*3re8C839C8g083HC83C8^^ 
 
 •v« • 
 
 K-’j l. 
 
 i 
 
 •• 
 
 . 
 
 Cardinal John Henry Newman. 
 
 S \/ 
 
 
 
 BT 
 645 
 . N4 
 1909 
 
 NEW YORK : 
 
 Cbc CatboUc Boob JEjcba mc t 
 
 120 West 6oth Street. 
 
 j ^ ' < 
 
The Question Box. 
 
 BY REV. BERTRAND L. CONWAY, C.S.P. 
 
 It is the most valuable book that 
 has been issued from the press for a 
 long time. The book runs to over 600 
 pages and it answers over 1,000 bona- 
 fide questions that have come through 
 the Question Box, on the Missions to 
 non-Catholics. The questions cover 
 every phase of religious inquiry. They' 
 are all intensely interesting, because 
 they are from actual life. 
 
 It sells for $10 a hundred copies, paper. 
 
 In cloth, 50 cents. 
 
 The Columbus Press, 
 
 120 West 60th Street, N. Y. 
 
NEWMAN’S ANSWER TO PUSEY 
 
 I 
 
 MARY, 
 
 THE MOTHER OE JESUS. 
 
 BY 
 
 CARDINAL JOHN HENRY NEWMAN. 
 
 Being a Letter addressed to Rev. E. B. Pusey, D.D., in 1864, in answer 
 to his Objections to the Catholic Doctrine and Practice 
 concerning Mary, the Mother of Jesus. 
 
 
 New York : 
 
 Gbe CatboUc JBoofc jEjcbattoe, 
 
 120 West 60th Street. 
 
 
 1909. 
 
£ 
 
 29018 ” 
 
 BOSTON COLLEGE LIMSKY 
 
 CHEST!' T »-tVT t lyjjfcSR 
 
 fcT 
 
 \W 
 
 \ 
 
 S ' 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Preface,.7 
 
 ■ [ . » ' i 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 Introductory Remarks : Observations on the Motives 
 of Catholics and of Anglicans in clearing away 
 Obstacles to Union, . . . , . . . n 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 Incidental Statements in Dr. Pusey’s Pamphlet : 
 Anglicanism a “ serviceable breakwater ” against Infi¬ 
 delity.—How Scripture and Tradition are related to 
 each other.—Remarks on Tract 90, and on the Es¬ 
 say on Development of Doctrine.—Attitude of a Con¬ 
 vert towards the Church and his Fellow-Catholics.— 
 
 “ I prefer English Habits of Belief and Devotion to 
 Foreign Ones.”—Dr. Griffiths “warned me against 
 Books of Devotion of the Italian School.”—Nothing 
 learned in Rome inconsistent with this.—Who are 
 Spokesmen for English Catholics and who are not.— 
 
 The Fathers of the Church are good Evidence of the 
 present Faith of Catholics concerning the Blessed 
 Virgin, . ..18 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 Belief as distinct from Devotion. —Devotion to 
 Mary has increased in the Course of Ages, but the 
 Doctrine has been the same from the Beginning.— 
 
 Faith and Devotion Compared.—Liberty of Devotion 
 among Catholics.—Diversified Devotions the Accumu¬ 
 lation of Centuries.—Evidences from Sacred History, 34 
 
 3 
 
4 
 
 Contents. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 Mary the Second Eve in the Early Church : This 
 was the rudimental Teaching of Christian Antiquity.— 
 The Ancient Fathers made a Parallelism between 
 Eve in the Fall of Man and Mary in the Redemp¬ 
 tion.—Testimony of St. Justin Martyr representing the 
 early Belief of Palestine.—Tertullian, who speaks for 
 Africa and Rome.—St. Irenaeus, representing Asia 
 Minor and Gaul, as well as St. John the Evangelist, 
 who taught his Master, St. Polycarp.—These Fathers 
 teach that Mary was not a mere Instrument of the 
 Incarnation, but freely and meritoriously co-operated. 
 —The Worth of the concurrent Testimony of these 
 earliest of the Fathers.—Testimony of the Fathers of 
 the succeeding Era: St. Cyril of Jerusalem, St. 
 Ephrem, St. Epiphanius, St. Jerome, St. Peter Chry- 
 sologus, St. Fulgentius,. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 The Immaculate Conception : True and False No¬ 
 tions of the Immaculate Conception.—This Doctrine 
 flows from that of the Second Eve.—Remarks on 
 Original Sin and on the Manner of Mary’s Exemp¬ 
 tion from it.—St. Augustine’s Teaching of the Doc¬ 
 trine, . 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 Mary’s Dignity: Reflections on Mary’s Historical Posi¬ 
 tion in'the Gospels.—What was She in Merit and in 
 Office and as a Model ?—Mary’s Exaltation taught by 
 the Vision of the Woman and Child in the Apoca¬ 
 lypse.—Antiquity of the Picture and Image of the 
 Virgin and Child.—Brief Exposition of St. John’s 
 • Vision.—Concurrent Teaching of Scripture, Tradition 
 of both East and West, and of the Fathers, 
 
Contents. 
 
 5 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 • p^ge 
 
 The Mother of Jesus is the Mother of God: The 
 Title of Theotocos among the Greek Fathers.—Used 
 by the General Council of Ephesus to express the 
 Divinity of Christ.—Universally used in the Ancient 
 Church.—Quotations from many Fathers of both West 
 and East,.S9 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 Mary’s Intercessory Power: Union in Intercessory 
 Prayer among the Living is a vital Characteristic of 
 the Christian Church.—Is this spiritual Bond to cease 
 
 /'i - 
 
 with Life ?—Scripture and Christian Antiquity answer 
 in the Negative.—The Vital Force of Intercession is 
 Sanctity.—Proved by many Scripture Texts.—The 
 Mother of Jesus being the holiest of Creatures is the 
 foremost of Intercessors with Christ.—Growth of De¬ 
 votion to Mary in proportion to realization in the 
 Church of Her Dignity and Sanctity.—The Miraculous 
 Creed of St. Gregory Thaumaturgus.—Special Value 
 in this Age of the revealed Doctrine and Events in 
 which Mary has a part, and of Her Intercession, . 75 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 Belief of Catholics as Colored by Their Devo¬ 
 tion : Rule to be followed in criticising Devotional 
 Practices.—Not to be held to abstract Rules of Pro¬ 
 priety any more than Love-letters.—“ The Religion of 
 the Multitude is ever Vulgar and Abnormal.”—Logic 
 is overtaxed in trying to follow and control Devotion¬ 
 al Instincts.—Contrast between Jesus and Mary as 
 Centres of Devotional Attraction.—The Cause of De- 
 votion to Mary is God’s Act in making Her the Mo¬ 
 ther of the Incarnate Word.—Influence of the Arian 
 Controversy on Devotion to Mary, ...» 83 
 
6 
 
 Contents . 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 Protestant Misconceptions and Catholic Ex¬ 
 cesses : Harshness of Condemnation often arises from 
 Low Views of Christ’s Divinity.—Suggestiveness of 
 the Devotional Extravagances in the Greek Church.— 
 Many Allegations of Excess not Proven.—A Fair 
 Specimen given of the Teaching of sound Catholic 
 Devotional Writers.—The Lesson of the Sanctuary 
 Lamp, of the Mass, and of Communion.—A Hymn of 
 Father Faber’s given as a Summary of Catholic Sen¬ 
 timent.—Remarks on Extravagant Utterances found 
 in Italian Writers.—Absence of Devotional Extrava¬ 
 gance among typical English Writers.—The Raccolta 
 as an Authoritative Exponent of Catholic Devotion.— 
 The Catechism of the Council of Trent.—Some Ex¬ 
 travagant Utterances mentioned and condemned.— 
 True Meaning of Statements about Mary’s Power to 
 assist us to save our Souls.—Standard Catholic Wri¬ 
 ters Quoted.—Note on a recent Roman Decision on 
 certain Practices and Terms.—Remarks on Dr. Pusey’s 
 Method and Spirit in this Controversy, 
 
 Note. —The anomalous statements of St. Basil, St. Chry¬ 
 sostom, and St. Cyril about the Blessed Virgin, 
 
 PAGE 
 
 93 
 
 121 
 
PUBLISHER’S PREFACE. 
 
 \ S Cardinal Newman in this treatise takes for 
 granted a knowledge‘of the Scripture references 
 to Mary, we prefix the chief ones from the New Tes¬ 
 tament, for the use of readers who are unfamiliar 
 with them. We use the Protestant version : 
 
 St. Luke's (i. 28) account of the Incarnation , showing 
 Mary’s freedom of choice, and her relation to the 
 Holy Spirit in the work of the Incarnation. 
 
 “And the angel came in unto her, and said, Hail, 
 thou that are highly favored (Hail, full of grace— 
 Catholic version), the Lord is with thee : blessed art 
 thou among women. And when she saw him she 
 was troubled at his saying, and cast in her mind 
 what manner of salutation this should be. And the 
 angel said unto her, Fear not, Mary : for thou hast 
 found favor with God. And, behold, thou shalt con¬ 
 ceive in thy womb, and bring forth a Son, and shalt 
 call his name JKSUS. He shall be great, and shall be 
 called the Son of the Highest; and the Lord God shall 
 give unto him the throne of his father David: and 
 he shall reign over the house of Jacob for ever, and 
 of his kingdom there shall be no end. Then said 
 Mary unto the angel, How shall this be, seeing I 
 know not a man ? And the angel answered and said 
 
 7 
 
8 
 
 Publisher $ Preface . 
 
 unto her, The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and 
 the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee: 
 
 therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of 
 
 ✓ 
 
 thee shall be called the Son of God. And, behold, 
 thy cousin Elizabeth, she hath also conceived a son 
 in her old age; and this is the sixth month with her, 
 who was called barren. F.or with God nothing shall 
 be impossible. And Mary said: Behold the hand¬ 
 maid of the Eord; be it unto me according to thy 
 word.” 
 
 St. Elizabeth's estimation of Mary's dignity (St. 
 Euke i. 41) : “And it came to pass that, when 
 Elizabeth heard the salutation of Mary, the babe 
 leaped in her womb ; and Elizabeth was filled with 
 the Holy Ghost : and she spake out with a loud voice 
 and said, Blessed art thou among women, and blessed 
 is the fruit of thy womb. And whence is this to me, 
 that the mother of my Eord should come to me ? For, 
 lo, as soon as the voice of thy salutation sounded in 
 mine ears, the babe leaped in my womb for joy. And 
 blessed is she that believed : for there shall be a per¬ 
 formance of those things which were told her from the 
 Eord.” 
 
 Mary's prophecy (St. Euke i. 46) : “And Mary said, 
 My soul doth magnify the Eord, and my spirit hath re- 
 
 v t- • - 
 
 joiced in God my Saviour. For he hath regarded the 
 low estate of his handmaiden : for, behold, from hence¬ 
 forth all generations shall call me blessed. For he that 
 is mighty hath done to me great things, and holy is his 
 
 name. 
 
Publisher s Preface. 
 
 9 
 
 Mary"s finding of the child fesus in the temple (St. 
 Luke ii.), in the midst of the doctors of the law ; show¬ 
 ing her relation to his office of teacher and her maternal 
 influence in postponing its exercise. “ And when they 
 saw him they were amazed : and his mother said unto 
 him, Son, why hast thou thus dealt with us? behold, 
 thy father and I have sought thee sorrowing. And he 
 said unto them, How is it that ye sought me ? Wist ye 
 not that I must be about my Father’s business? And 
 they understood not the saying which he spake unto 
 them. And he went down with them, and came to 
 Nazareth, and was subject unto them: but his mother 
 kept all these sayings in her heart.” 
 
 Mary"s hiflue?ice at the wedding in Cana ; hastening 
 the public manifestation of our Saviour’s glory (St. 
 John ii. i) : “ And the third day there was a marriage 
 in Cana of Galilee ; and the mother of Jesus was there : 
 and both Jesus was called, and his disciples, to the mar¬ 
 riage. And when they wanted wine the mother of Jesus 
 saith unto him, They have no wine. Jesus saitli unto 
 her, Woman, what have I to do with thee? (What 
 is that to me and to thee?—Catholic version.) Mine 
 hour is not yet come. His mother saith unto the 
 servants, Whatsoever he saith unto you, do it. (Here 
 follows the miracle of the changing of the water into 
 wine.) This beginning of miracles did Jesus in Cana 
 of Galilee, and manifested forth his glory ; and his dis¬ 
 ciples believed on him.” 
 
 Mary"s relation to our Saviour's atonement , as shown 
 by Simeon’s prophecy of her suffering (St. Luke ii. 34) : 
 
IO 
 
 Publisher s Preface. 
 
 “And Simeon blessed them, and said unto Mary his 
 mother, Behold, this child is set for the fall and rising 
 again of many in Israel ; and for a sign which shall be 
 spoken against (yea, a sword shall pierce through thy 
 own soul also), that the thoughts of many hearts may 
 be revealed.” 
 
 The bestowal of St. fohn upon Maiy as her son , he 
 standing for us all : “ Now there stood by the cross of 
 Jesus his mother, and his mother’s sister, Mary the 
 wife of Cleophas, and Mary Magdalene. When Jesus 
 therefore saw his mother, and the disciple standing by, 
 whom he loved, he saith unto his mother, Woman, 
 
 i 
 
 behold thy son ! Then saith he to the disciple, Behold 
 thy mother! And from that hour that disciple took her 
 unto his own home." (The word home is not in the ori¬ 
 ginal Greek, and therefore is printed in the Protestant 
 version in italics.) 
 
 To facilitate the use of this splendid defence of 
 Catholic doctrine and devotion, we have marked the 
 divisions off as chapters, and have prefixed to each one 
 a summary of its contents. 
 
Mary, the Mother of Jesus. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. 
 
 Observations on the Motives of Catholics and of 
 Anglicans in clearing away Obstacles to Union. 
 
 ft • sf 
 
 N O one who desires the union of Christendom after its 
 many and long-standing divisions can have any 
 other feeling than joy, my dear Pusey, at finding from 
 your recent volume that you see your way to make 
 definite proposals to us for effecting that great object, 
 and are able to lay down the basis and conditions on 
 which you could co-operate in advancing it. It is not 
 necessary that we should concur in the details of your 
 scheme, or in the principles which it involves, in order 
 to welcome the important fact that, with your personal 
 knowledge of the Anglican body, and your experience 
 of its composition and tendencies, you consider the 
 time to be come when you and your friends may, with¬ 
 out imprudence, turn your minds to the contemplation 
 of such an enterprise. Even were you an individual 
 member of that Church, a watchman upon a high 
 tower in a metropolis of religious opinion, we should 
 naturally listen with interest to what you had to report 
 of the state of the sky and the progress of the night, 
 
 ii 
 
12 
 
 Introductory Remarks . 
 
 what stars were mounting up or what clouds gathering, 
 what were the prospects of the three great parties 
 which Anglicanism contains within it, and what w T as 
 just now the action upon them respectively of the poli¬ 
 tics and science of the time. You do not go into these 
 matters; but the step you have taken is evidently the 
 measure and the issue of the view which you have 
 formed of them all. 
 
 However, you are not a mere individual; from early 
 youth you have devoted yourself to the Established 
 Church, and, after between forty and fifty years of un¬ 
 remitting labor in its service, your roots and your 
 branches stretch out through every portion of its large 
 territory. You, more than any one else alive, have 
 been the present and untiring agent by whom a great 
 work has been effected in it; and, far more than is 
 usual, you have received in your lifetime, as well as 
 merited, the confidence of your brethren. You cannot 
 speak merely for yourself; your antecedents, your exist¬ 
 ing influence, are a pledge to us, that what you may 
 determine will be the determination of a multitude. 
 Numbers, too, for whom you cannot properly be said to 
 speak, will be moved by your authority or your argu¬ 
 ments ; and numbers, again, who are of a school more 
 recent than your own, and who are only not your 
 followers because they have outstripped you in their 
 free speeches and demonstrative acts in our behalf, will, 
 for the occasion, accept you as their spokesman. 
 There is no one anywhere—among ourselves, in your 
 own body, or, I suppose, in the Greek Church—who 
 can affect so large a circle of men, so virtuous, so able, 
 so learned, so zealous, as come, more or less, under 
 your influence ; and I cannot pay them a greater com¬ 
 pliment than to tell them they ought all to be Catholics, 
 nor do them a more affectionate service than to pray 
 
Introductory Remarks. 
 
 13 
 
 tliat they may one day become such. Nor can I ad¬ 
 dress myself to an act more pleasing, as I trust, to the 
 Divine Dord of the Church, or more loyal and dutiful to 
 His Vicar on earth, than to attempt, however feebly, to 
 promote so great a consummation. 
 
 I know the joy it would give those conscientious 
 men, of whom I am speaking, to be one with ourselves. 
 I know how their hearts spring up with a spontaneous 
 transport at the very thought of union; and what 
 yearning is theirs after that great privilege, which they 
 have not, communion with the see of Peter, and its 
 present, past, and future. I conjecture it by what I 
 used to feel myself, while yet in the Anglican Church. 
 I recollect well what an outcast I seemed to myself, 
 when I took down from the shelves of my library the 
 volumes of St. Athanasius or St. Basil, and set myself 
 to study them; and how, on the contrary, when at 
 length I was brought into Catholic communion, I 
 kissed them with delight, with a feeling that in them I 
 had more than all that I had lost; and, as though I 
 were directly addressing the glorious saints, who be¬ 
 queathed them to the Church, how I said to the inani¬ 
 mate pages, “ You are now mine, and I am now yours, 
 beyond any mistake.” Such, I conceive, would be the 
 joy of the persons I speak of, if they could wake up 
 one morning, and find themselves rightfully possessed 
 of Catholic traditions and hopes, without violence to 
 their own sense of duty; and, certainly, I am the last 
 man to say that such violence is in any case lawful, • 
 that the claims of conscience are not paramount, or that 
 any one may overleap what he deliberately holds to be 
 God’s command, in order to make his path easier for 
 him or his heart lighter. 
 
 I am the last man to quarrel with them for this jeal¬ 
 ous deference to the voice of their conscience, whatever 
 
■4 
 
 Introductory Remarks. 
 
 be the judgment that others may form of them in con¬ 
 sequence, for this reason, because their present circum¬ 
 stances have once, as you know, been my own. You 
 recollect well what hard things were said against us 
 twenty-five years ago, which we knew in our hearts we 
 did not deserve. Accordingly, I am now in the posi¬ 
 tion of the fugitive Queen in the well-known passage ; 
 who, “non ignara mali” herself, had learned to 
 sympathize w r ith those who were the inheritors of her 
 past wanderings. There were priests, good men, whose 
 zeal outstripped their knowledge, and who in conse¬ 
 quence spoke confidently, when it would have been 
 wiser in them to have suspended their adverse judgment 
 of those whom, in no long time, they had to welcome as 
 brethren in communion. We at that time were in 
 worse plight than your friends are now, for our oppo¬ 
 nents put their very hardest thoughts of us into print. 
 One of them wrote thus in a letter addressed to one of 
 the Catholic bishops : 
 
 ‘ ‘ That this Oxford crisis is a real progress to 
 Catholicism, I have all along considered a perfect 
 delusion. ... I look upon Mr. Newman, Dr. 
 Pusey, and their associates, as wily and crafty, though 
 unskilful guides. . . . The embrace of Mr. New¬ 
 man is the kiss that would betray us. . . . But, 
 
 what is the most striking feature in the rancorous 
 malignity of these men, their calumnies are often 
 lavished upon us, when we should be led to think that 
 the subject-matter of their treatises closed every avenue 
 against their vituperation. The three last volumes [of 
 the Tracts] have opened my eyes to the craftiness and 
 the cunning, as well as the malice, of the members of 
 the Oxford Convention. ... If the Puseyites are 
 to be the new Apostles of Great Britain, my hopes for 
 my country are lowering and gloomy. ... I 
 
Introductory Remarks . 
 
 15 
 
 would never have consented to enter the lists against 
 this strange confraternity ... if I did not feel 
 that my own Prelate was opposed to the guile and 
 treachery of these men. ... I impeach Dr. Pusey 
 and his friends of a deadly hatred of our religion. 
 
 . . . What, my lord, would the Holy See think of 
 
 the works of these Puseyites ? .' . .” 
 
 Another priest, himself a convert, wrote : 
 
 “As we approach towards Catholicity, our love and 
 respect increases, and our violence dies away; but the 
 bulk of these men become more rabid as they become 
 like Rome—a plain proof of their designs. ... I 
 do not believe that they are any nearer the portals of 
 the Catholic Church than the most prejudiced Method¬ 
 ist and Evangelical preacher. . . . Such, Rev. 
 
 Sir, is an outline of my views on’ the Oxford move-; 
 ment.” 
 
 I do not say that such a view of us was unnatural ; 
 and, for myself, I readily confess, that I had at one 
 time used about the Church such language, that I had 
 no claim on Catholics for any mercy. But, after all, 
 and in fact, they were wrong in their anticipations, nor 
 did their brother Catholics agree with them at the 
 time. Especially Dr. Wiseman (coadjutor bishop as 
 he was then) took a larger and more generous view of 
 us, nor did the Holy See interfere against us, though 
 the writer of one of these passages invoked its judg¬ 
 ment. The event showed that the more cautious line 
 of conduct was the more prudent; and one of the 
 bishops, who had taken part against us, with a super¬ 
 erogation of charity, sent me on his death-bed an ex¬ 
 pression of his sorrow for having in past years mis¬ 
 trusted me. A faulty conscience, faithfully obeyed, 
 through God’s mercy, had in the long-run brought, me 
 right. 
 
1 6 
 
 Introductory Remarks. 
 
 Fully, then, do I recognize the rights of conscience 
 in this matter. I find no fault with your stating, as 
 clearly and completely as you can, the difficulties which 
 stand in the way of your joining us. I cannot wonder 
 that you begin with stipulating conditions of union, 
 though I do not concur in them myself, and think that 
 in the event you yourself would be content to let them 
 drop. Such representations as yours are necessary to 
 open the subject in debate; they ascertain how the land 
 lies, and serve to clear the ground. Thus I begin : but 
 after allowing as much as this, I am obliged in honesty 
 to add what I fear, my dear Pusey, will pain you. 
 
 • Yet I am confident, my very dear friend, that at least 
 you will not be angry with me if I say, what I must 
 say if I say anything at all, viz., that there is much, 
 both in the matter and in the manner of your volume, 
 calculated to wound those who love you well, but love 
 truth more. So it is; with the best motives and 
 kindest intentions—“ Csedimur, et totidem plagis Con- 
 sumimus hostem.” We give you a sharp cut, and you 
 return it. You complain of our being “ dry, hard, and 
 unsympathizing ” ; and we answer that you are unfair 
 and irritating. But we at least have not professed to 
 be composing an Irenicon, when we were treating you 
 as foes. There was one of old time who wreathed his 
 sword in myrtle ; excuse me—you discharge your olive- 
 branch as if from a catapult. 
 
 Do not think I am not serious ; if I spoke as serious¬ 
 ly as I feel, I should seem to speak harshly. Who will 
 venture to assert, that the hundred pages which you 
 have devoted to the subject of the Blessed Virgin give 
 other than a one-sided view of our teaching about her, 
 little suited to win us ? This may be a salutary casti¬ 
 gation of us, if any of us have fairly provoked it; but 
 it is not making the best of matters; it is not smooth- 
 
Introductory Remarks. 
 
 17 
 
 ing the way for an understanding or a compromise. 
 Your representation of wliat we hold leads a writer in 
 the most moderate and liberal Anglican newspaper of 
 the day, the Guardian , to turn away from us, shocked 
 and dismayed. “ It is language,” says your reviewer, 
 “which, after having often heard it, we still can only 
 hear with horror. We had rather not quote any of it, 
 or of the comments upon it.” What could an Exeter 
 Hall orator, what could a Scotch commentator on the 
 Apocalypse, do more for his own side of the controversy 
 in the picture he drew of us? You may be sure that 
 charges which create horror on one side, will be repelled 
 by indignation on the other; and these are not the most 
 favorable dispositions of mind for a peace conference. 
 I had been accustomed to suppose that you, who in 
 times past were ever less declamatory in controversy 
 than myself, now that years had gone on, and circum¬ 
 stances changed, had come to look on our old warfare 
 against Rome as cruel and inexpedient. Indeed, I 
 know that it was a chief objection urged only last year 
 against the scheme then in agitation of introducing the 
 Oratory into Oxford, that such an undertaking on my 
 part would be a signal for the rekindling of that fierce 
 style of polemics which is now long out of date. I had 
 fancied you shared in that opinion ; but now, as if to 
 show how imperative you deem the renewal of that old 
 violence, you actually bring to life one of my own strong 
 sayings in 1841, which had long been in the grave, 
 that ‘ ‘ the Roman Church comes as near to idolatry as 
 can be supposed in a Church of which it is said, ‘ The 
 idols He shall utterly abolish’ ” (P. 111). 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 INCIDENTAL STATEMENTS IN DR. PUSEY’S 
 
 pamphlet. 
 
 Anglicanism a “Serviceable Breakwater” against 
 Infidelity.— How Scripture and Tradition are re¬ 
 lated TO EACH OTHER.—REMARKS ON TRACT 90, AND 
 on tit3 Essay on Development of Doctrine.—At¬ 
 titude of a Convert towards the Church and 
 his Fellow-Catholics.—“I prefer English Habits 
 of Bel,Ilf and Devotion to Foreign Ones.”—Dr. 
 Griffiths “warned me against Books of Devotion 
 of thb'; Italian School.”—Nothing learned in 
 Rom 1 inconsistent with this.—Who are Spokes¬ 
 men for English Catholics and who are not.— 
 The Fathers of the Church are good Evidence 
 of the present Faith of Catholics concerning 
 the Blessed Virgin. 
 
 I KNOW, indeed, and feel deeply, that your frequent 
 references, in your volume, to what I have lately or 
 formerly written, are caused by your strong desire to be 
 still one with me as far as you can, and by that true af¬ 
 fection, which takes pleasure in dwelling on such say¬ 
 ings of mine as you can still accept with the full appro¬ 
 bation of your judgment. I trust I am not ungrateful 
 or irresponsive to >ou in this respect ; but other consid¬ 
 erations have an imperative claim to be taken into 
 account. Pleasant as it is to agree with you, I am 
 bound to explain myself in cases in which I have 
 
 is 
 
Various Statements in the Eirenicon. 
 
 *9 
 
 changed my mind, or have given a wrong impression 
 of my meaning, or have been wrongly reported ; and, 
 while I trust that I have higher than mere personal mo¬ 
 tives for addressing }^ou in print, yet it will serve to 
 introduce my main subject, and give me an opportunity 
 for remarks which bear upon it indirectly, if I dwell for 
 a page or two on such matters contained in your volume 
 as concern myself. 
 
 i. The mistake which I have principally in view is 
 the belief, which is widely spread, that I have publicly 
 spoken of the Anglican Church as ‘ ‘ the great bulwai'k 
 against infidelity in this land.” In a pamphlet of yours 
 a year old, you spoke of “ a very earnest body of 
 Roman Catholics,” who “rejoice in all the workings 
 of God the Holy Ghost in the Church of England 
 (whatever they think of her), and are saddened by 
 what weakens her who is, in God’s hands, the great 
 bulwark against infidelity in this land.” The conclud¬ 
 ing words you were thought to quote from my Apologia. 
 In consequence, Dr. Manning, now our Archbishop, 
 replied to you, asserting, as you say, the “ contradic¬ 
 tory of that statement.” In that counter-assertion, he 
 was at the time generally considered (rightly or wrong¬ 
 ly as it may be), though writing to you, to be really 
 glancing at my Apologia , and correcting it, without 
 introducing my name, where he thought it needed cor¬ 
 rection. Further, in the volume, which you have now 
 published, you recur to the phrase ; and you speak of 
 its author in terms which, did I not know your partial 
 kindness for me, would hinder me from identifying him 
 with myself. You say: “The saying was not mine, 
 but that of one of the deepest thinkers and observers in 
 the Roman Communion” (p. 7). A friend has sug¬ 
 gested to me that perhaps you mean De Maistre ; and, 
 from an anonymous letter which I have received from 
 
20 
 
 Various incidental Statements 
 
 Dublin, I find it is certain that the very words in 
 question were once used by Archbishop Murray ; how¬ 
 ever, you speak of the author of them as if now alive. 
 At length, a reviewer of your volume in the Weekly 
 Register , distinctly attributes them to me by name, and 
 gives me the first opportunity I have had of disowning 
 them ; and this I now do. What, at some time or 
 other, I may have said in conversation or in private 
 letter, of course I cannot tell; but I have never, I am 
 sure, used the word “bulwark” of the Anglican 
 Church deliberately, or speaking of it in its religious 
 aspect, nor, as I think, at all.* What I said in my 
 Apologia was this: that that Church was “ a service¬ 
 able breakwater against errors more fundamental than 
 its own.” A bulwark is an integral part of the thing it 
 defends ; whereas the word ‘ ‘ breakwater ’ ’ implies such 
 a protection of the Catholic truth as is, in its nature, 
 accidental and de facto ; and again, such a protection as 
 does not utterly exclude error, but detracts from its 
 volume and force. “ Serviceable,” too, implies a some¬ 
 thing external to the thing served. Again, in saying 
 that the Anglican Church is a defence against “errors 
 more fundamental than its own,” I imply that it has 
 errors, and those fundamental. 
 
 2. There is another passage of your book, at p. 337, 
 which it may be right to observe upon. You have 
 made a collection of passages from the Fathers, as wit¬ 
 nesses in behalf of your doctrine that the whole Chris¬ 
 tian faith is contained in Scripture, as if, in your sense 
 of the words, Catholics contradicted you here. And 
 you refer to my Notes on St. Athanasius as contribut¬ 
 ing passages to your list; but after all, neither do you, 
 
 * In the former of these volumes, p. i, speaking of “ Institutions ” (/. e ., 
 “the Church and Universities of the nation”), I call them “ the only politic 
 cal bulwarks” remaining of the “ dogmatic principle.” 
 
in the Eirenicon. 
 
 21 
 
 nor do I in my Notes, affirm any doctrine which Rome 
 denies. Those Notes also make frequent reference to 
 a traditional teaching, which (be the faith ever so cer¬ 
 tainly contained in Scripture), still is necessary as a 
 Regula Fidei, for showing us that it is contained there 
 (vid. pp. 283, 341) ;* and this tradition, I know, you 
 uphold as fully as I do in the Notes in question. In 
 consequence, you allow that there is a two-fold rule, 
 Scripture and Tradition; and this is all that Catholics 
 say. How, then, do Anglicans differ from Rome here ? 
 I believe the difference is merely one of words; and I 
 shall be doing, so far, the work of an Eirenicon, if I 
 make clear what this verbal difference is. Catholics 
 and Anglicans (I do not say Protestants), attach differ¬ 
 ent meanings to the word ‘ ‘ proof, ’ ’ in the controversy 
 as to whether the whole faith is, or is not, contained in 
 Scripture. We mean that not every article of faith is so 
 contained there, that it may thence be logically proved, 
 hidependently of the teaching and authority of the Tra¬ 
 dition ; but Anglicans mean that every article of faith is 
 so contained there, that it may thence be proved, 
 provided there be added the illustrations and compensa¬ 
 tions supplied by the Tradition. And it is in this latter 
 sense that the Fathers also speak in the passages which 
 you quote from them. I am sure at least that St. 
 Athanasius frequently adduces passages in proof of 
 points in controversy, which no one would see to be 
 proofs, unless Apostolical Tradition were taken into 
 account, first as suggesting, then as authoritatively 
 ruling their meaning. Thus you do not say, that the 
 whole revelation is in Scripture in such sense that pure 
 unaided logic can draw it from the sacred text, nor do 
 we say, that it is not in Scripture, in an improper sense, 
 in the sense that the Tradition of the Church is able to 
 
 * Oxford Edition. 
 
22 
 
 Various incidental Statements 
 
 recognize and determine it there. You do not profess 
 to dispense with Tradition ; nor do we forbid the idea 
 of probable, secondary, symbolical, connotative senses 
 of Scripture, over and above those which properly be¬ 
 long to the wording and context. I hope you will 
 agree with me in this. 
 
 3. Nor is it only in isolated passages that you give 
 me a place in your volume. A considerable portion of 
 it is written with a reference to two publications of 
 mine, one of which you name and defend, the other you 
 implicitly protest against: Tract 90, and the Essay on 
 Doctrinal Development. As to Tract 90, you have 
 from the first, as all the world knows, boldly stood up 
 for it, in spite of the obloquy which it brought upon 
 you, and have done me a great service. You are now 
 republishing it with my cordial concurrence ; but I take 
 this opportunity of noticing, lest there should be any 
 mistake on the part of the public, that you do so with a 
 different object from that which I had when I wrote it. 
 Its original purpose was simply that of justifying my¬ 
 self and others in subscribing to the Thirty-nine 
 Articles, while professing many tenets which had popu¬ 
 larly been considered distinctive of the Roman faith. I 
 considered that my interpretation of the Articles, as I 
 gave it in that Tract, would stand, provided the parties 
 imposing them allowed it; otherwise, I thought it could 
 not stand; and, when in the event the bishops and 
 public opinion did not allow it, I give up my Riving, as 
 having no right to retain it. My feeling about the in¬ 
 terpretation is expressed in a passage in Loss and Gain , 
 which runs thus : 
 
 “‘Is it,’ asked Reding, ‘a received view?’ ‘No 
 view is received,’ said the other; ‘the Articles them¬ 
 selves are received, but there is no authoritative inter¬ 
 pretation of them at all.’ ‘ Well,’ said Reding, ‘ is it a 
 
in the Eirenicon. 
 
 23 
 
 tolerated view ? ’ ‘It certainly lias been strongly op¬ 
 posed,’ answered Bateman ; ‘ but it has never been con¬ 
 demned.’ ‘ That is no answer,’ said Charles. ‘ Does 
 any one bishop hold it ? Did any one bishop ever hold 
 it? Has it ever been formally admitted as tenable by 
 any one bishop ? Is it a view got up to meet existing 
 difficulties, or has it an historical existence ? ’ Bateman 
 could give only one answer to these questions, as they 
 were successively put to him. ‘I thought so,’ said 
 Charles ; ‘ the view is specious certainly. I don’t see 
 why it might not have answered, had it been tolerably 
 sanctioned ; but you have no sanction to show me. As 
 it stands, it is a mere theory struck out by individuals. 
 Our Church might have adopted this mode of interpret¬ 
 ing the Articles; but, from what you tell me, it 
 certainly has not done so ’ ” (ch. 15). 
 
 However, the Tract did not carry its object and con¬ 
 ditions on its face, and necessarily lay open to interpre¬ 
 tations very far from the true one. Dr. Wiseman (as 
 lie then was), in particular, with the keen apprehension 
 which was his characteristic, at once saw in it a basis 
 of accommodation between Anglicanism and Rome. 
 He suggested broadly that the decrees of the Council 
 of Trent should be made the rule of interpretation 
 for the Thirty-nine Articles, a proceeding of which 
 Sancta Clara, I think, had set the example ; and as 
 you have observed, published a letter to L,ord Shrews¬ 
 bury on the subject, of which the following are ex¬ 
 tracts : 
 
 “ We Catholics must necessarily deplore [England’s] 
 separation as a deep moral evil—as a state of schism, 
 of which nothing can justify the continuance. Many 
 members of the Anglican Church view it in the same 
 light as to the first point—its sad evil, though they 
 excuse their individual position in it as an unavoidable 
 
24 
 
 Various incidental Statements 
 
 misfortune. . . .We may depend upon a willing, 
 
 an able, and most zealous co-operation with any effort 
 which we may take, towards bringing her into her 
 rightful position, into Catholic unity with the Holy See 
 and the Churches of its obedience—in other words, 
 with the Church Catholic. Is this a visionary idea ? 
 Is it merely the expression of a strong desire ? I 
 know that many will so judge it; and, perhaps, were I 
 to consult my own quiet, I would not venture to express 
 it. But I will, in simplicity of heart, cling to hopeful¬ 
 ness, cheered, as I feel it, by so many promising ap¬ 
 pearances. 
 
 ‘ ‘ A natural question here presents itself: what faci¬ 
 lities appear in the present state of things for bringing 
 about so happy a consummation as the reunion of Eng¬ 
 land to the Catholic Church, beyond what have before 
 existed, and particularly under Archbishops Laud or 
 Wake. It strikes me, many. First, etc. ... A 
 still more promising circumstance I think your Lord- 
 ship will with me consider the plait which the eventful 
 Tract No. 90 has pursued, and in which Mr. Ward, 
 Mr. Oakeley, and even Dr. Pusey have agreed. I 
 allude to the method of bringing their doctrines into ac¬ 
 cordance with onrs by explanation. A foreign priest has 
 pointed out to us a valuable document for our consider¬ 
 ation—‘ Bossuet’s Reply to the Pope,’ when consulted 
 on the best method of reconciling the followers of the 
 Augsburg Confession with the Holy See. The learned 
 bishop observes, that Providence had allowed so much 
 Catholic truth to be preserved in that Confession, that 
 full advantage should be taken of the circumstance ; 
 that no retractations should be demanded, but an ex¬ 
 planation of the Confession in accordance with Catholic 
 doctrines. Now, for such a method as this, the way is 
 in part prepared by the demonstration that such inter- 
 
in the Eirenicon . 
 
 25 
 
 pretation may be given of the most difficult Articles as 
 will strip them of all contradiction to the decrees of the 
 Tridentine Synod. The same method may be pursued 
 on other points ; and much pain may thus be spared to 
 individuals, and much difficulty to the Church” (pp. 
 
 11, 35, 38). 
 
 This use of my Tract, so different from my own, but 
 sanctioned by the great name of our cardinal, you are 
 now reviving : and I gather from your doing so, that 
 your bishops and the opinion of the public are likely 
 now, or in prospect, to admit what twenty-five years 
 ago they refused. On this point, much as it rejoices 
 me to know your anticipation, of course I cannot have 
 an opinion. 
 
 4. So much for Tract 90. O11 the other hand, as to 
 
 my hypothesis of Doctrinal Development, I am sorry to 
 find you do not look upon it with friendly eyes; though 
 how, without its aid, you can maintain the doctrines of 
 the Holy Trinity and Incarnation, and others which 
 you hold, I cannot understand. You consider my prin¬ 
 ciple may be the means, in time to come, of introducing 
 into our Creed, as portions of the necessary Catholic 
 faith, the Infallibility of the Pope, and various opinions, 
 pious or profane, as it may be, about our Blessed Bady. 
 I hope to remove your anxiety as to the character of 
 these consequences, before I bring my observations to 
 an end ; * at present I notice it as my apology for inter¬ 
 fering in a controversy which at first sight is no busi¬ 
 ness of mine. 
 
 5. I have another reason for writing; and that is, 
 unless it is rude in me to say so, because you seem to 
 think writing does not become me, as being a convert. 
 
 * Father Ryder of the Oratory removed the necessity of my fulfilling this 
 intention as far as Infallibility is concerned, by his able pamphlets in 
 answer to Mr. Ward. 
 
2 6 
 
 Various incidental Statements. 
 
 I do not like silently to acquiesce in such a judgment. 
 You say at p. 98 : 
 
 “ Nothing can be more unpractical than for an indi¬ 
 vidual to throw himself into the Roman Church, be¬ 
 cause he could accept the letter of the Council of Trent. 
 Those who were born Roman Catholics have a liberty, 
 which, in the nature of things, a person could not have 
 who left another system to embrace that of Rome. I 
 cannot imagine how any faith could stand the shock of 
 leaving one system, criticising z 7 , and cast himself into 
 another system, criticising it. For myself, I have 
 always felt that had (which God of His mercy avert 
 hereafter also!) the English Church, by accepting 
 heresy, driven me out of it, I could have gone in no 
 other way than that of closing my eyes, and accepting 
 whatever was put before me. But a liberty which indi¬ 
 viduals could not use, and explanations, which so long 
 as they remain individual must be unauthoritative, 
 might be formally made by the Church of Rome to the 
 Church of England as the basis of reunion.” 
 
 And again, p. 210 : 
 
 ‘ 1 It seems to me to be a psychological impossibility 
 for one who has already exchanged one system for 
 another to make those distinctions. One who, by his 
 own act, places himself under authority, cannot make 
 conditions about his submission. But definite explana¬ 
 tions of our Articles have, before now, been at least 
 tentatively offered to us on the Roman and Greek side, 
 as sufficient to restore communion ; and the Roman ex¬ 
 planations too were, in most cases, mere supplements to 
 our Articles, on points upon which our Church had not 
 spoken.” 
 
 Now, passages such as these seem almost a challenge 
 to me to speak ; and to keep silence would be to assent 
 to the justice of them. At the cost, then, of speaking 
 
in the Eirenicon. 
 
 27 
 
 about myself, of which I feel there has been too much 
 of late, I observe upon them as follows: Of course, as 
 you say, a convert comes to learn, and not to pick 
 and choose. He comes in simplicity and confidence, 
 and it does not occur to him to weigh and measure 
 every proceeding, every practice which he meets with 
 among those whom he has joined. He comes to Catho¬ 
 licism as to a living system, with a living teaching, 
 and not to a mere collection of decrees and canons, 
 which by themselves are of course but the framework, 
 not the body and substance of the Church. And this 
 is a truth which concerns, which binds, those also who 
 never knew any other religion, not only the convert. 
 By the Catholic system, I mean that rule of life, and 
 those practices of devotion, for which we shall look in 
 vain in the Creed of Pope Pius. The convert comes, 
 not only to believe the Church, but also to trust and 
 obey her priests, and to conform himself in charity to 
 her people. It would never do for him to resolve that 
 he never would say a Ilail Mary, never avail himself 
 of an indulgence, never kiss a crucifix, never accept the 
 Lent dispensations, never mention a venial sin in con¬ 
 fession. All this would not only be unreal, but would 
 be dangerous, too, as arguing a wrong state of mind, 
 which could not look to receive the divine blessing. 
 Moreover, he comes to the ceremonial, and the moral 
 theology, and the ecclesiastical regulations, which he 
 finds on the spot where his lot is cast. And again, as 
 regards matters of politics, of education, of general ex¬ 
 pedience, of taste, he does not criticise or controvert. 
 And thus surrendering himself to the influences of his 
 new religion, and not risking the loss of revealed truth 
 altogether by attempting by a private rule to discrimin¬ 
 ate every moment its substance from its accidents, he is 
 gradually so indoctrinated in Catholicism as at length 
 
28 
 
 Various incidental Statements 
 
 to have a right to speak as well as to hear. Also in 
 course of time a new generation rises round him; and 
 there is no reason why he should not know as much, 
 and decide questions with as true an instinct, as those 
 who perhaps number fewer years of life than he num¬ 
 bers Easter Communions. He has mastered the fact 
 and the nature of the differences of theologian from 
 theologian, school from school, nation from nation, era 
 from era. He knows that there is much of what may 
 be called fashion in opinions and practices, according to 
 the circumstances of time and place, according to cur¬ 
 rent politics, the character of the Pope of the day, or 
 the chief Prelates of a particular country ; and that 
 fashions change. His experience tells him, that some¬ 
 times what is denounced in one place as a great offence, 
 or preached up as a first principle, has in another 
 nation been immemorially regarded in just a contrary 
 sense, or has made no sensation at all, one way or the 
 other, when brought before public opinion ; and that 
 loud talkers are apt to carry all before them in the 
 Church, as elsewhere, while quiet and conscientious 
 persons commonly have to give way. He perceives 
 that, in matters which happen to be in debate, ecclesias¬ 
 tical authority watches the state of opinion and the 
 direction and course of controversy, and decides accord¬ 
 ingly ; so that in certain cases to keep back his own 
 judgment on a point, is to be disloyal to his superiors. 
 
 So far generally; now in particular as to myself. 
 After twenty years of Catholic life, I feel no delicacy in 
 giving my opinion on any point when there is a call for 
 me, and the only reason why I have not done so sooner 
 or more often than I have, is that there has been no 
 call. I have now reluctantly come to the conclusion 
 that your volume is a call. Certainly, in many in¬ 
 stances in which theologian differs from theologian and 
 
in the Eirenicon. 
 
 29 
 
 country from country, I have a definite judgment of 
 my own; I can say so without offence to any one, 
 for the very reason that from the nature of the 
 case it is impossible to agree with all of them. I pre¬ 
 fer English habits of belief and devotion to foreign, 
 from the same causes, and by the same right, which 
 justifies foreigners in preferring their own. In follow¬ 
 ing those of my people, I show less singularity, and 
 create less disturbance than if I made a flourish with 
 what is novel and exotic. And in this line of conduct 
 I am but availing myself of the teaching which I fell 
 in with on becoming a Catholic ; and it is a pleasure 4 to 
 me to think that what I hold now, and would transmit 
 after me if I could, is only what I received then. The 
 utmost delicacy was observed on all hands in giving 
 me advice : only one warning remains on my mind, 
 and it came from Dr. Griffiths, the late Vicar-Apostolic 
 of the Eondon district. He warned me against books 
 of devotion of the Italian school, which were just at 
 that time coming into England; and when I asked 
 him what books he recommended as safe guides, he 
 bade me get the works of Bishop Hay. By this I did 
 not understand that he was jealous of all Italian books, 
 or made himself responsible for all that Dr. Hay hap¬ 
 pens to have said ; but I took him to caution me against 
 a character and tone of religion, excellent in its place, 
 not suited for England. 
 
 When I went to Rome, though it may seem strange 
 to you to say it, even there I learned nothing incon¬ 
 sistent with this judgment. Eocal influences do not 
 form the atmosphere of its institutions and colleges, 
 which are Catholic in teaching as well as in name. I 
 recollect one saying among others of my Confessor, a 
 Jesuit Father, one of the holiest, most prudent men I 
 ever knew. He said that we could not love the Blessed 
 
30 
 
 Various incidental Statements 
 
 Virgin too much, if we loved our Lord a great deal 
 more. When I returned to England, the first expres¬ 
 sion of theological opinion which came in my way, was 
 apropos of the series of translated Saints’ Lives w T hich 
 the late Dr. Faber originated. That expression pro¬ 
 ceeded from a wise prelate, who was properly anxious 
 as to the line which might be taken by the Oxford 
 converts, then for the first time coming into work. 
 According as I recollect his opinion, he was apprehen¬ 
 sive of the effect of Italian compositions, as unsuited to 
 this country, and suggested that the Lives should be 
 original works, drawn up by ourselves and our friends 
 from Italian sources. If at that time I was betrayed 
 into any acts which were of a more extreme character 
 than I should approve now, the responsibility of course 
 is my own; but the impulse came, not from old Catho¬ 
 lics or superiors, but from men whom I loved and trust¬ 
 ed, who were younger than myself. But to whatever 
 extent I might be carried away, and I cannot recollect 
 any tangible instances, my mind in no long time fell 
 back to what seems to me a safer and more practical 
 course. 
 
 Though I am a convert, then, I think I have a right 
 to speak out; and that the more because other converts 
 have spoken for a long time, while I have not spoken; 
 and with still more reason may I speak without offence 
 in the case of your present criticisms of us, considering 
 that, in the charges you bring, the only two English 
 writers you quote in evidence are both of them converts, 
 younger in age than myself. I put aside the archbishop 
 of course, because of his office. These two authors are 
 worthy of all consideration, at once from their character 
 and from their ability. In their respective lines they 
 are perhaps without equals at this particular time ; and 
 
in the Eirenicon . 
 
 3 i 
 
 they deserve the influence they possess. One * is still 
 in the vigor of his powers; the othert has departed amid 
 the tears of hundreds. It is pleasant to praise them 
 for their real excellences ; but why do you rest on them 
 as authorities? You say of the one that he was “a 
 popular writer ’ ’ ; but is there not sufficient reason for 
 this in the fact of his remarkable gifts, of his poetical 
 fancy, his engaging frankness, his playful wit, his 
 affectionateness, his sensitive piety, without supposing 
 that the wide diffusion of his works is caused by a 
 general sympathy with his particular sentiments about 
 the Blessed Virgin? And as to our other friend, do 
 not his energy, acuteness, and theological reading, dis¬ 
 played on the vantage ground of the historic Dublin 
 Review, fully account for the sensation he has produced, 
 without supposing that any great number of our body 
 go his lengths in their view of the Pope’s infallibility ? 
 Our silence as regards their writings is very intelligible : 
 it is not agreeable to protest, in the sight of the world, 
 against the writings of men in our own Communion 
 whom we love and respect. But the plain fact is this— 
 they came to the Church, and have thereby saved their 
 souls; but they are in no sense spokesmen for English 
 Catholics, and they must not stand in the place of those 
 who have a real title to such an office. The chief 
 authors of the passing generation, some of them still 
 alive, others gone to their reward, are Cardinal Wise 
 man, Dr. Ullathorne, Dr. Eingard, Mr. Tierney, Dr. 
 Oliver, Dr. Rock, Dr. Waterworth, Dr. Husenbeth, and 
 Mr. Flanagan; which of these ecclesiastics has said 
 anything extreme about the prerogatives of the Blessed 
 Virgin or the infallibility of the Pope ? 
 
 I cannot, then, without remonstrance, allow you to 
 
 *Mr. W. G. Ward, Editor of the Dublin Review. 
 
 f Rev. F. W. Faber, of the London Oratory. 
 
32 
 
 Various incidental Statements 
 
 identify the doctrine of our Oxford friends in question, 
 on the two subjects I have mentioned, with the present 
 spirit or the prospective creed of Catholics; or to 
 assume, as you do, that, because they are through- 
 going and relentless in their statements, therefore they 
 are the harbingers of a new age, when to show a defer¬ 
 ence to Antiquity will be thought little else than a 
 mistake. For myself, hopeless as you consider it, I am 
 not ashamed still to take my stand upon the Fathers, 
 and do not mean to budge. The history of their times 
 is not yet an old almanac to me. Of course I maintain 
 the value and authority of the “ Schola,” as one of the 
 loci theologici; nevertheless I sympathize with Petavius 
 in preferring to the ‘ ‘ contentious and subtle theology ’ ’ 
 of the middle age, that “more elegant and fruitful 
 teaching which is moulded after the image of erudite 
 Antiquity.” The Fathers made me a Catholic, and I 
 am not going to kick down the ladder by which I 
 ascended into the Church. It is a ladder quite as ser¬ 
 viceable for that purpose now as it was twenty years 
 ago. Though I hold, as you know, a process of de¬ 
 velopment in Apostolic truth as time goes on, such de¬ 
 velopment does not supersede the Fathers, but explains 
 and completes them. And, in particular, as regards 
 our teaching concerning the Blessed Virgin, with the 
 Fathers I am content; and to the subject of that teach¬ 
 ing I mean to address myself at once. I do so because 
 you say, as I myself have said in former years, that 
 “That vast system as to the Blessed Virgin . 
 to all of us has been the special crux of the Roman 
 system” (p. ioi). Here, let me say, as on other 
 points, the Fathers are enough for me. I do not wish 
 to say more than they suggest to me, and will not say 
 less. You, I know, will profess the same ; and thus we 
 can join issue on a clear and broad principle, and may 
 
in the Eirenicon. 
 
 33 
 
 hope to come to some intelligible result. We are to 
 have a treatise on the subject of Our L,ady soon from 
 the pen of the Most Reverend Prelate ; but that cannot 
 interfere with such a mere argument from the Fathers 
 as that to which I shall confine myself here. Nor 
 indeed, as regards that argument itself, do I profess to 
 be offering you any new matter, any facts which have 
 not been used by others—by great divines, as Petavius 
 —by living writers, nay, by myself on other occasions. 
 I write afresh nevertheless, and that for three reasons; 
 first, because I wish to contribute to the accurate state¬ 
 ment and the full exposition of the argument in ques¬ 
 tion ; next, because I may gain a more patient hearing 
 than has sometimes been granted to better men than 
 myself; lastly, because there just now seems a call on 
 me, under my circumstances, to avow plainly what I do 
 and what I do not hold about the Blessed Virgin, that 
 others may know, did they come to stand where I 
 stand, what they would, and what they would not, be 
 bound to hold concerning her. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 4 
 
 4 
 
 BELIEF, AS DISTINCT FROM DEVOTION. 
 
 Devotion to Mary has increased in the Course of 
 Ages, but the Doctrine has been the same from 
 the Beginning.—Faith and Devotion compared.— 
 Liberty of Devotion among Catholics.—Diversi¬ 
 fied Devotions the Accumulation of Centuries.— . 
 Evidences from Sacred History. 
 
 I BEGIN by making a distinction which will go far to 
 remove good part of the difficulty of my undertak¬ 
 ing, as it presents itself to ordinary inquirers—the dis¬ 
 tinction between faith and devotion. I fully grant that 
 devotion towards the Blessed Virgin has increased 
 among Catholics with the progress of centuries; I do 
 not allow that the doctrine concerning her has under¬ 
 gone a growth, for I believe that it has been in sub¬ 
 stance one and the same from the beginning. 
 
 By ‘ ‘ faith ’ ’ I mean the Creed and assent to the 
 Creed; by “ devotion ’ ’ I mean such religious honors 
 as belong to the objects of our faith, and the payment 
 of those honors. Faith and devotion are as distinct in 
 fact as they are in idea. We cannot, indeed, be 
 devout without faith, but we may believe without feel¬ 
 ing devotion. Of this phenomenon every one has ex¬ 
 perience both in himself and in others ; and we bear 
 witness to it as often as we speak of realizing a truth or 
 not realizing it. It may be illustrated, with more or 
 
 34 
 
Belief \ as distinct from Devotion . 
 
 35 
 
 less exactness, by matters which come before us in the 
 world. For instance, a great author, or public man, 
 may be acknowledged as such for a course of years; yet 
 there may be an increase, an ebb and flow, and a 
 fashion, in his popularity. And if he takes a lasting 
 place in the minds of his countrymen, he may gradually 
 grow into it, or suddenly be raised to it. The idea of 
 Shakespeare as a great poet has existed from a very 
 early date in public opinion; and there were at least 
 individuals then who understood him as well, and 
 honored him as much, as the English people can honor 
 him now; yet, I think, there is a national devotion to 
 him in this day such as never has been before. This 
 has happened because, as education spreads in the 
 country, there are more men able to enter into his poeti¬ 
 cal genius, and, among these, more capacity again for 
 deeply and critically understanding him; and yet, from 
 the first, he has exerted a great insensible influence 
 over the nation, as is seen in the circumstance that his 
 phrases and sentences, more than can be numbered, 
 have become almost proverbs among us. And so again 
 in philosophy, and in the arts and sciences, great truths 
 and principles have sometimes been known and ac¬ 
 knowledged for a course of years; but, whether from 
 feebleness of intellectual power in the recipients, or ex¬ 
 ternal circumstances of an accidental kind, they have 
 not been turned to account. Thus the Chinese are said 
 to have known of the properties of the magnet from 
 time immemorial, and to have used it for land expedi¬ 
 tions, yet not on the sea. Again, the ancients knew of 
 the principle that water finds its own level, but seem to 
 have made little application of their knowledge. And 
 Aristotle was familiar with the principle of induc¬ 
 tion ; yet it was left for Bacon to develop it into an ex¬ 
 perimental philosophy. Illustrations such as these, 
 
36 
 
 Belief, as distinct from Devotion . 
 
 though not altogether apposite, serve to convey that dis¬ 
 tinction between faith and devotion on which I am in¬ 
 sisting. It is like the distinction between objective 
 and subjective truth. The sun in the spring-time will 
 have to shine many days before he is able to melt the 
 frost, open the soil, and bring out the leaves; yet he 
 shines out from the first notwithstanding, though he 
 makes his power felt but gradually. It is one and the 
 same sun, though his influence day by day becomes 
 greater; and so in the Catholic Church it is the one 
 Virgin Mother, one and the same from first to last, and 
 Catholics may have ever acknowledged her; and yet, in 
 spite of that acknowledgment, their devotion to her 
 may be scanty in one time and place, and overflowing 
 in another. 
 
 This distinction is forcibly brought home to a con¬ 
 vert, as a peculiarity of the Catholic religion, on his 
 first introduction to its worship. The faith is every¬ 
 where one and the same, but a large liberty is accorded 
 to private judgment and inclination as regards matters 
 of devotion. Any large church, with its collections and 
 groups of people, will illustrate this. The fabric itself 
 is dedicated to Almighty God, and that under the invo¬ 
 cation of the Blessed Virgin, or some particular saint; 
 or again, of some mystery belonging to the Divine 
 Name or the Incarnation, or of some mystery associated 
 with the Blessed Virgin. Perhaps there are seven 
 altars or more in it, and these again have their several 
 saints. Then there is the feast proper to this or that 
 day ; and during the celebration of Mass, of all the 
 worshippers who crowd around the priest, each has his 
 own particular devotions, with which he follows the 
 rite. No one interferes with his neighbor; agreeing, 
 as it were, to differ, they pursue independently a 
 common end, and by paths distinct but converging 
 
Belief \ as distinct from Devotion. 
 
 37 
 
 present themselves before God. Then there are con¬ 
 fraternities attached to the church—of the Sacred 
 Heart, or of the Precious Blood ; associations of prayer 
 for a good death, or for the repose of departed souls, or 
 for the conversion of the heathen ; devotions connected 
 with the brown, blue, or red scapular; not to .speak of 
 the great ordinary Ritual observed through the four 
 seasons, or of the constant Presence of the Blessed 
 Sacrament, or of its ever-recurring rite of Benediction, 
 and its extraordinary Forty Hours’ Exposition. Or, 
 again, look through such manuals of prayers as the 
 Raccolta , and you at once will see both the number and 
 the variety of devotions which are open to individual 
 Catholics to choose from, according to their religious 
 taste and prospect of personal edification. 
 
 Now these diversified modes of honoring God did not 
 come to us in a day, or only from the apostles; they are 
 the accumulations of centuries; and as in the course 
 of years some of them spring up, so others decline and 
 die. Some are local, in memory of some particular 
 saint, who happens to be the evangelist, or patron, or 
 pride of the nation, or who lies entombed in the church 
 or in the city where it is found ; and these devotions, 
 necessarily, cannot have an earlier date than the saint’s 
 day of death or interment there. The first of these 
 sacred observances, long before such national memories, 
 were the devotions paid to the apostles, then those 
 which were paid to the martyrs; yet there were saints 
 nearer to our Eord than either martyrs or apostles; 
 but, as if these sacred persons were immersed and lost 
 in the effulgence of His glory, and because they did not 
 manifest themselves, when in the body, in external 
 works separate from Him, it happened that for a long 
 while they were less dwelt upon. However, in process 
 of time the apostles, and then the martyrs, exerted loss 
 
38 
 
 Belief, as distinct from Devotion. 
 
 influence than before over the popular mind, and the 
 local saints, new creations of God’s power, took their 
 place, or again, the saints of some religious order here 
 or there established. Then, as comparatively quiet 
 times succeeded, the religious meditations of holy men 
 and their secret intercourse with heaven gradually ex¬ 
 erted an influence out of doors, and permeated the 
 Christian populace, by the instrumentality of preaching 
 and by the ceremonial of the Church. Hence at length 
 those luminous stars rose in the ecclesiastical heavens, 
 which were of more august dignity than any which had 
 preceded them, and were late in rising, for the very 
 reason that they were so specially glorious. Those 
 names, I say, which at first sight might have been ex¬ 
 pected to enter soon into the devotions of the faithful, 
 with better reason might have been looked for at a 
 later date, and actually were late in their coming. St. 
 Joseph furnishes the most striking instance of this re¬ 
 mark ; here is the clearest of instances of the distinc¬ 
 tion between doctrine and devotion. Who, from his 
 prerogatives and the testimony on which they come to 
 us, had a greater claim to receive an early recognition 
 among the faithful than he? A saint of Scripture, the 
 foster-father of our Cord, he was an object of the uni¬ 
 versal and absolute faith of the Christian world from the 
 first, yet the devotion to him is comparatively of late 
 date. When once it began, men seemed surprised that 
 it had not been thought of before; and now, they hold 
 him next to the Blessed Virgin in their religious 
 affection and veneration. 
 
 As regards the Blessed Virgin, then, I shall postpone 
 the question of devotion for a while, and inquire first 
 into the doctrine of the undivided Church—to use your 
 controversial phrase—on the subject of her preroga¬ 
 tives. 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 MARY THE SECOND EVE IN THE EAREY 
 
 CHURCH. 
 
 This was the rudimental Teaching of Christian An¬ 
 tiquity.—The Ancient Fathers made a Parallel¬ 
 ism between Eve in the Fall and Mary in the Re¬ 
 demption.—Testimony of St. Justin Martyr re¬ 
 presenting the early Belief of Palestine.— 
 Tertullian, who speaks for Africa and Rome.— 
 St. Iren^eus, representing Asia Minor and Gaul, as 
 well as St. John the Evangelist, who taught his 
 Master, St. Polycarp.—These Fathers teach that 
 Mary was not a mere Instrument of the Incarna¬ 
 tion, BUT FREELY AND MFRITORIOUSLY CO-OPERATED.— 
 
 The Worth of the concurrent Testimony of 
 
 THESE EARLIEST OF THE FATHERS.—TESTIMONY OF THE 
 
 Fathers of the succeeding Era: St. Cyril of 
 Jerusalem, St. Ephrem, St. Epiphanius, St. Jerome, 
 St. Peter Chrysologus, St. Fulgentius. 
 
 W HAT is the great rudimental teaching of antiquity 
 from its earliest date concerning her ? By 
 “rudimental teaching ’ ’ I mean the prima facie view of 
 her person and office, the broad outline laid down of 
 her, the aspect under \vhich she comes to us, in the 
 writings of the Fathers. She is the second Eve.* 
 Now let us consider what this implies. Eve had a 
 definite, essential position in the First Covenant. The 
 
 * Vide Essay on Development of Doctrine , 1845, p. 384, etc. 
 
 39 
 
40 
 
 Belief of Catholics 
 
 fate of the human race lay with Adam ; he it was who 
 represented us. It was in Adam that we fell; though 
 Eve had fallen, still, if Adam had stood, we should 
 not have lost those supernatural privileges which were 
 bestowed upon him as our first father. Yet though 
 Eve was not the head of the race, still, even as regards 
 the race, she had a place of her own ; for Adam, to 
 whom was divinely committed the naming of all things, 
 named her “the Mother of all the living,” a name 
 surely expressive, not of a fact only, but of a dignity; 
 but further, as she thus had her own general relation 
 to the human race, so again had she her own special 
 place, as regards its trial and its fall in Adam. In 
 those primeval events Eve had an integral share. 
 “ The woman, being seduced, was in the transgres¬ 
 sion.” She listened to the Evil Angel; she offered the 
 fruit to her husband, and he ate of it. She co-operated, 
 not as an irresponsible instrument, but intimately and 
 personally in the sin : she brought it about. As the 
 history stands, she was a sine qua non , a positive, 
 active cause of it. And she had her share in its 
 punishment; in the sentence pronounced on her she 
 was recognized as a real agent in the temptation and 
 its issue, and she suffered accordingly. In that awful 
 transaction there were three parties concerned—the 
 serpent, the woman, and the man ; and at the time of 
 their sentence, an event was announced for a distant 
 future, in which the three same parties were to meet 
 again, the serpent, the woman, and the man; but it was 
 to be a second Adam and a second Eve, and the new 
 Eve was to be the mother of the new Adam. “ I will 
 put enmity between thee and the woman, and between 
 thy seed and her seed.” The Seed of the woman is 
 the Word Incarnate, and the Woman, whose seed or 
 son He is, is His mother Mary. This interpretation, 
 
that She is the Second Eve. 
 
 41 
 
 and the parallelism it involves, seem to me unde¬ 
 niable ; but at all events—and this is my point—the 
 parallelism is the doctrine of the Fathers, from the 
 earliest times : and, this being established, we are able, 
 by the position and office of Eve in our fall, to de¬ 
 termine the position and office of Mary in our restora¬ 
 tion. 
 
 I shall adduce passages from their writings, noting 
 their respective countries and dates; and the dates 
 shall extend from their births or conversions to their 
 deaths, since what they propound is at once the doc¬ 
 trine which they had received from the generation 
 before them, and the doctrine which was accepted and 
 recognized as true by the generation to whom they 
 transmitted it. 
 
 First, then, St. Justin Martyr, a.d. 120-165; St. 
 Irenaeus, 120-200, and Tertullian, 160-240. Of these 
 Tertullian represents Africa and Rome; St. Justin 
 represents Palestine; and St. Irenaeus, Asia Minor 
 and Gaul; or rather he represents St. John the 
 Evangelist, for he had been taught by the martyr St. 
 Polvcarp, who was the intimate associate of St. John, as 
 also of other Apostles. 
 
 1. St. Justin : 
 
 “ We know that He, before all creatures, proceeded 
 from the Father by His power and will, . . . and 
 
 by means of the Virgin became man, that by what way 
 the disobedience arising from the serpent had its begin¬ 
 ning, by that way also it might have an undoing. For 
 Eve, being a virgin and undefiled, conceiving the word 
 that was from the serpent, brought forth disobedience 
 and death ; but the Virgin Mary, taking faith and joy, 
 when the angel told her the good tidings, that the 
 Spirit of the Eord shall come upon her and the power 
 
42 
 
 Belief of Catholics 
 
 of the Highest overshadow her, and therefore the Holy 
 One that was born of her was Son of God, answered, 
 ‘ Be it to me according to thy word ’ ” (Try//?., ioo). 
 
 2. Tertullian : 
 
 ‘ ‘ God recovered His image and likeness, which the 
 devil had seized, by a rival operation. For into Kve, as 
 yet a virgin, had crept the word which was the framer 
 of death. Equally into a virgin was to be introduced 
 the Word of God which was the builder up of life ; 
 that, what by that sex had gone into perdition by the 
 same sex might be brought back to salvation. Eve 
 had believed the serpent; Mary believed Gabriel; the 
 fault which the one committed by believing, the other 
 by believing has blotted out ” ( De Cam. Christ ., 17). 
 
 3. St. Irenseus: 
 
 “ With a fitness, Mary the Virgin is found obedient, 
 saying, ‘ Behold Thy handmaid, O Lord ; be it to me 
 according to thy word.’ But Eve was disobedient; for 
 she obeyed not, while she was yet a virgin. As she, 
 having indeed Adam for a husband, but as yet being a 
 virgin, . . . becoming disobedient, became the 
 
 cause of death both to herself and to the whole human 
 race, so also Mary, having the predestined man, and 
 being yet a Virgin, being obedient, became both to her¬ 
 self and to the whole human race the cause of salvation. 
 
 And 011 account of this the Eord said, that the 
 first should be last and the last first. And the Prophet 
 signifies the same, saying, ‘ Instead of fathers you have 
 children.’ For, whereas the Eord, when born, was the 
 first-begotten of the dead, and received into His bosom 
 the primitive fathers, He regenerated them into the 
 life of God, He Himself becoming the beginning of the 
 living, since Adam became the beginning of the dying. 
 Therefore also Euke, commencing the line of genera¬ 
 tions from the Eord, referred it back to Adam, signify- 
 
that She is the Second Eve. 
 
 43 
 
 ing that He regenerated the old fathers, not they Him, 
 into the Gospel of life. And so the knot of Eve’s dis¬ 
 obedience received its unloosing through the obedience 
 of Mary ; for what Eve, a virgin, bound by incredulity, 
 that Mary, a virgin, unloosed by faith ” ( Adv . Hcer ., iii. 
 22,34). 
 
 And again: 
 
 “ As Eve by the speech of an angel was seduced, so 
 as to flee God, transgressing His word, so also Mary 
 received the good tidings by means of the angel’s 
 speech, so as to bear God within her, being obedient to 
 His word. And, though the one had disobeyed God, 
 yet the other was drawn to obey God; that of the 
 virgin Eve the Virgin Mary might become the advo¬ 
 cate. And, as by a virgin the human race had been 
 bound to death, by a virgin it is saved,* the balance 
 being preserved, a virgin’s disobedience by a virgin’s 
 obedience” ( Ibid.,v . 19). 
 
 Now, what is especially noticeable in these three 
 writers is, that they do not speak of the Blessed Virgin 
 merely as the physical instrument of our Eord’s taking 
 flesh, but as an intelligent, responsible cause of it; her 
 faith and obedience being accessories to the Incarna¬ 
 tion, and gaining it as her reward. As Eve failed in 
 these virtues, and thereby brought on the fall of the 
 race in Adam, so Mary by means of the same had a 
 part in its restoration. You surely imply—pp. 151- 
 156—that the Blessed Virgin w T as only a physical in¬ 
 strument of our redemption; ‘ ‘ what has been said of 
 her by the fathers as the chosen vessel of the Incarna¬ 
 tion, was applied personally to her”—that is, by 
 
 * Salvatur ; some MSS. read Solvatur, “ [that] it might be loosed ” ; and 
 so Augustine contr. Jul. i. n. 5. This variety of reading does not affect the 
 general sense of the passage. Moreover, the word “salvation” occurs in 
 the former of these two passages. 
 
44 Belief of Catholics 
 
 Catholics—(p. 151), and again ‘‘the Fathers speak of 
 the Blessed Virgin as the instncment of our salvation, 
 in that she gave birth to the Redeemer (pp. 155, 156) ; 
 whereas St. Augustine, in well-known passages, speaks 
 of her as more exalted by her sanctity than by her 
 relationship to our Ford.* However, not to go beyond 
 the doctrine of the Three Fathers, they unanimously 
 declare that she was not a mere instrument in the Incar¬ 
 nation, such as David, or Judah, may be considered; 
 they declare she co-operated in our salvation not merely 
 by the descent of the Holy Ghost upon her body, but 
 by specific holy acts, the effect of the Holy Ghost with¬ 
 in her soul; that as Eve forfeited privileges by sin, so 
 Mary earned privileges by the fruits of grace; that, as 
 Eve was disobedient and unbelieving, so Mary was 
 obedient and believing ; that, as Eve was a cause of 
 ruin to all, Mary was a cause of salvation to all; that 
 as Eve made room for Adam’s fall, so Mary made room 
 for our Lord’s reparation of it; and thus, whereas the 
 free gift was not as the offence, but much greater, it 
 follows that, as Eve co-operated in effecting a great 
 evil, Mary co-operated in effecting a much greater 
 good. 
 
 And, besides the run of the argument, which reminds 
 the reader of St. Paul’s antithetical sentences in tracing 
 the analogy between Adam’s work and our Lord’s 
 work, it is well to observe the particular words under 
 which the Blessed Virgin’s office is described. 
 Tertullian says that Mary “blotted out” Eve’s fault, 
 and “brought back the female sex,” or “the human 
 race, to salvation” ; and St. Irenaeus says that “by 
 obedience she was the cause or occasion” (whatever 
 was the original Greek word) “of salvation to herself 
 and the whole human race ’ ’ ; that by her the human 
 *Opp, t, 3, p. 2, col. 369; t. 6, col, 312, 
 
that She is the Second Eve . 
 
 45 
 
 race is saved ; that by her Eve’s complication is dis¬ 
 entangled ; and that she is Eve’s Advocate, or friend in 
 need. It is supposed by critics, Protestant as well as 
 Catholic, that the Greek word for Advocate in the 
 original was Paraclete ; it should be borne in mind, 
 then, when we are accused of giving our Eady the 
 titles and offices of her Son, that St. Irenaeus bestows 
 on her the special Name and Office proper to the Holy 
 Ghost. 
 
 So much as to the nature of this triple testimony ; 
 now as to the worth of it. For a moment put aside St. 
 Irenaeus, and put together St. Justin in the East with 
 Tertullian in the West. I think I may assume that the 
 doctrine of these two Fathers about the Blessed Virgin 
 was the received doctrine of their own respective times 
 and places; for writers after all are but witnesses of 
 facts and beliefs, and as such they are treated by all 
 parties in controversial discussion. Moreover, the coin¬ 
 cidence of doctrine which they exhibit, and again, the 
 antithetical completeness of it, show that they them¬ 
 selves did not originate it. The next question is, Who 
 did? For from one definite organ or source, place or 
 person, it must have come. Then we must inquire, 
 what length of time would it take for such a doctrine to 
 have extended, and to be received, in the second 
 century, over so wide an area ?—that is, to be received 
 before the year 200 in Palestine, Africa, and Rome. 
 Can we refer the common source of these local tradi¬ 
 tions to a date much later than that of the Apostles, 
 since St. John died within twenty years of St. Justiffis 
 conversion and sixty of Tertullian’s birth ? Make what 
 allowance you will for whatever possible exceptions can 
 be taken to this representation ; and then, after doing 
 so, add to the concordant testimony of these two 
 Fathers the evidence of St. Irenaeus, which is so close 
 
46 
 
 Belief of Catholics 
 
 upon that of the school of St. John himself in Asia 
 Minor. “ A three-fold cord,” as the wise man says, 
 “ is not quickly broken.” Only suppose there were so 
 early and so broad a testimony to the effect that our 
 Lord was a mere man, the son of Joseph ; should we be 
 able to insist upon the faith of the Holy Trinity as 
 necessary to salvation? Or supposing three such 
 witnesses could be brought to the fact that a consistory 
 of elders governed the local churches, or that each local 
 congregation was an independent Church, or that the 
 Christian community was without priests, could Angli¬ 
 cans maintain their doctrine that the rule of episcopal 
 succession is necessary to constitute a Church ? And 
 then recollect that the Anglican Church especially 
 appeals to the ante-Nicene centuries, and taunts us 
 with having superseded their testimony. 
 
 Having then adduced these Three Fathers of the 
 second century, I have at least got so far as this : viz., 
 that no one, who acknowledges the force of early testi¬ 
 mony in determining Christian truth, can wonder, no 
 one can complain, can object, that we Catholics should 
 hold a very high doctrine concerning the Blessed 
 Virgin, unless indeed stronger statements can be 
 brought for a contrary conception of her, either of as 
 early, or at least of a later date. But, as far as I know, 
 no statements can be brought from the ante-Nicene 
 literature to invalidate the testimony of the Three 
 Fathers concerning her; and little can be brought 
 against it from the fourth century, while in that fourth 
 century the current of testimony in her behalf is as 
 strong as in the second ; and as to the fifth, it is far 
 stronger than in any former time, both in its fulness and 
 its authority. That such is the concordant verdict of 
 ‘ ‘ the undivided Church ’ 5 will to some extent be seen 
 as I proceed. 
 
 j 
 
that She is the Second Eve. 
 
 47 
 
 4. St. Cyril of Jerusalem (315-386) speaks for 
 Palestine : 
 
 “Since through Kve, a virgin, came death, it be¬ 
 hooved that through a virgin, or rather from a virgin, 
 should life appear; that, as the serpent had deceived 
 the one, so to the other Gabriel might bring good 
 things” ( Cat ., xii. 15). 
 
 5. St. Ephrem Syrus (he died 378) is a witness for 
 the Syrians proper and the neighboring Orientals, in 
 contrast to the Graeco-Syrians. A native of Nisibis on 
 the farther side of the Euphrates, he knew no language 
 but Syriac. 
 
 “Through Eve, the beautiful and desirable glory of 
 men was extinguished; but it has revived through 
 Mary” ( Opp . Syr., ii, p. 318). 
 
 Again : 
 
 “ In the beginning, by the sin of our first parents, 
 death passed upon all men ; to-day, through Mary we 
 are translated from death unto life. In the beginning, 
 the serpent filled the ears of Eve, and the poison spread 
 thence over the whole body; to-day, Mary from her 
 ears received the champion of eternal happiness : what, 
 therefore, was an instrument of death, was an instru- 
 ment of life also ” (iii. p. 607). 
 
 I have already referred to St. Paul’s contrast between 
 Adam and our Eord in his Epistle to the Romans, as 
 also in his first Epistle to the Corinthians. Some 
 writers venture to say that there is no doctrinal truth, 
 but a mere rhetorical display, in those passages. It is 
 quite as easy to say so, as to attempt so to dispose of 
 this received comparison, in the writings of the Fathers, 
 between Eve and Mary. 
 
 6. St. Epiphanius (320-400) speaks for Egypt, 
 Palestine, and Cyprus : 
 
 “She it is who is signified by Eve, enigmatically 
 
48 
 
 Belief of Catholics 
 
 receiving the appellation of the Mother of the living. 
 
 It was a wonder that after the transgression 
 she had this great epithet. And, according to what is 
 material, from that Eve all the race of men on earth is 
 generated. But thus in truth from Mary the life itself 
 was born in the world, that Mary might bear living 
 things, and become the mother of living things. 
 Therefore, enigmatically, Mary is called the Mother of 
 living things. . . . Also, there is another thing to 
 
 consider as to these women, and wonderful, as to Eve 
 and Mary. Eve became a cause of death to man, 
 . and Mary a cause of life; . . . that life 
 
 might be instead of death, life excluding death which 
 came from the woman, viz., He who through the 
 woman has become our life ” (- Hcer ., 78, 18). 
 
 7. By the time of St. Jerome (331-420) the con¬ 
 trast between Eve and Mary had almost passed into a 
 proverb. He says (Bp. xxii. 21, ad Eustoch.), “ Death 
 by Eve, life by Mary.” Nor let it be supposed that he, 
 any more than the preceding Fathers, considered the 
 Blessed Virgin a mere physical instrument of giving 
 birth to our Eord, who is the Life. So far from it, in 
 the Epistle from which I have quoted, he is only adding 
 another virtue to that crown which gained for Mary her 
 divine Maternity. They have spoken of faith, joy, and 
 obedience ; St. Jerome adds, what they had only sug¬ 
 gested, virginity. After the manner of the Fathers in 
 his own day, he is setting forth the Blessed Mary to the 
 high-born Roman Lady, whom he is addressing, as the 
 model of the virginal life; and his argument in its be¬ 
 half is, that it is higher than the marriage-state, not in 
 itself, viewed in any mere natural respect, but as being 
 the free act of self-consecration to God, and from the 
 personal religious purpose which it involves. 
 
 “Higher wage,” he says, “is due to that which is 
 
that She is the Second Eve. 
 
 49 
 
 not a compulsion, but an offering ; for, were virginity 
 commanded, marriage would seem to be put out of the 
 question ; and it would be most cruel to force men 
 against nature, and to extort from them an angel’s 
 life” (26). 
 
 I do not know whose testimony is more important 
 than St. Jerome’s, the friend of Pope Damasus at 
 Rome, the pupil of St. Gregory Nazianzen at Constan¬ 
 tinople, and of Didymus in Alexandria, a native of 
 Dalmatia, yet an inhabitant, at different times of his 
 life, of Gaul, Syria, and Palestine. 
 
 8. St. Jerome speaks for the whole world, except 
 Africa ; and for Africa in the fourth century, if we must 
 limit so world-wide an authority to place, witnesses 
 St. Augustine (354-430). He repeats the words as if 
 a proverb, “By a woman death, by a woman life” 
 ( Opp . t. v. Serm. 232) ; elsewhere he enlarges on the 
 idea conveyed in it. In one place he quotes St. Ire- 
 naeus’s words, as cited above (adv. Julian, i. n. 5). In 
 another he speaks as follows : 
 
 “It is a great sacrament that, whereas through 
 woman death became our portion, so life was born to us 
 by woman ; that, in the case of both sexes, male and 
 female, the baffled devil should be tormented, when on 
 the overthrow of both sexes he was rejoicing; whose 
 punishment had been small, if both sexes had been 
 liberated in us, without our being liberated through 
 both” {Opp. t. vi. De Agon. Christ, c. 24). 
 
 9. St. Peter Chrysologus (400-450), Bishop of 
 Ravenna, and one of the chief authorities in the 4th 
 General Council: 
 
 “ Blessed art thou among women ; for among women, 
 on whose womb Eve, who was cursed, brought punish¬ 
 ment, Mary, being blest, rejoices, is honored, and is 
 looked up to. And woman now is truly made through 
 
50 
 
 Belief of Catholics 
 
 grace the Mother of the living, who had been by nature 
 the mother of the dying. . . . Heaven feels awe of 
 
 God, angels tremble at Him, the creature sustains Him 
 not, nature sufficeth not; and yet one maiden so takes, 
 receives, entertains Him, as a guest within her breast, 
 that, for the very hire of her home, and as the price of 
 her womb, she asks, she obtains peace for the earth, 
 glory for the heavens, salvation for the lost, life for the 
 dead, a heavenly parentage for the earthly, the union 
 of God Himself with human flesh” ( Serm. 140). 
 
 It is difficult to express more explicitly, though in 
 oratorical language, that the Blessed Virgin had a real 
 meritorious co-operation, a share which had a “hire” 
 and a “price,” in the reversal of the fall. 
 
 10. St. Fulgentius, Bishop of Ruspe in Africa (468- 
 533). The homily which contains the following pas¬ 
 sage is placed by Ceillier (t. xvi. p. 127) among his 
 genuine works: 
 
 “ I11 the wife of the first man, the wickedness of the 
 devil depraved her seduced mind ; in the mother of the 
 Second Man, the grace of God preserved both her mind 
 inviolate and her flesh. O11 her mind it conferred the 
 most firm faith; from her flesh it took away lust 
 altogether. Since then man was in a miserable way 
 condemned for sin, therefore without sin was in a 
 marvellous way born the God-man” (Serm. 2, p. 124. 
 De Dupl. Nativ.) 
 
 Accordingly, in the sermon which follows—if it is 
 his—he continues thus, illustrating her office of uni¬ 
 versal Mother, as ascribed to her by St. Epiphanius : 
 
 “ Come ye virgins to a Virgin, come ye who conceive 
 to her who conceived, ye who bear to one who bore, 
 mothers to a mother, ye that suckle to one who suckled, 
 young girls to the young girl. It is for this reason that 
 the Virgin Mary has taken on her in our Eord Jesus 
 
that She is the Second Eve. 
 
 51 
 
 Christ all Jliese divisions of nature, that to all women 
 who have recourse to her she may be a succor, and so 
 restore the whole race of women who come to her, being 
 the new Eve, by keeping virginity, as the new Adam, 
 the Lord Jesus Christ, recovers the whole race of men.” 
 
 Such is the rudimental view, as I have called it, 
 which the Fathers have given us of Mary, as the Sec¬ 
 ond Eve, the Mother of the living : I have cited ten 
 authors. I could cite more, were it necessary : except 
 the two last, they write gravely and without any 
 rhetoric. I allow that the two last write in a different 
 style, since the extracts I have made are from their 
 sermons; but I do not see that the coloring conceals 
 the outline. And after all, men use oratory on great 
 subjects, not on small; nor would they, and other 
 Fathers whom I might quote, have lavished their high 
 language upon the Blessed Virgin, such as they gave to 
 no one else, unless they knew well that no one else had 
 such claims as she had on their love and veneration. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE IMMACUEATE CONCEPTION. 
 
 True and False Notions of the Immaculate Concep¬ 
 tion.—This Doctrine flows from that of the 
 Second Eve.—Remarks on Original Sin and on 
 the Manner of Mary’s exemption from it.—St. 
 Augustine’s Teaching of the. Doctrine. 
 
 ND now I proceed to dwell for a while upon two 
 
 ZjL inferences, which it is obvious to draw from the 
 rudimental doctrine itself; the first relates to the sanc¬ 
 tity of the Blessed Virgin, the second to her dignity. 
 
 Her sanctity: She holds, as the Fathers teach us, 
 that office in our restoration which Eve held in our 
 fall; now, in the first place, what were Eve’s endow¬ 
 ments to enable her to enter upon her trial ? She 
 could not have stood against the wiles of the devil, 
 though she was innocent and sinless, without the grant 
 of a large grace. And this she had ; a heavenly gift, 
 which was over and above and additional to that nature 
 of hers, which she received from Adam, a gift which 
 had been given to Adam also before her, at the very 
 time—as it is commonly held—of his original formation. 
 This is Anglican doctrine, as well as Catholic ; it is the 
 doctrine of Bishop Bull. He has written a dissertation 
 on the point. He speaks of the doctrine which ‘ ‘ many 
 of the Schoolmen affirm, that Adam was created in 
 grace, that is, received a principle of grace and divine 
 
 52 
 
Belief of Catholics in Her Immaculate Conception. 53 
 
 life from his very creation, or in the moment of the 
 infusion of his soul; of which,” he says, “ for my own 
 part I have little doubt.” Again, he says, “It is 
 abundantly manifest, from the many testimonies alleged, 
 that the ancient doctors of the Church did, with a 
 general consent, acknowledge that our first parents, in 
 the state of integrity, had in them something more than 
 nature, that is, were endowed with the divine principle 
 of the Spirit, in order to a supernatural felicity.” 
 
 Now, taking this for granted, because I know that 
 you and those who agree with you maintain it as well 
 as we do, I ask you, have you any intention to deny 
 that Mary was as fully endowed as Kve ? Is it any 
 violent inference, that she, who was to co-operate in the 
 redemption of the world, at least was not less endowed 
 with power from on high, than she who, given as a 
 helpmate to her husband, did in the event but co-oper¬ 
 ate with him for its ruin ? If Kve was raised above 
 human nature by that indwelling moral gift which we 
 call grace, is it rash to say that Mary had even a 
 greater grace ? And this consideration gives signifi¬ 
 cance to the Angel’s salutation of her as “full of 
 grace,” an interpretation of the original word which is 
 undoubtedly the right one, as soon as we resist the 
 common Protestant assumption that grace is a mere 
 external approbation or acceptance, answering to the 
 word “favor,” whereas it is, as the Fathers teach, a 
 real inward condition or superadded quality of soul. 
 And if Kve had this supernatural inward gift given her 
 from the first moment of her personal existence, is it 
 possible to deny that Mary too had this gift from the 
 very first moment of her personal existence ? I do not 
 know how to resist this inference ; well, this is simply 
 and literally the doctrine of the Immaculate Concep¬ 
 tion. I say the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception 
 
54 
 
 Belief of Cat ho 'ics 
 
 is in its substance this, and nothing more or less than 
 this (putting aside the question of degrees of grace) ; 
 and it really does seem to me bound up in the doctrine 
 of the Fathers, that Mary is the second Kve. 
 
 It is indeed to me a most strange phenomenon that so 
 many learned and devout men stumble at this doctrine; 
 and I can only account for it by supposing that in 
 matter of fact they do not know what we mean by the 
 Immaculate Conception; and your volume (may I say 
 it?) bears out my suspicion. It is a great consolation 
 to have reason for thinking so—reason for believing that 
 in some sort the persons in question are in the position 
 of those great Saints in former times, who are said to 
 have hesitated about the doctrine, when they would not 
 have hesitated at all if the word ‘ * Conception ’ ’ had 
 been clearly explained in that sense in which now it is 
 universally- received. I do not see how any one who 
 holds with Bull the Catholic doctrine of the supernatur¬ 
 al endowments of our first parents, has fair reason for 
 doubting our doctrine about the Blessed Virgin. It has 
 no reference whatever to her parents, but simply to her 
 own person ; it does but affirm that, together with the 
 nature which she inherited from her parents, that is, 
 her own nature, she had a superadded fulness of grace, 
 and that from the first moment of her existence. Sup¬ 
 pose Kve had stood the trial, and not lost her first 
 grace; and suppose she had eventually had children, 
 those children from the first moment of their existence 
 would, through divine bounty, have received the same 
 privilege that she had ever had ; that is, as she was taken 
 from Adam’s side, in a garment, so to say, of grace, so 
 they in turn would have received what may be called an 
 immaculate conception. They would have then been 
 conceived in grace, as in fact they are conceived in sin. 
 What is there difficult in this doctrine ? What is there 
 
in Her Immaculate Conception . 
 
 55 
 
 unnatural ? Mary may be called, as it were, a daugh¬ 
 ter of Eve unfallen. You believe with us that St. John 
 Baptist had grace given to him three months before his 
 birth, at the time that the Blessed Virgin visited his 
 mother. He accordingly was not immaculately con¬ 
 ceived, because he was alive before grace came to him; 
 but our Eady’s case only differs from his in this respect, 
 that to her the grace of God came, not three months 
 merely before her birth, but from the first moment of 
 her being, as it had been given to Eve. 
 
 But it may be said, How does this enable us to say 
 that she was conceived without orighial sin ? If Angli¬ 
 cans knew what we mean by original sin, they would 
 not ask the question. Our doctrine of original sin is 
 not the same as the Protestant doctrine. “ Original 
 sin,” with us, cannot be called sin, in the mere ordinary 
 sense of the word “ sin ” ; it is a term denoting Adam’s 
 sin as transferred to us, or the state to which Adam’s 
 sin reduces his children ; but by Protestants it seems to 
 be understood as sin, in much the same sense as actual 
 sin. We, with the Fathers, think of it as something 
 negative, Protestants as something positive. Protes¬ 
 tants hold that it is a disease, a radical change of 
 nature, an active poison internally corrupting the soul, 
 infecting its primary elements, and disorganizing it; 
 and they fancy that we ascribe a different nature from 
 ours to the Blessed Virgin, different from that of her 
 parents, and from that of fallen Adam. We hold 
 nothing of the kind ; we consider that in Adam she 
 died, as others; that she was included, together with 
 the whole race, in Adam’s sentence ; that she incurred 
 his debt, as we do ; but that, for the sake of Him who 
 was to redeem her and us upon the Cross, to her the 
 debt was remitted by anticipation, on her the sentence 
 was not carried out, except indeed as regards her 
 
56 
 
 Belief of Catholics 
 
 natural death, for she died when her time came, as 
 others. All this we teach, but we deny that she had 
 original sin ; for by original sin we mean, as I have 
 already said, something negative, viz., this only, the 
 deprivation of that supernatural unmerited grace which 
 Adam and Bve had on their first formation, deprivation 
 and the consequences of deprivation. Mary could not 
 merit, any more than they, the restoration of that 
 grace ; but it was restored to her by God’s free bounty, 
 from the very first moment of her existence, and there- 
 bjq in fact, she never came under the original curse, 
 which consisted in the loss of it. And she had this 
 special privilege in order to fit her to become the 
 Mother of her and our Redeemer, to fit her mentally, 
 spiritually for it; so that, by the aid of the first grace, 
 she might so grow in grace that when the angel came 
 and her Lord was at hand, she might be “ full of 
 grace,” prepared, as far as a creature could be prepared, 
 to receive Him into her bosom. 
 
 I have drawn the doctrine of the Immaculate Con¬ 
 ception, as an immediate inference, from the primitive 
 doctrine that Mary is the second Kve. The argument 
 seems to me conclusive : and, if it has not been uni¬ 
 versally taken as such, this has come to pass, because 
 there has not been a clear understanding among Catho¬ 
 lics what exactly was meant by the “ Immaculate Con¬ 
 ception.” To many it seemed to imply that the 
 Blessed Virgin did not die in Adam, that she did not 
 come under the penalty of the fall, that she was not 
 redeemed, that she was conceived in some way incon¬ 
 sistent with the verse in the Miserere Psalm. If con¬ 
 troversy had in earlier days so cleared the subject as 
 to make it plain to all, that the doctrine meant nothing 
 else than that in fact in her case the general sentence 
 on mankind was not carried out, and that, by means of 
 
in Her Immaculate Conception, 
 
 57 
 
 the indwelling in her of divine grace from the first 
 moment of her being (and this is all the decree of 1854 
 has declared), I cannot believe that the doctrine would 
 have ever been opposed; for an instinctive sentiment 
 has led Christians jealously to put the Blessed Mary 
 aside when sin comes into discussion. This is ex¬ 
 pressed in the well-known words of St. Augustine, All 
 have sinned “ except the Holy Virgin Mary, concern¬ 
 ing whom, for the honor of the Lord, I wish no question 
 to be raised at all, when we are treating of sins” (de 
 Nat. et Grat., 42) ; words which, whatever was St. 
 Augustine’s actual occasion of using them—to which 
 you refer, p. 176—certainly, in the spirit which they 
 breathe, are well adapted to convey the notion, that, 
 though her parents had no privilege beyond other 
 parents, she had not personally any part in sin what¬ 
 ever. It is true that several great Fathers of the fourth 
 century do imply or assert that on one or two occasions 
 she did sin venially or showed infirmity. This is the 
 only real objection which I know of; and as I do not 
 wish to pass it over lightly, I propose to consider it at 
 the end of this letter. 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 MARY’S DIGNITY. 
 
 Reflections on Mary’s Historical Position in the 
 Gospels.—What was She in Merit and in Office and 
 as a Model?—Mary’s Exaltation taught by the 
 Vision of the Woman and Child in the Apocalypse. 
 —Antiquity of the Picture and Image of the 
 Virgin and Child.—Brief Exposi i ion of St. John’s 
 Vision.—Concurrent Teaching of Scripture, Tra¬ 
 dition of both East and West, and of the Fathers. 
 
 ND now her dignity. Here let us suppose that our 
 
 1 i. first parents had overcome in their trial; and had 
 gained for their descendants for ever the full possession, 
 as if by right, of the privileges which were promised to 
 their obedience, grace here and glory hereafter. Is it 
 possible that those descendants, pious and happy from 
 age to age in their temporal homes, would have forgot¬ 
 ten their benefactors? Would they not have followed 
 them in thought into the heavens, and gratefully com¬ 
 memorated them on earth ? The history of the tempta¬ 
 tion, the craft of the serpent, their steadfastness in 
 obedience—the loyal vigilance, the sensitive purity of 
 Eve—the great issue, salvation wrought out for all 
 generations, would have been never from their minds, 
 ever welcome to their ears. This would have taken 
 place from the necessity of our nature. Every nation 
 has its mythical hymns and epics about its first fathers 
 
Belief of Catholics in Her Exaltation. 59 
 
 and. its heroes. The great deeds of Charlemagne, 
 Alfred, Coeur de Eion, Eouis the Ninth, Wallace, Joan 
 of Arc, do n6t die ; and though their persons are gone 
 from us, we make much of their names. Milton’s 
 Adam, after his fall, understands the force of this law, 
 and shrinks from the prospect of its operation. 
 
 “ Who of all ages to succeed, but, feeling 
 The evil on him brought by me, will curse 
 My head ? Ill fare our ancestor impure: 
 
 For this we may thank Adam.” 
 
 If this anticipation of the first man has not been ful¬ 
 filled in the event, it is owing to the exigencies of our 
 penal life, our state of perpetual change, and the igno¬ 
 rance and unbelief incurred by the fall; also because, 
 fallen as we are, still from the hopefulness of our na¬ 
 ture, w r e feel more pride,in our national great men, than 
 dejection at our national misfortunes. Much more then 
 in the great kingdom and people of God; the Saints are 
 ever in our sight, and not as mere ineffectual ghosts or 
 dim memories, but as if present bodily in their past 
 selves. It is said of them, “Their works do follow 
 them “ ; what they w 7 ere here, such are they in heaven 
 and in the Church. As we call them by their earthly 
 names, so we contemplate them in their earthly charac¬ 
 ters and histories. Their acts, callings, and relations 
 below are types and anticipations of their present 
 mission above. Even in the case of our Eord Himself, 
 whose native home is the eternal heavens, it is said of 
 Him in His state of glory, that He is a “Priest for 
 ever” ; and when He comes again, He will be recog¬ 
 nized by' those who pierced Him as being the very 
 same that Fie was on earth. The only question is, 
 whether the Blessed Virgin had a part, a real part, in 
 the economy of grace ; whether, when she was 011 earth, 
 
6 o 
 
 Belief of Catholics 
 
 she secured by her deeds any claim on our memories ; 
 for, if she did, it is impossible we should put her away 
 from us, merely because she has gone'hence, and 
 should not look at her still according to the measure of 
 her earthly history, with gratitude and expectation. 
 If, as St. Irenaeus says, she acted the part of an Advo¬ 
 cate, a friend in need, even in her mortal life; if, as St. 
 Jerome and St. Ambrose says, she was on earth the 
 great pattern of virgins, if she had a meritorious share 
 in bringing about our redemption, if her maternity was 
 gained by her faith and obedience, if her Divine Son 
 was subject to her, and if she stood by the Cross with a 
 mother’s heart and drank in to the full those sufferings 
 which it was her portion to gaze upon, it is impossible 
 that we should not associate these characteristics of her 
 life on earth with her present state of blessedness ; and 
 this surely she anticipated, when she said in her hymn 
 that all “ generations should call her blessed.” 
 
 I am aware that, in thus speaking, I am following a 
 line of thought which is rather a meditation than an 
 argument in controversy, and I shall not carry it 
 further; but still, before turning to other topics, it is to 
 the point to inquire, whether the popular astonishment, 
 excited by our belief in the Blessed Virgin’s present 
 dignity, does not arise from the circumstance that the 
 bulk of men, engaged in matters of this world, have 
 never calmly considered her historical position in the 
 Gospels, so as rightly to realize (if I may use the word 
 a second time) what that position imports. I do not 
 claim for the generality of Catholics any greater powers 
 of reflection upon the objects of their faith than Pro¬ 
 testants commonlj T have; but, putting the run of 
 Catholics aside, there is a sufficient number of religious 
 men among us who, instead of expending their de¬ 
 votional energies—as so many serious Protestants do^ 
 
in Her Exaltation. 
 
 61 
 
 on abstract doctrines, such as justification by faith only, 
 or the sufficiency of Holy Scripture, employ themselves 
 in the contemplation of Scripture facts, and bring out 
 before their minds in a tangible form the doctrines in¬ 
 volved in them, and give such a substance and color to 
 the sacred history as to influence their brethren ; and 
 their brethren, though superficial themselves, are 
 drawn by their Catholic instinct to accept conclusions 
 which they could not indeed themselves have elicited, 
 but which, when elicited, they feel to be true. How¬ 
 ever, it would be out of place to pursue this course of 
 reasoning here; and instead of doing so, I shall take 
 what perhaps you may think a very bold step—I shall 
 find the doctrine of our Cady’s present exaltation in 
 Scripture. 
 
 I mean to find it in the vision of the Woman and 
 Child in the twelfth chapter of the Apocalypse; * now 
 here two objections will be made to me at once : first, 
 that such an interpretation is but poorly supported by 
 the Fathers, and secondly, that in ascribing such a 
 picture of the Madonna—as it may be called—to the 
 Apostolic age, I am committing an anachronism. 
 
 As to the former of these objections, I answer as 
 follows : Christians have never gone to Scripture for 
 proof of their doctrines, till there was actual need, from 
 the pressure of controversy; if in those times the 
 Blessed Virgin’s dignity was unchallenged on all hands, 
 as a matter of doctrine, Scripture, as far as its argumen¬ 
 tative matter was concerned, was likely to remain a 
 sealed book to them. Thus, to take an instance in 
 point, the Catholic party in the Anglican Church—say, 
 the Nonjurors—unable by their theory of religion 
 simply to take their stand on Tradition, and distressed 
 
 * Vid . Essay on Doctr. Development, p. 384, and Bishop Ullathorne’s 
 work on the Immaculate Conception, p. 77. 
 
62 
 
 Belief of Catholics 
 
 for proof of their doctrines, had their eyes sharpened to 
 scrutinize and to understand in many places the letter of 
 Holy Scripture, which to others brought no instruction. 
 And the peculiarity of their interpretations is this, that 
 these have in themselves great logical cogency, yet are 
 but faintly supported by patristical commentators. 
 Such is the use of the word poiein or facere in our Lord’s 
 institution of the Holy Eucharist, which, by a reference 
 to the Old Testament, is found to be a word of sacrifice. 
 Such again is leitoyrgoynton in the passage in the Acts 
 “ As they ministered to the Lord and fasted,” which 
 again is a sacerdotal term. And such the passage in 
 Rom. xv. 16, in which several terms are used which 
 have an allusion to the sacrificial Eucharistic rite. 
 Such too is St. Paul’s repeated message to the household 
 of Onesiphorus, with no mention of Onesiphorus him¬ 
 self, but in one place with the addition of a prayer that 
 “ he might find mercy of the Lord ” in the day of judg¬ 
 ment, which, taking into account its wording and the 
 known usage of the first centuries, we can hardly deny 
 is a prayer for his soul. Other texts there are, which 
 ought to find a place in ancient controversies, and the 
 omission of which by the Fathers affords matter for 
 more surprise, those, for instance, which, according to 
 Middleton’s rule, are real proofs of our Lord’s divinity, 
 and yet are passed over by Catholic disputants; for 
 these bear upon a then existing controversy of the first 
 moment, and of the most urgent exigency. 
 
 As to the second objection which I have supposed, so 
 far from allowing it, I consider that it is built upon a 
 mere imaginary fact, and that the truth of the matter 
 lies in the very contrary direction. The Virgin and 
 Child is not a mere modern idea ; on the contrary, it is 
 represented again and again, as every visitor to Rome is 
 aware, in the paintings of the Catacombs. Mary is 
 

 in Her Exaltation. 
 
 ^3 
 
 there drawn with the Divine Infant in her lap, she with 
 hands extended in prayer, He with His hand in the at¬ 
 titude of blessing. No representation can more forcibly 
 convey the doctrine of the high dignity of the Mother, 
 and, I will add, of her influence with her Son. Why 
 should the memory of His time of subjection be so dear 
 to Christians, and so carefully preserved ? The only 
 question to be determined is the precise date of these 
 remarkable monuments of the first age of Christianity. 
 That they belong to the centuries of what Anglicans 
 call the “ undivided Church ” is certain ; but lately in¬ 
 vestigations have been pursued, which place some of 
 them at an earlier date than any one anticipated as pos¬ 
 sible. I am not in a position to quote largely from the 
 works of the Cavaliere de Rossi, who has thrown so 
 much light upon the subject; but I have his “ Imagini 
 Scelte,” published in 1863, and they are sufficient for 
 my purpose. In this work he has gn r en us from the 
 Catacombs various representations of the Virgin and 
 Child; the latest of these belong to the early part of 
 the fourth century, but the earliest he believes to be re¬ 
 ferable to the very age of the Apostles. He comes to 
 this conclusion from the style and the skill of its com¬ 
 position, and from the history, locality, and existing in¬ 
 scriptions of the subterranean in which it is found. 
 However he does not go so far as to insist upon so early 
 a date; yet the utmost concession he makes is to refer 
 the painting to the era of the first Antonines—that is, to 
 a date within half a century of the death of St. John. 
 I consider then, that, as you would use in controversy 
 with Protestants, and fairly, the traditional doctrine of 
 the Church in early times, as an explanation of a parti¬ 
 cular passage of Scripture, or at least as a suggestion, 
 or as a defence, of the sense which you may wish to put 
 upon it, quite apart from the question whether your in- 
 
64 
 
 Belief of Catholics 
 
 terpretation itself is directly traditional, so it is lawful 
 for me, though I have not the positive words of the 
 Fathers on my side, to shelter my own interpretation of 
 the Apostle’s vision in the Apocalypse under the fact of 
 the extant pictures of Mother and Child in the Roman 
 Catacombs. Again, there is another principle of Scrip¬ 
 ture interpretation which we should hold as well as you, 
 viz., when we speak of a doctrine being contained in 
 Scripture, we do not necessarily mean that it is con¬ 
 tained there in direct categorical terms, but that there 
 is no satisfactory way of accounting for the language 
 and expressions of the sacred writers, concerning the 
 subject-matter in question, except to suppose that they 
 held concerning it the opinion which we hold, that they 
 would not have spoken as they have spoken, u?iless they 
 held it. For myself I have ever felt the truth of this 
 principle, as regards the Scripture proof of the Holy 
 Trinity ; I should not have found out that doctrine in 
 the sacred text without previous traditional teaching ; 
 but, when once it is suggested from without, it com¬ 
 mends itself as the one true interpretation, from its ap¬ 
 positeness, because no other view of doctrine, which 
 can be ascribed to the inspired writers, so happily solves 
 the obscurities and seeming inconsistencies of their 
 teaching. And now to apply what I have been saying 
 to the passage in the Apocalypse. 
 
 If there is an Apostle on whom, h priori , our eyes 
 would be fixed, as likely to teach us about the Blessed 
 Virgin, it is St. John, to whom she was committed by 
 our Ford on the Cross ; with whom, as tradition goes, 
 she lived at Ephesus till she was taken away. This an¬ 
 ticipation is confirmed a posteriori; for, as I have said 
 above, one of the earliest and fullest of our informants 
 concerning her dignity, as being the second Eve, is 
 Irenaeus, who came to Lyons from Asia Minor, and had 
 
in Her Exaltation. 
 
 65 
 
 been taught by the immediate disciples of St. John. 
 The Apostle’s vision is as follows : 
 
 ‘ ‘ A great sign appeared in heaven: A woman clothed 
 with the Sun, and the Moon under her feet; and on her 
 head a crown of twelve stars. And being with child, 
 she cried travailing in birth, and was in pain to be de¬ 
 livered. And there was seen another sign in heaven; 
 and behold a great red dragon. . . . And the 
 
 dragon stood before the woman who was ready to be de¬ 
 livered, that, when she should be delivered, he might 
 devour her son. And she brought forth a man child, 
 who was to rule all nations with an iron rod; and her 
 son was taken up to God and to His throne. And the 
 woman fled into the wilderness.” Now I do not deny, 
 of course, that under the image of the Woman, the 
 Church is signified ; but what I would maintain is this, 
 that the holy Apostle would not have spoken of the 
 Church under this particular image, unless there had 
 existed a blessed Virgin Mary, who was exalted on 
 high, and the object of veneration to all the faithful. 
 
 No one doubts that the “ man-child ” spoken of is an 
 allusion to our Tord : why then is not “the woman” 
 an allusion to His Mother? This surely is the obvious 
 sense of the words ; of course they have a further sense 
 also, which is the scope of the image ; doubtless the 
 Child represents the children of the Church, and doubt¬ 
 less the woman represents the Church ; this, I grant, is 
 the real or direct sense, but what is the sense of the 
 symbol under which that real sense is conveyed ? who 
 are the Woman and the Child? I answer, they are not 
 personifications but Persons. This is true of the Child, 
 therefore it is true of the Woman. 
 
 But again : not only Mother and Child, but a serpent 
 is introduced into the vision. Such a meeting of man, 
 woman, and serpent has not been found in Scripture 
 
66 
 
 Belief of Catholics 
 
 since the beginning of Scripture, and now it is found 
 in its end. Moreover, in the passage in the Apocalypse, 
 as if to supply, before Scripture came to an end, what 
 was wanting in its beginning, we are told, and for the 
 first time, that the serpent in Paradise was the evil 
 spirit. If the dragon of St. John is the same as the 
 serpent of Moses, and the man-child is “ the seed of the 
 woman,” why is not the woman herself she whose seed 
 the man-child is? And, if the first woman is not an 
 allegory, why is the second ? If the first woman is Eve, 
 why is not the second Mary ? 
 
 But this is not all. The image of the woman, ac¬ 
 cording to general Scripture usage, is too bold and pro¬ 
 minent for a mere personification. Scripture is not fond 
 of allegories. We have indeed frequent figures there, 
 as when the sacred writers speak of the arm or sword 
 of the Ford ; and so too when they speak of Jerusalem 
 or Samaria in the feminine ; or of the Church as a bride 
 or as a vine; but they are not much given to dressing 
 up abstract ideas or generalizations in personal attri¬ 
 butes. This is the classical rather than the Scriptural 
 style. Xenophon places Hercules between Virtue and 
 Vice, represented as women; Aeschylus introduces into 
 his drama Force and Violence ; Virgil gives personality 
 to public rumor or Fame, and Plautus to Poverty. So 
 on monuments done in the classical style, we see 
 virtues, vices, rivers, renown, death, and the like, 
 turned into human figures of men and women. Cer¬ 
 tainly I do not deny there are some instances of this 
 method in Scripture, but I say that such poetical com¬ 
 positions are strikingly unlike its usual method. Thus, 
 we at once feel the difference from Scripture, when we 
 betake ourselves to the Pastor of Hennas, and find the 
 Church a woman; to St. Methodius, and find Virtue a ' 
 woman; and to St. Gregory’s poem, and find Virginity 
 
in Her Exaltation. 
 
 67 
 
 again a woman. Scripture deals with types rather than 
 personifications. Israel stands for the chosen people, 
 David for Christ, Jerusalem for heaven. Consider the 
 remarkable representations, dramatic I may call them, 
 in Jeremiah, Ezechiel, and Hosea : predictions, threat- 
 enings, and promises are acted out by those Prophets. 
 Ezechiel is commanded to shave his head, and to divide 
 and scatter his hair; and Ahias tears his garment, and 
 gives ten out of twelve parts of it to Jeroboam. So too 
 the structure of the imagery in the Apocalypse is not a 
 mere allegorical creation, but is founded on the Jewish 
 ritual. In like manner our Eord’s bodily cures are 
 visible types of the power of His grace upon the soul; 
 and His prophecy of the last day is conveyed under 
 that of the fall of Jerusalem. Even His parables are not 
 simply ideal, but relations of occurrences, which did or 
 might take place, under which was conveyed a spiritual 
 meaning. The description of Wisdom in the Proverbs 
 and other sacred books has brought out the instinct of 
 commentators in this respect. They felt that Wisdom 
 could not be a mere personification, and they deter¬ 
 mined that it was our Eord ; and the later-written of 
 these books, by their own more definite language, 
 warranted that interpretation. Then, when it was 
 found that the Arians used it in derogation of our 
 Eord’s divinity, still, unable to tolerate the notion of a 
 mere allegory, commentators applied the description to 
 the Blessed Virgin. Coming back then to the Apoca¬ 
 lyptic vision, I ask, If the Woman ought to be some 
 real person, who can it be whom the Apostle saw, and 
 intends, and delineates but that same Great Mother to 
 whom the chapters in the Proverbs are accommodated ? 
 And let it be observed, moreover, that in this passage, 
 from the allusion made in it to the history of the fall, 
 Mary may be said still to be represented under the 
 
 i/ 
 
68 
 
 Belief of Catholics in Her Exaltation. 
 
 character of the second Eve. I make a farther remark : 
 it is sometimes asked, Why do not the sacred writers 
 mention our Lady’s greatness? I answer, she was, or 
 may have been, alive when the Apostles and Evangel¬ 
 ists wrote ; there was just one book of Scripture cer¬ 
 tainly written after her death, and that book does (so to 
 say) canonize and crown her. 
 
 But if all this be so, if it is really the Blessed Virgin 
 whom Scripture represents as clothed with the sun, 
 crowned with the stars of heaven, and with the moon 
 as her footstool, what height of glory may we not at¬ 
 tribute to her ? And what are we to say of those who, 
 through ignorance, run counter to the voice of Scrip¬ 
 ture, to the testimony of the Fathers, to the traditions 
 of East and West, and speak and act contemptuously 
 towards her whom her Lord delighteth to honor ? 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 THE MOTHER OF JESUS IS THE MOTHER 
 
 OF GOD. 
 
 The Title of “ Theotocos ” among the Greek Fathers.— 
 Used by the General Council of Ephesus to ex¬ 
 press the Divinity of Christ.—Universally used in 
 
 THE ANCIENT CHURCH.—QUOTATIONS FROM MANY 
 
 Fathers of both West and East. 
 
 "V OW I have said all I mean to say on what I have 
 called the rudimental teaching of Antiquity about 
 the Blessed Virgin; but after all I have not insisted 
 on the highest view of her prerogatives, which the 
 Fathers have taught us. You, my dear friend, who 
 know so well the ancient controversies and Councils, 
 may have been surprised why I should not have yet 
 spoken of her as the Theotocos ; but I wished to show 
 on how broad a basis her dignity rests, independent of 
 that wonderful title; and again I have been loath to en¬ 
 large upon the force of a word, which is rather matter 
 for devotional thought than for polemical dispute. 
 However, 1 might as well not write to you at all, as 
 altogether be silent upon it. 
 
 It is then an integral portion of the Faith fixed by 
 Ecumenical Council, a portion of it which you hold as 
 well as I, that the Blessed Virgin is Theotocos, Deipara, 
 or Mother of God ; and this word, when thus used, 
 carries with it no admixture of rhetoric, no taint of 
 
 <39 
 
70 
 
 Belief of Catholics 
 
 extravagant affection; it has nothing else but a well- 
 weighed, grave, dogmatic sense, which corresponds and 
 is adequate to its sound. It intends to express that 
 God is her Son, as truly as any one of us is the son of 
 his own mother. If this be so, what can be said of any 
 creature whatever, which may not be said of her? 
 what can be said too much, so that it does not com¬ 
 promise the attributes of the Creator? He indeed 
 might have created a being more perfect, more ad¬ 
 mirable, than she is; He might have endued that 
 being, so created, with a richer grant of grace, of 
 power, of blessedness: but in one respect she surpasses 
 all even possible creations, viz., that she is the Mother 
 of her Creator. It is this awful title, which both illus¬ 
 trates and connects together the two prerogatives of 
 Mary, on which I have been lately enlarging, her 
 sanctity and her greatness. It is the issue of her 
 sanctity ; it is the origin of her greatness. What dig¬ 
 nity can be too great to attribute to her who is as closely 
 bound up, as intimately one, with the Eternal Word, as 
 a mother is with a son ? What outfit of sanctity, what 
 fulness and redundance of grace, what exuberance of 
 merits must have been hers, when once we admit the 
 supposition, which the Fathers justify, that her Maker 
 really did regard those merits, and take them into 
 account, when He condescended “ not to abhor the 
 Virgin’s womb ? ” Is it surprising then that on the one 
 hand she should be immaculate in her Conception ? 
 or on the other that she should be honored with an 
 Assumption, and exalted as a‘queen with a crown of 
 twelve stars, with the rulers of day and night to do her 
 service? Men sometimes wonder that we call her 
 Mother of life, of mercy, of salvation ; what are all 
 these titles compared to that one name, Mother of God ? 
 
 I shall say no more about this title here. It is 
 
that She is the Theotocos. 
 
 7 1 
 
 scarcely possible to write of it without diverging into a 
 style of composition unsuited to a letter ; so I will but 
 refer to the history and to instances of its use. 
 
 The title of Theotocos * as ascribed to the Blessed 
 Mary, begins with ecclesiastical writers of a date hardly 
 later than that at which w T e read of her as the second 
 Eve. It first occurs in the works cf Origen (185-254) ; 
 but he, witnessing for Egypt and Palestine, witnesses 
 also that it was in use before his time; for, as Socrates 
 informs us, he “ interpreted how it was to be used, and 
 discussed the question at length” (Hist., vii. 32). 
 Within two centuries of his time (431), in the General 
 Council held against Nestorius, it was made part of 
 the formal dogmatic teaching of the Church. At that 
 time, Theodoret, who from his party connections might 
 have been supposed disinclined to its solemn recog¬ 
 nition, owned that “the ancient and more than ancient 
 heralds of the orthodox faith taught the use of the 
 term according to the Apostolic tradition.” At the 
 same date John of Antioch, the temporary protector of 
 Nestorius, whose heresy lay in the rejection of the 
 term, said : “This title no ecclesiastical teacher has put 
 aside. Those who have used it, are many and eminent; 
 and those who have not used it, have not attacked 
 those who did.” Alexander again, one of the fiercest 
 partisans of Nestorius, witnesses to the use of the word, 
 though he considers it dangerous: “That in festive 
 solemnities,” he says, “or in preaching or teaching, 
 theotocos should be unguardedly said by the orthodox 
 without explanation is no blame, because such state¬ 
 ments were not dogmatic, nor said with evil meaning.” 
 If we look for those Fathers, in the interval between 
 Origen and the Council, to whom Alexander refers as 
 
 * Vid. Oxford Translation of St. Athanasius, pp. 420, 440, 447; and 
 Essay on Doct. Development, pp. 407-409. 
 
72 
 
 Belief of Catholics 
 
 using tlie term, we find among them no less names 
 than Archelaus of Mesopotamia, Eusebius of Palestine, 
 Alexander of Egypt, in the third century; in the 
 fourth, Athanasius, who uses it many times with 
 emphasis; Cyril of Palestine, Gregory Nyssen and 
 Gregory Nazianzen of Cappadocia, Antiochus of Syria, 
 and Ammonius of Thrace : not to refer to the Em¬ 
 peror Julian, who, having no local or ecclesiastical 
 domicile, is a witness for the whole of Christendom. 
 Another and earlier Emperor, Constantine, in his speech 
 before the assembled Bishops at Nicsea, uses the still 
 more explicit title of “ the Virgin Mother of God”; 
 which is also used by Ambrose of Milan, and by 
 Vincent and Cassian in the south of France, and then 
 by St. Eeo. 
 
 So much for the term; it would be tedious to produce 
 the passages of authors who, using or not using the 
 term, convey the idea. “ Our God was carried in the 
 womb of Mary,” says Ignatius, who was martyred a.d. 
 106. “The Word of God,” says Hippolytus, “was 
 carried in that Virgin frame.” “The Maker of all,” 
 says Ampliilochius, “is born of a Virgin.” “She 
 did compass without circumscribing the Sun of justice 
 —the Everlasting is born,” says Chrysostom. “God 
 dwelt in the womb,” says Proclus. “ When thou hear- 
 est that God speaks from the bush,” asks Theodotus,' 
 “in the bush seest thou not the Virgin?” Cassian 
 sa} r s, “ Mary bore her Author.” “ The One God only- 
 begotten,” says Hilary, “ is introduced into the womb 
 of a Virgin.” “The Everlasting,” says Ambrose, 
 “came into the Virgin.” “The closed gate,” says 
 Jerome, “ by which alone the Lord God of Israel enters, 
 is the Virgin Mary.” “ That man from heaven,” says 
 Capriolus, “ is God conceived in the womb.” “He is 
 made in thee,” says St. Augustine, “ who made thee.” 
 
that She is the Theotocos. 
 
 7 3 
 
 This being the faith of the Fathers about the Blessed 
 Virgin, we need not wonder that it should in no long 
 time be transmuted into devotion. No wonder if their 
 language should become unmeasured, when so great a 
 term as ‘ ‘ Mother of God ’ ’ had been formally set down 
 as the safe limit of it. No w T onder if it should be 
 .stronger and stronger as time went on, since only in a 
 long period could the fulness of its import be exhausted. 
 And in matter of fact, and as might be anticipated 
 (with the few exceptions which I have noted above, and 
 which I am to treat of below), the current of thought 
 in those early ages did uniformly tend to make much 
 of the Blessed Virgin and to increase her honors, not to 
 circumscribe them. Little jealousy was shown of her in 
 those times; but, when any such niggardness of affec¬ 
 tion occurred, then one Father or other fell upon the 
 offender, with zeal, not to say with fierceness. Thus 
 St. Jerome inveighs against Helvidius; thus St. 
 Epiphanius denounces Apollinaris, St. Cyril Nestorius, 
 and St. Ambrose Bonosus; on the other hand, each 
 successive insult offered to her by individual adversaries 
 did but bring out more fully the intimate sacred affec¬ 
 tion with which Christendom regarded her. “ She was 
 alone, and wrought the world’s salvation and conceived 
 the redemption of all,” says Ambrose ; * “ she had so 
 great grace, as not only to preserve virginity herself, 
 but to confer it on those whom she visited.” “ She is 
 the rod out of the stem of Jesse,” says St. Jerome, 
 “ and the Eastern gate through which the High-Priest 
 alone goes in and out, which still is ever shut.” “ She 
 is the wise woman,” says Nilus, who “hath clad be¬ 
 lievers, from the fleece of the Lamb born of her, with 
 the clothing of incorruption, and delivered them from 
 their spiritual nakedness.” “ She is the mother of lire, 
 
 * Essay on Doctr. Dev., ubisupr. 
 
74 Belief of Catholics that She is the Tlieotocos. 
 
 of beauty, of majesty, the morning star,” according 
 to Antiochus. “The mystical new heavens,” “the 
 heavens carrying the Divinity,” “the fruitful vine,” 
 “by whom we are translated from death unto life,” 
 according to St. Ephrem. “The manna, which is 
 delicate, bright, sweet, and virgin, which, as though 
 coming from heaven, has poured down on all the people 
 of the Churches a food pleasanter than honey,” accord¬ 
 ing to St. Maximus. 
 
 Basil of Seleucia says, that “she shines out above 
 all the martyrs as the sun above the stars, and that she 
 mediates between God and men.” “ Run through all 
 creation in your thought,” says Proclus, “and see if 
 there be one equal or superior to the Holy Virgin, 
 Mother of God.” “ Hail, Mother, clad in light, of the 
 light which sets not,” says Theodotus, or some one else 
 at Ephesus; “hail, all undefiled mother of holiness; 
 hail, most pellucid fountain of the life-giving stream.” 
 And St. Cyril too at Ephesus, “ Hail, Mary, Mother of 
 God, majestic common-treasure of the whole world, the 
 lamp unquenchable, the crown of virginity, the sceptre 
 of orthodoxy, the indissoluble temple, the dwelling of 
 the Illimitable, Mother and Virgin, through whom He 
 in the holy gospels is called blessed who eometh in the 
 name of the Eord, . . through whom the Holy 
 
 Trinity is sanctified, . . through whom Angels and 
 
 Archangels.rejoice, devils are put to flight, . . and 
 
 the fallen creature is received up into the heavens, etc., 
 etc.”* Such is but a portion of the panegyrical lan¬ 
 guage which St. Cyril used in the third Ecumenical 
 Council. 
 
 *Opp., t. 6, p. 355. 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 MARY’S INTERCESSORY POWER. 
 
 Union in Intercessory Prayer among the Living is a 
 vital Characteristic of the Christian Church.— 
 Is THIS SPIRITUAL BOND TO CEASE WITH LIFE ?—SCRIP¬ 
 TURE and Christian Aniiquity answer in the 
 Negative.—The Vital Force of Intercession is 
 Sanctity.—Proved by many Scripture Texts.—The 
 Mother of Jesus being the holiest of Creatures 
 is the foremost of Intercessors with Christ.— 
 Growth of Devotion to Mary in proportion to 
 
 REALIZATION IN THE CHURCH OF HER DIGNITY AND 
 
 Sanctity.—The miraculous Creed of St. Gregory 
 Thaumaturgus.—Special Value in this Age of the 
 
 REVEALED DOCTRINE AND EVENTS IN WHICH MARY 
 HAS A PART, AND OF HER INTERCESSION. 
 
 I MUST not close my review of the Catholic doctrine 
 concerning the Blessed Virgin without directly 
 speaking of her intercessory power, though I have inci-* 
 dentally made mention of it already. It is the immedi¬ 
 ate result of two truths, neither of which you dispute; 
 first, that “it is good and useful,” as the Council of 
 Trent says, “ suppliantly to invoke the Saints and to 
 have recourse to their prayers ’ ’ ; and secondly, that the 
 Blessed Mary is singularly dear to her Son and singu¬ 
 larly exalted in sanctity and glory. However, at the 
 risk of becoming didactic, I will state somewhat more 
 fully the grounds on which it rests. 
 
 75 
 
76 
 
 Belief of Catholics 
 
 To a candid pagan it must have been one of the most 
 remarkable points of Christianity, on its first appear¬ 
 ance, that the observance of prayer formed so vital a 
 part of its organization; and that, though its members 
 were scattered all over the world, and its rulers and 
 subjects had so little opportunity of correlative action, 
 yet they, one and all, found the solace of a spiritual 
 intercourse and a real bond of union in the practice of 
 mutual intercession. Prayer indeed is the very essence 
 of all religion; but in the heathen religions it was 
 either public or personal ; it was a state ordinance, or a 
 selfish expedient for the attainment of certain tangible, 
 temporal goods. Very different from this was its exer¬ 
 cise among Christians, who were thereby knit together 
 in one body, different, as they vrere, in races, ranks, 
 and habits, distant from each other in country, and 
 helpless amid hostile populations. Yet it proved suffi¬ 
 cient for its purpose. Christians could not correspond ; 
 they could not combine; but they could pray one for 
 another. Even their public prayers partook of this 
 character of intercession ; for to pray for the welfare of 
 the whole Church was in fact a prayer for all the classes 
 of men and all the individuals of which it was com¬ 
 posed. It was in prayer that the Church was founded. 
 For ten days all the Apostles “ persevered with one mind 
 in prayer and supplication, with the women, and Mary 
 the Mother of Jesus, and with his brethren.” Then 
 again at Pentecost “ they were all with one mind in one 
 place” ; and the converts then made are said to have 
 ‘‘persevered in prayer.” And when, after a while, St. 
 Peter was seized and put in prison with a view to his 
 being put to death, ‘‘prayer was made without ceas¬ 
 ing ’ ’ by the Church of God for him; and, when the 
 Angel released him, he took refuge in a house ‘‘where 
 many were gathered together in prayer,” 
 
in Her Intercessory Power. 
 
 77 
 
 We are so accustomed to these passages as hardly to 
 be able to do justice to their singular significance ; and 
 they are followed up by various passages of the Apos¬ 
 tolic Epistles. St. Paul enjoins his brethren to “pray 
 with all prayer and supplication at all times in the 
 Spirit, with all instance and supplication for all saints,” 
 to “pray in every place,” “to make supplication, 
 prayers, intercessions, giving of thanks, for all men.” 
 And in his own person he ‘ ‘ ceases not to give thanks 
 for them, commemorating them in his prayers,” and 
 ‘ ‘ always in all his prayers making supplication for 
 them all with joy.” 
 
 Now, was this spiritual bond to cease with life ? or 
 had Christians similar duties to their brethren de¬ 
 parted? From the witness of the early ages of the 
 Church, it appears that they had; and you, and those 
 who agree with you, would be the last to deny that 
 they were then in the practice of praying, as for the liv¬ 
 ing, so for those also who had passed into the interme¬ 
 diate state between earth and heaven. Did the sacred 
 communion extend further still, on to the inhabitants 
 of heaven itself? Here too you agree with us, for you 
 have adopted in your volume the words of the Council 
 of Trent which I have quoted above. But now we are 
 brought to a higher order of thought. 
 
 It would be preposterous to pray for those who are 
 already in glory ; but at least they can pray for us, and 
 we can ask their prayers, and in the Apocalypse at 
 least Angels are introduced both sending us their bless¬ 
 ing and offering up our prayers before the Divine 
 Presence. We read there of an angel who “ came and 
 stood before the altar, having a golden censer ’ ’ ; and 
 “ there was given to him much incense, that he should 
 offer of the prayers of all saints upon the golden altar 
 which is before the Throne of God.” On this occasion, 
 
Belief of Catholics 
 
 78 
 
 surely the Angel performed the part of a great Interces¬ 
 sor or Mediator above for the children of the Church 
 Militant below. Again, in the beginning of the same 
 book, the sacred writer goes so far as to speak of 
 “grace and peace” coming to us, not only from the 
 Almighty, “but from the seven Spirits that are before 
 His throne,” thus associating the Eternal with the 
 ministers of His mercies; and this carries us on to the 
 remarkable passage of St. Justin, one of the earliest 
 Fathers, who, in his Apology, says, “To Him (God), 
 and His Son who came from Him and taught us these 
 things, and the host of the other good Angels who fol¬ 
 low and resemble Him, and the Prophetic Spirit, we 
 pay veneration and homage.” Further, in the Epistle 
 to the Hebrews, St. Paul introduces, not only Angels, 
 but “the spirits of the just” into the sacred com¬ 
 munion: “Ye have come to Mount Zion, to the hea¬ 
 venly Jerusalem, to myriads of angels, to God the Judge 
 of all, to the spirits of the just made perfect, and to 
 Jesus the Mediator of the New Testament.” What 
 can be meant by having ‘ ‘ come to the spirits of the 
 just,” unless in some way or other they do us good, 
 whether by blessing or by aiding us ?—that is, in a word, 
 to speak correctly, by praying for us, for it is surely by 
 prayer that the creature above is able to bless and aid 
 the creature below. 
 
 Intercession thus being a first principle of the 
 Church’s life, next it is certain again, that the vital 
 force of that intercession, as an availing power, is 
 (according to the will of God) sanctity. This seems 
 to be suggested by a passage of St. Paul, in which the 
 Supreme Intercessor is said to be “the Spirit”—“the 
 Spirit Himself maketh intercession for us ; He maketh 
 intercession for the saints according to God.” And, 
 indeed, the truth thus implied is expressly brought out 
 
in Her Intercessory Power . 
 
 79 
 
 for us in other parts of Scripture, in the form both of 
 doctrine and of example. The words of the man born 
 blind speak the common-sense of nature : “if any man 
 be a worshipper of God, him He heareth.” And Apos¬ 
 tles confirm them : “ the prayer of a just man availeth 
 much,” and “ whatever we ask, we receive, because we 
 keep his commandments.” Then, as for examples, we 
 read of the Almighty’s revealing to Abraham and 
 Moses beforehand His purposes of wrath, in order that 
 they by their intercessions might avert its execution. 
 To the friends of Job it was said, “My servant Job 
 shall pray for you; his face I will accept.” Klias by 
 his prayer shut and opened the heavens. Elsewhere 
 we read of“Jeremias, Moses, and Samuel”; and of 
 “Noe, Daniel, and Job,” as being great mediators be¬ 
 tween God and His people. One instance is given us, 
 which testifies the continuance of this high office 
 beyond this life. Eazarus, in the parable, is seen in 
 Abraham’s bosom. It is usual to pass over this strik¬ 
 ing passage with the remark that it is a Jewish mode of 
 speech ; whereas, Jewish belief or not, it is recognized 
 and sanctioned by our Lord Himself. What do Catho¬ 
 lics teach about the Blessed Virgin more wonderful 
 than this ? If Abraham, not yet ascended on high, had 
 charge of Lazarus, what offence is it to affirm the like 
 of her, who was not merely as Abraham, “ the friend,” 
 but was the very ‘ ‘ Mother of God ’ ’ ? 
 
 It may be added, that, though, if sanctity was want¬ 
 ing, it availed nothing for influence with our Lord to 
 be one of His company, still, as the Gospel shows, He 
 on various occasions actually did allow those who were 
 near Him to be the channels of introducing supplicants 
 to Him or of gaining miracles from Him, as in the in¬ 
 stance of the miracle of the loaves ; and if on one occa¬ 
 sion He seems to repel His Mother, when she told Him 
 
8o 
 
 Belief of Catholics 
 
 that wine was wanting for the guests at the marriage 
 feast, it is obvious to remark on it, that, by saying that 
 she was then separated from Him (“ What have I to do 
 with thee?”) because His hour was not yet come, He 
 implied, that when that hour was come, such separation 
 would be at an end. Moreover, in fact He did at her 
 intercession work the miracle to which ner words pointed. 
 
 I consider it impossible then, for those who believe 
 the Church to be one vast body in heaven and on earth, 
 in which every holy creature of God has his place, and 
 of which prayer is the life, when once they recognize 
 the sanctity and dignity of the Blessed Virgin, not to 
 perceive immediately, that her office above is one of 
 perpetual intercession for the faithful militant, and that 
 our very relation to her must be that of clients to a 
 patron, and that, in the eternal enmity which exists 
 between the woman and the serpent, while the serpent’s 
 strength lies in being the Tempter, the weapon of the 
 Second Eve and Mother of God is prayer. 
 
 As then these ideas of her sanctity and dignity 
 gradually penetrated the mind of Christendom, so did 
 that of her intercessory power follow close upon them 
 and with them. From the earliest times that mediation 
 is symbolized in those representations of her with up¬ 
 lifted hands, which, whether in plaster or in glass, are 
 still extant in Rome, that Church, as St. Irenseus says, 
 with which “every Church, that is, the faithful from 
 every side, must agree, because of its more powerful 
 principality” ; “ into which,” as Tertullian adds, “the 
 Apostles poured out, together with their blood, their 
 whole doctrine.” As far indeed as existing documents 
 are concerned, I know of no instance to my purpose 
 earlier than a.d. 234, but it is a very remarkable one; 
 and, though it*has been often quoted in the controversy, 
 an argument is not weaker for frequent use. 
 
in Her Intercessory Power . 
 
 81 
 
 St. Gregory Nyssen,* then, a native of Cappadocia in 
 the fourth century, relates that his namesake, Bishop 
 of Neo-Caesarea in Pontus, surnamed Thaumaturgus, in 
 the century preceding, shortly before he was called to 
 the priesthood, received in a vision a Creed, which is 
 still extant, from the Blessed Mary at the hands of St. 
 John. The account runs thus : He was deeply ponder¬ 
 ing theological doctrine, which the heretics of the day 
 depraved. “ In such thoughts,” says his namesake of 
 Nyssa, “ he was passing the night, when one appeared, 
 as if in human form, aged in appearance, saintly in the 
 fashion of his garments, and very venerable both in 
 grace of countenance and general mien. Amazed at the 
 sight, he started from his bed, and asked who it was, 
 and why he came ; but, on the other calming the per¬ 
 turbation of his mind with his gentle voice, and saying 
 he had appeared to him by divine command on account 
 of his doubts, in order that the truth of the orthodox 
 faith might be revealed to him, he took courage at the 
 word, and regarded him with a mixture of joy and 
 fright. Then, on his stretching his hand straight for¬ 
 ward and pointing with his fingers at something on one 
 side, he followed with his eyes the extended hand, and 
 saw another appearance opposite to the former, in shape 
 of a woman, but more than human. . . . When 
 
 his eyes could not bear the apparition, he heard them 
 conversing together on the subject of his doubts; and 
 thereby not only gained a true knowledge of the faith, 
 but learned their names as they addressed each other 
 by their respective appellations. And thus he is said to 
 have heard the person in woman’s shape bid ‘John the 
 Evangelist ’ disclose to the young man the mystery of 
 godliness ; and he answered that he was ready to com¬ 
 ply in this matter with the wish of ‘ the Mother of the 
 
 * Vtd . Essay on Doctr. Dev., p. 386. 
 
82 Belief of Catholics in Her Intercessory Power. 
 
 Lord,’ and enunciated a formulary, well-turned and 
 complete, and so vanished. He, on the other hand, 
 immediately committed to writing that divine teaching 
 of his mystagogue, and henceforth preached in the 
 Church according to that form, and bequeathed to 
 posterity, as an inheritance, that heavenly teaching, by 
 means of which his people are instructed down to this 
 day, being preserved from all heretical evil.” He pro¬ 
 ceeds to rehearse the Creed thus given, “ There is One 
 God, Father of a Living Word,” etc. Bull, after 
 quoting it in his work on the Nicene Faith, alludes to 
 this history of its origin, and adds, ‘‘No one should 
 think it incredible that such a providence should befall 
 a man whose whole life was conspicuous for revelations 
 and miracles, as all ecclesiastical writers who have 
 mentioned him (and who has not?) witness with one 
 voice.” 
 
 Here our Lady is represented as rescuing a holy soul 
 from intellectual error. This leads me to a further 
 reflection. You seem, in one place of your volume, to 
 object to the Antiphon in which it is said of her “ All 
 heresies thou hast destroyed alone.” Surely the truth 
 of it is verified in this age, as in former times, and 
 especially by the doctrine concerning her on which I 
 have been dwelling. She is the great exemplar of 
 prayer in a generation which emphatically denies the 
 power of prayer in toto , which determines that fatal 
 laws govern the universe, that there cannot be any 
 direct communication between earth and heaven, that 
 God cannot visit His own earth, and that man cannot 
 influence His providence. 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 
 BELIEF OF CATHOLICS AS COLORED BY 
 THEIR DEVOTION. 
 
 Rule to be followed in criticising Devotional Prac- 
 tices.—Not to be held to abstract Rules of 
 Propriety any more than Love Letters.—" The 
 Religion of the Multitude is ever Vulgar and 
 Abnormal.”—Logic is overtaxed in trying to fol¬ 
 low AND CONTROL DEVOTIONAL INSTINCTS.—CONTRAST 
 
 between Jesus and Mary as Centres of Devotion¬ 
 al Attraction.—The Cause of Devotion to Mary 
 is God’s Act in making Her the Mother of the 
 Incarnate Word.—Influence of the Arian Con¬ 
 troversy on Devotion to Mary. 
 
 I CANNOT help hoping that your own reading of the 
 Fathers will on the whole bear me out in the above 
 account of their teaching concerning the Blessed Virgin. 
 Anglicans seem to me simply to overlook the strength 
 of the argument adducible from the works of those 
 anoient doctors in our favor; and they open the attack 
 upon our mediaeval and modern writers, careless of 
 leaving a host of primitive opponents in their rear. I 
 do not include you among such Anglicans, as you know 
 what the Fathers assert; but, if so, have you not, my 
 dear friend, been unjust to yourself in your recent 
 volume, and made far too much of the differences 
 which exist between Anglicans and us on this particu¬ 
 lar point? It is the office of an Irenicon to smooth 
 difficulties ; I shall be pleased if I succeed in removing 
 
 some of yours. Let the public judge between us here. 
 
 83 
 
84 Belief of Catholics about the Blessed Virgin 
 
 Had you happened in your volume to introduce your 
 notice of our teaching about the Blessed Virgin, with a 
 notice of the teaching of the Fathers concerning her, 
 which you follow, ordinary men would have considered 
 that there was not much to choose between you and us. 
 Though you appealed ever so much, in your defence, to 
 the authority of the “undivided Church,” they would 
 have said that you, who had such high notions of the 
 Blessed Mary, were one of the last men who had a right 
 to acct se us of quasi-idolatry. When they found you 
 with tl e Fathers calling her Mother of God, Second 
 Eve, a ad Mother of all Eiving, the Mother of Life, the 
 Morning Star, the Mystical New Heaven, the Sceptre 
 of Orthodoxy, the All-undefiled Mother of Holiness, 
 and the like, they would have deemed it a poor com¬ 
 pensation for such language, that you protested against 
 her being called a Co-redemptress or a Priestess. And, 
 if the/ were violent Protestants, they would not have 
 read you with the relish and gratitude with which, as 
 it is, they have perhaps accepted your testimony against 
 us. Not that they would have been altogether fair in 
 their view of you; on the contrary I think there is a 
 real difference between what you protest against, and 
 what with the Fathers you hold; but unread men of 
 the world form a broad practical judgment of the 
 things which come before them, and they would have 
 felt in this case that they had the same right to be 
 shocked at you, as you have to be shocked at us; and 
 further, which is the point to which I am coming, they 
 would have said, that, granting some of our modern 
 writers go beyond the Fathers in this matter, still the 
 line cannot be logically drawn between the teaching 
 of the Fathers concerning the Blessed Virgin and our 
 own. This view of the matter seems to me true and 
 important; I do not think the line can be satisfac- 
 
85 
 
 Colored by their Devotion to Her. 
 
 torily drawn, and to this point I shall now direct my 
 attention. 
 
 It is impossible, I say, in a doctrine like this, to draw 
 the line cleanly between truth and error, right and 
 wrong. This is ever the case in concrete matters, 
 which have life. Life in this world is motion, and 
 involves a continual process of change. Living things 
 grow into their perfection, into their decline, into their 
 death. No rule of art will suffice to stop the operation 
 of this natural law, whether in the material world or in 
 the human mind. We can indeed encounter disorders, 
 when they occur, by external antagonism and remedies; 
 but we cannot eradicate the process itself, out of which 
 they arise. Life has the same right to decay as it has 
 to wax strong. This is specially the case with great 
 ideas. You may stifle them; or you may refuse them 
 elbow-room; or again, you may torment them with 
 your continual meddling; or you may let them have 
 free course and range, and be content, instead of antici¬ 
 pating their excesses, to expose and restrain those ex¬ 
 cesses after they have occurred. But you have only 
 this alternative ; and for myself, I prefer much where- 
 ever it is possible, to be first generous and then just; to 
 grant full liberty of thought, and to call it to account 
 when abused. 
 
 If what I have been saying be true of energetic ideas 
 generally, much more is it the case in matters of reli¬ 
 gion. Religion acts on the affections; who is to hinder 
 these, when once roused, from gathering in their 
 strength and running wild ? They are not gifted with 
 any connatural principle within them, which renders 
 them self-governing, and self-adjusting. They hurry 
 right on to their object, and often in their case it is, the 
 more haste, the worse speed. Their object engrosses 
 th$m 4 and they see nothing else. And of all passions 
 
86 Belief of Catholics about the Blessed Virgin 
 
 love is the most unmanageable ; nay more, I would not 
 give much for that love which is never extravagant, 
 which always observes the proprieties, and can move 
 about in perfect good taste, under all emergencies. 
 What mother, what husband or wife, what youth or 
 maiden in love, but says a thousand foolish things, in 
 the way of endearment, which the speaker would be 
 sorry for strangers to hear; yet they are not on that 
 account unwelcome to the parties to whom they are 
 addressed. Sometimes by bad luck they are written 
 down, sometimes they get into the newspapers; and 
 what might be even graceful, when it was fresh from 
 the heart, and interpreted by the voice and the coun¬ 
 tenance, presents but a melancholy exhibition when 
 served up cold for the public eye. So it is with devo¬ 
 tional feelings. Burning thoughts and words are as 
 open to criticism as they are beyond it. What is 
 abstractedly extravagant, may in particular persons be 
 becoming and beautiful, and only fall under blame when 
 it is found in others who imitate them. When it is 
 formalized into meditations or exercises, it is as re¬ 
 pulsive as love-letters in a police report. Moreover, 
 even holy minds readily adopt and become familiar with 
 language which they would never have originated them¬ 
 selves, when it proceeds from a writer who has the same 
 objects of devotion as they have; and, if they find a 
 stranger ridicule or reprobate supplication or praise 
 which has come to them so recommended, they feel it as 
 keenly as if a direct insult were offered to those to 
 whom that homage is addressed. In the next place, 
 what has power to stir holy and refined souls is potent 
 also with the multitude ; and the religion of the multi¬ 
 tude is ever vulgar and abnormal; it ever will be tinc¬ 
 tured with fanaticism and superstition, while men are 
 what they are. A people’s religion is ever a corrupt 
 
Colored by their Devotion to Her . 87 
 
 religion, in spite of the provisions of Holy Church. If 
 she is to be Catholic, you must admit within her net 
 fish of every kind, guests good and bad, vessels of gold, 
 vessels of earth. You may beat religion out of men, if 
 you will, and then their excesses will take a different 
 direction; but if you make use of religion to improve 
 them, they will make use of religion to corrupt it. And 
 then you will have effected that compromise of which 
 our countrymen report so unfavorably from abroad: 
 a high grand faith and worship which compels their 
 admiration, and puerile absurdities among the people 
 which excite their contempt 
 
 Nor is it any safeguard against these excesses in a 
 religious system, that the religion is based upon reason, 
 and develops into a theology. Theology both uses 
 logic and baffles it; and thus logic acts both for the pro¬ 
 tection and for the perversion of religion. Theology is 
 occupied with supernatural matters, and is ever running 
 into mysteries, which reason can neither explain nor 
 adjust. Its lines of thought come to an abrupt termina¬ 
 tion, and to pursue them or to complete them is to 
 plunge down the abyss. But logic blunders on, forcing 
 its way, as it can, through thick darkness and ethereal 
 mediums. The Arians went ahead with logic for their 
 directing principle, and so lost the truth ; on the other 
 hand, St. Augustine intimates that, if we attempt to 
 find and tie together the ends of lines which run into 
 infinity, we shall only succeed in contradicting. our¬ 
 selves, when, in his Treatise 011 the Holy Trinity, he is 
 unable to find the logical reason for not speaking of 
 three Gods as well as of One, and of one Person in the 
 Godhead as well as of Three. I do not mean to say 
 that logic cannot be used to set right its own error, or 
 that in the hands of an able disputant it may not trim 
 the balance of truth. This was done at the Councils of 
 
88 Belief of Catholics about the Blessed Virgin 
 
 Antioch and Nicaea, on occasion of the heresies of 
 Paulus and Arius. But such a process is circuitous 
 and elaborate ; and is conducted by means of minute 
 subtleties which will give it the appearance of a game 
 of skill in matters too grave and practical to deserve a 
 mere scholastic treatment. Accordingly St. Augustine, 
 in the Treatise above mentioned, does no more than 
 simply lay it down that the statements in question are 
 heretical, that is, to say there are three Gods is Trithe¬ 
 ism, and to say there is but one person, Sabellianism. 
 That is, good sense and a large view of truth are the 
 correctives of his logic. And thus we have arrived at 
 the final resolution of the whole matter, for good sense 
 and a large view of truth are rare gifts; whereas all 
 men are bound to be devout, and most men busy 
 themselves in arguments and inferences. 
 
 Now let me apply what I have been saying to the 
 teaching of the Church on the subject of the Blessed 
 Virgin. I have to recur to a subject of so sacred a 
 nature, that, writing as I am for publication, I need 
 the apology of my purpose for venturing to pursue it. 
 I say then, when once we have mastered the idea, that 
 Mary bore, suckled, and handled the Eternal in the 
 form of a child, what limit is conceivable to the rush 
 and flood of thoughts which such a doctrine involves ? 
 What awe and surprise must attend upon the know¬ 
 ledge, that a creature has been brought so close to the 
 Divine Essence ? It was the creation of a new idea 
 and of a new sympathy, of a new faith and worship, 
 when the holy Apostles announced that God had be¬ 
 come incarnate; then a supreme love and devotion to 
 Him became possible, which seemed hopeless before 
 that revelation. This was the first consequence of 
 their preaching. But, besides this, a second range of 
 thoughts was opened on mankind, unknown before, and 
 
Colored by their Devotion to Her . 
 
 89 
 
 unlike any other, as soon as it was understood that that 
 Incarnate God had a mother. The second idea is per¬ 
 fectly distinct from the former, and does not interfere 
 with it. He is God made low, she is a woman made 
 high. I scarcely like to use a familiar illustration on 
 the subject of the Blessed Virgin’s dignity among 
 created beings, but it will serve to explain what I 
 mean, when I ask you to consider the difference of 
 feeling with which we read the respective histories of 
 Maria Theresa and the Maid of Orleans; or with which 
 the middle and lower classes of a nation regard a first 
 minister of the day who has come of an aristocratic 
 house, and one who has risen from the ranks. May 
 God’s mercy keep me from the shadow of a thought, 
 dimming the purity or blunting the keenness of that 
 love of Him which is our sole happiness and our sole 
 salvation ! But surely when He became man, He 
 brought home to us His incommunicable attributes 
 with a distinctiveness which precludes the possibility 
 of our lowering Him merely by our exalting a creature. 
 He alone has an entrance into our soul, reads our 
 secret thoughts, speaks to our heart, applies to us 
 spiritual pardon and strength. On Him we solely de¬ 
 pend. He alone is our inward life ; He not only re¬ 
 generates us, but (to use the words appropriated to a 
 higher mystery) semper gignit; He is ever renewing 
 our new birth and our heavenly sonship. In this 
 sense He may be called, as in nature, so in grace, our 
 real Father. Mary is only our mother by divine ap¬ 
 pointment, given us from the Cross; her presence is 
 above, not on earth ; her offi ce is external, not, w ithin 
 us_. Her name is not heard in the administration of 
 the Sacraments. Her work is not one of ministration 
 towards us; her power is indirect. It is her prayers 
 that avail, and her prayers are effectual by the fiat of 
 
90 Belief of Catholics about the Blessed Virgin 
 
 Him who is our all in all. Nor need she hear us by 
 any innate power, or any personal gift; but by His 
 manifestation to her of the prayers which we make to 
 her. When Moses was on the Mount, the Almighty 
 told him of the idolatry of his people at the foot of it, in 
 order that he might intercede for them; and thus it 
 is the Divine Presence which is the intermediating 
 Power by which we reach her and she reaches us. 
 
 Woe is me, if even by a breath I sully these ineffable 
 
 truths ! but still without prejudice to them, there is, 
 
 I say, another range of thought quite distinct from 
 
 them, incommensurate with them, of which the Blessed 
 
 Virgin is the centre. If we placed our Lord in that 
 
 • 
 
 centre, we should only be dragging Him from His 
 throne, and making Him an Arian kind of a God; 
 that is, no God at all. He who charges us with 
 making Mary a divinity, is thereby denying the divinity 
 of Jesus. Such a man does nqt know what divinity is. 
 Our Lord cannot pray for us, as a creature prays, as 
 Mary prays; He cannot inspire those feelings which a 
 creature inspires. To her belongs, as being a creature, 
 a natural claim on our sympathy and familiarity, in 
 that slie is nothing else than our fellow. She is our 
 ,_pride; in the poet’s words, “ Our tainted nature’s soli¬ 
 tary boast.” We look to her without any fear, any 
 remorse, any consciousness that she is able to read us, 
 judge us, punish us. Our heart yearns towards that 
 pure Virgin, that gentle Mother, and our congratula¬ 
 tions follow her, as she rises from Nazareth and 
 Ephesus, through the choir of angels, to her throne on 
 high, so weak, yet so strong; so delicate, yet so 
 glorious; so modest, and yet so mighty. She has 
 sketched for us her own portrait in the Magnificat: 
 “ He hath regarded the low estate of His hand-maid; 
 for, behold, from henceforth all generations shall call 
 
Colored by their Devotion to Her. 
 
 91 
 
 me blessed. He hath put down the mighty from their 
 seat; and hath exalted the humble. He hath filled 
 the hungry with good things, and the rich he hath sent 
 empty away.” I recollect the strange emotion which 
 took by surprise men and women, young and old, 
 when, at the Coronation of our present Queen, they 
 gazed on the figure of one so like a child, so small, so 
 tender, so shrinking, who had been exalted to so great 
 an inheritance and so vast a rule, who was such a con¬ 
 trast in her own person to the solemn pageant which 
 centred in her. Could it be otherwise with the specta¬ 
 tors, if they had human affection ? And did not the 
 All-wise know the human heart when He took to Him¬ 
 self a Mother ? did he not anticipate our emotion at the 
 sight of such an exaltation in one so simple and so 
 lowly? If He had not meant her to exert that wonder¬ 
 ful influence in His Church, which she has in the event 
 exerted, I will use a bold word, He it is who has per¬ 
 verted us. If she is not to attract our homage, why 
 did He make her solitary in her greatness amid His 
 vast creation ? If it be idolatry in us to let our 
 affections respond to our faith, He would not have 
 made her what she is, or He would not have told us 
 that He had so made her; but, far from this, He has 
 sent His Prophet to announce to us, “ A Virgin shall 
 conceive and bear a Son, and they shall call His name 
 Emmanuel,” and we have the same warrant for hailing 
 her as God’s Mother as we have for adoring Him as God. 
 
 Christianity is eminently an objective religion. For 
 the most part it tells us of persons and facts in simple 
 words, and leaves that announcement to produce its 
 effect on such hearts as are prepared to receive it. This 
 at least is its general character; and Butler recognizes 
 it as such in his Analogy, when speaking of the Second 
 and Third Persons of the Holy Trinity. “ The internal 
 worship,” he says, “to the Son and Holy Ghost is no 
 
92 
 
 Belief of Catholics about the Blessed Virgin. 
 
 • 
 
 farther matter of pure revealed command than as the re¬ 
 lations they stand in to us are matters of pure revela¬ 
 tion ; for the relations being known, the obligations to 
 such internal worship are obligatio?is of reason arising 
 out of those relations themselves.” * It is in this way 
 that the revealed doctrine of the Incarnation exerted a 
 stronger and a broader influence on Christians, as 
 they more and more apprehended and mastered its 
 meaning and its bearings. It is contained in the brief 
 and simple declaration of St. John, “ The Word was 
 made flesh ’ ’ ; but it required century after century to 
 spread it out in its fulness, and to imprint it energeti¬ 
 cally on the worship and practice of the Catholic people 
 as well as on their faith. Athanasius was the first and 
 the great teacher of it. He collected together the in¬ 
 spired notices scattered through David, Isaias, St. 
 Paul, and St. John, and he engraved indelibly upon the 
 imaginations of the faithful, as had never been before, 
 that man is God, and God is man, that in Mary they 
 meet, and that in this sense Mary is the centre of all 
 things. He added nothing to what was known before, 
 nothing to the popular and zealous faith that her Son 
 was God ; he has left behind him in his works no such 
 definite passages about her as those of St. Irenaeus or 
 St. Epiphanius ; but he brought the circumstances of 
 the Incarnation home to men’s minds, by the multiform 
 evolutions of his analysis, and thereby secured it to us 
 for ever from perversion. Still, however, there was 
 much to be done ; we have no proof that Athanasius 
 himself had any special devotion to the Blessed 
 Virgin, but he laid the foundations on which that de¬ 
 votion was to rest, and thus noiselessly and without 
 strife, as the first Temple was built in the Holy City, 
 she grew up into her inheritance, and was “ established 
 in Sion and her power was in Jerusalem.” 
 
 * Vid. Essay on Doctr. Dev., p. 50. 
 
CHAPTER X. 
 
 PROTESTANT MISCONCEPTIONS AND CATH> 
 
 OTIC EXCESSES. 
 
 Harshness of Condemnation often arises from Low 
 Views of Christ’s Divinity.—Suggestiveness of the 
 Devotional Extravagances in the Greek Church.— 
 Many Allegations of Excess not proven.—A Fair 
 Specimen given of the Teaching of Sound Catho¬ 
 lic Devotional Writers.—The Lesson of the 
 Sanctuary Lamp, of the Mass, and of Communion.— 
 A Hymn of Father Faber’s given as a Summary of 
 
 t 
 
 Catholic Sentiment.—Remarks on Extravagant 
 Utterances found in Italian Writers.—Absence of 
 Devotional Extravagance among Typical English 
 Writers.—The “Raccolta” as an authoritative: 
 Exponent of Catholic Devotion.—The Catechism oe 
 the Council of Trent.—Some Extravagant Utter¬ 
 ances Mentioned and Condemned.—True Meaning 
 of Statements about Mary’s Power to assist us in 
 saving our Souls.—Standard Catholic Writers 
 quoted.—Note on a recent Decision at Rome on 
 certain Practices and Terms.—Remarks on Dr. 
 Pusey’s Method and Spirit in this Controversy. 
 
 CjUCH was the origin of that august cultus which has 
 been paid to the Blessed Mary for so many centur¬ 
 ies in the East and in the West. That in times and 
 places it has fallen into abuse, that it has even become 
 a superstition, I do not care to deny ; for, as I have 
 said above, the same process which brings to maturity 
 
 93 
 
94 
 
 Anglican Misconceptions and Catholic 
 
 carries on to decay, and things that do not admit of 
 abuse have very little life in them. This of course 
 does not excuse such excesses, or justify us in making 
 light of them, when they occur* I have no intention of 
 doing so as regards the particular instances which you 
 bring against us, though but a few words will suffice for 
 what I need say about them : before doing so, however, 
 I am obliged to make three or four introductory re¬ 
 marks in explanation. 
 
 1. I have almost anticipated my first remark already. 
 It is this : that the height of our offending in our devo¬ 
 tion to the Blessed Virgin would not look so great in 
 your volume as it does, had you not deliberately placed 
 yourself on lower ground than your own feelings to¬ 
 wards her would have spontaneously prompted you to 
 take. I have no doubt you had some good reason for 
 adopting this course, but I do not know it; what I do 
 know is, that, for the Father’s sake who so exalt her, 
 you really do love and venerate her, though you do not 
 evidence it in 3^our book. I am glad then in this place 
 to insist on a fact which will lead those among us, who 
 know you not, to love you from their love of her, in 
 spite of what you refuse to give her; and lead Angli¬ 
 cans, on the other hand, who do know you, to think 
 better of us, who refuse her nothing, when they reflect 
 that, if you come short of us, you do not actually go 
 against us in your devotion to her. 
 
 2. As you revere the Fathers, so you revere the Greek 
 Church; and here again we have a witness on our be¬ 
 half, of which you must be aware as fully as we are, and 
 of which you must really mean to give us the benefit. 
 In proportion as the Greek ritual is known to the re¬ 
 ligious public, that knowledge will take off the edge of 
 the surprise of Anglicans at the sight of our devotions 
 
Excesses in Devotion to the Blessed Virgin. 95 
 
 to our Lady. It must weigh with them, when they 
 discover that we can enlist on our side in this contro¬ 
 versy those “seventy millions” (I think they do so 
 consider them) of Orientals who are separated from our 
 communion. Is it not a very pregnant fact, that the 
 Eastern Churches, so independent of us, so long sepa¬ 
 rated from the West, so jealous for Antiquity, should 
 even surpass us in their exaltation of the Blessed Vir¬ 
 gin ? That they go further than we do is sometimes 
 denied, on the ground that the Western devotion 
 towards her is brought out into system, and the Eastern 
 is not; yet this only means really, that the Latins have 
 more mental activity, more strength of intellect, less of 
 routine, less of mechanical worship among them, than 
 the Greeks. We are able, better than they, to give an 
 account of what we do; and we seem to be more ex¬ 
 treme, merely because we are more definite. But, after 
 all, what have the Latins done so bold as that substitu¬ 
 tion of the name of Mary for the Name of Jesus at the 
 end of the collects and petitions in the Breviary, nay, in 
 the Ritual and Liturgy ? Not merely in local or popu¬ 
 lar, and in semi-authorized devotions, which are the 
 kind of sources that supply you with your matter of ac¬ 
 cusation against us, but in the formal prayers of the 
 Greek Eucharistic Service, petitions are offered, not in 
 “ the name of Jesus Christ,” but in that “ of the Theo- 
 tocos.” Such a phenomenon, in such a quarter, I think 
 ought to make Anglicans merciful towards those writers 
 among ourselves who have been excessive in singing 
 the praises of the Deipara. To make a rule of substi¬ 
 tuting Mary with all Saints for Jesus in the public ser¬ 
 vice, has more “ Mariolatry ” in it, than to alter the Te 
 Deum to her honor in private devotion. 
 
 3. And thus I am brought to a third remark, supple¬ 
 mental to your accusation of us. Two large views, as I 
 
9 6 
 
 A nglican Misconceptions and Catholic 
 
 have said above, are opened upon our devotional 
 thoughts in Christianity; the one centring in the Son 
 of Mary, the other in the Mother of Jesus. Neither 
 need obscure the other; and in the Catholic Church, as 
 a matter of fact, neither does. I wish you had either 
 frankly allowed this in your volume, or proved the 
 contrary. I wish, when you report that “ a certain pro¬ 
 portion” of Catholics, “it has been ascertained by 
 those who have inquired, do,” in their devotions, “ stop 
 short in her,” p. 107, that you had added your belief, 
 that the case was far otherwise with the great bulk of 
 Catholics. Might I not have expected such an avowal? 
 May I not, without sensitiveness, be somewhat pained 
 at the omission ? From mere Protestants, indeed, I ex¬ 
 pect nothing better. They content themselves with 
 saying that our devotions to our Lady must necessarily 
 throw our Lord into the shade; and thereby they relieve 
 themselves of a great deal of trouble. Then they catch 
 at any stray fact which countenances or seems to coun¬ 
 tenance their prejudice. Now I say plainly, I never 
 will defend or screen any one from your just rebuke 
 who, through false devotion to Mary, forgets Jesus. 
 But I should like the fact to be proved first; I cannot 
 hastily admit it. There is this broad fact the other 
 way; that, if we look through Europe, we shall find, on 
 the whole, that just those nations and countries have 
 lost their faith in the divinity of Christ who have given 
 up devotion to His Mother, and that those, on the other 
 hand, who had been foremost in her honor have re¬ 
 tained their orthodoxy. Contrast, for instance, the Cal¬ 
 vinists with the Greeks, or France with the North of 
 Germany, or the Protestant and Catholic communions 
 in Ireland. As to England, it is scarcely doubtful what 
 would be the state of its Established Church, if the 
 Liturgy and Articles were not an integral part of its 
 
Excesses in Devotion to the Blessed Virgin. 97 
 
 Establishment; and, when men bring so grave a charge 
 against us, as is implied in your volume, they cannot 
 be surprised if we in turn say hard things of Anglican¬ 
 ism.* In the Catholic Church Mary has shown herself, 
 not the rival, but the minister of her Son ; she has pro¬ 
 tected Him, as in His infancy, so in the whole history 
 of the Religion. There is then a plain historical truth 
 in Dr. Faber’s words, which you quote to condemn, 
 “ Jesus is obscured, because Mary is kept in the back¬ 
 ground.’’ 
 
 This truth, exemplified in history, might also be 
 abundantly illustrated, did my space admit, from the 
 lives and writings of holy men in modern times. Two 
 of them, St. Alfonso Eiguori and the Blessed Paul of 
 the Cross, for all their notorious devotion to the Mother, 
 have shown their supreme love of her Divine Son, in 
 the names which they have given to their respective 
 Congregations, viz., that “of the Redeemer,” and that 
 “of the Cross and Passion.” However, I will do no 
 more than refer to an apposite passage in the Italian 
 translation of the work of a French Jesuit, Fr. Nepveu, 
 Christian Thoughts for every Day in the Year, which 
 
 * I have spoken more on this subject in my Essay on Development, 
 p. 438, “Nor does it avail to object, that, in this contrast of devotional 
 exercises, the human is sure to supplant the Divine, from the infirmity of 
 our nature; for, I repeat, the question is one of fact, whether it has done 
 so. And next, it must be asked, whether the character of Protestant devo ¬ 
 tion towards our Lord , has beeii that of worship at all ; and not rath er such 
 as we pay to an excellent human being. . . . Carnal minds will ever 
 
 create a carnal worship for themselves; and to forbid them the service of 
 the saints, will have no tendency to teach them the worship of God. More¬ 
 over, . . . great and constant as is the devotion which the Catholic 
 
 pays to St. Mary, it has a special province, and has far more connection with 
 the public services a?id the festive aspect of Christianity , and with certain 
 extraordinary offices which she holds, than with what is strictly personal 
 and primary in religion.” Our late Cardinal [Wiseman], on my reception, 
 singled out to me this last sentence, for the expression of his especial appro¬ 
 bation. 
 
98 
 
 Anglican Misconceptions and Catholic 
 
 was recommended to the friend who went with me to 
 Rome, by the same Jesuit Father there, with whom, as 
 I have already said, I stood myself in such intimate 
 relations; I believe it is a fair specimen of the teaching 
 of our spiritual books : 
 
 “ The love of Jesus Christ is the most sure pledge of 
 our future happiness, and the most infallible token of 
 our predestination. Mercy towards the poor, devotion 
 to the Holy Virgin, are very sensible tokens of predesti¬ 
 nation ; nevertheless they are not absolutely infallible ; 
 but one cannot have a sincere and constant love of Jesus 
 Christ without being predestinated. . . . The de¬ 
 
 stroying angel, which bereaved the houses of the 
 Egyptians of their first-born, had respect to all the 
 houses which were marked with the blood of the 
 Earnb.” 
 
 And it is also exemplified, as I verily believe, not 
 only in formal and distinctive Confessions, not only in 
 books intended for the educated class, but also in the 
 personal religion of the Catholic populations. When 
 strangers are so unfavorably impressed with us, because 
 they see Images of our Eady in our churches, and 
 crowds flocking about her, they forget that there is a 
 Presence within the sacred walls, infinitely more awful, 
 which claims and obtains from us a worship transcen- 
 dently different from any devotion we pay to her. That 
 devotion to her might indeed tend to idolatry, if it 
 were encouraged in Protestant churches, where there is 
 nothing higher than it to attract the worshipper; but 
 all the images that a Catholic church ever contained, all 
 the Crucifixes at its Altars brought together, do not so 
 affect its frequenters as the lamp which betokens the 
 presence or absence there of the Blessed Sacrament. Is 
 not this so certain, so notorious, that on .some occasions 
 it has been even brought as a charge against us, that 
 
Excesses in Devotion to the Blessed Virgin. 99 
 
 we are irreverent in church, when what seemed to the 
 objector to be irreverence was but the necessary change 
 of feeling, which came over those who were in it, on 
 their knowing that their Lord was no longer there, but 
 away ? 
 
 The Mass again conveys to us the same lesson of the 
 sovereignty of the Incarnate Son; it is a return to 
 Calvary, and Mary is scarcely named in it. Hostile 
 visitors enter our churches on Sunday at mid-day, the 
 time of the Anglican service. They are surprised to see 
 the High Mass perhaps poorly attended, and a body of 
 worshippers leaving the music and the mixed multitude 
 who may be lazily fulfilling their obligation, for the 
 silent or the informal devotions which are offered at an 
 Image of the Blessed Virgin. They may be tempted, 
 with one of your informants, to call such a temple, not 
 a “Jesus church,” but a “Mary church.” But, if 
 they understood our ways, they would know that we 
 begin the day with our Lord and then go on to His 
 Mother. It is early in the morning that religious per¬ 
 sons go to Mass and Communion. The High Mass, on 
 the other hand, is the festive celebration of the day, not 
 the special devotional service; nor is there any reason 
 why those who have been at Low Mass already should 
 not at that hour proceed to ask the intercession of the 
 Blessed Virgin for themselves and all that is dear to 
 them. 
 
 Communion, again, which is given in the morning, 
 is a solemn unequivocal act of faith in the Incarnate 
 God, if any can be such; and the most gracious of 
 admonitions, did we need one, of His sovereign and sole 
 right to possess us. I knew a lady, who on her death¬ 
 bed was visited by an excellent Protestant friend. The 
 latter, with great tenderness for her soul’s welfare, 
 asked her whether her prayers to the Blessed Virgin 
 
100 
 
 Anglican Misconceptions and Catholic 
 
 did not, at that awful hour, lead to forgetfulness of 
 her Saviour. “Forget Him?” she replied with sur¬ 
 prise. “ Why, He was just now here.” She had been 
 receiving Him in Communion. When then, my dear 
 Pusey, you read anything extravagant in praise of our 
 Fady, is it not charitable to ask, even while you con¬ 
 demn it in itself, did the author write nothing else? 
 Had he written on the Blessed Sacrament? had he 
 given up “ all for Jesus ” ? I recollect some lines, the 
 happiest, I think, which that author wrote, which bring 
 out strikingly the reciprocity, which I am dwelling on, 
 of the respective devotions to Mother and Son : 
 
 “ But scornful men have coldly said 
 
 Thy love was leading me from God ; 
 
 And yet in this I did but tread 
 The very path my Saviour trod. 
 
 “ They know but little of thy worth 
 
 Who speak these heartless words to me; 
 
 For what did Jesus love on earth 
 One half so tenderly as thee ? 
 
 “ Get me the grace to love thee more; 
 
 Jesus will give, if thou wilt plead ; 
 
 And Mother, when life’s cares are o’er, 
 
 Oh! I shall love thee then indeed. 
 
 “ Jesus, when His three hours were run, 
 
 Bequeath’d thee from the Cross to me; 
 
 And oh! how can I love thy Son, 
 
 Sweet Mother, if I love not thee.” 
 
 4. Thus we are brought from the consideration of the 
 sentiments themselves, of which you complain, to the 
 persons who wrote, and the places where they wrote 
 them. I wish you had been led, in this part of your 
 work, to that sort of careful labor which you have 
 employed in so masterly a way in your investigation of 
 
Excesses in Devotio?i to the Blessed Virgin. 
 
 IOI 
 
 the circumstances of the definition of the Immaculate 
 Conception. In the latter case you have catalogued 
 the bishops who wrote to the Holy See, and analyzed 
 their answers. Had you in like manner discriminated 
 and located the Marian writers, as you call them, and 
 observed the times, places, and circumstances of their 
 w r orks, I think they would not, when brought together, 
 have had their present startling effect on the reader. 
 As it is, they inflict a vague alarm upon the mind, as 
 when one hears a noise, and does not know whence it 
 comes and what it means. Some of your authors, I 
 know, are Saints; all, I suppose, are spiritual writers 
 and holy men; but the majority are of no great celeb¬ 
 rity, even if they have any kind of weight. Suarez 
 has no business among them at all, for, when he says 
 that no one is saved without t' e Blessed Virgin, he is 
 speaking not of devotion to hei, but of her intercession. 
 The greatest name is St. Alfonso Liguori ; but it 
 never surprises me to read anything extraordinary in 
 the devotions of a saint. Such men are on a level 
 very different from our own, and we cannot understand 
 them. I hold this to be an important canon in the 
 Lives of the Saints, according to the words of the 
 Apostle, “ The spiritual man judges all things, and he 
 himself is judged of no one.” But we may refrain from 
 judging, without proceeding to imitate. I hope it is 
 not disrespectful to so great a servant of God to say, 
 that I never have read his Glories of Mary ; but here I 
 am speaking generally of all Saints, whether I know 
 them or not; and I say that they are beyond us, and 
 that we must use them as patterns, not as copies. As 
 to his practical directions, St. Alfonso wrote them tor 
 Neapolitans, whom he knew, and we do not know. 
 Other writers whom you quote, as De Salazar, are too 
 ruthlessly logical to be safe or pleasant guides in the 
 
102 
 
 Anglican Misco 7 iceptions and Catholic 
 
 delicate matters of devotion. As to De Montford and 
 Oswald, I never even met with their names, till I saw 
 them in your book ; the bulk of our laity, not to say of 
 our clergy, perhaps know them little better than I do. 
 Nor did I know till I learnt it from your volume that 
 there were two Bernardines. St. Bernardine of Sienna 
 I knew, of course, and knew too that he had a burning 
 love for our Lord. But about the other, “Bernardine 
 de Bustis,” I was quite at fault. I find from the Pro¬ 
 testant Cave, that he, as well as his namesake, made 
 himself also conspicuous for his zeal for the Holy 
 Name, which is much to the point here. “ With such 
 devotion was he carried away,” says Cave, “for the 
 bare Name of Jesus (which, by a new device of Ber¬ 
 nardine of Sienna, had lately begun to receive divine 
 honors), that he was urgent with Innocent VIII. to 
 assign it a day and rite in the Calendar.” 
 
 One thing, however, is clear about all these writers ; 
 that not one of them is an Englishman. I have gone 
 through your book, and do not find one English name 
 among the various authors to whom you refer, except of 
 course the name of the author whose lines I have been 
 quoting, and who, great as are his merits, cannot, for 
 the reasons I have given in the opening of my Letter, 
 be considered a representative of English Catholic devo¬ 
 tion. Whatever these writers may have said or not 
 said, whatever they may have said harshly, and what¬ 
 ever capable of fair explanation, still they are for¬ 
 eigners ; we are not answerable for their particular 
 devotions; and as to themselves, I am glad to be able to 
 quote the beautiful words which you use about them in 
 your letter to the Weekly Register of November 25th 
 last. “I do not presume,” you say, “to prescribe to 
 Italians or Spaniards what they shall hold, or how they 
 shall express their pious opinions; and least of all did I 
 
Excesses in Devotion to the Blessed Virgin. 103 
 
 think of imputing to any of the writers whom I quoted 
 that they took from our Lord any of the love which 
 they gave to His Mother.” I11 these last words too you 
 have supplied one of the omissions in your volume 
 which I noticed above. 
 
 5. Now then we come to England itself, which after 
 all, in the matter of devotion, alone concerns you and 
 me ; for though doctrine is one and the same every¬ 
 where, devotions, as I have already said, are matters of 
 the particular time and the particular country. I sup¬ 
 pose we owe it to the national good sense, that English 
 Catholics have been protected from the extravagances 
 which are elsewhere to be found. And we owe it also 
 to the wisdom and moderation of the Holy See, which, 
 in giving us the pattern for our devotion, as well as the 
 rule of our faith, has never indulged in those curiosities 
 of thought which are both so attractive to undisciplined 
 imaginations and so dangerous to grovelling hearts. 
 I11 the case of our own common people I think such a 
 forced style of devotion would be simply unintelligible; 
 as to the educated, I doubt whether it can have more 
 than an occasional or temporary influence. If the 
 Catholic faith spreads in England, these peculiarities 
 will not spread with it. There is a healthy devotion to 
 the Blessed Mary, and there is an artificial; it is possi¬ 
 ble to love her as a Mother, to honor her as a Virgin, to 
 seek her as a Patron, and to exalt her as a Queen, with¬ 
 out any injury to solid piety and Christian good sense ; 
 I cannot help calling this the English style. I wonder 
 whether you find anything to displease you in the 
 Garden of the Sold , the Key of Heaven, the Vadc 
 Mccum , the Golden Manual, or the Crown of fesus. 
 These are the books to which Anglicans ought to 
 appeal who would be fair to us in this matter. I do 
 not observe anything in them which goes beyond the 
 
104 
 
 Anglican Misconceptions and Catholic 
 
 teaching of the Fathers, except so far as devotion goes 
 beyond doctrine. 
 
 There is one collection of devotions besides, of the 
 highest authority, which has been introduced from 
 abroad of late years. It consists of prayers of very 
 various kinds which have been indulgenced by the 
 Popes; and it commonly goes by the name of the 
 Raccolta. As that word suggests, the language of many 
 of the prayers is Italian, while others are in Eatin. 
 This circumstance is unfavorable to a translation, 
 which, however skilful, must ever savor of the words 
 and idioms of the original; but, passing over this neces¬ 
 sary disadvantage, I consider there is hardly a clause in 
 the good-sized volume in question which even the sensi¬ 
 tiveness of English Catholicism would wish changed. 
 Its anxious observance of doctrinal exactness is almost 
 a fault. It seems afraid of using the words “ give me,” 
 “ make me,” in its addresses to the Blessed Virgin, 
 which are as natural to adopt in speaking to her, as in 
 addressing a parent or friend. Surely we do not 
 disparage Divine Providence when we say that we are 
 indebted to our parents for our life, or when we ask 
 their blessing ; we do not show any atheistical leaning 
 because we say that a man’s recovery must be left to 
 nature, or that nature supplies brute animals with 
 instincts. In like manner it seems to me a simple pur¬ 
 ism to insist upon minute accuracy of expression in 
 devotional and popular writings. However, the Rac¬ 
 colta, as coming from responsible authority, for the most 
 part observes it. It commonly uses the phrases “gain 
 for us by thy prayers,” “ obtain for us,” “ pray to Jesus 
 for me,” “speak for me, Mary,” “carry thou our 
 prayers,” “ask for us grace,” “intercede for the 
 people of God.” and the like, marking thereby with 
 great emphasis that she is nothing more than an Advo- 
 
Excesses in Devotion to the Blessed Virgin. 105 
 
 cate, and not a source of mercy. Nor do I recollect in 
 this book more than one or two ideas to which you 
 would be likely to raise an objection. The strongest of 
 these is found in the Novena before her Nativity, in 
 which, apropos of her Birth, we pray that she “would 
 come down again, and be reborn spiritually in our 
 souls” ; but it will occur to you that St. Paul speaks 
 of his wish to impart to his converts, “not only the 
 gospel, but his own soul” ; and writing to the Corin¬ 
 thians, he says he has “ begotten them by the gospel,” 
 and to Philemon, that he had “begotten Onesimus, in 
 his bonds” ; whereas St. James, with greater accuracy 
 of expression, says “ of His own will hath God begotten 
 us with the word of truth.” Again, we find the 
 petitioner saying to the Blessed Mary, “ In thee I place 
 all my hope ’ ’ ; but this is explained by another pas¬ 
 sage, “ Thou art my best hope after Jesus.” Again, 
 we read elsewhere, “ I would I had a greater love for 
 thee, since to love thee is a great mark of predestina¬ 
 tion ” ; but the prayer goes on, “Thy Son deserves of 
 us an immeasurable love; pray that I may have this 
 grace, a great love for Jesus,” and further on, “I covet 
 no good of the earth, but to love my God alone.” 
 
 Then again, as to the lessons which our Catholics 
 receive, whether by catechising or instruction, you 
 would find nothing in our received manuals to which 
 you would not assent, I am quite sure. Again, as to 
 preaching, a standard book was drawn up three cen¬ 
 turies ago, to supply matter for the purpose to the 
 parochial clergy. You incidentally mention, p. 153, 
 that the comment of Cornelius a Lapide on Scripture is 
 ‘ ‘ a repertorium for sermons ’ 5 ; but I never heard of this 
 work being so used, nor indeed can it, because of its 
 size. The work provided for the purpose by the Church 
 is the “ Catechism of the Council of Trent,” and noth- 
 
Anglican Misconceptions and Catholic 
 
 ing extreme about our Blessed Lady is propounded 
 there. On the whole I am sanguine that you will come 
 to the conclusion, that Anglicans may safely trust them¬ 
 selves to us English Catholics, as regards any devotions 
 to the Blessed Virgin which might be required of them 
 over and above the rule of the Council of Trent. 
 
 6 . And, now at length coming to the statements, 
 not English, but foreign, which offend you in works 
 written in her honor, I will allow that I like some 
 of those which you quote as little as you do. I will 
 frankly say that, when I read them in your volume, 
 they affected me with grief and almost anger; for they 
 seemed to me to ascribe to the Blessed Virgin a power 
 of “ searching the reins and hearts,” which is the at¬ 
 tribute of God alone ; and I said to myself, how can we 
 any longer prove our Lord’s divinity from Scripture, if 
 those cardinal passages which invest Him with divine 
 prerogatives, after all invest Him with nothing beyond 
 what His Mother shares with Him ? And how, again, 
 is there anything of incommunicable greatness in His 
 death and passion, if He who was alone in the garden, 
 alone upon the cross, alone in the resurrection, after all 
 is not alone, but shared His solitary work with His 
 Blessed Mother—with her to whom, when He entered 
 on His ministry, He said for our instruction, not as 
 grudging her her proper glory, “ Woman, what have I 
 to do with thee?” And then again, if I hate those 
 perverse sayings so much, how much more must she, in 
 proportion to her love of Him? and how do we show 
 our love for her, by wounding her in the very apple of 
 her eye ? This I felt and feel; but then on the other 
 hand I have to observe that these strange words after 
 all are but few in number, out of the many passages 
 you cite ; that most of them exemplify what I said 
 above about the difficulty of determining the exact 
 
Excesses in Devotion to the Blessed Virgin. 107 
 
 point where truth passes into error, and that they are 
 allowable in one sense or connection, though false in 
 another. Thus to say that prayer (and the Blessed 
 Virgin’s prayer) is omnipotent, is a harsh expression 
 in every-day prose ; but, if it is explained to mean that 
 there is nothing which prayer may not obtain from God, 
 it is nothing else than the very promise made ju s in 
 Scripture. Again, to say that Mary is the centre of all 
 beings, sounds inflated and profane; yet after all it is 
 only one way, and a natural way, of saying that the 
 Creator and the creature met together, and became one 
 in her womb ; and as such, I have used the expression 
 above. Again, it is at first sight a paradox to say that 
 “Jesus is obscured, because Mary is kept in the back¬ 
 ground ” ; yet there is a sense, as I have shown above, 
 in which it is a simple truth. 
 
 And so again certain statements may be true, under 
 circumstances and in a particular time and place, which 
 are abstractedly false ; and hence it may be very unfair 
 in a controversialist to interpret by an English or a 
 modern rule, whatever may have been asserted by a 
 foreign or mediaeval author. To say for instance, dog¬ 
 matically, that no one can be saved without personal 
 devotion to the Blessed Virgin, would be an untenable 
 proposition; yet it might be true of this man or that, 
 or of this or that country at this or that date ; and, if 
 that very statement has ever been made by any writer 
 of consideration (and this has to be ascertained), then 
 perhaps it was made precisely under these exceptional 
 circumstances. If an Italian preacher made it, I should 
 feel no disposition to doubt him, at least if he spoke of 
 Italian youths and Italian maidens. 
 
 Next I think you have not always made your quota¬ 
 tions with that consideration and kindness which is 
 your rule. At p. 106 you say, “It is commonly said 
 
io8 
 
 Anglican Misconceptions and Catholic 
 
 that, if any Roman Catholic acknowledges that ‘it is 
 good and useful to pray to the saints,’ he is not bound 
 himself to do so. Were the above teaching true, it 
 would be cruelty to say so; because, according to it, 
 he would be forfeiting what is morally necessary to his 
 salvation.” But now, as to the fact, by whom is it 
 said that to pray to our Rady and the Saints is 
 necessary to salvation ? The proposition of St. Alfonso 
 is, that “ God gives no grace except through Mary ” ; 
 that is, through her intercession. But intercession is 
 one thing, devotion is another. And Suarez says, “ It 
 is the universal sentiment that the intercession of Mary 
 is not only useful, but also in a certain manner neces¬ 
 sary ” ; but still it is the question of her intercession, 
 not of our invocation of her, not of devotion to her. If 
 it were so, no Protestant could be saved; if it were so, 
 there would be grave reasons for doubting of the sal¬ 
 vation of St. Chrysostom or St. Athanasius, or of the 
 primitive Martyrs; nay, I should like to know whether 
 St. Augustine, in all his voluminous writings, invokes 
 her once. Our Lord died for those heathens who did 
 not know Him ; and His Mother intercedes for those 
 Christians who do not know her; and she intercedes 
 according to His will, and, when He wills to save a 
 particular soul, she at once prays for it. I say, He 
 wills indeed according to her prayer, but then she prays 
 according to His will. Though then it is natural and 
 prudent for those to have recourse to her, who from the 
 Church’s teaching know her power, yet it cannot be 
 said that devotion to her is a sine-quh-non of salvation. 
 Some indeed of the authors, whom you quote, go fur¬ 
 ther ; they do speak of devotion; but even then, they 
 do not enunciate the general proposition which I have 
 been disallowing. For instance, they say, ‘‘It is 
 morally impossible for those to be saved who neglect 
 
Excesses in Devotion to the Blessed Virgin. 109 
 
 the devotion to the Blessed Virgin”; but a simple 
 omission is one thing, and neglect is another. “It is 
 impossible for any to be saved who turn away from 
 her, ’ ’ yes ; but to ‘ ‘ turn away ” is to offer some positive 
 disrespect or insult towards her, and that with sufficient 
 knowledge ; and I certainly think it would be a very 
 grave act, if in a Catholic country (and of such the 
 writers were speaking, for they knew of no other), with 
 Ave-Marias sounding in the air, and images of the 
 Madonna in every street and road, a Catholic broke off 
 or gave up a practice that was universal, and in which 
 he was brought up, and deliberately put her name out 
 of his thoughts. 
 
 7. Though, then, common sense may determine for 
 us, that the line of prudence and propriety has been 
 certainly passed in the instance of certain statements 
 about the Blessed Virgin, it is often not easy to convict 
 them of definite error logically; and in such cases 
 authority, if it attempt to act, would be in the position 
 which so often happens in our courts of law, when the 
 commission of an offence is morally certain, but the 
 government prosecutor cannot find legal evidence suffi¬ 
 cient to insure conviction. I am not denying the right 
 of sacred Congregations, at their will, to act peremp¬ 
 torily, and without assigning reasons for the judgment 
 they pass upon writers; but, when they have found it 
 inexpedient to take this severe course, perhaps it may 
 happen from the circumstances of the case, that there 
 is no other that they can take, even if they would. It 
 is wiser then for the most part to leave these excesses 
 to the gradual operation of public opinion, that is, to 
 the opinion of educated and sober Catholics; and this 
 seems to me the healthiest way of putting them down. 
 Yet in matter of fact I believe the Holy See has inter¬ 
 fered from time to time, when devotion seemed running 
 
I io Anglican Misconceptions and Catholic 
 
 into superstition; and not so long ago. I recollect 
 hearing, in Gregory the XVI.’s time, of books about 
 the Blessed Virgin which had been suppressed by 
 authority; and in particular of a pictorial representa¬ 
 tion of the Immaculate Conception which he had for¬ 
 bidden ; and of measures taken against the shocking 
 notion that the Blessed Mary is present in the Holy 
 Eucharist, in the sense in which our Lord is present; 
 but I have no means of verifying the information I then 
 received. 
 
 Nor have I time, any more than you have had, to 
 ascertain how far great theologians have made protests 
 against these various extravagances of which you so 
 rightly complain. Passages, however, from three well- 
 known Jesuit Fathers have opportunely come in my 
 way, and in one of them is introduced in confirmation 
 the name of the great Gerson. They are Canisius, 
 Petavius, and Raynaudus; and as they speak very 
 appositely, and you do not seem to know them, I will 
 here make some extracts from them. 
 
 (i.) Canisius: 
 
 “We confess that in the cultns of Mary it has been 
 and is possible for corruptions to creep in; and we have 
 a more than ordinary desire that the Pastors of the 
 Church should be carefully vigilant here, and give no 
 place to Satan, whose characteristic office it has ever 
 been, while men sleep, to sow the cockle amid the 
 Lord’s wheat. . . . For this purpose it is his wont 
 
 gladly to avail himself of the aid of heretics, fanatics, 
 and false Catholics, as may be seen in the instance of 
 this Marianus cultus. This cultus, heretics, suborned 
 by Satan, attack with hostility. . . . Thus, too, 
 
 certain mad heads are so demented by Satan, as to 
 embrace superstitions and idolatries instead of the true 
 cultus , and neglect altogether the true measures 
 
Excesses in Devotion to the Blessed Virgin. 111 
 
 whether in respect to God or to Mary. Such indeed 
 were the Collyridians of old. . . . Such that Ger¬ 
 
 man herdsman a hundred years ago, who gave out 
 publicly that he was a new prophet, and had had a 
 vision of the Deipara, and told the people in her name 
 to pay no more tributes and taxes to princes. . . . 
 
 Moreover, how many Catholics does one see who, by 
 great and shocking negligence, have neither care nor 
 regard for her cultas ; but, given to profane and secular 
 objects, scarce once a year raise their earthly minds to 
 sing her praises or to venerate her.”— De Maria 
 Deipara , p. 518. 
 
 (2.) Father Petau says, when discussing the teaching 
 of the Fathers about the Blessed Virgin {De Incarn. 
 xiv. 8 ): 
 
 ‘ ‘ I will venture to give this advice to all who would 
 be devout and panegyrical towards the Holy Virgin, 
 viz., not to exceed in their piety and devotion to her, 
 but to be content with true and solid praises, and to 
 cast aside what is otherwise. This kind of idolatry, 
 lurking, as St. Augustine says, nay implanted in human • 
 hearts, is. greatly abhorrent from Theology, that is, 
 from the gravity of heavenly wisdom, which never 
 thinks or asserts anything but what is measured by 
 certain and accurate rules. What that rule should 
 be, and what caution is to be used in our present 
 subject, I will not determine of myself; but accord¬ 
 ing to the mind of a most weighty and most learned 
 theologian, John Gerson, who in one of his Epistles 
 proposes certain canons, which he calls truths, by 
 means of which are to be measured the assertions of 
 theologians concerning the Incarnation. . „ . By 
 
 these truly golden precepts Gerson brings within 
 bounds the immoderate license of praising the Blessed 
 Virgin, and restrains it within the measure of sober and 
 
112 
 
 Anglican Misconceptions and Catholic 
 
 healthy piety. And from these it is evident that that 
 sort of reasoning is frivolous and nugatory, in which so 
 many indulge, in order to assign any sort of grace they 
 please, however unusual, to the Blessed Virgin. For 
 they argue thus : ‘ Whatever the Son of God could 
 bestow for the glory of His Mother, that it became Him 
 in fact to furnish ’ ; or again, ‘ Whatever honors or 
 ornaments He has poured out on other saints, those 
 altogether hath He heaped upon His Mother ’; whence 
 they draw their chain of reasoning to their desired con¬ 
 clusion ; a mode of argumentation which Gerson treats 
 with contempt as captious and sophistical.” 
 
 He adds, what of course we all should say, that, in 
 thus speaking, he has no intention to curtail the liberty 
 of pious persons in such meditations and conjectures, on 
 the mysteries of faith, sacred histories, and the Scripture 
 text, as are of the nature of comments, supplements, 
 and the like. 
 
 (3.) Raynaud is an author full of devotion, if any 
 one is so, to the Blessed Virgin ; yet in the work which 
 
 he has composed in her honor (.Diptycha Mariana ), he 
 
 * 
 
 says more than I can quote here, to the same purpose 
 as Petau. I abridge some portions of his text: 
 
 “Fet this be taken for granted, that no praises of 
 ours can come up to the praises due to the Virgin 
 Mother. But we must not make up for our inability to 
 reach her true praise, by a supply of lying embellish¬ 
 ment and false honors. For there are some whose af¬ 
 fection for religious objects is so imprudent and lawless, 
 that they transgress the due limits even towards the 
 saints. This Origen has excellently observed upon in 
 the case of the Baptist, for very many, instead of observ¬ 
 ing the measure of charity, considered whether he 
 might not be the Christ” (p. 9). . . . St. An¬ 
 
 selm, the first, or one of the first champions of the 
 
Excesses in Devotion to the Blessed Virgin. 113 
 
 public celebration of the Blessed Virgin’s Immaculate 
 Conception, says, De Excell. Virg ., that the Church 
 considers it indecent that anything that admits of 
 doubt should be said in her praise, when the things 
 which are certainly true* of her supply such large 
 materials for laudation. It is right so to interpret St. 
 Epiphanius also, when he says that human tongues 
 should not pronounce anything lightly of the Deipara ; 
 and who is more justly to be charged with speaking 
 lightly of the most Holy Mother of God, than he who, 
 as if what is certain and evident did not suffice for her 
 full investiture, is wiser than the aged, and obtrudes 
 on us the toadstools of his own mind, and devotions un¬ 
 heard of by those Holy Fathers who loved her best ? 
 Plainly, as St. Anselm says, that she is the Mother of 
 God, this by itself exceeds every elevation which can 
 be named or imagined, short of God. About so sub¬ 
 lime a majesty we should not speak hastily from pruri¬ 
 ence of wit, or flimsy pretext of promoting piety ; but 
 with great maturity of thought; and whenever the 
 maxims of the Church and the oracles of faith do not 
 suffice, then not without the suffrages of the Doctors. 
 
 . Those who are subject to this prurience of 
 innovation, do not perceive how broad is the difference 
 between subjects of human science, and heavenly 
 things. All novelty concerning the objects of our faith 
 is to be put far away; except so far as by diligent in¬ 
 vestigation of God’s Word, written and unwritten, and 
 a well-founded inference from what is thence to be 
 elicited, something is brought to light which, though 
 already indeed there, has not hitherto been recognized. 
 The innovations which we condemn are those which 
 rest neither on the written nor unwritten Word, nor on 
 conclusions from it, nor on the judgment of ancient 
 sages, nor sufficient basis of reason, but on the sole 
 
H4 
 
 Anglican Misconceptions and Catholic 
 
 color and pretext of doing more honor to the Deipara ” 
 (p. io). 
 
 In another portion of the same work, he speaks in 
 particular of one of those imaginations to which you 
 especially refer, and for which, without strict necessity 
 (as it seems to . me), you allege the authority of a 
 Eapide. 
 
 “ Nor is that honor of the Deipara to be offered, viz., 
 that the elements of the body of Christ, which the 
 Blessed Virgin supplied to it, remain perpetually un¬ 
 altered in Christ, and thereby are found also in the 
 Eucharist. . . . This solicitude for the Virgin’s 
 
 glory must, I consider, be discarded ; since, if rightly 
 considered, it involves an injury towards Christ, and 
 such honor the Virgin lovetli not. And first, dismiss¬ 
 ing philosophical bagatelles about the animation of 
 blood, milk, etc., who can endure the proposition that a 
 good portion of the substance of Christ in the Eucharist 
 should be worshipped with a cultus less than latria f 
 viz., by the inferior cultus of hyperdulia f The prefer¬ 
 able class of theologians contend that not even tlie hu- 
 inanity of Christ, is to be materially abstracted from the 
 Word of God, and worshipped by itself; how then shall 
 we introduce a cultus of the Deipara in Christ, which is 
 inferior to the cultus proper to H im ? How is this other 
 than a casting down of the substance of Christ from His 
 Royal Throne, and a degradation of it to some inferior 
 sitting place ? It is nothing to the purpose to refer to 
 such Fathers as say that the flesh of Christ is the flesh 
 of Mary, for they speak of its origin. What will 
 hinder, if this doctrine be admitted, our also admitting 
 that there is something in Christ which is detestable? 
 for, as the first elements of a body which were com¬ 
 municated by the Virgin to Christ, have (as these 
 authors say) remained perpetually in Christ, so the 
 
Excesses in Devotion to the Blessed Virgin . 115 
 
 same materia , at least in part, which belonged origin¬ 
 ally to the ancestors of Christ, came down to the Virgin 
 from her father, unchanged, and taken from her grand¬ 
 father, and so on. And thus, since it is not unlikely 
 that some of these ancestors were reprobate, there 
 would now be something actually in Christ which had 
 belonged to a reprobate, and worthy of detestation” 
 
 (p- 237)- 
 
 8 . After such explanation, and with such authorities, 
 to clear my path, I put away from me, as you would 
 wish, without any hesitation, as matters in which my 
 heart and reason have no part (when taken in their 
 literal and absolute sense, as any Protestant would 
 naturally take them, and as the writers doubtless did 
 not use them), such sentences, and phrases, as these: 
 that the mercy of Mary is infinite ; that God has re¬ 
 signed into her hands His omnipotence ; that it is safer 
 to seek her than to seek her Son; that the Blessed 
 Virgin is superior to God ; that our Lord is subject to 
 her command; that His present disposition towards 
 sinners, as well as his Father's, is to reject them, while 
 the Blessed Mary takes His place as an Advocate with 
 Father and Son ; that the Saints are more ready to in¬ 
 tercede with Jesus than Jesus with the Father; that 
 Mary is the only refuge of those with whom God is 
 angry; that Mary alone can obtain a Protestant’s con¬ 
 version ; that it would have sufficed for the salvation of 
 men if our Lord had died, not in order to obey His 
 Father, but to defer to the decree of His Mother; that 
 she rivals our Lord in being God’s daughter, not by 
 adoption, but by a kind of nature; that Christ fulfilled 
 the office of Saviour by imitating her virtues ; that, as 
 the Incarnate God bore the image of His Father, so He 
 bore the image of His Mother; that redemption derived 
 
116 Anglican Misconceptions and Catholic 
 
 from Christ indeed its sufficiency, but from Mary its 
 beauty and loveliness ; that, as we are clothed with the 
 merits of Christ, so we are clothed with the merits of 
 Mary; that, as He is Priest, in a like sense is she 
 Priestess; that His Body and Blood in the Eucharist 
 are truly hers and appertain to her ; that as He is pres¬ 
 ent and received therein, so is she present and received 
 therein; that Priests are ministers as of Christ, so of 
 Mary ; that elect souls are born of God and Mary ; that 
 the Holy Ghost brings into fruitfulness His action by 
 her, producing in her and by her Jesus Christ in His 
 members ; that the kingdom of God in our souls, as our 
 Eord speaks, is really the kingdom of Mary in the soul; 
 that she and the Holy Ghost produce in the soul extra¬ 
 ordinary things; and that when the Holy Ghost finds 
 Mary in a soul He flies there. 
 
 Sentiments such as these I freely surrender to your 
 animadversion; I never knew of them till I read your 
 book, nor, as I think, do the vast majority of English 
 Catholics know them. They seem to me like a bad 
 dream. I could not have conceived them to be said. I 
 know not to what authority to go for them, to Scrip¬ 
 ture, or to the Fathers, or to the decrees of Councils, 
 or to the consent of schools, or to the tradition of the 
 faithful, or to the Holy See, or to Reason. They defy 
 all the loci theologici. There is nothing of them in the 
 Missal, in the Roman Catechism, in the Roman Rac- 
 colta , in the Imitation of Christ, in Gother, Challoner, 
 Milner, or Wiseman, as far as I am aware. They do 
 but scare and confuse me. I should not be holier, more 
 spiritual, more sure of perseverance, if I twisted my 
 moral being into the reception of them; I should but be 
 guilty of fulsome frigid flattery towards the most up¬ 
 right and noble of God’s creatures, if I professed them, 
 and of stupid flattery too; for it would be like the com- 
 
Excesses in Devotion to the Blessed Virgin . I I7 
 
 pliment of painting up a young and beautiful princess 
 with the brow of a Plato and the muscle of an Achilles. 
 And I should expect her to tell one of her people in 
 waiting to turn me off her service without warning. 
 Whether thus to feel be the scandalum parvulorum in 
 my case, or the scandalum PhariscBorum , I leave others 
 to decide; but I will say plainly that I had rather 
 believe (which is impossible) that there is no God at 
 all, than that Mary is greater than God. I will have 
 nothing to do with statements which can only be ex¬ 
 plained by being explained away. I do not, however, 
 speak of these statements, as they are found in their 
 authors, for I know nothing of the originals, and can¬ 
 not believe that they have meant what you say; but I 
 take them as they lie in your pages. Were any of them 
 the sayings of Saints in ecstasy, I should know they 
 had a good meaning; still I should not repeat them 
 myself; but I am looking at them, not as spoken by 
 the tongues of Angels, but according to that literal 
 sense which they bear in the mouths of English men 
 and English women. And, as spoken by man to man, 
 in England, in the nineteenth century, I consider them 
 calculated to prejudice inquirers, to frighten the un- 
 * learned, to unsettle consciences, to provoke blasphemy, 
 and to work the loss of souls.* 
 
 * As another and recent instance of the jealousy with which the Holy See 
 preserves the bounds within which both tradition and theology confine the 
 cultus of the Blessed Virgin, I refer to a Decree of February 28, 1875, ad¬ 
 dressed to the Bishop of Presmilia, in which the title of “ Queen of the 
 Heart of Jesus,” as well as a certain novelty in the representation of 
 Madonna and Child, as in use in a certain Sodality, are condemned, on the 
 ground that they may be understood in a sense inconsistent with the true 
 faith. It will be found in the Irish Ecclesiastical Record for April, 1875. 
 
 The Bishop had forbidden the above innovations, and the Sacred Con¬ 
 gregation, “ to which the examination of the matter was committed by the 
 Holy Father,” says to the Bishop, it cannot but “acknowledge and praise 
 your Excellency’s zeal and care in defending the purity of the faith, espe- 
 
i 18 Anglican Misconceptions and Catholic 
 
 9. And now, after having said so much as this, bear 
 with me, my dear friend, if I end with an expostula¬ 
 tion. Have you not been touching us on a very tender 
 point in a very rude way ? Is it not the effect of what 
 you have said to expose her to scorn and obloquy who 
 is dearer to us than any other creature ? Have you 
 even hinted that our love for her is anything else than 
 an abuse ? Have you thrown her one kind word your¬ 
 self all through your book ? I trust so, but I have not 
 lighted upon one. And yet I know you love her well. 
 Can you wonder, then, can I complain much, much as 
 I grieve, that men should utterly misconceive of you 
 and are blind to the fact that you have put the whole 
 argument between you and us on a new footing; and 
 that, whereas it was said twenty-five years ago in the 
 British Critic, ‘ ‘ Till Rome ceases to be what practi¬ 
 cally she is, union is impossible between her and 
 England,” you declare on the contrary, ” Union is 
 
 dally in these days, when it seems not to be held in much account by men, 
 who, whatever their piety, are led by a sovereign love of novelty to neglect 
 the danger, incurred in consequence by the simple among the faithful, of 
 deviating from the right sense of piety and devotion by means of strange 
 and foreign doctrines. 
 
 “ To obviate this danger,” the letter proceeds to say, the Sacred Congre¬ 
 gation has at other times (nitre volte) interposed, “to warn and reprehend” 
 those who, by such language about the Blessed Virgin, “ have not suffi¬ 
 ciently conformed to the right Catholic sense,” but “ascribe power to her, 
 as issuing from her divine maternity, beyond its due limits ; as if this new 
 title had brought her an accession of greatness and glory hitherto unknown, 
 and, in the notion of her sublime dignity hitherto held by the Church ac¬ 
 cording to the doctrine of the Holy Fathers, there was something still 
 wanting, not considering that, although she has the greatest influence 
 (possa moltissimo) with her Son, still it cannot be piously affirmed that 
 she exercises command over Him [eserciti impero)." 
 
 Further, in order apparently to mark the ministrative office of the 
 Blessed Virgin, and her dependence as a creature on her Son, “it has been 
 ruled by the Sovereign Pontiff that the images or pictures to be conse¬ 
 crated to the cultus in question, must represent the Virgin as carrying the 
 infant Jesus, not placed before her knees, but in her arms.” 
 
Excesses in Devotion to the Blessed Virgin. 1 19 
 
 possible , as soon as Italy and England, having the same 
 faith and the same centre of unity, are allowed to hold 
 severally their own theological opinions 5 ’ ? They have 
 not done you justice here ; because, in truth, the honor 
 of our Eady is dearer to them than the conversion of 
 England. 
 
 Take a parallel case, and consider how you would 
 decide it yourself. Supposing an opponent of a doc¬ 
 trine for which you so earnestly contend, the eternity of 
 punishment, instead of meeting you with direct argu¬ 
 ments against it, heaped together a number of extrava¬ 
 gant descriptions of the place, mode, and circumstances 
 of its infliction, quoted Tertullian as a witness for the 
 primitive Fathers, and the Convenanters and Ranters 
 for these last centuries; brought passages from the 
 Inferno of Dante, and from the Sermons of Wesley and 
 Whitfield ; nay, supposing he confined himself to the 
 chapters on the subject in the work, which has the 
 sanction of Jeremy Taylor, on “ The State of Man,” or 
 to his sermon on “ The Foolish Exchange,” or to par¬ 
 ticular passages in Eeighton, South, Beveridge, and 
 Barrow, would you think this a fair and becoming 
 method of reasoning ? and if he avowed that he 
 should ever consider the Anglican Church committed 
 to all these accessories of the doctrine till its au¬ 
 thorities formally denounced Beveridge, and Whitfield, 
 and a hundred others, would you think this an equit¬ 
 able determination,, or the procedure of a theologian? 
 
 So far concerning the Blessed Virgin ; the chief but 
 not the only subject of your volume. And now, when 
 I could wish to proceed,* she seems to stop all contro¬ 
 versy, for the Feast of her Immaculate Conception is 
 upon us; and close upon its Octave, which is kept with 
 
 *The sequel to this letter never was written. Vid. supr., note p. 25, 
 
120 Anglican Misconceptions and Catholic Excesses. 
 
 special solemnities in the churches of this town, come 
 the great Antiphons, the heralds of Christmas. That 
 joyful season, joyful for all of us, while it centres in 
 Him who then came on earth, also brings before us in 
 peculiar prominence that Virgin Mother who bore and 
 nursed Him. Here she is not in the background, as at 
 Easter-tide, but she brings Him to us in her arms. 
 Two great Festivals, dedicated to her honor, to-mor- 
 iow’s and the Purification, mark out and keep the 
 ground, and, like the towers of David, open the way to 
 and fro, for the high holiday season of the Prince of 
 Peace. And all along it her image is upon it, such as 
 we see it in the typical representation of the Catacombs. 
 May the sacred influences of this tide bring us all 
 together in unity! May it destroy all bitterness on 
 your side and ours ! May it quench all jealous, sour, 
 proud, fierce antagonism on our side; and dissipate all 
 captious, carping, fastidious refinements of reasoning on 
 yours ! May that bright and gentle Eady, the Blessed 
 Virgin Mary, overcome you with her sweetness, and 
 revenge herself on her foes by interceding effectually 
 for their conversion ! 
 
 I am, 
 
 Yours, most affectionately, 
 JOHN H. NEWMAN. 
 
 The Oratory, Birmingham, 
 
 Dec. 7, 1865. 
 
NOTTB 
 
 THE ANOMALOUS STATEMENTS OF ST. BASIL, ST. 
 CHRYSOSTOM, AND ST. CYRIL ABOUT THE 
 BLESSED VIRGIN. 
 
 I have admitted that several great Fathers of the Church of the 
 fourth and fifth centuries speak of the Blessed Virgin in terms 
 which we never should think of using now, and which at first sight 
 are inconsistent with the belief and sentiment concerning her 
 which I have ascribed to their times. These Fathers are St. 
 Basil, St. Chrysostom, and St. Cyril of Alexandria; and the occa¬ 
 sion of their speaking is furnished by certain passages of Scripture 
 on which they are commenting. It may in consequence be asked 
 of me, why I do not take these three, instead of St. Justin, St. 
 Irenasus, and Tertullian, as my authoritative basis for determining 
 the doctrine of the primitive times concerning the Blessed Mary: 
 why, instead of making St. Irenaeus, etc., the rule, and St. Basil, 
 etc., the exception, I do not make the earlier Fathers the excep¬ 
 tion, and the latter the rule. Since I do not, it may be urged 
 against me that I am but making a case for my own opinion, and 
 * playing the part of an advocate. 
 
 Now I do not see that it would be illogical or nugatory, though 
 I did nothing more than make a case; indeed I have worded my¬ 
 self in my Letter as if I wished to do little more. For so much as 
 this would surely be to the purpose, considering that the majority 
 of Anglicans have a supreme confidence that no case whatever 
 can be made in behalf of our doctrine concerning the Blessed 
 Virgin from the ancient Fathers. I should have gained a real 
 point if I did anything to destroy this imagination ; but I intend 
 to attempt something more than this. I shall attempt to invali¬ 
 date the only grounds on which any teaching contrary to the 
 Catholic can be founded on Antiquity. 
 
 I2X 
 
122 
 
 Note . 
 
 I. 
 
 First, I set down the passages which create the difficulty, as 
 they are found in the great work of Petavius, a theologian too 
 candid and fearless to put out of sight or explain away adverse 
 facts, from fear of scanda 1 , or from the expedience of controversy. 
 
 1. St. Basil then writes thus, in his 260th Epistle, addressed to 
 Optimus : 
 
 “ [Symeon] uses the word ‘sword,’ meaning the word which is 
 tentative and critical of the thoughts, and reaches unto the separa¬ 
 tion of soul and spirit, of the joints and marrow. Since then 
 every soul, at the time of the Passion, was subjected in a way to 
 someun settlement ( diakrisci ), according to the Lord’s word, who 
 said, ‘ All ye shall be scandalized in Me,’ Symeon prophesies even 
 of Mary herself, that, standing by the Cross, and seeing what was 
 doing, and hearing the words, after the testimony of Gabriel, after 
 the secret knowledge of the divine conception, after the great 
 manifestation of miracles, thou wilt experience, he says, a certain 
 tossing {salos) of thy soul. For it beseemed the Lord to taste 
 death for every one, and to become a propitiation of the world, in 
 order to justify all in Plis blood. And thee thyself who hast been 
 taught from above the things concerning the Lord, some unsettle¬ 
 ment ( diakrisis ) will reach. This is the sword ; ‘ that out of 
 many hearts thoughts may be revealed.’ He obscurely signifies 
 that, after the scandalizing which took place upon the Cross of 
 Christ, both to the disciples and to Mary herself, some quick heal¬ 
 ing should follow upon it from the Lord, confirming their heart 
 unto faith in Him.” 
 
 2. St. Chrysostom, in Matth. Horn. iv.: 
 
 “ ‘ Wherefore,’ a man may say, ‘ did not the Angel do in the 
 case of the Virgin [what he did to Joseph ? ’” viz., appear to her 
 after, not before, the Incarnation], “‘why did he not bring her the 
 good tidings after her conception ? ’ lest she should be in great 
 disturbance and trouble. For the probability was, that, had she 
 not known the clear fact, she would have resolved something 
 strange ( atopon ) about herself, and had recourse to rope or sword, 
 not bearing the disgrace. For the Virgin was admirable, and 
 Luke shows her virtue when he says that, when she heard the 
 salutation, she did not at once become extravagant, nor appro¬ 
 priated the words, but was troubled, searching what was the 
 
Note. 
 
 123 
 
 nature of the salutation. One then of so refined a mind ( diekri - 
 bomene ) would be made beside herself with despondency, con¬ 
 sidering the disgrace, and not expecting, whatever she may say, 
 to persuade any one who hears her that adultery had not been 
 the fact. Lest then these things should occur, the Angel came 
 before the conception ; for it beseemed that that womb should be 
 without disorder which the Creator of all entered, and that that 
 soul- should be rid of all perturbation which was counted worthy 
 to become the minister of such mysteries.” 
 
 In Matth. Horn. xliv. (7 rid. also in Joann. Horn, xxi.) : 
 
 “ To-day we learn something else even further, viz., that not 
 even to bear Christ in the womb, and to have that wonderful 
 childbirth, has any gain without virtue. And this is especially 
 true from this passage, ‘ As He was yet speaking to the multitude, 
 behold His Mother and His brethren stood without, seeking to 
 speak to Him,’ etc. This He said, not as ashamed of His 
 Mother, nor as denying her who bore Him ; for, had he been 
 ashamed, He had not passed through that womb ; but as showing 
 that there was no profit to her thence, unless she did all that was 
 necessary. For what she attempted came of overmuch love of 
 honor; for she wished to show to the people that she had 
 power and authority over her Son, in nothing ever as yet having 
 given herself airs ( phantazoinene ) about Him. Therefore she 
 came thus unseasonably. Observe then her and their rashness 
 ( aponoian ). . . . Had He wished to deny His Mother, 
 
 then He would have denied, when the Jews taunted Him with 
 her. But no : He shows such care of her as to commit her as 
 a legacy on the Cross itself to the disciple whom He loved best of 
 all, and to take anxious oversight of her. But does He not do the 
 same now, by caring for her and His brethren ? . . . And 
 
 consider, not only the words which convey the considerate re¬ 
 buke, but also . . . who He is who utters it . . . and 
 what He aims at in uttering it; not, that is, as wishing to cast 
 her into perplexity, but to release her from a most tyrannical af¬ 
 fection, and to bring her gradually to the fitting thought concern¬ 
 ing Him, and to persuade her that He is not only her Son, but 
 also her Master.” 
 
 3. St. Cyril, in Joann, lib. xii. 1064: 
 
 “ How shall we explain this passage ? He introduces both His 
 Mother and the other women with her standing at the Cross, and, 
 
124 
 
 Note. 
 
 as is plain, weeping. For somehow the race of women is ever 
 fond of tears ; and especially given to laments, when it has rich 
 occasions for weeping. How then did they persuade the blessed 
 Evangelist to be so minute in his account, as to make mention of 
 this abidance of the women? For it was his purpose to teach 
 even this, viz., that probably eve~ the Mother of the Lord herself 
 was scandalized at the unexpected Passion, and that the death 
 upon the Cross, being so very bitter, was near unsettling her 
 from her fitting mind ; and in addition to this, the mockeries of 
 the Jews, and the soldiers too, perhaps, who were sitting near the 
 Cross and making a jest of Him who was hanging on it and dar¬ 
 ing, in the sight of His very mother, the division of His garments. 
 Doubt not that she admitted ( eisedexato) some such thoughts 
 as these : I bore Him who is laughed at on the wood ; but, in 
 saying He was the true Son of the Omnipotent God, perhaps 
 somehow He was mistaken. He said He was the Life, how then 
 has He been crucified ? how has he been strangled by the cords 
 of His murderers? how prevailed He not over the plot of His per¬ 
 secutors? why descends He not from the Cross, though He bade 
 Lazarus to return to life, and amazed all Judaea with His mira¬ 
 cles ? And it is very natural that the woman in her {to gynaion ), 
 not knowing the mystery, should slide into some such trains of 
 thought. For we must conclude, if we judge well, that the gravity 
 of the circumstances was enough to overturn even a self-possessed 
 mind; it is no wonder then if a woman {to gynaion) slipped into 
 this reasoning. For if Peter himself, the chosen one of the holy 
 disciples, once was scandalized . . . so as to cry out hastily. 
 
 Be it far from Thee, Lord, . . . what paradox is it, if the soft 
 
 mind of womankind was carried off to weak ideas ? And this we 
 say, not idly conjecturing, as it may strike one, but entertaining 
 the suspicion from what is written concerning the Mother of the 
 Lord. For we remember that Simeon the Just, when he received 
 the Lord as a little child into his arms, . . . said to her, ‘ A 
 
 sword shall go through thine own soul, that out of many hearts 
 thoughts may be revealed.’ By sword he meant the sharp excess 
 of suffering cutting down a woman’s mind into extravagant 
 thoughts. For temptations test the hearts of those who suffer 
 them, and make bare the thoughts which are in them.” 
 
 Now what do these three Fathers say in these passages? 
 
 I. St. Basil imputes to the Blessed Virgin, not only doubt, but 
 
Note. 
 
 125 
 
 the sin of doubt. On the other hand, 1, he imputes it only on one 
 occasion; 2, he does not consider it to be a grave sin 1.3, he 
 implies that, in point of spiritual perfection, she is above the 
 Apostles. 
 
 2. St. Chrysostom, in his first passage, does not impute sin to 
 her at all. He says God so disposed things for her as to shield 
 her from the chance of sinning; that she was too admirable to 
 be allowed to be betrayed by her best and purest feelings into sin. 
 All that is implied repugnant to a Catholic’s reverence for her is, 
 that her woman’s nature, viewed in itself and apart from the 
 watchful providence of God’s grace over her, would not have had 
 strength to resist a hypothetical temptation—a position which a 
 Catholic will not care to affirm or deny, though he will feel great 
 displeasure at having to discuss it at all. This, moreover, at least 
 is distinctly brought out in this passage, viz., that in St. Chrysos¬ 
 tom’s mind our Lady was not a mere physical instrument of the 
 Incarnation, but that her soul, as well as her body, “ ministered to 
 the mystery,” and needed to be duly prepared for it. 
 
 As to his second most extraordinary passage, I should not be 
 candid, unless I simply admitted that it is as much at variance 
 with what we hold, as it is solitary and singular in the writings of 
 Antiquity. The saint distinctly {pace illius), needlessly, imputes to 
 the Blessed Virgin, on the occasion in question, the sin or infirm¬ 
 ity of vainglory. He has a parallel passage in commenting on the 
 miracle at the marriage-feast. All that can be said to alleviate 
 the startling character of these passages is, that it does not 
 appear that St. Chrysostom would account such vainglory in a 
 woman as any great failing. 
 
 3. Lastly, as to St. Cyril, I do not see that he declares that 
 Mary actually doubted at the Crucifixion, but that, considering 
 she was a woman, it is likely she was tempted to doubt, and near¬ 
 ly doubted. Moreover, St. Cyril does, not seem to consider such 
 doubt, had it occurred, as any great sin. 
 
 Thus, on the whole, all three Fathers, St. Basil and St. Cyril 
 explicitly, and St. Chrysostom by implication, consider that on 
 occasions she was, or might be, exposed to violent temptation to 
 doubt; but two Fathers consider that she actually did sin, though 
 she sinned lightly—the sin being doubt, and on one occasion, 
 according to St. Basil; and on two occasions, the sin being vain¬ 
 glory, according to St. Chrysostom. 
 
126 
 
 Note. 
 
 However, the strong language of these Fathers is not directed 
 against our Lady’s person, so much as against her nature. They 
 seem to have participated with Ambrose, Jerome, and other 
 Fathers, in that low estimation of woman’s nature which was 
 general in their times. In the broad imperial world, the concep¬ 
 tion entertained of womankind was not high; it seemed only to 
 perpetuate the poetical tradition of the “ Varium et mutabile sem¬ 
 per.” Little was then known of that true nobility, which is exem¬ 
 plified in the females of the Gothic and German races, and in 
 those of the old Jewish stock, Miriam, Deborah, Judith, and 
 Susanna, the forerunners of Mary. When then St. Chrysostom 
 imputes vainglory to her, he is not imputing to her anything worse 
 than an infirmity, the infirmity of a nature inferior to man’s, and 
 intrinsically feeble ; as though the Almighty could have created 
 a more excellent being than Mary, but could not have made a 
 greater woman. Accordingly Chrysostom does not say that she 
 sinned. He does not deny that she had all the perfections which 
 woman could have ; but he seems to have thought the capabilities 
 of her nature were bounded, so that the utmost grace bestowed 
 upon it could not raise it above that standard of perfection in 
 which its elements resulted, and that to attempt more would have 
 been to injure, not to benefit it. Of course I am not stating this 
 as brought out in any part of his writings, but it seems to me to be 
 the real sentiment of many of the ancients. 
 
 I will add that such a belief on the part of these Fathers, that 
 the Blessed Virgin had committed a sin or a weakness, was not 
 in itself inconsistent with the exercise of love and devotion to -her 
 (though I am not pretending that there is proof of any such exer¬ 
 cise on their part in fact) ; and for this simple reason, that if sin¬ 
 lessness were a condition of inspiring devotion, we should not feel 
 devotion to any but our Lady, not to St. Joseph, or to the Apos¬ 
 tles, or to our Patron Saints. 
 
 Such then is the teaching of these three Fathers; now how far 
 is it in antagonism to ours ? On the one hand, we will not allow 
 that our Blessed Lady ever sinned; we cannot bear the notion, 
 entering, as we do, into the full spirit of St. Augustine’s words: 
 “ Concerning the Holy Virgin Mary, I wish no question to be 
 raised at all, when we are treating of sins.” On the other hand, 
 we admit, rather we maintain, that, except for the grace of God, 
 
Note. 
 
 12; 
 
 she might have sinned ; and that she may have been exposed to 
 temptation in the sense in which our Lord was exposed to it, 
 though as His Divine Nature made it impossible for Him to yield 
 to it, so His grace preserved her under its assaults also. While 
 then we do not hold that St. Simeon prophesied of temptation, 
 when he said a sword would pierce her, still, if any one likes to 
 say he did, we do not consider him heretical, provided he does not 
 impute to her any sinful or inordinate emotion as the consequence 
 to it. In this'way St. Cyril may be let off altogether; and we 
 have only to treat of the paradoxa or anomala of those great 
 Saints, St. Basil and St. Chrysostom. I proceed to their contro¬ 
 versial value. 
 
 II. 
 
 I mean, that having determined what the three Fathers say, 
 and how far they are at issue with what Catholics hold now, I 
 now come to the main question, viz., What is the authoritative 
 force in controversy of what they thus say in opposition to Catho¬ 
 lic teaching ? I think I shall be able to show that it has no con¬ 
 troversial force at all. 
 
 I. I begin by observing, that the main force of passages which 
 can be brought from any Father or Fathers in controversy, lies in 
 the fact that such passages represent the judgment or sentiment 
 of their own respective countries; and again, I say that the force 
 of that local judgment or sentiment lies in its being the existing 
 expression of an Apostolical tradition. I am far, of course, from 
 denying the claim of the teaching of a Father on our deference, 
 arising out of his personal position and character; or the claims 
 of the mere sentiments of a Christian population on our careful 
 attention, as a fact carrying with it, under circumstances, especial 
 weight; but, in a question of doctrine, we must have recourse 
 to the great source of doctrine, Apostolical Tradition, and a 
 Father must represent his own people, and that people must be 
 the witnesses of an uninterrupted Tradition from the Apostles, if 
 anything decisive is to come of any theological statement which is 
 found in his writings ; and if, in a particular case, there is no 
 reason to suppose that he does echo the popular voice, or that 
 that popular voice is transmitted from Apostolic times, or (to take 
 another channel of Tradition) unless the Father in question 
 receives and reports his doctrine from the Bishops and priests 
 
128 
 
 Note. 
 
 who instructed him on the very understanding and profession that 
 it is Apostolical, then, though it was not one Father but ten who 
 said a thing, it would weigh nothing against the assertion of only 
 one Father to the contrary, provided it was clear that that one 
 Father witnessed to an Apostolical Tradition. Now I do not say 
 that I can decide the question by this issue with all the exactness 
 which is conceivable," but still this is the issue by which it must be 
 tried, and the issue by which I shall be enabled, as I think, to 
 come to a satisfactory conclusion upon it. 
 
 2. Such, I say, being the issue, viz., that a doctrine reported by 
 the Fathers, in order to have dogmatic force, must be a tradition 
 in its source or form ; next, what is a Tradition, considered in its 
 matter? It is a belief, which, be it affirmative or negative , 
 is positive. The mere absence of a tradition in a country is not a 
 tradition the other way. If, for instance, there was no tradition 
 in Syria and Asia Minor that the phrase “ consubstantial with the 
 Father’’came from the Apostles, that would not be a tradition 
 that it did not come from the Apostles; though of course it would 
 be necessary for those who said that it did, to account for the 
 ignorance of those countries as to the real fact. 
 
 3. The proposition “ Christ is God,” serves as an example of 
 what I mean by an affirmative tradition; and “ no one born of 
 woman is born in God’s favor,” is an example of a negative tradi¬ 
 tion. I observe then, in the third place, that a tradition does not 
 carry its own full explanation with it; it does but land (so to say) 
 a proposition at the feet of the Apostles, and its interpretation has 
 still to be determined, as the Apostles’ words in Scripture, how¬ 
 ever much theirs, need an interpretation. Thus I may accept the 
 above negative Tradition, that “ no one woman-born is bom in 
 God’s favor,” yet question its strict universality, as a point of criti¬ 
 cism, saying that a general proposition admits of exceptions, that 
 our Lord was born of woman, yet was the sinless and acceptable 
 priest and sacrifice for all men. So again the Arians allowed 
 that “ Christ was God,” but they disputed about the meaning of 
 the word “ God.” 
 
 4. Further, there are explicit traditions and implicit. By an 
 explicit tradition I mean a doctrine which is conveyed in the letter 
 of the proposition which has been handed down ; and by implicit, 
 one which lies in the force and virtue, not in the letter of the 
 proposition. Thus it might be an Apostolical tradition that our 
 
129 
 
 Note. 
 
 Lord was the very Son of God, of one nature with the Father, 
 and in all things equal to Him ; and again a tradition that there 
 was but one God: these would be explicit, but in them would 
 necessarily be conveyed, moreover, the implicit tradition that the 
 Father and the Son were numerically one. Implicit traditions are 
 positive traditions, as being strictly conveyed in positive. 
 
 5. Lastly, there are at least two ways of determining an Apos¬ 
 tolical tradition : (1.) When credible witnesses declare that it is 
 Apostolical; as when three hundred Fathers at Nicasa stopped 
 their ears at Arius’s blasphemies: (2.) When, in various places, 
 independent witnesses enunciate one and the same doctrine, as 
 St. Irenaeus, St. Cyprian, and Eusebius assert that the Apostles 
 founded a Church, Catholic and One. 
 
 III. 
 
 Now to apply these principles to the particular case on account 
 of which I have laid them down. 
 
 1. That “ Mary is the new Eve,” is a proposition answering to 
 the idea of a Tradition. I am not prepared to say that it can be 
 shown to have the first of the above two tests of its Apostolicity, 
 viz., that the writers who record it, profess to have received it 
 from the Apostles ; but I conceive it has the second test, viz., that 
 the writers are independent witnesses, as I have shown at length 
 in the course of my Letter. 
 
 It is an explicit tradition; and by the force of it follow two 
 others, which are implicit—first (considering the condition of Eve 
 in Paradise), that Mary had no part in sin, and indefinitely large 
 measures of grace; secondly (considering the doctrine of merits), 
 that she has been exalted to glory proportionate to that grace. 
 
 This is what I have to observe on the argument in behalf of the 
 Blessed Virgin. St. Justin, St. Irenaeus, Tertullian, are witnesses 
 of an Apostolical tradition, because in three distinct parts of the 
 world they enunciate one and the same definite doctrine. And it 
 is remarkable that they witness just for those three seats of 
 Catholic teaching where the truth in this matter was likely to be 
 especially lodged. St. Justin speaks for Jerusalem, the see of St. 
 James; St. Irenaeus for Ephesus, the dwelling-place, the place of 
 burial, of St.John; and Tertullian, who made a long residence 
 at Rome, for the city of St. Peter and St. Paul. 
 
130 
 
 Note . 
 
 2. Now, what can be produced on the other side, parallel to an 
 argument like this ? A tradition in its matter is a positive state¬ 
 ment of belief; in its form it is a statement which comes from 
 the Apostles: (i.) Now, first in point of matter, what definite 
 statement of belief at all, is witnessed to by St. Basil, St. Chry¬ 
 sostom, and St. Cyril ? I cannot find any. They do but interpret 
 certain passages in the Gospels to our Lady’s disadvantage ; is 
 an interpretation a distinct statement of belief? but even if it 
 was, there is no joint interpretation in this case; they do not all 
 three interpret one and the same passage. Nor do they agree 
 together in their interpretation of those passages, which either 
 one or other of them interprets so harshly; for, while St. Chry¬ 
 sostom holds that our Lord spoke in correction of His Mother 
 at the wedding-feast, St. Cyril on the contrary says that He 
 wrought a miracle which He was Himself unwilling to work, in 
 order to show “ reverence to His Mother,” and that she “ having 
 great authority for the working of the miracle got the victory, 
 persuading the Lord, as being her Son, as was fitting.” But, 
 taking the statements which are in her disparagement as we 
 find them, can we generalize them into one proposition ? Shall 
 we make it such as this, viz., “ The Blessed Virgin during her 
 earthly life committed actual sin ” ? If we mean by this, that 
 there was a positive recognition of such a proposition in the 
 country of St. Basil or St. Chrysostom, this surely is not to be 
 gathered merely from their separate and independent comments 
 on passages from Scripture. All that can be gathered thence 
 legitimately is, that, had there been a positive belief in her sin¬ 
 lessness in those countries, the Fathers in question would not 
 have spoken of her in the terms which they have used ; in other 
 words, that there was no belief in her sinlessness then and there ; 
 but the absence of a belief is not a belief to the contrary, it is 
 not that positive statement, which, as I have said, is required for 
 the matter of a tradition. 
 
 (2.) Nor do the passages which I have quoted from these 
 Fathers, supply us with any tradition, viewed in its form, that is, 
 as a statement which has come down from the Apostles. I have 
 suggested two tests of such a statement: one, when the writers 
 who make it so declare that it was from the Apostles ; and the 
 other when, being independent of one another, they bear witness 
 to one and the same positive statement of doctrine. Neither 
 
Note. 
 
 *3i 
 
 test is fulfilled in this case. The three Fathers of the fourth and 
 fifth centuries are but commenting on Scripture ; and comments, 
 though carrying with them of, course, and betokening, the tone 
 of thought of the place and time to which they belong, are, 
 prima facie , of a private and personal character. If they are 
 more than this, the onus frobandi lies with those who so main¬ 
 tain. Exegetical theology is one department of divine science, 
 and dogmatic is another. On the other hand, the three Fathers 
 of the second century are all writing on dogmatic subjects, when 
 they compare Mary to Eve. 
 
 IV. 
 
 Now to take the three later Fathers, viewed as organs of 
 tradition, one by one : 
 
 1. As to St. Cyril, as I have said, he does not, strictly speaking, 
 say more than that our Lady was grievously tempted. This 
 does not imply sin, for our Lord was “ tempted in all things like 
 as we are, yet without sin.” Moreover, it is this St. Cyril who 
 spoke at Ephesus of the Blessed Virgin in terms of such high 
 panegyric, as to make it more consistent in him to suppose that 
 she was sinless than that she was not. 
 
 2. St. Basil derives his notion from Origen, that the Blessed 
 Virgin at the time of the Passion admitted a doubt about our 
 Lord’s mission, and Origen, so far from professing to rest it on 
 Tradition, draws it as a theological conclusion from a received 
 doctrine. Origen’s characteristic fault was to prefer scientific 
 reasonings to authority ; and he exemplifies it in the case before 
 us, In the middle age, the great obstacle to the reception of the 
 doctrine of the Blessed Mary’s immaculate conception, was the 
 notion that, unless she had been in some sense a sinner, she could 
 not have been redeemed. By an argument parallel to this, Origen 
 argues, that since she was one of the redeemed, she must at one 
 time or another have committed an actual sin. He says : “ Are 
 we to think, that the Apostles were scandalized, and not the 
 Lord’s Mother ? If she suffered not scandal at our Lord’s pas¬ 
 sion, then Jesus died not for her sins. If all have sinned and 
 need the glory of God, being justified by His grace, and re¬ 
 deemed, certainly Mary at that time was scandalized.” This is 
 precisely the argument of Basil, as contained in the passage given 
 

 above: his statement then of the Blessed Virgin’s wavering in 
 faith, instead of professing to be the tradition of a doctrine, car¬ 
 ries with it an avowal of its being none at all. 
 
 However, I am not unwilling to grant that, whereas Scripture 
 tells us that all were scandalized at our Lord's passion, there was 
 some sort of traditional interpretation of Simeon’s words, to the 
 effect that she was in some sense included in that trial. How 
 near the Apostolic era the tradition existed, cannot be deter¬ 
 mined ; but such a belief need not include the idea of sin in the 
 Blessed Virgin, but only the presence of temptation and darkness 
 of spirit. This tradition, whatever its authority, would be easily 
 perverted, so as actually to impute sin to her, by such reasonings 
 as that of Origen. Origen himself, in the course of the passage 
 to which I have referred, speaks of “ the sword ” of Simeon, and 
 is the first to do so. St. Cyril, who, though an Alexandrian as 
 well as Origen, represents a very different school of theology, 
 has, as we have seen, the same interpretation for the piercing 
 sword. It is also found in a Homily attributed to St. Amphilo- 
 chius; and in that sixth Oration of Proclus, which, according to 
 Tillemont and Ceillier, is not to be considered genuine. It is 
 also found in a work incorrectly attributed to St. Augustine. 
 
 3. St. Chrysostom is par excellence the Commentator of the 
 Church. As Commentator and Preacher, he, of all the Fathers, 
 carries about him the most intense personality. In this lies his 
 very charm, peculiar to himself. He is ever overflowing with 
 thought, and he pours it forth with a natural, engaging frankness, 
 and an unwearied freshness and vigor. If he really was in the 
 practice of deeply studying and carefully criticising what he de¬ 
 livered in public, he had in perfection the rare art of concealing 
 his art. He ever speaks from himself, not of course without 
 being impregnatec with the fulness of a Catholic training, but, 
 still, not speaking by rule, but as if “ trusting the lore of his own 
 loyal heart.” On the other hand, if it is not a paradox to say it, 
 no one carries with him so little of the science, precision, consist¬ 
 ency, gravity of a Doctor of the Church, as he who is one of the 
 greatest. The difficulties are well known which he has occa¬ 
 sioned to school theologians : his obiter dicta about our Lady are 
 among them. 
 
 On the whole then I conclude that these three Fathers supply 
 no evidence that, in what they say about her having failed in faith 
 
I yiratenai 
 
 or humility on certain occasions mentioned in Scripture, they are 
 reporting the enunciations of Apostolical Tradition. 
 
 V. 
 
 Moreover, such difficulties as the above are not uncommon in 
 the writings of the Fathers. I will mention several: 
 
 1. St. Gregory Nyssen is a great dogmatic divine ; he too, like 
 St. Basil, is of the school of Origen: and, in several passages of 
 
 1 a* 
 
 his works, he, like Origen, declares or suggests that future punish¬ 
 ment will not be eternal. Those Anglicans who consider St. 
 Chrysostom’s passages in his Commentary on the Gospels to be a 
 real argument against the Catholic belief of the Blessed Virgin’s 
 sinlessness, should explain why they do not feel St. Gregory 
 Nyssen’s teaching, in his Catechetical Discourse, an argument 
 agaihst their own belief in the eternity of punishment. 
 
 2. Again, Anglicans believe in the proper Divinity of our Lord, 
 in spite of Bull’s saying of the Ante-Nicene Fathers, “ Nearly all 
 the ancient Catholics, who preceded Arius, have the appearance 
 of being ignorant of the invisible and incomprehensible ( immen - 
 sam ) nature of the Son of God ”; an article of faith expressly 
 contained in the Athanasian Creed, and enforced by its anathema. 
 
 3. The Divinity of the Holy Ghost is an integral part of the 
 fundamental doctrine of Christianity; yet St. Basil, in the fourth 
 century, apprehending the storm of controversy which its asser¬ 
 tion would raise, refrained from asserting it on an occasion when 
 the Arians were on watch as to what he would say. And, on his 
 keeping silence, St. Athanasius took his part. Such inconsisten¬ 
 cies take place continually, and no Catholic doctrine but suffers 
 from them at times, until what has been preserved by Tradition 
 is formally pronounced to be Apostolical by definition of the 
 Church. 
 
 VI. 
 
 Before concluding, I shall briefly take notice of two questions 
 which may be asked me. 
 
 1. How are we to account for the absence, at Antioch or Caesa¬ 
 rea, of a tradition of our Lady’s sinlessness ? I answer that it 
 was obliterated or confused for the time by the Arian troubles in 
 the countries in which those sees are situated. 
 
134 
 
 Note. 
 
 
 It is not surely wonderful, if, in Syria and Asia Minor, the seat 9 ’ 
 in the fourth century of A nanism-and Semi-Arianism, the prerog¬ 
 atives of the Mother were obscured together with the essential 
 glory of the Son, or if they who denied the tradition of His 
 divinity, forgot the tradition of her sinlessness. Christians in 
 those countries and times, however religious themselves, however 
 orthodox their teachers, were necessarily under peculiar disadvan¬ 
 tages. - ’ • 
 
 Now let it be observed that Basil grew up in the very midst of- 
 Semi-Arianism, and had direct relations with that portion of its 
 professors who had been reconciled to the Church and accepted 
 the Homoiision. It is not wonderful then, if he had 1 no firm 
 habitual hold upon a doctrine which (though Apostolical) in his 
 day was as yet so much in the background all over Christendom, 
 as our Lady’s sinlesSness. • 1 : y 
 
 As to Chrysostom, not only was he in close relations with thed 
 once Semi-Arian Cathedra of Antioch, to the disowning of the 
 rival succession thefe, recognized by Rome and Alexandria, but; 
 as his writings otherwise show, he came under the teaching of the 
 celebrated Antiochene School, celebrated, that is, at once for it£ 
 method of Scripture criticism, and (orthodox as it was itself) fbr ; 
 the successive outbreaks of heresy among its members. These 
 outbreaks began in Paul of Samosata, were continued in the Semi- 
 Arian pupils of Lucian, and ended in Nestorius. The famous 
 Theodore and Diodorus, of the same school, who, though not 
 heretics themselves, have a‘bad name in the Church, were, Dio¬ 
 dorus the master, and Theodore the fellow-pupil, of St. Chrysos¬ 
 tom. (Vid. Essay on Doctr. Devel. chap. v. § 2.) Here then is a 
 natural explanation, why St. Chrysostom, even more than St. Basil,' 
 might be wanting, great doctor as he was, in a clear perception 
 
 of the place of the Blessed Virgin in the Evangelical Dispensa- 
 
 ■| * 
 
 tion. 
 
 2. How are we to account for the passages in the Gospels 
 which are the occasion of the three Fathers’ remarks to her dis¬ 
 paragement ? I answer, they were intended to discriminate be¬ 
 tween our Lord’s work, who is our Teacher and Redeemer, and' 
 the ministrative office of His Mother. . ■ 
 
 As to the words of Simeon, indeed, as interpreted by St. Basil 
 and St. Cyril, there is nothing in, the sacred text which obliges us 
 to consider the “ sword ” to mean doubt rather than anguish ; but 
 
 I 
 
 
Note, 
 
 IBS 
 
 Matth.,jdi. 46-50, with its parallels Mark iii,. 31-35,-and Luke 
 yiii. 19-21 : and with Luke xi. 27,^28, and John ii. 4, requires 
 some-explanation'. 
 
 , I observe then>, that, when our Lord commenced His ministry, 
 and during it, as one of His chief self-sacrifices, He separated 
 Himself from all ties of earth, in order to fulfil the typical idea of 
 a, teacher and priest; and to give an example to His priests 
 after Him ; and especially, to manifest by this action the cardinal 
 truth, as expressed by the Prophet, “ I am the Lord, and there is 
 no Saviour besides Me.” As to His Priests, they, after Him, were 
 to be of the order of that Melchizedech who was.“ without .father 
 and without mother”;, for “no man, being a soldier to God, 
 entangleth himself with secular business ” ; ; and “ no man putting 
 fiis hand to the plough, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of 
 God.” Again, as to the Levites, who were His types in the, , Old 
 Law, there was that honorable history of their zeal for God, when 
 they even, slew their own brethren and companions who had com¬ 
 mitted idolatry; “ who said to his father and to his mother, I do 
 not know you, and to his brethren, I know you not, and their own 
 children they have not known.” To this His separation even from 
 His Mother He refers by anticipation at twelve years old in His 
 words, “ How is it that you sought Me ? Did you not know that 
 I must be about My Father’s business ? ” 
 
 The separation from her, with whom He had lived thirty years 
 and more, was not to last beyond the time of His ministry. She 
 seems to have been surprised when she first heard of it, for St. 
 Luke says, on occasion of His staying in the Temple, “they 
 understood not the word that He spoke to them.” Nay, she 
 seems hardly to have understood it at the marriage-feast; but 
 He, in dwelling on it more distinctly then, implied also that it was 
 not to last long. He said, “ Woman, what have I to do with 
 thee ? My hour is not yet come,” that is, the hour of His triumph, 
 when His Mother was to take her predestined place in His king¬ 
 dom. In saying the hour was not yet come, He implied that the 
 hour would come when He would have to “ do with her,” and 
 she might ask and obtain from Him miracles. Accordingly, St. 
 Augustine thinks that that hour had come, when He said upon 
 the Cross, “ Consummatum est,” and, after this ceremonial es¬ 
 trangement of years. He recognized His Mother and. committed 
 her to the beloved disciple. Thus, by marking out the beginning 
 
136 
 
 Note . 
 
 and the end of the period of exception, during which she could 
 not exert her influence upon Him, He signifies more clearly :by 
 the contrast, that her presence with Him, and Her power, was to 
 be the rule of His kingdom. In a higher sense than He spoke 
 to the Apostles, He seems to address her in the words, “ Because 
 I have spoken these things, sorrow hath filled your heart. But I 
 will see you again, and your heart shall rejoice, and your joy no 
 man shall take from you.” ( Vid. Sermon iii. in Sermons on Sub- 
 jCi ts of the Day. Also the comment of St. Irenaeus, etc., upon 
 John ii. 4, in my note on Athanas. Orat. iii. 41.) 
 
 Also, I might have added the passage in Tertullian, Carn. 
 Christ. § 7, as illustrating, by its contrast with § 17 (quoted above, \ 
 p. 34), the distinction between doctrinal tradition and personal 
 opinion, if it were clear to me that he included the Blessed Virgin 
 in the unbelief which he imputes to our Lord’s brethren ; on the 
 contrary, he expressly separates her off from them. The passage 
 runs thus on the text, “ Who is My Mother? and who are My 
 Brethren ? ” 
 
 “ The Lord’s brothers had not believed in Him, as is contained * 
 in the Gospel published before Marcion. His Mother, equally, is 
 not described (non demonstratur) as having adhered to Him , 
 whereas other Marthas and Marys are frequent in intercourse " 
 with him. In this place at length their (eorum) incredulity is 
 evident; while He was teaching the way of life, was preaching 
 the kingdom of God, was working for the cure of ailments and 
 diseases, though strangers were riveted to Him, these, so much 
 the nearest to Him (tarn proximi), were away. At length they I 
 come upon Him, and stand without, nor enter, not reckoning for¬ 
 sooth on what was going on within.” 
 
 It may be added to the above, that Father Hippolyto Maracci, 
 in his “ Vindicatio Chrysostomica,” arguing in behalf of St. 
 Chrysostom’s belief in the Blessed Virgin’s Immaculate Concep¬ 
 tion, maintains that a real belief in that doctrine is compatible 
 with an admission that she was not free from venial sin, granting 
 for argument’s sake that St. Chrysostom held the latter doctrine. 
 If this be so, it follows that we cannot at once conclude that 
 either he or the other two Fathers deny the doctrine of the 
 Immaculate Conception, because here and there in their writings 
 they impute to the Blessed Virgin infirmities or faults. 
 
 
 
BOSTON COLLEGE 
 
 3 9031 025 82841 
 
 29018 
 
 q 
 
 The Life of Christ. 
 
 REV. WALTER ELLIOTT, C.S.P. 
 
 Over 1,000 Illustrations. 800 pages. 
 
 I. 1 t 
 
 DOES NOT CIRCULATE 
 
 N£ W >v\ 5t/ , 
 
 B%rko/ 
 
 
 Boston College Library 
 
 Chestnut Hill 67, Mass. 
 
 Books may be kept for two weeks unless a 
 shorter period is specified. 
 
 If you cannot find what you want, inquire at 
 the circulation desk for assistance, 
 
 
 
 m % 
 
 M 
 
 * 
 
 Aj,, . \* 
 I i 
 
 
 4 
 
 * & 
 

 
 
 THE CATHOLIC WORLD. 
 
 PUBLISHED BY THE PAUUST FATHERS. 
 
 ESTABLISHED, 1865 
 
 . A Monthly Magazine of General 
 Literature and Science . 
 
 Contains every month timely papers by the ablest 
 Catholic writers in America and Great Britain on the liv-