THE CONTEST WITH KOME 
 
 A CHARGE TO THE CLERGY 
 OF THE ARCHDEACONRY OF LEWES, 
 
 DELIVERED AT THE ORDINARY VISITATION IN 1851 : 
 
 WITH NOTES, 
 
 ESPECIALLY IN ANSWER 
 
 TO DR NEWMAN'S RECENT LECTURES : 
 
 BY JULIUS CHARLES HARE, M.A. 
 
 LONDON: 
 JOHN W. PARKER AND SON, WEST STRAND 
 
 SOLD BY MACMILLAN, CAMBRIDGE. 
 1852.
 
 IT is not only the difficulty and labour which men take in 
 finding out of truth, nor again, that, when it is found, it imposeth 
 upon men's thoughts, that doth bring lies in favour, but a natural 
 though corrupt love of the lie itself. The same truth is a naked 
 and open daylight, that doth not shew the masks and mummeries 
 and triumphs of the world half so stately and daintily as 
 candlelights. BACON, Essay of Truth.
 
 TO THE CLERGY 
 OF THE ARCHDEACONRY OF LEWES. 
 
 MY DEAR BRETHREN, 
 
 WHILE I was preparing this Charge for publication, 
 in compliance with your wishes, I felt that, if it was 
 to be of real use in helping any one to see through the 
 delusions, by which so many persons of late years, and 
 not merely the weakminded, have been deceived and 
 fascinated, and seduced from our Church to that of Rome, 
 the various arguments contained in it ought to be workt 
 out more fully in their details. This has led me into a 
 somewhat elaborate examination of the pleas in behalf 
 of the Church of Rome, brought forward by her recent 
 apologists, on. which the greatest stress has been laid ; 
 and in carrying this out I have naturally taken Dr New- 
 man as her chief representative and champion, at least 
 in her relations to the present English mind. I have 
 not purpost to give anything like a general exposure 
 of the errours of Romanism. This has often been 
 done by English divines in former ages, by some of 
 them with consummate ability. My own aim has been 
 more directly practical, to tear off the last mask she 
 has put on, and to strip her of the newfangled gaudy 
 
 2066987
 
 iv DEDICATION. 
 
 drapery in which her diseased and deformed limbs have 
 been enrobed. 
 
 Polemical theology is now become a necessity. We 
 cannot defend our Church, without attacking our as- 
 sailants. We cannot uphold the truth, unless we ex- 
 pose the errours which mimic and would supplant it. 
 May God enable us to do so without violating the 
 Law of Love ! 
 
 Your affectionate Brother, 
 
 JULIUS CHARLES HARE. 
 
 HERSTMONCEUX, 
 June 2nd, 1852.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 CHARGE: THE CONTEST WITH ROME .. . 1 
 
 NOTE A : On Dr Newman's assertion that the Protestant view 
 
 of the Romish Church is founded on erroneous 
 
 traditions . . . .-...'.' " -.'.V* ' . 73 
 NOTE B : On Dr Newman's mode of dealing with History . 84 
 NOTES C, D: On the changes in Dr Newman's views of Romanism 96 
 NOTE Da : On the Protestant and Romish conception of Faith . 110 
 NOTE E : On the Authority of the Church, and the Rule of 
 
 Faith .;.;.:, 115 
 
 NOTE F : On the rightful influence of Authority in Religion . 135 
 NOTE G : On the twentieth Article, and the Rights of Private 
 
 Judgement .... ^. : . . . 151 
 NOTE H : On the twenty-first Article, and the Authority of 
 
 General Councils . '.-.... . i . .165 
 
 NOTE I : On the moral effects of the Romish conception of 
 
 Faith . . . . ...,- .> . . 168 
 
 NOTE J : On the pretended Scriptural grounds for the 
 
 Infallibility of the Pope . '.' < '.- . 185 
 NOTE K : On the Infallibility of General Councils, and the 
 
 views of our chief divines concerning it . . 190 
 
 NOTE L : On the recent origin of the Papal pretensions to 
 
 Infallibility 209 
 
 NOTE M : On De Maistre's arguments in behalf of the Infallibility 
 
 of the Pope 218 
 
 NOTE N : On the relation between Authority and Private 
 
 Judgement 223 
 
 NOTE O : On De Maistre's arguments to prove the necessity of 
 
 a single Head of the Church . . -, . 233
 
 VI 
 
 NOTE P : 
 NOTE Pa : 
 NOTE Pb : 
 
 NOTE Q : 
 NOTE R : 
 
 NOTE S. 
 
 NOTE Sa. 
 NOTE Sb : 
 
 NOTE T : 
 
 NoTEsU,V; 
 NOTE W : 
 NOTE X : 
 NOTE Y : 
 NOTES Z,\ 
 AA: ( 
 NOTE AB : 
 NOTE AC : 
 
 NOTE AD : 
 
 NOTE AE : 
 NOTE AF : 
 NOTE AG : 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 PACK 
 
 Effects of tlie Papacy as manifested in Italian 
 
 literature 245 
 
 Effects of the Papacy on the moral character of 
 
 nations 246 
 
 Quotation from Barrow on the selfish ends of the 
 
 Romish Corruption 251 
 
 On the demoralizing effects of compulsory celibacy . 254 
 Quotations from Jeremy Taylor on the effects of 
 
 compulsory Confession ..... 264 
 
 On Dr Newman's assertion that the spirit of Protes- 
 tantism is more intolerant than that of Rome . 265 
 On the Jesuit casuistry ...... 296 
 
 Quotation from Chillingworth on the Antiscriptural 
 
 tenets of Romanism 300 
 
 On the Judgement of the Court of Appeal in the Case 
 
 of Gorham v. the Bishop of Exeter . . .301 
 
 On the Constitution of the Court of Appeal . . 302 
 
 On the true idea of the Church .... 305 
 
 On the Supremacy of the Crown .... 307 
 
 On the need of a Synod 310 
 
 On the Exeter Diocesan Synod . . . .312 
 
 On the South Church Union . . . . .319 
 Addresses of the Archdeaconry on occasion of the 
 
 Papal Aggression ...... 321 
 
 On the Bill for legalizing the Marriage with a wife's 
 
 sister : reply to Mr Forster 326 
 
 On the demoralizing influence of the Papacy at Rome 337 
 
 On Coleridge's anticipation of the Papal Aggression 345 
 
 On the Schools for the Middle Classes . . . 346
 
 THE CONTEST WITH ROME: 
 
 A CHARGE TO THE CLERGY 
 
 OF THE ARCHDEACONRY OF LEWES, 
 
 DELIVERED AT THE ORDINARY VISITATION IN 1851.
 
 THE CONTEST WITH ROME. 
 
 MY REVEREND BRETHREN, 
 
 How shall I speak to you, what shall I say to you, 
 at tliis our Annual Meeting ? How shall I discharge 
 what on such occasions I have always deemed the duty 
 of my office, to call your attention to the principal 
 events whereby our Church has been affected, whether 
 beneficially or hurtfully, in the preceding year, and 
 to offer you such help as I can toward forming a calm 
 and right judgement upon them, and determining the 
 line of conduct which they seem especially to demand 
 from us. I have been compelled, as you are aware, by 
 illness, to defer this Visitation to a later season than 
 usual ; and I am afraid this may have been inconvenient 
 to some of you, and still more perhaps to some of the 
 Churchwardens, who are summoned along with you to 
 give account of the condition of their parishes. Should 
 this be so, I must beg those who feel this inconvenience, 
 to excuse a delay which has in no degree been caused 
 by my will. As soon as my health, under God's 
 blessing, was sufficiently restored for me to indulge 
 the hope of being able to meet you, my first act was 
 to fix on the earliest day for our Meeting. For I felt 
 that it was of more than ordinary importance this year, 
 that all who are entrusted with any office of exhortation 
 or teaching in our Church, should be diligent in saying
 
 2 THE CONTEST WITH ROME. 
 
 and doing whatever the Spirit of God may enable them 
 to say and do, in order to clear up and disperse 
 those dismal delusions, under the influence of which so 
 many members of our Church, nay, so many of her 
 ministers, have been forsaking her in the last eighteen 
 months, and have been throwing themselves into the 
 arms of Rome. As in a time of danger, when the enemy 
 is drawing near, every officer will long to be at his post, 
 and will be doubly distrest by any hindrance that keeps 
 him away from it, so must the officers of the Church 
 feel, when her enemies are assailing her. They must 
 long to employ their gifts, whatever they may be, in 
 defending her against her assailants. 
 
 These feelings were not indeed unmixt. There were 
 other causes, which made me shrink more than ever 
 before from the task this day imposes upon me. There 
 was the difficulty of the task itself, the need of wisdom 
 and sound judgement and learning and practical know- 
 ledge to discharge it worthily and usefully. There was 
 the consciousness of grievous deficiencies in all these 
 essential requisites. There was the exceeding delicacy 
 of the task, from the feverish state of men's minds, the 
 fear lest one might do harm instead of good, lest one 
 might offend and irritate where one meant to soothe 
 and heal, lest one might weaken our sacred cause by 
 the feebleness of one's arguments in support of it. 
 Moreover there are personal circumstances which render 
 my position peculiarly painful. For we in this Diocese, 
 when we are speaking this year of those who have aban- 
 doned their spiritual mother, to give themselves up to 
 the Romish Schism, are not speaking of strangers, are 
 not speaking of those who are personally indifferent to
 
 THE CONTEST WITH ROME. 3 
 
 us. Alas ! by a mysterious dispensation, through the 
 dark gloom of which my eyes have vainly striven to 
 pierce, we have to mourn over the loss, we have to 
 mourn over the defection and desertion, of one whom 
 we have long been accustomed to honour, to reverence, 
 to love, of one who for the last ten years has taken 
 a leading part in every measure adopted for the good 
 of the Diocese, of one to whose eloquence we have 
 so often listened with delight, sanctified by the holy 
 purposes that eloquence was ever used to promote, 
 of one, the clearness of whose spiritual vision it seemed 
 like presumption to distrust, and the purity of whose 
 heart, the sanctity of whose motives, no one knowing 
 him can question. For myself, associated as I have been 
 with him officially, and having found one of the chief 
 blessings of my office in that association, accustomed to 
 work along with him in so many undertakings, to receive 
 encouragement and help from his godly wisdom, and, not- 
 withstanding many strong differences and almost opposi- 
 tions of opinion, to take sweet counsel together, and walk 
 in the house of God as brothers, I can only wonder at 
 the inscrutable dispensation by which such a man has 
 been allowed to fall under so withering, soul-deadening 
 a spell, and repeat with awe to myself, and to my friends, 
 Let him who thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall. 
 
 I have allowed myself to say thus much on a matter, 
 which some may think of too personal a character for 
 this public occasion. But it is not so. The tie which 
 bound me to my late brother Archdeacon, was connected 
 with all the duties of my office. It was especially con- 
 nected with the duties of our Annual Visitation. You 
 too, my Brethren, must feel that the loss is not merely that 
 
 B 2
 
 4 THE CONTEST WITH ROME. 
 
 of a personal friend ; though there are not a few amongst 
 you who feel that also, in a greater or less degree : for 
 our lost brother is a man whom it is scarcely possible 
 to know without loving him. But you will also feel 
 that the loss is one which the whole Diocese must needs 
 deplore. It is the loss of one who has been among the 
 principal authors of divers good works amongst us, as 
 he has been the fosterer of every good work : and 
 the approaching anniversary of our Diocesan Association 
 recalls to our minds that he was one of the most active 
 assistants of our revered Bishop Otter in founding it, 
 as he has ever since been one of its most energetic sup- 
 porters, and the encourager and promoter of all the 
 good it has been allowed to effect. Nay, our whole 
 Church cannot but mourn over the loss of one of the 
 holiest of her sons, over one who seemed to have a 
 special gift for winning hearts to God. The thought 
 that such a man, of whom it might have been expected 
 that he would be specially secured by the gifts both 
 of nature and of grace from the blindness which surren- 
 ders the reason and conscience to the corruptions and 
 tyranny of Rome, has yet become a victim to the pestilence 
 which has been stalking through our Church, while 
 it convinces us how terrible the power of that pestilence 
 must needs be, should at the same time withhold us from 
 judging too severely of those who have deserted us along 
 with him. It may increase our horrour of the pestilence 
 itself: it may strengthen our conviction of the necessity 
 of guarding against its deadly fury: but it should at 
 all events teach us that we ought not to impute evil 
 motives or absolute silliness to those who have fallen 
 into the selfsame errour with Henry Manning.
 
 THE CONTEST WITH ROME. 5 
 
 From what I have said already, you will perceive 
 that the main point to which I purpose to call your 
 attention today, is the increase of the Romish Schism 
 in our land. This, it seems to me, is the most momentous, 
 as well as the most disastrous, among the events of the 
 last two years. Indeed, were it not for this, our other 
 evils might be borne more easily ; nay, we might hope 
 and feel assured that, through God's help, we should 
 overcome them. I do not mean to deny that there are 
 many other evils, great evils, and formidable, and per- 
 nicious, in the social condition of England at this day, 
 evils which it requires all the might of Faith and of 
 Hope and of Love to contend against, and against which 
 even these heavenly powers will be almost powerless, 
 unless the Spirit of God animate them continually. This 
 however is only the great and arduous struggle in which 
 the Church is always engaged, in which it has fought 
 against the world from the beginning, and will have 
 to fight against the world until the end. But that 
 which in all ages has rendered us so weak and inefficient 
 in this warfare, has been our divisions, that we have 
 had evermore to fight, not only against our avowed 
 enemies, but against our brethren, not only against 
 the barefaced servants of sin, but against many who 
 profess to be the servants of Christ. Or at all events, 
 if we have not to fight openly against them, we have 
 to keep watch continually, lest they smite us privily in 
 the side : we cannot trust in them ; we cannot reckon 
 confidently on their aid in our contests against God's 
 enemies. Moreover, though among the occurrences of 
 the last two years there have been several which, from 
 one cause or other, have troubled and distrest our
 
 6 THE CONTEST WITH ROME. 
 
 Church, still, from whatever side these may have pro- 
 ceeded, the reason which has rendered them so troublesome 
 and distressing, has been this our want of union, this 
 our mutual distrust, this waste of our strength in internal 
 dissensions and quarrels. Yet the history of our land, 
 like all history, is full of warnings against the evils of 
 such divisions. Twice has England fallen under the 
 yoke of the foreiner by reason of them. It was by 
 reason of our internal dissensions and divisions that the 
 Saxon made himself master of Britain. It was the same 
 wretched source of weakness, that rendered the Saxon 
 powerless against the Norman. Nor is our early history 
 devoid of admonitions that union supplies the strength, 
 which disunion destroys. For it was hence that Alfred 
 and Athelstan drew the power, which enabled them 
 to repell the Dane. May God avert the omen ! May 
 He preserve us from falling, as our fathers of old fell, 
 by reason of our divisions, under the crushing tyranny 
 of the stranger ! To that end may He unite the English 
 Church, heart and soul and mind and strength, to resist 
 and repell the emissaries of that tyranny ! 
 
 But why are we to resist and repell them ? why are 
 we to hope and pray that God may enable us to resist 
 and repell them ? Why are we not to prostrate our- 
 selves before them, and to welcome them, as Augustin 
 was welcomed, and to implore them to take possession 
 of us ? Alas ! that there should be occasion at this day 
 to moot such a question in England ! yea, to moot it 
 in the bosom of the English Church ! yea, to moot it 
 among the ministers of that Church ! We have seen 
 indeed, during the last winter, that the great body of 
 the English nation do not regard this as a questionable
 
 THE CONTEST WITH ROME. 7 
 
 matter, that their minds are made up on the point : 
 and for this we have good reason to give thanks. It 
 has been asserted, I am aware, by the ablest and bitterest 
 of those who have turned their former love for our 
 Church into hatred, that the hostility of the English 
 nation to Rome rests on vague, uncertain tradition, and 
 is founded upon fables (A). To understand this extra- 
 ordinary assertion, we must call to mind that this writer 
 has employed a large portion of his time and of his 
 ingenuity in the twofold process of transmuting fable 
 into history, and history into fable, until he seems to have 
 almost lost the perception that there is any real, abiding 
 distinction between them, and to fancy that they become 
 one or the other at the touch of a sophist's wand (B). Of 
 course it will be conceded to him that no national feeling, 
 which takes possession of a people, can be grounded on a 
 critical investigation by each individual concerning the 
 facts out of which it has sprung. Even when it is a con- 
 temporaneous feeling, it will not be so. Even then there 
 will ever be much of exaggeration, much of errour, mixt 
 up with it. A nation has not the means of examining 
 into the details of facts : and when a feeling is strong 
 enough to take possession of it, that feeling will be 
 inconsistent with the calmness and impartiality requisite 
 for critical and judicial enquiries. Yet the feeling may 
 on the whole be righteous, may have adequate causes, 
 may bear witness that vox populi is not seldom an 
 expression, though a rude and boisterous one, for vox 
 Dei. In the present instance there unquestionably are 
 certain huge facts, staring out from the surface of 
 history, which the English mind, according to the mea- 
 sure of its cultivation, would point to in warrant of its
 
 8 THE CONTEST WITH ROME. 
 
 prejudice. It would point to the Marian persecutions, to 
 the fires in Smithfield, to the attacks on the English 
 Crown and State by the Spanish Armada and the Gun- 
 powder Plot, to the ignominious reign of King John, 
 to the monstrous claim of a right to depose sovereins 
 and to absolve subjects from their allegiance. These 
 and other like recollections have become mixt up with 
 the historical traditions, with the ancestral faith of 
 the English people : similar records from forein countries 
 have been combined with them, the persecutions of the 
 Waldenses, 
 
 " the slaughtered saints, whose bones 
 Lie scattered on the Alpine mountains cold, 
 Even they who kept God's truth so pure of old," 
 
 the massacre of St Bartholomew, the murder of Henry 
 the Third and Henry the Fourth, the crimes of the 
 Inquisition : and we have not yet allowed the sophist's 
 wand to transmute all these evils and crimes before 
 our eyes into blessings and acts of virtue. The con- 
 ceptions of these facts will doubtless be incorrect in 
 divers particulars ; and yet they will be substantially 
 true. Herein they differ essentially and altogether from 
 the notions entertained concerning Protestantism and 
 Protestants in Romish countries ; where, were it not 
 for the contradictions presented by our travelers, we 
 should be lookt upon as little better than ogres and 
 cannibals, and, even as it is, are generally supposed to 
 be sheer atheists. Hence it would be singular that our 
 adversary should bring forward such an accusation against 
 us, were it not well known that sophists, as is seen in 
 every other page of the Platonic dialogues, have a 
 happy trick of cutting their own fingers. For, if his
 
 THE CONTEST WITH ROME. 9 
 
 accusation is to have any force, it should imply that 
 Romish countries are advantageously and honorably 
 distinguisht from Protestant ones by the fidelity of 
 their conceptions concerning Protestants. Yet ours, 
 when divested of their distortions and exaggerations, 
 have a solid basis of historical truth, which we have 
 received from the traditions of our fathers : theirs, on 
 the other hand, are mere fictions, derived from wilful, 
 conscious, flagrant falsehoods. 
 
 I exprest my regret just now, that there could be 
 any occasion for asking in an assembly of English clergy, 
 why we are to reject and repell the emissaries of the 
 Church of Rome. It may be replied that the clergy, 
 above other men, should be ready at all times to give 
 a reason for every particular of their faith concerning 
 Christ and His Church, that they, of all men, should 
 not allow themselves to be carried away by blind, un- 
 reasoning prejudices. Most true : it is our special obliga- 
 tion and privilege to give a reason for our faith. Others 
 may rest mainly, the bulk of mankind needs must do 
 so, on tradition and the authority of others, even in mat- 
 ters of the deepest concernment. But we are especially 
 bound to give clear, full, explicit, satisfactory reasons 
 for that which in the first instance we too must have 
 received from tradition and authority. Still, while it 
 behoves us to give reasons for our faith, it is of far 
 greater moment that we should hold that faith clearly, 
 decidedly, unhesitatingly. It is a sad time, a most sad 
 time, for a Church, when any of her ministers can feel 
 it a questionable matter whether they shall abide with 
 her, or forsake her, and join her enemy, when they 
 can dare to contemplate the remotest possibility of being
 
 10 THE CONTEST WITH ROME. 
 
 led to forsake her, when they do not feel an inmost 
 conviction that they are united to her for better, for 
 worse, and that nothing but death shall part them. 
 True, there have been, and may again be, critical epochs, 
 revolutionary epochs, in the history of the Church, 
 as there have been such in the political history of nations, 
 when the strongest, most sacred ties burst and are 
 dissolved ; even as the marriage tie is burst and dis- 
 solved by adultery. But nothing less than such a total 
 corruption of the moral life, such a violation of the 
 primary principle of the union, which binds men, whether 
 to the government of their State, or to their Church, 
 nothing less than a political or ecclesiastical adultery, 
 can furnish a warrant for such a disruption : and the 
 very possibility of such a thing no righthearted man 
 will dare to contemplate, any more than he would dare 
 to contemplate the possibility of his wife's committing 
 adultery. When the shock of the earthquake comes, it 
 may rend the house or the temple in twain. But we must 
 not anticipate such a crash. To live in constant fear of 
 it, listening for its approach, looking out for it, trying 
 to sent it, cannot but mar all moral energy, as well 
 as all peace and happiness. By a merciful dispensation 
 we cannot do otherwise than rely stedfastly and un- 
 doubtingly on the permanence of the laws of nature : 
 and it is a disastrous condition of society, when people 
 have not a like stedfast, undoubting reliance on the 
 permanence of the moral laws which regulate the con- 
 stitution of their State and Church. 
 
 This seems to me one of the most deplorable symptoms 
 in the present aspect of our Church, that there should 
 have been persons amongst us, who could dare to speak
 
 THE CONTEST WITH ROME. 11 
 
 of it, or even to think of it, as a thing possible, that 
 they might be induced to leave her, to desert her, and 
 to fly from her to Rome. More safely may a man 
 brood over the thought of committing suicide : some 
 outward shock may startle him out of this morbid 
 delusion. But he who ogles and flirts with another 
 Church, he who looks at her to lust after her, has 
 already committed adultery with her in his heart. He 
 has broken his faith with his own Church : he is stand- 
 ing on the verge of spiritual suicide. Yet we know 
 that there have been many instances of such double- 
 minded and doublehearted men amongst us of late 
 years. God grant that there may be none such any 
 longer ! If there are, may they seek to become single- 
 minded and singlehearted, to regain their first love, 
 and to be purged from the vagrant affections which 
 have led them astray ! 
 
 To those who remember the feelings and thoughts 
 with which the Romish Church was regarded by the 
 whole body of our own Church during the first quarter 
 of the present century, it must needs seem one of the 
 most extraordinary, among the many extraordinary 
 instances of the mutability of human opinion, that the 
 last five years in its second quarter should be markt 
 by the desertion of near a hundred of her ministers, 
 one or two of them among her brightest ornaments, 
 to join what was then deemed an effete, decrepit, worn- 
 out, exploded, crumbling superstition, which no man 
 could embrace without forfeiting his claim to be ac- 
 counted a reasonable being. If any prophet thirty 
 years ago had ventured to prognosticate such an event, 
 he would have had to encounter the fate of Cassandra.
 
 12 THE CONTEST WITH ROME. 
 
 Even if he had told of the wonders which have been 
 wrought since then by the help of steam and of elec- 
 tricity, he would not have found a more incredulous 
 audience. That these deserters from our Church have 
 proceeded in the main out of that school of theology, 
 which, for the sake of brevity, though averse to every- 
 thing like a nickname, I will designate by its common 
 appellation of Tractarian, is a fact which no one can 
 deny. Indeed, though several of them have come pri- 
 marily out of the opposite school, their course has lain 
 mostly through Tractarianism, which has helpt them 
 forward on their way. Nor will any reasonable man 
 now dispute that the tendency of the doctrines, on 
 which the Tractarian School laid the chief stress, is 
 toward Rome, at all events, when they are brought 
 forward prominently and exclusively. In fact, the 
 leader of that school, after maintaining for years that 
 he was occupying the true ground, and the only tenable 
 ground, of the Church of England, the only ground 
 from which it was possible for her to repell the attacks 
 of Rome, having himself followed out his own 
 principles step by step, till he found himself almost 
 unconsciously in the middle of the Roman camp, fighting 
 for Rome against his late associates, has asserted and 
 urged, with his own wonderful subtilty, and with that 
 logical power by which he himself has so often been 
 led captive, that the only consistent issue of Trac- 
 tarianism is Romanism (c). The contest against him 
 on this score is not one I feel any call to engage 
 in. Assuredly so it is. The principles which the 
 Tractarian School made it their chief business to 
 enforce, if workt up into a system, and carried out
 
 THE CONTEST WITH ROME. 13 
 
 exclusively to their utmost consequences, do lead and 
 must lead their champions, or rather their blind victims, 
 to Rome. 
 
 This however is the very errour by which men have 
 perpetually been led astray, in speculation times with- 
 out number, and very often in practical life, the deter- 
 mination to follow out a single principle, or a one-sided 
 set of principles, to their ultimate issue. What ! are 
 we not to follow out our principles to their ultimate 
 issues, no matter what their consequences may be ? 
 There is a delusion here lurking under the equivocal 
 word principle, which has a wide range, and many 
 shades of meaning. The consideration of personal con- 
 sequences to ourselves ought not to withhold us from 
 carrying out our principles honestly and consistently 
 and boldly, whenever Wisdom bids us do so. But the 
 due consideration of our own weakness, of the narrow- 
 ness of our minds, will ever check our confidence in 
 the absolute correctness of those principles, or at least 
 in their universal applicability under every variety of 
 circumstances; and so will a due consideration of the 
 order of the world. For that order is not simple, but 
 complex. It does not result from the uncontrolled 
 action of a single force, but from the harmonious co- 
 operation of several forces, which check each other's 
 excesses. Where would the order of the universe have 
 been, if each particle of matter had surrendered itself 
 to the absolute impulse of the centrifugal force ? or 
 to that of the centripetal ? It is by the concordant 
 operation of the two, under a number of modifications, 
 that this order is generated. So too, in the political 
 and moral world, it is not by the absolute, uncheckt
 
 14 THE CONTEST WITH ROME. 
 
 expansion of any one single principle that a right, 
 harmonious order is produced. Man, in the narrow- 
 ness of his selfwill, is ever desirous of converting the 
 temporary rule of his own mind into the law of the 
 social system to which he belongs. He refuses to recog- 
 nise and appreciate the coordinate rules and principles, 
 by which other minds are regulated, and which it is 
 their special task to enforce. If it be in the political 
 frame of society, he would have an absolute monarchy, 
 or an absolute aristocracy, or an absolute democracy ; 
 and it is only through the teaching of a higher Wisdom 
 than his own, guiding him through a series of gene- 
 rations, that he discovers how a combination of these 
 three principles may be wrought out into a constitution 
 incomparably better than any single one of them could 
 give birth to. So too in the Church we find the 
 champions of the absolute Papacy, and of an absolute 
 Episcopacy, and of an absolute Presbytery, and those 
 who would merge every other power in the absolute 
 supremacy of the Congregation. Whereas very few 
 recognise how, according to the true idea of a Church, 
 the Congregation, as well as the Presbyterate and 
 Episcopate, ought all to have their proper expression 
 and development. The same remark applies to the 
 other principal controversies in the Church. The self- 
 willed enforcement of a single, insulated truth, of a 
 peculiar, partial view, to the disparagement of different 
 and opposite truths, has ever been the character and 
 the cause of heresy, as the very name implies : and on 
 the other hand the Church, who by her assumption 
 of the name Catholic has declared herself to be above 
 these singularities, and free from these partialities, has
 
 THE CONTEST WITH ROME. 15 
 
 often, in her hostility to peculiar, dominant forms of 
 heresy, recoiled into the opposite, attempting to bottle 
 up the free, living, ever-flowing atmosphere of spiritual 
 truth into a set of positive, exclusive dogmas. 
 
 Now they who can carry their minds back to the 
 first origin of that which was subsequently called Tracta- 
 rianism, will remember that the founders of that School 
 came forward, not as teachers of the great body of 
 Christian truth, but as the asserters of a certain num- 
 ber of specific propositions, which they held to have 
 fallen into undue neglect, and as the impugners of that 
 system of Christian doctrines and practices, which they 
 deemed unduly predominant. From the first they had 
 a twofold purpose, both a positive and a negative one. 
 Hence, as through our narrowmindedness ever happens 
 to persons who come forward with such purposes, they 
 at once forgot the true limits of their own particular 
 truths, and the degree of truth which lay in the views 
 they were impugning. Their whole course is full of 
 exemplifications how " Vaulting Ambition doth o'erleap 
 itself, And falls on the other side." For instance, in 
 contending against certain Antinomian perversions of the 
 doctrine of Justification by Faith, they did not take 
 up their stand in the true, Scriptural, central position, 
 where both Justification by faith and Justification by 
 works are seen in their mutual bearings and coordina- 
 tion, but rusht over to the assertion of Justification by 
 works, and the denial of Justification by faith. Again, 
 in vindicating the power of the sacraments to confer 
 grace, they lapst into the denial of all spiritual influences, 
 except as conferred by a sacramental ordinance. 
 Again, in urging the importance of tradition, under its
 
 16 THE CONTEST WITH ROME. 
 
 various forms, as a help and guide to a right inter- 
 pretation of the Scriptures, they grew to rail against 
 private judgement, identifying its exercise with its worst 
 abuses, and seemed at last almost to speak as if the cor- 
 ruption of man's nature lay in his having the gift of 
 reason and a conscience (D). In all these assertions, it 
 will be seen, they started with having an important and 
 neglected truth to uphold: but by exaggerating its 
 importance, and denying the opposite, coordinate truth, 
 they fell into the system of Rome ; the Romish Church 
 having through a series of centuries been guilty of the 
 same exaggerations, and the same denials. For as the 
 spirit of ancient Rome was never speculative, but solely 
 practical, that of modern Rome has been no less so, 
 and practical under the narrowest forms, imperial and 
 imperious, not winning men's minds by the power of 
 reason and love, but issuing its commands and decrees, 
 and enforcing submission to them by all the artifices 
 of diplomacy, and all the terrours of excommunication* 
 embodied finally in its two great weapons, Jesuitism 
 and the Inquisition. 
 
 Tractarianism, I have been saying, from the first, 
 had a strong tendency, a strong bias toward Rome. 
 It set itself to assert those portions of Christian truth, 
 which the Church of Rome especially asserted and 
 upheld : and as the Church of Rome had asserted these 
 truths for centuries, in their exclusiveness, to the dis- 
 paragement of the opposite half of Christian truth, 
 thereby exaggerating them into falsehoods, so Tracta- 
 rianism undertook to vindicate the same truths from 
 neglect, to assert them in contradistinction and opposition 
 to the complemental body of Christian doctrine, and
 
 THE CONTEST WITH ROME. 17 
 
 thus, from its very position and circumstances, became 
 prone to fall into the same exaggerations. Of course 
 it was not allowed to carry on its work without notice. 
 It came forward controversially: it was actively, rest- 
 lessly, provokingly polemical. But the opposite truths 
 were not left without their champions ; and thus a 
 controversy, a warfare sprang up, by which our Church 
 has been grievously distracted during the last eighteen 
 years. 
 
 For myself, as some of you may perhaps remember, 
 ever since I first had to appear publicly amongst you, 
 and during the whole of my official connexion with you, 
 while I have endeavoured on the one hand to assert 
 and uphold those portions of Christian truth, which 
 Tractarianism, as it seemed to me, unduly disparaged, 
 and while I contended against what I deemed the ex- 
 aggerations and corruptions in its views, I have also 
 earnestly desired to recognise those portions of truth 
 which it had rescued from neglect. For it has ever 
 appeared to me to be the special duty of those who are 
 entrusted with any office of authority in the Church, 
 to do what in them lies for the preservation of her peace 
 and unity, not to espouse any party, but to contend 
 against the spirit of party, against exaggeration, from 
 whatsoever side, against every form of exclusiveness. 
 Authority should ever be candid and catholic. Thus 
 alone will it be just, with a higher justice than the strict 
 and literal. Even as the Creative Power manifested 
 itself by reducing the discordant, contentious, pugnacious 
 elements into order and harmony and concord, such 
 should be the aim of all to whom is committed the 
 slightest effluence from that power, of the Father in
 
 18 THE CONTEST WITH ROME. 
 
 his family, of the Magistrate in his district, of the 
 Soverein in his kingdom, of the Bishop in the Church. 
 1 have desired, you will remember, to defend our 
 brethren from the charge of Romanism ; but I have 
 also desired still more strongly to arrest them in their 
 progress toward Romanism. I have desired to shew 
 that the truths which they hold, so far as they are 
 true, may be held in due coordination with the opposite 
 truths, and in subordination to the one great body of 
 the faith, within our Apostolical Church. 
 
 Alas! the course of events has not corresponded to 
 my wishes. In the seventeeth century similar opinions 
 had been held by a number of our chief divines, men 
 of great learning, of great piety, distinguisht by divers 
 eminent intellectual gifts. But the memory of the 
 crimes of the Church of Rome, of her tyranny, her 
 corruptions, was then too fresh and vivid, for the mem- 
 bers of our Church to dream that they could find rest 
 or truth in her arms. Besides the fashion of men's 
 minds has changed since those days. They have become 
 more critical, more sceptical, more uncontrollable, more 
 self-confident and self-willed, more revolutionary. Their 
 movements are rapider : they are readier to distrust and 
 reject all establisht notions, every kind of authority. 
 Even those who came forward with the profest purpose 
 of contending against the critical, sceptical spirit of the 
 age, were themselves infected with it, and borne along 
 by it. In their very attempts to restore the reverence 
 for authority, they were combating against the recog- 
 nised authorities of their own time : and this it was 
 that gave such a zest to their enterprise, and made them 
 engage in it so busily and zealously. In attacking the
 
 THE CONTEST WITH ROME. 19 
 
 exercise of private judgement, they were merely ex- 
 ercising their own private judgement; with this dif- 
 ference however, that, while the use of private judgement 
 which they condemned was that under the controll of 
 reason and laborious reflexion, their private judgement 
 acknowledged no guide except their own casual impulses 
 and caprices. Thus, as their reading expanded, they 
 shifted their ground, first from the so-called Anglo- 
 catholic divines to the early Fathers, then to the Fathers 
 of the fourth and fifth centuries ; then, as they could 
 find no restingplace suited to their likings here, they 
 came down to the Schoolmen : and at length, when this 
 ground also gave way under their feet, when they had 
 sent out their spirit to roam over the earth, and it 
 came back to them with no olive-leaf in its mouth, 
 in a fit of despair they threw out an anchor, and tried 
 to fasten themselves on the infallibility of the Pope. 
 Yet in so doing they merely verified the Eastern tale, 
 where the storm-tost mariners think they have reacht 
 a place of safety, and landed on a rock, but find anon 
 that they are standing on the back of a huge sea- 
 monster, whose heavings and tossings and plungings 
 ere long threaten them with destruction. 
 
 This, I think, my Reverend Brethren, many of you 
 will agree with me, has been the course by which not 
 a few of the deserters from our Church have gradually 
 been drawn away from her, at first unconsciously and 
 involuntarily, till they found themselves on a sudden 
 at the very gates of Rome, her captives in heart and 
 mind. They had no such intention at starting. There 
 is no ground for doubting that they were thoroughly 
 sincere in the love which they then profest for the 
 
 o 2
 
 20 THE CONTEST WITH ROME. 
 
 Church of England, that their main desire and aim 
 was to uphold her, and to set her claims on what they 
 deemed an impregnable foundation. They wisht to 
 defend her, at once against Rome, and against the 
 Protestant Dissenters, but chiefly against the latter, 
 whom they regarded as at the moment her more for- 
 midable enemies. In contending against these, they 
 naturally laid great stress on the advantages which she 
 derives from her reverence for ancient tradition. The 
 temperate wisdom, which characterized our Reformers, 
 manifested itself in this respect, as in others, by trying 
 to combine the two truths, the excesses of each of 
 which could only be moderated beneficially by the 
 action of the other. While they asserted the rights 
 of Reason and of the Conscience, without the recognition 
 of which the Reformation would have been untenable ; 
 at the same time they acknowledged the value of tra- 
 dition, as a chart to guide the vessel of the Church, 
 when voyaging through unknown waters (E). 
 
 But it is ever perilous to engage in asserting a truth 
 with a polemical purpose, or in any other spirit than 
 the pure love of truth. The truth will soon be twisted 
 about and distorted, to suit that purpose. We connect 
 our own reputation with it. Our passions cling to it. 
 It swells out to a huge bulk, and absorbs all other 
 truths, or hides them from our view. Thus the partisan 
 is deluded in course of time by his own exaggerations, 
 and grows to believe his own lies. From contending 
 against the extravagances of private judgement, our 
 brethren got to fancy that the only effect of man's 
 intellectual gifts is to lead him into errour. From 
 insisting continually upon the value of authority, they
 
 THE CONTEST WITH ROME. 21 
 
 got to pine after some absolute authority, which might 
 preserve them from the bufferings of their own loose, 
 vagrant thoughts. They began to long for an infallible 
 Church. Hereupon, as so often happens, the wish was 
 father to the thought, that such a Church must needs 
 exist. Then a step further, and he who had thus 
 blinded his intellectual eyes, tumbled down the precipice, 
 and fell into the jaws of the dragon at the foot of it. 
 Thus we have heard it argued, that, as the Church 
 must needs be infallible, and as the Romish is the only 
 Church which lays claim to infallibility, the Church 
 of Rome must be the true one. 
 
 This argument, or rather this bewildering defiance 
 of everything like reason arid common sense, has been 
 one of the chief means whereby the deserters from our 
 Church have been seduced into surrendering themselves 
 to the Romish usurpation : and if, as is too probable, 
 there are still any persons in our Church wavering 
 whether they shall not take the same course, some form 
 of this flimsy fallacy will doubtless be buzzing about in 
 their restless, incoherent minds. For while the dread of 
 evil, in its twofold form of sin and errour, is the fear 
 which swallows up every other fear in the healthy, 
 soundminded Christian, this fear in the weak and morbid 
 and timid assumes the form of a dread of personal 
 responsibility, both moral and intellectual. Their 
 desire is not to be freed from sin, but from being 
 called to account for their sins, not to be delivered 
 from errour by knowing the truth, but to be saved 
 from having to answer for their errours, and from 
 the labours and uncertainties involved in the search 
 after truth. Give them falsehood, telling them that it
 
 22 THE CONTEST WITH ROME. 
 
 is truth ; and they will be ready to accept it as such. 
 They want to make over their conscience and their 
 reason to some one who will take care of these trou- 
 blesome, brittle pieces of furniture for them. As these 
 weak longings have ever been the support and the 
 fuel of the most abject superstitions, the Church of 
 Rome has craftily come forward with a promise to 
 relieve both these wants, not by the purification of 
 the reason and the conscience, as Christ through His 
 Spirit relieves them, but by a twofold imposture, 
 holding out her absolution as a nostrum for the one 
 want, and her infallibility as an opiate for the other. 
 By these two baits she lures the silly sheep into her 
 fold, and beguiles them into fancying that they shall 
 find rest and peace there. 
 
 The Church of Rome, it is argued, is the only Church 
 that lays claim to infallibility; and therefore it must 
 be the true one. A sounder logic would infer, that, 
 because the Church of Rome lays claim to infallibility, 
 therefore it cannot be the true Church, seeing that it 
 lays claim to what nothing human has, or can have. 
 Vaunting, highflown, tumid pretensions, whether in the 
 mouth of the Mahometan or the Mormonite impostor, 
 to take the first names that come across my mind, 
 or whether in Ancient Pistol, have never been deemed 
 sufficient to establish their own validity. Divers pre- 
 vious questions need to be askt. Have we reason to 
 expect that any Church will be endowed with the 
 gift of absolute infallibility ? At all events the whole 
 analogy of Nature, the whole order of the universe, 
 is against such a presumption. It is not enough to 
 say, that, because we are very fallible, very apt to err
 
 THE CONTEST WITH ROME. 23 
 
 and go astray, and therefore want an infallible guide, 
 the existence of this want assures us that it will be 
 appeased. There are indeed certain innate wants, which 
 form the grounds of a presumption that, in the Pro- 
 vidential order of Nature, some means will be found 
 for supplying them. But until we know the man- 
 ner in which, according to that Providential order, 
 they are to be supplied and satisfied, we should 
 scarcely divine it by any guesses of our own, at all 
 events unless we had the guidance of an extensive 
 analogy. Nay, without some such aid, we shall very 
 imperfectly understand the nature and purpose of the 
 wants themselves. It requires training and discipline 
 to understand the purpose and objects even of our 
 physical appetites, much more of our social and moral 
 appetites. How long, how many thousand years, would 
 man, without a higher teaching, have been in making 
 out the object and purpose of those appetites, which 
 find their end and satisfaction in the divine ordinance 
 of marriage? Would he ever have discovered this? 
 Millennium after millennium has rolled over the heads 
 of the Asiatic nations ; and they have not discovered 
 it down to this day. Greece, with all her philosophy, 
 with all her poetry, with all her wonderful instinct for 
 beauty and for speculative truth, never discovered it. 
 Even after the original revelation had been renewed 
 by the Son of God, the Gnostics rejected that revelation; 
 Mahomet rejected it ; the largest portion of the Church 
 for a thousand years has refused duly to recognise it. 
 The same dimness of vision is peculiarly conspicuous 
 in all our notions concerning the remedies required by 
 the various infirmities of our nature. We are ready
 
 24 THE CONTEST WITH ROME. 
 
 to assume that the blood of bulls and of goats will 
 take away sin. We cannot conceive how the blood 
 of Christ can take it away. We jump at the thought 
 that we can take it away by our own good works, by 
 self-imposed penances, by pilgrimages, by telling rosaries, 
 and mumbling ave-maries. We are reluctant to believe 
 that a living faith will take it away. Nor is it otherwise 
 with regard to our ignorance. We shrink from the 
 narrow, laborious path by which God has appointed 
 that it shall be remedied. We exult at the prospect 
 that it can be remedied, without any exertion on our 
 part, without any energy, moral or intellectual, by 
 placing our understandings, like a pail, for an infallible 
 teacher to pour his dogmas into them ; although uniform 
 experience shews that such understandings are like the 
 vessels of the Danaids, and that no living truth can 
 abide in them. 
 
 A number of pretended analogies are indeed brought 
 forward by Romish Apologists, with the intent of shew- 
 ing that, according to the Providential order of the 
 universe, we may reasonably expect the guidance of 
 an infallible Church. In every stage of human society, 
 it is contended, we are not left to ourselves to find 
 out our duties, but are placed under authority, children 
 under their parents, pupils under their teachers, ser- 
 vants under their masters, a whole people under its rulers. 
 Nor are we allowed to question the authority under 
 which we are placed, but are bound to submit to its de- 
 crees. Thus, it is urged, we are also bound to submit 
 to the decrees of the rulers of the Church ; who there- 
 fore, by a sophistical sleight of mind it is argued, must 
 be infallible. Surely it is marvellous that any one
 
 THE CONTEST WITH ROME. 25 
 
 should be imposed upon by such a bare trick ; and 
 yet numbers are so. The whole force of the analogy 
 in fact bears entirely the other way. Children are to 
 believe and to obey their parents ; and yet the parents 
 are not infallible ; though a humble child will for a 
 time almost suppose that they are so. In like manner a 
 humble pupil will for a while have a sort of belief in 
 the infallibility of his teacher ; and it is often a shock 
 of pain, when we are constrained to recognise that he 
 is fallible : yet so he is. So too are masters. So too, 
 as all history shews, are rulers and governors of nations, 
 although they are the ordinance of God, and although 
 their subjects are bound to honour and obey them. 
 By leaning on these supports we are to be trained 
 gradually for walking without them. The outward 
 law fades away before its manifestation as the law written 
 on the heart. The scaffolding of ordinances is removed, 
 in proportion as the soul is built up of living principles, 
 and able to stand without it. This truth, which our 
 Lord declares in his discourse with the woman of Sa- 
 maria, the Church of Rome has never been able to 
 understand (F). 
 
 In brief, the argument from analogy stands thus. 
 Children need guides, and have fallible ones. Pupils 
 need guides, and have fallible ones. Servants need 
 guides, and have fallible ones. Nations need guides, 
 and have fallible ones. In like manner the members 
 of Christ's Church need guides ; and therefore, ac- 
 cording to this analogy, their guides will be fallible 
 ones. Stop, says the sophist : when you get into this 
 region, things veer round. Topsyturvy is the order of 
 the day. Yes becomes No, and No becomes Yes. The
 
 /JO THE CONTEST WITH ROME. 
 
 way in which we follow analogy, is by running against 
 it. All other guides are fallible; therefore the guide 
 of the Church is infallible. 
 
 The analogy of our moral nature leads to the same 
 conclusion. For, if we need truth, we have no less 
 need of purity and holiness : and as truth is granted 
 to us, so are purity and holiness, in an ever increasing 
 measure, to him who seeks them diligently. Yet im- 
 peccability is unattainable by man ; and so is infallibility. 
 In fact, whatever analogy we examine, whatever part 
 of the order of Nature we consult, it rejects the Papacy, 
 and all its fictions. If we are seeking for arguments 
 in favour of the Papacy, we must look for them beyond 
 the sphere of God's Providence. The order of Nature 
 rejects ,it, even as History does. Catholic as both 
 these are, they are no less decidedly, vociferously 
 Protestant. 
 
 How brightly does the meek and temperate wisdom 
 of our Reformers shine forth with regard to this 
 point, when contrasted with the audacious assumptions 
 of Rome ! The Church, they laid down in the 20th 
 Article, "hath authority in controversies of faith." 
 From these words some persons have attempted to 
 deduce that we also assert the infallibility of the 
 Church : else how can she rightfully have authority 
 in controversies of faith ? For her having authority 
 implies that her members are bound to abide by her 
 decisions (G). Even if there were no other decla- 
 rations militating against such a supposition, we might 
 legitimately argue that, as a father has authority to 
 decide disputes among his children, and they are 
 bound by his decision, yet Le is not infallible, and
 
 THE CONTEST WITH ROME. 27 
 
 as judges and legislators have authority in contro- 
 versies of law to decide cases and frame new enactments, 
 and the whole nation are bound by their decisions, 
 as long as they stand, while yet both the judges and 
 the legislature are notoriously and acknowledgedly fal- 
 lible, so in the Church likewise, it being requisite 
 for the sake of peace and order that means should be 
 provided for settling controversies on points of faith, 
 there is a moral necessity for entrusting that authority 
 to some supreme tribunal, whose decisions must be 
 binding on her members. Even if this declaration 
 stood alone then, we might reasonably hold that it 
 implies nothing essentially different from that judicial 
 and legislative authority, which inhere in all modes of 
 government, but against the abuses of which, from 
 the knowledge how frail and fallible man is, even in 
 his highest estate, political wisdom is ever devising checks 
 and preservatives. The same 20th Article however 
 goes on to declare how the Church is bound in the 
 exercise of this her authority ; and the language of 
 the declaration clearly implies that those who framed it 
 conceived she might err in that exercise. " And yet it 
 is not lawful for the Church to ordain anything that 
 is contrary to God's word written ; neither may it so 
 expound one place of Scripture, that it be repugnant 
 to another." These words shew that the Church was 
 not regarded as being preserved by any inherent in- 
 fallibility from ordaining anything contrary to God's 
 word, or from expounding Scripture contradictorily. 
 We do not waste words in declaring that a person 
 must not commit an offense, which he cannot commit. 
 Besides the 19th and 21st Articles are still more
 
 28 THE CONTEST WITH ROME. 
 
 explicit. In the former it is declared that, "as the 
 pi I Church/ of Jerusalem, Alexandria, and Antioch have 
 erred, so also the Church of Rome hath erred, not 
 only in their living and manner of ceremonies, but 
 also in matters of faith." In like manner the 21st Article 
 declares that General Councils, " forasmuch as they be 
 an assembly of men, whereof all be not governed with 
 the Spirit and word of God, may err, and sometimes 
 have erred, even in things pertaining to God." Attempts 
 have indeed been made, as you are aware, to evade 
 and distort these plain words ; for, when the sophist 
 has cast off his allegiance to reason and truth, there 
 are no forms of words by which you can bind him (H). 
 But I am not purposing to engage in a controversy 
 on this point. I merely cite these passages to shew 
 how strongly and plainly our Church in her Articles 
 disclaims and repudiates the notion of her being in- 
 fallible. She confesses herself fallible ; and therefore 
 she may be a true Church. The Church of Rome on 
 the contrary, by asserting that she is infallible, pro- 
 claims herself to be an impostor, to be assuming that 
 which God has not given to man. She does think it 
 robbery to be equal with God ; she thinks it a thing 
 to be coveted and snatcht at; and in the spirit of a 
 robber she assumes that equality. 
 
 The difference between the two Churches in this 
 point is connected with the difference between the views 
 they take of human nature. The Reformation regards 
 man as a reasonable being, who, having been called 
 to a participation in Christ's redemption, and grafted 
 into His Church, is to work out his own salvation with 
 the help of the Spirit of God. The Church of Rome,
 
 THE CONTEST WITH ROME. 29 
 
 on the other hand, would fain persuade men that she 
 alone can work out their salvation for them, and that, 
 if they will submit implicitly to her, and do just as 
 she bids them, she will land them safe in heaven (i). 
 No wonder that her conveyance picks up all manner 
 of wayfarers, who are glad to be carried in this way 
 to their journey's end. This however is not God's mode 
 of dealing with His human creatures. In the whole 
 scheme of our redemption, the help which is granted 
 to us, is to elicit a corresponding energy within us. 
 The eye drinks in the light, and puts forth its faculty 
 of seeing. So every truth communicated to the mind 
 is the awakener and stimulater of an intellectual energy. 
 Thus, and thus alone, truth becomes power. We are 
 not supplied with leading-strings to draw us blindfold 
 to the truth. But we have every help, each according 
 to his need ; and if we make a right use of what we 
 have, and seek for more, under the guidance of God's 
 Spirit, meekly, patiently, diligently, we shall assuredly 
 have more and more of the truth made manifest to 
 us. Let us trust in this Divine guidance, and seek for 
 it, without looking aside for a conjuror or sophist, for 
 an infallible Church, or an infallible Pope, to spare 
 us the trouble of the search. 
 
 I have said thus much on this point, because the 
 infallibility claimed by the Church of Rome, utterly 
 baseless as it is, and out of harmony with the whole 
 order of God's dispensations for the salvation of man- 
 kind, has exercised, and is daily exercising, a delusive 
 fascination on many of the weak, the fainthearted, the 
 cowardly, who desire, according to the usual character 
 of human wishes, to reach the end per saltum, without
 
 30 THE CONTEST WITH ROME. 
 
 passing through the means. The time will not allow 
 me to enter into any examination of the Scriptural 
 arguments by which the claim has been propt up. 
 Indeed there is no need of doing so. They are so futile, 
 so utterly irrelevant, they might as reasonably be brought 
 forward to demonstrate the law of gravitation, as the 
 infallibility of the Pope (j). The authority of a General 
 Council rests of course on very different grounds. Such 
 a Council, lawfully assembled and rightfully constituted, 
 we might trust, would be guided by the Spirit to the 
 truth, if it allowed itself to be so ; that is, if it sought 
 the truth with singleness of purpose, and sought the 
 help of the Spirit in that search, if its members did not 
 suffer themselves to be swayed by any personal or party 
 motives, by any prejudices, by any interests. But as 
 such a Council cannot well be brought together, as 
 the Councils which have been collected have mostly 
 had an abundant portion of human infirmities and frail- 
 ties, our Article most rightly pronounces that they are 
 not exempt from the possibility of errour (K) ; although 
 their authority is very different from that of the Bishop 
 of a single see, which at a critical time may have such 
 occupants as Leo the Tenth, and Julius the Second, and 
 Alexander the Sixth. 
 
 In fact the passages of Scripture which are brought 
 forward to bolster up this claim, have merely been pickt 
 out from the Sacred Volume to support a foregone 
 conclusion ; as is the case moreover with all the texts 
 cited in defense of the Papacy and its various cor- 
 ruptions. In no instance, I believe, has the proposition 
 to be establisht been derived even from a misunder- 
 standing of the Scriptural text, as a number of sectarian
 
 THE CONTEST WITH ROME. 31 
 
 errours have been. But, as the Tempter could quote 
 Scripture, so can the Papacy ; and with a like aim of 
 frustrating and defeating the purpose and end of 
 Scripture. This assumption of infallibility, which is of 
 comparatively modern origin, and which has been a 
 subject of much controversy even latterly among Romish 
 theologians (L), was a part of the Papal usurpation of the 
 rights and privileges of Councils, a usurpation analogous 
 to that by which the rights and privileges of the Aris- 
 tocracy, and of the Parliaments or National Assemblies, 
 were swallowed up by the absolute monarchies in so 
 many countries of Europe. By degrees too, that which 
 had been conceded symbolically to the supreme power, 
 in order to denote its absolute earthly supremacy, was 
 asserted to belong literally to the Papacy, in the fullest 
 sense of the term designating it. The most zealous 
 among the new champions of the Papacy, in his recent 
 apology for it, has introduced a pretended attack on 
 our political Constitution for the sake of shewing how 
 the best things may be painted in the most odious 
 colours. In this invective, which, as a piece of buf- 
 foonery, as a parody of Exeter-Hall oratory, is singularly 
 clever and amusing, a supposed Russian declaims 
 against the monstrous blasphemy of ascribing omnipotence 
 to Parliament, and of asserting that the Soverein can do 
 no wrong, and never dies. The writer's evident intention is 
 hereby to excuse and justify the ascription of infallibility 
 to the Papacy. But here again, without being aware 
 of it, he has cut his own fingers. For everybody knows 
 that these expressions are merely legal fictions, that 
 the omnipotence of Parliament is an exaggerated desig- 
 nation for its absolute, uncontrolled, legislative power,
 
 32 THE CONTEST WITH ROME. 
 
 that the Soverein's doing no wrong, and never dying, are 
 fictions, by the first of which we not only declare that 
 there is no earthly tribunal for him to give account to, 
 but divest him, in his royal character, of all personal 
 responsibility for any political acts, transferring that 
 responsibility, and by consequence his power also, to 
 his ministers ; while his never dying denotes that, though 
 the individual occupant of the throne dies like other 
 men, the throne does not thereby become vacant, but 
 is immediately, without any interval, taken possession 
 of by his successor, to whom his whole prerogative is 
 instantaneously demised. If this were all that is implied 
 by Papal infallibility, if it merely meant that the Bishop 
 of Rome, during the suspension of Councils, is the 
 supreme judge in theological controversies, it would 
 still be a question whether it is expedient to vest such 
 a supremacy in a single Bishop ; but the revolting 
 imposture of the claim would then vanish, as would 
 the prestige whereby it fascinates the weak and un- 
 stable. The Pope would merely stand in the place 
 of the supreme tribunal of doctrine, however con- 
 stituted, in other Churches, and would be no more 
 infallible than they are ; only that they, in their more 
 scrupulous regard for truth, refrain from such a 
 pretension (M). 
 
 Here it may be remarkt, that, though the supreme 
 power may rightfully demand the submission of our will 
 and of our conduct, it cannot in like manner demand 
 the submission of our thoughts and of our reason. An 
 Act of Parliament may command us to do this or that ; 
 but it cannot command us to think this or that. Ten 
 thousand Acts of Parliament would not add one tittle
 
 THE CONTEST WITH ROME. 33 
 
 of certainty to anything that is true without them ; nor 
 could they take away one tittle of certainty from it. 
 In this province Reason has more of omnipotence, than 
 all the Governments upon earth. Hence he who would 
 claim authority in matters of opinion, must take Reason 
 into his Councils. There are various degrees of Wisdom ; 
 but the highest has always been the first to acknowledge 
 its own fallibility. When Reason speaks to us intelligibly, 
 we cannot refuse to go along with her. When Authority 
 usurps her place, we are constrained by the laws of our 
 minds to rebell against her (N). 
 
 Another delusive vision, by which some persons of 
 late years, as well as in former ones, have been drawn 
 toward Rome, is the notion that in the Church of 
 Rome they shall find something like a realization of 
 that Unity, for which our Lord so fervently prayed, 
 and foi* which every one animated by His Spirit must 
 therefore long. But the Unity for which our Lord 
 prayed, the Unity which St Paul sets before us in 
 several passages of his Epistles, is totally and essentially 
 different from the only unity which can be promoted 
 by the self-exaltation of the Papacy. The Unity for 
 which our Lord prays, is that which arises from the 
 indwelling of His Spirit. In St Paul's representation 
 of the Church, the Unity of the one Body springs 
 from the Unity of the indwelling Spirit, from the one 
 Lord, who is the sole Head of His Church, from the 
 one Faith, whereby it is united to Him, from the one 
 Baptism, which is the initiation of that union, and 
 from the one universal God and Father, who rules over 
 all its members, and pervades them, and abides in 
 them. In like manner, when St Paul is speaking of 
 
 D
 
 34 THE CONTEST WITH ROME. 
 
 the manifold diversities of gifts and offices, and point- 
 ing out the necessity of these diversities, he at the 
 same time declares that at the root of all these diversities 
 there is a ground of Unity, in that they are all the 
 gifts and ordinances of one and the same Spirit. Here 
 everything is spiritual ; and when acting under this her 
 heavenly Guide, the Church will preserve the unity 
 of the Spirit in the bond of peace. St Paul does 
 not say a word, nor is there a word in any part of 
 Scripture, about the unity of a temporal Head, which 
 in fact would turn the Church into a monster, like the 
 hundred-handed giants of ancient fable. With him the 
 one Divine Head is the Source, whence the spirit of 
 life flows through all the members, animating them all 
 in their countless diversities of form and function (o). 
 In fact Rome is, and ever must be, so long as she 
 asserts her present claims, the chief outward obstacle 
 to the Unity of the Church, and renders all attempts 
 to promote that Unity ineffectual. The Papacy has 
 always been too richly endowed with the wisdom of 
 this world, not to have learnt the maxim of the Roman 
 Commonwealth, Divide and Rule. Even the marriage- 
 tie . it deemed a hindrance to its purpose, and therefore 
 stript the Janizaries and Mamelukes, who were to be 
 the main instruments in spreading its empire, of their 
 natural affections, and turned them into insulated units, 
 that should have no bond except that to their chief. 
 Thus that which was the ground of the true greatness 
 of Pagan Rome, was rejected by Papal Rome. In 
 other respects, as the Roman Empire, after crushing 
 the resistance of those whom it vanquisht, trod out 
 their life, so that their growth into a living nation
 
 THE CONTEST WJTH ROME. 35 
 
 became impossible, in like manner the Papacy has 
 rather tried to crush and extinguish the spiritual life 
 of its subjects, than to foster and cultivate it. Du- 
 ring the Middle Ages, it is true, the influence of 
 Christianity was mighty in developing the peculiarities 
 both of individual and of national character ; but so 
 far as this influence was affected by the Papacy, it was 
 checkt : and since the Reformation, wherever Rome has 
 retained her dominion, she has operated as a blight ; 
 beneath which, if the mind of man attempted to rise 
 and expand, it rankled into infidelity. If we would 
 discern what the efficacy of the Papacy has been in 
 promoting unity, let us look at the history, and at 
 the present condition of Italy and of the Italians ; who 
 alone among the European nations have never been 
 able to coalesce into a national unity, not merely through 
 the political efforts of the Papacy to foment divisions 
 among them, but still more because they have always 
 been severed by mutual distrust, because the constant, 
 familiar spectacle of a faith which was no faith, which was 
 merely a hypocritical juggle, the dismal consciousness 
 of which has tainted so large a portion of Italian lite- 
 rature (?), has rendered it difficult for any man to feel 
 confidence in his neighbour, because, when that which 
 ought to be the central seat of Truth is known to be 
 falsehood, the very notion of Truth as dwelling in man 
 becomes extinct. Every way it is manifest that those 
 who are bound together by chains, or by any other 
 outward compulsion, are not united. Unity is of the 
 heart and mind, presupposes Freedom, is the offspring 
 of Love. 
 
 On some other fallacies, by which men's minds have 
 
 D 2
 
 36 THE CONTEST WITH ROME. 
 
 been beguiled of late years into thinking too favorably 
 of Rome, I have spoken in former Charges ; and the 
 time will not permit me to jecur to them today. But 
 before I turn away from this subject, it behoves me to 
 give some sort of brief general answer to the question 
 which 1 propounded above : Why are we to resist and 
 repell those who desire to draw us into the Church of 
 Rome ? why are we not to hail them as our bene- 
 factors, and to bow our necks thankfully beneath the 
 yoke which they would impose on us ? Because it 
 is a yoke, and not an easy one, like that Divine yoke, 
 which we are bid to take upon us, but a heavy and 
 oppressive human yoke ; whereas we are commanded 
 to call no man master upon earth, seeing that we have 
 One Master in heaven, who has called us all to be 
 brethren and servants one to another. Because the 
 dominion of Rome is a usurpation, founded upon no 
 divine right, upon no human right, repugnant to both 
 rights, destructive of both, destructive of the national 
 individualities which God has markt out for the various 
 nations of the earth, and which can only be brought 
 to their perfection when the nations become members 
 of His Kingdom. Because history shews, what from 
 reflexion we might have anticipated, that the sway of 
 Rome is degrading and corruptive to the spiritual and 
 moral, and even to the political character of every nation 
 that submits to it. Because the pretensions of Rome 
 are built upon a primary imposture ; and such as the 
 foundation is, such is the whole edifice that has been 
 piled upon it in the course of centuries, imposture upon 
 imposture, falsehood upon falsehood. Because the 
 evangelical truths, of which, from its portion in Christ's
 
 THE CONTEST WITH ROME. 37 
 
 Church, it has retained possession, have been tainted 
 and corrupted by its impostures, and thus have been 
 prevented from exercising their rightful influence upon 
 the moral growth of its members. Because it has gone 
 on debasing the religion of Christ more and more from 
 the religion of the Spirit into a religion of forms and 
 ceremonies, substituting dead works for a living faith, 
 the nominal assent to certain words for the real appre- 
 hension of the truths exprest by them, interposing all 
 manner of mediators between man and the One Only 
 Mediator, changing God's truth into an aggregation of 
 lies, and, at least in its practical operation, worshiping 
 the creature more than the Creator. Because so many 
 of its principal institutions are designed, not so much 
 to promote the glory of God, and the wellbeing of 
 mankind, as the establishment and enlargement of its 
 own empire, no matter at what cost of truth and 
 holiness ; because its celibacy is anti-scriptural and 
 demoralizing, baneful to the sanctity of family life, 
 and a teeming source of profligate licentiousness (Q) ; 
 because its compulsory confession taints the conscience, 
 deadens the feeling of sin, and breeds delusive security (R) ; 
 because its Inquisition enslaves and crushes the mind, 
 stifling the love of truth (s) ; because its Jesuitism is a 
 school of falsehood ; becauses it eclipses the word of 
 God, and withdraws the light of that word from His 
 people. 
 
 Therefore, because of these and divers other evils, 
 inherent in, and almost inseparable from the system of the 
 Papacy, evils, each of which has bred an untold mass of 
 sin and misery, accumulated through centuries, and which 
 have grievously hindered the saving and sanctifying
 
 38 THE CONTEST WITH ROME. 
 
 power of the Gospel, therefore did our ancestors 
 at the Reformation, under God's guidance, cast off the 
 yoke and bondage of Rome, and deliver the State and 
 people of England from it. Therefore has the protest 
 against that yoke and bondage been maintained by the 
 heart and mind of England for three centuries. There- 
 fore, notwithstanding the softening influences of Time, 
 has the protest been handed down from father to son 
 for nine generations ; and each generation has renewed 
 it with determined, unflagging zeal. Therefore, as has 
 been seen in the last winter, is it still the fixt purpose 
 of the English heart and mind to reject the advances 
 and to repell the assaults of the Papacy. Therefore too 
 do we trust that, under God's blessing, we shall still 
 have the heart and mind to repell them, yea, that, with 
 His help, we shall repell them successfully, and shall 
 preserve that pure treasure of Evangelical Truth, which 
 He has so graciously committed to our keeping. 
 
 Hitherto I have been speaking mainly of that which 
 seems to me the most distressing feature in the present 
 condition of our Church, the delusion, or rather the 
 complication of delusions, by which so many of our 
 brethren, both lay and clerical, have been drawn into 
 the arms of Rome. Unless this delusion be checkt and 
 dispelled, its effects cannot be otherwise than very 
 disastrous. The Church must needs mourn over every 
 one of her sons and daughters who forsakes the truth 
 he has learnt from her, to embrace the superstitions and 
 the idolatrous corruptions recommended by the practice, 
 if not directly inculcated by the authoritative teaching, 
 of her subtile, insidious adversary. Still more bitter 
 is the sorrow, when those abandon her, who have been
 
 THE CONTEST WITH ROME. 39 
 
 ministering for years at her altars, and whom she has 
 loved as among her most loving and dutiful children. At 
 such a time a general distrust takes possession of men's 
 hearts. We scarcely know on whom we can rely. Even 
 the members of the same family suddenly find that a wide 
 gulf of separation has burst open betwixt them : child 
 is severed from parent, brother or sister from brother, 
 husband from wife, in some cases without the slightest 
 notice or anticipation of such a calamity : so stealthily 
 has the deceiver come upon them ; so craftily has he 
 laid his snares, undermining all openhearted confidence, 
 poisoning the very sources of truth in the heart and 
 the conscience. Among the evil effects of such a state 
 of things, is, that many become disheartened in their 
 work. They know not what their neighbours will do. 
 How then can they unite, how can they cooperate with 
 persons who in a few months may perhaps be found 
 in the ranks of the enemy ? Thus all public efforts 
 flag ; joint enterprises are abandoned or neglected. 
 Hence springs a fresh crop of woes. The best remedy 
 for the fainthearted is ever to unite with the more 
 vigorous in active exertion. When the line is marching 
 onward, they are borne along by it ; and their hearts 
 kindle at the touch of their comrades. But, when a 
 retreat is sounded, each one begins to think how he 
 can save himself. In this depression, they who see their 
 brethren falling away around them, begin to doubt 
 about their own standing: they fancy that the ground 
 is slipping away under their feet: they feel uncertain 
 where they may be in another year : they hardly dare 
 ask themselves : they resign themselves to the guidance 
 of events. If everything in the Church goes on exactly
 
 40 THE CONTEST WITH ROME. 
 
 as they wish, they think they shall probably stay where 
 they are. But if anything happens to annoy or offend 
 them, if the Crown, if the Parliament, if the Ministry, 
 if the Bench of Bishops, if the body of Deans, if the 
 Archdeacons, if the Clergy in their neighbourhood, do 
 not all do just what they think right and fitting, if 
 any one of these persons has the presumption to hold 
 an opinion at variance with those of the waverer, and 
 to act upon it, then what can he do but quit his 
 house and home, his Church and people, and join the 
 Romish Schism ? In this morbid, inflammatory state 
 of mind, every gnat-bite is enough to put him into a 
 fever, and to drive him, like lo in the Greek tragedy, 
 a vagrant from land to land. In this state, as we are 
 told by one who well knew the perversities of human 
 nature, " trifles light as air Are confirmations strong As 
 proofs of Holy Writ." Hence it is not to be wondered 
 at, if certain recent events in our Church, of considerable 
 importance in themselves, have had that importance 
 greatly magnified, have been viewed with eyes which 
 could not help discolouring and distorting them, and 
 have produced an excitement far beyond their real 
 significance. 
 
 I am referring, you will perceive, principally to the 
 agitation by which our Church was distracted last year 
 through its whole length and breadth, in consequence 
 of the decision pronounced by the Judicial Committee 
 of the Privy Council on the Appeal brought before 
 them in a case involving the doctrine of the efficacy 
 of infant Baptism. Of course I am not about to renew 
 the controversy on that subject, in which, as many of 
 you, my Reverend Brethren, are probably aware, I took
 
 THE CONTEST WITH ROME. 41 
 
 some part at the time, from an earnest desire to do what 
 I could toward calming the agitation, by drawing people 
 to consider the real purport and effect of that decision. 
 For, owing to the feverish state of men's minds, it 
 seemed to me to be strangely misinterpreted; and all 
 my subsequent reflexion, as well as my examination of 
 what has been written by others, has only confirmed this 
 view. They who were unfamiliar with the strictness 
 and precision of our judicial procedure, and knew not 
 how our judges shrink, whenever it is possible, from 
 laying down any general principle, confining themselves 
 as closely as they can to the immediate facts proved 
 in evidence before them, assumed that they had taken 
 upon themselves to determine the doctrine of our Church 
 concerning Baptismal Regeneration. Although the 
 Judges themselves declared that they had not determined 
 any doctrinal question, and that they had studiously 
 abstained from doing so, knowing they had no jurisdiction 
 for such a purpose, any more than they have for deter- 
 mining the law of the land, their office being solely 
 to determine the bearing of the existing law, whether 
 of the land or of the Church, on the specific cases 
 brought before them, it was asserted that the Judges 
 did not understand the meaning of their own sentence ; 
 and a cry past from one end of England to the other, 
 that a body of laymen were taking upon themselves to 
 determine the doctrines of the Church, that the Govern- 
 ment, which might consist of Jews, Turks, Heretics, and 
 Infidels, was usurping what belonged of right to the suc- 
 cessors of the Apostles, and that the Church of England 
 was on the point of forfeiting her position and privileges 
 as a branch of Christ's Holy Catholic Church.
 
 4?2 THE CONTEST WITH ROME. 
 
 Nay, even this was not enough. To magnify and 
 aggravate the offense of the Judgement, it was declared 
 to contravene an Article of the Nicene Creed. Thus 
 it became of a sufficiently gross and palpable nature to 
 furnish fuel for a popular cry. It mattered not that 
 no reference, no allusion had been made to this Article 
 of the Creed in the long, minute, exhaustive examination 
 to which the appellant had been subjected, that no 
 reference, no allusion had been made to it in the plead- 
 ings on either side before the Court of Arches, or in 
 the very able and elaborate Judgement delivered in that 
 Court, that no reference, no allusion had been made 
 to this argument, which, if it had been supposed to 
 have any real validity, would of course have been brought 
 forward from the first in the front of the case, till just 
 before the close of the speech of the last counsel before 
 the Court of Appeal. There could not indeed well be 
 a stronger presumptive proof that the bearing of the 
 Article of the Creed on the case was very remote and 
 impalpable, than that so many acute and ingenious di- 
 vines and lawyers should have been searching during a 
 twelvemonth for all the arguments by which they could 
 support their cause, and yet had not discovered this 
 bearing. Nor, whatever may be conceived to be the 
 meaning of the Article by the theological mind, which 
 is habitually exercised in educing the utmost quantity 
 of meaning from a very few words, would any person 
 trained to the precision of our judicial logic have dared 
 to lay down that this Article defines the mode in which 
 the remission of sins is connected with the Baptismal 
 Act. All this however was overlookt. When this point 
 had once been taken, it served the purpose of agitation
 
 THE CONTEST WITH ROME. 43 
 
 too well to be let drop : and in the clamour which arose, 
 the principal, ever-repeated complaint was, that an Article 
 of the Nicene Creed had been contravened, and that our 
 Church was thereby forfeiting her Catholicity. Alas ! 
 I am afraid that even now there are many, who do not 
 recognise the fallaciousness of this complaint, who do 
 not discern that, in consequence of the principles which 
 regulate our whole judicial procedure, the Article of 
 the Nicene Creed could not have any force in swaying 
 the opinions of the Judges, and therefore that it could 
 not be contravened by their decision (T). Doubtless, as 
 has often been asserted, the whole body of our faith may 
 be said to lie in the germ in the Apostles Creed. But 
 a Court of Law would not hold that even the Arian 
 hypothesis was excluded thereby ; and the Church herself 
 evinced her conviction of this by laying down more 
 precise and fuller determinations of her doctrine in this 
 and other cases, as the need of them occurred. On the 
 other hand we may observe that, among those who were 
 foremost in complaining of this contravention of our 
 faith, several, having since gone over to the Romish 
 Church, have themselves contravened that very Article 
 in the directest manner by submitting to a second Bap- 
 tism. For, even admitting the absurdly extravagant 
 notion that the Church of England did forfeit her Catho- 
 licity by the decision of last year, this decision could 
 not act retrospectively, and invalidate the Baptism they 
 had received from her hands thirty or forty years before. 
 Thus we see how the most solemn arguments in the 
 most solemn matters are merely taken up to serve the 
 purpose of the moment, and may be cast away the next 
 moment, and trampled underfoot.
 
 44 THE CONTEST WITH ROME. 
 
 Another complaint, which had more of plausibleness 
 in it, was against the constitution of the tribunal by 
 which the cause had been decided. For it is clearly 
 desirable and right that the final decision on ecclesiastical 
 causes, in which doctrinal questions are involved, should 
 not rest wholly with a body of secular judges, who 
 have no specific theological training, many of whom 
 have little, if any, knowledge of theological doctrine, 
 or of the meaning of theological terms, and with regard 
 to whom there was no security for their even being 
 members of our Church. It is desirable and right that, 
 while the judicial calmness and precision of the proceed- 
 ings are ensured by our having a certain number of 
 persons in the tribunal, who have been disciplined by 
 the practice of our law-courts, it should also comprise 
 an adequate number of divines, familiar with the course 
 and bearings of theological and ecclesiastical contro- 
 versies. Still, if the complainants had been in a state 
 of mind to exercise a sober judgement, they must have 
 perceived that, though they might have urged this plea, 
 not without reason, before the Court came to its decision, 
 they were barred from it after the decision had been 
 pronounced. If they themselves had not discovered 
 the unfitness of the tribunal, before it gave its decision, 
 they could not afterward legitimately condemn the 
 Court, or any one else, for not having found this out. 
 It is quite clear that the Act, by which the present 
 Court of Appeal was constituted, was not framed with 
 the slightest purpose of wronging the Church, or usurp- 
 ing any controll over her doctrines. No appeal, in which 
 doctrine was concerned, having occurred for more than 
 a century, the franier of the Act, as he himself has
 
 THE CONTEST WITH ROME. 45 
 
 stated, had no intention or thought of its bearing on 
 such appeals, and, not contemplating such cases, made 
 no special provision for them. 
 
 Hence this part of the jurisdiction of the Court was 
 a mere accident, whereat no reasonable man can feel 
 indignant. In fact a Bill for remedying this over- 
 sight had already been brought before Parliament in 
 three successive Sessions ; and though its enactment had 
 been postponed, partly from the usual dilatoriness of our 
 legislative proceedings, and partly from the desire that 
 it should be well considered before it became law, there 
 seemed to be no reason for doubting that we should 
 soon have a Court of Appeal rightly constituted. What 
 then, in such a state of things, was the conduct be- 
 fitting the faithful, loyal, dutiful sons of the Church ? 
 Nay, what was the conduct befitting reasonable, sober- 
 minded men ? Surely an irregularity of this kind, which 
 arose out of a mere accident, out of an inadvertence 
 on the part of the representatives of the Church in the 
 Legislature, and which, there was ample ground for 
 hoping, would soon be corrected, could not afford a 
 plea for any one, who was not already labouring under 
 a morbid irritability, to cry out either against the Church 
 or the State, against the State as tyrannizing over the 
 Church, or against the Church as giving up to Cesar 
 the things which are God's. The plain course of duty 
 was manifestly to petition the Legislature to correct 
 the anomalies in the constitution of the Court of Appeal. 
 Had this course been adopted, had such an alteration 
 been urged with calm, judicious earnestness, the evil 
 would probably have been redrest before now. 
 
 I do not forget that the Bill, which was brought
 
 46 THE CONTEST WITH ROME. 
 
 before the House of Lords for this purpose in the month 
 of June last year, was rejected. But it seems to me 
 that the Church has reason to be very thankful to the 
 House of Lords for rejecting that Bill. Had the scheme 
 for the constitution of the Court of Appeal proposed 
 in it resembled that of the preceding Session, or that 
 which was brought in at the beginning of the same 
 Session, to form a tribunal in which a certain number 
 of Bishops and eminent divines should sit along with a 
 certain number of the most eminent Judges, the fate 
 of the Bill would probably have been different. But 
 unfortunately a notion had got into vogue, that the 
 determination of all questions, even legal questions, 
 connected with doctrine ought to be entrusted exclu- 
 sively to the Episcopal Bench, as belonging to them 
 indefeasibly by a Divine ordinance ; and this assumption 
 the House of Lords rejected, most rightly, as it seems to 
 me ; and judging wisely for the welfare of the Church (u). 
 For consider, my Reverend Brethren, what the conse- 
 quences would have been. A casual majority of the 
 Episcopal Bench, a majority which might be only of 
 one, and might often be inferior to the minority in 
 wisdom and learning and piety, would have been in- 
 vested with the authority of determining points of doc- 
 trine, in a manner binding on the Law Courts, and on 
 the whole Church. Who, in such a state of things, 
 could have felt safe ? The majority might be on one 
 side this year, and on the opposite side the next, or 
 a few years later. Imperfect as the constitution of 
 our Convocation is, the Upper House is held in check 
 by the Lower ; and both, if they entered upon any 
 injudicious, precipitate course of legislation, might be
 
 THE CONTEST WITH ROME. 47 
 
 arrested by the Crown, as the representative of the 
 Laity, either proroguing them, or refusing its sanction. 
 But the decision of the projected Court was necessarily 
 to be hasty, and was to be peremptory. Moreover 
 it appeared far from improbable that many of the 
 Bishops, as might be expected from persons with no 
 legal training, and little accustomed to submit their 
 convictions to positive outward rules, would be apt 
 to regard the question propounded to them as a matter 
 which they were to decide, not merely according to 
 the Articles and Formularies of our Church, but rather 
 according to abstract principles, and to the authority 
 of the Bible. Nay, the likelihood of such a result 
 became the greater in proportion as a Bishop attach t 
 a paramount importance to what he, in his own mind, 
 regarded as the true exposition of Scriptural truth ; 
 whereby endless controversies would have been en- 
 gendered (v). Hence the rejection of this Bill was no 
 legitimate ground for the Church to murmur against 
 the State, but rather to be thankful. Still, though 
 the last Session, from being almost entirely occupied 
 by the discussion of a single measure, has been allowed 
 to slip away without any attempt to reform the Court 
 of Appeal, we may hope that, if a Bill, analogous in 
 the main to that of 1849, be brought forward next 
 Session, it will pass into law without much opposition. 
 Only let our conduct be that of reasonable, practical 
 men, who desire specific remedies for specific grievances, 
 not that of vague dreamers, or of revolutionists, who 
 grumble and clamour against the whole establisht order 
 of things, and desire to change and remould it in 
 conformity to their own momentary fancies.
 
 48 THE CONTEST WITH ROME. 
 
 On another very important and difficult question, 
 which arose out of this controversy, or rather was 
 brought forward more prominently in consequence of 
 it, concerning the nature and extent and limits of the 
 Royal Supremacy, I can only allow myself to touch very 
 briefly. But I cannot pass it over altogether ; since 
 this has been one of the chief complaints made against 
 our Church of late years, not only by her enemies from 
 without, but also by her wavering members, that she 
 allows the civil, secular power to exercise an undue 
 authority with regard to spiritual matters. Of course 
 this question cannot be otherwise than very intricate ; 
 as all questions touching the primary rights of the great 
 powers in the State and Church, and the relations 
 between them, needs must be. For these rights and 
 relations were never denned and determined with pre- 
 cision, any more than you can have a straight line of 
 demarcation between the land and the sea. Like the 
 great powers of Nature, those which act upon each 
 other in history, do not cut themselves off by rule and 
 measure. The boundary between them bears the rugged 
 marks of warfare, which continue during periods of 
 mutual peace ; and its evenness is broken by promi- 
 nences and indentures, by jutting rocks and headlands, 
 and by insinuating gulfs and bays. In the course of 
 ages too this boundary will vary, from encroachments, 
 probably on both sides. Even if the line of demar- 
 cation between the secular power and the spiritual had 
 ever been distinctly denned, the lapse of centuries would 
 have modified and changed it, not merely through their 
 strife and reciprocal aggressions, but also from changes 
 in the nature of the powers themselves, in that the
 
 THE CONTEST WITH ROME. 49 
 
 secular power is gradually more and more spiritualized, 
 while the spiritual power grows secularized, in a good 
 sense, it may be, as well as a bad. Thus the re- 
 lation between Anselm and William Rufus is far from 
 the same as that between Becket and Henry the Second ; 
 and immense was the change which had past over it, 
 when we examine the position of the Church and of 
 the Sovereins in the age of the Reformation. Nor did 
 the change cease then ; and of course it has been 
 rapider in the nations which adopted the Refor- 
 mation, and recognised the universal priesthood of 
 Christians, and the right of all to a free access to God 
 and to His word. In fact, as the whole community is 
 brought more and more under the influence of the 
 Gospel, the separation between its various classes tends 
 to become less abrupt, to become a distinction of offices, 
 rather than a difference of essence, according to the 
 grand picture set before us in St Paul's Epistle to the 
 Corinthians. Even within our own memory, he who 
 can look back thoughtfully on what England was at 
 the beginning of this century, and at the manifold 
 wonders of its progress, will perceive that enormous, 
 incalculable changes have been wrought in the relations 
 of the various classes of society, from the highest to 
 the lowest, not merely by positive laws, such as the 
 Reform-Bill, but still more by the silent working of 
 all manner of social, economical, moral influences* Nor 
 are these by any means confined to our secular relations : 
 they are of scarcely inferior moment within the Church. 
 Thus, at every point in history, these relations are 
 not what they were determined to be by some positive 
 enactment concerning them, it may be centuries before :
 
 50 THE CONTEST WITH ROME. 
 
 they are a combination resulting from two distinct 
 elements, what they have been in the past, and what 
 the heart and mind of the Nation or Church deem at 
 the time they ought to be. For, while the past has its 
 rights, and ought to retain them, the present also has 
 rights of its own, wkich, unless they are recognised 
 voluntarily, will make themselves recognised by force. 
 With regard to our immediate question, it seems to 
 me that the discussions which took place last year, lead 
 on the whole to results, which are no way inconsistent 
 with the rightful claims, either of the State, or of the 
 Church ; at least unless we suffer ourselves to be deluded 
 by the notion, which, though perpetually disclaimed 
 nowadays, may perpetually be detected exercising a 
 mischievous influence, not seldom upon those who are 
 unconscious of it, nay, who loudly disclaim it, that the 
 Church is synonymous with the Clergy. Whereas it is 
 made up of the whole body of its baptized members, 
 and, in a higher sense, of the whole body of its com- 
 municants ; while there cannot be a grosser perversion 
 of the truth, than to confine it to its ministers, to those 
 who are specially ordained to be the servants of the 
 congregation. The baneful effects of this errour may 
 be traced through the whole history of the Church, in 
 the demoralization and despiritualization of the Clergy, 
 no less than of the Laity. Indeed I know not whether 
 any errour has ever done half so much evil to mankind : 
 and the chief propagater of this errour, and of the 
 evil consequences that flow of it, has ever been the 
 Papacy (w). 
 
 Here it seems as if I could hardly pass on without 
 alluding to a paper, which was circulated very generally
 
 THE CONTEST WITH ROME. 51 
 
 among the Clergy last year, and which most of you, my 
 Reverend Brethren, must doubtless have seen, containing 
 a declaration with regard to the nature and limits of the 
 Royal Supremacy. This declaration was promulgated by 
 three of the most eminent among our brethren in the 
 ministry ; and it was supposed that on the assent of the 
 Clergy to it would probably depend whether the propound- 
 ers would continue in our Church or not. Some of you 
 may perhaps have sent answers to this paper : many of 
 you, doubtless, took no notice of it. In fact it did seem 
 an extraordinary assumption, for a trio of persons, 
 however eminent individually, if such was indeed their 
 purpose, to 'require the whole body of the Clergy to 
 adopt their view on this very intricate and complicated 
 matter, and to express that view in a certain definite 
 form of words, with the resolution of quitting the Church, 
 if the answers were not comformable to their wishes. 
 This would be another deplorable instance of the 
 manner in which persons set up their own private judge- 
 ment, not as the rule of their own conscience and 
 conduct, but as the law of the Church and State ; as 
 though a man were to say, unless Parliament passes such 
 or such a law, I will throw off my allegiance, and become 
 a Frenchman, or an American. Moreover the very mode 
 in which the declaration was drawn up, involving an 
 express condemnation of the proceedings in the recent 
 Appeal, and founded, as it seems to me, on a total 
 misconception of those proceedings, must have prevented 
 many from adopting it. Had the declaration been 
 worded simply and plainly, and confined itself to 
 the one essential point, whether the Royal Supremacy 
 implies that the Crown has authority to determine the 
 
 K 2
 
 52 THE CONTEST WITH ROME. 
 
 doctrines of the Church, though many might still have 
 declined to sign it, whether from deeming it an 
 indecorous assumption, or from other motives, at all 
 events I feel sure than one consistent response would 
 have risen from the hearts of the whole body of the 
 Clergy, from ninetynine out of a hundred, that no such 
 authority is, or ever has been, involved in the Supremacy 
 of the Crown, that they never did, and do not, recognise 
 such an authority, that the Crown itself has never laid 
 claim to it, and that the only body which has any real 
 authority to determine the doctrines of the Church, is 
 the Church herself acting through her lawful Councils 
 or Synods (x). 
 
 These words lead me to congratulate you that the 
 prospect of a rightly constituted Synod of our Church 
 seems so much nearer now, than when I last addrest 
 you from this Chair. Having repeatedly on these 
 occasions given utterance to my earnest wishes for such 
 an assembly, and having endeavoured, in a Note to my 
 Charge for 1842, to reply to the chief objections which 
 at that time were urged against it, I will not enter into 
 any argument on the subject today. But I cannot 
 refrain from expressing my satisfaction that the desire, 
 in which ten years ago few joined with me, has now 
 become so prevalent, and still more that the right of 
 the Laity to an important share in such an assembly 
 has already obtained so general a recognition. It was 
 with exceeding pleasure that I heard our excellent 
 Bishop declare at the Visitation last year, that it was 
 not only his own conviction, but that of all his Episcopal 
 Brethren, without a single exception, that, if a Synod 
 of the Church is to be convened, it ought to contain
 
 THE CONTEST WITH ROME. 53 
 
 a large admixture of laymen. Indeed, without such an 
 admixture, the Synod would he inefficient and powerless. 
 In this, as in all things, we greatly need the help of 
 our lay hrethren. We need the help of their good 
 sense, of their sober, practical judgement. We need 
 collegues who will not be carried away by speculative 
 notions, by ecclesiastical theories, who will not look at 
 questions from a clerical point of view, who will counter- 
 balance any exaggerated reverence on our part for the 
 traditions or the dogmas of former ages, by their vivid 
 consciousness of the wants of the present time, by their 
 greater familiarity with the thoughts and feelings which 
 are now stirring and agitating the world, and which, 
 while they cannot be calmed and brought into order 
 except by the power of the Gospel, often need some 
 new form and utterance of Evangelical Truth to still 
 them. In the Note just referred to, I have set before 
 you a considerable body of evidence shewing that in 
 early ages the Laity bore part in the Synods ; as they 
 do now, with much benefit, in those of the American 
 Church. In course of time indeed the Clergy deprived 
 them of this, as of so many other rights ; but, as is 
 mostly the case with usurpers, they themselves were 
 ultimately the chief sufferers from the usurpation, both 
 socially and morally. For we can hardly injure others, 
 without injuring ourselves. During those centuries in- 
 deed, when almost all the learning of the age was 
 confined to the Clergy, there was less impropriety in 
 their constituting themselves the sole judges with re- 
 gard to matters, for the cognisance of which some degree 
 of learning is indispensable. But when learning and 
 knowledge became more widely diffused, and clerkly
 
 54 THE CONTEST WITH ROME. 
 
 acquirements were found in others beside the Clergy, 
 the exclusive system could no longer be upheld. In 
 truth this was among the principal causes of the dis- 
 continuance of the Convocation, and of other like 
 assemblies, not in England only, but also in the other 
 countries of Europe. The secular mind had outgrown 
 the tutelage of the ecclesiastical ; while the latter, rely- 
 ing on its superiority of position, had almost fallen 
 asleep, and had neglected to strengthen that superiority 
 by a superiority of knowledge. Moreover our Convo- 
 cation was a very inadequate representation of the Clergy 
 themselves, in addition to its total exclusion of the lay 
 element of the Church. To maintain this exclusion in 
 our days would be impossible, at least in Protestant 
 countries, where the clerical monopoly of the Scriptures 
 can no longer be enforced. If a Synod is to have any 
 authority in the Church, the religious Laity must 
 have a voice in it. We may well be thankful to learn 
 that this necessity is recognised by the whole body of 
 our spiritual rulers ; and with this assurance we may 
 entertain a reasonable confidence that, when a Synod 
 is allowed to meet, it will exercise a real and salutary 
 influence. Of course there will be sundry difficulties in 
 settling its constitution; and a number of jealousies 
 may probably be aroused. But what great work can 
 be accomplisht, without many difficulties to surmount ? 
 If we set to work heartily and unitedly, we shall soon 
 overcome them (Y). 
 
 But, though I strongly desire, and, notwithstanding 
 all the dissensions and contentions in our Church, can 
 look forward hopefully to the assembling of a rightly 
 constituted National Synod, even as likely to promote
 
 THE CONTEST WITH ROME. 55 
 
 peace, I am far from feeling the same confidence with 
 regard to a measure, which many persons, I believe, 
 view with favour, either as a preparative for such an 
 assembly, or as a less hazardous substitute for it. The 
 recent Meeting of the Exeter Diocesan Synod, which 
 appears from all accounts to have been conducted with 
 great ability and moderation, has inclined many to believe 
 that the disorders in our Church may be quieted, and 
 her wants relieved, by such Synods, with less risk than 
 by one to which our whole Church should send deputies. 
 This inference however does not appear to me well 
 grounded. I should rather draw a different conclusion, 
 even from the proceedings of that Synod ; the unanimity 
 displayed at which was in some degree fallacious, inas- 
 much as it seems to have arisen in great measure from 
 the Synod's being constituted almost entirely of the 
 representatives of a single party in the Church, the 
 Clergy of the opposite party having generally declined 
 to vote at the elections for it (z). Thus this unanimity 
 merely shews how zealously the members of one party 
 could work together, and certainly with no spirit of 
 supererogatory indulgence or conciliation toward those 
 who differed from them ; so that, if the latter had taken 
 part in the Meeting, there would probably have been 
 a formidable collision. Besides that Meeting was mainly 
 swayed by the influence of a single powerful mind. But 
 should other similar Synods assemble, as that did, with 
 the notion that they represent the Church, and are 
 entitled to exercise the authority of the Church in 
 pronouncing dogmatically upon doctrinal questions, what 
 result can be anticipated, except a battling of contrary 
 currents, and an ever-bursting storm of confusion ?
 
 56 THE CONTEST WITH ROME. 
 
 Throughout the history of the Church it has been 
 seen, that one of her chief perils arises from the dog- 
 matizing spirit, which is inherent in human nature, 
 springing from our narrowmindedness and ignorance, 
 pampered by and pampering our self-will. Few visions 
 are so flattering to our vanity, as that of establishing 
 the correctness of our own judgement by imposing our 
 opinions upon others, by compelling all nations to 
 worship the image which Nebuchadnezzar the king has 
 set up. If the Papacy has been the curse of the Church, 
 the Pope is only the huge symbol of what is found 
 within every breast. Every man has the spirit of the 
 Papacy within him. Everybody would fain be a Pope 
 in his own circle, and would stretch out that circle as 
 widely as he can. It is only from godly wisdom, from 
 pondering the lessons of history, from Christian meekness 
 and sobermindedness, that we learn to distrust ourselves, 
 and to respect our neighbours. If we may look forward 
 hopefully to the assembling of a National Synod, it is 
 because we may trust that, under God's guidance, the 
 members elected to represent the Church in it would 
 in the main comprise the persons who are most eminent 
 for godly wisdom and sobermindedness both among the 
 Clergy and among the Laity ; because it would not Ije 
 under the predominant influence of any one single mind ; 
 and because, even if it should allow itself to be carried 
 away into any indiscreet proceedings, the right of pro- 
 roguing it would be vested in the Crown. But in a 
 Diocesan Synod we have none of these securities. Even 
 if there were a due proportion of laymen in it, still it 
 would always be liable to be swayed by its Bishop, 
 especially in theological discussions ; whereas in the
 
 THE CONTEST WITH ROME. 57 
 
 ancient Synods, even in the provincial ones, there were 
 ever a large number of Bishops, whose position would 
 ordinarily betoken an approved intellectual or moral 
 superiority, and who stood on the same level. Nor 
 would a Diocesan Synod be less prone to issue hasty 
 dogmatical decisions, because it would seldom happen 
 that there were more than half a dozen or a dozen 
 persons in a Diocese, at all qualified by their character, 
 their temper of mind, and their familiarity with specu- 
 lative divinity, and with ecclesiastical history, for such 
 a task. In nothing was the wisdom of the great early 
 Councils more apparent, than in the earnestness with 
 which they tried to check and bridle the dogmatical spirit, 
 even so far as to issue anathemas against any one who 
 should presume to add to the Articles of the Creed (AA). 
 Such caution is not likely to be found in a Diocesan 
 Synod, least of all in seasons when theological contro- 
 versies are raging. Each Synod would deem itself 
 thoroughly competent to settle all the controversies in 
 the Church ; and its confidence would probably increase 
 in an inverse ratio to its real competence. An active, 
 energetic Bishop, with strongly markt opinions, would 
 often be able to carry his Synod along with him. Thus 
 the Church would perpetually be harast with new dog- 
 matical decisions, not seldom contradicting one another ; 
 and there are symptoms which threaten that these de- 
 cisions might ere long be enforced by a volley of ana- 
 themas. The very want of authority to impose their 
 decisions would lessen the feeling of personal respon- 
 sibility, which arises within us when others are to be 
 materially affected by our deliberations and our acts. 
 They who play at soldiers, knock down their mimic
 
 58 THE CONTEST WITH ROME. 
 
 armies far more rapidly than they fall in actual war. In 
 a word, if every Diocese were to have its Synod, 
 meddling with the doctrines of the Church, the results 
 would hardly be more satisfactory, than if the work of 
 legislation were transferred from Parliament to our 
 County-Meetings. 
 
 Doubtless, if Diocesan Synods were precluded from 
 attempting to legislate upon doctrinal questions, if their 
 discussions were restricted to the practical wants of 
 the Diocese, and to practical measures for its improve- 
 ment, they would not do the same harm, and might 
 become very beneficial ; more especially if a scheme 
 were devised by which a certain number of lay members 
 should take part in them. Otherwise in this respect 
 they would be far inferior to our Diocesan Associations, 
 though in other points they would have advantages of 
 their own. 
 
 Much of what I have just been saying will apply still 
 more forcibly to those newfangled bodies, which have 
 recently been setting themselves up, with no slight 
 pretensions, in various parts of England, under the name 
 of Church-Unions ; a name very inappropriate, seeing 
 that, in the instances which of late have come most 
 before the public eye, they have consisted almost ex- 
 clusively of the members of a single party in the Church, 
 bound together by some party shibboleth, and combined 
 to effect certain purposes, to which they knew that a 
 large portion of their brethren were strongly opposed : 
 so that they might more aptly be termed Church- 
 Disunions. These associations are embodiments of 
 that impatience and self will, which are such prominent 
 elements in the spirit of the age, even in those who are 

 
 THE CONTEST WITH ROME. 59 
 
 loudest in declaiming against them. Everywhere, we find, 
 people will not wait for the ordinary, legitimate modes 
 of carrying their purposes into effect, in a manner con- 
 sistent with the establisht order of things, with the 
 constitution of the Church, by reasonable persuasion. 
 Everywhere the revolutionary spirit peeps out behind 
 the mask, even of those who are inveying against it. This 
 spirit, and every form of party -spirit, are inevitably 
 fostered by these so-called Church-Unions. They who 
 combine and assemble for a party-purpose, strengthen 
 each other in their prejudices, in their persuasion of their 
 own exclusive rectitude and wisdom, in their repugnance 
 and scorn toward those who differ from them. This 
 has been seen for instance in the Trades-Unions, in 
 which even well-meaning, conscientious men, by brooding 
 over their grievances, and talking of them continually 
 with their associates, have become so inflamed as to be 
 ready for every form of crime. In like manner these 
 combinations in the Church, fashioned as they are after 
 the model of factious and seditious combinations in the 
 State, can hardly fail to increase and aggravate the evils 
 of our condition ; more especially when the opposite 
 party, as is the natural, legitimate consequence of such 
 combinations, combine to resist them ; whereby dissen- 
 sions must needs be exasperated and prolonged. You 
 will observe too, that the party which now resorts to 
 these associations for effecting its aims, is the very party 
 which a few years back strongly condemned the vari- 
 ous Religious Societies, which had been formed for 
 benevolent and religious purposes, because they had 
 taken upon themselves to do this without the sanction 
 of the proper ecclesiastical authorities. In so many
 
 60 THE CONTEST WITH ROME. 
 
 respects do we find the severest condemnation of their 
 present practices in the principles which they formerly 
 profest. 
 
 Here it behoves me to say a few words on a personal 
 matter. On two occasions, since I last addrest you from 
 this chair, a wish has been entertained by a considerable 
 number of the Clergy of the Archdeaconry that I should 
 summon a public Meeting ; and on both occasions I 
 have declined complying with this wish. The first was 
 in the month of June last year, when the Church was 
 so agitated by the decision of the Court of Appeal with 
 reference to the Baptismal Question. The second oc- 
 casion was in the autumn, when the whole people was 
 stirred up to resist the aggression of the Pope on the 
 Crown and Church of England. The wish for a public 
 Meeting on the latter occasion was, I believe, strongest 
 on the part of the opponents of those who had been the 
 most desirous of taking some step to protest against 
 the judgement of the Court of Appeal. Thus it is 
 plain, at all events, that my refusal did not arise from 
 any leaning toward one party more than toward another. 
 But it has never seemed to me that any benefit to the 
 Church has accrued from Meetings held to debate ques- 
 tions on which the Church is much divided ; whereas 
 the evil of such a public display of our contentions 
 must ever be great. On the Baptismal Question, though 
 I did not know with certainty which way the scales 
 would turn, I did know that there would be a strong, 
 probably a violent collision, by which nobody would 
 be edified. For, while I was well aware that a very 
 large majority of you, my Reverend Brethren, hold the 
 doctrine of Baptismal Regeneration, and are convinced
 
 THE CONTEST WITH ROME. 61 
 
 that it is the doctrine of our Church, I knew also that 
 many among the holders of that doctrine were very 
 thankful, as I myself was, that the Judgement of the 
 Court of Appeal had arrested an attempt, whereby so 
 many of the most pious and zealous among our brethren 
 in the ministry would have been driven out of it. By 
 some persons indeed I may be thought chargeable with 
 inconsistency, in objecting to Public Meetings of the 
 Clergy, while I desire to see a Synod of the Church. 
 But the very reasons which induce me to wish for the 
 latter, make me deprecate the former. In a Synod I 
 should hope to see a solemn, orderly assembly of the 
 gravest, most pious, discreetest members of our Church, 
 acting under fixt rules, with the consciousness of a deep 
 responsibility. But what is there of this kind in a Public 
 Meeting ? in which the most violent are usually the 
 loudest, and often carry their partisans along with them. 
 The late Anniversaries of the National Society have 
 shewn what such Meetings tend to become. What good 
 our Diocese would have derived from such, I know 
 not. In truth one main benefit of a Synod would be, 
 that it would silence such irregular expressions of irri- 
 tation ; even as the Meeting of Parliament is so often 
 powerful in stopping the irregular expressions of 
 political feeling (AB). 
 
 On the former of the two occasions referred to, 
 knowing that the minds of the Clergy were very much 
 divided, I did not propose any measure for your adop- 
 tion, thinking it better to leave each Rural Deanery 
 to act as it judged meet. With regard to the Papal 
 Aggression there was not the same ground for hesitation. 
 Here one might feel sure of finding a general agreement,
 
 62 THE CONTEST WITH ROME. 
 
 at least unless one chose to run foul of some rock of 
 controversy. But here again it seemed to me that a 
 Public Meeting would supply an opportunity, which 
 divers persons might be ready to seize, for vehement 
 condemnation of those among our brethren, whose 
 opinions have been so lamentably proved to have a fatal 
 bias toward Rome. Now the attack made by the Pope 
 on the Church and Crown of England ought to be 
 regarded, it appeared to me, as a warning sent to us by 
 God, calling upon us all, upon all who love our Spiritual 
 Mother, upon all who have not already apostatized 
 from her in heart, to join heart and soul and mind in 
 repelling the insolent assailant. Hence I could not 
 but esteem it a counteraction of God's gracious purpose, 
 a perversion of His gift, if, instead of uniting cordially 
 together in defending our Mother, we were to take 
 this occasion for rebuking and triumphing over our 
 brethren ; whom this attack from our common enemy 
 ought to have brought nearer to us, while it opened 
 their eyes to the perils of the path they had been 
 walking in. Nor could I feel anything but the deep- 
 est pain in reading the accounts how Public Meetings 
 in other Dioceses had been turned into scenes for railing 
 accusations. On this subject however I was sure that 
 you would almost all be desirous of giving utterance 
 to your feelings. Therefore, with the kind help of 
 the Rural Deans of the Archdeaconry, I drew up the 
 addresses which they circulated among you ; and I was 
 very thankful to them, both for the alacrity with which, 
 at a moment's warning, the chief part of them attended 
 a Meeting convened for the purpose, and for their 
 anxious care to avoid every expression which could
 
 THE CONTEST WITH ROME. 63 
 
 give offense to the most sensitive feelings, or present 
 an obstacle to the unanimous concurrence of the Clergy 
 of the Archdeaconry (AC). 
 
 I should have wisht to make a few observations on 
 a couple of important questions, which have been debated 
 during the last Session of Parliament ; but the time 
 compells me to pass over them (AD). Already, I doubt not, 
 many of you, my Brethren, have been surprised that, 
 though I have been speaking so long about the events 
 of the last two years, I have made no direct mention 
 till just now of that which you probably regard as 
 the most important among them, the extraordinary 
 attack made by the Pope on the English Church and 
 Crown. Yet, I would fain believe, you must have 
 discerned that, though I did not expressly mention 
 that attack, it was standing before my eyes throughout 
 in the dark back -ground of our present condition ; inas- 
 much as I have been speaking throughout of the various 
 causes which alone render it formidable. Were it not 
 for the calamitous dissensions amongst us, were it not 
 for the Romanizing tendencies which have issued in 
 so many deplorable apostasies, were it not for the 
 notion, which these and other causes may naturally 
 have fostered, that the deserters, who have already gone 
 over from our ranks, would be followed by a far more 
 numerous body, I can hardly conceive that the Papacy 
 would have ventured on so audacious a measure. At 
 all events, were it not for these favouring circumstances, 
 its conduct would have provoked little beyond ridicule 
 and scorn. If there is any real danger in that attack, 
 the ground of the danger lies wholly in ourselves. 
 
 If we call to mind what the position of the Papacy
 
 64 THE CONTEST WITH ROME. 
 
 was, when I last addrest you here two years ago, the 
 change seems like one of the lawless scene-shiftings in a 
 dream. It was then a fugitive, an outcast, from the city, 
 in which for a thousand years it has been a moral pes- 
 tilence (AE). It had taken refuge under a Government, 
 which, above all others, bears witness what its moral 
 influence is, and which has just been exposed to all 
 Europe in its naked deformity, known long ago to all 
 persons well acquainted with its workings, as reckless of 
 every obligation, of every law, of every principle, standing 
 with one foot upon perjury, upon cruelty with the other. 
 Hence, after a while, the Papacy returned, borne in by 
 foreiii bayonets, and only protected by the same from the 
 hatred of the people who have had the experience of a 
 thousand years to teach them what it is. The present 
 wearer of the triple crown, having vainly attempted to 
 extricate his subjects and himself from the evils and 
 miseries which they have had to bear, in consequence 
 of their city's being the abode of the so-called Vicar of 
 Christ, was compelled to surrender his own better desires 
 and aims to the iron bondage of the system which placed 
 him there : for, a curse to all under\ it, it is so above all 
 to him whom it sets on its throne, and to whom, as to 
 Kehama in Southey's poem, the cup of divine honour and 
 power becomes the cup of helpless weakness and woe. 
 Yet at this very time, in the midst of this abject fall, the 
 Papacy, by some mysterious, inscrutable dispensation, has 
 been rising to greater power than it had wielded for 
 centuries. The nations of Europe have been falling down 
 and worshiping it. Under the panic produced by the 
 revolutionary movements of the last years, they have 
 fancied they should find help from the old magician, who
 
 THE CONTEST WITH ROME. 65 
 
 had been so successful in stifling the mind of man, 
 wherever the word of God was not held up to baffle 
 his spells : and, in order to obtain his aid, they have 
 voluntarily given up the securities, by which their more 
 prudent fathers fenced themselves against his encroach- 
 ments. But that the wheel of time never goes back, one 
 might almost deem that the age of Hildebrand and of 
 Innocent was about to return. It was in the midst of 
 her pride, elated by these unlookt for triumphs, that the 
 Romish Church hurled her defiance against England, al- 
 most expecting, as it would seem, that England would join 
 the rout of Governments who were falling prostrate before 
 her. To this defiance however, as we know, the people 
 of England have made answer with united heart and voice, 
 that they will not bow down to Rome, that, with God's 
 blessing, they are resolved to maintain that inheritance 
 of Truth which they have received from their ancestors, 
 and to stand fast in the liberty wherewith Christ has 
 made them free. 
 
 Of the measure by which our Legislature has repelled 
 the aggression of the Papacy, I need not speak. You 
 have all heard it canvast, and have canvast it yourselves, 
 over and over and over again, until you must be weary of 
 the subject. In judging of it, we should bear in mind 
 that the difficulties of Parliament arose in great measure 
 from the righteous resolution to adhere to those principles 
 of toleration, which have been graven of late years on the 
 front of our Constitution. While the attack of the Papacy 
 was twofold, on the Crown of England, and on the 
 Church, the former was the only part of it with which 
 it behoved Parliament to interfere. Now this consisted 
 mainly in the assumption of a right to parcel out England 
 
 F
 
 66 THE CONTEST WITH ROME. 
 
 into Dioceses, as though it were a Heathen country, and 
 to bestow territorial titles on certain intruders of its 
 own appointment, without seeking the permission of the 
 Crown, a right which it would not have dared to usurp 
 in any other State in Europe. The special duty of 
 Parliament therefore was to declare these titles unlawful, 
 and to prohibit their assumption. Whether the measure 
 which has been adopted will effect this purpose, time 
 will shew (AF). 
 
 For us, my Reverend Brethren, there remains a dif- 
 ferent, a more arduous, but a godlier and more blessed 
 task : and in this task you too, my Lay Brethren, you 
 especially who have come as Churchwardens to this 
 Visitation, are equally called to bear part. Your name 
 designates you as wardens or guardians of the Church, 
 immediately indeed in your own parishes, and with re- 
 ference to the preservation of the fabric of your churches, 
 and to other parochial matters, but also with reference 
 to the great principles of Christian truth, which our 
 Church and our churches are set up to maintain. For 
 what would be the worth of all the petty details of 
 parochial administration, what would be the worth of 
 our churches themselves, why should we repair and 
 beautify them, unless all these things were subordinate 
 and instrumental to the upholding of Christian truth and 
 order ? This act of the Papacy is an open declaration of 
 war against us, a declaration of internecine war. It 
 involves a denial of our veiy existence as a branch or 
 portion of Christ's Church. For near three hundred 
 years the Papacy has refrained from such an extreme 
 measure. It has been reserved to be the closing act of 
 the first half of the nineteenth century. Now, when a
 
 THE CONTEST WITH ROME. 67 
 
 person's existence is denied, the best refutation of such 
 a denial is, not by words and arguments, but by actions. 
 Therefore, it having been denied by the Papacy, before 
 God and man, that we are a part of Christ's Church, let 
 us, my Brethren, come forward in the sight of God and 
 of man, and prove, God helping us, by our actions, by 
 our faith, by our zeal, by our love, that we are so. We 
 are all and each of us called upon to prove, in our several 
 spheres, before God and man, that we are Christians, 
 that we are members of Christ's holy Church, and not in 
 name only, but in power, yea, that the spirit of Christ 
 dwells in us. 
 
 In this age of universal competition, we are specially 
 called to a competition in good works. Our rivals are 
 compassing us about : we know not where they may be 
 lurking, where they may suddenly start up, not even 
 whether it may not be unawares in some bosom friend, in 
 a brother. Even on the hearts of our own families we 
 cannot count with certainty ; even they may be wrested 
 from us, secretly, stealthily. One of the best features 
 in our English character, a truly Protestant feature in 
 it, is the repugnance to all underhand proceedings, the 
 desire that everything should be above-board, as the 
 phrase is. Let this then be our course in contending 
 with our subtile enemy. While he would outwit us by 
 his hidden arts and disguises, let us outwit him by our 
 constant frankness and straightforwardness. The victory 
 will be with the day, not with the night. God has 
 committed His truth to our keeping. Of this we feel, 
 and ought to feel, an undoubting assurance. Let us bear 
 witness of the truth in our whole conduct : let us shew 
 that the truth animates us, rules in us : let us defend 
 
 F 2
 
 68 THE CONTEST WITH ROME. 
 
 the truth in every way, but above all by manifesting it 
 in our lives. 
 
 An infinite field of work lies spread out before us, 
 in which we are called to labour, the hearts and souls 
 and minds of the whole people of England. All these 
 are to be won from the devil, to be won for God. 
 They are to be brought to a living knowledge of God, 
 to a living faith in Him : they are to be trained for 
 lives of holiness and love. Their vices are to be sub- 
 dued ; their affections are to be cultivated ; their social 
 condition is to be bettered. If we are slothful or care- 
 less then, it will never be for lack of work, nor for 
 lack of motives to stir us up to it, . even without the 
 fresh motive supplied by our Romish rivals. Nor shall 
 we be slothful for lack of help. It is most true, the 
 mighty works to which we are called, can only be 
 accomplisht by God Himself; even as He alone can 
 pour out the light from its fountains, and can turn 
 the wheel of the seasons, and can send out the sun 
 on his course, and can bid the moon keep her watch 
 in heaven. But in the application of that which these 
 elementary powers effect, for the sustenance of human 
 life, and the increase of human comforts, we are chosen 
 to be God's instruments, yea, in a manner to be fellow- 
 workers with Him. So are we in everything pertaining 
 and conducive to the social welfare of mankind. No 
 social good, no improvement is effected without man's 
 instrumentality, without the help of man's thought and 
 energy and goodwill. But we have also a still higher 
 work appointed for us, a divine work, which angels 
 might desire to share with us : we, my Reverend 
 Brethren, are especially called to be God's instruments,
 
 THE CONTEST WITH ROME. 69 
 
 yea, His fellow-workers, in the spiritual regeneration 
 of our brethren, in the redemption and salvation of 
 mankind. 
 
 Does Rome desire to take part with us in this blessed, 
 this divine work ? Let her do her best in it. Provided 
 she perform her work honestly, faithfully, lovingly, 
 we will not grudge it to her. If she will labour at 
 saving souls, without ensnaring them into deadly errours 
 and corruptions, we will not hinder her work by any 
 outward impediment. Only let us be diligent in per- 
 forming our part, and in seeking God's help that we 
 may do so more diligently. He desires that this work 
 should be done. ^He has especially appointed us to do 
 it. Therefore we may be assured that He will help us, 
 that He will help and bless our weakest efforts, if they 
 are indeed made in faith and love. 
 
 Among other things, seeing that we have an undoubt- 
 ing belief that the truth is on our side, let us strive to 
 spread the knowledge of the truth among all classes, 
 by a diligent cultivation of the faculties whereby man 
 receives it. Let it be one of our chief aims to render 
 the education of all classes of the English nation a 
 Christian education, to train up the young of all classes 
 in the knowledge and service of God. 
 
 Here I cannot refrain from referring for a moment 
 to one of the few bright spots which have shone out 
 from the darkness of the past year : I mean the foun- 
 dation of the great School for the Middle Classes at 
 Hurstpierpoint. I was allowed to take part in the pro- 
 ceedings on that occasion ; and no event in the last 
 twelvemonth has given me so much pleasure, though 
 there have been a few others also of hopeful promise.
 
 70 THE CONTEST WITH ROME. 
 
 If we desire to uphold our Church, the most effectual 
 mode of doing so, under God, must be to train up her 
 children, and especially those of the Middle Classes, who 
 must needs exercise a mighty influence over the future 
 mind and character of the English Nation, in her faith 
 and worship, as dutiful, loving members of her com- 
 munion. This is the special purpose of that institution, 
 the purpose which its noblehearted founder, as our 
 Bishop, when laying the foundation stone, repeatedly 
 called him, most earnestly desires to accomplish, to which 
 he has solemnly pledged and bound himself, and to 
 which he has dedicated himself and everything that he 
 has, being himself a most dutiful, loving son of our 
 Church, animated with a righteous hatred of the false- 
 hoods and corruptions of Rome. Should similar in- 
 stitutions multiply and prosper, they promise to be 
 among the most efficient means for promoting the moral 
 wellbeing of the people of England, and for gathering 
 the whole nation under the wings of the Church (AG). 
 
 In this, my Brethren, and in all things, let us bear 
 in mind, what we are especially admonisht of by the 
 Gospel of the week, that this is the time of the Visi- 
 tation of our Church, and that the attack of the Papacy 
 upon us is among the tests whereby we are to be tried. 
 Our enemies are gathering round us, are starting up in 
 the midst of us. But they cannot harm us, unless we 
 are false to ourselves. If we are faithless, if we shew 
 no proofs of the boasted superiority of the light vouch- 
 safed to us, that light will be taken away : our enemies will 
 overcome us, will trample our Church in the dust ; and 
 the fate of Jerusalem will be hers. But, if we are
 
 THE CONTEST WITH ROME. 71 
 
 faithful, if we are dutiful, if we are diligent, if we shew 
 forth the fruits of faith in our lives, if we preach the 
 truth, and do it, if we are zealous in love and good works, 
 then, we may trust, our Church will ere long hear words 
 like those which were written to the Church of Smyrna : 
 Fear none of those things which tliou shall suffer : ye shall 
 have tribulation ten days : be thou faithful unto death / 
 and I will give tliee a crown of life. So be it : Amen.
 
 NOTES. 
 
 NOTE A : p. 7. 
 
 THE problem which Dr Newman has set himself in his recent 
 Lectures On the present Position of Catholics in England, is 
 certainly one of no ordinary difficulty. " I am going to enquire 
 (he says, p. 1) why it is, that, in this intelligent nation and in 
 this rational nineteenth century, we Catholics are so despised 
 and hated by our own countrymen." To a Protestant indeed, 
 who knows anything about history, many answers to this query 
 will suggest themselves. But what can a Romanist say? Dr 
 Newman however is not a person to shrink from difficulties. He 
 rather seems to love a problem the more, in proportion to the 
 ingenuity he has to spend in solving it. In the present instance 
 he has undertaken to shew that " Tradition is the sustaining 
 Power of the Protestant View of the Catholic Church," that 
 " Fable is its Basis," that " True Testimony is unequal to it," 
 that it is " logically inconsistent," that " Prejudice is its Life," 
 that " Assumed Principles are its Intellectual Instrument," 
 and that " Want of Intercourse with Catholics is its Protection." 
 In vigour of style these Lectures are perhaps even superior to 
 any of the author's previous writings. His humour, which on 
 other occasions he has manifestly reined in, has been allowed a 
 free course. In ingenious combinations they are rich, and in 
 feats of his peculiar logical dexterity. No Chinese juggler, no 
 Indian tumbler can surpass him. He will whirl round like a 
 wheel, and then balance himself on his little finger. But, as 
 pieces of reasoning, the Lectures are disjointed and arbitrary
 
 74 NOTE A. 
 
 throughout, and often quite flimsy ; and they must be felt to be 
 unsatisfactory, I should think, by most of the intelligent even 
 among those whose cause he is advocating. They abound too in 
 logical quicksands, on which if one tries to stand, one is in great 
 risk of being swallowed up. 
 
 To go through all the fallacies in these Lectures would require 
 a volume as large as they form. But it may not be altogether 
 useless to point out a few of them, by way of warning to the 
 incautious reader, lest he be deluded by their plausibilities, and 
 to shew the kind of arguments that the ablest champion of Rome 
 is driven to resort to. 
 
 I will begin with the first Lecture, in which the author un- 
 dertakes to prove the groundlessness of our English prejudices 
 against Rome in the following manner. " It happens every now 
 and then (he says, p. 11) that a Protestant, sometimes an En- 
 glishman, more commonly a foreiner, thinks it worth while to 
 look into the matter himself ; and his examination ends in his 
 confessing the absurdity of the outcry raised against the Catholic 
 Church, and the beauty or the excellence of those very facts and 
 doctrines which are the alleged ground of it." He then proposes 
 to shew by " the testimony of candid Protestants, who have ex- 
 amined into" her history and teaching on three points, that " the 
 bulk of the English nation are violent because they are ignorant, 
 and that Catholics are treated with scorn and injustice simply 
 because they have never patiently been heard." 
 
 Here Dr Newman has the whole field of history and doctrine 
 open to him. He may pick out the grossest misrepresentations 
 he can find, and may search through the whole of Protestant 
 literature for refutations of them. With such an amplitude of 
 choice, one might fancy he could hardly fail to make out a 
 specious case. What is it ? 
 
 In the first place, he draws a highly coloured representation of 
 the Protestant view of the Romish Church during the Middle 
 Ages ; and then, to refute that view, he professes (p. 14) to quote, 
 " what that eminent Protestant historian, M. Guizot, who was 
 lately Prime Minister of France, says of the Church in that
 
 NOTE A. 75 
 
 period, in which she is reported by our popular writers to have 
 been most darkened and corrupted." In a passage cited just 
 before from the Homilies, this period is said to extend " by the 
 space of above 800 years" before the Reformation, that is, from the 
 sixteenth to the eighth century : so, to shew the injustice of 
 this representation, Dr Newman brings forward an assertion of 
 Guizot's, that, " at the close of the fourth, and the commencement 
 of the fifth century, the Christian Church was the salvation of 
 Christianity." Nay, though this irrefragable testimony, bearing 
 so immediately on the point, with only a gap of three or four 
 hundred years, might be supposed to settle the whole question 
 about the abuses and corruptions of the Church during the ninth, 
 tenth, eleventh, twelfth, thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth cen- 
 turies, he resolves to strengthen his case still more by quoting what 
 Dr Waddington, in his Ecclesiastical History, observes to the 
 same t purport : "At this crisis, when the Western Empire was 
 overthrown, and occupied by unbelieving barbarians, it is not too 
 much to assert, that the Church was the instrument of heaven for 
 the preservation of the religion." Thus the Lecturer persuades 
 his credulous audience that he has parried his adversary's attack, 
 whereas in fact he has been lunging out in a totally different 
 direction. But doubtless it will ever be found to be the most 
 convenient way of vindicating the Papacy, to talk about what the 
 Church was and did before the Papacy existed, or at all events 
 before it grew up to that highth of power, when it absorbed the 
 evil spirits of the world into itself, and shed them abroad in a 
 blighting mildew over the Church. After the words just cited 
 from Dean Waddington, Dr Newman adds : " And then he goes 
 on to mention six special benefits which the Church of the Mid- 
 dle Ages conferred on the world." Here the interpolation of the 
 words, of the Middle Ages, gives an incorrect notion of what Dr 
 Waddington has said. The passage occurs at the close of his thir- 
 teenth Chapter, and refers to the period which intervened between 
 the destruction of the Western Empire and the reign of Charle- 
 magne, that is to say, which preceded what are especially termed 
 the Middle Ages, as well as what we have just seen defined to
 
 76 NOTE A. 
 
 be the calamitous period of the corruptions of the Papacy. In 
 like manner it has heen asserted that Nero was a very amiable 
 and beneficent soverein : but, when the grounds of this assertion 
 were examined into, it was found to rest mainly on his having 
 been popular in his youth for the sake of his grandfather, Ger- 
 manicus. This kind of testimony in behalf of the antenatal 
 beneficence of the Papacy will hardly prove that, as Dr Newman 
 boastfully asserts (p. 16), while "the nursery and schoolroom au- 
 thors are against" Rome, " the manly and original thinkers are 
 in her favour," or that they confess that "the Church in the Mid- 
 dle Ages was the mother of peace, and humanity, and order." It 
 must be a drowning cause that catches at such a straw. 
 
 Dr Newman's second attempt to rebut an evil report of his 
 Church is certainly less infelicitous. In opposition to the com- 
 mon tradition and rumour concerning the Jesuits, he cites Blanco 
 White's favorable account of their influence in Spain : though, 
 to be sure, one cannot well see how this account takes the sting 
 out of the Lettres Provinciates, or refutes the charges which in- 
 duced so many Governments in the last century to expell the 
 Jesuits from their dominions, and the Pope himself to abolish the 
 order. 
 
 On the other hand, his third attempt of the same kind is just 
 fit to run in harness with the first. In order to shew the 
 erroneousness of the Protestant notions of monks and monachism, 
 he quotes (p. 19) what "the very learned, and thoughtful, and cele- 
 brated German historian, Dr Neander, a deep-read student, a 
 man of facts, as a German should be," says about the institution 
 of mouachism, and about the habits and practices of the monks, in 
 the time of Chrysostom and Augustin and Basil. May we not 
 expect ere long to hear him rebuking the ignorance and folly of 
 the sanitary reformers, who complain of the pollution of the 
 waters of the Thames at London Bridge, because, when it rises in 
 the Cotswolds, the rill is very clear and pure ? 
 
 Among the paralogisms of most frequent occurrence in these 
 Lectures, one is that of arguing from a part to a whole ; another 
 is that of converting an effect into a cause. Where a general
 
 NOTE A. 77 
 
 strong aversion, like that of the English people to Popery, exists, 
 there will ever be a proneness to believe reports injurious to the 
 objects of this aversion and with regard to the appetite for 
 slander, it is most certain that the demand will soon produce a 
 plentiful supply. In the third Lecture, the object of which is to 
 prove that Fable is the basis of the Protestant view, Dr Newman 
 again says (p. 92), that he is " going to put his finger on three small 
 fountain-heads of the Tradition. The first shall be a specimen of the 
 tradition of literature, the second of the tradition of wealth, and the 
 third of the tradition of gentlemen." Here we may remark, in 
 the first place, that the existence of spurious coin does not destroy 
 or impair the value of the genuine : nor did Ishmael's being the 
 son of a concubine invalidate the legitimacy of Isaac. All history 
 would have to be cast to the dogs, if we may not believe any por- 
 tion of it with which erring tradition and fable have been mixt 
 up. But assuredly the first body that would then tumble to the 
 bottom of the pit, would be the Church of Rome. Doubtless the 
 English aversion to Romanism has given birth to a number of 
 fables, to many gross exaggerations and misrepresentations : but 
 England has also produced a series of eminent men, who have 
 desired to speak the truth about Rome, and have spoken it, who 
 have carefully investigated the grounds of her pretensions, and 
 have examined her system of doctrines, their origin and their 
 development, who have turned them round and round, scanning 
 them on every side, and have found the truth overgrown by 
 manifold errours, and corrupted by large admixtures of false- 
 hood, the moral life denaturalized, and tainted with all manner 
 of evil. 
 
 The first of the three traditions which Dr Newman selects, to make 
 examples of them, for the sake of proving that Fable is the Basis 
 of the popular Protestant view of his Church, is the misrepre- 
 sentation of the sermon of Eligius, which had already gained 
 considerable notoriety from its exposure by Mr Maitland, in one 
 of his learned and entertaining Essays on the Dark Ages. In 
 that series it had an appropriate place, more so than when 
 occupying ten pages of Dr Newman's Lecture. For, though it
 
 78 NOTE A. 
 
 is a remarkable instance of the carelessness with which even 
 celebrated authors go on repeating one another, without taking 
 the trouble of looking into the grounds of their assertions, it can 
 hardly be conceived to have had much influence on the popular 
 view of Romanism. Its interest is chiefly as an example how 
 still, as of old, draXatTrutpoQ ij rrjc, cr'\T/0t'cte Yjrijffte, a remark 
 which certainly does not apply less to Rome than to other 
 communions. 
 
 Here however it may be observed that, though the history of 
 this misrepresentation proves that Protestant authors, as well as 
 Romanist, will receive and repeat stories without taking the 
 trouble of ascertaining their correctness, it also proves that 
 among Protestants, at all events, there are laborious and con- 
 scientious lovers of truth, who will search after it, and will be 
 zealous in proclaiming it, even when it makes for their ad- 
 versaries. How many such men are to be found among the 
 Romish saints, or their canonizers, or their historians, is not 
 recorded.* 
 
 * In this instance, at least, Dr Newman has not shewn that he has any right 
 to reprehend Mosheim. The wrong done to Eligius consists in this, that by 
 Maclaine, Robertson, Jortin, and Mr Hallam, he is reported to have taught that 
 Christianity consisted in paying ecclesiastical dues, and divers ceremonial obser- 
 vances, making no mention of the love of God, or of our moral duties. This latter 
 negative feature in the account originates entirely with Maclaine. There is not a 
 word of the sort in Mosheim ; who merely says, in his account of the seventh 
 century (Part II. cap. iii.); " Illi (antiquiores Christiani) Christum morte ac san- 
 guine suo peccata mortalium expiasse doccbant : Hi (qui hoc saeculo Christiani 
 dicebantur), parum aberat, quin decernerent, nulli, qui sacrum ordinem seu eccle- 
 siam muneribus ditaret, coeli fores occlusas esse." To these words he subjoins 
 the extract from Eligius, without any observation upon it. He quotes it solely 
 to bear out this particular assertion, as it docs, especially by the words, liedimite 
 animus vest.'as de poena, etc., and Da, quia dedimus, which bring out the contrast 
 to the expiation through the blood of Christ. Whereas Dr Newman, exulting in the 
 victory gained ever half a dozen Protestant historians and divines, not by himself 
 but by two Protestants, says (p. 98) : " Now let us proceed to the first father of 
 Mumpsimus, the Lutheran Mosheim himself: (To enliven his anecdotical Lecture 
 he had prefaced his story of Eligius by Bentley's celebrated one about Mumpsimus.) 
 His words run thus in his Ecclesiastical History : ' The earlier Christians, . . . 
 taught that Christ had made expiation for the sins of men by his death and his 
 blood ; the latter (those of the seventh century) seemed to inculcate that the gates 
 of heaven would be closed against none who should enrich the clergy or the church
 
 NOTE A. 79 
 
 Dr Newman's other two stories relate to our own days ; and, 
 after tearing them to pieces elaborately, he adds (p. 119): 
 " And now I will state my conviction, which I am sure to have 
 confirmed by every intelligent person who takes the trouble to 
 
 with their donations. The former were studious to maintain a holy simplicity, and to 
 follow a pure and chaste piety, the latter place the substance of religion in external 
 rites and bodily exercises.'' And then, in order to illustrate this contrast, which 
 he has drawn out, between the spirituality of the first Christians and the forma- 
 lity of the Papists, he quotes the famous passage which has been the matter of 
 our investigation." Here Dr Newman misrepresents Mosheim, whose quotation, 
 as we have seen, is appended to the former sentence, not to the latter. It is 
 introduced to substantiate that particular assertion, which it does substantiate ; 
 and this is apparent also in Maclaine's Translation. But, as Dr Newman's ver- 
 sion of these words differs from Maclaine's, he probably made use of the original ; 
 and, if so, he is utterly unjustifiable in imputing any portion of the blame to 
 " the Lutheran Mosheim," who had a Lutheran love of truth, and exhibited it 
 wonderfully in his Institutes of Ecclesiastical History. Still less does the excellent 
 Chancellor of Gottingen deserve my friend, Dr Waddington's, vehement abuse, 
 which Dr Newman takes pleasure in repeating, and for which there is not the 
 slightest ground. Nay, there seems to be a fatality about this passage, that they 
 who come near it shall run foul of it ; for even Mr Maitland, one of the most ac- 
 curate of men, who, in his second Letter to Mr Rose, has pronounced so high a 
 eulogium on Mosheim's wonderful learning and accuracy, has joined here in con- 
 demning him, pronouncing (p. 113) that the Sermon of Eligius " seems to have 
 been written as if he had anticipated all and each of Mosheim's and Maclaine's 
 charges, and intended to furnish a pointed answer to almost every one." Mr 
 Maitland does indeed notice one inaccuracy in Mosheim's text (p. 109), that, 
 though he " printed the passage in such a way as to shew that there were some 
 omissions, he did not indicate all." But the most vigilant correction of tlie press 
 will not secure an author from these inaccuracies, least of all in such a book as 
 Mosheim's. 
 
 For myself, I became acquainted with the history of these misrepresentations 
 accidentally five and twenty years ago. When Southey was engaged on his 
 Vindication of his Book of the Church, he wrote to my Brother, then resident at 
 New College, and begged him to look in the Bodleian at the Sermon of Eligius, 
 which Mr Butler and Dr Lingard had accused Mosheim of misrepresenting. In 
 telling me of this, my Brother said he had found that the Sermon was a very 
 good, pious, practical one ; but that, amid much excellent moral exhortation, it 
 contained a few sentences about ceremonial and ecclesiastical matters ; that these 
 Mosheim had extracted, very correctly for his purpose, but by so doing had misled 
 his Translator into supposing that these sentences formed the substance of the 
 Sermon ; and that this unwarranted assertion of Maclaine's had been repeated 
 by Robertson and others. This information, which he sent to Southey, was in- 
 corporated in Southey's Letters to Mr Butler, publisht in 1826 (pp. 5962); 
 where he speaks in a mild and sensible tone about the matter, advantageouslv
 
 80 NOTE A. 
 
 examine the subject, that such slanders as I have instanced are 
 the real foundation on which the Anti-Catholic feeling mainly 
 rests in England, and without which it could not long be main- 
 tained." Surely this is something like putting the cart before 
 the horse, as the phrase is, or rather like making the column 
 
 contrasted with that of the other writers on it. " I should express myself (he 
 says) not less indignantly than you have done, if upon due examination I had 
 not perceived that it was evidently unintentional, and in what manner it had 
 arisen. It originated with Mosheim, an author whose erudition it would be 
 superfluous to commend, and to whose fidelity, as far as my researches have lain 
 in the same track, I can bear full testimony. The passage from Eligius is 
 strictly in point to the assertion in the text ; and Mosheim cannot justly be ac- 
 cused of garbling the original, because he has not shewn that these exhortations 
 were accompanied with others to the practice of Christian virtues. To have done 
 this would have been altogether irrelevant ; but by not doing it he has misled his 
 translator, who, supposing that St Eligius had required nothing more than libe- 
 rality to the Church from a good Christian, observes that he makes no mention 
 of any other virtues. The misrepresentation on his part was plainly uninten- 
 tional ; and it was equally so in Robertson, who followed him ; and however 
 censurable both may be for commenting thus hastily upon an extract, without 
 examining the context, Mosheim is clearly acquitted of all blame." How often 
 do we see that an ounce of common sense is worth pounds, nay, hundredweights 
 of learning and logic ! But if Dr Newman had taken this reasonable view of 
 the matter, what would have become of his Lecture ? What would have become 
 of his denunciations against Protestant fictions and fables ? What would have 
 become of his argument, if he had not produced any fable in that Lecture anterior 
 to 1851, to account for the origin and growth and spread of the English aversion 
 to Rome ? 
 
 As to Dr Newman's burst of indignation, when he winds up his story by 
 saying (p. 102) that, he * knew enough of the Protestant mind, to be aware how 
 little the falsehood of any one of its traditions is an effectual reason for its relin- 
 quishing it," and that accordingly in the new edition o Mosheim, publisht in 
 1841, the text with Maclaine's observation is left standing, " without a word of 
 remark, or anything whatever to shew that a falsehood had been uttered, a false- 
 hood traditionally perpetuated, a falsehood emphatically exposed," it really looks 
 like an assumed bluster to impose upon his hearers. It must be by a slip of me- 
 mory, by a transfer of the present to the past, that he charges his former co- 
 religionists with retaining their traditions, notwithstanding the exposure of their 
 falsehood ; and surely there is a very simple way of accounting for the retention 
 of the errour in the new edition of Mosheim. Without having the least notion 
 who the editor may be, I feel sure he was not aware that Maclaine's statement 
 had been shewn to be erroneous. 
 
 A like petty, almost paltry, imputation, utterly unworthy of Dr Newman, 
 occurs in the next Lecture, where he tells us (p. 137) that Blanco White's 
 Poor Man's Preservative against Popery, used to be on the catalogue of the
 
 NOTE A. 81 
 
 stand on the cobwebs which are spun round its capital. At least 
 two of his three stories, since they belong to the year 1851, can 
 hardly have had much hand in producing the excitement of last 
 autumn ; however powerfully the supposititious Sermon of poor 
 Eligius may have contributed to inflame it. But who knows ? if 
 we wait a while, may we not be told that they were among the 
 causes which brought about the Reformation ? Chronology has 
 divers uses ; and not the least of them is, that it will now and 
 then pull in those who are running riot in manufacturing history 
 out of their own brain. 
 
 Dr Newman however admits that these and similar stories do 
 not form the one sole ground of the English hatred of Rome. 
 " Doubtless," he says, with exemplary candour, " there are argu- 
 ments of a different calibre, whatever their worth, which weigh 
 against Catholics with half-a-dozen members of the University, 
 with the speculative church-restorer, with the dilettante divine, 
 with the fastidious scholar, and with some others of a higher 
 character of mind ; whether St Justin Martyr said this or that ; 
 whether images should be drest in muslin, or hewed out of stone; 
 what criticism makes of a passage in the prophets, questions 
 such as these, and others of a more serious cast, may be con- 
 clusive for or against the Church in the study or in the lecture- 
 room, but they have no influence with the many." Now, since 
 Dr Newman, in his prior state of being, spent so many years at 
 Oxford, and took an active part in the theological controversies 
 there, he must be a thoroughly competent witness, both as to the 
 points on which those controversies turned, and as to the number 
 of persons who took part in them. Therefore, in some future 
 
 Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, but that, on enquiring after it 
 recently, he was told it was out of print. Hence he infers that it can never have 
 been popular, because it was too temperate, and adds (p. 166), " Truth is not 
 equal to the exigences of the Protestant cause ; falsehood is its best friend." But 
 surely there was ample reason for the withdrawal of that work from the Society's 
 Catalogue, in its author's subsequent notorious infidelity. This motive Dr New- 
 man suggests, (p. 138) but rejects. It would not serve his purpose ; therefore it 
 could not be true. We may feel some satisfaction, when we see our enemy 
 reduced to use such brittle weapons against us. 
 
 O
 
 02 NOTE A. 
 
 Romish History of England, it will be recorded as an irrefra- 
 gable fact, resting on the most indisputable testimony, even 
 that of the greatest controversialist in Oxford, that in the twelve 
 years from 1832 to 1844 there were just "half-a-dozen members 
 of the University " who had anything to urge against Rome of 
 greater weight than mere flagrant forgeries, and that these 
 weightier arguments were, whether Justin Martyr said this or 
 that, whether images should be drest in muslin, or hewn out of 
 stone, and what criticism makes of a passage in the prophets. 
 This is a sample of the history we may expect, when Protestant 
 fictions and fables are swept away, and Romish truth has no 
 longer any one to check its flight over the subject universe. Or, 
 should some solitary surviving Protestant, who had spent his life 
 in learned enquiries, presume to contradict this assertion, saying 
 that in a secret corner of the Bodleian he had discovered a unique 
 copy of certain Lectures on Romanism and Popular Protestantism, 
 which were delivered at Oxford during that very period, in the 
 year 1837, and in which a totally different line of argument was 
 taken against Romanism, and one of great depth and power, he 
 will be held to be utterly confuted, when he produces the book 
 and exhibits the name on the titlepage ; as it will be deemed a 
 palpable impossibility that the author of the above-mentioned 
 statement could have forgotten his having written such a work ; 
 which our unfortunate Protestant will therefore be pronounced to 
 have forged, and the guilt of which he will have to expiate by a 
 lifelong imprisonment in the dens of the Holy Office. 
 
 It is true, Dr Newman does just allow that there are also other 
 questions " of a more serious cast," which " may be conclusive for 
 or against the Church in the study or in the lecture- room." 
 These words may embrace his own Lectures on Romanism. They 
 may be meant to comprise all that has been said against Rome 
 by Jewel and Hooker and Field and Andrewes and Bramhall and 
 Jackson and Taylor and Chillingworth and Stillingfleet and 
 Barrow. These men have brought forward certain arguments 
 " of a more serious cast," which must needs " weigh against " 
 Romanism with a portion of the afore-mentioned " half-a-dozen
 
 NOTE A. 83 
 
 members of the University." By this rhetorical artifice the 
 author preserves himself from saying what is absolutely false. I 
 do not mean to accuse him of intending to deceive his readers. 
 But it appears always to have been almost a law of his mind, 
 to see hardly anything but what he can colour with his own 
 opinions and feelings. The objects and facts which seem to 
 make for him, he multiplies and magnifies : those which are 
 adverse, he diminishes till they are almost imperceptible : and 
 , thus, by exaggerating the common practice of marshaling a 
 host of Brobdignagians in opposition to a few scattered Lilli- 
 putians, he leads the unwary reader to believe that his victory 
 is certain and decisive. This process, exemplified more or less 
 in all Dr Newman's writings, has never been carried to such a 
 highth as in these last Lectures, in which almost everything is 
 out of place, out of keeping, out of sequence, out of proportion ; 
 his logical caleidoscope giving a semblance of harmony to objects, 
 which in themselves have neither significance nor connexion. 
 
 If we ask what Dr Newman has effected by these two Lec- 
 tures, the first and third, toward explaining the causes of the 
 English hostility to Popery, the answer is, Nothing. Of the story 
 of Maria Monk, about which he speaks in the fourth Lecture, I 
 am ignorant. If the statement, that above two hundred thousand 
 copies of it have been circulated in the last fifteen years, be 
 correct, it must needs have inflamed many prejudices. But 
 as to the stories I have referred to, you might as reasonably 
 assert that the wheel is impelled by the mud which flies off 
 from it. The great fact remains just as it was, unexplained, 
 unaccounted for. Doubtless, it has been fostered by traditions ; 
 but these, as I have said in the Charge, are great historical 
 traditions, such as brought about the Reformation, not only in 
 England, but in many other regions of Europe, and would have 
 done so more widely still, if it had not been supprest by the 
 sword of the civil power. If we would trace the origin of these 
 traditions, we may search in the records of the Councils of the 
 fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, we may search in the his- 
 tories, and in the literature of the Middle Ages. Both before and
 
 84 NOTE B. 
 
 since the Reformation, the great adversary to the Papacy has 
 not been Fable, but History. 
 
 NOTE B : p. 7. 
 
 I HAVE already had occasion to shew, in my Vindication of 
 Luther, that Dr Newman's conception of the great German 
 Reformer, as exhibited in his Lectures on Justification, was no 
 more like him than it was like the man in the moon. In his 
 subsequent writings, whenever he speaks of Luther, the same 
 fabulous shadow reappears. This however is no more than an 
 instance of a practice which has been growing upon him, that of 
 substituting the creations of his own mind for the realities of 
 history. In the very singular confession and retractation prefixt 
 to his Essay on Development, he has himself avowed that he was 
 wont to do so. After quoting some of the strongest passages 
 condemnatory of Rome from his earlier writings, he says : " If 
 you ask me how an individual could venture, not simply to hold, 
 but to publish such views of a communion so ancient, so wide- 
 spreading, so fruitful in saints, I answer that I said to myself, ' I 
 am not speaking my own words, I am but following almost a 
 consensus of the divines of my Church. They have ever used the 
 strongest language against Rome, even the most able and learned 
 of them. I wish to throw myself into their system. While I 
 say what they say, I am safe. Such views, too, are necessary for 
 our position.'" 
 
 Now in this passage, I am persuaded, Dr Newman grievously 
 wronged his former self. He had not said to himself, " I am not 
 speaking my own words, I am but following a consensus of the 
 divines of my Church." He had not said to himself, " While 
 I say what they say, I am safe." He had not said to himself, 
 " Such views are necessary for our position." He can never have 
 been guilty of such a flagrant violation of a writer's highest, 
 most sacred duty, as to bring such conduct distinctly before his 
 conscience, and to set up such an excuse for it. Still doubtless,
 
 NOTE B. 85 
 
 though his words caricature, they do in some measure represent 
 his practice. He had done what he here charges himself with, 
 though he cannot have cheated his conscience with such a paltry 
 excuse for it. In fact we are all too apt to do so, more or less. 
 When we have to speak, even on the most solemn and awful 
 subjects, instead of endeavouring earnestly and laboriously to 
 ascertain the truth, and to speak the truth, the whole truth, and 
 nothing but the truth, we too often merely give utterance to 
 what we seem to perceive from our casual point of view, 
 under the dominant feelings of the moment-, and often merely 
 echoing the voices of others. Nevertheless the evil of such a 
 practice has its gradations ; and it will be worse, in a calm> 
 meditative, self-conscious, self-analysing mind, like Dr Newman's, 
 which is accustomed to watch its own movements, as is implied 
 in his confession. Even in this practice we may discern a 
 nascent tendency Home-wards, both in the setting up of authority 
 instead of and above truth, and in the aptness to throw the 
 responsibility of his actions upon others. Thoroughly Romish 
 too is the notion, While I say what they say I am safe, a 
 motive avowed by a number of our Romanizers, as though the 
 purpose of man's mission here on earth were to cry Sauve qui 
 pent, and to be the first in following his own cry. Dr Newman 
 might call these the germs of his subsequent development, the 
 indications that Rome was his destination : and such indications 
 and germs there are in all men, unless the Spirit of God enables 
 us to overcome and crush them.* 
 
 * Since these paragraphs went to the press, I have met with Dr Newman's 
 attempt to explain and vindicate his Retractation, in the Lectures on Anglicanism, 
 p. 117. But I do not find any reason in it for altering what I have written. Indeed 
 I myself had tried to defend his former self against him. He now says that what 
 he meant to apologize for was, not his holding, but his publishing his opinions 
 hostile to Rome. " He spoke what he felt, what he thought, what at the time he 
 held, and nothing but what he held, with an internal assent ; but he would not 
 have dared to say it, he would have shrunk, as well he might, from standing up, 
 a sinner and a worm, an accuser against the great Roman communion, unless in 
 doing so he felt he had been doing simply what his own Church required of him, 
 and what was necessary for his Church's case." With regard to these last words 
 1 still feel inclined to question the correctness of his memory. A hired advocate
 
 86 NOTE B. 
 
 Of course, in proportion as he approximated to Rome, this 
 habit of mind grew stronger. When a Church sets up herself as 
 the Truth, she must needs cease in time to perceive that there is 
 any essential difference between truth and falsehood. Both are 
 regarded as dependent on her will ; and such a will is soon 
 tempted to disport itself, and to display its absolute authority, 
 by decreeing each to be the other. He who would usurp God's 
 place, as is set forth in a number of mythological fables, makes 
 himself over to the Evil One. 
 
 Similar notions concerning historical truth are exprest in the 
 Advertisement prefixt to the second number of the Lives of the 
 English Saints ; about the authorship of which little doubt could 
 be entertained, even without the initials subjoined to it. " The 
 question," it is there said, " will naturally suggest itself to the 
 reader, whether the miracles recorded in these narratives are to 
 be received as matters of fact ; and in this day, and under our 
 present circumstances, we can only reply, that there is no reason 
 why they should not be. They are the kind of facts proper to 
 ecclesiastical history, just as instances of sagacity and daring, 
 personal prowess or crime, are the facts proper to secular history. 
 And if the tendency of credulity or superstition to exaggerate 
 and invent creates a difficulty in the reception of facts ecclesias- 
 tical, so does the existence of party spirit, private interests, 
 personal attachments, malevolence, and the like, call for caution 
 and criticism in the reception of facts secular and civil. There 
 is little or nothing then, primd facie, in the miraculous accounts 
 in question to repell a properly taught, and religiously disposed 
 
 does indeed consciously ask himself what is necessary to make out his client's 
 case. But a divine's business is not to make out a case. He has to speak the 
 truth ; and when he has duly convinced himself that what he desires to say is 
 true, he has only two questions to ask himself, first, Is it desirable under the 
 present circumstances that this particular truth should be uttered ? and in what 
 manner ? and secondly, Am I the right person to utter this truth ? sliall I be able 
 to utter it wisely, so/icrly, in such manner that it shall exercise the Jiealing, saving 
 pmver of Truth ? or owjlit 1 to leave it for some one better qualified to be Truth's 
 spokesman and proj>het. Dr Newman's temptation however is not to make out a 
 case, except for his own system. He builds up that ; and to that, as in Joseph's 
 dream, the sun and the moon and the eleven stars have to make obeisance.
 
 NOTE B 8< 
 
 mind ; which will accordingly give them a prompt and hearty 
 acquiescence, or a passive admission, or receive them in part, or 
 hold them in suspense, or absolutely reject them, according as 
 the evidence makes for or against them, or is, or is not of a 
 trustworthy character." 
 
 Here thus much may readily be granted, that a wise lover of 
 Truth, will not take upon himself to pronounce absolutely a priori 
 against any of these ecclesiastical facts, as Dr Newman terms 
 them. In judging of them, he will be guided by the same 
 principles of criticism, which determine his decision with regard 
 to facts of secular history, modifying those principles, so far as 
 may be required by the nature of the subject matter. For in 
 secular history the main facts are on a large scale, are wrought 
 before the eyes of the world ; and the whole nation in a manner 
 takes part in them and witnesses them. Of that which is 
 anecdotical, and merely personal, the judicious historian will be 
 sparing; and, when he introduces it, he will exercise a strict 
 scrutiny of the evidence. But these ecclesiastical facts are mostly 
 anecdotical ; and their evidence is usually of the vaguest, mea- 
 grest kind, a mere rumour, a tradition proceeding from a witness 
 incapable of judging, and apt to be imposed upon ; and this 
 tradition is ever found to grow more marvellous in proportion 
 as it recedes from the fountain-head. If Dr Newman, and his 
 associates in the Lives of the Saints, had resolved to exercise the 
 strict principles of historical criticism on their facts, those Lives 
 would have remained unwritten, or would have shrunk up into 
 mere fragmentary skeletons. But they have lulled their con- 
 sciences, by saying to themselves, " These are the kind of facts 
 proper to Ecclesiastical History ; and in this day, and under our 
 present circumstances, we can only say that there is no reason 
 why they should not be true. When the race of Protestant 
 cavilers is extinct, it will be otherwise. We shall then be able 
 to speak out more boldly." Yet surely an ecclesiastical historian 
 ought to be quite as scrupulous about the correctness of his facts 
 as a secular. Religion gives no license for lying. Ought he not to 
 lay down the good old rule for himself 1 ? OVK iic TOV
 
 NOTE B. 
 
 ?;<w<ra ypafytiv, ovd' utg ffiol e&ket, a'XX' olg re avroc 
 Kai trapa rwv aXXwv oow Ivvarov dupigeiq. irspl tKdtrrov 
 Ought he not also to keep diligent watch against 
 and to reject the temptation, that e'c jutv dicpoairtv ro JUT) fivQtLtits 
 avrtiv drepTTEffTepov Qavtirai j 
 
 That ro nvO&cifG exercises a mighty fascination on the mind of 
 Dr Newman and his followers, is seen far too clearly in those 
 Lives of the English Saints. Another extraordinary instance of 
 it occurs in his Sermon on the Establishment of the Bomish 
 Hierarchy, last autumn, in which, after speaking of the conversion 
 of the Anglosaxons, he says : " The fair form of Christianity rose 
 tip and grew and expanded like a beautiful pageant from north 
 to south ; it was majestic, it was solemn, it was bright, it was 
 beautiful and pleasant, it was soothing to the griefs, it was plea- 
 sant to the hopes of man, it was at once a teaching and a worship ; 
 it had a dogma, a mystery, a ritual of its own ; it had an hierar- 
 chical form. A brotherhood of holy pastors, with mitre and crosier, 
 and hand uplifted, walked forth and blessed and ruled the joyful 
 people. The crucifix headed the procession, and simple monks 
 were there with hearts in prayer, and sweet chants resounded, 
 and the holy Latin tongue was heard, and boys came forth in 
 white, swinging censers, and the fragrant cloud arose, and mass 
 was sung, and the saints were invoked ; and day after day, and 
 in the still night, and over the woody hills, and in the quiet 
 plains, as constantly as sun and moon and stars go forth in 
 heaven, so regular and solemn was the stately march of blessed 
 services on earth, high festival, and gorgeous procession, and 
 soothing dirge, and passing bell, and the familiar evening call to 
 prayer ; till he who recollected the old pagan time, would think 
 unreal what he beheld and heard, and conclude he did but see a 
 vision, so marvellously was heaven let down upon earth, so tri- 
 umphantly were chased away the fiends of darkness to their 
 prison below." 
 
 This page out of a Delia- Cruscan novel, who could suppose 
 that it was intended to describe a portion of real history ? Who, 
 remembering what he may have read in other books concerning
 
 NOTE B. 89 
 
 the Anglosaxon Heptarchy and Monarchy, would imagine that 
 this could be a representation of that period ? To be sure, it 
 will do for that period, as well as for any other, and seems rather 
 designed for the Elysian fields, or the Islands of the Blessed. 
 Perhaps it may be deemed fery beautiful by those who can con- 
 ceive Beauty as existing apart from Truth. Others it will rather 
 remind of . the painted dolls, robed in pink muslin, with spangles 
 and beads, that are set up to be worshipt by the devotees of the 
 Virgin. To others it may seem that the Author has described 
 his own vision best in calling it "a beautiful pageant." After a 
 few more sentences, we are told that, "as time went on, the work 
 did but sink deeper and deeper into the English nature." The 
 English did indeed " become a peculiar, special people, I will 
 say a bold thing, in its staidness, sagacity, and simplicity, more 
 like the mind that rules, through all time, the princely line of 
 Roman pontiffs, than perhaps any other Christian people whom 
 the world has seen." From which sagacity, and which simplicity, 
 the simplicity of the serpent, may God ever preserve us ! A 
 very bold thing indeed the writer has here said, with far more 
 of boldness, than of truth, nay, a thing which could not be true. 
 What would a nation be, with a heart and mind like that of the 
 Popes, like that which is imposed upon the Popes by their training 
 and their awful position 1 " And so (the Sermon proceeds) things 
 went on for many centuries. Generation followed generation ; 
 revolution came after revolution ; great men rose and fell : there 
 were bloody wars, and invasions, conquests, slavery, recoveries, 
 civil dissensions, settlements." But all the while " boys came 
 forth in white, swinging censers ; and the fragrant cloud arose." 
 And so things went on down to the time of the Reformation. 
 Then people grew tired of all these pretty playthings, as chil- 
 dren will grow tired of sugarplums and lollipop. "They preferred 
 the heathen virtues of their original nature to the robe of grace 
 which God had given : they fell back upon their worldly integrity, 
 honour, energy, prudence, and perseverance :" wherein they were 
 not far wrong, if there was nothing more real and living in their 
 previous state than processions " with mitre and crosier," and
 
 90 NOTE B. 
 
 chants in " the holy Latin tongue," and " boys in white, swinging 
 censers." 
 
 I will quote another example, shewing how, in this mode of 
 painting, black becomes white, and white becomes black, just as 
 the artist's momentary fancy dictates. In the Essay on Develop- 
 ment, having composed a picture of the early Church, by a kind 
 of mosaic, out of the reports of Heathen writers, the Author sets 
 himself to shew how closely this corresponds with the present 
 aspect of the Church of Rome, desiring hereby to establish the 
 identity of the one with the other. The paragraph in which this 
 is done, is quite a prodigy of rhetorical ingenuity. " If there is 
 a form of Christianity now in the world which is accused of gross 
 superstition, of borrowing its rites and customs from the heathen, 
 and of ascribing to forms and ceremonies an occult virtue ; a 
 religion which is considered to burden and enslave the mind by 
 its requisitions, to address itself to the weakminded and ignorant, 
 to be supported by sophistry and imposture, and to contradict 
 reason and exalt mere irrational faith ; a religion which im- 
 presses on the serious mind very distressing views of the guilt and 
 consequences of sin, sets upon the minute acts of the day, one by 
 one, their definite value for praise or blame, and thus casts a 
 grave shadow over the future ; a religion which holds up to 
 admiration the surrender of wealth, and disables serious persons 
 from enjoying it if they would ; a religion, the doctrines of 
 which, be they good or bad, are to the generality of men un- 
 known, which is considered to bear on its very surface signs of 
 folly and falsehood so distinct that a glance suffices to judge of it, 
 and careful examination is preposterous ; which is felt to be so 
 simply bad, that it may be calumniated at hazard and at plea- 
 sure, it being nothing but absurdity to stand upon the accurate 
 distribution of its guilt among its particular acts, or painfully 
 to determine how far this or that story is literally true, what must 
 be allowed in candour, or what is improbable, or what cuts two 
 ways, or what is not proved, or what may be plausibly defended ; 
 a religion such, that men look at a convert to it with a feel- 
 ing which no other sect raises, except Judaism, Socialism, or
 
 NOTE B. 91 
 
 Mormonism, with curiosity, suspicion, fear, disgust, as the case 
 may be, as if something strange had befallen him, as if he had had 
 an initiation into a mystery, and had come into communion with 
 dreadful influences, as if he were now one of a confederacy which 
 claimed him, absorbed him, stripped him of his personality, re- 
 duced him to a mere organ or instrument of a whole; a religion 
 which men hate as proselytizing, anti-social, revolutionary, as 
 dividing families, separating chief friends, corrupting the maxims 
 of government, making a mock at law, dissolving the empire, the 
 enemy of human nature, and a ' conspirator against its rights and 
 privileges ;' a religion which they consider the champion and 
 instrument of darkness, and a pollution calling down upon the 
 land the anger of heaven ; a religion which they associate with 
 intrigue and conspiracy, which they speak about in whispers, 
 which they detect by anticipation in whatever goes wrong, and to 
 which they impute whatever is unaccountable ; a religion the 
 very name of which they cast out as evil, and use simply as a bad 
 epithet, and which from the impulse of self-preservation they 
 would persecute if they could ; if there be such a religion now in 
 the world, it is not unlike Christianity as that same world viewed 
 it when first it came forth from its Divine Author" (pp. 240 242). 
 This marvellous sentence might suggest many remarks. I will 
 merely observe, that, if it is to be regarded as anything more 
 serious than a feat of rhetorical skill, the proof of identity is not 
 to be found in similarity of outward aspect at distant periods, 
 but in similarity of spirit and principle. Indeed it may be 
 said to be a moral impossibility that any living power on this 
 changeful earth should exhibit the same aspect at two periods, 
 with an interval of eighteen hundred years between them. The 
 aspect of dead things, such as the pyramids, may change but 
 little; but no man at seventy can look like what he was when a 
 boy : he who came nearest to it would be a dwarf. The child 
 is the " father of the man :" he is not the man. Yet the full- 
 grown man is more like the boy, than a dwarf would be. Nor 
 can a nation, after a millennium, present the same form and 
 features. If the Church, after eighteen hundred years, during
 
 92 NOTE B. 
 
 which nation after nation has been gathered into her, during 
 which the kings of the earth have bowed down to her, during 
 which generation after generation has been proclaiming her doc- 
 trine by word and action, still appears in the eyes of those who 
 have watcht and traced her progress, as, when she first emerged 
 from Judea, she appeared in the eyes of those who knew nothing 
 of her, and merely hated her as an alien intruder, what must have 
 become of all the power with which she was entrusted for the 
 regeneration and purification of the world 1 Has she been 
 wrapping it up in a napkin, and burying it in the ground ? Has 
 she been unable to make it apparent in any way that the King- 
 dom of God is come upon earth 1 Such powerlessness could 
 only have proceeded from the fact, that the Prince of this world 
 had gained dominion within her, and over her ; whereupon he 
 would triumph by trampling her in the dust. 
 
 But my purpose in citing this passage was to shew how 
 rapidly, when it suits the rhetorician's purpose, everything is 
 changed. He waves his wand ; and a totally different vision 
 starts up. In his recent Lectures, as we have seen, Dr Newman 
 undertakes to explain how it has come to pass that the Church of 
 Rome is regarded with such scorn and hatred in England. Now, 
 if there were any truth in the picture we have just been contem- 
 plating, if this were the aspect that she presents, the explanation 
 would be ready at hand. If the idea and presence of Christianity 
 is still as strange and alien in all the nations of Europe, as it was 
 in the time of Tacitus, no wonder that it should still be termed 
 and treated as "a pernicious superstition." But, as I have just 
 said, the rhetorician waves his wand ; and what do we see now ? 
 " Considering, what is as undeniable a fact as that there is a 
 country called France, or an ocean called the Atlantic, the actual 
 extent, the renown, and the manifold influence of the Catholic 
 religion, considering that it surpasses in territory and in popu- 
 lation any other Christian communion, nay, surpasses them all put 
 together, considering that it is the religion of two hundred mil- 
 lions of souls, that it is found in every quarter of the globe, that 
 it penetrates into all classes of the social body, that it is received
 
 NOTE B. 93 
 
 by entire nations, that it is so multiform in its institutions, and 
 so exuberant in its developments, and so fresh in its resources, as 
 any tolerable knowledge of it will be sure to bring home to our 
 minds, that it has been the creed of men the most profound 
 and the most refined, and the source of works the most bene- 
 ficial, the most arduous, and the most beautiful ; and, moreover 
 considering that, thus ubiquitous, thus commanding, thus intel- 
 lectual, thus energetic, thus efficient, it has remained one and the 
 same for centuries, considering that all this must be owned by 
 its most virulent enemies, explain it how they will ; surely it is 
 a phenomenon the most astounding, that a nation like our own, 
 should so manage to hide this fact from their minds, as habi- 
 tually to scorn, and ridicule, and abhor, the professors of that 
 religion. Was there ever such an instance of self-sufficient, 
 dense, and ridiculous bigotry, as that which rises up and walls 
 in the minds of our fellow countrymen from all knowledge of one 
 of the most remarkable phenomena which the history of the 
 world has seen 1 This broad fact of Catholicism, as real as the 
 continent of America, or the Milky Way, which they cannot deny, 
 Englishmen will not entertain ; they shut their eyes, they thrust 
 their heads into the sand, and try to get rid of a great vision, a 
 great reality, under the name of Popery; they will not recognise, 
 what infidels recognise as well as Catholics, the vaatness, the 
 grandeur, the splendour, the loveliness of the manifestations of 
 this time-honoured ecclesiastical confederation" (pp. 41, 42). 
 
 If there were truth in the preceding picture, all this perplexity 
 would vanish It is not to be wondered at that Ulysses was not 
 recognised when he came to his home in rags, after twenty years 
 of absence. Our poet however has here chosen to strip off his rags, 
 and to exhibit him in his majesty and beauty. Were the latter 
 picture a whit truer than the former, the recognition must needs 
 be instantaneous : but I am afraid the resemblance in Rome 
 hardly extends beyond her desire to inflict summary justice on 
 her enemies. 
 
 If we desire to account for these strange incongruities, a clue 
 is supplied to us by what Dr Newman has said, in hie Essay on
 
 94 NOTE B. 
 
 Development, concerning ideas. Ideas with him are not the 
 objects of intellectual intuition, but judgements formed by 
 comparison, contrast, abstraction, generalization, adjustment, 
 classification (p. 30). This peculiarity of his intellectual vision 
 manifests itself in all his writings from the very first, and has 
 had a powerful influence in determining the whole course of his 
 life. It may even be said to have carried him to Rome. If he 
 had ever had an intuition of a Divine idea, of a Divine truth, he 
 could never have gone to Borne. But this was wanting ; and 
 therefore, with all his wonderful power of logical combination, 
 and with all his wonderful subtilty of analysis, he has gone on 
 receding further and further from the Truth. In fact this is 
 the Romish habit of mind ; and therefore, whenever during the 
 Middle Ages men gifted with the power of intellectual intuition 
 arose, they were apt to stray away, or at least to diverge, from 
 the Church, and fell under her censure. They who had seen the 
 Truth as a living Presence, could not be content to receive it 
 swathed up in a multitude of dogmatical decrees. They knew 
 that there is a higher criterion of truth than any human autho- 
 rity ; and they could not submit to the latter, when it impugned 
 the former. 
 
 The whole practice of the Catenae Patrum, by which the 
 Tractarians from the first tried to establish their propositions, 
 arose from the same intellectual want. When ideas are merely 
 the results of comparison, and abstraction, and generalization, 
 and classification, we need a multitude of witnesses to help us in 
 constructing them. But what would the Duke of Wellington 
 have said to a man who brought him a Catena of Generals to tell 
 him what he was to do 1 or what would Shakspeare have made out 
 of a Catena of Poets and Critics t The intuitive mind proceeds 
 at once to the truth, and bursts the Catenae by which Authority 
 would bind it. Nay, Dr Newman himself had too much life in 
 him to submit permanently to this bondage. In his Essay on 
 Development he has burst all his old Catenae asunder ; though, 
 from not knowing what better to substitute for them, not know- 
 ing that the Truth makes us free, and that this freedom is its
 
 NOTE B. 95 
 
 own divine law, he has taken shelter from the waywardness and 
 frowardness of his own understanding by girding himself with 
 the chain of an absolute authority. Yet in this Essay also the 
 old tendency displays itself. In every part of it he tries to 
 establish his propositions by scraping together every kind of 
 authority with which his great reading will supply him ; and 
 these are often constrained to bear witness to propositions they 
 never dreamt of. For he rejects all the processes of ordinary 
 criticism. He seldom thinks of cross-examining his witnesses, 
 of asking what they meant to say, what in their position, in- 
 tellectual and moral, they could not but say ; though very often 
 he puts his own meaning, not seldom a very incongruous one, 
 into their words. Indeed this mode of dealing with history, and 
 with the writers of former times, is that which is habitual among 
 Romanists, as any one familiar with their writings must be aware. 
 They rake up whatever they can find that appears to favour 
 their purpose. Whether it be really favorable, they do not 
 enquire. They repudiate criticism as uncatholic, as Protestant. 
 Their canons are, that all opinions held by their Church must be 
 true, and that everybody who ever spoke the truth, must have 
 said what their Church says. This is their mode of obtaining 
 what they call a Catholic consensus. This process, in another 
 region of literature, is exemplified continually, and often very 
 beautifully, in the Broad Stone of Honour, and still more in the 
 later writings of its Author. 
 
 Let me cite a curious instance of this procedure, which hap- 
 pened just now to strike me. In page 263 of the Essay on 
 Development, Dr Newman argues that, the Bishops of the Church 
 " were not mere local officers, but possessed a power essentially 
 ecumenical." Among a number of sayings and facts, real or 
 imaginary, alledged to prove this, he says, " The see of St Hippo- 
 lytus, as if he belonged to all places in the orbis terrarum, 
 cannot be located, and is variously placed in the neighbourhood 
 of Rome and in Arabia." Now this is a very strange statement, 
 which stands quite alone, and is at variance with all we know of 
 ecclesiastical history; wherefore a man who cared about the
 
 96 NOTE r. 
 
 accuracy of his statements, would have taken some pains to 
 ascertain its validity. But what is the fact ? Hippolytus, as 
 has just been proved most convincingly by my friend, the 
 Chevalier Bunsen, was Bishop of Portus, near Home; and the 
 notion of his having been a Bishop in Arabia is a mere blunder of 
 certain ecclesiastical historians, as has also been shewn in the 
 clearest manner. Yet Dr Newman has caught hastily at this 
 blunder, and bearing it in his hand has jumpt to the conclusion, 
 that Hippolytus " belonged to all places in the orbis terrarum" 
 
 That such a method, if method it can be called, is altogether 
 lawless and chaotic, that it may be made to favour any arbitrary 
 result, is plain. Take a sentence or two here and there from 
 this Father, and a couple of expressions from another, add half a 
 canon of this Council, a couple of incidents out of some eccle- 
 siastical historian, an anecdote from a chronicler, two conjectures 
 of some critic, and half-a-dozen drachms of a schoolman, mix 
 them up in rhetoric quant, suff., and shake them well together, 
 and thus we get at a theological development. But who except the 
 prescriber can tell what the result will be ? and may not he 
 produce any result he chooses ? Yet this is held out as the 
 method by which we are to be preserved from drawing false 
 inferences from the words of Scripture. 
 
 NOTE C: p. 12. 
 
 EVERYBODY who has any acquaintance with the theological 
 literature of the last eighteen years, must be aware that, at least 
 during the former half of that period, it was continually asserted 
 by the writers of the Tractarian school, that their position sup- 
 plied the only sure ground for resisting the arguments of Rome. 
 Protestantism they derided : it had no power of coherence, no 
 consistency, no deep roots, no ancient foundations ; it was ca- 
 pricious, variable, ephemeral, the creature of wilfulness, depend- 
 ing on each man's private judgement. But, as for themselves, 
 they were planted on the rock of Antiquity, upheld by the
 
 NOTE C. 97 
 
 concurrence of ages, with the. whole learned body of Anglican 
 Divines to form their main line, and the Fathers, as their tri- 
 arians, in the rear. With such a host at their back, how could 
 they fail to conquer ? In the confident assurance of success, they 
 rusht on so impetuously as ere long to leave the Anglican 
 Divines far behind ; and several of the foremost fell into an 
 ambush, and were made captive. 
 
 When he who was the chief leader of the Movement, delivered 
 his Lectures on Romanism and Popular Protestantism in 1837, 
 his aim was to mark out this very ground. Protestantism, or the 
 bugbear which he called by that name, he disliked and despised. 
 The main purpose of his Lectures is to strengthen his position 
 against Rome ; and he tries hard to persuade himself and his 
 readers that he has done so effectually. For instance, at the end 
 of the Lecture on Antiquity (p. 98), he writes : " Enough has 
 been said to shew the hopefulness of our own prospects in the 
 controversy with Rome. We have her own avowal that the 
 Fathers ought to be followed, and again, that she does not follow 
 them ; what more can we require than her witness against her- 
 self, which is here supplied us 1 If such inconsistency is not at 
 once fatal to her claims, which it would seem to be, at least it is 
 a most encouraging omen in our contest with her. We have but 
 to remain pertinaciously and immovably fixed on the ground of 
 Antiquity ; and, as truth is ours, so will the victory be also. We 
 have joined issue with her, and that in a point which admits of a 
 decision, of a decision, as she confesses, against herself. Abstract 
 arguments, original views, novel interpretations of Scripture, may 
 be met by similar artifices on the other side ; but historical facts 
 are proof against the force of talent, and remain where they were, 
 when it has expended itself. How mere Protestants, who rest 
 upon no such solid foundation, are to withstand our common 
 adversary, is not so clear, and not our concern. We would fain 
 make them partakers of our vantage ground ; but since they 
 despise it, they must take care of themselves, and must not com- 
 plain if we refuse to desert a position which promises to be 
 impregnable, impregnable both as against Romanists, and
 
 98 NOTE C. 
 
 against themselves." Again be says (p. 25) : " At this day, 
 when the connexion of Protestantism with infidelity is so evident, 
 what claim has the former upon our sympathy 1 and to what 
 theology can the serious Protestant, dissatisfied with his system, 
 betake himself, but to Romanism, unless we display our cha- 
 racteristic principles, and shew him that he may be Catholic and 
 Apostolic, yet not Roman 1 Such, as is well known, was the 
 service actually rendered by our Church to the learned German 
 divine, Grabe, at the end of the seventeenth century, who, feeling 
 the defects of Lutheranism, even before it had lapst, was contem- 
 plating a reconciliation with Rome, when, finding that England 
 offered what to a disciple of Ignatius and Cyprian were easier 
 terms, he conformed to her creed, and settled and died in this 
 country." So again, in p. 253, he writes : "These distinctions 
 are surely portions of a real view, which, while it relieves the 
 mind of those burdens and perplexities which are the portion 
 of the mere Protestant, is essentially distinct from Romanism." 
 
 Other passages to a like effect might easily be adduced ; but it 
 is needless. He who ought to know the strength and worth of 
 these opinions, better than any one else, now declares that they 
 are utterly strengthless and worthless. He not only rejects them, 
 but scouts and spurns them. His chief business at present is to 
 build again the things which he destroyed. 
 
 Quod petiit spernit, repetit quod nuper omisit, 
 Diruit, aedificat, mutat quadrata rotundis. 
 
 The main object of his Lectures on the Difficulties of Anglicanism is 
 to shew the feebleness and untenableness of the opinions of which 
 seventeen years ago he was the main promulgater and champion. 
 Nothing can exceed the contempt, the scorn, with which he 
 speaks of those opinions. To all other modes of opinion he can 
 be indulgent. " I can understand (he says, p. 128), I can 
 sympathize with those old-world thinkers, whose commentators 
 are Mant and D'Oyly, whose theologian is Tomlin, whose ritualist 
 is Wheatly, and whose canonist is Burns. Those also I can un- 
 derstand, who take their stand upon the Prayerbook ; or who
 
 NOTE C. 99 
 
 honestly profess to follow the consensus of Anglican divines, as 
 the voice of authority and the standard of faith. Moreover I can 
 quite enter into the sentiment, with which members of the liberal 
 and infidel school investigate the history and the documents of 
 the early Church. But (he adds, turning to his own quondam 
 associates and followers), what a Catholic would feel so prodigious 
 is this, that such as you, my brethren, should consider Chris- 
 tianity given from Heaven once for all, should protest against 
 private judgement, should profess to transmit what you have 
 received, and yet, from diligent study of the Fathers, from 
 living, as you say, in the atmosphere of antiquity, should come 
 forth into open day with your new edition of the Catholic Faith, 
 different from that held in any existing body of Christians, which 
 not half-a-dozen men all over the world would honour with their 
 imprimatur ; and then, withal, should be as positive in practice 
 about its truth in every part, as if the voice of mankind were 
 with you, instead of against you. You are a body of yesterday ; 
 you are a drop in the ocean of professing Christians ; yet you 
 would give the law to priest and prophet ; and you fancy it a 
 humble office forsooth, suited to humble men, to testify the very 
 truth of revelation to a fallen generation, which has been in 
 unintermittent traditionary error. You have a mission to teach 
 the National Church, which is to teach the British Empire, which 
 is to teach the world. You are more learned than Greece ; you 
 are purer than Rome ; you know better than St Bernard ; you 
 judge how far St Thomas was right, and where he is to be read 
 with caution, or held up to blame." By these, and similar stinging 
 words he lashes his credulous admirers, if so be he may again 
 prevail upon them to follow him whom they have found so 
 unerring a leader. The objections, which others have frequently 
 urged against the Tractarian doctrines, but which were repelled 
 with indignation, he himself brings forward in the most cutting 
 form. He tells them that they " have an eclectic or an original 
 religion of their own" (p. 132), that their rule of faith is "their 
 own private judgement." 
 
 For the sake of effecting some sort of reconciliation, or rather
 
 100 NOTE C. 
 
 compromise, between these and his former opinions, and of 
 accounting for their gross apparent inconsistency, much con- 
 temptuous abuse is poured upon the Church of England, which 
 is called throughout by the degrading name of the Establishment, 
 and is asserted to have developt its Erastian character more and 
 more during the last twenty years ; so that, though it might be 
 mistaken for Catholic and Apostolic by the profoundest and 
 most sagacious divines, when Tractarianism entered upon its 
 mission, no intelligent man can suppose it to be such now. 
 " During the last twenty years (he says, p. 58) the National 
 Church has changed and is changing with the Nation." As to 
 this fact there cannot be a question. Perhaps twenty years never 
 pass over a Nation, unless it be the Chinese, without some kind 
 of change in it. At least it has never been so in Christendom, 
 since Christianity introduced the great spring of all improvement, 
 of all progress, into humanity. What indeed must be the con- 
 dition of a Church, if it makes no advance in twenty years ? Of 
 the Church, above all, as of our spiritual life generally, may it be 
 said, that non progredi est regredi. Nor could the Church remain 
 unaffected by the ever increasing, almost multiplying velocity in 
 every other sphere of human action. The only question therefore 
 is, What is the nature and character of the changes that have 
 taken place in the Church during the last twenty years 1 Nor, I 
 think, can any candid man, who has observed what has been 
 going on, and who has any information as to what was the state 
 of things twenty, thirty, forty, fifty years ago, hesitate a moment 
 in replying, that, under God's blessing, the condition of our 
 Church has been continually improving during the last half 
 century. The information with which my official position sup- 
 plies me, enables me to state that the improvement in this 
 Archdeaconry has been very considerable during the last ten 
 years : nor have I any reason for supposing that we have been 
 more favoured than other parts of England. It may be that the 
 increase in the power of the world, in the power of Mammon, 
 during the same period, has been still greater, and that both 
 parties have been gathering their forces for some great and
 
 NOTE C. 101 
 
 terrible conflict. This however is a different point. If our 
 Church had a claim to the love, the zeal, the devotion of her 
 children twenty years ago, she has a still stronger claim now, which 
 is only hightened, not lowered, by the increast strength of her 
 enemies. In the general character of our pastors the improve- 
 ment has been great, in their zeal and love for their people, 
 in their attention to the education of their flocks. To speak 
 of outward, visible, and tangible facts, the multiplication of 
 churches and schools, the institution and erection of Training 
 Schools, bear witness that the Church is not forgetful of her 
 pastoral office. The large increase of our Colonial Episcopate, 
 and of the ministry under it, the addition to our Episcopate at 
 home, which, we may trust, is only the first step toward a further 
 increase, are facts that claim our gratitude. Dr Newman indeed 
 speaks derisively of these facts. Ascribing almost everything 
 that has been effected to his own party, he says (p. 93) : " The 
 movement succeeded in gaining an increase in the number of 
 Episcopal sees at home and abroad : " but, to impair the value of 
 this fact, he adds: "If the Apostolical Movement desired to 
 increase the Episcopate, it was with a view to its own Apostolical 
 principles : it had no wish merely to increase the staff of Govern- 
 ment officers in England or in the Colonies, the patronage of a 
 ministry, the erection of rural palaces, and the Latitudinarian 
 votes in Parliament." This merely exemplifies his usual trick 
 of giving every fact whatever shape and hue he chooses, by 
 bringing out and exaggerating its accidents. He ought to 
 have known that the number of Episcopal votes in Parliament 
 has not been increast. As to the ordinary adjuncts of an 
 Episcopal See, they who wisht to see an increase of the Sees, 
 can hardly have been such visionaries as not to have known 
 that those adjuncts would accompany the increase. 
 
 With regard to doctrine also we may say, with hearty thanks- 
 giving to God for the grace vouchsafed to us, that an immense, 
 ever-widening improvement has taken place since the beginning 
 of the century. The Socinian leaven has almost disappeared 
 from our pulpits. The meagre moral essays with which our
 
 102 NOTE C. 
 
 fathers were so poorly dieted, are hardly to be heard. The 
 distinctive doctrines of our faith are brought forward, more 
 or less prominently, in almost every church. At the same time 
 the Antinomian extravagances, which were not uncommon at 
 the first revival of Evangelical preaching, are become rare ; and 
 a better appreciation of the Church, and of her rites and ordi- 
 nances, has been gaining ground among the disciples of that 
 School. The strange, perplexing fact is, that, while our Church, 
 through God's blessing, has in this manner been putting on her 
 strength, and girding herself with her apparel, so many of her 
 ministers, and those too who profest to love her most, have been 
 casting away their love for her, and joining her enemies and 
 revilers. Such is the power of wilfulness in our days : If thou 
 wilt not do everything that I bid thee, I will throw myself into the 
 arms of the harlot. 
 
 This extraordinary inconsistency has been pointed out with 
 his usual force by the Bishop of St David's in his recent ad- 
 mirable Charge : " The Church of England (he says, p. 19) 
 stands at this moment in a very peculiar situation ; one, I 
 believe I might say, without example in her own history, or in 
 that of any other Church. At no previous epoch, since the 
 recovery of her purity and her independence, has she displayed 
 more evident signs of life, vigour, and energy. Whether we 
 look abroad, or at home, whether we consider the increasing 
 zeal, activity, and success, with which she has been carrying 
 forward her vast missionary work, the new and enlarged pro- 
 vision which she has made for its future progress, both in her 
 domestic institutions, and in the great number of completely 
 organized Colonial Churches which she has planted within the 
 course of a very few years, or observe the efforts which she has 
 been making to supply the wants of her growing population, the 
 rapid multiplication of churches and schools and training in- 
 stitutions, the exertions of the societies which collect and dispense 
 a large part of her resources for pious uses, the examples of 
 selfdenying charity and munificence exhibited by her individual 
 members, the ready and liberal answer which is made to every
 
 NOTE C. 103 
 
 appeal on her behalf, the lively interest which is manifested in 
 every question that affects her welfare, the earnestness and ability 
 with which her cause is maintained at every disputed point of 
 theological controversy, look whichever way we will, we find 
 sure tokens of health and strength, from which it might seem 
 safe to augur, not only lasting stability, but increasing prosperity. 
 These are not the exaggerations of partial friends, but indisputable 
 facts, attested by the reluctant admission of her adversaries. To 
 whatever degree her system may be justly charged with defects 
 or abuses, at least it cannot be said that there is any want of 
 will to investigate and correct them. It would of course be quite 
 consistent with such a state of things, that the Church should, at 
 the same time, be assailed by the most violent attacks from 
 without. But the strange thing is, that in the midst of all these 
 grounds of thankfulness, hope, and confidence, there should be 
 heard from many quarters within the language of alarm and 
 despondency, gloomy forebodings of impending disasters, com- 
 plaints as of men labouring under almost intolerable evils, which 
 must either drive them out of our communion, or force them to 
 seek a remedy in organic changes of indefinite extent, and of 
 very uncertain and perilous issue." 
 
 We say not these things boastingly : God forbid ! We know 
 and confess that what has been done is but a small part of what 
 ought to have been done by a Christian people, on whom such 
 wonderful blessings have been bestowed. But when our Church 
 is reproacht and reviled, as she is perpetually, we may allowably 
 appeal to these signs that God has not deserted her, nay, that He 
 is stirring her up to the performance of those great works for 
 which her position as the Church of England marks her out. 
 
 Dr Newman himself is constrained to acknowledge these tokens 
 of vitality in our Church, though he tries to render his admission 
 as depreciatory as he can. " If life (he says, p. 40) means strength, 
 activity, energy, and well-being of any kind, in that case doubt- 
 less the national religion is alive. It is a great power in the 
 midst of us ; it wields an enormous influence ; it represses a 
 hundred foes ; it conducts a hundred undertakings. It attracts
 
 104 NOTE C. 
 
 men to it, uses them, rewards them : it has thousands of beautiful 
 homes up and down the country, where quiet men may do its 
 work and benefit its people : it collects vast sums in the shape of 
 voluntary offerings ; and with them it builds churches, prints 
 and distributes innumerable Bibles, books, and tracts, and sustains 
 missionaries in all parts of the earth. In all parts of the earth 
 it opposes the Catholic Church, denounces her as an ti Christian, 
 bribes the world against her, obstructs her influence. If this be 
 life, if it be life to be a principle of order in the population, 
 and an organ of benevolence and almsgiving toward the poor, 
 then doubtless the National Church overflows with life. But the 
 question has still to be answered, Life of what kind 1 Heresy 
 has its life ; worldliness has its life. Is the Establishment's life 
 merely national life 1 or is it something more ? Is it Catholic 
 life as well 1 Is it a supernatural life 1 ?" To these questions we' 
 answer confidently, Yes. Knowing whence every good gift cometh, 
 and how poor in herself human nature is, we answer, that it 
 is " supernatural life." Inasmuch as we hold the Creeds of the 
 Church, and have been realizing them more and more of late 
 years in our teaching, while we reject all unwarranted, uncatholic 
 additions to them, we answer that it is " Catholic life." But when 
 Dr Newman goes on to put another test, whether the life of our 
 Church is "congenial with those principles, which the movement 
 of 1833 thought to impose or to graft upon it?" we refuse the 
 test ; we deny the authority of that Movement to impose or graft 
 its principles upon our Church : we bid that Movement abide by 
 its professions of receiving its principles from the Church : we 
 repudiate the pretensions of such a Papal Directory to give the 
 law to the Church, which God has set up in England, and has 
 purified, and has maintained in its purer form for three centuries, 
 and which He has of late been so signally blessing. 
 
 Dr Newman indeed has a strange course to pursue in dealing 
 with his former associates and disciples, a course which needs all 
 the subtilty of his tortuous understanding. While on the one 
 hand, as we have just seen, he speaks of them in language of 
 unmeasured scorn, on the other hand he represents them as
 
 NOTE C. 105 
 
 having been sent by God to revive the truth in our Church. 
 When he was with them, they were the latter : when he left 
 them, they became objects of scorn. " It is scarcely possible to 
 fancy (he says, p. 81) that an event so distinctive in its character 
 as the rise of the so-called Anglo- Catholic party in the course of 
 the last twenty years should have no scope in the designs of 
 Divine Providence. From beginnings so small, from elements of 
 thought so fortuitous, with prospects so unpromising, it sud- 
 denly became a power in -the National Church." It would be 
 strange, were it not for his peculiar faculty of seeing just what 
 lie likes, that a person, so well acquainted with the contagious- 
 ness of heresies, should urge the rapid spread of Tractarianism 
 as a proof of its having "a scope in the designs of Divine 
 Providence." In a certain sense doubtless this argument might 
 be admitted; only in that sense it would apply equally to 
 Mormonism. But in the sense whicli Dr Newman intends, how 
 are we to discriminate between them ? why are we to concede 
 that to Tractarianism, which we deny to Mormonism ? Yet he 
 will not allow the same argument, though incomparably stronger, 
 to prove the Divine mission of Lutheranism, or that of the 
 English Church. The Reformers, both here and in Germany, 
 brought forward primary truths, which had been neglected, violated, 
 trampled upon. God stirred the hearts of His chosen, of those 
 who were appointed to be heirs of the Truth, in England and 
 in Germany : they listened to the sound of the heavenly trumpet, 
 and heard the truth gladly, and received it, and handed it down 
 under God's guidance to their children : and so it was trans- 
 mitted from generation to generation, and is preserved amongst 
 us at this day. Yet this Dr Newman pronounces to be contrary 
 to God's purpose. He is not silly enough to fancy that our 
 Church can have forfeited her Catholicity by the consecration of 
 Dr Hampden to his see, or the institution of Mr Gorham to his 
 living. " No sober man (he says, p. 44), 1 suppose, dreams of 
 denying that, if the National Church be impure and unapostolical 
 now, it has had no claim to be called ' pure and apostolical' last 
 year, or twenty years back, or for any part of the period since the
 
 106 NOTE C. 
 
 Reformation;" not even in the age of the Nonjurors ; not even 
 in that of the Anglo-catholic divines. The Anglo-catholic divines 
 themselves are now pronounced to be uncatholic. It is well to 
 have the sentence drawn out in all its length and breadth, in all 
 its arrogance and outrageousness. When we read the sacred 
 words, No man cometh to the Father, but by Me, we recognise the 
 miserable weakness which compells us to need this Mediation, 
 and we bless the Divine Mediator, who came down to bring us to 
 the Father. But when the Papacy applies these words to itself, 
 or its minions do so for it, our hearts and souls and minds revolt 
 at the blasphemous usurpation, and cry Thou, Lord, Thou f alone 
 art the Way, the Truth, and the Life. Thou, in Thine infinite 
 lovingkindness hast called us to Thee : to Thee ive come, and will 
 not give Thy glory to another. 
 
 Dr Newman's main argument however, which runs through the 
 whole series of Lectures, is, that his quondam followers, who 
 adopted the original principles of his School, are bound to follow 
 them out to their logical consequences. Logic is ever his 
 favorite weapon, his Harlequin's sword, with which he works 
 whatever transformations he pleases. Now Logic, it is well 
 known, or rather the abuse and perversion of Logic, has ever been 
 a fruitful source of all manner of errours. By logical deductions 
 from an abstract conception, which can never at the utmost be 
 more than a shadowy ghost or a skeleton of a living idea, 
 the physical philosophy of Antiquity and of the Schoolmen 
 was led into those extravagances from which Bacon delivered 
 it. By logical deductions from premisses imperfectly appre- 
 hended, all the heresies by which the Church has been troubled, 
 sprang up ; as a very little reflexion will prove to us with 
 regard to the Arian, the Unitarian, the Nestorian, the Pelagian, 
 the Manichean. Thus, even in speculative matters, Logic is a 
 mere Cyclops, one-eyed, looking straight before it. But still 
 more delusive is its guidance in practical life. If you put one 
 foot forward, the logical inference would be, that you are next to 
 put the other foot forward. But what if you have put the first foot 
 forward in a wrong direction ? what if the right path turns aside
 
 NOTE C. 107 
 
 at the next step? what if the next step would be down a 
 precipice? These are things concerning which Logic cannot 
 enlighten us ; and they are to be decided by the exercise of our 
 other faculties : which are to be consulted continually, at 
 every step, not merely at the first and the second, but again at 
 the third, and again at the fourth. For we do not live in a 
 vacuum, but amid the living fulness of the world, where at 
 every step we may meet with some fresh obstacle bidding us halt 
 or turn aside. Dr Newman speaks now and then as if he were 
 the slave of logic, as if he were in its bondage, in its chains, and 
 must go onward whithersoever it drives him. In the Essay on 
 Development he says (p. 29) : " That the hypothesis here to be 
 adopted accounts not only for the Athanasian Creed, but for the 
 Creed of Pope Pius, is no fault of those who adopt it. No one 
 has power over the issues of his principles ; we cannot manage 
 our argument, and have as much of it as we please and no more." 
 But we may re-examine our hypothesis : we may analyse and 
 resolve it into its elements, and find out how to modify and 
 regulate its application. We do so in all the applied sciences. 
 The arrow would fly on to infinity, if the force of gravity were 
 not acting upon it at every moment to bring it back to the earth ; 
 and so, with regard to the issues of our principles, we have all 
 manner of practical considerations, above all we have a moral 
 gravitation, to keep them in bounds. We are not forced to say 
 B, because we have said A; we may say D, or C, or X, or Z. 
 The great use of our dialectic faculty is to serve as a corrective 
 for the logical, as we see continually in the Platonic dialogues. 
 The Sophist rushes on from one proposition to another, " over hill, 
 over dale, over park, over pale," sometimes like a hunter hearing 
 the sound of the horn, sometimes like a mad bull : for madmen 
 are often very logical ; and this is the method in their madness. 
 But how does Socrates by his dialectical power compell them 
 continually to exhibit the fallaciousness of logic, often by letting 
 them run on from proposition to proposition till they fall into 
 some gross absurdity, often by denying their premisses, specious 
 as they may seem, and constraining them to sift these thoroughly !
 
 108 NOTE C. 
 
 " Logic is a stern master," Dr Newman- says in another place 
 (Difficulties of Anglicanism, p. 28), speaking of our modern Pan- 
 theistic infidels ; " they feel it ; they protest against it ; they 
 profess to hate it, and would fain dispense with it; but it is the 
 law of their intellectual nature. Struggling and shrieking, but 
 in vain, will they make the inevitable descent into that pit from 
 which there is no return, except through the almost miraculous 
 grace of God, the grant of which in this life is never hopeless." 
 He writes here as having himself felt the sternness of the same 
 master, though in another direction. It drove him to Rome ; 
 and under its spell, as its slave, he is using all the powers'" of his 
 mind to force others to follow him. Robespierre acted under a 
 like spell : he too was the slave of Logic, which bad him guillotine 
 two millions of his countrymen. In fact, it is the Jacobinical 
 principle, which throws everything else overboard. But surely 
 even Robespierre might have checkt himself, might have laid hold 
 on some affection, on some principle, on some habit, on some 
 conventional practice or decorum, to break his fall : and still more 
 so may every one who has been called o the liberty of the Gospel. 
 The absolute tyranny of Logic has no more place than any other 
 in the Kingdom of Heaven. 
 
 Among the opinions and principles held by the Tractarians, 
 from which Dr Newman would infer the necessity and duty of 
 their following him to Rome, how many were exaggerated, how 
 many erroneous, distorted, drawn from other ages and circum- 
 stances, and ill-suited to the present ! How many errours has he 
 himself confest to ! and is he quite sure that these are the only 
 ones which he or his party committed ? The very things to which 
 he devoted his whole intellect, his whole heart, he now tells us 
 he entirely misunderstood, that our Church is something totally 
 different from what he then believed her to be, that Rome is totally 
 different, that the testimony of the Fathers is totally different. 
 Surely, even logically, it is a strange inference, You followed me 
 formerly when I was utterly wrong ; therefore you ought to follow 
 me now. Moreover, if be was so mistaken about the things which 
 he had studied the most and loved the best, is it not probable
 
 NOTE C. 109 
 
 that he was at least as grossly wrong with regard to things which 
 he had never studied, which he had always viewed with disgust, 
 about which he had nothing but blind prejudices. 
 
 Therefore I would earnestly entreat his quondam followers to 
 give no heed to his logical war-cry. If there be any extravagance 
 of private judgement, it would be this. This is Rationalism in 
 its baldest, wildest form. God has placed them where they are. 
 He has given them the duties of their calling. He has girt them 
 round with affections, that they may take root where they are> 
 and not be blown about by every wind of Logic. Some outward 
 necessity may indeed come, as it came to our ancestors at the 
 Reformation, some revolutionary force, which may compell 
 them, without their own act and deed, to quit their immediate 
 position, or to make some material change in its relations. In 
 such a case, of which however I cannot see a likelihood, it 
 would behove them to yield to the necessity, which they cannot 
 change. We must not violate our conscience ; we must not do 
 what our conscience declares to be wrong. But so long as this 
 lord of our being continues inviolate, we may bid Logic mind 
 its own business, and content ourselves with doing our duty in 
 that state of life to which it has pleased God to call us. 
 
 The same arbitrariness, which in the last Note we have seen 
 manifested by Dr Newman in his selection and representation of 
 facts, is equally prominent in his Lectures on Anglicanism. Thus, 
 in a very eloquent and highly wrought passage, he professes to 
 draw a contrast between the Church of Catholic antiquity and 
 our present Establishment ; and, as a sample of the former, he 
 selects the dispute at Milan between Ambrose and Valentinian 
 (p. 47) as a sample of the latter, the riot at Exeter seven years 
 ago, occasioned by the attempt to preach in a surplice, or, as he 
 curiously terms it (p. 53), "because only the gleam of Apostolical 
 principles, in their faintest, wannest expression, is cast inside a 
 building which is the home of the National Religion." This is 
 just as fair a parallel as if he had pickt out Hector for the 
 pattern Trojan, and Thersites for the pattern Greek. The 
 squabbles and conflicts at Constantinople under the Empire,
 
 110 NOTE D. 
 
 and many of those in Rome itself, would have furnisht less 
 inappropriate materials for a comparison. But, even with regard 
 to these, we should have to bear in mind that distance veils over 
 what nearness vulgarizes : and one of the consequences of the 
 progress of order and civilization is, that great social questions 
 are not decided now by such majestic movements as the Secession 
 of the Plebs to the Sacred Mount, or the war of the Parliament 
 against Charles the First, and that mere riots are meaner, both 
 in their origin and their conduct. 
 
 NOTE D : p. 16. 
 
 As I am merely stating these matters historically, without any 
 thought of discussing them, or entering into an argument on the 
 subject, there does not seem to be any necessity for citing specific 
 passages in support of these statements. Their correctness will 
 hardly be disputed by any person conversant with the controversies 
 of the last seventeen years; and he who wishes for particular 
 proofs, will find such collected in the principal attacks on the 
 Tractarian theology. 
 
 NOTE Da: p. 19 : 1. 23. 
 
 I have been somewhat amused, in reading over Dr Newman's 
 Lectures on the Difficulties of Anglicanism for the sake of these 
 Notes, to find that he has used this same image in nearly the 
 same manner, though with an opposite purpose. After speaking 
 of the way in which his party tried to support their opinions, 
 first by the Anglican divines, and then by the Fathers, he adds 
 (p. 124) : " Their idea was simply and absolutely submission to 
 an external authority : to it they appealed, to it they betook 
 themselves ; there they found a haven of rest ; thence they looked 
 out upon the troubled surge of human opinion, and upon the 
 crazy vessels which were labouring, without chart or compass,
 
 NOTE Da. Ill 
 
 upon it. Judge then of their dismay, when, according to the 
 Arabian tale, on their striking their anchors into the supposed soil, 
 lighting their fires on it, and fixing in it the poles of their tents, 
 suddenly their island began to move, to heave, to splash, to frisk 
 to and fro, to dive, and at last to swim away, spouting out inhos- 
 pitable jets of water upon the credulous mariners who had made 
 it their home." Only, in this application of the image, it seems 
 to me, he has yielded to the common delusion of travelers, who 
 transfer their own motion to the objects around them. For the 
 Anglican divines, whose opinions have been stored up in bulky 
 folios for the last hundred and fifty or two hundred years, could 
 not well take to heaving, and splashing, and frisking about ; 
 not to mention that this was not much their fashion when they 
 were composing those folios. This habit is far more like the 
 theological pamphleteers of our days, who, when their boats 
 rebounded from their rash impact on our old divines, began 
 fancying that the divines had run away from them. Yet Dr 
 Newman half implies that this notion was confined to himself and 
 a few others. " If only one (he says), or a few of them, were 
 visited with this conviction, still one was sufficient to destroy 
 that cardinal point of their whole system, the objective perspicuity 
 and distinctness of the teaching of the Fathers." Here it is 
 difficult to pronounce which is the strangest hallucination, the 
 original assumption, or the abandonment of it on such a ground. 
 I may take this opportunity of answering a question which 
 Dr Newman puts to me in the same Lectures : After quoting 
 a couple of sentences from my Letter to Mr Cavendish (in p. 39), 
 with a courtesy for which I return him my thanks, he asks, what 
 I mean by faith ? whether I do not mean something very vague 
 and comprehensive 1 whether I do not mean, as I might say, " the 
 faith of St Austin, and of Peter the Hermit, and of Luther, and 
 of Rousseau, and of Washington, and of Napoleon Bonaparte 1 " 
 Why he has strung together this odd medley of names, I know 
 not. I might reply by referring him to my Sermons on the 
 Victory of Faith, where I have attempted to set forth my own 
 conception of Faith, expressly distinguishing it from that which
 
 he had laid down in his Lectures on Justification. But he does 
 not seem to have much acquaintance with my writings, since he 
 merely quotes me as a writer in the Record. Nay, I should have 
 thought that the very combination in which I use the word, 
 "personal faith and holiness," when taken in connexion with 
 the rest of his quotation, might shew that it is not a quality in 
 which Rousseau and Bonaparte had much share. But I may as 
 well state that I certainly do not mean by faith, what Dr Newman 
 means, as he has expounded his view in his ninth Lecture. " Faith 
 (he says, p. 39) has one meaning to a Catholic, another to a 
 Protestant." God be thankt that it has, that we have been 
 delivered from the miserable debasement of the Romish notion. 
 Of the Protestant conception Dr Newman, here as elsewhere, 
 proves himself to be strangely ignorant. " Protestants (he says 
 p. 223) consider that Faith and Love are inseparable : where 
 there is Faith, there, they think, is Love and Obedience ; and in 
 proportion to the strength and degree of the former, is the 
 strength and degree of the latter. They do not think the in- 
 consistency possible of really believing without obeying ; and, 
 where they see disobedience, they cannot imagine the existence 
 of true faith." From what sources Dr Newman derived this 
 representation of the Protestant view, I know not. It certainly 
 is different from that of the chief Protestant authors. They 
 hold indeed that, whenever Faith is real and lively, it must 
 manifest itself in some measure by love and good works. Thus 
 we read, in the Apology for the Confession of Augsburg, at 
 the beginning of c. 3, De dilectione et impletione legis, " Quia 
 fides affert Spiritum Sanctum, et parit novam vitam in cordibus, 
 necesse est, quod pariat spirituales motus in cordibus. Et qui 
 sint illi motus, ostendit Propheta, cum ait: Dabo legem meam 
 in corda eorum. Postquam igitur fide justificati et renati sumus, 
 incipimus Deum timere, diligere, petere, et expectare ab eo 
 auxilium, gratias agere et praedicare, et obedire ei in afflic- 
 tionibus. Incipimus et diligere proximos, quia corda habent 
 spirituales et sanctos motus." I quote these words, because they 
 may be regarded as the most authoritative exposition of the
 
 NOTE Da. 113 
 
 Protestant view. Faith, we hold, a living faith, a faith which 
 is the work of the Holy Spirit, cannot be utterly inactive, must 
 begin at least to manifest its divine power, must shew that it 
 does really believe in God, our Creator and Redeemer, and in 
 the Sacrifice offered up for our sins, by loving Him who so mer- 
 cifully gave His Only-begotten Son for us. A faith, unaccom- 
 panied by any such motions of love, we regard as a mere belief, 
 such as the devils themselves may have. As Melanchthon says, 
 when we have faith, Incipimus Deum timere, diligere, inci- 
 pimus et diligere proximos. There must be a beginning of 
 such love; or our faith must be dead, as St James declares. But 
 St Paul's words, 1 Cor. xiii, 2, are quite enough to convince us 
 that we may have a high degree of faith, without much true 
 love. Nor am I aware of any Protestant author of note, who 
 denies the possibility of the case here put by St Paul. " Hie 
 locus Pauli (says Melanchthon, a little further on in the same 
 chapter, 98) requirit dilectionem: hanc requirimus et nos. Si 
 quis dilectionem abjecerit, etiam si habet magnam fidem, tamen 
 non retinet earn." A living faith, we maintain, ought to produce 
 love and obedience, and, if it be really living, will produce them. 
 But, since the miserable disruption of our nature by the Fall, we 
 know too well that what God has joined together, man perpetually 
 rends asunder. 
 
 At the same time we do altogether reject the Romish 
 notion of faith, which Dr Newman expresses in these words : 
 " Catholics hold that faith and love, faith and obedience, faith 
 and works, are simply separable, and ordinarily separated in 
 fact ; that faith does not imply love, obedience, or works ; that 
 the firmest faith, so as to move mountains, may exist without 
 love, that is, true faith, as truly faith in the strict sense of the 
 word as the faith of a martyr or a doctor. In fact it contem- 
 plates a gift which Protestantism does not imagine. Faith is a 
 spiritual sight of the unseen; and Protestantism has not this 
 sight; it does not see the unseen; this habit, this act of the 
 mind is foreign to it ; so, since it keeps the word, faith, it is 
 obliged to find some other meaning for it; and its common, 
 
 I
 
 114 NOTE Da. 
 
 perhaps its commonest, idea is, that faith is substantially the same 
 as obedience ; that it is the impulse, the motive of obedience, or 
 the fervour and heartiness which attend good works. In a word, 
 that faith is hope or love, or a mixture of the two. It does not 
 contemplate faith in its Catholic sense ; for it has been taught 
 by flesh and blood, not by grace." Here, as in other places, 
 the lessons which Dr Newman ascribes to Divine Grace, are not 
 those which rise above, but those which sink below humanity. 
 A still more subtile logician, Bayle, in his account of Caligula, 
 says of that monster, " A 1'imitatiou du Diable, il croyoit qu'il 
 y a un Dieu, et il en trembloit ; et neanmoins il vomissoit des 
 blasphemes epouvantables contre la Divinite. II usurpa fiere- 
 ment tous les honneurs de la Religion ; et il n'y avoit aucun 
 crime qu'il fit conscience de commettre." Bayle, when he penned 
 these words, was perhaps thinking of some of the Popes : but 
 he who reads Dr Newman's attempt, in the ninth Lecture, to 
 maintain the coexistence of the divine gift of faith with habitual 
 immorality and profaneness, will find what might almost have 
 served as an apology for Caligula. 
 
 Now to this conception of faith, we reply in the words of 
 St James, that faith without love, that faith without obedience 
 is dead ; and as we do not call a dead body a man, so we do 
 not call dead faith, faith, but merely belief. This is no dispute 
 about words : the consequences of this distinction run through 
 the whole of theology, and are most momentous. The awful 
 consequences which Dr Newman deduces from it, will come before 
 us in Note I. As to the impertinences which he here pours 
 out on Protestants, they are utterly groundless, and mere Romish 
 fictions. Faith, according to the Protestant conception, is not 
 indeed a magical gift, to which there is nothing corresponding, 
 no analogon, in the natural man. As spiritual love has its 
 counterpart, its fore-shadowing, in the various modes of human 
 love, so has spiritual faith in moral faith. But, in all its mani- 
 festations, faith, we assert, is the apprehension of the unseen, of 
 the invisible. Without faith no great human work was ever 
 accomplieht. As to religion, without faith it cannot exist at
 
 NOTE E. 115 
 
 all. It is only by faith that we apprehend the Unseen, Invi- 
 sible God. It is by faith that we apprehend His Only-begotten 
 Son, His Incarnation, His Crucifixion, His Exaltation, His con- 
 stant Intercession for the Church. It is by faith that we receive 
 and apprehend the sanctifying influences of the Spirit. It is by 
 faith that we behold and receive the Body and Blood of our 
 Lord in the Holy Communion. We do not, we dare not, tran- 
 substantiate them into the visible elements of bread and wine. 
 In fact this is why we are separated from Rome, who, indulging 
 and pampering the carnal tendencies of our nature, is ever bringing 
 the visible, yea, the ornate, and even the tawdry, before the eyes 
 of her people, in order to supply them with visible substitutes 
 for the Unseen, in which they cannot believe. Doubtless there 
 have been many persons of heroic faith in the Church of Rome; 
 but in that which is peculiarly and distinctively Romish, we 
 mostly find some mode of idolatry or superstition, each of which 
 is ever a mere caput mortuum of faith. 
 
 NOTE E : p. 20. 
 
 In the very first Act of the reign of Elizabeth, the original 
 Act of Uniformity, it is ordered ( 36), that the Court which 
 shall be appointed to try cases of heresy, " shall not in any wise 
 have authority or power to order, determine, or adjudge any 
 matter or cause to be heresy, but only such as heretofore have been 
 determined, ordered, or adjudged to be heresy, by the authority 
 of the Canonical Scriptures, or by the first four general Councils, 
 or any of them, or by any other general Council wherein the same 
 was declared heresy by the express and plain words of the said 
 Canonical /Scriptures, or such as hereafter shall be ordered, 
 judged, or determined to be heresy by the High Court of 
 Parliament of this Realm, with the assent of the Clergy in their 
 Convocation." Here we find a solemn recognition of the au- 
 thority of the early Church. It was of great importance that 
 the Court of Heresy should have some clue to guide them in 
 
 i 2
 
 116 NOTE E. 
 
 determining the legal meaning of Scripture, with reference to the 
 cases brought before them. Nor was it of less moment thus 
 from the first to declare the connexion and continuity between 
 the doctrine of our Church and that of the first ages. This 
 clause was also of much value, in that it imposed a limit on the 
 construction of heresies, which were previously multiplied at 
 will by the temporary rulers of the Church. We must bear in 
 mind too that this Act was past eleven years before the final 
 legislative enactment of the Articles, which then became the 
 authoritative rule "for the avoiding of diversities of opinion, 
 and for the establishing of consent touching true Religion." 
 After this the previous criterion was of less moment; and hence 
 no mention is made of it in subsequent Acts bearing on the 
 same matter. From that time forward the Articles, along with 
 the Liturgy, became the authoritative criterion of heresy, a far 
 plainer and more definite than the former one. 
 
 One of the most remarkable instances of deference for An- 
 tiquity is Jewel's challenge, in his famous Sermon at Paul's 
 Cross, which led to his controversy with Harding, and thus be- 
 came an important act in the history of our Church. In this 
 sermon he recites a number of propositions, ultimately they 
 amounted to seven and twenty, r with regard to which he 
 declares that, " if any learned man of all our adversaries, or if 
 all the learned men that be alive, be able to bring any one 
 sufficient sentence out of any old catholic doctor or father, or out of 
 any old general council, or out of the Holy Scriptures of God, or 
 any one example of the primitive Church, whereby it may be 
 clearly and plainly proved that there was any private mass in 
 the whole world at that time, for the space of six hundred years 
 after Christ, or that, <kc. <fcc. <fec. if any man alive were able to 
 prove any of these Articles by any one clear or plain clause or 
 sentence, either of the Scriptures, or of the old doctors, or of any 
 old general Council, or by any example of the primitive Church, 
 I promised then that I would give over and subscribe unto 
 him." The boldness and confidence of this pledge were start- 
 ling : as Jewel himself expresses it, " I said, perhaps boldly, as
 
 NOTE E. 117 
 
 it might then seem to some man, but, as I myself, and the learned 
 of our adversaries themselves do well know, sincerely and truly, 
 that none of all them that this day stand against us, are able, or 
 shall ever be able, to prove against us any one of all those points, 
 either by the Scriptures, or by example of the primitive Church, 
 or by the old doctors, or by the ancient general Councils." The 
 establishment of this proposition was one of the greatest services 
 ever rendered to our Church by a single man, proving that we 
 are the faithful transmitters of the tradition of the early Church, 
 that, as Jewel himself well said in his answer to Dr Cole's 
 Second Letter, " we have the old Doctors Church, the ancient 
 Councils Church, the primitive Church, St Peter's Church, St 
 Paul's Church, and Christ's Church ; and this ought of good 
 right to be called the Apostles Church." 
 
 An official recognition of the authority of the Fathers is 
 contained in the often quoted Canon of 1571, drawn up by 
 the same Convocation which issued the forty Articles then for 
 the first time confirmed by Parliament. With regard to 
 Concionatores, that Canon lays down, "Inprinais videbunt ne 
 quid unquam doceant pro concione, quod a populo religiose 
 teneri et credi velint, nisi quod consentaneum sit doctrinae Veteris 
 aut Novi Testamenti, qtwdque ex ilia ipsa doctrina Catholici 
 Patres et veteres Episcopi collegerint. Et quoniam Articuli illi 
 Religionis Christianae, in quos consensum est ab episcopis in 
 legitima et sancta Synodo, jussu atque auctoritate serenissimae 
 principis Elizabethae convocata et celebrata, haud dubie collecti 
 sunt ex sacris libris Veteris et Novi Testamenti, et cum coelesti 
 doctrina, quae in illis continetur, per omnia congruunt ; quoniam 
 etiam Liber Publicarum Precum, et liber de inauguratione archi- 
 episcoporum, episcoporum, presbyterorum, et diaconorum, nihil 
 continent ab ilia ipsa doctrina alienum ;* quicunque mittentur 
 
 * Archdeacon Wilberforce, in his History of Erastianism, says (p. 15), that 
 the Canons of 1U03 " were plainly a turning point in the history of the Church 
 of England ; for they first required the Clergy to give their assent to the Book of 
 Common Prayer (by Canon 36), which, having been composed and employed 
 under Royal order, was now for the first time accepted by tho Spiritual Body.'*
 
 118 NOTE E. 
 
 ad docendum populum, illorum Articulorum auctoritatem et 
 fidem, non tantum concionibus suis, sed etiam subscriptione 
 confirmabunt." 
 
 If we attend to the wording of this Canon, in connexion with 
 the time when it was drawn up, we shall perceive that its 
 immediate purpose, like that of the clause on the determination 
 of heresies, was negative and restrictive, as is evident on the 
 face of it. A main part of our controversy with Rome was, 
 that Rome had added a number of Articles, which she enjoined 
 as Articles of Faith, but which were without any warrant 
 in Scripture, or in the teaching of the ancient Church. The 
 refutation of these spurious additions to the Faith had been 
 Jewel's great work, both in his Reply to Harding, and in the 
 Defense of the Apology, the second enlarged Edition of which was 
 publisht in 1570. Hence it seems plain that the Canon of 1571 was 
 specially designed to forbid the inculcation of these spurious Ar- 
 ticles of Faith. This too is the reason why Grotius, in his treatise 
 De Imperw Summarum Potestatum circa Sacra (c. vi. 9), when 
 he is protesting against the multiplication of dogmas, extolls this 
 Canon : "Non possum non laudare praeclarum Angliae Canonem." 
 In the rudimental state of our Church at that time, it was very 
 expedient to lay down this rule, and hereby to mark out the 
 great principle which had been followed in our Reformation, as 
 on the whole in the Lutheran also. For in that too the protest 
 was chiefly against the later additions and corruptions of Rome. 
 Herein they both differed from that brought about under the 
 direction of Calvin, in whom the systematic, dogmatic spirit was 
 predominant. In 1603, on the other hand, when we had had an 
 
 He seems to have overlookt the mention of the Common Prayer in this Canon of 
 1571. In the Canon of the same Convocation about Deans, it is also enjoined 
 that they shall take care " ne qua alia forma ohservetur in canendis aut dicendis 
 sacris precibus, aut in administratione sacramentorum, praeterquom quac proposita 
 et praescripta est in Libro Publicarum Precum." The Chancellors also are to 
 take care that all persons under their jurisdiction " observent ordines et ritus 
 descriptos in Libro Publicarum Precum, tarn in legendis Sacris Scripturis, et 
 precibua dicendis, quam etiam in administratione sacramentorum, ut neve 
 detrahant aliquid, neve addant, neve de materia, neve de forma."
 
 NOTE E. 119 
 
 adequate experience of the sufficiency of our own formularies, the 
 rule laid down for preachers, in the 51st Canon, is much simpler 
 and more definite, and therefore better, not to " publish any doc- 
 trine, either strange, or disagreeing from the word of God, or 
 from any of the Articles of Religion agreed upon in the 
 Convocation-house anno 1562, or from the Book of Common 
 Prayer." 
 
 In the Dedication of Jewel's Works to James the First by 
 Bishop Overall, the coincidence of our Canon with the Apology 
 is noticed. The principal end of Jewel's writings, he says, is to 
 shew, "that this is and hath been the open profession of the 
 Church of England, to defend and maintain no other Church, 
 faith, and religion, than that which is truly Catholic and 
 Apostolic, and for such warranted, not only by the written word 
 of God, but also by the testimony and consent of the ancient and 
 godly Fathers. For further proof whereof, the Church of 
 England in a Synod, Ann. 1571 (soon after the second im- 
 pression of the Defense of this Apology), did set out, together 
 with the Articles of Religion repeated and confirmed again by 
 subscription, this canon for the direction of those which were 
 preachers and pastors, viz : ' That they should never teach any- 
 thing as matter of faith religiously to be observed, but that which is 
 agreeable to the doctrine of the Old and New Testament, and 
 collected out of the same doctrine by the ancient fathers and catholic 
 bishops of the Church.' Whereby the public profession of our 
 Church for consent with antiquity, in the articles of faith and 
 grounds of religion, doth plainly appear ; howsoever particular 
 men may have otherwise their private opinions, and take some 
 liberty of dissenting from the ancient Fathers, in matters not 
 belonging to the substance of faith and religion, and in diverse 
 expositions of some places of Scripture, so long as they keep 
 themselves within the compass of the Apostle's rule of the 
 proportion of faith and platform of sound doctrine." 
 
 On this point Jewel himself speaks excellently, among other 
 places, in his Treatise on tlie Holy Scriptures (Vol. iv. p. 1173). 
 " But what say we of the Fathers, Augustin, Ambrose,
 
 120 NOTE E. 
 
 Jerome, Cyprian, &c 1 What shall we think of them, or what 
 account may we make of them ? They be interpreters of the 
 word of God. They were learned men, and learned Fathers ; the 
 instruments of the mercy of God, and vessels full of grace. We 
 despise them not, we read them, we reverence them, and give 
 thanks to God for them. They were witnesses to the truth ; 
 they were worthy pillars and ornaments in i\\e Church of God. 
 Yet may they not be compared with the word of God. We may 
 not build upon them : we may not make them the foundation 
 and warrant of our conscience : we may not put our trust in 
 them. Our trust is in the name of the Lord. And thus are we 
 taught to esteem of the learned Fathers of the Church by their 
 own judgement. St Augustin said of the doctors and fathers in 
 his time : Negue quorumlibet disputationes, quamvis catholicorum 
 et laudatorum hominum, velut scripturas catholicas habere debemus; 
 ut nobis non liceat aliquid in eorum scriptis improbare aut re- 
 spuere, si forte invenerimus quod aliter senserint quam veritas habet. 
 Talis sum ego in scriptis aliorum : tales esse volo intellectores 
 meorum. Some things I believe ; and some things which they 
 write I cannot believe. Cyprian was a doctor of the Church ; 
 yet he was deceived. Jerome was a doctor of the Church ; yet 
 he was deceived. Augustin was a doctor of the Church ; yet he 
 wrote a book of Retractations ; he acknowledged that he was 
 deceived. God did therefore give to His Church many doctors, 
 and many learned men, which all should search thfi truth, and 
 one reform another, wherein they thought him deceived. St 
 Augustin saith : Auferantur de medio chartae nostrae : procedat 
 in medium codex Dei : audi Christum dicentem : audi Veritatem 
 loquentem. In this sort did Origen, and Augustin, and other 
 doctors of the Church speak of themselves, and of theirs, and the 
 writings of others, that we should so read them, and credit them, 
 as they agreed with the word of God. Hoc genus literarum non 
 cum credendi necessitate, sed cum judicandi libei'tate [that is, with 
 the exercise of private judgement] legendum est. The Fathers 
 are learned : they have preeminence in the Church : they are 
 judges : they have the gifts of wisdom and understanding ; yet
 
 NOTE E. 121 
 
 they are often deceived. They are our fathers, but not fathers 
 unto God. They are stars, fair, and beautiful, and bright ; yet 
 they are not the sun : they bear witness of the light ; they are 
 not the light. Christ is the Sun of Righteousness : Christ is the 
 Light which lighteth every man that cometh into the world."* 
 
 Surely this is a reasonable, intelligent, and sufficient recognition 
 of the worth of the Fathers. The value of their testimony is 
 indeed of a twofold kind, that which they may have as witnesses 
 of the general belief of the Church in their age, and that which 
 they derive from their individual gifts. In the latter respect 
 they differ greatly, according to the diversity of their gifts. 
 Chrysostom and his School have their value, Origen and Jerome 
 theirs, Athanasius and Basil theirs, Augustin, Ambrose, Hilary 
 theirs. As usual too, their peculiar gifts often become their 
 peculiar temptations ; as we see most conspicuously perhaps, or at 
 all events with the greatest regret, in Augustin, the worth of 
 whose writings, were it not for this, would be doubled. Herein 
 however the Fathers do not differ essentially, nor even 
 
 * Jewel, it is notorious, was a special object of dislike and invective to the 
 flippant railer, of whom Dr Newman says (Lectures on Anglicanism, p. 32) that 
 he, " if any, is the author of the movement altogether." He, whom Hooker 
 (II. vi. 4,) calls " the worthiest divine that Christendom hath bred for the space 
 of some hundreds of years," was insolently termed " an irreverent dissenter." 
 In an Article in the British Critic for July 1841, ascribed to a minister of our 
 Church who some time after quitted us for Rome, where his heart had long 
 been, an attempt is made to justify Mr Froude's abuse. That Article was one of 
 the first announcements of the purpose of unprotestantizing our Church (p. 45) ; 
 and Jewel's chief sin is his being a Protestant, and agreeing with the Protestants 
 abroad ; of whom the writer seems to know about as much as the rest of his 
 School. For one charge against Jewel is, that he past nearly the whole period 
 of Mary's reign " in close and confidential intercourse with Peter Martyr, as well 
 as with Bullinger, Zuingli, and the rest of the congregation at Zurich " (p. 34). 
 Now Zuingli was killed at the battle of Cappel in 1531, whereas Jewel did not 
 go to Zurich till 1556; so that, his intercourse with the living Zuingli can 
 hardly have been more intimate than that of the Reviewer with Zuingli's 
 writings or life. This is a blunder into which a person, having the slightest 
 knowledge of the Swiss Reformation, could not have fallen. But it is not a 
 very unfair sample of the learning with which the Tractarians thought fit to arm 
 themselves for their warfare against the forein Protestants. Ignorance often 
 stands us in stead, by keeping us from knowing how ignorant we are. 
 Polyphemus, when his eye was out, could not even see his own misses.
 
 122 NOTE E. 
 
 specifically, from the divines of later ages, from Luther and Calvin, 
 from Jewel and Hooker. The divines of the seventeenth century 
 also have their own gifts ; and so, scanty as they may be, have 
 those of the eighteenth. On each of these his peculiar gifts have 
 been bestowed by one and the same Spirit, dividing to each 
 severally as He will ; and they all work together under His 
 direction for the edifying of the Church. 
 
 The English good sense, and respect for that which is and 
 which has been, the desire, so signally exemplified through our 
 whole history, to connect that which is with that which has 
 been, our preference of the real and practical to the abstract 
 and theoretical, as they have been the regulating principles of 
 our Church in all things, have also determined our mode of 
 dealing with the Fathers. In this matter there has been a 
 remarkable agreement among all our writers who have any 
 claim to the name of theologians. As Field expresses it (B. iv. 
 c. 16), "Touching the interpretations which the Fathers have 
 delivered, we receive them as undoubtedly true, in the general 
 doctrine they consent in, and so far forth esteem them as 
 authentical ; yet do we think that, holding the faith of the 
 Fathers, it is lawful to dissent from that interpretation of some 
 particular places, which the greater part of them have delivered, 
 or perhaps all that have written of them, and to find out some 
 other not mentioned by any of the ancients." Of course too this 
 liberty has increast along with the wider range and improved 
 method of Philology. 
 
 In like manner Jeremy Taylor, in the Dissuasive from Popery 
 (P. 1. c. 1. 1), proves the identity of our Church with the 
 primitive. " The religion of our Church is therefore certainly 
 primitive and apostolic, because it teaches us to believe the whole 
 Scriptures of the Old and New Testament, and nothing else, as 
 matter of faith; and therefore, unless there can be new Scrip- 
 tures, we can have no new matters of belief, no new Articles of 
 Faith. Whatsoever we cannot prove from thence, we disclaim 
 it, as not deriving from the fountains of our Saviour. We also 
 do believe the Apostles Creed, the Nicene, with the additions of
 
 NOTE E. 123 
 
 Constantinople, and that which is commonly called the Symbol of 
 St Athanasius : and the four first general Councils are so entirely 
 admitted by us, that they, together with the plain words of 
 Scripture, are made the rule and measure of judging heresies 
 amongst us : and in pursuance of these it is commanded by our 
 Church, that the Clergy shall never teach anything as ' matter of 
 Faith, religiously to be observed, but that which is agreeable to 
 the Old and New Testament, and collected out of the same 
 doctrine by the ancient Fathers and Catholic Bishops of the 
 Church.' This was undoubtedly the faith of the primitive 
 Church. They admitted all into their communion that were 
 of this faith. That which we rely upon, is the same that the 
 primitive Church did acknowledge to be the adequate foundation 
 of their hopes in the matters of belief: the way which they 
 thought sufficient to go to heaven in, is the way which we walk : 
 what they did not teach, we do not publish and impose : into 
 this faith entirely, and into no other, as they did theirs, so we 
 baptize our catechumens : the discrimination of heresy from 
 Catholic doctrine which they used, we use also; and we use no 
 other ; and in short we believe all that doctrine which the 
 Church of Rome believes, except those things which they have 
 superinduced upon the old religion, and in which we shall prove 
 that they have innovated. So that, by their confession, all the 
 doctrine which we teach the people as matter of faith, must be 
 confest to be ancient, primitive, and apostolic ; or else theirs is 
 not so. For ours is the same ; and we both have received this 
 faith from the fountains of Scripture and universal tradition ; 
 not they from us, or we from them, but both of us from Christ 
 and His Apostles." 
 
 In the second part of the Dissuasive (B. 1. 2), Taylor shews 
 that the rule adopted by our Church is also the rule laid down 
 concurrently by the Fathers of the third and fourth centuries : 
 and unless the passages which he alledges are proved to be 
 fallacious, which they never have been, and cannot be, his 
 conclusion as to the identity of our Church with the primitive 
 must stand fast, and cannot be shaken. In fact he is merely the
 
 124* NOTE E. 
 
 spokesman of the whole body of our divines down to our times. 
 One after another, they have taken up their parable, and have 
 demonstrated this same truth ; which indeed is so manifest and 
 palpable, that all attempts to rebut it have been utterly futile. 
 This too at first was the position taken up by the Tractarians, 
 the position which Dr Newman himself tried to maintain in his 
 Lectures on Romanism, as is apparent even in the passage quoted 
 above in p. 97. 
 
 At present, on the other hand, he asserts the very contrary. 
 Nay, in the last of his Lectures on Anglicanism, he tells us that 
 it was by the study of the Fathers that he was led to Rome. 
 How was this revolution brought about 1 In my Vindication 
 of Luther, when touching on this change, I have cited a pro- 
 phetic passage from Coleridge's Remains, where that great 
 intuitive philosopher foretells, that students of the Fathers, who 
 have no deeper philosophy than that of our ordinary English 
 systems, are almost sure of falling into the arms of Rome; and 
 I have tried to suggest some explanation why this should be so. 
 In fact, even in Dr Newman's most confident assertion of the im- 
 pregnableness of his original position, we may discern the germs 
 of his subsequent development. As he has shewn so much skill 
 in developing, not opposites out of opposites, which would be 
 in conformity to an ordinary law of Nature, but contraries out 
 of contraries, so in his own life he had just been doing the same 
 thing. He allowed the enemy to enter by a mine into his 
 impregnable position, as Camillus entered into Veii ; and then 
 he surrendered at discretion. 
 
 From the first, as I have observed in the Charge, the party, 
 who afterward obtained the name of Tractarians, set themselves 
 to maintain what they regarded as the peculiar position of the 
 English Church, against two opposite enemies, on the one side 
 against the Church of Rome, on the other against our English 
 Dissenters ; and in doing the latter they laid a special stress on 
 that portion of her characteristics whereby she is chiefly 
 distinguisht from our Dissenters, her discipline, and her respect 
 and deference for Antiquity. With this view they extended the
 
 NOTE E. . 125 
 
 application of the clause in the Act of Uniformity concerning 
 Heresies, and of the Canon of 1571, somewhat beyond their 
 original purpose ; which, as we have seen, was mainly negative 
 and restrictive, to prohibit the enforcement of any doctrine as 
 necessary, and the condemnation of any as heretical, except where 
 such a decision was confirmed by the consent of the early Church. 
 Dr Newman, on the other hand, and his followers, try to make 
 these rules positive and directive, as repressive of private judge- 
 ment, and enjoining the teaching of all that the early Church 
 taught. Thus in the Lectures on Romanism (p. 322), where he 
 cites both these enactments, he says that we, unlike both the 
 Romanists and the mere Protestants, " consider Antiquity and 
 Catholicity to be the real guides, and the Church their organ." 
 Now, after what has been said above, it will easily be seen that 
 the prohibition. You must not inculcate any doctrine as an Article 
 of Faith except what the early Church teaches, is by no means 
 convertible into the injunction, You must teach whatever the early 
 Church teaches : not to mention that both these rules were 
 omitted, and, as it were, dropt by our Church, when she had 
 drawn up her own Formularies to supersede them, the Canon of 
 1571 in the collection of 1604, and the clause concerning 
 Heresies in the subsequent enactments on the same subject. 
 Still less can we recognise the true spirit of our Church in what 
 Dr Newman said in the next page : " Explicit as our Articles are 
 in asserting that the doctrines of faith are contained and must be 
 pointed out in Scripture, yet they give no hint that private 
 persons may presume to search Scripture independently of 
 external help, and to determine for themselves what is saving. 
 The Church has a prior claim to do so ; but even the Church 
 asserts it not, but hands over the office to Catholic Antiquity. 
 In what our Articles say of Holy Scripture as the document 
 of proof, exclusive reference is had to teaching. It is not said 
 that individuals are to infer the faith, but that the Church is to 
 prove it from Scripture ; not that individuals are to learn it, but 
 are to be taught it. It does not say what individuals may do, but 
 what the Church may not do. The question whether individuals
 
 126 NOTE E. 
 
 may exercise a right of Private Judgement on the text of 
 Scripture in matters of faith, is not even contemplated." But 
 surely it is a complete misapprehension of the nature of laws, to 
 require that they should be distinctly and specifically permissive. 
 A law does not say, You may do this : the rule for its interpre- 
 tation is, Quod non prohibetur permittitur. Surely too our 
 Church did assert her right to search Scripture, not indeed 
 " independently of external help," but making use of such help 
 as she could obtain, though without fettering herself thereby, or 
 resigning her right to exercise her own judgement upon that 
 help, under the guidance of the Spirit of Truth, by her own 
 act, when she drew up her Articles and Formularies, and when, 
 having proved their sufficiency, she cast aside her previous 
 leading-strings. Moreover, by laying down that it is not lawful 
 for her " to ordain anything contrary to Scripture," or " to enforce 
 anything besides Scripture," she in a manner challenges the 
 examination of her teaching, and almost invites her members to 
 ascertain its congruity with Scripture. She never feared this test, 
 never shrank from it. She durst not contradict her Lord's 
 exhortation to the Jews to search the Scriptures ; nor did she 
 doubt that, if those of the Old Testament would be found on a 
 careful examination to testify of Him, a like testimony would be 
 derived from those of the New Testament by every conscientious 
 enquirer. She did not conceive that the Apostolic precepts, to 
 prove all things, to try the spirits, to give a reason for our faith, 
 were to be translated, for the great body of the faithful, into 
 commands, under pain of excommunication, to prove nothing, 
 to take all things upon trust, and to give up our reason blindfold 
 into the hands of a selfstyled infallible guide. By taking this 
 view of our position, and by his vehement repudiation of Pri- 
 vate Judgement, Dr Newman shewed from the first, that he 
 was likely to quit the ground of our Church, and to migrate to 
 Rome : and as these tendencies in his writings involved him and 
 his partisans in severe controversies, which are mostly bitterest 
 when among the members of the same household, while Ro- 
 manists rather welcomed such hopeful auxiliaries, they became
 
 NOTE E. 127 
 
 stronger and stronger, according to the wonted effect of contro- 
 versies, while the estrangement from the whole Protestant side of 
 our Church became more complete. 
 
 A similar tendency may also be observed in the passage 
 quoted above in p. 97, where he says: "Abstract arguments, 
 original views, novel interpretations of Scripture, may be met by 
 similar artifices on the other side ; but historical facts are proof 
 against the force of talent, and remain where they were, when it 
 has expended itself." The shallowness of this passage might 
 be deemed marvellous, as proceeding from so acute a logician ; 
 were it not continually found that the logical faculty is totally 
 distinct from the apprehensive and the intuitive, and often 
 subversive, or at least perversive of them. It is not easy to 
 say which member of the foregoing sentence implies the great- 
 est number of fallacies. Is it not the old rigmarole against 
 Copernicus and Kepler, against Galileo and Newton, that abstract 
 arguments, original views, novel interpretations of Nature, may be 
 met by similar artifices on the other side ? but physical facts 
 are proof against the force of talent, and remain where they were 
 when it has expended itself. Do you not see that the sun moves ? 
 do you not feel that the earth stands still ? So argues the Church 
 of Rome. These are plain facts, simple facts, palpable facts, facts 
 proof against the force of talent ; and in spite of all your mathe- 
 matics they remain just where they were. Therefore Copernicus, 
 Galileo, Newton are to be condemned, or, at the utmost, allowed 
 to pass as clever dealers in " abstract arguments and original 
 views." Has Dr Newman never felt that there is a truth in 
 philosophy, in ethics, in religion, nay, in history, and even in 
 poetry, of a totally different character from "abstract arguments," 
 and " original views," a truth in which the old and the new blend 
 into one, in which fact and idea become identified ? Is it indeed 
 the case, that, as has been reported, Dr Newman believes that the 
 Ptolemaic and the Copernican system of the world are both true ? 
 or that one of them is true one day, and the other the next, in 
 ever-recurring alternation, much like Anglicanism and Romanism ? 
 Or how could any man, who has reflected for an hour on the
 
 128 NOTE E. 
 
 course of his own life, on the processes of his own mind, on 
 the manifold transitions from the thoughts of the child to those 
 of the man, or on the events which have been going on in the 
 world around him, not to speak of those which have been the 
 objects of the continually ebbing and flowing controversies of 
 historians, pronounce that " historical facts are proof against 
 talent, and remain where they were, when it has expended itself." 
 True, the objective facts do so remain ; but what is he speaking 
 of here, except the subjective view of those facts, the view which 
 he had previously taken, and which has now been superseded by 
 a directly contrary view? This abjuration of Reason, this con- 
 founding of Reason with abstract arguments and original views, 
 and this setting up of arbitrary conceptions of facts, of pseudo- 
 miracles and imaginary saintship, as the tests of truth, are 
 essential characters of Romanism ; and when we meet with them 
 in the adversary of Romanism, they portend that, if he is not 
 mercifully preserved from following the tendencies of his own 
 mind, he will ere long become its captive. In sooth what do 
 we know of a fact, beyond the conception which we form of it, 
 and which is subject to all manner of influences? or how is 
 it possible to draw any inference whatsoever from a multitude of 
 facts, such as is presented by the writings of the Fathers, and 
 the traditions of the early Church, except so far as the dead 
 sticks, which lie scattered about, are pickt up and gathered 
 into a fagot, or organized into a structure, by the ecclesiastical 
 historian ? 
 
 How far historical facts are from being " proofs against the 
 force of talent, and remaining where they were when it has 
 expended itself," Dr Newman must have found out long ago. 
 For this is the main topic and argument of his Essay on 
 Development ; in which he takes the self- same materials as in his 
 Lectures on Romanism, professes to draw his arguments from the 
 Fathers, and comes to a directly contrary conclusion. The 
 Fathers, he said in 1837, are against Rome, and with us : but 
 now they have veered round : East is become West, and West 
 East : the Fathers reject us, and recognise Rome as their lawful
 
 NOTE E, 129 
 
 offspring. Still, after all, we have this plain advantage : the 
 direct testimony of the Fathers is in our favour ; and it is only 
 when they have been submitted to sundry processes of development, 
 that evidence in behalf of Rome can be extorted from them. 
 Therefore, in spite of this modern apology for Romanism, we may 
 still maintain, as confidently as ever, that our Church is one 
 with that of primitive Antiquity. What we used to call Romish 
 additions are now termed developments by their own champion, 
 and thus admitted to be novelties ; and, even if they could be 
 shewn to be legitimate developments, this would not prove them 
 to be necessary. Hence the rule of the early Councils condemns 
 and rejects this augmentation of the Articles of Faith. 
 
 In the last Lecture on Anglicanism indeed Dr Newman assumes 
 a bolder tone, and pronounces (p. 296) that "no candid person 
 who has fairly examined the state of the case can doubt that, if 
 we (the Romanists) differ from the Fathers in a few things, 
 Protestants differ in all, and if we vary from them in accidentals, 
 they contradict them in essentials." Here the distinction, 
 if it be relevant to his argument, ought to be between the 
 Church of England and that of Rome : but in that case his 
 assertion would be too glaringly false, too gross a contradiction 
 to his own former teaching. Therefore he uses the indefinite, 
 comprehensive term, Protestants, which must here be meant to 
 comprise the Church of England ; and thus a charge is in- 
 sinuated against her, which he has himself shewn to be directly 
 contrary to truth.* He then complains that our controversialists 
 
 * Professor Butler has pointed out (p. 86), that one of Dr Newman's rheto- 
 rical artifices in his Essay on Development is his " vividly describing infidelity, 
 and calling it Protestantism, and under the Protestantism so described covertly 
 leaving to be included the Catholic Church of England." Now I do not in the 
 slightest degree mean to disclaim the title of Protestant in its application to our 
 Church, if only it be rightly understood. Our Church is Protestant, in that it 
 protests against the usurpations and the corruptions of Rome. Nor is it a name to 
 be ashamed of, under the fancy that Protestantism is a mere negation. Every 
 prophet, every preacher of truth and righteousness from the beginning, has been a 
 Protestant, has had to lift up his voice in protesting against the vices and follies 
 of his contemporaries. The false prophets, who cry peace where there is no peace, 
 are not Protestants : but he who cries that there is no peace to the wicked, is, in 
 so doing, a Protestant. The Law, with its imperative TIwu shult not, is Protestant.
 
 130 NOTE E. 
 
 call upon the Romanists to shew why they differ at all from the 
 Fathers, " though partially and intelligibly, in matters of dis- 
 cipline and in the tone of their opinions ;" and adds that Jewel 
 " tries to throw dust in the eyes of the world," by making " an 
 attack on the Papacy pass for an Apology of the Church of 
 England j and more writers have followed his example than it is 
 worth while, or indeed possible, to enumerate. And they have 
 been answered again and again ; and the so-called novelties of 
 modern Catholicism have been explained, at the very lowest 
 as far as to shew that we have a case against them." The names 
 of our apologists, as well as of the Romish answerers, he prudently 
 omits : they would have indicated too plainly which scale had 
 kickt the beam, and what sort of a case has been made out 
 against us. For does he mean Harding's answer to Jewel? or 
 Brerely's to Field 1 or Smith's and Serjeant's to Bramhall 1 or 
 the same doughty Serjeant's to Jeremy Taylor, and to Stilling- 
 fleet ? or Knott's to Chillingworth ? in most of which combats 
 the Romish champion gained much such a victory as the 
 famous one of Goliath over David, like to it not only in the 
 issue, but also in the meekness of the tone which preceded it. 
 Or was he perchance rather thinking of his own answers to 
 his previous censures of Rome ? in which he certainly is very 
 forbearing and indulgent toward his opponent, a happy ex- 
 ception therein to the ordinary fulminations of Romish polemics, 
 
 So too is the Gospel, in that the light shineth in darkness, and the darkness 
 comprehendeth it not. There is a mode of Protestantism indeed, which is a mere 
 negation : but true Protestantism is only that assertion of the truth, which involves 
 a denunciation of the opposite errours, that proclamation of the light, which not 
 only diffuses the light, but drives away the darkness. Dr Newman, in his 
 former state, took the lead in dressing up Protestantism as a scarecrow, at which 
 he and his followers took fright ; and for a time they were continually exclaiming 
 that they were not Protestants, but Anglicans. Now however, in trying to lure 
 those whom he deserted to follow him, he tells them (Lectures on Anglicanism, 
 p. 1 32) that " nearly all our divines, if not all, call themselves Protestants." 
 Doubtless so they do, even Laud, on the most solemn occasions, in his speeches 
 both before the Lords and before the Commons, and in that on the scaffold. 
 The strange thing is, that a person should have had any acquaintance with our 
 divines, and not have found this out. This is the way in which talent is proof 
 against facts.
 
 NOTE E. 131 
 
 while he reserves all his severity for the Church he has for- 
 saken : and yet even in these skirmishes, we may maintain, the 
 advantage, if there be any, is oftenest on our side. Doubtless 
 however the Romanists have a case. But who has not 1 Judas 
 Iscariot has had his apologists ; and we have just seen 
 a case made out in defense of Louis Bonaparte's atrocious 
 crimes. Dr Newman seems to hold that no victory can be 
 decisive, unless the adversary is driven from his position, 
 and confesses it. This however can rarely be effected in in- 
 tellectual warfare, where practical interests are concerned. The 
 Byzantine Empire lingered on for centuries after its moral life 
 was almost extinct : and so may it be with the Papacy. At 
 all events so it has been with several of the Eastern branches of 
 the Church. But in fact the Essay on Development is a virtual 
 abandonment of the long- contested position. 
 
 As to the assertion that our divines charge Rome with differ- 
 ing from the Fathers, " partially and intelligibly, in matters of 
 discipline and in the tone of her opinions," it is true that a large 
 part of Jewel's twenty-seven propositions relate to circumstantial 
 details connected with Transubstantiation and the Adoration of 
 the Host ; these having been the most prominent points in the 
 disputations which preceded the martyrdom of Cranmer and his 
 companions. But his Apology takes a wider ground ; and if we 
 turn to Jeremy Taylor's Dissuasive, we find that the first chapter 
 treats of the controverted Articles in which the doctrine of the 
 Roman Church "is neither catholic, apostolic, nor primitive;" 
 and, to look only at the table of its various sections, he exemplifies 
 this with regard to the power of making new Articles claimed 
 by Rome, and in the Roman Doctrine of Indulgences, the 
 Doctrine of Purgatory, the Doctrine of Transubstantiation, the 
 Half-Communion, the denial of Public Prayer to the Common 
 People in a language they understand, the Veneration of Images, 
 the Pope's Universal Bishopric, the Invocation of Saints, the 
 Insufficiency of Scripture without Traditions, <fcc. Now will 
 Dr Newman dare to assert, that these innovations, with which 
 we charge Rome, are " partial and intelligible, in matters of 
 
 K 2
 
 discipline, and in the tone of her opinions ?" He dares not assert 
 it directly ; but he does assert it indirectly. Who then is it that 
 " tries to throw dust in the eyes of the world 1" His excuse must 
 be, that he had previously thrown it into his own eyes, so as to 
 blind his understanding, and almost to blind his conscience. 
 
 To discuss the Essay on Development, and to point out its 
 numerous fallacies, would be inconsistent with the scope of these 
 Notes, and would require a separate volume, which is hardly 
 needed. For its utter hollowness was exhibited in the most 
 convincing manner, as it seems to me, soon after its publica- 
 tion, by my brother-in-law, Professor Maurice, in the Preface 
 to his Lectures on the Hebrews; and its principles were sub- 
 jected to a searching analysis, which detected all manner of 
 fallacies, by the late Professor Butler, in a very able series of 
 Letters, which were printed in the Irish Ecclesiastical Journal, 
 and have now been collected. Several years ago, in Note G to 
 the Mission of the Comforter, I made some observations on the 
 necessity of progressive developments in the expansion of 
 Theology, and on the regulative principles by which they must 
 be determined ; and the correctness of those observations does 
 not seem to have been invalidated by Dr Newman's subsequent 
 Essay, or by the Replies to it. Hence I cannot take the ground 
 of denying his first principle, that Theology is a science designed, 
 like other sciences, to be developt gradually under the influence 
 of those circumstances which determine the expansion of the 
 human mind. But, this being conceded, two important questions 
 remain. Are Dr Newman's developments legitimate 1 ? and I 
 think nothing can well be more arbitrary and confused than the 
 process by which he elicits the main part of them : they are 
 rather accretions, than developments. Besides, even if this were 
 not so, if his developments were indeed legitimate, there is 
 still another question : Are they of such a kind, of such 
 manifest truth, of such primary moment, so clearly derivable 
 from Scripture, and so essential to the entireness of our Chris- 
 tianity, as to justify the Church in imposing them as additional 
 Articles of Faith, or in insisting on their practical reception ?
 
 NOTE E. 133 
 
 Whereto we may reply with the utmost confidence, that they 
 are not. In fact most of them are contrary to primitive truth, 
 contrary to purity of faith, contrary to holiness of life. 
 
 After what has been said in this Note, we may fairly 
 pronounce that Dr Newman's assertion, that " Protestants differ 
 from the Fathers in all things," and " contradict them in 
 essentials," if by Protestants he means the Church of England, 
 as exhibited in her formularies and in the teaching of her chief 
 doctors, is directly contrary to the truth, as he well knows, 
 having himself proved it in his Lectures on Romanism : and 
 assuredly this is one of the historical facts, which remain just 
 where they were, after all the resources of controversial ingenuity 
 have been expended upon it. Yet, among the gross delusions by 
 which the deserters from our Church have been drawn away, one 
 is, that she is not a legitimate successor of the Apostolic Church, 
 that she is not connected with the Apostolic by any continuous 
 tradition, nay, that she is the creature of the sixteenth century. 
 The impudent old question, Where was your religion before 
 Luther ? is still askt ; and though the assertion implied in it 
 has been refuted a thousand times over, it is still able to gull 
 some of those who have distorted their intellectual vision by 
 poring over ecclesiastical and theological controversies. As 
 Jeremy Taylor well replies (Dissuasive, c. 1. 12), "It is much 
 more easy for us to shew our religion before Luther, than for 
 them to shew theirs before Trent. And although they can shew 
 too much practice of their religion in the degenerate ages of the 
 Church, yet we can and do clearly shew ours in the purest and 
 first ages ; and can and do draw lines, pointing to the times and 
 places where the several rooms and stories of their Babel were 
 builded, and where polisht, and where furnisht. When almost 
 all Christian princes did complain heavily of the corrupt state of 
 the Church, and of Religion, and no remedy could be had, then 
 it was that divers Christian kingdoms, and particularly the 
 Church of England, being ashamed of the errours, superstitions, 
 heresies, and impieties, which had deturpated the face of the 
 Church, lookt in the glass of Scripture and pure Antiquity, and
 
 134 NOTE E. 
 
 washt away those stains -with which time and inadvertency and 
 tyranny had besmeared her, and, being thus cleansed and washt, 
 is accused by the Roman parties of novelty, and condemned 
 because she refuses to run into the same excess of riot and 
 deordination. But we cannot deserve blame, who return to our 
 ancient and first health, by preferring a new cure before an 
 old sore." 
 
 As to the argument which Mr Newman has brought for- 
 ward several times over in his recent writings under one form 
 or other, that the Church of Rome is the only Church now 
 existing which resembles that of the Fathers, and that, if any 
 of them were to visit the earth, they would own it as their 
 communion, it has been excellently answered by Professor 
 Butler in his Seventh Letter ; with a few extracts from which 
 I will wind up this Note. Both Athanasius and Augustin, he 
 Bays (p. 278), when they have any point to establish, do not 
 appeal to the decision of Rome ; but " go to work with their 
 Bibles in the most unequivocally Protestant fashion, and appeal 
 to the common belief of their predecessors, like simple Catholics, 
 who knew no better. Their Scripture texts are not confir- 
 mations, but principles. The Syrian exegetics, were never 
 declined by Chrysostom, or Cyril of Jerusalem, or Ephrem, or 
 Basil. There is no one of the dogmatic treatises of those times, 
 (allowance made for peculiarities of style and incidental allu- 
 sions ) which might not have been the production of our 
 Hammond, or Pearson, or Taylor. There is not one of them, 
 that could by any possibility be conceived written, as it stands, 
 by Romish divines." Further, after some remarks on the 
 exterior resemblance arising from identity of climate and race, 
 he adds (p. 296) that, were Athanasiua and Ambrose to come to 
 Oxford, as Dr Newman supposes, he should not be " confident of 
 a verdict, if the illustrious strangers were forced to a decision 
 within an hour after their arrival. But Athanasius and Ambrose 
 were both men of distinguish^ intellectual powers ; and with 
 a reasonable time for enquiry I should have no doubt at all of 
 the issue. And even as regards the first immediate aspect of
 
 NOTE F. 135 
 
 Romanism, Mr Newman will never persuade me that St 
 Athanasius would have joined ' the unlettered crowd before the 
 altar,' when he heard that crowd utter the prayer of enthusiastic 
 devotion to creatures, to himself, he who has so emphatically 
 declared that * Angels themselves are not worshipt, but 
 worshipers, and God alone to be adored,' and built on the exclu- 
 siveness of the right the proof of the Divinity of his Lord ; or 
 that Ambrose, who proclaims that ' the Church knows no such 
 idle forms of images/ would have willingly bowed his mitred head 
 to the drest and painted statue of a holy woman. But an 
 appeal lies to mightier authorities still. Ambrose and Atha- 
 nasius vail before Paul. I conduct the Apostle from an English 
 country church, with its noble and intelligible Liturgy, and the 
 expressive simplicity of its ritual, and the chastened ardours of 
 its Conramnion, to the procession of the Host, and the incensing 
 priests chanting in an unknown tongue, and the crowd of wor- 
 shipers prostrate before the God beneath the canopy, and I 
 confidently ask, which communion would he take for his own ? " 
 
 NOTE F : p. 25. 
 
 WE have just been witnesses of the hugest act, and one of the 
 hugest facts, one of the most saddening and dismal in the whole 
 history of the world. Seven millions of men, almost the entire 
 mass of a mighty nation, of a nation that boasts of standing 
 at the head of all civilization and culture, and that has been 
 striving and panting and grasping after Liberty, and wading 
 through fire and through blood, through every mode of death 
 and of crime, for the last sixty years in pursuit of it, have just 
 been exercising the privilege they have thus acquired, and 
 for what purpose 1 >to cast away their liberty, and to set up 
 a master, who shall rule over them with absolute, despotic 
 sway. And who is the man whom they have set up for such 
 an end ? to make a constitution for them, to order and renovate 
 the whole fabric of their state, to dispose of their families, their
 
 136 NOTE F. 
 
 wives, their children, their possessions, according to his arbitrary, 
 uncontrolled will. The Spartans of old, we read, set up Lycur- 
 gus for such a work, the Athenians, Solon, their wisest, justest, 
 most faithful, most upright, most generous, most temperate and 
 sober-minded, most patriotic citizen, of whom they knew that 
 he loved his country better than himself, that he would seek 
 no selfish aim, but only justice and the public good, that for 
 these he would joyfully sacrifice himself. This however was 
 in barbarous, heathen times. We, in this nineteenth century 
 of the Catholic Church, and of modern civilization, have learnt 
 a different lore. The nation now is to be sacrificed to the lusts 
 of the Prince, whose claims to his exaltation are founded on 
 triple perjury, and on the massacre of thousands of his peaceful 
 fellow-citizens, and the pledges and prognostics of whose legis- 
 lation are to be sought in the seizure, imprisonment, transporta- 
 tion, murder, of whomsoever he, or any of his officers, chooses 
 thus to honour, and in the suppression of every utterance, 
 whether by writing or speech, except of such as are willing to 
 lick the dust at his feet. So inveterate a part is it of man's 
 weak, corrupt nature, to desire to be ruled by a master, and 
 to dread and shrink from the dangers of liberty and personal 
 responsibility. 
 
 As an appropriate accompaniment of this most dismal fact, 
 we have seen the governors of that Church, which in like 
 manner abhors liberty, and crushes personal responsibility, 
 ready and eager to applaud the most outrageous crimes, and 
 to fraternize with the most atrocious criminals, if they will 
 seek her favour by varnishing over their crimes with a coating 
 of religious hypocrisy. And is not this huge act, which has 
 :ust taken place in France, a sort of parallel to what has been 
 going on in England of late years, and in Germany during the 
 earlier part of the last half century ? Of the excuses which 
 the deserters from liberty and truth may have found in the 
 latter country, from the previous licentiousness of a shallow, 
 all-confounding rationalism, I will not here speak. But surely, 
 if we marvel at the zeal with which the French nation are
 
 NOTE F. 137 
 
 bending their necks under their new yoke, it is still more mar- 
 vellous that, in the present state of the English nation and of 
 the English Church, her sons, without any such excuse, should 
 be rushing over to a somewhat similar despotism, beseeching 
 it to put out their eyes, and to manacle their reason, and to 
 gag their conscience. So singular is the analogy between these 
 facts, that every other newspaper furnishes us with some fresh 
 illustration of it. No one is to print, no one is to speak, no 
 one is to think, save what the political Pope wills and com- 
 mands. Already the process has commenced of castrating the 
 literature of former times, lest any manly voice from better 
 days offensive to the new Hierarch should be heard among the 
 people. Meanwhile the Church looks on, and smiles, and blesses 
 the holy work. 
 
 One lesson imprest on us by these events, a lesson confirmed 
 by the whole of history, is, that freedom, whether political or 
 intellectual, cannot exist, except in union with moral temperance 
 and selfcontroll. The repugnance to freedom, the wish to be 
 rid of it, arises in most cases from the conscious want of self- 
 controll. Men know not what to think ; their loose thoughts 
 drive them to and fro ; they hesitate, and doubt, and falter, 
 and slip about ; and hence they crave after infallibility, to fasten 
 and pin them down, and tell them what they are to think, 
 and what they are to do. It is in this morbid craving for a 
 master, for a rule, for something that shall deliver us from the 
 burthen of exercising our own reason and will, that the claim of 
 Papal infallibility finds its main support. 
 
 This claim, as asserted specifically for the Bishop of Rome, 
 is .notoriously of comparatively recent origin. No trace of it 
 whatsoever is to be found for many centuries, no hint of a notion 
 that there was any infallible guide, by whose wisdom the diffi- 
 culties and perplexities of the Church, in her innumerable 
 harassing controversies with all forms of heresy, might be set 
 at rest.* There was no bos locutus even at Rome itself. The 
 
 * Barrow urges this argument repeatedly. " Why did not the Council of 
 Trent itself, without more ado, and keeping such a disputing, refer all to his
 
 138 
 
 NOTE F. 
 
 oracles were dumb ; or rather there was one oracle, one infal- 
 lible Guide, to which all the teachers of the Church resorted, 
 which Athanasius and Chrysostom and Basil, and Ambrose 
 and Augustin and Hilary consulted, with equal diligence and 
 patience and submission, and from which they had a sure and 
 certain hope that, under the guidance of the Spirit of God, they 
 should learn the truth. Afterward, when the mind of the old 
 world had burnt out, and that of the new, modern world was 
 yet in its infancy, and through the centuries during which it 
 continued in its nonage, it received the lessons it was taught, 
 with implicit, unquestioning credulity, after the manner of 
 childhood, and did not think of examining into the grounds 
 or limits of the authority of its teacher. It was during these 
 centuries that the Papacy grew up, and, being the chief possessor 
 of religious truth, and wielder of religious power, absorbed 
 that power without difficulty more and more into itself. How 
 easily might Hildebrand, might Innocent, looking abroad from 
 his spiritual watch-tower on the world around him, and behold- 
 ing the selfishness, the cruelty, the reckless ambition of the 
 princes and lords, and the blindness and misery of their subjects 
 and vassals, feeling in himself too that he was called to alleviate 
 and remedy these evils and miseries, and to establish the majesty 
 of Truth and Righteousness upon earth, how easily might he 
 
 oracular decision ? Concord was maintained and controversies decided without 
 him in the ancient Church, in Synods, wherein he was not the sole judge, 
 nor had observable influence." p. 650. " The ancients in case of contentions, 
 had no recourse to his judgment ; they did not stand to his opinion ; his authority 
 did not avail to quash disputes. They had recourse to the holy Scriptures, to 
 Catholic tradition, to reason : they disputed and discussed points by dint of 
 argument. Ireneus, Tertullian, Vincentius Lirinensis, and others, discoursing 
 of the methods to resolve points of controversy, did not reckon the Pope's 
 authority for one. Divers of the Fathers did not scruple openly to dissent from 
 the opinions of Popes ; nor were they wondered at or condemned for it." 
 p. 736. " The ancients knew no such pretender to infallibility ; otherwise they 
 would have left disputing, and run to his oracular dictates for information. They 
 would have only asserted this point against heretics. We should have had 
 testimonies of it innumerable. It had been the most famous point of all," 
 p. 738. The facts being indisputably such, Barrow's argument is quite 
 unanswerable. It has been well put by Professor Butler, pp. 277-281.
 
 NOTE F. 139 
 
 grow to regard himself as charged with a divine mission to 
 overthrow the tyranny of the Prince of this world, and to set 
 up Christ's Kingdom in its stead ! How much of truth was 
 there in this belief ! and how easy was the transition, how 
 manifold the temptations, to conceive that, in the warfare, which 
 he almost alone was waging against the powers of earth and 
 hell, he was Christ's vicegerent, empowered to use all the weapons 
 of His spiritual armory, and to conquer armies by anathemas. 
 That this was an erroneous view of the nature of Christ's 
 Kingdom, and of the means whereby it was to be spread, that 
 it was beset by a number of almost irresistible temptations, 
 that he who entertained it would be prone to exalt himself 
 inordinately, and to open his heart to the very spirit he was 
 combating, we now know. Still more certain was it, that 
 successors of a less grand type of character would abuse and 
 pervert the power thus acquired, and, instead of devoting them- 
 selves to the holy work of bringing mankind into the Kingdom 
 of Christ, would employ the weapons of that Kingdom in setting 
 themselves up as lords over the earth. To their rule however 
 the mass of the people submitted, not unwillingly. The dominion 
 of the crook was milder than that of the sword. Men's thoughts 
 were scarcely out of the shell, their desires narrow, their know- 
 ledge next to nothing. They were ready to believe what they 
 were told by God's messengers and priests. Even if a Bible 
 had been procurable, and they had had the power of reading 
 it, how could they dare to take it in their hands, to turn over 
 its magical pages, to frame notions of their own about its mystic 
 words ? The use of a learned language, different from that of 
 the. people, was itself an effectual mode of keeping off the 
 profane vulgar, of making religion a thing of distant wonder 
 and awe. As to those whose understandings had been trained 
 to habits of reflexion, the philosophy of the Middle Ages led 
 them rather to spin notions about things, and to build up 
 castles in the air, than to take hold of them, and look at them, 
 and search into them, and interrogate them. They who scarcely 
 condescended to look at outward objects, except when seen in
 
 140 * NOTE F. 
 
 Aristotle's mirror, were readily contented to seek for revealed 
 truth in the canons of Councils and the decretals of Popes. 
 Or, if any soul was kindled by a living spark from the altar, 
 there were divers means of quenching and extinguishing it, 
 which were used without scruple. 
 
 These remarks may help us in accounting for the fact that 
 the claim of Papal infallibility was not distinctly asserted until 
 the dawn of the Reformation. The supremacy of the Popes 
 had rather been exercised in disciplinary and ritual matters, 
 which pertain more appropriately to such a tribunal, than on 
 questions of doctrine. But the transition from the former to 
 the latter was easy, and almost unavoidable; and how dazzling 
 are the temptations of an empire, which is to be wielded over 
 the hearts and souls of men, which is to make their reason, 
 their conscience, the innermost springs of the will, bow down 
 to it ! When the first gleams of the Reformation began to break 
 through the darkness, the relations between the various classes 
 of society, between the secular power and the spiritual, between 
 secular and spiritual knowledge, were entering upon a great 
 change, which has been going on ever since. The modern world 
 was coming of age, was no longer to be in the same manner 
 under tutors and governors. Self-consciousness was awakening, 
 and asserting its awful, its terrible rights. Men were becoming 
 more alive to the sense of their own personality, of their own 
 individuality, and, as involved therein, of their own responsi- 
 bility. When the blessed art of printing multiplied the copies 
 of the Bible, and the revival of ancient literature, and the 
 growth of philology enabled persons to study it, they began to 
 feel that it was no longer allowable to take religion upon trust, 
 that it was their duty to go to the fountain-head, to search 
 the Scriptures, which God had so graciously thrown open to 
 them. Hereby the authority, which had previously been sub- 
 mitted to unquestioningly, was shaken to its base. It could 
 no longer uphold itself by a bare Ipse-dixit. It had to seek 
 for some ulterior support, for that of Reason, if Reason could 
 be enlisted to support it, if not, for some plausible substitute.
 
 NOTE F. * 141 
 
 Everybody assumes that, what has long been his de facto, is 
 his de jure also. The possibility of an abuse, when our pre- 
 scriptive rights are called in question, does not enter our heads. 
 Thus it may not have been a very wide step, yet it was a 
 very bold one, one of the most audacious ever taken by man, 
 to assert that the authority in doctrinal matters, which the 
 Papacy had hitherto exercised during the intermission of Coun- 
 cils, on the strength of its supremacy, belonged to it by an 
 inherent, divine right on account of its infallibility. Seldom 
 has a grosser imposture been practist, never a cleverer, or one 
 which shewed a more piercing insight into the weaknesses of 
 the human heart. How must the Italians have laught in their 
 sleeves, when they asserted the infallibility of the Pope ! How, 
 above all, must the Popes themselves have laught in their 
 sleeves, when they proclaimed their own infallibility ! Hilde- 
 brand may have believed himself inspired; Innocent may have 
 believed himself inspired; but what faith could Alexander the 
 Sixth, or Julius the Second, or the classical voluptuary, Leo the 
 Tenth, or the tortuous politician, Clement the Seventh, have in 
 his own infallibility with regard to things spiritual and divine 1 
 If they did not deem Christianity itself a lie, as no small 
 number of the Popes must have done, to be upheld for the 
 sake of their own power or pleasures, or, at best, for the sake 
 of social order and morality, at all events they assuredly knew 
 themselves to be mere lies, lies in all things, above all in the 
 pretension to an infallible discernment of religious truth. Surely 
 it is a terrible thought, that a man, it may be a good man, 
 should be doomed to spend his whole life in acting out such 
 an imposture. Of all the snares of the Papacy this has been 
 the most delusive, of all its plagues the most pernicious. Its 
 tendency has been to eradicate the very idea and principle of 
 truth from the soul. They who live under its influence lose 
 the faith that anything is true in itself, lose their faith in that 
 Reason, which God has given us as an organ for the discernment 
 of Truth. Truth becomes dependent on the fiat of a mere man. 
 Hence in nations, over which the Papacy has exercised an
 
 142 NOTE F. 
 
 uncontested sway, the love of truth has faded from the con- 
 science ; and a sort of indifference to truth, as such, has become 
 a characteristic of Romanism, as contradistinguisht from Catho- 
 licism, especially of the Jesuit order, constituted as it was for 
 the sake of asserting and vindicating the unlimited claims of 
 the Papacy. 
 
 What an awful example of this is afforded by the manner 
 in which the Church of Rome has dealt with Physical Science ! 
 The infallible Pope, under the bondage of his infallibility, com- 
 pelled Galileo to recant. Probably the Pope himself was well 
 aware that he was compelling him to lie : but what mattered 
 one more lie, in a world the very element of which was falsehood? 
 At all events Galileo knew that he was betraying the truth, 
 which he had been chosen to proclaim to mankind. Had he 
 been a German, had he been an Englishman, he could not have 
 done so : even if he had tried to utter the words, they would 
 have " stuck in his throat." But, having been bred up as an 
 Italian, in an atmosphere of falsehood, he solaced himself with 
 that bitter jest, which ought to have wrung his heart's blood 
 from him, e pur si muove. Must he not have felt, when he 
 said this, as though the very foundations of the world were 
 out of course, as though something still more solid than the 
 earth were tottering under his feet ? and what must have been 
 his thoughts of Gocl, whose archpriest had forced him to utter 
 this absolute falsehood? of a God who was to be propitiated 
 by lies about His works ? We know too that this was not an 
 insulated act, but a sample of a system, a link in a chain of 
 falsehood, if such a chain or system can be. With good reason 
 then might Barrow, who felt the preciousness of Truth, both 
 scientific and religious, declare (vol. I. p. 641, ed. 1716) : " The 
 greatest tyranny that ever was invented in the world, is the 
 pretense of infallibility. For Dionysius and Phalaris did leave 
 the mind free, pretending only to dispose of body and goods 
 according to their will: but the Pope, not content to make 
 us do and say what he pleaseth, will have us also to think 
 so, denouncing his imprecations and spiritual menaces if we
 
 NOTE F. 143 
 
 do not." Can any one look at the declaration by which the 
 Jesuit editors of Newton disclaim any participation in his 
 theories, without feeling that he has entered into the dominions 
 of the Father of lies ? 
 
 Yet this is the region into which our Romanizers are rushing 
 back ; and this is the charm that fascinates them. They will 
 not follow the divine music of the Orpheus who calls them 
 into the upper realm of spiritual light and truth. The light 
 is too painful to their eyes ; Can this be truth, they exclaim, 
 so unlike what I supposed it to be ? They look back, and are 
 lost. Nay, like the Dunolly eagle in Wordsworth's sonnet, 
 they fly back out of the light "into the castle-dungeon's 
 darkest mew." The new converts to Romanism are hugging 
 their chains more, and drawing them tighter, than those who 
 had grown up under them. They rejoice in the bondage which 
 delivers them from the rationalism and scepticism of their own 
 minds. They wanted an authority to tell them what they 
 were to think, an infallible authority, lest they should have 
 the trouble of examining the rectitude of its decisions. Bind 
 my eyes, and lead me, or drag me along, that I may not have 
 to exercise my private vision in deciding where I shall walk: 
 so cries the Romanizing fledgeling. How can I find out my 
 own way, when there are so many paths, and so many puddles 
 in the pat/is, and so many ditches and pitfalls beside them, into 
 which I may slip; or my feet may get wet, and I may catch 
 cold ! What a pity it is that God gave us eyes to see for our- 
 selves with ! How happy shall I be, when I get where there 
 are no puddles, and no mud, and no ditches or pitfalls, and 
 where an unerring priest will carry me on his back into heaven ! 
 
 The complaint of the want of guidance in our Church resounds 
 on every side, and becomes louder every year. Dr Newman 
 himself set it up long ago, when he was amongst us, by com- 
 plaining of the "stammering lips" of our Formularies. That 
 blessed providence, which, by means of a singular combination 
 of political and ecclesiastical sagacity, preserved our Church, 
 in the midst of a dogmatizing age, from the snares of the
 
 144 NOTE F. 
 
 dogmatizing spirit, and threw her gates wide open, as wide as 
 those of the New Testament itself, became an object of reproach. 
 Block up those huge archways ! was the cry, as big as those of 
 Peterborough Cathedral; and make a private door in the side 
 for me and my followers. Divers parties had taken up this cry 
 in generation after generation ; and now at last it was taken 
 up by those who called themselves Catholics. They too betrayed 
 their affinity to Rome, by clamouring that their brethren ought 
 to be compelled to think just as they did. 
 
 For this, after all, we mostly find, is the guidance which 
 people really desire, to be bid to follow their own will, and 
 to have the power of making others follow it. This came out 
 prominently a year and a half ago in the correspondence between 
 Mr Maskell and the Archbishop of Canterbury. If Mr Maskell's 
 wish had been to be guided by the Primate of his Church, to 
 know what are the principles of her teaching, the Archbishop's 
 answer would have supplied him with hints for the purpose. 
 But his wish was to be told that he might impose his own 
 opinions upon his neighbours, nay, upon our whole Church. 
 His spirit was the Tridentine spirit : Qui secus dixerit, anathema 
 sit. Dr Newman, in his Lectures on Anglicanism, p. 8, cites 
 the Archbishop's answer, in a passage where he asserts that 
 our Church, "as a thing without a soul, does not contemplate 
 itself, define its intrinsic constitution, or ascertain its position ; " 
 that " it has no traditions ; it cannot be said to think ; it does 
 not know what it holds, and what it does not ; it is not even 
 conscious of its own existence."* As though it were essential 
 to the existence of a soul, that it should be busied in defining 
 its intrinsic constitution, and ascertaining and circumscribing 
 its position. As though it were not the constant characteristic 
 of an energetic, genial soul, that it pours itself out in action 
 
 * It is somewhat curious that ten years ago, in his Letter to Dr Jelf, Dr 
 Newman himself contended strongly in behalf of the proposition, that our Church 
 "allows a great diversity in doctrine, except as to the Creed," supporting himself 
 by quotations from Bramhall, Stillingfleet, Laud, and Taylor. In fact however 
 the liberty he then desired to establish was all on his own side. For even then 
 he complained of the stammering lips of our ambiguous Formularies.
 
 NOTE F. 145 
 
 upon the world around, without wasting its time in defining 
 its intrinsic constitution, or ascertaining its position. As though 
 this itself were not indicative of a checkt, represt action. Is 
 it not the grand and blessed peculiarity of our political Con- 
 stitution, that all our institutions, all our liberties, have grown 
 out of particular emergencies, that we have never set ourselves 
 down, like our neighbours on the other side of the Channel, 
 to define our intrinsic constitution, and ascertain our position 1 
 Yet for this very reason do we understand our position better ; 
 because we know it practically, from acting in it, not specu- 
 latively, from theorizing about it. Nay, was not this the spirit 
 and principle of the whole Catholic Church in its best ages ? 
 as it continued more or less until the Anticatholic Council of 
 Trent set about defining its intrinsic constitution, and ascertain- 
 ing its position, and building circumvallations around it, wall 
 beyond wall, and bastion beside bastion, with batteries of 
 anathemas mounted upon them, desolating the country round. 
 Our Reformers cared for truth, cared for Scripture. They 
 knew the perils that environ all attempts to construct systems 
 out of words, and aimed at correctness, rather than com- 
 pleteness. They were very scrupulous too not to go beyond 
 Scripture in any of their assertions. They desired that the 
 Church should be what it had been from the beginning : 
 they only wanted to demolish the walls and lines by which it 
 had been turned into a castle, and to throw the anathemas 
 down into the abyss from which they had risen. I can never 
 look into the Canons of the Council of Trent, without thinking 
 of the contrast to our own Articles, and blessing God that I 
 was made a member of the English Church, and not of the 
 Roman Castle, with its perpetual cannonade of anathemas. If 
 this is, "not to know what we hold, and what we do not," we 
 may well be content with such ignorance ; and we may thank 
 God that He endowed our Reformers with that rare and ex- 
 emplary wisdom, which was content to be assured from His 
 word that they were right, without drawing the presumptuous 
 inference that all such as differed from them were wrong, which 
 
 L
 
 146 NOTE F. 
 
 knew that difference is not opposition, and that opposition is 
 not contrariety. 
 
 That Mr Maskell's questions to the Archbishop were addrest 
 to him with any purpose of being guided by his answer, no 
 one can suppose. His own decision was made up. If the 
 Archbishop's had coincided with his, he would have accepted 
 it : as it differed, he repudiated it, and the Church of which 
 he was the metropolitan, because it did not agree with what 
 he, by his own private judgement, had determined ought to be the 
 doctrine of the Church. This inconsistency pervades the con- 
 duct of our seceders. They invey against private judgement, 
 and then exercise it in the most momentous act of their lives. I 
 do not blame them for exercising it. They cannot help doing so. 
 But how can one do otherwise than blame those who forsake their 
 Church for admitting of private judgement, to be exercised 
 soberly and reasonably, when they themselves are exercising 
 it inteinperately and unreasonably, in order to be rid of it 
 once for all, by jumping into the gulf, where their private 
 judgement blindly promises them they shall find an infallible 
 teacher ? 
 
 Dr Newman himself has written concerning infallibility from 
 opposite sides, first as its strenuous adversary, and latterly as its 
 advocate. If we compare the two arguments, we. may be 
 tolerably well satisfied : for our champion is decidedly superior 
 to the Roman, and has unhorst him more than once by anticipa- 
 tion. Of the Lectures on Romanism the two ablest are employed 
 on this topic. After admitting (p. 102), as he was bound to do, 
 that " in Romanism there are some things absolutely good, some 
 things only just tainted and sullied, some things corrupted, and 
 some things in themselves sinful," he adds : " but the system 
 itself so called, as a whole, and therefore all parts of it, tend 
 to evil. Of this evil system the main tenet is the Church's 
 infallibility."* He then sets forth a number of the mischiefs 
 
 These Lectures were publieht in 1837. In 1841, in his Letter to Dr Jelf, 
 the author exprest the same conviction no less strongly (p. 14). " Is its infalli- 
 bility a slight characteristic of the Romish, or Romanistic, or Papal system ? Is 
 it not that on which all the other errours of its received system depend? " 

 
 NOTE F. 14-7 
 
 which result from this evil source ; and though there are divers 
 symptoms of those partial and erroneous views which characterize 
 his works, though one finds indications of the harm which the 
 exaggerated admiration and misapplication of Butler's Analogy 
 have done to so many of our modern divines, I know few portions 
 of his writings, unless it be among his Sermons, more valuable 
 than these two Lectures. 
 
 On the other hand, in the Essay on Development, Dr Newman 
 has found out that this central evil of Popery, " the main tenet 
 of this evil system," is a necessity; as it may be for the 
 upholding of that " evil system," although utterly incompatible 
 with a sound state of Christianity. He maintains that it is 
 indispensable for the consolidation of his whole scheme of 
 Developments, that there should be a Developing Authority ; 
 and this Authority, he pronounces, must be infallible ; though 
 it would rather appear as if by the word infallible he did 
 not mean that it really is so. But on this point I shall have 
 to speak in Note M. The fallaciousness of the reasoning by 
 which this proposition is supported, has been very ably ex- 
 posed by Professor Butler in his last three Letters. I myself 
 on a former occasion (in Note A to my Charge for 1842) have 
 pointed out how Dr Newman in this argument gives a plausible 
 appearance to his case by a couple of ordinary sophisms, by his 
 indefiniteness in the use of the words hypothesis and theory, 
 substituting them one for the other, as if they were equivalent, 
 and by bringing forward two or three extravagantly absurd 
 alternatives, as though these were the only means of escaping 
 from the hypothesis he is defending. Some of the arguments 
 in this section come before us in the shape of answers to objec- 
 tions urged by himself in his Lectures on Romanism, and are 
 curious specimens of the diamond-cut-diamond mode of reasoning. 
 The following, in p. 124, shews what a wrench a strong mind 
 must undergo when it plunges into the Romish abyss. 
 
 " It must be borne in mind that, as the essence of 
 all religion is authority and obedience, so the distinction 
 between natural religion and revealed lies in this, that the 
 
 i 2
 
 148 NOTE F. 
 
 one has a subjective authority, and the other an objective. 
 Revelation consists in the manifestation of the Invisible Divine 
 Power, or in the substitution of the voice of a Lawgiver for 
 the voice of conscience. The supremacy of conscience is the 
 essence of natural religion; the supremacy of Apostle, or Pope, 
 or Church, or Bishop, is the essence of revealed; and when 
 such external authority is taken away, the mind falls back 
 again upon that inward guide which it possessed even before 
 Revelation was vouchsafed. Thus, what conscience is in the 
 system of nature, such is the voice of Scripture, or of the 
 Church, or of the Holy See, as we may determine it, in the 
 system of Revelation." 
 
 In this passage there is a chain of sophisms by which we are 
 led to the most revolting conclusions. The primary assertion, 
 that " the essence of all religion is authority and obedience," is a 
 partial truth, exprest with such vague generality that it may 
 subserve to any amount of fallacies. All religion does indeed 
 imply a relation, which in one sense must be that of authority 
 and obedience. But it no way follows from this, as Dr Newman's 
 argument would infer, that every relation of authority and 
 obedience is, as such, religious. This will depend upon the nature 
 and character of the authority ; so that the very point on which 
 the question hinges, is assumed in this way of stating it. When 
 Eve obeyed the Tempter, it was not religious obedience. When 
 our Lord resisted him, it was not an act of irreligious disobedience. 
 Among the highest acts of faith, many have ever involved disobe- 
 dience to some lawless, evil power. Nor are we destitute, as a 
 Romanist might pretend, of the means of discerning when we 
 ought to obey, and when to disobey. A conscience enlightened 
 by the Gospel will guide a simple peasant aright, as was seen, 
 for instance, in Tell. Again, though there is a sort of truth in 
 the assertion that " Revelation consists in the substitution of the 
 voice of a Lawgiver for the voice of Conscience," that truth, as 
 is often the case with Romanism, stops short at the Mosaic 
 dispensation. If the proposition is extended to the Christian, it is 
 contradicted by the declaration that, while the Law was given by
 
 NOTE F. 149 
 
 Moses, Grace and Truth came by Jesus Christ, Grace, the illu- 
 mination of the Conscience by the Spirit, and Truth, which 
 through that illumination it apprehends. What the beloved 
 Apostle designates as the glory of the better Dispensation, Dr 
 Newman casts back into the period of Natural Religion, whenever 
 that may have been. Were it true, that " the supremacy of Con- 
 science is the essence of Natural Religion, the supremacy of 
 Apostle, or Pope, or Church, or Bishop, the essence of revealed," 
 we should be unable to withstand the argument of the Ration- 
 alist, that Revelation is a mere step in the development of Natural 
 Religion. But the character of Christianity, as announced by 
 the prophets, is just the reverse. The Law is not to be 
 proclaimed by Pope or Bishop, but to be written in the heart ; 
 and all men are to know their Heavenly Lawgiver. The Truth 
 was not to make us bondmen to the Pope, but free. When He 
 who was the True Light of every man, and had been so from 
 the beginning, came into the world, He gave power to as many 
 as received Him to become the sons of God, that is, to them that 
 believed in His name. He did not say, / will set up My Light 
 here, on the hill of Zion, or there, on the seven hills of Rome. He 
 said, The hour cometh when neither on this mountain, nor yet at 
 Jerusalem, shall ye worship the Father^ neither here nor there, 
 as if these were the only places upon earth set apart for His 
 worship. But the hour cometh, and now is, when the true wor- 
 shipers shall worship the Father in Spirit and in truth, in all 
 places, without distinction. Hence the antithesis in the last 
 sentence of the passage just quoted ought not to be between 
 Conscience and Scripture, or the Church, or the Pope, but between 
 Conscience acting under the guidance of our own intellectual 
 and moral faculties, assisted by the traditions of mankind, and 
 Conscience with the superadded light of Scripture, and of the 
 Church, and of the Spirit of God. 
 
 The difficulties, which, the Romanists are wont to urge, inca- 
 pacitate the individual conscience for pronouncing judgement, 
 are greatly increast by Dr Newman's whole scheme of Develop- 
 ment. His Essay manifests an eminent revolutionary capacity
 
 150 NOTE F. 
 
 for throwing all things into confusion, a capacity not seldom 
 found largely developt in a froward child ; but it does not bear 
 witness to a similar faculty for restoring order and reorganizing. 
 There is little light in it, except what the flints strike from 
 being flung against each other. Hence, being utterly unable to 
 untie the knots, which he himself has tied, he wants a developing 
 Authority to do so. This is in keeping with the usual artifice of 
 Roman controversialists, who, after exaggerating the difficulties 
 presented by Christianity to the critical mind, assume that it 
 must present the same difficulties to all minds, and thus make 
 out a necessity for bringing in a Deus ex macJiina. At the 
 bottom of these proceedings, as of so many others of the same 
 Church, lies an erroneous conception of Faith, and the want 
 of it. Confounding faith with belief, she lays down that a 
 belief in every dogma is of the essence of Christianity, and 
 that they must all be believed under pain of damnation. But, 
 as the literal carrying out of this proposition would lead to 
 consequences equally absurd and horrible, she has invented the 
 makeshift of an implicit faith in all that she may teach ; 
 whereby such as surrender their reason and conscience to her 
 keeping shall obtain a ticket of free admission into heaven. 
 What however is there in all this, but a dreary want of faith 
 in spiritual realities? Dr Newman, in the passage quoted in 
 p. 113, and elsewhere, taunts Protestants with the want of 
 Faith, in the sense of "a spiritual sight of the unseen." In 
 the Notes on tJie Mission of ttie Comforter I have had frequent 
 occasion to remark how the want of that spiritual sight of the 
 unseen is a peculiar characteristic of Romanism ; for instance in 
 pp. 198, 342, 349, 435, 473 (2d Edit.). The same conviction forced 
 itself upon me in my Vindication of Luther, when replying 
 to Dr Newman's censures of him. In like manner, if we ex- 
 amine the arguments which are brought forward to establish 
 the infallibility of the Church, or of the Pope, we can hardly 
 fail to perceive that they imply a deplorable want of faith in the 
 gift of the Spirit, as granted to all who earnestly and devoutly 
 seek His illumination to guide them to the truth. He who
 
 NOTE F. 151 
 
 sincerely desires to find help, that he may be enabled to discover 
 the way of salvation, will find it, according to his need, in our 
 Church, quite as sure, quite as infallible, or rather far more 
 so than in the Church of Rome. For, even if the Papacy were 
 infallible, he could not benefit by that infallibility : he could 
 not have access to the Pope, so as to propound his private 
 difficulties for the decision of the oracle. His own minister 
 would be to him, as with us, the interpreter of the voice of the 
 Church. The main difference would be, that with us he would 
 be allowed and exhorted to train and refresh his mind and 
 spirit by the constant study of the Book of Life ; while Rome 
 would interdict his reading what, she knows, if freely examined, 
 must ever prove fatal to her pretensions. 
 
 In fact the faith of the Romish Church, so far as it differs 
 from ours, is not in spiritual powers and acts, but in magical. 
 A spiritual power acts upon the will and the conscience, and 
 through them. A magical power produces its changes arbi- 
 trarily, independent of the will and conscience. Such is the 
 belief which Dr Newman calls faith, and which he supposes to 
 manifest itself by outward acts, by the repetition of prayers by 
 rote, without any renewal of the spirit. Such is the baptismal 
 change of nature, as substituted for the new birth. Such is 
 the belief of a string of propositions on the authority of 
 another, without any inward personal conviction of their truth. 
 Such is the infallibility ascribed to Popes, without any reference 
 to their moral and spiritual condition. The Pope is nothing 
 but a hierarchal Archimagus. 
 
 NoiEG: p. 26:' 
 
 IN the third volume of Coleridge's Remains (p. 17), there is 
 the following remark on the twentieth Article. " It is mournful 
 to think how many recent writers have criminated our Church 
 in consequence of their own ignorance and inadvertence, in not 
 knowing, or not noticing, the contradistinction here meant
 
 152 NOTE G. 
 
 between power and authority. Rites and ceremonies the Church 
 may ordain jure proprio : on matters of faith her judgement 
 is to be received with reverence, and not gainsaid, but after 
 repeated enquiries, and on weighty grounds." 
 
 This seems to have been written in 1831, when the 
 ecclesiastical current, which had so long been ebbing away, was 
 just flowing back with springtide force. During the last twenty 
 years, if this Article has been deemed unsatisfactory, the com- 
 plaint has rather been that it does not sufficiently magnify the 
 authority of the Church ; and attempts have been made to 
 strain its words into a meaning very different from that which 
 its authors put into them. Thus the simple wisdom of our 
 great Christian philosopher, which stood out almost alone during 
 the neap-tide, has since been submerged by the rush of the 
 waters. But that rush will pass away; and then his simple 
 wisdom will be seen to express the true sense of our Article, 
 marking out the right boundary between the undue depreciation 
 and the inordinate exaggeration of the authority of the Church. 
 
 Here again Dr Newman, in his Lectures on Romanism, though 
 he denounced the Romish doctrine of the infallibility of the 
 Church with much logical as well as rhetorical power, yet 
 prepared the way for the inculcation of the same doctrine with 
 regard to our own Church. " In the 20th Article (he says, 
 p. 226) we are told that the Church has ' authority in contro- 
 versies of faith.' Now these words certainly do not merely mean 
 that she has authority to enforce such doctrines as can historically 
 be proved to be Apostolical. They do not speak of her power 
 of enforcing truth, or of her power of enforcing at all, but say 
 that she has ' authority in controversies.' But how can she 
 have this authority, unless she be certainly true in her decla- 
 rations 7 She can have no authority in declaring a lie." 
 
 Now surely it is marvellous that so expert a logician should 
 have presented us with such a dilemma, that he should not 
 have discerned how there are a number of intermediate alter- 
 natives, between declaring the truth with absolute certainty, 
 and declaring a lie. May we not have a strong, a very strong
 
 NOTE G. 153 
 
 presumption that the Church, after a patient, devout consideration 
 of the controversies of faith, will be enabled to pronounce rightly 
 concerning them 1 although this presumption may fall short 
 of absolute certainty. Yet it may be sufficient to warrant her 
 in interposing her decision for the sake of peace, when con- 
 troversies of faith are raging among her ministers : and this 
 is why, in claiming that authority, she defines its application 
 to " controversies of faith." Hence, in drawing up her Articles, 
 she declared them to be "for the avoiding of diversities of 
 opinions, and for the establishing of consent touching true re- 
 ligion." In this also she followed the practice of the early 
 Church, not laying down a scholastic system of doctrine, like 
 the Tridentine, but confining the exercise, and even the 
 assertion of her authority to those doctrines which had become 
 the subject of controversies. Moreover her earnest desire not to 
 fetter the individual conscience was manifested in this, that 
 her Articles were not designed to be Articles of Faith, or 
 terms of Communion ; nor did she invent any such fiction aa 
 Implicit Faith, to salve over the wide-spread sore of general igno- 
 rance and unbelief: she merely desired to keep her appointed 
 teachers from preaching the prevalent errours of Rome, and from 
 running after the extravagances which the shock of the Re- 
 formation had let loose. So long as she put forth her authority 
 thus judiciously, her ministers might bow to it, at least in silent 
 submission, with perfect conscientiousness, provided no essential 
 doctrine was involved ; or, if they felt their own sense of truth 
 trencht upon, they might retire into lay communion. 
 
 The other arguments used by Dr Newman in the same 
 Lecture may be refuted by the same simple remark. While he 
 claims certainty for the decisions of the Church, our Article im- 
 plies nothing more than a high degree of probability. " To say 
 the Church has authority (he argues in p. 227), and yet is not 
 true, as far as it has authority, were to destroy liberty of con- 
 science." Yes : to say it is not true. But who says that ? 
 We say, that we have very strong grounds for trusting that her 
 decisions will be true, though still there is a possibility of her
 
 154 NOTE G. 
 
 erring. Nor does this fallibility invalidate her authority, any 
 more than that of parents and other governors, as I have pointed 
 out in the Charge. 
 
 In his views on this point there seems to have been no little 
 confusion. The passage just cited is not easily reconcilable with 
 all that is urged so strongly in the previous Lectures against the 
 infallibility claimed by Rome. In a subsequent Lecture (pp. 
 320 324), on the other hand, he maintains that our Church, in 
 claiming authority, does not claim it as a judge, but as a witness 
 of primitive truth ; and he tries to support this assertion by the 
 Canon of 1571, which we have discust above in Note E. That 
 Canon however was not laid down as an absolute rule for the 
 Church, but merely for the guidance of individual preachers, in a 
 time of intellectual convulsions : and even for them it is merely 
 negative and limitary. In the 20th Article the Church, in the 
 consciousness of her spiritual privileges, does not recognise any 
 absolute rule for her own direction, except that of Scripture ; 
 though, when we turn to the Canon, we may feel convinced that, 
 in forming her judgement, she will gladly take advantage of 
 whatever help may be afforded by the teaching of Antiquity. 
 The Article does not state that the primitive Church alone had 
 authority in controversies of faith, but that in every age, as con- 
 troversies arose, the Church, by her lawful organs, has authority 
 to decide them ; and the only condition prescribed for the exer- 
 cise of this authority is, that it must be in conformity to 
 Scripture. How the Church is to interpret Scripture, the Article 
 does not define, further than that she must not " so expound one 
 place of Scripture that it be repugnant to another." All beyond 
 this is left open : and why should it not be so ? In every age, 
 we may trust, the Spirit will teach the Church, what use she 
 is to make of her various human helps. 
 
 Without engaging in the dispute about the manner in which 
 the first sentence of the 20th Article obtained a place in it, I 
 may here remark, that, in determining the meaning of that 
 Article, we should bear in mind that this first sentence is a later 
 addition, whether made in 1562, or in 1571. In its original
 
 NOTE G. 155 
 
 form, this Article, like many of the others, was merely negative 
 and restrictive, laying down the limits of the authority of the 
 Church, that it is not lawful for her to ordain anything 
 contrary to God's word written, or to expound one place of 
 Scripture so that it be repugnant to another, or to enforce 
 anything, besides what is derived from Scripture, to be believed 
 for necessity of salvation. Thus it was meant as a protest 
 against the Papal assumption of a right to fabricate new Articles 
 of Faith, and to impose them as necessary to salvation. This 
 was one of the main principles of our Reformation ; and 
 therefore it is also asserted in the 6th Article, and again in the 
 21st. In the course of the controversy occasioned by Tract 
 XC, it was contended that the insertion of these words, "necessary 
 to salvation" in the 21st Article, was indicative of a compromise, 
 and of a purpose to leave it an open question, whether General 
 Councils might not be infallible with regard to such truths as 
 are not necessary to salvation. But, if we look at them rightly, 
 in connexion with the circumstances of the age, they merely 
 shew that our Reformers here also were acting with their wonted 
 selfcontroll, and confined themselves to the assertion of that 
 which was requisite for the deliverance of the Church from 
 the bondage of human, arbitrary Articles of Faith. They did 
 not indulge themselves in laying down general propositions 
 concerning matters that were not requisite for their immediate 
 purpose : but surely, if they did not hold General Councils to be 
 preserved from the possibility of errour with regard to truths 
 necessary to salvation, they can never have had any intention of 
 implying that such Councils might have an immunity from 
 errour with regard to other less momentous truths. At the same 
 time, in the very act of drawing up the Articles, they were 
 exercising authority in controversies of faith ; and when this 
 authority became a matter of dispute, it was clearly expedient 
 and right that it should be distinctly asserted, as well as the 
 power of decreeing rites and ceremonies ; which was so vehemently 
 impugned, that one of Hooker's main purposes in writing his 
 great work was to vindicate it.
 
 156 NOTE G. 
 
 In this assertion however, while there certainly was not the 
 slightest thought of claiming infallibility, as the 21st Article, 
 by itself, would suffice to prove, I am equally unable to discern 
 any pretension to a right of binding consciences ; which indeed, 
 strictly speaking, could not exist, unless it were accompanied by 
 infallibility. Authority may require the obedience of our 
 actions ; but no human authority, as such, can demand more than 
 the deference of our thoughts : nor can we really render more 
 without betraying our humanity. It was with a wise recognition 
 of this truth, that our Reformers did not draw up their Articles 
 as Articles of Faith, but merely as Articles of Peace, " for the 
 avoiding of diversities of opinions." This distinction is pointed 
 out by Bramhall, in his Replication to the Bishop of Chalcedon 
 (Vol. ii. p. 201), where he contrasts our practice with that of 
 Rome : " Pius the Fourth did not only enjoin all ecclesiastics 
 to swear to his new Creed, but he imposed it upon all Christians, as 
 veram fidem Catholicam extra quam nemo salvus esse potest. We 
 do not hold our Thirtynine Articles to be such necessary truths, 
 extra quam non est solus, nor enjoin ecclesiastic persons to swear 
 to them, but only to subscribe them as theological truths, for the 
 preservation of unity among us, and the extirpation of some 
 growing errours." When Dr Newman, in his Letter to Dr Jelf, 
 urged this important distinction, and supported it (in pp. 
 18 23) by the testimonies of some of our chief divines, he, for 
 once, was contending for a great Protestant liberty. 
 
 Hence I cannot adopt, what Archdeacon Wilberforce, in his 
 History of Erastianism (p. 29), calls " the ancient principle," 
 which he strenuously maintains, " that the interpretation of 
 doctrine as given by authority has a claim upon the conscience ;" 
 if the claim is to anything more than to respectful deference and 
 consideration. In fact our Church herself expressly denies such 
 a claim, unless it be enforced by the clear testimony of Scripture. 
 
 In the Sermon on the Principle of Church Authority subjoined 
 to this Sketch of Erastianism, the excellent writer tries to 
 vindicate his view of that principle by a comparison between the 
 processes by which we acquire the knowledge of natural and that
 
 NOTE G. 157 
 
 of spiritual things. The conception was a happy one ; and, if he 
 had workt it out more closely and distinctly, he would have 
 arrived at different, and, as it seems to me, corrector results. 
 After speaking of the great importance ascribed by philosophers, 
 ancient and modern, to the common consent of mankind, as a 
 testimony to the truths for which it vouches, he tells us that, in 
 the sphere of revealed truth, the place of this common consent is 
 occupied by the authority of the Church. Undoubtedly : but, 
 precious as is the value of this common consent, so far as it 
 expresses the deep, hidden consciousness of humanity in behalf 
 of moral truths, it not seldom misunderstood itself, was often 
 tainted and perverted by errours springing from the inherent 
 sinfulness of our nature, seldom attained to more than a semi- 
 consciousness of its own meaning, and needed some spokesman or 
 interpreter, some heaven-sent prophet, to give it utterance. This 
 was the office of the great lawgivers and moral teachers of 
 Antiquity, nay, of every man in whom the voice of Conscience 
 spake out and delivered its messages, whether by word or by 
 deed. Among these prophets of the Heathen world, the first 
 place by general accord is granted to Socrates, whose great work 
 was to give utterance to the truths of man's innermost conscious- 
 ness ; and in whose life we see how the common consent of his 
 age had become encrusted with a number of traditionary and 
 dogmatical errours, so that it required the death-plunge of an 
 immortal spirit to burst through it. Now it is very certain that 
 in the written word of God we have an incomparably clearer, 
 distincter enunciation of moral and spiritual truth, than that 
 which the common consent of Antiquity had to bear witness and 
 give utterance to. But, as the power of Sin, although it had been 
 overcome once for all, has still been awfully mighty, even in the 
 Church of Him who overcame it, so has it been with Errour, 
 which from the first has always been its correlative, its inseparable 
 Siamese twin. All forms of errour, both traditionary and dog- 
 matical, have been perpetually springing up and spreading 
 through the Church ; and divers of these have been taken up 
 from time to time by the common consent of particular ages,
 
 158 NOTE G. 
 
 through the elective affinities of Sin, until some new witness or 
 witnesses to the Truth, as declared once for all in the word of 
 God, have been called up to establish it, often by their 
 martyrdom. Doubtless the truths of revealed religion have been 
 apprehended from time to time more distinctly, and have been 
 exprest in definite propositions with more or less of scientific 
 order, by those who have exercised authority in the Church ; 
 even as the truths of our moral consciousness were apprehended 
 and enunciated by the ancient sages : but in neither case has the 
 human liability to errour been wholly excluded. Though the 
 Spirit would assuredly have directed the Church to the truth, 
 if the Church had allowed herself to be directed by Him, yet 
 in this, as in so many other instances, the Divine promise 
 has been more or less baffled, not from any slackness on the part 
 of the Giver, but through the manifold obstacles opposed by the 
 recipients. Still, in the main, the Spirit did so far prevail over 
 the reluctances of man's carnal, sinful nature, that the primary 
 principles of Christian truth, those which are embodied in the 
 Creeds, have obtained a catholic recognition in the Church. 
 With regard to these then she is a sure witness and a safe 
 guide to the truth ; and of this we may feel a confident conviction, 
 in that she proves her declarations to be in accordance with 
 Scripture. So far as she does this, and so far as she awakens 
 a response in the heart and mind of the individual believer, 
 so far her authority is binding on his conscience ; but no further, 
 that is, with regard to points of faith. In ritual and ceremonial 
 matters, and all things indifferent, he will owe her obedience : 
 but in faith he cannot render such, except so far as his own 
 spirit is awakened and aroused to receive what she would pour 
 into it. If the Church would bind the conscience, she must do 
 so, according to St Paul's method (2 Cor. iv. 2), by manifestation 
 of the truth. 
 
 Hence I cannot but regret that Archdeacon Wilberforce, in 
 the same Sermon, should have given his sanction to the hankering, 
 the morbid hankering, it seems to me, after leading-strings, 
 which has been beguiling so many persons of late to listen
 
 NOTE G. 159 
 
 to every bold pretender, whether he would lead them to Rome or 
 to the land of the Mormons. His Sermon being on St Paul's 
 declaration, that he who is spiritual judgeih all things, yet he 
 himself is judged by no man, he warns us that these words must 
 be received with great caution, inasmuch as they are a favorite 
 text with enthusiasts and impostors : and then, after citing the 
 analogous verses of St John, Ye have an unction from the Holy 
 One; and ye know all things: the anointing which ye have 
 received from Him abideth in you ; and ye need not that any man 
 teach you: he adds (p. 126): "Such expressions harmonize 
 with that longing for some principle of guidance, which is deeply 
 rooted in the heart. We can classify and catalogue the material 
 treasures of mankind. And is the higher region of thought and 
 intellect to be vext for ever by unsatisfying contentions ? are 
 systems of belief to follow one another like the waves of the 
 deep, without umpire and without end 1 Is there no test of 
 moral and religious truth, no criterion for interpreting God's 
 word ? " 
 
 This umpire, and test, and criterion, he bids us seek and find 
 in the authority of the Church. Yet the more I examine the 
 passages here cited, along with the context, the clearer it seems 
 to me, that both St Paul and St John are not speaking of the 
 authority of the collective body, or of the Church, but of the 
 personal, individual illumination vouchsafed by the Spirit to 
 every faithful Christian, who seeks His holy communion. This 
 is the prima facie meaning of these passages; and it is confirmed 
 by the whole tenour of St Paul's Epistle, one main topic of which 
 relates to the various gifts of the Spirit bestowed on individuals : 
 To one is given by the Spirit the word of wisdom ; and so on. 
 It is only by foisting in considerations which are quite alien 
 from these passages, that we can wrest them from this meaning. 
 One of the worst mischiefs of that which is called the Sacra- 
 mental System, is, that its advocates are apt to disparage and 
 lose sight of all spiritual influences, except such as are conveyed 
 ecclesiastically through some sacramental ordinance. A like 
 tendency, I have had occasion to remark in the Notes on
 
 160 NOTE G. 
 
 the Mission of the Comforter, is often found in the divines who 
 belong to what is called the Anglocatholic School. I am not 
 urging this as an argument against that system, a question far 
 too large for this place : I readily concede that the evils which 
 may result from the perversion and misapplication of a truth, do 
 not impeach it. But in like manner we have a right to demand 
 that the evils alledged to result from false pretensions to a 
 spiritual illumination must not be allowed to weigh against the 
 reality of such illuminations. If the abuse of a thing disproved 
 its use, man would long ago have forfeited every blessing that 
 God has granted him. 
 
 I cannot admit therefore that these texts refer, as Archdeacon 
 Wilberforce contends (p. 137), "not to the individual, but to 
 the collective Christian." Assuredly they do refer to the in- 
 dividual Christian, not indeed in his frail, sinful, erring 
 individuality, but, as some would say, to the ideal Christian, 
 to that ideal Christian who is one and the same with the real 
 Christian, to the individual, so far as he avails himself of his 
 Christian privileges, and fulfills his Christian character, so far 
 as he lives, not by his own selfish, insulated life, but by the 
 spirit of Christ dwelling in him. It is true, _St Paul " does not 
 mean that each man may believe what he chooses for himself." 
 But who ever did mean this? Who can ever have asserted 
 anything so grossly and glaringly absurd 1 The wonder is, 
 that anybody should ever have set up such a man of straw to 
 knock down, that anybody should ever have identified this 
 absurdity with the claim to the exercise of private judgement. 
 No one in his senses can ever have maintained " that each man 
 may believe what he chooses for himself" in theology, any more 
 than in any other branch of knowledge. In all branches our 
 conceptions must be regulated and determined by their objects. 
 Nor is such a proposition implied in the denial of our being 
 bound to believe what others choose for us. Will and choice 
 have nothing to do with the matter ; except so far as the will 
 may be needed to suppress the interference of personal likings 
 and prejudices, and to make us submit our minds obediently to
 
 NOTE O. 161 
 
 that which is appointed for our belief by the various laws of 
 thought. 
 
 But, though St Paul does not mean " that each man may 
 believe what he chooses," he is just as far from meaning, what 
 Archdeacon Wilberforce (p. 137) imputes to him, "that each 
 man is safe, while he holds that which is accepted of all." This 
 is a miserable modern notion, a miserable modern anxiety, this 
 vexing and worrying ourselves about what it is safe for us to 
 believe and to think. This phrase, for surely it is nothing 
 else : even those who make use of it cannot really mean what 
 they say, is brought forward perpetually nowadays, even by 
 those who talk grandly about an objective system of Truth, and 
 boast of having set up this to supersede the merely subjective 
 views of the last generations. Yet, if the divinity of our fathers 
 was too apt to pass by many of the deepest truths of Christianity, 
 and to fix its attention too exclusively on those which bear 
 immediately on our own personal salvation, it was left for their 
 successors to make this the test of truth. When St Paul 
 exhorted us to meditate on whatsoever things are true and 
 honest and just and pure and lovely and of good report, he 
 omitted to mention whatsoever things are safe. This omission 
 must seem unaccountable to our new divines, who, passing over 
 all the other grand and glorious objects of contemplation, set 
 whatsoever things are safe before us as the one class we are to 
 think on. Yet assuredly, if we seek what is true, honestly and 
 earnestly, with such helps as God has given us, and if we believe 
 and act up to the truth which we may thus find, we shall be 
 safe. Whereas, if our main purpose is merely to find out what 
 we may believe with safety to our own puny selves, we shall 
 miss the truth, and our safety along with it. In no point of 
 view is it more certain, that he whose anxiety is to save his 
 life will lose it, and that he alone who is ready to lose his life 
 will save it. When we read St Paul's stirring account of the 
 manifold perils he had past through, we there see how he saved 
 his life, and won it. Had he shrunk from them, he would have 
 lost it. To us indeed it is not granted to walk in the footsteps 
 
 M
 
 of that great Apostle, who trod, so to say, from pinnacle to 
 pinnacle, from mountain-top to mountain-top, in the spiritual 
 world : but the rule of our walk ought to be the same as his. 
 
 I have already had occasion to cite another instance of this 
 perversity in p. 85 ; and I have said thus much on it here, 
 because this notion, that we are not to seek after that which 
 is true, but merely that which is safe, akin, as it is, to the 
 Eomish disbelief of any real truth, and to the intellectual 
 despotism of the Papacy, is a fosterer of those delusions 
 which lead people to despair of ascertaining any truth for 
 themselves, and to bow their hearts and minds under any dogmas 
 that Rome may impose on them, deeming themselves safe if 
 they can but get quit of their own personal responsibility. 
 Archdeacon Wilberforce seems to think that, by thus putting 
 on the yoke of authority, we may be delivered from the un- 
 satisfying contentions which are "for ever vexing us in the 
 higher region of thought and intellect." But surely, if he 
 had followed out his own comparison with the processes of 
 thought concerning physical objects, he would have perceived 
 that, so long as systems and dogmas and traditions were held 
 to be authoritative, Science was full of contentions, and impro- 
 gressive ; but, since it has cast off all bondage except that 
 which is imposed upon it by the laws of thought, in other 
 words, since it has become free, its progress has been im- 
 measurable, subjugating new worlds one after another, and yet 
 on the whole with a wonderful consent and unity. This consent 
 and unity have not resulted from the authority of Academies, but 
 from the power of Truth, and from the longing of the human 
 mind to know and acknowledge it. The last summer ought to 
 have taught all nations, though the Governments have blinded 
 their eyes to the lesson, that the freest nation is also the most 
 orderly, and the readiest to recognise the majesty of Law. 
 
 Here I may suggest an answer to a question, which has been 
 put by Archdeacon Wilberforce, as well as by others before him, 
 with reference to the declaration in our Articles, that the 
 decisions of the Church are not valid, unless they are agreeable to
 
 NOTE G. 163 
 
 Scripture. "By whom (he asks, p. 144) is Scripture to be 
 interpreted?" Who is to determine whether this agreement 
 exists or not 1 Ultimately, no doubt, the Church herself, by 
 whom alone her authoritative decision can be authoritatively 
 modified or set aside j just as an Act of the Civil Legislature can 
 only be modified or set aside by a subsequent Act of the same. 
 As to the tribunal by which the decisions of the Church are to be 
 interpreted, I shall have to speak of it in Note U. But in that 
 the Church appeals to the test of Scripture, and disclaims all 
 authority, except as derived from Scripture, she herself authorizes 
 her individual members to examine her decisions by that test. 
 She does not forclose enquiry, but invites it. Hence, as in Science 
 the common consent of philosophers, however firmly establisht it 
 may appear, is not held to debar gifted thinkers from questioning 
 any of the propositions which that common consent has recog- 
 nised, if a sufficient cause for doing so is shewn, so may he, who 
 has the proper spiritual gifts, if he perceives any defects in the 
 teaching of the Church, point out what seems to him erroneous. 
 How far this may be done consistently with the obligations 
 incurred by the exercise of a ministerial office, must be 
 determined by the conscience in each particular case : but, if such 
 objections are brought forward in a right spirit, a spirit of 
 reverence toward the Church, but of still higher reverence for 
 Truth, religious truth will be promoted thereby, even as 
 scientific truth is by the ever-renewed researches of competent 
 enquirers. Thus we return to the proposition of Coleridge's, 
 which stands at the opening of this Note. 
 
 This assertion of the rights of the individual Christian no way 
 implies, as the impugners of private judgement are wont to 
 assume, that every man may set about building up a scheme 
 of religion and theology for himself out of the Scriptures ; any 
 more than every man of science begins constructing a new system 
 of Natural Philosophy. To maintain that each man may be 
 guided by the Spirit to the truth, is not inconsistent with, but 
 on the contrary involves the recognition that the faithful in 
 all ages have had the same Divine guidance vouchsafed to them ; 
 
 M2
 
 164 NOTE G. 
 
 and he who truly desires and seeks that guidance, and feels its 
 constraining power, should be the first to look with childlike 
 reverence for every manifestation of His working in the history 
 and teaching of the Church, with a reverence like that of St 
 Paul for the prophetic lessons of the Old Testament. Nor does 
 our conviction that no philosopher who ever lived was infallible, 
 prevent our having a reasonable certainty with regard to the 
 great body of the knowledge stored up for us, a certainty 
 fully adequate for all the practical wants of life, and which we 
 ourselves, if duly qualified, shall not hesitate to make use of as 
 the groundwork for further discoveries. 
 
 Several of the questions toucht on in this Note, and in some of 
 the preceding ones, have been treated by Jeremy Taylor with 
 admirable logical power, and with his own wonderful eloquence, 
 in his Dissuasive from Popery, especially in the first Sections of 
 the second Part. In this, as in his other later writings, his 
 eloquence has risen from that of imagery to that of thought. 
 He no longer spreads out his plumage, after the manner of 
 young writers, to display its bright and gorgeous colours, but 
 uses it to soar and fly through the air to the truths he desires 
 to reach. An abridgement of this work, if well executed, 
 omitting such portions of it as bear mainly on the specific con- 
 troversies of his own time, and supplying the most important 
 quotations, might be of much service in dispersing the delusions 
 of our days. Many of them are so thoroughly exploded here, 
 that one might have deemed they could never have lifted up 
 their heads again, more especially as the opposite truths are 
 set forth so vividly and forcibly. But England has still many 
 blessings to receive from her great writers of former ages. 
 They will still help her to confound and scatter modern follies ; 
 and, alas ! she needs their help.
 
 165 
 
 NOTK H : p. 28. 
 
 Among the most curious phenomena of inconsistency, it may 
 be recorded, that the very persons who were continually striving 
 to exalt and exaggerate the authority of the Church, to claim 
 a gwost-infallibility for her, and to make it binding on con- 
 sciences, were at the same time exercising all the arts and 
 artifices of logic to evacuate her decisions of their meaning, and 
 to turn them into mere strings of nerveless words. Thus pal- 
 pably did they betray that their purpose was, not to establish the 
 authority of the Church, but their own, not to render the deci- 
 sions of the Church, but their own opinions, binding on the 
 consciences of their brethren. 
 
 In the notorious Tract, which terminated the series of the 
 Tracts for the Times, there are divers attempts to enervate our 
 Articles ; of which the most sophistical is perhaps the one 
 brought to bear on the 21st, that " General Councils may not 
 be gathered together without the commandment and will of 
 princes ; and when they be gathered together, forasmuch as they 
 be an assembly of men, whereof all be not governed with the 
 Spirit and Word of God, they may err, and sometimes have erred, 
 even in things pertaining to God." That this is a plain, direct 
 denial of the infallibility of General Councils, I cannot see how 
 a reasonable man can question. The Article does not assert 
 that every General Council has erred : it contents itself with 
 asserting that no such Council had an absolute gift of infal- 
 libility : and it gives the sufficient reason which prevented 
 Councils from having that gift, that their members were " not 
 all governed by the Spirit and word of God," a fact, the truth 
 of which is grievously establisht by ecclesiastical history. Well ! 
 the ingenious author of the Tract, to get rid of this obvious 
 meaning, expounds the Article thus : " General Councils may 
 err, [as such; may err], unless in any case it is promised, as a 
 matter of express supernatural privilege, that they shall not err;
 
 166 NOTE H. 
 
 a case which lies beyond the scope of this Article, or at any rate 
 beside its determination." This, forsooth, is the way in which 
 the authority of the Church is to be binding on the conscience ! 
 binding it to fraud by fraud ! What form of words can have 
 real force, if we are allowed to destroy that force by such a tacit 
 restriction ? / will obey the King, unless the Pope bids me not 
 do so. I will be a dutiful subject, unless it will promote the 
 interests of the Church to blow up King, Lords, and Commons. I 
 cannot believe that Mr Newman himself ever subscribed our 
 Articles with such a mental reservation. He cannot at that 
 time have been, I trust he is not now, such an adept in the 
 school of Loyola. But why did he suggest such a fraud to 
 others 1 Could there be a better preparation for Rome ? Nor 
 does the case which he contemplates, " lie beyond the scope of 
 the Article," or even " beside its determination." The clause in 
 which it is said that the members of Councils are "not all 
 governed by the Spirit and word of God," contains a plain and 
 direct reference to the promise of the Spirit, by whom, if they 
 had been so governed, they would have been led to the truth. 
 
 The sophist continues : " Such a promise however does exist, 
 in cases when General Councils are not only gathered together 
 according to ' the commandment and will of princes,' but in the 
 Name of Christ, according to our Lord's promise. This Article 
 merely contemplates the human prince, not the King of Saints." 
 But, though the Article speaks of the human prince, with 
 reference to a point which was sanctioned by ancient and almost 
 universal practice, assuredly it did contemplate at the same time 
 that the Council was to be assembled in the Name of Christ. 
 Nay, what else could it mean ? What could a General Council 
 be, which was not professedly assembled in Christ's name ? 
 
 Further : " While Councils are a thing of earth, their infal- 
 libility of course is not guaranteed : when they are a thing of 
 heaven, their deliberations are overruled, and their decrees 
 authoritative. In such cases they are Catholic Councils. Thus 
 Catholic or Ecumenical Councils are General Councils, and 
 something more. Some General Councils are Catholic, and others
 
 NOTE H. 167 
 
 are not. If Catholicity be thus a quality found at times in 
 General Councils, rather than the differentia belonging to a cer- 
 tain class of them, it is still less surprising that the Article 
 should be silent about it." What purpose is answered by the 
 logical terminology here, except that of throwing dust into 
 people's eyes ? When a person talks about the differentia, it is 
 supposed he must understand what he is writing about ; but 
 very often he is only mystifying himself as well as his readers- 
 The phrase General Councils in the Article is evidently used in 
 its comprehensive sense, as distinguisht from Provincial or 
 Diocesan, but assuredly with no intention of excluding the 
 Catholic or Ecumenical Councils. Had there been any such 
 purpose, it would have been exprest. Indeed what would the 
 Article mean, according to this interpretation ? Of course there 
 is one exception implied in it, but only one, the case, if any 
 such there ever was, in which the great majority of the members 
 were truly governed by the Spirit and word of God. 
 
 To confirm the interpretation of this Article, the opinion of 
 Gregory Nazianzen is referred to, who, the writer says, " well 
 illustrates the consistency of this Article with a belief in the 
 infallibility of Ecumenical Councils, by his own language on the 
 subject on difierent occasions." Now Gregory's often quoted 
 words, " My mind is to keep clear of every conference of 
 bishops ; for of conference never saw I good come, or a remedy 
 so much as an increase of evils : for there is strife and ambition ; 
 and these have the upperhand of reason :" do indeed fully 
 justify the statement in the Article, that the members of 
 General Councils " are not all governed by the Spirit and word 
 of God." But as to the expressions cited in the Tract from his 
 21st Oration, his speaking of "the Holy Council in Nicea," and 
 " that band of chosen men whom the Holy Ghost brought together," 
 they no more imply a belief in the infallibility of that Council, 
 than a like belief is implied in the addresses prefixt by St Paul 
 to his Epistles, for instance, in the first verses of that to the 
 Ephesians. 
 
 In the controversy occasioned by Tract XC, other sophisms,
 
 168 NOTE I. 
 
 of no greater cogency, were brought forward for the same purpose 
 of destroying the force of this Article, by some of those zealous 
 worshipers of Antiquity, whose laborious researches into Anti- 
 quity had hardly extended beyond the writings of the illustrious 
 Fathers, Mr Newman and Mr Froude : but there is nothing in 
 them to call for a specific refutation. 
 
 NOTE I : p. 29. 
 
 I have already had several occasions to refer to Dr Newman's 
 Lectures On the Difficulties of Anglicanism. His object in those 
 Lectures is twofold. In the first seven he presents his former 
 disciples, whom he has forsaken, and whom he tries to lure after 
 him, with a highly coloured, exaggerated picture of the diffi- 
 culties of their position in the English Church, difficulties the 
 chief part of which they have brought upon themselves by 
 following his misguidance. In the last five Lectures he attempts 
 to remove certain objections, which, he thinks, even after he has 
 done all he can to disgust them with the Church of England, 
 may still keep them from joining him in the Church of Home. 
 Thus the aim of the eighth Lecture is stated to be, to prove 
 that " the political state of Catholic countries is no prejudice to 
 the sanctity of the Church," that of the ninth, to prove that 
 "the religious character of Catholic countries is no prejudice to 
 the sanctity of the Church." One might have expected that 
 he would have entered into a like course of argument with regard 
 to their moral state, either along with the other two, or in lieu 
 of the former. But, though he may gain some advantages by 
 speaking of this somewhat less directly, in part under the poli- 
 tical, partly under the religious state, there would perhaps have 
 been some awkwardness in treating it by itself: and we shall 
 see presently that he is not a person to be deterred by any 
 difficulties in his case, or to distrust the power of his logic to 
 prove that black is white. 
 
 On the argument with regard to the political state of Romish
 
 NOTE I. 169 
 
 countries, I shall have to say a few words in a subsequent Note. 
 In that on their religious state, the Author undertakes (p. 221) 
 to apologize for the familiarity and coarseness, the levity and 
 profaneness, as it seems to us, with which the most sacred objects 
 are treated and spoken of in the Church of Rome. Now doubt- 
 less in this respect great allowances are to be made in consequence 
 of the greater loquacity and externality of southern nations, 
 their greater proneness to give utterance to their momentary 
 feelings and impulses in words and gestures, as contrasted with 
 our Northern, Teutonic inwardness and reserve. In truth such 
 allowances, or rather recognitions, should be mutual. The 
 Italian should not demand or expect his vivacity and exube- 
 rance of expression from us, any more than we should look for 
 our suppression of our feelings in him. Dr Newman however 
 rejects this plea. In fact it would not serve his purpose. " To 
 no national differences (he says, p. 222) can be attributed a 
 character of religion so specific and peculiar : it is too uniform, too 
 universal to be ascribed to anything short of the genius of Catho- 
 licism itself; that is, its principles and influence acting upon 
 human nature, such as it is everywhere found." He does not 
 seem to have bestowed much attention on the modern speculations 
 concerning the diversities and peculiarities of races. Indeed these 
 are matters with which Rome meddles not, which she does not 
 recognise. She only recognises herself, and her subjects, and 
 her enemies : and all who are not her subjects, all who 
 will not wear her livery, are her enemies. As Dr Newman 
 observes, these characteristics of Romanism are not found in 
 Southern nations merely, but to a large extent in Belgium, as 
 they formerly were in England and throughout Germany. This 
 however is easily accounted for from the Roman propensity to 
 impose the same laws and manners, and even speech, on all 
 nations, a propensity which the Church inherited from the 
 Empire : and the insurrection of the Teutonic spirituality and 
 individuality against this alien yoke was a main cause of the 
 Reformation, as is shewn even by the limits of its success. It 
 may be that, if Dr Newman had meditated more on that which is
 
 170 NOTE I. 
 
 accidental in Romanism, on that which has resulted from peculiar 
 circumstances of time and place, he would not have desired to 
 revive what is so uncongenial and repugnant to the English 
 mind. At all events the Essay on Development exhibits a strange 
 medley of mere accidents, which he tries to invest with per- 
 manence and necessity. Nor can it well be doubted, that many 
 of these accidental peculiarities, in Romanism have exercised a 
 strong attraction on the lighter minds that have left us. For 
 while our sturdy, homebred nationality rejects whatever is forein 
 and unenglish with somewhat of insolent disdain, that dilet- 
 tantism, which often intervenes between the exclusive exaltation 
 of our own nationality, and the just estimation of other nation- 
 alities along with our own, is apt to find a charm in novelty, which 
 it cannot discover in what is familiar, and to fancy it shall be- 
 come religious all at once, if it can get where there are monks and 
 nuns, and matins and vespers, and boys in white swinging censers, 
 and priests to hear confession and give absolution. 
 
 However we certainly have no reason to complain that Dr 
 Newman has thought fit to transfer the argument to another 
 field. He has turned it on a point, which is not a mere acci- 
 dental, but an essential difference between the two Churches ; 
 and with his wonted boldness he has chosen to assail our very 
 strongest position. It is here that he introduces that contrast 
 between the Protestant and the Romish view of Faith, which I 
 have cited above in Note Da (pp. 112, 113), and the ex- 
 aggerations and erroneousness of which I have there pointed out. 
 Still, while we disclaim the doctrine " that faith and love are 
 inseparable," as manifested in our fallen nature, we strenuously 
 maintain that Faith, in its Scriptural sense, as the condition of 
 salvation, as able to move mountains, as manifested in the heroic 
 exploits recorded in the Epistle to the Hebrews, is a practical 
 principle, which, if it be living and real, must shew itself forth 
 in works, and which, without works, is dead. The assertion of 
 this fundamental truth was the first great act of the Reformation : 
 and this view has been that of all those among our divines, who 
 have most fully imbibed and exprest the spirit of the Reformation.
 
 NOTE I. 171 
 
 When Dr Newman however said, that Protestants " do not think 
 the inconsistency possible of really believing without obeying, 
 and, where they see disobedience, cannot imagine the existence 
 of true faith," he must strangely have forgotten the favorite 
 missiles of his party in their invectives against Luther for 
 antinomianism. This exemplifies his aptness, in his logical 
 vagaries, to assert any fact that may suit his argument, 
 without pausing to ask himself whether it is correct or no. 
 On the other hand, when he tells us that Romanists hold 
 " that faith and love, faith and obedience, faith and works, 
 are simply separable, and ordinarily separated in fact, that 
 faith does not imply love, obedience, or works, that the firmest 
 faith, so as to move mountains, may exist without love," we are 
 tempted to ask, can this faith, which is able to move mountains, 
 exist without works 1 To a large extent, though the hypo- 
 thetical case put by St Paul is not necessarily a possible one, we 
 know from experience, faith may exist without works of love 
 toward our neighbours. But can it exist without any of those 
 works which proceed from love toward God ? Can we really 
 have a living, strong faith in God, our Maker, our Father, our 
 Guardian and Preserver, our Saviour and Protector, who gave 
 His Only Son to live and to die for our sins ? can we have a 
 real, living, strong faith in that Eternal Son, who came down 
 from the bosom and the glory of the Father, to live as a 
 Servant, and to die as a Criminal, for our sins, that we 
 through His life and death might be redeemed from eternal 
 death, and might inherit eternal life ? can we have this faith, 
 firmly, strongly, livingly, without any of the stirrings, any of 
 the works of love toward Him who has so loved us ? And if 
 we say that this cannot be, is this indeed a sign that, as Dr 
 Newman taunts us, " Faith is a spiritual sight of the unseen ; 
 and Protestantism has not this sight?" that we do not "see the 
 unseen *? " whereas the proof, according to him, that Romanists 
 have this sight, and do " see the unseen," is, that it exercises no 
 sort of moral influence over them. This too shews, he tells us, 
 that we have been " taught by flesh and blood, not by grace."
 
 172 NOTE I. 
 
 Doubtless we know very well, from the witness of our own 
 consciences, as well as of the world around us, that we may 
 entertain strong persuasions and convictions concerning many 
 things, and so far may believe them, without their wielding any 
 moral power over us. Flesh and blood will teach us this, with- 
 out need of Divine grace; unless it be to grave the lesson 
 on our hearts, and to make it bear fruit in our lives. As the 
 devils believe and tremble, so may men j so have many men 
 done ; and there are a number of shades and degrees of this 
 faithless belief. But this belief is not faith. To many persons 
 indeed it may seem that this is little more than a dispute 
 about words, that we use the word faith in one sense, and 
 the Romanists in another, and that it is not worth while to 
 argue about the matter. But, when we call to mind how great 
 are the power and the blessings promist to faith by the Gospel, 
 it surely is a question of the highest moment, whether that 
 power and those blessings belong to a lifeless, inert, inanimate 
 notion, or to a living, energetic principle. This is the great 
 controversy between Romanism and Protestantism. Their stay 
 is the opus operatum, ours fides operans, Faith, the gift of God, 
 apprehending Him through Christ, renewing the whole man, 
 and becoming the living spring of his feelings and thoughts 
 and actions. 
 
 After such an outset, one cannot be surprised at any extrava- 
 gances the champion of Rome may run into. Having endowed 
 her people with this Divine gift of a faith, which seeing does 
 not perceive, and hearing does not understand, and believing 
 does not believe, he has little difficulty in explaining how 
 they may fall into all manner of inconsistencies. " This cer- 
 tainty (we are told, p. 224), or spiritual sight, which is included 
 in the idea of faith, is, according to Catholic teaching, perfectly 
 distinct in its own nature from the desire, intention, and power 
 of acting agreeably to it. As men may know perfectly well 
 that they ought not to steal, and yet may deliberately take 
 and appropriate what is not theirs ; so may they be gifted 
 with a simple, undoubting, cloudless belief, that, for instance,
 
 NOTE I. 173 
 
 Christ is in the blessed Sacrament, and yet commit the sacrilege 
 of breaking open the tabernacle, and carrying off the consecrated 
 particles for the sake of the precious vessel containing them." 
 So that this Divine gift of Faith is just what might have been 
 found in a worshiper of Hermes, and what a heathen moralist, 
 being taught, as we are, by flesh and blood, would have con- 
 demned or derided as an impious mockery. According to 
 the lessons of the same blind teachers, we should also hold 
 that this " simple, undoubting, cloudless belief," if it could 
 exist in such a person, would have awfully aggravated his 
 crime. Nay, we should have fancied that this judgement is 
 implied in the words, that the servant who knew his lord's will, 
 and prepared not himself, nor did according to his will, shall 
 be beaten with many stripes. But the infallible Church has 
 overruled this, as well as so many other declarations of Him whom 
 she professes to call her Lord. Of such a soul as that just 
 described, Dr Newman says (p. 226), " There are certain remark- 
 able limitations and alleviations in its punishment; and one 
 is this, that the faculty or power of faith remains to it," to 
 exhibit still further that it has no power. " Thus the many 
 are in a condition, which is absolutely novel and strange in 
 the ideas of a Protestant : they have a vivid perception, like 
 sense, of things unseen, yet have no desire at all, or affection 
 toward them." It has been imagined that, if Virtue could 
 be seen, all men would be rapt by love for her; but this 
 must be because they were not under grace. Still there is, " in 
 spite of this moral confusion, in one and all a clear intellectual 
 apprehension of the truth"* (p. 228) : which, one may think, 
 
 * I know not on what evidence Dr Newman grounds his assertion, so often 
 repeated in this Lecture, concerning the high religious knowledge of the lower 
 orders in Romish countries. My own acquaintance with them is far too slight to 
 warrant me in contradicting his statement ; which however is at variance with 
 the accounts given by almost every traveler, even by those who have resided 
 many years amongst them. Hundreds of witnesses might easily be cited : I 
 will merely cite one, whose veracity will hardly be impeacht ; and though his 
 testimony refers to the condition of Ireland two centuries ago, I am not aware that 
 there is any reason for supposing that the state of things in this respect is much
 
 174 NOTE I. 
 
 is far more than their apologist here evinces. "Just as in 
 England, the whole community knows about railroads and 
 electric telegraphs, and about the Court, and men in power, 
 and proceedings in Parliament, so, in a Catholic country, the 
 ideas of heaven and hell, Christ and the evil spirit, saints, angels, 
 souls in purgatory, grace, the blessed Sacrament, the sacrifice 
 of the Mass, absolution, indulgences, the virtue of relics, of 
 holy images, of holy water, and of other holy things, are facts, 
 by good and bad, by young and old, by rich and poor, to be 
 taken for granted." In this enumeration there is an omission 
 which may surprise us. No mention is made of Him, who, 
 above all, ought to be in all our thoughts, and who will not 
 give His glory to another. Nor is the omission accidental. 
 It is forced upon the apologist by the fact, that in the Romish 
 
 changed now. In fact the picture does not perhaps differ essentially from Dr 
 Newman's. 
 
 Jeremy Taylor, in the preface to his Dissuasive, says : " We have observed, 
 amongst the generality of the Irish, such a declension of Christianity, so great 
 credulity to believe every superstitious story, such confidence in vanity, such 
 groundless pertinacity, such vicious lives, so little sense of true religion and the 
 fear of God, so much care to obey the priests, and so little to obey God, such 
 intolerable ignorance, such fond oaths and manners of swearing, thinking themselves 
 more obliged by swearing on the mass-book than the four Gospels, and St Patrick's 
 mass-book more than any new one, swearing by their father's soul, by their 
 gossip's hand, by other things which are the product of those many tales are told 
 them, their not knowing upon what account they refuse to come to Church, but 
 now they are old and never did, or their countrymen do not, or their fathers or 
 grandfathers never did, or that their ancestors were priests, and they will not 
 alter from their religion, and, after all, can give no account of their religion, what 
 it is, only, they believe as their priest bids them, and go to mass, which they 
 understand not, and reckon their beads, to tell the number and the tale of their 
 prayers, and abstain from eggs and fish in Lent, and visit St Patrick's well, and 
 leave pins and ribands, yarn or thread, in their holy wells, and pray to God, St 
 Mary, and St Patrick, St Columbanus, and St Bridget, and desire to be buried 
 with St Francis's cord about them, and to fast on Saturdays in honour of our 
 Lady. These and so many other things of like nature we see daily, that we, 
 being conscious of the infinite distance which these things have from the spirit of 
 Christianity, know that no charity can be greater than to persuade the people to 
 come to our Churches, where they shall be taught all the ways of godly wisdom, 
 of peace and safety to their souls : whereas now there arc many of them that 
 know not how to say their prayers, but mutter like pies and parrots, words which 
 they are taught, but they do not pretend to understand."
 
 NOTE I. 175 
 
 system His glory is given to others, not indeed to His Son, 
 whom we exalt far more than they do, but to the Virgin Mary, 
 and to saints, and to relics, and to images. The latter of course 
 are not familiar notions with us ; because our Church has wisely 
 rejected them, knowing from the unvarying lessons of Christian 
 history, as well as of Jewish and Heathen, that these media 
 ever intercept the Divine Vision from the eyes of weak humanity. 
 These objects of a superstitious, idolatrous worship are familiar 
 to the common Romanist, just as the grosser fables about their 
 deities were to the Heathens in early ages, just as his Fetishes 
 are to the African. Thus the creatures of superstition and 
 idolatry have ever been treated with irreverence ; because the 
 worshiper, after all, retains an unquenchable consciousness of 
 his own superiority to them. But the name of God cannot be 
 treated profanely by those who attach any living meaning to 
 it. There must still be something analogous to the putting 
 off our shoes, when we feel that the ground we are treading 
 is really holy. 
 
 Soon after our apologist takes us into a church (p. 235). 
 "There is a feeble old woman, who first genuflects before the 
 Blessed Sacrament, and then steals her neighbour's handkerchief 
 or prayerbook, who is intent on his devotions. Here at last, 
 you say, is a thing absolutely indefensible and inexcusable. 
 Doubtless; but what does it prove? Does England bear no 
 thieves? or do you think this poor creature an unbeliever? 
 or do you exclaim against Catholicism, which has made her 
 so profane ? But why ? Faith is illuminative, not operative ; 
 it does not force obedience, though it increases responsibility ; 
 it heightens guilt ; it does not prevent sin ; the will is the 
 source of action, not an influence from without, acting mechani- 
 cally on the feelings. She worships and she sins : she kneels 
 because she believes ; she steals because she does not love." Can 
 it be that these words, "an influence from without, acting 
 mechanically on the feelings? are meant to be a description of 
 Faith ? One should deem it impossible, though I see not 
 in what other way to interpret them, were it not that the
 
 176 NOTE I. 
 
 whole passage seems to prove that Dr Newman's conception of 
 Faith must be just this, and nothing else, a magical influence 
 from without, acting mechanically on the feelings, having nothing 
 spiritual in it, never touching the will, never reaching the 
 conscience. Illuminative he terms it : but what does it illumine ? 
 It does not even make the poor creature's darkness visible. He 
 does indeed allow that it hightens her guilt : this admission is 
 extorted from him by the remnant of his Protestant conscience : 
 but it does not amount to much : for a few pages afterward this 
 very Faith, which has been violated and outraged through life, is 
 represented as exercising a last magical influence mechanically on 
 the feelings, and becoming the instrument of salvation, just as 
 any charm might do in a fairy tale. 
 
 We are then presented with a description of the Protestant 
 conception of Faith, some portions of which may perhaps be 
 recognised by his own former associates, but which Luther and 
 every Protestant would repudiate as a godless fiction. " I sup- 
 pose it might be, as Luther said it was, had God so willed it, 
 that faith and love were so intimately one, that the abandonment 
 of the latter was the forfeiture of the former (p. 239)." That 
 this is utterly repugnant to Luther's teaching, all who know 
 anything of it, must be aware. And what a mechanical con- 
 ception of the moral order of the world is implied in those 
 words, "I suppose it might be, had God so willed it!" as 
 though the deepest essential truths were mere arbitrary ordi- 
 nances. He continues : " Now did sin not only throw the soul 
 out of God's favour, but at once empty it of every supernatural 
 principle, we should see in Catholics, what is, alas ! so common 
 among Protestants, souls brought back to a sense of guilt, 
 frightened at their state, yet having no resource, and nothing to 
 build upon, [that is, no saintly intercession, no priestly absolution]. 
 Again and again it happens, that, after committing some sin 
 greater than usual, or being roused after a course of sin, or 
 frightened by sickness, a Protestant wishes to repent ; but what 
 is he to fall back upon ? whither is he to go ? what is he to 
 do t " Can it then indeed be, that, so long as Dr Newman was
 
 NOTE I. 177 
 
 in our Church, he was unable to answer these questions? Would 
 he have hesitated a single moment about the answer he was to 
 give. Then was it indeed time for him to go to Rome, if he had 
 not yet learnt the very first principles of evangelical truth. Or 
 rather it is not surprising that he should have gone thither : for 
 there he will hardly learn them. Had he never heard of the 
 Cross, until he began to worship the Crucifix 1 
 
 Further : " But the Catholic knows just where he is, and what 
 he has to do : no time is lost, when compunction comes upon 
 him ; but, while his feelings are fresh and keen, he can betake 
 himself to the appointed means of cure. He may be ever falling; 
 but his faith is a continual invitation and persuasive to repent." 
 He goes to his medicine-chest, and takes his dose of magnesia, 
 or his drachm and opium pill, and fancies himself well again. 
 " The poor Protestant adds sin to sin ; and his best aspirations 
 come to nothing." He knows that he was shapen in iniquity, 
 and conceived in sin ; and he feels how awful all sin must needs 
 be in the sight of Him who desires truth in the inward parts. 
 But he also knows that there is a hyssop with which he may be 
 washt, and One who will purge him therewith. On the other 
 hand, " the Catholic wipes off his guilt again and again [just as 
 he might wash his hands] ; and thus, even if his repentance does 
 not endure, and he has not strength to persevere, in a certain 
 sense he is never getting worse, but ever beginning afresh." This 
 is in direct contradiction to the whole experience of mankind, 
 that a relapse is worse than the original disease, and that a suc- 
 cession of relapses becomes incurable. Dr Newman adds indeed : 
 " Nor does the apparent easiness of pardon operate as an en- 
 couragement to sin ; unless repentance be easy, and the grace of 
 repentance to be expected, when it has already been quencht; or 
 unless past repentance avail, when it is not persevered in." But 
 this sentence seems hardly reconcilable with the one before it : 
 and everything depends on what he means by "repentance" and 
 "the grace of repentance.' 1 '' We, who are "taught by flesh and 
 blood," feel that real repentance is very difficult, and that the 
 difficulty increases with every repetition of sin : but, if Dr 
 
 N
 
 178 NOTE I. 
 
 Newman's "grace of repentance" as his words seem to imply, is a 
 mechanical outward thing, like his grace of faith, it may be no 
 less easy and manageable. 
 
 It is the end however that proves all things ; and it is then 
 that we are to find the real power and worth of Faith. It is 
 then that the magical charm puts forth its virtue, to save him in 
 whom it has been asleep and torpid all through his life. The 
 Romanist " has within him almost a principle of recovery, certainly 
 an instrument of it. He may have spoken lightly of the 
 Almighty, but he has ever believed in Him : he has sung jocose 
 songs about the Blessed Virgin and Saints, and told good stories 
 about the evil spirit, but in levity, not in contempt : he has 
 been angry with his heavenly patrons when things went ill 
 with him, but with the waywardness of a child who is cross with 
 his parents. They were ever before him, even when he was in 
 the mire of mortal sin, and in the wrath of the Almighty, as 
 lights burning in the firmament of his intellect, though he had no 
 part with them, as he perfectly knew. He has absented himself 
 from his Easter duties years out of number ; but he never denied 
 he was a Catholic. He has laught at priests, and formed rash 
 judgements of them, and slandered them to others, but not as 
 doubting the divinity of their functions and the virtue of their 
 ministrations. He has attended Mass carelessly and heartlessly ; 
 but he was ever aware what was before his eyes, under the veil of 
 material symbols, in that august and adorable action. So, when 
 the news conies to him that he is to die, and he cannot get a 
 priest, and the ray of God's grace pierces his heart, and he yearns 
 after Him whom he has neglected, it is with no inarticulate con- 
 fused emotion, which does but oppress him, and which has no 
 means of relief. His thoughts at once take shape and order ; 
 they mount up, each in its due place, to the great objects of 
 faith, which are as surely in his mind as they are in heaven. He 
 addresses himself to his crucifix ; he interests the Blessed Virgin 
 in his behalf ; he betakes himself to his patron Saints ; he calls 
 his good angel to his side ; he professes his desire of that sacra- 
 mental absolution, which for circumstances he cannot obtain ;
 
 NOTE I. 179 
 
 lie exercises himself in acts of faith, hope, charity, contrition, resig- 
 nation, and other virtues suitable to his extremity. True, he is 
 going into the unseen world ; hut true also, that that unseen 
 world has already been with him here. True, he is going to a 
 forein, but not to a strange place; judgement and purgatory 
 are familiar ideas to him, more fully realized within him even 
 than death. He has had a much deeper perception of purgatory, 
 though it be a supernatural object, than of death, though a 
 natural one. The enemy rushes on him, to overthrow the faith 
 on which he is built [that faith which was an influence from with- 
 out, acting mechanically on his feelings] : but the whole tenour 
 of his past life, his very jesting, and his very oaths, have been over- 
 ruled, to create in him a habit of faith, girding round and pro- 
 tecting the supernatural principle. And thus even one who has 
 been a bad Catholic may have a hope in his death, to which the 
 most virtuous of Protestants, nay, my dear brethren, the most 
 correct and most thoughtful among yourselves, however able, 
 or learned, or sagacious, if you have lived, not by faith, but by 
 private judgement, are necessarily strangers." 
 
 In the last sentence of this astounding passage, there is an 
 ambiguity, which would almost seem to be intentional, and 
 which leaves it somewhat obscure what is the contrast really 
 meant. They who have lived "not by faith" might be supposed 
 to be mere unbelievers, and, as such, to have no share in the 
 promises of the Gospel. But even the expression, "private 
 judgement" would direct our view toward a peculiar mode of re- 
 ceiving the truths of Christianity; although there is no real 
 contrariety between private judgement and faith : nay, faith, if it 
 be living and powerful, involves an act of private judgement, an 
 individual, personal recognition of the truths which it receives. 
 The act of proving all things is not contrary, but the reasonable, 
 legitimate antecedent to holding fast that which is good. More- 
 over, if the whole passage is to have any force, any meaning, the 
 contrast in it must needs be between the deathbed of a Romanist 
 and that of a member of the Church of England ; and so far as 
 one may venture to pronounce anything positive with regard to
 
 180 NOTE I. 
 
 such a complex of wild extravagances, the writer would seem by 
 the words, " the most virtuous of Protestants," to refer to the 
 Evangelical portion of our Church, and by " the most correct and 
 thoughtful" of the persons he is addressing, to the Tractarians 
 or Anglocatholics, for whom his Lectures are especially designed, 
 and whom he would bribe to come to him by telling them that 
 " a bad Catholic" may have a better hope in death than they can 
 have. 
 
 Yet, even if Dr Newman had meant to speak of a con- 
 scientious, " virtuous" unbeliever, assuredly one might look with 
 more of satisfaction, yea, with more of hope, on his death, than 
 on that of the " bad Catholic," of whom he draws what he means 
 to be an alluring, but what to a lover of truth and righteousness 
 must be such a revolting picture. For observe: the contrast is 
 not between him who has lived by faith, and him who has lived, 
 " not by faith, but by private judgement :" it is between him 
 who has lived by private judgement, correctly and virtuously, 
 and him who, according to the supposition, having the Divine 
 gift of faith, has lived in continual violation of it. Of such a 
 man Dr Newman pronounces, that he may have a hope in his 
 death, to which the most virtuous of Protestants, the most cor- 
 rect and thoughtful of Anglocatholics, are necessarily strangers. 
 Observe the scale here : at the bottom stands the " virtuous " Pro- 
 testant ; he has the reality, and is therefore cast down in this 
 world of phantoms and shams: next comes the "correct" Anglo- 
 catholic, with his formal morality: but the highest place is 
 reserved for the " bad Catholic," who has neither the reality, nor 
 the form. He knows what is right, and does it not ; he knows 
 what is wrong, and does it ; and therefore he shall be saved. 
 According to the principles of all law, the justice of which the 
 conscience instantaneously recognises, and which the Gospel has 
 repeatedly sanctioned, the light of knowledge is a grievous and 
 terrible aggravation of sin committed under it and in despite of 
 it. If ye were blind, ye would have no sin : but now ye say, We 
 see : therefore your sin remaineth. Dr Newman, on the contrary, 
 tells us that this light, in his bad Catholic, is " almost a principle
 
 NOTE I. 181 
 
 of recovery, certainly an instrument of it. The Almighty, the 
 Blessed Virgin and Saints, were ever before him, even when he 
 was in the mire of mortal sin, as lights burning in the 
 firmament of his intellect." The writer feels no hesitation in 
 controverting that great law, according to which sin dulls and 
 deadens our spiritual faculties, and bedims and darkens our 
 spiritual perceptions. If ye will come and join me, if ye will fly 
 for refuge to Rome, ye shall be angels and devils at the selfsame 
 moment. Of yore those who knew God from the manifestation 
 of His power and Godhead in the outward world, yet glorified 
 Him not as God, were given up to a reprobate mind, and lost the 
 knowledge they had abused ; but it shall not be so with you. 
 Through the Divine gift of faith, even while you are lying in the 
 mire of mortal sin, ye shall have the beatific vision ; and, though 
 this revelation produces no effect on you, still it shall abide in 
 the firmament of your intellect ; and, when the fear of death 
 comes upon you, it shall enable you to see all that you are 
 to do. When Dr Newman's Catholic is told that he is to die, 
 he immediately begins packing up his clothes for his journey: 
 he knows just how many shirts and how many pair of stock- 
 ings he shall want ; and he begs or borrows them of his 
 patron saint. The same mechanical, formal course of thought, 
 which we have seen in the former parts of this Lecture, 
 reaches its consummation at the close, both in the account of 
 the bad Catholic's sins, and still more in that of the good 
 deeds, by which he is to get a ticket of admission into 
 heaven. All the mysterious powers and weaknesses of the 
 heart and will, the agonies and the deadness of the con- 
 science, the palsying force of habit, the craft and subtilty of 
 evil, are ignored and forgotten ; and he on whom the heavenly 
 lights burning in the firmament of his intellect, while he was 
 lying in the mire of mortal sin, produced no effect, except 
 that of "overruling his very jests and oaths to create in him 
 a habit of faith," is so roused by the prospect of death, that 
 he can all at once lay in a store of " acts of faith, hope, 
 charity, contrition, resignation, and other virtues suitable to
 
 182 NOTE I. 
 
 his extremity." He blows his whistle, and anon collects a 
 whole pack of virtues, which come at his calling, they who 
 are wont to be so retiring, so reserved, they who grow up 
 slowly even in the ground of an honest and good heart. But 
 I mistake : it is not the virtues he collects : he merely "exer- 
 cises himself in acts of faith, and acts of hope, and acts of 
 charity, and acts of contrition, and acts of resignation." He 
 who had been more or less of an actor all his life, becomes a 
 consummate actor at the point of death, and puts on his last 
 mask, for his last masquerade, and hopes thus to beguile and 
 deceive Him who seeth the heart, and desireth truth in the 
 inward parts. Verily, to a discerning eye, a deathbed tor- 
 mented by the reproachful stings of conscience would be far 
 less dismal and hopeless than such a theatrical daub, such a 
 melodramatic pantomime. 
 
 The pernicious, demoralizing character of the Romish teaching 
 on these subjects is forcibly represented by Jeremy Taylor in his 
 Dissuasive, Part 1. c. 2. 1. Having laid down the proposition, 
 that "the Church of Rome, as at this day disordered, teaches 
 doctrines, and uses practices, which are in themselves, or in their 
 true and immediate consequences, direct impieties, and give 
 warranty to a wicked life," he proceeds to illustrate this in the 
 first instance by her doctrine of repentance. " For the Roman 
 doctors teach, that, unless it be by accident, or in respect of 
 some other obligation, a sinner is not bound presently to repent 
 of his sin, as soon as he has committed it. Some time or other 
 he must do it ; and if he take care so to order his affairs that 
 it be not wholly omitted, but so that it be done one time or 
 other, he is not by the precept or grace of repentance bound 
 to do more. Scotus and his scholars say that a sinner is bound, 
 viz. by the precept of the Church, to repent on holydays, espe- 
 cially the great ones. But this is thought too severe by Soto 
 and Molina, who teach that a sinner is bound to repent but 
 once a year, that is, against Easter. These doctors indeed do 
 diifer concerning the Churches sense : but they agree in the worst 
 part of it, viz. that, though the Church calls upon sinners to
 
 NOTE I. 183 
 
 repent on holydays, or at Easter, yet that by the law of God 
 they are not tied to so much, but only to repent in the danger 
 or article of death. If it be replied to this, that, though God 
 hath left it to a sinner's liberty to repent when he please, yet 
 the Church hath been more severe than God hath been, and 
 ties a sinner to repent by collateral positive laws ; for, having 
 bound every one to confess at Easter, consequently she hath tied 
 every one to repent at Easter, and so by her laws he can lie 
 in the sin without interruption but twelve months or there- 
 abouts; yet there is a secret in this, which nevertheless 
 themselves have been pleased to discover for the ease of tender 
 consciences, viz. that the Church ordains but the means, tho 
 exterior solemnity of it, and is satisfied if you obey her laws by 
 a ritual repentance ; but the holiness, and the inward repentance, 
 which in charity we should have supposed to have been designed 
 by the law of festivals, is not that which is enjoined by the 
 Church in her law of holydays. So that still sinners are left 
 to the liberty, which, they say, God gave, even to satisfy our- 
 selves with all the remaining pleasures of that sin for a little 
 while, even during our short mortal life : only we must be sure to 
 repent at last. 
 
 " But this, though it be infinitely intolerable, yet it is but 
 the beginning of sorrows. For the guides of souls in the Roman 
 Church have prevaricated in all the parts of repentance most 
 sadly and dangerously. The next things therefore that we shall 
 remark, are their doctrines concerning contrition: which, when 
 it is genuine and true, that is, a true cordial sorrow for having 
 sinned against God, a sorrow proceeding from the love of God, 
 and conversion to Him, and ending in a dereliction of all our 
 sins, and a walking in all righteousness, both the Psalms and 
 the Prophets, the Old Testament and the New, the Greek Fathers 
 and the Latin, have allowed as sufficient for the pardon of our 
 sins through faith in Jesus Christ, as our writers have often 
 proved in their Sermons and Books of Conscience, yet first 
 the Church of Rome does not allow it to be of any value, unless 
 it be joined with a desire to confess their sins to a priest,
 
 184 NOTE I. 
 
 saying that a man by contrition is not reconciled to God, without 
 their sacramental or ritual penance, actual or votive ; and this 
 is decreed by the Council of Trent : which thing, besides that 
 it is against Scripture and the promises of the Gospel, not only 
 teaches for doctrine the commandments of men, but evacuates 
 the goodness of God by their traditions, and weakens and dis- 
 courages the best repentance, and prefers repentance toward 
 men before that which the Scripture calls repentance toward 
 God, and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ." 
 
 After touching on a couple of other points, Taylor concludes : 
 " The sequel is this, that, if a man live a wicked life for three- 
 score or fourscore years together, yet, if in the article of his 
 death, sooner than which God hath not commanded him to re- 
 pent, he be a little sorrowful for his sins, then resolving for the 
 present that he will do so no more, and though this sorrow 
 hath in it no love of God, but only a fear of hell, and a hope that 
 God will pardon him, this, if the priest absolves him, does 
 instantly pass him into a state of salvation. The priest with two 
 fingers and a thumb can do his work for him ; only he must be 
 greatly disposed and prepared to receive it : greatly, we say, 
 according to the sense of the Roman Church ; for he must be 
 attrite ; or it were better if he were contrite ; one act of grief, 
 a little one, and that not for one sin more than another, and this 
 at the end of a long wicked life, at the time of our death, will 
 make all sure." 
 
 The groveling immorality of these speculations and calcu- 
 lations, this bargaining and chaffering with Almighty God in the 
 spirit of an old market-woman, this attempt to trick the All- 
 righteous into letting you into heaven with still more and more 
 of sin upon your shoulders, this notion that you are help- 
 ing and benefiting a soul by getting leave for it to continue so 
 much longer in the hell-pools of sin, these symptoms of an 
 intellect that has been sharpened by casuistry until every moral 
 perception has been rubbed away from it, and that deals with 
 good and evil by the pound and the yard, trying to adulterate 
 virtue with the foulest garbage of vice, and exulting in passing
 
 NOTE J. 185 
 
 it off as of the first quality, these things are too gross for Dr 
 Newman. No one who has had the education of an English 
 gentleman, could dabble in such iniquity ; still less a person who 
 has been brought up in a Protestant Church, and has been an 
 eminent preacher of holiness and righteousness therein. Never- 
 theless there is the same leaven in the passage last quoted from 
 his Lectures on Anglicanism : the tendency of that passage is in 
 the same direction, though it is not pusht to the same loathsome 
 extremes. It shews us too how the same evil spirit is still active 
 and dominant in the Church of Rome. We cannot however do 
 her full justice, without calling to mind what Dr Newman was. 
 Let a person turn to some of those glowing exhortations to 
 holiness and godliness, which shine forth in his Sermons, and 
 then judge between the two Churches. Here, in these Ser- 
 mons, we find Mr Newman, the minister of the Church of 
 England. There, in that Lecture, you see Dr Newman, the 
 priest of the Church of Rome. What ! you ask ; has a moral 
 paralysis struck him ? Alas ! so it must be. His intellect 
 is keen and bright as ever. What then can have thus 
 paralysed him ? The gripe of Rome. 
 
 NOTE J : p. 30. 
 
 Bellarmin (De Romano Pontifice, L. iv. c. 3), having laid down 
 this proposition that " the supreme Pontiff, when he is teaching 
 the Church in matters pertaining to faith, cannot err in any 
 case," attempts to prove it by four texts of Scripture. The first 
 is our Lord's words to Peter (Luke xxii. 31, 32), Simon, Simon, 
 behold, Satan hath desired to have you, that he may sift you as 
 wheat. But I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not : and 
 when thou art converted, strengthen the brethren. The second is 
 the celebrated passage in St Matthew, xvi. 18 : Upon this rock I 
 will build My Church ; and the gates of hell shall not prevail 
 against it. The third is the charge in St John, xxi. 16, Feed 
 My sheep. The fourth is the ordinance in Exodus, xxviii. 30 :
 
 186- NOTE J. 
 
 Thou shalt put on the breastplate of judgement the Urim and the 
 Thummim. On these four texts he seems to fancy he shall 
 drive his polemical chariot home to the goal, through the midst 
 of the Protestant host : but, when we look at the wheels, we 
 perceive that not one of them is really attach t to the chariot; 
 and as soon as he tries to set it in motion, they drop down, 
 and leave him on the ground. 
 
 To us, the more closely we examine these four texts, the 
 clearer it appears that no one of them bears in the remotest 
 manner on the proposition professedly deduced from them, 
 that in no one of them is there the slightest reference to any 
 mode of infallibility, that in no one of them is there any 
 contemplation, direct or indirect, of the See of Rome, except 
 so far as that See is comprised in the general body of the 
 Christian ministry. In Bellarmin's application of these texts 
 there are at least two audacious and wholly groundless assump- 
 tions, first, that our Lord's words to St Peter involve the 
 promise of infallibility to him personally ; and secondly, that 
 the special gifts alledged to have been bestowed on St Peter were 
 to be transmitted by him, as an heirloom, to his alledged 
 successors in the See of Rome ; assumptions, in favour of which 
 there is nothing even like an early tradition to be cited. In 
 fact St Peter is the only Apostle, of whom it is recorded that 
 he was mistaken on an important question, subsequently to 
 the day of Pentecost; so that in this case, as well as in that 
 of the Virgin Mary, and in the direction that all shall drink 
 of the Cup in the Lord's Supper, the writers of the New Tes- 
 tament seem to have been especially guided to warn and guard 
 the Church against the corruptions which Rome after many ages 
 was to introduce. 
 
 Hence one might deem it surprising that so able and clear- 
 headed a thinker as Bellarmin should have supposed that there 
 was any real force in such arguments. But in judging of his 
 writings, and of those of others in a similar position, it behoves 
 us to make large allowances for the force of inveterate pre- 
 judice, which is almost overwhelming in behalf of a proposition
 
 NOTE J. 187 
 
 regarded as well nigh axiomatic, nay, as a fundamental religious 
 truth. That tendency to project itself into its objects, which 
 accompanies all the operations of the human mind, belongs to 
 its prejudices, quite as much as to its principles, nay, far more; 
 because its principles supply a corrective for their own aberra- 
 tions ; whereas the greater the aberration, the more fondly our 
 prejudices cherish it. Thus we are enabled to understand the 
 otherwise inexplicable inconsistency, when, as not seldom happens, 
 especially in members of the Jesuit order, we find great holiness 
 of life allied to a seemingly utter disregard of truth. As we all 
 fancy that our senses perceive a number of things, of which 
 they have no inkling whatsoever, so is it with our intellectual 
 and moral perceptions, unless they have gone through a long and 
 severe purgatorial discipline. 
 
 Accustomed as we are to look at the words of Scripture 
 with the naked eye, to us it seems incontrovertibly clear, that 
 our Lord's words to Peter, in the passage cited from St Luke, 
 bear immediately and exclusively upon him, except so far 
 as they may be transferred by analogy to persons in a similar 
 condition, and that they relate directly to his denial of the 
 Lord, and to the help which he was to receive through his 
 Master's prayer that he might rise out of his sinful fall, 
 and might shew forth the increast strength derived from the 
 knowledge of his weakness in calling others to accept the for- 
 giveness which he himself had found. This is Augustin's 
 interpretation of the passage, and Chrysostom's, and Theophylact's, 
 as cited by Bellarmin himself. Nor do they give the slightest 
 hint that any power of infallibility was conferred on St Peter 
 by our Lord's words, or that they had any bearing on the See 
 of Rome. Field, who, in his fifth Book Of the Church (G. 42), 
 has an able discussion and refutation of Bellarmin's arguments, 
 points this out especially with regard to Theophylact, who, he 
 says, " doth not attribute the confirmation of the brethren by 
 Peter, which he is commanded to perform, to his constancy in 
 the true faith, and in the profession of it, but to the experience 
 that he had of the tender mercy and goodness of God toward
 
 188 NOTE J. 
 
 him. For who will not (as the same Theophylact fitly observeth) 
 be confirmed by Peter in the right persuasion of the mercies 
 and goodness of God toward repentant sinners, when he seeth 
 him whom Christ had so much honoured, after so shameful a 
 fault, and so execrable a fact, of the abnegation of his Lord 
 and Master, the Lord of Life, not only received to mercy, but 
 restored to the dignity of the prime and chief Apostle." 
 
 No less manifest is it that our Lord's words in St Matthew 
 contain no promise of infallibility to St Peter, of whose fallibi- 
 lity subsequently to that promise we have such proof, still 
 less to any branch of the Church, or even to the whole Church. 
 Of the indefectibility of the Church we have indeed a full 
 assurance in that promise : but this is a very different thing 
 from infallibility, though the two are often confounded. 
 
 With regard to the charge by which St Peter is reinstated in 
 his apostolical office, as Field says, " we know, and all that are 
 in their right wits do acknowledge, that a man may be a pastor 
 in the Church of God, and yet subject to errour; and therefore 
 Christ's requiring Peter to do the duty of a pastor, will not prove 
 that the Pope cannot err." 
 
 It is perhaps owing to Bellarmin's fourth text, that the later 
 Roman apologists have been led to detect an anticipation of the 
 Papal infallibility in the Jewish High-Priest. But the history 
 of the Jewish Church furnishes no warrant for such a supposi- 
 tion, unless it be the unintentional prophecy of Caiaphas : and 
 in this sense we might doubtless find many expressions of self- 
 condemnation in the language of Popes, and many glimmerings 
 of truths which they resisted, instead of following them out. In 
 truth, as Thorndike remarks (Vol. II, p. 71), " he that from 
 hence [from the prophecy of Caiaphas] concludes the Church 
 infallible, must first maintain that Caiaphas erred not in 
 crucifying our Lord Christ." 
 
 The monstrous fallacy and imposture of identifying the See 
 of Rome with St Peter, and of investing it with all the privileges 
 which have been ascribed to St Peter, whether truly or falsely, 
 has never been set forth more forcibly than by the Bishop of St
 
 NOTE J. 189 
 
 David's in his Sermon On the Centre of Unity, with an extract 
 from which I will close this note. Preaching on St Paul's words 
 1 Cor. i. 12, 13, he says: "If it had been given to St Paul 
 to pierce with prophetic eye through the long vista of ages 
 which separates his time from ours, and to foresee in what sense, 
 and under what circumstances, men would continue to say, / am 
 of Peter, it is hard to determine which aspect of this mournful 
 history would have filled his soul with deeper emotions of 
 astonishment, shame, and grief. It would no doubt have 
 appeared to him marvellous enough, that his brother Peter, 
 Peter whom he had withstood to his face because he was to be 
 blamed, Peter to whom he would not allow any degree of 
 authority, which might not be as rightfully claimed by himself, 
 Peter who had himself admonisht his fellow elders not to 
 carry themselves as being lords over God's heritage, but being 
 examples to the flock, that Peter, I say, should ever be sup- 
 posed, not only to have possest, but to have transmitted to 
 others, a title to absolute dominion over the whole Church of 
 Christ, that each of his pretended successors should receive 
 divine honours, should be adored upon the altar, should be 
 solemnly proclaimed Vicar of Christ, Ruler of the World, should 
 be acknowledged as Lord of Lords, as the Almighty, the Infalli- 
 ble, as Vicegerent of God, as God upon earth, as our Lord God : 
 this, I say, would have appeared to St Paul marvellous enough. 
 And yet I venture to think that even this awful blasphemy 
 would not have been the thing which would have excited in 
 him the highest degree of amazement and horrour. I believe that 
 he would have shuddered still more, if he had contemplated 
 the means by which this usurpt dominion was maintained and 
 propagated, the manner in which it was exercised, and the ends 
 which it was made to serve. And even among these would it 
 have been the violence of persecution, the rivers of innocent 
 blood, the dark and loathsome dungeons, the instruments of 
 lingering torture, the manifold forms of agonizing death, by 
 which this unrighteous sovereinty was enforced, from which he 
 would have turned away with the deepest abhorrence? Or
 
 190 NOTE K. 
 
 would it have been that this cruel tyranny, exercised in the 
 name of Christ, was employed to supersede Christ's religion by 
 another Gospel, to set up other mediators in Christ's stead, to 
 make Christ's word a dead letter, and to replace it with the 
 traditions and inventions of men? to decree new articles of 
 faith, to impose doctrines of which Paul never heard, and which, 
 if he had known, he would have withstood even to the death ? 
 I believe not so. For he would have had before his eyes 
 something still worse than this. He would have seen these 
 attributes of Omnipotence assumed for still more unhallowed 
 ends, to do that which, with reverence be it spoken, God Himself 
 could not do, even to subvert the first principles of truth and 
 justice, to confound the eternal distinctions of right and wrong, 
 to sever the most sacred ties by which society is knit together, to 
 stifle the voice of reason and conscience, to make evil good, and 
 good evil, darkness light, and light darkness." 
 
 The central principle of this evil system, the Bishop finds, 
 even as Dr Newman did when he was amongst us, in the claim of 
 infallibility. " Whatever changes " (he says,) " it may undergo 
 in its outward aspect, whatever variety of forms it may develope, 
 still, so long as the principle of an omnipotent infallible autho- 
 rity is retained, and it was never asserted more boldly than 
 at this day, the spirit of the religion must continue the same ; 
 and each new addition is bound upon every conscience as tightly 
 as any article of its original creed." 
 
 NOTE K : p. 30. 
 
 I have spoken above (in Note H) of the extraordinary 
 sophistry by which it has been attempted to prove that our 
 21st Article does not deny the infallibility of General Councils. 
 Why the Tract-writer indulged himself in this exhibition of 
 his logical dexterity, is not very clear. For our Article is in 
 accordance with the opinions of Christian Antiquity, and is 
 supported by the almost unanimous consent of our own divines.
 
 NOTE K. 191 
 
 A few pages will not be misemployed in establishing the latter 
 point by the evidence of some of the chief amongst them. 
 
 One of the very first Acts of our Reformation is a Judgement 
 pronounced by the Convocation of 1536, and printed by Lord 
 Herbert, by Burnet, and by Collier. " As concerning General 
 Councils, like as we, taught by long experience, do perfectly 
 know that there never was, nor is anything devised, invented, or 
 instituted by our forefathers more expedient or more necessary 
 for the establishment of our faith, for the extirpation of heresies, 
 and the abolishing of sects and schisms, and finally for the 
 reducing of Christ's people unto one perfect unity and concord in 
 His Religion, than by the having of General Councils, so that the 
 same be lawfully had and congregated in Spiritu Sancto, and be also 
 conform and agreeable to that wholesome and godly institution 
 and usage, for the which they were at first devised and used in 
 the primitive Church ; even so on the other side, taught by 
 like experience, we esteem, repute, and judge, that there is, nor 
 can be, anything in the world more pestilent and pernicious to 
 the common- weale of Christendom, or whereby the truth of God's 
 word hath in times past, or hereafter may be, sooner defaced or 
 subverted, or whereof hath and may ensue more contention, more 
 discord, and other devilish effects, than when such General 
 Councils have or shall be assembled, not Christianly, nor charit- 
 ably, but for and upon private malice and ambition, or other 
 worldly and carnal respects and considerations, according to the 
 saying of Gregory Nazianzenus," already quoted in p. 167. 
 Here, as in the Article, the value of the Council is regarded as 
 dependent on the character of its members, without reference to 
 any supposed infallibility. 
 
 Of Jewel it will not be expected that he should speak with 
 any excessive reverence of General Councils. In his Answer to 
 Dr Cole's Second Letter, he writes : " Whereas you say we could 
 never yet prove the errour of one General Council, I think your 
 memory doth somewhat deceive you. For, to pass by all other 
 matters, Albertus Pighius, the greatest learned man, as it is 
 thought, of your side, hath found such errours to our hands :
 
 192 NOTE K. 
 
 for in his Ecclesiastica Hierarchia, speaking of the Second 
 Council holden at Ephesus, which you cannot deny but it was 
 General, and yet took part with the heretic abbot Eutyches 
 against the Catholic father Flavianus, he writeth thus : Concilia 
 universalia, etiam congregate, legitime, ut bene, ita perperam> 
 injuste, impieque judicare et definire possunt" In his Answer to 
 Dr Cole's Third Letter, Jewel, after defending his previous 
 remarks, adds : " When ye have sought out the bottom of your 
 learning, I believe it will be hard for you to find any good 
 sufficient cause why a General Council may not as well be 
 deceived as a Particular. For Christ's promises, Ecce ego vobiscum 
 sum, and Ubicunque duo aut tres convenerint in nomine Meo, ibi 
 sum Ego in medio illorum, are made as well to the Particular 
 Council as to the General." 
 
 In his Defense of the Apology (c. ii. 9) Jewel quotes the 
 remarkable passage from Augustin's Treatise on Baptism against 
 the Donatists (b. ii. c. 4) : " Quis nesciat Sanctam Scripturam 
 Canonicam, tarn Veteris quam Novi Testamenti, omnibus 
 posterioribus episcoporum litteris ita praeponi, ut de ilia omnino 
 dubitari et disceptari non possit, utrum verum vel utrum rectum 
 sit quidquid in ea scriptum esse constiterit ; episcoporum autem 
 litteras et per sermonem forte sapientiorem cujuslibet in ea re 
 peritioris, et per concilia licere reprehendi, si quid in eis forte 
 a veritate deviatum est ; et ipsa concilia quae per singulas 
 regiones vel provincias fiunt, plenariorum conciliorum auctoritate 
 quae fiunt ex universe orbe Christiano, sine ullis ambagibus 
 cedere; ipsaque plenaria saepe priora posterioribus emendari, 
 cum aliquo experiment rerum aperitur quod clausum erat, 
 et cognoscitur quod latebat." Here there is no notion of a 
 supernatural infallibility, but the very reverse, the fallibility and 
 corrigibility which belong to human decisions. 
 
 Jewel also quotes the words of Panormitanus : Plus credendum 
 est uni privato fideli, quam toti concilia et Papae, si meliorem 
 liabeat auctoritatem vel rationem. 
 
 In Hooker's excellent remarks upon General Councils (E. P. I. 
 x. 14), we find a complete agreement with the Judgement of the
 
 NOTE K. 193 
 
 Convocation of 1536, but no intimation of their possessing any 
 special privilege of infallibility. " As one and the same law 
 divine is to all Christian Churches a rule for the chiefest things, 
 by means whereof they all in that respect make one Church, as 
 having all but one Lord, one Faith, and one Baptism, so the 
 urgent necessity of mutual communion for preservation of our 
 unity in these things, as also for order in some other things 
 convenient to be everywhere uniformly kept, maketh it requisite 
 that the Church of God here on earth have her laws of spiritual 
 commerce between Christian nations, laws by virtue whereof all 
 Churches may enjoy freely the use of those reverend, religious, 
 and sacred consultations, which are termed Councils General : 
 a thing whereof God's own blessed Spirit was the Author; a 
 thing practist by the holy Apostles themselves ; a thing always 
 afterward kept and observed throughout the world ; a thing 
 never otherwise than most highly esteemed of, till pride, 
 ambition, and tyranny began by factious and vile endeavours 
 to abuse that divine invention to the furtherance of wicked 
 purposes. But as the just authority of civil courts and par- 
 liaments is not therefore to be abolish t, because sometime there 
 is cunning used to frame them according to the private intents 
 of men over-potent in the commonwealth ; so the grievous 
 abuse which hath been of Councils should rather cause men to 
 study how so gracious a thing may again be reduced to that 
 first perfection, than in regard of stains and blemishes sithence 
 growing be held for ever in extreme disgrace." He adds : 
 " Whether it be for the finding out of anything whereunto 
 divine law bindeth us, but yet in such sort that men are not 
 thereof on all sides resolved, or for the setting down of some 
 uniform judgement to stand touching such things, as, being 
 neither way matters of necessity, are notwithstanding offensive 
 and scandalous when there is open opposition about them, be 
 it for the ending of strifes touching matters of Christian belief, 
 wherein the one part may seem to have probable cause of 
 dissenting from the other, or be it concerning matters of polity, 
 order, and regiment in the Church, I nothing doubt but that
 
 194 NOTE K. 
 
 Christian men should much better frame themselves to those 
 heavenly precepts, which our Lord and Saviour with so great 
 instancy gave as concerning peace and unity, if we did all concur 
 in desire to have the use of ancient Councils again renewed, 
 rather than these proceedings continued, which either make all 
 contentions endless, or bring them to one only determination, and 
 that of all others the worst, which is by sword." 
 
 It was not however till the seventeeth century that this 
 question was brought forward very prominently, and became one 
 of the chief heads of controversy . The disputes in the sixteenth 
 turned rather on the particular errours and corruptions intro- 
 duced by the Church of Rome. Feeling their weakness, as they 
 could not but do, on these points, the Roman apologists adopted 
 the plan of laying the stress of their argument on the general, 
 formal topics of the authority and infallibility and other 
 attributes of the Church, which, they asserted, manifestly 
 belonged to no Church except that of Rome. In the fifth 
 book of Field's Treatise Of the Church, these questions are 
 discust with great learning and sobriety of judgement, calmly 
 and convincingly. In the 51st chapter, which treats "of the 
 assurance of finding out the Truth, which the Bishops assembled 
 in General Councils have," he writes : "There are that say that all 
 interpretations of Holy Scriptures agreed on in General Councils, 
 and all resolutions of doubts concerning things therein con- 
 tained, proceed from the same Spirit from which the Holy 
 Scriptures were inspired ; and that therefore General Councils 
 cannot err, either in the interpretation of Scriptures, or resolving 
 of things doubtful concerning the faith. But these men should 
 know that, though the interpretations and resolutions of Bishops 
 in General Councils proceed from the same Spirit from which the 
 Scriptures were inspired, yet not in the same sort, nor with like 
 assurance of being free from mixture of errour. For the Fathers 
 assembled in General Councils do not rely upon immediate 
 revelation in all their particular resolutions and determinations, 
 as the writers of the books of Holy Scripture did, but on thoir 
 own meditation, search, and study, the general assistance of
 
 NOTE K. 195 
 
 Divine Grace concurring with them. Secondly, when we desire 
 to have things made known to us by immediate revelation from 
 God, we go not to them that are most learned, but to them that 
 are most devout and religious, whether they be learned or 
 unlearned, whether of the Clergy or the Laity, whether men or 
 women ; because for the most part God revealeth His secrets not 
 to them that are wiser and more learned, but to them that 
 are better and more religious and devout. But in Councils men 
 go to them that are more learned and have better place in the 
 Church, though they be not the best and holiest men. There- 
 fore questions touching matters of faith are not determined in 
 Councils by immediate revelation. It is no way necessary to 
 think that the Fathers are any otherwise directed by the Spirit 
 of Truth in General Councils, than in Patriarchal, National, 
 or Provincial j seeing General Councils consist of such as come 
 with instructions from Provincial, National, and Patriarchal 
 synods, and must follow the same in making decrees, and con- 
 sequently that they are not led to the finding out of the truth 
 in any special sort or manner, beyond that general influence that 
 is required to the performance of every good work. So that, as 
 God assisting Christian men in the Church only in a general 
 sort to the performance of the works of virtue, there are ever 
 some well-doers, and yet no particular man doth always well ; 
 so, in like sort God assisting Christian men in the Church in 
 seeking out the truth only in general sort, as in the performances 
 of the actions of virtue, and not by immediate revelation and in- 
 spiration, as in the Apostles time, there are ever some that hold 
 and profess all necessary truth, though no one man or company 
 of men, do find the truth ever and in all things, nor any assu- 
 rance can be had of any particular men, that they should always 
 hold all necessary truths ; and therefore we may safely conclude 
 that no man can certainly pronounce that whatsoever the greater 
 part of Bishops assembled in a General Council agree on, is 
 undoubtedly true." 
 
 These propositions Field supports by the testimony of pre- 
 ceding writers and of facts, and theji proceeds : " Yet, when there 
 
 o 2
 
 196 NOTE K. 
 
 is a lawful General Council, if there appear nothing to us in it 
 that may argue an unlawful proceeding, nor there be no gain- 
 saying of men of worth, place, and esteem, we are so strongly 
 to presume that it is true and right, that with unanimous con- 
 sent is agreed on in such a Council, that we must not so much 
 as profess publicly that we think otherwise, unless we do most 
 certainly know the contrary ; yet may we in the secret of our 
 hearts remain in some doubt, carefully seeking, by the Scripture 
 and monuments of antiquity, to find out the truth. Neither is 
 it necessary for us expressly to believe whatsoever the Council 
 hath concluded, though it be true ; unless by some other means 
 it appear to us to be true, and we be convinced of it in some 
 other sort than by the bare determination of the Council only. 
 But concerning the General Councils of this sort that hitherto 
 have been holden, we confess that, in respect of the matter about 
 which they were called, so nearly and essentially concerning the 
 life and soul of the Christian faith, and in respect of the manner 
 and form of their proceeding, and the evidence of proof brought 
 in them, they are and ever were expressly to be believed by all 
 such as perfectly understand the meaning of their determination." 
 Then, after speaking of the first six Councils he concludes : 
 "and therefore, howsoever we dare not pronounce that lawful 
 General Councils are free from danger of erring, as some among 
 our adversaries do, yet do we more honour and esteem and more 
 fully admit all the General Councils that ever hitherto have been 
 holden, than they do ; who fear not to charge some of the chiefest 
 of them with errour, as both the second and the fourth, for 
 equaling the Bishop of Constantinople to the Bishop of Rome, 
 which I think they suppose to have been an errour in faith." 
 
 As among the arguments made use of in our days to con- 
 vert the weak and unstable and vacillating, it is found that none 
 is more impressive and effective than the promise that they 
 shall have an infallible guide to save them from the perils and 
 dangers of personal responsibility, so was it in the seventeenth 
 century. Archdeacon Wilberforce, in a passage already quoted, 
 speaks of " that longing for some principle of guidance, which
 
 NOTE K. 197 
 
 is deeply rooted in the heart." Now this longing, like every 
 natural appetite, has its diseased, as well as its healthy con- 
 dition. When it impells us to make use of our own intellectual 
 faculties, diligently, soberly, orderly, and to take advantage of 
 all the helps and means wherewith God has supplied us, it is 
 healthy : but when it disposes us to shake off this labour and 
 care and anxiety, to repine against the divine ordinance that 
 in the sweat of our understanding and of our heart we must 
 eat our bread, and to crave for some magical aid whereby we 
 may be relieved from this labour, it is utterly morbid, no less 
 morbid than the analogous longings for the philosopher's stone 
 and the elixir of life. Assuredly an infallible guidance, if it be 
 anything else than that illumination of the Spirit which is to be 
 obtained by holiness and earnest prayer, is quite as visionary as 
 these phantoms, by which so many in former ages were lured 
 and deluded, quite as visionary as the Mahometan paradise, by 
 which the Arabian impostor fascinated his followers : and it is 
 only by reason of our weakness and sinfulness that it exercises 
 such a charm over us. 
 
 Hence this became the main argument in the controversy be- 
 tween Laud and Fisher, in which Laud, then Bishop of St 
 David's, tried to rescue the Duke of Buckingham, as well as his 
 wife and mother, from the clutches of the subtile Jesuit. We 
 are told that, in some previous conferences between Fisher and 
 White, afterward Bishop of Ely, "all the speech was about par- 
 ticular matters, and little or none about a continual, infallible, 
 visible Church, which was the chief and only point in which a 
 certain lady [the Countess of Buckingham] required satisfaction, 
 as having formerly settled in her mind that it was not for 
 her, or any other unlearned persons, to take upon them to 
 judge of particulars without depending upon the judgement 
 of the true Church." To this Laud replies ( 3. 17): "If 
 that lady desired to rely on a particular infallible Church, it 
 is not to be found on earth." He argues ( 10. 3) : "Since 
 you distinguish not between the Church in general and a General 
 Council, which is but her representation for determinations of the
 
 198 NOTE K. 
 
 faith, though I be very slow in sifting or opposing what is 
 concluded by lawful, general, and consenting authority, though 
 I give as much as can justly be given to the definitions of 
 Councils truly General, nay, suppose I should grant, which I 
 do not, that General Councils cannot err, yet this cannot down 
 with me that all points even so defined are fundamental. For 
 deductions are not prime and native principles ; nor are super- 
 structures foundations : Therefore nothing is simply fundamental 
 because the Church declares it, but because it is so in the nature 
 of the thing which the Church declares" ( 10, 7). "For full 
 Church authority is but Church authority; and Church authority 
 when it is at full sea is not simply divine ; therefore the sentence 
 of it not fundamental in the faith ; and yet no erring disputer 
 may be endured to shake the foundation which the Church in 
 Council lays. But plain Scripture, with evident sense, or a 
 full demonstrative argument, must have room, where a wrangling 
 and erring disputer may not be allowed it. And there is neither 
 of these but may convince the definition of the Council, if it be 
 ill founded" ( x. 11). "Now Catholic maxims, which are pro- 
 perly fundamental, are certain prime truths deposited with the 
 Church, and not so much determined by the Church, as publisht 
 and manifested, and so made firm by her to us. Where all 
 that the Church doth is but that the same thing may be be- 
 lieved, which was before believed, but with more light and 
 clearness, and, in that sense, with more firmness than before. 
 But this hinders not the Church herself, nor any appointed by 
 the Church, to examine her own decrees, and to see that she 
 keep the principles of faith unblemisht and uncorrupted. For 
 if she do not so, but that new doctrines be added to the old, 
 the Church, which is sacrarium veritatis, may be changed in 
 lupanar errorum" ( x. 15). "The Church of England 
 grounded her positive Articles upon Scripture j and her negative 
 do refute there, where the thing affirmed by you is not affirmed 
 by Scripture, nor directly to be concluded out of it" ( xv. 1). 
 
 In the course of his argument Laud strenuously maintains, 
 and proves, that the Church is not infallible, not even the
 
 NOTE K. 199 
 
 Church general, much less that of Eome. " Every assistance of 
 Christ and the Blessed Spirit is not enough to make the autho- 
 rity of any company of men divine and infallible, but such and 
 so great an assistance only as is purposely given to that effect. 
 Such an assistance the Prophets under the Old Testament, and the 
 Apostles under the New had ; but neither the Highpriest with 
 his clergy in the Old, nor any company of prelates or priests 
 in the New, since the Apostles, ever had it" ( xvi. 26). In 
 the 25th section (4. 5), Laud shews that, though the whole Church 
 cannot universally err in any point of faith simply necessary 
 to salvation, yet it may err on points which are not fundamental, 
 and that the passages of Scripture alledged to prove the infal- 
 libility of the Church, merely prove her indefectibility, and 
 convey a promise of Divine assistance. " To settle controversies 
 in the Church, there is a visible judge and infallible, but not 
 living; and that is the Scripture pronouncing by the Church. 
 And there is a visible and a living judge, but not infallible ; and 
 that is a General Council, lawfully called, and so proceeding" 
 ( xxvi. 1). 
 
 In the 33rd section, the longest and most elaborate of the 
 whole book, Laud enters into a full consideration of the argu- 
 ments adduced to prove the infallibility of General Councils, 
 and displays their utter untenableness and futility. When we 
 examine these arguments, the work may seem not to be a 
 difficult one ; but it could not well be better executed ; and, 
 as far as reasoning is concerned, the victory is complete. The 
 texts of Scripture alledged in behalf of their infallibility are 
 shewn to be wholly irrelevant, the authority of the Fathers, 
 and the evidence of history, to be adverse. 
 
 This argument is followed by some remarks on the still more 
 groundless, and far more irrational and revolting assumption, 
 which ascribes infallibility to the Pope. Of this he says : " I 
 am persuaded, many learned men among yourselves scorn it at 
 the very heart ; and I avow it, I have heard some learned and 
 judicious Roman Catholics utterly condemn it. And well they 
 may; for no man can affirm it, but he shall make himself a
 
 200 NOTE K. 
 
 scorn to all the learned men of Christendom, whose judgements 
 are not captivated by Roman power. For my own part, I am 
 clear of Jacobus Almain's opinion : ' A great wonder it is to 
 me that they who affirm the Pope cannot err, do not affirm 
 likewise that he cannot sin. And I verily believe they would 
 be bold enough to affirm it, did not the daily works of the 
 Popes compell them to believe the contrary.' For very many 
 of them have led lives quite contrary to the Gospel of Christ, 
 nay, such lives as no Epicurean monster storied out to the world 
 hath outgone them in sensuality or other gross impiety, if their 
 own historians be true. Yet these must be infallible in their 
 dictates and conclusions of faith." To this argument the Romish 
 apologists are wont to reply, that it is mere Protestant dulness 
 to confound infallibility with impeccability, which is something 
 totally different, being a moral gift, instead of an intellectual. 
 So that here again we find the same rending asunder of the 
 heart and mind, which characterizes the Romish conception of 
 faith, a separation belonging to the region of sin, but which 
 is to be overcome more or less in the Kingdom of Grace. Yet 
 we have been taught by our Divine Master that the true way 
 of attaining to the knowledge of religious truth is by living 
 according to it. But in this respect also Romanism substitutes 
 a magical for a spiritual power, and seems to regard it as dero- 
 gatory to the arbitrary omnipotence of the Deity, if we speak 
 of the illumination which ever goes along with purity of heart, 
 of the wonderful discernment which is granted to godliness, 
 and of the manner in which sin, under all its forms, darkens 
 our spiritual vision. We hold these opinions, we are told, be- 
 cause we are taught by flesh and blood, not by grace. When 
 we come under this higher teacher, we shall discover that this 
 is one of the ways in which God shews that, in the distribution 
 of His gifts, He is no respecter of persons, that, though accord- 
 ing to the law of the natural world more is given to him who 
 hath, in the spiritual world this law is reverst, and that the 
 most signal demonstration of the Divine Omnipotence is, that 
 the miraculous gift of infallibility is often bestowed upon those
 
 NOTE K. 201 
 
 who might otherwise have been supposed to have derived their 
 conception of Christianity from the Gospel of Judas Iscariot. 
 
 Again, when Lord Falkland's mother tried to draw him over 
 to the Church of Rome, the main argument of the controversy in 
 which he had to engage, was the infallibility of that Church. It 
 was to defend Lord Falkland's Discourse, that Hammond entered 
 into the discussion, who, in the Preface to his Treatise, writes 
 thus : " The sad effects of the present differences and divisions of 
 this broken kingdom having made Peace and Unity and In- 
 fallibility such precious desirable things, that, if there were but 
 one wish offered to each man among us, it would certainly be 
 laid out on this one treasure, the setting up some catholic um- 
 pire or daysman, some visible, infallible definer of controversies, 
 the pretenders to that infallibility, having the luck to be alone 
 in that pretension, have been lookt on with some reverence, and, 
 by those who knew nothing of their grounds or arguments, ac- 
 knowledged to speak, if not true, yet seasonably ; and having so 
 great an advantage upon their auditors, their inclinations and 
 their wishes to find themselves overcome going along with every 
 argument that should be brought them, they began to redouble 
 their industry and their hopes ; and, instead of the many par- 
 ticulars of the Romish doctrine, which they were wont to offer 
 proof for in the retail, now to set all their strength upon this 
 one in gross, the very gains and conveniences that attend this 
 doctrine of theirs, if it were true, being to flesh and blood, which 
 all men have not the skill of putting off, mighty topics of 
 probability that it is so." 
 
 There is something very disheartening in the contemplation 
 of the manner in which errours and fallacies, after having 
 been in great measure supprest, and apparently almost extin- 
 . guisht, at least within certain limits, will sprout up again, it 
 may be, after centuries, as vigorous and delusive as ever. It is 
 sad and disheartening to think how closely these words of Ham- 
 mond's apply to what has been going on in our Church in these 
 last years. The triumphant learning and reasoning of our great 
 divines in the seventeenth century had so completely demolisht
 
 202 NOTE K. 
 
 all the arguments alledged in behalf of the infallibility either 
 of the Pope or of Councils, that for a century and a half few 
 voices ventured to lift themselves up in defense of such an ex- 
 ploded errour in England. Yet now it is become rampant 
 again, and is welcomed equally by weak and by over-subtile 
 minds, by those who have not strength to grasp any truth, and 
 by those who have undermined all truth. Only we have not the 
 same excuse for this morbid craving in our days, which Ham- 
 mond finds in the divisions and dissensions of his. On the con- 
 trary, while we have had such wonderful proofs of the power of 
 Truth in establishing consentient conviction, not only in the 
 whole old world, but also in so many new continents, of Science, 
 there were also divers indications of an approaching recon- 
 ciliation in the sphere of moral and political and social philosophy, 
 and even in religion, when it was proclaimed anew at Oxford, 
 that man has no faculty of discovering, or even of discerning and 
 recognising moral and spiritual truth, and that the fallibility of 
 Reason must be superseded by the infallibility of Authority; 
 much as though a person should take disgust at the multitu- 
 dinous complicated operations of the laws of Nature, and should 
 call up Chaos, the " anarch old," to set things in order. 
 
 Hammond continues : " To discover the danger of this sweet 
 potion, or rather to shew how far it is from being what it pre- 
 tends, and so to exchange the specious for the sound, the made- 
 dish for the substantial food, allowing the Universal Church 
 the autftority of an irrefragable testimony, and the present age of 
 the Romish Church as much of our belief as it hath of conformity 
 with the Universal of all ages, but not a privilege of not being 
 able to say false whatsoever it saith, and so to set us in the 
 safer though longer way, thereby to whet our industry in the 
 chase of truth, instead of assuring ourselves that we cannot 
 err, this Discourse of Lord Falkland's was long since designed ; 
 as also to remove the great scandals and obstacles which have 
 obstructed all way of hope to that universal aim of all true 
 Christians, the universal peace of Christendom. For to this 
 nothing is more unreconcilably contrary than pretensions to
 
 NOTE K. 203 
 
 infallibility in any part of it ; all such making it unlawful either 
 for themselves to mend, or others to be endured, shutting out 
 all possibility either of compliance or charity or reformation 
 in their own, or mercy to other men's errours." 
 
 Dr Newman, in his Letter to Dr Jelf in Explanation of Tract 
 KG. enumerates a variety of opinions, which had been 
 held by some of our principal divines, and the lawfulness of 
 which he had desired to vindicate ; and among these he deems 
 it should be allowable " to hold with Hammond that no General 
 Council, truly such, ever did, or shall err in any matter of 
 Faith." No authority is cited for this statement, which, carefully 
 as it is worded, may produce an erroneous impression ; for at 
 the utmost it can only be correct under very strict limitations. 
 In his Vindication of Lord Falkland's Discourse (c. xi. . 2), 
 Hammond says : " It being supposed that Councils are not 
 deciders of controversies, meaning thereby infallible ones, they 
 be yet of good authority and use in the Church, to help to decide 
 them, and be only denied by us the privilege of infallibility, 
 not that other of being very useful and venerable in a lower 
 degree, and, such the Council may be, even next to the word 
 of God itself." 
 
 In his Discourse Of Fundamentals (c. xii.), speaking of " the 
 doctrines that hinder the superstructing of good life on the 
 Christian belief," he singles out " especially the infallibility and 
 inerrableness which is assumed and inclosed by the Romish 
 Church, without any inerrable ground to build it on, and, being 
 taken for an unquestionable principle, is, by the security it 
 brings along with it, apt to betray men to the foulest whether 
 sins or errours, whensoever this pretended infallible guide shall 
 propose them. For of this we have too frequent experience, 
 how hard it is to dispossess a Romanist of any doctrine or prac- 
 tice of that present Church, for which he hath no grounds 
 either in Antiquity or Scripture, or rational deductions from 
 either, but the contrary to all these, as long as he hath that one 
 hold or fortress, his persuasion of the infallibility of that Church, 
 which teacheth or prescribeth it. And indeed it were as
 
 204 NOTE K. 
 
 unreasonable for us to accuse or wonder at this constancy in 
 particular superstructed errours, whilst this great first compre- 
 hensive falsity is maintained, as to disclaim the conclusion, when 
 the premisses that duly induce it are embraced. And then that 
 other errours and guilts of the highest nature neither are nor 
 shall be entertained by those that are thus qualified for them, 
 must sure be a felicity to which this doctrine hath no way en- 
 titled them, and for which they can have no security for one 
 hour, but by renouncing that principle which equally obligeth to 
 the belief of truths and falsehoods, embracing of commendable 
 and vicious practices, when they are once received and proposed 
 to them by that Church." 
 
 But it is in the Paraenesis, the fifth Chapter of which treats on 
 Heresy, that Hammond most fully discusses the various questions 
 concerning the authority of Councils. To the first four General 
 Councils he ascribes the highest authority (. 7), " because, these 
 being so near the Apostles times, and gathered as soon as the 
 heterodox opinions appeared, the sense of the Apostles 1 might more 
 easily be fetcht from those men and Churches to whom they had 
 committed it." As to other General Councils, he shews ( 13) that 
 there is no scriptural ground for deeming them infallible, and that 
 the texts alledged in behalf of such a notion, Matth. xviii. 20, 
 John xvi. 3, Acts xv. 28, do not bear it out ; and then (in 14) 
 he adds : " This then of the inerrableness of General Councils being 
 thus far evidenced to be no matter of faith, because not founded 
 in any part of Scripture or Tradition, the utmost that can be 
 said of it is, that it is a theological verity which may piously be 
 believed. And so I doubt not to pronounce of it, that if we 
 consider God's great and wise and constant providence and care 
 over His Church, His desire that all men should be saved and, 
 in order to that end, come to the knowledge of all necessary 
 truth, His promise that He will not suffer His faithful servants 
 to be tempted above what they are able, nor permit scandals and 
 false teachers to prevail to the seducing of the very elect, His 
 most pious godly servants, if, I say, we consider these, and 
 some other such like general promises of Scripture, wherein this
 
 NOTE K. 205 
 
 question seems to be concerned, we shall have reason to believe 
 that God will never suffer all Christians to fall into such a 
 temptation, as it must be in case the whole Church representative 
 should err in matters of faith, by way of ellipsis, define against 
 or leave out of their Creed any Article of that body of Credenda, 
 which the Apostles delivered to the Church, and therein find 
 approbation and reception among all those Bishops and Doctors 
 of the Church diffused, who were out of the Council. And 
 though in this case the Church might remain a Church, and so 
 the destructive gates of Hades not prevail against it, and still 
 retain all parts of the Apostles depositum in the hearts of some 
 faithful Christians, who had no power in the Council to oppose 
 the decree, or out of it to resist the general approbation, yet 
 still the testimony of such a General Council, so received and 
 approved, would be a very strong argument, and so a very dan- 
 gerous temptation, to every the most meek and pious Christian : 
 and it is piously to be believed, though not infallibly certain, 
 (for who knows what the provocations of the Christian world, 
 of the Pastors, or the flock, may arrive to, like the violence of 
 the old world, that brought down the deluge upon them ?) that 
 God will not permit His servants to fall into that temptation." 
 This is but a scanty measure of infallibility; and thus much 
 many might be ready to concede : yet after all it must remain 
 questionable whether the proposition rejected by the General 
 Council be indeed a fundamental point of faith. And who is to 
 ascertain and determine this 1 What will be the practical use 
 of such an infallibility to the simple Christian ? 
 
 Hammond's greater contemporary, Jeremy Taylor, discusses 
 the same questions concerning the infallibility of the Church, of 
 General Councils, and of the Pope, very fully in the second Part 
 of his Dissuasive (Book i. 1 ), with his own wonderful brilliancy 
 of logic and of wit, scattering the arguments of the opposite 
 party like dust before a March wind. They had previously 
 undergone a thorough process of pounding in Chillingworth's 
 logical crucible. 
 
 Thorndike, one of the most strenuous champions of
 
 206 NOTE K. 
 
 ecclesiastical authority, treats of the same topics at large in the 
 first Book of his Epilogue to the Tragedy of the Church of 
 England; and he too is a master of reasoning. In the 
 fourth Chapter he shews that there is no passage in Scripture 
 containing anything like a promise of infallibility to the Church. 
 The same subject is resumed in the 27th Chapter, where he 
 writes ( 7): "I say not that the Church cannot determine 
 what shall be taught and received in such disputes as will 
 divide the Church unless an end be put ; but I say that the 
 authority of the Church can be no reason obliging or warranting 
 to believe that for truth, which cannot be reasonably deduced 
 from the motives of our common faith." Again ( 14), "Neither 
 will it be strange that I allow not any Council, in which never 
 so much of the authority of the present Church is united, to say, 
 in the same sense and to the same effect as the Synod of the 
 Apostles at Jerusalem, It seemed good to the Holy Ghost and to 
 us : though I allow the overt act of their assembling to be a 
 legal presumption that their acts are the acts of the Holy Ghost, 
 so far as they appear not to trangress those bounds upon which 
 the assistance of the Holy Ghost is promist the Church." Further 
 ( 18), "Though, granting the Church to be subject to errour, 
 salvation is not to be attained without much difficulty, and 
 though division in the Church may create more difficulty in 
 attaining salvation than errour might have done, yet, so long as 
 salvation may be and is attained by visible communion with the 
 Church, so long is Christ with His, nor do the gates of hell prevail 
 against His Church; though errour, which excludeth infallibility, 
 though division, which destroyeth unity, hinder many and many 
 of attaining it." See also 25 : " Suppose the Church, by the 
 foundation of it, enabled to maintain both the truth and the 
 sufficiency of the motives of faith against infidels, and also the 
 rule of faith against heretics, by the evidence which it maketh 
 that they are received ; what is this to the creating of faith 
 by decreeing that which, before it was decreed, was not the 
 object of faith 1 Surely the Church cannot be the pillar that 
 sustains any faith but that which is laid upon it, as received from
 
 NOTE K. 207 
 
 the beginning, not that which it layeth upon the foundation of 
 faith." 
 
 In the 28th Chapter he shews that this view of the authority 
 of the Church is alone consistent with the general opinion of the 
 Fathers; and here, among other things, he writes ( 11): "I 
 know nothing in all antiquity more peremptory against the 
 infallibility of the Church, than that of Vincentius, denying that 
 the rule of faith can ever increase, or Councils do any more in it 
 than determine that expressly and distinctly, which was simply 
 held from the beginning." 
 
 That the labours of our divines with regard to this question 
 were not ineffectual, we learn from Pearson's Preface to Lord 
 Falkland's Treatise, where he says : " The great defenders of the 
 doctrine of the Church of England have, with more than ordinary 
 diligence, endeavoured to view the grounds of this controversy, 
 and have written, by the advantage either of their learning 
 accurately, or of their parts most strongly, or of the cause itself 
 most convincingly, against that darling infallibility. How clearly 
 this controversy hath been managed, with what evidence of truth 
 discust, what success so much of reason hath had, cannot more 
 plainly appear than in this, that the very name of infallibility, 
 before so much exalted, begins now to be very burthensome, even 
 to the maintainers of it; insomuch as one of their latest and 
 ablest proselytes, Hugh Paulin de Cressy, in his Exomologesis, 
 hath dealt very clearly with the world, and told us, that ' this 
 infallibility is an unfortunate word,' that Mr Chillingworth ' hath 
 combated against it with too, too great success,' so great that ' he 
 could wish the word were forgotten or at least laid by,' that not 
 only Mr Chillingworth, but we, the rest of the poor ' Protestants, 
 have in very deed very much to say for ourselves when we are 
 prest unnecessarily with it.' And therefore Mr Cressy's advice 
 to all the Romanists is this, ' that we may never be invited 
 to combat the authority of the Church under that notion.' 
 the strength of reason rightly managed ! the power of 
 truth clearly declared ! that it should force an eminent member 
 of the Church of Rome to retract so necessary, so fundamental
 
 208 NOTE K. 
 
 a doctrine, to desert all their schools, and contradict all their 
 controvertists. But indeed not without very good cause : for 
 he professes withal, that, 'no such word as infallibility is to 
 be found in any Council : neither did ever the Church enlarge 
 her authority to so vast a wideness : but doth rather deliver the 
 victory into our hands when we urge her decisions.' It cannot 
 therefore be the word alone, but the whole importance and sense 
 of that word infallibility, which Mr Cressy so earnestly desires 
 all his Catholics ever hereafter to forsake, because the former 
 Church did never acknowledge it, and the present Church will 
 never be able to maintain it. This is the great success which 
 the reason, parts, and learning of the late defenders of our 
 Church have had in this main architectonical controversy." 
 
 This collection of testimonies might easily be enlarged : but it 
 is already sufficient to prove that the great body of our eminent 
 divines concur in holding that, neither in the reason of the 
 thing, nor from any declaration of Scripture, direct or even 
 implicit, is there the slightest ground for deeming that the 
 Councils of the Church have been, or would be, endowed with 
 any miraculous gift of infallibility; wherefore we may safely 
 pronounce that the existence of such a gift is a fond and vain 
 imagination. At the same time they hold that Councils right- 
 fully convened may be regarded, according to the expression of 
 our Article, as having authority in controversies of faith; though 
 their decisions, to have legal force, require to be adopted by each 
 particular Church. Moreover they deem that the first four 
 General Councils have a special paramount authority, as 
 witnesses of the faith committed by the Apostles to the first 
 ages of the Church; and many would probably incline to 
 believe, with Hammond, that the decisions of every lawful 
 General Council would be so far overruled by that superintending 
 Providence which watches over the welfare of the Church, as 
 that they would not be allowed to contravene any fundamental 
 article of faith.
 
 NOTE L. 209 
 
 NOTE L : p. 31. 
 
 The denial of the absolute infallibility of the Pope is well 
 known to be one of the main principles of the Gallican Church, 
 set forth in the four Articles of their famous Synod in 1682. 
 The second of those Articles is, that " the full power in spiritual 
 things is so vested in the Apostolical See, in the successors of St 
 Peter and Vicars of Christ, as that the decrees of the Holy Ecu- 
 menical Council of Constance, approved as they have been by the 
 Apostolical See, and confirmed by the use of the Roman Pontiffs, 
 and of the whole Church, and having always been religiously ob- 
 served by the Gallican Church, shall retain their full force, as they 
 were enacted in the fourth and fifth Sessions concerning the authority 
 of General Councils, and that the Gallican Church does not 
 approve of those who would impair the force of those decrees, as 
 though they were of doubtful authority, or referred solely to the 
 period of the Schism." Now the most important of the decrees 
 here referred to was a declaration that " the Assembly, being 
 legitimately gathered together in the Holy Ghost, constituting 
 a General Council, and representing the Catholic Church, has 
 its power immediately from Christ, and that every person, of 
 whatsoever state or dignity, even though it be the Papal, is 
 bound to obey the Council in those things which pertain to faith, 
 and to the extirpation of the said Schism, and the reformation of 
 the said Church in its Head and members." This declaration 
 of the Council of Constance, in which we see a kind of dawn of 
 the Reformation, was adopted in the Gallican Church in its 
 fullest sense: and the fourth Article adds, that, "in contro- 
 versies of faith, the office of the Pope is the chief, and that his 
 decrees pertain to all Churches; nevertheless that his judgement 
 is not irreformabile, unless it is confirmed by the consent of the 
 Church."* 
 
 * These Articles are of such importance that I will subjoin the original 
 words. The Second is: "Sic autein inesse Apostolicae Sedi, ac Petri 
 
 P
 
 210 NOTE L. 
 
 If any doubt could exist as to the purport of these Articles, it 
 would be removed by Bossuet, who took the leading part in the 
 Synod where they were drawn up, and who spent a large portion 
 of his subsequent life in composing an elaborate Vindication 
 of them, perhaps the ablest and most valuable of all his works. 
 The main object of the last seven books of this Vindication, 
 which he went on correcting and improving down to his death, 
 was to prove that the infallibility of the Pope was altogether a 
 modern doctrine, that for many centuries it had never been held 
 under any form, and that even down to the sixteenth century 
 there were abundant proofs of its not having been regarded as 
 an article of faith. He proves this by the decrees of Councils, by 
 the testimony of Fathers, Doctors, and Schoolmen, by the 
 declarations of Popes themselves, among others, in the first 
 book of the Appendix (c. xii.), by those words of that truly 
 honest Pope, Hadrian VI. who, when he was professor at Louvain, 
 wrote: "Si per Ecclesiam Romanam intelligatur caput ejus, 
 puta Pontifex, cerium est quod possit errare, etiam in iis quae 
 tangunt fidem, haeresim per suam determinationem aut decre- 
 talem asserendo ; plures enim fuere Pontifices Romani hacretici." 
 These words sufficiently prove that the Pope cannot then have 
 been generally regarded as infallible. The meaning of the 
 
 succcssoribus, Christi vicariis, rerum spiritualium plenam potestatem, ut simul 
 valeant atque immota consistant sanctae oecumenicae Synodi Constantiensis a 
 Sede Apostolica comprobata, ipsoque Romanorum Pontificum ac totius ecclesiae 
 usu confinnata, atque ab ecclesia Gallicana perpetua rcligione custodita, decreta de 
 auctoritate Conciliorum generalium, quae sessione quarta et quinta contincntur ; 
 nee probari a Gallicana ecclesia, qui eorum decretorum, quasi dubiae sint aucto- 
 ritatis ac minus approbata, robur infringant, aut ad sol urn schismatis tenipus 
 Concilii dicta detorqueant." The fourth Article is " In fidei quoque quaestionibus 
 praecipuas summi Pontificis esse partes, ejusque decreta ad oranes et singulas 
 ecclesias pertinere, nee tanien irreformabile esse judicium, nisi Ecclesiae consensus 
 accesserit." 
 
 I will add the words of the Council of Constance : " Primo declarat quod 
 ipsa in Spiritu Sancto legitime congregata, concilium generale faciens, et ecclesiam 
 catholicam repraesentans, potestatem a Christo immediate habet, cui quilibet 
 cujuscuroque status vel dignitatis, etiam si papalis existat, obedire tcnetur in his 
 quae pertinent ad fidem, et exstirpationem dicti schismatis, et reformationem 
 dictae ecclesiae in capite et in membris."
 
 NOTE L. 211 
 
 declaration that the Pope's judgement is not irreformajbile, Bossuet 
 explains (L. vii. c. 1) by saying that the word is taken from 
 Tertullian: "Judicium illud irreformabile esse dicimus, quod 
 immobile, irretractabile, irrefragabile ab antiquis, postremo 
 denique aevo infallibile appellatum est." 
 
 Bossuet's view on this matter was maintained by Fleury, the 
 Ecclesiastical historian, by Dupin, in the last generation by 
 Cardinal Bausset, his biographer, and by the great body of the 
 French Church, by all those who were especially called Galli- 
 cans. It has been impugned by De Maistre in his book Du 
 Pape, a considerable part of which is employed in replying to 
 Bossuet. Having explained his own conception of infallibility, 
 on which I shall say a few words in the next Note, he remarks, 
 that, from not having seized his principles, " des theologiens du 
 premier ordre, tels que Bossuet et Fleury, ont manque 1'idee de 
 1'infaillibilite, de maniere a permettre au bon sens la'ique de 
 sourire en les lisant. Le premier nous dit serieusement que 
 la doctrine de l'infaillibilite n'a commence qu'au concile de 
 Florence ; et Fleury encore plus precis nomme le dominicain 
 Cajetan, comme 1'auteur de cette doctrine, sous le pontificat de 
 Jules II. On ne comprend pas comment des hommes, d'ailleurs 
 si distingues, ont pu confondre deux idees aussi differentes que 
 celles de croire et de soutenir un dogme. L'Eglise catholique 
 n'est point argumentatrice de sa nature : elle croit sans disputer; 
 car la foi est une croyance par amour; et 1'amour n'argumente 
 point. Le catholique sait qu'il ne peut se tromper; il sait de 
 plus que s'il pouvait se tromper, il n'y auroit plus de ve"rite 
 revele'e, ni d'assurance pour I'homme sur la terre. Mais si Ton 
 vient a contester quelque dogme, elle sort de son 6tat naturel, 
 etranger a toute idee contentieuse ; elle cherche les fondemens 
 du dogme mis en probleme ; elle interroge 1'antiquite ; elle cr6e 
 des mots surtout, dont sa bonne foi n'avait nul besoin, mais qui 
 sont devenus nScessaires pour caracteriser le dogme, et mettre 
 entre les novateurs et nous une barriere e'ternelle." Pp. 1113. 
 
 Now it will not be difficult to defend Bossuet against these 
 objections. For, though I readily acknowledge the truth of De 
 
 p 2
 
 212 NOTE L. 
 
 Maistre's remark concerning social institutions, that it is not 
 given to us to discern and trace the workings of the generative, 
 assimilative, and expansive processes in society, any more than in 
 nature, this applies only to those institutions which spring from 
 the general instincts of human nature, not to those which are 
 derived from an express positive fiat. De Maistre himself seems 
 here to have been somewhat misled by the grand analogy which 
 he detects between the infallibility of the supreme power in the 
 Church, and that which he ascribes to human governments. In 
 the Preface to the second edition he tells us that he had been 
 charged with having too much humanized the infallibility of the 
 Church ; and he asserts that he had not been unmindful of its 
 divine origin. This objection to Bossuet seems to prove that, 
 for a moment at least, he did lose sight of it, being carried 
 away by the fascinations of his theory concerning the analogy 
 between the natural and spiritual world. For, if the claim of 
 infallibility was really drawn from a certain number of verses in 
 Scripture containing an express promise of it, we have a right to 
 expect that an institution which proceeded from a distinct 
 ordinance, and the authors of which therefore must have been 
 aware of that ordinance and its bearings, should exhibit and 
 express this consciousness. If it was infallible only because all 
 governments are infallible, then it might be so without telling 
 us ; but if it was infallible, because our Lord promist St Peter 
 that it should be so, then its ground can no longer have been 
 hidden: it must have come distinctly before the consciousness: and 
 the consciousness of it must have found an utterance. It cannot 
 have continued in an intermittent state for fourteen centuries. 
 
 Moreover De Maistre's arguments seem to indicate that he 
 cannot have read Bossuet's great work, or at all events that he 
 had forgotten its contents. Perhaps he was writing during his 
 exile in Russia, of which he speaks so beautifully in the Soirees 
 de Saint-Petersbourg : at least he tells us (in p. 147), that he was 
 unable to refer to it for the sake of verifying a quotation. His 
 references are to Bausset's Life of Bossuet, from which he derives 
 the statement he so strongly objects to, that the doctrine of papal
 
 infallibility originated at the Council of Florence, on occasion of 
 the quarrel between Pope Eugenius IV. and the Council of 
 Basle. I have not observed any such express assertion in 
 Bossuet; but that is immaterial. De Maistre's objection might 
 have some weight, if Bossuet's argument had merely been, 
 that we do not find any enunciation of the doctrine of infalli- 
 bility anterior to the Council of Florence. But if De Maistre 
 had reflected, he must have bethought himself that this merely 
 negative argument, even in the hand of a much prolixer writer, 
 could never have filled the main part of two portly volumes. In 
 fact Bossuet's argument is a totally different one. He disproves 
 the infallibility of the Pope, not merely by negative, but by a 
 long and strong chain of positive evidence, by adducing a 
 number of instances, as well as direct assertions, of his fallibility 
 from generation after generation, by shewing from a large 
 induction of facts that during a series of centuries he was 
 regarded and treated as fallible, and never as otherwise than 
 fallible, and that, when an opposite opinion began to gain 
 ground, it arose mainly from the exercise of that authority, 
 which belongs to a supreme power, and which De Maistre terms 
 infallibility. This demonstration is so clear and cogent, nay, 
 irrefragable, that, were it not for the cleverness and pertinacity 
 with which the Jesuits have gone on mustering routed and 
 scattered arguments, and filling their ranks with the skeletons of 
 such as had been slain a dozen times over, the notion of the 
 infallibility of the Pope must have been utterly exploded, even 
 in his own Church, at least to the north of the Alps. 
 
 Here I will take leave at once to illustrate and to reinforce 
 Bossuet's argument, by citing a witness who has recently been 
 disinterred : I mean Hippolytus, bishop of Portus, and a presbyter 
 of the Church of Rome, whom my friend, the Chevalier Bunsen, 
 has proved, with a power of critical combination scarcely to be 
 found except in Niebuhr and his disciples, to be the author of 
 the recently publish t Refutation of all Heresies, ascribed by the 
 Editor to Origen. Now it might easily have happened that, 
 though Hippolytus does not say a word ascribing infallibility to
 
 214? NOTE L. 
 
 the Bishop of Rome, there might have been nothing in the work 
 distinctly impugning his infallibility ; as of course there would 
 not be, if, according to our belief, no pretension to such infalli- 
 bility had ever been brought forward. Let us see then what he 
 actually does say, neither laying stress on the want of an express 
 assertion, if what he says is consistent with the notion of such an 
 infallibility, nor demanding the denial of a claim, which could 
 not be disputed, unless it had previously been made. He 
 lived as a Christian minister at Rome during the episcopate of 
 Zephyrinus and that of Callistus, at the beginning of the third 
 century : and in his ninth Book he treats of the heresy of Noetus. 
 This, he says ( 7), was brought by his deacon and disciple, 
 Epigonus, to Rome, where it was adopted by Cleomenes, " at the 
 time when Zephyrinus thought he governed the Roman Church, 
 a rude and avaricious man (t^twr^e KUI aln^oKtpSrjg), who, being 
 induced by bribes, allowed such as chose to study under 
 Cleomenes, and himself, being drawn away in course of time, 
 adopted the same opinions, having Callistus for his counsellor 
 and complice in his evil deeds. During their episcopates the 
 school continued growing and gaining strength from being 
 patronized by Zephyrinus and Callistus, although I never gave 
 way to them, but repeatedly withstood and refuted them, and 
 compelled them to acknowledge the truth : which they confestfor 
 the moment through shame, and through the power of truth ; but 
 after a while they rolled back into the same mire (eVt rbv avrov 
 @6popov aWvXt'ovro)." This is the way in which a presbyter and 
 bishop of the Roman Church speaks of two Bishops of Rome, two 
 of our so-called Infallibilities: the writer's official position is evident 
 on the face of the book itself : what the Chevalier Bunsen has 
 effected is to prove the identity of this Roman presbyter and 
 bishop with St Hippolytus. 
 
 After giving an account of the opinions held by Noetus, and 
 of their derivation, not from the Gospel, but from the doctrines 
 of Heraclitus, our heresiographer proceeds : " This heresy was 
 supported by Callistus, a man who was an adept in wickedness 
 and crafty to deceive (aVi/p iv KuKty iravovpyoc KOI
 
 irpoQ TT\dvr)v), and who was aiming at the episcopal throne. He 
 prevailed on Zephyrinus, a rude, illiterate man, ignorant of 
 ecclesiastical definitions, whom he could lead to do whatever 
 he chose, and who was also a bribe-taker and money-lover, to 
 excite a series of controversies among the brethren ; and then, by 
 cunning sleights, he contrived to win the favour of both parties, 
 pretending in private that he agreed with the orthodox, and 
 again with the followers of Sabellius. For when Zephyrinus was 
 admonisht by us, he was not obstinate ; but as soon as he was 
 alone with Callistus, the latter impelled him to incline to the 
 views of Cleomenes, saying that he thought the same. Bringing 
 forward Zephyrinus publicly, he persuaded him to say, / know 
 one God Je&us Christ, and beside Him no other who was born and 
 sti/ered ; and at other times saying, The Father did not die, but 
 the Son, he thus maintained a ceaseless controversy among the 
 people. When I perceived his thoughts, I did not assent to 
 him, but confuted and resisted him in behalf of the truth : 
 whereupon, being stung to madness because, while all others 
 concurred in his pretenses, I withstood them, he called us 
 ditheists, vomiting forth the venom hidden within him." 
 
 Hippolytus next gives us a history of the strange and 
 disgraceful adventures by which Callistus mounted from the 
 condition of a slave to his high eminence, his embezzling the 
 money deposited in his master's bank by Christian widows and 
 brethren, his flight on being detected, his throwing himself into 
 the sea, his being pickt up and condemned to the treadmill, 
 his exciting a riot in a Jewish synagogue, his condemna- 
 tion to the mines in Sardinia, his escape from thence and 
 return to Rome during the episcopate of Victor, how, after 
 Victor's death, Zephyrinus made use of him in canvassing the 
 Clergy, and how, after the death of Zephyrinus, he obtained the 
 object of his ambition. Hereupon, " being a conjuror and trickster 
 (yoijc *:at iravovpyog), he imposed for a time upon many. But, 
 having the venom lying in his heart, and designing nothing 
 straightforward, being moreover ashamed to speak the truth, 
 because he had publicly taunted me with being a ditheist, and
 
 216 NOTE L. 
 
 was himself frequently accused by Sabellius of having abandoned 
 his first faith, he devised the following heresy, saying that the 
 Word was the Son, and also the Father, so called in name, but 
 in fact one indivisible Spirit [we should probably read tv Se 
 ovra vyevfia dctaiptTov, instead of tv t ov, TO Trvew/m ddiatperov]; 
 that the Father was not One, and the Son Another, but that they 
 were One and the Same, that all things above and below were 
 filled with the Divine Spirit, and that what became Incarnate in 
 the Virgin was not another Spirit beside the Father, but One 
 and the Same: and that this is what is said, Believest thou not that 
 I am in the Father, and the Father in Me 1 for that the Visible 
 Human Being was the Son, but the Spirit contained in the Son was 
 the Father : for, he said, I will not speak of two Gods, but One. For 
 the Father who was in Him, taking to Himself flesh, deified it, 
 uniting it to Himself, so that One God was called Father and 
 Son, and that this One Person could not be two, and that thus 
 the Father suffered along with the Son. For he would not say 
 that the Father suffered, and was One Person, desiring to avoid 
 blaspheming the Father, the senseless trickstei', tossing about 
 blasphemies at random (oaVo?jroc KCU Trot'tciXoc, ourw KCITU) ffve^ta^wv 
 jS/\a<T^?/u/ac), sometimes falling into the doctrine of Sabellius, 
 sometimes into that of Theodotus. These things the impostor dared, 
 and establisht a school over against the Church, where he taught 
 thus : and he first devised the plan of allowing men to live as 
 they pleased, saying that he could forgive their sins to all. For 
 when a Christian of any other congregation committed a sin, his 
 sin was not imputed to him, if he went over to the school of 
 Callistus. He decreed that, if a bishop committed a sin, even a 
 sin unto death, he ought not to be deposed. In his time persons 
 who had been married twice and even thrice, began to be ordained 
 bishops, priests, and deacons." 
 
 Hippolytus further speaks of the moral corruptions which 
 gained entrance among the Christians through his laxity. It 
 may be that the picture is somewhat too highly coloured from 
 his antipathy to his theological opponent. But throughout the 
 work the writer appears to be an honest man, desirous of speaking
 
 NOTE L. 217 
 
 the truth : and assuredly he could not have written as he did, 
 if there had been the slightest notion that the mitre of the Roman 
 See invested a man with infallibility, or with any of the 
 extravagant endowments afterward ascribed to it. Zephyrinus 
 and Callistus were simple bishops of Rome, just as liable to the 
 worst moral failings and intellectual errours as the meanest of 
 their brethren : and we see from this account what was the value 
 of the canonization which they subsequently received. In the 
 net of Romish saintship, which gathers together the bad as well 
 as the good, there are no more worthless stockfish than these two 
 bishops of Rome. At a time when so many restless, discontented 
 spirits are opening their hearts fondly to the fascinations of 
 the Romish imposture, it may be regarded as a providential gift, 
 that this revelation of the state of the Roman Church at the 
 beginning of the third century has been set before us. The more 
 light we gain on the early centuries of the Church, the more 
 complete will be the discomfiture of all the Papal claims to 
 special privileges bestowed on the successors of St Peter. 
 
 Even Dr Newman himself, in his Essay on Development 
 (p. 368), says : " To this day the seat of infallibility remains, I 
 suppose, more or less undevelopt, or at least undefined, by the 
 Church." In earlier and wiser days he had written, in his 
 Lectures on Romanism (p. 61), illustrating the incongruity 
 between the abstract system of Rome, and her practical teaching : 
 " In the Creed of Pope Pius not a word is said expressly about 
 the Church's infallibility : it forms no Article of Faith there. 
 Her interpretation indeed of Scripture is recognised as authori- 
 tative; but so also is 'the unanimous consent of the Fathers.' 
 But when we put aside the creeds and professions of our 
 opponents for their actual teaching and disputing, they will be 
 found to care very little for the Fathers, whether as primitive or 
 as concordant ; they believe the existing Church to be infallible ; 
 and if ancient belief is at variance with it, which of course they 
 do not allow, but if it is, then antiquity must be mistaken : that 
 is all." Again (p. 68) : " There is this remarkable difference, 
 even of theory, between them and Vincentius, that the latter is
 
 218 NOTE M. 
 
 altogether silent on the subject of the Pope's infallibility, whether 
 considered as an attribute of his See, or as attaching to him in 
 General Council. If Vincentius had the sentiments and feelings 
 of a modern Romanist, it is incomprehensible that, in a treatise 
 written to guide the private Christian in matters of Faith, he 
 should have said not a word about the Pope's supreme authority, 
 nay, not even about the infallibility of the Church Catholic. He 
 refers the enquirer to a triple rule, difficult surely, and trouble- 
 some to use, compared with that which is ready furnisht by 
 Romanism. Applying his own rule to his work itself, we may 
 unhesitatingly conclude that the Pope's supreme authority in 
 matters of faith is no Catholic or Apostolic truth, because he 
 was ignorant of it." 
 
 In Germany, where Truth is held to be the most precious of 
 all possessions, even by members of the Catholic Church, the 
 conviction of the mischiefs produced by the doctrine of the 
 infallibility of the Pope is so strongly felt by many, that one of 
 the greatest philosophers of the last generation, Baader, who was 
 a zealous champion of Christian truth, and himself an earnest 
 Catholic, used perpetually to repeat the pregnant words of St 
 Martin, Le Papisme est la faiblesse du Cat/tolicisme ; et le Catho- 
 licisme esl la force du Papisme: and one of his latest essays, 
 publishtin 1839, was On t/ie Practicability or Impracticability of 
 emancipating Catholicism from the jKoman Dictatorship in 
 reference to Theology. 
 
 NOTE M : p. 32. 
 
 De Maistre's Treatise Du Pape opens with an argument pro- 
 fessedly in maintenance of the infallibility of the Pope ; but 
 when we examine that argument, we find that it does not touch 
 the real question at issue. Having laid down that " lea verites 
 theologiques ne sont que des verites generates, manifestoes et 
 divinisees dans le cercle religieux," he proceeds thus (p. 2) : 
 " L'infaillibilite dans 1'ordre spirituel, et la souverainete dans
 
 NOTE M. 219 
 
 1'ordre teraporel sont deux mots parfaitement synonymes. L'un 
 et 1'autre expriment cette haute puissance qui les domine toutes, 
 dont toutes les autres derivent ; qui gouverne et n'est pas 
 gouveruee, qui juge et n'est pas jugee. Quand nous disons que 
 VEylise est infaillible, nous ne demandons pour elle aucun 
 privilege particulier ; nous demandons seulement qu'elle jouisse 
 du droit commun a toutes les souverainetes possibles, qui toutes 
 agissent ne"cessairement comme infaillibles; car tout gouvernement 
 est absolu ; et du moment ou Ton peut lui resister sous pretexte 
 d'erreur ou d'injustice, il n'existe plus. La souverainete" a des 
 formes differentes, sans doute. Elle ne parle pas a Constantinople 
 comme a Londres ; mais quand elle a parle de part et d'autre a 
 sa maniere, le bill est sans appel comme lefetfa." 
 
 Now these last words shew the fallacy of the whole argument. 
 In fact, in governments as well as in individuals, one of the 
 first tokens of true wisdom is the conviction of our fallibility ; 
 and the more we increase in wisdom, the stronger this con- 
 viction becomes. The laws of the Babylonians and Medes 
 and Persians, whether enacted by the godless pride of Nebu- 
 chadnezzar, or elicited from the self-indulgent weakness of 
 Darius, were accounted absolute and infallible and without 
 appeal. On the other hand, though our laws, according to the 
 principle of our Constitution, cannot be enacted without ample 
 consideration by the two branches of the Legislature, which 
 ought to comprehend a large portion of the wisdom of the nation, 
 yet so strong is our conviction that our Legislature is not in- 
 fallible, but fallible, that it is customary for our Acts of 
 Parliament to have a clause added to them, providing that they 
 may be amended or repealed within the same Session, a clause 
 especially honorable as containing an acknowledgement of human 
 .liability to errour. So that the sovereinty which essentially 
 belongs to government, is not identical with infallibility, as De 
 Maistre says, but totally distinct from it; though the identity 
 is asserted by the lawless magnifiers of their own arbitrary will. 
 There is indeed a necessity for governments to decide and to 
 act, even as there is for individuals ; and their decisions, after
 
 220 NOTE M. 
 
 being preceded by mature deliberation, ought to be decisive : 
 but, as wisdom ever involves a balancing of opposites, so of 
 governments may it be said, that, while they ought to stand 
 stoutly and boldly on the only true rock, that of faith in the 
 principles which they endeavour to carry into act, they ought 
 also continually to take heed lest they merely think they are 
 standing, and so slip and fall. 
 
 Carrying on the same line of argument, De Maistre contends 
 that in every judicial system we must come at last to a final 
 Court of Appeal, "auquel on ne puisse dire, Vous avez erre." 
 That such a Court is not always attainable, we have had sad 
 experience of late. Indeed its unattainableness is implied in the 
 maxim, which so forcibly expresses the impossibility of measur- 
 ing and adjusting the infinite varieties of moral being by any 
 definite forms of words, Summum jus summa injuria : and it is 
 to prevent the injustice which would result from adhering too 
 closely to the letter of the law, as though it were infallible, that 
 the higher power of mercy, which is a solemn recognition that 
 God is the only Infallible Judge, is vested in the soverein. 
 
 Moreover there is another weighty fallacy closely connected 
 with De Maistre's argument, namely, that government, sovereinty, 
 is a great and primary and indispensable want of the Church. 
 The State does indeed need an ever active, ever vigilant go- 
 vernment ; though even with regard to the State we are 
 learning that its most important function is to set free the 
 expansive instincts of society, and to protect them from ob- 
 structions and injuries. But this is far more the case in the 
 Church. Thus the work of the Council of Jerusalem was to 
 protect the Church from the usurpations of arbitrary, imperious 
 will, from the bonds which that will would have imposed upon 
 her. Seldom however has this principle been observed by 
 subsequent Councils. Our Lord's warning, in those words 
 which set forth the distinction between the civil and the 
 spiritual Kingdom, The kings of the Gentiles exercise lordship 
 over t/iem, and they that exercise authority upon them are called 
 benefactors; but ye shall not be so, has been deplorably
 
 forgotten. De Maistre thinks he can establish the necessity of 
 the Papacy by a remark, which, he says (p. 16.), " ne souffrepas 
 le moindre doute : (Test qu'une souverainet periodique ou in- 
 termittente est une contradiction dans les termes ; car la souve- 
 rainete doit toujours vivre, toujours veiller, toujours agir." 
 Therefore, he argues, Councils are inadequate to govern the 
 Church. But, not to speak of the contradictions to this pro- 
 position supplied by the history of all well-constituted nations, 
 in which, though an administrative sovereinty is entrusted to 
 a permanent functionary, the judicial sovereinty is studiously 
 separated from it, and still greater care is taken to preserve the 
 legislative sovereinty from the fluctuations of individual caprice, 
 vesting it mostly in impermanent bodies, our Lord's words, 
 which I have just quoted, seem to declare that the Church 
 will not require anything like a permanent, regular govern- 
 ment ; and if we examine the history of the Apostolic Church, 
 as set forth in the Book of Acts and the Epistles, we see 
 that, at a time when, above all, according to the calculations 
 of human policy, a vigorous central government would have 
 been needed, no example of such a government is exhibited; 
 but the Church is taught that, in times of urgent difficulty, 
 the questions which agitate her are to be referred to the 
 decision of a Council. Surely too, if we bear in mind that 
 the dealings of Religion are with the heart and conscience, 
 and only with outward acts, so far as they are the ex- 
 pression of the heart and conscience, thus reversing the order 
 of civil government, which has to regulate outward acts, and 
 meddles not with the heart and conscience, except so far as they 
 find vent in outward acts, we must perceive that, in the spi- 
 ritual kingdom, anything like an absolute, regulative authority 
 must be out of place. When outward order is the primary con- 
 sideration, the exercise of sovereinty is required, even though it 
 may now and then be at the cost of individual rights and 
 liberties : but when Truth stands before and above all things, it 
 is impossible to admit a fictitious infallibility, such as de Maistre 
 would set over us. Here the Reason and the Conscience are
 
 God's only Vicegerents. Hence the dormancy of the legislative 
 sovereinty for centuries in the Church, if it has in some respects 
 been injurious, has not been fatal, as such a suspension would 
 have been in a State. 
 
 I do not forget that, as was observed in the last Note, De 
 Maistre declares, in the Preface to his second edition, that he 
 believes in the divine origin of the infallibility of the Church. 
 The objections I have been urging only refer to the political 
 arguments by which he tries to justify it. The religious ones 
 have been examined, as far as was needful, in previous Notes. 
 
 At the beginning of his 15th Chapter De Maistre complains 
 that Protestants have magnified the idea of infallibility, so 
 as to make a ridiculous scarecrow of it. Perhaps we have 
 better reason for complaining that there is so much vagueness 
 and indefiniteness and ambiguity in the Romish use of the 
 word, that, if one tries to lay hold on it under one shape, it 
 slips away, and rises up under another. Pearson, in the Preface 
 cited above (p. 207), observes that, after Cressy had abandoned 
 the notion of infallibility as untenable, he reasserts it under 
 the form of authority. A like ambiguity runs through De 
 Maistre's views on the subject. Dr Newman's definition, in his 
 Essay on Development (p. 117), " By infallibility I suppose is 
 meant the power of deciding whether this, that, and a third, 
 and any number of theological or ethical statements are true," 
 admits of either interpretation. Thus, in order to bolster 
 up the claim of infallibility by political analogies, it is identified 
 \vith the power of giving a final, irreversible decision ; and the 
 ascription of infallibility to the tribunal is compared with that 
 of omnipotence to our Legislature. Such an infallibility how- 
 ever would not serve the purposes of the usurping Church. It 
 would have no more force or value than the omnipotence of 
 Parliament; which is oftener mentioned in reproof of the extra- 
 vagance of the expression, than for any other purpose. It 
 would hold out no lure to weak minds tormented by doubts, 
 and desirous of getting rid of their tormentors. Such an 
 infallibility, which is none, is to be found in the Church of
 
 NOTE N. 223 
 
 England just as well as in the Church of Rome. Hence the bait 
 held out to those who are to be caught in the Popish trap, is, 
 that here they will find a real, true, perfect infallibility, which 
 will enable them to feel quite certain about every momentous 
 religious doctrine, whether it be the efficacy of a sacrament, or the 
 breadth of a phylactery or of a pair of bands. All this they shall 
 know, and everything else, if they will only come and bury 
 their heads under the apron of the infallible Church. 
 
 It might have been thought that such openmouthed receptive- 
 ness for all the deceivableness of unrighteousness would hardly 
 be found among educated Englishmen. But education does not 
 deliver us from the proneness to set up our own idols and fetishes, 
 and to bow down and worship the idols and fetishes, which we 
 ourselves have set up. Dr Newman, in his Lectures on Angli- 
 canism (p. 112), describing the progress of Tractarianism, says, 
 " The principle of these writers [of whom he himself was the 
 chief] was this : an infallible authority is necessary ; we have it 
 not ; for the Prayerbook is all we have got. But, since we have 
 nothing better, we must use it, as if infallible." Verily it was 
 high time that Mr Carlyle should rise up, and preach a crusade 
 against all shams, when the ministers of the God of Truth 
 thought it beseemed them to promote His worship by setting 
 up a sham Infallibility. Of course they who could take pleasure 
 in thus imposing upon themselves, were ready to be snatcht up by 
 the Arch Impostor, and to swell his ghastly procession. Nor is 
 it a new thing to see the worshiper of idols break the idols of 
 his own making, when they will not conform to his wishes. 
 
 NOTE N : p. 33. 
 
 One of the chief motives which actuated the founders of 
 Tractarianism from the outset, was a vehement aversion to the 
 exercise of the intellectual faculties, which they perpetually 
 censured and condemned under the name of Private Judgement. 
 Herein, as is so often the case, they were in the main rebuking
 
 224 NOTE N. 
 
 in others, what they had a morbid consciousness of in themselves. 
 For seldom has speculation been more arbitrary and capricious 
 than in some of them, especially in Mr Froude : seldom has it 
 disported itself more wantonly in bidding defiance to received 
 opinions. At the very beginning of the Introduction to his 
 Lectures on Romani&m, Mr Newman said : " Though enquiry is 
 left partly open in order to try our earnestness, yet it is in 
 great measure, and in the most important points, superseded 
 by Revelation, which discloses things which reason could not 
 reach, saves us the labour of using it when it might avail, and 
 sanctions the principle of dispensing with it in all cases. Yet 
 in spite of this joint testimony of nature and grace, we exult 
 in what we think our indefeasible right and glorious privilege 
 to choose and settle our religion for ourselves ; and we stigma- 
 tize it as a bondage to be bid take for granted what the 
 wise, good, and many have gone over and determined long 
 before, or to submit to what Almighty God has revealed." 
 
 These last words are an eminent instance of that logical form, 
 which is termed begging the question : for of course the very 
 matter in dispute would be, what has Almighty God revealed ? 
 what is the meaning and purport of His revelation ? When 
 that has been made out clearly, we will gladly submit to it. As 
 to " the wise, good, and many," the latter class have never been 
 deemed the safest guides to Truth. Nor does it seem a very 
 rational ground of complaint, if we in our days have to plow 
 up the same fields, which our ancestors plowed up before us, 
 or if, in doing so, we make use of modern improvements in 
 husbandry, or if in this also it be our doom, that, unless 
 we plow, we shall reap no harvest. The mind of man was 
 not made to take truths for granted : when it does so, it will 
 soon let them fall. It will come under the condemnation, that, 
 he who hath not, from him shall be taken away even what he hath. 
 
 Again, what strange conceptions of Reason and Revelation are 
 implied in the words, that Revelation " saves us the labour of 
 using Reason, and sanctions the principle of dispensing with 
 it ! " as though Revelation transported us into an intellectual
 
 land of Cokayne, where the fruits drop into our mouths without 
 our being at the trouble of gathering them. Here we see the 
 germ of that passage in the Essay on Development, (quoted above 
 in p. 148), where the special dignity and blessing of Revelation 
 is represented as consisting in the substitution of the supremacy 
 of a Pope or Bishop for that of Conscience. Is this then the 
 lesson which Dr Newman has learnt from his intimate acquaint- 
 ance with the history of the Church 1 Mahometanism dreads 
 Reason, and supersedes it, and quenches it. So, more or less, 
 do all corrupt forms of Religion. On the other hand, the whole 
 history of the Christian Church shews that Christianity elevates 
 the intellectual faculties, and raises them above themselves, and 
 glorifies them with a glory beyond their own. Christianity does 
 this ; although Popery, as such, does the contrary, herein, a3 in 
 so many other respects, betraying its affinity to Heathenism. In 
 one sense indeed Christianity does " save us the labour " of using 
 our Reason, by turning that labour into a blessing, by setting 
 higher objects before us, and by helping us in mounting up to them, 
 so that our labour may now be sure of attaining to its reward. 
 
 Where Mr Newman discovered that Revelation " sanctions the 
 principle of dispensing with reason in all cases," he did not inform 
 us. Did St Paul ever tell him so, in some Epistle which has 
 escaped the researches of all other theologians ? On this head a 
 sufficient answer is supplied by the following words from Chilling- 
 worth's Preface ( 12), where he addresses his opponent thus : 
 " You say that, if the infallibility of the Church be once impeacht, 
 every man is given over to his own wit and discourse : which, 
 if you mean discourse not guiding itself by Scripture, but only 
 by principles of nature, or perhaps by prejudices and popular 
 errours, and drawing consequences, not by rule, but chance, is by 
 no. means true. If you mean by discourse right reason, grounded 
 on divine revelation and common notions written by God in the 
 hearts of all men, and deducing, according to the never failing 
 rules of logic, consequent deductions from them, if this be it 
 which you mean by discourse, it is very meet and reasonable and 
 necessary that men, as in all their actions, so especially in that of
 
 226 NOTE N. 
 
 greatest importance should be left to it : and he that follows 
 this in all his opinions and actions, and does not only seem to 
 do so, follows always God ; whereas he that follows a company of 
 men, may ofttimes follow a company of beasts. And in saying 
 this, I say no more than St John to all Christians in these 
 words, Dearly beloved, believe not every spirit ; but try the spirits, 
 whether they be of God or no : and the rule he gives them to 
 make this trial by, is, to consider whether they confess Jesus to 
 be the Christ, that is, the Guide of their faith and Lord of their 
 actions. I say no more than St Paul, in exhorting all Christians 
 to try all things, and holdfast that which is good, than St Peter, 
 in commanding all Christians to be ready to give a reason of the 
 hope that is in them ; than our Saviour Himself in forewarning 
 all His followers that, if they blindly followed blind guides, both 
 leaders and followers would fall into the ditch, and again in 
 saying even to the people, Yea, and why of yourselves judge ye not 
 what is right ? And though by passion, or precipitation, or prejudice, 
 by want of reason, or not using what they have, men may be, and 
 are oftentimes, led into errour and mischief; yet they cannot be 
 misguided by discourse, truly so called. For what is discourse, 
 but drawing conclusions out of premisses by good consequence 1 
 Therefore by discourse no man can possibly be led to errour ; 
 but, if he err in his conclusions, he must of necessity either 
 err in his principles, or commit some errour in his discourse ; 
 that is indeed, not discourse, but seem to do so." 
 
 Hooker also, in the 8th chapter of his third Book, asserts the 
 rightful use of Reason in questions pertaining to Religion, with 
 hi8 own peculiar majesty of thought and language, against 
 enemies who were assailing it from the opposite side, the 
 fanatical decriers of all light, except that which glared through 
 the fumes of their own ignorance, and which they confounded 
 with the light of the Spirit. 
 
 But the Tractarian denunciations of private judgement, and of 
 the exercise of the intellect in religious questions, were no less 
 alien from the spirit of those whom they especially profest to 
 follow, and whom they set up for the standards of Anglocatholic
 
 NOTE N. 227 
 
 divinity; as is sufficiently evinced by this extract from Laud's 
 Conference with Fisher ( xvi. 13), where he is arguing the 
 question how we are to ascertain the Divine authority of Scripture. 
 " The last way, which gives Reason leave to come in and prove 
 what it can, may not justly be denied by any reasonable man. 
 For, though Reason, without Grace, cannot see the way to heaven, 
 nor believe this Book, in which God has written the way, yet 
 Grace is never placed but in a reasonable creature, and proves, 
 by the very seat which it has taken up, that the end it has is to 
 be spiritual eyewater, to make reason see what by nature only 
 it cannot, but never to blemish reason in that which it can 
 comprehend. Now the use of reason is very general; and man, 
 do what he can, is still apt to search and seek for a reason why 
 he will believe ; though, after he once believes, his faith grows 
 stronger than either his reason or his knowledge. The world 
 cannot keep him from going to weigh it at the balance of Reason, 
 whether Scripture be the word of God or not. To the same 
 weights he brings the tradition of the Church, the inward 
 motives in Scripture itself, all testimonies within which seem to 
 bear witness to it ; and in all this there is no harm : the danger 
 is when a man will use no other scale but Reason, or prefer 
 Reason before any other scale. For the word of God, and the 
 book containing it, refuse not to be weighed by Reason. But 
 the scale is not large enough to contain, nor the weights to 
 measure out, the true virtue and full force of either. Reason 
 then can give no supernatural ground into which a man may 
 resolve his faith that Scripture is the word of God infallibly : 
 yet Reason can go so high, as it can prove that Christian religion, 
 which rests upon the authority of this book, stands upon surer 
 grounds of nature, reason, common equity and justice, than 
 anything in the world which any infidel or mere naturalist hath 
 done, doth, or can adhere to against it, in that which he makes, 
 accounts, or assumes, as religion to himself." 
 
 Thus the hostile attitude which the Tractarians from the 
 first took up with regard to private judgement, set them in 
 opposition to the whole body of our English divines. In
 
 228 NOTE N. 
 
 the fifth Lecture on Anglicanism, Dr Newman gives an ac- 
 count, half sad, half ludicrous, how they roamed about, like 
 the children lost in the wood, searching after an authority that 
 would deliver them from their homeless wanderings, how they 
 were reduced to the dire necessity of setting up an authority 
 for themselves, and how they were fain to invest this authority of 
 their own choosing with an infallibility of their own making. 
 "If you say (he remarks, p. 116) they were untrue to their 
 principles, and selected partially and on private judgement, so 
 much the more for my purpose. How clearly must the principle 
 of an ecclesiastical and authoritative, not a private judgement, 
 have been the principle of the movement, when those who 
 belonged to it were obliged to own that principle, at the very 
 time that it was inconvenient to them, and when they were driven, 
 whether consciously or not, to misuse or evade it!" A more 
 legitimate inference would have been, that they, who had gone 
 out in search of what could not be attained, except by a 
 violation of the very principle they were trying to establish, had 
 fallen into a wrong track from the outset, and that their so-called 
 principle was not a reality, but a delusion. Dr Newman however 
 (p. Ill) finds a warrant for their procedure in the practice of 
 Rome herself : " They had too much common sense to deny 
 the necessary exercise of private judgement, in one sense or 
 another. They knew that the Catholic Church herself admitted it, 
 though she directed and limited it to a decision upon the organ 
 of Revelation." That is to say, with regard to those passages 
 of Scripture, where he who runs may read, and where a plain 
 understanding and honest heart cannot go materially wrong, 
 nobody must presume to exercise his own judgement. But on 
 one of the most difficult, tangled questions ever proposed to man, 
 requiring a combination of historical with theological knowledge, 
 and a fine critical discrimination, to separate the true from the 
 false, and to draw right conclusions from the mass of materials, 
 on a question which has occupied the most learned scholars 
 and the ablest reasoners in Europe for three centuries, without 
 having been brought to a conclusive determination, on this
 
 NOTE N. 229 
 
 question everybody, wise or simple, learned or ignorant, is 
 competent to pronounce. He who is warned against the audacity 
 of attempting to swallow a gnat, is exhorted to swallow a camel ; 
 after the performance of which feat, his throat contracts again to 
 its previous dimensions. In a passage already quoted (above, p. 
 110), Dr Newman tells us that the idea of his party was "simply 
 and absolutely submission to an external authority : to it they 
 appealed ; to it they betook themselves ; there they found a 
 haven of rest." That they did not find a haven of rest, he 
 himself adds immediately after. Nor could they ; because they 
 were seeking for that which is contrary to the order of the world, 
 contrary to the course appointed by God for man, because man 
 was not made to be a limpet sticking to the rock of an outward 
 authority. Our somewhat singular coincidence in applying the 
 same image from the Arabian tale to them may be regarded as 
 an indication that their desire was for something which is not to 
 be attained, something which will slip away from us if we try to 
 gain a footing upon it. In fact however Dr Newman's account 
 of them proves that their idea was anything but " submission 
 to an external authority." They started with impugning the 
 prevalent authorities of their own times, and only betook them- 
 selves to the Caroline divines, in the hope of being supported 
 in that attack. 
 
 If we look with any scrutiny at the Catenas, in which they 
 profest to set forth the opinions of the chief Anglican divines, this 
 becomes apparent. They are not chains of cogent argument, but 
 ropes of sand with which the compilers have surrounded them- 
 selves. A person familiar with the writings of our old theologians 
 will easily perceive that the extracts from them in the Catenas 
 are very far from expressing their real, settled convictions. 
 In fact the compilers of those Catenas did not set themselves to 
 read through the authors from whom they gave extracts, with 
 the view of making out what their mature, deliberate convictions 
 were. This might have been a work of some use, but would 
 have required painstaking, and thought, and fairness. They 
 rather contented themselves with turning over the pages of the
 
 230 NOTE N. 
 
 old writers, and picking out such passages as favoured their 
 own views, without heeding the limitations and restrictions 
 under which those views had been exprest, or the passages of 
 an opposite tendency by which they were often counterbalanced. 
 Not seldom too, as is perpetually the case with regard to quota- 
 tions from the Fathers, oratorical passages, in which a preacher 
 strives to enforce the particular point he is urging with all the 
 exaggerations of rhetoric, to the temporary disparagement of every- 
 thing else, are brought forward as though they had a substantial, 
 dogmatical worth. In this manner it came to pass that those 
 who gave out all the time that they were following our Anglo- 
 catholic divines, often ran far ahead of them, often diverged into 
 devious paths, and thus found themselves anon rushing counter 
 to them. In the Lectures on Anglicanism (p. 132), Dr Newman 
 points out divers matters, where their simple and absolute sub- 
 mission to an external authority, which they had unhappily been 
 forced to choose for themselves by an exercise of the evil spirit 
 of private judgement, was thus transformed into opposition. " You 
 dare not stand or fall (he says to them) by Andrewes, or by Laud, 
 or by Hammond, or by Bull, or by Thorndike, or by all of them 
 together. There is a consensus of divines, stronger than for Bap- 
 tismal Regeneration or the Apostolical Succession, that Rome 
 is, strictly and literally, an Antichristian power : liberals and 
 Highchurchmen in your communion in this respect agree with 
 Evangelicals ; you put it aside. There is a consensus against 
 Transubstantiation ; yet many of you hold it notwithstanding. 
 Nearly all your divines, if not all, call themselves Protestants; 
 and you anathematize the name." He adds some other special 
 points, which, like the first two, seem to belong to the later 
 phase of Tractarianism : but the aversion to Protestantism 
 characterized it from the first, and, one may suppose, in so 
 learned a body, must have arisen from their identifying Pro- 
 testantism with Exeter Hall. At all events it is quite certain 
 that almost all our old divines, as I have observed already 
 (in p. 130), called themselves Protestants, and regarded our 
 Church as united in a common cause with the Protestant
 
 NOTE N. 231 
 
 Churches on the Continent, though peculiarly favoured in 
 matters of discipline. This negative principle of Tractarianism, 
 drawing it away from those living fountains of Truth, which 
 were reopened for the Church primarily and mainly by the 
 German Reformers, drew them away also from the Anglican 
 divines : and it was this repulse of their Anti-Protestantism, 
 that made them fancy the Anglican divines had run away 
 from them. The reasonable, conscientious exercise of private 
 judgement, with its proper helps, and under its proper restraints, 
 will naturally breed a loyal reverence for authority, pro- 
 portionate to its rightful claims ; but he who will not let his 
 neighbours think for themselves, is likely ere long to grow 
 impatient that his superiors or forefathers should have done so. 
 
 Of course the right of private judgement may be abused, as 
 every other kind of liberty may. Like every other right, it may 
 be perverted by man's exaggerations and exorbitancies into a 
 wrong. But if liberty has its lawless excesses, so has rule; 
 which are often still more pernicious, because apt to be more 
 enduring, and more crushing to the moral character of such as 
 live under it. 
 
 After all however the question is entirely misrepresented by 
 being treated as a contest between Private Judgement and 
 Authority. Science, in its dealings with the physical world, 
 is not the antithesis to experience, but the synthesis of experience 
 and of reflexion on the materials which experience supplies us 
 with. It makes use of those materials, and discerns the laws 
 by which they are regulated. In like manner there is no 
 antagonism or antithesis between Reason and any Authority 
 derived legitimately from the traditions and testimonies of 
 former ages. Arbitrary, irrational Authority Reason rejects ; 
 but reasonable Authority it admits ; and this will naturally 
 be great in questions pertaining to history, and to the order 
 of God's Providence as manifested therein. Every wise man, in 
 considering what ought to be, will take count of what has been, 
 and what is ; though no wise man will be hasty in pronouncing 
 that what has been, or what is, ought to be.
 
 There are some good remarks on this question in Professor 
 Butler's fourth Letter (p. 154). "From the very outset of 
 Christianity, we observe in it the combination of two powerful 
 principles, the duty of individual Obedience, and the duty of 
 individual Enquiry. The accurate conciliation of these con- 
 trasted principles is indeed a great problem. If the New 
 Testament abounds (as it amply does) with earnest admonitions 
 to humility, obedience, subjection, and earnest denunciations of 
 them that cause divisions, it is equally certain that the Lord 
 of the Church has bad the mingled multitudes who heard him 
 beware of false prophets, personally testing and judging them 
 by their fruits, that He subjected His own doctrine to the 
 standard of Scripture examined and applied by His Jewish 
 hearers, that He askt them with sorrowful indignation, why 
 even of themselves they judged not what was right, nay, that 
 His whole mission and office consisted in an appeal against 
 establisht ecclesiastical authority, against that very authority, 
 of which it was said (what surely no so authentic voice from 
 Heaven has ever said of Rome), Thou shalt not decline from 
 the sentence which the Priests and the Judge shall shew thee to 
 the right hand nor to the left: thou shalt observe to do according 
 to all that they inform thee. It is certain that His Apostles, 
 acting on the same principles, applauded those who individually 
 searcht the Scriptures daily, and so decided whether these things 
 were so, that they hesitated not to exhort the whole mass of 
 their hearers to prove all things, that they besought them to 
 try the spirits whether they were of God, that they desired that 
 every man should be fully persuaded in his own mind, that 
 they bad them be ready to give an answer to every man that askt 
 them a reason for their hope, which necessarily implies a complete 
 previous examination of all the intellectual grounds of faith." 
 This is followed by proofs that the same principle was recognised 
 by the Fathers. In a subsequent Letter Professor Butler rightly 
 urges (p. 382): "The final decision of deliberate Reason in 
 matter of Obligation is to be always obeyed, because, from 
 the very nature and necessity of the case, there never can be
 
 NOTE O. 233 
 
 any higher standard of action : if any higher could be imagined, 
 it would instantly enter into the calculation of Reason, and 
 become only a new element in a new final decision of the moral 
 Reason itself. Manifestly nothing can ever be higher than that 
 which, in its own nature, is highest of all : nothing can claim 
 authority to supersede that, which, by inherent and indefeasible 
 prerogative, judges every other authority whatever." 
 
 Note : p. 34. 
 
 De Maistre (DuPape, p. 4) lays down the following proposition. 
 " S'il y a quelque chose d'evident pour la raison autant que 
 pour la foi, c'est que 1'Eglise universelle est une monarchic. 
 L'idee seule de Tuniversalite suppose cette forme de gouvernement, 
 dont 1'absolue necessite repose sur la double raison du nombre 
 des sujets et de 1'etendue geographique de 1'empire." 
 
 Seldom has a thinking man uttered a rasher defiance both of 
 reason and of fact. In truth throughout this work, as well as 
 through its two offsets, that on the Gallican Church, and that 
 on the Inquisition, De Maistre seems to be walking in fetters. The 
 freedom of his mind is crampt ; and we find very few of those 
 profound and genial thoughts, which refresh us so frequently in 
 the Soirees de Saint Petersbourg. It is true, the idea of universality 
 involves that of unity, of something whereby the multitudinous, 
 manifold parts are combined into a whole; and this necessity 
 is as it were a shadow cast by the unity of the Divine Author 
 upon the minds of His creatures. But as this is no warrant 
 for a universal monarchy in the temporal order of things, and 
 as the ambition which aims at such a monarchy is one of the 
 many modes in which man usurps the attributes of God, and 
 would seat himself on His throne, so has it ever been a like 
 audacious, godless usurpation, when attempts have been made to 
 establish a universal monarchy in the spiritual world. The 
 whole history of the Church refutes such a pretension. For 
 every fresh effort to set it up has been suicidal, in a twofold
 
 234- NOTE O. 
 
 manner, by driving large portions of the Church to cut 
 themselves off from the unrighteous despotism, and by the 
 spiritual degradation of such as submitted to it. Nor does any 
 analogy from the history of civil governments favour De Maistre's 
 conclusion. Doubtless the largest empires that have existed 
 upon earth, the Roman, the Chinese, the Spanish, the Russian, 
 the English, have been monarchal, more or less, in form : but in 
 all these instances, except the last, the curse of the monarchy 
 has been felt in the abject degradation of the great mass of its 
 subjects, and in the impossibility of their coalescing into a 
 nation. On the other hand, if there is any prospect that the 
 English Empire may be preserved from a like inward decay, 
 this must rest on the hope that its various members may be 
 allowed and encouraged to develope themselves freely, each 
 according to its peculiar nature. This argument, I know, would 
 not have much weight at Rome. The main aim of the Papacy has 
 ever been " the number of its subjects, and the geographical 
 extent of its empire." If it gains the surface, it cares for little 
 else. The lower the moral and spiritual condition of its subjects, 
 the more easily can it drive its car over them. That the vigour 
 and energy of a great empire are no way dependent on its 
 monarchal form, is proved by the history of those two States, 
 which are the great storehouses of political ideas, the chief 
 studies of every political philosopher. Under the Roman Com- 
 monwealth, so long as those who were subjected by conquest 
 were incorporated into the nation, the Empire continued to 
 expand, and became so vigorous, that its energy outlasted its 
 liberties for two centuries. The power of the Empire was not 
 the offspring of the Empire, but of the Republic : when the 
 Republic expired, that power began to wane; but such had 
 been the energy of its life, that its slowly mouldering corpse 
 cumbered the earth for half a millennium. In like manner the 
 power and vigour of England have continually increast, and her 
 empire has expanded, along with the expansion of her liberties, 
 and in proportion as a larger part of her members has been 
 incorporated into the governing body. Wherefore, if a type for
 
 NOTE O. 235 
 
 the government of Christ's Church is to be sought in any form 
 of civil government that has hitherto existed, it should rather 
 be in our present English Commonwealth, than in the 
 Russian or Spanish despotism. This too accords much more 
 nearly with the model presented to us by the history of the 
 Church herself during the first five centuries, when, as has 
 been well observed, we find a sort of example and prototype of 
 a representative government in her Councils. 
 
 De Maistre asks indeed (p. 5) : " Qu'est ce qu'une republique, 
 des qu'elle excede certaines dimensions ? C'est un pays plus ou 
 moins vaste, commande par un certain nombre d'hommes qui se 
 nomment la republique. Mais toujours le gouvernement est un; 
 car il n'y a pas, et meme il ne peut y avoir de republique dis- 
 se*minee. Ainsi, dans le temps de la republique romaine, la 
 souverainete republicaine etoit dansle/orwm; et les pays sou- 
 mis etoient une monarchic, dont le forum etoit 1'absolu et 
 1'impitoyable souverain. Que si vous otez cet etat dominateur, 
 il ne reste plus de lien ni de gouvernement commun, et toute 
 unite disparoit." 
 
 Now, without discussing the question, which is of little con- 
 cern to our argument, whether the nations under the .Roman 
 Republic were really in a worse condition than those under the 
 Roman Emperors, or those under the Persian kings, nay, even 
 supposing it certain that they were so, De Maistre entirely 
 abandons his position, when he makes the Forum the soverein or 
 monarch of the Roman territories. This might supply a parallel 
 for a government vested in a College of Cardinals, but overthrows 
 the necessity of a unity embodied in an individual ruler. Besides, 
 while we acknowledge and deplore the narrowness and selfishness 
 which prevented the free development of the ancient Republics, 
 we are no way compelled to admit that these vices are neces- 
 sarily, still less exclusively, inherent in the republican form. 
 Many of the selfish vices which are found in individuals, 
 though not the worst of them, are also found in corporate bodies : 
 and even granting that the reigns of the Antonines were on the 
 whole, which is exceedingly questionable, more propitious to
 
 236 NOTE O. 
 
 the happiness of mankind than the times of the Republic, it is 
 incontrovertible that the reigns of Caligula and Nero and Vi- 
 tellius and Commodus were infinitely more pernicious. But it 
 should not be forgotten that the Gospel, in addition to every- 
 thing else that it has effected for the purifying and humanizing 
 and ennobling of human society, has by its principles done 
 away the wall of separation between nations, so that Greek and 
 Jew, Roman and Barbarian, are no longer severed from each 
 other by an insuperable national antagonism : and weak though 
 the Gospel has hitherto been in eradicating national antipathies 
 and animosities, we will not limit its future powers by the past, 
 nor close our eyes to the various symptoms, which, in spite of all 
 manner of disturbances and confusions, hold out the promise of 
 a nearer, more intimate union among nations. If that national 
 pride, and those national jealousies and repugnances, which find 
 their main source and replenishment in our personal self-suffi- 
 ciency and cupidity and hatred, were to be abated, if they were 
 to be subdued, and why should we despair of such a result, 
 when all the considerations of human morality, as well as of 
 social expediency, are working in unison with the influences 
 of the Gospel 1 the principal hindrances, which have hitherto 
 impeded the establishment of a Federal Commonwealth, would 
 vanish. 
 
 De Maistre continues (p. 6) : " Des qu'il n'y a plus de centre, 
 ni de gouvernement commun, il ne peut y avoir d'unite", ni par 
 consequent dUEglise universelle (ou catholique), puisqu'il n'y a 
 pas d'Bglise particuliere qui ait seulement, dans cette supposition, 
 le moyen constitutionnel de savoir si elle est en communaute de 
 foi avec les autres." 
 
 It seems really marvellous that a man, capable of reflecting, 
 and who had reflected deeply on political institutions, should 
 have attacht any weight to the difficulty urged in this sentence ; 
 as if a score of modes might not be devised, by which the fact, that 
 two independent Churches are in communion, may be satis- 
 factorily ascertained ! As if there had been any great difficulty 
 in doing this during the first centuries of the Church ! As if the
 
 NOTE O. 237 
 
 chief obstructions in the way of it had not arisen from the 
 arrogant, exclusive assumptions of particular Churches, especially 
 of the Roman I The assertion that there can be no unity, 
 without a centre, or a common government, is only true, as I 
 have already hinted, in a sense which no way helps De Maistre's 
 argument. "When St Paul is reproving the divisions at Corinth, 
 he does not set himself up as the centre of unity : nor does he 
 tell them that they must seek a centre of unity in St Peter. He 
 tells them that Paul is nothing, that Apollos is nothing, that 
 Peter is nothing. But is his inference, like De Maistre's, that 
 they are therefore left to hopeless divisions'? He does not say 
 that there is no foundation for them to rest on, nor that 
 Peter is the foundation whereon the Church is to be built. He 
 says merely that none can lay any other foundation than that 
 which has been laid already, and that this Only Foundation 
 is Christ. In truth this Romish inability to recognise the unity 
 of the Church, without the help of a visible human centre, is 
 only another instance of that miserable incapacity for faith in 
 spiritual realities, which, we have repeatedly observed, is the 
 pervading character of Romanism. As the Jews, under the old 
 Dispensation, shewed their carnalmindedness in asking for a 
 king, ivlien the Lord their God was their King, so does the sinful 
 unbelief of Rome manifest itself in the demand for a visible Head 
 and Centre of the Church, when Christ is its Head and 
 Centre. 
 
 In fact, as the usurpation of the Papacy is the hugest, 
 most monstrous example of that pride of our fallen nature, 
 which inclines every man to set himself up as the lord and 
 ruler of the universe, according to his conceptions of it, and 
 which renders self-restraint, selfcontroll, one of the rarest and 
 most difficult virtues, so has it a counterpart in that intel- 
 lectual infirmity, through which all men inevitably contem- 
 plate themselves as the centres of their own system of the 
 universe, and according to which we are ever prone to conceive 
 that the world was made for us, and that its whole order was 
 framed and is regulated with a special adaptation to our own
 
 238 NOTE O. 
 
 personal wishes and wants. We are the centre of our own 
 universe; and the most difficult of all things is to transfer 
 ourselves from this our false centre to our true Centre in God. 
 For even when our natural false centre is shaken from under 
 us, we are apt to leap from it to some factitious centre, in 
 which we ourselves are comprehended, and which therefore is a 
 kind of expanded self. Every nation believes itself to be the 
 leading, central nation of mankind. All men believe the earth 
 to be the centre of the universe. So that Joseph's dream is only 
 an expression of everybody's self-delusion. Nor is it unconnected 
 with this tendency, that we are so prone to believe that some 
 single proposition, especially if it be one with which we have in 
 any way identified ourselves, contains the key to all the mys- 
 teries of knowledge. Our narrow, crampt, hidebound intellect 
 shrinks with a kind of instinctive repugnance from the thought 
 of the fulness of the Universe, from the infinite Fulness of the 
 Godhead, from the infinite Fulness of Him in whom all Ful- 
 ness dwells, and who filleth the Church, which is His Fulness. 
 We are fond of systematizing, and schematizing, and formulizing 
 everything, so that we may put it wrapt up and ticketed into 
 one of the pigeon-holes of our understanding, to be taken out 
 when we want it. Thus we lay down grand, sweeping pro- 
 positions, like those of De Maistre's, which I have been exa- 
 mining : " S'il y a quelque chose d'evident pour la raison autant 
 que pour la foi, c'est que 1'Eglise universelle est une monarchic. 
 L'idee seule de 1'universalite suppose cette forme de gouverne- 
 ment. Des qu'il n'y a plus de centre, ni de gouvernement 
 commun, il ne peut y avoir d'unite, ni par consequent d'Eglise 
 universelle." Such propositions make us fancy we know a great 
 deal, and enable us to pronounce positively and peremptorily, while 
 in fact they only mislead us, and teach us nothing aright. 
 
 Here I will insert a passage from a greater philosopher, who 
 teaches us a far higher lore, and had dived down far deeper 
 to the principles of things, and whose speculative flights were 
 regulated and directed by his strong, practical, English under- 
 standing. I have quoted the passage already in another work ; but 

 
 NOTE O. 239 
 
 it contains such a complete refutation of De Maistre's plausibilities 
 about the unity and universality of the Church, that, at a time 
 when so many are deluded by those plausibilities, it should be 
 quoted again and again. Coleridge, in his invaluable Treatise 
 On the Constitution of the Church and State (p. 128), lays down, 
 as one of the essential characters of the Church of Christ, " the 
 absence of any visible Head or Soverein, and the non-existence, 
 nay, the utter preclusion, of any local or personal centre of unity, 
 of any single source of universal power. This fact (he says) may 
 be thus illustrated. Kepler and Newton, substituting the idea 
 of the infinite for the conception of a finite and determined world 
 assumed in the Ptolemaic astronomy, superseded and drove out 
 the notion of a one central point or body of the universe. Finding 
 a centre in every point of matter, and an absolute circumference 
 nowhere, they explained at once the unity and the distinction that 
 co-exist throughout the Creation by focal instead of central bodies; 
 the attractive and restraining power of the sun, or focal orb, in 
 each particular system, supposing and resulting from an actual 
 power, present in all and over all, throughout an indeterminable 
 multitude of systems. And this, demonstrated as it has been by 
 science, and verified by observation, we rightly name the true 
 system of the heavens. And even such is the scheme and true 
 idea of the Christian Church. In the primitive times, and as long 
 as the Churches retained the form given them by the Apostles and 
 Apostolic men, every community, or, in the words of a Father of 
 the second century (for the pernicious fashion of assimilating the 
 Christian to the Jewish, as afterward to the Pagan ritual, by 
 false analogies was almost coeval with the Church itself), every 
 altar had its own bishop, every flock its own pastor, who derived 
 his authority immediately from Christ, the Universal Shepherd, 
 and acknowledged no other superior than the same Christ, 
 speaking by His spirit in the unanimous decision of any number 
 of bishops or elders, according to His promise, Where two or three 
 are gathered together in My name, there am I in the midst of them. 
 Hence, the unitive relation of the Churches to each other, and 
 of each to all, being equally actual indeed, but likewise equally
 
 240 NOTE O. 
 
 ideal, that is, mystic and supersensual, as the relation of the 
 whole Church to its One Invisible Head, the Church with and 
 under Christ, as a One Kingdom or State, is hidden; while in 
 all its several component monads (the particular visible Churches 
 I mean), Cesar receiving the things that are Cesar's, and con- 
 fronted by no rival Cesar, by no authority, which existing 
 locally, temporally, and in the person of a fellow-mortal, must 
 be essentially of the same kind with his own, notwithstanding 
 any attempt to belie its true nature under the perverted and 
 contradictory name of spiritual, sees only so many loyal groups, 
 who, claiming no peculiar rights, make themselves known to him 
 as Christians, only by the more scrupulous and exemplary 
 performance of their duties as citizens and subjects." The 
 analogy here pointed out between the true idea of the Church 
 and the Copernican idea of the universe is singularly appropriate ; 
 and one might almost fancy that some lurking semiconsciousness 
 that her own fate is identified with that of the Ptolemaic concep- 
 tion, is among the causes which still keep the Church of Rome 
 from giving up an exploded fiction, and acknowledging what the 
 scientific researches of three centuries have determined with one 
 voice to be the truth ; though, to be sure, Truth, even in matters 
 of Science, is one of the last things cared for at Rome. 
 
 So much importance is ascribed to De Maistre's arguments 
 on the Unity of the Church, as involving the recognition of 
 the Papacy, that it may not be useless to glance at two or 
 three more of them. In p. 6 he says : " Soutenir qu'une foule 
 d'Eglises inde"pend antes forment une Eglise une et universelle, 
 c'est soutenir, en d'autres termes, que tous les gouvernemens 
 politiques de 1'Europe ne forment qu'un seul gouvernement un et 
 universel. Ces deux idees sont identiques ; il n'y a pas moyen 
 de chicaner." Yet it is very easy to shew the ineptitude of this 
 parallel for proving what De Maistre would infer from it. 
 Doubtless the Unity of the Church is in a very broken condition. 
 But is there less imperfection in its other attributes, for instance, 
 its holiness ? The Apostolic Epistles teach us that both these 
 qualities were miserably wanting, in the very first age of the
 
 NOTE O. 241 
 
 Church; and her whole history bears witness that, in her out- 
 ward visible form, she has in all ages been very different from 
 what she ought to have been. Therefore we do not, nor can we, 
 say that the present outward aspect of Christendom exhibits a 
 realization of the Unity of the Church : nor can Rome say 
 that the Unity of the Church is realized in her Communion, 
 except by an audacious disregard and denial of facts. Yet we 
 contend that there is an inward, latent Unity among all 
 Christians, who are really united by faith to the One Head 
 and Centre of the Church, that there is such, even though 
 they may be unconscious of it, even though they may deny 
 it, and that this Unity would be much greater and more 
 manifest, were it not for the grievous deficiency of all the other 
 Christian graces in every branch of the Church. If her Unity 
 is wanting, it is because her other attributes are still more want- 
 ing. Our divisions, like those at Corinth, prove that we are 
 carnal. But assuredly, in despite of all the divisions and con- 
 trarieties, of which the Papacy is the chief breeder and fomenter, 
 there is a unity in Christendom. Christendom is not a mere 
 arbitrary abstraction, but implies an essential oneness, whereby 
 it is distinguisht from all the rest of mankind, the oneness 
 produced by our common bond to our One Lord, by the One 
 Spirit given to all the members of His Body, by the One Hope 
 of our calling, by our One Faith, by our One Baptism, by our 
 One God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, 
 and in us all. What is the Roman Unity, resulting from a 
 visible government, to keep the members in subjection, compared 
 with this ? except the unity of a fagot, compared with that of a 
 tree. And what stark blindness to spiritual powers is involved 
 in the assertion that all these mighty principles of unity are of 
 no avail, unless you can stick the impress of a Papal head upon 
 them ! 
 
 Among the governments of Europe, on the other hand, 
 viewed politically, there are no such principles of unity : and 
 since governments deal with outward things, which exclude one 
 another, they cannot coalesce in the same manner in which a
 
 number of Churches coalesce into one Church. The purposes of 
 each government are distinct and separate, bearing reference to 
 the peculiarities of each nation : the purposes of the Church are 
 the same everywhere, bearing on that which is essential in man, 
 and upon his essential immutable relations. Yet attempts have 
 been made to combine the states of Europe into some sort of 
 federal union. This was the idea of the Empire in the Middle 
 Ages, but was baffled in consequence of the incongruity between 
 a number of independent sovereins and a supreme Emperor over 
 them : whence a variety of conflicting, clashing rights led to 
 interminable struggles. A somewhat similar idea may in our 
 own age have flasht across the minds of some of the statesmen 
 who establisht what they called the Holy Alliance : only, from 
 the condition of Europe at the time, that Alliance inevitably 
 took a mere party character, and was converted into a kind of 
 conspiracy of Governments to keep down the liberties of their 
 subjects. 
 
 Surely however the world is not brought to such a pass, 
 that we are compelled to pronounce that what has never been 
 yet, can never be hereafter. The powers of creation and pro- 
 duction and organization are not yet worn out. On the contrary, 
 as the elements and conditions of society are undergoing changes 
 every year, under the action of manifold economical, intellectual, 
 moral, and religious influences, we may feel confident that the 
 future, while it will bear divers analogies to the past, will also 
 have differences and peculiarities of its own. Still less are we 
 bound to limit the possibilities of the Kingdom of Heaven, even 
 in its earthly manifestation, the Church, by any rules abstracted 
 from the observation of what men have been and have done, 
 in the political relations of nations, in which Might has mostly 
 been regarded as the main constituent of Right, while Law, till 
 latterly, has hardly been allowed to lift up her voice amid the 
 contentious tumult of selfish passions. Hooker, after speaking 
 of the evil of important differences among Churches, has well 
 said (viii. c. 3. . 5) : " The way to prevent it is not, as some do 
 imagine, the yielding up of supreme power over all Churches
 
 NOTE O. 243 
 
 into one only pastor's hands, but the framing of their govern- 
 ment, especially for matter of substance, everywhere according to 
 the rule of one only Law, to stand in no less force than the Law 
 of Nations doth, to be received in all kingdoms ; all soverein 
 rulers to be sworn no otherwise to it, than some are to maintain 
 the liberties, laws, and received customs of the country where 
 they reign. This shall cause uniformity even under several 
 dominions, without those woful inconveniences whereto the state 
 of Christendom was subject heretofore through the tyranny and 
 oppression of that one universal Nimrod who alone ruled all. 
 And till the Christian world be driven to enter into the peace- 
 able and true consultation about some such kind of general Law 
 concerning those things of weight and moment wherein now we 
 differ, if one Church hath not the same order which another 
 hath, let every Church keep as near as may be the order it 
 should have, and commend the just defense thereof to God, even 
 as Judah did, when it differed in the exercise of religion from 
 that form which Israel followed." 
 
 Again De Maistre says (p. 7): "Si quelqu'un s'avisoit de 
 proposer un royaume de France sans roi de France, un empire de 
 Russie sans empereur de Russie, on croiroit justement qu'il a 
 perdu 1'esprit ; ce seroit cependant rigoureusement la meme idee 
 que c'elle <T une Eglise universelle sans chef." Here the fallacy is 
 palpable to the dimmest perceptions. The idea of a kingdom 
 implies its being governed by a king, or a queen ; that of an 
 empire, in this sense, involves that of an emperor. But that of 
 the Church does not contain the slightest hint with regard to its 
 peculiar form of government. Or, if etymology is to have any 
 force, that of Eglise, eKK\i)ffia, points to a popular assembly. 
 
 Once more: "II seroit superflu de parler de 1'aristocratie ; 
 car n'y ayant jamais eu dans 1'Eglise de corps qui ait eu la 
 pr6tention de la regir sous aucune forme elective ou he're'ditaire, 
 il s'ensuit que son gouvernement est necessairement monarchique, 
 toute autre forme se trouvant rigoureusement 6xclue." It is 
 difficult to understand how De Maistre could overlook the 
 analogy between an Aristocracy and the Episcopate, which for 
 
 R2
 
 244 NOTE O. 
 
 several centuries was the only body exercising anything like an 
 authority of government in the Universal Church. 
 
 I have not observed any other argument on this point, to 
 which the Author himself attaches any weight. 
 
 On the other hand we need not hesitate to assert, on the 
 strength of what we know of man, as his nature has manifested 
 itself in all ages, whether individually, or in his social and 
 political relations, that the assumption of a right to govern 
 the whole Church must ever be destructive of its unity, and 
 incompatible therewith ; unless indeed the persons invested 
 with the sovereinty were to be raised by a perpetual succes- 
 sion of miracles above all the weaknesses and frailties and 
 narrownesses of humanity. Even if we were to take the most 
 favorable supposition, one which the whole history of the 
 Papacy contradicts, that a mode of electing the soverein could 
 be devised such as to ensure the choice of an unbroken series of 
 men eminent for intellectual and moral energy, as well as for 
 sanctity and earnest faith, still, unless they were all endowed 
 with a superhuman wisdom, guiding their decisions in every 
 question of discipline, no less than of doctrine, it cannot but be 
 that the spiritual soverein will desire to stamp the impress of his 
 own mind, of that which he deems best and most expedient, on 
 the whole body of the Church. But while human nature con- 
 tinues under its present limitations, it is no less certain that the 
 most capacious intellect will never be able to comprehend and 
 recognise the fitness of the innumerable modifications of human 
 thought and feeling, expanding under the innumerable varieties 
 of character, temperament, and circumstances, and fostered by 
 the genial warmth of religion : and such a capacity seems always 
 to be contracted, where there is a strong, resolute will, and where 
 power elicits the action of that will. On the opposite side, in 
 every branch of the Church there will ever be numbers of men 
 holding strong conscientious convictions more or less at variance 
 with those of the spiritual soverein, who will also be convinced 
 of the lawfulness of their convictions, and that it is their duty 
 not to allow their Christian liberty to be infringed and violated,
 
 NOTE P. 245 
 
 but to defend their convictions even though by suffering martyr- 
 dom for them. Thus no Popes have inflicted greater breaches on 
 the unity of the Church, than two of the greatest in the whole 
 list, Gregory the Seventh, and Innocent the Third : I do not 
 mean especially by their conflicts with the temporal powers of 
 their days, but the former by his obstinate enforcement of 
 celibacy and other disciplinary rules, the latter by his unrelent- 
 ing persecutions. What then must happen when there is no 
 security for the intellectual or moral character of the soverein ! 
 when, as has been so often seen in the history of the Papacy, he 
 may be taken from among those who are the scandals of human 
 nature. History declares that every fresh attempt to extend the 
 authority of Rome has been followed by a schism in the Church. 
 The Greek Church separated from her a thousand years ago : 
 half Europe asserted its Christian liberty at the Reformation : 
 and yet Rome boasts that she is the only ground and support of 
 the unity of Christendom. 
 
 NOTB P : p. 35. 
 
 The proofs of this would furnish materials for a long and 
 interesting essay, which would be a mournful illustration of the 
 truth exemplified in the whole history of the Romish Church, 
 that corruptio optimi jit pessima. Here I will only quote the 
 following passage from Professor Maurice's Preface to his Lectures 
 on the Epistle to the Hebrews (p. LXV) : " When it was proclaimed 
 in terms, ' Christ has given His authority to the chair of St 
 Peter,' then did the hearts of the humble and meek begin more 
 and more to utter the cry, Tliey have taken away our Lord from 
 His universe; and we know not where they have laid Him. That 
 cry may be heard, not in the sixteenth century, not in Witten- 
 berg, not in Geneva, but throughout the middle ages, from the 
 most vehement, modern Protestants would say, the most idol- 
 atrous Churchmen. We are worthily punisht for our dishonesty 
 in not doing justice to what was right and holy and noble in
 
 246 NOTE Pa. 
 
 those ages. The testimonies they bear on this subject, to those 
 who will read them fairly, outweigh, it seems to me, all the 
 tomes of anti-pontifical controversialists. Bishop Lowth, in his 
 Prelections, speaking of the tyranny which was establisht in 
 Rome after the death of Julius Cesar, and of the means by which 
 it might have been checkt, exclaims Plus, mehercule, valuisset 
 unum 'AppoSiov fieXog quam Ciceronis Philippicae omnes. Those 
 who are dallying with the theory of Papal Supremacy in our day, 
 who are fancying it means something very real and reconciling, 
 may perhaps learn more of its true nature from a few cantoes of 
 the Inferno than from the Treatise of Barrow." 
 
 NOTB Pa : p. 36, 1. 27. 
 
 Coleridge's Treatise On the Constitution of the Church and State 
 was publisht as a kind of apology for what was called Catholic 
 Emancipation, It was his last work, written in the fullest 
 maturity of his judgement, the result of the observation and 
 meditation of his whole life ; and in it he pronounces an opinion 
 (p. 146) not unfavorable on the whole to the "rites and doc- 
 trines, the agenda and credenda of the Roman Catholics, could 
 we separate them from the adulterating ingredients combined 
 with them, and the use made of them by the sacerdotal Mame- 
 lukes of the Romish monarchy, for the support of the Papacy 
 and Papal hierarchy." Hence, in such a book, we are not likely 
 to find the expression of any blind, hasty, inconsiderate preju- 
 dices against Rome. Yet here he writes thus (p. 130): "As 
 the mistaking of symbols and analogies for metaphors has been 
 a main occasion and support of the worst errours in Protestan- 
 tism, so the understanding the same symbols in a literal or 
 phenomenal sense, notwithstanding the most earnest warnings 
 against it, the most express declarations of the folly and danger 
 of interpreting sensually what was delivered of objects super- 
 sensual, this was the rank wilding on which the Prince of this 
 world, the lust of power and worldly aggrandizement, was
 
 NOTE Pa. 247 
 
 enabled to graft, one by one, the whole branchery of Papal super- 
 stition and imposture. A truth not less important might be 
 conveyed by reversing the image, by representing the Papal 
 monarchy as the stem or trunk circulating a poison-sap through 
 the branches successively grafted thereon, the previous and 
 natural fruit of which was at worst only mawkish and innu- 
 tritious. Yet among the dogmas or articles of belief that contra- 
 distinguish the Roman from the Reformed Churches, the most 
 important, and in their practical effects and consequences the 
 most pernicious, I cannot but regard as refracted and distorted 
 truths, profound ideas sensualized into idols, or at the lowest 
 rate lofty and affecting imaginations, safe while they remained 
 general and indefinite, but debased and rendered noxious by 
 their application in detail : for example, the doctrine of the 
 Communion of Saints, or the sympathy between all the members 
 of the Universal Church, which death itself doth not interrupt, 
 exemplified in St Antony and the cure of sore eyes, St Boniface 
 and success in brewing, and other such follies. What the same 
 doctrines now are, used as the pretexts and shaped into the 
 means and implements of priestly power and revenue, or rather, 
 what the whole scheme is of Romish rites, doctrines, institutions, 
 and practices, in their combined and full operation, where it 
 exists in undisputed sovereinty, neither represt by the prevalence, 
 nor modified by the light, of a purer faith, nor holden in check 
 by the consciousness of Protestant neighbours and lookers-on, 
 this is a question which cannot be kept too distinct from the 
 former. And as, at the risk of passing for a secret favourer 
 of superannuated superstitions, I have spoken out my thoughts 
 of the Roman Theology, so, and at a far more serious risk of 
 being denounced as an intolerant bigot, I will declare what, after 
 a two years residence in exclusively Popish countries, and in 
 situations and under circumstances that afforded more than 
 ordinary means of acquainting myself with the workings and the 
 proceeds of the machinery, was the impression left on my mind 
 as to the effects and influences of the Romish (most uncatholic) 
 religion, as it actually and practically exists. "When I
 
 248 NOTE Pa. 
 
 contemplate the whole system, as it affects the great fundamental 
 principles of morality, the terra firma, as it were, of our huma- 
 nity, then trace its operation on the sources and conditions of 
 national strength and well-being, and lastly consider its woful 
 influences on the innocence and sanctity of the female mind and 
 imagination, on the faith and happiness, the gentle fragrancy and 
 unnoticed everpresent verdure of domestic life, I can with 
 difficulty avoid applying to it what the Rabbins fable of the 
 fratricide Cain, after the curse, that the firm earth trembled 
 wJierever he strode, and the grass turned black beneath his feet." 
 
 In a subsequent passage (p. 147), Coleridge gives this as the 
 result of a recent tour in the Romish provinces on the Rhine. 
 "Every fresh opportunity of examining the Roman Catholic 
 religion on the spot, every new fact that presents itself to my 
 notice, increases my conviction that its immediate basis and the 
 true grounds of its continuance are to be found in the wicked- 
 ness, ignorance, and wretchedness of the many, and that the 
 producing and continuing cause of this deplorable state is, that 
 it is the interest of the Romish priesthood that so it should 
 remain, as the surest, and in fact only support of the Papal 
 sovereinty and influence against the civil po\vers, and the re- 
 forms wisht for by the more enlightened Governments, as well 
 as by all the better informed and wealthier class of Roman 
 Catholics generally. And as parts of the same policy, and 
 equally indispensable to the interests of the Papal Crown, are 
 the ignorance, grossness, excessive number, and poverty of the 
 lower ecclesiastics themselves, the religious orders included. 
 When I say the Pope, I understand the Papal Hierarchy, which 
 is in truth the dilated Pope : and in this sense only, and not of 
 the individual priest or friar at Rome, can a wise man be sup- 
 posed to use the word. I feel it as no small comfort and con- 
 firmation to know that the same view of the subject is taken, 
 the same conviction entertained, by a large and increasing 
 number in the Roman Catholic Communion itself, in Germany, 
 France, Italy, and even in Spain ; and that no inconsiderable 
 portion of this number consists of men who are not only pious 
 as Christians, but zealous as Roman Catholics."
 
 NOTE Pa. 249 
 
 This testimony might be strengthened by that of a host of 
 other witnesses, whose means of observation have been abundant, 
 and whose veracity is indisputable. 
 
 Now the profest object of Dr Newman's eighth Lecture On the 
 Difficulties of Anglicanism is to shew that " the Political state of 
 Catholic Countries is no prejudice to the sanctity of the Church." 
 His way of proving this is singular and characteristic. He 
 ingeniously diverts his argument from what would seem to be 
 the legitimate issue, the political and social condition of Romish 
 and of Protestant countries, as compared with each other ; and 
 pushing aside what he could not deny, though he does not 
 expressly acknowledge it, he contends that the aims of the 
 Church are totally different from those of the world, that the 
 world desires and seeks to gain such ends as order, peace, 
 tranquillity, national wealth and prosperity, social culture, 
 whereas the Church "contemplates, not the whole, but the 
 parts, not a nation, but the men who form it, not society in 
 the first place, but in the second place, and in the first place 
 individuals : it looks beyond the outward act, on and into the 
 thought, the motive, the intention, and the will : it looks beyond 
 the world, and detects and moves against the devil, who is sitting 
 in ambush behind it. It has then a foe in view, nay, it has a battle- 
 field, to which the world is blind : its proper battle-field is the 
 heart of the individual ; and its true foe is Satan" (p. 196). 
 
 All this is true, and excellently said, as is much more to a like 
 effect in the same Lecture. The strange thing is, that Dr 
 Newman should speak of this as a novelty, as a truth which had 
 only been " brought home to him closely and vividly," since he 
 joined the Church of Rome. For surely the designation of the 
 Gospel for the salvation of individual souls is not a truth un- 
 known or unspoken of in the Church of England. Nay, is not 
 this the central principle of our whole Evangelical Theology? 
 and has it not often been a matter of complaint against that 
 Theology, on the part of the School of which Dr Newman was 
 the head, that it neglected every other view of the Gospel, to 
 dwell solely on such as bore immediately on the salvation of
 
 250 NOTE Pa. 
 
 individual souls, that it overlooktandneglectedallthemysterious 
 truths revealed to us concerning the Trinity, and the relations of 
 the Divine Persons to each other, and the Incarnation, confining 
 its attention exclusively to the work of Mediation and Re- 
 demption, and the manner in which that work is to be rendered 
 effectual for as many as possible of those who are called to par- 
 take in its benefits 1 that it was too narrowminded to embrace 
 any other end along with this, and thus cared not about nature 
 or art, or learning or science, or the social and political relations 
 of mankind ? 
 
 When we read the common apologies for Romanism, we are 
 wont to find it urged, that Protestantism, that Evangelicalism, 
 may indeed have some power in their dealings with individual 
 souls, but that they are utterly unfitted for dealing with nations 
 and states, and that the Church of Rome alone possesses the 
 power and the wisdom requisite for political action, for operating 
 upon Governments and nations, and for moulding society in a 
 Christian form. That she has utterly failed in this work, her 
 great champion seems now to admit, though he chooses rather 
 to transform his admission into an assertion that she never 
 attempted it, that she deemed the affairs of this world unworthy 
 of her attention, and felt bound to keep her eyes and thoughts 
 ever fixt immovably on the affairs of another world. How 
 precisely the evidence of History tallies with this account of the 
 principles and practice of Rome, it remains for him to shew 
 hereafter; when perhaps he will have occasion to renew his 
 observation, that " historical facts are proof against the force of 
 talent, and remain where they were, when it has expended 
 itself." At all events Coleridge's statements just cited, which 
 might be corroborated by hundreds of similar ones, hardly 
 indicate that Rome has been very successful in fitting her mem- 
 bers for another life, except so far as that end may be promoted 
 by unfitting them for the chief duties of this life. 
 
 A sophism runs through this eighth Lecture : while its 
 profest theme is to explain the grounds of the inferiority of 
 Roman Catholic nations to Protestant, the argument turns on
 
 NOTE Pb. 251 
 
 the different ends aimed at by the Church and by the World; 
 and it is assumed that the influences acting on the Romish side 
 are purely religious, those on the Protestant or English side purely 
 political. Thus we are brought to the conclusion that Godli- 
 ness no longer has the promise of the life that now is, and that, as 
 is especially exemplified in the Roman State, it is no longer true 
 nowadays, that happy is the people who have the Lord for their 
 God. If we keep watch against this sophism, we may readily 
 acknowledge the truths which are set forth with such powerful 
 eloquence in this Lecture ; and yet we shall perceive that they 
 no way impair the force of the argument against Romanism, 
 drawn from the political and moral superiority of Protestant 
 countries and nations. 
 
 Pb: p. 37,1. 18. 
 
 This has been urged by Barrow with tremendous force (p. 642), 
 where he shews that " Christianity by the Papal influence has 
 been modeled to a system of politic devices serving to exalt and 
 enrich the Pope, with his Court and adherents, clients and vassals. 
 What doctrine (he asks) of Christian Theology, as it is inter- 
 preted by their schools, hath not a direct aspect, or doth not 
 squint that way ? especially according to the opinions passant 
 and in vogue among them. To pass over those concerning the 
 Pope, (his universal pastorship, judgeship in controversies, power 
 to call councils, presidency in them, superiority over them, right 
 to confirm or annull them, his infallibility, his double sword, 
 and dominion, direct or indirect, over Princes, his dispensing in 
 laws, in oaths, in vows, in matrimonial cases, with all other the 
 . monstrous prerogatives, which the sound Doctors of Rome with 
 encouragement of that Chair do teach) : what doth the doctrine 
 concerning the exempting of the Clergy from secular jurisdiction 
 and immunity of their goods from taxes signify, but their entire 
 dependence on the Pope, and their being closely tied to his 
 interests 1 What is the exemption of inouastical places from the
 
 252 NOTE Pb. 
 
 jurisdiction of Bishops, but listing so many soldiers and advo- 
 cates to defend and advance the Papal Empire ? What meaneth 
 the doctrine concerning that middle region of souls, or cloister 
 of Purgatory, whereof the Pope holdeth the keys, opening and 
 shutting it at his pleasure by dispensation of pardons and 
 indulgences, but that he must be master of the people's con- 
 dition, and of their purse ? What meaneth the treasure of merits 
 and supererogatory works whereof he is the steward, but a 
 way of driving a trade, and drawing money from simple people 
 to his treasury? Whither doth the entangling of folks in 
 perpetual vows tend, but to assure them in a slavish dependence 
 on their interests eternally, without evasion or remedy, except 
 by favorable dispensation from the Pope? Why is the opus 
 operatum in sacraments taught to confer Grace, but to breed a 
 high opinion of the Priest, and all he doth ? Whence did the 
 monstrous doctrine of transubstantiation (urged with so furious 
 zeal) issue, but from design to magnify the credit of those, who 
 by saying of a few words can make our God and Saviour ? and 
 withal to exercise a notable instance of their power over men, 
 in making them to renounce their reason and their senses? 
 Whither doth tend the doctrine concerning the mass being a 
 propitiatory sacrifice for the dead, but to engage men to leave 
 in their wills good sums to offer in their behalf? Why is 
 the cup withholden from the laity, but to lay it low, by so 
 notable a distinction, in the principal mystery of our religion, 
 from the Priesthood ? Why is saying private mass or celebrating 
 the communion in solitude allowed, but because priests are paid 
 for it, and live by it? At what doth the doctrine concerning 
 the necessity of auricular confession aim, but that thereby the 
 priests may have a mighty awe on the consciences of all people, 
 may dive into their secrets, may manage their lives as they 
 please And what doth a like necessary particular absolution 
 intend, but to set the Priest in a lofty state of authority above 
 the people, as a judge of their condition, and dispenser of their 
 salvation? Why do they equal ecclesiastical traditions with 
 Scripture, but that on the pretense of them they may obtrude
 
 NOTE Pb. 253 
 
 whatever doctrines advantageous to their designs ? What drift 
 hath the doctrine concerning the infallibility of Churches or 
 Councils, but that, when opportunity doth invite, he may call a 
 company of Bishops together to establish what he liketh, which 
 ever after must pass for certain truth, to be contradicted by 
 none ; so enslaving the minds of all men to his dictates, which 
 always suit to his interests 1 What doth the prohibition of Holy 
 Scripture drive at, but a monopoly of knowledge to themselves, 
 or a detaining of people in ignorance of truth and duty ; so that 
 they must be forced to rely on them for direction, must believe 
 all they say, and blindly submit to their dictates, being disabled 
 to detect their errours, or contest their opinions 1 Why must the 
 sacraments be celebrated, and public devotions exercised, in an 
 unknown tongue, but that the Priests may seem to have a 
 peculiar interest in them, and ability for them ? Why must the 
 priesthood be so indispensably forbidden marriage, but that it 
 may be wholly untackt from the state, and rest addicted to him, 
 and governable by him? that the persons and wealth of priests 
 may be purely at his devotion 1 To what end is the clogging 
 Religion by multiplication of ceremonies and formalities, but to 
 amuse the people and maintain in them a blind reverence toward 
 the interpreters of the dark mysteries coucht in them, and by 
 seeming to encourage an exterior show of piety (or form of 
 godliness) to gain reputation and advantage, whereby they might 
 oppress the interior virtue and reality of it, as the Scribes and 
 Pharisees did, although with less designs ? Why is the venera- 
 tion of images and relics, the credence of miracles and legends, 
 the undertaking of pilgrimages and voyages to Rome, and other 
 places more holy than ordinary, sprinklings of holy water, 
 consecrations of baubles (with innumerable foppish knacks and 
 trinkets), so cherisht, but to keep the people in a slavish credulity 
 and dotage, apt to be led by them whither they please, by any 
 sleeveless pretence, and in the meanwhile to pick various gains 
 from them by such trade 1 What do all such things mean, but 
 obscuring the native simplicity of Christianity? whereas, its 
 being represented intelligible to all men, would derogate from
 
 254 NOTE Q. 
 
 that high admiration, which these men pretend to from their 
 peculiar and profound wisdom. And what would men spend for 
 these toys, if they understood they might be good Christians, and 
 get to Heaven without them? What doth all that pomp of 
 religion serve for, but for ostentation of the dignity of those who 
 administer it ? It may be pretended for the honour of religion ; 
 but it really conduceth to the glory of the Priesthood, who shine 
 in those pageantries. Why is Monkery (although so very 
 different from that which was in the ancient times) so cried up 
 as a superlative state of perfection ? but that it filleth all places 
 with swarms of lusty people, who are vowed servants to him, and 
 have little else to do but to advance that authority by which 
 they subsist in that dronish way of life. In fine, pursuing the 
 controversies of Bellarmine, or any other champion of Romanism, 
 do but consider the nature and scope of each doctrine main- 
 tained by them ; and you may easily discern that scarce any of 
 them but doth tend to advance the interest of the Pope, or of his 
 sworn vassals." 
 
 NOTE Q : p. 37. 
 
 Among the many strange and startling assertions in Dr 
 Newman's two recent courses of controversial Lectures, none is 
 stranger or more startling than what he says in those delivered 
 at Birmingham, when vindicating the enforcement of clerical 
 celibacy. After a generous admission that the few married 
 clergymen whom he has known, are "of such excellence and 
 consistency of life, that he would feel it to be absurd to suspect 
 them of any the slightest impropriety in their conduct," he adds : 
 " but still the terrible instances of human frailty, of which one 
 reads and hears in Protestant bodies, are quite enough to shew 
 that the married state is no sort of warrant for moral correctness, 
 no preventive, whether of scandalous offenses, or much less of 
 minor forms of the same general sin. Purity is not a virtue 
 which comes as a matter of course to the married any more than
 
 NOTE Q. 255 
 
 to the single." Thus much no one will dispute. But he con- 
 tinues : " Though it is impossible to bring the matter fairly to 
 an issue, yet for that very reason I have as much a right to my 
 opinion as another to his, when I state my deliberate conviction 
 that there are, to say the least, as many offenses against the 
 marriage vow among Protestant Ministers, as there are against 
 the vow of celibacy among Catholic Priests" (p. 129). 
 
 Dr Newman here resolves to set an example of moderation in 
 his statements : he will only " say the least," the very least part 
 of what he might have said, of what the history of the Church 
 would of course have justified him in saying. At all events how- 
 ever he has a somewhat large notion of the rights of private 
 judgement. " I have as much a right (he says) to my opinion, 
 as another to his :" for the restriction implied in the conditional 
 clause, that " it is impossible to bring the matter fairly to an 
 issue," is just nothing. Though it is impossible to get an exact 
 statistical enumeration of the offenses committed in the two 
 cases, yet, where, as in all practical questions, absolute certainty 
 and precision are unattainable, proximate conclusions are bind- 
 ing on the judgement. In fact it is rank scepticism to say, 
 / have as much a right to my opinion as another to his. A legal 
 right doubtless a man has to think that the moon is made of 
 green cheese ; inasmuch as the law has never prohibited such an 
 opinion, and will not punish him for holding it, unless perhaps 
 by a strait waistcoat. But morally no man has a right to any 
 opinion, except it agree with the truth, or with the most correct 
 estimate of the truth he can frame. Right has nothing to do 
 with the matter. We have no right, except to think rightly; 
 and this right is also a duty, imposed upon every being endowed 
 with the faculty of thinking by his indefeasible allegiance to 
 Truth. No wonder however that Dr Newman, having formed 
 such notions of the right of private judgement, should entertain 
 so inveterate a hostility to it. 
 
 But is it indeed so ? Is the evidence of facts with regard to the 
 moral effects of compulsory celibacy so scanty, or so ambiguous, 
 that history has never been able to pronounce a positive verdict
 
 256 NOTE Q. 
 
 on the subject? I had thought that we had the concurrent 
 testimony of more than fifteen centuries, proceeding from divers 
 countries, under divers social forms, exprest in divers ways, more 
 copiously indeed at one time than at another, but without any 
 variation as to the result ; which throughout has confirmed the 
 wisdom of St Paul's injunctions to the Corinthians (Ep. i. c. 
 vii.), not to attempt to counteract the laws of Nature. I will not 
 defile these pages with details of the revolting evils which 
 have arisen from that attempt : but since this audacious as- 
 sertion has been made, which the asserter himself at all events 
 must believe, and which therefore may find some credulous 
 hearers, in an age when the want of firm convictions disposes so 
 many to seek support in prohibitive ordinances, it becomes a 
 duty to point to certain heads of evidence, which at all events 
 will shew that, in protesting against compulsory celibacy, we are 
 not influenced by the vague traditions or the fables which 
 Dr Newman declares to be the grounds of the English aversion 
 to Rome. 
 
 The Councils, at least from the ninth century downward, bear 
 witness by many of their Canons to the scandalous immorality of 
 the Clergy, which hardly shrank from the most unutterable 
 horrours. For instance, it had been ordained by several of the 
 earlier Councils, by that of Nicea, by those of Carthage in 348 
 and 398, by that of Tours in 567, by that of Lyons in 583, by 
 that of Toledo in 633, that no priest should have any woman 
 living in his house, unless she was his mother, or sister, or aunt. 
 But the Council of Mayence, in 888, makes the rule universal, 
 on the ground of the incestuous acts which had arisen from the 
 allowance of those exceptions : " Ut clericis interdicatur mulieres 
 in domo sua habere. Quamvis enim sacri canones quasdam 
 personas feminarum simul cum clericis in una domo habitare 
 permittant, tamen, quod multum dolendum est, saepe audivimus 
 per illam concessionem plurima scelera esse commissa, ita ut 
 quidam sacerdotum cum propriis sororibus concumbentes filios 
 ex eis generassent." A like Canon was enacted at the Synod 
 of Metz in the same year, where the prohibition is expressly
 
 NOTE Q. 257 
 
 extended to the mother, and again, a few years after, at the Synod 
 of Nantes, where it was forbidden that any priest should have any 
 woman living in his house, " neque illas quas canones concedunt : 
 (quia instigante diabolo etiam in illis scelus frequenter perpe- 
 tratum reperitur, aut etiam in pedissequis illarum) : scilicet 
 matrem, amitam, sororem." 
 
 Another subject of frequent legislation was the sons of the 
 clergy, a large class of whom are designated by Benedict the 
 Eighth in a preliminary address to the Council of Ticino about 
 the year 1020, as fitti concubinarii. The same letter gives an 
 awful picture of the licentiousness of the clergy: and his testi- 
 mony might be confirmed by that of hundreds of unimpeachable 
 witnesses speaking of the character of the clergy during the five 
 centuries anterior to the Reformation. I will merely quote a 
 passage from one of Petrarch's Letters, the 20th of his Epistolae 
 sine titulo, in which he speaks of the Papal Court at Avignon : 
 " Quis, oro, non irascatur et rideat illos senes, pueros coma Can- 
 dida, togis amplissimis, adeoque lascivientibus animis, ut nihil 
 illuc falsius videatur, quam quod ait Maro : Frigidus in Venerem 
 senior. Tarn calidi tamque praecipites in Venerem senes sunt : 
 tanta eos aetatis et status et virium cepit oblivio : sic in libidines 
 inardescunt : sic in omne ruunt dedecus, quasi omnis eorum 
 gloria non in cruce Christi sit, sed in comessationibus et ebrieta- 
 tibus, et quae has sequuntur cubilibus impudicis. Sic fugientem 
 manu retrahunt juventam; atque hoc unurn senectutis ultimae 
 lucrum putant, ea facere quae juvenes non auderent. Hos ani- 
 mos et hos nervos tribuit hie Bacchus indomitus, hie orientalium 
 vis baccarum. Spectat haec Sathanas ridens, atque impari tri- 
 pudio delectatus, interque decrepitos ac puellas arbiter sedens, 
 stupet plus illos agere quam se hortari. Mitto stupra, raptus, 
 incestus, adulteria, quae jam pontificalis lasciviae ludi sunt. 
 Mitto raptarum viros, ne mutire audeant, non tantum avitis 
 laribus, sed finibus patriis exturbatos, quaeque contumeliarum 
 gravissima est, et violatas conjuges et externo seinine gravidas 
 rursus accipere, et post partum reddere ad alternam satietatem 
 abutentium coactos. Quae omnia non unus ego, sed vulgus
 
 258 NOTE Q. 
 
 novit." This sounds like an account of the Court of Commodus 
 or of Elagabalus : it is that of the Court of a man who called 
 himself the Vicar of Christ upon earth. 
 
 Dr Newman indeed contends that this licentiousness was no 
 way connected with celibacy. " If matrimony does not prevent 
 cases of immorality among Protestant ministers, it is not celi- 
 bacy which causes them among Catholic priests. It is not what 
 the Catholic Church imposes, but what human nature prompts, 
 which leads any portion of her ecclesiastics into sin. Human 
 nature will break out, like some wild and raging element, under 
 any system : it bursts out under the Protestant system : it bursts 
 out under the Catholic." This, alas ! cannot be denied. But, 
 though a river of itself may at times overflow its banks, a dam, 
 which excludes it from its proper channel, will make it do so 
 always. I believe there can be no question that, even among 
 the laity, simple fornication is a far more frequent sin- than 
 adultery : and surely, were it not for this contra-natural institution, 
 there is nothing in the character or office of the Christian ministry 
 to increase man's proneness to fall into licentiousness, but on the 
 contrary every motive, every inducement, every help to draw him 
 away from it. Moreover, though I know of no ground, and have 
 not the slightest wish, to impeach the moral character of the 
 Romish priesthood now in England, and though in this, as in 
 other respects, the Church of Rome has derived much benefit from 
 the influence of the Reformation, so that generally, where the two 
 Churches have existed in juxtaposition, the priesthood has been 
 delivered from the foul spots which previously stained it, yet, I 
 believe, no candid enquirer can come to any other conclusion, than 
 that the increast licentiousness of the clergy has generally been 
 coincident with the stricter enforcement of celibacy, and that, where 
 the ministers of the Gospel have been allowed, they have set a 
 right example of the holy relations of family life to their people. 
 
 This coincidence has been pointed out repeatedly by Gieseler, 
 in the sections in which he speaks of ecclesiastical discipline, 
 for instance, in the Second Portion of his Third Period 
 (extending from 858 to 1073), . 30. "The licentiousness
 
 NOTE Q. 259 
 
 of the clergy, produced by their celibacy, (Die durch den 
 Cb'libat hervorgerufene Unkeuschkeit der Geistlichen), which had 
 always been a standing subject of synodal legislation, rose in 
 these ages of rudeness to the most unnatural crimes. The bishops 
 set the example ; the lower clergy followed without scruple." 
 In the notes on this Section, Gieseler gives the most shocking 
 evidence of the truth of his statement. Again, in the Third 
 Portion of the same Third Period (from 1073 to 1305) . 65: 
 " The celibacy of the Clergy, which was now enforced still more 
 extensively than before, could not be thoroughly carried out in 
 many countries before the thirteenth century, but brought the 
 grossest excesses in its train, the more so because many of the 
 bishops overlookt them ;" where again the notes supply terrific 
 evidence of the facts. The same statement recurs, with evidence 
 equally appalling, in the fourth Portion of the same Period (from 
 1305 to 1409) . 108: where, among other things, it is stated 
 that in several countries the laity, in order to preserve their 
 wives and daughters from the impure solicitations of the clergy, 
 compelled them to keep concubines. This is said to have hap- 
 pened in Spain, in Flanders, in Ireland, in Norway.* 
 
 Of the general prevalence of this depravity in Scotland at the 
 age of the Reformation, an awful account appeared in the 
 Quarterly Review for June last. The writer, who seems well 
 acquainted with the family history of that period, goes through a 
 long list of the Bishops, and shews how, one after another, they 
 lived openly and avowedly with concubines. " The most culti- 
 vated (he says), the most amiable among them, were in this re- 
 spect not a whit purer than the others. Such of them as were 
 contented with one woman were esteemed virtuous ; nay, ladies 
 of good condition thought it no shame to live as their avowed 
 
 * The same thing happened in parts of Switzerland. Sleidan, in the Third 
 Book of his Commentaries, under the year 1522, tells us that Zwingli, in a 
 Letter to the Swiss, "monet ne verae doclrinae cursum impediant, neque 
 sacerdotibus mantis ullam faciant molestiam: coelibatus enim praeceptum 
 auctorem habere Sathanam : nonnullis in ipsorum pagis hunc esse morem, cum 
 novum quempiam ecclesiae ministrum recipiunt, ut jubeant eum habere 
 concubinam, ne pudieitiam alienam tentet." 
 
 s 2
 
 60 NOTE Q. 
 
 concubines, and found the sympathy of society not averse to such 
 a departure from the celibacy which the Church pretended to 
 enforce. These things are brought more home to us in the 
 domestic history of a narrow kingdom : but the condition of the 
 clergy was not materially different in other countries of Christ- 
 endom, before the Reformation produced a change of morals far 
 beyond the widest spread of its doctrines" (p. 42). Thus Car- 
 dinal Beaton " lived with a concubine, the daughter of an old 
 baronial house, during the greater part of his life. The offspring 
 of that connexion were numerous : some of the sons were dig- 
 nified churchmen, others laymen, who founded families in Fife 
 and Angus. Three of these gentlemen had letters of legitimation 
 under the Great Seal. For not less than four of their sisters, 
 all taking their father's name, and all in recorded documents set- 
 ting forth his style and rank as honorable to them, large dowers 
 found matches among the best of the Scotch nobility and gentry." 
 Again, Archbishop Hamilton, Beaton's successor in the See of St 
 Andrews, " lived openly with the wife or widow of his kinsman, 
 Hamilton of Stenhouse. That lady, known as Lady Stenhouse, 
 or Lady Gilstown, affected no concealment. Among the goods 
 and chattels inventoried in her testament, confirmed at Edin- 
 burgh in 1575, are specified three grants of legitimation in favour 
 of as many bastard children by his Grace." Bishop Chisholm of 
 Dumblane gave large portions " of the ecclesiastical patrimony of 
 this church to his natural son and to his two natural daughters." 
 Soon after (p. 46) we are told of Bishop Leslie, " the faithful 
 servant of Queen Mary, and the elegant historian of his country, 
 a person so admirable in all other respects, that his breach of his 
 ordination vows shews both the sad effects of the example of a 
 whole society, and the danger of making a law so hard upon 
 human nature that the sympathies of mankind are in favour 
 of breaking it." Hepburn Bishop of Moray " lived long enough 
 to dilapidate his great Bishopric, and to provide for a very large 
 family, whose several legitimations stand on record." In 1543 
 letters of legitimation were granted in favour of Michael, Robert, 
 and Hugh Montgomerie, " bastard sons of the Reverend Father in
 
 NOTE Q. 261 
 
 Christ Robert Bishop of Argyll." Alexander Gordon, Bishop of 
 Galloway, "joined the Reformation, that he might marry Barbara 
 Logie, his mistress, and make his children by her legitimate." 
 
 When this was the condition of the hierarchy, what must have 
 been that of the inferior clergy I The fantastical delusions of 
 our modern lovers of darkness have thrown such a gaudy haze 
 around the evils of Rome, that people are forgetting how terrible 
 was the curse from which they were delivered by the Refor- 
 mation, and are calling upon the Pope to return and renew his 
 withering despotism in England. Hence it becomes necessary to 
 bring forward facts, which in a healthier state of the public mind 
 one might gladly suffer to lie in oblivion. " The effect of the 
 Reformation (the Reviewer concludes, p. 56) upon the manners 
 of the clergy, whether of the old faith or of the new, was signal 
 and immediate." Thus the Church of Rome herself owes an 
 enormous debt of gratitude to the Reformation. For it was only 
 through the shock of the Reformation that she was roused out of 
 her deadly torpour, and that the efforts of the reformers, who 
 continued within her pale, became less abortive than those of 
 their predecessors in previous centuries. 
 
 I will merely hint at a part of the evidence to be drawn from 
 general literature. Of the Italian Novelle, the main part seems to 
 have been derived from anecdotes of real facts, either pertaining 
 to earlier times or contemporaneous. At all events we may be 
 sure that, in the representation of contemporary occurrences, they 
 exhibit the opinions and the feelings of the age. Now the 
 licentiousness of these Novelle is notorious ; and a large portion 
 of the grossest and most licentious stories are told of priests and 
 monks. The same is the case in the French Fabliaux. Nor 
 are these pictures set before us as monstrous violations of order 
 and decency, but rather as ordinary occurrences, merely remark- 
 able for some humorous peculiarity. Yet Dr Newman, after 
 asserting his right to think what he chooses, states it as his 
 deliberate conviction, " that there are, to say the least, as many 
 offenses against the marriage vow among Protestant ministers, as 
 there are against the vow of celibacy among Catholic priests."
 
 2t32 NOTE Q. 
 
 How then does he account for this fact 1 Assuredly the general 
 literature of the last three centuries has not been led, either in 
 England or in Germany, to cover the sins of the clergy through 
 any excessive reverence for their sacred office. If the facts had 
 afforded a warrant for such representations, there would have 
 been numbers to take advantage of them. But had such tales 
 been written, the public mind would have revolted from their 
 extravagant falsehood.* Doubtless Dr Newman says truly: 
 " Passion will carry away the married clergyman as well as the 
 unmarried priest :" and this has been represented in fiction, for 
 instance, in the tale of Adam Blair. Doubtless too there are 
 many instances of grosser offenses among Protestant ministers, 
 some of which acquire notoriety from proceedings in courts of 
 justice : but, whatever the number may be, it is not such as to 
 make licentiousness an ordinary characteristic of the Clergy in 
 public estimation, as it used to be before the Reformation, in 
 consequence of the institution of compulsory celibacy. Or 
 does Dr Newman merely mean, as his words taken literally might 
 be interpreted, to confine his assertion to the moral character 
 of the Romish clergy in England, or generally, at the present 
 day ? If so, we certainly have not adequate grounds for deciding 
 the question. I have no wish to impugn the moral character 
 of the Romish priesthood, either in England or in Germany : 
 in France it would seem to have improved greatly since 
 the beginning of the Revolution : and though one hears evil 
 rumours from Italy and Spain, and these have received 
 terrible confirmation from Scipio Ricci and from Blanco White, 
 
 * This has been urged by Southey, in his Letters to Butler (p. 302). " Upon 
 this point we may appeal to popular opinion, being one of the few points on which 
 it may be trusted. Before the Reformation the Clergy in this country were as 
 much the subjects of ribald tales and jests for the looseness of their lives, as they 
 were in all other Roman Catholic countries, and still are in those wherever any 
 freedom of speech can be indulged. Wherever the Reformation was establisht, 
 this reproach has been done away. Amid all the efforts which are made to 
 bring the Church of England into contempt and hatred, there is no attempt to 
 revive it. The general decorum and respectability of the Clergy as a body of 
 men is so well known and undeniable, that even slander and faction have not 
 assailed them on that score."
 
 NOTE Q. 263 
 
 whose statements are far from having been invalidated by Dr 
 Newman's objections, I know of no sufficient body of authentic 
 evidence for building a stable conclusion upon. But when an 
 institution has been tried during a dozen centuries in all parts of 
 the world, and has uniformly been found productive of the same 
 evil effects, there cannot well be a doubt what sentence ought to 
 be pronounced on it : Cut it down. That the Papacy should 
 have refrained from pronouncing this sentence,- that on the 
 contrary it should have retained and upheld that institution with 
 dogged pertinacity, notwithstanding the horrours which streamed 
 in whelming torrents from it, is perhaps the most damning 
 proof how the Papacy recklessly sacrificed every moral considera- 
 tion, recklessly sacrificed the souls of its ministers, for the sake of 
 maintaining its own power by surrounding itself with an innu- 
 merable host of spiritual Mamelukes, bound to it by that which 
 severed them from all social ties. And this is the Church for 
 which our modern dreamers claim the exclusive title of Holy ! 
 a church headed by his Holiness Pope Alexander the Sixth ! 
 
 This whole question of the celibacy of the Clergy has been 
 treated in a masterly manner by Jeremy Taylor, in that wonder- 
 ful book, his Ductor Dubitantium (B. iii. c. iv. Rule 20) : where 
 (in . 28) he gives the following summary of his objections. 
 " The law of the Church was an evil law, made by an authority 
 violent and usurpt, insufficient as to that charge. It was not a 
 law of God : it was against the rights, and against the necessities 
 of Nature : it was unnatural and unreasonable : it was not for 
 edification of the Church : it was no advantage to spiritual life. 
 It is a law that is therefore against public honesty, because it 
 did openly and secretly introduce dishonesty. It had nothing of 
 the requisites of a good law, no consideration of human frailty, 
 nor of human comforts : it was neither necessary, nor profitable, 
 nor innocent, neither fitted to time, nor place, nor person : it was 
 not accepted by them that could not bear it ; it was complained 
 of by them that could : it was never admitted in the East ; it 
 was fought against and declaimed and railed at in the West ; 
 and at last it is laid aside in the Churches, especially of the
 
 264 NOTE R. 
 
 North, as the most intolerable and most unreasonable tyranny in 
 the world. For it was not to be endured, that, upon the pre- 
 tense of an unseasonable perfection, so much impurity should be 
 brought into the Church, and so many souls thrust down to hell." 
 That the North should have taken the lead in opposing it, not 
 merely at the Reformation, but almost throughout, is easily 
 understood, when we call to mind that the Northern and Teu- 
 tonic nations have ever had a much deeper feeling of the moral 
 and spiritual character of marriage, though they did not turn 
 it into a sacrament, and that they could not find a compensation 
 for the want of it in the sensual indulgences, to which Southern 
 nations more readily abandon themselves. 
 
 NoTER: p. 37. 
 
 There are divers questions connected with Confession, which 
 are grievously troubling our Church, and urgently require the 
 calmest, most thoughtful consideration. But I cannot enter 
 upon them here ; nor is this the place for them. I will merely 
 quote another powerful passage of Jeremy Taylor (Dissuasive, 
 P. i. c. ii. . 2), where he enumerates some of the evils, which re- 
 sult from its practice when compulsory. " For confession, it is 
 true, to them who are not used to it, as it is at the first time, and 
 for that once, it is as troublesome, as for a bashful man to speak 
 orations in public. But where it is so perpetual and universal, 
 and done by companies and crowds at a solemn set time ; and 
 when it may be done to any one besides the parish priest, to a 
 friar that begs, or to a monk in his dorter, done in the ear, it 
 may be to a person that hath done worse, and therefore hath no 
 awe upon me, but what his order imprints and his viciousness 
 takes off ; when we see women and boys, princes and prelates do 
 the same every day, and, as oftentimes they are never the better, 
 so they are not at all ashamed, but men look upon it as a cer- 
 tain cure, like pulling off a man's clothes to go and wash in a 
 river, and make it, by use and habit, by confidence and custom,
 
 NOTE S. 265 
 
 to be no certain pain, and the women blush or smile, weep or 
 are unmoved, as it happens, under their veil, and the men under 
 the boldness of their sex ; when we see that men and women 
 confess to-day, and sin to-morrow, and are not affrighted from 
 their sin the more for it, because they know the worst of it, 
 and have felt it often, and believe to be eased by it ; certain it 
 is, that a little reason, and a little observation, will suffice to 
 conclude that this practice of confession hath in it no affright- 
 ment, not so much as the horrour of the sin itself hath, to the 
 conscience. For they who commit sins confidently, will with less 
 regret, it may be, confess it in this manner where it is the fashion 
 for every one to do it. And when all the world observes how 
 loosely the Italians, Spaniards, and French do live in their car- 
 nivals, giving to themselves all liberty and license to do the 
 vilest things at that time, not only because they are for a while 
 to take their leave of them, but because they are, as they suppose, 
 to be so soon eased of their crimes by confession, and the circular 
 and never failing hand of the priest, they will have no reason 
 to admire the severity of confession ; which, as it was most 
 certainly intended as a deletory of sin, and might do its first 
 intention, if it were equally managed, so now certainly it gives 
 confidence to many men to sin, and to most men to neglect 
 the greater and more effective parts of essential repentance." 
 
 Of the influence which such a system of discipline exercises 
 in deadening the conscience, we have had a most lamentable 
 example in Note I. 
 
 Note S : p. 37. 
 
 - WE have seen Dr Newman's method of dealing with the 
 argument concerning the moral effects of compulsory celibacy. 
 There are some cases of sins against chastity in the members of 
 a married ministry : we cannot tell what the number of these 
 may be : therefore, he says, I have a right to exercise my private 
 judgement in the matter, and to "state my deliberate conviction"
 
 266 NOTE S. 
 
 that these sins of licentiousness among Protestant ministers are, 
 " to say the least," as numerous as those among Catholic priests. 
 It matters not that these sins of Protestant ministers are pro- 
 nounced by the public voice to be flagrantly heinous and 
 exceptional, while those of the Romish priests and monks were 
 deemed for several centuries in divers countries to be general, if 
 not ordinary, and were often declared to be so by the chief 
 teachers of the church, and even by popes, and by councils. Dr 
 Newman is determined to make up for the restraint of his private 
 judgement on other matters by letting it run riot on this, and 
 asserts his right to " state a deliberate conviction " repugnant to 
 all the evidence of history. So great too is the satisfaction he 
 feels at the dexterity of this achievement, that, after boasting of 
 his triumph at the beginning of his fifth Lecture, he sets about 
 applying the same method to clear Rome from another stigma 
 affixt to it by popular errour, the charge of having been ani- 
 mated with, and of having fostered a persecuting spirit, of having 
 persecuted, and encouraged persecution. 
 
 Here again he performs his favorite feat of turning white 
 black, and black white. His method, as I have said, is the same 
 which he adopts with such brilliant success in vindicating 
 celibacy. He shews that Protestants also have persecuted, and 
 do exercise certain modes of persecution ; wherefore " Protestants 
 are just the very last persons in the world who can with safety 
 or consistency call Catholics persecutors, for the simple reason, 
 that they should not throw stones, who live in glass houses" 
 (p. 175). In this case however he is not content with saying 
 the least. Emboldened by his previous victory, he resolves to 
 annihilate his adversary, and to set up his client on a pinnacle of 
 solitary glory. The tone of this whole Lecture is overbearing 
 quite to a pitch of insolence against Protestants, of whom he 
 declares at the conclusion (p. 211), that "they have persecuted 
 whenever, wherever, and however they could, from Elizabeth 
 down to Victoria, from the domestic circle up to the Legislature, 
 from black looks to the extremity of the gibbet and the stake." 
 With similar accuracy and impartiality he pronounces (p. 212):
 
 NOTE S. 267 
 
 " Far other is the wisdom of the Church [which with him of 
 course means that of Rome]. It is plain, if only to prevent the 
 occurrence of persecution, she must head a movement, which it is 
 impossible to suppress. And in the course of eighteen hundred years, 
 though her children have been guilty of various excesses, though 
 she herself is responsible for isolated acts of most solemn import, 
 yet for one deed of severity with which she can be charged, there 
 have been a hundred of her acts repressive of the persecutor, and 
 protective of his victims. She has been a never-failing fount of 
 humanity, equity, forbearance, and compassion, in consequence 
 of her very recognition of natural impulses and instincts, which 
 Protestants would vainly deny and contradict: and this is the 
 solution of the paradox stated by the distinguisht author I just 
 now quoted (Balmez), to the effect, that the religion which for- 
 bids private judgement in matters of Revelation, is historically 
 more tolerant than the religions which uphold it. His words 
 will bear repetition : ' We find, in all parts of Europe, scaffolds 
 prepared to punish crimes against religion : scenes which sadden 
 the soul, were everywhere witnest. Rome is one exception to 
 the rule, Rome, which it has been attempted to represent as a 
 monster of intolerance and cruelty. It is true, that the Popes 
 have not preach t, like the Protestants, universal toleration ; but 
 the facts shew the difference between the Protestants and the 
 Pope. The Popes, armed with a tribunal of intolerance, have 
 scarce spilt a drop of blood : Protestants and philosophers have 
 shed it in torrents." 
 
 It would take a volume to unravel all the entanglements, to 
 straighten all the distortions, and to correct all the misrepresen- 
 tations in this strange medley of confusion : but I cannot refrain 
 from saying a few words on some of the steps by which Dr 
 Newman arrives at his extraordinary conclusions. Both of 
 them are equally at variance with our usual notions, and with 
 the views taken by the whole body of the historians of the last 
 three centuries : they both exemplify their author's fondness for 
 indulging in the most violent paradoxes: what else do they 
 exemplify 1
 
 268 NOTE S. 
 
 As the main part of the argument, according to the fashion of 
 every man who has a desperate cause to defend, is that which 
 is aggressive against Protestantism, let us begin by looking at 
 the grounds for the charge which Dr Newman brings against 
 us. We have persecuted (he tells us) " whenever, wherever, and 
 however we could, from Elizabeth down to Victoria, from the 
 domestic circle up to the Legislature, from black looks to the 
 extremity of the gibbet and the stake." Now to this charge, we 
 cannot hesitate to reply, the moment we hear it, nor do we feel 
 more hesitation after the most careful perusal of all the counts of 
 Dr Newman's indictment, that it is so enormously exaggerated, 
 as to be utterly false ; and whatever speciousness it may gain in 
 his statement results from a series of fallacies. 
 
 In the first place the whole Lecture is pervaded by this fallacy, 
 that, while the legitimate comparison ought to be between our 
 Church and the Church of Rome, between the acts performed 
 in each by the ecclesiastical authorities, or by the civil authorities 
 under the direction or the influence of the ecclesiastical, the 
 main part of the charges brought against us are grounded on the 
 acts of private individuals, or of mobs in a state of ferment. 
 Much of this argument is as though a person were to assert 
 that all Englishmen talk the wildest nonsense, and are more 
 than half mad, and then tried to substantiate his assertion by a 
 record of conversations and actions in Bedlam and St Luke's. 
 When we say that the Church of Rome is a persecuting Church, 
 we mean that she is so by the acts of her rulers, by her prin- 
 ciples embodied in her institutions, such as the Inquisition, by 
 the acts of civil governments under her sanction and direction. 
 There is no fair analogy between such acts and those of the mob 
 in last November, or a father's casting off his son for going over 
 to Rome. This confounding of totally different acts will never 
 help us to form a correct judgement. 
 
 Dr Newman lays great stress on the treatment which persons 
 quitting our Church for that of Rome receive, children from 
 their parents, servants from their masters. " Protestants (he says, 
 p. 177) have felt it right, just, and necessary to break the holiest
 
 NOTE S. 269 
 
 of earthly ties, and to inflict the acutest temporal suffering on 
 those who have exercised their private judgement in the choice of 
 a religion." This is a main proof and instance of the persecuting 
 spirit that animates us. He has unluckily omitted to give us 
 the opposite side of the picture, to contrast our cruelty with 
 the mild, gentle, loving treatment of those who quit the Church 
 of Rome, the caresses of the rack, the embraces of the auto da 
 fi. Nor does he say anything as to the principle by which 
 our conduct ought to be regulated in such a case. He merely 
 describes certain scenes of parents scolding their children some- 
 what roughly, and turning them out of doors, with other ex- 
 pressions of individual passion. If we withdraw these things, 
 which belong to peculiarities of temper, the gravamen of the 
 offense seems to lie in this, that parents and masters of fami- 
 lies deem it their duty to preserve their children and house- 
 holds from the influence of those who are likely to exert every 
 kind of influence in drawing them over to Rome. And is not 
 this their duty 1 ? Dr Newman is continually complaining that 
 we look at everything exclusively from our own point of view, 
 and will not conceive that any other can be taken by an 
 honest, reasonable man. Now surely he must admit that a 
 member of our Church may be honest and reasonable, and can- 
 did and tolerant to boot, and yet may feel that there are so 
 great evils in Romanism, even though he confine himself to 
 those which Dr Newman pointed out in his Lectures fifteen 
 years ago, that he may desire most earnestly to secure his 
 children and servants from being led into them. Surely such 
 a desire is no indication of a persecuting spirit. Persecution 
 is aggressive, attacks others, and is totally distinct from self- 
 defense and self-protection. Most painful will be the wrench 
 which the separation from an erring son will cause to the 
 father's heart; and yet he may feel that it is a solemn duty 
 to endure it for the sake of his other children. This Dr 
 Newman leaves entirely out of sight. In his pictures of Pro- 
 testant parents, which are laughable enough, and shew his emi- 
 nent talent for buffoonery, he represents them as animated
 
 270 NOTE S. 
 
 solely by wilfulness, and implies that they cannot have any 
 real principle, any reasonable conviction, to determine their con- 
 duct. Whereas, such is the wall of separation by which Rome 
 has cut herself off from all the rest of Christendom, that the 
 converts themselves, as I have known happen in several cases, 
 and as has doubtless happened in many others, at the very 
 time when they inform their parents of the change, have violently 
 snapt the holy ties of nature and natural affection. 
 
 Dr Newman complains that parents, who would have allowed 
 their children to join any form of sectarianism, cannot bear 
 that they should join the Church of Rome. But is not this 
 itself a proof that their conduct does not spring from a per- 
 secuting spirit, to which all modes of deviation from their own 
 opinion would be almost equally offensive ? that there must be 
 something in Romanism, which renders its presence, in families 
 as well as in states, especially in times of excitement, danger- 
 ous and alarming ? Nor need we go far to seek for this. Dr 
 Newman himself points it out, when, adopting an expression 
 of Hume's (p. 188), he speaks of its "zeal of proselytism." Dr 
 Newman indeed hails this expression exultingly : " we do sur- 
 pass in zeal every other religion, and have done so from the 
 first. But this surely ought to be no offense, but a praise." 
 We have been admonisht however that it is of no slight moment, 
 what is the nature of the cause in which zeal is shewn. Nor 
 did those predecessors of Rome, who compast sea and land to 
 make one proselyte, and made him twofold more the child of 
 hell, obtain a blessing, but a woe. 
 
 Now this zeal of proselytism renders a person a dangerous 
 inmate in a family. Dr Newman represents his proselytizer as 
 a man who " cherishes zeal, and deals the blows of reason and 
 argument," and speaks of him as highly to be commended. Yet 
 he who does this, who troubles the peace and calm of domestic life 
 by perpetually dealing about such blows, will be a pestilent 
 nuisance in a family, as Dr Newman himself would have been 
 the first to declare ten years ago, and as he would declare now, 
 were it not for the sake of his argument. Not that we are afraid of
 
 NOTE S. 271 
 
 " the blows of reason and argument," at their proper time and 
 place. With the strength of our good cause, and with God to 
 uphold it, I know not why we should dread the Goliath of Rome, 
 with his helmet of brass, and his logical coat of mail, and the spear 
 of his redoubtable rhetoric : we will not fear him even though 
 he bring all his brother giants along with him. Yet we will 
 not expose our women and children to them, or the simple mem- 
 bers of our flock. The spirit of a convert makes him eager 
 to win fresh converts. During his own change he will have 
 gained some sort of familiarity with controversial topics. Besides 
 there are other characteristics of Romanism, which make one 
 shrink from exposing a person to its polemics. Its unscrupulous- 
 ness is too notorious : so is its laxity with regard to truth, 
 especially in dealing with heretics, and when the soul of a brother 
 may be saved by the infusion of some drachms of falsehood into 
 the potion that is to heal him. How sadly too is the feeling of 
 personal responsibility paralysed by subjection to a ghostly coun- 
 sellor ! how does the conscience become deadened, when a priest 
 at any time may put his extinguisher upon it ! 
 
 Our assailant then proceeds to more general indications of our 
 feelings toward the Church of Rome. He asks, whether we 
 would not close all their churches and chapels tomorrow, if we 
 could. Doubtless ; most thankfully, if we could do it by legi- 
 timate means, by persuasion, through the power of the Spirit. 
 He says (p. 1 83) : " You know what an outcry is raised, because 
 the Roman Government does not sell or give ground to Pro- 
 testants to build a Protestant Church in the centre of Rome. 
 That Government hinders them there, because it is able; Pro- 
 testants do not hinder us here, because they are not able. Can 
 they, in the face of day, deny this 1 " Rather may we ask, is 
 Dr Newman so shortsighted, so incapable of seeing anything but 
 the mere point he fixes his eyes on, that he cannot perceive how 
 this very contrast implies a wide difference between our Church 
 and theirs on this matter ? For why are we not able to hinder 
 the Romanists from building Churches ? except because our 
 Nation and Church has in this adopted the principles of an
 
 272 NOTE S. 
 
 enlightened toleration ; while Rome sticks to her old rule of 
 suppressing and stifling every mode of opinion diverging from 
 her own. It is true, our laws and institutions, in this, as 
 in many other respects, are wiser than the great body of the 
 people. The selfwill, the narrow-mindedness, the bigotry, the 
 various elements of the persecuting spirit, which Home took 
 up and embodied in her Inquisition, and still embodies in so 
 many laws and institutions, have not been eradicated from the 
 hearts of Protestants. There is still too much of that spirit in 
 all of us : in many its bitterness and fierceness are such as can 
 hardly be surpast in the Church of Rome. Nay, perhaps it may 
 be bitterer and fiercer with us than in Romish countries ; 
 because, where freedom is greater, it is necessarily liable to 
 greater abuses; and religious controversies among Romanists 
 are mostly confined to a few, while in England nowadays one can 
 hardly find a family untroubled by them. Nevertheless that 
 Freedom is favorable, not only to energy and activity, but also 
 to peace and order, we have seen exemplified in the wonderful 
 blessings granted to England, while so many despotical states 
 have had to pass through such a series of convulsions. In like 
 manner, notwithstanding the occasional excesses of our mobs, the 
 principles of toleration are far better recognised in England, by 
 the English Church and Nation, than in any Romish country. 
 Dr Newman's own recent works are a proof of this. Before he 
 dares talk again of the tolerant spirit of Rome, and of the per- 
 secuting spirit of England, let him produce a book printed and 
 freely circulated at Rome, saying half as much evil of the Church 
 of Rome, as he says of that of England. 
 
 Yet I do not mean to deny the enormity of our offenses against 
 charity. Dr Newman himself had to endure their violence for 
 years, before he left us, far more than since. For our domestic 
 enemies, whether real or supposed, are those on whom we pour 
 out the worst vials of our wrath. In fact almost every month 
 furnishes some fresh, proof that the evil spirit of religious hatred 
 and jealousy has not been extinguish t or tamed, but will start 
 up at every alarm as blind and rabid as ever. In the recent
 
 NOTE S. 273 
 
 anti-papal agitation these feelings were aggravated by the notion 
 which was entertained, not without reason, that the Papal Bull 
 was a wanton insult to the Crown and State of England. At 
 such a season one cannot expect that mobs will always be care- 
 ful not to overstep the bounds of decorum. 
 
 Of course Dr Newman makes the utmost of the laws against 
 the Papists in the reign of Elizabeth ; and he enforces his ar- 
 gument by some harrowing accounts of the cruelties committed 
 in the execution of those laws. For those cruelties I offer no 
 apology, except that they were wofully in accordance with the 
 whole spirit of the age, and that those who perpetrated them 
 were incenst by the various acts, whereby the Papacy had as- 
 sailed the English Crown and Commonwealth and Church. But 
 I know not well how to account for Dr Newman's having omitted 
 to state that these statutes were not enacted on religious grounds, 
 but on political. Nor can I understand how, though he must 
 have been aware of this, he could wind up his account of these 
 cruelties with asking (p. 209) : " What will the Protestants bring 
 against the Holy See comparable to atrocities such as these 1 Not 
 surely, with any fairness, the burnings in Queen Mary's reign, the 
 acts, as they were, of an English party, inflamed with revenge 
 against their enemies, and opposed by Cardinal Pole, the Pope's 
 Legate, as well as by the ecclesiastics of Spain." For few facts in 
 history can be more firmly establisht than that the martyrs in 
 Queen Mary's time were put to death on account of their religious 
 opinions, which is persecution, by the Romish party in the 
 Church of England ; whereas Elizabeth, for the first twelve years 
 of her reign, acted in a wise spirit of toleration, desiring to in- 
 clude all her subjects in the National Church. It was only after 
 the Bull of Pius V. excommunicating and anathematizing the 
 Queen, pretending to depose her, and to absolve her subjects from 
 their oath of allegiance, and anathematizing all who thence- 
 forward should obey her, that the Legislature, in consequence of 
 this lawless and wicked act, found it necessary to enact certain 
 penal statutes for the protection of the Government. Nor did 
 any one suffer the loss of life by these statutes for more than six 
 
 T
 
 274* NOTE S. 
 
 years, until the insurrection in the North, Alva's cruel perse- 
 cutions in the Netherlands, and those of the Huguenots in France, 
 with the crowning crime of the massacre of St Bartholomew's, 
 shewed what a Protestant nation and government had to expect 
 from the Vicar of Satan and his subjects and tools. It is not to 
 be wondered at, however it may be deplored, that the officers of 
 justice, at such a time, should have exhibited too much of the 
 ferocity of human nature in dealing with persons who, by violating 
 the laws, incurred the suspicion of being parties to like crimes 
 in England, crimes which excited the more indignation from 
 being perpetrated under the mask of religion. 
 
 This important distinction was pointed out in the clearest 
 manner by Bramhall in his Just Vindication of the Church of 
 England (c. 3). " I have often wondered how any rational man 
 could make the severity of our laws, or the rigour of our princes, 
 since the Reformation, a motive to his revolt from our Church. 
 Surely the Inquisition was quite out of his mind. But I meddle 
 not with forein affairs. He might have considered that more Pro- 
 testants suffered death in the short reign of Queen Mary, men, 
 women, and children, than Roman Catholics in all the longer 
 reigns of all our princes since the Reformation put together, 
 the former merely and immediately for religion, because they 
 would not be Roman Catholics, without any the least pretext of 
 the violation of any political law, the latter not merely and im- 
 mediately for religion, because they were Roman Catholics. For 
 many known Roman Catholics in England have lived and died in 
 greater plenty and power and reputation in every prince's reign 
 since the Reformation, than an English Protestant could live 
 among the Irish Roman Catholics since their insurrection. If a 
 subject was taken at mass itself in England, which was very rare, 
 it was but a pecuniary mulct ; no stranger was ever questioned 
 about his religion. I may not here omit King James affirma- 
 tion, that no man in his reign, or in the reign of his predecessor, 
 Queen Elizabeth, did suffer death for conscience sake, or religion. 
 But they suffered for the violation of civil laws ; as either for 
 not acknowledging the political supremacy of the king in
 
 NOTE S. 275 
 
 ecclesiastical causes over ecclesiastical persons, which is all that 
 we assert, which the Roman Catholics themselves in Henry the 
 Eighth's days did maintain as much, or perhaps more, than we ; 
 or else for returning into the kingdom so qualified with for- 
 bidden orders, as the laws of the land do not allow (the state 
 of Venice doth not, the kingdom of France hath not, abhorred 
 from the like laws) ; or lastly, for attempting to seduce some of 
 the king's subjects from the religion establisht in the land. In 
 all these cases, besides religion there is something of election : 
 he that loves danger doth often perish in it. The truth is 
 this : a hard knot must have a heavy mall : dangerous and 
 bloody positions and practices produce severe laws. No king- 
 dom is destitute of necessary remedies for its own conservation. 
 If all were of my mind, I could wish that all seditious opinions 
 and over-rigorous statutes, with the memory of them, were buried 
 together in perpetual oblivion. I hold him scarce a good Chris- 
 tian that would not cast on one spadefull of earth toward their 
 interment." 
 
 In his Replication to the Bishop of Chalcedon, c. 3, 4, 
 Bramhall states the reasons of these laws. " First let it be ob- 
 served that, after the secession of the English Church from the 
 Court of Rome, the succeeding Popes have for the most part 
 lookt upon England with a very ill eye. Witness that terrible 
 and unparalleled excommunication and interdiction of England 
 and deprivation of Henry VIII. Witness the bull of anathema- 
 tization and deprivation by Pius V. against Queen Elizabeth and 
 all her adherents, absolving all her subjects from their oaths of 
 allegiance. Witness the Pope's negotiations with the English, 
 Spanish, French, and Portuguese, to have Queen Elizabeth 
 taken away by murder, and the frame of the government altered, 
 publisht at Rome by Hieronymo Catena, secretary to Cardinal 
 Alexandrine in the time and with the privilege of Sixtus V. 
 Witness the Legantine authority given to Sanders, and the 
 hallowed banner sent with him and Allen, two Romish priests, 
 to countenance the Earl of Desmond in his rebellion, and the 
 phenix plume sent to Ter Owen, to encourage him likewise in 
 
 T 2
 
 276 NOTE S. 
 
 his rebellion, and a plenary indulgence for him and all his 
 adherents and assistants, from Clement the Eighth. Lastly 
 witness the two briefs sent by the same Pope to exclude King 
 James from the inheritance of the crown of England, unless he 
 would take an oath to promote the Roman Catholic interest." 
 
 Bramhall proceeds to enumerate various other grounds which 
 constrained the Government to look upon the Romanists with 
 extreme suspicion. The Pope had sacrilegiously commanded 
 them to commit treason. They would not deny his right to 
 demand their obedience. Many of them were guilty of exciting 
 and fomenting treason and rebellion ; many took part therein. 
 Their brother Romanists on the Continent were perpetrating 
 acts of the basest perfidy, of the most atrocious cruelty, for the 
 extermination of the Protestants, with the approbation and 
 applause of the Popes. In such a state of things it is not to be 
 wondered at if the people of England felt abhorrence for those 
 whom they had cause to regard as the agents and instruments 
 of similar crimes, or if the Legislature deemed it their duty 
 forcibly to suppress the system which encouraged them, and 
 endangered the life of the Queen and the very existence of the 
 State. During such an internecine war, the enemy's spies cannot 
 expect much mercy. At all events these penal statutes were 
 not religious, but political. Men were not punisht for their 
 opinions, but as the servants and tools of the deadly foe of 
 England, who was abusing his spiritual powers to overthrow and 
 enslave her. 
 
 Were it not for the many instances we have seen of Dr 
 Newman's Circean talent for metamorphosing historical facts, 
 we should feel some astonishment that, in the passage where he 
 details the cruelties inflicted on certain Romanists in the reign 
 of her whom he calls " bloody Elizabeth," he speaks of them 
 solely as examples of the persecuting spirit of Protestants, 
 without the slightest intimation of the political grounds, which 
 indeed were the only ones, of those punishments ; while on the 
 other hand he pleads that " the burnings in Queen Mary's reign" 
 were " the acts of an E nglish party inflamed with revenge
 
 NOTE S. 277 
 
 against their enemies, and opposed by Cardinal Pole, the Pope's 
 Legate, as well as by the ecclesiastics of Spain." To wit : 
 Elizabeth is called "bloody" because for twelve years she 
 earnestly tried to conciliate the Romanist portion of her subjects, 
 and did not take any penal measures against them, until she 
 was compelled to do so by the fierce war waged against her by 
 the Pope. " The English party " was the whole body of the 
 English Romanists with the Queen and the chief Bishops at 
 their head. Cardinal Pole, one of the wisest and best men of 
 the age, did indeed advocate a sounder policy, as he had done 
 previously at Trent : but, as at Trent he incurred suspicions of 
 entertaining opinions too favorable to the Protestants on the 
 great doctrinal questions there agitated, and was forced by these 
 suspicions to quit the Council, so in England his milder policy 
 was condemned by the Pope, who sent another legate to supersede 
 him. As to " the Spanish ecclesiastics," if their opposition to 
 the Marian persecutions is to be regarded as a proof that there 
 were some among the Spanish clergy who had discovered that 
 the flames of an auto da ft are not of the same kind as the 
 flames which descended on the day of Pentecost, the general 
 conduct of the Spanish Church and Government during the 
 reign of Philip the Second shews that this conviction was con- 
 fined to a very few.* 
 
 But Dr Newman's boldness increases : vires acquirit eundo. 
 Not content with proving Protestantism to be the main, if not 
 
 * Southey's statement of this question, in his Book of the Church (c. xv), is 
 incontrovertible. After speaking of Pius the Fifth's Bull of excommunication and 
 deposition, he adds : " Hitherto the conduct of Elizabeth's government toward the 
 Romanists had been tolerant and conciliatory, in accord with her own feelings, 
 and with those of her statesmen and prelates. Severer statutes were now made 
 necessary. It was made treasonable to deny that Elizabeth was the lawful soverein, 
 to affirm that she was a heretic, schismatic, or infidel, and to procure or intro- 
 duce bulls or briefs from the Pope. Still the Government continued its forbear- 
 ance, till it was compelled, by the duty of self-preservation, to regard its 
 Papistical subjects with suspicion, and treat them with severity. Against the 
 propagandists of such doctrine as was contained in the Bull of Pius V. and 
 inculcated in the seminaries, Elizabeth was compelled, for self-preservation, to 
 proceed severely. They were sought for and executed, not for believing in tran- 
 substantiation, nor for performing mass, but for teaching that the Queen of
 
 278 NOTE S. 
 
 the sole, principle of persecution in England, he thinks he may 
 as well prove it to be the same over the whole world. And 
 verily, according to his mode of reasoning, the proof does not 
 take much trouble. Protestantism, he says (p. 209), has " ever 
 shewn itself a persecuting power. It has persecuted in England, 
 in Scotland, in Ireland, in Holland, in France, in Germany, in 
 Geneva." To be sure ! did not the Dutch burn Alva and his 
 army in the Netherlands ? did not the Huguenots massacre 
 Charles the Ninth, and Catherine de Medici, and every Roman 
 Catholic in Paris, on the famous night of St Bartholomew ? Dr 
 Newman is over-indulgent in selecting his poor, paltry examples 
 of insulated acts of individuals, when, without much greater 
 cost of truth, he might have brought forward such grand ones. 
 He merely tells us, that " Calvin burnt a Socinian, Cranmer 
 an Anabaptist, Luther advised the wholesale murder of the 
 fanatical peasants, and Knox was party to bloody enactments 
 and bloody deeds." It was said of old that one swallow does 
 not make the spring : but, according, to our Neo-catholic logic, 
 one act of persecution is enough to brand a whole Church, and 
 that too even though this act be no act of persecution at all. 
 I will not discuss the question as to the degree of Calvin's 
 complicity in the execution of Servetus : at all events his act, 
 and Cranmer's, was one which the whole spirit of the age de- 
 manded, and which the mildest men approved, and only indi- 
 cates that all must more or less be under the contagion of that 
 spirit. As to the assertion about Luther, it exhibits the same 
 strange ignorance of what Luther was and did, which I have had 
 to remark in Dr Newman on former occasions. Whatever judge- 
 ment we may form on Luther's writings during the Peasants 
 War, the offenses of the peasants did not lie in their opinions, 
 in their faith ; which are the objects of persecution. They were 
 
 England ought to be deposed, that it was lawful to kill her, and that all 
 Popish subjects who obeyed her commands were cut off from the communion 
 of their Church for so doing." The same questions are discust with great 
 clearness and impartiality by Bishop Short in his History of the Church of 
 England, . 437445.
 
 NOTE S. 279 
 
 committing the most outrageous crimes, burning, pillaging, mur- 
 dering : they had risen in open insurrection against the laws and 
 the government, and thus rightfully incurred civil punishment. 
 But Dr Newman has been picking up one of those innumerable 
 fabulous traditions, which are the main stay of the Romish 
 hatred of Protestants. 
 
 Were it not for this blinding prejudice, he might have 
 remembered that there were other acts in Germany, in Flanders, 
 in France, which to vulgar eyes look more like persecution, 
 and bear more of the character of proceeding from a nation or 
 a Church. In Germany, it is calculated that thirty thousand 
 Protestants were put to death before the year 1560. In the 
 Netherlands, the Duke of Alva boasted that in six years he had 
 put eighteen thousand persons to death by the hands of the 
 executioner : Grotius, in his time, estimates the number of 
 victims at a hundred thousand. In France, the Church recruited 
 her strength by the massacre of fifty thousand Huguenots; for 
 which massacre Pope Gregory the Thirteenth went in proces- 
 sion to St Mark's to return thanks to Almighty God.* These 
 
 * Strype, in his Life of Parker (Append. Ixviii), gives the French version of 
 the Pope's Bull, enjoining a jubilee " pour 1'heureux succes du Roi Treschrestien 
 contre les heretiques," as well as for the preservation of Flanders, and the 
 victory over the Turks. " Notre Sainct Pere le Pape Gregoire treziesme, 
 prenant peine, par la grace de Dieu, de veiller sur le troupeau des ouailles de 
 Jesu Christ, ayant est6 bien adverty que nostre Seigneur Dieu, qui maine le 
 cceur des roys et des princes comme bon luy semble, a magnifiS sagrande mis6ricorde 
 envers son Eglise par ce qu'il a excite son tres cher fils en Jesu Christ Charles 
 neunesme Tresclirestien Roy de France a venger les injures 61 outraiges faictz a 
 Dieu et a son Eglise Catholique par les here~tiques appellez Huguenoz, et a punir 
 les chefs principaux des rebelles, qui ces annes passees, d'une raige sanglante et 
 implacable, par meurdres, voleries, sacrileges, et ravaiges, ont trouble, pille, et 
 degast6 ce tres florissaut royaulme de France. Pour cette occasion lui accompaign6 
 du college de tous Messieurs les Cardinaux en 1'Eglise de S. Marc a Rome de la 
 plus grande devotion qui luy a est6 possible a rendu action de graces a Dieu le 
 Createur pour ceste grande misericorde envers son Eglise, le priant de donner 
 grace et vertu audict Roy Treschrestien de poursuivre une tant salutaire et 
 heureuse entreprise, et repurger son royaume jadis tant rtligieux et catholicque 
 entre toutes nations, de toutes heuresies, et y remectre et restituer la religion 
 Catholique en son integritS et splendeur encienne," wherefore he appoints a 
 jubilee, that all Christians may give thanks to God for the happy success of the
 
 280 NOTE S. 
 
 wholesale massacres however, and a score of similar ones might 
 he enumerated, are among the proofs, I suppose, that, as Dr 
 Newman says (p. 212), "for one deed of severity with which 
 the Church [of Rome] can be charged, there have been a hundred 
 of her acts repressive of the persecutor, and protective of his 
 victims ;" and that " she has been a never-failing fount of 
 humanity, equity, forbearance, and compassion." To kill one 
 man makes a murderer ; to kill a million, they say, makes a 
 hero. This is the scale on which we are henceforward to deter- 
 mine the difference between an ever-persecuting Church, and one 
 that is a never-failing fount of humanity, equity, forbearance, and 
 compassion. Alas for those who have to drink of that fount ! It 
 
 most Christian King against the said heretics and rebels, and may pray to God 
 to grant the King virtue and the means entirely to perfect the work which through 
 God's grace he has so happily commenced. 
 
 To bring out the full contrast between this " never-failing fount of humanity, 
 equity, forbearance, and compassion," and the "ever-persecuting Protestants," 
 I will add an extract from the prayers which were appointed to be offered up 
 by our Church on hearing of the massacre of the Huguenots. " Lord our 
 God, and Heavenly Father, look down, we beseech Thee, with Thy Fatherly 
 and Merciful Countenance, upon us, Thy people and poor humble servants, 
 and upon all such Christians as are anywhere persecuted and sore afflicted for 
 the true acknowledging of Thee to be our God, and Thy Son Jesus Christ, 
 whom Thou hast sent, to be the Only Saviour of the world. Save them, 
 merciful Lord, who are as sheep appointed to the slaughter, and by hearty 
 prayers do call and cry to Thee for Thy help and defense : hear their cry, 
 Lord, and our prayers for them and for ourselves. Deliver those that be oppressed ; 
 defend those that be in fear of cruelty ; relieve them that be in misery ; and 
 comfort all that be in sorrow and heaviness ; that by thy aid and strength 
 they and we may obtain surety from our enemies, without shedding of Christian 
 and innocent blood. And for that, Lord, Thou hast commanded us to pray for 
 our enemies, we do beseech Thee not only to abate their pride, and to stay the 
 cruelty and fury of such as either of malice or ignorance do persecute them that 
 put their trust in Thee and hate us, but also to mollify their hard hearts, to open 
 their blind eyes, and to enlighten their ignorant minds, that they may see and 
 understand, and truly turn to Thee, and embrace that holy word, and unfeigned ly 
 be converted to Thy Son Jesus Christ, the Only Saviour of the world, and believe 
 and love His Gospel, and so eternally be saved." (Strype's Parker, iv. c. 11). 
 
 We may stake the whole question on the contrast between the Papal Bull, 
 which calls on all people to pray for the destruction of their supposed enemies, and 
 the Protestant prayer for their conversion and salvation. It will not be difficult 
 to perceive which has most of the Spirit of Christ.
 
 NOTE S. 281 
 
 would have been happy for them had they never been born. The 
 truth is, that, in this as in other respects, whatever good the 
 Church of Rome has effected, has been effected by the spirit of 
 Christianity, by the Spirit of God working in the Church, which 
 the system of Popery has not wholly quencht and extinguisht, 
 deplorably as it has hindered that Spirit, and perverted its 
 operations. 
 
 I am not purposing to assert that Protestants generally, or 
 that our own Church, are exempt from the guilt of religious 
 persecution. The spirit, from which even the familiar intercourse 
 with the Saviour could not deliver the sons of Zebedee, can- 
 not be expelled from the heart of man by the clearest intellec- 
 tual conviction of the evils of persecution. The English Church 
 has persecuted, alas ! lamentably, unjustifiably, inexcusably : 
 but this spirit has been evinced more in her conduct to the 
 various Nonconformist sects, than to the Romanists : nor has 
 Nonconformity availed to suppress it. Even now hardly a month 
 passes without some fresh eruption, or at least ebullition of it. 
 But when Dr Newman charges us with the inconsistency that, 
 while we boast of our toleration, we indulge in all modes of 
 persecution, there seems to be some confusion in his view. The 
 chief advocates and wisest upholders of religious liberty amongst 
 us, from the author of the Liberty of Prophesying downward, are 
 in the main a distinct body from those who pamper their own 
 pride and selfwill by persecuting their brethren on account of 
 their religious opinions. The reverence for the liberty of the 
 conscience is of slow growth in any heart, of still slower in a 
 nation ; though doubtless, as it gains in public estimation, many 
 will profess it, who are totally devoid of it. 
 
 Dr Newman however has had the good luck to discover that 
 there is one spot upon earth where a reverence for the liberty of 
 conscience is a native growth, one heart in which it has always 
 been inherent : and it is the very last place, the very last heart, 
 in which one should have lookt for it, at Rome, in the Pope. 
 To the Pope has the glorious privilege been granted of transmitting 
 the sacred principle of toleration from age to age. Nor has he
 
 282 NOTE S. 
 
 ever hid his light under a bushel : that which was whispered 
 into his ear, he has proclaimed from the housetops. Such is the 
 new fashion of ecclesiastical history, which the fathers of the 
 Oratory are to teach us. The Popes are the highpriests of 
 religious liberty ; and Satan is the angel of light. " Doubtless 
 (Dr Newman admits, p. 203), in the long course of eighteen 
 hundred years, there are events which need explanation, or 
 which the world might wish otherwise : but the general tenour 
 and tendency of the traditions of the Papacy have been mercy 
 and humanity. It has ever been less fierce than the nations, and 
 in advance of the age : it has ever moderated, not only the 
 ferocity of barbarians, but the fanaticism of Catholic populations." 
 Thus, for instance, was Cardinal Campeggio " repressive of 
 the persecutor and protective of his victims," when, being sent 
 by Clement VII to the Diet of Augsburg, he represented to the 
 Emperor, that "if there be some persons, which God forbid, 
 who obstinately persevere in this diabolical way, your Majesty 
 may make use of fire and the sword to extirpate this venomous 
 plant by the root." Thus did the Papacy " moderate, not only 
 the ferocity of barbarians, but the fanaticism of Catholic popu- 
 lations," when Pius the Fifth, on sending a body of troops to 
 assist the French Catholics against the Huguenots, gave their 
 commander, Count Santafiore, a special charge "not to take 
 any Huguenot prisoner, but to kill every one immediately who 
 fell into his hands." In a like spirit, it must of course have 
 been to reward Alva for his exceeding lenity in the Netherlands, 
 that Pius sent him a consecrated hat and sword.* And was it 
 
 * Mr Mendham, in his Life of Pius the Fifth (pp. 6569), gives some extracts 
 from his Letters to Charles IX. to Catherine de Medici, and to the Duke of 
 Anjou, written in the first years of the wars against the Huguenots. They shew 
 how exemplarily he followed out "the general tenour and tendency of the traditions 
 of the Papacy toward mercy and humanity," with what gentle wisdom he "mode- 
 rated the fanaticism of Catholic populations." To the King, on occasion of the 
 battle of Jarnac, he writes : *' Quanto benignius tecum nobisciunque egit Dcus, 
 tanto diligentius hujus occasione victoriae enitendum est tibi, ut eorum qui 
 restant hostium reliquias persequaris atque conficias, omnes tanti tamque corroborati 
 mali radices, atque etiam radicuin fibras, funditus evellas. Hoc autem fades, si
 
 NOTE S. 283 
 
 not to inculcate loyalty, and a reverence for the sanctity of 
 oaths, that he absolved the subjects of Queen Elizabeth from 
 their allegiance, and commanded them not to obey her under 
 pain of his anathema ? So true too is it that " the general 
 tenour and tendency of the traditions of the Papacy have been 
 mercy and humanity," that Gregory XIII seized the torch of 
 love which Pius V had clencht in his dying hand, and endea- 
 voured for years to instigate France and Spain to invade England, 
 and afford an occasion for the English Romanists to display 
 their loyalty. Nor did the genius of Sixtus V discover any 
 better mode of manifesting his mercy and humanity, than that 
 which God confounded by the destruction of the Armada. 
 
 nullaram personarum rerumque humanarum respectus te in earn mentem adducere 
 poterit, ut Dei hostibus parcas, qui Deo neque tibi unquam pepercerunt. Non 
 enim aliter Deura placare poteris quam si Dei injurias sceleratissimorum hominum 
 debita poena severissime ulciscaris." He then reminds Charles how Saul forfeited 
 his kingdom by sparing Agag. Again, in another letter soon after, he repeats 
 the same benign exhortations. " Si ea de quibus Deus offenditur insectari 
 atque ulcisci distuleris, certe ad irascendum ejus patientiam provocabis ; qui quo 
 tecum egit benignius, eo debes acrius illius injurias vindicate. Qua in re, nullius 
 preces admittere, nihil cujusquam sanguini et propinquitati concedere, sed om- 
 nibus qui pro scelestissimis hominibus rogare audent, inexorabilem te praebere 
 oportet." To the Queen Mother he writes : " Nullo modo, nullisque de causis 
 hostibus Dei parcendum est : sed severe cum illis agendum, qui neque Deo neque 
 filiis tuis unquam pepercerunt. Neque enim aliter Deus placari potest, nisi ipsius 
 injurias justa ultione vindicaveris. Qua de re eo studiosius cum nyijestate tua 
 agendum esse existimavimus, quod dari operam istic ab aliquibus audimus, ut ex 
 eorum haereticorum qui capti sunt numero quidam liberentur, inultique abeant : 
 quod ne fiat, atque homines sceleratissimi justis afficiantur suppliciis, curare te 
 omni studio atque industria oportet." The Duke of Anjou he admonishes in the 
 same strain. " Nihil in ea re indulgentia peccetur. Nam si, in tot tantisque 
 Dei omnipotentis offensis inultis omittendis, aliquid aut indulgendo, aut con- 
 nivendo vel negligendo peccaretur, periculum esset ne, quemadmodum adversus 
 Saulem, pro simili Amalecitarum justa animadversione ab eo omissa, sic ad- 
 versus Christianissimum Regem, fratrem tuum, teque ipsum etiaxn, eo gravius 
 ira- Dei exardesceret, quo benignius atque clementius ad hanc usque diem 
 cum utrisque vestrum divina sua bonitas egisset." When the Highpriest of 
 Moloch, installed in the Vatican, kept on pouring such bloodthirsty blasphemies 
 into the ears of his credulous worshipers, it is not to be wondered at that the 
 fruit of these exhortations sprang up ere long in the general massacre of the 
 Huguenots : and surely a large share in the guilt of that massacre falls on the 
 pontiff who thus inflamed the perpetrators of it, or at least on the atrocious 
 system which produced and fashioned him.
 
 284* NOTE S. 
 
 I must add a few words with regard to what Dr Newman says 
 about the Inquisition (p. 201), "in proof of the utterly false view 
 which Protestants take of it, and of the Holy See in connexion 
 with it." He quotes Balmez, as asserting " that the Roman Inqui- 
 sition has never been known to pronounce the execution of capi- 
 tal punishment, although the Apostolic See has been occupied, 
 during that time, by Popes of extreme rigour and severity in all 
 that relates to the civil administration." He then tells us that 
 the " Spanish Inquisition, which really was bloody, is confest by 
 great Protestant authorities, such as Ranke and Guizot, to have 
 been a political, not an ecclesiastical institution. The Protestant 
 Ranke distinctly maintains that it was even set up against the 
 Pope and the Church." Now I have not seen the work, of 
 Balmez, and so can only judge of him by Dr Newman's extracts; 
 from which he would appear to have just such a respect for 
 historical truth as one may look for in a champion of the 
 Papacy. The extract does not make it clear what is the period 
 during which he asserts that the Roman Inquisition has never 
 been known to pronounce the execution of capital punishment : 
 but Dr Newman himself observes, that he is " rather surprised 
 that this is stated so unrestrictedly," adding however, that " the 
 fact is substantially as stated, even though there were some 
 exceptions to the rule." 
 
 Dr Newman's quotation from " the Protestant Ranke " seems 
 to have been taken from the Dublin Review, He does not give 
 a reference to the passage ; nor have I lighted upon it : but 
 as the Protestant Ranke truly deserves that honorable name 
 from his unswerving, indefatigable love of truth, I will give 
 some of his statements concerning the Roman Inquisition, to 
 shew the accuracy of that cited from the Romanist Balmez. He 
 speaks on the subject in one of the latter sections of his Second 
 Book. 
 
 Soon after the Conference at Ratisbon, Clement VII one day 
 askt Cardinal Caraffa (who was afterward Pope Paul IV), what 
 was to be done, to check the increase of heresy. Caraffa answered 
 that an energetic Inquisition was the only method. Cardinal
 
 NOTE S. 285 
 
 Burgos concurred with him. The old Dominican Inquisition 
 had long before fallen into decay. The monks had been allowed 
 to choose the inquisitors ; and it happened at times that they 
 held the opinions which were to be supprest. In Spain the 
 original form was abandoned by the appointment of a supreme 
 tribunal for that country. Caraffa and Burgos, both of them 
 old Dominicans, gloomy zealots for pure Catholicism, severe in 
 their own lives, inflexible in their opinions, advised the Pope to 
 erect a supreme tribunal of the Inquisition at Rome, on which 
 all others were to depend; after the model of the Spanish. The 
 Bull was issued in 1542. It appointed six Cardinals to be 
 general Inquisitors in matters of faith within and beyond the 
 Alps. Everybody was to be subject to them. They were to 
 imprison the suspected, to punish the guilty with loss of life 
 and property. CarafFa lost no time in carrying this into effect. 
 He took a house, out of his own means, fitted up the chambers 
 and the prisons with bolts and locks, with blocks, chains, and 
 bonds, and all that terrible furniture. Then he appointed general 
 commissioners for different countries. The first at Rome was 
 Teofilo di Tropea, of whose severity even cardinals, for instance 
 Pole, had to complain. 
 
 Caraffa laid down the following rules : first, " that in matters 
 of faith one must not delay a moment, but proceed immediately 
 on the slightest suspicion of the heretical plague, and use all 
 force and violence to extirpate it : next, to pay no regard to 
 any prince or prelate, however high he might stand : thirdly, 
 to proceed with more severity against those who tried to shelter 
 themselves under the protection of any soverein, and that none 
 should be treated with mildness and fatherly mercy, except such 
 as confest their errour: fourthly, that they must not disgrace 
 themselves by any toleration toward heretics, especially Cal- 
 vinists." Such are the rules laid down by that Church which 
 is "a never-failing fount of humanity, equity, forbearance, and 
 compassion." The Protestant Ranke's remarks do not exactly 
 coincide with this. " Everything here (he says) is severity, 
 uncompromising, absolute severity, until a confession has been
 
 286 NOTE S. 
 
 obtained. Terrible was this, especially at a moment when 
 opinions were not yet fully developt, when many were seeking to 
 reconcile the deeper doctrines of Christianity with the institutions 
 of the existing Church. The weak gave way and submitted : 
 the stronger-minded were driven into embracing the opposite 
 opinions, and tried to withdraw from the reach of the Papal 
 power." 
 
 Ochino left Italy. So did Pietro Martyre, Celio Secundo 
 Curione, Filippo Valentino, and Castelvetri. For persecution 
 and terrour spread throughout Italy. It is scarcely possible, said 
 Antonio dei Pagliarici, to be a Christian, and to die in ones bed. 
 The Academies at Modena and Naples were dissolved. The 
 whole of literature was subjected to the severest inspection. In 
 1543 Caraffa ordered that no book, ancient or modern, on what- 
 ever subject, should be publisht without the permit of the Inqui- 
 sition. By degrees they came to the Indices Librorum Prohibi- 
 torum, of which the earliest in the present form appeared at Rome 
 in 1559. This rule was enforced with incredible strictness. 
 "Thus the stirrings of diverging religious opinions in Italy 
 were forcibly stifled and destroyed. Almost the whole order 
 of Franciscans was compelled to retract. The chief part of the 
 followers of Valdez consented to recant. At Venice a degree of 
 liberty was allowed to strangers, to Germans, who were living 
 there for the sake of trade or of study : the natives on the 
 contrary were compelled to abjure their opinions; their asso- 
 ciations were destroyed. Many fled : in all the towns of Germany 
 and Switzerland we meet with these fugitives. Those who 
 would not yield, and could not escape, were punisht. At Venice 
 they were sent in two boats out of the lagunes into the sea. A 
 plank was laid between the boats ; they who had been condemned 
 were placed on it : at the same moment the boats rowed away 
 from each other : the plank fell into the sea : once more the un- 
 fortunates called on the name of Christ, and sank. At Rome the 
 autos (Za/ewere celebrated before San Maria alia Minerva indue 
 form. Many persons fled from place to place with their wives and 
 children. We can follow them for a while ; then they disappear:
 
 NOTE S. 287 
 
 probably they fell into the nets of their merciless pursuers" 
 (Book, ii. pp. 205-213). Such was the conduct of that Church 
 which "has been a never-failing fount of humanity, equity, 
 forbearance, and compassion." how long shall these impos- 
 tures circulate amongst us? Is the Father of lies about to 
 regain his empire over the world ? These men had committed 
 no crime against the laws : they were arraigned for no moral 
 guilt : they were merely charged with holding opinions at 
 variance with those enjoined by the rulers of the Church : and 
 this was their treatment. Never was there a more complete 
 illustration of the truth, that the tender mercies of the wicked 
 are cruel. 
 
 We may make out from this statement how it came to pass 
 that the executions for heresy at Home have not been numerous. 
 It is true, the Papal Government has not been bloody during the 
 last two centuries. Indeed it has become a prominent feature of 
 the later Italian character, to abhor shedding blood, at least one's 
 own blood, or running the risk of shedding it, whether in poli- 
 tical conflicts, or in moral and religious : although that this is 
 no sign of any improvement in humanity, is proved by the fre- 
 quency of assassinations. Moreover the policy of the Conclave, 
 and that of the forein Governments that have exercised influence 
 in it, has generally tended to the election of a mild Pope, and 
 has shrunk from men of energy and vehemence. Nor has there 
 been provocation to violent measures. A people that recoils 
 from hazarding its life in battle, will not be over-ready to hazard 
 it at the stake. Nay, why should it 1 how could it have such a 
 spirit, when Truth was not a Divine reality, to be recognised by 
 the Reason, and enshrined in the Conscience, but was fabricated 
 by the word of a mere man. Thus Galileo's recantation became 
 a national act. What mattered it what one said 1 when one 
 might shrug up one's shoulders, and mutter aside, E pur si 
 muove. But when the main stem of a man's mind has been cut 
 off, it will not grow again. Hence the moral and spiritual life 
 of the nation was stunted and dwarft from the cradle upward; 
 and when this is so, the intellectual life must partake in the
 
 288 NOTE S. 
 
 degradation. Above all has this been the case at Rome, as was 
 set before us two years ago in the deeply interesting essay on 
 Leopardi in the Quarterly Review, ascribed with evident justice 
 to the accomplisht translator of Farini. Hereby pettiness has 
 become the characteristic of the countrymen of Michael Angelo 
 and Dante. This is one of the precious boons conferred on 
 Italy by the Papacy. Freedom of thought has been crusht, 
 though with no diminution of licentiousness. False as the as- 
 sertion is, that " the Popes, armed with a tribunal of intolerance, 
 have not spilt a drop of blood," whatever semblance of truth 
 there is in it, arises from their having drained all the blood from 
 the hearts and souls of the Roman people, whose authors now 
 write little beyond dissertations, sometimes ingenious ones, on 
 petty archeological questions, even on such matters scarcely 
 venturing beyond details, or folio volumes on the history of 
 some church. Whatever might bring an author into the clutches 
 of the Inquisition is carefully eschewed. How the effects of this 
 jealousy cramp every branch of knowledge, appears from what 
 the editor of Leopardi says, " that in Italy it would be almost 
 hopeless to find a printer for a Greek book, and quite impossible 
 to find five readers for it." 
 
 That the assertion of Balmez is untrue, unless it be limited 
 very narrowly, would be proved by the history of Giordano 
 Bruno, who, if his mighty intellect had not been driven awry 
 by growing up under the blighting shadow of Popery, might 
 have been one of the greatest of philosophers, and who was burnt 
 at Rome in the year 1600, when his murder was celebrated with 
 frantic yells of exultation by the genuine Papist Scioppius. But 
 I will add a few more facts taken out of Ranke. When Caraffa 
 became Pope Paul the Fourth, he was naturally zealous in 
 supporting the Inquisition. He insisted on its being conducted 
 with the utmost severity. He subjected new offenses to it : he 
 gave it the cruel right of using the torture for the sake of dis- 
 covering complices: cardinals, such as Morone and Foscarari, 
 who had previously been employed in examining the contents 
 of important books, he threw into prison, because he had
 
 NOTE S. 289 
 
 conceived doubts of their orthodoxy. He imprisoned, excommu- 
 nicated, and held autos da ft. The people were so incenst by 
 his severity, that, on his death, they pillaged the buildings of 
 the Inquisitiou, and then set fire to them. 
 
 Pius the Fifth, who had himself been a zealous inquisitor, 
 was not content with making the Inquisition punish recent 
 offenses : he ordered that they should enquire into those com- 
 mitted ten or twenty years before. Carnesecchi was given up 
 to him by the Duke of Florence, thrown into the dungeon of the 
 Inquisition, and died at the stake. Guido Zanetti was given up 
 to him by the Venetians. Carranza, Archbishop of Toledo, the 
 first ecclesiastic in Spain, who had been a member of the Council 
 of Trent, and who was Pole's chief assistant in establishing 
 Catholicism in England under Queen Mary, could not escape the 
 Inquisition. " I have never had any other view," he said, " than 
 to fight against heresy. God has helpt me in this matter. I 
 myself have converted many heretics. I have had the bodies of 
 some dug up and burnt. Catholics and Protestants have called 
 me the chief defender of the faith." But this thoroughly Catholic 
 declaration did not avail him against the Inquisition. Sixteen 
 articles were found in his works, in which he seemed to approach 
 to the opinions of the Protestants, especially in regard to justi- 
 fication. After he had been imprisoned a long time in Spain, 
 he was brought to Rome and condemned.* 
 
 It is true, the Roman Inquisition never attained to the un- 
 utterable atrocities of the Spanish. Dr Newman, following Balmez 
 and other Roman apologists, pleads that the guilt of the latter 
 falls solely on the civil Government, and not on the Popes, who at 
 times tried to check its violence. Yet assuredly the acts of the 
 Spanish Inquisition were those of the Spanish Church : and 
 though a Pope of a milder disposition may now and then have 
 
 * A fuller account of the crimes of the Inquisition at Rome and throughout 
 Italy may be found in M'Crie's History of the Progress and Suppression of Hie 
 Reformation in Italy, especially in the fifth Chapter ; where we see that, if the 
 Inquisition shed little blood at Rome in later years, it was because the spirit 
 of the Reformation had been extinguish! by the destruction or expulsion of all 
 who held opinions favorable to it. 
 
 U
 
 290 NOTE S. 
 
 been shock t by its enormous cruelties, the Papal system, the 
 system of the Romish Church, at all events, is justly answerable 
 for them. This argument is well put by Sou they in his Letters 
 to Butler ; and as Southey's veracity and accuracy are equal to 
 his immense learning, which on matters concerning the Spanish 
 Peninsula is almost unrivaled, I will quote a few sentences from 
 that work on the subject. 
 
 "There is proof (he says, p. 418) that the Popes themselves, 
 with few exceptions, thought this mode of dealing with the Jews 
 unnecessary ; for they did not pursue the same course in their 
 own dominions. There is evidence even that one of them thought 
 it impolitic, at least, if not inhuman. But they never interposed 
 to prevent it. We know from the most moderate calculations* 
 founded upon authentic papers and sure data, that in Spain alone, 
 from the year 1481 to 1808, more than 30,000 persons had been 
 burnt by this tribunal, more than 17,000 burnt in effigy, more 
 than 290,000 condemned to punishments short of death, but 
 which involved utter ruin, and entailed perpetual infamy upon their 
 families. The Inquisition in Portugal was equally alert in the 
 same Catholic pursuit. In the latter kingdom there were kings 
 who would gladly have put a stop to these horrors, one especially, 
 Joam IV. But the Clergy and the friars were too powerful. 
 There was a Jesuit living at that same time, who possest and 
 deserved the friendship of that king, a man whose single virtues 
 might almost redeem his order, whose single genius might alone 
 ennoble his country, if it had no other boast : it is of Vieyra 
 that I am speaking ; and for exerting himself in behalf of the 
 New Christians, he was brought under the power of the Inquisi- 
 tion himself. Some fantastic notions connected with Sebastianism 
 afforded a pretext ; but this was the cause. The Popes might at 
 any time have stopt this wickedness. At any time they might 
 have put an end to the enormous evil, the unutterable cruelties, 
 the incalculable sum of human sufferings, sufferings whereof the 
 rack and the stake are the least part, which the Holy Office was 
 producing. If any misunderstanding or dispute arose concerning 
 the asserted privileges of the Papacy, the Popes were ready to
 
 NOTE S. 291 
 
 exert their power without delay. But when humanity was thus 
 outraged, when religion was thus blasphemed and injured, when 
 Christianity was thus perverted and made an object of hatred and 
 horrour, they were silent : not a whisper of disapprobation was 
 heard from the Vatican, which was wont to express its displeasure 
 in thunder ; not a breath came from the brazen Bulls, which had 
 breathed fire against the Waldenses, the Lollards, and the Protes- 
 tants. The Popes acquiesced in these things ; they suffered them 
 to be done, to be approved, to be applauded, as the triumphs 
 of the Holy Roman Catholic and Apostolic faith ; they allowed 
 the pictures of the victims in their san benitos, which had been 
 displayed as part of the pageantry while those victims were in the 
 flames, to be suspendedas ornaments and trophies in the Churches. 
 Year after year, and generation after generation, the Inquisition 
 immured its victims in solitary dungeons, stretcht them on the 
 rack, consumed them at the stake for a holiday spectacle, for 
 horrible as it may seem, an auto-da-fe was considered as a fes- 
 tival, and scattered their ashes upon the winds and waters. The 
 Popes could have prevented these things ; but they permitted 
 them : a large portion of the guilt therefore is upon their heads ; 
 and the infamy is upon that Church, that Roman Catholic 
 Church, whose principles made persecution a duty, that Roman 
 Catholic Church, which, till this hour, has neither retracted the 
 principle, nor exprest its contrition for the practice." * 
 
 After reading such accounts as these, the correctness of which 
 is indisputable, if we turn to De Maistre's Letters on the Inqui- 
 sition, we can hardly help thinking that he must be mocking us, 
 when he professes (p. 67), " pour nous faire connoitre les precedes 
 de 1'Inquisition," to cite a couple of stories from Townsend's Travels 
 in Spain, as instances of these proceedings. One of them is of a 
 
 * This was publisht in 1826. Southey had already written an exceedingly 
 interesting account of the Spanish and Portuguese Inquisition fifteen years before 
 in the twelfth number of tlie Quarterly Review. It is to be hoped that we may 
 soon have a collection, or at least a copious selection, of Southey's contributions 
 to our Periodical Literature. It would contain a most valuable mass of solid, 
 well-digested information, in a style which gives grace to whatever it touches, 
 and in a spirit which delights in bringing out every form of human virtue. 
 
 u 2
 
 292 NOTE S. 
 
 beggar, who for administering philtres was condemned to be led 
 through the streets of Madrid on an ass, and to be flogged, the 
 latter part of which punishment was remitted. This is gravely 
 represented as a sample of the proceedings of the Inquisition. Can 
 De Maistre then have been the one man of education in Europe 
 ignorant of the truth in this matter 1 or did he too surrender his 
 conscience to the maxim that any amount of misrepresentation is 
 justifiable to serve the interests of the Church 1 
 
 Nor is the rest of these Letters of greater value. He does not 
 scruple to say (p. 6) : " L'Inquisition est, de sa nature, bonne, 
 douce, et conservatrice : c'est le caracteTe universel et ineffasable 
 de toute institution ecclesiastique. Vous le voyez a Rome; et 
 vous le verrez partout ou 1'Eglise commandera. Mais si la puis- 
 sance civile, adoptant cette institution, juge a propos, pour sa 
 propre surete", de la rendre plus severe, 1'Eglise n'en re"pond plus." 
 Does our apologist really mean that a tribunal may pronounce a 
 sentence, which in 30,000 cases is followed by the punishment of 
 death, and yet may plead that it has not pronounced the sentence 
 of death ] that it has only given over the culprit to the secular 
 arm ? Surely the hypocrisy of such a pretense would render 
 the act still more hateful. What could be baser, more disgrace- 
 ful to the Church, than such a subserviency to the cruelty of the 
 secular government ? This however is one of the pervading evils 
 of Popery, that it renders persons ready to shift their own indi- 
 vidual responsibility on their neighbours, so that they care not 
 what they spend, if others are to be the paymasters. 
 
 No less contrary to all sound principle is De Maistre's decla- 
 ration (p. 48), that it does not matter what a law is, provided it 
 be executed without respect of persons, that a soverein has 
 a right to impose any punishment he pleases, while nobody is 
 entitled to ask him why he does so, and that, if death be in- 
 flicted on any one for opposing the religion of a country, " per- 
 sonne ne doit plaindre le coupable qui aura me'rite ces peines; et 
 lui-me'me n'a pas droit de se plaindre : car il y avoit pour lui 
 un moyen bien simple de les eviter, celui de se taire." Such 
 maxims would justify the most atrocious tyranny, the extreme
 
 NOTE S. 293 
 
 of persecution. We know a man who felt that it was woe to him 
 if he did not preach the Gospel. Many others have had a like 
 feeling. They cannot avail themselves of De Maistre's shift to 
 escape death, " celui de se taire :" nor would he himself have done 
 so : nor did he, when he felt that necessity in a time of danger. 
 They must speak, as he himself did. If in speaking they com- 
 mit a civil wrong, they may of course be punisht. But a positive 
 law is not necessarily just : it is contrary to the principles of 
 justice, if it renders that which is meritorious, or merely innocent 
 in itself, illegal by a positive enactment. The principles here 
 advocated by De Maistre would have extinguisht Christianity in 
 its cradle. Herod would have given thanks for them. There 
 seems also to be a confusion in what he says about the irre- 
 sponsibility of the supreme power. Its subjects cannot call it to 
 account, except by a revolutionary earthquake. Nor is there 
 any tribunal at present, by which Christendom can take cogni- 
 sance of crimes committed by sovereins against the primary laws 
 of social morality. But surely the moral reason of mankind, and 
 history are justified in condemning them; and there is no wisdom 
 in desiring to suppress or check these judicial voices. 
 
 The most extraordinary argument however in apology for the 
 Inquisition is that exprest in these words (p. 89) : " Voyez la 
 guerre de trente ans allumee par les argumens de Luther, les 
 exces inouis des Anabaptistes et des paysans, les guerres civiles de 
 France, d'Angleterre, et de Flandres, le massacre de la St Bar- 
 thelemy, le massacre de Merindal, le massacre des Cevennes, 
 1'assassinat de Marie Stuart, de Henri III, de Henri IV, de 
 Charles I, du prince d'Orange, etc. etc. Un vaisseau flotteroit 
 sur le sang que vos novateurs ont fait repandre : 1'Inquisition 
 n'auroit verse que le leur." One is puzzled to make out whether 
 this passage savours most of insanity or of imbecillity. Cain 
 might as reasonably have protested that Abel, by offering up a 
 more acceptable sacrifice than his, was the guilty cause of his own 
 murder. The Reformers caused the Thirty Years war ! the mas- 
 sacre of the Cevennes ! the murder of Henry IV ! Even so He 
 who came to reconcile man to God, declared of Himself that He
 
 294 NOTE S. 
 
 came not to bring peace, but a sword. The world will not hear 
 truth, closes its ears and heart against truth, takes up fire and 
 sword against it. So it did in the first ages of Christianity : so it 
 did at the Reformation : and then, as the Prince of this world is 
 also the father of lies, he exclaims that the preachers of truth are 
 the disturbers of the peace of the world, the cause of all the 
 bloodshed, of all the cruelty, of all the crimes, which the world 
 has wrought to stifle and cast out the truth. Yet may we 
 not ask, what would have been the state of Europe, if there had 
 been no Reformation, or if the Papacy had been able to suppress 
 it ? Would there have been no wars then ? Were there no wars 
 anterior to the Reformation, no crimes, no ambition, no lust, no 
 cruelty ? Surely too, when we compare the mass of the crimes 
 committed, of the slaughter perpetrated, by the opponents and 
 the supporters of the Reformation, justice requires us to make 
 the latter party answerable only for their own share, for what they 
 themselves did : and how small a portion does this embrace of the 
 atrocities enumerated by De Maistre ! Hence we are fully war- 
 ranted in saying that the main part of these crimes arose, not 
 from the Reformation, but from the obstinacy, the wilfulness, the 
 recklessness of Popery in repudiating and trying to hinder the 
 Reformation, by fair means and by foul. The contrary notion is 
 one of the forms of that monstrous proposition, that the virtues 
 of the good are the cause of the sins of the wicked ; which is the 
 intermediate step to that terrible summit of blasphemy, that God 
 is the Author of evil. 
 
 Yet Dr Newman does not shrink from a proposition which is 
 very nearly akin to this absurdity of De Maistre's. Not content 
 with quoting the passage where Balmez says, " The Popes, armed 
 with a tribunal of intolerance, have not spilt a drop of blood ; 
 Protestants and philosophers have shed torrents" (p. 201), he 
 winds up his Lecture (p. 213) by repeating and appropriating the 
 same words with a slight correction : " It is true, that the Popes 
 have not preach t, like the Protestants, universal toleration; but the 
 facts shew the difference between the Protestants and the Popes. 
 The Popes, armed with a tribunal of intolerance, have scarce
 
 NOTE S. 295 
 
 spilt a drop of blood ; Protestants and philosophers have shed it 
 in torrents." This closing claptrap contains a double falsehood. 
 The attempt to whitewash the Popes is as futile as that to white- 
 wash an Ethiop. On the other hand the combination of Protes- 
 tants and Philosophers in this same category is evidently meant 
 to insinuate that there is a connexion between them of such a 
 kind as to make Protestantism answerable for the torrents of 
 bloodshed here imputed to Philosophy. Such an insinuation in 
 the mouth of a Spaniard, whose acquaintance with modern lite- 
 rature may perhaps be limited by the national boundary, with 
 the exception of that refuse of French literature, which, we 
 learn from Blanco White and others, has made its way through 
 the cordon sanitaire of the Inquisition, may in some degree be 
 excusable. But in an Englishman, familiar with all that Oxford 
 could teach in history and philosophy during the first half of the 
 nineteenth century, this assertion implies that the author is deter- 
 mined to say whatever he chooses, in despite of facts and of reason. 
 He, at all events, must know that the blood said to have been 
 shed by Philosophy, was not shed in Protestant lands, but in 
 lands from which Protestantism had been expelled by a series of 
 massacres and other acts of cruel oppression, in generation after 
 generation. The torrents of blood shed under the garb of 
 Religion were not shed by Protestants, but by Papists, with 
 the approbation, with the command, with the blasphemous 
 blessing of the Popes. Whatever sins Philosophy may have 
 been guilty of in Protestant countries, bloodshed is not one of 
 them. But even Philosophy, when nurtured in the lair of the 
 tiger, among those who deemed it lawful and holy to shed the 
 blood of heretics, and to enforce truth by fire and the sword, 
 caught the taint, and learnt to adopt the same course. Here too 
 let me again ask what would have been the condition of Europe, if 
 the Reformation had not burst the leprous crust which Popery 
 had cast over it, had not roused it out of the slough in which it was 
 sinking 1 It would have gone on weltering in all manner of evil, 
 rottenness and corruption within, hypocrisy and gaudy ceremonies 
 without, until it had become as Sodom and like to Gomorrah.
 
 Therefore, even if torrents of blood were the necessary price of the 
 Reformation, even at that price it would not have been dearly 
 purchast. Our bodily life is not to be secured at the cost of our 
 moral and spiritual life, but to be given for it readily and cheer- 
 fully, if needful ; as is declared in the noble saying, that the 
 blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church. 
 
 With regard however to the main question discust in this 
 Note, the comparison between Popery and Protestantism on the 
 score of persecution, 1 know no arguments, among those brought 
 forward by the modern champions of Rome, that should prevent 
 our repeating what Southey exprest so grandly (p. 423), when 
 Butler "adjured him as a Christian and a gentleman to say on 
 which side the balance of religious persecution lies, the Roman 
 Catholic or the Protestant : Put the Inquisition in the scale ; 
 and nothing can be found to counterpoise it, unless Hell be 
 pluckt up by the roots." 
 
 NOTE Sa : p. 37. 1. 25. 
 
 I cannot enter into any general discussion about the Jesuits : 
 but there is a passage in the fifth of Dr Newman's Lectures at 
 Birmingham, on which I wish to make a couple of remarks. In 
 speaking about the Protestant inconsistencies, he says (p. 173) : 
 " When James II went out, and William came in, there were 
 persons who refused to swear fidelity to William, because they 
 had already sworn fidelity to James : and who was to dispense 
 them from their oath ? Yet these scrupulous men were the few : 
 the many virtually decided that the oath had been conditional, 
 depending on their old king's good behaviour, though there was 
 nothing to shew it in the words in which it ran, and that 
 accordingly they had no need to keep it any longer than they 
 liked. And so, in a similar way, should a Catholic priest, who 
 has embraced the Protestant persuasion, come over to this 
 country and marry a wife, who among his new co-religionists 
 would dream of being shockfc at it? Every one would think it
 
 NOTE sa. 297 
 
 both natural and becoming, and reasonable too, as a protect 
 against Romish superstition : yet the man has taken a vow 
 and the man has broken it. but he had no business to 
 make such a vow ! he did it in ignorance ; it was antichris- 
 tian ; it was unlawful. There are then, it seems, after all, such 
 things as unlawful oaths ; and unlawful oaths are not to be 
 kept ; and there are cases which require a dispensation : yet 
 let a Catholic say this, and he says nothing more, rather he 
 says much less than the Protestant ; for he strictly defines the 
 limits of what is lawful and what is unlawful ; he takes a 
 scientific view of the matter, and forbids the man to be judge 
 in his own case : let a Catholic, I say, assert what the Protes- 
 tant practises; he has furnisht matter for half a dozen platform 
 speeches, and a whole set of Reformation tracts." 
 
 This remark seems designed to point to the grounds of an 
 apology for the Jesuit casuistry. But, not to speak of the 
 misrepresentation involved in the words that " they had no need 
 to keep it any longer than they liked," the oath of allegiance 
 taken by a subject implies a reciprocal obligation on the part of 
 the soverein, that he will observe his Coronation oath, and govern 
 according to the laws and constitution of the realm. Thus in the 
 marriage vow no express exception is made ; yet adultery on 
 either side is rightly held to absolve the other party from the 
 vow. In this case, it being one of frequent occurrence, rules 
 may be laid down to regulate the proceedings ; and a court of 
 law may pronounce accordingly. But in the contract between 
 the soverein and his subjects there is no arbiter. This is one of 
 the cases in which the reason and conscience of the nation must 
 pronounce for themselves, in which the vox populi must in a 
 manner claim the authority of the vox Dei, even though it may 
 in fact be more like a vox diaboli. In the middle ages the Pope 
 assumed the right of acting as arbitrator in such cases : but then 
 the old question recurred, Quis custodiet ipsos Custodes ? The 
 arbiter, it was found, himself needed a higher controll, could 
 not resist the temptations held out by such a paramount, irre- 
 sponsible power, and was a still less apt expounder of the voice
 
 298 NOTE sa. 
 
 of God than the vox populi. Hence, however unsafe it may be 
 for men to be judges in their own affairs, it is at all events far 
 better than to have one universal judge seated a thousand miles 
 off, and unable to take cognisance of the merits of the case. 
 What acts shall constitute a breach of the soverein's fealty and 
 allegiance, it is difficult to determine generally. We have seen 
 several glaring instances of such acts in the last few years, as 
 might rightfully be deemed to have absolved the subjects from 
 their allegiance and fealty : but what the issue may be, God 
 alone can determine : and we may be sure that He will determine 
 far more wisely and more righteously than the Pope ; whom we 
 have seen, prodigal of his approbation of treason, when enacted 
 by the possessor of authority. 
 
 Now the Jesuit casuistry, it is well known, has undertaken 
 to lay down rules for all similar exceptional cases, the essential 
 peculiarity of which is, that they do not recognise any rule, 
 that they spring from some overpowering necessity, that they are 
 cast up by some earthquake of the heart or the conscience. 
 That there is a necessity which supersedes ordinary law, our 
 Lord Himself has taught us, when He appeals to the example 
 of David's eating the shewbread. But if David had set out 
 with the determination of supplying the wants of his followers 
 in this manner, the necessity would have been factitious, and 
 would have been no justification of his conduct. In like 
 manner we may argue how far Brutus was justified in putting 
 Cesar to death. But the moral guilt or innocence of the act 
 depends upon a number of imponderable circumstances, wholly 
 personal and peculiar; and he who would set up to copy 
 Brutus, would be a shallow and odious coxcomb. Indeed, in 
 almost every man's life, there occur crises when he is called to 
 dive into the innermost depths of his being, and to look beneath 
 the moral law, into the central principles which on ordinary 
 occasions it covers and conceals. The only safe guidance we 
 can give to persons with regard to such crises, is by enlighten- 
 ing them on the principles of morality, by instilling that love 
 on which the law depends, not by laying down rules ; which is
 
 NOTE sa. 299 
 
 as vain as trying to muzzle a thunderbolt, or to bind an 
 earthquake with chains. 
 
 Pascal has exposed the absurdity and immorality of many of 
 these moral paradoxes : but I will not go back to his Letters. 
 The reader may find a sufficient number of instances in Mr 
 Connelly's recent Letter to Lord Shrewsbury; where, among 
 other things of the same kind, this horrible proposition is 
 quoted (p. 15) : " If a wife knows that in the night she is to be 
 killed by her husband, if she cannot escape, she may anti- 
 cipate him." What a wife, what a Christian wife would do in 
 such a case, what she would think herself justified in doing, 
 none can pronounce for her. In the horrour of the moment, 
 if attackt unawares, she might repell the attack by like violence, 
 and her doing so might be forgiven. But if she did so of pre- 
 meditation, she would be without excuse. It was a far deeper 
 wisdom, however imperfect, that led the dying Desdemona to lie 
 for the sake of saving her murderer. Surely the only resistance 
 which a Christian wife could oppose in such a case, would be 
 that of Christian love. 
 
 Having had occasion to cite Mr Connelly's most well-timed 
 letter, I cannot refrain from expressing my thankfulness that one 
 of our Romish renegades has been enabled to see through the 
 impostures by which he was surrounded, and that, after fifteen 
 years spent amidst them, under the most favorable circumstances 
 for seeing them in no unfair light, he should have publisht this 
 exposure as a warning to those who may be fascinated by the 
 same delusions. In regard to what was said in Note Q about 
 the purity of the present Romish Clergy, he gives a shocking 
 testimony as to the licentiousness caused by compulsory celi- 
 bacy (p. 21). " I have read to the pure and simple-minded Cardi- 
 nal Prefect of the Propaganda a narrative, written to a pious lay 
 friend by a respected Roman priest, of such enormities of lust 
 in his fellow priests around him, that the reading of them 
 took away my breath, to be answered, Caro mio, I know it, 
 I know it all, and more and worse than all ; but nothing can be 
 done. I have seen priests of mean abilities, of coarse natures,
 
 300 NOTE sb. 
 
 and gross breeding, practise upon pure and highly gifted 
 women of the upper ranks, married and unmarried, the teach- 
 ings of their treacherous and impure casuistry, with a success 
 that seemed more than human. I have seen these priests im- 
 pose their pretendedly divine authority, and sustain it by mock 
 miracles, for ends that were simply devilish. I have had poured 
 into my ears, what can never be uttered, and what ought not 
 to be believed, but was only too plainly true. And I have 
 seen that all that is most deplorable is not an accident, but a 
 result, and an inevitable result, and a confessedly inevitable re- 
 sult of the working of the practical system of the Church of 
 Rome with all its stupendous machinery of mischief." 
 
 The following assertion (in p. 24) shews that the abominable 
 practice spoken of above (in p. 259), as having prevailed exten- 
 sively in Europe in the 15th and 16th centuries, still prevails 
 in America. " Were it not for the Protestant monarchy of 
 England, ostentatious concubinage would be in Europe, as it 
 is in Mexico and parts of South America, a grateful and 
 respected promise of moderation in the Clergy." 
 
 NOTE Sb. : p. 37. 1. 27. 
 
 Chillingworth (c. ii. . 1) has given an enumeration of the 
 evils of the Romish system, of its an ti- scriptural tenets, which 
 may stand here as a body of reserve. "The Holy Scriptures 
 being made, in effect, not your directors and judges (no further 
 than you please), but your servants and instruments, always 
 prest and in readiness to advance your designs, and disabled 
 wholly with minds so qualified to prejudice or impeach them, 
 it is safe for you to put a crown on their head, and a reed 
 in their hands, and to bow before them, and cry Hail King 
 of the Jews ! to pretend a great deal of esteem and respect 
 and reverence to them. But to little purpose is verbal reve- 
 rence without entire submission and sincere obedience ; and 
 as our Saviour said of some, so the Scripture could it speak,
 
 NOTE T. 301 
 
 I believe, would say to you, Why call ye me Lord, Lord, 
 and do not that which I command you ? Cast away the vain 
 and arrogant pretense of Infallibility, which makes your 
 errours incurable. Leave picturing God, and worshiping Him 
 by pictures. Teach not for doctrine the commandments of 
 men. Debar not the Laity of the testament of Christ's blood. 
 Let your public prayers and psalms and hymns be in such 
 language as is for the edification of the assistants. Take not 
 from the Clergy that liberty of marriage which Christ hath left 
 them. Do not impose upon men that humility of worshiping 
 angels which St Paul condemns. Teach no more proper sacri- 
 fices of Christ but one. Acknowledge them that die in Christ to 
 be blessed, and to rest from their labours. Acknowledge the sacra- 
 ment after consecration to be Bread and Wine, as well as Christ's 
 Body and Blood. Acknowledge the gift of continency without 
 marriage not to be given to all. Let not the weapons of your 
 warfare be carnal, such as are massacres, treasons, persecutions, 
 and, in a word, all means either violent or fraudulent. These, 
 and other things which the Scripture commands you, do; and 
 then we shall willingly give you such testimony as you de- 
 serve: but till you do so, to talk of estimation, respect, and 
 reverence to the Scripture, is nothing else but talk." 
 
 NOTE T : p. 43. 
 
 I cannot forbear mentioning the great pleasure it gave me to 
 find that the view which, in my Letter on the occasion, I ven- 
 tured to express as to the operation of the Judgement given by 
 the Committee of Council, was confirmed in all its parts by one 
 of the most valuable pamphlets which that controversy elicited, 
 the Letter by a Layman to the Bishop of Exeter. The writer of 
 that Letter is well known to be one of the highest authorities on 
 the Judicial Bench ; and his theological opinions are shewn by it 
 to be very remote from Mr Gorham's on the point in dispute : 
 but his intellect is far too clear, and his knowledge of law too
 
 302 NOTE U. 
 
 masterly, for him to let himself be carried away by the delusions 
 which blinded so many persons otherwise clearsighted : and this 
 Letter of itself is enough to prove of what inestimable importance 
 it is that our ecclesiastical Court of Appeal should contain a large 
 admixture of legal minds. In opposition to all the persons, who, 
 with the Bishop of Exeter at their head, raised such an outcry 
 about the evils brought on our Church by that Judgement, he 
 shews, with the utmost clearness, in a dozen pages, first that the 
 decision, standing alone, scarcely affects the law of the Church, 
 inasmuch as it might be overruled tomorrow by another decision 
 of the same Court, or set aside even by an inferior Court, and 
 secondly, that the decision itself, whatever its authority may be, 
 goes no further than to cover that form of opinion which the 
 Court has given as a summary of Mr Gorham's doctrine; which 
 summary contains nothing incompatible with the teaching of 
 our Church. To the argument, as here stated, I see not how 
 any intelligent person can refuse his assent ; wherefore all the 
 clamour about our Church as having forfeited her Catholicity, 
 and about the violation of an Article of the Nicene Creed, vanishes 
 into smoke. It is grievous to think how many wellmeaning men 
 were carried away by these mere blunders, some even into 
 quitting our Church, and throwing themselves into the arms of 
 the Roman deceiver. 
 
 NoxEU: p. 46. 
 
 When we look at our Lord's thrice-repeated charge to St 
 Peter, to feed His lambs and His sheep, in connexion with the 
 question which precedes it, and with what we know of Peter's 
 previous conduct, we can hardly fail to perceive that its imme- 
 diate purpose is personal, that the question refers to Peter's over- 
 forward profession, that its triple repetition corresponds to his 
 triple denial, and that by the triple charge he is at once rein- 
 stated in his ministry, and admonisht how he is to manifest his 
 love for his Master, by a diligent fulfilment of his pastoral office.
 
 NOTE U. 303 
 
 In this last sense the charge bears in like manner on all ministers 
 of the Gospel. But this triple charge, while its real meaning has 
 been less attended to, has been interpreted so as to serve very 
 different purposes. By the Church of Rome, as we have seen 
 in Note J, it has been turned into a main prop of the Papal 
 authority, and even of the claim to infallibility : and in our own 
 Church also there are writers who strain this charge far beyond 
 what the words convey. Thus, for instance, Mr Gladstone, in 
 his Letter on the Royal Supremacy, after a very able, candid, 
 and elaborate argument in defense of the view of the Supremacy 
 taken by our Church at the Reformation, when he turns away 
 from this general historical argument to its immediate occasion, 
 the recent Judgement of the Court of Appeal, alledges this charge 
 to Peter, as though it settled the question against the validity of 
 the tribunal. It cannot be admitted, he says (p. 60), " that, if the 
 justification of the Reformers is to rest on such grounds as the 
 foregoing, their reputation can owe thanks to those who would 
 now persuade the Church to acquiescein a disgraceful servitude, 
 and to surrender to the organs of the secular power the solemn 
 charge which she has received from Christ, to feed His sheep 
 and His lambs : for the real feeder of those sheep and those 
 lambs is the Power that determines the doctrine with which 
 they shall be fed." 
 
 Now surely it is a strange inference to draw from these three 
 simple words, so beautifully fitted to convey consolation and com- 
 fort to the penitent Peter, that they were also designed to lay 
 down with what body of men it would rest to determine the doc- 
 trine of the Church to the end of time. In one respect the 
 Church of Rome might plead that her interpretation has more of 
 speciousness, in that the words are evidently spoken to Peter in- 
 dividually, not to the body of the Apostles. So far as Peter was 
 the representative of every minister of the Gospel, every minister 
 may rightfully take them to himself : but there is nothing in 
 them indicating with what body, what tribunal, it should rest in 
 after ages to determine questions of doctrine Doubtless the 
 Church is to determine her own doctrine : but who shall form the
 
 304 NOTE V. 
 
 judicial tribunal must be settled by totally different considera- 
 tions; nor does our Lord's charge to Peter throw any sort of 
 light on the question. 
 
 NOTE V : p. 47. 
 
 In the feverish state of many minds at the time, the rejection 
 of the Bishop of London's Bill excited a good deal of irrita- 
 tion; and that I might do what in me lay toward abating it, I 
 publisht my Few Words on the subject. It is probable that 
 some, who at the moment were pained by the decision of the 
 House of Lords, will have recognised ere this that it was just 
 and wise. The Bishop of Salisbury, in his last Charge, after 
 stating that he had " concurred with the great majority of the 
 Bishops in supporting the Bill," adds, with his usual candour : 
 " I am free to confess that some of the objections urged against 
 that Bill were very grave : and I should myself be disposed to 
 look rather to some other solution of the question, than to the 
 re-introduction of a precisely similar measure in a future Session 
 of Parliament." 
 
 The Session of 1852, it is evident, will pass away without any 
 enactment on this point. But I cannot refrain from expressing 
 my regret, that from the notice which the Bishop of London has 
 just given, on the 10th of May, of his intention to bring in a 
 Bill next year, it would appear, according to the report in the 
 newspapers, that he still adheres to his plan of referring theolo- 
 gical points to the Bench of Bishops, or to the Upper House of 
 Convocation, with the proviso however that " the opinion of the 
 Bishops is not to be binding on the Court, but merely to be com- 
 municated to them in the way of advice." It is to be hoped that 
 this statement may be incorrect, or at all events that the scheme 
 may undergo further alterations before it is brought forward. For 
 it does not escape from the objection, that we shall thus be liable 
 to have frequent definitions of doctrine emanating from a mere 
 casual majority of the Episcopal Bench, which, without having
 
 NOTE W. 305 
 
 any real authority, will be assumed to have it by those who 
 agree with them. Besides it seems derogatory to the dignity of the 
 Bench, that a formal opinion pronounced by it on a theological 
 question is to be treated by a body of lawyers as a mere piece of 
 advice, which they may adopt or reject as they please. Surely this is 
 not the way to allay the jealousies entertained by so many about 
 having questions of doctrine decided by a lay tribunal. 
 
 NOTE W : p. 50. 
 
 Even those who are most strenuous in asserting the true 
 idea of Baptism, and of the Church, as comprehending all its 
 baptized members, are often misled by the unconscious influence 
 of the delusion, which restricts the Church to the Clergy. This 
 delusion seems to have been operating secretly in Mr Gladstone's 
 mind, when he wrote the passage cited in Note U, complaining 
 of the Church as acquiescing in a disgraceful servitude, if it sur- 
 rendered to the organs of the secular power the solemn charge it 
 had received from Christ. For the secular power also in a 
 Christian nation is a portion of the Church, no less than the 
 ecclesiastical : and any tribunal lawfully appointed by the Go- 
 vernment of a state, with the concurrence of the secular power 
 and of the ecclesiastical, according to the existing forms of the 
 constitution, would be a Church-tribunal, even if it did not 
 comprise a single ecclesiastic among its members. 
 
 In like manner Archdeacon Wilberforce, in his History of 
 Erastianism, after having stated that a certain degree of spiritual 
 power had been ascribed ever since the Reformation to Christian 
 kings, remarks (p. 47) : " This would seem to imply that a 
 Christian king was not, strictly speaking, a layman ; but that his 
 divine commission to rule transferred him in some way from the 
 kingdom of nature to the kingdom of grace." One should have 
 thought that Archdeacon Wilberforce would have been one of 
 the last men to forget, for a single moment, that every baptized 
 Christian, and such the Christian king must needs be, has
 
 306 NOTE W. 
 
 already been transferred by his baptism from the kingdom of 
 nature to the kingdom of grace, and that there was no need of 
 the supervening of his royal commission to effect that transfer. 
 Yet this is not a mere casual oversight. For the same notion lies 
 secretly at the bottom of his whole book, and runs as an under- 
 current through it. The comparison which follows, with a 
 scientific society, which " is amenable to the laws of the land for 
 any contracts into which it enters," but does not recognise any 
 such superintendence with regard to questions of science, is based 
 on the supposition that the civil power is extrinsic to the Church, 
 as it is to Scientific Associations. Again (in p. 77) he tells us 
 that the question brought before the Committee of Council was 
 not referred to " the Church," but to " the world ;" a distinction 
 which, in this sense, if he had remembered his own view of Bap- 
 tism, he must have deemed inadmissible, and which is no less 
 mischievous practically, than it is theoretically false. 
 
 In fact this same confusion has been the main source of the 
 irrational clamour that has been excited on this occasion. I do 
 not mean that our Court of Appeal is rightly constituted. I 
 have repeatedly exprest my persuasion, not only, as is admitted 
 almost universally, that it ought to consist exclusively of members 
 of our Church, but that greater care should have been taken 
 to provide that there should be an adequate portion of the 
 judges, of whom it might reasonably be expected that they would 
 be duly qualified by professional learning for pronouncing on 
 theological and ecclesiastical points. But this last matter, how- 
 ever important, is not one in which any vital principle is imme- 
 diately concerned, and might be settled calmly and without much 
 discrepancy of opinion, were it not for the prevalent confusion 
 about the idea of the Church.
 
 NOTE X. 307 
 
 NOTE X : p. 52. 
 
 The preceding Notes have swollen to such a bulk, that I must 
 pass cursorily over the subjects to be toucht on in those which 
 remain. In the paper referred to it is stated that " it is now 
 made evident by the late appeal and sentence in the case of 
 Gorham v. the Bishop of Exeter, and by the judgement of all the 
 Courts of Common Law, that the Royal Supremacy, as defined 
 and establisht by Statute Law, invests the Crown with a power 
 of hearing and deciding in appeal all matters, howsoever purely 
 spiritual, both of discipline and doctrine." Wherefore the Clergy 
 are called upon to declare, that they " do not, and in conscience 
 cannot acknowledge in the Crown the power recently exercised 
 to hear and judge in appeal the internal state or merits of 
 spiritual questions touching doctrine or discipline, the custody of 
 which is committed to the Church alone by the law of Christ." 
 
 Here, not to speak of the vague, erroneous notion of the Church, 
 which peeps out in the concluding antithesis with the Crown, 
 as though the Crown were not rightfully a part of it, I cannot 
 refrain from expressing my surprise that the eminent composers of 
 this declaration should have taken upon themselves in this man- 
 ner to pronounce that the Crown by its Court of Appeal has been 
 exercising the power of "judging the internal state or merits of 
 spiritual questions touching doctrine or discipline," and should 
 not have hesitated to call upon the whole body of the Clergy to 
 concur in this assertion ; when the Court of Appeal itself had so 
 positively and repeatedly disclaimed their right of doing so, and 
 declared that they would not attempt it. Surely the Court of 
 Appeal did not consist of such blockheads, that they should be 
 supposed to be totally ignorant of what they were doing ; although 
 they were charged with this ignorance in a sermon which most 
 indecorously applied our Lord's prayer to them, Father, forgive 
 them ; for they know not what they do. Nor will an intelligent 
 person, who reads the Letter to the Bishop of Exeter referred to in 
 
 x 2
 
 308 NOTE X. 
 
 Note T, along with the Second Letter by the same Layman , 
 question that they were quite right. If a Court, as now and 
 then happens, has to decide a cause in which some geological or 
 chemical question is involved, it will endeavour to collect the 
 best information on that question, and will pronounce accord- 
 ingly : but no sane person will accuse it of attempting to lay 
 down the laws of chemistry or geology. Thus our learned Layman 
 has shewn us that the effect of the sentence pronounced by the 
 Court of Appeal was to remit the spiritual question to be decided 
 by the Archbishop. 
 
 As to any usurpation on the part of the Crown, toe constitution 
 of the Court of Appeal was determined by the Legislature, in 
 which, as the supreme organ and expounder of the national will, 
 the real supremacy is vested. An oversight has indeed been 
 made in the construction of the Court : but History does not 
 teach us that monarchs are less fallible than a Legislature like 
 ours. Though a good deal of outcry has been raised, because the 
 power, originally vested in the Crown, is now exercised by the 
 Prime Minister, much of this outcry seems to be mere childish- 
 ness. For the power vested in the Crown was not vested in 
 Edmund Ironside, or in Henry Plantagenet, or in George Guelph, 
 personally and individually, but merely on the ground of his 
 being the supreme impersonation of the national will. Now 
 surely we have as good security for a wise exercise of discre- 
 tion by a person who, after going through the probation of 
 Parliament, comes forth as the man deemed worthy to be en- 
 trusted with the actual administration of the English Government, 
 as by a person who wears the Crown by the mere title of birth; 
 not to mention that under the latter also the power will often 
 be exercised by some mere personal favorite. Of course, if the 
 Prime Minister were not a Member of our Church, it would be 
 requisite to make some fresh provision for the due exercise of 
 the ecclesiastical power of the Crown. But there does not seem 
 to be much likelihood of such an event at present ; and it could 
 hardly occur without other changes which would lead to a 
 remodeling of the relations between the Church and the State.
 
 NOTE X. 309 
 
 On this subject I will merely cite the following passage from 
 Brarnhall's Answer to La Milletiere, which states the real nature 
 of the Royal Supremacy very correctly and clearly. " It may be 
 that two or three of our princes at the most (the greater part 
 whereof were Roman Catholics), did style themselves, or give 
 others leave to style them, the Heads of the Church within their 
 dominions. But no man can be so simple as to conceive that 
 they intended a spiritual Headship, to infuse the life and 
 motion of grace into the hearts of the faithful : such a Head is 
 Christ alone : no, nor yet an ecclesiastical Headship : we did 
 never believe that our Kings in their own persons could exercise 
 any act pertaining either to the power of order or jurisdiction : 
 nothing can give that to another, which it hath not itself. They 
 meant only a civil or political Head, as Saul is called the Head 
 of the Tribes of Israel, to see that public peace be preserved, 
 to see that all subjects, as well ecclesiastics as others, do their 
 duties in their several places, to see that all things be managed 
 for that great and architectonical end, that is, the weal and 
 benefit of the whole body politic, both for soul and body. If 
 you will not trust me, hear our Church itself : ' When we attri- 
 bute the soverein government of the Church to the King, we do 
 not give him any power to administer the word or sacraments, 
 but only that prerogative which God in Holy Scripture hath 
 always allowed to godly princes, to see that all states and orders 
 of their subjects, ecclesiastical and civil, do their duties, and to 
 punish those who are delinquent with the civil sword.' Here is 
 no power ascribed, no punishment inflicted, but merely political : 
 and this is approved and justified by S. Clara, both by reason, and 
 by the examples of the Parliament of Paris. Yet, by virtue of 
 this political power, he is the keeper of both Tables, the preserver 
 of true piety toward God, as well as right justice toward men, 
 and is obliged to take care of the souls as well as the skins and 
 carcasses of his subjects."
 
 310 
 
 NOTE Y : p. 54. 
 
 The Bishop of St David's, in his last Charge, has given some 
 weighty reasons (pp. 51 60), such as might be expected from 
 one to whom the study of history has taught statesmanly wisdom 
 and caution, for checking over-sanguine anticipations of good 
 from the meeting of Convocation, for which so many are calling : 
 and he winds up by declaring, " For my own part, I cheerfully 
 accept my full share of all the obloquy incurred by those who 
 shrink from the responsibility of exposing the Church to such a 
 danger." Now assuredly no soberminded man will venture to 
 assert that the desired measure is one to be contemplated with 
 unmixt confidence. Nor could much real good accrue from the 
 assembling of Convocation in its present very defective form ; 
 while the construction of a Synod, adapted to the circumstances 
 of our age, after the lapse of centuries, during which such 
 momentous changes have been wrought in the whole frame and 
 order of society, must needs be a problem of no little difficulty. 
 Nor is it to be questioned that a great part of the vehement 
 cry for a Convocation proceeds from an ignorant and presump- 
 tuous impatience. Still, seeing that no one can deny the many 
 evils of divers kinds which spring from our present anarchal 
 condition, and for which, by reason of that anarchal con- 
 dition, it is impossible to devise any remedy, we may justly 
 entertain a wish, which the Bishop himself pronounces (p. 52) to 
 be " natural and reasonable," and from which, he tells us, he 
 "cannot withhold his sympathy." Seeing too that, as he ad- 
 mits, "the power of deliberating on its own affairs seems 
 inseparable from the very notion of a corporate body, which is 
 not a mere machine or passive instrument of a higher will, and 
 therefore most especially to belong of right to a Christian Church," 
 I should incline to hold that, even on prudential grounds, it 
 would be best that our Church should be allowed to exercise this 
 power, " inseparable from the very notion of a corporate body."
 
 NOTE Y. 311 
 
 At the same time I should entirely concur with my honoured 
 Friend in deprecating all attempts to narrow the pale of our 
 Church by more precise and stringent dogmatical definitions of 
 doctrine : and doubtless, as he says, it is to Councils convened 
 for such a purpose that Gregory Nazianzen's well-known censure 
 applies. Doubtless too dogmatism and metaphysical subtilty are 
 natural parasites of the theological mind : but these grew much 
 more rankly in Greece, than they do in England ; where, owing 
 in great measure to the practical bent of our understanding, we 
 have acquired the faculty of minimizing the evil and maximizing 
 the good of deliberative assemblies. Hence I should not apprehend 
 much mischief from the dogmatizing spirit in a Synod of our 
 Church, at all events, if there be a corrective for it in the infusion 
 of an adequate proportion of lay common sense. In fact it has 
 rarely been mischievous in the Councils of the Latin Church, 
 the working of which on the whole was beneficial, considering 
 how they were hampered and opprest by the Papacy, and by 
 false notions of priestly authority and sanctity. In every age 
 indeed, while the vulgar and shallow are the slaves of its spirit, 
 and are ever trying, bustlingly, and with clamorous self-importance, 
 to drive on its wheels by shouting, Get on ! Get on ! there is 
 also a class of more valuable minds, that have gathered up the 
 riches of the past, and are revolted by the vulgarity of their noisy, 
 self-conceited contemporaries. These men perform an important 
 task in reminding us that the present rests upon the past, and 
 will topple over if its foundations are withdrawn from it. In 
 this way the Oxford School has rendered much valuable service 
 to our Church ; and in this way they would be very useful in a 
 Synod. Nor have we reason to fear that they will exercise too 
 much influence in such a body. The impulses which drive the 
 age onward, are not likely to be overpowered by any attempts to 
 drive it backward in a free general assembly of the Church. 
 
 I will not go over the questions which I have already discust 
 at some length in Note J to my Charge for the year 1842, espe- 
 cially with reference to the necessity that the Laity should form 
 an important element in a rightly constituted Synod. The
 
 conviction of this necessity has been gaining ground every year 
 since, and has recently been helpt on greatly by Mr Gladstone's 
 valuable Letter to Bishop Skinner. 
 
 NOTE Z : p. 55. 
 
 In the Times of August the 15th 1851, there is a letter from 
 Mr Conybeare, the Vicar of Axminster, contradicting a previous 
 statement, that two representatives of each deanery had been 
 elected for the Synod by an absolute majority of the beneficed 
 and licenst clergy in each district. " Had this been really the 
 case (Mr Conybeare very reasonably says), it would have made 
 the unanimity of the 60 elected members of the Synod a very 
 remarkable fact : but the very reverse was the truth ; for the repre- 
 sentatives were elected by an absolute minority of the clergy in 
 each district, so far as I have been able to ascertain. In the 
 Rural Deanery to which I myself belong (that of Honiton), the 
 clergy present at the election were 10 ; and one proxy was sent : 
 thus the representatives were elected by only 11 out of 27 clergy 
 entitled to vote. The majority declined to take any part in the 
 election, and left it in the hands of the minority. This was the 
 case almost universally throughout the Diocese, except in those 
 two Deaneries which refused to send any representatives at all." 
 
 Such loud songs of triumph have been chanted on account of 
 the unanimity of the Exeter Synod, that it ought to be generally 
 known how delusive that unanimity was. That the declaration 
 on Baptism, considering how that question has been contested 
 for centuries, and how it is agitated nowadays, should have been 
 adopted without a single dissentient voice by the representatives 
 of a whole Diocese, would indeed have been little short of a 
 miracle. But when we know the mode in which the Synod was 
 actually constituted, it loses the main part of whatever im- 
 portance might else have attacht to it. That Mr Conybeare's 
 statement is correct, I feel justified in assuming, not only from 
 what 1 have heard of his high character as a fellow of my own
 
 NOTE AA. 313 
 
 College, but also because, I believe, it has remained without 
 contradiction. 
 
 Mr Conybeare adds : " The reason why the majority of the 
 Clergy and the dignitaries of the Cathedral declined to take part 
 in the Synod, was not, so far as I can learn, from disapproving of 
 such assemblies in general, but because the Bishop of Exeter, in 
 his Pastoral A ddress convoking the Synod, renounced communion 
 with the Archbishop, to whom he had formerly taken an oath of 
 canonical obedience. In the same Address he (not obscurely) in- 
 timated his wish that the Synod should support him in this 
 course ; although, when it came to the point, he made no proposal 
 to that efiect." 
 
 NOTE AA : p. 57. 
 
 Grotius, in his Treatise De Imperio Summarum Potestatum 
 circa Sacra, c. vi. 9, wisely mentions this as the first caution 
 to be observed in order to uphold the peace of the Church : 
 " Frima, ut a definiendo abstineatur quantum fieri potest : hoc 
 est salvis dogmatibus ad salutem necessariis, aut valde eo facienti- 
 bus. Omnem in jure definitionem periculosam esse tradunt 
 Juris auc tores. De theologicis idem quis merito dixerit. Vetus 
 enim est sententia : De Leo etiam vera dicere periculosum est. 
 Hue illud Nazianzeni spectat monitum, 70 oirwc /*'} iroXvirpuy- 
 fiovu. Multoque magis illud Augustini, Sunt in quibw inter se 
 aliyuando etiam doctissimi atque optimi regulae Catholicae, de- 
 Jeiisores salva jidei compage non consonant. Hanc definiendi 
 modestiam secuti sunt Patres in Nicaena et Constantinopolitana 
 priina Synodo, et qui has Synodos inoderati sunt Impera tores. 
 Dogmata ergo definienda sunt paucissima, et necessaria quidem sub 
 anathemate, alia vero sine anathemate. Plurimum vero ad reti- 
 nendam Ecclesiae Catholicae concordiam primis istis saeculis 
 valuit, quod dogmaticae definitiones nullae fieri solebant nisi 
 in Conciliis Oecumenicis ; aut si quae factae essent in minoribus 
 Synodis, eae non erant ratae antequam ad alias Ecclesias missae
 
 314 NOTE AA. 
 
 atque ita communi judicio approbatae forent : quern morem si 
 reducendum curarent, qui nunc in Christiano Orbe imperium 
 habent, nullum sane possit ab illis beneficium majus exspectari." 
 
 The sagacity and importance of this remark will be imprest 
 upon us, I fear, by grievous experience, if the practice of holding 
 petty Synods gains ground. For assemblies are still less apt than 
 individuals to acknowledge their own incompetence for any pur- 
 pose : and what will be the confusion of the Church, if such 
 declarations as that of the Exeter Synod on Baptism are scattered 
 to and fro ? The mere fact that a declaration of this sort, so 
 explicit, so full, so positive, on a question which has agitated the 
 Church for centuries, was adopted by the unanimous consent of 
 sixty clergy, after a discussion which cannot have occupied much 
 more than an hour, shews that the members of the Synod must 
 have come with their minds previously made up, and ready to 
 echo the dictates of the presiding Bishop. Nay, does it not also 
 imply that they can hardly have had a proper sense of the many 
 great difficulties in which the subject is involved ? Yet, without 
 such a sense, how can a person be qualified to pronounce judge- 
 ment on any question whatever ? In fact, this is the difference 
 between a prejudice and a judgement: a prejudice is anterior to 
 and without a previous thorough investigation of the subject 
 matter : a judgement involves that previous investigation. We 
 are informed indeed that the declaration had already been sub- 
 mitted to the members of the Synod for their consideration. Still 
 their unanimous consent in such a decision will be regarded, by 
 those who have reflected on the inevitable diversities of human 
 thought and feelings, as materially detracting from the value of 
 their voice. 
 
 It would take me much too far to examine that declaration in 
 detail, and to discuss the various questionable propositions in it. 
 But no one can look at it without perceiving that the Article 
 of the Nicene Creed, which it professes to expound, has been 
 enormously expanded, so that it rivals the prodigies which we 
 sometimes see drawn out of a nutshell. A more careful ex- 
 amination will shew us that, though a large part of the
 
 NOTE AA. 315 
 
 propositions may actually be latent in the Article, they only lie 
 there along with their coordinate and limitary propositions ; the 
 wisdom of the framers of the Article having manifested itself 
 especially in this, that they contented themselves with asserting 
 the primary, essential truth, the on, but did not iroXvTrpaypovEtv 
 
 TO 07TW. 
 
 For my own part, if I may take leave to express an opinion, 
 without entering into a detailed argument on the matter, while I 
 am unable to adopt the notion of Archdeacon Sinclair, although 
 supported by the high authority of the Bishop of St David's, that 
 the assertion in the Creed concerning the unity of Baptism was 
 intended to forbid its repetition, I am equally unable to find all 
 that the Bishop of Exeter evolves from it. For, if the purpose 
 of prohibiting the repetition of Baptism had stood distinctly 
 forward in the mind of the Council, it would rather have found 
 utterance in a disciplinary Canon, than in an Article of the 
 universal Creed. Or, at all events, it would have been exprest in 
 plainer, less ambiguous words. If they had spoken of the other 
 sacrament, surely they might have said, / believe in one Sacrament 
 of the Body and Blood of Christ ; but this would no way have 
 implied a condemnation of frequent communion. Yet I am still 
 less able to believe, with the Exeter Synod, that the assertion of 
 the unity of Baptism was designed to imply that Baptism in all 
 cases produces the same wonderful effects. 
 
 Surely in asserting the unity of Baptism, the Council was 
 merely adopting St Paul's expression in the Epistle to the 
 Ephesians, yet did not, any more than St Paul, distinctly pur- 
 pose thereby to signify that Baptism must not be repeated, or 
 that in all cases it will produce the same mighty spiritual effects. 
 It is One especially as being the one appointed entrance into the 
 Kingdom of Christ, whereby all who desire admission into that 
 Kingdom are received through the power of the Holy Ghost. 
 Moreover, as it is only through Christ, as members of His 
 Church, through His, all-prevailing sacrifice and intercession, 
 that we become reconciled to the Father, and receive forgiveness 
 of our sins, so this One Baptism is the One Baptism for the
 
 316 NOTE AA. 
 
 remission of sins. But, as in all things there are diversities in the 
 operations of the One Spirit, so is it in Baptism, where, though 
 the gift conferred may be essentially the same, it is modified 
 diversely by the nature of the recipient. Hence there seems to 
 be much confusion, when the Exeter Declaration goes on to say, 
 " We hold, as implied in the aforesaid Article of the Creed, all 
 the great graces ascribed to Baptism in our Catechism. For by 
 one Spirit we are all baptized into one Body, even the body of 
 Jesus Christ : we are made to be His Body, Members in parti- 
 cular of His Body, Members of Christ. And being thus baptized 
 unto Him, we were baptized into His death, who died for our sins : 
 we are dead with Him, dead unto sin, buried with Him in 
 Baptism, wherein also we are risen with Him, quickened to- 
 gether with Him, made to sit together in Heavenly places in 
 Christ Jesus : our life is hid with Christ in God" 
 
 In this passage we have an example of the mischief of using 
 words dogmatically, to assert positively what is, which, in the 
 passage whence they are taken, are rather used rhetorically, if 
 I may be pardoned for the expression, to exhort people to be- 
 come what they ought to be, by telling them what God has 
 called them and enabled them to be. All who have been 
 baptized ought to be dead to sin, ought to be buried with Christ, 
 ought to be risen with Him, ought to be quickened together with 
 Him, and made to sit together in heavenly places. But are they 
 so ? all ? how many of them are so 1 Alas ! it is by this 
 careless abuse of language, by the misapplication and perversion 
 of the words of Scripture, by our asserting, as divine truths, 
 what everybody, even the asserter himself, must know to be contra- 
 dicted by universal experience, that men's consciences are sorely 
 troubled, and nothing is fostered but infidelity, lurking in some, 
 opened and avowed by others. This will ever be the effect of 
 binding the human mind by absolute dogmas. As easily may 
 you bind the strong man with withes. Even if you shave off his 
 hair, and put out his eyes, he will rise and destroy you, and him- 
 self, in one tremendous convulsion. But let us all endeavour to 
 walk in the light, and we shall have fellowship one with another.
 
 NOTE AA. 317 
 
 In the Exeter Declaration indeed these words seem to be 
 applied solely to " adults, with fit qualifications, duly baptized." 
 Of such persons, if they avail themselves of their baptismal 
 privileges, what St Paul says, and what is here said, will indeed 
 be true. That is, they are true of him who is a true Christian 
 in heart at the time of his Baptism, and from that time forward. 
 But what is the number of these, even among the few who re- 
 ceive baptism as adults ? and why, in explaining the power of 
 baptismal grace, does the Declaration dwell chiefly on these rare 
 and exceptional instances, about which there is no controversy, 
 when the whole controversy turns upon the power of baptismal 
 grace in infants 1 Besides the terms which our Catechism applies 
 to children, members of Christ, children of God, and inheritors 
 of the Kingdom of Heaven, are included among those applied in 
 the Declaration to adults : nor is it hinted which of the others 
 belong to infants also. In our service, both for infant and for 
 adult Baptism, St Paul's words about the baptismal death to sin, 
 are rightly used in the concluding exhortation as setting forth 
 what the baptized ought to be, not what they are : so should 
 we, who are baptized, die from sin and rise again to righteousness. 
 
 These arguments may suffice to shew how unwise and 
 hazardous it is to attempt such explicit determinations of 
 doctrine as those contained in the Exeter Declaration on Baptism. 
 At all events that Declaration is totally at variance with the 
 practice of the early Councils. Jeremy Taylor, in the second 
 Part of his Dissuasive. (B 1. 4), shews how carefully the Nicene 
 Fathers refrained from dogmatical definitions : still, he adds, 
 "the Council's adding something to the Creed of the Church, 
 which had been the avdevria of the Christian faith for three 
 hundred years together, was so strange a thing, that they would 
 not easily bear that yoke. That the inconvenience might be cut 
 off, which came in upon the occasion of the Nicene addition, 
 (for it produced thirty explicative Creeds more in a short time, 
 as Marcus Ephesius openly affirmed in the Council of Florence), 
 in the Council of Ephesus, which was the third General, it was 
 forbidden that ever there should be any addition to the Nicene
 
 318 NOTE AA. 
 
 Faith, ' that it should not be lawful from thenceforward for any 
 one to produce, to write, or to compose any other Creed, besides 
 that which was defined by the holy Fathers meeting at Nice in 
 the Holy Spirit.' This canon was renewed in the next General 
 Council, that of Chalcedon. The case is here, as in Scripture, to 
 which no addition is to be made, nothing to be diminisht from 
 it. But yet every doctor is permitted to expound, to enlarge the 
 expressions, to deliver the sense, and to declare, as well as they 
 can, the meaning of it. And much more might the doctors of 
 the Church do to the Creed ; to which although something was 
 added at Nice and Constantinople, yet from thenceforward they 
 might, in private or in public, declare what they thought was the 
 meaning, and what were the consequents, and what was virtually 
 contained in the Articles ; but nothing of this, by any authority 
 whatsoever, was to be put into the Creed. For in Articles of 
 Belief simplicity is part of its excellency and sacredness ; and 
 those mysteriousnesses and life-giving Articles, which are fit to 
 be put into Creeds, are, as Philistion said of hellebore, medicinal 
 when it is in great pieces, but dangerous or deadly when it is in 
 powder. For if that faith be sufficient, whatsoever is added to 
 it is either contained in the Article virtually, or it is not. If 
 not, then it is no part of the faith. But if it be, then he that 
 believes the Article, does virtually believe all that is virtually 
 contained in it : but no man is to be prest with the consequents 
 drawn from thence, unless the transcript be drawn by the same 
 hand that wrote the original. For we are sure it came in the 
 simplicity of it from an infallible Spirit ; but he that bids me 
 believe his deductions under pain of damnation, bids me, under 
 pain of damnation, believe that he is an unerring logician : for 
 which, because God hath given me no command, and himself can 
 give me no security, if I can defend myself from that man's 
 pride, God will defend me from damnation. We find by 
 experience that a long Act of Parliament, or an indenture and 
 covenant that is of great length, ends none, but causes many 
 contentions ; and when many things are defined, and definitions 
 spun out into declarations, men believe less, and know nothing
 
 NOTE AB. 319 
 
 more." In these last words our admirable Bishop has in a 
 manner pronounced judgement by anticipation on the Declaration 
 of the Exeter Synod. 
 
 Note AB : p. 61. 
 
 Our own part of England has been visited with the misfortune 
 of having what is called a South Church Union establisht in it ; 
 which, though it contains a few eminent names, does not seem 
 likely, from such of its acts as have come under my observation, 
 to be more beneficial to the Church than similar associations 
 elsewhere. In the Report of this Body adopted in July 1851, 
 I am taxt with having been, most unintentionally and unwit- 
 tingly, the cause of its establishment. " A requisition (it is 
 said) for a General Meeting of the Archdeaconry [on occasion of 
 the Judgement of the Court of Appeal], signed by about 70 of 
 the Clergy, was forwarded to the Archdeacon, and was refused ! 
 This refusal seemed to have the eflect of opening the eyes of 
 some to the utterly defenseless state in which they were placed 
 (by the want of Synodical action) ; and in default of a more 
 Ecclesiastical organization, the more irregular form of a Church 
 Union was decided upon. It was considered at the time as an 
 evil, but a necessary one. The more regular synodical proceeding 
 being by such an unwonted stretch of arbitrary power refused, 
 what wonder if the first weapon at hand were seized for 
 defense ! " 
 
 Perhaps a reasonable man will think that I do not need any 
 better justification of my conduct than this statement. For if 
 the party who desired a Public Meeting were in such a state of 
 irritation, that, when they could not obtain it, they resorted 
 to a measure which they themselves regarded as irregular and 
 " an evil," what prospect was there that, supposing I had con- 
 vened the Meeting, it would have been conducted with the 
 calmness and temperance and decorum befitting an assembly 
 of the Clergy? more especially as I knew of a good many
 
 320 
 
 NOTE AB. 
 
 clergymen, who, if a Meeting had been summoned to condemn 
 the Judgement, would have been no less vehement in vindicating, 
 and even extolling it. What good would have resulted from 
 such a conflict, I know not, whatever the issue might have been. 
 As far as I could judge, from my acquaintance with the Clergy 
 of the Archdeaconry, the condemners of the Judgement would 
 have been in a minority ; which would hardly have pleased 
 them more than my refusal, or left them less prone to take up 
 the irregular, evil course which they adopted. I do not mean 
 that a majority of the Clergy concurred in Mr Gorham's views : 
 very few did so: but I believe that a considerable majority had 
 been grieved by the proceedings against him, had dreaded a 
 condemnatory sentence, and were thankful for the Judgement 
 which averted a disruption of the Church. 
 
 With regard to the censure of my conduct as " an unwonted 
 stretch of arbitrary power," the writers of the Report must have 
 been aware, I should think, of a letter which I was compelled, 
 by certain gross misrepresentations, to write about a year before 
 to the seventy Petitioners, explaining the reasons of my refusal. 
 In that letter I stated that I had good reason for believing 
 that my decision was in accordance with the wishes of the great 
 majority of the Clergy of the Diocese. For I had heard from 
 divers quarters that the utmost activity had been exercised 
 during several weeks in canvassing the Clergy, in order to get 
 every attainable signature to the Petition, with the view of 
 forcing the reluctant Archdeacon to call the Meeting. Yet 
 after all the signers only amounted lo about a fourth of the 
 Clergy of the Archdeaconry. Among them were only two out 
 of the twelve Rural Deans, by whose counsel, in a question of 
 difficulty, I should chiefly desire to be guided. Of the excellent 
 body of Clergy at Brighton, whose position gives them a con- 
 siderable advantage for forming a correct judgement on practical 
 questions, only two, the two youngest, out of twenty, signed the 
 petition ; of the Hastings and St Leonard's Clergy not one. On 
 the other hand almost every Clergyman I had seen or corre- 
 sponded with since the question had been started, had concurred
 
 NOTE AC. 321 
 
 with me in deprecating a Meeting, from apprehension of the 
 almost inevitable collision, which would only have afforded 
 triumph to the enemies, while it saddened the friends of the 
 Church. I had been informed too by one of our Rural Deans 
 that at his recent Chapter, when the Requisition was brought 
 forward, eleven out of the twelve Clergy present thought it 
 desirable that the peace of the Archdeaconry should not be 
 disturbed. 
 
 Hence I cannot admit that the South Church Union are 
 justified in accusing me of "an unwonted stretch of arbitrary 
 power," or in charging me with the sin of having driven them 
 to take that evil course, which they adopted solely out of their 
 own impatience and irritation. 
 
 NOTE AC : p. 63. 
 
 We resolved to send up an Address from the Clergy of the 
 Archdeaconry to the Queen, and one to the Bishop of the Diocese. 
 The former was as follows : 
 
 MAY IT PLEASE YOUR MAJESTY : 
 
 WE, the undersigned Clergymen of the Archdeaconry of 
 Lewes, humbly crave permission to approach your Majesty with 
 the expression of our loyal attachment to your Person, and our 
 faithful allegiance to the British Crown. 
 
 We deem it our duty to give utterance to the indignation 
 excited in us by the act of the Bishop of Rome, whereby, in 
 violation of your Majesty's Prerogative, and of the ancient prin- 
 ciples and laws of our Constitution, he has taken upon himself 
 to parcel out your Majesty's Kingdom of England into a number 
 of Dioceses, and to bestow those Dioceses, designated from certain 
 cities and towns situate therein, on divers Ecclesiastics, who re- 
 cognise him as their spiritual head. By this act he has attempted 
 to exercise a jurisdiction within this realm, altogether without a 
 parallel since England became a Christian State. None of your 
 Majesty's Royal Predecessors would have submitted to such an 
 
 Y
 
 322 NOTE AC. 
 
 intrusion, even in the ages anterior to the Reformation : the 
 whole nation would have risen up in arms against it. No Sove- 
 rein of any other European State would brook it. No Bishop 
 of Rome since the Reformation has dared thus to insult the 
 Crown and Church of England. It has been reserved for these 
 days, as a return for the manifold concessions and privileges 
 granted by your Majesty, and by your Majesty's immediate 
 Predecessors, to your subjects of the Romish persuasion. We 
 humbly hope and pray that your Majesty will not allow the 
 rights of your Crown, and of that Church, of which your Majesty 
 is the supreme temporal Head, to be thus openly assailed and 
 infringed. 
 
 Under a deep conviction that, among the many blessings 
 granted by Almighty God to this highly favoured nation, the 
 Reformation of Religion in the sixteenth century, whereby we 
 were delivered from the unscriptural doctrines and idolatrous 
 practices of the Church of Rome, is second only to the original 
 introduction of Christianity into this land, while we desire that 
 a full toleration may be extended to every form of Religion, so 
 far as is consistent with morality and social order, we pray your 
 Majesty to take such measures as may seem best calculated to 
 repell this aggression, by which the Bishop of Rome has assumed 
 the exercise of absolute ecclesiastical dominion in this realm, and 
 to uphold that pure scriptural Faith, which is the only living 
 source, not merely of individual virtue and wellbeing, but also of 
 national greatness and prosperity. 
 
 And we beseech Almighty God to enrich you abundantly with 
 His grace, that in all your thoughts, words, and works, you may 
 ever seek His honour and glory, and study to preserve His people 
 committed to your charge in wealth, peace, and godliness. 
 
 This Address was sent to the Bishop of the Diocese, along with 
 the following to himself : 
 
 We, the undersigned Clergymen of the Archdeaconry of Lewes, 
 in your Lordship's Diocese, feel called upon by the attack which
 
 NOTE AC. 323 
 
 has recently been made on your spiritual rights, as well as on 
 the whole Church of England, to express our dutiful affection 
 to your Lordship personally, and our reverence for your sacred 
 Apostolical Office. 
 
 In consequence of this unprecedented aggression of the Bishop 
 of Rome, we have deemed it our duty to draw up and sign an 
 Address to our most Gracious Queen, the Prerogative of whose 
 Crown has been thus invaded ; and we place our Address in 
 your Lordship's hands, requesting that you will present it 
 to her Majesty at such time and in such manner as you may 
 think fit. 
 
 To her Majesty we have exprest our conviction that this 
 act is a direct violation of her Royal Prerogative, and of the 
 fundamental principles of our Constitution, that it is an assump- 
 tion of authority such as no Bishop of Rome has attempted io 
 exercise, unless at the first introduction of Christianity, in this 
 or any other European Nation. Our ancestors, even in ages long 
 anterior to the Reformation, found themselves under the necessity 
 of guarding jealously against the introduction of Papal Bulls, 
 touching the rights of the Crown, without the consent of the 
 Government ; and this act proves that such precautions are no 
 less necessary now than ever. Moreover it is expressly provided 
 in the Act of the 10th of George IV, for the Relief of the 
 Roman Catholics, whereby they were admitted to the highest 
 offices of the State, that no person should assume the name or 
 title of Archbishop of any Province, or Bishop of any Bishopric 
 in England or Ireland. The wisdom of this provision is clear, 
 as by it alone can the ecclesiastical Supremacy of the Crown be 
 preserved unimpaired. Without it, the declaration in the Oath 
 of Supremacy, " that no forein prince, person, prelate, state, 
 or potentate, hath or ought to have, any jurisdiction, power, 
 superiority, preeminence, or authority, ecclesiastical or spiritual, 
 within her Majesty's realms, dominions, or countries," a decla- 
 ration the principle of which is indispensable to our national 
 independence, becomes a mere mockery. It has been attempted 
 to evade this provision by the adoption of the names of other 
 
 y 2
 
 324 NOTE AC. 
 
 towns than those belonging to our ancient Sees. But, though 
 we cannot feel certain in what manner the Courts of Law may 
 interpret this provision, it seems manifest to us that the purpose 
 of the Legislature was to prevent the occupation of any territorial 
 Sees in England. We therefore hope that your Lordship will 
 take counsel with your Right Reverend Brethren, and with her 
 Majesty's Government, concerning the best mode of repelling 
 this attack on the rights of the Crown, as the sole Fountain 
 of Honour in this Kingdom. 
 
 To your Lordship we would further submit that this act is an 
 attack on our Church, such as no previous Bishop of Rome has 
 dared to commit. It has been represented indeed, in some 
 quarters, as a mere matter of harmless internal arrangement and 
 administration, whereby no one, except the members of the 
 Romish Communion, is anywise affected. These representations 
 however are directly refuted by the tone in which the intrusive 
 ecclesiastic, usurping the title of Archbishop of Westminster, 
 has declared that he will govern, and continue to govern, divers 
 counties, among others that of Sussex, which forms your Lord- 
 ship's Diocese of Chichester. So too are they refuted by the 
 triumphant notes with which this act has been hailed as annulling 
 and annihilating the Church of England. That such is its 
 real intent and purpose, will hardly be questioned by those 
 who remember how carefully it was provided in the ancient 
 Canons of the Church, sanctioned in Council after Council, that 
 no second Bishop should intrude into a Diocese already occupied 
 by another. Such an intrusion was ever regarded as a schis- 
 matical act, and condemned as such : wherefore the Bishops of 
 Rome have shrunk till now from sending any Bishops as occu- 
 pants of English Sees to England. Their authority has hitherto 
 been exercised with greater deference to the Crown of England, 
 and with a kind of tacit recognition of the validity of the 
 succession in her Church : and it can hardly be unknown to 
 the very persons who are denying the importance of the recent 
 act, that it must either be a gross schismatical violation of 
 the fundamental Laws of the Church, or else that it is an
 
 NOTE AC. 325 
 
 implicit declaration by which the Church of England is set aside 
 as non-existent. In our eyes it is the former, and, as such, 
 a consummation of the schismatical acts by which the Bishops 
 of Home in the sixteenth century cut themselves off from 
 the pure Apostolical Church of this land ; and as He, who 
 then purified us, has ever since wonderfully holpen and upheld 
 us through the manifold conflicts and perils of the last three 
 centuries, and of late years especially has been shewing forth 
 His grace by strengthening and deepening our spiritual life 
 at home, and by spreading out our branches from East to 
 West, and from the sea to the end of the world, we feel a 
 humble reliance that, as there are still such great works which 
 He calls us to perform, He will prosper our endeavours to 
 perform them. 
 
 Under this persuasion, we desire to assure your Lordship 
 that we are no way troubled byfchis attack upon our Church. 
 She who is in God's hands cannot fear. She whom the Heavenly 
 Bridegroom is preparing in such manifold ways, and calling to 
 such glorious tasks, cannot be afraid, unless of her own weak- 
 ness and unworthiness. We would fain hope that, as a forein 
 invasion has so often caused the various parties in a nation 
 to unite heartily in repelling the common enemy, so, in ihia 
 case likewise, the attack upon our Church may prove a signal 
 blessing to us, by healing our divisions, by calling on us and 
 impelling us to unite against those who are striving to destroy 
 her, by opening the eyes of those who, from whatsoever motive, 
 have been led to look favorably on our assailant, by proving 
 to them that the spirit of Rome is still as ambitious, as grasp- 
 ing, as imperious and overweening as ever, and that none can 
 safely dally with her, or with any of her superstitious practices. 
 We earnestly hope and pray that we may not be defrauded 
 of this blessing by ebullitions of intemperate violence on any 
 side, but that we may all be directed, under God's guidance, to 
 exercise mutual forbearance in the spirit of love ; that we 
 may be led, each of us, to examine our own faith, the ground 
 of our hope, and the manner of our lives; and that we may
 
 326 NOTE AD. 
 
 become more earnest in fulfilling our own pastoral duties, and in 
 waging war against evil, under all its terrible forms of unbelief, 
 ignorance, and vice, as it spreads in such huge masses through 
 the length and breadth of the land. This, we feel assured, 
 will, under God's blessing, be the best mode of contending 
 against Rome, of resisting her emissaries, and of preserving 
 the hearts of our people in the pure faith of Christ, as establisht 
 amongst us at our blessed Reformation. 
 
 May God grant your Lordship a long life, with health and 
 strength, bodily and spiritual, to lead and guide us in this holy 
 warfare. 
 
 NOTE AD : p. 63. 
 
 Had the time allowed, I should have wisht to express my 
 thankfulness that the attempts made to procure the admission 
 of Jews into the House of Commons had again been frustrated : 
 but, as I have not noticed any fresh arguments in favour of their 
 admission requiring refutation, I will not renew the discussion 
 of this question, which has already been treated at sufficient 
 length in my Charges for 1848 and 1850, and the Notes 
 appended to the former. 
 
 The other subject on which I wisht to touch, was the rejection 
 of the Bill for legalizing marriages with a deceast wife's sister. 
 By a judicious arrangement the Bill was brought this time in 
 the first instance before the House of Peers, so that it might 
 have the advantage of being discust by the Spiritual and the 
 Law Lords. The debate was a very able one ; and the majority 
 was such, including every English and Irish Bishop present, that 
 we may trust the question is set at rest for many years to come. 
 For this being a matter in which the social and moral feelings 
 of the nation, if they can be clearly ascertained, ought to exercise 
 a paramount influence, it being now indubitable that an 
 enormous majority of the educated classes, who are the only safe 
 expounders of that feeling, view the alteration of the existing 
 law with intense repugnance, it is plainly desirable that these 
 feelings, on questions touching the very heart of our social life,
 
 NOTE AD. 327 
 
 should not be liable to perpetual disturbance and assault. As 
 it is, they have been confirmed and strengthened by the shock 
 they have received. 
 
 On this subject however, the opinions which I exprest in my 
 last Charge and the Notes to it, have been so strangely misun- 
 derstood and misrepresented, that I am compelled to make a few 
 remarks in explanation of them. Owing to these perversions of 
 my meaning, I have had to sustain several attacks, the viru- 
 lence of which would have surprised me, if anything of that kind 
 could surprise one amid the present confusions in our Church. 
 
 Of my opponents the fiercest, who has come forward with his 
 name, is Mr Forster, the Rector of Stisted, who has denounced 
 me in a Sermon preacht in Canterbury Cathedral, and in some 
 twenty pages of Notes subjoined to it, wherein he would fain 
 cut me to pieces and throw me to the dogs, but, luckily for me, 
 has only been lavishing his blows on a man of straw of his own 
 construction. I conceive that he must be the author of a work 
 on Mahometanism publisht a score of years ago, and of some 
 recent Essays on primeval languages ; and I have heard the 
 former work spoken of as able. If it be so, he would seem to 
 have sadly impaired his logical faculty, as many have done 
 before, in his etymological researches ; and whatever capacity 
 he may have acquired in deciphering the primitive tongues, 
 he must have lost his insight into his own language, while 
 poring over them. At all events, whether it be this, or his 
 indignation that has blinded him, there are but few of the sen- 
 tences he has extracted from me, the meaning of which he has 
 been able to make out. To be sure, this may be my fault : but 
 still, when I compare my words with the meaning he ascribes 
 to them, it sometimes passes my ingenuity to discover by what 
 mode of interpretation he has extorted it. Hence, were it not 
 that he has a name of some respectability, I might dispense with 
 further notice of his attack. As it is, I am led to give a few 
 samples of it; since few are likely to take the trouble of ascertain- 
 ing whether I have really been guilty of all the wickedness he 
 imputes to me.
 
 328 NOTE AD. 
 
 To his Notes he prefixes the first words of my Dedication to 
 the Clergy : " In publishing this Charge, in compliance with your 
 wishes, I feel bound to state that there are some opinions exprest 
 in it, from which many of you STRONGLY MSSENT." The meaning of 
 these words seems plain, and hardly needs to be brought out by 
 the grand rhetorical emphasis of italics and capitals : but one 
 thing at all events Mr "Porster might have learnt from them, that, 
 in publishing my Charge, I acted in deference to the wishes of 
 the Clergy. In that case he would hardly have said, in p. 40: 
 " I especially allude to Mr Hare's Archidiaconal Charge, publisht 
 apparently for the purpose of advocating the Marriage Bill. I 
 speak advisedly when I say that this appears to have been his 
 chief object in publishing his Charge ; for, although he states at 
 the opening 'that he has not seen his way clearly to any satisfactory 
 conclusion,' and assigns this confession as a sufficient reason for 
 ' neither himself taking a part in the agitation, nor inciting his 
 brethren to do so, in the way of petitioning the Legislature, or 
 otherwise'' yet his conduct has been exactly the reverse of this 
 statement. He has not indeed given his Clergy an opportunity 
 of expressing their condemnation of the Bill ; but he himself has 
 taken a most earnest part in the agitation in favour of the Bill, 
 if not by petitioning the Legislature, at all events otherwise by 
 every means in his power. For, just at the critical time when 
 the Legislature is discussing the Bill, and about to decide upon 
 it, he has publisht a very long and elaborate treatise in its 
 favour, employing whatever may be the weight of his name, and 
 all the influence of his office in the Church, to persuade men 
 that the proposed change is right and holy." 
 
 Now, if the confusion in my opponent's mind were not so 
 evident as to exempt him from a large part of the responsibility 
 for what he says, I should tax this paragraph with a series of 
 misstatements. Having himself cited my reason, a very simple 
 and ordinary one, for publishing the Charge, what right has he 
 to assert, and that too " advisedly," that my purpose was something 
 totally different ? though, if it had been, I cannot perceive what 
 is the evil of bringing out a discussion on a legislative measure
 
 NOTE AD. tJ^y 
 
 "just at the critical time when the Legislature is discussing it." 
 A reasonable man would have thought that this was the very 
 time when a person who fancied he could throw any light on 
 the question, or on any branch of it, was bound so to do. Mr 
 Forster however tells us that he is "an Irish Churchman :" and 
 in Ireland, it is said, the custom is to look after you leap, first 
 to decide on a matter, and then to discuss it. How again, unless 
 through a like interchange of the past and the future, was my 
 conduct "the reverse of my statement 1 ?" I stated what my 
 conduct had been up to the delivery of the Charge. Was it 
 inconsistent with this statement, that I publisht the Charge 
 subsequently ? How too does the publication of my Charge, 
 with a somewhat laborious enquiry into the meaning of a verse 
 of Scripture, and into the manner in which that verse had been 
 interpreted in various ages, deserve to be stigmatized with the 
 name of agitation, and that too " by every means in my power?" 
 In fine I have to protest against the description of my argu- 
 ments as an "elaborate treatise in favour of the Sill" and an 
 attempt "to persuade men that the proposed change is right 
 and holy." If Mr Forster had done me the honour, the 
 justice I may say, seeing that he was about to make such an 
 onslaught upon me, to read what I have written on the 
 subject connectedly to the end, he must have seen that I 
 pronounce no positive opinion, one way or the other, on the 
 proposed change of the marriage-law, that the main part 
 of my discussion is on the meaning of the passage in Leviticus, 
 xviii. 18, and its bearing on our question; though I do indeed 
 express my conviction that this text does not forbid the 
 marriage of two sisters, except contemporaneously, and that 
 therefore we are no way bound by this text to prohibit such 
 a marriage to a Christian people. My desire was to clear the 
 controversy from this irrelevant topic, so that the argument might 
 rest on its proper grounds, the social and moral expediency or 
 inexpediency of the law. I am aware that this is contrary to the 
 practice of our ordinary partisans, who scrape together whatever 
 they can find to make a show in favour of their cause, seldom
 
 330 NOTE AD. 
 
 scrupling about distorting it to serve them, when there is need ; 
 wherefore, if -they see a person discarding a bad argument, they 
 fancy he must be an adversary: but I have learnt to believe that 
 nothing can yield any lasting strength, save truth, that this 
 will be stronger in proportion to its purity, and that every 
 particle of falsehood, helpful as it may appear at the moment, is 
 rottenness to the bones. On the main subject itself, the expe- 
 diency or inexpediency of the Law, I declared repeatedly that I 
 did not feel qualified to pronounce a judgement : it did not seem 
 to me that we had sufficiently precise information for legislating : 
 but, so far as I could form a conclusion, I say, that " the bias of 
 my mind would incline strongly to maintain the existing law, 
 with its sanctions of ancient usage and moral opinion, and 
 whereby we are made partakers of great blessings, while it is 
 impossible to estimate the mischiefs of a change" (p. 31) ; 
 that, " with regard to the higher classes the present state of the 
 law may justly be esteemed a great blessing" (p. 30) ; that, 
 " were it allowable to look at the question with reference to the 
 higher classes solely, I should wish that the present law should 
 be retained, both on account of the precious domestic blessings 
 which we derive from it, and because, in matters concerning 
 the primary relations of family life, the course of wisdom is 
 quieta non movere, unless under the pressure of some strong, 
 manifest, urgent cause" (p. 90). Now surely, if Mr Forster 
 had vouchsafed to read the writer whom he was attacking, 
 unless he had left his understanding swamp t in the morass of 
 some antediluvian language, he could never v have said of a 
 writer who summed up his opinion in this manner, even though 
 he acknowledged that there were other elements to be taken 
 into account, which might modify his conclusion, that he " has 
 taken a most earnest part in the agitation in favour of the 
 Bill by every means in his power," and that he was "hotly 
 advocating" (p. 33) the marriage with a wife's sister. 
 
 Let me cite another instance of the same intellectual offus- 
 cation. The first Note (p. 29) opens with the following extract 
 from my Charge. " The main argument of all, that which has
 
 NOTE AD. 331 
 
 been drawn from the injunctions of the Levitical Law, has 
 seemed to me wholly untenable ; and that too, without any need 
 of enquiring how far, and in what parts, and in what manner 
 and degree, the Levitical Law is to be regarded as still binding 
 upon Christians, after our having been expressly releast from it 
 by the Apostolic Council at Jerusalem." In these words, which, 
 as they stand in the context, seem to me perfectly clear, I meant 
 to say, that the argument, on which so much stress had been 
 laid, from Leviticus xviii. 18, seemed to me quite untenable, as 
 I try to shew immediately after, from the very wording of that 
 verse, without any necessity for our entering into the wider argu- 
 ment on the mode and extent of the obligatoriness of the Levitical 
 Law upon Christians. The reader may judge then of my sur- 
 prise, when I found it stated : " The passage here quoted presents 
 a fair specimen of certain very grave defects, which run through 
 the whole of that portion of Mr. H's Charge, which relates to the 
 marriage question. I mean that he too generally ignores the 
 arguments of the opposite side ; either assuming that none 
 such exist, or barely inferring that opinions opposed to his own 
 are unworthy of notice ; and, on the other hand, equally with- 
 out an attempt at proof, he endeavours to convince by bold, 
 undoubting, and reiterated assertion. Thus the passage of his 
 Charge referred to, put into a logical form, contains the following 
 syllogism : 1. The prohibitions in Lev. xviii. form part of the 
 Levitical, as distinguisht from the moral Law of God. 2. The 
 Council of Jerusalem releast Christians from all parts of the 
 Levitical Law, as distinguisht from the moral law of God. 3. 
 Therefore, the Council of Jerusalem releast Christians from the 
 prohibitions of Lev. xviii." 
 
 It has been said that we only find in a book what we put 
 into it, an assertion which, though, quite false in its ordinary 
 application, has found its realization in Mr Forster, whose grafts 
 are strangely different from the original stock. How this 
 sentence can shew that I " ignore the arguments of the opposite 
 side/' it is difficult to understand. I could not make mention 
 of them parenthetically in the sentence itself; but they are
 
 332 NOTE AD. 
 
 cited and examined in the Notes, such of them at least as my 
 library enabled me to discover. In the Notes I have tried to 
 weigh what seemed most important in the arguments used by 
 Dr Pusey and Mr Keble, by Jewel,* by Willet, by Basil, by 
 Hammond and Patrick. Indeed, so far was I from ignoring 
 them in that very sentence, the words which Mr Forster 
 italicizes, I suppose, to mark the egotisticalness of my way of 
 speaking, which others have reproved on the same ground, 
 it seemed to me, were adopted because this mode of speech 
 appeared to me to convey less of assumption than a naked as- 
 sertion would, on a matter on which certain eminent persons 
 had held a different opinion. Nor is it much easier to detect 
 how the sentence quoted exemplifies the practice laid to my 
 charge of " endeavouring to convince by bold, undoubting, and 
 reiterated assertion ; " seeing that the only thing like an as- 
 sertion in it is exprest as a mere personal opinion. As to the 
 syllogism spun out of my sentence, the minor is the only part 
 to which there is anything corresponding. I decline enquiring 
 into the validity of the major, and so draw no conclusion. 
 
 My castigator's next accusation (p. 31) is, that I have said, 
 "The rendering (of Levit. xviii. 18) adopted by the Caraites, 
 'one wife to another,' is not only destitute of all authority, but 
 discordant with the spirit of the sacred language : " and he 
 complains that I have "settled the matter in this off-hand 
 positive way." Now I grant I should justly have been liable 
 to his censure, if, without having the slightest pretensions to 
 Hebrew scholarship, I had taken upon myself so to speak. But 
 the words are not mine. If Mr Forster's irritation had allowed 
 
 * From a letter publisht in the new Edition of Jewel (vol. iv. p. 1262), 
 it appears that the good Bishop had changed his mind on this question, a year 
 and a half after he delivered the opinion given by Strype in his Life of him. 
 Writing to Archbishop Parker about a case, which had come before him and the 
 Archbishop, and which had been carried by appeal before the Court of Delegates, 
 he says : " I would they would decree it were lawful to marry two sisters ; so 
 should the world be out of doubt : as now it is past away in a mockery." The 
 last words seem to mean that the habitual violation of the prohibition rendered 
 it " a mockery."
 
 NOTE AD. 333 
 
 him to look beyond the sentence which offended him, he would 
 have seen that it is part of the opinion of Dr Adler, the chief 
 Rabbi, given in the Appendix to the Report by the Commis- 
 sioners, who justly thought that his opinion on a question of 
 Jewish law and usage was entitled to high consideration. 
 
 Again Mr Forster reproves me (p. 35) for wishing to introduce 
 these " two elements into our new national morals, the one as a 
 substitute, the other as a superseder of law, namely ' the con- 
 science of individuals' (p. 66), and 'the self-relying will'" (p. 
 71), and pronounces that "once admitted into play they would 
 open the flood-gates to antinomianism." I will not lengthen 
 this discussion by quoting the passages in which these expres- 
 sions stand, but will merely remark, that it is strange to find 
 a person, who has ever reflected on any moral question, ignorant 
 of the important part which the conscience of individuals must 
 act in the whole regulation of their moral life, and unable to 
 perceive how this is implied in those words of St Paul, which 
 enunciate one of the primary principles of all morality, Let every 
 man be fully persuaded in his own mind. As to "the self-relying 
 will," instead of introducing it as an element of social morality, 
 I merely use the expression in the way of warning, when urging 
 the necessity of bringing positive ordinances into agreement 
 with the conscience of a nation, as else " they will be under- 
 mined by the encroachments of the sceptical reason, and the 
 self-relying will." 
 
 There is a good deal more of the same sort of stuff, coloured 
 with more or less invective : but these samples are quite 
 enough to shew the value of my castigator's censure ; and I 
 should waste no more words on him, but that he accuses me (in 
 p. 46) of " a libel on the village-poor of England," because I 
 .have said that, in the present condition of the lower classes, 
 which we can hardly hope to see materially changed, " while a 
 widower, when left with young children, will naturally and 
 rightly invite his wife's sister to replace their mother's care over 
 them, the intimacy thus bred will have a strong tendency to 
 terminate in concubinage, if it may not in marriage." This
 
 334 NOTE AD. 
 
 passage Mr Forster denounces with the utmost vehemence : nor 
 has anything in his pamphlet surprised me more than his doing 
 so. For he tells us he has had " the charge of two large village 
 parishes : " and I have been informed on good authority that 
 he has distinguisht himself in them most honorably by his 
 zealous endeavours to suppress the sins of the flesh. Therefore 
 he, of all persons, one should think, cannot be ignorant of the 
 terrible evils which arise from the smallness of our cottages, and 
 the want of a proper separation between the sexes. At all 
 events, they have been set forth over and over again in various 
 recent publications concerning the condition of our lower classes : 
 and if one converses with the clergymen who go about much 
 amongst them in London, one is almost sure to hear shocking 
 accounts of cases of incest even between the nearest blood- 
 relations. Now I did not deem it an improbable supposition 
 that a widower, left with young children, would be likely to 
 invite his wife's sister, if she had an unmarried one, to come 
 and take charge of them. Nor did it seem a violent presump- 
 tion, considering the circumstances, to infer that such an intimacy 
 must have a tendency to terminate in concubinage, if it may not 
 in marriage. That it does at times terminate in marriage, I 
 have reason to know from several cases that have come before 
 me, some of them officially through presentments made at the 
 Visitation ; though no proceedings have ensued from those pre- 
 sentments, owing partly to the illregulated state of our Diocesan 
 Courts, and partly to the unwillingness of the presenters to 
 incur the inevitable expense of a prosecution. This is the reason 
 that made those exemplary parish ministers, Dr Hook, Dr Dale, 
 Mr Champneys, Mr Villiers, Mr Gurney, come forward in support 
 of the late Bill. They had so deep a sense of the evils they 
 found around them, that they did not shrink from encountering 
 the fury of the Pharisees, who would burn and crucify all such as 
 deem truth and righteousness more precious in God's sight than 
 their traditions. If such be the state of the case, I cannot see 
 how there is any reverence toward God in concealing it, or any- 
 thing like impiety in speaking of a great social evil with the 
 view of having it remedied. Mr Forster indeed calls my remark
 
 NOTE AD. 335 
 
 " a fearful proposition : " because " it asserts that the law which 
 forbids a man from marrying his wife's sister must, in the nature 
 of things, universally have a strong tendency to lead to immo- 
 rality and improper intercourse among the poor, i. e. } among the 
 immense majority of mankind." Of course it asserts nothing 
 of the kind. If the law be a law of God, and the horrour of 
 incest, which protects a sister, cannot be aroused to protect a 
 sister-in-law, the consequence is plain : people must beware of 
 exposing themselves to avoidable temptations. Hence I am no 
 way dismayed by the assertion, that my "conclusion would 
 involve an impiety from which I should shrink with horrour." 
 My conviction that God is the author of all good, that His law 
 is good and holy, and that whatever of evil may arise from its 
 application, springs solely from man's corruptions and perversions 
 of it, is far too strong, for me to fear anything that can result 
 from an honest search after truth. Only let us seek it strenu- 
 ously and singleheartedly, and, though He may allow us to stray 
 and stumble for a while, He will bring us out at length to a spot 
 where the way will spread out before our eyes; and He will 
 help us to contend against evil, even against that which we 
 ourselves may unwittingly have occasioned. 
 
 The strain of Mr Forster's invective had scarcely ceast, when 
 it was taken up by a writer in the 69th number of the Christian 
 Remembrancer, who has more vigour and smartness and know- 
 ledge, but displays his gifts with that flippancy and insolence and 
 unscrupulousness which often characterize the writers in that 
 Review. If he is superior to my previous castigator in clever- 
 ness, he makes up for this by his inferiority in honesty : for 
 while the former, as I have said, is only half responsible for his 
 misrepresentations, those of the latter bear an evident stamp 
 of malice. Of course I shall not think of replying to an anony- 
 mous assailant. The same general misrepresentations of my 
 purpose, which I have noticed in Mr Forster's Notes, run through 
 the Review : and if any one will compare the passages quoted 
 with the originals, he will find that in almost every instance they 
 are distorted in one way or other, and that what may seem 
 reprehensible in them is stuck in by the Reviewer.
 
 336 NOTE AD. 
 
 On one point only will I add a word. In the Charge I have 
 said (p. 29), that we are not " to be overruled and fettered in 
 the interpretation of a passage like this (Levit. xviii. 1 8), by any 
 alledged consent of the Church. For in the first place there is 
 no such consent, as may be ascertained without much trouble." 
 In the Notes I have shewn that the prohibition in this verse was 
 interpreted as applying solely to the lifetime of the first wife by 
 Philo, by Augustin, by Nicolaus de Lyra, whose authority is the 
 more valuable from his having been a Jew, by Cornelius a Lapide, 
 by Caietan and Bellarmin, by Fagius, by Tostatus and Lorinus, 
 by Selden and Grotius, men whose combination of legal with 
 theological and philological learning fitted them especially to 
 pronounce on this question, by Jeremy Taylor, by Le Clerc, by 
 Kosenmiiller and Baumgarten, by Chalmers, and by the two 
 most eminent jurists of our age in Germany. I have contended 
 too, on the authority of Grotius, that the Apostolic Canon, as it 
 merely prohibits a man who marries two sisters from becoming a 
 clergyman, seems to imply that laymen in that age were not 
 precluded from such marriages. Surely this is a sufficient body 
 of evidence that there is no general consent in the interpretation 
 of this passage as prohibiting such marriages. Yet on the 
 strength of this denial the Reviewer thinks himself warranted in 
 discharging several pages at me full of flippant and insolent 
 abuse : meanwhile he himself adopts an interpretation very 
 different from the received one, and then, some time after, says 
 (in p. 1 68), " Had Archdeacon Hare's negative of general consent 
 been applied to this verse, he would be right." Yet to this verse 
 I did apply it, and to this verse solely ; except so far as the 
 number of authorities for interpreting this verse as sanctioning the 
 marriage of a wife's sister implies that there was no consent in 
 holding that the Levitical Law forbad it. This is .the verse which, 
 from the beginning of my argument, I profest to discuss, and the 
 only verse with regard to which I have attempted to collect the 
 opinions of divines and jurists. The general question as to the 
 obligatoriness of the Levitical law I have not argued ; though I 
 have quoted Jeremy Taylor to shew that it is not a point to be
 
 NOTE AE. 337 
 
 taken for granted. With regard to Levit. xviii. 18, I have been 
 glad to find my opinion confirmed in the House of Lords in the 
 excellent speeches of the Bishops of St David's and Norwich. 
 
 Note AE : p. 64. 
 
 In earlier ages, before the love and dutifulness of the Christian 
 Bishop was swallowed up by the ambition of the Pope, the pre- 
 sence of the Bishop of Rome, for instance, that of Gregory the 
 Great and of Leo the Great, was an inestimable blessing to the 
 imperial city. For the last ten centuries it has rather been a 
 curse. The earth itself bears witness to it, as every traveler feels 
 on passing from the bright and rich fields of Tuscany to the 
 dreary wastes of the patrimony of St Peter. The aspect of the 
 people, in whom the same contrast is seen, bears a like testimony : 
 and the reports of those who have had opportunities of knowing 
 them, declare that their intellectual and moral and spiritual 
 character is too aptly typified by their outward appearance. 
 This is the case in our days : it has been so more or less for cen- 
 turies : and there appear to be the strongest reasons for believing 
 that the character of the people has been moulded in great 
 measure by that of the Government. 
 
 How deeply this conviction had imprest itself on the great Ita- 
 lians of the fourteenth century, we see from a number of passages 
 in Petrarch's Letters, especially in those sine titulo. I will quote 
 an extract from the 15th, in which he also speaks of the manner 
 in which the Papacy had carried its train of abominations along 
 with it in its migration to Avignon, making that still worse than 
 Rome. He is writing to a friend who was going from the former 
 place to the latter ; and he thus describes the two seats of the 
 Papacy : '* Ecce jam oculis vides, jam manibus palpas, qualis est 
 Babylon ilia novissima, fervens, aestuans, obscena, terribilis, quam 
 nee Cambysis opus Babylon Niliaca, nee ilia vetustior regia Semi- 
 ramidis Babylon aequet Assyria : Nilum et Euphratem Rhodanus 
 vincit, nernpe qui Tartarea flumina, Cocytum vincit et Acheron- 
 tern. Quicquid uspiam perfidiae et doli, quicquid inclementiae
 
 338 NOTE AE. 
 
 superbiaeque, quicquid impudicitiae effrenataeque libidinis audisti 
 aut legisti, quicquid denique impietatis et morum pessimorurn 
 sparsim habet aut habuit orbis terrae, totum istic cumulatim 
 videas acervatimque reperias. Nam de avaritia deque ambitione 
 supervacuum est loqui ; quarum alteram ibi regni sui solium 
 posuisse, unde orbem totum populetur ac spoliet, alteram vero 
 alibi nusquam habitare compertum est." Such is Avignon : thence 
 he carries his friend to Rome. " Vides en populum non modo Christi 
 adversarium, sed, quod est gravius, sub Christi vexillo rebellantem 
 Christo, militantem Sathanae, et Christi sanguine tumidum atque 
 lascivientem, et dicentem, Labia nostra a nobis sunt : qnis noster 
 dominus est ? populum duricordem et impium, superbum, 
 famelicum, sitientem, hianti rostro, acutis dentibus, praecurvis 
 unguibus, pedibus lubricis, pectore saxeo, corde chalybeo, plumbea 
 voluntate, voce melliflua ; populum, cui non modo proprie 
 convenire dixeris evangelicum illud atque propheticum, Populus 
 hie labiis me konorat, cor autem eorum longe est a me ; sed illud 
 etiam Judae Scariothis, qui Dominum suum prodens et exosculans 
 aiebat, Ave Rabbi, et Judaeorum, qui indutum purpura, coro- 
 natum spinis, percutientes et conspuentes, illusione amarissima 
 flexis poplitibus adorabant, et salutabant Ave Rex Judaeorum, ! 
 Quid enim, quid, oro, aliud assidue geritur hos inter Christi 
 hostes et nostri temporis Pharisaeos? Nonne etenim Christum 
 ipsum, cujus nomen die ac nocte altissimis laudibus attollunt, 
 quern purpura atque auro vestiunt, quern gemmis onerant, quern 
 salutant et adorant cernui, eundem in terra emunt, vendunt, 
 nundinantur, eundem quasi velatis oculis non visurum et impiarum 
 opum vepribus coronant, et impurissimi oris sputis inquinant, 
 et vipereis sibilis insectantur, et venenatorum actuum cuspide 
 feriunt, et, quantum in eis est, illusum, nudum, inopem, flagellatum 
 iterum atque iterum in Calvariam trahunt, ac nefandis assensibus 
 cruci rursus affigunt ? Et pudor ! dolor I indignitas I 
 tali urn hodie, ut dicitur, Roma est. De qua non illepide jocans 
 quidam ait : 
 
 Roma, tibi fuerant servi domini dominorum, 
 Servorum servi mine tibi sunt domini."
 
 NOTE AE. 339 
 
 Let us come down now from the fourteenth century to the 
 nineteenth. I will give a few extracts from Niebuhr's Letters, 
 shewing what that great observer saw in Italy, and especially at 
 Home, where he spent so many years. On the 24th of September 
 1816 he writes : "I have become acquainted with two or three 
 literary men of real ability ; but they are old men, who have only 
 a few years longer to live ; and when they are gone, Italy will 
 be, as they say themselves, in a state of barbarism. No one feels 
 himself a citizen. Not only are the people destitute of hope, they 
 have not even wishes respecting the affairs of the world, except 
 as they concern their several cabinets ; and all the springs of great 
 and noble thoughts and feelings are choked up. The three genuine 
 and intellectual scholars of my acquaintance are all ecclesiastics ; 
 they are however only ecclesiastics by profession ; for I have not 
 found in them the slightest trace, either of a belief in the dogmas 
 of Catholicism, or of the pietism which you meet with in Germany. 
 When an Italian has once ceast to be a slave of the Church, he 
 never seems to trouble his head about such matters at all." 
 
 Again, on the 30th of October : " Rome is a terrible place for 
 any one who is melancholy ; because it contains no living present, 
 to relieve the sense of sadness. The present is revolting ; and 
 there are not even any remains of the Church of the Middle Ages. 
 There is only one man of talent and mental activity here, at least 
 among the philologers and historians, an old ex-Jesuit on the 
 borders of the grave : and he repeats the verdict which I have 
 already heard from the lips of the few old men, in whom I have 
 become acquainted with the relics of a more intellectual age : 
 Italia e spenta, e un corpo morto : and I find it so." 
 
 Again, on the 7th of February 1817 : "Today begins the wild 
 buffoonery of the Carnival, to us a melancholy spectacle. It is a 
 question whether even the Romans will enact it with any real 
 gaiety of heart. A people of utterly vacant mind is capable of 
 childish enjoyment, as long as it has outward comforts ; but when 
 a period of agitation and calamity comes, when its playthings 
 are broken, and it has to go hungry, it must inevitably become 
 heavy and stupid." 
 
 z 2
 
 340 NOTE AE. 
 
 On the 16th of February, 1817 : " The old Greeks were pretty 
 near the mark, when they pictured our coasts (i.e. those of Italy) 
 as the land of Cimmerian darkness, and fabled Apollo as wander- 
 ing between Delphi and the noble Hyperboreans. It has already 
 come to this with me, that I feel I am growing as superficial 
 and ignorant as a modern Italian, and look up to all that you 
 can send me with sorrowful humility. The genuine native 
 Italians would indeed have to look up to it from the depths, 
 those here I mean, for whom I always feel angry that there is 
 no other name than the shamefully profaned one of Romans. 
 For the old men at Venice, Bologna, and Florence, said with 
 bleeding hearts, that all was over with their nation and their 
 literature, and that their departed greatness was but an agonizing 
 remembrance." 
 
 On the 26th of June 1818 : " About the Italians you will have 
 heard Ringseis testimony : [He was an enthusiastic and pious 
 Roman Catholic :] and we Protestants can leave it to him to 
 paint the clergy and the state of religion in this country. In 
 fact we are all cold and dead, compared to his indignation. 
 The most superficial prophet of so-called illumination cannot 
 have a more sincere aversion to enthusiasm than the Roman 
 priesthood : their superstition bears no trace of it. I know that 
 I am perfectly correct in saying that even among the laity 
 you cannot discover a vestige of piety. The life of the Italian 
 is little more than an animal one ; and he is not much better 
 than an ape endowed with speech. There is nowhere a spark 
 of originality or truthfulness. Slavery and misery have even 
 extinguisht all acute susceptibility to sensual enjoyments ; and 
 there is, I am sure, no people upon earth more thoroughly 
 ennuye, and opprest with the burthen of their own existence, 
 than the Romans. Their whole life is a vegetation. While 
 whole families sleep round the charcoal pans in winter, and 
 often get suffocated out of sheer idleness, the nobles carry on 
 conversazioni, which are not much better, and in which most 
 are neither speakers nor listeners. The universal knavishness 
 and thievishness are also the effect of laziness : people must
 
 NOTE AE. 341 
 
 eat and clothe themselves ; and this must be done without 
 interruption to their sloth. The present government has 
 undertaken the task of introducing tolerable civil security by 
 a police, in the midst of ever increasing wickedness and degra- 
 dation, a system of constraint and terrour that may impose fetters 
 on the wild passions of the animal man. They never think of 
 making him comfortable : he may sink deeper and deeper into 
 wretchedness; but he shall fear blows and the gallies, rather than 
 follow his own lusts. Surrounded by an incalculable body of 
 spies, and knowing how he himself would be ready to accuse and 
 betray any one for gold, Fear is to be his highest deity. There 
 is no criminal code; the punishments are quite arbitrary. 
 Cardinal Kuffo is dead ; and a historical personage, who equals 
 any of the commissioners of the Convention, relates with lively 
 chuckling how his Calabrians treated the towns, and even the 
 convents, which had been Jacobinical. Even the murder of a wife 
 is very lightly punisht. The effect of this severity is seen in the 
 absolute inertness of the common people. The nobles, who 
 have nothing to fear, spend their days in lifeless inaction, and in 
 glutting their lowest lusts. The destruction of Bonaparte's rule, 
 you know how I hate it elsewhere, has been the greatest 
 misfortune for Rome. To extirpate priestcraft, as it was and 
 is, was a necessary amputation ; and on the whole it was performed 
 with discretion, forbearance, and moderation. The people were 
 employed and cared for : the number of births increast rapidly; 
 the priests were no longer able to command or permit abortion : 
 the number of deaths diminisht incredibly. The conscription 
 was disliked, but did good. A French regiment was a school of 
 honour and morality for an Italian, as it was of corruption for a 
 German. Some life was awakened among the higher classes : 
 people began to take an interest in something; and very much, 
 perhaps all that is possible for a Roman, would be gained, if he 
 recovered animation. There were a good number of criminals 
 executed without the attendance of a priest, consequently con- 
 demned to eternal damnation ; whereas now, in the opinion of 
 the common people, every criminal who is executed goes fully
 
 342 NOTE AE. 
 
 absolved into Heaven. The officials set the Romans a pattern of 
 liberality and conscientiousness ; and the purveyors were models 
 of strict integrity and humanity to the managers of hospitals : 
 all this you will not misunderstand." 
 
 On the 21st of May 1819, he writes thus from Tivoli : The 
 priests are generally very poor, and incredibly bad. In Rome 
 there are parish priests who go about begging. The monks are 
 unquestionably nearly all good for nothing, although I know 
 one very estimable Franciscan. Learning and literature are at 
 a lower ebb than perhaps in any other country. Devotion is 
 merely external ; and this has much diminisht. I have been 
 assured by Italians themselves that the young men have 
 scarcely any faith at all. From the highest to the lowest, all 
 unite in hating and despising the Government. I have been 
 talking here with an intelligent landowner about the city and 
 its inhabitants ; and he drew a frightful picture of one after 
 another of the most eminent men, which had quite an air of 
 truth. As he had just been blaming the Government, unhappily 
 with too much reason, I askt him, what good he hoped for, 
 if those who would come into power on the fall of the priestly 
 domination were so bad. He acknowledged that no improvement 
 could be expected." 
 
 On the 14th of October 1820, after having been four years 
 at Rome, Niebuhr writes : " It is impossible but that the 
 coquetting with Catholicism, which is now in fashion among 
 a certain class, should come to an end : it is altogether too 
 untruthful and revolting a comedy. Here in Italy the faith of 
 the Church has so died out, that the mummy would fall into 
 dust at the first hard blow. But what will replace it, God 
 knows ; since there is not a human throb in the heart of the 
 people, nor is any want felt beyond those of the animal nature. 
 It is just the same among the educated classes in Spain, where 
 religion is regarded as an insupportable yoke." Niebuhr's pro- 
 phecy has not been fulfilled so soon as he probably expected ; 
 though, to be sure, now that the coquetting with Romanism in 
 Germany has reacht its acme in the Countess of Hahn-IIahn, we
 
 NOTE AE. 343 
 
 may trust that the boil is on the point of bursting. But he 
 would never have thought that the English mind would have 
 caught the infection. 
 
 From Florence, after finally leaving Rome, he wrote on the 
 22nd of May 1823 : "Here in Tuscany the traveler is gladdened 
 by the general aspect of prosperity and cheerfulness. The people 
 appear to be in the very condition best suited to their character 
 and temperament. Their moral superiority to the Romans strikes 
 you immediately, above all, their piety, as contrasted with the 
 utter want of it at Rome. You'must not take it ill of us Pro- 
 testants, if, after spending seven years at Rome (though many 
 people go to church there every day), we fancied that this virtue 
 was quite extinct among the Italians, because it is so absolutely 
 at Rome. We were much edified here on Whit-Tuesday, by the 
 real devotion of an immense multitude. It is not difficult to 
 explain why at Rome, above all places, religious services are now 
 become a painful taskwork." 
 
 There cannot be a completer refutation than these extracts 
 give to Dr Newman's sophistical attempt to prove, in the 
 Lecture cited in Note I, that the moral and social debasement of 
 the Roman people is the natural result of the exclusive power 
 which Religion exercises at Rome. Rather is it the natural, the 
 inevitable result of a corrupt religion, of a hollow religion, 
 of religion worn as a mask. A mass of evidence to the same 
 effect has recently been set before us in Farini's History of 
 the Roman State. I cannot stop here to collect even a tithe or 
 a scantling of that evidence, but will merely transcribe the 
 conclusions drawn from it by an able writer in the 74th 
 Number of the Christian Remembrancer, who, from the character 
 of that Journal, cannot be suspected of any ultra-protestant 
 rancour. 
 
 Speaking of the moderate and religious class of Italian liberals, 
 he says (p. 364) : " Good Catholics as they are, and because 
 they are such, their moral sense has been deeply shockt by that 
 absence of morality, both in what is neglected, and in what is 
 done, or allowed to be done, by authorities which claim most
 
 344 NOTE AE. 
 
 loudly the sanction of religion. In the home and centre of 
 Roman Catholicism, in that Italy whose faith has never been 
 shaken in the traditions of antiquity, and under the eye of the 
 guardian of that faith, the methods of governing are the by- word 
 of Christendom. And this is no mere question of political 
 philosophy or party ; it is something much more elementary 
 than a comparison of different theories or models of government. 
 It means that such is the system which has grown up and taken 
 root in many parts of that country, in the employment of 
 political power, that neither truth, nor fairness, nor mercy, 
 nor honour, nor justice, nor integrity, are reckoned among 
 its essential and indispensable laws and conditions. It means 
 that no one expects these, as a matter of course, at the hands 
 of those in authority ; and that rulers never shew any hesitation, 
 or scruple, when it is convenient, in departing from them. It 
 means that, where religion is alledged to be purest and most 
 influential, fraud, falsehood, corruption, and every form of loath- 
 some and base villany, vex and pollute the civil and social 
 relations of men, more widely, more systematically, and more 
 hopelessly than in any other Christian people ; because those who 
 have the welfare of their fellows in their hands, cannot, after 
 many attempts, be divested of the idea that these disgraceful 
 expedients are lawful and justifiable. It means further, that 
 those who, in times of difficulty, meet discontent and resistance 
 with vindictive and cruel measures, cannot be got to take the 
 trouble, in times of peace, to consult seriously for the happiness 
 and improvement of their subjects. This is what is meant by 
 the political degradation of Italy ; that authority, in a race of so 
 much intelligence and such high cultivation, is without dignity 
 and without principle ; that the very ideas of truth and justice 
 between the governors and the governed have been obliterated 
 by the immemorial and incurable contempt of them ; this, and 
 not the mere admiration of constitutions and representatives, 
 this it is which makes men liberals in Italy ; not only the 
 violent and impetuous, but the religious, the temperate, and the 
 well judging ; those who know how the Bible speaks of cruelty
 
 NOTE AF. 345 
 
 and oppression, of treachery and denial of justice ; and that 
 these are not the less sins against religion, because contrary to 
 a civilization itself not always religious." 
 
 NOTE AF, p. 66. 
 
 I know not whether it has been remarkt, that Coleridge, in his 
 invaluable Essay On the Constitution of the Church and State, a 
 work which arose out of a correspondence on the expediency of 
 what was termed Catholic Emancipation, and which especially 
 treats of the securities requisite to justify that measure, lays a 
 main stress on the very enactment, which the Papal Bull, ap- 
 pointing the Romish hierarchy in England, violated. After say- 
 ing that " the principle, the solemn recognition of which he 
 deemed indispensable as a security, and would be willing to 
 receive as the only security, is not formally recognised in the 
 Bill," he adds, (p. 10) : "It may, perhaps, be implied in one 
 of the clauses, that which forbids the assumption of local titles 
 by the Romish bishops ; but this implication, even if really con- 
 tained in the clause, and actually intended by its framers, is not 
 calculated to answer the ends, and utterly inadequate to supply 
 the place, of the solemn and formal declaration which I required." 
 
 From Sir James Graham's speech on the late Bill, it would ap- 
 pear that neither Sir Robert Peel, nor even the Duke of Welling- 
 ton, attach t any great importance to the clause in their own Act ; 
 and I remember how Coleridge at the time was derided as a mere 
 visionary, who always magnified his molehills into mountains, 
 and made so much of what every reasonable practical man must 
 needs deem insignificant. Well ! after twenty years the Papacy 
 attacks England on this very point. The Government, the Church, 
 the Nation, from one end to the other, are exasperated by the 
 attack : they all feel its enormous importance : and lo ! what was 
 called a molehill, now proves to be a mountain, the magnitude of 
 which the prophetic seer discerned in the distance, while from 
 others it was hidden, even from the Duke of Wellington. Thus, 
 among the freaks of Time, it now and then comes out, that the
 
 346 NOTE AG. 
 
 unpractical philosopher, looking into the heart of things, sees far 
 beyond the vision of all his practical contemporaries. 
 
 Of the late Bill I will not speak. He who questions its justice 
 or its necessity will find a very able and complete vindication of 
 both in the Bishop of Ossory's late Charge. 
 
 AG. p. 70. 
 
 On these Schools for the Middle Classes, I have already spoken 
 so much, and so earnestly, in my Charge for 1849, and in my 
 Sermon on Education the Necessity of Mankind, and the Dedica- 
 tion prefixt to it, that I will content myself here with commend- 
 ing them again to the help and support of all who love England 
 and her Church. A noble work was never undertaken in a nobler 
 spirit ; and, though it has had many jealousies and suspicions to 
 contend with, a blessing has rested upon it ; so that there is good 
 reason to believe that a large building, capable of holding three 
 hundred boys, will be completed before the end of 1852, and will 
 have its full complement of pupils. Ere long, I trust, the sus- 
 picions and jealousies will be in great measure allayed, through 
 the manifest benefits conferred by the school ; and we may hope 
 to see others like it rising in every county in England. 
 
 In p. 78 I have erroneously followed Dr. Newman in mentioning Mr. Hallam 
 among the repeaters of the story about Eligius, not having his work at hand to 
 refer to, nor having noticed that Dr. Newman at the end of his volume states 
 that Mr. Hallam in a later edition had corrected the mistake. To the list of 
 Protestants who have taken pains to expose it, I should have added Dr. Arnold : 
 see his first Lecture on Modern History, p. 102.
 
 Lately publisfit : 
 
 THE MISSION OF THE COMFORTER : Second Edition : 1850. 
 THE VICTORY OF FAITH : Second Edition : 1847. 
 SERMONS PREACHT IN HERSTMONCEUX CHURCH : 1841. 
 Second Volume : 1849. 
 
 THE BETTER PROSPECTS OF THE CHURCH : a Charge 
 
 delivered at the Visitation in 1840, with Notes. 
 PRIVILEGES IMPLY DUTIES: a Charge delivered at the 
 
 Visitation in 1841, with Notes. 
 THE MEANS OF UNITY : a Charge delivered at the Visitation in 
 
 1842, with Notes, especially on the Anglican Bishopric at Jerusalem, 
 
 and on the Need of an Ecclesiastical Synod. 
 THE DUTY OF THE CHURCH IN TIMES OF TRIAL: a 
 
 Charge delivered at the Visitation in 1848, with Notes, especially on 
 
 the Controversy touching the Management of Schools, and on the 
 
 Jewish Question. 
 THE TRUE REMEDY FOR THE EVILS OF THE AGE: a 
 
 Charge delivered at the Visitation in 1849, with Notes, especially on 
 
 the Educational, Matrimonial, and Baptismal Questions. 
 THE UNITY OF THE CHURCH : a Sermon, with Introductory 
 
 Remarks on Uniformity : 1845. 
 THE UNITY OF MANKIND IN GOD : a Sermon preacht on 
 
 occasion of the Jubilee of the Church Missionary Society : 1848. 
 EDUCATION THE NECESSITY OF MANKIND: a Sermon 
 
 preacht at the laying of the Foundation Stone of a School for the 
 
 Middle Classes : 1851. 
 LETTER TO THE DEAN OF CHICHESTER, on the Appointment 
 
 of Dr Hampden to the See of Hereford : Second Edition, with a 
 
 Postscript, on Lord John Russell's Letter to the Clergy of Bedford, 
 
 and in reply to Mr Trower's Plain Remarks : 1848. 
 THOU SHALT NOT BEAR FALSE WITNESS AGAINST THY 
 
 NEIGHBOUR : a Letter to the Editor of the English Review : with 
 
 a Letter from Professor Maurice to the Author : 1849. 
 LETTER TO THE HON. R. CAVENDISH, on the recent 
 
 Judgement of the Court of Appeal, as affecting the Doctrine of the 
 
 Church : Second Edition, with a Postscript : 1850. 
 A FEW WORDS ON THE REJECTION OF THE EPISCOPAL 
 
 BILL TO AMEND THE ECCLESIASTICAL COURT OF 
 
 APPEAL: 1850. 
 PORTIONS OF THE PSALMS IN ENGLISH VERSE, selected 
 
 for Public Worship : 1839. 
 GUESSES AT TRUTH, by Two Brothers : First Series, Fourth Edition, 
 
 revised: 1851. 
 Second Series, Second Edition, with large Additions : 1848.
 
 Preparing for Publication : 
 
 A VINDICATION OF LUTHER AGAINST HIS RECENT 
 ENGLISH ASSAILANTS: Secoud Edition, reprinted from the 
 Notes to the Mission of the Comforter, revised, with Notes. 
 
 THE WANTS OF THE CHURCH : ROMANIZING FALLA- 
 CIES: THE ROMANIZING TENDENCIES OF THE AGE: 
 Three Charges delivered at the Visitations in 1843, 1845, 1846, with 
 Notes. 
 
 NOTES TO THE VICTORY OF FAITH. 
 
 SERMONS PREACHT ON PARTICULAR OCCASIONS : Second 
 Edition, with Notes. 
 
 GUESSES AT TRUTH, by Two Brothers : Third Series, enlarged. 
 
 LONDON . Printed by S. BBNTLEY and Co. Bangor House, Shoe Lane.
 
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