THE LEADING TOPICS

OF

DE. PUSEY'S RECENT WORK

EEVIEWED IN A LETTEE

ADDEE8SED ( BT PERMISSION) TO THE

MOST REV. H. E. MANNING, D.D.

BY THE t

VEEY EEV. FEEDEEICK OAKELEY, M.A.

Solliciti servare unitatem Spiritus in vinculo pacis.— Eph. iv. 3.

LONDON :
LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.
|V\V\g5"£- 1866.

THE LEADING TOPICS

OF

DR. PUSEY'S RECENT WORK

EEVIEWED IN A LETTEE

ADDHESSEO (BY PERMISSION) TO THE

MOST REY. H. E. MANNING, D.D.

VEEY EEV. FEEDEEICK OAKELEY, M.A.

Solliciti servarc unitatem Spiritus in vinculo pacis.— Epii. iv, 3.

%f^\

?.

LONDON :
LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.
1866.

LONDON
P HINTED BT SPOTTI3WOODE AND CO
NRW-STKTIET SQUARH

LETTER

MOST REV. E E. MANNING, D.D.

My dear Lord Archbishop,
When I read Dr. Pusey's recently published work,
I felt that it ought to be answered, and that Your
Grace was the person to answer it, for this as well as
for other reasons, — that it was written with immediate
reference to yourself. There is but one plea upon
which your friends can acquiesce in your unwillingness
to enter upon such a task, and that is, that your in
cessant labours on behalf of your flock leave you
scarcely a moment for any occupation which does not
come before you in the shape of an imperative duty.
It is under these circumstances, and on this ground
only, that I have obtained your permission to give
utterance to my pressing thoughts upon the work in
question, in the form of a Letter to Your Grace. In
doing so, however, I wish to premise, that you have no
other responsibility in the following pages than such as
is implied in the fact of this permission.
A '2

4 THE EIRENICON; ITS TWOFOLD ASPECT
Dr. Pusey calls his book an ' Eirenicon,' and I thank
him for the word. I thank him yet more for the strong
assurances he has since given us of his bond fide desire
of peace and reconciliation.* I confess that his book
seemed to me to wear a twofold aspect, not covertly,
nor disingenuously, but of set purpose. I recognised,
indeed, in it quite enough to justify the profession of a
pacific object which appears on its titlepage ; but I
also fancied that I saw in parts of it symptoms of
another purpose, of a controversial, not to say
hostile, character ; I mean the desire of frightening
inquirers away from the Catholic and Eoman Church,
as she is, by a carefully selected series of passages on
one great subject of her teaching and practice, put
forward rather in the spirit of an advocate pleading a
side, than of a mediator balancing difficulties with a
view to negotiation. I am rejoiced to find from Dr.
Pusey's explanation of his object, that neither this nor
any other portion of his work was conceived in an un
friendly spirit. Under such circumstances, we must all
be amply gratified by the fact of one holding so high
a position, and possessing so extensive a command over
the hearts and consciences of others, feeling himself
able, in the face of the world, to declare that he is pre
pared to accept all our de fide doctrines in the true sense
of the Church ; and that union with us is the dearest
object of his pursuit. This is surely a great step. It
seems like a dream, that a claim bearing so great a simi
larity to that for the avowal of which, only twenty years
* See his Letter in the Weekly Register of November 25.

MODIFIED BY SUBSEQUENT EXPLANATION. 5
ago, Mr. Ward was stripped of his M.A. gown by a vote
of the Oxford Convocation, and myself suspended from
all ministerial functions in the province of Canterbury,
by a sentence of the Supreme Ecclesiastical Court, except
on condition of a full and free recantation of my ' errors,'
should now be advanced by a Canon of Christchurch
and a Eegius Professor without reserve, yet without
reproach. I think, indeed, that Dr. Pusey's claim
labours under the same defect as Mr. Ward's, inasmuch
as the acceptance of all our de fide doctrines is incon
sistent with the practical rejection of the Pope's divinely
ordained supremacy, which, as I shall presently show,
is one of those doctrines. It is not, however, the
validity of the claim which is here in question, but the
spirit which it indicates, and the boldness of declaring
it. Dr. Pusey's avowal, moreover, not merely involves
the acceptance of that interpretation of the Thirty-nine
Articles for which Mr. Newman was censured by nearly
every Bishop of the Establishment, but goes beyond
that interpretation in a Catholic direction, inasmuch as it
comprehends the doctrine of Transubstantiation, which
Mr. Newman, I believe, never thought to be included
within the terms of the Articles. It also goes beyond
Mr. Newman's argument in his Tract, in that it supposes
the Catholic sense of the Articles to be their obvious
and only true sense, instead of being merely one of the
senses which is compatible with honest subscription.*
And here I must say in passing, that I think Dr. Pusey
somewhat unfair on Mr. Ward in attributing to him the
* See Appendix.

6 GENIUS OF THE NATIONAL CHURCH
unpopularity of Tract XC. ; since, in extending the in
terpretation of the Tract to our doctrine of the Blessed
Eucharist, Dr. Pusey is in fact adopting Mr. Ward's
construction of the Articles, and not Mr. Newman's.
For as to saying that the Articles condemn such a view
of the doctrine only as overthrows the distinction be
tween the changed Substance and the unchanged Acci
dents, no such view was at any time in question, since
it is not the view of the Cathohc Church ; and if my
memory does not deceive me, there was no single point
upon which Mr. Ward insisted more strongly than this
very distinction on which Dr. Pusey also insists.
I repeat, therefore, that Dr. Pusey's work seems to
me a great and important fact. Yet he must forgive
me if I say that, gratifying though this fact be as a
proof of his own progress in a Catholic direction, and
as an augury of things to come, it does not seem to
me to tell in favour of his communion ; but the
reverse. What many of us feel with regard to the
Anglican Church, in its history during the last twenty
years, is, that it has become less and less of a teaching
Church. Whenever it has attempted to assume that
office through its recognised tribunals, it has taught
httle else than errors, which have supphed its more
orthodox members with repeated occasions for protests
and disclaimers. I had always supposed that the great
object of the Tractarian Movement was to get the
Church of England to come out as a teacher of
Catholic Truth ; and it is because this purpose seemed
to me to have been practically defeated by the fact
of Mr. Newman's conversion, that I said in a passage

COMPREHENSIVE, NOT DOGMATIC. 7
in my 'Historical Notes' on that Movement with which
Dr. Pusey finds fault, that Mr. Newman's conversion
was its ultimate resolution. I am perfectly aware, as
indeed I said, that, subsequently to the epoch in
question, there has been a great development of Eitual
in the Anglican Communion, and, what is far better,
of self-denying charity in forms and ways peculiarly
Catholic. The latter is a circumstance full of hope
and promise ; of the former I Avill speak hereafter.
I know also — especially from Dr. Pusey's work, as far
as the shortness of the period during which it has
been in circulation can enable us to judge on the point —
that there is a marvellous advance in the liberty of
utterance on doctrinal subjects, and in the public
toleration of what are called extreme opinions. But
I cannot consent to regard this fact as creditable to
the Anglican Church, merely because it happens in
this instance to tell on our side. It is impossible to
shut one's eyes to the fact, that the Bishops allow
Dr. Pusey and his friends to run out in one line,
because they wish to secure an indemnity for Eational-
ists, Liberals, and Evangelicals in another. I think
their Lordships are far wiser in their generation than
their predecessors, and take a far truer view of the
genius of the Church in which they hold office. That
Church is essentially a national institution, and the
nation to which it is accommodated is essentially an
undogmatic nation. No one was better aware of this
than Queen Elizabeth and her councillors, who con
solidated the work of the so-called Eeformation which
Henry VIII. and Cranmer began. In the time of her

8 AN UNDOGMATIC CHURCH CAN BE NO
successors, attempts were more than once made to give
to the National Church somewhat of a dogmatic cha
racter ; but their effect was to divide into sections that
which was intended, in its first origin, to be a national
unity. Nothing is easier than to compass unity, if we
choose to abandon dogma. The Anghcan Bishops of
the present day are seeking to bring their Church
more and more into conformity with the Elizabethan
model. They are opening it to Eomanisers on the one
side, and to Liberals and Nonconformists on the other.
Their principle is, ' Hanc veniam petimusque damusque
vicissim.' This is a state of things which cannot last,
and sooner or later there will be a conflict and a break
up ; for an external and merely political union cannot
assimilate sincere minds of an opposite cast. This,
however, is not my present point. What I wish to
note is, that a Church — so to call it — in which all
opinions are tolerated except those which conflict with
some national prejudice more powerful than the love
of toleration, and in which there is absolutely no living
voice to determine authoritatively and finally which of
such opinions is right and which is wrong, is no
Church at all, in any sense which consists, I will not
say with the theory of Eome, but with the language
of Scripture, and the teaching of the Fathers ; and as
such ought, I think, to be repudiated quite as much
by Dr. Pusey as by ourselves. When, therefore, Your
Grace said that the Estabhshed Church could be in no
sense a 'bulwark' against Infidelity, I understood you
to refer to this absence of any authoritative and di
rective power within it. I did not understand you to

BULWARK AGAINST INFIDELITY. 9
deny that, as the great organ of Conservatism in this
country, it has exercised a certain, though constantly
diminishing, influence in controlling the excesses or
checking the inroads of circumambient unbelief. But
I am at a loss to understand, quite as much as yourself,
how there can be any trustworthy safeguard against
the extremest developments of intellectual self-will,
except in a Church which teaches, not merely in her
recognised formularies, but in her every practical
manifestation, that there is an Objective Truth, the
nature and limits of which she leaves her members
without even the shadow of an excuse for misunder
standing. What we have principally to deplore in the
religious condition of this country is a profound
spiritual lethargy — a total insensibility to the realities
of any world but the present ; compared with which
even the strong reaction from a lively faith into posi
tive infidelity, which has sometimes been witnessed in
Catholic countries (as in France, at the time of the
Great Eevolution), terrible as it is, is an evil that
indicates a far less desperate malady in the moral
constitution of a people. I am far from denying that
positive infidelity prevails also to a very considerable
extent in this country. No one who reads our popular
literature with attention can doubt this fact ; and I
know it to be the opinion of excellent Catholics of the
middle class, who hold mercantile and official situ
ations, that, in that class of Protestants, infidelity is
greatly on the increase. As mere secular education
is extended, and the Established Church comes to be
more and more amalgamated with sects which do not

10 RITUAL APART FROM DOGMA
even recognise the principle of authority, there can be
httle doubt that what is now a smothered fire, will
break out into something like an open conflagration.
Then will be found, I fear too late, the hopelessness of
attempting to cope with the spirit of infidelity, except
ing by means of a dogmatic and infallible Church.
The start which has been made during the last few
years, in the direction of ceremonial religion, apart
from any corresponding advances in sensitiveness to
the necessity of an ordained provision for dogmatic
teaching, appears to me to be, not only not a gain, but
a distinct and conspicuous evil. It can have no other
effect than to amuse with mere baubles a number of
good men who mistake the form for the substance.
The rites and ceremonies of religion are not only
most beautiful in themselves, but react powerfully
upon its truths, when they are the natural expressions
of those truths, and are so understood by all who
witness them ; but they can no more teach religion of
themselves, or be a substitute for it, than the emblazoned
pall which covers the corpse of a monarch can sustain
the idea of a living royalty. I do not, indeed, deny
that these mimicries of Catholic ceremonial may do
us a service in familiarising the minds of Englishmen
with a type of worship which had been totally ob
literated ; but this is a very different thing from saying
that they represent a reality where they are, or can be
otherwise than most injurious to those who delight in
them, by leading them to confound the outward show
with the true spirit of Catholicity. But even this is
scarcely their worst result. They cannot be practised

WORSE THAN USELESS. 11
without entailing a system of equivocation and com
promise highly prejudicial to the moral sense. The
only legitimate interpreter of doubtful Eubrics is
the Ordinaiy ; and it certainly cannot be said, either
that the Eubrics on which these practices are founded
are clearly in their favour, or that an explanation of
their ambiguities is usually sought from the living
authority. Hence, a considerable body of the Clergy
are constantly seeking to hoodwink their Bishops, who
are themselves not very impatient of the process ; and
thus the Cathohc principles of authority and obedience
find their counterpart in a mutual relation of connivance
and evasion.
But offensive controversy is always an ungracious
task, and I gladly pass from it to that department of
my subject which is less concerned with attacking the
position of others than with defending our own. Here I
am at once introduced into a wide field. Dr. Pusey,
like those who have preceded him, draws a broad dis
tinction between the dogmatic statements of the Church
and her practical system. He considers, and rightly
considers, that anyone who submits to the Catholic
Church is at once introduced into an entirely new
atmosphere of thought, habit, and association, which is
not, and cannot be, fully represented by the precise
and measured language of doctrinal formularies. So
far he is certainly in the right. Where I humbly con
ceive that he is mistaken is, in supposing that the
character and effects of that which he calls our practical
system can be duly estimated by those tokens of it
which protrude from within its limits, into the sphere

12 PERSONAL EXPERIENCE OF CATHOLIC SYSTEM.
of external observation. He says, as I should have
expected from one so dutiful to authority, that he could
never consent to enter the Catholic Church in the
spirit of an objector or a critic. I will venture to say,
most confidently, that I believe if he ever, did enter it,
he would find not even the temptation to contravene so
excellent an intention. I can fully understand the sort
of nervous apprehension which any thoughtful Angli
can must experience in the idea, that, on becoming a
Catholic, he will have to enter upon a kind of terra
incognita, of whose inhabitants and productions he
knows nothing ; and more than suspects that when he
has reached it he will find himself in a strait between
the difficulty of accommodating himself to its strange
properties on the one hand, and, on the other, of
retracing an irrevocable step ; and, of course, the
anxieties of such a prospect are increased in proportion
as we grow older, and become more thoroughly accli
matised to the land of our birth. I can understand
this state of mind, for I have experienced it, and re
member to have described it, under the pressure of its
embarrassment, about a year before I became a Catholic,
in a letter which appeared in the 'English Churchman.'
The apprehension which I there expressed was that, if
I entered the Eoman Communion, I should find my
conscience and my duty to the Church continually at
cross purposes ; and I remember that the subject
especially present to my mind was, that of certain
popular devotions which I then felt that I could not
adopt as a good Christian, and should not be allowed
to decline as a good Catholic. But, as time went on, I

PRACTICAL SYSTEM OF THE CHURCH VINDICATED.
came to the conclusion that the act from which I so
recoiled might be what Mr. Newman had called one of
the ' ventures of faith,' and that the very quality of faith
which had been honourably commemorated in the case
of him who is called, by way of eminence, the ' Father
of the Faithful,' was, that he followed God's leading,
' not knowing whither he went.' When I say that
never for one single instant, since I entered the Holy
Catholic and Bonian Church, have I been able even to
realise the state of mind under which I expressed the
anxiety in question, I know that such a saying may be
regarded as a controversial expedient, or imputed to
circumstances of some special kind ; yet I will say it,
however it be understood, as a public expression of my
thankfulness to God for giving me, amid whatever other
evidences of His chastening love, no practical expe
rience of so terrible a trial.
I am aware, however, that personal experience is
not argument, and, therefore, I must address myself to
two topics of a more general kind. The first, that
from the very fact of the Catholic religion being a living
reahty, and not a mere documentary system, that
religion cannot be comprehended within the limits of
formularies, but must necessarily expand into a vast
body of traditions, and logical deductions from its
ascertained dogmas and principles, the fruit of pious
minds constantly energising within it ; the second, that
what is called the practical system of the Catholic
Church is, in fact, at once the consequence and the
evidence of our religion being such a reality ; and that
this system is entirely consistent with the doctrinal

14 PRACTICAL SYSTEM OF THE CHURCH
foundations, out of which it springs, though going
beyond those foundations, as the legitimate conclusions
of true premisses may be said to go beyond the pre
misses in which they lie hidden.
God the Holy Ghost is the Creator of the Church,
and it is in Him that the Church lives and moves and
has its being. When He vouchsafed to form it on the
Day of Pentecost, He not only descended on the heads
of the Apostles, but filled the whole room in which they
were gathered together with Mary their Queen, and
others of our Lord's disciples. He guided them, as the
Lord had promised, ' into all truth.' All that man is
required to believe unto salvation — all that ever has
been, or that ever will be, drawn out into the shape of
explicit dogma, was virtually and implicitly contained
in that one original revelation ; but together with it
there was infused into the Church the principle of life,
and a power, analogous to that annexed in the creation
of the material world to animal and vegetable nature, —
the power of continuous reproduction in forms in
definitely various in their details, but all of them
founded essentially upon the original type. Hence the
Church, when viewed at any period of her subsequent
history, presents the appearance, not of a sterile form or
stereotyped literature, but of a world teeming with
spiritual animation. Here is the theologian working out
the problems of his science from its elementary axioms ;
there is the Saint following out a train of thought on
the Incarnation, and resting with holy rapture on in
ferences, strictly within the terms of the Faith, yet hidden
from minds less purified from earthly stain, or less prac-

THE FRUIT AND EVIDENCE OF HER LIFE. 15
tised in the exercise of mental prayer ; while, in addition
to the fruits which are continually added to the Church's
store of untechnical and traditionary knowledge, she is
always gathering in fresh resources of the same kind from
the attestation "of miracles, the illustrations of saintly
example, the growth and influence of popular devotions,
the comparison of experiences, the collision with
error, and many other such outward manifestations of
a pervading and vigorous life. It is thus that the
Church weaves around her, as it were, a network of
associations out of materials within herself, which is at
once the evidence of her activity, and the protection of
her weakness. This is what men call her popular
system ; the assemblage of secondary and inferential
doctrines constantly accruing from her energetic action,
and gathering round her steps in multiplied profusion
as she hastens down the course of ages. In this retinue
of concomitant illustrations the Mediseval Church was
richer than the Primitive, and the Present is richer
than the Mediaeval. Had not the Church been gifted
with this principle of enduring life and prolific repro
duction of new forms, according to an original standard,
every succeeding age would have carried her further
and further from the source of her purity ; and this is
what her enemies or critics, who do not understand
her character, are apt to urge to her disadvantage,
because they judge her according to the measure of
mere human institutions. As it is, however, she can
grow old without ceasing to be young.
Jam senior, sed cruda Defe viridisque senectus.

16 PRACTICAL SYSTEM OF THE CHURCH
Nay, it is predicted of her that her youth shall be
renewed as that of the eagle; it is ever becoming
more beautiful, more vigorous ; for thus it must needs
be, since the Saints sustain and propagate the hfe of
the Spirit within the Church, for the Saints are of no
single age, but each successive age is enriched by the
experiences of those that have gone before. Dr.
Pusey and others who look at us from without, always
seem to argue as if what they call the popular system
of the Eoman Church were something which is of the
'earth earthy' — a mass of corruption — the product of
human infirmity or perversity, by which the pure gold
of Primitive Christianity is hidden or dimmed. What
they desire is to see the Church reheved of this
incubus, as they regard it ; to drive her within the
entrenchments of her ruled and abstract definitions.
Thus Dr. Pusey would appeal from our theologians to
the Church, as if the two witnesses were not consentient
in their evidence. The whole practical and devotional
expression of the Church's mind he seems to look upon
as a kind of traditionary gloss, like that by which the
Pharisees obscured the law of Moses. This is a view
of the case against which we from within must
strenuously protest as tantamount to a denial of a
Divine Presence constantly within the Church, by
which she is secured from errancy, not only in her
formal decisions, but in all which relates to the spiritual
government of her members, so far as it comes within
the sphere of her responsibility. We can no more
conceive of the Church without this great accessory
system, the work of her theologians and of her Saints,

NOT EXEMPT FROM EFFECTS OF HUMAN FRAILTY. 17
than of the material world divested of the atmosphere
which surrounds and permeates it. We do not place
this superstructure in the same category with the dog
matic foundations on which it rests. We do not say
that heresy is necessarily implied in rejecting it in this
or the other of its details ; but Ave do say that, to tie
the Church down to her formal and abstract enact
ments on Articles of the Faith — to deny not only that
she may, but that she must, go beyond them, though
never beside them, in her practical teaching — to pre
sume that we can be competent judges as to the true
relation between certain doctrines and practices ap
proved by the Church where our judgment is at
variance with that of the Church herself, who, under
the direction of the Indwelling Spirit, determines such
practices to be the legitimate result of such doctrines
— all this is quite inconsistent with believing the
Church to be abidingly ruled by the Spirit of God,
and is only not heresy in the concrete, because it is the
very essence of heresy itself.
Of course we do not forget that we have this
treasure in earthen vessels ; that God has been pleased
to commit the dispensation of His grace to weak and
fallible human instruments ; and that, in the actual
manifestations of the Church in this or that place at
any given time, there may be defects, and even abuses,
blended with that popular system which in itself is
but the necessary result of an organic and constantly
throbbing life. It is also quite possible that the Church
may not always expel these spots ' and wrinkles ' from
her visible constitution with the promptitude which
B

18 PARTIAL AND OCCASIONAL ABUSES
our indignant and impatient zeal may require at her
hands. In such cases it is surely the instinct of faith
and loyalty to give her credit for a prudence exceeding
our own. There is such a thing as fearing to pluck
up wheat with the tares. The line which divides
superstition from faith is as fine as a hair, and the eye
of a diviner wisdom may see faith where a calculating
human prudence sees only credulity. Again : Inter
positions of authority are in their very nature solemn
and final acts, such as all wise governments reserve for
extreme cases, and especially a government on whose
acts the most momentous issues are suspended. Then,
again, the wickedness or the waywardness of man may
turn the most wholesome laws to a selfish or an evil
purpose, or break loose into excesses which no re
straints of rule can control ; and thus the outward
aspect of the Church may be prejudiced in the eyes of
those who judge her by superficial tokens. Under the
former of these heads may be classed the possibly
avaricious abuse of so needful and apostolic a regu
lation as that by which a priest is allowed to receive
an alms, or, as it is commonly called, a ' retribution,'
apportioned to the exigencies of his maintenance, for
masses said at the request of another ; a regulation
literally in accordance with St. Paul's words, that they
who minister at the altar should live by the altar.
As an instance of the second case, we may refer to
occasional popular excesses, or mistakes, in devotion,
often rigidly interpreted by casual observers as indi
cations of the formal teaching of the Church ; as if
every act or gesture of a class proverbially undiscrimi-

NOT ALWAYS AMENABLE TO DISCIPLINE. 19
nating could be brought under the hand of a power
whose course is ordered by considerations upon which
it is quite impossible that individuals, and, least of all,
Protestants, should be competent to decide. All that
is needed is faith in the Divine authority, and constant
supernatural guidance of the Church in the government
of her members as a body, in regard to all which
relates to their eternal welfare.
I am next to show that a Catholic is bound to no
view of doctrine or practice of devotion, which is not
a legitimate result of the teaching of Holy Scripture,
as embodied in the doctrinal decrees of the Church.
I refer here more particularly to our teaching and
practice on the subject of the Blessed Virgin, both
because it is this which forms the kernel of our
popular system, as distinguished from all non-catholic
communities, and because it is this which is the gist
of Dr. Pusey's objection to the Holy Catholic and
Eoman Church as she is.
I distinctly and emphatically deny that there is any
view of the prerogatives and office of the Blessed
Virgin which assigns to her the place of dignity and
extent of power imphed in the scriptural representation
of her, as symbolised in the Apostles' Creed, except
that which is expressed in the largest and fullest
development of approved Catholic devotion. The
germ of that expanded flower is contained in the
words ' Natus ex Maria Virgine.' A meditation on the
narrative of the Annunciation in St. Luke's Gospel is
alone sufficient to account for the most extreme of the
doctrinal and devotional expressions which Dr. Pusey
n 2

20 CATHOLIC ESTIMATE OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN
has produced ; yet I cannot but observe, in this place,
that there is no mode of controversy less fair than that
of stringing together a collection of single passages
apart from their context, and of subjecting to the rules
of hard and technical criticism the fervid language of
bold and untechnical devotion. It is a course, I must
plainly say, seemingly at variance with the profes
sion of peace which will be apt to attract to Dr.
Pusey's work readers whom its contents will griev
ously disappoint. Those who are unfamiliar with our
doctrines will be simply shocked and perplexed by
phrases or reasonings to which nothing in their previous
habits of religious thought presents either parallel or
clue to their interpretation ; and even Cathohcs, un
accustomed to pursue elementary truths to their legiti
mate consequences, may be startled for the moment
by the exhibition of those truths in a form so unusual
and so abrupt. If Dr. Pusey considers such results as
a gain to the cause of religious truth, he will undoubt
edly have answered his purpose, at least for the time
being, by the form into which he has cast his objections.
But I do not think that the impression he may have
created will be durable. He will at least have opened
a great question to the minds of many who will scarcely
be prepared to rest in his solution of it. He will lead
many to the conclusion that the love and cultus of the
Blessed Virgin must be either an extreme or a nullity ;
that, unless we be prepared to degrade her office as the
Mother of our Eecleemer, and the great instrument of
that dispensation whence flow all blessings to the
human race, we cannot stop short of ascribing to her

FOUNDED ON HOLY SCRIPTURE AND THE CREEDS. 21
even the most majestic of those titles, and the most
transcendant of those privileges, which have been
found for her in the pious inventions of saintly love.
It is quite as much for the consolation and reassurance
of my own brethren as for the conviction of those who
are separated from us, that I feel it my duty to justify
this controversial position.
' Qui conceptus est de Spiritu Sancto, natus ex Maria
Virgine.' These words, I repeat, contain the justifica
tion of all that theologians have concluded, or saints
conceived, of the prerogatives of the Blessed Virgin, or
of the honour due to her.* They open a view of her
relation to the Most Holy Trinity which raises her all
but infinitely above every other created being. Not
only the highest of saints, but the highest of archangels,
takes a rank indefinitely below her. If God the Father
thus elected her from all eternity to be the Mother of
His Only Begotten Son, through the immediate opera-
* I mean, of course, to confine this remark to writers of established
reputation in the Church, and with due allowance for human infirmity,
and varieties of character and temperament. Persons often argue as if
the Church made herself responsible for every work, and every phrase
in every work, which she has not expressly censured. But there are
many intervening conditions between the publication of even a question
able work and the declaration of the censure which it may merit. There
are, for instance, works so unimportant that to make them the subject of
formal censure would be like ' crushing a butterfly on a wheel.' Again :
the Holy See may judge, in its wisdom, that an extreme indulgence is
due to the casual expressions of one who has done the Church good
service, or of a work the general purport and tenour of which is good and
edifying. This may be a suitable opportunity of observing that Dr. Pusey has
quoted largely from a writer named Oswald. I pronounce no opinion
upon the merits of this writer as a theologian ; but I may remark, that no
Catholic I have met with, even of those versed in our theological litera
ture, has ever heard of his name.

22 ' HOMO EST EX SUBSTANTIA MATRIS.'
tion of the Holy Ghost, then is there no hyperbole but
simple scriptural truth in the Cathohc enumeration of
her relationships to the Three Divine Persons, as
Daughter of the Eternal Father, Mother of the Eternal
Son, and Spouse of the Holy Ghost. Yet what Pro
testant is there who, if this description of our Blessed
Lady were abruptly set before him, would not instinc
tively recoil from it as exaggerated and even blas
phemous ?
Then let us consider what is involved in the title,
' Mother of God,' by which the Ephesian Council sym
bolised the dogma of the Divine Personality of our
Lord against the heresy of Nestorius ; thus drawing
out into explicit shape the truth, not less really, though
less formally, contained in the second article of the
Apostles' Creed, — ' Et in Jesum Christum, Filium Ejus
Unicum, Dominum nostrum, qui conceptus est de
Spiritu Sancto, natus ex Maria, Virgine.' The Blessed
Virgin stands precisely in the same relation to God,
her Creator and Eedeemer, in which every mother
stands towards the child of her love. Of two whole
and perfect Natures which are united, each with its own
properties distinct, in the One Person of our Incarnate
God, that of His Manhood is given Him by the Blesse
Virgin. In the words of that grandest of dogmatic
psalms, the Athanasian symbol, ' Deus est ex substantia
Patris ante sascula genitus, et Homo est ex substantia
Matris in saeculo natus.' Hence it follows necessarily,
that whatever appertained to the humanity of the Son
of God, except His human Soul, was of the Blessed
Virgin, before He took it into union with the Godhead,

CONSEQUENCES OF THIS BELIEF. 2:1
and did not cease to have been once hers by becoming
His. It was through her instrumentality that He was
born into the world, and born with a nature in which
He could share our infirmities, appear among men in
visible shape, touch and be touched, hunger, thirst, be
weary, suffer, die, be buried, rise again, and carry up
our common humanity to the right hand of His Eternal
Father. This, and nothing less than this, is what the
Blessed Virgin has done for man ; this, and nothing
less than this, is the part she has in the nature of the
Incarnate God. And httle as such an element enters
into an ordinary Catholic's habitual idea of the Blessed
Eucharist, it is a matter not of pious inference merely,
but of simple fact, that the Precious Blood we therein
receive is the blood derived from Mary, though infinitely
exalted by its union with the Divinity in the Person of
her Son. And this is certain, even though we admit,
as we may safely do, the operation in the case of our
Divine Lord of those physical changes which the human
frame is considered to undergo in the progress of life.
In the same sense, surely, in which we say that the
blood of our parents and ancestors flows in our veins
(those physical changes notwithstanding), and with the
necessary limitation expressed above, we may also say,
and truly say, that the blood of the Blessed Virgin was
in her Son from first to last, and is, therefore, in that
wondrous communication of Himself which He makes
to us in the Blessed Eucharist.
Whatever is wanting to the doctrine of our Blessed
Lady's privileges and claims as involved in the simple
statement that God the Son was born of her, is sup-

24 SCRIPTURE NARRATIVE OF THE ANNUNCIATION.
plied by the literal and inevitable meaning of other
passages in the Holy Scriptures. Let us take, for in
stance, the narrative of the Annunciation in St. Luke's
Gospel. The position there assigned to the Blessed
Virgin is surely something quite different from that
of any ordinary recipient of a Divine communication.
The Archangel, as it has often been said, does not lay
the Holy Virgin under the obligation of instant submis
sion, as though she were a mere subject, but treats
with her as an ambassador bearing a message of love
to a sovereign princess. He listens respectfully to her
pleas of demur and hesitation, and disposes of them
not as though they were the difficulties of incredulity,
but as the suggestions of a brightly illuminated con
science. The same question, ' How shall these things
be ? ' which in Zachary is reproved as a note of unbelief,
is in her virtually commended as an instinct of humi
lity and purity. The Blessed Virgin must be convinced
before the Divine commission can be entrusted to her.
She must express her free and unbiassed consent, before
the human race can be redeemed in the manner fore
ordained of God ; yet foreordained, in such sense as
to consist with the freedom, and depend on the concur
rence of the Blessed Virgin. Now, all this being so, I
cannot see that those spiritual writers, who have gone
the length of attributing to the Blessed Virgin a certain
co-ordinate yet wholly subordinate office in the re
demption of the world, have done more than pursue
this revelation of the inspired Word of God into its
legitimate logical results ; nor can I see (though I ad
mit this to be rather the pious inference of devotion,

PROPHECY IN GENESIS, C iii. V. 15. 25
than the logical conclusion of dogma) that any more
direct share in the unapproachable office of our Ee-
deemer is ascribed to His Blessed Mother in regarding
the Passion itself as suspended upon her consent, than
is implied in the intimacy thus proved by the language
of Scripture itself to have existed from the first between
the decrees of the Most Holy Trinity and the free-will
of the Blessed Virgin.
I now come to what we regard as the scriptural
germ of every doctrine, and the legitimate ground of
every authorised devotion on the subject of the Blessed
Virgin, — I mean the prediction of her office in the
Christian Dispensation uttered by Almighty God at the
time of the Fall. It is most unfair to commit the
argument founded on this prediction to the uncer
tainties of the controversy as to the words ' Ipsa ' or
' Ipsum ; ' since, if the clause of the prediction with
respect to which that question has been raised were
whohy obhterated from the sacred text, the remnant of
it would be abundantly sufficient for the purposes of
our argument : ' The Lord God said unto the serpent, I
will put enmities between thee and the woman, and
between thy seed and her seed.' That, by the woman
in this passage must be intended the true Mother of the
Divine Seed is a position about which, I suppose, there
is no second opinion among pious believers, or indeed
among careful readers of the sacred text, whatever be
their religious opinions. It cannot surely be pretended,
that a relation of internecine warfare was established
between fallen Eve and the Tempter by whom she
had fallen ; whereas, if we understand by the ' woman '

26 THE FIRST AND SECOND EVE.
to be meant the second Eve through whose instru
mentality the curse of the Fall was revoked, the force
of the prediction becomes lucidly apparent. There is
something very remarkable in the manner in which this
title of ' the Woman ' seems to be throughout the
Scriptures the especial property of the Blessed Virgin.
This view is followed out as part of the Scripture testi
mony to our Lady, in an article which appeared in the
' Dublin Eeview ' for January 1865. Here I will but
observe its possible bearing upon the use of that phrase
by our Lord in addressing His most Holy Mother at the
marriage of Cana, and at the Crucifixion. It is also a
most significant fact, that the Blessed Virgin should be
spoken of in the Apocalypse, under the very same title
by which she is described, in the third chapter of
Genesis, as the principal antagonist of the Tempter. It
would be a far more prolific theme of sacred reflection
than I can possibly enter upon in this necessarily brief
review of a great subject, to describe the various
' enmities ' which have subsisted between the glorious
Second Eve and the seducer of the First, as well as
between her Divine Seed and the fell progeny of her
antagonist. The antithetic par allel between the office of the First
and Second Eve lies at the root of all our teaching on
the subject of the Blessed Virgin, and especially of the
doctrine of her Immaculate Conception. As our Lord
was the Second Adam, so was His Blessed Mother the
Second Eve. As the first Eve was the parent of cor
ruption, so is the second the authoress of the dispensa
tion of grace ; the authoress of course I mean in virtue

THE IMMACULATE CONCEPTION. 27
of her appointment to that office by Almighty God, and
as qualified for the fulfilment of it through the anti
cipated merits of her Divine Son. What may be called
the moral fitness of the doctrine of the Immaculate
Conception is beautifully pointed out by Dr. Newman
in the following passage : —
' The course of ages was to be reversed ; the tradition of
evil to be broken ; a gate of light to be opened amid the
darkness for the coming of the Just ; a Virgin conceived and
bore Him. It was fitting for His honour and glorjr, that she
who was the instrument of his bodily presence should first be
a miracle of His grace; it was fitting that she should triumph
where Eve had failed, and should " bruise the serpent's head "
by the spotlessness of her sanctity. ... As grace was infused
into Adam from the first moment of his creation, so that he
never had experience of his natural poverty till sin seduced
him to it, so was grace given in still ampler measure to Mary,
and she was a stranger to Adam's deprivation. ... If Adam
might have kept himself from sin in his first state, much
more shall we expect immaculate perfection in Mary.' *
Objectors to the doctrine are fond of appealing to
the testimony of St. Bernard and St. Thomas, but they
uniformly forget to state that St. Bernard in direct
terms, and St. Thomas of course by implication, make
a reserve in favour of any subsequent definition of the
Holy See. The private opinion, even of Saints, upon
an open question of theology, cannot be pleaded in
arrest of a later authoritative judgment of the Church,
without striking at the root of her whole dogmatic
system. With regard to the mode in which her in
fallible judgment was arrived at and expressed in the
* Discourses to Mired Congregations, Discourse XVII.

28 DEVOTION TO THE BLESSED VIRGIN MODIFIED
case of this great dogma of the Faith, I may have
something to say further on : here I will only remark
in passing, that every requirement, even of the lowest
theory of infallibility, is satisfied by a dogmatic
decision which emanates from the Sovereign Pontiff
speaking ex cathedrd, and has subsequently been ac
cepted by the collective Episcopate of the Eoman
obedience. I pass now to the question of the Catholic devotion
to the Blessed Virgin in its general aspect and charac
teristic features. And here I will say, that I think it
quite impossible for any one to judge fairly of this de
votion who is not himself a Catholic in the constant
use of it, and of its concomitant practices. Cardinal
Wiseman, somewhere, illustrates the difference between
our devotional system, as viewed from without and
from within, by a very apt and beautiful similitude.
He says that it is like a painted window in a church,
which, as seen by an external observer, presents no idea
but that of an indistinct and unsightly mass ; whereas,
those who view it from within the church are able to
appreciate the beauty of its design, and the harmony
of its colouring. Much, no doubt, of the intense dis
like which Protestants and Anglicans feel to the cultus
of the Blessed Virgin, is founded in a just appreciation
of the claims of our Blessed Lord, with which this
cultus seems to them inconsistent, and ought therefore
to be treated by us with great forbearance and sym
pathy. What we know experimentally, and they can
hardly understand in the abstract, is the power of a
Catholic's habitual estimate of his Lord's inalienable

BY OTHER PARTS OF THE CATHOLIC SYSTEM. 29
and unapproachable prerogatives in supplying the in
terpretation, and modifying the strength, of even the
most extreme forms of devotion to His Most Holy
Mother. The great means of working this estimate
into the texture of the Catholic mind is the daily ob
lation of the Sacrifice of the New Law. But it is also
created by a whole series of penetrating and transform
ing devotions, which tend to bring out the subject of
our Lord's work for sinners in a way most difficult to
be understood by those who do not realise their effects
by experience. Such, for instance, are the devotions
to the Blessed Sacrament as a special Object of loving
adoration, apart from the daily oblation of Mass. Such
also, hi a very especial manner, is the devotion to the
Sacred Heart of Jesus, — to His Most Precious Blood, to
His Five Wounds, to the very instruments of His Pas
sion ; and again that practice so popular, especially
with the poor, of performing the Stations of the Cross.
It may be taken as an undoubted fact, that devotion to
the Blessed Virgin is never an insulated manifestation
of Catholic piety. Where Catholics are not devout to
our Lord, they are not devout to His Mother, and
vice versa ; but I have never happened to meet with
an instance of extraordinary devotion to the Blessed
Virgin, without a corresponding expansion of piety
in other directions. I know it is commonly said, that
the merciful attributes of the Blessed Virgin are made
by uninstriicted Catholics an excuse for the commission
of sin. I will not go so far as to plead my own limited
experience against an equally authentic testimony in
favour of such an abuse ; nor, indeed, were it clearly

30 SUPPOSED ABUSE OF DEVOTION TO THE B. VIRGIN.
shown to exist, would it prove anything more than a
new illustration of the poet's words, that ' Noblest
things find vilest using.' Yet I will say, upon the
word of a priest and confessor of nearly seventeen years'
standing, that I have never met with a case of the
kind. I have always found, on the contrary, that one
of the first symptoms of spiritual dechne is the decay
of devotion to the Blessed Virgin ; and that they who
realise enough of her office to know that she is our
true Mother of Mercy cannot, if they would, divest
themselves of the salutary impression, that she is also
the purest of God's creatures, and that, as such, she is
abhorrent of sin in all its forms. Of course there is
always a danger that sinners will be tempted to lay too
great a stress on the merciful aspects of religion ; but
this they do, even where devotion to the Blessed
Virgin is out of the question. It must be one of the
duties of Christian preachers to guard that devotion
from any such fearful abuse as that of being made
subservient to the purposes of sin. To show that I
myself am not insensible to this danger (though I
repeat that I have no experimental acquaintance with
it), I will quote words which I published before I knew
that I should be required to defend devotion to the
Blessed Virgin against this specific charge. I say in a
little volume of sacred poetry which I put out last
spring, speaking of the Blessed Virgin :

But woe to them, that in thy mercy trace
Deceitful hues of peace that ne'er shall come ;
And in the sorrowing sinner's pledge of grace,
Forget the harden'd sinner's threat of doom.

PROTESTS AGAINST IT. 31
And again : —
Bend, 0 ye angels, o'er the precious sight ;
Return abash'd, ye sinners, from the view ;
Humbled, yet thankful, that a Queen so bright,
Should yearn with all a mother's heart o'er you.
Yet, while ye claim her sweet indulgent aid,
Seek ye the grace her life to imitate.
We cannot love the spotless Mother-maid,
And love the sin which was her only hate.*
I cannot conclude this part of my subject without
quoting a passage which is directly to the present point,"
from one of those very writers who is thought by
Dr. Pusey to exceed unwarrantably in the line of
Marian devotion. In a treatise on that subject, which
it was one of the latest acts of Father Faber to trans
late literally into English, the Venerable Grignon de
Montfort has the following words : —
' Presumptuous devotees are sinners abandoned to their
passions, or lovers of the world, who, under the fair name
of Christians and clients of our Blessed Lady, conceal pride,
avarice, impurity, drunkenness, anger, swearing, detraction,
injustice, or some other sin. They sleep in peace in the
midst of their bad habits, without doing any violence to
themselves to correct their faults, under the pretext that they
are devout to the Blessed Virgin. They promise themselves
that God will pardon them ; that they will not be allowed to
die without confession ; and that they will not be lost eter
nally, because they say the Eosary, because they fast on
Saturdays, because they belong to the Confraternity of the
Holy Bosary, or wear the Scapular, or are enrolled in other
congregations, or wear the little habit or little chain of our
Lady. They will not believe us when we tell them that
their devotion is only an illusion of the devil, and a perni-
* Lyra Liturgica, Feast of the Immaculate Conception, December 8.

32 DEVOTIONS TO THE BLESSED VIRGIN
cious presumption likely to destroy their souls. They say that
God is good and merciful ; that He has not made us to con
demn us everlastingly ; that no man is without sin ; that they
shall not die without confession ; that one good Peccavi at the
hour of death is enough ; that they are devout to our Lady; that
they wear the Scapular, and that they say daily, without re
proach or vanity, seven Paters and Aves in her honour ; and
that they sometimes say the Eosary and the Office of our
Lady, besides fasting, and other things. To give authority to
all this, and to blind themselves still further, they quote cer
tain stories, which they have heard or read — it does not
matter to them whether they be true or false — relating how-
people have died in mortal sin without confession ; and then,
because [in their lifetime they sometimes said some prayers,
or went through some practices of devotion to our Lady, how
they have been raised to life again, in order to go to confes
sion, or their soul miraculously retained in their bodies till
confession ; or how they have obtained from God at the
moment of death contrition and pardon of their sins, and
so have been saved; and that they themselves expect similar
favours. Nothing in Christianity is more detestable than
this diabolical presumption. For how can we say truly that
we love and honour our Blessed Lady when, by our sins, we
are pitilessly piercing, wounding, crucifying, and outraging
Jesus Christ her Son ? If Mary laid down a law to herself,
to save by her mercy this sort of people, she would be
authorising crime and assisting to crucify and outrage her
Son.'* After so explicit a protest against the abuse of devo
tion to the Blessed Virgin on the part of one of its
most enthusiastic advocates, let it not be said that the
Church is responsible for the errors of individuals
among her children.
It is also worthy of note, that devotions to the
* The Venerable Grignon de Montfort's Treatise on the True Devotion
to the Blessed Virgin. Translated by F. W. Faber, D.D., Priest of the
Oratory.

ARE INCLUSIVELY DEVOTIONS TO OUR LORD. 33
Blessed Virgin which are in most frequent use amongst
us either distinctly recognise the worship of the Blessed
Trinity and of our Divine Lord, or are, inclusively, de
votions to Him. Thus the Litany of Loreto, like all
similar litanies, opens with an address to the Three
several Persons of the Blessed Trinity, and then to
those Three Persons in their essential Union, while it
terminates with a triple address to the Lamb of God.
The form of the petitions directed to God and to the
Blessed Virgin respectively is likewise varied. When
we leave the Creator and pass to the creature, we sub
stitute the Ora pro nobis for the Miserere nobis.* A
very common mode of commemorating the graces and
glories of the Blessed Virgin is to recite Gloria Patris
in thanksgiving to God for the favours bestowed on
her. But the most customary and popular of all such
devotions are the Angelus and the Eosary. Now in
the Angelus, which we recite three times a day, we
commemorate the Incarnation ; while all the mysteries
which we call to mind in saying the Eosary, with the
exception of two, are either incidents in the life of Our
Lord, or in that of His Blessed Mother, recorded in
Scripture, and bearing directly on Him. It is on this
type, rather than on that of the ' Glories of Mary,' that
the ideas of our people are formed. The phrases which
Dr. Pusey has exhibited in a somewhat startling sever
ance from the doctrines which justify them, and the
context which modifies them, represent rather the shape
* Too much weight, however, must not be attached to this distinction,
since the Church, in the Antiphon of the Blessed Virgin for Advent,
addresses to her the words 'Peccatorum miserere.'

34 PRAYER TO THE B. VIRGIN FOR DIRECT AID.
into which men of ascetic hves and profoundly spiri
tual minds are accustomed to cast their thoughts on
this subject, than the standard of our customary preach
ing or the scale of general devotion ; and, in saying
this, I am not depreciating devotions of such a cha
racter, but the contrary. For I think that Dr. Pusey
himself can hardly have failed to remark two facts
most important to our argument ; the one, that they
who have spoken the most rapturously of the preroga
tives and merits of the Blessed Virgin have always
been either canonised Saints or Catholics who have
earned the right to venture upon such utterances by
some especial fellowship with the sufferings of our
Lord ; the other, that those Saints who are the most
remarkable for devotion to the Blessed Virgin are also
the most devoted to the Passion of her Divine Son. If
I cite, as instances, St. Bernard, St. Bonaventure, and
St. Alphonsus Liguori, I shall but suggest to the Ca
tholic reader a host of other names with which the
union of these two kindred attractions is associated.
Dr. Pusey, as I understand him, would desire to
limit his own practice to the simple use of the ' Ora
pro nobis,' that is, of prayer for prayer. Such a limi
tation, however, would preclude him from the use,
not merely of less authorised devotions to the Blessed
Virgin, but of those which form part of the Liturgy
and Breviary. He will remember frequent instances,
both in the Missal and Breviary, of addresses to the
Blessed Virgin to grant favours, as though they were at
her own command. For example : in the Sequence
of the Feast of the Seven Dolours ; ' Fac ut tecum, lu-

ITS USE JUSTIFIED. 35
geam,' &c. ; in the hymn ' Ave maris stella, Solve vincla
reis Profer lumen caxis, Mala nostra pelle, Nos, culpa
solutos, Mites fac et castos ' ; again in the antiphons
at the end of Complin, ' Jesum benedictum fructum
ventris tui, nobis post hoc exilium ostende,' ' Da mihi
virtutem contra hostes tuos ' ; and the passage already
cited, ' Sumens illud Ave, peccatorum miserere.' All
such expressions are founded in something that corre
sponds with what in literary language, far below the
truth, we call a poetical licence. Every well-instructed
Catholic knows that the Blessed Virgin possesses no
power to grant petitions, except such as she derives
from God ; but he also knows that her influence with
her Divine Son, in virtue of her maternal relation, and
of her transcendant sanctity, must needs be such that
her will to grant is tantamount to the fact of granting,
since her will is so entirely in harmony with the will
of God that her petitions are of necessity all in the
order of His providence. If we knew that an earthly
sovereign had an almoner, to whom he had given the
office of distributing his bounty, we should address our
selves to that almoner as the source from which the
bounty emanates, though conscious all the while that he
was merely the instrument of its bestowal. The confi
dence of true doctrine, in which a Cathohc habitually
reposes, imparts a certain freedom to his modes of ex
pression, which, in the eyes of another, wears the
appearance of heresy. He knows, or trusts, that God
will not misunderstand him ; and gives vent to the
natural feelings of his heart, without caring to protect
himself at every turn from the misapprehensions of
c 2

36 WHAT IS DR. PUSEY S STANDARD OF
those to whom he is not equally responsible. Love
shrinks from recourse to provisoes and qualifications. A
mother, when fondling her dearest child, uses towards
it a great deal of language which a harsh critic might
charge with idolatry ; but, were he to bring such a
charge under her cognizance, she would reply in the
beautiful words of the poet, ' He speaks to me that
never had a child.' Far be it from me to impute any
such coldness to Dr. Pusey, who, I sincerely believe,
if he were one of ourselves, would be found among
the most devoted and un-critical of the chents of Mary.
I only use the illustration to show how unfair it is to
try the phraseology of affection by too severe a rule.*
Dr. Pusey's argument on the subject of devotion to
the Blessed Virgin is simply negative. He tells us
rather what kind of devotion he objects to, than
what kind he would approve. He does not point
out how, in his judgment, the Scriptural view of
the Blessed Virgin as the Mother of Our Eedeemer
could be duly satisfied in the practical and devotional
estimate of Christians by modes of thought and ex
pression less copious and less intense than those in use
among Catholics. He has not shown how he could
materially curb the actual latitude permitted by the
Cathohc Church without striking at the root of the
devotion altogether, and thus endangering the prac
tical reception of those more fundamental truths which
that devotion seems to us to sustain and promote. If
the sentiments of a writer quoted by Dr. Pusey as
* See Appendix.

FILIAL DEVOTION TO THE BLESSED VIRGIN? 37
neither Eoman, Greek, nor Anglican, may be con
sidered to represent the views of the Greek Church,
with which at the time when he wrote he was believed
to be in sympathy, the strongest expressions of our
Marian writers, as they are called, would be weak in
comparison with what a proselyte to that communion
would be expected to believe and practise. On the
other hand, Dr. Pusey would scarcely appeal to the
Anglican Church at any period of its history since the
Eeformation, as having preserved a just medium be
tween excess and defect in this instance. With the
rejection of the Eoman obedience, there seems, if I
am not mistaken, to have come over the national
Church an all but complete oblivion of the Mother of
God. Till Mr. Keble touched so beautifully, yet so
sparingly, upon her claims to reverence and love, in
parts of the ' Christian Year,' and Mr. Newman fore
shadowed in some of his sermons the advent of a new
era, I do not ever recollect to have heard the name of
the Blessed Virgin, except in the Creeds and the Holy
Scriptures, unless, indeed, it were in the way of con
troversial objection in the University pulpit. It yet
remains to be seen how those who think with Dr.
Pusey will succeed in propagating true devotion to
her without the safeguards of it which are furnished
in the Catholic Church. I believe the attempt
to be simply impossible. But does there exist any
serious desire to set about making it? So far
as Dr. Pusey himself may be taken as an exponent
of those with whom he acts, the prospect of any
just appreciation of the claims of our Blessed Lady,

38 THE B. VIRGIN AS THE GUARDIAN OF THE FAITH
except among ourselves, would seem to be most
unpromising. From the beginning to the end of
Dr. Pusey's work, I can find nothing to indicate that
he recognises them in any due sense. Yet one would
have thought that, in protesting against what he
regards as the excesses of the devotion, he would have
found a natural place for vindicating its legitimate use.
Dr. Pusey, I take for granted, understands the ' Ecce
Mater tua,' at the Crucifixion, as Catholics understand
it, to mean the bestowal of the Blessed Virgin as a
Mother upon all Our Lord's disciples in the person of
the beloved one ; or, at any rate, he believes that the
Mother of Our Lord is also the Mother of those whom
He deigns to call His brethren. Yet, what should we
think of that sort of filial love which should exhibit
itself only or chiefly in defending a mother from the
effects of exaggerated praise ?
The theory of some indissoluble connexion between
the office of the Blessed Virgin and that of the Church,
which is involved in her title as Destroyer of heresies,
is remarkably borne out, both in its positive and nega
tive aspect, by the history of the Church. It is
remarkable that the Blessed Virgin should be men
tioned by name as having been in the company of the
Apostles when the Holy Ghost came down upon them ;
and the silence of Scripture as to her subsequent share
in casting on the Church the light of her wisdom and
intimate knowledge of the heart of her Divine Son,
will be no bar to the devout Christian's conviction,
that she presided over the infancy of the Church with
the same intense affection with which she watched

AND THE DESTROYER OF HERESIES. 3<J
beside the manger of Bethlehem. Nor would she
seem to have ceased from this charge after her As
sumption into Heaven, for all the great doctrinal
decisions of the Church in after times involved some
of her prerogatives, and were blessed by her aid.
The unity of the Person of her Divine Son was couched
in a formula which redounded to her honour, nor were
her privileges less really, though less expressly, in
volved in the dogma of His Two Natures. It was the
Body which He took from her that the Church ruled
to be truly present in the Blessed Eucharist. It was
by preaching devotion to her as the Mother of our
Incarnate God, that St. Dominic quelled that formidable
heresy which assailed the Incarnation by degrading
the nature which Christ vindicated against the do
minion of evil by taking it in its purest form into
union with Himself. It was by inculcating special
devotion to the Blessed Virgin that St. Ignatius and
his foUowers counteracted the deadly work of Luther ;
and, lastly, it is by the definition of the dogma of the
Immaculate Conception that Pius IX. has struck the
latest blow, not so much against any particular heresy
as against the root of that evil product itself. On the
other hand, it is remarkable how, in our own country,
the decay of devotion to the Blessed Virgin has been
the harbinger of a corresponding decline in sensitiveness
to orthodoxy on the subjects of the Blessed Trinity
and Incarnation. In some quarters, Sabellianism has
been openly taught, and the objections taken against
it treated as mere captious logomachy. In others, the
very principle of dogmatism itself has been assailed.

40 FREE SCOPE FOR DEVOTIONAL PREFERENCES
Socinianism is believed to exist to a great extent in
certain professions, and only not to be avowed as a
distinct form of religious opinion, because there is felt
to be nothing in the position of a lay member of the
Church of England which requires him to renounce it.
Clergymen used to omit the Athanasian Creed, on the
ground of its doctrinal statements, or of its condemna
tory clauses. Even High Churchmen used to shrink,
as I remember, from attributing, in sermons or other
wise, the acts done by Our Lord in virtue of His
Human Nature to the Person of God. Nor do I think
it any exaggeration to say that there was hardly one
clergyman out of a hundred (I had almost said a
thousand) who could have explained the doctrines of
the Trinity and Incarnation with the same dogmatic
precision as an ordinarily instructed Catholic child.
Such was the fruit of putting away the devotion to the
Blessed Virgin on the plea of loyalty to Christ, our
Lord. It was the great Tractarian movement, in
which Dr. Pusey bore so important a part, which first
helped to recal us from this state of religious lethargy;
and I thankfully acknowledge that there is now a
promise of better things. But that movement was
instrumental, among its other benefits, though still
most defectively, in elevating our view of the office
and claims of the Blessed Virgin, and will not, I believe
(if Dr. Pusey will forgive me for saying so), have
answered its providential purpose till it has landed its
freight on the shore of the true Church, under the
guidance of her beautiful Star of the Sea.
I am deeply satisfied that this great crux of

ALLOWED BY THE CHURCH. 41
Dr. Pusey's is a phantom of the devil's creating, and
one among the many evidences which history and
experience furnish of his implacable hostility to her
whom he knows to be the great antagonist of his
power. Dr. Pusey would stipulate, as I understand
him, for some exemption in favour of himself and his
friends from the obligation of adopting, as the form
and measure of their practical devotion to the Blessed
Virgin, certain expressions to which he objects, not
because, as he tells us,* he considers them necessarily
to imply any disloyalty to our Blessed Lord, but be
cause he and they think them dangerous, and, at all
events, cannot personally go along with them. Were he
one of ourselves, he would come to know that no fresh
act of the Church is required in order to release any of
her members from such an obligation ; inasmuch as no
such obligation rests upon them. The Church regards
such devotion to our Blessed Lady as, in point of
fervour and intensity, goes beyond the standard of
her ordinary prescriptions, not as a duty, but as a
privilege. I do not think that those who are external
to us have any just idea of the room which is allowed
us for the free play of personal preferences which do
not clash, either in form or spirit, with the faith of the
Church, or with principles plainly deducible from it.
Now, one such principle would certainly be contra
vened by any view of the prerogatives and claims of
our Blessed Lady, which woidd make a person in
tolerant of the phraseology in which great Saints,
* See his first letter to the Weekly Register.

42 DR. PUSEY'S DESIRE OF LIMITING
eminently devoted to our Lord, have occasionally cast
their pious thoughts respecting her. But nothing that
I know of would involve in well-grounded suspicion
of disloyalty to the Church a Catholic who, while
placing no restriction on the liberty of others, should,
as a matter of taste, prefer the more measured lan
guage of our hturgy and offices on the subject in
question to that in which more ardent temperaments
than his own might find a more congenial expression
of their devotion.
But Dr. Pusey, in his most commendable anxiety
for union with us, has hazarded one suggestion which
requires a far more serious treatment. If I understand
portions of his ' Eirenicon ' aright, he would desire to
apply what is called, in pohtical jargon, the principle
of ' finality ' to the capacities of dogmatic expression
in the Church. Alarmed, it may be not unnaturally,
by hints thrown out without authority, or private
wishes expressed on the part of enthusiastic writers
(in one instance not even Cathohc), he puts in his
caveat against prospective and purely imaginary deci
sions of the Church on the subject about which he is
so sensitive, and he, in the person of an individual
Catholic, would say to her, ' Thus far shalt thou go,
and no further.' To mention such a suggestion, as I
understand it, is to condemn it in the eyes of all those
who beheve the Church, as a visible institution, to
be habitually ruled by the Holy Ghost. How different
is this from the spirit of St. Bernard, who, while freely
giving his own private opinion on the subject of the
Immaculate Conception, then an open question, makes

THE DOGMATIC ACTION OF THE CHURCH. 43
an express reserve in favour of any future dogmatic
decision of the Church on the subject ! It is obvious
to remark that for the Church to pledge herself as to
her course in respect of the particular mode of exer
cising her authority as a divine teacher would be
tantamount to the abdication of the office delegated
to her by her Lord ; and that for any one of her
members, or rather nominal members, to rest in the
behef that she could, by possibility, express a formal
judgment at variance with the Divine revelation, would
be a sin against faith of the first magnitude.
I close the whole subject of devotion to the Blessed
Virgin, as the adjunct of faith, with a passage so
beautiful and majestic that I might well rejoice to
adorn my pages with it from whatever quarter it might
proceed ; but it is doubly gratifying to me to enforce
my argument by the language of one who, of all
Cathohcs that could be named, is the most likely to
carry conviction to the mind and heart of Dr. Pusey.
Now, as you know, it has been held from the first, and
defined from an early age, that Mary is the Mother of God.
She is not merely the Mother of our Lord's manhood, or of
our Lord's body, but she is to be considered the Mother of
the Word Himself ; the Word Incarnate ; God, in the Person
of the Word, the Second Person of the All-glorious Trinity,
humbled Himself to become her Son. 'Thou did'st not
shrink from the Virgin's womb,' as the Church sings. He
took the substance of His human flesh from her, and clothed
in it He lay within her, and He bore it about with Him as a
sort of badge, and witness, that He, though God, was her's.
As time went on He ministered to her, and obeyed her ; He
lived with her for thirty years, in one house, with an unin
terrupted intercourse, and with only the saintly Joseph to

44 DR. NEWMAN ON DEVOTION TO THE B. VIRGIN.
share it with Him. She was the witness of His growth, of
His joys, of His sorrows, of His prayers ; she was blessed
with His smile, with the touch of His hand, with the whisper
of His affection, with the expression of His thoughts and
His feelings, for that length of time. Now, my brethren,
what ought she to be, what is it becoming that she should
be, who was so favoured ? Such a question was once asked
by a heathen king when he would place one of his subjects
in a dignity becoming the relation in which he stood towards
him. That subject bad saved the king's life, and what was
to be done to him in return ? The king asked, ' What shall
be done to the man whom the king desireth to honour?'
And he received the following answer, ' The man whom the
king wisheth to honour ought to be clad in the king's
apparel, and to be mounted on the king's saddle, and to re
ceive the royal diadem on his head ; and let the first among
the king's princes and presidents hold his horse, and let him
walk through the streets of the city, and say: "Thus shall
be honoured whom the king had a mind to honour." ' So
stands the case with Mary ; she gave birth to the Creator,
and what recompense shall be made her ? What shall be
done to her, who had this relationship to the Most High ?
What shall be the fit accompaniment of one whom the Al
mighty has deigned to make, not His servant, not his friend,
not His intimate, but His superior ; the source of His sacred
being, the nurse of His helpless infancy, the teacher of His
opening years ? I answer, as the king was answered : nothing
is too high for her to whom God owes His life ; no exube
rance of grace, no excess of glory but is becoming, but is to
be expected there, where God has lodged Himself; whence
God has issued. Let her ' be clad in the King's apparel ; '
that is, let the fulness of the Godhead so flow into her that
she may be a figure of the incommunicable sanctity, and
beauty, and glory of God Himself: that she may be the
mirror of justice, the mystical rose, the tower of ivory, the
house of gold, the morning star ; let her ' receive the Kind's
diadem upon her head,' as the Queen of heaven, the mother
of all living, the health of the weak, the refuge of sinners,

' CORPORATE RE-UNION. 45
the comforter of the afflicted ; and ' let the first amongst the
King's princes walk before her,' let angels, and prophets, and
apostles, and martyrs, and all Saints kiss the hem of her gar
ment, and rejoice under the shadow of her throne. Thus it
is that king Solomon has risen to meet His Mother, and
bowed himself unto her, and caused a seat to be set for the
King's Mother, and she sits on his right hand.*
This brings me to the last portion of the subject I
have proposed to myself, which is not that of examin
ing Dr. Pusey's argument in all its details, but that of
seizing upon some of its salient points as matter of free
discussion. I am now, then, in conclusion, to advert
briefly to the difficulties, I will not say vast merely,
but insurmountable, which seem to me to lie in the
way of his proposal for a ' corporate union between
the Eoman and Anglican Churches.' Before doing so,
however, I must make some prefatory observations ;
the first of them is that which befits every one of us,
whatever view of this question he may take, who as
a private Catholic presumes to discuss the matter at all,
namely, that he speaks but as a private Catholic, with
out warrant either to represent the judgment of autho
rity, or to predict the actual form which that judgment
may take. On the other hand, there are certain prin
ciples of absolutely invariable application on which
every judgment of the Church is founded, and upon
which a private Catholic, supposing him otherwise
competent as a witness on the subject, is neither dis
qualified nor precluded by any duty from pronouncing.
He may certainly, and to any extent, misapprehend or
* Newman's Discourses to Mixed Congregations, Discourse XVIII.

46 DESIRE OF UNITY A HOPEFUL TOKEN.
misrepresent these principles ; all I mean is, that he is
not ipso facto incapacitated from entering upon a ques
tion to which they belong. I would say, in the next
place, that I desire to speak of this matter with the
utmost possible tenderness to the good men, unhappily
separated from us, whose hearts are now yearning in
the direction of Catholic unity ; and I trust that I
shall not be turned from the proper effect of such a
desire by anything which, in what I may call the draft
of their scheme, may seem to me impracticable and
even grotesque. I well remember how vast a step in
the right direction Mr. Newman and others felt it to
be, when five-and-twenty years ago certain persons of
our company began to be alive to the tremendous evils
of that spirit of isolation in which, up to that time,
many Anglicans had not only rested but rejoiced.
I remember, also, how strong a sensation was created,
even among High Churchmen, at the time when this
note of Cathohc unity was first sounded in the
' British Critic ' ; nor am I altogether sure that I
ought to except from this number Dr. Pusey himself,
though ever too generous to utter a public word which
might create dissension among those in whose general
aims he sympathised, while differing from some of
them, even materially, as to the manner of carrying
those aims into effect. But I remember also, what is
a still more important fact, that there was not one of
us earlier converts (unless, indeed, it were our far-
sighted friend John Henry Newman) who was not, to
use a familiar phrase, ' bitten ' with the theory of a
* corporate re-union,' or, at least, who did not foster

THE PRELUDE TO INDIVIDUAL CONVERSIONS IN 1845. 47
the hope of something like a combined movement,
before he decided upon taking an independent step.
I could never say, without an act of self-condemnation,
which I do not beheve to be warranted, that there is
any necessary absence of the spirit of humility and
submission in the abstract desire of entering the Eoman
communion in a body, rather than as individuals.
Such a mode of submitting to it, were it practicable,
would undoubtedly be clear of many of the real dis
advantages which attend the course of individual and
insulated action ; while, in a simply Catholic point of
view, no one can doubt that the accession of a large
body to the ranks of the Church, always supposing
that it could be effected without compromise on any
side, would be the subject of a heartier Te Deum than
even that with which we celebrate the accession of
an individual. On the other hand, I am sure that
Dr. Pusey himself would be the last to deny that even
a separation which cannot be bridged over without the
sacrifice of conscientious conviction, painful and ano
malous as it is, is an incomparably less evil than union
(to put a purely hypothetical and absolutely impossible
case) brought about by concessions inconsistent with
Catholic doctrine and principle. I think, moreover,
that Dr. Pusey must be impressed by observing how
purely as a matter of conscience, a question involving
the prospect of so immense a gain, in point of numbers
and influence, to the side of the Eoman obedience, is
dealt with by Catholics, and how little they are actually
induced to swerve from what appears to them the line
of right by the fear of exposing themselves to the

48 ' CORPORATE RE- UNION ' — WHAT DOES IT MEAN ?
charge of stubborn inflexibility. To my own mind,
this is among the strongest of secondary evidences to
the Divine authority of the Church, and exhibits her
in the most marked contrast to the religious commu
nities which are swayed to and fro by the action of
the world.
But, when I pass from the hopes of re-union in the
abstract to the mode by which it is proposed to carry
those hopes into effect, I confess that I am lost in the
mazes of a proposition of which the difficulties seem to
me as inextricable as the conception is amiable, and
the theory at first sight attractive. The very phrase,
' corporate re-union,' will not bear sifting. A ' corporate'
re-union means, I suppose, a union of bodies ; for the
mere fusion of a number of individuals into a definite
body is rather an absorption than a union, which seems
to imply substantive existence on the part of both the
bodies so uniting. In the Eoman communion the
presence of this condition is abundantly evident ; but
where shall we seek it on the other' side ? Where is
the principle of cohesion, or the mark of organisation,
in the communion with wdiich the Holy See would be
invited to enter into ecclesiastical relations ? Its very
name is matter of question among its members. Is its
denomination the Established Church, or the Anglo-
Catholic Church, or the National Church, or the
Protestant Church ? The first is rejected by the High
Church section of its members ; the second by the
Low Church party ; the third does not represent its
character, for it takes no account of the numerous
bodies of Dissenters who with it make up the aggre-

CASE OF THE GREEK CHURCH INAPPLICABLE. -10
gate of the nation, religiously speaking ; while the
term ' Protestant ' is as zealously repudiated by one
party as it is jealously vindicated by another. The
collective body of its Bishops represents nothing but
the principle of passive disunion. Some of them lean
to the latitudinarian side ; one or two appeal to an
tiquity, but protest against Borne ; several uphold
private judgment on the Scriptures as sufficient for all
the purposes of faith ; others steer clear of extremes,
and desire nothing but a quiet hfe. Who is to be the
spokesman of such a body, the representative of such
a pohty, the ambassador of such a court ? It is im
possible even to describe such a state of things without
exposhig oneself to the charge of satire ; but the satire
is not in the spirit, but in the fact.
It must come then, at last, to this : that the union is
not to take place between the Church of England as
a body (for it is in no true sense a body capable of
treating) and the Holy Catholic and Eoman Church,
but between a certain section of its members and that
Church. This, obviously, changes the whole aspect of
the question. The case of a communion, such as the
Greek Church, with unbroken traditions, unimpaired
liturgies, and a united Episcopate, cannot be paralleled
with a Church whose traditions have been so rudely
invaded, whose formularies so seriously tampered with,
and whose government so fatally dislocated as that
which claims to be the lineal descendant of the ancient
English Church ; and this would be true even did that
Church at this time present as much appearance of
organisation and union as, for instance, some of the

50 WANT OF BASIS FOR UNION.
Dissenting bodies. But still less can the parallel be
sustained between an ancient and compact communion
and a mere handful of Catholic-minded Christians in
one so disunited.
Even, however, supposing, merely for argument's sake,
that the Anglican Church, as a body, or any of her
members, could prevail upon the Holy See to admit the
question of a religious treaty, the basis of such a treaty
would be, beyond all possibility of doubt, that which
I now find does not enter into the present contempla
tion of Dr. Pusey. Two views, and two only, of the
conditions necessary to the exercise of the infallible
authority of the Church are consistent with the posi
tion of a Catholic in communion with the Holy See.
The one is that which vests the prerogative of infalli
bility absolutely in the person of the Holy Father,
speaking ex cathedrd ; the other that which requires,
as a condition of it, the subsequent acceptance, at least
tacit, of his decrees by the collective episcopate in
communion with Borne. Now, to take the case of the
dogmatic decree on the Immaculate Conception, which
Dr. Pusey appears to regard as involving some novel
exercise of this prerogative, I must say, on the con
trary, that this decree fully satisfies, and more than
satisfies, the requirements even of the lowest theory of
infallibility. In the instance in question, the Pope did
not pronounce the definitive judgment till he had first
ascertained the opinions of all the bishops of Catholic
Christendom ; and, through their instrumentality, the
sensus fidelhun on the subject of it. The dogmatic
decree, pronounced by the Holy Father with the

DOCTRINE OF INFALLIBILITY. 51
utmost solemnity, and in the presence of an extra
ordinary concourse of Bishops from every part of his
spiritual dominions, has since been accepted by the
whole Church, not only without reluctance, but with
the greatest possible joy and gratitude. It was the
nearest approach to a General Council which the
Church had witnessed for three hundred years. Dr.
Pusey, indeed, lays great stress upon the circumstance
of a minority of the bishops having sent in to the
Holy Father the statement of their difficulties or ob
jections. But he candidly draws attention to the fact
that these difficulties and objections, in every instance,
related, not to the doctrine itself, but to the time,
mode, or prudence of defining it ; and that all the
bishops ahke expressed their readiness to submit to
the definition, if the Holy Father in his wisdom should
see fit to proceed with* it. The difference between
opinions so collected and opinions expressed by word
of mouth at a General Council, whatever it may be>
is surely not sufficient to counterbalance the weight of
such a testimony. But, even had this previous con
sultation of the Episcopate been waived altogether
the decree would have failed in no condition de
manded even by the lowest theory of infallibility. For
that theory calls for no limitation of the Pope's personal
prerogative, save an ex post facto one ; and dogmatic
decrees, such as that by which the errors of Jansenius
are condemned, are universally accepted as adequate
expressions of the infallible voice, although promul
gated without ceremonial solemnity, and without any
previous formal consultation of the collective Catholic
D 2

52 PAPAL SUPREMACY OF DIVINE RIGHT.
Episcopate. Hence it follows, not only that the'range
of de fide doctrines is far more extensive than the
terms of Dr. Pusey's claim would seem to embrace,
but that he is at issue with us as to the necessary con
ditions of a de fide declaration of the Church. And
this brings me to the main difficulty in the way of
union on Dr. Pusey's terms. There is no doubt
whatever that the supremacy of the See of Peter, in
the sense in which Dr. Pusey at present refuses to
accept it, is one of those de fide doctrines, to a belief
in which the terms of his claim oblige him, but from
the obligation of which he would exempt himself
by such a limitation of those doctrines as we cannot
possibly recognise. He tries to raise a difficulty in the
way of this position, by observing that it must compel
us to condemn the Greek Church of heresy, as well as
IK
schism.* We are perfectly aware of this consequence,
and do not shrink from it. We base the position, that
the supremacy of the See of Peter is an article of faith,
implicitly reeeived from the beginning, upon the decla
ration of the Council of Florence : —
Sanctam Apostolicam sedem, et Eomanum Pontificem in
universum orbem tenere principatum et ipsum Pontificem
Eomanum successorem esse Beati Principis Apostolorum, et
verum Christi Vicarium, totiusque Ecclesipe caput, et omnium
Christianorum Patrem et Doctorem existere ; et ipsi in Beato
Petro pascendi, regendi, et gubernandi Universalem Eccle-
siam, a Domino Nostro Jesu Christo plenam potestatem tra-
ditam fuisse.
This most explicit declaration is thus recognised as a
* See Dr. Pusey's second letter to the Weekly Register.

A PRACTICAL DIFFICULTY/. 53
Catholic dogma in the Constitutions of Pope Pius VI.
in the year 1786 : —
Super soliditate Petrse fundatam a Christo Ecclesiam,
Petrumque singulari Christi munere prae cceteris electum,
qui vicaria potestate Apostolici Chori Princeps existeret
totiusque adeo gregis pascendi, Fratres confirmandi totoque
orbe ligandi ac solvendi summam curam auctoritatemque in
Successores omni aevo propagandam susciperet, Dogma
Catholicum est, quod ore Christi acceptum, perenni Patrum
predicatione traditum ac defensum, Ecclesia Universa omni
setate sanctissimi retinuit, saepiusque adversus Novatorum
errores Summorum Pontificum, Conciliorumque decretis
confirmavit.*— Constitutio Pii VI., 28 Nov. 1786.
Here Dr. Pusey is met by a serious practical difficulty.
If the Pope is to exercise in a re-united England the
power which he claims all over the world, of controlling
the appointments to the Episcopate, it is quite certain
that the bishops so nominated, or, at least, accepted
by him, will, with the priests who are their subjects,
be the instruments of flooding England with the
devotions to which Dr. Pusey conscientiously objects.
Dr. Pusey, if I understand him aright, would suggest,
as the remedy of what he considers so great an evil,
that the Pope should recognise England as part of his
spiritual dominions, yet waive in her case the right
which he exercises elsewhere of determining who shall
be the bishops to preside over the several dioceses. He
would have England bear the relation to the Holy See of
an outlying colony, with its own independent govern
ment and institutions. To name such a proposal, if I do
* These extracts will he found in Dr. Patrick Murray's Theological
Essays, which the reader is strongly recommended to consult.

54 THE ' CATHOLIC MINIMUM.'
not misconceive it, is surely to condemn it in the eyes
of every good Cathohc. It would not, I am convinced,
be a union on terms like these, or, indeed, any union
of which I can even imagine a satisfactory basis, that
would tend to promote the great and most desirable
object which enters so largely and so laudably into the
mind and heart of Dr. Pusey, as a motive for aiming at
a reconciliation with Eome ; the combination, namely,
of those elements of strength against the infidel and
rationalistic spirit of the day which are at present
disunited by religious differences. There are not
wanting evidences that even this spirit itself would be
more than tolerant of such an union as might break
down what it considers the intolerance of the Church
and her stern resistance to the spirit of the age.
Dr. Pusey has spoken with approval of the dictum
of some Itahan nobleman, who is reported to have
said, that a point of contact for union might be
found between the Catholic minimum and Anglican
maximum* I hardly think that, if he had a clear
idea of a Cathohc minimum, he would feel it to be a
possible basis of such a union as he could approve.
To suppose that a substantial rehgious compound could
be formed out of the weakest elements of Catholic
and the strongest of Anglican truth is to overlook
the ethical bearings of doctrine, and to reduce the
subject to the unreal form of a mere question of
intellectual assent to certain barren articlesof faith.
We ought rather to look at the matter in the concrete,
* See his first letter in the Weekly Register.

THE ' MINIMUM CATHOLIC.' 55
and to imagine, if it be possible, the character of a
minimum Catholic engrafted on that of a ¦maximum,
Anglican. My own belief is that the theory would va
nish, like the logical riddle of Achilles and the tortoise,
under the stern operation of a practical experiment ;
and that a mere nondescript being would be the product
of an attempt to fuse into union such heterogeneous con
stituents. My idea of the character of a. minimum Catho
lic will be best conveyed by a rough sketch of what I
conceive to be its leading features, with allowance for
circumstantial varieties which do not affect the essence
of the picture. What may be the minimum Catholic
of Italy or France I have no better means of deter
mining than are also at Dr. Pusey's command. But
I think I know in what shape this sort of Catholic
would come out in England. He is one, then, who
considers belief to be a burden, not a privilege, and
who, therefore, beheves no more than he can help.
In ecclesiastical politics he scarcely rises to the Gallican
level. He has more fellow-feehng with his non-Catholic
countrymen than with Catholics, however excellent, of
other countries ; that is to say, he prefers his country
to the Church. He is, therefore, more sensitive to the
rights of the Oueen and constitution than of the Pope ;
not, of course, that he should disregard the former,
but that he should especially prize the latter. He
dislikes our popular devotions, not only those which
relate to the Blessed Virgin, but others also, consider
ing them superfluous and rather sentimental. He
wishes priests to be ' men of the world ' ; not in the
sense of being experimentally alive to its delusions,

56 THE ' MINIMUM CATHOLIC.'
or of meeting it half way in its own line with a view
to subduing it, but of copying its ways, mingling in
discriminately with its societies, and entering with
undue zest into its peculiar interests. I half suspect
that he is secretly disinclined to clerical celibacy ; but
upon this subject the feeling is happily too strong to
allow of his giving public expression to a sentiment
so unpopular. However, he has no scruple about ad
vocating marriages between Cathohcs and Protestants,
as tending to break down invidious distinctions. He
prefers mixed to exclusive education ; he sets more
store by the social than by the especially supernatural
virtues, and is half inclined to doubt whether the
latter have any real existence, except in the pages of
saintly biography, or in the exhortations of enthu
siastic preachers. He doubts the advantage of Eeligious
Orders, excepting, perhaps, those of the female sex
which attend the hospitals. He abhors the Irish as a
dreamy unpractical people, taking little or no account
of their faith and piety. He is inclined to think that ob-
jective Truth is a chimera, and a dogmatic religion the
most indefensible of tyrannies ; he considers that reli
gious differences are all capable of being cleared up by
mutual explanation ; and that, at last, if a man be a
good citizen and a good neighbour, his creed is of the
less importance, since the poet has said —
He can't he wrong whose life is in the right.
The formal recognition of a low standard of Catholic
doctrine as a basis of union will have no other effect

CONCLUSION. 57
than that of multiplying such sorry specimens of the
religious character as I have just described. Is it to
effect a result such as this, that Dr. Pusey would employ
the latest energies of a life, laboriously and honourably
spent in the inculcation and exemplification of principles
the very reverse of those on which such a character is
founded ; and this, too, at the moment when he is
striving to borrow from Borne the light and help which
may enable him to realise more perfectly the ideal
of Catholic loyalty and Catholic sanctity, to which
he finds the resources at his command avowedly un
equal ?
Lastly, let us pause for one moment to consider the
results of such an union with reference to the battle
against , infidelity and atheism. It would be like
attempting to conquer a well-disciplined phalanx with
a disloyal and treacherous soldiery. Anglicans, as a
body, are no match for the rationalism of the age, be
cause their Church does not support them in the main
tenance of objective religion, even, when personally they
prize it ; and the allies they require in their necessity
are surely such Catholics as combine a devoted alle
giance to the principles and an intimate perception of
the spirit of the Church, with a cordial appreciation,
and not a bare acceptance merely, of her essential
doctrines. I have now performed my task, and am fuUy con
scious how httle I have done justice to the subject.
The work which I have reviewed so imperfectly is
large in bulk, and still larger in the range of matter
over which it extends. It would not be easy to deal

5§ CONCLUSION.
with its contents even in a volume, far less in a
pamphlet. It is therefore a satisfaction to me to know
that various portions of its contents are likely to re
ceive notice from those who are fully competent to
handle them.* My own work is of a character inter
mediate between a complete treatise and a discussion
of single topics entering into Dr. Pusey's plan, and is
intended rather as a popular review of his general
argument than a minute examination of the various
questions involved in it. I submit it most respectfully
to Your Grace's judgment ; and, through you, to the
judgment of the Holy See ; desiring that all its con
tents may be understood in the true sense of the
Church, and withdrawing every word of them which
may be found to be at variance with her mind.
One word in conclusion. I bring this little work
to a close on the Festival, and place it under the espe
cial patronage of that glorious Apostle and Evangelist
who is the representative and preacher, in his life, of
the tenderest affection to our dearest Lord, and of the
most ardent love of the brethren ; in his writings, of
heavenly wisdom, and theological science ; and in his
office, delegated to him from the Cross itself, of the
most loyal fidelity and filial devotion to the Mother of
God. These are precisely the interests which it has
been my object in these pages to promote and to har
monise ; and I regard it as a providential coincidence,
and hail it as an omen of promise, that my work
* While these sheets are passing through the press, a most able and
elaborate article on Dr. Pusey's work has appeared in the Dublin Review
for January 1866.

CONCLUSION. 59
should go forth to the world in the strength of so
mighty a name, and under the shelter of so auspicious
an invocation.. I am, my dear Lord Arclibishop,
Yours affectionately, FEEDEEICK OAKELEY.

St. Jons 's, Islington:
Feast of St. John the Evangelist, 18G5.

APPENDIX.

Note at page 5.
The controversy upon the interpretation of the Thirty-nine Articles
does not enter into my proposed subject. But I take advantage of
a brief allusion to it in the text to give in extenso, as an appendix
to my pamphlet, an admirable letter on the subject from the pen of
Canon Estcourt, which appeared in the ' Weekly Register ' of
December 9, and of which he has kindly allowed me to avail my
self. The publication of Dr. Pusey's new edition of Tract XC,
with a preface, likewise gives me an occasion of explaining very
briefly a passage in my pamphlet which conflicts with a statement
of his both in the Eirenicon and in his later publication. He there
repeats, what he said in his book, that Mr. Ward's method of ex
plaining Mr. Newman's Tract, with his own additional comments,
was the principal cause of the outcry with which that Tract was
received. He founds this opinion partly upon the circumstance of
Mr. Ward having adopted into his view of Eoman doctrine those
traditionary glosses, as he considers them, against which Mr. New
man understood the Articles to protest ; and partly upon the use of
the term ' non-natural,' by which Mr. Ward described the Catholic
sense of the Articles, and which Dr. Pusey seems to think that
people had good grounds for regarding as a synonyme with ' dis
honest.' Now, it is certainly true that in 1844-5 Mr. Ward had arrived at
the conclusion that the grave errors against which he supposed the

62 APPENDIX.
Articles to be directed, had no real existence in the authorised
teaching, any more than in the formal doctrines of the Roman
Church, but were mere creations of the imagination which the
framers of the Articles took up at second hand. But it is equally
true that, in 1841, Mr. Ward neither expressed, nor even held, any
other opinion on this matter than such as was entirely coincident with
the view taken by Mr. Newman in the Tract. The outcry against
the Tract and its author intervened between these two periods, and
had reached its height before the arrival of the second ; so that I do
not see how Mr. Newman's case was prejudiced in the eyes of the
world, in this instance at least, by Mr. Ward's alleged perversion
or exaggeration of his meaning. The outcry against Mr. Ward
did not take its rise, or at all events assume a very definite charac
ter, till the appearance of the ' Ideal,' in the summer of the year
1841. The protest of the Four Tutors of the Hebdomidal Board,
the Charges of sundry Bishops, and a volley of smaller shot, had
been directed against Mr. Newman, and driven him into retirement
long before that time.
I am aware that Mr. Ward brought down on himself, and all who
were any way connected with him in the movement, an immense
deal of obloquy by the use of the word ' non- natural ' to express the
peculiar interpretation of the Articles for which he and others con
tended. But this obloquy was so perfectly groundless, and even
absurd, that I wonder how any sensible person can seriously defend
it. The word ' non-natural ' does not mean the same with ' un
natural,' but, on the contrary, is carefully framed with the view of
excluding such a sense. It simply denies that the sense in question
is the ' natural ' sense, without going the length of saying that it is
positively contrary to that sense. The sense of ' non' in such com
pounds is privative rather than positive. Surely Dr. Pusey does
not deny that the Articles and Prayer Book are construed in a
' non-natural sense ' by the Evangelicals, — for otherwise he must
consider that their natural sense is opposed to certain doctrines to
which he attaches a just importance. Yet, on the other hand, he
will not say that they who subscribe them in that ' non-natural
sense' are dishonest. Now, then, let us take an instance. Does Dr.
Pusey mean that the interpretation which extracts the Catholic

APPENDIX. 63
doctrine of Transubstantiation from the following language of the
XXVIII. Article is natural or non-natural ?
' Transubstantiation, or the change of the substance of the bread
and wine in the Supper of the Lord, cannot be proved by Holy
Writ; but is repugnant to the plain words of Scripture, overthrow-
cth the nature of a sacrament, and hath given occasion to many
superstitions.' Mr. Newman said that such an interpretation of this Article as
brought it into harmony with our received doctrine was impossible.
Mr. Ward said that it was possible, but not natural. Dr. Pusey
says that it is not only possible, but quite natural. Let the reader
choose between these different views. If he do not adopt the
second, I see no alternative in common sense except in the first.
It is certain, at any rate, that Mr. Ward's epithet of ' non-
natural' could have nothing to do with the unpopularity of Tract XC,
since it] was first used in the ' Ideal,' which did not appear for
nearly four years after the publication of that Tract. Dr. Pusey's
statements are strangely deficient in historical accuracy. I now
proceed to give Mr. Estcourt's letter to the Weekly Register.
To the Editor of the Weekly Register.
Sir, — Reading in Dr. Pusey's letter the following passage — 'I
have long been convinced that there is nothing in the Council of
Trent which could not be explained satisfactorily to us, if it were
explained authoritatively, i.e. by the Roman Church itself, not by
individual theologians only. This involves the conviction on my
side, that there is nothing in our Articles which cannot be explained
rightly, as not contradicting any things held to be deflde in the Roman
Church ' — I cannot but fear that he is deceiving himself in assuming
such a position. It is no doubt a great grace to be prepared so far
to accept the Catholic Faith as declared in the Council of Trent, —
and all Catholics will recognise with joy such an admission. But if
it is supposed that the Decrees and Canons of the Holy Council
may be submitted to the same mental process as that which the
Thirty-nine Articles have to undergo, I fear that in the dispositions,
apparently so hopeful, there is only a distant approach to the
Catholic spirit.

64 APPENDIX.
The Articles are not intended, nor supposed, to bind the consciences
of those who subscribe them, and they are therefore susceptible of
the utmost latitude of interpretation. It is possible that a person
subscribing them may not, by that act, be precluded from accepting
the whole Council of Trent. But the converse of this proposition is
an impossibibty. No one who accepts that Council as the voice of
the Church, and the guide of his faith, could, with a safe conscience,
subscribe to the Thirty-nine Articles.
The decisions of the Church, as they embody the Faith, demand
not only an exterior assent, but an interior conviction. The divine
gift of faith infused into the soul of every Catholic finds in them its
food and guidance, and its very life. We have to bebeve everything
the Church believes and teaches, and to condemn everything she
condemns. This involves the duty, not only of detesting every open
substantial heresy, but also of refusing our assent, whether by word,
or act, or sign that might imply assent, to any proposition that
even in the form of expression contains error, or that sounds wrong,
or that seems offensive, or may cause scandal to Catholics in general,
even though the proposition assented to might, in a certain sense,
receive an innocent explanation.
An illustration of this readily occurs. The Oath of Supremacy
has been often explained, and is generally understood to mean that
the Pope has no power in this country that can be enforced by law.
This is no more than the plain fact, and if he has no power by law, it
is equally the fact that according to English law he ought not to
have it. Thus the Oath of Supremacy is capable of an interpretation
in which Catholics and Protestants would all agree. But what
Catholic would think of taking such an oath ; being in its original
intention, and in express form, a renunciation of the authority of
the Holy See, and when his so doing would generally appear as an
act of apostacy ?
It may then be worth while to examine the possibility of recon
ciling the Anglican formularies with the Council. Whether the
Articles were directed against the Council, or the Decrees of the
Council against the Articles, may be matter of historical enquiry.
Perhaps in some parts the censure is intentional on each side ; for
the Articles were first published in 1552, and confirmed in their
present form in 15C2 ; thus coming in between the first part of the
Council, which lasted from 1545 to 1552, and the concluding sessions
from 1562 to '63. There is evidence that the state of religion in
England was frequently referred to in the later sessions.
But this is of no consequence as regards the question of doctrine.

APPENDIX.

65

That question depends simply on the language used in either case —
viz., whether one contradicts the other. I will therefore place in
parallel columns propositions extracted from each — the Thirty-nine
Articles and Common Prayer Book on one side, and the Canons
and Decrees of the Council on the other, as follows — using Water-
worth's Translation of the Council, and beginning with those in
which the heresy is directly stated and apparent.

Aeticles.
IX. This infection of nature
doth remain, yea in them that
are regenerated ; whereby the
lust of the flesh ... is not sub
ject to the law of God. And
although there is no condemna
tion for them that believe and are
baptized, yet the Apostle doth
confess that concupiscence and
lust hath of itself the nature of

XLTI. Of Works before Justifica
tion.
Works done before the grace
of Christ and the inspiration of
His spirit are not pleasant to
God, forasmuch as they spring
not of faith in Jesus Christ ; . .
. . yea, rather for that they are
not done as God hath willed and
commanded them to be done, we
doubt not but that they have the
nature of sin.

Council op Trent.
Session V. The holy Synod
confesses and is sensible that in
the baptized there remains con
cupiscence or an incentive to
sin ; which whereas it is left for
our exercise, cannot injure those
who consent not, but resist man
fully by the grace of Jesus Christ :
yea, he who shall have striven
lawfully shall be crowned. This
concupiscence, which the Apostle
sometimes calls sin, the holy
Synod declares that the Catholic
Church has never understood to
be called sin, as being truly and
properly sin in those bom again,
but because it is of sin, and in
clines to sin. And if any one is
of a contrary sentiment, let him
be anathema. Session VI.
Canon 7. — If any one saith,
that all works done before justi
fication, in whatsoever way they
be done, are truly sins, or merit
the hatred of God ; ... let
him be anathema.

E

IJIJ

APPENDIX.

XXII. The Romish doctrine
concerning Purgatory, Pardons,
Worshipping and Adoration, as
well of Images as of Reliques,
and also Invocation of Saints, is a
fond thing vainly invented, and
grounded upon no warranty of
Scripture, but rather repugnant
to the word of God.

¦ Session "XXV.
There is a Purgatory, and the
souls there detained are helped
by the suffrages of the faithful.
They think impiously, who
deny that the Saints, who enjoy
eternal happiness in Heaven, are
to be invocated ; or who assert
either that they do not pray for
men ; or that the invocation of
them to pray for each of us even
in particular is idolatry ; or that
it is repugnant to the word of
God, and opposed to the honour
of the one mediator of God and
men, Christ Jesus ; or that it is
foolish to supplicate, vocally or
mentally, those who reign in
Heaven. They who affirm that venera
tion and honour are not due to
the relics of Saints, and that
these and other sacred monu
ments are uselessly honoured by
the faithful . . . are wholly
to be condemned, as the Church
has already long since condemned,
and now also condemns them.
The images of Christ, of the
Virgin Mother of God, and of the
other Saints, are to be had and
retained particularly in temples,
and due honour and veneration
are to be given them.
If any one shall teach or enter
tain sentiments contrary to these
decrees ; let him be anathema.
Session XXV.
The Holy Synod teaches and
enjoins that the use of Indul
gences, for the Christian people

APPENDIX.

67

XXV. — There are two Sacra
ments ordained of Christ Our
Lord in the Gospel, that is to
say, Baptism, and the Supper of
the Lord.
Those five, commonly called
Sacraments, that is to say, Con
firmation, &c, are not to be
counted for Sacraments of the
Gospel .... (they)
have not bke nature of Sacra
ments with Baptism and the
Lord's Supper.
XXVIII. — Transubstantiation,
or the change of the substance of
bread and wine in the Supper of
the Lord, cannot be proved by
Holy Writ ; but is repugnant to
the plain words of Scripture,
overthroweth the nature of a
Sacrament, and hath given oc
casion to many superstitions.

The Body of Christ is given,
taken, and eaten, in the Supper,

most salutary, and approved of
by the authority of sacred Coun
cils, is to be retained in the
Church ; and it condemns with
anathema those who either assert
that they are useless, or who
deny that there is in the Church
the power of granting them.
Session VII.
Canon 1. — If any one saith,
that the Sacraments of the New
Law were not all instituted by
Jesus Christ Our Lord ; or that
they are more or less than seven,
to wit, Baptism, &c. ; or even
that any one of these seven is
not truly and properly a Sacra
ment, let him be anathema.

Session XIII.
Canon 2. — If any one saith,
that in the sacred and Holy
Sacrament of the Eucharist, the
substance of the bread and wine
remams conjointly with the Body
and Blood of Our Lord Jesus
Christ, and denieth that wonder
ful and singular conversion of
the whole substance of the bread
into the Body, and of the whole
substance of the wine into the
Blood — the species only of the
bread and wine remaining —
which conversion indeed the
Catholic Church most aptly calls
Transubstantiation ; let him be
anathema. Canon 8. — If any one saith,
that Christ, given (exhibitum) in

68

APPENDIX.

only after an heavenly and spi
ritual manner.

The Sacrament of the Lord's
Supper was not by Christ's ordi
nance reserved, carried about,
lifted up, or worshipped.
Rubric. It is declared that (by
kneebng) no adoration is in
tended or ought to be done, either
unto the Sacramental Bread or
Wine there bodily received, or
unto any corporal presence of
Christ's natural Flesh and Blood.
For the Sacramental Bread and
Wine remain still in their very
natural substances, and therefore
may not be adored (for that
were Idolatry, to be abhorred of
all faithful Christians) ; and the
natural Body and Blood of Our
Saviour Christ are in Heaven,
and not here ; it being against
the truth of Christ's natural
Body to be at one time in more
places than one.
XXX. — The cup of the Lord is
not to be denied to the lay
people ; for both the parts of the
Lord's Sacrament, by Christ's
Ordinance and commandment,
ought to be ministered to all
Christian men alike.

the Eucharist, is eaten spiritually
only, and. not also sacramentally
and really ; let him be ana
thema. Canon 6. — If any one saith,
that in the Holy Sacrament of
the Eucharist, Christ the only
begotten Son of God is not to
be adored with the worship even
external of latria; and is con
sequently neither to be venerated
with a special festive solemnity
nor to be solemnly borne about
in processions, according to the
laudable and universal rite and
custom of Holy Church ; or is
not to be proposed publicly to
the people to be adored, and that
the adorers thereof are idolaters ;
let him be anathema.

Session XXI.
Canon 1. — If any one saith,
that, by the precept of God or
by necessity of salvation, all and
each of the faithful of Christ
ought to receive both species of
the most Holy Sacrament of the
Eucharist ; let him be anathe-

Canon 2. — If any one saith,
that the Holy Catholic Church
was not induced, by just causes
and reasons, to communicate,
under the species of bread only,
laymen, and also clerics when

APPENDIX.

69

not consecrating ;
anathema.

let him be

Article VI., ' Of the Holy Scriptures,' and Article XXIV., ' Of
speaking in the congregation in a tongue understood,' are also sub
ject to the anathemas of the Council.
We now come to other expressions in which the heresy is less
open and direct. In some of these the language is in a certain sense
true, but is used in an heretical sense, having been adopted with the
intention of denying some other truth taught by the Church. Such
are the following : —

Art. XI. — ' We are accounted
righteous before God, only for
the merit of our Lord and
Saviour Jesus Christ by Faith,
and not for our own works or
deservings; wherefore, that we
are justified by Faith only is a
most wholesome doctrine and
very full of comfort.' 
[Erroneous, in the phrase3
' accounted righteous,' ' by Faith
and not for our own works and
deservings,' and 'by Faith only;'
being intended to deny the
Cathohc doctrine of the gift of
inherent justice, and of justifica
tion by good works.]
XIL — 'Albeit that good works,
which are the fruits of Faith and
follow after justification, cannot
put away our sins and endure
the severity of God's judgment,
yet are they pleasing and ac
ceptable to God in Christ, and
do spring out necessarily of a
true and lively Faith ; insomuch
that by them a lively Faith may
be as evidently known as a tree
discerned by the fruit.'
[Ambiguous, whether or not
intended to mean that good

Session VI.
Canon 11. — If any one saith,
that men are justified, either by
the sole imputation of the justice
of Christ, or by the sole remission
of sins, to the exclusion of the
grace and the charity which is
poured forth in their hearts by
the Holy Ghost, and is inherent
in them ; or even that the grace
whereby we are justified is only
the favour of God ; let him be
anathema.

Canon 24. — If any one saith,
that the justice received is not
preserved and also increased
before God through good works,
but that the said works are
merely the fruits and signs of
justification obtained, but not a
cause of the increase thereof; let
him be anathema.
28. — If any one saith, that,
grace being lost through sin,
Faith also is always lost with it ;
or that the Faith which remains,
though it be_not a lively Faith, is

70

APPENDIX.

works are only the fruits and
consequence of justification, and
not also a cause of its increase ;
and erroneous, because Faith may
be true, though not living, with
out good works.]
Prater in the Communion.
. . ' We most heartily thank
Thee, for that Thou dost vouch
safe to feed us, &c. . . and dost
assure us thereby of Thy favour
and goodness towards us.'
Prater in Confirmation.'
. . ' Thy servants, on whom
... we have now laid our hands,
to certify them by this sign of
Thy favour and gracious good
ness towards them.' . . .
[Erroneous ; being intended
to deny that grace is more than
the external favour of God, and
not an interior gift and power.]
Art. XXV. — ' Sacraments . . .
be certain sure witnesses, and
effectual signs of grace, and God's
good will towards us, by the
which He doth work invisibly in
us, and doth not only quicken,
but also strengthen and confirm
our Faith in Him.'
[Ambiguous; being intended
in the same meaning, and the
error not being removed by the
words ' effectual ' and ' work in
visibly in us.']
Art. XIX.— 'The visible
Church of Christ is a congregation
of faithful men, in the which the
pure Word of God is preached,
and the Sacraments be duly mi
nistered according to Christ's or
dinance in all those things that

not a true Faith ; or that he who
has Faith without charity is not a
Christian ; let him be anathema.

Session VI.
Canon 11. — If any one saith,
. . . that the grace, whereby we
are justified, is only the favour
of God, let him be anathema.

APPENDIX.

71

of necessity are requisite to the
same.' ' As the Church of Jerusalem,
Alexandria, and Antioch have
erred, so also the Church of
Rome hath erred, not only in
their living and manner of cere
monies, but also in matters of
faith.' [False and scandalous ; being
intended to mean that in the
Catholic Church the pure Word
of God is not preached, and the
Sacraments not rightly adminis
tered ; and that the Church is
in error in matters of Faith.]
' The Absolution to be pro
nounced by the Priest.'
' Almighty God . . . who hath
given power and commandment
to His Ministers to declare and
pronounce to His people, being
penitent, the Absolution and Re
mission of their sins : He par-
doneth and absolveth all them
that truly repent, and unfeignedly
believe His Holy Gospel.'
[Erroneous ; because intended
to mean that the power of Ab
solution is nothing more than a
declaration of remission.]
' The Order or Confirmation.'
. . . ' None shall be confirmed
but such as can say the Creed,
&c, and answer the short Cate
chism .... to the end that,
children, being come to years of
discretion, and having learned
what their godfathers and god
mothers promised for them in
Baptism, they may themselves,

Session XIV.
Canon 9. — If any one saith,
that the Sacramental Absolution
of the Priest is not a judicial act,
but a bare ministry of pronounc
ing and declaring sins to be
forgiven to him who confesses ;
provided only he believe himself
to be absolved, or even though
the Priest absolve not in earnest,
but in joke ; or saith, that the
confession of the penitent is not
required in order that the Priest
may be able to absolve him ; let
him be anathema. Session VII.
Canon 1. — If any one saith,
that the confirmation of those who
have been baptized is an idle
ceremony, and not rather a true
and proper Sacrament ; or that
of old it was nothing more than
a kind of Catechism, whereby
they who were near adolescence
gave an account of their Faith

72

APPENDIX.

with their own mouth and con
sent, openly before the Church,
ratify and confirm the same.'
[Erroneous ; because it is in
tended to mean that Confirmation
is nothing more than this ratifi
cation of baptismal promises ;
with which view the rite has
been altered from the ancient
Catholic rite, and every expres
sion implying a sacramental gift
of grace has been eliminated.
Thus the Anglican form of Con
firmation is rendered altogether
invalid.] Prayers in ' the Communion.'
' Who made (upon the
cross) by His one oblation of
Himself once offered, a full, per
fect, and sufficient sacrifice, ob
lation, and satisfaction for the
sins of the whole world ; and did
institute, and in His holy Gospel
command us to continue a per
petual memory of that His pre
cious death until His coming
again.' . . We desire Thy fatherly
goodness .... to accept
this our sacrifice of praise and
thanksgiving.' [Erroneous ; because intended
to mean that the Eucharist is no
more than a commemoration, and
only a sacrifice of praise and
thanksgiving. This appears, be
cause the prayers are taken partly
from the Canon of the Mass, and
these expressions have been sub
stituted for those that imply the
real and proper sacrifice.]
Art. XXXI.— 'The Offering

in the face of the Church ; let
him be anathema.

Session XXII.
Canon 3. — If any one saith,
that the Sacrifice of the Mass is
only a sacrifice of praise and
thanksgiving ; or that it is a bare
commemoration of the sacrifice
consummated on the Cross, but
not a propitiatory sacrifice ; or
that it profits him only who re
ceives ; and that it ought not to
be offered for the living and the
dead for sins, pains, satisfactions,
and other necessities ; let him be
anathema. Canon 4. — If any one saith,
that by the Sacrifice of the Mass,
a blasphemy is cast upon the
most holy sacrifice of Christ
consummated on the Cross ; or
that it is thereby derogated from ;
let him be anathema.

APPENDIX. :,•!
of Christ once made is that per
fect redemption, propitiation, and
satisfaction for the sins of the
whole world, both original and
actual ; and there is none other
satisfaction for sin, but that
alone. Wherefore the sacrifices
of Masses, in the which it was
commonly said that the Priest
did offer Christ for the quick
and dead, to have remission of
pain or guilt, were blasphemous
fables, and dangerous deceits.'
[False and impious ; nor can
it be defended on the ground of
the phrase ' Sacrifices of Masses '
being in the plural number, be
cause the term ' Sacrificia Mis-
sarum.' is equally correct, and
has the same meaning with ' Sa-
crificium Missee.' Thus in the
Missa pro Defunciis, ' anima
famuli tiu his sacrificiis purgata,
et a peccatis expedita.' This
Article is therefore nothing else
than a charge of blasphemy and
imposture on the Most Holy Sa
crifice of the Eucharist.]
There are various other points in which the Book of Common
Prayer and the Thirty-nine Articles are at variance with the
Council ; but these are sufficient to show that in each of those
formularies the errors and heresies condemned by the Church are
formally stated and maintained. It is difficult, therefore, to see any
other basis for the reconciliation of Anglicans to the Catholic
Church than their renouncing the Prayer Book and Articles, and
receiving the Council of Trent. I remain, yours faithfully,
Birmingham, Dec. 2. E. E. Estcocrt.

74 APPENDIX.

Note at page 36.
A great part of the objection to the language of Catholic devotion
arises from the practice of confining certain words to their conven
tional sense, instead of interpreting them according to the intention
of the writer or speaker ; or, on the other hand, of restricting to a
secondary and technical use those which are employed in a more
general sense. Thus there is really no difference in fact between the
terms 'worship' and 'veneration'; yet, while mere human quahties
are popularly considered to warrant veneration, Catholics are charged
with idolatry who speak of the Blessed Virgin as an object of wor
ship ; a charge the more impertinent when we remember that in
the words of the marriage rite, common to Cathobcs with Protest
ants, this term is actually employed in the sense of ' service ' or
' devotion.' The word ' adoration,' again, has come to be restricted,
like that of ' prayer,' to the homage claimed by God only ; though
the first, according to its etymology, need mean no more than 'invo
cation,' and the second, though refused to the saints, is used without
scruple in petitions to Parliament. All such words mean only what
they are meant to imply. They are to be interpreted by our inten
tion, and not our intention by them. ' Mediation,' again, has been
gifted in Protestant controversy with a special sense which is not
borne out by its received use. The word is employed freely and un
suspiciously to denote the friendly intervention of an ambassador or
peacemaker ; but in religious language we are expected to apply it
exclusively to the office of our Blessed Lord. All this is very intel
ligible on the part of those who do not believe that the saints in
heaven render us any assistance in the work of salvation, but it
should clearly be understood that the objection to such expressions
originates in an objection to that doctrine. Those indeed who attri
bute to the intercession or mediation of the Blessed Virgin any kind
of interference with the office of our Lord would seem to imagine

APPENDIX. 75
that we suppose our Lord to mediate or intercede with the Eternal
Father in the same sense in which we bebeve the Blessed Virgin to
mediate or intercede with Him. One hardly likes to hint such a
charge ; but the objection is certainly one which might be expected
to proceed from an Arian. The Church regards the intercession of
our Lord with the Eternal Father as something not only in degree
higher, but in kind other, than that of the Blessed Virgin with her
Son. The advocacy of the Blessed Virgin with her Divine Son is
incomparably the highest and most effectual that a mere created
being can exercise; but it is characteristically different from that
according to which God the Son pleads continually, in the bosom of
the most Holy Trinity, the priceless satisfaction of His Cross and
Passion, which is, in truth, the sole meritorious cause of all the
graces and prerogatives of His most blessed Mother.
The light in which our Lady's privilege first presented itself to her
own mind was as a motive to magnify God. ' Magnificat anima mea
Dominum ; et exultavit spiritus meus in Deo salutari meo,' and her
children speak freely of her greatness, and of her gifts, because they
feel that aU exaltation of her is implicitly, and, by consequence, an
exaltation of Him who willed that she should be the created model
of divine excellence in willing that she should be His Mother.

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