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Cornell University Library 
 BR 85 .N55E7 1885 
 V.2 
 Essays, critical and historical / 
 
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ESSAYS 
 
 CRITICAL AND HISTORICAL 
 
 SIXTH EDITION. 
 
LONDON : 
 
 PRINTED BY GILBERT AND RIVINGTOM, LIMITED, 
 
 ST. JOHN'S SaVARS. 
 
ESSAYS 
 
 CRITICAL AND HISTORICAL 
 
 BY 
 
 JOHN HENRY CARDINAL NEWMAN 
 
 SIXTH EDITION 
 
 VOLUME II 
 
 LONDON 
 
 LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 
 
 1885 
 

 K 
 
CONTENTS OF VOLUME II. 
 
 PARK. 
 
 ESSAY X. THE CATHOLICITV OF THE ANGLICAN CHURCH I 
 
 NOTE ON ESSAY X. . . . . 74 
 
 XI. THE PROTESTANT IDEA OF ANTICHRIST . . 112 
 
 XII. MILMAN'S VIEW OF CHRISTIANITY . . . 186 
 
 XIII. THE REFORMATION OF THE ELEVENTH CEN- 
 
 TURY . . 249 
 
 NOTE ON ESSAY XIII 318 
 
 XIV. PRIVATE JUDGMENT 336 
 
 XV. JOHN DAVISON 375 
 
 XVI. JOHN KEBLE . 42I 
 
CATHOLICITY OF THE ANGLICAN CHURCH. 
 
 IN his recent work on the Apostolic Succession and 
 the English Orders, Mr. Perceval has done us a ser- 
 vice, which was very much needed, and had never been 
 attempted. Many living writers have treated of the 
 Apostolical Succession as well as he ; but no one but he 
 has had the opportunity, and been at the pains, of ex- 
 hibiting to the general reader the evidence of the fact 
 of the Succession in the English Church. We are 
 referring to the elaborate Appendix to his Volume, in 
 which he has brought together a great number of docu- 
 ments and tables illustrative of some of the more im- 
 portant points in the history of the spiritual descent of 
 our existing bishops and clergy from the Apostles. He 
 begins by enumerating the chief objections which the 
 Roman Catholics have urged against our Succession, as 
 passing through Archbishop Parker and his colleagues, 
 and he lays before us some chief portions of the evi- 
 dence in its favour, presenting us with the records of 
 Parker's consecration as contained in the registers at 
 Lambeth and in the library of Corpus Christi College, 
 Cambridge, and with the offices for consecration and 
 ordination, according to the Antenicene, Eastern, 
 Ancient Western, Coptic, and Queen Elizabeth's Ritual 
 VOL. II. I 
 
2 Catholicity of the 
 
 Next, he has printed a list of between 400 and 500 Eng- 
 lish consecrations, from Cranmer and his consecrators in- 
 clusive, down to the present time, containing name, see, 
 date of consecration, and names of consecrators in the 
 case of each bishop. After this we have the respective 
 Episcopal descents of Parker and Pole traced back, by 
 way of contrast, for four steps ; by which it appears 
 that the proof from existing records of the transmission 
 of the apostolical commission to Pole, is far less complete 
 than what is producible on the side of Parker. Mr. Per- 
 ceval next traces up the Episcopal descent of the present 
 archbishop of Canterbury for four antecedent steps, all 
 the consecrations being in this case known, and finds, to 
 use his own words, that "in transmitting the Apostolical 
 commission to the present Archbishop of Canterbury 
 there were, in the first step, four bishops concerned ; in 
 the second, twelve ; in the third, twenty-seven ; in the 
 fourth, about fifty ; nearly enough to fill all the English 
 dioceses twice over ; so that, not a single consecration 
 here and there, but all the consecrations in England for 
 successive generations, must be supposed' to have failed, 
 before the objection can be worthy of consideration, that 
 the failure of the due consecration of anyone single bishop 
 in a line would destroy the whole theory.'V-P- 218. 
 
 Other tables are added ; among which r.ot the least in- 
 teresting is one containing the consecrations of the non- 
 jurors, the- last bishop of whom died as lately as 1805. 
 
 We do trust and believe that the question of English 
 Orders is now settled once for all. If, indeed, members 
 of our Church again forget the great privilege therein 
 involved, as they have forgotten it in no slight measure 
 ijiore than once, then indeed the whole controversy will 
 
Anglican Church. 3 
 
 have to be run through again, as lately, at a miserable 
 waste of time, labour, and peace. The world will become 
 ignorant of the grounds on which we claim the privilege ; 
 and will require fresh discussion upon its nature, its pro- 
 bability, its evidence, and its place in the Anglican 
 system. We hope better things of our Church than to 
 anticipate such an event ; and at all events the con- 
 troversy is at an end for the present. And so our oppo- 
 nents seem ta consider ; for they evince a disposition to 
 concede to us the Succession " for argument's sake ;" or 
 in other words they find that it is not safe or tenable in 
 argument to deny it, since what they call " for argument's 
 sake " really means " for their own sake." But though 
 we have gained this point, it does not follow that we 
 have driven the enemy from the field and put an end to 
 the war. There is another important and difficult post 
 which the Roman party have not yet surrendered, and 
 from which we must dislodge them; Mr. Perceval does 
 scarcely more than refer to it, nor does it properly fall 
 in his way. , That our Orders are good in themselves is 
 indisputable ; but still they may be given and continued 
 in schism ; our Church may be a true but a schismatical 
 branch of the Catholic body, though ever so legitimately 
 descended from the Apostles. She may at present have 
 a bar upon her ordinances, Sacraments as well as Orders, 
 which deprives them of grace, as a son may be really a 
 son yet disinherited, or a man in a fainting fit or in 
 derangement is still a man, yet unable to use his func- 
 tions. This is a ground which Roman writers have very 
 commonly taken up, and with considerable advantage. 
 Our writers, on the other hand, have not discussed it 
 with the exactness and fulness which it requires at the 
 hands of those who profess to defer to the opinions of 
 the Fathers. We are not unmindful of what our learned 
 
4 Catholicity of the 
 
 champions have done long ago ; but every age has its 
 own character, its own mode of stating things, its own 
 exigencies ; and cannot use, or at least cannot be con- 
 tent with, the controversial efforts of a former time. 
 
 The objection which we have in mind, concisely- 
 stated, is this : on the one hand, that unity is the tenure 
 of divine favour ; that communion with our brethren is 
 the means of communion with our Lord and Saviour; 
 that the Church is not only Apostolic, but Catholic ; that 
 schism cuts off the fountains of grace ; and that estrange- 
 ment from the Christian world is schism ; and, on the 
 other, that in matter of fact our Church is emphatically 
 in a state of estrangement, having intercourse with no 
 other Christian body in any part of the world, except- 
 ing her own dependencies and offshoots. This is the 
 point, which deserves, as we think, to be attentively 
 considered; we make no pretences and have no hopes 
 of doing justice to it in the pages of a Review ; yet it is 
 something to direct attention to it, and so much we 
 propose to do in the pages which follow. 
 
 2. 
 
 Now the first step towards duly answering the objec- 
 tion is to enter into it and master it ; and the best way 
 of effecting this is to put it before our minds as strongly . 
 as we can. With this view, then, we shall first of all 
 endeavour to make a strong statement of our opponents' 
 case, and then bring forward what means we have for 
 overthrowing it. And perhaps we shall best begin by 
 setting down the pleadings on the one side and the ' 
 other in the form of dialogue, which shall be con- 
 ducted favourably to the Church of Rome, so as to ' 
 bring matters to an issue. We are promising a great j 
 deal, but, our intentions being good, we have a sort of 
 
Anglican Church. 5 
 
 claim upon the kind feeling of all upholders of the 
 Catholicity of the English Church. 
 
 The Roman Catholic then begins thus : — There is but 
 One true Church, and its characteristic, both in Scripture 
 and in the Fathers, is, that it should be in many countries, 
 or rather all over the earth. Thus it differs from what it 
 was during the Dispensation of the Law ; then it was 
 one in one country ; under the Gospel it is one in many 
 countries. 
 
 Anglo-Catholic. — I grant ; and that it is schism to 
 separate from it, and that schism is a state of sin. 
 
 Rom. — The flock of Christ is one, not two flocks ; 
 though in many countries, is still but one flock, as sheep 
 moving in a body over a plain. If there be two flocks 
 claiming to be the true flock, it cannot be both of them. 
 If it is the one, it is not the other ; if the other, it is not 
 the one. It cannot be both the Church of Rome and 
 the Church of England ; if the English Church is true, 
 the Roman is a pretence ; and the English is a pretence, 
 if the Roman is true. 
 
 Angl. — This does not follow: a flock of sheep that 
 straggles is still one flock. One part may be on one side 
 of the hedge and yet the other on the other. 
 
 Rom. — A flock of sheep may spread widely and yet be 
 one ; but they would cease to be one if they formed into 
 parties shunning and worrying each other. It is said " a 
 house divided against itself cannot stand ; " if both you 
 and we are the Catholic Church, the Church is falling or 
 has even fallen. 
 
 Angl — We do not differ from each other in all things ; 
 we agree together in fundamentals, and where you agree 
 with us, there we do not act hostilely towards you. 
 
 ^om.—Oa. the contrary, you, as a body, oppose and 
 ; denounce us, as a body, in all possible ways ; and we too 
 
6 Catholicity of the 
 
 oppose and denounce you. Let us look at facts, and 
 not speak by book. Arid you are small, we are large ; ■ 
 therefore we, not you, are the Church. 
 
 Angl.—li we two cannot be at peace, the worse for 
 you ; for your teaching is corrupt, and ours is pure. 
 
 Rom. — No, we preach the whole gospel, and you halve 
 it. 
 
 Angl. — Ouf teaching is the true, because it is the 
 primitive ; yours is not true, because it is novel. 
 
 Rom. — Our teaching is the true, for it is everywhere the 
 same; yours has no warrant, for it is but local and private. 
 
 Angl. — We go by Antiquity ; that is, by the Apostles. 
 Ancient consent is our standard of faith. 
 
 Rom.— We go by Catholicity. Universal consent is 
 our standard of faith. 
 
 Angl. — You are cut off from the old Fathers. 
 
 Rom. — And you are cut off from the present living 
 Church. 
 
 Here each disputant has a strong point ; our strong 
 point is the argument from the past, that of the Romanists 
 is the argument from the present. It is a fact, however 
 it is to be explained, that Rome has added to the Creed ; 
 and it is a fact, however it be justified, tliat we are 
 estranged from the great body of Christians over the 
 world ; and each of these facts is at first sight a grave 
 difficulty in the respective systems to which they belong. 
 
 The difficulty in the Roman view is as great as can 
 well be conceived. The state of the case is this : — 
 Scripture declares that there is one faith, that it is once 
 for all delivered to the saints, that it is a deposit and is 
 to be jealously guarded and transmitted. It gives in 
 various places the particular articles of this faith, corre- 
 sponding pretty nearly when put together to the articles 
 of the Apostles' Creed. This Creed we find in substance 
 
Anglican Church. 
 
 •& 
 
 in all the early churches, used at baptism as the substance 
 of the revealed message brought to us in the Gospel, the 
 privilege of every Christian and the foundation of the 
 Church ; and declared by the Fathers, who speak of it, 
 in various ages and countries, to be sacred and unalter- 
 able, level to the most unlearned, sufficient for the most 
 profound, the framework of faith, admitting indeed of 
 development and enucleation, but ever intended to pre- 
 serve the outline and the proportions with which it was 
 originally given. Moreover, when controversies aros«, 
 such as the Arian, this rule was prominently insisted on, 
 not only "keep to what you have been taught," but 
 "keep to what has been ever taught, keep to the old 
 and first paths." Further, this Creed did remain thus 
 inviolate till the time of the Deutero-Nicene Council, 
 A.D. 787, when, for the first time, a General Council, or 
 what is called so, made an article of faith, in addition tO; 
 not in development of, the Creed ; * and it did so under 
 the following significant circumstances ; first, this said 
 General Council was the first of the Councils which rested 
 the proof of its decree on grounds short of Scripture ; 
 the first that violated the doctrine of adherence to the 
 practice or received opinion of Antiquity ; the first 
 which was held in a divided state of the Church, as the 
 events before it and after it show ; held with prbtests 
 both from east and west ; and enforced not without 
 something like rebellion at first sight on the part pf the 
 Pope against the Imperial Power. Such is the history of 
 
 • [It is surely a paradox to say that the simple words of the Seventh 
 General Council in 787, " Credentes in unum Deum, in Trinitate collauda- 
 tum, honorabiles ejus imagines salutamus ; Qui sic non habent, anathema 
 sint," or the Tridentine words, ' ' Imagines Christi in templis habendas, eisque 
 debitum honorem et venerationem impertiendam," are sufficient to constitute 
 an extrinsic addition to the Creed, and are not a mere carrying out in wor- 
 siip, of faith in our crucified Lord, and in the communion of saints.] 
 
8 Catholicity of the 
 
 the departure itself from the primitive theory concerning 
 the Creed ; such was the first step. Now what has it 
 issued in ? in an assemblage of doctrines, which, as was 
 observed above/whether right or wrong, have scarcely- 
 closer connection with the doctrines whether of the 
 jirimitive Creed or the primitive Church than the doctrines 
 of the Gospel have with those of the Law. In Antiquity, 
 the main aspect in the economy of redemption comprises 
 ■ Christ, the Son of God, the Author and Dispenser of all 
 grace and pardon, the Church His living representative, 
 the sacraments her instruments, bishops her rulers, their 
 collective decisions her voice, and Scripture her standard 
 of truth. In the Roman schools,* we find St. Mary and 
 the Saints the prominent objects of regard and dispensers 
 of mercy, purgatory or else indulgences the means of 
 obtaining it, the Pope the ruler and teacher of the 
 Church, and miracles the warrant of doctrine. As to the 
 doctrines of Christ's merits and eternal life and death, 
 these are points not denied (God forbid !) but taken for 
 granted, and passed by in order to make way for others 
 of more present, pressing, and lively interest. That a cer- 
 tain change, then, in objective and external religion has 
 come over the Latin, nay, and in a measure the Greek, 
 Church, we consider to be a plain historical fact ; a 
 change indeed not so great as is common Protestantism, 
 for that involves a radical change of inward temper and 
 principle as well, as indeed its adherents are sometimes 
 not slow to remind us, but a change sufficiently startling 
 to recall to our minds, with very unpleasant sensations, 
 
 * [Of these heads of accusation, the only one which will be allowed by 
 Catholics is that "the Pope is the ruler and teacher of the Church ;" but 
 this cannot be said to be a mere . mediaeval or modern doctrine ; it seems . 
 to have been claimed as true- and apostolic from the first in the Roman \ 
 Church itself; vide the history of Popes Victor, b..phen, and Dionysius.] S 
 
Anglican Chitrch. 9 
 
 the words of the Apostle, about preaching any other 
 Gospel besides that which has been received. 
 
 So much on the difficulty on the side of Rome ; now 
 let us consider the difficulty on our side : it is this. The 
 Church was intended to be one kingdom or polity in all 
 lands : this is its mark or note. Now there is a body 
 mainly answering to this description, the communion of 
 Rome, lineally descended from the ancient Church, and 
 in possession of her territory. If there be a Church now, 
 in nature and office like the ancient Church, and like her 
 image in prophecy, the Roman communion, it will be 
 urged, and nothing but the Roman, is it. If there be 
 Notes of the Church now, such as are given in prophecy 
 and were fulfilled in Antiquity, she has them. If schism 
 is separation from the body of Christians, we are schis- 
 matical. If schism now be what schism was formerly, we 
 are excommunicated from the grace of the Gospel. 
 
 3- 
 This being the state of the (;gse on both sides, divines 
 of our Church are forced, as if from necessity, to make 
 light of separation from Christendom, or to maintain 
 that the few may be right and the many wrong ; and 
 divines of the Church of Rome are forced, by a like 
 necessity, to make light of the judgment of Antiquity, 
 or to maintain that Revelation is progressive, and that 
 Christians now know more than the Fathers. Thus 
 Archbishop Laud says to Fisher, " As for the number 
 and worth of men, they are no necessary concluders for 
 truth. Not number ; for who would be judged by the 
 many .' the time was when the Arians were too many for 
 the orthodox." — R 302. His antagonist, on the other 
 -hand, says, " We acknowledge all due respect to the 
 Fathers, and as much (to speak modestly) as any of our. 
 
lO Catholicity of the 
 
 adversaries' party. But they must pardon us, if we prefer 
 the general interpretation of the present Church, before 
 the result of any mans particular fancy'.' — Stillingfleet s 
 Grounds^ i. v. § 19. On the one hand, Anglo-Catholics 
 say, " Even though we were in schism, as we are not; 
 such separation would not be disadvantageous, when 
 faith is in danger ; " and Roman Catholics say, " Even 
 though we had innovated, as we have net, such inno- 
 vation is not in error, when the Church is the author of 
 it." Such is the difficulty on either side of the con- 
 troversy. There seems to be but the alternative of 
 saying, on the one hand, that the Church Catholic can 
 go wrong ; on the other, that the faith of ages may be 
 remodelled. It is a difficulty meeting every inquirer, 
 which he must fairly look in the face and be content tO 
 begin with. And it is felt to be a difficulty by the two 
 parties in the controversy ; by the Anglo-Catholic, as 
 shown in the anxious endeavour of our divines, till the 
 course of events made it hopeless, to fraternize with the 
 Protestants of the Continent, which, considering the men 
 who have evinced it, is quite unaccountable till we come 
 to see what their sore point in the discussion was their 
 separation from Christendom ; and by Roman Catholics, 
 as is abundantly evidenced by their shufflings and shiftings 
 to and fro on the question, whether they do or do not keep 
 to Antiquity. On this subject it is plainly impossible to 
 get an intelligible answer from them ; whether they have 
 , added to the articles of faith or not, go by the Fathers 
 or not, keep to the ancient creed or not, — what they hold, 
 what they do not hold, what is > the true sense of their 
 decrees, what their practical interpreters, and what the 
 limits of interpretation. , 
 
 But now, as to the respective views themselves, Roman 
 and Anglican, the maintainer of the former has this ad- 
 
Anglican Church. ii 
 
 vantage, that the fact which he alleges against us, want 
 of Catholicity, is far more level to the apprehension of 
 men in general than that which we allege against him, 
 want of primitiveness in doctrine, while the logical force 
 of his fact is such as plausibly to throw discredit upon 
 our contrary fact. It is very obvious to the whole world 
 that the English Church is separated from the rest of 
 Christendom ; it is not evident, except to a very few, 
 that the faith of Rome is an addition to the primitive 
 Again, suspicion is thrown on the allegation that it is an 
 addition, by the very fact, unquestionable as it is, that far 
 the greater part of Christendom denies that allegation. 
 Our argument then has to sustain the disadvantage both 
 of the certainty in fact, and the apparent cogency in 
 reasoning, of their argument. And while the argument 
 of the Romanists is thus practically efficient, it has a 
 simplicity in its form which is very plausible. It 
 provides for the special difficulty which we urge against 
 their religious system, before we bring it ; whereas ours 
 does not similarly account for and dispose of the 
 difficulty which they bring against our system. Roman 
 Catholics urge against us that we are separated from 
 Christendom ; now the fact of our keeping to the primi- 
 tive faith had no tendency whatever to bring about their 
 deflection from it, that is, to explain how it comes to 
 pass that we are practically estranged from the great 
 Christian body. On the other hand, when we in turn 
 urge against them that they have added to the faith, 
 they are not unwilling in a certain sense to grant it ; 
 they account for it by referring it to a cause recognized 
 in their system, — to the power which they maintain is 
 possessed by the great Christian body in matters of faith, 
 of developing the faith. Their alleged fact, that they 
 are the Church Catholic, serves to account for our 
 
12 
 
 Catholicity of the 
 
 alleged fact, that they believe more than the ancients. 
 We bring little against them which is not at once solved 
 on the supposition of their assumption being true ; they 
 bring a charge against us which remains just where it 
 was, though our assumption be ever so much granted. 
 It is still a difficulty how the great body of Christians 
 should have gone wrong, even granting our assumption 
 that they have ; it is no difficulty that the great body 
 should have added to the faith, when we grant their 
 assumption that they have the power.* 
 
 Yet, in spite of all this, they are in a difficulty, even 
 in this portion of their theory, when it is narrowly 
 considered, — not to go to other portions, which do not 
 here come into notice. Allowing the Church Catholic 
 ever so much power over the faith, allowing that it may 
 add what it will, provided it does not contradict what 
 has been determined in former times, yet let us come 
 to the plain question. Does the Church, according to 
 Romanists, know more now than the Apostles knew.' 
 Their theory seems to be that the whole faith was pre- 
 sent in the minds of the Apostles, nay, of all saints at all 
 times, but in great measure as a matter of mere temper, 
 feeling, and unconscious opinion, that is, implicitly, 
 not in the way of exact statements and in an intellec- 
 tual form. All men certainly hold a number of truths, 
 and act on them, without knowing it ; when a question 
 is asked about them, then they are obliged to reflect, 
 what their opinion has ever been, and they bring before ! 
 themselves and assent to doctrines which before were :. 
 but latent within them. We have all heard of men 
 changing to so-called Unitarianism, and confessing on a 
 
 * [" I am very far more sure that England is in schism than that the | 
 
 Roman additions to the Primitive Creed may not be developments." 
 
 May 4, 1843. K«Vf. Apologia, 1841— 1845.] 
 
Anglican Church. 13 
 
 feview of themselves that they had been Unitarians all 
 along without knowing it, till some accident tore the 
 bandage off their eyes. In like manner, the Roman 
 Catholics, we suppose, would maintain that the Apostles 
 were implicit Tridentines ; that the Church held in the 
 first age what she holds now ; only that heresy, by rais- 
 ing questions, has led to her throwing her faith into 
 dogmatic shape, and has served to precipitate truths 
 which before were held in solution. Now this is all very 
 well in the abstract, but let us return to the point, as to 
 what the Apostles held and did, and what they did not. 
 Does the Romanist mean, for instance, to tell us that St. 
 Paul the Apostle, when he was in perils of robbfers or 
 perils by the sea, offered up his addresses to St. Mary, 
 and vowed some memorial to her, if she would be pleased 
 " deprecari pro illo filium Dei " .' * Does he mean to 
 say that the same Apostle, during that period of his life 
 when as yet he was not "perfect" or had "attained," 
 was accustomed to pray that the merits of St. John the 
 Baptist should be imputed to him .' Did he or did he 
 not hold that St. Peter could give indulgences to 
 shorten the prospective sufferings of the Corinthians in 
 purgatory? We do not deny that St. Paul certainly 
 does bring out his thoughts only in answer to express 
 questions asked, and according to the occasion ; or that 
 St. John has written a Gospel, on the one hand later, on 
 
 * [No ; he need not so mean. " 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 the Evangelists wrote ; there 
 was just one book of Scripture, the Apocalypse, certainly, written after her 
 death, and that book does (so to say) canonize and crown her. ... If irt- 
 vocation of her were necessary to salvation, there would be grave reasons 
 for doubting of the salvation of St. Chrysostom, St. Athanasius, or of the 
 primitive martyrs ; nay, I should like to know whether St. Augustine in all 
 his voluminous writings, invokes her once." — ^Letter to Dr. Pusey. Invo- 
 cations are matters of practice, usage, and discipline, not simply of dogma.] 
 
14 Catholicity of the 
 
 the other more dogmatic, than his fellow- Evangelists, 
 in consequence of the rise of heresy. We do not at all 
 mean to affirm that the sacred writers said out at one 
 time all they had to say. There are many things we 
 can ima,gine them doing and holding, which yet, in 
 matter of fact, we believe they did not do, or did not 
 hold. We can imagine them administering extreme 
 unction or wearing copes. Again, there are many 
 things which they could neither hold nor do, merely 
 from the circumstances of the times or the moment. 
 They could not determine whether General Councils 
 might or might not be held without the consent of 
 princes, or determine the authority of the Vulgate before 
 it was written, or enjoin infant baptism before Christians 
 had children, or decide upon the value of heretical bap- 
 tism before they were heretics, and before those heretics 
 were baptized. But still there are limits to these con- 
 cessions ; we cannot imagine an Apostle sajHng and 
 doing what Romanists say and do ; can they imagine 
 it themselves ? Do they themselves, for instance, 
 think that St. Paul was in the habit of saying what 
 Bellarmine and others say, — " Laus Deo Virginique 
 Matri " ? Would they not pronounce a professed Epistle 
 of St. Paul's which contained these words spurious on 
 this one ground ? 
 
 It may be objected that this argument proves too 
 much for our purpose, since our doctrines also, as those 
 of the Trinity and Incarnation, are developments ; so 
 that it may in turn be asked of us, did the Apostles hold 
 the Athanasian doctrine, or, on the other hand, do we 
 know more than they.' But we avow they did hold the 
 Athanasian doctrine ; they did hold those developments 
 which afterwards were incorporated in the Church sys^ 
 tem. There is no paradox in maintaining of any indL- 
 
Anglican Church. ,15 
 
 vidual in the Apostles' lifetime that he held them ; for 
 heresies arose while they were on earth, quite sufficient 
 to lead to their holding and transmitting to the Church 
 views as explicit and formal as those which were after- 
 wards recognized and adopted in Councils and fixed in 
 creeds ; not to say that a mystery naturally leads the 
 mind of itself, without external stimulus, to trace it to 
 its ultimate points. There is nothing strange then in 
 maintaining that the Apostles held just what the after 
 centuries held ; it is natural that they should do 50. On 
 the other hand, there being nothing in the Apostles' day to 
 elicit the worship of St. Mary or knowledge of purgatory, 
 which did not also exist in the age immediately after 
 them, — that age not having these portions of Christian 
 truth, (as Romanists allege,) because there was nothing 
 to elicit them, — it would be very strange to maintain that 
 the Apostles had what the age immediately after them 
 had not. If the argument of the absence of an external 
 cause avails to account for the ignorance of the early 
 Church, it is a reason for a similar ignorance on the part 
 of the Apostles ; on the other hand, if the Apostles did 
 teach the doctrines of purgatory or the worship of the 
 Saints, as Rome teaches them, it is incredible that they 
 should not have transmitted them to the generations 
 immediately following.* As it is, the early Church not 
 knowing, and the later knowing them, it is difficult to 
 say which it is most congruous for such a system to 
 
 • [The age following the Apostles did hold, in various parts of Christen- 
 dom, one doctrine in particular about the Blessed Virgin, which, because 
 of its proximity to the Apostles, and of its reception in such various parts, 
 must reasonably be referred to their teaching,— which has been tanght con- 
 tinously from that time to this, — and which contains in it all that Catholics 
 hold concerning her intrinsic gifts and powers, viz., that " she is the Second 
 Eve." This dogma required no heresy for its development.— Vid. Letter 
 to Dr. Pusey.] , 
 
1 6 Catholicity of the 
 
 maintain, that the Apostles did not know them, or that 
 they did. 
 
 To this must be added the exceeding and almost in- 
 credible boldness of saying that popes and bishops, nay, 
 private Christians, know now, what Apostles did not 
 know then ; as if we are to St. Paul and St. John as they 
 are to Moses. The feeling of this difficulty has led some 
 Roman writers to the theory of a disciplina arcani in 
 the Church, as if this would serve to extricate them 
 from it. 
 
 4. 
 
 However, our object here is not to expose the difficulty ^ 
 which occurs in the Roman theory of the Church, but to 
 solve that which is urged against our own. We said 
 above that we considered the English difficulty had not 
 been sufficiently met, and we promised some remarks , 
 upon it, to which all that has hitherto been said is but 
 introductory. 
 
 The difficulty is this: the Church being "one body," 
 how can we, estranged as we are from every part of • 
 it except our own dependencies, unrecognized and J 
 without intercommunion, maintain our right to be con- 
 sidered part of that body ? This is the objection : and, ; 
 in discussing it we are of course to put out of question , 
 the circumstance that our creed is sounder than the ; 
 Roman. For we are not stating the grounds on which :j 
 we keep aloof from Rome, but have to meet an inci- I 
 dental difficulty which that keeping aloof involves. If 
 indeed we considered that the Pope was Antichrist, and < 
 had denied the foundation of the faith, then indeed our 
 keeping aloof would justify itself. If Rome is apostate, ^ 
 she has no longer claims on us as a Church ; but whilg | 
 she is allowed to be a Church, she has claims. In this 
 
Anglican Church. 17 
 
 point of view it is, that the ultra-Protestant theory, 
 which ignores or denies the Scripture promises made to 
 the Church, becomes thereby much simpler than our 
 own. It denies the Church of Rome to be a Church, and 
 so gets rid of the question why we are estranged from 
 it ; and this is why the theory that Rome is the city of 
 Antichrist was so popular at the time of the Reforma- 
 tion. It made short work with a number of questions, 
 which else would have been perplexing. It would be a 
 similar simplification of the Roman theory, if Rome gave 
 up the Fathers. But while Rome, though not deferring 
 to the Fathers, recognizes them, and England, while not 
 deferring to the larger body of the Church, recognizes it, 
 both Rome and England have a point to clear up. We 
 are now to clear up our own difficulty ; and we repeat, it 
 avails nothing towards doing so, to say that our faith is 
 more ancient than the faith of Rome. Still the com- 
 munion of Rome more nearly answers to the Church of 
 the prophecies than ours. 
 
 One point is acknowledged, one must be conceded, 
 and one will be maintained, by all Anglo-Catholics ; — 
 that the Church is One, is the point of doctrine; that we 
 are estranged from the body of the Churqh, is the point 
 oifact; and that we still have the means of grace among 
 us, is our point of controversy. These points being set 
 down, there are various ways of reconciling them, such 
 as the following: — i. That intercommunion is not 
 necessary to unity. 2. That, though it be, the absence 
 of unity does not at once involve a state of schism. 
 3. That, though it do, yet that the grace of the ordi- 
 nances is not necessarily suspended in a state of schism. 
 Different minds will resign themselves to one or other of 
 these solutions, or modify them by one another, accord- 
 ing to their particular feelings and principles. What we 
 
 VOL. II. 2 
 
1 8 Catholicity of the 
 
 are going to say on the subject will bear on them all, in 
 a measure embrace them all, and therefore in turn is 
 exposed to be modified by all, and may be adapted to 
 any of them ; but is intended, instead of following any 
 one of them exclusively, rather as a statement of the 
 general view maintained by our divines, whatever be the 
 more correct analysis of it. 
 
 The Anglican view, then, of the Church has ever been 
 this, that its separate portions need not be united toge- 
 ther, for their essential completeness, except by the tie 
 of descent from one original. They are like a num- 
 ber of colonies sent out from a mother country, or as 
 the tribes or nations which spring from a common 
 parent. Jerusalem was the mother Church ; they all 
 come from her ; they are Churches in that they come 
 from her ; but they are not bound to any union together 
 in order to be Churches, any more than branches of an 
 extended family, or colonies of a mother country, need 
 have a common table or common purse, in order to have 
 the blood and name of their ancestor. The Apostolical : 
 Succession is necessary in order to their possessing claim j 
 of descent ; but that being secured, each branch is bound , 
 to conform to the country, and form alliance with the 
 institutions, in which it finds itself, quite irrespectively i 
 of all the rest. Each Church is independent of all the; 
 rest, except indeed so far as the civil power unites any 
 number of them together. They are in consequence, as 
 Churches, under the supremacy of the state or monarch ■ 
 whom they obey in temporals, and may be used by him | 
 as one of the functions of his government, as his minis- 
 ters of public instruction. Further, it is a natural, though 
 of course not necessary, consequence of this view of the 
 Church, to confine spiritual power to the sacramental or 
 quasi-sacramental privileges. Ordination is the bishop's 
 
Anglican Church. ig 
 
 prerogative ; but everything else save ordination comes 
 from the king. The whole jurisdiction is his ; his are all 
 the spiritual courts ; his the right of excommunication ; 
 his the control of revenues ; his the organization of 
 dioceses ; his the appointment of bishops. It is another 
 extreme consequence of this theory, that our own 
 Church was not allowed to recognize her own daughters 
 in Scotland and America ; nor was accounted as one 
 Church with the Irish, till the Act of Union in the 
 beginning of this century, determined by the authority 
 of Parliament, that the established Irish Church was the 
 Church of England in Ireland. It was this same ex- 
 treme view upon which Cranmer acted, upon the ac- 
 cession of Edward the Sixth, and which is expressed in 
 the commission which he took out for his archbishopric. 
 " Whereas," says the king, " all authority of j urisdictionj 
 and indeed jurisdiction altogether, that which is called 
 ecclesiastical as well as secular, emanated from the first 
 from the royal power as from a supreme head, and the 
 sourpe and spring of all magistracies within our king- 
 dom, etc. : We decree that thou shouldst take our stead in 
 the manner and form, below mentioned, and shouldst be 
 licensed to ordain whomsoever within thy diocese of 
 Canterbury thou shalt find fitting in character and 
 learning, etc, etc." Sometimes indeed this document 
 has been supposed to claim to the king the power of 
 Ordination ; so extravagant an assumption has of course 
 no connection with the theory under review; for the 
 words need only be taken to mean, what has been 
 usually held among us after Cranmer's time, — that the 
 Church, though really possessed of powers, is precluded 
 from exercising them without the leave of the State, and 
 has no jurisdiction independent of it. Lord Thurlow, 
 however, took a view of our Church's theory still more 
 
20 Catholicity of the 
 
 extreme than this imputed to Cranmer, when he main- 
 tained, as it is reported, against Horsley, that the Scotch 
 Bishops were not Bishops, except by a play upon words, 
 because they had no seats in the House of Lords. 
 
 These extravagances serve to illustrate the English 
 theory, even if it were only by way of contrast. But 
 they also show what it will admit, without infringing its 
 notion of what a Church consists in. If iiideed the 
 Church is essentially one and one only organized body 
 .in every age and country, then such an absorption of a 
 branch of it into a nation is nothing else but a formal 
 state of schism. If, on the other hand, her essence 
 consists in her descent from the Apostles, such an 
 absorption, or such a suspension of intercommunion with 
 other branches, as is consequent upon it, may be expe- 
 dient or inexpedient, allowable or culpable, but does not 
 touch the life of the Church, or compromise the tenure i 
 of its privileges. Each diocese is a perfect independent 
 Church, sufficient for itself ; and the communion of 
 Christians one with another, and the unity of them all 
 together, lie, not in a mutual understanding, intercourse, 
 and combination, not in what they do in common, but in 
 what they are and what they have in common, in their | 
 po.ssession of the Succession, their Episcopal form, theirl 
 Apostolic faith, and the use of the Sacraments. Ac-I 
 cordingly Stillingfleet says : " We have not separated 
 from the whole Christian world, in anything wherein the i 
 whole Christian world is agreed ; but to disagree from I 
 the particular Churches of the Christian world in such I 
 things wherein those Churches differ among themselves,! 
 is not to separate from the Christian world, but to ■ 
 disagree in some things from such particular ChurchesJ 
 .... There can be no separation from the true! 
 ..Catholic Church but in such things wherein it is CatholicJ 
 
Anglican Church. 21 
 
 now it is not Catholic in anything, but what properly 
 relates to its being a constitution." — Grounds, ii. 4, § 2. 
 
 Ill this extract it is implied that mutual intercourse is 
 but an accident of the Church, not of its essence. The 
 same view is strongly maintained by Barrow in his 
 Discourse on the Unity of the Church. Prefacing it 
 with a motto from Augustine, " Non habet charitatem 
 Dei, qui ecclesise non diligit unitatem," he proceeds to 
 determine in what this unity consists ; viz., first, in unity 
 of faith ; next, in mutual charity and goodwill ; thirdly, 
 in the gift of one and the same Spirit ; fourthly, in the 
 mystical body of Christ ; fifthly, in the mutual ihter- 
 course of individual Christians, in mutual peaCe and love, 
 in common works of piety and devotion, common prayer, 
 Eucharist, conferences, and common defence of the truth ; 
 sixthly, in agreement of all bishops in faith and good 
 offices ; seventhly, in sameness of order and govern- 
 ment; eighthly, in matters of prudential discipline. Then 
 he adds : 
 
 "AH these kinds of unity do plainly agree to the 
 universal Church of Christ ; but the question is, whether 
 the Church is also necessarily, by the design and ap- 
 pointment of God, to be in way of external policy under 
 one singular government or jurisdiction of any kind ; so 
 as a kingdom or commonwealth are united under the 
 command of one monarch or one senate .'' That the 
 Church is capable of such an union, is not the con- 
 troversy ; that it is possible it should be so united, 
 (supposing it may happen that all Christians may be 
 reduced to one nation or one civil regiment, or that 
 several nations spontaneously may confederate and com- 
 bine themselves into one ecclesiastical commonwealth, 
 administered by the same spiritual rulers and judges 
 according to the same laws,) I do aot question ; that 
 
22 Catholicity of the, 
 
 when in a manner all Christendom did consist of subjects 
 to the Roman Empire, the Church then did arrive near 
 such an unity, I do not at present contest ; but that 
 such an union of all Christians is necessary, or that it was 
 ever instituted by Christ, I cannot grant; and for my 
 refusal of that opinion, I shall assign divers reasons." — 
 P. 449, ed. 1836. 
 
 These reasons are, first, that Scripture nowhere insists 
 on a political union, on " one monarch, or one senate, or 
 one sanhedrim, which is a pregnant sign that none such 
 was then instituted;" next, that the Apostks took no 
 pains to establish any such polity ; thirdly, that the 
 Fathers "do make the unity of the Church to consist 
 only in these virtues of faith, charity, peace, not in this 
 political union ; " fourthly, that it could not be without 
 a sovereign authority, which is nowhere established by 
 Christ or His Apostles ; fifthly, that the primitive state 
 of the Church did not well comport with such an unity ;" 
 sixthly, that the autonomy or liberty of the Churches 
 long continued in practice inviolate ;" seventhly, that 
 such a political unity is unevangelical ; eighthly, incon- 
 venient ; ninthly, needless ; tenthly, not expedient for 
 the design of Christianity ; eleventhly, not necessary to 
 the idea of unity. 
 
 In the course of his remarks he lays down the follow- 
 ing principle, which other writers have improved upon, 
 and which does admit of such improvement : " The case 
 of bishops was like that of princes, each of whom hath 
 a free superintendence in his own territory, but for to 
 uphold justice and peace in the world, or between ad- 
 jacent nations, the intercourse of several princes is 
 needful. The peace of the Church was preserved by 
 communion of all parts together, not by the subjection 
 of the rest to one part." This is a statement which 
 
Anglican Church. 23 
 
 writers like Dodwell and Hickes have illustrated with 
 especial pains and fulness. They teach, agreeably with 
 what has above been called the Anglican theory, that 
 the Church is complete in one bishopric ; that a num- 
 ber of bishoprics are but reiterations of one, and add 
 nothing to the perfection of the system. As there 
 is one Bishop invisible in heaven, so there is but one 
 bishop on earth ; and the multitude of bishops are not 
 acknowledged in the Gospel system as many, or as if 
 (viewed as representatives of the Bishop invisible) they 
 were capable of mutual relations one with another, but 
 as being one and all shadows and organs of one and the 
 same divine reality. If so, they are neither capable of 
 direct communion one with another as bishops, nor of 
 schism one from another, since their only communion as 
 bishops is with Him whom they represent, and they 
 have communion with each other in and through Him ; 
 and while they have communion with Him, they have 
 communion one with another, though they never saw, 
 never acted with each other. It is true they can act 
 with each other in Synods, but then they form a sort of 
 board of presbyters, and are our Lord's Council, as 
 Ignatius views them. Considered as bishops, each is 
 the ultimate centre of unity and independent channel 
 of grace ; they are all equal ; and schism consists in 
 separating from them, or setting up against them in 
 their particular place. Introducing one Church into the 
 heart of another, or erecting altar against altar, is schism, 
 in the ecclesiastical sense of the word, and forfeits the 
 gifts of the Gospel : for it strikes at the principle of 
 unity and touches the life of the Church. 
 
 Such is the essence of unity, and the essence of 
 schism ; but an organized union of Churches, though 
 proper and fitting, does not enter into the formal notion 
 
24 Catholicity of the. 
 
 of a Church ; and the fact of dissensions between 
 Churches, though a breach of the law of love, as little 
 avails to. unchurch them, as lukewarmness, or corruption 
 of doctrine, or ambition, or covetousness. Intercom- 
 munion is a duty as other duties, but is not the tenure 
 or instrument of the communion between the unseen 
 world and this ; and much more is the confederacy of sees 
 and churches — the me'ropolitan, patriarchal, and papal 
 systems — mere matter of expedience, or of natural duty 
 from long custom, or of propriety from gratitude and 
 reverence, or of necessity from voluntary oaths and 
 engagements, or of ecclesiastical force from the canons 
 of Councils, but not necessary in order to the convey- 
 ance of grace, or for fulfilment of the ceremonial law, as 
 it may be called, of Unity. Bishop is superior to bishop 
 only in rank, not in real power ; and the Bishop of 
 Rome, the head of the Catholic world, is not the centre 
 of unity, except as having a primacy of order.' Accord- 
 ingly, even granting for argument's sake that the Eng- 
 lish Church violated a duty in the sixteenth century, in 
 releasing itself from the Roman Supremacy, still it did 
 not thereby commit that special sin which cuts off from 
 it the fountains of grace, and is called schism. It was 
 essentially complete without Rome, and naturally inde- 
 pendent of it ; it had in the course of years, whether by 
 usurpation or not, come under the supremacy of Rome, 
 and now, whether by rebellion or not, it is free from it ; 
 and as it did not enter into the Church Invisible by join- 
 •ing Rome, so it was not cast out of it by breaking from 
 ' Rome. These were accidents in its history, involving,! 
 indeed, sin in individuals, but not affecting the Church 
 as a Church. 
 
 This view of the subject throws light upon the Oath 
 of Supremacy, which declares that " no foreign prelate 
 
Anglican Church. 25 
 
 hath or ought to have any jurisdiction, power, pre-emi- 
 nence, or authority within this realm." In other words, 
 there is nothing in the Apostolic system which gives 
 authority to the Pope over the Catholic Church, more 
 than to any other bishop. It is altogether an ecclesias- 
 tical arrangement; not a point de fide, but of expedience, 
 custom, or piety, which cannot be claimed as if the Pope 
 ought to have it, any more than, on the other hand, the 
 king could claina the Supremacy by divine right, the 
 claim of both the one and the other resting, not on duty 
 or revelation, but on specific engagement. We find 
 ourselves as a Church under the king now, and we obey 
 him ; we were under the Pope formerly, and we obeyed 
 him. " Ought " does not in any degree come into the 
 question. 
 
 5- 
 Dodwell has illustrated this subject at great length 
 in his Discourse concerning the one Altar and one 
 Priesthood ; and in \{\%\x&2X\s& De Episcopo Unitatis prin- 
 cipio, which is the seventh of his Cyprianic Dissertations. 
 In the former of these he is led to comment on the lan- 
 guage of St. Ignatius, as in the latter on that of St. 
 Cyprian ; both Fathers strongly confirming the view of 
 unity which we have been drawing out, viz., that the 
 Episcopal is the only divine jurisdiction. He begins 
 the former treatise by referring to the constitution of 
 the Jewish Church, and observes that the Apostolical 
 Fathers consider Christianity to be in point of worship 
 and Church government, what it is in other respects also, 
 nothing else than a mystical Judaism ; that as bap- 
 tism took the place of circumcision, so has the Bishop 
 taken the place of the High Priest, and the Christian 
 altar the place of the Jewish. Rente St. Clement of 
 
26 Catholicity of the 
 
 Rome deduces from the budding of Aaron's rod the 
 sacredness of the episcopal office under the Gospel, and 
 from the subordination of the Temple hierarchy infers 
 the necessity of the Orders of the Christian ministry. 
 He next shows that among the Jews the altar had ever 
 been the symbol and centre of unity, and a setting up a 
 rival altar the essential mark of schism. This doctrine 
 was first insisted on in their controversy with the Sama- 
 ritans, and is sanctioned by our Lord in His discourse 
 with the woman at the well. It was brought out into 
 system by the Hellenistic Jews, who, on the ground of 
 such commands as that made to Moses, to "make all 
 things according to the fashion showed him in the 
 Mount," held that the provisions of the Mosaic ritual 
 were adumbrations of things unseen, and felt that there 
 was some deep mystical sense under the letter; and, 
 not having the true key which the Gospel afterwards 
 supplied, made a conjectural interpretation, which at 
 least serves to illustrate the true one ;—" They designed 
 their visible altar," he observes, "as a means of com- 
 municating with that which was mystical and invisible. 
 They also allowed a mystical invisible priesthood of the 
 Logos, with whom they were to communicate by main- 
 taining a communication with their visible priesthood." 
 — P. 190. "Accordingly He must be the invisible or 
 spiritual Hierophanta and Priest, performing invisibly 
 all that was visibly transacted by the High Priest in 
 their visible ministry. He was to assist in the invisible 
 ideal altar, and to offer up mystical sacrifices, as the 
 High Priest did visible ones on the visible altar. The 
 title of 'A/oxiEjOEuc is accordingly given to the Aoyoc," by 
 Philo ; " and the High Priest in going into the Holy 
 of Holies personated the entrance of the Logos into 
 heaven, according to the reasoning of the author to the 
 Hebrews."— Pp. 204, 205. 
 
Anglican Church. 27 
 
 Dodwell then goes on to show that bishops have 
 taken the place of the High Priest in a similar but still 
 higher office than was ascribed by the Hellenists to the 
 latter, as if in fulfilment of our Lord's words, that not 
 Sichem only and Jerusalem, but that every city every- 
 where should have a temple and an altar, a priest and 
 a sacrifice of its own. St. Clement's implied testimony 
 in behalf of the continuance of the Jewish ritual in a 
 spiritual form under the Gospel, has already been men- 
 tioned. Dodwell argues the same, at length, from the 
 book of Revelations and St. Ignatius's Epistles. In the 
 inspired Apostle's prophecy, the Almighty is described 
 with seven Spirits around His throne ; and, in like man- 
 ner, our Lord is represented with seven stars and seven 
 candlesticks, or seven churches with their bishops, who 
 are the messengers between Christ and His people, as 
 the Spirits are between God and the world. But again, 
 the bishop in his turn was attended, according to the 
 ancient rule, by seven deacons, to signify that he was 
 not only the messenger, but the representative or type of 
 our Lord, or that he was to the Church on earth what 
 God was to the Church in Heaven. That the deacons 
 answer to the Angels or Spirits is plain from such pas- 
 sages as Heb. i. 14, where the latter are called " minis- 
 tering " or diaconic " Spirits ; " or again, from Zech. iii. 9, 
 iv. 10, where they are called " the eyes of the Lord which 
 run to and fro through the whole earth," words which 
 exactly describe both the title and office of deacons in 
 the early Church. Since then the deacons represent 
 the Angels, it follows that, in like manner, the bishop to 
 whom they minister represents Christ. And in order to 
 preserve this mystical meaning, great stress was laid in 
 primitive times on the number of the deacons being 
 neither more nor less than seven. Seven were appointed 
 
28 Catholicity of the 
 
 by the Apostles at their first institution ; seven, accord- 
 ing to tradition, was the number appointed by St. Mark 
 at Alexandria ; seven were in use at Rome not only in 
 the pontificate of Cornelius, but even as late as the age 
 of Sozomen. And the council of Neocaesarea made it a 
 universal rule, whatever was the size of each Church. 
 
 This will enable us to understand the high language 
 in which bishops are spoken of in St. Ignatius's Epistles. 
 As soon as we comprehend that there is a correspondence 
 between the celestial and ecclesiastical hierarchy, words, 
 which at first sight seem extravagant, have their legiti- 
 mate and sufficient meaning ; and still more so when it 
 is considered that the especial sin he is warning his 
 brethren against is schism, for if the bishop be Christ's 
 representative, the effisct of separating from the bishop 
 , is thus simply shown to be a separating from Christ. 
 For instance, he says, "Jesus Christ, our inseparable 
 life, is the mind of the Father; like as the bishops, 
 appointed through all coasts of the earth, are according 
 to the mind of J esus Christ." — Eph. 3. " A man is not 
 misleading this his visible bishop, but is trifling with the 
 Bishop Invisible ; and so the question is not with flesh, 
 but with God, who seeth the secrets." — Magn. 3. "Like- \ 
 wise let all men give heed to the deacons, as to Jesus 
 Christ, as also to the bishop as to the Son of the Father, 
 and to the presbyters as to a council of God, and as a 
 company of Apostles ; without these the name of church ■ 
 is not." — Trail. 3. In this last passage, according to 
 Dodwell, presbyters are added as typifying the Apostolic; I 
 College, and completing the hierarchy ; agreeably to 
 St. John's vision of the heavenly Presence above, where 
 before the throne were " seven lamps of fire burning, ] 
 which are the seven spirits of God," and "round about ^ 
 the throne four and twenty elders sitting," emblematical 'i 
 
Anglican Church. 29 
 
 of the College of Apostles, (doubled, as St. Clement of 
 Alexandria says, to show the interest which Gentiles as 
 well as Jews had in them,) and of the presbyterate, be- 
 cause they have the sacerdotal symbol of " vials full of 
 odour, which are the prayers of saints." Such is the 
 substance of this work of Dodwell's, which has surely 
 much solid and cogent matter, even if it has something 
 of fancifulness or refinement in parts ; his object in it 
 being to urge upon Dissenters the necessity of conformity, 
 without his being forced to carry on the argument to 
 conclusions favourable to the Church of Rome, and this, 
 by the maintenance of the simple principle that Bishops 
 everywhere, and not the Pope, are the elementary centres 
 of unity. 
 
 In his Cyprianic Dissertations he discusses the subject 
 more immediately in relation to the Romanists. It is 
 well known that St. Cyprian has written a treatise on 
 the Unity of the Church, besides various Epistles on the 
 same subject, with a view of meeting an error of his day, 
 that, in the case of the lapsed, the communion of martyrs 
 was efficacious and saving, even though the bishop 
 refused to reconcile them to the Church. He insists in 
 consequence, in the work in question, on there being 
 but one Church ; on the Catholic Church ; on the instru- 
 mentality of Cornelius, the then Bishop of Rome, in 
 uniting men with the Church ; on St. Peter as the prin- 
 ciple of unity, and on similiar topics. Now the question 
 between us and the Romanists is, whether the Church 
 spoken of, in which is salvation, is the particular and 
 local Church everywhere, (or, again, the abstract Church 
 of which the local is its realization under the bishop,) 
 'or whether it is the literal and actual extended commu- 
 nion of all Christians everywhere viewed as one body 
 under the supremacy of the Pope. Dodwell maintains 
 
30 Catholicity of the 
 
 the former side of the alternative — that the whole Church 
 is (if the expression may be allowed) .crystallized out of 
 a number of independent organic and complete units. 
 Schism then, in its formal sense, is not the separation of 
 Church from Church, which when separated from each 
 other are still perfect, but laceration of the organic 
 structure of the particular or local Church itself. In 
 proof of this view he urges St. Cyprian's remarkable 
 words, " Episcopatus unus est, cujus cl singulis in soli- 
 dum pars tenetur " — De Unit. " The episcopate is one 
 which each bishop shares in fulness" or " so shares as 
 to have a full interest in it." Again, his definition of 
 a Church is, " a people united to a priest, and a flgck 
 adhering to its pastor." — Ep. 6g. Accordingly, as this 
 illustrious Father proceeds, " the Bishop is in the Church 
 and the Church in the Bishop ; and whoever are not 
 with the Bishop are not in the Church ; " where 
 " the Bishop " cannot mean the Pope, and therefore " the 
 Church " means the Church under the Bishop ; that is, 
 the local or integral Church. Again, elsewhere he uses 
 the word "Bishops" in the plural. "Let those only 
 remain outside the Church, who have receded from the 
 Church. Let those only be apart from the Bishops, 
 who have rebelled against the Bishops." — Ep. 43. And 
 elsewhere he says, that " heresies and schisms have ever 
 had their rise in disobedience to the priest of God, and 
 neglect of the one priest in the Church at the time, the one 
 judge at the time, in the place of Christ."—^. 59. So 
 much may be argued from the passages themselves ; but 
 what decides the matter is, that in these and similar 
 letters Rome does not come into the controversy, the 
 matters spoken of relating to Africa. 
 
 This relation to Africa also decides his meaning 
 when he speaks of the see of St. Peter, Cathedra Petri, 
 
Anglican Church. 31 
 
 and claims authority for it. In one place he so speaks 
 with reference to Cornelius, Bishop of Rome, whom he 
 supports in preference to Novatian, as filling " the place 
 of Peter, and the rank of the sacerdotal see." — Ep. 40. 
 But elsewhere he uses the same language writing to his 
 own people in condemnation of Felicissimus, the African 
 schismatic : " God is one, and Christ is one, and the 
 Church one, and the see one, founded by the Lord's voice 
 upon Peter." This plainly shows that he considers St. 
 Peter's authority not as bound up in the see of Rome 
 only, but as extending to all bishops. He does not 
 speak of him merely as the local Bishop of Rome, but 
 as the type of all bishops, and as if ruling in every see 
 all over Christendom. And every Bishop is St. Peter's 
 successor : and to separate from St. Peter does not mean 
 separation from Rome, but from the local see wherever 
 a man finds himself ; though it was natural, of course, 
 since that Apostle had a more intimate connexion with 
 Rome than with other places, that, when St. Cyprian 
 speaks of Rome, he should especially be led to mention 
 St. Peter. But the best proof that by St. Peter's see 
 Cyprian did not mean simply to designate Rome, or by 
 St. Peter's authority the Papal power, is contained in the 
 history of his own controversy with Pope Stephen on the 
 subject of heretical baptism. Had he so accounted him 
 to be the one Bishop in the Church, as the Roman inter- 
 pretation of these passages requires, he never would 
 have spoken of Stephen's " obstinatio," or, as he did, in 
 his translation of Firmilian's letter, of his " audacia et 
 idsolentia." But if by the " supremacy of Peter " it is 
 not meant to designate the power of the Pope, it remains 
 that it must designate that of the Bishop. 
 
 And here we may be content to end our description 
 of what may be specially called the Anglican theory of 
 
32 . Catholicity of the 
 
 ecclesiastical unity, viz., that each Church is naturally- 
 independent of every other ; each bishop an autocratic 
 channel of grace, and ultimate centre of unity ; and that 
 unions of see with see are only matters of ecclesiastical 
 arrangement; further, that no jurisdiction but the 
 episcopal is of divine right ; and further still, as some 
 have carried it, that all jurisdiction belongs by right 
 to the temporal soverign, as the supreme governor of 
 the Church in each state, the sole authority in every 
 spiritual act beyond ministry of the word and sacra- 
 ments, and the sine qua non sanction and permissive 
 author even of that ministry. 
 
 6. 
 
 But now comes this difficulty ; that, distinct and 
 satisfactory as the above theory appears to be, being 
 consistent in itself, and founded on the doctrine of St. 
 Ignatius and St. Cyprian, it would certainly seem as if 
 St. Augustine did not hold it, or rather held a doctrine ; 
 more nearly approaching to the Roman, as though the - 
 principle of unity lay, not in each individual bishop, but/ 
 in the body of the Church, or, if in any one bishop, in 
 the Pope ; and as though the union of Church with ' 
 Church were not a mere accident, but of the essence of 
 ecclesiastical unity — not for the sake of convenience or 
 piety, but as a sacramental form ; and as though schism 
 were separation from this one whole body, and from this 
 or that bishop Only as far as he was the organ or repre- 
 sentative of all bishops, that is, of the Bishop of Rome. 
 
 Now that it is so strong a duty for the -Whole Church 
 to be in active communion together, that it can hardly 
 be made too strong, and can hardly be exaggerate(fc;| 
 before the actual event of separation, we do not doubt. '^ 
 So strong we feel the duty to be, that, while it would be 
 
Anglican Church. 33 
 
 shocking and wrong to contemplate a state of extensive 
 and lasting disunion before it happened, it also would 
 be right to consider the consequences of it, did it happen, 
 to be greater than we could master, — so vast as to be 
 vague. It would not be wholesome or pious, it would 
 perhaps mark a bold and a cold heart, even to think to 
 set about determining, before the event, whether or not 
 the friendly intercourse of branch with branch was or 
 was not of the essence of Church unity. We trust, then, 
 nothing we have said above will be taken to countenance 
 the miserable notion that Church may stand aloof from 
 Church without sin ; sin somewhere or other ; and, in 
 the deplorable controversy which is our main subject, 
 without sin in Rome, sin in us, or sin in both. The 
 simple question is, whether the sin goes so far as to 
 violate the primary notion, the essence of the Church ; 
 whether all that remains when this intercommunion is 
 broken, the communion of succession, doctrine, temper, 
 warfare, and the like, go for nothing ; whether they may 
 not be enough, in the sight of a merciful Master, to 
 allow of His continuing that secret intercourse in heart 
 and spirit, of Christians so divided, both with each other 
 and with the dead, through and in Him, which is the 
 true communion of saints, and the substantial unity of 
 the Church. We are far from intending to disparage 
 the duty of visible active communion ; we can under- 
 stand the great doctors of the Ancient Church raising it 
 ever so high ; but Christians now are in a different posi- 
 tion from theirs, a position which those doctors could not 
 without a %ult have realized to themselves ; and it comes 
 ' upon us, — not as a cold-hearted or curious speculation, 
 ■ or the inquiry of those who would fain go to the very 
 ' verge of safety, and who bend the stick with no fear 
 I* except that of actually breaking it, — to ask whether or 
 li , VOL. II. 3 
 
34 Catholicity of the 
 
 not that state of estrangement from the great Christian ^ 
 body, — in which we find ourselves, not into which we 
 brought ourselves, — which we are kept in, first by our 
 duty to our own particular Church, next by the terms 
 of communion which Rome enforces on all who would 
 be at peace with her — whether this state is or is not 
 formal schism, and an utter severance of us from the 
 fountains of divine grace ? We are forced to do, what 
 the opposers of the profligate Arians or the fanatical 
 Donatists had no need to do — to investigate the essence 
 of the Church, and the elementary idea of unity, in order 
 to ascertain what our duty is, in certain painful circum- 
 stances in which we find ourselves. 
 
 We are neither, then, for disallowing the duty of what 
 Barrow calls, somewhat invidiously, " political union " 
 among Churches, for which, "brotherly," we think, would . 
 be a better word ;* nor can we complain of the holy I 
 Fathers in their more happy state for speaking stronglyl 
 of its importance — nay, so strongly as at first sight to 
 smite ourselves. We will thank thenri for their severity, 
 knowing that we deserve stripes, and will smile under| 
 their unintentional blows, not taking our chastisers to 
 mean more than they surely need, not resenting theji;i:^ 
 chastisement pettishly, not rising against their authority,^ 
 but gaining a lesson from them, and meekly thankingi 
 them for it. Sweet are the wounds of a friend ; — it is 
 better to listen to honest words though harsh, than to be 
 offended at them on the one hand, or to explain them| 
 away on the other. We experience this every day in 
 common matters ; our truest friends often little sympa- , 
 
 * [Is not " visible " a better word still? and is not the proposition main- 
 tained in the text simply this, "The unity of the Church is an invisible ,'i 
 unity ? " But if this is allowed, will it be possible long to deny the pro- 
 position, " The Church is invisible " ?] 
 
Anglican Church. 3>) 
 
 thise with us, nay, hurt us, but they give good advice, 
 and if we are wise, we follow it : let us look at St. Au- 
 gustine as one of such free-spoken guides, not less 
 valuable because he could not foresee or enter into the 
 miserable condition in which we find ourselves. 
 
 It is certain, then, that Augustine does explain St. 
 Cyprian differently from Dodwell. The famous passage 
 in St. Cyprian's De Unitate, " Tear the ray from the 
 sun's substance, unity will not admit this division of 
 light ; break the branch from the tree, it will not bud 
 when broken ; cut off the channel from the spring, the 
 channel will dry up," which Dodwell applies only to 
 the episcopal and diocesan unit, Augustine unhesitatingly 
 interprets of the body of the universal Church, " Ecclesia 
 universa toto terrarum orbe diffusa." — contr. Cresconium 
 Donat. ii. 33. And it seems to be a fixed notion with him, 
 that the universal Church is right in a quarrel with a par- 
 ticular Church, that the universal Church is that which 
 is diffused through all countries, and that "diffused," 
 an expressive word, includes the idea of active com- 
 munion, as being analogous to life or blood in the animal 
 body. He says that the great difficulty of the Donatists 
 began " posteaquam ipsis rebus experti sunt cum Cceci- 
 liano permanere coinmunionem orbis terrarum, tt ad eum 
 k transmarinis Ecclesiis communicatorias litteras mitti, 
 non ad ilium quern sibi scelerate ordinaverant." — Ibid. 
 Ep. 43, 19, ad Glorium. And he lays down this as a 
 general principle, " The whole does ever, by the best of 
 rights, take precedence of the parts." — De Bapt. contr. 
 Donat. ii. 14. And in like manner, he elsewhere says, 
 "Securus judicat orbis terrarum." — Contr. Epist. Par- 
 men, iii. 24. 
 
 Now let us for a moment grant this in the general, 
 without going on to the consideration of the limitations 
 
36 Catholicity of the 
 
 by which the concession is to be guarded. Let us grant 
 it, and what is the inference from it ? why, this, which is 
 never to be lost sight of in the controversy, to which it 
 will be profitable here to draw attention, and which Gal- 
 ilean divines have not been slow in urging, that Catho- 
 licity, and not the Pope, is the essence of the Church. 
 This argument, whatever embarrassment it may give to 
 us, is at least fatal to the Ultramontanes, and, if it galls 
 us, as being separate from Christendom, at the same 
 time it releases us from the special difficulty which we 
 have with Rome. This, it is conceived, is practically 
 no small advantage, and may be proved so as time goes 
 on ; for, after all, Rome has but a party in the Roman 
 Catholic Church, though it has the active party ; and 
 much as the Church has been identified with that party 
 in times past, and is still identified, yet it is something 
 to find that what the English Church wants of perfect 
 Catholicity, supposing it to want anything, may be sup-' 
 plied without going all the way to Rome. 
 
 The point in question has been drawn out with great I 
 care by Launoy {^id. especially Epistles., v. i, vii. 13), in 
 the latter of which he attacks the doctrine of Bellarmine 
 and Canisius, who, he contends, have introduced a new 
 definition of the Church unknown to former times. Bel- 
 larmine defines it to be " a congregation of men bound 
 by common profession and sacraments, under legitimate 
 pastors, especially the Pope:" "coetus hominum ejusdem 
 Christianse fidei professione et eorundem sacramentorum 
 communione colligatus, sub regimine legitimorum pas- : 
 torum et prsecipue unius Christi in terris Vicarii Romani ^ 
 Pontificis." In opposition to this view, Launoy con- 
 tends that its simple definition is "coetus" or " congre- . 
 gatio fidelium," the supremacy of the Pope not being of 
 its essence ; a view, let it be observed, between that of 
 
Anglican Church. 37 
 
 our divines who consider each particular diocese to be 
 the normal Church and the Bishop its essence, and of the 
 Ultramontane which makes the extended Church one 
 unit, and the Pope its essential principle. He observes 
 that in Scripture the main idea of a Church is a united 
 congregation ; for instance, "all this assembly sha.\\ know 
 that the Lord saveth not with sword and spear," — uni- 
 versa Ecclesia. — i Sam. xvii. 47. " O sing unto the 
 Lord a new song ; let the congregation of saints praise 
 Him," — Ecclesia sanctorum, or coetus fidelium. — Ps. 
 cxlix. I. "If a man know not how to rule his own 
 house, how shall he take care of the Church of God," 
 or the multitude under his rule.' — i Tim. iii. 5. And 
 that this definition is acknowledged by the Fathers, , 
 Launoy shows at length. For instance, by Justin, "men 
 many in number, are called by one name (the Church), 
 as if they were one thing." — Tryph. 42. Clement of 
 Alexander defines the Church " the congregation of the 
 elect." — Strom 6. The same intercommunion is implied 
 by Irenseus when he speaks of the Church as " cherish- 
 ing the faith all over the earth, as in one house, as 
 .though she had one soul, one heart, and preaching it 
 most concordantly, as though she had one mouth." — 
 Hcer. xi. 31. Isidore of Pelusium defines the Church to 
 be " a collection of the holy brought together on a right 
 faith, and the best rules for living." — ii. 246. Cyril of 
 Alexandria describes " the city of God " to be " as 
 though a certain territory and region of men sanctified 
 and enriched dy unity in God through the Spirit." — In 
 Mic. V. § 49. And Theodoret, " the company of those 
 who believe." — In i Tim. iii. fin. 657. Gregory the 
 Great says that "the Holy Church consists in the unity 
 of believers, as our body is, united by the framework of 
 its limbs."— In Job, xix. § 43. At the same time, how- 
 
38 Catholicity of the 
 
 ever expressions such as these tell against the Pope as 
 a visible head of the Church, still they surely must in 
 fairness be taken also to show that, in the opinion of 
 those who use them, perfect church communion consists, 
 not simply in union with a common invisible Head, but 
 in visible communion with each other, — that, sufficient 
 as the Episcopate may be for the essence, or ro X,i)v of 
 a particular Church, yet for the iv Zyv, or health, it 
 should be united in bonds of active intercourse with all 
 its fellow-branches. 
 
 The same conclusion would result still more strongly, 
 if, instead of quoting passages from the Fathers which 
 speak of the Church, we adduced such as speak of 
 branches which are estranged from it. But we need not 
 say more on the point, except to remark, by the way, 
 what is not a little curious, that our 19th Article, on the 
 face of its wording, prefers the Galilean, to what we 
 have above called the Anglican definition of unity, 
 speaking of the Church as "ccetus fidelium, in quo ver- 
 bum Dei purum pr£edicatur, et sacramenta quoad ea 
 quje necessario exiguntur juxta Christi institutum recte 
 administrantur." If these words are to be strictly con- 
 strued by the light of such passages as Launoy brings 
 from a multitude of antecedent writers against Bellar- 
 mine, our Reformers held but one Church in the world, 
 and entertained the idea of intercommunion, reciprocity, 
 and mutual understanding, in short, political union, as 
 i!a.& perfection of ecclesiastical unity. 
 
 7- 
 It will be asked then, admitting as much as this, how 
 do we escape from the conclusion which would seem to 
 follow, and which St. Austin especially, as the spokes- 
 man of other Fathers, seems to urge upon us, that the 
 
Anglican Church. 39 
 
 English Church is cut off from the Catholic body, a ray 
 from the sun, a branch from the tree, a channel from the 
 fountain ? I answer, — by such considerations and facts 
 as the following, which will be seen to be tenable without 
 any breach of respect and piety towards those holy men, 
 to whom both Roman Catholics and ourselves appeal. 
 
 Now, first, the one Church was in the days of the 
 Fathers, in matter of fact, in a state of perfect inter- 
 communion ; it is not then at all wonderful, rather it 
 could not be otherwise, especially as such a state was a 
 fulfilment of Divine prophecy, that they should appeal 
 to that fact as a mark of its divine origin. It was a 
 mark of the true Church ; the only question is, whether 
 it was an indispensable mark of truth, an essential con- 
 dition, the absence of which was fatal. While it existed 
 it was a divine witness ; but it might possibly admit of 
 being lost, and then the Church and the truth which 
 the Church taught, would be so far obscured. While the 
 Jewish Temple remained, that Temple was a proof of 
 God's faithfulness to the Jews ; its demolition was a trial, 
 " they saw not their tokens ; " but Israel was a holy 
 people notwithstanding. And in the same way we may 
 be part of the Church, even grarlting, for argument's^ 
 sake, that as far as this particular note is concerned, we 
 have it not in the degree in which the Roman Church 
 has it. There are various notes of truth of various, 
 cogency; the only question is, what is the essential note } 
 because intercommunion is an important one, it does not 
 therefore follow that it is a sine qud non, or that the es- 
 sence of the Church does not rather lie in the possession 
 of Apostolic Succession. Before the notes were impaired, 
 the question of comparison between them would not arise. 
 Till then, one might seem as strong as another. 
 
 Again, the circumstance that a particular note was 
 
40 Catholicity of the 
 
 wanting in a particular country, this would of course be 
 an especially strong presumption against that country ; ■ 
 and the Fa:thers, as was natural, treated what was mainly 
 an antecedent probability as if it rose to the fulness of 
 a principle ; and because it was to be expected that the 
 great body of the Church would always be in the right, 
 they laid it down as a general truth that it would and 
 must always be so. Nothing surely is more likely than 
 that the unanimous opinion of ninety-nine men in a 
 matter in which they can judge should be more correct 
 than the contrary opinion of the hundredth. Might not 
 we say, ninety-nine witnesses are sure to be right, without 
 deciding, that in every particular instance the minority 
 must for certain be in the wrong.' We have such maxims 
 as, " cuique credendum in arte sua ; " yet no one would - 
 take such maxims as rigorous regulations which admitted 
 of no exception. All moral propositions are but gene- 
 ral ; nor is it any paradox to urge this consideration in 
 ecclesiastical matters. It is hard upon the Fathers to ■ 
 convert their presages and vaticinations into unchange- 
 able truths, as if earthly things might not in turn be . 
 their subject-matter as well as heavenly. It is hard 
 upon St. Augustine to suppose that his striking and 
 beautiful principle against the Donatists, " securus judi- ■ 
 cat orbis terrarum," was intended as a theological verity 
 equally sacred as an article in the Creed.* 
 
 So many instances may be produced in illustration of 
 this remark as to make selection difficult. For example, • 
 it is a great principle of the Fathers, recognized by the 
 Church of Rome, to prefer what is old to what is novel ; 
 
 * [It is a great practical principle, not a doctrine : and the question is, 
 what array of arguments in a particular case is sufficient to overcome it ? ' 
 For instance, is the argument for Anglicanism of such an overpowering' 
 character as to be able, by a consensus of opinion, in itself to overcome it ?1 
 
Anglican Church. 41 
 
 yet, as they themselves maintain, the Church has power 
 of altering or renovating in matters of discipline. They 
 have dropped the practice of infant communion, they 
 have prohibited the'cup to the laity, they have enforced 
 celibacy on the clergy ; they will not, we conceive, deny 
 that in these points they have never thought the apostolic 
 age their necessary rule. Now might we not bring 
 against them the great maxims of the Fathers about 
 "standing on the old ways," with equal cogency, to say 
 the least, as they urge us with St. Austin's maxim about 
 authority of the orbis terrarum".' Might we not insist 
 on the " antiquitati inhsrendum," nihil innovandum nisi 
 quod traditum est," to apxaia KpaTHTw, and the like, as at 
 once condemning them out of their own mouths .' and 
 how will they show themselves consistent except by such 
 distinctions and explanations as we feel it equitable 
 to adopt in the case of their charge against us } Or, 
 again, how does the decision of Vincent of Lerins, 
 " Quid si novella aliqua contagio, non jam portiunculam 
 tantum, sed totam pariter Ecclesiam commaculare cone- 
 tur.? tunc item providebit ut antiquitati inhasreat," — how 
 does it stand with the " securus judicat " of Augustine, 
 if we are bent on pressing the letter rather than the drift 
 of the Fathers .' Or again, how shall we account for 
 Lactantius's " That is the true Catholic Church in qu& est 
 confessio et p(snitentia" or Jerome's "ecclesia ibi est, ubi 
 fides est" unless we understand them, not as strict defi- 
 nitions, but as great and general truths, useful for the oc- 
 casion, elicited by the presence of the Novatian or Arian 
 heresy? Or again, the words above quoted from Au- 
 gustine, in which he says that the part must yield to the 
 whole, run thus : " Et concilia posteriora prioribus apud 
 ■posteros praponuntur, et universum partibus semper jure 
 optimo praeponitur," Is the Church of Rome willing 
 
42 Catholicity of the 
 
 to stand by both clauses, and, while the English Convo- 
 cation yields to a General Council, to supersede the 
 Council of Trent by a Council yet to come ? Or, if the 
 former clause need limitation, why not the latter ? 
 
 Or again, it is well known what jealousy and dislike 
 were felt, in the early Church, of dialectics, rhetoric, and 
 the kindred sciences. Aristotle was looked upon as the 
 teacher of all that was unfit for a Christian to hold, 
 ^' That miserable Aristotle ! " says Tertullian, " who in- 
 vented dialects, the art of building up and pulling 
 down." — De Prczscr. 7. Nazianzen speaks of " the arti- 
 fice of Aristotle's art as among the plagues of Egypt." 
 — Or at. 26. Jerome says, that "the dialecticians, whose 
 master is Aristotle, pass whole days and nights in askirig 
 and answering questions, giving or accepting a thesis, 
 stating, proving, concluding." — In Tit. iii. 9. Faustinus, 
 the Luciferian, calls Aristotle the Bishop of the Arians ; 
 and Damascene says that the Monophysites made him 
 a thirteenth Apostle. All parts of the Church unite in 
 condemning him' and his art ; we have a consensus 
 veterum on the subject, and the general feeling is 
 summed up by Ambrose in the beautiful apothegm, 
 "Non in dialectic^ complacuit Deo salvum facere popu- 
 lum suum." Now, philosophical and undeniable as the 
 statement is, would it not be altogether preposterous to 
 take it as a necessary truth in the letter, instead of a 
 truth relative to the thing spoken of, heresy ; to deny 
 that reasoning is of any use in theology, forbid the 
 study of dialectics, and bring up an array of Fathers 
 against Aristotle in defence of such a proceeding.' 
 Would it be wise or satisfactory, upon this basis, to de- 
 nounce the dialectical labours of these very Fathers in 
 theology, and (what is more to the purpose) the works 
 of the Schoolmen, and to cherish and make much of 
 
Anglican Church. 43 
 
 St. Ambrose's dictum, as supplying a safe rule and 
 guide in matters of faith, to the sacrifice of creeds, to 
 the triumph of infidels, and the utter dissolution of the 
 Church ? Not less unreasonable surely is it to make a 
 saying of St. Augustine the turning-point of our reli- 
 gion, and to dispense with all other truths in order that 
 we may maintain this in the letter.* 
 
 But here another instance occurs, which it would be 
 superfluous to add, except that it carries us out from 
 these disputes about syllables into a wider and more 
 generous line of thought. When we object to the 
 Romanists that their Church has changed in the course 
 of years, they not un frequently acknowledge it, and are 
 philosophical on the subject. They say that all systems 
 have their development ; that nothing begins as it ends ; 
 that nothing can come into the world omnibus nuineris,tha.t 
 the seed becomes a tree, and the child a man. And they 
 urge, moreover, that the full-grown fulfilment, to super- 
 ficial observers, necessarily seems different from what it 
 was in its rudiments, just as a friend, not seen for many 
 years, is strange to us at first sight, till, by degrees, we 
 catch the old looks, or the well-remembered tones, or 
 the smile or the remark, which assure us that, with 
 whatever changes of age or circumstance, he is the same 
 man. And so upon the present Church of Rome, its 
 advocates grant that time has brought changes ; that 
 many things have been introduced which once were not ; 
 that the internal principles of the Church may have 
 developed disproportionably compared with what they 
 
 • [My first feeling about this sajdng, I liave described Apol., p. 117, 
 ed. z, thus : — "A mere sentence struck me with a power, which I never had 
 felt from any words before." My second thoughts are given above in the 
 text. My third thoughts came back to my first. In some matters, second 
 thoughts are not the best.] 
 
44 Catholicity of the 
 
 once were. The relation of people to bishop, or of 
 bishop to pope, or of pope to council, is not what it 
 was ; but so a child's face changes into a man's ; the 
 features are variously enlarged, — what was prominent, 
 retires, — what was not a feature, becomes the ruling 
 expression of the countenance, — yet the face is the 
 same, and the child is the man. They will grant per- 
 haps that the papacy is a development ; but why, they 
 ask, should not this be intended ? why should it not 
 be intended that, saving the Church and her faith, her 
 internal constitution should determine in a monarchy,, 
 as the Mosaic_polity might be intended in the counsels 
 of Divine Wisdom to end in a dynasty of kings ? And 
 how groundless and peevish it is, they say, on such 
 grounds to find fault with the Roman Catholic Church, 
 as if it had departed from Antiquity and forfeited its 
 trust ! We think there is a great deal of force in this 
 view ; it does seem to reconcile one to much that other- 
 wise it is difficult to comprehend in the history of reli- 
 gion ; only we would propose to carry it out a little 
 further. Why should it not be the intention of Divine 
 Providence, as on the one hand, still to recognize His 
 Church when contracted into a monarchy, so also not to 
 forsake her when relaxed and dissolved again into a 
 number of aristocratic fragments .' * why may not the 
 impieties of the sixteenth century have been overruled by 
 His sovereign arm as well as the ambition and supersti- 
 tion of the eighth or the eleventh 1 Children grow to 
 men, as the Romanist reminds us ; but, in like manner, 
 men grow old and wax feeble, and their limbs drag after 
 
 • ["Why not?" because, in fact, it is not so dissolved; doubtless, were 
 it so dissolved, were the Pope, as indistinct a power as he was in the first 
 centuries, and the Bishops as practically independent, the Church would 
 still be the Church.] 
 
Anglican Church, 4c 
 
 them, and their voice falters; shall the decrepitude of 
 the nineteenth century more interfere with the inward life 
 and perfection of the Church than the inexperience and 
 feebleness of the Antenicene era ? Shall Dionysius be 
 called the forerunner of Arius, yet in truth be a great 
 saint ? shall Cyprian live in the Church as a glorious 
 martyr, though he erred in his controversy about bap- 
 tism ? and shall the names of Andrewes or Butler be 
 erased from the catalogue, because they were in less 
 intimate union than was abstractedly desirable with 
 Christians of the south, or were prisoners in an Erastian 
 court ? It is surely unfair to carry on the development 
 of the Church only just to the point which serves our 
 purpose, and to be indulgent towards tyranny within it, 
 while we make no allowance for insubordination. 
 
 Now against this view of course will be brought to bear 
 St. Austin's doctrine, already discussed, that the general 
 Church's' judgment is final against particular branches. 
 Here then we come to the point from which we seem to 
 have digressed ; for, granting he says so, still we wish to 
 urge this, viz., that just as he says the Church's judgment 
 is above its branches, so does he elsewhere insist on its 
 being above the decision of the Pope. He makes it 
 final both against individual branches and against the 
 Pope ; and, as his decision against the Pope is not reck- 
 oned by Romanists fatal to their theory of development, 
 neither need his decision against individual branches be 
 considered as fatal to our theory of development. Here 
 again we will avail ourselves of the labours of the learned 
 Launoy, though Augustine's judgment on the subject is 
 too well known to need assistance from any controversial 
 writer. For instance, he speaks in the following manner 
 of Pope Stephen's controversy with Cyprian about he- 
 retical baptism : " The obscurity of this question caused 
 
46 Catholicity of the 
 
 in the early ages of the Church, before the schism of 
 Donatus, such controversy and fluctuation, as far as 
 peace would allow, in great men and endowed with great 
 charity, that for a long while there was uncertainty in 
 the decrees of councils in distinct places, until by a 
 plenary council of the whole world the most sound view 
 was confirmed to the removal of all doubt." — De Bapt, 
 1.9. In his letter to Glorius and others, having said that 
 Melchiades, the Pope of the day, had in council con- 
 demned Donatus, Augustine proceeds to say : " Let us 
 suppose that those bishops who gave sentence at Rome, 
 were not fair judges ; there still remained a plenary 
 council of the Universal Church, in which the cause might 
 be argued against those very judges, in order that if they 
 had been convicted of wrong judgment, their sentence 
 might be reversed!' — Ep. 43, 19. And he thus speaks 
 against Petilian : " Whatever Marcellinus was, or Marr 
 cellus, or Silvester, or Melchiades" (these were Popes), 
 " or Mensurius, or Csecilian, and others, to whom in their 
 defence they object what they please, this does nothing 
 prejudice the Catholic Church diffused over the whole world; 
 we in no measure are victorious in their innocence, in no 
 measure are found guilty in their iniquity." — De Unie., 
 Bapt. 30. It is a plain matter of fact, then, that, as far 
 as the constitution of the Church is concerned, the divi- 
 sion between Rome and England does not make so 
 great a difference between this age and the age of St. 
 Cyprian, as the Papal monarchy makes between the age 
 of Hildebrand and the age of St. Augustine.* 
 
 On the whole then, it being considered that the dicta 
 
 [If so, then, the division between Jerusalem and Samaria does not make 
 so great a difference between the age of Jeroboam and that of Joshua, as 
 the Israelitish monarchy makes between the age of Solomon and the age 
 of Samuel.] . ■' 
 
Anglican Church. 47 
 
 of the Fathers upon the temporal state of the Church are 
 not to be taken as first principles, and that from the 
 happy circumstances of their times the Fathers may have 
 been led to lay an extreme stress upon the necessity of 
 intercommunion as a condition of Churchmanship, and 
 that the Church may possibly be intended to bear a 
 different appearance in different ages, and to wear her 
 bridal ornaments and the signs of her rank, some at one 
 time, some at another, and in consequence that branches 
 estranged from the rest of the body, may, nevertheless 
 be part of the body, let us proceed to show that what 
 may possibly be, is probably, as regards the English 
 Church. As soon as it is granted that active intercourse 
 is not absolutely necessary as a note of the Church, an open- 
 ing is made for adducing other circumstances which may 
 serve to be an evidence of that, which such intercourse , 
 would evidence, if it existed. We conceive then that, in 
 spite of our being separated from Greece and Rome, shut 
 up in ourselves and our dependencies, and looked coldly 
 on or forgotten by the rest of Christendom, there is suffi- 
 cient ground for still believing that the English Church 
 is at this time the Catholic Church in England. 
 
 8. 
 Let it be considered then, first, that either we are the 
 Catholic Church in England, or there is no Catholic 
 Church here. There has been a Church here from the 
 first, consisting of many sees ; those sees remain, they 
 are filled ; the Church exists still ; it may be schismatical, 
 or heretical, but here it is. If it be in heresy or in 
 schism, then, as Romanists say, it certainly is not a true 
 branch ; but then, if so, there is no other that is true. 
 If so, England is lost to the Catholic world ; no other 
 bishops claim our sees. As far as the argument from 
 
48 Catholicity of the 
 
 visibility goes, if it be a fact that we are estranged from 
 the Continent, it is also a fact that we have possession of 
 the thrones of Cuthbert, Becket, and Wykeham. Is it 
 probable that the noble line of Canterbury Should be 
 extinct ? has the blood of martyrs dried up, and the 
 voice of the confessors failed ? Have our cathedrals no 
 living spirit in them, and is our hierarchy a form only, 
 and not a power ? Is it usual \»fith Holy Church to 
 retire where once she has stationed herself? shall she 
 suddenly leave a haunt frequented and illustrated by 
 her presence through 1300 years ? Shall Cranmer, if so 
 be single-handed, destroy the work of ages ? So great, 
 so monstrous an improbability, gives some weight of 
 evidence on the other side that we are what our ances- 
 tors were. The Romanists urge against us as a provi- 
 dential badge that we dare not openly take the name of 
 Catholic ; and may we not retort that they too have not. 
 dared openly to fill our sees, and that the hand of Provi- 
 dence is seen in the fact ? They have given us posses- 
 sion ; we have it in the open face of day without rival 
 interference from them ; and the matter is reduced to a 
 question of opposite probabilities, whether we shall 
 suppose active communion dispensable, or shall proceed 
 utterly to extinguish the candlesticks of an old and 
 famous Christian country, dear to Christendom. Well 
 were it if they would look back upon the past, and show 
 us some little love "for the Fathers' sake." Would 
 that both parties would look back on that ancient time 
 which they both claim as theirs, and would love each 
 other in it ! Would that our Fathers could plead some- 
 what for us in the affections of our opponents, and bring 
 them to relent from the cruel purpose with which they 
 follow after us to destroy us ! 
 
 They delight to compare us to the Donatists, but these 
 
Anglican Church. 49 
 
 surely were in a very different position. The Donatists 
 had not possession ; their only tenure of existence was 
 hatred and opposition to all the rest of Christendom. 
 They vigxq forced to call the Catholic Church the "scor- 
 tum diaboli," in order to justify their continuing a rival 
 succession against her in their country. They could not 
 acknowledge her abroad, without betraying the cause of 
 Donatus at home. It was a decisive argument against 
 the Donatists, to say that the Church was prophesied of 
 as Catholic, diffused over various countries, and therefore 
 could not be a Church, which was all but shut up in 
 Africa. Their very principle of separation obliged them 
 to deny that the Church elsewhere was the true Church ; 
 for, if true, why had they made a distinct and second suc- 
 cession in Africa .' If the general Church was true, its 
 African branch was true, and they were setting up a 
 second Church without reason. It was a great incon- 
 sistency to say that the general Church was true and 
 sound, yet not to join that branch of it which had been 
 from the first among theniselves. This was the great 
 absurdity of a Donatist bishop, famous in those times, 
 of the name of Tichonius. He gave up his point, and 
 yet did not give up his Church. If altar cannot lawfully 
 be erected against altar, Augustine and his rival bishop 
 at Hippo could not both be free from schism ; yet 
 Tichonius seemed to affirm it. On the other hand, 
 though we hold, as we do, that altar cannot be lawfully 
 erected against altar, yet our bishops and those of France, 
 ours and the German, ours and the Roman, may still 
 both be free from schism. Nor would this view of the 
 subject be affected, even were the Roman Catholics ill- 
 advised enough at this time of day to fill our sees ; for 
 it would be absurd to suppose that at the end of three 
 centuries they could claim what they had so long ago 
 VOL. II. 4 
 
50 Catholicity of the 
 
 abandoned. However, by the time they recover the sees 
 of England, we on the other hand, perchance, shall have 
 succeeded in regaining the name of Catholic. 
 
 Here another thought is suggested to us. We have 
 been saying that, unless the English be a Catholic branch, 
 the Catholic Church is defrauded of the " orbis terrarum." 
 This leads us to observe how much more real the fulfil- 
 ment of the prophecies is on our interpretation than on 
 the Roman. Insisting, as they do, on intercommunion as 
 an essential mark of the Church, they are obliged to 
 make its Catholicity in no small degree a mere fiction of 
 law. Surely it is but a legal fiction to say that there is 
 a Church in England, if the Roman communion be it, 
 compared with the full and adequate truth of the pro-, 
 position, supposing it be possible, in spite of the differ- 
 ence of faith and discipline between England and Rome, 
 to call them one and the same Church, extending into 
 the two countries. And this applies still more strongly 
 to the case of the Greek Church ; for in what sense can 
 the Church of Rome be said to extend through the vast 
 spaces of Russia, except on that pen-and-paper plan 
 which gives them an indefinite abundance of bishops 
 in partibus infidelium f If then intercommunion be a 
 Note of the Church, reality is one also ; and unless 
 Roman divines are content to create a territory for' 
 themselves by merely mapping it, and to appropriate it 
 by compasses, they must relax their ideas, high and 
 primitive though they be, of the necessary intercom- 
 munion and mutual brotherly affection of the various 
 portions of the present Catholic Church. 
 
 But to return to our own. It is made an objection to 
 us that we are not, and that we dare not call ourselves. 
 Catholic ; as if the common sense of mankind and our own 
 conscience thereby gave judgment against us. Certainly 
 
Anglican Church. 51 
 
 the title has been principally cherished by us with a sort 
 of disciplina arcani, not claimed indeed, but not aban- 
 doned ; and so far of course it has not served us as a 
 Note of the Church. We should have thought, however, 
 that our Church's being so often called Popish and 
 Papistical by the world would have saved it from this 
 reproach at the hands of the Romanists ; for what do 
 the speakers mean, and what can the Romanists wish to 
 understand by " Popish," but just the very same thing 
 as Catholic by another name ? However, admitting the 
 charge, which is hard as coming from them, still on the 
 other hand it must be borne in mind as a very striking 
 contrary fact, that if we do not possess the title Catholic, 
 at least we have never borne the name of mortal man. 
 Heretical and schismatical bodies are formed upon a 
 certain doctrine, or begin in a certain leader. We have 
 none such. What exact parallel is there to our position 
 in former times ? The Donatists formed a large Church 
 and spread through Africa, yet they were called from 
 Donatus ; if they are our prototypes, why are we not 
 called Cranmerites or Jewellists ? The Monophysites 
 got possession of whole districts, and might seem, if any 
 men, identified with the local Churches in those districts, 
 yet they are named from Eutyches, from Severus, from 
 Jacob, from Gaianus, and from Theodosius ; not to 
 mention their more common title of Acephali, which 
 implies that at least a great portion of them had lost the 
 Succession altogether. If then our present forfeiture of 
 the title Catholic be against us, our freedom from human 
 title is for us, and is a Note of the true Church. Surely 
 a note, even in Bellarmine's judgment ; who thus speaks, 
 even when he is explaining the force of the word Catholic : 
 " Heretical sects," he says, are " branches or parts cut off 
 from the tree of the Church." " There is no heresy," he 
 
52 ,: Catholicity of the 
 
 ' continues, " which does not take a name from some man 
 as its author, and leave the name of Christian to them 
 from whom it departs." And theiji he instances this 
 remark from Justin Martyr, who says, " They (sectaries) 
 are distinguished by surnames, called after individuals, 
 according as each was the author of any new doctrine, 
 some Marcionists, others Valentinians, others Basilidians, 
 others Saturninians, others by other names from the first 
 inventor of their respective doctrine." — In Tryph. 35. 
 "When men are called Phrygians, or Marcionites, etc.," 
 says Lactantius, " they cease to be Christians ; for they 
 have lost Christ's name, and put on human and foreign 
 titles." — Inst. iv. 30. " Never has people," says Atha- 
 nasius, " received name from their bishops, but from the 
 Lord in whom they have believed ; even from the blessed 
 Apostles, our teachers, we have not received titles, but 
 from Christ we are and are called Christians." — Orat. 2. 
 contr. Arian. " Wherever you shall hear," says Jerome, 
 "those who are called Christians, named not from the 
 Lord Jesus Christ, but from any one else, as Marcionitesj^i.^ 
 Valentinians, etc., know that it is not Christ's Church, 
 but the synagogue of Antichrist." — /« Lucif. fin. All 
 this is almost prophetically fatal to Lutherans, Calvinists, 
 Socinians, and Wesleyans ; but for us it is a note of our 
 Churchmanship, on Bellarmine's own admission, that we 
 are proof against it. However, if Romanists among us 
 still taunt us with our present loss of the name Catholic, , 
 as far as the world's witness goes, then we take leave to 
 remind them that if we have let slip " Catholic," at least 
 we have kept " Church," which in this country they have 
 not ; and thus we have a popular witness in our favour as 
 well as they. It is a common reproach of theirs against 
 us, that if we were to take St. Cyril's test, and ask in the 
 street for the " Catholic" place of worship, no one would 
 
Anglican Church. 53 
 
 dream of directing us to any but their's. Now it has 
 been retorted, truly and happily, that in like manner, if 
 they ask for the " Church," they will be directed to none 
 other than our's. We go to church, and they to chapel. 
 They possess Catholic meetings, conciliabula Apostolo- 
 rum, a contradiction in terms. 
 
 9- 
 
 While we are on the subject, we will notice another 
 Note of the Church, which Bellarmine does not distinctly 
 mention, but is equal to any, life. The Church is em- 
 phatically a living body, and there can be no greater 
 proof of a particular communion being part of the Church 
 than the appearance in it of a continued and abiding 
 •energy, nor a more melancholy symptom of its being a 
 corpse than torpidity. We say an energy continued and 
 abiding, for accident will cause the activity of a moment, 
 and an external principle give the semblance of self- 
 motion. On the other hand, even a living body may for 
 a while be asleep. And here we have an illustration of 
 what we just now urged about the varying cogency of 
 the Notes of the Church according to times and circum- 
 stances. No one can deny that at times the Roman 
 Church itself, restless as it is at most times, has been in 
 a state of sleep or disease, so great as to resemble death ; 
 the words of Baronius, speaking of the tenth century, are 
 well known : " Dormiebat tunc plan^ alto, ut apparet, 
 sopore Christus in navi, cum hisce flantibus validis ven- 
 tis, navis ipsa fluctibus operiretur. Una ilia reliqua 
 consolatio piis, quia, etsi Dominus dormivit, in eadem 
 tamen navi dormivit."* It concerns then, those, who 
 
 * Ann. A.D. 912, n. 14, vol. 15, p. 571. Just before he had said : — 
 ."Quae tunc fades sanctas Ecclesiae RomansE ! quam fcedissima, cum Rom^ 
 dominarentur potentissimse seque ac sordidissim£e meretrices ! quanun 
 
54 Catholicity of the 
 
 deny that we are the true Church because we have 
 not at present this special note, intercommunion with 
 other Christians, to show cause why the Roman Church 
 in the tenth century should be so accounted, with pro- 
 fligates, or, rather, the profligate mothers of profligate 
 sons, for her supreme rulers. And still, notwithstanding, 
 life is a Note of the Church ; she alone revives even if 
 she declines ; heretical and schismatical bodies cannot 
 keep life ; they gradually become cold, stiff and insen- 
 sible. They may do some energetic work at first from 
 excitement and remaining warmth, as the Arians con- 
 verted the Goths, though even this seems, as the his- 
 tory shows us, to have been an accident, for which they 
 can claim no praise ; or as the Nestorians spread in the 
 East, from circumstances which need not here be noticed. 
 But wait awhile, and " see the end of these men." " I 
 myself," says the Psalmist, " have seen the ungbdly in 
 great power, and flourishing like a green-bay tree. I 
 went by, and lo, he was gone ; I sought him, but his 
 place could nowhere be found." Heresies and schisms, 
 whatever be their promise at first, and whatever be their 
 struggles, yet gradually and surely tend not to be. 
 Utter dissolution is the scope to which their principles 
 are directed from the first, and towards which for the 
 most part they steadily and continually move. Or, if the 
 principle of destruction in them be not so living as to 
 hurry them forward in their career, then they remain 
 inert and motionless, where they first are found, kept 
 together in one by external circumstances, and going to 
 pieces as soon as air is let in upon them. 
 
 arbitrio mutarentur sedes, darentur Episcopi, et, quod audita horrendum et 
 infandum est, intraderentar in sedem Petri earum amasii pseudo-pontifices. 
 qui non sint nisi ad consignanda tantum tempora in catalogo Romanorusa 
 Pontificum scripti." 
 
Anglican Church. 55 
 
 Now if there ever were a Church on whom the experi- 
 ment has been tried whether it had life in it or not, the 
 English is that one. For three centuries it has endured 
 all vicissitudes of fortune. It has endured in trouble 
 and prosperity, under seduction and under oppression. 
 It has been practised upon by theorists, browbeaten by 
 sophists, intimidated by princes, betrayed by false sons, 
 laid waste by tyranny, corrupted by wealth, torn by 
 schism, and persecuted by fanaticism. Revolutions 
 have come upon it sharply and suddenly, to and fro, hot 
 and cold, as if to try what it was made of It has been 
 a sort of battle-field on which opposite principles have 
 been tried. No opinion, however extreme any way, but 
 may be found, as the Romanists are not slow to reproach 
 us, among its bishops and divines. Yet what has been 
 its career upon the whole.' Which way has it been 
 moving through three hundred years 1 Where does it 
 find itself at the end? Lutherans have tended to 
 Rationalism ; Calvinists have become Socinians ; but 
 what has it become ? As far as its formularies are con- 
 cerned, it may be said all along to have grown towards 
 a more perfect Catholicism than that with which it 
 started at the time of its estrangement ; every act, every 
 crisis, which marks its course, has been upward. It 
 never was in so miserable case as in the reigns of 
 Edward and Elizabeth. At the end of Elizabeth's 
 there was a conspicuous revival of the true doctrine. 
 Advancements were made in the Canons of 1603. 
 How much was done under Charles the First, need not 
 be said ; and done permanently, so as to remain to this 
 day, in spite of the storm which immediately arose, 
 sweeping off the chief agents in the work, and for a time 
 levelling the Church to the ground. More was done 
 than even yet appears, as a philosophical writer has 
 
56 Catholicity of the 
 
 lately remarked, in the Convocation of 1661. One 
 juncture there was of a later date (1688) which seemed 
 to threaten a relapse ; yet it was the only crisis in which 
 no ecclesiastical act took place. The temper, however, 
 of the Church certainly did go back ; a secular and 
 semi-sceptical spirit came in. Now then was the time 
 when the Church lay open to injury ; yet, by a wonder- 
 ful providence, the Convocation being, during this 
 period, suspended, there was no means of making per- 
 manent impressions on its character; and thus civil 
 tyranny was its protection against itself That very 
 Convocation too expired in an act of zeal and faith. In 
 our own times, temporal defences have been removed 
 which the most strenuous political partisans of the 
 Church considered essential to its well-being, and the 
 loss of which they deplored as the first steps towards its 
 ruin. To their surprise these well-intentioned men have 
 beheld what they thought a mere establishment, de- 
 pendent on man to create and destroy, rise up and walk 
 with a life of its own, such as it had before they and 
 their constitution came into being. 
 
 How many learned divines have we had, even oui 
 enemies being judges 1 and in proportion to their learn- 
 ing, so on the whole has been their approximation to- 
 wards the full ancient truth. Or take again those whom 
 by a natural instinct " all the people count as prophets," 
 and will it not be found that either altogether, or in 
 those works which are most popular, those writers are 
 ruled by primitive and Catholic principles.? No man, 
 for instance, was an abler writer in the last century than 
 Warburton, or more famous in his day ; yet the glare is 
 over, and now Bishops Wilson and Home, men of fai" 
 inferior powers, but of Catholic temper artd principles, 
 fill the doctor's chair in the eyes of the many. What a 
 
Anglican Church. 57 
 
 Notfe of the Church is the mere production of a man like 
 Butler, a pregnant fact much to be meditated on ! and 
 how strange it is, if it be as it seems to be, that the real 
 influence of his work is only just now beginning! and 
 who can prophesy in what it will end ? Thus our 
 divines grow with centuries, expanding after their death 
 in the minds of their readers into more and more exact 
 Catholicism, as years rolled on. Nay, even our errors 
 and heterodoxies turn to good : Wesleyanism in itself 
 tends to heresy, if it was not heretical in the outset ; 
 but, so far as it has been in the Church, it has been 
 overruled to rouse and stimulate us, when we were 
 asleep. Moreover, look at the internal state of the 
 Church at this moment ; much that is melancholy is 
 there, strife, division, error. But still on the whole, 
 enlarge on the evils as you will, there is life there, per- 
 ceptible, visible life ;* rude indeed, undisciplined, per- 
 haps self-willed, but life ; and not the life of death, not 
 that heretical restlessness, which, as we have observed, 
 only runs out the quicker for its activity, and hastens to 
 be no more, but, as we may humbly trust, a heavenly 
 principle after all, which is struggling towards develop- 
 ment, and gives presage of truth and holiness to come. 
 Look across the Atlantic to the daughter Churches of 
 England in the States ; shall one that is barren bear a 
 child in her old age? yet "the barren hath borne 
 seven."t Schismatic branches put out their leaves at 
 once in an expiring effort ; our Church has waited three 
 centuries, and then blossoms, like Aaron's rod, budding 
 and blooming and yielding fruit, while the rest are dry. 
 And lastly look at the present position of the Church at 
 home ; there too we shall find a note of the true city of 
 God, the Holy Jerusalem. She is in warfare with the 
 
 • iVid. sufr. Note, vol. i., pp. 379, 380.] + \yid. ibid., pp. 381—383.] 
 
58 Catholicity of the 
 
 world, as the Church Militant should be ; she is rebuking 
 the world ; she is hated, she is pillaged by the world. 
 And, as if it were providentially intended to show this 
 resemblance between her and the sister branches, what 
 place she has here, that they have there; the same 
 enemies encompassing both them and her, and the same 
 trials and exploits lying in prospect. She has a com- 
 mon cause with them, as far as they are faithful, if not 
 a common speech and language ; and is together with 
 them in warfare, if not in peace. 
 
 Much might be said on this subject. At all times, 
 since Christianity came into the world, an open contest 
 has been going on between religion and irreligion, and 
 the true Church, of course, has ever been on the religious 
 side. This then is a sure test in every age, where the 
 Christian should stand. There may have been corrup- 
 tions or errors, and great difficulties of judgment about 
 details ; but in spite of them all, he would feel no hesi- 
 tation, did he live in the eleventh century, that Hilde- 
 brand was the champion of heaven, not the Caesar ; in 
 the twelfth, Becket, not Henry. Now applying this 
 simple criterion to the public parties of this day, it is 
 very plain that the English Church is at present on God's 
 side, and therefore so far God's Church ; — we are sorry 
 to be obliged to add, that there is as little doubt on which 
 side English Romanism is. It must be a very galling 
 thought to serious minds who profess it, to feel that they 
 are standing with the enemies of God, co-operating with 
 the haters of truth and haters of the light, and thereby 
 prejudicing religious minds even against those verities 
 which Rome continues to hold.* 
 
 As for the English Church, surely she has notes enough, 
 
 • It cannot be said that this reproach now applies to English Catholicism ; 
 •-^■itness the years 1850-1, and i860 — 1870. 
 
Ans^lican Church. 59 
 
 "b,^ 
 
 " the signs of an Apostle in all patience, and signs and 
 wonders and mighty deeds ;" she has the note of posses- 
 sion, the note of freedom from party titles ; the note of 
 life, a tough life and a vigorous ; she has ancient descent, 
 unbroken continuance, agreement in doctrine with the 
 ancient Church. Those of Bellarmine's Notes, which 
 she certainly has not, are intercommunion with Chris- 
 tendom, the glory of miracles, and the prophetical light ; 
 but the question is, whether she has not enough of 
 divinity about her to satisfy her sister Churches on their 
 own principles, that she is one body with them. 
 
 10. 
 
 But we do not mean to leave the subject here. It has 
 been observed above, that Augustine's maxim about sub- 
 mission to the orbis terrarum, as a sign of Churchman- 
 ship, is a presumption rather than a law, not a criterion 
 but a general evidence ; this will be confirmed by refer- 
 ring to transactions which took place in the Church 
 shortly before his own day. We shall find instances in 
 point in the history of Arianism, which serve to fix our 
 sense upon his words. 
 
 I. Let us take the case of the Semi-Arians. These 
 religionists had separated off from the Arians on the 
 death of Constantius, who had managed to keep together 
 a very miscellaneous party, and they formed a commu- 
 nion of their own under the name of Macedonians. After 
 a little while, they determined on abjuring their heresy 
 and professing the creed of Nicsea ; and for this purpose 
 they sent deputies to Pope Liberius, who received their 
 adhesion, and reconciled them. On the return of the 
 deputies, a portion of the body seceded again, refused to 
 accept the word Homoiision, though they seemed to have 
 accepted the doctrine implied in it. As to the divinity 
 
6o Catholicity of the 
 
 of the Holy Spirit, some of the seceders positively denied 
 the doctrine, others doubted. Against these latter, th^n, 
 who were merely in perplexity and suspense, there could 
 be no real complaint on the part of the Church, except 
 so far as they were in a state of separation. The seced- 
 ing body were in possession of sees, at least to the 
 number of thirty-four. Now one would have thought 
 that a strong case m.ight be made out in favour of any 
 Catholic, who had kept aloof from them. They came 
 of the Arians, had attempted to rival them in court 
 favour, had separated from them of necessity, not of 
 choice, had betaken themselves to Liberius in order to 
 escape the persecution they had met at their hands, had . 
 cooled in their Catholicity as soon as they got reinstated 
 in their sees, and a portion at least had retraced their 
 steps and formed a separate connection. Their conduct 
 had been of so marked a character that they gained from 
 St. Athanasius the title of Tropici or Turn-abouts. Yet 
 how did the Fathers treat them.? had they rejected them 
 in a mass from the first as schismatics } far from it ; in 
 spite of their separation from the general body, they 
 took them one by one, rested their opinion of them solely 
 on their personal faith, and were ready to honour and to 
 communicate with those, whom, in spite of whatever 
 perplexities of belief, they considered to be orthodox 
 at bottom. Athanasius, Basil, Gregory Nazianzen, and 
 Hilary, all take this view of the Semi-Arians. Of these, 
 it may suffice to dwell upon the instance of St. Basil. 
 He was baptized, probably between the ages of twenty 
 and thirty, by a bishop who, for twenty years, had sided 
 with the Arian party, and who soon afterwards signed 
 the prevaricating symbol of Ariminum. Shortly after, 
 he made the friendship of Eusebius of Samosata, who 
 eventually indeed conformed to the Church, and lost his 
 
Anglican Church. 61 
 
 life from Arian violence, but at the time in question was 
 found among the Semi-Arians, and was accounted an 
 Arian by Damasus, Bishop of Rome, up to the year 
 before St. Basil's death. Next, while he was a reader, 
 he attended the Council of Constantinople held at the 
 end of the reign of Constantius, as the assistant of a 
 celebrated Semi-Arian bishop, his namesake, Basil of 
 Ancyra. And about the same time he became intimate 
 with Eustathius, afterwards Bishop of Sebaste, a man far 
 less sound in faith than the Eusebius above mentioned, 
 and from whom, in the course of years, he was obliged to 
 separate. At an earlier day he had also taken part in 
 the Council held by the Semi-Arian party at Lampsacus. 
 Silvanus of Tarsus was another Semi-Arian whom he 
 visited at the same time. Now, though there could be 
 no doubt about the estrangement of these men from the 
 great Christian body, yet, as Basil tells us himself, he 
 was attracted by the purity and strictness of their lives, 
 and was persuaded, though in one instance wrongly, of 
 the soundness of their faith. 
 
 Their conspicuous seriousness of life indeed is espe- 
 cially insisted on by contemporaries and others, and 
 though not an infallible sign of their communion with 
 the invisible Church, as the event proved, yet was con- 
 sidered a note sufficient to outweigh many adverse 
 suspicions. 
 
 " No small portion of the people followed them," says Sozomen, 
 "in Constantinople, Bithynia, Thrace, the Hellespont, and the ' 
 neighbouring districts ; for their lives, to which the multitude espe- 
 cially attends, were irreproachable ; their : address was grave, and 
 their mode of living approaching to the monastic ; their speech 
 cultivated, and their moral qualities attractive. Such, they say, 
 was Marathonius atthat time ; who, having made a large fortune as 
 paymaster of the pretorian soldiers, gave up the army, and took the 
 charge of a hospital of sick and poor." — Hist. iv. 27. 
 
62 Catholicity of the 
 
 " May you be granted," says Nazianzen to them, " the reward of 
 your manner of hfe, to confess the Spirit perfectly, and to preach 
 with us, yea, before us, whatever is fitting. I dare to speak somt 
 great thing in your behalf, even the saying of the Apostle. So do I 
 embrace you, and so much I reverence that decent dress of yours, 
 and that complexion of continence, and those sacred assemblies, 
 and that grave virginity and purity, and your psalmody through 
 the night, and your love of the poor, and of the brethren, and of 
 strangers, that I am ready even to be anathema from Christ, and 
 to suffer somewhat as condemned, so that ye might stand with us, 
 and that we might glorify the Trinity in common." — Orat. 41, p. 737. 
 
 2. The history of Meletius, Bishop of Antioch, at the 
 same date, is still more in point, and will bear dwelling 
 on somewhat at length. Summed up in a few words it 
 is this : — he was the friend of St. Basil ; he presided 
 at the second General Council ; his funeral sermon was 
 preached by St. Gregory Nyssen ; he is spoken of as a 
 saint by St. Chrysostom, and has a place in the Roman 
 calendar ; yet, on the other hand, he was not acknow- 
 ledged by. the Pope of his day; he was denied littera 
 formatce ; he was not in communion with Alexandria ; 
 he refused to communicate with Athanasius, and he is 
 severely spoken of by Jerome. Let us review both sides 
 of this contrariety. 
 
 Meletius had been of the Semi-Arian party, but had 
 after a time, with as much boldness as sincerity, avowed 
 the orthodox doctrine. However, as was not unnatural, 
 the Catholics, suspecting him, consecrated another bishop 
 in his see, who was acknowledged by Rome, by all the 
 West, and Alexandria. The East supported the claims 
 of Meletius, and St. Basil interested himself at Rome 
 and Alexandria in his behalf, but in vain. To Peter, 
 the successor of Athanasius, he writes in a tone of serious 
 disappointment at the failure of his attempt. 
 
 " Dorotheus," he says, " related to us on his return the conversa- 
 
Anglican Church. 63 
 
 tions he had had in the presence of the mast reverend Bishop 
 Damasus " [of Rome] " with your excellency ; and he pained us by 
 saying that our most gracious brothers and fellows Meletius and 
 Eusebius" [of Samosata] "were numbered among the Arian heretics. 
 Yet the battle which the Arians wage against them is by itself 
 no slight proof of their orthodoxy to candid judges." — Ep. 266. 
 
 As to Athanasius himself, who seems to have been 
 well inclined to Meletius, it happened, when he came to 
 Antioch, that Meletius, for reasons unknown, refused to 
 communicate with him. — ( Vid. Basil, Epp. 89, 258.) Nor 
 did Athanasius take any steps towards acknowledging 
 Meletius, though he is said to have wished to do so. 
 
 But audi alteram partem; thus separate from his 
 brethren of the West and South was Meletius ; yet even 
 in his lifetime he had the affections of Christendom with 
 him, and on his death the debt of reverence is paid him 
 by three great Fathers, Nazianzen, Nyssen, and Chry- 
 sostom. 
 
 As to his own day, Theodoret relates a curious account 
 which we extract, not for its own sake, so much as to 
 show how little his schismatical position affected his 
 reputation even in his lifetime. 
 
 "[The Emperor] Theodosius," he says, "thought he Saw in a 
 dream the divine Meletius, Bishop of Antioch, arraying him in a 
 royal robe, and beautifying his head in a like crown. When the 
 bishops were come together," [to the council of Constantinople] 
 " being i Jo in number, he forbade any to tell him which was the 
 great Meletius ; for he wished to single him out from the memory 
 of his dream. When the whole multitude of bishops had entered 
 into the palace, passing by all the rest, he ran up to the great Me- 
 letius, and as an affectionate son, enjoying the sight of his father 
 after a long time, he embraced and kissed him, eyes, lips, breast, 
 and head, and the,hand which crowned him." — Hist. v. 6, 7, 
 
 And after his death, Gregory Nazianzen says of him 
 in verse, which we must be content to render in humble 
 
64 Catholicity of the 
 
 prose — " Of whom " the bishops in the Council " there 
 was one man, the president, most religious, simple, 
 straightforward, full of God, of calm aspect, blending 
 boldness with modesty in the eyes of beholders, a field 
 cultivated by the Spirit." — De Vit. sua, p. 24. He adds 
 with reference to his death, which took place while he 
 was attending the General Council, " After many exhor- 
 tations to peace, he departed to the company of Angels, 
 and with a divine attendance and the outpouring of the 
 city." — Carm. Pp. 24, 25. Gregory Nyssen's funeral 
 sermon, which begins by calling him a new Apostle, who 
 has increased the number of Apostles, proceeds : — 
 
 " We have lost our head, and together with our head have disap- 
 peared our precious senses. No longer have we an eye, to gaze on 
 things heavenly ; nor ear, hearing the divine voice, nor that tongue, 
 the pure consecrated organ of truth. Where is the sweet 
 sereneness of the eyes ? where the bright smile upon the lips ? 
 Where the ready hand, which moved its fingers in accordance 
 with the blessing of his mouth } I pity thee, O Church ; to thee I 
 speak, O Antioch : who shall tell the children that they are made 
 orphans ? who shall take the news to the bride that she is a widow ? 
 Alas, for what they sent out and what they receive back ! They 
 sent forward an ark, and they receive back a bier. An ark, my 
 brethren, was that man of God, an ark, containing in itself the 
 divine mysteries ; there the golden pot of the divine manna, of the 
 heavenly food. In it were the tables of the Covenant, inscribed on 
 tables of the heart by the Spirit of the living God, not with ink." 
 
 Whatever is thought of such passages as these, so far 
 is clear, that want of intercommunionj,with Rome, Italy, 
 France, Spain, Africa, and Egypt, was thought no dis- 
 advantage to his memory. The saint's body was taken 
 to Antioch, where a vast multitude met it, and was 
 buried near his illustrious predecessor, St. Babylas, by 
 the Orontes. The anniversary d^y seems to have been 
 kept from the first, and the sermon of St. Chrysostom, 
 which remains, was delivered by him on its fifth return. 
 
Anglican Church. 65 
 
 " It is the way," he says, " with those who love, to cherish the 
 very names of the objects beloved, and to kindle at the very sound ; 
 which is your feehng as regards this blessed saint. For from the 
 time you first received him into this city, every one of you was wont 
 to call his child after his name, thinking thus to introduce the saint 
 into his own house ; and mothers, passing over fathers, grandfathers, 
 and forefathers, gave the name of the blessed Meletius to the 
 children they had borne. Nor was it towards his name only that 
 you felt thus affectionately, but towards his person too. What you 
 did as to his name, that you were frequent in, as regards his like- 
 ness. On the stones of rings, on cups, on jugs, on the walls of their 
 chambers, many there were who had engraved his sacred likeness." 
 
 Epiphanius, who was of the Roman party, and ac- 
 knowledged Meletius's rival in his see, uses the same 
 language in his lifetime. " His life is serious," he says, 
 "his conduct kind; he is entirely loved by the people, 
 on account of his life, which all concur in extolling." 
 We are told that, on occasion of his banishment for con- 
 forming to the Nicene doctrine, the governor of Antioch, 
 who was conveying him out of the city, was imprudent 
 enough to pass through the market-place, and the peo- 
 ple greeted him with a shower of stones. His prisoner 
 threw his cloak round him, and so saved his life. Such 
 was Meletius. It is remarkable how distinct and con- 
 sistent is the picture which all accounts give us of this 
 holy and most amiable man ; whose meekness, gentle- 
 nes-s, sweetness of temper, and generosity of feeling, 
 seem to have been notes of his churchmanship, which 
 outweighed his separation from Rome and Alexandria, 
 and prove that saints may be matured in a state which 
 Romanists of this day, would fain call schism. 
 
 3. Lucifer, Bishop of Cagliari in Sardinia, and the 
 main author of Meletius's unsatisfactory position, affords 
 another instance to our purpose. His noble efforts and 
 his sufferings in the cause of othodoxy against the 
 
 VOL. II. 5 
 
66 Catholicity of the 
 
 Arians are well known. When Julian put an end to 
 their ascendancy, Athanasius, Eusebius of Vercellse, 
 Lucifer, and Hilary, seemed the four remaining beacons 
 of the Church, "rari in gurgite," to whom her fortunes 
 were committed. Yet in a very short time Lucifer had 
 quarrelled with his brethren, and thrown himself out of 
 communion with the whole of Christendom, on a ground 
 not unlike that of the Donatists. The Bishops of the 
 whole Catholic Church, with a few exceptions, had been 
 seduced during the preceding two years, by Arian ad- 
 dress, into signing the ambiguous formulary of Ariminum. 
 Athanasius and the rest decided that, on submitting to 
 the creed of Nicsa, they might be acknowledged in their 
 sees. But Lucifer, refusing to hold any intercourse with 
 bishops who had thus betrayed their trust, or with those 
 who had intercourse with them, shut himself out from 
 the whole Catholic world, and confined the Church of 
 God to Sardinia. He died in this estrangement. Yet, 
 in spite of the history of his latter years, he seems, after 
 his death, to have been reverenced as a saint both in 
 Sardinia and some parts of Italy. In the Church of 
 Vercellse he is named in an invocatory hymn with 
 Eusebius, bishop of that city, and Dionysius of Milan ; 
 and in the middle of the seventeenth century the dis- 
 putes seem to have run so high concerning him, that the 
 Pope of the day published a decree, in which he forbids 
 "all and every, for the future, from daring to treat 
 publicly, dispute, or controvert about the sanctity, wor- 
 shipi and veneration of Lucifer, or write or print for it 
 or against it, till it shall be otherwise ordered by his 
 Holiness or the Holy See."— Vit ed. Ven. 
 
 But perhaps the strongest fact is St. Jerome's language 
 about him, in his tract, written after Lucifer's death, 
 against his followers ; he calls him Beatus, a title which, 
 
Anglican Church. 67 
 
 while explained away by some as a mere appendage to 
 his episcopal office, has been the main cause of others 
 maintaining, against the concurrent testimony of history, 
 that he was either reconciled before his death, or never 
 seriously opposed himself to the Catholic body. What 
 makes Jerome's evidence the more valuable, is the cir- 
 cumstance that he felt the full difficulty of Lucifer's 
 position, as having become the author of a real and 
 serious schism ; and yet, far from deciding that the mere 
 fact of his personal estrangement decided against him, 
 he thinks it worth while to mention and deny certain 
 minor charges against him, such as vain-glory and resent- 
 ment, charges which it would be superfluous to notice, 
 were he by his estrangement notoriously put out of grace 
 and beyond hope. 
 
 " I am come," he says, " to a most difficult point, in which, 
 against my own will and design, I am compelled to judge of the 
 iilessed Lucifer, somewhat otherwise than is accordant with his 
 merits and my own kind feeling towards him. But what can I do ? 
 Truth unlocks my mouth, and a conscious heart forces into words 
 an unwilling tongue. In that crisis of the Church, amid that ftiry 
 of the wolves, he withdrew his few sheep, and abandoned the rest 
 of his flock, good shepherd as he was himself, yet leaving much 
 prey to the beasts. I pass over the charge which certain cen- 
 sorious speakers maintain to be true, viz., as that he acted thus 
 from desire of notoriety and posthumous repute ; or again, from 
 the resentment which he felt towards EusebiuS, on account of the 
 misunderstanding at Antioch. I believe no such thing of such a 
 man. One thing I will firmly maintain about him even now, that 
 he differs from us in words, not in things, if he receives those who 
 had obtained baptism from the Arians." — In Lucif., 20. 
 
 Now what do all these instances show but this, that 
 in troubled times of the Church much allowance ought 
 to be made on all hands for jealousies, misunderstand- 
 ings, estrangements between the parts of the Church ; 
 and that it is a very serious matter for any individual to 
 
68 Catholicity of the 
 
 pronounce what perhaps the whole Church alone can 
 undertake, that this or that part of itself is in formal 
 and fatal schism. Nor are we aware, taking Romanists 
 on their own principles, that their Church has ever given 
 such a sentence against ours. 
 
 4. Again, the Church of Rome has, in ancient and 
 modern times, canonized persons who .have lived and 
 died in communion with an anti-Pope, on the plea of 
 involuntary ignorance. Some instances occur in the 
 fourteenth century ;* but let us confine ourselves to one 
 which Pope Gregory mentions, and which, by the way 
 in which the doctrine of purgatory is introduced, shows 
 incidentally, what we have had above to insist upon in 
 another connexion, the unprimitive character of the 
 Roman creed. Paschasius, a Roman deacon, took part 
 with the anti-Pope Laurence against Pope Symmachus 
 in the end of the fifth century ; he died in schism, so to 
 name it, yet he is on the list of saints in the Roman 
 catalogue. Gregory speaks thus of him in his Dia- 
 logues : — 
 
 " When I was yet quite a youth, and still had on my lay habit, I 
 have heard from old and competent persons, that Paschasius, 
 deacon of the Apostolic See, whose most orthodox and perspicuous 
 treatises on the Holy Ghost are still extant among us, was a man 
 of singular sanctity, especially devoted to alms deeds, a cherisher 
 of the poor, and a neglecter of self. However, in the dispute 
 which took place from the kindUng of zeal of the faithful between 
 Symmachus and Laurence, he chose Laurence for Pontiff, and, 
 when he was worsted afterwards by the unanimity of all, yet he 
 persisted in his own opinion even to the day of his death, in loving 
 and preferring him who, by the judgment of the bishops, the 
 Church had refused as her president. He then dying in the time 
 of Symmachus, bishop of the Apostolical See, a possessed person 
 touched his dalmatic, as it lay on the bier, and immediately was 
 
 • Vide also Perrone, Praslect. Theol. t, i. pp. 263, 264. [p. 3 1 6. J 
 
Anglican Church. 
 
 t, 
 
 69 
 
 cured. After ^ long time Germanus, bishop of Capua, was oraered 
 by the physicians for his health to bathe in the hot wells at Angolos, 
 who, on entering the said wells, saw the aforesaid deacon Pas- 
 chasius, standing obediently in the heat. Exceedingly frightened 
 at the sight, he asked what such a man was there doing. He made 
 answer, ' For this sole cause I am placed here, because I sided 
 with Laurence against Symmachus. But I pray thee, entreat the 
 Lord for me, and thou wilt hereby know that thou art heard, if re- 
 turning hither thou findest me not.' Therefore that man of the 
 Lord, Germanus, devoted himself to prayer, and on returning after 
 a few days, found the said Paschasius plainly gone from that place. 
 For since he had sinned not from fault of wickedness but of igno- 
 rance, he could be purged from sin after death. We must believe, 
 however, that it was through the largeness of his alms deeds that 
 he obtained this power of thus meriting pardon, then when he could 
 no longer work. Peter.— llov! is it that in. these last times so 
 many things dawn upon us about souls, which before lay hid, so 
 that, by open revelations and disclosures, the world to come seems 
 entering in and opening upon us ? " — Dial. iv. 40. 
 
 Let Roman Catholics be consistent. If they accept 
 part of this alleged disclosure, let them take all. If 
 such supernatural appearances prove the doctrine of 
 purgatory, at least they also prove that schism is not 
 necessarily a forfeiture of grace and hope. 
 
 II. 
 
 But enough of an argumentum ad komhiem, which 
 certainly is not the highest line of controversy. Look- 
 ing at this instance in itself, as well as at the foregoing, 
 which the Arian history furnishes, we seem to see this 
 clearly : that, much as Roman Catholics may denounce 
 us at present as schismatical, they could not resist us, if 
 the Anglican communion had but that one Note of the 
 Church upon it, to which all these instances point, — 
 sanctity. The Church of his day could not resist Mele- 
 ♦■ius ; his enemies were fairly overcome by him, by his 
 
70 Catholicity of the 
 
 meekness and holiness, which melted the most jealous 
 of them. He had the suffrages of all Christian people 
 with him in life and dpath, and when the schism was 
 happily ended at a late period, he was acknowledged as 
 a saint by the whole Church. And so as regards our- 
 selves ; in vain would a few controversiahsts taunt us in 
 that case with the disorders of the sixteenth century, or 
 attempt to prove our alienation from the commonwealth 
 of Israel. The hearts of their own people would be with 
 us ; we should have an argument more intelligible than 
 any which the schools could furnish, could we appeal to 
 this living evidence of truth, in our bishops, our chapters, 
 our clergy, our divines, our laity, causing men to glorify 
 our Father which is in heaven. We should not be un- 
 willing to place the matter on this issue. We are almost 
 content to say to Romanists, Account us not yet as a 
 branch of the Catholic Church, though we be a branch, 
 till we are like a branch, so that when we do become 
 like a branch, then you consent to acknowledge us. 
 Unless our system really has a power in it, making us 
 neglectful of wealth, neglectful of station, neglectful of 
 ease, munificent, austere, reverent, childlike, unless it is 
 able to bring our passions into order, to make us pure, 
 to make us meek, to rule our intellect, to give govern- 
 ment of speech, to inspire firmness, to destroy self, we 
 do not deserve to be acknowledged as a Church, and we 
 submit to be ill-treated. 
 
 And, on the other hand, we put the matter on the 
 same issue as regards themselves. Without here speak- 
 ing upon points of faith, without pressing on them what 
 we account corruption in doctrine and cruelty in enforc- 
 ing it, — we urge against them simply the lack of what 
 in other respects we desiderate in ourselves. Till we see 
 in them as a Church more straightforwardness, truth, 
 
Anglican Church. 71 
 
 and openness, more of severe obedience to God's least 
 commandments, more scrupulousness about means, less 
 of a political, scheming, grasping spirit, less of intrigue, 
 less that looks hollow and superficial, less accommoda- 
 tion to the tastes of the vulgar, less subserviency to the 
 vices of the rich, less humouring of men's morbid and 
 wayward imaginations, less indulgence of their low and 
 carnal superstitions, less intimacy with the revolutionary 
 spirit of the day, we will keep aloof from them as we 
 do. In perplexed times such as these, when the land- 
 marks of truth are torn up or buried, here is a sure guide 
 providentially given us, which we cannot be wrong in 
 following, " By their fruits ye shall know them." When 
 we go into foreign countries, we see superstitions in the 
 Roman Church which shock us ; when we read history, 
 we find its spirit of intrigue so rife, so widely spread, 
 that "Jesuitism" has become a by- word; when we look 
 round us at home, we see it associated everywhere with 
 the low democracy, pandering to the spirit of rebellion, 
 the lust of change, the unthankfulness of the irreligious, 
 and the enviousness of the needy. We see its grave 
 theologians connecting their names with men who are 
 convicted by the common sense of mankind of some- 
 thing very like perjury, and its leaders in alliance with a 
 political party notorious in the orbis terrarum as a sort 
 of standard in every place for liberalism and infidelity. 
 We see it attempting to gain converts among us, by 
 unreal representations of its doctrines, plausible state- 
 ments, bold assertions, appeals to the weaknesses of 
 human nature, to our fancies, our eccentricities, our 
 fears, our frivolities, our false philosophies. We see its 
 agents smiling and nodding and ducking to attract at- 
 tention, as gipsies make up to truant boys, holding out 
 tales for the nursery, and pretty pictures, and gold 
 
72 Catholicity of the 
 
 gingerbread, and physic concealed in jam, and sugar- 
 plums for good children. 
 
 Who can but feel shame when the religion of Ximenes, 
 Borromeo, and Pascal is so overlaid ? Who can but feel 
 sorrowwhen its devout and earnest defenders so mistake 
 its genius and our capabilities? We Enghshmen like 
 manliness, openness, consistency, truth. Rome will 
 never gain on us till she learns these virtues, and uses 
 them ; then she may gain us, but it will be by ceasing 
 to be what we now mean by Rome, by having a right; 
 not to " have dominion over our faith," but to gain and 
 possess our affections in the bonds of the Gospel. Till 
 she ceases to be what she practically is, a union is im- 
 possible between her and England ; but if she does 
 reform, (and who shall presume to say that so large a 
 part of Christendom never can.') then it will be our 
 Church's duty at once to join in communion with the 
 Continental Churches, whatever politicians at home may 
 say to it, and whatever steps the civil power may take 
 in consequence. And though we shall not live to see 
 that day, at least we ire bound to pray for it ; we are 
 bound to pray for our brethren that they and we may 
 be led together into the pure light of the Gospel, and be 
 one as once we were ; that Ephraim may no longer 
 envy Judah, or Judah vex Ephraim ; that " all who pro- 
 fess and call themselves Christians may beled into the 
 way ojf truth, and hold the fa>th in unity of spirit, in the 
 bond of peace, and in righteousness of life;" "that all 
 who do confess " God's " holy name, may agree in the 
 truth of His Holy Word, and live in unity and godly 
 love." It was most touching news to be told, as we 
 were lately, that Christians on the Continent were pray- 
 ing together for the spiritual well-being of England. 
 We are their debtors thereby. May the prayer return 
 
Anglican Church, 73 
 
 abundantly into their own bosom, and while they care 
 for our souls may their own be prospered ! May they 
 gain light while they aim at unity, and grow in faith 
 while they manifest their love ! We too have our duties 
 to them ; not of reviling, not of slandering, not of hating, 
 -though political interests require it ; but the duty of 
 loving brethren still more abundantly in spirit, whose 
 faces, for our sins and their sins, we are not allowed to 
 see in the flesh. 
 
 yanuaty, 184a 
 
74 
 
 Note on Essay X. 
 
 If the arguments used in the foregoing Essay did not 
 retain me in the AngHcan Church, I do not see what 
 could keep me in it ; yet the time came, when I wrote 
 tu Mr. Keble, "I seem to myself almost to have shot 
 my last arrow [against Rome], in the article on English 
 Catholicity." — Apolog. Ed. 2, p. 134. 
 
 The truth is, I believe, I was always asking myself 
 what would the Fathers have done, what would those 
 whose works were around my room, whose names were 
 ever meeting my eyes, whose authority was ever influ- 
 encing my judgment, what would these men have said, 
 how would they have acted in my position 1 I had 
 made a good case on paper, but what judgment would 
 be passed on it by Athanasius, Basil, Gregory, Hilary, 
 and Ambrose.' The more I considered the matter, the 
 more I thought that these Fathers, if they examined 
 the antagonist pleas, would give it against me. 
 
 I expressed this feeling in my Essay on the Develop- 
 ment of Christian Doctrine. " Did St. Athanasius, or St. 
 Ambrose, come suddenly to life, it cannot be doubted," 
 I said ironically, " what communion they would mis- 
 take for their own. All surely will agree that these 
 Fathers, with whatever differences of opinion, whatever 
 protests, if we will, would find themselves more at home 
 with such men as St. Bernard, or St. Ignatius Loyola, or 
 with the lonely priest in his lodgings, or the holy sister- 
 
Note on Essay X. 75 
 
 hood of Charity, or the unlettered crowd before the altar, 
 than with the rulers or members of any other religious 
 community. And may we not add, that were the two 
 Saints, who once sojourned in exile or on embassage at 
 Treves, to come more northward still, and to travel until 
 they reached another fair city, seated among groves, green 
 meadows, and calm streams, the holy brothers would 
 turn from many a high aisle and solemn cloister which 
 they found there, and ask the way to some small chapel, 
 where mass was said, in the populous alley or the forlorn 
 suburb ? And, on the other hand, can any one who has 
 but heard his name, and cursorily read his history, doubt 
 for one instant, how the people of England, in turn, ' we, 
 our princes, our priests, and our prophets,' Lords and 
 Commons, Universities, Ecclesiastical Courts, marts of 
 commerce, great towns, country parishes, would deal 
 with Athanasius, — Athanasius, who spent his long years 
 in fighting against kings for a theological term?" — P. 138. 
 I recommend this passage to the consideration of those 
 more than friendly critics of mine, who, in their per- 
 plexity to find a motive sufficient for my becoming a 
 Catholic, attribute the step in me personally (without 
 any warrant, I think, from anything that I have said or 
 written) to a desire for a firmer ground of religious cer- 
 titude, and a clearer view of revealed truth, than is fur- 
 nished in theChurch of England* I should also venture 
 
 * Mr. Hutton, in his recently published most interesting Essays, speaking 
 of converts, wonders " what is the charm which has power to retain them, 
 after expetience oi Rome's coarse splendours and of her vigilant and oppres- 
 sive rule." 1 suppose he is contemplating in Rome what I had in mind 
 in 1850 when I spoke of her aspect as "peremptory, stem, resolute, over- 
 bearing, and relentless ; " but this is what I felt, as I then expressly said, 
 before "experience " of her "rule," and an impression which did not deter me 
 from becoming a Catholic, or rather helped me to become one, can have no 
 power to affect me unfavourably now, when I have been a Catholic so long. 
 
76 Note on Essay IX. 
 
 respectfully to offer the same passage to the notice of an 
 eminent statesman and brilliant writer, who has lately 
 gone out of his way to observe that " the secession of 
 Dr. Newman " is an " extraordinary event," which, " has 
 been ' apologized for,' but has never been explained ; " 
 except that I doubted whether a genuine politician could 
 possibly enter into any motives of action, not political, 
 and was not likely, even in the province of physics, to 
 demand reasons of state or party interests in explana- 
 tion of a chimpanzee being delivered of a human baby, 
 or a Caucasian man developing into an Archangel. But 
 to our immediate subject : — 
 
 The foregoing Essay calls on me for a reconsideration 
 of its contents in three respects : as regards, firs):, the 
 validity of Anglican Orders ; secondly, the unity of ec- 
 clesiastical jurisdiction ; thirdly, the apparent exceptions 
 to that unity in the history of the early Church. And 
 first as to Anglican Orders. 
 
 I. 
 
 As to the Anglican Orders, I certainly do think them 
 doubtful and untrustworthy ; and that, independent of 
 any question arising out of Parker's consecration, into 
 which I will not enter. Granting, for argument's sake, 
 that that consecration was in all respects what its de- 
 fenders say it was, still I feel a large difficulty in 
 accepting the Anglican Succession and Commission of 
 Ministry, arising out of the historical aspect of the 
 Anglican Church and of its prelates, an aspect which 
 suggests a grave suspicion of the validity of their acts 
 from first to last. I had occasion to make some re- 
 marks on this subject several years ago ; but I left them 
 unfinished, as feeling that I was distressing, without 
 convincing, men whom I love and respect, by impugning 
 
Note on Essay X. 'J'J 
 
 an article of their belief, which to them is sacred, in pro- 
 portion as it is vital. Now, however, when time has 
 passed, and I am opposing not them but my former self,, 
 I may be allowed, pace charissimorum virorum, to ex- 
 plain myself, and leave my explanation on record, as 
 regards some points to which exception was then taken. 
 And, in so doing, I do but profess to be setting down a 
 view of the subject which is very clear to my own mind, 
 and which, as I think, ought to be clear to them : but 
 of course I am not laying down the law on a point on 
 which the Church has not directly and distinctly spoken, 
 nor implying that I am not open to arguments on the 
 other side, if such are forthcoming, which I do not 
 anticipate. 
 
 First of all, I will attempt to set right what I thought 
 I had set right at the time. A mis-statement was made 
 some time ago in Notes and Queries, to the effect 
 that I had expressed " doubts about Machyn's Diary." 
 In spite of my immediate denial of it in that publica- 
 tion, it has been repeated in a recent learned work on 
 Anglican Orders. Let me then again declare here that 
 I know nothing whatever about Machyn, and that I 
 have never even mentioned his name in anything I have 
 ever written, and that I have no doubts whatever, be- 
 cause I have no opinion at all, favourable or unfavour- 
 able, about him or his Diary. Indeed, it is plain that, 
 since, in the letter in which I was supposed to have 
 spoken on the subject, I had dismissed altogether what I 
 called the " antiquarian " question concerning the con- 
 secrations of 1559, as one which I felt to be dreary and 
 interminable, I should have been simply inconsistent, had 
 I introduced Machyn or his Diary into it, and should, 
 in point of logic, have muddled my argument. 
 
 That argument, which I maintain now as then, is as 
 
78 Note on Essay X. 
 
 follows : — That the consecrations of 1559 were riot only 
 facts, they were acts ; that those acts were not done and 
 over once for all, but were only the first of a series of 
 acts done in a long course of years ; that these acts too, all 
 of them, were done by men of certain positive opinions 
 and intentions, and none of those opinions and views, 
 from first to last, of a Catholic complexion, but on the 
 contrary erroneous and heretical. And I questioned 
 whether men of those opinions could by means of a 
 mere rite or formulary, however correct in itself, start 
 and continue in a religious communion, such as the 
 Anglican, a ministerial succession which could be 
 depended on as inviolatel I do not see what guarantee 
 is producible for the faithful observance of a sacred rite, 
 in form, matter, and intention, through so long a period 
 in the hands of such administrators. And again, the 
 existing state of the Anglican body, so ignorant ot 
 fundamental truth, so overrun with diversified error, 
 would be but a sorry outcome of Apostolical ordinances 
 and graces. "By their fruits shall ye know them." 
 Revelation involves in its very idea a teaching and 
 a hearing of Divine Truth. What clear and steady 
 light of truth is there in the Church of England ? What 
 candlestick, upright and firm, on which it has been set ? 
 This seems to me what Leslie calls "a short and easy 
 method ;" it is drawn out from one of the Notes of the . 
 Church. When we look at the Anglican communion, 
 not in the books, in the imagination, or in the affections 
 of its champions, but as it is in fact, its. claims to speak 
 in Christ's Name are refuted by its very condition. An 
 Apostolical ministry necessarily involves an Apostolical 
 teaching. - 
 
 This practical argument was met at the time by two 
 objections : first, that it was far-fetched, and next, that 
 
Note on Essay X. 79' 
 
 in a Catholic it was suicidal. I do not see that it is 
 either, and I proceed to say why. 
 
 I. As to its being far-fetched or unreasonable ; if so, 
 it is strange that it should have lately approved itself to 
 a writer placed in very different circumstances, who has 
 used it, not indeed against Anglican Orders, for he 
 firmly upholds them, but against Swedish ; — I mean, 
 Dr. Littledale. This learned and zealous man, in his 
 late lecture at Oxford, decides that a certain uncatholic 
 act, which he specifies, of the Swedish ecclesiastical 
 Establishment, done at a particular time and place, has 
 so bad a look, as to suffice, independent of all investiga- 
 tion into documents of past history, at once to unchurch 
 it, — which is to go much further in the use of my ar- 
 gument than I should think it right to go myself. 
 "Sweden," he says, "professes to have retained an 
 Apostolical Succession ; I am satisfied from historical 
 evidence that she has nothing of the kind ; but the late 
 chaplain to the Swedish embassy in London has been 
 good enough to supply me with an important disproof 
 of his own Orders. During a long illness, from which 
 he was suffering som'e time ago, he entrusted the entire 
 charge of his flock to a Danish pastor, until such time 
 as his own successor was at length sent from Sweden. 
 His official position must have made the sanction of tlte 
 authorities, both in Church and State, necessary for a 
 delegation of his duties j so that the act cannot be 
 classed with that of an obscure Yorkshire incumbent, 
 the other day, who invited an Anabaptist minister to 
 fill his pulpit. And thus we gather that the quasi- 
 Episcopal Church of Sweden treats Presbyterian minis- 
 ters on terms of perfect equality." — P. 8. 
 
 Here then a writer, whose bias is towards the Church 
 of England, distinctly lays down the principle, that a 
 
8o Note on Essay X. 
 
 lax ecclesiastical practice, ascertained by even one formal 
 instance, apart from documentary evidence, or ritual ob- 
 servance, is sufficient in itself to constitute it an important 
 disproof of the claim advanced by a nation to the pos- 
 session of an Apostolical Succession in its clergy. I speak 
 here only of the principle involved in Dr. Littledale's argu- 
 ment, which is the same as my own principle ; though, 
 for myself, I do not say more than that Anglican ordina- 
 tions are doubtful, whereas he considers the Swedish to be 
 simply null. Nor again should I venture to assert that 
 one instance of irregularity, such as that which he ad- 
 duces, is sufficient to carry on either me or (much less) 
 him to our respective conclusions. To what indeed does 
 his " disproof " of Swedish orders come but to this : 
 that the Swedish authorities think that Presbyterianism, 
 as a religion, has in its doctrines and ordinances what is 
 called " the root of the matter," and that the Episcopal 
 form is nothing more than what I have called above (vol. i. 
 p. 365) "the extra twopence"? Do the highest living 
 authorities in the Anglican Church, Queen or Archbishop, 
 think very differently from this ? would they not, if they 
 dared, do just what the late Swedish chaplain did, and 
 think it a large wisdom and a true charity to do so .? 
 
 So much on the reasonableness of my argument. I 
 conceive there is nothing evasive in refusing to decide 
 the question of Orders by the mere letter of an Ordina- 
 tion Service, to the neglect of more elementary and 
 broader questions; nothing far-fetched, in taking into 
 account the opinions and practices of its successive ad- 
 ministrators, unless Anglicans may act towards the 
 Swedes as Catholics may not act towards Anglicans. 
 Such is the common sense of the matter ; and that it is 
 the Catholic sense, too, a few words will show. 
 
 It will be made clear in three propositions :■ — First, the 
 
Note on £^ssay X. 8i 
 
 Anglican Bishops for three centuries have lived and 
 died in heresy ; (I am not questioning their good faith 
 and. invincible ignorance, which is an irrelevant point ;) 
 next, it is far from certain, it is at the utmost only pro- 
 bable, that Orders conferred by heretics are valid ; lastly, 
 in conferring the sacraments, the safer side, not merely 
 the more probable, must ever be taken. And, as to 
 the proof of these three points, — as regards the first of 
 them, I ask, how many Anglican Bishops have believed 
 in transubstantiation, or in the necessity of sacramental 
 penance ? yet to deny these dogmas is to be a heretic. 
 Secondly, as to Orders conferred by heretics, there is, 
 I grant, a strong case for their validity, but then there 
 is also a strong case against it {vid. Bingham, Antiq. 
 iv. 7) ; so that at most heretical ordination is not cer- 
 tainly, but only probably valid. As to the third point, 
 this, viz., that in conferring sacraments, not merely the 
 niore probable but the safer side must be taken, and 
 that they must be practically considered invalid, when 
 they are not certainly valid, ttiis is the oi-dinary doctrine 
 of the Church. " Opinio probabilis," says St. Alfonso 
 Liguori, " est ilia, quae gravi aliquo innititur fundamento, 
 apto ad hominis prudentis assensum inclinandum. In 
 Sacramentorum collatione non potest minister uti opinione 
 probabili, aut probabiliori, de Sacramenti valore, sed 
 tutiores sequendse sunt, aut moraliter certse."* Pope 
 Benedict XIV. supplies us with an illustration of this 
 principle, even as regards a detail of the rite itself. In 
 his time an answer was given from Rome, in the case 
 
 * The principle of the " tutior " opmion applies also to the rule of three 
 bishops for a consecration, about which Hallier says: "An consecratio 
 episcopi omnino nuUa, irrita, et invalida sit, vel solum illegitima, quae a 
 paucioribus tribus episcopis peracta fiierit : Caietanus, Bellarminus, 
 Vasquer, et alii -affirmantem pa.rtem sequuntur (nisi ecclesi^ dispensatio 
 accident); negantem vero Paludanus . . . Sylvester . . et alii . . . 
 
 VOL. II, ^ 
 
82 Note on Essay X. 
 
 of a candidate for the priesthood, who, in the course of 
 his ordination, had received the imposition of hands, but 
 accidentally neglected to receive from the Bishop, the 
 Paten and Chalice. It was to the effect that he was 
 bound to be ordained over again sub conditione.* 
 
 What Anglican candidate for the priesthood has ever 
 touched physically or even morally Paten or Chalice in 
 his ordination, from Archbishop Parker to Archbishop 
 Tait ? In truth, the Catholic rite, whether it differs from 
 itself or not in different ages, still in every age, age after 
 age, is itself, and nothing but itself. It is a concrete 
 whole, one and indivisible, and acts per modum unius ; 
 and, having been established by the Church, and being 
 in present use and possession, it cannot be cut up into 
 bits, be docked and twisted, or split into essentials and 
 
 Difficilis utique hffic comtroversia est, in qua tamen posterior longe proba- 
 bilior et fortioribus innixa mihi videtur argumentis, , . tamen prior com- 
 munis est, et hocce tempore magis recepta." — De S. Ordin. t. 2, pp. 299, 
 308. 
 
 * Benedict says, Syn. Dioec. VIII., 10 : " Quidam sacerdotio initiandus, , 
 etsi omnes consuetas manuum impositiones ab Episcopo accepisset, ad 
 Episcopum tamen, solita patense cum hostia et calicis cum vino instrumenta 
 porrigentem, ad alia tunc temporis distractus, non accessit. Re postea 
 detecta, quid facto opus asset, dubitatum, atque a S. Congregatione petitum 
 est." After giving his own opinion, "Nihil esse iterandum, sed caute 
 supplendum, quod per errorem prstermissum," he states the decision of 
 the Sacred Congregation, " Sacra Congregatio totam Ordinationem sub 
 conditione iterandam rescripsit." And Scavini Theol. Mor. t. 3, p. 278, 
 referring to the passage in Benedict, says of the " libri traditio " as well as 
 the " manuum impositio " in the ordination of a deacon : " Probabile 
 
 est libri traditionem esse de essentia quare pro praxi concludimus, 
 
 utramque esse adhibendam, cum agatur de Sacramentis ; et, si quidpiam ex 
 istis fiierit omissam, sub conditione ordinationem iterandam esse." 
 
 It is true that Father Perrone in 1863, on his asking as to the necessity of 
 the "physicm tactus" (as Father Ephrem before him in 1661) received 
 for answer as Ephrem did, that to insist on it was a scruple (Gury de 
 Ord.) ; but we are here concerned, not with the mere physical " tactus," 
 but the moral "traditio instrumentorum." 
 
Note on Essay X. 83 
 
 non-essentials, genus and species, matter and form, at 
 the heretical will of a Cranmer, or a Ridley, or turned 
 into a fancy ordinal by a royal commission of divines, 
 without a sacrilege perilous to its vitality. Though the 
 delivery of the sacred vessels was not primitive, it was 
 part of the existing rite, three centuries ago, as it is 
 now, and could not, and cannot be omitted, without 
 prejudice to the ecclesiastical status of those who are 
 ordained without it. 
 
 Whether indeed, as time goes on, the Pope, in the 
 plenitude of his power, could, with the aid of his theologi- 
 ans, obtain that clearer light, which the Church has not 
 at present, on the whole question of ordination, for ^yhich 
 St. Leo IX. so earnestly prayed, and thereby determine 
 what at present is enveloped in such doubtfulness, viz., 
 the validity of heretical ordination, and, what is still 
 more improbable than the abstract proposition, the 
 validity of Anglican Orders in particular, is a subject 
 on which I do not enter. As the matter stands, all we 
 see is a hierarchical body, whose opinions through three 
 hundred years compromise their acts, who do not them- 
 selves believe that they have the gifts which their zealous 
 adherents ascribe to them, who in their hearts deny those 
 sacramental formulas which their country's law obliges 
 them to use, who conscientiously shudder at assuming 
 real episcopal or sacerdotal power, who resolve " Receive 
 the Holy Ghost " into a prayer, " Whose sins ye remit 
 are remitted " into a license to preach, and " This is My 
 Body,- this is My Blood" into an allegory. 
 
 And then, supposing if ever, these great difficulties 
 were overcome, after all would follow the cardinal ques- 
 tion, which Benedict XIV. opens, as I have shown, about 
 the sufficiency of their rite itself. 
 Anyhow, as things now stand, it is clear no Anglican 
 
84 I'^ote on Essay X. 
 
 Bishop or Priest can by Catholics be recognized to be' 
 such. If indeed earnestness of mind and purity of pur- 
 pose could ever be a substitute for the formal conditions 
 of a sacrament, which Apostles have instituted and the 
 Church maintains, certainly in that case one might 
 imagine it to be so accepted in many an Anglican ordir 
 nation. I do believe that, in the case of many men, it is 
 the one great day of their lives, which cannot come 
 twice, the day on which, in their fresh youth, they freely 
 dedicated themselves and all their powers to the service 
 of their Redeemer, — solemn and joyful at the time, and 
 ever after fragrant in their memories : — it is so ; but de- 
 votion cannot reverse the past, nor can good faith stand 
 in the stead of what is true ; and it is because I feel this, 
 and in no temper of party, that I refuse to entertain an 
 imagination which is neither probable in fact, nor Catholic 
 in spirit. If we do not even receive the baptism of Angli- 
 cans, how can we receive their ordinations ? 
 
 2. But now, secondly, comes the question, whether 
 the argument, used above against Anglican, may not be 
 retorted on Catholic ordinations ; — for it may be ob- 
 jected that, however Catholics may claim to themselves 
 the tradition of doctrine and rite, they do not profess to 
 be secure against bad ecclesiastics any more than Pro- 
 testants ; that there have been times of ignorance, 
 violence, unscrupulousness, in the history of the Catholic 
 Church ; and that, if Anglican Orders are untrustworthy 
 because of the chance mistakes in three hundred years, 
 much more so are Catholic, which have run a whole 
 eighteen hundred. In short, that I have but used 
 against the Anglican ministry the old notorious argu- 
 ment of "Chillingworth and Macaulay, an argument, 
 which is of a sceptical character in them, and, in a 
 Catholic, suicidal also. 
 
Note on Essay X. 85 
 
 Now I do not well know what is meant by calling 
 such an argument sceptical. It seems to me a very fair 
 argument. Scepticism is the refusal to be satisfied with 
 reasons which ought to satisfy. To be sceptical is to be 
 unreasonable. But what is there unreasonable, what 
 extravagant in idea, or inconsistent with experience, in 
 recognizing the chance of important mistakes, here or 
 there, in a given succession of acts ? I do certainly 
 think it most probable, that an intricate series of ordi- 
 nations through three hundred years, and much more 
 through eighteen hundred, will have flaws in it. Who 
 does not think so ? It will have them to a certainty, 
 and is in itself untrustworthy. By " untrustworthy in 
 itself," I mean, humanly speaking ; for if indeed there 
 be any special protection promised to it, beyond nature, 
 to secure it against errors and accidents, that of course 
 is another matter ; and the simple question is, whether 
 this or that particular Succession has such a promise, or 
 in other words, whether this or that Succession is or is 
 not apostolical. It is usual for Anglicans to say, as we 
 say, that they have " the Apostolical Succession ; " but 
 that is begging the question ; if a Succession de aposto- 
 lical, then indeed it is protected from errors ; but it has 
 to be proved apostolical before such protection can be 
 claimed for it ; that is, we and they, both of us, must give 
 reasons in our own case respectively for this our critical 
 assumption of our 6em£- apostolical. We, Catholics, do 
 produce our reasons, — that is, we produce what are com- 
 monly called " the Notes of the Church," — by virtue of 
 those reasons, we consider we belong to that Apostolical 
 Church, in which were at the beginning stored the pro- . 
 mises ; and therefore our Succession has the apostolic 
 promise of protection and is preserved from accidents, 
 or is apostolic ; on the other hand, Anglicans must give 
 
f56 X^ote on Essay X. 
 
 reasons on their part for maintaining that they too 
 belong to the Apostolic Church, and that their Suc- 
 cession is Apostolic. There is then nothing unfair in 
 Macaulay's argument, viewed in itself; it is fair to both 
 of us ; nor is it suicidal in the hands of a Catholic to use 
 it against Anglicans, if, at the same time, he gives reasons 
 why it cannot by opponents be used against himself 
 Let us look, then, at the objection more closely. 
 
 Lord Macaulay's remarks on the " Apostolic Succes- 
 sion," as contained in one of his Reviews, written with 
 the force and brilliancy for which he is so well known, 
 are far too extended to admit of insertion here ; but I 
 will quote a few words of his argument from its begin- 
 ning and ending. He begins by laying down, first, that, 
 whether an Anglican clergyman "be a priest by suc- 
 cession from the Apostles depends on the question, 
 whether, during that long period, some thousands of 
 events took place, any one of which may, without any 
 gross impropriety, be supposed not to have taken place ; 
 and next " that there is not a tittle of evidence for any 
 one of these events." Then after various vivid illus- 
 trations of his argument, he ends by a reference to Chil- 
 lingworth's " very remarkable words," as he calls them. 
 " That of ten thousand probables no one should be false, 
 that of ten thousand requisites, whereof any one may 
 fail, not one should be wanting, this to me is extremely 
 improbable, and even cousin-german to impossible." 
 
 I cannot deny, certainly, that Catholics, as well as the 
 high Anglican school, do believe in the Apostolic Suc- 
 cession of ministry, continued through eighteen hundred 
 . years ; nor that they both believe it to be necessary to an 
 Apostolical ministry; nor that they act upon their belief 
 But, as I have said, though so far the two parties agree, 
 still they differ materially in their respective positionSj 
 
Note on Essay X. 87 
 
 relatively towards that Succession, and differ in conse- 
 quence in their exposure respectively to the force of the 
 objection on which I have been dwelling. The difference 
 of position between the two may be expressed in the 
 following' antithesis : — Catholics believe their Orders are 
 valid, because they are members of the true Church ; 
 and Anglicans believe they belong to the true Church, 
 because their Orders are valid. And this is why 
 Macaulay's objection tells against Anglicans, and does 
 not tell against Catholics. 
 
 In other words, our Apostolical descent is to us a theo- 
 logical inference, and not primarily a doctrine of faith ; 
 theirs with them is a first principle in controversy, and a 
 patent matter of fact, the credentials of their mission. 
 That they can claim to have God's ministers among 
 them, depends directly and solely upon the validity of 
 their Orders ; and to prove their validity, they are bound 
 to trace their Succession through a hundred intermediate 
 steps till at length they reach the Apostles ;till they do 
 this their claim is in abeyance. If it is improbable that 
 the Succession has no flaws in it, they have to bear the 
 brunt of the improbability ; if it is presumable that a 
 special Providence precludes such flaws, or compensates 
 for them, they cannot take the benefit of that presumption 
 to themselves ; for to do so would be claiming to belong 
 to the true Church, to which that high Providence is 
 promised, and this they cannot do without arguing in a 
 circle, first proving that they are of the true Church 
 because they have valid Orders, and then that their 
 Orders are valid because they are of the true Church, 
 
 Thus the Apostolical Succession is to Anglican divines 
 a sme qud non, not " necessitate 'praecepti " sed " necessi- 
 tate medii." Their Succession is indispensable to their 
 po'sition, as being the point from which they start ; and 
 
88 Note on Essay X. 
 
 therefore it must be unimpeachable, or else, they do not 
 belong to the Church ; and to prove it is unimpeachable 
 by introducing the special Providence of God over His 
 Church, would be like proving the authority of Scrip* 
 ture by those miracles of which Scripture alone is the 
 record. It must be unimpeachable before and without, 
 taking that special Providence into account, and this, I 
 have said above, it cannot be. We, on our side, on the con- 
 trary, are not in such a dilemma as this. Our starting- 
 point is not the fact of a faithful transmission of 
 Orders, but the standing fact of the Church, the Visible 
 and One Church, the reproduction and succession of 
 herself age after age. It is the Church herself that 
 vouches for our Orders, while she authenticates herself 
 to be the Church not by our Orders, but by her Notes. 
 It is the great Note of an ever-enduring cxtus fidelium, 
 with a fixed organization, a unity of jurisdiction, a 
 political greatness, a continuity of existence in all 
 places and times, a suitableness to all classes, ranks, 
 and callings, an ever-energizing life, an untiring, ever- 
 evolving history, which is her evidence that she is the 
 creation of God, and the representative and home of 
 Christianity. She is not based upon her Orders ; she 
 is not the subject of her instruments ; they are not 
 necessary for her idea. We could even afford, for argu- 
 ment's sake, to concede to Lord Macaulay the uncer- 
 tainty of our Succession. If Providence had so willed, 
 she might have had her ministers without any lineal 
 descent from the Apostles at all. Her mere nomination 
 might have superseded any rite of Ordination ; there 
 might have been no indelible character in her ministers ; 
 she might have commissioned them, used them, and re- 
 called them at her pleasure. She might have been like 
 a civil state, in which there is a continuation of office. 
 
Note on Essay X. 8g 
 
 but not a propagation of official life. The occupant 
 of the See of St. Peter, himself made such by mere 
 election, might have made bishops and unmade them. 
 Her Divine Founder has chosen a better way, better 
 because He has chosen it. A transmission of ministerial 
 power ever has been, and ever shall be ; and He who 
 has so ordained, will carry out His ordinance, preserve 
 it from infraction or make good any damage to it, 
 because it is His ordinance, but still that ordinance is 
 not simply of the essence of the Church ; it is not more 
 than an inseparable accident and a necessary instrument. 
 Nor is the Apostolic descent of her priests the direct 
 warrant of their power in the eyes of the faithful ; their 
 warrant is her immediate, present, living authority ; it is 
 the word of the Church which marks them out as the 
 ministers of God, not any historical or antiquarian re- 
 search, or genealogical table ; and while she is most 
 cautious and jealous that they should be ordained aright, 
 yet it is sufficient in proof of their ordination that they 
 belong to her. 
 
 Thus it would appear, that to Catholics the certainty 
 of Apostolical Orders is not a point of prime necessity, 
 yet they possess it ; and for Anglicans it is absolutely 
 indispensable, yet they have it not. 
 
 On such grounds as these it is, that I consider the 
 line of argument, which I have adopted against Anglican 
 Orders, is neither open to the charge of scepticism, nor 
 suicidal in the hands of a Catholic. 
 
 2. 
 
 My second point does not require so many words. I 
 have been urging that there is no security for the trans- 
 mission of the Apostolical Ministry, except as continued 
 in that Church which has the promises. We must first 
 
go Note on Essay X. 
 
 be sure that we are in that Church, and then we shall 
 inherit the Church's security about her Orders. If we 
 are in the Church, in that case we know well that He, 
 who overrules everything for her good, will have taken 
 full account of the infirmity of her human instruments, 
 and have prevented or remedied, in His own way, any 
 faults which may have occurred in past centuries in the 
 administration of His own ordinance, and will prevent 
 or remedy them still. Thus the Orders depend on the 
 Church, not the Church on the Orders. 
 
 This argument presupposes that there is in fact a 
 Church, that is, a visible body corporate, gifted with 
 supernatural privileges, present and future ; and if there 
 be not, then the Apostolical Succession has no meaning 
 I r object, and vanishes out of theology with the Church 
 itself of which it is a function. But I am assuming, 
 that there is a Church, for the high school of Anglicans, 
 against whom these remarks are directed, upholds the 
 existence of a visible Church as firmly as Catholics, and 
 the only question between the two parties is, what and 
 where the Church is ; in what it consists : and on this 
 point it is that they differ. This Church, this spiritually 
 endowed body, this minister of the sacraments, teacher 
 of Gospel truth, possessor of that power of binding and 
 loosing, commonly called the power of the keys, is this 
 Divine creation coincident, as Catholics hold, with the 
 whole extended body of Christians everywhere, so as to 
 be in its essence one and only one organized association, — 
 or, on the other hand, as insisted on in the above Essay, 
 is every separate bishopric, every diocesan unit, of which 
 that whole is composed, properly and primarily the 
 Church which has the promises, each of them being, 
 like a crystallization, only a repetition of the rest, each 
 of them in point of privileges as much the perfect 
 
Note on Essay X. 9 r 
 
 Church as all together, each equal to each, each inde- 
 pendent of each, each invested with full spiritual powers, 
 in solidum, as St. Cyprian speaks, none subject to any 
 none bound to union with other by any law of its being 
 or condition of its prerogatives, but all free from all 
 except as regards the duty of mutual love, and only 
 called one Church, when taken in the aggregate or in its 
 catholicity, though really multiform, by a conversational 
 misnomer, or figure of speech, or abstraction of the 
 mind, as when all men, viewed as one, are called "man"? 
 In taking in my Essay this view of the Church, I fol- 
 lowed in the main, not only Dodwell and Hickes, whom 
 I cited, but such high authorities as Pearson, Barrow, 
 Stillingfleet, and Bingham. 
 
 ■ Now it is very intelligible to deny that there is any 
 divinely established, divinely commissioned, Church at 
 all ; but to hold that the one Church is realized and 
 perfected in each of a thousand independent corporate 
 units, co-ordinate, bound by no necessary intercom- 
 munion, adjusted into no divine organized whole, is a 
 tenet, not merely unknown to Scripture, but so plainly 
 impossible to carry out practically, as to make it clear ■ 
 that it never would have been devised, except by men, 
 who conscientiously believing in a visible Church and also 
 conscientiously opposed to Rome, had nothing left for 
 them, whether they would or would not, but to entrench 
 themselves in the paradox, that the Church was one 
 indeed, and the Church was Catholic indeed, but that 
 the one Church was not the Catholic, and the Catholic 
 Church was not the one. 
 
 I. First, as to the scriptural view of the subject That 
 the writers of the New Testament speak of many local 
 Christian bodies, called churches, is indisputable ; but 
 the question is, whether these various local bodies, so- 
 
<^2 Note on Essay X. 
 
 called, were, or were not, brought together by divine 
 command into a higher unity than any local association, 
 and into a union rendered imperative by the special pri- 
 vileges attached to its observance ; whether by the word 
 " Church " was not properly and really denoted, not any 
 local body, but one and only one large association ex- 
 tending as widely as tshe Christian name, including in 
 it all merely local bodies, having one organization, a 
 necessary intercommunion, fixed mutual relations be- 
 tween its portions, and supernatural powers and gifts 
 lodged primarily in it, the association itself, and thence 
 communicated, by aggregation and incorporation, to 
 each subdivision and each individual member of it. 
 This latter view is the teaching of Scripture. 
 
 That is, in the lifetime of the Apostles, according to 
 the Scripture record, the Church of the promises, the 
 Church of Christ, was a body, (i) visible; (2) one; (3) 
 Catholic, and (4) organized. 
 
 1. That it is -visible, is allowed on all hands, for even 
 the churches or congregations of Independents or Uni- 
 tarians are visible; the word "Ecclesia" means an 
 assembly of men, and if men are visible, their assem- 
 bling must be visible also. 
 
 2. Next it is one : true though it be that St. Paul, St. 
 Luke, and St. John, when engaged on historical fact 
 speak of many "churches," the style of Scripture changes 
 when it speaks of the great Christian gifts doctrinally. 
 In presence of these gospel prerogatives there is but one 
 body with many members. Our Lord builds, upon the 
 rock of Peter and of Peter's faith, not churches, but 
 "My Church ; " St. Paul speaks of the " House of God, 
 the Church of the Living God " in which St. Timothy is 
 called to be a ruler, and not of " churches ; " of the 
 Church "being the pillar and ground of the truth." 
 
Note on Essay X. 93 
 
 Again he speaks, as of " One God and Father of all, one 
 Lord, one Spirit, one faith, one hope, one baptism," so 
 also of but " one body ; " and again our Lord as " the 
 Head of the body, the Church," not of the churches. 
 
 3. This one Church, as it necessarily follows, is Ca- 
 tholic, because it embraces all Christians at once in one 
 extended whole, its catholicity being coincident with its 
 unity. This is a subject on which St. Paul delights to ex- 
 patiate, Where has he a word of dioceses or bishoprics, 
 each a complete whole, each independent of the rest, 
 each with the power of the keys, each a facsimile of 
 each ? On the contrary, he declares " we are all bap- 
 tized by one Spirit into one body," the Spirit who is one, 
 being the pledge of the body's unity, and the one body 
 being the condition of the Spirit's presence. Both Jews 
 and Gentiles " are fellow-heirs, and of the same body ; " 
 are " framed together and grow into a holy temple," " a 
 habitation of God through the Spirit." " There is neither 
 Jew nor Greek, ye are all one in Christ Jesus." " To the 
 peace of God ye are called in one body." We, bemg 
 many, are one body in Christ." "The body is one and 
 hath many members ; ye are the body of Christ and 
 members in particular." Is it not clear then that ac- 
 cording to St. Paul, the whole Church comes first, and 
 its portions or individual members come second, that its 
 portions are not wholes, that they are accidents, but the 
 one whole body is no accident, no conglomerate, but the 
 object of Apostolic zeal, and the direct and primary 
 recipient of divine grace .' 
 
 4. Once more, this visible, one, and whole or Catholic 
 body, is, as indeed the word " body " implies, an organi- 
 zation, with many members converging and concurring 
 into one ecclesiastical corporation or power. I mean, 
 this the Church was, in matter of fact, in the days of 
 
94 Nok on Essay X. 
 
 the Apostles.- Even Apostles, though each of them had a 
 universal jurisdicti9n,,had not the power to break lip the 
 one Church into fragments, and each of them to make a 
 communion of his own in it. "Who is Paul, who is 
 Apollos," says the Apostle, " but ministers " .' " Ye are 
 i^ods husbandry, ye are God's building, ye are the 
 temple of God." In like manner St. Luke tells us 
 that those who were baptized " continued steadfastly in 
 the Apostles' doctrine Sind fellowship ;" and St. Paul that 
 the many members of the body have not the same 
 office, nor are all equally honourable, — implying in all 
 he writes a formed ecclesiastical polity. On this point I 
 cannot do better than make an extract from one of the 
 early Tracts for the Times, which runs as follows : 
 
 " Some time ago I drew up the Scripture proof of the 
 doctrine of the Visible Church, which I will here tran- 
 scribe. I am not arguing for this or that form of polity, 
 nor for the Apostolical Succession, but simply for the 
 duties of order, union, and ecclesiastical obedience. I 
 limit myself to these points, as being persuaded that, 
 when they are granted, the others will eventually follow. 
 
 " I. That there was a Visible Church in the Apostles' 
 day. 
 
 " I. General texts. Matt. xvi. i8, xviii. 17 ; i Tim. iii. 
 15 ; Acts passioi, etc. 
 
 " 2. Organization of the Church. 
 
 " (i) Diversity of ranks, i Cor. xii ; Eph. iv. 4 — 12 ; 
 Rom. xii. 4 — 8 ; 1 Peter iv. 10, 11. 
 
 "(2) Governors. Matt, xxviii. 19; Mark xvi. 15, 16; 
 John XX. 22, 23 ; Luke xxii. 19, 20 ; Gal. ii. 9, etc. 
 
 " (3) Gifts. Luke xii. 42, 43 ; John xx. 22, 23 ; Matt, 
 xviii. 18. 
 
 "(4) Order. Acts viii. 5,6, 12, 14, 15, 17; ix. 27; 
 
Note on Essay X. 9 j 
 
 xi. 2—4, 22, 23 ; XV. 2, 4, 6, 25 ; xvi. 4 ; xviii. 22 ; xxi". 
 17 — 19. Comp. Gal. i. i — 12 ; i Cor. xiv. 40; i Thess. 
 V. 14. 
 
 " (5) Ordination. Acts vi. 6 ; i Tim. iv. 14, v. 22 ; 2 
 Tim. i. 6 ; Titus i. 5 ; Acts xiii. 3 ; cf. Gal. i. i — 12. 
 
 " (6) Ecclesiastical obedience, i Thess. v. 12, 13; Heb. 
 xiii. 17 ; Tim. v. 17. 
 
 " (7) Rules and discipline. Matt, xxviii. 19 ; Matt. 
 xviii. 17; I Cor. v. 4 — 7; Gal. v. 12, etc.; i Cor. xvi. 
 I, 2 ; 1 Cor. xi. 2, 16, etc. 
 
 " (8) Unity. Rom. xvi. 17 ; i Cor. i. 10 ; iii. 3 ; xiv. 
 26 ; Col. ii. S ; i Thess. v. 14 ; 2 Thess. iii. 6. 
 
 " II. That the Visible Church, thus instituted by the 
 Apostles, was intended to continue. 
 
 " I. Why should it not .' The onus probandi lies with 
 those who deny this position. If the doctrines and pre- 
 cepts already cited be obsolete at this day, why should 
 not the following texts } e.g., 1 Peter ii. 13; or, e.g., Matt, 
 vii. 14 ; John iii. 3. 
 
 " 2. Is it likely so elaborate a system should be framed, 
 yet with no purpose of its continuing ? 
 
 " 3. The objects to be obtained by it are as necessary 
 now as then, (i) Preservation of the faith. (2) Purity 
 of doctrine. (3) Edification of Christians. (4) Unity 
 of operation. Vid. Epistles to Tim. and Tit. passim. 
 
 " 4. If system were necessary in a time of miraclej^ 
 much more is it now. 
 
 " 5. 2 Tim. ii. 2. Matt, xxviii. 20, etc," 
 
 So far the Tract. If then the New Testament is to be 
 our guide in matters ecclesiastical, one thing at least is 
 certain. We may doubt whether Bishops are of obli- 
 gation, whether there is an Apostolical Succession, 
 whether prebsyters are priests, whether St. Stephen and 
 
g6 JVbie on Essay X, 
 
 his six associates were the first deacons, whether the 
 Sacraments are seven or two ; but of one thing we cannot 
 doubt, that all Christians were in that first age bound 
 together in one body, with an actual intercommunion 
 and mutual relations between them, with ranks and 
 offices, and with a central authority ; and that this 
 'Organized association was "the body of Christ," arid 
 that in it, considered as One, dwelt the "One Spirit." 
 This external unity is a duty prior in order and idea to 
 Episcopacy ; in it, and not in Episcopacy, lies the trans- 
 mission and warrant of Divine privilege. It is empha- 
 tically a " Sacramentum Unitatis," and is presupposed, 
 typified, required by the Sacraments properly so-called ; 
 and divines who substitute a diocese for the orbis 
 terrarum as the first rudiment of the Church, must in 
 consistency be prepared to answer those who, going a 
 little farther, substitute a congregation for a diocese ; 
 for Episcopalians are only one species of Independents, 
 with far less to say for themselves from Scripture. 
 
 2. Secondly, this theory is as impracticable, as an 
 ecclesiastical system, as it is unknown to Scripture. Not 
 only has it never worked, but it never has been fairly 
 attempted, or even imagined, at least for any length of 
 time or on a large scale. Regarded in its probable 
 results and actual tendencies, it is a sure and easy way 
 of not effecting those very ends which ecclesiastical 
 arrangements are intended to subserve. The first idea 
 of the Gospel is Revelation, — that is, right faith, cer- 
 tain knowledge, truth and light ; the first precept of 
 the New Law is charity, — that is, mutual goodwill, 
 brotherly love, peace ; now if our Lord had intended to 
 promote, not these merciful ends, but ignorance, con- 
 fusion, unbelief, discord, strife, enmity, mutual ahena- 
 tion, could He have provided a better way, than that 
 
Note on Essay X. 97 
 
 of ordaining by express command, and sanctioning by 
 supernatural privilege, a thousand or two local Episco- 
 pates, all over the earth, each sovereign, each inde- 
 pendent of the rest ? Of course it might be His will to 
 manifest His overruling might amid human pride, passion, 
 and selfishness, and to work by miracle ; nor again do I 
 deny that history tells us of great abuses and disorders in 
 religious matters, arising out of despotic power, and the 
 indignant re-action of the oppressed. Certainly there is 
 no form of polity which is safe from the inroads of hu- 
 man infirmity and sin ; but at the same time there are 
 some forms which can withstand or prevent these evils 
 better than others ; — the present British Constitution, 
 for instance, is more conducive to peace, internal and 
 external, than was the Heptarchy, nor should we be so 
 happy in temporal respects as we are, were each of our 
 cities a sovereign state, as some arc Just now scheming 
 to bring about in France ; — but if there be any polity, 
 ecclesiastical or civil, which has proved itself above 
 others a working system, strong, coherent, enduring, 
 and full of resource, surely it is the world-wide eccle- 
 siastical power which alone, among forms of Christianity, 
 has ever preserved and carried on that Unity in Catho- 
 licity which we see initiated in Scripture. Natural gifts 
 and virtues, statesmanlike principles, sagacious policy, 
 have found large room for their development in that 
 organization which inspired Apostles commenced ; it 
 alone, as Protestant writers have confessed, has carried 
 civilization and Christianity across the gulf which sepa- 
 rates the old world from the modern ; and, while it is 
 only a matter of opinion whether it has on any im- 
 portant subject added to the faith once delivered, it has 
 beyond all question, and in matter of fact, answered the 
 ends of its institution, in preserving to us every page 
 VOL. II. 7 
 
^8' Note on Essay X. 
 
 of inspired Scripture, every doctrine of the primitive 
 Church, a host of immemorial rites and traditions, and 
 the voluminous writings of the Ancient Fathers. This 
 has been the result of ecclesiastical unity. 
 
 On the other hand, as to the Anglican theory, how is 
 it even to be put upon the course .'' how is it to start .' 
 how are we to find for it life and strength enough even 
 to allow of its attempting and breaking down .■' It has an 
 initial difficulty before it comes into the region of fact : 
 its necessary church unit is diocesan ; what is diocesan is 
 local ; what is local must have boundaries ; boundaries 
 do not come by nature, but by positive enactment ; who 
 is to draw them } Suppose two neighbouring Bishops 
 draw lines intersecting each other, who is to enforce a 
 settlement between them .■' suppose each of them thinks 
 that the two dioceses naturally form but one diocese, 
 then we have altar set up against altar. And further, 
 who is to map out a whole province .■■ Is it not very 
 plain that the civil power must come in from the first, 
 either as guiding or compelling an arrangement 1 Thus, 
 from the first, episcopal autonomy is close upon eras- 
 tianism. 
 
 But there maybe Councils held, laws passed, oaths 
 taken, and a central authority created ; — of course ; but 
 that authority is after all human and conventional ; how 
 is it a match for that episcopal magisterium which on the 
 hypothesis is divine .■" Each Bishop has the power of the 
 keys; each can bind and loose ; each can excommunicate 
 all his brethren. Each can proclaim and defend a heresy. 
 What then can keep them in the unity of the faith, but 
 to suppose each of them alike infallible } Yet must a 
 theory, which protests against one infallibility, fall back 
 upon a thousand ? Would Christianity, as regards truth 
 and peace, faith and charity, fare worse, would it not 
 
Note on Essay X. 99 
 
 fare better, without any Church at all, than with a thou, 
 sand Churches, scattered through the world, all supreme 
 and independent ? 
 
 If it be asked of me how, with my present views of 
 the inherent impracticability of the Anglican theory of 
 Church polity, I could ever have held it myself, I answer 
 that, though swayed by great names, I never was without 
 misgivings about the difficulties which it involved ; and 
 that as early as 1837, in my Volume in defence of Angli- 
 canism as contrasted with " Romanism and popular Pro- 
 testantism," I expressed my sense of these difficulties. 
 I said much on the subject in my Introductory Chapter. 
 Among other things, " The proof of reality in a doc- 
 trine," I said, "is its holding together when actually 
 
 attempted Not till Christianity was tried, 
 
 could the coherence of its parts be ascertained. Now 
 the class of doctrines in question as yet labours under 
 the same difficulty. Indeed, they are in one sense as 
 entirely new as Christianity when first preached. The 
 Via Media, viewed as an integral system, has scarcely 
 had existence, except on paper. . . . Bystanders accuse 
 us of tendering no proof to show that our view is not 
 self-contradictory, and, if set in motion, would not fall to 
 
 pieces, or start off in different directions at once 
 
 It still remains to be tried whether what is called Anglo- 
 Catholicism, the religion of Andrewes, Laud, Hammond, 
 Butler, and Wilson, is capable of being professed, acted 
 on, and maintained on a large sphere of action, and 
 through a sufficient period, or whether it be a mere 
 modification or transition-state either of Romanism or 
 of popular Protestantism, according as we view it." — 
 Pp. 19 — 22. 
 
 This, I said, in honesty, though it was in a measure 
 an unravelling of the work which I was then completing, 
 
loo Note on Essay X. 
 
 and in consequence, when published, a cause of deep 
 offence to the late Mr. Rose, nay, of an estrangement 
 from me, for some months, of a friend whom I so much 
 valued and respected. But he had forgiven me by- 
 February 1838, and, when he left England for good in 
 October of that year, in the kindness of his heart, he 
 would not go away without bidding me farewell ; and he 
 wrote to me a friendly letter, wishing me all success in 
 the British Critic, which I was then undertaking, I on 
 my part dedicating to him, with his leave, and with all 
 my heart, my fourth volume of Parochial Sermons. 
 
 3. 
 
 The doctrine of the unity of ecclesiastical jurisdiction, 
 which I have been dwelling upon from Scripture and from 
 the reason of the case, might also be copiously illustrated 
 from the Fathers ; but this is not denied in the Essay 
 which has given rise to these remarks. Rather, the 
 witness of the Fathers in its favour is granted, by the 
 very fact that it does no more than bring forward, as if 
 exceptions to the rule; certain passages from their writ- 
 ings, or facts in their history, which admit or perhaps 
 teach a contrary doctrine, and thereby suggest that the 
 unity of jurisdiction was not always insisted on in fact, 
 and that a local Church, as the Anglican,- may withdraw 
 from the Catholic jurisdiction without necessarily and 
 at once forfeiting its claim to Catholic communion. On 
 these exceptional passages I shall now say a few words. 
 
 The argument in the Essay is of the following kind : 
 There are strong passages in the Fathers against schism 
 and separatism certainly, but then there is no rule but has 
 exceptions ; and these strong passages only embody 
 general truths, proverbial sayings, aspects, types, symbols 
 of Catholic doctrine, principles applicable to particular 
 
Note on Essay X. loi 
 
 subjects, times, and places, and are sometimes in their 
 letter even contradictory to each other, showing that 
 they carry with them an antecedent or presumptive force 
 and nothing more. Thus our Lord sometimes says, 
 " Follow Me," at another "Count the cost;" and "He 
 that is not with Me, is against Me," yet also, " He that is 
 not against us, is for us." And He says, " Blessed are the 
 poor ;" " Woe unto you rich ;" yet no one would deny 
 that such enunciations do need a careful handling, and 
 may be grievously misapplied. Therefore, in like manner, 
 though St. Augustine, after St. Cyprian, says, "Break the 
 branch from the tree, it will not bud," or " The universal 
 Church is in its judgments secure of truth," it does not 
 thence follow for certain that the Church of England 
 may not be a living Church amid its supreme isolation, 
 or is ipso facto condemned because it has the whole East 
 and West absolutely against it and its doctrines. So 
 much as to the doctrines of the Fathers ; next, as to facts 
 in their history. It is certain, that Eusebius of Samo- 
 sata is a saint in the Roman calendar, though for years 
 and almost till his death he was in the ranks of the 
 Semi-Arians ; Meletius, a saint also, died out of com- 
 munion with Rome; Lucifer died in schism, yet is called 
 "Beatus" by Jerome, and up to the seventeenth century 
 was honoured as a saint in Sardinia and parts of Italy; 
 and Paschasius to the last adhered to the anti-Pope 
 Laurence against Pope Symmachus, yet he too is in the 
 Roman calendar. If these men are saints, in spite of 
 their separation from Rome, why may not England, 
 though accidentally in a state of protest, enjoy, as those 
 primitive saints enjoyed, the communion and the bless- 
 ings of the Catholic Church.' Such is the argument, and 
 now I shall give my answer to it. 
 
 I. And first as to the examples adduced : — I begin by 
 
102 Note an Essay X. 
 
 drawing attention to what I conceive to be an erroneous 
 assumption in an earlier Essay, which this is the proper 
 place to set right. I said in my remarks upon Mr. Palmer 
 {supr., vol. i., pp. 164-5). "If division is not ipso facto 
 formal schism, length of time cannot make it such. If 
 thirty-five years do not deprive a separated branch of its 
 Catholicity, neither does a hundred." This is what I 
 have said above ; but now I venture to suggest, that the 
 truth is just the contrary to this statement, while the dis- 
 tinction, which it denies to exist, is just that which forms 
 the critical contrast between those instances of eccle- 
 siastical differences which occur in ancient times, and 
 the utter alienation which exists at this time between 
 England and Rome. In the early centuries there were 
 frequent quarrels among Christians : Pope Victor de- 
 clared the Asian Bishops excommunicate, by reason of 
 their Quartodeciman observance of the Easter Festival ; 
 Stephen threatened the Easterns, on the question of 
 heretical baptism, and Firmilian of Csesarea retorted in 
 sharp words ; Acacius of Constantinople, as favouring 
 the Monophysite party, drew on him the anathema of 
 Pope Felix ; first the African bishops, and then the 
 ex-archate of Ravenna and the churches of Istria refused 
 the decrees of the fifth Ecumenical Council. Such acts 
 implied separation, and sometimes those separations 
 were long; but it is difficult to treat any of them as 
 perfected schisms. They were the threatenings and be- 
 ginnings of schism ; they tended to schism, as disorders 
 of the body, not in themselves fatal, yet, if neglected, 
 may terminate in death. Estrangements, in early times, 
 were often but " amantium irae ; " and there was sooner 
 or later an " amoris integratio." 
 
 Such were the instances of schismatical proceedings in 
 early times, the like of which I have adduced above 
 
Note on Essay X, 103 
 
 in my Essay; but very different surely from these is 
 the chasm which has long yawned between England and 
 the Catholic world. This separation is surely no lover's 
 quarrel ; arising to-day, spent and over to-morrow. Each 
 of the contending parties has broken off from the other 
 now for long centuries ; each has for centuries continued 
 on in its own territory supreme, and thus growa into its 
 own shape ; each has formally turned its back upon the 
 other, or has recognized it only to affront it ; each has 
 framed decrees and passed laws against the faith and the 
 claims of the other. The whole of England, with its 
 multitude of sects, tolerant for the most part of each 
 other, protests against Rome : its Court, its legislators, 
 its judicial bench, its public press, its literature and 
 science, its populace, forcibly repudiate, view with in- 
 tense jealousy, any advance, in any quarter, even of a 
 hair's breadth, towards the Roman Church. Its Bishops 
 at home and from abroad, once in a way assembled in a 
 Pan-Anglican Synod, cannot part in peace with mutual 
 good wishes, without a parting fling at the Holy See. 
 All this animosity against Catholicism is conscious, de- 
 liberate, and hearty, the coagulate of bitter experiences 
 and of festering resentments. Year after year, the con- 
 science of our great country more determinately confronts 
 and defies the principles and the practices of the Roman 
 Curia. At the era of Elizabeth, this opposition was 
 founded on passion or policy ; in Victoria's time it is an 
 intellectual and moral antipathy. It is as different now 
 from what it was then, as the severe but transient in- 
 fluenza, which is the first step of a consumption, differs 
 from the hectic fever and organic ruin, in which it ends. 
 All things are possible to God ; I am not saying that this 
 antagonism between Rome and England must last for 
 ever, because it is so energetic now; but I am stating 
 
104 Note on Essay X. 
 
 what it is at this time ; and I protest that to compare it 
 to the coolness between Meletius and Athanasius, or the 
 jealousies between Basil and Damasus, or the parties 
 and partizanship which the untoward act of Lucifer 
 created at Antioch, is to do what Catholics are on certain 
 other questions charged with doing, — to pervert history 
 in the interest of controversy. Say that Luther and Leo 
 quarrelled no worse than Paul and Barnabas, and then 
 you will be consistent in maintaining that Rome does 
 not wish the Church of England dead and buried, and 
 England does not fear and detest the See of Rome. 
 
 I had occasion to insist upon the principle, on which 
 these remarks are grounded, in Lectures published in 
 1850, apropos of the Gorham decision, and I will extract 
 a portion of what I then said in answer to two writers of 
 name, now both deceased. Archdeacon Hare and Dr. 
 Neale. 
 
 " I have spoken of the tests," I said, "which the last 
 twenty years have furnished, of the real character of the 
 Establishment ; for I must not be supposed to be inquiring 
 whether the Establishment has been unchurched during 
 that period, but whether it has been proved to be no 
 Church already. The want of congeniality which now 
 exists between the sentiments and ways, the moral life 
 of the Anglican communion, and the principles, doc- 
 trines, traditions of Catholicism, — of this I speak in 
 order to prove something done and over long ago, in 
 order to show that the movement of 1833 was from the 
 first engaged in propagating an unreality. The eloquent 
 writer just quoted, in ridicule of the protest made by 
 twelve very distinguished men, against the Queen's recent 
 decision concerning the sacrament of baptism, contrasts 
 ' logical dreams ' and ' obscure and perplexing questions 
 of dogmatic theology ' with ' the promise ' in the Esta- 
 
Note on Essay X. 105 
 
 blishment of a large family ' of daughters, spread round 
 the earth, shining and brightening every year.' Now I 
 grant that it has a narrow and technical appearance 
 to rest the Catholicity of a religious body on particular 
 words, or deeds, or measures, resulting from the temper of 
 a particular age, accidentally elicited, and accomplished 
 in minutes or in days. I allow it, and feel it ; that a 
 particular vote of Parliament, endured or tacitly accepted 
 by bishops and clergy, or by the metropolitans, or a 
 particular appointment, or a particular omission, or a 
 particular statement of doctrine, should at once change 
 the spiritual character of the whole body, and ipso facto 
 cut it off from the centre of unity and the source of grace, 
 is almost incredible. In spite of such acts, surely the 
 Anglican Church might be to-day what it was yester- 
 day, with an internal power and a supernatural virtue, 
 provided it had not already forfeited them, and would 
 go about its work as of old time. It would be to-day 
 pretty much what it was yesterday, thpugh in the course 
 of the night it had allowed an Anglo-Prussian see to be 
 set up in Jerusalem, and subscribed to a disavowal of the 
 Athanasian creed. 
 
 " This is the common sense of the matter, to which 
 the mind recurs with satisfaction, after zeal and inge- 
 nuity have done their utmost to prove the contrary. Of 
 course I am not saying that individual acts do not tend 
 towards, and a succession of acts does not issue in, the 
 most serious spiritual consequences ; but it is so difficult 
 to determine the worth of each ecclesiastical act, and 
 what its position is relatively to acts and events before 
 and after it, that I have no intention here of urging any 
 argument deduced from such acts. A generation may not 
 be long enough for the completion of an act of schism 
 or heresy. Judgments admit of repeal or reversal ; 
 
1 06 Note on Essay X. 
 
 (.enactments are liable to flaws and informalities ; laws 
 require promulgation ; documents admit of explanation ; 
 words must be interpreted either by context or by cir- 
 cumstances ; majorities may be analyzed ; responsibilities 
 may be shifted. I admit the remark of another 
 writer in the present controversy, though I do not accept 
 his conclusion. ' The Church's motion,' he says, ' is not 
 that of a machine, to be calculated with accuracy, and 
 predicted beforehand, — where one serious injury will 
 disturb all regularity, and finally put a stop to action. 
 It is that of a living body, whose motions will be 
 irregular, incapable of being exactly arranged and fore- 
 told, and where it is nearly impossible to say how much 
 health may co-exist with how much disease.' And 'he 
 speaks of the line of reasoning which he is opposing as 
 being ' too logical to be real.' ' Men,' he observes, ' do 
 not, in the practical affairs of life, act on such clear, 
 sharp, definite theories. Such reasoning can never be 
 the cause of any one leaving the Church of England. 
 But it looks well on paper, and therefore may perhaps 
 be put forward as a theoretical argument by those who, 
 from some other feeling, or fancy, or prejudice, or honest 
 conviction, think fit to leave us.' 
 
 "Truly said, except in the imputation conveyed in the 
 concluding words. I will grant that it is by life without 
 us, by life within us, by the work of grace in our com- 
 munion and in ourselves, that we are all of us accustomed 
 practically to judge whether that communion be Catholic 
 or not ; not by this or that formal act, or historical 
 event. I will grant it, though of course it requires some 
 teaching, and some discernment, and some prayer, to 
 understand what spiritual life is, and what is the working 
 of grace. However, at any rate, let the prdposition pass ; 
 I will allow it at least for argument's sake ; for I am not 
 
Note on Essay X, 107 
 
 here going to look out, in the last twenty years, for dates 
 when, and ways in which, the Establishment fell from 
 Catholic unity, and lost its divine privileges. No ; the 
 question before us is nothing narrow or technical ; it has 
 no cut and dried premisses, and peremptory conclusions ; 
 it is not whether this or that statute or canon at the time 
 of the Reformation, this or that 'further and further 
 encroachment' of the State, this or that 'Act of Wil- 
 liam IV.,' constituted the Establishment's formal sepa- 
 ration from the Church ; not whether the Queen's recent 
 decision binds it to heresy ; but, whether these acts and 
 abundant others are not, one and all, evidences, in one 
 out of a hundred heads of evidence, that whatever were 
 the acts which constituted, or the moment which com- 
 pleted the schism, or rather the utter disorganization, of 
 the National Church, cut off and disorganized it is." — 
 Difficulties of Anglicanism, Led. 2. - 
 
 2. On the principles, then, enforced in this extract I 
 consider such passages in ecclesiastical history, as are 
 adduced in my foregoing Essay, to be merely instancesof 
 inchoate schism, proceedings and arrangements which were 
 reversed before they issued in a formal state of schism. 
 For this reason they cannot fairly be taken to constitute 
 precedents and pleas for the present and past position of 
 the Anglican communion. Schism indeed, abstractedly 
 speaking, is separation from the orbis terrarum, but a 
 schism cannot be completed in a day or a year. The 
 abstract proposition requires various corrections when 
 viewed in the medium of the concrete, corrections and 
 supplements varying with each case to which it is applied. 
 And thus I am brought to notice, or I rather have anti- 
 cipated, what I have to say on the second point questioned 
 in my Essay, viz., the argumentative value of the strong 
 dicta of the Fathers which I there employ myself in 
 
io8 • Note on Essay X. 
 
 explaining and modifying. I am willing to modify them 
 still. I admit without any difficulty, as the Essay main- 
 tains, that such dicta are not to be taken in the bare letter, 
 but are general truths, which do not at once and defini- 
 tively apply to the particular cases which seem to fall 
 under them, but are of the nature of antecedent probabili 
 ties and presumptions against each particular case as it 
 comes. I should be as little disposed to decide against 
 England in 1560 as against Antioch in 362, that it was 
 at once summarily excluded from the Catholic Church 
 because of St. Jerome's famous words to Pope Damasus : 
 " Ego nullum primum nisi Christum sequens, Bsatitudini 
 tuse, id Cathedrae Petri, communione consocior. Non novi 
 Vitalem, Meletium respuo, ignoro Paulinum. Quicunque 
 tecum non colligit, spargit, hoc est, qui Christi non est, 
 Antichristi est." I should be dealing violently with a 
 great truth, if I so used them. Nor again, because 
 "Life is a note of the true Church," should I therefore 
 at once unchurch the Rome of John XII. and Boniface 
 VII., or include the Nestorians of the middle ages within 
 the pale of Catholicism. The sun is the source and 
 centre of light, but clouds may darken the day, and the 
 moon illuminates the night. 
 
 On the other hand, I use the admission I have made, 
 as in the case of the just-mentioned medieval Popes, on 
 the Catholic side of the controversy. Vincent's famous 
 dictum, "Quod semper, quod ubique," etc., admits of excep- 
 tions, and must not be pushed to an extremity against 
 our theology, as if doctrines did not admit of develop- 
 ment. And again, as to " securus judieat orbis terrarum" 
 while no Catholic would contend that this aphorism 
 precludes or supersedes the appeal to Antiquity, at the 
 same time it avails at least for as much as this, which is 
 all that is needed, viz., in proof that other tests of re- 
 
Note on Essay X. 109 
 
 vealed truth exist, besides Antiquity ; and those other 
 tests may sometimes be more easy of appHcation. The 
 general reception, for instance, of the definition of an 
 Ecumenical Council may avail to determine for us what 
 the records of Antiquity now extant leave doubtful, or 
 only imperfectly testify. 
 
 I think it well to append the letter referred to at 
 p. "j-j. I have now somewhat altered the words in which 
 mention is made of Mr. Knox. 
 
 The Oratory, Birmingham, 
 August sth, 1868. 
 My dear Father Coleridge, 
 
 You ask me what I precisely mean, in my Apologia, 
 Appendix, p. 26, by saying, apropos of Anglican Orders, that 
 " Antiquarian arguments are altogether unequal to the urgency of 
 visible facts." I will try to explain : — 
 
 I. The inquiry into Anglican Orders has ever been to me of the 
 class which I must call dreary ; for it is dreary surely to have to 
 grope into the minute intricate passages and obscure comers of 
 past occurrences, in order to ascertain whether this man was ever 
 consecrated, whether that man used a valid form, whether a certain 
 sacramental intention came up to the mark, whether the report or 
 register of an ecclesiasticalact can be cleared of suspicion. On 
 giving myself to consider the question, I never have been able to 
 arrive at anything higher than a probable conclusion, which is most 
 unsatisfactory except to antiquarians, who delight in researches into 
 the past for their own sake. 
 
 II. Now, on the other hand, what do I mean by "visible facts" ? 
 I mean such definite facts as throw a broad antecedent light upon 
 what may be presumed, in a case in which sufficient evidence is 
 not forthcoming. For instance — 
 
 I The Apostolical Succession, its necessity, and its grace. 
 
no Note on Essay X, 
 
 is not an Anglican tradition, though it is a tradition found in 
 the Anglican Church. By contrast, our Lord's divinity is an 
 Anglican tradition — every one, high and low, holds it. It is not 
 only in Prayer Book and Catechism, but in the mouths of all pro- 
 fessors of Anglicanism. Not to believe it, is to be no Anglican; 
 and any persons in authority, for three hundred years, who were 
 suspected to doubt or explain it away, were marked men, as Dr. 
 Colenso is now marked. And they have been so few that they 
 could be counted. Not such is the Apostolic Succession ; and, 
 considering the Church is the columna et firmamentum ■veritatis, 
 and is ever bound to stir up the gift that is in her, there is surely 
 a strong presumption that the Anglican body has not, what it does 
 hot profess to have. I wonder how many of its bishops and 
 deans hold the doctrine at this time ; some who do riot, occur 
 to the mind at once. One knows what was the case thirty or 
 forty years ago by the famous saying of Blomfield, Bishop of 
 London. 
 
 2. Where there is a true Succession, there is a true Eucharist ; 
 if there is not a true Eucharist, there is no true Succession. Now, 
 what is the presumption here ? I think it is Mr. Alexander Knox 
 who says or suggests that, if so great a gift be given, it must have 
 a rite. I add, if it has a rite, it must have a custos of the rite. 
 Who is the custos of the Anglican Eucharist? The Anghcan 
 clergy? Could I, without distressing or offending an Anglican, 
 describe what sort of custodes they have been, and are, to their 
 Eucharist ? " O bone custos," in the words of the poet, " cui 
 commendavi Filium Meum ! " Is it not charitable towards the 
 bulk of the Anglican clergy to hope, to beUeve, that so great 
 a treasure has not been given to their keeping ? And would our 
 Lord Isave Himself for centurie sin such hands ? Inasmuch, then, 
 as " the sacrament of the Body and Blood of Christ " in the 
 Anglican communion is without protective ritual and jealous 
 guardianship, there seems to me a strong presumption that neither 
 the real gift, nor its appointed guardians, are to be found in that 
 communion. 
 
 3. Previous baptism is the condition of the valid administration 
 of the other sacraments. When I was in the Anglican Church I 
 saw enough of the lax administration of baptism, even among High 
 Churchmen, though they did not of course intend it, to fill me with 
 great uneasiness. Of course there are definite persons whom one 
 
Note on JSssay X. 1 1 1 
 
 might point out, whose baptisms are sure to be valid. But my 
 argument has nothing to do with present baptisms. Bishops were 
 baptized, not lately, but as children. The present bishops were 
 consecrated by other bishops, they again by others. What I have 
 seen in the Anglican Church makes it very difficult for me to deny 
 that every now and then a bishop was a consecrator who had never 
 been baptized. Some bishops have been brought up in the north 
 as Presbyterians, others as Dissenters, others as Low Churchmen, 
 others have been baptized in the careless perfunctory way once so 
 common ; there is then much reason to believe that some con- 
 secrators were not bishops, for the simple reason that, formally 
 speaking, they were not Christians. But at least there is a great 
 presumption that where evidently our Lord has not provided a 
 rigid rule of baptism, He has not provided a valid ordination. 
 
 By the light of such presumptions as these, I interpret the 
 doubtful issues of the antiquarian argument, and feel deeply that, 
 if Anglican Orders are unsafe with reference to the actual evidence 
 producible for their validity, much more unsafe are they when con- 
 sidered in their surroundings. 
 
 Most sincerely yours, 
 
 (Signed) John H. Newman. 
 
112 
 
 X. 
 
 THE PROTESTANT IDEA OF ANTICHRIST. 
 
 THE Discourses which Dr. Todd has recently given 
 to the world, are, perhaps, the first attempt for 
 a long course of years in this part of Christendom to fix 
 a dispassionate attention and a scientific interpretation 
 . upon the momentous " Prophecies relating to Antichrist 
 in the writings of Daniel and St. Paul." When men set 
 out by resolving that a certain ecclesiastical power, or 
 foreign enemy, or political principle, or historical per- 
 sonage, must and shall be the scope of the inspired 
 announcement, which is too often done, they are not, of 
 course, sure to be wrong in their conclusion, but they are 
 pretty sure to be unfair in their proofs. Candour, judg- 
 ment, critical acumen, exactness in reasoning, adherence 
 to principles, whether of interpretation or of theology, 
 these and similar qualities are not to be expected of such 
 expositors ; they start with a prejudice, they argue as 
 advocates, and they end in a foregone conclusion. 
 Faults such as these cannot be imputed to Dr. Todd ; 
 he is methodical, careful, and accurate in his investi- 
 gations, and clear and unaffected in his manner of pre- 
 senting them before his readers. 
 
 Far from imposing a meaning upon Scripture, in order 
 to make it tally with events in the history of the day, if he 
 
The Protestant Idea of Antichrist. 113 
 
 has a fault, it rather lies in his proving too little from it ; 
 that is, in his being rather bent on disproving what others 
 advance than in establishing, according to the sense of the 
 Catholic Church, anything positive and substantial in- 
 stead. An adversary would impute to his discussions 
 some deficiency of poetry, by which we mean a defi- 
 ciency of that subtlety of thought and sensitiveness of 
 feeling which is the best preparative for entering into 
 those superhuman announcements and descriptions upon 
 which he has written. We have pleasure in believing 
 that in matters of doctrine we entirely agree with Dr. 
 Todd ; and, judging from what Dr. Arnold has pub- 
 lished, we are sorrowfully conscious that we do not agree 
 with Dr. Arnold; still,. as regards the principles of pro- 
 phetical interpretation, we think that there is a deeper 
 philosophy in Dr. Arnold's two Sermons lately published 
 than in the Discourses before us. This, however, we 
 avow merely because by our profession we are critics, 
 and, in giving an opinion on the subject, are performing 
 a task which may even be expected of us. Having 
 given it, we may with a safe conscience proceed tO' the 
 consideration of the main position on which Dr. Todd 
 has employed himself, which we cannot but consider to 
 be most true and most important, and to entitle him to 
 the gratitude of all churchmen. 
 
 That position is^ this, that the: prophecies concerning 
 Antichrist are as yet unfulfilled, and that the predicted 
 enemy of the Church is yet to come. No one can deny, 
 the importance of such a view of the subject, if it be 
 true. If dreadful scenes still await the Church,, if they 
 have been foretold, and foretold that Christians may be 
 prepared for them, no calamity can be greater than a 
 belief that they have already been fulfilled, and that 
 there is nothing to look out for or to fear ; no device of 
 
 VOL. II. 8 
 
1 14 The Protestant Idea of Antichrist. 
 
 Satan can be more crafty than to make us think that 
 they are not to come, that they have come to pass 
 already, — nay, that they have been fulfilled in a branch 
 of the Church herself, that Church which was ordained by 
 her Divine Author ever to be one, all over the earth, and 
 to live in internal peace, not in mutual revilings and ac- 
 cusations, in strife and hatred. 
 
 But there is another reason why Dr. Todd's work is 
 seasonable and important. We consider that it is im- 
 possible to hold certain branches of the Church to be the: 
 communion of Antichrist, as it has long been the fashion 
 with Protestants to maintain, without involving our own 
 branch in the charge ; if any part of the Church be anti- 
 Christian, it will be found that all the Church is so, our 
 own branch inclusive. We are much disposed to ques- 
 tion whether any tests can be given to prove that the 
 Roman communion is the Synagogue of Satan, which 
 will not, in the judgment of the many, implicate the 
 Church of England. This is a most serious consider- 
 ation, in proportion as we believe it to hold good. In 
 such case it will not be from any special leaning towards 
 Romanism that we shall be eager to prove that Rome is 
 not the seat of the Enemy of God ; it will arise simply 
 from prudential motives, if we have no other. As to 
 Rome, we owe her of late years nothing at all, except 
 indeed, according to the Scripture rule, love for hatred. 
 Nothing that we can say will soften one whit that obdu- 
 rate temper, or touch that secular political spirit, which 
 at present is dominant among her children. Therefore 
 we take up Dr. Todd's position, if we must give our 
 reason, from nothing more or less than the mere instinct 
 of self-preservation. It is very well for Sandemanian, 
 Ranter, or Quaker to call Rome the seat of Antichrist. 
 We cannot afford to do so ; nostra res agitur : we 
 
The Protestant Idea of Antichrist. 115 
 
 come next. Members of our Church are entreated to 
 consider this carefully. In thus assaulting Rome, they 
 are using an argument which is with equal certainty, if 
 not with equal fulness, available against their own re- 
 ligious position ; an argument which, if they use it con- 
 sistently, must drive them forward into some still more 
 simple system of religion, nay, on and on they know not 
 whither, till " tota jacet Babylon." * If, indeed, it be a 
 truth that the Bishop of Rome is Antichrist, let us of 
 course boldly follow it out ; but surely, considering the 
 uncertain arguments on which prophetical interpretations 
 must rest, and that clear evidence on which the Articles 
 of the Creed and the principles of Christian ethics 
 are received, it is necessarily no slight argument against 
 a certain interpretation, that it is found legitimately to 
 lead to the denial whether of Christian doctrine or of . 
 Christian duty. If we cannot consistently hold that the 
 Pope is Antichrist, without holding that the principle of 
 establishments, the Christian ministry, and the most 
 sacred Catholic doctrines, are fruits of Antichrist, surely 
 the lengths we must run are a reductio ad absurdum of 
 the position with which we start. If we must deny 
 either that Christian Rome is Babylon, or affirm that 
 Socinus was right, it is not difficult to see which propo- 
 sition must give way. 
 
 And another serious question is this, whether we ought 
 not to be very sure before we assert that a branch of 
 Christ's Church,not merely has evil extensively prevailing 
 within it, but is actually the kingdom of evil, the king- 
 dom of God's enemy ; considering that, if it be not the 
 
 * The distich, framed at the time of the Reformation by one of the 
 extreme Protestant party, was this : 
 
 " Tota jacet Babylon, destruxit tecta Lutherus, 
 CaJvinus muros, et fundamenta Socinus." 
 
1 1 6 The Protestant Idea of Antichrist. 
 
 kingdom of darkness, it is the Church, the dwelling-place 
 of the Most High. The question really lies, be it ob- 
 served, between'those two alternatives, eiiher theChurch of 
 Rome is the house of God or the house of Satan ; there 
 is no middle ground between them. Now, surely our 
 Lord's strong language about the consequences of speak- 
 ing against the Gracious Presence which inhabits the 
 Church, or of ascribing the works of the Spirit to Beel- 
 zebub, is enough to make us very cautious of forming a 
 judgment against particular branches of the Church, 
 unless we are very certain what we are saying. If we 
 are not "treading upon the adder," we are "kicking 
 against the pricks." 
 
 These are some principal reasons which lead us to feel 
 thankful to Dr. Todd for the careful and learned work 
 which he has presented to the Christian public ; and 
 with the hope of strengthening the Scripture argument 
 to which he has for the most part confined himself, we 
 shall here employ ourselves on some collateral thoughts 
 upon the subject, chiefly of an antecedent nature, 
 whether in answer to like antecedent objections, or the 
 expansion of considerations which we have already sug^ 
 gested. 
 
 That Scripture contains intimations of the coming of 
 a special enemy of Christ and His Church, of great power, 
 craft, and wickedness, is undeniable. He is described 
 by St. Paul and Daniel, in the prophecies which Mr. 
 Todd undertakes to elucidate, as " the man of sin," " the 
 lawless one," " the son of perdition," " a king of fierce 
 countenance, and of look more stout than his fellows ;" 
 as " having eyes," and " a mouth speaking very great 
 things," and " tindefstanding dark sentences;" as a liar 
 
The Protestant Idea of Antichrist. 117 
 
 and hypocrite, and of a seared conscience ; as " doing 
 according to his will;" as "opposing, exalting, and 
 magnifying himself above every god," and " all that is 
 called God, or that is worshipped ; as " speaking mar- 
 vellous things against the God of gods ; as " sitting as 
 God in the temple of God," and " showing himself that 
 he is God ;" "with all power, and signs, and lying won- 
 ders, and with all deceivableness of unrighteousness ; " 
 as coming " when the transgressors are come to the full," 
 with or after an " apostasy," and that " from the faith," 
 in a mystery of iniquity which even in the Apostles' day 
 " did already work ; " as " prospering till the indignation 
 be accomplished," till " the Lord consume him with the 
 spirit of His mouth, and destroy with the brightness of 
 His coming." Such is the prophecy, as Dr. Todd de- 
 lineates it ; the question is, whether, as he maintains, its 
 fulfilment is yet to come, or whether it has taken place 
 in the person of the Bishop of Rome, as Protestants 
 have very commonly supposed. 
 
 Now, one of the first questions which it is natural to 
 ask on entering upon the subject is, whereas the Pope is 
 said to be Antichrist, sometimes from the fourth, some- 
 times from the seventh century, when was he first de- 
 tected and denounced, and by whom.' In other words, 
 what is the history of that interpretation of prophecy on 
 which Protestants rely .-' On this point Dr. Todd sup- 
 plies us with much information, from which it appears 
 that the belief that the Pope was Antichrist was the 
 conclusion gradually formed and matured out of the 
 belief that the Church of Rome was Babylon, by three 
 heretical bodies, between the eleventh and sixteenth cen- 
 turies, in consequence of their being submitted to perse- 
 cution for their opinions : 
 
 " In the middle of the eleventh century, numerous emigrants 
 
1 1 8 The Protestant Idea of Antichrist. 
 
 from Thrace and the East had established themselves in the north 
 of Italy, and especially in the neighbourhood of Milan ; and some, 
 despising a fixed habitation, or unable to obtain one, itinerated 
 throughout various parts of France and Germany. The doctrines 
 of these sects exhibit various shades of extravagance and error, 
 and appear to have had a close affinity with the Oriental Manichees 
 or Pauhcians, from whom they are historically descended. They 
 are accused of holding that the material world was the work of an 
 evil being, and not of the Supreme Deity ; that the Incarnation 
 and Crucifixion of the Lord were therefore visions, or at least so 
 far unreal events as to be disconnected with matter ; that absti- 
 nence from flesh and wine was necessary to salvation ; that 
 marriage was a carnal state, and inconsistent with Christian per- 
 fection. They are said also to have rejected the authority of the 
 Old Testament, as the work of the evil principle ; and to have con- 
 demned the temporal possessions and rank of the clergy, on the 
 ground that the true Church of Christ should imitate to the letter 
 the poverty of the first Apostles ; they despised all external religion, 
 ridiculed the office and powers of the priesthood, the efficacy of 
 the Sacraments, and especially the use of baptism." — Pp. 28 — 30. 
 
 These were the Albigenses, the first of the three in- 
 dependent families of heresy above mentioned. 
 
 The second protesting sect which those times pro- 
 duced was, according to Dr. Todd, of a much purer and 
 more respectable character. It originated at the end of 
 the twelfth century, in the celebrated Peter Waldo ; was 
 free from the Manichsean errors of the Albigenses and 
 the Paulicians ; and, though its members held, at least 
 ultimately, the unlawfulness of oaths, the necessity of 
 poverty, and the inefficacy of the sacraments, yet the 
 innocency of their lives, and their seasonable vehemence 
 against the superstitions of the day, procured them accept- 
 ance in almost every part of Europe. Pursuing the line 
 of research which the learned Mr. Maitland has opened, 
 Dr. Todd has brought together a mass of information 
 on this subject, and the notes which stand at the end of 
 
The Protestant Idea of Antichrist. 119 
 
 his Lectures, form one of the most interesting parts of 
 his work. It would appear from these that the Albi- 
 genses founded their opposition to the Church on a 
 Manichsean principle, viz., that, as there was an evil deity, 
 and he the author of the visible world, so was he author 
 also of the visible Church, which in consequence was 
 " the devil's basilica and synagogue of Satan," and, in 
 the language of the Apocalypse, " the mother of forni- 
 cations." This they maintained ; though, as denying our 
 Lord's Incarnation, condemning holy matrimony, and 
 prohibiting meats, they themselves came nearest of all 
 religious parties, then existing, to that prophetic descrip- 
 tion, which they are at this day supposed by their protest 
 to have fastened upon Rome. The Waldenses, on the 
 other hand, far from participating in these grave errors, 
 seem at first to have differed in no article of faith 
 from the received orthodoxy of the thirteenth century ; 
 nay, they were in the habit of disputing against the 
 Albigenses, and that " acutissim^," even after their own 
 separation from the Church. Moreover, far from wishing 
 to separate, they in the first instance attempted to take 
 a place in the Church, such as the Mendicant Friars soon 
 afterwards occupied under the leading of St. Francis and 
 St., Dominic, and applied to the Pope with a view of 
 obtaining his sanction to their rules, and of being per- 
 mitted to found a religious order. Failing in this, they 
 seceded, and proceeded to denounce the Church of Rome, 
 not on the Manichaan principle, nor exactly on the Pro- 
 testant, though on one which Protestants have often 
 taken, viz., that the Church or its clergy lost their spiri- 
 tual powers from the period of their consenting to receive 
 temporal endowments. But, as to any opposition to the 
 Church simply founded on the prophecies in the Apoca- 
 lypse, of this, Dr. Todd contends, and with great force 
 
120 The Protestant Idea of Antichrist. 
 
 of argument, there is no trace among them, till after the 
 rise of the last of the three families of heresy aforesaid, 
 to which that opposition really belonged, and of which 
 an account shall now be given in our author's words : 
 
 " The third class of heretics, amongst whom a similar doctrine 
 prevailed, arose in the bosom of the Church of Rome itself. The 
 great popularity of the sects, to whose history I have alluded, 
 afforded a lesson which was not lost upon the court of Rome ; and 
 accordingly, in the beginning of the thirteenth century, the papaf 
 sanction was given to the proposal of certain zealous individuals 
 for the establishment of the mendicant orders, upon principles 
 which embraced everything that was attractive to the multitude in 
 the discipline of the heretics, while pains were taken to retain their 
 votaries in strict obedience to the papal authority. These orders 
 acknowledged the great principle, so vehemently contended for by 
 the Vaudois and other reputed heretics, that voluntary poverty was 
 the primary virtue of the Christian religion, the necessary con- 
 dition of Christian perfection, and the true mode of imitating our 
 Lord and His disciples ; and thus a door was opened by which the 
 diseased and dissatisfied spirits, who would otherwise perhaps have 
 joined the ranks of the heretical revolutionists, were afforded a 
 field for the exercise of their zeal and devotion, and at the same 
 time retained in the communion of the Roman Church. 
 
 " But although the stream of heresy was thus apparently turned 
 into a less dangerous channel, and made subservient to the am- 
 bitious projects of the see of Rome, yet the evil broke out afresh in 
 a new and unexpected form. The Franciscan order, especially, 
 soon split into factions which reproduced all the most fatal errors 
 of the he'retics, and set the papal power at defiance. The rule of 
 poverty admitted of laxer or of severer interpretation, and fur- 
 nished the first great subject of internal division among the 
 brethren of St. Francis. The fanatical opinion also, that the life 
 of St. Francis was an exact imitation of the life of our Lord, and 
 that in him were fulfilled many prophecies, especially in the Apo- 
 calypse, soon led to serious evils. The spiritual Franciscans, as 
 they were called, who maintained the absolute illegaUty of all 
 possessions, under any pretence or fiction whatsoever, were also 
 distinguished for an affectation of prophetical powers, and for 
 peculiar interpretations of the book of Revelation. They insisted 
 
The Protestant Idea of Antichrist. 121 
 
 that St. Francis was the Angel whom the Apostle had seen in 
 vision flying in the midst of heaven, having the everlasting Gospel 
 to preach to them that dwell on the earth ; and that the mendicant 
 friars of his order were destined, like the Apostles of our Lord, to 
 introduce a new dispensation which should regenerate the Church 
 and the world. 
 
 " The court of Rome, as was naturally to have been expected, 
 opposed these extreme opinions, and supported the modified inter- 
 pretation of the Franciscan rule ; and hence, notwithstanding 
 many efforts to appease the storm, the spiritual Franciscans soon 
 attacked the papal chair itself. At the close of the thirteenth 
 century, indeed, an effort was made to re-unite them to the Roman 
 Church, by erecting them into a separate order, under the name of 
 Celestine-Eremites, but the evil was too deeply rooted to admit of 
 so easy a cure, and soon ended in their total separation from the 
 order, and from the Church. The Fratricelli, which was one of 
 the names assumed by the new separatists, denied the right of the 
 Sovereign Pontiff himself to interpret or to dispense with the 
 ■ letter of their rule ; they maintained that they themselves were the 
 true Church of Christ, that the bishops and priests of the Roman 
 communion were no longer true bishops or priests ; that the 
 Church of Rome was the synagogue of Satan, the beast or harlot 
 of the Apocalypse. They asserted that the Gospel preached by 
 Christ and His Apostles was an imperfect and temporary dispen- 
 sation, like that of Moses ; that St. Francis was the inspired founder 
 of a new and more glorious Gospel, which was to be preached in 
 all the world by the mendicant friars of his order, and which was 
 destined to endure for ever." — Pp. 31 — 34. 
 
 In maintaining these views concerning the Roman 
 communion, the spiritual Franciscans were much in- 
 debted to the writings of the Abbot Joachim, the cele- 
 brated founder of the Florensian order at the close of 
 the twelfth century, the warm supporter of the Popedom, 
 and the friend of Popes Lucian, Urban, and Clement, 
 and eventually a canonized saint. This is not the place 
 to enter into the discussion of a system of prophetical 
 interpretation, to which much attention has been lately 
 drawn. Its effect upon the Franciscan party will be seen 
 
122 The Protestant Idea of Antichrist. 
 
 by enumerating some out of the twenty heretical tenets 
 charged upon Olivi, or Peter John, the most remarkable 
 of their writers, according to Dr. Todd, who flourished 
 towards the end of the thirteenth century. Olivi taught, 
 according to Eymericus, that " the rule of the Minor 
 Friars, put forth by St. Francis, is truly and properly 
 that Evangelical rule which Christ observed in His own 
 person, enjoined on the Apostles, and caused to be 
 written in His Gospels; that, as the Synagogue was 
 propagated from twelve Patriarchs, and the Church of 
 the Gentiles from twelve Apostles, so the last Church of 
 the remnant of Jews and Gentiles is to be propagated by 
 means of twelve Evangelical men ; whence St. Francis 
 had twelve sons and associates, through whom and in 
 whom was founded and begun the Evangelical order; 
 that the angel Francis will perceive himself to prosper 
 not so much in the carnal Church of the Latins, as in 
 the Greeks, Saracens, Tartars, and, at length, the Jews ; 
 that that Church, which we call the universal Church 
 Catholic militant, is a carnal Church, Babylon, the great 
 harlot corrupting herself and all the nations subjected 
 to her with foul carnalities and Simoniacal lusts, and 
 earthly glory of this world ; that the Roman Church is 
 that woman, the great harlot, spoken of in the Apo- 
 calypse, which once was in the state of paganism, and 
 afterwards in the faith of Christ, which now in many 
 ways has committed fornication with this world." 
 
 This is a specimen of the doctrine of the spiritual 
 Franciscans, and, considering how much more it is to the 
 purpose of our ultra-Protestant brethren than that of 
 either Albigenses or Waldenses, we do wonder that 
 Bishop Newton does not include them am,ong the wit- 
 nesses, " Protestants before even the name came into 
 use." who he conceives have been raised up against the, 
 
The Protestant Idea of Antichrist. 123 
 
 Church of Rome. " Our Saviour," he says, " sent forth 
 His disciples two and two, and it has been observed, 
 that the principal reformers have usually appeared in 
 pairs, as the Waldenses and Albigenses, John Hubs and 
 Jerome of Prague, Luther and Calvin, Cranmer and 
 Ridley." Why should not Peter John Olivi pair with 
 the Abbot Joachim .■' Yet, ungrateful towards those 
 who were the first inventors and propagators of the view 
 adopted by himself, he presently puts forward these 
 Waldenses and Albigenses again, sects which contro- 
 verted with each other, one orthodox, the other heretical, 
 the one akin to the Begging Friars, the other of the 
 stock of the Manichees, as " the true witnesses, and, as 
 I may say, the Protestants of that age." 
 
 Surely it is not without reason that Dr. Todd asks, 
 "Are these the expositors from whom the Church of 
 Christ is to receive the true interpretation of the 
 Prophecies 1 " and " whose bare assertion that their 
 enemies are the Antichrist is to be .received as itself 
 the fulfilment of prophecy, and a proof that ' the time 
 of the end ' is arrived 1 " — P. 34. " These sects," he 
 observes elsewhere, "were for the most part corrupt in 
 doctrine, or ignorant and superstitious in their practice ; 
 and . . . their denunciations of the Roman Church as 
 the Babylon of Prophecy were the offspring of a spirit 
 very different indeed from that in which we should seek 
 for the true interpretation of a book, of which it is 
 written, ' Blessed is he that readeth, and they that hear 
 the words of this prophecy, and keep those things that are 
 written therein! " — P. 497. 
 
 2. 
 
 " Our Protestant forefathers," then, as these unhappy 
 misbelievers have, we believe, with a boldness which we 
 
1 24, The Protestant Idea of Antichrist. 
 
 hardly know whether to applaud or to reprobate, some- 
 times been called, do not themselves shed much lustre 
 upon the doctrine which they originated. However, it 
 is obvious that the more modern witnesses to it are of a 
 much more respectable cast; and its maintainers will 
 not be slow probably in urging this circumstance upon 
 our attention, as a set-off against the disreputable nature 
 of its origin. The Protestant world, it may be said, 
 contains in it multitudes of that high character and 
 intellectual calibre, so learned, so acute, so profound, 
 and so honest, that nothing can stand against the 
 testimony which they bear to the truth of the views 
 of Prophecy which the Albigenses or the Franciscans 
 began. This, then, is the next point to which our 
 attention is naturally called ; and here, though we are 
 far of course from presuming to speak disrespectfully of 
 the qualities of mind which Protestant expositors have 
 possessed (to do which would be the extreme of arro- 
 gance and ignorance), yet so far is quite clear, that this 
 is a case which has put their learning, acuteness, and. 
 other endowments, sorely to task ; for a very little ex- 
 amination of the matter will show that they have made 
 some most considerable slips in their treatment of it. 
 
 This is a most important circumstance in an inquiry 
 in which so much blind reliance must inevitably be 
 placed by students upon their teacher. There is no 
 department of theology in which ordinary men are more 
 at the mercy of an author than that of prophetical 
 interpretation. Creeds are restraints upon divines; and 
 safeguards to readers, in point of doctrine ; moral sense 
 in questions of duty ; the text of Scripture itself in direct 
 exposition and comment ; the existing form and esta- 
 blishment of religion in matters of discipline and polity; 
 but who shall warrant, and who shall verify, discussions 
 
The Protestant Idea of Antichrist. 1 25 
 
 which embrace on the one hand the wide range of his- 
 tory, and necessarily plunge on the other into the subtle- 
 ties of allegory and poetry, which profess to connect and 
 adjust a field so fertile in facts with a page so recondite 
 in character, and that upon no principles, perhaps, but 
 such as approve themselves to the judgment of the 
 individual interpreter ? What a temptation is there 
 under such circumstances for unconscious practising 
 upon the inspired text, or unconscious management of 
 the historical materials? The relative importance of 
 events, their aspect and meaning, the probability of their 
 having occurred, the value of the particular testimony 
 produced, the force of words, the arrangement of dates, 
 these are but a few out of the many matters, in which, 
 from the nature of the case, the personal judgment of 
 the reader is almost excluded, and the dictum of the 
 teacher must be received as law. When then we actually 
 meet with grave and obvious instances of misrepresenta- 
 tion in the statements of certain writers upon Prophecy, 
 and these same repeated from writer to writer, strong 
 suspicion is thrown at once over all such interpretations, 
 which, for what we know, are not better founded than 
 those of which we happen to be able so plainly to dis- 
 cern the unfairness and fallaciousness. These writers 
 are discovered to have taken points for granted, which 
 they had better have examined for themselves, and 
 which turn out to be mistakes, and that in matters of a 
 very sacred character, and involving conclusions most 
 awful towards a great part of the Christian world. Now 
 Mr. Maitlarid, who is one of the few persons who have 
 undertaken to sift the facts on which the ultra- Protestant 
 interpreters of the Prophecies rely, has at once brought 
 to light so many strange mistakes in their statements 
 as to make a candid reader very suspicious, or, rather, 
 
126' The Protestant Idea of Antichrist. 
 
 utterly incredulous, of all allegations made on the mere 
 authority of these writers. 
 
 What can be thought of the zealous Mr. McNeile, for 
 instance, who has been taught by Bishop Hurd to select 
 for a motto to a sermon, which he publishes under the 
 name of " Antichrist," a passage from St. Bernard, as if 
 in reprobation of the Papacy, to the effect that "that 
 beast of the Apocalypse, to whom is given a mouth 
 speaking blasphemies, occupies the chair of Peter, as a 
 lion ready for the prey " ? whereas it turns out that St. 
 Bernard is not speaking of the Pope, but of the Antipope ; 
 is defending the Pope against the Antipope Peter Leo, 
 on whose name he is playing when he compares him to 
 a lion, and whose conduct he denotes by the word 
 occupat,-^\ivih. does not mean "occupies" but "seizes" 
 or " usurps!' 
 
 A second instance occurs in the colour put upon the 
 words of Abbot Joachim by Bishops Hurd and Newton, 
 Mr. McNeile and Mr. Irving, to which Dr. Todd refers 
 in his notes, and Mr. Burgh also in his excellent sermon 
 on Antichrist. These four writers either distinctly state 
 or imply that the Abbot Joachim interpreted of the 
 Pope the passage in 2 Thess. ii., and even the text about 
 the beast in the Apocalypse, whereas he does but say 
 that " Antichrist is born in Rome, and will be elevated 
 to the Apostolic See;" and that, as his system of 
 prophecy proves him to mean, by a usurpation, to the 
 overthrow of the Pope, whose dignity he specifies, be- 
 cause it was the highest which any one could aim at. 
 
 Another misstatement which might be mentioned, 
 not so violent, but quite as real, is the common assertion 
 that Pope Gregory the Great asserted that whoever 
 claimed to be Universal Bishop was Antichrist ; a state- 
 ment which, even when corrected so as to be true in the 
 
The Protestant Idea of Antichrist. 127 
 
 letter, conveys a very incorrect opinion of his meaning 
 to an unlearned reader. St. -Gregory says, that "who- 
 soever adopts or desires the title of Universal Priest is 
 the forerunner of Antichrist ; " by which he does not 
 mean to assert that Antichrist will be a Universal 
 Bishop, that is, the Pope, as Protestants suppose, but 
 that the affectation of supremacy is the presage of some 
 vast evils near to come, even of the reign of the expected 
 Antichrist. The ancients, ever looking out as they were 
 for the end of all things, and knowing that the coming 
 of Antichrist was to be its immediate sign, as the 
 Apostle had determined, were led to discern in evety 
 serious evil which happened to the Church tokens of 
 the coming woe, and called them "forerunners of Anti- 
 christ ;" as we might speak of " crimes which call down 
 judgment," or " are evidence of divine wrath." Instead 
 of speaking of " crying sins," they spoke of " forerunners 
 of Antichrist." Thus TertuUian, St. Dionysius, and St. 
 Cyprian, consider the heathen persecution as the token 
 of Antichrist. St. Cyril of Jerusalem, and St. Athana- 
 sius, call the Arian disturbances "the forerunner of 
 Antichrist ; " as do also St. Gregory Nazianzen and 
 St. Hilary. St. Leo in one place calls Nestorius and 
 Eutyches " forerunners of Antichrist ; " in another, per- 
 sons who resist what the Church has once settled, or who 
 oppose the see of St. Peter. Anastasius speaks of the 
 "ten horns" of the Monophysite heresy as such. And at 
 a later period, Theodorus Studites, writing against the 
 Iconoclasts, considers their proceedings "the apostasy 
 which must first come, the invasion of Antichrist." Pope 
 Gregory then meant doubtless, in the words in ques- 
 tion, to denounce a great evil ; but is in no respect a 
 witness for the Protestant doctrine concerning Anti- 
 christ, unless indeed we are willing to say that by St. 
 
128 The Protestant Idea of Antichrist. 
 
 Athanasius Arius was considered to be Antichrist, oi by 
 St. Leo Eutyches. 
 
 Again, to take another instance : Bishop Newton 
 states that the Pope " is styled and pleased to be styled 
 our Lord God the '2 o-^e.'.'— Dissert. 22. Now the state 
 of the case, as Mr. Maitland has elicited it, seems at 
 greatest disadvantage to be this : that the words oc- 
 curred in a gloss of a canonist named Zenzelius, in one, 
 or more than one, edition of the Decretals, and occurred 
 in the course of an argument, the object of which was 
 to prove that the Pope's words were to be obeyed, 
 because, as all law, civil inclusive, they were the decision 
 of God; — that in other editions they did not occur ; — 
 and that there is reason to believe that they were erased 
 from that in which they did occur ; while it is certain 
 that from ancient times the title Deus has been applied 
 to all bishops, after the pattern of the text quoted by our 
 Lord, " I said ye are Gods." Now we repeat what we 
 have said before, our object is not to defend the Roman 
 Catholics, who must look about them for themselves, 
 but to inquire how facts lie. After such a result of the 
 inquiry in this particular case, what are we to think of a 
 writer like Mr. Edgar, who (in his Varieties of Popery, 
 p. 131, ed. 2), s.ays — 
 
 " A fourth variety, on this subject, makes the Pope superior to 
 God. Equality with the Almighty, it might have been expected, 
 would have satiated the ambition of the pontiff, and satisfied the 
 sycophancy of his minions. But this was not the giddiest step in 
 the scale of blasphemy. The superiority of the Pope over the 
 Creator has been boldly and unblushingly maintained by pontiffs, 
 theologians, canonists, and councils." 
 
 Now it may readily be granted that some of these 
 writers are not possessed of that seriousness and earnest- 
 
The Protestant Idea of Antichrist. 1 29 
 
 ness of mind which entitles them to our respect; but 
 when we consider the character of others, of Mr. 
 McNeile for instance, or Mr. Irving, or others who 
 might be named, it is quite plain that evidences of no 
 common, or rather very uftcommon, candour, imparti- 
 ality, and calmness may fairly be required, before we 
 venture to resign ourselves to an interpreter of pro- 
 phecy, who, from his particular creed or other cause, is 
 under any special temptation (unconsciously) to distort 
 facts, and to wrest or explain away the Scripture text. 
 If men so eminent, so religious, as some of those who 
 might be named, have not come out of this temptation 
 unscathed, who can hope to overcome it ? none surely 
 but those rare specimens of evangelical sanctity which 
 are scattered through the heavens,: like stars, each in his 
 turn ; none but saints and doctors and confessors, men 
 of sound judgment and well-digested learning, whose 
 sufferings in the cause of truth prove their sincerity, and 
 whose mortified lives are the warrant for their illumi- 
 nation. All of us indeed may edify each other, as in 
 doctrine and precept, so in interpretation of prophecy ; 
 viz., by transmitting what we have received from the 
 Church, or by illustrating what is on the surface of 
 Scripture, or by refuting extravagances. But we are 
 speaking of new or further interpretations, whether of 
 the sacred text or of the world's history : and, not at all 
 denying that there is room for these, not at all denying 
 that the new may surpass the old, not denying their 
 desirableness, yet we repeat that no ordinary man can 
 undertake to enunciate them, no man can command our 
 assent, unless he has some portions of that spirit which 
 inspired the prophecy itself And if this be true generally, 
 what an uncommon man must he be, who is to be our 
 guide in unchurching the greater part of Christendom ? 
 VOL, II. Q 
 
130 The Protestant Idea of Antichrist. 
 
 No one can be at a loss to detect a number of feelings 
 and principles which may be present to prejudice sensi- 
 ble and amiable men, or even men of deep intellects, to 
 whom no one would impute that carnal political spirit, 
 or that bitter fanaticism, or that scoffing tone of mind, 
 each of which has in its turn been the fruitful source of 
 interpretations of the Apocalypse. To go no further, 
 even a dutiful temper will lead a writer to say what 
 others of his own party, school, or sect have said before 
 him. He takes for granted their statements, which he 
 has heard from his youth, and repeats them. He has 
 not thrown his mind upon this subject ; he has not ex- 
 amined it for hiniself ; hence it does not occur to him to 
 doubt what he has been taught. Endowments, too, have 
 been provided for the inculcation of a particular view of 
 Prophecy ; and a writer may be exercising his thoughts 
 unf^r them, and thereby be led to say out what he had 
 hitherto but passively held, and would never otherwise 
 have put into words, though he might profess to hold it. 
 The Warburton Lectures, it is well known, were founded, 
 as the words run, "to prove the truth of Revealed Religion 
 in general, and of the Christian in particular, from the 
 completion ,of the prophecies in the Old and New Testa- 
 ment, which relate to the Christian Church, especially to 
 the apostasy of Papal Rome!' It is only surprising that 
 such a foundation has not done more in behalf of its 
 object. In matter of fact, after three lecturers had 
 passed in succession, a fourth could not be found, and 
 for some time there was a suspension of the lecture. 
 Mr. Davison has but one discourse on the subject, and 
 an able .and respected writer, whose Lectures have just 
 appeared, does not bestow upon us even one.* 
 
 Again, venerated writers have been stirred up to speak 
 * [Archdeacon Lyall.] 
 
The Protestant Idea of Antichrist. 131 
 
 of the bishops of Rome as Antichrist, from the fierce 
 persecuting spirit which these bishops have so ofteu 
 evidenced. Men, who are smarting under injuries in- 
 flicted, will naturally view their tormentor in the least 
 favourable light. It was persecution which led the 
 Waldenses to call Rome the Apocalyptic Babylon ; 
 and it has been persecution, or the fear of it, which 
 has led much better and more learned men of modern 
 times to call the Pope Antichrist. Moreover, it should 
 be carefully borne in mind, that Protestants will ever 
 feel a strong temptation to this view, by the ease with 
 which it disposes of the plausible and apparently cogent 
 pi-oofs with which Rome fights her battles. No one can 
 deny that the Roman theory is in the abstract most ex- 
 ceedingly specious and persuasive ; nor can it be refuted 
 without considerable labour and learning, and an appeal 
 to principles which are not felt to be axioms by ordinary 
 minds, and are deficient in practical persuasiveness. The 
 problem then which lies before the Protestant contro- 
 versialist is, to find some popular answer to popular and 
 intelligible pretensions, and the position that Papal Rome 
 is Babylon is the " wherefore " to the " why," — a brief, 
 clear, strong, and simple refutation of them. If once we 
 assume that the Pope is Antichrist, then all the apparent 
 ' evidences in favour of Rome only become the more con- 
 vincing evidences of the truth of the assumption with 
 which we start. Antichrist doubtless is to deceive many ; 
 he is to bring with him a plausible doctrine ; he is to be 
 very like the truth. In consequence, universality, anti- 
 quity, claim to miraculous power, sanctity, all the Notes 
 of the Church, become but symptomatic of its being the 
 Synagogue of Satan. Is it far spreading i" — The reign 
 of Antichrist was to be over the earth. Is it ancient .' 
 — The mystery doth already work, from the Apostles' 
 
132 The Protestant Idea of Antichrist. 
 
 time downwards. Does it profess the power of doing 
 miracles ? — Antichrist is to come with " lying wonders." 
 Is it in appearance holy? — Antichrist is to be Satan 
 transformed into an Angel of light. Has it all these 
 and much niore of cumulative evidence in favour of its 
 divine origin .? It is a mystery of iniquity. Excellently 
 speaks Mr. McNeile, as quoted by Mr. Burgh : 
 
 " It is extremely difficult, without giving rise to misapprehension 
 or misconstruction, to contend against the chamelion shifting of its 
 hypocritical professions. It professes truth, while it circulates false- 
 hood. It professes faith, while it cultivates sight. It professes , 
 spiritual worship, while it practises gross idolatry. It professes' 
 charity, while it is based on intolerance. It professes purity, while 
 it encourages sin. With an oily tongue it professes Christ, while 
 in the depth of an unsanctified heart it is Antichrist" — Antichr., 
 p. 340. 
 
 Again, the Protestant polemic is harassed with ques- 
 tions about the duty of "hearing the Church," about 
 preserving unity, about the patriarchal authority, epis- 
 copal grace, long and unbroken tradition, and the weight 
 of synodal decisions. We do not say the claims of Rome 
 on these various grounds may not be separately and 
 satisfactorily met, but that such answers in detail must 
 be abstruse, circuitous, and ineffective ; on the contrary, 
 when the simple principle is once mastered that the Pope 
 is Antichrist, nothing more is necessary in the contro- 
 versy. It answers to the dogma of the Pope's infalli- 
 bility in the Roman system. A bold, forcible, decisive 
 argument is taken, intelligible to the meanest capacity; 
 it is a tactic which puts an end to skirmishing, manoeu- 
 vring and desultory warfare. A Church can have no 
 rights which has ceased to be a Church. Thus surely it 
 was that Luther made progress, not by appeals to the 
 Fathers, not. by reasonings on the nature of the case, not 
 
The Protestant Idea of Antichrist. 12^1 
 
 by elaborate deductions from Scripture, but by positions 
 venturous, striking, stamped with originality, and suited 
 even to the ignorant, — that we are justified by the sole 
 instrumentality of faith, that our best works are sins, that 
 assurance is possession, and, among these, that the Pope 
 is Antichrist. The advantage of this mode of warfare is 
 pointed out with much naivete, and not less truth, by a 
 controversialist, whose words we quote from a periodical, 
 in which we find them. 
 
 "There are two modes of viewing Popery," he observes, " 1st. 
 As a gigantic system of smW foretold in Scripture, essentially satanic 
 in its origin, distinguished by a variety of errors, and called the 
 ' Apostasy of the latter times ; ' 2ndly. As a Church infected by 
 -various errors, but not the apostasy foretold, its errors being, how- 
 ever, demonstrable from Scripture. On these two modes of viewing 
 Popery, there are grounded two different methods of attacking it. 
 in the first case it is attacked bodily, if I may so speak. It is iden- 
 tified as a system, from its corporate characteristics, with the apos- 
 tasy, or Babylon of the Scriptures, and all its errors and corruptions 
 are brought forward as illustrations of this truth, and as strong 
 confirmatory reasons, on account of which we should obey the man 
 date issued by God Himself, namely, ' Come out of her, my people.' 
 In the second case, instead of attacking the system of Popery, or 
 rather, I should say perhaps, the Popish Church, the assailant ex- 
 poses the errors which it holds, and the contest becomes one simply 
 about doctrines, maintained too, as I have shown elsewhere, by the 
 Protestant advocate, under circumstances very disadvantageous to 
 the cause of truth" 
 
 This writer certainly puts the advantage of calling 
 Christian Rome Babylon in a clear point of view. 
 
 + 
 But more may be said on this subject ; we just now 
 hinted that mere honesty, and impartiality, and talent, 
 are not enough for an interpreter of these awful prophe- 
 cies, but qualities are needed for him more akin to those 
 
134 The Protestant Idea of Antichrist. 
 
 possessed by the inspired writers themselves. Daniel, 
 St. Paul, and St. John, the three prophets of the last 
 days, are also saints. We do not see what good could 
 come to theology from the expositions of the Manichees 
 or the Fratricelli of the middle ages ; no, nor in later 
 times from attendants on Walpole or Pelham, or fre- 
 quenters of the back-stairs at St. James's. Mere decency 
 of life is not a candle bright enough to read withal holy- 
 Apostles or the " man greatly beloved ;" and much more 
 when the matter taken in hand is no less than that of 
 unchurching the greater part of Christendom. A man 
 must be almost an Angel, to stand forth to teach us that 
 the great multitude of Christian bishops are children of 
 the devil. And if he is not an Angel, then he has to 
 show that he himself is not of the family of him who is 
 emphatically, we are told, the " accuser of the brethren." 
 Who, indeed, but the like of ascetic Daniel, much-suffer- 
 ing Paul, and contemplative John, will suffice to es- 
 talalish the paradox that Carlo Borromeo sucked the 
 breast of Babylon, and that Pascal died in her arms? 
 Now, let a candid Protestant decide : is he prepared to 
 match Warburton, Newton, or Hurd, against, we will 
 not say these saints of Scripture, but even against the 
 saints of degenerate Rome ? Is he prepared to sit in 
 judgment on such men as have been named, with no- 
 thing better than Newton for our saint, doctor, bishop, 
 and confessor ? What is there to command respect in 
 Newton's life and character, what to command con- 
 fidence in his intellectual or moral illumination ? 
 
 Now we are going to commit what may seem an in- 
 vidious act, to appeal to the private life of a respectable 
 and amiable man. His Dissertations on the Prophecies, 
 however, are the main source, we suppose, of that anti- 
 Roman opinion on the subject of Antichrist, now afloat 
 
The Protestant Idea of Antichrist. 135 
 
 among us, as far as men have an opinion ; and if we 
 venture to speak hardly against him, it is only to prevent 
 his being believed, when he speaks hardly of his betters. 
 His work, on its first appearance, went through six large 
 editions in the course of thirty years, and was translated 
 into German and Danish. Its influence has undoubtedly 
 been great : let us then see what its author was worth ; 
 and this we are enabled to do from the circumstance of 
 his having also bequeathed to the world an Autobio- 
 graphy, never to be forgotten. It was written with a 
 winning gentleness and calmness ; but some extracts 
 will soon decide for us whether he had much of insight 
 into the spiritual world. Surely an author who charged 
 the greater part of Christendom with satanical error, has 
 no right to complain of being convicted out of his own 
 mouth of a secular spirit 
 
 " In the first year of the king's reign," he says, " there was a re- 
 markable mortality among the great bishops : Hoadly, of Win- 
 chester, who died April 17 ; Sherlock, of London, who died July 
 18 ; and Gilbert, of York, who died August 9, all in the year 1761. 
 Dr. Newton'' [this is the writer himself] "had the honour of being 
 in some measure known to the Earl of Bute, having baptized one 
 or two of his children, and having sometimes met him at Leicester 
 House, when as chaplain he had been in attendance upon the 
 Princess of Wales. He had also presented to Mm the three volumes 
 of his Dissertations on the Prophecies, having obtained the favour 
 .of his lordship to present them to the Prince of Wales. Upon the 
 death of Bishop Sh,erlock, Lord Bute told a noble lord, a particular 
 friend of Dr. Newton's, that he would certainly be the new bishop, 
 and would be obliged to no minister for his promotion : it was 
 entirely the doing of the king himself and the Princess of Wales. 
 .... He " [the Duke of Newcastle] ♦' had been so long used to 
 shuffle and cut the cards, that he well knew how to pack them in 
 such a manner as to have the honours " [for instance, the see of 
 London] " dealt to his particular friends ; and on the day when 
 they were all appointed to kiss the king's hand, Drummond for 
 York, Hayter for London, Thomas for Salisbury, Yonge for Nor- 
 
136 The Protestant Idea of Antichrist. 
 
 wichj and Green for Lincoln, Newton, who was to succeed Yonge 
 in the bishopric of Bristol and residentiariship of St. Paul's, had 
 no notice sent him from the office as the rest had ; so much less 
 regard was paid to the king's nomination than to the minister's. 
 He was in some doubt whether he ought to go to court ; but being 
 persuaded to go, he met the Duke of Newcastle upon the great stairs, 
 and asked him whether he was in the right, whether he was come 
 for any good purpose. Aye, aye, said the duke, you are right, go 
 on and prosper \ and the same was confirmed to him above stairs 
 by Mr. Jenkinson, who was. then Lord Bute's secretary. .... The 
 Bishop of Bristol" [himself] "was no great gainer by his fre, 
 ferments for he was obliged to give up the prebend of Westminster, 
 the precentorship of York, the lectureship of St. George's Hanover 
 Square, and the genteel office of sub-almoner ; but, however, he 
 was rather better pleased with his little bishopric and the residenti- 
 ariship of St. Paul's, than he would have been with the large and 
 extensive and laborious diocese of Lincoln, for which his friend 
 was in all respects much better qualified. St. Paul's had always 
 been the object of his wish, and he used to say that if he could get 
 into Amen Corner, he should arrive at the end of his prayers. 
 'Hoc erat in votis,' but 'Dii melius fecere."'-^Zj^, pp. 112 — 115. 
 
 Or take another anecdote of an earlier date : 
 " When he waited upon the archbishop " [Gilbert, of York,] " at 
 Kew, his grace further informed him that among other things the 
 king had said, that, though he had no reason X.o find fault with the 
 length of Dr. Newton's sermons, yet, as he would now preach 
 oftener before him, he must desire that he would be particularly 
 short, especially on the great festivals, for he was an old man, and 
 if the sermon was long he was in danger of falling asleep and 
 catching cold, and it would fatigue him too much, especially on 
 those days when he was afterwards to come down into the chapel 
 to receive the Sacrament. The doctor" [himself] "had before 
 taken care in his sermons at court to come within the compass of 
 twenty minutes, but after this, especially on the great festivals, he 
 never exceeded fifteen, so that the king sometimes said to the clerk 
 of the closet, a short goad sermon. But Archbishop Gilberfs 
 favours did not stop here. The Archbishop of York is fiot a very 
 good patron, but he gave him one of the mast valuable pieces aj 
 preferment in the church of York, the precentorship which he held 
 till he was promoted to a bishopric, etc., etc." — Pp. 104, loj. 
 
The Protestant Idea of Antichrist. 137 
 
 In a like spirit, he tells us of the mastership of the 
 Charter House, that Bishop Benson and Dr. Jortin used 
 to say that there was a certain time of their lives, when 
 of all preferments they wisJted for it the most. — P. 32. 
 Speaking of his own residence in Lord Carpenter's 
 family, he says that, " Here he " (that is himselO ''stuck 
 some time without any promotion .... he waited often 
 upon the bishop," of Durham, "and sat with him an 
 hour or two in the evening, and often dined with him 
 on a Sunday;" and he adds that, though the bishop con- 
 tinued in his see about twenty years, "yet in all that 
 time he bestowed no preferment upon this young man, 
 of whose company he seemed so desirous," p. 41 ; he 
 says that " Mrs. Devenish, like a true friend, took every 
 opportunity of commending him to" the Prince and 
 Princess of Wales, "and leaving a good impression of his 
 character, which long after was of great service to him, 
 and may be said to be the groundwork of his best pre- 
 ferment" and that she also " first introduced him to the 
 acquaintance of Lord Bath," two introductions which 
 "he ever esteemed as two of the most fortunate cir- 
 cumstances, the most happy incidents in all his life!' 
 — P. 45. He tells us, moreover, that the rectory of 
 St. Mary-le-Bow, to which he was afterwards preferred 
 through the interest of Lord Bath, though he was forty 
 years old before he obtained any living, "was likewise 
 esteemed a fortunate living, the two former rectors, Dr. 
 Lisle and Dr. Blandford, having been made bishops," 
 pp. 72, 73 ; that " the bishopric, which of all others " 
 Dr. Pearce "most desired was Peterborough, but Pro- 
 vidence saw fit to dispose of matters otherwise, and sent 
 him further to a better bishopric, — to Bangor." — P. 79. 
 
 Moreover, as if to give us some further insight into his 
 character, he informs us that "as long as Dr. Trebeck 
 
13^ The Protestant Idea of Antichrist. 
 
 lived, Dr. Newton continued to board with his family, 
 from his old principle of avoiding as much as possible the 
 trouble of housekeeping; but the breaking up of the 
 family naturally engaged him to think seriously again of 
 matrimony; for he found the study of sacred and classic 
 authors ill agreed with accounts of butchers' and bakers' 
 bills, and by daily experience he was convinced more 
 and more that it was not good for man to live alone, 
 without an help meet for him." " And especially" he con- 
 tinues, " when he had some prospect of a bishopric, fresh 
 difficulties and troubles opened to his view ; there would 
 be a better table and public days to be kept ; and he 
 plainly foresaw that he must either fall a prey to servants 
 or fnust look out for some clever sensible woman to be 
 his wife, who had some knowledge and experience of the 
 world, who was a prudent manager, who could do the 
 honours of his table in a becoming manner, who had 
 no more taste and love of pleasure than a reasonable 
 woman should have, who would be happier in staying 
 with her husband at home than in perpetually gadding 
 abroad, would be careful and tender of his health, and in 
 short be a friend and companion of all hours." — Pp. i lo, 
 III. He was at this time fifty-seven, and " it was happy 
 for him," he adds, " that such a woman was in his eye," 
 one whom " he had known from a little child in a white 
 frock, and had observed her through all the parts of her 
 life." 
 
 Assuredly there is nothing high in all this ; of Newton's 
 kindness of heart and amiablenesswe have nodoubt at all; 
 but a man so idolatrous of comfort, so liquorish of pre- 
 ferment, whose most fervent aspiration apparently was 
 that he might ride in a carriage and sleep on down, whose 
 keenest sorrow that he could not get a second appoint- 
 ment without relinquishing the first, who cast g. regretful 
 
The Protestant Idea of Antichrist. 139 
 
 look back upon his dinner while he was at supper, and 
 anticipated his morning chocolate in his evening muffins, 
 who will say that this is the man, not merely to unchurch, 
 but to smite, to ban, to wither the whole of Christendom 
 for many centuries, and the greater part of it even in 
 his own day, if not, as we shall presently show to be the 
 case, indirectly his own branch also. Nay, he does not 
 spare even the Church of the Nicene era, for while he 
 maintains that the monks "revived and promoted the 
 worship of demons" and either out of credulity or for 
 worse reasons recommended it to the people with all 
 the pomp and power of their eloquence in their homilies 
 and orations, he refers to " some of the most celebrated 
 fathers" St. Basil, St. Ephrem, St. Gregory Nazianzen, 
 St. Gregory Nyssen, and St. Chrysostom, as being " full 
 of this sort of superstition;" and, he adds, "all these 
 were monks, and most of them bishops too ; the monks, 
 these were the principal promoters of the worship of the 
 dead in former times ; — and who are the great patrons 
 and advocates of the same worship now ? Are not tlieir 
 legitimate successors and descendants, the monks, and 
 priests, and bishops of the Church of Rome .■•" — Dis- 
 sert. 23. Now, if this be so, if Chrysostom, Basil, and 
 the rest, were but monks and bishops, one is tempted to 
 ask what was Thomas Newton ? Not a monk certainly, 
 but a bishop, and such a bishop as felt thankful that his 
 diocese did not give him much trouble, and thereby re- 
 signed himself to the loss of more eminent dignities. Is 
 this the man to sit in judgment on Chrysostom .■" is he the 
 man to be trusted rather than Chrysostom } To which 
 of the two do the souls of men owe the more } which 
 was the more zealous preacher t which resisted luxury 
 and mammon more boldly.' which was more like St. 
 John the Baptist in a royal court 1 Let us know theft 
 
I40 The Protestant Idea of Antichrist. 
 
 where we are to find ourselves if we are to interpret pro- 
 phecy on this rule ; will it be pleasant to have exchanged 
 St Chrysostom for Newton, or St. Basil for Warburton ? 
 Is this good company to live and die in ? Who would 
 not rather be found even with Whitfield and Wesley, 
 than with ecclesiastics whose life is literary ease at the 
 best, whose highest flights attain but to Dov/ning Street 
 or the levee ? 
 
 5. 
 
 We are engaged in a very invidious task ; but still, 
 since we have begun it, we wish to go through with it, by 
 submitting to the reader some notice of certain persons 
 whom Newton's theory cuts off from the hope of sal- 
 vation. And first let us consider the life and character 
 of that limb of Antichrist, as Newton must think hitn. 
 Carlo Borromeo, Archbishop of Milan, Cardinal of the 
 Roman Church, and nephew to Pope Pius IV. For this 
 purpose we make use of the valuable work of Mr. Palmer. 
 It seems that, when he came to reside at Milan, he volun- 
 tarily resigned benefices and estates to the value of 
 80,000 crowns per annum, reserving only an income of 
 20,000 crowns. The principality of Oria, which had 
 become his property by the death of his brother, he sold 
 for 40,000 crowns, which he commanded his almoners to 
 distribute among the poor and the hospitals. When the 
 list which the almoners showed him for the distribution 
 amounted, by mistake, to 2,000 crowns more, Carlo said 
 the mistake was too much to the advantage of the poor 
 to be corrected, and the whole was accordingly distri- 
 buted. When his brother died, he also caused all the rich 
 furniture and jewels of the family to be sold, and gave 
 the price, which amounted to 30,000 crowns, to the poor. 
 Several other cases of charity, on an equally large scale. 
 
The Protestant Idea of Antichrist. 141 
 
 ■might be added. His chief almoner was ordered to dis- 
 tribute among the poor of Milan, of whom he kept an 
 exact list, 200 crowns every month ; Carlo would nevei 
 permit any beggar to be dismissed without some alms, 
 whatever he was. He was exceedingly hospitable and 
 liberal in entertaining princes, prelates, and strangers of 
 all ranks, but always without luxury ; and he endea- 
 voured as much as possible to conceal his own abstemi- 
 ousness. His religious foundations, his repairs of churches, 
 of the dwellings of the clergy, and of the seminaries of 
 learning, not only at Milan but at Bologna, Rome, and 
 many other places, were on the most magnificent scale of 
 liberality. 
 
 He found his diocese in extreme disorder. The great 
 truths of salvation were little known or understood ; and 
 religious practices were profaned by the grossest abuses, 
 and disfigured by superstitions. The sacraments were 
 neglected ; the clergy seem scarcely to have known how 
 to administer them, and were slothful, ignorant, and 
 depraved. The monasteries too were in a scandalous con- 
 dition. Carlo instituted seminaries for the instruction of 
 the clergy ; appointed a number of vicars, or rural deans, 
 who exercised a vigilant superintendence over every part 
 of his diocese ; and held many provincial and diocesan 
 synods, in which the most excellent and judicious regula- 
 tions were made and enforced with inflexible firmness. 
 In the course of his proceedings he frequently encoun- 
 tered the most violent opposition from those who were 
 unwilling to be corrected. The order of monks called 
 Humiliati were particularly irritated by his labours for 
 their reform, and excited against him one of their 
 members, who actually fired a musket at the archbishop, 
 as he was one evening at prayers. Carlo calmly finished 
 his prayers, though the ball had struck his vestment, and 
 
142 The Protestant Idea of Antichrist. 
 
 then, with truly Christian charity, forgave ihe assassin, 
 and even soHcited his pardon. But justice took its course, 
 and the order was suppressed by the Pope. 
 
 Carlo divided the revenue of his see into three parts ; 
 one of which was appropriated to his household, another 
 |:o the poor, and a third to the repairs of churches : and 
 it was his custom to lay before the Provincial Councils 
 the accounts of his revenues to the last farthing, saying 
 that he was no more than an administrator or steward. 
 He employed no clergy of his own kin in the govern- 
 ment of his diocese ; nor did he make over to them any 
 of the benefices which had been conferred on him. 
 
 " It was one of his greatest pleasures," continues Mr. 
 Palmer, " to converse with and catechise the poor ; and 
 he would often visit them in the wildest and most 
 mountainous parts of his diocese. On one occasion 
 while he was engaged in his visitation, the Bishop of 
 Ferrara, coming to meet him, found him lying under a 
 fit of ague on a coarse bed, and in a very poor cottage. 
 Borromeo, observing his surprise, remarked, 'that he 
 was treated very well, and much better than he deserved.' 
 During the dreadful ravages of a pestilence, this excel- 
 lent man encouraged his clergy to administer the conso- 
 lations of religion to the sick and dying, and he was 
 himself assiduous in the performance of this dangerous 
 duty." On this occasion he sold all his furniture to 
 procure medicine and nourishment for the unhappy 
 sufferers. He was careful not to lose a moment of his 
 time ; even at table he listened to some pious book, or 
 dictated letters or instructions. He was remarkable for 
 sincerity ; it appeared in all his words and actions ; and 
 his promises were inviolable. He delighted in prayer, to 
 which he gave a large part of his time; and he never 
 said any prayer or performed any religious office with 
 
The Protestant Idea of Antichrist, 143 
 
 precipitation, whatever business of importance might be 
 on his hands, or however he might be pressed for time. 
 In giving audience and in the greatest hurry of business 
 his countenance, his modesty, and all his words, showed 
 that he was full of the recollection of God. " His spirit 
 of prayer and the love of God which filled his heart gave 
 to him remarkably the power of exciting and encourag- 
 ing others to religion. A short address, even a single 
 word or action, sometimes produced the most powerful 
 effects in animating his clergy to repentance and to 
 virtue. 
 
 "This great and good man died in 1584, in the forty- 
 seventh year of his age ; with the same piety and 
 sanctity which adorned his short but admirable life." — 
 Church History, pp. 226 — 229. 
 
 Or what would Bishop Newton say to that other 
 great saint whose life Mr. Palmer sketches, St. Francis 
 de Sales .' 
 
 " He was much respected by Baza and the rest of the Reformed 
 in Switzerland ; and the excellence of his own character, and the 
 piety and meekness which he always evinced, probably did more 
 for his cause than any other arguments by which it was sustained. 
 The plague at one time raged violently in the place where he re- 
 sided, but this did not deter him from assisting the sick in their 
 last moments by day and night ; and he was wonderfiilly preserved 
 in the pestilence, which carried off several of the clergy who aided 
 him. In 1599 he became coadjutor of the Bishop of Annecy, with 
 the right of succession to that see ; and soon after he was obliged 
 to go to France, where he was received by all ranks and classes 
 with the utmost distinction. He preached before the king, who 
 endeavoured to detain him in France by promises of a large pension 
 and of the first vacant bishopric : but Francis de Sales declined all 
 these offers, and, returning to the poor bishopric of Annecy, was 
 soon after, on the death of his predecessor, consecrated its pastor 
 in 1602. He now laid down a plan of life, to which he ever after 
 rigorously adhered. He resolved to wear no expensive clothing ; 
 to have no paintings except of a devotional character in his house 
 
144 The Protestant Idea of Antichrist. 
 
 to possess no splendid furniture ; to use no coach or carriage, but 
 make his visitations on foot. His family was to consist of two 
 priests, one to act as his chaplain, the other to superintend his ser- 
 vants and temporalities ; his table to be plain and frugal. He re- 
 solved to be present at all religious and devotional meetings and 
 festivals in the churches ; to distribute abundant alms ; to visit the 
 sick and poor in prison ; to rise every day at four, meditate for an 
 hour, read private service, then prayers with his family, then to read 
 the Scriptures, celebrate the holy eucharist, and afterwards apply 
 to business till dinner. He then gave an hour to conversation, 
 and the remainder of the afternoon to business and prayer. After 
 supper he read a pious book to his family for an hour, then prayed 
 with them, and retired to his private devotions and to rest. Such 
 was the general mode of life of this excellent man. 
 
 " Immediately after he became bishop he applied himself to 
 preaching and to all the other duties of his station. He was very 
 cautious in conferring holy orders, ordaining but few clergy, and 
 only after a most rigid examination of their qualifications. He was 
 also exceedingly diligent in promoting the instruction of the igno- 
 rant by catechising on Sundays and holy days ; and his personal 
 labours in this respect had a very great influence in persuading the 
 clergy of his diocese to follow so good an example. He still con- 
 tinued to delight in preaching in small villages and to the poorest 
 people, whom he regarded as the special objects of his care." — 
 liid.,^. 230. 
 
 The disinterested spirit which he had early manifested 
 always continued. When he was solicited by Henry IV., 
 king of France, to accept an abbey of large income, he 
 refused it, saying, " that he dreaded riches as much as 
 others desired them ; and that the less he had of them 
 the less he should have to answer for." The same prince 
 offered to name him for the dignity of cardinal at the 
 next promotion ; but he replied that, though he did not 
 despise the proffered dignity he was persuaded that 
 great titles did not suit him, and might raise new 
 obstacles to his salvation. His conscientious firmness 
 was also remarkable. On one occasion the parliament 
 
The Protestunt Idea' of Antichrist. 145 
 
 of Chambery, in Savoy, seized his temporalities for re- 
 fusing, at its desire, to publish an ecclesiastical censure 
 which he thought uncalled-for by the circumstances of 
 the case. When he heard of the seizure of his pos« 
 sessions, he said that he thanked God for teaching him 
 by it, "that a bishop is altogether spiritual." He did 
 not desist from preaching, or apply to the sovereign for 
 redress ; but behaved in so kind and friendly a manner 
 to those who had insulted him most grossly, that at 
 length the parliament became ashamed of ita pro- 
 ceedings, and restored his temporalities. In 1619, while 
 he was in Paris, he preached a course of Lent Sermons, 
 which, aided by his conferences, the example of his holy 
 life, and the sweetness of his discourse, most powerfully 
 moved, not only the devout, but even libertines and 
 atheists. He was entreated, for the sake of his health, 
 not to preach twice in the day. He replied, with a 
 smile, "that it cost him much less to preach a sermon 
 than to find an excuse for himself when invited to per- 
 form that office. God had appointed him to be a pastor 
 and a preacher, and ought not every one to follow his 
 profession.'" "On one occasion," says Mr. Palmer, "seeing 
 a vicious and scandalous priest thrown into prison, he 
 fell at his feet, and with tears conjured him to have com- 
 passion on him his pastor, on religion which he scan- 
 dalized, and on his own soul. The man was so deeply 
 impressed with his conduct, that he was entirely con- 
 verted, and became a virtuous man from that moment." 
 
 6. 
 
 Here the reader may be tempted to exclaim, "AH 
 this is unfair and a fallacy. It is a fallacy to contrast 
 Newton with Chrysostom or Borromeo ; it is to take a 
 bad specimen of a good system and a good specimen 
 
 VOL. II. 10 
 
146 The Protestant Idea of Antichrist. 
 
 of a bad one. How does it prove that the Protestant 
 system is bad or the Roman good, because holy men 
 have been not of, but in, the latter, and sycophants or 
 worldlings in, though not rf, the former ? " Now such 
 an objection is founded on a misapprehension of the 
 state of the case ; and to show this will carry us on to 
 a further remark to which we wish to direct attention. 
 The truth is, that when people so freely call Rome 
 Babylon and the Pope Antichrist, they know not what 
 they are saying and whither they are going. They think 
 to make exceptions ; they think to confine their imputa- 
 tion of corruption and apostasy within bounds ; they 
 think, on the one hand, to except Bernard or Fenelon, 
 and to keep clear of their own Church on the other. On 
 the latter point something more presently ; here we do 
 but observe in answer to that wish to make exceptions, 
 which the objection, as we have stated it, involves, that 
 it is directly in opposition to the plain letter of Scrip-, 
 ture. If the bishop of Rome be " the man of sin, the 
 son of perdition, the lawless one," what are those who 
 receive and submit to him } Hear the Apostle's de- 
 scription of them : " They received not the love of the 
 truth, that they might be saved ; and for this cause God 
 shall send them strong delusion that they should believe 
 a lie, that they all might be damned who believed not in 
 the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness." But it 
 may be said that if Papists have the love of the truth, 
 they are not involved in the ruin of Antichrist ; — rather 
 surely we ought to say, since Papists may have the 
 love of the truth, therefore the Pope is not Antichrist. 
 Followers of Antichrist are in the above text described 
 as utterly lost; which Papists, it seems, need not be. 
 However, let us suppose this text of doubtful cogency ; 
 what will be said of the following ?- -" He opeiled his 
 
The Protestant Idea of Antichrist. 147 
 
 mouth to blaspheme His name and His tabernacle, and 
 them that dwell in heaven ; and power was given him 
 over all kindreds and tongues and nations, and all that 
 dwell upon the earth shall worship him, whose names are 
 net written, in the book of life." Now who could be said 
 to worship the Pope, if Borromeo and Fenelon did not ; 
 Fenelon who implicitly resigned his private judgment to 
 him ; Borromeo, a Pope's nephew, who was especially- 
 employed by him in the composition of the Catechism 
 of Trent ? However, it may be said, captiously as we 
 think, that, though all whose names are not written do 
 worship him, still (if so be) some whose names are 
 written may worship him also. Must then the screw be 
 driven tighter still ? — then listen. " If any man worship 
 the beast, and his image, and receive his mark, in his 
 forehead, or in his hand," (and we are told shortly before 
 that " he caused all, both small and great, rich and poor, 
 free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand or 
 in their foreheads,") the same slrnll drink of the wine of 
 the wrath of God, which is poured out without mixture 
 into the cup of His indignation ; and he shall be tor- 
 mented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the 
 holy angels, and in the presence of the Lamb, and the 
 smoke of their torment ascendeth up for ever and ever, 
 and they have no rest day nor night who worship the 
 beast and his image, and whosoever receiveth the mark 
 of his name," 
 
 We entreat indulgence of serious minds for quoting 
 such very awful words in a composition of this kind ; 
 but it is most necessary to bring before all thinking men 
 the real state of the case, and respectfully and anxiously 
 to warn them what they are doing, when they so con- 
 fidently and solemnly pronounce Christian Rome to be 
 Babylon. Do they know what they say .? do they really 
 
148 The Protestant Idea of Antichrist. 
 
 resign themselves in faith, as they profess to do, to the 
 sovereign word of God as they interpret it ? Do they 
 in faith make over the millions upon millions now and 
 in former times who have been in subjection to the 
 Roman See to utter and, hopeless perdition ? Do they 
 in very truth look upon them as the direct and open 
 enemies of God, and children of Satan ? Then surely 
 they ought to show this much more in acts, in the fruits 
 of such faith, than even the most zealous of them have 
 adopted ; then is mere exclusion of Romanists from 
 political power a very poor and miserable way of sepa- 
 rating themselves from the kingdom of Satan. If even 
 heresy stops the channels of sacramental grace, if there 
 are degrees of moral corruption which bid fair to destroy 
 the being of a Church and annul even the most canonical 
 Succession, if we are to shun and abhor those in whom 
 the prince of this world works, what ought to be our 
 acts and our feelings towards the embodied idea of 
 rebellion and pride, towards him who is pure evil, who 
 is to be revealed as the son of perdition, and who is 
 destined from the beginning for divine wasting and 
 destruction ? How any thoughtful person can hold/ 
 though we know there are very thoughtful persons 
 who do, that any one can be in communion with Anti- 
 christ without partaking of his plagues, or that to re- 
 ceive Orders from him is not an act of communion 
 with him in those who receive those Orders, or that 
 they who transmitted to us our Orders from Rome 
 could give the Orders without the plagues ; — or again, 
 how men can conceive that the English Church can 
 recognize the Orders of a Roman priest on his coming 
 over to it, and yet hold that he gained them from 
 Babylon, — or how men, thinking that the Pope is the 
 Beast of the Apocalypse, can endure the sight of any of 
 
The Protestant Idea of Antichrist. 149 
 
 his servants, can join in distributing the Bible with them, 
 or can sit with them in the same Council or Parliament, 
 or can do business with them, buy and sell, trade and 
 traffic, or can gaze upon and admire the architecture of 
 churches built by Antichrist, or make much of his pic- 
 tures, — or how they can read any book of his servants, 
 Pascal's " Thoughts " or Kempis's " Imitation of Christ," 
 — or works of theology, as those of the Benedictines, 
 Tillemont, or Fleury, — or even school books, Delphin 
 classics, or Gradus ad Parnassum, — or how they can go 
 abroad into Roman Catholic countries without necessity, 
 prying into their churches and gazing on their pro- 
 cessions ; — all this is to us inexplicable. " What fel- 
 lowship," as the Apostle asks, " hath righteousness with 
 unrighteousness ? and what communion hath light with 
 darkness ? and what concord hath Christ with Belial, or 
 what part hath he that believeth with an infidel ? and 
 what agreement hath the Temple of God with idols ? " 
 Or in the words of another Apostle, to which Dr. Todd 
 refers, p. 321, "doth a fountain send forth at the same 
 place sweet water and bitter.? Can the fig-tree bear 
 olive-berries .' either a vine figs .' " What then is there 
 in Antichrist that we can admire or take interest in ? 
 
 This surely is a principle which comes home to us, and 
 approves itself both to our feelings and judgments. If 
 Englishmen, as is certain, do not start with abhorrence 
 from the members of the Church of Rome, surely this is 
 a clear proof that they do not really account Rome to 
 be Babylon, though they may seem to affirm it. We 
 are surely fighting with a shadow ; there is no difficulty 
 here ; those who denounce Rome and its bishops do 
 not mean what they say. They do not mean to say that 
 this Pope and that Pope are utterly and hopelessly lost 
 beyond the power of repentance : they do not mean that 
 
150 The Protestant Idea of Antichrist. 
 
 to hold communion with him is to be involved in his 
 plagues. They may say so in their closets ; they do not 
 say so, in proportion as they come into contact with those 
 whom they denounce. They keep their ground, as far 
 as their insular position has hold upon them ; but they 
 do give way, just so far as they cease to be islanders. 
 This then, after all, is what thoughtful persons mean 
 when they call Rome the seat of Antichrist, — nothing 
 more than that it has the spirit of Antichrist in it ; not 
 that it is bodily God's enemy, but that it has in it Sa- 
 XzxAcaS. principles. And then perhaps in process of time 
 they go on to the further doctrine, that these same bad 
 principles are also, though not of course in the same 
 degree, in Protestant countries and Protestant systems 
 of doctrine. But all this is to give up the point in dis- 
 pute, for either the Popes come up to the full stature 
 of Antichrist, or we must look for Antichrist else- 
 where. This is what Dr. Todd has remarked in his 
 Discourses : — 
 
 " The advocates of the opinion," he says, " that the corruptions 
 of popery have been foretold in these prophecies, are ^reduced to 
 this dilemma ; they must either evade and soften down the obvious 
 declarations of Scripture by misrepresenting the real characters of 
 the prediction ; or else they must deny the possibility of salvation 
 in the Church of Rome, — they must be prepared to assert that 
 every one who has lived and died in that communion is utterly and 
 irretrievably perished for ever." — P. 323. 
 
 7- 
 
 So much on the calumny itself ; but it maybe ob- 
 jected that the mere fact that the Continental Churches 
 should be called, and called so extensively, by such 
 fearful or such shocking names, is a proof that they in 
 some degree merit it. Even a heathen said, "Caesar's 
 wife must not be suspected ;" and, in like manner, there 
 
The Protestant Idea of Antichrist. 151 
 
 is at first sight surely a slur cast on the sanctity of a 
 communion which has, in matter of fact, been desig- 
 nated by titles which are almost too odious to mention. 
 Honour is almost part of ^__.stity ; and shall the imma- 
 culate Bride of the Lamb be called sorceress, harlot, 
 mother of abominations, habitation of devils, and her 
 chief ruler be considered the man of sin, the enemy of 
 God, and the son of perdition ? The Church of Rome is 
 thus circumstanced, therefore she is not the true Church. 
 
 We consider this to be an argument eminently suc- 
 cessful with the imagination, and yet a few sentences of 
 Scripture and facts of history will serve, if we mistake 
 not, to destroy its force. — For, first of all, our Saviour 
 was called a deceiver, a man gluttonous and a wine- 
 b'bber, a blasphemer, a Samaritan, a demoniac. He was 
 crucified, and that between thieves ; has " the offence of 
 the cross " ceased ">. are we better than He ? 
 
 But further, it is a very impressive and touching fact, 
 that He Himself has told us that His Church should 
 have to bear the same reproach with Him : — " If they 
 have called the Master of the house Beelzebub, how much 
 more shall they call them of the household ? " 
 
 Antichrist, then, is almost foretold to be the title which 
 His representatives and servants should bear. The im- 
 putation of it may almost be called one of the Notes 
 of the Church. We say deliberately, that " Antichrist," 
 " Babylon," " Moiher of Harlots," " Beast," these titles 
 given to the Church by the world, are as much a note 
 of her being Christ's Church as her real inward sanctity 
 is. Rome must not monopolize these titles ; Rome has 
 them not alone ; we share them with Rome ; it is our 
 privilege to share them ; Anglo-Catholics inherit them 
 from the Roman family, from their common Lord and 
 Saviour. Rome must not appropriate them ; the early 
 
152 The Protestant Idea 0/ Antichrist. 
 
 Church had them. We take it as a clear mark that 
 we are the Church, and Rome the Church, and both 
 the same Church, because in these titles we are joint- 
 heirs of the Church of St. Cornelius and St. Augustine. 
 Heretics have generally taken high ground, considered 
 themselves saints, called the Church by foul and fright- 
 ful names ; it is their very wont to speak, not against 
 the Son of Man, for He is away, but against those who 
 represent Him during His absence. The Montanists 
 called Catholics " the natural men," the Novatians called 
 them " the Apostates," the Donatists called them " trai- 
 tors " and " sinners," called St. Peter's chair the seat of 
 pestilence, washed the very pavement which Catholics 
 had trodden, and maintained that the whole Church had 
 perished except the fragment in connexion with them- 
 selves ; the Luciferians called the Church " the devil's 
 harlot," and " the synagogue of Satan." This is a 
 sample of the language which has ever been applied to 
 the fold of Christ by those who are cast out of it. Dr. 
 Todd has shown us that the Albigenses, gross Mani- 
 chees as they were, disbelievers in the Incarnation, 
 deriders of Baptism, and enemies of all external reli- 
 gion, still conceived themselves in a position to call 
 the Roman Church "the mother of fornications, and 
 the basilica of the devi-l,: and the synagogue of Satan, and 
 the den of thieves, and the Apocalyptic harlot ; " while 
 the Waldenses called it " the Church of the malignants," 
 and "Babylon." There is then nothing to surprise us 
 in the language which Protestants have used, whether 
 against us or against the Roman Catholics ; they do 
 but know and take their own place, and act conform- 
 ably to their function in the history of Christianity. 
 
 We are tempted to add one remarkable illustration in 
 point, in addition to the above furnished to us by Dt 
 
The Protestant Idea of Antichrist. 153 
 
 Todd, from a treatise now in course of publication, 
 which from circumstances has attracted some attention, 
 A work indeed of such talent and such range as "An- 
 cient Christianity " of course deserves attention on its 
 own ground from persons interested in its subject, — that 
 is, will deserve it when it is completed. At present it 
 is only in an inchoate state, and if we attempted at this 
 moment to master the author's argument, we might find 
 on his finishing it in subsequent numbers, that it as 
 little resembled our conceptions of it, as any complete 
 copy of a work resembles its first rough draught. We 
 have in consequence felt it right to be patient, and to 
 wait and see where he ends, a resolution in which we 
 are confirmed by finding it adopted by others beside 
 ourselves, and persons too not agreeing with us in 
 theological views. The particular point for which we 
 now refer to him, is his avowal, as Dr. Todd quotes him, 
 that the state of the Church of the fourth century is the 
 fulfilment of the prophecy in i Tim. iv., concerning " the 
 apostasy of some from the faith," in " forbidding to 
 marry, and commanding to abstain from meats." Dr. 
 Todd's remarks on this passage, which form the subject 
 of his sixth lecture, are very valuable. He observes, 
 (after Mede so far,) that the prophecy is a continua- 
 tion of the train of thought begun at the conclusion of 
 the foregoing chapter. The Apostle had said, "great 
 is the mystery of godliness," and, after describing it, he 
 adds, " but the Spirit speaketh expressly that some shall 
 apostatize from the faith," this faith once for all de- 
 livered, — " the great mystery of godliness." If this be 
 so, it will follow that the falling away or apostasy to 
 come is a denial of the Incarnation ; a conclusion which 
 is singularly confirmed by St. John's words, " Every 
 spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in 
 
154' The Protestant Idea of Antichrist., 
 
 the flesh is not of God, and this is. that spirit of Anti- 
 christ, whereof ye have heard that it shall come, and 
 even now already is it in the world ; " or, as St. Paul 
 speaks, " the mystery of iniquity doth already work ; " 
 — a pointed contrast being intended by the Apostle 
 between the mystery of truth and the mystery of error. 
 St. Peter confirms this view by prophesying, as the great 
 evil which lies before the Church, " false teachers " who 
 shall " privily bring in damnable heresies, even denying 
 the Lord that bought them." Then as to the two speci- 
 fied points which mark the Apostasy, — of forbidding 
 marriage and meats, — every one who can read his Greek 
 Testament must know quite well, that the word rendered 
 " meats " has as little to do with flesh specially, (which 
 is what the Roman Church or the Nicene Church has 
 in view when it enjoins fasting,) as the word sweetnuat 
 in English has. " It denotes food," says Dr. Todd, 
 whether animal or vegetable ; in short, whatsoever is 
 employed for the aliment and sustenance of man." — 
 P. 309. But, independently of this, it is very wonderful 
 how any one can see in this passage a condemnation of 
 fasting, who professes to hold, with the English Church, 
 its religious use, or can make it a peculiar badge either 
 of the Roman or of the Primitive. Well may Mr. Mait- 
 land say, — as Dr. Todd quotes him, — 
 
 " I feel quite at a loss how to express my astonishment, that any 
 expositor should have been hardy enough to carry on the interpre- 
 tation, by applying this part of the prophecy to the fasts of the 
 Church of Rome. Strange indeed it will be, if the predicted mark 
 of apostasy should turn out to be a practice commanded in the 
 word of God, recognized as a religious duty by every Christian 
 communion, and placed first and foremost in her list of 'good 
 works ' by the purest Protestant Church in the world. (See the 
 Homily ' Of Good Works, and first of Fasting.') To say that this, 
 which the Church of England enjoins on her members as a ' good 
 
The Protestant Idea of Antichrist. 155 
 
 work,' whose commendation is both in the law and in the Gospel,' 
 changes its character so far as to become a badge of apostasy, 
 when excessively or superstitiously performed, is a shift which it 
 would not be worth while to answer, if the reply were not so close 
 at hand. Has the Church of Rome ever commanded such ex- 
 cessive abstinence as had been practised by voluntary superstition 
 long before that Church was distinguished as the apostasy, or, in 
 fact, distinguished at all from the rest of the Catholic Church? 
 And has the Greek Church never been excessive or superstitious on 
 this point ? " — P. 341. 
 
 On the other hand, it is a very observable fact that 
 such an unnatural or rather murderous abstinence, as is 
 spoken of in this text of the Apostle, did exist among 
 the Albigenses. Our author says, — 
 
 " The most remarkable instance, perhaps, of voluntary suicide 
 recommended, under the name of religion, by a sect pretending to 
 Christianity, was the endura or fasting to death, practised among 
 the Albigenses of Thoulouse, in the thirteenth and fourteenth 
 centuries. It seems that these heretics recommended the endura 
 to such persons as were received into the communion of their sect 
 during their last illness, or what was supposed to be so ; and that; 
 these unhappy dupes of a miserable superstition were taught to 
 believe, that by submitting to be thus starved to death, their ever-, 
 lasting happiness was secured. Abundant proofs of the existence 
 of this cruel and monstrous practice among these heretics, will be 
 found in the Book of Sentences of the Inquisition. ...... Th^ 
 
 well-known superstitions of the natives of India exhibit numerous 
 instances of self-immolation performed from a religious motive, 
 and widely spread, nay popular, for centuries, among an intelligent, 
 snd not in other respects an uncivilized, people." — Pp. 309, 310. 
 
 In like manner, the Manichees and Gnostics com- 
 manded abstinence from certain kinds of food, not for 
 a moral end, but on the ground of their being unlawful 
 or unfit for use, or, contrariwise to St. Paul, as if not 
 "every creature of God was good." Dr. Todd also 
 quotes St. Augustine, who says of the Tatianists, that 
 " they condemn marriage, and hold it all one with for- 
 
156 The Protestant Idea of Antichrist. 
 
 nication and other impurity; and do not receive into 
 their number man or woman living in a married state. 
 Nor do they eat flesh, but abominate it altogether." — 
 P. 3 1 . As to this other characteristic of the Apostasy, that 
 it shall forbid marriage, Dr. Todd observes, in behalf of 
 the Church of Rome, what will apply still more strongly 
 to the Nicene Church, that the words in the inspired text 
 
 " imply, in their natural and obvious signification, an absolute pro- 
 hibition of marriage, on some such principles as those which led to 
 the prohibition of it in the ancient Gnostic and Manichaean sects ; 
 or else, perhaps, on the licentious principles which are not with- 
 out their advocates in our own times. .... Without attempting, 
 therefore, in the least to defend or to excuse this part of the dis- 
 cipline and doctrine of the Roman Church, — for I believe it inde- 
 fensible, — I trust I may be permitted to express my doubts, whether 
 the injunction or recommendation to celibacy to certain classes of 
 persons in that communion, can in fairness and candour be repre- 
 sented as equivalent to a general prohibition of the holy ordinance 
 of matrimony, or a denial of its divine institution. I am persuaded 
 that the prophecy before us is intended to predict a much more 
 fatal error than that of Romanism ; an error more destructive to 
 morality and to society ; an error, which, if we are to seek for its 
 antitype in modern times, would seem to be represented rather 
 by what we have seen was always the result of infidel domination, 
 both in our own country, — during the temporary overthrow of our 
 religion and monarchy, — and in still later times, in France, where 
 the marriage contract was capable of being legally dissolved at any 
 time by the mutual consent of the parties ; and that infidel opinions 
 of a similar tendency are not without their victims in our own 
 nation, at the present day, none need be told who are acquainted 
 with what is now commonly maintained on this subject by the 
 enemies of our faith and institutions. We have not indeed, as yet, 
 seen men go to the length of prohibiting the ordinance of the 
 Church, or the public recognition of the civil contract ; but we have 
 seen in our own times a legal sanction given to a mode of entering 
 upon this contract, wherein neither the blessing of the Almighty is 
 besought, nor the Church admitted as a witness. How far this 
 may be considered as a step to a more anti-Christian state of 
 things, it would ill become me to predict ; at present it can only be 
 
The Protestant Idea of Antichrist. 157 
 
 appealed to as one amongst many still more unequivocal indica- 
 tions of the tendency of a certain class of opinions, now widely 
 spread amongst us, and an earnest of what may fairly be expected 
 from a national recognition of Infidelity, and an overthrow of the 
 Christian Church. 
 
 " But the subject is one upon which it would be manifestly im- 
 possible to enter here ; and I shall therefore only say that I believe 
 the prophecy to have foretold an infidel prohibition of the ordinance 
 of marriage, rather than a superstitious preference for a life of 
 celibacy, and that a state of things is hereafter to be revealed, far, 
 far exceeding in impiety and immorality any example of super- 
 stition, hypocrisy, or mistaken devotion that has ever been tolerated 
 in the darkest period or region of the Church." — Pp. 333 — 339. 
 
 But now to return to the imputation upon Ancient 
 Christianity cast by the author to whom we have 
 referred in connexion with this text, an imputation 
 which, in the case of writers of his cast of opinions, we 
 do really consider, as we have said, to be one of the 
 Notes of the Church in every age. — Dr. Todd thus 
 records and comments on it : — 
 
 "This writer abandons as untenable the interpretation which 
 supposes this prophecy to have been fiilfiUed in the Roman Church, 
 on the ground that, in the sense in which the Apostle's words have 
 been applied to that communion, they are equally applicable to the 
 Church Catholic, Eastern and Western, of the Nicene age. He 
 says, 'but here again we are met by that Protestant habit of 
 thinking, which has, in so many instances, impelled the anxious 
 opponents of the Papacy to attribute specifically to the Romish 
 Church what in truth belongs to it only in common with the 
 Eastern and with the Nicene Church. . . . Protestant commen- 
 tators, in referring to this prediction, have been wont to call it a 
 striking prediction of Popery. But why of Popery ? as well say of 
 Spanish Catholicism, or of Irish Catholicism. ... In our eagerness 
 ... to attach this brand to Papacy we have too much forgotten 
 that Rome only inherited and shared the more ancient Apostasy.' 
 . . . The author of Ancient Christianity . . . not only admits, but 
 broadly asserts, , . . that the Nicene Church was apostate. . . . 
 " Popery will live and triumph so long as those corruptions continue 
 
158 The Protestant Idea 0/ Antichrist. 
 
 to be called Popish, which, in fact, were much more ancient In 
 the present instance, I appeal to serious and candid minds, compe- 
 tently informed in Church history, and ask, whether the brand of 
 Apostasy be not herein fixed by the Apostolic hand upon ... the 
 Nicene Church f'"— Todd, pp. 516—518. 
 
 8. 
 
 Here then we have ancient and modern dissentients 
 from the Primitive Church, Donatists, Luciferians, and 
 the author of " Ancient Christianity," not satisfied with 
 dissenting, but accusing her of apostasy. . One should 
 not wish the EngHsh Church to be other than a partner 
 in a cross which Athanasius and Augustine have borne 
 in their day and down to these times. And now let us 
 see whether, for well-nigh three centuries, the Reformed 
 Anslo-Cathohc communion has not also in fact borne it. 
 The writings of Puritan and other authors will afford us 
 abundant materials on this subject, of which the follow- 
 ing may serve as a specimen, which are extracted from 
 the works which first come to hand. 
 
 For instance, these dissentients from us are in the 
 habit of calling our Church Babylon, and Antichrist, es- 
 pecially on the ground of our Church's union with the 
 State; a more outrageous reason cannot well be con- 
 ceived, of course ; but we must beg our readers to bear 
 with what is monstrous for the sake of the various 
 lessons which the survey brings with it. " The kingdom 
 of Christ," says the celebrated Robert Browne, founder 
 of the Brownists, as quoted by Mr. Hanbury, in his late 
 elaborate collection of " Historical Memorials relating 
 to the Independents," — " The kingdom of Christ is His 
 office of government, whereby He useth the obedience 
 of His people to keep His laws and commandments to 
 their salvation and welfare. The kingdom, of Antichrist 
 
The Protestant Idea of Antickrisf 159 
 
 is his government confirmed by the civil magistrate, 
 whereby he abuseth the obedience of his people to 
 keep his evil laws and customs to their own damna- 
 tion." — P. 21. Barrowe, taking "a little view of the ec- 
 clesiastical government and ordinances of" the Church 
 of England, says, " Great hath been their craft and 
 manifold their devices to cover their anti-Christian 
 practices, and to uphold this their ruinous and tyran- 
 nous kingdom. I had need express my meaning to be 
 of their false ecclesiastical regiment, the Kingdom of the 
 Beast ; lest they be my interpreters, and draw me with 
 danger and treason." — P. 45. Again, to take a recent 
 instance — " What I denounce as anti-Christian" says 
 the late Mr. Walker, of Dublin, "is not this or that 
 corruption in the Establishment, nor is it the religious 
 establishment of England and Ireland, etc., etc. It is 
 the generic thing of a religious establishment, under the 
 name of Christian, under whatever modifications and 
 specific differences, the thing per se cannot but be anti- 
 Christian; and when such a thing is put forward as 
 Christianity, Christians are called to discern in it the 
 man of sin usurping the prerogative of God."— Works, 
 vol. i., p. 341. Again, he says thaj^"One of the dis- 
 tinguishing characters of the Christian religion is, that 
 it cannot possibly be made a political establishment — 
 cannot be made a national institution." " When the 
 Church of Christ," he continues, " espoused as a pure 
 virgin unto Him, becomes a common harlot, committing 
 fornication with the kings of the earth, she ceases to be 
 the Church of Christ." — Ibid., p. 339. Again, " Multi- 
 tudes in anti-Christian Europe burn with zeal for the 
 false Christ, whom they have set up in their union of 
 •Church and State, while they scorn and detest the only 
 true Christ, the Christ of God, and manifest this by their 
 
1 60 The Protestant Idea of Antichrist. 
 
 contemptuous rejection of the word that testifies of 
 Him." — ^Vol. ii., p. 93. And to the same purport is the 
 following avowal of Wesley's, as it occurs in a pamphlet 
 from which we shall further quote below : " From th« 
 time that Church and State, the kingdom of Christ and 
 of the world, were so strangely and unnaturally blended 
 together, Christianity and heathenism were so thoroughly 
 incorporated with each other that they will hardly ever be 
 divided till Christ comes to reign on the earth. So that, 
 instead of fancying that the glory of the New Jerusalem 
 covered the earth at that period, we have the terrible 
 proof that it was then, and has ever since been, covered 
 with the smoke of the bottomless pit'.' 
 
 Another ground taken against us is the circumstance 
 of our considering the Church as an hierarchy, a reli- 
 gious, spiritual, or divine, and not a human society. For 
 instance. Bishop Hall, in his answer to Robinson, tells 
 us that the latter had cast " upon her honourable name 
 blasphemous imputations of apostasy, anti- Christianism, 
 whoredom, and rebellion ; " and Robinson thus defends 
 himself : "The mystery of iniquity did advance itself by 
 degrees, and, as the rise was, so must the fall be. That 
 man of sin and lagvless ma7i must languish and die away 
 of a consumption. . , . You have renounced many false 
 doctrines in Popery, and in their places embraced the 
 truth. But what if this truth be taught under the same 
 hateful prelacy, in the same devised office of the ministry, 
 and confused communion of the profane multitude .' If 
 Antichrist held not many truths, wherewith should he 
 countenance so many forgeries .' Or how mould his 
 work to a ' mystery of iniquity I which in Rome is more 
 gross and palpable, but in England is spun with a finer 
 thread, and so more hardly to he discovered? I desire to 
 know of you whether the office of archbishops, bishops, 
 
The Protestant Idea of Antichrist, i6i 
 
 and the rest of that rank, were not parts of that ac- 
 cursed hierarchy in Queen Mary's days, and members 
 of ' the man of sin ' ? All the Reformed Churches in 
 the world renounce the prelacy of England as part of 
 that pseudo-clergy and anti-Christian hierarchy derived 
 from Rome." — Pp. i86 — 193. And Burton speaks in like 
 manner of the bishops of his day : " Beware of all those 
 factors for Antichrist, whose practice is to divide kings 
 from their subjects and subjects from their kings, that so, 
 between both, they may fairly erect Antichrist s throne 
 again. . . . Herein have we cause to comfort ourselves 
 and to bless the name of our God, who hath raised up 
 faithful ministers of His word, who chose rather to lose 
 all they had than to submit to the commands of usurp- 
 ing anti-Christian mushrooms." — P. 555. And no less a 
 man than Milton says, " Mark, readers, the crafty scope 
 of these prelates; they endeavour to impress deeply 
 into weak and superstitious fancies the awful notion of 
 a ' Mother ; ' that thereby they might cheat them into 
 a blind and implicit obedience to whatsoever they shall 
 decree or think fit. And if we come to ask a reason 
 of aught from our ' Dear Mother,' she is invisible, under 
 the lock and key of the Prelates, Iter spiritual adulterers. 
 They only are the internuncios, or the go-betweens of 
 this time-devised mummery. Whatsoever they say, she 
 says must be a deadly sin of disobedience not to believe. 
 So that we, who by God's special grace have shaken 
 off the servitude of a great male tyrant, our pretended 
 father, the Pope, should now, if we be not betimes 
 aware of these wily teachers, sink under the slavery of 
 a female notion ; the cloudy conception of a demi- 
 island 'Mother;' and, while we think to be obedient 
 sons, shall make ourselves rather the bastards, or the 
 centaurs, of their spiritual fornications" — Hanb., p. 187, 
 
 VOL. IT II 
 
1 62 The Protestant Idea of Antichrist. 
 
 How precisely the fanatic spirit of the Donatist Cir- 
 cumcellionists ! 
 
 The Apostolical succession and priesthood is another 
 ground on which these modern heretics call us Anti- 
 christ. " Our prelates," says Burton, " have no other 
 claim for their hierarchy than the Popes have and do 
 make ; which all our divines, since the Reformation, 
 till but yesterday, have disclaimed, and our prelates 
 cannot otherwise but by making themselves tJie very 
 limbs of the Pope, and so our Church a member of that 
 synagogue of Rome." — P. 553. In like rnanner, Mr. 
 Walker : " It is now many years since I have renounced 
 with abhorrence the title of ' Reverend,' and the whole 
 clerical character connected with it. That character, 
 under whatever name or modification, is one of the 
 ungodly fictions of the m,an of sin, and one of the main 
 pillars of Antichrist's kingdom!' — Vol. ii., p. 354. Again : 
 " Stare not, when I assert that the distinction between 
 clergy and laity is essentially anti-Christian, and in- 
 deed one of the main pillars supporting the edifice of 
 the man of sin. . . . The blasphemous titles assumed 
 by the Pope of Rome go little beyond the profane 
 arrogance of our English bishops in styling themselves 
 ' Successors of the Apostles in the government of the 
 Church. . . . From the prime ministers of Antichrist 
 all the inferior orders of clergy received their ordination, 
 their appointment, and their sacred function. . . . ' This 
 do in remembrance of Me,' saith the Lord. ' No, no ! ' 
 say the clergy, ' presume not to do it, unless ye have 
 among you one of the clerical caste, to consecrate the 
 elements, and administer them to you." — Vol. ii., p. 520. 
 
 Another ground taken by these writers is that of 
 our rites and liturgical services. " Your temples," says 
 Robinson, "especially your Cathedrals and Mother 
 
The Protestant Idea of Antichrist. 163 
 
 Churches, stand still in their proud majesty, possessed 
 by archbishops and lord bishops, like the Flamens and 
 Arch-flamens amongst the Gentiles, from whom they 
 were derived, and furnished with all manner of pompous 
 and superstitious monuments, as carved and painted 
 images, massing copes and surplices, chanting and or- 
 gan music, and many other glorious ornaments of the 
 Romish harlot, by which her majesty is commended to 
 and admired by the vulgar ; so far are you in these 
 respects from being gone, or fled, yea or crept either, 
 out of Babylon." — P. 197. " If a man," says the same 
 writer, " should set the Church of England before his 
 eyes, as it differeth but from the Reformed Churches, it 
 would be no very beautiful bird ; yea, what could it in 
 that colour afford but Egyptian bondage, Babylonish 
 confusion, carnal pomp, and a company of Jewish, 
 Heathenish and Popish ceremonies ?" — P. 205. "Shall 
 we think that the services of Antichrist" says Bastwick, 
 " only taken out of the language of the Beast and put 
 into English, and in French, or any other tongue, is ac- 
 ceptable unto God ? And, that our services, the whole 
 Prayer-book, is taken out of the Mass-book and other 
 Popish pamphlets, I myself, being in. Italy, compare'd 
 them together. And for our Litany, if I do not forget 
 myself, it is translated, word for word, out of the Litany 
 to our Lady, as they call it : Lady being turned into 
 Lord, as in the Lady's Psalter, Lord and God are turned 
 into Lady." — P. 575. " These blasphemous wretches" 
 says Barrowe, " not to darken only, but to reproach 
 the truth yet further, proceed and give out 'that the 
 heavenly order and ordinances which Christ hath ap- 
 pointed in His Testament,' the government of His 
 Church, which they call discipline, ' are but accidental, 
 and no essential work of the Established Church.' , . . 
 
164 The Protestant Idea of Antichrist. 
 
 Thus is Antichrist extolled, arid openeth his mouth 
 against God and all His ordinances." — P. 45. And in 
 like manner, Mr. Walker, in answer to Archbishop 
 Whately's Tract on the Sabbath, "'The Church,' he 
 (the Archbishop) tells us, ' has full power to sanctify any 
 day that may be thought most fitting.' Power to sanc- 
 tify ! the assumption of the man of sin can scarcely be 
 carried higlier than this. Here he appears indeed as God 
 sitting in the Temple Of God!' — Works, vol. ii., p. 144. 
 
 Again, the mixture of good and bad men in our 
 Church, and her injunctions to unity, are made a fresh 
 proof of her kindred with Antichrist. " For your 
 graces," says Robinson, " we despise them not, nor any 
 good thing amongst you ; no more than you do such 
 graces and good things as are to be found in the Church 
 of Rome, from which you separate notwithstanding. 
 We have, by God's mercy, the pure and right use of 
 the good gifts and graces of God in Christ's ordinance, 
 which you want. Neither the Lord's people nor the 
 holy vessels could make Babylon Sion ; though both 
 one and the other were captive for a time." — P. 201. 
 Robinson, in a passage above cited, observes, that we 
 have still the prelacy, the ministry, and the "confused 
 communion of the profane multitude" which are badges 
 of Antichrist. And Mr. Walker observes to a friend, 
 " You quote Eph. iv. 3 as warranting your tender 
 apprehensions, lest you should disturb the tranquillity of 
 that ungodly confederacy in which you are engaged, by 
 the introduction of Scriptural truth. The 'unity of the 
 Spirit' indeed ! let me freely tell you, that I view the 
 unity of the Spirit which you are endeavouring thus to 
 keep, as no other than the unity of the Spirit of Anti- 
 chfist." — P. 374. 
 
 Much might be said in addition on the subject of faith 
 
The Protestant Idea of Antichrist. 165 
 
 and works, taptism, and other doctrines, by way of show- 
 ing how fully our Church is practically involved in the 
 charge of Antichristianism by those who adopt Luther's 
 view of the "articulus stantis vel cadentis ecclesiae." 
 " Dissenters," says a clever pamphlet from one of them- 
 selves, " whether justly or not, believe that baptismal 
 regeneration, the exclusive validity of the Orders con- 
 ferred by bishops, the consequent exclusive right of the 
 clergy 'to be quite sure that they have the body of 
 Christ, to give to the people,' the conversion of the 
 Christian ministry into a priesthood, with the inevitable 
 association of some mysterious nature connected with 
 their services . . . \}s\eYh^\&ve:'CcL3X that from which they 
 naturally spring, really is contained and taught in the 
 offices and canons of tlu Church ; and if not, they know 
 that the things themselves are extensively assumed and 
 circulated as if they were there ; and that, even when 
 denied in the pulpit, the belief of them is fostered by 
 the fact, that the uniform phraseology of the Book of 
 Common Prayer is, apparently at least, founded upon 
 them. They consider that pernicious and perilous errors 
 lurk in the language and are supported by the use of 
 the Confirmation Service and the form of Absolution, 
 both public and private ; and they think that very much 
 that is awfully deceptive is engendered or aggravated by 
 the manner in which the Lord's Supper is dispensed to 
 the dying, and the Burial Service read over the dead."* 
 
 9- 
 
 Our object in making the foregoing selections has 
 been mainly this, to show that the charge on the part 
 of its enemies of being Antichrist, or verging on Anti- 
 christ, is one of those notes or characteristics which go 
 
 • What ? and who says it ?— P. 64. 
 
1 66 The Protestant Idea of Antichrist. 
 
 to ascertain the true Church ; next, that in consequence, 
 much as there is to condemn in the Roman communion, 
 yet, if that communion is not proved on other grounds to 
 be the Babylon of prophecy, the mere fact that it is so 
 called, however startling at first sight, affords no presump- 
 tion that it is so ; and lastly, and what most concerns 
 members of our own body, that we should be cautious 
 of calling Rome by the name of Babylon, inasmuch as 
 we are certain of being so called ourselves if ours is the 
 true Church * and that, in matter of fact, we have ever 
 been so called, — more so, since we became separate from 
 Rome, than before, — and that down to this day. If any 
 of us think to gain for ourselves some relief from the 
 odious imputation, by casting it boldly upon Rome, he 
 quite mistakes both our position and the feelings of our 
 opponents. They will take what we give, and use it 
 against ourselves. Let us be quite sure of the truth of 
 the sacred and heathen proverbs in this case, one of 
 which says, that stones cast into the air fall back upon 
 the caster's head ; and the other, that curses, like young 
 chickens, always come home to roost. Newton tells us 
 in one place, that " The seeds of popery, sown even 
 in the Apostles' day, were idolatry, strife, and division, 
 adulterating God's word, making 'a gain of godliness, and 
 teaching iox filthy lucres sake," (Oh, Dr. Newton!) "a 
 vain observance of festivals, a vain distinction of meats, 
 a neglecting of the body, and traditions and command- 
 ments of men." How ill would the " plurima pietas," 
 which suggested such an enumeration to this mild 
 logician, have fared in the rude unmannerly hands of 
 Henry Ainsworth, who, in his " Arrow against Idolatry" 
 
 * [It is undeniable that the Anglican Church has retained large portions 
 of the Catholic doctrine and ritual ; so far forth as it has done so, of course 
 it -will Be called anti- Christian by those who call Rome pure Antichrist.] 
 
The Protestant Idea of Antichrist. 167 
 
 reckons among its relics existing among mj, our "Dio- 
 cesan, Provincial, and National Churches," our " Litur- 
 gies " and " organs," our holy days with their eves, our 
 hierarchy, our "Churches, baptized bells, hallowed fonts, 
 and holy churchyards," or, as he appropriately calls them, 
 " high places," our " lands, livings, tithes, offerings, gar- 
 ments, signs, gestures, ceremonies, courts, canons, cus- 
 toms, and many more abominations wherewith have been 
 enriched the merchants of the whore and all that sail with 
 ships in her sea." These and others, (he proceeds to 
 say,) are " very Gilluhim, the loathsome idols and excre- 
 ments of the Queen of Sodom and the filthiness of her 
 fornication " with which " she defileth the consciences of 
 men."* We desiderate in Newton's Treatise an answer 
 to these railings ; and we think no English divine does 
 us a service who so vaguely delineates Antichrist that 
 at a little distance his picture looks not very unlike our- 
 selves. He should be precise enough not to include 
 England while he includes Rome ; and this task, what» 
 ever be the grievous errors of Rome, we hold to be 
 impossible. All the great and broad principles on which 
 she may be considered Babylon, may be retorted on us. 
 Does the essence of Antichrist lie in interposing media 
 between the soul and its God .■' we interpose baptism ; — 
 In imposing a creed ? we have articles for the clergy and 
 creeds for all men ; — In paying reverence to things of 
 tim.e and place .'' we honour the consecrated elements, 
 take off our hats in churches, and observe days and 
 seasons ; — In forms and ceremonies .' we have a service 
 book ; — In ministers of religion .' we have bishops, 
 priests, and deacons ; — In claiming an imperium in 
 imperiof such was the convocation, such are elective 
 chapters ; — In the high state of prelacy ? our bishops 
 
 • Hanbury's Memorials, p. 23S. 
 
1 68 The Protestant Idea of Antichrist, 
 
 have palaces, and sit among princes ; — In supporting 
 religion by temporal sanctions ? we are established ; — In 
 the mixture of good and bad ? we are national ; — In dis- 
 cipline of the body? we fast. England does not differ 
 then from Rome m principles, but in questions oifaci, ot 
 degree, of practice; and whereas Antichrist differs from 
 Christ, as darkness from light, if one of the twO' Churches 
 is Antichrist, the other must be also. 
 
 Nay, let not even the Kirk be too sure that she has 
 succeeded in ridding herself of the same frightful imputa- 
 tion. So far as she still retains upon her the shadow of a 
 Church, so far does she, in the eyes of those who have 
 cast off all churchmanship, bear tokens of the enemy of 
 truth. A Church, as such, as Mr. Walker confesses in 
 his own case, is what Protestants really mean by Anti- 
 christ. We have a strange paper before us, which has 
 been widely circulated, and is written by a late Fellow of 
 a College in the University of Oxford, which, after decid- 
 ing that the first Beast is the Papacy, the seven horns 
 the seven sacraments, war with the beast the Protestant 
 league, the mouth speaking great things, the Council of 
 Trent, goes on to say, that the second Beast is the 
 Queen's supremacy, the two horns like a lamb, are the 
 two Universities, Oxford and Cambridge, the image to 
 the first Beast, the book of Common Prayer, the name 
 of the second Beast the supreme head of the Church, 
 and ends by warning the Kirk that the Queen's High 
 Commissioner in the General Assembly " sits there, as 
 in the Temple of God, showing himself that he is God," 
 (that is, supreme head of the Church in its ecclesiastical 
 capacity,) and by asking " If the Church of England be 
 an idolatrous Church, as was universally held by all 
 Presbyterians in the reign of the Stewarts, identifying as 
 they did, Prelacy with Popery throughout, upon what 
 
The Protestant Idea of Antichrist. i6g 
 
 principle does the Evangelical portion in particular of the 
 Church of Scotland now seek a closer union with the 
 Church of England, when the latter Church has noto- 
 riously become more superstitious than ever, with her 
 crosses, and candlesticks, and altars, and faldstools, and 
 though last, not least, with her priestly robes and royal 
 dalmatics ?" Let it be observed that this writer, as well 
 as Ainsworth and the rest, accuses us of idolatry, the one 
 point in which we might seem at first sight specifically 
 to differ from Rome ; but it is a remarkable circumstance 
 that, real as this difference is, as we should contend, 
 Idolatry is not mentioned in Scripture as a mark of A nti- 
 christ ; just the reverse. " Neither shall he regard the 
 God of his fathers," says the prophecy, " nor regard any 
 god, for he shall magnify himself above all ; but in his 
 estate he shall honour the god of forces." " Who 
 opposeth and exalteth h\mBe\i above a.\\ that is called god 
 or that is worshipped!' " He opened his mouth in blas- 
 phemy against God, to blaspheme His name, and His 
 tabernacle, and them that divell in lieaven." 
 
 lO. 
 
 Enough has been said to show the deficiency of theo- 
 logical principle, on which the attack upon Rome has 
 commonly been conducted among us. Writers of our 
 Church who Call her Babylon, ought to have laid down 
 definitely what they considered the essence of Antichrist, 
 and have shown that our own was clear of it. They 
 ought, before attacking the foundations of Rome, to have 
 shown that we ourselves had not built upon them. 
 Instead of this, in their eagerness to strike a blow at 
 Rome, they have done no little to overturn all visible, all 
 established religion in the world, and to involve the 
 Primitive Church, our own, the Kirk — nay, all sects and 
 
lyo The Protestant Idea of Antichrist, 
 
 denominations whatever, — in one common ruin. And 
 now we will make a suggestion towards remedying their 
 deficiency, that is, towards analysing the principle on 
 which alone Rome can logically be called the seat of 
 Antichrist : whether such principle, when stated, will be 
 satisfactory to ourselves, and available in our warfare 
 with our Roman Catholic brethren, is another matter. 
 
 Now, whatever has been said above to make it probable 
 that the calumny of being Antichrist is in fact one of the 
 Notes of the true Church, yet nothing has been suggested 
 to account for the phenomenon that the Church, or what 
 is like the Church, should be exposed to so strange 
 an imputation. It is satisfactory indeed to be told that, 
 if we are called Beelzebub, we are but fulfilling our 
 Master's pattern ; but still the question remains how men 
 come to call us so ? We conceive upon the following 
 principle. 
 
 We observe then that the essence of the doctrine that 
 there is " One only Catholic and Apostolic Church " lies 
 in this ; — that there is on earth a representative of 
 our absent Lord, or a something divinely interposed 
 between the soul and God, or a visible body with 
 invisible privileges. All its subordinate characteristics 
 flow from this description. Does it impose a creed, or 
 impose rites and ceremonies, or change ordinances, or 
 remit and retain sins, or rebuke and punish, or accept 
 offerings, or send out ministers, or invest its ministers 
 with authority, or accept of reverence or devotion in 
 their persons .'' — all this is because it is Christ's visible 
 presence. It stands for Christ. Can it convey the 
 power of the Spirit .' does grace attend its acts } can 
 it touch, or bathe, or seal, or lay on hands .' can it use 
 material things for spiritual purposes >. are its temples 
 holyi'^all this comes of its being (so far) what Christ 
 
The Protestant Idea of Antichrist. 171 
 
 was on earth. Is it a ruler, prophet, priest, intercessor, 
 teacher? — it has titles such as these in its measure, as 
 being the representative and instrument of the Al- 
 mighty Lord who is unseen. Does it claim a palace 
 and a throne, an altar and a doctor's chair, the gold, 
 frankincense and myrrh of the rich and wise, an uni- 
 versal empire and a never-ending succession "i — all this 
 is so, because it is what Christ is. All the offices, 
 names, honours, powers which it claims depend upon 
 the determination of the simple question — Has Christ, 
 or has He not, left a representative behind Him ? 
 
 Now if He has, then all is easy and intelligible ; this 
 is what churchmen maintain ; they welcome the news ; 
 and they recognize in the Church's acts but the fulfil- 
 ment of the high trust committed to her. But let us 
 suppose for a moment the other side of the alternative 
 to be true ; — supposing Christ has left no representative 
 behind Him. Well, then, here is an Association which 
 professes to take His place without warrant. It comes 
 forward instead of Christ and for Him ; it speaks for 
 Him, it developes His words ; it suspends His appoint- 
 ments, it grants dispensations in matters of positive duty ; 
 it professes to minister grace, it absolves from sin ; — and 
 all this of its own authority. Is it not forthwith, accord- 
 ing to the very force of the word, "Antichrist " .■' He who 
 speaks for Christ must either be His true ambassador 
 or Antichrist ; and nothing but Antichrist can he be, 
 if appointed ambassador there is none. Let his acts be 
 the same in both cases, according as he has authority 
 or not, so is he most holy or most guilty. It is not the 
 acts that make the difference, it is the authority for those 
 acts. The very same acts are Christ's acts or Anti- 
 christ's, according to the doer : they are Christ's, if 
 Christ does them; they are Antichrist's, if Christ does 
 
1 7 2 The Protestant Idea of Antichrist. 
 
 them not. There is no medium between a Vice-Christ 
 and Antichrist. 
 
 It is no accident then or strange occurrence that the 
 Church should have been called Antichrist. She must 
 be called so in consistency by those who separate from 
 her. Such an imputation is the necessary result of dis- 
 belief in her commission. Her acts are known in all 
 the world ; there is no mistaking them. Difference of 
 opinion about them will be shown not in disputing 
 against what is mere matter of history and public noto- 
 riety, but in viewing them in a different light, and 
 referring it to a distinct origin. Convince the Presby- 
 terian or Wesleyan that the Church has spiritual powers, 
 and he will find no great difficulty in her general con- 
 duct: she does not act up to her commission. If the 
 Church be from Christ, even her least acceptable words 
 or deeds ex caihedrd may be taken on faith : if she be 
 not, even her best, are presumptuous, and call for a 
 protest. She is an honoured servant in one case ; an 
 usurper and tyrant in another.' There is on the whole 
 then but one issue in the controversy about the Church, 
 and that a very plain and simple one. Its children and 
 its enemies both understand that the Church professes 
 to act for God, but the one party says rightfully, the 
 other wrongfully. This then is the point on which the 
 controversy turns, and before which all other questions 
 sink in importance. All may easily be arranged when 
 this one question is settled. Neglect it, and we shall be 
 arguing without understanding where we are ; master 
 this one principle, and you may change your whole 
 position in a day : the Church will be henceforth faith- 
 ful for arrogant, diligent for officious, charitable for 
 political, firm for violent, holy for blasphemous, Christ 
 for Antichrist. If we believe she has a commission, we 
 
The Protestant Idea of Antichrist. 173 
 
 shall be Catholics, and call her holy : if we make our 
 inward light, or our reason, or our feelings, our guide, 
 and set up Antichrist within us, then, with Gnostics, 
 Montanists, Novatians, Manichees, Donatists, Paulicians, 
 Albigenses, Calvinists, and Brownists, we shall, in mere 
 self-defence and mere consistency, call her Babylon, 
 Sodom, sorceress, harlot, Jezebel, Beelzebub, and Anti- 
 christ. A sacerdotal order is historically the essence of 
 the Church ; if not divinely appointed, it is doctrinally 
 the essence of Antichrist. 
 
 And thus we answer a gibe, we believe of Baxter's, 
 which at first sight is not without its force. He said 
 that " If the Pope was not Antichrist, he had bad luck 
 to be so like him." Not " bad luck ; " but sheer ne- 
 cessity. Since Antichrist simulates Christ, and bishops 
 are images of Christ, Antichrist is like a bishop, and a 
 bishop is like Antichrist. And what is the Pope but a 
 bishop .' his peculiarity lying, not in his assuming to be 
 mniiibus nimieris a bishop, but in his disfranchising all 
 bishops but himself ; not in his titles nor in his pro- 
 fessed gifts, which are episcopal, but in his denying 
 these to other bishops, and absorbing the episcopate 
 into himself. 
 
 The only question then is this, "Has Christ, or has 
 He not, appointed a body representative of Him on 
 earth during His absence .' " If He has, the Pope is not 
 Antichrist ; — if He has not, every bishop in England, 
 Bishop Newton, Bishop Warburton, Bishop Hurd, is 
 Antichrist ; every priest is Antichrist, Mr. McNeile, Dr. 
 Jortin, and Dr. Faussett inclusive. We hold most firmly 
 that He has, or of course we could not belong to the 
 Church of England ; this, however, is not the pkce to 
 prove it in extenso. We have done all that falls within 
 the scope of Dr. Todd's lectures, if we have shown that 
 
,174 The Protestant Idea of Antichrist. 
 
 members of the English Church are not quite the persons 
 to venture to speak of " that woman Jezebel," meaning 
 thereby the Holy Church Catholic, sojourning in Rome; 
 however, before concluding, we may be allowed to make 
 one or two suggestions in behalf of our side of the main 
 principle itself, which is in dispute, viz., that Christ has 
 left behind Him a representative society. 
 
 II. 
 
 Now, that He has condescended so to do, is so clearly 
 declared in the sacred volume, especially when its an- 
 nouncements are viewed in the light of historical facts, 
 that we could almost say that the argument did but 
 require to be fairly brought out, in order to the con- 
 viction of any serious and unbiassed mind. Not even 
 the proof of our Lord's divinity is plainer than that of 
 the Church's commission. Not even the promises to 
 David or to Solomon more evidently belong to Christ, 
 than those to Israel, or Jerusalem, or Sion, belong to the 
 Church. Not even Daniel's prophecies are more exact 
 to the letter, than those which invest the Church with 
 powers which Protestants consider Babylonish. Nay, holy 
 Daniel himself is in no small measure employed on this 
 very subject. He it is who announces a fifth kingdom, 
 like " a stone cut out without hands," which " broke in 
 pieces and consumed " all former kingdoms, but was 
 itself to "stand for ever," and to become "a great 
 mountain," and to "fill the whole earth," He it, is also 
 who prophesies, that "the Saints of the Most High 
 shall take the kingdom and possess the kingdom for 
 ever." He "saw in the night visions, and behold one 
 like to the Son of Man came with the clouds of heaven, 
 and came to the Ancient of Days, and there was given 
 Him dominion and glory and a kingdom, that all 
 
The Protestant Idea of Antichrist. I75 
 
 people, nations, and languages should serve Him." 
 Such too is Isaiah's prophecy, " Out of Zion shall go 
 forth the law, and the word of the law from Jerusalem, 
 and He shall judge among the nations and rebuke 
 many people." Now Christ. Himself was to depart 
 from the earth : He could not then in His own person 
 be intended in these great prophecies ; if He acted, it 
 must be by delegacy. Let us then for a moment sup- 
 pose that the Church has been really His vicar and 
 representative. Supposing her so to be. He has as truly 
 and literally judged among the nations, and rebuked 
 many people, reigned in righteousness,' promoted peace, 
 taught the nations, repressed the wicked, as the sove- 
 reign of England keeps the peace, administers justice, 
 punishes offences, and performs other regal offices by 
 his courts of law, magistrates, army, police, and other 
 functionaries. All works indeed in which man has part 
 are marked with imperfection ; divine promises and 
 counsels are but fulfilled on the whole and in due 
 measure in this sinful world. It is easy to point out 
 ten thousand instances in which the functionaries of the 
 Church have failed of their duty to their Lord and 
 Master, when, according to His own announcement, 
 the " wicked servant " has said " in his heart, my Lord 
 delayeth His coming," and has begun " to beat the man- 
 servants and the maidens, and to eat and drink, and be 
 drunken ; " still it is impossible surely to read the his- 
 tory of the Church, up to the last four or five hundred 
 years, with an unprejudiced mind, without perceiving 
 that whatever were the faults of her servants, and the 
 corruptions of her children, she has on the whole been 
 the one element of civilization, light, moral improve- 
 ment, peace, and purity in the world. In the darkest 
 times, with exceptions too brief or local to bear insisting 
 
176 The Protestant Idea of Antichrist. 
 
 on, she has been far the superior, in those respects in 
 which she was designed to be superior, of those earthly 
 powers among whom she has moved. In the darkest 
 times, and when the conduct of her organs was least 
 defensible, and her professed aims and principles most 
 extreme, she will be found, when contrasted with other 
 powers, to be fighting the cause of truth and right 
 against sin, — to be a witness for God, or defending the 
 poor, or purifying or reforming her own servants and 
 ministers, or promoting peace, and maintaining the holy 
 faith committed to her. This she was till she quarrelled 
 with herself, and divided into parts ; what she has been 
 since, what she is now, a future age must decide ; we 
 can only trust in faith that she is what she ever has 
 been, and was promised ever to be, — one amid her divi- 
 sions, and holy amid her corruptions. 
 
 But returning to the thought of former and happier 
 times, what, we ask, are her acts as then displayed, so 
 lordly and high, so maternal, so loving yet so firm, so 
 calm yet so keen, so gentle yet so vigorous, so full of the 
 serpent's wisdom yet of the dove's innocence ; what is 
 all this but a literal accomplishment of the sure word 
 of prophecy concerning the reign of Christ upon earth } 
 The writings of the Fathers, as they have come down 
 to us, form an historical comment upon the inspired 
 pages of Isaiah, supplying numberless instances of the 
 execution of that high mission, whereby the spiritual 
 Israel was set forth in the world, as the elect of God, 
 created as an instrument of righteousness to set forth 
 his Maker's glory, to teach truth and righteousness, " to 
 relieve the oppressed, to judge the fatherless, to plead 
 for the widow," to feed the hungry, to shield the im- 
 perilled, to raise the fallen, to repress the tyrannical, to 
 reconcile enemies, and largely to dispense benefits to 
 
The Protestant Idea of Antichrist. 177 
 
 and fro. Even what is visibly exhibited in the page of 
 history is an abundant and a most wonderful accom- 
 plishment of the prophetic word. We find, for instance. 
 St. Ambrose journeying across the Alps in the winter 
 to protect Justina from the usurper Maximus ; we read 
 of the bishops throughout France interceding with 
 the latter" for members of their flock or for others, who 
 had taken part against him ; while Flavian, Bishop of 
 Antioch, on that city having grievously insulted the 
 emperor, betakes himself in his old age to Constanti- 
 nople, presents himself before his offended sovereign, 
 and gains his pardon. St. Basil founds an hospital for 
 lepers in his diocese in Cappadocia, and his example 
 is followed throughout the neighbouring country. He 
 writes to Valerian to offer his mediation between 
 Valerian and certain Caesareans ; to Elias, the imperial 
 collector, to gain longer time for his people's contri- 
 bution ; to Callisthenes, to persuade him to deal mildly 
 with certain slaves ; to the Count of the private purse, for 
 a diminution of the tribute of iron exacted of the people 
 of Taurus, and of mares exacted of another place ; to 
 two parties going to law, offering himself as arbitrator, 
 in order to save them expense ; to a civil officer, to save 
 the country people from the oaths usual on paying 
 taxes ; to Duke Andronicus, to soften his feelings to- 
 wards Domitian ; to a commissioner of taxes, to relieve 
 the hospitals from imposts ; and to Modestus, to relieve 
 Helladius from a civil employment 
 
 " Certain Circumcellianists and Donatist clergy," says St. Austin 
 to Apringius, " have confessed horrible enormities of theirs against 
 my brethren and priests, that they waylaid and murdered one, carried . 
 off from his home another, pulled out his eye, cut off his finger, and 
 mutilated him. Finding that they would fall under your axe, I 
 write in haste to your nobility, by way of deprecating, for the mercy 
 
 VOL. II, U 
 
1 7 8 The Protestant Idea of Antichrist. 
 
 of Christ, any strict retaliation. Though the law's punishment can- 
 not lie in the very same acts in which the offenders showed their 
 fury, yet I fear lest they, at least the murderers, should meet with 
 sentence at your hands. That they may not, a Christian petitions 
 the judge, a bishop admonishes the Christian. You bear not the 
 sword in vain ; but it is one thing when a province is the party 
 injured, another when the Church. Fear with us the rigorous judg- 
 ment of God our Father, and be a pattern of the clemency of your 
 mother. For when you act, the Church acts, for whom you act, 
 whose son you are in acting. They with the sword of guilt drew 
 blood of Christians ; you from their blood hold back even the sword 
 of justice for Christ's sake. They robbed the Church's minister of 
 his time for living ; do you prolong to her enemies their time for 
 repenting." 
 
 Or, to take another department of their high duties, 
 St. Ambrose suspends the Emperor Theodosius from 
 communion for a passionate massacre of the inhabitants 
 of Thessalonica ; St. Athanasius excommunicated a mili- 
 tary chief of Libya, for immoral conduct, forbidding him 
 throughout Christendom fire, water, and shelter at the 
 hands of the faithful ; St. Basil interdicts a certain re- 
 fractory person from the Church services ; and Synesius 
 abandons to the divine anger Andronicus, president of 
 Libya, a cruel tyrant, who had invented instruments of 
 torture to extort money from the people. 
 
 Or, let us view a third aspect of the episcopal character. 
 
 " I lived," said Theodoret when accused of heresy, " in a monas- 
 tery up to the time of my episcopate, and received that charge 
 against my will. Five-and-twenty years have I lived bishop, nor 
 have ever been appealed against by any, nor any have I accused. 
 Not an obol, not a cloke have I received from any. Not one loaf 
 or one egg has domestic of mine ever received. Except the rags 
 that cover me, nought have I endured to take. Public porticos 
 have I erected out of my ecclesiastical revenue. Two bridges have 1 
 built of largest size; I have taken the charge of public baths. Find- 
 ing the city wanting in supply from the river that runs near it, / 
 made the aqueduct, and have filled with water this deficient city. 
 
The Protestant Idea of Antichrist. lyg 
 
 To change the subject, eight villages of Marcionites and their neigh- 
 bourhoods I have led with their good will into the truth ; another 
 full of Eunomians, another of Arians, I have brought to the light of 
 divine knowledge. By God's grace not one tare of heresy remains 
 among us. And all this not without peril ; o/ilen have I shed my 
 blood, often have I been stoned by them, and brought even to the 
 very gates of hell. But I am become a fool in glorying, yet I speak 
 of necessity, not of will. This the thrice-blessed Paul was forced 
 to do once, to stop the mouth of accusers." 
 
 These are but specimens of a varied and widely ex- 
 tended phenomenon which rose up, Hke a plant out of 
 the ground, from the very beginnings of the Gospel, 
 wherever and whenever, and just so far as the iron hand 
 of persecution relaxed its hold upon the infant religion. 
 Shall we say it is a usurpation of His power from whom 
 all authority comes ? or a delegated exercise of it .' Is 
 there a kingdom of Christ upon earth or not } This is 
 the simple question, on which all turns. And that there is, 
 would be probable enough, merely considering it is said 
 in Scripture that Christ shall reign, though He is gone 
 away ; that there j^a// be a kingdom, while the Church 
 has in fact fulfilled the objects proposed by it. But the 
 case is far stronger than this ; a power short of Christ is 
 expressly addressed in the Prophets, and dominion 
 promised it ; a viceroy and vicar is named by them as 
 ruling for Him. " Arise, shine, for thy light is come," 
 says the inspired oracle, " and the glory of the Lord is 
 risen upon thee. And the Gentiles shall come to thy 
 light and kings to the brightness of thy rising. The 
 mountain of the Lord's house shall be established in the 
 top of the mountains, and all nations shall flow into it." 
 " A king shall reign in righteousness, and princes shall 
 rule in judgment, and a man shall be as a hiding place 
 from the wind, and a covert from the tempest, as rivers 
 of water in a dry place, as the shadow of a great rock in 
 
i8o The Protestant Idea of Antichrist. 
 
 a weary land. The liberal deviseth liberal things, and 
 by liberal things shall he stand." " Though the Lord 
 give you the bread of adversity, and the water of .afflic- 
 tion, yet shall not thy teachers be removed into a corner 
 ' any tnore, but thine eyes shall see thy teachers." " The 
 spirit that is upon thee, an'd my words which I have put 
 in thy mouth, shall not depart out of thy mouth, nor out 
 of the mouth of thy seed, nor out of the mouth of thy 
 seed's seed, henceforth and for ever." " Ye shall be 
 named the priests of the Lord j men shall call you the 
 ministers of our God. Ye shall eat the riches of the Gen- 
 tiles, and in their glory shall you boast yourselves. I 
 will make thy officers peace, and thine exactors righteous- 
 ness. Violence shall no more be heard in thy land, 
 wasting nor destruction within thy borders ; for thou 
 shalt call thy walls Salvation and thy gates Praise." " Be- 
 hold, I have graven thee upon the palms of my hands ; 
 thy walls are continually before me." " No weapon that 
 is formed against thee shall prosper, and every tongue 
 that shall rise against thee jn judgment thou shalt 
 condemn." 
 
 12 
 
 One more remark shall we make, and that shall be 
 the last. What is the real place of the Church of the 
 middle ages in the divine scheme need not be discussed 
 here. If we have been defending it, this has been from 
 no love, let our readers be assqred, of the Roman party 
 among us at this day. That party, as exhibited by its 
 acts, is a low-minded, double-dealing, worldly-minded 
 set, and the less we have to do with it the better. No- 
 thing but a clear command from above could make a 
 member of our Church recognize it in any way. We 
 are not speaking against the Church of Rome : it is a 
 
The Protestant Idea of Antichrist. i8i 
 
 sister Church ; we are not speaking against individual 
 members of it ; far from it : it is our delight to think 
 that God has many saints among them, it^ought to be 
 our prayer that among us may be as great saints as 
 have been among them. But what we protest against 
 and shrink from is, that secular and political spirit 
 which in this day has developed itself among them 
 into a party, and at least in this country is that party's 
 motive-principle and characteristic manifestation. We 
 have no sympathy at all with men who are afraid to 
 own the doctrines of their religion, who try to hoodwink 
 the incautious and ignorant, who ungenerously cast off 
 their and our ancestors, the Church's great champions 
 in former times, who take part in political intrigue, who 
 play the sycophant to great men, who flatter the base 
 passions of the multitude, who join with those who are 
 further from them to attack those who are nearer to 
 them, who imitate the low ways of the popular religion, 
 who have music parties in their chapels, and festivals 
 aboard steamers, and harangue at public meetings. 
 Such was not Borromeo, such was not Pascal ; such 
 was not Beckett, Innocent, Anselm, Bernard, Hilde- 
 brand, or the first Gregory ; such were not the men of 
 holy and humble heart, whom Rome commemorates in 
 her services. With such we wish to be " better strangers," 
 the longer we live ; and not a word of what we have 
 said, or are about to say, against the notion of Rome 
 being apostate, is spoken for the sake of the like of 
 them. Dismissing them then with this protest, we pro- 
 ceed to our proposed remark. 
 
 We take it then for granted, as being beyond doubt, 
 that one main reason why Protestants are suspicious both 
 of the Fathers of the early Church, and of the more or- 
 thodox of our writers, is the dread that the doctrine and 
 
1 82 The Protestant Idea of Antichrist. 
 
 system which these divines teach is denounced in prophecy 
 as the element of Antichrist, and savours of the pre- 
 dicted apostasy. When pressed with arguments from 
 Scripture or reason, they cannot perhaps answer them, but 
 they see, as they consider, the end to which the CathoHc 
 system tends. They judge that the teaching recom- 
 mended to them is of Antichrist, because it has before 
 now resulted in Popery ; and, under the impression that 
 Popery is Antichrist, they say to tliemselves that some- 
 where or other there must be a fallacy in the reasoning, 
 for that the fruit is the proof of the tree. Their dread 
 of what is really Apostolical doctrine mainly, nay often 
 solely, rests upon a religious apprehension that the pro- 
 phecies have denounced it. To persons in this state of 
 mind we propose the following question : If we must 
 go by prophecy, which set of prophecies is more exactly 
 fulfilled in the Church of the middle ages, those of 
 Isaiah which speak of the evangelical kingdom, or 
 those of St. Paul and St. John which speak of the anti- 
 Christian corruption .' If the history of Christian Rome 
 corresponds to the denouncements of the Apocalypse,, 
 does it not more closely and literally correspond to the 
 promises of Isaiah .' If there is a chance of our taking 
 part with Antichrist, taking into account the Apocalypse, 
 is there not a greater chance of our " speaking against 
 the Holy Ghost," considering the book of Isaiah ? 
 
 To take a broad view of the subject, two traits of 
 Antichrist, we suppose, will be particularly fixed upon 
 as attaching to the see of Rome, pride and luxury, the 
 one seen in its extravagant temporal power, the other in 
 its splendour. For instance, St. Paul speaks of Anti- 
 christ as " exalting himself above all that is called God; 
 or that is worshipped," sitting " as God in the temple of 
 God, showing himself that he is God." Again, the beast 
 
The Protestant Idea of Ajiiichrist. 183 
 
 is said to have seven heads and ten crowned horns ; and 
 the dragon gives him power. And Babylon is called 
 " that great city," and she has power over other cities, 
 and over kings, because she is said to have " made all 
 nations drink of the wine of " her "wrath," and "the 
 kings of the earth had committed fornication with her." 
 And the Beast " opened his mouth in blasphemy," and 
 the woman was on a scarlet-coloured beast "full of 
 names of blasphemy." All this, it is urged, is fulfilled 
 in the Medieval Church's proclaiming herself (as the 
 early Church did before her) to be Christ's vicar, in her 
 assumption of power over kings, and her claim to define 
 and maintain the faith, and to confer spiritual gifts. 
 Now, as to the mode in which her functionaries did this, 
 their motives, their characters, their individual know- 
 ledge of the faith, with all this we are not here con- 
 cerned ; but as to the ultimate facts in which the action 
 of the whole system resulted, surely they far more 
 literally correspond to the inspired prophecy of Isaiah 
 than to that of St. John. " The sons of the strangers 
 shall build up thy walls, and their kings shall minister to 
 thee. The nation and kingdom that will not serve thee 
 shall perish ; yea, those nations shall be utterly wasted. 
 The sons of them that afflicted thee shall come bending 
 unto thee ; and all they that despised thee shall bow 
 themselves down at the soles of thy feet!' "Kings shall 
 be thy nursing fathers, and their queens thy nursing 
 mothers ; they shall bow down to thee with their face 
 towards the earth, and lick up the dust of thy feet!' " Fear 
 not, thou worm Jacob, and ye men of Israel. Behold I 
 will make thee a new thrashing instrument having teeth; 
 and thou shalt thrash the mountains, and beat them small, 
 and. make the hills as chaff. Thou shalt fan them, and 
 the wind shall carry them away, and the whirlwind shall 
 
184 The Protestant Idea of Antichrist. 
 
 scatter them." Surely if the correspondence, whatever 
 it is, of the prophecies of Antichrist with the history 
 of the Medieval Church should frighten us from that 
 Church, much more should that of the prophecies con- 
 cerning Christ's kingdom with her history draw us 
 to her. 
 
 The other point commonly insisted on is the Me- 
 dieval Church's wealth and splendour, the rich embel- 
 lishment of her temples, the jewelled dress of her 
 ministers, the offerings, shrines, pageants, and proces- 
 sions, which were part of her religious service. All 
 these are supposed to be denoted by "the purple and 
 scarlet colour, and gold, and precious stones, and 
 pearls," with which the sorceress in the Apocalypse is 
 arrayed ; where mention is also made of the mer- 
 chandize of gold and silver, precious stones, and of 
 pearls and fine linen, and purple, and silk, and scarlet, 
 and all thyine wood, and all manner of vessels of ivory, 
 and precious wood, and brass, and iron, and marble, and 
 cinnamon, and odours, and ointment, and frankincense, 
 and wine, and oil, and fine flour, and wheat, and beasts, 
 and horses, and chariots, and slaves, and souls of men, 
 and the voice of harpers and musicians, and of pipers 
 and trumpeters." All such magnificence would of 
 course, in itself, as little prove that the Church is Anti- 
 christ, as that any king's court is Antichrist, where it is 
 also found. But, whatever cogency be assigned to the 
 correspondence, still let a candid mind decide whether 
 it can be made to tell more strongly against the Church, 
 than the following account of the evangelical kingdom 
 tells in her behalf " I will lay thy stones with fair 
 colours, and thy foundations with sapphires, and I will 
 make thy windows of agates, and thy gates of carbuncles, 
 and all thy borders of precious stones" " The multitude 
 
The Protestant Idea of Antichrist. 185 
 
 of camels shall cover thee, the dromedaries of Midian 
 and Ephah : all they from Sheba shall come ; they shall 
 bring gold and incense, and they shall show forth the 
 praises of the Lord. The glory of Lebanon shall 
 come unto thee, the fir-tree, the pine-tree, and the 
 box together, to beautify the place of My sanctuary. 
 For brass I will bring gold, and for iron I will bring 
 silver, and for wood, brass, and for stones, iron." Pas- 
 sages such as these, at least show that precious stones 
 are no peculiar mark of Antichrist ; which is sufficiently 
 clear even from a later chapter of the Apocalypse, in 
 which jasper, sapphires, and other jewels are mentioned 
 among the treasures of the New Jerusalem. 
 
 On this ground then we would rest the matter with 
 all serious students of Scripture. If they listen to the 
 deep mysteries of St. John, they are inconsistent surely 
 in being deaf to the uplifted voice of Isaiah ; and in 
 saying this, we must not be supposed to be conceding 
 that the words of St. John in the Apocalypse, or of St. 
 Paul in his Epistles, have met yet with their due solution 
 in the Church's history. How wide they fall short of it, 
 has been shown in one instance from St. Paul, in the 
 course of our remarks ; and in Dr. Todd's volume the 
 reader will find similar instances, in the case of the 
 other passages, whether in that Apostle or in Daniel, 
 which relate to Antichrist, but which cannot by any 
 sober mind be applied to the ecclesiastical events or 
 persons of the past ages of Christianity. 
 
 October, 184a 
 
1 86 
 
 XI. 
 
 MILMAN'S VIEW OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 THE " History of Christianity " which Mr. Milman 
 has lately given to the world, is a work of very 
 considerable ability, and bears upon it tokens of much 
 thought and varied research. No one could doubt that 
 such would be the character of any publication of the 
 author's, and the expectation raised by his name has 
 been increased by the length of time during which re^ 
 ports have been current of his having a work on Chris- 
 tianity in hand. It consists of three ample volumes, but 
 even these are but an instalment of the whole design to 
 which he has devoted himself. " If he should be blessed 
 with life and leisure," says his Preface, "the author 
 cannot but look forward to the continuation of this his- 
 tory with increasing interest, as it approaches the period 
 of the re-creation of European society under the in- 
 fluence of Christianity." — P. lo. It is notorious that 
 the English Church is destitute of an Ecclesiastical 
 History ; Gibbon is almost our sole authority for sub- 
 jects as near the heart of a Christian as any can well be. 
 We do not indeed mean to say that Mr. Milman will 
 supply this want ; rather we conceive him to hold that 
 it is a want which ought not to be supplied. Our im- 
 pression at least is, — we do not mean to state it as more 
 than an impression, — that he considers Church histories. 
 
MilmarC s View of Christianity. 187 
 
 as such, to be nothing better than " tolerabiles ineptiae." 
 His present volumes are rather the substitute than the 
 supply of this desideratum in our ecclesiastical lite- 
 rature, and are meant to supersede the history of the 
 Church by the history of Christianity. But we acknow- 
 ledge even this as a boon ; without agreeing to Mr. 
 Milman's historical views or doctrinal opinions, as what 
 we shall presently say will show, we consider it to be 
 impossible even for a Gibbon to write an uninstructive 
 history of the Evangelical Dispensation ; and much less 
 can Mr. Milman, who is not a Gibbon, but a clergyman, 
 fail to be useful to those who are in search of facts, and 
 have better principles than his own to read them by. 
 We frankly confess that he has not pleased us ; nor, 
 on the other hand, will he please any clear-headed, 
 long-sighted adherents of that philosophy which he has 
 allowed himself just to taste, — except, indeed, as far 
 as, in the present state of things they will thankfully 
 accept whatever is conceded to them, and welcome it 
 as a precedent and pattern for fresh innovations. 
 
 I. 
 
 However, we shall be very unjust to Mr. Milman, 
 unless we try carefully to place ourselves in the posi- 
 tion which he has chosen for contemplating and delir 
 neating the Christian religion. Unless we succeed in 
 this, we shall cruelly misunderstand him, as if he held 
 certain opinions, when he does but state the premisses 
 which practically involve them. It is obvious that the 
 whole system of Revelation may be viewed in various, 
 nay antagonist aspects. He who regards our Lord as 
 man, does not in consequence deny that He is more 
 than man ; and they who with Mr. Milman love to 
 regard the whole Christian history as much as possible 
 
1 88 Milmari s View of Christianity. 
 
 as a thing of earth, may be wise or unwise, reverent or 
 irreverent, in so doing, may be attempting what is prac- 
 ticable or impracticable, may eventually be led on to 
 commit themselves to positive errors about it, and may 
 accordingly be wantonly trifling with serious matters/ 
 but cannot without unfairness be charged with an ipso 
 facto denial of its heavenly character. The Christian his- 
 tory is " an outward visible sign of an inward spiritual 
 grace:" whether the sign can be satisfactorily treated 
 separate from the thing signified is another matter ; but 
 it seems to be Mr. Milman's intention so to treat it, and 
 he must be judged by that intention, not by any other 
 which we choose to impute to him. Christianity has an 
 external aspect and an internal ; it is human without, 
 divine within. To attempt to touch the human element 
 without handling also the divine, we may fairly deem 
 unreal, extravagant, and sophistical ; we may feel the 
 two to be one integral whole, differing merely in aspect, 
 not in fact : we may consider that a writer has not 
 mastered his own idea who resolves to take liberties 
 with the body, and yet not insult the animating soul. 
 So we do ; but all this is another matter ; such a person 
 does not mean any harm ; nor does the writer who de- 
 termines, as far as he can, to view the Christian as a 
 secular fact, to the exclusion of all theological truth. 
 He gives a representation of it, such as it would appear 
 to a man of the world. This, at least, is omt primd facie 
 view of Mr. Milman's book, and to draw it out shall be 
 our first step, — in doing which we shall have an oppor- 
 tunity, without unkindness to the author, of convicting 
 him of what seems to us a want of clearness and definite- 
 ness of conception in his original design. 
 
 And first he shall state his object for himself, as it is 
 set before us in his Preface : 
 
MilmarC s View of Christianity. i8g 
 
 " As the Jewish annals might be considered in relation to the 
 general history of man, to the rank which the nation bore among 
 the various families of the human race, and the influence which it 
 exercised on the civilization of mankind : so Christianity may be 
 viewed either in a strictly religious, or rather in a temporal, social, 
 and political light. In the former case, the writer will dwell almost 
 exclusively on the religious doctrines, and will bear continual re- 
 ference to the new relation established between man and the 
 Supreme Being: the predominant character will be that of the 
 theologian. In the latter, although he may not altogether decline 
 the examination of the religious doctrines, their development, and 
 their variations, his leading object will be to trace the effect of 
 Christianity on the individual and social happiness of man, its in- 
 fluence on the polity, the laws and institutions, the opinions, the 
 manners, even on the arts and the literature of the Christian world : 
 he will write rather as an historian than as a religious instructor. 
 Though, in fact, a candid and dispassionate survey of the con- 
 nexion of Christianity with the temporal happiness, and with the 
 intellectual and social advancement of mankind, even to the religious 
 inquirer, cannot but be of high importance and interest ; while with 
 the general mass, at least of the reading and intellectual part of the 
 community, nothing tends so powerfully to the strengthening or 
 weakening of religious impression and sentiment, nothing acts so 
 extensively, even though perhaps indirectly, on the formation of 
 religious opinions, and on the speculative or practical belief or 
 rejection of Christianity, as the notions we entertain of its influence 
 on the histpry of man, and its relation to human happiness and 
 social improvement,"-^Pp. v. vi. 
 
 In another place he tells us that the course of his 
 history 
 
 "will endeavour to trace all the modifications of Christianity, by 
 which it accommodated itself to the spirit of successive ages ; and 
 by this apparently almost skilful, but in fact necessary, condescen- 
 sion to the predominant state of moral culture, of which itself 
 formed a constituent element, maintained its uninterrupted do- 
 minion. It is the author's object, the difficulty of which he himself 
 fully appreciates, to portray the genius of the Christianity of each 
 successive age, in connexion with that of the age itself ; entirely to 
 discard all polemic views; to mark the origin and progress of all 
 
I go Milman^ s View of Christianity. 
 
 the subordinate diversities of belief ; their origin in the circumstances 
 of the place and time at which they appeared ; their progress from 
 their adaptation to the prevailing state of opinion or sentiment : 
 rather than to confute error or to establish truth ; in short, to exhibit 
 the reciprocal influence of civilization on Christianity, of Christianity 
 on civihzation. To the accomplishment of such a scheme he is 
 well aware that besides the usual high qualifications ..of a faithful 
 historian, is requisite, in an especisil manner, the union of true phi- 
 losophy with perfect charity, if indeed they are not one and the 
 same. This calm, impartial, and dispassionate tone he wiU con- 
 stantly endeavour, he dares scarcely hope, with such warnings on 
 every side of involuntary prejudice and unconscious, prepossession, 
 uniformly to maintain. In the honesty of his purpose he will seek 
 his excuse for all imperfection or deficiency in the execution of his 
 scheme." — P. 47. 
 
 These extracts, setting forth the intellectual idea 
 under which the author writes, contain matter more 
 than sufficient for the limits within which we wish our 
 remarks upon him to be confined. 
 
 2. 
 
 Now let us see how much we are disposed to grant to 
 Mr. Milman, and where we part company with him : in 
 doing which we must be allowed to begin somewhat ab' 
 ovo, and for a while to exchange a critical for a didactic 
 tone. We maintain then, as we have already said, that" 
 Christianity, nor Christianity only, but all God's deal- 
 ings with His creatures, have two aspects, one externa], 
 one internal. What one of the earliest Fathers says of 
 its highest ordinance, is true of it altogether, and of all 
 other divine dispensations : they are twofold, " having 
 one part heavenly, and one part earthly." This is the 
 law of Providence here below ; it works beneath a veil, 
 and what is visible in its course does but shadow out at 
 most, and sometimes obscures and disguises what is in- 
 visible. The world in which we are placed has its own 
 
MilmarC s View of Christianity. 19 1 
 
 system of laws and principles, which, as far as our know-, 
 ledge of it goes, is, when once set in motion, sufficient 
 to account for itself, — as complete and independent as 
 if there was nothing beyond it. Ordinarily speaking, 
 nothing happens, nothing goes on in the world, but may 
 be satisfactorily traced to some other event or fact in it, 
 or has a sufficient result in other events or facts in it, 
 without the necessity of our following it into a higher 
 system of things in order to explain its existence, or to 
 give it a meaning. We will not stop to dwell on excep- 
 tions to this general statement, or on the narrowness of 
 our knowledge of things : but what is every day said 
 and acted on proves that this is at least the impression 
 made upon most minds by the course of things in 
 which we find ourselves. The sun rises and sets on a 
 law ; the tides ebb and flow upon a law ; the earth is 
 covered with verdure or buried in the ocean, it grows 
 old and it grows young again, by the operation of fixed 
 laws. Life, whether vegetable or animal, is subjected 
 to a similar external and general rule. Men grow to 
 .maturity, then decay, and die. Moreover, they f rm 
 into society, and society has its principles. Nations 
 move forward by laws which act as a kind of destiny 
 over them, and which are as vigorous now as a thousand 
 years ago. And these laws of the social and political 
 world run into the physical, making all that is seen one 
 and one only system ; a horse stumbles, and an op- 
 pressed people is rid of their tyrant ; a volcano changes 
 populous cities into a dull lake ; a gorge has of old time 
 opened, and the river rolls on, bearing on its bosom the 
 destined site of some great mart, which else had never 
 been. We cannot set limits either to the extent or tq 
 the minuteness of this wonderful web of causes and 
 effects, in which all we see is involved. It reaches to 
 
192 MilmarC s View of Christianity. 
 
 the skies ; it penetrates into our very thoughts, habits 
 and will. 
 
 Such is confessedly the world in which our Almighty 
 Creator has placed us. If then He is still actively present 
 with His own work, present with nations and with indi- 
 viduals, He must be acting by means of its ordinary 
 system, or by quickening, or as it were, stimulating its 
 powers, or by superseding or interrupting it ; in other 
 words, by means of what is called nature, or by miracle; 
 and whereas strictly miraculous interference must be, 
 from the nature of the case, rare, it stands to reason 
 that, unless He has simply retired, and has left the 
 world ordinarily to itself, — content with having origi- 
 nally imposed on it certain general laws, which will for 
 the most part work out the ends which He contem- 
 plates, — He is acting through, with, and beneath those 
 physical, social, and moral laws, of which our expe- 
 rience informs us. Now it has ever been a firm article 
 of Christian faith, that His Providence is in fact not 
 general merely, but is, on the contrary, thus particular 
 and personal ; and that, as there is a particular Pro- 
 vidence, so of necessity that Providence is secretly con- 
 curring and co-operating with that system which meets 
 the eye, and which is commonly recognized among men 
 as existing. It is not too much to say that this is the 
 one great rule on which the Divine Dispensations with 
 mankind have been and are conducted, that the visible 
 world is the instrument, yet the veil, of the world in- 
 visible, — the veil, yet still partially the symbol and 
 index : so that all that exists or happens visibly, con- 
 ceals and yet suggests, and above all subserves, a system 
 of perse ns, facts, and events beyond itself. 
 
 Thus the course of things has a natural termination 
 as well as a natural origin ; it tends towards final causes 
 
Milman! s View of Christianity. 193 
 
 while it springs from physical ; it is ever issuing from 
 things which we see round about us ; it is ever passing 
 on into what is matter of faith, not of sight. What is 
 called and seems to be cause and effect, is rather an 
 order of sequence, and does not preclude, nay, perhaps 
 implies, the presence of unseen spiritual agency as its 
 real author. ■ This is the animating principle both of the 
 Church's ritual and of Scripture interpretation ; in the 
 latter it is the basis of the theory of the double sense; 
 in the former it makes ceremonies and observances to be 
 signs, seals, means, and pledges of supernatural grace. 
 It is the mystical principle in the one, it is the sacra- 
 mental in the other. All that is seen, — ^the world, the 
 Bible, the Church, the civil polity, and man himself^ — are 
 types, and, in their degree and place, representatives 
 and organs of an unseen world, truer and higher than 
 themselves. The only difference between them is, that 
 some things bear their supernatural character upon their 
 surface, are historically creations of the supernatural 
 system, or are perceptibly instrumental, or obviously 
 symbolical : while others rather seem to be complete in 
 themselves, or run counter to the unseen system which 
 they really subserve, and thereby make demands upon 
 our faith. 
 
 This may be illustrated from the creation of man. 
 The Creator "formed man of the dust of the ground, 
 and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and 
 man became a living soul." He first formed a mate- 
 rial tabernacle, and then endued it with an unseen life. 
 Now some philosophers, somewhat after the manner of 
 the ancient Gnostics whom Mr. Milman mentions (vol. ii., 
 p. 113), have speculated on the probability of man's 
 being originally of some brute nature, some vast mis- 
 shapen lizard of the primeval period, which at length 
 
 VOL. II. 13 
 
194 Milman's View of Christianity. 
 
 by the force of nature, from whatever secret causes, was 
 exalted into a rational being, and gradually shaped its 
 proportions and refined its properties by the influence of 
 the rational principle which got possession of it. Such 
 a theory is of course irreconcilable with the letter of the 
 sacred text, to say no more ; but it bears an analogy, • 
 and at least supplies an illustra,tion, to many facts and 
 events which take place in this world. When Provi- 
 dence would make a Revelation, He does not begin 
 anew, but uses the existing system ; He does not visibly 
 send an Angel, but He commissions or inspires one of 
 our own fellows. When He would bless us. He makes 
 a man His priest. When He would consecrate or 
 quicken us, He takes the elements of this world as 
 the means of real but unseen spiritual influences. 
 When He would set up a divine polity, He takes a 
 polity which already is, or one in course of forming. 
 Nor does He interfere with its natural growth, develop- 
 ment, or dependence on things visible. He does not 
 shut it up in a desert, and there supply it with, insti- 
 tutions unlike those which might naturally come to it 
 from the contact and intercourse of the external world. 
 He does but modify, quicken, or direct the powers of 
 nature or the laws of society. Or if He works miracles, 
 still it is without superseding the ordinary course of 
 things. He multiplies the floc^cs or the descendants 
 of Jacob, or in due season He may work signal or 
 public miracles for their deliverance from Egypt; but 
 still the operation of ordinary causes, the influence of 
 political arrangements, and what is called the march of 
 events, are seen in such providences as truly, and can be 
 pointed out as convincingly, as if an Angel and a pillar 
 of a cloud were not with them. 
 
 Thus the great characteristic of Revelation is addition, 
 
MilmarC s View of Christianity. ig^^ 
 
 substitution. Things look the same as before, though not 
 an invisible power has taken hold upon them. This 
 power does not unclothe the creature, but clothes it. 
 Men dream everywhere : it gives visions. Men jour- 
 ney everywhere : it sends " the Angels of God to meet 
 them." Men may elsewhere be hospitable to their 
 brethren : now they entertain Angels. Men carry on 
 a work ; but it is a blessing from some ancestor that is 
 breathing on and through it unseen. A nation migrates 
 and seizes on a country ; but all along its proceedings 
 are hallowed by prophecy, and promise, and providence 
 beforehand, and used for religious ends afterwards. 
 Israel was as much a political power, as man is an 
 animal. The rites and ceremonies enjoined upon the 
 people might be found elsewhere, but were not less 
 divine notwithstanding. Circumcision was also practised 
 in Egypt, frequent ablutions may be the custom of the 
 East, the veil of Moses may have been the symbol of 
 other rulers (if so be) before him, — though the fact 
 has to be proved ; a Holy of Holies, an altar, a sacri- 
 fice, a sacerdotal caste, in these points the Mosaic law 
 resembled, yet as to these it differed from, the nations 
 round about. The Israelitish polity had a beginning, a 
 a middle, and an end, like other things of time and 
 place ; its captivities were the natural consequences, its 
 monarchy was the natural expedient, of a state of poli- 
 tical weakness. Its territory was a battle-ground, and 
 its power was the alternate ally, of the rival empires of 
 Egypt and Assyria. Heathen travellers may have sur- 
 veyed the Holy Land, and have thought it but a narrow 
 slip of Syria. So it was ; what then ? till the compara- 
 tive anatomist can be said by his science to disprove the 
 rationality and responsibility of man, the politician or 
 geographer of this world does nothing, by dissertations 
 
196 MilmarCs View of Christianity, 
 
 in his own particular line of thought, towards quenching 
 the secret light of Israel, or dispossessing its angelic 
 guardians of the height of Sion or of the sepulchres of 
 the prophets. Its history is twofold, worldly to the 
 world, and heavenly to the heirs of heaven. 
 
 What is true of Judaism is true of Christianity. The 
 kingdom of Christ, though not of this world, yet is 
 in the world, and has a visible, material, social shape. It 
 consists of men, and it has developed according to the 
 laws under which combinations of men develop. It 
 has an external aspect similar to all other kingdoms. We 
 may generalize and include it as one among the various 
 kinds of polity, as one among the empires, which have 
 been upon the earth. It is called the fifth kingdom ; 
 and as being numbered with the previous four which 
 were earthly, it is thereby, in fact, compared with them. 
 We may write its history, and make it look as like those 
 which were before or contemporary with it, as a man is 
 like a monkey. Now we come at length to Mr. Milman : 
 this is what he has been doing. He has been viewing 
 the history of the Church on the side of the world. Its 
 rise from nothing, the gradual aggrandizement of its 
 bishops, the consolidation of its polity and government, 
 its relation to powers of the earth, its intercourse with 
 foreign philosophies and religions, its conflict with ex- 
 ternal and internal enemies, the mutual action for good 
 or for evil which has been carried on between it and 
 foreign system^, 'political and intellectual, its large ex- 
 tension, its growth and resolution into a monarchy, its 
 temporal greatness, its gradual divisions and decay, and 
 the natural causes which operated throughout, — these are 
 the subjects in which he delights, to which he has dedi- 
 cated himself,-^that is, as far as they can be detached 
 from their directly religious bearing ; and unless readers 
 
MilmarC s View of Christianity. 197 
 
 understand this, they will think that what is but a con-' 
 temptation of what is outside, is intended by him for a 
 denial of what is inside. Whether such denial has in 
 any measure resulted, even in Mr. Milman's own mind, 
 from such contemplation, is a farther question, after- 
 wards to be considered ; but, anyhow, it is to be feared 
 that too many persons will unfairly run away from his 
 book with the notion that to ignore the Almighty in 
 ecclesiastical history is really to deny Him. 
 
 3- 
 
 Some specimens of Mr. Milman's peculiarity will 
 serve further to explain what we mean. The follow- 
 ing, for instance, are some of his observations on the 
 resemblance between the Magianism of the East and 
 Judaism after its return from captivity there : 
 
 " The earliest books of the Old Testament fully recognize the 
 ministration of Angels, but in Babylonia this simpler creed grew up 
 into a regular hierarchy, in which the degrees of rank and subordi- 
 nation were arranged with almost heraldic precision. The seven 
 great archangels of Jewish tradition correspond with the Amschas- 
 pands of the Zendavesta ; and in strict mutual analogy, both systems 
 arrayed against each other a separate host of spiritual beings with 
 distinct powers and functions. Each nation, each individual had 
 in one case his Ferver, in the other his guardian angel, and was 
 exposed to the hostile Dev or Daemon. . . . The great imper- 
 sonated Principle of Evil appears to have assumed much of the 
 antagonist power of darkness. The name itself of Satan, which in 
 the older poetical book of Job is assigned to a spirit of different 
 attributes, one of the celestial ministers who assemble before the 
 throne of the Almighty, . . . became appropriated to the prince Qf 
 the malignant spirits, — the head and representative of the spiritual 
 world, which ruled over physical as well as moral evil." — Pp. 
 70—72, 
 
 Our object in quoting this passage is neither to deny 
 the similarity between the two theologies, nor to inquire 
 
igS MilmarC s View of Christianity. 
 
 I 
 
 how this came to pass, but to give an instance of Mr. 
 Milman's peculiar manner, and the facility with which he 
 may be taken, not unnaturally, but still over-hastily, to 
 be saying what he does not say, that the Jewish theo- 
 logy is worth no more than the Magian. He as little 
 says it as, in asserting that man is an animal, he would 
 be denying that he is rational. 
 
 And in like manner when he calls the Magnificat 
 "Jewish," he need not mean more than to be an "his- 
 torian rather than a religious instructor ; " we take him 
 to be merely stating what he considers a fact, whatever 
 comes of it, whatever theory is to be built upon it, what 
 explanation is to be given of it, viz., that the language 
 which the Blessed Mary uses, is such as the Scribes and 
 Pharisees, Judas the Zealot, or Caiaphas the High Priest 
 might use also ; in spite of this, he may consider the 
 spirit and meaning in each party to be quite different. 
 " It is curious',' he says, " to observe how completely 
 and exclusively consistent every expression appears with 
 the state of ^belief at that period ; all is purely Jewish, 
 and accordant with the prevalent expectation of the 
 National Messiah." — Vol. i., p. 102. 
 
 Again, when he says that the Baptist "^ partook of the 
 ascetic character of the more solitary of the Essenes, all 
 of whom retired from the tumult and licence of the city," 
 vol. i., p. 141, no one can reasonably suppose that he 
 means to be more than an historical relator, keeping clear 
 of religious principles and doctrinal theories, and stating 
 facts, external facts. 
 
 In like manner he parallels Christian asceticism to 
 Oriental ; whatever theory he does or may proceed to 
 erect upon this fact of a correspondence between the two, 
 still, as far as the profession of his Preface goes, he is 
 not bound to consider it at all in a " strictly religious " 
 
MilmarCs View of Christianity. igg 
 
 but "rather in a temporal, social, and political light." 
 4^ supernatuial cause for it may exist in Christianity, a 
 divine authority ; but this does not conflict with the fact 
 that the Christian athlete may externally resemble the 
 heathen ; unless indeed, which no one will maintain, the 
 parallel fact of the heathen or Jewish ceremonial ablu- 
 tions be an argument against the divine appointment of 
 evangelical baptism. He says, — 
 
 " On the cold table-lands of Thibet, in the forests of India, among 
 the busy population of China, on the burning shores of Siam, in 
 Egypt and in Palestine, in Christianised Europe, in Mahomme- 
 tanised Asia, the worshipper of the Lama, the Faquir, the Bonze, the 
 Talapoin, the Essene, the therapeutist, the monk, and the dervish, 
 have withdrawn from the society of man, in order to abstract the 
 pure mind from the dominion of foul and corrupting matter. Under 
 each system, the perfection of human nature was estrangement from 
 the influence of the senses, those senses which were enslaved to the 
 material elements of the world ; an approximation to the essence of 
 the Deity^ by a total secession from the affairs, the interests, the 
 passions, the thoughts, the common being and nature of man. The 
 practical operation of this elementary principle of Eastern religion 
 has deeply influenced the whole history of man. But it had made 
 no progress in Europe till after the introduction of Christianity." — 
 Vol. ii., pp. 86, 87. 
 
 Again he says, speaking of the time of Christ's 
 coming, 
 
 " Man, as history and experience teach, is essentially a religious 
 being; there a,re certain faculties and modes of thinking and feeling 
 apparently inseparable from his mental organization, which lead 
 him irresistibly to seek some communication with another and a 
 higher world. But at the present juncture the ancient religions 
 were effete ; they belonged to a totally different state of civilization ; 
 though they retained the strong hold of habit and interest on dif- 
 ferent classes of society, yet the general mind was advanced beyond 
 them ; they could not supply the rsligious necessities of the age 
 Thus, the world, peaceably united under one temporal monarchy 
 
200 MilmarC s View of Christianity. 
 
 might be compared to a vast body without a soul : the throne of 
 the human ptmd appeared vacant; among the rival competitors 
 for its dominion, none advanced more than claims local, or limited 
 to a certain class." — Vol. i., p. 8. 
 
 These instances will be sufficient of Mr. Milman's 
 manner. We proceed next to observe that, as if in 
 order that there may be no mistake, he often gives his 
 readers intimation, more or less express, of the external 
 view he is taking of his subject ; as a few out of the 
 many instances, which might be quoted in point, will 
 show. 
 
 Thus he says of the Jews, that " to the loose manner 
 in which religious belief hung on the greater part of the 
 subjects of the Roman empire, their recluse and un- 
 compromising attachment to the faith of their ancestors 
 offered the most singular contrast!'- — Vol. i., p. 345 ; and 
 that "the Jews stood alone, according to the language and 
 opinion of the Roman world, as a nation of religious 
 fanatics. — Ibid. Again, "so long as" the Christians 
 " made no visible impression upon society, their unsocial 
 and self-secluding disposition would be treated with con- 
 tempt and pity rather than with animosity." — ^Vol. ii., 
 p. 144. Words like these bear on their very face the 
 writer's intention merely to describe how Christians 
 appeared to the heathen. 
 
 Still more expressly he speaks of " One who appeared 
 to the mass of mankind in His own age as a peasant of 
 Palestine," vol. i., p. 35 : he says that the estabhshment 
 of the Mosaic Law was " accompanied, according to the 
 universal belief, with the most terrific demonstrations of 
 Almighty power," ibid., p. 168 ; and he makes the solemn 
 announcement, ", in the stable of the inn or caravansera 
 was born the child . . . who has been for centuries con- 
 sidered the object of adoration as the divine Mediator 
 
Milniai'C s View of Christianity, 201 
 
 between God and man by the most civilized and en- 
 lightened nations of the earth." — Ibid., p. 108. 
 
 Speaking of the Greeks who came to Christ at the 
 feast, he says, " to tlieir surprise . . . the somewhat 
 ambiguous language of Jesus dwells at first on His ap- 
 proaching fate, etc." — P. 306. Speaking of our Lord's 
 injunction to secrecy on occasion of His miraculous 
 cures, he says, that this was so frequent "that one 
 evangelist considers that the cautious and unresisting 
 demeanour of Jesus, thus avoiding all unnecessary 
 offence or irritation, exemplified that characteristic of 
 the Messiah so beautifully described by Isaiah, ' He 
 shall neither strive, etc' " — P. 224. That one evangelist 
 considered a prophecy exemplified, is quite consistent, 
 of course, with a belief that at the same time inspira- 
 tion pronounced it to be fulfilled. Mr. Milman need not 
 mean more than to state an external fact. 
 
 In the same spirit he calls our Saviour's miracles 
 "preternatural," not "supernatural works." — Vid. vol. i., 
 pp. 283, 389. The latter word would assume the point in 
 debate between the world and the Church, their divinity, 
 whereas he is taking up an impartial or philosophical 
 position between the two. He speaks of Christ as a man 
 " who as far as he [Pilate] could discover, was a harm- 
 less, peaceful, and benevolent enthusiast." — P. 346. And, 
 in describing the attempt of the Nazarenes to cast our 
 Lord down the brow of their hill, he cautiously says, in 
 the same historical tone, " they found that the intended 
 victim of their wrath had disappeared." — Ibid., p. 188. 
 And in another passage where he is led to compare 
 Budhism with Christianity, he expressly "deprecates 
 misconstruction." "The characteristic of the Budhist 
 religion," he says, " which in one respect may be con- 
 sidered (/ deprecate misconstruction) the Christianity of 
 
202 Milman's View of Christianity. 
 
 the remoter East, seems an union of political with re- 
 ligious reformation." And then he even takes the 
 trouble to mention where Christianity, in his opinion, 
 parts company with Budhism, as well as what it shares 
 with it. " Its end," he observes, " is to substitute purer 
 morality for the wild and multifarious idolatry into 
 which Brahminism had degenerated, and to break down 
 the distinction of castes. But Budhism appears to be 
 essentially monastic ; and how different the supersti- 
 tious regard for life in the Budhist from the enlightened 
 humanity of Christianity ! " — P. 98. Thus Christianity 
 certainly is superior to Budhism. 
 
 4- 
 We have said nothing to imply that we approve of 
 the judgment which has determined Mr. Milman to this 
 mode of writing. Still less can we speak well of it, 
 considering it has led him to that apparent suppression 
 of doctrinal truth which we are now to notice. For the 
 fact is undeniable, little as Mr. Milman may be aware 
 of it, that this external contemplation of Christianity 
 necessarily leads a man to write as a Socinian or Uni- 
 tarian would write, whether he will or not. Mr. Milman 
 has not been able to avoid this dreadful disadvantage, 
 and thus, however heartily he may hate the opinions of 
 such men himself, he has unintentionally both given 
 scandal to his brethren and cause of triumph to the 
 enemy. A very few words will account for this. The 
 great doctrines which the Socinian denies are our Lord's 
 divinity and atonement ; now these are not external 
 facts ; — what he confesses are His humanity and cruci- 
 fixion ; these are external facts. Mr. Milman then is 
 bound by his theory to dwell on the latter, to slur over 
 the former. Nay, further still, the forgiveness of sins is 
 
MilmarHs View of Chnstianity. ' 203 
 
 not an external fact ; but moral improvement is ; con- 
 sequently he will make the message of the Gospel to 
 relate mainly to fnoral improvement, not to forgiveness 
 of sins. Again, those who maintain most earnestly the 
 divinity of Christ as a matter of doctrine, must yet 
 admit that what is " manifested " in Him, is not, cannot 
 be, more than a certain attribute or attributes of the 
 divinity, as, for instance, especially love. Accordingly, 
 Mr. Milman, speaking mainly of what is externally seen, 
 will be led to speak almost in a Sabellian fashion, as 
 if denying, because not stating, the specific indwelling 
 which Scripture records, and the Church teaches. Hence 
 the general effect of Mr. Milman's work, we cannot deny, 
 though we wish to give as little offence as possible, is 
 heretical. 
 
 On these considerations, for instance, we account for 
 the following passages : — he says that the " structure 
 of the new faith " is " a temple to which all nations in 
 the highest degree of civilization may Mn^ their offer- 
 ings of pure hearts, virtuous dispositions, universal cha- 
 rity" and that "our natural emotion on beholding it, is 
 " the recognition of the Divine goodness in the promul- 
 gation of this beneficent code of religion, and adoration 
 of that Being in whom that Divine goodness is thus em- 
 bodied and made comprehensible to the faculties of man. 
 In the language of the Apostle, God is in Christ recon- 
 ciling "Ca^ world unto Himself."— Vol. i., p. 51. 
 
 We all know it to be an essential and most practical 
 doctrine that the Person of Christ is Divine, and that 
 into His Divine Personality He has taken human na- 
 ture ; or, in other words, the Agent, Speaker, Sufferer, 
 Sacrifice, Intercessor, Judge, is God, though God in our 
 flesh ; not man with a presence of Divinity. The latter 
 doctrine is Sabellianism, Nestorianism, and Socinianism. 
 
204 Milman^ s View of Christianity. 
 
 Yet it is adopted to the letter by Mr. Milman, who, ad- 
 mitting nothing but what is of this world when he con- 
 templates Christ's person, is obliged to see in it by his 
 very theory nothing more than a man. Thus, he says, 
 ^hat " Jesus declared " " that the Son of God . . . had 
 descended from heaven," and was " present in His Peri 
 son." — Vol. i., p. 173. 
 
 Again, what could be more lax and unsatisfactory 
 than such discrimination as the following between the 
 Gospel and the religions of the East, but for the salvo 
 that Mr. Milman's very object and only object is to show 
 how like Christianity is to heathenism ? 
 
 " The incarnation of the Deity, or the union of some ^ari of the 
 Divine Essence with a material or human body, is by no means an 
 uncommon religious notion, more particularly in the East. Yet in 
 the doctrine as subsequently developed by Christianity, there seems 
 the same important difference which characterizes the whole system 
 of the ancient and modern religions. It is in the former a mytho- 
 logical impersonation of the power, in Christ it is the goodness of 
 of the Deity, which associating itself with a human form assumes 
 the character of a representative of the human race ; in whose per- 
 son is exhibited a pure model of human perfection, and whose 
 triumph over evil is by the slow and gradual progress of enlighten- 
 ing the mind and softening and purifying the heart." — ^Vol. i., p. 97. 
 
 The concluding words of this extract should be well 
 observed ; the victory of the Cross and the free pardon 
 of sin are not mentioned among Christ's "triumphs." 
 The author adds presently that the sole design of the 
 " Christian scheme is to work a moral change, to establish 
 a new relation between man and tJte Almighty Creator, 
 and to bring to light the great secret of the immortality 
 of man." It is said that the exception proves the rule ; 
 now it so happens that the vague words put into italics 
 are the nearest approach which we have observed in Mr, 
 Milman's volumes to the doctrine of forgiveness of sins, 
 
MilmarCs View of Christianity. 205 
 
 let alone that of the atonement. We are far from pro- 
 nouncing for certain that there is nothing more definite 
 to be found in them, but we are sure that we are faithful 
 to the general tone of his work in thus speaking. 
 
 Again, he speaks of the more opulent Romans being 
 " tempted to make themselves acquainted with a religion, 
 the moral influence of which was so manifestly favourable 
 to the happiness of mankind, and which offered so noble 
 a solution of the great problem of human philosophy, the 
 immortality of the soul." — Vol. ii., p. 156. Surely this 
 account of the great problem awkwardly fits in with the 
 real and deep cry of human nature embodied in the 
 jailor's words, "What shall I do to be saved V 
 
 Again, he speaks of Christ as one " whose moral doc- 
 trines, if adopted throughout the world, would destroy 
 more than half the misery, by destroying all the vide 
 and mutual hostility of men," vol. i., p. 108 ; where the 
 last phrase is perhaps intended as an explanation of 
 Christ "having made/^aci?." 
 
 Elsewhere he dwells upon the beauty of the picture 
 presented to us in Christ's removing bodily afflictions ; 
 and on the other hand, " gently instilling into the minds 
 of the people those pure, and humane, and gentle prin- 
 ciples of moral goodness to which the wisdom of ages 
 has been able to add nothing ;" and God's condescend- 
 ing " to show this image and reflection of His own in- 
 conceivable nature for the benefit of" men, "to restore 
 them to, and prepare them for, a higher and eternal 
 state of existence," — Pp. 197, 198. He is, it seems, pre- 
 cluded by his position from expressing definitely the 
 idea conveyed in the proclamation, " Repent ye," and in 
 the announcement, " Thy sins be forgiven thee." 
 
 In another place he expressly sets himself to interpret 
 the last-mentioned words. When the woman that was 
 
2o6 Mihiaii s View of Christianity. 
 
 a sinner washed our Saviour's feet with her tears, He 
 said, "Thy sins be forgiven thee;" Mr. Milman para- 
 phrases, " the reply of Jesus intimates that His religion 
 was intended to reform and purify the worst" — P. 233, 
 That is, Christ's reply hints less than it expresses. 
 
 Again, speaking of what he considers the growing 
 illumination of society, he says : — 
 
 " Even if (though I conceive it impossible) the imagination should 
 entirely wither from the human soul, and a severer faith enter into an 
 exclusive alliance with pure reason, Christianity would still have its 
 moral perfection, its rational promise of immortality, its approxima- 
 tion to the one pure, spiritual, incomprehensible Deity, to satisfy that 
 reason, and to infuse those sentiments of dependence, oi gratitude, of 
 love to God, without which human society must fall to ruin, and the 
 human mind, in humiliating desperation, suspend all its noble ac- 
 tivity, and care not to put forth its sublime and eternal energies." 
 — Vol. i., p. 132. 
 
 Again, he speaks of baptism as being a mark of the 
 convert's " initiation into the new faith," while " a secret 
 internal transmutation was to take place by divine 
 agency in his heart, which was to communicate a new 
 principle of moral life!' — Vol. i., p. 172. Still no mention 
 of the forgiveness of sins. 
 
 Again, he tells us that the object of the Temptation 
 was "to withdraw" Christ "from the purely religious 
 end of His being upon earth, to transform Him from 
 the author of a moral revolution to be slowly wrought 
 by the introduction of new principles of virtue, and new 
 rules for individual and social happiness . . . who was to 
 offer to man the gift of eternal life, and elevate his nature 
 to a previous fitness for that exalted destiny." — Vol. i., 
 p. 156. 
 
 5. 
 Now it is very far from our intention indeed to say 
 
MilmarCs View of Christianity. 207 
 
 that the solemn topics of atonement, and forgiveness, 
 and of our Lord's divine nature, are to be introduced 
 upon all occasions, and especially in an historical work 
 such as Mr. Milman's. He is, as he truly says, "an his- 
 torian rather than a religious instructor." But still, when 
 he is engaged in specifying expressly what the revealed 
 doctrine consists in, and what the object of Christ's 
 coming was, we consider it to be a very unhappy view 
 of historical composition, which precludes him from 
 mentioning what all members of the Church hold to 
 be fundamental in that doctrine, and primary in that 
 object. 
 
 Yet, singular to say, Mr. Milman makes this mode of 
 writing a subject of especial self-congratulation ; and 
 this is a phenomenon which deserves dwelling on. It is 
 impossible then to mistake the satisfaction which he feels 
 in adopting the external view of Christianity, and the 
 sort of contempt, we are sorry to say it, in which he 
 holds theological science ; yet we really do not see what 
 the merit is, which he seems to claim for his historical 
 method. Not that we cannot conceive many reasons 
 for contemplating sacred things as they show themselves 
 externally ; but there is a broad intelligible difference 
 between throwing one's mind into the feelings of a cer- 
 tain state of society, or into the views of certain persons, 
 for an occasion or purpose, and habitually taking their 
 feelings or views as one's own, and making what is not 
 the true position for surveying them the centre of our 
 own thoughts about them. Men may take this external 
 view of sacred things by way of putting themselves into 
 the place of unbelievers, and entering into their diffi- 
 culties, and so assisting them in finding the truth. Such 
 is the case with Paley and other Vriters on External 
 Evidence. Again, there is certainly a silent and soothing 
 
io8 MilmarCs View of Christianity. 
 
 pleasure in viewing great things in the littleness and 
 feebleness in which they appear to the world, from the 
 secret feeling of their real power and majesty, and an 
 exulting anticipation of their ultimate and just triumph. 
 Such is the pleasure excited by the recognitions or dis- 
 coveries of Greek tragedy, which, as being generally 
 foreseen from the beginning, feed the imagination. 
 Moreover, a mean exterior cast over what we admire 
 and revere acts as a veil of mystery heightening our 
 feeling of its greatness. And again, the very keenness 
 and fulness of our feelings may often act, in leading us in 
 very despair or from deep awe to use simple and homely 
 words concerning what is more constraining with us, 
 and more affecting, than anything else in the world. 
 None of these considerations, however, will serve to 
 explain Mr. Milman's course of proceeding. Neither as 
 a conscientious exercise of mind, nor except very par- 
 tially in the way of evidence, nor from any poetical 
 pleasure, nor to gratify the love of mystery, nor in 
 admiration, nor from a principle of reserve, does he 
 display the earthly side of the Gospel ; but, strange to 
 say, from a notion of its being philosophical to do so. It 
 is quite undeniable, and quite as astonishing, that he 
 thinks there is something high and admirable in the 
 state of mind which can thus look down upon a Divine 
 Dispensation. He imagines that it argues a large, 
 liberal, enlightened understanding, to be able to gene- 
 ralize religions, and, without denying the divinity of 
 Christianity, to resolve it into its family likeness to all 
 others. He thinks it a sign of an acute and practised 
 intellect to pare down its supernatural facts as closely as 
 possible, and to leave its principal miracles, the multi- 
 plying bread, the raising Lazarus, or the Resurrection, 
 standing alone like the pillars of Tadmor in the wilder- 
 
MilmarCs View of Christianity. 209 
 
 ness. He evidently considers that it is an advance in 
 knowledge to disguise Scripture facts and persons under 
 secular names. He thinks that it is so much gain if he 
 can call Abraham an Emir or a Sheik ; that it is a 
 victory to be able to connect Church doctrine with 
 Magianism, or Platonism, or Judaism, or Essenism, or 
 Orientalism ; and to liken holy Basil or Bernard to 
 Faquir, Bonze, Talapoin, and Dervish. This is what 
 meets us on the very surface of his book, and it is, we 
 must speak frankly, no promising trait. What, for in- 
 stance, should we say to a comparative anatomist, who 
 not only exercised his science in his own line and for 
 its own ends, bjit should profess to write an account ot 
 man, and then should talk much of man's animality and 
 materiality, of. his relation to the beasts of the field, of 
 the processes of nutrition, digestion, disease, and dis- 
 solution, and should boast of his having steered clear of 
 all mention of the soul, should waive the question of 
 the moral sense, should deprecate the inquiry into a 
 future life, leave the debate upon responsibility to the 
 schools, and all this with the air of one who was no 
 common man, but was breathing the pure, elevated, and 
 serene atmosphere of philosophy ? Yet such as this in 
 the eyes of all serious men will be an author who speaks 
 of any inquiry into the doctrines of Christianity as a sort 
 of condescension, and looks upon its outward and secular 
 aspect as its glory. We cannot exempt Mr. Milman 
 from the force of this comparison. 
 
 For instance, he speaks in the first extract above given, 
 as not being able " altogether " to " decline the exami- 
 nation of the religious doctrines, their development, and 
 iheir variations," though " his leading object " is to trace 
 the effect of Christianity on the individual and social 
 aappiness of man, its influence on the polity, laws, and 
 
 VOL. II. 14 
 
2 lo MilmarC s View of Christianity. 
 
 institutions, the opinions, the manners . . . the arts and 
 literature of the Christian world." He implies that his 
 survey is to be "candid and dispassionate" and says that 
 though mainly relating to what is temporal, intellectual, 
 and social, it will be of high importance and interest 
 " even to the religious inquirer," and will be of a nature 
 to act upon "the general mass at least of the reading 
 and intelligent part of the community," in forming their 
 religious opinions, and in their " speculative or practical 
 belief" of Christianity. He goes on to congratulate 
 himself that, as regards the sceptical and infidel writers 
 of Germany, for so we understand him, he " shall not be 
 be accused of that narrow jealousy, and, in his opinion, 
 unworthy and timid suspicion, with which the writers of 
 that country are proscribed by many."— P. viii. He com- 
 pliments them on " their profound research and philo- 
 sophical tone of thought." He celebrates St. Thomas 
 the Apostle as "remarkable for his coolness and reflecting 
 temper of mind." — P. 226. As to the points at present 
 in controversy in our Church, including, let it be ob- 
 served, baptismal regeneration and other doctrines not 
 less important, " though of course," he says, " I cannot 
 be, yet I have written as if, in total ignorance of the 
 existence of such discussions." — P. ix. This ought to 
 mean, we suppctse, — I have my definite opinion, but I 
 will not controvert ; but it sounds very like, — I hold a 
 great and a calm view, and all others are partizans and 
 zealots. He continues : " / have delivered without fear 
 and without partiality what / have conscientiously be- 
 lieved to be the truth. / write for the general readers 
 rather than for the members of my own profession ;" — 
 and now let us attend to the reason of this great resolve : 
 " as I cannot understand why such subjects of universal 
 interest should be secluded, as the peculiar objects of 
 
Milman^s View of Christianity. 2 1 1 
 
 study to one class or order alone." In other words, — 
 My own profession cannot be brought to take an ex- 
 ternal view of Christianity ; but I write for the world, 
 which does. 
 
 He further tells us that — 
 
 "As Christian History, surveyed in a wise and candid spirit, 
 cannot but be a useful school for the promotion of Christian faith ; 
 so no study can tend more directly to, or more imperatively enforce 
 on all unprejudiced and dispassionate minds, mutual forbearance, 
 enlightened toleration, and the greatest even of Christian virtues, 
 Christian Charity." — P. xi. 
 
 In the second of the extracts with which we com- 
 menced, he repeats his hope of attaining a "calm, im- 
 partial, a.nd dispassionate tone ; " that is, the calmness 
 and dispassionateness, we suppose, which can bring a 
 man comfortably through an assimilation of the later 
 Jewish prophets to Zoroaster, and Christianity to Bud- 
 dhism. Moreover, he tells us, that "his disposition in- 
 clines" to labour even more, "to show the good as well 
 as the evil of each phasis of Christianity." — Vol. i., p. 49. 
 
 We have further light what Mr. Milman means by 
 "calmness and dispassionateness" by the tone in which 
 he speaks of any show of zealous feeling in others. He 
 contrasts it with his own state of mind. For instance, in 
 one place he disavows, though he excuses, the " isolatioii 
 of the history of Christ in a kind of saered seclusion" 
 thongh, he proceeds, it " has no doubt a beneficial effect 
 on the piety of the Christian, which delights in contem- 
 plating the SdivloMr undisturbed and uncontaminated by 
 less holy associations'." — Vol. i., p. 52. Now is not this 
 unreal ? Mr. Milman surely himself is contemplating, 
 not " the Saviour," but his Saviour ; and the question 
 with the Christian is, not what effect it has upon his 
 piety— as if he cherished reverent thoughts of Christ 
 
212 MilmarCs View of Christianity. 
 
 from a mere calculation of the benefit such reverence 
 will do to his own mind- — but " How can I, indepen- 
 dently of a call of duty, forget, or speak as if I forgot, 
 who and what He is ?" Mr. Milman's language cer- 
 tainly implies that calmness and dispassionateness and 
 an absence of prejudice are shown in being able to hear 
 and to repeat, without wincing, as regards our great 
 Benefactor, the profane things which infidels and scorn- 
 ers say of Him. We know he cannot mean this ; yet 
 his language implies it, and in consequence we cannot 
 wonder at his exciting a clamour. Presently he speaks 
 of a departure " from the evangelical simplicity in the 
 relation of facts," such as he has adopted, offending " the 
 reverential feelings of the reader ;" why not of the 
 writer.' 
 
 However, we should be unfair unless we added that 
 there are occasions when he can respond personally to 
 the calls of reverence made upon him by the subject on 
 which he is employed. For instance, of the last scenes 
 of our Lord's life, he writes, with imposing effect, " As we 
 approach the appalling close, we tremble lest the colder 
 process of explanation should deaden the solemn and /?«;'- 
 f-^a/z^^ impression of the scene, or weaken the contrast be- 
 tween the wild and tumultuous uproar of the triumphant 
 enemies and executioners of the Son of Man with the 
 deep and unutterable misery of the few faithful adherents 
 who still followed His footsteps. "-r-Vpl. i., p. 359. 
 
 6. 
 
 Our object hitherto has been, to the best of our ability, 
 to analyze the view, with which Mr. Milman apparently 
 starts, of his position and office, freely to censure it, but at 
 the same time to vindicate him from any sinister intentions 
 in assuming it. That view involves, as we have inciden- 
 
MilmarC s View of Christianity. 213 
 
 tally shown, a great error in judgment ; it necessarily 
 lays the author open to misrepresentation, as if he held 
 or countenanced what he disapproves ; and it could not 
 avoid paining many excellent persons, whom so kindly- 
 tempered a man as Mr. Milman would be very unwilling 
 to perplex or alarm. We should have said thus much, 
 had Mr. Milman adhered ever so rigidly, were that pos- 
 sible, to what seems to us his original design of merely 
 stating 'Ca:^ facts of Christianity, without notice, good or 
 bad, of the principles which are their life. But such an 
 adherence was impossible ; as in fact he confesses when he 
 speaks of " not altogether declining" theological subjects. 
 He does make a ttieory of the facts which he records, 
 and such a theory as unhappily implies that they belong 
 mainly to that external system of things of which he 
 writes, and must be directly referred to visible causes 
 and measured by intelligible principles. His mode of 
 writing does not merely pass over, but actually denies' 
 the existence and presence among us of that higher and 
 invisible system of which we have spoken above. Not 
 content with claiming for the historical facts of Christi- 
 anity a place in the course of this world, which they; 
 have, he disallows that supernatural world, in which they 
 have a place also. As anatomists might treat man 
 simply according to their science and become material- 
 ists, as physical experimentalists might teach pantheism 
 or atheism, as political economists might make wealth 
 the measure of all things and deny the social uses of 
 religion, as the professors of any science may deny the 
 existence of any world of thought but their own, and 
 refer all facts which meet them to it, so Mr. Milman, 
 viewing Christianity as an external political fact, has gone 
 very far indeed towards viewing it as nothing more; deny- 
 ing in one or two places, in so many words, the great truth, 
 
214 MilmarCs View of Christianity. 
 
 which we have been employed above in drawing out, 
 that it is in two worlds at once, and that the same 
 occurrences, persons, and actions seem to be natural 
 consequences of what is seen, and yet really have as 
 natural a place in a system which is not seen- The 
 effects of this denial upon Mr. Milman's history are now 
 to be shown. We have candidly said where we think he 
 is open to unfair misrepresentation ; we shall as candidly 
 say where we think he has given just cause of offence 
 and dissatisfaction to all Churchmen. 
 
 Just one word, however, first on the author's evident 
 inconsistency, unavoidable as it is under his circumstances, 
 in professing to keep to fact, and yet insinuating a theory. 
 He promised us in his Preface a political and social his- 
 tory — he disclaimed theology. Presently he deprecated 
 polemics. Had we not otherwise been sure of the line 
 he was taking, that protestation alone would have been 
 equivalent, in our judgment, to a declaration of war. As 
 liberals are the bitterest persecutors, so denouncers of 
 controversy are sure to proceed upon the most startling, 
 irritating, blistering methods which the practice of their 
 age furnishes. We never knew of any one of them who 
 Set about charming and lulling the spirit of bigotry with- 
 out joining " Conjuro te, scelestissima," to " good Mrs. 
 Margaret Merrilies." Further evidence how matters 
 stood would have been afforded us, had we fallen upon 
 his concluding pages, in which he tells us that a " clergy- 
 man who in a credulous or enthusiastic age dares to be 
 rationally pious, is a phenomenon of moral courage" — 
 Vol. iii., p. S3S- These signs of conflict, before and after, 
 have abundant accomplishment in the body of his work. 
 It is quite impossible in the few pages which we are 
 devoting to it (in which we think it best to confine our- 
 selves to one subject), to give an idea of the range and 
 
MilmarC s View of Christianity. 2 15 
 
 variety of dogmatic thought and statement in which he 
 has allowed himself. To take a few instances which 
 come first to hand : — he tells us, for instance, that the 
 millennium is a " fable of Jewish dotage " — vol. i., p. 79, 
 note ; that " among the vulgar there is a passionate 
 attachment to religious tyranny" — p. 292 ; that a kind 
 of latent Judaism has constantly lurked within the bosom 
 of the Church" — p. 456; that "the sacerdotal and the 
 sectarian spirit had an equal tendency to disparage the 
 ' perfection of piety' and ' sublimity of virtue' " — p. 457 ; 
 that " sacerdotal domination is altogether alien to genuine 
 Christianity;" yet that "an hostility to every kind of 
 priesthood," is a sign of a "vitiated" mind — pp. 10, 11, 
 note ; that " the sole difference" in a church from a 
 synagogue was, " that God was worshipped in it through 
 the mediation of the crucified Jesus of Nazareth" — 
 vol. ii., p. 2 ; that Christianity is " grounded on the abro- 
 gation of all local claims to peculiar sanctity" — ^vol i., 
 p. 319; that the Almighty's "pure and essential spiri- 
 tuality" does not under the Gospel "attach itself to, or 
 exhibit itself under, any form " — p. 22 ; that " God is 
 power in the old religion, love under the new" — ibid.; 
 that " Christian morality" is, " strictly speaking, no law," 
 but "the establishment of certain principles" — p. 206; 
 that St. Paul "could scarcely be entirely dead to or 
 ignorant " of the " elevating associations " of Athens- 
 vol, ii., p. 16; that the age when Christ came was in 
 an "advanced state of intellectual culture" — vol. i., 
 pp. 8, 36, and "enlightened" — p. 41 ; and that, because 
 of its " reasoning spirit " — p. 37, Christianity has 
 "accommodated itself to the spirit of successive ages" — 
 p. 47 ; that it " will advance with the advancement of 
 human nature," and that " intellectual culture is that 
 advancement " — p. 50 ; and that " the development of a 
 
2i6 Milman's View of Christianity. 
 
 rational and intellectual religion" is "perhaps not yet 
 complete, certainly not general " — p. 49. 
 
 These are some of the enunciations of doctrine, true or 
 false, peremptorily advanced by Mr. Milman, and yet he 
 tells us that he writes " as an historian rather than as a 
 religious instructor " — he only does. " not decline " theo- 
 logical subjects, writes " as if in total ignorance of the 
 existence" of pending controversies, and " entirely dis- 
 cards all polemic views." Such is Mr. Milman's mode of 
 keeping the peace ; and he observes, we suppose, partly 
 with reference to it, that " he himself fully appreciates 
 the difficulty " of his undertaking. — P. 47. All this is so 
 very strange, that we can only suppose that he considers 
 it to be among the rights of philosophy to profess 
 opinions without incurring their responsibilities, to have 
 a sort of lasciar passare, which enables it to introduce bag 
 and baggage free of examination ; or that it lives on some 
 high cliff, or some remote watch-tower, and is able thence 
 to contemplate with the poet the' sea of human opinion, 
 " alterius spectare laborem ;" and in a pure ethereal region 
 to discern Christianity abstracted from all religion, and to 
 gauge it without molestation by principles simply incom- 
 mensurable with its own. But now to the business in hand. 
 
 7- 
 
 We will begin with citing a passage at the end of his 
 volumes, in which he describes and condemns the pecu- 
 liar religious sentiments of the Middle Age, sentiments 
 which are in fact based upon the very principles which 
 we have above advocated as primitive and true. In doing 
 this, we are fair to Mr. Milman, for it is beautifully 
 written. 
 
 " The Christian of these days lived in a supernatural world, or in 
 a world under the constant and felt and discernible interference of 
 
Milmari! s View of Christianity. 217 
 
 supernatural power. God was not only present, but asserting His 
 presence at every instant, not merely on signal occasions and for 
 important purposes, but on the most insignificant acts and persons. 
 The course of nature was beheld, not as one great uniform and 
 majestic miracle, but a succession of small, insulated, sometimes 
 trivial, sometimes contradictory interpositions, often utterly incon- 
 sistent with the moral and Christian attributes of God. The divine 
 power and goodness were not spreading abroad like a genial and 
 equable sunlight, enlightening, cheering, vivifying, but breaking out 
 in partial and visible flashes of influence ; each incident was a 
 special miracle, the ordinary emotion of the heart was divine inspi- 
 ration. Each individual had not merely his portion in the common 
 diffusion of religious and moral knowledge or feeling, but looked 
 for his peculiar and especial share in the divine blessing. His 
 dreams came direct from heaven ; a new system of Christian omens 
 succeeded the old ; witchcraft merely invoked Beelzebub or Satan 
 instead of Hecate ; hallowed places only changed their tutelary 
 nymph or genius for a saint or martyr. , . . God had been brought 
 down, or had condescended to mingle himself with the affairs ot 
 men. But where should that faith, which could not but receive 
 these high and consolatory and reasonable truths, set limits to the 
 agency of this beneficent power? How should it discriminate 
 between that which in its apparent discrepancy with the laws of 
 nature (and of those laws how little was known !) was miraculous, 
 and that which, to more accurate observation, was only strange or 
 wonderful, or perhaps the result of ordinary but dimly-seen causes 'i 
 How still more in the mysterious world of the human mind, of 
 which the laws are still, we will not say in their primitive, but, in 
 comparison with those of external nature, in profound obscurity? 
 If the .understanding of man was too much dazzled to see clearly 
 even material objects ; if just awakening from a deep trance, it 
 beheld everything floating before it in a mist of wonder, how much 
 more was the mind disqualified to judge of its own emotions, of 
 the origin, suggestion, and powers of those thoughts and emotions 
 which stiU perplex and bafiie our deepest metaphysics." — ^Vol. iii., 
 PP- 532—534. 
 
 No one can deny that this is a very eloquent and 
 striking passage, and, to complete our admissions, we 
 must candidly add that it is a view of the medieval reli- 
 
2i8 MilmarC s View of Christianity. 
 
 gion in which a number of persons, not friends of Mr. 
 Milman, will concur, and which others again, with greater 
 reason, will consider partly true, and partly false :^now 
 let us see what comes of it, as Mr. Milman uses it. 
 
 For instance, two kinds of miracles are recorded in 
 Scripture, public and sensible, and private ; — those 
 which many saw, and which had for their object some- 
 thing material ; and those which one person or no one 
 saw, or which belonged to the world of spirits. Our 
 Saviour's cures, which were subjected to the scrutiny 
 of the senses, are instances of the former class ; the 
 Annunciation and Transfiguration, of the latter. The 
 former form part of the evidences, the latter of the 
 matter or mode of Revelation. The former are facts of 
 this world, and have their place in the political course 
 of things, as fully as facts which are not miraculous ; 
 the latter have no such place, but belong solely to the 
 spiritual system. Now Mr. Milman inclines, to say the 
 least, to deny the reality of the latter. Speaking of 
 " the more imaginative incidents of the early Evangelic 
 History " (by which he especially means " the angelic 
 appearances, the revelations of the Deity addressed to 
 the senses of man," in the first chapters of St. Matthew 
 and St. Luke), he observes that "these passages in 
 general are not the vital and essentials truths of Chris- 
 tianity, but the vehicle by which these truths were com- 
 municated, a kind of language by which opinions were 
 conveyed, and sentiments infused, and the general belief 
 in Christianity implanted, confirmed, and strengthened." 
 — Vol. i., p. 1 30. He continues : 
 
 "Whether then these were actual appearances, or impressions 
 produced on the mind of those who witnessed them, is of slight 
 importance. In either case they are real historical facts ; they 
 partake of poetry in their form, and, in a certain sense, in their 
 
Milmatis View of Christianity, 219 
 
 groundwork ; but they are imaginative, not fictitious ; true as re- 
 lating that which appeared to the minds of the relators exactly as it 
 did appear. . . . The incidents were so ordered that they should 
 thus live in the thoughts of men. . . . Could, it may be inquired, a 
 purely rational or metaphysical oread have survived for any length 
 of time during suqb stages of human civilization ? " 
 
 That is, he considers, that when St. Luke says, " In 
 the sixth month the Angel Gabriel was sent from God to 
 a Virgin," etc., first, that there are reasons /(>r the Blessed 
 Virgin's having an impression that there was an Angel 
 Gabriel, and that he was sent to her ; and, secondly, that 
 there are reasons against the occurrence being a real fact 
 external to her mind. That she should think she saw an 
 Angel, is important, he observes, because a religion with 
 such poetical incidents is more influential and long-lived 
 than one that has them not. Well, then, if so, why 
 should not the incidents have really been vouchsafed .' 
 has Almighty God no Angels ? why should He not have 
 done what He is said to have done, since there is so 
 good a reason for His doing it ? Mr. Milman proceeds 
 to give us the reason on the other side, " the purely 
 rational and metaphysical " reason ; viz., that according 
 to a certain class of writers, (followers of Hume and 
 and Bentham we suppose,) " these incidents, being irre- 
 concilable with our actual experience, and rendered sus- 
 picious by a multitude of later fictions, which are 
 rejected in the mass by most Protestant Christians j 
 cannot accord with the more subtle and fastidious intelli- 
 gence of the present times. Some writers go so far as 
 to assert that it is impossible that an inquiring and rea- 
 soning age should receive these supernatural facts as 
 historical verities." — P. 130. And for the sake of these 
 persons Mr. Milman proposes an intermediate view, as 
 a sort of irenicon or peace-offering, to reconcile the faith 
 
220 MilmarHs View of Christianity. 
 
 of eighteen centuries and the infidelity of the nineteenth; 
 on the one hand suggesting that St. Mary's imagination 
 may have been deceived, or that her "reminiscences" 
 were dim and indistinct, and, on the other, defending her 
 veracity and that of her contemporaries. The circum- 
 stances recorded " are too slight," he says, " and wanting 
 in particularity, to give the idea of invention ; they seem 
 like a few scattered fragments preserved from oral tradi- 
 tion." — P. 132. On the whole, then, it seems that Mr. 
 Milman inclines to think that God will never do any- 
 thing which to philosophers is difficult to receive, and 
 that the Blessed Virgin is more likely to have been mis- 
 taken than unbelievers to be irrational. 
 
 Again, he thus glances at the true explanation of the 
 Angel's appearance to Zacharias : — 
 
 "Almost the most important [function of the officiating course] 
 was the watching and supplying with incense the great brazen altar, 
 which stood within the building of the temple, in the first or Holy 
 Place. Into this, at the sound of a small bell, which gave notice to 
 the worshippers at a distance, the ministering priest entered alone ; 
 and in the sacred chamber, into wMch the light of day never pene- 
 trated, but where the dim fires of the altar, and the chandeliers 
 which were never extinguished, gave a solemn and uncertain light, 
 still more bedimmed by the clouds of smoke arising from the newly 
 fed altar of incense, no doubt (!), in \!as. pious mind, the sense of the 
 more immediate presence of the Deity, only separated by the veil, 
 which divided the Holy Place from the Holy of Holies, would con- 
 stantly have awakened the most profound emotions. . . . In the 
 vision of Zachariah, he had beheld an Angel standing on the right 
 side of the altar," etc. — Vol. i., pp. 90, 91. 
 
 Again, of the miracle attendant on our Lord's Bap- 
 tism, Mr. Milman says, "Neander represents it as a 
 symbolic vision." — P. 151. And he refers to the pas- 
 sages of the Fathers, not happily, as we think, to show 
 that the " explanation of voices from heaven, as a mental 
 
MilmarCs View of Christianity. 221 
 
 perception, not as real articulate sounds, but as inward 
 impressions, is by no means modern, or what passes 
 under the unpopular name of Rationahsm." Possibly 
 not ; but let us for argument's sake grant it ; yet what 
 do we gain by such a view of the subject ? this, — we 
 tend to rid ourselves of the unseen world, of the belief 
 that the things which we see have relations to, and are 
 parts of, a system of things which ordinarily does not 
 disclose itself to us. This does not seem to be any great 
 achievement.* 
 
 Again, when Mr. Milman comes to our Lord's Temp- 
 tation, after an announcement, with much circumstance 
 but obvious drift, that "on the interpretation of no incident 
 in the Gospels do those who insist on the literal accepta- 
 tion of the Evangelists' language, and those who consider 
 that even in the New Testament much allowance is to be 
 made for the essentially allegoric character of oriental 
 narrative, depart so far asunder," he adds, in a note, " this 
 is one of those points which will be differently understood 
 according to the turn and cast of mind of different 
 individuals. I would therefore deprecate the making 
 either interpretation an article of faith, or deciding with 
 dogmatic certainty on so perplexing ^ passage." — P. 153. 
 Afterwards he says, that whether we believe Christ 
 
 * Mr. Milman says gf the pool of Bethesda, that it "was supposed to 
 possess remarkable properties for healing diseases. At certain periods 
 there was a strong commotion in the waters, which probably bubbled up 
 from some chemical cause connected with their medicinal effects. Popular 
 belief, or rather perhaps popular language, attributed this agitation of the 
 surface to the descent of an Angel." — Vol. i., p. 215. On the other hand, 
 the Evangelist says expressly, "an Angel went down at a certain season 
 into the pool." Mr. Milman adds in a note, that ." the verse relating to 
 the Angel is rejected as spurious by many critics, and is wanting in some 
 manuscripts." That is a fair argument against it t if the verse cannot be 
 supported on external evidence, let it be rejected ; but let it not be kept, 
 and explained away on a theory. 
 
222 MilniarC s View of Christianity. 
 
 tempted by Satan, or by the High Priest, or by His owri' 
 feeHngs, "the moral purport of the scene remains the 
 same, the intimation that the strongest and most lively 
 impressions were made upon the mind of Jesus to with- 
 draw Him," etc. — P. 156. Here is a writer admitting, 
 without "perplexity," the great invisible miracle that 
 the Son of God took on Him a human soul and body, 
 yet finding a difficulty in receiving literally the narrative 
 of His being tempted in that body and soul by the Evil 
 One in person, and "deprecating" the necessity of doing 
 so. 
 
 The principles, which the above extracts have been 
 illustrating, make it impossible for Mr. Milman to believe 
 in the reality of demoniacal possession. All the pheno- 
 mena which demoniacs exhibit can be referred to the 
 laws of pathology ; therefore they cannot also have rela- 
 tion to an unseen state of things, and be caused by evil 
 spirits. He says, 
 
 " I have no scruple in avowing my opinion on the' subject of the 
 demoniacs to be that of Joseph Mede, Lardner, Dr. Mead, Paley, 
 and all the learned modern writers. It was a kind of insanity, not 
 unlikely to be prevalent among a people peculiarly subject to the 
 leprosy and other cutaneous diseases ; and nothing was more pro- 
 bable than that lunacy should take the turn and speak the language 
 of the prevailing superstition of the times. As the belief in witch- 
 craft made people fancy themselves witches, so the beUef in posses- 
 sion made men of distempered minds fancy themselves possessed." — 
 — Vol. i., p. 234, note. 
 
 None of us can go a little way with a theory ; when it 
 once possesses us, we are no longef our own masters. It 
 makes us speak its words, and do violence to our own 
 nature. Would it be believed that Mr. Milman's zeal 
 against the reality of possessions as a preternatural phe- 
 nomenon, actually carries him on here to the denial of 
 
MilmarCs View of Christianity. 223 
 
 external and visible fact, which is the very basis on which 
 he has rested his opinion that they were not preternatural? 
 It is obvious that the miracle of the swine interferes with 
 his theory; accordingly he hints at an explanation, which 
 seriously compromises the outward historical fact at- 
 tendant upon the miracle ; that is, first he denies demoni- 
 acal possession, because the recorded phenomena of its 
 visitation upon man do not necessarily involve its reality; 
 next he denies the recorded phenomena of its visitation 
 en the swine, which do involve its reality, because there is 
 no such thing as demoniacal possession. How too does 
 this hold with what he assures us elsewhere, that his 
 doubts about invisible or private miracles would not 
 entrench upon sensible or public ones ? He told us, 
 that such doubting, " of course, does not apply to facts 
 which must have been either historical events or direct 
 fictions," such as the Resurrection of Jesus. — ^Vol.i., p. 131. 
 And he promised that he would " strictly maintain this 
 important distinction" between them and " the more 
 imaginative incidents of the history." Now for the per- 
 formance of his engagement. 
 
 " The moral difficulty of this transaction has always appeared to 
 me greater than that of reconciling it with the more rational view 
 of demoniacism. Both are much diminished, if not entirely re- 
 moved, by the theory of Kuinoel, who attributes to the lunatics 
 the whole of the conversation with Jesus, and supposes that their 
 driving the herd of swine down the precipice was the last paroxysm 
 in which their insanity exhausted itself." — P. 238, note. 
 
 Would it be a much greater violence to the history 
 than this, to say, with some unbelievers, that our Lord 
 was taken down from the Cross alive, and showed Him- 
 self again without a Resurrection ? For after all, as Mr. 
 Milman said just now, would not " the moral purport of 
 the scene remain the same .'" What limits are we to put 
 
224 MilfnarCs View of Christianity. 
 
 to this denial of historical truth ? Where is theory to 
 stop, if it is once allowed ? 
 
 Again, we read in the Acts a narrative of an evil spirit 
 answering, "Jesus, I know," etc., but Mr. Milman para- 
 phrases it to the effect that the possessed pa,rty " had pro- 
 bably before been strongly impressed with the teaching of 
 Paul, and the religion which he preached ; and irritated by 
 the interference of persons whom he might know to be 
 hostile to the Christian party, assaulted them with great 
 violence" etc. — vol. ii., p. 28 ; that is, what Scripture calls 
 an evil spirit, he calls a Christian convert How long 
 will this interpretation stand 1 How many will receive 
 ' it ? Will Mr. Milman himself this time next year ? 
 
 8. 
 
 Now let us proceed to some further, though hardly 
 more violent practisings, upon the Christian documents 
 and facts, which these volumes exhibit. The following 
 is curious as a reductio ad absurdum of Mr. Milman's 
 beau ideal of the Christian temper. He observes that 
 James and John, who " received the remarkable name of 
 Boanerges, the Sons of Thunder . . . do not appear 
 remarkable among their brethren either for energy or 
 vehemence : " and he adds, that accordingly " it is not 
 easy to trace" its "exact force ;" and that "the peculiar 
 gentleness of" St. John "both in character and in the 
 style of his writings, would lead us to doubt the correct- 
 ness of the interpretation generally assigned to the 
 appellation." — Vol. i., p. 225. Strange to say, his only 
 idea of St John's, as of our Lord's character, as seen'in 
 Scripture, is gentleness ; and then, strong in this most 
 gratuitous assumption, he finds a difficulty in the received 
 interpretation of a plain passage. 
 
 In the same way, in another place, he " would reject, 
 
MibnarCs View of Christianity. 225 
 
 as the offspring of a more angry and controversial age, the 
 story of St. John's " flying in fear and indignation from 
 a bath polluted by the presence of the heretic Cerinthus." 
 — Vol. ii., p. 62. Did not our author recollect certain 
 " angry and controversial" words ascribed to St. John in 
 Scripture ? " If there come any unto you and bring not 
 this doctrine, receive him not into your house, neither bid 
 him Godspeed." 
 
 Striking too is the contrast between the clear, keen, 
 majestic, and awful language of the Evangelists and Mr. 
 Milman's circuitous, inadequate, and (we must add) 
 feeble version of it. St. Luke says of Herod, " imme- 
 diately the Angel of the Lord smote him, because he gave 
 not God the glory ;" Mr. Milman explains away both 
 the fact and the reason. " In [the] terrific and repulsive 
 circumstances" of his death, he says, "the Christians 
 could not but behold the hand of their protecting God," — 
 vol. i., p. 410; whereas the remarkable thing is that it is 
 not represented in Scripture as an interposition in behalf 
 of the Church at all. 
 
 Again, " Whosoever sinneth against the Holy Ghost, 
 it shall not be forgiven him, neither in this world, nor in 
 the world to come," is turned into "an offence which 
 argued such total obtuseness of moral perception, such 
 utter incapacity of feeling or comprehending the beauty 
 either of the conduct or the doctrine of Jesus, as to leave 
 no hope that they would ever be reclaimed from their ran- 
 corous hostility to His religion, or be qualified for admis- 
 sion into the pale and to the benefits of the new faith." 
 — Vol. i., p. 235. Forgiveness of sins, the one subject of 
 our Lord's announcement in this passage, is literally 
 obliterated from it by Mr. Milman ; — whence this strange 
 aversion to mention sin and the forgiveness of sin ? 
 
 Again : of the passage which speaks of " the unclean 
 
 VOL. II. IS 
 
2 26 MilmarC s View of Christianity. 
 
 spirit going out of a man," etc., he observes that Christ 
 " reverts in language of more than usual energy" (that is, 
 not " gentle " language, we presume,) " to the incapacity 
 of the age and nation to discern the real and intrinsic 
 superiority of His religion." — P. 236. 
 
 In our Lord's slowly granting the request of the Syro- 
 phoenician, who wished for the crumbs that were the 
 dog's portion, with the words, " O woman, great is thy 
 faith" Mr. Milman discerns but a condescension to the 
 prejudices" of the Jews and His Apostles, by which "Jesus 
 was enabled to display His own benevolence without 
 awakening, or confirming if already awakened, the quick 
 suspicion of His followers." — P. 253. 
 
 In the same spirit he elsewhere observes that the 
 Apostles, "with cautious deference to Jewish feeling, were 
 forbidded to proceed beyond the borders of the Holy 
 Land." — P. 238. The words, "Ye are of your father the 
 devil," (words which Mr. Milman apparently feels to be 
 inconsistent with what he considers our Lord's " gentle- 
 ness,") become " the spirit of evil, in whose darkest and 
 most bloody temper they were ready to act, was rather 
 the parent of men with dispositions so diabolic." — P. 268. 
 The discourse in the Synagogue of Capernaum, after 
 the miracle of the loaves, related by St. John, ch. vi., is 
 explained to mean merely " the improvement of the moral 
 and spiritual condition of man, described under the strong 
 but not unusual figure of nourishment administered to the 
 soul." — P. 243. How can an earnest mind, contemplating 
 our Lord's most mysterious words, thus satisfy itself.' 
 Further, Mr. Milman tells us that in the rite of the Lord's 
 Supper there really are " allusions to the breaking of His 
 body and for the pouring forth of His blood." — P. 329. 
 
 He says respecting the incident in John xii., that what 
 " the unbelieving part of the multitude heard only as an 
 
MilniaiUs View of Christianity . 22'] 
 
 accidental burst of thunder, to others . . seemed an audible, 
 a distinct, — or, according to those who adhere to the 
 strict letter, — the " — (it avails not to delay, out with it !) 
 — " the articulate voice of an Angel." — P. 306. Yes, the 
 real articulate voice ; how painful to our " subtle and 
 fastidious intelligence " ! 
 
 As to the power of binding and loosing, promised first 
 to St. Peter, then to all the Apostles, then afterwards 
 bestowed, the subject is too formidable, we suppose, to 
 approach siccis oculis. Mr. Milman thus hurries by : 
 "the Apostle" St. Peter, " is commended in language so 
 strong that the pre-eminence of Peter over the rest of the 
 Twelve has been mainly supported by the words of Jesus 
 employed on this occasion."— P. 256. What .' do these 
 memorable words, in substance thrice uttered, only ac- 
 count for a certain interpretation of them ? do they 
 determine but a relative question .' do they decide no- 
 thing at all positive about all the Apostles 1 
 
 It is quite perplexing what satisfaction a man of Mr, 
 Milman's religious character can have in explaining away 
 the supernatural accompaniments of our Lord's last con- 
 flict ; and yet he certainly does seem to think it even 
 more philosophical to make the Resurrection an isolated 
 miracle. "This spake he," says the Evangelist, of 
 Caiaphas, "not of himself, but being high priest that 
 year, he prophesied: " " his language," says Mr. Milman, 
 " was afterwards treasured in the memory of the Chris- 
 tians as inadvertently prophetic." — P. 286. He says that 
 Pilate's wife's dream was in "her morning slumbers, 
 when visions were supposed to be more than ordinarily 
 true." — P. 355. The impenitent thief is " infected " with 
 a " fanatical Judaism ; " his companion is " of milder dis^ 
 position ; " and " inclines to believe in Jesus," who, 
 "speaking in the ctirrent language, promises him an im- 
 
2 28 MilmafCs View of Christianity. 
 
 mediate reward." — P. 361. As to the resurrection of 
 " many bodies of the saints that slept," Mr. Milman is of 
 opinion that the earthquake opened the tombs and ex- 
 posed the dead to public view. He adds, " To the_ azve- 
 struck and depressed minds of the followers of Jesus, no 
 doubt, were confined those visionary appearances of the 
 spirits of their deceased brethren, which are obscurely 
 intimated in the rapid narratives of the Evangelists." — 
 P. 365. What antecedent objection does the " intelli- 
 gence " of this age find to the resurrection of the bodies 
 of these saints which will not apply also to the resurrec- 
 tion at the last day } They must rise some time ; why 
 should they not have risen then } because, Mr. Milman 
 seems to answer, there is no system going on in the world 
 now, except the visible, political, temporal system which 
 our eyes and ears experience. Again : to the minds of the 
 women he says " highly excited and bewildered with as- 
 tonishment, with terror, and with grief, appeared what is 
 described by the Evangelist as a ' vision of angels.' One 
 or more beings in human form seated in the shadowy 
 twilight within the sepulchre." — P. 378. 
 
 One circumstance, however, we cheerfully acknow- 
 ledge, — that Mr. Milman does not, with some writers of 
 latter times, in violence to our Lord's words, explain 
 away the guilt, or what he calls " the extraordinary con- 
 duct," of Judas. He candidly says, " Much ingenuity 
 has been displayed by some recent writers in attempting 
 to palliate, or rather account for, this extraordinary con- 
 duct of Judas ; but the language in which Jesus spoke of 
 the crime appears to confirm the common opinion of its 
 enormity." — P. 326. As to his remorse, he considers that 
 there were quite circumstances enough to " drive him to 
 •desperation, little short of insanity!' — P. 329. This, we 
 suppose, is to show that he need not have a verdict of 
 fdo de se recorded against him. 
 
MilmarC s Vieiv of Christianity. 229 
 
 9- 
 
 We have now seen how Mr. Milman's theory operates 
 upon the facts and documents of Christianity ; now let 
 us observe what it does for its fundamental and' essential 
 doctrines, which, even without taking it into account, 
 have, as we have already seen, fared very hardly from 
 his mere negative method of historical composition. In 
 doing this, however, we do not make Mr. Milman respon- 
 sible for our account of his views. Principles have a life 
 and power independent of their authors, and make their 
 way in spite of them ; — this at least is our philosophy. 
 Mr. Milman may in his own instance limit or modify what 
 nevertheless has its mission, and, whether he like it or 
 not, will be sure to tell its tale to an end, before it has 
 done. By others, then, it must be viewed, not shackled, 
 and as it were muzzled, according to any careful direc- 
 tions which this or that writer may deliver, but in itself. 
 We are sure that Mr. Milman does not see the tendency 
 of the line of thought of which both his present and a 
 former work give such anxious evidence ; and therefore, 
 while we need not, we clearly could not, if we tried, deli- 
 neate the principles which are contained in them, as they 
 are held by himself personally ; — he would be sure to 
 say we were unfair. The very inconsistency which, in a 
 former place, we pointed out, between the design and 
 the execution of his work, is an intelligible warning to 
 us what a false position we should be taking up, if we 
 were to attempt to draw out for ourselves his doctrinal 
 notion of Christianity. We disclaim such an intention 
 altogether. No writer likes to accept his opinions in the 
 wording of an opponent. We shall use Mr. Milman's 
 volumes, therefore, only in illustration of those momen- 
 tous principles, which he has adopted indeed, but which 
 are outside of him, and will not be his slaves. 
 
230 Milman's View of Christianity. 
 
 As regards then the settlement of Christian doctrine, 
 Mr. Mihnan's External Theory seems to us to result or 
 manifest itself in the following canon : — That nothing 
 belongs to the Gospel but what originated in it ; and 
 that whatever, professing to belong to it, is found in 
 anterior or collateral systems, may be put out of it as a 
 foreign element. Such a maxim easily follows upon 
 that denial of the supernatural system, which we have 
 above imputed in large measure to Mr. Milman. They 
 who consider with him that there was, for instance, no 
 spiritual agency in what is called demoniacal possession, 
 on the ground that the facts of the case may be satisfac- 
 torily referred to physical causes, are bound, or at least 
 are easily persuaded, to deny for the same reason any 
 doctrine to come from Christ, which they can trace to 
 the schools of men. Such persons cannot enter into the 
 possibility of a visible and an invisible course of things 
 going on at once, whether co-extensive or not, acting on 
 each other more or less, and sometimes even to the 
 cognizance of our senses. Were the electric fluid ascer- 
 tained to be adequate to the phenomena of life, they 
 would think it bad philosophy to believe in the presence 
 of a soul ; and, sooner than believe that Angels now 
 minister to us unseen, they deny that they were ever 
 seen in their ministrations. No wonder then that in like 
 manner as regards the articles of the Creed, they deny 
 that what is historically human can be doctrinally divine, 
 confuse the outward process with the secret providence, 
 and argue as if instruments in nature preclude the opera- 
 tions of grace. When they once arrive at a cause or 
 source in the secular course of things, it is enough ; and 
 thus, while Angels melt into impressions. Catholic truths 
 are resolved into the dogmas of Plato or Zoroaster. 
 
 A theory does not prove itself; it makes itself pro- 
 
MilmarHs View of Christianity. 23 1 
 
 bable so far as it falls in with our preconceived notions, 
 as it accounts for the phenomena it treats of, as it is 
 internally consistent, and as it excels or excludes rival 
 theories. We should leave Mr. Milman's undisturbed, and 
 proceed at once, as we proposed, merely to give instances 
 of its operation, except that it might seem to be allowing 
 to that theory, as it were, possession of the field, when, 
 in truth, there is another far more Catholic philosophy 
 upon which the facts of the case, as Mr. Milman states 
 them, may be solved. Now, the phenomenon, admitted 
 on all hands, is this : — that great portion of what is gene- 
 rally received as Christian truth, is in its rudiments or in 
 its separate parts to be found in heathen philosophies 
 and religions. For instance, the doctrine, of a Trinity is 
 found both in the East and in the West ; •■so is the cere- 
 mony of washing ; so is the rite of sacrifice. The doc- 
 trine of the Divine Word is Platonic ; the doctrine of the 
 Incarnation is Indian ; of a divine kingdom is Judaic ; of 
 Angels and demons is Magian ; the connexion of sin 
 with the body is Gnostic ; celibacy is known to Bonze 
 and Talapoin ; a sacerdotal order is Egyptian ; the idea 
 of a new birth is Chinese and Eleusinian ; belief in sacra- 
 mental virtue is Pythagorean ; and honours to the dead 
 are a polytheism. Such is the general nature of the fact 
 before us ; Mr. Milman argues from it, — " These things 
 are in heathenism, therefore they are not Christian:" we, 
 on the contrary, prefer to say, " these things are in Chris- 
 tianity, therefore they are not heathen." That is, we 
 prefer to say, and we think that Scripture bears us out in 
 saying, that from the beginning the Moral Governor of the 
 world has scattered the seeds of truth far and wide over 
 its extent ; that these have variously taken root, and 
 grown up as in the wilderness, wild plants indeed but 
 living ; and hence that, as the inferior animals have 
 
2^2 MilmarCs View of Christianity, 
 
 tokens of an immaterial principle in them, yet have not 
 souls, so the philosophies and religions of men have their 
 life in certain true ideas, though they are not directly 
 divine. What man is amid the brute creation, such is 
 the Church among the schools of the world ; and as 
 Adam gave names to the animals about him, so has the 
 Church from the first looked round upon the earth, 
 noting and visiting the doctrines she found there. She 
 began in Chaldea, and then sojourned among the 
 Canaanites, and went down into Egypt, and thence 
 passed into Arabia, till she rested in her own land. 
 Next she encountered the merchants of Tyre, and the 
 wisdom of the East country, and the luxury of Sheba. 
 Then she was carried away to Babylon, and wandered 
 to the schools of Greece. And wherever she went, in 
 trouble or in triumph, still she was a living spirit, the 
 mind and voice of the Most High ; "sitting in the midst 
 of the doctoi's, both hearing them and asking them ques- 
 tions ;" claiming to herself what they said rightly, cor- 
 recting their errors, supplying their defects, completing 
 their beginnings, expanding their surmises, and thus 
 gradually by means of them enlarging the range and 
 refining the sense of her own teaching. So far then from 
 her creed being of doubtful credit because it resembles 
 foreign theologies, we even hold that one special way in 
 which Providence has imparted divine knowledge to us 
 has been by enabling her to draw and collect it together 
 out of the world, and, in this sense, as in others, to 
 " suck the milk of the Gentiles and to suck the breast of 
 kings." 
 
 How far in fact this process has gone, is a question of 
 history ; and we believe it has before now been grossly 
 exaggerated and misrepresented by those who, like Mr. 
 Milman, have thought that its existence told against 
 
Milman^s Viem of Christianity. ■2.-2i2> 
 
 Catholic doctrine; but so little antecedent difficulty- 
 have we in the matter, that we could readily grant, 
 unless it were a question of fact not of theory, that 
 Balaam was an Eastern sage, or a Sibyl was inspired, or 
 Solomon learnt of the sons of Mahol, or Moses was a 
 scholar of the Egyptian hierophants. We are not dis- 
 tressed to be told that the doctrine of the angelic host 
 came from Babylon, while we know that they did sing 
 at the Nativity ; nor that the vision of a Mediator is in 
 Philo, if in very deed He died for us on Calvary. Nor 
 are we afraid to allow, that, even after His coming, the 
 Church has been a treasure-house, giving forth things 
 old and new, casting the gold of fresh tributaries into 
 her refiner's fire, or stamping upon her own, as time 
 required it, a deeper impress of her Master's image. 
 
 The distinction between these two theories is broad 
 and obvious. The advocates of the one imply that 
 Revelation was a single, entire, solitary act, or nearly so, 
 introducing a certain message ; whereas we, who main- 
 tain the other, consider that Divine teaching has been 
 in fact, what the analogy of nature would lead us to 
 expect, " at sundry times and in divers manners," 
 various, complex, progressive, and supplemental of it- 
 self. We consider the Christian doctrine, when ana- 
 lyzed, to appear, like the human frame, "fearfully and 
 wonderfully made ; " but they think it some one tenet 
 or certain principles given out at one time in their ful- 
 ness, without gradual enlargement before Christ's coming 
 or elucidation afterwards. They cast off all that they 
 also find in Pharisee or heathen ; we conceive that the 
 Church, like Aaron's rod, devours the serpents of the 
 magicians. They are ever hunting for a fabulous pri- 
 mitive simplicity ; we repose in Catholic fulness. They 
 seek what never has been found ; we accept and use 
 
^34 Milman^ s View of Christianity. 
 
 what even they acknowledge to be a substance^ They 
 are driven to maintain, on their part, that the Church's 
 doctrine was never pure ; we say that it never can be 
 corrupt We consider that a divine promise keeps the 
 Church Catholic from doctrinal corruption ; but on what 
 promise, or on what encouragement, they are seeking for 
 their visionary purity does not appear. 
 
 lO. 
 
 Which of these theories is the true, this is not the 
 place for discussing ; our business here, to which we now 
 address ourselves, is to trace out some of the applica- 
 tions of the one on which Mr. Milman proceeds, as his 
 volumes enable us to do, and to inquire how much will 
 be left of Christianity at the end of the process. He 
 states then, that in her first ages the Church separately 
 encountered Judaism, Orientahsm, and Paganism , and 
 again, that her system resembles all three. From the 
 encounter, he would argue the probability of their in- 
 fluencing her ; from the resemblance the fact. He 
 says : 
 
 "As a universal religion aspiring to the complete moral con- 
 quest of the world, Christianity had to encounter three antagonists, 
 Judaism, Paganism, and Orientahsm. It is our design successively 
 to exhibit the conflict with these opposing forces, its final triumph, 
 not ■without detriment to its own native purity and its divine sim- 
 plicity, from the interworking of the yet unsubdued elements of the 
 former systems into the Christian mind ; until each, at successive 
 periods, and in different parts of the world, formed a modification 
 of Christianity equally removed from its unmingled and unsullied 
 original ; the Judseo-Christianity of Palestine, of which the Ebionites 
 appear to have been the last representatives ; the Platonic Christia- 
 nity of Alexandria, as, at least at this early period, the new religion 
 could coalesce only with the sublime and more philosophical prin- 
 ciples of Paganism; and, lastly, the Gnostic Christianity of the 
 East."— Vol. i., p. 413. 
 
Milman! s View of Christianity. 235 
 
 In like manner he speaks elsewhere of an " inveterate 
 Judaism," which "has perpetually revived in the Christian 
 Church in days of excitement." — P. 148. "The Grecian 
 philosophy," he says, " and, at a later period, influences 
 still more adverse to that of Judaism, mingled with the 
 prevailing Christianity. A kind of latent Judaism has, 
 however, constantly lurked within the bosom of the 
 Church." — P. 456. Again, " Asiatic influences have 
 ■worked more completely into the body and essence of 
 Christianity than any other foreign elements." — Vol. ii., 
 p. 82. Such, we say, is the theory ; now to apply it. 
 
 To begin with the hierarchy of Angels, to which 
 we have already referred. Speaking of Simon Magus's 
 doctrine on that subject, Mr. Milman says : 
 
 " This peopling of the universe with a regular descending succes- 
 sion of beings was common to the whole East, perhaps in great part 
 to the West. The later Jewish doctrines of angels and devils ap- 
 j>roached nearly to itj it lurked in Platonism, and assumed a higher 
 form in the Eastern cosmogonies." — Vol. ii., p. loi. 
 
 And more strongly in an earlier passage : 
 
 " It is generally admitted that the Jewish notions about the 
 angels, one great subject of dispute in their synagogues, and what 
 may be called their demonology, received a strong foreign tinge 
 during their residence in Babylonia. ... In apparent allusion to 
 or coincidence with this system, the visions of Daniel represent 
 Michael, the titular angel or intelligence of the Jewish people, in 
 opposition to the four angels of the great monarchies ; and even 
 our Saviour seems to condescend to the popular language when He 
 represents the parental care of the Almighty over children under 
 the significant and beautiful image, ' for in heaven,' " etc. — ^Vol. i., 
 p. 70. 
 
 It seems, then, the angelic hierarchy is not a doctrine 
 of divine truth, because it was taught in the Zenda- 
 vesta ; and further, what is still more observable, even 
 our Lord's teaching it does not make it so. This illus- 
 
236 Mihnan^s View 0/ Christianity. 
 
 trates forcibly the view given above of Mr. Milman's 
 canon for ascertaining what is matter of Revelation. 
 Our Lord cannot say a thing in earnest, which heathen 
 sages taught or surmised before Him. 
 
 Next, Mr. Milman tells us that "the Jew concurred 
 with the worshipper of Ormusd in expecting a fi7ial 
 restoration of all things through the agency of a Divine 
 Intelligence." — Vol. i., p. "JJ. The words of St. Peter 
 might come into the reader's mind, about the time of 
 refreshing, when " He shall send Jesus Christ, whom the 
 heavens must receive until the times of restitution of all 
 things ; " but Mr. Milman overturns the authority of the 
 whole passage, observing that it seems " as if even yet 
 Peter himself was not disencumbered of that Jewish 
 notion of an immediate re-appearance of Christ." — Vol. 
 i., p. 391. " The disciple is not better than his Lord ; " 
 if not Christ's, much less are St. Peter's words, though 
 spoken after a miracle, matter of Divine Revelation, 
 provided they betray any resemblance to a doctrine of 
 Zoroaster. 
 
 Speaking of the Resurrection, he says, " It appears 
 .... in its more perfect development, soon after the 
 return from the captivity. As early as the revolt of the 
 , Maccabees, it was so deeply rooted in the public mind, 
 that we find a solemn ceremony performed for the dead. 
 ... In the Zoroastrian religion, a resurrection holds a 
 place, no less prominejit than in the later Jewish belief." 
 — Vol. i., p. 75. In spite of this, Mr. Milman of course 
 insists, though we see not with what consistency, on the 
 doctrine of th£ Resurrection as proper to Christianity ; 
 however, soon after the above passages, speaking of the 
 " Oriental colouring " which the Jews adopted, he says, 
 " even the doctrine of the Resurrection was singularly 
 harmonized with their exclusive nationality. At least 
 
MihnarC s View of Christianity. 237 
 
 the first Resurrection was to be their separate portion ; 
 it was to summon them, if not all, at least the more 
 righteous, from Paradise, from the abode of departed 
 spirits ; and under their triumphant king they were to 
 enjoy a thousand years of glory and bliss upon the 
 recreated and renovated earth." — P. 78. Is not this 
 " colouring," as Mr. Milman calls it, very like St. John's 
 language in the Apocalypse ? Is that language to fare 
 as the words of our Lord and St. Peter .' or is it, on the 
 other hand, to be considered as Eastern tradition which 
 is appropriated and guaranteed by St. John .' 
 
 But there are instances in which Mr. Milman recoils 
 from his own theory. For example, he tells us, that 
 "the practice of the external washing of the body, as 
 emblematic of the inward purification of the soul, is 
 almost universal. The sacred Ganges cleanses all moral 
 pollution from the Indian ; among the Greeks and 
 Romans, even the murderer might, it was supposed, 
 wash the blood clean from his hands. . . . The perpetual 
 similitude and connexion between the uncleanness of the 
 body and of the soul, which run through the Mosaic 
 law . . . must have familiarized tlte mind with the 
 mysterious effects attributed to such a rite." — P. 142. 
 True ; but then why might not Orientalism in like 
 manner " familiarize " the mind with the religious ob- 
 servance of celibacy, instead of throwing discredit on its 
 divine authority .' 
 
 Again, concerning the doctrine of a Mediator, Mr. 
 Milman says ; 
 
 " Wherever any approximation had been made to the sublime 
 truth of the one great First Cause, either awful religious reverence 
 or philosophic abstraction had removed the primal deity entirely 
 beyond the sphere of human sense, and supposed that the inter- 
 course of the Divinity with man, the moral government, and even 
 
238 MilniarC s View of Christianity. 
 
 the original creation, had been carried on by the intermediate 
 agency, either in Oriental language of an emanation, or in the 
 Platonic, of the wisdom, reason, or intelligence of the one Supreme. 
 This Being was more or less distinctly impersonated according to 
 the more popular or more philosophic, the more material or more 
 abstract notions of the age or people. This was the doctrine from 
 the Ganges, or even the shores of the Yellow Sea to the Ilissus ; it 
 was the fundamental principle of the Indian religion and Indian 
 philosophy ; it was the basis of Zoroastrianism, it was pure Plato- 
 nism, it was the Platonic Judaism of the Alexandrian school. Many 
 fine passages might be quoted from Philo, on the impossibility that 
 the first self-existing Being should become cognizable to the sense 
 of man." — ^Vol. 1., pp. 72, 73. 
 
 Now, here again, as before, the principle which Mr. 
 Milman elsewhere applies, is too much for him : and 
 since he will not admit that this universal belief is from 
 tradition or secret suggestion, (as we would maintain,) 
 and of course dare not take the alternative, which in 
 consistency he ought to take, of denying that what is 
 found outside of Christianity is part of Christianity, he is 
 obliged to have recourse to the following expedient by 
 way of accounting for the fact : " From this remarkable 
 uniformity of conception and coincidence of language," he 
 says, " has sometimes been assumed a common tradition, 
 generally disseminated throughout the race of man. I 
 should be content with receiving it as the general acquies- 
 cence of the human mind in the necessity of some medi- 
 ation between the pure spiritual nature of the Deity 
 and the intellectual and moral being of man." — P. 74. 
 "Content," means "too happy, thus to turn my back 
 upon my own theory ; " however, supposing others are 
 not content ? all minds have not equal piety ; they are 
 carried away by reason ; they are run off with by a 
 principle ; what is to hinder a writer less religious- 
 minded than Mr. Milman, proceeding to infer concerning 
 the doctrine of mediation what he himself does infer con- 
 
MilmarC s View of Christianity 239 
 
 cerning the angelic host ? Is not mediation proved to 
 be an Orientalism ? and may not the " moral effect " of 
 its idea be the same on the vulgar, even though the 
 " refined intelligence " of the educated, who do not need 
 it, should decline it ? And again, if the universality of 
 the doctrine of mediation is to be accounted for on an 
 instinct, why may not the doctrine of celibacy also ? 
 
 In like manner all the divine and regal titles of Christ 
 had been anticipated in one quarter or another ; why are 
 they not to be rejected as Oriental, Jewish, or Alexan- 
 drian ? Mr. Milman tells us — 
 
 " Each region, each rank, each sect, the Babylonian, the Egyptian, 
 the Palestinian, the Samaritan, the Pharisee, the lawyer, the zealot, 
 arrayed the Messiah in those attributes which suited his own tem- 
 perament. Of that which was more methodically taught in the 
 synagogue of the adjacent school, the populace caught up whatever 
 made the deeper impression. The enthusiasm took an active or 
 contemplative, an ambitious or a religious, an earthly or a heavenly 
 tone, according to the education, habits, or station of the believer ; 
 and to different men the Messiah was man or angel, or more than 
 angel ; he was king, conqueror, or moral reformer ; a more victo- 
 rious Joshua, a more magnificent Herod, a wider-ruling Cassar, a 
 wiser Moses, a hoUer Abraham ; an angel, the angel of the Cove- 
 nant, the Metatron, the Mediator between God and man ; Michael, 
 the great tutelar archangel of the nation, who appears by some to 
 have been identified with the mysterious Being who led them forth 
 from Egypt ; he was the word of God ; an emanation from the 
 Deity, himself partaking of the Divine nature." — Vol. i., pp. 82, 83. 
 
 Or, to take another passage : 
 
 " In all the systenu a binary, in most a triple, modification of the 
 Deity was admitted. The Logos, the divine word or reason, might 
 differ in the various schemes, in its relation to the parental divinity, 
 and to the universe ; but it had this distinctive and ineffaceable 
 character, that it was the mediator, the connecting link between 
 the unseen and unapproachable world and that of man. This Pla- 
 tonism, if it may be so called, was universal. It had gradually 
 absorbed all the more intellectual class ; it hovered over, as it 
 
24 o Milmai-C s View of Christianity. 
 
 were, and gathered under its wings all the religions of the world. 
 It had already modified Judaism; it had allied itself with the 
 Syrian and Mithraic worship of the Sun, the visible Mediator, 
 the emblem of the word ; it was part of the general Nature wor- 
 ship ; it was attempting to renew Paganism, and was the recog- 
 nized and leading tenet in the higher mysteries." — ^Vol. ii., p. 427-8. 
 
 Where then are we to stop ? What will be left to us 
 of Christianity, if we assume that nothing is of its 
 essence which is found elsewhere .' Will even its pre- 
 cepts remain ? " If we were to glean," says Mr. Milman, 
 " from the later Jewish writings, from the beautiful 
 aphorisms of other Oriental nations, which we cannot 
 fairly trace to Christian sources, and from the Platonic 
 and Stoic philosophy, their more striking precepts, we 
 might find perhaps a counterpart to almost all the 
 moral sayings of Jesus. But the same truth is of differ- 
 ent importance as an unconnected aphorism, and as the 
 groundwork of a complete system." — ^Vol. i., p. 207. Most 
 true ; but we suspect the same distinction will be found 
 to hold concerning some other Catholic doctrines and 
 observances, which Mr. Milman would reject as Oriental 
 or Judaic. It will hold too, in a remarkable manner, of 
 a doctrine, which, as we have shown above, Mr. Milman 
 so strangely passes over, but which surely is the practical 
 basis of the whole Revelation, the forgiveness of sins. 
 
 However, there are two doctrines, which Mr. Milman 
 seems to admit as especially proper to Christianity, 
 which therefore ought to be especially considered of the 
 essence of the Revelation ; we suspect, however, that, 
 characteristic as they are, they are not of that liberal and 
 enlarged sort, which will please the " fastidious intelli- 
 gence " of this age. The two to which we allude, are the 
 principle of dogmatism, and the doctrine of ecclesiastical 
 liberty. This is remarkable. 
 
MilmarC s View of Christianity. 241 
 
 As to the former of the two, the principle of maintain- 
 ing the faith, Mr. Milman says, speaking of the times of 
 Athanasius : 
 
 " How singular an illustration of the change already wrought in 
 the mind of man by the introduction of Christianity. . . . This 
 controversy related to a purely speculative tenet. The disputants 
 of either party . . . appear to have dwelt little, if at all, on the 
 practical effects of conflicting opinions. In morals, in manners, in 
 habits, in usages, in Church government, in religious ceremonial, 
 there was no distinction between the parties which divided Chris- 
 tendom. . . . The Arians and Athanasians first divided the woild 
 on a pure question of faith. . . . Religion was become the one 
 dominant passion of the whole Christian world ; and everytliing 
 allied to it, or rather, in this case, which seemed to concern its very 
 essence, could no longer be agitated with tranquillity or debated 
 with indifference!' — Vol. ii., pp. 42.^ — ^432. 
 
 The other principle was that of ecclesiastical liberty : 
 
 " It is curious," observes Mr. Milman, " to observe this new 
 element of freedom, however at present working in a concealed, 
 irregular, and perhaps still guarded manner, mingling itself up 
 with, and partially upheaving, the general prostration of the human 
 mind. The Christian, or in some respects it might be more justly 
 said, the hierarchical principle, was entering into the constitution 
 of human society, as an antagonist power to that of the civil sove- 
 reign." — ^VoL iii., p. 34. 
 
 II. 
 
 Instances, however, such as these, deserving as they 
 are of notice, scarcely do more than illustrate the rule to 
 which they are exceptions. We repeat, then, in perfect 
 sincerity and much anxiety, our inquiry, — What tenet of 
 Christianity will escape proscription, if the principle is 
 once admitted, that a sufficient account is given of an 
 opinion, and a sufficient ground for making light of it, as 
 soon as it is historically referred to some human origin .' 
 
 VOL. II. 16 
 
242 Milman's View of Christianity. 
 
 What will be our Christianity ? What shall we have to 
 believe ? What will be left to us ? Will more remain 
 than a caput mortuum, with no claim on our profession 
 or devotion ? Will the Gospel be a substance ? Will 
 Revelation have done more than introduce a quality into 
 our moral life world, not anything that can be contem- 
 plated by itself, obeyed and perpetuated ? This we do 
 verily believe to be the end of the speculations, of which 
 Mr. Milman's volumes at least serve as an illustration. 
 If we indulge them, Christianity will melt away in our 
 hands like snow ; we shall be unbelievers before we at 
 all suspect where we are. With a sigh we shall suddenly 
 detect the real state of the case. We shall look on 
 Christianity, not as a religion, but as a past event which 
 exerted a great influenqe on the course of the world, 
 when it happened, and gave a tone and direction to 
 religion, government, philosophy, literature, manners ; 
 an idea which developed itself in various directions 
 strongly, which was indeed from the first materialized 
 into a system or a church, and is still upheld as such by 
 numbers, but by an error ; a great boon to the world, 
 bestowed by the Giver of all good, as the discovery of 
 printing may be, or the steam-engine, but as incapable 
 of continuity, except in its effects, as the shock of an 
 earthquake, or the impulsive force which commenced the 
 motions of the planets. 
 
 It is impossible that a thoughtful man like Mr. Milman 
 should not feel this difficulty even as a matter of logical 
 consistency, not to speak of it as a deep practical ques- 
 tion. ■ Accordingly he has attempted, though, as we 
 think, most arbitrarily and unsuccessfully, to set bounds 
 to his own principle, and to shut the door on innovation, ' 
 when he has let in as much of it as suited his taste. 
 Some incidental symptoms of his anxiety have appeared 
 
MilmarCs View of Christianity. 243 
 
 in the course of passages lately quoted ; but it is else- 
 where embodied in protests, cautions, and attempts at 
 explanation. Early in his work he begins by a protest ; 
 — after speaking of the successive changes which have 
 taken place in the form of Christianity, he proceeds : 
 
 " While, however, Christianity necessarily submitted to all these 
 modifications, I strongly protest against the opinion, that the 
 origin of the religion can be attributed, according to a theory 
 adopted by many foreign writers, to the gradual and spontaneous 
 development of the human mind. Christ is as much beyond His 
 own age, as His own age is beyond the darkest barbarism." — VoL i., 
 p. so. 
 
 Doubtless, no principle of Mr. Milman's book is in- 
 consistent with the proof of our Lord's divine mission 
 concisely stated by him in the last sentence ; but proof 
 in behalf of His mission does not tend to determine His 
 doctrine. The question is, whether Mr. Milman has not 
 taken up a position which puts him out of reach of all 
 means of ascertaining or proving what Christ came to 
 tell the world .■' For instance, he himself seems to be 
 contented to retreat back as far as the doctrine of the 
 immortality of the soul, and there to take his stand. 
 Now this is confessedly not a new doctrine, first proposed 
 by Christianity ; let us see then whether he can so state 
 his case in its favour, as not at the same time to suggest 
 proof in behalf of other doctrines which he rejects. He 
 thus defends it from the objection in question : 
 
 "Henceforward that great truth begins to assume a new cha- 
 racter, and to obtain an influence over the political and social, as 
 well as over the individual, happiness of man, unknown in the 
 former ages of the world. It is no longer a feeble and uncertain 
 instinct, nor a remote speculative opinion, obscured by the more 
 pressing necessities and cares of the present life, but the universal 
 predominant sentiment, constantly present to the thoughts, en- 
 woven with the usages, and pervading the whole moral being of 
 
244 MilmarC s View of Christianity. 
 
 man. The dim and scattered rays, either of traditionary belief, of 
 intuitive feeling, or of philosophic reasoning, were brought as it 
 were to a focus, condensed and poured with an immeasurably 
 stronger, an expanding, an all-permeating light upon the human 
 soul. Whatever its origin, whether in human nature, or the aspira- 
 tions of high-thoughted individuals, propagated through their fol- 
 lowers, or in former revelation, it received such an impulse, and 
 was so deeply and universally moulded up with the popular mind 
 in all orders, that from this period may be dated the true era of its 
 dominion. If by no means new in its elementary principle, it was 
 new in the degree and the extent to which it began to operate in 
 the affairs of men." — ^Vol. i., pp. 371, 372. 
 
 A very good argument indeed, as we should say, in 
 favour of the doctrine of the soul's immortality as a part 
 of the special Gospel message. Yet, strange to say, 
 hardly has Mr. Milman uttered it, but he is obliged in a 
 note to make the following most remarkable, though 
 indirect, confession, that the rationalizing principles 
 which he has adopted do not necessarily secure even 
 to this doctrine a place in the idea of Christianity ; and 
 that, in the judgment, not of any mere paradoxical 
 minds, but of one of the most profound thinkers, as 
 fame goes, of his age. Mr. Milman says : 
 
 " The most remarkable evidence of the extent to which German 
 speculation has wandered away from the first principles of Chris- 
 tianity, is this, that one of the most religious writers, the one who 
 has endeavoured with the most earnest sincerity to reconnect reli- 
 gious belief with the philosophy of the times, has actually repre- 
 sented Christianity without, or abnost without, the immortality of 
 the soul J and this the ardent and eloquent translator of Plato ! 
 Copious and full on the moral regeneration effected by Christ in 
 this world, with the loftiest sentiments of the emancipation of the 
 human soul from the bondage of sin by the Gospel, Schleiermacher 
 is silent, or almost silent, on the redetnption from death. He 
 beholds Christ distinctly as bringing life, only vaguely and re- 
 motely, as bringing immortality to light."— Vol. i., p. 372, note, 
 
 Christianity did not even bring the immortality of the 
 
MilmarC s View of Christianity. 245 
 
 soul to light; where then, after all, and what is Chris- 
 tianity ? 
 
 However, Mr. Milman's expedient for limiting his own 
 principles is, as we have seen, this, — to assert that a 
 broad line must be drawn between the starting and the 
 continuance of the religion, Divine Providence watching 
 over it for its purity in the first age in a way in which it 
 did not in the second ; and then, as if by way of make- 
 up to the second and following ages for this implied 
 charge of corruption against them, to console them with 
 the concession that perhaps their corruptions tended to 
 \\\e. permanence of Christianity. But the champions of the 
 ages in question, with all due acknowledgments for the 
 compliment, will not allow him thus delicately to tiptoe 
 over the difficulty. His words are these : 
 
 " On a wide and comprehensive survey of the whole history of 
 Christianity, and considering it as left altogether to its own native 
 force and impulse, it is difficult to estimate how far the admission, 
 even the predominance, of these foreign elements, by which it was 
 enabled to maintain its hold on different ages and races, may not 
 have contributed both to its original success and its final perma- 
 nence. If it lost in purity, it gained in power, perhaps in per- 
 manence. No doubt in its first contest with Orientalism, were 
 sown those seeds which grew up at a later period into Monasticism; 
 it rejected the tenets, but admitted the more insidious principle of 
 Gnosticism ; yet there can be little doubt that in the dark ages the 
 monastic spirit was among the great conservative and influential 
 elements of Christianity."— Vol. 1% pp. 94, 95. 
 
 We neither thank Mr. Milman for granting to us that 
 the monastic spirit has been " conservative," nor will we 
 grant to him in turn that "no doubt " it sprang from the 
 " insidious principle of Gnosticism." 
 
 It will be observed that, throughout the foregoing 
 remarks on Mr. Milman's volumes, we have been grant- 
 ing generally the existence of a resemblance between 
 
246 MilmafCs View of Christianity. 
 
 Christianity and certain doctrines and practices scattered 
 to and fro in the heathen philosophies and religions. 
 Our purpose was to show that the genuineness of the 
 Catholic creed, ethics, and ritual was unaffected by this 
 fact ; their being an existing Catholic theory on which 
 the fact could stand without detrinnient to Catholicism, 
 as well as a popular and liberalistic theory according 
 to which the fact would throw discredit upon it. But, 
 the professed fact itself needs careful looking after, for it 
 has been before now, and is continually, shamefully mis- 
 stated. We had intended in this place to have added 
 some words upon it, but our limits forbid. 
 
 There is another question which obviously arises out 
 of the fact under consideration, viz., as to its effect upon 
 the authority of Revealed Religion. It may be objected, 
 that originality Is necessary, if not for truth of doctrine, 
 at least for evidence of divinity ; and, though there is 
 nothing very profound in the remark, it ought to be 
 answered ; and we mention it, that we may be seen not 
 to have forgotten it. 
 
 And now, in bringing our remarks on this able work 
 to an end, we must confess the mixed feeling with which 
 we have made them. We have felt it to be an impera- 
 tive duty to take that view of Mr. Milman's volumes 
 which first presents itself to a Churchman. It is also 
 their prominent asjpect, and such as is likely to arrest 
 the attention of the general reader, as well as of those 
 whose habit of mind it is to associate the visible world 
 with the invisible. The second aspect in which we should 
 regard them, is as being a serviceable collection, or com- 
 monplace-book, of the worst which can be said by a 
 
MihnarC s View of Christianity. 247 
 
 candid enemy against the theory of Catholicism. The 
 third remark we make upon them, and we make it 
 with great sincerity and much pleasure, only wishing it 
 could come first instead of third, is in their praise as 
 a work of unusual learning and thought, containing a 
 large mass of information, valuable to the students of 
 ecclesiastical history. The author's method has its good 
 side as well as its bad. He treats Catholic persons, 
 proceedings, and events, in a large and tolerant spirit. 
 His sketches of the great bishops of the fourth century 
 are particularly interesting, though defaced, of course, 
 by the peculiarities of his religious theory. With the 
 same drawback, we can express great satisfaction in 
 many of his discussions on particular points, of which 
 we especially notice the chapters called " Christianity 
 and Orientalism," and " Christianity and the Fine Arts." 
 It is indeed most painful, independently of all personal 
 feelings which a scholar and poet so early distinguished as 
 Mr. Milman must excite in the minds of his brethren, 
 that a work so elaborate and so important should be com- 
 posed upon principles which are calculated to turn all 
 kindly feeling into mere antipathy and disgust. Indeed 
 there is so much to shock people, that there is compara- 
 tively little to injure. To one set of persons only is he 
 likely to do much mischief, those who just at this mo- 
 ment are so ready to use his main principle for the 
 demolition of Catholic views, without seeing that it 
 applies to the New Testament History and teaching 
 just as well. He will assist such persons in carrying 
 out their principle. We observe that a publication, 
 prominent in this warfare, cautions its readers against 
 Mr. Milman's most dangerous and insidious work. We 
 beg to join this publication and all other similar ones in 
 its sage and seasonable warning. Let all who carp at 
 
248 Milmans View of Christianity. 
 
 the Fathers and deny Tradition, who argue against sacra- 
 mental influence, who refer celibacy to Gnosticism, and 
 episcopal power to Judaism, who declaim against mys- 
 ticism, and scoff at the miracles of the Church, while at 
 the same time they uphold what is called orthodox Pro- 
 testantism, steadily abstain from Mr. Milman's volumes. 
 On their controversial principles his reasonings and 
 conclusions are irresistible. 
 
 January, 1841, 
 
249 
 
 XII. 
 
 REFORMATION OF THE ELEVENTH 
 CENTURY. 
 
 PERHAPS the greatest of the wants under which our 
 religious literature labours at this day is that of an 
 ecclesiastical history. It is inconvenient enough to have 
 no good commentary on Scripture, and so little of sys- 
 tematic theology ; but the Creed tells us the principal 
 points of doctrine, and Scripture is to the pious mind, in 
 some sense, its own interpreter. But the providences of 
 God towards His Church during eighteen centuries, 
 though contained in outline in prophecy, are consigned 
 to no formula or document, clear enough to convey its 
 own meaning, and minute enough to impress its pecu- 
 liarities upon the private Christian. Not even the wildest 
 advocate for the right of Priyate Judgment ever professed 
 to apprehend past facts, as he might think he discovered 
 revealed doctrines, without the assistance of books or 
 teachers. Rather such an one will commonly be found 
 to depreciate, instead of pretending to, historical know- 
 ledge : he will apply the Caliph Omar's argument to the 
 events of iSoo years, and say that except for the first 
 and three last centuries they are not to be studied at all, 
 as being little or nothing better than the times of pre- 
 dicted evil. He shuts up God's dealings with His 
 
2^0 Reformation of the Eleventh Century. 
 
 Church under a formula, and is contented with symbols 
 which neither he nor any one else can put into plain 
 English. 
 
 It is difficult justly to estimate the injury done to our 
 whole view of Gospel truth by our ignorance of ecclesias- 
 tical history. Every department of theology acts upon 
 the rest, and if one is neglected the others suffer. Our 
 view of doctrine affects our view of history, and our view 
 of history our view of doctrine ; and our view of doctrine 
 the sense we put upon Scripture : and our interpretation 
 of Scripture our ethics, and our ethics our interpretation 
 of Scripture. And, moreover, the history of the past 
 ends in the present ; and the present is our scene of 
 trial ; and to behave ourselves towards its various pheno- 
 mena duly and religiously, we must understand them ; 
 and to understand them, we must have recourse to those 
 past events which led to them. Thus the present is a 
 text, and the past its interpretation. To a child there is 
 no difference between one fact and another in the 
 religious world. He does not understand their mutual 
 relations or their respective bearings. He has, when an 
 infant in arms, learned to classify and dispose of objects 
 of sense ; he knows that the church spire is not so near 
 him as his nose or his hand, and that leaves are parts of 
 the tree, and not of the sky or the earth, with which they 
 are conterminous. But he cannot learn without the 
 assistance of others the meaning of moral facts ; and, as 
 things are, he commonly grows up and lives and dies as 
 ignorant of those of an ecclesiastical character as he was 
 when he first had the faculty of thought. " What is the 
 difference between a Methodist and a Roman Catholic.'" 
 and " Why are we not all Quakers .'" are the questions 
 which a thoughtful child of five years old may ask ; and 
 it is not at all clear whether he is likely to have taken 
 
Ileformation of the Eleventh Century. 251 
 
 any real steps towards the solution of them by the time 
 he is fifty. This of course is witnessed in the case of 
 political and social facts quite as much as in ecclesias- 
 tical. What a different meaning, for instance, has the 
 so-called " Catholic Relief Bill," or the Reform Bill, to 
 men of twenty and of thirty ! How differently has the 
 character of the Duke of Wellington come out to. the 
 present generation since the publication of his dispatches ! 
 How differently appear our present relations with Russia 
 to those who know and those who are ignorant of the 
 history of the last century ! Men enter into life, and 
 take what they find there, and put their own interpreta- 
 tion upon it, if their imaginations are not pre-occupied 
 with the one true historical comment. , This is why there 
 is such difficulty in rousing the public mind to understand 
 the importance of certain measures, proposed or resisted : 
 to the public they are facts without meaning. What 
 virtue is there in a name to those who are dead to it } 
 Why should not Brutus stir a spirit as soon as Csesar .'' 
 It is the association which is everything ; but to those 
 who know not the true history of that to which the name 
 belongs, there are no associations with it, or wrong ones. 
 The case is the same as regards words written or spoken. 
 Take an orator and he shall make a speech, or an author 
 and he shall write a pamphlet, or a preacher and he shall 
 deliver a sermon ; and then let it be considered how 
 differently the speech, or the pamphlet, or the sermon, 
 in each case seems to persons who know him well and 
 those who do not. Very different for better and for worse ; 
 let him be a man of pomp and parade, or of smoothness 
 and artifice, and strangers will be taken in, and admire 
 the very words, turns of speech and gestures, which 
 make those who know him well only cry out, " How Hke 
 so-and-so ! " On the other hand, the deep feeling and 
 
2-52 Reformation of the Eleventh Century. 
 
 reality of another sort of man go clean over the heads of 
 those who do not know him, while friends are pierced 
 by every word. Let the very same speech or sentiment 
 come from two persons, and it has quite a different 
 meaning, according to the speaker, and takes a different 
 form in our minds. We always judge of what meets us 
 by what we know already. There is no such thing in 
 nature as a naked text without note or comment. 
 
 It is a curious fact, that these remarks even apply to the 
 case of personal appearance, as is sometimes proved by 
 the test of portraits. Let a likeness, taken twenty years 
 ago, be put before two persons, now for the first time, one 
 of whom knew the subject of it at the time, and the 
 other did not, and the former will think it like him as he 
 is now, and the latter will deny the likeness. We colour 
 our ocular vision with the hues of the imagination : as 
 reason is said to deceive our eyes in the phenomenon of 
 the horizontal moon, so memory is a gloss upon them 
 here. Our friend has grown fat, or his temples are 
 higher, or his face is broader, or lines have come to view 
 along his cheek, or across his forehead, and yet in certain 
 cases we shall be heard to say, that such a one has not 
 altered at all since the day we first knew him. To us 
 his youth is stamped upon his maturity, and he lives in 
 our eye, as well as in our mind, as when we first gave 
 him our afiection. We are surprised on going into the 
 world to hear him called a middle-aged man. 
 
 In such a case, to be sure, we have an instance of an 
 abuse of the important instrument which has been above 
 insisted on. But we adduce it to prove the extent of 
 the influence which the knowledge of the past has on 
 the present ; — that it may become excessive and out 
 of place, that we may become mere antiquarians and 
 pedants, that we may bury ourselves in the illusions of 
 
Reformation of the Eleventh Century. 253 
 
 history, when we should be contemplating things as they 
 are before us, is very certain : but the danger at this day 
 rather is, lest, from total ignorance of history, we should 
 be obliged to determine every action and every principle 
 by the only test which will practically be left us, the test 
 of visible expediency. And late ecclesiastical occur- 
 , rences supply sorne melancholy instances in point. This 
 will be the certain consequence of treating history as an 
 old almanac, whatever persons of some station in the 
 Church may say to the contrary. 
 
 And, again, it must be recollected that men will form 
 their theories and write books on religious subjects, 
 whether or not they have the facts, which alone can 
 enable them to do so justly. To assign causes, to draw 
 out relations, is natural to man ; and he will do it on a 
 theory, rather than not at all. A number of answers can 
 be given to the question. What is the Church .'' We are 
 far from saying that in so complicated a question only 
 one, or perhaps that any one, is right and true ; but 
 whatever is right, whatever wrong, surely we must go to 
 history for the information. If we are content merely to 
 look round us to catch up certain peculiarities which 
 meet our eye, listen to ■Wfhat is said in parliament or the 
 newspapers, or in some fashionable chapel, and then 
 proceed to form our theory, we ghall probably approach 
 about as near the truth ^s the clever Oriental who de- 
 fined the English as a nation who live on the sea, and 
 make penknives. This is a remark which applies in a 
 measure even to writers of a deeper tone of thought : we 
 are just now becoming rich in treatises on ecclesiastical 
 politics and doctrine : let us take good care that our 
 arbitrary views do not get ahead of our knowledge. 
 
 We have now given some of the reasons why we are 
 especially obliged to Mr. Powden for the life of Hilde- 
 
254 Reformation of the Eleventh Century. 
 
 brand, known in history as Pope Gregory VII., which 
 he has lately given to the world; No one can write 
 without opinions : we are far from saying that Mr. 
 Bowden has not his own, and that of a very decided 
 character ; but what we principally thank him for is his 
 narrative of facts ; he has drawn out the facts of a 
 momentous and wonderful period of history with great 
 distinctness and perspicuity, and we are sure that no 
 one will rise from the perusal of his volumes without re- 
 spectful feelings towards their author for the information 
 and instruction he has provided. We do not intend to 
 make this article a panegyric on Mr. Bowden ; but to 
 convey to the reader by means of it some account of his 
 subjects. Yet, before proceeding to business, it is but 
 justice to him to say, that he has given us at once a very 
 learned and very well-arranged history. To have read 
 the original sources diligently and to report them accu- 
 rately is one great praise ; but a far more diiScult task 
 is the combination and adjustment of materials. To 
 bring out the course of events so that a reader may go 
 away with a definite impression upon his mind of what 
 has passed through it, is a very difficult art. We are not 
 perhaps quite satisfied with Mr. Bowden's style ; but we 
 eulogize his composition. He is a very neat and skilful 
 artist, a clear and forcible narrator ; makes a great many 
 points, and every one of them tells. 
 
 But now let us proceed to his work itself. It is the 
 history of the commencement of that great reformation 
 of the Church in the middle ages, which Providence 
 conducted through the instrumentahty, partly divine, 
 partly human, of the Papal Monarchy. It is. usual to 
 
Reformation of the Eleventh Century. 255 
 
 call the times in which it occurred the dark ages ; but, 
 properly speaking, that title applies to the centuries 
 which preceded it. No exaggeration is possible of the 
 demoralized state into which the Christian world, and 
 especially the Church of Rome, had fallen in the years 
 that followed the extinction of the Carlovingian line 
 (A.D. 887). The tenth century is even known among 
 Protestants par excellence as the sseculum obscurum, and 
 Baronius expresses its portentous corruption in the vivid 
 remark that Christ was as if asleep in the vessel of the 
 Church. " The infamies prevalent among the clergy of 
 the time," says Mr. Bowden, " as denounced by Dafniani 
 and others, are to be alluded to, not detailed." — Vol i., 
 p. 144. When Hildebrand was appointed to the monas- 
 tery of St. Paul at Rome, he found the offices of devotion 
 systematically neglected, the house of prayer defiled by 
 the sheep and cattle who found their way in and out 
 through its broken doors, and the monks, contrary to all 
 monastic rule, attended in their refectory by women. 
 The excuse for these irregularities was the destitution to 
 which the holy house was reduced by the predatory 
 bands of Campagna ; but when the monastic bodies were 
 rich, as was the case in Germany, matters were worse 
 instead of better. Unworthy brethren of the conventual 
 orders, Mr. Bowden tells us, incessantly beset the ears of 
 princes and great people, who had the presentation to 
 abbeys and benefices, offering sums so large in purchase 
 that secular competitors were excluded. The world 
 wondered, says an historian of the times, himself a monk, 
 from what springs such rivers of wealth could flow ; and 
 understood not how the riches of Croesus or Tantalus 
 could be amassed by men who had taken on them the 
 scandal of the Cross and the profession of poverty. 
 Adelbert, Archbishop of Bremen, though himself a man 
 
256 Reformation of the Eleventh Century. , 
 
 of pure life and austere practice in an age of general 
 dissoluteness, conceived a plan, by means of the imperial 
 influence which he enjoyed, of making Hamburg the 
 seat of his power, and establishing a sort of papacy in 
 the North. With this purpose in view, he was tempted 
 to grasp at every method of increasing his revenues, and 
 disgraced his rule by a wide-spread system of corruption 
 and plunder. Associating himself with a profligate 
 favourite of the Emperor, he despoiled without shame 
 the lands and revenues of the less powerful religious 
 communities, and put up to sale every office, civil or 
 ecclesiastical, which fell to his disposal. On an archbishop 
 in France, who had contrived to bribe to silence the prin- 
 cipal evidences against him of simony, at length being 
 brought to confess his guilt and being deposed, no less 
 than forty-five bishops and twenty-seven other dignitaries 
 or governors of churches came forward to confess the 
 criminal mode by which they had obtained their bene- 
 fices, and retired from stations which they had no valid 
 right to retain. In Lombardy, the Archbishop Guido 
 in the eleventh century was said to have invariably 
 demanded a price for the favour of admission into holy 
 orders ; his clergy were in their own way as deeply in- 
 volved in the guilt of simony as himself, till their very 
 flocks learned to treat them with open manifestations of 
 contempt, reviled them in the house of God itself, and 
 hooted them along the streets. In the times of St. 
 Romauld, who died in 1027, the practice of emperors 
 selling bishoprics, bishops their preferments, and laymen 
 their benefices, was so recognized and ordinary, that 
 when the saint had spoken even to religious persons of 
 simony as a sin, he seemed to them to inculcate over- 
 strained and fanciful notions. 
 
 Even two centuries earlier than this, when, as appears 
 
Rzformation of the Eleventh Century. 257 
 
 on the face of the facts, the corruption was not so general, 
 a Council of Paris had complained that many of the 
 clergy were so occupied in the pursuit of gain and other 
 worldly avocations that they suffered many infants to 
 die without baptism. A Council of Aix-la-Chapelle of 
 the same date prohibits extortion and intemperance in 
 bishops, and protests against their non-residence. A 
 Synod of Pavia a little later prohibits the clergy the 
 practice of sumptuous banquets and the use of dogs and 
 hawks. Hincmar judged it expedient to issue a decree 
 against the pawning by the clergy of the vestments and 
 the communion plate. In 829, the prelates assembled in 
 council at Paris found it necessary to urge Louis the 
 Debonair to use all his influence in extirpating simony, 
 "this heresy so detestable, this pest so hateful to 
 God," from the Church. The Synod of Meaux, in 845, 
 renewed the warning. And Leo IV., in or about 847, 
 denounced it in an epistle to the Bishops of Britanny 
 as a crime condemned by many Councils. The nobles 
 secured the ordination of their younger sons or relatives 
 for the sole purpose of qualifying them for the acceptance 
 of lucrative benefices ; giving them, while they did so, 
 the same military training and secular habits with the 
 rest of the family. Others procured admission to the 
 priesthood for dependants whom they intended to retain 
 in subordinate stations in their household. " Such," says 
 Agobard, Archbishop of Lyons, " is the disgrace of our 
 times, that there is scarcely one to be found who aspires 
 to any degree of honour or temporal distinction who has 
 not his domestic priest ; and this, not that he may obey 
 him, but that he may command his obedience alike in 
 things iawfuLand things unlawful ; in things human and 
 things divine; so that these chaplains are constantly 
 to be found serving the tables, mixing thcstrained wine, 
 VOL. II. 17 
 
258 Reformation of the Eleventh Century. 
 
 leading out the dogs, managing the ladies' horses, or 
 looking after the lands." 
 
 Mr. Bowden shall inform us of a scene which took 
 place during the minority of the Emperor Henry the 
 Fourth : 
 
 " At the commencement of vespers before the king and court at 
 Goslar, at the solemn season of Christmas, 1062, a dispute arose 
 between the servants of the Bishop of Hildesheim and those of the 
 Abbot of Fulda, with regard to the position of the seats of their 
 respective masters. The abbot, by ancient usage, was entitled to 
 sit next to the metropolitan ; but the bishop, indignant that any 
 should take this place, within his own diocese, in preference to him- 
 self, had commanded his domestics to place the chairs accordingly. 
 The dispute soon led to blows, and but for the interference of Otho 
 of Bavaria, would have terminated in bloodshed. This noble 
 asserted the rights of the abbot, and the bishop was consequently 
 foiled. He looked forward however to a renewal of the contest 
 under more favourable auspices ; and at the feast of Pentecost fol- 
 lowing, previously to the entrance of the king and prelates into the 
 Church, he secreted behind the high altar Count Ecbert and some 
 well-armed soldiers. As the contending prelates proceeded to their 
 seats, the affray between the servants began again ; when the count 
 suddenly springing from his ambush, rushed with his followers upon 
 the astonished men of Fulda, and drove them with blows and 
 menaces from the church. But they too had made preparations for 
 a violent struggle, and had friends and arms at hand. In a body 
 they rushed once more into the sacred building, and engaging their 
 enemies with swords in the midst of the choir, confusedly mingled - 
 with the choristers. Fiercely was the combat waged : ' throughout 
 the church,' says Lambert of Aschaffenburgh, ' resounded, instead , 
 of hymns and spiritual songs, the shouts of the combatants and the 
 screams of the dying ; ill-omened victims were slaughtered upon the 
 altar of God ; while through the building ran rivers of blood, poured 
 forth, not by the legal religion of other days, but by the mutual 
 cruelty of enemies.' The Bishop of Hildesheim, rushing to a pulpit 
 or some other conspicuous position, exhorted his followers, accord- 
 ing to the same writer, as with the sound of a trumpet, to persevere 
 in the fray, and encouraged them by his authority, and by the promise ' 
 of absolution, to disregard the sanctity of the place. The young 
 
Reformation of the Eleventh Century. 259 
 
 monarch called in vain on his subjects to reverence his royal 
 dignity; all ears were deaf to his vociferated commands and 
 entreaties ; and, at length, urged by those around him to consult his 
 own safety, he escaped with difficulty from the thickening tumult, 
 and made his way to his palace. The men of Fulda by the efforts 
 of Count Ecbert, were at length repulsed, and the doors of the 
 church closed against them ; upon which, ranging themselves before 
 the building, they prepared to assault their enemies again, as soon 
 as they should issue from it ; and there remained until the approach 
 of night induced them to retire." — ^Vol. i., pp. 235 — 237. 
 
 Miserable as are the above specimens of those truly 
 " dark ages," yet they are decency itself compared with 
 the atrocities which in the same era disgraced the see of 
 Rome. At the close of the ninth century, Stephen VI. 
 dragged the body of an obnoxious predecessor from the 
 grave, and, after subjecting it to a mock trial, cut off its 
 head and three fingers, and threw it into the Tiber. He 
 himself was subsequently deposed, and strangled in 
 prison. In the years that followed, the power of electing 
 to the popedom fell into the hands of the intriguing 
 and licentious Theodora, and her equally unprincipled 
 daughters, Theodora and Marozia. These women, mem- 
 bers of a patrician family, by their arts and beauty, 
 obtained an unbounded influence over the aristocratic 
 tyrants of the city. One of the Theodoras advanced a 
 lover, and Marozia a son, to the popedom. The grand- 
 son of the latter, Octavian, succeeding to her power, as well 
 as to the civil government of the city, elevated himself, 
 on the death of the then Pope, to the apostolic chair, at the 
 age of eighteen, under the title of John XII. (A.D. 956.) 
 His career was in keeping with such a commencement. 
 " The Lateran palace," says Mr. Bowden, " was disgraced 
 by becoming a receptacle for courtezans: and decent 
 females were terrified from pilgrimages to the threshold 
 of the Apostles by the reports which were spread abroad 
 
26o Reformation of the Eleventh Century. 
 
 of the lawless impurity and violence of their representa^- 
 tive and successor." — Vol. i., p. 83. At length he was 
 carried off by a rapid illness, or by the consequences of 
 a blow received in the prosecution of his intrigues. 
 Boniface VII. (A.D. 974), in the space of a few weeks 
 after his elevation, plundered the treasury and basilica 
 of St. Peter of all he could conveniently carry off, and 
 fled to Constantinople. John XVI 1 1. (A.D. 1003) expressed 
 his readiness, for a sum of money from the Emperor 
 Basil, to recognize the right of the Greek Patriarch to 
 the title of ecumenical or universal bishop, and the con- 
 sequent degradation of his own see ; and was only pre- 
 vented by the general indignation excited by the report 
 of his intention. Benedict IX. (A.D. 1033) was conse- 
 crated Pope, according to some authorities, at the age of 
 ten or twelve years, and became notorious for adulteries 
 and murders. At length he resolved on marrying his 
 first cousin ; and, when her father would not assent 
 except on the condition of his resigning the popedom, 
 he sold it for a large sum, and consecrated the purchaser 
 as his successor. Such are a few of the most prominent 
 features of the ecclesiastical history of these dreadful 
 times, when, in the words of St. Bruno, " the world lay 
 in wickedness, holiness had disappeared, justice had 
 perished, and truth had been buried ; Simon Magus 
 lording it over the Church, whose bishops and priests 
 were given to luxury and fornication." 
 
 2. 
 
 Had we lived in such deplorable times as have been 
 above described, when Satan seemed to have been let 
 loose at the end of his thousand years, and had we been , 
 blessed with any portion of divine light to understand, 
 and of love to desire better things, we might have asked 
 
Reformation of the Eleventh Century. 261 
 
 whether it was conceivable that the Church should ever 
 recover itself from the abyss into which it was sunk. 
 Where was the motive principle — where the fulcrum, by 
 which it was to be righted? What was left but for 
 matters to become worse and worse, till the last ray of 
 truth and righteousness died away, and the last saint 
 was gathered in, and the end of all things came, and the 
 Judge with it ? One thing we should have felt for cer- 
 tain, that if it was possible to retrieve the Church, it 
 must be by some external power ; she was helpless and 
 resourceless ; and the civil power must interfere, or there 
 was no hope. So thought the young and zealous em- 
 peror, Henry III. (A.D. 1039), who, though unhappily far 
 from a perfect character, yet deeply felt the shame to 
 which the Immaculate Bride was exposed, and deter- 
 mined with his own right hand to work her deliverance. 
 In one respect, indeed, he was plainly unequal for so 
 high a mission, had he had other credentials of it; he 
 who was not possessed of the grace of personal purity, 
 could not hope to remove the more flagrant scandals 
 with which the clergy of the day were laden ; but this 
 good thing had he, that, with all his ecclesiastical pre- 
 rogatives and possessions, he had in no single instance 
 incurred the guilt of simony ; he had the most awful im- 
 pression and the most acute feelings of its heinousness ; 
 and thus, if he could not animadvert upon one of the 
 two chief sins of the day, he might aspire to be a censor 
 of the other. And so much is undeniable, that, though 
 he cannot be considered as regularly called to the work, 
 and though a movement had already begun, as we shall 
 presently see, in the Church itself, which, humanly 
 speaking, would have effected it without him, yet in 
 matter of fact, this well-meaning prince did begin that 
 reformation which ended in the purification and monar- 
 
262 Reformation of the Eleventh Century. 
 
 chical estate of the Church. He held a Council of his 
 bishops in 1047 5 i" '* ^^ passed a decree that " Who- 
 soever should make any d'S^ce^ or station in the Church 
 a subject of purchase or sale, should suffer deprivation 
 and be visited with excommunication ;" at the same 
 time, with regard to his own future conduct, he solemn- 
 ly pledged himself as follows : — " As God has freely 
 of His mere mercy bestowed upon me the crown of 
 the empire, so will I give freely and without price all 
 things that pertain unto His religion." This was his 
 first act ; but he was aware that the work of reform, to . 
 be thoroughly executed, must proceed from Rome, as 
 the centre of the ecclesiastical commonwealth, and he 
 determined, upon those imperial precedents and feudal 
 principles which Charlemagne had introduced, himself to 
 appoint a Pope, who should be the instrument of his 
 general reformation. 
 
 The reigning Pope at this time was Gregory VI., and 
 he introduces us to so curious a history- that we shall 
 devote some sentences to it. Gregory was the identical 
 personage who had bought the papal office of the pro- 
 . fligate Benedict IX. for a large sum, and was conse- 
 crated by him, and yet he was far from a bad sort of 
 man after all. As to his traffic in holy things, he seems 
 to have viewed it in the light of the worthy persons in 
 our own days, whose advertisements concerning the sale 
 or purchase of advowsons or presentations figure in the 
 newspapers ; and he really does seem to have com- 
 mitted his act of simony with the very best intentions, 
 which he did in fact carry out, so far as his bargain was 
 made good to him. He had been known in the world as 
 John Gratianus ; and at the time of his promotion was 
 arch-priest of Rome. " He was considered," says Mr. 
 Bowden, " in those bad times more than ordinarily re- 
 
Reformation of the Eleventh Century 263 
 
 Hgious ; he had lived free from the gross vices by which 
 the clergy were too generally disgraced." He is de- 
 scribed as "idiota et mirae simphcitatis," and, what per- 
 haps is included in this account of him, he was un- 
 lettered. He could not be quite said to have come into 
 actual possession of his purchase ; for Benedict, his pre- 
 decessor, who sold it to him, being disappointed in his 
 intended bride, returned to Rome after an absence of 
 three months, and resumed his pontifical station, while 
 the party of his intended father-in-law had had sufficient 
 influence to create a Pope of their own, John, Bishop of 
 Sabina, who paid a high price for his elevation, and 
 took the title of Sylvester HI. And thus there were 
 three self-styled Popes at once in the Holy City, Bene- 
 dict performing his sacred functions at the Lateran, 
 Gregory at St. Peter's, and Sylvester at Santa Maria 
 Maggiore. Gregory, however, after a time, seemed to 
 preponderate over his antagonists ; he maintained a 
 body of troops, and with these he suppressed the sub- 
 urban robbers who molested the pilgrims. Expelling 
 them from the sacred limits of St. Peter's, he carried 
 his arms further, till he had cleared the neighbouring 
 towns and roads of these marauders. On an outcry 
 being raised at the unclerical character of such perform- 
 ances, brilliant as they were, he associated with him 
 Lorenzo, Archbishop of Amalfi, who was an exile at 
 Rome, as his coadjutor, and, while the latter undertook 
 the direct duties of the papal office and government, 
 he devoted himself to that police department in which 
 he seemed so much to excel. 
 
 This was the point of time at which the Imperial 
 Reformer made his visitation of the Church and See of 
 the Apostles. He came into Italy in the autumn of 
 .1046, and held a Council at Sutri, a town about thirty 
 
264 Reformation of the Eleventh Century. 
 
 miles to the north of Rome. Gregory was allowed to 
 preside ; and, when under his auspices the abdication of 
 Benedict had been recorded, and Sylvester had been 
 stripped of his sacerdotal rank and shut up in a monas- 
 tery for life, Gregory's own turn came, and, as there was 
 no one competent to judge the highest ecclesiastical 
 authority upon earth, as he was admitted really to be, 
 the following device was taken to get rid of him : 
 
 "His (Henry's) bishops, the cases of Gregory's rivals having been 
 disposed of, requested the pontiff to state, for their information, the 
 circumstances of his own election to the Papal office ; and, when 
 they had thus drawn from him an admission of the unholy traffic by' 
 which that transaction had been accomplished, they brought before ' 
 him the impropriety of his conduct in a manner so glaring, that the 
 confounded Pontiff at length exclaimed, ' I call God to witness that, 
 in doing what I did, I hoped to obtain the forgiveness of my sins 
 and the grace of God. But now that I see the snare into which the 
 enemy has entrapped me, tell me what I must do ?' The bishops 
 having thus obtained their point, replied, 'Judge thyself — condemn 
 thyself with thine own mouth ; better will it be for thee to live, like 
 the holy Peter, poor in this world and to be blest in another, than 
 like the magician Simon, whose example misled thee, to shine in 
 riches here, and to receive hereafter the sentence of condemnation.' 
 And the penitent Gregory, in obedience to the suggestion spoke as 
 follows : ' I, Gregory, bishop, servant of the servants of God, pro- 
 nounce that, on account of the shameful trafficking, the heretical 
 simony, which took place at my election, I am deprived of the Roman 
 See. Do you agree,' he concluded, 'to this ?' ' We acquiesce,' was 
 the reply, 'in your decision;' and the ex-Pope at once divested 
 himself of the insignia of pontifical authority." — Vol. i., p. 119. 
 
 The new Pope whom the Emperor gave to the Church " 
 instead of Gregory VI., Clement II., a man of excellent 
 character, died within the' year. Damasus II. also, who was 
 his second nomination, died in three or four weeks after 
 his formal assumption of his pontifical duties. Bruno, 
 Bishop of Toul, was his third choice ; he was a relation 
 
Reformation of the Eleventh Century. 265 
 
 of Henry's, mild and unambitious in character, fervent 
 in his devotion, courteous and popular in his manners, 
 and possessed, if not of commanding talents, of con- 
 siderable energy and activity of mind. He was far 
 from desiring his elevation ; when the proposal was first 
 made to him, he requested three days to consider of it ; 
 at the end of which he made a confession of his faults 
 before the assembled Council, with the hope of gaining 
 their permission to decline it. But they overruled his 
 objections, and he found himself compelled on the spot 
 to assume the style and honours of a pontiff (a.d. 1049). 
 Such was the person, and such the manner of his pro- 
 motion, who is now known as St. Leo, the ninth of that 
 name. 
 
 And now we are arrived at the moment when the 
 State reformer struck his foot against the hidden rock, 
 and found to his surprise that, in that apparently dis- 
 organized and lifeless frame, which he was attempting 
 to new-make, there was a soul and a power of self- 
 action adequate both to its recovery and to its resist- 
 ance against foreign interference. He had chosen a 
 Pope, but " quis custodiat ipsos custodes " ? What was 
 to keep fast that Pope in that very view of the relation 
 of the State to the Church, that plausible Erastianism, 
 as it has since been called, which he adopted himself.' 
 What is to secure the Pope from the influences of some 
 Hildebrand at his elbow, who, a young man himself, 
 shall rehearse, in the person of his superior, that part 
 which he is one day to play in his own, as Gregory 
 Vn. ? Such was the very fact ; Hildebrand was with 
 Leo, and thus commences the ecclesiastical career of 
 that wonderful man, to whose history Mr. Bowden ha? 
 
266 Reformation of the Eleventh Century. 
 
 devoted his reading. Hildebrand was at this time from 
 thirty to forty years of age, having been born between 
 lOio and 1020 ; his birthplace, as it is supposed, Soana, 
 in Tuscany ; his father a carpenter. He had been soon 
 remolded from home to the care of an uncle, the Abbot 
 of St. Mary's on the Aventine, who is supposed to be 
 the same with that Lorenzo, Archbishop of Amalfi, 
 whom Gregory VI. had made his coadjutor, and whose 
 assertion of ecclesiastical power had previously led to 
 his banishment from his own diocese by Guaimar, prince 
 of the city. Such a man was a happy master for the 
 champion of the Church ; and under his auspices Hilde- 
 brand had rapidly acquired a knowledge of the seven 
 liberal sciences, while he exhibited from his earliest 
 years the rudiments of that devotional temperament, 
 which in after-life so strikingly characterized him. He 
 was, says one of his annalists, a monk from his boy- 
 hood ; his life, from its very commencement, was one of 
 abstinence, mortification, and self-command. 
 
 Arrived at man's estate, he had undertaken a journey 
 across the Alps, and resided for some time in the cele- 
 brated monastery of Cluni in Burgundy, the strictness of 
 which formed an acceptable contrast, in the eyes of the 
 austere youth, with the laxity of manners which pre- 
 vailed at Rome. The Abbot Odilo, himself an eminent 
 saint, was equally pleased with Hildebrand, applying to 
 him prophetically the words, used by the Angel of the 
 commissioned Reformer who went before the first Ad- 
 vent, " He shall be great in the sight of the Lord." On 
 his return to Rome, disgusted with the prevalent corrup- 
 tions, Hildebrand would have quitted the city again and 
 for good, but was fixed in a resolution to stay after an 
 occurrence not unlike, in character and termination (if 
 we may compare together such opposite fortunes as 
 
Reformation of the Eleventh Century. 267 
 
 those of a Pope and a Lord Mayor), the "turn-again" 
 passage in the history of Whittington. He afterwards 
 served under the unfortunate Gregory VI. On Gre- 
 gory's downfall, Hildebrand was carried by Henry 
 across the Alps with Gregory himself ; and thus he was 
 at hand, when Leo, on his appointment to the papacy, 
 invited his assistance. Such was Hildebrand, and such 
 his previous history ; and now what advice will he give 
 to the mild and unassuming Bruno ? Mr. Bowden shall 
 tell us. 
 
 " Bruno knew and respected his zeal and ability, and, as he hap- 
 pened to be at Worms during the session of the Council, the newly- 
 thosen pontiff sent for him, and requested him to be the companion 
 of his intended journey to Rome. ' I cannot,' said Hildebrand, 
 'accompany you;' and, when pressed to declare the reason of this, 
 probably unexpected, refusal, he said, ' Because you go to occupy 
 the government of the Roman Church, not in virtue of a regular 
 and canonical institution to it, but as appointed to it by secular and 
 kingly power.' This led to a discussion, in which Bruno, gentle and 
 candid by nature, and already, perhaps, inclined in his heart to 
 favour the principles which Hildebrand now advocated before him, 
 permitted himself to be convinced that the legitimate electors of the 
 gee of St. Peter were the Roman clergy and the people ; and he pre- 
 pared to shape his course accordingly. Returning to Toul, to make 
 the necessary preparations, and to take a farewell of his diocese, he 
 set out thence in a style very different from that which had usually 
 been adopted by the nominees of Teutonic sovereigns in their inau- 
 gural journeys to the papal city. Instead of the rich pontifical attire 
 which they were wont, from the day of their nomination, to assume 
 he clothed himself in the simple habit of a pilgrim, thus publiclv 
 testifying to the world that, notwithstanding the act of the German 
 Henry and his Council, he considered that his real election was yet 
 to come. Leaving Toul on the third day from the festival of Christ- 
 mas, he halted on his way, at the monastery of Cluni, and froin 
 hence, if not from Toul itself, was accompanied by Hildebrand, in 
 his unostentatious progress to the papal city. At that city, bare- 
 footed, and clad in the humble guise which he had thus assumed, 
 Bruno arrived in the early part of February, 1049 ; and as he found 
 
268 Reformation of the JElevejttk Century. 
 
 the clergy and people assembled, and uttering hymns of thanks' 
 giving and shouts of joy in honour of his arrival, he at once addressed 
 them, and having announced to them the mode of his election in 
 Germany, entreating them fully and freely to declare their sentiments 
 on the subject. Their election, he said, was of paramount authority 
 to every other ; and if what had been done beyond the Alps did not 
 meet with their general approval, he was ready to return — a. pilgrim 
 as he had come — and to shake off the burden of a responsibility, 
 which he had only upon compulsion undertaken. His discourse 
 was responded to by an unanimous shout of approval ; and Bruno, 
 installed without delay in his office, assumed thenceforward the 
 name of Leo IX." — Pp. 137 — 139. 
 
 It seems, then, there is a hidden power in the Church 
 struggling with Henry in the person of his own nomi- 
 nees, and that, as regards the very point through which 
 the system of Charlemagne introduced corruption into 
 it. The State appointment to the Church offices, which 
 was the result of the Carlovingian changes, implied the 
 secular character of offices held by virtue of such an ap- 
 pointment ; and that presumed secular character led to 
 their being treated as secular, that is, to simony in ob- 
 taining them, and to a worldly use of them. Henry's 
 reform then was conducted pn a principle which involved 
 and perpetuated the very evils which it was intended to 
 remove ; if the Church was under secular jurisdiction, it 
 was fairly open to secular use. This feeling it was, the 
 perception of this axiomatic truth, which the Church's 
 instinct, or divine sense, seemed to be travailing with 
 and bringing into effect at the era before us ; and now 
 let us, under Mr. Bowden's guidance, inquire into the 
 history of the momentous doctrines, which it eventually 
 succeeded in establishing. 
 
 When Christians have but a partial confidence in their 
 own principles, there is a great temptation, when Church 
 matters go wrong, to give up God's way, and take what- 
 
Reformation rf the Eleventh Century. 269 
 
 ever is recommended by the expediency of the moment. 
 The ancient and true methods of proceeding appear 
 quite out of date and place ; the old materials, instru- 
 ments, centres, and laws, on which the Church once 
 moved, are apparently worn out by use ; and what 
 remains but to take up whatever comes to hand? We 
 need not go to past ages for illustrations of this remark. 
 In all times, weeds and scum, and all that is worthless, 
 float on the surface, and precious gems lie at the bottom 
 of the deep ; and where there is neither faith to accept 
 nor penetration to apprehend, what does not obtrude 
 itself upon the senses, men are very ready to put up 
 with what they see, in despair of meeting with what 
 may be more to their purpose. Thus in Hildebrand's 
 age, it might be plausibly argued that ecclesiastical 
 affairs had, in the changes of society, devolved to the 
 civil power ; that the State was their natural adminis- 
 trator ; that it had the means, and none but it, of re- 
 forming the Church. It might be urged that the old 
 high spirit, beautiful as it had been, was no more ; that 
 there was no place within the Church on which a re- 
 former could place himself, who desired to operate upon 
 it ; that whether he attempted pastors or flock, regulars 
 or seculars, the ground would give way under him. The 
 necessity of the case then formed the vindication of the 
 Emperor's conduct, were there no other plea in its be- 
 half ; and yet in matter of fact, out of that hopeless 
 chaos rose, and upon it found a seat, the broadest and 
 most sovereign rule which the Christian world has seen. 
 
 In truth, taking the corruptions of that day at the 
 worst, they were principally on the surface of the Church. 
 Scandals are petulant and press into view, and they 
 are exaggerated from the shock they communicate to 
 beholders. Friends exaggerate through indignation, foes 
 
270 Reformation of the Eleventh Century. 
 
 through malevolence. In the worst of times there is- 
 always a remnant of holy men, out of sight, scanty 
 perhaps in numbers, but great in moral strength, and 
 there is always even in the multitude an acknow- 
 ledgment of truths which they do not themselves 
 practise. Among all men, educated and unlettered, 
 there is a tacit recognition of certain principles as the 
 cardinal points of society, which very rarely come dis- 
 tinctly into view, and of which the mind is the less 
 conscious because of their being intimately near to it. 
 Such there were in Hildebrand's day, and the secret of 
 his success lay in his having the genius or the faith to 
 appeal to them. We should rather say the faith ; for 
 this is remarkably the case, and is exemplified in our 
 own day ; that what is commonly admired as com- 
 manding talent is far more rightly to be regarded as 
 a firm realizing grasp of some great principle, and that 
 power of developing it in all directions, and that nerve 
 to abide faithful to it, which is involved in such a true 
 apprehension. 
 
 The fundamental notion of the Hildebrandine period 
 was the ecumenical power of the Pope, which had been 
 matured by a v:»riety of circumstances, and remained in 
 the European mind even in the most scandalous and 
 trying times. Mr. Bowden has struck off some of these 
 operative causes with great power. In the first place, 
 Rome was the only apostolical see in the West, and 
 thereby had a natural claim to the homage of those sees 
 which were less distinguished. This pre-eminence was' 
 heightened by her inflexible orthodoxy amid the doc- 
 trinal controversies in which the Eastern sees had suc- 
 cessively erred, and by the office of arbitrator and: 
 referee, which she held, amid their rivalries and quarrels. 
 Further, when the descent of the barbarians had over- 
 
Reformation of the Eleventh Cetitury, 271 
 
 whelmed or exterminated the nations and churches of 
 the Empire, Christian Rome became the instrument of 
 the conversion of the heathen population, and the patri- 
 archal centre of the new world which it created. And 
 when the seat of temporal power had been removed to 
 Constantinople, or re-founded in France or Germany, 
 the Roman See came into a position of independence 
 and sovereignty which could not be the lot of Churches 
 living under the immediate shadow of the imperial 
 throne. It became the rival of the eastern Caesars and 
 the viceroy of the western. Moreover, in the age of 
 feudahsm, when monarchy was the only form of civil 
 polity, there would be at once a tendency in the eccle- 
 siastical state to imitate it, and an expediency in doing 
 so in order to meet and counteract its aggressions. And, 
 amid national changes and the rise and fall of dynasties, 
 it was natural for struggling leaders to seek support 
 from a settled power like Rome, and to recognize that 
 power by asking for its exercise. And it must be con- 
 sidered too that power has always a tendency to increase 
 itself, and that, independently, as it would seem, of the 
 wishes or efforts of its possessors. 
 
 To these historical causes, doctrinal sanctions, true or 
 pretended, lent their aid. From the first, indeed, prero- 
 gatives were attached to the Church of Rome which 
 belonged to no other but her; but these were extrava- 
 gantly increased by certain well-known forgeries, of 
 which Mr. Bowden gives us an interesting account. The 
 chief of these were the pretended Decretals, a variety of 
 letters, decrees, and other documents, purporting to be the 
 work of bishops of Rome from the very earliest times. 
 This celebrated forgery made its appearance between 
 the years 830 and 850, and what is remarkable did not 
 proceed from Rome, but from the North, from Mentz, 
 
272 Reformation of the Eleventh Century. 
 
 being, as would appear, the work of a deacon of that 
 city of the name of Benedict. Under all circumstances 
 it is natural for the weaker portion of the community 
 to desire the means of appeal from the arbitrary will of 
 their rulers, and that to a power safe from the local influ- 
 ences of those against whom they themselves desire pro- 
 tection ; and this operated in an especial way in disposing 
 the German bishops towards Rome, passing over their 
 own metropolitans, at a time when the civil power was in 
 the hands of tyrants but partially reclaimed from barba- 
 rism. The Churches then of Germany naturally looked to 
 Roipe for protection against their secular governors ; and 
 the forgery in question was the expression of their previous 
 wishes, as well as the formal basis in justification of them 
 in time to come. The spurious series, says Mr. Bowden, 
 is throughout consistent with itself, and is occupied 
 throughout in asserting the Church's independence from 
 every species of secular dominion or jurisdiction ; and 
 " the bishop of the holy and universal Church" is declared 
 to be the Pope. To him all cases of importance are to 
 be referred ; he is the head and cardinal point of all 
 Churches, and by him they are all to be governed.* 
 Such was the combination of circumstances under which 
 the supremacy of the Pope over other bishops had been 
 established, both in fact and in public opinion ; and in 
 this connexion we are led to quote the following just 
 and important remark of our author : 
 
 " The pontiifs," he says, " did not so much claim new privileges 
 
 * [Mr. Bowden says that, before the appearance of the forgery, "the 
 theory of papal supremacy already existed in its great, but yet unconnected, 
 elements," though the forgery of course consolidated it ; and that " the 
 immediate effect of it was rather to make and consolidate relations already 
 existing between the different orders in the Christian hierarchy than to in- 
 troduce new ones."]— Vol. i., pp. £2, 56. Vi4. Note on this Essay, infra. 
 
Reformation of the Eleventh Century. 273 
 
 for themselves as deprive their episcopal brethren of privileges 
 originally common to the hierarchy. Even the title by which thest.: 
 autocratical prelates, in the plentitude of their power, delighted to 
 style themselves, ' Summus Sacerdos,' ' Pontifex Maximus,' 'Vica- 
 rius Christi,' ' Papa ' itself, had, nearer to the primitive times, been 
 the honourable appellations of every bishop ; as ' Sedes Apostolica' 
 had been the designation of every bishop's throne. The ascription of 
 these titles therefore to the Pope only gave to the terms a new force, 
 because that ascription became exclusive ; because, that is, the 
 bishops in general were stripped of honours to which their claims 
 were as well founded as those of their Roman brother ; who became, 
 by the change, not so strictly universal, as sole, bishop. The 
 degradation of the collective hierarchy, as involved in such a rela- 
 tive exaltation of one of its members, was seen and resisted by one 
 not likely to ent&tain unreasonable or exaggerated views of the 
 - dangers to be expected from Roman aggrandizement, the truly great 
 and good Pope Gregory I. ' I beseech your Holiness,' said this 
 pontiff to the Patriarch of Alexandria, who had addressed him, 
 contrary to his previously expressed desire, by the title of Papa 
 Universalis, ' to do so no more ; for that is taken from you which is 
 bestowed, in an unreasonable degree, upon another, ... I don ot 
 reckon that to be honour, in which I see their due honour taken 
 from my brethren ; for my honour is the honour of the Universal 
 Church, the sohd strength of my brethren ; I then am truly honoured 
 when the proper share of honour is assigned to each and to all. 
 But if your Holiness styles me " Universal Pope," you renounce 
 that dignity for yourself which you ascribe universally to me. But 
 let this be done no more. . . . My predecessors have endeavoured, 
 by cherishing the honour of all members of the priesthood through- 
 out the world, to preserve their own in the sight of the Almighty.' 
 
 "And even at a much more mature stage of the growth of 
 papal pretensions, in the eleventh century itself, we find the pontiff 
 Leo IX., in an epistle to the Grecian Patriarch, Michael Cerularius, 
 repeating the assertion, made by Gregory in the above epistle, that 
 his predecessor and namesake, Leo the Great, to whom the title of 
 Ecumenical Patriarch had been offered by the Council of Chalcedon 
 had repudiated the proud appellation, by the ascription of which to 
 one prelate an affront would be offered to the equal dignity of all." 
 — ^VoL i., pp. 64 — 66. 
 
 The causes we have been enumerating had effected 
 VOL. n. ■ 18 
 
274 Reformation of the Eleventh Century. 
 
 the introduction of papal supremacy, even 'before the 
 dark times to which the Hildebrandine period succeeded ; 
 and it is observable that, even amid the moral and poli- 
 tical degradation of the Roman See in the ninth and 
 tenth centuries, the theory still maintained its hold upon 
 the public mind. We find Dietrich, Archbishop of 
 Treves in 969, soliciting and obtaining from John XIII. 
 for himself and his successors that precedence among 
 the archbishops of Germany, which the office of legate 
 was considered to confer. Stephen of Hungary, a secu- 
 lar prince, at the end of the tenth century, with a view of 
 strenthening his authority over his half-converted sub^ 
 jects, had obtained from Sylvester II. the permission to 
 combine his regal title with that of Apostolic Legate. 
 Gregory V., the imrnediate predecessor of Sylvester, 
 when he excommunicated the son of Hugh Capet for 
 an illegal marriage, excommunicated also the Arch- 
 bishop of Treves, who had solemnized it, and the other 
 bishops who had countenanced it with their presence ; 
 and on that prince defying the sentence, had put 
 his kingdom under an interdict, with such effect that 
 he was deserted by his whole court and household, 
 and even the two domestics who remained with him, 
 avoiding his touch as infected, threw every plate 
 and vessel out of which he had eaten and drunk into 
 the fire. And, to take another specimen of prerogative, 
 John XV. about the same date, had begun the practice 
 of canonization, acting, as he expressed it, " by the au- 
 thority of the blessed Peter, prince of Apostles," from 
 whom he claimed to be the one visible head of the com- 
 munity of the faithful, the " bishop of the holy Roman 
 Catholic and Apostolic Church." It cannot be denied 
 then, that in spite of the dreadful demoralization of the 
 Church and popedom in the tenth and eleventh centuries. 
 
Reformation of the Eleventh Century. 275 
 
 there ivas laid in the temper of the age and the feelings 
 of society a deep and firm groundwork, if men could be 
 found who had the heart to appeal to it, for reforming 
 and purifying the Church by an internal effort, and 
 without recurring to the temporal power, which seemed 
 at first sight the obvious, or rather the only resource. 
 
 Here then was the point of battle between the Church 
 and the State. The State said to the Church, " I am 
 the only power which can reform you ; you hold of me, 
 and your dignities and offices are in my gift." The 
 Church said to the State, " She who wields the power 
 even of smiting kings, cannot be a king's creature ; and 
 if you attempt to reform her, you will be planting the 
 root of corruption by the same hand which cuts ofit 
 its branches." 
 
 ' The struggle between the parties began from the com- 
 mencement of Hildebrand's political history. Before his 
 intimacy with Leo IX., he had, as we have seen, been 
 connected with the unfortunate Gregory VI. ; yet, even 
 he, guilty as he was of a crime to which Hildebrand so 
 earnestly opposed himself from first to last, committed 
 it withihe object of asserting, against the aristocracy, the 
 dormant right of the Roman clergy and people to elect 
 their own bishops. After this time Hildebrand seems 
 to have been the chief spring in ecclesiastical movements 
 in the papal city,, for a space of twenty-four years, till 
 the time of his own elevation. During that period he 
 served the Popes Leo IX., Victor II., Stephen IX., 
 Nicholas II., and Alexander II., — all of them virtuous or 
 even austere persons, — steadily developing and realizing 
 by successive acts the purification of the Church and 
 the theory of her independence and sovereignty, For 
 
275 Reformation of the Eleventh Century. 
 
 the interesting history of this period, we must refer to 
 Mr. Bowden's second book, on which our limits will not 
 allow us to enter, but from which, as a specimen of its 
 contents, we will extract two or three passages from the 
 history of two saints, Leo, whom we have already in- 
 troduced to the reader, and Peter Damiani. 
 
 The pontificate of Leo IX. supplies an illustration of 
 that mixture of catholic truth with wild romance, which 
 pervades the history of the times. In his own personhewas 
 a model of that reform which he had in view for the whole 
 Church. His "hours of sleep," says Mr. Bowden, "were 
 systematically abridged by his devotions': when at Rome, 
 it was his wont, thrice in the week, to walk barefoot at 
 midnight from the palace of the Lateran to the church of 
 St. Peter (from one extremity, that is, of Rome to the 
 other) accompanied by two or three only of his clergy, 
 for the purposes of praise and prayer : a spectacle which 
 might well strike those with astonishment, who were 
 accustomed to the scenes of infamy and riot, by which 
 the palace in question, and the papal city in general, had 
 been disgraced under the licentious pontiiis of the pre- 
 ceding age." — Vol. i., p. 152. Yet this pure and holy 
 man is next presented to us as leading a military expe- 
 dition against the Normans, which he seems to have 
 thought to be as little out of character with his pontifical 
 office, as a rector of a parish among ourselves in being a 
 magistrate and reading the riot act, or a clergyman serv- 
 ing the office of proctor in our Universities. It was now 
 about fifty years since the Normans had first become 
 known to Ihe inhabitants of Calabria and Apulia, whither 
 they had at first come as pilgrims, then done battle as 
 champions of the faith, then served as mercenaries, and 
 at length spread devastation as marauders. The pagan, 
 to whom they had opposed themselves, was the Saracen, 
 
Reformation of the Eleventh Century. ij" 
 
 who from time to time made descents upon the coast, 
 though his power was on the decline ; and Mr. Bowden 
 gives the following account of the first collision between 
 young faith and degenerate misbelief : 
 
 " In or about the year 1002, a petty flotilla appeared before 
 Salerno, and a body of Saracens, landing under the walls of the place, 
 demanded, with the customary menaces, a pecuniary contribution. 
 Guaimar III., Prince of Salerno, and his timid subjects, felt that 
 they had no course to adopt but submission ; and their surprise 
 was great, when about forty pilgrims from a distant land, who 
 happened to be at the moment within their walls, requested of the 
 prince arms, horses, and permission to chastise these insolent 
 marauders. The request was readily complied with : the pilgrim 
 warriors, accoutred in haste, galloped eagerly forth through the 
 gates of Salerno ; the Saracens, confounded and dismayed, fled 
 tumultuously from the onset of this unexpected foe ; and esteemed 
 themselves happy when their retreating barks bore them out of 
 reach of the swords of the victorious Normans. 
 
 " The delighted Guaimar would willingly have been prodigal in 
 his bounty towards his gallant deliverers ; but he experienced a 
 second surprise when the costly presents, which he laid before them, 
 were firmly, though courteously, rejected. 'For the love of God, 
 and of the Christian faith,' said the chivalrous pilgrims, ' we have 
 done what we have done ; and we may neither accept of wages for 
 such service, nor delay our return to our homes.' " — Vol. i., pp. 156, 
 IS7- 
 
 " They departed accordingly," adds Mr. Bowden, "but 
 not unaccompanied. Guaimar sent with them, to their 
 native land, envoys laden with presents, such as might 
 best tempt the countrymen of these hardy and disin- 
 terested warriors to enlist in his service. Specimens of 
 southern fruits, superb vestments, golden bits, and mag- 
 nificent horse-trappings, attracted and dazzled the eyes 
 of the population of Normandy, and produced on the 
 enterprising youth of the province their natural effect." 
 This was the commencement of their connexion with 
 southern Italy ; but it was not for ever of so edifying a 
 
278 Reformation of the Eleventh Century. 
 
 character. They returned in the capacity of soldiers 
 in the pay of its petty princes, and, with the duties, 
 they practised the vices and excesses of their profession. 
 They were a people of warm religious feelings ; but a 
 young nation has the waywardness and uncertainty of 
 children, and every now and then these soldiers of for- 
 tune, turning to plunder, were tempted to rifle, for the 
 sake of gain, the holy shrines in which, on their first ap- 
 pearance, they had come to worship. Tidings of their 
 sacrilegious acts reached the ears of Leo. " And when," 
 Mr. Bowden tells us, "he saw that the insulters of the 
 Church were also the ruthless oppressors of their fellow- 
 creatures, when he beheld the southern gates of Rome 
 daily thronged by the wretched inhabitants of Apulia, 
 who, destitute, blinded, and horribly mutilated, were 
 seeking a refuge from further tyranny behind the shel- 
 tering walls of the papal city, the pitying pontiff yielded 
 himself entirely to the impulses of his benevolent na- 
 ture," and led an army in person against the Normans. 
 With that object he crossed the Alps and gained of the 
 Emperor 500 Germans, most of them volunteers ; then 
 returning, he raised the banner of St. Peter in Italy, and 
 a motley company from Apulia, Campania, and Ancona 
 flocked around it. It is not known whether Hildebira-nd 
 sanctioned this measure. Benno " his embittered ad- 
 versary," as Mr. Bowden calls him, charges him with 
 doing so ; but " the statement," he continues, " appears 
 to be unsupported by other contemporaneous authority ; 
 and the work of Benno is filled with so many palpable 
 calumnies against Hildebrand, that nothing in the na- 
 ture of an accusation can be worthy of credit which rests 
 upon his evidence alone." It is undeniable, however; 
 that Hildebrand, when Pope, himself entertained a some- 
 what similar project. On the other hand, Hildebrand's 
 
Reformation of the Eleventh Century^ 2"]^ 
 
 intimate friend, and the principal organ of his party, 
 Peter Damiani, has left on record his protest against 
 the assumption, on the part of the successor of St. Peter, 
 of that earthly sword, which our Lord Himself denied to 
 the Apostle. Anyhow, it was unprecedented in that 
 age, considering Leo was Pope, and the enemy a Chris- 
 tian people ; though bishops were in the habit of accom- 
 panying their retainers to the field, and Pope John X., 
 somewhat more than a century before, had engaged 
 Mahomedans in battle. 
 
 " It was on the i8th of June, 1053, that Leo's troops confronted 
 those of the enemy near the town of Civitella. The Normans, 
 when aware of his intentions, h^d made all preparations in their 
 power to ward off the coming blow. William Ironarm was no 
 more ; but his brothers, Humphrey and Robert, — the latter of 
 whom, subsequently surnamed Guiscard, had recently arrived in 
 Apulia with a considerable reinforcement to the Norman forces, — 
 succeeded to the command of his intrepid warriors ; and Richard, 
 Count of Aversa, the chief of a smaller, but independent, Norman 
 colony in Italy, brought all the force he could muster to the defence 
 of the common cause. But the Normans were dispirited : rumour 
 had magnified among them the scale of the papal preparations, and 
 they were awed by the sacred character of him in whom, even while 
 he was their enemy, they recognized their spiritual parent. The 
 heralds, therefore, who approached Leo while he was yet within the 
 walls of Civitella, assumed an humble tone ; they deprecated his 
 hostility, and informed him that the Norman princes, though they 
 declined to abandon possessions which they had won, were ready to 
 hold their conquests thenceforth by his grant, and do suit and 
 service for them to him, as to their lord paramount. But the tall, 
 bulky Germans, by whom the pontiff was surrounded, smiled in 
 scorn when they beheld the diminutive though active forms of their 
 adversaries ; and Leo, inspired by their confidence, as well as by 
 his conviction of the goodness of his cause, rejected the overtures 
 of the Norman leaders, and demanded the total abandonment of the 
 lands which they had recently usurped from St. Peter. This the 
 Normans declined to concede, and therefore, feeliiig that no oth^r 
 alternative lay before them, they gave the signal for battlCj before 
 
286 Reformation of the Eleventh Century. 
 
 Leo had issued from the gates of Civitella. The result of the actiof. 
 which now took place, falsified alike the confident anticipations ot 
 the one party and the desponding auguries of the other. The 
 impetuous charge of the Norman chivalry at once unmanned the 
 timid Italians who composed the bulk of Leo's army, and who fled 
 in every possible direction. Werner and his German band met the 
 shock with the calm courage of their country ; but the Normans, 
 unresisted elsewhere, turned their flanks, and hemmed them in on 
 every side ; until this gallant troop, contending valiantly to the last, 
 covered with their corpses the ground which they had occupied. 
 But for their resistance, — so sudden was the flight, so rapid the dis- 
 persion of Leo's army, — the business of the day might seem rather 
 to deserve the name of a slaughter than of a battle. 
 
 "The conquering chiefs pushed on without delay, through the 
 streets of Civitella, into the presence of Leo. But they no sooner 
 beheld the venerable pontiff, than,' exchanging the fierceness of the 
 warrior for the subdued tone of the penitent, they fell at his feet, 
 and in abasement and tears besought the absolution and the blessing 
 of their vanquished enemy. Moved by this conduct, and induced by 
 the exigency of his position, Leo revoked the sentence of anathema 
 which he had pronounced against them ; and they then escorted him 
 with all reverence and honour to the city of Benevento. Here the 
 humbled pontiff remained nine months, during which time, at the 
 request of his captors, he consented to grant them, in the name of 
 St. Peter, the investiture of all their conquests, made or to be made, 
 in Apulia, Calabria, and Sicily ; which they were thenceforward to 
 hold as fiefs of the Holy See."— VoL i., pp. 162—165. 
 
 By this turn of events, Leo's defeat and captivity 
 involved more favourable results than could have been 
 reaped from the most brilliant victory. The Pope ac- 
 quired a claim on the services of the Normans, as of 
 vassals ; and, moreover, recognition of his power to con- 
 fer the investiture, as lord paramount, of extensive do- 
 mains, over which they had held no previous sway. 
 What was more to the immediate purpose of the war, 
 the presence of the mild old man succeeded in subdu- 
 ing the fierceness and cruelty with which the proceed- 
 ings of the Normans had hitherto been attended ; an 
 
Reformation of the Eleventh Century. 281 
 
 effect, moreover, which would be naturally promoted by 
 their admission, in consequence of the compact, into the 
 circle of recognized sovereigns and the responsibilities of 
 legitimate power. However, Leo did not at the time 
 find all this consolation in the issue of his military 
 exploits. He considered the failure of his arms to be a 
 sign of the divine displeasure that he had taken them 
 up. He gave himself over to acts of penance. Though 
 his health was declining, a carpet on the bare earth was 
 his ordinary couch, a stone his pillow, and a hair shirt 
 his garment. " Under such austerities," says Mr. Bow- 
 den, " aided as they were in their effect by the sorrows 
 and anxieties of his mind, his constitution gradually 
 sank ; and when he at length left Benevento, and re- 
 turned, in March, 1054, to the papal city, it was only to 
 breathe his last there on the 19th of the following April, 
 after having committed to his beloved friend Hildebrand 
 the provisional government of the Roman Church, until 
 a new pontiff should be appointed to the Apostolic 
 See." — Vol. i., pp. 166, 167. 
 
 St. Peter Damiani, Bishop of Ostia, who has already 
 been incidentally mentioned, is another personage of 
 this period, whom the course of the history brings be- 
 fore us, and to whom, we think, that Mr. Bowden, as 
 regards one passage of his life, is hardly fair, though he 
 treats him always with that respect and honour which 
 is his due. He speaks of him "as a man of sincere 
 and deep devotion, of extraordinary talents, and of a 
 monastic austerity ; of too ardent a temperament to be 
 uniformly judicious in his proceedings ;" while "his faith 
 was of a description which led him to receive, without 
 question, a host of legends of the most absurd descrip- 
 tion." " But," he continues, " there shone forth in him a 
 singleness and purity of character, which, in connexior. 
 
282 Reformation of the Eleventh Century, 
 
 with his abilities, procured him the universal respect and 
 admiration of his contemporaries." He had devoted 
 himself to a monastic life, and he resisted his elevation 
 to the episcopate with all his might. " He feared," says 
 Mr. Bowden, "to be drawn from the unremitting aus- 
 terities of his retirement ; and it was not until he was 
 threatened by Stephen and his Council with excommu- 
 nication, that he consented to change the life of seclu- 
 sion and self-denial which he lived for the activity and 
 notoriety of a more responsible situation." — Vol. i., ppj 
 189, 190. 
 
 After a time, he was sent to Milan, as legate, to set right 
 the disorders existing in those parts which the Milanese 
 clergy attempted to shield from reform under colour of 
 the dignity and independence of the Church over which 
 St. Ambrose had presided. Another point on which 
 reform was demanded was their assertion that they had 
 a right to marry, by virtue of a privilege granted them 
 by the same Saint. In this business he was associated 
 with Anselm da Badagio, Bishop of Lucca, afterwards 
 Pope Alexander H. 
 
 " Making their appearance in the long-disturbed city, these envoys 
 found the archbishop and his clergy, however hostile in secret to 
 their coming, prepared to acknowledge their authority, and to re- 
 ceive them with every outward mark and sign of deference. But 
 the populace, moved perhaps by the secret instigations of their 
 pastors, soon showed, disposed as they might be themselves to 
 ridicule or revile these careless guides, that they were keenly jealous 
 of the assumed independence of their native Church, and viewed 
 with suspicion any papal interference with the proceedings of its' 
 governors. In tumultuous throngs they filled the streets, and entered 
 the building in which the legates had convened the clerical body of 
 the place. . . . The discontent at length broke out in open tumult. 
 . . . The clergy, eager to augment the fray, rang the alarm-bell in , 
 the various churches of the city ; the confusion increased, and even 
 the life of Damiani was apparently in danger. But that bold and 
 
Reformation of the Eleventh Century. 283 
 
 high-spirited man was equal to the crisis ; ascending a pulpit, he 
 showed himself prepared to address the tumultuous multitude. His 
 dauntless bearing awed them to silence, and he was heard with at- 
 tention, while with dignity, and all the eloquence which distinguished 
 him, he set forth the claims which the mother Church of Rome 
 possessed on the dutiful obedience of her daughter, the Church of 
 Milan. He cited instances in which St. Ambrose himself had ap- 
 pealed to the protection of the Roman prelate, and acknowledged 
 his pre-eminence. ' Search,' he concluded, ' your own records, anl 
 if ye find not there that what we say is the truth, expose our false- 
 hood. But if ye find us true, resist not the truth, resist not unduti- 
 fuUy the voice of your mother ; but from her, from whom ye first 
 drew in the milk of apostolic faith, receive with gratitude the more 
 solid food of heavenly doctrine.' 
 
 "This appeal, and the legate's fearless demeanour, produced a 
 sudden turn in the feelings of his hearers . . . and the clergy offered 
 no further opposition to the legatine authority. On Peter's demmd, 
 their whole bouv, with the archbishop at their head, agreed to pledge 
 themselves with a solemn vow against simony and clerical marriage • 
 . . . and Peter, thus successful in his mission, pronounced in his 
 official character the reconciliation of Milan to the Apostolic See." 
 — Vol. i., pp. 208 — 210. 
 
 Shortly after this, Damiani resolved on resigning his 
 bishopric and retiring back to his beloved cloister, from 
 which he had been with such difficulty separated. Here 
 it is that we think Mr. Bowden is rather hard upon him, 
 unless, as is certainly possible, he has reasons which do 
 not appear in his work. He calls him "singular-minded," 
 and he speaks of " his morbid craving after ascetic re- 
 tirement." Now surely there is nothing strange in his 
 desiring quiet, and as to whether he ought to have 
 indulged that desire, that is a question which no one 
 could determine but himself. Supposing he found him- 
 self falling back in self-control and divine love, would 
 not that be a reason for doubt and deliberation what it 
 was his duty to do ? Gibbon speaks ironically of un- 
 willing monks torn out of their retreats and seated on 
 
284 Reformation of the Eleventh Century. 
 
 bishops' thrones, but no one could know but themselves 
 how great a blessing the cloister was, and what a great 
 sacrifice to relinquish it. The ten thousand trivial acci- 
 dents of the day in a secular life which exert a troublous 
 influence upon the soul, dimming its fair surface with 
 many a spot of dust and damp, these give place to a 
 divine stillness, which, to those who can bear it, is the 
 nearest approach to heaven. A sharp word, or a light 
 xemark, or a tone, or an expression of countenance, or a 
 report, or an unwelcome face, or an association, ruffles 
 the mind, and keeps it from fixing itself upon its true 
 good. " One day," says Pope St. Gregory I., "when 
 I was oppressed with the excessive trouble of secular 
 affairs, I sought a retired place, friendly to grief, where 
 whatever displeased me of my engagements might show 
 itself openly, and all that was accustomed to inflict pain 
 might be seen at one view." There he was surprised by 
 " his most dear son Peter the deacon," whom he had made 
 his intimate from the time that the latter was a young 
 man. He opens his grief to Peter in words which are so 
 much to our purpose, that with the reader's indulgence 
 we will digress to quote them. " My sad mind," he says, 
 "labouring under the soreness of its engagements, re- 
 members how it went with me formerly in my monastery, 
 how all perishable things were beneath it, how it was 
 superior to all that was transitory ; that it was wont to 
 think of nought but things of heaven ; that, though still 
 in the body, it went out beyond the very prison of the 
 flesh in contemplation ; that it even loved death, whicli 
 is nearly to all a punishment, as the entrance of life and 
 a reward of its labour. But now, in consequence of the 
 pastoral charge, it undergoes the occupation of secular 
 men, and for that fair beauty of its quiet, is dishonoured 
 with the dust of earthly work. And after dissipating 
 
Rifor>nation of the Eleventh Century, 283 
 
 itself on outward things to serve the many, even when it 
 seeks what is inward, it comes home indeed, but is no 
 more equal to itself." — Dial. i. i. 
 
 Such would be the bitter experience of a mind like 
 Damiani's ; and it depends on a number of minute cir- 
 cumstances, whether it was not as much his duty to 
 decline the pastoral charge, as Gregory's to retain it. 
 Mr. Bowden allows, too, that "from his retirement he 
 continued to watch with an attentive eye the fortunes of 
 the Church ; by his epistles he still interfered with her 
 concerns and influenced her destiny, nor was he backward, 
 when called on, to devote himself on special occasions to 
 active service in her cause." And we find in the after- 
 history, of his going, in his extreme age, as Alexander's 
 legate, to the young King Henry, and preventing him 
 from the scandalous step of divorcing an innocent wife, 
 against whom he had no charge except that he did not 
 like her. Mr. Bowden notices, however, that his retire- 
 ment, at a time when the Church had such need of his 
 services in his episcopate, was never forgiven by Hilde- 
 brand ; and he adds his own suspicion that some per- 
 sonal feelings towards Hildebrand influenced him in 
 retiring from his post. 
 
 S- 
 But it is time to return to Hildebrand himself, in whom 
 all the interest of his times centres. A decree of a 
 Lateran Council had been passed under Nicholas H., in 
 1059, vesting the election of Pope in the College of 
 Cardinals, with the concurrence and ratification of the 
 Emperor ; a decree which opened the way to a still 
 greater innovation, upon the first vacancy in the Holy See. 
 The imperial court resisted the appointment of Alex- 
 ander who was the choice of the Sacred College, and 
 
286 Reformation of the Eleventh Century. 
 
 named an antipope, Cadalous ; but the contest v/as 
 terrtiinated in favour of the papahsts in 1067, at a Council 
 held in Mantua, in which the Emperor gave up Cadalous 
 and acknowledged Alexander II. Six years afterwards 
 Alexander died. Hildebrand had already on a former 
 occasion been put forward for the papal chair, but he 
 had resisted the proposal, it is said, "with many tears 
 and supplications ; " now, however, the following scene 
 took place : 
 
 "Alexander II. had no sooner breathed his last, than his arch- 
 deacon, in concert with the other leading ecclesiastics of the city, 
 directed that the three following days should be devoted to fasting, 
 to deeds of charity, and to prayer ; after which the proper authori- 
 ties were to proceed, in the hope of the divine blessing upon their 
 counsels, to the election of a successor. But long before the period 
 thus prescribed had elapsed, that election was decided. 
 
 " On the day following that of Alexander's decease, the dignified 
 clergy of the Roman Church stood, with the archdeacon, round the 
 bier of the depSJted pontiff, in the patriarchal church of the Lateran. 
 The funeral rites ware in progress, and Hildebrand, it is probable, 
 was taking a part in the celebration of these solemn ceremonies. 
 But suddenly, from the body of the building, which had been fiUed 
 to overflowing by the lower clergy and people, burst fortll the cry of 
 ' Hildebrand.' A thousand voices instantly swelled the sound 'Hil- 
 debrand shall be Pope.' ' St. Peter chooses our Archdeacon Hilde- 
 brand.' These, and cries like these, rang wildly along the church ; 
 the ceremonies were interrupted, and the officiating clergy paused 
 in suspense. The subject of this tumult, recovering from a momen- 
 tary stupor, rushed into a pulpit, and thence, while his gestures 
 implored silence, atteippted to address the agitated assembly." 
 
 The attempt was vain ; the uproar continued, and it 
 was not until the cardinal presbyter, Hugo Candidus, 
 coming forward, declared Hildebrand to be the unani- 
 mous choice of the cardinals, that the multitude suffered 
 their cries to subside. 
 
 " Then the joyous cries of the populace arose anew. The cardinal, 
 
Reformation of the Eleventh Century. 287 
 
 bishops, and clergy approacted the object of their choice to lead 
 him towards the apostolic throne. ' We choose,' they cried to the 
 people, ' for our pastor and pontiff, a devout man ; a man skilled 
 in interpreting the Scriptures ; a distinguished lover of equity and 
 justice ; a man firm in adversity, and temperate in prosperity ; a 
 man, according to the saying of the Apostle, of good behaviour, 
 blameless, modest, sober, chaste, given to hospitality, and one that 
 ruleth well in his own house. A man from his childhood gene- 
 rously brought up in the bosom of this mother Church, and for the 
 merit of his life already raised to the archidiaconal dignity. We 
 choose, namely, our archdeacon Hildebrand, to be Pope and suc- 
 cessor to the Apostle, and to bear henceforward and for ever the 
 name of Gregory.' The Pope elect, upon this, was forthwith 
 invested by eager hands with the scarlet vestment and tiara of pon- 
 tifical dignity, and placed, notwithstanding his gestures of reluct- 
 ance, and even his tears, upon the throne of the Apostle. The 
 cardinals approached him with obeisance, and the people, with 
 shouts yet louder and more joyous than before, repeated the desig- 
 nation of their new pontiff, and tumultuously testified their appro- 
 bation."— Vol. i., pp. 314 — 317. 
 
 Considering the unparalleled character, or, as we may- 
 say, the madness of the plans to which Hildebrand was 
 pledged, and which his spirit within him told him he 
 must attempt at all risks, it is not wonderful at all that 
 he should both have shrunk from the pontificate before- 
 hand, and have been overcome with the burden when it 
 was first put upon him. Power or wealth is pleasant to 
 us when unattended with conditions ; but did they in- 
 volve the necessity of losing limbs, or resigning friends, 
 or risking popularity or good name, they would lose 
 much of their attraction and many of their aspirants. 
 Now Hildebrand was thus circumstanced : while he was 
 a subordinate, he might promote the plans of others, even 
 though short of the best and largest ; but when " a dis- 
 pensation of the Gospel" was committed to him, "neces- 
 sity was laid on hini" to go through all and leave nothing 
 
288 Reformation of the Eleventh Century. 
 
 undone. Mr. Bowden tells us, that his election, at the 
 moment unquestionably unexpected by himself, seems 
 to have overwhelmed for a while even his intrepid spirit. 
 In letters written from his couch, he speaks of it in terms 
 of terror, using the language of the Psalms, " I am come 
 into deep waters where the floods overflow me," im- 
 ploring the intercessions of his friends in his behalf, 
 and expressing a hope that their prayers, though they 
 had not sufficed to prevent his being called to that post 
 of danger, might nevertheless avail to defend him when 
 placed there. 
 
 He wrote a letter shortly after his elevation to Lanfranc, 
 to whom he unbosomed himself more entirely than to 
 others, and from this Mr. Bowden gives us sorne extracts. 
 "The greater," he says, "the peril in which we are 
 placed, the greater our need of the prayers of all good 
 men. For we, if we would escape the sentence of the 
 Divine wrath, must arise against many, and must incense 
 them against uur own soul. And thy prudence will alike 
 see, how fearful it must be for us to abstain from opposing 
 such persons, and how difficult for us to oppose them." 
 Such were his feelings, and that they were replete with 
 faith and conscientiousness there can be no doubt, or 
 that he viewed the course which lay before him with awe. 
 Well he mights we shall confine ourselves to two of the 
 projects which he conceived and carried out, — the chief 
 but not the only acts of his pontificate, and amply suf- , 
 ficient in themselves to exemplify the force of will and 
 fortitude of Spirit, which has made his name so memo- 
 rable in Church history. The first was no less than the 
 obliging the clergy either to separate from their wives or 
 resign their preferments. The second was the abasement 
 of the temporal below the spiritual power. And first of 
 his enforcement of clerical celibacy : — 
 
Reformation of the Eleventh Century. 289 
 
 6. 
 
 We have already noticed that simony and licentious- 
 ness were the two crying sins of the clergy ; nor did 
 their practice of taking wives at all diminish the latter. 
 Rather it led to it ; for, since they knew that in marrying 
 they were transgressing their duty, they were easily led. 
 on, from the recklessness which follows upon the wilful 
 violation of conscience in any matter^ from a first sin to 
 a second. The prohibitory rule was one of long stand- 
 ing, and Mr. Bowden, waving the discussion of its abstract 
 propriety, has drawn up a succinct account of it from the 
 time of Pope Nicholas I. (A.D. 858), to the date of Hilde- 
 brand, a period of two hundred years. Direct condem- 
 nations of the practice are found in Nicholas's reply to 
 the Bulgarians, 860 ; in the Synod of Worms, 868 ; in 
 Leo VII.'s epistle to the Gauls and Germans, 938; in 
 the decrees of Augsburg, 952 ; and in Benedict VIII.'s 
 speech, and the decrees passed at Pavia, about 1020. 
 Hincmar of Rheims in 845, Chrodegang, bishop of Metz, 
 in 750, Councils at Mentz and Metz in 888, and at Nantes 
 at the epd of the same century, had confirmed the rule 
 with additional circumstances of strictness. And the 
 association in the case of the clergy between marriage 
 and concubinage, nay, of general laxity of morals, was 
 unhappily so deeply seated; that neither did it occur to 
 the reformers to question their necessary connexion; 
 nor, had they done so, could they have overcome the 
 popular feeling on the subject. Under the circumstances, , 
 as Mr. Bowden observes, "the battle which they under- 
 took against their less strict contemporaries, was unques- 
 tionably that of purity against impurity, that of holiness 
 against corruption. Seizing the means in their power, , 
 they set themselves to achieve, and did achieve, a most 
 important reformation ; and we may not think lightly, , 
 
 VOL. II. 19 
 
2 go Reformation of the Eleventh Century. 
 
 either of their principles or of their labours, because that 
 reformation was imperfect." 
 
 We have already stated what Gregory's proceeding 
 was, and it was carried into effect under circumstances as 
 shocking, as the resolve was ruthless. With a single and 
 severe determination, putting before him the honour of 
 Christ, and the welfare of the Church, like Ezra, the 
 great reformer of Judah, he "said to his father and to 
 his mother, I have not seen him ; neither did he acknow- 
 ledge his brethren, nor knew his own children." Ezra 
 learned, to his deep dismay, that his people had taken to 
 themselves wives of the heathen ; " so that the holy seed 
 had mingled themselves with the people of those lands, 
 yea, the hand of the princes and rulers had been chief in 
 this trespass." Upon this he tells us, that he rent his 
 garments and mantle, and plucked off the hair of his 
 head and of his beard, and sat down astonished. So he 
 sat till the evening sacrifice ; when he rose from his heavi- 
 ness, deliberately rent his garment and mantle, fell on 
 his knees, spread out his hands towards heaven, and con- 
 fessed the sin of his people, and interceded for their for- 
 giveness. One thing only could be done, and Shechaniah, 
 the son of Jehiel, exhorted him to it : to make the people 
 " put away all the wives, and such as were born of them," 
 and added, " Arise, for this matter belongeth unto thee ; 
 we also will be with thee ; be of good courage, and do it." 
 Such a voice seemed to sound in Gregory's ears ; and, 
 in the strength of a pure conscience, he bade those of his 
 brethren, who against their conscience had taken wives, 
 to make the only reparation which could be made by 
 them for their sin. 
 
 But it was not so easy to accomplish as to command ; 
 . he had, as might be supposed, an opposition to encounter, 
 to which no nerve but his could have been equal. 
 
Reformation of the Eleventh Century. 291 
 
 "Vehement was the indignation of tlie German clergy, when 
 first the intelligence of this obnoxious enactment reached their 
 ears, and when they found that the great moral power, which the 
 papacy; had within the last few years attained, was to be wielded 
 in enforcing, as realities, those principles of austere reformation, 
 which, when promulged as they had been by Gregory's prede- 
 cessors, a few years before, had probably seemed like theoretical 
 notions, based upon views unsuited to the state of things actually 
 existing in the world. The Pope, the clergy exclaimed aloud, was a 
 heretic, and his decree that of a madman. The execution of it was 
 a childish, an impossible notion. Human nature being what it 
 was, the rigour of his laws, the attempt to make men live like 
 angels, would only plunge the clergy, by a necessary reaction, into 
 habits more dissolute than ever. And the letter of holy Scripture, 
 the plain teaching as well of our Lord Himself, as of His inspired 
 Apostle, was directly at variance with this wild, this extravagant 
 enactment. But they defied him to proceed to such an extremity 
 as to enforce its general adoption ; and protested tha;tj sooner than 
 resign their domestic enjoyments, they would relinquish the priest- 
 hood ; and, when he had expelled them, for no other reason than 
 that they were men, he might seek where he could for angels, to 
 minister in the churches in their stead. 
 
 " And long, and violently, did this tumult rage. Several bishops, 
 among whom was Otho, of Constance, openly put themselves a> 
 the head of the clergy opposed to Gregory's authority. And pre- 
 lates, who, taking a different course, attempted to promulgate the 
 papal edict in their respective dioceses, were assailed by the refrac- 
 tory members of their churches with insolence and outrage. But 
 Gregory, ever watchful of their proceedings, prevented their zeal 
 from flagging by repeated messages of warning, exhortation, and 
 encouragement. And most especially was he urgent with Siegfried, 
 to assume, on the occasion, the determined tone which became 
 him, as primate of Germany, and to enforce the observance of the 
 mandates of the Church, with the full weight of his authority." — 
 Vol. ii., pp. 20 — 22. 
 
 Siegfried was a most unworthy successor of St. Boni- 
 face. He had at an earlier date committed himself 
 to an attempt to introduce a tithe payment among the 
 Thuringians, which he prosecuted at all seasons, with 
 
292 Reformation of the Eleventh Century. 
 
 a pertinacity not at all inferior to that of the worthy 
 Trapbois, for his miserable piece of gold. With the hope 
 of effecting this through the royal power, he had even 
 consented to advocate the project of the royal divorce, 
 and summoned a Council for that purpose in his metro- 
 politan city ; when Damiani appeared as the Pope's 
 legate and stopped the infamous proceeding, as was 
 mentioned above. The year following he was summoned" 
 by Alexander 11. to Rome, to defend himself against a. 
 charge of simoniacal practices. Roused to a momentary 
 remorse by the remonstrance of the Pope, he expressed 
 a wish to resign his station, and retire to a life of peni- 
 tence and seclusion. This proposal, however, was stre- 
 nuously resisted by Alexander and others ; and he 
 returned ta Germany, to lose his serious thoughts, and 
 to relapse into his former secularity. At the present 
 crisis, he gave his clergy six months to deliberate on 
 Gregory's injunction, and then summoned 3 Council, m- 
 which he put before them the alternative of renouncing- 
 either their wives or those offices which they had accepted, 
 on the condition of celibacy. The clergy, after hearing , 
 his address, quitted the place of assembly, as if for the 
 purpose of private deliberation, and then resolved at 
 once to set out for home, without his leave. Siegfried^ 
 however, pacified them, and persuaded them to return, 
 and then temporized with them ; but it all ended in his 
 bringing forward, before a mixed assembly of clergy and 
 laity, the old question of his pretensions to the Thurin- 
 gian tithes, which had already been settled by treaty in 
 favour of the Thuringians. A tumult ensued ; the Council 
 was broken up in confusion, the archbishop with difficulty 
 escaped with his life, and betaking himself to Heili- 
 genstadt, he continued there during the remainder of 
 the year, repeating, but in vain, on every festival, his 
 
Reformation of the Eleventh Century. 293 
 
 summons to the disturbers of the Council to do penance 
 for the crime, under pain of excommunication. 
 
 Such were Gregory's proceedings, and such his success 
 with the high prelacy ; but he had a new and formidable 
 and, we must add, unjustifiable weapon in his arsenal, 
 which he now brought into the contest. The measure 
 which he was enforcing was founded on four Canons 
 lately passed at Rome in Council, the fourth of which 
 was to the effect that the laity should refuse the minis- 
 trations both of simoniacal and of married or licentious 
 clerg}'. This Canon seemed to oppose the advice of 
 Nicholas I. to the newly converted Bulgarians, who, on 
 asking whether they should receive and honour married 
 priests, had received for answer, that such priests might 
 be in themselves fit subjects for censure, but it was not 
 for them as laymen to pronounce a censure which lay 
 with their bishops only. Gregory, however, seems to 
 have understood that the aversion to a married priest- 
 hood, which he felt himself, was shared largely by the 
 multitude, especially- as they saw marriage commonly 
 associated with general laxity of life. Another feeling 
 which he had on his side was of a far less defensible 
 character — the opposition to authority, and especially 
 ecclesiastical authority, which is so congenial to human 
 nature. He urged then this canon upon the Germans, 
 and the consequences were dreadful : 
 
 " By the last of the four canons above quoted, the laity were 
 thrown into the position, — if not of judges of the priesthood, — at 
 least of punishers of its irregularities. And such invitation, thus 
 made, was of course readily and generally attended to. The occa- 
 sion seemed, — to the selfish, the irreverent, and the profane, — to 
 legalize the gratification of all the bad feelings with which per- 
 sons of those dispositions must ever regard the Church and her 
 ministry ; and priests, whose disobedience to the papal authority 
 furnished any excuse for such conduct, were openly beaten, abused, 
 
294 Reformation of the Eleventh Century. 
 
 and insulted by their rebellious flocks. Some were forced to fly 
 with the loss of all that they possessed, some were deprived of 
 limbs, and some, it is even said, put to death in lingering torments. 
 And to lengths even more horrible than these did the popular vio- 
 lence, thus unhappily, thus criminally sanctioned, proceed. Too 
 tnany were delighted to find what they could consider a religious 
 excuse for neglecting religion itself, for depriving their children 
 of the inestimable gift conferred in the holy sacrament of baptism, 
 or for making the solemn mysteries of the Church subjects for the 
 most degrading mockery, or of the most atrocious profanation. 
 Deeply is it to be regretted that a pontiff' who desired, from the 
 bottom of his heart, the purification of the Church ; whose whole 
 life had been devoted to that high and holy cause .... should 
 have evoked, in furtherance of his views, a spirit of so odious a 
 character, as was that which showed itself in these dreadful trans- 
 actions. But such had been the line marked out for him by those 
 who had gone before him." — Vol. ii., pp. 25 — 2"]. 
 
 In France the promulgation of Gregory's Canons was 
 received by the clergy with a burst of indignation yet 
 more vehement, if possible, than that which had followed 
 them in Germany. A Council of Paris denounced them, 
 and the only member of the assembly who ventured to 
 defend them was seized, beaten, spit upon, and tumul- 
 tuously dragged to prison. When the Archbishop of 
 Rouen endeavoured to enforce them upon his clergy, 
 he was pelted with stones and fled for his life. Mr. 
 Bowden tells us that the system of clerical marriage had 
 been so completely established in Normandy, that 
 churches had become property heritable by the sons, 
 and even by the daughters, of their possessors. This 
 fact shows how the two canonical offences of clerical 
 marriage and simony ran together. Indeed it seems 
 that the French king, breaking a promise he had made 
 to Gregory, was practising a simoniacal traffic in 
 bishops and abbeys without remorse or shame ; while 
 the holders of dignities thus obtained were not likely 
 
Reformation of the Eleventh Century. 295 
 
 to be more scrupulous, in their turn, in their nomination 
 to such inferior benefices and offices as thus fell under 
 their control. In Spain, again, the papal legate was 
 assailed by the clergy with menaces and outrages, when 
 he attempted to enforce the observance of celibacy upon 
 them. When the ill-treated prelates complained to 
 Gregory, they got some such consolation as the fol- 
 lowing : " Shall it not shame us," he asks, " while every 
 soldier of the world daily hazards his life for his sove- 
 reign, if we, priests of the Lord, shrink from the battle 
 of our King, who made all things out of nothing, who 
 scrupled not to lay down His life for us, and who has 
 promised us eternal rewards." In Hungary, twenty 
 years later, the rule had not made greater way than 
 this, that a council under Ladislaus prohibited second 
 marriages among the clergy, but allowed to married 
 presbyters a time of indulgence, " on account of the 
 bond of peace and the unity of the Holy Ghost, until 
 the paternal authority of the Apostolic See should have 
 been consulted on the subject." England, ruled at this 
 time by the Conqueror, Gregory did not attempt ; with 
 that judgment and discrimination which he united to 
 vigour, he waited for the influence of the precedent 
 which he was introducing elsewhere. Yet even a few 
 years after this the Council of Winchester enacted that 
 no married persons should be admitted into Orders, 
 though it passed a decree that parish priests who had 
 wives already might retain them ; which showed what 
 already was the silent and indirect effect of Gregory's 
 energetic proceedings in the empire. Eventually, the 
 Anglican Church gave its adhesion to the principle of 
 clerical celibacy even more completely than the Church 
 of France. 
 
 But at the time Gregory seemed to have success in no 
 
296 Reformation of the Eleventh Century. 
 
 quarter, and not the least vexatious opposition was 
 offered him in his own city. Guibert, who in the time 
 of Alexander had been the Imperial Chancellor of 
 Italy, and the supporter of the intruder Cadalous, was 
 at this time Archbishop of Ravenna, having been ap- 
 pointed by the mediation of the Empress Agnes, just at 
 the close of Alexander's life. Alexander himself had 
 seen through the insincerity of his professed repentance, 
 and was reluctant to consecrate him ; but Hildebrand, it 
 is said, trusted him and pleaded for him. Upon this, 
 Alexander, with a prescient spirit, said, " I indeed am 
 about to be dissolved ; the time of my departure is at 
 hand ; but thou shalt feel his bitterness." The prophecy 
 was not long in finding its fulfilment, and he eventually 
 became Anti-Pope in Gregory's later years. " He put 
 himself at the head of that party in Rome," says Mr. 
 Bowden, " who were either alarmed by Gregory's rigour, 
 or conceived themselves aggrieved by his measures of 
 reform ; attaching to himself the relatives, and friends 
 of the married clergy, as well as those many members 
 of the sacerdotal body who had resigned their benefices 
 in preference to adopting a life of celibacy." And there 
 were other classes in Rome whose enormities were con- 
 fronted by the reforming pontiff. To the Church of St. 
 Peter belonged more than sixty officers of the class 
 called ' Mansionarii.' They were married laymen, many 
 of dissolute habits ; and it was their custom, — such had 
 been the disgraceful laxity of the times, — mitred and 
 dressed in sacerdotal vestments, to keep constant watch 
 at all the altars of the church, excepting only the high 
 altar itself, to proffer, as priests, their services to the 
 simple laity, who came from distant parts of Italy, and 
 to receive their oblations. Relieving each other, they 
 occupied the church day and night, and, as though not 
 
Reformation of the Eleventh Century. 297 
 
 content with one description of sacrilege, they disgraced 
 the holy place during the hours of darkness by robberies 
 and licentiousness of the most infamous kind. Nor was 
 it without great difficulty that Gregory, even in his own 
 city, could put an end to this portentous abuse, and re- 
 place at the altars these impious laymen by priests 
 canonically ordained. Mr. Bowden adds that " the car- 
 dinals themselves were wont, in the same church, to 
 disgrace their office by celebrating the Holy Eucharist 
 at irregular hours for the sake of gain ; and Gregory's 
 interference, to put a stop to this abuse by wholesome 
 regulations, is described as having excited against him 
 much odium among certain classes of his flock." — VoL 
 ii., pp. 42, 43. 
 
 Gregory was at this time about sixty years of age, 
 and, tried by cares and by a life of rigid mortification 
 from his boyhood, he gave way in health, and it was 
 thought that he was dying. He recovered however ; a 
 circumstance, he says himself, " rather for sorrow than 
 for joy. For our soul was tending towards, and with all 
 desire panting for, that country where He, who observes 
 our labour and our sorrow, prepares for the weary re- 
 freshment and repose. But we were yet reserved to 
 our accustomed toils, our infinite anxieties ; reserved to 
 suffer, as it were, each hour the pangs of travail, while 
 we feel ourselves unable to save, by any steersmanship, 
 the Church which seems almost foundering before our 
 eyes." 
 
 Well might Gregory say that he was reserved for 
 something, for he had not yet reached his celebrated 
 struggle with Henry, which Fox the martyrologist, if no 
 one else, has made familiar to Protestant ears, and which 
 is the last and longest passage of his history which we 
 propose to trace. 
 
298 Reformation of the Eleventh Century. 
 
 7- 
 
 In 1074 he had waged his battle with the clergy ; that 
 was enough for one year ; but in the very next spring 
 he opened his assault upon the Emperor. No wonder a 
 mind of such incessant energy should complain of no- 
 thing but weariness and disappointment ; and this seems 
 to have been the habitual feeling under which he went to 
 his work. " Often," he says, at this point of time, " have 
 I implored the Lord, either to remove me from this pre- 
 sent life, or to benefit, through me, our common Mother ; 
 and yet has He not hitherto removed me from tribulation, 
 nor, as I had hoped, made my life profitable to her in 
 whose chains He has bound me. Vast is the grief, wide- 
 spreading the affliction, which encompasses me. Con- 
 templating east, south, north, I perceive scarcely any 
 bishops lawfully admitted to their office, and leading 
 lives conformable to their sacred character. Nor do I 
 find among the secular princes any who prefer God's 
 honour to their own, or righteousness to gain. Those 
 nations among whom I dwell, the Romans, Lombards, 
 and Normans, I conceive, as I often declare to them, 
 to be in some sense worse than Jews or Pagans. And 
 turning inwards, I find myself so laden with the burden 
 of my own doings, that no hope of salvation remains to 
 me but in the sole mercy of Christ. Did I not trust to 
 attain to a better life and to do service to Holy Church, 
 I would on no account remain in Rome ; in which city 
 it has been by compulsion, God is my witness, that I 
 have dwelt these twenty years. Whence it comes to 
 pass, that, between this grief daily renewed in me, and 
 the hope which, alas, is too long deferred, I live as it 
 were in death, shaken by a thousand storms. And I 
 await His coming who has bound me with His chains, 
 led me back again to Rome against my will, and girt me 
 
Reformation of the Eleventh Century. 299 
 
 round with countless difficulties." Such were the feelings 
 under which he got ready for his greatest exploit. 
 
 It is hardly to our purpose to go into the Pope's quarrel 
 with the Emperor in its early stages ; it turned princi- 
 pally on Henry's profligate life, his simoniacal appoint- 
 ments, and his cruelties and perfidies towards his subjects. 
 Besides this, the Pope claimed the right of investiture, 
 feeling that from its very form it was undeniably an 
 ecclesiastical, not a secular act ; and that, when exercised 
 by laymen, it was necessarily connected with simony, 
 and involved the principle that the Church was the 
 creature of the State. We will but say that Alex- 
 ander II., at a Council held about two months before his 
 death, had excommunicated five of Henry's profligate 
 favourites, and had even, as some say, sent a message to 
 Henry himself, to appear before the chair of St. Peter 
 and defend himself against the charge of simony and 
 other offences. On Gregory's accession, the new Pope 
 made friendly overtures to him, and the young king, 
 being in great difficulties with his subjects, accepted 
 them with much profession of humility and repent- 
 ance. 
 
 "Smitten in some degree, through God's mercy, with 
 compunction," he said, " and returning to ourselves, we 
 confess our past transgressions, and throw ourselves on 
 your paternal indulgence, hoping in the Lord to obtain 
 the boon of absolution from your apostolical authority. 
 Criminal we have been, and unhappy, partly through the 
 alluring instincts of youth, partly through the licence of 
 unbridled power, partly through the seductive guidance 
 of others. We have not only invaded the property of 
 churches, but have sold to persons infected with the gall 
 Jf simony the churches themselves ; but now, unable 
 without your authority to reform the abuses of the 
 
300 Reformation of the Eleventh Century. 
 
 churches, we implore alike your counsel and your aid, 
 in this as in all things. Your command is, in all things, 
 of authority." Subsequently to this, Henry's mother, 
 sent by Gregory, undertook a journey to him with the 
 papal legate ; he complied with their demands, made 
 open confession of his simony and other offences, assisted 
 them in degrading the simoniacal bishops, and received 
 absolution at their hands. But, shortly afterwards, his 
 fortunes taking a favourable turn, he was released from 
 the necessity of keeping terms with the Pope ; and, re- 
 calling the excommunicated nobles to his court, he 
 provided himself with counsellors whose personal feel- 
 ings would encourage him in courses directly opposed to 
 the wishes and the principles of Gregory. His tone and 
 conduct, in consequence, underwent an entire change. 
 He appointed bishops to the churches of Fermo and 
 Spoleto without consulting Gregory, and, in spite of his 
 promise, to that of Milan ; and the preponderance which 
 he thus gave to the anti-papal party in northern Italy, 
 was extended by Guibert of Ravenna into the south by 
 a correspondence with Robert Guiscard, who happened 
 at this time to be under papal ban. On the other hand, 
 the Saxons, who, having been cruelly oppressed by 
 Henry, had risen in arms and been reduced, appealed 
 to Gregory for protection .for their bishops, whom Henry 
 had perfidiously seized, deposed, plundered, and im- 
 prisoned ; and Gregory, answering to their appeal, took 
 the strong step of not only demanding the liberation of 
 the bishops, but, as Alexander is said to have done 
 before him, of summoning Henry himself to appear be- 
 fore the apostolic tribunal, to clear himself of the charges 
 which had been brought against him. 
 
 " All things are double, one against another." Every 
 power, every form of governnient, every influence strong 
 
Reformation of the Eleventh Century. 301 
 
 as it may be, has its natural complement or match, by 
 which it is prevented from doing all things at its will. In 
 constitutional governments men appeal to the law ; in 
 absolute monarchies they rise ; in military despotisms 
 they assassinate. James the Second is opposed by legal 
 forms ; Louis of France by jaqueries ; Paul of Russia is 
 strangled. The only remedy for a reforming Pope was to 
 carry him off and lodge him safe in durance. Guibert of 
 Ravenna has the reputation of being concocter of a plot, 
 with the privity of Henry and Robert Guiscard, which 
 developed itself as follows : — Cencius was the instrument 
 of it, a bold and profligate man, a member of the powerful 
 family which was in possession of the castle of St. Angelo, 
 and which had been the main support of the anti-pope 
 Cadalous in his struggle with Alexander. 
 
 "The night of Christmas Eve, 1075, was gloomy and tempes- 
 tuous; the torrents of rain, according to Paul of Bemreid, were 
 such, as to present a lively image of the general deluge ; and 
 although Gregory, according to custom, celebrated the Holy Eucha- 
 rist at midnight, in the church of Sta, Maria Maggiore, the building 
 instead of being as usual thronged with worshippers, was compara- 
 tively silent and deserted; few venturing to leave their homes in 
 weather so inclement. 
 
 " Gregory and his clergy had partaken of the holy elements, and 
 were engaged in distributing them to the laity, when, on a sudden, 
 Cencius and his confederates burst in arms into the church. Inter- 
 rupting the holy ceremonial, they seized the pontiff at the altar; one 
 of the ruffians aimed a blow with a sword at his head, inflicting a 
 serious wound on his forehead ; and the rest then dragged him, 
 amid insults and blows, from the precincts of the sanctuary. He 
 preserved a perfect composure, lifting up his eyes to heaven, but 
 neither strugghng nor speaking, while these abandoned wretches 
 thus vented on him their fury. They stripped him of his pallium 
 and chasuble, and then binding him, still clad in his alb and stole 
 behind a ruffian on horseback, they hurried him to one of the towers, 
 already mentioned, of Cencius ; where preparations had been made 
 for bearing him at once beyond the walls of Rome. But the latter 
 
3P2 Reformation of the Eleventh Century. 
 
 part of this project the conspirators were not able to succeed in 
 accomplishing. . . . And the first glimpse of dawn showed to the 
 conspirators within it their enemies, provided with ladders, catapults, 
 and every species of engine then used in assaults, and preparing 
 for an immediate and vigorous attack. The sister of Cencius, 
 abandoned as her brother, reviled the illustrious prisoner in the most 
 violent terms ; while one of her partizans, drawing a sword, threat- 
 ened to strike off, on the instant, his head. But the scene was now 
 - to change. A lance, or dart, from without, pierced this wretch's 
 throat, and laid him breathless on the ground, .... The attack 
 was, therefore, carried on with redoubled fury. The walls of the 
 tower soon gave way before their exertions, and Gregory, borne in 
 triumph from amid the ruins to the church from which he had been 
 torn, there concluded the holy service in which he had been inter- 
 rupted, amid the enthusiastic rejoicings of the people. Cencius, 
 pursued by the execrations of his countrymen, with difficulty escaped 
 from their fury, and fled with his principal confederates to Ger- 
 many." — Vol. ii., pp. 8i — 85. 
 
 This attempt then failed — but, meanwhile, the measures 
 of Gregory proceeded. About the same time that Cen- 
 cius was playing his part in Rome, the Pope's legates 
 appeared before Henry with his summons to appear, 
 warning him at the same time, that, did he not, a sen- 
 tence of excommunication would issue against him, 
 Henry dismissed them with ridicule and insult ; and 
 since force had failed against their master, he resolved 
 to attack him with his own weapons, and summoned 
 in haste a Council of the German Church at Worms 
 for Septuagesima Sunday, January 24, with the view of 
 obtaining from it the condemnation and deposition of 
 Gregory. It was attended by a numerous assemblage 
 of bishops and abbots ; and when the session was opened, 
 Hugo Candidus, who played a conspicuous part in Gre- 
 gory's election, and who had vacillated from side to side 
 several times, stood forward as his accuser. He laid 
 before the Council a variety of forged letters, purporting 
 
Reformation of the Eleventh Century. 303 
 
 to come from different archbishops and bishops, and from 
 the cardinals, senate, and people of Rome, filled with com- 
 plaints of Gregory's conduct, and with entreaties for his 
 deprivation, and the appointment of a successor. Then, as 
 though in explanation of these epistles, Hugo read a 
 document (which seems to have been subsequently the 
 foundation of Benno's work) professing to give an ac- 
 count of Gregory's life, and filled with the most unfounded 
 and incredible calumnies. It insisted on the lowness of 
 his origin, and described his whole life, before and after 
 his election, which was stated to have been simoniacal, 
 as a tissue of crimes, among which were enumerated 
 murder, necromancy, the profanation of the Holy Eucha- 
 rist, and the worship of the devil. In consequence, after 
 two days' consultation, without proposing even that Gre- 
 gory should be heard in his defence, the Council decreed, 
 by its own local act, that he was no longer Pope, and 
 presented to each bishop the following formula for sub- 
 scription : " I, N., bishop of the city of N., abjure from 
 this hour all subjection and obedience to Hildebrand, 
 and will never more account or style him Pope." All 
 the bishops present seemed to have signed. Messengers 
 were forthwith despatched into Lombardy with the news ; 
 the Lombard bishops met forthwith in council at Pia- 
 cenza, and not only subscribed, but bound themselves 
 by a solemn oath upon the Gospels, to the act of Worms. 
 Roland, a priest of the Church of Parma, was charged 
 with the perilous duty of bearing a copy of the acts of 
 both Councils to Rome, where he arrived in the second 
 week in Lent, just when the Council was assembled to 
 which Henry had been summoned. Much as we have 
 quoted from Mr. Bowden, we must here, as elsewhere,, 
 be allowed to prefer his vivid description to any words 
 we could put together ourselves : 
 
304 Reformation of the Eleventh Century. 
 
 " The Council being assembled, and the echoes of the solemn 
 strain, ' Veni Creator Spiritus,' having scarcely died away amid the 
 holy aisles of the Lateran, Roland suddenly stepped forward before 
 the pontiff and his prelates (p. 95). . . . Addressing his speech to 
 Gregory, ' The king,' he said, ' and the united bishops, as well of 
 Germany as of Italy, transmit thee this command, — Descend with- 
 out delay from the throne of St. Peter, and abandon the usurped 
 government of the Roman Church, for to such honours should none 
 aspire, unsanctioned by their general choice, and by the approval 
 of the Emperor.' And then, ere the assembled prelates and clergy 
 had recovered their astonishment, the audacious envoy looked 
 round upon them, and thus addressed them collectively : ' To you, 
 brethren, it is commanded, that you do, at the feast of Pentecost, 
 present yourselves before the king, my master, to receive a Pope 
 and a father from his hands. The pretended pastor before you is 
 detected to be a ravening wolf.' 
 
 " ' Seize him !' cried John, Bishop of Oporto, a prelate of holy and 
 exalted character,, who could no longer contain his indignation. 
 The prefect of the city rushed forward, attended by the guards and 
 attendants of the Council. Swords were brandished^ even in that 
 holy place ; . and the blood of Roland would, on the moment, have 
 expiated his temerity,,, had not Gregory himself forced his way into 
 the crowd, and restrained, though with difficulty, the fury of his 
 adherents. Having at length succeeded in obtaining comparative 
 tranquillity, the pontiff received from the prisoner the documents 
 which he had been commissioned to deliver ; and then, imploring 
 the continued silence of the assembly, he proceeded to read aloud, 
 with his usual composure, the acts of the Councils of Worms and 
 Piacenza, and the following imperial epistle : — 
 
 " ' Henry, not by usurpation, but by the holy ordinance of God, 
 king, to Hildebrand, no longer the Pope, but the false monk. 
 
 " 'A greeting like this-hast thou for thy confusion deserved; thou 
 who hast left no Order of the Church untouched, but hast brought 
 upon each confusion, not honour, — cursing, not blessing. To speak 
 but of a few of thy most distinguished deeds, — the rulers of the holy 
 Church, the archbishops, bishops, and presbyters, thou hast not only 
 not feared, seeing that they are the Lord's anointed, to touch ; but, as 
 though they were servants who know not what their Lord doeth 
 thou hast trampled them under thy feet. Thou hast obtained favour 
 with the vulgar by their humiliation ; and hast thought that they 
 know nothing, and that thou alone knowest aU things. Yet, this 
 
Reformatidn of the Elemnth Century. 305 
 
 knowledge of thine thou hist used for the purpose, not of edification, 
 but of destifuction, insomuch that we believe the blessed Gregory, 
 whose name thou hast assumed, to have spoken prophetically of 
 thee, when he said, " By the abundance of subjects, the mind of him 
 who is set over them is puffed up, for he supposes that he excels 
 all in knowledge, when he finds that he excels all in power."'" — 
 Vol. ii., pp. 95—99- 
 
 We wish we had room to continue this exciting scene, 
 which ends in a majestic address of Gregory to the 
 Council, and the enthusiastic acclamations of the pre- 
 lates assembled in answer to it. 
 
 The next day, in the presence of 110 prelates and of 
 the Empress Agnes, whose sense of duty overcame the 
 affections of a mother, he pronounced sentence in form 
 upon the German and Lombard bishops, and above all 
 upon Henry, whom he declared excommunicated from 
 the Church and, suspended from the exercise of his im- 
 perial power. 
 
 8. 
 
 Jn these transactions, we see, on both sides what we 
 tpust account a confusion of the rights of Church and 
 State, — the Emperor in council deposing the Pope, and 
 the Pope deposing the Emperor. Mr. Bowden has some 
 just remarks on the subject, and traces it to the feudal- 
 ism of the day, which acknowledged but one standard 
 of rank in the community, <and forced all powers and 
 offices to measure themselves by it. As in Russia, it is 
 said, that men are only recognized as soldiers, and the 
 clergy take rank as colonels or captains, so in the 
 eleventh century Gregory was forced to place himself 
 in direct relation to the Emperor, and take precedence 
 either above him or beneath him, and with this alter- 
 native he put himself above him, as the nearest approxi- 
 mation to the truth. And in like manner, the Emperor, 
 
 VOL. II. 20 
 
3o6 Reformation of the Eleventh Century. 
 
 not the present Henry only, but his father before him, 
 and Conrad his grandfather, not to say the Carlovin- 
 gians, had placed themselves above the Church, because 
 they were supreme in temporals, and had treated the 
 Pope as one of their subjects, just as a naturalist of this 
 day in despair ranks a whale among the mammalia. 
 
 On the present occasion, Mr. Bowden considers it a 
 cause of thankfulness that Gregory, with all the inci- 
 dental defects of his theological system, was in the chair 
 of St. Peter. He considers that the success of the Im- 
 perialists would have been the immediate triumph of 
 simony, licentiousness, and the other crying evils of the 
 time, and would have tended to make that triumph 
 perpetual. On the other hand, Gregory was not only 
 engaged in vindicating what he considered his divine 
 authority, but also an ecclesiastical principle essential to 
 the independence and well-being of the Church. The 
 real question was, whether the Church was or was not 
 a creature of the State .' Whether she had or had not 
 temporal rights was an excrescence upon the main ques- 
 tion ', and she needed a champion, such as, through 
 God's providence, she found, who scorned either to be 
 swayed by menaces, or to be bribed by the promise of a 
 temporary peace, into the compromise of her essential 
 principles. 
 
 Thus the contest opened ; Gregory had on his side 
 many of the leading nobles of Germany, the Saxons, to 
 a certain extent the Swabians, the great mass of the 
 regular and a considerable portion of the secular clergy. 
 And Henry was supported by the Rhenish provinces, by 
 the large towns, as Worms, now rising into some degree 
 of commercial opulence, by a certain number of the 
 nobility, who had felt or feared the papal censures, and 
 the vast body of anti-reforming clergy. It was a moment 
 
Refor77iation of the Eleventh Century. 307 
 
 of extreme excitement, when each of the contending 
 parties had defied his antagonist, and waited to see how 
 the defiance was received by Christendom at large, with 
 whom eventually lay the decision. 
 
 As to Henry himself, however, he seems to have 
 thought he had done everything when he had secured 
 the synodal acts of Worms and Piacenza, as if they 
 were to work their effect as a matter of course ; he was 
 astounded therefore at the intelligence that the old man, 
 whom he was resisting, far from crouching, had vigo- 
 rously smitten him in turn with the ban of the Church. 
 For a moment the unfortunate prince seemed over- 
 powered with agitation ; then he treated the subject 
 with apparent indifference ; then he gave orders that 
 Gregory himself should be publicly excommunicated in 
 turn. He committed this office to Pibo, Bishop of Toul ; 
 but Pibo, together with another bishop, set off in the 
 night and left the king to go to the cathedral by him- 
 self, where the Bishop of the place (Utrecht) pronounced 
 the sentence. The next thing he heard was, that the 
 German prelates, who had been denounced by Gregory 
 together with himself, were crossing the Alps to make 
 their peace with him ; next, the secular princes, who 
 had the charge of the Saxon nobles and bishops, 
 whom Henry had faithlessly seized, having been al- 
 ready shocked at Henry's proceedings in the Council 
 of Worms, on hearing the papal sentence against him, 
 let go their prisoners and sent them off to Saxony. On 
 their arrival there, the Saxons rose in arms, appeared 
 before the strongholds, which the king, in violation of 
 his promise, had rebuilt in their country, took them by 
 assault or capitulation, and then proceeded to resume 
 the lands which had been seized by the royal favourites. 
 
 An event occurred which increased the dismay : 
 
 ) I 
 
3o8 Reformation of the Eleventh Century. 
 
 William, Bishop of Utrecht, who has been mentioned 
 above as excommunicating Gregory in the cathedral, 
 repeated the sentence several times the same Easter, 
 calling the Pope a perjurer, an adulterer, and a false 
 apostle. A month had not passed before he was seized 
 with a violent illness, which carried him off in a few 
 days. In his last moments he cried out that he had 
 forfeited life both here and hereafter, and forbade his 
 friends to pray for him after death, as one destined to 
 perdition. These facts were exaggerated ; in addition, 
 stories were circulated that, as he breathed his last sigh, 
 his cathedral and his sovereign's palace were struck 
 with lightning. Other deaths too in the king's party 
 about the same time were interpreted in the light of 
 William's. 
 
 Henry appointed a diet at Worms for Whitsuntide ; 
 not one of his chief nobles attended : he postponed it to 
 St. Peter's Day at Mentz ; even then but a few obeyed 
 the summons. Udo, the venerated Archbishop of Treves, 
 had gone to Rome and received absolution. On his re- 
 turn he refused to hold any intercourse with the Arch- 
 bishops of Mentz and Cologne. Henry he would only 
 approach for the purpose of counselling ; he would not 
 sit at table with him or join in prayer. The more reli- 
 gious members of the king's household withdrew them- 
 selves, and withstood Henry's most urgent entreaties to 
 return. 
 
 Henry next led a force against the Saxons, and was 
 repelled with loss. At Gregory's suggestion his principal 
 pobles held a solemn Diet qf the empire at Worms in the 
 autumn ; it was very numerously attended.; even Sieg- 
 fried of Mentz obtained papal absolution and attended; 
 the Patriarch of Aquileia and Bishop of Padua appeared 
 as lega,tes from the JHoly See. Henry sent the humblest 
 
Reformation of the Eleventh Century. 309 
 
 messages to the Diet in vain : at last they consented to 
 treat with him on these conditions : first, that his con- 
 tinuing to reign should be referred to the Pope ; next, 
 that until he could procure reconciliation, he should live 
 as a private individual, neither entering church nor exer- 
 cising any royal functions; thirdly, that he should 
 renounce the society of all excommunicate persons ; and 
 lastly, that, if at the end of a year his own excommuni- 
 cation was not reversed, his right to empire should be 
 lost for ever. A Council was appointed for the begin- 
 ning of January, to meet at Augsburgh, over which 
 Gregory himself was to preside, and then Henry was to 
 be reconciled. Henry wished to come to Italy, but 
 Gregory forbade him. His anxiety for a release from 
 the anathema inflicted on him increased ; he could not 
 bear the suspense. Regardless therefore of Gregory's 
 prohibition, of the season, which was unusually severe, 
 and of the difficulty of crossing the Alps in the winter, 
 he set out to find the Pope in Italy. Mr. Bowden shall 
 set him forward on his journey : 
 
 " The winter which closed the year 1076 was a season of unusual 
 severity ; the Rhine being frozen over from Martinmas almost to the 
 beginning of April, 1077. The difficulties, therefore, of a journey 
 across the Alps, at the time of Henry's expedition, must, under any 
 circumstances, have been great ; and the auspices under which the 
 unfortunate monarch set forth were such as to render the undertaking 
 in his case peculiarly arduous. Deprived of his friends and of his 
 resources, it was not in his power to make any proper provision for 
 the journey. Nor could he venture to prosecute his way along any 
 of the more direct tracts which led from his German dominions into 
 Italy; as Rudolf, Welf, and Berthold, who wished to retain him in 
 Germany, sedulously watched the mountain passes of Swabia, 
 Bavaria, and Carinthia. But Henry felt too strongly the danger of 
 furnishing his enemies with any new pretext for setting him aside, 
 to think of giving up the attempt, desperate as it might be, to pro- 
 lure a timely absolution. 
 
3IO Reformation of the Eleventh Century. 
 
 "A few days, therefore, before the Christmas which closed the 
 year 1076, the king put himself in motion from Spires. His wife 
 and infant child accompanied his steps, and, whatever meaner fol- 
 lowers may have formed his escort, it appears that only one person 
 of gentle blood — and he not distinguished by rank or possessions^- 
 attended the fallen sovereign. ... He set forward, however, and 
 taking his way through Burgundy, halted to observe the festival of 
 Christmas at BesanQon. And thence, passing the Jura, he proceeded 
 to Vevay on the shore of the lake of Geneva. . . . Ev?n the valleys 
 of the Alps, when Henry began to wind his way among them, were 
 white with snow and slippery with ice. Peasants of the country, 
 whose services he had hired, went before him, and cleared, as best 
 they might, a precipitous and rugged road for the advance of the 
 royal party. As the travellers ascended towards the higher regions 
 of the pass, the difficulties of this process increased, of course, with 
 every step., Happily, however, no serious accident occurred : and 
 after long toils, the monarch and his little train found themselves on 
 the summit of a ridge, a descent from which would lead them into 
 Italy. But this descent appeared in prospect more formidable than 
 anything which they had previously accomplished. The whole of 
 the precipitous mountain slope formed one sheet of ice, on which no 
 foot, it seemed, could for a moment maintain its position. The 
 descent, however, was necessarily attempted. Henry and the men of 
 the party Crawled carefully down on their hands and knees, placing 
 their feet on whatever points of support they could find ; and he 
 whose footing unfortunately failed him rolled far away into the 
 snowy depths below ; from which it was often a matter of great 
 difficulty to extricate him. The queen, her child, and her female 
 attendants, were, by the experienced peasants,' lowered down the 
 slope enveloped in skins of cattle ; and the whole party reached at 
 length the bottom in safety ; though of their horses — which were 
 either drawn down the descent with their legs tied together, or 
 lowered on some rude kinds of machines constructed for the pur- 
 pose — many died, and many more were rendered unfit for further 
 service." — Vol. ii., pp. 161 — 164. 
 
 Thus it was that Henry and the imperial family at last 
 reached the plains of Lombardy. 
 
 9- 
 In Italy the report was at once spread abroad that he 
 
Reformation of the Eleventh Century. 311 
 
 had come to take vengeance on the Pope. People recol- 
 lected or had been told of Henry III.'s visitation of the 
 Papal See thirty years before, when a Council was held 
 at Sutri, and Gregory, the sixth of that name, was made 
 to abdicate. Accordingly, nobles, prelates, and warriors 
 thronged to greet him, and his crowded and brilliant 
 court formed a strange contrast to the neglect, or rather 
 aversion, which he had had to encounter on the other 
 side of the Alps. But Henry was not so dazzled with 
 the scenes, which now surrounded him, as to forget those 
 which he had left. He asked where the Pope was, and 
 finding he was at Canossa, a fortress of the Appennines, 
 belonging to the Countess Matilda, (whither Gregory 
 had taken refuge on the rumour of Henry's having come 
 at the head of a formidable force,) he betook himself 
 thither. 
 
 Matilda goes by the name of the Great Countess. 
 She inherited Tuscany from her mother, and was the 
 enthusiastic friend and servant of Gregory ; to him and 
 to his principles her energies, her influence, and her trea- 
 sures were dedicated. Her talents and learning were as 
 remarkable as her rank and her devotion. Amid the 
 various occupations which her extensive territories occa- 
 sioned, she found time and opportunity to become the 
 encourager, and, in some degree, the restorer, of ancient 
 literature. She was acquainted with the more recent 
 languages spoken in France and Germany, as well as in 
 her own country. She was active and energetic in the 
 enforcement of justice and the maintenance of her autho- 
 rity ; nor was she unequal to the task of eliciting the ' 
 military resources of her territory, and bringing well- 
 disciplined armies into the field. She was munificently 
 charitable to the poor ; systematically kind and hospi'^ 
 table to the exile and to the stranger ; and the foundress 
 
312 Reformation of the Eleventh Century. 
 
 or benefactress of a great number of churches and con- 
 ventual institutions. Throughout her eventful life she 
 never suffered secular matters to interfere with the fre- 
 quency or regularity of her exercises of devotion ; and in 
 adversity, of which she was allotted her share, she found 
 her consolation in the society of holy men and the 
 perusal of Holy Scripture. " Such," says Mr. Bowden, 
 " was the Great Countess ; such was she, who, too proud 
 or too humble to recapitulate the roll of her titles, was 
 wont to subscribe herself, — 'Matilda, by the grace of 
 God what I am ; ' " and at the present moment she was 
 especially fitted to undertake the mediation between 
 Gregory and Henry, being a relative of Henry as well 
 as the host of Gregory. 
 
 " Towards Canossa, then, Henry bent his steps, accompanied by 
 his recently formed train of Italian followers. His faithful German 
 adherents, who had, in the preceding month, set out to cross the 
 Alps, by different paths, had encountered on the journey a variety 
 of difficulties and sufferings. Dietrich, Bishop of Verdun, was cap- 
 tured by Adelbert, Count of Calw, and plundered of the sums which 
 he had, with much trouble, collected to meet the expenses of his 
 journey. Rupert of Bamberg, being seized by Welf while traversing 
 the Bavarian territory, was kept in strict ward from Christmas until 
 the feast of St. Bartholomew in the following year. But the rest of 
 Henry's excommunicated supporters, having surmounted the dan- 
 gers of their journey, and made good their way into Italy, appeared 
 before Canossa, while the king himself was yet on his way, and 
 humbly presented themselves before the Pope as supplicants for his 
 absolution. ' From those,' said Gregory, ' who rightly acknowledge 
 and bewail their sin, forgiveness cannot be withheld. The peti- 
 tioners must, however,' he continued, 'submit to the cauterizing 
 process which is needful for the healing of then: wounds, that they 
 may not, by too lightly obtaining absolution, be led too lightly to 
 regard the sin which they have committed by disobedience to 
 apostolical authority.' Prelates and lay-nobles alike professed their 
 readiness to undergo whatever peiiance their spiritual father might 
 think proper to impose ; and the former were, by his directions, 
 
Reformation of the Eleventh Century. 313 
 
 confined in separate cells with scanty supplies of food, while to the 
 latter penances were assigned of a severity proportioned to the age 
 and strength of each individual. And when he had thus tried them 
 for several days, Gregory summoned them again before him, and 
 after mildly rebulcing them for their past conduct, and admonishing 
 them against such demeanour in future, declared them severally 
 absolved, warning them at the same time, anxiously and repeatedly, 
 against holding any communion with their imperial master until he 
 also should have given satisfaction to the Apostolic See ; till that 
 should happen they were to be permitted to hold coUoquy with him 
 only for the purpose of inducing him, by their persuasions, to aban- 
 don the error of his ways, 
 
 "At length the principal offender appeared in person before 
 Canossa, and pitched his camp without the walls of the fortress."— 
 Vol. ii., pp. 167, 168. 
 
 The humiliation to which Gregory put the king him- 
 self has always been severely animadverted upon, and 
 has done his character much harm with posterity ; but 
 Mr. Bowden bids us recollect that severer penances were 
 not at all uncommon at that time, and that it is very 
 unfair to measure them by the standard of drawing-room 
 propriety, and the judgment of an age of kid gloves and 
 Naples soap. It was a most uncomfortable thing to be 
 kept shivering in the cold from morning to night, and 
 likely to cause rheumatism, of which we have no inten- 
 tion at all of speaking lightly ; but Henry III., the king's 
 father, would habitually, before presenting himself in 
 royal robes upon his throne, submit in private to a self- 
 imposed scourging. The magnificent and luxurious 
 Boniface of Tuscany, Matilda's father, submitted on one 
 occasion to a similar discipline before the Altar of St. 
 Mary's at Pomposa, at the suggestion, if not at the hands, 
 of his spiritual adyiser, as a penance for some simoniacal 
 transactions ; and Godfrey of Lorraine, Matilda's step- 
 father, in remorse for the burning of the cathedral of 
 Verdun in the course of bis warlike operations, not only 
 
314 Reformation of the Eleventh Century.. 
 
 contributed largely to its rebuilding, but caused himself- 
 to be scourged in public, and as publicly took part in the 
 work of building, in the capacity of a common labourer. 
 In the following century took place the well-known 
 scourging of Henry II., by the monks of Canterbury, at 
 the shrine of St. Thomas. Such facts as these must be 
 recollected when we read the following extraordinary 
 scene : 
 
 " It was on the morning of the 25th of January, 1077, while the 
 frost reigned in all its intensity, and the ground was white with snow,' 
 that the dejected Henry, barefooted, and clad in the usual garb of 
 penance, a garment of white linen, ascended alone to the rocky 
 fortress of Canossa, and entered its outer gate. The place was sur- 
 rounded by three walls, within the two outer of which the imperial 
 penitent was led, while the portals of the third or inner wall of the 
 fortress were still closed against him. Here he stood, a miserable 
 spectacle, exposed to cold and hunger throughout the day, vainly 
 hoping; with each succeeding hour, that Gregory would consider 
 the penance sufficient, and his fault atoned for. The evening, how- 
 ever, came, and he retired, humbled and dispirited, to return to his 
 station with the returning light. 
 
 " On a second day, and on a third, the unhappy prince was still 
 seen standing, starved and miserable, in the court of Canossa, from 
 the morning until the evening. All in the castle, except the Pope, 
 bewailed his condition, and with tears implored his forgiveness ; it 
 was said, even in Gregory's presence, that his conduct was more 
 like wanton tyranny than apostolic severity. ■ But the austere pontiff 
 continued obstinately deaf to all entreaties. At length Henry's 
 patience failed him, and, taking refuge in the adjacent chapel dedi- 
 cated to St Nicholas, he there besought, with tears, the intercession 
 of the aged abbot of Cluni ; Matilda, who was present, seconded the 
 king's entreaty, but the abbot, turning to her, replied, ' It is thou 
 alone who canst undertake this business.' And Henry, upon the 
 word, fell upon his knees before his kinswoman, and besought her, 
 in the most impassioned manner, once more to exert her potent inter- 
 cession. She promised to use her utmost endeavours, and returned 
 into the castle ; and Gregory, feeling that he had now sufficiently 
 vindicated his authority, relaxed at length his rigour, suffering the 
 
Reformation of the Eleventh Century. 315 
 
 nnfortunate king, still barefooted, and in his linen garment, to be 
 brought into his presence, on the fourth day of his penance. 
 
 " The scene, as the suppliant king approached the pontiff, must 
 have been singularly striking. The youthful and vigorous Henr)', 
 of lofty stature and commanding features, thus humbling himself 
 before the smaU, insignificant, and now probably withered, figure of 
 Gregory VII., must have afforded a striking type of that abasement 
 of physical before moral power, — of the sword before the crosier, — 
 which the great struggle then in progress was fated to accomplish." 
 — Vol. ii., pp. 174 — 176. 
 
 10. 
 Having brought our narrative to this critical point, we 
 must break it off abruptly. What followed upon this, 
 what an immediate triumph to the Pope, what subsequent 
 reverses, what eventual success to his principles after his 
 day ; how Henry lapsed again, and how Gregory was at 
 length forced to abandon Rome and died an exile at 
 Salerno, — for these and a multitude of interesting details 
 we must refer the reader to the work itself of which we 
 are availing ourselves. As also for the account of the 
 wonderfully large range of action which Gregory's labours 
 embraced, and the multitude of Churches and States with 
 which he held negotiation, among which were Constan- 
 tinople, Hippo, Spain, England, Denmark, Russia, and 
 Hungary. On two occasions also we find him directing 
 the attention of the Church to the project of a crusade 
 to the Holy Land, which was taken up in the next gene- 
 ration. But all this we must omit ; and shall end our 
 protracted yet incomplete narrative with Mr. Bowden's 
 account of Gregory's death : 
 
 . " He moved, shortly after his final departure from Rome, to 
 Salerno, where, under the efficient protection of Robert Guiscard, 
 he was enabled to repose in security, and where, while he still kept a 
 watchful eye upon the troublous scenes of the world around him, he 
 sought a solace for its sorrows in assiduous devotion, and in con- 
 
3l6 Reformation of the Eleventh Century. 
 
 tinual meditation on the word of God. As early as in January, 
 1085, he perceived symptoms of the exhaustion of his powers ; the 
 natural consequence of years, and of the arduous and unremitting 
 labours and anxieties in which he had been so long engaged. 
 During the succeeding months his debility increased, and in May it 
 became evident to all around him that from the sick bed, on which 
 he was laid, he was doomed never to rise again. Aware of his ap- 
 preaching end, he summoned around him the cardinals and bishops, 
 whd, faithful to his cause, or rather to his principles, had attended 
 him to Salerno. He spoke to them of the events of his past hfe, 
 and, while he disclaimed any right to glory in anything which he 
 had done, he acknowledged the satisfaction which he derived 
 from the thought that his course had been guided by principle, by 
 a zeal for the right, and by an abhorrence of evil. His auditors, 
 plunged in sincere sorrow, expressed to him their melancholy antici- 
 pations of the fate of the Church when deprived of his guiding 
 hand. ' But I,' said he, with eyes and hands upraised to heaven, 
 ' am mounting thitherward ; and with supplications the most fer. 
 vent will I commend your cause to the goodness>of the Almighty.' 
 
 " Being solicited to express his opinion with respect to the choice 
 of a successor, he mentioned the names of Desiderius, Abbot of 
 Monte Cassino ; of Otho, Bishop of Ostia ; and of Hugo, Bishop of 
 Lyons ; suggesting, as a reason for giving priority to the formerof 
 tile three, his presence at the moment in Italy. 
 
 " Three days before his death, on the question being brought be- 
 fore him of absolving the persons whom he had excommunicated, 
 he replied, ' With the exception of Henry, styled by his followers 
 the king ; of Guibert, the usurping claimant of the Roman See ; and 
 of those who, by advice or assistance, favour their evil and ungodly 
 views, I absolve and bless all men who unfeignedly believe me to 
 possess this power, as the representative of St. Peter and St, Paul.' 
 And then, addressing those around him for some time, in the lan- 
 guage of warning, he thus impressively concluded : ' In the name 
 of the Almighty God, and by the power of His holy Apostles St. 
 Peter and St. Paul, I adjure you, recognize no one as my successor 
 in the Roman See, who shall not have been duly elected and canoni- 
 cally ordained by Apostolic authority.' 
 
 "On the 25th of May, 1085, he peacefully closed his earthly 
 career ; just rallying strength, amid the exhaustion of his powers, 
 to utter, with his departing breath, the words, ' I have loved justice 
 and hated iniquity; and therefore I die in exile.' 
 
Reformatio-n of the Eleventh Century. 317 
 
 "'In exile !' said a prelate who stood by his bed, ... in exile 
 thou canst not die ! Vicar of Christ and His Apostles, thou hast 
 received the nations for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts 
 of the earth for thy possession.' " — ^Vol. ii., pp. 322, 324. 
 
 Gregory thought he had failed : so it is ; often a cause 
 seems to decline as its champion grows in years, and to 
 die in his death ; but this is to judge hastily ; others are 
 destined to complete what he began. No man is given 
 to see his work through. " Man goeth forth unto his work 
 and to his labour until the evening," but the evening falls 
 before it is done. There was One alone who began and 
 finished and died; 
 
 April, 1S41. 
 
3i8 
 
 Note on Essay XI. 
 
 A SHORT memoir of Mr. Bowden, prefixed, under date 
 of St. Bede's Day (May 27), 1845, to a posthumous pub- 
 lication, his " Thoughts on the Work of the Six Days 
 of Creation," may be fitly appended to the foregoing 
 Essay, as a record of one whom to have known is to 
 have loved and to hold in perpetual remembrance. 
 
 After stating that the small volume in question " was 
 the occupation and solace of the last illness of its author," 
 and, both from its subject and the character of its com- 
 position, a suitable memorial of a mind " at once active 
 and serene, deeply interested in the histories both of 
 nature and of man, apprehensive of the Divine Hand in 
 all he found in them, and contemplating with an un- 
 clouded faith the tokens they exhibit, and Divine Love 
 and Wisdom," it proceeds to say : 
 
 "He was born in London on February 21, 1798; 
 went to Harrow School in 1812 ; entered as a commoner 
 at Trinity College, Oxford, in Lent term, 18 17; and, 
 after obtaining mathematical honours in Michaelmas 
 Term, 1820, proceeded in due course to the degrees of 
 BA. and M.A. 
 
 " In the autumn of 1826 he received the appointment 
 of Commissioner of Stamps, which he resigned in 184a 
 For some years he was a member of the Geological 
 Society of London. In June, 1828, he married. 
 
 "In 1833, and following years, he engaged zealously 
 in the revival which took place of the ecclesiastical prin- 
 ciples of the seventeenth century, and was one of the 
 
Note on Essay XI. 319 
 
 earliest assistants and supports of a friend who at that 
 time commenced the series called the Tracts for the 
 Times. That most intimate friendship, which, begun 
 with the first months of his residence at Oxford, showed 
 itself also in the contributions to the Lyra Apostolica, 
 which bear the signature of a, and in several Articles 
 which he wrote in the British Critic between the years 
 1836 and 1 841. 
 
 " The Articles referred to, are those upon the ' Rise 
 of the Papal Power,' in July, 1836 ; on 'Gothic Archi- 
 tecture,' in April, 1837; on the 'British Association,' in 
 January, 1839 ; and on ' The Church in the Mediterra- 
 nean,' in July, 1 841. 
 
 " In the spring of 1839, he had the first attack of the 
 malady which ultimately proved fatal. On his apparent 
 recovery in the autumn, he went abroad with his family 
 for the winter, which he passed at Malta. On his return 
 in the course of the ensuing spring, he put to press his 
 ' Life and Pontificate of Gregory VII.,' which had been 
 written in previous years, during his intervals of leisure 
 from official duties. 
 
 " His complaint returned in the summer of 1843 ; 
 throughout a long illness, the gifts of clearness and 
 equability of mind, and of a gentle, cheerful, composed 
 spirit, with which he had ever been blessed, were merci- 
 fully increased to him. He died in the early morning 
 of Sunday, September 15, 1844, in undoubting com- 
 munion with the Church of Andrewes and Laud. He 
 was buried at Fulham, which had been the home of his 
 childhood and youth. He lives still here, the light and 
 comfort of many hearts, who ask no happier, holier end 
 than his." 
 
3 20 Note on Essay XI. 
 
 The foregoing account of Mr. Bowden's History of 
 Gregory VII. calls for no remark here, except as relates 
 to the subject of the forged Decretals. As public atten- 
 tion has lately been drawn to them, I think it well to 
 make the following extract concerning them, from the 
 " Critique on Mr. Ffoulke's Letter, by H. I. D. Rydei;, 
 of the Oratory." 
 
 I. 
 
 The pseudo-decretals, A.D. 859, "were but indications 
 of a current that had long been setting steadily in one 
 direction. What claims did they really put forward on 
 the Pope's behalf, that had not been made before.? Two 
 points in particular have been marked as innovations; 
 I. The reservation, independently of appeal, of all the 
 criminal causes of all bishops to the Holy See. 2. The 
 assertion of the nullity of any synod, convened without 
 the authority of the Holy See. 
 
 " I. As to the first, within the western Patriarchate, at 
 least, it was no new claim ; see Pope Xystus III, [a.d. 
 432 — 440,] Ep. 10, who reserves all such causes to him- 
 self or to his vicar, Anastasius of Thessalonica. Far 
 the reservation of the causes of Metropolitans, see Greg. 
 Magn. Ep. ad Episcopos Sardinuz, and St Leo I„ 
 Ep. 84. 
 
 " As regards the Oriental Bishops, there was a pre- 
 scriptive reservation .to the Pope of the criminal causes 
 of Patriarchs and Exarchs, as being autocephalous : see 
 the Epistle of Julius [A.D. 337—352] ad Euseb ; also the 
 Epistle of the Council :0f Ephesus [a.d. ,481], which 
 speaks of the reservation of the Pope of the cause of 
 John of Antioch, Again, as to the criminal causes of 
 common Bishops, Pope Julius in the same Epistle, al- 
 though he is speaking particularly of the case of Alex- 
 andria, insinuates that it is fitting that these causes also 
 
Note on Essay XL 321 
 
 should come before him ; and Gelasius [A.D. 492 — 496], 
 Ep. ad Orient, speaks of an ancient custom to this effect. 
 
 " For the reservation of the ' causse majores ' to the 
 Vicar of the Holy See, see Xystus III., Ep. 8 ad Syn. 
 Thessalonic. and Innocent I. [A.D. 402 — 417], Ep. ad 
 Victric. Boniface I. [A.D. 418 — 422], Ep. 15, insists upon 
 the invariable custom in the Eastern Church of sub- 
 mitting their ' magna negotia ' to the Pope. . . . 
 
 "2. As to the second, so far as it establishes the 
 nullity of a diocesan or provincial synod unsupported 
 by the authority of the Pope, it is undoubtedly an inno- 
 vation. But it is certain, says Blascus ((Comment, in 
 Pseud-Isid., ch. 9), that the popes never applied it, 
 even within their own patriarchate, to any synod but 
 such as pretended to be general, or to deal with the 
 reserved causes of bishops. No writer, says the same 
 authority, before the twelfth century applies, this prohi- 
 bition to synods generally ; and the Roman correctors 
 of Gratian, Adnot. ad Can. 4, Hist. 17, limit it expressly 
 to General Synods. 
 
 " 3. Two other points have been sometimes regarded 
 as novelties : the extension of the right of appeal to 
 clerics generally, and the anticipation of judgment by 
 an appeal to Rome, instead of appealing from the 
 sentence, when pronounced. As regards the former. 
 Dr. Dollinger remarks, (Church Hist, vol. iii., § 7,) that 
 the appeal of simple priests to Rome was by no means 
 uncommon, previous to the pseudo-decretals. As re- 
 gards the latter, it is sufficient to observe that Hincmar, 
 in his controversy with Nicholas I. concerning Rothad, 
 Bishop of Soissons, whom he had deposed, justifies him- 
 self solely on. the ground that Rothad had withdrawn 
 the appeal, by which he had at first attempted to bar 
 the proceedings of his judges. I think after this we 
 
 VOL. II. 21 
 
32? Note on Essay XI. 
 
 may very contentedly acquiesce in Ballerini's moderate 
 and judicial summing-up, when he says, in his Essay on 
 the Canons, part iii., cap. 6, § 3, that, when these decre- 
 tals appeared, they represented a discipline, which was 
 already forming, particularly in those parts where they 
 had their birth. 
 
 " This judgment of Ballerini's is so amply borne out 
 by two non-Catholic writers of different nationalities 
 and different schools of thought, but like one another, 
 at least, in their learning and their candour, that I can- 
 not forbear quoting them. The first is Neander (Church 
 History, vol. vi., p. 7, ed. Bohn). He says, ' He, the 
 pseudo-Isidore, was at all events but the organ of a 
 tendency of the religious and ecclesiastical spirit which 
 prevailed with the great masses of the men amongst 
 whom he lived. He had no idea of introducing a new 
 code ; but only of presenting, in a connected form, the 
 principles which must be recognized by every one as 
 correct, and on which depended the well-being of the 
 Church. ... In truth, even what had been said by 
 Leo the Great [A.D. 440 — 461] concerning the Pope's 
 primacy over the whole Church, involves the principle 
 of all that is to be found in the decretals ; though Leo 
 could not bring into effect, in his own age, those outlines 
 of the ideal of a papacy which floated before his mind.' 
 
 " The second is Mr. Bowden, who speaks thus in the 
 Introduction to his Life of Gregory VII., p. 56 : ' The 
 immediate effect of the forgery was rather to sanction 
 and consolidate relations already existing between the 
 different orders of the Christian hierarchy, than to intro- 
 duce new ones ; and, though the work, having once been 
 received, undoubtedly did much towards handing down 
 in its completeness the system of Papal monarchy to 
 subsequent ages, it derived its own weight at the epoch 
 
Note on Essay XI. 32.3 
 
 of its origin, from the tendency which already existed in 
 that system to perfect and extend itself.' 
 
 " Even Dean Milman, in spite of a decided anti-papal 
 bias, is obliged to admit (Latin Christ., vol. ii., p. 307) 
 that it cannot be proved that the pseudo-decretals con- 
 tain anything absolutely new, anything that had not 
 been said before. . . . 
 
 " If . . the Papal Monarchy be a usurpation, and de- 
 structive of that economy which Christ meant should 
 reign throughout His Church, at least it is undeniable 
 that the Church from the beginning bore and fostered 
 the germ within her. To the Bishop of Rome all may 
 appeal, and from him none. He is the judge of all, 
 whom none may judge. Every corner of the vineyard 
 is open to him, who is its guardian, whenever the faith 
 or peace of the Church is in danger. No canon avails 
 without his sanction ; and it is for him to interpret the 
 canons according to the exigencies of time and circum- 
 stance. What the ancient Church does not claim for the 
 Pope, she allows him to claim for himself. Restrictive 
 laws seem to have been mad^ for others, not for him. 
 Patriarchs, the most ancient and the most august, are 
 keenly criticized and sharply rebuked, if they speak 
 proud things, or interfere with even the humblest of 
 their neighbours ; the Bishop of Rome alone, it seems, 
 cannot exalt himself above his rightful place, or intrude 
 where he is not due. If he is rebuked, it is by heretics 
 like the Eusebians, whom he detects and punishes ; or if 
 a Saint says a sharp word, the Church lets it fall to the 
 ground, as if it knew not what he said. . . ." 
 
 Here I interrupt the course of Mr. Ryder's argument 
 to refer to my own Essay on the Development of Chris- 
 tian Doctrine, in which I have been led to enumerate 
 such testimonies in behalf of the authority of the Holy 
 
324 Note on Essay XI. 
 
 See, and the Roman Church, as occur in the first three 
 centuries, and do not fall within the range of his survey 
 of the history. " Faint they may be one by one," I say, 
 " but at least they are various, and are drawn from many 
 times and countries, and thereby serve to illustrate each 
 other, and form a body of proof." For instance, to St. 
 Clement, one of the first successors of St. Peter, the 
 Corinthians have recourse in their domestic dissensions, 
 and he, in the name of his Church, writes to them a 
 letter of exhortation and advice ; while St. Ignatius, 
 his' contemporary, who gives his, counsels freely to 
 various churches of Asia, utters not one word of ad- 
 monition in writing to the Roman Church, and calls it 
 " the church which has the first seat " in its place. 
 Again St. Polycarp of Smyrna, in the next generation, 
 betakes himself to the Bishop of Rome on the ques- 
 tion of Easter ; the heretic Marcion, excommunicated in 
 Pontus, goes off to Rome ; and we read of Soter, as 
 observing the custom of his church, when he sent alms 
 to the churches of the empire, and as "affectionately 
 exhorting those who came to Rome," in the words of 
 Eusebius, "as a father his children." To Rome the Mon- 
 tanists came from Phrygia to gain the countenance of 
 its bishop ; and Praxeas, also, in order to expose them ; 
 Pope Victor pronounces the Asian churches excommu- 
 nicate, and Irenaeus, in his interposition, questions, not 
 his right but the charity of his act. The same Saint 
 speaks of Rome as the church in which the churches 
 from every side centre, and as being pre-eminently the 
 "principal" church. He says it was founded by St. 
 Peter and St. Paul, and he prefers its tradition to that 
 of other churches ; Tertullian, too, says that the Apostles 
 poured out into it their whole doctrine ; and, after he 
 was a Montanist, acknowledges, while he complains, that 
 
Note 071 Essay XI. 325 
 
 the Pope acted as a Pontifex Maximus and Bishop 
 of bishops. Pope Dionysius entertains the accusation 
 brought by Alexandrian priests against their Bishop in 
 a matter of doctrine ; and forthwith asks of him an ex- 
 planation, which the latter grants without any protest. 
 Cyprian speaks of Rome as " the See of Peter and the 
 principal church ;" and, when he and Firmilian withstood 
 Pope Stephen who maintained the validity of heretical 
 baptism, the Pope carries his point against the churches 
 of Africa, Egypt, and Asia Minor. Basilides, deposed 
 in Spain, betakes himself to Pope Stephen. Fortunatus 
 and Felix, deposed by Cyprian, have recourse to Pope 
 Cornelius. So much in the first three centuries. 
 
 In the fourth. Pope Julius [A.D. 337 — 351], as we learn 
 from Athanasius, remonstrates with the Arian party for 
 " proceeding on their own authority," "for what we have 
 received from the blessed Apostle Peter, that I signify 
 to you." " Julius wrote back," says Socrates, " that they 
 acted against the canons, because they had not called him 
 to a Council, the ecclesiastical canon commanding that 
 the Churches ought not to make canons beside the judg- 
 ment of the Bishop of Rome." Sozomen says, " It was a 
 sacerdotal law, to declare invalid whatever was transacted 
 beside the judgment of the Bishop of the Romans." The 
 Arians themselves, whom the Pope was withstanding, 
 were forced to confess that Rome was " the school of the 
 Apostles, and the Metropolis of orthodoxy from the 
 beginning." Pope Damasus [a.d. 366 — 386] calls the 
 Eastern bishops his " sons " : " In that your charity pays 
 the due reverence to the Apostolic See," he says, " ye 
 profit most yourselves, most honoured sons;" and he 
 speaks of himself as "placed in the See of that holy 
 , Church, in which the holy Apostle taught how be- 
 comingly to direct the helm to which we have sue- 
 
$i6 Note on Essay XI. 
 
 ceeded." " I speak," says St. Jerome to the same Pope, 
 " with the successor of the Fisherman and the disciple of 
 the Cross. I, following no one as my chief but Christ, 
 am associated in communion with thy blessedness, that 
 is, with the See of Peter. Whoso gathers not with thee, 
 scatters." St. Basil entreats the same Pope to send per- 
 sons to settle the troubles of Asia Minor; " we are asking 
 nothing new," he says, " for we know from tradition of 
 our fathers, and from writings preserved among us, that 
 Dionysius," a Pope of the third century, " sent letters of 
 visitation to our church of Csesarea, and of consolation, 
 with ransomers of our brethren from captivity." 
 
 Pope Siricius [a.d. 386 — 398] says : " We bear the 
 burden of all who are laden, — yea, rather the blessed 
 Apostle Peter beareth them in us, who, as we trust, in 
 all things protects and defends us, the heirs of his 
 government." " Diligently and congruously do ye con- 
 sult the arcana of Apostolical dignity," says Pope 
 Innocent [A.D. 402 — 417] to the African Bishops, "the 
 dignity of him on whom, besides those things which are 
 without, falls the care of all the churches, following the 
 form of the ancient rule, which you know, as well as I, 
 has been preserved always by the whole world." And 
 Pope Celestine to the Bishops of Illyria [A.D. 422 — 432], 
 " About all men we especially have anxiety, we, on whom, 
 in the holy Apostle Peter, Christ conferred the necessity 
 of making all men our concern, when He gave him the 
 keys of opening and shutting.* Mr. Ryder continues : — 
 
 " Boniface I. (an. 422) Ep. xiv. ' To the Bishops of 
 Thessaly,' ap. Coust. Ep. Rom. Pont. p. 1037. ' The insti- 
 tution of the Universal Church began in the honour 
 granted to St. Peter, in whom the supremacy {regimen 
 et summa) was established. As religion prospered, from 
 * Vid. " Development of Doctrine " [ed. 1878, pp. 157^ &c,]. 
 
Note on Essay XL 327 
 
 him as from its source, ecclesiastical discipline flowed 
 throughout all the churches. Nor do the canons of 
 Nicaea testify otherwise ; inasmuch as they do not 
 venture to add aught to him, seeing that nothing could 
 be given above his deserts, and knowing that all thing? 
 had been given him by the words of Christ. It is 
 certain, then, that this See stands, in relation to the 
 churches spread throughout the world, as the head to its 
 members ; from whom, if any divide himself, he becomes 
 an outcast from the religion of Christ, since he is ex- 
 ternal to its organization.' And Ep. xv., /. c, p. 1042 : 
 ' None ever raised his hand against that apostolic height 
 whose judgment it is not lawful to retract ; none has 
 shown himself a rebel towards it, unless he would bring 
 judgment upon himself.' 
 
 "Xystus III. (an. 435) to the Synod of Thessalonica, 
 I.e., p. 1263 : 'Let the Metropolitans of each province 
 enjoy the rank which is their due, saving the privilege 
 of him (the Papal Vicar) whom the most honourable 
 might honour. Let them have the right of ordaining 
 in their provinces, but let no one venture to ordain with- 
 out his knowledge and goodwill, whom, in all cases of 
 ordination (i.e. of bishops) we would have consulted.' 
 
 " Gelasius (circa an. 480) to Faustus (Labbe, tom. v., 
 p. 297) : ' The canons have decided that no one what- 
 ever shall appeal from this 'See ; and so provide that it 
 shall judge the whole Church, and itself be judged of none. 
 . . . Timothy of Alexandria, Peter of Antioch, Peter, Paul, 
 John, not one, but many, bearing the episcopal name, 
 by the authority of this Apostolic See alone, were cast 
 down. . , Therefore we are in no fear lest the Apostolic 
 judgment be reversed, to which the voice of Christ, 
 tradition, and the canons, have given the decision of 
 controversy throughout the whole Church.' 
 
328 Note on Essay XI, 
 
 "The secohd count . . . takes the form of a reflection 
 upon the honesty of the Holy See. But if there is a 
 point in the whole subject, upon which there is a con- 
 sensus of writers, Protestant and Catholic, it is precisely 
 this, that the Pope had nothing to do with the forgery 
 of the pseudo- decretals ; and moreover that they were 
 not forged in his interest. They were forged in Gaul, 
 not in Rome ; and their immediate object was to relieve 
 the bishops and the inferior clergy from the , tyranny of 
 the Metropolitans, who were but too frequently the tools 
 of the secular power. . . . When they exalt the Pope^ 
 it is only to pull themselves out of the mire ; and it has 
 been observed (see Blascus, I.e., c. lo, seq?^, that these 
 decretals, where the interests of the episcopate are not 
 at stake, do not concern themselves to uphold even the 
 well-established privileges of the Holy See, and in some 
 cases (whether wittingly or not is uncertain) actually 
 contravene them. . . .' 
 
 "But ... ' if the Pope [St. Nicholas I.] be not th^ 
 coiner, he is at least the conscious utterer v. f this false 
 coin ; he had duplicates of all the genuine letters of hig 
 predecessors in his portfolio ; and, if he did not actually 
 discover that these were forgeries, it was because he felt 
 they were, and would not look.' . . . This assumption is 
 simply false. On the contrary, I maintain that the fact 
 of the duplicate of a papal letter not being found in the 
 Roman archives, not only did . not prove it spurious, but 
 in very many instances could not create- any fair pre- 
 sumption against it. It is true that the Popes, like other 
 bishops, were in the way of laying up by their archives 
 copies of the letters they wrote, and of the more im- 
 portant letters, which, they received. We have frequent 
 
Note on Essay XL 329 
 
 references and appeals, in the letters to and from the 
 Holy See, to the contents of the Roman archives ; but 
 it is impossible not to be struck with the short periods 
 of time which these appeals cover. I think I am right 
 in saying, that, with one exception, they do not extend 
 beyond a century, and that most fall far short of it. I 
 know of only one exception, and that was when, in 531, 
 Theodore of Thessalonica produced from his archives 
 Papal letters from Damasus downwards, a space of about 
 150 years, all extant and all genuine, and asked Boni- 
 face II. to verify them from the Roman scrinia. Curiously 
 enough, we do not know how far the Roman scrinia 
 stood the trial, for the document (see Labbe, tom. v., 
 p. 843) is imperfect. 
 
 "I. Mabillon [de re Diplom. Supp. p. 5), enumerates the 
 many dangers that beset the ancient archives. They 
 were, moreover, peculiarly liable both to be neglected, 
 and tampered with, owing to the fact that the notarii 
 and scriniarii, who were alone capable of reading, trans- 
 cribing, and classifying the manuscripts, were a small, 
 and consequently irresponsible class. This was so much 
 felt to be the case, but we find that, from time to time, 
 CMstodes were appointed to watch over the honesty of the 
 notarii, and keep them to their duty. The irresponsi- 
 bility of the notarii was, of course, in direct ratio to the 
 want of culture of their time and country ; thus, in Italy, 
 we may presume they had things very much their own 
 way during the latter half of the fifth and throughout 
 the seventh and eighth centuries. So deplorable was 
 the state of knowledge in Italy, and particularly in Rome, 
 in the seventh century, owing to the repeated wars of 
 barbarians that had swept over the face of the country, 
 that we find Pope Agatho [a.d. 678 — 682], in his letter 
 to the Emperor Congtantine, thus excusing the rudeness. 
 
330 Note on Essay XI. 
 
 of his legates Labbe, torn, vii., p. 655: "Among us, 
 planted as we are in the midst of the Gentiles, and 
 winning our daily bread most precariously by bodily 
 toil, how should literary knowledge in its fulness be 
 found, more than that we preserve, in simplicity of heart 
 and undoubtingly, what has been canonically defined by 
 our holy predecessors in the Apostolical See, and by the 
 five Holy Councils, of the faith delivered to us by our 
 fathers ? " And again, in his Synodical Letter to the 
 same Emperor, loc. cit., p. 707: 'As regards secular 
 knowledge, I think there are not any in our times, who 
 may boast of having reached its summit ; since, in our 
 land, the wrath of contrary nations rages, fighting, over- 
 running, and ravaging ; and . . . the ancient revenue of 
 the Church has gradually, under diverse misfortunes, 
 melted away. But our faith remains our one support, 
 with which to live is our glory, and for which to die is 
 our eternal recompense.' 
 
 '" Under such circumstances, nothing is more natural 
 than that the Roman archives should have sustained 
 vast and frequent losses, and we are not surprised when 
 Baronius (torn, v., an. 381, xxxi) points out to us that the 
 Roman archives had evidently suffered a loss between 
 the times of Damasus and Gregory I. [A.D. 366 and 
 590]. He quotes St. Gregory, lib. vi., Ep. 15 (ed. Ben. 
 lib. vii., Ep. 34) to the effect that the Roman Church 
 knew nothing of the condemnation of the Eudoxians, 
 except from doubtful or corrupt sources, and remarks 
 that, seeing that several of the ancient Fathers speak of 
 Eudoxius as accused and convicted of frightful heresy, 
 St. Gregory's words clearly show, 'jacturam passa esse 
 Romana archivia.' I may observe that the letter of 
 Liberius to Constantius (see Coustant,, p. 423,) speaks of 
 Eudoxius as having refused to condemn Arius, and 
 
Note on Essay XI, 331 
 
 being therefore excommunicate ; and this letter must 
 have been originally in the Roman archives. 
 
 In this same letter Liberius testifies that he has got 
 the letter of Alexander of Alexandria to Pope Silvester, 
 concerning the Arian controversy, ' manent literae ;' and 
 Constant remarks that, of course, there were numbers of 
 letters to and from Silvester on the same subject, though 
 none have come down to us. 
 
 " In the eighth century, St. Boniface of Mayence, Ep. 
 IS, tells Nothelm of Canterbury that, as regarded the 
 famous letter of St. Gregory to Augustine, the Roman 
 scriniarii had looked in the archives of the Roman 
 Church, and could not find it. 
 
 " In 743, the Germans rested their right to marry ' in 
 quarta generatione,' upon an indult of Pope Gregory II., 
 which could not be discovered in the Roman archives ; 
 but Pope Zachary did not on that account reject it as 
 spurious. . . . ' Although we cannot find the document, 
 we do not hesitate to believe it genuine' (see Blascus, /. c, 
 cap. iv.) 
 
 " We have only to look through Constant's volume, to 
 see that numbers of the Papal letters do not come from 
 the Roman archives, but from those of other Sees, par- 
 ticularly Vercellas, and the famous Gallic Sees of Aries 
 and Vienne. And the editor of the ' BuUarium Ro- 
 manum, Rome 1739,' in his preface, after noticing the 
 losses which the Roman archives had sustained, parti- 
 cularly in Papal letters, from Leo I. to Innocent III. 
 [A.D. 440 to 1 198], observes, that numbers of these au- 
 tographs, ' of which no longer any mention or trace 
 remains in the Roman archives,' have been found intact 
 in the archives of other cathedral towns and monasteries. 
 
 "It has been said, that the fact that so many of the 
 pseudo-decretals profess to be the letters of Popes of the 
 
332 Note on Essay XI. 
 
 times of persecution, should have awaked the Pope's 
 suspicions. But it must be remembered, first, that there 
 is great reason for supposing that St. Nicholas never 
 sa,w more than certain portions of these decretals, with 
 which he shows an acquaintance, although he nowhere 
 formally quotes them ; secondly, that it is well known 
 that the Popes, in the times of persecution, did write, 
 and write frequently, — witness the genuine fragments 
 of their writings in Eusebius, Hilary, and elsewhere. 
 Moreover, the Fathers testify an acquaintance with other 
 documents which are wholly lost. St. Augustine, for 
 instance, Ep. 43 (olim 162) n. 16, shows that he knew, in 
 extenso, the decree of Pope Melchiades [a.D. 310 — 314] 
 condemning Donatus ; and St. Jerome speaks of the 
 four letters written by St. Cornelius [A.D. 250 — 252] to 
 Fabius, as extant in his time. 
 
 " There was nothing, then, in these relics of the times 
 of persecution, in that age, to awaken suspicion ; whilst 
 there was much to attract devotion. Men naturally 
 welcomed their discovery with the same deyotion, and 
 certainly with no greater surprise, than they , did the 
 kindred discovery of the martyrs' bodies. St. Nicholas,; 
 in his letter to the Bishop of Gaul (Labbe, tom. x., 
 p. 282), shows what idea was uppermost in his mind, 
 when he refers to those decrees, of which he had seen 
 something, and heard more, as the decrees of those 
 ' quorum videmus Deo auctore Sanctam Ecclesiam aut 
 roseo cruore floridam, aut rorifluis sudoribus et salubribus 
 eloquiis adornatam.' 
 
 " Again, it must be remembered that the Holy See 
 received these decretals from the Gallic Church, upon 
 whose learning it had been taught to depend in its con- 
 troversies with the civil power and Greek heresy. 
 . " We find a remarkable instance of this dependence 
 
Note on Essay X. 333 
 
 recorded by Pasehasius Radbert, in his Life of Wala 
 (ap. Mabillon Oct. S. Ord. Ben., saec. iv., part i., p. 511). 
 He relates that he and Wala (an. 833) showed Gregory 
 IV. — then in France, engaged in the difficult and 
 dangerous task of reconciling the king and his sons, — 
 'sundry documents, confirmed by the authority of the 
 holy Fathers and his own predecessors, against which 
 none might deny that he had the power (forsooth God's, 
 the blessed Apostle Peter's, and his own,) to go and send 
 unto all nations for the faith of Christ the peace of the 
 Churches, the preaching of the Gospel, and the assertion 
 of the truth ; and that in him resided the supreme 
 authority and living powers of blessed Peter ; in virtue 
 of which he might judge all, and himself be judged of 
 none. Which documents he graciously received, and 
 was exceedingly comforted.' 
 
 "Some writers have thought that in this they dis- 
 covered evidence of the pseudo-decretals ; but the idea 
 is very generally abandoned. One strong argument, 
 against it appears to me to be the fact, that Agobard, 
 who belonged to the same party as Wala and Radbert, 
 in his letter to the king, which exactly coincides in time 
 with his friends' mission to Gregory, and in which he 
 has the same object in view with them, viz., the exal- 
 tation of papal prerogative, grounds his argument ex- 
 clusively on genuine documents. However this may be, 
 the whole story is a curious illustration of the influence 
 of the French Church upon the Holy See. 
 
 " But, not only did the Pope receive these documents 
 from the French Bishops, but they themselves furnished 
 him with what he might well regard as a crucial test' 
 of their genuineness. For, even when Hincmar, in his 
 controversy with St. Nicholas, does his utmost to dis- 
 prove their cogency as law, he never so much as, suggests 
 
334 ^ot^ on Essay XL 
 
 a doubt of their genuineness. It is true that, in his 
 subsequent controversy with Adrian II., Hincmar uses 
 rather different language ; but even then he hints at 
 nothing worse than that they have been garbled and 
 interpolated by his own nephew and others, to serve 
 their private ends. 
 
 " In the letter to the Bishops of Gaul, quoted above, 
 the Pope clearly seems to indicate other sources of 
 authentic decretals besides the archives ; when, in meet- 
 ing Hincmar's attempt to restrict the legal cogency of 
 decretals to those contained in the Codex of Adrian, he 
 says, ' God forbid that we should not embrace the dcr 
 cretals, which the Roman Church, 'penes se in suis 
 archivis et vetustis rite monumentis recondita vene- 
 rantur.' The ' vetusta monumenta ' no doubt included 
 all such well-authorized collections as the pseudo- 
 Isidorian professed to be. 
 
 2. " Besides the fact of the frequent losses which the 
 Roman archives had sustained, rendering their contents 
 at any given time an unsafe criterion of genuineness, it 
 was exceedingly difficult to make out what they did 
 contain. For, as I have observed, only a very small 
 class, the scriniarii, were competent to engage in such 
 a search. These were put upon their bath that they had 
 produced all that they could find regarding the cause 
 in hand, as we read in the Acts of the Sixth Council. 
 And, for these experts, the search was doubtless ex- 
 ceedingly difficult, when covering any considerable 
 length of time, and when documents were wanted, that 
 had not been previously arranged for controversial pur- 
 poses. Often, indeed, it could have been little else than 
 a wild hunt among boxes of manuscripts in various 
 stages of decay, when the subject of any successful 
 discovery might well be described as ' Deo revelante 
 
Note on Essay XI. 335 
 
 reperta' (see Nicholas' Letter to Herard, Labbe, torn, x, 
 p. 298). 
 
 "Ballerini (St. Leo, torn, i., p. 511), after remarking 
 upon the number of St. Leo's letters that were lost, thus 
 accounts for these and other losses : ' After the general 
 collections of the Canons and Papal letters, originally 
 compiled by private persons for private use, had got so 
 generally into circulation that the Popes themselves took 
 their predecessors' letters oftener from these private col- 
 lections than from the Apostolic scrinia, it came about 
 that the autographs of these same letters, which were in 
 the Apostolic scrinia, gradually falling into neglect, as 
 time went on, perished.' 
 
 " This, then, is St. Nicholas' position. He is presented 
 with portions of documents, for we have no proof that 
 they were more, which accurately represent the ecclesias- 
 tical spirit of the day, a recommendation, rather than a 
 difficulty, in an uncritical age. Their genuineness is at- 
 tested by the Church of Gaul, a church incomparably 
 more learned than his own ; and attested, moreover, even 
 against that church's interests. The genuineness of 
 these documents was in no sense upon its trial ; it was 
 undisputed. The presumption was strongly in favour of 
 the genuineness of documents, containing doctrine so or- 
 thodox and so apposite ; if any heresy had cropped up 
 in them, then, indeed, it would have been another matter^ 
 But more than this, the Pope, even if a doubt of these 
 had crossed his mind, which is in the highest degree im- 
 possible, had not, in the Roman archives, any satisfactory- 
 test of their genuineness." 
 
356 
 
 xiir. 
 
 PRIVATE JUDGMENT. 
 
 THERE is this obvious, undeniable difficulty in the 
 attempt to form a theory of Private Judgment, in 
 the choice of a religion, that Private Judgment leads dif- 
 ferent minds in such different directions. If, indeed, there 
 be no religious truth, or at least no sufficient means of 
 arriving at it, then the difficulty vanishes : for where there 
 is nothing to find, there can be no rules for seeking, and 
 contradiction in the result is but a reductio ad absurdum. of 
 the attempt. But such a conclusion is intolerable to those 
 who search, else they would not search ; and therefore on 
 them the obligation lies to explain, if they can, how it 
 eomes to pass, that Private Judgment is a duty, and an 
 advantage, and a success, considering it leads the way not 
 only to their own faith, whatever that may be, but to 
 opinions which are diametrically opposite to it ; consider- 
 ing it not only leads them right, but leads others wrong, 
 landing them as it may be in the Church of Rome, or in 
 the Wesleyan Connexion, or in the Society of Friends. 
 
 Are exercises of mind, which end so diversely, one 
 and all pleasing to the Divine Author of faith ; or rather 
 must they not contain some inherent, or some incidental 
 defect, since they manifest such divergence t Must private 
 judgment in all cases be a good per se ; or is it a good 
 
Private jfudgment. 337 
 
 under circumstances, and with limitations ? Or is it a 
 good, only when it is uot an evil ? Or is it a good and 
 evil at once, a good involving an evil ? Or is it an ab- 
 solute and simple evil ? Questions of this sort rise in 
 the mind on contemplating a principle which leads to 
 more than the thirty-two points of the compass, and, in 
 consequence, whatever we may here be able to do, in the 
 way of giving plain rules for its exercise, be it greater or 
 less, will be so much gain. 
 
 I. 
 
 Now the first remark which occurs is an obvious one, 
 and, we suppose, will be suffered to pass without much 
 opposition, that whatever be the intrinsic merits of Private 
 Judgment, yet, if it at all exerts itself in the direction of 
 proselytism and conversion, a certain onus probandi lies 
 upon it, and it must show cause why it should be tole- 
 rated, and not rather treated as a breach of the peace, 
 and silenced instanter as a mere disturber of the existing 
 constitution of things. Of course it may be safely exer- 
 cised in defending what is established ; and we are far 
 indeed from saying that it is never to advance in the 
 direction of change or revolution, else the Gospel itself 
 could never have been introduced ; but we consider that 
 serious religious changes have a primA facie case against 
 them ; they have something to get over, and have to 
 prove their admissibility, before it can reasonably be 
 allowed ; and their agents may be called upon to suffer, 
 in order to prove their earnestness, and to pay the penalty 
 of the trouble they are causing. Considering the special 
 countenance given in Scripture to quiet, unanimity, and 
 contentedness, and the warnings directed against dis- 
 order, insubordination, changeableness, discord, and 
 division ; considering the emphatic words of the Apostle, 
 
 VOL. II. 22 
 
338 Private Judgment 
 
 laid down by him as a general principle, and illustrated 
 in detail, "Let every man abide in the same calling 
 wherein he was called ;" considering, in a word, that 
 change is really the characteristic of error, and unalter- 
 ableness the attribute of truth, of holiness, of Almighty 
 God Himself, we consider that when Private Judgment 
 moves in the direction of innovation, it may well be re- 
 garded at first with suspicion and treated with severity. 
 Nay, we confess even a satisfaction, when a penalty is 
 attached to the expression of new doctrines, or to a 
 change of communion. We repeat it, if any men have 
 strong feelings, they should pay for them ; if they think 
 it a duty to unsettle things established, they should show 
 their earnestness by being willing to suffer. We shall be 
 the last to complain of this kind of persecution, even 
 though directed against what we consider the cause of 
 truth. Such disadvantages do no harm to that cause in 
 the event, but they bring home to a man's mind his own 
 responsibility; they are a memento to him of a great 
 moral law, and warn him that his private judgment, if 
 not a duty, is a sin. 
 
 An act of private judgment is, in its very idea, an 
 act of individual responsibility ; this is a consideration 
 which will come with especial force on a conscientious 
 mind, when it is to have so fearful an issue as a change 
 of religion. A religious man will say to himself, " If I 
 am in error at present, I am in error by a disposition of 
 Providence, which has placed me where I am ; if I 
 change into an error, this is my own act. It is much 
 less fearful to be born at disadvantage, than to place 
 myself at disadvantage." 
 
 And if the voice of men in general is to weigh at all 
 in a matter of this kind, it does but corroborate these 
 iastinptive feelings. A convert is undeniably in favour 
 
Private yudgmejit. 339 
 
 with no party ; he is looked at with distrust, contempt, 
 and aversion by all. His former friends think him a 
 good riddance, and his new friends are cold and strange ; 
 and as to the impartial public, their very first impulse is 
 to impute the change to some eccentricity of character, 
 or fickleness of mind, or tender attachment, or private 
 interest. Their utmost praise is the reluctant confession 
 that " doubtless he is very sincere." Churchmen and 
 Dissenters, men of Rome and men of the Kirk, are 
 equally subject to this remark. Not on extraordinary 
 occasions only, but as a matter of course, whenever the 
 news of a conversion to Romanism, or to Irvingism, or to 
 the Plymouth sect, or to Unitarianism, is brought to us, 
 we say, one and all of us, " No wonder, such a one has 
 lived so long abroad ;" or, " he is of such a very ima- 
 ginative turn;" or, "he is so excitable and odd;" or, 
 " what could he do ? all his family turned ;" or, " it was 
 a re-action in consequence of an injudicious education ;" 
 or, " trade makes men cold," or " a little learning makes 
 them shallow in their religion." If, then, the common 
 voice of mankind goes for anything, must we not con- 
 sider it to be the rule that men change their religion, not 
 on reason, but for some extra-rational feeling or motive .-' 
 else, the world would not so speak. 
 
 Now, for ourselves, we are not quarrelling with this 
 testimony, — we are willing to resign ourselves to it ; but 
 we think there are parties whom it concerns much to 
 ponder it. Surely it is a strong, and, as they ought to 
 feel, an alarming proof, that, for all the haranguing 
 and protesting which goes on in Exeter and other halls, " 
 this great people is not such a conscientious supporter 
 of the sacred right of Private Judgment as a good Pro- 
 testant would desire. Why should we go out of our 
 way, one and all of us, to impute personal motives or ia 
 
340 Private JudgmenL 
 
 explanation of the conversion of every individual con^ 
 vert, as he comes before us, if there were in us, the 
 public, an adhesion to that absolute, and universal, and 
 unalienable principle, as its titles are set forth in heral- 
 dic style, high and broad, sacred and awful, the right, 
 and the duty, and the possibility of Private Judgment ? 
 Why should we confess it in the general, yet promptly 
 and pointedly deny it in every particular, if our hearts 
 retained more than the " magni nominis umbra," when 
 we preached up the Protestant principle ? Is it not sheer 
 wantonness and cruelty in Baptist, Independent, Ir- 
 vingite, Wesleyan, Establishment-man, Jumper, and 
 Mormonite, to delight in trampling on and crushing 
 these manifestations of their own pure and precious 
 charter, instead of dutifully and reverently exalting, at 
 Bethel, or at Dan, each instance of it, as it occurs, to 
 the gaze of its professing votaries ? If a staunch Pro- 
 testant's daughter turns Roman, and betakes herself to 
 a convent, why does he not exult in the occurrence ? 
 Why does he not give a public breakfast, or hold a 
 meeting, or erect a memorial, or write a pamphlet in 
 honour of her, and of the great undying principle she 
 has so gloriously vindicated ? Why is he in this base, 
 disloyal style muttering about priests, and Jesuits, and 
 the horrors of nunneries, in solution of the phenomenon, 
 when he has the fair and ample form of Private Judg- 
 ment rising before his eyes, and pleading with him, and 
 bidding him impute good motives, not bad,, and in very 
 charity ascribe to the influence of a high and holy prin- 
 ciple, to a right and a duty of every member of the 
 family of man, what his poor human instincts are fain 
 to set down as a folly or a sin. AH this would lead us 
 to suspect that the doctrine of private judgment, in its 
 simplicity, purity, and integrity, — private, judgment, all 
 
Private yudgment. 341 
 
 private judgment, and nothing but private judgment, — 
 is held by very few persons indeed ; and that the great 
 mass of the population are either stark unbelievers in it, 
 or deplorably dark about it ; and that even the minority 
 who are in a manner faithful to it, have glossed and 
 corrupted the true sense of it by a miserably faulty 
 reading, and hold, not the right of private judgment, 
 but the private right of judgment ; in other words, 
 their own private right, and no one's else. To us it 
 seems as clear as day, that they consider that they 
 themselves, indeed, individually can and do act on rea- 
 son, and on nothing but reason ; that they have the gift 
 of advancing, without bias or unsteadiness, throughout 
 their search, from premiss to conclusion, from text to 
 doctrine ; that they have sought aright, and no one else, 
 who does not agree with them ; that they alone have 
 found out the art of putting the salt upon the bird's tail, 
 and have rescued themselves from being the slaves of 
 circumstance and the creatures of impulse. It is unde- 
 niable, then, if the popular feeling is to be our guide, 
 that, high and mighty as the principle of private judg- 
 ment is in religious inquiries, as we most fully grant it 
 is, still it bears some similarity to Saul's armour which 
 David rejected, or to edged tools which have a bad trick 
 of chopping at our fingers, when we are but simply and in- 
 nocently meaning them to make a dash forward at truth. 
 ' Any tolerably serious man will feel this in his own case 
 more vividly than in that of any one else. Who can know 
 ever so little of himself without suspecting all kinds of 
 imperfect and wrong motives in everything he attempts .' 
 And then there is the bias of education and of habit ; 
 and, added to the difficulties thence resulting, those 
 which arise from weakness of the reasoning faculty, 
 ignorance or imperfect, knowledge of the original Ian- 
 
342 Private Judgment. 
 
 guages of Scripture, and again, of history and antiquity. 
 These things being considered, we lay it down as a 
 truth, about which, we think, few ought to doubt, that 
 Divine aid alone can carry any one safply and success- 
 fully through an inquiry after religious truth. That 
 there are certain very broad contrasts between one 
 religion and another, in which no one would be at fault 
 what to think and what to choose, is very certain; but 
 the problem proposed to private judgment, at this day, 
 is of a rather more complicated nature. Taking things 
 as they are, we all seem to be in Solomon's case, when , 
 he said, " I am but a little child ; I know not how to 
 go out or come in ; and Thy servant is in the midst of 
 a great people, that cannot be numbered nor counted 
 for multitude. Give, therefore, Thy servant an under- 
 standing heart, that I may discern between good and 
 bad." It is useless, surely, attempting to inquire or 
 judge, unless a Divine command enjoin the work 
 upon us, and a Divine promise sustain us through it. 
 Supposing, indeed, such a command and promise be 
 given, then, of course, there is no difficulty in the 
 matter. Whatever be our personal infirmities, He whoni 
 we serve can overrule or supersede them. An act of 
 duty must always be right ; and will be accepted, 'what- 
 ever be its success, because done in obedience to His 
 will. And He can bless the most unpromising circum- 
 stances ; He can even lead us forward by means of our 
 mistakes ; He can turn our mistakes into a revelation ; 
 He can convert us, if He will, through the very ob^ 
 stinacy, or self-will, or superstition, which mixes itself 
 up with our better feelings, and defiles, yet is sanctified 
 by our sincerity. And much more can He shed upon 
 our path supernatural light, if He so will, and give us an 
 insight into the meaning of Scripture, and a hold of the 
 
Private yudgment. 343 
 
 sense of Antiquity, to which our own unaided powers 
 never could have attained. 
 
 All this is certain ; He continually leads us forward 
 in the midst of darkness ; and we live, not by bread 
 only, but by His Word converting the hard rock or salt 
 sea into nourishment. The simple question is, has He, 
 in this particular case, commanded, has He promised } 
 and how far .■" If He has, and as far as He has, all is 
 easy ; if He has not, all is, we will not say impossible, 
 but what is worse, undutiful or presumptuous. Our 
 business is to ask with St. Paul, when arrested in the 
 midst of his frenzy, " Lord, what wilt Thou have me to 
 do .' " This is the simple question. He can bless our 
 present state ; He can bless our change ; which is it His 
 will to bless .■• If Wesleyan or Independent has come 
 over to us apart from this spirit, we do not much pride 
 ourselves in our convert. If he joins us because he 
 thinks he has a right to judge for himself, or because 
 forms are of no consequence, or merely because sectari- 
 anism has its errors and inconveniences, or because an 
 established Church is an efficacious means of spreading 
 religion, he plainly thinks that the choice of a com- 
 munion is not a more serious matter than the choice of 
 a neighbourhood or of an insurance office. In like 
 manner, if members of our communion have left it lo\ 
 Rome, because of the msthetic beauty of the latter, and 
 the grandeur of its pretensions, we are grieved, but, 
 good luck to them, we can spare them. And if Roman 
 Catholics join us or our " Dissenting brethren," because 
 their own Church is behind the age, insists on Aristo- 
 telic dogmas, and interferes with liberty of thought, such 
 a conversion is no triumph over popery, but oyer St. 
 Peter and St. Paul. Our only safety lies in obedience ; 
 our only comfort in keeping it in view. 
 
344 Private Judgment. 
 
 If this be so, we have arrived at the following con- 
 clusion : that it is our duty to betake ourselves to 
 Scriiiture, and to observe how far the private search of 
 a religion is there sanctioned, and under what circum- 
 stances. This then is the next point which comes under 
 consideration. 
 
 2. 
 
 Now the first and most ordinary kind of Private Judg- 
 ment, if it deserves the name, which is recognized in 
 Scripture, is that in which we engage without conscious 
 or deliberate purpose. While Lydia heard St. Paul 
 preach, her heart was opened. She had it not in mind 
 to exercise any supposed sacred right, she was not set- 
 ting about the choice of a religion, but she was drawn 
 on to accept the Gospel by a moral persuasion. "To 
 him that hath more shall be given," not in the way of 
 judging or choosing, but by an inward development met 
 by external disclosures. Lydia's instance is the type of 
 a multitude of cases, differing very much from each 
 other, some divinely ordered, others merely human; 
 some which would commonly be called cases of private 
 judgment, and others which certainly would not, but all 
 agreeing in this, that the judgment exercised is not re^ 
 cognized and realized by the party exercising it, as the 
 subject-matter of command, promise, duty, privilege, or 
 anything else. It is but the spontaneous stirring of the 
 affections within, or the passive acceptance of what is 
 offered from without. St. Paul baptized Lydia's house- 
 hold also ; it would seem then that he baptized servants 
 or slaves, who had very little power of judging between 
 a true religion and a false ; shall we say that they, like 
 their mistress, accepted the Gospel on private judgment 
 or not.' Did the thousands baptized in national con*- 
 
Private judgment. 345 
 
 versions exercise tiieir private judgment or not? Do 
 children when taught tlieir catechism ? Most persons 
 will reply in the negative ; yet it will be difficult to 
 separate their case in principle from what Lydia's may 
 have been, tliat is, the case of religious persons who are 
 advancing forward into the truth, how they know not. 
 Neither the one class nor the other have undertaken to 
 inquire and judge, or have set about being converted, or 
 have got their reasons all before them and together, to 
 discharge at an enemy or passer-by on fit occasions. The 
 difference between these two classes is in the state of 
 their hearts ; the one party consist of unformed minds, 
 or senseless and dead, or minds under temporary excite- 
 ment, who are brought over by external or accidental 
 influences, without any real sympathy for the Religioni 
 which is taught them in order that they may learn sym-r 
 pathy with it, and who, as time goes on, fall away again 
 if they are not happy enough to become embued with 
 it ; and in the other party there is already a sympathy 
 between the external Word and the heart within. The 
 one are proselytized by force, authority, or their mere 
 feelings, the others through their habitual and abiding 
 frame of mind and cast of opinion. But neither can be 
 said, in the ordinary sense of the word, to inquire; 
 reason, and decide about religion. And yet in a great 
 number of these cases, — certainly where the persons in 
 ■question are come to years of discretion and show them- 
 selves consistent in their religious profession afterwards, 
 — they would be commonly set forth by Protestant 
 minds as instances of the due exercise of the right of 
 private judgment. 
 
 ' Such are the greater number perhaps of converts at 
 ■this day, in whatever direction their conversion lies ; and 
 ttheir so-called exercise of private judgment is neither rigltt 
 
346 Ptivate judgment. 
 
 nor wrong in itself, it is a spontaneous act which they do 
 not think about ; if it is anything, it is but a means of 
 bringing out their moral characteristics one way or the 
 other. Often, as in the case of very illiterate and unre- 
 flecting persons, it proves nothing either way ; but in those 
 who are not so, it is right or wrong, as their hearts are 
 right or wrong ; it is an exercise not of reason but of 
 heart. Take for instance, the case of a servant in a 
 family ; she is baptized and educated in the Church of 
 England, and is religiously disposed ; she goes into 
 Scotland and conforms to the Kirk, to which her master 
 and mistress belong. She is of course responsible for 
 what she does, but no one would say that she had 
 formed any purpose, or taken any deliberate step. In 
 course of time, when perhaps taxed with the change, 
 she would say in her defence that outward forms matter 
 not, and that there are good men in Scotland as well as 
 in England ; but this is an afterthought. Again, a care- 
 less person, nominally a churchman, falls among serious- 
 minded dissenters, and they reclaim him from vice or 
 irreligion ; on this he joins their communion, and as 
 time goes on boasts perhaps of his right of private judg- 
 ment At the time itself, however, no process of inquiry 
 .took place within him at all ; his heart was " opened," 
 whether for good or for bad, whether by good influences 
 or by good and bad mixed. He was not conscious of con- 
 vincing reasons, but he took what came to hand, he em- 
 braced what was offered, he felt and he acted. Again, a 
 man is brought up among Unitarians, or in the frigid 
 and worldly school which got a footing in the Church 
 during last century, and has been accustomed to view 
 religion as a matter of reason and form, of obligation, to 
 the exclusion of aff'ectionateness and devotion. He falls 
 among persons of what is called an Evangelical cast, 
 
Private Judgment. 347 
 
 and finds his heart interested, and great objects set 
 before it. Such a man falls in with the sentiments he 
 finds, rather than adopts them. He follows the leadings 
 of his heart, perhaps of Divine grace, but certainly not 
 any course of inquiry and proof. There is nothing of 
 argument, discussion, or choice in the process of his con- 
 version. He has no systems to choose between, and no 
 grounds to scrutinize. 
 
 Now, in all such cases, the sort of private judgment 
 exercised is right or wrong, not as private judgment; but 
 according to its circumstances. 'It is either the attraction 
 of a Divine Influence, such as the mind cannot master ; 
 or it is a suggestion of reason, which the mind has yet to 
 analyze, before it can bring it to the test of logic. If it 
 is the former, it is above a private judgment, popularly 
 so called ; if the latter, it is not yet so much as one. 
 
 A second class of conversions on private judgment 
 consists of those which take place upon the sight or the 
 strong testimony of miracles. Such was the instance 
 of Rahab, of Naaman, if he may be called a convert, 
 and of Nebuchadnezzar ; of the blind man in John ix., 
 of St. Paul, of Cornelius, of Sergius Paulus, and many 
 others. Here again the act of judgment is of a very 
 peculiar character. It is not exactly an unconscious act, 
 but yet it is hardly an act of judgment. Our belief in 
 external sensible facts cannot properly be called an act 
 of private judgment ; yet since Protestants, we suppose, 
 would say that the blind man or Sergius Paulus were 
 converted on private judgment, let it even so be called, 
 though it is of a very particular kind. Again, conviction 
 after a miracle also implies the latent belief that such 
 acts are signs of the Divine Presence, a belief which may 
 be as generally recognized and maintained, and is as 
 little a peculiar or private feeling as the impression oa 
 
348 Private yudgment. 
 
 the senses of the miracle itself. And this leads to the 
 mention of a further instance of the sort of private judg- 
 ments to which men are invited in Scripture, viz., the 
 exercise of the moral sense. Our Creator has stamped 
 certain great truths upon our minds, and there they 
 remain in spite of the fall. St. Paul appeals to one of 
 these at Lystra, calling on the worshippers of idols to 
 turn from these vanities unto the Living God ; and at 
 Athens, "not to think that the Godhead is like unto 
 gold, or silver, or stone graven by art and man's device," 
 but to worship " God who made the world, and all things 
 therein." In the same tone he reminds the Thessalonians 
 of their having "turned to God from idols to serve the 
 Living and True God," In like manner doubtless other 
 great principles also of religion and moi^als are rooted 
 in the mind so deeply, that their denial by any Religion 
 would be a justification of our quitting or rejecting it. 
 If a pagan found his ecclesiastical polity essentially 
 founded on lying and cheating, or his ritual essentially 
 impure, or his moral code essentially unjust or cruel, we 
 conceive this would be a sufficient reason for his re- 
 nouncing it for one which was free from these hateful 
 characteristics. Such again is the kind of private judg- 
 ment exercised, when maxims or principles, generally 
 admitted by bodies of men, are acted upon by individuals 
 who have been ever taught them, as a matter of course, 
 without questioning them ; for instance, if a member of 
 the English Church, who had always been taught that 
 preaching is the great ordinance of the Gospel, to the 
 disparagement of the Sacraments, thereupon placed 
 himself under the ministry of a powerful Wesleyan 
 preacher; or if, from the common belief that nothing is 
 essential but what is on the surface of Scripture, he 
 forthwith attached himself 'to the Baptists, Independents,' 
 
Private Judgment. 349 
 
 or Unitarians. Such men indeed often take their Hne 
 in consequence of some inward Hiding for the reUgious 
 system they adopt ; but we are speaking of their pro- 
 ceeding as far as it professes to be an act of judgment. 
 
 A third class of private judgments recorded in Scrip- 
 ture, are those which are exercised at one and the same 
 time by a great number ; if it be not a contradiction to 
 call such judgments private. Yet here again we suppose 
 staunch Protestants would maintain that the three 
 thousand at Pentecost, and the five thousand after the 
 miracle on the lame man, and the "great company of 
 the priests," which shortly followed, did avail themselves, 
 and do afford specimens, of the sacred right in question ; 
 therefore let it be ruled so. Such, then, is the case ot 
 national conversions to which we have already alluded. 
 Again, if the Lutheran Church of Germany with its 
 many theologians, or our neighbour the Kirk,— General 
 Assembly, Men of Strathbogie, Dr. Chalmers, and all, — 
 came to a unanimous or quasi-unanimous resolve to sub- 
 mit to the Archbishop of Canterbury as their patriarch, 
 this doubtless would be an exercise of private judgment 
 perfectly defensible on Scripture precedents. 
 
 Now, before proceeding, let us observe, that as yet 
 nothing has been found in Scripture to justify the cases 
 of private judgment which are exemplified in the popular 
 religious biographies of the day. These generally con- 
 tain instances of conversions made on the judgment, 
 definite, deliberate, independent, isolated, of the parties 
 converted. The converts in these stories had not seen, 
 miracles, nor had they developed their own existing prin- 
 ciples or beliefs, nor had they changed their religion in 
 company with others, nor had they received new truths, 
 they knew not how. Let us then turn to Scripture 
 a second time, to see whether we can gain thence any 
 
350 Private Judgment. 
 
 clearer sanction of Private Judgment as now exercised 
 among us, than our search into Scripture has hitherto 
 furnished. 
 
 3- 
 
 There certainly is another method of conversion upon 
 private judgment described in Scripture, which is much 
 more to our purpose, viz., by means of the study of Scrip- 
 ture itself. Thus our Lord says to the Jews, " Search 
 the Scriptures ;" and the treasurer of Candace was 
 reading the book of Isaiah when St. Philip met him ; 
 and the men of Berea are said to be " more noble than 
 those of Thessalonica, in that they received the word 
 with all readiness of mind, and searched the Scriptures 
 daily, whether those things were so." And it is added, 
 " therefore many of them believed." Here at length, it 
 will be said, is a precedent for such acts of private 
 judgment as are most frequently recommended and 
 instanced in religious tales ; and indeed these texts 
 commonly are understood to make it certain beyond 
 dispute, that individuals ordinarily may find out the 
 doctrines of the Gospel for themselves from the private 
 study of Scripture. A little consideration, however, will 
 convince us that even these are precedents for something 
 else ; that they sanction, not an inquiry about Gospel 
 doctrine, but about the Gospel teacher ; not what has 
 God revealed, but whom has He commissioned ">. And 
 this is a very different thing. 
 
 The context of the passage in which our Lord speaks 
 of searching the Scriptures, shows plainly that their 
 office is that of leading, not to a knowledge of the 
 Gospel, but of Himself, its Author and Teacher. "Whom 
 He hath sent," He says, " Him ye believe not. Search 
 the Scriptures, for in them ye think ye have eternal life, 
 and they are they which testify of Me" He adds, that 
 
Private Judgment, 351 
 
 they " will not come unto Him, that they may have 
 life," and that " He is come in His Father's name, and 
 they receive Him not." And again, " Had ye believed 
 Moses, ye would have believed Me, for he wrote of Me." 
 It is plain that in this passage our Lord does not send 
 His hearers to the Old Testament to gain thence the 
 knowledge of the doctrines of the Gospel by means of 
 their private judgment, but to gain tests or notes by 
 which to find out and receive Him who was the teacher 
 of those doctrines ; and, though the treasurer of Candace 
 appears in the narrative to be contemplating our Lord 
 in prophecy, not as the teacher but the object of the 
 Christian faith, yet still in confessing that he could not 
 " understand " what he was reading, " unless some man 
 should guide him," he lays down the principle broadly, 
 A^hich we desire here to maintain, that the private study 
 of Scripture is not intended ordinarily as the means of 
 gaining a knowledge of the Gospel. In like manner 
 St. Peter, on the day of Pentecost, refers to the book of 
 Joel, by way of proving thence, not the Christian doc- 
 trine, but the divine promise that new teachers were to 
 ie sent in due season, and the fact that it was fulfilled 
 in himself and his brethren. "This is that," he says, 
 " which was spoken by the prophet Joel, I will pour out 
 My Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and yow 
 daughters shall prophesy." 
 
 While, then, the conversions recorded in Scripture are 
 brought about in a very marked way through a teacher, 
 and not by means of private judgment, so again, if an 
 appeal is made to private judgment, this is done in order 
 to settle who the teacher is, and what are his notes or 
 tokens, rather than to substantiate this or that religious 
 opinion or practice. And if such instances bear upon 
 our conduct at this day, as it is natural to think they do, 
 
352 Private Judgment. 
 
 then of course the practical question before us \.s,ivho is 
 the teacher now, from whose mouth we are to seek the 
 law, and what are his notes f 
 
 Now, in remarkable coincidence with this view, we 
 find in both Testaments that teachers are promised under 
 the dispensation of the Gospel, so that they, who like 
 the noble Bereans, search the Scriptures daily, will be at 
 little loss whither their private judgment should lead 
 them in order to gain the knowledge of the truth. In 
 the book of Isaiah we have the following express pro- 
 mises : " Though the Lord give you the bread of ad- 
 versity, and the waters of affliction, yet shall not thy 
 teachers be removed into a corner any more, but thine 
 eyes shall see thy teachers, and thine ears shall hear a voice 
 behind titee, saying, This is the way," etc. Several tests 
 follow descriptive of the condition of things or the cir- 
 cumstances in which these teachers are to be found. 
 First, the absence of idolatry ; " Ye shall defile also the 
 covering of thy graven images of silver, and the orna- 
 ments of thy molten images of gold;" and next, the 
 multitude of fellow-believers : " Then shall He give the 
 rain of thy seed that thou shalt sow the ground withal ; 
 in that day shall thy cattle-feed in large pastures" Else- 
 where the appointed teacher is noted as speaking with 
 authority and judicially : as " Every tongue that shall 
 rise against thee in judgment thou shalt condemn." 
 And hers, again the promises or tests of extent and per- 
 petuity appear : " Thou shalt break forth on the right 
 hand and on the left, and thy seed shall inherit the 
 Gentiles ;" and " My kindness shall not depart from 
 them, neither shall the covenant of My peace be re- 
 moved." Elsewhere holiness is mentioned : " It shall 
 be called. The way of holiness, the unclean shall not 
 pass over it." One more promise shall be cited : " My 
 
Private Judgment. 35.3 
 
 Spirit that is upon thee, and My words which I have 
 put in thy mouth, shall not depart out of thy mouth, 
 nor out of the mouth of thy seed . . from henceforth 
 and for ever." 
 
 In the New Testament we have the same promises 
 stated far more concisely indeed, but, what js much more 
 apposite than a longer description, with the addition of 
 the name of our promised teacher : " The Church of the 
 living God," says St. Paul, " the pillar and ground of 
 ihe truth!' The simple question then for Private Judg- 
 ment to exercise itself upon is, what and where is the 
 Church } 
 
 Now let it be observed how exactly this view of the 
 province of Private Judgment, where it is allowable, as 
 being the discovery not of doctrine, but of the teacher 
 of doctrine, harmonizes both with the nature of Religion 
 and the state of human society as we find it. Religion is 
 for practice, and that immediate. Now it is much easier 
 to form a correct and rapid judgment of persons than of 
 books or of doctrines. Every one, even a child, has an 
 impression about new faces ; few persons have any real 
 view about new propositions. There is something in the 
 sight of persons or of bodies of men, which speaks to 
 us for approval or disapprobation with a distinctness to 
 which pen and ink are unequal. This is just the kind of 
 evidence which is needed for use, in cases in which private 
 judgment is divinely intended to be the means of our 
 conversion. The multitude have neither the time, the 
 patience, nor the clearness and exactness of thought, for 
 processes of investigation and deduction. Reason is 
 slow and abstract, cold and speculative ; but man is a 
 being of feeling and action ; he is not resolvable into a 
 dictum de omni et nulla, or a series of hypothetical, or 
 a critical diatribe, or an algebraical equation. And this 
 
 VOL. II. 23 
 
354 Private yiidgtnent. 
 
 obvious fact does, as far as it goes, make it probable 
 that, if we are providentially obliged to exercise our 
 private judgment, the point towards which we have to 
 direct it, is the teacher rather than the doctrine. 
 
 In corroboration, it may be observed, that Scripture 
 seems always to imply the presence of teachers as the 
 appointed ordinance by which men learn the truth ; and 
 is principally engaged in giving cautions against false 
 teachers, and tests for ascertaining the true. Thus our 
 Lord bids us " beware of false prophets," not of false 
 books ; and look to their fruits. And He says elsewhere 
 that " the sheep know His voice," and that " they know 
 not the voice of strangers." And He predicts false Christs 
 and false prophets, who are to be nearly successful 
 against even the elect. He does not give us tests of 
 false doctrines, but of certain visible peculiarities or 
 notes applicable to persons or parties. " If they shall 
 say, Behold, he is in the desert, go not forth ; behold, 
 he is in the secret chamber, believe it not." St. Paul 
 insists on tokens of a similar kind : " Mark them v;hich 
 cause divisions, and avoid them ;" " is Christ divided ?" 
 "beware of dogs, beware of e vil- workers ;" "be fol- 
 lowers together of me, and mark them which walk so, 
 as ye have us for an ensample." Thus the New Testa- 
 ment equally with the Old, as far as it speaks of pri- 
 vate examination into teaching professedly from heaven, 
 makes the teacher the subject of that inquiry, and not 
 the thing taught ; it bids us ask for his credentials, and 
 avoid him if he is unholy, or idolatrous, or schismatical, 
 or if he comes in his own name, or if he claims no au- 
 thority, or is the growth of a particular spot or of par- 
 ticular circumstances. 
 
 If there are passages which at first sight seem to 
 interfere with this statement, they admit of an easy ex- 
 
Private Judgjnait, 355 
 
 planation. Either they will be found to appeal to those 
 instinctive feelings of our nature already spoken of 
 which supersede argument and proof in the judgments 
 we form of persons or bodies ; as in St. Paul's reference 
 to the idolatry of Athenian worship, or to the extreme 
 moral corruption of heathenism generally. Or, again, 
 the criterion of doctrine which they propose to the 
 private judgment of the individual turns upon the ques- 
 tion of its novelty or previous reception. When St. 
 Paul would describe a false gospel, he calls it another 
 gospel " than that ye have received ; " and St. John 
 bids us "try the spirits," gives us as the test of truth 
 and error the " confessing that Jesus Christ is come in 
 the flesh," and warns us against receiving into our 
 houses any one who "brings not this doctrine." We 
 conceive then that on the whole the notion of gaining 
 religious truth for ourselves by our private examination, 
 whether by reading or thinking, whether by studying 
 Scripture or other books, has no broad sanction in Scrip- 
 ture, is neither impressed upon us by its general tone, 
 nor enjoined in any of its commands. The great ques- 
 tion which it puts before us for the exercise of private 
 judgment is, — Who is God's prophet, and where .' Who 
 is to be considered the voice of the Holy Catholic and 
 Apostolic Church ? 
 
 4- 
 
 Having carried our train of thought as far as this, it 
 is time for us to proceed to the thesis in which it will be 
 found to issue, viz., that, on the principles that have 
 been laid down, Dissenters ought to abandon their own 
 communion, but that members of the English Church 
 ought not to abandon theirs. Such a position has often 
 been treated as a paradox and inconsistency ; yet we 
 
356 Private Judgment. 
 
 hope to be able to recommend it favourably to the 
 reader. 
 
 Now that seceders, sectarians, independent thinkers, 
 and the like, by whatever name they call themselves, 
 whether " Wesleyans," " Dissenters," " professors of the 
 national religion," " well-wishers of the Church," or even 
 " Churchmen," are in grievous error, in their mode of 
 exercising their private judgment, is plain as soon as 
 stated, viz., because they do not use it in looking out 
 for a teacher at all. They who think they have, in eon- 
 sequence of their inquiries, found the teacher of truth, 
 may be wrong in the result they have arrived at ; but 
 those who despise the notion of a teacher altogether, 
 are already wrong before they begin them. They do 
 not start with their private judgment in that one special 
 direction which Scripture allows or requires. Scripture 
 speaks of a certain pillar or ground of truth, as set up to 
 the world, and describes it by certain characteristics ; 
 dissenting teachers and bodies, so far from professing 
 to be themselves this authority, or to contain among 
 them this authority, assert there is no such authority to 
 be found anywhere. When then we deny that they 
 are the Church in our meaning of the word, they ought 
 to take no offence at it, for we are not denying them 
 anything to which they lay claim ; we are but denying 
 them what they already put away from themselves as 
 much as we can. They must not act like the dog in 
 the fable; (if it be not too light a comparison,) who 
 would neither use the manger himself, nor relinquish it 
 to others : let them not grudge to others a manifest 
 scriptural priTilege which they disown themselves. Is 
 an ordinance of Scripture to be fulfilled nowhere, be- 
 cause it is not fulfilled in them } By the Church we 
 mean what Scripture means, " the pillar and ground of 
 
Private Judgment. 357 
 
 the truth ; " a power out of whose mouth the Word and 
 the Spirit are never to fail, and whom whoso refuses to 
 hear becomes thereupon to all his brethren a heathen 
 man and a publican. Let the parties in question accept 
 the Scripture definition, or else not assume the Scripture 
 name ; or, rather, let them seek elsewhere what they 
 are conscious is not among themselves. We hear much 
 of Bible Christians, Bible Religion, Bible preaching ; it 
 would be well if we heard a little of the Bible Church 
 also ; we venture to say, that Dissenting Churches 
 would vanish thereupon at once, for, since it is their 
 fundamental principle that they are not a pillar or 
 ground of truth, but voluntary societies, without au- 
 thority and without gifts, the Bible Church they cannot 
 be. If the serious persons who are in dissent would 
 really imitate the simple-minded Ethiopian, or the 
 noble Bereans, let them ask themselves, " Of whom 
 speaketh" the Apostle, or the Prophet, such great 
 things ? — Where is the " pillar and ground " ? — Who is it 
 that is appointed to lead us to Christ ? — Where are those 
 teachers which were never to be removed into a corner 
 any more, but which were ever to be before our eyes and 
 in our ears .'' Whoever is right, or whoever is wrong, they 
 cannot be right, who profess not to have found, not to 
 look out for, not to believe in, that Ordinance to which 
 Apostles and prophets give their testimony. So much 
 then for the Protestant side of the thesis. 
 
 One half of it then is easily disposed of; but now we 
 come to the other side of it, the Roman, which certainly 
 has its intricacies. It is not difficult to know how we 
 should act towards a religious body which does not even 
 profess to come to us in the name of the Lord, or to be a 
 pillar and ground of the truth ; but what shall we say 
 when more than one society, or school, or party, lay 
 
358 Private y^tidgment. 
 
 claim to be the heaven-sent teacher, and are rivals one 
 to the other, as are the Churches of England and Rome 
 at this day ? How shall we discriminate between them ? 
 Which are we to follow ? Are tests given us for that 
 purpose ? Now if tests are given us, we must use them ; 
 but if not, and so far as not, we must conclude that Pro- 
 vidence foresaw that the difference between them would 
 never be so great as to require of us to leave the one for 
 the other. 
 
 However, it is certain that much is said in Scripture 
 about rival teachers, and that at least some of these 
 rivals are so opposed to each other, that tests are given' 
 us, in order to our shunning the one party, and accept- 
 ing the other. In such cases, the one teacher is repre- 
 sented to be the minister of God, and the other the 
 child and organ of evil. The one comes in God's name, 
 the other professes to come simply in his own name. 
 Such a contrast is presented to us in the conflict be- 
 tween Moses and the magicians of Egypt ; all is light 
 on the one side, all darkness on the other. Or again, 
 in the trial between Elijah and the prophets of Baal. 
 There is no doubt, in such a case, that it would be our 
 imperative duty at once to leave the teaching of Satan, 
 and betake ourselves to the Law and the Prophets. 
 And it will be observed that, to assist inquirers in doing 
 so, the representatives of Almighty God have been 
 enabled, in their contest with the enemy, to work mira- 
 cles, as Moses was, for instance, and Elijah, in order to 
 make it clear which way the true teaching lay. 
 
 But now will any one say that the contrast between 
 the English and the Roman, or again, the Greek, 
 Churches, is of this nature i" — is any of the three a 
 " monstrum nulld virtute redemptum " } Moreover, the 
 magicians and the priests of Baal " came in their own 
 
Private yudgrnent. 359 
 
 name ; " is that the case with the Church, English, 
 Roman or Greek ? Is it not certain, even at first sight, 
 that each of these branches has many high gifts and 
 much grace in her communion? And, at any rate, as 
 regards our controversy with Rome, if her champions 
 would maintain that the Church of England is the false 
 prophet, and she the true one, then let her work mira- 
 cles, as Moses did in the presence of the magicians, in 
 order to our conviction. 
 
 Probably, however, it will be admitted that the con- 
 trast between England and Rome is not of that nature ; 
 for the English Church confessedly does not come in 
 her own name, nor can she reasonably be compared to 
 the Egyptian magicians or the prophets of Baal ; is there 
 any other type in Scripture into which the difference 
 between her and the Church of Rome can be resolved ? 
 We shall be referred, perhaps, to the case of the false 
 prophets of Israel and Judah, who professed to come in 
 the name of the Lord, yet did not preach the truth, and 
 had no part or inheritance with God's prophets. This 
 parallel is not happier than the former, for a test was 
 given to distinguish between them, which does not 
 decide between the Church of Rome and ourselves. 
 This test is the divine accomplishment of the prophet's 
 message, or the divine blessing upon his teaching, or the 
 eventual success of his work, as it may be variously 
 stated ; a test under which neither Church, Roman or 
 Anglican, will fail, and neither is eminently the foremost. 
 Each Church has had to endure trial, each has overcome 
 it ; each has triumphed over enemies, each has had con- 
 tinued signs of the divine favour upon it. The passages 
 in Scripture to which we refer are such as the following. 
 — Moses, for instance, has laid it down in the Book of 
 Deuteronomy, that, " when a prophet speaketh in the 
 
360 Private Judgment. 
 
 name of the Lord, if the thing follow not, nor come to. 
 pass, that is the thing which the Lord hath not spoken, 
 but the prophet hath spoken it presumptuously/' To the 
 same effect, in the Book of Ezekiel, the denunciation 
 against the false prophet is, " Lo ! when the wait is 
 fatten, shall it not be said unto you, where is the daubing 
 wherewith ye have daubed it ? " And Gamaliel's advice 
 to "refrain from these men, and let them alone, for if 
 this counsel or this work be of men, it will come, to 
 jiought," may be taken as an illustration of the same 
 rule of judgment. Hence Roman Catholics themselves 
 are accustomed to consider, that eventual failure is the 
 sure destiny of heresy and schism ; what then will they 
 say to us ? the English Church has remained in its 
 present state three hundred years, and at the end of the 
 time is stronger than at the beginning. This does not 
 look like, an heretical or schismatical Church. However, 
 when she does fall to pieces, then, it may be admitted, 
 her children witl have a reason for deserting her; till then,- 
 she has no symptom of being akin to the false prophets 
 who professed the Lord's name, and deceived the simple 
 and unlearned ; she has no symptom of being a traitor 
 to ^e. faith. 
 
 However, there is a third type of rival teaching men- 
 tioned in Scripture, under which the dissension between 
 Rome and England may be considered to fall, and which 
 it may be well to notice. Let it be observed, then, that 
 even in the Apostles' age very grave outward differences 
 seem to have existed between Christian teachers, that is, 
 the organs of the one Church, and yet those differences 
 were not, in consequence, any call upon inquirers and 
 beholders to quit one teacher and betake themselves to 
 another. The state of the Corinthian Christians will 
 exemplify what v/e mean : Paul, Cephas, and Apollos,. 
 
Private Jud^rnent. 361 
 
 were all friends together, yet parties were formed round 
 each separately, which disagreed with each other, and 
 made the Apostles themselves seem in disagreement. 
 Is not this, at least in great measure, the state of the 
 Churches of England and Rome ? Are they not one in 
 faith, so far forth as they are viewed in their essential 
 apostolical character ? are they not in discord, so far as 
 their respective children and disciples have overlaid 
 them with errors of their own individual minds ? It was 
 a great fault, doubtless, that the followers of St. Paul 
 should have divided from the followers of St. Peter, 
 but would it have mended matters, had any individuals 
 among them gone over to St. Peter ? was that the fitting 
 remedy for the evil ? Was not the remedy that of their 
 putting aside partisanship altogether, and regarding St. 
 Paul " not after the flesh," but simply as " the minister by 
 whom they believed," the visible representative of the un- 
 divided Christ, the one Catholic Church .? And, in like 
 manner, surely if party feelings and interests have sepa- 
 rated us from the members of the Roman communion, 
 this does not prove that our Church itself is divided 
 from theirs, any more than that .St. Paul was divided 
 from St. Peter, nor is it our duty to leave our place and 
 join them ; — nothing would be gained by so unnecessary 
 a step ; — but our duty is, remaining where we are, to 
 recognize in our own Church, not an establishment, not 
 a party, not a mere Protestant denomination, but the 
 Holy Church Catholic which the traditions of men have 
 partially obscured, — to rid it of these traditions, to try 
 to soften bitterness and animosity of feeling, and to re- 
 press party spirit and promote peace as much as in us 
 lies. Moreover, let it be observed, that St. Paul was 
 evidently superior in gifts to Apollos, j-et this did not 
 justify Christians attaching themselves to the former 
 
362 Private Judgment. 
 
 rather than the latter ; for, as the Apostle says,- they 
 both were but ministers of one and the same Lord, and 
 nothing more. Comparison, then, is not allowed us 
 between teacher and teacher, where each has on the 
 whole the notes of a divine mission ; so that even could 
 the Church of Rome be proved superior to our own 
 (which we put merely as a hypothesis, and for argu- 
 ment's sake), this would as little warrant our attaching 
 ourselves to it instead of our own Church, as there was 
 warrant for one of the converts of Apollos to call him- 
 self by the name of Paul. Further, let it be observed, 
 that the Apostle reproves those who attached themselves 
 to St. Peter equally with the Paulines or with the disciples 
 of Apollos ; is it possible he could have done So, were 
 St. Peter the head and essence of the Church in a sense 
 in which St. Paul was not .' And, again, there was an 
 occasion when not only their followers were at variance, 
 but the Apostles themselves ; we refer to the dissimula- 
 tion of St. Peter at Antioch, and the resistance of St. 
 Paul to it : was this a reason why St. Peter's disciples 
 should go over to St. Paul, or rather why they should 
 correct their dissimulation ?* 
 
 We are surely bound to prosecute this search after 
 the promised Teacher of truth entirely as a practical 
 matter, with reference to our duty and nothing else. 
 The simple question which we have to ask ourselves is. 
 Has the English Church sufficiently upon her the signs 
 of an Apostle ? is she the divinely-appointed teacher to 
 us ? If so, we need not go further ; we have no reason 
 to break through the divine rule of " being content with 
 such things as we have ; " we have no warrant to com- 
 pare our own prophet with the prophet given to others. 
 
 • [In.answer to this whole argument, vid. supr., p. 103, and vol. I., p. 185.] 
 
Private judgment, 363 
 
 Nor can we : tests are not given us for the purpose. 
 We may believe that our own Church has certain im- 
 perfections ; the Church of Rome certain corruptions : 
 such a belief has no tendency to lead us to any deter- 
 minate judgment as to which of the two on the whole 
 is the better, or to induce or warrant us to leave the one 
 communion for the other. 
 
 s. 
 
 One point remains, however, which is so often felt 
 as a difficulty by members of our Church that we are 
 tempted to say a few words upon it in conclusion, and 
 to try to show what is the true practical mode of meet- 
 ing it. And this perhaps will give us an opportunity of 
 expressing our general meaning in a more definite and 
 intelligible form. 
 
 It cannot be denied, then, that a very plausible 
 ground of attack may be taken up against the Church 
 of England, from the circumstance that she is separated 
 from the rest of Christendom ; and just such a ground as 
 it would be allowable for private judgment to rest and act 
 upon, supposing its office to be what we have described 
 it to be. " As to the particular doctrines of Anglicanism, 
 (it may be urged,) Scripture may, if so be, supply pri- 
 vate judgment with little grounds for quarrelling with 
 them ; but what can be said to explain away the Note 
 of forfeiture, which attaches to us in consequence of our 
 isolated state ? We are, in fact (it may be objected) cut 
 off from the whole of the Christian world ; nay, far from 
 denying that excommunication, in a certain sense we 
 glory in it, and that under a notion, that we are so very 
 pure that it must soil our fingers to touch any other 
 Church whatever upon the earth, in north, east, or south. 
 How is this reconcilable with St. Paul's clear announce- 
 
364. Private yudgment. 
 
 ment that there is but one body as well as one spirit ? of 
 with our Lord's, that ' by this shall all men know', as by 
 a Note obvious to the intelligence even of the illiterate 
 and unreasoning, ' that ye are My disciples, if ye have 
 love one to another ' ? or again, with His prayer that His 
 disciples might all be one, ' that the world may know 
 that Thou hast sent Me, and hast loved them as ThoU; 
 hast loved Me ' ? Visible unity, then, would seem to be 
 both the main evidence for Christianity, and the sign of 
 our own participation in its benefits ; whereas we English 
 despise the Greeks and hate the Romans, turn our backs 
 on the Scotch Episcopalians, and do but smile distantly 
 upon our American cousins. We throw ourselves into 
 the arms of the State, and in that close embrace forget 
 that the Church was meant to be Catholic ; or we call 
 ourselves the Catholics, and the mere Church of Eng- 
 land our Catholic Church ; as if, forsooth, by thus con- 
 fining it all to ourselves, we did not ipso facto forfeit all 
 claim to be considered Catholic at all." 
 
 What increases the force of this argument is, that 
 St. Augustine seems, at least at first sight, virtually to 
 urge it against us in his controversy with the Donatists, 
 whom he represents as condemned, simply because sepa- 
 rate from the " orbis terrarum," and styles the point in 
 question "qusestio facillima," and calls on individual 
 Donatists to decide it by their private judgment* 
 
 * Ego cum audio quenquam bono ingenio prfeditum, doctrinisque libe- 
 ralibus eniditum, quamquam non ibi salus animas coustituta sit, tamen in 
 queestione facillimd sentire aliud quam Veritas postulat, quo magis miror, eo 
 magis exardesco nosse hominem et cum eo colloqui ; vel si id non possim, . 
 saltern Jitteris quae longissime volant [to the nineteenth century ?] attingere 
 mehtem ejus atque ab eo vicissim attingi desidero. Siciit te esse audio talem 
 virum, et ab Ecclesia Catholica, quae sicut Sancto Spiritu pronunciata est, 
 toto orbe diffunditur, discerptum doleo atque seclusum. — Ep. 87, vid. 
 «p. 61. 
 
Private Judgment. 365 
 
 Now this is an objection which we must honestly say 
 is deeply felt by many people, and not inconsiderable 
 ones ; and the more it is openly avowed to be a difficulty 
 the better ; for then there is the chance of its being ac- 
 knowledged, and in the course of time obviated, as far 
 as may be, by those who have the power. Flagrant 
 evils cure themselves by being flagrant ; and we are 
 sanguine that the time is come when so great an evil, as 
 this is, cannot stand its ground against the good feeling 
 and common sense of religious persons. It is the very 
 strength of Romanism against us ; and, unless the 
 proper persons take it into their very serious con- 
 sideration, they may look for certain to undergo the 
 loss, as time goes on, of some whom they would least 
 like to be lost to our Church. If private judgment can 
 be exercised on any point, it is on a matter of the 
 senses ; now our eyes and our ears are filled with the 
 abuse poured out by members of our Church on her 
 sister Churches in foreign lands. It is not that their 
 corrupt practices are gravely and tenderly pointed out, 
 as may be done by men who feel themselves also to be 
 sinful and ignorant, and know that they have their own 
 great imperfections, which their brethren abroad have 
 not, — ^but we are apt not to acknowledge them as 
 brethren at all ; we treat them in an arrogant John 
 Bull way, as mere Frenchmen, or Spaniards, or Aus- 
 trians, not as Christians. We act as if we could do 
 without brethren ; as if our having brethren all over 
 the world were not the very tenure on which we are 
 Christians at all ; as if we did not cease to be Christians, 
 if at any time we ceased to have brethren. Or again, 
 when our thoughts turn to the East, instead of recol- 
 lecting that there are sister Churches there, we leave it 
 to the Russians to take care of the Greeks, and to the 
 
366 Private jfudgment. 
 
 French to take care of the Romans, and we content 
 ourselves with erecting a Protestant Church at Jeru- 
 salem, or with helping the Jews to rebuild their temple 
 there, or with becoming the august protectors of Nes- 
 torians, Monophysites, and all the heretics we can hear 
 of, or with forming a league with the Mussulman against 
 Greeks and Romans together. Can any one doubt that 
 the British power is not considered a Church power lay 
 any country whatever into which it comes ? and if so, is 
 it possible that the English Church, which is so closely 
 connected with that power, can be said in any true sense 
 to exert a Catholic influence, or to deserve the Catholic 
 name ? How can any Church be called Catholic, which 
 does not act beyond its own territory ? and when did the 
 rulers of the English Church ever move one step beyond 
 the precincts, or without the leave, of the imperial power ? 
 " pudet haec opprobia nobis 
 Et dici potuisse, et non potuisse refelli." 
 
 There is indeed no denying them ; and if certain per- 
 sons are annoyed at the confession, as if we were thereby 
 putting weapons into our enemies' hands, let them be 
 annoyed more by the fact, and let them alter the fact, and, 
 they may take our word for it, the confession will cease 
 of itself. The world does not feel the fact the less for its 
 not being confessed ; it is felt deeply by many, and is 
 doing incalculable mischief to our cause, and is likely to 
 hurt it more and more. In a word, this isolation is doing 
 as much as any one thing can do to unchurch us, and it 
 and our awakened claims to be Catholic and Apostolic 
 cannot long stand together. This then is the main 
 difficulty which serious people feel in accepting the 
 English Church as the promised prophet of truth, and 
 we are far indeed from undervaluing it, as the above 
 remarks show. 
 
Private Judgtnent. 367 
 
 But now taking the objection in a simply practical 
 view, which is the only view in which it ought to cbncern or 
 perplex any one, we consider that it can have legitimately 
 no effect whatever in leading us from England to Rome. 
 We do not say no legitimate tendency in itself to move 
 us, but no legitimate influence with serious men, who 
 wish to know how their duty lies. For this reason — 
 because if the note of schism on the one hand lies 
 against England, an antagonist disgrace lies upon Rome, 
 the Note of idolatry. Let us not be mistaken here : 
 we are neither accusing Rome of being idolatrous nor 
 ourselves of being schismatical, we think neither charge 
 tenable ; but still the Roman Church practises what looks 
 so very like idolatry, and the English glories in what 
 looks so very like schism, that, without deciding what 
 is the duty of a Roman Catholic towards the Church of 
 England in her present state, we do seriously think that 
 members of the English Church have a providential 
 direction given them, how to comport themselves 
 towards the Church of Rome, while she is what she is. 
 We are discussing the subject, not of decisive proofs, 
 but of probable indications and of presumptive notes of 
 the divine will. Few men have time to scrutinize ac- 
 curately ; all men may have general impressions, and 
 the general impressions of conscientious men are true 
 ones. Providence has graciously met their need, and 
 provided for them those very means of knowledge which 
 they can use and turn to account. He has cast around 
 the institutions and powers existing in the world marks 
 of truth or falsehood, or, more properly, elements of 
 attraction and repulsion, and notices for pursuit and 
 avoidance, sufficient to determine the course of those 
 who in the conduct of life desire to approve themselves 
 to Him. Now, whether or no what we see in the Church 
 
368 Private Judgment. 
 
 of Rome be sufficient to warrant a religious person to 
 leave her (a question, we repeat, about which we have 
 no need here to concern ourselves), we certainly think it 
 sufficient to deter him from joining her ; and, whatever 
 be the perplexity and distress of his position in a com- 
 munion so isolated as the English, we do not think he 
 would mend the matter by placing himself in a com- 
 munion so superstitious as the Roman ; especially con- 
 sidering, agreeably to a remark we have already made, 
 that even if he be schismatical at present, he is so by the 
 act of Providence, whereas he would be entering into^ 
 superstition by his own. Thus an Anglo-Catholic is 
 kept at a distance from Rome, if not by our own excel- 
 lences, at least by her errors. 
 
 That this is the state of the Church of Rome, is, alas ! 
 not fairly disputable. Dr. Wiseman has lately attempted 
 to dispute it ; but if we may judge from the present state 
 of the controversy, facts are too clear for him. It has 
 lately been broadly put forward, as all know, that, what- 
 ever may be said in defence of the authoritative documents 
 of the faith of Rome, this imputation lies against her 
 authorities, that they have countenanced and established 
 doctrines and practices from which a Christian mind, 
 not educated in them, shrinks ; and that in the number of 
 these a worship of the creature which to most men will 
 seem to be a quasi-idolatry is not the least prominent.* 
 Dr. Wiseman, for whom we entertain most respectful feel- 
 ings personally, ahd to whom we impute nothing but what 
 is straightforward and candid, has written two pamphlets 
 on the subject, towards which we should be very sorry 
 to deal unfairly; but lie certainly seems to us in the for- 
 
 • [This is an exaggeration ; I have reconsidered the whole subject in mj 
 essay on " Development of Doctrine " in 1845 j ^^^ "i Jny letter to Dr, 
 Pusey in 1866.] 
 
Private ^udgmenL 369 
 
 mer of them to deny the fact of these alleg-ed additions 
 in the formal profession of his Church, and then, in the 
 second, to turn right round and maintain them. What 
 account is to be given of self-contradiction such as this, 
 but the fact, that he would deny the additions, if he 
 could, and defends them, because he can't ? And that 
 dilemma is no common one ; for, as if to show that what 
 he holds in excess of our creed is in excess also of primi- 
 tive usage, he has in his defence been forced upon citations 
 from the writings of the Fathers, the chief of which, as 
 Mr. Palmer has shown, are spurious ; thus setting before 
 us vividly what he looks for in Antiquity, but what he 
 cannot find there. However, it is not our intention to 
 enter into a controversy which is in Mr. Palmer's hands ; 
 nor need we do more than refer the reader to the various 
 melancholy evidences, which that learned, though over- 
 severe writer, and Dr. Pusey, and Mr. Ward adduce, in 
 proof of the existence of this Note of dishonour in a sister 
 or mother, towards whom we feel so tenderly and reve- 
 rently, and whom nothing but some such urgent reason 
 in conscience could make us withstand so resolutely. 
 
 So much has been said on this point lately, as to in- 
 crease our unwillingness to insist upon a subject in itself 
 very ungrateful ; but a reference to it is unavoidable, if 
 we would adequately show what is the legitimate use 
 and duty of private judgment, in dealing with those notes 
 of truth and error, by which Providence recommends to 
 us or disowns the prophets that come in His name. 
 
 What imparts an especial keenness to the grief which 
 the teaching in question causes in minds kindly disposed 
 towards the Church of Rome, is, that not only are we 
 expressly told in Scripture that the Almighty will not 
 give His glory to another, but it is predicted as His 
 especial grace upon the Christian Church, " the idols He 
 
 VOL. II. 24 
 
370 Private Judgment. 
 
 shall utterly abolish ;" so that, if Anglicans are almost 
 unchurched by the Protestantism which has mixed itself 
 up with their ecclesiastical proceedings, Romanists also 
 are almost unchurched by their superstitions. Again 
 and again in the Prophets is this promise given, " From 
 all your filthiness and from all your idols will I cleanse 
 you ;" " Neither shall they defile themselves any more 
 with their idols ;" " Ephraim shall say, What have I to 
 do any more with idols ?" " I will cut off the names of 
 the idols out of the land." And the warning in the New 
 is as strong as the promise in the Old : " Little children, 
 keep yourselves from idols ;" " Let no man beguile you of 
 your reward in a voluntary humility and worshipping of 
 Angels ;" and the Angel's answer, to whom St. John fell 
 down in worship, was " See thou do it not, jor I am thy 
 fellow-servant; worship God."* 
 
 It is then a Note of the Christian Church, as decisive 
 as any, that she is not idolatrous ; and any semblance of 
 idolatrous worship in the Church of Rome as plainly dis- 
 suades a man of Catholic feelings from her communion,, 
 as the taint of a Protestant or schismatical spirit in our 
 communion may tempt him to depart from us. This is 
 the Via Media which we would maintain ; and thus with- 
 out judging Rome on the one hand, or acquiescing in 
 our own state on the other, we may use what we see, as 
 a providential intimation to us, not to quit what is bad 
 for what may be worse, but to learn resignation to what 
 we inherit, nor seek to escape into a happier state by 
 suicide. 
 
 6. 
 
 And in such a state of things, certain though it be that 
 St. Austin invites individual Donatists to the Church, on 
 
 * This passage proves, on the one hand, that such worship as St. John 
 offered is wrong ; on the other, that it does not unchurch, unless we can 
 fancy St. John guilty of mortal sin. 
 
Private yudgmcnt. 371 
 
 the simple ground that the larger body must be the true 
 one, he is not, he cannot be, a guide of our conduct here. 
 The Fathers are our teachers, but not our confessors or 
 casuists ; they are the prophets of great truths, not the 
 spiritual directors of individuals. How can they possibly 
 be such, considering the subject-matter of conduct t 
 Who shall say that a point of practice which is right in 
 one man, is right even in his nekt-door neighbour 1 Do 
 not the Fathers differ from each other in matters of 
 teaching and action, yet what fair persons ever imputed 
 inconsistency to them in consequence .■• St. Augustine 
 bids us stay in persecution, yet St. Dionysius takes to 
 flight ; St. Cyprian at one time flees, at another time 
 stays. One bishop adorns churches with paintings, 
 another tears down a pictured veil ; one demolishes the 
 heathen temples, another consecrates them to the true 
 God. St. Augustine at one time speaks against the use 
 of force in proselytizing, at another time he speaks for it. 
 The Church at one time comes into General Council at the 
 summons of the Emperor ; at another time she takes the 
 initiative. St. Cyprian re-baptizes heretics ; St. Stephen 
 accepts their baptism. The early ages administer, the 
 later deny, the Holy Eucharist to children.* Who shall 
 say that in such practical matters, and especially in points 
 of casuistry, points of the when, and the where, and the 
 by whom, and the how, words written in the fourth cen- 
 tury are to be the rule of the nineteenth ? 
 
 We have not St. Austin to consult ; we cannot go to 
 him with his works in our hand, and ask him whether 
 they are to be taken to the letter under our altered cir- 
 cumstances ? We cannot explain to him that, as far as 
 
 ♦ [All these are merely points of discipline or conduct ; but whether 
 there is a visible Church, and whether it is visibly one, is a question which 
 as it is answered affirmatively or negatively changes the essential idea and 
 the entire structure of Christianity.] 
 
372 Private Judgment. 
 
 the appearance of things go, there are, besides our own, 
 at least two Churches, one Greek, the other Roman ; and 
 that they are both marked by a certain peculiarity which 
 does not appear in his own times, or in his own writings, 
 and which much resembles what Scripture condemns as 
 idolatry. Nor can we remind him, that the Donatists 
 had a Note of disqualification upon them, which of itself 
 would be sufficient to negative their claims to Catho- 
 licity, in that they refused the name of Catholic to the 
 rest of Christendom ; and moreover, in their bitter hatred 
 and fanatical cruelty towards the rival communion in 
 Africa. Moreover, St. Austin himself waives the question 
 of the innocence or guilt of Caecilian, on the ground that 
 the orbis terrarum could not be expected to have accurate 
 knowledge of the facts of the case ;* and, if contemporary 
 judgments might be deceived in regard to the merits of 
 the African Succession, yet, without blame, much more 
 may it be maintained, without any want of reverence to 
 so great a saint, that private letters which he wrote four- 
 teen hundred years ago, do not take into consideratioii 
 the present circumstances of Anglo-Catholics. Are we 
 sure, that had he known them, they would not have led 
 to an additional chapter in his Retractions ? And again, 
 if ignorance would have been an excuse, in his judgment, 
 for the Catholic world's passing over the crime of the 
 Traditors, had Czecilian and his party been such, much 
 more, in so nice a question as the Roman claim to the 
 orbis terrarum at this day, in opposition to England and 
 Greece, may we fairly consider that he who condemned the 
 Donatists only in the case of " quaestio facilliipa," would 
 excuse us, even if mistaken, from the notorious difficulties 
 which lie in the way of a true judgment. Nor, moreover, 
 .would he, who so constantly sends us to Scripture for 
 * Epp. 93, 144. 
 
Private Judgment. 373 
 
 the Notes of the Church Catholic, condemn us for shun- 
 ning communions, which had been so little sensitive of 
 the charge made against them of idolatry. But even let 
 us suppose him, after full cognizance of our case, to give 
 judgment against us ; even then we shall have the verdict 
 of St. Chrysostom, St. Basil, and others virtually in our 
 favour, supporters and canonizers as they were of Mele- 
 tius. Bishop of Antioch, who in St. Augustine's own day 
 lived and died out of the communion of Rome and 
 Alexandria.* 
 
 We do not think then that St. Austin's teaching can 
 be taken as a direction to us to quit our Church on 
 account of its incidental Protestantism, unsatisfactory as 
 it is to have such a Note lying against us. And it is 
 pleasant to believe, that there are symptoms at this time 
 of our improvement ; and we only wish we could see as 
 much hope of a return to a healthier state in Rome, as 
 is at present visible in our own communion. There is 
 among us a growing feeling, that to be a mere Establish- 
 ment is unworthy of the Catholic Church ; and that to 
 be shut out from the rest of Christendom is not a subject 
 of boasting. We seem to have embraced the idea of the 
 desirableness of being on a good understanding with the 
 Greek and Eastern Churches ; and we are aiming at 
 sending out bishops to distant places, where they must 
 come in contact with foreign communions ; and though 
 the extreme vagueness, indecision, and confusion, in 
 which our theological and ecclesiastical notions at present 
 lie, will be almost sure to involve us in certain mistakes 
 and extravagances, yet it would be unthankful to " de- 
 spise the day of small things," and not to recognize in 
 these movements a hopeful stirring of hearts, and a reli- 
 
 * [As has been said above, this statement is too absolute ; at least, Atha- 
 nasius was reconciled to Meletius.] 
 
374 Private Judgment. 
 
 gious yearning after something better than we have. But 
 not to dwell unduly on these public manifestations of a 
 Catholic tendency, we should all recollect that a restora- 
 tion of intercommunion with other Churches is, in a cer- 
 tain sense, in the power of individuals. Every one who 
 desires unity, who prays for it, who endeavours to further 
 it, who witnesses for it, who behaves Christianly towards 
 the members of Churches alienated from us, who is at 
 amity with them, (saving his duty to his own communion 
 and to the truth itself,) who tries to edify them, while he 
 edifies himself and his own people, may surely be con- 
 sidered, as far as he himself is concerned, as breaking 
 down the middle wall of division, and renewing the 
 ancient bonds of unity and concord by the power of 
 charity. Charity can do all things for us ; charity is at 
 once a spirit of zeal and of peace ; by charity we shall 
 faithfully protest against what our private judgment 
 warrants us in condemning in others ; and by charity we 
 have it in our own hands, let all men oppose us, to restore 
 in our own circle the intercommunion of the Churches. 
 
 There is only one quarter from which a cloud can 
 come over us, and darken and bewilder our course. If, 
 nefas dictu, our Church is by any formal acts rendered 
 schismatical, while Greek and Roman idolatry remains 
 not of the Church, but in it merely, denounced by Coun- 
 cils, though admitted by authorities of the day, — if our 
 own communion were to own itself Protestant, while 
 foreign communions disclaimed the superstition of which 
 they are too tolerant, — if the profession of Ancient Truth 
 were to be persecuted in our Church, and its teaching 
 forbidden, — then doubtless, for a season, Catholic minds 
 among us would be unable to see their way. 
 
 July, 1841. 
 
375 
 
 XIV. 
 JOHN DAVISON. 
 
 I. 
 
 THE author on whose character and writings we are 
 now proposing to remark, Mr. Davison, may be con- 
 sidered as an instance of the operation of a mysterious 
 law which is often witnessed in the course of history. 
 It is surely mysterious, considering what the world is, 
 how it needs improvement, and moreover that this life 
 is the appropriate time for action, or, what is empha- 
 tically called in Scripture, work, that they who seem 
 gifted for the definite purpose of influencing and edify- 
 ing their brethren, should be allowed to do so much less 
 than might be expected. For instance, no one certainly, 
 it must be admitted, can pretend to measure the effect 
 produced by as much as Mr. Davison has been ap- 
 pointed to say and to do ; still, left to ourselves, we are 
 apt to grudge that the powers of such a mind as his 
 have not had full range in his age and country, and 
 that a promise of such high benefits, should, owing to 
 circumstances beyond man's control, have been but 
 partially accomplished. Here is one of the most 
 original thinkers of his day, deep, serious, reverential, 
 various, suffered to end his course, as it may be called, 
 prematurely; absorbed moreover during the greater 
 
376 John Davison, 
 
 part of it in employments which, though sacred in their 
 nature and honoured by a special blessing, and zeal- 
 ously fulfilled by him, yet apparently might have been 
 left to those who had not his particular endowments ; 
 and, as the consequence of those employments, stinted 
 in his apprehension and possession of dogmatic know- 
 ledge, so that what he has written is rather true in 
 principle and admirable in sentiment, than complete in 
 system. Here is a man of the cast of Hooker and 
 Butler, fitted to be a doctor of the Church, yet confined 
 pretty much to the contemplation of the first principles 
 of Christian doctrine, and allowed but once or twice to 
 give utterance to the truths on which he lived, and to 
 manifest the flame which burned unceasingly within 
 him. 
 
 Of course in such cases we may rest quite secure that 
 all is ordered according to the most perfect wisdom, 
 though we do not understand it. But what deserves 
 notice in the case before us is, that the bent and temper 
 of Mr. Davison's own mind did but concur in and carry 
 out this external disposition of things, which we have 
 been noticing, as if within and without one Agent was 
 present, or as if his inner man was instinctively resign- 
 ing itself to his outward destination. At the time of his 
 death, the common report was that he had ordered all 
 his manuscripts to be destroyed ; and in the Preface 
 to the present collection it is pointedly observed that 
 " nothing hitherto unpublished appears in it." We also 
 learn from the Preface that the same feeling has operated 
 to the maintenance of an almost absolute silence about 
 the author's history. It professes to give " the few 
 brief notes of his life, whicli those who are entrusted 
 with his Remains feel to be all that they are permitted 
 here to set down. A Memoir greatly more detailed, and 
 
Fellow of Oriel. 377 
 
 so far more satisfactory, might very easily have been 
 compiled. But in this, and in many like particulars, the 
 wishes of those who survive have given way to their 
 decided conviction of what his would have been." — 
 P. iii. 
 
 Moreover, if we may continue our remarks on this 
 subject, it would appear as if there were something even 
 in the outward bearing and demeanour of this revered 
 person, which answered the same purpose of concealing 
 from the gaze of the world what he was. We do not 
 write as being his friends or acquaintance ; he was of a 
 generation before us ; we do not write as if in apology 
 or explanation ; but we write as thinking him a man 
 of a great mind, and as feeling, we cannot deny, some 
 curiosity and pleasure in contemplating an instance, the 
 more interesting because not uncommon, of the secresy 
 and solitude in which great minds move, as if, like our 
 Lord's forerunner, they would not force themselves on the 
 world, but were bidding it, if it thought worth while, to 
 " go out into the wilderness " after them. In the Preface 
 to these Remains, it is observed of their author, that 
 " perhaps his whole character might be cast in a mould 
 of severer goodness than this age could easily endure," 
 — p. v., reminding us of the plaintive distich, " Few were 
 the admirers of Thucydides, son of Olorus." " They 
 that wear soft clothing are in kings' houses." We can 
 conceive such an one, epicurean or academic, refined, 
 fastidious, accomplished, indolent, spending an aimless 
 life amid society and literary leisure, falling in with the 
 subject of these remarks, and shrinking from the reality 
 of mind which he could not appreciate, and disgusted 
 with the staidness or abruptness which he could. 
 
 The confessions of such a man of the world, small in 
 the midst of his endowments and advantages, have lately 
 
378 John Davison, 
 
 got abroad. " I saw D. the other day in town," he 
 says : " it is quite astonishing that with such an under- 
 standing and such acquirements, his manners should be 
 entirely odious and detestable. How you could live with 
 him without hating him, I do not understand. Clever 
 as he is, there must be some great defect in his mind, or 
 he would try to make himself a little more sufferable." — 
 Letters, p. 58. Of course such a judgment can give pain 
 to no friend of the subject of it. Probably Lord Dudley 
 was very offensive in his own way, and found his match. 
 Of course he would have no perception that this was 
 the case ; and feeling that he had been struck by some- 
 thing very hard, would consider, not that he had him- 
 self impinged, but that he had been assailed. Certainly 
 men of reverential and religious tempers are apt to hide 
 themselves from those who are not worthy of them ; nay, 
 it must be confessed toOj they often put on a very rough 
 jacket for their special benefit. The above record then 
 on the part of a man, whom with all his estimable points 
 few persons will take as an authority, is not one which 
 deserves dwelling on for its own sake ; yet it may be 
 taken, not without profit, as a specimen of the judg- 
 ments, so often found in history, so often at this day, 
 which the world forms of those who are endeavouring 
 to live within the veil, and to view things as He views 
 them who sees all things as they really are. Men of 
 cultivated minds consider great divines or great philo- 
 sophers merely in an intellectual point of view, and 
 think they have a right to be admitted at once to their 
 familiarity, when they meet them. They have no ob- 
 jection to exclusiveness, when talent and education, or 
 again when wealth and station, are made the tickets of 
 admission ; but they are very much disgusted, when they 
 find the exclusiveness conducted on quite another prin- 
 
Fellow of Oriel. 379 
 
 ciple, when the brotherhood of mind or the talisman of 
 good society avails them nothing, and when they find 
 themselves without, not within, the privileged circle. 
 Till this " odious " and " insufferable " reserve is intro- 
 duced, they will bear with a great deal in the way of 
 difference, singularity, or, as they call it, even error of 
 opinion. A man, for instance, to take what principally 
 meets our view at this time, may go a great way in 
 Catholic opinions, and will be allowed to say and do 
 what would be considered monstrous in another, if he 
 does but conform himself to the existing state of things, 
 adopt the tone of the world, take his place in the 
 social body, and become an integral member, and a 
 breathing and living portion, and a contented servant, 
 of things which perish. But if he will not put an es- 
 tablishment or a philosophy in the place of the Church, 
 if he will not do homage to talent as such, or wealth 
 as such, or official eminence as such, then he is out 
 ■ of joint with the age, and not only his words, but his 
 look and his air, are like a pail of cold water thrown 
 over every man of the world whom he meets. Thus, to 
 .instance the phenomenon in an extreme case, Hume, as 
 is well known, said he never fell in with a religious man 
 who was not melancholy. 
 
 The writer of the Preface to these Remains makes 
 one remark about Mr. Davison, which serves with much 
 appositeness to illustrate what we have been saying : 
 
 " He always showed himself particularly anxious to favour and 
 
 befriend all kinds of moral worth, as distinct from mere ability. 
 
 His pupils knew him to be especially on his guard against the 
 
 ' idolizing of intellectual talent or successful study. He saw nothing 
 
 admirable in it, except as guided by an energetic sense of duty" 
 
 This seems written at Lord Dudley by anticipation : 
 the writer proceeds : 
 
3^0 John Davison, 
 
 "The following extract of a letter is inserted as expressive of 
 this feeling : ' I am cast upon this place ' (Colstersworth) ' by the 
 division of my journey between York and London. It is a great 
 spot, for it has Newton on the right, and Sanderson on the left; 
 My mind turns most to Boothby Pagnel. Newton 1 can only 
 admire. Sanderson is nearer to imitation, though still far above 
 it. What a delight it is to dwell upon the memory of such a man ! 
 much more would it be to be able to live like him.' " — P. v. 
 
 In like manner the following noble passage occurs in 
 his note upon his Sermon on Education : 
 
 " Our civilization itself, what is it but a speculative or a mecha- 
 nical phantom, except as it gives larger scope to the exercise of 
 virtue, private, social, or religious ? We might as well be in the 
 woods, where our forefathers were, as in the midst of looms and 
 engines, pictures and libraries, or in the midst of the enjoyments of 
 pleasure or accommodation which these things produce, unless we 
 lift our views to a point of moral elevation above them, and are 
 intent on some better object which the conscience can approve, as 
 the proper aim and business of the responsible creatures of God," 
 —P. 250. 
 
 2. 
 
 We have got into our subject without such intro- 
 ductory formalities as are usual and befitting ; and now 
 it is too late to do more than notice our irregularity. 
 And, since the " qualis ab incepto " is always more re- 
 spectable than inconsistency, we hope to be allowed, as 
 we have begun, so to proceed, not without something of 
 arrangement in our own minds, but with not a very per- 
 ceptible one, and with frequent digressions as they occur, 
 and at last perhaps without any plan or order at all. It 
 will be recollected that we have been speaking of that 
 economy of reserve and secresy, to which our author 
 seems to have been inclined, as other similar minds ; 
 and now we will point out another of its secondary 
 causes, or, as they may be called, its phenomena. We 
 
Fellow of Oriel. 3 8 1 
 
 mean the difficulty he seems to have had in expressing 
 himself, and the consequent effort which, not only com- 
 position, but even conversation, or we may say speech, 
 cost him, and the effect of this difficulty visible in his 
 writings. 
 
 It would be great presumption, except in one who 
 knew such a person wellj to attempt to analyze the 
 causes in his partipplar case for this peculiarity, and the 
 manner in which it operated ; and we have no sort of 
 intention of incurring it. Yet, viewing him not in himself, 
 but, as it were, in the abstract, as an historical portrait 
 offered for our contemplation, it may be not without its 
 use to set down, not what actually were the causes, but 
 some of what might be its causes, and what are the 
 .auses of this characteristic in similar .instances. We 
 suppose it then to be undeniable, that there are persons, 
 whose minds are full of thought even to bursting, in 
 whom it is pent up in a strange way, and in whom, 
 when it at last forces itself out in language, it does so 
 with the suddenness, brevity, completeness, and effec- 
 tiveness (if the comparison be allowed) of a steam-boiler. 
 The more fully formed is the image of truth in the mind, 
 the greater task is it to find door or window for it to 
 escape by ; 5i.nd, when it makes egress, perhaps it comes 
 head-foremost. Again, minds which vividly realize con- 
 clusions, often are irritated at the necessity of drawing 
 out premisses ; or they are inadequate to the task ; or 
 they are impatient of many words ; or they are at a 
 loss -yvhere to begin ; or they despair of conveying their 
 meaning to others ; or they find a relief to their feelings 
 in some sudden and strong outbreak. When, under 
 such circumstances, there is a habit of self-government, 
 and a watchful control of feeling and language, there 
 will pfteii be an abruptness of speeph in consequence ; 
 
382 John Davison, 
 
 or an unseasonable silence ; or an uneasy patience, an 
 unaccountable constraint, a composure without repose ; 
 or a variable jerking manner, as if a man were riding 
 his horse with a tight rein. Or sometimes, to recur to 
 our former figure, he will let off the steam in the shape 
 of humour. Or when the mind feels its own separation 
 from others, its strangeness, its isolation, a distance of 
 demeanour in general society is the consequence, which 
 apparently argues a want of frankness and cordiality, or 
 a recklessness, which may be set down to arrogance and 
 pride. All these mental states are destructive of ease of 
 deportment ; to which must be added what is sometimes 
 called consciousness, the painful perception of the pre- 
 sence of self, quite distinct from self-importance and 
 self-conceit, though looking like them to undiscrimi- 
 nating eyes. 
 
 Mr. Davison's style is an illustration of what we have 
 been saying. We consider its characteristic to lie in the 
 force and vividness of its separate expressions, phrases, 
 or sentences ; and, though there is always a danger of 
 generalizing beyond our data, we are tempted to pro- 
 nounce that he is more happy in his words and clauses 
 than in his conduct of an argument. His style, viewed 
 in its general tenor and substance, is but one of those 
 imperfect manifestations of the inner man, which are 
 characteristic of him. He does not compose well ; there 
 is a want of vigour and skilfulness in putting his argu- 
 ments and views out of hand ; he is circuitous and un- 
 ready in the management of his matter, and inelegant in 
 his grammatical constructions. And where this is the 
 case, that very force and richness in the lesser portions 
 of the composition, which we would specially ascribe to 
 Mr. Davison, does but increase of course the appearance 
 of elaborateness, we may even add of heaviness, in it. 
 
Fellow of Oriel. 383 
 
 viewed as a whole. They act as weights upon it, not as 
 supports. It may be added that, in consequence of what 
 may be called his unreadiness, he promises more than 
 he fulfils, and gives us the appearance of a mere dwelling 
 on the style more than on the argument, and of select- 
 ing his words and phrases more for the sake of em- 
 bellishment than of illustration. Nor is it any disparage- 
 ment of him to say, that in his case his words do 
 sometimes go beyond what they convey, though this at 
 first sight may sound like a paradox; for in truth, he 
 had deeper thoughts than he could well bring to light ; 
 so that his language is rather the index of his mind than 
 of his sense, of the objects which possessed him than of 
 the subject-matter which he treated. And again, we 
 may bear to say that his style is laboured in its details ; 
 for what is this but to allow that he is so engrossed with 
 realities which are close at hand, and feels it so difficult 
 to shake oif their impression, that he is but a second-rate 
 artist in bringing out those broad lights and effects, and 
 in taking those general views, which are so clear and so 
 persuasive in the literature of the day, because they are 
 so superficial .'' We will add, that his apparent negli- 
 gence in composition is sometimes so great, as almost 
 to look like intention. What, for instance, if it be worth 
 noticing, can be more inartificial and ungraceful, than 
 the following commencement, literally the first sentence, 
 of a Sermon delivered, if we mistake not, at an anniver- 
 sary meeting of some very high persons ? 
 
 " In the following discourse I propose, first, to consider these 
 words of the Apostle, as they encourage to active usefulness in hfe ; 
 next to speak of the value and advantage of societies instituted for 
 the furtherance of objects of public utility ; and lastly, to advert to 
 some of the peculiar objects which come under the care of your 
 ancient incorporated Society." — Remains, p. 205. 
 
384 yohn Davison, 
 
 And these three separate heads, when entered upon, 
 prove to be so distinct from each other, so entire in 
 themselves, that we are presented rather with three half- 
 finished sermons, preached one after another, than with 
 the bond fide treatment of one subject, such as we might 
 fairly anticipate on such an occasion. But we shall have 
 more to say about this Sermon by-and-by, in a different 
 connexion. 
 
 3- 
 We have been speaking of Mr. Davison's style, as 
 unattractive in its general course, yet as happy in its 
 separate portions, as being a sort of type of that 
 economy of reserve which an unseen " hand wrapped 
 round him. Of its excellence indeed, in its separate 
 portions, it is impossible to speak too highly ; the 
 energy of his mind discharges itself concisely and 
 forcibly on the matter in hand, with the flashing power 
 of artillery directed against a fortress ; at other times 
 with the calm clear light of some sudden rent in a 
 dark sky. His brilliant sententiousness, the beauty 
 of his images, the terseness and truth and freshness 
 of his expressions, their graphic distinctness, — in a 
 word, his remarkable originality, an originality more 
 remarkable in style even than in matter, give a charm 
 to his discussion which amply compensates for whatever 
 is wanting in its set, in the vigour and ease of its move- 
 ments, or the knitting and suppleness of its joints. The 
 mere man of letters will desiderate purity and harmony 
 of language ; but Mr. Davison is sui similis beyond any 
 other religious writer of his day, and, though it is very 
 difficult to analyze what it consists in, there is a certain 
 definite character, one and the same, which all persons 
 will recognize, running through his sayings, his conversa- 
 tion, and his writings, which belongs to no one else. If 
 
Fellow of Oriel. 385 
 
 any writer has reason to have his name turned into a 
 grammatical root, surely as Cicero is the author of 
 Ciceronian Latin, so we may be permitted without 
 offence to call Mr. Davison's style Davisonian. It was 
 probably in allusion to this peculiarity that a French 
 refugee, resident in Oxford in his day, used to say of his 
 language that it was like Minerva, issuing armed cap-d- 
 pie from Jupiter's head. No better illustration can be 
 given of it than the short dialogue about truth and 
 accuracy, which for a different purpose is recorded in 
 the Preface. It is an instance of a remark, grave and 
 sensible indeed in itself, but striking especially from the 
 manner in which it is conveyed. 
 
 " 'D. That is rather a minute accuracy. But I have a respect 
 for all accuracy, for all accuracy is of the noble family of truth! 
 Answ., And is to be respected accordingly.' D. 'Even to her 
 most mental servant.' " — P. lo. 
 
 Accordingly, few persons seem to have left more of 
 their sayings in the memory of their friends than Mr. 
 Davison ; and that quite as much from their being like 
 their author, and reminding them of one they loved and 
 admired, as because of their intrinsic value. Some of 
 them are in their circumstances of a lighter character. A 
 college servant used to tell a story how, when Mr. Davi- 
 son in his younger years was pro-proctor, he chased an 
 undergraduate all the way from Magdalen Bridge to the 
 Star Hotel, where he caught him ; by which time the 
 narrator, who was his " bull-dog," was, to use a familiar 
 word, completely winded. Mr. Davison, however, was 
 as even in his breathing and sedate in his deportment as 
 before the race begun, and thereupon spoke his first and 
 last words to his captive, " Sir, it has not availed." One 
 day a pupil burst into his dressing-room full of hope and 
 joy to tell him that the report was, that he had got the 
 
 VOL. II. 25 
 
3 86 John Davison, , 
 
 Newdigate ; he replied with mock gravity, " Do you 
 come here, Mr. Rickards, to occupy me with rumours ?" 
 On another occasion he interrupted a rambling reasoner 
 in a low tone, " Stop, stop, you reason uncomfortably." 
 We hope these instances, which of course only occur at 
 random out of an indefinite number of similar ones, are 
 Jiot beneath the purpose for which we select them, nor 
 are inconsistent with the reverent feelings which we en- 
 tertain and wish to express towards the subject of them; 
 but they seem to us to have their value, as serving to 
 depict a mind under control, relieving itself briefly and 
 strongly, not without a dash of humour in the expres- 
 sion, by way of discharging itself the more safely. 
 
 But it is hardly fair to the reader, to say nothing of 
 the claims of our author himself, to record the mere col- 
 loquial effusions of a great mind. In order to form a 
 judgment of the vividness, felicity, and graceful festivity 
 of Mr. Davison's language, we extract the following locus 
 classims, as it may be called, from his review of Edge- 
 worth's Professional Education. He has told us in a 
 previous page that " in a series of Essays Mr. Edgeworth 
 has traced different plans of education, calculated for 
 the wants of the several professions. His plans begin 
 at a very early period, and undertake to regulate the 
 habits, studies, and sometimes the amusements of the 
 boy, in almost every particular, with a view to his civil 
 employment in future life. The advantage to be secured 
 by this concentration of his tastes and studies is the 
 enabling him to fulfil his station well, and enlarge his 
 attainments, as applicable to it."— P. 422. This theory 
 was supremely distasteful to Mr. Davison, and he thus 
 comments on it : — 
 
 " Instead of making well-educated men, the object of his system 
 is tO' make pleading and prescribing machines. So far does he 
 
Fellow of Oriel. 387 
 
 caiTy the subdivision of his relative aims, that the knowledge of 
 the first and. plainest truths of religion, is made to belong to a 
 particular profession. The little uncassocked clergyman, of six 
 years old, is to be made acquainted with the being of a God, in a 
 proper philosophical way. But his lay-brothers have no such 
 regular instruction provided for them. It is no part of their 
 business. They must recollect that they are not designed for the 
 Church, and follow their proper profane studies. Who knows but 
 that they may live to hear their brother in the pulpit, and get some 
 religion from him there ? 
 
 " The lawyer is to have his appropriate management as soon as 
 he begins to speak. A nurse of good accent is to be procured for 
 him, to modulate his first babbling to the right tone of the bar. He 
 is to prattle for a fee. He is afterwards to be encouraged to a little 
 ill-bred disputatiousness for the same worthy purpose. Mr. Edge- 
 worth quotes a trite passage of Roman history to show that the 
 Romans bestowed much care upon the elocution of their children, 
 and repeats over again the tale of Cornelia and the Gracchi. The 
 Romans thought it a grace in their children to speak their own 
 language well. So thinks every one. The peculiarity of Mr. Edge- 
 worth's mind consists in making it exclusively a lawyer's accom- 
 plishment. 
 
 " The physician that is to be, as soon as he can wield a spade, is 
 to have his garden in imitation of the great Sir Charles Linnseus, 
 and vex the ground with his botanical arrangements. The culture 
 of opium and rhubarb will be his first step to the prescription of 
 them. 
 
 " The infant soldier is to be made a hero as soon as possible. 
 Indeed no time is to be lost with him, for Mr. Edge worth recom- 
 mends that he be accustomed to the presence of domestic animals 
 without terror, ' and be taken to the exhibitions of wild beasts, that • 
 he may be familiarized to their forms and cries.' His nurse too 
 must be chosen for her aptitude to the duties of rearing a great 
 captain. When the defender of his country is grown up to be a 
 boy, his sports should be of the military cast. Without making too 
 much parade, he should begin to work upon some fortification in 
 the corner of a shrubbery. He must be trained also to a sense of 
 Tionour, and abhor the disgrace of corporal punishment as a soldier 
 ought. 
 
 " Such is the grand scheme of partition to be made among the 
 professional aspirants according to their destinations of future life. 
 
388 John Davison, 
 
 Religion, a good elocution, gardening and other amusements, a 
 manly constitution of body and mind, and a tenderness of honour, 
 we have always thought to be good for boys as sensitive rational 
 beings capable of instruction, health, and pleasure. , To make 
 cunning sport for them, and defraud them of the natural right of 
 amusing themselves in their own way, does not agree with our 
 feelings of kindness for them. It sophisticates them in the very 
 point where they should be most free and natural. But to delegate 
 the moral qualities, such as a just impression of religion and a 
 right sense of honour, to a station or title, or a piece of cloth, or to 
 make the slightest difference in these respects, is to confound the 
 essence of morality, and run deliberately insane upon a spurious 
 conceited wisdom." — P. 452 — 454. 
 
 We have already alluded to Mr. Davison's images': they 
 are severe, yet graceful ; just and natural, yet' poetical. 
 They are sometimes introduced into the gravest dis- 
 cussion, yet without any detriment to its keeping. For 
 instance, Mr. Edgeworth, as we have seen, is for settling 
 every one's profession in his cradle, which he con- 
 siders, to use his own words, "in a family where there 
 are more sons than one, would prevent all injurious com- 
 petition. As all the brothers would early know that 
 they were to pursue different modes of life, there could 
 never be any crossing interests or jealousy of particular 
 talents, though there might and ought to be among them an 
 emulation of general excellence" Mr. Davison observes 
 upon the hint thrown out in the last words : 
 
 ■"A more unlikely method of inspiring emulation, or leaving any 
 scope for it, we can hardly conceive, than a complete separation, at 
 an early age, -of every feeling and pursuit among them. It is like 
 setting horses on their speed against each other, by running them ■ 
 on different grounds that they may not jostle." — P. 418. 
 
 In a later part of the same paper he observes : 
 
Fellow of Oriel. 389 
 
 " To make the connexion of them (the liberal studies) with the 
 immediate technical business of any profession apparent, is no part 
 of our manner of arguing. If they cherish and invigorate the mental 
 powers, it is enough. When the tide flows strong in the main sea 
 we shall never doubt but it will, in due time, fill every channel, 
 creek, and harbour." — P. 444. 
 
 In his review of the charges of the Edinburgh Review 
 against Oxford and the controversy which they occa- 
 sioned, he speaks of the fallacy of making the Uni- 
 versity examinations in the last century the measure of 
 what was taught in Oxford, when " everything of im- 
 portance, in the way of examination, and by far the 
 greatest part in the way of instruction, was done," 
 whether rightly or wrongly, " within the walls of each 
 particular college, and could be seen only there." This 
 takes him to the image contained in the last extract 
 for a fresh illustration : 
 
 "When the reviewer is disposed to propagate the belief that 
 either the subjects or the state of learning in the place were to be 
 judged of by those open examinations, mere relics of forni, he pro- 
 ceeds upon what we know to be a most gross historical mistake ; 
 and a person might as well record the rise of the tide by measures 
 taken on a shore which the sea had abandoned." — P. 463. 
 
 Presently he pursues the subject thus : 
 
 [The Review] " enters upon a train of reflections which suppose 
 all along the existence of some forms or statutes at Oxford at this 
 day in force, to ' chain down the mind and check inquiry.' Acquit- 
 ting the critic of unfairness, we cannot so easily acquit him of 
 palpable false reasoning about forms and statutes. These things 
 may be of very little efficacy, to do either good or harm. If the 
 public mind is not conformable to them, they are virtually abolished 
 while they subsist. So it was in Oxford, according to the author's 
 statement, that 'the new doctrines were received and taught' in 
 the face of the old exercises : that is, the genius of the place was 
 not so feeble but that it could carry a few Unks of the old chain 
 about it, after it had sprung into liberty."— P. 371. 
 
5 go John Davison, 
 
 ' These illustrations are sufficient for the purpose 
 which has led us to cite them ; but there are others 
 of a different kind, introduced as if rather for his own 
 refreshment and recreation in the midst of a dry dis- 
 cussion, than for the sake of the subject. Sometimes 
 they have a character of grave humour ; sometimes they 
 are almost eccentric. The Edinburgh Reviewer had 
 been labouring to show that what he considered in a 
 former publication to be beyond the elements of mathe- 
 matics might be included within those elements, by the 
 time at which he was then writing. Mr. Davison uses a 
 figure quite his own on the occasion ; — not to confute 
 a quibble, but to vent his disdain of it : 
 
 "The idea of, a floating boundary, which is included in that 
 criterion, is rather exceptional ; but, granting it, still we cannot 
 suppose that science has made such a flight during the last six 
 years, active as it has been, that conic sections, which Professor 
 Playfair in 1804 ranked beyond the elements, should now be con- 
 sidered as only ' elementary.' Does the boundary of the elements 
 advance so rapidly ? Let the empire abroad be extended in all 
 quarters ; but we do not wish, upon every new conquest, to have 
 'Ca&pomceria put in motion."^?. 369. 
 
 In his Considerations on the Poor Laws, a matter-of- 
 fact subject, if any other, in the midst of a grave para- 
 graph, he suddenly breaks out into the vivid and ener- 
 getic image contained in the following extract ; which 
 is almost as startling, where it occurs, as if in the middle 
 of a college lecture he had attempted to fulfil it in his 
 own person : 
 
 " At the same time, projects of amendment have no right to be 
 very sanguine in the extent of their aims . For the particular in- 
 terests of the country, which ■ are the most nearly affected by the 
 constitution of our poor laws, are by no means beholden to those 
 laws for all the injury or benefit of which they are capable. We 
 must not suppose, therefore, that, if those interests were set as 
 
Fellow of Oriel. 39 1 
 
 completely at ease, as the most satisfactory removal of all that is 
 objectional in those laws could set them, they would immediately 
 pass at once into a state of extraordinary high order, vigour, and 
 perfection, like so many smooth spheres, spinning on their axes, in 
 free space, along the national ecliptic. This is no more than a 
 truism, resulting from the complexity of all such affairs ; and I 
 mention it," etc., etc. — P. 569. 
 
 This extraordinary capriccio has brought to our minds 
 a reminiscence of Bishop Butler, which, we believe, is a 
 tradition at Stanhope, and may, for what we know, have 
 before this got into print, viz., that he was a very hard 
 rider. Cannot we trace something of a common cause 
 in these two similar minds, grave, contemplative, re- 
 served, profound, manifesting itself in the violent exercise 
 of the one, and the sallies of wit in conversation or in 
 writing of the other } 
 
 If the reader is tired of these specimens, it is because 
 we have no business to transplant them out of their 
 proper soil, into, as it were, a nursery garden, where 
 they lose their meaning ; yet, at the risk of this damage, 
 we are tempted to give one more, and it shall be the 
 image of a tree, and that growing out of the rock of 
 that same dry Essay on the Poor Laws. He is con- 
 trasting the national debt with the then poor law 
 system : 
 
 " It is quite possible for a very opulent country to be most seri- 
 ously shaken, and distvirbed by obstructions and embarrassments 
 in the balance of a sum, or the making up of a debt, which may be 
 absolutely insignificant in comparison of its whole opulence. It 
 makes a vast difference, whereabout in the sum of its public affairs, 
 that difficulty of balance or debt may happen to rest. If it affects 
 the first sources of supply, if it cramps and disorganizes the system 
 of the labour of the country, by converting labourers into mere 
 spenders and consumers, the real detriment produced by it is in- 
 finitely greater than it would be if there be a defalcation from its 
 means to the same nominal extent in any other part of its svstem. 
 
392 John Davison^ 
 
 ... A nation would better afford to owe its stockholders five times 
 the amount. It eats, in fact, like a canker, at the root of our re- 
 sources, for the labour of the kingdom, with its myriads of working 
 hands, is that fibrous root, which extracts for us the first element of 
 our growth and sap of circulation.. If this root of labour makes 
 its way, and can strike its last fibres freely, the timber will thrive 
 in its strength of trunk, and pride of branch and foliage ; if it does 
 not, the finest suns and rains overhead will not be able to make 
 the plant grow. It is commonly said of the palm tree, that no 
 weight laid upon its head can kill it. I have not heard whether 
 naturalists have made the other experiment upon that indestructible 
 species, but I should suppose that a much smaller force would be 
 sufficient to do it a serious mischief at the root." — Pp. 566, 567. 
 
 5. 
 We have above remarked on the inequality of ex- 
 cellence between the course of Mr. Davison's composi- 
 tion and his separate sentences and phrases. Some of 
 the above extracts may seem to disprove this distinc- 
 tion, and, as has already been remarked, it is true that 
 he is at one time far more successful than at another. 
 He sometimes writes without effort, and at another he 
 is like an Atlas with the world on his shoulders. We 
 supposed at first that this was owing to increasing 
 expertness in composition, and that his last writings 
 were his more vigorous and well compacted : but this is 
 by no means the case. His review of Mr. Edgeworth's 
 Professional Education, the best sustained and most 
 self-possessed, is also one of the earliest of his writings. 
 His Inquiry into the Origin of Sacrifice, not to say his 
 Lectures on Prophecy, which, eloquent as they are, 
 can neither of them be called easy compositions, were 
 published thirteen or fourteen years later. In truth, it 
 is very plain that the subject was the cause of the differ- 
 ence ; and so we think it will be found respecting him 
 generally, that according as he approaches religious 
 
Fellow of Oriel, 393 
 
 topics, his power of sustaining an argument flags, and 
 his course becomes impeded ; but as soon as he has no 
 overshadowing awe to subdue him, he is able again to 
 write with vigour and grace. Hence his occasional Ser- 
 mons, though very valuable in point of matter, are some 
 of his least satisfactory specimens of style. Again, his 
 Essay on Baptismal Regeneration, which appeared as 
 a Review, begins at a distance from its subject, and 
 with an elasticity of step, which is just the quality we 
 generally desiderate in him ; but he loses it page by 
 page as he gradually comes to walk amid sacred truths 
 and solemn arguments. We shall quote the opening, 
 as a rare specimen of what may be called momentum in 
 style ; it has all the weight of Johnson, with a lighter, 
 more springy tread : 
 
 . . . "We wish openly to disavow the officious service of labour- 
 ing for an accommodation of opinion, between persons who may 
 have their reasons for avoiding all approaches to it. Because, first, 
 we cannot pretend to the authority which ought to go along with 
 the assumption of such an office ; and next, not being willing to 
 concede any part of our own belief, we will adopt no principle of 
 accommodation between others, except the firm and temperate 
 statement of our own opinions, which could be conciliatory only 
 just so far as the grounds of them are convincing ; and lastly, we 
 are weU aware that nothing is less welcome to persons strongly 
 engaged in a debate than the neutrality of a peace-maker, who is 
 likely with many to provoke the anger he would disarm, by his sus- 
 pected censure of it. And therefore, as we have no special call, in 
 our pages, to this offensive and ungracious moderation, we request 
 that we may not incur the prejudice and evil report of it with any 
 description of men 
 
 " Controversy, when it is carried on in the sound and manly 
 spirit of investigation, is so favourable to the advancement or the 
 more firm establishment 'of our knowledge, that we shall never pre- 
 sume to check or decry it. While it is so conducted, religion is 
 only more securely rooted by its friendly violence. Indolent and 
 implicit knowledge is roused by it to a more honest discipline ; and 
 
394 John Davison, 
 
 error flies before it If sorne degree of animation, inspired perhaps 
 more by the ardour of conflict in discussion than by the exact un- 
 prejudiced concern for the subject, should insinuate itself, we still 
 should regard that accident as a venial one, which may render the 
 advocates on either side more alert, and quicken their research 
 without perverting their principles of judgment. The more severe 
 and jealous accuracy, which we must be contented often to take 
 from, personal feeUngs, may in the end produce that best of all 
 results, a more certain and a better reasoned apprehension of the 
 truth. In this light our infirmities may serve us better than our 
 duties. They may give us a vigour of research, which those more 
 tardy motives might fail to supply ; for we never hail the progress 
 of truth so much as when we hope ourselves to share her triumph." 
 . . .—P. 280. 
 
 Such is the vigour and exactness of his gait wh«n his 
 mind is at ease ; but in proportion as it becomes anxious, 
 serious, or abstracted, and 
 
 " Ajax strives some rock's vast weight to throw. 
 The line too labours and the words move slow." 
 
 6. 
 
 An intimate friend of Mr. Davison's, Mr. Keble, was 
 once asked what he considered to be Mr. Davison's 
 habitual and ruling idea. It was at the time when his 
 Visitation Sermon, preached at St. Helen's, Worcester, 
 which is reprinted among his " Remains," had just made 
 its appearance. Mr. Keble took it up and turned to the 
 page in it in which the following sentence occurs, and 
 put his finger upon the words which we have printed in 
 italics : 
 
 "A clergyman's virtue .... consists not in singularities. All 
 Christian excellence is in great and substantial duties ; in the doc- 
 trines of faith cordially embraced and applied ; in the love of God ; 
 in charity to man ; in temperance, in integrity, in humility ; in the 
 control of the appetites and desires ; in prayer and other exercises 
 of piety ; in the fixed love and admiration of heavenly things" — 
 P. 269. 
 
Fellow of OrieL ■ 395 
 
 We should say that Mr. Davison's writings abundantly 
 confirm this testimony, — if we understand it to ascribe 
 to him, as we consider was meant as his special charac- 
 teristic, an awful contemplation of the providential deal- 
 ings of God with man. This is the occupation in which 
 he is engaged through his greater works, and to which 
 we find him drawn even amid subjects of secular in- 
 terest. His Discourses on Prophecy and Inquiry into 
 the Origin of Sacrifice are but simple exercises of this 
 habit of mind, and it manifests itself again and again in 
 the occasional Sermons and Essays of which the Volume 
 of his Remains mainly consists. It is remarkable, there 
 is very little dogmatic teaching in his writings, as in the 
 case of Bishop Butler's ; vast as is the store of holy me- 
 ditations which the articles of the faith provide, and 
 essential as they are to all Christian life, yet these were 
 not the characteristic subjects of either the Bishop or Mr. 
 Davison. But they each seem to have been absorbed 
 in the vision of the Scheme of Religion Natural and 
 Revealed, of the divine judgments, the divine ways, the 
 divine works ; and at this great sight, the latter, not to 
 speak of Butler, seems to have been unable to go 
 forward, and, somewhat after the pattern of the man 
 greatly beloved, to have "set his face towards the 
 ground, and " as regards the great objects of faith them- 
 -selves, to have " become dumb." 
 
 In the Sermon just now quoted, he enumerates the 
 parts of Christian knowledge, with a selection, and a 
 relative prominence, remarkably illustrative of this 
 characteristic of his mind : 
 
 "And here, if I did not hasten to a conclusion, I might enter 
 upon an inviting subject, in descanting upon the excellence and in- 
 trinsic pleasure of Christian knowledge, with its kindred pursuits, 
 whatever they may be. The mystery of our Redemption ; the dis- 
 
396 yohn Davison, 
 
 pensations of God ; the economy of His all-wise governing Provi- 
 dence ; the life, death, doctrines, and mercies of the Holy Jesus, 
 our Saviour ; our own moral nature ; our duties ; the prospects of 
 our future immortal state ; the history of the Church of Christ in 
 its brighter and its darker periods ; the fortunes of its propagation ; 
 with the lives of its pastors, sages, and martyrs ; these are subjects 
 for which other literature can furnish no equivalent in dignity of 
 character, and which, if cultivated, will yield to none in point of 
 interest to our feelings. No good reason, therefore, can be assigned 
 why our taste should be directed, by preference, to other studies, 
 even if motives of duty did not intervene to decide our choice." — 
 P. 275. 
 
 In like manner his Assize Sermon on the text, " For 
 rulers are not a terror," etc., begins by reminding us that 
 "our own nature and the scene of life around us" are 
 " equally the subject of Divine Revelation, and the im- 
 provement of the one " is " designed by every light 
 thrown upon the constitution of the other" (p. 179) ; 
 and'proceeds in a similar strain ; speaking presently of 
 our being able " to perceive the agency of a divine 
 appointment in the affairs of men, deterring and re- 
 straining crime, supporting its first efforts of virtue, and 
 providing for a system of improvement and discipline 
 among men, by the very frame of society itself, by 
 sanctions temporal as well as eternal, the terror of the 
 first being only a present, sensible anticipation of the 
 other" (p. igo). In his Sermon at Deptford he finds 
 his favourite subject on the sea, and breaks out into 
 a meditation, which we are prompted by its beauty to 
 transfer to our pages : 
 
 " Its [this earth] intercepting seas were meant to provoke his 
 enterprise ; its divided climates and countries to diversify his en- 
 joyments and his arts for obtaining them. The dispersion of his 
 kind was thus counteracted by the bonds of a mutual communication. 
 The works of God were to be seen and known in the great waters. 
 And how rich and various in its stores is this world made, to create 
 
Felloiv of Oriel. 397 
 
 the desire, invig'orate the faculties, and reward the labour of that 
 master being, who has received for a time the delegated possession 
 of it. Sea and land yield him their increase. Productions are 
 removed to a distance to be recommended by their cost and peril of 
 acquisition. The whole society of the species consolidated by the 
 intervention of a mutual want, and the variety of a partial priva- 
 tion ; and many wholesome qualities of morals and understanding, 
 with the general circulation of arts and knowledge growing out of 
 the meaner pursuits, which are secured in their activity by the pro- 
 gressive demands of our mere physical nature. The worse is here 
 made to serve the better part ; for that some may eat the fruit or 
 wear the clothing of foreign lands, what labour and skill to be laid 
 out in the attempt, and how richly freighted does the vessel return, 
 in experience, in discovery, in information, in the value of hard- 
 ships patiently endured, and of dangers bravely encountered. And 
 this commerce of the world is daily becoming an object which the 
 wise and good man may contemplate with the greater pleasure, as 
 he sees it purged of one evil which an inveterate avarice had long 
 been permitted to reckon among its acquired possessions." — Pp. 
 216, 217. 
 
 To this "fixed love and admiration" of the provi- 
 dences of Almighty Wisdom we trace many of the 
 characteristics of Mr. Davison's writings. One is that 
 embarrassment and constraint to which we have already 
 referred, and which is analogous to what a subordinate 
 feels eveiy day when told to do a thing in the presence 
 of superiors. If we consider how awkward a young 
 teacher or a schoolmaster feels when bid to catechise 
 when his instructor or employer is by, or the anxiety 
 and distrust of self with which a well-conducted child 
 undergoes an examination, we shall have some insight 
 perhaps into the diffidence and fear with which Mr. 
 Davison touches on sacred subjects. Again, it seems 
 to have led him to elaborate embellishment of style, 
 from the feeling with which devout persons spend time, 
 thought, and substance on the decoration of churches. 
 There is often an evident prolonged dwelling on the 
 
398 John Davison, 
 
 subject on which he is speaking, or the low tones of 
 a yearning affection, or a beating of heart, or a glow 
 of delight, or an importunate exhibition, or a simple 
 earnest statement, which show what is going on within 
 him. Of course it is very difficult to show this in iso- 
 lated passages detached from the context, and chosen 
 by the arbitrary feeling and taste of individual critics, 
 yet we will attempt, even at this risk, to convey what 
 we mean to the reader, leaving it to him, when he has 
 once entered into our view, to find more apposite pas- 
 sages for himself, and not doubting that he will enter 
 into it. 
 
 Sometimes, as in the following extract, his deep 
 thoughts make him eloquent, not constrained ; but the 
 principle is the same : 
 
 " Sacred religious knowledge," he says, in a Sermon from the 
 Note to which we made our opening extract, " if it feed not 'the 
 flame of a holy and obedient life, is vain and unprofitable like the 
 rest. For what is knowledge ? Evil spirits have it, and in great 
 perfection. Bad men may have it. But the soul, actuated by its 
 knowledge to obedience, and governed by this divine principle jo 
 the love of God, this it is which is the glory of saints, and which 
 peoples heaven, and turns the schools of education into nurseries 
 of God's Church, and does His work in the world, and makes the 
 ' world and His Church to be the nurseries of His eternal kingdom." 
 —P. 236. 
 
 Again, the following passage brings to remembrance 
 that calm, tender, eager, wistful, unearthly tone, which 
 is characteristic of a vefy different author of a very 
 different age — St. Cyprian : 
 
 " The devout apprehension of God is better than the unhallowed 
 speculation of His works. . . . All other knowledge, if unaccom- 
 panied with this, or not ministering to it, is but a learned ignorance, 
 a stir and curiosity after shadows and trifles. For God, and our 
 duty, and our last end, and the doctrines of salvation and huinility 
 
Fellow of Oriel. 399 
 
 which illuminate the Christian faith, are the greatest things that we 
 can know, and the highest objects upon which we can exercise our 
 understanding." — P. 234. 
 
 In the sentences with which he concludes his Origin 
 of Sacrifice, we find the same contemplative spirit, the 
 same affectionate reverence for the saints of other days, 
 the same solemn waiting for the future, which have ap- 
 peared in some former extracts : 
 
 " Of the first generations of men, and of their faith and piety, a 
 brief memorial is all that remains. We might wish to see further 
 into the lives and notions of the progenitors of our race, but the 
 wish is denied to us ; and our researches in that line must rest 
 where the only authentic record terminates our view. But this 
 memorial of the Old World, brief as it is, is not insufficient to the 
 ends of a Christian contemplation. 'Abel was a righteous man, 
 and God testified of his gifts ; ' and ' Enoch walked with God, and 
 God took him ; ' and ' Noah was a just man, and perfect in his 
 generations.' These are the great relics of piety and virtue, spared 
 to us out of the ruins of time and the deluge. They are monuments 
 which perpetuate the names of those servants of God from the 
 beginning of things, and occupy the annals of His Church beyond 
 the flood with an imperishable inscription to their memory. We do 
 not look back into the distant antediluvian scene as to a dreary 
 void. We find there the instances of their approved faith and 
 obedience, and therein a bond and a motive to our sympathy of 
 communion with them. 
 
 " If their information, in the method of their redemption and 
 ours, was less, whilst they remained upon earth, than was given to 
 some later ages, perhaps by this time the defects of it have been 
 supplied, and its measure made complete. But if not opened to 
 them already, the full revelation of that mystery, we know, is only 
 delayed. It is only deferred tiU the time arrives which shall sym- 
 metrize all irregularities of faith and knowledge ; when the Church 
 of God of every age shall be but ' one general assembly,' and ' the 
 spirits of just men made perfect,' being gathered to the holy Jesus, 
 , the mediator of the new covenant,' shall receive the completion of 
 whatever has been wanting in their faith, by a direct illumination 
 frorn the Fountain of Light."— Pp. 162^ 163. 
 
400 yohn Davison, 
 
 To make one more extract, in illustration of the point 
 under review : — who will not discern in the following 
 passage that same devout sedulous earnestness to offer 
 his best eloquence to the divine honour, which is so well 
 understood in regard ^to the obligations and dedications 
 of pious opulence ? 
 
 " The doctrine of the Gospel had been revealed, and not revealed. 
 It was dark with the excess of the mystery, till it shone in the 
 person of the Saviour ; in Him was seen ' the fulness of grace and 
 truth.' For then was come the time when the plan of grace and 
 redemption was to be revealed by being accomplished, and the 
 doctrines of it to be made explicit objects of faith. These doctrines 
 were no more to be wrapped in figure, nor taught by the tongue of 
 prophecy, which spoke the secrets of heaven to earthly ears, and 
 represented things which the eye had not yet seen. They were 
 things too precious to he buried any longer, hke gold in the Indian 
 mines, to ripen against a distant day; or to shine darkly, as jewels 
 at the bottom of the great deep, the abyss of God's counsels. They 
 were brought forth in their lustre, and planted, where they now are 
 seen, on the forehead of the evangelical revelation. Thus we 
 receive the completion of type and of prophecy, and the luminous 
 Crown of Christian faith." — Pp. 156, 157. 
 
 7- 
 The reverence which Mr, Davison's writings show 
 toward sacred subjects, they also pay in free and un- 
 grudging measure to the institutions and the persons 
 whereby he had learned his knowledge of them. We 
 do not augur much good of any one who does not in 
 the first instance throw himself into the system under 
 which he has been born, accept the voices of the 
 teachers, divines, and pastors, by which he is provident 
 tially surrounded, as the voice of heaven, and identify 
 their pattern and their faith with the holy doctrine 
 which they have been the instruments of conveying to 
 him. Of course, such implicit confidence cannot last in 
 
Fellow of Oriel. 40 1 
 
 all cases, as time goes on, for there is but one trutli, 
 whatever it is, whereas there are " many kinds of voices 
 in the world ;" and it is not to be anticipated that all 
 minds everywhere, as they grow morally and intellec- 
 tually, will just happen felicitously to concur in the 
 respective systems in which they find themselves. And 
 moreover, as regards the multitude of sects, there cannot, 
 from the nature of the case, be any loyal attachment to 
 them on the part of their individual members, seeing 
 they do not call for it, or provide any object for its exer- 
 cise. So far from it, their very principle commonly is, 
 that every one is as able to judge as another, that 
 every one should follow his own judgment, and that 
 they are narrow-minded and superstitious who do not. 
 However, as regards the members of any Christian 
 community of long standing, with ranks and offices, 
 with a succession of divines, and with a traditionary 
 body of doctrine, that is, any community which asks 
 for their allegiance and trust, that heart and mind must 
 be in a very unsound state which does not from the 
 first, without formal deliberation, but spontaneously and 
 generously, accord it. Certainly with such a temper Mr. 
 Davison would appear to have no sort of sympathy, 
 which is the more remarkable, for he is just such a per- 
 son as, from his peculiar manner of writing and speak- 
 ing, a superficial observer might have set down as a man 
 of what is called "original mind;" that is, one who de- 
 spises all who have gone before him, and employs him- 
 self in framing new truths expressly for the benefit of 
 the nineteenth century. On the contrary, we suppose 
 scarcely a writer can be produced, who in the same com- 
 pass (that is to say, in the Volume containing his mis- 
 cellaneous publications and Remains, a thick one, but 
 still only one, and pf which two hundred pages are on 
 VOL. II. 26 
 
402 yohn Davison, 
 
 politics, economy, and law,) has introduced, in one way 
 or other, a respectful mention or eulogy of so many of 
 our writers, and that of different schools. Never cer- 
 tainly was an author further removed from " setting up 
 for himself" than the subject of these remarks. He 
 speaks of Hooker's as "a great judgment, with which I 
 reckon it almost a pledge of the truth of any opinion to 
 agree " — {^. in); "of the incomparable Bishop Taylor," 
 " the high authority of his mind and reason, which is as 
 great as any can be," and " his freedom of strength of 
 thought," and " his immortal work, the ' Ductor Dubitan- 
 tium ' " (p. 30) ; presently of " the services of Hooker's 
 great and capacious mind, the eloquent wisdom of 
 Taylor, and the patient and laborious learning of the 
 excellent Hammond " (p. 96) ; of his "affection to the 
 memory, and respect to the orthodox learning, of Ham- 
 mond," ibid. ; again, of Sanderson, in language which has 
 already been quoted ; of Bacon, as " an author whom it 
 is much safer to take as an authority than to attempt to 
 copy " (p. 441) ; of " our own virtuous and learned Bishop 
 Bull, whose mind was much nurtured in the sentiments of 
 the primitive Church " (p. 260) ; of Tillotson, as one of 
 "our best divines" (p. 345); of Burke, as "our im- 
 mortal statesman, whose eloquence is inferior only to his 
 more admirable wisdom " (p. 442). 
 
 This characteristic in Mr. Davison will go far to 
 account for certain opinions or avowals which we find 
 in his writings, and in which it is very obvious that we 
 ourselves, for instance, should be unable to follow him. 
 He put himself, as it were, into the hands of the authors 
 he respected. A friend of his and ours was once asked, 
 " Why Mr. Davison did not attempt the interpretation 
 of the Apocalypse .'" he answered, that Mr. Davison had 
 expressed to him that overwhelming sense of Mede's 
 
Fellow of Oriel. 403 
 
 powers, which made it seem quite presumptuous in him 
 to attempt it after him. And accordingly, in his Dis- 
 course upon the " Prediction of the great Apostasy," we 
 find him speaking of the system contained in the Apo- 
 calypse as having given " scope to the exercise of Mede's 
 capacious understanding." Probably we owe to Mede, 
 not only what he did not write in way of comment on 
 the Apocalypse, but in a measure what he did write ; 
 though doubtless we owe it to the provisions of the War- 
 burton Lecture that he committed himself to the theory 
 to which we allude, viz., that the prophecies concerning 
 Antichrist have been fulfilled in the Church of Rome. 
 That is, he was bound by the very foundation which gave 
 occasion to his Discourses to take this side of the con- 
 troversy ; and the following passage, with which he in- 
 troduces his contribution to it, is sufficient to suggest 
 how much he may have been unconsciously biassed by 
 his deference to the authority which exacted it of him : 
 
 " As the distinguished prelate, the founder of this Lecture, had it 
 in view, as one object of his institution, to enforce a special refer- 
 ence to those parts of prophecy which will fall within my present 
 discourse, by bringing them under your notice I shall comply with 
 that his particular design, and at the same time prosecute the 
 inquiry into the use and inspiration of the Scripture oracles, which 
 I have wished to follow in a settled course and order, and with a 
 more extended view. As to this one subject of prophecy, on which 
 his mind was intent, he has not only prescribed it to others, but he 
 has cultivated it himself, and that with so much strength of reason 
 and eloquence of discussion, in one of those learned and argumenta- 
 tive discourses which he delivered in this place, that the author has 
 in a manner surpassed the founder, by anticipating, in this argument 
 at least, with so much skill and success, the purpose of his institu- 
 tion." — Prophecy, Discourse X. 
 
 It will be observed that the author here says that it 
 was "one object" of Warburton to secure lectures against 
 
404 John Davison, 
 
 the Church of Rome, whereas the words of the endow- 
 ment, we believe, speak of Lectures " to prove the truth 
 of revealed religion in general, and of the Christian in 
 particular, from the completion of the prophecies of the 
 Old and New Testament, which relate to the Christian 
 Church, and especially to the apostasy of papal Ronie." 
 We believe we are correct in saying, that in the great 
 controversy between the Roman and Anglican divines 
 in the reign of Charles II. and James II., the topic of 
 Antichrist was never brought forward ; its revival is due 
 to Bishops Newton, Warburton, and Hurd, men of not 
 very serious or spiritual minds, in the middle of the fol- 
 lowing century. 
 
 There is another eminent person for whom he has a 
 great respect, and to whose memory we should be un- 
 just, if we did not mention the fact, — Bishop Jewel, 
 Parties impeached ought always to have every possible 
 advantage given them, and, if testimonies to character 
 can possibly avail in what is a question of fact. Bishop 
 Jewel certainly should have the benefit of a witness so 
 very different in mind and temper from himself And 
 we have another reason for citing Mr. Davison's testi- 
 monial ; it is drawn up in such very choice and signi- 
 ficant language, that, even were we disposed to be unfair, 
 we should not have the heart to pass over what is as 
 pregnant in meaning as beautiful in expression : 
 
 " Had all the serious and learned divines of our Church to give 
 their voice in favour of the one man whom they would hold forth as 
 the greatest light of the Reformation,— as the person whose mind 
 had most fully comprehended and laboured upon the whole compass 
 of reformed tr\itji, apd whose writings do still preserve the roost 
 highly sanctioned memorial of it,- — we know not whether they 
 would name any other than him, who, having received from the 
 great fathers of the Reformation the office of unfolding, complete 
 in all its parts, that truth which they with their faithful voices had 
 
Fellow of Onel. 405 
 
 proclaimed among us, first reduced and recorded our whole national 
 creed with its illustration and evidence, Bishop Jewel. He, with 
 a more leisurely survey of the bearing of every doctrine than could 
 be taken even by the leading reformers themselves, who, in the first 
 effort and agoiiy of their work, with rude and noble simplicity, 
 threw down the fabric of error, and hewed the granite from the 
 quarry, and brought it for the building, he, coming in the close of 
 their labours, executed and perfected all that they had prepared or 
 done, as much as any one man can be said to have done it. To 
 the theological inquirer he is a master-builder of the system of our 
 doctrine. His formal and deliberate judgment, therefore, is of the 
 greatest value." — Pp. 300, 301, 
 
 Presently he adds, that Jewel's Defence of his Apo- 
 logy " may be reckoned perhaps the most accurately 
 digested system of reformed doctrine, as far as it goes, 
 the most scrupulously and deliberately worded, which 
 our Church produced in its debate with the Church of 
 Rome." — P. 312. 
 
 What makes this testimony of the greater value is, 
 that Mr. Davison, in spite of his reverent and admiring 
 temper, is not indiscriminate in his praise. He has his 
 antipathies and dislikes ; and it will serve to give some 
 further notions of his theological system, on which we 
 have imperceptibly fallen, to state who are the objects 
 of them. This will be pretty evident by two or three 
 clauses or expressions from his various works. Light- 
 foot, he says, "is one of the last writers to deserve our 
 confidence, either for his perspicuity as a scholar, or his 
 justness of thinking as a divine (p. 60) ; though he owns 
 him (p. 62) as a " really learned and good man." Speak- 
 ing of Bochart, he says, '' Here is a person, a prodigy of 
 learning," yet "setting the example of" a "hcentious 
 theology" (p. 144). He speaks of "the rash positions 
 of Clopperburch, Heidegger, and Witzius (p. 96) ; and 
 of certain " superficial ideas of Witzius," whom he calls a 
 
4o6 John Davison, 
 
 "foreign divine." He speaks of some arguments of 
 Carpzov and Leidekker, as " plan^ inepta et futilia " 
 (p. Ill, note); is disrespectful towards Buddeus (p. 128); 
 considers certain representations of Warburton as " most 
 unsatisfactory or erroneous" (p. iSl)> and observes that 
 that writer "had no dislike of bold ingenuity, not free 
 from paradox" (p. 152). Although he speaks respect^ 
 fully of the continental Reformers, he says, " We do not 
 require any foreign aid, either to ascertain or uphold 
 our own belief" (p. 317), and refuses "to accept them 
 as arbiters or witnesses in our own doctrine" (p. 318). 
 He speaks of Beccaria, Voltaire, and the Empress 
 Catherine as "all foreigners," and adds, "perhaps 
 there is a vulgar taste in many of our speculators at 
 home to admire the wisdom of other countries, as we 
 do their fashions " (p. 486). 
 
 Considering the hereditary and habitual opinions of 
 his day, it is not wonderful that he does not look upon 
 the Fathers as the spokesmen and witnesses of a far 
 more pure and religious age than our own ; yet it is 
 remarkable, still, how different his tone is concerning 
 them from that of most of his contemporaries. Speak- 
 ing of an opinion on the Origin of Sacrifice in " modern 
 theology," >vhich contradicted theirs, he says : 
 
 " This, at the best, is a cheerless and unsatisfactory state of the 
 controversy. For, although the Fathers of the Church are neither 
 to be reckoned infallible, nor free from serious error, yet it is a 
 mortification to our charity, in our communion with them, to find 
 that any important opinion which they have taught shall be deemed 
 to be at variance with the foundations of our faith. One would wish 
 to think there might be piety and safety in their error ; although, 
 if we have been blessed in later times with some superior light, 
 there can be no reason for us to retain their mistakes, but only to 
 spare their honour and memory. But when the primitive Fathers 
 took their impression from the Scripture history, concerning the first 
 
Fellow of Oriel. 407 
 
 appointment of Sacrifice, I believe that they derived it by reading, 
 in this instance, with a candour and ingenuousness of mind, which 
 we should do well to imitate." — P. 128. 
 
 The writer of the Preface informs us that Mr. Davison, 
 after he had completed his Origin of Sacrifice, enter- 
 tained an intention of editing a selection from the writ- 
 ings of the early Church, with a view, as he expressed it, 
 of " introducing the study of the Fathers a little, and 
 blending old and new divinity together." — P. x. He also 
 observes, with reference to the additional notes which he 
 now publishes of Mr. Davison's upon that work, that 
 " many of them are references to the Fathers, to the 
 study of whose works he found himself drawn more 
 and more in the later years of his theological reading." 
 — P. xiii. 
 
 8. 
 
 It has been suggested above, that Mr. Davison is rather 
 a t&3^cher.oi principles than of doctrines. This might be 
 illustrated at some length from his separate publications ; 
 the Essay on Baptismal Regeneration is of course doc- 
 trinal, but, with this exception, nearly every one of them, 
 as it comes, has its own philosophical principle or view 
 which it undertakes to maintain. Thus, in the Essay on 
 Sacrifice, we are taught with great force of reasoning the 
 acceptableness of "will worship," or spontaneous piety, 
 the real obligation and character of Natural Religion, and 
 the mistake of " asking a revelation for every duty of re- 
 ligion," which, he adds, "has been actively employed in 
 the Christian Church, to its misfortune and disturbance, 
 ever since the Reformation," and " has been the master- 
 engine of the Puritan system." — P. 95. In his Assize 
 Sermon he considers " this principle laid down by the 
 Apostle, that lawful power for the adminstration of jus- 
 
4o8 "jfohn Davison, 
 
 tice is not less than the minister of God." — P. 183. In his 
 Sermon before the Corporation of the Trinity House, he 
 lays down the maxim, that " the union of religion with all 
 our graver concerns is in a manner the main, I had almost 
 said the only, work of our lives here." " And," he pro- 
 ceeds, "to point out the consistency of the one with the 
 other, and the strict relation they bear to each other, 
 may be useful to their joint interests. It is a vain faith 
 and piety which does not penetrate the concerns of life." 
 -r-P. 210. In his National School Sermon (which em- 
 braces most important subjects, and in which he was the 
 first distinctly and boldly to lay down positions, at the 
 time almost paradoxes, but now happily taken for granted 
 among religious people), he says that " education will 
 never produce virtue by precepts repeated and truths 
 inculcated," that " the power of reading, or the use of it, 
 ^makes no man either wise or virtuous," and that "no 
 mechanism as yet has invented the wheel to make a nation 
 brave, united, or happy." In his review of Mr. Edge- 
 worth's work, he insists that " the professional character 
 is not the only one which a person engaged in a profes- 
 sion has to support " (p. 424), and " that certain studies 
 improve the judgment and others do not" (p. 434). In 
 his remarks on our criminal law, he discusses the true 
 principles of punishment, capital punishment, the expe- 
 dience of discretionary power, and the like. And his 
 Dialogue between a Christian and a Reformer lays down 
 the duty of religious fear, as of the essence of all true 
 religion. 
 
 Doctrines are the limits or issues of principles, and 
 if the principles be religious, they do legitimately and 
 naturally lead to revealed doctrines, where such revela- 
 tion is made. It vas Mr. Davison's unhappiness to live 
 at a time when Christian doctrine was under a partial 
 
Fellow of Oriel. 409 
 
 eclipse, and hence his principles are far more Catholic, 
 or, we will rather say, positive and defined, than his 
 dogmatic statements. His principles and their definite- 
 ness are his own; his doctrines, or 'rather their indis- 
 tinctness, is the peculiarity of his age. Thus, to take one 
 instance, in his Assize Sermon some excellent remarks 
 occur on the necessity which exists, that the principles of 
 morals and religion should be externally recommended 
 to the individual, as a memento and protection to him, 
 by pubhc positive institutions; and he says, and truly, 
 that the law of the land fulfils this office ; but still, 
 it is observable, he keeps a profound silence about the 
 Institution, directly divine, which has been far more 
 highly honoured and favoured than any national law, 
 and which is the true realization of the principle under 
 review. 
 
 What a most serious witness is it against an age, when 
 so deep and reverential a writer, giving utterance to its 
 meditations in the heart of the most religious University 
 in the world, does not recognize the Church Catholic as 
 an authoritative instrument of teaching, warning, impress- 
 ing, fortifying the minds of a Christian people ; but speaks 
 as he does, of the human law as " their most certain 
 instruction," as their earliest guardian, as furnishing them 
 at least " with some stock of ideas for duty," as " their 
 plainest rule of action ; " nay, as if the Mother of Saints 
 were dead or banished, a thing of past times or other 
 countries, actually applies to the law of the land language 
 which she had introduced, figures of which she exemplified 
 the reality, and speaks of the law as " laying crime under 
 the interdict 3.nd infamy of a public condemnation" ! 
 
 Men cannot at their will change the state of things 
 it would have been unreal in Mr. Davison to have spoken 
 otherwise. Had he said that the law was not the most 
 
4IO , John Davison, 
 
 authoritative teacher in the country, but that the Church 
 had the higher authority and the more urgent influence, 
 he would have said the thing that was not. Had he 
 enlarged on the prerogatives of the Church, he would 
 have been set down as a theorist or a papist for his pains. 
 He was quite bold enough in publishing his Remarks on 
 Education ; and we know an instance of a young clergy- 
 man, not very long afterwards, — one of the many who are 
 indebted to his writings, — preaching a Sermon for some 
 schools near London, in which he innocently ventured 
 to repeat some of the sentiments of Mr. Davison's own 
 discourse, and encountering thereupon the extreme sur- 
 prise and disgust of his principal hearers, who hardly 
 would speak to him when they met in vestry to count 
 the collection, and who pronounced his composition to 
 be " truly a charity sermon, for it required great charity 
 to sit it out." This was, at that day, the award of opin- 
 ions which now are taken as first principles within the 
 Church, which circulate as free as air, and which the stars 
 of the season go about spouting, with great satisfaction, 
 at all meetings, and in any episcopal chapel, secure of 
 the risk of any ism whatever being affixed to their names 
 in consequence. But, if such was the strangeness of 
 opposing Campbell the poet and my Lord Brougham in 
 the year 1827, how great would have been the extra- 
 vagance, thewildness, the inanity, in 1817, of speaking, in 
 the pulpit of St. Mary's, of the Rule and the Majesty 
 and the Jurisdiction and the Sanctions of Holy Church .' 
 We know the fate of St. Paul at Areopagus, and without 
 forgetting the venerated names of Van Mildert and 
 others, then in authority, we suspect they would have 
 been as quite alive as others, though more indulgent, to 
 so unseasonable and abrupt an exhibition of the pearls 
 of the Gospel. 
 
Fellow of Oriel. 4 1 1 
 
 9- 
 
 There is another quality akin to reverence in Mr. 
 Davison, which makes it unsafe to accept his words in 
 their very letter ; and that is his extreme courteousness 
 and consideration towards those for or to whom he is 
 writing. He adopts somewhat of the tone of St. Paul 
 on the occasion just referred to, or before Festus and 
 Agrippa, and takes their part or their side as much as 
 ever he can, sometimes, perhaps, a little too much. It 
 should be recollected, for instance, that the panegyric 
 on the Law of the land to which we have referred, was 
 preached before the Judges ; one is only tempted to 
 regret that he had not sometimes the Church herself to 
 preach before, as well as the Queen's representatives. 
 The same tendency is conspicuous in his praise of War- 
 burton, in the passage from his Warburtonian Lectures 
 above quoted ; a very different view of that bold writer 
 being given us in his Origin of Sacrifice. On such oc- 
 casions we could even suspect our revered author of 
 indulging in a little amiable rhetoric. Surely it is not 
 unnatural to suppose that the extreme goilt with which 
 he sets about the production of Jewel's evidence, arises 
 from the circumstance of its telling so completely on the 
 side of the high Church. 
 
 One other instance shall be given of this peculiarity 
 of Mr. Davison's manner ; and, since it is very tame to 
 carry a critique to an end without some spice of criti- 
 cism, we shall take the opportunity of raising a small 
 quarrel with him upon it, even were it only to show that 
 we have views of our own, and then we shall take our 
 leave of him and his writings. 
 
 Mr. Davison, then, in his Sermon at Deptford, is led 
 to praise Societies for public objects generally, and that 
 
412 John Davison, 
 
 of the Trinity House in particular. We cannot of course 
 quarrel with such a judgment, because, as any one will 
 admit, there is, to say the least, a great deal of truth in 
 it. But what we think ungracious and hard is, that, by 
 way of heightening his eulogy, the author contrasts the 
 Societies of this day with a certain Institution of times 
 past, as if the latter just did not contemplate, and did 
 not do, what present Societies both contemplate and do; 
 whereas it both contemplated and it did what existing 
 Societies, even if they all contemplate, certainly often fail 
 to do, and fully exemplified all those benefits which Mr. 
 Davison justly attributes to the principle of combination 
 itself, — we mean the Monastic Rule. Let our complaint 
 be- clearly apprehended ; Mr. Davison does not merely 
 contrast Monastic with Protestant and other Societies of 
 this day, as if, whereas they both had the same general 
 end, the former failed in what the latter succeeded in 
 effecting; but, what seems to us paradoxical, he denies 
 that the monastic principle is gregarious, co-operative, 
 industrious, practical, and productive. This seems to be 
 contrary to well-known historical fact. His words are 
 these : 
 
 " [The Gospel] is full and positive in requisitions applying to the 
 distributive welfare of society ; insomuch that it may be reckoned 
 one of the most evident perversions of religious doctrine, which in 
 an age of darkness exalted the secluded exercise of a monastic vir- 
 tue as the perfection of a Christian spirit. Read but the discourses 
 of our Saviour, or His parables, or read a page of His apostles, and 
 you will see they all imply, that the persons to whom they are 
 addressed are engaged in the active and mixed duties ; and were 
 they not so engaged, that those discourses and writings might in 
 great measure have been spared. The matter contained in them 
 would have nothing to attach upon ; it would be addressed to beings 
 not in the slate which the instruction supposes, and would be in- 
 structing them in sentiments and offices which their actual occu- 
 pation did not need."^-Pp. 206, 207. 
 
Fellow of Oriel. 4 1 3 
 
 Now it is difficult to do justice to the various thoughts 
 to which this representation gives rise. First of all, is it 
 not a violence to history to speak of " monastic virtue " 
 as "secluded," in the sense here intended, viz., as not 
 "engaged in the active and mixed duties"? Would our 
 author say. that 2. family was secluded from social rela- 
 tions and occupations .'' would he speak of "the secluded 
 exercise of a domestic virtue " .'' for what is a monastery 
 but a family ? and in what sense is it secluded, in which 
 the greater part of the world is not secluded already .■• 
 How was a nun more secluded from active duties in her 
 cloister, who had her duties found for her, than most 
 single women of small means and few acquaintances, 
 who have no duties at all, are secluded now ? The dif- 
 ference is, that the one may walk about as she will, 
 may speak to whom she will, may dress as she will, may 
 read what she will, may visit about if she will, and may 
 do nothing if she will ; and does the exercise of " the 
 active and mixed duties " so depend upon this liberty, 
 that not to have this liberty is to be cut off from that 
 exercise altogether ? Would our author go the length 
 of saying that it is a duty for every young woman to 
 marry, lest she should incur the " perversion " of a dark 
 age.' 
 
 Supposing a monastic life were nothing else than se- 
 clusion in the cloister, would it in consequence have no 
 trials and duties .' Is there not trial, duty, self-denial, 
 of many kinds in a family ">. Is it not as difficult, as it 
 is " good and joyful, for brethren to dwell together in 
 unity " ? Is there not much exercise of temper, much 
 call on a placable, unselfish, patient, forbearing, cheerfu. 
 disposition, much occasion for self-control in word and 
 in deed, in family life .? How is it, then to the purpose, 
 tl ue though it be, as Mr. Davison says, that " meekness, 
 
414 John Davison, 
 
 forgiveness of injuries, humility, preference of each other 
 in honour, would have no room to be practised, if every 
 man, as he is a Christian, were to be shut up in solitude 
 in a sphere of his own " ? It is true that " the meek 
 and chastened spirit, which is the sum of these duties, 
 could neither be tried nor acquired, were the collision 
 and intercourse of other men's feelings and interests so 
 studiously avoided, as that we should have nothing to 
 conceal, nothing to forgive, nothing to forbear " (p. 207) ; 
 but what a pretty sort of a monk is he who has a will 
 of his own, and is not meek, not self-abasing, not for- 
 giving ? Obedience is one of the three special character- 
 istics of the monastic life, as its professed instance in our 
 Great Exemplar is that of his " going down to Nazareth 
 and being subject to his parents ; " had He no opportu- 
 nity of meekness and humility till He was thirty, and 
 began to preach ? 
 
 We have said this as contemplating a monastic life in 
 its essence, and when viewed at the least advantage. But 
 commonly it has been united or rather devoted to em- 
 ployments, directly productive of the graces specified ; 
 or, again, of a directly beneficial and useful nature. Mr., 
 Davison says that — "the whole of the active part of a 
 Christian charity manifestly derives its very being from 
 a participation in the concerns of our fellow-creatures. 
 Bountifulness, beneficence, personal kindness, personal 
 service, are only so many other modes of expression for 
 a manner of living with others, and living for them. 
 They are wholly relative in their feeling and their prac- 
 tice ; and the same divine authority which enjoins them, 
 places us in that busy and peopled world which gives 
 them their proximate motive and their opportunity of 
 action. In short, the very love of our neighbour, which 
 is the second great commandment, must fall to the 
 
Fellow of Oriel. 4 1 5 
 
 ground, unless we keep a station of intercourse with 
 him, and make him the better for our existence ; and 
 even the first commandment, the love of God, is made 
 to have its evidence and its perfect work in the fulfil- 
 ment of the second." — P. 207. 
 
 Most accurate and important sentiments surely ; but 
 in order to show how a monastic life is not destructive, 
 but rather is the great fulfilment of both the first and 
 the second commandment of the law, it is only necessary 
 to take up any work such as Alban Butler's, in which a 
 hundred instances will be found of active and self-deny- 
 ing charity, in men and women bound by the monastic 
 vows. The service of hospitals is one out of various 
 religious objects and active labours with which the reli- 
 gious life has ever been connected. Schools, whether 
 for high or low, are another ; orphan-houses are another ; 
 literary or theological pursuits another. Again, from 
 the first the monastic bodies have been an instrument in 
 the hands of Providence for the maintenance of ortho- 
 doxy ; the sons of St. Antony were the champions and 
 the refuge of St. Athanasius. All the great Fathers 
 and Bishops of the Church were monks ; yet who was 
 more busy in the crowd of men than Chrysostom t who 
 has been so influential in theology as Augustine t who 
 such revivers of religion as Gregory and Basil .' who is 
 more fruitful in practical lessons than Pope Gregory .' 
 who so large and so minute and exact in thought as St. 
 Thomas } Even in those times when monastic bodies 
 seemed to do least, and when the sloth and corruption 
 of some brought disgrace upon all, they were, as we all 
 know, the preservers of ancient literature ; and let any 
 one reflect what the state of our historical and doctrinal 
 ■ knowledge would be now, were it not for those whom 
 we are tempted to accuse as " fruges consumere nati." 
 
4i6 John Davison, 
 
 And as regards the other sex, so far from making 
 women idle and profitless, it is the only institution 
 which hitherto has been able to give dignity, and, as it 
 were, rank to female celibacy, and to secure an honour- 
 able and useful application of it. How great a number 
 of women in this Protestant land spend their lives in 
 doing nothing ! how much labour, to use secular lan- 
 guage, is lost to the community ! what numbers are led 
 to throw themselves and their happiness away on hus- 
 bands unworthy of them, because, when they would fain 
 not be useless in their day, marriage is the only path 
 open to their ambition ! 
 
 Mr. Davison speaks forcibly and well of the divine 
 wisdom of the Gospel in " reducing the matter of duty 
 to some plain specific exercise, some direct and substantial 
 instance of application " (p. 209) ; now is not this one 
 special object of the monastic rule, to give a definite 
 penance to those who would repent, definite duties to 
 those who would grow in love, definite safeguards to 
 those who are under temptation, definite objects to those 
 who have high but vague aspirations 1 Again, he says, 
 that "when that object is really a good and praiseworthy 
 one," Societies for the furtherance of objects of public 
 utility are like main works and fortresses in the map of 
 life against the evils and deficiencies which lie around it" 
 (p. 211); but why are the learned Benedictines, or the 
 Order of the Trinity for the redemption of captives, to be 
 exempted from this eulogy t We can enter into, though 
 we disown, the opinion or prejudice that the monastic 
 rule does more harm than good, nay, is to be condemned 
 as pure evil ; ' but we do not know what is meant by the 
 statement, as atl historical fact, that it has been destruc- 
 tive of the action and influence of man on man. If 
 retirement and secresy are incompatible with usefulness. 
 
Fellow of Oriel. 4x7 
 
 what becomes of the remarks on Mr. Davison's own his- 
 tory with which we commenced ? Was his life at Oriel 
 College a more public one than that of St. Jerome at 
 Bethlehem, or St. Anselm at Bee' Again, it is in Societies 
 for public objects, says our author, "that the better 
 feelings of our kind, being trained and brought forward, 
 look abroad for connection and co-operation ; that men 
 attract one another to a common cause ; and their union 
 becomes safe and useful under the auspices of responsible 
 personal character, and with the sanction of an acknow- 
 ledged public confidence" (p. 211). And in a passage 
 already quoted, "Such institutions give d. fixed point And 
 a tone, as well as a system, to the purpose which they 
 adopt." But it would be as tedious, as it is, we think, a 
 needless work, to show in all its details, that the wise 
 and philosophical remarks he has made upon the prin- 
 ciple of combination for public objects, do in a special 
 and singular way find their fulfilment and exemplifica- 
 tion in that holy and ancient discipline which he opens 
 them by disparaging. 
 
 But there is one sentiment of his which surprises us 
 more than any other, viz., that monachism is inconsis- 
 tent with our Lord's precepts, which literally have no 
 subjects, no drift, if it is to be allowed. Now let us take 
 the monastic rule, not as practised by those who lived 
 in community, but even as carried out into its extreme by 
 hermits, anchorites, fathers of the desert, and the like : 
 are there no commands, as, for instance, concerning 
 poverty and humility, which, taken in their first and 
 obvious meaning, such a life literally and strikingly 
 fulfils ? We are not at all saying or dreaming, of course 
 not, that all our Lord's precepts must be taken in the 
 letter, yet it is better to observe them in the letter, than 
 not to observe them at all. Now it is pretty clear that 
 
 VOL. 11. 27 
 
41 8 John Davison, 
 
 society, as at present constituted, does not keep the 
 commands in question either in letter or spirit ; also it 
 seems to us clear, that whether a literal observance of 
 them be necessary or not, monastic institutions do, of 
 all others, most accurately and comprehensively fulfil 
 the code of Gospel commandments, whether those which 
 the present age does not fulfil, or those which it does. 
 Indeed there cannot be a doubt who they are, and where 
 they are to be found, who give us instances of obedience 
 to the precept of " not resisting evil ; " of " turning the 
 cheek to the smiter ; " of " selling that we have and 
 giving alms ; " " of selling all that we have," in order 
 to be " perfect ; " of having our " loins girded about and 
 lights burning ; " of " watching and praying always ; " of 
 "taking no thought for the morrow;" of "taking up the 
 cross daily ; " and a number of other particulars which 
 might be mentioned. And if, as we have already been 
 urging, monastic bodies are on the other hand far from 
 neglecting those social duties which Mr. Davison truly 
 says ha,ve so essential a portion and so exalted a place 
 in Christian obedience, then it will follow that they fulfil 
 more of our Lord's precepts than any other set of men, 
 and instead of being " one of the most violent perversions 
 of religious doctrines," they are the nearest approach to 
 the perfection of a Christian spirit. 
 
 Nor is even the eremitical rule itself, nor surely (much 
 less) are associations for the main purpose of prayer and 
 intercession, incapable of justification or excuse. Mr. 
 Davison excepts all associations which are for the good 
 of the community ; and considering that Christianity has 
 made the offering of praise and prayer its especial 
 " Liturgy," or public service, it is surely a want of faith 
 to deny that those above all men may be benefactors to 
 their brethren, who spend their lives in devotional exer- 
 
Fellow of Oriel. 419 
 
 cises. Moreover, it should be recollected that there is no 
 one, to speak in general terms, but is the better for oc- 
 casional retreats from the world ; and the more active 
 and useful is a man's life, the greater is his need of them. 
 But the occasional retirement of the many requires the 
 livelong retirement of the few, and an establishment of 
 recluses is but the sanctuary of the uncloistered. To be 
 shut out from the world is their very duty to the world ; 
 to be in leisure is their business ; and as well might we 
 call a schoolmaster inactive, or a private circle anti- 
 social, as an institution which devotes itself to repent- 
 ance, intercession, and giving of thanks, for the benefit of 
 seculars, — as a propitiation in the sight of heaven, and a 
 witness and warning before men, — as the home of the 
 helpless, and the refuge of the downcast, — as a common 
 mould of character, and a bond of mutual love, and a 
 principle of united worship to all, because it is succes- 
 sively the school and confessional of each. 
 
 And, lastly, if objectors point to the well-known history 
 of St. Simeon Stylites as an instance of that " secluded 
 exercise of a monastic virtue in an age of darkness," to 
 which Mr. Davison must be referring, we remind such 
 persons that Theodoret, an author for whom he enter- 
 tained a special respect, informs us, on his own know- 
 ledge, that this mystical religionist converted, by means 
 of his pillar, " many myriads " of pagans, which is good 
 work for any man's lifetime, and more than they are 
 likely to do by their own rational religion, one and all 
 of them together. 
 
 On the whole, then, we look upon the sentiment of 
 Mr. Davison, on which we have been thus freely com- 
 menting, as only another instance, in addition to those 
 which we have mentioned, in which a great mind was 
 unconsciously swayed by deference to the opinions 
 
420 John Davison. 
 
 among which he lived, and which, for what we know, could 
 not have been rejected by him, in his particular place 
 and time, without some portion of irreverence, love of 
 paradox, or self-confidence, most foreign to his character. 
 There are ten thousand questions, whether of fact or of 
 opinion, on which every one of us must be content to 
 remain without any view of his own, and must take the 
 current notions of his day, unless he would incur the cer- 
 tainty of being unreal and the risk of being untrut' 
 Mr. Davison probably as little thought of analyzing th. 
 popular sentiments of which he was the spokesman, as oi 
 looking out for "death in the pot" at his meals, or suspect- 
 ing arsenic in his candles. It is the trial and mystery of 
 our position in this age and country, that a religious mind 
 is continually set at variance with itself, that its deference 
 to what is without contradicts its suggestions from within, 
 and that it cannot follow what it presages without re- 
 belling against what it has received. 
 
 . April, 1843. 
 
4-^1 
 
 XV. 
 fOHN KEBLE. 
 
 I. 
 
 IN venturing some remarks on the poems just now 
 published at Oxford under the title of the Lyra 
 Innocentium, it is far from our intention to adopt the 
 tone of controversialists, or even of critics. The name 
 of their author would hinder us from so doing. That 
 they are really Mr. Keble's, we make no question, 
 though we are not told so in the title-page. There 
 are few of them which do not bear clear marks of 
 their relationship to those in the Christian Year and the 
 Lyra Apostolica, which are so familiar to our memories 
 and our hearts ; and, that (unlike the Lyra Apostolica,) 
 they have all one and the same parentage, is evident, on 
 the principle that exceptio probat regulam, from the cir- 
 cumstance that one of them, and one only, is ascribed, 
 in a note appended to it, to another person. One or two 
 there are which are somewhat different from the rest in 
 style; and there are metres introduced which do not 
 occur in the Christian Year ; the matter too is not so 
 condensed, nor the thoughts so recondite ; but- such va- 
 rieties are found in the separate works of every author, — 
 time, place, age, frame of mind, subject, circumstances, 
 giving to each its distinctive character. The Christian 
 
422 John Keble, 
 
 Year was published in 1827 ; the Lyra Apostolica (as 
 far as it is Mr. Keble's) is the Christian Year of 1833 ; 
 the Lyra Innocentium is the Christian Year of 1846. 
 The circumstances of 1827 and 1846 differ from each 
 other more than the character of the two Volumes 
 which belong to those respective dates. 
 
 We have not the analytical powers which would war- 
 rant us to attempt a critical estimate of the poems con- 
 tained in the Volume before us ; and we have not quite 
 the heartless officiousness to view them in a controversial 
 aspect. If they have a special characteristic, it is that 
 they are not controversial, in this respect differing from 
 other poems which other writers of his school have given 
 to the world, and he at other times. Whether we look 
 into the Lyra Apostolica, or into the Cathedral and 
 Baptistery, loyalty to the Anglican Church is here or 
 there enforced or insinuated by attacks on the See of 
 Rome and the Catholic Church ; some few traces of this 
 peculiarity are found even in the Christian Year. But 
 the Lyra Innocentium preserves an emphatic silence on 
 the subject of other Churches. It will teach the happy 
 children who are submitted to its influence, at least by 
 implication, that there is no contrariety, no separation 
 between the different portions of Christendom; that 
 Christianity is everywhere the same, the religion of 
 peace and truth, with one and the same great daily 
 rite, one and the same profession of faith. Catholics, at 
 least, are not called upon to find fault with such a repre- 
 sentation. 
 
 Nor do we find in this Volume any strong language 
 against those who have recently left the Anglican Church, 
 as is the manner with the periodicals and pamphlets 
 which express the sentiments of the party with which 
 the author's name is connected. That he seriously dis- 
 
Fellow of Oriel. 423 
 
 approves of their step, is evident even from the fact that 
 he does not take it himself ; for such a step is either a 
 duty or a sin ; nay, he distinctly records his feeling on 
 the subject ; at the same time he records it without bit- 
 terness, violence, or injustice towards the persons con- 
 cerned. In his introductory stanzas " To all friendly 
 readers," he desires their prayers 
 
 "that he 
 A true and timely word may frame 
 
 For weary hearts that long to see 
 Their way in our dim twilight-hour : 
 
 His lips so purged with penance-fire, 
 That he may guide them, in Christ's power, 
 
 Along the path of their desire ; 
 
 "And with no faint and erring voice 
 May to the wanderer whisper, ' Stay : 
 God chooses for thee : seal His choice, 
 Nor from thy Mother's shadow stray.'" 
 
 It will be observed that he here recognizes himself dis- 
 tinctly as " guiding " others, and that " with no faint nor 
 erring voice." And in another place he seems to com- 
 pare those who "mistrust their elders" and leave the 
 Anglican Church, to St. Thomas, who would himself 
 see, before he believed the Resurrection ; a kind com- 
 parison, because St. Thomas was an Apostle notwith- 
 standing, but still of a very decided meaning. The 
 poem is on the general subject of wilfulness and " worldly 
 wisdom," in refusing to " see with others' eyes ; " it ends 
 thus : 
 
 "Alas ! that man his breath should lose 
 In wayward, doubting race. 
 Nor his still home in shelter choose 
 
 Where Thou hast set his place." — P. 109. 
 
424 John Keble. 
 
 2. 
 
 Would that others had confined themselves to this — 
 we will not say kind and gentle, but — equitable tone in 
 their reproofs ! we speak not of one person or another, 
 but of the generality of those who have felt it a duty to 
 animadvert on recent converts to the Catholic Church. 
 We are not here crying for mercy, but asking justice, de- 
 manding common English fairness ; we have a right to 
 expect, but we do not find, that considerate, compas- 
 sionate, comprehensive judgment upon their conduct, 
 which, instead of fixing on particular isolated points in it, 
 views it as a whole, — uses the good, which is its general 
 character, to hide its incidental faults, makes one part 
 explain another, what is strong here excuse what is 
 weak there, and evident sincerity of intention atone for 
 infirmity of performance ; — which has a regard to circum- 
 stances, to the trial of an almost necessary excitement, 
 to the -necessity of acting beyond criticism, yet without 
 precedent, and of reaching a certain object when all 
 paths to it have respectively their own difficulties. We 
 are not apologizing for their great and momentous deci- 
 sion itself, but for the pecularities which have accompanied 
 its execution ; if to do as much as this be considered 
 after all asking for mercy, not for equity, it is only such 
 mercy, to say the least, as the parties censuring, as well 
 as the parties censured, will require themselves on a day 
 to come. In the well-known words of the poet — 
 
 " In the course of justice, none of us 
 Should see salvation ; we do pray for mercy ; 
 And that same prayer doth teach us all to render 
 The deeds of mercy." 
 
 And we on our parts will show to these our good 
 friends so much consideration, as to allow that at least 
 
Fellow of Oriel. \2^ 
 
 they do not pass their censures wantonly. We do not 
 hold them justified in those censures, but we are able to 
 enter into the reasons why they pass them. Such censures 
 are necessary for their own position. When men of edu- 
 cation, of good abilities, of blameless lives, make great 
 sacrifices, give up their place in society, their friends, 
 and their means of living, in order to join another com- 
 munion, it is a strong argument, as far as any single ar- 
 gument is strong, for that communion's claim on the duti- 
 ful regard of Christians generally. And in the instances 
 before us, the argument told with particular cogency on 
 those persons, and they were not few, who were united 
 to the converts by ties of friendship, kindred, or grati- 
 tude. It was impossible that such persons should not 
 be moved by the example thus held out to them ; and, 
 this being the case, there was no saying how far its 
 influence might spread. In consequence it became very 
 necessary for those who had no doubts or difficulties to 
 show to all who wavered or might waver, that there was 
 something faulty in the mode in which the seceding par- 
 ties had severally detached themselves from their original 
 communion, — some fault such as to invalidate the testi- 
 mony of each, and to destroy its logical and rhetorical 
 force. It was a great point to be in a condition to say, 
 that there was not any one of them who might not have 
 acted better than he did ; and, whereas by the fact of 
 seceding they had shown no pity towards the Church of 
 Ehgland, its doctors, or its living divines and prelates, 
 there was no special call for any delicacy in dealing with 
 them, and no reason against imputing motives to them 
 or using personalities about them, freely and without 
 scruple. If motives could not be plausibly conjectured, 
 faulty tendencies at least were discoverable in their 
 several characters ; or hypothetical failings were as- 
 
426 yohn Keble, 
 
 signable, as restlessness, or flightiness, such as would, 
 if existing, account for their conduct by what Gibbon 
 calls " human causes ; " or, if everything else failed, 
 words might be cast at them, and they might be ac- 
 cused of "rationalism." Nay, since no man living is 
 perfect, and such critical junctures bring out an individual 
 mind, such as it is, into full play, develop its qualities 
 and faculties, and magnify for the time, as by a lens, 
 even its minutest peculiarities, and represent its faintest 
 shades and colours, we may readily grant that never was 
 there a case of conversion, except under the influence 
 of extraordinary inspiration, which might not have pro- 
 ceeded more holily, more wisely, more religiously than it 
 did — never a case which did not present an opportunity 
 of criticism, to those .who had the heart, or felt it a 
 necessity, or thought it a duty; to criticise. 
 
 Such is the condition of all of us in this world. 
 " Posuisti iniquitates nostras in conspectu tuo, saeculum 
 nostrum in illuminatione vultus tui." Good friends, you 
 have not far to seek ; habetis conjitentem reum ; he 
 pleads guilty ; he has given up a fellowship or a living, 
 or he has forfeited an inheritance, or ruined the prospects 
 or present provision of wife and children, or damaged his 
 reputation for judgment or discernment ; he has cheer- 
 fully made himself a scoff, submitted himself as a prey 
 to the newspapers, has made himself strange to his 
 brethren ; and besides and amid all this, it is true, he 
 has said a strong word he had better not have said — or 
 uttered a sarcasm — his successive disclosures have not 
 severely kept time with the growth of his misgivings, — 
 he has spoken to those with whom he should have been 
 reserved, and has been silent where he should have 
 spoken ; at times he has not known where he stood, and 
 perhaps promised what he could not perform. Of his 
 
Fellow of Oriel. 427 
 
 sacrifices he thinks and says nothing ; what he does 
 know and does painfully think of, is in substance just 
 that which you so rhetorically urge against him, yes, and 
 before you urge it. His self-scrutiny has preceded your 
 dissection of him. What you proclaim to the world, he 
 confesses without grudging, viz., that he heis but acted 
 secundum captum suum, according to what he is, not as 
 an Angel, but as a man. In the process of his conver- 
 sion he has had to struggle with uncertainty of mind, 
 with the duties of an actual position, with misgivings of 
 its untenableness, with the perplexity of fulfilling many 
 duties and of reconciling conflicting ones. He is not 
 perfect ; no one is perfect ; not they who accuse him ; 
 he could retaliate upon them ; he could gratuitously 
 suggest reasons for their retaining their stations, as they 
 can suggest reasons for his relinquishing his own ; it is 
 easy to impute motives ; but it would be unworthy of 
 him to do so. He leaves his critics to that Judgment to 
 which he himself appeals. May they who have spoken 
 or written harshly of recent converts to the Catholic 
 Church, receive at the Great Day more lenient measure 
 than they have in this case given ! 
 
 3- 
 Returning to the Volume which has led to these 
 remarks, we find the author's silence concerning the 
 matters of the day still more emphatic than we have as 
 yet described it. Not only is he entirely uncontrover- 
 sial, as beseemed one who writes of " Christian Children, 
 their ways and their privileges," but he abstains almost 
 entirely from any allusion whatever to the existing state 
 and prospects of the English Church. In this respect 
 he is singularly in contrast with himself in the Christian 
 Year, which, though written for the personal edification of 
 
428 John Keble, 
 
 private Christians, abounds in sentiments about ecclesias- 
 tica,! matters, as they stood at the date of its composition. 
 Those sentiments wear the character of forebodings, arid 
 those forebodings seem from the event and the present 
 position of affairs to be almost prophetic. He wrote and 
 published in a time of peace and plenty for his Church, 
 when Lord Liverpool's government was in power, whai 
 Church patronage was dispensed more respectably than 
 perhaps it ever had been, and when Church Reform had 
 not showed itself even on paper. In those palmy days 
 of the Establishment, our author discerned, that neither 
 in doctrine nor in ethical standard was it even as much 
 as it might have been according to its own principles> 
 and as it had actually been from time to time in the 
 persons of certain of its members. He thought he per- 
 ceived in it, not merely corruption of life, but failure of 
 faith, and judgment in the horizon. He described the 
 world, which once attended our Lord in triumph i.ito 
 Jerusalem, as now 
 
 " Thronging round to gaze 
 On the dread vision of the latter days, 
 
 Constrained to own Thee, but in heart 
 Prepared to take Barabbas' part ; 
 ' Hosanna ' now, to-morrow ' Crucify,' 
 The changeful burden still of their rude lawless cry." 
 
 And then he asked : 
 
 " But what are heaven's alarms to hearts that cower 
 In wilful slumber, deepening every hour, 
 
 That draw their curtains closer round, 
 The nearer swells the trumpet's sound?" 
 
 He speaks of the " watchman true," as 
 
 "Waiting to see what God will do, 
 As o'er the Church the gathering twilight falls ; " 
 
Fellow of Oriel. 429 
 
 and 
 
 " Contented in his darkling round, 
 If only he be faithful found, 
 When from the east the eternal morning moves." 
 
 He addresses the clergy in general in a similar strain: 
 
 " Think not of rest ; though dreams be sweet. 
 Start up, and ply your heavenward feet ; . . . 
 , Till, when the shadows thickest fall, 
 
 Ye hear your Master's midnight call." 
 
 And elsewhere, — 
 
 " Is this a time for moonlight dreams 
 Of love and home by mazy streams . . , 
 While souls are wandering far and wide^ 
 And curses swarm on every side ? 
 No — rather steel thy melting heart 
 To act the martyr's steadfast part. 
 To watch with firm, unshrinking eye, 
 Thy darling visions as they die. 
 Till all bright hopes and hues of day 
 Have faded into twilight grey. . . ." 
 
 At another time, speaking of the English Church more 
 directly, after commencing with " Stately thy walls and 
 holy are thy prayers," he continues — 
 
 " O mother dear. 
 Wilt thou forgive thy son one boding sigh ? 
 Forgive, if round thy towers he walk in fear. 
 And tell thy jewels o'er with jealous eye ? " 
 
 And then he proceeds to apply to his Church Ezekiel's 
 fearful Vision in the Temple. Elsewhere he speaks of 
 
 " God's new Israel, sunk as low. 
 
 Yet flourishing to sight as fair, 
 As Sion in her height of pride." 
 
 And, to make one additional extract, speaking of Aaron's 
 sin in the matter of the golden calf, he asks, — 
 
430 John Keble, 
 
 " For what shall heal when holy water banes ? 
 Or who may guide 
 O'er desert plains 
 Thy loved yet sinful people wandering wide 
 If Aaron's heart unshrinking mould 
 An idol form of earthly gold ? . . . 
 
 And he intercedes for those 
 
 " That nearest to Thine altar lie, 
 Yet least of holy things descry." 
 
 4- 
 
 Such plaintive notes, " quales populeS. Philomela sub 
 umbra," have by this time altogether left the Poet's 
 Lyre : as far as we have observed, not a sound remains 
 of them in the present Volume. What is the meaning 
 of this ? is it that singing-birds are silent when a storm 
 is at hand, and that the evil in his Church is too awful 
 and imminent for verse .' Actual England is too sad to 
 look upon. The Poet seems to turn away from the 
 sight ; else, in his own words, would it " bruise too sore 
 his tender heart ; " and he takes refuge in the contem- 
 plation of that blessed time of life, in which alone the 
 Church is what God intended it, what Christ made it, 
 the time of infancy and childhood. He strikes the Lyra 
 Innocentium. He hangs over the first springs of divine 
 grace, and fills his water-pots with joy " ex fontibus Sal- 
 vatoris," before heresy, schism, ambition, worldliness, and 
 cowardice have troubled the still depths. He would fain 
 have the morning last till evening ; he confesses it : 
 
 " O sweet morning-dream, I pray, 
 Pass not with the matin-hour : 
 Charm me : — ^heart and tongue allay, 
 Thoughts of gloom and eyes that lower. 
 
Fellow of Oriel. 43 1 
 
 r rom the Fountain to the Shrine, 
 Bear me on, thou trance divine ; 
 Faint not, fade not on my view, 
 Till I wake and find thee true." — P. ii. 
 
 Thus he would live and die in a "trance" or "dream;" a 
 dream, as he confesses it to be, since souls fall from their 
 first innocence, as time goes on. And yet we cordially 
 thank him for his " dream ; " that is, we thank him for 
 choosing a subject for his verse in which Catholics and 
 he are at one, — a subject such, that Catholics can claim 
 and use his poems as expressing their own mind, not 
 merely imposing a higher and fuller sense on them, but 
 taking them in that very sense in which he speaks. 
 Whatever differences Catholics may have with Mr. 
 Keble, they have none in the main doctrine and fact on 
 which his Volume is written. If there be one point from 
 which they are able to look with satisfaction on this 
 bewildered land, it is as regards the state of its baptized 
 infants. Those infants are, in their estimation, as good 
 Catholics as themselves, or better. The Catholic Church 
 is the very " Church of their baptism ;" and the "Mother 
 of their new birth ;" they were baptized into nothing 
 short of that Church : too soon indeed they pass into 
 the hands of others, who detach them from their true 
 Mother ; but in their first years, till they come to years 
 of discretion, and commit acts which separate them from 
 her, they are as fully and absolutely the children of the 
 Catholic Church as if they were baptized by Catholics. 
 They have Angels to guard them, and saints to intercede 
 for them ; they are lovely and pleasant in their lives, and 
 blessed in their deaths. Thus the death of children in 
 this Protestant country is attended by a consolation un- 
 speakable ; the dreadful controversy about the two com- 
 munions does not touch them ; they are recognized as 
 
432 John Keble, 
 
 innocents on all hands, and they have been taken away 
 from the evil to come. Bright, precious thought, though 
 dimmed of late years with a shade of sadness, from the 
 negligence and ignorance with which the sacred rite of 
 baptism has been so often administered! 
 
 Well would it be for all men, could they always live 
 the life they lived as infants, possessed of the privileges, 
 not the responsibilities of regeneration. Our author, as 
 we have said, especially feels it atthe present time; and, 
 leaving the AngUcan Church to go on as it will, and to 
 deny truth as it will, he hides from himself all that is 
 national, local, schismatical, existing, — ^he withdraws his 
 pleading eye and his warning voice from a generation 
 which scorns him, — -he leaves bishops and clergy, cathe- 
 dral chapters and ecclesiastical judges, town mobs and 
 country squires, to the tender mercies of history, in 
 order to enjoy a blameless Donatism, to live in a church 
 of children, to gaze on their looks and gestures, to en- 
 courage them in good, and to guard them from harm 
 and sin. 
 
 Thus, in some beautiful stanzas he compares a child 
 sleeping in his cradle, first to the infant Moses in his ark of 
 bulrushes, then to our Lord Himself asleep in the vessel : 
 
 " Storms may rush in, and crimes and woes 
 Deform the quiet bower ; 
 They may not mar the deep repose 
 
 Of that immortal flower. 
 
 Though only broken hearts be found, 
 
 To watch his cradle by, 
 
 ^ No blight is on his slumbers sound. 
 
 No touch of harmful eye. 
 
 " So gently slumbered on the wave 
 The new-bom seer of old, 
 Ordained the chosen tribes to save, 
 Nor dreamed how darkly rolled 
 
Fellow of Oriel. 433 
 
 The waters by his rushy brake, 
 
 Perchance even now defiled 
 With infants' blood for Israel's sake, 
 
 Blood of some priestly child. 
 
 " Hail, chosen Type and Image true 
 
 Of Jesus on the sea ! 
 In slumber, and in glory too, 
 
 Shadowed of old by thee. 
 Save that in calmness thou didst sleep, 
 
 The summer stream beside. 
 He on a wider, wilder deep. 
 
 Where boding night-winds sighed."-^Pp. 32 — 34. 
 
 He inquires whether regenerate infants do not see 
 their Saviour, and by their sudden transport on waking 
 is reminded of the unborn Baptist at the Visitation : 
 
 " Oft as in sun-bright dawn 
 The infant lifts his eye, joying to find 
 The dusky veil of sleep undrawn, 
 And to the East gives welcome kind, 
 Or in the morning aii 
 Waves high his little arm. 
 As though he read, engraven there. 
 
 His fontal name, Christ's saving charm. 
 
 " Still in love's steady gaze, 
 In joy's unbidden cry. 
 That holy Mother's glad amaze, 
 
 _ That infant's worship we descry."— P. 43. 
 
 To this intimate approach to the Saviour of all, vouch- 
 safed to children, he is led to attribute, in another poem, 
 the sort of understanding which exists between them and 
 the brute creation, 
 
 VOL. II. 28 
 
434 John Keble, 
 
 " Thou makest me jealous, infant dear, 
 
 Why wilt thou waste thy precious smiles, 
 Thy beckonings blithe, and joyous wiles. 
 
 On bird or insect gliding near ? 
 Why court the deaf and blind ? 
 
 What is this wondrous sympathy, 
 
 That draws thee so, heart, ear, and eye, 
 Towards the inferior kind ? 
 
 "We tempt thee much to look and sing — 
 
 Thy mimic notes are rather drawn 
 
 From feathered playmates on the lawn — 
 The quivering moth, or bee's soft wing. 
 
 Brushing the window pane, 
 Will reach thee in thy dreamy trance, 
 When nurse's skill for one bright glance 
 
 Hath toiled an hour in vain." — Pp. 49, 50. 
 
 Then he speaks of the " baying bloodhound " and the 
 "watch-dog stern," the "war-horse," nay, the "tiger's 
 whelp," "wild elephant and mountain bull," as well as 
 " bounding lamb or lonely bird," as being in league with 
 children, and thus is led on to his conclusion : 
 
 "Ah, you have been in Jesus' arms, 
 
 The holy fount hath you imbued 
 
 With His all-healing kindly blood ; 
 And somewhat of His pastoral charms, 
 
 And care for His lost sheep. 
 Ye there have learned : in ordered tones 
 Gently to soothe the lesser ones. 
 
 And watch their noonday sleep." 
 
 In another poem he traces to the same intimacy with 
 the Unseen the power of children over the wicked : 
 
 "A little child's soft sleeping face 
 
 The murderer's knife ere now hath stayed : 
 The adulterer's eye,, so foul and base, 
 Is of a little child afraid. 
 They cannot choose but fear, 
 Since in that sign they feel God and good Angels near." 
 
Fellow of Oriel. 435 
 
 He continues ; 
 
 " Heaven in the depth and height is seen ; 
 On high among the stars, and low ' 
 In deep clear waters : all between 
 Is earth, and tastes of earth ; even so 
 The Almighty One draws near 
 To strongest seraphs there, the weakest infants here." 
 
 And thus he accounts for cherubs being represented 
 in churches under the form of infants : 
 
 " O well and wisely virought of old, 
 
 Nor without guide be sure, who first 
 Did cherub forms as infants mould. 
 And lift them where the full deep burst 
 Of awful harmony 
 Might need them most, to waft it onward to the sky ; 
 
 " Where best they may, in watch and ward, 
 Around the enthroned Saviour stand, 
 May quell with sad and stem regard 
 Unruly eye and wavering hand. 
 May read the blessed dole 
 Of saving knowledge round from many a holy scroll." 
 
 Pp. 268 — 271. 
 
 While the above extracts sufficiently show Mr. Keble's 
 deep reverence towards the state of infants, they do 
 not always connect the holiness of that state with the 
 rite of baptism. On the latter point, however, he is 
 very earnest ; and, if we might theorize on the subject, 
 we should fancy that he was not quite pleased with 
 the Platonic tone, as it may be called, of much of the 
 poetry of the day, which extols indeed the divine 
 blessedness of infancy, but in so unguarded or ignorant 
 a manner as to forget the source of it, as if this divinity 
 belonged to children in their own nature and original 
 state, and not as new-made by baptism. There is a 
 studious accuracy of the author on this point. 
 
436 John Keble, 
 
 5- 
 But now we come to notice a second peculiarity in 
 these poems, which immediately follows from their main 
 topic being such as we have described it to be. If the 
 author is to sing of regenerate infants and their sinless 
 blessedness, and is to view them in such lights as thence 
 belong to them, to what is he necessarily brought back 
 at once, but to the thought of our Lord in the first years 
 of His earthly existence, when He was yet a little one 
 in the arms and at the breast of His Blessed Mother ? 
 Hence the Virgin and Child is the special vision, as it 
 may be called, which this truly evangelical poet has be- 
 fore him throughout his " Thoughts in Verse on Chris- 
 tian Children;" like "that holy painter" and evangelist, 
 whom he himself speaks of, 
 
 " Who with pen and pencil true 
 Christ's own awful mother drew." — P. 98. 
 
 He even introduces the thought of her, where there 
 are neither children to suggest it, nor Scripture texts to 
 declare it. He observes that, at the first Whitsuntide, 
 " all estates, all tribes of earth " were collected ; " only 
 sweet infancy seemed silent in the adoring earth." 
 " Mothers and maidens " were there, " widows from 
 Galilee," " Levites," and " elders sage." He continues : 
 
 "But nought we read of that sweet age 
 Which in His strong embrace He took. 
 And sealed it safe, by word and look, 
 From earth's foul dews, and withering airs, of hell : 
 The Pentecostal chant no infant warblings swell." — P. 343. 
 
 And he goes out of his way, as follows, to supply the 
 imagined deficiency : 
 
 " Nay, but 5'^sSworships here, 
 Whom still the Church in memory sees, 
 
Fellow of Oriel. 437 
 
 (O thought to mothers dear !) 
 
 Before her babe on bended knees, 
 
 Or rapt with fond adoring eye, 
 
 In her sweet nursing ministry. 
 How in Christ's anthem fails the children's part. 
 While Mary bears Him throned in her maternal heart ?" 
 
 We feel a reluctance to exhibit the many traces which 
 these poems exhibit of a similar devotional feeling to- 
 wards the Blessed Virgin : it is like running through the 
 Volume to find out what are called " strong passages." 
 Yet, since it falls into the direct line of thought which 
 we are pursuing to enlarge upon this peculiarity of the 
 author, we shall do so for the sake of Catholics who 
 know nothing of him except as one of those who are 
 retaining doubting minds in a schismatical communion, 
 and who ought to know a great deal more of him. 
 
 For instance, the following is part of his Poem or 
 Hymn for Easter Day : 
 
 " The Angel came full early. But Christ had gone before ; 
 The breath of Ufe, the living soul, Had breathed itself once more 
 Into the sacred body. That slumbered in the tomb, 
 As still and lowly as erewhile In the undefiled womb. 
 And surely not in folds so bright The spotless winding-sheet 
 Inwrapt Him, nor such fragrance poured The myrrh and aloes 
 
 sweet, 
 As when in that chaste bosom. His awful bed. He lay. 
 And Mary's prayer around Him rose. Like incense, night and day. 
 And even as, when her hour was come. He left His Mother mild, 
 A royal virgin evermore. Heavenly and undefiled, 
 So left the glorious body The rock it slumbered on. 
 And spirit-like in silence passed, Nor touched the sealed stone." 
 
 P-344. 
 
 He continues presently : 
 
 " He veiled His awful footsteps. Our all-subduing Lord, 
 Until the blessed Magdalene Beheld Him and adored. 
 
438 John Keble, 
 
 But through the veil the Spouse may see, For her heart is as His 
 
 own, 
 That to His Mother or by sight Or touch He made Him known. 
 And even as from His manger-bed He gave her His first smile, 
 So now, while seraphs wait. He talks Apart with her awhile : 
 That thou of all the forms, which To thee His image wear, 
 Mightest own thy parents first. With Thy prime of loving care." 
 
 P. 335. 
 
 In his poem on "Judas's Infancy," he has, what seems 
 to us, a most touching and beautiful thought, though 
 some may call it too refined, that " the blessed Mary " 
 doubtless thought with pity upon the poor mother who 
 had nursed the traitor, "a harmless child," ere gold had 
 bought him. Yet, sure it was, he grew up to be the 
 man of whom the Voice of Truth has said, that it had 
 been good if he had not been born. 
 
 Elsewhere he says that " two homes of love's resort " 
 are mentioned in Scripture — the upper room and the 
 temple ; 
 
 " Possessing 
 Alike her presence, whom the awful blessing 
 Lifted above all Adam's race." — P. 83. 
 
 We, in like manner, have two homes, our closet and 
 our Church ; and, in like manner, 
 
 " The Mother of our Lord is there. 
 And Saints are breathing hallowed air, 
 Living and dead, to waft on high our feeble prayer." 
 
 The feeling which is brought out into formal statement 
 in these passages is intimated by the frequency and 
 tenderness of expression with which the thought of the 
 Blessed Virgin is introduced throughout the Volume. 
 She is the " Blessed Mary" with her " lily flower," "the 
 Virgin blest," " that Maiden bright," or " Virgin bright," 
 a " royal Virgin evermore," Christ's " Mother mild," or 
 
Fellow of Oriel. 439 
 
 'Mother dear," "the Mother-maid," "the Maiden 
 Mother," "the Virgin Mother," "that Mother undefiled," 
 " Christ's awful Mother," " Mother of God ; " " the spot- 
 less Mother, first of creatures." And Christ is "the dread 
 Son of Mary," " Mary's child," " the awful Child on 
 Mary's knee." Perhaps the author's most beautiful 
 lines on this subject are those addressed to a child who 
 had lost her mother, in which he applies to the child the 
 words spoken by our Lord on the cross to St. John. He 
 says that, though she has lost her natural mother, yet 
 surely she now has the blessing of the Virgin's patron- 
 age, to whom she had already, on the birth of a younger 
 sister, shown her devotion. 
 
 "Thy vision (whoso chides, may blame 
 The instinctive teachings of the altar flame,) 
 Shows thee above, in yon ethereal air, 
 A holier Mother, rapt in more prevaihng prayer. 
 
 " 'Tis she to whom thy heart took flight 
 
 Of old in joyous hour. 
 When first a precious sister-spright 
 
 Came to thy nursery bower. 
 And thou with earnest tone didst say, 
 Mother, let Mary be her name, I pray, 
 For dearly do I love to think upon 
 That gracious Mother- Maid, nursing her Holy One." 
 
 The deep and tender devotion which this language 
 discovers is no novelty with our author. No reader of 
 the Christian Year can forget his " Ave Maria ! Thou 
 whose name All but adoring love may claim ;" and we 
 may even say that, judging from these poems, his devo- 
 tional feeling has but become more decided, and has more 
 firmly based itself in his reason, as life has advanced. 
 Shall we observe, there is one thing we " desiderate " in 
 
440 jfohn Keble, 
 
 this volume ? — to use Mr. Froude's word on a similar 
 occasion. We do not discover one "Ave Maria" through- 
 out it, though he has used that invocation in the above 
 passage of the Christian Year. We cannot doubt it has 
 been upon his lips ; why, then, is it excluded from his 
 book } Perhaps he feared to give scandal, Or to cause 
 distress or excitement, in the use of a form of words 
 not sanctioned by his Church ; the case was different at 
 the date of the Christian Year, when it would pass for 
 mere poetry. Moreover, in two of the passages above 
 quoted the author studiously speaks of Mary as " bend- 
 ing to adore the Babe," and before her Babe "on bended 
 knees." No Catholic can quarrel with such an image, 
 which indeed is represented in some of the paintings of 
 the great masters ; but as introduced into these passages 
 it is surely out of place, as if intended to give satisfaction 
 to Protestants, — as more adapted for polemics than for 
 devotional poetry, and savouring much of the evangelical 
 school, which never allows the mention of one doctrine 
 of religion without a recapitulation of all the rest, as if 
 in our prayers and praises we must ever have an eye to 
 controversy. 
 
 6. 
 
 Such a Volume as this is a clear evidence that what 
 is sometimes called " the movement" in the Anglican 
 Church is not at an end. We do not say that it is 
 spreading, — or that it will obtain permanent footing in 
 the communion in which it has originated, — or that it 
 will or will not lead to a reaction, and eventually pro- 
 testantize — or again weaken — a religious body, to which, 
 under favourable circumstances, it might have brought 
 strength. We are not prophets ; we do but profess to 
 draw conclusions ; and the above conclusion respecting 
 
Fdlow of Oriel. 44 1 
 
 " the movement " which these poems have suggested, 
 seems a very safe one. Nor can we venture on predict- 
 ing the destiny of individuals who are connected with 
 that movement ; for them the gravest anxieties will 
 naturally be felt by sensitive friends, lest they should be 
 resisting a call, and risking their election. Cases may 
 be expected which will pierce to the heart those among 
 ourselves who have to deal with them, or are led to wit- 
 ness them. We only mean to say, that more has still to 
 come of the opinions, which have lately found such ac- 
 ceptance in the Church of England, because they are still 
 alive within its pale. Our author has doubtless published 
 the poems before us with the intention of calling people's 
 minds off external and dangerous subjects and present 
 perplexities, of leading them back to the memory of the 
 years when they were young, innocent, and happy, and thus 
 of persuading them calmly to repose under the shadow 
 of the tree beneath which they were born. He has pub- 
 lished them at a critical time, and much will be expected 
 of them by his friends. Much certainly came of the 
 Christian Year : it was the most soothing, tranquillizing, 
 subduing work of the day ; if poems can be found to 
 enliven in dejection, and to comfort in anxiety ; to cool 
 the over-sanguine, to refresh the weary, and to awe the 
 worldly ; to instil resignation into the impatient, and 
 calmness into the fearful and agitated — they are these. 
 
 " Tale tuum carmen noois, divine poeta, 
 Quale, sopor fessis in gramine : quale per sestum 
 Dulcis aquae saliente sitim restinguere rivo." 
 
 Or like the Shepherd's pipe, in the Oriental Vision, 
 of which we are told, that " the sound was exceedingly 
 sweet, and wrought into a variety of tunes that were 
 inexpressibly melodious and altogether different from 
 
442 jfohn Keble, 
 
 anything I had ever heard. They put me in mind of 
 those heavenly airs that are played to the departing 
 souls of good men upon their first arrival in paradise, 
 to wear out the impressions of the last agonies, and 
 qualify them for the pleasures of that happy place. I 
 drew near with that reverence which is due to a superior 
 nature ; and as my heart was entirely subdued by the 
 captivating strains I had heard, I fell down at his feet 
 and wept." 
 
 Such was the gift of the author of the Christian Year, 
 and he used it in attaching the minds of the rising 
 generation to the Church of his predecessors, Ken and 
 Herbert. He did that for the Church of England which 
 none but a poet could do : he made it poetical. It is 
 sometimes asked whether poets are not more com- 
 monly found external to the Church than among her 
 children ; and it would not surprise us to find the ques- 
 tion answered in the affirmative. Poetry is the refuge 
 of those who have not the Catholic Church to flee to 
 and repose upon, for the Church herself is the most sacred 
 and august of poets. Poetry, as Mr. Keble lays it down 
 in his University Lectures on the subject, is a method 
 of relieving the over-burdened mind ; it is a channel 
 through which emotion finds expression, and that a safe, 
 regulated expression. . Now what is the Catholic Church, 
 viewed in her human aspect, but a discipline of the 
 affections and passions .' What are her ordinances and 
 practices but the regulated expression of keen, or deep, 
 or turbid feeling, and thus a "cleansing," as Aristotle 
 would word it, of the sick soul .' She is the poet of her 
 children ; full of music to soothe the sad and control 
 the wayward, — wonderful in story for the imagination 
 of the romantic ; rich in symbol and imagery, so that , 
 gentle and delicate feelings, which will not bear words, 
 
Fellow of Oriel. 443 
 
 may in silence intimate their presence or commune with 
 themselves. Her very being is poetry ; every psalm, 
 every petition, every collect, every versicle, the cross, 
 the mitre, the thurible, is a fulfilment of some dream 
 of childhood, or aspiration of youth. Such poets as are 
 born under her shadow, she takes into her service ; she 
 sets them to write hymns, or to compose chants, or to 
 embellish shrines, or to determine ceremonies, or to mar- 
 shal processions ; nay, she can even' make schoolmen of 
 them, as she made St. Thomas, till logic becomes poeti- 
 cal. Now the author of the Christian Year found the 
 Anglican system all but destitute of this divine element, 
 which is an essential property of Catholicism ; — a ritual 
 dashed upon the ground, trodden on, and broken piece- 
 meal ; — sprayers, clipped, pieced, torn, shuffled about at 
 pleasure, until the meaning of the composition perished, 
 and offices which had been poetry were no longer even 
 good prose ; — antiphons, hymns, benedictions, invoca- 
 tions, shovelled away ; — Scripture lessons turned into 
 chapters ; — ^heaviness, feebleness, unwieldiness, where the 
 Catholic rites had had the lightness and airiness of a 
 spirit ; — vestments chucked off, lights quenched, jewels 
 stolen, the pomp and circumstances of worship annihi- 
 lated ; a dreariness which could be felt, and which seemed 
 the token of an incipient Socinianism, forcing itself upon 
 the eye, the ear, the nostrils of the worshipper ; a smell 
 of dust and damp, not of incense ; a sound of ministers 
 preaching Catholic prayers, and parish clerks droning 
 out Catholic canticles ; the royal arms for the crucifix ; 
 huge ugly boxes of wood, sacred to preachers, frowning 
 on the congregation in the place of the mysterious altar ; 
 and long cathedral aisles unused, railed off, like the tombs 
 (as they were,) of what had been and was not ; and for 
 orthodoxy, a frigid, unelastic, inconsistent, dull, helpless 
 
444 John Keble, 
 
 dogmatic, which could give no just account of itself, yet 
 was intolerant of all teaching which contained a doctrine 
 more or a doctrine less, and resented every attempt to 
 give it a meaning, — such was the religion of which this 
 gifted author was, — not the judge and- denouncer, (a 
 deep spirit of reverence hindered it,) — but the renovator, 
 as far as it has been renovated. Clear as was his per- 
 ception of the degeneracy of his times, he attributed 
 nothing of it to his Church, over which he threw the 
 poetry of his own mind and the memory of better days. 
 His happy magic made the Anglican Church seem 
 what Catholicism was and is. The established system 
 found to its surprise that it had been all its life talking 
 not prose, but poetry. 
 
 " Miraturque novas frondes et non sua poma.'' 
 
 Beneficed clergymen used to go to rest as usual on 
 Christmas Eve, and leave to ringers, or sometimes to 
 carollers, the observance which was paid, not without 
 creature comforts, to the sacred night ; but now they 
 suddenly found themselves, to their great surprise, to be 
 "wakeful shepherds ;" and "still as the day came round," 
 "in music and in light," the new-born Saviour "dawned 
 upon their prayer." Anglican bishops had not only lost 
 the habit of blessing, but had sometimes been startled and 
 vexed when asked to do so ; but now they were told of 
 their " gracious arm stretched out to bless ; " moreover, 
 what they had never dreamed when they were gazetted 
 or did homage, they were taught that each of them was 
 "an Apostle true, a crowned and robed seer." The parish 
 church had been shut up, except for vestry meetings and 
 occasional services, all days of the year but Sundays, 
 and one or two other sacred days ; but church-goers 
 were now assured that " Martyrs and Saints " " dawned 
 
Fellow of Oriel. 445 
 
 on their way," that the absolution in the Common Prayer 
 Book was "the Golden Key each morn and eve;" and 
 informed moreover, at a time too when the Real Pre- 
 sence was all but utterly forgotten or denied, of " the 
 dear feast of Jesus dying, upon that altar ever lying, 
 while Angels prostrate fall." They learned, besides, 
 that what their pastors had spoken of, and churchwardens 
 had used at vestry meetings, as a mere table, was " the 
 dread altar;" and that "holy lamps were blazing;" 
 "perfumed embers quivering bright," with "stoled priests 
 ministering at them," while the " floor was by knees of 
 sinners worn." 
 
 Such doctrine coming from one who had such claims 
 on his readers from the weight of his name, the depth of 
 his devotional and ethical tone, and the special gift of con- 
 solation, of which his poems themselves were the evidence, 
 wrought a great work in the Establishment. The Catho- 
 lic Church speaks for itself, the Anglican needs external 
 assistance ; his poems became a sort of comment upon 
 its formularies and ordinances, and almost elevated them 
 into the dignity of a religious system. It kindled hearts 
 towards his Church ; it gave a something for the gentle 
 and forlorn to cling to ; and it raised up advocates for 
 it among those, who otherwise, if God and their good 
 Angel had suffered it, might have wandered away into 
 some sort of philosophy, and acknowledged no Church 
 at alL Such was the influence of his Christian Year ; 
 and doubtless his friends hail his Lyra Innocentium, as 
 being likely to do a similar work in a more critical time. 
 And it is to be expected that for a while something of 
 a similar effect may follow its publication. That so 
 revered, so loved a name as the author's, a name known 
 by Oxford men for thirty years and more, — that one who 
 has been " a hermit spirit" unlike the world all his days, 
 
446 John Keble, 
 
 who even in his youth caused the eyes of younger men to 
 turn keenly towards him, if he was pointed out to them 
 in public schools or college garden, who by the mere first 
 touch of his hand has made them feel pierced through, 
 so that they could have sunk into the earth for shame, 
 and who, when removed from his loved University, was 
 still an unseen silent influence moving hearts at his will, 
 — that a " whisper " from such a man, " with no faint and 
 erring voice," will for the time retain certain persons in 
 the English Church, who otherwise, to say the least, 
 would have contemplated a return to that true Mother 
 whose baptism they bear, the one sole Ark of salva- 
 tion, of this we make no question at all. But there 
 is another point, of which we entertain just as little 
 doubt, or rather are a great deal more confident, — 
 that as far as the Volume has influence, that influence 
 will, on the long run, tell in favour of the Catholic 
 Church ; and will do what the author does not, nay, 
 from his position, alas ! cannot, may not contemplate, — 
 will in God's good time bring in a blessed harvest into 
 the granaries of Christ. And being sure of this, much 
 as the immediate effects of its publication may pain the 
 hearts of those who are sighing and praying for the souls 
 of others, we can bear to wait, we can afford to be patient, 
 and awfully to watch the slow march of the divine pro- 
 vidences towards this poor country. 
 
 7. 
 
 Take the Volume ; consider its doctrine ; consider, 
 too, that it seldom insists upon the English Church as 
 a definite and substantive body, but seems almost to 
 view the infant's breast as the true visible Church, the 
 only doctor and saint in the land ; and then imagine 
 what will be the direction and course of thought in those 
 
Fellow of Oriel. /^^^y 
 
 children, who grow up under the teaching which it im- 
 parts. It tells them, for instance, that in the very act 
 and moment of baptism the soul is regenerated, and, 
 ordinarily, is regenerated in no other way ; that each 
 soul has an Angel for its guardian ; that, whereas Christ 
 works His miracles of mercy now as at the beginning, 
 St. Mary is an instrument in them as in the marriage of 
 Cana, and also the Apostles ; that the Saints are rightly 
 called gods ; that "the Infinite" is present in the "un- 
 bloody rite ; " that the Eucharistic sacrifice is offered up 
 daily all over the world, and that the sun never sets upon 
 it ; that the Church has ever spread in that shadow of St. 
 Peter, which in the beginning wrought miracles, and that 
 it shall never grow less ; and that it is " duteous " to 
 pray for the dead as well as the living, a position with 
 which he opens the first stanza in his Volume. Now in 
 what sense is this a Church-of-England training ? How 
 can a child ever learn from it sympathy with and attach- 
 ment to that communion, as he grows up ? How is such 
 teaching dutiful towards it ? The Ethiopian, on reading 
 the prophet Isaiah, inquired, " Of whom speaketh the 
 prophet this ? " and so the boy, the youth, the man, as 
 he looks wider and further into the world, as he is 
 gradually thrown upon his own thoughts, will surely ask 
 with louder and louder voice where this teaching is to be 
 found .' whence it comes .? which of the living English 
 bishops or departed divines, and how many, which of 
 the Anglican formularies, what part of the Prayer Book, 
 which of the Articles, what obsolete canon, or what 
 ecclesiastical judge, sanctions its doctrines ; and how far 
 literal tangible facts bear out its statements .' — and next 
 whether there are not existing bishops elsewhere, and 
 divines, and decrees, and usages, which do bear it out 
 fully, and offer him what he is seeking; whether, in 
 
448 John Keble, 
 
 short, the author's comment is sanctioned by his text ; 
 or belongs to some other text not his ? There is but 
 one Church which has firmly, precisely, consistently, 
 continually held and acted upon these doctrines of the 
 Lyra Innocentium ; and, if holding them to be token of 
 the true Church, one and only one Church is true. 
 
 It must be recollected, too, that these doctrines are 
 part of a system ; they lead to other doctrines ; they 
 gradually and imperceptibly draw the mind into the 
 reception of others, whether it will or no. At this very 
 moment souls are being led into the Catholic Church on 
 the most various and independent impulses, and from the 
 most opposite directions. True it is, that such persons 
 as have been taught from childhood certain principles 
 are able without prejudice to them to admit other doc- 
 trines which are their direct contradictories, and which 
 in themselves tend inevitably to their destruction. An- 
 glicans of forty years' standing may admit that St. Peter 
 is the foundation of the Church, yet feel no misgivings 
 in consequence that the Church of England is external 
 to Catholic communion ; but the Lyra Innocentium is 
 not addressed to grown men, but to children, whose hearts 
 and heads have yet to be formed, and who, if " trained 
 up " (as they will be) " in the way they should go," are not 
 likely in the end to " depart from it." Is it not, indeed, 
 by this time abundantly clear, that, as children of the 
 Evangelical school of the last age have so often become 
 Latitudinarians, so the young generation whose pious 
 and serious parents ^re now teaching them to cross them- 
 selves, to fast or ajDgtain, to reverence celibacy, and to 
 say the Ave Mary, should they grow up as serious and 
 pious as their instructors, will end in being converts to 
 the Catholic Church .' 
 
 Well would it be, if the really honest holders of 
 
I'ellow of Oriel. 449 
 
 Anglo-Catholic principles could be made to see this ; it 
 would be the removal of a veil from their eyes ; they 
 would at once perceive that they ought to be plain 
 Catholics. Some of them, indeed, may hitherto have 
 had thoughts of leavening the whole English Church 
 with their doctrine ; they may have described that 
 Church as what it ought to be and was not, in the hope 
 thereby of tending to make it what it ought to be ; and 
 now, though they see or suspect their own tendency to 
 be towards Rome, they may put this suspicion aside, 
 and remain where they are, in the confidence that, if 
 they are but patient, they shall ultimately succeed in 
 , bringing over their whole communion to their own views. 
 But such a confidence has not been the feeling of the 
 author of the Christian Year, if we may judge from his 
 writings. His imagination, creative as it is, has been 
 under the control of too sober a judgment, as we cannot 
 but surmise, to acquiesce in the notion that the English 
 Church is the natural seat of Catholicism ; that you 
 have but to preach the truth, and the heart of her mem- 
 bers will recognize in that truth their own real senti- 
 ments, and claim their lost inheritance ; that Erastianism 
 in high places will ever become a mere matter of history ; 
 that ecclesiastical courts, university authorities, mobs 
 and vestries, will ever lose their keen scent for detecting 
 popery, and their intense satisfaction in persecuting it. 
 He seems to resign himself and his friends, as if it were 
 no " strange thing," to the prospect of unkind, unnatural 
 treatment ybr ever, from her whom the word of prophecy 
 has depicted as the mother of her children. He hgs 
 some beautiful lines on a child's clinging to its mother's 
 gown who appears the while to disregard it, with a 
 reference to the miracle wrought upon the issue of 
 blood : and it is impossible not to see that he is all 
 VOL. II. 29 
 
450 John Keble, 
 
 the while drawing himself and the English Church Jn 
 a parable. 
 
 " She did but touch with finger weak 
 The border of His sacred vest, 
 Nor did he turn, nor glance, nor speak, 
 Yet found she health and rest. 
 
 " Well may the Word sink deep in me. 
 For I full many a fearful hour. 
 Fast clinging. Mother dear, to thee. 
 Have felt love's guardian power. 
 
 " When looks were strange on every side, 
 When, gazing round, I only saw 
 Far-reaching ways unknown and wide, 
 I could but nearer draw : 
 
 " I could but nearer draw, and hold 
 Thy garment's border as I might. 
 This while I felt, my heart was bold, 
 My step was free and light. 
 
 " Thou haply on my path the while 
 Didst seem unheeding me to fare. 
 Scarce now and then, by word or smile. 
 Owning a playmate there. . 
 
 " What matter ? well I know my placa 
 Deep in my Mother's inmost heart; 
 I feared but, in my childish race, 
 I from her robe might part."' — P. 147. 
 
 We are ourselves reminded of a different image. We 
 have somewhere seen some lines by Darwin, in which a 
 mother is described as killed by a chance ball in a 
 battle ; her children are found clinging to her in the 
 persuasion that she is asleep ; — when she is discovered 
 by those who know better, the poor babes say in sur- 
 prise, " Why do you weep, mamma will soon awake .' " 
 None other but that miraculous Voice, which used the 
 same words over Jairus' daughter, can wake the dead. 
 
Fellow of Qriel. \^\ 
 
 8. 
 
 There is one other issue, to which we have not yet 
 drawn attention, to which Anglo-Catholic writers may- 
 reduce the inquiring mind ; — they may throw it, by a 
 reaction, into rationalism. When the opening heart 
 and ea:ger intellect find themselves led on by their 
 teachers, as if by the hand, to the See of St. Peter, and 
 then all of a sudden, without good reason assigned, are 
 stopped in their course, bid stand still in some half 
 position, on the middle of a steep, or in the depth of a 
 forest, the natural reflection which such a command 
 excites is, " This is a mockery ; I have come here for 
 nothing ; if I do not go on, I must go back." Of course 
 such a feeling, though the natural, will not, and ought 
 n,ot to be, the first feeling of the young. Reverent 
 minds will at first rest on the word of their teachers by 
 the instinct of their natures, and will either receive them 
 without examination, or accept on faith what does not 
 approve itself to their reason. But as time proceeds, 
 and the intellect becomes more manly, and has a greater 
 hold of the subjects of thought and the relations of those 
 subjects to each other, it will at length come to feel that 
 it must form its own judgment on the questions which 
 perplex it, unless the authority, to which it has hitherto 
 submitted, claims to be infallible. To an infallible 
 authority it will submit; but since no teacher of the 
 Anglican Church, no, nor that Church itself, claims to 
 have the power of absolutely determining the truth in 
 religious matters, the moment must arrive when the 
 young inquirer feels it right to have an opinion of his 
 own, and then it is that a peremptory prohibition of his 
 advancing onward, without sufficient reason assigned 
 for it, will act as a violent temptation to recede. A for- 
 
452 John Keble, 
 
 lorn feeling comes over the mind, as if after all there 
 was nothing real in orthodoxy — as if it were a matter of 
 words, about which nothing is known, nothing can be 
 proved — as if one opinion were as good as another. 
 The whole Roman faith it thinks it could receive ; but 
 a half-and-half system, which both does and does not 
 appeal to reason — which argues as far as it thinks argu- 
 ment tells in its favour, and denounces argument when 
 it tells the otlier way — flies to authority, puts forward 
 great names, and talks in a vague way of " reverence," 
 "submission," "the Church of our baptism," "restless- 
 ness," and the like, neither commands its faith nor wins 
 its love. O that we could be sure about our author, that 
 however he might think it his duty to treat the gentle 
 and unlearned who depend on him, at least when men 
 of independent minds, young or old, come to him in 
 doubt — men of the world, or rising men of active minds, 
 whose characters are yet undetermined, (we are speaking 
 in entire ignorance whether he has knowledge of such 
 cases,) what a blessing it would be to be able to think 
 that, instead of placing an obstacle in the path of such, 
 he felt himself at liberty to say to them as much as this : 
 " Stay with us, if you do not risk your Christian faith 
 and hope by staying ; but, little as I can countenance 
 your departure to the Church of Rome, better do so 
 than become a rationalist." This surely is not asking 
 a very great deal. 
 
 As to the author personally, we cannot help cherish- 
 ing one special trust, which we hope is not too sacred to 
 put into words. If there be one writer in the Anglican 
 Church who has discovered a deep, tender, loyal devo- 
 tion to the Blessed Mary, it is the author of the Chris- 
 tian Year. The image of the Virgin and Child seems' 
 to be the one vision upon which both his heart, and' 
 
Fellow of Oriel. 453 
 
 intellect have been formed; and those who knew Oxford 
 twenty or thirty years ago, say that, while other college 
 rooms were ornamented with pictures of Napoleon on 
 horseback, or Apollo and the Graces, or Heads of 
 Houses lounging in their easy chairs, there was one 
 man, a young and rising one, in whose rooms, instead 
 of these, might be seen the Madonna di Sisto or Do- 
 menichino's St. John — fit augury of him who was in the 
 event to do so much for the revival of Catholicism. 
 We will never give up the hope, the humble belief, that 
 that sweet and gracious Lady will not forget her ser- 
 vant, but will recompense him, in royal wise, seven-fold, 
 bringing him and his at length into the Church of the 
 One Saviour, and into the communion of herself and all 
 Saints whom He has redeemed. 
 
 June, 1846. 
 
454 
 
 POSTSCRIPT. 
 
 I HERE subjoin, what had quite gone out of my mtnd 
 Mr. Palmer's disavowal of some of the opinions which I 
 ascribed to him in my review of his Treatise on the 
 Church {vid. above, Essay iv.) His remarks upon it are 
 to be found among the " Notices of Books " in the British 
 Critic for April 1839, and have accidentally met my eye 
 since the publication of these volumes. Neither at the 
 time did they lead me, nor do they lead me now, to 
 change the judgment which I formed of the direct drift, 
 of his teaching ; but in fairness he ought to have the 
 benefit of them. They run as follows : — 
 
 " I have not anywhere maintaihed that the 'vyhole 
 Catholic Church ' does even at this day preach every- 
 where one and the same doctrine, except in very minor 
 and secondary points, or except as popular errors interfere 
 ' with it,' British Critic " [supr., vol. i., p. 1 69]. "A reference 
 to what I have above stated, p. 567, will show that I am 
 not on principle bound to sustain this position ; nor do 
 I practically admit it, because, in my opinion, several of 
 the errors and abuses of the Roman Church are of a 
 vejry important nature, and very detrimental to Christian 
 piety, though they be not, strictly speaking, contrary to 
 the articles of faith. 
 
 " I know not what part of my work had led to the 
 notion that I hold ' that the faith of the Church admits 
 of addition,' and that ' any doctrine which has once been 
 generally received must be apostolic, or in other words 
 
Postscript. 455 
 
 that the majority cannot be wrong '" \stipr., vol. i., p. 176], 
 " I have expressly argued against the latter position 
 vol. ii., p. 136, etc. As to the former, I have distinctly 
 stated that the articles of our faith were but once revealed 
 and admit of no addition, vol, i., p. 89. Perhaps it may 
 be supposed that, in admitting that, before the universal 
 Church has decided some question of controversy, 
 different opinions may be held without heresy, while I 
 hold, that, after the judgment of the Church, there should 
 be no more diversity, I may seem to admit the articles 
 of faith to be capable of addition. This was not my, 
 intention ; I only mean, that, in the heat of controversy 
 when different opinions are supported by men of learning, 
 it may for a time be doubtful what the revealed truth is, 
 and therefore persons may for a time not receive that 
 truth, may even hold what is contrary to it ; and yet, until 
 the authority of the universal Church has decided the 
 question, and left them without excuse, they may be free 
 from the guilt of formal heresy. I only speak here of 
 controversies which the Church had not decided in 
 former ages ; or in which the testimony of tradition as 
 well as Scripture is disputed." 
 
 November, 187 1, 
 
INDEX. 
 
 Aaron's rod, i. 326 ; ii. 26, 233 ; 
 golden calf, 429. 
 
 Abbot, Jacob, i. 36 ; his Corner 
 Stone, 72 ; introduces himself to 
 Dr. Newman, 100. 
 
 Acacius of Constantinople, i. 164. 
 
 Adelbert, Archbishop of Bremen, 
 ii. 255. 
 
 /Eschylus, the ■ action of his plays 
 always simple and inartificial, i. 
 2 ; his Agamemnon, 5. 
 
 Agatho, Pope, his Letter to the 
 Emperor Constantine, ii. 329. 
 
 Ainsworth, 'Rs!iT^,\as, Arrow against 
 Idolatry, ii. 166. 
 
 Ambrose, St., his opposition to the 
 Empress Justina, i. 116; Confes- 
 sion ascribed to, 201 ; on dialec- 
 tics, ii. 42. 
 
 Ancona, seizure of by the French, i. 
 130. 
 
 Andrewes, i. 400 ; ii. 45, 59. 
 
 Anglo- American Church, the, i. 308. 
 
 Antichrist, the Protestant idea of, ii. 
 112. 
 
 Antigone, i. 3. 
 
 ApoUinarianism, i. 200. 
 
 Apostle's Creed, the, ii. 6. 
 
 Arianism, i. 239. 
 
 Aristotle, his Poetics, i. I ; his treat- 
 ment of dramatic composition, 7 ; 
 fragmentary character of his work, 
 8 ; his definition of poetry, 9 ; on 
 pity, 106; condemned by the early 
 Fathers, ii. 42. 
 
 Arius, cross examined by the Fathers 
 at Nicsea, i. 278. 
 
 Armida, garden of, i. 310. 
 
 Arnold, Dr., ii. 113. 
 
 Athanasian Creed, need of, in these 
 dangerous times, i. 87 ; its protest 
 against ApoUinarianism, 200; an- 
 tithetical structure of, 205. 
 
 Athanasius, i. 203 ; quoted, 205, 
 214; bears witness to the genuine- 
 ness of the Ignatian Epistles> 245; 
 quoted, ii. 52. 
 
 Augustine, St., i. 164; his theology, 
 286; motto from, ii. 21; on Unity, 
 35, 40, 41; against the Donatists, 
 
 364- 
 Avenir, the, i. 127-128. 
 
 Bacchus, worship of, i. 6. 
 
 Bacon, Lord, on poetry, i. 9; ii. 402. 
 
 Baillie, Joanna, her Chough and 
 Crow, i. 17. 
 
 Barrow, his Discourse on the Unity 
 of the Church, ii. 21 ; quoted, 
 159. 
 
 Basil, St., ii. 60, 326. 
 
 Bastwick, quoted, ii. 163. 
 
 Baxter, Richard, a gibe off his 
 answ,ered, ii. 173. 
 
 Becke't, iL 58. 
 
 Bede, i. 309. 
 
 Beethoven, i. 192. 
 
 Bellarmine, i. 143, 178 ; his defini- 
 tion of the Church, ii. 36 ; on the 
 word Catholic, 51 ; Notes of the 
 Church, 59. 
 
 Benedict IX., Pope, ii. 260. 
 
 Benson, Bishop, of Gloucester, i. 404. 
 
 Berridge, lUr., his interview with 
 the Bishop of Lincoln, i. 407 ; 
 described, 418. , ' 
 
458 
 
 Index. 
 
 Berthier, Abb^, lo6. 
 
 Betbesda, ii. 221. 
 
 Bible and the Church, i. 154. 
 
 Bickersteth, Mr., i. 263. 
 
 Bingham's Antiquities, i. 143. 
 
 Bird, Mr., on the Oxford School, i. 
 
 303- , 
 Bolingbroke, Lord, his respect for 
 
 Lady Huntingdon, i. 401 ; on 
 
 Whitfield, 402. 
 Boniface VII., Pope, ii. 260. 
 Borromeo, Carlo, ii. 140. 
 Bossuet, i. 170, 178. 
 Bourbon Monarchy, the, L 107. 
 Bowden, Mr., his Life of Hilde- 
 
 brand, ii. 254 ; short memoir of, 
 
 318. 
 Brougham, Lord, ii. 410. 
 Browne, Robert (founder of the 
 
 Brownists), on Antichrist, ii. 158. 
 Bruno, ii. 267. 
 Bull, Bishop, i. 75, 144, 192, 197, 
 
 250, 285 ; ii. 402. 
 Bunsen, Baron, his Hyppolytus 
 
 quoted, i. 250. 
 , Burke, Edmund, ii. 402. 
 Bums, Robert,. i. 21. 
 Butler, Alban, Lives, of the Saints, 
 
 ii. 415. 
 Butler, Bishop, on Christianity, 1. 
 
 51 ; quoted, 54; 59, 69; a hard 
 
 rider, ii. 391 ; teaching of, 395. 
 Byron, Lord, immoral compositions 
 
 of his later years, i. 12 ; Hebrew 
 
 Melody, 16 ; Ckilde Harold^ 17, 
 
 18 ; the Corsair, 19 ; had very 
 
 little elasticity of genius, 20 ; his 
 
 Sardanapalus and Myrrha, ib.; 
 
 Manfred, 22. 
 
 Cadmus, i. 6. 
 Calvin's Institutes, i. 401. 
 Campbell on the Gospels, 1. 42. 
 Campbell, Thomas, his Pleasures of 
 
 Hope, i. 18; ii. 410. 
 Cassandra, i. 6. 
 Caswall, Mr., his account of the 
 
 State of the American Church, i. 
 
 313- 
 Channing, Dr., i, 94, 99. 
 Chapman, Dr., i. 329; \n.iSermons 
 
 quoted, ib. 
 
 Chase, Bishop, of Ohio, 1. 315, 318. 
 
 Chesterfield, i. 388. 
 
 Qhevallier, Mr., his translation of a 
 passage in Ignatius, i. 213. 
 
 Chillingworth, quoted, ii. 86. 
 
 Chrysostom, death of, i. 164 ; 
 quoted, 340. 
 
 Church Articles, i. 58. 
 
 Cicero, on the talent of the orator, 
 i. 17 ; on the value of Antiquity, 
 199 ; his Latin, ii. 385. 
 
 Clement, St., 1. 187 ; ii. 29. 
 
 Clement VIL, Pope, i. 177. 
 
 Coleridge, i. 268.. 
 
 Composition, i. 24. 
 
 Constantius, ii. 59. 
 
 Cooke, Dr., i. 328. 
 
 Cooper, Fenimore, his novel of The 
 Pioneers, i. 375; quoted, 376. 
 
 Cornelius, Bishop of Rome, ii. 31. 
 
 Cowper, Lines on his Mother's Pic- 
 ture, i. 17; slovenly in his versi- 
 fication, 26. 
 
 Crabbe's Tales of the Hall, i 18. 
 
 Cranmer, ii. 19, 48. 
 
 Cureton, Dr., publishes a Syriac 
 version of three of the Epistles 
 of St. Ignatius, i. 227, 261. 
 
 Cyprian, St., on the Unity of the 
 Church, i. 163, 192, 285 ; ii. 29, 
 398. 
 
 Cyril, St., of Alexandria, quoted, i. 
 
 . 216. 
 
 D'Ailly,Cardinal, on the Eucharistic 
 
 Presence, i. 178. 
 Damiani, St. Peter, his character 
 
 and career, ii. 281. 
 Darwin, Erasmus, lines by, ii. 450. 
 Davison, John, Fellow of Oriel, ii. 
 
 375- ' 
 Dehon, Bishop, quoted, i. 339! 
 
 eloquence of, 340 ; sketch of his 
 
 career, 341. 
 De Lolme on the Constitution, 
 
 quoted, i. 288. 
 Dionysius of Syracuse, i. 126; ii. 45. 
 Doane, Dr. , Bishop of New Jetsey, 
 
 his Editions of the Apostolical 
 
 Fathers, i. 377. 
 Doddridge, Dr., i. 320; works of 
 
 40a 
 
Index. 
 
 4:)9 
 
 Dodwell, his Discourse conceming 
 
 One Altar and Priesthood, ii. 25. 
 Domenichino's St. John, ii. 453. 
 Donatists, the, i. 167 ; ii. 48. 
 Dryden, his Alexander's Feast, i. 22; 
 
 his Hind and the Panther quoted, 
 
 312. 
 Dudley, Lord, ii. 378, 
 Dunkers, the, described, i. 324. 
 Durandus, Bishop of Annecy, his 
 
 views on the Eucharistic Presence, 
 
 i. 178, 180. 
 
 Edgar, Mr., his Varieties of Pofery 
 quoted, ii. 128. 
 
 Edgeworth Miss, her tales, i. 13 ; 
 Mananivring, 14 ; her representa- 
 tions of the Irish character, 15. 
 
 Edgeworth Richard Lovel, his Es- 
 says, ii. 386. 
 
 Ehsha, i. 33 ; and the Shunammite 
 woman, 391, 404. 
 
 Empedocles, his Physics, i. 12. 
 
 Epiphanius, on Meletius, ii. 65. 
 
 Erskine, Mr., i. 30; his Internal 
 Evidence, 49. 
 
 Essenes, the, ii. 198. 
 
 Euripides, his carelessness in the 
 construction of his plots, i. 2 ; 
 beauties of his tragedies, 3 ; his 
 Bacchae, 6 ; his Clytemnestra, 15 ; 
 affected simplicity of, 26. 
 
 Eusebius, enumerates and quotes 
 from the Seven Epistles of Igna- 
 tius, i. 244. 
 
 Eustathius, ii. 61. 
 
 Eve, i. 122. 
 
 Exeter Hall divinity, i. 298 ; haran- 
 guing and protesting, ii. 339. 
 
 " Eyes and no Eyes," i. 191. 
 
 Ezekiel'svision in the Tempi ,11.429. 
 
 Faustus the Manichean, i. 224. 
 
 Fenelon, ii. 146. 
 
 Fleury, i. 143; on the death of 
 Ghrysostom, 164. 
 
 Fox the martyrologist, ii. 297. 
 
 Frederick, Prince of Wales, his 
 admiration of the character of 
 Lady Huntingdon, i. 399; in- 
 clined to favour the Methodistic 
 taovement, ib. ; death of, 400. 
 
 Froude, Hurrell, on Scripture and 
 Fundamentals, '\. 174; quoted, ii. 
 
 439- 
 Fundamentals of Faith, i. 168. 
 
 Gallicanism, i. 109. 
 
 Gibbon, i. 23 ; on Gregory VII. 
 
 and his successors, 117, 19S ; ii. 
 
 186, 283. 
 Gordon, Mr. Hunter, on Protes- 
 
 tanism, i. 265. 
 Grant, James, on the spread of the 
 
 Oxford Tract doctrines, i. 265. 
 Greek Tragedy, i. i. 
 Gr^goire, Abb^, i. 106. 
 Gregory V., Pope, ii., 274. 
 Gregory VI., Pope, his purchase of 
 
 the Holy See, ii. 262 ; his abdi- 
 cation, 264. 
 Gregory VII., Pope, i. 117, 254 
 
 sqq. See Hildebrand. 
 Gregory XVI., Pope, i. 129,139. 
 
 Hall, Bishop, quoted, ii. 160. 
 Hallier, quoted, ii. 81. 
 Hammond, quoted, i. 172 ; ii. 402. 
 Hampden, Bishop, his Bampton 
 
 Lectures, i. 101. 
 Haweis, Dr. , i. 390, 414. 
 Hefele, Dr., i. 261. 
 Henry III., Emperor, ii. 261. 
 Henry IV., of France, ii. 144. 
 Hilary of Aries, i. 164. 
 Hildebrand, i. 161, 305 ; ii. 58, 253, 
 
 265, sqq. See Gregory VII. . 
 Hippolytus, fragments of, i. 207. 
 Hoadly, Bishop, i. 388. 
 Hobart, Bishop, of New York, i. ' 
 
 315 ; his Sermons quoted, 339 ; 
 
 his protest against the Prerogative 
 
 of Episcopal Election by the 
 
 Crown, 355. 
 Homer's Iliad, i. 11, 22; style ot 
 
 his poems perfect, 26. 
 Hooker, i. 144, 197, 298 ; ii. 402. 
 Hopkins, Bishop, of Vermont, works 
 
 of, i. 377. 
 Home, Bishop, ii. 56. 
 Hume, i. 23 ; on Miracles, 194 ; ii. 
 
 219. 
 Huntingdon, Countess of, i. 386, sqq. 
 Hurd, Bishop, i. 405. 
 
46o 
 
 Index. 
 
 Hutton, R. H., his Essays quoted, 
 ii. 75. 
 
 Jackson's Works, their rise in price 
 
 and estimation, i. 299. 
 Jacobson, Mr., his Edition of the 
 
 Apostohcal Fathers, i. 199, 213. 
 Jeroboam, 1. 124. 
 Jerome, St., quoted, i. 252 ; ii. 41, 
 
 52, 67, 326. 
 Jesuits, the, i. 120. 
 Jewel, Bishop, ii. 404. 
 Ignatius, St., the Seven Epistles of, 
 
 i. i86 ; ii. 27, 324. 
 Innocentiusand St. Augustine, i. 164. 
 Joachim, Abbot, ii. 121. 
 John XV., Pope, ii. 274. 
 John XVIII., Pope, ii. 260. 
 Johnson, Dr., Style of, ii. 393. 
 Ion, picturesque situation of, i. 3. 
 Iren£eus, i. 192 ; on the birth of 
 
 Christ, 203, 205 ; his great work 
 
 Contra Htereses, 207 ; quoted, 21 8; 
 
 on the Church, ii. 37. 
 Isidore of Pelusium, his definition 
 
 of the Church, ii. 37. 
 Justin, i. 192 ; on the Church, ii. 37. 
 Justina, Empress, i. n6. 
 
 Kaye, Dr., Bishop of Lincoln, i. 285. 
 
 Keble, John, i. 151, 182 ; his Chris- 
 Han Year, 189 ; of the country 
 clergy, 272 ; his Christian Year 
 described by a Romanist writer, 
 290 ; on Mr. Davison, ii. 394 ; his 
 Lyra Jnnocentium, 421. 
 
 Keble, Thomas, i. 279. 
 
 Kid gloves and Naples soap, age of, 
 
 ii- 313- 
 Knox, Alex., his Jiemains qioted, 
 
 i. 268 ; ii. 1 10. 
 Kuinoel, theory of, as to the herd of 
 
 swine, ii. 223. 
 
 Lacordaire, i. 137. 
 
 Lactantius, quoted, ii. 41, 52. 
 
 I>a Mennais, de, Fall of, i. 102. 
 
 Latimer, i. 183. 
 
 Laud, Archbishop, i. 195, 197 ; 
 
 quoted, ii. 9. 
 Launoy, his definition of the Church, 
 
 ii. 36 ; quoted, 45. 
 
 Latirence, St., martyrdom of, i. 115, 
 
 Lavington, Bishop, of Exeter, i.405. 
 
 Leo IX., pontificate of, an illustra- 
 tion of the mixture of Catholic 
 truth with wild romance, ii. 276. 
 
 Leo XII., Pope, i. 139. 
 
 Leslie, i. 144. 
 
 Liberius, Pope, ii. 59. 
 
 Liguori, St. Alfonso, quoted, ii. 81 
 
 Littledale, Dr., ii. 79. 
 
 Lloyd, Bishop, i. 145. 
 
 Louis Philippe, i. 104, 106. 
 
 Loyola, i. 305. 
 
 Lucifer, Bishop of Cagliari, ii. 65. 
 
 Lucretius, i. 23. 
 
 Luther, i. 129, 144, 159, 305; ii. 
 132, 165. 
 
 Lyall, Archdeacon, his Lectures, ii. 
 130. 
 
 Lydia and St. Paul, ii. 344. 
 
 Mabillon, quoted, ii. 329. 
 
 Macaulay, Lord, on the Apostolic 
 Succession, ii. 86. 
 
 Machyn's Diary, ii. 77. 
 
 Madan, Rev. Martin, i. 401 ; de- 
 scribed, 417 ; his Thelypihara, 
 418. 
 
 " Manifestation," i. 40. 
 
 Marlborough, Duchess of, on Whit- 
 field's preaching, i. 398. 
 
 Mayo, Dr. , i. 27. 
 
 McNeile, Mr., Sermon on Anti- 
 christ, ii. 126. 
 
 Mede, high opinion entertained of 
 him by Mr. Davison, ii. 402. 
 
 Medea, i. 3. 
 
 Meg MerrUies, ii. 214. 
 
 Melancthon, i. 295. 
 
 Meletius, Bishop of Antioch, ii. 62. 
 
 Methodism, a heresy, i. 386. 
 
 Milman, Dean, his History of Chris- 
 tianity, ii. 186, sqq. ; quoted, 323. 
 
 Milner, i. 170, 192, , ■ . 
 
 Milton, his Allegro and Penseroso, i. 
 ,12 ; his Sonnet on his Blindness, 
 1 7 ; Hymn on ,the Nativity, ib. ; 
 26 ; on Prelacy, ii. 161. 
 
 Montalembert, i. 137 ; his Life of 
 Lacordaire, quoted ib. ; on the 
 lapse of De la Mennais, 142. 
 
 Montalivet, M., i. io5. 
 
Index. 
 
 461 
 
 Moore, Thomas, style of, i. 26. 
 Mormonites, the, i. 325. 
 Moscow, Archbishop of, his Sum- 
 ■ mary of Christian Divinity, i. 169. 
 Mosheim, i. 143. 
 Mucins Scsevoia, i. 68. 
 Mystery, Scripture sense of the 
 word, i. 41. 
 
 Naaman, i. 33. 
 
 Napoleon at Lodi, i. 89 ; his Con- 
 cordat with the Pope, 104. 
 
 Nazianzen, Gregory, on the birth of 
 Christ, i. 204, 214; on Aristotle, 
 ii. 42, quoted, 62, 64. 
 
 Neoptolemus, i. 3. 
 
 Nestorius, i. 202. 
 
 Newman, Dr., his Apologia quoted, 
 i. 29 ; his account of an interview 
 with Mr. Abbott, loi ; his Devel- 
 opment of Doctrine quoted, 184 ; 
 indebted to Archbishop Whately ; 
 272 ; quotation from his Apologia, 
 307 ; from Anglican Difficulties, 
 381 ; his letter to Father Cole- 
 ridge, ii. 109. 
 
 Newton, Dr., his Autobiography, 
 quoted, ii. 135 ; a man idolatrous 
 of comfort and liquorish of prefer- 
 ment, 138. 
 
 Nicodemus, i. 33. 
 
 Nicole on Unity, i. 166. 
 
 Nines, diocese of, i. 105. 
 
 Norris, Mr., of Hackney, his Letter 
 to Bishop Hobart, i. 342. 
 
 Notes and Queries, ii. 77. 
 
 Notes of the Church, i. 155. 
 
 Novatians, the, i. 163. 
 
 Oakeley, Mr. , Preface to his White- 
 hall Sermons, quoted, i. 272. 
 
 Objective Truth, i. 34. 
 
 Oceanus, i. 3. 
 
 O'Connell, Mr., i. 124. 
 
 O'Conor, Dr. Charles, on the de- 
 bates which separate Protestants 
 from Catholics, i. 170. 
 
 Ohio, diocese of, i. 321. 
 
 Olivi, Peter John, teaching of, ii. 
 122. 
 
 Onderdonk, Bishop, of New York, 
 i- 354- 
 
 Oppian,his History of Animals,i. 12. 
 Orestes, i. 3, 11. 
 Origen, i. 202, 207. 
 Osburn's Errors of the Apostolic 
 Fathers, i. 195 ; on St Ignatius, 
 
 210. 
 
 Pacca, Cardinal, i. 131, 139. 
 
 Page, Mr., of Virginia, i. 343. 
 
 Paley's Evidences, ii. 207. 
 
 Palmer on Faith and Unity, i. 143 ; 
 Treatise on the Church of Christ, 
 147; Letters to Dr. Wiseman, 
 183 ; on Carlo Borromeo, ii. 140; 
 on St. Francis de Sales, 143 ; 
 disavowal of some of the opinions 
 ascribed to him, 454. 
 
 Parker, Archbishop, ii. i. 
 
 Paterculus, Velleius, history of, i. 
 
 239- 
 Pearson, on the Creed, i. 143 ; on 
 
 the Ignatian Epistles, 221, 249, 
 
 254, 260. 
 Peel, Sir Robert, i. 28. 
 Felaglanism, i. 395. 
 Pelagius, creed of, i. 201. 
 Pentheus, i. 6, 7. 
 Perceval, Mr., on the Apostolic 
 
 Succession and the English 
 
 Orders, ii. i. ''^ 
 
 Perrone, Fr., on Mr. Palmer, i. 181 ; 
 
 ii. 82. 
 Petavius, i. 143. 
 Phasdra, 1. 3. 
 Philoctetes, i. 3. 
 Phcenix, vulgarities of, in the ninth 
 
 Iliad, i. II. 
 Pius VII. and Napoleon, i. 138. 
 Poetical Composition, i. 24. 
 Polycarp, St., i. 244 ; ii. 324. 
 Pope, Alex., richness of his diction, 
 
 i. 25 ; an admirer poet, 267, 388 ; 
 
 quoted, ii. 394. 
 Powell, Baden, quoted, i. 263. 
 Priscian, i. 239. 
 Private Judgment, ii. 336. 
 Prometheus, ii. 3. 
 Protestantism, described by De la 
 
 Mennais, i. 129. 
 Provoost, Bishop, of New York, i. 
 
 344- 
 Purgatory, ii. 15. 
 
462 
 
 Index. 
 
 Pusey, Dr. , i. 272 ; his Letter to the 
 
 Bishop of Oxford, quoted, 282. 
 Pyramids, builders of the, i. 91. 
 
 Rasselas, i. 310. 
 
 Rationalism, defined, i. 31. 
 
 Reformation, in England, i. 112 ; 
 of the Eleventh Century, ii. 249. 
 
 Regulus, i. 89. 
 
 Revealed Religion, essentially poeti- 
 cal, i. 23. 
 
 Revelation, i. 41,. 
 
 Romaine, Mr., i. 406.' 
 
 Rome and Antichrist, i. 182. 
 
 Rome, the resting-point and centre 
 of Catholicism, i. iii. 
 
 Rose, Rev. H. J., his defence of 
 Bishop Hobart, i. 356 ; aliena- 
 tion from Dr. Newman, ii. 100. 
 
 Sabellianism, i. 95, 99. 
 
 Sales, St. Francis de, ii. 143. 
 
 Saul's armour, ii. 341. 
 
 Schleiermacher, Dr. , his view of the 
 doctrine of the Holy Trinity 4.96. 
 
 Scott, Mr., of Aston Sandford, his 
 Essays, quoted, i. 68. 
 
 Scott, Sir Walter, his Peveril of the 
 Peak, i. 13 ; his Bride of Lammer- 
 moor, 16 ; the Waverley Novels, 
 19, 22 ; his versification, 26 ; pre- 
 pared the way for a closer ap- 
 proximation to Catholic truth, 
 267 ; his character of the miser 
 Trapbois, ii. 292. 
 •Seabury, Dr., of Connecticut, his 
 Sermons quoted, i. 337, 358. 
 
 Seeker, Archbishop, i. 391. 
 
 Seed-and-Snake Baptists, i. 324. 
 
 Senior, Nassau, i. 27. 
 
 Shakespeare, his frequent introduc- 
 tion of unpoetical matter for the 
 sake of relief, i. 1 1 ; his Richard 
 and lago, 15 ; Lady Macbeth, 
 Romeo and Juliet, Ophelia, 16, 
 18, 22; quoted, ii. 251, 424. 
 
 Sharp, Granville, his Letter to Dr. 
 Franklin on American changes 
 in the Prayer-Book, 1. 343. 
 
 Siegfried, ii. 291. 
 
 Silvanus of Tarsus, ii. 6i- 
 
 Simeon Stylites, St., i. 350; ii. \\q. 
 
 Simon Magus, ii. 235. 
 
 Smith, Dr., of Maryland, i. 358. 
 
 Smith, Horace, his novel of Brarrf 
 bletye-House, i. 13. 
 
 Socrates, Ecclesiastical History, 
 quoted, ii. 325. 
 
 Sophocles, his (lidipus at Colonus, 
 i. 2 ; his Philoctetes, 3; OEdipus, 
 5 ; inattention to style, 26. 
 
 Southey, his epic poems, i. 16,268; 
 his advice to Mr. White respect- 
 ing the London Review, 28; his 
 censure of Mr. Berridge, 419. 
 
 Sozomen, quoted, ii. 61, 325. 
 
 Stillingfleet, i. 144; quoted,ii. 10,20. 
 
 Subjective Truth, i. 36. 
 
 Sumner, Bishop, on the Oxford 
 Tract Movement, i. 264. 
 
 Swetchine, Madame, on the lapse 
 of De la Mennais, i. 142. 
 
 Taylor, Isaac, his Ancient Christi- 
 anity quoted, i. 263, 278, 296, 
 304 ; characterized, ii. 153. 
 
 Taylor, Jeremy, on Sacramentals, i, 
 45; \i\% Ductor Dubitaniium,\i,T„ 
 298 ; ii. 402. 
 
 TertulUan, on the birth of Christ, i. 
 203 ; treatises of, 207, 285 ; on 
 Aristotle, ii. 42. 
 
 Theodoret, on the Church, ii. 37 ; 
 on Meletius, 63 ; self-defence, 
 178; on St. Simeon Stylites,4i9. 
 
 Thomson, minuteness of his remarks 
 upon nature, i. 12. 
 
 Thurlow, Lord, on the Scotch 
 Bishops, ii. 20. 
 
 Tillotson, i. 388 ; ii. 402. 
 
 Tiresias, i. 6. 
 
 Todd, Dr., on the Prophecies re- 
 lating to Antichrist, ii. ill. 
 
 Tracts for the Times, i. 30, 100, lOl. 
 190, 262 ; ii. 94. 
 
 Transubstantiation, established by 
 the Fourth Lateran Council, i. 
 I77- 
 
 Tropici (or Turn-abouts), ii. 60. 
 
 Valentinus, i. 249. 
 Valentinus Pacaeus, i. 229. 
 Vasquez, I. 143. 
 
Index. 
 
 463 
 
 Vincent of Lerins, quoted, i. 205 ; 
 
 ii. 41, 108. 
 Virgil, occasional irreligion of, i. 22 ; 
 
 a master of composition, 26. 
 Ulysses, i. 3. 
 Vbss, on a passage in Ignatius, i. 
 
 213; industry of,229; quoted, 249. 
 
 Waldo, Peter, ii. 118. 
 Wall's Infant Baptism, i. 144, 298. 
 Walpole; Sir Robert, i. 388. 
 Warburton, Bishop, his conduct to 
 
 Lady Huntingdon, i. 408 ; as a 
 
 writer, ii. 56 ; Mr. Davison's 
 
 opinion of him, 411. 
 Washington,anEpiscopalian,i. 314. 
 Waterland, i. 75, 144, 298. 
 Wellington, Duke of, his Des- 
 , patches, ii. 251. 
 _ Wesley and Whitfield, i. 422. 
 Wesley, Charles, i. 408, 420. 
 Wesley, John, quoted, ii. 160. 
 Whately, Archbishop, i. 27, loi ; 
 
 his Tract on the Sabbath, ii. 
 
 164. 
 White, Bishop, i. 338, 343, 345, 
 
 ■357- 
 White, Blanco, his editorship of the 
 
 Londofi Review, i. 27 ; his Hei-esy 
 and Orthodoxy, quoted, 75, loi. 
 
 Whitfield, George, his deference to 
 the worldly rank of Lady Hunt- 
 ingdon, i. 391. 
 
 Williams, Mr. Isaac, i. 279. 
 
 Wilson, Bishop, ii. 56. 
 
 Wiseman, Dr., i. 183 ; ii. 368. 
 
 Witzius, ii. 405. 
 
 Woodgate, Mr., i. 151. 
 
 Wordsworth, Dr., i. 183. 
 
 Wordsworth, William, i. 268. 
 
 Worship of the Virgin, ii. 13, 436. 
 
 Ximenes, ii. 72 
 
 Xystus III., to the Synod of Thes- 
 salonica, ii. 327. 
 
 Young's Night Thoughts, i. 17. 
 
 Zaleucus, Prince of the Locrians, 
 
 story of, i. 68. 
 Zedekiah, i. 205. 
 Zendavesta, ii. 197, 235. 
 Zenzelius, ii. 128. 
 Zoroaster, ii. 211, 230, 236. 
 Zuingle, i. 295. 
 Zwingli-Lutheranism, i. 167. 
 
 FINIS. 
 
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