LTBEARY OF THE Theological Seminary. PRINCETON, N. J. Case BX 5129 . P9 pt.2 Pusey, E. B. 1800-1882. Shelf First letter to the Very Book Rev. J. H. Newman, D.D EIEENICON. Past II. * LONDON : GILBERT AND BIYINGTON, PBINTEHS, ST. JOHN'S SQUARE, B.C. FIRST LETTER TO THE YERY KEY. J. H. NEWMAN, D.D. in (Explanation CHIEFLY IN BEGABD TO THE REVERENTIAL LOVE DEE TO THE EVER-BLESSED THE0T0K0S, AND THE DOCTRINE OF HER IMMACULATE CONCEPTION; WITH AN ANALYSIS OF CARDINAL DE TURRECREMATA'S WORK ON THE IMMACULATE CONCEPTION. BY THE EEV. E. B. PUSEY, D.D. EEGIU8 PBOFESSOB OP HEBBEW, AND CANON OF CHBIST CHTJBCH. SOLD BY JAMES PARKER & CO., OXFORD, AND 377, 8TEAND, LONDON; RIVINGTONS, WATERLOO PLACE, LONDON, HIGH 8TEEET, OIFOED, AND TEINITY STEEET, CAMBEIDGE. 1869. Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2015 https://archive.org/details/firstlettertoverOOpuse CONTENTS. PAGE Personal explanations . . . . . . . . 3 — 5 Objects of the Eirenicon ........ 6 No imputations intended ........ 8 Ground of adducing language as to B. V. . . . .10 Citations, mostly from books popular in England . . . .11 Grounds of those citations ........ 13 Title of co-Redemptress used extensively .... 14 — 15 Language cited, justified by Oakeley ..... 16 — 19 De Montfort, Faber . 17 Object of gathering into one the devotions as to the B. V. . . 18 Belief as to the title " Theotokos " assumed . . . . .21 The B. V. a " moral " instrument of the Incarnation . . .22 Great titles given by the Fathers to the B. V. related to the fruits of the Incarnation ....... 26 — 33 Intercession of the Saints a necessary fruit of perfected love . 34 — 35 Meaning of titles given by the Fathers to the B. V. partly changed ; others added ; effects ..... 36 — 40 Points agreed upon, or at issue ...... 41 — 42 Difference of Roman Catholics as to Marian devotions . . .43 Vision of the woman " clothed with the sun " . . .44 " Behold thy mother " ........ 45 Interpreted of S. John only by the Fathers . . . . .48 Improbable texts alleged later ....... 49 Active and passive conception ....... 51 Explanation of Mgr. Dupanloup. Imm. Cone, differs only in degree from that of Jeremiah and S. John B. . . 52 — 53 Schoolmen deny sanctification before animation . . . .55 Soul of the B. V. could be sanctified, when infused . . .56 Active conception taught by some to be Immaculate . . .57 Revelations of S. Brigit 57 — 58 a VI Contents. PAGE Active conception commonly meant by word " conception " . .59 This, its scriptural use ....... 59 — 60 Unexplained, tlie Immaculate Conception will probably include that of the body too . . . . . . . 60—64 Grounds of Scripture and Tradition against the Immaculate Con- ception, quoted by Biel ...... 64 — 67 Special weight of St. Augustine's ...... 67 His mode of declining to include the B. V. in actual sin implies his belief of her conception in original sin (see also De Turr. below, pp. 506, 507) 68—69 Porce of his exception of Our Lord Alone from original sin . 70 — 71 Objects in reproducing De Turrecremata's chain of authorities against the Immaculate Conception . . . . .72 Character of Turrecremata's work 73 — 74 De Bandelis . 75 Importance of an adequate explanation of this tradition . 76 — 77 Those authorities, of five classes ...... 77 Special weight of third class (omitted by Perrone), which held that Christ alone was not conceived in original sin, because not born in the way of nature . . . . . .78 Prse-Augustinian writers quoted (except Tertullian and Origen) by S. Augustine, on universality of original sin, without making exception. 1 — 11. S. Irenseus, Tertullian, Origen, S. Cyprian and African Council of 66 Bishops, Beticius, Olympius, S. Hilars', S. Ambrose, S. Gregoiy Naz., S. Basil, S. Chrysostom 79—94 12. Pope Zosimus, as commented on by S. Augustine . . 94 — 97 13. S. Augustine's statement, through 18 years, on " the likeness of sinful flesh " as peculiar to our Lord. Mary from Adam died for sin : Jesus Alone Innocent, as born of a virgin : all flesh, except His, infected through mode of our conception : all inherit sinful nature from Adam through mode of their birth. The condition of Mary's birth dissolved by re-birth 98 — 106 Passages of S. Augustine held to be valid by Perrone . 107 — 108 14. Clement of Alexandria . ...... 108 15. Eusebiiis of Csesarea ........ 109 16 — 17. S. Athanasius, Didymus Alex 110 18. Macarius^g . Ill 19—20. Mark Hermit, S. Greg. Nyss 112 21. De Bapt. in S. Basil 114 22—23. S. Pacian, S. Paulinus 115 24—25. S. Zeno • Peter of Tripoli, imitator of S. Aug. . . 116 Contents. vii PAGE 26 — 27. Pious unknown; Hypognosticon (perhaps M. Mercator) 117 28. Ambrosiaster ......... 118 29 — 30. S. Jerome, " Christ alone without sin ;" Rufinus . . 119 31—32. S. Cyril of Alexandria, Cassian 120 33—34. Eusebius Gallieanus, S. Pet. Chrysologus . . .122 35—36. Vincent of Lerins, S. Leo 1 123 37. S. Prosper . . . ....... . . .125 38 — 39. Chrysippus of Jerusalem, Antipater Bostr. . . . 126 40 — 41. Vineentius, Olympiodorus 127 42. Pope S. Gelasius 128 43. Julianus Pomerius ........ 130 44. S. Fulgentius of Ruspe . 131 45. Peter the Deacon, &c, 14 Bishops with S. Fulgentius . . 132 46. Boethius .......... 135 47. Cassiodorus 137 48. 2nd Council of Orange and S. Caesarius .... 139 49. Fulgentius Ferrandus ........ 140 50. Primasius . . . . . . . . . . 141 51. Pope S. Gregory the Great 142 52. S. Isidore of Seville . . . . . ... . 144 53 — 54. John IV., Pope Elect; Sophronius ..... 145 55. Bede . . . . . . . . . . .147 56. S. John Damascene ........ 148 57. Alcuin, or contemporary ....... 150 58. Rabanus Maurus . . . . . . . . .151 59. Haymo of Halberstadt 152 60. Rhemigius .......... 153 61. John Geometra ......... 154 62—63. S. Bruno Herbip., S. Peter Damiani . . . .155 64. S. Bruno, Founder of the Carthusians ..... 158 65. S. Bruno Astensis ......... 162 66. S. Anselm 163 67—68. John Beleth, Rupertus 167 69. Author in S. Bernard . . . ... . . ,168 70. S. Bernard 170—176 71. Hugo a S. Victor . . . 176 72—73. Eadmer (formerly thought S. Anselm), Herve of Dol. 179—181 74. P. Lombard 181—183 75. Porre"e .183 76. Odo, Bp. of Frisingen 184 77. Richard of S. Victor 185—188 78—79. Zacharias of Chrysopolis, Peter of Celle . . . 189—193 80. Gul. Parvus 193 a 2 viii Contents. PAGE 81—82. Sicardus, Innocent III 194 83. Cencius Sabellius (Honorius III.) ...... 197 84. P. Comestor (see p. 437) 198 Canonists : — 85. Hugutio, or Hugo 199 86. Joh. Teutonicus .202 87. S. Raimund de Penyafort 203 88. Card. Hostiensis .204 89. Durandus Speculator ........ 205 90 — 91. Guido de Baiisio, Archidiac. ; Barth. a S. Concordio . 207 92. John Andrea 208 Other Jurists . .209 Doctrinal Writers : — 93. William, Chancellor of Paris ib. 94. Alanus (perhaps Magnus) ....... 210 95. Petrus Prarpositivus ........ 211 96 — 97. Moneta of Cremona ; Gul. Arvernus, Bp. of Paris . . 212 98. Win. of Auxerre (Maurice, Bp. of Paris) . . . .213 99. John of Paris (Poinlane) 214 100. Alex, de Hales ib. Contradictory ways of getting rid of his testimony . . 215 101. Albertus Magnus 216 102. S. Bonaventura 217 Spurious Sermon ascribed to him ..... 220 103. S. Thomas Aquinas . 221 Answer to wrong inference from one place .... 224 104. Sermons on Antiph. " Salve, regina " . . . . . 226 105. Hugo de Argentina 227 106. Hannibaldus de Hannibaldis ...... 229 107. Peter de Tarantasia (Innocent V.) 230 108. Joann. ^gidius of Zamora .232 109. John de Balbis .233 110. Henry of Ghent 234 111. Ulric of Strasburg .236 112. Richard Middleton 238 113. jEgidius of Rome 239 114—115. Odo Rigaldi ; Hugo Gall., Card. Abp. of Ostia . . 241 116. John of Naples 242 117. Guido of Perpignan ........ 245 118. Hervseus Natalis 247 119. John de Poliaco 249 Contents. ix PAGE 120. John de Bacon, or Baconthorpe 250 121. Joann. Ricardi, Bp. of Dragonara ..... 253 122. Alvarus Pelagius. F. of the Sanctification at Rome . . ib. 123. Paul. Sake, de Perusio (Add. p. 519) 257 124. Nic. Treveth, of Oxford .258 125. Durandus a S. Porciano ....... ib. 126. Gregory of Ariminum 260 Writers of Sermons on Fest. of B.V. .- — 127. Rich, of S. Laurence ........ ib. 128. Bp. of Lincoln (probably Grosthead) 262 129—130. Joan, de Rupella, Odo de Castro Rodulphi . . .264 131. Lucas of Padua, disciple of S. Antony of Padua . . . 265 132. Wra. Perault . ib. 133. Martinus Polonus 266 134. Conrad of Saxony. . . . . . . . 268 135. Jac. de Voragine ......... ib. 136. Thomas de Ales . . . . . .271 137. Jacoponus de Benedictis ....... ib. 138. James of Lausanne ........ 272 139. Card. Bertrand de Turre 273 140. Jordanes de Quedlinborch . . . . . . .274 141. S. Vincent Ferrier . . 275 Commentators : — 142. John de Varsiaco 277 143. Card. Hugo de S. Caro 278 144. WiUiam of Alton 279 145. Nic. de Lyra ......... ib. 146. Ludolf of Saxony (" Life of Christ ") 281 147. Petr. de Palma 282 148. Stephen, ancient Postillator and Paris Doctor . . . 283 149. Venble. Cistercian father, of Fountain Abbey . . . ib. 150. S. Antoninus of Florence 284 Card, de Turrecremata . . . . . . . 288 Scotus rests the contrary on abstract arguments, not on tradition . 291 Petau on want of diligence and sagacity in citing evidence in favour of Imm. Cone. ....... 295 Meaning brought into, not out of, authorities alleged . . . 297 1. Acts of S. Andrew's Martyrdom . . . . . . ib. 2. S. Dionysius of Alexandria (if his) ...... 298 3. Latin Pseudo-Origen 299 4. S. Hippolytus, of Conception of Our Lord .... 301 X Contents. PAGE 5. S. Ephraim, the B. V. " guileless " 301 Speaks only of actual holiness . . . . . . ib. 6. S. Ambrose, freedom from actual sin only .... 306 7. S. Augustine, condition of birth dissolved by grace of re-birth . ib. 8. Theodotus, of actual grace on Incarn. ..... 307 9. Writer in S. Chrysostom (of Incarnation) .... 309 10. S. Proclus, the same, and against offence at it . . . ib. 11. Sedulius, if words were pressed, would go the other way . 311 12. Post-Augustinian treatise against five heresies . . . 312 13. S. Pet. Chrysologus, B. V. pledged to Christ in the womb . 314 14. S. Sabba, no ground to think we have any thing of his . . ib. 15. Psalter ascribed to S. Columban declares conception of all in orig. sin .......... 316 16. Hesychius, of actual grace ....... 318 17 — 18. Andrew of Crete, Germanus, relate to the Incarnation or actual holiness ......... ib. 19. S. John Damascene, her miraculous Cone, or freedom from actual sin. • . . . . 322 20. Pseudo-Alcuin and Council of Frankfort, of actual stainlessness 324 21. Theodoras, eminence of the creation of B. V. . . . . 325 22 — 24. Joseph, hymn-writer ; George of Nicomedia ; Peter Chore- piscopus. Actual holiness of the B. V., or that derived from our Lord's Presence ........ 326 25. Some Sophi-onius, actual graces of B. V. . . . . 327 26. John Geometra, of her Conception of Christ. Held the Cone. in orig. sin ......... ib. 27. Fulbert of Chartres, knowledge of her temporal beginnings hidden . ...... . . .329 28. S. Maximus of Turin, whole context relates to grace of virginity (see also on the other side, p. 431) . . . 331 29. Paschasius Radbertus argues in proof of immaculate Nativity of B. V., held sanctif. after cone, in orig. sin, Petau, De Band., De Turrecr. (see below, p. 493) . . . 332—336 30. (Ballerini) Charta of TJgo not earlier than 13th cent., and spurious ; " Trope " of same date. ..... 337 31. Hymn, later than S. Ambrose, relates to Virgin-birth . . 339 Three Greek writers alleged, Antipater, Sophronius, Isidore of Thessalonica, go the other way ..... 341 Titles speak only of actual undefiledness . . . . ib. Holiness of parents did not prevent transmission of orig. sin . 345 Presence of the Holy Ghost at her Cone, relates to holiness of parents, John of Eubcea, Peter of Argos, Jacob Mon., Isid. Thess 346—348 Contents. xi PAGE Festival of Conception of the B. V. has reference to the temporal beginning of her who was to bear the Saviour of the world: Hymns, Sermons . . . . . . . 351 — 357 Festival of the Nativity of B. V. has reference to the same . . 358 Greek Icons. Conception of S. John Baptist .... 359 Sketch of introduction of Festival of Cone, of B. V. in the West . 360 Ways in which it might be kept, apart from immaculateness 362 — 364 Introd. in England in view to the Incarnation, Constitution of Abp. Mepham, 1328 365 At Borne, in view to subsequent sanctif., Alvarus Pelagms . . 367 Carthusian statutes ......... ib. Old Dominican service-books 370 Office of Vine. Bandellus 372 Breviary of Church of Gironne ....... 374 Breviary in many parts of Germany . . . . . .376 De Turr.'s argument from Office on the Nativity. . . . 377 Festival of Cone, did not imply its immaculateness : Clement VI. while Card. Abp. of Rouen ...... 378 Clement XI 379 Bellarmine, not chief foundation of festival 380 Natalis Alex . . . . 381 Scripture alleged : — Arg. even from faulty reading " Ipsa," Gen. iii., exaggerated . 382 Falls with the reading Ipsa . 385 De Bossi's grounds, why reading should be corrected . . . 386 Perrone's argument as to identity of meaning in either reading fails . . . . . . . . . . .388 Minute patristic parallel between the B. V. and Eve rather seems to exclude than include a point not paralleled . . . 389 Objects of the above statement of evidence ..... 392 Value of the " quod ubique " acknowledged on both sides . . 393 Original sin . . . . . . . 397 English and Tridentine statements thereon contrasted with Luther's and Calvin's 398 How original sin is transmitted, a mystery ..... 401 Difficulties, as stated by Mohler ....... 402 Innocent III. on its transmission, before and after he was Pope . 404 His doctrine, possible basis of explanation ..... 407 The " fomes peccati," or concupiscence ..... 409 Exceptions in "Eirenicon" as to popular doctrine on the B. V. only made to what was not " de fide 410 English feeling as to the B. V., why cramped .... 411 xii Contents. PAGE Love for the B. V. cannot be too great ..... 412 Yearning towards her in the Eng. Church, Bp. Andre wes . . 413 Bp. Hall, Pearson 414 Bp. Hicks . 415 Dr. Frank . . . . 417 George Herbert .......... 418 " The Christian Year " 419 Hopes 420 Rev. G. Williams on interpolations in the Greek Liturgies . . 425 APPENDIX. Labour and care of Card, de Turrecremata in preparing his " Re- lation on the Truth of the Conception of the B. V.," for the Council of Basle 429 Omitted passages or authorities : — S. Augustine .......... ib. 151. S. Maximus of Turin . . 431 Ancient writer quoted as S. Cyril 432 S. Cyril 433 Pope S. Leo I ' . . ' . 434 S. John Damascene ......... 435 S. Bernard 436 On Peter Comestor 437 152. Ancient Doctor of Paris ib. 153. Richard of Armagh 438 Dominicans : — 154. Peter de Palude (objection removed) ib 155. Thomasinus of Ferrara 440 156. Bernard of Clermont ........ 441 157. Robert de Holcot (opposed interpolation) . . . . ib. 158. Thomas de Walleis 442 159. Nic. Gorram 444 100 — 161. Vincent Historialis, James of Beneventum . . . 445 162 — 163. John of Luxemburg, J. Sterngasse .... 446 Franciscans : — 164—165. Rob. Conton, Barth. de Pisis 447 166. Jac. de Casali ......... 448 Contents. xiii Augustinians : — paoe 167. Bernard Oliveri . / 418 1G8 — 169. John Teutonicus, Henry de Vrimaria .... 419 171. John Clivoth of Saxony ....... 451 172. John Stringarius 452 Cistercians : — 173. John Calcar [qu. de Cervo] ...... 453 174 — 175. John Monachus ; writer of Sermones Soccii . . 454 176. Mag. Garric 455 Analysis of Card, de Turrecremata's " Treatise on the truth of the Conception of the most Blessed Virgin, as a relation to he made before the fathers of the Council of Basle, July, a.d. 1437, compiled at the mandate of the legates of the Apostolic See, presiding over the said Council " . . 456 — 518 Addenda 519 I) ERRATA. P. 250, line 18, for ought to be held as heretical, who read one who holds it ought to be accounted heretical, who — — , — 20, after for ever ? add None certainly. — — , note 2, add [printed wrongly for 118]. — 262, line 2, for She read The dawn — 265, — 18, for went read goeth — 266, — 3, for when read since — 267, — 16, for waste read waste a — — , — 20, for consumption 9 read conception — 268, — 21, for a Bishop read Archbishop — 316, — 25, for &ixa>ixov, read ■Kavd/xa/j.ov, — 340, — 17, for 304, read 384 A LETTER, My Dearest Friend, First, let me thank you for the love shewn in your letter, a love which was such joy to my youth, and now is so cheering to my old age. 2. Next let me say, that I should indeed have thought it not rude only but insolent, to imply that " writing does not become " you. In the sentences which you quote, I was thinking, partly (as I said) of myself, " had the English Church, by accepting heresy, driven me out of it," partly, of an unprac- tical habit of mind of some who have gone over to the Roman Church, because they could accept the letter of the Council of Trent in their own sense. Nothing has been further from my mind than any criticism of yourself, whom I still admire as well as love. 3. But neither, on that account, have I ever meant to identify you, in your present position, b 2 4 Personal explanations. with any thing which I may say. In writing my " historical preface " to Tract 90, which you kindly permitted me to re-publish, " I purposely abstained from consulting you upon the subject, in order not to identify you with any thing in it." I dwell, indeed, on the sunny memories of those bright days of early or middle life, when we were fighting altogether the same battle (for against unbelief we are fighting the same battle still), when not our hearts only and our affections were (as they now are) one, but our thoughts also. But I did not mean to use your name, in order to identify you in the least now with any thing which I think or say. 4. In alleging those passages from the Fathers, which "state or imply that the faith is contained in Holy Scripture " (p. 336 sqq.), I had no idea of any controversy with Rome. In the whole of this part of my Eirenicon, I was purely on the defensive. It is, I think, not uncommon with Roman Catholic controversialists, to give to our YIth Article an un- Catholic sense. I meant simply to maintain that its teaching is identical with that of the Fathers. It had been said that " the Church of England weakens the hold of the truths which it teaches, by detaching them from the Divine voice of the Church." I meant to maintain that the Church of England does hold a Divine authority in the Church, to be exercised in a certain way, deriving the truth from Holy Scripture, following Apostolical tradition, under the guidance of God the Holy Ghost. I fully Personal explanations. 5 believe that there is no difference between us in this. The " quod ubique, quod semper, quod ab omnibus," which our own Divines have so often inculcated, contains, I believe, the self-same doctrine as is laid down in the Council of Trent upon tradi- tion. It was in pure honesty, and as a matter of fact, that I stated that, for some of the passages (which I did not know by my own reading), I was indebted to your most valuable notes on St. Athanasius. But I am glad that this reference to yourself has brought out your own clear expression of the identity of the belief of Roman Catholics and Anglicans on this point. Your whole statement entirely expresses our belief. I may, in token of that agreement, transfer one clear sentence to these pages. " We [you] mean — that not every article of faith is so con- tained there [in Holy Scripture], that it may thence be logically proved, independently of the teaching and authority of the Tradition ; but Anglicans mean that every Article of faith is so contained there, that it may thence be proved, provided there be added the illustrations and compensations of Tradition '." These explanations are towards yourself. There are three graver matters which concern myself: 1. That, in your own eyes and those of Roman Catholics, I have, under the name of an Eirenicon, been, in fact, to speak plainly, as aggressive as an Exeter-Hall2 controversialist. 2. That I have withheld the expression of my faith in regard to 1 Letter, p. li. 2 Letter, p. 10. C Objects of the Eirenicon, Sj-c. the Mother of my Lord. 3. That in writing on a quasi-authoritative system in regard to her, which I set forth as our chief difficulty, I have, in fact, inserted more or less from persons who are of no weight. All this you have said with your usual tender- ness; but to this it comes in substance; and I am glad of the opportunity of explaining myself. 1. My book had necessarily a two-fold aspect. It was a defence of ourselves against what, amid all courteousness of language, was a root-and-branch attack upon the Church of England, ascribing to her more of evil, and less of good, than any publi- cation I had happened to see. In answer to this, I claimed to her all the broad outlines of faith which you too have, and, (as I trust, truly,) I set aside many things which are the ordinary subjects of Protestant attack upon you. It has been so far said of my book, that, as far as it should have influence, it would change the character of the controversy. But, having done this, I was bound in conscience to my own people to say why I remain where 1 am, and why I not only think the Church of England justified in not accepting the only terms now open to her — viz. simple and absolute submission, in- cluding the reception of that whole practical system, which is, I believe, the ground why she remains apart ; but also trust that Almighty God has an office for her, in His over-ruling Providence, in regard to that same system. Yet I trusted that the exposition of this might still be without offence. For I pointed Objects of the Eirenicon, fyc. 7 out, that those things which are a " crux " to me, and, I believe, to our people generally, are not de fide among you; so that I thought I could not be considered as attacking the Church of Rome itself. I called the whole an Eirenicon, to show what my real animus was; what, in my own mind, underlay the whole. I meant the name to be the key to what necessarily was very miscellaneous. Whatever else there was in the book, and whatever appear- ances some of it might wear, I wished to say, that although I had been put upon the defensive, and although, in parrying a death-thrust, I could hardly help wounding, what I bond fide aimed at, as the ultimate result of all, was " peace." Plainly, if the Roman Church were wholly in the right, we should be wholly in the wrong; which I could not think; else, of course, I should not be where I am. But (which is the centre of all) I meant to suggest, that this state of things was not irremediable ; that there was a way, whereby peace and intercommunion might be restored, through mutual explanations, without calling upon the Church of Rome to aban- don any thing which she had pronounced to be " de fide." The writer of the first article in the Weekly Register seized my meaning, and I am grateful to him for it. At the same time seeing, in that remarkable collection of Episcopal letters 3 on the question of 3 The Pareri dell' Episcopato Cattolieo, &c. 8 No imputations intended ; yet language defining, as " de fide," the doctrine of the Imma- culate Conception, how tenderly many of the Bishops felt towards those who are not in the Roman Com- munion, and how much they desired not to aggravate their difficulties, I hoped that it would not be taken amiss, if I stated, in all its breadth, what, in that system which is our special difficulty, startled and repelled us. I did not use (as you will bear me witness) one word of declamation. I meant the statements to be simply of historical facts, if I may include under the term " historical," and simply as facts, the anticipations of influential writers in the Roman Communion of a large de- velopement of the cultus of the Blessed Virgin. In putting together these facts, nothing was further from my mind than to pass any opinion whatever, as to the writers whom I quoted. I simply wished to exhibit the picture of practical devotion to the Blessed Virgin, as it was reflected to me in their writings, and it did not even occur to me that I could be thought thereby to pass any opinion as to the inner life of those whose words were cited. When I heard that my not expressing this was thought to be unjust to holy men whom I quoted, I took the first opportunity which occurred to say, that I did not mean to impute to any. of them that " they took from our Lord any of the love which they gave to His Mother." In saying this, I may add, I hope without offence, that their language does appear to me self-contra- spoken of, contradicted other truth. 9 dictory. They used it, doubtless, in the security that they could not be misunderstood. Perhaps, if they had been writing for us English, or among us, they would not have used it. Still, the grammatical meaning of the words does not, in many cases, bear any softening. When S. Alphonso quotes from writers, following in part S. Thomas Aquinas, the statement, " The Father gave all judgment to the Son, and the whole office of mercy He gave to the Mother this antithesis is not explained, but contradicted by the statement, that " her tender- ness and compassion for men are but a drop from the boundless ocean of the infinite Mercy of Jesus Christ, her Son and her God 5." If it is said, " 6 The greater luminary is Christ, who presides over the just; the lesser luminary is Mary, who is set over sinners;" the antithesis is misleading, if it be not meant that Mary has some special office towards sin- ners which our Lord has not : the more so, when it is added ; " since then Mary is this propitious moon to sinners, if any miserable man finds himself fallen into the night of sin, let him behold the moon; let him pray to Mary." It is, of course, not said "pray to her" exclusively; but the sinner is said to have " lost the light of the Sun," i. e. Jesus, " by losing Divine grace," and is not directed to seek Him Whom he had lost, but Mary. Or 4 Glories of Mary, T. i. p. 81. 6 Note of transl., Ibid. (Not in former translations.) 6 Card. Hugo in Glories of Mary, C. 3. § 2. T. i. p. 184. 10 Ground of adducing language as to B. f7., when it is said to her 7, " Therefore hast thou been chosen from eternity to be the Mother of God, that thy mercy might procure salvation for those, whom the justice of thy Son could not save;" it seems to me, that the writer, in his vehement desire to set forth the privileges of Mary, contradicted the truth which he himself held, if he believed that the mercy of Jesus could save them. If, by any choice of words, I could have softened the pain of such statements, you must know how gladly I would have done it. But the pain lay in the subject itself. And no other way occurred to me, than that which I adopted, of giving the state- ments which presented difficulties to me, in the words of the writers, with only so much of ob- servation as should serve to indicate wherein the difficulty pressed upon us. But my object was a practical one. I knew that in thousands of English minds (I doubt not, that in millions), this and the like language is the great barrier against re-union. I have often (though you will smile perhaps at the advocacy) had to defend the Roman Church against being idolatrous, and that, on the ground of this and the like language. I wished to make out our case to you, not against you. I held to what I had put down at the outset, that if the Roman Church could declare to be de Jide, that only which the Council of Trent laid 7 De Prtes. Beatae Virgin., quoted as S. Chrysostom's or S. Ignatius'. cited from books in use in England. 11 down, as explained by Divines of repute among you (especially in this country), one chief obstacle to re-union would be removed. And so, as circum- stances induced me to accumulate the evidence of what we wished to be protected against, I thought with myself, " Well, they have but to disown it, and it will be so much gained." But, let me say, that in three instances only (which I will explain presently) I went to any book not in use in England. The authorities which I quote, the two Bernardines, Suarez, &c, were all taken from S. Alphonso, just as they lay in his book, only translated. And this book was in English. The third edition of the English version of his " Glories of Mary," came into my hands, (I know not how,) just as I was finishing my defence of Tract 90 in 1841. I had used Archbishop Ussher's extracts, to illustrate what our Articles meant by the Invocation of Saints which they con- demned, but little thinking to impute them to Rome at the present day. I thought that they belonged to past times. I said that I had hoped that "they were the exaggerations of individual minds, and that it was not fair to charge them as teaching, now received in the Roman Church." But in "the Glories of Mary " I found the self-same quotations, which I had before found in Archbishop Ussher, so that not only the general system remained the same, but there was a stream of authorities, which flowed on from generation to generation. The 12 Citatio?2s, mostly nothing new now. traditional system was sustained by the same tra- ditional authorities. The extracts I gave professedly on S. Liguori's authority, only here and there giving the name of the real author quoted (as Eadmer instead of St. Anselm); and this too (I may say) not on my own authority, but on that of the Benedictines. Indeed, although some Roman writers speak of me as laying down that "this is not genuine," &c, I believe that on one occasion only, and that not in controversy, I was obliged to use my own discrimination8. Else I have rested implicitly on the judgment of such critics as the Benedictines. I did not rend the passages from their context. Whatever modification any of them may have had originally, from the circumstances under which they were written, this was entirely removed by the fact of their having been transplanted among us. Although written for Italians 9 chiefly, they were translated into English. The quotations from the Bernardines, &c, became, I thought, a sort of received sayings, or first principles on the subjects on which 8 This one instance was in my work, " The Doctrine of the Beal Presence from the Fathers," in which I extracted passages from those Sermons only of S. Augustine, published by Card. Mai, which I myself believed to be genuine. I could not do otherwise. But this was in defence of the " real objective Presence." In saying that Ipsa (Gen. iii. 15) was a mistake for Ipse (for which F. Gallwey censures me, " The Lady Chapel," &c, p. 51), I alleged the great Koman Catholic critic, De Rossi. 9 Dr. Newman's Letter, p. 110. Grounds of additions. 13 they had written or preached. They had been Italian devotions ; they now were naturalized in England. Weary and sick of the controversy, I, so far, did nothing- in my Eirenicon, but extract anew the passages which I had before quoted in my defence of Tract 90, and in the notes to a sermon on the Rule of faith, now fourteen years ago. Principles, which had been enunciated of late, (I thought, for the first time,) alone occasioned me to do more. These principles were: 1) that it was for the good of the Church, to decree honours to the blessed Virgin, as gaining fresh favours from her; 2) that there ought to be an immense increase of devotion to her, and that Priests ought to incul- cate it; 3) that whatever, being so inculcated, became popularly received in the Church, was infallibly true ; or, as some of the Bishops expressed it, that the " quod ubique " was in itself a proof of the "quod semper." For if, according to the Council of Trent, the only sources of faith were Holy Scripture and really Apostolic tradition, and if what came to be taught popularly every where in the Roman Church was infallibly true, then, if it had not the authority of Holy Scripture, it must of necessity be assumed to have that of tradition. And there is a large body of teaching, against which it would be difficult to find any opposed tradition, on the ground that it did not bear directly on any doctrine, which would occasion it to be contradicted. 14 Title of co-Redemptress used extensively. Now, in the official answers of Bishops of Italy, Sicily, Sardinia, Spain1, I found that the doctrine, that the Blessed Virgin is our " co-Redemptress," was received in those countries which were of old most anxious that her Immaculate Conception should be declared to be matter of faith. Why should this too, I thought, not be declared to be matter of faith, since to honour the Blessed Virgin was considered an adequate ground for so declaring a belief, which was popularly received ? And if so, this would be a fresh difficulty in the way of re-union. But, as I did not understand the meaning of the title (with which I had become acquainted in studying those responses of the Bishops, as an index of the present mind in the Roman Church), I went to Salazar to learn it. Almost the only other foreign writer, whom I quoted, Oswald, I quoted expressly as not repre- senting Roman Theology, but as putting forth a fresh developement. I am thankful to hear that his book has been condemned. Of course, had I known this, I should not have quoted him. But I think it rather hard to be blamed for not knowing this2, or for not looking in the Index to ascertain the fact, when I had no ground to imagine it. I met with quotations from Oswald in a German work; wishing to ascertain their correctness, I obtained his own book in the ordinary way of trade, and 1 Eirenicon, pp. 151 — 153. 8 By Mr. Rhode3 in the Weekly Eegister. Presence of something of the B. V. in Eucharist. 15 read it. Why should I suspect a book to be in the Index, which eminent Roman Divines, who spoke of it, did not know to be there 1 But after all, though he said strange things, the central point, for which I quoted him, seems to me to lie in what Faber reports to have been a revelation to S. Ignatius Loyola 3. I wished to see whether what I found in Oswald and Faber, of the presence of something of the Blessed Virgin in the Holy Eucharist, occurred in other writers. And so I took up the third foreign book, which I quoted, believing him to be popular among your preachers, as he is, I think, among ours, Corn, a Lapide. To me he seemed explicitly to teach the same, on two grounds ; first, what seemed to me an assertion of dogma. " The Blessed Virgin feeds all with her own flesh, equally with the Flesh of Christ in the Eucharist4;" secondly, that from this feeding with her own flesh is derived the transfusion of the graces of the Blessed Virgin into pious communicants. "And hence" (it is from her so " feeding them with her own flesh equally with the Flesh of Christ,") "that love of virginity and angelic purity in those who worthily and frequently communicate." The maker of the Index to a Lapide understood him, as I did5. 3 Eirenicon, pp. 171, 172. * lb., p. 171. 6 " Ejus carnem in Ven. Eucharistia ediinus," v. B. Maria. I see that a Lapide' s work is being re-published in a cheap form. 1G Oakeley \s justification of the doctrine. This too Oakeley justifies : "In the same sense, surely, in which we say that the blood of our parents and ancestors flows in our veins (those physical changes notwithstanding), and with the necessary limitation expressed above, we may also say, and truly say, that the blood of the Blessed Virgin was in her Son from first to last, and is, therefore, in that wondrous communication of Himself which He makes to us in the Blessed Eucharist c." I do not think that this is what those writers meant, since they insisted that the blood was unchanged, and it is open to the fatal objection urged by Raynaud, whom you quote 7, (and I think I remember the same in Suarez,) that then, (as Oakeley's defence too implies,) not the blood of the Blessed Virgin only, but that of her parents, and their parents in turn, must have been present too, the evil consequences of which theory Raynaud points out. De Montfort I quoted, as being an approved writer, although recently published among us, and as one from whom a great impulse to that universal devotion, which was to characterize the new " age of Mary 8," was expected. The Preface to his book contained the statement that " The MS. has been examined at Rome . . . most minutely examined as to a Letter to Archbishop Manning, p. 23. r Letter, p. 137. 8 Faber, quoted Eirenicon, p. 116. De Montfort, Faber. 17 its doctrine, and declared to be exempt from all error which could be a bar to his canonization." So that I have been accused of presumption in demurring to any teaching s, which had at least this negative sanction1. I know not how much this sanc- tion amounts to. It could not, I suppose, involve an authoritative approbation of all in his book ; else, a similar sanction of the works of S. Thomas would involve a sanction of his denial of the Immaculate Conception. But if it did not authoritatively sanction all, neither, of necessity, did it sanction that which I cited ; yet, with that general approbation and the strong commendation of Faber, it was no obscure nor uninfluential work, from which I extracted. With regard to Faber himself, (whose memory I too cherish, and from whom I thankfully own that I have learned much,) I did not mean, that " the wide diffusion of" his " works, arose out of his particular sentiments about the Blessed Virgin2;" 0 Letter in the Weekly Register. 1 Since this has been in type, Bishop Ullathorne has pointed out (Weekly Register, April 21), that one form of devotion recommended by De Montfort, has been condemned, that of " wearing little iron chains, as a badge of their loving slavery," by "those who made themselves slaves of Jesus and Mary." But the condemnation had no special reference to any devotion to the Blessed Virgin, since the use of such chains was equally prohibited, when employed to symbolize that the wearer was SovXos 'l-qo-ov Xpiarov, lit. " the slave of Jesus Christ," as St. Paul says (Rom. i. 1). It must have been, I suppose, something in the symbol, or its use, inde- pendent of the thing symbolized, which was condemned. 3 Letter, p. 25. B 18 Object of gathering into one I meant only, that he seemed to me to use the well- deserved influence, which he gained through that rich variety of natural and spiritual gifts wherewith God endowed him, to the promotion of an extreme cultus of the Blessed Virgin, and that, unless there were something to counterbalance it, the wide diffusion of his writings made him an important element in the future course of English and foreign Roman Catholic devotion to her. My object was, as I said, towards, not against you. Speaking in the name of many (as I did), I hoped that those Roman Catholic Bishops, who, for love's sake, were unwilling to create any difficulty in the minds of those who wish to be one with them, might restrain those of their brethren who ignore us, or who look upon the healing of this division as hopeless. But, in all this, I did not utter one word of censure. I could not but express my feeling of the seriousness of it. I wrote, as one in earnest for others who were in earnest. It was our case, why we wished to have some formula framed, which, by its very character, should tacitly shew that all this was not " de fide," that in case of re-union, we should be exempt from teaching, such as Faber was using all his well-merited influence to naturalize among us. Indeed I believe that the only " strong- saying" in my book, is one which you say, I " bring to life, after it had long been in its grave." I thought that it 1 had been interred so long, that the devotions as to the B. V. 19 no one would know it again, or have guessed its parent, else I would not have quoted it ; and now that you have revealed its author, I shall take the - first opportunity to remove it. I only used it, as an illustration how deep the feeling was among us, since "one who appreciated highly what is good and holy in the Roman Church " had used it. Oakeley speaks of even the most extreme state- ments, which I quoted, as held to be " 3 doctrinally defensible by many excellent Catholics, who yet would hesitate to adopt them as the rule of their language and habits of thought on the subject of our Blessed Lady." He even anticipates their ultimate general adoption, as the result of their having been brought together. He [I] will lead many to the conclusion that the love and cultus of the Blessed Virgin must either be an extreme or a nullity ; that, unless we are prepared to degrade her office, as the Mother of our Redeemer and the great instrument of that dispensation whence flow all blessings to the human race, we cannot stop short of ascribing to her even the most majestic of those titles [I suppose, "Co- Redemptress," "Co-operatress," " Helper of Christ" in our salvation,] which have been found for her in the pious inventions of saintly love." But, if this be so, I do not see where my supposed fault lies. 3 Letter to the Weekly Eegister. 1 Letter to the Most Eev. H. E. Maiming, pp. 20, 21. B 2 20 Where was the evil? I set them down as our difficulties, and stated what made them difficulties to us. Oakeley says in fact, that they ought not to be difficulties, and that, he thinks, they must one day be owned, as an essential part of Christian trutb5. But then I see not what evil I can be supposed to have done, in putting together, chiefly from a book in familiar use in this country, passages which contain these statements, with very little note except the briefest indication wherein our difficulty lies. And yet another, who dedicates bis sermon to Oakeley, has no other title for me than that of " the Accuser 6," ascribing to me, totidem verbis, the character of Satan 7, while he himself puts into my 5 Oakeley anticipates also, that the re-union of England in visible communion with the Roman Church would, without some provision, issue in our being involved in these and all the other doctrines which I deprecated. He says, (Letter, p. 53,) " Here Dr. P. is met by a serious practical difficulty. If the Pope is to exercise in a re-united England the power which he claims all over the world, of controlling the appointments to the Episcopate, it is quite certain that the Bishops so nominated or at least accepted by him will, icith the priests, who are their subjects, be the instruments of flooding England with the devo- tions to which Dr. P. conscientiously objects." And certainly, to judge from the writing of him whom he addresses, this would be so, if there should be no Concordat, and if this section of Eoman theology should be the accurate representative of Rome. 8 Dr. Gallwey, " The Lady Chapel and Dr. P.'s Peacemaker," pp. 11—14, 18* 22, 26, 31. 7 " Be not weary yet, for the accuser doea not easily tire of accusing. To the blessed St. John it was revealed that the accusing spirit accused the brethren by day and by night. He is not silenced then yet." p. 26. Belief, as to title " Theotokos," assumed. 21 mouth language which I never used s. Alas ! if I have, unwittingly, (as you say half-playfully, in order not to speak as would pain me,) "discharged my olive branch as if from a catapult," he has wielded "the lightning of the sword" of the judgment of Almighty God. 2. But you think that I have been unjust to myself in not stating what I do believe in regard to the Blessed Virgin, as well as what I do not be- lieve, and that, had I so done, my book would have found less favour with Protestants 9. Certainly, the last thing which I imagined was, that my book could find any thing but condemnation at the hands of those who were really Protestants; and if it has met with less disfavour than I expected, it is, I think, owing to the powerful spell which those words, "re-union of Christendom," must exercise over every Christian heart. My omission of any positive statements, in regard to the greatness of the Blessed Virgin, was partly owing, I suppose, to my not even imagining that any one could doubt my belief, since the doctrine expressed by that great title, Theotokos, is a matter of faith, an essential part of the doctrine of the Incarnation. Partly too my immediate subject was not her eminence, but the "invocation of saints;" — in what way I thought that the requests for the prayers of the saints would find entrance among us, and what held us back 8 e. g., p. 27. 9 Letter, pp. 82, 83. 04. 22 The B. V. a moral, not physiml from entering upon the borders of the system. Englishmen are apt too much to concentrate themselves on the single point which they have in view; and I, T suppose, exaggerated an infirmity incidental to me as an Englishman. Yet, in one respect, my own words have conveyed to you a meaning utterly different from what was in my mind. I said, " what was said of her [the Blessed Virgin] by the Fathers as the chosen vessel of the Incarnation, was [by later writers] applied personally to her." I seemed to you to be speak- ing of the Blessed Virgin as " the physical instru- ment only of the Incarnation." This had not occurred to me. The contrast in my own mind, which I expressed, I suppose, the less clearly, because I had expressed it so often, and presup- posed it as known, was quite different from this. I meant two things; (1) that later writers apply to her present office, by virtue of her intercession, language which the Fathers used in regard to her office, which she through grace accepted, of be- coming the Mother of her and our Redeemer; (2) that besides this co-operation in the salvation of mankind, which Holy Scripture speaks of as the result of her free and engraced will, Salazar and others speak (as I cited him) of a co-operation, all along, in our Lord's own proper work of our Redemption, in a way of which Holy Scripture and, I may add surely, tradition hint nothing. But it never occurred to me to think of the instrument only of Incarnation. 23 Blessed Virgin otherwise than as a moral instru- ment of our common redemption. Almighty God employs His rational creatures only as moral in- struments ; much more, in that central act whereby He restored our race, and, in us, united His crea- tures with Himself. I have indeed thought it an exaggeration, when some writers of books of devotion have delighted to dwell on the Incarnation, as though our redemption depended upon the " fiat " of Mary. For, although God, — in conformity with that His wondrous con- descension, whereby He reverences (if I may so speak) the free will with which He has endowed us, and will not force our will — would not accomplish the Incarnation without the free will of His crea- ture, yet, of course, there was nothing really in suspense. Had He indeed, amid the manifold failures which He has allowed in His work of grace, willed to allow this scope also to free-will, that it should reject the privilege of being Theo- tokos, and so have offered it to one who would not accept it, the Incarnation might have been delayed for a while; it could not have failed. But He did not so will. He, in all eternity, we both believe, foreordained her who was to be Theotokos, Geni- trix Dei, the Mother of God. He, in time, created her; He endowed her with all those qualities, with which it was fitting that she should be endowed, in whom, " when Thou tookest upon Thee to deliver man, Thou didst not abhor the Virgin's womb." 24 The B. V. a moral, not physical It was indeed, in my young days, a startling thought, when it first flashed upon me, that it must be true, that one, of our nature, which is the last and lowest of God's rational creation, was raised to a nearness to Almighty God, above all the choirs of Angels or Archangels, Dominions or Powers, above the Cherubim, who seem so near to God, or the Seraphim with their burning love, close to His Throne 1. Yet it was self-evident, as soon as stated, that she, of whom He deigned to take His Human Flesh, was brought to a nearness to Him- self above all created beings; that she stood single and alone, in all creation or all possible creations, in that, in her womb, He Who, in His Godhead, is Consubstantial with the Father, deigned, as to His Human Body, to become Consubstantial with her. In S. Proclus' eloquent language, which you quote in part : — " Traverse in thought, 0 man, the creation, and see if there is any thing equal to or greater than the holy Virgin, who hare God. Compass the earth, survey the sea, search the air, track the heavens in thought ; consider all the invisible powers, and see whether there is any other such marvel in all creation. For the heavens declare the glory of God ; the angels serve with fear ; the archangels worship with trembling ; the Cheru- bim, not sustaining, quiver; the Seraphim, flying around, ap- proach not ; and trembling cry, ' Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord of hosts; heaven and earth are full of His praise.' The clouds in awe became the chariot of the Resurrection ; Hell in fear cast forth the dead ; — count over the miracles, and admire the victory of the Virgin ; for Whom all creation hymned with fear 1 I see this in a sermon which I preached twelve years ago. instrument only of Incarnation. 25 and trembling, she aloue inexplicably housed. Blessed for her sake are all women. For womankind is no longer under a curse ; for the race has received That wherefrom it shall sur- pass the Angels in glory. Eve is healed 2," &c. Yet she too had her trials. Nor, when I spoke of her as " the chosen vessel of the Incarnation," did I by that term, which I took from Holy Scripture, mean any other than a moral instrument. Great must that trial have been, whereby she believed what was, according to the laws of nature, im- possible, and on the ground of what with God only was possible, risked the reproach 3 among men, with which the poor Jews still blaspheme her Son and revile herself. She too was perfected through trial, and her belief in God was the first step in the undoing of the evil brought upon us through Eve's unbelief in God and belief in the evil one. And, doubtless, any imaginations of ours must come short of the truth, if we would picture to our- selves the superhuman, engraced beauty of the soul of her whom God vouchsafed to create, so alone in His whole creation, whose being ever lay in His eternal Counsels, who must have been in His Divine Mind, when, in all eternity, He contemplated the way in which He should unite His rational creation to Himself, redeeming our fallen race; from whom He, Who should be God and Man, was to derive 2 Orat. vi. in S. Deip. pp. 342, 313. 3 Celsus has it (in Orig. c. Cels. i. 20), and Origen him- self has more, yet agreeing with the Talmud. (Ib. n. 32.) 26 Meaning of titles of the B. V. used His Human Flesh, and in His Sacred Childhood to be subject to her. And in regard to that solemn act, whereby she became the mother of our Lord, with one addition, which you hold, though, as self-evident, you do not mention it, your words express my belief also. — " 4 They [the Fathers] declare that she co-operated in our salvation, not merely by the descent of the Holy Ghost upon her body, but by specific holy acts, the effect of the Holy Ghost upon her soul ; that, as Eve forfeited privileges by sin, so Mary earned privileges by the fruits of grace ; that, as Eve was a cause of ruin to all, Mary was a cause of salvation to all ; that, as Eve made room for Adam's fall, so Mary made room for our Lord's reparation of it ; and thus, whereas the free gift was not as the offence, but much greater, it follows that, as Eve co-operated in effecting a great evil, Mary co-operated in effecting a much greater good." That one self-evident addition is, that the Blessed Virgin, by her faith in Him Whom, on and through her faith, she conceived and bore, gained her own redemption as well as ministered to ours. I say this, because so many writers, in their zeal to exalt her, speak of her co-operating in our salvation, of her longing for it, as if they forgot that she needed redemption as much as we; that the Blood, shed for the redemption of the world, was shed for hers also. Further, my only difficulty in adopting any of the great titles which, as you say, the Fathers have given to the Blessed Virgin, is my impression that, 1 Letter, pp. 38, 39. by the Fathers^ recast. Two classes. 27 in the popular devotions, those titles which alone would come into question here, have received a different meaning from that in which the Fathers used them; and so that I should be speaking the language of other days which would be understood as it has been moulded by later usage. I should be using coin which had been re-stamped. The titles which the Fathers give to the Blessed Virgin fall, I think, into two classes, — those which shadow her perpetual Virginity before, in, and after, the Birth, and those Avhich speak of her as conceiving and bearing God. Of the first there is no question, and they, I think, seldom occur in modern books of devotion. Those other great terms, great as they were, were, I believe, but weaker expressions of that one word, Theotokos. They were so many colours evolved out of that central light. She was the Mother of our Redeemer, and so from her, as the fountain of His Human Birth, came all which He did and was to us. Thus she was "the Mother of Life," because she was the Mother of Him Who is our Life ; she was " the gate of Paradise," be- cause she bore Him Who restored us to our lost Paradise ; " the gate of Heaven," because He, born of her, "opened the kingdom of Heaven to all be- lievers;" she was " the all-undefiled Mother of holi- ness," because " the Holy One born of her was called the Son of God ;" the " light-clad Mother of light," because He Who indwelt her and was born of her, was "the true Light, which lighteth every man 28 Great titles given by Fathers to the B. V. that cometh into the world." And in like way, that other title, " staff of orthodoxy," has, I suppose, reference to that truth, which we suppose to lie as the foundation of the blessing to St. Peter, that the belief in the Incarnation, in our Lord, God and Man, which he has confessed, would be the impregnable strength of the Church. In the well-known words of S. Fulgentius, "5It is certain that almost all the errors of heretical pravity have hence manifoldly stolen in upon some, that the great mystery of godliness, which was manifested in the flesh, justi- fied in the spirit, appeared to Angels, preached to the Gentiles, believed in the world, received up in glory, some do not believe as it is, or altogether disbelieve." And so, as to all the language which you have quoted from S. Cyril, I adopt it all, but I think, from the context, that I adopt it rightly, as ex- pressing in different ways, that one central truth, of which S. Cyril was God's chosen champion, the 5 ad Tras. i. 4. This, I understand to be the meaning of the Antiphone,"cuuctas hajreses sola interemisti in universo mundo" (Off. Parv. B. M.). I did not criticise the Antiphone (Eiren. p. 124), as one of my critics has objected to me. The use of the past, "thou slewest," shows that the reference is to a past act, such as was the Incarnation, which, rightly believed, is the destruction of all heresies. I only spoke historically of its ap- plication to her present personal power, an expectation which I found repeated very often in the " Pareri," that she, " the de- stroyer of all heresies," would, on the declaration of her Imma- culate Conception, destroy them. " I would she did!" said a very eminent foreign Divine; "but there they are, rife everywhere." related to fruits of Incarnation. 29 Incarnation; — that He Whom she bare, was not Man only, as Nestorius blasphemed, but the Very and Eternal God. " 6 Hail, holy Mother of God, majestic treasure of the whole world, the lamp unquenchable, the crown of virginity, the staff' of orthodoxy, the indissoluble temple and dwelling-place of the Incomprehensible, Mother and Virgin, through whom He is named in the Gospels ' Blessed, Who cometh in the Name of the Lord.' Hail, thou who containedst in thy holy Virgin womb the Uncontainable ; through whom the Holy Trinity is glorified and worshipped throughout the whole world ; through whom heaven is gladdened ; through whom Angels and Arch- angels are rejoiced ; through whom devils are put to flight ; through whom the devil, tempting, fell from heaven ; through whom the fallen creature is received up into heaven ; through whom the whole creation, bound by the madness of idolatry, has come to the knowledge of the truth ; through whom holy Baptism accrueth to believers ; through whom, the oil of gladness; through whom throughout the world churches are founded ; through whom the Gentiles are brought to re- pentance ; and why say more ? through whom the Only- Begotten Son of God shone to them who sat in darkness and in the shadow of death." Or, to take a much later, and to me unknown, writer, to whom I have already been referred, as though he were Hesychius of Jerusalem 7 ; " Every well-meaning tongue greets, as is meet, the Virgin and Deipara, and imitates, as he may, the Archangel Gabriel. And one, bids her Hail ; another addresses her, ' The Lord is from thee,' on account of Him Who was born from her, and ap- 0 Opp. T. v. P. ii. pp. 355, 356. I have followed in some slight things a text amended from MSS. collated by my son, which I mention lest certain critics should accuse me of falsifying. 7 Bibl. Vet. Patr., Paris, 1624, ii. 421. 30 Great titles given by Fathers to the B. V. peared in flesh to the race of man, the Lord. One calleth her ' Mother of light another, ' Star of Life ;' another calleth her ' Throne of God ;' another, ' temple greater than the heavens ;' another, ' seat not less than the seat over the Cherubim ;' another again, ' garden, unsown, fruitful, untitled ;' ' viue of goodly cluster, flourishing intact;' 'pure turtle;' 'dove uudefiled;' ' cloud of rain conceiving incorruptibly ;' case, whose Pearl was brighter than the sun ; mine, from which the Stone, which filleth the whole earth, goeth forth, no one cutting it out; ship, full of its Burden, needing no pilot ; enriching treasure. Others, in like way, call her ' closed lamp, enkindled from iiself;' 'ark, wider, longer, more glorious than that of Noah;' that was an ark of living creatures, this of Life ; that of perish- able being, this of imperishable Life; that bare Noah, this, the Maker of Noah ; that had second and third stories, this, the whole fulness of the Trinity, since the Spirit came upon her and the Father overshadowed her and the Son, borne in the womb, indwelt her. For he saith, 'The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee ; therefore also the Holy Thing born of thee, shall be called the Son of God.' Thou seest how great and what the dignity of the Virgin Deipara. For the Only-Begotten Son of God, the Maker of the world, was carried by her as a Child, and re-formed Adam and sanctified Eve, and destroyed the serpent, and opened Paradise, and kept safe the seal of the womb," &c. Hence too S. Proclus, or whoever he was, calls her " 8 the holv shrine of Sinlessness ; the sanctified temple of God ; the golden altar of whole burnt offerings; the precious alabaster of the pure oint- ment;— the gate looking eastward, which, through the entrance and exit of the king, was closed for ever; — the field, blessed of the Father, wherein the Treasure of the dispensation of the Lord lay; — the Orat. vi. pp. 378 -380. Letter, pp. 72, 128. related to fruits of Incarnation. .31 beautiful spouse of the Canticles which modestly received in her chamber the heavenly Bridegroom ; the tabernacle of the faithful, which received the living Ark of the covenant; the tabernacle of witness, wherefrom the true Jesus, being God, went forth after His nine months' sojourn ; — the undefiled fleece, placed on the threshing-floor of the world, wherein the saving rain, coming down from heaven, dried the whole earth from the boundless tide of evils; — the fruitful olive, planted in the house of God, from which the Holy Ghost, taking the branch of the Body of the Lord, brought It to the tempest-tost race of man, announcing the peace from above; the flourishing paradise of immortality, wherein the Tree of life, being planted, yieldeth to all, without hindrance, the fruits of immortality ; the heavenly sphere of the new creation, wherein the ever-shining Sun of righteousness chased from every soul all darkness of night." And in the same reference, I doubt not, he goes on to call her, "the boast of virgins; the gladness of mothers; the establishment of the faithful; the diadem of the Church; the stamp of orthodoxy; the seal of piety ; the rule of truth; the garment of continency; the vest of virtue ; the munition of righteousness ; the dwelling-place of the Holy Trinity, - according to the Gospel relation, ' the Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee ; wherefore also the Holy Thing born of thee shall be called the Son of God ;' to Him be glory," &c. 32 Great titles given by Fathers to the B. V. And Theodotus has much the same combination of images 9 : — " Hail, saving and spiritual fleece ; hail, light-clad Mother of the unsetting Light; hail, all undefiled Mother of Holiness; hail, most pellucid fountain of the life-giving Stream; hail, new Mother in whom the new Birth was moulded; hail, inex- plicable mother of Incomprehensibility; hail, ac- cording to Isaiah, new tome of the new covenant, whereof the faithful witnesses are angels and men ; hail, alabaster of the sanctifying ointment; hail, creation formed to embrace the Creator; hail, tiniest vessel, containing the Uncontainable," &c. Such, also, I doubt not from the context, is the meaning of that highest title of all, which I am glad to add from your last edition', out of Basil of Seleucia, " mediatrix between God and Man." For the whole context is a paraphrase on the angelic salutation in reference to the Incarnation, and the fruits whereof he speaks, are the direct fruits of the Cross of Christ. "2Hail, engraced one ! Bright be thy countenance ! For from thee shall be born the Joy of all, and shall make cease their ancient curse, by loosing the power of death, and bestowing on all the hope of resurrection. Hail, engraced one! unfading paradise of chastity, planted wherein the Tree of life shall bear the 9 In S. Amphilock. p. 40. 1 Letter, p. 72, ed. 3. 3 Orat. 39, p. 215. related to fruits of Incarnation. 33 fruits of salvation, whence the four-mouthed foun- tain of the Gospels shall well forth to believers streams of mercies. Hail, engraced one ! mediat- ing to God and men, that the middle wall of enmity may be destroyed, and the things on earth may be united to the things in heaven3." Now, in all this, I suppose that there is nothing which any Anglican who reflected on the term " Theotokos," would hesitate about (except that we are unaccustomed to mystical interpretations of Holy Scripture), if only we were certain that we should be understood to use them in what I believe to have been their original meaning, and not to imply that she was "the gate of Heaven," &c. by virtue of her present Intercession. Not but that, of course, she with all the inhabitants of heaven, and she more eminently than all, does pray for us. The intercession of the saints departed and at rest, for us who are still militant, is part of the doctrine of the Communion of Saints, and would be a necessary consequence of God-given love, even if it did not appear from Holy Scripture. The contrary is in- conceivable. "Not only does the High Priest," says Origen 4, " pray with those who pray aright, but the angels also, who ' rejoice in heaven over one sinner that repenteth,' more than over ninety and nine just persons who need no repentance/ and the souls of the saints who have fallen asleep before 3 Eph. ii. 14, 15. 4 De Orafc. n. 11. T. i. pp. 213, 214. C 34 Intercession of the saints a us. For seeing that knowledge is made manifest to those who are worthy in this present life through a glass darkly, but is there revealed face to face, it were absurd not to conceive the like of the other virtues too, that, which has been prepared beforehand in this life, being perfected then. But one of the verv chiefest virtues, according to the Divine word, is love to our neighbour, which we must needs con- ceive must exist in a far higher degree in the saints who have fallen asleep before us towards those who are militant in this life, than in those who are yet beset with human weakness, and who labour together with those who are deficient. For not here only is that implanted in those who have brotherly love, ' if one member suffer, all the members suffer with it, and if one member be glorified, all the members rejoice with it.' For it beseemeth that love too, which is external to this present life, to say, ' the care of all the churches. Who is weak, and I am not weak? Who is offended, 'and I burn not?' Since Christ too confesseth that He is weak in each of the saints who is weak, and in prison also and a stranger and a hungered and athirst." Great indeed is the thought of that glorious com- pany in all their different orders, whether, as the blessed Angels, they never fell, or as the Saints, with whom God has been filling up their broken ranks, they, " secure of their own safety, are anxious as to our salvation V And, as the world grows old ° S. Cyprian de mortal, fin. necessary fruit of perfected love. 35 and the strife with unbelief becomes more deadly., and perhaps the last conflict is drawing on, year by year the number of those increaseth who, beholding God, pray for us militant on earth. " They that be with us are more than they that are against us." But the truth, of the intercession of the inhabitants of Heaven is, as you observe, distinct from their " invocation." Nay, it would, in itself, rather seem to supersede it. For we do not ask any one to do, what we are quite sure, that he does without our asking. The asking for the prayers of any, living or departed, implies, that those so asked would pray for us, if asked, in a way in which otherwise they would not. The intercession, then, upon which the difficulty turns, is not that general intercession of all the inhabitants of that realm of love and holiness and vision of our God, for all of us, who are struggling here, but the special intercession for individuals obtained by direct prayer to them. Nor, again, does it turn on the mere fact of asking for their prayers especially, in the same way in which we should ask one another's prayers, it being always understood, (in your Bishop Milner's words which I have already quoted6,) " That, as the saints' in Heaven are free from every stain of sin and imperfection, and are con- firmed in grace and glory, so their prayers are far more efficacious for obtaining what they ask for, 8 Eirenicon, pp. 100, 101. C 2 36 Meaning of titles given by Fathers than are the prayers of us imperfect and sinful mortals." If this had been all, I have expressed my conviction that the difficulty never would have arisen. The difficulty arose, I believe, in the change of the meaning of the great terms which the Fathers used of the Blessed Virgin, looking on to the Incarnation, in that she was the Mother of our Redeemer, God-Man, and the transference of those terms to describe her present influence and power with Him, her Son. Both interpretations are allowable among you. I am not accusing. I only say, from what we wish to be exempt. I am thankful to see in " The Crown of Jesus," to which you referred me, expositions of the great titles which are concentrated in the Litany of Loretto, such as every Christian must receive. "Mother of Divine Grace, because she is the parent of Him Who is the Source and Author of all grace ; Seat of Wisdom, as being replenished with this heavenly virtue, because she is the Mother of Him Who is Wisdom itself; Cause of our Joy, as being the instrument of that great blessing, which is the source of all our Christian consolations ; Tower of Ivory, as being remarkable for the purity of innocence : ivory, by its whiteness, being the emblem of delicacy, whence that saying in the Canticles, ' Thy neck is as a tower of ivory ;' Ark of the Covenant, as being the parent of Him, Who is the Mediator of the new Covenant ; Gate of Heaven, as being, again, Mother of Him, Who has opened to us the gate of everlasting happiness ; Morning Star, as being the harbinger of that bright Day which has brought immortality to light 7." 7 pp. 653, 654. partly changed ; others added. Effects. 37 Even with these explanations, there still, indeed, remain the difficulties of some titles, which do not occur in the Fathers, and which one would have expected rather to be given to our Lord ; Health of the weak, Refuge of sinners, Comforter of the afflicted, Help of Ch?%istians. For when a title is given to any one, we can hardly help thinking that it is meant upar excellence" to belong to that being to whom it is given ; that it must, at least, be his or her's, in some special way in which it can belong to no one else. Nothing short of this can justify the title. Even if, in some higher sense, it could belong to some one else, there must be some special way in which it must be believed to belong to that person ; else it would not be given at all. This title, "Refuge of sinners," is, accordingly, the text on which S. Liguori puts together the passages of middle-age writers, or such as are attributed wrongly to the Fathers, which speak of her as " the Hope of Sinners." Such sinners seem to be spoken of as out of the reach of Jesus, or hopeless of His help, and Mary seems to be held out to them as the way by which they are to approach to Jesus 8. 8 See ab. pp. 9, 10. " In the ancient cities of refuge, all cri- minals did not find refuge ; but under the patronage of Mary, all sinners find protection, no matter what crimes they may have committed ; it is enough for them to take refuge under her mantle. ' I,' says St. John Damascene in the name of our queen, ' am the city of refuge of all who flee to me ' (Or. 38 Effects of these changes in the titles And with this fall in those explanations of the other titles, which are, I think, more common, as 2 de dorm, [said of the tomb, said not to be his]). If; is enough to have recourse to Mary ; for him who shall have the happiness to enter this city, it will not be necessary to speak in order to be saved. 'Assemble yourselves, and let us enter into the fenced city, and let us be silent there' (Jer. viii. 14). This fenced city is, according to B. Albertus Magnus, the Holy Virgin fortified in grace and glory. ' And let us be silent there,' i.e. says the gloss, 'because we do not dare to depre- cate the Lord, whom we have offended, let her deprecate and ask.' Hence a devout author (Ben. Fernandez in Gen. iii.) exhorts all sinners to take shelter under the protection of Mary ; ' Flee, 0 Adam, O Eve, flee ye their children, within the bosom of the Mother, Mary. She is the city of refuge, the only hope of sinners !' [S. Liguori adds, " after Jesus."] Thus she is called by St. Augustine, 'Only hope of sinners,' Serm. 18 de Sanct. [not his, see Bened. on T. v. Serm. 194 App.] Hence S. Ephrem says to Mary, ' Thou art the only advocate of sinners, and of those bereft of all succour.' Hence he salutes her, ' Hail, refuge and hospice of sinners, to whom namely sinners can fly,' de laud. V. [not his]. Bichard of St. Law- rence also says, ' The Lord complained, before Mary [was born], "There is no one who riseth up and withholds Me" (Ezek. xxii.), until Mary was found, who held Him until He was softened' (Bic. i. 2, de laud. Virg.). The Blessed Virgin her- self revealed to S. Brigit that ' there is not a sinner so cast ofl' by God, who, if he invoke me, will not return to God.' Bev. i. 6 [wrong reference. "How much soever a man sins, if with his whole heart and true amendment he return to me [the Blessed Virgin], I am prepared forthwith to receive the peni- tent. Nor do I consider how much he have sinned, but with what intention and will he returns." Bev. ii. 23]. 'The world,' says the devout Blosius, 'has not so execrable a sinner that she should abominate him and repel him from her, and, if he pray for her help, not be able, know and will, to reconcile him to her most beloved Son' (Bios, de dictis PP. c. 5). given by the Fathers. 39 in the hook which you also name, " The Key of Heaven." " Tower of ivory, for in the Canticles thou art that tower of ivory whereunto the fair neck of the Bride is likened ; for through thee all graces pass from Christ the Head unto the Church His Body : Gate oflieaven, since through thee salvation came into the world, and none can enter into heaven but by thee '." This change in the meaning of titles, given by the Fathers, occasions devotions which (you will agree with me) the Fathers knew not, and furnishes their doctrinal basis. For when, instead of its being said, that " God willed that we should have all through Mary," i. e. through the Incarnation, it came to be thought that " God mlleth that we should have all through her," or that " through her," i.e., through her intercession, "God willeth that all graces should pass from Christ the Head unto the Church His Body," that doctrine involved the whole system of teaching as to the office of the B. V., as our access to our Redeemer, from which we wish to be exempt. For, setting aside cases of inculpable ignorance, then, if this were true, any one who should neglect to ask her, through Justly then S. John Damascene salutes thee, ' Hail, hope of the hopeless!' S. Lawrence Justinian, 'Hope of criminals;' S. Ephrem, ' Safest harbour of the shipwrecked.' The same saint goes so far as to call thee the 1 Protectress of those under sentence of damnation,' " &c. S. Lig. Gl. of M. iii. 2. 1 P. 253. 40 Basis of S. Liguori's theses. whom God willed all His graces to come to His creatures, would he shewing contempt to the known will of God, and incurring the forfeiture of all the graces necessary to his salvation. All the strong language which I extracted from writers quoted by S. Liguori in support of his thesis, " on the necessity of invoking the intercession of Mary 2," " Mary is our life, because she obtains for us the pardon of our sins3;" "Mary is our life, because she obtains for us the gift of perseverance 4 ;" "Mary is the hope of all5;" "Mary is the hope of sinners6;" "Mary is the peacemaker of sinners with God7," are but applications of this one prin- ciple. Even Suarez goes beyond the Council of Trent. " 8 The Church holds that the intercession and prayer of the Virgin are useful and necessary to her above all others [saints] ; the Blessed Virgin therefore is to be prayed by us above all." For the Council of Trent only says that it is useful; Suarez says, that " she is to be prayed to," because her special intercession (for of this he is speak- ing), such intercession as is to be gained by prayer to her, is necessary. And conversely, I suppose, we may infer that S. Augustine and other Fathers did not hold that there was any such necessity, since, as you observe, no prayer to the Blessed 2 C. v. s. 1. 3 C. ii. s. 1. 1 lb. B. 2. s C. iii. s. I. c lb. s. 2. 1 C. vi. s. 3. 6 In P. iii. q. 37, disp. 23. s. 3. fin., the passage which I took from S. Liguori. Points agreed upon, or at issue. 41 Virgin is to be found in the voluminous works of St. Augustine. As I said, I do not " accuse." I have never had any thought that the fact of your having such prayers would be " 9 compromising to those who propose entering into communion with" you. I was only thinking of ourselves, and, as a Priest, of our people, and I only wish that, in case of reunion, we should still be allowed to worship, as I believe that they did, who lived in the times nearest to our Lord and His Apostles. The difference, then, does not relate to the greatness of the sanctification which we may well believe that God bestowed upon her, whom He willed to bring into so near a relation to Himself; nor to the singular eminence to which He willed thereby to raise her, alone in His whole creation; nor to the fact, that she, with all the saints in glory, intercedes for us; nor to its being permis- sible, in the way explained by your Bp. Milner above, to ask for her prayers as we ask for the prayers of other our fellow-creatures, only, of course, that she is far more exalted and acceptable to God ; but to this, whether God has constituted her in such sort the Mediatrix with Him our Mediator, that as we have no approach to God, except through Jesus, so our approach to Jesus must be through her; or, again, as all grace comes to us through Jesus Alone and 5 Letter, p. 155, said of seeking to enter into communion with the Greek Church. 42 Points at issue. for His merits, so all grace is transmitted from Him through her; or whether, again, He have delegated her as the dispensatrix of His graces, (as the pictures of the Immaculate Conception repre- sent her no longer, as in the representations of the Catacombs, holding up her hands to God, but rain- ing down graces upon us;) or whether she is "the gate of Heaven" in such sort, that " no one can enter heaven, unless he pass through Mary as through a door1;" or again, whether she be "the hope of sinners," so that the first step for return- ing sinners is to betake themselves to her, as their approach to Jesus ; or whether " she restrains her Son, that He may not inflict chastisement, and saves sinners 2." It is my fear, that the system of extreme devo- tion to the B. V. is in the ascendancy. It seems to me, and I am told, that there is a strong 1 S. Bonav. in S. Lig. Gl. of M. v. i. p. 237. 2 Grl. of M. c. iii. s. 2., quoting from S. Bonaventura, " She takes hold of her Son, that He may not strike sinners." This is set before the eyes in the picture of Rubens at Antwerp, in which our Lord is represented as armed with lightning to dis- charge it on the world for its wickedness (denoted by the ser- pent twined around it), and the Blessed Virgin as holding His hand, and shewing her breasts, so shewing her claim, as His Mother, to intercede with Him. S. Liguori, too, quotes (iii. 1. p. ISO.) from S. Bonaventura : " If my Redeemer cast me off for my sins, I will throw myself at the feet of His mother, and stay there, that she may obtain pardon for me. For she (ipsa) knows not, how not to have mercy, and never knew, how not to satisfy the miserable. And therefore, out of compassion, she will incline her Son to pardon me." Difference of R. C.s as to Marian devotions. 4U tide setting in among you to extreme Marian devo- tions (I trust that the term is not offensive, since Bishops speak of Spain at least as "a Marian kingdom"). The tendency seemed and seems to me to be, to make matters to be " de fide," which have been taught so long undisputed, because they have been borne with patiently. And yet I was joyed to find some of your mind among foreign ecclesiastics. For while a Belgian divine of emi- nence defended the common saying, "If your Father [God] is angry with you, to whom should you go but to your Mother [Mary] ?" as the voice of human nature, another very eminent Theologian condemned such language with uplifted hands. While one eminent French Bishop (not one of those, of whom the Fi-ench papers reported, that they allowed me interviews) thought me gravely wrong in not believing that all graces came through Mary, an eminent Theologian quoted to me the remarkable (I fear antiquated) French proverb (to be found, he told me, in collections of French proverbs), " It is better to go to God than to all the saints." It appears to me that you are, on this and other points, in an unfixed state, analogous to ours; that God is leading you too somewhere, as all things among us are manifestly setting in two directions, and minds are rising to full Catholic belief (I mean, of course, primitive faith), or sinking to the abyss. Twenty or thirty years will, I suppose, see these, the two chief classes in England ; twenty or thirty 44 Vision of the woman clothed years will, I suppose, determine whether very much which is now matter of opinion among you, will be erected into dogma, or whether there will be a more pronounced body of Roman Catholics, who will repress those excesses. Oakeley anticipates the former as to the Marian system. I trust that your voice, which once blew a deep trumpet-call among us, will again occasion others also to speak, who love truth and soberness. I hope that I see in your words and your disclaimers a dawn of a hope of restored union, when yours shall not be a single voice, and those, who think as you do, shall by God's help prevail. What we want is to have it made clear by authority, in some way which God the Holy Ghost may suggest, that these non-primi- tive doctrines are not " de fide" or proximate to faith, and are not to be required of any. It has been promised to certain individuals, on joining the Roman communion, that it should not be required of them to invoke the Blessed Virgin; one, some twenty years ago, was allowed to say the Litany of Jesus instead of the Litany of Loretto. Why should not what has been allowed to individuals be allowed to a nation, or rather to many nations (for such the English are) ? Why should we not, in case of re- union, be allowed to pray as the Fathers of the Church and the holy army of martyrs prayed ? 3. The interpretation of Holy Scripture being very seldom matter of faith, it will create no jar, that I cannot interpret, as you do, the vision in the with the sun. " Behold thy motlier" 45 Apocalypse of the woman clothed with the sun. And this on the ground which, I suppose, deter- mined the ancient interpreters to explain it of the Church, that, after the " Child Who was to rule all nations with a rod of iron, was caught up unto God and to His throne," " the woman fled into the wilderness, where she hath a place prepared of God." The impossibility of explaining this as to the Blessed Virgin has determined a modern Roman Catholic interpreter too to adhere to the ancient interpretation as the literal sense, and hold the application to the Blessed Virgin to be nothing more than allusive. But doctrine is only derived from the literal sense. Here, however, nothing is at issue, since the B. V. was undoubtedly more than arrayed in the sun, when " the Sun of righteous- ness" dwelt in her. 4. The interpretation of the passage, upon which Roman Catholics now generally rest the title of the Blessed Virgin, " our mother," is, of course, much graver. For this introduces a new personal relation of the Blessed Virgin to us, not indirectly through our Lord, but directly as given to her by Him. It is a great change. In the two ancient passages, where alone, as I believe, she is spoken of as hypo- thetically the mother of any Christian, or mother of Christians, it is because we are "members of Christ3." Our relation to Christ is immediate; 3 The two passages of which I know, are, the one of Origen, the other S. Augustine's. Origen (in Joann. i. 6. p. 6. ed. de la 46 Language of Origen and St. Augustine she is the Mother of Him our Head, of Whom we have been made the members. She has not, in Eue) is speaking of the greatness of St. John's Gospel, and that no one could understand it, who was not himself another St. John, and by the indwelling of Christ, a " Jesus from Jesus." Having spoken of the other Evangelists as having reserved something for St. John, he says, <; AVe must venture to say, that the Gospels are the first-fruits of all Scriptures, and that that according to John is the first-fruits of the Gospels, whose mind no one can gain, unless he lie upon the breast of Jesus, and receives from Jesus, Mary becoming his mother also. Such must one become who would be another John, so that like John he might be shown to be a Jesus from Jesus. For if there was, according to those who think soundly in regard to her, no other son of Mary but Jesus, and Jesus says to His mother, ' Behold thy son,' and not, ' Behold this too is thy son,' He says as much as, ' This is Jesus whom thou barest.' For every one who is perfected, it is no longer he who liveth, but Christ liveth in him, and since Christ liveth in him, He saith of him to Mary, ' See thy son, Christ.' " It is plain that Origen' s thought was that, to understand St. John, one must be another St. John ; that those who had the mind of Christ, and were indwelt by Him, were, as some fathers boldly say, " Christs" (XpuxToi), and were the sons of Mary, because members of Him "Who was the Son of Mary. S. Augustine's meaning is plainly the same. He is consoling those who had given them- selves to the virgin life, that they could not be also mothers, and says that virgins too are spiritually mothers of Christ. " That birth from the one holy Virgin is the glory of all holy virgins. They too, with Mary, are mothers of Christ, if they do the will of His Father. For hence was Mary too, in a more praiseworthy and blessed way, Mother of Christ, accord- ing to this saying above-mentioned, ' AVhosoever doeth the will of My Father AVhich is in heaven, the same is My brother and sister and mother.' All these kinships He forms for Himself spiritually in the people which He has redeemed ; for brothers and sisters He hath holy men and holy women, since- bearing on our Lord's words. 47 this aspect, been assigned to men as a Mother to bring them to Christ by her intercessions ; her only they are co-heirs with Him in the heavenly inheritance. His mother is the whole Church, because she bears His members, that is, His faithful through the grace of God. Also every pious soul is His mother, doing the will of His Father in most prolific charity, in those of whom it travaileth until He be formed in them. Mary, then, doing the will of God, is cor- porally only mother of Christ, but spiritually both sister aud mother; aud thereby that one woman is not only in spirit, but also in body, both mother and virgin. And, indeed, mother in spirit, not of our Head, of Whom rather she was spiritually born, because all those who believed in Him, of whom she too was one, are rightly called children of the Bridegroom ; but mother of His members, which we are, because she co-operated by love that faithful should be born in the Church, who are members of that Head, but, in the body, the Mother of the Head Himself. For need was, that our Head, on account of the wondrous miracle, should according to the flesh be born of a virgin, that He might signify that, according to the spirit, His members should be born of the Virgin Church. Mary then alone is, in spirit and body, mother and virgin, and mother of Christ and virgin of Christ. But the Church, which in the saints shall possess the kingdom of God, is, in spirit, the whole of her, mother of Christ ; the whole of her, virgin of Christ ; but in the body, not the whole of her, but in some [members] virgin of Christ, in others, mothers, but not of Christ" [viz. of children who <:are not born Christians of their flesh, but become such"], [de sancta virginit. c. 5, 6]. It is plain, from S. Augustine's speaking in past time, " she co-operated," that he is speaking of the act of the Blessed Virgin in the Incarna- tion, by which she, through engraced love, became corporally Mother of Him, of whom we, by grace and spiritually, are members. Directly, he speaks of the Church as our Mother ; ultimately, she, whose virgin birth typified, he said, the virgin maternity of the Church, is our mother, because mother of Him, in "Whom by grace we are. 48 " Behold thy mother" interpreted of S. John only relation to us is, in that we are already Christ's. It is remarkable, moreover, that no one of the early expositors of Scripture, as Origen, S. Chry- sostom, S. Augustine, S. Cyril of Alexandria, (even such of them as explain our Lord's words to St. John and to His mother in the way of homilies,) or of those who comment on our Lord's words, although not on the Gospel, S. Hilary 4, S. Am- brose5, or S. Siricius0 (or Damasus); or Ter- tullian 7, who alludes to them, interprets the words, " Behold thy Son," " Behold thy Mother," of any relation of the Blessed Virgin, except that personal relation which is literally contained in the words, between the beloved disciple and herself. And this is the more remarkable in S. Ambrose, because he does in one place give a mys- tical interpretation of the words ; yet it relates to the Church, not to the Blessed Virgin 8. Some of these passages are but allusions ; yet no one, I think, 1 In S. Matt. c. i. pp. 611, 612. 5 In S. Luc. ii. 4. vii. 5. x. 131. De instit. virg. vii. 47. Ep. 63. Eccl. Verc. n. i. 109. De obifc. Valent. n. 39. 6 Epist. ad Anys. et Epp. Ulyr. Coiicil. T. ii. p. 1230. ed. Col. 7 de Pnescr. c. 22. 8 " Thou sayest, How can I be a son of thunder ? Thou canst, if thou recline, not on the earth, but on the breast of Christ. Thou canst be a son of thunder, if earthly things move thee not, but thou rather, by the power of thy mind, shatter the things of earth. Let the earth stand in awe of thee, not capture thee; let the flesh feel the power of thy mind, be shaken and subdued. Thou wilt be a son of thunder, if thou art a son of the Church. Let Christ say to thee from the Cross of suffering, ' Behold thy by the Fathers ; improbable texts alleged later. 49 can be otherwise than morally convinced that a modern Roman writer would have introduced the doctrine; nor can I myself think otherwise than that they did not introduce it because they were unacquainted with the doctrine, that they did not look upon St. John as a type of Christians, or think of any thing beyond the bare literal meaning. And yet S. Cyril, as you have observed, gave her the most exalted titles. Yet those titles point to and culminate in our Lord; they are not reflected back, so as to have any relation directly to us. She was the Mother of Him Who is all in all to us ; she has no personal office to us. So here. Her holy Motherhood ter- minates in Him : our relation is to Him Whom she bare, God-Man, our Redeemer, not to herself. And, although Roman Catholics now rest the relation chiefly on our Lord's words to St. John, and any other explanation of those words seems to them un- natural, not only is this interpretation not, I believe, found in antiquity, but in later times too the relation was rested equally on other mystical interpretations, in which few would probably now find it. Thus, on the same mis-interpretation which the Socinians, &c, adopt, that the words " she conceived her first- born son," not only declared our Lord's relation to her, but implied that she had other sons, it was mother.' Let Him say to the Church, too, ' Behold thy son ;' for then thou beginnest to be a son of the Church, when thou beholdest Christ conquer upon the cross." In S. Luc. vii. 5. 50 S. Athanasius calls the B. V. our sister. argued that, since piety forbade to think that she had other sons after the flesh, it must mean that she had spiritual sons 9. Another, somehow, derived the doctrine from the words, " I am the Mother of fair love 1 ;" or from those in the Psalm, " Save the son of Thy handmaid 2," as if David thereby called himself the son of Mary. On the other hand, I cannot think that, with any belief like that ex- pressed by the name now, S. Athanasius could have called Mary " our sister." " 3 Nay, no phantasy is our salvation, nor of the body only ; but of the whole man, soul and body in truth, was our salvation wrought in the Word Himself. Human, then, by nature, was That which was from Mary, according to the Sacred Scriptures, and true was the Body of the Lord. True it was, since it was the same with ours. For Mary was our sister, seeing also that we are all from Adam." I cannot but think that some other term or form of expression would have been used. 5. Your statement4 about the doctrine of the Im- maculate Conception opens a gleam of hope where the clouds seemed thickest before. It shews that the form of the doctrine, which brings it most proxi- mately in connexion with that of the transmission 9 Anonymous author in S. Lig. G-lor. of M. i. pp. 94, 95 ; also S. Gertrude, as a " revelation." Ib. 1 Ecclus. xxiv. 14. Ib. p. 98. 2 Ps. lxxxv. 16. 3 Ep. ad Epict. n. 7. Opp. i. 906. Ben. 4 Letter, p. 52. Active and passive Conception. 51 of original sin, is not declared to be de fide. Your rejection of any such belief as, that the Blessed Virgin did not die in Adam, that she did not come under the penalty of the fall, that she was con- ceived in some way inconsistent with the verse in the Miserere Psalm s, if confirmed by authority, would remove difficulties as to doctrine, which the decree suowsted to the Greeks as well as to ourselves. Indeed, subsequently to the publication of the Eirenicon, Mgr. Dupanloup had the good- ness to explain to me his own belief, which is the same as yours, and in explanation of which he quotes the statement of Benedict XIV. ; — " 8 Conception may be taken in two ways : for it is either active, wherein the parents of the B. V., coming together, sup- plied what related to the formation, organisation, and disposi- tion of her body for receiving the rational soul, to be infused therein by God, or it is passive, when the rational soul is united with the body. Tor this infusion and union with the body is commonly called the passive Conception, which itself takes place at that very instant in which the rational soul is united with the body, consisting of all its members 'and its organs 7." 5 Ps. li. 5. 6 de festiv. D. N. J. C, B. M. V., et quoruud. Sanctt. c. xv. 7 I gave this same explanation in the Eirenicon, p. 146. A critic (who reads awry all which I write) imputes my so doing to my " own very imperfect acquaintance with the common terms and distinctions of divines upon matters upon which I undertake to write " (Month, Dec. 18G5, p. 030). The same critic, in the same page, imputes to me a grotesque ignorance of the meaning of the words, "I believe one Catholic and Apostolic Church," because I said, that in the words which confess to God her being, I confessed also my belief in her authority and my implicit submission to her teaching. D 2 52 Mgr. Dupanloup. Imm. Cone, differs in degree His own explanation is, "'The Imm. Cone, in the mother of the Saviour, is the ex- emption from the original stain at the moment when the soul was created and united with her body, i. e. the dispensation, by Divine favour, for that blessed soul, of that mysterious solidarity, whereby we all come into existence, deprived of sanctifying grace, righteousness, primaeval purity, and deprived of the friendship of God. We say that it was not thus with Mary. At the moment that her beautiful soul was united to the body, prepared naturally in her mother's womb to receive it, this soul, by the bounty of God, was supernaturally, even then, wholly pure, adorned with sanctifying grace, embellished (as the first man was formerly in the state of innocence, and even in a de- gree more excellent) with the interior gifts of righteousness and original holiness, exempt from all germ of concupiscence, as of the sin itself which is its source, and finally as the well- beloved daughter of Heaven, wherewith she was one day to be united by relations so amazing and so close." The gift of sanctifying grace, at the first moment of existence, would be different in degree only, not in kind from what Holy Scripture states in regard to Jeremiah, and St. John the Baptist. The sanc- tification of Jeremiah was in his mother's womb2. Of St. John Baptist the angel seems to pro- phesy that he should be sanctified, " then and thenceforward V The sanctification, attributed to the Blessed Virgin under the term " Immaculate 8 Mandement, 1855, p. 3. 1 This is not my statement only, but that of Mgr. Dupan- loup. 2 Jer. i. 5. 3 St. Luke i. 15. Meyer (as cited by Alford on St. Luke) thinks that the sanctification in his mother's womb lies in the words In ex K.oikla.% [i. a. only from that of Jeremiah and S. John B. 53 Conception," would, on this explanation, be only anterior in time; for, since Jeremiah and St. John Baptist came into the world already sanctified, they too were born free from the stain of original sin. Thus far there was no difficulty. It was natural to believe that what Holy Scripture relates to have been granted to Jeremiah and St. John Bap- tist was (even though not related) granted to her whom our Lord willed to bring into so near a rela- tion to Himself. The difficulty, as you know, arose as to the doctrine of the transmission of original sin, and related both to the (so-called) " active" and "passive" "conception." S. Bernard states both, while himself maintaining the sanctification in her mother's womb. " 4 She could not be holy before she was ; since, before she was conceived, she was not. Or did perchance holiness mingle itself with the conception itself, so that she should be at once sanctified and conceived ? Neither will reason admit this. For how could there be holiness without the hallowing Spirit ? or was the Holy Spirit associated with sin ? or how was there not sin, where concupiscence was not absent ? unless some one said, that she was conceived of the Holy Ghost and not of man ; but this hath hitherto been unheard of. It remains, that she be believed to have received sanctification while already existing 4 Ep, 174 ad Canon. Lugd. A story was circulated as to S. Bernard, " that he retracted that opinion, at least after his death ; whence it is said that he appeared to a certain monk after death with a spot on his breast, on account of the things which he had said as to the Conception of the glorious Virgin." Capreolus in Sent. 3. 3 q. 1. art. 1. fiu. 54 S. Bernard held Nativ.o/B. V. holii, not her Cone. in the womb, which, excluding sin, made her nativity holy, but not her conception also. Wherefore, although to some, though few, of the human race, it has been granted to be born with holiness, yet to be conceived so too bas not been granted, in order that the prerogative of a holy Conception might be re- served for One Who should sanctify all, and, coming Alone with- out sin, should purge away sins. The Lord Jesus, then, Alone was conceived by the Holy Ghost, because He Alone was Holy, even before His Conception. Him excepted, that regards all who are born of Adam, which one humbly and truly said of bimself, ' I was conceived in wickedness, and in sin did my mother conceive me. ' " S. Bernard does not further express, in what way the defect, entailed upon the body through concu- piscence, involved the soul. Probably no explanation can be satisfactory. Mohler states the difficulties of each in turn, and says, on the authority of Payva ab Andrada, a Portuguese theologian present at the Council of Trent, that it purposely abstained from defining wherein original sin consisted5, acting, Pallavicini adds, on the advice of the legates, " not to decide upon the nature of original sin, since divines were of different opinions thereon, Scripture and Tradition giving no results." The Schoolmen indeed mostly seem to lay down, that there could have been no sanctification before animation, and, as they state it, it is self-evident. Thus Biel says 6 : " The first conclusion, in which all agree, (is,) The Virgin Symbolik, i. 2. p. 57. 6 3. 3 q. 1. art. 1. Schoolmen deny sanctification before animation. 55 Mary, before the second conception, whereby she was animated in her mother's womb, was not sanctified by grace. This is obvious, because that sanctification takes place through the infusion of grace, of which the intellectual soul alone is capable; therefore, where it existed not, sanctifying grace could not be ; but, before the second conception, the soul wa3 not, since it is created by infusing; therefore, &c. Also, to be sanctified pre- supposes being ; whence what is not is not sanctified; but, before the second conception or auimating of the Virgin, the Virgin was not ; therefore she was not sanctified." For, of course, as soon as it is laid down that sanctification is to be taken in the sense of " the infusion of grace," it is self-evident that such sanc- tification can take place only in the soul. We are here on grounds purely abstract. And, supposing (as the Schoolmen thought) that the body does ever exist without the soul, I see no reason why it should not have been sanctified then. For since the body, which has once been the temple of the Holy Ghost, even when resolved into its dust, is, in its dust, still holy, (as the common reverence of Christians thinks, not of Elisha's bones only, when the dead man woke to life at their touch, nor of the true remains of martyrs only, but, in their degree, as to the dust of those really asleep in Christ,) so I do not see any ground in the nature of things, why it should not have been sanctified before it received the soul. Durandus a S. Porciano, on the theory that "7 by Adam's fall a destructive infectious quality worked its way into the human body, and3 7 Mohler, 1. c. 56 Soul of B. V. could be sanctified, when infused. being propagated by generation, encompassed the soul at the moment of its union with the body, drew it down to itself, and communicated to it its own disorder," held it possible that the B. V. should " not have been conceived in original sin, but that at one and the same time she received her soul and grace was given her." " 3 Although original sin is formaliter only in the soul, yet in the flesh there is a certain diseased quality or infection, hy reason whereof original sin is contracted from the conjunc- tion of the soul with the flesh having this diseased quality. Since then that diseased quality is different from the flesh itself, a given mass of flesh might be preserved hy Divine power from being infected, or, if infected, might be cleansed before the infusion of the soul, so that, although on the part of the generator it was in itself flesh unclean and diseased, yet, by Divine virtue cleansing, it was made immaculate and clean, so that, from the union of the soul therewith, original sin should not be contracted by the soul." The question of the immaculateness of the " active conception" was, of course, different from this. It was allowed that the act in itself might be pleasing to God, when done purely to fulfil the will of God, as in the case of Abraham. But they distinguished between " the act of the person, in which the will was the moving cause, and the act of nature, in wdiich nature was the moving cause; in regard to the will, the act proceeded from charity; in regard to nature, from the disorderedness of concupiscence. But conception followed from nature, not from the 9 In sent. 3. 3 q. 1. Active Conception taught by some to be Imm. 57 will;" and therefore, following S. Bernard, they held that, " although on one side the act might be meritorious, the conception itself, following thereon, would not be, and so neither was there sanctifica- tion in conception V Yet, although this might be the thoughtful opinion, yet the popular mind would not enter into these distinctions. It was natural to understand by the " Immaculate Conception" conception in its widest sense. It seemed pious, too, to think that, when the will was holy, all which followed on that will was holy too. And, accordingly, in the "Reve- lations of S. Brigit," the exemption of the B. V. from original sin was connected with the propriety of the marital union of her parents. The Blessed Virgin is introduced as saying 1 : " It is the trutb, that I was conceived without original sin, because as my Son and I never sinned, so no marriage was ever more proper [nullum conjugium honestius] than that from which I proceeded." Such conception of her body is also spoken of as the ground of the Festival of the Immaculate Con- ception2 ; " "Wherefore also it would be very fitting and worthy, that that day should be held by all in great reverence, on which that matter was conceived and collected in the womb of Anna, from 0 From Alex. Ales, P. 3. q. 9. memb. 2. art. 2. 1 Bevel. S. Brigit. vi. c. 49. a Sermo Angel. B. Brigittro, fin. p. GG1. #58 Some taug ht Immaculateness of active Cone. ; which the blessed body of the Mother of God was to be formed, which ["matter," "quam,"] God Himself and all His Angels loved exceedingly in so great charity." The Feast of the Nativity being Sept. 8, the day of the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, Dec. 8, was that day of which S. Brigit speaks. In the first prayer, said to have been " 3 revealed by God to the Bl. Brigit," in which " the glorious Virgin is devoutly and beautifully praised for her sacred Conception, &c." the conception spoken of is, not the infusion of the soul but, the conception of the body through her parents. " 4 Glory be to thee, my Lady, Virgin Mary, Mother of God, who, by that same Angel by whom Christ was announced to thee, wert announced to thy father and mother, and wert con- ceived and born of their most honourable marriage." Of course, no believer would deny, on abstract grounds, that God could miraculously have made the "active conception" also absolutely holy, had He so willed. We only want the evidence, that He has revealed that He did so. But, unless some authoritative explanation is given by the Roman Church, it seems to me inevitable that under the term "Immaculate Conception," which is declared to be " of faith," the conception of the body of the 3 lb. p. 674. 4 lb. p. 764. A like stress on the propriety [honestas] of the marriage is laid in the Sermo Angel, c. 10. Ib. p. 661 ; the absence of concupiscence is dwelt upon in Eevel. i. 9. Ib. p. 13. At the close of Eev. L. v. God the Father is introduced, saying, " She was conceived without sin, that My Son might be conceived of her without sin." p. 409. this commonly meant by word '■conception.' 59 Blessed Virgin will be included. Some Bishops, who were consulted about making " the Immaculate Conception" an article of faith, understood by the term " the conception of the body." Thus Alex- ander, Abp. of Urbino, said 5, " Nay, although almost all theologians, distributing Concep- tion into active and passive, contend that the passive only, and not the active, was immaculate in the B. V. yet, in the sense of the Church, I should believe either that this distinction was not really present, or that the active also was held to be immaculate. Tor this seemeth to be opposed neither to reason nor Scripture, and is supported also with some appearance of truth out of the revelations of S. Brigit, from which the Conception of the B. V. is inferred to have been therefore immaculate, because there was no marriage more decorous than that from which she proceeded." This is, moreover, what, in common language, is meant by " conception," not in our own only but in other tongues. This is impressed upon our people by the language of Holy Scripture, in which the word " conceived" is uniformly used of what took place in the mother, as the result of the coming- together of the parents °. The most probable ori- ginal meaning of the Hebrew word, used in Holy 6 Pareri, &c, iii. 43. Among the Schoolmen I see that Capreolus says, " There is a twofold inquiry as to this question [of the Immaculate Conception], because she had two sanc- tifications. The first inquiry is about the sanctification of the B. V. in the womb, while she was being conceived passively. The second, of the sanctification, while she was being conceived actively, of which sanctification I much doubt." In Sent. 3. 3.. q. 1. art. 1. fin. 0 e. g. Gen. iv. 1. 17. xvi. 4, &c. 60 Unexplained, the Imm. Cone, will probably Scripture, points to an act in which there was some, even if involuntary, human passion 7. Holy Scrip- ture speaks of conception without the distinctions of the schools. The distinction also which used to be made, whereby the reception of the rudiments of the body was separated by some long interval from the infusion of the soul, is now abandoned. It was part of the Aristotelian physics, when " the quickening-," i. e. the moment when the child had strength to move in its mother's womb, was thought to be the real commencement of the animate exist- ence of the human being, i. e. of the infusion of the soul s. This date of what was called " the passive conception" having been tacitly abandoned, it is probable that the distinction of time will be aban- doned too. There is, of course, a distinction, as wide as heaven and earth. For the conception of the human body is through that which each parent supplieth ; the infusion of the soul is from God. But the ground for detaching the two acts in time being gone, the wide distinction which used to be made formerly is gone too. Scripture says nothing; and, amid its silence, reason says nothing, physics nothing. There is an impenetrable veil over the 7 The word iTin stands aloue in the Semitic dialects. The only probable etymology which I have seen is that of Gesenius, that it is a softer pronunciation of mil, " incalesco," accord- ing to the analogy of DfT, the word used in Ps. li. 7. 8 The theory, I am told, still remains in our laws, in which the destruction of the foetus before a given time is not ac- counted the destruction of a living beiug. include the conception of the body too. 61 commencement of the undying life of the soul. The two acts may as probably be simultaneous as not. And when Holy Scripture says, " in sin did my mother conceive me," it speaks not only of the formless embryo, but of the whole bein£, " me." When, on the other hand, Schoolmen wished to express the reception of the soul as distinct from the conception of the body, some of them, at least, used separate terms, and spoke of the reception of the soul as being " the second conception," or " the animation 9," which the Scotists declared to be im- 9 Alexander de Hales, following S. Bernard, puts the same questions as he, whether the B. V. was sanctified before her con- ception, i. e. in her parents ; whether she could be sanctified in the conception itself ; whether, also, after the conception, before the infusion of the soul, P. 3. q. 9. memb. 2. Art. 1, 2, 3. S. Thomas proceeds in the same order, denying that she could be sanctified before her conception, until after her conception, or before her animation : but holding (like de Hales) that she was sanctified before her birth (in 3 dist. 3. q. 1. art. 2). S. Bonaventura follows S. Bernard, that the flesh of the Blessed Virgin could not be sanctified before or in her conception, or before animation ; and holds "that it was more consonant to the piety of faith and the authority of the saints, that her sanctifi- cation was after the contraction of original sin." L. 3. dist. 3. art. 1. Albertus Magnus asks the same questions, " Whether the flesh of the B. V. was sanctified in the womb or before the womb ?" " Whether her flesh was sanctified before animation or after it ? " He himself held that to say that she was sanc- tified before animation was a heresy condemned by S. Bernard and all the masters of Paris (in 3. Dist. 3. Art. 3, 4). Diony- sius Carth. quotes Udalric, (a celebrated disciple of Albert. M.,) as saying (Summa L. v.), " We believe that the mother of Christ, most worthy of all praise, was sanctified speedily after her animation, i. e. the infusion of her soul. But John was sanctified 02 U/iexplaified, the Imm. Cone, will probably maculate in the Blessed Virgin. It seems then the more probahle to me, that when this their limita- tion is dropped, the term "conception" must be understood, in this case, of what every one under- stands it of in every other. And that the more, since the day, upon which the Immaculate Concep- tion is celebrated, is that accounted to be the dav of the first Conception. The term, also, used in the Bull still seems to me, unexplained, to favour the same impression. For S. Thomas Aquinas, in one of the passages which I quoted2, uses it unmistakeably of the conception of the body. For although our Blessed Lord, when He vouchsafed to take our nature upon Him, took both body and soul together, yet S. Thomas, in asking the ques- tion which he purposed to answer by affirming this sooner than Jeremiah, yet later than Mary, in that he was sanctified in the Gth month after his conception, when his mother was visited hy the mother of Christ. But that some celebrate the conception of the B. V., this is borne with by the Church, not referring it to the conception of seeds but of natures, which was in the infusion of the soul ; nor do they celebrate it [the conception of the B. V.] because it was in sin, but by reason of the sanctification, nearly adjoined to it." (Dion, in Sent. 3. 3. q. 1. p. 38.) 1 " In primo instanti conceptionis sua?." Alexander VII. in the Constit., Solicitudo omnium Ecclesiarum, used the more restricted expression, " animam in primo instanti creationis atque infusionis in corpus," quoted by Perrone, de Immac. B. M. V. Cone. p. 48. The Scholia on Scotus (p. 31) use the term "in primo instanti animationis ;" Biel, " in instanti sua3 animationis," and "ante conceptionem secundam, qua fuit in utero matris suae animata," in 3 dist. 3. q. ]. 2 Eirenicon, p. 117. » include the conception of the body too. 63 truth, used the words " in the first instant of His Conception," of the conception of His Holy Body. For he put the question thus, " Whether the Body of Christ was animated in the first moment of His Conception ? " The question would have been absurd, had the words, " in the first moment of His Conception," in themselves implied any more than the conception of His Body. For it would have been to ask, " whether His Soul was in His Holy Body, when He took at once His Body and Soul?" S. Thomas obviously meant to ask, whether, upon that operation of God the Holy Ghost, whereby His Holy Body was formed in the Virgin's womb, His Soul (contrary to what was at that time sup- posed to be the case in ordinary conception) was present in His Body. For he goes on to argue against the applicability of the Aristotelian grounds for denying that the body was ordinarily animated at the first, to the Conception of our Divine Lord. While, then, I am truly thankful that Mgr. Dupanloup and yourself still maintain the old dis- tinction, I hope that I shall not seem to you at least, my dearest friend, to be presuming, if I think that, in this too, an explanation, which would re- move difficulties from us, would be of service to you, if the Church of Rome wishes the Imma- culate Conception, as matter of faith, to be under- stood of the soul only of the Blessed Virgin, and not of her body also. Without some such expla- nation, I should have feared that the belief of the G4 Grounds of Scripture and T radition Immaculate Conception among you would be what to us seems the most natural explanation of the words of the Bull, that in the Blessed Virgin, as in her Divine Son, both body and soul were conceived immaculately, the only difference being, that the Conception of the body in her case, though in the way of nature, was immaculate, by virtue of His foreseen merits ; in His case, it was immaculate, there being nothing to defile it. You must have heard, from time to time, of a maxim among Marian writers, that, of two admissible aspects of doctrine, that is to be preferred which does most honour to the Blessed Virgin ; a maxim which, I suppose, would find its way here too in popular devotion, 6. With regard to the larger subject of the Imma- culate Conception, as a whole, some explanation could possibly be given, to soften the apparent con- tradiction of the doctrine to Holy Scripture, as inter- preted by the long tradition in the Church. The Scotists did not conceal the apparent contradiction. Thus, Biel enumerates authorities against the con- clusion to which he had come 3 : " The second conclusion according to that opinion, ' The Virgin Mary was not preserved from the contagion of original sin in the first moment of her animation.' They endeavour to prove this by authority and reason. By authority of the Apostle, Kom. v. [12], ' In Adam all sinned.' For he says, 'As through one man sin came into this world, and death by sin, and so death passed upon all men, in whom (quo) all sinned,' all who were in him according to the ' ratio seminalis.' Also Rom. iii. [23], ' All have sinned and come short of the glory of God.' The Interlineary Gloss says, 'sinned in themselves or in 3 in Sent. 3. 3. q. 1. against the Imm. Cone, tjuoted by Biel. 05 Adam.' Also, 1 Cor. xv. [22], 'As in Adam all die, so in Christ shall all be made alive.' Also, Eph. ii. [3], ' We were all chil- dren of wrath.' In all these places, the Apostle speaks univer- sally without exception ; therefore under that universality the Virgin is comprised, being a daughter of Adam, and having been born in Adam ' secuudem rationem seminalem.' Gregory of Arimiuum says here (in ii. dist. 30. q. 2), 'Since by human reason certainty cannot be had on this matter, that seems to mo rather to be held which is most consonant to sacred scripture, which, wherever it speaks hereon, delivers an universal sentence as to all, without any exception.' " This same is proved by authority of the saints. For the blessed Augustine in the ' de fide ad Petrum,' c. 23 [S. Ful- gentius, Bened. in S. Aug. Opp. vi. p. 18. App.], ' Hold most firmly and no wise doubt, that every man who is conceived by intercourse of man and woman is born with original sin, sub- ject to ungodliness and liable to death, and therefore is by nature born a child of wrath. Of whom the Apostle says, "We too were children of wrath even as others."' Also on that of John i., ' "Behold the Lamb of God." He alone was innocent Who did not so come, i. e. by propagation [Tract, iv. n. 10. p. 31G. Ben.]. Also de perfect, just. [c. ult. T. x. p. 188], ' Whoever then thinks that there was or is in this life any man or any men, except the One Mediator of God and man, to whom remission of sins was not necessary, contradicts Divine Scripture,' quoting Bom. v. as above. Also de Nupt. et Cone. [i. n. 13], ' Christ willed not to be born of cohabi- tation ; that thence too He might teach, that every one who is born of cohabitation is flesh of sin, siuce That alone which was not born therefrom, was not flesh of sin,' and consequently the flesh of the Virgin, which was born of cohabitation, was flesh of sin. Also against Julian (ii. 3G), who denied that children contracted original sin, he says the same, ' If beyond doubt the Flesh of Christ is not flesh of sin, but like unto flesh of sin, what remains but that we understand that, It excepted, all other human flesh is flesh of sin r" and shortly after [c. 15. n. 52], 'The Body of Christ is thence said to be "in the likeness of flesh of sin," because whosoever denies that all other flesh of E 06 Authorities against Imm. Cone, quoted by man is flesh of sin, and so compares the Flesh of Christ with the flesh of other men who are born, so as to assert that both are of the like purity, is found to be a detestable heretic.' And de Gen. ad lit. x. c. 23 [x. 18. n. 32. Ben.], 'Accordingly the Body of Christ, although it was taken from the flesh of woman who had been conceived from that stock of sin, yet, because It was not so conceived in her, as she had been conceived, neither was He flesh of sin, but likeness of flesh of sin.' Where it clearly appears that he thought that the flesh of the Blessed Virgin was flesh of sin. Also in the de fide ad Pet. [n. 16], ' Because the cohabitation of parents is not without passion, therefore the conception of the children born of their flesh can- not be without sin, when not propagation, but passion, trans- mits sin to the little ones.' But it is known that neither the Blessed Virgin nor any other human being, besides Christ, was conceived without cohabitation of parents. Also Ambrose on Luke [L. ii. n. 36, quoted by S. Aug. c. Julian, i. n. 10], 'The Lord Jesus Alone, of all born of woman, was throughout holy, "Who, by the newness of His Immaculate Birth, did not feel the contagion of earthly corruption, and by His Heavenly Majesty dispelled it.' If then ' Christ Alone,' then no others, and so neither His virgin Mother. And on Isaiah [quoted by S. Aug. de Nupt. et Concup. i. fin.], ' Therefore He was, as Mau, tempted in all things, and in the likeness of man endured all things. For all men are liars, and no one is without sin, but God only. That then is maintained, that from man and woman, i.e. through that corporeal union, no one should seem free from sin. For He Who is free from sin, is free also from this mode of concep- tion.' Also Dama, ' The Holy Ghost cleansed her with one word.' But cleansing is only from sin; therefore she had sin; not actual ; therefore original. And Leo, in a sermon on the Lord's Nativity, 'As He found none free from guilt, so He came to free all.' Also Anselm (Cur Deus homo, ii. 16) says, ' Because by His Death which was to be, that Virgin too of whom He was born and many others were cleansed from sin ;' if then they were cleansed from sin, then she had sin before her cleansing. And P. Lombard, iii. L. 3 : 'It may be said and believed, according to the agreement of the attestation of the Biel : special weight of S. Augustine's. 67 saints, that the very Flesh of the Word was Itself before subject to sin, like the rest of the flesh of the Virgin, but was cleansed by the operation of the Holy Ghost, so that, free from all contagion, it should be united to the Word.' Lo, he says, 'that the flesh of the Virgin was subject to sin, and was cleansed by the operation of the Holy Ghost.' Very many other like things may be alleged out of the sayings of the saints." Then, after quoting S. Bernard, he adds, from the Decretals, de Consecr. dist. iii. c. i. [where the Assump- tion and Nativity of the Blessed Virgin are enumerated among the festivals, not the Conception], " It is said in the gloss: 'Of the Feast of the Conception nothing is said, be- cause it is not to be celebrated as it is in many countries, and chiefly in England. And this is the reason, because she was conceived in sin, as also the other saints, except the Oue Person of Christ.' " The quotations from S. Augustine are, I think, the more remarkable, because of the care which he took to guard himself against seeming to ascribe actual sin to the Blessed Virgin. When affirming against Pelagius, that no one was exempt from actual sin, he protests that, fo'r reverence to our Lord, he would not speak of the B. V. (whom Pelagius had instanced among others) when speak- ing of sins. "Except then the holy Virgin Mary, of whom, for the honour of the Lord, I will that no question whatever should be had, when sins are treated of ; — for whence know we, what more of grace, for the overcoming of sin altogether, may have been conferred upon Tier, who obtained to conceive and bear Him, of whom it is known that He had no sin ? — excepting then this Virgin, if we could bring together all the other holy men and women, while they lived here, and could ask them whether E 2 08 S. Aug., declining to speak of sins of they were without sin, what can we suppose that they would answer? what that man [Pelagius] said, or what the Apostle John said ? I pray you, whatever was the eminence of their sanctity in this body, if they could be asked, would they not have cried out with one voice, ' If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us4?' " Now from this very passage, which, with a passage of S. Anselm, was put forth by the Scotists as the proof from authority that the B. V. had not origi- nal sin, I should have rather inferred that S. Au- gustine believed that she was not exempted from it. For he does not pronounce that it was certain that she never had any venial sin. The subject was hateful to him, for honour of his Lord, and he would have nothing to do with it. But the con- trast with the certainty, that our Lord had no sin, leaves some shade of uncertainty. And yet had he believed that the B. V. was born as exempt from original sin as our first parents, then any sin whatever would have been the repetition of Adam's fall; which were of all things the most unimaoi- nable and abhorrent. Then too, the expression, " Whence know we, what more of grace for the conquering of sin altogether, may have been be- stowed upon her?" which some Schoolmen so strangely quoted, as if it implied exemption from original sin % I should have thought, at least im- 4 De Nat. et Grat. c. 30. 1 Biel says I.e., "We are said to conquer sin, which never was in us, when we are preserved by grace from it, that it master us not." Even this we could not say, unless we had B. V., implies Conception in original sin. 69 plied the existence of a tendency to sin within, the "fomes peccati." One could speak of "overcoming' the world," " overcoming Satan," meaning thereby overcoming the might or the external temptations of Satan or the world. But sin has no temptations except from within. To " overcome sin" must be, one should think, to overcome its risings within one's self. S. Antonine, I see, insists that S. Augustine, when rejecting all question of sins in regard to the B. V., in honour of our Lord, meant the same sins, which, in contrast with her, he affirms of the rest of mankind, viz., actual sins. " 6 In answer to this authority, it is said according to Thomas [Aquinas] and Durandus, that Augustine is speaking there of actual sins, as is clear and patent from what precedes and fol- lows in that book, and from the authority of John in his first canonical Epistle, which Augustine immediately afterwards ad- duces : ' If we say that we have no sin, &c.' But all Doctors agree in this, that the Virgin alone among adults was free from venial sin too." But, apart from this, it seems to me utterly in- conceivable, that a writer so careful as S. Au«us- tine, who revised his works and retracted inaccu- rate expressions of so very slight account, who some involuntary tendency to the sin ; but conception in original sin is antecedent to human will, and no matter for struggle or victory. 6 Summa, P. i. Tit. 8. c. 2. dc Concept. B. M. i. 552. Verona, 1740. 70 Force of S. Augustine's exception of our guarded his language, and, on the subject of actual sin, made the specific exception in regard to the B. V., should have spoken so absolutely and with- out all exception as to the derivation of original sin to every one born as we all are born, unless he had believed that no exception was to be made ; and this the more, since he is speaking, not of our liability to those consequences of the fall, which the inheritance of original sin involves, but of the fact, that Christ Alone had been born without sin, because He alone was born, not of human gene- ration, not in the way in which His blessed Mother was born. When he is speaking of actual sin, he does except the Blessed Virgin, out of reverence to our Lord. Often as, in consequence of the necessity of warning his people or the Church against the Pe- lagians, he had to speak, formally and dogmatically, of the universality of original sin and of the mode of its transmission, he never makes more than one exception, the Person of our Lord. The very pains which people have been at, to make the occasion in which he exempts the B. V. from actual sins, to include original sin also, brings out the more the force of the omission. It is not S. Augustine's way to allow any grave statement of his belief to rest on an expression, which does not, according to the natural force of the terms, contain it. Accord- ing to modern defenders of the doctrine of the Ira- maculate Conception, the omission was not a mere Lord Alone from original sin. 71 slip of S. Augustine's, upon a subject which was not under discussion, language (inadvertently on h;s part) too broad and comprehensive. According to them, he did mean to except the B. V. once, although it does not seem to have oc- curred to any one that he did, until the Scotists wished to shelter themselves under his authority. But if so, it must have occurred to him that he had not excepted her distinctly even there, and, that every where else he had written, as one would, who did not mean to exclude her. The one work in which he so wrote, was written, a.d. 415, when S. Augustine was 60, fifteen years before his decease. Though circulated, as all his works were, it was written originally to individuals. He could not an- ticipate that what he had thus written, would be known, as it is now, to all who know his works at all, and to tens of thousands who do not know them. Yet neither in what he wrote subsequently upon the universality of the transmission of origi- nal sin to all born after the law of our birth, did he make any exception, nor in his Retractations did he say that he had failed to make that one exception ; and yet even in works later than this date, he corrected very minute mistakes. You, my dear friend, will not think that it is in any spirit of controversy that I put together from the collections of Cardinal de Turrecremata, Do Bandelis, and others, a series bearing upon the Immaculate Conception. 72 Object of reproducing the citations of Card. The work of Cardinal de Turrecremata (who, when he compiled it, was Magister Palatii at Rome) was no ordinary work. It was executed when he was of mature age (he was 49 when he completed it), with full access to libraries, " at the mandate of the legates of the Apostolic See, then presiding over the Council of Basle 7," on the affirmative side, viz., " that the B. V. was conceived in original sin." (The other side was executed by John of Segovia.) Of course, he had difficulties, printing not being yet invented. And so he states that he had omitted very many authorities, which he had seen in libra- ries, because he could not ascertain the names of the authors; partly too he was hindered by lack of time, and he limited his selection to one hundred authorities. But what he quoted, with the exception of very few passages, he says, that he had seen with his own eyes. His own statement, prepared for the Synod, was : — " 8 Behold, O sacred Synod, 100 witnesses, who, being most profound Doctors in Divine and Canon law, or very learned Fathers, give a most clear testimony to the side of the question for which you have entrusted me with the ministry, viz., that 7 This is stated in the title, " Tractatus de veritate conceptio- ns Beatiss. V. pro facienda relatione coram Patribus Cone. Bas. a.d. 1437, mense Julio de mandato Sedis Apostolica? lega- torum, eidem S. Concil. Prsesidentium, per B. P. F. Joann. de Turrecremata S.T.P. ord. Praed., tunc S. Apost. Palatii Magis- trum, postea S. B. E. Cardinalem Episc. Sabin. Bomse 1547." 8 P. vii. init. extracted in De Alva's Trituratio, pp. 22, 23. de T urrecremata : character of his work. 73 the most Bl. Virgin was in her conception subject to original sin. To whom it would be easy to add many others, consider- ing that the faith and doctrine of almost all the ancient expo- sitors of the Bible and Doctors of the schools, who are of more celebrated authority, fame, and opinion, tends to that side of the question. ~Qut,for the present, I have been content with this number, because the number of 100 is held perfect in Holy Scripture (as the gloss says, Deut. 22), as also because want of opportunity and multiplicity of occupations did not permit me to visit several libraries ; also, because although I found in libraries, which I visited, many other Doctors, both on the Sentences and in expositions of the Bible, and in treatises made in praise of the most Bl. V., who taught and preached this doc- trine, and left it in their writings for instructing the Christian people, yet, since I often could not know their names, I decided not to quote the sayings of these many Doctors. But the testimonies of the 100 Doctors or venerable Fathers, (except some very few, of whose judgment I had knowledge from the faithful report of others,) I have seen in their originals with my own eyes." These authorities are but a small portion of his important work 9. To him was assigned the office 9 The work is so manifestly one whole, from one mind, at one time, and that, engaged in close, hand-to-hand, yet peace- loving, controversy with the opposite party, with continual reference to each of the opponents, and occasionally to preachers of sermons at the Synod, and to the fathers of the Synod itself, with even the recurrence of rare expressions, that De Alva must have looked very superficially at the book (as his character was), that he -could speak of its citations, at one time, as the work of Barth. Spina, General of the Order, Prof, of Theol. and Master of the Apostolic Palace, who directed the publication, and, while able, laboured on it ; at another, of Alb. Duimius, Domin. Prof, at Borne, who corrected errors which had crept into the MSS. in the 110 years between its delivery and its printing. They were merely Editors. Pref. of Alb. Duim. to De Turr.'s work. 74 Character of De Turrecrematd s Work. of answering what had been said by the two advo- cates on the other side, supporting what had been said by his colleague the Provincial of Lombardy, to whom the opening of the subject had been com- mitted. He followed the arguments of his oppo- nents, step by step, even at the cost of repetition, and supported his allegations of Holy Scripture or his arguments by the traditional interpretations, and advanced nothing unsupported. His extracts are conscientiously and carefully made, as one would expect from him, especially upon such an occasion. Even De Alva, who is unsparing of his accusations of those who wrote on that side, and who often finds fault for inaccuracy, where there is none to be found, is frequently compelled to own the authentic way in which Cardinal de Turrecre- mata cites his authorities, or contrasts it with the less exact citations of others. De Alva, on the other hand, who accuses so confidently, falls at times into the slips, to which self-confidence and suspicious- ness expose any one. He is useful in checking citations, but he has need to be checked himself ; for he declares authors or their works to have been non-existent or forged, because he could not him- self trace them, or two writers to be the same, because he had not the means of distinguishing them. Quetif's belief was the same as De Alva's, yet in his learned " Library of the Dominicans," he has noticed some of these mistakes of De Alva's in regard to Dominican writers ; and he uses the ex- De Bandelis. 75 pression, " 1 if it had not been an ascertained thing-, that he (De Alva) ran lightly over the authors who occurred to him." The careful study of his elaborate work makes one think heavily, that, had it ever been read to the Council, their decision (which was counted exten- sively as the decision of the Church) might have been stayed. As it was, they decided under the influence of unanswered arguments and (of which De Turrecremata complains) invidious declamation. De Bandelis 2 appeared to me to have quoted less exactly 3. At least, he has sometimes important words which do not occur in the present texts, and sometimes gives an epitome of a passage rather 1 Biblioth. Prsed., art. F. Hugo Argentin. i. 470. 2 " De singulari puritate et praerogativa Conceptionis Salva- toris nostri Jesu Christi ex auctoritatibus 260 Doctorum illus- trium." — Printed at Bologna, a.d. 1481. 3 In such a mass of authorities, he has, T may say, of course, made mistakes. As the list in Melchior Canus (referred to, "Eirenicon," p. 178) rests doubtless on his authority, I would say he was probably mistaken about S. Bernardine ; the sermon which he ascribes to S. Antony of Padua has not been found, although S. Antony, if I understand him aright, does not express any opposite belief. S. Erhardus, or Gerardus, Bishop and Martyr, is the same as a " Bishop and Martyr " quoted by De Turrecremata. Sometimes, too, De B. has quoted the same author under two or more names (such as he found probably in his MSS.), although not so often as De Alva imputes to him. In the absence of bibliographies it was almost impossible to avoid it. It was not obvious, e. g., to an Italian, that " Ki- chardus lladulphi [Richard Fitz Ralph], Chancellor of Oxford," was the same as " Dom. Armachanus," i.e. Archbishop of Armagh. 76 Importance of an adequate than its exact words 6. His citations too are often (in the way of S. Thomas Aquinas in the Catena Aurea) made up of disjointed sentences, which he enwreathes into one whole. I have then used his work as a convenient index, but I have (sometimes with some labour) given the exact words and a fuller context, although, in this way, often not so salient as they stand in his work 7. No one can wish more earnestly than myself that a solution of these authorities8 should be found, and should be authoritatively given. I wish this as earnestly now, as I did wish beforehand, that the Immaculate Conception should not be made a matter of faith, but left as a matter of 'pious opinion ;' and I wish it on the self-same grounds ; fifteen years ago, that there might be no fresh diffi- 6 I have seen this stated in one case by Deza, bis continua- tor, as quoted by De Alva. 7 As the works from which they quote for the first 1100 years, have been since printed, I have inserted nothing during that period, which I have not myself verified. "Wherever I have sub- sequently used authorities from Turrecremata, still unprinted, I have referred to him. Sometimes De Alva himself quotes a MS. containing De Turrecremata's authority and agreeing with it except in unimportant variations, or in giving a fuller context, as De Turrecremata says he understood "compendiousness" to belong to his office. In these cases, I have translated from De Alva's extracts. In one or two cases I have found the passage in Quetif. Later authorities, which rest on Turrecremata alone, I have, when I have cited them, marked with a t- 8 I have weighed carefully what De Alva says, though, his work being a folio, it would be wearisome to any reader to in- troduce it in controversy. explanation of this tradition. 77 culty in the way of rc-union; now, that, if possible, the definition, made in 1854, should be so explained as not to be an obstacle. But you have no internal ground to give any such solution, since there is no question about the doctrine among you. When the building is raised, the scaffolding is not wanted; nor is any question had about the difficulties ex- perienced in raising it. These become mere matter of history. If, then, there is to be any explanation, (and an explanation is of much moment towards the re-union of Christendom, East and West too,) the impulse must come to you from without. In the view, then, of obtaining an authoritative expla- nation, I have re-arranged this body of tradition, which cannot, I think, be simply set aside, without destroying altogether the value of tradition as a witness of truth. Whatever this or that Father or middle-age writer may be said not to mean, it is of moment, that it should be shown, what this con- current testimony, spread over so many centuries, does mean, based, as so much of it is, on words of Holy Scripture, that God sent His Son in " the likeness of flesh of sin." Perrone, following P. Benedict Piazza, divides the authorities into five classes: "9(1) those testi- monies, in which it is asserted that God Alone or Christ Alone is without any sin, without making any mention of original sin; (2) those, which affirm • Do Irani. B. V. Cone. p. 57. 78 Perrone — Patristic authorities in Jive classes. that the whole human race is infected with original sin, without specially naming the Blessed Virgin; (3) those, in which Fathers teach, that, Christ Alone excepted, all men are defiled with that origi- nal stain ; (4) those, which maintain that the flesh of the Blessed Virgin was flesh of sin ; (5) those, in which Fathers assert in plain terms, that the Blessed Virgin was sanctified, cleansed, purged." Perrone contents himself with considering some of the two last classes. I have myself mostly omitted the first. The force of the third class Perrone has, I think, naturally understated. To me its great weight seems to lie, not in the fact of the contrast alone between our Lord and His redeemed, hut that the exemption of our Lord's Human Nature from original sin is ascribed to the difference of the mode of His Conception. All, those Fathers teach, have been born subject to the original sin, who received their being after the way of nature; our Lord's Human Nature Alone was not so subjected, because He was not conceived after the way of nature; He was conceived, not of man, but of the Holy Ghost. The very nature of the contrast compels the Fathers to speak of the Blessed Virgin. Her conception must have been consequently pre- sent to their minds. Original sin did not, they say, pass to our Lord, because He was conceived of His Mother in a way in which she was not con- ceived. Had they thought that she had been ex- cepted, it seems almost impossible, that no one of Special weight of third class. S. Irenceus. 79 them should have made the exception. For it is not a case of oratorical or devotional language, or of a general confession of our hereditary sinfulness. They are dogmatic statements, carefully worded. The earlier Fathers, who speak on the subject, belong chiefly to Pcrrone's second class. Yet, S. Augustine gathers^ them into one, as attesting the belief of the Church as to the universal trans- mission of original sin to all naturally born of Adam. The writers themselves are naturally more or less full or precise. S. Augustine takes cer- tain expressions (e. g. those of S. Irenseus) as key- notes of a system of faith, which they implied, but which those Fathers did not fully explain. These I give on S. Augustine's authority, else I should not have cited them. Yet, with such a full statement as Origen's, one cannot doubt, even apart from S. Augustine's authority, that the Catholic writers before him, whom Pelagius claimed, not only held the doctrine of original sin, but the mode of its transmission, as contained in the fuller statements. This gleams through in most of the writers quoted. 1. S. Irenseus lays stress on S. Paul's words, " the likeness of the flesh of sin," as belonging to our Lord, in contrast with the rest of mankind 10. " No otherwise could men be saved from the ancient wound of the serpent unless they believe in Him, Who, in the likeness of flesh of sin, being lifted up from the earth on the wood of witness, drew all thiDgs to Himself and quickened the dead." iv. 2. 7, quoted by S. Aug. c. Julian, i. 3, Opp. x. 500. 80 Tertullian. I had perhaps better add Tertullian and Origen here, (although not quoted by S. Augustine,) because the explicitness of their statements (borne out by S. Ambrose and other Catholic writers) shows that, long before the Pelagian controversy, the mode of transmission of original sin was stated in connexion with Psalm li., and that no exception was made. 2. Tertullian, about a.d. 199, wrote — Satan, " 1 whom we call the angel of wickedness, the con- triver of all evil, the corruptor of the whole world, through whom man, being from the beginning beguiled, so that he transgressed the commandments of Grod, and on that account being given over unto death, hath henceforth made his whole race, that is infected of his seed, the transmitters of his con- demnation also." And, in a work after his fall into Montanism — " " This, too, appertaineth to the faith, that Plato divides the soul into rational and irrational. Which definition we too approve, yet not so, that both be ascribed to nature. For the rational must be believed to be natural, being inborn in the soul from the beginning, as coming from a rational Author. But the irrational is to be understood to be later, as having come from the suggestion of the serpent, that very transgres- sion of theirs which they admitted, and that thenceforth it in-grew and grew up together in the soul, having now a sort of character of nature, because it happened in the very first beginning of nature3." 1 De Testim. Anim. 3. p. 135. Oxf. Tr. - De Anima. c. 16. s Lumper (Tertullian, c. (5. art. 10. p. 363) refers in illustra- tion to Bossuet, t. 2, Defense dc la Tradition et des Saints Peres, L. 8. c. 29. p. 148. Tertullian. 81 " 4 To such a degree is well nigli no nativity clean, viz., of heathens." Then he explains S. Paul (1 Cor. vii. 14) to mean that the children of believers were clean, as " designated for holiness ;" " else," he says, "the Apostle well remembered the decision of the Lord, ' Unless one be born of water and the Spirit, he will not enter into the kingdom of God,' i. e. he will not be holy." He proceeds, " So then every soul is so long counted in Adam, until it be counted anew in Christ ; so long unclean, until it be so counted anew ; and sinful, because un- clean, receiving ignominy from the association of the flesh [he means additional ignominy, since he goes on to speak of the body as only an instrument of evil]. The evil then of the soul (besides what is built thereon by the intervention of the evil spirit) is antecedent from the fault of origin, being in a manner natural. For, as we said, the corruption of nature is another nature, having its own god and father, viz. the author himself of its corruption, yet so that there is good too in the soul, that which is principal, that which is divine and genuine, and properly natural. For that which is from God is not so much extinguished as overshadowed. For it can be over- shadowed, because it is not God ; it cannot be extinguished, because it is from God. So then, as light, hindered by some obstacle, abides, but appears not, if the density of the hindrance be adequate, so also the good in the soul, oppressed by the evil, according to the quality of that evil, is either missing altogether, the light suffering occultation, or shines, when allowed, having gained freedom. So some are exceeding evil, some exceeding good, and yet all are one kind of soul. So in the worst, too, there is something of good, and in the best there is something of the worst. Tor God Alone is without sin, and the only Man without sin is Christ, because Christ is also God." And in another — ■ " 5 For which cause also, we were 1 children of wrath,' he saith, but ' by nature,' lest, because the Creator had called the 4 lb. c. 30—41. 9 Adv. Marc, v. 17. pp. 608, 609. Rig. F 82 Absolute universality of original sin ; Jews children, the heretic might argue, that the Lord was the creator of wrath. For when he says, ' we were by nature children of wrath,' hut the Jews were sons of the Creator, not by nature, but by election of the fathers, he referred their being ' children of wrath ' to ' nature,' not to the Creator. Subjoining, as 'also the rest,' who clearly are not sons of God. He appears to ascribe sins and concupiscences of the flesh, and unbelief and anger, to the common nature of all men, yet [he doth so], the devil taking captive nature, which too he himself already infected, by bringing in the seed of transgression." 3. Origen : " c But if you would hear what other saints also think of that birth [in the flesh], hear David saying, ' I was conceived in iniquities, and in sins did my mother bear me,' showing that whatsoever soul is born in the flesh is polluted by the defile- ment of iniquity and sin ; and that therefore is that said, which we have mentioned above, that ' no one is clean from defilement, not even if his life be of one day.' " " 7 Whosoever cometh into this world is said to be made in a certain contamination. Wherefore also Scripture saith, ' No one is clean from defilement, not even if his life be of one day.' For from the very fact, that he was placed in his mother's womb, and takes the matter of his body from the origin of his father's seed, he may be said to be contaminated in father and in mother. Or know you not, that when the male child is forty days old, it is offered at the altar, to be purified there, as having been polluted in the conception itself, either of the paternal seed or the maternal womb ? Every man, then, was polluted in father aud in mother, but Jesus, my Lord, Alone entered pure into this generation ; He was not defiled in His mother. For He entered a body undefiled [being a virgin]. For He it was, Who had said long before too through Solomon, ' But rather, being good, I came to a body undefiled.' He was 6 Orig. in Lev. Horn. 8. n. 3. T. ii. p. 230. ed. De la Eue. 7 lb. Horn. 12. n. 4. Ib. p. 251. Origen, S. Cyprian. 83 not then defiled in His mother, but neither was He in His father. Tor Joseph yielded no part in His generation, except ministry and love. Wherefore also, for his faithful ministry, Scripture granted him the name of father. For so Mary her- self saith in the Oospel, ' Behold I and Thy father have sought Thee sorrowing.' So then He alone is the great High Priest, Who was defiled neither in father nor mother." " 8 But of that regeneration [in the world to come, S. Matt, xix. 28], the prelude is, that which is called in Paul the wash- ing of regeneration, and [the prelude] of that newness is that which followeth upon the washing of regeneration in that of renewal of life. But, perhaps, according to birth too, 'no one is clean from defilement, not if his life be one day,' on account of the mystery concerning the birth, in regard to which [birth] each one of all who have come to the birth may say that which was said by David in the 50th Psalm, thus, that ' I was con- ceived in transgressions, and in sins was my mother pregnant of me,' but according to the regeneration from the leaven, every one who has been born from above of water and the Spirit, is clean from defilements, to speak boldly, clean ' through a glass and darkly,' &c." " 9 Or, rather, it seemeth that this [Rom. v. 14] ought to be taken simply, that ' the likeness of Adam's transgression ' ought to be received without any discussion, so that by this saying all who are born of Adam, the transgressor, should seem to be indicated, and to have in themselves the likeness of his trans- gression, received in themselves, not only from the seed, but also from education." 4. S. Cyprian and his African Council of sixty- six Bishops, — in that celebrated response, in which S. Augustine says that " 10 the question whether it was lawful for an infant to be baptized before the 8 In S. Matt. T. 15. n. 2:}. Opp. iii. 685, 686. 9 In Eom. T. 5. n. i. Opp. iv. 550. 10 Contr. 2 Epp. Pelag. iv.. 8 n. 23. Opp. x. 481. See other places of S. Aug. in S. Cyprian's Epistles, p. 195. n. Oxf. Tr. F 2 84 Universality of original sin. Reticius, eighth day, was so handled, as though, through the Providence of God, the Catholic Church were already confuting the Pelagian heretics, who were to rise so long after," — say, " 1 If then to the most grievous offenders, and who had before sinned much against God, when they afterwards believe, re- mission of sins is granted, and no one is debarred from Baptism and grace, how much more ought not an infant to be debarred, who, being newly born, has in no way sinned, except that, being born after Adam in the flesh, he has by the first birth contracted the contagion of the old death, who is on this very account more easily admitted to receive remission of sins, in that not his own but another's sins are remitted to him." S. Jerome quotes 2 besides from S. Cyprian's col- lection of texts of Holy Scripture, arranged under heads, the heading 3, " That none is born without defilement and without sin." In support of which S. Cyprian alleges Ps. li. 5, " Behold I was con- ceived in iniquities, and in sins did my mother conceive me;" and 1 John i. 8, "If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us." S. Cyprian unites actual and original sin, and denies the exemption of any from either of them. 5. Reticius, Bp. of Autun, one of the three Bishops appointed by Constantine to judge with 1 S. Cyprian and Afric. Council to Fidus, Ep. 64 fin. 2 Dial. c. Pelag. n. 32. Opp. ii. 715. ed. Yall. 3 Testim. iii. 64. Treatises, p. 100. Oxf. Tr. Olympius, S. Hilary. 85 Melchiades Bp. of Rome in the case of the Dona- tists 4, said of Baptism ; " i Every one knows that this is the chief forgiveness in the Church, in which we put off the whole weight of the old sin, and blot out the ancient sins of our ignorance, where too we put off the old man with our inborn guilt." 5. Augustine dwells on the terms, " weight of the old sin," " ancient sins," " the old man with our inborn guilt." 6. Olympius, " c a Spanish Bishop of great glory in the Church and in Christ," said in a sermon, " If faith had remained any where on earth uncorrupt, and had held its footmarks imprinted, which, when marked, it abandoned, never, by the death-bringing transgression of the protoplast, would lie have infused vice in the germ, so that sin should be born with man." 7. S. Hilary, like S. Jrenseus, dwells on the ex- pression, " the likeness of the flesh of sin," in our Lord, in contrast with ours 7 . "Since then He was sent in ' the likeness of flesh of sin,' He had not sin too, as He had flesh. But because all flesh is from sin, being derived from sin, i. e. from Adam our parent, He was sent in 'the likeness of flesh of sin,' there being in Him not sin, but ' the likeness of flesh of sin.' " 4 Eus. H. E. x. 5. S. Augustine dwells on the fact of his so judging, as showing that he was " of great authority in the Church." 5 Ap. S. Aug. c. Juliau. i. 7. p. 501. " lb. § 8. 7 Erom an unknown and lost work in S. Aug. 1. c. § 9, 86 Orig. sin derived from mode of our conception. S. Hilary elsewhere s speaks of " The Apostolic faith attesting that ' the Man Christ Jesus was found in fashion as a man,' and was sent in 'the likeness of flesh of sin,' so that, being ' in fashion as a man,' He should be in the form of a servant, and not be in the defects of nature ; and being in ' the likeness of flesh of sin,' should indeed be the Word-Flesh, yet be in ' the likeness of flesh of sin,' rather than be the flesh of sin itself; and, being the Man Christ Jesus, should be Man, yet so that, in the Man, He could be nothing else than Christ is ; and thus that He should both be born Man, by the birth of the body, and yet not be in the faults of man, not being in the origin ; because ' the Word made Flesh ' could not but be the Flesh which It was made, and the Word, although made Flesh, yet did not part with Its being the Word ; and while ' the Word, made Flesh,' cannot lack the Nature of His origin, It could not but abide in the origin of His own Nature, that He was the Word ; nor yet could the Word not be understood to be truly the Flesh which He was made ; yet so that, since He dwelt among us, that Flesh was not the Word, but the Flesh of the Word dwelling in the flesh." S. Augustine quotes S. Hilary again as con- 8 De Trin. x. 26. p. 1054. Ben. The Bened. comment on the passage is, " We have in this section the sum of what had been hitherto proved, that the Word, taking Flesh, did not lose what He was, and took the verity of human nature, not its defects. The ground, why Hilary so earnestly maintained the distinction of the Divine and Human Nature in Christ, was to prove that our infirmities, which the heretics ascribed wrongly to the Divine Nature, were incidental only to the Human. But since it was unfitting that the God-united Man should be sub- ject to the dominion of passions, he shows appositely, that Christ knew not the foul beginnings of our conception, and so was not liable to our passions, as far as they are injurious and vicious, and have rule over us." S. Hilary, S. Ambrose. 87 necting our original sin with the mode of our con- ception ; " ' 9 My soul shall live and it shall praise Thee, and Thy judgments shall help me.' He doth not think that he lives, in this life, in that he said, ' Behold I was conceived in iniquities, and in sins did my mother bear me.' He knows that he was born under the origin of sin and under the law of sin." 8. From S. Ambrose, besides the passages already cited by Biel ', S. Augustine quotes his comment on David's words, "Behold I was conceived in wickedness, and in sins did my mother bear me." " 2 Before we are born, we are stained by contagion ; and, before we enjoy the light, we receive the injury of our origin itself, we are conceived in iniquity. He did not express, whether of our parents or our own. ' And in transgressions does his mother generate each.' Nor did he declare, whether the mother generates in her own sins, or whether there be already some transgressions too of the new-born. But see whether both are not to be understood. Neither is the conception without iniquity, since the parents too are not without lapse ; and, if even the child of a day old is not without sin, much more are not those days of the maternal conception without sin. We are conceived then in the sin of our parents, and we are born in their iniquities. But the birth itself too has contagions of its own, nor has nature itself one contagion only." — "In Whom [Christ] Alone, there was both a virginal conception and birth, without any defilement of mortal origin. For it was meet, that He, Who was to have no sin of bodily prolapsion, should feel no natural contagion of generation. Bightly then did David mournfully lament in himself the very defilements of nature, that stain begins in man earlier than life." 0 In Ps. cxviii. 175. p. 366. Ben. 1 Above, p. 66. 2 Apol. David, c. 11. Opp. i. 691, 695. 88 Christ alone free from original sin by His birth. " 3 One is our iniquity, another that of our heel, in which Adam vras wounded by the serpent's tooth, and by his own wound left the inheritance of human succession subject thereto, so that we all halt through that wound." And in language which, though ante-Pelagian, is such as S. Augustine adopted 4 ; " It is declared, that salvation should come to the nations through One, Jesus Christ, "Who Alone could not be righteous, whereas every generation erred, unless, being born of a Virgin, He was by no means held by the law, which lay upon a guilty generation. He who was counted righteous above the rest, says, ' Behold I was conceived in wickednesses, and in sin my mother bare me.' "Whom then should I now call righteous, save One free from these chains, Whom the chains of the common nature hold not ? All are under sin ; from Adam over all death reigned. Let Him come, Who Alone was right- eous in the sight of God, of Whom it should be said, now no longer with limitation, ' He sinned not in His lips,' but, 1 He did no sin.' " S. Augustine then asks Julian, whether he would venture to say to S. Ambrose too, " that, since he excepted Christ Alone from the bonds of a guilty generation, because He was born of a virgin, whereas all others descended from Adam were born under the bond of sin, which sin the devil sowed, he made the devil the creator of all born from the union of the sexes." "Confute him" (he says) "as a condemner of marriage, who says that the Virgin's Son was Alone born without sin." 3 On Ps. xlviii. 6. n. 8. Opp. i. 947, quoted in S. Aug. c. Jul. i. 3. 4 Quoted by S. Aug. c. Julian, ii. 2, and cont. 2 Epp. Pelag. iv. n. 29, from S. Ambrose's de Area Noe, not there now. S. Ambrose, S. Augustine. 89 He further quotes from S. Ambrose ; " 6 Christ was therefore immaculate, because neither was He maculate by the wonted condition of birth itself." " 0 He [Peter] offered himself for that which he, before, thought sin, asking that not his feet only, but his head also should be washed ; because he had immediately understood that, by the washing of the feet, which in the first man slipped, the defilement of the guilty succession was done away." And again, commenting upon the same text, upon which S. Irenseus had touched before, and which S. Augustine expands so often, that " God sent His Son in the likeness of sinful flesh," he connects our Lord's sinlessness with His not being born, as all besides were born. " r He does not say, ' into the likeness of flesh,' because Christ took the verity, not ' the likeness ' of human flesh. Nor does he say, ' into the likeness of sin,' for He did no siu, but was made sin for us. But He came ' into the likeness of flesh of sin,' i. e. He took the likeness of sinful flesh ; therefore, 'the likeness,' because it was written, ' And He is a man, and who shall acknowledge Him ?' He was a man, in flesh according to man, who should be acknowledged ; with virtue above man, who should not be acknowledged. So also He hath our flesh, but hath not the faults [vitia] of this flesh. For He was not gene- rated, as every human being is, of commingling of male and female; but, being born of the Holy Ghost and the Virgin, He had received an immaculate Body, which not only no faults [vitia] had stained, but neither had the injuring concretion of generation or conception offuscated. For all we, the race of man, are born under sin, whose very birth is in fault, as thou 5 On Isaiah in S. Aug. c. 2. Epp. Pel. iv. 29, p. 488. 0 Id. ib. ' De Pcenit. i. 3. Opp. ii. 393, 394. The part " all we . . . guilt " is quoted by S. Aug. ib. 90 Universality of original sin. hast it read, when David says, ' Behold I was conceived in iniquities, and in offences did my mother bear me.' Therefore the flesh of Paul was a body of death, as he himself says, 'Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?' But the Flesh of Christ condemned sin, which, being born, He felt not, which, dying, He crucified; so that in our flesh there might be justification by grace, where, before, there was defile- ment through guilt." Another passage, which S. Augustine quotes from S. Ambrose as his " teaching, how from that law of sin, (i. e. from the concupiscence of the flesh, carnis,) every man is generated, and therefore con- tracts original sin," I leave untranslated on account of its strength. " 8 Hos filios generans David partus illos eorporeae com- mixtionis horrebat, et ideo mundari sacri fontis irriguo desi- derabat, ut carnalem et terrenam labem gratia spiritualis ab- lueret. ' Ecce,' inquit, ' in iniquitatibus conceptus sum, et in delictis peperit me mater mea.' Male Eva parturivit, ut partus relinqueret mulieribus haereditatem, atque unusquisque concu- piscentise voluptate concretus, et genitalibus visceribus infusus, et coagulatus in sanguine, in pannis involutus, prius subiret delictorum contagium quam vitalis spiritus munus hauriret." S. Augustine explains that the " pannis involutus " is a meta- phor, " non utique laneis aut lineis, aut hujuscemodi talibus, qualibus jam nati obvolvuntur infantes, sed pannis vitiatse originis, tanquam haereditariis, involutus." 9. From S. Gregory of Nazianzum, speaking of Baptism, S. Augustine quotes 9, " Let the word of Christ too persuade you of this, when He 8 De Sacramento regenerationis, s. de Philosophia in S. Aug. c. Julian, ii. 6, n. 15. 0 In S. Aug. c. Julian, i. n. 15. T. x. p. 505. The sermon from which S. Aug. quotes is not extant. S. Gregory jftaz., S. Basil. 91 saitb, that 'no man can enter the kingdom of heaven, unless he be reborn of water and the Spirit.' By this are the stains of the first nativity purged, whereby we 'are conceived in iniquities, and in sins have our mothers borne us.' " On the other hand, he speaks of the Blessed Virgin, as having been " fore-purified " before the Conception of our Lord ; " 1 He becomes Man in all things, save sin, having been conceived by the Virgin who had been fore-purified {TrpoKadap- 6ei