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TVt(3 2^)fc

Zbe

jfoucfolb Difficult?
of

Bngltcantsm:

OR,

THE CHURCH OF ENGLAN'D

TESTED BY THE NICENE CREED.

IN A SERIES OF LETTERS

BY

VERY REV.
J. SPENCER NORTHCOTE, D.D.,
Provost of Birmingham.

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mmmd



CONTENTS.

Page

INTRODUCTORY. v

LETTER I.—Means of Learning Christianity I

LETTER II.—Marks of the True Church ... ... ... 6

LETTER III—Unity 9

LETTER IV.—Want of Unity in the Church of England ... 16

LETTER V.—Unity of the Roman Church ... ... ... 23

LETTER VI.—Sanctity... ... ... ... ... ... 34

LETTER VII.—Sanctity in the Roman Church 46

LETTER VIII.—Catholicity 54

LETTER IX.—The Church of England not Catholic ... 62

LETTER X.—Apostolicity ... ... . ... ... 7

6

LETTER XI.—Objections considered 87



, J ; :



INTRODUCTORY.

I suppose that the death of the dear and venerable

Cardinal Newman has set many an old man reviewing

his own religious history during that memorable autumn

of 1845, when the religious world in England was

startled by the announcement that “Newman had gone
over to Rome.” I had been acting for eighteen months

as curate to a High Church clergyman in the North of

Devon, where we had daily service and all that was

then considered characteristic of the Anglo-Catholic

party in the Establishment. I now obtained leave from

the Bishop (of Exeter) to retire from active duty for a

while; and, under his Lordship’s direction, proceeded to

study Barrow and Leslie on the Roman question. I

soon discovered how inconsistent they were in their use

of principles, arguing on High Church principles against

Dissenters and on Low Church principles against Rome.

I communicated this impression by letter to the Bishop,

sending him at the same time extracts from a sermon

which I had preached on the 2nd Sunday in Advent,

1844, and in which I had contrasted the methods of inter-

preting Scripture adopted by Anglicans and by Dis-

senters. I had no suspicion at the time that I was

wielding a two-edged sword, but it now dawned upon

me that an impartial use of the same principles would

justify many Roman doctrines which I had been wont

to denounce. This communication soon involved me
in a brisk correspondence with his Lordship. In my
third or fourth letter I specified the supremacy of St.

Peter as a subject of which I found quite as much proof

in Holy Scripture as of the necessity of Infant Baptism

or the Divine Institution of Episcopacy. I received the

following reply :

—



VI Introductory.

Bishopstowe,

4th Jan., 1846.

1. The Church of England does not teach that it is

“to be required of any man that either the fitness or

blessedness of Infant Baptism or the Divine Institution

of Episcopacy should be believed as an article of the

faith or be thought requisite or necessary to salvation.”

2. Secondly, both those articles are capable of being

proved by Scripture.

Therefore your argumentum ad hominem does not

appty*
Farewell, I wish I might still subscribe myself your

Brother, as I still feel towards you,

Your faithful friend,

H. Exeter.

This letter was a revelation to me. Could it be then

that nothing more than a private interpretation of

Scripture stood between English Churchmen and Bap-

tists? or Presbyterians and Episcopalians? Or did the

Church of England claim a right to exercise an economy

in her ministry of the Word, knowing certain doctrines

to be divinely revealed, yet not proposing them to the

faith of her children?

I now found myself face to face with the following

problem : should I abandon the principles upon which

I had hitherto held and taught the doctrines of the

Church of England, or should I carry them out to their

legitimate development by submission to Rome ? I could

not hesitate long in my choice between these alternatives,
and a few days later I was reconciled to the Catholic

Church. I wished to publish my correspondence with
the Bishop of Exeter, but was prevented. Six months

later, I published the following letters, partly in justifi-

cation of the step I had taken, but chiefly with the hope

of inducing others to follow my example. They were
answered by Rev. W. Gresley, Prebendary of Lichfield,

Rev. A. H. Hosmer, and two or three more. They

received other, and to me more gratifying answers, from



Introductory. Vll

persons with whom I had no previous acquaintance, but

who had derived more or less help from them in their

search after Catholic Truth. They are republished now

in the hope that they may have similar effect at the

present day. Certainly, whatever may be the worth of

their argument, it has not been enfeebled by age. Much

has since happened within the Church of England, but

not with the result of improving her unity.

When these letters were first published, it was pointed

out by one of my critics that the Church of England did

not use the word holy in her version of the Nicene Creed.

The history of this singular variation from the Roman

I have never investigated, neither have I thought it

necessary to disturb the frame-work of my argument
because of it. She has retained the word holy in the

Apostles’ Creed, and therefore is as much bound to

recognize Sanctity as one of the notes of the true Church

as if she had retained it in the Nicene Creed also.

The bulk of this little pamphlet remains the same as

when it first appeared, but certain retrenchments, ad-

ditions, and other changes have been freely made in

many parts. I need hardly add that it makes no

pretension to being a complete treatise on the subject in

hand
;

it only professes to deal with it in a popular way

and with a special view to the difficulties and prejudices

of the ordinary Anglican mind.

J. S. N.

The Presbytery,

Stoke-on-Trent.

Christmas, 1890.



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of BnoUcanfsm.

LETTER I.

What means did Our Lord take to secure the
perpetual transmission of His teaching to man-

kind? Answer to be found in His own words in
the Gospel, and in the facts recorded in the Acts

of the Apostles and the Epistles.

My dear

You wish me to tell you what were my
reasons for becoming a Catholic, or (as you some-

what strangely express it) “for joining the Romanist

Schism in this country;” and you assure me that you

make this enquiry, not to gratify a mere idle curiosity,

still less with a determination not to be convinced, but

with a real practical purpose and an honest desire of

knowing the truth. Hitherto you have professed the

same form of Christianity that you learnt from your

parents, but without having particularly examined into

the authority on which it rests. Recent circumstances,

however, have somehow awakened your mind, and made

you look into the grounds of your belief, and the result

has been to raise grave doubts. The question has

B



2 Fourfold Difficulty of Anglicanism.

taken firm hold of you
;
you recognize its deep import-

ance; you see that it may be a question of life or
death— I mean, of life or death eternal; you are resolved
to look into the matter with all seriousness, and to act in

accordance with the result of your examination, be the

consequences what they may. Under these circum-

stances, instead of entering at present into the details of

my own conversion, I think I shall better comply with
the spirit of your request, by laying before you some

general grounds on which, as I believe, you and all

others ought to join the Roman Communion likewise.

How shall we begin our enquiry ? What form shall it
take?

Practically, the question before you comes to this:

Who is the appointed teacher of Christianity ? what are
the appointed means of learning it? Now, we are all

agreed that Jesus Christ, our Lord and Saviour, came

down from heaven not only to die for us on the Cross,

not only to purchase for us by that death the forgiveness

of our sins and all the means of grace, but also to teach

us all truth, to show us what we must believe, and what

we must do in order to gain the kingdom of heaven.

This is so universally acknowledged by all sects of

Christians that we need not waste any words to prove it.

We have next therefore to ask what means did our Lord
adopt in order that you and I, who live more than 1800

years after His return to heaven, should learn the same

truth as He Himself taught? Let us look into the Bible,
which both of us revere as the Word of God. We
read there that Jesus chose twelve of His disciples,

whom also He named Apostles, and that He sent them

to preach the kingdom of God. After His resurrection,

He breathed upon these men, imparting to them the
gift of the Holy Ghost, and making them partakers

in* His own Divine Mission, saying: “As the Father

hath sent Me, I also send you.”*

When He was just now about to leave this earth and

ascend into heaven, He said to these same Apostles:
“All power is given to Me in heaven and in earth;

* St. John xx. 21,



Means of Learning Christianity. 3

going therefore teach ye all nations, baptizing them in

the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy

Ghost; teaching them to observe all things whatsoever

I have commanded you, and behold I am with you all
days even to the consummation of the world.”*

These words of our Blessed Lord make it quite plain

that if we had been living in those early days of the

Church’s history, and had wished to know anything

about Christ’s teaching, we must have gone to one or

other of these Apostles, and we should have been per-

fectly safe in believing every word they taught, because

of our Lord’s promise that He would be with them, and
other promises to the same effect. To listen to one of

these apostles would have been the same thing as to

listen to the voice of God Himself, according to those

other words of Christ, “He that heareth you heareth
Me,” t and again, “He that receiveth whomsoever I
send, receiveth Me, and he that receiveth Me, receiveth

Him that sent Me.”f
This would have been the state of things if we had

lived ten, twenty or forty years after our Lord’s Ascension,

as long as any of His Apostles remained upon earth.

But how would it have been if we had lived fifty or a

hundred years later, or supposing we had lived in some

town or village which the Apostles never visited? The

Apostles were but men, they were not able to go every-

where, neither were they going to live for ever. What

provision was made for those generations of men who

would never see any of the Apostles themselves ? We
should certainly have conjectured from the words of

our Lord’s last promise to them, which have been al-

ready quoted, that the Apostles were to last till the end

of the world, if not in their own natural bodies, yet in

their super-natural office
;

if not themselves, yet others

succeeding to their places and inheriting their privileges.

But in this letter I do not wish to leave anything to

conjectures, or even to reasonable inference. I mean as

far as possible to go by the plain testimony of the

* St. Matt, xxviii. 19, 20. f St. Luke x. 16.

X St. John xiii. 20.



4 Fourfold Difficulty of Anglicanism.

Scriptures in all that I shall say. What then do the

Scriptures tell us as to the question before us? What

happened as a matter of fact after our Lord’s Ascension?

At first the Apostles, having filled up their number by

the election of Matthias in the place of Judas, managed

all the affairs, both spiritual and temporal, of the new

society. Presently, finding this too much for them, they

shifted the burden of temporalities to the shoulders of a

new set of officers called deacons. By and by the

Church is thrown open to the Gentiles
;
and shortly

afterwards, under the immediate direction of the Holy

Ghost, Saul and Barnabas were set apart for the work

of the ministry by a ceremony which included fasting

and prayer and the laying on of hands.* These

men go about preaching the Gospel in various places,

founding new churches or congregations of the faithful,

and in every church they ordain priests or elders—we
will not stop now to dispute about their right name

or precise functions; we will only remark that prayer

and fasting are again mentioned in connection with these

ordinations.

St. Paul, writing to his beloved son Titus, tells him

that he had left him behind him in Crete for this

very purpose that he should set in order the things that

were wanting, and in particular that he should ordain

priests in every city. What was to be the duty of these

priests? One part of their duty certainly was to

teach, For St. Paul, writing to Timothy, another

well-beloved son, whom he had desired to remain at
Ephesus, as he had desired Titus to remain in Crete,

tells him that he had done so in order that he might
“ charge some not to teach differently from what they

had been themselves taught;”! and after exhorting him

again and again not to neglect the grace that is in him,

which was given him by prophecy with imposition of the

hands of the priesthood, he gives him the following

charge : “ The things which thou hast heard of me by
many witnesses, the same commend to faithful men
who shall be fit to teach others also.”

J

* Acts xii. 2. f Tim. i. 3. f Tim. ii. 2.



Means of Learning Christianity. 5

Here then we have had set before us four or five links

in a chain of divinely appointed teachers. Has that chain

ever come to an end ? First, we see God the Son sent by

His Heavenly Father, then God the Son sends twelve

men with the very same Divine mission He had Him-
self received : God the Holy Ghost too, Himself sent by

the Father and the Son, sends other men on the same

mission and with the same authority. One of these

men sends others, amongst the rest Timothy and Titusr
and he charges them to hand on the same commission

to faithful men who shall be fit to teach others also.

Had you and I been living then, and had we desired

to learn the true doctrine of Christ, is it not clear that

we should have had to go to one of these men and listen

to his teaching and that we should have been perfectly

safe in doing so? Nay, more; that we could not then

have learnt the Christian religion in any other way. For,

as you very well know, Jesus Christ did not leave one

single document behind Him. When He left this earth,,
not one single sentence of the New Testament had been
written. Neither do we find among His directions to

His apostles one single trace of any command to them

to commit His divine doctrine to writing. Moreover, we
know, as a matter of fact, that thousands of men and

women embraced Christianity, and believed in it unta

salvation, and died in the faith of Jesus Christ, who had

never heard of, and much less seen, any inspired Gospel,

or inspired Epistle, or any book of the New Testament.
Observe how exactly this tallies with St. Paul's account

of the generation of faith in the hearts of those who
receive it. He first lays down the general proposition
that “ whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord

shall be saved," and then he goes on, “ How shall they
call on him in whom they have not believed ? or how
shall they believe him of whom they have not heard ?
and how shall they hear without a preacher? and how

shall they preach unless they be sent?"* And he concludes
“ Faith then cometh by hearing, and hearing by the

word of Christ : ” the word of Christ spoken or preached

* Romans x. 14.



6 Fourfold Difficulty of Anglicanism.

as he has just said. And this also agrees with what

the same apostle has said in another place, “It pleased

God by the foolishness of our preaching to save

them that believe."* And elsewhere he repeats more

than once that he has been appointed a preacher, an

apostle, and a teacher of the Gentiles.

Two things are clearly established by these sayings of
St. Paul, that in his day at least the teaching of Christi-

anity was to be by preaching, and that the preachers

were to be sent. Has this law ever been revoked? And
if so, when and by whom? Has there ever been a time
since the days of St. Paul when there was not a body of

men on earth claiming to be thus sent? Is there such a
body of men now ?

LETTER II.

If two rival bodies claim to be the Church

established by Christ, how is the true to be
distinguished from the false ? According to the

Nicene Creed, the true Church must be One, Holy,

Catholic, and Apostolic.

You tell me that I have taken unnecessary trouble in

laying a foundation for our correspondence; that the

same foundation has been long since firmly laid in your

own mind; for that you were brought up in the High

Church school, and therefore had never tried to form a

creed for yourself from your own private reading and

interpretation of the Bible, but had received it from the

Church of England in which you were born, as from a

divinely-appointed teacher. Moreover, you had been

taught to believe that the Church was a visible body to

*
I Cor. i. 21.



Marks of the True Church. 7

which “the Lord added daily such as should be saved

*

that it was so near and dear to its Divine Founder as

to be called by His Apostles His spouse and His very

Body, and so important in its relations to ourselves, as to

deserve to be called by the same inspired writers “the

pillar and ground of the truth.” f You are quite prepared

therefore to answer in the affirmative the question with

which my last letter concluded. You readily admit that

there is a visible body upon earth, founded by our Lord

for the diffusion of His truth, and the one appointed

channel whereby grace is conveyed for the restoration of

fallen man, and that it is therefore wicked and dangerous

presumption, either wilfully to separate from this body, or

wilfully to continue separate from it. Your difficulty is

of another kind. You ask, how you are to recognize this

body, for you find yourself in the presence of two bodies

equally earnest in claiming your allegiance, yet opposed

to one another in many matters of great importance.

Now I think you will not deny that the Church must
have certain outward signs or tokens whereby it may be

distinguished from false rival societies : God has surely

set some plain indications of His presence upon that

body, which is really His, and in which He vouchsafes
to dwell, that so strangers may be drawn towards it, and

all His sheep be gathered into one fold. The question

then arises, What are these signs and tokens, the outward

and visible notes of the One True Church ?

Both you and I publicly declare, in one of the sacred

symbols of our faith, that we believe in One, Holy,

Catholic and Apostolic Church
;

it must be fair then to

test our respective claims to be considered members of

God's Church by this simple rule—to which communion
do these notes most unequivocally belong, to yours or

to mine? the English or the Roman?

And this method of inquiry is the more satisfactory,

because the notes here spoken of are easily intelligible,

and also answer entirely to the natural sense and judg-

ment of our own minds. It is obvious to all, that Unity

must be a characteristic of Christ's Church, because that

* Acts ii. 47. f I. Tim. iii. 15.



§ Fourfold Difficulty ofAnglicanism.

Church is the depository of God’s revealed truth, which

must needs be one with itself, everywhere and always

the same; Sanctity
,
because the very purpose of Christ’s

coming was “to destroy the works of the devil, and

purify to Himself a peculiar people, zealous of good

works
;

” Catholicity
,
because we are told, that in Christ

“ the wall of partition is broken down
;

” the new covenant

was to be, not like the old one—local, national, and
limited—but “ a light to lighten the Gentiles,” as well as
“the glory of His people Israel;” and Apostolicity

,

because thus only can we be sure that its doctrines and

sacraments are really those which Christ taught and

instituted, if we know it to be the true representative, by

direct succession, of that body of Apostles who received

them from Himself, inheriting therefore that Divine

warrant of their commission, “As My Father hath sent
Me, even so send I you,” together with the promise of

perpetuity, “ Lo ! I am with you always, even to the end
of the world.”

Another advantage in this line of argument is its

broad, general character, which saves me from being

entangled in any examination of details; in truth, such

an examination would be very difficult, if not wholly

impossible, because I am ignorant of your present position

in this matter. English High Churchmen differ so much

from one another, and from themselves at different times,

that I really do not know what are the precise points in

“Roman doctrine” which you now consider to require

an apology, what you are ready to concede, or what you

would pass by as unimportant: eg., one clergyman

concedes the cultus of the saints, but cannot believe in

purgatory; another holds purgatory to be both ancient

and reasonable, but cannot conceive why we should pray

to those who were once our fellow-men, and so on through

a graduated scale of opinions, from those who have but

recently learnt to question whether Rome be really

Antichrist, to those who claim to hold (or, less confidently

not to reject) all Roman doctrine.

This, then, is the plan which I propose to follow: to

enquire which communion, the English or the Roman,



corresponds most faithfully to the description of Christ’s

Church set down in the Nicene Creed, of “One, Holy,

Catholic and Apostolic Church.” Let me hear that you

do not object to this, that you do not consider it unfair

or unreasonable, and, in my next letter, I will enter at

Once on the consideration of the first of these tests

—

Unity.

The Church of England is not at one with other

Protestant bodies, nor with the Catholic Church,

nor with herself. Vital importance of the points

at issue. Examples.

In considering the point of Unity as it concerns the

Established Church of England, it cannot but be fair to

look on that Church in the character which you yourself

assign to it—that, namely, of a National Church, forming
a part of the One Church Catholic. Looking upon her,

then, in this point of view, we are naturally led to enquire

how she stands in relation to the other National Churches,

which, with her, according to this theory, make up the

Catholic Church, and with which we should therefore

expect her to be one, in “ origination,” in “hope,” in

“charity,” in “discipline,” in “sacraments,” and in

“faith; ” in which six points, according to your Bishop

Pearson, the unity of the Church consists. Now, of these,

the unity of “origination” and of “hope” may be claimed

alike by all Christians of whatever denomination : but can

it be said that the English Church, as a body, is one with

other Churches even in the unity of charity ? and is it not

a fact almost too obvious to mention, that, in point of

discipline and sacraments, in point ot faith and doctrine,

f

LETTER III.



io Fourfold Difficulty ofAnglicanism.

there is no one Christian society in the world, excepting

only her own offshoots and dependencies, with whom she
is in communion? In former years, indeed, there was a

boasted union of all the Reformed Churches, the Church

of England among the rest. “Blessed be God,” says

Bishop Hall,* “there is no difference in any especial

matter betwixt the Church of England and her sister

Churches of the Reformation; we accord in every point

of Christian doctrine without the least variation; their

public confessions and ours are sufficient convictions

to the world of our full and absolute agreement. The

only difference is in the form of outward administration,

wherein also we are so far agreed, as that we all profess

this form not to be essential to the being of a Church,

not seeing any reason why so poor a diversity should

work any alienation of affection in us one towards

another.” Such was the tone and temper of the English

Church for many generations after the Reformation
;
and

I suppose a very large proportion of her people, her clergy,

and bishops, still in some sense make common cause

with the Protestant Churches of the Continent : such, at

least, was the temper indicated by the proceedings in

the matter of the Jerusalem bishopric, some forty years

ago, in the course of which the Prussian government was

allowed to declare without contradiction, that the English

Church, “ both by origin and doctrine, is most intimately

akin to the German Evangelical Church;” and the

Bishop of London, preaching about the same time before

the King of Prussia, exhorted his hearers “not to think

or speak more uncharitably of other National Churches

(i.e., the Lutheran, &c.) than the fathers of their own [the

English] had spoken.” The same spirit also is manifested

in the proceedings of the more recent Pan-Anglican

Synod at Lambeth, where the right hand of fellowship

was held out to Protestant nonconformists at home.

Still, however, the English Church cannot be said to

be in communion with any of these; and, on some

important points of discipline and doctrine, she is at

variance with them all. This, indeed, you, and those

* A.D. about 1640. Peace-Maker, vol. viii. p, 356.



Unity. ii

who think with you, would be only too ready to admit

;

you would indignantly repudiate all suspicion of unity

between the Church of England and the Protestant

communions; your theory being, that those national

bodies are cut off from the Catholic Church, while the

English communion, on the other hand, is a branch of

that Church, the Roman Church (under which general

name are included, be it remembered, besides the Roman

Church strictly so called, the several National Churches

under its obedience) being another branch, and the

Greek Church a third : so that, in spite of all seeming

differences, there is a real vital unity between the English

and Roman communions, so close, that they may be

considered branches of the same tree, “ parts” of the

same “vineyard.”

But, my dear friend, is this anything more than a
theory—a theory on paper, contradicted by the experience
of three hundred years? Is not the Church of England,

in point of fact, out of communion with the Church of

Rome? Nay, does she not denounce that Church, re-

pudiate some of her doctrines, charge her with idolatry,

and even call her by the name of Antichrist ? * And,

on the other hand, does not the Church of Rome utterly

deny the claim of the Church of England to be of the

Church Catholic, and excommunicate all her bishops,

clergy, and people as open heretics and schismatics?

“ These two branches not only have no formal or visible

fraternity, union, or communion as churches, but re-

ciprocally denounce each other as false, heretical, and

Antichristian. We speak not of the writings, speculations,
tracts, or opinions of individual ecclesiastics, but of the

established and authorized documents of each of these

would-be Catholic Churches, all of which confessedly

go to the denial of the Christianity, Apostolicity, and

Catholicity of the other.” f This is evidently the

language of one who is neither an English Churchman

nor a Roman Catholic
;
but it is also the language of

common sense, honesty, and fairness. And, with these
facts before us, I am at a loss to conceive how any one

* In the Homilies. f Eclectic Review.



E2 Fourfold Difficulty ofAnglicanism.

can seriously maintain the existence of vital arid essential

unity between the two communions.

It would not be necessary to mention the Greek

Church, except that it is sometimes spoken of as a

possible thing to bring about “friendly relations” be-

tween it and the Church of England. But it is manifest

that, in point of fact, not only is there at present no

communion between them, but that, in every doctrine

and practice in which the English Church differs from

the Roman, except, of course, the one question of the

supremacy, she differs also from the Greek Church;

therefore, it is mere unreality to pretend that she finds

in the East a sympathy denied her by the Churches of

the West.

But, it may be said, all this is too true; and yet this

unhappy severance of England from the rest of Christen-

dom is so far from being a token against her, that it is
the consequence of her fidelity to the truth. She is

separated from the Churches in the Roman obedience,
because those Churches still obstinately adhere to the

corruptions with which time has overlaid the pure faith

of the Gospel; while she, on the other hand, having

once participated with them in the same corruptions,

has nobly arisen and purified herself, and now holds the

faith in its primitive simplicity, as it was taught in the

early ages of the Church. And she is separated from

the other Protestant bodies because, when she thus cast

aside her corruptions, she still faithfully adhered to the

Apostolic type of doctrine and discipline, retaining as

much of the system of the existing Church as was con-

formable to that type; while they, on the contrary,

formed to themselves a new religion, which they pro-

fessed to draw straight from the Bible, and which is

utterly without sanction in the records of Christian

antiquity. Thus, it may be said, she stands alone, as

a necessary consequence of her position
;
she is the one

middle point of truth between contending errors. This

is no small pretension, representing, as it does, the

Church of England in the character of the single con-

fessor for the truth in the face of all the Churches of



<

" Unity: .13

Christendom, alone “ faithful found among the faithless/'

Surely, a Church, venturing on so bold a position as

this, ought, one would think, to bear some very marked

tokens of her calling to an office, which, as all must

admit, it requires little short of inspiration to fulfil : and

as, while error is diverse, truth can be but one, the

especial mark for which we should naturally look in this

sole champion of the truth, would be unity in herself.

But what is the condition in this respect of the Church

of England? Is it not confessed on all hands, and

bewailed the most loudly by the most devoted of her

children that, on some of the most fundamental questions

of the Christian religion, there exist in her “ notorious

doctrinal oppositions, not mere differences, not shades

of opinion, not open questions, but downright, flat,

patent contradictions that she allows “one set of men

to preach one doctrine, and another to preach its logical

and consequential contradictory.” This contradiction

is so palpable, that the most uneducated have been

heard to express their surprise, when a change of teachers

has not brought with it a change of doctrine : and I

suppose you could hardly find ten consecutive parishes

in any part of the country, or name a single large town,

where the same doctrines are taught from every pulpit.

It has even been found necessary sometimes to furnish

a bishop with a theological chart of the parish in which

he was to preach, that he might know where to speak,

and where to be silent
$
in order to bribe him into silence

in one Church on all “controverted subjects,” he was

reminded that in another, a few hundred yards distant,

but in the same parish, he would have full scope for

preaching what he liked—that is, what he considered to
be exclusively the true and pure Gospel. Look at the

rival streams of theological literature daily pouring from

the press
:
pamphlets, magazines, and newspapers, tracts

against tracts, sermons against sermons. Look at the

rival societies formed for the purpose of disseminating

doctrines so entirely contradictory, that the one party

denounces as a “ soul-destroying heresy” what the other

proclaims to be “ the very commencement and basis



14 Fourfold Difficulty of Anglicanism.

of the Christian life;” the one puts forth as “the sum

and substance of the Gospel ” what the other does not

hesitate to characterize as an “awful delusion” and a

“snare of the devil.”

The fact of this absence of unity in the English Church

is so glaring and unquestionable, that it is not necessary,

in order to establish it, to look into the details of her

disunion : at the same time, it is a fact of such importance,

that it ought not to be glossed over, as it sometimes is,

by a sort of general formula, “ acknowledging and

deploring the existence of differences,” without an attempt

to realize the extent of those differences and their

fundamental character.

It is true that many would represent them as one

doctrinal disagreement, which others endeavour to mag-

nify into formidable proportions. But what is that one

doctrinal disagreement, and what does it involve? Is

it not concerning the cardinal doctrine, so to speak, of

the Christian system, the nature and mode of man’s

justification ? Surely, then, the question at issue between

"the two contending parties in the English Church is

nothing less than this, what the true Gospel really is

;

for only consider how many subjects of Christian doc-

trine stand, more or less immediately, in necessary

connexion with the doctrine of justification—original sin,
the freedom of the human will, Divine grace, faith,

repentance, good works, sanctification, assurance of

salvation, purification after death
;

all these must needs

be understood in senses wholly different, nay, some of

them received or rejected altogether, according to the

different views on this point. Further, only to mention

at present one portion of this great subject, the mode

of justification, it has been well said, that the whole tone

of a man’s religious character depends on his belief con-

cerning the sacraments, and it is manifest that it must

be so through every stage of his life. What can be

more opposite, for instance, than the condition of child-

hood, with and without the belief in baptismal regenera-

tion? In the one case, the child is taught to consider

himself as cleansed from original sin, as in the favour



Unity. 15

of God and in possession of His justifying grace, which

gives him power to do his duty acceptably, and which

he, on his part, is bound, by doing his duty, and by

using every appointed means, to cherish and to guard.

In the other, he is taught to consider himself as still a

child of sin, under the wrath of God, and to look upon

justification as a blessing which may or may not one

day be his
;

while, at the same time, he is told that

“good works done before the grace of Christ are not

pleasant to God,” * nor even make him “ meet to receive

grace
;

” so that one does not see what spring of energy

there can be within him, nor even what motive for

exertion is suggested to his mind.

In the parish in which I was born and spent the first

fifteen or sixteen years of my life, the Rector not only
preached against the doctrine of a new birth in baptism,

but also deliberately changed the words in the baptismal

office which asserted it, and substituted other words of his

own devising. Mr. Bennett, the well-known clergyman of

Frome, asserts that the same thing was frequently done

with impunity by evangelical clergymen, but the Bishop

of Exeter, Dr. Philpotts, prosecuted my Rector for so
flagrant a breach of discipline and succeeded in having

him deprived of his office and benefice for three years.

The rev. gentleman spent some of this time in preaching

in the Calvinist chapels in Switzerland; and at the

expiration of his sentence returned to his parish, roasted

an ox on the village green and proceeded to use his own

prayers in administering the Sacrament of baptism as

before. He was allowed to do so in peace until the day
of his death.

In the year 1844 a document was published in the

papers signed by about 200 persons, of whom about two-
thirds were clergy, which among other heretical pro-

positions included the following : “ Ungodly persons

have neither been born again of the spirit nor justified,

although they were baptized in infancy.” And “ There

is no scriptural authority for affirming that our Lord is

present with His people at the Lord’s Supper, in any

* Article xiii.



! 6 Fourfold Difficulty ofAnglicanism .

other manner than that in which He is present with them
whenever they meet together in His Name: and His

Body and Blood are verily and indeed taken and

received by them at that ordinance by faith, just as

they are verily and indeed taken and received by them

whenever they exercise faith in His atoning Sacrifice.”

I never heard that any of those who signed this docu-

ment was prosecuted on a charge of false teaching.

Some years later Dr. Philpotts refused to induct into

a living a clergyman who denied the doctrine of

baptismal regeneration. The case was fought out in

the Ecclesiastical Courts and carried to the final court

of appeal, which decided that clergymen of the Estab-

lished Church were at liberty either to teach or to deny

that doctrine according to their own good pleasure.

And this state of things still continues.

Such, then, is the subject on which the Church of

England is divided into two parties, as we have said,

absolutely antagonist; and, if she differs upon this,

on what practical point affecting the Christian life of her

children can she be said to speak unanimously and

distinctly?

LETTER IV.

Historical causes of the internal disunion of

the Church of England. Inconsistencies of her

formularies.

I rejoice in your candid acknowledgment of the fact

of disunion in the English Church, and of its extent, that •

it is “a rent to the very foundation;” though, at the same

time, you plead that such disunion is not inherent in her

essence, but only an accident, which proper ecclesiastical



Want ofUnity in Church of England. 1

7

discipline would remove. Be this as it may; that you

confess the fact is enough for my present purpose; for I
am only concerned to prove that, from whatever cause,
the Church of England has not that essential note of the

true Church, Unity; and this you have fully admitted.

And, before I examine^the plea you have put forward,

let me just entreat you to weigh well the extent of this
admission. What is it to confess that a Church has not

unity of doctrine, but to confess by implication that she

has not the true faith, or at least that she has it not for

the practical benefit of her children? For, supposing

that one ofthe antagonist systems within her be the truth,

and, even further, that her formularies sanction that

system rather than the other, still, how are the simple

and uneducated to know which it is, if they hear both

alike taught by her accredited ministers ? It is vain to

refer such to the Prayer-book, telling them to judge for

themselves whose teaching is most in accordance with

what they find there; this is to require from them what

they have not mental training sufficient to enable them

to do, while it encourages them also to place themselves

in an attitude of mind, surely most undesirable, that of

judges over their teachers. To the multitude, the

teaching of the Church is, and always must be, the

teaching of the individual clergy; if then these are

divided, how are the people to learn the truth ?

Only meditate upon this, which you cannot but admit,

and then determine whether, considering that the

teaching of the faith is one main office of the Church, a

body which does not teach any distinct creed can be of

the true Church.

But,—to turn to the examination of your plea,—do
you honestly believe that unity would be the result of

improved ecclesiastical discipline in the English Church ?

Are you not too painfully conscious that the adminis-

trators of that ecclesiastical discipline are not themselves

of the same mind ? Surely, while the rulers of the Church

themselves are thus disagreed, an augmentation of their

power (which I suppose is involved in your idea of

improved discipline) would only tend to aggravate the

c



1

8

Fourfold Difficulty of Anglicanism.

evil. For, what would it be but simply a hardship, if the

bishops were enabled by such augmented power to

silence their dissentient clergy, unless, at the same time,

their own opinions could be brought into harmony?

Again, it is surely idle to seek for unity by strengthening

the executive authority of the Church, until there are

some means of ascertaining what her mind really is. Is

there, at present, any one legitimate exponent of her

doctrine recognized as such by all parties ? If we quote

the charges of the bishops as samples of her teaching,

we are told that all these together will not make up the

voice of the Church :—the decisions of a Convocation
reckon for nothing:—the highest judge in an Eccle-
siastical Court gives now a judgment seeming to tend

in the Catholic direction, now another swaying back into

Protestantism; and in both instances, parties are found

to deprecate such decision being in any way attributed

to the Church. Nay, if the Queen, the Supreme

Governor of the Church herself, in concurrence with the

Primate of all England, holds out the right hand of

fellowship to heretical and schismatical bodies in the

East, sending a Bishop to Jerusalem, who fraternizes with

Lutherans or Nestorians;—even this, we are told, is
in no sense the act of the Church of England. Surely

the fact that so great changes must take place in the

system of the English Church, before increase of

discipline would give her unity, is an argument against

your plea that her disunion is a mere accident; for that

which it would require a remodelling of her whole

constitution to rectify, must be something, at least, very

intimately interwoven with her essence; and, indeed, the

annals of the last three hundred years, that is, of the

whole term of her separate existence, are enough to show

that, if division be not inherent in her system, it is an

“accident” altogether “inseparable” from it.

But, in truth, that the real cause of the mischief lies

deep in her very essence is too manifest, whether we

study the history of her origin, and the formation of her

various symbols and offices, or her theory as stated in

her own articles. There has been within her, from the



Want of Unity in Church ofEngland. 1

9

very first, a contest between two irreconcilable principles,

the Catholic and the Protestant; each of these has wrung

from her what sanction it could; and utter inconsistency

has been, of course, the result. Hence, she presents for

the acceptance of her children Calvinist Articles side-by-

side with a Catholic Prayer book; and of the two parties

who have always been struggling to obtain the exclusive

mastery with her, one has uniformly taken the Prayer-

book, the other the Articles, as the key-note in their

respective attempts to harmonize the conflicting portions

of her formularies. That portions of her formularies are

conflicting, each being taken in its obvious sense, none,

I believe, attempt to deny
;
and many, who desire nothing

more than to submit in unquestioning obedience to the

teaching of their Church, feel the inconsistency very

painfully. For instance, the Catechism teaches that

“The Body and Blood of Christ are verily and indeed

taken and received by the faithful in the Lord’s Supper.”

These words are plain and not anti-Catholic
;
but how

can they be reconciled with the declaration at the end

of the Communion Service, which, apologizing for the

practice of kneeling at that Sacrament, says that thereby

no adoration is intended, for that “ the natural Body

and Blood of our Saviour Christ are in heaven, and not

here ” in the consecrated elements ? I have myselfknown

young persons, who have been taught to understand the

Catechism in its obvious meaning, greatly perplexed by

this declaration, not knowing which of the two to receive,

but feeling it quite impossible to receive both. Again,

the 2 1st Article teaches distinctly enough, that “General

Councils may err, and sometimes have erred, even in
.things pertaining unto God;” and yet, by the laws of

the English Church, not only is that to be adjudged for

heresy which “hath been so adjudged by the authority

of the Canonical Scriptures,” but also, “ by the first four

General Councils.” Again, in the preface to the Ordina-

tion Services, we are told that “from the Apostles’ times

there have been three orders of ministers in Christ’s

Church but, in the Articles, the definition of a Church

seems to have been purposely framed so generally as to



2o Fourfold Difficulty ofAnglicanism.

include all the Reformed Churches of the continent,

without any reference to an apostolical succession of

bishops, or to the existence of these three orders as

essential. The same may be said of the ambiguous

language of the 23rd Article, and the apologetic

tone of the 36th, on the same subject. So nothing can

exceed the definiteness of the doctrine contained in the

Baptismal Offices and in the Catechism on the subject of

Baptism, yet those who deny that doctrine, appeal, not

without plausibility, to the 27th Article, which, speaking

of that Sacrament only “ as a sign of Regeneration, or

new birth, whereby, as by an instrument, they that

receive it rightly are grafted into the Church,” may seem

to agree with the Evangelical party, who assign its

efficacy rather to the virtue of prayer unto God, by which

it is accompanied, than to its own sacramental power.

And, if we turn from the authorized formularies of the

Church of England to the writings of her standard divines,

our perplexity is increased
;

it is true there are catenas

of “Anglo-Catholic” Doctors, carefully drawn up, and

exhibiting a tolerably consistent view of Christian doc-

trine, in an unbroken series from the Reformation to the

present day; but there are equally perfect catenas,

beginning in some instances even with the very same

names, and, at any rate, dating from the same era, of

quite a contradictory character; and who is to decide

which is the truest representative of the mind of the

Anglican Church ? for there is nothing to give a stamp

of weight and authority to the one, which is wanting to

the other. This is a very important consideration, and too

notorious to be called in question
;
indeed, it is acknow-

ledged by yourselves. “ It would be easy,” say the

Editors of a series of “Tracts of the Anglican Fathers,”*

“ for disputants of all varieties of opinion within the pale

of the Establishment, to find ancestors in heterodoxy.”

“ Many heresies have been maintained, and many

dangerous positions asserted, by divines of the Anglican

communion.” “Among the vast masses of the old

divinity, almost every shade of error will find its advocate,

* Vol. I. Introduction.



Want of Unity in Church ofEngland. 2

1

and the natural effect upon the minds of those who

examine but superficially, will be a despair of tracing any-

thing like unity in our Church writers.”

Such, then, is the fact. The Church of England has

been, from the very beginning of her existence, disunited,

as she is at present : and it seems to me, that if you look

into her own statement of her position and claims, you

will be compelled to acknowledge that nothing but such

incongruity in practice could result from a theory so

contradictory and self-destroying. Look, for instance, at

her assertion, that “the Church has authority in con-

troversies of faith;” and then at the limitation, which

immediately neutralizes this assertion : “ And yet, it is

not lawful for the Church to ordain any thing that is

contrary to God’s word written, neither may it so expound

one place of Scripture that it be repugnant to another.”

And again, “ the Church, besides Scripture, ought not to

enforce any thing to be believed for necessity of salvation.”

Now, as it seems to me, the assertion of “authority in

controversies of faith,” and these subsequent limitations

taken together, must at last resolve themselves into this

dilemma : If the assertion means any thing, the limitations

mean nothing
;

if, on the other hand, the limitations have

a meaning, then the assertion has none. To explain

myself : the declaration that the Church may not ordain

any thing contrary to Scripture, nor expound Scripture

so as to make it repugnant to itself, necessarily supposes

the existence of some party wherein resides the power of

determining whether, or not, she does the things thus

prohibited; or, in other words, of being her judge. If

this be so, it is manifestly the said party, and not the

Church herself, which has really authority in controversies

of faith. And, who is this supreme judge? It cannot

be Scripture itself, as some say, for Scripture is the law

to be expounded; neither can it be Catholic Antiquity,

as others pretend, for that is also a mere written document.

In fact, this tribunal of last resort, at whose bar the Church

is tried, can be none other than the private judgment of

each individual. This is, as we know, the recognized

Protestant principle, and perfectly intelligible
;
but then,



2 2 Fourfold Difficulty ofAnglicanism.

what becomes of the Church’s authority? According

to this theory, her children receive her teaching, not

because it is hers, but because it accords with their view

of what is taught in Scripture
;

if it did not seem to them

so to accord, they would be bound to reject it, and she

has no right to blame them for so doing
;

for if they

plead, as many do plead, that they consider her teaching,

on this or that point, to be contrary to Scripture, or even

“besides” it, she has, according to the hypothesis, nothing

to reply; for her children are her legitimate judges, and

from them is no appeal. If it be said that the Church

herself is the sole judge in her own cause, then the

limitations we have quoted seem to me to be without

meaning : for no Church, however corrupt, would confess

of herselfthat her decisions were contrary to God’s written

word. In fine, if assertion and limitation are both to

stand, I do not see how they can be construed into any-

thing but this: that the Church rests her claim to

authority on her right interpretation of the Word, and

then puts forward her authority as the guarantee that her

interpretation is right.

But, further, is not the very fundamental principle of

the Church of England’s position itself a suicidal one ?

Her existence, as a separate body, can only be vindicated

by the assertion, that the churches from which she has

separated herself have corrupted the truth
;
and thus she

distinctly declares, in one ofher articles, that the Churches

of Jerusalem, Alexandria, Antioch, and Rome have

erred, and that “ not only in their living and manner of

ceremonies, but also in matters of faith.” Now this, of
course, establishes the principle that national Churches

may err in matters of faith; and therefore the question

may well suggest itself to an English churchman, “ If

a national Church may err, how can I be confident that

my own Church, standing as it does alone, protesting
against all the other Churches of Christendom, has a

special immunity from thus erring ? ” and, surely, if there

be no such special immunity, it would be more probable

(on a primfr facie view), that the one Church of England

should be in error, than the several Churches of Italy,



Unity of the Roman Church. 23

Spain, Austria, France, and others, united as they are

in one faith and one communion.

I am fully convinced, then, and would fain convince

you, that the disunion you bewail in the Church of

England is inherent in her very essence, as it has been

her distinguishing mark from the beginning. You know

that she has never presented a consistent front, except

in her opposition to the doctrines of the Church of Rome
;

and even this negative unity, this agreement in disagree-

ment, she is now fast losing. It has been with her as

with the Donatists of old: “Sicut Christum dividere

conata est, sic ipsa a suis quotidiana concisione divi-

ditur.”*

LETTER V.

Unity of the Roman Church universally ac-
knowledged; even made a subject of reproach to
her. Internal consistency of all Catholic doctrine.

Past conflicts between Jesuits and Jansenists,

Ultramontanes and Gallicans no real objection

against the unity of the Church.

Having entered thus fully into the state of the English

Church with respect to Unity, it is fair to apply the same

test to the Roman Church
;
but much need not be said

to prove that she can bear the trial, for the fact of her

unity is admitted, as far as I know, by most Protestant

divines, though they often endeavour to trace its existence

to some unworthy cause. Thus, “ The boasted unity of

the Church of Rome is the result of the negation and

abandonment of private judgment
;

it is the effect of that

implicit belief, which brings the mind into bondage to

* S. Aug. de Agone Christiano, § 31.



24 Fourfold Difficulty of Anglicanism.

the decisions of fallible men. In one word, it is not

union founded in truth but in error.”

*

And again : “ It

is a union merely artificial and mechanical; a unity

resulting in innumerable instances from accident, custom,

and authority.” “ The system of Roman Catholic unity,”

says Blanco White, j
“

is but an arbitrary contrivance
;

”

“ the effect of blind submission to a silencing authority

and I could quote passages to the same effect almost

without number. Another, and not an unimportant

class of writers, conscious of the difficulty, seek to escape

it by disparaging and making light of Christian unity

altogether. Thus Leslie denies that there is any stricter

unity in the Church than in the world
;
and maintains

that, as there is a “ unity of relation, of humanity, and

of common principles,” which all the nations upon earth

still retain, even amid the fury of war, so the unity of

the Church consists in that common Christianity wherein

all agree, a unity which can never be lost.J Others,

again, bid us look for the unity of the Protestants in the

depths of their spiritual life; thus wisely carrying the

question into a region beyond the cognizance of human

faculties. Barrow too propounds a theory on the subject

of unity, and enumerates the several duties which flow

from it; (the non-fulfilment of which, however, by his

own communion, proves her, according to his theory, to

be no part of the Church Universal,) and then proceeds

to enquire, § whether that stricter unity, which the Church

of Rome insists upon, is necessary by the design and

appointment of God. Of course he decides in the

negative
;
but the inquiry itself is sufficient to show that

the unity of the Churches in the Roman obedience is at

least something stricter and more real than is even

professed elsewhere.

But, if we look at the one point only of unity in faith,

where, I would ask, will you find in the Roman Church

* Errors of the Church of Rome, by Rev. R. Meek, 1834, p. 7.

See also Mr. Gresley’s
“ Theory of Development,” &c., p. 11.

t Evidence against Catholicism, pp. 109, ill.

i Works, vol. 3. p. 12, 13. Ed. Oxford, 1832.

§ Unity of the Church, sect. 8. vol. 3. p. 212. Edinburgh, 1841.



Unity of the Roman Church . 25

anything at all like those differences of opinion which I

have pointed out in the Church of England? You

know well that they do not exist: that the Catholic

priesthood, from Great Britain to New Zealand,—now,
as when Protestantism sprang into being,—at all times
and in all places, speak, as with one voice, one and the

same unalterable faith. You will not find some Catholic

congregations believing in the real Presence, and others

rejecting it : some priests commending prayers for the

dead, and others protesting against them : some persons

practising confession, and others denying the absolving

power of the priest. Variations of practice you may

indeed discover in different Catholic countries, but no

diversity of faith. Seasons, degrees, and rules of fasting,

for instance, may differ according to climates or physical

capabilities, but you will find no Catholics denying the

obligation to fast in some way or other. There may be

more public demonstrations of love and honour to the

Saints and the Blessed Virgin in Spain, for instance, than

in England
;
but the doctrine of the communion of saints

is precisely the same, and expounded in the same terms,

throughout the Catholic world. In a word, the same

faith is believed and professed everywhere, though its

outward expression may and must differ, according to

the taste, habits, earnestness, moral and intellectual

capabilities, that is, the whole character of those who

receive it.

But it is scarcely needful to say all this: for, to

establish the fact of unity in the Roman Church, it is

really enough to appeal to the common opinion of her

enemies concerning her. Is she not universally dreaded

as a subtle and dangerous conspiracy : and what con-

spiracy could be more than contemptible without unity?

Is not her polity everywhere spoken of as the “master-

piece of human wisdom
;

” and could it be such, if its

fruit were division? You yourself, and others of my
friends, bear unconscious testimony to the same truth,

by your complaints that you can no longer look upon

my words and deeds as my own; because, in the case
of all Roman Catholics, you find it quite impossible to



2 6 Fourfold Difficulty ofAnglicanism .

distinguish between the working of the individual will,

and that of the system. Many go further still, and
believe that a man’s moral being undergoes a complete

transformation when he becomes a Catholic: that the

virtues which have been wrought into his character by

previous good habits—habits, it may be, which have
been years in forming; nay, even those instinctive

perceptions of right and wrong, common to him with
the whole human race—are blotted out in a moment,
all his personal responsibilities being merged in the one

absorbing duty of obedience; and that, too, as it is

believed, to a power which contradicts his natural

conscience, calling evil good and good evil
;
but which,

nevertheless, by some mysterious attraction, sucks him

into itself, stripping him of his personality, and making

him a blind organ of its will. The falsehood and

absurdity of this belief you are as well aware of as

myself; but real and intense indeed, and manifest to

the world, must be the unity of that body of which such

things can be believed, in which the individuality of

many millions is supposed to be thus merged and

annihilated.

In reply to this it is sometimes urged that, however it

may be now, unity of faith has not always been a

characteristic of the Church of Rome
;

that, in former

days, there were disputes and divisions upon Christian

doctrine between the Jesuits and the Jansenists, Galli-

cans and Ultramontanes, etc. In answer to this I

would say, it is undoubtedly true that there was con-

siderable disagreement on Christian doctrine between

the Jesuits and the Jansenists, just as there was between

the different parties in the Arian disputes of the fourth

century, or in the Nestorian and Eutychian controversies

of the fifth. And as long as these dissensions lasted, so

long the unity of faith was to a certain degree impaired,

or, to speak more accurately, was for a while obscured

;

but, by-and-bye, in all these instances alike, the Church

uttered her voice, and the false doctrine gradually

withered and died, or, if it still lived, it was no longer

within her pale. That disputes, such as those alluded



27Unity of the Roman Church.

to, were to be expected beforehand as likely to occur in

the Church, nay, as from the nature of the case almost

inevitable, I think a moment's consideration will dispose

you freely to admit. The Gospel, it is true, is a divine

message, yet, as the language in which it is conveyed is

human, questions may naturally suggest themselves,

almost without end, as to the real import of that

language : as, for instance, from the brief and mysterious

announcement, “The Word became Flesh," three “wide

questions," as it has been well said, * at once open upon

us: what is meant by “the Word," what by “Flesh,"

and what by “became:" and inquiries of this kind have,

as you know, from time to time arisen within the

Church, in the shape of conjectures or hypotheses, more

or less supported by Scriptural and traditional evidence.

These have gradually gained ground and attracted

notice, until the Church has felt herself obliged to

pronounce judgment upon them, and thenceforward,

according to her seal of sanction or anathema, such

opinions have been either incorporated into the Catholic

creed, or denounced as contrary to it: and those bodies,

which, spite of such anathema, have still clung to the

proscribed opinions, have gradually become external

and hostile to the Church. There may have been a

longer or a shorter struggle, but at last the victory of

the Church has been manifest and complete; the

enemies once detected and expelled, never again rise up

to trouble her; they are “gone out from her" for ever;

and the increased distinctness of her creed, which is the

result of the conflict, prevents their ever finding a home

in her again.

Such has been the ordinary law of progress and decay

in all heresies. But can you in honesty bring forward

a dispute which has died away without leaving a single

practical hindrance in the path of Catholic believers, as

in any way parallel to the divisions in the English

Church? These are as rife now as they were at the

beginning, and on the very same points. Although the

two systems of doctrine struggling within her are abso-

* Newman’s Essay on Development, p. 97.



2 8 Fourfold Difficulty ofAnglicanism.

lutely antagonist, and therefore, if she have a distinct

creed, one of them must needs be hostile to it; yet no

authoritative voice has denounced either as heresy : and

if, as you contend, the Puritan system is the alien, it is

so far from being subdued, that, (spite of the experience

of the 17th century, and the recent movement in the

Catholic direction) we are told by persons well qualified

to give an opinion, that, even at this moment, there is

nothing to prevent Puritanism again getting the upper

hand, and remodelling the Church of England.* Can

it be said, in the same way, of Jansenism, Lutheranism,

or any other heresy that has been once condemned,

that there is danger of its overrunning the Church of

Rome?

It is still less to your purpose to refer to the differences

which existed between Gallicans and Ultramontanes.

These did indeed disturb for a while the peace of the

Church but never broke her unity, because they turned

upon a point which had not yet been defined. Both

parties were agreed that the Church is infallible, and

that the Roman Church is the Mother and Mistress of

all Churches, but they disputed whether this infallibility

resided in the head of the Church or in the body, or in

both. This question was discussed and settled in the

Vatican Council of 1870, and now all Catholics are of

one mind and of one heart on this matter in the world-

wide unity of the infallible faith. It is true indeed that

a certain number of persons, especially in Germany, led

by a few professors and warmly patronized by certain

statesmen, have refused to accept the decision, but

henceforth they remain as much cut off from the Church

as did the Arians after the Council of Nice.

It is manifest, then, from the mere sensible testimony

of facts, that in this essential characteristic of the true

Church, Unity, the Roman communion stands out in

distinct and unquestionable superiority; and that superi-

ority will appear more striking and important if we

briefly examine into the inward principles or causes

* Mr. Gresley’s “Real Danger of the Church of England,” pp.

29, 34, &c.



Unity of the Roman Church. 29

from which it springs. All Catholic doctrine, as held

by the Roman Church, has been the result of one

continued law of growth, and has therefore the unity of

nature and of life: its development has been like that of

the Church itself, “the least of all seeds, but, when it is

grown, the greatest amongst herbs,” or like the growth of

grace in each individual soul, “ first the blade, then the

ear, after that the full corn in the ear.” Thus, the seed

of all Catholic theology may be said to be the one great

truth of the Incarnation; “the Word became flesh, and

dwelt among us;” “perfect God and perfect Man, yet not

two, but one Christ;” this is the centre round which every

detail in the whole cycle of Catholic doctrine moves in

harmonious sympathy
;

this is the one fundamental idea

on which is based the edifice of faith—or rather the
vivifying principle which, by animating every individual

part, binds all together into one living whole. That the

essential doctrines of the mediation and the atonement

flow immediately from it, is obvious to all, even from the

letter of Holy Scripture itself; and deeper reflection will

show us that it has a no less real and necessary connection

with the nature and efficacy of the sacraments, with the

doctrine of a visible and infallible Church, with the

intercession and invocation of saints, with the especial

prerogative of the blessed Virgin Mother, with the

veneration of relics, and every article of the Catholic

faith. All these are most intimately interwoven with it

and with each other
;
the same theandric principle, as it

is called by German theologians, runs through them all,

and distinctly marks them as parts of one indivisible

whole. And, because the more harmonious the mechan-

ism of a system, the less will it bear rough handling

;

therefore, those who once presume to subject this divinely-

constituted creed to a critical examination, choosing this

portion and rejecting that, soon find that they have

loosened the whole fabric of belief in their mind, and that,

if they will be consistent, and not rest in broken theories,

they must go on to the denial of Revelation itself. The

biography of Blanco White is a melancholy instance of

the truth of this remark
;
so are the lives of many other



30 Fourfold Difficulty of Anglicanism.

apostates, all demonstrating, by the sure testimony of

experience, that there is no trustworthy resting-place to

a logical mind between obedience to the Catholic faith

on the one side, and infidelity on the other. Testimony

to the same truth has been borne by the experience (only

in a contrary direction) of many recent converts
;
they

first received the doctrine of baptismal regeneration, and

then were gradually led to feel its incompleteness without

the sacrament of penance, and to see the “ logical neces-

sity” of belief in purgatory ; they were taught to acknow-

ledge the real presence, and soon felt that adoration of the

Host was involved in that acknowledgment; and so on,

through many close and subtle links, until at length they

embraced, in theory at least, the larger portion, if not the

whole, of the Catholic creed, before they recognized the

authority of the Catholic Church; and this because,

throughout the whole length and breadth of the Catholic

system, there is the strictest logical coherency of each and

every part. Nay, the history of the English Church bears

testimony to the same truth
;
when she separated from the

Universal Church, though she deliberately rejected much

of its doctrine, yet she meant to assign certain limits to

the working of the spirit of scepticism which she had thus

evoked : but what has been the result ? She wished to

cast off what she called Romish superstition
;
her children

have also “ cast off that reverence and obedience which

the law of God requires.” * She purposed to discontinue

the Catholic practice of invocation of saints and angels
;

her children have “lost all practical feeling of the

communion of saints, and, like the Sadducees of old, have

learnt almost to forget or deny the existence of angels or

spirits.” She dreaded “too great an exaltation of the

Sacraments;” her children “deny or explain away the

doctrine of baptismal regeneration.” She objected to the

“abuses of the Mass;” her children have been led to

“ degrade the holy sacrament into a mere sign of a thing

absent.” She rejected the supremacy of the pope
;
her

children have been led into a practical disregard of

episcopal authority : and so on, in the same way, through

* Mr. Gresley’s “ Theory of Development,” &c. p. 15, 16.



Unity of the Roman Church . 3i

every detail of Christian faith and practice. Nay, the

very doctrine of the Incarnation itself has become the

subject of unhallowed disputations or secret disbelief:

“ Arianism was taught with impunity in our communion

in the last century/’ is the confession of an English

clergyman ;* and a late Regius Professor of Divinity in

the University of Oxford publicly professed his belief that

two-thirds of the clergy were (unconscious) Nestorians.

Now, as we have before said, to this logical coherency of

the Roman system of doctrine, that of the Church of

England forms a melancholy contrast : so far from the

holding one of her doctrines making it necessary to hold

all, some of them are so incongruous that belief in one

absolutely precludes belief in another
;

for instance, if a

man heartily receives the doctrine of justification by faith
alone, he cannot in earnest believe in baptismal regenera-

tion, nor the real presence in the eucharist, nor, indeed,

in the sacramental principle at all; which belief the

Church of England nevertheless inculcates in her liturgy

as undoubtedly as, in her articles, she enforces the doctrine

of justification by faith.

Another, and not less important, cause of the unity of

the Roman Church is to be found in her living and

energetic authority. It has been well said, that “ firmness

of belief can only be produced by the recognition of

some outward and permanent teaching authority;” an

authority which shall determine the limits within which

doubt or speculation may have scope, while it keeps the

sacred deposit of the faith whole and undefiled. Such

an authority is the Catholic Church to her children; and

she has no shrinking, no hesitation in enunciating her

claim to be such. She stands forth fearlessly as the one

representative of her Lord on earth, the sole living ex-

ponent of His will, and the dispenser of His gifts

;

indefectible, because the promise standeth sure, “ I will

be with you always even to the end of the world;” infal-

lible, because inspired by the Spirit of Truth
;
and

bearing on her standard the awful denunciation, “ He
that despiseth you despiseth Me.” That such authority

* Rev.
J.

F. Russell :
4 4

Judgment of the Anglican Church.
”



3 2 Fourfold Difficulty ofAnglicanism .

belonged to the Apostles, none, I suppose, will question

;

and that same authority the Church claims as her own,

by virtue of her succession from them. From her,

therefore, the Catholic receives the faith, even as she

received it from God, not making himself its judge, not

criticising its details, nor submitting them to any test of

his own choosing, but in full unhesitating confidence, as

from an inspired teacher; “the faith ” to him is not an

opinion of his own mind, it is something out of himself,

positive, dogmatic, complete, and immutable; and his

reception of it is not an act of eclecticism, but of faith.

That this recognition of an infallible authority must

necessarily result in unity of doctrine, is obvious to all

;

and it is equally obvious how greatly the state of the

English Church contrasts in this particular with that of

the Roman. We have already remarked on the hesitating,
self-contradictory way in which she asserts her authority;

and how little that authority is recognized by the majority

of her children, you yourself would be the first to

lament; but you would not perhaps be so ready to

admit, that the language used on this subject by the

school to which you belong is quite as subversive of

the principle of Church authority—at least, as that
principle is understood by Catholics—as any of which
you complain in the evangelical party

;
not only do you

speak of your bishops with contempt, and of your articles

as a tyranny, to be evaded until it can be thrown off

;

but you talk of infusing this or that spirit into the

Church, of introducing into her such and such doctrines

and practices, nay, of “Catholicizing” her, as if the

Church were a passive thing, to be moulded at your will,

instead of a living power, instinct with the spirit of wis-

dom—as if her children were the channels of God’s truth
to her, not she to them.

But enough has been said on the subject of unity : I

will only remind you, in conclusion, that the Church in

which, as we have seen, it has no place, consists of a

single nation; while that Church, of which it is the

striking characteristic, is composed of many nations,

peoples, and languages, diverse in all beside—some of



Sanctity. 33,

them in this world’s interests hostile to each other—but
all one in her

;

“ out of many nations one people,” sub-

mitting to one discipline, governed by one head, holding

the one faith, in unity of spirit and in the bond of peace.

Sanctity a more invidious subject ofcomparison.

Different types of sanctity recognized in the

Anglican and Roman communions. Sanctity of
Religious Orders. Self-sacrifice the basis of

sanctity. Newman's conversion specially attri-
buted to the attraction of this note of the true

Church.

Having said thus much on the subject of Unity, we

next come to the consideration of Sanctity, as the second

test of the true Church
;
and this I feel to be a harder

task, both because it is a point on which comparison is

more invidious, and because the test itself, from its very

nature, is more difficult of application : and yet I cannot

consent to pass it by unnoticed, because the testimony

borne in favour of the Church Catholic, by the lives of

her saints, appears to me at once the most winning and
the most convincing that can be adduced : and it is,

moreover, to this note of His Church more especially,

that our Lord Himself seems to direct our attention :

—

“ By their fruits ye shall know them.”

In claiming this note of sanctity, however, as the

exclusive possession of the Roman Church, I do not, of

course, mean that there is nothing which might be called

by that name to be found in the Church of England

:

sanctity, unlike unity, admits of degrees, and I should

D



34 Fourfold Difficulty ofAnglicanism.

suppose that there is no body of Christians among whom

does not exist something which, at least, seems akin to

it. But what I do mean is this, that there is in the

Roman Church a living energy, bursting forth from

time to time in words of power and wonderful deeds

;

manifesting itself now in this man, now in that, by the

heroic exercise of supernatural virtues; now darting

upwards to the very throne of God, now spending itself

in some enterprise for the good of man; embodying itself

in all varieties of outward form, as ages roll along and

circumstances change, but always essentially the same,

always living, plastic, and creative : and this is what we

mean when we speak of sanctity.

Now I appeal to yourself to judge, whether a spirit
such as this has ever found a permanent home in the

Church of England, or whether her very excellencies

have not borne altogether a different character, a

character cold and common-place in comparison, and,

if I may venture to say it, “of the earth, earthy.” But

since this must seem to you an invidious saying, I had

rather borrow the language of one of your own brethren,

which, in the main, expresses what I mean. “ Ours is

the Church of Walton and Herbert, not of Athanasius and

Ambrose
;
and truly we have been born into a beautiful

inheritance. Our fathers have bequeathed to us the

appreciation of a kindly and a holy spirit; a spirit of

affectionate unobtrusive meekness, of considerate friend-

liness, of calm cheerfulness
;
and these are in their

measure not only appreciated but realized amongst us

But not content with thankfulness, we have

been boastful of this grace of ours
;
we have spoken of

it as if it were the only form of Christian love, as if no

man could have any other line of action than to be frank

and amiable, to marry and bring up a family, to be

neighbourly to his equals, and active in relieving want,

&c whereas there are a whole class of expressions

in the New Testament, which, though surely they do
not condemn the English Church, yet seem somehow

not to have received their natural development in it...

We seem afraid of these. We are anxious judi-



Sanctity. 35

ciously to point out that in these days, when Christianity

is rich, men of large possessions are not called on to sell

all they have; when it is established, to leave fathers

and wives; that when Christianity is protected from

injury, there is no expediency in remaining single; when

it is triumphant, no reason why we should not laugh

now Within our own Church, we are careful to

soothe enthusiasm, and somewhat helpless in directing

it.”*

This account of the English Church is confirmed by

the fact, that, whenever a spirit more akin to that of the

Roman Saints has for a moment shot forth within her, it

has been gazed at or shrunk from, as a portent strange

and full of danger : and it has either died out at once

for want of aliment, or has burnt its way through her

enclosures, devastating as it went, and has spent itself at

last among the thorns in the wilderness. Look at the

history of the many secessions from her bosom; how

often have they been originated by some ardent mind,

full of zeal for God, which, if it had found in her a

mother's sympathy and a mother’s gentle discipline,

would have learnt to temper all that was extravagant,

and to condense enthusiastic feeling into devoted service;

but which, finding instead of such sympathy and guid-

ance nothing but cold rebuke and utter uncongeniality,

has burst forth, breaking all bonds, and so its energies

have run to waste, working for the most part evil rather

than good. Even at the present day, does it not grieve

one to the heart to see the immense religious power, so

to speak, awake and energizing in this country, and yet

accomplishing nothing, and worse than nothing
;

like

giant strength, without eyesight to direct it? Remember

the early struggles of Wesley; or, confining your view

to the present time, consider how many of the fanatical

sects daily springing up in this land have really been

engendered by a sense of spiritual misery, and a longing

for something more real and intense—for something of
inward devotedness and outward service, more worthy of

* British Critic, January, 1838. See also Macaulay’s Essays, vol.

3- P- 237.



36 Fourfold Difficulty of Anglicanism.

the Christian calling. And this is especially true of the

poor
;

if they are awakened to any acute sense of the

realities of eternity, where do they fly for sympathy and

succour? Not to the Church of England; but almost

invariably to some religious association out of her pale,

where they find more to satisfy their cravings. You can

hardly deny that the spiritual life which exists among our

poor has been kept alive mainly by the exertions of the

dissenters, and that among them if anywhere in Protest-

antism, we must seek for a spirit of zeal and self-devotion

akin to that of the Catholic saints. Akin to it, I say,

inasmuch as it is a zeal for God : but yet how different

in its character ! Zeal, in the Catholic Church, though

cherished with the tenderest sympathy, and nursed up to

its fullest development, yet in its outward working is

subject to strict rule, and exercised in a continual discip-

line, not only of austerity and self-restraint, but also of

humility and obedience; the Church claims as entire

submission from her most gifted as from her meanest

children; and how beautiful a character of steadiness

and refinement is thus wrought into the minds of the

ardent and influential you need only read the lives of her

saints to discover. You know how seldom the two

qualities of really burning zeal and humble obedience are

found together in the Church of England; and even

when they do exist thus blended, still in some way or

other we cannot but feel that something is still lacking

of the splendour and completeness of Catholic sanctity.

The fact that there is a real difference inspirit between

Rome and England is one, which, even while I was an

English Churchman, I felt I could not deny: and it is

freely acknowledged by many who are still in your

Communion: indeed, I cannot believe that any unpre-

judiced person, who has really studied the religious

biography of England and Rome respectively, of the

last three hundred years, can have any doubt upon the

subject. It is sometimes, however, objected, that the

Catholic and Anglican standards of holiness being

confessedly different, it is not fair to try the holy men of

one communion by the standard of the other: for that,.



Sanctity. 37

if, instead of the Catholic, we take the Anglican rule as

our measure, Hooker, Andrewes, and Ken are to be

preferred to St. Charles Borromeo, St. Francis de Sales,

or St. Vincent de Paul. In answer to this suggestion,

I can only express my conviction, that, whichever of the
- various qualities enumerated in Holy Writ, consecrated

by our Lord’s example, or exhibited in primitive practice,

you may select as tokens of sanctity, the Roman Church

will be found to possess them both far more abundantly,

and in greater splendour than the English. Whether

you look to the contemplative life of Mary, or he more

active service of Martha;—whether your type of Christian

sanctity be the missionary zeal of the Apostle of the

Gentiles, or the love of Christ which burned in the breast

of Peter;—the purity of him who leaned on his Lord’s
bosom, or the penitence of her who bathed His feet with

tears ;—the austerity of the Holy Baptist, or the charity
of the Son of Consolation;—be it which it may of all
these, you must now seek its transcript elsewhere than

at home. For which of her missionaries can the Church

of England pretend to compare with St. Francis Xavier,

or the noble fathers of Paraguay ? Which of them have

sealed their testimony with their blood, like the heroic

preachers of the faith, who won the crown of martyrdom

during the tremendous persecution of the 17th century

in Japan? or those thousands who even during the last

few years have passed from fearful tortures in Cochin

China, to join the white-robed army in heaven ? Which

of the very holiest of her children can we conceive “rapt

to a Seraph,” and brought into mysterious communion

with the Passion, like St. Francis of Assisium? Which

of her specimens of youthful piety belongs to at all the

same order of spiritual life with the angelic purity of St.

Aloysius or St. Stanislaus? In austerity and penitential

discipline, she would not even challenge a comparison;

for that is, as you know, one of the points on which she

considers the Catholic temper of mind to be morbid and

overstrained, striving “to wind itself too high, For sinful

man beneath the sky ;” and yet the saints of the first four
centuries (to which period she professes to appeal as a



38 Fourfold Difficulty ofAnglicanismt

standard), exceeded, if possible, in severity of penance,

those of the mediaeval Church.

It is, I suppose, in practical love to man, that is, in the

various branches of Christian alms-giving, that you

would be most disposed to claim equality with the Roman
Church; but, on this point, without pursuing the com-

parison between individuals, or insisting on that peculiar

character, which, as I think, distinguishes the philan-

thropy of the Catholic Saint from that of other men, just

in the same indescribable way that heroism is distinguish-

ed from ordinary valour,—it is sufficient to take a more
general view, and to look at the numbers, both of men

and women, whom the Catholic Church presents to us,
not singly, but grouped as it were in masses, each under

the shade of some holy institute, wholly consecrated by

vow, and for life, to works of mercy. And here a com-

parison naturally suggests itself, between the Churches

of Rome and England, which, I fear, will sound invidious,

but which strikes my own mind so forcibly, that I cannot
forbear calling your attention to it; I mean, as to the

principles which they respectively assume as the basis of

their calculations in organizing any extensive plan of

beneficence
;
the Catholic Church, in such cases, appeals

to self-devotion, the Protestant to self-interest. To

explain myself: although it is fair to say, that the sums

collected in England for charitable purposes are spoken

of with admiration even among Catholics, and though

very many individuals voluntarily devote to charitable

employments all the time they can command, yet the

Protestant Church dares not reckon on absorbing, for a

permanence, the whole time and energy of any but paid

agents,—while the Catholic Church, on the other hand,
reckons on indefinite numbers, eager to spend and be

spent in her service, and only waiting for her to point

out to them a fitting object for their zeal.

For instance: you remember the great movement

made a few years ago, by some excellent individuals,

in the National Education Society; one object of which

was the establishment of schools for the training of

parochial schoolmasters
;
you must have heard it pro-



Sanctity. 39

phesied, that the scheme would fail after all, because

- young men educated on the scale proposed, would be

able tp obtain much more lucrative situations in other

departments than they could as schoolmasters, and

therefore it would not be “ worth their while” to adhere

to their original destination. How this difficulty has
been met, I do not know; but its having been so gener-

ally felt is an exemplification of what I mean. When

a parallel movement took place in the Roman Catholic

Church, towards the end of the 17th century, to meet

the need then felt of more extended machinery for

Christian education, it issued' in the founding of a new

religious order, the Frkres des Ecoles Chretiennes,

which at the time of the French Revolution numbered

12 1 houses, and continues in vigorous operation to the

present day. And thus it has ever been : besides the

great Orders so well known throughout Christendom,

whose services to the cause of literature and science,

and indeed of improvement generally, during the middle

ages, are now universally recognized,—those of St.
Francis, St. Dominic, St. Augustine, and the most ancient

and fruitful of them all, the noble order of St. Benedict,

there were almost countless associations, all formed on

the same basis of self-devotion, called into being by the

passing exigences of the times; some of which, there-

fore, have passed away, now that their work is done,

while others still remain. You cannot glance ever so

superficially at the history of the mediaeval Church,

without finding that as one want arose after another

in that age of struggle and progressive civilization, it

was thus met. For instance : when that dreadful disease,

called St. Anthony’s fire, first broke out in Europe in

the nth century, a nobleman of Dauphin^, whose son

had been attacked by it, and, as he believed, miraculous-

ly restored to health, founded the Order of St. Anthony,

for the purpose of tending those who were suffering

under it. The ravages of leprosy, in like manner, called

into birth the Knights of St. Lazarus : from the per-

secutions endured by the Christians in the East, arose

-the Military Orders. A noble pilgrim, returning one



40 Fourfold Difficulty of Anglicanism.

day from the shrine of St. James in Gallicia, fell among

bandits, on the height of a desolate mountain in Au-

vergne
;
he escaped from them unhurt, and in fulfilment

of a vow made in the hour of peril, instituted an associa-

tion for the protection of future pilgrims; built a

religious house on the spot, with a church dedicated to

the Blessed Virgin, and established there a community,

consisting of knights, sworn to drive the robbers from

the neighbouring forests, and to escort travellers on

their way, of priests, of lay-brothers, and other servants,

and of a sisterhood of religious ladies, devoted to attend-

ance on the pilgrims, and^on the sick poor. The Order

of our Lady of Mercy was founded for the redemption

of captives from the infidels; and it was one of the vows

taken, and in many instances actually fulfilled by its

members, that, if money should fail them for this pur-

pose, they should sell themselves into slavery as a

ransom. I well remember some 40 years ago what

praise was bestowed on one of your clergy for having

caused prayer to be made in his church for a poor

criminal about to be executed: but, there has existed

in Rome, ever since the year 1488, a brotherhood called

the “ Arcbi-Confraternitk di S. Giovanni Decollate,”

whose duty it is, not only to pray for such persons

- continually both in life and death, but also to visit them

.
in their prison, to administer to them all the consolation

which their condition admits, to prepare them for death,

to accompany them to execution, to give them Christian

burial within their own cemetery, and to take care of

their widows and orphans. Madness too, that most

dreadful of all calamities, has been remembered by the

charity of the Church. At the time of the Reformation,

perhaps in consequence of the great excitement which

then prevailed, this malady seems suddenly to have

increased to a fearful degree
;
and at that very time, St.

John of Grod founded an Order especially destined for

its relief, the success of which was wonderful, for the

Christian love of those devoted brethren anticipated the

discovery of modern science as to the efficacy of a

soothing treatment. Thus, their hospitals were sur-



Sanctity. 41

rounded by extensive grounds, and care was taken to

provide all possible variety of gentle recreation for the

sufferers. A touching story is told of a visit paid by the
Superior of the Order to a wretched maniac, who was

kept chained in one of the underground dungeons, used

at that time for such purposes by the civil power, and

who was said to be unapproachable. The holy brother

insisted on being let into his den, and immediately

embracing him, and stroking him gently with his hand,

contrived to let him know that he was come in love.

The poor maniac, melted in a moment at the voice of

kindness, became passive as a child; allowed himself

to be clothed, and, to the astonishment of all, walked

away, leaning on the arm of his deliverer
;
and in a year

that man was restored to his family in health and peace.

I cannot refrain from adding yet another Institute,

.
still more interesting to ourselves, from the fact that it

has sprung up in our own times and that one of its latest

efforts has been to found an establishment in our own

neighbourhood. I allude to the Little Sisters of the

Poor, who began just 50 years ago in St. Servan on the

coast of Brittany, opposite to St. Malo, in the persons

of a young seamstress, who was not quite 18, and a poor

orphan girl who was hardly 16. These girls were intro-

duced to one another by their Confessor, a young

curate of the parish utterly destitute of means. Under

his guidance they were trained in a life of religious

discipline, though still following their ordinary vocations

;

in the world for the space of two years. At last he

bade them take care of a blind old woman living in their

neighbourhood, to whom they therefore devoted their
spare time. Next, the old woman and the girls them-

selves lived together in the attic of a very humble

house. Space will not allow me to enter on the history
of the full development of the Institute; a most interest-

ing account of it may be read in a tract published by the

Catholic Truth Society; suffice it to say, that when I

visited their Noviciate and Mother House in France

some 20 years ago, I saw some six or seven hundred

novices assembled together under one roof: that at



'42 Fourfold Difficulty of Anglicanism.

this moment there are about 260 houses of them scatter-

ed over every part of the world, containing upwards of

4,000 Sisters, providing comfortable homes for upwards

of 30,000 aged poor of both sexes.

These are only a very few specimens from an almost

countless number; but they are sufficient to illustrate

what I have said, that the Roman Catholic Church may
safely reckon on finding among her children self-devotion

sufficient to carry out her designs of mercy. And as her

pious institutions are based on a higher principle than

parallel ones elsewhere, they are, in consequence, much

more efficient in their operation. " Catholicity,” says a

Protestant writer, “has made more eager and systematic

aggression upon the moral and physical ills of poverty,

—has shown more sympathy with poverty,—has given
away more, and done more for charity’s sake, in each

successive year of its existence, than some wealthy Pro-

testant establishments in each successive century of

theirs : with its brotherhoods and sisterhoods of mercy,

it gives a basis of permanent institution and uniform

religious principle to beneficent impulses, which by

Protestants are commonly left to the energy of each

passing generation and the necessities of the hour, and

often die out for lack of an efficient organization.”

We have hitherto only considered the religious orders
with reference to Christian almsgiving, but we must not

forget that some of them were instituted for purposes yet

more exalted. The love of man in the Catholic Church

is but an off-shoot, as it were, from the Love of God

:

and to the more immediate exercise of this higher love,

many of her holy fraternities and sisterhoods are con-

secrated. That there is nothing in the English Church

in any way parallel to the contemplative orders, is

admitted on all hands; and Protestants escape the

difficulty by denouncing those orders as dreamy and

useless, and a mere encumbrance on the system to which

they belong. But, on this point, let us refer once more

to those standards which the Church of England ac-

knowledges,—Scripture and primitive practice. Surely,
we shall find in both enough to teach us that there is a



Sanctity
. 43

hidden life of prayer, and praise, and mystical com-

munion, which, in its higher degree, is the privilege of

those who, for its sake, renounce all besides. We read
in the Gospel of continuing in fastings and prayers night

and day; of forsaking father and mother, wife and

children, for Christ
;
of bearing the cross daily

;
of selling

all that we have
;
of being dead to the world

;
crucified

with Christ; buried with Him; and all these sayings of

Holy Writ we know that the early Christians understood

literally, and faithfully practised : that they continued

instant in prayer night and day : that they gave up their

possessions, and relinquished all their nearest ties,

stripping themselves of every thing personal, that they

might no longer live in themselves, but in Christ: and

many of them, as we know, long before the system of

monastic life was organised, fled to the deserts that they

might be, without distraction, rapt in the love of God.

Think of St. Macarius, St. Anthony, St. Ephrem of Syria,

and the Egyptian anchorites, and then ask yourself for

a moment—were those holy fathers now to revisit this
world, where would they find sympathy ? Would it be

in that Church which pours forth at this day, as she has

done from the beginning, her swarms of holy contem-

platives, or in that which, in the course of three hundred

years, has had one family (that ofgood Nicholas Ferrar)

devoted to perpetual psalmody; and is only now

beginning to attempt the revival of religious houses, for

purposes of active works of charity, none, I believe, for

prayer a.nd contemplation.

But you will say, that the destruction of these blessed

institutions was no act of the Church of England, but,

on the contrary, a fierce exercise of royal tyranny and

oppression, of which she was the victim, and the effects

of which she has no power to remedy, and that it is hard

she should be upbraided with her calamity. But, my dear
friend, if she were really Catholic, she could and would

have remedied it long ago. The mere dissolution, in the

reign of Henry VIII., of the religious communities then

existing, though it involved the confiscation of their

property, and the overthrow of their dwellings, could not



44 Fourfold Difficulty of Anglicanism.

have destroyed the monastic spirit. If those feelings

and desires to which the conventual system alone supplies

satisfaction, had not, from some cause, been annihilated

at the same time, they would soon have re-appeared on

the surface of your history, in the form of new or revived

religious institutions. Consider the recent destinies of

the Church in France. In 1790, the religious houses

were dissolved, churches and abbeys destroyed, whole

communities slaughtered, their goods confiscated, estates

sold, and the very name of the Christian faith proscribed

throughout the land : now, until the renewed persecution

of quite recent date there were more than 35,000 monks

and nuns once more discharging their conventual duties

as zealously, and as fully according to the spirit of their

respective institutes, as at any period prior to the

Revolution : there are even a larger number, we are told,

of the more severe Orders than there were before: it is the

same in Belgium
;

it would be the same everywhere

throughout the whole Catholic world
;
even in our own

country, in spite of the systematic oppression under

which Catholics so long laboured, the spirit of self-devo-

tion has not been crushed out of them
;
and the rapidly

increasing number of monasteries and convents bears

witness to the vigour of its life.

Surely these things, if true, are very important, and

ought to be well considered in weighing the respective

claims of the Roman and English Churches to the note

of sanctity :—if in every form of Christian holiness the
saints in the Roman communion stand pre-eminent; if

there be in that Church a spirit of self-devotion lacking

to the other;—if, since England broke herself off from
the rest of Christendom, the “ more excellent way

”
has

been practically unheard of within her communion,

while, during the same period, in the churches of the

Roman obedience, hundreds and thousands, both men

and women, have lived in prayer and contemplation, or

have devoted themselves to the exercise of charity in

every varied form ;—surely we ought not long to hesitate
in judging which of these two communions is the genuine

representative of that family, of whom it is written,

—



Sanctity. 45

“the multitude of them that believed were of one heart

and of one soul ; neither said any of them, that aught

of the things which he possessed was his own, but they

had all things common.”
*

P.S.—Whilst writing this letter, there has fallen into
my hands the very striking article communicated to the

Guardian newspaper on occasion of Cardinal Newman’s

death, from the pen (it is said) of the late Dean Church.

He considers the “ultimate key to Newman’s history to

have been his keen and profound sense of the life, society,

and principles of action presented in the New Testa-

ment.” “ He could not see a trace in English society of

that simple and severe hold of the unseen and the future

which is the colour and breath, as well as the outward

form, of the New Testament life.” “The English

Church had exchanged religion for civilization,” “but at

least the Roman Church had not only preserved, but

maintained at full strength through the centuries to our

day, two things of which the New Testament was full,

and which are characteristic of it, devotion and self-

sacrifice. The crowds at a pilgrimage, a shrine, or a

‘ pardon’ were much more like the multitudes who

followed our Lord about the hills of Galilee—like them
probably in that imperfect faith which we call supersti-

tion—than anything that could be seen in the English
Church. And the spirit which governed the Roman

Church had prevailed on men to make the sacrifice of

celibacy a matter of course, as a condition of ministering

in a regular and systematic way, not only to the souls

but to the bodies of men, not only on the priesthood,

but on educational brotherhoods and sisters of the poor

and of hospitals. Devotion and sacrifice, prayer and

self-denying charity, in one word sanctity, are at

once on the surface of the New Testament and
interwoven with all its substance. He recoiled from
a representation of the religion of the New Testament
which to his eye was without them. He turned to

* This, and all the other passages from Scripture which are

quoted in these Letters, are taken for obvious reasons from the

Protestant version.



46 Fourfold Difficulty of Anglicanism.

where, in spite of every other disadvantage, he found

them.”

Thus, according to this writer,—one, be it remembered,
who had more than ordinary means of knowing the

truth,—the absence of the note of sanctity in the Angli-
can Communion and its presence in the Roman, was the

special attraction which drew this holy soul from the one

communion to the other.

LETTER VII.

Superiority of Catholic spiritual writings.

Devotion of the Catholic poor and of Catholic

worshippers generally. Alleged immorality and

infidelity of Catholic countries.

The mention of the contemplative orders, with which

my last letter concluded, naturally brings to the mind

the subject of religious books, which I must not omit to

notice, because the unquestioned superiority of the

Roman to the English Church in this particular, is a

fact deserving serious consideration. “ Why cannot any
of you write with feeling and unction such as this?”

asked James I. of his bishops, when he had read the “ In-

troduction a la vie devote,”* sent to him by Mary of

Medici.

The private devotions of Archbishop Laud borrrow

largely from the prayers of Catholics,—the devotions of
Hickes and Cosin are formed on their very model : some

* A translation of this, “ adapted to the use of the English
Church,’ ’ was licensed by Archbishop Laud’s chaplain. See an

interesting letter in Laud’s Autobiography, p. 219.



Sanctity in the Roman Church . 47

of the most valuable portion of Jeremy Taylor’s works are
1 founded

9

on the “ great moral writers of the Continental

Church,—using their very words and terms of expression,
giving their advice and their cautions.” In fact, the

chapter on Meditation, of which this was especially said,

is little more than an analysis of the scheme of the

Spiritual Exercises, that all but inspired composition

of St. Ignatius Loyola, which has been
“
wonderfully

blest in the conversion of tens of thousands.” Bishop

Wilson recommended the use of the Spiritual Combat :

—

Thomas k Kempis has been edited even by some of the

Evangelical party : and Fenelon is almost as familiar to

Protestants as to Catholics themselves.

We read in the life of a late prominent member of your
clergy (Rev. A. H. Mackonochie) that “he seemed fairly

to have absorbed the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius,

and two or three other Catholic Ascetical works, and that

they supplied very frequently the plan of his retreats,

missions, and courses of sermons, or the frame-work of

simple meditation,” and there is reason to believe that the

same might be said with equal truth of a considerable

number of your High Church clergy. Long ago it was

found worth while to publish a series of translations from

the works of our Ascetical writers, “adapted to the use of

the English Church,” and in the preface to some of the

earlier volumes, Dr. Pusey wrote that “in contemplation

and self discipline ” (i.e., in the whole of religion practical

and devotional, objective and subjective) “the spiritual

writers of foreign churches have, as yet, some obvious

advantages over our own.” Fifty years have passed

away since these words were written. Is there any

token that the balance of advantage is inclining to the

other side ?

Thus far we have spoken of sanctity only in its higher

degree; and on that we might fairly rest the whole

question, because, as Aristotle says, “ that kind is alto-

gether best, whose excellence or pre-eminence is best
;

”

but it may be more satisfactory to you if we pursue the
comparison further, and consider the respective religious

condition of the multitudes whose vocation lies in the



48 Fourfold Difficulty of Anglicanism.

world—that is, of the main body of each communion.
It is obvious, however, that to enter into so vast a subject

with anything like detail would be far beyond the com-

pass of a letter. I will only make one or two remarks

upon it.

The first thing which struck me when I began to
frequent Catholic Churches was the intense devotion of

the half-clad paupers, the very beggars, who are in daily

attendance there : there is something in the expression

of their faces, especially when they approach the Blessed

Sacrament, utterly unlike anything I had ever before

seen in real life, and only reminding one of the pictures

of Catholic Saints. If you could witness this for yourself,

and contrast it with the almost total absence of the very

poor from your public worship, and especially from your

communions, I think you could not doubt which of the

two religions takes deepest root in the hearts of the poor;

and, considering that “to the poor” more especially

“was the Gospel preached,” there is surely a strong

presumption that the Church of the poor is the Church

of Christ. This fervour of devotion, however, though

most striking in the poor, seems equally to pervade all

classes, and indeed is acknowledged on all hands as a

marked characteristic of Catholicism. Hear the remarks

of a Presbyterian traveller on this subject : * “Catholicism

has certainly a much stronger hold over the human

mind than Protestantism; the fact is visible and un-

deniable, and perhaps not unaccountable. The fervour

of devotion among Catholics, the absence of worldly

feelings in their religious acts, strikes every traveller who

enters a Roman Catholic Church abroad In no

place of worship do we witness the same intense abstrac-

tion in prayer, the same unaffected devotion of mind. ...

The public mind is evidently more religionized than in

Protestant countries;” and he then proceeds to enquire:

“ Why should such strong devotional feeling be more
widely diffused and more conspicuous among people

holding erroneous doctrines, than among us Protestants

holding right doctrines ?” which very perplexing problem

* Laing’s Notes of a Traveller, pp. 430, 448, &c.



Sanctity in the Roman Church. 49

he at last solves thus: “Our belief is the
working of

iudgment, theirs of imagination;
and in this way we

must account for the undeniably
greater devotional

fervour of Catholics than of Protestants.”

Here you will probably bring against
me the so often

alleged immorality of Catholic
countries as compared

with our own, on which, therefore, it
will be necessary to

say a few words before we bring this
subject to a close.

I must, however, premise that,
even if this charge be

true I cannot consider it a fair
objection against the

sanctity of the Church. The character
of a Church,

surely, can only be judged of by the
conduct of those who

receive her teaching, and in the main obey
her precepts

;

for to charge upon any system the failures
of those who

upon every point run counter to its
principles, were to

blame a physician for the death of a
patient who refused

to take his medicines, and pursued a
regimen absolutely

contrary to the one he had prescribed.
Besides, the

Church on earth is not triumphant,
but militant ; the

very object of her existence is
to fight against evil,

wherever it is to be found ; and that it
is to be foun

within her own camp, is no more than her
Lord warned

her to expect: “Many are called, but few
chosen; the

tares and wheat must grow together
until the harvest

;

the good and bad fish are in the
same net; and it is

written that “ It must needs be that
scandals come. A

man born in a Catholic country is called a
Catholic in

consequence of his baptism; but to be a
Catholic, that is,

to submit one’s self to the Catholic
system, must he in all

cases an act of the individual will.
There can be no

mistake about it in the Catholic
Church—a man must

be either obedient or disobedient;
and if he disobeys

distinctly and consciously, that is,
systematically and

deliberately, he as really rejects the
Catholic Church as

if he became a Mahometan or a Pagan;
and none ol his

sins ought in fairness to be ascribed to
her, nor himseli

reckoned any more among her children, but
her enemies.

That such a one may fall into frightful depths
of wicked-

ness, I can easily conceive ; and if the
Roman Catholic

Church be, what I believe her to be, the
one Church ot

E



50 Fourfold Difficulty of Anglicanism.

God, and the sole depositary of His sacramental grace,

one would rather expect that those who have rejected

“so great salvation” would be more abandoned of God

than those whose privileges have been less, for we are

told that where the Gospel of God is not the “savour of

life unto life,” it is the “savour of death unto death.”

But is it a fact that so-called Catholic lands are more

immoral than our own?

The moral condition of England is at this moment a

subject of such deep and sorrowful anxiety to all thought-

ful persons that I need not quote any fact or authorities

in illustration of it; but I must be allowed to add, that I

have been assured by Italian priests resident in this

country, that the villages and small towns, in which they

find themselves located here as missionaries, present a

picture of sin and sensuality such as they had never

witnessed—such as does not, in fact, exist—in the
villages of their own native country

;
and that it is a task

of exceeding difficulty to awaken in the minds of some

of those who become converts anything like an adequate

sense of the enormity of their past guilt.

But, it may be said, whatever be the state of the case

as to morals, it is certain that open infidelity is much

more common in Catholic countries than it is here.

This I can easily believe
;
and it is what I should rather

expect from the more stringent character of the Catholic

system, both as to faith and practice. If a Catholic

once lets go his belief in any one of the doctrines of his

Church, he soon finds that in rejecting one he rejects all,

because, in rejecting any, he has already lost his faith in

the authority on which he holds all, that is, the Church

;

a Catholic, in embracing any form of Protestantism

subverts the fundamental principle of his Christian life

quite as much as if he became an infidel at once
;
and

therefore it is this open form, which his unbelief very

often assumes; and, even if he begin by holding some

Protestant creed, he generally strips it, sooner or later, of

everything dogmatic, and ends (as recent instances have

miserably exemplified) in discarding all positive belief

whatever. Among Protestants, private judgment as to



Sanctity in the Roman Church . 5

1

the sense of Scripture, not Church authority, is generally

recognized as the rule of faith
;
therefore, a man violates

no principle in changing from one sect to another, and

may explain away from his creed all that makes too large

a demand upon his faith, without ceasing to call him-

self a Protestant; and it is well known how convenient

a resting-place is in fact afforded by Socinianism, to

those who, but for it, would be professed unbelievers.

From this difference between Catholicism and Protes-

tantism it may surely be expected to result, that those

who “have not faith,
1” under the one system will alter

Christianity to suit their own mind, and under the other

will reject it altogether, because they find it unalterable.

Then, again, in practice; there is little comparatively in

Protestantism which requires self-sacrifice; a member of

the Church of England, for instance, may be thoroughly

irreligious at heart, and yet feel nothing in the system of

his Church grievous enough to rouse him to the exertion

of publicly renouncing it. To fulfil his ordinary social

duties, and even to attend public worship and go through

the customary round of religious observances, can be no

great hardship to him
;
and as long as he does this, none

dare call him an infidel, and he may never be led to

think enough on the subject of religion to be altogether

conscious to himself that he is such; but, if this person

had to fast for the forty days of Lent, to kneel at the

tribunal of penance, and there confess his most secret

sins, and crave the blessing of absolution, he would soon

find himself, as it were, forced into a position of open

rebellion
;
and it is, I believe, because the Catholic rules

of practice are thus searching and stringent, and enter so

minutely into the details of daily life, that they are

absolutely intolerable to the love of indulgence, and

especially to the pride of the worldly heart
;
and therefore

in Catholic countries, the opposition between the Church

and the world is far more distinct than in England.

How deadly is the hatred borne by the infidel party to
the Church in Catholic lands, is sufficiently shown by

those recent works of Michelet, Sue, and others, with

translations of which our English press is teeming; but



5 2 Fourfold Difficulty of Anglicanism,

to me this seems only a testimony that the Catholic

Church is the true representative of that “rock of offence,”

concerning which it was said, “ on whomsoever it shall

fall, it shall grind him to powder.” It must not, how-

ever, be forgotten that there have been seasons in this

country when infidelity has been almost universal, at

least among the higher classes. Bishop Butler says of

the state of things in his own time, “it is come to be

taken for granted, by many persons, that Christianity is

not so much as a matter of inquiry, but that it is now at

length discovered to be fictitious; and, accordingly, they

treat it as if, in the present age, this were an agreed

point among all people of discernment, and nothing re-

mained but to set it up as a principal subject of mirth and

ridicule.” Is there no reason to apprehend a similar evil

in the present day? Before taking leave of this subject

of Sanctity* I must say a few words about those whom;

we call canonized saints. You know that from time ta

time the Church adds to the number of these, holding

up to our imitation or veneration the lives or deaths of

certain persons who have specially distinguished them-

selves in the service of God. One of your own clergy

(Dean Perowne, now Bishop of Worcester) has lately

called public attention to this practice of the Church

of Rome and contrasts it with the absence of any

corresponding act in the Church of England. “The

Church of Rome,” he says, “is so far right, for she adds

freely to her lists. Her perpetual canonization is a

witness to the consciousness of a living Church, that the

spirit of God has not ceased to work within the limits of

her pale. We speak of a St. Bernard and a St. Anselm.
Why do we not speak also of a St. Martin Luther and
St. John Wicliff?” He does not grudge the aureole of
sanctity awarded to St. Francis of Assisi, St. Vincent

of Paul, or even Sir Thomas More, but he would fain

see the same conceded to a large number of individuals

whom he enumerates, but of whom I will only name the
first and last triplets : Ridley, Cranmer and Latimer,

—

Thomas Chalmers, Norman McLeod and Livingstone.

He does not give any hint as to the mode of procedure,.



Sanctity in the Roman Church. 53

by which he would have these Protestant canonizations

conducted
;
whether the names should be submitted to

universal suffrage or the right of voting be an exclusive

privilege of the clergy; whether, when the decision is

arrived at, it should be embodied in an Act of Parliament

or in a Statute of Convocation, &c., &c. But I should

wish you to know that in the Roman Church, at least, the

process which ends in canonization is a very long and

serious one. The popular voice may have something to

do with it in the first place; rumour is spread abroad that

such a person has lived and died in the odour of sanc-

tity, as we say. A judicial enquiry is set on foot by the
Bishop of the place, evidence is taken on oath, and all

materials for arriving at a true judgment diligently

collected. Then the work is removed to the centre of

the Catholic Church, the See of Rome, when the whole

business is enquired into from the very beginning with

all the minute precautions attending a severe judicial

investigation. Every detail of the individual's life is en-

quired into, to ascertain that it has been in all -things

conformable to the rules of Christian duty. Every scrap

of his writings, if he was an author, is minutely scrutin-

ized to ascertain that they are in all things conformable

to the rule of Christian faith
;

it must be proved that he

has practised the Christian virtues in an heroic degree,

&c., &c. And even when this has all been settled

satisfactorily, the Catholic Church does not presume to

enrol the name of any among the company of the saints,

until, in the words of St. Augustine, *
“ She has been

persuaded thus to honour them by some trustworthy

tokens from God;" and among these, one with

which she now never dispenses is that of miracles.

I fear most Protestants will turn away with scorn from

the very mention of miracles, since they are wont to

assume, though one cannot see on what grounds, that all

alleged miracles, excepting only those mentioned in

Scripture, must necessarily be false. Catholics, on the

other hand, read and believe many wonderful and

mysterious things spoken in Holy Writ of God's Saints.

* De Civ. Dei lib. I. cxxvi.



54 Fourfold Difficulty ofA nglicanism.

They know that our Lord declared that supernatural

signs would follow them that believed, that they should

do greater works than He Himself had done. They
know too, that as a matter of fact many of them wrought

miracles; many had visions and revelations from the

Lord
;
handkerchiefs and aprons were brought from the

body of an Apostle, fraught with miraculous powers of

healing; there was virtue in the very shadow ofan Apostle,

and evil spirits were cast out by the name of Jesus.

Knowing also that Christ has promised to be with His

Church all days, even to the end of the world, they do

not count it strange that she should manifest from time

to time the same signs of His presence as He certainly
vouchsafed in the beginning. With what jealous and

scrupulous caution she examines any miraculous report

submitted to her judgment in order to satisfy herself

that it is trustworthy, all Protestants who have had

opportunity of observing bear witness, and it is among

Catholics a proverbial saying, that it is next to a miracle

to prove a miracle at Rome. Surely this subject ought

to be calmly and carefully investigated, for if God thus

speaks and we refuse to hear, will not Tyre and Sidon

rise up against us to condemn us at the last day?

LETTER VIII.

Catholicity. Importance of the title in the

opinion of the ancient Fathers. Title usually

given to the Roman Church, which is Catholic in
fact as well as in name. The English Church only

national : confined to English-speaking peoples.

Catholicity and nationality contrasted.

I think that I have now shown to the satisfaction of

really candid enquirers, that the first two notes of Christ’s



Catholicity. 55

Church, Unity and Sanctity in its only proper sense,

belong to the Churches of the Roman obedience, not to

the Established Church of this country. The third note,

Catholicity, we might almost leave to be adjudged by

the unpremeditated confession of our adversaries them-

selves
;

for the name of Catholic is the common title by

which we are known throughout the world; and the

members of every religious denomination whatever, so

far as I know, excepting only the Irvingites and a small

portion of yourselves, agree in conceding it to us without

dispute
;

whilst, on the other hand, one of your own

bishops has publicly disowned it for the Church of Eng-

land, or at last condemned the continual use of it as

“an affectation and others of your clergy are

allowed, without protest, to teach concerning the habit

of “talking of a Catholic Church” at all, that it is a

“ contractedness, ” and of “boasting in English parti-

alities as Catholic doctrine,” that it is “a wretched

littleness.”! Under these circumstances, it is not difficult

to conjecture what would have been the judgment of

ancient Catholic doctors between us. “ All heretics wish

to be called Catholic,” says St. Augustine,! “yet if any

stranger ask, where do the Catholics hold their assembly,

no heretic dare point to his own church or chapel.”

“The word Church,” says St. Cyril, § “is applied to
different things, and therefore the faith has delivered to

thee, by way of security, the article, 4 And in One Holy

Catholic Church/ that thou mayest avoid the wretched

meetings of the heretics, and ever abide with the Holy

Church Catholic, in which thou wast regenerated. And

if ever thou art sojourning in any city, enquire not simply

where the Lord's house is, nor merely where the Church

is
,
but

,
where is the Catholic Church ? For this is the

peculiar name of this holy Body, the Mother of us all,

which is the Spouse of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Only-

begotten Son of God.” These passages are very

* The Bishop of Worcester, in 1846.

f Mr. Bickersteth’s Sermon, May 5, 1842.

t Cont. Epist. Manich. iv. Tom. viii. p. 269.

§ Catech. Lect. xviii. p. 252, Oxford Translation.



5 6 Fourfold Difficulty ofAnglicanism .

striking; and might well be considered conclusive. But

their applicability to us is sometimes disputed, because

we are also called Roman Catholic
;
and it is moreover

objected that there is something contradictory and self-

condemning in this title, as though it represented a

particular branch of the Church as equal to the whole,

as itself the Catholic Church. To this it may be

answered, first, that we call ourselves, and are quite as

commonly called by others, simply Catholics, without

any qualification at all; and secondly, that it is mere

ignorance or wilful misrepresentation to attach any such

meaning as that I have mentioned to the title in ques-

tion, because everybody knows that the Roman Catholic

Church is not one particular or national Church, but

a union of very many national churches, as of

Belgium, Austria, &c., and indeed of Churches from

among every people in the whole world, where Christi-

anity itself is known. All these agreeing together, and

holding communion one with another, in the unity of

doctrine and the bond of peace, make up the Catholic

Church, which, because it acknowledges the principality

of the apostolic see, is also called Roman, just as St.

Jerome and others, for the same reason, not unfrequently

designate the faith of the Catholic Church simply as
“
the Roman faith.”

Catholicity, however, is something more than a word

and a name; it is also a fact; a real quality or character

whose presence or absence in any body of Christians

can be easily ascertained; let us therefore examine it

somewhat more attentively. “The most obvious and

most general notion of the word” (Catholicity), says

Bishop Pearson, “ consists in the diffusiveness of the

Church, grounded upon the commission given to the

builders of it: ‘Go, teach all nations/ ” Which, then, is

the most diffused, the Church of Rome, or the Church

of England? Let us hear the testimony of an able

Protestant writer upon this question. * “ The Reformed

churches were mere national churches. The Church of

England existed for England alone; it was an institution

* Macaulay’s Essays, Vol, 3. p. 236.



Catholicity. 57

as purely local as the Court of Common Pleas. The

Church of Scotland, in the same manner, existed for

Scotland alone. The operations of the Catholic Church,

on the other hand, took in the whole world. Nobody

at Lambeth or at Edinburgh troubled himself about

what was doing in Poland or Bavaria. But Cracow and

Munich were at Rome objects of as much interest as

the purlieus of St. John Lateran.”

The truth of this statement is abundantly confirmed

by the actual condition of Christendom. An English

churchman cannot find himself quite at home in spiritual

matters even in Scotland or America; for in the one

Church he will find a liturgy containing, as it is said,

doctrines against which his Church at home protests

;

and in the other, a repudiation of the Athanasian creed,

which, as he has learnt, “ ought thoroughly to be

received and believed
;

” and if it be thus with respect

to communions which are mere offshoots from your own,

what shall we say of every other part of the world, where,

as you well know, there are no Christians at all, except-

ing here and there congregations ofyour own countrymen,

who by holding communion with you, will bear witness

to your Catholicity. It is not strange then, that those

clergy who are alive to the real state of things, should

seek to discourage any of their flock from travelling into

foreign countries; they may well fear, lest, oppressed by a

sense of their spiritual loneliness, such travellers should

presently crave admission into a Church, Catholic in fact

no less than in name
;
a Church whose members, like

the Christians of old, if furnished with proper creden-

tials from their bishop, may travel through the world

from east to west, and from north to south, and be

received to communion with their brethren in any part

of the globe.

I know it will be objected here, that, though the Roman

Church is certainly more extensively diffused than the

English, yet she too has her limits; she is not really and

truly Catholic, because she is not in communion with the

Greek Church in Russia, nor with the Eutychians in

Syria, &c.; but this is an objection which was answered



58 Fourfold Difficulty of Anglicanism.

for us by St. Augustine* nearly 1500 years ago: “ The

Novatians, Arians, Patripassians, Valentinians, &c.,” he

says, “do not, as you justly observe, communicate with

us. Nevertheless, wherever they are, there is the Catholic

Church, just as she is also in Africa, where you (the

Donatists) are; but not wheresoever the Catholic Church

is, there are either you, or any other of the various heresies

:

whence it is sufficiently apparent which is the tree

extending its branches with abundant fruitfulness over

the whole earth, and which are the broken branches that

have no life from the root, and are lying and withering

each on its own ground.”

These last words are full of meaning : for, in truth, if

there be a special characteristic of the English Church, it

is this of “ lying in her own ground ;” it has even been

her boast from the beginning. The real struggle at the

Reformation, as a high-church writer declares, was
“ between this island of the free on the one hand, and an

Italian priest on the other and, if we read the history

of this country for several centuries previous to that event,

we shall see that it was at all times the policy of the

government to loosen as far as possible the tie ofobedience

which bound their Church to Rome, and to disengage her

from all foreign influence whatever—in a word, to
nationalize her; that, being thus unsupported from with-

out, she might become a mere appendage to the state,

and so be the more helpless in the hand of the civil power.

This design, so often frustrated, was at last, as we all

know, too fully accomplished
;
and, since that period, the

Church of England, instead of bewailing the loss of

Christian brotherhood, has gloried in her separation; even

at the present day one of her spiritual rulersf recommends

that “ the nationality of the English religion be secured

by some energetic protest;” and it is surely on this

principle only (that of religion being a national matter),

that you can denounce us as “the Romanist schism in

this country,” while acknowledging us to be Catholics

elsewhere, as though there were some mysterious spell in

* Contra Cresc. Don. lib. iv. 75. Tom. ix. p. 794.

f Bishop of Oxford, May 16, 1846.



Catholicity. 59

British soil, whereby a priest who says Mass at Calais, a

devout Catholic in the morning, is transformed into a

rebellious schismatic when he sings vespers in Dover in

the evening. But, if Catholicity be a note of the Church*

how is it possible that nationality should be such likewise?

Are not the two principles absolutely antagonistic ? Sure-

ly, when the wall of partition was broken down between

Jew and Gentile, nationality ceased for ever to be the

mark of God's people ? The Church was to be a new

kingdom,—the kingdom of God
:

gathering into herself

all nations, and kindreds, and people and tongues
;
not

that the nations thus gathered should continue so many

independent bodies in the things pertaining to Gcd; but

that they should all become “ one body," animated by

“one spirit;" “one fold under one shepherd;" one

“ grain of mustard-seed," which should expand into a

great tree; one stone, “cut out without hands," which

should fill “the whole earth." Now, without entering

into the question of the necessity of a central point from

which this unity of the Church must emanate, and in

which its supreme authority must reside, thus much at

least is manifest, that, if the Church is to be thus one

whole, the sovereignty of that whole over its parts must

necessarily be absolute
;
and their union with it and with

one another indissoluble. It cannot therefore be lawful

for any one of them to stand out alone, to fence itself

round, as it were, from the rest, and to commence a

separate existence. What says St. Cyril on this subject?
“ While the kings of particular nations have bounds set to

their dominion, the Holy Catholic Church alone extends

her illimitable sovereignty over the whole world."* How
little recognition of the independence of national Churches

do we find in the practice of the early Church. We read
that every church was obliged to “communicate with

every other church all over the world in all holy offices,

in order to preserve the communion of worship one entire

thing throughout the whole Catholic Church, without

division or distraction." The Council of Nice, “ in order

that all things might be done alike in all dioceses," made

* Catech. Lect. xviii.



6o Fourfold Difficulty of Anglicanism.

a canon, contrary to the practice of some, prohibiting

genuflection in public worship on Sundays and during

the Paschal season : the same holy synod declared it a

thing “ unlawful” that there should be any diversity of

practice among Christians touching the time of the

celebration of Easter
;
and ever afterwards the opposers

of that decree were commonly censured as heretics or

schismatics. The fourth council of Carthage, held before

the end of the fourth century, decreed that any who

should make a practice of fasting on the Lord’s Day,

should not be considered a Catholic. Surely the holy

bishops who were assembled at those councils would not

have long hesitated in denying the title of Catholic to a

national body severed, like the English Church, from the

“ Universal brotherhood” in faith, in discipline, in sacra-

ments, and in communion ?

And not only is this principle of nationality repugnant

to ancient practice, but it is, at the same time, fatal to

the very existence of the Church which adopts it. The

Church of England, for instance, began with separating

herself from the Church Universal, and rejecting both

doctrines and sacraments which were received throughout

Christendom
;
then, immediately placing herself in the

position of the Church from which she had revolted, she

claimed submission from her children, and denounced as

schismatics all who dissented from her. But, on what

plea could she justify her departure from the Universal

Church, which would not equally justify her children in

departing from her? If she be Catholic in spite of her

separation, why may they not continue Catholic, though

separated from her ? If it be said that Catholicity lies

in the episcopate, each separate bishop being the centre

of unity in his own diocese, and so, in some sense,

himself an entire Church, then at least her bishops may

separate from her, or rather from each other, and there

may be as many Churches as dioceses. Supposing, for

instance, the Bishop of Calcutta, with some other of your

foreign bishops, or two or three of your bishops at home,

should join together in a new communion, casting off the

authority of the Archbishop of Canterbury, as he once



Catholicity. 61

cast off that of the Pope, and remodelling the doctrine

and discipline now received in the Church of England

according to what they may consider a purer and more

primitive type, what would prevent a communion thus

established from being as Catholic as that which it had

left ? It is manifest that the principle of the independence

of national Churches and their completeness within them-

selves, to be consistently held, must be grounded on that

of the civil supremacy, thus making the institutions of

the Church follow those of the world
;
and this theory

many of the English divines unhesitatingly adopt
;
laying

it down, that “ every people under one prince, or at least

of one nation, using the same language, civil law and

fashions, should be united in the bands of ecclesiastical

polity and Barrow* presses this principle so far, as to

consider “ the voluntary consent or command of princes ”

as a sufficient reason for “ adhering in confederation”

even to the Roman Church. Indeed, as all heresy

and schism, being the fruit of individual pride, have

“ tended to insulate man, and to reduce every thing by

sub-division;” so the main principle of Protestantism

has been well described, f as
“ National independence,

—

the proper expression of the temporal element of society,

—in opposition to the idea of a sacerdotal religion,
supreme and predominant over all temporal power.”

But that Church has a feeble hold over the consciences

of men whose most powerful claim to their obedience is,

that it is the religion by law established
;
for there are

few who take so high a view of civil government, as to

believe it to be the commissioned and infallible interpre-

ter of God's holy Revelation. How different is the
strength of that Church whose whole system is pervaded

by Catholicity, as by a force unseen, yet by living energy,

where the voice of every national Communion, of every

Archbishop, of every Bishop, of every Priest, nay, of

every individual in any way commissioned to teach, is

the voice of the whole Church; and therefore where

every local authority, which in itself would be as nothing,

is irresistible in its derived power.

* Unity of the Church, in fin. f Ranke’s History of the Popes.



62 Fourfold Difficulty of Anglicanism.

Thus then the case stands :—the English Church is a
mere national communion

;
a “ branch,” as she is fond

of terming herself, but a “ branch” into which no sap

flows from any other branch, nor from any main stem ;

—

a branch utterly cut off, and lying, as has been said, “on

her own ground;”—while the Roman Church, on the
other hand, is as a tree which filleth the land

;

“
the hills

are covered with the shadow of it; and the boughs thereof

are like the goodly cedar trees:” of her might the

ancient Father* speak, as he spoke of the Church in his

own day :—she is a “ rich and fruitful vine with many
branches, and the varied tresses of many a tendril : not

everywhere indeed having large clusters, not having

every grape full swelled
;
some have suffered from the

winter-cold, others from the rough hail, others from the

burning heat of summer; one bud is studded thicker

with shoots, another is stronger, another cleaner : one

bursts forth into fruit, another only into exuberance of

leaves; yet is she everywhere a vine, in every part

beautiful.”

LETTER IX.

Church of England claims to be Catholic on the

plea that she teaches Catholic doctrine. This plea

shown to be, 1. insufficient
;
2. false. Its falsehood

demonstrated in four instances, her teaching on

the Holy Eucharist, the Sacrifice of the Mass,

prayers for the dead, and the cultus of the Saints.

You say that in my last letter I did not state the one
real ground on which the Church of England rests her

claim to Catholicity, viz: agreement in Christian doctrine

* St. Pacian, Ep. iii. sect. 50. See Oxford Translation, p. 360.



Church of England not Catholic. 63

with the Catholic Church of the early centuries. You

say that she holds the three Catholic Creeds, the

Apostles’, the Nicene, and the Athanasian; and that on

all points, not specified in those Creeds, she throws

herself on the consent of all the Catholic doctors of the

first four or five centuries; that the Church of that

period being Catholic, the Church of England, perfectly

coinciding with her in belief, must needs be Catholic

also; that the Church has no right* to impose new

articles of faith, that the Roman Church has imposed

Transubstantiation, Purgatory, Intercession of Saints,

Veneration of Relics, &c., which were unknown to

primitive times; these doctrines therefore she repudiates

as Roman, while she accepts all that are Catholic.

Now, before we consider whether the Church of

England can really bear this test, let us briefly enquire

whether it is a fair one in itself; for, though Anglicans

are apt to assume this as self-evident, yet serious

objections seem to lie on its very surface
;

for, if this be

indeed the test by which we must determine a Church’s

Catholicity, then Catholicity is not that simple and

obvious note of the true Church which one would

expect it to be from its being put forward in the Creed,

and which St. Cyril, St. Augustine, and others, represent

it; since the common consent of all Catholic doctors
can only be gathered by one deeply read in Ecclesiasti-

cal Antiquity.

And further: if the Church has no right now to

* It is sometimes said that the Council of Ephesus, in its seventh

Canon, distinctly prohibited any further development of the

Christian creed, as though it were possible for the Church in any

age so to limit the power of the Church in all future ages, as to

deprive her of the privilege of defining articles of faith against any

new heresy that might arise. The occasion of the canon in
question (a subtle attempt to impose a Nestorian creed), its very

language, the manner in which the same law was afterwards

expressed by the third council of Constantinople (“ any newly-

invented phrases, to the subversion of those things already defined,”)

no less than reason itself, sufficiently determine the sense of the

canon. Moreover, if it be interpreted otherwise, how does the
Church of England justify her use of the Athanasian creed, or of

the Filioque in the Nicene?



64 Fourfold Difficulty of Anglicanism.

require as a guarantee of Catholicity any thing beyond

the acceptance of the Creeds of the first three centuries,

what right had she in the days of Macedonius, for

instance, to require more than the Nicene Creed as

originally drawn up
;

or, in the days of Arius, to require

more than the Creed of the Apostles ? Nay, if you deny

her all power of explaining, or in any way amplifying,

what she has once enunciated, the original profession of

faith (as accepted by Philip from the Ethiopian), ought

to have been left in its simplicity, and “ I believe in the

Lord Jesus Christ,” should have been for ever a con-

fession distinct enough to declare a man a Catholic;

for it cannot be denied that each additional article of

the Creed was necessarily a means of narrowing the

limits of the Church by excluding some. Many, as you

know, hold that the Church overstepped her prerogative

in dogmatizing at all
;

and this is an intelligible

opinion : but to allow her that power at one period, and

to deny it her at another, seems altogether unreason-

able.

You will answer me that the Church was Catholic,

and of infallible authority, so long as she continued One,

but that when the Greek Church broke off from her, her

inspiration, her authority, and her Catholicity passed

away together; or rather were shattered into fragments,

a portion abiding with the one Church, and a portion with

the other; so that after that separation, we have no

means of knowing what is the real mind of the collective

Church except by looking back to the records of the

time when it was One. In reply I would only say, that,

in thus representing Catholicity as of a divisible nature,

you destroy its very idea, at least as it was understood

by the early Fathers. It is always spoken of by them,

as, like Unity, an inalienable note of the true Church,

and of it alone
;
so that to suppose the existence of two

separate bodies, both in an equal measure Catholic, and

neither such altogether; or to suppose that the true

Church has at any time suffered, or is capable of suffering,

a loss of Catholicity, or that Catholicity admits of degrees

at all, would be, in their opinion, to suppose a contra-



Church of England not Catholic. 65

diction. In fact, your theory plainly interpreted is simply

this : that Catholicity has ceased for the present to be a

note of the Church, that is, that the promises of Christ

to her are, for the present, suspended ; which is a belief

so repugnant to the letter of Scripture, so contrary to the

expectation of the early Church, and so very distressing

in itself, that it requires stringent proof.

But, you will say, look at the fact
;
here is a manifest

division in the Christian world; the Eastern churches

and the Western are out of communion
;
and what reason

have I to determine that Catholicity inheres exclusively

in either of these branches, so that the other is cut off

from it? It would be beside the purpose of this letter to

enter into any proof of our own belief on this subject

:

but the case, even as it appears on a primhfacie view, is

one which deserves your serious consideration. There

is, as you well know, one portion of the Church, and one

only, which claims to be, in an especial sense, the seat

of her vitality; in which vitality, if we may trust the

language of the ancient Fathers, Catholicity is included as

an essential element. Now, surely, that there should be

one portion of the Church more vital than another cannot

be considered as otherwise than antecedently probable,

whether we look to analogy, or to the nature of the case.

Consider, for instance, the structure of the natural body,

to which the Church is so often compared in Scripture.

We know that we may lose several limbs, all organs of
sense, and even the greatest part of our bodies, and yet

remain the same living agents that we were before; while,

on the other hand, there are parts which we cannot lose,

without at the same time losing life. And further, we

know that perpetual existence is guaranteed to the

Church by the promise of her Lord; and—considering
that her Body is of vast extent, and subject, as history

demonstrates, to sundry changes and the lopping off of

many and important limbs—we cannot see, humanly
speaking, how the fulfilment of this promise can be

adequately secured, except there be some one portion of

her substance in which, by the appointment of God,

vitality is indissolubly inherent. This antecedent proba-

F



66 Fourfold Difficulty of Anglicanism.

bility would of course go for nothing, if there were no

corresponding claim made; but such a claim being

made, it is surely a corroboration of it; and the fact

that all parties would allow—a centre of Catholicity
being once admitted—that it can be none but Rome,
ought, in fairness, to be considered a further corrobora-

tion
;
neither ought the present recognition of her claim

by so many national churches to be altogether without

weight.

It is usually urged by Anglicans as altogether con-

clusive, that in the earlier ages there was no consciousness

in the Church of any central point, in which her life thus

especially resided; but, even supposing this true, it does

not seem to me to decide the question, because it may

have been God’s will that experience alone should dis-

cover to His Church this secret of His counsel
;

it may

be only experience which has taught us what parts of

our body are vital
;
and if indeed—as some Protestant

authors have said—it was her immunity from heresy,
when one Church after another had been corrupted by

it,—the wisdom of her decisions, as prelates and people
appealed to her from far and near;—her missionary
zeal and miraculous success,—which gradually led to the
recognition of the Church of Rome as that centre of

vitality,—I cannot see how this impugns her claim to be
such of divine right.

In point of fact, however, we need only the admissions

of Protestant controversialists themselves to show us,

that it is a deceit to pretend that, in those centuries to

which the English Church appeals as her standard, there

are no traces of the Roman supremacy; there may not

be sufficient irresistibly to confute us, if we set out with the

assumption that her claims are certainly false
;
but more

than sufficient to convince us, if we set out with the belief

that they may be true. It would be dwelling too long

on this subject to give many instances; but what I have

mentioned in a former letter, that the Catholic faith is

often simply designated the fides Romana

;

the well-

known address of St. Ignatius (almost in the apostolic

age) to “the Church which presides;” the saying of St.



Church ofEngland not Catholic. 6/

Irenaeus, “ that Church to which all others must resort,

propter potiorem principcilitatem that of St. Cyprian,

that “ error in faith, or misbelief, can have no access to

it;” that of St. Gregory Nazianzen, that “ ancient Rome
hath the right faith from of old, and always retains it, as

it becometh the city which is mistress of the whole world,

always to hold the full and entire faith the letter of St.

Jerome, requesting the pope to tell him with which of

three rival bishops in Syria he should communicate,

because, “If any one is united to the see of Peter,” he

says, “he is mine;” the almost axiomatic saying of

St. Ambrose, Ubi Petrus, ibi ecclesia

;

the confident

appeal of Optatus even to the Donatists, that they could

not deny that “whoever resisted the chair of Peter was

a schismatic;” all these and many other passages which

might be adduced, tend strongly to the confirmation of

the Roman claim. I know that it is possible to evade

the force of these passages taken singly; at least it has

been attempted, and in some instances with better suc-

cess than in others; but how it is proposed to overthrow

their full cumulative force, when connected and combined,

I know not
;
certainly it is impossible, upon any grounds

of reasoning which would be considered trustworthy and

safe in practical matters of common life. Thus too the

promise to St. Peter, “on this rock I will build My
Church,” must have had some distinct meaning at the

moment when it was spoken by our Lord
;

if indeed there

were nothing in the present state of the Christian Church,

which seemed to answer to it, then it would be natural

to conclude that meaning to have been something

mysterious and hidden
;
or to explain it, as some do, of

St. Peter not personally, but merely as a type of the

collective Apostolate; but, as there is a wonderful fact

which does entirely answer to it, to regard it as other

than a prophecy of that fact, is to deal with it in a way

quite contrary, surely, to any general principle of inter-

pretation recognized by any party.

Now that Rome makes the great claim in question,
with something at least to be said in its corroboration,

while the Greek Church claims nothing of the kind, I



68 Fourfold Difficulty of Anglicanism.

must think an important feature in the case; more

especially, as the test of Catholicity, which I quoted in

my last letter from St. Augustine, is applicable here also

;

inasmuch as in the regions of the East are many Churches

in the Roman obedience, but none in Western Europe

who own allegiance to the East. This is surely enough

to prevent your laying it down as self-evident, that when

that unhappy severance took place, a portion of the

Church’s Catholicity was torn away; it rests clearly

with yourselves to show why this particular secession

really divided the living Body of Christ, when you do

not pretend that the previous schisms of Arians, Nesto-

rians, or Donatists, had wrought any such fatal injury.

You must also consider (what no one pretends to

dispute) that the Greek and Roman Churches are and

have been ever since their separation, fully agreed on

almost all the points of doctrine and practice, in which

the English Church considers the Roman to have de-

parted from primitive teaching; and therefore we may

fairly conclude that they were agreed on the same points,

previous to their separation; it follows from this, that

the whole Church, then (according to the theory we are

considering) undeniably Catholic, because one and un-

divided, was nevertheless (according to the same theory)

uncatholic, inasmuch as it had departed from primitive

teaching; yet you admit that, so long as the Church

continued One and Catholic, so long she continued

infallible
;
how then came this infallible Church to de-

part from primitive teaching, that is, to fall into error ?

And further, as the Greek and Roman Churches both

taught error, and were therefore uncatholic, it follows

that from the close of the primitive period (whenever

that was) until the birth of the present English Church,

there was no Catholic Church whatever. Now it certainly
requires strong evidence to convince one of this

;
to make

one really believe that Catholicity, after living and

energizing in the Church for three, four, or five centuries,

fell, as it were, into a charmed slumber, and continued

thus spell-bound age after age, until, when ten or eleven

centuries had passed away, she was suddenly discovered



Church of England not Catholic. 69

and awakened by the touch of some master hand in this

happy island.

Having thus examined whether the test of Catholicity

to which you appeal is a fair one, it remains to consider

whether the Church of England can really abide it

successfully. You will not, I think, deny that to make

out her claim to Catholicity on this ground, you must

prove that in the main and on the whole she approximates

more nearly than the Church of Rome to identity of

doctrine and practice with the primitive Church. No
one will question the fairness of this statement; I have

even put it more favourably for the English Church than

strict justice requires; for considering her position

relatively to Rome, a very strong case of identity on her

own part, and discrepancy on that of her antagonist,

ought surely to be made out, in justification of her having

thrown off an authority acknowledged for centuries, and

severed herself from the rest of Christendom.

But do you really believe that, as a whole
,
her system

is more congenial than the Roman to that of early times ?

that the Saints, or the ordinary Christians, of the first,

second, third, or fourth centuries, if permitted to revisit

earth, would find themselves more at home with you

than with us? Take the respective systems of each

Church; their dogmatic formularies, articles of faith,

creeds, catechisms and homilies; their liturgies, hymns,

prayers, religious observances and ceremonial, keeping

of fast, and festival, all that pertains to outward

worship
;
take too their inward spirit, as exhibiting itself

in their spiritual books, their institutes, the life and

conversation of their children, with much else that might

be named; and then say which, both in outward

semblance and inward spirit, is most resembling the

Church of our fathers. I do not think any honest

enquirer, Catholic or Protestant, would hesitate for a

moment what answer to give. When, however, this

appeal to antiquity is made by Anglicans as aggressive

against Rome, you well know that it is never done by

thus comparing the, systems as a whole, but by bringing

forward this or that doctrine as taught by the Roman



jo Fourfold Difficulty of Anglicanism.

Church, and asserting (generally from the negative

evidence of silence), that it was not so taught in earlier

times. And even in these details they have not dealt

fairly by us, for they have generally contented them-

selves with pointing out what they conceive to be a

discrepancy between the Roman and primitive doctrines

on some particular subject, without examining whether

the English doctrine on the same subject be more or less

like the primitive than is the Roman.

Take, by way of example, the doctrine of the holy

Eucharist. Anglicans say, the adoration now paid to

the Host has no sufficient warrant in early times; that

the festival of Corpus Christi, for instance, was not

instituted, nor the doctrine of transubstantiation definitely

taught, until the 13th century; therefore, the Roman

Church and the Primitive are at variance on this point.

But does the teaching of the English Church on this

same point agree better with antiquity? In what

authorized document, in what Christian Father do we

find that, in kneeling at the communion, “ no adoration

is intended
;

” that it is “ contrary to the truth of Christ’s

natural body to be in two places at once
;

” that “ it is

in heaven, and not here,” as we are formally instructed

by her rubric
;
or that it is a mere figure, and not in

any literal sense the body and blood of Christ, as the

great mass of her children believe? How can this
teaching be reconciled with what St. Cyril * says,
“ Since He has Himself declared and said of the bread,
This is My body, who shall dare to doubt any longer?
And since He has affirmed and said, This is My blood,
who shall ever hesitate, saying that it is not His blood?

He once turned water into wine in Cana of Galilee, and
is it incredible that He should have turned wine into
blood ? What seems bread is not bread, though bread
by taste

;
and what seems wine is not wine, though the taste

will have it so, but the blood of Christ. This bread is

bread before the words of consecration (verba sacrament-

orum) but when the consecration has come, from bread

it becomes the body of Christ..... It was not the

* Catech. Lect. xxii. Oxford Translation.



Church ofEngland not Catholic. 71

body of Christ before the consecration, but I tell you

that, after the consecration, it is straightway the body

of Christ. He spake, and it was made; He commanded,
and it was created.. Wine and water are put into

the chalice, but it becomes blood by the consecration of

the heavenly word.” Or to turn to the ancient liturgies,

which are now so well known among the clergy of your

school, with which of them can the rubric we have

quoted or the common belief of English churchmen be

brought into harmony? Ifwe look deeper into this subject,

and consider the doctrine of the Eucharistic Sacrifice,

that, as you know, is not only utterly disbelieved by

your people, but was formally and advisedly expunged

from your prayer-book, after having been for some time

retained, has been repudiated by a decree of one of your

ecclesiastical courts, and is condemned in one of your

articles, which declares that “the sacrifices of masses, in

the which it was commonly said that the priest did offer

Christ for the quick and the dead, to have remission of

pain or guilt, were blasphemous fables, and dangerous

deceits : ” yet in the ancient liturgies, to which I have

alluded, mention is made of the “ unbloody sacrifice.”

St. Cyril* says, “ When we offer to God our supplica-
tions for those who have fallen asleep, though they be

sinners, we offer up Christ sacrificed for our sins,

propitiating our merciful God both for them and for

ourselves;” “believing that it will be a very great

advantage for the souls for whom the supplication is put
up, while that holy and most awful sacrifice is presented.”

St. Augustine too
: f

“ It is not to be doubted that by the

prayers of holy Church, and the saving sacrifice and

alms which are expended for their souls, the dead are

aided, that the Lord should deal more mercifully with

them than their sins have deserved. For this tradition

ofthe Fathers the Universal Church observes , that for them

who have deceased in the communion of the body and

blood of Christ, when they are commemorated in their

proper place at this sacrifice, prayer be made, and it be

* Catech. Lect. xxiii.

t Horn, in Nov. Test. I22 s Oxford Translation, p. 385.



ft Fourfold Difficulty ofAnglicanism.

announced that that sacrifice is offered for them also.”

So also St. Ambrose* bids us not doubt “ but that angels

are present round our altars when Christ is immolated.”

But I need not multiply instances
;
you know yourself

that you cannot turn to a page in the writings of the

Fathers, without finding much more to the same effect.

The question, then, seems to me to be this: “If the

present Roman Catholic Church differs from the early

Church, as Anglicans assert, by having defined the mode

of our Lord’s presence in the holy Eucharist, and by

paying to Him thus present more frequent and fervent

adoration, the English Church, as we have seen, differs

also, but in another way; by speaking doubtfully, at

least, concerning the real presence itself, where the early

Church spoke with unmistakable distinctness; by being

cold in her homage to that blessed mystery, where the

early Church was full of intense devotion; by treating

the altar in God’s house with no especial reverence, nay,

by partially, if not entirely suppressing its very name

—

whereas, in primitive times, it was the very central spot

of the Christian’s veneration: and I leave it to your own

honest judgment to determine which of these two

“differences” is the greater, and with which of the two

communions our fathers in the faith would feel most

sympathy. I cannot myself doubt but that St. Augustine,

for example, would seek one of those places of worship

where he would find the “tradition of the Fathers”

universally observed; where he would hear it given out,

day after day, almost in his own words, “Your prayers

are requested for the soul of
,
who died last night,

and for whom the holy sacrifice of the Mass will be

offered up to-morrow.”

Or let us take another example from the doctrine

which is so vividly present to all Catholic minds during

the month in which I write, the doctrine of Purgatory.

It is said that this doctrine was not known in its present

definite form to the earliest ages of the Church. Yet

every one who is at all competent to give an opinion on

the matter must acknowledge the literal truth of the

* Expos, in Luc. I. 742. 28. Ed. Venet. 1781.



Church of England not Catholic. 73

following testimony given by the Protestant Dean

Plumptre in his recent work on the spirits in prise n.

Prayers for the dead, he says, “ went up with no faltering

voice—in no indistinct accent from the Church of the first
ages. In every form, from the solemn liturgies which

embodied the belief of her profoundest thinkers and truest

worshippers to the simple words of hope and love which

were traced over the graves ofthe poor,* her voice went up

without a doubt or misgiving, in prayers for the souls of

the departed .... From East and West, with a consent

which is at least as strong as that in favour of infant

Baptism, they rose up in the assemblies of the faithful,

and from the hearts of mourners. They were associated

all but indissolubly with the rite which was thought of

as the highest act of worship and intercession, as a com-

memorative and eucharistic sacrifice, and whatever else

they implied, however undefined may have been the theory

which supervened or the emotions out of which they

rose, they at least bore their witness to the continuance

of sympathy, communion and interdependence between

the living and the dead, to the belief that the state of the

latter was one of discipline and progress. The prayers

of the faithful might hasten their progress upward, or

make them more capable of the Divine compassion, or

help them to a higher or earlier place in the first resurrec-

tion, or mitigate in some mysterious way the keenness

of their pain.” Now contrast with this the teaching and
practice of the Church of England during the whole

period of her existence. If she has not absolutely

forbidden prayers for the dead, she has at least never

inculcated them, but has allowed the millions of her

children who have passed out of this world to lose what,

according to the teaching of the early .Church, would

have been of incalculable benefit to them.

If we carried on our examination through all the^details

of doctrine in which the Church of England differs from

* I do not know why these words should be inserted, the rich and
poor were for the most part buried promiscuously, and the same

epitaphs are found upon the graves of both. See “ My Visit to the
Catacombs,” p. 113.



74 Fourfold Difficulty of Anglicanism.

the Church of Rome, the result would be the same
;
we

should find in the Roman system, at most, the expansion,
in the.Anglican the absolute contradiction, of the primitive

idea. I will confine myself to one more example which

shall be taken from the invocation of Saints and

veneration of relics. Compare the teaching of your

Church upon these subjects with the following narrative,

taken at random from many told by St. Augustine in one

of his most celebrated works :* “ There was a certain old

man in this our town of Hippo, called Florentius, a

religious man and poor, maintaining himself as a tailor.

He lost his garment, and had not wherewithal to buy
himself another; wherefore he prayed with a loud voice

to the twenty martyrs (whose memory is much honoured

among us) that he might be clothed. Some mocking

youths, who happened to be present, laughed at him.

As he walked on in silence, he saw a great fish

cast on the shore, which he took and sold for 300 pieces

of money to a certain cook named Catosus, a good

Christian, telling him what had happened. The said

cook, cutting up the fish, found inside it a gold ring, and

straightway, melted with compassion and struck with awe,

he restored it to the man, saying: ‘ See how the twenty

martyrs have clothed you.’ ” He gives also many instances

of miracles wrought at the intercession or by the relics of

St. Stephen
;
one of which was the conversion of a man

of rank named Martial, whose daughter and son-in-law

were Christians, but who was himself hostile to the faith.

After many vain attempts to convince him, once, when

he was sick, his son-in-law repaired to the shrine of St.

Stephen, and there, after having prayed for his conversion

with great fervour, took one of the flowers from the altar,

and laid it on his pillow while he slept. Before dawn, he

suddenly awoke and called for baptism. These are only

specimens from a great number of similar narratives, which

he gives at length
;
but I think they are enough to show

us where the sympathies of that ancient Father would find

a home on earth : not, surely, with those who, while they

read with interest of the “ glorious cloud of witnesses”

* De civ. Dei, lib. xxii. c. 8. s. 9.



Church of England not Catholic. 75

belonging to the old covenant, sever themselves utterly

in spirit from the saints, martyrs, and confessors of the

new
;

thus, looking back on that long space of eighteen

centuries which lies between us and our Lord’s Ascension

as one unpeopled waste; but rather with those who may

be seen from time to time lying prostrate before the altars

while the choir, in plaintive litanies, call on our glorified

brethren to pray for us to their Lord and ours.

I forbear from mentioning further instances, though I

am persuaded that, the more you examine, the more you

will see cause to agree with the judgment once expressed

by a dignitary of your Church,* that “ primitive Christian-

ity was nothing more nor less than modern popery ;”

neither am I proposing what I have already adduced as

proofs of the doctrines of the Roman Church, for this is

not my present object, but only to show that, if the
primitive type does not exist in the Roman Church,

neither does it exist in the English
;
and to leave it to you

to judge which of the two systems is most akin to it, and

whether the English Church can fairly make out her claim

to Catholicity on the ground you state. For myself, I can

only say, that even my partial acquaintance with the
writings of the Fathers, long before I was a Catholic, had

brought before me many startling passages which I found

hard to reconcile with English teaching, and had produced

in my mind a general impression of strangeness and
incongruity, and a painful feeling that I was not in entire

sympathy with the ancient days; whereas, now, the

acceptance of Roman doctrine has given a meaning and
consistency to what were before floating incoherences, or

even positive perplexities, in my creed—which, neverthe
less, I had derived entirely from that source to which my
own communion directed me, the teaching of the Primitive

Church. It has also given me, as it were, the key

wherewith to open the secret treasures of Holy Scripture,

and it has made me feel, whether I read the Acts of the
Apostles or the writings of the Fathers, that I am really
in the same Church with them—the Church alike of all
ages, as of all places, One, indefectible, and Catholic.

* Archdeacon Middleton.



/6 Fourfold Difficulty ofAnglicanism.

LETTER X.

Apostolicity. Several serious flaws in the

evidence for the Apostolic succession of Anglican

Orders. Jurisdiction of Anglican clergy from the

Crown, not from the Church. Her doctrine not
derived by succession from the Apostles.

The fourth and last note of the true Church which we

have now to consider, Apostolicity, you fearlessly claim

for the Church of England
;
because, as you say, her

present bishops derive their orders, through an unbroken

succession, from St. Augustine and his brethren, who

were themselves of undoubted apostolical descent
;
and

you say, further, that this claim is tacitly acknowledged

even by Rome herself, inasmuch as she has never formally
declared the English orders invalid.

Now, this whole question is much too intricate for

either you or me to enter upon in anything like detail.

But, with respect to this last assertion, that Rome has

not pronounced upon the English orders, even if it be

true in the letter, the impression which it conveys is

certainly false
;

for has she not pronounced upon them

to all intents and purposes, when every clergyman of the

Church of England who embraces the Catholic faith, and

desires to become a Catholic priest, is required to be

ordained de novo and unconditionally, just in the same

way as any lay candidate? This is, at least, a practical

decision on the question
;
and that Rome has so decided

is a fact which, I think, ought to have some weight even

with you, when you remember that she has no interest

in denying or representing as doubtful the orders of those

communions which have separated from her, because,

according to her theory, such separation is in itself

enough to constitute schism; and, moreover, that she

does acknowledge the validity of orders in the Greek

Church, the Armenian, and other schismatical or heretical



Apostolicity• 17

bodies in the East, so as not to require re-ordination from

any of their priests who return to her obedience. This

ought in fairness to suggest to you the enquiry, whether

there be not some special flaw in the English succession,

discernible to her experienced eye, which renders it

nugatory.

To enquire minutely what this law is, would be a long

and dreary business. I shall content myself with jotting

down a few facts, some or all of which may perhaps be

new to you. First, it is extremely doubtful whether

William Barlow, who consecrated Parker the first Pro-

testant Archbishop of Canterbury, ever himself received

Episcopal consecration—I must even go further and
say, that it is almost certain that he did not. For:

—

j. There is no evidence that he ever did.

2. Catholic controversialists, writing within five years

of Parker's consecration, boldly asserted that he had not

received any lawful consecration. And those who

answered them did not attempt to prove that he had.

3. It is notorious that Barlow, like Cranmer himself,

held that Episcopal Consecration was not necessary, that

appointment by the king was amply sufficient to give

them full authority.

Secondly, in King Edward's time an entirely new

service was prescribed both for the ordering of priests

and deacons and for the consecration of bishops. In

the consecration of bishops the form of words which was

substituted for the ancient form, made no mention of the

office to which the candidate was promoted
;
indeed, it

was such as might have served with equal propriety for

the ordination of a deacon, or even the confirmation of

a layman. This defect was supplied, as you know, in a

new ritual introduced in the time of Charles II. But

this remedial measure came a hundred years too late.

Thirdly, during the whole of these hundred years

Episcopal Ordination was not accounted a necessary

condition for holding office in the Established Church.

It was by the Act of Uniformity passed in 1662, that

persons not episcopally ordained were for the first time

made incapable of holding benefices in the English



/8 Fourfold Difficulty ofA nglicanism.

Church, and so lax had been the practice in this matter

up to that time, that Clarendon, the historian, says that

as many as 2,000 ministers who had never received orders

but in France or Holland, yet possessed benefices with

cure of souls and other ecclesiastical promotions in

England, resigned their offices in one day, rather than

take orders by ordination from a bishop.

Fourthly, it is by no means certain that some of your

bishops and archbishops were ever baptized, and if they

were not, they were incapable of being made bishops.

One was an Anabaptist, another was only baptized by a

Presbyterian minister, and Anglican bishops and others

who have witnessed the way in which baptism is

administered by Presbyterian clergy, are so doubtful of

its validity that in dealing with converts to Anglicanism

they are in the habit of re-baptizing them conditionally.

This by no means exhausts the series of doubts and

difficulties which surround the question of Anglican

orders, but enough, surely, has been said to destroy that

unreasonable confidence which so many Anglican writers

assume with reference to their validity. Valid orders

are necessary for the validity of all the Sacraments

except baptism, and in such a momentous matter*

therefore, there should be no room for doubt. I know

some persons are content to shelter themselves behind

the defence of your orders published by Courayer; but

you ought to know that his book was authoritatively

condemned as soon as it appeared, and that its unhappy

author died a heretic even upon the cardinal doctrines

of the Trinity and the Incarnation.

I will not examine any details of the defence, because

it is only my purpose to show that the Apostolic descent of
your bishops is at least not a simple, clear, and incontro-

vertible fact; that there are grave difficulties connected

with it, which none but men of eminent ecclesiastical

learning are at all able to grapple with—perhaps even
they unable to overcome.

And if, instead of limiting the enquiry to the mere

validity of orders, we extend it to spiritual jurisdiction, it

becomes more complicated still; yet this is of course



Apostolicity. 79

included in the idea of Apostolicity ; otherwise there might

be two rival churches in the same place, both Apostolical,

because both having the succession—which you would
be the first to deny. What, then, is the condition of

the Church of England in this particular? Whence

St. Augustine, to whom she must look as the founder

of her hierarchy, derived his jurisdiction is universally

known. No one ever attempted to deny that he came

straight from Rome, sent as a missionary by St. Gregory

the Great'; that, so soon as he found that the people

were likely to embrace the faith, he went, according to

the commands which he had received from the holy

father, Gregory, to ^Etherius, archbishop of Arles, and

was by him consecrated bishop over the nation of the

Angles
;
that pope Gregory sent him the pall, and wrote

to him to the effect, that he should consecrate twelve

bishops, who should be subject to his rule; that he should

send a bishop to York, who, in case of that city and

neighbourhood receiving the faith, should ordain other

twelve bishops; and the letter continues,* “not only

those bishops whom yourself shall consecrate, or those
who shall be consecrated by the bishop of York, but also

all the priests in Britain you shall hold subject to you,

by the will of our God and Lord Jesus Christ,” &c.

Nothing can be more explicit than this; no other source

can be mentioned whence St. Augustine drew his spiritual

jurisdiction, but only the Apostolic See: surely, then, the

bishops of the present Church of England can scarcely

pretend to be the inheritors of that jurisdiction, when

they repudiate the authority of the See by which it was

originally conferred
;
for if, as the English Church teaches,

“the bishop of Rome neither hath, nor ought to have,
any jurisdiction in this realm of England,” then he had

no power to confer any on St. Augustine; and if that

original grant was nugatory, all that flows from it must

be nugatory also.

And, in fact when we read the history of the Reforma-

tion, we find that a principle was at that period

introduced into the English Church, by which her claim

* Bedae Hist. Eccl, I. c. 29,



80 Fourfold Difficulty of Anglicanism.

to obedience was rested on a basis totally different from

that of Apostolical descent. In 1535, Henry VIII. issued

out “letters of inhibition,” forbidding, by his own supreme

ecclesiastical authority, the archbishops and bishops to

exercise those things which belong to his own jurisdiction,

“and thus,” says an impartial historian of your Church,*

“all episcopal jurisdiction was laid asleep, and almost

struck dead by the Regale during the king’s pleasure.” The

same historian had told us, in the preceding page, how

the archbishop of Canterbury began to make his

metropolitical visitation, but did not “venture upon this

branch of jurisdiction without the king’s license, for now

the bishops could do little without an authority from the

crown.” In fact, the bishops had already taken out a

commission in the following terms: “Whereas all

authority ofjurisdiction, and indeed jurisdiction altogether

as well that which is called ecclesiastical, as that which

is secular, emanated at first from the royal power, as

from the supreme head,” &c. And in the beginning of

king Edward’s reign, new commissions of the same tenor

and form were again taken out by the same bishops;!

and the commission for Cranmer’s archbishopric is thus

expressed: “ We will that thou shouldest take our stead in
the manner and form below mentioned, and shouldest be

licensed to ordain within thy diocese of Canterbury.” Thus

the power of ordination, and all other branches of eccles-

iastical jurisdiction, were to be conferred by the king, and

to be executed “in his place and name and by his autho-

rity.” Later still, in Queen Elizabeth’s reign, “ the whole

compass of Church discipline was again transferred upon

the crown;”! and archbishop Parker did homage in

these words: “I, Matthew Parker, D.D., acknowledge

and confess to have and to hold the said archbishopric

of Canterbury, and the possessions of the same entirely,

as well the spiritualities as temporalities thereof, only of

your majesty and crown royal
;

” to which document is

added as an appendix: “We also, whose names be
under written, being bishops of the several bishoprics

* Collier iv. 297. 254, &c. f Collier, v. 179, &c.

4 X Ifc>id.
vi. 224. ix. 331,



Apostolicity. 8r

within your majesty’s realm, do testify, declare, and

acknowledge all and every part of the premises in like

manner as the Right Reverend Father in God, the

archbishop of Canterbury, has done.” In a word, the

Church of England, at the period of the Reformation,

distinctly recognized the civil sovereign, not merely as

the supreme governor, but also as the sole fountain of

ecclesiastical jurisdiction : so that, to use the words of

Lord Coke, “ all the Church’s laws are aptly and rightly

called the king’s ecclesiastical laws of England;” or, as

Lord Chief Justice Hale has it, “ her jurisdiction is from

the crown, and her laws are under its laws—lex sub
graviore lege.” Heylyn, in his history of the Reforma-

tion, says that the result of the legislation of this period

was “to make the bishops no other than the king’s

ministers only, his ecclesiastical sheriffs, as a man might

say, to execute his will and dispense his mandates.”

Now what was the admission of this principle, but a
distinct relinquishment of all claim to authority as derived

from the apostles, and an acceptance of it at the hands of

a power altogether different? a breaking off, in fact, of

the Church of England from that Universal Church of

which the successors of the apostles are the appointed

rulers, to make it a mere appendage to a particular state,

with the crown for its source of jurisdiction and centre of

unity; thus subordinating the ecclesiastical to the secular,

the spiritual to the natural, the divine to the human
;
and

in suitable accordance with this beginning the Church of

England has faithfully persevered ever since.

Subserviency to the State has been one of her most

prominent characteristics
;

it has been a living energetic

principle, growing and spreading itself abroad unchecked,

and producing all those moral consequences which one

would have naturally expected from it.

Well might the good Bishop Andrews pray to be kept

from “ making gods of kings 1”*

You will answer that, be this as it may, the Roman
Church is, after all, in this country an intruding Church

;

that the whole English Church accepted the Reformation

* Prec. Quot. p. 190. ed. 1827.

G



82 Fourfold Difficulty of Anglicanism,

under Queen Elizabeth, and continued conformable until

the famous bull was issued in 1570, when a certain party

detached themselves from it; that the National Church

continued its succession of bishops unbroken and in

undisputed possession of the ancient sees, while the

Roman party, in process of time, gathered round certain

foreign priests and bishops, sent from Rome with no
English sees, who are therefore in the position of intruders,

they and their faction having separated from the National

Church, not it from them.

Now, in the first place, it cannot be truly said that the

whole English Church did receive the Reformation, seeing

that, when the oath of supremacy was tendered in Queen

Elizabeth’s reign, every single bishop
,
excepting one only

,

refused to take it, and were all, in consequence, ejected from

their sees. Surely this protest of her episcopate, together

with their consequent deprivation, seems much like the

death-pang of the English Church
;
or rather like those

mysterious sounds, “ Let us depart,” which boded the

approaching downfall of the ancient temple in Jerusalem.

The convocation too had drawn up a Catholic profession

of faith, which was subscribed by both Universities, and,

together with a protest against the royal supremacy,

presented to the House of Lords
;
and though the inferior

clergy, for the most part, afterwards conformed, yet it

must be remembered that, by so doing, they broke their

vows of canonical obedience to their bishops. Moreover,

very many of them only conformed provisionally, as it

were, hoping that things would take some favourable

turn
;
and not a few went so far as to continue saying Mass

in private, while they used the communion service in

public. Perhaps, too, you are hardly aware how far the

compliance of the nation was the result of coercion and

violence; nor by how stringent a system of persecution,

the Catholic spirit was crushed down in this country for

many generations. As early as 1560 (that is, ten years

before the bull in question was issued), a penalty of £20
a month (equal to something like £250 in the present
day) was already exacted from all who were not present

at worship after the established form : and an act had



83Apostolicity.

been passed, that if any one should say or hear Mass, he

should, for the first offence, forfeit all his goods
;

for the

second, suffer banishment; and for the third, death. In

1563, the emperor Ferdinand wrote letters to the Queen,

respecting the sufferings of the English Catholics
;
and

indeed many families had been obliged to fly the kingdom

;

many noble persons had been thrown into prison, and

before the end of her reign, more than 120 priests, besides

laymen and women, had suffered martyrdom for their

faith. You can scarcely call such a forced compliance

as this was, an acceptance of the new religion.

But, even if it were otherwise, even if it were true that

the English Church had accepted the Reformation, yet

this could not in any way affect the Apostolicity of the

Roman Church in this country: for suppose a National

Church should become Arian, for instance, all its bishops

and clergy to a man heading the apostacy, and that the

See of Rome should send forth bishops and priests into

that land to reclaim its people to the ancient faith
;

find-

ing it convenient, moreover, to send them not as an

established hierarchy, but as a missionary Church “ in

partibus infidelium,” I am sure you would not yourself
doubt that such a Church would be the Apostolic Church

of the land, though without the ancient sees
;
and suppos-

ing further that the Pope had waited for a while unwilling

to interfere prematurely, and hoping that the National

Church would recant its errors, and return to the com-

munion of the faithful, surely this would in no way alter

the case. It is idle then to deny the Apostolicity of

the Roman Church in this kingdom, simply on the ground
of intrusion

,
when you must know that the question

between us lies very much deeper. It is mere unreality

to talk of the English and Roman Churches as rival
communions, with no important point at issue between

them, but that of rightful jurisdiction in this country;

for, if the Roman be a true Church anywhere, she is the
only true Church here; for such she is, according to her

own theory, and if that theory is false, she is a false

Church everywhere. The two Churches are antagonist

bodies, representing antagonist principles, and holding



84 Fourfold Difficulty of Anglicanism.

antagonist systems of faith
;
and, therefore, laying aside

all question of succession or jurisdiction, they cannot,

here or anywhere, be both Apostolical.

For you will readily admit that the apostolical succes-

sion is not only the channel of sacramental grace, but

also the guarantee for the faithful transmission of all

Christian truth, and that therefore the maintenance of

Apostolic doctrine is one inalienable mark of an Apos-

tolic Church; in fact, were it otherwise, the Jacobite,

Eutychian and other heretical communions are all

Apostolical Churches. Now in this particular, the case
of the Church of England stands thus : she cannot claim

Apostolicity on the ground of a regular transmission of

Apostolic doctrine from bishop to bishop within her fold

;

since, as she would herselfallow, her present bishops teach

a doctrine on many points diametrically opposed to that

which was taught by St. Augustine, from whom they
profess to derive their commission to teach, and by his

successors for many centuries : more especially as this

discrepancy is not the result of silent and gradual change,

but of a sudden convulsion, one set of bishops teaching

the doctrines they had received from their fathers, and

their immediate successors denouncing that system as

corrupt, and teaching another absolutely contradictory to

it. The Church of England, therefore, is either herself

not Apostolic, or she is the only Apostolic Church in the

world, since there is none other with which she agrees

in doctrine. In a word, even if her orders and spiritual

jurisdiction were admitted, her claim to Apostolicity

must still be judged by her possession or lack of the

other notes of the true Church
;

if she be One, Holy,

and Catholic, and have besides an Episcopate deriving

orders and jurisdiction from the Apostles, then she must

be Apostolic also
;
but if any one of those other notes is

lacking to her, the possession of such an Episcopate

cannot of itself make her Apostolic.

If, however, we would determine, by the simple light

of reason and common sense, which Church may rightly

claim the title of Apostolic, as the true representative of

the Church of the Apostles, we must recall to our minds



Apostolicity 85

an idea which is almost forgotten by English churchmen

in general, and which even those of your school have

scarcely considered with the attention it deserves : I mean

the idea of the Church as a kingdom . You know that many

who recognize the Church as the treasure-house of divine

truth for the instruction of the faithful, and of divine grace

for their justification, overlook its further claim to be at

the same time the treasure-house of divine power for their

rule and governance. Yet all acknowledge that our

Blessed Lord is not only the Prophet and Priest of His

people, but also their King; and you, at least, would not

shrink from confessing His Church to be His perfect

representative upon earth. And further, a moment's

reflection will remind us how uniformly it is spoken of in

Scripture, not as a literature, or a philosophy, or simply a

religion, but as a kingdom . As such it appeared in the

vision of Nebuchodonoser, side by side with the great

visible kingdoms, which have successively held dominion

over the world ;—it was foretold of our Lord that “the
government should be upon His shoulder,” that He
should “ sit on the throne of His father David,” and that

“of His kingdom there should be no end;”—in the Psalms
and Prophets the Church is set forth as a kingdom into

which all nations should flow, and before which all the

powers of this world should bow down to the very dust

;

nay, the Jewish Church, in which the Christian Church

existed in embryo, was itself a kingdom
;
and when our

Lord sent His Apostles forth to preach the gospel, they

preached, saying, “ The kingdom of heaven is at hand;”

—as the “kingdom of heaven,” He Himself sets it forth
in all His parables;—and St. Paul constantly speaks of
it as the “kingdom of Christ,” “the kingdom of God's

dear Son;”—moreover we cannot but see, that in the
Apostolic times it was a compact and visible society,

governed by its own rulers and its own laws, gathering

into itself “the elect” from divers nations, and altogether

independent of any of the powers of this world.

Now if, as the Anglican theory would have it, the
Church in each nation has really no necessary depen-

dence on the Church in any other nation, but is a part



86 Fourfold Difficulty of Anglicanism.

and parcel of the constitution of the realm, and hangs

on the throne as its supreme authority, in what sense can

the Church be called a kingdom ? and, if it be not a

kingdom, why is it always so represented in Scripture ?

Of course, if nothing existed, answering to the “sure

word of prophecy,” if the Church were everywhere thus

merged in the State, one should conclude that the obvi-

ous meaning of Scripture in this matter is not the true

one
;
but you know well that there is a kingdom claiming

to be this “kingdom of heaven;” a kingdom whose

internal polity is the wonder of mankind; whose reproach

it is in the eyes of the world, that its rulers have humbled

to the dust the pride of princes; which has undergone

many vicissitudes, and risen again living and triumphant,

as “fated not to die;” nay, of which its very enemies

feel that it has within it the principle of enduring

existence. Hear the testimony rendered by one of them,*

and then judge whether this be not the kingdom, which,

as the prophets speak, shall “stand for ever.” “The

proudest royal houses are but of yesterday, when com-

pared with the line of the supreme Pontiffs;—the
Republic of Venice is modern when compared with the

Papacy ;—and the Republic of Venice is gone, and the
Papacy remains ;—the Papacy remains, not in decay,
not a mere antique, but full of life and youthful vigour.

The Catholic Church is still sending forth, to the farthest

ends of the world, missionaries as zealous as those who

landed in Kent with Augustine, and still confronting

hostile kings with the same spirit with which she con-

fronted Attila. She saw the commencement of all the

governments, and of all the ecclesiastical establishments

which exist in the world, and we feel no assurance that

she is not destined to see the end of them all. She was

great and respected before the Saxon set foot in Britain.

She may still exist in undiminished vigour, when

some traveller from New Zealand shall, in the midst of a

vast solitude, take his stand on a broken arch of London

Bridge, to sketch the ruins of St. Paul’s.”

* Macaulay’s Essays, vol. 3. p. 207.



Objections Considered. 87

LETTER XI.

Objections to Catholic doctrine irrelevant to the

argument of these letters one or two of them,

however, considered and answered. General

Summary and conclusion.

I have thus endeavoured, with all fairness and truth,

to test the English communion by those four notes of the

true Church, which are set before us in the Nicene

Creed
;
and I think I have proved that to neither of

them can she successfully lay claim ;—that so far from
being One, either with the rest of Christendom, or with

herself, her alienation from every other communion and

her internal discord are proverbial; that the spiritual life

in its higher forms, in which alone it deserves the name

of Sanctity, is unknown to her; that so far from being

Catholic, it is her very boast that she is national; and

that, instead of ruling with an Apostolically-derived

authority, she has professedly received her jurisdiction

from the English crown. I have also endeavoured to

produce some proofs that there is a Church, and one

only, to which all these notes apply :—whose Unity is
the marvel of the world

;
which teems in every age with

multitudes walking in the varied paths of Christian

perfection; which embraces in her wide bosom all

nations, peoples and languages, countless in numbers and

unrivalled in extent
;
and whose sway, transmitted from

hand to hand, is derived from no earthly potentate, but

from the Prince of the Apostles, who received it from

Jesus Christ Himself.

It only remains then to say a few words in answer to

some of the main objections which you urge against the

argument I have used, or rather against the conclusion

to which I would bring you.

You say, in the first place, that, whether or not the
four notes we have been considering really apply to

Rome, still there are difficulties in her doctrines which

you cannot get over, because some of them appear to



88 Fourfold Difficulty of Anglicanism.

you to be “ plainly unscriptural.” Now surely, such an
objection is inconsistent with the admission which you

made at the beginning of your belief in a visible Church,

the authorised exponent of Divine truth
;
you professed

to have no doubt as to the existence of such a Church,

and only to desire to find out whether it is the Church

of Rome or the Church of England. To attempt the

solution of this problem by an examination of their

respective systems of doctrine, is in fact to prejudge the

case, to suppose ourselves already in possession of that

very truth which it is their office to impart. Our duty in

the matter must be simply to examine the various

outward tokens or other credentials which they can

respectively allege, and when we have determined from

these, to the best of our judgment, which of the two is

the Church of God, to receive the instructions of that

Church with glad and unquestioning docility. The

legitimate office of private judgment is to choose our

teacher; when it pretends to decide on the matter

taught, it oversteps its province, and nothing but confusion

and uncertainty can be the result. For, after all, when

you call Roman doctrine unscriptural, you are necessarily

comparing it, not with scripture itself, but with your own

interpretation of scripture. The Church of Rome admits,

as fully as you can do, the inspiration of the holy volume,

but she claims to be its sole infallible interpreter; she

contends, moreover, that all or nearly all her doctrines

are to be found therein, if not on the surface, open to

any casual observer, yet latent and discoverable to the

eye of faith
;

if not in their minute details and present

systematized form, yet in their broad general principles :

she has set the seal of her authority on a large body of

interpretation, which she has gathered, from age to age,

from the meditations of her learned doctors and holy

contemplatives
;
and it is to this sanctioned interpretation

that you oppose your own.

Surely, if the outward testimony in favour of Rome be

strong, as you admit that it is, it is something of a risk to

withhold your obedience on a ground such as this
;
you

can hardly think it safe to trust your own mind as the rule



Objections Considered. 89

of Scriptural interpretation : more especially as
you must

be conscious how greatly your views of Scripture
have

changed and developed from time to time; how many

important doctrines you once overlooked, which now seem

to you so plainly written in its pages that you
wonder you

did not see them before; doctrines which you received

originally perhaps from some other source, but of
which

you find more and more confirmation in your Bible
every

time you open it : so that you can hardly be sure
that, as

your inward light increases, you may not see that doctrines

which you cannot yet discover in God’s Word are

nevertheless there. Can then such a shifting rule as the

individual judgment of each man be a safe rule of faith ?

Will not one person be able to solve difficulties
and

reconcile contradictions more fully than another ? and is

every one to stand on different ground, each following

his own view, according to their respective success in

making all things consistent? or would not this be at once

destructive of the very possibility of unity? You must

know too from history, and perhaps from experience, that

if you once admit private interpretation of Scripture,

controversies can have no end: that, even in the days of

the Apostles, the Word of God was combated out of the

Word of God; and that, ever since that time, in all

discussions conducted on this principle, there has been

“ but one learned (or unlearned) interpretation opposed

to another, man standing against man, and the Bible on

both sides.” Moreover, you yourself repudiate the

principle in arguing with Dissenters ; you do not hold
them

justified in separating, or continuing separate, from the

Church of England because many of her doctrines appear

to them contrary to the plain word of Scripture. Yet,

wherein does their case differ from yours? Nay, is not

the case of both too parallel to that of the infidel, who says

that, whatever may be the weight of external evidence

adduced in favour of Christianity, its system of doctrine

appears to him so strange and unreasonable that he

cannot receive it. Truly I cannot but think that the

temper of mind which now leads men to withhold their

obedience from Rome, while acknowledging the strength



go Fourfold Difficulty of Anglicanism.

of the outward testimony by which her claims are

supported, until they are satisfied as to every particular

of her doctrine, would also, if Christianity were now

preached to them for the first time, hold them back from

Baptism, until they had investigated and distinctly con-

vinced themselves of the truth of each individual article

of the faith. In both these cases, it may be that they are

unwittingly excluding themselves for ever from the

knowledge which they desire, because the very obedience

which they thus withhold may have been appointed by

God as the one condition of its attainment.

Moreover, as Newman once wrote to a friend of mine
who was consulting him on an historical difficulty that was

perplexing myself : “ When we have lost our way we
mount up to some eminence to look about us,” but a man

who begins with considering objections, “ plunges into the

nearest thicket to find out his bearings. A man ought
to begin by taking large and broad views of the subject,

instead of entangling himself with particular questions.”

This is precisely what I have attempted to do for you

in this series of letters.

And yet once more; are you quite sure that you rightly

apprehend the doctrines to which you object? What

means have you taken to ascertain their real import, and

the relative positions they occupy in the Roman Creed ?

Have you studied Catholic catechisms and other theo-

logical works, listened to Catholic sermons, or consulted

Catholic priests? I think I may venture to assume that

you have done none of these things
;
but that your

impression of Roman Catholic doctrines has been taken

mainly from the representation given ofthem in the works

of Protestant controversialists. Many will not even listen

to what is said on this subject by their own nearest friends

and relations who have become Catholics. Yet what

would they think of the sincerity of a Socinian or other

dissenter, who, denouncing the doctrines of the Church

of England as unscriptural, should refuse to hear what any

Anglican clergyman has to say in explanation or defence

of them, and should persist in listening only to the

interpretation given of them by the minister of his own



Objections Considered. 9

1

persuasion ? The dread of personal influence which has,

in so many instances, raised a barrier between the

Catholic converts and their late most intimate friends,

seems to me altogether inexplicable on any acknowledged

principle of candour or justice.

But you say further, that Roman doctrine is not only

contradictory to Scripture, but also to natural conscience.

This would indeed be a fearful objection, if it were true :

for if there were upon earth a system, endued like the

Roman with wisdom, power, and fascination, which

friends and enemies alike acknowledge as superhuman,

and yet using that power and wisdom to inculcate a body

of doctrine contradictory to conscience—how could we
deem of such a system otherwise than as the organ of our

great enemy ? but you do not pretend that, in the main
,

the Roman system contradicts natural conscience,

because you admit the pre-eminent holiness of her saints,

the blessedness of her religious institutions, and even the

excellence of the moral training which she affords to all

her children: surely, then, you ought to feel that the

chances are, that, if any of her doctrines appear to you

thus repugnant to conscience, it is because you misunder-

stand them. “ Doth a fountain send forth at the same

place sweet water and bitter?”

You do not specify the doctrines to which you object;

I can only surmise that you allude to that which author-

ises the invocation of saints, because there is no other

about which I can even conceive your so feeling. Let

us, then, look at this doctrine fairly for a few moments,

and consider whether you are not deceiving yourself in

supposing that your objections to it spring from con-

science, and also whether the objections themselves are

really such as ought to outweigh the external evidence

which we have adduced in favour of the Roman Church.

You say that it offends your natural sense of right and

wrong to offer to your fellow-men the same homage which

you offer to Almighty God. In this all must agree
;
the

only question between us is, whether the homage which

Catholics pay to the saints is the same which they pay

to Almighty God
;
and this, being a question of fact, is



92 Fourfold Difficulty ofAnglicanism.

in no way within the cognizance of conscience. We
contend, moreover, that the fact is otherwise

;
that the

very matter of our prayers to them (being an entreaty

that they will pray to God for us) distinctly recognizes

their position as creatures like ourselves, absolutely de-

pendent on Almighty God, only higher in His favour,

because sinless and in His more immediate presence.

: But, you will say, to pray to saints at all, with whatever

intention, is in itself idolatrous, because, by so doing, we

ascribe to them omnipresence, which is an incommuni-

cable attribute of the Deity. Here, again, the question

becomes one simply of fact—namely, whether or not
there is reason to believe that God permits any of His

creatures to be so far partakers of His omnipresence as

to be ubiquitous to us, or at least, in some way or other,

capable of communicating with us, though not within the

sphere of our senses
;
and it is clear that the point must

be decided by some other faculty than conscience, since

conscience confessedly cannot pronounce any judgment

as to the existence or non-existence of a fact, but can

only direct us as to the moral duties or obligations which

arise out of that fact. Thus, if the fact that the saints

and angels have the power of hearing our prayers and

interceding for us with God, were in any way made cer-

tain to our minds, conscience might then determine

whether or not we ought to ask their intercession
;
and

I cannot but think that conscience would decide in favour

of such a practice, or at least would in no way condemn

it. We all eagerly ask the prayers of those of our
friends whom we love and revere, and as we know that
the prayers of “the just made perfect” must needs be

more acceptable than any that can be offered here, it

would surely be but a natural instinct to ask for such in

our behalf, if we were once assured that we are heard by

the saints above as readily as by our friends on earth.

To say that by so doing we trench on the office of the

One Intercessor is idle, for, whether we ask the interces-

sions of friends on earth or in heaven, the principle is

the same.

But let us look for a moment into the question of



Objections Considered. 93

fact, and consider whether or not the idea that the saints

may hear us is contrary to reason. In the first place, we

know by experience that beings, not absolutely omnipre-

sent, may yet be relatively so—as, for instance, you
yourself might be ubiquitous to an anthill

;
and what

proportion the capacities of glorified spirits bear to those

we at present possess, we have no means of even forming

a conjecture
;
and, in fact, to attempt to argue concerning

them from anything we know of our own, is as though

a caterpillar should apply the laws of its own being to

that of a butterfly. Because by the laws of nature certain

limits are imposed on our powers of perceiving, does it

follow that the perceptions of disembodied spirits are

subject to the same laws? What a cloud of mystery

enwraps even our present selves ! so that, when we specu-

late for a moment on those powers of perceiving

and communicating which we daily exercise, we are at

once compelled to confess ourselves “ most ignorant of

what we are most assured;” how utterly inscrutable then

to us, in this our embryo state, must be the whole subject

of spiritual existence; and how idle it is to argue upon

it, as if we understood its nature or its laws 1 The facul-

ties of the spirit on its liberation from this body of clay,

may be suddenly developed to an extent utterly beyond

our present powers of conceiving.

I read not long since in the life of the late eminent

oculist and Protestant philosopher, Dr. Hinton, what

harmonizes so well with what I am saying, that I
cannot refrain from quoting it: “We mistakenly think
that the difference between the heavenly state and ours

depends upon the loss and taking away of something

we now possess. I think the difference consists wholly

in an addition to our present faculties—I cannot think
(I speak not of my feelings but of the hardest and
severest thought)—that spirits in heaven are lost to
earthly things, or feel or think them less

;
rather it must

be that they then truly grasp them and learn to estimate

their worth.... It must be that the sympathy is intensified,

not diminished; made perfect, not chilled....We must
remember that we are under illusion, they are escaped



94 Fourfold Difficulty of Anglicanism.

from it; we are diseased, they have been restored to

health. Can this diminish love or dry up the fountains

of pity? Or if it did, how could this be heaven?”

Many another Protestant thinker has felt and said the

same thing; surely, then, it cannot be pretended that

there are any solid grounds in reason for considering it

impossible that the saints may hear our prayers?

And if we turn to Scripture, we find it distinctly men-

tioned that the angels are in some way present with us

;

we are told that they are “ ministering spirits, sent to

minister to such as shall be heirs of salvation ;” that
“
there is joy among the angels over one sinner that

repenteth ;” and practically most Protestants believe in

the ubiquity of evil spirits, who are after all but fallen

angels
;
and if angels are thus present with us, why not

saints ? In a parable of our Lord, spirits are represented

as conversing with each other even across the great gulf

which separates Abraham’s bosom from the place of

torment, and we are told in the last book in the Bible,*

that the souls of the martyrs have knowledge of what

passes upon earth.

I can readily understand, however, that these con-

siderations from reason, and even these indications from

Scripture, may not appear to you sufficient in themselves

to sanction the practice of invocation
;
that you may feel

the need of some authority explicitly to assure us that we

have a right, as Christians, to the prayers of the whole

family, in heaven, as well as on earth, before we venture

to claim such a privilege; that to address the saints

without such an authority may seem a rash and overbold

intrusion into the secrets of the world unseen; and I

cannot but fancy it may be some feeling of this sort which

makes you say that invocation of saints is against your

conscience. But though it may be against your con-

science to practise it without authority, it does not follow

that it would be against your conscience to practise it

under authority
;

for instance, if Almighty God should

speak to you as He did to the friends of Job, commanding

you to ask. the prayers of His servants in your behalf, it

* Chap, vi. io.



Objections Considered. 95

would not then be against your conscience to do so ; and

just such an authority to her children is the Catholic

Church, nay, the self-same authority, for she is to them

the voice of God on earth. If, then, it be the want of

authority which makes you feel that the practice of in-

vocation would be sinful in your own case, that feeling

is no argument against the Catholic Church, because if

you were once (on other grounds) convinced of her

authority, it would pass away. That she sanctions what,

unsanctioned, would be wrong, simply because unsanc-

tioned, is no more than is true of Christianity itself. What

soul would dare, without authority, to place herself in

those dear and intimate relations with her God, to which

the religion of Jesus entitles her; through the blood of

Jesus we have access to the most holy place, where we

should otherwise be aliens and intruders.

You will say, perhaps, that, though an accurate state-

ment of the doctrine in question is harmless, and its

practice by people of education not idolatrous, yet that

its tendencies are mischievous, and that it is sure to be

misapprehended by the ignorant. But to this the answer

is obvious : every revealed doctrine may be said in like

manner to have dangerous tendencies, because, if it were

taken out of its proper place, magnified into undue pro-

portions, and made the arbitrary centre of a theological

system, it would necessarily result in evil; the very doc-

trine of the Unity of the Godhead, thus severed from the

rest of the Christian system, has had its development in

pure Theism
;

it is the Socinian objection to the doctrine

of the Trinity that it tends to Polytheism
;
in the minds of

some heretics the Divinity of our Lord has absorbed His

Humanity
;
by others the error has been reversed

;
it is

idle, then, to talk of dangerous tendencies in this or that

Catholic doctrine, until you have duly considered its

relations to every other part of the Catholic system. It

‘is. most true that the invocation of saints would be fraught

with dangerous tendencies, if it were transplanted into

Protestantism
;
with us it has its proper place, and finds

all the corrective which it needs in other doctrines and

practices no less stringently enforced. As to its being



g6 Fourfold Difficulty of Anglicanism.

rightly understood by the poor, I can only say that it is

most clearly stated in the Catechisms which they learn,

and in point of fact it would be a far less difficult task to

find five hundred English churchmen either grossly ignor-

ant or heretical on the subject of the Trinity, than to find

one Catholic whose devotion to the Blessed Virgin, or

any other of the saints, can really be called idolatrous.

You must allow me to say further, that it is manifest

to Catholics that one cause of the instinctive dread with

which Protestants seem to shrink from praying to the

saints is, that they have no idea of any higher worship

than prayer, to God Himself. Now, the supreme act of

adoration with which the Catholic Church approaches

Almighty God is the Christian sacrifice, in which she

offers up to Him the body and blood of His dear Son.

This, as the meanest Catholic knows, is the especial

honour which may not be given to another
;
he knows

as well as St. Augustine* himself, that though “he must

celebrate the memories of the saints with religious solem-

nity, both that he may be excited to follow their examples,

and also that he may become a partaker in their merits

and be benefited by their prayers, yet he may not build

an altar to any of them, but only to their God, though

still in their memory “neither may a priest be conse-

crated, nor sacrifices offered, to any but the Lord our God.”

But you sum up all your objections by saying, in con-

clusion, that even if you were convinced that the Roman

Communion is in every respect superior to the English,

you should still feel that you had no right to choose a

Church for yourself on the ground of such superiority

;

that your allegiance is due to the Church of your baptism

:

and that you cannot help giving great weight to the fact

that it is not by your own will, but by the Providence of

God that you are placed where you are
;
whereas, if you

change your position, it must be by a decided act of your

own, dictated by your own private judgment, and there-

fore involving a tremendous responsibility.

All these objections, my dear friend, are based on an

* Cont. Faust. Lib. xx. Tom. viii. p. 544. D. De Civ. Dei.
viii. 27. Tom. vii. p. 350. B.



Objections considered. 97

assumption of the very point in dispute, or rather on a

misconception of the scope of my whole argument. I am

not urging you to forsake one communion and select

another on the ground of its ideal superiority ; neither is

it for the sake of Unity, Sanctity, Catholicity, and

Apostolicity in themselves, that we have been examining

whether they belong to Rome or to England, but because

they are tokens of something beyond themselves. When-

ever you recite the Nicene Creed, you declare your belief

in One Church (not two), which Church you further

define as being Holy, Catholic and Apostolic; andtherer

fore what I have endeavoured to set before you is,—not
that these four qualities being in themselves beautiful, the

Body in which they exist must be more beautiful than

that to which they are lacking, but that as, according to

your own confession, they are the appointed notes of the

True Church, you are bound to acknowledge the Body

in which they are found to be the True Church
;
and as

Unity is one of those notes, you are bound to denounce

every other Body, whatever its pretensions may be, as no

Church at all. The question then is, not which is the best

Church, but which is the true Church
;

all our enquiries

must concentrate themselves on this one point ofauthority.

To talk of the Church of your baptism is simply to beg

the question: for what is the Church of your Baptism?

According to the teaching of the Universal Church ever

since the days of St. Cyprian, every person receiving

Baptism rightly, whether at the hand of priest or layman,

man or woman, Catholic or heretic, is baptised into the

Catholic Church
;
so that when any, who from ignorance

or perverseness have strayed from her pastures either by

schism or by any other sin, are by God’s grace reclaimed

;

she receives them, not as strangers come to her for the

first time from the land of the enemy, but as lost sheep

returning, to their own fold, as the son in the Gospel,
“ who was dead and is alive again, who was lost and

is found.” Surely, you do not yourself look on your

Baptism as something purely local and national
;
you do

not consider that one baptized by a Presbyterian or a

Wesleyan, would forsake “the Church of his Baptism”

H



98 Fourfold Difficulty of Anglicanism.

by becoming an Anglican
;
the true Church, wherever

that be, and no other, must needs be to every Christian

the Church of his Baptism
;
she is his real mother, to whom

all his affections are due, though it may be that a stranger

stole him from her even in his cradle, and has brought him

up in ignorance of his royal descent and rightful heritage.

Labour then to discover the true Church, and in her you

will have discovered the Church of your Baptism.

When you say further, that you dare not leave your pre-
sent position because you are placed in it by Providence,

you are using an argument, which, I doubt not, keeps

back numbers from joining the Roman Church
;
numbers

too, I fear, who are not all like yourself still in serious

doubt, but of whom many are almost, if not altogether,
convinced of the validity of her claims : it is an argument

too which easily insinuates itself into the mind, because

the feeling in which it originates bears the semblance of

humility, resignation, and obedient waiting upon God

:

but when we come to examine it, as an argument, we

see at once that it is worth nothing. In the first place,

it proves too much
;

if you would be wrong in joining

the Roman Church because you find yourself at present

out of it, a convert from any religious system to any

other must be wrong also : for there are none who may

not consider themselves to have been placed where they

happen to be by Providence. All the early converts to

Christianity itself belonged to some system or other—the
Jewish converts to one which they knew to be Divine.

And, in the second place, it begs the question
;
for if the

Church of Rome be the true Church (which is the very

point in dispute), it is absolutely impossible that it should

be the will of God that any should continue, knowingly,

in disobedience to her
:

just as though all men are not

made Christians in their infancy, yet you cannot doubt

that it is the will of God they should become so if they

have the opportunity* It is, of course, no argument

against the truth of the Church of Rome, that we were

not educated within her pale
;
neither is it any excuse

for our refusing to acknowledge that truth, if it is by any

means brought home to our minds : and if we do ac-



Objections considered. 99

knowledge it, and yet say that we will remain external to

her, and do our duty where we are, surely we are

entangled in a subtle form of self-righteousness, going

about to “ establish our own righteousness,” instead of

submitting to the “ righteousness which is of God by

faith.” Thus we are still brought back to the single

question, into which everything in this matter resolves

itself: Which is the true Church?

The fact is, you wish to escape from the responsibility

of making a choice, but that cannot be
;
you can no more

put from you this responsibility, than you can cast off

your own identity
;
the choice you must make, and what-

ever it be, you must make it at your peril. You are

keenly alive to the risk on the side of submitting to the

Church of Rome, but is there not an equal risk in reject-

ing her? Nay, considering the magnitude of her claim

as compared with that of the Church of England, is not

this risk incalculably the greater? For it is foolish to

imagine that you do not yourself personally reject her,

by passively acquiescing in her rejection by your fore-

fathers. Now that the question has been by God’s
providence brought before your mind, if you refuse to

submit to her, you do reject her as distinctly, deliberate-

ly, and wilfully, as if you had led the revolt against her

three hundred years ago. Any how, whether you submit

or refuse submission, it is equally the act of your own

will, the result of your own private judgment. Before

you stand two rival claimants, each announcing herself

to be the Herald of the Most High
;
and it is binding

upon you, as you would save your soul, fairly to examine

their respective claims and to decide between them

;

and that, without any regard to the accidents of your

birth and education, or indeed to anything whatever

but simply the merits of the question itself
;
and when

you have so decided, you are bound to act on your

decision without reserve or delay.

And now, my dear friend, I must conclude. Show
me any other more trustworthy tokens than those we
have been examining, whereby the true Church of God
may be known, and which belong to England rather



ioo Fourfold Difficulty of Anglicanism.

than to Rome; or else, consider these well, and follow

them faithfully wherever they may lead you. Shrink

not back because of any evil report which you may have
heard, and which the enemy of your soul will not be

slow in suggesting to you; say not with Nathanael, “ Can

there any good thing come out of Nazareth?” unless

like him, you are ready also to “ come and see.” If you

do this, then, like him, will you be rewarded—O how
abundantly! He came, and instantly recognized “the
Son of God, the King of Israel ;” and in like manner,

she, who now seems to you as that despised Nazareth,

will, it may be, when you have once entered within her
walls, shine forth as the city of the Apocalypse, of which

it is spoken, that “ the glory of God doth lighten it, and

the Lamb is the light thereof.”

You will not, I know, receive our testimony
;
I do not

ask that you should, excepting only as a corroboration

of the outward testimony of facts; I only desire to

balance our experience—an experience in my own case
of nearly half a century—against your suspicions. Yours
are impressions arising from vague hearsay

;
you know,

concerning the Church to which we have submitted

ourselves, that in this, country “ it is every where spoken

against ;” we know that we have found in her the hidden

treasure, the pearl of great price; that she hath given us

the bread of life and the oil of gladness; that she hath

poured into our souls that peace which passeth all

understanding; in a word, that we have found in her a

home, such as we never found elsewhere, a counsellor, a

friend, a guide, a mother; and it is because we so value

these blessings, that we are loud and earnest in our

entreaties that you may be made a partaker in them.
“ Forbid us not,” says St. Augustine,* “ forbid us not to

seek thee
;
this prohibition is agreeable to that perverse-

ness whereby we were separated, not to that charity

wherein we are still brethren
;
we seek our brother and

make intercession to God for him, not saying, ‘ Master,

speak to my brother that he divide his inheritance with

me/ but ‘ speak to him that he may share mine/”

* In Ps. xvlii. Enarr. ii. 6. Tom. iv. p. 121. C.



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