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 Ffoulkes 
 The Roman Index
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 ^^ ■" X ^-t'^^ ^ ^ ^— dT \r 
 
 The Roman Index and its late ^ 
 proceedings. ] 
 
 A SECOND LETTER 
 
 THE MOST REV. ARCHBISHOP MANNING, 
 
 ETC., ETC. 
 
 BY THE AUTHOR OP 
 
 "THE CHUECH'S CEEED OE THE CEOWN'S CEEEDP" 
 
 Omnes reverendissimi episcopi acclamaveiimt " Nemo abseutem condcmnat." ' 
 
 Coiicil, Glial, Act. iv. 
 
 LONDON: 
 
 J. T. HAYES, LYALL PLACE, EATON SQUAEE. 
 NEW YOllK :— POTT & AISIEKY. 
 
 1
 
 loNDOS : 
 
 SWIPT <fc CO., REG-ENT PRESS, KISG STREET 
 REGENT STREET, W.
 
 z. 
 
 lo/f 
 
 A SECOND LETTER 
 
 &c. 
 
 My Loed Archbishop, 
 
 No prisoner ever received a free pardon more thankfully than 
 I received your Grace's communication of the 7th of September 
 last, which released me from silence. This is all that I shall 
 say of it at present. For eight weary months — for the whole 
 year previous — I had been running the ecclesiastical gauntlet, 
 driven from pillar to post and from post to pillar again, in a way 
 that I will abstain from characterising till I have first described 
 it, at all events, and by that time most educated persons, I 
 should imagine, who have followed me, will have characterised 
 it for themselves, or be better able to appreciate what I may 
 then say of it. 
 
 At present I confine myself to a plain narrative of facts, com- 
 menting Upon them as I proceed, only to elucidate their character 
 or their force, draAving inferences from them subsequently. 
 
 To state them, I must, I fear, draw largely from the various 
 communications — correspondence principally — that have passed 
 between us on the subject ; but I do so without hesitation, as I 
 never approached your Grace from the first but in your official 
 capacityj and it is to your official acts exclusively that I shall 
 invite the attention of the outside world. Your personal charac- 
 ter is, and always has been, above my criticism ; for your official 
 acts I make the system in which you bear office alone responsible; 
 
 824721
 
 ( 4 ) 
 
 Your Grace is beholden to one, and perhaps to many, superiors 
 in that system. Accordingly, whatever injunctions are laid upon 
 you by a higher authority than your own, you can have no alter- 
 native but to comply with and execute. 
 
 The circumstances, briefly, which led to the publication of my 
 pamphlet, "The Church's Creed or the Crown's Creed?" were 
 these : On November 20, 1867, I sought an interview with your 
 Grace, as my bishop, on the subject of some grave difficulties, as 
 they appeared to me, by which I had been confronted in my 
 enquiries into the history of the schism between the Latin and 
 Greek Churches, forming the subject of the second part of my 
 book called " Christendom's Divisions," which had then been 
 published six months. Your Grace listened to all that I had to 
 say with apparent gravity, telling me that you had not as yet 
 read my book on account of some unfavourable criticisms that it 
 had elicited, lest it should ever come before you judicially ; but 
 ended by promising that if I would set down my difficulties on 
 paper they should be referred to persons of acknowledged learning 
 and impartiality for consideration. 
 
 My paper, accompanied by two others which had appeared in 
 print a short time before with my name affixed to them, was 
 forwarded to your Grace the day after Christmas, and it ended 
 thus : 
 
 " I have only to explain, in conclusion, my object in submitting 
 these pages for pcrilsal. Deprecating any criticism, favourable 
 or unfavourable, of any part of them that is strictly my own, I 
 demand respectfully, by the right that every Christian is acknow- 
 ledged to have when he is persuaded that a question of faith is 
 at stake,, that the facts adduced by me should be taken info 
 serious consideration by the heads of the Church. I have done 
 my best to state each fact honestly, as it is recorded in history, 
 without suppressing any, neither undervaluing, nor exaggerating 
 their importance. Should I seem to have failed in any case, I 
 desire nothing more than to retract any statement that can be 
 shewn to be incorrect or untrue. Should my facts turn out to be
 
 ( 5 ) 
 
 fi^enerally correct, tlien my hope is that our ecclesiastical rulers 
 will assent to take this whole question into their own hands with- 
 out delay. On receiving an assurance to that effect, I should 
 gladly refrain from stirring any more in the matter on my own 
 private responsibility and await their verdict. But the question 
 is one which my conscience utterly forbids me to allow to rest 
 statu quo." 
 
 No acknowledgment of the receipt of this paper ever reached 
 me. At length, April 19, I wrote begging to be informed of its 
 fate, and three days afterwards I received a note from your 
 Grace, commencing with these words : ''The enclosed paper will 
 give you a statement of the Catholic doctrine of the Holy Trinity, 
 which I do not find in that you have written. ... I hope you 
 will make any remarks you wish on the enclosed, and send them 
 freely." 
 
 I sent my remarks as invited on this paper of a dozen pages 
 ordinary letter-size, and not closely written, after an interval of 
 about as many days; observing, however, that "unfortunately 
 for myself, it contained no solution of my peculiar difficulties ; 
 indeed, in most cases, it hardly purported to meet them at all." 
 
 I waited a fortnight in vain for any reply to this communication 
 from your Grace, the object of which was to shew that your Grace 
 had misapprehended my meaning throughout on a point to which 
 your paper was principally directed, and that my contention was 
 not that the teaching of the Latin Church on the Processsion of 
 the Holy Ghost was erroneous, but that it merely required — still 
 necessarily required — explanation to bring it into complete 
 harmony with that of the East, and of the early Church. On 
 May 21, I wrote, therefore, to ask whether I had appealed on 
 this, and on other points in vain. 
 
 "I thought it only dutiful," I said, "to submit my diffi- 
 culties to your Grace in private, when they had reached a 
 certain point : and I had become convinced that they were 
 founded in fact : but in case of my appeal pro^dng of no avail 
 I had always contemplated the possibility of my having to
 
 ( 6 ) 
 
 address you in public on them. Possibly I might have saved 
 you some trouble, had I done this from the first." 
 Your Grace replied briefly by return of post : 
 *' From your letter I gatlier that you wish to lay your views 
 before the Holy See : a course most natural and easy if you so 
 desire. If you wish me to transmit any documents I shall be 
 happy to do so." 
 
 I instantly rejoined : 
 
 "I think it must have escaped your Grace that the papers 
 which I had the pleasure of sending you in December last were 
 drawn up expressly for the purpose of being forwarded to Rome, 
 in the event of their appearing to the impartial theologians to 
 whom you proposed referring them in the first instance, to be of 
 sufficient importance to warrant their being despatched thither 
 for examination. This was the course proposed by yom* Grace at 
 our interview, as far back as November 20. From the corres- 
 pondence which has passed between us more recently, I can only 
 gather that they have failed of their mission : so that nothing 
 seems now left to me but to seek to force discussion of the subject 
 in some other way. And this I am afraid must be by my pub- 
 lishing a letter in my own name addressed to your Grace, 
 recapitulating the historical facts of the case. 
 
 Up to this time I had received no sort of intimation from your 
 Grace, direct or indirect, that my papers had ever been seriously 
 examined. In your letter of May 25, your Grace for the first 
 time so much as hints that this had been done. 
 
 ' I, and those icith me, finding nothing in j-our papers 
 that is not well known to theological students in Rome, are 
 satisfied that there is no matter which needs to be referred to 
 Rome for coi^ideration. I may further add that to do so \^'ith a 
 ^dew to invite the Holy See to reconsider the whole course of its 
 authoritative acts in so high a matter, would seem to imply either 
 a want of accurate knowledge in respect to those acts, or a want 
 of faith in its divine office. In the answer and paper which I sent 
 vou, I refrained as carefully as possible from giving you needless
 
 ( 7 ) 
 
 pain, by explicitly stating what I hope I have here expressed with 
 due regard to your feelings." 
 
 Facts rather than doctrine had formed the burden of my 
 papers throughout : the paper which your Grace had been pleased 
 to send me was purely theological, and directed for the most 
 part against a phrase of mine* which I had never used but in one 
 sense, and which your Grace condemned in another. If there 
 was nothing in my papers but what was well known to theological 
 students in Eome, why not have referred me to one of their class- 
 books, where my facts were answered ? If it was " most natural" 
 for me " to wish to lay my views before the Holy See" but three 
 days ago, what could have happened since to make your Grace 
 
 say now, '' that to do so would seem to imply a want of faith 
 
 in its divine office ? " The purpose for which I wished to do so 
 must have been as patent to your Grace on May 22, as on 
 May 25, beyond dispute. But your Grace became much more 
 explicit in the same breath. 
 
 " At the risk of giving you pain, I feel it now to be my duty to 
 notice passages in your two last letters on which hitherto I have 
 made no comment. You express your probable intention of 
 addressing me on this subject in public. But let me first set 
 before you the possible consequences of any public act on your 
 part. You have a full and ample right to come to me, or to 
 write to me, as any other member of the Church for help or satis- 
 faction which it is in my power to give. In these private offices 
 of friendship and charity I shall always be happy, so far as my 
 work permits, to render what service I can. But if by any publi- 
 cation of opinions which are erroneous, you should introduce 
 danger to the faith of others, or to the peace of the Church, you 
 would lay upon me an inevitable duty to take such public steps as 
 may thereby become necessary. This I fear could not fail to be 
 of grave and painful consequence to yourself, and I would very 
 earnestly impress upon you the prudence and duty of refraining 
 
 * "Double procession," by which I had always meant "procession" frow two 
 Persons,
 
 ( B ) 
 
 from any act which shall transfer the private difficulties of your 
 own mind into public discussions dangerous to others.' 
 
 As this Avhole correspondence had turned upon difficulties cer- 
 tainly not bhnked or slurred over in a book published by me just 
 twelve months previously, and then selling tolerably, I was at 
 first unable to comprehend the drift of this last sentence, because 
 by publishing a book, even though your Grace had hitherto not 
 perused it for the reasons you named, I conceived I had already 
 ventured upon as public an act as any now or at any future time 
 within my power. Afterwards it occurred to me that it was not 
 so much by my bishop as by the system represented by him " ex 
 officio,'' that I was addressed in this whole passage : and I decided 
 that my reply to it accordingly should be that of an Englishman. 
 
 I replied, therefore : " Believe me, no fear of any con- 
 sequences that you or any power upon earth could hold over 
 me would have the smallest effect in inducing me to suppress 
 a single fact which I ever behoved it to be necessary for the 
 interests of truth to publish on the housetops, or to refrain 
 from reprobating what I believed to be foul wickedness, albeit 
 in the highest places — 
 
 " ITpo? ravr eir efioi 'piTneadu) ju,ev 
 IIvpo^ ufi(p)]K7]<; j36crTpv')(o^, aWijp 8' 
 ^Epe6t^ea0(o /3povTfj," itc* 
 
 That the facts to which I allude are not known in England 
 as they should be, whatever they may be in Rome, I am 
 quite certain ; and I hold myself absolutely free both to state 
 them in the form that I judge most effective, and to comment 
 on them as their nature may require — I had hoped that by 
 placing the subject in your Grace's hands, I might have been 
 spared saying another word about it in pubhc myself; but, 
 failing this, I shall have no alternative but to work it out all in 
 my own way as time may permit. Had I been addressing the 
 
 * " No ! let the forked-haired lightning first 
 Brandished in wrath upon me burst, 
 And heaven with thunders rend." — jEsch. Prom. F.,1079, &c.
 
 ( ) 
 
 Prime Minister of this country on some gross abuses that 
 I seemed to have discovered in our venerable constitution, and 
 faihng to enlist his support, had informed him that I might 
 possibly publish a letter addressed to him, is it credible that he 
 would have written back to threaten me with the law ? I will 
 only add in conclusion that I have kept this letter a day open 
 before me, and now send it without changing a word." 
 
 This letter of mine, as your Grace may remember, was dated 
 May 25, 1868, and it closed our correspondence. I was then, 
 and continued to be till the September following, unintermittently 
 engaged in examining and collating ancient documents in the 
 Record Office and elsewhere for a Chancery suit of some magni- 
 tude ; so that I was obhged to defer any further steps. And, 
 indeed, I was far from regretting the delay, as it not only gave 
 me time for reflection, but the opponents of my book time like- 
 wise to have brought it before your Grace judicially, had they 
 been so minded. As your Grace had given me to understand, 
 you had abstained from reading it hitherto, from anticipating 
 such action on their part. I never heard that any such action 
 was or had ever been taken ; and during my brief holiday I com- 
 posed my pamphlet. As I was on the eve of finishing it, a 
 report reached me that you were about to leave this country for 
 Rome. I did my best to get a copy to your Grace before you 
 started ; but it was too late. It was posted to your address in 
 Rome on the 11th or 12th of December, and on the 18th of the 
 same month, as I learnt subsequently, both my volumes of 
 *' Christendom's Divisions," one that had been out one year and a 
 half, and tho other that had been out three, were placed on the 
 Index. All this time I had been resident in London, within two 
 miles of your Grace ; yet so far from having received the remotest 
 hint from you, that either of them contained any thing censurable, 
 when I had the honour of conferring with your Grace on some 
 points connected with the second of them — a conference which 
 was of my own seeking entirely — your Grace, while mentionino- 
 the fact that it had been unfavourably criticised, gave me to
 
 ( 10 ) 
 
 understand in so many words that yon knew not with what 
 justice, as you had avoided reading it. Whether your Grace 
 read either of them subsequently, I have no means of ascer- 
 taining ; all I know is that within eight days of my forwarding 
 my pamphlet to your address in Rome, my two volumes were 
 placed on the Index there. In this again I would fain see, not 
 so much the act of my bishop as of the system in which he bears 
 office. A dangerous book, as we must infer fi.-om its condemna- 
 tion afterwards, is allowed to circulate for three years and a half 
 freely, without a word of warning to its author, or to those who 
 read it. On the appearance of a pamphlet referring to some 
 portions of it, but embracing a good deal of other matter as well, 
 it is condemned in haste. How like the incident which most of 
 us must have witnessed in our younger days, when the wrong 
 boy was punished for making a noise in school ! So ended the 
 first act of the drama. 
 
 The news of the condemnation of my book reached me early 
 in January, not through any official channel, but through the 
 newspapers. A number of the '' Correspondence de Rome " 
 contained aU the information respecting^ it that your OAvn Yicar- 
 General, to whom I applied, could supply. The sentence, sup- 
 posing it to have been rightly reported there, ran as follows : — 
 
 " The Sacred Congregation of the most eminent and reve- 
 rend Cardinals of the Roman Church appointed and delegated 
 by our Most Holy Lord Pope Pius IX., and the Holy Apostolic 
 See, to the Index of books of unsound doctrine, and for 
 proscription, expurgation, and permission of the same, in the 
 whole Christian commonwealth, held in the Apostolic palace 
 of the Vatican, has condemned and condemns, has proscribed 
 and proscribes, or having been otherwise condemned and pro- 
 scribed, has ordered and orders to be placed on the Index of 
 prohibited books the works which follow : 
 
 " ' Christendom's Divisions, being a philosophical sketch of 
 the divisions of the Christian family in East and West. — Latine- 
 vero, Christianismi Divisiones : nempe specimen dinsionum
 
 ( 11 ) 
 
 Christianse familias in Oriente atque Occidente : auctore Ed 
 mundo S. Ffoulkes. Londini, 2 vol. 1865 et 1867.' 
 
 *' Wherefore let nobody, of what rank and condition soever 
 presume in future to publish, or read or retain published, in any 
 place or in any language the said condemned and proscribed 
 works : but be bound to deliver them up to the local ordinaries 
 or else the inquisitors of heretical unsoundness, under the 
 penalties set forth in the Index of forbidden books. 
 
 ''Which being referred to our Most Holy Lord Pope Pius IX. 
 by me the under\NTitten secretary of the Holy Congi-egation of the 
 Index, his Holiness approved and ordered promulgation of the 
 decree. In testimony whereof, &c. 
 
 ** Given at Ptome the 18th day of December, 1868. 
 
 " Antoninus, Cardinal of Lucca, Praefect of the Holy Con- 
 gregation of the Index. -\- in place of a seal. 
 
 " Fr. Angeltjs Yincentius, Modena, of the Order of Preachers, 
 secretary of the Holy Congregation of the Index. 
 
 " On the 18th day of December the above decree was affixed and 
 
 published on the Church of S. Mary super Minervam, the basilica 
 of the Prince of the Apostles, the Palace of the Holy Office, the 
 door of the Innocentian Court, and other customary places, by me 
 Aloysius Serafiui, Apostolic Cm-sitor. Philip Ossani, Master of 
 the Cursitors." 
 
 In returning the Yicar-General his newspaper, as requested, I 
 ventured to ask him to be so good as to allow me to ask him the 
 following questions : 
 
 '■'1. Is it not usual for some official notification to be for- 
 warded, sooner or later, to the author of a proscribed work, that it 
 has been proscribed ? 
 
 '^2. Is it not usual to acquaint him, sooner or later, with the 
 grounds on which it has been proscribed : when, as in the present 
 instance, the decree throughout is wholly reticent about them : 
 in order that he may learn what amount of ' expurgation ' it 
 would need to be ' permitted ' free circulation again ?
 
 ( 12 ) 
 
 " 3. Does the author of a work proscribed in the form in 
 which mine has been, incur any pains or penalties other than are 
 expressed in the sentence with which the decree terminates ? If 
 so, when and how is he to be apprised what they are ; and on 
 what terms, in my o^mi particuLar case, wouklthey be removed?" 
 
 On January 10 he favoured me with the following curt 
 answer : — 
 
 " Dear Sir, 
 
 "I must ask you to have the kindness to excuse my not 
 answering the questions you propose, and to allow me to suggest 
 respectfully that the best course for you to adopt will be to 
 communicate with Kome. — Yours, &c." 
 
 He replied to a second appeal from me much in the same way : 
 impressing me with the idea that he, no less than myself, had 
 been taken by sm-prise, and was perplexed what to say. I called 
 upon him on the IStli as a last resource, when he was frank and 
 courteous. In answer to my questions he explained to me that 
 the bishops had not yet got the "forum externum'^ in this 
 country : but your Grace was, in fact, engaged at that moment 
 in endeavouring to get it accorded by Kome. The condemnation 
 of my book had not been notified to him officially : it did not, he 
 believed, carry with it any penal consequences to the author. 
 No order had been transmitted through or from him " to refuse 
 me absolution" as the Weekly Register asserted numerous priests 
 had resolved to do : but this, he said candidly, they would in his 
 opinion be justified in doing, until I had made some amends for 
 the public scandal caused by my pamphlet. He concluded by 
 advising me to write to your Grace, and furnishing me for that 
 purpose with your exact address. 
 
 AVhat he told me about the forum externum — a subject to 
 which I shall return again before I have done — was in reality no 
 news to me : I had long suspected as much ; nevertheless it iras 
 authentic confirmation. I made some further inquiries else- 
 where respecting the ordinary practice of the Index in these
 
 ( 13 ) 
 
 cla3^s — ^for of the rules by wliicli it still affects to be guided I was 
 not altogether ignorant : having lived for months together at one 
 time with a huge " Catalogus lihrormn iiroMbitorum " at my 
 elbow in a cell of the Bodleian Library, which I used to read for 
 amusement. I shall have occasion to dwell upon one of these 
 rules further on. Having learnt what I could of its current 
 practice, I despatched a letter as advised to your Grace on the 
 16th, in these words : 
 
 '' My dear Lord Archbishop, 
 
 "For so I trust to be permitted to address you still, 
 and in the same confidence and with the same freedom with 
 which your Grace allowed me to speak at our last interview ; 
 hoping sincerely you may be disposed to pardon any pain I may 
 have caused you when you have read this. I commence, then, 
 by saying that we have each been faithful to the course de- 
 lineated in the last letters that passed between us about nine 
 months back. I have taken the step of addressing your Grace 
 publicly : and the consequence which you then represented as 
 inevitable has been realised, by my hook having been placed on 
 the Index. Not that I mean to imply that this has been due to 
 your action alone. What I rather infer is, that my book having 
 been previously denounced by some one else, your Grace stayed 
 proceedings, or at least judgment : but that on the receipt of my 
 letter in print, you withdrew your good of&ces and allowed judg- 
 ment to proceed 
 
 As far as I can learn, no penal consequences are supposed to 
 be entailed by it on the author. At the same time, I do not 
 wish to be thought indifferent even to the bare censure. And, 
 therefore, I should be much obliged if your Grace would ascertain 
 for me what are the principal points in my work to which objec- 
 tion has been taken : and what amount of expurgation it would 
 require to prevent a second edition which I am now preparing of 
 it, falling under the like censure. The censure by marking the 
 date of publication of each part respectively, must I presume be
 
 ( 14 ) 
 
 understood to apply to tlie edition of each part alone now 
 in the hands of the public. If you have received ' Catholic 
 Opinion ' for the week, you will see from my letter to the Editor, 
 and still more from the postscript, which, though too late for this 
 week, the manager kindly promised should be forwarded to j^our 
 Grace in print with the paper, that I fully purpose deferring to 
 authority in one of two ways : 1. by cheerfully retracting or 
 correcting any statements judged to be contrary to faith or fact : 
 and 2. by submitting loyally to any ecclesiastical censures that 
 I might fall under in the event of my being asked to retract more 
 than my sense of duty to truth would allow me — an alternative which 
 I sincerely hope to be spared. I would consent willingly to stultify 
 myself a hundred times a day, but not truth for one moment. 
 With this expression of my sentiments I leave my case in your 
 hands, as far as the authorities of the Index are concerned. . . 
 .... These sentiments I beg also to profess on the subject of 
 my letter to yourself equally, or indeed with tenfold emphasiSi 
 I owe so much to your Grace personally, and have so much real 
 love and respect for you in consequence, that I would most wil- 
 lingly strain my conscience to its uttermost limits, sooner than 
 
 yield you no more than a merely passive obedience 
 
 My line has been exclusively that of history — and in all that I 
 have written, I have testified to the voice of history, being that 
 the See of Rome has never erred from the faith : that it has 
 a ^ jure divine ' primacy in the Church of Christ according to 
 the strict sense of the Florentine definition : and is the 
 appointed centre of unity to that degree that no two Churches 
 separated from it have ever been able to unite with each other. 
 1 have said again and again in public, that for there to be any 
 true re-union of Christendom was out of the question except 
 Under the Pope. 
 
 ''At the same time, my writings being historical and not dog- 
 matical, such statements are possibly less prominent in them 
 than some may think they should be : particularly when I take 
 notice of so much in practice that apparently conflicts with thenii
 
 ( 15 ) 
 
 Yet in all this I maintain that what I have criticised, has been 
 solely the governmental action of Eome, since its establishment 
 as a Court as well as a See : and as in so doing I have never 
 exceeded what has been urged over and over again by S. Bernard 
 and other saints and doctors of the Church, I conceive I have as 
 good a claim to be considered a loyal and devoted son of the Chmxh 
 as they had. They were conscientiously persuaded there were 
 things that impeded the wholesome action of the Church in their 
 day, and they denounced them accordingly. I am no less con- 
 scientiously persuaded that there are things in our day which 
 impede the re-union of Christendom under the Pope, for which 
 I pray daily, and therefore have felt it my duty to denounce 
 them in the same spirit as best I could. If any thing, I am 
 sorry to add, my opinion is that I have said too little rather than 
 too much in this respect. On the other hand, I beg your Grace 
 to reflect, that unless I admitted a 'jure divino ' in the Popes to 
 govern, it would be sheer nonsense to inveigh as I do against the 
 wrong use, which in certain specified cases, according to my 
 
 reading of history, they made of it At all events, 
 
 there is one measure that I hope your Grace may never see 
 cause to adopt in my case : viz. — that of interposing any bar to 
 my admission to the sacraments — I should submit to it of course 
 if you did : but it would necessitate my defending myself before 
 the public I am, &c." 
 
 Your Grace's answer reached mc on the 28th. 
 
 "My dear Mr. Ffgulkes, 
 
 '* I have received and read your letter of the 16th with 
 a very sincere sorrow and anxiety. I see in it so much 
 which leads me to believe that you will faithfully and humbly 
 submit your whole will and mind to the grace which is striving 
 With you, that I cherish a strong hope that the great danger 
 which now besets you may be happily averted. But I see also in 
 your letter expressions which make me fear tbat a spirit which is 
 not of God, may hinder His work in you. Hitherto, I trust you
 
 ( 16 ) 
 
 have neither found me harsh nor cold. For the future, I may 
 
 assure you, I feel no motive or temptation to be so 
 
 Let me beseech you, as one whom you have long ImowTi, of whom 
 you write more than I ought to accept, and as one who bears to 
 you a true charity and affection : I will say nothing of other 
 claims I might have to your acquiescence, to follow the counsel I 
 now give. 
 
 *' 1. Write to me, and authorise me to say in your name to 
 the Holy Father, that you submit your books to the examination 
 of the Holy See. 
 
 "2. Send whatsoever you have prepared for your second 
 edition, together with your pamphlet on the 'Fil'wque,^ and your 
 letter to me, and ask that they may be examined by theologians 
 deputed for the purpose. 
 
 "3. Take no new step, and publish nothing until an answer 
 shall be made. 
 
 ** I have not taken any official step on your letter to me as 
 yet, in the strong hope that any such duty may be averted. But 
 I must not conceal from you that judgments of a very strong 
 and urgent kind, have been made known to me both from England 
 and in Rome, as to the scandal which has been already given, 
 and the danger both to truth and to souls which has been abeady 
 caused by your act. Let me hope that you will joyfully and 
 promptly yield to the counsel and invitation I have given, 
 for which I will both pray and obtain the prayers of many. May 
 God guide and keep you safely. — Believe me, &c." 
 
 Why should I shrink from avowing it, my heart yearned to 
 comply with advice tendered in such language as this, and had 
 there been nobody else to treat with except the Holy Father and 
 your Grace, I should not have hesitated for a moment : but 
 between you both, and distinct from either, was the Index : and 
 here lay my repugnance — to say nothing of its claims to my 
 allegiance, of which hereafter, how had it treated me ? By 
 ignoring the very rule that it "was especially bound to regard in a 
 case like mine. I quote from the well-known constitution of
 
 ( 17 ) 
 
 Benedict XIV., issued for its remodelment and perpetual guid- 
 ance : and from which, if it had never departed, it might never 
 have descended to the estimation in which it is now held. And 
 I heg your Grace to take particular notice of the words in italics, 
 to which I shall again refer. 
 
 " We know," says the far-seeing author of this constitution, 
 ''that people have complained occasionally that books are con- 
 demned and proscribed without hearing their authors, or allowing 
 them any place for defence. To this we know answer has been 
 made, that it is not at all necessary to bring authors into court, 
 tvhere there is no question of marking or condemning tliclr 
 persons, but of consulting the indemnity of the faithful, and 
 averting danger from them which is easily incurred by reading 
 books calculated to do them harm. Should, indeed, any stigma 
 attach to the name of the author from thence, it would do so but 
 indirectly from the condemnation of his book. On this account 
 it is, that we consider no exception can be taken to the prohibi- 
 tion of books in this way decreed without hearing their authors ; 
 the more so, as it is to be supposed that whatever the author 
 could have alleged in his own defence, or that of his teaching, 
 could not have been unknown to, or unheeded by, his judges or 
 censors." It was to obviate this very objection ever being made 
 in future, that he had in the preceding section ordained as 
 follows : — 
 
 "As, however, in the Congregation of the Index, the iirohihi- 
 tlon ofhooJis is alone discussed, we have decided on adding some 
 things in this place that will be of the greatest use to the said 
 congregation, and yet must, in future, be observed equally by the 
 other congregation of the holy office, whenever engaged in causes 
 of this kind, where similar circumstances may present them- 
 selves. As often as the question turns upon a work written by a 
 Catholic of good character, and with a reputation gained, either 
 from other published works of his, or may bo from tliis very 
 ivork ivhich, having been brought up for examination, has to he 
 proscribed, let the custom that has long since obtained be kept in 
 

 
 ( 18 ) 
 
 \'iew, unless from any grave obstacles in the way of its applica- 
 tion to the case in point, it would be out of place, of prohibiting 
 a book with this clause annexed, " until it be corrected." This 
 condition having been appended to its proscription, instead of the 
 decree being issued at once, let its publication be suspended, 
 and the author, or some one else acting for him, at his request, 
 be communicated with, and told what should be struck out, 
 changed, or corrected. If nobody should appear in his behalf, 
 or he, or another acting for him, decline to make the required 
 correction of his book, then let the decree be issued after a 
 suitable defined time. But should he, or his proctor, in com- 
 phance with the commands of the congregation, prepare a new 
 edition of his book with fitting changes and corrections, let the 
 prohibitory decree be suppressed altogether, unless copies of 
 the first edition should have been dispersed in any great number ; 
 in that case the decree would have to be published : yet so, that 
 all might understand that while copies of the first edition alone 
 were interdicted, copies of the second and amended edition were 
 allov\-ed." 
 
 Arbitrary treatment, nobody should know better than your 
 Grace, is never more unlikely to succeed with Englishmen than 
 when they have discovered, in addition, that it is the reverse of 
 what is actually prescribed by law. This consideration, added 
 to the equally strong views I entertained of my inalienable right 
 to be judged by my own bishop in the first instance, and unless 
 I appealed from Ills sentence, hy him. alone, constrained me to 
 reply to your Grace as I did on February 2nd. 
 
 '•' I turn to that portion of your letter where your Grace speaks 
 of seeing expressions in mine that make you fear that a spirit 
 which is not of God may hinder His work in me. I trust not. My 
 reserve is prompted by considerations that I have no diificulty at 
 all in explaining. If I know anything of Church law, it belongs 
 to your Grace and your sufii-agans in England to sit in judgment 
 on any works published there by any members of your flocks 
 supposed to contain errors against the faith. Unless, therefore,
 
 ( 19 ) 
 
 your Grace is at the head of a very different hierarchy from 
 what I have supposed it to he, I claim both as an English subject 
 and resident in an archdiocese of the Church of Christ, that 
 if any such imputations are made seriously against any works 
 published by me in this country, they shall be examined here 
 by yourself, or any to whom you may delegate that office, in con- 
 formity with the laws and usages, not merely of the Church at 
 large, but of this country. To the judgment of such a tribunal 
 I promise beforehand the fullest submission in all that concerns 
 the faith, and the utmost deference in other matters. I say this 
 in consequence of my works being historical, and only touching 
 incidentally upon doctrine. Should there be any reasonable 
 ground for appealing to Rome from your sentence, which I do 
 not the least expect, I will apply to your Grace for leave to do 
 so. But I have insuperable objections to any other tribunal than 
 
 your own in the first instance According to your kind 
 
 advice, then, so far modified : 
 
 1. I cheerfully submit my books to the examination of your 
 Grace and sufi"ragans in this country. 2. I engage to send 
 " Christendom's Divisions," and a sketch of what I propose for 
 any future edition of the same, with my pamphlet on the 
 " FHioque,'" and my letter to York Place, whenever called upon, 
 with a request that they may be examined by theologians or 
 others deputed for that purpose: 3. I engage to take no new 
 step and publish nothing until an answer shall have been 
 made 
 
 Likewise, should your Grace being at Rome, think it a good 
 opportunity to request to have the principal facts on which I have 
 laid stress, examined by the learned at Rome — historians, allow 
 me to suggest, as well as theologians — preparatorily to your sit- 
 ting in judgment on me at home, I can assure you, that I will do 
 all in my power to facilitate, as well as testify my respect for, 
 such an inquiry. Your Grace may indeed remember that more 
 than a year ago I offered to place all my papers and facts in your 
 hands for that purpose, and abstain from publishing any more on 
 
 c 2
 
 ( 20 ) 
 
 the subject till such inquiry had been instituted. I shall never 
 cease to regret that this oii'cr of mine was not accepted. How- 
 ever the issues between us being now narrowed to the mere 
 question of the "forum externum,'" I trust your Grace wiH not 
 object to use your influence at Rome to avoid placing me in any 
 dilemma that would be fatal to my continuance in the Eomau 
 communion.' 
 
 In the earlier part of this letter I had made free to tell your 
 Grace that had I been in 1855 acquainted with the facts of Church 
 history most prominently brought out in my letter of 1868, they 
 would most certainly have prevented my joining the Roman com- 
 munion that day fourteen years : and that, in consequence, I had 
 felt imperatively called upon to direct public attention to them in 
 England all the more, that others at any rate might be saved from 
 taking the same step in the ignorance of them that I had, and 
 years afterwards being reproached as ' had Catliolics' for having 
 discovered them, and professing to be terribly scandalised and 
 perplexed at their existence. People, I added, who talked of my 
 having caused scandal, were bound in fairness to consider how 
 far I myself had cause to be scandalised by the facts to which I 
 referred : and whether what had, in reality, given most scandal, 
 was the facts themselves being only too true. What I said at the 
 close of my letter related more particularly to the subject that 
 was filling me with additional qualms. I had been one of those 
 who were dazzled twenty years ago with the flash of the Bull con- 
 stituting om- existing hierarchy, though I contemplated it from 
 afar then, neither knowing whether it was needed or not, nor 
 what it was to effect. But coming at a time when our notions of 
 Church authority were at their highest, and when the intervention 
 of the Privy Council in matters of doctrine looked ugliest for 
 Anglicans, it seemed exactly the effort of moral courage that we 
 so desiderated in our own spiritual rulers just then : exactly the 
 proof of ecclesiastical independence that we should have so liked to 
 supply. Now, I was fast drifting to the conclusion that the crea- 
 tion of our hierarchy had not been, by any means, the mag- 
 nanimous act that I had fondly supposed.
 
 ( 21 ) 
 
 Youi" Grace was not as plain-spoken in your reply as I had 
 hoped — and ' you had been slow to reply," yoii said, " because of 
 the pain which your reply must give to yourself and me.' Till the 
 receipt of my letter " you had cherished the hope — and this hope 
 you would not yet abandon — that I should promptly and unre- 
 servedly submit myself to the judgment and guidance of the Holy 
 See." Then you continued : 
 
 " In duty to my flock I can no longer delay to proceed in the 
 matter of your late pamphlet " The Church's Creed or the Cro-^ni's 
 Creed?" but I desire so to proceed, as to avert, if possible, the 
 end to which your steps arc visibly carrying you. 
 
 "1. First, I am bound by my duty to declare that the pamphlet 
 is heretical : and I hereby formally make known to you my judg- 
 ment to that effect. It was my desire, if possible, to avoid pro- 
 nouncing this judgment upon it, or to pronounce it with all 
 candour and certainty. I therefore placed the pamphlet in the 
 hands of four theologians. They all alike, without communication 
 Vvith each other, and without hesitation, pronounced it to be 
 heretical. 2. Secondly, with these facts before me I have no 
 freedom of choice. My duty to you for the salvation of your 
 soul is to entreat you once more, and in the name of our Lord 
 Jesus Christ to comply with the following counsels : 
 
 " First, that you will not resist with pertinacity the judgment 1 
 have here made known to you. Secondly, that you will make 
 reparation for the scandal you have given, by withdrawing yoiu* 
 books, both those that are on the Index and also your last pam- 
 phlet from circulation, and by writing to me a letter expressing 
 your sorrow for having so written as to incur this judgment, and 
 for having given scandal to your brethren. These two acts, taken 
 in compliance with my counsel, Avill I hope enable me to avoid 
 the formal and judicial steps, which I shall otherwise be com- 
 pelled to take on my return to London." 
 
 This was written on February 18th, and your Grace requested me 
 to direct my answer to York Place : though you were not to leave 
 Rome till March 1st. Your Grace was therefore ffood enough to
 
 ( 22 ) 
 
 give rae time for reflection : and you besides invited a mutual 
 friend to confer with me, of whom I will only say here that he is 
 one of the gentlest and most persuasive influences for good, and 
 for good only, that anybody could picture. But to return to your 
 letter. It occasioned me little surprise to find your Grace passing 
 judgment on my pamphlet in this fashion, being at Eome your- 
 self, and possibly not wishing to inaugurate any course different 
 from that of the Index on my book. At the same time I felt that 
 in speaking of the " formal and judicial steps which you would be 
 compelled to take on my return" unless I followed your counsels, 
 your Grace must have had the author as well as his book in your 
 mind : so that the justification assigned by Benedict XIV. for 
 condemning the one without hearing the other, seemed to be 
 wanting in this case. Then it occurred to me that in the 4th 
 action of the Council of Chalcedon — one of the largest and weigh- 
 tiest tribunals ever convened to try the oftence charged upon me, 
 we read : " All the most reverend bisbops exclaimed, ' Nobody 
 condemns the absent :'" and when one of them quoted the saying 
 of governor Festus to king Agrippa : " It is not the manner of the 
 Romans, ')(api^e(T6ai nva avOpcoTrov eh airoSkeLav, before he 
 which is accused have the accusers face to face, and have license 
 to answer for himself concerning the crime laid against him : " it 
 was received with applause. I remembered the laborious exami- 
 nation and criticism, again, bestowed at the fifth Council on the 
 three chapters, whose authors were dead and past hearing, before 
 they were condemned. These considerations weighed heavily 
 upon me, as another can testify, during the interval elapsing 
 between the receipt of your communication and my reply to it 
 sent on March 5th. I began by stating, that I had " never contem- 
 plated the possibility of your Grace passing judgment on it so far 
 away from England, and from your diocese. This however 
 having been done, you would not, I trusted, decline to specify 
 those passages in it which you considered heretical, and any 
 besides which you might deem objectionable on other grounds. 
 I was," I said, "already pledged by my last letter not to resist
 
 ( 23 ) 
 
 j^our judgment as regards the first, and to defer to it to the utmost 
 as regards the second. Withdraw my pamphlet I coukl not : in the 
 first place, because the copyright belonged to another : and 
 secondly, because even if it belonged to me, the pamphlet recorded 
 a number of incontrovertible facts which I would not for one 
 moment be understood to unsay, or even withdraw from public 
 attention, except on the understanding that they were going to be 
 gravely considered. On that understanding I would gladly with- 
 draw the whole pamphlet as far as in me lay." .... Then pass- 
 .ing to the other part of your letter I said : 
 
 " As regards my books on the Index I must take the liberty 
 of drawing a distinction between them and my pamphlet, and of 
 requesting to be much more formally dealt with in their case than 
 I have yet been. 1. I have never received any official intima- 
 tion that they have been placed on the Index. 2. The decree 
 relating to them has not been published in this country, so far 
 as I can learn. 3. Knowing from canonical authorities that in 
 France — where I joined the Roman Communion — the decrees 
 of the Index have never been received, I beg for authentic 
 evidences of their having been ever received in England. Even 
 should there be any formal act by which they have been received 
 here, they must, I submit, have been published here to have 
 any binding force. Till this has been done, and made known 
 to me, I must ask to be excused limiting my answer to the 
 pamphlet exclusively, unless, indeed, your Grace should call on 
 me to submit them for examination to your own tribunal 
 
 " Your Grace may rest assured that I have weighed every 
 word of the solemn admonition with which your letter con- 
 cludes : and it is the consciousness of having acted on it 
 systematically, so far as my powers will admit, that sustains 
 me : ' mistrust yourself .... mistrust all others who would 
 advise you to resist the counsel I now again offer' .... I have 
 never asked one word of advice from any human being on any of 
 these matters — I go elsewhere for advice — I know in Whom I 
 have trusted — His will be done .... would that I could look
 
 ( 24 ) 
 
 upon mistrusting myself anJ trusting my autliorities — in their 
 official capacity, that is— as correlatives. But with the use still 
 sanctioned of the False Decretals in the Tridentiue Catechism, 
 and, must I add, the way in which my own book was placed on 
 the Index before my eyes, how can I accord them the unre- 
 served confidence that I would otherwise with pleasure ? With- 
 out intending any personal disrespect to your Grace for one 
 moment, I cannot refrain from saying, that as far as the strictly 
 official treatment hitherto accorded me goes, I cannot help envy- 
 ing the worst criminals the justice shown them at our Assizes. 
 For whatever the amount of evidence against them, they are held 
 innocent till they have been proved in their own hearing, and 
 after the best defence they can make with every assistance, 
 guilty." 
 
 The canonical authorities to which I referred are given in 
 "Lequeux's Manual," which was recommended to me ten years 
 back in Paris as the best then in use, for what follows :* — " Such 
 judgments emanating from the Roman congregations have no 
 place in France, because of the express provision in the Concordat 
 of Leo X. ' We ordain that all and singular causes within the 
 kingdom, except those specially known in law as the greater 
 causes, shall be terminated and settled by those judges on the 
 spot, before whom whether from prescription or privilege they 
 ought to come.' Hence .... decrees of the Index are not 
 held amongst us to be strictly obligatory : because, first, only 
 those decrees are held to have force amongst us which have been 
 promulgated on the spot, as we said N. 19, which has never 
 been done in the case of the Index ; and, secondly, because 
 the bishops are in the habit of allowing even heretical books to 
 be read by any that they may judge fit." And Bouix, writing 
 on the Ultramontane side, whom I have consulted since, cannot 
 dispute their weight. " It was the opinion" — but unless 
 M. Lequeux, who was Vicar-General of the Bishop of Soissons 
 in 1850, if not now, has deceived us, it is still the opinion — '' of 
 * Tract, cle Persouis, s. 1, c. v.
 
 ( 25 ) 
 
 many Catholic doctors, tliat the Index was altogether, or in 
 part, not obligatory iu the said countries, from the custom of not 
 regarding it as such having legitimately acquired the force of 
 prescription. We grant that the said opinion has been really main- 
 tained by many Catholic doctors," .... the countries intended 
 by them being France, Belgium, Naples, Spain, and Germany. 
 He says, indeed, that could their opinion be regarded as only 
 probable, the Index would be nowhere obligatory now outside the 
 limits of the Papal territory. But the strength of his argument 
 against them lies in the fact that the Index had been at one 
 time received in some of those countries, and that in others 
 several diocesan synods had declared for receiving it within the 
 last few years. Of England M. Bouix says nothing. Had 
 he said anything, he could not have said either of these two 
 things I presume. The Index had not certainly been received in 
 England before the present hierarchy was established : I much 
 doubt whether any book written by a Roman Catholic in 
 England had ever been placed en the Index before the decree 
 which placed mine there : and I doubt still more whether a 
 single instance could be adduced, since the Index was estab- 
 lished, of any Roman Catholic in England having submitted to 
 it. Your Grace might, I think, have condescended to resolve 
 some of these points for me : but with the exception of " re- 
 calling to my memory the humility of Fenelon, who in his own 
 cathedral, and with his own lips, read to his flock the condemna- 
 tion of his own writings" — a precedent obviously rather for 
 those placed in his position than for me — your Grace passed over 
 the subject of the Index without a word in acknowledging the 
 receipt of my letter, which, you said, " gave you much consola- 
 tion — as it assured you of my desire to comply with the counsels 
 offered in your last letter from Rome." Your Grace likewise 
 declared yourself unable to specify what passages you judged 
 heretical in my pamphlet. 
 
 " It is not, I am sorry to say, any longer in my power to enter 
 into the details of your pamphlet. My duty now is to the truth
 
 ( 26 ) 
 
 and to my flock, and your duty now is to submit readily and 
 without reserve, either to the judgment which I have been com- 
 pelled to pass ; or, if you ivill, hy ajtpeal to the judgment of the 
 Holy See. 
 
 " Having made known to you the judgment that your pamphlet 
 is heretical, my duty on returning to the diocese is to see either 
 that the scandal it has caused be fully removed, or that the 
 inevitable consequences of that judgment be formally and judi- 
 cially carried into effect. Your letter inspires me with the hope 
 that the former and happier result will be attained." .... 
 For the rest I was to call at York Place before the end of the 
 week. 
 
 What I understood your Grace to mean, in effect, was, that 
 you were unable to copy from the administration of justice at our 
 assizes, or even from the proceedings of the Fourth or any similar 
 Council. Your duty was to the system in which you bore office ; 
 and I fully believed, and had from the first never ceased to 
 exonerate, your Grace from having acted in any way towards me 
 differently from what the Index had. But there was just a 
 glimmer of the light of other days in the one sentence of your 
 letter describing my duty ; and I thanked God for it, and prayed 
 it might end sooner or later by throwing every thing else into 
 shade. "Your duty now is to submit readily, and without 
 reserve, either to the judgment which I have been compelled to 
 pass ; or, if you ivill, by appeal to the judgment of the Holy 
 See." The course sketched out here for me is all the world over 
 the course prescribed by the canons — the canons received by the 
 whole Church, I mean — and your Grace stood hereby committed 
 to it in black and white. My sole reason in coming to York 
 Place was to give effect to it. So ended the second act of the 
 drama. 
 
 From this point I must condense my narrative, as it would 
 otherwise involve endless repetitions ; letters in answer to letters ; 
 rejoinders and replications ; journeys to York Place and back : 
 conversations with your Grace ; messages from your Grace ; con-
 
 ( 27 ) 
 
 versatious with him on whose sahitary influences yon depended 
 for moving what you were pleased to term the largest part of 
 me — namely, my heart : then a lull ; then a fresh start again, 
 spread over eight months in all, and ending where we commenced 
 eight months back. Such a labyrinth as I never in all my life 
 tlireaded before, and was at last thankful to escape from, beyond 
 expression, on any terms — 
 
 " Parietibus textum cajcis iter .... qua signa sequendi 
 Falleret indeprehensus et irremeabilis error." * 
 
 At our interview, then, on March 19th, I went at once, without 
 preface or apology, to the crucial point, and said I had fully made 
 up my mind that any compromise would be unavailing ; that my 
 own principles were fixed and definite, and that I should go on 
 writing in accordance with them to the end. Hence, whatever 
 statement I made calculated to satisfy your Grace now, would be 
 sure to be construed hereafter as indicating a breach of faith on 
 my part should any subsequent work of mine be called in ques- 
 tion ; besides which, I felt sure, from what I had read in some 
 of the Eoman Catholic newspapers, that almost any declaration 
 that my conscience would allow me to make would be considered 
 insufficient by those who had taken most ofi'ence at my pamphlet, 
 and therefore, if accepted by your Grace, would only have the 
 effect of transfemng some of the ill-will entertained against me 
 to yourself, which could not be were I dealt with summarily, as, 
 in fact, seemed required by the judgment you had deemed it your 
 duty to pronounce so summarily on what I had written. Your 
 Grace repHed by handing me a declaration which you begged me 
 to read over while you left the room for ten minutes, but to which 
 you would advise my making a retreat of as many days with the 
 Jesuits at Roehampton before giving my final answer. The 
 
 • With blind blank walls its secret hid — 
 A tangle of a thousand ways — 
 Which, whoso sought by signs to thrid, 
 Went wandering, baffled, and involved, 
 Through paths returnless and unsolved. 
 
 Conington's Virff. yEn., v. 089, &<i,
 
 ( 28 ) 
 
 moment you came back into the room, I said tlie ten minutes 
 had been more than enough. Nothing \^'ould induce me to sign 
 the paper before me. Your Grace requested mo to specify the 
 parts of it to which I demurred most. I pointed to the paragraph 
 relating to the censure of the Index ; reminding you that I had 
 ah'eady refused having any thing to do with it, and expressing 
 surprise that it should have been brought up again. I added 
 that it would be impossible for me with my views ever to pledge 
 myself u nreservedly to the judgment of the Holy See, so long as 
 the Court and the See were conjoined and acted as one. This 
 was amply sufficient to show that I could not sign the paper 
 as it stood, let alone any thing else. It was couched in these 
 words : 
 
 " Having learnt that a pamphlet lately published by me, entitled 
 * The Church's Creed or the Crown's Creed ?' has been examined by 
 my bishop and pronounced by him to be heretical, I desire hereby 
 to submit myself to that judgment, and to express my sorrow that I 
 should in any thing have erred from the holy Catholic and Roman 
 faith. 
 
 " I hereby submit to the judgment of the Holy See, my books, 
 which have been placed upon the Index, and I will not republish 
 them unless with the corrections and sanctions of the Holy See. 
 "If it were in my pov/er to withdraw from circulation the 
 pamphlet above referred to, I would gladly do so. As it has 
 passed into the legal possession of another, I am unable to with- 
 draw it ; but I hereby desire to undo, as far as in my power, the 
 mischief caused by that pamphlet. 
 
 " Although I trust I have not intentionally erred from the 
 truth, nor wilfully opposed myself to the divine authority of the 
 Church, nevertheless, I am well aware how easily I may have 
 unconsciously done so. I therefore, freely, without reserve, 
 retract all and every thing that I have written, which has been, 
 or shall be, judged by the Holy See to be heretical, erroneous, 
 scandalous, offensive to the piety of the faithful, or injurious to 
 the Holy See.
 
 ( 29 ) 
 
 " Having learned, also, that scandal, offence, and pain has 
 been given by my writings, and especially by the pamphlet above 
 named, to the faithful, and that the same pamphlet has been 
 used by those that are separate from the Catholic and Roman 
 Chm-ch as an excuse or argument for not submitting to its divine 
 authority, I hereby declare my heartfelt sorrow for the same, and 
 I ask forgiveness of God and of my brethren. 
 
 " Lastly, I freely and from my heart profess and declare my 
 faith in the divine unity and infallibility of that one only Church 
 wliich is Catholic and Uoman, in the following words prescribed 
 by the authority of Pope Pius lY. ' I acknowledge,' " &c. 
 
 I got the first inkling, I conceived, of the " heresy " charged 
 on my pamphlet in the underlined words of the concluding para- 
 graph ; and it struck me forcibly that what they would have 
 made me profess is just what is siqjpressed in the creed autho- 
 rised by Pope Pius IV. in the most marked way. I came home, 
 therefore, and drew up a paper of my own founded upon that of 
 your Grace, but intended to express how much I thought might 
 fairly be demanded of me, and what my own views really were 
 on the points on which your Grace seemed to have laid most 
 stress. But this paper was written entirely for my own satisfac- 
 tion : nor would it ever have been offered by me as a substitute 
 for that of my bishop. It was taken to York Place with my 
 consent, however, on the evening of March 22nd ; and the next day 
 on calling, as requested, my pleasure was great indeed to hear 
 your Grace express yourself so well satisfied with it on the 
 whole, that you had made some corrections in it with your own 
 hand, and invited me to make two or three more, sketched by 
 yourself, in my own words. On Maundy- Thursday, March 25th, 
 you gave me your blessing : nor is it too much to say that I had 
 every reason to suppose the matter at an end, and myself 
 privately, though not yet publicly, condoned. 
 
 But the day following, as I learnt afterwards — unknown to 
 your Grace, must it not be said as to me ? a decree of the Index 
 condemning my pamphlet appeared in Piome. On the 1st of
 
 ( 30 ) 
 
 April you wrote me word : '' The bishops will be with me next 
 week, and will desire to know what steps I have taken in the 
 matter which engages us. It is obviously necessary for the 
 solidity of what is done that they should rest satisfied. I would 
 ask you, therefore, to send me the paper, or, what would be 
 better, to come to me with it to-morrow." On that day we dis- 
 cussed the alterations that I had made in my paper ; and to one 
 of them your Grace took exception as not free from ambiguity. 
 We corresponded on this ; and after I had explained my views to 
 their full extent, your Grace sent me some extracts from 
 Perrone,* on which you wrote: "This note of unity, and this 
 endowment of infallibility belong exclusively to the Church in 
 communion with the Holy See, the divinely constituted centre of 
 both," and then added : " If, as I hope, you can either incorpo- 
 rate these passages in your declaration, or conform it to them, 
 no substantial ^ambiguity can remain ; if you have any hesi- 
 tation in doing so, I would advise that you should make no 
 decision or reply until some time shall have elapsed." To this 
 I replied in substance, that there was no cause for delay, and 
 that in many senses I had no difficulty whatever in accepting 
 what you had written. But in the face of several of&cial acts 
 and sayings of the Popes themselves which I adduced, and of 
 accomplished facts in Church history that could not be gainsayed, 
 nothing would induce me to subscribe to any statement, or any 
 liable to be so interpreted, that churches and individuals out of 
 communion with the See of Rome for any conceivable cause, 
 thereby ceased to belong to the Catholic Church at all. Your 
 Grace laboured in vain to impose a statement on me to this 
 effect. Ultimately I returned my paper into your hands, em- 
 bodying the nearest approach that I could devise to what was 
 required^ but accompanied by a note containing this sentence : 
 " I must be bold to explain, in conclusion, that I shall not 
 consider this declaration as precluding me from still doing my 
 best to get the facts on which I have so often insisted, fairly 
 • Tract de loc. Tlieol. n. 112 and 164.
 
 ( 31 ) 
 
 looked in the face, which they certainly have not been by 
 Perrone or any other modern that I have been able to discover, 
 as I am solemnly determined not to rest till they have been." 
 
 This was said for the bishops who were about to meet at 
 your house, rather than for your Grace. To your Grace it could 
 have been no news, as it had been this determination of mine, 
 announced to you at the end of our first correspondence, that 
 had produced my pamphlet. Whether it was communicated to 
 their Lordships or not, I was not informed; but on the 11th of 
 April your Grace apprised me that you had " foreseen the paper 
 I last sent would produce on the bishops an impression very 
 unfavourable to me ; you were very sorry to say that it did so ; 
 and that their judgment was now added to your own. Your 
 last note, "you proceeded," contains also another passage, which 
 almost closes this correspondence ; I mean the declaration of 
 your determination to pursue hereafter the same course you have 
 pursued hitherto." 
 
 I had been rather hoping that surrounded by your suffragans 
 your Grace would have invited me to appear personally, and 
 given me that opportunity of vindicating or explaining myself, 
 which had been denied me when your own judgment was formed ; 
 but it was not to be. Instead of this, on April 14th, I received 
 a fresh paper to be appended to my own, and alternative pro- 
 posed once more, " if I had difficulty, of a ten days' retreat at 
 Ptoehampton, before making any decision." In it, your Grace 
 informed me, were " the heads of the matter which you were 
 compelled to require in my declaration," at whose instance you 
 refrained from adding : I thought then it only to be that of the 
 bishops ; I see now it might have been that of the Lidex. How 
 much more satisfactory, how much more calculated to dispose 
 me to a right judgment^ than solitary confinement for ten days 
 under the sole direction of some priest, a perfect stranger to me 
 till then, to have heard your suffragans with my own ears 
 assenting to your decision, and you with them, and them with 
 you, repeating unanimously what this paper affirms.
 
 ( 32 ) 
 
 I. "It is necessary" — IF// o says so? *' tliat the declaration 
 sliould comprise tlie following points : 
 
 1. "That the Catholic Church in commimion with the Holy 
 See, is the one only Church in which infallibility resides. 
 
 2. " That all Churches or bodies of Christians separate from 
 that one Church are in schism, or in heresy, or in both. 
 
 3. "That the Procession of the Holy Ghost from the Father 
 and the Son is a truth f]i-\nnely revealed : that tlie insertion of 
 that doctrine in the Creed, by the word FiUoque ,-^^5 made by the 
 infallible authority of a General Council : and that the profession 
 therefore of that doctrine is to be required, as of divine faith, of 
 all the baptised. 
 
 4. " That the separation of the Greek Church and of the 
 Anglican, is a schism from the divine unity of the Catholic 
 Church, and is an heretical opposition to its divine and infallible 
 authority." 
 
 The remainder is of course from your Grace. 
 
 II. "I have hitherto confined our correspondence to the 
 subject of heresy : but I am compelled to require an expression 
 of your sorroAV for the language in your pamphlet, which has 
 given scandal to the piety of the faithful, and is injurious to the 
 Holy See. I forbear from specifying any particulars, and I do 
 not require you to do more than express your sorrow in the 
 terms I have here used. 
 
 III. "As in the Sacrament o^ 'Penance, the j^rojiositum, not 
 to offend again is essential to the sacrament, so in this case it is 
 essential that you engage not to repeat the acts which have 
 caused the present sc andal. I must require you, therefore, to 
 promise me that you will hereafter publish nothing touching on 
 theological or religious subjects without first subjecting it to the 
 examination of persons approved by me, or by the bishop of any 
 diocese in which it may be published. I do not require that this 
 engagement should be expressed in your public declaration. I include
 
 ( 33 ) 
 
 in this engagement your two volumes on the ' Divisions of 
 Christendom.' " 
 
 Of all these propositions, I could only subscribe to the first 
 as it stood : and this I had at no time denied. 
 
 No. 2, I could have accepted, had the word " ordinarily" been 
 inserted after the word " are : " or it for the word " separate " 
 the words " cut off by formal censure," were substituted. 
 
 No. 3.. contained a statement historically incorrect, which I 
 liad exposed only too often for my own satisfaction, in showing 
 how the FiVioque clause really came in. 
 
 No. 4, I declined, as never having been affirmed by any 
 General Council in concert with the Pope. The Council of 
 Basle, before ceasing to act in concert with Eugenius IV., ex- 
 pressly declined asserting it of the Greek Church ; and the 
 Council of Trent deliberately abstained from asserting it of the 
 Anglican in the reign of Elizabeth, though pressed to do so. 
 Should the Council about to be held take the initiative in assert- \ 
 ing it of both, on the reception of this Council in England, I \ 
 might be called upon to do as much, but not before. 
 
 As to the remainder, I said it would be my pleasure to 
 apologise for any pain that my pamphlet had occasioned amongst 
 my brethren through any fault of mine, the moment I could do 
 so, without seeming to retract any parts of it that were really 
 true: and that my wishes at all times were to defer to my bishop; 
 but in the uncertainty in which matters now stood, I felt pre- 
 cluded from entering into specific engagements of any kind. My 
 confidence had been rudely shaken by what had occurred : and I 
 expressed myself determined to look upon it as a breach of faith, 
 if any thing more than my own declaration, altered to the extent 
 agreed upon, was required from me : and to abide by the conse- 
 quences. To my great joy these alterations were completed in 
 it by the end of April : and I print it, therefore, as last amended. 
 The italics with crosses are your Grace's own insertions, which 
 occur twice. No. 1 being the first, and No. 2 the last alteration 
 of all, in point of time and place. The italics with stars, are 
 
 D
 
 ( 34 ) 
 
 insertions made at your instance. What your Grace cancelled as 
 superfluous, lias been omitted altogether. 
 
 " Having learnt from my bishop that a pamphlet lately pub- 
 lished by me, entitled ' The Church's Creed or the Crown's 
 Creed?" has been examined, and pronounced by him to be 
 heretical, I desire hereby to submit myself to that judgment, and 
 to express my sorrow that I should in any thing have erred from 
 the holy Catholic and ApostoHc faith. 
 
 "Although I trust I have not intentionally erred from the truth, 
 nor wilfully opposed myself to the divine authority of the 
 Church, nevertheless, I am well aware how easily I may have 
 done so. 
 
 " I therefore hereby, without reserve, retract all and every 
 thing that I have written, there or elsewhere, which is* contrary* 
 to what the Church has defined as of faith. 
 
 "Having learnt also from him that scandal, offence, and pain 
 has been given by my writings, and especially by the pamphlet 
 above named, to the faithful : and that the same pamphlet has 
 been used by those that are separate from the Catholic and 
 Roman Church, as an excuse or argument for not submitting to 
 its divine authority, I hereby desire to explain myself categori- 
 cally on two points in particular, the most likely to have caused 
 such results of any that occur to me, fi'om not having been 
 brought out as prominently there as they might have been, but 
 on which it never was my intention that my meaning should be 
 ambiguous. 
 
 1. " Whatever I may or may not have been called upon to 
 profess fourteen years ago myself, I nevertheless beHeve, and 
 believe heartily, in the inerrancy, by perpetual assistance of the 
 Holy Ghost in all ages* of the one Catholic Church in com- 
 munion with the Pope, and of which the Pope is head by divine 
 right, 'in fidei ac morum disciplina tradenda,' as the Catechism 
 of the Council of Trent teaches. And 2. as regards matter of 
 fact, my own personal investigations enable me to affirm the 
 » In the original draft, " which he may point out as contrary," &c.
 
 ( 35 ) 
 
 verdict of history to be, that the See of Eome, as such, has 
 been preserved in all ages from upholding or embracing heresy. 
 I say this more particularly with reference to the doctrine of the 
 procession of the Holy Ghost, on ichich I fear my meaning may 
 have been misapprehended* 
 
 " Therefore, negatively, should I have ever seemed to say or 
 imply the contrary to what I have just affirmed : or else to say 
 or imply that the true Church has ever ceased, or can ever cease 
 to be one visibly * or that the See of Rome was not constituted 
 its centre of unity upon earth, so that communion with the one 
 should be the indispensable condition of participating in the 
 unity of the other.^ I hereby declare my heartfelt sorrow at 
 having in any of my writings so expressed myself on these 
 points, as to have offended any or misled any by seeming to 
 say or imply, in language injur ions to the Holy See,\ what I 
 never meant to assert and hereby repudiate. 
 
 "And as the best reparation now in my power, I willingly 
 undertake that this expHcit declaration of mine shall be printed 
 and distributed gratuitously by my publisher, and appended as a 
 fly-leaf to all copies of my pamphlet, of which the copyright is 
 not in my own hands, and other published works of mine that 
 may hereafter be sold, should it be desired. 
 
 " Lastly, I freely, and from my heart, renew my assent to 
 what follows, taken from the profession of Pope Pius IV., * I 
 acknowledge,'" &c. 
 
 On this declaration I beg to be allowed to make two remarks : 
 1. That I accepted and embodied in it your Grace's final require- 
 ments on tlie 2nd of May, and on the 4th, your Grace acknow- 
 ledged to have received it, in these terms : 
 
 *' I have received with very sincere pleasure the declaration as 
 last amended, and I trust that it will complete what I have daily 
 prayed may be accomplished. I have a profound conviction that 
 you will hereafter return thanks to our Divine Lord for the grace 
 
 In the original draft, " Full unity." 
 
 D 2
 
 ( 36 ) 
 
 wliicli lias enabled you to do this act You will not 
 
 misconceive the slowness with which I finally accept your declara- 
 tion. I am slow that I may make a sure and solid work of it, 
 and close all ways to future misunderstanding. With this motive 
 I must take certain steps, which in the end will be, I believe, 
 
 more acceptable to you than to any one As soon as 
 
 possible you shall hear from me." To which I replied 
 
 at once : — 
 
 " That it should be necessary for your Grace to move slowly 
 to some extent I can well understand, and have no wish to dis- 
 pute ; but I think after the protracted correspondence that has 
 passed between us on this subject, and the innumerable reports 
 daily circulated on all sides to my prejudice, it can hardly be 
 considered asldng too much to beg your Grace to favour me with 
 a distinct expression of your own complete satisfaction with the 
 declaration as it now stands, and to authorise me to communicate 
 this without reserve amongst my friends." 
 
 My request was evaded : but I was given to understand through 
 another shortly afterwards, that the delay arose from your Grace 
 wishing to communicate with Eome before making my declara- 
 tion public. I was well aware that your Grace was bound to 
 Eome by ties that only those who have perused the oath taken 
 by bishops on their consecration can appreciate ; and, therefore, 
 ill as I brooked the delay, I said no more. I knew too, by this 
 time, from private sources, what your Grace had never com- 
 municated to me, that my pamphlet had been placed on the 
 Index. 
 
 2. Touching the declaration itself, I regarded it in subscribing 
 to it as in part explanatory and in part justificatory : explanatory, 
 as being confined to those points, on which I believed my mean- 
 ing to have been misapprehended ; and then justificatory, because 
 the explanations there given of my real meaning had been 
 accepted by my bishop. It proved me, therefore, to be what I 
 had been so loudly denounced as not being, a bond fide member 
 of the Koman Catholic Church, And that those explanations
 
 ( 37 ) 
 
 had not been coined for the occasion will appear from reference 
 to the first of my letters to your Grace, dated January 16th, and 
 quoted at length, p. 14. My paper contained no retractation for 
 the best of reasons ; because though I had expressed myself 
 willing to retract every thing ever wTitten by me " contrary to 
 what the Chm-ch had defined aa of faith," nothing of this kind 
 had been proposed to me for retractation. Hypothetical retracta- 
 tion, of my own accord, and in a general way, of any thing that 
 I might have seemed, but never intended, to say contrary to this 
 or that principle, or else injurious — " id quod injuste, immerito, 
 cum injuria, dicitur " — to the Holy See, cannot be construed as 
 though I pleaded guilty to having really transgressed either way. 
 
 My reasons for this remark will appear shortly. People who 
 had taken interest in my pamphlet were persecuting me daily with 
 kind or curiosity-prompted inquiries as to what had been, or was 
 going to be done, in my case by my authorities or by me. Others 
 who had no knowledge of me were circulating stories about me, 
 that I was constantly being asked to contradict in the news- 
 papers, particularly those conducted by Eoman Catholics. A 
 word from your Grace would have saved me from many defama- 
 tory, because untrue, paragi-aphs in these last, while your 
 reticence had an ugly look of unfairness about it after having 
 imposed silence upon me. At last, on the l7th of May, I had a 
 note from one of my oldest friends, a highly esteemed clerg}'man 
 of the Church of England to this efl'ect : 
 
 " Will you think me very impertinent if I venture to ask you 
 if a report be true which has reached me in a way, and from a 
 source, which seem to carry with it an appearance of truthful- 
 fulness. Ward of the Duhl'in told a friend of mine very lately 
 that you are now writing a retractation of your pamphlet ; that 
 Archbishop Manning had offered you two things : withdrawal of 
 the pamphlet or excommunication : and that you had chosen the 
 former. Is this so ? It seems so unlike you I can hardly 
 believe it." 
 
 To which I replied instantly : nor without some warmth I con-
 
 ( 38 ) 
 
 fess : "I would be excommunicated a dozen times a day sooner 
 than retract my pamphlet : and Archbishop Manning to his 
 credit, let it be said, never proposed any such thing. What he 
 proposed, however, I rejected ; and substituted for it a declara- 
 tion of my own which is merely justificatory. This slightly 
 altered he has since accepted : so that my part is over. I can 
 easily account for his slowness in acting, when he has such critics 
 (no less than myself) as ' Ward of the Dublin^ to disappoint and 
 frustrate. But all this is between ourselves. As soon as it is all 
 over, I shall return to one or two points not sufficiently brought 
 out in my pamphlet, and retract them in a more argumentative 
 and calmer form." 
 
 This was the whole of my note copied from the original now 
 before me. It may prove me to have been wanting in diplomacy, 
 but it is every word of it strictly true. And with the underlined 
 injunction "All this is between ourselves," I thought it was as safe 
 as it would have been in my own keeping. Unfortunately my 
 kind friend, instead of considering my note private, and com- 
 municating its contents, if at all, to those solely for whose sakes 
 he had elicited it, in the same strict confidence in which it had 
 been addressed to him, so far forgot himself as to read the first 
 paragraph of it to a well-known busy-body on the Roman side — 
 the same probably who had been " told by Ward of the Dublin" 
 what I was then engaged upon : and this person not having had 
 any thing I dare say so authentic to communicate for a long 
 while, rushed off triumphantly to a public gathering and informed 
 yom- Grace, before I know not how many more, that a note had 
 been read out to him in my handwriting " containing in words or 
 in substance the statement that I would rather be excommuni- 
 cated than retract," as you wrote me word on the 30th. Pre- 
 viously to this your Grace had made a demand on me which I 
 imagine few in this country would credit, if it were not capable of 
 proof in your own handwriting, namely, that this letter of mine, 
 marked private, to a private friend, should be got back from him, 
 and handed over into your keeping. This demand came in the
 
 ( 39 ) 
 
 form of a message in the first instance through one whom I much 
 loved, and well it was so : otherwise I might have possihly for- 
 gotten in my reply the respect due to your person. On my 
 answer being reported to you, no doubt amiably toned down, your 
 Grace seemed to think there was still some hope of my yielding. 
 *' I am sorry," you said, " for any pain you have, and trust you 
 will bear it with resignation to om- Lord's Will," after which you 
 
 proceeded : "If you will get from the letter referred to, it 
 
 would enable me to prevent some evU, which we should much 
 regret." .... 
 
 In other words, your Grace was apprehensive lest this loose 
 statement of a well-known tale-bearer duly reported to Eome 
 should give rise to your being inhibited from accepting my decla- 
 ration. Though I thought this extremely probable, I contented 
 myseK with assuring your Grace by letter, that if the individual 
 in question had reported me to have said, " I would rather be ex- 
 communicated than retract," (sic) he had either misrepresented 
 me wilfully, or stated what was not the fact. My English feel- 
 ings would not allow me to do more. Your Grace had the terms 
 of my declaration before you, and might, I conceived, have gone 
 bound at Rome or any where else for my honesty in adhering to 
 them without compromising your own. 
 
 Practically our correspondence terminated at this point. It 
 was no surprise to me when in the first week of August you sent 
 me a message — your Grace shrank naturally enough after aU that 
 had passed between us from putting it in black and white — to the 
 effect that unless my declaration included what it had been 
 literally drawn up to exclude, and you had yourself by revising it 
 in the form proposed to you, countenanced its excluding tiU then, 
 it would not sufiice. 
 
 Only the manner of this communication remains to be told. 
 A letter, or part of a letter— I cannot say which — was on 
 August 6th read to me from Monsignor Nardi, in what official 
 capacity I am not sure, to your Grace, stating that my declara- 
 tion had been pronounced defective by the Congregation of the
 
 ( 40 ) 
 
 Index for several reasons, and particularly for not containing any 
 mention of submission to the judgment of the Index. He then 
 proceeded in the kindest manner to sketch out for me such a 
 declaration as would be accepted, and which was purely general : 
 a form of submitting unreservedly to the judgment of the Index, 
 and of retracting all it condemned. This declaration, he was 
 good enough to add by way of recommendation, would never be 
 made public, but would be stowed away in their archives ; and 
 the only public notice taken of it would be " Auctor laiidahiliter 
 se suhjecit" in the usual way. " The Holy Father would then 
 send me his blessing, and all further proceedings would be 
 stayed." 
 
 I can perfectly well understand your Grace forwarding me this 
 overture through another. You must have felt in your own 
 mind there was not one in a thousand of your educated country- 
 men ever likely to accede to a compromise of this description. 
 It was one way, certainly, of putting an end to the scandal which 
 my pamphlet was said to have caused : one way of acquainting 
 its author with the heresy which he must in future avoid. To 
 be candid, I must avow that I pitied your Grace from my heart 
 in having to be the instrument of a Court officially stjded holy, 
 whose absorbing idea seemed to be that of its own consequence : 
 whose least concern the interests of those in whose behalf it 
 professed to act. Now I realized what it must be to be pledged 
 to such a system ! 
 
 I called on your Grace the next day, for my own satisfaction, 
 to be quite sure you were serious in recurring to the Index, after 
 having treated with me for five whole months on the under- 
 standing originally traced in your own words, and since then 
 fulfilled by me to the letter. " Your duty is to submit readily, 
 and without reserve, either to the judgment which I have been 
 compelled to pass ; or, if you will, by appeal to the judgment of 
 the Holy See." * I saw at a glance how matters stood. Your 
 Grace was in a ii'ice : much the harder pressed of the two : and 
 * Letter of March IGtli, ou yoiir return from Eome, quoted p. 26.
 
 ( 41 ) 
 
 the utmost you could do was to offer to give me time for 
 deliberation. 
 
 I wanted none. On returning home I wrote my resolve, 
 posted it August 8th, and then went off to the sea-side a freer 
 and easier man than I had been for months. What I wrote 
 was to this effect : — 
 
 " The more I reflect on the point pressed upon me by your 
 
 Grace at our last interview, and pre\dously through , of 
 
 submitting myself to the judgment of the Index, the stronger 
 and more insuperable I find my objections in conscience to be 
 to such a step. One of them, as I thought it my duty to 
 intimate to yom- Grace some months back, is founded on the 
 written laws of the realm : and to those laws, I must beg your 
 Grace to understand most distinctly, I shall not fail to have 
 recourse for protection and redress in the event of any pains or 
 penalties of any sort being imposed on me for non-submission to 
 it. Possibly the authorities at Eome might be um^iUing to 
 press theii* sentence so far, if they were aware that any steps 
 taken for enforcing it if resisted, as in this case, would entail 
 a conflict with the laws of England. On the other hand, shoidd 
 they have foreseen, and be not indisposed to face this contin- 
 gency, your Grace will not object to supply me with the means 
 of having it faudy tried early next Term. But even if I appealed 
 to the statutes of the realm in vain, my objections to submit to 
 the judgment of the Index would remain as strong as before : so 
 that if they are to exclude me from communion at all, they 
 may exclude me for ever. However, do your duty, my Lord, 
 without swevA-ing, by all means : and I will do mine : and believe 
 me to say all this without a breath of rancour or disrespect : 
 and to subscribe myself as heretofore," &c. 
 
 The challenge, or menace, such as it is, contained in this 
 letter, I may as well explain was intended not so much for my 
 bishop as for the authorities at Rome. I believed I knew how far 
 the powers accorded to him as head of the Roman Cathohc Church 
 in England extended : but I judged likewise that further powers
 
 ( 42 ) 
 
 might possibly be placed in his hands, pro Jiac vice, should it 
 be thought advisable. There were these two points, accord- 
 ingly, that I wished to test : 1. Whether the Court of Eome 
 was prepared to face a contest with the laws of this country 
 by a public act : and 2. What the action of my bishop would be, 
 left to himself. As just a month elapsed before I heard again 
 from your Grace, I may presume Eome may have been con- 
 sulted and heard from abundantly by then. The curious part of 
 it is, that other business having unexpectedly caused my return 
 to town on the afternoon of September 8th of all days, I found 
 your answer on my table, having only preceded me by some 
 minutes. I had not calculated amiss. In the letter that greeted 
 me Eome was not to be seen at all ; and my bishop as much as I 
 had supposed, and no more. His action was confined to the 
 forum internum, unless my Manual had misrepresented it. 
 
 Q. 77. "What is the jurisdiction of the forum internum?* 
 
 A. "The jurisdiction of the forum internum is a power 
 belonging to the ministers of the Church, by which they direct 
 
 the consciences of the faithful, regarded as individuals 
 
 by ministering to them, or refusing, the sacraments 
 
 Q. 78. " What is the jurisdiction of {he forum externum'? 
 
 A. " The jurisdiction of the forum externum is a power by 
 which the ministers of the Church govern those subject to them, 
 as members of a visible society, and in order to the good of the 
 same. To this jurisdiction it belongs, therefore, to decree pubhc 
 punishments, to require that satisfaction should be made to 
 society, and so forth." 
 
 Agreeably with the first of these your Grace said : 
 
 " I have thought it better to allow a time to pass before 
 writing again. I do so now with great sorrow, having only one 
 course open to me. 
 
 " At Easter and at Whitsuntide, I was able to hope that all 
 ban between you and the Holy Sacraments was morally removed, 
 or at least in process of removal. 
 
 • Lequeux, sect. I. De Hierarch. Jurisd. c. 1. art. 2.
 
 ( 43 ) 
 
 "Your last letter takes away this hope : and I have no choice 
 but to make known to you that, until the scandal caused by your 
 pamphlet is repaired by submission, no absolution can be given. 
 
 *' The sorrow with which I write this is very gi-eat : and I pray 
 God the time may speedily come when I may have the conso- 
 lation of seeing you restored to the Holy Sacraments. For this 
 
 I will daily pray with all my heart." And then, for the 
 
 first time in our correspondence, you subscribed yourself, 
 " ffi Henry E., Archbishop of Westminster," as though this could 
 impart a different character to your sentence from that attaching 
 to it from the terms in which it was couched. 
 
 Taking account of the day on which it reached me, I repKed 
 unhesitatingly : 
 
 "Your letter of the 7th reached me but yesterday — the 
 day on which so many prayers are yearly, and have been for 
 years, offered up for the re-union of Christendom, a subject to 
 which I have devoted more prayer, thought, and time, than to 
 any thing else through life. This circumstance was an unex- 
 pected consolation to me on the receipt of a communication 
 which I had long expected, but which Providence arranged so 
 tenderly to be delayed till then. 
 
 " Your Grace tells me that my last letter left you no choice 
 but to act as you have. My last letter was intended to be no 
 more than a distinct resume of the last conversation that I had 
 the honour to have with your Grace, as that conversation was, 
 on my part, merely the resume of what I had declared all along, 
 both at Whitsuntide, at Easter, and before your Grace left 
 Rome : namely, that while ready to submit to the judgment of 
 my bishop at all times, I would never, as an Englishman, submit 
 to the judgment of the Roman Index. 
 
 " Consistently with this I had, long before our last conver- 
 sation took place, submitted to the judgment of my bishop in 
 terms partly dictated, and partly revised by him, as your Grace 
 well knows. When, therefore, your Grace proceeds to tell me
 
 ( 44 ) 
 
 that ' until the scandal caused hy my pamphlet is repaired hy 
 submission,' I must profess my inability to understand entirely 
 what your Grace can mean. However, it is not for me to say 
 whether your Grace might have been more plain-spoken, under 
 the circumstances. My own clearest and simplest course, under 
 the circumstances, is, I am persuaded, to accept the penalty con- 
 tained in the next sentence : reserving to myself complete liberty 
 of action from henceforth : and to subscribe myself, in conclu- 
 sion, your Grace's faithful and obliged servant." 
 
 So ended the last act of the drama, which I will recapitulate 
 diary-wise — 
 
 Nov. 20th, 1867. Sought explanations from your Grace of 
 points afterwards brought out in my pamphlet. 
 
 May 25th, 1868. As good as threatened by your Grace 
 with what has since come to pass, in case I addressed you 
 publicly on those points. 
 
 Dec. 10th. Pamphlet addressed by me to your Grace came 
 out. 
 
 Dec, 18th. Book published by me three years before, not 
 the pamphlet, placed on the Index at Rome. 
 
 Feb. 18th, 1869. Pamphlet condemned by your Grace 
 while still at Ptome. 
 
 March 22nd. Declaration drawn out by me, taken to your 
 Grace at 8 York Place. 
 
 March 25th. As good as told by your Grace that all "ban 
 between me and the Sacraments was morally removed : " 
 not that up to then there had been any, unless in the con- 
 sciences of some priests. 
 
 March 26th. Being the day following — pamphlet placed 
 on the Index at Rome. 
 
 April 14th. Additional terms required of me. 
 
 May 4th. My original declaration wdth corrections, accepted 
 by your Grace all but officially. 
 
 Aug. 6th. Letter read me from Monsignor Nardi to your
 
 I 
 
 ( 45 ) 
 
 Grace requiring a fresh declaration, in which absolute 
 submission to the Index was to be the turning point. 
 
 Aug. 8th. Wrote my absolute refusal to submit to the 
 Index at all. 
 
 Sept. 8th. Being the twelfth anniversary of the foundation of 
 the Association for Promoting the Unity of Christendom 
 — absolution formally denied me by your Grace for such 
 refusal. 
 
 And now for the epilogue — 
 
 In justice to others as well as myself, for the sake of the 
 cause which I have advocated honestly- — whether or not wisely 
 — through life, I cannot conclude without expatiating at some 
 length on the treatment which it has fallen to my lot to have 
 experienced at your hands, but without charging it upon your 
 Grace personally for one moment. With equal sincerity let me 
 disclaim charging it upon the Roman authorities themselves of 
 this day, who have been born and bred in the system which they 
 administer, and who may well be presumed to have dealt with 
 me conformably with their ordinary practice throughout, and not 
 to have resorted to any exceptional measures against one so 
 little known as myself for harm or good. Similarly, let me not 
 .jO supposed, in resisting their sentence, to deny to the authori- 
 'iies of the Church the right of sitting in judgment on books as 
 •ntimately connected with faith and morals as my own, for to 
 this principle I subscribed in addressing my late pamphlet to my 
 own bishop, and thus inviting his judgment on it, to which 
 I have since submitted. Neither is it even any part of my con- 
 tention that an Index is either not needed at Rome, or could 
 not be administered properly there as a Supreme Court. I 
 ascribe the treatment of which I complain to the actual system 
 upheld there, and to it so exclusively, that as long as it lasts 
 I cannot imagine anybody certain of having fairer treatment 
 accorded to him let him be whom he may. Formerly, I could 
 only judge of it at a distance from what I read in books, or
 
 ( 46 ) 
 
 heard from others : now it has been brought home to me by the 
 action of the Index in my own case, which I have described 
 accordingly step by step, so that he may run that reads ; and 
 I ajjpeal to the common sense of every Christian man and 
 woman who may read it, whether the best interests of the 
 Church are not imperilled by its supreme authority being 
 administered in this fashion. Your Grace has more than once 
 spoken of the deep sorrow which it has given you to act as you 
 have ; and I can well believe it for more than one reason. Can 
 you lay your hand upon yom* heart before God, and say that 
 I have been treated righteously — treated as you would have 
 treated me yourself had you been free ? Would you not be as 
 ashamed, as I know your Grace to be proud of, your country, 
 were justice administered similarly to us all here in the name 
 of the Queen ? Let me recapitulate briefly what has occurred. 
 A member of the Roman Catholic Church publishes a Tract which 
 for some reason or other excites wide- spread attention in educated 
 circles, and gets him a name. Well, there was a special com-se 
 traced out to be observed in such cases by the authorities of the 
 Index, in a constitution framed for their perpetual guidance by 
 one of the wisest of Popes. It was utterly ignored in this case. 
 The Index is declared by the same Pope to be a tribunal " ex- 
 clusively for prohibiting of books," and not " for noting or con- 
 demning their authors :" yet his bishop is obhged in this case to 
 inhibit him from the Sacraments, exclusuely for not submitting 
 to it. Who delated his Tract to the Index, or caused it to be 
 condemned there while his own bishop was sitting in judgment 
 on it at home with his full assent 'and submission — who 
 delated his other works to the Index, or caused them to be con- 
 demned within a few days of the appearance of his Tract, though 
 they had been then out several years, he is not told ; and never 
 will know. His worst enemy may have done both. Yet sum- 
 marily condemned as they had been in each case, he is apprised 
 of a way of getting relieved from all consequences as summarily, 
 provided he will only submit without reserve to a tribunal of
 
 ( 47 ) 
 
 which all he knows is that it has judged him contrary to its own 
 laws ; and of whose claims to his ohedience he knows and can 
 learn no more than that his hishop has chosen, or heen compelled, 
 to summon him to admit them. No title has heen produced for 
 the jurisdiction which is assumed ; all laws applicahle to it have 
 been superseded in its enforcement. Viewed dispassionately too, 
 perhaps, it may be doubted whether he or his bishop has been the 
 most sinned against. The case was taken out of the hands of his 
 bishop while his bishop was engaged in adjudicating on it ; and 
 the terms accepted by him were pronounced illusory — so much 
 for his intelligence ! Neither he nor his bishop courted this 
 intermeddling ; some busy-body, some fiery zealot or private 
 vindictiveness, stepped between them unasked. All are welcome 
 to the Index who invoke its interference. And all approach it in 
 confidence, weU knowing that then- intrigues, be they ever so 
 vile, will be kept secret. Its deliberations are clandestine ; its 
 decisions arbitrary ; of law there is not a vestige, expressed or 
 understood. Nobody can have followed its proceedings in this 
 case, at all acquainted with Church history, without recognising 
 the hkeness — for the Index is but one of a family — and feeling 
 they see the action of the Court of Rome portrayed in it to the 
 life — of the Court of Rome, just what it was in the Middle Ages, 
 with this difi'erence : that its sentences being no longer of any 
 concern to the secular power, as it has been deprived of that 
 support, so it has been reheved likewise from that check. It 
 can trample upon the disestablished Churches of Christ and 
 their members now to its heart's content spiritually, by way 
 of compensation for the power it has lost over their lives and 
 estates. When it mixes in general society, it must be as well 
 behaved as its neighbours, and observe the laws ; but it has dis- 
 covered that it may be still as tyrannical as ever in its own house- 
 hold, where the slightest remonstrance on the part of any of its 
 domestic staff would lose them their places. 
 
 As it is precisely this license, and the system in which it has 
 become second nature, that I have denounced on all occasions
 
 ( 48 ) 
 
 wherever it came in my way — and this, I doubt not, is the principal 
 heresy of all my works on Church history — could anything well 
 be more craven in me than to shriek and succumb on experiencing 
 the first touch of it in my own person ? Yet if facts will not 
 condemn it, neither will I ; when its good deeds have been 
 established, I will cry jjcccavi myself. There must have been 
 something in it, however, radically amiss beyond dispute, for so 
 many saints, and doctors, and historians to have denounced it in 
 days Avhen it was all-powerful, as " the fountain and origin" of 
 all the evils they saw around them — I am quoting one of them* — 
 without a hand ever being held up in its favour, so to speak. 
 There must have been something intensely needing correction in 
 it, for the foremost abuse delated to the Councils of the 15th 
 century, Pisa, Constance, and Basle to have been " circa statum 
 Papcg, et Romance Curm; " for Pius IV.f to have told the Council 
 of Trent, within a month of its closing, with especial reference 
 to his own Court, that in his judgment the reforms hitherto pro- 
 posed there would prove anything but sufficient. I advert to 
 these facts in passing merely, without developing them on this 
 occasion. The facts to which I shall call attention concern our- 
 selves much more intimately, and my text-books for them shall 
 be Mr. Simpson's "Father Campion:" the Piev. J. Berington's 
 " History of the Decline and Fall of the Pioman Catholic Pieligion 
 in England " — a most ominous title ; and the Pv.ev. J. Husenbeth's 
 " Life of Bishop Milner." 
 
 Mr. Simpson was taken to task some years back for having 
 said of Paul III., Paul IV., and Pius V., " Those Popes lost 
 England to the faith." It was not so much his assertion, 
 indeed, as that of AVilliam Barclay, a well-known jurisconsult, 
 who commenced his career at the Court of Mary Queen of Scots, 
 but preferred exile to a post of honour offered to him by her 
 son James I., on condition of his forsaking the Koman Catholic 
 
 * Bishop Grossetete's Sermon before the Pope and Cardinals at the First 
 Council of Lyons. 
 
 t Paleotto's Acta, by Mendham, p. 618.
 
 ( 49 ) 
 
 Communion for that of the Church of England. He, therefore, 
 may be allowed to speak both unbiassedly and from experience ; 
 and his words are : " Of the last two Popes, Paul and Pius, 
 I may venture to affirm plainly — for it is notoiious to the world 
 at large — that they occasioned the ruin of our religion in England 
 by endeavouring to assume to themselves and exercise that most 
 invidious and portentous power over the sovereign and people of 
 that kingdom." .... 
 
 Nor was he the only person who then thought so by any 
 means. Mr. Simpson has adduced a weightier and more out- 
 spoken witness.* " We know," said Urban VIII. , in reply to a 
 similar demand made to him by Spain — " that Protestants, 
 although they are out of the Catholic Church, for so much as 
 concerns the faith and common vows and suffrages, yet are they 
 not in point of jurisdiction, and therefore we may declare them 
 excommunicate, as Pius V. declared Queen Elizabeth of England, 
 and before him Clement VII., the King of England, Henry VIII., 
 and all at the instances of the House of Austria and the Spaniards ; 
 but with what success ? The whole world can tell. We yet 
 bewail it in tears of blood ! Wisdom doth not teach us to 
 imitate Pius V. or Clement VII., but Paul V., who, in the 
 beginning (of his pontificate), being many times urged by the 
 Spaniards to excommunicate James, King of England, would 
 never consent unto it." f 
 
 " Tears of blood," literally : but what of the hecatombs of 
 high-souled devoted men like Campion, Sherwin, Briant, and 
 the rest arraigned with them, who would have willingly lived and 
 died good subjects, and attracted and edified all around them by 
 their fervent piety, had not enmity been sown between them and 
 their fellow- citizens by the ambitious projects and political 
 intrigues of the Court of Rome, too powerful in general for 
 the Popes themselves to resist. The moral of this biography 
 
 * P. 370-1, among the notes. 
 
 t State Papers (Foreign), Charles I., Italy, bundle 24. Mr. S., I think, mis- 
 takes the allusion to Austria, which no doubt refers to that of Henry YIII., not 
 of Elizabeth.
 
 ( 50 ) 
 
 beyond question is, that it was not England, nor yet the Popes, 
 who murdered them. 
 
 Excommunications were abandoned, in point of fact, after the 
 defeat of the Spanish Armada, and not before. Even so, neither 
 Urban himself, nor Paul V., whose milder councils he professed 
 to follow, were free to permit the faithful few who adhered to 
 their communion in England to be good subjects. On the detec- 
 tion of the Gunpowder Plot in 1605, Parliament enacted the 
 oath of allegiance known as that of James I. It was immediately 
 denounced by Paul V., that is to say, in a brief addressed to the 
 Roman Catholics of England in his name, " as containing many 
 things obviously adverse to faith and salvation;" and a second 
 brief forbade their taking it. Blackwell the arch-priest or head 
 of the hierarchy then for England and Scotland, a friend of 
 Bellarmine and of the Jesuits, "who from the beginning had 
 approved of the oath, would not surrender his convictions of its 
 propriety. He took it himself, and by a public letter, recom- 
 mended it to his clergy. Many followed his example."* But 
 it cost him his place. For nearly two hundred years from that 
 time those who clung to the Roman Catholic Communion in 
 England had to submit to be called and be treated as disloyal 
 subjects, who refused to swear allegiance to their sovereign at 
 any price ; j)ersecuted by penal statutes made purposely to rob 
 them of every privilege worth living for in this world, or goad 
 them into abjuring a creed which they prized better than life ; 
 shimned in society by their countrymen and fellow- Christians, as 
 those in whom honour and honesty were extinct. Three parts 
 of the eighteenth century had passed away, before the day of 
 their release dawned ; and how was it ushered in? "In regard of 
 the bill which now obtained," says Mr. Berington of the 
 first Roman Catholic Relief Bill of 1778, f "there was a 
 circumstance that merits notice. An oath was annexed 
 
 * Berington, i^p. 78-9. 
 
 + Ibid., p. 427, with the note on the supposed differences between the two 
 oaths.
 
 ( 51 ) 
 
 to it to be taken witliin a limited time by all who would enjoy the 
 benefits of the bill, ichich oath, in its principal clauses, 2cas the 
 same as that of James I. which Paul V. anathematised in 1606, 
 as " containing many things obviously adverse to faith and salva- 
 tion," which anathema he afterwards confirmed, as did Urban 
 VIII. in 1626, and on account of which anathema the Catholics 
 at that time and in after times refused to take the oath, thereby 
 exposing themselves to the odium of their fellow-citizens, and the 
 persecution of the laws. The chief clause objected to by the 
 Roman Court, and which probably drew its curse on the whole, 
 was that which abjured the deposing doctrine as impious and 
 heretical, pronounces it to be damnable. In the oath of 1778 
 the same doctrine is abjured without any qualification of its 
 character or tendency. But it was the doctrine that Rome 
 
 laboured to save He who took the oath of James declared 
 
 the deposing doctrine to be impious, that is contrary to the sound 
 principles of morality ; to be heretical, that is, in the language of 
 the propounders, contrary to the written word of God ; to be 
 damnable, that is, to merit the strongest abhorrence of language. 
 He who takes the oath of George III. renounces the same 
 doctrine, and by implication loads it with the same weight of 
 imprecation. What is false in the sense of that proposition, is 
 false in all its concomitant analogies ; that is, is impious, is 
 heretical, is damnable. At all events in 1778 that tenet was 
 ahjwred by the Catholics of England, clergy and laity, which in 
 1606 a Pope of Rome had forbidden to be abjured : and by that 
 act it was declared that the briefs of Pontiffs, in some cases, were 
 unbindiiig and nugatory. Then, commenting on the protestation 
 " almost unanimously signed and pubHshed by the CathoHcs" of 
 this country the year following : "a second time we have re- 
 nounced," he says, " the deposing power, calling it execrable and 
 impious : and with it that grand foundation of all abuses which 
 have depraved the prerogative and power of Rome — the personal 
 infallibility of her first pastor." 
 
 True it is that the new oath, modelled on this protestation not 
 
 E 2
 
 ( 52 ) 
 
 being approved by the Vicars Apostolic was abandoned : and that 
 eventually the oath that had been taken by the Koman Catholics of 
 Ireland was embodied in the Relief-bill of 1791. However, the 
 declaration of the Irish themselves, according to the Act of 
 33 George III. in 1792-3 was : "I declare that it is not an 
 article of the Roman Catholic faith, neither am I required to 
 believe or profess, that the Pope is infallible."* 
 
 The moral of this history of the Roman Catholic oath attests 
 that Roman Catholic emancipation here comprised more than is 
 ordinarily supposed. It was emancipation not by any means from 
 the draconian oppressiveness of our penal statutes alone, but from 
 the tyrannical action of the Roman Court equally that had 
 occasioned them. Meanwhile, how fared Church government 
 among us during this unhappy period ? As was natural, questions 
 of life and death took precedence of aU others during the reign of 
 Elizabeth. At its close there was a resolution taken at Rome,t 
 " after mature deliberation and the best advice, that neither 
 bishops nor the form of an ecclesiastical hierarchy, as established 
 in Catholic countries, should be permitted in England." In 
 other words, that the earnest demands of the secular clergy and 
 laity suffering for their faith there should be refused. Blackwell 
 was created arch-priest in consequence of this resolve : but 
 before long, ''mature deliberation and the best advice" suggested 
 it should be set aside for something more neutral : and accord- 
 ingly Dr. Bishop was consecrated in 1623 to the see of Chalcedon 
 by a Papal brief giving him jurisdiction-'-in England and Scotland, 
 " ad nostrum et seclis Aj)ostoUc(S hencplacitum.^^ He was suc- 
 ceeded in the same see with the same powers in 1625 by Dr. 
 Smith ; who after a residence of four years here, in consequence 
 of a controversy which it would take too long to explain between him 
 and the regulars, withdrew into France. There had been a dean 
 and chapter, however, erected by his predecessor, which survived 
 
 * De la Hogue, De Eccl. note to p. 384. 
 
 t Berington, Introd. p. 66, note. Taken from the MS. Eelation of the 
 Regulars.
 
 ( 53 ) 
 
 him, was in existence when the first Vicars Apostolic 'were in con- 
 templation half a centuiy later, and had the courage and the honesty 
 to protest against their appointment in a memorial presented to 
 James II., July 23rd, 1685, containing amongst others, these 
 stiiking objections to theii* official character in the abstract : — 
 
 1. That the Yicar being obliged to act, not by the known laws 
 and rules of the Church, but by special orders and injunctions 
 from his delegant, the government icill he arbitrary and un- 
 certaii\, which must be of a pernicious consequence as well in 
 ecclesiastical as in civil affair's. 
 
 2. That divers laws enacted by his (the King's) Catholic 
 ancestors in providing against the inconveniences of foreign 
 pretences of the Court of Kome, viz., Ed. I., Ed. II., Ed. III., 
 Rich, II., stand still in force : and an ordinary bishop wiU be 
 obliged to espouse his Majesty's and kingdom's interest in the 
 due execution of the said laws, which a Vicar cannot be expected 
 to do : but, if enjoined, act contrary to them. 
 
 3. That the very name of a Vicar ApostoHc will raise in his 
 Majesty's Protestant subjects an apprehension of the kingdom's 
 being subjected to the immediate jurisdiction of a foreign court, 
 against the pretensions of which court, either ecclesiastical or 
 civil, all his Catholic ancestors thought themselves obKged to 
 stand upon their guard. 
 
 4. To avoid these inconveniences, it is humbly, therefore, 
 offered to his princely consideration to provide that the bishop 
 to be sent for be declared true and proper ordinary of the 
 Catholics in England, with command to govern them as other 
 ordinaries do* 
 
 Had James listened to these wise counsellors, it might have 
 been better for his religion, and he might never have lost his 
 crown. But Vicars Apostolic harmonising enth-ely with his own 
 notions, they were appointed. And this is the character given 
 of them, after more than 100 years had elapsed, by those who 
 
 * Berington, Introduction p. 66.
 
 ( 54 ) 
 
 had to look up to tliem for every thing that concerned their 
 faith : 
 
 " The mode of government by Vicars Apostolic," says 
 Mr. Berington, speaking for others as well as himself,* "was 
 an economy in its obvious nature most extraordinary and 
 dependent, in which they who styled themselves bishops were 
 but the delegated agents or stewards of another, while that other, 
 the Roman Pontiff, was himself the ordinary or immediate bishop 
 of the English Catholic Chm-ch. This bishop apportioned out 
 to his delegates the quantum of jurisdiction it seemed exjfedient 
 they should exercise, which he could recall, limit, or modify, as 
 his own will or their conduct might direct. The agents were 
 independent of each other in their respective offices .... 
 ' moving equally abreast,' it has been said with some wit, ' without 
 any mutual relation, coherence, or order among themselves.' 
 To the disorganised, or rather, anomalous, state of 
 things of which I am spealdng, no primitive legislation could 
 apply — nor did Rome wish it should be so — ' for all canons are 
 thrown out of doors, or deemed insignificant, when a government 
 comes in that guides itself by the -placita Cur'ue RomanceJ' 
 . . . . Its evils are, first, dependence on the Roman Court, 
 or rather, on one of its congi-egations. So entire is this depend- 
 ence, as to the Vicar's whole commission and its exercise that the 
 jjlacita Curia Bomance are the sole rule of their conduct ; of 
 which conduct, and of all persons subject to their inspection, 
 they are bound at stated times to give in an account.'! .... 
 Being thus dependent themselves, they were tempted to govern 
 others also without law. ^Because you maintain principles that 
 I disappj-ove,'' said the Senior Vicar to Mr. Wilks, a highly 
 respected Benedictine, 'I declare your missionary faculties 
 to cease. Nor was I bound to give any reasons at all,' 
 he afterwards observed, ' either by ecclesiastical law or the 
 
 * P. 373 ; his quotations are from Mr. Serjeant's MSS., a great champion of 
 the secular priests, 
 t Berington, p. 4C1.
 
 ( 55 ) 
 
 practice of the mission.' Grouudiug this arbitrary declara- 
 tion on the plac'ita Cur'ue Romance, that, as his own powers 
 were revocable at will, so were those of his clergy."* .... 
 
 No wonder that "the Eoman CathoHc religion " should have 
 "declined" under a system like this, in a country where 
 reverence for law is proverbial, and trial by law vindicated even 
 for the negro ! Again and again were the Yicars Apostolic 
 petitioned by the patient and devoted remnant enthralled in such 
 bondage " to solicit the Eoman See for the establishment of a 
 succession of ordinary episcopal jurisdiction so necessary for this 
 country above all others f .... to exei't their endeavours 
 to procure that in future the ecclesiastical government of this 
 country 7nay be settled according to the knoivn rules and canons 
 of the Catholic Church, by tvhich the clergy may possess the 
 rights of a parochial clergy.^' I 
 
 Two anecdotes illustrative of the intrigues that went on imder 
 this regime may be told here, the more so as they reflect small 
 credit on the side to which my own sympathies may be supposed 
 to lean ; but what could men do when there was, in reality, no 
 other way of obtaining redress within their reach ? 
 
 Dr. Milner was a prelate of whom his countrymen, whether 
 agreeing with him or not, might well have been proud. He was 
 earnest, fearless, and uncompromising to a fault ; art and artifice 
 were unknown to him. He was as vigilant a guardian of the 
 sheepfold as could have been desired, but a noble watch-dog — for 
 he never skulked, or lay in wait for his foe. Any body coming 
 forward on any pretence whatever with opinions that he deemed 
 dangerous or erroneous, was certain to hear his bark ; and any 
 body venturing to do so within reach of his chain, to feel his bite. 
 All who opposed him knew where to find, and what to expect 
 from him : a resolute adversary, but one who abhorred subterfuge ; 
 one who said what he thought, and meant what he said, and did 
 exactly what his sense of duty told him to do without turning to 
 the right or left ; without asldng any body to do his work for 
 * Berington, p. 462. + Ibid., p. 380. { Ibid., p. i65.
 
 ( 56 ) 
 
 him, or share his responsibihties ; without caring a straw for con- 
 sequences, least of all those likely to affect his interests. He 
 was an Ultramontane — to the full extent of the Ultramontanism in 
 vogue then — without compromise, at a time when there was 
 scarcely another in England. Single-handed he fought for the 
 Pope as nobody else cared or dared to do then. Several of the 
 French clergy who had sought an asylum amongst us having 
 attacked Pius VII. furiously for reconstituting the Church in 
 France to please Napoleon, he denounced and proscribed them as 
 rebels. The Eev. J. Berington, author of the history last quoted, 
 and other works of high merit ; the Piev. J. Eustace, author of 
 the "Classical Tour;" Mr. C. Butler, the well-known antagonist 
 of Southey, and the late Bishop Philpotts, he stigmatised as 
 "betrayers of their religion," mainly for what they had said of 
 the Pope and his Court. Of Lingard's History, soon after it had 
 commenced coming out in 1819, he said : " The History of 
 England which has lately appeared is not a Catholic history 
 
 such as our calumniated and depressed condition calls for 
 
 It is a bad book, only calculated to confirm Protestants in their- 
 errors." He was thus out-spoken ; still nobody could complain 
 that he denounced authors without exposing their errors, or con- 
 demned them till he had given them full opportunity to retract or 
 explain. Vehement as his tone and his procedure may have been 
 at times, it was all above-board ; he had done nothing that should 
 have exposed him to a stab in the dark from his worst foe. 
 Nevertheless, it came. Suddenly, without a hint of danger, or 
 one word of warning, he received, in 1820, a letter from the 
 Propaganda, written to him by command of the Pope, reprobating 
 his connection ■svith a periodical called the Orthodox Journal, as 
 most calculated to perpetuate dissensions amongst the Catholics 
 of Great Britain, and bidding him abstain from any further sup- 
 port of it directly or indirectly, under j)ain of being deprived of 
 his Vicariate. 
 
 " Thus, by means of misrepresentation and political influ- 
 ence,''^ says his biographer, "is Dr. Milner, who for forty years
 
 ( 57 ) 
 
 has used the weapon of his pen in defence of truth, and waged 
 an lionourahle 2var against the enemies of religion, required to 
 throw away his arms and retire from the fiekl of battle covered 
 with laurels which he had plucked from the brows of his adver- 
 saries ; but rewarded by those in whose cause he had been 
 exposed with disapprobation and reproof instead of applause and 
 gratitude."* Milner detected the intrigue at a glance, and 
 awaited its issues in disdainful silence. " For my own part, if 
 I am dismissed from my apostolic vicarship by Cardinal Consalvi 
 to gratify Mr. C. Butler and his ministerial friends, I shall be 
 glad to take the situation at Norwich," was all the notice that, 
 according to his biographer, it ever received from him. Nor 
 was this the only trick played upon him, I regret to say, in this 
 unworthy manner by the same hand. Two years afterwards he 
 charged his clergy not to admit Mr. C. Butler to the sacraments, 
 without requiring from him a public retractation of his opposition 
 to his ecclesiastical superior.! But Mr. Butler, unknown to his 
 bishop, despatched a memorial to the Prefect of the Propaganda, 
 which elicited a reply from Cardinal Consalvi in praise of his 
 moderation. A second memorial followed equally concealed 
 from his vicar ; and it is possible that had Cardinal Consalvi 
 lived, Milner might have been subjected to a second indignity. 
 All my sympathies are with the bishop on both occasions. 
 With all my predilections for the writings of Mr. C. Butler and 
 his school, I can assure your Grace most positively that I can 
 see nothing in this part of his career to imitate or admire. If 
 I designated it at all, I should call it a dirty trick. I mention 
 it in order to show what the practices of the Court of Rome are 
 to this day ; that a simple layman may intrigue there for years 
 in secret against his ecclesiastical superior at home with unfailing 
 success ; and let his ecclesiastical superior occupy what rank he 
 may, have what character he may for zeal or orthodoxy, get a 
 severe reprimand administered to him when he least expects it, get 
 him threatened with removal unheard on an ex parte statement. 
 
 * Life, p. 423. t Ihid. p. 450. 
 
 F
 
 ( 58 ) 
 
 Such anecdotes might be multiplied indefinitely, and of his- 
 torians above all others. Beriugton, the two Butlers, and 
 Lingard, of our countrymen and immediate predecessors, all 
 incurred, or narrowly escaped, censure for the facts they brought 
 out. In 1825, Dr. Gradwell could write from Rome and tell 
 Lingard that his history was spoken of there as one of the great 
 causes that had altered public opinion in this country so much 
 for the better on Catholic matters. Yet, in 1829, he discovered 
 himself that he was being surreptitiously described there as 
 ** the most dangerous enemy who had assailed the rights of the 
 Church in the present century."* Your great predecessor 
 happily described this attack as " the drivelling of a mad ultra ;" 
 but had the historian not happened to have two such champions 
 as Drs. Gradwell and Wiseman in Rome, then it might have 
 been worse for his book. None are so likely to bring Rome 
 down upon them as those who occupy themselves with Church 
 history ; and to show what views are taken of it in the most 
 enlightened quarters, where " the Roman Spirit " is affected, 
 I need only refer to the repeated statements of the Month, that 
 a man should go through a course of theological training in 
 order to be qualified to state facts of that sort honestly, and 
 estimate them at their proper worth. No doubt one who had 
 been trained in the Roman schools would be more likely to avoid 
 getting into trouble there than one who had not ; but mainly for 
 this reason, that one would be more conversant with Roman 
 ways than the other. What is wanted is even-handed justice for 
 all there, whether theologians or not ; and trial by law in all 
 cases against which intrigues should be powerless. Intrigues ! 
 but was it not to have been expected that they would have been 
 effectually disarmed once for all here by the substitution of a 
 regular hierarchy for Vicars ApostoKc, according to the prayer of 
 our forefathers, untrammelled by concordats or organic articles, 
 and free as the air we breathe for any control to which it has 
 been subjected by the state ? Most of us can remember in what 
 * Memoir by Tierney in vol. x. of his " History of England."
 
 ( 59 ) 
 
 high-sounding terms it was announced: and with what trae 
 courage defended ; of the cost of maintaining it few, perhaps, 
 have any distinct idea. Your Grace may remember my calling 
 your attention two or three years ago to some receipts and dis- 
 bursements in the Report of the Society for the Propagation of 
 the Faith, that, as a subscriber, I thought far from satisfactory. 
 My notion in subscribing to it had been that I was giving my money 
 for the propagation of the faith amongst the heathen, as when I 
 gave to the S. P. G. formerly. I found from its Report 
 in 1856 that while the money subscribed in England for that 
 purpose amounted to 47,062 francs or £188'Z ; a sum of 172,423 
 francs or .^6896, was disbursed out of the general fund to 
 England alone : so that, in point of fact, instead of the Roman 
 Catholics of this country contributing one penny towards the 
 conversion of the heathen, we were literally subtracting from 
 this society for our own domestic purposes, the large sum of 
 £4000 a year — £4000 a year ! I am far from grudging it : 
 but I should have noticed it less had it been subscribed expressly 
 for that purpose, and least of all had the hierarchy which has 
 been given us been all it professed to be. For its shortcomings 
 and their attendant evils, I am far from making those charged 
 with their administration responsible. But in plain English, this 
 is about the truth. In 1850 it pleased the Court of Rome to 
 reward the Roman Catholics of this country for their unswerving 
 loyalty to their faith through good and evil report for three long 
 centuries, by granting them a hierarchy that was three parts a 
 sham. It risked embroiling them with then- fellow- citizens for 
 the third and last time, by parcelling out their common kingdom 
 into dioceses, without leave from the Crown, and then rewarded 
 them by appointing bishops to those Sees, shorn of their powers, 
 restricted to work with one hand, and their best hand tied behind 
 them, as Archbishop Whately would say — and leaving the rest of 
 the clergy in the same helpless and abnormal condition of which 
 they had so long complained. The resolution taken at Rome 
 so far back as 1598, ''that neither bishops, nor the form of an 
 
 F 2
 
 ( ^0 ) 
 
 ecclesiastical liierarcliy as exhibited in Catholic conntries, should 
 be permitted in England," was rescinded just so far as concerned 
 the appointment of the bishops and no more. They were to 
 have regular dioceses of their own, and be canonically elected, 
 and canonically dealt with in future. They were no longer to be 
 " tenants-at-will " — ad nostrum et sedis Apostolicce heneplacitum 
 — as the Bishop of Chalcedon and after him the Vicars Apos- 
 tolic were. This was the one reality bestowed in the Bull of 
 1850, that made so much noise. In all other respects there 
 was no change at all. The bishops of course had the forum 
 internum made over to them : and whatever else may have 
 been absolutely required for administrative purposes. The forum 
 externum, without which no bishop answers to his description in 
 Canon Law — but is a nondescript literally — was withheld from 
 them so far at all events, that the placita Curice Romance might 
 continue to be law here, and not a finger raised amongst us, 
 after the manner of school-boys, as before, without leave from 
 Rome. 
 
 Could there have been imagined any policy more truly Roman 
 than this : to withhold a power from our bishops which the laws 
 of England would never interfere with their exercising, but on 
 the contrary would uphold them in exercising over their respec- 
 tive flocks, so long as it was wielded with justice : and to bind 
 them hand and foot to the sentences of a foreign Court — a posi- 
 tion, which could not fail to lower them in the eyes of their 
 countrymen, and may sooner or later bring them into collision 
 with the laws of the Realm ? 
 
 Has Rome no faith in bishops who have sworn allegiance to 
 the Pope on their consecration, and are responsible to him ever 
 afterwards for all they do, that she cannot trust them to rule 
 their flocks except through the confessional, or administer justice 
 to them in broad day-light, and conformably with the Canons, 
 as members of a community ? 
 
 Here we are still, after all that has been said and done by our 
 forefathers in depreciation of it, victims to the same intrigues,
 
 ( 61 ) 
 
 to the same back-stair practices, to the same secret and in-egular 
 agencies that they were : invoking Kome over the heads of our 
 bishops when we want a thing stopped, of which we are not 
 sure that they will not approve : plotting at Rome against our 
 brethren, where we think our bishops should have spoken and 
 have not : plotting at Rome against our brethren, whose 
 opinions, not whose articles of faith, conflict with om- own. 
 These are no visionary sketches of my own^ I am speaking of 
 three notorious intrigues of late years — and there may be many 
 more for aught I know — that I could not help knowing. 
 
 1. Your Grace may remember my conferring with you in 1865 
 on a Roman Catholic Hall, which I was hoping a Bill then before 
 Parliament would enable me to open at Oxford. My scheme had 
 been favourably entertained by your predecessor, as I could show 
 from letters in my possession, but he referred me to you on 
 your return from Rome : and your views turned out to be not as 
 his. However, at your instance, I addressed a letter to each of 
 his suffragans on the subject, whose replies merely went to the 
 extent of recommending me to act with caution. One of them, 
 indeed, whom I consulted personally, was kind enough to be 
 more explicit. He told me frankly that it was useless for me 
 to apply for his sanction, without having secured Rome first : 
 and he supplied me with a form of petition which I have by me 
 still, but would sooner have starved than use. This was the 
 first inkling I had of our real condition ; and in the absence of 
 any legislative measure passing to enable me to take my own 
 course, I remained passive from that time. I felt that for all 
 practical purposes it was more respectful to abstam from any 
 further appeal to our bishops, than to ask them to act. Others 
 forced on the question : and we all know how it went. Rome 
 was invoked : and Rome decided, or purported to have decided, 
 in the negative. In vain a memorial bearing one hundi'cd and 
 seventy tolerably well-known signatures, and the good will of 
 many times that number, who from various motives withheld 
 their names, respectfully deprecated her interference just then.
 
 ( 62 ) 
 
 The Cardinal-Prefect objected to the memorial, "that it had 
 not been signed by a single prince, and that the majority of the 
 signatories were mer'e gentlemen.^' Also, " that as in England, 
 ivheniJie Queen and the House of Peers had made a law it could 
 not he set aside : so when the Congregation had gone to the 
 Pope, and the Pope had arrived at a conclusion, there was no 
 further proceeding open."" No wonder that one so perfectly 
 familiar with EngHsh alBfairs as his Eminence, should have taken 
 a different view from those who approached him of their real 
 interests. Afterwards the same cardinal, or another, is said to 
 have visited Oxford in the long vacation. I presume, to see 
 what it was like : whether the health of Roman Catholic students 
 would be likely to suffer there, and so forth. The whole thing 
 reminded me of what a French priest, to whom I had confided 
 my scheme of a Roman Catholic Hall, and asked his concurrence 
 in case I wanted a theological professor, said with exquisite 
 naivete, "Monsieur, y-a-t-il la bibliotheques suffisantes '? " only 
 he was not sitting in judgment on my plan. 
 
 2. Again, your Grace may remember a letter of the Cardinal- 
 Prefect of the Inquisition, issued in 1864, against the "Associa- 
 tion for Promoting the Unity of Christendom." Well, I was not 
 one of the original members of that association ; but I joined it 
 on learning that among its members were several of the most 
 esteemed of my Roman Catholic friends, and also that it was 
 looked upon far from unfavourably by your predecessor. Through 
 whose representations the letter condemning it was procm-ed, I 
 will not inquire. This I ascertained from himself : that it was 
 not merely not his doing, but that he had not even seen it, when 
 I informed him of its being cii'culated in his diocese. To my 
 request to be informed whether it was necessary for me to with- 
 draw from the Association in consequence, he never returned any 
 answer to the day of his death. 
 
 3. Whether your Grace knows anything of the remaining 
 intrigue to which I shall allude, it is not competent for me to 
 
 * " Statement of Facts," &c.
 
 ( 63 ) 
 
 say : the intrigue, or series of intrigues, namely, that has for so 
 long doomed to comparative retirement and inaction one of the 
 master-minds of his age : when for the genius with which God 
 has hlessed him, and the influence which he wields over count- 
 less multitudes in all communions — above all, for the crisis 
 through which we are passing — he ought to have been raised 
 aloft on a pedestal as the S. Bernard of Europe. Characters that 
 it takes ages to produce, we should make the most of while we 
 can : therefore, when they are condemned to unmerited obloquy 
 year after year, of their mature prime, it becomes a national, if 
 not a world-wide calamity. Now I have seen and read a pam- 
 phlet written by one scarcely his inferior in ability, and full his 
 equal in honesty, detailing this intrigue from beginning to end, 
 and disclosing such conduct in some cases — in one case compar- 
 able with the behaviour of Lady Nottingham to Lord Essex — as 
 would have made all concerned in it, however exalted their 
 positions, colour crimson had it been made public. The noble 
 nature that had been assailed stepped in between this pamphlet 
 and the world, just as it was ready for circulation : a presentation 
 copy gave him the first tidings of what was contemplated, and he 
 replied by telegi-aph begging that it might be suppressed. Should 
 your Grace desire that its contents should be made public after 
 my pointed allusions, its author may possibly be induced to defer 
 to your wishes. 
 
 What I desire to submit to your Grace is whether it can 
 possibly be for our honour or advantage that such intrigues 
 should continue ; and whether their continuance is due to any 
 thing else than the arbitrary control arbitrarily retained over our 
 hierarchy by the Court of Kome, withholding from our episcopate 
 their inherent right of sitting as judges over their respective 
 flocks, interfering in their dioceses with or without their know- 
 ledge ; leaving the rest of our clergy without any rights at all, 
 and incapacitating us all from appealing to Rome conformably 
 with the canons, by exercising a jurisdiction amongst us utterly 
 opposed to the canons. Look at the sketch traced in the well-
 
 ( 64 ) 
 
 known letter of Pelagius II. to the sjTiod of Constantinople, 
 which he ^\Tote to reprove John the Faster for allowing himself to 
 be styled (Ecumenical patriarch, and which there are grounds for 
 thinking S. Gregory the Great,* our founder, then his archdeacon, 
 may have inspii-ed. Except for the principles laid down in it, 
 one might have supposed it intended for our existing hierarchy. 
 I aui not indeed vouching for the genuineness of the whole letter, 
 but, interpolated or not, it must have been all written in primitive 
 times comparatively to the establishment of the Com"t of Rome, 
 which might copy to advantage now and then even fi'om the 
 Pseudo-Isidore. " A state," the Pope says, "is that which has 
 ten or eleven counties and one king, with as many subordinate 
 rulers under him ; and one bishop with ten or eleven more 
 suffragan bishops as judges. To their judgment all causes con- 
 cerning the bishops and priests and aU others in the several 
 countries should be referred, that by then- collective wisdom they 
 might be settled equitably, provided those to be judged should not 
 appeal to a higher tribimal. "Wherefore it is not fitting that any 
 state should he degraded or dishonoured, but each should have 
 judges within itself, bishops and priests to wit, according to theii" 
 rank. And every body that is inqAeaded should he judged by his 
 own judges, and not foreigners : that is, by the regular judges of 
 his own country, and not those of another : unless, as has heen 
 said, he that is judged should a2)pcal.i 
 
 This all, I should imagine, will concede to be sound law ; it 
 may turn ont to have been enunciated by the great founder of the 
 Anglo-Saxon Chm-ch ; it is just what is wanting to make Roman 
 Catholic emancipation in this coimtry complete. This would not 
 merely secm-e justice for us all, but true episcopal jurisdiction to 
 the heads of om- existing hierarchy, and canonical rights to theii* 
 
 * From his pointed allusions to it, and treatment of the same subject : Ep. 
 V. 18, which is to John himself : v. 21, v. 43, and is. 69. He is generally 
 credited with the authorship of the 3rd letter of Pelagius to the bishops of 
 Istria. 
 
 t Mansi, ix. 900. Comp. of Concordat of Leo X. with France cited 
 above, p. 24.
 
 ( 65 ) 
 
 subordinate clergy. Your Grace, may it not be permitted to 
 hope, will never come back from the Council that is about to 
 meet without having secured this charter of rights and liberties 
 for your entire flock. Even the meanest may claim to be re- 
 instated in the possession of what is due to them, before any 
 fresh honours are decreed to the chiefest. And this one principle 
 gained for ourselves, and ordered never to be withheld again from 
 others throughout Christendom, would eflect without noise or 
 violence that reform of the Court of Rome which has been 
 agitated and supplicated for so- many centm-ies, but never accom- 
 pHshed hitherto. Could it fail to be fraught ^^dth advantage to 
 the Supreme Pontifl' ? I have noticed with intense satisfaction 
 that even those who have contended most warmly for his personal 
 infallibility of late years, are unanimous in restricting it to him 
 as head of the Church, and not of his congi-egations ; in other 
 words, of his court. " To his congregations," says M. Bouix, 
 " he can delegate jurisdiction, but not infallibility." * Neverthe- 
 less, can it be doubted that one of the greatest impediments in 
 the minds of men to the reception of the dogma of his infalli- 
 bility would not be removed, if either he were to be from hence- 
 forth quite dissociated from the action of his com-t, or the action 
 of his court took a completely new turn : ceased to be what it 
 has been systematically for ages, and began to be systematically 
 what it might and ought to have been at all times. 
 
 These may be large matters for one in my position to be so 
 outspoken about ; nevertheless, speak I will. I am a Christian, 
 and have been taught fi'om childhood to love, or at least desire to 
 love, my neighbour as myself. I am a Christian — and if there 
 is any that I love dearly — crazily let it be called for aught 
 I care — it is the Christian religion. One of the earhest recol- 
 lections of my school-days which has never left me is a passage 
 of Xenophon, which says that Persian law treated ingratitude as 
 a heinous crime. My o^vn feelings are that no punishment would 
 be too great for me were Christianity to cease to be my fondest 
 * Quoted by Dr. Ward: "Doctrinal Decisions," p. 119, conip., p. 129.
 
 ( 66 ) 
 
 object in life. It alone stands between me and a yawning abyss 
 to which I can see no end. It alone prevents me homiy from 
 cursing the day on which I was born. Go where I will, look 
 where I will, past, present, and future stare me in the face with 
 a picture of doubt and perplexity, of sin and misery, that but for 
 Christianity I should not have strength to contemplate, or be 
 able to reconcile with the existence of a just and merciful God. 
 Christianity will not answer all my difficulties ; but it answers 
 so many of them, and so satisfactorily, that I can well afford to 
 wait in confidence for the solution of the rest, which it intimates 
 is for pm'poses of my probation withheld now, which it assures me 
 will be vouchsafed hereafter, when we ourselves shall, if faithful, 
 be admitted with glorified faculties into visible fellowship with 
 Him by Whom all things were made, to hear them explained. 
 
 Meanwhile, from the experience which I have of it in my own 
 person, and from what I have seen in others, those who have 
 been brought up in it, and those who have never known it, or 
 cast it off, I am morally convinced that its influences are of the 
 most humanising description of any within man's reach ; having 
 a direct tendency to develope all that is high and capable of 
 improvement in us, if it had our full co-operation, to a point 
 incredible ; and to eradicate or keep in check all that is debasing 
 in us, but in resisting which our probation consists : inspiring us 
 with a desire, based upon the purest motives, to relieve the 
 wants, inequalities, and miseries that we see around us, and 
 making our own homes all the happier, the better ordered, and 
 more respectable the more we can, each one of us who compose 
 them, regulate our lives by its precepts. 
 
 All which notwithstanding, it is impossible to blink the fact 
 that Christianity is far from being as much prized as it should 
 be ; and that in our own days men having become civilised and 
 enlightened beyond all former precedents through its instrumen- 
 talities, seem possessed with the idea that it may be thrown 
 aside with impunity; that it acts as an impediment to their 
 present enjoyment and further progress ; and that those who
 
 ( 67 ) 
 
 come after them would be no losers if it were voted obsolete. 
 Miserable delusion ! But wbo is to blame for it ? As Plato said 
 long ago, could men only see wisdom as she is, they must 
 inevitably fall in love with her. So it is with Christianity. What 
 men see before them is not the ideal ; it is the concrete mass 
 called Christendom — a wrangling and divided household — from 
 whose interminable family quarrels they are flying in reality, 
 when they seem to be tiring of Christianity, and seeking to find 
 peace. They cannot see their way to retain Christianity without 
 identifying themselves with some part or other of this seething 
 mass, out of whose bewildering and exciting controversies nobody 
 was ever known to have emerged a wiser or a better man. Every 
 body who thinks on such subjects at all, feels that its strife is of 
 an internecine character, and must end in the destruction of one 
 or more of the contending parties. Accordingly, numbers of 
 those who are resolved on clinging to it for the sake of the 
 religion to which they wish to attach themselves more closely 
 than ever, in consequence of the defections that are taking place 
 from it, have thought their best security lay in rallying round 
 that part of it whose unity never having given way hitherto is 
 likely to endure longest. And, therefore, their watch-word has 
 been Kome or infidelity. Nobody was more stii-red by this cry 
 than I was when it was first raised ; and there is one sense in 
 which I wish, above all things, it may turn out true. But 
 nobody that has ever confronted his neighbour with this dilemma 
 can be dispensed from asking his own conscience the further 
 question : Are Kome and Christianity convertible terms ? And 
 this in spite of all my best wishes that they were or might be, I 
 am unable, in honesty, to profess they are. 
 
 On the contrary, while granting theoretically that Rome is 
 what she claims to be, my own experience will not allow me to 
 doubt that practically those who speak and act in her name are 
 driving men into infidelity by tens of thousands who would have 
 much preferred of the two to have lived and died good Christians. 
 For what drives men into infidelity need not, od any Christian
 
 ( 68 ) 
 
 principles, be the freedom of speculation, or the cultivation of 
 science, considered in themselves ; but it is the pursuit of both 
 unchecked, unchastened by religion. And ordinarily speaking, 
 men abandon religion when they abandon its practice ; and, 
 ordinarily they abandon its practice when they cease frequenting 
 the Sacraments, that would otherwise have been their mainstay. 
 Here therefore we are brought to the root of the mischief. Is it 
 that men cease frequenting the sacraments in most cases of their 
 own accord, where they have been taught to frequent them from 
 childhood, or that they are driven from them ? And I maintain 
 unhesitatingly that in nine cases out of ten they are driven from 
 them. For such is the system established by Kome of interfering 
 on all subjects and in all places arbitrarily, and not according to 
 any fixed law, and of exacting from all local authorities the 
 blindest obedience to her mandates, whatever their own senti- 
 ments or the wishes of their flocks may be, that every body may 
 distrust, and nobody can possibly feel safe under it. And as 
 under existing circumstances Eome can only reach laymen 
 through the Sacraments, on this account it is that laymen are 
 driven into absenting themselves from the Sacraments to avoid 
 being subjected to her caprice. Ecclesiastics being bound to her 
 in other ways, and liable to be summarily debarred their pro- 
 fession at any moment, have no such escape. Laymen sooner 
 than risk being refused the Sacraments, for objecting to be 
 treated like schoolboys, and threatened or refused absolution in 
 the confessional for a hundred other matters besides theii* sins, 
 take the law into their own hands and stay away. Then, if they 
 happen to be absorbed in other pursuits, or are tempted to become 
 sceptical or forgetful of their religion upon other grounds, or are 
 from mere constitutional temperament incompetent or averse to 
 be at the increased pains of adhering faithfully to it under diffi- 
 culties, they settle down into indifferentism, exclaiming that 
 religion has been made impossible so far as concerns its practice 
 for any but women and children. 
 
 And is not this the conclusion to which my own case points ?
 
 ( 69 ) 
 
 I am not so foolish as to suppose my writings immaculate ; far 
 from it. All I ever stood out for lias been a fair trial for their 
 author. That your Grace gave me the best you could is quite 
 possible : that I might have been much worse off had I not had a 
 polished gentleman and first-class man of the University of 
 Oxford to deal with in my bishop is still more possible : but that 
 ninety-nine educated men out of a hundred would never have 
 tolerated the vexatious procedure to which I have been subjected, 
 is, and I think most Englishmen will agree with me, the most 
 certain of all. My bishop had called me to account for a 
 pamphlet addressed to him, and I had given him satisfaction : 
 suddenly there steps in between us the arbitrary sentence of a 
 foreign Court, that will not even regulate its proceedings by its 
 own laws, and I am cast for not submitting to it, which, as long 
 as it acts thus, I never mil. I resist it on principle, for the sake 
 of others as well as my own. Your Grace may be relieved to 
 know it has never cost me a moment's disquietude. Arbitrary 
 sentences can do nobody the smallest harm, save those who 
 inflict them : and suffering unjustly is a lot by no means un- 
 recognised or condemned in the Gospel. Please God, I shall 
 live to contribute my quota towards being the death of the system 
 from which it proceeds — 
 
 " Sed periit postquam cerdonibus esse timendus 
 Coeperat : hoc nocuit Lamiarum c£3de madenti — " * 
 
 Please God, one of two things — for which I shall continue to 
 labour through life — either that Christianity and Kome may 
 become convertible terms, which it is my sincere vnsh they should 
 be : or else that fresh halting places for sober ordinary Christians 
 between Eome and infidelity may be developed amongst us, and 
 new life be vouchsafed to those which exist already. 
 
 A few words on the subject of my Pamphlet and I have done. 
 Unquestionably there are passages in it which I regret, and 
 should wish unsaid, or said difi'erently, seeing what pain they 
 
 * "When he assailed the people, then he fell, 
 
 Dukes he had slain by thousands, and done well." — Juv. iv. 153,
 
 ( 70 ) 
 
 have caused in some quarters, and misunderstanding in others. 
 But, when people talk of being scandalised at me for having 
 written it at all as a Eoman Catholic, I feel tempted to reprint 
 part of a Tract I published on joining the Roman Catholic Church 
 in 1855, which was as outspoken as any thing that I have ever 
 written on some of the points most strongly dwelt upon in my 
 late Pamphlet. For instance, " The supremacy of the Pope," I 
 say there,* " is coimtenanced in the New Testament exactly in 
 the same sense that the sovereignty of the tribe of Judah is 
 countenanced in the Old. And as regards histoiy, both the one 
 and the other came about in the same chequered way. Popes 
 did not always increase their power by means either the most 
 amiable or justifiable ; and there can be no sort of question but 
 that in point of fact it came to them by a gradual process. 
 Again, it is no less incontrovertible that some Popes have not 
 been at all the characters which they ought to have been, but 
 abused their authority to the great detriment of the Church." 
 
 I joined the Church of Rome saying all this, and a good deal 
 more to the same effect, and was received with open arms. Is it 
 not all of a piece, vii*tually, with what I have said in my pamphlet ? 
 Either, therefore, my Tract of 1855 ought to have caused scandal, 
 and proved a bar to my being received into the Roman Church, 
 or else my Pamphlet of 1868 ought not to be considered scan- 
 dalous, or a bar to my remaining in it. Nobody can call upon me 
 to surrender at one time the liberty which I claimed and was 
 allowed at another. Either I ought not to have been received 
 into the Roman Church in 1855, or I am a true member of it 
 in 1869. 
 
 I have still to see what several answers that have been made 
 to my Pamphlet contain ; as I abstained from reading them while 
 my case was pending. Whether their authors behaved hand- 
 somely to me in publishing them at a time when they must have 
 known my lips were closed, it is not for me to say : however, 
 may be, they will solve some of my difficulties, answer some of 
 » " One more return," &c., p. 2.
 
 ( 71 ) 
 
 my facts, supply me with qnalifj^ng facts that I had not 
 noticed, in which case I shall take an early opportunity of 
 thanking them publicly. But there is one fact which I fear 
 nobody will ever be able to set aside, with the authorities now 
 before me, which I discovered since writing my Pamphlet, and 
 shall make public in any case shortly, chapter and verse, so that 
 all may judge of them ; and it was my crucial difficulty — namely, 
 that all we of the West are lying under more than one solemn 
 anathema of more than one Pope, speaking as head of the 
 Church — if Popes have ever spoken as heads of the Church — 
 for hanng changed a syllable in the creed authorised by the 
 Fourth Council. 
 
 I remain, 
 
 My Lord Archbishop, 
 
 Most respectfully, your faithful and obliged servant, 
 
 EDMUND S. FFOULKES. 
 
 St. Luke's Day, 1869. 
 7, Campden House Road, IV. 
 
 London : Swift & Co., Regent Press, 55, King Street, Regent Street, W.
 
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