^§?

LECTURES

ON THE

REUNION OF THE CHURCHES

RIVINGTONS
S-onUan . . Waterloo Place
©ifiJtS .... . High Street
damtellSC . . Trinity street

lALL RIGHTS RESERyED.-]

^Lectures

ON THE

Reunion of the Churches

By JOHN J. L VON DOLLINGER, D.D., D.C L.,
PROFESSOR OF ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF MUNICH,
PROVOST OF THE CHAPEL-ROYAL, ETC. ETC.

TRANSLATED WITH PREFACE
By henry NUTCOMBE OXENHAM, M.A.,
LATE SCHOLAR OF BALLIOL COLLEGE, OXFOETJ

'Et ingressus est in ea spiritus, et vixeriint : sieteruntgue super pedes suos exercttus grandis
nimis valde. Ei dixit ad nte ; Fili hominis, ossa hcec universa domus Israel est^

RIVINGTONS
ILonDon, €)j;forlr, anli Cambrttiffc
1872

•^xr the
Eet. HENEY PAEEY LIDDON, D.D., D.C.L,
IRELAND PROFESSOR OF EXEGESIS IN THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD,
CANON OF ST. PAUL'S.

My deae Liddon, You will readHy believe that there
are many reasons why I should gladly seize the oppor
tunity of dedicating this volume to you, but it will be
sufficient to mention two. In the first place, it has
long been my wish to put on record some acknowledg
ment of a friendship which has now lasted nearly
twenty-five years, dating from my first undergraduate
term at Oxford, and which has been to me the source
of so much happiness and so many blessings. Yet
what could I hope to offer of my own that would be at
all worthy of your acceptance ? Here, however, where
for the most part the language alone is mine, and the
thoughts are those of one whom we have both leamed

vi Dedication.
to love and reverence, is something which I may not
unfitly present and you need not hesitate to accept.
And then, again, I would ask you to welcome this
Dedication, as a little souvenir of the pleasant and
profitable hours we spent together last year at Munich
in the company of the illustrious author.
Wishing you every blessing, and praying that you
may long be spared with health and strength to labour
in your place for those sacred interests, so dear to
both of us, to which Dr. Dollinger has here devoted
the ripe wisdom of his maturest reflections,
I am ever, my dear Liddon,
Most affectionately yours,
H. N. OXENHAM.
Nativity of O0e Ladt, 1872.

CONTENTS.

PAGE
Preface, ..... ix

LECTURE I.
General Review of the Religious Condition of the
World, ...... 1
LECTURE II.
The Duty op Christian Nations to the Heathen, and
ITS Great HrNBRAUCB, ... 20
LECTURE IIL
Division op East and West : Grounds of Hope, . 32
LECTURE IV.
The German Reformation, . . 60
LECTURE V.
Reaction towards Union on the Continent in the
Seventeenth Century, .... 84

viii Contents.

LECTURE VL
PAtiK
The English Reformation, its Nature and Results, . lO.'J

LECTURE VII.
Difficulties and Grounds of Hope, . . 136

PRE FA CE.
QiOME apology is due to the public both for the
^^^ delay in the appearance of this work, and for
the form in which it is now presented to them. The
Lectures here translated were delivered by Dr. Dollinger
in the Great Hall of the Museum at Munich, on Friday
evenings, during the months of February and March
last; but it was his intention to revise and enlarge
them considerably before publication, and he had
kindly promised to send me the sheets for translation,
as they were successively printed off. But meanwhile
the execution of this design has been delayed beyond
his expectation by the pressure of other engagements,
and he therefore afterwards offered to supply me with
the manuscript of the Lectures, as originally delivered,
from which the present translation has been made. I
shall, of course, hereafter avail myself of the complete
work on its appearance in Germany, should occasion

X Preface.
arise for doing so. It is right to add that none of the
reports of the course which appeared in the principal
German newspapers, and were wholly or partially
reproduced in some of our own, were published with
the author's sanction, and that he disclaims all
responsibility for them. The actual text differs in
many respects from the report in the Allgemeine
Zeitung. This is accordingly the first appearance of
the Lectures, either in Germany or in England, in an
authentic form. Some notes and references the author
has himself added to the manuscript. For all bracketed
notes I am alone responsible. They are for the most
part simply designed to provide illustrative details of
information, which may not always be familiar to the
general reader.
The momentous question which Dr. Dollinger has
here undertaken to discuss, and to which indeed he
has again and again called attention in several of his
previous works, is one that has long been forcing itself
on the thoughts of serious men in aU parts of our
divided Christendom. Some testimonies to the wide
spread and growing sense of its importance have been
collected, as well from Catholic as from Anglican writers,
in a former work of mine on the subject, and the evi-

Preface. xi
dence might be indefinitely multiplied.'^ Within the
last few years only, to such names as Wiseman, Ketteler,
and Dupanloup have been added those of men differing
as widely in many respects both from them and from
each other, as Maret, Gratry, Perreyve, Michaud,
Strossmayer, and the martyred Darboy. Nor is the
feeling, as will be seen from these Lectures, confined to
one side only. It is shared also by Lutheran as well
as Anglican divines, though probably not as yet to the
same extent by the former.^
We cannot wonder that it should be so. The direct
contradiction to the wiU and purpose of our divine
Lord, revealed in the religious divisions of His professed
disciples, would of course alone be a 'more than sufficient
motive for making every exertion to put an end to a
state of things- so displeasing to Him. But over and
above this, the overwhelming practical interest of the
question is impressing, I might say obtruding, itself
1 See Appendix to my Letter to F. Lockhart on Dr. P-wsey's Eirenicon,
2d ed., Washboume, 1872.
^ See, e.g., some remarkable letters addressed by several Protestant
pastors to Bishop Martin of Paderbom, urging him to use his influence for
the removal of what they allege to be the two chief hindrances to a reunion
of the separated Churches, viz., the compulsory celibacy of the clergy and
the withdrawal of the chalice from the people. The letters are given in
the second appendix to Friedrich's TagehiLch wWhrend des Vat. Concils,
pp. 424 sqq.

xii Preface.
more prominently every day on the notice even of the
most superficial observers of the existing phenomena,
whether of the Christian or the Heathen world. On
the latter point nothing need be added here to what has
been so fuUy set forth by the lecturer. The single fact
that, at the end of eighteen centuries, some 800,000,000
of our fellow-men — considerably over two-thirds of the
human race — are still strangers to any form of Chris
tianity, speaks volumes. And it is not the less, but
the more significant, when we call to mind the large
and generous efforts which have been made for their
conversion during the last three centuries, — the im
mense expenditure of English gold with such absurdly
disproportionate results, and the heroic labours of
Catholic missionaries, who have shed their blood like
water on almost every shore, and yet have gathered in
but a precarious harvest of souls, counted by hundreds
or thousands, when the millions of heathendom should
long since have become obedient to the faith. It was
not thus when Apostles preached, when Augustine, or
Boniface, or Columba went forth to win whole nations
to the Gospel. And why not ? They taught a " com
mon Christianity " in a very different sense from that
now attached ¦ to the phrase, and the world, beholding

Preface. xiii
their unity, believed in Him who sent them. But the
rival preachers of a score of jarring creeds the world
cannot believe in; and for the most part it cuts the
knot by rejecting all alike. We were warned before
hand that it must be so.
I will but add the eloquent testimony of Bishop
Maret on this point : " If, after eighteen centuries,
idolatry prevails over the greater part of the globe ;
if Mahometism desolates once flourishing Christian
countries; if a thinly disguised atheism ravages even
the Christian world, — doubt not that one of the most
powerful causes of so many moral and social miseries,
so many shameful humiliations, lies in the many
unhappy internal divisions of Christians, which con
stitute schism and heresy. If the Eastern Churches
were reunited to the Mother Church, if our brethren,
separated from unity by the violent revolutions of the
sixteenth century, were reunited with us, what a new
power of transformation and victory would Christi
anity display in the world, combining in one all its
living forces, all the elements of regenerated progress,
science, and civilisation. Then indeed should we wit
ness the reign of God and of His Christ on earth.
Everything which can hinder the drawing together

xiv Preface.
again of hearts and minds, and the restoration of
religious unity, should be regarded as the greatest of
evils, because it is what hinders the greatest of bless
ings."^ And if we turn our glance on the Christian world, the
portentous results of disunion stare us yet more visibly
in the face. Scepticism manifests its presence daily
and hourly among us in a thousand open or insidious
forms. It colours our literature, it controls our policy,
it mounts our pulpits, it aspires to restrain or to for
mulate our prayers. And how do the champions of
orthodoxy essay to meet it ? By ingenious arguments,
which perhaps only half convince themselves ; by
stammering appeals to an undefined authority; or by the
worn-out sophisms of "the Bible and the Bible only"
theory, as though the world could stand on the tortoise,
and the tortoise stand upon space. But this will not
avail. Protestantism, as a system of positive belief, is
found to be unequal to the crisis.^ If I refer to the
independent witness of a recent writer in the West-
1 Du Candle General, vol. ii. pp. 387, 8.
" It is a fact abundantly proved by statistics that religious perplexity is
one main cause of the large increase of insanity in modern times, as also
that suicide is more common in Protestant than in Catholic countries. —
See Casper's Denhwv/rdiglceiten zur medicin. Statistik, quoted in Buckle's
History of Civilisation, vol. i. p. 26.

Preface. xv
jninster Review, it is not for any novelty in his argument
— for it has often been urged before — stUl less from
any sympathy with his tone, even where I am able to
agree with him ; but simply because he has defined the
situation from the infidel point of view with edifying
candour and precision.^
Catholicism, he begins by assuring us, is destined to
outlive Protestantism, as well because " its promises are
more satisfactory to the instincts of the vulgar" — that
is, because it better satisfies the religious cravings of
the human soul — as from its resting on a more philo
sophical basis. He is reviewing Dr. Newman's recent
reprint of the 85 th of the Tracts for the Times, vindi
cating the claims of historical as opposed to what is
sometimes called Bible Christianity, and he fully admits
the force of the argument. He thinks it certain that
" at the date of the publication of the fourth Gospel,
or very shortly afterwards," which can hardly mean
later than the second century, the teaching of the
Church was distinctively Catholic, and reminds us that
the earliest authorities cited for the canon of Scripture
are equally emphatic in asserting, e.g., the doctrines of
the Eucharistic sacrifice and prayer for the dead. He
1 West. Rev. for July 1872 ; Art. " Difficulties of Protestantism."

xvi Preface.
is naturally not sanguine as to the future spread of
Christianity, and refers for his own purposes to the
comparative failure, which was noticed just now, of
modem missionary efforts. But he is quite convinced
that, wherever it does spread, it will not be in the form
of Protestantism. Indeed, he goes so far as to express
an opinion that, " speaking broadly, it is impossible
now-a-days to convert any one to" a system, which
cannot elicit faith, for it is in fact simply " an arrested
development of free thought," and is already writhing
uneasily under the artificial fetters imposed on it at the
Eeformation. It is incapable from its nature of forming
a permanent dwelling-place for the mind, but has done
good service as a temporary resting-place, " which has
happily sheltered man on his way from bondage to
freedom, from darkness to light, from theology to Truth."
In other words, it has served to break, and thereby
to disguise, the fall from Christian faith into naked
infidelity. The reviewer urges in conclusion, what is
obvious, that the final issue must turn on the admis
sion or denial of the supernatural in any form ; and
he might have added that premonitory signs are already
discernible of the approach of the contest, if it is not
actually begun. That the contending forces will be

Preface. xvii
eventually driven by the conditions of the conflict to
range themselves in two, and two only, camps, under
the rival banners of faith or of unbelief, there cannot
be a doubt, and as little that such a crisis would
involve "not only the eclipse, but the disappearance
of the system known as Protestantism," through the
absorption of its positive and negative elements into
the opposite systems to which they respectively belong.
There are two reasons just now for insisting on this
aspect of the case, and which have led me to dwell, at
greater length than its intrinsic merits would require,
on the article in the 'Westminster Review. In the first
place, it is well that religious Protestants should bring
themselves to understand distinctly — and I use the
term, " Protestant," for all who rest their belief on the
Protestant principle of private judgment, as distinct
from the traditional and historical basis of Catholic
Christianity — on how insecure a tenure they hold those
portions of revealed truth which they are sincerely
anxious to retain, and how signal must be their dis
comfiture, if they elect to stand alone against the
advancing forces of unbeKef.^ It should be borne in
1 A studiously vague and general assertion of the supernatural element
in religion was only carried by a majority of 61 to 46 last June in the
Synod of the French Protestant Church, after a prolonged and stormj
h

xviii Preface.
mind that Protestantism, when left to itself, has always
betrayed an inherent tendency to gravitate towards
Socinianism. This has been abundantly illustrated in
the Eeformed Churches of Germany and Switzerland,
while a case tried before the English law courts some
forty years ago brought out the startling fact, that
almost the entire Presbyterian body in this country
had abandoned the fundamental tenet which discrimi
nates Christianity from natural religion.-^
And it is surely not a little significant in this
connexion that, in the vital controversy now agitating
the Established Church, the Evangelical party, whose
theological culture has never been their strong point,
should have openly and somewhat eagerly joined the
ugly rush against that majestic and venerable formu
lary which most effectively guards the central verity of
revelation. The circumstance is the more remarkable,
because the Athanasian Creed touches on no single
doctrine which they do not, equally with their High
Church and Eitualist rivals, profess to believe. And
it would be the merest excess, not of charity, but of
unreason, to affect to doubt that, with the great majo-
debate of several days' duration. It contains no distinct assertion of the
divinity of Christ.
1 The case of Lady Hewley's Charity, in 1832.

Preface. xix
rity of the assailing party, the real ground of antagonism
lies in a disbelief, more or less consciously acknowledged,
either of some of the doctrinal statements of the Creed,
or of its peremptory assertion of a principle, borne out
by every line of the New Testament, that men will be
held responsible for their acceptance of God's revelation
no less than for their obedience to His moral law.^
Scarcely less suggestive than the Evangelical atti
tude towards the Athanasian Creed, is the line taken
by (I fear) the great body of English Dissenters on the
Education question, which inevitably reminds one of
the advice of the false mother in Solomon's judgment.
Better that all our children should be brought up in an
" unsectarian " religion — that is, without any faith at
all — than that any of them should be taught the
Apostles' Creed, which happens to be a distinctive
formulary of two, not inconsiderable, Christian " de
nominations."^ Such a system is a far more serious
- It is worth remarking that those Protestant communities which have
dropped the Athanasian Creed have, as a rule, either retained a very
faltering hold on the doctrine of the Holy Trinity, or abandoned it
altogether. The American Episcopal Church cannot fairly be quoted as
an exception, for — not to insist on the neces.sarily conservative influence
of a hierarchy — it is not yet a century old, and there is understood to be
a growing desire among its more orthodox members for the restoration
of what was hastily cast away in an age which, to say the least, gave a
peculiar prominence to the negative side of its beliefs.
2 Since the above passage was written, it has received a striking con-

XX Preface.
evU, both in theory and practice, than pure secularism,
for it not only omits all genuine religious teaching,
but supplants it by a spurious substitute. And there is
a further reason for noticing the matter here, because
" the religious difficulty " of education, of which we
have heard so much during the last few years, is
notoriously and solely due to the divided state of
Christendom. But for that, we should never have
heard of the strange undertaking to construct, what
one of the Anglican Bishops the other day justly
termed " a new religion," viz., the theological residuum
extracted by eliminating whatever is distinctive in
the teaching of any of the hundred or so of, I was
flrmation in the report of a debate on the subject in the Wesleyan Con
ference, extending over two days and ending in a drawn battle (see Times
of August 14 and 15). The Wesleyans have usually been regarded as
denominationalists, but with many of them the desire for a pri-vilegium
against Anglican and Roman Catholic schools appears to have overpowered
every other feeling. Those who supported the resolution against denomi
national education dwelt avowedly, and almost exclusively, on the argu
ment that it enabled " Papists" and Anglicans to train their children in
their own faith. As the mover of the resolution (Rev. W. Arthur) put it,
" Their choice lay between Popery and the Bible." It is right to say that
several ministers spoke on the other side, one of whom (Rev. B. E. Jenkins),
honestly avowed that " he would ratlier have the Bible explained to a
child of his in a Ritualist or Broad Church school than have it simply read
in a cold and lifeless manner in a school where no explanation was given.
He would rather be a Papist than an Atheist or a Unitarian." This is
the language both of Christianity and of common sense ; if the Bible is
to be read in school without note or comment, it had much better be read
In Hebrew.

Preface. xxi
going to say. Christian sects in the country.^ But,
in presence of Jews and Secularists, it may well be
questioned if the existence of a personal God must
not be relegated to the forbidden category of " denomi
national" beliefs; about the divinity of Christ there
is confessedly no question at all. And the education
difficulty has its political as well as its religious side.
If a Eoman Emperor wished that his people had but
one neck, a modem statesman might with better reason
wish, on the lowest ground, that they had but one
religion. It has, indeed, been suggested that what is really
wanted, and is alone practicable, is " a better manage
ment of our differences." And it is well, no doubt, to
cultivate friendly relations with those from whom we
differ, so far as it can be done without any compromise
of principle. A better understanding between the
members of divided communions is the first step, as
^ Bishop Magee, whose speech is referred to in the text, speaks of
"126 religious fractions of the country." — See Guardian for July 24,
1872. It is gratifying to leam that this hopeful experiment is actually
about to be tried in Japan, where it is announced that " the Government
has decided on the promulgation of a new form of religion, after careful
consultation with the most noted exponents of each sect, and all will he
compeUed to conform thereto. The new religion will be enlightened,
simple, and adapted to common sense, and is likely to meet the approval of
all classes. " Perhaps it may ; the Japanese are said to be about the most
irreligious and immoral people on the face of the earth.

xxii Preface.
the lecturer has pointed out, towards the desired
reconciliation ; the first, but not the last. To coalesce
on a basis of mutual disagreement,
" Thou, for my sake, at Alla's shrine.
And I at any god's, for thine,"
is one thing ; it is quite another to meet in the unity
of a common faith. The rule of " liberty in what is
doubtful, and charity in aU things " is most excellent,
as far as it goes, but it wiU secure no inward or lasting
harmony between those who are at variance on the
essential truths of revelation. Had the early Church
been united, in its stand against the Pagan empire, on
the principle of agreeing to differ, the ten persecutions
would have been reduced by nine, for there would have
been nobody left to persecute. Tt is not without
reason, accordingly, that Dr. DolKnger lays down, as an
indispensable condition of all negotiations for reunion,
the acceptance not only of Holy Scripture, but also
of the three oecumenical Creeds, interpreted by the
teaching of the ancient Church, before East and West
were separated. This was in fact the ground taken,
and with perfect success for the moment, at the CouncU
of Florence, though insincerity on both sides, and lust
of dominion on one, reduced the agreement to a fiasco ;

Preface. xxiii
and we have a more permanent record of the positive
results of such an appeal in the independent but
concurrent witness of the dogmatic canons of Trent
and the " Orthodox Confession of Faith," sanctioned
in 1672 by the Eastern Synod of Bethlehem.^
But it would be a grievous mistake to suppose that
Protestants alone are interested in the reunion of
Christendom, as neither are they alone responsible for
its divisions. There are few quarrels, public or private,
in which the fault lies whoUy on one side, and the
Eeformation is certainly not one of them. The great
ecclesiastical revolution which dates from the ninth
century, as it was the immediate occasion of the sepa
ration of East and West, became also the remote cause
of the schism of the sixteenth century, by giving the first
impulse to the new administrative system, which had by
that time attained such enormous dimensions. And there
was unfortunately much on the Catholic side at that

1 It is admitted by theologians, on both sides, that the continued
quarrel between the Latin and Greek Churches still hinges on the dispute
about the primacy, which was its source ; and that if this were amicably
settled, the remaining difierences, including the question of the Filioque,
would not be difiicult of adjustment. See on this point the testimony of a
recent ultramontane writer. Father Tondini, who quotes a dissertation of
the learned Belgian Jesuit, De Buck, Pope of Rome, and Popes of the
Oriental Church, pp. 4, 5 ; and cf. the speech of the Russian deputy. Dr.
Ossinin, at the Munich Congress last year.

xxiv Preface.
critical epoch to deepen and embitter the antagonism
which had long been growing up, and had left its mark on
the Councils, as well as on the literature and religious
life, of the fifteenth century. To speak of Tetzel's
indulgence-box as the cause of the Eeformation, is to
confound sign with substance, but it was one of many
outward indications of a state of things sure sooner or
later to produce an explosion, if it was not remedied.
.And the remedy of the counter-reformation, besides
being partial, came too late. Had aU Popes of that
age been like-minded with Adrian VI., and aU Cardinals
such as Contarini and Sadolet, the religious history of
the last three centuries might have been a very different
one ; and the intolerant spirit which helped to create
the breach has lived on to keep it open and widen it.
We have all. Catholics and Protestants alike, been far
too ready to hug ourselves in self-complacent isolation,
and too little disposed, in the words of " the profound
and pious Mohler," to " stretch a friendly hand to
one another, and exclaim, in the consciousness of a
common guilt, ' We all have erred ; the Church alone
cannot err. We aU have sinned ; the Church alone is
spotless.' This opere confession of guilt on hoth sides,"
adds the author, " wiU be followed by the festival of

Preface. xxv
reconciliation."^ And that open confession, which Mohler
desiderated forty years ago, is a desideratum still. If
Protestants are narrow and unreasonable, and refuse, as
they often do, to look an inch beyond the bare letter
of the Bible, as interpreted by what they call their
private judgment, but what is in reality a mere floating
Protestant tradition. Catholics, on the other hand, are
apt to content themselves with pointing proudly, almost
scornfuUy, to the unbroken unity of the Church, and
telling outsiders to take care of themselves ; the loss
is theirs alone.
The statement is hardly accurate in the letter, for
whenever there has been any serious thought of recon
ciling East and West, the Popes themselves have always
dealt with the Easterns as constituting a portion of
the Church, not as mere outsiders. But I do not care
to wrangle over niceties of terminology. However we
interpret the unity of the Church, the broad fact re
mains that Christendom is divided. To the outward
eye, and as a witness to mankind, the Church is no
longer one, as it was in the early ages, as it was in
Western Europe up to the sixteenth century. Then,
1 Mohler's Sy-miolism, Eng. Trans., vol. ii. p. 32, first published in
1832. The passage is quoted iu Cardinal Wiseman's Letter to Lord
Shrewsbury.

xxvi Preface.
like Him who sent her, the divine messenger spoke
with authority, for her credentials were visibly written
on her regal brow : incessu patuit dea. There was
one unfailing answer to doubts and difficulties, which
was felt to be practically conclusive ; and though no
one could be better able than St. Augustine to grapple
with intellectual error, his most effective argument lay
in an appeal to fact ; Securus j'udicat orhis terrarum.
It is not so now, when the orhis terrarum is divided,
and the Church's witness is discredited by the
discordant clamours of hostUe sects. Protestant
countries have no monopoly of scepticism. It is
as rife, at the very least, in France and Italy as in
England. Only the other day a popular French
newspaper announced that " Christianity has fataUy
disorganized civUisation, and its advent may be defined
as 'the first invasion of the barbarians.' Now, all
tlie merit of the barbarians was to arrive at the
point where there should be no more barbarians : in
the same way the advantage of Christianity is to arrive
at the point where there will be neither Pagans nor
Christians, but freethinkers, definitely liberated from
every God!' ^ Why has the French Church, with her
1 Repuiliq-ue Fran^aise, quoted in the Times of July 15, 1872.

Preface. xxvii
vast machinery, her eloquent preachers, her devoted
priesthood, so little hold on the male intellect of the
country, that public opinion is more than tolerant of
Atheism ? Several answers might be given, and
indeed have been given, in detail by those best
qualified to speak ; ^ but they wUl be found ultimately
to resolve tliemselves into that one radical evil, which
is the fruitful source of such manifold corruption and
disease, the disunion of Christendom. To quote the
testimony of one of the ablest of our living writers,
who cannot certainly be accused of excessive eccle
siastical sympathies : " As things are, rationalism
and fatalistic reveries may be laboriously confuted,
but amidst the energies and aspirations of a regenerated
Christendom they would spontaneously pass away." ^
The question before us then is one which, apart from
aU motives of charity for others, CathoUcs, for their
own sakes, cannot afford to ignore. AU sections of our
distracted Christendom, each in its own way, are
1 See, e.g. a remarkable passage at the close of Father Gratry's Second
Letter to Mgr. Dechanvps {jpj>. 49, 60), on "the school of error" within
the Church, which is the great hindrance to her progress.
^ Goldwin Smith's Lectures on the Study of History, p. 181. The writer
had just said, "The reunion of Christendom is likely at last to become
a practical aim. Probably it would be a greater service to humanity,
on philosophical as well as religious grounds, to contribute the smallest
unit towards this consummation, than to construct the most perfect
demonstration of the free personality of man."

xxviii Preface.
suffering the penalty of a common sin, and tiU this
is frankly acknowledged on all sides there can be no
hope of reconciliation. I have said that an union on
the basis of mutual disagreement would be at once
useless and impossible, but it is no less unreal to
propose an unconditional surrender. He who wUls
the end must will the means, and those who adopt this
tone towards their separated brethren cannot be credited
with any sincere desire for that peace which — let us
remember — is promised hominibus bonce voluntatis. In
fact, as Dr Dollinger has pointed out, there is no greater
hindrance to reunion than the Une taken on the subject
by' a powerful party in the Church, which found
singularly clear and forcible expression some years ago
in a characteristic pronouncement of the Dublin Review
against an eirenic publication, then recently issued by
a devout and learned Catholic layman. " The Church
apostolic, undivided, and universal," rejoined his critic,
" stands alone among other religious communities, with
everything to bestow, nothing to receive." She admits
no right to parley with her, "her call, whether to
individuals or communities, is a summons not to treat
but to surrender. She- sits as judge in her own
controversy, and the only plea she admits is a Con-

Preface. xxix
fiteor, the only prayer she Ustens to a Miserere!' How
far such language breathes the true spirit of the Church
or of the Church's Lord, how far it is consistent with
the recorded utterances of some of the wisest of her
pontiffs and the holiest of her Saints, or with the
precedents of former negotiations with external bodies,
I do not stay to examine here.'' Those who are familiar
with the facts will have no difficulty in answering the
question for themselves. It is enough for my present
purpose to observe that such is unhappUy the habitual
language, and represents the habitual policy, of what
Dr. Newman has characterized as an " aggressive,
insolent faction," but which just now is tyrannously
dominant in the Church.
Let me give but one example of this. Ten years
ago, Ketteler, Bishop of Mayence, one of the most
influential of the German episcopate, pubUshed a
work under the title of Liberty, Authority, and the
Church^ which contained the most frank and fuU
confession' of the terrible evils resulting both from
the earlier rupture between East and West, and frohi
" the no less deplorable division of the CathoUc Church
1 Some remarks on this point will be found in my " Postscript on Catholic
Unity," in Essays on the Reunion of Christendom,. Hayes.
' Freiheit, Autoritat und Kirche, Mainz, 1862.

xxx Preface.
in the West, which for three centuries has preyed on
our vitals, and is the source of such deadly mischief."
He urges and conjures aU sincere Christians "to pray
for the reunion of aU the Christian confessions," and
" would stUl more rejoice to see members of different
Christian communities deliberate together for the recital
of some common prayer,'' — exactly, by the way, what was
done in England fifteen years ago, and has since been
condemned by the Eoman Inquisition.'' The Bishop
goes on to say that nearly all the charges brought against
the Church spring out of misapprehensions, " and these
almost always have then origin in the imperfections and
infirmities of members of the Church;" and then he
pointedly insists, for the information of Protestants,
that the infaUibility of the Church " resides only in the
whole body of the Episcopate united to the successor
of St. Peter, and extends only to truths proclaimed by
Christ."^ The work also contained emphatic assertions
of the rights of conscience and the absolute unlawful
ness of all religious coercion. It naturally excited
considerable attention and very general sympathy in
' The A. P. U. C. was founded on the feast of the Nativity of our Lady,
1857, including clergy and laity of the English and Roman Catholic
Churches among its flrst members.
2 The passage is cited at length in my Letter to F. LocTchart, pp. 107-
110.

Preface. xxxi
Germany, and was as naturally most unacceptable to
the party whose principles it so directly contravened,
and who have the ear of Eome. On account of the
author's position it was not put on the Index, but it
was well understood by himself as well as by others to
be implicitly condemned in the SyUabus,^ and, which
is the main point. Bishop Ketteler has found it discreet
to adopt an entirely different Une on reUgious questions
since then.
So much for the tyrannous influence of the dominant
faction. That their attitude towards external com
munions, which recognises nothing but a " Confiteor
and a Miserere" must prove, as it always has proved,
absolutely fatal, so far as it extends, to the very idea of
concUiation, is obvious on the face of it, and must be
perfectly obvious to themselves. Not such was the
attitude or the spirit of Leander, Sancta Clara, and
Panzani, of Bossuet or Spinola, of Adrian vl. Urban viiL,
Innocent XL, Clement xiv. ; and only by proceeding in
a spirit the very opposite of this can the wounds of
Christendom be healed. There have been many on all
^ He attempted indeed in a subsequent pamphlet, Deutschland nach dem
Kriege (1867), to explain away the force of the implied censure by the
strange hypothesis, that the articles of the Syllabus did not contain a
general principle, but only applied to particular countries !

xxxii Preface.
sides. Catholics, Anglicans, Lutherans, in former days
as now, who have laboured and longed for that blessed
consummation, and have not Uved to see it ; some, like
Spinola and Leibnitz, in one generation, Du Pin and
Wake in another, whose names are indelibly associated
with the sacred cause. And in almost every case the
fairest hopes have been wrecked, not on a reUgious, but
a political difficulty, as seems only too likely to be the
case with the present unionistic movement in the East,
to which Dr Dollinger has referred. Wliat the good
Bishop Doyle said of one such attempt is more or less
true of all or nearly all : " its faUure was owing more to
Princes than to Priests,, more to State policy than to a
difference of belief." How true are the concluding
words of the same letter : " They are pride and points
of honour which keep us divided on many subjects,
not a love of Christian humiUty, charity, and truth ! " ^
And there are many more, of every clime and age,
in remote English viUages, in the seclusion of foreign
convents, in the privacy of domestic Ufe, before
gleaming altars, on Ungering death-beds, who have
watched, and toUed, and prayed for the dawn of that
1 Letter to Lord Ripon (1824), published in Fitzpatrick's Life, Times,
and Correspondence of Dr. Doyle, pp. 421 sqq., and in Union Review,
vol. i. pp. 12 sqq.

Preface. xxxiii
second Pentecost, who are praying for it stiU in the
brightness of the everlasting sunshine, whose names we
know not, and shaU never know on earth, over whose
forgotten graves their guardian angels whisper that
most musical of aU the Beatitudes, Beati pacifici,
quoniam filii Dei vocabuntur. There are many yet
among us who are striving and praying for it now. And
besides all these there is a vast multitude of interces
sors, whom no man can number, of every kindred,
tribe, and tongue, sunflushed with the glory of the
Uncreated Vision, and gazing on the pure reflection of
unsulUed truth that is mirrored for ever and for ever
on the waveless surface of the crystal sea, whose sight
is purged from aU earthly film and their souls from
taint of human passion, who cease not day and night
to cry continually, " How long, 0 Lord, how long ? "
And we, too, if we reaUy cared about the matter,
should make it a subject of definite contemplation,
definite action, definite, united, persevering, pertina
cious prayer. We should, in the startUng language of
Scripture, " weary " the Supreme Judge with our impor
tunities ; ^ we should interest all the glorified host in
1 The original word (in Luke xnn. 5), iiromafij ( Vulg. " sugillet ") is far
stronger, and will hardly indeed bear literal translation. A more tre-

xxxiv Preface.
our supplications to the Most High. Omnes Sancti et
Sanctoe Dei, intercedite pro nobis !
And to aU who, in whatever communion, and under
whatever form, worship in sincerity our common Lord,
I would say. Do not put from you the suggestion as
unpractical, or trivial, or inopportune, as a morbid
craving for the satisfaction of an ideal want. A
craving which is rooted in the deepest instincts of our
moral nature, and is strengthened by menacing pheno
mena in the present condition of society, whose
accumulated weight presses more heavily each day on
the inteUect and conscience, is no mere sickly dream ;
and a divine ideal can never be impossible of attain
ment. If we have come to look on reUgious disunion
as a chronic and tolerable evU, or even — and there are
some who seem so to view it — as a positive advantage,
that is only because long use has inured us to a state
of things which ought to be intolerable to Christians,
as it has long been the palmary argument and impreg
nable stronghold of the mocking enemies of Christ.
" Go ye, make disciples of all nations, baptizing them,"
was the original commission of the Church, and now, at
the end of eighteen centuries of missionary enterprise,
mendous assertion of the duty and efficacy of prayer it would be impossi
ble to conceive.

Preface. xxxv
and when every heathen land has been incarnadined
in martyr-blood, three-fourths of mankind are unbap-
tized ! " That they may aU be one, even as We are
One, that the world may believe that Thou hast sent
Me," was the Eedeemer's dying intercession for His
foUowers; and now, in this nineteenth century since
His Crucifixion, there are more Christians sects in
England alone than there were believers in the Upper
Eoom at Jerusalem after the Ascension ! And what is
the upshot ? Simply this, that every shred of the revela
tion He committed to His Church is openly disputed
by those who profess to be His disciples, whUe the
great mass of the poor, to whom especiaUy the Gospel
was to be preached, are left to live the life and die
th-e death of heathen in a nominally Christian land,
because those who should have taught them His word
and ministered His sacraments have wasted their
energies, and lost half their faith and all their authority,
in perpetual bickerings with one another as to what
that word ajid those sacraments are. Truly, if Chris
tianity be a divine revelation, and the Christian Church
is to be its teacher, the religious outcome of the last
three centuries of division is a spectacle to make
infidels triumph and angels weep.

xxxvi Preface.
But anyhow the case is hopeless, and it wUl be our
wisdom to acquiesce quietly in the ine'vitable : reunion
is an idle dream. Why ? Simply because we choose to
make it so. There is a story of a farmer in a country
parish, who was consulted by the rector, after a
dry season, as to whether he should use the prayer
for rain. " Well, sir," was the reply, " there is no use
in your praying for rain while the wind continues in
the north." We have acted for three centuries and
more in the spirit of that pious and intelligent rustic,
and during aU that period the theological wind has
set very steadily from the north. As long as we
continue to emulate his example, we have only ourselves
to thank if it should blow from the same quarter for
the next three centuries. We have not, because we
ask not ; we ask, and have not, because we ask amiss.
Too many of us do not ask at all. Like the gods of
Epicurus, "they lie beside their nectar," and regard
the religious condition of the world, if they ever
think about it, much as the deity of a certain school
of modern thinkers is supposed to contemplate, if he
ever does contemplate, the universe he created, if
indeed he did create it, — with an otiose if not
cynical detachment. Eeunion, they say, would be a

Preface. xxxvii
miracle, and to pray for miracles is idle, if not
presumptuous. And many, who would shrink from
the virtual atheism of such an avowal, are unreal
when they pray for unity, because their normal
standard of conduct and opinion is in direct contra
diction with their prayers ; out of the same mouth
proceeds blessing and cursing. If there is truth in
the proverb, Qy,i laborat orat, if it is unreal to ask for
what we will make no efforts to attain, stiU less can
we expect our petitions to be heard, if we do all in
our power to thwart them. WhUe we habitually feel
and act on the tacit assumption that our divisions
are irreconcileable, that aU the right is on one
side, and the sole legitimate object of discussion is
not peace, but victory ; whUe we are eager to ¦ in
criminate and slow to explain, resolved to learn nothing
and forget nothing, to admit no faults on our own
side, and condone none on the other; whUe we are
never weary of flinging at each other's heads the
fagots of Smithfield and the gibbets of Tyburn,
like schoolboys in a snowball match, — so long we
are doing our utmost to create the impossibility we
affect to deplore. Far better let the dead bury their
dead, and, while we respect the constancy of the

xxxviii Preface.
sufferers on either side, not seek to make controversial
capital out of past atrocities, which disgraced religion ;
still less, as some would have us, desire to emulate
them. Mary and her evU counseUors did more, no
doubt, than aU the Eeformers put together, to brand
the tradition of Protestant exclusiveness into the heart
and conscience of England; and we, if we are wise,
shaU take warning by their example, how unity can
never be restored.^ Actual persecution is, of course,
out of the question in the present state of society, but
^ It is impossible to condemn too strongly the Marian burnings,
whether on grounds of principle or of policy. But it is fair to remember
that the sufferers never shrank from inflicting the penalties they were
ready to endure bravely, when their turn came : they had no dift'erence
with their persecutors about the principle, but only about its application.
Cranmer, of course, I put out of the reckoning altogether. It may or
may not be true that he held the fingers of the peevish boy in whose
name he misruled England, while forcing him to sign the death-warrant
of a visionary little less orthodox and infinitely more honest than himself ;
but anyhow he was no more a genuine persecutor than a genuine martyr.
He burnt impugners of the Real Presence as long as it suited his interests,
and he was burnt for denying it — probably with sincerity, for his range of
belief seems to have been a limited one — after he had solemnly recanted
his denial. But Latimer, who was a typical Reformer and unquestion
ably honest, preached a sermon worthy of Torquemada, while Prior
Forest was being roasted to death over a slow fire for denying the
spiritual supremacy of Henry vm. And I am afraid there can be no
doubt that Elizabeth's Jesuit victims would have been equally ready to
burn any one who denied the spiritual or temporal supremacy of the Pope.
" The toleration of heresy," sayn Sir J. Mackintosh, " was deemed by men
of all persuasions to be as unreasonable as it would now be thought to
propose the impunity of murder." For copious authorities on the Pro
testant side, see a remarkable article on " The Protestant Theory of
Persecution " in the Ramiler for March 1862.

Preface. xxxix
the persecuting temper can express itself in a hundred
ways, and is the precise contradictory of that temper
in which alone we can meet our aUenated feUow-
Christians with any prospect of ultimate agreement.
And never surely was the obUgation more urgent,
never was there more in the circumstances of the
day to supply both warning and encouragement, than
now. Ours is in one sense a pecuUarly reUgious age.
Eeligious questionings, aspirations, doubts, interpene
trate its Uterature and thought, trouble its policy, and
mingle in the detaUs of its social life. It organizes
religious meetings, congresses, and synods of every
hue. The religious question, as it has been said, is the
order of the day. And this is a ground of encourage
ment. On the other hand, it is also a very irreligious
age. Scepticism has never before been so open-
mouthed, so widespread, and withal so oppressively
respectable as it has recently become. Its apostles
do not scruple to assure us, with an engaging frankness,
that virtue and vice are " natural products in the same
sense as sugar and vitriol," or that prayer is an obsolete
superstition to be classed with the beUef in " witches,
dreams, astrology, and auguries of good or evU luck,"
for which the civUized world wUl learn to substitute

xl Preface.
the equally " ennobUng " and "consoUng" contempla
tion of the " soUdarity between themselves and what
surrounds them through the endless reactions of
physical laws." But stUl it is not the mocking scep
ticism of Tom Paine or Voltaire. It is sedate, refined,
decorous, respectable ; it sometimes almost seems to
be devout. But if we are tempted to let ourselves
imagine that in losing its grossness it has lost its
sting, we are likely to be crueUy undeceived. And
indeed already there are not wanting ominous signs of
the spirit which deluged the Colosseum with Christian
blood, or voices among those which would banish
the " pale Galilean " from an emancipated world, that
do not suffer us to forget in what guise the goddess
Eeason was enthroned, not a century ago, on the high
altar of Notre Dame.
Such moral and intellectual aberrations wiU never
be disposed of by mere force of reasoning, however
laborious and acute. They thrive in the cold shade
of our mutual hatreds, and would fade away like
a noisome exhalation in the bracing atmosphere
and clear strong sunshine of a Christendom at unity
with itself. But if there stiU remains "the little
rift within the lute," if the trumpet still gives an

Preface. xli
uncertain sound, when it summons us to the battle
with Antichrist, — and the spirit of Antichrist is rife
among us now — how shaU his assault be met by the
disjointed and spasmodic efforts of a straggUng multi
tude, without leader, discipline, or common watchword ?
But it is the glory of Divine Providence to bring good
out of evU, and the infidel aggression, which threatens
us on every side, may weU be His predestined instru
ment for reuniting Christian believers in presence of
a common foe.
On the special bearing of the Eeunion question on
the EstabUshed Church I wUl make but one remark
here. The present agitation against the Athanasian
Creed, and the official relations of the clergy to a
legislature which has already sanctioned adultery, and
is only too Ukely ere long to sanction incest, must have
brought home two facts very distinctly to the minds
even of its most attached and loyal adherents. In the
first place, they cannot fail to perceive in what a difficult
position an isolated communion finds itself, whatever
may be pleaded in defence or excuse of its isolation,
when caUed upon to vindicate the most elementary
principles of Christian morality and beUef.' And,
• By the present law a clergyman is bound, on application, to allow the
d

xUi Preface.
secondly, these difficulties afford a fresh Ulustration of
the insecure tenure on which the Establishment, as
such, holds its ground.-' And disestabUshment, when
ever it comes, whUe leaving the Church more free to
negotiate with external bodies, wiU also make the need
for external support more urgent, by withdrawing the
prestige and cohesive power suppUed by union with the
State. And now, I am afraid I have detained the reader
too long, if indeed he has aUowed himseK to be
detained, from studying testimony far weightier and
more authoritative than any I could hope to give. It
is in itself a remarkable fact, that "the venerable
Nestor of Catholic theology," as he has been styled,
whose life has been spent as a Catholic professor and
prelate in the very centre of northern Catholicism, and
who has himself, in former days, devoted the vast
resources of his intellect and learning to the exposure

use of his church for the re-marriage (so-called) of a divorced parishioner,
whether guilty of previous adultery or not, and may be compelled to
marry the " innocent party " himself ; every such pretended marriage being
of course a nullity and a sacrilege. A notorious case occurred not long
ago in one of the principal parish churches of London.
1 This is expressly recognised in Dr. Pusey's letter on the subject, pub
lished in the Times of Aug. 13.

Preface. xliii
of Protestant error,^ should, during the last twelve
years, have scarcely pubUshed a single work without
pointedly introducing this question of Eeunion, which
he has now, when ultramontanism has just won its
crowning triumph, set himself expressly to discuss.
Speaking from the platform of a long experience, a
profound acquaintance with the past history of the
Church, and an extensive familiarity with the present
condition of both CathoUc and Protestant society, he
declares that union to be at once a supreme necessity
of the Christian commonwealth and a perfectly
practicable achievement. It is not the voice of a
youthful zealot, or a dreaming mystic, or a fiery
reformer, which addresses us, but a venerable priest,
fuU of years and of honours, cautious by temperament,
and of a nation pre-eminent for its critical acumen,
conservative and Catholic to the backbone in his
instincts and habits, who sums up in these weighty
words the concentrated convictions of a Ufetime. It
is indeed the utterance of a mitis sapientia, chastened
by long years of toU and trial, but also of an
enthusiasm, in the best and truest sense of the word,
^ See, e.g. his Die Reformation in 3 vols, and his Martin Luther.

xliv Preface.
which only shines out with brighter lustre through the
veU of patient suffering and advancing age, because it
is based on the faith of an unerring promise, and lives
in the habitual vision of the world beyond the grave.
H. N. 0.
Feast op the Nativity of our Lady, 1872.

LECTUEE 1.
GENERAL EEVIEW OF THE RELIGIOUS CONDITION 01
THE WORLD.
rr^HE Christian portion of the human family may be
reckoned at some 350 mUlion souls, and includes
about thirty per cent, of the inhabitants of the world.
But Christians are divided into many larger or smaller
communities or churches, which mutuaUy exclude each
other, aUowing no communion of worship, sacraments,
or prayer, and accusing one another of errors or de
partures from the teaching of Christ so serious as to
endanger salvation.
Divisions and formations of separate churches were
not indeed infrequent during the first thousand years
after Christ. But they were generaUy of short duration,
and after a whUe were reabsorbed into the great Catholic
Church. So it was with the Churches which took their
rise from the Arian controversies, and those which
had separated mainly on ethical grounds, referring to

2 Reunion of the Churches.
ecclesiastical discipline, such as the Novatians, Dona
tists, Montanists, and most of the Western sects.
But this cannot be said of the separations and newly
formed communities of the last thousand years. These
stiU continue, that is, the principal parties or churches,
with, on the whole, no diminution of vital and expansive
power. Let us take a bird's-eye view of them.
The Greek Catholic or Eastern Church, which
numbers about seventy-five million members, in Eussia,
Turkey, and Greece, has separated from the Eoman
Catholic, or Western Church, which contains about 180
nulUons. This separation began about the middle of
the eleventh century, but was only consummated in
the thirteenth, in consequence of the taking of Con
stantinople and violent subjugation of the Greeks by
Westerns acting under papal inspiration. To this
Church, which takes the name of "Orthodox," are
closely related the Nestorians, the remnant of a Church
once widely spread in the interior of Asia, which has
been separated from the rest of the Christian world
since the middle of the fifth century, in consequence of
the controversies about the Person of Christ, and the
Monophysites, who separated about the same time, and
from similar causes, as representatives of the opposite

Religious Condition of the World. 3
view, and formed a far more numerous body than the
Nestorians, comprising three national Churches, the
Armenian, the Coptic in Egypt, and the Abyssinian.
And as the Church has been separated since the
twelfth century into two numerically unequal halves,
each going its own way and accusing the other of
schism and heresy, so in the sixteenth century came the
great split in the Western or Latin Church, which cut
far deeper. Out of the reforming movement which
after 1517 took possession of the whole populace of
Western Europe, sprang by degrees new ecclesiastical
societies, which are genericaUy termed Protestant. And
hence three great systems have grown up. There is
first the Lutheran, covering Germany, Scandinavia, and
the eastern coasts of Eussia, about thirty mUlions
strong; then the Eeformed, including some twelve
million inhabitants of Switzerland, the Netherlands,
Scotland, and parts of Germany and Hungary. Dis
tinguished from both these is the EngUsh Episcopal
Church, stUl as yet the State Church, which has kept
closer in its constitution and worship to the two ancient
Churches of the East and West, and from the compara
tive brevity and vagueness of the Thirty-nine Articles
which form its doctrinal confession, is on the one hand

4 Reunion of the Churches.
less widely removed from CathoUc dogmas, while on
the other it aUows more room for differences of teach
ing and interpretation.
Meanwhile, besides these great national Churches
there sprang up at and after the time of the Eeformation
many smaller sects, which, though several have died
out, not only stUl survive — chiefly in England and
North America — but are constantly being increased in
number. There are at present about a hundred of these
smaller religious communities, numbering some 18,000
members. Many of them have never extended beyond
the land of their birth, and are hardly known by
name elsewhere. Others, especiaUy the Anabaptists,
count their adherents by mUUons. Nor are these sects
always based on doctrinal distinctions. Sometimes
peculiarities in social arrangements or worship, or
methods of education and individual culture, form the
leading characteristic, as is shown in the case of the
Moravians and the English and American Methodists.
It is chiefly in the Anglo-Saxon race, in both its English
and American branches, that the capacity and inclina
tion for forming sects has developed itself, whUe the
German people, if we except the Swabian branch, has
never manifested such a tendency.

Religiotis Condition of the World. 5
The circle of thought within which most of these
sects revolve is a very narrow one, and the differences
are often confined to points of infinitesimal importance.
Not unfrequently jealousy or love of notoriety, or even
a financial speculation, is the inspiring motive of the
founders of a new sect ; but the mere fact of their so
often succeeding proves how ready the people are to
welcome such associations.
It is true that smaUer communities are sometimes
distinguished by a stricter discipUne and higher code
of moraUty, for the individual is more supported and
upheld by the body of which he is a member, more
closely watched and far more dependent on the good
opinion of the rest. This moral earnestness, and
abstinence at least from ordinary vices, is generally,
e.g., to be observed in the Anabaptist settlements,
and their example benefits the members of other bodies
also. Many of these Uttle communities may exist for
centuries without either injuring or profiting the
rest of the world. They lead a quiet Ufe, far from
the busy throng of men, sometimes closely hemmed in
by the adherents of antagonistic creeds, and thus, as
it were, welded together, or perhaps united also by ties

6 Reunion of the Churches.
of blood. And so they maintain themselves with
indestructible vigour in spite of constant dangers and
iU-treatment. In this way the Nestorians or Christians
of St. Thomas have now existed for 1300 years in
East India, and the Copts stiU longer in Egypt.
We thus find two principal famUies of Christian
Churches, — first the ancient Churches, whose continuity
has never been interrupted, and which reach up by a
regular succession to the first beginnings of Christianity,
however great may have been their internal changes ;
such are the Eastern Church with its daughters, the
Eussian, Armenian, Coptic, and Nestorian ; and the
Western Catholic Church. The other family is com
posed of those Churches which have issued directly or
indirectly from that powerful religious movement caUed
the Eeformation, and the communities and sects which
have again broken off from them.
This great number of divisions and separate Churches
has its good as weU as its evil consequences, but we
shall have no doubt on a closer inspection as to which
preponderate. As to the first, it may be said that every
' new sect or Church is an experiment, or a trial of certain
doctrines or usages and regulations peculiar to the sect.
Here Gamaliel's maxim may be applied, and Church

Religious Condition of the World. 7
history regarded as a great course of experiments ; what
has held its o^wn, or even increased in strength with
the lapse of time, has conquered for itself the right of
permanence, while what passes away and disappears
imder the stream was not worth preserving. But then
history and experience contradict this view. Islam,
which must be considered at bottom a Christian heresy,
the bastard offspring of a Christian father and Jewish
mother, and is indeed more closely allied to Chris
tianity than Manicheeism, which is reckoned a
Christian sect, — Islam has now maintained for 1250
years an at least outwardly unshaken dominion over a
large portion of mankind, 120 miUions, and moreover
stUl makes fi'esh advances every year in Africa, Aus-
traUa, and the interior of India, which exceed the
progress of Christianity in those countries. It has
made large encroachments on Christianity, from which
it has aUenated whole regions, without, on the other
hand, suffering any important losses through conversion
to our faith. And yet how clear it is to us that history
has already pronounced sentence on this reUgion, and
sealed its rejection, when we consider the once flourish
ing, now fallen, condition of those lands where Islam
prevaUs, and of their denizens. Such are Asia Minor,

8 Reunion of the Churches.
Syria, Persia, Cyprus, Egypt, and a closer inspection
proves that it is precisely to their false religion that
their unhappy condition and gradual decay and extinc
tion are due. Nor is this at aU inconsistent with the
fact that the same religion has benefited peoples in
a lower stage of development, as has been recently
observed in the case of negroes converted to Mahomet-
anism in South Africa.
It cannot be denied that there is something repul
sive in the present aspect of the Christian world, with
its sharply-divided and hostile Churches and sects,
mutuaUy hating and incriminating one another. And
were we not accustomed to the sight from our youth up, it
would strike us as stiU uglier, and the contrast between
the idea and the reaUty would be more glaring in our
eyes. In aU the other highest departments of life, in
science, in art, the power of attraction and union of
minds asserts itself, and sooner or later dissonance and
hatred are lost in harmony. With reUgion alone it is
different ; what according to its inmost essence was
meant to be the most powerful bond of union, because
possessed and filled with love, has been the cause of
so many divisions — what was to estabUsh peace has
kindled strife and bloody wars — what was to give men

Religious Condition of the World. 9
certainty and confidence has provoked doubt and
planted mistrust in their minds. The division of the
two great ancient Churches of East and West is, or
rather was, unmeaning, because of their essential unity
of doctrine ; now, on the other hand, since July 1 8,
1870, it is different. And here permit me to observe
how perilous may be the consequences of this eccle
siastical division in the immediate future.
There can be no question that, since the end of the
Franco-German war, the Eastern question is the weighti
est, and at aU events far the most difficult, question of
the day. Considered from a purely political point of
view, it must be caUed simply insoluble ; and yet on
its solution hinges the future of Austria, and in no
sUght degree of the world generaUy, which has now to
take in the German Empire. No doubt time might
eventually bring a solution, but only in the distant
future ; for the Turkish people, which now tyrannizes
over miUions of Christians, is, so to speak, at the
point of death ; it decreases considerably every year,
whUe the Christians steadily increase. But the situa
tion is too intolerable, and the impatience of mankind
too great, to wait for the solution of time, and the
great crisis is constantly forcing its way to the front.

I o Reunion of the Churches.
Eussians and Greeks — the great majority, that is, of
the population of the Empire — are co-religionists,
members of the same Church. Will Eussia be wiUing
or able to look on quietly much longer on a situation
such as aU correspondents on the spot describe it
to be, which no diplomatic intervention can touch,
because it is grounded in the very nature of things,
inasmuch as for the Mahometan conscience there is
no rule but the Koran, which breathes only hatred and
contempt for Christians ? And thus all the efforts of
England, France, and Austria to avert the catastrophe
have as yet been fruitless, except for gaining time.
Eussia alone holds the keys of the destiny of the
Turkish Empire. And who wiU contradict Eussia if
she decides that it is a duty to be carried out by force
of arms, to improve the desperate condition of the Chris
tians in that Empire ? Have not aU the European
powers acted from time to time on this principle ? But
if only an ecclesiastical union between East and West
were brought about, how completely would the whole
situation be changed ! A general co-operation of the
great Christian powers would then become possible for
warding off the danger from both the Austrian and
German Empires, and a solution in accordance with the

Religious Condition of the World. 1 1
balance of power in Europe might be found. More
than that : sUght as is the real difference between the
Eusso-Greek and Latin Churches, the Eussian people
are profoundly impressed with the beUef, long since
studiously fostered by their rulers, that theirs is the
sole true and legitimate Church, and all foreign nations
are to be regarded as heretical and unbeUeving, and
that consequently every foreign war is a religious war
of beUevers against unbeUevers. It wUl be remem
bered by what means the Emperor Nicholas sought to
increase and accentuate this national prejudice. His
proclamation of March 26, 1848, is well known : "Hear
and bow down, ye GentUes, for God is with us ;" 'and
his speech to the Eussian and Polish Bishops, on May
26, 1849 : " The true faith survives in Eussia only ; in
the West it is utterly lost." The Czar Alexander II.,
also, after his accession, addressed the army as "the
true soldiers and champions of the Church, the throne,
and the fatherland " — so that the Eussian soldier is in
spired by the belief that his first duty is to defend the
Church with his arms. It is obvious what a lever this
view supplies, and what an enthusiasm it may kindle in
war, and how grave would be the danger for Germany
if ever an anti-German or Panslavist party succeeded in

12 Reunion of the Churches.
involving the colossal Empire in a war with us, and this
war came to be considered by Eussia as a reUgious
war. On the other hand, the Churches which sprang from
the Eeformation of the sixteenth century have been
gradually, and for the most part reluctantly, urged or
violently driven into separation by profound differences
of doctrine, and when once aU intercommunion had
been entirely broken off, the original differences of doc
trine grew wider, and were moulded into systems whose
hard inflexible letter made all reconciliation impossible.
HistoricaUy considered, we know that the Eeformation
was inevitable, and that, when no room was allowed it
in the bosom of the ancient Church, a breach of imity
was the necessary consequence. Nor can we blind
ourselves to the fact that it has had many beneficial
results, and has in various ways proved a gain even to
the ancient Church which was so hostUe to it. We see
that it has created a rich inteUectual world, and given
an impulse to every form of mental activity. It has
become the most powerful and permanent force in
modern history. But the three centuries and a half of
its existence have apparently sufficed to bring out and
mature whatever spiritual resources it contained within

Religious Condition of the World. 13
itself. That period has also supplied evidence that these
new ecclesiastical creations have faults and defects
of their own which they have no inherent power of
remedying, and that they are incapable of reaUy and
permanently satisfying all the religious needs of man
kind. The morbid hankering after division, the dis
content of individuals, the incompetence to form any
church organizations standing firmly on their own
foundations, have long been sensibly felt ; and it
is impossible not to perceive that in the first heat
of the struggle and passionate excitement of the Ee
formation tempest, many doctrines and practices of the
ancient Church were much too hastily rejected, leaving
a gap it is difficult to fiU up. The time wiU come, and
in the opinion and desire of many is already come,
when the Petrine and Pauline Churches will develope
into a Johannean Church, or, as used to be said in
mediaeval times, to the period of the Father and the
Son wiU succeed the age of the Holy Ghost. And this
would be brought about by the existing Churches being
content to leam and receive of one another, and to
impart to one another their peculiar possessions and
privileges, and thus enter into the noblest community
of goods, but above all, by their setting a higher price on

14 Reunion of the Churches.
the doctrines and creeds which they have inherited and
confess in common than on what divides them. iMany
wiU ask whether this is possible. I reply that it must
be possible, for it is a duty. No doubt a great purifica
tion and renewal of the Church in the sixteenth cen
tury was a pressing need : the condition of things had
become untenable and intolerable. But this process
might have been accomplished without the divisions
which grew out of it, whereas not only have the Catho
Ucs separated from the Protestants, but among these
last, the Lutherans have separated from the Eeformed
(Calvinists), and the Anglicans from both aUke. In
this then we must acknowledge a grievous faulb of men,
originating in their passions and sinful errors, as history
abundantly testifies. On that point aU schools and
parties are substantiaUy agreed, only that each throws
the whole blame, or the greater part of it, on its oppo
nents. Every Church maintains that the rest are bound
to unite with it, and thus atone for the crime of their
forefathers. That Christ, the Founder of the Church, desired and
enjoined its unity is clear. In His Eucharistic prayer
we read, " That they all may be one ; that as Thou,
Father, art in Me and I in Thee, they also may be one in

Religious Condition of the World. 1 5
Us, that the world may believe that Thou hast sent Me."^
Nay, this unity is, as He further prays, to be a perfect
one, and therefore the most penetrating and purest con
ceivable among men. And here it is especially to be
noted that this unity of Christian believers is itself to
serve as the means to a further end ; it is to be a testimony
for the world in general, and for all nations, of the truth
and divinity of the teaching of Christ. And such it
was in the early ages. " See how these Christians love
one another," was then a common saying of the heathen.
According to the wiU of our Lord, men ought always to
be able to say, " A reUgion which unites its adherents,
and holds together a vast society so closely, without any
coercion, through the Spirit which animates it, bears the
impress of its truth and divinity." And thereby He
has of course given us to understand that ecclesiastical
divisions and a multiplicity of separate Churches wUl
produce just the opposite impression on non-Christian
nations, and on many Christians too, and wiUbe to them
a great stumbUngblock and occasion of serious doubt
as to the truth of Christianity. Any one who wishes
to reaUze this has only to ask some educated Jew
resident among us what impression the strife and
controversy of the Churches makes upon him.
^ John xvii. 21.

1 6 Reunion of the Churches.
At the same time, no Church can ignore the command
and commission to teach and baptize heathen nations.
It is a duty and mission laid upon us to bring within
the reach of foreign nations the benefits of civiUsation,
culture, moral improvement, and elevation of both
faniUy and civU life, by the only possible means, of
reUgious instruction and ecclesiastical organization,
whereby we ourselves obtained them. But more than
two-thirds of the inhabitants of, the world are heathen;
there are stUl 800 milUon souls unconverted to Chris
tianity. And yet we may truly say that almost the
whole human race is possessed with a feeling of rest
lessness unknown even in the ages of the great migra
tion of nations, while at the same time the wonderfuUy
increased facUities of intercourse have roused a passion
for travel, and an irresistible impulse to more intimate
union among different peoples. The most remote, ob
scure, and unknown corners of the earth are explored,
all the laboriously constructed barriers of earlier days
give way to pressure from without, or are torn down
by the nations which erected them, and we observe
with surprise, in how many parts of the earth ci'vQized
men and barbarians. Christians and heathen, jostle one
another, so that in America Chinese meet and mingle
with Europeans. We see how nations which have long

Religious Condition of the World. 17
remained sunk in the lowest depth of moral or intellec
tual stagnation, are suddenly drawn into the vortex of
the great world-stream which has broken in upon them.
It seems as though no nation of the world was to be
allowed any longer to go on vegetating independently
on its old foundations. Even the great civUized nations
of Eastern Asia, the Hindus, the Chinese, the Japanese,
are constrained to enter into European conditions and
requirements, and to appropriate the arts and methods
of education of the Christian West. But this picture,
which I have only indicated by a few touches here,
while on the one side it encourages the brightest hopes,
discloses on the other some dark spots. The first is
the fact, more and more forcing itself on the notice of
observers, that many of the peoples now dweUing on the
earth are not only incapable of any historical existence,
but are inevitably doomed to destruction, and are, some
slowly, some rapidly, fading away. The Indians in
North and South America, the negroes in Australia., the
inhabitants of the South Sea Islands, the Hottentots in
South Africa, and other tribes, are disappearing. Of
the once numerous tribes of North America, many are
already extinct, and their very names forgotten. The
most harmless contact with strangers, or the mere

V*

1 8 Reunion of the Churches.
presence of Europeans or their descendants, is enough
to bring havoc on many of the native races.
The study of geography has revealed a yet darker
side in the present condition of the nations. Nature
herself, the very soU, groans under the burden and curse
of a false religion, — for when the people degenerate,
nature herself grows brutaUzed and depraved. The
earth is given men to till, but irreligious or misbe
lieving populations destroy instead of cultivating it;
under their hands it becomes unfruitful, and loses its
grace and vegetation. Towns and viUages decay, and
graduaUy perish, and where once was a rich country
and busy population, there is a howUng wUdemess.
No land under Moslem rule can now be called a flourish
ing one. In the region between the Tigris and Euph
rates, the ancient Chaldea, the cradle of the human
race, there is a widespread desolation, Uttle agricul
ture, only a few decayed and impoverished towns, no
villages, and a mere roving population, who know
notliing of their ancestors, and sink deeper every year
into a state of utter barbarism. AU those fair and
populous cities of which history tells, that vast, civiUzed
and flourishing population which held its place there
far into the middle ages, have disappeared, and if the

Religious Condition of the World. 19
reason is asked, there is but one reply — It is the work
of a false reUgion ! What a spectacle is presented now
by the once great and powerful Persian Empire, a
country more than twice the size of Germany, but with
only some five miUion inhabitants, with few towns, and
none of which whole quarters are not in ruins, pillaged
by a wretched despotic government, and now lying
helpless under the assault of a deadly famine, whUe it
feebly awaits the hour when Eussia may please to take
it in hand.-' And yet the very reUgion which exhibits
these phenomena in Turkey, North Africa, and Egypt,
and which one might suppose to be graduaUy dying out
through the decay of the peoples who are under its
curse, shows itself elsewhere fuU of youthful -vigour and
elasticity. In the Indian Archipelago and the interior
of Africa, from the Niger to the Cape, it is in rapid
advance, conquering whole heathen kingdoms in its
course, and makes progress even among the Christian
Abyssinians. But unfortunately there is no other reU
gion which has so deeply-rooted a hatred to Christianity
as Mahometanism, and this hatred is engrained into
every nation which embraces it.
1 [As regards the hollow and unprogressive character of Turkish civilisa
tion, cf. Newman's Lectures on the Turks, Lect. iv. "Barbarism and
Civilisation."]

LECTUEE IL
THE DUTY OF CHRTSTUN NATIONS TO THE HEATHEN, AND
ITS GREAT HINDKANCE.
"TTTE are met here by an objection which requires to
be disposed of. I wUl state it in the words
of a high authority on the subject of ethnology : " Do
not deceive yourselves ; every nation has its own reli
gion. Catholicity was and is impossible. The German,
the ItaUan, and the Greek have and always had differ
ent religions, because they are different nations. We
should not speak of Christianity so much as of Chris
tian nations, and of each of these in particular, for it is
the national mind which really apprehends and inter
prets the message according to its capacity." It is true
that the author of this passage belongs to a people with
whom religion and nationaUty are so completely iden
tified that the one covers and sustains the other, and
neither can exist apart. But his view is contradicted
20

Duty to the Heathen and its Hindrance. 2 1
by the whole course of Christian history, and not only
Christianity but Mahometanism has the character of a
world-wide reUgion, destined to embrace many and
diverse nationaUties. Turks, Arabians, and Persians are
as unUke each other as any three nations on about the
same level of civUisation well can be, and yet all these
have the same reUgion ; and are not the Scotch and Swiss
Protestants of whoUy different nationaUty though they
have the same reUgion ? There is only so much truth
in the view in question, that, in the first place, there
are nations whose moral and spiritual condition is so
deplorably low, that they have no aptitude for a spiritual
reUgion like the Christian. Such, for instance, are the
Papuas of New HoUand, those most -wretched and
apparently most hopelessly degraded of human beings,
on whom the labours of missionaries for long years have
been wasted. It is true, secondly, that a religion which
has once got possession of a nation interpenetrates, and
in a sense transforms, the national character, and thus
no doubt brings out differences, the cause of which
might be confounded with the effect, if it were to be
deduced from the original character of the people,.
whereas it is really the result of a religious faith received
from without. It must further be admitted, that how-

2 2 Reunion of the Chiirches.
ever close the simUarity of views and Church organiza
tion, the apprehension and practice of a reUgion wUl
vary widely according to national temperament, and
these differences wUl not be removed or equalized by
the mere fact of two nations belonging to the same
great Church. Thus, for instance, a German Catholic,
suddenly transported to Calabria, and master of the
language, would find it difficult to reaUze that he and
his neighbours possessed the same religion, so strange
would the materialistic and magical distortion of Chris
tianity appear to him. When, again, he first came in
contact with the reUgious notions and practices of a
baptized Indian in South America, what -violence would
he have to do to his feeUngs before he could reaUze
that they both professed the same faith ; whUe, on the
other hand a married pair in Germany, of whom one is
a believing Catholic and the other a beUeving Protes
tant, can carry on domestic worship and Bible-reading
together for years in perfect harmony.
It cannot then be denied that the great Christian
powers have a call and a duty to extend to the
heathen nations under their dominion, or within the
sphere of their influence, the benefits of civiUsation.
For even those nations which are reaUy cultivated, and

Duty to the Heathen and its Hindrance. 23
possess a Uterature, art, and a kind of civiUsation of
their own, such as the Chinese and Japanese, are not,
properly speaking, civiUzed, for they want that humaniz
ing which a moraUty based on the laws of righteousness
and love to man can alone supply, and that depends on
reUgion. There is therefore only one kind of civilisa
tion, which is the product of the Christian spirit, and
those nations alone possess a genuine civilisation
which have passed under the discipUne of the Christian
Church, and are stUl learning in that school. The
antithesis to this is barbarism ; and it is no paradox, but
a notorious fact, that cultivated nations such as those
named just now are at the same time barbarous. Even
in the bosom of Christian civiUsation there must be
a constant struggle against the symptoms threatening,
either from above or below, a relapse into barbarism.
The gravity of the danger has just been exemplified in
the frightful tragedy of the Paris Commune, and what
is connected with it aU over Europe. And therefore
what has been caUed the internal or domestic mission
of Europe must be as carefuUy attended to as the
external mission to the heathen ; indeed, the former is
the more pressing and indispensable of the two.
But here I must explain more precisely what I under-

24 Reunion of the Churches.
stand by civilisation, and what I mean by the duty
incumbent on the great Christian states and nations,
first towards themselves, and then towards the heathen
world. Our whole social order, every public and private
institution or mode of life, rests, or should rest, on the
foUowing truths : — Before God all men are equal, aU
are caUed to the highest attainable moral and spiritual
perfection, and thence to happiness, and all should love
one another as brothers ; there should be no castes and
no slavery. Every man is a free person, not to be
treated as a means or a thing, but as an end in himself.
There must therefore be a free development and expres
sion of aU powers and capabiUties, and legal right of
exercising them, Umited by due regard for the common
Uberty of aU. Marriage is an institution consecrated by
reUgion on the basis of monogamy and the equal rights
of the wife. The father's right over his children is
Umited and controlled by society, whence child-murder
is prohibited, and the State compels parents to provide
for the training and education of their chUdren. Labour
and chastity are recognised as moral and religious duties,
and the relation of the ci-vil power to its subjects as
consecrated by reUgion, so that obedience to law, and
lawful authority as ordained by God, becomes a duty.

Duty to the Heathen and its Hindrance. 2 5
as it is also a duty for authority to keep within lawful
limits, without arbitrary caprice or tyranny.
It is the contrary of these ideas and conditions which
meets us everywhere in the non-Christian world,
whether Buddhist, Brahminical, or Mahometan. Above
all, there is everywhere chUd-murder, especiaUy of
female chUdren, and that too practised by the mothers
themselves. The woman is a being of lower grade, so
that throughout the East it is commonly supposed that
only men have souls, and accordingly women are op
pressed, maltreated, shut out from aU means of educa
tion, bought and sold Uke merchandise, and surrendered
to the arbitrary caprice of men like slaves or beasts of
burden; and thence comes the system of polygamy,
so fatal wherever it is tolerated, and the dissolution of
family life which is inseparable from it. Everywhere,
too, a disesteem of human Ufe prevaUs, which is often
wantonly lavished to a frightful extent.
It is an oppressive thought that from four to five
hundred millions belong to a reUgion Uke the Buddhist,
which connects with the doctrine of transmigration of
souls that of the " Nirvana," holding forth to man as
his supreme end a condition of passive and otiose
unconsciousness, and commending to him, as the truest

26 Reunion of the Churches.
and highest virtue, the negation of activity, wUl, desire,
or thought. And where Buddhism ends Brahminism
begins, in whose meshes are held between 130 and 140
mUlion Hindus. Here we have a gross Pantheism,
with a worship that takes the form of the most indis
criminate idolatry; the crudest arrogance and pre
sumption in the Brahmins, combined -with the utmost
contempt of man in the case of the lower castes. A
cow is more honoured than a Sudra, and a Pariah
can be murdered with impunity ; there are no rights
of man, but only of caste.
And now let us take a glance at those nations
whose position in the world entaUs on them the
care of the portion of mankind which stands in
grievous need of help. There is England, whose
empire on the Ganges has been established for a cen
tury, and now embraces aU Hindustan, which on the
whole rules with a wisdom, justice, and clemency of
which history records few examples. There is Eussia,
whose giant arms embrace the whole of Northern,
Western, and Eastern Asia ; and France, to which
Northern Africa belongs. And what happened to Eng
land in the East Indies is happening to both of them :
they wUl be driven on from conquest to conquest.

Dtity to the Heathen and its Hindrance. 2 7
Eussia especially cannot stand still ; she must become
more and more the arbiter of the destiny of North and
Middle Asia. Does she possess the capacities for doing
justice to this mission, the greatest and most difficult
which can be imposed on any nation or state ? England
has proved her capacity ; Eussia is still at the begin
ning of the great work assigned to her, and has to show
that she is equal to the task, and understands not only
how to conquer, but how to rule and civiUze. Is it
not above all requisite that the Eussian Church should
recognise in the overwhelming duties which are more
and more pressing upon her every day, a motive for
abandoning her old exclusiveness, and seeking, through
union with other Churches, a renewal of her spirit and
vigour, and greater versatiUty of powers ?
England has bestowed on her Hindu subjects,
late indeed, and in larger measure and more Uberal
sense since 1829, all the privUeges of her o-wn higher
culture and civU order, so far as the people are capable
of receiving them ; there are now numerous universities
and schools of every sort there, widow-burning and
exposure of children is forbidden, the administration
of justice is organized, the exclusiveness of castes wUl
not be able to hold its ground much longer, countless

28 Reunion of the Churches.
newspapers and magazines find a large circle of readers.
But aU this -wUl not suffice to give the millions of India
what they chiefly need — a great moral purification and
improvement. The inspiring breath of reUgion can alone
effect that. The Christian missions there have accom
plished very little in proportion to their efforts and the
greatness of their task, and have scarcely stirred the
surface of the vast slough of heathenism. Not only
in Hindustan ; the three hundred years of Catholic
and the fifty years of Protestant missions are rich in
examples of admirable devotion, persevering energy,
and heroic self-sacrifice ; noble martyr blood has
flowed in streams, and flows stUl every year. But
when we ask for the result of so many sacrifices, and
so vast an apparatus, we are disappointed, and can
hardly help feeling that the distinguished powers which
would have produced such rich fruits at home have
been wasted abroad on sterUe soil. It is true that
many Indian tribes, whose conversion seemed finaUy
achieved, have died out and left no trace, in spite of
their Christianity. The once flourishing missions of
the Jesuits in North America and Paraguay have long
since expired. Even among the cultivated races of
India, in Camboja, Siam, and Burmah, only a few

Duty to the Heathen and its Hindrance. 29
thousand converts have been won by the missionary
labour of above a thousand years ; and, moreover, the
Indian Christians have the reputation of getting bap
tized for interested motives, and easily faUing away.
It is, above aU, one of the rarest things to find a per
manent settlement of heathen converts with a native
priesthood. As to the Protestant missions, their own
friends admit that only a tiny fraction of the heathen
population has as yet been, I do not say actuaUy con
verted, but even prepared for conversion, and that if
the apparatus and energies employed are measured by
the results, an unfavourable judgment must be formed
of the missionary work altogether.
Our surprise is diminished when we discover, on
looking into the narratives of missionaries and traveUers,
how the European Christians carry with them every
where their di-visions and sectarian spirit; how, for
instance, in East India, twenty different churches and
sects are labouring at the conversion of the Hindus,
each endeavouring to encroach upon the rest, destroy
their settlements, and gain over their proselytes. And
what is true there is true equaUy elsewhere, so that
Christianity presents itself to the intelligent heathen
under the repulsive aspect of division and uncertainty.

30 Reunion of the Churches.
In Tahiti, the French Government years ago took pos
session of the Protestant missions and handed them
over to French Catholic emissaries. We know how
dear this arbitrary procedure cost the Government of
Louis Philippe, on account of the pecuniary indemnifi
cation paid to the English missionary Pritchard, which
was so cried out against in France. In Madagascar,
the emissaries of the rival Churches, Catholic and Pro
testant, brought matters to such a pass that King
Eadema osciUated for a year between them, and when
he was murdered each party charged the other with the
crime, and the mutual hatred and endeavours to sup
plant one another stiU continue. In 1845 the Pro
testant missionaries were ejected from Fernando Po by
the Spaniards, who laid claim to the island. That is
the spectacle presented by Christians to the gaze of the
heathen world. Christ says that every kingdom divided
against itself shaU be destroyed. We understand the
faUure of missionaries. And that is not aU. What
is to Christians the hoUest and most venerable of aU
places, the birth-land of our faith, where Christ taught,
lived, and suffered, is now the meeting-place of Churches
that hate one another. Greeks, Eussians, Latins, Arme
nians, Copts, Jacobites, Protestants of various sects, aU

Duty to the Heathen and its Hindrance. 3 1
have there their fortresses and entrenchments, and are
intent on making fresh conquests for the rival Churches.
To the shame of the Christian name, Turkish soldiers
have to interfere between rival parties of Christians,
who would else tear one another to pieces in the holy
places, and the Pasha holds the key of the Holy
Sepulchre. The strife between Latins and Greeks for
the possession of the chapel in 1852 was the imme
diate occasion of the Crimean war.
Truly eveiy one who values the name of Christian
should daUy pray to God for a fresh outpouring of the
Spirit of Unity, that we may keep a new Pentecost of
enUghtenment, peace, and brotherly love.

LECTUEE III.
DIVISION OF EAST AND WEST : GROUNDS OF HOPE.
"VT'THEN we speak of the hopes of reunion of sepa-
' ' rated Churches, it is obvious that the first point
to be thought of is to prepare the way for a better
understanding, for taking counsel together, and for dis
covering eirenic explanations of the existing confessions
of faith. The first thing is to distinguish dogma from
opinion, traditional doctrine from the artificial products
of theology, use from abuse, to remove weU -grounded
causes of scandal, and to restore what has become cor
rupted to its original form. Two divided Churches can
not rush at once into each other's arms, Uke two friends
meeting after a long separation. And we see what
infinite difficulty a single difference in doctrine may
occasion, and how it may frustrate the most various
and weU-meant endeavours, in the separation of the
Lutheran and Eeformed Churches, which is not yet

Division of East and West. 33
by any means whoUy got rid of, notwithstanding the
grand union between them.^ There is needed a power
ful and dominant spirit of union, such as is not often
found in the course of centuries, and a common con-
troUing principle independent of individual caprice.
Above aU, the union of Churches is only then possible,
when a high measure of mental culture is found in
connexion with reUgious intelligence and zeal. From
a lower inteUectual standpoint differences of rite and
ceremonial are regarded as questions on which salva
tion hinges, and instead of quiet and peaceful inquiry
men rush to arms. Among Mahometans almost aU
differences have been decided by the sword, the restora
tion of unity meant the conquest and extermination
of a sect ; and thus religious wars have lasted for
centuries among them down to quite recent times.
Among Christians religious wars have been chiefly
carried on when great moral corruption turned religious
zeal into fanaticism, as in the Albigensian wars in the
south of France, and the later contests there between
Protestants and CathoUcs.
1 [The Lutheran and Reformed (or Calvinistic) Churches of Germany were
united by Frederick- William m. of Prussia in 1817, under the name of the
" Evangelical Church " (Evangelische Kirche), which is still the Protestant
State Church. But the union was only partially successful. See Krum-
maoher's Autobiography, pp. 95, 96.] C

34 Reunion of the Churches.
If we look round among the nations to see where
there is any disposition to take part in the work of
pacification, we must put aside the Eomance nations,
Spanish, Italian, and even French, partly on account
of their reUgious indifference, partly because of their
exclusive devotion to political questions and interests ;
and because too they do not feel the sting of separation,
from belonging entirely, or almost entirely, to one
Church. Nor can we look to North America, where the
sectarian spirit is stUl in full bloom, and the passion
for di-vision is so widely spread. With the Slavonic
peoples the national sentiment is just now prepon
derant, and forces higher religious considerations into
the background. There remain England and Germany.
In England the friends of union are a numerous and
daUy increasing body. The whole movement of the
Oxford school, which has been advancing for the last
thirty-five years — what used to be called " Puseyism,"
and is now caUed "Eitualism" — is essentiaUy, and
for the most part consciously, directed to union with
the Western Catholic and the Eastern Churches.^
But, on the other hand, the sharply defined Protestant
1 For some years past [since 1863] a magazine expressly devoted to this
object has been published in England, — the Union Review.

Division of East and West. 35
spirit and antipathy as weU to Eome as to everything,
whether in creed or ritual, that exceeds the bare letter
of Scripture, is nowhere more deeply rooted in the
popular mind than in England. This Calvinistic spirit,
as it may weU be termed, is pecuUarly powerful in the
great communities of Baptists, CongregationaUsts, and
Wesleyans, and reacts from them on the members of
the EstabUshed Church. And there must be a funda
mental change in the condition of the Established
Church itself, if it means to deal with the question of
union in earnest ; it must abandon its position as a
State Church, which makes it at once too narrow and
too broad, too lax and too stiff, too free in one sense
and too dependent in another.
And so we come to Germany. In the German
Empire the CathoUcs now form one-third, the Pro
testants two-thirds of the population. If we count the
Austrian provinces, the two Churches are about equal
in numbers. This situation is pecuUar to us Germans
among aU nations. Only the two great neighbouring
countries of HoUand and Switzerland exhibit a some
what similar phenomenon. In every other nation one
Church, whether Eoman Catholic, Greek CathoUc, or
Protestant, immensely preponderates, if it does not

36 Reu7tion of the Churches.
prevail alone. But we have suffered so unspeakably
from this religious division, which pierces through the
body of the nation like a sharp sword, and our weak
ness, dismemberment, and humUiation, stand in such
close relation of cause and effect to our division of
Churches, that the belief is constantly forcing itself on
every German familiar with the history of his country,
that where the religious split began and the schism
originated, there the reconciliation must foUow, and the
division must lead to a higher and better unity. That
would be the tragical expiation in the great drama of
our history.
Meanwhile the numerical proportion of the members
of different Churches is not the main point. Far more
important is the relative proportion of powers and
capabUities which can neither be counted nor weighed ;
and this leads to the observation that in Germany the
overwhelming preponderance, or rather domination, in
science and literature, is on the Protestant side. Our
belles-lettres, and nearly aU our scientific Uterature, if
we except some medical works, is almost entirely Pro
testant. In theology especially the disproportion is so
great that the Protestant theology is at least six times
richer than the Catholic in quantity and quaUty. The

Division of East and West. 37
main cause of this is unquestionably to be found in
the former condition of the CathoUc schools and uni
versities; in the oppressive Latin influence, fatal to
inteUectual Ufe, which lay like a dead weight on the
culture and education of CathoUc countries, and the
defective character of the schools intrusted to a foreign
and essentially im-German Order, which through its sys
tematic neglect and contempt of the German language,
its inadequate classical teaching and its formal method,
faUed to implant in its scholars either the capacity or
the materials of thought, either style or power of expres
sion, thirst for knowledge, or perseverance in seeking it.
For two centuries and a half this state of things con
tinued, and its consequences are stiU constantly felt.
However, for the object we are now considering, the
reconcUiation of the Churches, this inferiority of one
side might teU favourably, and almost be reckoned a
gain. For when the end in view is to unite those
who are divided, it is essential that at least one party
should be conscious of its own deficiencies, and desirous
of sharing the benefits and privUeges of the other.
The present state of things in Germany is this : Catho
Ucs and Protestants are united by community of speech,
literature, manners, laws, and administration of justice,

38 Reimion of the Churches.
— by everything, in short, which binds men together, —
while the gulf between them in Church matters is far
wider than that which separates Catholics from members
of the Eusso-Greek Church. The .Protestants have often
wished and sought for reunion with the CathoUc Church
of the West ; but there has been only one attempt on
their part, almost immediately abandoned, to come to
an understanding with the Eastern Church, when, in
1575, the Tubingen theologians entered into negotia
tions with Jeremiah, Patriarch of Constantinople. But
a comparison of their respective confessions then led
both parties to the conclusion that the doctrinal and
ecclesiastical differences were too great for any union
to be effected. Nor could even the transfer of the
Protestant Baltic provinces and their imiversity to
Eussia produce any change in this cool, self-sufficient,
and exclusive way of looking at the question. But
this cannot continue, and it is certainly indispensable
for members of the Latin CathoUc Church, as soon as
they enter into conciliatory negotiations with Protes
tants, never to act without reference to the Eastern
Church, or, stiU better, in concert with its members ;
or else the attempt to bridge over one chasm might help
to widen and deepen another no less deplorable and

Division of East and West. 39
displeasing to God. And to leave out the EngUsh
Church from our attempts would be to drop a link no
less indispensable than precious in the chain we are
seeking to reunite.
But we cannot undertake the healing of a schism
without first having a clear view of its original causes
and subsequent course. Let us begin with the older
split. How and why was the Christian East divided
from the West ?
In the earUer centuries the distinction of Eastern
and Western Churches simply meant a distinction in
geographical site and language, and hence later on they
came often to be called the Greek and Latin Church.
As Christianity passed from East to West, all Christian
documents and writings were for a long time — tUl
towards the end of the second century— i-composed in
Greek only, and even in Eome the Greek language
prevaUed for a considerable time among Christians.
Thus did the Eastern portion of the Church for a long
time enjoy a complete inteUectual superiority; the
Westerns had to leam from their Greek co-reUgionists,
and to receive from them their ecclesiastical and
theological education. AU Latin theological Uterature
before St. Augustine is in substance the application or

I
40 Reunion of the Churches.
imitation of Greek models. From the fourth century
the Bishop of Constantinople advanced more and more
to the headship of the whole Eastern Church ; and the
strength, life, and learning of the Church became more
and more concentrated in this imperial metropolis.
Eome vainly sought to reduce the dignity of the
Bishops and Patriarchs of New Eome, as it was called ;
it was too completely involved in the circumstances of
the Greek Empire, and too well adapted to the needs
of the Eastern countries and Churches, and became so
indispensable when the other great Sees of Alexandria,
Antioch, and Jerusalem had faUen under Moslem
dominion, and their Churches were graduaUy disappear
ing. After the northern migration each Church went
its own way ; the union between Eome and Constan
tinople, often interrupted by quarrels, was always
restored after a longer or shorter interval, but the
alienation increased. The other Western Churches
in Italy, France, England, Spain, and Germany had no
direct relations with the East. The establishment of
the Carlovingian and afterwards of the German Empire,
was regarded at Constantinople as an usurpation and
violation of the rights of what claimed to be the sole
legitimate representative of the ancient Eoman Empire.

Division of East and West. 41
Moreover, many Eoman rites began more and more to
vary from the Eastern form, as in the use of unleavened
bread in the Eucharist, and afterwards in the with
drawal of the chalice, and disuse of immersion in
Baptism. The most important point of difference was
the addition of 'Filioque to the common creed, forced
by the Franks on Eome after long resistance, whence
sprang the controversy about the Procession of the
Holy Ghost, which has lasted to this day.
Yet it was not tiU quite the middle of the tweffth
century, not-withstanding aU the soreness and growing
aUenation on both sides, that communion between the
Churches was broken off. But the Crusades, the acts
of violence perpetrated by the Latins who often be
haved insolently to the weaker Greeks, and above aU
the new system of papal absolutism, to which even
the Byzantine Emperors were now expected to suc
cumb, aU conspired to make a pubUc and complete
breach inevitable. Then, in 1204, a crusading army
conquered Constantinople and the greatest part of the
Empire, and estabUshed a Latin Empire there, which
the Popes took under their guidance and protection.
The whole Eastern Church was to be Latinized, and a
complete system of ecclesiastico-political tyranny was

42 Reunion of the Churches.
organized — a yoke which seemed utterly intolerable to
the Greeks, and produced a deep hatred against the
Westerns, especially against Eome, that survived for
centuries. The seizure and sacking of the capital
followed, with circumstances of horrible atrocity and
profanation of churches, and then the spUt both in
feeling and in fact was consummated ; — in fact, by
Innocent iii. arbitrarily imposing Latin Bishops on the
Greek Churches, and thereby declaring aU Easterns
heretics and schismatics. Within sixty years (in 1261)
the Latin Empire again fell, and with it fell the
violently imposed Latin hierarchy. But the restored
Greek Empire was weak and imperUled. The hostility
of the West, especiaUy of the Popes, had to be bought
off at any price ; and so the Emperor let Pope
Gregory arrange the terms of union as he pleased at
the CouncU of Lyons in 1274. But to carry it out was
impossible in the face of universal opposition, and with
the Emperor's death the work feU to pieces. A new
union was effected a hundred and sixty years later at
Florence, which again was simply a work of necessity
and compulsion. The Empire had faUen, with the
exception of the capital ; aU else was in the hands of
the Turks, who were preparing to strike the last blow,

Division of East and West. 43
and it was thought that the Pope alone, through his
wealth and authority in the West, could avert it. After
long negotiations, in which the Pope and his theologians
yielded something, and the Greeks, under compulsion of
their Emperor, reluctantly and insincerely submitted to
the conditions imposed, the decree of union was drawn
up, which has since then continued to be the test
required by Eome of aU Orientals and Eussians coming
into her communion. But as the Greeks had only
submitted under stress of necessity, the work fell to
pieces in the next few years, and two Greek CouncUs
condemned the Florentine decrees.
Already, from the thirteenth centurj"-, the conviction
had been gaining ground, both in East and West, that
the great hindrance to union lay not in theological
and ceremonial differences, but in the Eoman claims to
dominion over Church and State. The Greek Church,
relying on its tradition and rich ecclesiastical literature,
and clinging tenaciously to aU that had been established
at the time of the great movements and definitions of
the fourth and fifth centuries, was suddenly caUed
upon, in the thirteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth, to
accept a form of absolute monarchical Church-govern
ment for which there was no precedent or evidence

44 Reunion of the Churches.
in its former history and Uterature, which had been
developed in the West first in the ninth and then in
the eleventh and twelfth centuries, and there only on
the strength of a long series of forgeries and inventions,
by which the Western clergy had been deceived. The
same means were now of course employed for circum
venting the Greeks. In CouncUs, in conferences, and
in writings used against them, they were met with the
same forged authorities, or with others constructed for
their special benefit ; but then the attempt " proved
generaUy a failure, for the learned Greeks, of whom
there were always a considerable body, were too well
informed and too famiUar with the views of the ancient
Church. The only result of such attempts was an
increased mistrust on the side of the Greeks, who got
accustomed to reject every overture suspiciously, as an
attack on the freedom of the Eastern Church and its
loyal adherence to the traditional deposit.
But meanwhUe the great and growing Eussian
Empire had become the centre of Greek Christianity,
and the daughter Church of Eussia left a mere hono
rary primacy, without real power, to the mother
Church on the Bosphorus and its PatriarcL For
132 years, from 1588 to 1720, Eussia had a Patri-

Division of East and West. 45
arch of her own.^ But in all points of doctrine and
usage the Greek type was preserved unchanged. Just
at the time of the erection of the Patriarchate began
also the efforts of Eome and the Jesuits to bring
about an union of the Churches in Poland, which
then stiU included whole districts belonging to the
Greek rite, in Lithuania and in Eussia. In Poland
and Lithuania the attempt succeeded by means of the
Bishops taken from noble PoUsh families. As all
the externals of worship were left unchanged, and
the question of the Filioque was uninteUigible both to
people and clergy, the union simply consisted in throw
ing off the Patriarch of Constantinople and submitting
to the Pope. .All this, however, was the work of force
and intrigue, dictated by, motives of policy and ambi
tion. The Lithuanians were to be completely separated
from the Muscovite Empire, to which they were bound
by ties both of race and reUgion. The antagonism
between Eussia, which was constantly advancing, and
Poland, which was constantly growing weaker and more
' [By an ukase of January 25, 1721, Peter the Great abolished the Patri
archate of Moscow, which had been established with the consent of the
four Eastern Patriarchs, and substituted the " Most Holy Governing
Synod " — the composition of which has been subsequently changed more
than once — as the supreme authority in the Russian Church. To this
change the Patriarch of Constantinople assented two years afterwards.]

46 Rettnion of the Churches.
anarchical, has shaped the whole Church-history of the
Slavonic world from the middle of the sixteenth cen
tury to this day. The attempt of the Poles to seat two
impostors (the false Demetriuses) side by side on the
Eussian throne sprang from the same origin ; they were
to subjugate the Eussian Church to the Pope. The
only result attained, after many persecutions and acts
of sanguinary violence, was the internal spUt of the
Polish nation. The nobles and higher clergy remained
Uniate or Latin, whUe the people and the lower
clergy were Greek, or at least ready and inclined to
return to the Eussian or separate Greek Church.
These unionist efforts conducted by the Jesuits, with
their brutal tyranny, have had unforeseen consequences
of world-wide import. They have led at once to the
aggrandizement of Eussia and the downfaU of Poland ;
to the first, by inspiring the Eussian people with that
crusading spirit or proud national feeUng of " the world
against us and we against the world," which taught
them to regard every foreign war as a war of religion ;
to the dissolution of Poland, because its reUgious
divisions could not be healed, nor yet be pacified by
the establishment of civU equality. Besides the system
of elective monarchy and the anarchy and venaUty of

Division of East and West. 47
its nobles, the chief cause of the destruction of Poland
was reUgious dissent and the intervention of Eussia,
when appealed to for the protection of its co-reU-
gionists. From the time of Peter the Great Poland
was dependent on the wiU of the Czar, and yet it pro
ceeded with an incomprehensible blindness to exclude
its numerous non-Catholic citizens from all offices and
posts, and to oppress them in other ways. A long
series of reUgious wars, always carried on with horrible
cruelty, extends through the later history of Poland,
even over the first partition.
The aggrandizement of Eussia since the middle of
the seventeenth century had been mainly due to the
Czars undertaking the charge of their foreign co-reli
gionists and seeking to draw them over to themselves.
Catherine n. wished to reap the harvest sown by her
predecessors during the last 130 years, and incorporate
Poland, where it was possible, with the Eussian Em
pire. By the two partitions of 1772 and 1793, she had
placed whole dioceses of the Uniate Church, including
two in Galicia, and in 1796 several miUions of Uniates,
under Eussian rule. From that time forward it became
a fixed aim of Eussian poUcy to abolish the union, and
to bring back these miUions — sometimes by gentle

48 Reunion of the Churches.
means, where necessary by violence — into the bosom of
the Greek Church. The higher Polish clergy with the
Jesuits had paved the way for this, by drawing over the
nobUity to the Latin rite against the former agreement,
so that the people who had remained true to the Greek
rite felt aUenated from them even in reUgious matters.
The clergy themselves had often Latinized, and thereby
increased the confusion and division. And so it was
easy for the Eussian government to dissolve the union
in this kingdom divided against itself. The method
adopted was to leave the people to choose whether to
remain Latins or to return to the "Mother Church."
They almost always chose the latter. Under the Czar
Nicholas, up to 1839, there were two miUion Uniates
in Eussia, but by an ukase of March 25 that year,
they also were brought over to the national Church.
And so at last of the great Uniate Church of the north,
which once contained several mUUons, there is nothing
left but a few poor fragments in the diocese of Ohelm.
And Catherine understood weU enough to whom she
owed her chief successes in Poland ; when Clement xiv.
suppressed the Jesuit Order,^ she received them grate-
1 [The Jesuit Order was suppressed by Clement XIV. (Ganganelli) in
1773, and restored by Pius vu. in 1814, when some of its older members
were stUl alive.]

Division of East and West. 49
fuUy as educators of the PoUsh nobiUty and counsellors
of the Kings and Bishops who had played so effectively
into the hands of Eussia. By her command the Order
with its revenues continued to exist in her dominions.
The long history of this union, this ecclesiastical
tragedy, which had its beginning, middle, and end in
¦violence, persecution, oppression, and bloodshed, and
closed with the destruction of a once mighty kingdom,
teaches us how a union of divided Churches is not to
be effected.
In GaUcia, South Hungary, and Transylvania, there
are stiU Uniate Churches, including together two
milUons and a half of souls. But everywhere the
mixture of the Eoman and Greek rite, or the super
seding of the latter by the former, which a section of
the clergy are always aiming at, causes disturbances
and perplexity of conscience, and endangers the continu
ance of the union.
In general, the Eastern Church has remained where
it was when the two halves of Christendom were stUl in
communion. Since then it has been disturbed by no
important doctrinal controversies, and there has accord
ingly been no occasion for dogmatic definitions. Its
theology has remained thoroughly patristic and tradi-
D

50 Reunion of the Churches.
tional, keeping to the writings of the Fathers up to the
seventh century, and practicaUy closing with St. John
of Damascus in the eighth, whUe the theological move
ment of the West began in the ninth, culminated with
the scholasticism of the thirteenth and fourteenth cen
turies, and then again in the sixteenth and seventeenth
had to encounter its great adversary, the Protestant
doctrine and theology. Even in the twelfth century,
although there were many points in dispute between
Eome and Constantinople, it was stiU the prevalent
¦view that there was but one great universal Church,
embracing East and West alike. The national hatred
was great, but neither side dared to say this, " We alone
are the Catholic Church, and you are excommunicated,
apostate, heretical." Both sides appealed to the first
seven or eight (Ecumenical CouncUs and their decrees,
and held that fresh decisions binding the universal
Church could only be enacted at such another Synod
representing both East and West. And that is stUl
the beUef in the East and in Eussia. With this is
connected the patriarchal theory, that there are five
Presidents of the whole Church, four in the East and
one in the West, namely, the Pope, to whom belongs the
first rank, but no power or dominion over the rest. But

Division of East and West. 51
since the Pope has separated himself from the commu
nion of the rest, and put forward inadmissible claims to
dominion, his place has been taken by the later Patri
archate of Moscow, and since 1720 by the Governing
Synod of St. Petersburg which superseded it ; and if
any controversy concerning the whole Church required
settlement, it would be referred to the four Oriental
patriarchs, and decided by their unanimous verdict.
Thus it was that before 1854 the doctrinal differ
ences between East and West were very slight, but the
differences in Church constitution, ritual, and worship
were considerable.
The insertion of the Filioque in the Nicene Creed is
an offence to the Orientals, who say that the Latin
Church alone had no right to make it, and that this
ancient symbol must be maintained in the precise form
fixed by the (Ecumenical CouncUs. The Popes aUowed
it to remain without the addition in the (Uniate)
Eastern Churches. So again with Purgatory. AU
Oriental Churches rejected the notion of a purifying
fire after death, and at the Council of Florence the Pope
and his theologians consented to its being abandoned or
left an open question, and the doctrine of the Church
confined to the permission or recommendation of prayer

5 2 Reunion of the Churches.
for the dead.^ No objection was ever made to the use
of the chaUce in the East, though the Popes persistently
refused it to Western nations, or withdrew it after being
once conceded, at the cost of rivers of blood and of
the strengthening and extension of Protestantism. So
again with the marriage of priests. The universal
custom of Eussia and the East, that every secular priest
should marry before ordination, was never assaUed by
the Popes, nor did they ever require the introduction of
ceUbacy. It was out of regard for the Greek Church
that at the Council of Trent no condemnation was
pronounced on divorce for adultery, as an error, and the
CouncU contented itself with -vindicating the opposite
practice of the Latin Church.^
As regards Baptism, which the Orientals perform by
1 [This is all that is taught authoritatively now. The Council of Trent
(Sess. xxv.) simply defines "Purgatorium esse, animasque ibi detentas
fidelium suffragiis, potissimum vero acceptabili altaris sacrificio juvari,"
and forbids preachers to deal with subtle and difficult questions, which
tend rather to curiosity and superstition than to edification. Perrone the
Jesuit Professor at the Roman College for the last thirty years, says
accordingly, " Duo tantum ab Ecclesil de Purgatorio defiuita sunt, ejus
dem scilicet existentia, et suflragiorum utilit.is erga defunctorum animas.
Omnia proinde quse ad locum, tempus, poenarum uaturam et acerbitatem
spectant, dogma non attingimt ; prout nee attingunt quae ad modum per
tinent, quo defunctorum animse suffragiis fidelium adjuvantur."— Pririeci.
Theol. Parisiis, 1854, vol. i pp. 478, 9. The Greek Synod of Bethlehem,
held in 1672, ou this, as on other points, virtually indorsed the teaching
of Trent.]
^ [Divorce a vinculo is not however allowed among the Uniates.]

Division of East and West. 53
immersion, whUe throughout the West, both CathoUc
and Protestant, affusion only is used, in Constanti
nople it was for some time the custom to reject Western
baptism and rebaptize converts. In Eussia, also, a
Synod held in 1620, under the Patriarch PhUaret, pre
scribed this rebaptism, but the PhUaret of our own day
observes that it was an order not to be justified by the
doctrine of the Church, but excusable on account of
the crimes of the age.'' Latterly Constantinople has
foUowed the ad-vice of St. Petersburg, and abandoned
the practice of rebaptizing, thereby admitting the
vaUdity of Western baptism.
Even the official language of Eome used to speak not
of heresy but only of schism, which had come to be
termed the Photian Schism — an unhistorical designa
tion, for Photius, who came forward in the ninth cen
tury as the accuser of Eome and the West, did not
effect any separation, and the mutual recognition and
intercommunion of the Churches lasted two centuries
longer. Indeed, as late as 1583, Pope Gregory xm.
addressed a friendly letter to Jeremiah, Patriarch of
Constantinople, calling him his "venerable brother,"
and breathing no syUable about subjection or recanta-
1 PhUaret's Geschichte Russlands, trans, by Blumenthal, 1872, vol. ii. p. 98.

54 Reunion of the Churches.
tion of any doctrine, but only begging him, to exert his
authority for the reception of the new calendar in the
East.^ And the ecclesiasliical acts of the separated
Eastern Bishops and Priests have been acknowledged
as valid in the West on the ground of their episcopal
succession and ordination, as was distinctly shown at
the CouncU of Florence, where neither the Pope nor
his theologians maintained that they had lost their
jurisdiction (or power of absolution) through separa
tion from Eome.
The great stumbUngblock and real hindrance to any
understanding in the eyes of aU Easterns is the Papacy,
in the form which it has assumed according to the
ultramontane theory, since the time of Gregory -vn., of
an absolute spiritual and temporal dominion over the
whole Christian world. Both Latins and Greeks said
as much in the middle ages, and it is stiU openly
avowed in our o-wn day, as weU by converts as by
Eussians and Greeks themselves.^ And now, through
recent occurrences, every hope of reconcUiation and
future reunion has been purposely cut up by the roots.
The present Pope has within the last few years imposed
1 See Theiner's Die Staatskirche Russlands, 1853, p. 47.
2 Cf. e.g. Prince Augustine Galiztn's L'Eglise Grmco-Russe, Paris 1861
p. 59. ' . .

Division of East and West. 5 5
three new articles of faith — the Immaculate Conception,
his Universal Episcopate, and his InfaUibUity. None
of his predecessors for 1800 years, with one soUtary
exception, has done anything of the kind, and that one,
Boniface vm., contented himself with a single dogma,
and did not succeed in securing the acceptance of that.^
The whole traditions of the Eastern Church, its canon
law and patristic Uterature, contain nothing in support
of these doctrines, or capable of being brought into
harmony with them. The forgeries employed to per
suade the Greeks to accept them have long since
been seen through and exposed.
In Eome the mind and temper of the Greeks and
Eussians was perfectly weU understood. It was known
that on their principles this attempt to make new
dogmas could only be regarded as a crime and a blas
phemy. The division can no longer, as before, be
caUed a mere separation or schism ; the whole Eastern
and Eussian Church, with its seventy-five milUons,
must now be declared heretical, and the Curia and
1 [The author refers to the Bull Unam Sanctam, issued in 1302, defining
that the spiritual and temporal swords are equally committed by God to
the Roman Pontifi-, and that it is absolutely essential to salvation for every
human being to be subject to him. The Bull was publicly burnt at Paris,
and Philip the Fair appealed to a future General CouncU. It was virtually
withdra-vm by Clement v.]

56 Reunion of the Churches.
Jesuits must admit aU the consequences that foUow
from that declaration. To speak any longer of hopes
of a future union would border on madness. We can
but assume that this was deliberately intended at Eome
— entire separation for ever and for aU eternity. But
man proposes and God disposes.
The Eussian people — viz., the thinking and active -
portion of them, who form public opinion — beUeve
that two great tasks Ue before them, one in Europe,
the other in Asia. The latter is the strengthening
and maintenance of Christianity, everywhere in Asia
oppressed by Islam, and the restoration of a great
Asiatic Eastern Church. The Privy Councillor Moura-
vieff, a member of the Governing Synod, refers to this
point when he says : — " We are thoroughly convinced
that the famous Oriental Sees wUl recover their ancient
splendour." ^ Indeed, the system of the Eussian and
the whole Eastern Church requires that the three
ancient Patriarchs of Alexandria, Antioch, and Jeru
salem, should again become in fact what they were
formerly, and not be mere assessors of the Patri
arch of Constantinople. In Europe it is the idea
of Panslavism which shapes the thought of young
1 Question Religie-use d'Orient et d'Occident, p. 97.

Division of East and West. 5 7
Eussia, the ruling and acting Eussia* of the future.
And not there only, but throughout Eastern Europe,
this notion or hope is strongly leavening the popular
mind, into which it sinks deeper every day. Yet the
object aimed at, whether it be the moral or poUtical
union of aU Slavonic peoples, or of the ten principal
cognate races, which comprise together some eighty
miUions, has no historical basis, and has never before
found expression or sympathy. For the first time,
in our own day, some Bohemian scholars, who had
advanced from linguistic to historical investigations,
discovered that aU these nationaUties united by a com
mon primitive language sprung from a common stock.
It was a natural inference from this in Eussia, that the
Eussian nation itself, comprising fifty-four miUions of
the eighty mUlion Slaves, was caUed to the hegemony
of the race. When the question is regarded from an
ecclesiastical point of view, we find that over two-thirds,
or fifty-six mUlions, of the Slaves belong to the Greek
Church, nineteen millions to the Eoman Catholic, three
mUUons to the Uniate, and about a milUon and a half
are Protestants. And thus the Panslavist idea natur
ally points to the formation of a great united Slavonic
Church, in which seventy-eight million Slaves might be

58 Reunion of the Churches.
religiously weldfed together through a union of Latins
and Easterns. Even now, a letter of the Czech his
torian and leader, Palacky, to the Eussian spokesman
of Panslavism, Pogodin, is going the round of the
daily papers.'' Palacky salutes him as "the reawakener
and apostle of the happy idea of Slavonic national
union," and adds, " Praise and thanks to the aU-
merciful God, who has blessed your labours and mine.
The Slavonic national spirit has waked up from the
slumber of centuries ; the sentiment of common fel
lowship is constantly gaining ground in aU Slavonic
countries. The ultimate triumph of the cause we, who
are both old, may leave with confidence to the rising
generation.'' That younger generation wUl soon dis
cover, if it has not discovered already, that, with the
mass of the people, no community of mind and senti
ment, such as is aimed at, is possible ¦without an union
of Churches. The Czechs may consult the Eussians
about that.
Since the time of Alexander il a powerful move
ment has penetrated the Eussian Church. It feels
itseU to be the chief representative and leader of the
Eastern Church, so venerable for its age, its unbroken
• See Wiener Neue Freie Presse, 10 Feb. 1872.

Division of East and West. 59
succession, and its immutabUity. Even the indepen
dent Church of the kingdom of Greece is stirring, and
in the South and Eussian North alike an ecclesiastical
Uterature is rapidly growing up. Foreign, and espe
ciaUy German Uterature, is read and studied. Several
young men in Greece have received their theological
training at German universities. And at the same
time energetic efforts are being made in the Eussian
Church to secure the reforms which are urgently needed.
It is perceived that the whole position of the clergy, the
feud between the white and black clergy — the seculars
and parish priests on one side, and the monks and
bishops, who are taken from their ranks, on the other
— and the want of preaching and popular instruction,
are matters requiring radical change. This is not only
felt but openly asserted ; and those who remember the
days of the Emperor Nicholas cannot but be astonished
at the advances made since then. And this Church is
able to correct any past mistake or error, as has been
done in the case of rebaptism, even should it affect
the decree of a CouncU. She is not compeUed by her
principles, on the ground of any fancied infalUbiUty,
always to drag her errors after her Uke a baU fastened
to her heeL And accordingly there is ground for the
fairest hopes in that quarter of the Christian world.

LECTUEE IV.
THE GERMAN REFORMATION.
rr^HEEE are not many years tn the world's history
where two eventful pages come so close together
as on March 16 and November 1, 1517. On the former
day the fifth Lateran CouncU at Eome was closed after
several years' session, and thereby the last hope of
any reform of the Church from above was laid in the
grave. That assembly of ItaUan bishops had but one
object, to extend the power of the Pope, and make any
independent reforming CoimcU, like the CouncU of
Basle, impossible for the future.^ Seven months later
Luther's theses were posted up at Wittemberg, and the
contest began which, after 350 years, is stUl unfinished.
i [Tlie fifth Lateran Synod was opened by Julius n. in 1612, and dis
solved in 1517 by Leo s. It consisted of some fifty or sixty Italian bishops
only, and has never been received as oecumenical, nor did even ultramon
tane writers, till quite lately, venture to affirm its oecumenicity with any
confidence ; Bellarmine and Muzzarelli, e.g. speak very doubtfully. Its
principal achievements were the abolition of the Pragmatic Sanction, and
the assertion, in the Bull Pastor JEtemus, of the superiority of Popes to
Councils, in direct contradiction to the famous decrees of Constance.]
60

The German Reformatio7i. 6i
The Eeformation was a movement so deeply rooted
in the needs of the age, and sprang so inevitably from
the ecclesiastical conditions of the centuries immedi
ately preceding, that it took possession of aU the nations
of the West in turn. So powerfuUy did it sway men's
minds in Italy, the native home of the Papacy, that
Paul IV. declared the Inquisition, with its dungeons and
blazing pyres, to be the only sure and firm support of
the Papacy there. In Italy and Spain, however, it was
found possible to crush the movement, though only at
a frightful sacrifice of human Ufe ; but in Germany it
sank so deep into the heart of the nation that even such
a tribunal as the Spanish Inquisition would have faUed
to achieve the task.
This force and strength of the Eeformation was only
in part due to the personaUty of the man who was its
author and spokesman in Germany. It was Luther's
overpowering greatness and wonderful many-sidedness of
mind that made him the man of his age and his people.
Nor was there ever a German who had such an intui
tive knowledge of his countrymen, and was again so com
pletely possessed, not to say absorbed, by the national
sentiment, as the Augustinian monk of Wittemberg.
The mind and spirit of the Germans was in his hand

62 Reunion of the Churches.
what the lyre is in the hand of a skUled musician. He
had given them more than any man in Christian days
ever gave his people — language, popular manuals of
instruction. Bibles, hymnology. AU his opponents
could offer in place of it, and aU the reply they could
make to him, was insipid, colourless, and feeble, by the
side of his transporting eloquence. They stammered;
he spoke. He alone has impressed the indeUble stamp
of his mind on the German language and the German
inteUect, and even those among us who hold him in
religious detestation, as the great heresiarch and seducer
of the nation, are constrained, in spite of themselves, to
speak with his words and think with his thoughts.
And yet stUl more powerful than this Titan of the
world of mind was the yearning of the German people
for deUverance from the bonds of a corrupted Church
system. Had no Luther arisen Germany would not
have remained CathoUc. We may gather that from the
enthusiastic sympathy, especiaUy in South Germany,
for the doctrine of the Anabaptists. This doctrine,
which emanated from the lowest ranks, was zealously
attacked by the whole body of theologians. It was
essentially distinguished from Luther's teaching, whose
favourite dogma of justification by faith alone it re-

The German Reformation. 63
jected. But many laid down their Uves for this form
of beUef, and if the princes had not hastUy combined to
strangle the movement, which was not only reUgious,
but poUtical and social, tn the blood of its adherents,
Germany would probably have been divided, not, as
afterwards happened, between Lutherans and Zwing-
Uans, but between Anabaptists and Lutherans. For
the Eeformed (ZwingUan) doctrine was never popular
in Germany ; it was a mere exotic growth, artificiaUy
fostered by the princes, and was generaUy only endured
under compulsion.
Luther had one very powerful aUy besides the national
sympathy, and that was the Court of Eome itself. Had
the Curia been advised by an astute disciple of the
German Eeformer, he could hardly have given counsel
more efficient or more profitable to his master than
what was actuaUy foUowed. At the first moment,
the official theologian of the Curia, Sylvester Prierio,
Master of the Sacred Palace, met Luther's appeal to the
Bible with the assertion that the force and authority of
Holy Scripture is derived entirely from the Pope. To
censure anything done by Eome was heresy. Then,
again, Leo x.'s BuU against Luther condemned as errors
such universaUy familiar truths as that the best penance

64 Reunion of the Churches.
is reformation of Ufe, and that it is against the charity
of the Holy Ghost to burn heretics. If the indulgence-
preachers told men that as soon as the money chinks tn
the chest the soul fUes out of Purgatory, they preached
to deaf ears.
But if Luther and the other Eeformers painted in
the darkest colours the deep corruption in the Church,
the wretched management of ecclesiastical affairs, the
crimes of the clergy, and the unspeakable misery
of the people, so utterly neglected, deceived, and plun
dered by their pastors, aU this was fuUy admitted
on the other side. And more than this too : the
Popes themselves could not deny — for it was too
notorious — that Eome itself was the seat and source
of corruption, and the Popes its authors and dissemi
nators. Adrian vi. had it openly proclaimed at the
Diet of Nuremberg tn 1522, that everything in the
Church had been perverted, and a disease had spread
from the head to the members, from the Popes to
the rest of the rulers of the Church.^ And what
Adrian proclaimed in general, in accents of penitence,
the Germans read tn detaU twelve years later in the
1 [Adrian vi., a Netherlander, who succeeded Leo x. in 1522, was a man
of deep piety, but he reigned only one year. He was the last non-Italian
Pope.]

The German Reformation. 65
famous memorial drawn up at the command of Paul in.
by nine Eoman prelates, including Caraffa, afterwards
Paul IV., where ' the theory invented by sycophants
of the Pope's absolute dominion over the whole Church
was characterized as the source of aU this corrup
tion.-' One member of the Commission, Cardinal Con
tarini, who was afterwards papal legate in Germany,
expressly maintained the impiety of this doctrine,
which made the Pope absolute lord and master of the
whole Church, and defended Luther's work on the
Babylonish Captivity, where the doctrine of Christian
Uberty is opposed to this tyrannical doctrine.
What was communicated to the Emperor Charles v.
as the -wish and ad^vice of the Pope,i was mainly
comprised in the request to put down the German
movement by force of arms. The Legate Campeggio
represented in 1530 that capital punishment and the
estabUshment of the Inquisition in aU German countries
' [Paul m. commenced his reign by summoning several distinguished
men of reforming tendencies and devout life into the Sacred College,
among whom were Contarini, Pole, Sadolet, Carafia, and Giberto ; and
they were encouraged to speak their opinions freely. See Ranke's Popes,
vol. i. pp. 98 sqq. It was, however, through Carafi'a's influence, who
distrusted all gentler means of gaining over the Protestants, aided by the
advice of Ignatius Loyola, that the Roman Inquisition was established iu
1542, and he became one of the first and severest Grand Inquisitors. Ih.
pp. 141 sqq^ E

66 Reunion of the Churches.
would be the best remedy.'^ And when at last the
Emperor took up arms, Paul iii. sent an auxiliary force
commanded by his nephews. And thus the feeUng of
hatred against Eome was so universal, that MarceUus H.,
when legate in Germany, wrote to Eome that nothing
so fiUed htm with fear and horror as the intense
exasperation of a whole nation, which he everywhere
encountered.^ Even a Jesuit Uving in Eome, John
Faure, in 1750 felt obliged to acknowledge that the
principal and indeed only cause of the separation of
the Northern nations was, not at aU their love for
Lutheran and Calvinist doctrines, but their hatred of
the Pope and Court of Eome, and this hatred was
increased by the profligacy, pride, domineering, and
covetousness of the clergy, especiaUy of the reUgious
orders.^ This too was remarkable and hard to explain, that
after the famous BuU issued by Leo x. in 1520 against
the earliest publications of Luther, the Popes refrained
from any further dog-matic pronouncements. Europe
was in a state of the extremest excitement, and the
1 So thought Clement vii. according to Cardinal Loaysa. See Cartas
al Emperador Carlos V. por su Confesor. Heine, Berlin, 1848.
2 Cf. Anecdota Romana.
' Commentarium in Bullam Pauli III., 1750, p. 139.

The German Reformation. 67
whole reUgious edifice seemed tottering to its faU. The
most discordant doctrines, in sharp antagonism to aU
pre^vious teaching, were forcing their way to the front ;
never had there been a period in aU Christian history
when the perplexity of men's minds was so great, and
the people left to themselves so utterly helpless, as in
the forty-three years from 1520 to 1563. Yet the Popes,
according to the latest theory the sole infaUible teachers
of mankind, kept sUence. Not a single doctrinal
Bull of that whole period exists ; one whole generation
was suffered to grow up in Europe, and another to
pass to its grave, without knowing what the infaUible
chair in Eome bade them beUeve on the gravest reU
gious questions. German Bishops, like Faber in Vienna,
made the most mo^ving representations. The whole
generation, he said, whose birth or youth coincided with
the time of the great controversy, knew not what was
the true reUgion, and if this continued men would
become thoroughly godless and atheistical.' As late as
1530 he ¦wrote to the Pope that, if even then he would
undertake the correction of abuses, there was great
hope that aU Germany, and indeed the whole Church,
would be brought back to its earUer condition of
1 Raynaldus, Annal. Eccl. ann. 1536, p. 70.

68 Reunion of the Churches.
peaceful orthodoxy.^ But all was in vain. The Popes
persisted in their poUcy of sUence, and of putting every
obstacle in the way of the CouncU so anxiously looked for,
untU it was too late for its decrees to make the sUghtest
impression on a generation that had been thoroughly
imbued with Protestant views from childhood.
And the German Church ? Where was it then, and
how did it help itself? The Germans had stiU indeed
a poUtical unity — the Empire, ¦with the Emperor and the
Imperial Diet; and they had Bishops and dioceses. But
there was wanting a higher organization of common Ufe,
— in a word, a German national Church. For centuries
no German CouncU had been held, nor anything done
to remedy even the grossest and most crying abuses.
In truth, such a Council was hardly possible, and it is a
significant fact that during the whole forty years of the
Eeformation contest, neither the German episcopate,
nor even any considerable portion of it, made a single
attempt to take counsel in Synod on the reUgious situa
tion and the common measures to be adopted. There
is scarcely a parallel case in aU Church history, but it
is explained by their conscious impotence. For since
the dismemberment of the entire Church system through
1 Raynald. AnnaX. Eccl. ann. 1536, p. 54.

The German Reformation. 69
the Popes, the German Church lay on the gTound like
a helpless and motionless giant with fettered limbs.
The whole conduct of the Popes from Clement vil.
do^wnwards, in regard to the constantly renewed peti
tions and requirements of the Emperor, the sovereigns,
and the nations, as recent discoveries have revealed it to
us, was one long series of evasions, intrig-ues, and false
hoods. Pius IV. himself declared without hesitation to
the Venetian ambassador, that his predecessors had
professed to ¦wish for a Council, but had not reaUy
desfred it. And he added, that if he wished after their
example to give the mere appearance of a CouncU, he
could keep the world occupied for three or four years
at least ¦with the question of when it should meet.^
Many may find it incomprehensible how, at a time
when one nation after another was being swept into
the movement, the authorities at Eome should have
obstinately persisted in refusing what they must have
themselves acknowledged to be just and right ; but
three causes conspired to produce this result. The first
was the powerful and compact resistance of the whole
entourage of a Pope and his court, which profited by the
abuses. The second cause lay in the diminution of
1 Cf. Reimarus, Forschungen z-wr deutschen Geschichte, pp. 594, 602.

70 Reunion of the Churches.
power which any reform must inevitably involve. For
the development of the papal system, with its centra
lized bureaucracy and plenary power to meddle in
everything, had sunk the Church in such deep deg'rada-
tion that every removal of an abuse, every improvement
in doctrine and discipUne, would have been also a
lessening or limitation of papal power. Lastly and
chiefly, it was the supreme principle and soul of the
whole Eoman system of ecclesiastical administration
that made the Papacy hostUe to aU reform — the prin
ciple, namely, that a claim once preferred could never
be abandoned, an error or injustice never pubUcly con
fessed, and therefore never remedied. Authority must
remain inviolate, and can never be sufficiently exalted.
This was pre-eminently the principle of the new Order
of Jesuits, which now came to the assistance of the
Papacy in its sore need. And this soon appeared in
the great question of the use of the chaUce, which the
sovereigns, who in other respects were entirely opposed
to Protestantism, were now urging, because they saw no
other way of retaining their subjects in the ancient
Church. But the Jesuits, Canisius especially, carried
the day by insisting that the point at issue was the
authority of the Church, meaning that of the Pope, for

The German Reformation. 7 1
which alone they cared. If any concession was made,
how was the earUer conduct of the Popes to be excused,
with the bloody wars and countless holocausts of human
victims it had cost ?^
When we look closely into the circumstances of Ger
many during the period from 1520 to 1568, we perceive
how the resistance of the old CathoUc element became
constantly feebler and the number of CathoUcs more
Umited, tUl at last the Protestant beUef, Uke a mighty
stream, swept everything before it. In a former work
I have taken pains to discover aU the German scholars
who stUl adhered to the ancient Church, or would
gladly have remained loyal to it, but it was a mere
handful. In the reports of papal nuncios during thirty
years we read that there were stUl many so-caUed
" Expectants," who wished to remain undecided tUl a
true CouncU pointed out to them the right way. We
read how these nuncios were adjured and implored with
tears by the highest personages, by princes, to impress
on the conscience of the Pope the urgent necessity of
at once convoking an (Ecumenical or a German CouncU
as the only avaUable means of saving the Church.
But, generally speaking, aU the learning and culture
' Cf. Canisii Vita, p. 199.

72 Reunion of the Churches.
gra^vitated to the Protestant side, especiaUy the influ
ential class of schoolmasters and humanists, and even
the clergy. These last were stUl very numerous at the
beginning of the movement, for the German Church was
the wealthiest in the world. The endowed benefices
were numberless ; even small towns had from thirty
to forty priests, besides convents and monks, and we see
these clergy going over in shoals to the Eeformation,
or succumbing without the slightest resistance to the
introduction of Protestantism. In those countries and
cities where the new religion had been imposed by the
civU authority or the magistrates, the CathoUc clergy
did not depart, as they easUy might have done, but
stayed where they were, partly in voluntary partly in
involuntary subjection. Even the dissolution of the
monasteries only converted the monks into Protestant
preachers, or foUowers of some secular caUing. And
yet in South Germany there were hundreds of un
occupied parishes and empty monasteries, where the
priests and monks ejected by the Eeformation would
have been gladly welcomed and cared for, had they
come. And this too at a time when aU over Europe,
in France, England, the Netherlands, Italy, Spain,
fagots were blazing, and men preferred a fiery death to
denying their faith.

The German Reformation. 73
In 1557 the Venetian ambassador, Badoero, who was
weU informed, reported that seven-tenths of the Ger
man nation had become Lutheran, and two-tenths
belonged to other sects — the Eeformed and Anabaptist,
— while only one-tenth remained Catholic. The greater
part of Austria and Bohemia was Protestant, and in
Bavaria, the nobility, and the Emperor MaximiUan 11.
himseK, though he continued nominaUy CathoUc, were
of the same reUgion. But since the end of the six
teenth and beginning of the seventeenth century, half
Germany has graduaUy become CathoUc again. This
happened partly through the internal division of the
Protestants and the Utigious spirit of their divines,
which produced disgust and painful uncertainty among
the people, and led many to look on the rigid system
of authority and uniformity of the ancient Church as
preferable. But it was chiefly by the oppression and
banishment of the Protestant ministers, the forced
emigration of those who adhered to their faith, the
destruction of Protestant Bibles, catechisms, and hymn-
books, and generaUy the employment of aU those
means of coercion which the Jesuits had reduced to
a system, that the so-caUed counter-Eeformation in
Austria and Bavaria and the ecclesiastical principaUties
was brought about.

74 Reunion of the Churches.
But the notion of a permanent separation from the
ancient Church had not occurred to the generation
of the Eeformation era in Germany. It was only a
reformation that was demanded ; it had been longed for
and demanded for centuries before. The old dweUing-
house was thought to require repairing and cleansing, but
there was no intention of puUing it down and buUding
a new one in its place. The idea of two rival Churches
in Germany arrayed in permanent hostiUty against each
other shocked the mind. All diets and reUgious con
ferences of the day were conducted on the assumption
that the adherents of the new and the old reUgion were
still members of one universal Church, and that a
common understanding could and ought to be arrived
at, and communion of worship restored. Even when
the Augsburg religious treaty of 1555 estabUshed a
legal and political separation, the Estates of the Empire
consoled themselves and the nation with the hope of
a future Council ; and as that could not be at once
obtained, they thought another reUgious conference
should be tried, when, as was said, " the truth would be
brought to light." Two years later this conference -was
opened without any result at Worms. But still for a
long time the separation continued to be regarded as a

The German Reformation. 75
temporary and provisional state of things, although it
seemed as if the Tridentine decrees on the one side, and
the Formulary of Concord^ on the other, in their sharp
antithesis must exclude all hope. Yet a century after
the separation the hope of a future union was still
clung to in the Articles of the AVestphalian Peace, and
the boundary-lines were fixed only until, " by the grace
of God," a friendly settlement of the religious contro
versies was attained.^
With the year 1560, at the end of the reign of the
Emperor Ferdinand L, a revolution began to work in
Germany, and generaUy both in the Catholic and the
Protestant camp, which could not fail to make even any
approach to friendly negotiations more difficult, and
seemed destined to make the breach perpetual. Among
the German Protestants the long series of internal
controversies was decided in a strictly Lutheran
sense, and the buUding up of the Lutheran dogmatic
system followed, — a theological codification studiously
sharpening all the points of divergence from the
ancient Church. It was based on the Formulary of
Concord, which was not a common symbol like
1 [The Formula Concordice was established in 1577, after Luther's death,
as the final and formal standard of Lutheran doctrine.]
2 Cf. Instrum. Pacis Westphal. v. 14, 25, 31, 48.

76 Reunion of the Churches.
the Augsburg Confession, but a theological code which
the princes enforced by aU the means of compul
sion at their command. Thenceforward aU attempts
at peace and re-union necessarily ceased. Still more
fatal was the change which took place in the Catholic
Church, coinciding with the latter period of the CouncU
of Trent and the rise of the Jesuit Order. Hitherto,
since 1540, and partly before, there had been a con
siderable body of learned men in the Church, who
were attached indeed to the Catholic doctrine and
communion, but at the same time recommended radical
reforms and a return to the earlier and purer system
of the Church, and were accordingly in favour of
making great concessions to the Protestant party. Such
had been, in Germany, Erasmus and his friends, and
then Witzel, Staphylus, Cassander, Wild (or Ferus), and,
in France, d'Espense, Gentien, Hervet, the Chancellor
I'Hopital, aud others. The gentle Emperor Ferdinand i.
was substantially of the same mind, differing therein
from his brother Charles v., who took the Spanish view,
and only saw in all the movements of the age a
heresy to be rooted out with fire and sword. Ferdi
nand and his son Maximilian il still hoped for a
reconciliation. Ferdinand procured the drawing up of

The German Reformation. Tj
the eirenical memorials of Cassander and Witzel, and
for a long time demanded more searching reforms from
the Council of Trent. He did not obtain them, and
at last agreed, though reluctantly, to the CouncU being
closed without having satisfied even the most moderate
requirements of Church reform.
The writings of Witzel and Cassander on one side,
and the opinions and influence of the contemporary
Jesuits, Laynez, Salmeron, and Canisius, on the other,
reveal the wide chasm which was on the point of
opening within the Catholic Church. The former
started from the principle that, to use Cassander's
words addressed to the Emperor Ferdinand, the view
and judgment of the ancient Church must be investi
gated, in order that, as far as possible, the present
Church, which was descended from it, might be restored
to the form it assumed in its free development after
Constantine, at the period of the first Councils.
Cassander adds that the authority of this ancient
Church is so fully recognised, that both sides, even
those who are wont to appeal to Scripture only, appeal
to its verdict. The Jesuits devoted themselves to
enforcing the opposite view. According to their repre
sentation the Church is a great aU-embracing Empire,

78 Reunion of the Churches.
an absolute monarchy, ruled with irresponsible and
plenary power by one man, the Pope. To him aU aUke,
layman and cleric, king and beggar, are equally and
absolutely subject. No one has any rights before him,
and all authority in the Church is an emanation from
his — a mere deputed power that may at any moment
be recalled. This papal kingdom must be upheld and
extended by all means of compulsion and -violence, and
punishments of Ufe and limb, sometimes directly in
flicted, sometimes by invoking the secular arm, which is
bound at once to execute its sentence. To make any
sort of concession to the rebeUious and disobedient
would be simply to put a premium on rebellion. More
over, the Papacy requires large revenues and constant
influx of money from the whole world, partly on account
of the enormous expenses involved in the administra
tion of a kingdom of 200 millions descending into the
minutest details, partly that it may be able to reward
liberally its numerous ministers and instruments. And
therefore all reforms calculated in any way to diminish
the papal income are for that reason, if for no other,
inadmissible. There could not, of course, but be bitter enmity
between the reforming school of CathoUc theologians

The German Reformation. 79
and the Jesuits, and Witzel said with good reason, " We
are the object of their fiercest enmity, because they
wish to preserve the present deformed condition of the
Church, and, according to the principles of their Order,
wiU aUow no improvement." ^ The leading men of this
party soon died off, and those who inherited their ideas
had to keep silence and conceal themselves, for the
Jesuits in a rapid course of victory gained possession of
the CathoUc high schools and gymnasia, and became
confessors and directors of conscience at the Courts,
and who then would have dared in Catholic Germany
to disown their rule or breathe a single notion dis
pleasing to them ? Moreover, every work which sug
gested any concessions at aU being made to the ad
herents of the Eeformation was promptly condemned at
Eome, and every such opinion compromised the author's
safety. And thus on both such sides any approxi
mation seemed impossible. In all the domains of
CathoUc princes Protestant worship was suppressed,
under Jesuit dictation ; it was the professed aim of the
Order to undermine the treaty of Augsburg. Every
thing was rapidly tending to the Thirty Years' War.
1 See his letters to Cassander in 1565, shortly before his death, in Illus-
rium et Cla/rmum Virorum Epistolae, Batav. 1617, p. 280.

8o Reunion of the Churches.
Here I must refer to a peculiar difficulty which
stands in the way of any approximation or friendly
understanding between the German Protestant Church
and one of the ancient Churches. I mean the inter
ruption of ecclesiastical succession, the aboUtion of the
episcopate and episcopal ordination of Presbyters.
There was no external necessity for Luther and his
colleagues to do this, for some of the CathoUc bishops
had early come over to their side. But they thought
that, as in the New Testament the words bislwp and
presbyter are used interchangeably, and the two offices
were not at first distinguished, the episcopate must be
regarded as a mere later aud human institution. But
with it much more too was lost, more than at first sight
they themselves comprehended; the link which attached
them to the old apostoUc Church was severed, and the
bridge broken down by means of which communion or
mutual exercise of influence between the two bodies
might have been maintained or reopened. This ap
peared also in their relation to the EngUsh Church,
which had equaUy issued from the Eeformation, but
had retained the episcopate, and with it the succession
and ordination. Consequently, any German Protestant
minister who wished to enter its ser-vice had first to

The German Reformation. 8i
undergo episcopal ordination, whereas a Latin or Greek
priest coming over to its communion is received at once
by virtue of his former orders, the vaUdity of which is
acknowledged. And on episcopal ordination depends
the consecration of the Holy Eucharist and absolution.
And aU this was sacrificed on the strength of a doubtful
interpretation of Scripture, for not a few Protestant
theologians held that the episcopate was instituted by
the Apostles, though in the later apostolic age; and
aU must aUow that the whole history of the Church
from the death of the Apostles exhibits a settled
episcopate existing everywhere, and indeed is com
pletely shaped by it.
Two distinguished phUosophers, Leibnitz and the
Court preacher Jablonski, about 1701, when Prussia
became a kingdom, perceived the gravity of the false
position into which the German Eeformed Church had
brought herself, and busied themselves with considering
how the defect might be remedied. Leibnitz thought
it would have been better if the Eeformers had not
broken the " linea ordinationis " (the succession) legiti
mately preserved in ancient Christendom, and the
bishops had retained their former position, and priests
F

82 Reunion of the Churches.
been ordained by bishops, as before.^ Jablonski took
a similar view. He thought the episcopate had been
abolished in order to outrage the Eoman Church as
much as possible, whereby also all the Eastern Churches,
the EngUsh, and aU Christian antiquity, was set at
nought. And he added that its restoration was the
more to be ¦wished, because it almost seemed as though
in separating from the Eoman Church they had separ
ated from the universal Church also ; but he did not
deny that there were great difficulties in the way of
such a restoration, which could only be overcome " by
a large measure of heroic spirit." ^
Both representations were addressed to the King of
Prussia, and Frederick L actuaUy, on assuming the royal
title, had two preachers, Ursinus and Sander, conse
crated bishops by the EngUsh Church, but -with their
death this episcopate again became extinct. In our
o^wn days Frederick- WiUiam iv. again took up the
subject, and this was one of his reasons for urging
the establishment of a Protestant bishopric at Jeru
salem. Here a bishop of the EngUsh Church was to
impart ordination to German clergymen ; and in the
* See Joh. Esth. Kapfen's Einige Vertrauten Briefe, Leipzig, 1745,
p. 250. 2 Cf. Henke's Magazin, 1795. No. 222.

The German Reformation. 83
King's instructions occur the words, which have evi
dently been carefuUy chosen, that " he offers his hand
with fuU confidence to the episcopal Church of Eng
land, which unites with evangeUcal principles an his
torical constitution and ecclesiastical independence
aiming at universaUty." This is a gentle but perfectly
intelligible expression of the feeUng that his own
Church was too much isolated and alienated from
the great ancient communions ; and it is in fact weU
kno^wn that he was dissatisfied with his "sovereign
episcopate," and would gladly have intrusted the guid
ance of the Church to fitter hands, meaning thereby an
episcopal constitution.

LECTUEE V.
REACTION TOWARDS UNION ON THE CONTINENT IN THE
SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.
rr^HE Germans displayed a quite remarkable patience
in attempting for nearly a century to heal the
reUgious schism by means of pubUc conferences, the
latest of whichtook place in 1601 at Eatisbon, and
1618 at Prague. But this only resulted in scholastic
disputations, in which everything turned on dialectical
skiU and promptness, and the one point aimed at was
to perplex the adversary and involve him in a contra
diction. The upshot, as a rule, was simply to widen
the chasm, and increase mutual bitterness, without any
real gain to either side. And that always wUl be the
result when each party starts with the conviction of its
own absolute perfection, and seeks nothing but 'victory
and the conversion of opponents to its own views.
In the period succeeding the Thirty Years' War, many
84

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/. ^o/^ ^;^y>^-3fi ^.^ -^^^ . . V ^

Reaction of Seventeenth Century. 85
members of the Lutheran Church felt uncomfortable
and dissatisfied with their position. There was some
thing oppressive and humUiating in the yoke of civU
domination over the Church, and its entire dependence
on secular princes and their theological advisers. It
is true that the scandalous and violent changes of
the reUgion of whole countries, such as took place in
the Palatinate, in Anhalt, and elsewhere, ceased after
the WestphaUan Peace, and the religious changes of
sovereigns affected themselves only. But still the
whole Church system remained in the hands of Con
sistories, under royal control. And to this must be
added the theological ossification and narrow rigidity
of the doctrines which had to be maintained according
to the Formulary of Concord. From these causes
sprang a double reaction, among the laity and the
theologians. The lay reaction manifested itself partly
in the growing frequency of conversions to Catholicism ;
many felt the authority of Popes and Councils to be
preferable to that of a secular prince. On the other
hand, the whole reUgious literature of the laity, from
the seventeenth to far into the eighteenth century, is
penetrated with a profound dissatisfaction at the con
dition of the system and prevalent teaching of the

86 Reunion of the Churches.
Protestant Church. The theological reaction was
chiefly developed in the writings and school of George
Calixtus, as represented at the two universities of
Helmstadt and Konigsberg. Calixtus insisted on the
authority of ecclesiastical tradition, rightly understood,
viz., the consentient teaching of the first five' centuries,
being recognised as well as the scriptural evidence of
doctrine. And thus he approximated to the ancient
Churches, both Eastern and Latin, and evoked the most
vigorous opposition. His view, which is now shared by
so many of the very best men, that the three particular
Churches should not regard themselves as faultless and
incapable of improvement, found no acceptance then on
either side.
MeanwhUe, towards the end of the seventeenth
century the number of converts to the Catholic Church
increased. Queen Christina, the talented and accom
plished daughter of Gustavus Adolphus, resigned the
Swedish throne to embrace Catholicism, in order to
take refuge in the ship of ecclesiastical authority from
the ocean of philosophical doubt. Still more remarkable
was the conversion of the learned Landgrave of Hesse-
Ehineland, who, after twenty years' experience, wrote a
book fuU of well-meant but unsparing exposure of the

Reaction of Seventeenth Century. 87
abuses he had discovered in the Church of his choice.
The motives of several other conversions of princes and
princesses about the same period were less disinterested.
Further influences co-operated to produce in thinking
Protestants a longing, if not for the Catholic Church,
for the appropriation of its prerogatives. The Nether
lander, Hugo Grotius, who was celebrated throughout
Europe as an acute and many-sided scholar, had in his
-widely circulated writings insisted far more strongly
than Calixtus on the profound and excessive divergence
of Protestantism from the Church of the early centuries,
and the necessity of either seeking a reunion with the
ancient Church, or at least jpestoring much which had
been rejected. And afterwards a great impression was
produced by the accession of a truly pious and model
Pope in the person of Innocent XL (1676-1689), who
was at once engaged in earnest conflict with the Jesuits,
and made an attempt, feeble and ineffectual as it proved,
to put a check on their pernicious system of morals.
He was the only Pope who made such advances to
the Protestants as entirely to approve the negotiations
of Spinola, which were based on extensive concessions.
But his participation had to be kept secret, and Spinola
was obliged to act in his o-wn name, without appealing

88 Reunion of the Chiirches.
to the plenary powers granted him by the Pope, be
cause the French Cardinals in Eome were opposed to
the scheme.'' A religious reconciliation with Germany
would then, as afterwards, have been very inconvenient
for French policy.
These labours for reunion commenced in Germany
in 1675, and lasted about thirty years. Eoyas de
Spinola, a Spaniard who had come to Germany as
confessor of the Emperor Leopold's wife, and was made
bishop first of Teria (in Croatia), and then of Neustadt
near Vienna, was the first to undertake the enterprise.
Germany was still suffering from the effects of the
Thirty Years' War, and the Jesuits, who were its authors,
were as powerful as ever at the Courts of Paris and
Vienna. Both the Emperor Leopold and Louis xiv.
had intrusted their consciences to them, and foUowed
their counsel impUcitly in religious matters ; and if
the houses of Hapsburg and Bourbon were united, and
abandoned their feud of 150 years' standing, they
seemed strong enough to crush Protestantism on the
Continent, the more so as it had no powerful protector
^ [Some account of Spinola's labours, and of the negotiations for union
in the seventeenth century generally, may be found in two articles on
"Leibnitz's Letters on Reunion," in the Contemporary Review for May
and August 1867.]

Reaction of Seventeenth Century. 89
to fall back upon. But there was no prospect of this,
owing to the hostUe attitude assumed by Louis towards
the imperial house and the German Empire. The
Emperor Leopold was so deeply interested in the suc
cess of the undertaking that he at last brought the
negotiations for union to Vienna, and summoned
Leibnitz thither.
On the German Protestant side stood Leibnitz and
Molanus, the latter a well-grounded theologian of the
school of CaUxtus; the former the leading mind of
Germany at that date, equally acute and capacious, and
of immense knowledge — an universal genius in his day,
Uke Aristotle of old, and in fact the first who raised
the credit of Germany before the world after the deep
decay of the seventeenth century. After a while,
Bossuet, the most influential of the French bishops,
who might almost be called the theological oracle of
his age, was brought into the negotiations through the
intervention of some royal ladies.-^ Bossuet's famous
Exposition of the Catholic Faith had appeared some
time before, and had at once been translated into all
languages. The aim of his book was to distinguish

' [Especially of Anna Gonzaga of Mantua, wife of Edward, Count Pala
tine.]

90 Rezmion of the Churches.
what is reaUy dogma from theological opinions and
inferences, and to place it before Protestants in the least
repellent form. It had been approved and commended
in Eome by Pope and Cardinals, and has almost
attained and preserved down to our own day the
authority of a Confession of Faith. Now, of course, Uke
so many other writings and views, it is abolished and
become obsolete, for it says nothing of the new articles
of faith fabricated since 1854, and characterizes as
mere school opinions what are now proposed as Divine
revelations. Thus Bossuet puts aside the question of
Infallibility, as a mere scholastic controversy ha-ving
no relation to faith ; and this was approved at Eome
at the time. Now, of course, he is no longer re
garded in his own country as the classical theologian
and most eminent doctor of modern times, but as a
man who devoted his most learned and comprehen
sive work, the labour of many years, to the estabUsh
ment and defence of a fundamental error, and spent
many years of his life in the perversion of facts and
distortion of authorities. For that must be the present
verdict of every infaUibiUst on Bossuet.
At that time the first condition in all such negotia
tions, which had to be demanded on the CathoUc side.

Reaction of Seventeenth Century. 9 1
was that the Protestants should no longer regard and
designate the Pope as Antichrist, and when this was
agreed upon Spinola and Molanus thought a great
point was gained. For this view was stUl universaUy
prevalent, and dominated the thoughts and feelings of
the people to such a degree that' a contemporary
theologian, Hermann of Hurdt, could write to his
colleague Fabricius of Helmstadt that " all Protestants
are so bewitched with this conceit about Antichrist,
that they fly from Catholics as from snakes in the
garden, and think they see a dragon or an evil spirit if
they meet a CathoUc." ^ According to the received view,
the apocalyptic images of the harlot seated on the
beast, who is drunk -with the blood of the saints and
disciples of Jesus, and of Babylon that deceived the
nations, were not to be understood of heathen but of
papal Eome, and the Pope himself as the Antichrist
of Scripture, — a view put forward by the Protestant
divines as the foundation of their religion, though it
is inconsistent with Scripture and involves fatal con
tradictions. But Eome was partly responsible for its
growth. If the Pope was constantly urging on religious
wars, and recommending the extermination of aU
^ MenseVs Magazin, 1788, p. 118.

92 Reunion of the Churches.
heretics by the sword — and even at Eome executions
for Protestantism continued down into the seventeenth
century, — the people were sure to think they saw the
Papacy in the apocalyptic woman drunk with the blood
of the saints, just as it was easy to identify the Man of
Sin spoken of by St. Paul, who exalts himself above
everything divine, and sits in the temple of God, with
the Pope, claiming to be vicar of God, and to exercise
absolute dominion over all nations and Churches.
Untenable as these interpretations are criticaUy, they
have had an enormous influence. At the time of the
Eeformation many thought this the only ground which
would justify them in conscience in separating from
the old Church and establishing a new one. For it is
said of Babylon or Eome in the Apocalypse, "Come
out of her. My people, that ye be not partakers in her
sins." Even during the last century these views have
had an enormous influence, and have built up a brazen
wall between Catholics and Protestants. At this hour
they are still deeply rooted and powerful in England and
America, and supported by a copious and constantly
increasing apocalyptic literature. But in Germany
they have long since disappeared from the popular
belief, notwithstanding the sanction of the Smalkaldic

Reaction of Seve^tteenth Century. 93
Articles, and thereby, as it seems to me, one of the
most serious hindrances to a reunion of the two reli
gions is removed.^
But at the end of the seventeenth century it was
very different in Germany. Then the song was sung
year by year in every Evangelical congregation —
" Defend us by thy -word, 0 Lord,
From Pope and Paynim's murderous stvord," ^
and the events of almost every year suppUed a practical
commentary on this juxtaposition of the two great
enemies. In Hungary there had been a bloody perse
cution of Protestants, lasting ten years, and it was
notorious to aU the world how Louis xiv. treated the
Eeformed in France. The preachers therefore were
never at a loss for opportunities of asking the prayers
of their congregations for co-reUgionists suffering under
Antichristian tyranny. And the feeling thus engendered
made it impossible to bring theological negotiations
for reunion before the public ; on the contrary, such
attempts had to be kept strictly private.
^ [See first Appendix in the author's First Age of Christianity and the
Church (W. H. Allen and Co.), on " History of Interpretation of 2 Thess.
ii. 12."]
2 [Cf. the popular Scotch ditty quoted in Scott's AUbot —
" The Paip, that Pagan fu' o' pride.
Hath blinded us ower lang."]

94 Reunion of the Churches.
Leibnitz did not become a Catholic privately, as has
been inferred from his unpublished work discovered
in MS. some fifty years ago, the so-called Sy sterna
Theologicum. This work was only meant to show what
a thinking man might urge from the CathoUc stand
point in favour of the controverted Catholic dogmas.
He did not indeed adhere to the Protestant form of
belief, in which there was much that he disapproved.
He wrote to the Landgrave of Hesse that had he been
born in the Catholic Church he should never have left
it, but that he could not join it whUe certain doctrines
continued to be enforced in aU their naked harshness.
He thought the Protestants ought to accept any doctrine
proved to have been universally received in the ancient
Church of the Eoman Empire. And in fact Molanus
had already managed to get rid of so many difficulties
that Bossuet thought the union would be pretty well
accomplished if the other theologians assented to his
view. But both Leibnitz and Molanus considered it
essential that the Tridentine CouncU, with its manifold
anathemas, should be suspended, and the controverted
points examined and compared at a new CouncU,
composed of Catholics and Protestants in common.
Leibnitz appealed in support of this view to the con-

Reaction of Seventeenth Century. 95
cessions made at Basle to the Hussites. A still better
example would have been the Council of Florence,
where aU the points of difference with the Greeks were
allowed to be re-examined and compared by both sides
together, without regard to the decrees of the Council of
Lyons in 1274.^- This condition however proved fatal
to the whole scheme.
The greatest difficulties, the stumblingblocks which
could not be removed, did not even come under
discussion, or were only incidentally referred to. That
same Molanus, who showed himself so conciUatory and
almost CathoUc in matters of doctrine, afterwards
maintained against his coUeagues that the revocation of
the edict of Nantes, and the persecution of Protestants
in France, -with the formal approval of these proceed
ings by the very best of the Pop.es, Innocent xi., had
done more to confirm him in drawing a line between
Protestant and Papal doctrine than all the contro
versial divinity he had ever seen.^ Yet even Bossuet
' [The Council of Florence was accordingly to have been accepted on
both sides, had the reunion proved permanent, as the Eighth Oecumenical
Council, passing over all the mediaaval Councils since the separation of
Bast and West. It is actually called Octavwm Concilium in the flrst Latin
issue of the Acts, published in 1526 under Clement vii., and thirty years
later in Cardinal Pole's Reformatio Anglice, a collection of statutes made
by him in his legatine capacity, and published at Rome in 1566.]
^ See the letter in Leukfeld's Antiquitates Amelunsfbomenses, p. 113.

^6 Reunion of the Churches.
was unable to see, what must have been so clear to
every thinking man, that a Church which makes a rule
and principle of coercing conscience and exterminating
heretics by the sword, can only inspire hatred and
detestation. There was one Pope, however, Clement
XIV., who does appear to have seen it. He says, " What
a happy revolution would have been witnessed, ff,
instead of being persecuted, heretics had simply been
entreated and adjured with all possible gentleness not
to separate from the centre of unity ; if their difficulties
had been explained with kindness, their objections
patiently listened to, and if, above all, they had been
addressed, as religion itself speaks, without bitterness
or pride." ^ I don't know whether GanganelU remem
bered, when he wrote this, that he was condemning a
long line of his predecessors, and above aU the canonized
Pius V.
There were other hostUe and menacing circumstances
in the background of these negotiations for union, which
cast a dark shadow over every gleam of hope. Chief
among these was the Eoman notion of the absolute
power of the Pope, and all attempts in apologetic
writings and expositions, such as Bossuet's and Veron's
' Lettere Interessanti di Clemente XIV., Ninezia, 1778, iv. 60.

Reaction of Seventeenth Centiiry. 97
before him, to explain this away, or make it look
harmless and beneficial, were sure in the end to prove
Ulusory. No Protestant ever judged the Papacy more
favourably than Leibnitz, who wished to see the
temporal power of the Popes stiU further increased and
extended over the whole of Italy, that they might be
the better able to act as European arbiters, and hinder
wars of conquest. But an unlimited despotic . power,
such as the Jesuits and all the Eomanist party ascribed
to the Court of Eome, he considered equaUy intolerable
and mischievous. Then again it was a standing reproach
and objection urged against every representation of
CathoUc doctrine put out for the benefit of Protestants,
that what looked good and innocent on paper had in
fact, and in its practical application to popular life, a
very different and most objectionable character. This
feeUng was vividly expressed in the universal contra
diction to Bossuet's representation evoked in Protestant
Europe. Even Molanus did not conceal his conviction
that the Papal Church was far worse in worship than
in doctrine, as he had witnessed it in Italy, Spain, and
other Catholic countries ; it was, indeed, so corrupted
that a thinking man, unacquainted with the Eeformed
doctrine, could not but suppose the Christian religion
G

98 Reunion of the Churches.
was a poUtical invention of the Popes for keeping men
in subjection.-^ The utter helplessness of the disputants
in this matter was brought to Ught when they came to
consider, in view of a future union, how the worst
excrescences of a crude and immoral superstition, by
the help of which the religious Orders preyed upon the
people, could be restrained. But with the independent
position of these Orders, and their financial wants,
nobody had any effective remedy to suggest. Leibnitz
says in one place, — " The great question is stUl this —
how far it is allowable to wink at the pubUc corrup
tions, especiaUy when it looks as if the steps taken
amounted to a tacit approval of them."^
Bossuet's biographer. Cardinal Bausset, cannot ex
plain by what fatality these promising efforts after
union, after proceeding so far, and with so rich a com
bination of talent, learning, and good-wUl engaged in
the cause, came to nothing, and left no trace behind
them. He thinks the interposition of Leibnitz frightened
the theologians, and ruined everything. Far from it ;
on the contrary, Leibnitz wguld have made concessions
which the theologians shrank from. The real reason
1 Hock, Anton Ulrich, p. 113.
'^ See Kheinfeld Rriefwechsel, ed. Bommel, ii. 78.

Reaction of Seventeenth Century. 99
was a different one. In dealing with a Church where
the actual creed of daily life differs so widely from the
theoretical creed, it is impossible to get beyond mere
theoretical negotiations. Bossuet himself did not choose
to see that; whenever any gross abuse was brought
before him, he would always point triumphantly to the
substance of the doctrine, which contained nothing
of the kind. And yet the great bishop and famous
doctor might himself have been pointed out as a
conspicuous example of ecclesiastical impotence. He
found himself, in his own Church, in presence of a
doctrine invented only a century before, which could
not but have a most decisive influence on the religious
position of every Christian, — ^the doctrine that fear
alone, without love of God, is sufficient for the
remission of sins. He considered this a most dangerous
error, affecting the very essence of Christianity, and
wrote against it; but he could not prevent the most
powerful of the religious Orders, with the knowledge
and support of the Holy See, taking this error under
its patronage, and acting upon it in the confessional
in his o^vsTi diocese. Yet he found it quite in order
that every one who had desired to administer Com
munion according to Christ's institution, simply for the

I oo Retmion of the Churches.
sake of union and obedience, should have been excom
municated. For theologians understand weU how to
strain out gnats and swaUow camels.
After these fruitless attempts of Bossuet, Molanus,
and Leibnitz, nothing further of the kind was under
taken for 170 years, either in Germany or elsewhere.^
Men were thoroughly discouraged and deterred. On the
Protestant side, the gradual advance of rationaUsm
hindered any further thought of union, and among
Catholics there could be no idea of reviving those efforts
till after the abolition of the Jesuits in 1773. But
they had too much to do in setting their own house in
order, and the best of them thought they could only
invite the guests they wished to see when the house had
been cleansed. In our own day there are phenomena
which exhibit a real or apparent affinity with the ideas
and efforts it is the aim of these Lectures to suggest to
the minds of believing Christians. Many would reckon
among these the " Evangelical AUiance," a British and
American product of a kind of unionist sentiment.
But this association, of which very little has been
heard lately, has confined itself to a mere external
' [The correspondence of Archbishop Wake with the doctors of the
Sorbonne early in the eighteenth century had a similar aim, though it led
to no result.]

Reaction of Seventeenth Century. loi
combination and common action of all Protestant
communities for an offensive and defensive alliance
against the ancient Churches. The fusion of the
Lutheran and Eeformed Churches brought about by
Frederick -WiUiam iiL has remained a mere fragmentary
work, and has led to internal divisions, the end of
which is yet to be seen ; and one of the most eminent
Protestant theologians, Kahnis, has declared only this
year that " the introduction of the union into the
Lutheran national Churches of Germany, Eussia, and
Scandinavia, woiUd be the beginning of incurable
discords which would probably end in their dissolution.
To carry it out generally is an impossibility."^ The
fundamental principle of this union, which is to leave
the most opposite doctrines to co-exist side by side,
unmodified and unreconciled, and let every one choose
between them, has not succeeded.
The recently formed community of the Irvingites
might be regarded as in some sense a favourable symp
tom, pointing to hopes of union. It includes some
highly respectable men, famiUar with ecclesiastical anti
quity. The exclusive product of a Protestant soil, and
founded by men trained in Protestant belief, it approxi-
' Christmthum und Lutherthum, Leipsic, 1872.

I02 Reunion of the Churches.
mates in essential points to the ancient Churches of
East and West. It reminds one strongly of a pheno
menon of the second century, Montanism. Perhaps
it is still possible to strip off from the system much
which appears to those who look at ,it from without
too fantastical and directly contradictory to the mind
of the ancient Church, such as the revival of the
Apostolate, and the immediate expectation of the great
crisis of the world's history intimated in Scripture.
Where faith and love are found, there hope cannot
be absent. He who believes in Christ, and loves his
country and Christians of all confessions, cannot divest
himself of the hope that no distant future may reveal a
Church which, as the genuine heir and representative
of the Church of the early centuries, may have room
and power of attraction for those who are now sepa
rated ; a Church where liberty will be reconcUed with
order, discipline, morality, and unity of faith with
science and freedom of inquiry.

LECTUEE VL
THE ENGLISH REFORMATION, ITS NATURE AND RESULTS.

A'

T the beginning of the Eeformation the island
kingdom of England was far behind-hand in
power, wealth, and population ; indeed, 150 years later
it had only five miUion inhabitants. It possessed no
fleets, no manufactures, no colonies, and no army.
But it was better prepared ecclesiasticaUy than the
Latin countries for receiving the seed brought over
from Germany. From the end of the thirteenth cen
tury, and constantly during the fourteenth, it had
resisted the encroachments and extortionate demands
of the Eoman Court with the united force of King
and ParUament. And Wycliffe, one of Luther's
forerunners, and the LoUard sect, had disseminated
doctrines which partly corresponded with those pro
claimed at Wittenberg. But it was from above, and
not froni beneath, as in Germany, from the Crown,

I04 Reunion of the Churches.
not from the people, that the ecclesiastical revolution
in England received its impulse, rule, and form. No
man of first-rate eminence appeared — no Luther, or
Calvin, or Melanchthon — to take the lead of the rnove-
ment. Minds of an inferior order, possessed with the
ideas struck out at Wittenberg and Zurich, served as
the instruments for naturalizing those principles in
England and effecting the ecclesiastical changes.
It is weU known that what brought about the breach
with Eome and the transference of the papal supremacy
to the King was the affair of Henry viil's divorce.
The whole English clergy submitted, renounced T;he
Pope, and promised to regard him henceforth only as
Bishop of Eome. One bishop alone, Fisher of Eochester,
resisted, and went to the scaffold. There was no inten
tion, however, of separating from communion with the
Pope ; and his rights in relation to the universal Church,
such as the summoning and presiding over General
Councils, were not called in question. The people
were expressly assured that England continued to be
a portion of the CathoUc Church, of which the Eoman
Church was another branch.^ Nor was there any
change of doctrine introduced. But a series of Acts
^ In the Institution of a Christian Man, 1537, approved by twenty-one
Bishops. See Formularies of Faith (Oxford, 1825), p. 65.

The English Reformation. 105
were passed — the Parliament being entirely at one with
the King — which extended the royal authority over the
Church further, untU at last all ecclesiastical power
seemed to be derived from the Crown. The notion
invented by the sycophants of Eome since the
thirteenth century, that the episcopal was a mere
derivation from the papal authority, was now in Eng
land transferred to the Crown. '
Clement "VIL had already excommunicated the King,
but in 1538 appeared a Bull of his successor, Paul in.,
which excited universal astonishment, for it almost
looked as if he wished to alienate the whole nation
from him, and drive it into complete separation from
the See of Eome. He not only deposed the King and
consigned him to eternal perdition, if he did not
appear before his tribunal, but laid all England
under an interdict, which means, according to Eoman
teaching, that a Pope punishes and imperUs the
salvation of mUUons of innocent persons for the sins
of one or a few guilty persons. He forbade all divine
worship and administration of sacraments,^ forbade every
Englishman to obey any royal command, deprived all
^ [There are some exceptions'to this rule. Baptism can be administered
to children, and the last sacraments to the dying, under an interdict, and
confessions can be heard. — Cf. Soglia, Instit. Jur. Priv. Eccl., Paris, p. 556.]

io6 Reunion of the Churches.
the King's adherents of their civil rights, abrogated all
treaties made with them or oaths sworn to them, pro
hibited all traffic with them, and gave up the property
of all Englishmen to be plundered by foreigners. And
this was done in 1538, when a great part of Germany
and Switzerland, and the northern kingdoms, had
already risen against Eome, and thousands in Europe
were eager to make capital out of such weak points of
the Eoman See, and thus increase the widely-spread
abhorrence of the Curia. It might reaUy be regarded
as an example of judicial blindness.
After Henry's death in 1547 the Eeformation was
carried further in a Protestant sense under Edward -vi.,
always from above, by means of the royal supremacy
over the Church. Archbishop Cranmer, and Somerset,
who was regent for his nephew, a boy of ten years old,
worked together, not without opposition from the mass
of the people, who were still Catholic in their
sympathies ; and there were revolts, which had to be
extinguished in blood. For the nobUity seized the
Church property, the country people took up arms, the
class' of smaU landowners disappeared, and tenant-
farmers took their place. But among the clergy there
was only passive submission.

The English Reformation. 107
The whole edifice of the new reUgion collapsed when
Mary, the daughter of a Spanish mother and wife of
PhUip IL of Spain, succeeded to the throne on the early
death of Edward. Unreservedly devoted to the Pope,
full of burning hatred against the new heresy, and hard
and pitUess as her father, she at once broke the promise
given to the people, when they rose in her favour, of
leaving the laws of the land unaltered. She surrounded
herself with Uke-minded counsellors, and a Parliament
elected under strong government influence seconded all
her plans. Cardinal Pole appeared, as papal legate, to
absolve the nation from the anathemas of Eome, and
England found itself again under the dominion of the
Pope. The nation was soon taught at how dear a price
of human life it had again become Eoman. Hitherto
the Protestant doctrine had made little advance in the
minds of the people, the majority of whom adhered to
their ancestral faith ; the decided Protestants could be
named and counted. But now the papal legate.
Cardinal Pole, the man who ruled England both in
religious and civU matters, was himself charged with
suspicion of heresy by the terrible Paul iv. — the Pope
who saw no salvation for Italy or the world except in
the dungeons and piles of the Inquisition, — and was

1 08 Reunion of the Churches.
summoned to Eome to answer for his faith. He did
not go, but left his implacable persecution and exter
mination of heretics to bear witness before the Pope
and the Eoman Inquisition to his unimpeachable
orthodoxy. And thus within three years about 300
persons were burnt, including some bishops, several
priests, and fifty-five women.
Hundreds of thousands of Protestant writings scat
tered over the length and breadth of the land, and
disseminated in the cottages of the poor, would not
have done so much to strengthen the Protestant
doctrine as the spectacle of the fires of Smithfield, and
the testimony borne by so many men and women, most
of whom could have purchased their lives by recanta
tion, going with such wonderful courage to the stake.
The impression then made has remained to this day
powerfully and indeUbly impressed on the popular
mind. And if the hatred of everything called Popery
has shown itself for the last three centuries stronger
and deeper in England than in any other nation, Mary
and her counsellors are responsible for the origin of a
feeling which was no doubt afterwards intensified by
the Gunpowder Plot.
Mary carried with her to the grave the hatred and

The English Reformation. 1 09
detestation of her people; and her sister Elizabeth
mounted the throne in 1558 amid loud and universal
rejoicings. The re-establishment of papal domination
had not obtained much favour even among the populace,
whose sympathies were Catholic, and Paul iv. himself
took care that the new Queen should have no choice.
He made it a question of life and death for her to
abjure Eome. When she announced her accession to
him, he replied by censuring her "presumption," and
declaring that she had been stigmatized by his prede
cessors as iUegitimate, and therefore incapable of
succeeding, and that the decision on the subject
belonged to him alone as suzerain of England, a
pretension of Eome long since rejected by Parliament.
The supremacy over the Church which her father
and brother had enjoyed was now again assigned by
ParUament to the Queen, who thereby took the place
of the Pope. The Act of Uniformity imposed on all
Churches the use of the Liturgy of Edward Ti., modified
in a CathoUc sense.^ Every clergyman was required,
on pain of deprivation, to take the Oath of Eoyal
' [That is, the Second Liturgy of Edward vi. It had been the Queen's
original wish and intention to restore the First, and with some Catholic
additions ; but it was found necessary to abandon the design, in order to
conciliate the extreme, or, as it was afterwards called, Puritan party. —
See Hook's Life of Archbishop Parker, pp. 158 sqq.'\

IIO Reunion of the Churches.
Supremacy, and out of 9000 only about 189, or one in
fifty, refused it.^ Most of the bishops refused, and new
ones were appointed and vaUdly ordained, so that the
succession was not interrupted. A short formulary of
faith, in Thirty- nine Articles, setting forth substan
tiaUy the Protestant doctrine, but in modified form and
with many compromises, became law. And thus the
Eeformation in England and the edifice of the EngUsh
episcopal Church was completed. It differed from aU
reformed Churches of the Continent, but wished to
remain in connexion ¦with them ; and the poUtical
situation forced Elizabeth more and more into the posi
tion of a protector of European Protestantism generally.
^leanwhUe the number of CathoUcs was stUl con
siderable, but as all churches and chapels belonged to
the dominant reUgion, and absence from service was
punished ¦with fines, they took part in pubHc worship;
and thus to aU outward appearance there seemed to be
but one Church in the country, and every likelihood of
the old faith dying out in one or two generations. This
state of things lasted tiU about 1570, when new priests,
1 [This mast be taken with some reserve. The Supremacy Oath was
certainly imposed by law from the first ; but there is reason to believe
th.it for many years of Elizabeth's reign the majcrirr of the deigy
al)i5:;'.ined from taking it, with the tacit conniTance oi ihe GoTemment.
There is no evidence of more dian about S'» being sworn in 1559.]

The English Reformation. 1 1 1
trained in the strictest Eoman system, came to England
from the clerical seminaries established on the Con
tinent, and the Jesuits also commenced their labours
there. Then, for the first time, many separated them
selves from the national worship; and then, too,
appeared the BuU of Pius v., which not only deposed
Elizabeth, but forbade aU Englishmeli to acknowledge
her on pain of excommunication, without, however,
proposing any other king or regent for their allegiance.
And thus aU CathoUcs who did not rebel were excom
municated, and it seemed to be the sole aim of the
Pope, who had abeady tried to get Elizabeth put out
of the way by assassination, to produce a general
confusion and bloody civU war in England.
The most zealous of the Papal party wanted to make
PhUip of Spain master of England. A series of plots,
conspiracies, and revolts foUowed. Elizabeth could say
with truth that her life was daUy threatened, and more
than any other in Europe. A new BuU of Sixtus v.,
issued in 1588 in support of the Spanish invasion,
renewed her deposition, on the express ground that the
Pope alone was entitled to decide who should wear
the English crown.-' Well might Urban vm. say after-
1 [It is remarkable, however, that Sixtus v., one of the ablest Popes of

1 1 2 Reunion of the Churches.
wards that the Popes, his predecessors, were respon
sible for the loss of England.^ The laws against foreign
priests were now made more stringent, and the mere
performance of sacerdotal functions became a capital
offence. A considerable number of priests were actually
executed, who showed great constancy in death. The
first who were condemned were questioned as to
whether they would obey the Pope or the laws of the
land in civU matters, and those who answered in the
latter sense were spared.
MeanwhUe the Jesuits had developed their doctrine
of tyrannicide into a system, and had disseminated it
both by writing and orally. They taught that, as the
Pope has a divine right, in the interest of religion, to
depose monarchs and annul aU their official acts, the
deposed monarch, if he tries to retain his dignity, is an
usurper and tyrant, and may be put to death. That
this teaching endangered the life of every prince dis-
the post-Reformation era, personally entertained a strong sympathy for
Elizabeth, and to the last cherished hopes of her conversion. At one time
he even requested Henry iii. of France to enter into communication with
her on the subject, and he seems to have given only a reluctant sanction
to the Spanish Armada. On the other hand, Elizabeth, when urged by
her ministers to marry, was wont to reply, " I know of but one man
worthy of my hand, and that is Sixtus v." — Cf. Hiibner's Life and Times
of Sixtus v., passim.]
1 [A similar remark is attributed to Pius IV. in reference to Paul rv.'s
policy.]

The English Reformation. 113
pleasing to the Court of Eome was shown in the
murder of Henry iii. of France, and the attempts
on the Ufe of Henry iv., and of WilUam of Orange,
for these two princes also at last fell beneath the
daggers of fanatics. And if there was already a
disposition in England to look on every Catholic
as a born enemy of the State and its rulers, this
was further increased by the Gunpowder Plot at
the beginning of James l's reign, which fiUed up the
measure of the misfortunes of the unhappy adherents
of the old Church. The discovery of this Satanic plot
for blowing up King and Parliament was commemo
rated in England by a Church festival, only recently
abolished. Pope Clement viiL, who had some years
pre-viously urged Henry iv. to assist the King of Spain
in conquering England, had just before directed the
CathoUcs to hinder the accession of James, and Eng
Ush Jesuits were deeply impUcated in the plot, of
whom two were found guilty and executed, and one
escaped. King James, with the view of providing some
protection for his own life and that of his son, intro
duced, in concurrence ¦with Parliament, a special oath
for Catholics — the Oath of AUegiance. They were to
abjure, as impious and heretical, the doctrine that the
H

114 Reunion of the Churches.
Pope can depose sovereigns and absolve subjects from
their oath of allegiance, and that princes excommuni
cated by the Pope may be deposed and murdered. The
sorely oppressed CathoUcs, whose condition had been
rendered much worse by the last conspiracy, were to
gain some toleration by talcing this oath ; but Paul v.
forbade their taking it on pain of damnation, and aU
Catholics who took it were to be refused the sacra
ments. And Cardinal BeUarmine wrote a treatise to
prove its unlawfulness.
MeanwhUe no express declaration of the Eoman
Court, explaining in what the soul-destroying char
acter of the oath consisted, could be obtained by any
entreaties, and many priests suffered death rather than
take it. James, who, from various poUtical grounds,
and partly from fear, wished to be on peaceable terms
with the See of Eome, intimated to the Pope, through
the French ambassador, that he would acknowledge
him as the first bishop and president of the Church,
if he would renounce the arrogant claim to depose
sovereigns. But Paul replied that he could not do so
without faUing into heresy himself. This conduct of the
Pope's made the condition of Catholics in England a
terribly painful one — the priests threatened with death

The English Reformation. 115
on the scaffold, and the laity objects of universal sus
picion, detested by their fellow-countrymen and sub
jected to heavy exactions. There seemed no prospect
left them but of constant diminution and gradual
extinction; and in fact they had dwindled down to
150,000 by 1630, accordingto the report of the Papal
nuncio, Panzani. WeU might they represent to Eome,
through Father Leander, that they had suffered more
for the Papacy than any other Catholics.^ Father
Leander also represented that Charles i. was surprised
to find that doctrines allowed in France were con
demned in England. It was universally said that the
1 [Father Leander, an English Benedictine, was sent to England by
Urban -viii. in 1632, and Father Panzani, an Oratorian of Arezzo, iu 1634,
both with the sanction of the Government, as well to examine and report
on the condition of the English Roman Catholics as on the true state
of the Church of England. On the latter point they reported very
favourably, and the idea of a reunion was seriously entertained on both
sides, though it eventually fell through, chiefly owing to the bitter oppo
sition of the Jesuits on one side, and the Puritans on the other. Father
Leander reports of the Anglicans : " They agree in all the doctrine of the
Trinity and Incarnation and true Deity of our Blessed Saviour ; in the
points of Providence, predestination, justification, necessity of good works,
co-operation of free wUl with the grace of God. They admit the first four
General Councils, the three authentic symbols of the Apostles, Nice or
Constantinople, and of St. Athanasius, as they are received in the Roman
Church : they reverence the primitive Church and unanimous consent of
the ancient Fathers, and all traditions and ceremonies which can be suffi
ciently proved by testimony of antiquity ; they admit a settled liturgy
taken out of the Roman liturgy, distinction of orders, bishops, priests,
and deacons, in distinct habits from the laity, and divers other points in
which no transmarine Protestants do agree." — Clarendon State Papers,
vol. i. p. 207 ; quoted also in Charles Butler's Book of the Roman CathoUc

1 1 6 Retmion of the Churches.
Popes vindicated the doctrines whereby the authors of
the Gunpowder Plot excused their murderous attack
on the King and the nobility.
But now, as before, it was all in vain. The Popes
had again and again been told that the notion of
murder committed in the interests of religion being
meritorious, was so widely spread, so disgraceful and
injurious to Catholicism, and so strongly confirmed by
Jesuit writings, that there was urgent need for one
Pope at least publicly and solemnly to condemn this
error. But Eome held her peace; it was impossible
even to get the worst of the Jesuit ¦writings which
recommended tyrannicide placed on the Index.
The events which occurred in Ireland served to in
tensify the hatred of the English nation against Eome
and the CathoUcs, and to exhibit the Popes as the most
irreconcilable and dangerous enemies of England. On
Church, p. 2. And he adds : " Union seemeth possible enough, if the
points were discussed in an assembly of moderate men, without contention
or desire of victory, but out of a sincere desire of Christian union ; espe
cially since the leame.der sort of Protestants hold this difference to be no
impediment to salvation, and grant besides that the Church of Rome is
a true member of the Church of Christ."— TJirf. p. 208. On the other
hand, Montague, Bishop of Chichester, assured Panzani that only three
out of the whole bench of Bishops could be considered opposed to the
scheme. — Panzani's Memoirs, p. 246. It is clear from Heylin's Life of
Laud that the primate was favourably disposed towards it. See for further
information on these negotiations an interesting essay on " 1636 and 1866,"
in Essays on Reunion, Hayes, 1867, and cf. i-nfra, p. 121.]

The English Reformation. 117
the pretext that the Emperor Constantine had given aU
islands to the Pope, Adrian iv. had bestowed Ireland on
Henry n., king of England, At the time of the Wars
of the Eoses the English rule over Ireland had again
coUapsed. The Popes had impressed on the Irish that
their island was a papal fief over which they exercised
supreme rights of suzerainty, and accordingly, when
the English kings ceased to discharge the duties of
vassals, Gregory xiiL had sent an English theologian,
Sanders, as his legate to Ireland, with Italian officers,
and appointed an Irish general, Desmond, to rouse the
inhabitants, who had been deprived of the exercise of
Catholic worship without having become Protestants,
and to lead them in a holy war against England. The
enterprise faUed, and at the death of Elizabeth in 1603
Ireland was completely subjected to England.
Then broke out the insurrection of 1642, and a mas
sacre foUowed in which several thousand Protestants
were kUled. A papal nuncio, Euniccini, came, and for
some time acquired possession of supreme power. Ire
land was to be entirely separated from England, and
annexed either to Spain or to some Italian principaUty
under the suzerainty of the Pope.-' Cromwell's con-
' Ranke, Eng. Gesch., Werke, vol. xvii. p. 26.

ii8 Reunion of the Churches.
quest of Ireland put an end to this scheme. At the
Eestoration in 1660, a prospect was held out to the
Irish Catholics of religious toleration and regaining
their property, on condition of their taking an oath of
allegiance to the King, and repudiating all right of the
Pope to depose him or absolve his subjects from the
duty of civU obedience. A similar declaration had
been required of the English Catholics in 1647 by
ParUament, on the motion of Lord Fairfax, as the con
dition of religious toleration. But Innocent x. had at
once strictly forbidden them to accept any declaration
of the kind, and excommunicated those who had already
subscribed it. And now almost the whole property of
Catholics and the social existence of the nobility was
at stake in Ireland. But the papal nuncio at Brussels,
and the Irish Bishops who were under him, condemned
in accordance with papal teaching the " Eemonstrance,"
which 121 nobles had already signed. The theologians
who drew it up, Walsh, Carew, and Coppinger, were
persecuted and censured, and thus the fate of Ireland
was sealed for centuries. This result was most grati
fying to the Cromwellian soldiers and English and
Scotch adventurers, who had come into possession
of the property through the war and confiscations.

The English Reformation. 1 1 9
King Charles confirmed them in their possessions, and
also confirmed the suppression of CathoUc worship.
The CathoUc nobUity of Ireland feU, the entire property
passed into Protestant hands, aud the mass of the
CathoUc population sank into an ignorant and barbar
ous proletariate. But the Pope's right to depose kings,
annul oaths, and command rebellion, was preserved
in^violate !
EUzabeth and her advisers had attempted to weld
together in the edifice of their State Church foreign and
mutuaUy hostUe elements, which were now sure to
confUct with each other. The notion of two or more
different Churches dwelUng peacefully side by side was
at that time hardly thought conceivable, and only
admitted as a last resource, under pressure of extreme
necessity. And therefore the national Church had to be
made capacious enough to embmce and tolerate in its
bosom the two opposite parties already existing in
England, — the Cal^vinist and the CathoUc.
Cal^vinism, chiefly represented by the exUes who had
returned from Switzerland after Mary's death, and
forced their way into Church offices under EUzabeth,
developed more and more into Puritanism from the end
of the sixteenth century ; and the Puritans began to

I20 Retmion of the Churches.
agitate for a new reformation of the Church, on the
principle of receding to the furthest possible distance
from CathoUc rites and forms. In opposition to this
movement a CathoUcizing school, appealing to the
ancient Church, developed itself from about 1618 ; and
through the favour of James L and Charles i., who saw
in a hierarchical organization and a strong episcopate
a powerful support of the monarchy, the episcopal sees
were filled with members of this school. The Laudian
school, as it may be named after one of its most
prominent representatives, the unfortunate Archbishop
Laud, became, in the period between about 1620 and
1670, the predecessor of the " Oxford " or " Eitualistic "
school of to-day, and may be said to have formed a
permanent unionist academy, although matters never
advanced in England to the stage of regular negotiations,
as was afterwards the case in Germany. In the writings
of these men, Andrewes, Montague, Laud, BramhaU,
Hammond, Thomdyke; and others, we meet with
manifold expressions of a desire for reunion, and a
hope of its accomplishment. It would be impossible
to commend the unity of the Church more eloquently
and emphatically than, e.g. Hammond has done, who
regards it as the noblest gift of God, the grace above

The English Reformation. 121
aU graces, the duty above all duties, the fulness of
heavenly joy ; while he regards the Churches and
reUgious parties of his own day as the palpitating and
¦violently dismembered limbs of a living body, which
present the most revolting and painful spectacle, as
though tom asunder on the rack. And the complaint
constantly recurs in the works of these writers, — " If
only Eome would be less hard, and not lay on us
burdens we cannot bear, and make demands which
are intolerable." The English bishops told Panzani,
who was sent as papal agent in 1634, that two parties
were labouring to hinder the union of the English
and Eoman Churches, ¦viz., the Puritans and the
Jesuits.^ But the bishops and theologians stood almost alone
in the nation with their Catholic tendencies, so powerful
had the Protestant spirit, in its crudest form, become
in England through the influence of events, and so
deeply had fear, horror, and hatred of everything
connected with the Papacy sunk into the popular
mind. The charge against Archbishop Laud, of having
aimed at an union of the English Church with Eome,
brought the primate of the Established Church to the
^ [See above, p. 115, «ote.]

122 Reunion of the Churches.
block ; and it is worth remarking that his not having
regarded the Pope as Antichrist formed one item in the
indictment. It availed him nothing that he had
declined the offer of a Cardinal's hat, and had written
a learned work against the Papacy.
The Episcopal Church, closely bound up with the
monarchy, shared its fall, and Puritanism triumphed
with its Calvinistic doctrine, its rejection of episcopacy,
sacrifice, and priesthood, and its dislike of reUgious
symbolism and liturgical worship. But it was soon
weakened by internal dissensions, three great Puritan
sects — the Presbyterians, Independents, and Baptists —
mutually assailing one another, and with the fall of the
Commonwealth after twelve years its dominion also
came to an end. At the Eestoration, the Episcopal
Church was re-established as weU as the monarchy,
and with the full approval of the nation, which was
heartily sick of sectarian domination. In 1662 two
thousand Puritan ministers suffered deprivation rather
than submit to the ritual of the Episcopal Church, as
enjoined by the Act of Uniformity, just as twelve years
before many thousands of the Anglican clergy had
resigned their benefices rather than accept the Puritan
dogmas and forms. What a contrast with the Catholic

The English Reformation. 123
clergy in Elizabeth's reign, when among 9400 not 200
could be found to sacrifice their benefices rather than
submit to the Protestant doctrine !
This was the sixth great change in the English
Church since the beginning of the Eeformation, and
thenceforth its continuity has not again been inter
rupted, however great the fluctuation of religious views
was and is among its members. The greatest change
of feeUng was wrought by the four years' reign of
James n. He, having himseff become a Catholic, did
not wish, like his father and brother, to pave the way
for a gradual union of the two Churches, but thought
to subjugate aU England to the Pope by treachery and
violence, and to introduce the Jesuit type of Catholi
cism as the national reUgion — a scheme betraying a quite
abnormal measure of bUndness. For the English
CathoUcs no longer formed even a hundredth part of the
population, and no feeUng was stronger among the over
whelming majority of the nation than hatred against
the Pope and the papal Church. His poUcy led to the
Eevolution of 1688. James was dethroned, and died a
fugitive in France ; his descendants remained pretenders,
and a German royal family, the house of Brunswick,
mounted the EngUsh throne. But the result of this

124 Retmion of the Churches.
danger and excitement, and of lively theological contro
versy ¦with CathoUc divines, was to give the Church a
strong impetus in the Protestant direction. At the be
ginning of the eighteenth century, the only represen
tatives left of the earUer CathoUcizing school were the
Nonjurors, who had been thrust out of their dignities
and benefices for refusing to acknowledge the new
dynasty, and became extinct about the middle of the
century. Under the pressure of a stiU severer penal code,
and the dispiriting consciousness of being objects of
universal suspicion, the EngUsh CathoUcs constantly
diminished in number, and by 1780 they had shrunk
to about 65,000 in all. But towards the end of the
eighteenth, and increasingly since the beginning of the
present century, foUowed the great immigration of
Irish CathoUcs, purchased by an oath in which at length
the deposing power of the Pope was openly and ex
pressly abjured, and in the very words of the formula
of James L It was taken by aU the Bishops and Vicars-
ApostoUc, and Eome held her tongue. And if in our
day the EngUsh CathoUcs number about a milUon, or a
twentieth part of the nation, nine-tenths of them are of
Irish descent. The first mitigation of the penal laws

The English Reformation. 125
took place in 1778, but so bitter was stUl the popular
hatred, that in 1780 there was a great outbreak in
London, roused by the weU-known "No- Popery" cry,
(the Lord George Gordon riots), when CathoUc chapels
were destroyed, and the re-enactment of the penal laws
was demanded of ParUament, though ¦without success.
As a condition of complete emancipation Pitt
required and obtained (in 1760) from the Theological
Faculties of the Sorbonne, Louvain, Douay, Valladolid,
Salamanca, and Alcala, a declaration that the Pope has
no ci^vil authority in England, that he cannot absolve
from the Oath of Allegiance, and that faith must be
kept with heretics.^ And when at last, in 1824, the
time of fuU emancipation was approaching, and the
recollection of Papal BuUs, insurrections, and con
spiracies of former times was found to be stiU the
grand impediment to the bestowal of civU equality on
CathoUcs, the EngUsh and Irish bishops issued solemn
declarations to the effect that the Popes have not the
sUghtest civil authority or any right to enforce religious
duties by temporal means, such as corporal punish
ment and the like. This too Eome tolerated, for
1 [The document is given at length in the Second Appendix to Sir John
Cox Hippesley's Speech on a Petition of the Irish Roman Catholics, May
18, 1810, 2d ed., London, 1810. Cf. Edinburgh Review, vol. xvii. 13 sqq.^

126 Retmion of the Churches.
emancipation depended on it. And as it involved
the rejection of the theory of Papal infallibility, it was
stated in the English Catechisms that this pretended
Catholic doctrine was a Protestant invention.'^ But
the English and Irish bishops of this day do not hold
themselves bound by the words of their predecessors,
1 [In Keenan's Controversial Catechism, published by "the Catholic
Publishing Company, New Bond Street," and largely circulated, especially
in Ireland, the following Question and Answer occur, or did occur till
a twelvemonth ago, at p. 112 ; " Q. Must not Catholics believe the Pope
in himself to be infallible ? A . This is a Protestant invention ; it is no
article of the Catholic faith ; no decision of his can oblige under pain of
heresy, unless it be received and enforced by the teaching body, that is, by
the Bishops of the Church." As late as August 1871 the Catechism was on
sale in its original form in Dublin, but since then the leaf containing this
passage has been cancelled and another substituted, in which this Question
and Answer are omitted, and the book can only be obtained now in its
expurgated form. As regards the testimony of the English and Irish
Catholic bishops referred to in the text, the following important passage
occurs in Bishop Clifford's objections to the infallibility decree, printed at
Rome by authority during the Council in the Synopsis Analytica Oiserva-
tionum (see Friedrich's Documenta Cone. Vat., vol. ii. p. 259) : — " Another
gre£it mischief is that before Catholics were liberated from the penal laws,
and admitted to full liberty and civil equality with their fellow-citizens,
bishops and theologians were publicly asked by Parliament whether the
Catholics of England believed that the Pope could, without the express or
implied assent of the Church, impose definitions in relation to faith or
morals upon the people. All the bishops, among whom were two prede
cessors of his Eminence the Cardinal Archbishop of Dublin, and the
theologians, answered that Catholics did not so believe. This appears in
the printed papers of Parliament. In reliance on these answers the English
Parliament admitted Catholics to participation in civil rights. Who will
be able to persuade Protestants that Catholics have not violated honour
and good faith, inasmuch as when the acquisition of civil rights was in ques
tion they publicly declared that the doctrine of Papal infallibility was no
part of the Catholic faith, but as soon as they have gained what they
wanted abandon their public profession of faith and assert the contraiy ? "1

The English Reformation. 127
and regard the doctrine of the episcopate of 1826 as
a doctrine condemned by the present Church.
In outward form the position of the Episcopal
Church in the present day is the same as in the last
century. The Thirty-nine Articles and the Liturgy,
which do not harmonize strictly with each other, stUl
form the obligatory standard for its members ; it still
retains undisputed possession of its rich endowments,
and the majority of the nation stiU belong to it, —
an overwhelming proportion of the upper classes and
rural population, but not so many of the middle class
in towns. But the Dissenting communities, weakened
by the disappearance of the Presbyterians,^ but rein
forced during the last hundred years by the numerous
sect of Wesleyans or Methodists, are stronger and
better organized in their common antagonism to the '
State Church than at any former period. It may still
be said with truth that no Church is so national, so
deeply rooted in popular affection, so bound up with
the institutions and manners of the country, or so
powerful in its influence on national character. During
1 [The English Presbyterians have not disappeared altogether, though
their numbers are diminished through the lapse of a large proportion into
Socinianism. It was stated in the Eclectic Review for February 1832 that
out of 258 Presbyterian congregations in England 232 had become
Unitarian. —See Letters to a Dissenter, Seeley, p. 106.]

128 Reunion of the Churches.
the last forty years it has extended its range, besides
strengthening itself internally by the foundation of
numerous colonial bishoprics in all quarters of the
world.-' It possesses a rich theological literature,
inferior only to the German in extent and depth, and
an exceUent translation of the Bible, a masterpiece of
style, and more accurate than the Lutheran ; and it has
made the Bible a people's book all over England, so
that one finds it even in the bedrooms of hotels.
I believe we may credit one great superiority of
England over other countries to the circumstance that
there the Holy Scripture is found in every house, as is
the case nowhere else in the world, and is, so to speak,
the good genius of the place, the protecting spirit of the
domestic hearth and famUy. I mean that no such
Uterature of sin and shame as has poisoned the moral
atmosphere of France, and is, alas ! circulated in a
lesser degree in Germany, has yet found entrance into
the British Isles. Another point of superiority is the
observance of Sunday, which all Churches and parties
have at heart, though it is not at present free from
1 [In the Calendar of the English Church for 1872 I find fifty colonial
dioceses enumerated, in South and West Africa, North America, Australasia,
China, India, the West Indies, Sandwich Islands, and Islands of the Western
Pacific]

The English Reformation. 129
Judaizing exaggerations. But what I should estimate
most highly is the fact that the cold, dull in-
differentism, which on the Continent has spread like a
deadly mUdew over aU degrees of society, has no place
in the British Isles. To whatever extent scepticism
may have advanced among the younger generation, on
the whole the Englishman takes an active part in Church
interests and questions, and that unnatural division
and hostility between laity and clergy produced by
ultramontanism in CathoUc countries is quite unknown
there ; so much so, that the influence of the prevalent
manners has extended to English Catholics, and the
relations of the laity to the priesthood among them
are more intimate and confidential than anywhere
else. What has been accomplished during the last
thirty years by the energy and generosity of religious
EngUshmen, set in motion and guided by the Church,
in the way of popular education and church building,
far exceeds what has been done in any other country.-'
Attendance at reUgious worship on Sunday is not, as in
France, the exception but the rule with the higher and
middle classes. The Church Congress at Nottingham in
,¦ 1 [The Calendar of the English Church for 1872 (Rivingtons) gives a list
of ninety-six churches and chapels re-opened after restor."ition or recon
struction, and seventy-eight new ones built, during 1871 only.]
I

130 Reunion of the Churches.
October last (1871), tn which sixteen bishops and some
three thousand clergymen and laymen of the most
various ranks and classes took part, presented an
enviable spectacle to other nations. The weightiest
religious questions of the day, and the special events
and difficulties of the Anglican Church, were discussed
with a dignity and thoroughness which suggests to
every German the tacit inquiry whether anything of
the kind would be possible with us.
But there is no doubt a dark side to the picture,
and three points wUl at once strike the eye of every
observer. In the first place may be mentioned what
is in England called Erastianism, — the heavy yoke
of State supervision under which the EngUsh Church
groans, a yoke it has indeed imposed on its own
neck and daUy confirms by the subscription of the
Thirty-nine Articles. For this alone of aU Churches
in its confession of faith declares it to be a divinely
revealed doctrine, that CouncUs cannot be held without
the permission of secular princes, which impUes the
right of the State not to allow any authoritative
declaration of doctrine without its own control and
consent.'' The King or Queen, now represented by
1 [This is hardly accurate. The Thirty-nine Articles do not profess, like

The English Reformation. 131
the Privy CouncU, chiefly composed of laymen, is the
Supreme Court of Appeal for aU dogmatic or ritual
questions. Its decisions in the two famous cases of
Gorham and Denison-' some years ago drove numbers
of clergymen out of the Church, which seemed to them
desecrated by this bondage.
A second great evU is the religious neglect of the
masses congregated in the great to^wns. The Church,
with her existing machinery, cramped by the famUy
ties of the clergy and the want of reUgious corporations,
feels herself powerless in the presence of this constantly
increasing heathenism ; and aU the isolated attempts to
meet the crisis have hitherto proved unavaUing.
But the greatest difficulty and most painful disease
of the EngUsh Church is the internal rivalry and
antagonism of parties and systems, and the harassing
the Creeds, or dogmatic Canons of Councils, to deal only with revealed
doctrine, but to be a formula dra-wn up " for the avoiding of diversities of
opinion " in the public teaching of the clergy, who are alone required to
subscribe them. Moreover, the 21st Article is susceptible of a different
interpretation from that given in the text. See TrcuA 90 (new ed.,
Rivingtons, 1865), p. 21, and cf. Bishop Forbes's Explanatiim of the
Articles (J. Parker, 1867), pp. 293 sqq.]
1 [This is a mistake. The Denison prosecution was quashed on technical
grounds at an earlier stage, and never came before the Privy Council at
all on its merits. The question then raised, whether the doctrine of
Transubstantiation or the "Real Objective Presence," with its consequent
doctrines of sacrifice and worship, can be lawfully taught in the Church of
England, was ruled aifirmatively by the Judicial Committee in the recent
Bennett case.]

132 Reunion of the Churches.
uncertianty for clergy and laity which is its inevitable
result. The divergence of views between different
parties in this Church is greater than any which
separates it from the Greek and Latin Churches, if the
three are judged by their formal standards. Three
great parties or schools are contending for mastery in
the EngUsh Church, — the EvangeUcal or Low Church,
the Broad Church, and the High Church or Anglo-
CathoUc. The first claims to inherit the Cal^vinist
system, formerly naturalized in England, and to repre
sent the principles and doctrines of the pure Protestant
ism of the sixteenth century. These EvangeUcals are
whoUy destitute of theological culture, and possess and
produce only a popular, not a scientific Uterature. The
old Calvinistic doctrine of justification is to them the
Alpha and Omega of Christianity. In this party is
especially concentrated the old traditional hatred of
the Papacy, and the anti-papal interpretation of the
Apocalypse is indispensable for tickUng the ears of their
hearers. They still exist on the credit of their greater
and more active predecessors, and by help of the institu
tions they founded ; but they are not an advancing party,
but the reverse. On the other hand, the Broad Church,
as being the youngest school, are still in progress.

The English Reformatioti. 133
Created and sustained by the study of German philo
sophical and theological Uterature, they form an union
of sympathizing scholars rather than a Church party,
but exercise no inconsiderable influence on the views
of educated lay society. As eclectics, they recognise in
every large ecclesiastical body a mixture of truth and
falsehood, good and evU, but consider the EngUsh
Church the best relatively, on account of its combina
tion of CathoUc and Protestant doctrines, and the great
diversity of opinion cherished within its pale. They
attach Uttle importance to the form of Church-govern
ment, but aU the more to the maintenance of the union
of Church and State.
The third, and from our point of view most important
party, is that termed by its opponents the High Church
or EituaUstic, and which caUs itself the Anglo-CathoUc.
Its headquarters are at the University of Oxford, from
wluch it derives its name. It repudiates the title of
Protestant. It has been in process of development for
forty years, and claims descent from the school of theo
logians of the seventeenth century, mentioned before,
reaching from Andrewes to Bingham. It regards the
Church as the di-vinely ordained organ and keeper of
doctrine and the means of grace, and as standing or

134 Reunion of the Churches.
faUing by the apostoUcal succession. And as this
can only be found in the three great Churches
whose continuity has never been interrupted, — the
Western, Eastern, and EngUsh, — these three together
make up the true universal Church ; their substantial
agreement in matters essential to salvation not being
prejudiced by various excrescences, abuses, and errors
which may be found in them. The body of the Church,
one in origin, has in course of time, through the sin of
man and by Divine permission, become di^vided into
three great branches — outwardly separated, but in
wardly united, — which, when the right time is come,
wiU grow together again into one tree, overshadowing
the world with its foliage.
The Oxford or Anglo- CathoUc school does not consider
itself to be at issue with the doctrinal standards of the
English Church. It maintains that by God's grace the
Thirty-nine Articles, apart from the opinions of their
authors, were so composed as to admit of an interpreta
tion in the sense of the ancient undivided Church, and
are therefore capable of being subscribed by men hold
ing their views. And in fact three explanations of the
Articles in a CathoUc sense have already appeared, — one
in the seventeenth century by the Catholic theologian.

The English Reformation. 135
Davenport (Sancta Clara) ;^ another in 1841 by John
Henry Newman, who has since become a Catholic ; and
the last in 1867, by Forbes, Bishop of Brechin.
It is chiefly from this section of the English Church
that proposals and considerations on the subject of
reunion emanate. Their most influential theologian,
Pusey, has undertaken to show, in his last great work,
the Eirenicon, how comparatively easy an union would
be, inasmuch as the doctrines in which both Churches
agree are so many. But that was aU written before
the notorious decrees of the Vatican CouncU, the bare
possibiUty of which nobody then believed in. The
bridge for corporate union has now been broken down.
1 [Paraphrastica Expositio Articulorum Confessionis Anglicance, edited,
with Introduction and Translation, by Rev. F. G. Lee. Hayes, 1865.
Cliristopher Davenport was bom at Coventry about 1598, and matriculated
at Merton College, Oxford, in 1613. He soon afterwards became a Roman
Catholic, and went first to Douay, and then to Ypres, where he entered
the Franciscan Order, taking the name of Franciseus a S. Clara, iu 1617.
In 1639, on the re-establishment of the English Franciscan province, he
returned to his native country, and was appointed chaplain to the Queen,
Henrietta Maria. He was the author of several theological works, and after
three times holding the office of Provincial of the Order in England, died at
Somerset House in 1680. The Exposition of the Articles was published in
1646, and dedicated to Charles i. Of the Thirty-nine Articles, Sancta Clara
considers eighteen Catholic throughout, and two (11 and 12) concerned
vrith mere logomachies, while the rest require, but also admit of, explana
tion in whole or in part, and these last are examined at length, viz..
Articles 6, 9, 13-15, 19-22, 24, 25, 28-32, 35-37. The work is supposed to
have formed the basis of the famous Tract 90, to which Cardinal Wiseman
' refers in his Letter to Lord Shrewsbury, as containing " the demonstration
that such interpretation may be given to the most difiicult Articles as will
strip them of all contradiction to the decrees of the Tridentine Synod."]

LECTUEE VII.
DIFFICULTIES AND GROUNDS OF HOPE.
" "VT^OU speak of a possible reunion of separated
Churches, while you are yourself obUged to
admit that the largest of them, which is your own, has
made union with her impossible by the decrees of July
18, 1870." This is the objection before us, on which I
proceed to remark as follows.
Certainly no other Church wiU think of uniting with
a body which assumes the right, never before claimed
or heard of throughout the Christian world, of making
new dogmas, and places this right at the absolute dis
posal of a single individual. And for this reason, that in
deaUng with a Church so despoticaUy constituted there
cannot be any union, from the nature of the case, but
only unconditional submission and renunciation of aU
knowledge and judgment of one's own. The notion of
binding one's-seK to accept articles of faith to be here-
1.36

Difficulties and Grounds of Hope. 137
after fabricated and as yet unknown, contradicts the
fimdamental principles of Christianity.^
When a great change is to be carried through,
a new doctrine introduced, and a great institution
revolutionized, the first question to be asked is, which
side the younger generation wUl take ? for to them
belongs the future. We ask, therefore, whether our
boys and youths will really become inoculated with
the new doctrines, and make them, as directed, the basis
of their faith, with which the whole edifice of Chris
tianity stands or faUs ? WUl they say, " My infallible
master, my true lord and governor, to whom I am sub
ject, body and soul, is that ItaUan priest who is caUed
the Pope"? I think it impossible. It is inconceivable,
because our whole education and training in Germany
is an historical one, and every page of history convicts
this system of spiritual absolutism of falsehood ; because,
in the present condition and wide spread of historical
knowledge in Germany, our youth wiU inevitably dis
cover that the new dogma of papal omnipotence is a
1 [Accordingly, Archbishop Murray, of Dublin, when examined before a
Parliamentary Committee in 1825 on the nature and extent of Papal pre
rogatives, and asked whether there had been any change in Catholic belief
on the subject, replied, " With respect to faith there can he no change ; the
faith of the Catholic Church we consider to be invariable."— iSemonai
Papers, 1825, voh viii. p. 239 ]

138 Reunion of the Churches.
product of fraud and forgery, and a source of ruin for
Churches as weU as States. It is no longer possible to
shut out our youth from knowledge, to keep them in
ignorance of history. In that as in many other matters
they are deceived at Eome. The ItaUan, Spanish,
South American, and French bishops, who conformed
to the Pope's wUl on July 18, possessed indeed not the
sUghtest particle of historical culture ; but what was
and is practicable in those countries, in the lamentable
condition of their schools, is not possible in Germany.
That circumstance alone must upset the calculations
of the Vatican party, as far as Germany is concerned,
for even the women and country folk, who are stUl
reckoned upon, wUl be graduaUy and irresistibly drawn
into the stream of knowledge emanating from the edu
cated classes, and carried along with it. Our young
students wUl either put aside the articles of faith made
yesterday, in the true conviction that they wUl be as
foreign to the future as they are to the past beUef of
the Church, and wiU adhere to the ancient doctrine,
or — God grant it be not the commoner result ! — on
account of these untenable articles wUl reject the whole
faith and abandon aU religion.
I may be further asked how I can venture to cherish
and kindle in others hopes of reconciliation, when the

Difficulties and Grounds of Hope. 1 39
old, weU proved and implacable enemies of ecclesiastical
union — the men to whom any union, which is not an
unconditional surrender, is an abomination — the Jesuits,
are at present more numerous and influential in Ger
many than in any other country. Have they not
their strong fortresses and intrenched camps in the very
heart of our Empire ? Are they not already dominant
in WestphaUa and the Ehineland ? Do they not keep
our bishops in complete dependence on them, and have
not these last just held up the Jesuits to popular
encouragement and veneration, as models of Christian
¦wisdom and virtue ? Is it not they who pre-arranged
the Vatican decrees, and thus, so to say, lent a hand to
the Pope and the ultramontane bishops ?
To this I reply as foUows. I do not only beUeve
but know that the reign of this Order in Germany
wUl not be of long duration, that their brUliant victory
— I mean especially the battles won on July 18 and
August 31, 1870,^ the Vatican decrees and surrender of
the German bishops — wiU at no distant future be
converted into a defeat. The clear testimony of history
leaves no doubt about it.
^ [The date of the second Fulda Pastoral, accepting the Vatican decrees.
— Cf. Reinkens' Unterwerfung der deutschen Bischofe zu Fulda, Miinster,
1871. It wiU be remembered that this Lecture was delivered in March
last.]

140 Reunion of the Churches.
The experience of three centuries shows that the
Jesuits have no lucky hand. No blessing ever rests on
.their undertakings. They buUd with unwearied assi
duity, but a storm comes and shatters the buUding, or a
flood breaks in and washes it away, or the worm-eaten
edifice faUs to pieces in their hands. The Oriental
proverb about the Turks may be appUed to them :
" Where the Turk sets his foot, grass never grows."
Their missions in Paraguay, Japan, and among the wUd
North American tribes have long since gone to ruin.
In Abyssinia they had once (in 1625) almost attained
dominion, but soon afterwards (in 1634) the whole
concern coUapsed, and they never ventured to return
there. What is left to-day of their laborious missions
in the Levant, the Greek islands, Persia, the Crimea,
and Egypt ? Scarcely a reminiscence of their former
presence there is to be found on the spot.
Above aU has the Society of Jesus devoted its best
services to its native home of Spain. Themselves
chUdren of the Spanish race and inheritors of the
Spanish character, for sixty years they displayed their
Spanish feeUng throughout Europe ; they laboured for
the spread and consoUdation of the universal monarchy
of Spain. The result was the bankruptcy and depopu-

Difficulties and Grotmds of Hope. 1 4 1
lation of that once powerful kingdom, and its loss of one
possession after another, so that by the end of the
seventeenth century, to cite the language of a Spanish.
writer, it had become an inanimate corpse, the skeleton
of a giant. In Spain itself they co-operated with the
Inquisition for two hundred years in impressing their
spirit on the Ufe of the people, with this result, that the
higher education has been crushed, the scientific spirit
strangled, and the country, ruined in every department
of Ufe, is stUl behind every other country in Europe
except Turkey, and, having no healthy literature of its,
own, has to feed on the foreign Uterature of France.
WeU might a Spanish diplomatist in Eome say, at the
time of the suppression of the Order, "The Jesuits are
the wood- worm that gnaws on our bowels." ^
They it was who brought on the German nation the
Thirty Years' War and its results, and to them Catholic
Germany owes the decline of its schools and its conse
quent backwardness in cultivation and long inteUectual
sterility. It was they who completely undermined the
ancient German and CathoUc Empire, and paved the
way for its faU. They, as the aU-powerful conscience-
1 " Quanto bien nos ha di venir de la expulsion de la carcoma que nos
roea las entranas." — EspiritH di Aza/ra, p. 26.

142 Reunion of the Churches.
keepers of the Hapsburgs, Ferdinand I., Ferdinand IL,
and Leopold L, have on their conscience the destruction
of the liberties of the States of the Empire, the thorough
enforcement of absolutism, the oppression and expulsion
of the Protestants ; in a word, that whole crop of in
extinguishable hatred which the house of Hapsburg has
sown throughout Protestant Germany. By their in
fluence that inteUectual quarantine was estabUshed, by
which the Austrian states have been entirely cut off
from the rest of Germany, German culture kept at
arm's length, and that exclusion of Austria brought
about which we have Uved to witness.
Bohemia has long been given over to the care and
charge of the Jesuits, and what have they made of it ?
They have utterly destroyed the old Czech Uterature,
and have brought matters to such a pass that nearly the
whole Bohemian nobUity is annihUated through execu
tions, confiscations, and banishment, three thousand
famUies driven out of the country, and the Bohemian
constitution broken up. And now the harvest of the
dragon's teeth sown by the Order of Loyola is springing
up, and if the contest of the two nationaUties there
admits of no peace or reconcUiation, the acts of the
seventeenth century and their authors must bear the

Difficulties and Grounds of Hope. 143
blame. The working of the Order in the ecclesiastical
principaUties may be exempUfied from the condition of
the electoral state of Cologne, as recently described by
Perthes. .There for nearly two centuries everything was
subject to their influence and direction, as confessors
of the Electors.
In England the destiny of the CathoUcs was for a
century moulded by the influence of the Jesuits at
Eome and the intense hatred which they excited at
home, and we have seen what a monstrous weight of
misfortune and oppression they roUed down on the
shoulders of their hapless co-reUgionists.
They tried to reintroduce Catholicism into Sweden
by means of a Uturgy forcibly imposed on the clergy,
and -with the help of King Sigismund, who was under
thefr guidance ; Sigismund in consequence lost his
crown, and they were banished for ever from the
country.-' In Eussia they undertook, by means of their instru
ment, the false Demetrius, to estabUsh Polish influence,
and bring the Empire and nation into subjection to the ,
See of Eome, but their proselyte and protigi was
kiUed, and they had to quit the country. In Poland
^ Gejer's Geschichte Schwedens.

144 Retmion of the Churches.
they dominated the kings, the higher clergy, and the
nobUity for a long time ; and Poland is destroyed.
In Portugal they had King Sebastian entirely in
their hands, and he lost his army and his Ufe in Africa,
in a fooUsh campaign suggested by reUgious enthusiasm,
and plunged his country into an abyss of misery and
ruin, from which it has never been able to rise to its
former prosperity. Then they did their best to promote
the Spanish dominion over Portugal, and that also soon
coUapsed. And when they again became powerful
through ha^ving the Sovereigns under their spiritual
direction, the country sank into a decUne, from which it
is stUl suffering, through their intolerable misgovern-
ment. In France the Jesuits were the conscience-keepers of
the Bourbons, and their spiritual chUdren, Louis xiv.
and Louis xv., paved the way for the Eevolution and,
the destruction of the dynasty, or rather, one may say,
made it inevitable. For the deep decay of the country,
the neglect of the greater part of the nation, and the
profligacy spreading from the Court, impressed on the
first acts of the Eevolution the destructive character
which has to this day hindered the recovery of France.
And here too we must say of the French Church, that

Difficulties and Grounds of Hope. 145
it was the Jesuits who, during the time they ruled it
by means of the royal patronage, so devastated and
demoralized it, that even in the eighteenth century it
was powerless to cope with Voltairianism, and was
already faUing to pieces before it was finaUy over
thrown by the Eevolution.
I readUy leave to this Order the fate of the Vatican
decrees, the more readily as it has the duties of pater
nity to discharge towards them. For the Jesuits
excogitated, sketched out, and finally shaped those
decrees, though with the assistance of certain Bishops.
And now I tum to the friends of our cause, those who
have before me borne their testimony to it, and those
on whose co-operation or sympathy we may reckon.
There are three works of recent date occupied with
the question of the union of the Churches, aU of
which have fed my hopes and raised my courage ; for
they prove that aUke in Germany and in England the
number of the friends of union is by no means smaU,
and is stiU increasing. The author of Pax Vobiscum^
is an influential clergyman in Franconia. He paints
in glaring colours the great and almost insuperable
1 Pax Vobiscum. Die kirchliche Wiedervereinigung der Katholiken wnd
Protestanten historish-pragmatisch beleuchtet von einem Protestanten.
Bamberg, 1863. K

146 Reunion of the Churches.
difficulties which beset every step on the road to
reunion. There does not seem to him either the capa
city or the call to accomplish the blessed work at the
present time, but the way should be prepared for it,
and every impediment, as far as possible, got rid of ^
Nor does he conceal that the contest for dear life which
both Churches will have to carry on, against the giant
powers of unbelief and destruction which are rising
up against them, can only be waged successfully with
their forces united.
The second work, by the Berlin preacher Schulze,
goes so far in the approval and acceptance of Catholic
doctrines that one may almost say that, if it expressed
the mind of a preponderating majority in the German
Protestant Church, four-fifths of the difficult work of
reunion would be already accomplished.^ Nor does the
work stand alone, as is shown by the fact that the
Evangelische Kirchenzeitung of Berlin for 1870 has
communicated and indorsed its contents.
The third work, by Dr. Pusey, the views of which
are substantially shared by thousands of the clergy
and laity of the Anglican Church, goes further still than
1 Pax Vobiscum, p. 342.
^ Ueber romanisirende Tendenzen, ein Wort zum Frieden. Berlin, 1870.

Difficulties and Grounds of Hope. 147
Schulze's, for the famous Oxford theologian thinks that
all the doctrinal decisions of Trent might be accepted,
if only certain decrees were authoritatively explained
in the sense of the more moderate Catholic divines.^
Only the extension of the papal primacy to an un
limited supremacy, and the excesses in Marian worship,
and in the veneration of Saints and sacred jiictures,
are, in the author's eyes, the great stumbUng-blocks
that must first be removed.
We constantly hear complaints now of a general
hostUity to the Church. There is said to be a wide
spread feeling of alienation and disUke towards her,
variously and injuriously manifested in the press and
in society. That such complaints should be made on
the CathoUc side is perfectly inteUigible. The party
now dominant in the Church is warUke and aggressive,
and constantly proclaims that it is striving for two
great objects.^ In the first place, it is resolved to rule
and subjugate everything, not only in the sphere of

-I. An Eirenicon. By Rev. E. B. Pusey, D.D. Rivingtons, 1865. Gt First
Letter to Very Rev. J. H. Newman, D.D., 1869, and Is Healthful Reunion
impossible I a Second Letter, etc., 1870.
^ [Compare Newman's description of the action of this same ' ' insolent
and aggressive faction," in his letter to Bishop Ullathome, published in
the Standard of April 7, 1870. It is quoted in full at pp. 355 sqq. of
Letters of Quirinus. Rivingtons, 1870.]

148 Reunion of the Churches.
religious but of moral and even political and civil life.
In the next place, it is resolved to undermine, and,
when the right moment arrives, to destroy the existing
public order of society and modem legislation, with the
Uberty of the press, of religion, of teaching, etc. ; for
with these things — appealing as it does to the principles
of the Syllabus and the views of the Popes — it cannot
reconcile itself. But with the Protestant Church it
is different. Its clergy, aUowing of course for some
exceptions, can neither be charged with lust of power
nor with hostUity to the present order of society. And
here I am reminded of the strong saying uttered at a
Church meeting : " We have no flocks at our back ;
ninety-nine hundredths of our people are in league
with the enemy."-' How is this phenomenon to be
explained? And how is one to explain another cog
nate phenomenon, which I wUl describe in the words
used by a distinguished Protestant divine, Bruckner,
in an address delivered at Leipsic in 1860: "Our
Church, notwithstanding all remaining differences, is
in many respects reverting to the condition of the age
before Constantine. Public opinion is again, on the
whole, enlisted, not on the side of Christianity, but
' Messner's Neue Evang. Kirchenzeitung, 1866, p. 6.

Difficulties and Grounds of Hope. 1 49
against it," etc. ; and he anticipates oppression and
sufferings for his Church.^
Here it is obvious that mere naked unbelief or
hostUity to positive religion will not explain the
phenomenon ; the mischief Ues deeper. The general
superintendent and Court preacher at BerUn, Hoff
mann, has lately written on the " Causes of the
antagonism to the Church in Germany."^ He enumer
ates many, but above all the uncertainty and dis
cordance of the doctrines delivered from the pulpit.
The impression left on one's mind is, that the evil
Ues ih the want of confidence and respect of the laity
for their preacher, in whom they see a man teaching
simply according to the measure of his attainments,
and from his own subjective point of ¦view. They
have no feeling that he is supported on the broad
stream of Christian tradition flowing down through
eighteen centuries, and that his message is but the
echo of the voice of the whole Church reaching up to
Christ ; that they do but hear from his mouth what
has been always and everywhere proclaimed in the
name of the Lord. If then the German Protestant
' Die Kirche 'nach ihr. Ursprung, Geschichte, Gegenwart, VortrUge, von
Luthardt, Kahnis und Brilckner. Leipsic, 1865.
2 See his periodical, Deutschland, Jahrg. i. pp. 224 sqq.

150 Reunion of the Chtirches.
Church was enlarged by union with other Churches,
and re-entered by this union with the ancient Churches
into their unbroken continuity of Church Ufe and
doctrine, would she not gain in strength and authority ?
Would not her testimony be weightier and her power
of popular attraction increased ?
If we look closer, we shall be able to assume a dis
position and readiness for union among aU those who
admit that the communion they belong to is not abso
lutely the Church, the one and single Church complete
in itself, but only a branch Church, which cannot claim
to be itseff that One Holy CathoUc and ApostoUc Church
whereof the Creed speaks. This is maintained by those
divines who adhere most strictly to the Lutheran
doctrine.-' They, as weU as most Protestant theologians
at the present day, say that there is no communion of
which it can be affirmed that the fulness of the gifts
of grace and spiritual Ufe dweU exclusively within its
pale, while aU without is apostasy and heresy.^ It
foUows that they must hold the one Catholic Church
to be now spUt into fragments, each of the great
Churches having, of course in different degrees, its
1 So Hamack, Die Kirche, ihr A mt, ihr Regiment, Niimberg, 1862, pp.
87 sqq.
' Cf. Stahl, Die lutherische Kirche und die Union, p. 450.

Diffictdties and Grounds of Hope. 1 5 1
pecuUar advantages and defects. But it also foUows
that no single Church can claim CathoUcity to the ex
clusion of the rest. The Greek and Eussian Churches
do not do so. Mouravieff observes that the CouncUs
held in the East by Greek and Eussian Bishops had
abstained from calUng themselves " fficumenical," be
cause the Greek Church cannot regard herself as the
universal Church apart from the Eoman.-'
And here I wUl refer to a doctrinal ruling of CathoUc
theology, which is admitted even by the most papally-
minded theologians, and which as I beUeve may be of
the greatest ser^vice for the cause of union. It is
always taught in the Church that baptism is what
makes every one a member of the true CathoUc Church,
and as baptism can never be obUterated or repeated,
anybody once baptized remains for ever a member of
the One Church, even should he pass over to another
sect or Church, only that he then loses the rights of
membership. In the reUgious manual approved by
Church authority for use in the Bavarian schools, it is
^ Qiiestion Religie-use d'Orient et d'Occident (Moscow, 1856), pp. 223.
[Similarly the Popes who summoned the Councils of Lyons and Florence
for the reunion of the Greeks, Gregory x. and Eugenius iv., speak through
out in their official documents of "the union of the Western and Eastern
Church," of " uniting the Church of God," etc. See, for the detailed
evidence of this, Ffoalkes's Christendom's Divisions, pp. 259-261, 337-340.]

152 Reunion of the Churches.
taught that those who have been made members of
Christ by the sacrament of baptism, if they remain out
of her visible communion only through involuntary
ignorance and error, are regarded by the Church as her
true children erring by no fault of their own.
And here it must be explained that the notion of
involuntary error is a very wide one, for it includes aU
who cannot be charged with obstinacy {pertinacia)
and conscious rejection of recognised truth. Conse
quently the great majority of Protestants are members
of the One CathoUc Church. Of the eighty milUon
Greeks and Eussians this is self-e^vident. So broad is
the notion of Catholicity, and thus disappears what else
would be offensive and odious in the maxim, " Out of
the Church no salvation." Certainly Pius ¦veil in his
Brief of March 25, 1830, addressed to the Ehenish
Bishops, has again enjoined on them the teaching of
this doctrine in the harshest sense, and without the
addition of any mitigating or explanatory interpretation,
and that with direct reference to the Protestants.-' But
Pius IX. has not thought himself bound by this judg
ment, and declares in an Allocution of December 9,
1854, not only, first, that ignorance is an excuse before
1 Denziger, Eincheiridion Symb. et Defin., 1854, p. 423.

Difficulties and Grounds of Hope. 1 5 3
God, but,- secondly, that "no one can undertake to fix
the limits of this ignorance, when regard is had to the
diversity of peoples, countries, and minds, and the influ
ence of many other circumstances." The Pope therefore
teaches, or must by logical inference teach and inculcate,
" Judge not that ye be not judged ; condemn no one who
is in error according to your opinion, for you cannot teU
whether his error is inculpable or not." That the pre
valent practice in the Eoman Catholic Church and the
conduct of many of her priests is in glaring contradic
tion to these theories, is perfectly true. If Popes and
Bishops wished to be consistent, they would be obliged
to acknowledge that the Church is obscured and her
¦visible evidence and attractive power lessened by the
gross abuses prevalent, the amount of superstitions
favoured and practised, and the spectacle of so many
scandals among the clergy, and that this excuses before
God the judgment of those who refuse the invitation to
enter her communion. But this doctrine of the Church
being partly visible and partly invisible does us exceUent
service, first, in disposing of the old controversy between
Catholic and Protestant theologians about the visibUity
or invisibiUty of the Church ; and secondly, because it
enables us to say to aU members of other communions,

154 Reunion of the Churches.
" As being baptized, we are aU on either side brothers
and sisters in Christ, we are aU at bottom members of
the universal Church. In this great garden of God let
us shake hands with one another over the confessional
hedges, and let us break them down so as to be able to
embrace one another altogether. These hedges are the
doctrinal divisions, about which either we or you are
in error ; if you are wrong, we do not hold you moraUy
culpable, for your education, surroundings, knowledge,
and training make your adhering to these doctrines
excusable, and even right. Let us examine, compare,
and investigate the matter together, and we shaU dis
cover the precious pearl of reUgious peace and Church
unity, and then join our hands and forces in cleansing
and cultivating the garden of the Lord, which is over
grown with weeds."
The doctrine of conversion and justification is stUl
regarded in many quarters as the most important point
of difference. It was, men say, the turning-point of the
German Eeformation, its fairest jewel and speciality,
the article of a standing or falUng Church. The words
of the Elector of Brandenberg are often cited, who
impressed above all on the consciences of his theolo
gians, when setting off for a conference with their

Difficulties and Grounds of Hope. 155
opponents, to bring back with them the little word
" sola," i.e. the doctrine that man is justified by faith
" alone." And in fact this doctrine formed the prin
cipal subject of the public discussions at diets and
reUgious conferences, as at Eatisbon in 1541 and 1546.
But I must confess, at the risk of manifold contradictions,
that this is just the point where reconciliation seems to
me most easily attainable. On one side are ranged the
whole Western CathoUc Church, the whole Greek and
Eussian Church, and the greater part of the Anglican
Church ; aU these adhere to the ancient doctrine.
The Protestant doctrine, as it is most clearly taught in
the two Formularies of Concord and the Catechism of
Heidelberg, is no doubt absolutely irreconcilable with
the doctrine of the other Churches. The contradiction
is so glaring and decisive, that, were the Protestant
doctrine adhered to, aU hope of reunion must be given
up. But happily this is not the case ; the overwhelming
majority of German Protestant divines, and especiaUy
those who make Scripture exegesis their speciality, only
differ in their manner of expression, and not in sub-
stance, from the ancient doctrine.
¦^ [See, for some illustrations of this, my Catholic Doctrine of the Atone
ment, pp. 281-284.]

156 Reunion of the Churches.
The celibacy of the clergy can form no ground of
separation, for this reason, if for no other, that even
the Eoman Church does not regard it as a divine law,
but only as an ecclesiastical ordinance, and does not
therefore hesitate to hold communion with the married
clergy of the Eastern Church. And, on the other hand,
Protestants, remembering certain exhortations of St.
Paul, ought to aUow that it well befits the Church to
have a class of ministers who voluntarily renounce
family life, in order to devote themselves exclusively to
the service of the flock, and to offer to that body of
the laity who, in these days, are compelled by poverty
or their station in life to remain unmarried, an example
of continence which might else be represented as im
possible. So again with communion in both kinds. The
withdrawal of the chalice in Western Christendom has
caused unspeakable mischief, and led to divisions and
wars ; nor have I been able to discover any important
benefit resulting from it. The whole Eastern and
Eussian Church, Uniate as weU as Orthodox, adminis
ters communion under both species ; and at all events
those Churches which are wiUing to unite ought not
to be rejected on that account.

Difficulties and Grotmds of Hope. 1 5 7
As regards the doctrine of the intermediate state, it
is clear how both Churches might gain by comparing
and coming to an understanding on their points of
difference. Protestant theologians complain that the
popular notion of two states only after death — heaven
and heU, immediate beatitude or damnation, — and the
consequent disuse of prayer for the departed, "has
brought the people to the brink of doubt about eternal
life altogether."-' They acknowledge that beUef in an
intermediate state of cleansing ought to be received, and
prayer for the dead recommended, even for the sake of
the Uving, and indeed ought to be formally reintroduced.^
On the other hand, the Latin Church, by uniting with
the Eastern, has allowed the scholastic opinion of a
material fire in Purgatory as the means of chastisement
to drop ; ^ and the substance of the doctrine can cause
no further offence, if once the gross abuses and mis
apprehensions are removed, which have incrusted its
kernel in practice and popular belief.
1 Neumann in the Zeitschrift fiir luther. Theologie, 1852, p. 282.
2 So Karsten and F. W. Schulze. [The testimony of two other eminent
Lutheran divines, Martensen and Rothe, are cited to the same effect in my
Catholic Doctrine of the Atonement (2d ed., W. H. Allen), pp. 282, 284,
and the list might easily be enlarged. For a catena of Anglican authorities
in favour of prayer for the dead — which might be indefinitely lengthened
by reference to living writers — see ch. xi. ot Christian Doctrine of Prayer
for the Departed, by Rev. F. G. Lee. Strahan, 1872.]
3 [Cf. supra, p. 51.]

1 5 8 Reunion of the Churches.
As regards confession, it is enough to remember that
the need for some institution securing to the clergyman
the opportunity of acting directly on the conscience of
the individual Christian is keenly felt in every Church.
In the Anglican Church, confession, in the strict sense
of the word, has been largely practised for some years.
In the German Protestant Church, as far as I can
gather from its literature, there is a very widely spread
desire to replace the general confession, which has be
come unmeaning and mechanical, by something much
more Uke the Catholic form.
Then again, the Sacrifice of the Eucharist, and the
necessity or fitness of making it the centre of public
worship, as in the ancient Churches, has in our day
found zealous advocates among German Protestant
theologians. On the other hand, the Catholic theo
logians will not deny that the use of the Uving and
universally understood language of the people is
preferable to the dead Latin, which only fosters the
popular fancy of some occult sacredness and magical
power residing in unintelligible forms.-'
Among the points in which the Churches have come
1 [In the North of Gei-many it is very common at High Mass to sing
vernacular paraphrases of the Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, etc., in which the
people join, instead of the Latin ; and authorized forms are published
for this purpose in many dioceses.]

Difficulties and Grounds of Hope. 159
nearer than before must be reckoned the monastic insti
tute. It is allowed by Protestants that " only by such
corporations can the wants be satisfied, which always
make themselves imperatively felt in the Christian
community ;"^ and in fact the Protestant deaconesses
correspond to the Sisters of Mercy in the Catholic
Church.^ And we may recognise an unmistakeable
approximation and removal of old causes of offence in
the circumstance that in the CathoUc Church the
female orders and convents, designed exclusively for a
life of prayer and contemplation without active work,
have disappeared, or are in course of disappearing ; whUe
the communities devoted to the bodUy and spiritual
good of others, the care of the sick and education,
display a power and activity hitherto unknown.
We must make up our minds to encountering
numberless adversaries. Three classes especially will
set themselves to oppose our eirenic efforts, — the first
numerous and powerful in England and America, the
second in Germany, the third everywhere. First
come aU those who recognise in the Pope the fulfil-
' Rothe's Ethik, vol. iii. p. 424.
^ [The Calendar of the English Church for 1872 gives between forty and
fifty Anglican sisterhoods or convents, discharging various works of mercy,
corporal and spiritual ; some of them having several daughter houses in
different localities.]

1 60 Reunion of the Churches.
ment of the scriptural prophecies about the great enemy
of Christ and the Apostasy, and consequently think no
further reformation of the papal Church possible, but
look for its judgment and destruction. Secondly, there
are those theologians to whom the ancient doctrines
common to all Christian Churches are already a burden
and offence, of which they are anxious to rid them
selves. The third hostile army, and its name is
legion, consists of those encamped under the papal and
Jesuit banner. That no stone will be left unturned by
that party to hinder every approximation, and strangle
at its birth every idea of peace, is certain. The Vatican
Council was organized for the express purpose of making
aU plans of reunion for ever impossible. Individual
conversions, indeed, are gladly welcomed ; they are
drops at once absorbed and lost in the ocean of Eoman
uniformity. But there is to be no negotiation on a
larger scale, for bodies of men meeting on equal terms.
Some years ago a society was formed in England of
Anglicans and CathoUcs combined for the common
furtherance of the union of the Christian Churches,
and it was condemned by the Pope, at the instance
of Ar chbishcp Manning.^
1 [The " Association for the Promotion of the Unity of Christendom " by

Difficulties and Grounds of Hope. 1 6 1
At the beginning, then, of any eirenic movement, its
opponents wUl outnumber its friends and helpers. But
we may count on the sympathy, if not the active help,
of those who have at heart the greatness and unity of
Germany, and who beUeve that the poUtical union is but
half the work and requires an ecclesiastical union of all
its tribes as the completion, fulfilment, and crowning of
the edifice. In Germany the two reUgions are con
stantly becoming more intermingled, and the artificial
de^vices for keeping them apart are more and more felt
to be disturbing and hindering influences, superseded by
the movement and needs of the present, and are being
graduaUy put aside. It seemed, after the controversy on
the subject at Cologne in 1839 and the foUowing years,
as if marriages between CathoUcs and Protestants would
become more infrequent, but they have increased of
late years, and wUl certainly continue to increase. And
these multiplying marriages and famUies of mixed

intercessory prayer, founded Sept. 8, 1857, and condemned by a decree of
the Roman Inquisition, Sept. 16, 1864, first published in England by
Archbishop Manning, shortly after his appointment to the See ot West
minster, in a Pastoral dated Epiphany 1866. The official report, published
by the Secretary of the Association in Sept. 1868, gives the total number
of members as 12,684, including " Roman Catholics, 1881 ; Orientals,
685 ; members of miscellaneous Protestant communities, 92 ; of Church of
England, 10,026."— See Unim Review, vol. vii. p. 74.]

1 62 Reunioit of the Churches.
religion are already paving the way for the fusion of
tbe Churches, and encourage us not to lose heart. The
mixture and interpenetration of the adherents of the
two confessions advances unchecked. There are no
longer any towns, and there will in time be no ¦villages,
where Catholics and Protestants are not dwelling
side by side. But that mutual tolerance and respect
which depends on the forms of refined social intercourse
is confined to the higher and educated classes. Among
the lower classes and the country population the
intermixture of confessions must either lead to a coarse
unbelieving indifferentism, or beget the desire and
need for a Church union, which may put an end to
those interminable reUgious troubles, frictions, and
asperities. I have found it the almost universal conviction in
foreign countries that it is the special mission of
Germany to take the lead in this world-wide question,
and give to the movement its form, measure, and
direction. We are the heart of Europe, richer in
theologians than all other lands ; and the Unguistic
knowledge indispensable for this task exists ¦with us
in a higher degree than anywhere else. What can,
what ought to be done ? A negotiation between the

Difficulties and Grotmds of Hope. i6

a

Churches through plenipotentiaries accredited on either
side promises no result ; the mere proposal or attempt
would now, after Jidy 18, 1870, be a folly. The right
instruments would be found in men, both of the clergy
and laity, who would unite for common action, first in
Germany, untrammeUed by instructions, and simply
foUowing their own mind and judgment. They would
soon draw others to them in rapidly increasing
numbers, by the magnetic power of a work so pure and
pleasing to God, and would thus be brought into com
munication with Uke-minded men in other countries.
The basis of their consultations would be Holy Scrip
ture, ¦with the three oecumenical Creeds, interpreted
by the stUl undi^vided Church of the early centuries.
Thus would an international society of the noblest and
most beneficial kind be formed, and what began as a
snowbaU might weU become an irresistible avalanche.
There would be no lack of cold contempt or furious
hostiUty to the work; but they would faU to over
throw it.
A Prussian official, who had long been concerned
with the ecclesiastical affairs of both Confessions, wrote
thus at the end of his public career in 1857 : — " I am
certain the time will come, before the newly inserted

164 Retmion of the Churches.
stones are mouldered, when a common Te Deum will

be sung in the cathedral of Cologne." ^
In this belief and hope I desire to live and die.
Nor could I wish for any better success and reward of
my Lectures than this ; that my hearers should make
a like hope part of their life, carry it into their dealings
with members of other communions, and, wherever an
opportunity occurs of bearing witness to it, not remain
cold and dumb. We Germans have lived to see days
of serious import and joyful triumph, — days of
victory and of national unity at length attained ; and
I trust that our people will remain strong enough and
moral enough to maintain the lofty position divine
Providence has assigned to them. But these days of
triumph have had to be dearly bought with terrible
sacrifices, and at the cost of rivers of human blood.
Here, in the sphere of religion and in the effort for
reUgious peace, a fairer crown and bloodless victory
awaits the German people, — more difficult indeed to
win than that victory over France, for it is the con
quest of ourselves, our indolence, our pride, our selfish
ness, our prejudices, our easy self-conceit. But if we
are willing to march to this contest, we march under a
1 Eilers, Meine Wanderung d-wrch Leben (Leipsic, 1857), vol. ii. p. 265.

Difficulties and Grounds of Hope. 165
Leader whose name may inspire the most faint
hearted with courage. It is He from whom descends
every good and perfect gfft, whose word is not yet
fulfiUed, but must be fulfiUed in time to come : " There
shall be one fold and one Shepherd."

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