people, as
equally true ; by the philosopher, as equally false ;
and by the magistrate, as equally useful." But if the
philosopher chanced to be also a magistrate, his use
of the religion he held to be false was more a tribute
to the expediencies of government than to the in
tegrity of philosophy. Cicero, too, as orator and
statesman, praised the popular religion, and played
the role of sincere believer, fervently recounting the
miracles it had accomplished on behalf of himself and
the Republic ; but as a philosopher we find him in
his treatises flouting this same religion with lordly
disdain. Marcus Aurelius appears in his Medita
tions as the typical Roman saint, the ideal man of
the Stoics embodied in breathing flesh and blood ; but
he stands in history as one of the chief persecutors of
the Christian Church, leaving to us the hard problem
of reconciling the tolerant philosopher with the in
tolerant Emperor. In the long roll of English kings
two stand out as eminent and learned theologians,
Henry VIII. and James I. To the former we owe,
1 Decline and Fall, chap. ii. 1.

352 CA THOLICISM

among other things, the famous book against Luther,
the Assertio Sep tern Sacramentorum, which procured
for its author and his successors the proud title of
" Fidei Defensor " ; to the latter, among other things,
the Basilikon Doron, which declared that he hated
" no man more than a proud Puritan " — a being
no king could suffer, unless indeed " for trying of
his patience, as Socrates did an evil wife" — and
the Apology for the Oath of Allegiance, which ex
plained his theory of kingcraft in the province of
religion. But he would be a bold man who should
assert of Henry that he was one of the most just and
magnanimous of kings, or of James that he was one
of the wisest. Still there is no principle which
English history more illustrates than this, that
problems, even in passing politics, are best under
stood when looked at in the light of large ideas and
high aims. If we are unable to name Bacon a states
man, yet we cannot forget that he was the most
eminent English philosopher of his day, — to say, as
some have said, of all time, is to speak foolishly.
Clarendon, once chancellor of the kingdom, has given
us a history, not unconcerned with church and
religion, that will live as long as the English tongue.
Last century Bolingbroke discoursed through five
prolix volumes on sundry matters, philosophical and
theological, including such congenial themes as " the
folly and presumption of philosophers, especially in
matters of the first philosophy," and " authority in
matters of religion;" and "Alexander Pope, Esquire,"

"THE FOUNDATIONS OF BELIEF" 353
to whom the essays and letters were addressed, did
the system of his " friend and genius," the " master
of the poet and the song," into the polished measure
and empty optimism of the Essay on Man. But,
though Bolingbroke professed deism and upheld the
church, yet we may reckon it among the kind things
of Providence that he had not the opportunity of
realizing his " Idea of a Patriot King," or maintain
ing as a statesman the church he did not believe
in as a man. In this century, statecraft and theology
have often gone hand in hand. In France, Joseph
de Maistre led the counter-revolution, and evoked
the papacy as the spirit which was to reduce to
order the chaos of loose and lawless wills ; the Due
de Broglie described the early, that he might inform
and defend the living, church ; Guizot, when relieved
by the Second Empire from the service of the citizen
king, occupied himself with the interpretation of
Evangelical Christianity and the revival of French
Protestantism ; while Jules Simon had edited Des
cartes, and vindicated La Religion Naturelle, before
he was known as a politician and minister. Nearer
ourselves stand statesmen who were scholars, and
minded the affairs of the State all the better that
they did not neglect their own studies. We remem
ber that one English Prime Minister of Queen
Victoria translated Homer ; another, the " little great
man " who " knew that he was right " — Earl Russell,
— was almost as active in literature as in politics ;
a third, Lord Beaconsfield was the author of some
23

354 CATHOLICISM
of the cleverest, most brilliant, audacious, and ma
licious novels of the time ; but novels as they were,
they were yet full of social, political, and ecclesias
tical theory. And to-day the most venerable of
English statesmen has also been throughout his long
life an eager and prolific theologian. He began his
career as a sort of lay divine, claiming for his church
a higher place, more independent authority and in
defeasible rights, than even her official heads had
then either the courage or the faith to affirm. In his
maturer manhood classical studies absorbed him,
and we had those delightful excursions into the
world of Homer and the Homeric poems, which
were all the more instructive that they were in
character so entirely distinct from the performances
of the mere scholar. If he had not what the
youngest scholar thought the only, because the
newest, scientific method of inquiry into the date,
the composition, the authorship, and the mythology
of the Homeric poems, he yet showed an unrivalled
mastery of the text and a familiarity with the world
it described and illustrated, which was all his own.
And now in his later days he returns — though one
may say from a maturer and higher point of view —
to his earlier interests. It is less the political form
and idea of religion, and more the metaphysical and
ethical contents— i.e., the truth of it — that interest
him. There is a certain fitness in the man who
began his life as an apologist for a given theory of
the church in the State, ending his life as the editor

" THE FOUNDATIONS OP BELIEF" 355
of the greatest of all the apologies of the Christian re
ligion ever written in the English tongue. And now,
just as many have been feeling how the withdrawal
of a mind accustomed to study the State, through
the large and luminous atmosphere of religion, had
impoverished politics, a younger statesman descends
into the arena and boldly challenges attention and
criticism by his Notes Introductory to the Study of
Theology. And what can a theologian do but ask,
Whither does this Introduction lead — into theology ?
or whither ?
2. Mr; Balfour here repeats and expands his older
book,1 developing and applying its principles. And
we may at once say, the old book is the best intro
duction to the new, and is, indeed, necessary to its
complete elucidation. The new work is distinguished
by many admirable qualities, is at once lucid and
subtle, brilliant and eloquent, always grave, yet often
lighted up with flashes of a nimble though ironical
humour, with a delicate yet elastic style, excellently
suited to the deft and sinuous movement of the
thought. If to be well put were to be victoriously
argued, this would indeed be a cogent book ; but I
must frankly, even at the very outset, confess that to
one reader at least it has been a deep disappoint
ment. The early chapters awakened high hope ;
their form threw over one a sort of spell ; but the

1 A Defence of Philosophic Doubt : being an Essay on the
Foundations of Belief, 1879.

356 CATHOLICISM

spell slowly faded, and pleasure turned to pain, as the
underlying philosophy was seen to be shifting sand
rather than solid rock, and what could its unstable
weakness do but fracture the whole frail superstruc
ture ? The farther the reading proceeded, the less
satisfactory the argument seemed. The criticism
that had appeared so pleasantly potent at the begin
ning, became sadly impotent at the middle, and mis
chievously inadequate or irrelevant at the end. This
was a conclusion most reluctantly reached ; but
whether justly reached, it will be for the readers of
both the book and this essay to determine.
It is, I hope, not necessary to say how thoroughly
I sympathize with Mr. Balfour's purpose, and how
entirely I admire the motives of his book and the
ability by which it is everywhere distinguished. As
one whose work and interests lie altogether in the do
main of theology, I would welcome the incursion into
it of this brilliant "amateur. For so far as it relates to
theology, properly so-called, it is an amateur's book,
and as such it ought to be judged. It is difficult, for
example, to conceive that any one whose knowledge
was first-hand, especially if possessed of a philosophic
and scientific mind, could have written the note on
pp. 278-9 as to the decisions of the early Church
relative to the doctrine of the Trinity. The very
thing that the creeds were not, was " the negation of
explanations." They were framed by men who had
elaborated doctrines which were theories concerning
the highest mysteries, and their decisions were defi-

" THE FOUNDATIONS OF BELIEF" 357
nitions which were expressly intended to affirm their
own and exclude other and opposed doctrines. The
symbols both of Nicaea, and Chalcedon are distin
guished by terms as strictly technical as any terms
in either philosophy or science ; and, indeed, the
great struggle at Nicaea, which it needed all the
subtlety of Athanasius and all the authority of the
Emperor to overcome, was against the introduction
into a symbol of terms and phrases which had been
coined and used in the schools, but had not hitherto
been sanctioned by the Church. In other words, the
terms were exactly what Mr. Balfour says they were
not — " of the nature of explanations " ; they expressed
theories, embodied definitions, affirmed one doctrine
and denied another, and were for this very reason
introduced, and for the same reason strenuously
resisted. But if in historical theology he shows the
mind and art of the amateur, it must not be under
stood to mean that his appearance as a philosophical
theologian is held to be unwarranted. On the con
trary, there is no field of inquiry where a fresh and
well-disciplined mind may be of more real service,
especially if he be in thought and language neither
derivative nor conventional. And there are sections
or borders of the field where a man of Mr. Balfour's
knowledge and speculative capacity is absolutely in
place ; and it is with such a section that his book is
mainly concerned. The men who are in this field, as
it were, common day labourers, may well feel cheered
and exhilarated at the appearance amongst them of
an occasional workman so effective in form and so

358 CATHOLICISM

dexterous in the use of his tools as is this last comer,
who so happily combines the capacities of the philo
sopher and the statesman.
Mr. Balfour well defines his initial position, which
also implies the function he is best able to fulfil, in
the sentence : " The decisive battles of theology are
fought beyond its frontiers. It is not over purely
religious controversies that the cause of religion is
lost or won. The judgments we shall form on its
special problems are commonly settled for us by our
general mode of looking at the Universe." x This,
of course, means that theology is implicit in philo
sophy, or philosophy explicit in theology. As the
late Sir William Hamilton used to say, every question
which emerges in theology has before emerged in
philosophy. So the philosopher can render no greater
service to theology than the discussion in his own
free way and province of those principles which
determine its problems. But I wonder that Mr.
Balfour failed to feel how fatal to his theological
purpose is his want of an explicit philosophy. With
out a positive philosophy how is a positive theology
possible ? The " mode of looking at the universe "
which is to determine our attitude to theology, will
not be created by a negative criticism of philosophical
or scientific ideas ; this is more likely to leave us in
an attitude of vacant expectancy, where perception is
blind and conception empty, than in one of intelligent
receptivity. One may deeply sympathize with Mr.
1 The Foundations of Belief, pp. 2, 3.

"THE FOUNDATIONS OF BELIEF" 359
Balfour's purpose, and be all the more deeply regret
ful that he has, by his peculiar method, done so much
to defeat it. But this is to anticipate a criticism
which has still to be made good.
The book, though divided into four parts, really
falls into three main divisions, which we may dis
tinguish as the critical, the transitional, and the
positive or constructive. In the critical, Mr. Balfour
discusses and dismisses as philosophically inadequate
both the empirical and the transcendental theories of
knowing and being, especially as regards those ideas
which are held to be the assured and necessary prin
ciples for the interpretation of man and nature. In
the transitional he discovers and emphasizes what he
holds to be a group of neglected factors in the forma
tion of belief. In the positive, he attempts a pro
visional justification and unification of beliefs. What
is to be here said will deal with these three divisions
in succession.
§ II. The Critical Philosoplier as Positive Theologian
i. The critical discussion, which runs irregularly
through the entire book, though it is more systemati
cally dealt with in Parts I. and 1 1., is applied to four
provinces — two philosophical, empiricism and trans
cendental idealism — and two theological, the older
rationalism and its corrective yet counterpart, the
older apologetic and rationalistic orthodoxy. The
latter two need not concern us, though they are
perhaps more kindly handled than as tendencies

360 CA THOLICISM

historically effete they altogether deserved to be.
Nor need we concern ourselves with the discussion on
Transcendental Idealism. It is not very serious and
in no respect thorough, nor is it marked by the
author's usual subtlety and grasp; while it really
stands outside the argument, which has not been
" arranged " " with overt or tacit reference to that
system" (p. 6). Only two things need be said: (i)
Mr. Balfour fails to recognize the conspicuous services
this Idealism has rendered to the cause he champions ;
and the recognition might very well have been as
sociated with the name of the late Professor T. H.
Green, whose position is mainly here criticized. To
see what these services have been, we have only to
remember the controversies of from twenty to twenty-
five years ago, when, under the impulse given to
pamphysicism by evolution, agnosticism became
belligerent and constructive ; and the doctrine that
" matter had the promise and potency of every form
and quality of life," was preached with eloquent
assurance from the chair of the British Association —
and then compare that most electrical atmosphere
with the very different " psychological climate " we
now enjoy. If to-day our empirics cultivate a
modesty which was then unknown, if they are more
conscious of the limitations and impotence of their
physico-metaphysical theories, it is largely due to the
criticism of the Idealism which is here so cavalierly
dismissed. (2) This Idealism is not to be understood
from the subjective point of view emphasized by Mr.

" THE FOUNDATIONS OF BELIEF" 36 1
Balfour. He fails to apprehend its objective signifi
cance, its ability to explain those problems in the
history of mind which remain in his hands the most
hopeless of puzzles. The one philosophy which has
done even approximate justice to the religions of man
and the nature by which they are, certainly deserved
juster treatment in a book concerned with the
" foundations of belief." It reveals, at least, an im
perfect sense of the gravity and range of the most
serious attempt yet made to solve these problems.
2. But the author's serious and perfectly tireless
criticism is concentrated on what he terms " Natural
ism." 1 His dexterity in dealing with it is mar
vellous ; he argues against it, he examines its psy
chological data, analyzes its logical principles and
processes, tests it by man, measures it by nature, and
finds it, in all its fundamental doctrines, either impos
sible, or unveracious, or self-contradictory. Its creed
is composed of two elements : " The one positive,
consisting, broadly speaking, of the teaching con
tained in the general body of the natural sciences ;
the other negative, expressed in the doctrine that
beyond these limits, wherever they may happen to lie,
nothing is, and nothing can be, known." 2 One would
have expected him to be rather more careful in his
definition. What is here described as the positive
element does not belong to Naturalism in any special
or even in any tolerable sense at all ; and what is
termed the negative is really the only positive
1 p. 6. 2 p. 92.

362 CATHOLICISM

element. For what constitutes " Naturalism " but the
affirmation that beyond the limits of nature, as it
exists to sense, " nothing is, and nothing can be,
known " ? The " Natural Sciences " have nothing to
do with it ; it existed before they were as they
are now ; they exist now where it is denied ; it
exists to-day where they are known only in
part.1 Nobody knows better than Mr. Balfour
that the most distinguished names in Natural Science
are those of men as averse to " Naturalism " as he
himself is. And this double definition was an argu
mentative as well as an historical blunder ; it forces
him to become, as it were, a scientific agnostic, in
order that he may the better refute metaphysical
agnosticism ; and to become a fictitious character is
certainly not the most effectual way of ending fiction.
Nor is he a happy warrior who in battle strikes at
friends as well as foes ; in the result he may slay
what he most of all wishes to save alive.
The Naturalism he thus defines he discusses from
two points of view : the personal and practical, and
the psychological and speculative. Under the first
aspect, he shows its insufficiency to man as an ethical,
aesthetic, and rational being. This is, to my thinking,
his far most satisfactory piece of work ; for it I have
nothing but praise. In Part I., which deals with it,
his dialectical and literary qualities are seen at their
1 That Mr. Balfour is perfectly well aware of the distinction
is obvious (see p. 134) ; but in his reasoning he often allows it
to seem as if he forgot it.

"THE FOUNDATIONS OF BELIEF" 363

best. Under the second aspect he shows that Nat
uralism is psychologically unjustified and specula
tively incoherent ; its theory of knowing contradicts
its theory of being. His arguments are not new;
they are the commonplaces of transcendental criti
cism ; but they are vigorously put and strikingly
illustrated and applied. The experience which sup
plies Naturalism with its premisses,'Js not a thing of
nature ; x nor are these premisses in the strict sense
true to nature. " The most immediate experiences
carry with them no inherent guarantee of their vera
city." " Habitual inaccuracy " attends " the cognitive
leap through perception to object." "Our perceptions,
regarded as psychological results," are, " regarded as
sources of information, not merely occasionally in
accurate, but habitually mendacious." 2 As a con
sequence, " science owes its being to an erroneous
view as to what kind of information it is that our
experiences directly convey to us."3 Nay, more,
" Out of a succession of individual experiences, such
a fundamental scientific principle as causation cannot
be " reasonably extracted." 4 The conclusion there
fore is — " A philosophy which depends for its pre
misses in the last resort upon the particulars revealed

1 p. 108. 2 p. in.
3 p. 118. Cf. Philosophic Doubt, p. 287. "Science is a sys
tem of belief which, for anything we can allege to the contrary,
is wholly without proof. The inferences by which it is arrived
at are erroneous ; the premisses on which it rests are un
proved." * p. 119.

364 CATHOLICISM

to us in perceptive experience alone, is one that
cannot rationally be accepted." x
Now, why this elaborate analysis and refutation of
empiricism? It serves various ends, negative and
positive. It is only by "an effectual criticism of
empiricism" that Naturalism can be effectually de
stroyed,2 and the admission compelled that we are
" as yet without a satisfactory philosophy." 3 Doubts
are started " as to the theoretic validity of certain uni
versally accepted beliefs," * in order that a scientific
standard may cease to be used as " sole test of truth." 5
Beliefs that are so open to doubt cannot be logically
held to make other beliefs doubtful ; the weapon
sceptical criticism has blunted, has lost its power to
kill or even to wound. The result is that our ethical
and religious ideas have nothing to fear at the hands
of those termed scientific ; their provinces differ, and,
as regards the right to be, the one class has no ad
vantage over the other. They are in many respects
parallel, yet, in a sense, inter-independent. " Philoso
phic Doubt " as to " an independent outer world " is
possible ; but " for all practical purposes " the belief in
it " should be accepted with a credence which is im
mediate and unwavering." 6 Similarly doubt may be
possible as to theological and ethical beliefs ; yet they
ought to be accepted as necessary to the satisfaction
of human needs and the regulation of conduct. Both

p. 133. 2 p. 134. 3 pp. 246, 247. " p. 246.
5 p. 235. 6 p. 238.

" THE FOUNDATIONS OF BELIEF" 365
classes of belief are alike " symbolic " ; " the world
as represented to us by science, can no more be per
ceived or imagined than the Deity as represented by
theology." x Our idea of Deity is no more anthro
pomorphic than our idea of the external world.2
Our knowledge of matter is no more direct than our
knowledge of Deity.3 So ideas that are alike sym
bolic and alike open to sceptical criticism agree in a
kind of unity ; neither can claim pre-eminence or be
used to discredit or disprove the other.
3. The cogency of the criticism is undeniable ; its
usefulness, within limits and properly balanced and
qualified, may be undoubted ; but what precisely does
it accomplish in Mr. Balfour's hands, and how does
it serve his purpose in regard to the " foundations of
belief" ? He himself recognizes its thoroughly scepti
cal character, not only so far as empirical theory but
even so far as fundamental scientific ideas are con
cerned.4 His two books are indeed models of mor
dant scepticism. He has said of his earlier book
that " the title has attracted more interest than the
contents," 5 but the title is hardly just to the contents
or their interest. It is not so much a "defence of
philosophic doubt " as critical doubt of all the philo
sophies. These two are not only different, but almost
opposite things ; " philosophic doubt " is more posi-

1 Philosophic Doubt, p. 245. 2 lb., p. 246. 3 lb., p. 258.
4 F. B., pp. 245, 246 ; cf. Philosophic Doubt, pp. 287, 293.
5 Essays and Addresses, p. 284.

366 CATHOLICISM

tive in character than doubt of philosophy. Hume is
the typical exponent of " philosophic doubt," but he
is in some respects much more positive and even
constructive than Mr. Balfour. He accepted the
current philosophical doctrine of his day : Locke's
"ideas of sensation," Berkeley's "ideas of sense," were
his " impressions " ; while, we may add in passing, the
familiar " phenomena " of our contemporary thought,
and Mr. Herbert Spencer's "vivid manifestations of
the unknown," may be regarded as their living repre
sentatives, if not strict equivalents. Locke's " ideas
of reflection," Berkeley's " ideas of imagination," were
Hume's " ideas," which were echoes or reminiscences
of the impression, true in the measure that they re
peated it, false in the degree they omitted any feature
of their original. Now, Hume did not trouble him
self with Descartes' speculative deduction of being
from thought, with his innate ideas and occasional
causes; nor with Spinoza's substance with its two
attributes of extension and thought ; nor with Leib
nitz's monads and pre-established harmony, or 'his
pregnant hint that the intellect was needed to interpret
the impressions which the senses conveyed in from
without. On the contrary, he resolutely left philoso
phical criticism alone ; and, assuming the premisses of
the home or native philosophy, turned to the problem
they set him. He saw quite as clearly as our author
sees, that if " impressions " were ultimate, the origin
of all knowledge and its only authentic elements,
then those fundamental beliefs by which we inter-

"THE FOUNDATIONS OF BELIEF" 367
preted both man and nature had no warrant in
reason. Every " impression " was of a single or in
dividual thing, a subjective experience which could
tell nothing of the reality or nature of the objective
world, its system or coherence, its causation or con
tinuity, or of the continued personal being of the
subjective. What caused and what experienced the
" impressions " were alike unknown : nor were we
endowed by nature with any faculty or instrument
sufficient for their discovery. But Hume was at once
too subtle and too speculative to remain satisfied with
so purely negative a conclusion ; and so he boldly
essayed to explain how beliefs that had no warrant
fronf nature yet naturally came to be. His problem
was twofold : How did a fleeting succession of sub
jective " impressions " come to suggest and to seem
a permanent and ordered outer world? And how
could a stream of ideas in perpetual flux, and suc
ceeding each other with inconceivable rapidity, come
to bear the appearance of a continuous personal and
conscious self? The solution lay in the mystic words
" association " and " custom " ; association was per
sonal, individual, the tendency to join together in
thought things perceived together in sense, to con
ceive as inseparable, objects invariably associated in
perception ; but custom was collective — association
worked into a habit at once common and personal.
Now, Hume's scepticism, so construed, cannot, what
ever we may think of its intellectual or philosophical
validity, be denied a positive character. His forma-

368 CATHOLICISM

tion of ideas or beliefs by association or custom,
whether arbitrary, illicit, or accidental, was a philoso
phic theory of knowledge adapted to a special, though
current and common, psychology. His speculative
sincerity may be doubted, even when his speculative
genius is admired ; x but his philosophy was a theory
intended to account for beliefs which, however unreal,
had all the appearance and served all the purposes of
realities. But Mr. Balfour, while more critical, is less
positive than Hume. He may not be sceptical in his
results ; but he is so much so in his argumentative
process as to leave us without any premisses that
can justify his conclusions. His book is the work of
a man who has "always found it easier to satisfy him
self of the insufficiency of Naturalism than of the
absolute sufficiency of any" other system of thought; 2
and what he gives is cogent destructive criticism,
unredressed by any equally cogent constructive argu
ment. In other words, he vindicates his own prin
ciples by invalidating those of other people ; but he
does not explicate or justify the principles on which
he builds his superstructure, or discover the basis on
which they ultimately rest. Hume was sceptical both
in his premisses and in his conclusion, though positive
in his method ; but Mr. Balfour, though positive in
his conclusion, is negative in his method, and un
critical as to his premisses. He dismisses, by a
1 Foundations of Belief, p. 96. Cf. Philosophic Doubt, pp.
85, 86. 2 Foundations of Belief, p. 92.

"¦THE FOUNDATIONS OF BELIEF" 369
searching critical process, our current philosophies,
empirical and transcendental ; then confesses he has
no effectual substitute to offer ; and finally offers a
provisional theory for the unification of beliefs which
throws into the most startling relief all the sceptical
elements in his own criticism.
4. This criticism need not perhaps be further elabo
rated, but it is necessary that its precise point and
purpose be not missed. There is no complaint that
Mr. Balfour's criticism of empiricism is destructive ;
the more thorough he can make it in this respect the
more wholesome will it be. The objection is to its
purely sceptical character; it creates doubt, it does
nothing more. It does not make the formation of
belief more intelligible, the process of knowledge
more conceivable, its results more real, or its conclu
sions more trustworthy. It involves all these things
in deeper doubt ; it turns the relation of mind to
nature and of nature to mind into a hopeless maze,
and creates suspicion as to the truth and reality of
knowledge. And this cannot be done at one point
of our intellectual being without affecting every other.
Scepticism is a double-edged weapon, and very dan
gerous in audacious hands. If faith in one class of
beliefs is broken down, the result is more likely to be
that all classes will suffer than that any one class will
specially benefit Doubt of the veracity of mind in
its simplest operations, has a subtle way of becoming
doubt all round. Certainly faith is not made more
possible by the processes and products of mind being
24

370 CATHOLICISM
made less intelligible and real. The want of a
constructive philosophy, an architectonic idea and
method, is a fatal want in a book which aims at the
conservation of belief. Descartes' universal doubt
was not doubt, and was not universal ; it was a pro
cess of digging down to what the thinker believed to
be solid rock, in order that he might build upon
thought a system which thought could clearly con-'
ceive : i.e., the critical process was necessary to the
architectural purpose — was, indeed, the first stage in
its realization. So, too, the Transcendental Idealism,
which is here so episodically criticized, may handle
Empiricism quite as caustically as our author ; but it
does so that it may discover the real factors or posi
tive conditions of knowledge. Its aim is to make the
universe more intelligible to man, and man more in
telligible to himself; to show the subjective reason
and the objective rationality in such reciprocal action
and correspondence as to make the process of know
ledge a solution of the problem of being. The theory
may be true or it may be false, but, at least, it is
positive : for it so uses the transcendental factor in
knowledge, viz., the interpreting reason, as to discover
and determine the real ultimate of being, viz., the inter
preted reason, and to make the thought which unites
these a veracious and rational process. But Mr.
Balfour's method is purely sceptical ; he leaves mind
bewildered in the face of nature, unable to trust its
perceptions, unable to determine what is truth, unable
to feel any reality in knowledge. By this means he

"THE FOUNDATIONS OF BELIEF" 371
may have made the fundamental ideas of science too
doubtful to be used against faith ; but what is the only
logical deduction possible from the principles which
he has used his sceptical method to obtain ? Why,
*this : — Since error creeps into all our thought, and
uncertainty surrounds all our knowledge of nature,
how can we know that there is any truth anywhere, in
any premiss or in any argument, any certainty in any
knowledge, any reality in any belief? If such be the
result of his sceptical criticism, where is the advan
tage to faith ? For what does it represent in thought
save the method of the blind Samson, who sacrificed
himself in order that he might the more effectually
bury the Philistines under the ruins of their own
temple ? § III. The Philosophy of Theology 4
So far we have been concerned with what may
be termed fundamental philosophical theory ; we
have now to proceed to its application to religious
or theological belief.
1. And here I may say, Mr. Balfour seems to me
to have no adequate sense of the range and com
plexity of the problem he has set for himself; that
is nothing less than to find a positive philosophy
of religious beliefs. And this he is all the more
bound to find, that his destructive criticism has been
so merciless and so complete. But this problem
cannot be discussed simply as if it were a- matter
of individual experience, or a question of con-

372 CATHOLICISM

temporary thought. There is nothing at once so
universal and so particular, so uniform and so varied,
as religion. Man everywhere possesses and professes
it, yet it is never in any two countries, with any
two peoples, or even any two persons, exactly th^
same thing. There are, therefore, two distinct yet
cognate questions : Why are religious beliefs at once
so invariable and so varied ? Why do they every
where emerge, and yet everywhere assume some
specific local form ? It is evident that the special
function of the philosophy of religion is to explain
at once why religious belief is so universal and
uniform, and religious beliefs so multiform and
varied. The causes that produce it must be common
and continuous in their action ; but the conditions
that produce variation, local and occasional. The
creative factor can never cease to operate, otherwise
the belief would cease to live ; and were the modify
ing conditions to become inactive, all beliefs would
tend to a monotony of character or sameness of form.
The one question is wholly philosophical, the other
is partly philosophical and partly historical ; and
taken together they signify that the only scientific
and satisfactory method of enquiry and discussion is
the constant correlation of the permanent factor of
belief with its varying forms, in order to the discovery
of the reason at once of its continuous life and con
stant change. Now, what one most of all misses in
this book is the sense that there is such a problem,
that it is initial to all philosophical theology, that

" THE FOUNDATIONS OF BELIEF" 373
till it be discussed neither the bed nor the material
for any foundation for belief has been found. One
is surprised to find Mr. Balfour distinguishing as
he does between " causes " and " reasons " of belief ;
in the only sense tolerable in such a discussion,
" causes " are " reasons," and reason is cause. In a
scientific theory of the genesis of knowledge we find
its justification ; in a philosophical explanation of
the origin of belief we have its vindication. The
very process which, consciously and analytically pur
sued by the individual, justifies his theism, produces,
when spontaneously and synthetically pursued by
the race, the beliefs which have organized and built
up its religions.
But we must take Mr. Balfour on his own terms ;
we have no right to demand his acceptance of ours.
Well, then, let us grant that his sceptical criticism
has been completely victorious ; empiricism is van
quished, and its scientific ideas so paralyzed that
they can no longer be used as tests or standards to
determine the credibility or incredibility of theo
logical beliefs. What then ? The beliefs are there.
What are they ? How did they come to be ? How
are they to be justified ? He has proved scientific
ideas to be so incapable of proof as to be without
normative value or force in the ethical and religious
realm, but he has not proved theological beliefs to
be true ; on the contrary, he has pursued a method
which compels us to approach them in an attitude
of doubt or even negation. The radical scepticism

374 CATHOLICISM

which has created doubt of one class of beliefs, has
created a presumption against the truth of the other
class. But what do we find here? A sudden re
versal of the method before pursued, and no attempt
made to compel the beliefs to give an account of
themselves, to justify their being, or to examine their
form and contents in the light of their source. The
whilom sceptic becomes curiously credulous, while
he skilfully does not see the questions which he can
neither discuss nor answer frankly and explicitly ;
but he offers an instructive substitute for a dis
cussion. There is a titular inquiry into the " Causes
of Experience." 1 What are these " causes " ? The
most diligent search through the book has left me
still with the question, but without any answer.
This, of course, may be purely my fault, but the fruits
of the search are worth recording. " Naturalism " is
dismissed ; what, then, is to be our system ? Not
dualism, "a natural world immediately subject to
causation, and a spiritual world immediately subject
to God." This is "a patchwork scheme of belief,"
" a rough and ready expedient " for escaping from
" the rigid limits of a too narrow system," excellent
in a measure, and not to be hastily condemned, but
clearly a system in which many find it " difficult or
impossible to acquiesce." 2 To those who " ask for
a philosophy which shall give rational unity to an
adequate creed " he answers, " I have it not to give." 3

1 Part III. chap. i. 2 pp. 1 86, 187. 3 pp. 187, I J

"THE FOUNDATIONS OF BELIEF" 375
Instead, "provisionally restricting himself to the
scientific point of view," he forbears "to consider
beliefs from the side of proof," and " surveys them
for a season from the side of origin only, and in
relation to the causes which gave them birth." J
This is excellent ; the best philosophy of belief is
an adequate theory of its origin, though we note
that the forbearance from proof is here logical, or
rather inevitable ; the sceptical criticism had made
any other course simply impossible, especially any
course involving rational proof. What, then, is the
cause or origin of " the apparatus of belief " (a most
significant phrase) "which we find actually connected
with the higher scientific, social, and spiritual life of
the race " ? 2 The causes are many, " presuppose the
beliefs of perception " (the very perception which had
been proved so habitually inaccurate and menda
cious), " memory, and expectation in their elementary
shape," and " an organism fitted for their hospitable
reception by ages of ancestral preparation." We
may note, in passing, how empirical and scientific this
mode of speech is ; but " these conditions " (not
causes, it will be seen), " are clearly not enough " ;
there must be "an appropriate environment," and
within this is "a group of causes" (not conditions),
" so important in their collective operation " as to
demand " detailed notice." The name of this group
is " authority," and our immediate concern is with
it as " a non-rational cause of belief."
1 p. 1 88. 2 p. 193.

376 CA THOLICISM

2. Now, our first question here is, What does Mr.
Balfour mean by " Authority " ? It is a large word,
denotes varied things, connotes many ideas. It has
one sense in literature, another in science, another
in law, still another in religion ; in the realm of
opinion it denotes the right to define and the power
to enforce belief ; in the sphere of action, the right
to prescribe conduct and to exact obedience. It has
been conceived as both personal and impersonal,
vested in the one case in a society like the church,
or in a body of beliefs like tradition, or a written
word like the Sacred Scriptures ; or, in the other
case, in either an invisible Head like our Lord, or
in a visible head like the Pope. Now, in what sense
does Mr. Balfour use the term ? He says it is " a
word which transports us into a stormy tract of
speculation nearly adjacent to theology " ; x it may
be too much to say it " has been for three centuries
the main battlefield of new thoughts and old," but
we can contrast it with reason, its " rival and oppo
nent." 2 " We are acted upon by authority," but
when " we reason " we act, we produce.3 When it is
so described we seem to be dealing with authority
in its special religious sense, as legislative over
opinion, and judicial as regards conduct ; but this
soon turns out to " be a mistake. For under one
aspect it is the Zeitgeist, the spirit of the age ; then
it appears as a "psychological atmosphere," or

p. 194. pp. 195, 219. ' p. 203.

"THE FOUNDATIONS OF BELIEF" 377
" climate," favourable to some, unfavourable to other
beliefs ; x then it assumes the shape of " custom,
education, public opinion, family, party, or Church " ; 2
in a, for Mr. Balfour, curious antithesis, " the equities
of reason " are opposed to " the expediencies of au
thority " ; 3 and finally, it is said to " stand for that
group of non-rational causes, moral, social, and educa
tional, which produces its results by psychic processes
other than reasoning,"1 and in this sense it is con
trasted with "Papal infallibility."5 What, then,
does he mean by " authority " ? Why, exactly what
Hume meant by " custom " ; what Mr. Spencer might
describe as the accumulated and transmitted experi
ence of the race, of the State, or of the family. It
is an explanation of belief by means of a "non-
rational cause " ; 6 in Hume's phrase, it is " belief
engendered upon custom," which custom he would,
in turn, have termed the creation of " a certain kind
of accident " — i.e., a result which was " non-rational,"
or for which he could give no reason. We may
understand why Hume should tell us that the
" ultimate cause of the impression is perfectly inex
plicable by human reason," that reason itself is only
1 p. 206. 2 p. 213. 3 p. 215. 4 p. 219. 5 pp. 223 ff.
6 In Philosophic Doubt Mr. Balfour seemed, prepared to apply
his theory to theological as well as to other beliefs : " The
progress of knowledge has led us rather to diminish our esti
mate of the part which reasons as opposed to other causes have
played in the formation of creeds ; for it has shown that these
- reasons are themselves the results of non-rational antecedents,"
pp. 200, 201.

378 CATHOLICISM

" an unintelligible instinct," that " belief is an act of
the mind arising from custom," which is " the founda
tion of all our judgments " — for that was scepticism
logically applied to all classes of beliefs. But what
we do not understand is how custom, though trans
muted into " authority," should be able to save one
class of beliefs, while criticism is free to inflict upon
another the sentence of intellectual death. What
seems plain is that Mr. Balfour has, by emptying
the reason, or normal nature of man, of all construc
tive ideas, emptied it also of all the higher beliefs,
and so has to invent a special agency or method for
their introduction. In other words, the sceptical
criticism has evoked its inevitable Nemesis — i.e., has
divorced thought as completely from God as percep
tion from the realities of nature ; and so has made,
in Mr. Balfour's own words, " certitude the child of
custom,"1 only custom has undergone baptism and
appears as " authority," the demure mother of Chris
tian beliefs.
3. Now, on this very curious theory, which is also
most instructive, especially so far as it illustrates
Mr. Balfour's own mind and attitude to theology, I
have some criticisms to offer.
i. What is the " reason " to which " authority " is
here opposed ? It seems to be not so much
" reason," as ratiocination. The use and interchange
of terms in this chapter is indeed a perplexing, but

1 p. 164.

" THE FOUNDATIONS OF BELIEF" 379
highly educative study. We have " reason," " we
reason " ; " reasoning," gliding out and in of sentences
and taking each other's places as if they were strict
synonyms. Now ratiocination may denote an activity
or exercise or process of the reason, but it is not
reason ; and is in no sense the antithesis of authority,
under which, as scholasticism shows, it may live and
operate with quite preternatural acuteness and suc
cess. If these opposed terms had been carefully
discriminated and defined, we should have been
spared this chapter,
ii. It is curious that the author, in dealing with a
matter so fundamental to his argument, should never
raise the question, how this authority, or custom, or
group of causes " of psychic processes," acting within
our psychological environment, came to be. To
what kind or class of factors or agencies does it owe
its existence ? He describes it as " a non-rational
cause of belief": but what is it itself — a creation of
reason, a result of purpose, or a non-rational effect of
a non-rational cause? If reason made it, how can it
be truly described as "a non-rational cause of belief" ?
If reason did not make it, what did ? Accident or
chance? But these terms denote the worst sort of
Agnosticism ; they are the kind of words which a
moment of puzzled incompetence surprised out of
sceptic Hume, and so they are alien to the mind
which comes to lead us into the inner court of theo
logy. The question as to the source or cause of the
authority is determinative of its nature and character.

380 CATHOLICISM

One would think that if it be a " rational effect," it
could not be a "non-rational cause" of a thing so
rational as ethical and religious belief. And the
greater the function authority has in history and in
the formation of mind, the less can we conceive it
as a non-rational factor of rational things ; otherwise
the forces which govern man will cease to be either
theistic or ethical. And the puzzlement is increased
by some o*\ Mr. Balfour's own phrases. His
" authority " Assumes various most rational forms ;
" the spirit of the age," which is just the intellectual
atmosphere created by its living thought ; parental
discipline, which is surely the action of rational will
upon rational will; education, which is the more
mature acting by means of rational instruments on
the less mature mind ; custom, which is a mode of
intelligent action become habitual and common.1
What acts under these forms and conditions is surely
incorrectly described as " a non-rational cause of
belief." The phrase seems, therefore, to me either
insignificant or absurd. If what is here termed
authority, viz., our organized ethical ideals, intellec
tual habits, and social instincts in their organizing
action, have a rational cause — and unless this be
granted we depose Providence for accident — then it
must be rational when it becomes a cause of beliefs.
And, whatever their cause, what are beliefs? Non-

Mr. Balfour in one place explains "authority" by "the
non-rational action of mind on mind " (p. 238). Sentences of
this order cause one's ideas to get a little mixed.

" THE FOUNDATIONS OF BELIEF" 381
rational effects? If so, what are the things whose
being Mr. Balfour would justify, but blind creations
of a blind cause, which man must with his growth in
reason get progressively rid of?
iii. It is also curious that Mr. Balfour did not raise
the question as to the relation of the individual to
these beliefs of non-rational origin. -Man is ever
modifying his environment by his action on it ; which
means that this so-called authority is ever in process
of change, being, as it were, ever called to account
and compelled to adapt itself to the new mind and
its new forms of belief or modes of thought ; and this
further means that the person whom the authority
forms, in turn reforms the authority. For the life of
the belief is quite as significant as its origin. If its
origin is non-rational, it lives its life in a rational
medium, and has to accept the conditions under
which life there is possible. And surely it is more
philosophical to bring the causes of the origin and
the conditions of the maintenance of life into har
mony, than to set them at war with each other. We
must also remember that the life of the belief within
the reason ever acts as a modifying force on the
environment. Mr. Balfour knows the distinction
which the Roman jurists drew between jus naturale
and jus civile, and the use they made of the former
to affect the latter. The jus civile was statutory,
established and fixed law — so to speak, the actual
legal environment ; the jus naturale was ideal, the
principle of justice and equity immanent in the man,

382 CATHOLICISM

yet, with the progress of his ethical culture, growing
ever more articulate. And the great jurists of the
second and third centuries, who were also for the
most part Stoics, so applied the ideal of law within,
to the actual law without, as to compel the actual to
embody the ideal, at least in as perfect a degree as
we are ever likely to see in time. And precisely the
same action is ever going on in the region of belief.
Whatever may be its origin, thought is a potent
factor in its modification ; and on its harmony with
thought its continued life depends. A " non-rational
cause" is no explanation of the being of a rational
thing ; and we may be certain that in the last
analysis the real source can never be different in
kind from the cause which secures continuance.
iv. The most curious point of all is this : Mr.
Balfour never raises the question as to whether the
authority which causes the belief justifies the belief it
causes. This surely was for his purpose the most
vital point in his problem ; apart from it, his cause
was without character or logical function. The real
question he set himself to answer was this : What
are we to think of Christian theology and the prin
ciples on which it is built? It is not any or every
religious belief that he seeks to justify ; it is our
specifically Christian beliefs. He has made his
appeal to authority, which is " the spirit of the age,"
our "psychological climate," public opinion, custom,
family, party, Church ; but these are all the most
variable of things. Our " psychological climates " are

"THE FOUNDATIONS OF BELIEF" 383
more numerous, varied, and changeable than our
geographical ; the extremes are greater, the grada
tions steeper, and the variations more sudden. Mr.
Balfour is a statesman as well as a philosopher, and
he will not think me impertinent if the point be
illustrated by his own position and experience. He
is by descent and family a Scotchman, but by educa
tion and political place an Englishman ; the " psycho
logical climate " in Scotland is Presbyterian ; in
England, Episcopalian : does his double nationality
duplicate his beliefs? Does it justify his being a
Calvinist and Presbyterian north of the Tweed, an
Arminian and an Anglican south of it ? Are the
proper beliefs of a man those of his "psychological
climate ? " or is this " climate " a justification for the
beliefs ? or has it no significance for their character ?
But this is an innocent comparison, involving what
may be thought no very radical difference. Well,
then, Mr. Balfour, as a statesman, has helped to
govern India ; and he may one day be at home the
responsible minister for it, or even go out there to be
the representative of his Sovereign. Its "psycho
logical climate," customs, education, public opinion —
in a word, " authority " — is very unlike ours : what of
the beliefs it causes? What is their truth, their
validity, their value and warrant? The question is
not simply curious ; it is vital. If authority is in
voked to explain belief, how do the beliefs it explains
stand related to theology and theological truth ? Is
religion to become a theory of " climate ? " And is

384 CATHOLICISM

all idea of a religion true for all places, all times, and
all men, to be allowed to fall to the ground ? This
would be indeed a strange result to follow from a
philosophically conservative attempt to lay " the
foundations of belief." Yet it recalls the attempt
of another conservative and sceptical philosopher to
make the " psychological " coincide with the civil or
national, if not with the geographical, climate ; it
exactly repeats the theory of Hobbes, with im
personal authority substituted for the personal king.
We were not surprised at it in his case, for he had a
frankness which was so blunt as to leave no room for
surprise ; but we do wonder at finding it in so acute
a critic of " Naturalism," and so strenuous an upholder
of theology, as Mr. Arthur Balfour.
§ IV. The Theology of the Philosopher
But it is more than time we passed to the con
structive-part of the work, if constructive it can be
called. Here it is more difficult to criticize, for the
points of agreement and difference are in these later
chapters so intricately intermixed. His argument
has about it the waywardness of genius ; it halts in
unexpected places, turns back upon itself, breaks into
felicitous asides, diverges into delightsome by-paths.
The book indeed is redeemed by its digressions;
without them it would have seemed a mere exercise
in cunning sword-play, but with them it has all the
appearance of an army of victorious arguments
marching into the battle. Were battles won by

"THE FOUNDATIONS OF BELIEF" 3&5
gallant bearing, gay banners, and martial music, our
author would deserve to be saluted as a victor indeed.
What, then, is the method and principle of the
constructive argument? It starts with the pro
visional scheme for the unification of beliefs ; and
here the definition of faith is significant. " Faith or
assurance, which, if not in excess of reason, is at least
independent of it, seems to be a necessity in every
great department of knowledge which touches on
action." x In this sense it belpngs in an equal degree,
at once to science and theology, to ethics and
religion ; and while the belief in an outer world is
more universal and inevitable than any single
religious belief, yet "these peculiarities have no
import. They exist, but they are irrelevant." For
man is a being of needs as well as of sense-percep
tions ; and his needs require ethical ideals and religious
beliefs for their satisfaction. And just as in every
belief which has its origin in perception, we assume
some kind of harmony between ourselves and the
outer universe ; so a like harmony ought to be
assumed between "that universe and our higher
needs." 2 What strikes one in this rather rudimen
tary equation of beliefs, is its unreasoned character,
indeed the utterly illogical and unphilosophical pro
cedure by which it has been accomplished. Nothing
could be more different than the measure which is
meted out to the two orders of beliefs respectively.
The one class has been analyzed, criticized, satirized,
1 p. 240. 2 p. 247. 25

386 CATHOLICISM
beaten and buffeted in every possible way ; the other
class is allowed to enter without any kind of question,
or any attempt to examine either its subjective
warrant or objective validity. But this difference is
a serious confession, either of the incompetence of the
philosophy to justify the beliefs, or of the incapability
of the beliefs to be justified. It is an acknowledg
ment that they cannot bear to be reasoned about, but
live in a region of emotion or instinct, of feeling and
impulse. This is of all positions the most intellec
tually dangerous, especially when the basis for it has
been laid in philosophical scepticism. For feeling is
an individual thing, living an unstable and dependent
life, noble only as it is penetrated by the intellect and
governed by the conscience. A distinguished German
thinker, whose philosophy was even as Mr. Balfour's,
described himself as a heathen according to the
intellect, but a Christian according to the heart.
And where such a schism has been introduced into
the nature, the old heathen is certain to prove himself
subtler and stronger than the young Christian.
Mr. Balfour, indeed, maintains that the relation
between our " needs " and their satisfaction is not as
" purely subjective in character " as that between " a
desire and its fulfilment." The correspondence is
that between " the immutable verities of the unseen
world," and " these characteristics of our nature, which
we recognize as that in us which, though not neces
sarily the strongest, is the highest." x But what are
1 p. 248.

"THE FOUNDATIONS OF BELIEF" 387
these "characteristics"? What faculty in us corre
sponds to verity in the universe ? Is it not reason or
thought, the faculty by which we know rather than
feel ? He had everything to gain by as free a use of
the critical method on the source, the form, and the
matter of religious beliefs, as on the basis and truth
of scientific ideas ; by his failure to use it he leaves
to the beliefs an unjustified existence, introduces a
hopeless schism between knowledge and faith, and
tends to reduce religion to a mere consuetudinary
and institutional system. Indeed, the notion that
religion — though not religious ideas — is the creature
of custom, the thing of " psychological atmosphere "
or political "climate," is the historical correlative of
his fundamental philosophy ; and, though incompletely
developed, it lurks in all the constructive parts of the
book, notably in his theories of " authority " and of
" beliefs and formulas."
But I would not part from the book and its author
without expressing anew my admiration of its spirit,
and of his purpose and endeavour. It is a remark
able achievement for a statesman ; and gives to the
State the happy assurance that a mind which may
yet control its destinies, has visions of higher and
more enduring things than the strife of parties, the
collision of interests, or the jealousies of classes. We
live by faith ; and this faith is here often fitly and
finely expressed. To his belief in a God capable of
"preferential action"; in an inspiration "limited to no
age, to no country, to no people " ; in an incarnation

388 CATHOLICISM

which may transcend science, but is "the abiding
place of the highest reality " ; in Christianity, as a
religion so "effectually fitted to minister to our
ethical needs" as to be made even more credible
by the mystery of evil, which it so forcibly recognizes
that it may the more victoriously overcome — I en
tirely and heartily subscribe. My criticism has
concerned not so much the end he has reached, as
his mode of reaching it. The way of faith is in
these days hard enough ; it need not be made more
difficult ; and it becomes those who believe that the
highest truth of reason is one with the highest object
of faith, to make it clear that, in their view at least, a
true theology can never be built on a sceptical philo
sophy, and that only the thought which trusts the
reason can truly vindicate faith in the God who
gave it.
April, 1895.

IX

SOME RECENT ENGLISH THEOLOGIANS
THE heaviest loss which theology has sustained
within the past decade seems to me, even
after the lapse of more than seven softening years, to
have been the sudden and premature death of Edwin
Hatch. Within his own communion more eminent
churchmen, and scholars of equal or even higher name,
have died ; but each, in a sense that was not at all
true of Hatch, either had finished his work or was
more a loss to his church than to theology. Light
foot, a son of the same school, though of another
university, only a month later followed .him to the
grave ; and he had by his learned labours built
himself an enduring monument, worthy, alike as
regards magnitude and quality, of the most heroic
age of English scholarship. In the following year
two distinguished churchmen died : Canon Liddon,
whose fine piety and noble eloquence made him
while he lived a potent influence both within and
beyond the Anglican communion ; and Dean Church,
who preferred to remain a dean when he might have
been an archbishop, and who was perhaps more a
389

390 CATHOLICISM
man of letters than a theologian, with the keen
literary temper, and a tense nature which the love
of the old humanities rather cultivated than subdued.
Two years later Hort died, leaving behind work
much less in quantity than Lightfoot's, but marked
by rarer and more stimulating qualities, and a band
of eager disciples, quickened to activity by regret at
the stores of knowledge and the energy of construc
tive thought which had perished with the master.
In 1893, about a year after Hort, death claimed
another victim, Benjamin Jowett, though he indeed
" came to the grave in a full age, like as a shock of
corn cometh in his season." He had made his name
in theology, but had for years forsaken what he had
found to be its unquiet ways for the serener atmo
sphere of classical scholarship and philosophy, and
had in consequence become, though in a narrower
region, an intenser and less resistible power, because
a power more intangible. He was the most distin
guished figure in the Oxford of his day, the one name
that created a new mythology and attracted to itself
the most picturesque elements in the old, affecting
belief the more potently that his public silence and
his sphinx-like utterances in private compelled, in
order to the interpretation of his mind, a free use
of the young academic imagination. There was
indeed a peculiar pathos about his closing days ;
though he was a most social man, loving society and
loved by it, yet he was one of the loneliest of men.
He was the last Broad Churchman of the old school,

SOME RECENT ENGLISH THEOLOGIANS 39 1
i.e., he was a Christian whose Church was the State,
whose beliefs were more akin to humanism than to
dogma and the creeds, oecumenical or particular,
whose love was for civil society and sanctity ; while
he feared priestly claims and despised the show and
the make-believe of sacerdotal religion. He was one
of the rare characters who could be cynical without
being bitter, who could be audacious in speech while
he seemed most innocent and bland ; and, though he
looked with a wonder, not untouched with pain, at
the ancient comrades who had risen in the church by
falling in the faith, he was yet able to retain affection
even where he had ceased to feel intellectual respect,
When he died, Oxford and England were the poorer
for the loss of one who had served the church by
being true to himself.
The two men we have described as " distinguished
churchmen " lie outside the scope of this paper.
Neither was, in the strict sense of the term, a theo
logian. Canon Liddon was a man of strong religious
convictions and eloquent speech ; he believed in
tensely, thought earnestly, and reasoned concerning
his beliefs with a sort of impassioned logic that was
very impressive when it had a large and strenuously
sincere personality behind it. But neither as thinker
nor as critic and scholar did he make to the theology
of his age any contribution that will outlast his
personal influence. And even before he died, his
influence had, just because of his intellectual limita
tions, suffered, even within his own party in his own

392 CA THOLICISM

church, what may be alternatively described as re
striction or eclipse. He had built on tradition, and
when tradition manifestly failed as a basis of doctrine
and was forsaken by the more clear-sighted of his
pupils, he felt as if the whole structure of faith had
broken up beneath him. What we may term his
farewell to the pulpit was fitly spoken in St. Mary's,
Oxford, and was little else than a forlorn apology for
an impossible position. Dean Church, again, had
a keen and sympathetic intellect, a quick and assimi
lative mind, which came of his literary instincts and
made him the very converse of Liddon ; one capable
of appreciating new points of view, adopting and
adapting them to older forms of thought, and of
securing for them, by vigour and grace of exposition,
acceptance and recognition. He was by nature and
capacity a Vermittler, and he did his work with most
excellent discrimination. He understood Darwin
and appreciated evolution ; he had a critical intellect,
knew that criticism was inevitable, and saw how its
sting could be drawn by some of its results being
appropriated. And he wrote with the strength and
moderation of one who stood fast in the conviction,
that the old could best be preserved by taking to
itself as much of the new as it could absorb without
danger to its distinctive character and claims. But
most of his work was provisional and occasional, and
had a sort of periodical character about it ; as it was
done to meet an emergency, its significance passed
away with the emergency it satisfied. His essay on

SOME RECENT ENGLISH THEOLOGIANS 393
Dante is perhaps the most perfect thing he ever did ;
while his book on Anselm shows how he could write
on a great theologian and find his theology — which,
after all, was his great claim to name and fame — the
least attractive or significant thing about him. What
he achieved instead was a most genial appreciation of
one churchman by another.
§ I. The Cambridge Scholars and Divines
We turn then to the four scholars who were
theologians as distinguished from churchmen : and
of them, two were typical of Cambridge, and two
no less typical of Oxford. This is not a study in
academic types ; but the difference in these univer
sities is a basis for a classification which is not
altogether unjust to character. It will be most
convenient to begin with the Cambridge men. But
we can hardly think of the two who have died,
without thinking of a third, who, happily, still lives,
though in a sphere which, unhappily, forbids the
expectation of much further theological work from
his hand.
i. Lightfoot, Westcott, and Hort represent the
nearest thing to a triumvirate in learning any Eng
lish university has known, at least in our century ;
possibly too, the nearest approach to a distinct
tendency or school, since the days of the Cambridge
Platonists, Whichcote, Cudworth, and More. Each
in his own way was a genuine son of his university,
enhancing its reputation by embodying its historical

394 CA THOLICISM
character and distinctive genius. Lightfoot was a
scholar whose learning recalled that of his illustrious
namesake of the seventeenth century ; while his
energy in controversy and mastery of his weapons
reminded one now of Whitgift and now of Bentley.
He was, indeed, altogether too massive and sincere
to stoop to the arts and language of Elizabeth's
famous archbishop, though, in explanation, it ought
to be remembered that in these respects the distance
between the sixteenth and the nineteenth century
is simply immeasurable ; and his manhood was too
large and sane and kindly to allow him to flay an
opponent in the merciless manner of Phileleutherus
Lipsiensis. He had, as his criticism of Supernatural
Religion showed, all Bentley's power to hit an oppo
nent hard and straight, though, happily, without his
marvellous ingenuity in quarrelling with his friends
and provoking quarrels where he need have none. He
had, too, if not all his fine scholarship, yet his rare
critical genius, and, again happily, without the
eccentricity of mind that made the greatest English
scholar of his century the worst judge of English
literature. Dr. Westcott we here think of as the Cambridge
professor with a very distinct message to his age, and
not as the Bishop of Durham. We now know that
he combines in a rare degree the natures of the
speculative and the practical man, the dreamer and
the realist, the intellect that can see visions and the
will that can realize the visions he has seen. But,

SOME RECENT ENGLISH THEOLOGIANS 395
meanwhile, we forget the administrator and think
only of the scholar, who seemed almost like a
Cambridge Neo-Platonist strayed out of the seven
teenth century into our own ; yet with most charac
teristic differences. These we may indicate rather
than define thus : He was a Neo-Platonist of the
ecclesiastical rather than of the classical Renaissance.
He did not so much seek to find the Church in
philosophy as philosophy in the Church ; he came
to his Platonism through Clement and Origen, not
through Plotinus and Numenius ; and so it tended
to be sacramental more than symbolical, to be
allegorical in thought and expression, in art and
history ; which means that he was in intellect less
rational than emotional and intuitive. His system,
which is only another name for the attitude of his
mind, was more Biblical than classical, deduced from
John and the Hebrews, not from Plato and the
Academy. But though the form was changed, yet
it held the old spirit. The idealism was not the
less real that it found its material in the Gospels
and Epistles, instead of in philosophical treatises ;
and that it was developed in commentaries on the
books of the New Testament, and not on all the
mythologies. Hort, again, was more the pure scholar and critic
than either of the other two. And so he was too
conscious of the possibilities of error and the limita
tions of knowledge, to reach the clear-cut and assured
conclusions of Lightfoot ; too much alive to the

396 CATHOLICISM

complexities of thought and the inadequacies of
human speech, to be as prolific and facile a writer
as Westcott. We know Hort, indeed, only from his
works, and especially from his Life and Letters ;
but in this we are far from singular ; for it may be
said of the men who knew him in the flesh and were
thought to be his friends, that only one, his twin
soul, or it may be two, knew him in any other way.
Before fame had idealized him, and turned his very
peculiarities into notes of distinction, he was to
swift and obvious academic wit, but Hortus siccus.
He has been described by the most competent of
living hands, and a hand made competent no less
by love and reverence for his memory than by
knowledge of his work, as "our greatest English
theologian of the century," yet as " a man of humble
mind " and " inexorable sincerity." 1 If unable to
accept without qualification all that is implied in
the first statement, yet, as one who knew him only
from afar, I may be allowed brief space for a few
sentences of appreciation and regret. For his charac
ter and history appeal in a signal degree to a man
whose main interests lie in theology. Academic
distinction came earlier to the other two than, to
him ; and they had in due season the highest
ecclesiastical preferment, which was, of course, in

1 The Rev. Dr. Sanday, in the American Journal of Theology,
pp. 95-117.

SOME RECENT ENGLISH THEOLOGIANS, 397
both cases unsolicited, and certainly not beyond
their deserts ; while Hort was never more than a
humble parish priest, though no man appreciated
more than he the dignity of his office. But he so
used his quiet and comparative seclusion as to
qualify himself for the very highest work — nay, to
do work of the very highest order. There is safety
for some men in an early escape from the university,
especially if it be an escape to the obscurity where
independence can be cultivated, congenial work
undertaken, and the problems of the time wrestled
with in a spirit and with a labour becoming their
gravity. For my own part, I never know whether
to congratulate or condole with a young scholar
who gains a fellowship or holds a tutorship which
keeps him up at the university. It may deprive
him of the opportunity he needs to develop the
best that is within him. The atmosphere of the
common room may be stimulating, but it is not
always bracing ; and it may tend to the creation
of that most impotent of tempers and most de
pressing of habits, academic conventionalism. It
was thus a real gain to Hort that he for so long
escaped not only promotion in the church but even
office in the university. But in due season there
came to him what may be described as an honour
and an office which was all his own. He became
the ideal of a band of younger scholars, a sort of
unconscious mentor, a literary conscience which
exacted independence, accuracy, and the patient

398 CATHOLICISM
search for truth. We do not know any modern
English scholar who was so much a hero to scholars,
so progressively loved and admired and trusted. On
his immense resources the obscurest could draw, and
could be certain of meeting no repulse. His' silence
was at once a cause of perplexity and a source of
power, for men wished that he would speak so as
to solve their problems, or to help them to a solu
tion ; yet they felt that before the silence of one
who had inquired so long, who knew and had
thought so much, they could only cultivate the
reverence and the spirit he had so splendidly
exemplified. And so the young scholars he in
fluenced are keeping his memory green by attempting
to become even such as he was, or such as he would
have approved.
2. What distinguished these men and made them
amid all their differences a unity, members of the
same family, or varieties of a single type, was the
formal attitude of their minds, or, in other words,
their apprehension of theology as a problem in
literature rather than in history. Of course their
attitude was not in all respects or at all points
uniform, but this was its general character. Light
foot settled the Ignatian controversy for, at least,
our generation. That was his great achievement,
where his really great qualities showed themselves
in their most perfect form. His Clement and Poly
carp are not unworthy to stand alongside his
Ignatius, though his work, especially as regards

SOME RECENT ENGLISH THEOLOGIANS 399
Clement, was not so finished as he himself could
have wished it to be. But as his distinguished
successor has justly and soberly said — his edition
of the Apostolic Fathers is " a monument of learning,
sagacity, and judgment unsurpassed in the present
age." x His Pauline Epistles are not nearly so
successful ; there is often a curious hardness in his
tone, his exegesis is not seldom marked by imperfect
sympathy and defective insight. The man who was
both by friendship and knowledge most capable of
judging him, said of these Commentaries : " The
prevailing characteristic is masculine good sense
unaccompanied by either the insight or the delusion
of subtlety." 2 In matters of thought he had what
seems a very curious, but is a very common com
bination of qualities, a real love of positive dogma
with little interest in the history of doctrine, or much
real -comprehension of its inner meaning. But it is
in dealing with literary and critical questions, as
distinguished from questions historical and exegeti-
cal, that his true power appears. He does not so
much construe history, as compel us to find room
in any future attempt at construction for documents
he has proved to be authentic, and for the facts
they describe. This, of course, must be taken as a
general statement which admits of being variously
qualified, as by the ability for historical criticism

1 The Apostolic Fathers, pt. i. Prefatory note, p. vi.
2 Hort in Diet, of National Biography.

400 CATHOLICISM
so clearly exhibited in his dissertation on The
Christian Ministry, and his remarkable and illu
minative discussion of the martyrdom of Ignatius ;
but in the broad sense it is, if not quite adequate
yet true.
I have found it no easy thing to write these sen
tences concerning a man whose memory is so revered
and whose work is so pre-eminent in its own order ;
but unless the limitations of the workman be recog
nized, his work is certain to be falsely valued. Dr.
Sanday, writing under the sense of recent loss, con
fessed that Lightfoot's mind was not naturally
" metaphysical," that he was without the " metaphy
sical fervour, the delight in the contemplation of
mysteries " combined " with strong, clear, logical
thinking," which distinguished Cyril of Alexandria.
" But few Englishmen have this ; and Bishop Light
foot was English to the backbone." 1 And with this
judgment Hort agreed. " Lightfoot," he said, "is
not speculative enough or eager enough to be a
leader of thought." 2 His " mental interests lay
almost exclusively in concrete facts or written words.
He never seemed to care for any generalization. No
one can with advantage be everything ; and he
gained much by what was surely a limitation."3
Indeed, Lightfoot's mind was severe and rigorous,
and had a certain vigorous native belligerency, which

1 English Historical Review, vol. v. p. 214.
2 Life and Letters of F. J. A. Hort, vol. ii. p. 89. • Ibid., 410.

SOME RECENT ENGLISH THEOLOGIANS 401
Hort described as " its correspondence to the preva
lent English habit of mind, by which he gained
enormously in ready access to English people of all
sorts." 1 And these are the very qualities and
limitations which stamped with its formal character
all his work.
Westcott, on the other hand, has more of a
mystical nature than Lightfoot, though it would
be incorrect to say that he was more metaphysical.
His mind has more affinity with literature and
criticism than with philosophy and history. He is
a contemplative rather than a speculative thinker.
He is an idealist who loves the sources where he
finds the lights that give him life; he is not a
dialectician who loves to discover and follow and
weave together the sequences of thought. It was
real affinity that attracted him to " John " ; a similar,
though a less complete, affinity that drew him to
" Hebrews." To his peculiar idealism Alexandria
is more congenial than Athens, and the personal
equation limits the insight and the range of his
interpretative power. His mind can hardly be
described as pellueid ; he loves the twilight which
subdues the stronger colours and softens the harsher
or more rigid outlines. In his discussions in literary
or historical criticism he manages often to leave a sort
of unsatisfied feeling, as if the mind had not got
fairly face to face with the facts, but had instead

1 Life and Letters of F. J. A. Hort, vol. ii. p. 41 r.
26

402 CATHOLICISM

looked at them through a haze, which flooded the
scene with more harmonizing effects than would
have come from the pitiless light of day. But
while as a thinker he appeals to a comparatively
restricted class, as a textual critic, i.e., in the region
where he deals with the most formal and exact
of all literary studies, he has as his audience the
whole of the learned world. He can speak as a man
of science, and classify and marshal his authorities,
and where they are in conflict decide between them
for reasons the competent can understand and will
either approve or condemn. And so his great con
tribution, though it is not his alone, to the theology
of the age — as pre-eminent in its own order as
Lightfoot's great work was in its — fs a Greek text
of the New Testament. And the name which stands
on the title-page indissolubly associated with his is
Hort's. They were indeed par nobile fratrum, and
the text which bears their joint names is the fit
monument of their brotherhood. But the precedency
in name and in honour will only be fully known and
determined when the letters which passed between
the two, while the work was in progress, have seen
the light.
What has been said as to Westcott applies,
mutatis mutandis, partially to Hort ; but it needs to
be qualified by being enlarged. He was a man of
rarer, in some respects of higher qualities than either
of his compeers. His nature was more complex,
and, in obedience to something wiser than instinct,

SOME RECENT ENGLISH THEOLOGIANS 403
he had given his varied faculties a no less varied
discipline. He was long remembered at Cambridge
as the Man of four Triposes — mathematical, classical,
the natural and the moral sciences. This was a
dangerous beginning, and might well have signified
a fatal facility for drudgery, but no capacity for
better things. In Hort's case, however, it expressed
a real demand of nature. It did not" tempt him
either to sacrifice his life to his academic reputation,
or to try to become an expert in all or any of his
tripos subjects : but it saved him from the limitations
of the mere scholar, the sectionalism of the mere
man of science, the abstract idealism of the mere
metaphysician, while it drilled him into the habits
of accuracy and methods of research which were the
factors of his later efficiency. His regard for facts,
however trivial, his love of research, his faculty of
delicate discrimination and classification, his sym
pathy with the spirit of discovery, his mental
hospitality, the welcome he was ever ready to offer
to a theory which promised to shed new light on
old things, his eagerness to discover causes and
conditions of variation or of relations between old
and new forms, different or cognate, in nature or in
history, in morphology or in MSS., sprang out of
a discipline which had been at once philological,
scientific, and philosophical. The mental attitude
which is thought to be typical of the apologetic
divine — the attitude which looks upon every new
discovery or theory in science as a masked danger

404 CATHOLICISM

to faith, and deals with it as such— was utterly alien
to him. He was always on the outlook for fresh
truth, for new ways of viewing and interpreting men
and things. On the morrow of its appearance he
hailed The Origin of Species as, " in spite of its
difficulties," an " unanswerable " book. But, while
the university drilled him, his intellectual quicken
ing came from personal teachers, notably Newman
Coleridge, and Maurice. They made the ideal
elements of his mind, the regulative principles of
his thought ; yet their application, the realm in
which he moved as a thinker, was specifically his
own. It was the history of primitive Christianity,
construed not simply for its own sake or in its more
phenomenal being, but rather as the parable of the
universe, the mystery in whose interpretation all
time was interpreted.
In a quite exceptional degree Hort's own intel
lectual problems were" those of the early Church ;
and in him the great thoughts of the second and
third centuries seemed to be re-incarnated. To him
the doctrine of the Logos was no mere orthodox
dogma, but a living belief, a whole philosophy of
being. In its light he read the texts, the early
Church, its literature and its creeds. But while the
thought that lived in him was ancient, the man it
lived in was modern, looking upon the problem of
the universe through eyes that science had trained
and that philosophy had opened, yet with a mind
which faith had illumined. It was this which

SOME RECENT ENGLISH THEOLOGIANS A°b
created the atmosphere that surrounded both the man
and his work, which filled with the enthusiasm of hope
the disciples who got near enough to catch some
glimpse of the things he saw in the light he saw them
under. And yet it helps to explain why he found
speech so hard as to be well-nigh impossible. There is
something singularly pathetic in the volumes which
have been so lovingly edited and published since his
death. They are, indeed, but shadowy fragments
of a once vivid mind, as it were half articulate words
from lips which seemed silent for ever. When these
posthumous volumes are read through the Life and
Letters we see this ; that Hort's inability to write
what would satisfy himself sprang from the conflict
of two tendencies within him — the scientific and the
speculative ; and the conflict was the more acute
that the speculative stood at the end, and the
scientific was the way which led up to it. Of all
rare combinations, that of the scholar and the
thinker is the rarest ; and, curiously, it is often a
paralyzing combination, especially when each of the
two so retains its integrity that the scholar insists on
all his facts being reckoned with, and the thinker
that every several fact must have its place and
reason. And we see in Hort's Hulsean Lectures —
long brooded over, printed in part, carried about for
years, revised, re-revised, growing to him ever less
adequate — the thinker struggling after this immense
co-ordination. His son says " he viewed all the move
ments of the time in connection with theology." He

406 CATHOLICISM

did more than this ; he construed through theology
all nature and history. In his system he wanted to
find a place for the documents and institutions and
persons of the Church ; but also for the religions and
civilizations of the world, as well as for the dis
coveries of science. Without physics theology was
incomplete ; without theology all the speculations
and discoveries of man had no unity. And the
unification was to be carried out by a process of
verification. The experience of man was at once to
authenticate and justify the truth of God. And so
he believed that freedom was as necessary to theology
as authority to religion.
§ II. The Oxford Scholars and Divines
i. Benjamin jowett
I. Of the two Oxford scholars named above,
neither may seem comparable as theologians to these
three eminent members of the sister university. But
we must distinguish. As to the late Master of Bal-
liol two things have to be remembered — he forsook
theology early, and he occupied, first as tutor and
then as head of his college, positions that were little
friendly to the vocation of the scholar or the cultiva
tion of the higher learning. But it is easy to be here
unjust. The very force of his personality and his
success as an administrator and educator helped to
obscure Jowett's higher qualities and achievements.
And the clouds that did so much to hide his real
character were not always lined with silver ; they

SOME RECENT ENGLISH THEOLOGIANS 407
were often very dark and earth-born indeed, whether
due to the undergraduate imagination, which dearly
loves the mythical, or to the ecclesiastical, which has
the art of invoking unconscious invention to justify
dislike. The Oxford of his early manhood was a
stormy place, not kindly to the golden mean, or what
is fabled as the academic calm of philosophic mind ;
and too narrow to allow the hostile forces free play,
it compelled the men who embodied them so to jostle
each other, or even so to collide, as to transform
intellectual difference into personal heat. The his
tory of what is known as " the Oxford movement "
has still to be written ; of books dealing with it,
more than one has earned a name which once fell
from the late Master, " a reservoir of posthumous
spites." The worship of fictitious heroes is an easy
and common cult, but is not noble or elevating ; and
it has had free scope and full exercise among the
Tractarian men In no circle of men in modern
days have there been more extravagant loyalties or
violent hates ; and the hates were not always al
lowed to perish with their occasion — they survived
among the men who became " Catholics " and did
not altogether die among the men who remained
"Anglicans." And exaggerated praise or immoderate
admiration is as little just as extravagant blame.
John Henry Newman has been made to live before
the imagination of the multitude as the most typical
Oxford man of the century. As a matter of fact, he
is typical, not of Oxford, but of a school that has

408 CA THOLICISM
now and then attempted to find there a home. The
men typical of Oxford, as a "home of learning and
knowledge, are Roger Bacon, the interpreter of na
ture ; Duns Scotus and William of Ockham, the one
the most critical, the other the most speculative, of
Schoolmen ; Cardinal Wolsey, statesman and munifi
cent patron of letters ; Dean Colet, student of Scrip
ture and founder of a great school, selecting for his
trustees, as Erasmus says, " married laymen of honest
reputation," because he had observed generally " that
such persons were more conscientious and honest
than priests " ; Richard Hooker, stateliest of English
prose writers as well as most judicious of divines ;
John Hales, " the ever memorable,"' who loved
breadth and hated the ecclesiastical tyranny which
created schism ; William Chillingwofth, who tried
Catholicism only to return into a larger and
thorougher Protestantism ; John Selden, jurist,
scholar, and historian ; John Hampden and John
Pym, English statesmen ; Edward Pococke, Oriental
ist, the last representative of an illustrious race of
scholars who made the English rpne famous in
Europe ; Joseph Butler, philosopher and divine ; John
Wesley, preacher and organizer ; Charles Wesley,
preacher and poet ; Adam Smith, moral philosopher
and economist — founder, indeed, of the modern
science of economics ; William Hamilton, metaphy
sician .and man of learning ; Thomas Arnold, school
master, historian, and man of affairs— these a-e the
men most typical of Oxford, representing all that is

SOME RECENT ENGLISH THEOLOGIANS 409
finest in her culture and truest in her handiwork, and
most beneficent in the contributions she has made
to the common weal. But under the spell and pas
sion of Newman she renounced the serenity in
which she loved to walk and to meditate, and turned
her home into a sort of fiery furnace, glowing with
sevenfold heat ; and the youth that were then cast
therein had to be made of good stuff", if they were to
walk in the midst of it unsinged and undismayed.
And there were men, though they were few and elect,
who stood the fiery trial, and came out of the furnace
without so much as the smell of fire upon their gar
ments. It was, indeed, a brave thing to keep a quiet
soul in those days of quick speech, which yet was
not quick enough for the feeling it would fain ex
press. But the young academic Liberals were gal
lant men, the very chivalry of their time — Arthur
Stanley, Benjamin Jowett, Arthur Hugh Clough,
Matthew Arnold, and we may name other two,
though their course was more troubled and less
straight, Mark Pattison and James Anthony Froude.
These men have not been made saints or heroes of ;
their party is too critical to be apt at canonization,
while, to speak the blunt truth, one, or possibly two,
were of too mixed material to be built after the
heroic model or made into a heroic form. But
Jowett was certainly compacted of the finest stuff;
struggle did not fret him, nor, what is a far rarer
thing, did petty persecution sour. He had to suffer
the martyrdom of silence, but he bore it like a

410 CA THOLICISM

man ; and when he found speech, he spoke like one
who did not know or feel that his lips had been sealed.
2. We have to remember these things if we would
understand what Jowett did in theology, or the spirit
he did it in. The work which he did in this field,
the commentary on certain Pauline Epistles, with its
incorporated essays, appeared just ten years after the
Tractarian movement had culminated in the seces
sion of Newman ; but between it and the Develop
ment of Doctrine, which marked the event, the dis
tance must be measured by centuries rather than by
years. It was a most modern book, puzzling by its
very modernity, misunderstood because it was so new
and strange a thing in sacred criticism and exegesis.
It was subtle, penetrated by intense religious feeling,
often distinguished by lucid elegance of form and
phrase, yet with the frequent lapses in the sequence
of his thought which marked all Jowett's work to
the very end. What bewildered the student was its
absolute freedom from tradition ; and the curious
thing was that the old scholastic tradition had not
been argued down, analyzed — an airy nothing — or
otherwise forcibly expelled ; it simply was not, and
for the author seemed not to have been. Paul ap
peared to be lifted bodily out of the world in which
learned interpretation, held in the leading-strings of
theological formulas, had for ages made him live and
move, and placed back in a simpler and roomier
world, where thought was more fluid and less fixed.
Men did not" know what to make of this Paul ; he

SOME RECENT ENGLISH THEOLOGIANS 411
was too much of a real man, and too little of the
scholastic theologian to whom they had grown ac
customed. They thought he had been simplified out
of existence and did not see the profound insight of
this new presentation, how cunningly he had been
unclothed, how deftly re-clothed in his hidden and
forgotten raiment. We might describe the commen
tary as, in one sense classical, in another sense his
torical, in a third sense secular, understanding that
term in its true and literal meaning. It was classical
as distinguished from theological ; the Epistles read
as literature, for themselves and in order to the dis
covery of their thought, their writer, the forces that
made him, the influences that surrounded him, the
character that moulded his conduct, and the men
whose friendship or hostility affected his opinions
and helped to determine his policy. It was historical
as distinguished from traditional : the canons of the
schools counted for nothing, but the world the man
moved in was thoroughly realized ; that world
Jewish, Hellenistic, Greek, Roman, was made to re
live for the interpreter ; then the mode which the
man had of using the Book he best knew and most
used was studied, and the forms of thought which
were his rather than ours subtly analyzed and deter
mined. It was secular as opposed to isolated and
sectional : Paul and his books were part of the age
in which they lived, shared the life and reflected the
experience of their own time ; his relation to the
Twelve and to the_Churches were explained and

412 CATHOLICISM
illustrated by the action of kindred personalities in
distant times but similar circumstances. Luther and
Calvin, Wesley and Whitefield were summoned to
show how Paul and Apollos, or Paul and Peter might
differ in theology, yet preach in the same church or
address the same people. Philo was re-embodied
that he might express the ideas which were current
in the Judaism that Paul knew. The work was that
of a comparatively young man, yet one who had far
passed the age of paradox and crude originality, and
who lived under conditions where continuous study
and concentrated thought are least of all possible ;
but it deserves to be called a book which marked, if
it did not make, a new era. It was a book which
owed much to Baur's Paulus, though it had an
originality of its own ; it was English and not
German, for it was less ridden by theory and stood
more soberly face to face with fact. It showed more
creative and constructive power than any of Light
foot's Commentaries ; and as it represented only the
firstfruits of Jowett's labours in this field — though
alas, the firstfruits were destined to be also the last !
— one may almost venture the prophecy that if he
had not turned from theology to classics he would
have done here the work for which England was
waiting ; and by supplying the Broad Church with
a basis at once Biblical and reasonable, he might
have saved it from the extinction which he lived to
see it experience.1
u 1 Cf. Hort's judgment. " Certainly his (Lightfoot's) doctrinal

SOME RECENT ENGLISH THEOLOGIANS 413

ii. Edwin Hatch
1. But we turn from Jowett to the younger scholar
whose work suggested this paper, Edwin Hatch.
Of his hard struggle for a foothold and even a
livelihood, of his long unrecognised merit and un
rewarded labours, I will not venture to speak. For
years, even after he had attained European fame,
he was allowed to hold the office of Vice-Principal
of St. Mary Hall, which may fitly be described
as the least of all the cities of Judah ; and even
at one time he was forced to undergo the exhausting
and depressing drudgery of taking private pupils.
When University recognition did come, it was
parcelled out in small offices, which in most cases
involved the maximum of uncongenial toil. These
things are said only that they may indicate the
difficulties under which he did his work ; but they
were difficulties that neither broke his temper nor
abated his resolution, though, without doubt, they
overtaxed his strength and shortened his life. One
thing more of a personal nature I will dare to say.
comments are far from satisfying me. They belong far too
much to the mere Protestant version of St. Paul's thoughts,
however Christianised and rationalised. One misses the real
attempt to fathom St. Paul's own mind and to compare it with
the facts of life which one finds in Jowett." And again,
" Doctrinal questions are almost entirely avoided, as Lightfoot
means to keep them for Romans. However, that is certainly
the weakest point of the book ; and Jowett's notes and essays,
with all their perversities, are still an indispensable supple
ment."— Life and Letters of F.J. A. Hort, vol. ii. pp. 79, 35.

414 CA THOLICISM

He did not escape the ordinary misjudgment that
falls to the men who take their own line in theo
logical inquiry. Men who were party leaders did
not love him, and, conscious of his at one time
almost unbefriended loneliness, they did not care
to conceal their dislike. But, though we had much
intercourse and many confidences, I never heard
him speak one unkind or ungenerous word of any
man among those from whom he had suffered
many things. I well remember how an old friend
of mine met him at first with some reluctance and
much misgiving, because he had been accustomed
to hear him described by certain ecclesiastical
opponents, one, in particular, whose name occurs
elsewhere in this paper, as a man of "a cold and
hard nature," of "a rationalistic temper," "without
faith in the supernatural " or " feeling for historical
continuity in the Church." But my friend, being
himself a man of fine character and open eye,
learned in the course of a few days' progressively
intimate companionship how utterly Hatch had
been misconceived and belied. These are things
I had no intention of saying when I began this
paper, but a man's work can never be really under
stood unless it be read through his character.
Hatch was not a scholar in the sense and degree
in which Lightfoot was one, though his Essays
in Biblical Greek and the Concordance to the
Septuagint, which he planned, organized the work
for and did so much to carry through, show how

SOME RECENT ENGLISH THEOLOGIANS 415
much he could have accomplished in the field of
constructive scholarship. But Hatch was strong
where Lightfoot and Westcott are weak, in using
literature for the interpretation of history, in analyzing
the forces that determine its course, shape its
institutions, formulate its beliefs, create its tendencies,
regulate its thinking, in a word, govern its develop
ment. It is doubtful whether in the delicacy and
success with which he handled and explained the
most complex phenomena in early ecclesiastical
history, he had a superior or even a peer. His
method was scientific, at once analytic and com
parative, though, in order to its appreciation, it was
necessary to see him at work. He was, in the
strict sense, as an historical inquirer without dog
matic assumptions. The Church as it lived and
moved, took shape, and grew into an organic
structure, was something to be explained ; and the
only thing which could be regarded as an explanation
must come through an analysis of the forces and
conditions which had made it. To say that it
was, in its political and organized or in its social
and secular being, a supernatural creation, was to
lift it out of the category of things with which
the scientific student of history could deal; and
such supernatural power could be logically invoked
only when every normal and intelligible cause had
been tried and failed. To postulate a miraculous
cause when historical causes were discoverable and
sufficient, was a most needless multiplication of

416 CATHOLICISM

hypotheses. In harmony with this principle, he
proceeded to examine the structure, and the several
forms or stages through which it passed, in relation
to the various conditions under which, and forces
amid which, it lived and grew; in order that he
might discover whether there were any cause or
causes which could account for its organization by
a normal historical process. He began with the
ministry, for it was the most obvious point for him
to begin at. He lived face to face with a theory
of it on which a most portentous series of claims
was based ; and he was, as it were, every day of
his life challenged to accept or contradict the theory.
It was characteristic of him to seize on elements
and aspects of the idea and functions of the original
Christian society which had been overlooked or
neglected by ecclesiastical writers. The Church
which history revealed to him was not simply a
new organ for worship, equipped with the officials,
ritual, and authority needed to establish an appro
priate cult; but it was rather a ministry of benefi
cence, a society charged to create a new social
order, where the distinction of bond and free shpuld
cease, and to exercise those charities which made
the poor share in the abundance of the rich. He
examined the guilds and religious associations of
the Grasco-Roman world; he compared their con
stitution with the constitution of the Church, and
found analogies that made it probable that the
new Christian societies were not dissimilar from

SOME RECENT ENGLISH THEOLOGIANS 417

the old associations. Then he examined the Jewish
communities, found special features in their adminis
tration, "elders" who formed a "synedrion," or
local court, which had many points of similarity
with the Roman municipalities, and these, in their
union, became transformed into the council of the
Church. The process was then analyzed by which
the bishop rose to supremacy, the clergy and laity
came to be differentiated, and the Church organized
on the lines of the empire. It was a study in
ecclesiastical biology, the formation of the clerical
orders dealt with as a problem in natural history.
And its success may be measured by two things —
the violence with which it was assailed, on the one
side, and the admiration with which the most
competent and dispassioned judges received it, on
the other. One thing must have been peculiarly
gratifying to Hatch — the letter which in the Sep
tember of 1 886 he received from Hort :
" On the question of organisation, I imagine that we agree
more than we differ ; but some of your language is not such
as I should naturally use. I quite go with you in condemning
the refusal of fellowship with sister Churches merely because
they make no use of some elements of organisation assumed
to be jure divino .essential. But it seems to me that the
rejection of theoretical and practical exclusiveness clears the
ground for the recognition of at least the possibility that other
kinds of (relative) jus divinum may be brought to light by
history and experience. In organisation, as in other things,
all Churches have much, I think, to learn from each other,
the Church of England as much as any. It does not follow
that organisation ought to be everywhere identical. But it
27

418 CATHOLICISM

may well turn out that there are some elements or principles
of organisation which cannot anywhere be cast aside without
injury ; and, at all events, each Church has need to ask how
far its peculiarities may be mere gratuitous defects, not right
adaptations to its own special circumstances." '
What this means is obvious enough ; it showed that
Hatch stood no longer alone. The man he regarded
as in the region of literary and historical criticism
the most capable, detached, and constructive intellect
of the English Church, substantially agreed with
him. To Hort, as to him, a special organization
was not of the esse, though it' might be of the bene
esse of the Church ; it did not forbid " fellowship
with sister Churches," or justify "theoretical and
practical exclusiveness." What Hort desiderated
was " practical tolerance and practical brotherliness " ;
and he regretted that "Anglican prejudice and
exclusive theory" barred the way, but felt that
even these "needed tender handling if their power
is to be sapped."2 Reflection and research had
effected a revolution in the quondam High Church
man which his son and biographer has not appreci
ated or even perceived.
2 But Hatch did not imagine that to trace the
organization of the ministry was to explain the
Church. On the contrary, the Church represented
to him a most complex growth, and was a highly
complicated structure. As he conceived the matter,
it was not explained at any point unless it was

1 Hort's Life and Letters, ii. p. 357. 2 Ibid> p 3s8_

SOME RECENT ENGLISH THEOLOGIANS 419

explained at all. The Bampton Lectures were but
a small section of a much greater whole ; they did
not express his complete view or cover the field
within which he had pursued his researches. They
were not his solution of the problem, but only a
step towards it. The Hibbert Lectures carried the
problem another step forward, but in the mind
of their author no more than a single step. Their
special question was as to "the influence of Greek
ideas and usages upon the Christian Church"; but
the question had so many ramifications and raised
so many issues that adequate discussion of any
one, let alone all, within the limits allowed him,
was simply impossible. As it was, the ease and
force of his exposition enabled him to perform a
task that would have been to any less well-furnished
mind simply impossible. He analyzed the medium
or soil in which Christianity had to live when it
became the religion of the Gentiles. The mind
that assimilated also transformed the religion, and
the transformation was only explicable through the
mind that accomplished it. He sketched the Greek
mind as it was in the first and second centuries of
our era, how it was educated and exercised, what
its interests were, and what sort of life it led ; and
he indicated the relation in which the habit of
mind created by the vagrant philosophers, who
speculated and argued in public and preached so
as to gratify curiosity, tickle the fancy, and exercise
the understanding, stood to the new system which

420 CATHOLICISM

came to claim belief in ways so instructively analogous
to the old. He examined the methods of exegesis
which had been used to extract reason from Greek
mythology and to reconcile Moses and Plato, and
which in due season became in the hands of the
Fathers now a weapon of apology, now a means
of proving doctrine, and now the instrument of
bringing the New Testament out of the Old. He
analyzed the action of philosophy on the Greek
mind, and traced its influence on the tendency to
speculate and define in the region of belief. He
showed the distinction between Greek and Christian
ethics, and indicated how the Greek penetrated,
changed, in some respects superseded, the Christian.
Then he traced how the region of theology proper,
man's intellectual interpretation of God as the
highest and most real Being, was invaded by the
metaphysical Greek mind, with its inherited instincts,
its well-disciplined habits, and its elaborate ter
minology ; with the result that the faith of the Church
in a living personal God was transmuted into a
series of abstract yet rigorously defined dogmas.
The Greek mysteries, it was further argued, had
affected the Christian sacraments, changing them
from their simple primitive sense and purpose to
acts and ceremonies akin to those associated with
the ancient secret cults. The result of the whole
was the transformation of the original basis of the
Christian society, and a correspondent change in
the whole structure it supported.

SOME RECENT ENGLISH THEOLOGIANS 42 1
Immense and intricate as the problem was, it by no
means adequately or fairly represented the question
he had put to himself, and the material he had col
lected for its discussion. He did not imagine that the
Church had been explained when, as in the Bampton
and Hibbert Lectures, the forces contributing to the
formation of its ministry, the formulation of its creed,
the rise of its mysteries, and the evolution of its ethics
had been analyzed and described. Other and quite
as integral elements in its constitution had still to be
reckoned with. The action of Roman law, of the
civil organization of the empire and its administration,
of its religious legislation and institutions, had still to
be traced. There was the constitution of the Church,
catholic and provincial, national and parochial, the
functions and powers of councils and synods as
affected by the imperial system, now independent of
the emperor, now dependent upon him, and the whole
remarkable body of legislation called the Canon Law
to be explained. There were also to be traced the
changes which the growth and application, the con
solidation and codification of this law effected in the
discipline, in the internal organization and the exter
nal policy, both of provincial Churches and the
Roman Church. And in the light thus shed it be
came more possible to discover the state and
influence of the localities where given synodical or
conciliar canons had been framed ; to watch the
development of the clerical orders and- the definition
of their authority; to study the methods of the

422 CATHOLICISM

Church in dealing with offences, ecclesiastical and
moral, lay and clerical, the manners, conduct, vices of
special classes, places, and times, the relation and
reciprocal action of Church and State, with the in
creasing emphasis on the monarchical idea in the one,
and the changes due to the weakness or the strength
of the imperial or regal power in the other ; to ascer
tain the attitude of city to surrounding country, and
of province to capital, with its correlative action in the
creation of diocesan episcopacy. And he had made
large researches and collected considerable material
towards a history of these things, though nothing
more than the merest hints as to his conclusions and
fragments of his work ever saw the light.
3. These are dry records of the streams of fertilizing
light which he poured into dark places well known to
scholasticism, dead and living, but all too seldom
visited by science. In his hands the study of Canon
Law, as some of us remember it, was distinguished by
vivid reality. He made one see the Church as she
lived in the age when the special canons, whether of
a council or a synod, which he was at the time study
ing, were framed, the age she lived in, the difficulties
she had to meet, and her mode of meeting them.
And the study was always comparative; the new
canons were examined in relation to the old, and the
action of the whole on the constitution and history
of the Church carefully traced. By his method he
made us see, as if it were going on under our very
eyes, the whole process of organic change, which

SOME RECENT ENGLISH THEOLOGIANS 423

transformed the free Christian societies of Syria,
Greece, and Italy, into a new empire, ecclesiastical
and Roman. He did not describe the process with
Harnack as the secularization of the Church or with
Sohm as its naturalization l (" the natural man is a
born Catholic," " Church Law has risen from the
overpowering desire of the natural man for a legally
constituted, catholicized Church ") ; but the process
certainly appeared as one of progressive alienation
from the primitive ideal. Nor did Canon Law ex
haust his question. Over against it stood two very
different classes of phenomena, one in the region of
opinion, represented by the Heresies, another in the
region of emotion and worship, represented by the
Liturgies. The growth of legislation made the Church
partake more and more of a political character, and
heresy appear more and more as a political crime ;
and I have no more instructive recollection than a
private discussion with Hatch, in which he illustrated
the influence which the ideas Augustine had derived
from these two sources — the political idea of the
Church and the criminal character of heresy — had on
his mind and system. His discussions of the Liturgies
brought him into a deeper and more sacred region ;
but he so handled the question as to make the
Liturgies illustrate the growth at once of religious

1 Outlines of Church History, pp. 35, 36. This position 13
most elaborately and learnedly worked out in Sohm's great work
on Kirchenrecht, vol. i.

424 CATHOLICISM

ideas and of customs, especially as concerned the
relations of clergy and people.
The whole of the question he had set himself to
solve he was never able to discuss publicly, or even
in his university lectures. And so much as he did
publicly discuss was in a form that hardly enabled
him to do justice to his mind. What I have called
the immense and intricate problem of the " Hibbert
Lectures" was treated in a book of only 350 pages,
originally given as a series of twelve lectures, each
being of about an hour's duration. Looked at thus,
the attempt might seem to say more for Hatch's
courage than for his discretion. But he knew him
self so well, felt so much the brevity and uncertainty
of life, believed so thoroughly that truth could best
be served by early and frank discussion, that he did
not feel as if he had any choice. And the death
which came so soon and sadly showed that he was
wise. But he felt strongly that his argument de
pended for its cogency on its evidence, that the
evidence was cumulative, and that its strength could
only be fully appreciated when its lines had all been
drawn out and mustered and marshalled in force. It
was, therefore, signally unfortunate that his theory
and its proof came out, as it were, piece-meal,
especially as his style and manner of exposition
increased the evil. He threw himself upon his
subject, laboured at its elucidation, seemed to think
of it alone, and of how best to compel others to think
of it as he did. The result was a fine lucidity, a

SOME RECENT ENGLISH THEOLOGIANS 425
brisk incisiveness and cogency, which made it easy to
follow his meaning, though it hid from the polemical
or the undiscerning much of his implied but unex
pressed mind. As a result, he had more than his
share of misconception and irrelevant criticism. His
theory of the ministry was criticized from assumptions
as to his beliefs which he would not have admitted ;
and on the basis of a localization of the divine energy
and an externalization of the means of grace which
he would have vehemently denied. His opponents
spoke as if he did not believe in the supernatural
character of the Church : while, as a matter of fact, his
supernatural was larger than theirs, not limited and
defined by external organs, but expressed in the
whole of history and in the lives of men. His
purpose was as positive as any problem in science ; it
was to seek from history an answer to this question :
How and why has the Church, as a whole and in its
several parts, become what it is ? But his critics —
though only so far as they were English, his Conti
nental critics understood him better — assumed his
purpose to be polemical or controversial, and not
merely historical and scientific ; and they answered
him as the person they assumed him to be. He
spoke of himself as having " ventured as a pioneer
into comparatively unexplored ground," and con
fessed that he had no doubt " made the mistakes of a
pioneer "; but he was handled as if his inquiries were
a process of dogmatic affirmation towards a pre
destined conclusion. It was complained that he

426 CATHOLICISM
neglected " central and positive evidence in favour of
what is external, suggestive, and subsidiary " : when,
as a simple matter of fact, his evidence was as
" central " as it could be for his own purpose, though
his purpose was not that of his critics. The very
title of his Hibbert Lectures, the " Influence of Greek
Ideas on the Church," was forgotten ; and he was
rebuked as if he had meant that Greek ideas had
created as well as helped in the formulation of
Christian doctrine. His contention that the Nicene
Creed was due to the influence of " Greek meta
physics " was answered by the obvious commonplace,
that " Christianity became metaphysical simply and
only because man was rational." x But so to argue
was to answer what he had never questioned, and
contradict what he had never affirmed. He had said
nothing about metaphysics in general ; but about a
special school or type of metaphysics, to wit, " Greek
metaphysics " — i.e., the school philosophies of the
patristic period, with their elaborate technical termino
logies and scholastic methods. And his problem was
to inquire how far these had contributed to the be
coming of " the metaphysical creed," which stands in
the forefront of the Christianity of the fourth century.
The process of production, with its several factors, the
worth of the product, the value of its form, and the
sufficiency of the form to the ineffable beliefs it would
express, are all distinct questions. Dr. Hatch under-
1 Gore, Bampton Lectures, p. 21,

SOME RECENT ENGLISH THEOLOGIANS 427
took to deal with only one of these, and it was no very
relevant reply to deal with him as if he had denied
one of the most flagrant facts of human nature.
It lies outside my purpose to examine the criti
cisms, relevant and irrelevant, made upon his method
or his argument ; but as I have said so much, I may
as well say one word more. Canon Gore complains
that Hatch, in his book on the Influence of Greek
Ideas, left out of consideration the theology of the
Apostolic writers.1 It is so very obvious a criticism
that one would have expected an acute critic like
Canon Gore to have jealously questioned himself
before making it. Surely, if Dr. Hatch's purpose
had been, as Dr. Gore supposed, a polemic against
doctrine, and not simply, as it was, an historical
inquiry into " the influence of Greek Ideas and
Usages on the Christian Church," he could not have
made a more extraordinary blunder than the omis
sion for which he is censured. It would have been
a sort of unconditional surrender of himself into the
hands of the enemy. But for his purpose such an
inquiry was not necessary, though it seems to me
that it would, if it had been prosecuted, have enor
mously strengthened his contention. He did not
analyze the Sermon on the Mount, though he intro
duced his subject by an allusion to it. He did
not attempt an exhibition of the theology of Jesus,
though from Dr. Gore's point of view this ought to

1 Gore, Bampton Lectures, pp. 99, 100.

428 CATHOLICISM

have been a much more serious omission than even
his neglect of " the theology of the Apostolic writers."
His work, in reality, begins outside and after the
New Testament, though he is never forgetful of its
being. It is a matter the student of the primitive
Church can hardly be ignorant of, that the develop
ment of doctrine does not begin where the New
Testament ends ; it begins, not behind it, but with
out it ; though, perhaps, after it, yet on a lower level,
amid influences less strong and less noble than those
of the Apostolic circle. It starts with tradition, with
confused memories, with blind and stumbling endea
vours to comprehend what was said and believed
among the multitude, not what had been written and
explained by the Apostles. / The New Testament
might be written at the end of ,the Apostolic age,
but its material had not been assimilated by such
Christian mind as then was, had not been fused in
the fire of experience, refined by the labour of the
intellect or stamped by the hands of thought. Hort
would have taught Dr. Gore that a written revelation
without " discipular experience " is but a virgin mine
rich in unwrought wealth. To deal, therefore, with
the sub- Apostolic age as if it had, or had used, the
New Testament, as we have it, or as we use it ; or to
speak as if the Pauline or the Johannine theology
had worked itself into the collective consciousness
and become intelligible as a reasonable system or
even as an oral tradition — is not to exhibit the his
torical or scientific spirit, or to show critical compre-

SOME RECENT ENGLISH THEOLOGIANS 429
hension of the man who has followed it. The age
when " Greek ideas and usages " began to exercise
their influence on Christian thought, was an age when
for that thought the theology of the New Testament,
as we understand the term, could not be said to be.
And when it did begin to be, the mind that came
to the New Testament was one penetrated by those
very Greek ideas whose influence it was the function
of the historian to trace. Hence the " leaving out of
consideration the theology of the Apostolic writers "
seems to us to have been due to a scientific apprecia--
tion of the problem ; the criticism of the omission
to be due to the absence in the critic of a like
scientific appreciation and critical sense. In Hatch's
own words, he was concerned, not with the " spiritual
revelation" which the Apostolical communities had
" accepted," but with " the influences " which enabled
them to translate what had been thus " accepted "
into " an intellectual conviction."
§ III. Comparison as regards Mind and Methods of
Drs. Hort and Hatch
1. It is not my purpose to attempt any com
parative estimate of the men whose work has been
here passed in hurried review. Indeed, only two of
them can be fairly compared — Hort and Hatch.
They had many points of resemblance, but possibly
more of difference; and the differences were the
more characteristic. Hort was the more courageous
thinker, Hatch the more adventurous inquirer. Hort

430 CATHOLICISM

suffered permanently from the inability to give exact
or adequate expression to his mind ; Hatch had
much of the passion of the explorer, who rejoices in
the double delight of making discoveries and telling
of the discoveries he has made. Hort was fastidious
to the last degree; he feared lest he might err, for
to his scrupulous intellect the possibilities of error
were infinite ; he feared to affirm a position lest he
should fail to prove it, or lest, on further research,
his proofs should turn out false. But Hatch was too
much a master at once of historical analysis and
constructive synthesis to be deterred by the inade
quacy of the tools he must employ, or even by any
defect of skill on his own part in handling them.
He was as much alive as Hort to the possibilities of
error, but believed that it was better to run the risk
of erring than to leave great questions undiscussed ;
for the way to success lay through failure. He saw
as much as Hort the value of good texts, but he also
saw that it was the duty of science to work with the
materials it had at hand ; to wait till its materials
were better was the very way to postpone their im
provement, was to allow religious inquiry to stagnate,
and to cause the methods of research into the past
of theology and the Church to fall out of relation to
the whole living body of the historical sciences. As
a result, little as Hatch accomplished compared with
the work he had designed, his published work bears
a fairer proportion to his mind as a whole than what
Hort has left behind. Hatch did nothing that was

SOME RECENT ENGLISH THEOLOGIANS 43 1
in its order so satisfactory and thorough as Hort's
work on the text of the New Testament; on the
other hand, Hort has not started so many questions
or done so much as Hatch to suggest new problems
and new methods to the workers in the field of
ecclesiastical history.
2. But we shall better see the significance and
the difference of the two men if we try to seize
what we may term their fundamental and regulative
ideas. The passion of Hort, we may say, was to
conceive Christianity from within, to discover its
intrinsic quality and capability, the power by which
it penetrated man and worked out its idea or pur
pose. We must here speak with caution and reserve,
especially as the material for the interpretation of
his mind is scanty ; and it has the double disad
vantage of being as a whole incomplete, almost
chaotic, while single parts have been elaborated with
often repeated toil. As he said, " Beliefs worth call
ing beliefs must be purchased with the sweat of the
brow." His idea is embodied, or, let us say, has
suffered a sort of incarnation, in the evangelical
history. That history is a parable which sets out
the .mysteries of being ; in it the inmost truths as
to God and the universe have so become flesh and
dwelt among us, that we may even in its visible
things behold the glory of the invisible idea. The
centre of the system is Jesus Christ; in Him the
whole mystery of God and nature is epitomized,
interpreted, realized. His significance for man is

432 CATHOLICISM

measured by man's experience of Him ; the larger
and deeper the experience the richer the significance.
In the early Church there was a difference between
the disciples being present with the Master and the
Master being present with the disciples. The record
of the former state is in the Synoptists ; the record
of the latter is in John. In the Synoptists we see
the disciples learning from association with the
Master; in John we see the disciple, all the more
a disciple that he is an apostle, enriched in thought
because richer in experience, teaching what he has
learned through the Master having taken him into
association with Himself. The Fourth Gospel is,
therefore, neither a supplement nor a correction to
the other three ; it is their interpretation, nay, it is
the interpretation of the universe, not in the abstract
unities of philosophy — which represents "a corpse
god, not a living God " — but in the concrete per
sonalities of religion. All its terms are vivid with
reality, "spirit," "light," "love," "way," "truth,"
"life." In these terms God is conceived, and they
are the terms which articulate Christ. "He is not
a supplement to belief in God, but the only sure
foundation of it." " Impersonal names are dilutions
of the truth meeting the weakness of human facul
ties " ; even of God " the personal mode of expres
sion alone is strictly true." God read through Christ
ceases to be a silent mystery, the darksome back
ground of our collective insolubilities, and appears
as light, and life, and love. These things were

SOME RECENT ENGLISH THEOLOGIANS 433
realized for time in Christ ; through Him they are
realized in us ; as they are realized in us we are
united to God, the living point of unity being the Per
son who creatively embodied what we are to realize.
This is not a speculative dream, it is a process of
experience verified in the life of the disciples, of the
Church, and of the individual. These three ex
periences repeat and complete each other ; that of
the disciples is reflected in the Church, that of the
Church in the man. The more inchoate the ex
perience, individual or collective, the more confused
and the less adequate our apprehension of the divine.
" There is a truth within us, to use the language of
Scripture, a perfect inward ordering, as of a trans
parent crystal, by which alone the perfect faithful
image of truth without us is brought within our ken."
The pure in heart see God ; and to create this vision
is the function of all we co-ordinate under the term
Church. To the eye that can see it, there is here a
large philosophy both of religion and of history.
The end of all things is the inward vision, but it is
late in being reached, and to it many things are
necessary that are yet not of it. Outward forms,
tradition, systems may be methods of discipline to
be used and valued as such, with seasons and
functions of their own ; but in character they are
provisional and transitional. The natural expression
of this- mood was a large catholicity, to which a
political Catholicism grew less and less congenial.
As his thoughts deepened they widened, and out-
28

434 CA THOLICISM

ward matters he had emphasized in earlier life be
came much less prominent in his later life. " There
is," said he, " no ' Christianity as it is,' but a multi
tude of Christianities, each of which covers but a
small part of what is believed in the nineteenth cen
tury ; while this as a whole excludes much that has
been believed in past centuries, and the sum of the
whole covers but a part of the contents of the Bible."
" Christianity consists of the most central and
significant truth concerning the universe, intelligible
only in connection with other truth not obviously
Christian, and accepted by many not Christians."
" The history of the Church, if it could ever be truly
written, would be the most composite of all histories,
since it would have to set forth the progress of every
element of humanity since its invisible Head was
revealed." These broad principles followed from his
fundamental conception of the place and function of
Christ, and the " discipular experience " by which
alone He could be interpreted ; and they show how
far he had travelled from the days when he " could
almost worship Newman " and imagined himself a
High Churchman somewhat in Newman's sense.
3. Hatch, on the other hand, had a more purely
intellectual conception, one more distinctly inter-
pretable, whether by himself or others. He was not
a mystic. Nature was not to him a parable, nor was
history an allegory which could be read back into its
divine realities by the eye which had learned the
secret. But he was indeed a very positive thinker,

SOME RECENT ENGLISH THEOLOGIANS 435
and was for this reason inclined to regard with some
thing severer than impatience those who took acci
dents of time and place for the very essence of
eternal things. God was to him the Spirit who
manifested Himself in history through the spirits of
men. Character was His creation ; ethical distinc
tions were the most real of things, moral qualities
the most sacred. God, as He conceived Him, was
too catholic in character, too varied in His activities,
too rich in grace to be confined to one society, or
to be represented as making certain artificially
created orders of men the covenanted channels of
His mercies. The charities and simple beneficences of
the early Church seemed to him worthier of the divine
than the priestly claims of Cyprian or the offices of
the Roman priesthood. To use political distinctions
to circumscribe the society of God, was opposed as an
unjustifiable interference with His modes of action.
But he was scrupulously anxious to avoid the specu
lative determination of history. He would not and
did not determine beforehand what the Church was,
but he conceived his function to be one of strict
historical inquiry. Hence his real contribution to
theology was his problem and his method. His
problem was : How had the Church— understanding
Under that term all the institutions, usages, and be
liefs which the Christian society had created as at
once an expression of its life and the means of its
maintenance— come to be? And his method was
by an exhaustive historical and comparative analy*

436 CATHOLICISM

sis to discover how far the home in which it lived,
the conditions under which it thought, the forces
which worked for or worked against it, were respon
sible for the formation and development of its
peculiar organization. In other words, it was the
application of a rigorously scientific method to a
field which science had seldom been allowed to ex
plore. He was permitted to state his problem and
illustrate his method only in part, and to reach con
clusions which were so far tentative as they were due
to a process which was incomplete. But he fell as
the " pioneer " falls, who has opened the way to
disciples that have learned his secret and are eager
to follow in his footsteps.
But here our study of these English theologians
must end. They have shown us that the race of the
great scholars who were great divines, has not yet
ceased in England. They were men who were loyal
sons of their country and their Church ; they have
enriched the English mind, adorned the English
universities, enhanced the reputation of English
scholars, and made even the Christian religion, more
honourable and more credible, by the consecration
of all their powers to the investigation of her history,
the study and elucidation of her literature, and the
exposition of her beliefs. May not the- men of
whom these things can be said assure us that the
race of the noble and the godly has not yet perished
from the earth ?
March, \Zoy.

X
OXFORD AND JOWETT
WHILE the Life of the late Master of Balliol *
is the work of two minds, it has throughout
the unity of one spirit, and shows everywhere the
hand of a filial affection, fine yet discriminative. It
is well and even gracefully written, with a reserve he
would have approved, a moderation and an accuracy
he would have commended. It is tender and appre
ciative without being blind, judicial without being cen
sorious, reverent without adulation or idolatry. Its
errors are but trivial, and mainly in matters of personal
detail ; its omissions are inconsiderable, and its chief
defect a too uniform smoothness which has tempted
its authors to mask some ancient fires, which are not
yet extinguished, and touch lightly characteristics that
ought to have been clearly filled in. There are no
" blazing indiscretions," which makes it, indeed, all
the truer a mirror of the man ; for though Jowett was
audacious, he was never indiscreet. If he did a bold
thing — and he did many — it was not by impulse or by
accident, but of set purpose ; and he was too wise ever
1 The Life and Letters of Benjamin fowett, M.A., Master of
Balliol College, Oxford. By Evelyn Abbott and Lewis Camp
bell. Two Volumes. London : John Murray, 1897.
437

438 CATHOLICISM

to explain it or to apologize for it, being well content
to leave it to be justified or condemned by the results.
His correspondence and memoranda are peculiarly in
structive, and open up unexpected glimpses into the
beliefs and ideals that were the springs of his action.
The mind revealed in his letters and note-books is
so pure, the aims so high and generous, the life so
unselfish, the spirit so silent as to its own sorrows,
while so tender and sympathetic to those of others,
that even the men who are most alien from his creed
and his policy may well feel compelled to respect the
man. Still the biography is, if we may say so, too
biographical, and lacks background. We are not
made to see the world the man lived in, or to measure
the forces he resisted and overcame. Much of his
most characteristic work was indeed imperceptible
and incalculable. The qualities and acts which
made him to so many a loved and revered memory
stand written in the lives of men. He was great as
the head of a college, because he was quick at dis
covering and apt at educing what was most excellent
in its sons. Only those who can read this biography
in the light of the living background they form, will
be able to see the central figure in its real propor
tions, adjusted, as it were, to scale.
Jowett was certainly a man who deserved to have
his biography written. He contributed more to form
the mind and character of his age than many men
who occupied more conspicuous positions. He fought
a battle that was the more splendidly successful that

OXFORD AND JOWETT 439
it was so long without the outward signs and spoils
of victory. It was not that he had transcendent gifts
in any one direction ; nay, in most respects he could
be easily surpassed. As a scholar he had superiors
both in his own and in the sister university ; as a
philosophical thinker he was eclipsed by some even
of his own disciples ; as a theologian he early fell out
of the race, and though to the last wistfully anxious
to take up the running, grew progressively unfit to do
it ; as an administrator of the university he had the
defects of a man whose ends and means were too
much his own to be easily adjusted to the temper and
ways of an assembly which can only be deliberative
by being critical. But when every deduction has
been made, it will still remain true that the late
Master of Balliol was the most potent academic per
sonality which Oxford, at least, has known in this
century. To have been this, was to be a person
whose memory, especially as regards the elements
and secrets of power, ought not to be willingly let die.
§ I. Oxford University and Colleges
Jowett is not a man that can be studied apart from
the Oxford of his day: and as that is an Oxford
which is of large and varied significance, we may be
forgiven if we preface our criticism of the man by
some remarks as to his university.
1. When he entered Oxford it was less a university
than a city of colleges, which had the differences,
jealousies, antagonisms of societies that were at once

44O CATHOLICISM

neighbours and rivals, rather than the homogeneity
and harmony of a corporate body whose several
parts are members one of another. Oxford has, to
the outside imagination, a remarkable unity of
character ; but, to inside experience, a remarkable
variety of temper and tendencies. Each college has
its own traditions, methods, capabilities, ambitions,
develops distinctive qualities in its men, and appeals
to its special constituency ; with the result that it
affects the university more than it is affected by it.
The college is a small and exclusive society, with a
completer and more direct control over its men than
is possible to the university ; it deals with them more
as boys and less as men, interprets the status pupil-
laris more rigorously, enforces discipline more easily,
is less open to new ideas, and is more concerned with
the practical function or use of knowledge than with
its expansion. The college tutor has more the
charge of men, and exercises in a very real sense the
cure of souls ; but the university professor has more
the care of a subject, a field or a province of know
ledge which it is his duty to cultivate and enlarge.
The more a tutor feels the men he has in charge, the
less will he have of the scholar's mind ; the more the
professor tills his field, the less can he charge himself
with the care of men. But the very difference of
college and university makes each essential to the
other. Their combined functions may be described
as the cultivation of learning and the formation of
men, or the communication of knowledge and the

OXFORD AND JOWETT 441
culture of character. And these functions are, while
distinct, yet not separate or even separable. It is
by the communication of knowledge that men are
formed and character cultivated. Men live the more
nobly that they have been trained to think the
thoughts of the great masters of mind and morals in
the language they themselves used. And they feel
the more humble, teachable, and reverent before the
mysteries of being, that they have learned to love
and obey nature in order that they might discover
her. secret. It is in this that the difference lies
between a university and a learned society — the one
cultivates knowledge that it may discipline men, the
other prosecutes discovery that it may enlarge
science. The" society seeks knowledge for its own
sake, but the university seeks it for the purpose of
evolving the humanity latent in man. Each may
equally pursue learning and encourage research, but
it must always be with this fundamental difference of
end. And it is here where college and university so
well supplement each other ; the college, by its cul
ture of men, keeping the university from sinking into
a mere learned society ; the university, by its cultiva
tion of learning, giving to the college a larger atmos
phere and more liberal mind.
The ideal academic state, then, would be one where
the forces represented by the university and the
college existed in a condition of equilibrium and
constant interaction. And Oxford, in its twofold
character of a university and a city of colleges, stood

442 CATHOLICISM

in an unrivalled position for realizing the ideal
academic state. But in order to this it was necessary
that neither character should devour or enervate the
other. Of course, it might be possible, were the two
functions separable, to argue that it is better to form
character than to cultivate knowledge. The men
whom the university contributes to Church and
State, to literature and art, to medicine and science,
are a more solid test of academic competence than
the books she directly produces, the discoveries made
within her laboratories, or the ideas and doctrines
stamped with her name. But, as a matter of fact,
these two things go invariably together. Where
intellect is not active, education can never be effi
cient ; unless knowledge be loved, character will not
be cultivated. In other words, the college can never
do its work unless inspired by the university, nor the
university fulfil its end without the help of the college.
2. It is significant that during the eighteenth cen
tury, when the colleges were most exclusive and the
university almost moribund, the sterility of the
studies which Oxford pursued had its fit counterpart
in the sort of men she produced ; for her most illus
trious sons then, were either the men who owed her
least, or those she was least inclined to acknowledge.
Of the Oxford men in that century three stand easily
foremost in literary fame — Butler, Gibbon, Johnson ;
but it would be hard to find men for whom the uni
versity did less. Butler was no raw schoolboy when
he entered Oriel, but a man who had been formed

OXFORD AND JOWETT 443
under one of the most influential teachers of his age,
if we measure the teacher's power by the eminence of
his pupils. We know that the problems that were
later to occupy Butler's mind had, before his coming
to Oxford, greatly exercised his thought; and we
also know that he went down, on taking his degree,
without either his college or the university in any
way recognizing his eminence. It need not surprise
us, therefore, that we find so little trace of Oxford in
either the Sermons or the Analogy, or that she did
not learn to appreciate or use them until they had
been well studied and appreciated elsewhere. He
appealed more to the Scottish intellect than to the
English understanding ; and men so dissimilar as
Thomas Reid and David Hume, Adam Smith and
Dugald Stewart, Thomas Brown and Thomas Chal
mers, united in owning him a master in metaphysics
and ethics, and in helping to make his name famous
in his own school. Gibbon, again, acknowledged
" no obligation to the University of Oxford," which,
he said, With less than his usual prescience, would " as
cheerfully renounce me for a son as I am willing to
disclaim her for a mother." He entered Magdalen
" with a stock of erudition that might have puzzled a
doctor, and a degree of ignorance of which a school
boy would have been ashamed " ; and he spent there
" the fourteen most idle and unprofitable months of
his whole life." It is no lovely or attractive picture
which he paints of college and university ; in the one,
the conversation of the dons " stagnated in a round

444 CATHOLICISM

of college business, Tory politics, personal anecdotes,
and private scandal " ; in the other, " the public pro
fessors have for these many years given up altogether
even the pretence of teaching." Yet so deeply
rooted were this state and these abuses in " law and
prejudice, that even the omnipotence of Parliament
would shrink from an inquiry into " them. Samuel
Johnson, after two years' residence, went down with
out a degree : and though later, as became an exu
berant Jacobite, he idealized the place, its memories,
and its idolatries, no man knew better than he how
little it had done for him, or how it would have
spoiled him had he been absorbed in its dreary
routine. And so he was angry that, on the very eve
of its publication, the Master of his own college
would not order a copy of the Dictionary, or speak
about it, or even invite its author to dinner ; and he
said in his wrath : " There lives a man who lives by
the revenues of literature, and he will not move a
finger to support it." And when he met his old
friend and rival, Meeke, whose " superiority " he used
to feel unable to bear, Johnson could not help lament
ing that a man " of such excellent parts " had been
" Lost in a convent's solitary gloom."
And if the sons who achieved most eminence
in literature were those who owed her least, the
men she most harassed and despised were those
who accomplished most for religion. The story of
the Methodists at Oxford is too familiar a tale to
bear repeating, but I may add, as one of its less

OXFORD AND JOWETT 445
recognized incidents, that the evil system and associa
tions of the old servitorship left for life their ignoble
stamp on the soul of Whitefield.
Of course, it must not be Inferred that we conceive
college or university to have been as black as, say,
Gibbon or Whitefield painted it. On the contrary,
we do not forget either the learning of Bingham,
though it is only just to remember that he was
compelled to resign his fellowship and leave Oxford ;
or " the classic elegance " of Lowth, what he did
for Hebrew poetry, or his fine vindication of the
university against the insults of Warburton ; or the
genial insight and healthy piety of Home, who not
only commented on the Psalms, but broke into verse
to describe "weeping London's crowded streets"
and "grand parade of woe as Garrick's funeral
passed," and who, in the Olla Podrida, gave this
characteristic apology for Johnson : " To reject
wisdom, because the person of him who communi
cates it is uncouth, and his manners are inelegant
— what is it but to throw away a pine-apple, and
assign for a reason the roughness of its coat ? " And
we ought also to remember that in one region of
thought Oxford even then showed her old intellectual
activity, producing several eminent jurists, like Black
stone and the two Scotts, who later became respec
tively Lords Stowell and Eldon. But when every
¦ possible deduction has been made, we may certainly
say, during the eighteenth century the poverty of
Oxford in learning was truly reflected in her poverty

446 CATHOLICISM

in men. The supremacy of the colleges was fatal
to both scholarship and culture.
§ II. Oxford and its Sons in Two Centuries
i. The Oxford of the nineteenth century stands
out in striking contrast to the Oxford of the
eighteenth. The attempt which from the middle
of the century onwards was so strenuously made
to resuscitate the university without depressing the
colleges, has had its counterpart in the activity
which each has displayed in its most characteristic
field. In the region of thought Oxford has, on the
whole, produced no work of such relative eminence
as Butler's ; in history, nothing that can be com
pared to Gibbon's ; in literature, no man that lives
in the imagination like Johnson. But there has been,
on the whole, a much more uniform and disciplined
mental activity. The university has not, indeed,
been without creative thinkers in philosophy, and
writers in history who have a fair title to the term
"classical." Nor has it been deficient in learning,
both of the older and newer order. Yet what is
remarkable is that its performances on the arena
of the intellect have been surpassed by its produc
tivity in the field of character and life. Into the
causes of this double change we need not inquire,
though certain of them are obvious enough. For
one thing, Oxford has lived much more in the life
of the nation, has been a sort of epitome or centre
in which all the forces that have moved the day have

OXFORD AND fOWETT 447
been intensified by being concentrated. It has not,
like the Oxford of the eighteenth century, cultivated
treason in its heart, and been proudly disloyal to
the reigning House through loyalty to a House that
could not govern ; nor has it, because it could not
continue Jacobite, sullenly turned Tory, as the most
agreeable form in which it could maintain its aloof
ness from the outside [world. On the contrary, no
place agrees less with Matthew Arnold's description
of Oxford than Oxford herself. It is only to the
poet's fancy that she can seem " the home of lost
causes, forsaken beliefs, unpopular names, and im
possible loyalties." She has been no " adorable
dreamer," but, on the whole, a matron of excellent
worldliness, who, naturally indeed, retains her " in
effable charm " to the reminiscent imagination or
the mind that sees her from afar. There has been
no spot less serene, or more scorched by fierce
intellectual fires. Where mind is young, thought
must be active : the place where youth is perennial
can never grow old. And Oxford has for our
generation such infinite significance, because within
her borders so much of the unending conflict of the
new mind with the old has been fought. And the
conflict has been prolific in heroes, whose monuments,
in the shape of their biographies, stand thick upon
the field. They are a multitude even more signifi
cant for their quality than for their number. In
the first quarter of the century the change begins.
Coplestone feels in a dim way the dawn of the

448 CATHOLICISM

new era, and attempts by manipulation of terms,
by the use of an ingenious but not very profound
philosophy, to awaken the young mind to it and
create room for it within the old forms. His pupil
and admirer, Richard Whately, continues and perfects
the process, acting, as Newman said later, on his
younger contempories "like a bright June sun
tempered by a March north-easter." Into the Oriel
which Coplestone had quickened there came, in
Thomas Arnold, a larger and humaner nature, with
an outlook into history that promised to do for
ancient Rome what Gibbon had done for "the
Decline and Fall." Another sign of the coming
change was the rise of learned philosophers like
Hamilton, men of letters like Gibson Lockhart, and
exuberant and imaginative athletes like John
Wilson. Then into the rather exhausted ecclesias
tical traditions of the university came Blanco White,
with his practical experience of Romanism, vivified
by the moral passion and the sceptical intellect which
had made continuance within it an impossibility
to him.
2. But with the second quarter of the century,
what is regarded as the most characteristic Oxford
movement of the century began. Its causes were
many and complex. One cause was the fear lest
political change should do for the Church in this
century what it had done for the Monarchy in the
last ; and spare the divine right of the clergy as
little as it had spared the divine right of the king.

OXFORD AND fOWETT 449

Another was the association of political liberalism
on the Continent with a negative rationalism which
threatened death to the higher ideals of man and the
State. A third was romanticism, which idealized
a past it did not know, in order to find its realization
in a present to which it was alien. But deeper than
these, the factor that moved and unified it all, was
the splendid sincerity of a few men and the tran
scendent genius of one man. Now that we stand
at a distance sufficient to enable us to see the men
in true perspective, we are impressed both by their
extraordinary intellectual limitations and the eleva
tion of their moral and religious aims. The late
Dean Church is right in regarding the motive of the
men as " the love of holiness " ; but in religious
conflicts the ways and the words of the men are
seldom as holy as their motives or their ends. We
may thus say that the interest of the Oxford Move
ment lay in its men. If knowledge or if intellectual
veracity had been the conditions of success, they
could not have succeeded ; but the instinct which
made its great leader issue in his early days R. H.
Froude's Remains as a sort of impersonated pro
gramme, and in his later the Apologia pro Vita Sua,
was an instinct which came of the insight of genius.
And here, if we may digress for a moment into
a question which is not so irrelevant as it may seem,
we may say that, in one sense, Newman's great
contribution to the age is— the interpretation of
Newman, He is the greatest subjective writer of
29

450 CATHOLICISM

our age ; his power over it is but the fascination
exercised by his revelation of himself. In his more
scholastic treatises — in his dogmatic works, in his
attempts at historical writing — his strained subtleties,
his violent prejudices, his wilfulness, and his often
startling pettiness, make him one of the authors a
dispassionate student finds it hardest to read. But
the moment his own experience is distilled into a
sermon, or tract, or book, his peculiar and often
almost irresistible fascination appears. His Present
Position of Catholics in England is a sort of earlier
Apologia ; in it speaks the proud consciousness of
a man who knew the English feeling to Catholics,
and met it and rebuked it with lofty irony. His
Letter to the Duke of Norfolk may be described as
a later Apologia, written by a man who could not
but stay in a system he must believe infallible ; yet
stayed because he was able so to conceive what he
must believe, that he could, when convenient, qualify
out of existence the infallibility which guaranteed
his belief, or at least prevent it becoming too intru
sive and troublesome. In his Idea of a University,
ideals and experiences which he owed to his loved,
lost, Oxford are embalmed. In his Grammar oj
Assent, in a greater degree than in the Apologia,
his own mental history is analyzed and described.
The hymn which for the multitude most preserves
his name, owes its exquisite beauty and charm to
its being so perfect an expression of a mood that
was- the man. But it is the Apologia that conquered

OXFORD AND fOWETT 451

for Newman the reverence of the younger generation,
and left them no choice but to believe in his sincerity
and do honour to his motives. It is doubtful if there
is anything in literature to. compare with it. Here
is a man who has practically determined the judg
ment of an age concerning himself, who has so
interpreted himself as he was to himself as to compel
his own day and his own people to accept the in
terpretation. Yet the man was a poet, and the poet's
autobiography can never have Wahrheit without
Dichtung, were it only because what has passed
through the imagination is transfigured in the
passage. The unconscious or the undesigned is ever
the truest autobiography ; and even more than in
any Apologia, the true Newman may be discovered
in the books that come, as it were, unbidden out
of his spirit, and seem still to throb as if they had
within them the very breath of life.
It has not been the fortune of the other men of
that time to be so splendidly transfigured and, as it
were, embalmed for posterity in fragrant spices. But
they have received all that loving hands, uncom-
manded by genius, could give them. ' John Keble
has, perhaps, been happy in the brevity of his biogra
phers ; but his name may remain all the more loved
that it lives as an ideal rather than a being clothed in
the coldest black and white. The voluminous Life
of Pusey is all too pathetically faithful to his morbid
nature, so curiously compounded of mystic emotion
and pugnacious obstinacy. The two brothers-in-law

452 CATHOLICISM

Samuel Wilberforce and Henry Manning, have
issued from the hands of their biographers as rather
wounded and wingless seraphs ; while Ward, even in
the hands of skilful and filial affection, appears as
one who took himself more seriously than a sober
and critical world will ever be persuaded to take him.
But when all possible deductions have been made, it
will remain true, that the University which produced
these men did a greater thing for England and the
Church than either the Church or England has as yet
been able to conceive.
3. But over against the Tractarians stands another
and no less imposing army of Oxford men. Tait,
sober, cautious, essentially Presbyterian in temper,
doubtful of new things, yet most wishful to find a
modus vivendi for old and new, is a good type of a
man who keeps the middle path and seeks safety in
moderation. Next to him comes Stanley, who may
be described as in a way a Broad Church Newman,
without his self-consciousness, his subtle and corrosive
scepticism in thought, his passionate imagination and
mystic feeling, whose ideal is a mixed and organized
State, as distinct from a graded and governed and
obedient Church. Stanley was an ideal biographer,
as Newman was a master of idealized autobiography ;
and the Life of Thomas Arnold by the one may well
challenge in the eyes of posterity comparison with
the apologetic " Life " of the other by himself. One
thing Arnold, as Stanley represented him, and
Stanley himself, did in a quite singular and intense

OXFORD AND fOWETT 453
degree — viz., reconciled minds that would otherwise
have remained radically alien from the English
Church. Justice in this respect has never been done
to either of the two men. The Anglican Revival
has been ungrateful to its most distinguished and
effectual friends. Their idea of a Church as compre
hensive as the State, tolerant of differences, zealous
for a liberal education, which the clergy might share
but must not control ; devoted to religion, yet aiming
at the secular weal of all men and the reconciliation
of all classes to each other and to God — made its
way into the hearts of multitudes who had lived
alienated from the Church in thought and feeling,
and supplied an ideal which they believed could be
realized in modern England. This idea made many
gentle to the Church of Arnold and Stanley, who
would have contended to the bitter end against the
Church of Newman and Pusey. The Anglican Revi
val has, because of this idea and the men who were its
sponsors, managed to penetrate where it could never
have gone by itself ; and these distinguished fathers
of the Broad Church ought never to be forgotten by
those who have so largely entered into their labours.
But it is not simply ecclesiastical men that Oxford
has produced. I have but to raise my eyes to certain
shelves in my library, and there stand names dis
tinguished in literature, in politics and in the service
of the State. There are the Memoirs of Mark
Pattison, who would have been a kindly and loved
man if he had only permitted himself to follow

454 CATHOLICISM

nature ; and beside him is Conington, whom he did
not love, and Henry Nettleship, who loved him, edited
him, and cultivated in kindred spirit the old Literez
Humaniores. Near him stands T. H. Green, with his
works edited and his life written by another Nettle-
ship, who also all too soon was lost to philosophy and
learning. And beside them is a book which speaks
of Arnold Toynbee — the Industrial Revolution. In
the domain of purer letters, A. H. Clough sings a
song of yearning and of a hope that is close akin to
despair ; Matthew Arnold girds at imaginary Philis
tines in the most Philistinian manner and mood,
attempts to interpret a literature whose charm he
feels, but whose mysteries and problems he has failed
to master, while he allows his better self to escape
in polished and graceful verse. John Addington
Symonds discourses of Greek poetry and of the Italian
Renaissance ; and affords us glimpses into a sin
gularly brave and hopeful spirit, defying disease to
arrest his work. And beside him stands William
Morris, who began as " the idle singer of an empty
day," and ended as the seeker and seer of a new and
higher social order. John Nichol, too, is there, a man
whom all men loved and all believed equal to greater
things than any he ever managed to do. And of
these we cannot think, without recalling the names of
men who had it in them to achieve as great things as
they did, but who fell before they had achieved. As
distinguished in their own order stand the statesmen,
even more numerous than the men of letters, exhibit-

OXFORD AND fOWETT 455
ing that beautiful compound, so distinctive of our
English public life, of the statesmen who have not
ceased to be students ; and who have known how to
beguile the tedium of the Senate or the Civil Service
or the Bench by the cultivation of literature, prevent
ing deterioration of mind in administrative work or in
party strife by maintaining the studies which had been
delightsomely pursued in the Oxford of their youth.
§ III. Jowett as Reformer in University and College
i. Into this Oxford, then, just when the Tractarian
turmoil was at its fiercest, and the consequent cycle
of academic change was about to begin, came Benja
min Jowett. What we have now to understand is the
reciprocal action of Oxford on him and his on Oxford
during his almost sixty years of residence. To it he
devoted his life. He regretted that so many of her
most capable sons forsook the university for the
wider world ; he deplored, in particular, that Stanley
preferred the Deanery of Westminster to his Oxford
Professorship, for he believed that higher oppor
tunities and a finer field could be found in the
university than even in the Abbey where England
has loved to bury her most honoured dead. He
himself did not feel the fret and the worry and the
distraction that make continued residence to so many
impossible. Indeed, his own social tastes, his love of
varied society, his desire to have it influence the
university and the university to influence it, made him
the man who has perhaps done more than any other

456 CATHOLICISM
to make life in Oxford harder to the student and less
kindly to study than even it was before. However
that may be, it is clear that he rightly appreciated
the value of Oxford as a sphere of influence, certain
to repay lifelong service ; and no man who studies
his life can deny that»he was right.
His residence, I have said, began at a time when it
was becoming obvious that reform must lay its com
pelling hand on Oxford. One of her most eminent
sons had subjected the studies of the English univer
sities to a most merciless criticism. Ecclesiastical
strife, and its mischievous effects upon both the mind
and work of the university, had showed that the
terms of life within it must be changed. Universal
subscription had proved positively disastrous ; the
abuses which it had created, the opportunities it gave,
when ecclesiastical passions ran high, to rankest
injustice, had been proved in the experience of all
reasonable men. Then increased knowledge of the
Continental, and especially of the German universi
ties, had created the most wholesome feeling of envy
and of self-criticism. The work done by poorly paid
German professors, their enthusiasm for science, the
success with which they had cultivated the higher
scholarship, their philosophical activity and indus
trious erudition, had made those who had come to
know them feel how much Oxford had to learn, and
how far she was behind in the work of science and
research. In this work, men like Dr. Pusey, and still
more his brother Philip, had been forerunners. But

OXFORD AND JOWETT 457
in Tait and Stanley it took practical shape ; and an
agitation began in Oxford which meant that the
university must be resuscitated and a new order of
things instituted, or rather an old order restored.
This seemed at first a simpler thing than it was soon
found to be. The colleges had practically eaten up
the university ; and it was no easy matter to find how
they could be got to disgorge, or how the disjecta
membra could be built into a homogeneous structure.
It was thought that the system of professorships
might be revived and extended, that new branches of
knowledge might be added to its studies, new schools
created, the university more adequately equipped for
learning and research. And it was hoped that thus
Oxford might be adapted to modern conditions and
needs. Then there were multitudes outside the
university seeking admission ; and there was within
a corresponding desire to find terms which would
make the entrance of fresher minds possible and
their assimilation real.
Now Jowett sympathized with these views only in
part. While from the first an advocate of university
reform, he could hardly be called an efficient univer
sity reformer; on the contrary, his policy was in
many respects unwise and his action mischievous.
He served Oxford by what he did for Balliol. He
showed not what a university ought to be, but what a
college could do for the university. His policy and
ideals were not so much those that become a uni
versity as those proper to a college; his qualities,

458 CATHOLICISM

intellectual, moral, and administrative, were of a kind
that acted with intense force within the restricted
area of the college, but would have wasted and spent
themselves fruitlessly in the larger arena of the
university. He had what may be described as the
tutorial character, but not the professorial mind.
His . character was more powerful to influence than
to please ; his prelections pleased more than they
influenced. And so, true to his nature, he had more
faith in the college than belief in the university ; he
believed more in examinations than in lectures.
Personal superintendence seemed to him a more vital
matter than the dubious learning of the class-room,
or the inchoate erudition of a not always coherent or
lucid lecturer. But what probably weighed with him
still more was the practical difficulty of shaping the
policy of a university whose ultimate authority was
a Convocation composed of members who could be
summoned from the uttermost parts of the kingdom,
and who in many cases were not qualified to discuss
the question on which they were convened to vote.
Reason governs as little in academic as in parlia
mentary politics. And in a body which was not
educated by experience or even frequent discussion,
but only came together on special occasions to do a
special thing, great questions could never be seriously
considered ; and were more likely to be settled by
gusts of passion than by deliberative reason, or by
arguments more whimsically subtle than morally
and intellectually cogent. In such a case unreason is

OXFORD AND JOWETT 459
surer to reign than reasonableness. And Jowett had
known Convocation summoned to do the most high
handed things, and had seen it do them. And so he
came to doubt its competence and to expect no re
form in a body over which Convocation remained in
a sense legislatively supreme. In this he was by no
means singular, for even in Stanley's " Life " we find
an ironical account of its proceedings illustrated by a
letter to the Times, with the characteristic signature,
" An M.A. who abhors Convocation."
2. But while to Jowett the university was an in
tractable body, the college was, if not a manageable
society, yet a society where it was possible for a
potent individual to accomplish something. And it
was characteristic of Jowett to refuse to lessen his
personal influence by forcing it to attempt what it
could not perform. And so his energies and am
bitions concentrated themselves upon his college.
Balliol was to him wife and child, home and family.
He lived for it, gave himself up to it. It used to be
said that whatever uncertainty there was as to the
Master's faith, there was none as to his belief in
Balliol. He watched its undergraduates with the
keenest and most jealous eyes ; he followed their
later careers with the solicitude of a parent, appreci
ative of every act and achievement which reflected
honour on the college. He laboured unweariedly to
make it famous ; replenished its ranks from the
capable among all sorts and conditions of men;
carried out his dream of university extension, which

460 CATHOLICISM

was to secure to poorer students the advantages of
tuition without the expenses of in-college residence,
and rigorously enforced his method of personal
discipline and superintendence. He gave generously
from his own resources, and persuaded his friends to
give generously from theirs. While no lover of
aestheticism, he pressed music into the service of the
college, and made the Sunday evening concert a new
educative agency. While no devotee of athleticism,
he supplied the college with a field where its young
barbarians could play. On the one side, he dealt
with Balliol as if it were a school ; on the other, as if
it were a university ; with the result that, though he
stepped into a great inheritance when he became
Master, he yet left to his successor the inheritance
vastly enlarged and enhanced. It was indeed a high
achievement to make and to keep, in a period when
new studies meant new expenditure, one of the
poorer colleges in the university the college whose
scholarships were " the blue ribbon " for which
English public schools eagerly competed, and on
whose books the men most ambitious of academic
distinction were eager to enrol their names.
§ IV. Jowett as Scholar and Thinker
But we must look beyond the Master of Balliol, and
consider other sides of his picturesque personality.
i. I have already said that his chief claim to re
membrance will not rest on his scholarship. He had,
indeed, many fine intellectual qualities, but they were

OXFORD AND JOWETT 46 1

literary rather than scientific, critical and discursive
rather than philosophical. He thought by intuition,
rather than by any process of ratiocination. In
scholarship, properly so called, he had only a remote
interest ; for its severer methods he had a positive
distaste ; for its history he had little appreciation, and
few of its great names appealed either to his admir
ation or respect. This rather curious defect comes
out in the biography in a very characteristic way —
the paucity of letters to scholars, or concerned with
scholarship. There are many letters to scholarly
pupils and friends, but few on questions of purely
scientific or philosophical interest. He writes to
many distinguished people, both men and women.
His letters are full of wisdom, whether secular or
spiritual, of fine feeling, of delicate insight, of a high
sense both of his own duty and of theirs. They
express a large conception of the significance of life
and its possibilities, and the obligation common to
himself and his correspondents to make the most out
of it. These letters cannot do other than raise the
general idea of the man. He was often suspected of
paying too assiduous court to the great, and of loving
to surround himself with persons of name. He
would, in a sense, have pleaded guilty to the charge,
for he had a keen perception of the immense possi
bilities associated with station, He felt that an
aristocracy of rank which was also an aristocracy of
intellect and character had opportunities such as
were granted to no other class ; and ha frankly

462 CATHOLICISM

cultivated the society that he held to promise most
for the culture and character of the State, But
certainly no man ever lay less open to the charge of
toadying to the great. If their advisers had always
been as honest, yet delicate and sensitive, in advice,
their lives would have accomplished more for the
common good. We are, therefore, not at all surprised
at the number of letters to women in high places ;
and I confess that if his circle had been larger, and
his letters always as charming and simple and sincere,
it would have been the better for those who seem
destined to become ever more potent forces in our
public life. But what does surprise one is that he
seems to care so little for learning ; that his corre
spondence has so little to do with it or with the
learned. It is remarkable that the man who was the
head of Balliol, a representative Oxford scholar,
should yet have had so small intercourse with the
scholars either of Great Britain or the Continent, and
have been so little concerned in the discussions, the
investigations, the discoveries, the controversies, that
during his long and active life agitated the world of
letters. I have called this want of interest in learning and
the learned characteristic of the man, and so it was.
Though a student of Plato, yet Platonic scholarship
did not interest him, and for its history he had some
thing that may almost be described as aversion. It
never seemed to him like a real chapter in the history
of the human mind, significant both of its growth and

OXFORD AND JOWETT 463

of the influence ofthe great master on whose interpre
tation he himself so long and so genially laboured.
He was impatient with the older scholarship, because
its methods were so unlike his own, and seemed to
him violent and subjective. Yet subjectivity was the
very note of his own work, and made his Platonic
studies and dissertations so largely a reflection of
himself. He disliked systematic thinking in whatever
field. He feared metaphysics, deplored their fascina
tion for the young mind, regretted their reign within
his own college, even under a man he so much
admired and loved as T. H. Green. He warned so
distinguished a philosopher as his successor in the
mastership against a too devoted cultivation of meta
physics. He dreaded their effect on literature and
on knowledge, which he somehow persuaded himself
to regard as injuriously affected by constructive and
systematic thinking, The continuity which was so
alien to his own habits of thought, he suspected when
it was incorporated in men who loved thought all the
more that it was concatenated and could be expressed
in a progressive dialectic.
2. The same defect is seen in his relation, or rather
want of relation, to the more speculative spirits and
tendencies of his own time. This is most apparent in
regard to one with whose aims he had much in
common, Frederick Maurice. They were contem
poraries, and engaged, though not always for the
same reasons, in the controversies which made for
freedom and comprehension ; but so far as Jowett is

464 CATHOLICISM

concerned Maurice might as well never have been.
The mysticism, the neo-Platonic idealism, the passion
for the universal and positive, of the latter, provoked
something more than impatience in the former ; the
more that, though both were alike English, they were
divided by almost racial antipathies. Even where
their aims agreed, their methods and means differed.
Maurice influenced men on their spiritual and ethical
side, but Jowett on the intellectual. The orte
developed moral enthusiasm, but the other tended to
repress it. The socialism of Maurice was a generous
endeavour to save those wronged or neglected by
society, and to ameliorate their lot ; but the work
among the masses which Jowett commended to his
young men was more as an agency for their own
education. It is no less curious that Mansel and Mill
are unknown both to his correspondence and his
table-talk ; though the former was once a potent
person alike in the thought, the politics, and the
society of the university, more justly celebrated for
his jeux d 'esprit than for his learning or his philosophy ;
and the latter was a great authority in its schools.
Hegel indeed he had studied, and had " gained more
from him than from any other philosopher" ; but it
was from his historical rather than speculative side.
And to Comte he had a positive aversion.
It was this very quality of mind that attracted
him to Plato ; and it was also the secret of his
imperfect sympathy with Aristotle. He disliked the
logical rigour, the intellectual formalism, the ency-

OXFORD AND JOWETT 465
clopsedic and systematic temper, in a word, the
scholasticism of the one ; he delighted in the imagi
native freedom, the variety, the inconclusiveness, the
habit which discussed rather than solved problems,
which he found in the other. The spirit in Plato
which shed light on all things without finally adju
dicating on any, was the very spirit that Jowett
loved. The impersonated and suggestive discussion
suited him ; it exercised mind and cultivated the
mind by its exercise. It supplied views of life, of
society, and the State, that interested, illumined,
educated. It enabled him to turn Plato into an
English and modern classic, and to make him a
centre round which thought could freely play. What
he gave us was indeed Jowett's Plato rather than
the Plato of history, of philosophy, or of classical
scholarship. 3. We may better illustrate at once the action
and effect of Jowett's mental characteristics by com
paring him with a contemporary with whom he had
much in common, but still more in difference — Mark
Pattison. Both were academic Liberals, but with
such radical differences as expressed fundamental
unlikeness. The academic ideal of Pattison was a
university consecrated to research ; but Jowett's was
a college devoted to the discipline and the culture
of mind. Pattison had a horror of the mental habits,
the formal drill, and shallow omniscience created
by examinations ; but Jowett had immense faith in
their educational function and efficiency. Both were
30

466 CATHOLICISM '

theological Liberals, but Pattison's Liberalism was
historical and critical, Jowett's was personal and
intuitive. Both passed through the Tractarian storm,
and its fires scorched Pattison, while they hardly
warmed the atmosphere about the soul of Jowett.
It added to the pessimistic nature of the one a
deeper element of disappointment, but it left the
sunny optimism of the other unshadowed and un
disturbed. Both were successful tutors, and were
disappointed in their first expectation of the head
ship of their respective colleges. The disappoint
ment, added to the loss of his earlier faith,
permanently embittered Pattison ; but it only made
Jowett a more potent because a more self-contained
and silent man. Yet these external coincidences
are significant only in so far as they indicate internal
differences, which had their more characteristic ex
pression In the region of their studies and the style
of their work. Pattison had more the mind and
temper of the scholar, Jowett of the man of letters.
The history of scholarship was a matter of extra
ordinary interest to Pattison ; he loved to see the
action of intellectual forces in any given time, to
analyze the ideas and expound the method of other
ages than his own ; to trace the behaviour of societies
which embodied systems, of tendencies which ex
pressed prevailing habits of mind. But neither the
history nor the archaeology of thought had any real
or living interest for Jowett. Mind was to him too
individual a thing to have a collective history or

OXFORD AND JOWETT 467

to make its antecedents worthy of scientific Investi
gation and construction. Pattison loved the great
scholars of the past. The labours, the struggles,
the poverty, the wanderings of Casaubon directly
appealed to him ; the Stephenses and the Scaligers
were names he loved ; the parts they had played
in the revival of letters, in the development of
printing, in editing the classics and advancing
classical scholarship, made them, as it were, men
of flesh and blood to his imagination. The Patristic
labours of the Benedictines, the classical erudition
of the Jesuits, their use of It for their revolutionary
and reactionary purposes, their mode of assailing
scholars that were not of their Order, and discredit
ing by invented scandal the work of men they could
not pervert ; the apostasy of Lipsius, the pomposity
of Salmasius, and the ferocity of Milton, all interested
him, and were pressed into the illustration of the
history and the growth of European scholarship.
But Jowett had no feeling for the heroes of hu
manism ; their method was not his ; their implements
were less perfect than his own ; their interpretations
were often grotesque ; and he was too conscious of
the difference of mind and times, and too much
interested in classical literature for its own sake, to
care much for the men who had contributed to the
making of it intelligible. Even in his own country
and in his own subject this was true. The Cam
bridge Platonists lay almost altogether outside the
region of his sympathies. Bentley, as Professor

468 CA THOLICISM

Campbell says, seemed to Jowett " wanting in judg
ment, which is the first element in criticism " ; he
was only an example " of the baneful influence which
a great philologer, like a great philosopher, may
have on whole generations of his followers." He
was, " upon the whole, a man who kept bad company
in literature."1 Selden, indeed, he greatly admired.
But it was not the Selden of the De Jure Naturali
et Gentium, nor the Selden of the De Diis Syris;
rather it was the Selden of the " Table Talk," who
supplied him with such aphorisms as, doctrine in
theology is " rhetoric turned into logic," and the
Authorized Version of the Bible is " the best trans
lation in the world." And so, too, he loved Samuel
Johnson, whose criticism of life and of men, of
books and of manners, made him a man after
Jowett's own heart.
§ V. Jowett as Theologian and Churchman
I. The mental qualities which regulated his judg
ments and achievements in the field of scholarship
determined also his attitude to religious and theo
logical questions. He had an intensely religious
nature. He was a man capable of doing his duty
with almost stoic severity ; but his duty was apt
to be conceived under rather peculiar and personal
forms. There is no truer thing said by Professor
Lewis Campbell than this : " What Jowett said of
•J'Life,"!!. 186.

OXFORD AND JOWETT 469

Greek literature became more and more applicable
to himself: 'Under the marble exterior was con
cealed a soul thrilling with spiritual emotion.'"1
He progressively realized the truth of Aristotle's
words, " Pure thought alone is ineffectual." But the
feelings and imagination In him had to contend
against a singularly shy and yet emotional temper ;
there was nothing he could so little do as unbosom
himself, even to his dearest friends, as to what was
deepest in his heart. Very early he says to Dr.
Greenhill : " Why I don't write to you oftener Is
that I do not like writing about religion ; and it
seems so cold and prosy to write to an intimate
friend about anything else." 2 This difficulty in
creased rather than lessened with the progress of
the years. But several incidents narrated in the
" Life " show his simple and tender piety, such as
his going to Sir Henry Acland when he was 111
and reading to him " in that small voice, which once
heard was never forgot," the fourteenth chapter of St.
John ; or the scene, pathetic in its sacred simplicity,
at the deathbed of Archbishop Tait. But I may
be allowed to tell, because it is so significant of
both men, one little Incident which is not told in
the "Life."3 When Robert Browning was staying
with him on, I think, his very last visit, he learned,
when it was too late to attend, that the Master had

» i. 388. ! i- 109.
8 It is told, somewhat imperfectly, in Hon. Lionel A. Tolle-
mache's Benjamin Jowett, p. 21.

470 CATHOLICISM

conducted, as he greatly loved to do, a religious
service for the college servants. Browning was met
by a friend walking in the Garden Quadrangle
greatly agitated, and he said to him, " The Master
is the very soul of goodness ; yet he makes me
quite indignant. He is hospitality itself; he will
eat with me, talk with me, walk with me, read with
me, take me Into his very bosom ; but one thing
he will not do, he will not pray with me." But
this inability, which Browning so much regretted,
came from a native shyness which much intercourse
with men had deepened, and which the fear of being
irreligious even in religion, or of seeming to mean
more than he actually said, had intensified. But
just because intimate speech on the mysteries and
higher experiences of religion was so difficult to
himself, he was a hard critic of those who found
it easy. Thus he says : " I never hear a sermon of
which it is possible to conceive that the writer has
a serious belief about things ; if you could but cross-
examine him, he would perjure himself every other
sentence."1 He was anxious to be veracious in
what he himself said, and dreaded very early in his
career the too great stress which " the ordinary
divinity of the day " " laid on words," creating " a
sort of theological slang," which was held to be of
"the fundamentals of the Christian faith." He
quotes, with approval, in a letter to Stanley, the
1 i- 153-

OXFORD AND JOWETT 471
words of a lady who had said to him : " We Liberals
should not talk about freedom, but about truth —
that is the flag under which we fight." x
2. It is easy to misunderstand Jowett's attitude
towards Subscription, and to be unjust to him on
the ground of it. In order to a proper appreciation
of his attitude two things have to be remembered
— the mental habit which we have already described,
and his own personal experiences. The long en
forcement of Subscription at the universities had a
most injurious effect upon the mental integrity of
the subscribers. The mischief began at a very early
date. Boys who could not possibly know the mean
ing of the act had to subscribe ; they must in almost
every case have done it as a simple matter of
academic form ; but the doing of it at all was an
initial vice accentuated at every stage in the aca
demic career. Many of the' men who subscribed as
a condition of holding a fellowship did it intending
to do with the articles of belief very much as they
meant to do with the statutes of the college — adapt
them as far as they legally could to existing con
ditions. There was thus begotten in the minds of
the more thoughtful the worst of all attitudes to
religious belief — that of giving a formal assent to
what was understood not to represent internal con
viction. This mischief was immensely aggravated
by the miserable partisan politics which governed

299.

472 CATHOLICISM

the university during the major part of Jowett's
career, and which had, by means of tests, instituted
an " abominable system of terrorism." He had seen
Subscription used by the aggressive Tractarians to
damage Hampden. He had seen men who had
resisted Hampden's elevation to the bishopric solac
ing their souls with the idea that his act of
Subscription cancelled their obligation to further
resistance. He had seen the same weapon of Sub
scription turned against the very Tractarian party
which had made it so powerful an instrument of
offence, and he had witnessed this misuse culminate
in the comic tragedy of the degradation of Ward.
He had seen " all Balliol, as usual, furious " i over
the giving of an honorary degree to the then
American Minister, because he had been a Socinian
clergyman. And later in his own experience It was
turned Into the means of inflicting cruel humiliation
on a proud and sensitive spirit ; for he was com
pelled to re-subscribe before being allowed to enter
on his Professorship. And this was done at the
instance of men who were in certain respects as
faithless to the Articles as he was himself, and as
little scrupulous In their interpretation of their obli
gations when the literal sense seemed contrary to
their convictions. The subtleties of " Tract XC."
show how fast and loose the ultra-orthodox, when
their own views were at stake, could play with the

1 Church, Life and Letters, 43.

OXFORD AND JOWETT 473
very formula which they could not allow their op
ponents any latitude in interpreting. The slicing,
as it were, of the Articles, which is not uncommon
even now, was then a fully perfected art ; with the
aggravation that the men who did it most effectually
in their own interests, were the least tolerant to the
men who attempted the same thing, but because
of another conscience. The whole attitude was,
therefore, that of the legalist rather than of the
moralist ; formulae which were meant to express
high truths were construed as effete statutes to which
conscientious acquiescence could not be expected.
3. This is said, of course, in explanation of Jowett's
attitude, not in justification of it. He and his oppo
nents were alike latitudinarian — he in one direction,
they in another. Nor did his attitude imply indiffer
ence to theology, for in it he had from the first very
great interest. He early wished to see a theological
school founded in the university, though, by a curious
Nemesis, when it was founded, he was excluded from
the theological board. His reason was that he wished
to see the clergy trained in the university rather than
in diocesan colleges. And he held that the more
liberal the education, the more liberal would be the
clerical thought : for the highest theory of the office
was held by the men who had the least fitness for it.
For the clerical order, as such, he had no admiration ;
he rather thought that "loyalty to the clergy was
treachery to the Church." He was, if one may say
so, a rigorous individualist in religion ; he loved to

474 CATHOLICISM

elaborate his own belief, to let his mind play upon
history and dogmas, and to translate them into the
ideals which could regulate his life. In a letter he
describes " the true basis of religion as the life and
death of Christ " ; but what that means he straight
way proceeds to explain thus : " The life and death
of Christ in the soul, the imitation of Christ ; the
inspiration of Christ ; the sacrifice of self ; the being
in the world, but not of it ; the union with God
and the will of God such as Christ had." 1 He con
ceived the ideal as the essential element in religion.
Christ was to him an ideal rather than a reality : a
name that denoted an object of reverence and thought,
rather than any historical person. This Is perhaps
putting it more sharply than he himself would have
done, though he has stated his position with almost
equal precision. He wanted to see the personal
Christ become an ideal Christ, and this pass into
the idea of Goodness.2 But he was not a man that
inconsistencies terrified. He had moods that needed
only the ideal, and moods that craved for the
historical ; but he loved to find himself in the
Gospels, just as he liked to make Plato the vehicle
and medium of his own thought. It is one of the
points where the action of a loved author may be
subtly seen in similar manifestations in the most
opposite of minds. Jowett had too sane an intellect
to allegorize ; but Plato taught him to idealize. He

1 ii. 273. 3 ii. 15.

OXFORD AND JOWETT 475
learned a mysticism that made him independent of
history, but dependent on the Ideas which were the
ultimate realities of his life.
4. As Pattison exhibited a contrast to Jowett's
attitude to scholarship, so we may find in Dean
Stanley a contrast to his attitude to theology. The
affinities with Stanley, both in thought and aim, were
far more intimate than those he had with Pattison.
They formed, indeed, as near a parallel to Jonathan
and David as modern conditions permit of. They
had almost everything in common — they thought
together, planned together, travelled together, worked
together. They were in constant consultation about
the most intimate matters of private belief and public
conduct. Their friendship, indeed, was almost ideal :
but in its unity It represented characteristic and
fundamental differences. Stanley's was a picturesque
mind ; he had, as it were, a sensuous imagination ; its
images came through the senses, and were clothed in
the raiment the senses supplied. Where allegory and
analogy stood to Newman, history and geography
stood to Stanley. But he did not use them as the
true romanticist did. He loved to people a place with
the figures of the past ; but the more unlike these
figures were, the more picturesque the contrast they
offered to each other, the more attractive did they
seem to Stanley. If we may so distinguish, we may,
say that he was a cosmopolitical rather than a medi
aeval romanticist. For him romance lay not in the
imagined chivalry of a time behind us, though it was

476 CATHOLICISM

a time that had never been ; but rather in the dis
similarities of the persons, the times, and the causes
he could bring together and combine or contrast in
the strong light and shade of his pictorial pages.
But the creations of the sensuous imagination did
not appeal to Jowett. Pictorial history was to him a
weariness — almost, indeed, a childishness. While he
had no love for the sensuous image, he had an intense
love for the ideal. He delighted to translate a cruder
into a riper conception, an inchoate into a simple and
classic thought. But this was not the most funda
mental distinction between the two friends. Stanley
was a born warrior ; he was a man with a mission,
and the mission was one which could be carried out
only by an aggressive policy. He had inherited
Arnold's great idea, and wanted the Church to be
co-extensive with the State, as varied, as rich in the
elements and persons it comprehended. All the fine
figures which he loved in the past he rejoiced to co
ordinate in an ideal unity, which he would fain have
translated in the present into the practical unity of
an organized religious society. So he laboured to
modify Subscription, that it might cease to be a
barrier to the conscientious Dissenter ; and he strove
to make Westminster Abbey not simply the tomb of
English heroes and saints, but the home of English
religion, where the representatives of its varied sec
tions and societies could meet in worship and partici
pate in the common sacraments of their religion.
But Jowett had no mission to be progressive or

OXFORD AND JOWETT i,T]
polemical in behalf of those who stood outside the
society to which he belonged. He could hardly
understand why a man should make difficulties about
Subscription, when it had become too conventional a
thing to be taken seriously. It seemed to him more
than a trifle foolish — indeed, only a sort of illiberal
scrupulosity — to stand aloof from the National
Church because you did not agree with its creed.
As a matter of fact, nobody did agree with that creed.
Time and use had modified Subscription sufficiently
to ease the tender conscience of its pain.
This, indeed, is putting it more sharply than is
quite just, if it be understood to apply to academic as
well as ecclesiastical tests. He looked at things as
they were, found men possessed of differences, and in
order to make the university national, which tests pre
vented it being, he came to urge their abolition. But
in the ecclesiastical sphere his attitude was rather
" use your liberty," than " make liberty a consti
tutional and legal thing." It would hardly be too
much to say that Jowett never understood either the
Dissenter or Dissent, though nothing could exceed
his personal kindness and consideration to the Dissen
ters he knew, or anything be stronger than his deter
mination that men, whether in the university or in the
college, should have their 'due, irrespective of creed.
He was perhaps, in the heart of him, inclined to think
that to be scrupulous about Conformity was to make
much ado about nothing. The pathos of the Dissen
ter's position did not appeal to him. He had difficulty

478 CATHOLICISM

in conceiving that a man might have an absorbing
desire to be a member of a great university, and yet
feel under an imperious obligation to refuse member
ship on the only terms that were then possible. He
had in his secret mind the suspicion that Dissent was
a sort of obstinacy, an illiberal rigour and vigour of
mind that education would soften and finally elimi
nate. We are often less patient with those who agree
with us in part than with those who wholly differ
from us. Social toleration of a Dissenter is probably
a rarer thing than social toleration of an infidel or an
agnostic. The one is a vulgar middle-class form of
religion ; the other Implies some intellectual distinc
tion and independence. This attitude was not with
out a parallel in Jowett's own experience. When he
was most suspected and persecuted, a friend called to
tell him that the orthodox felt more kindly to Con-
greve and the thoroughgoing Positivists than to him.
But in nothing did he so show himself the philosopher,
as in the equanimity with which he bore suspicion
and isolation.
These sentences must not be construed to mean any
lack of appreciation of Jowett's services to the cause
of freedom, whether in the college or the university.
These services were varied, distinguished, and effec
tual. It is, indeed, one thing to be opposed to tests,
and quite another either to understand or to appre
ciate the action of a man who will endure serious civil
or social or academic loss rather than submit his con
science to their yoke. But Jowett's merit lies not so

OXFORD AND JOWETT 479
much in the region of theory as of practice ; he was
much more than an advocate of abolition ; he honestly
tried to act justly towards the idea of an open college
and a free university. This is by no means so easy a
thing as it may look : and it is especially hard in the
case of one who is head of a college, which is by its
very history, constitution, and traditions a closer and
more rigid society than the university of which it is a
component part. The repeal of tests may be a simple
legislative process, but the enforcement, even of the
repealed tests, may be regarded by men of a certain
order of conscientiousness as an administrative expe
dient, which they feel bound in some form to follow.
One of the last things that the head, or even in cer
tain cases the tutor, of a college with the history and
antecedents of the Oxford colleges, may be able to
realize, is that his college has ceased to be an ecclesi
astical institution, and has become a place of educa
tion open to men of all churches and all creeds.
Jowett was far too honourable a man ever so to abuse
his academic position as to use it for the purpose of
winning ingenuous minds from their ancestral faith.
On this point Illustration would be easy and grateful,
but it must suffice simply to say that he seems to me
to have been an academic statesman and administra
tor who knew how and "when to take
Occasion by the hand, and make
The bounds of freedom wider yet."
5. But the contrast to Stanley suggests another

480 CATHOLICISM

and most distinctive characteristic. Jowett was one
of the most persistent of men, though one of the least
polemical. If he found his way barred, or if to sur
mount the bar threatened to be too toilsome a pro
cess, he turned aside to seek a passage by some other
way. He had such a feeling for the conditions of
moral influence, that he would not dissipate it by
allowing it to break against obstacles that were for
the moment irremovable. He preferred to go round
the mountain rather than scale the heights. Thus
when the storm was raised, first by his Epistles of
Paul, and next by his essay In Essays and Reviews,
he simply dropped theology for the time being and
turned to Plato and philosophy. So, too, when he
missed the Mastership and found the college uncon
genial, he forsook the Hall and the common-room,
lived much alone, devoted himself to his work and to
his pupils, preparing for the day when he could
emerge from his seclusion and play a more command
ing part in the college. So, too, in the matter of his
Professorship, he felt keenly the insults to which he
was exposed both in assuming the Chair and when
refused the salary that was his . due ; but he devoted
himself to the duties of his Chair, leaving chivalrous
friends to champion his cause. And his method was
as well suited to his ultimate success as to his imme
diate peace of mind.
But enough has been said to indicate Jowett's place
and function in the making of modern Oxford. He
was an educator rather than a scholar, a man of

OXFORD AND fOWETT 48 1
letters rather than a man of learning. He is distin
guished at once by the comparative feebleness of his
scientific interest and the intensity of his interest In
persons. He was an enthusiast for the creation of
the best men for the service of the Church and State ;
and he believed that- there was no place for their
creation equal to a well-equipped, well-governed, and
well-disciplined college, where the most cultured
minds of the present introduced the learners to the
classical literatures of the past. And he lived to
make the college he ruled what he conceived a college
ought to be. It was a noble ambition nobly carried
out. And the attitude of his own mind qualified him
for the work he elected to do. He educated by sug
gestion and criticism rather than system and con
struction, stimulated by questioning rather than
informed by instruction. But, whatever may be
thought of his educational method or his literary
work, one thing is certain — he will be remembered
above all his contemporaries as the man who lived
for his college, and made it a supreme force in the
academic life of the nineteenth century.
fune, 1897.

Butler &» Tanner, The Stliuood Printing Works, Frame, and London
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