* ex**9** ? >e ee © PRiNCET ON. N. J. Part of the f ADDISON ALEXANDER LIBRARY, which was presented by Messrs. It. L. a so A. Stuakt. BT 21 . B8 7 4 1858 Butler, William Archer 18147-184 8. Letters on Romanism ■ ■ y -r- . L | . ■ - THE WORKS OF WILLIAM ARCHER BUTLER, M.A. Late Professor of Moral Philosophy in the University of Dublin. FIVE VOLUMES 8 vo. UNIFORMLY PRINTED AND BOUND. “ A man of glowing genius and diversified accomplishments, whose remains fill these five brilliant volumes." — Edinburgh Review. SOLD SEPARATELY AS FOLLOWS. ] . Sermons, Doctrinal and Practical. First Series. Edited by the Very Rev. Thomas Woodward, M.A. Dean of Down, with a Memoir and Portrait. Fourth Edition. 8vo. cloth, 12s. “ Present a richer combination of the qualities for Sermons of the first class than any we have met with in any living writer." — British Quarterly. 2. Sermons, Doctrinal and Practical. Second Series. Edited from the Author’s MSS., by J. A. Jeremie, D.D., Regius Professor of Divinity in the University of Cambridge. Second Edition. 8 vo. cloth, 1 os. 6d. “They are marled by the same originality and vigour of expression, the same richness of imagery and illustration, the same large views and catholic spirit, and the same depth and fervour of . devotional feeling, which so remarkably distinguished the preceding Series and which ren¬ dered it a most valuable accession to our theological literature." — From Dr Jeremie’s Preface. 3. Letters on Romanism, in Reply to Dr Newman’s Essay on Development. Edited by the Very Rev. Thomas Woodward, M.A. Dean of Down, and revised by the Rev. Charles Hardwick, M.A. Christian Advocate in the University of Cambridge. Second Edition. 8vo. cloth, 1 os. 6d. “ Deserve to be considered the most remarkable proofs of the Author's indo¬ mitable energy and power of concentration.” — Edinburgh Review. 4. Lectures on the History of Ancient Philosophy. Edited from the Author’s MSS. with Notes, by William Hepworth Thomp¬ son, M.A. Regius Professor of Greek in the University of Cambridge. a vols. 8vo. il. 5 s. “ Of the dialectic and physics of Plato they are the only exposition at once full, accurate, and popular, with which I am acquainted : being far more accurate than the French, and incomparably more popular than the Ge'rman treatises on these departments of the Platonic philosophy." — From Prof. Thompson’s Preface. _ LETTERS ON ROMANISM. Camfcrrtige : PRINTED BY C. J. CLAY, M. A. AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS. This Boole was originally published in 1850, under the title “ Letters on the Development of Christian Doctrine, dec.” LETTERS ON ROMANISM, IN $eplj to HR ftomatt'g feag on gtfetoptent. BY THE REV. WILLIAM ARCHER BUTLER, ALA. LATE PROFESSOR OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF DUBLIN. EDITED BY THE VERY REY. THOMAS WOODWARD, M.A. DEAN OF DOWN. SECOND EDITION. REVISED BY THE REY. CHARLES HARDWICK, M.A. CHRISTIAN ADVOCATE IN THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE. “ Such is the looseness of reasoning, and the negligence of facts, which all writers more or less exhibit, who consider that they are in possession of a sure hypothesis on which to interpret evidence, and employ argument.” — J. H. Newman. “ It is visible wherein the strength of his performance lies, and what it is that he chiefly trusts to. It is not Scripture, it is not antiquity, but a Philosophical Principle, to which Scripture, Fathers, everything must yield.” — Archdeacon Waterland. ©ambrftHje : MACMILLAN AND CO. 1858. [ The right of translation is reserved .] Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2019 with funding from Princeton Theological Seminary Library https://archive.org/details/lettersonromanis00butl_0 PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. It was the intention of my lamented friend, Professor Butler, an intention expressed not long before his death, to have republished the following Letters, in a separate form, with corrections and additions. But a mysterious Providence has overruled that purpose, and an early grave has closed on all his promises of wide-spread usefulness. It has devolved upon the Editor to carry out the design, however imperfectly. Circumstances, over which he had no control, have hitherto delayed the execution of this interesting, though melancholy task, which he unaffectedly re¬ grets has not been committed to a better hand. The Letters were originally published in the columns of- that ably conducted periodical, the Irish Ecclesiastical Journal; but a wish, too general to be disregarded, calls for their re-appearance in a more convenient form. They were written at intervals, between the close of 1845 and the commencement of PREFACE. • • • yin 1847, and were the work of hurried moments, snatched from labours of beneficence to the starving crowds who daily flocked around their Author s resi¬ dence. The famine, which during that period was at its height, had visited with fearful intensity the parish and neighbourhood of Professor Butler, and he was indefatigable in remedial efforts. Such a scene, so beset with harassing interruption, so far from intellectual converse, was indeed almost incom¬ patible with calm processes of subtle reasoning, and erudite investigation. The composition of such a work, under disadvantages so overwhelming, is in truth no small evidence of Butler s extraordinary power of thought. That some few traces of haste should not be perceptible, it would of course be im¬ possible to expect. Some oversights have been cor¬ rected in the notes. Several quotations, taken at second-hand from text-books, have evidently not been considered in their context, and have been em¬ ployed in a significance varying considerably from their real meaning. In throwing in guards and qua¬ lifications, in endeavouring to place the quotations in the light originally intended, the Editor has been conscious that he was doing what Professor Butler would have earnestly desired to have done. That most candid and most truthful mind would have been the last purposely to support his argument by PREFACE. IX unfair citation, or overstrained interpretation, or by making the words of any author seem to convey an impression different from what they were designed to produce. The appearance of Mr. Newman’s celebrated Es¬ say on the Development of Christian Doctrine 1 wras the occasion which urged Professor Butler, at such inconvenience to himself, to undertake the publica¬ tion of these Letters. They treat, however, of topics which possess a general and perpetual interest. They are replete with arguments and principles which ex¬ tend far beyond their primary object of refuting a particular disputant. It is, perhaps, an unavoidable result of our position between two opposite extremes, and on the defensive against both, that our Anglican Theology is cast, for the most part, in a controversial mould. Its richest treasures must be carefully picked up by the student, not arranged in didactic treatises, but scattered as they lie through Defences and Be- plies, through Apologies and Vindications. Thus the reader, who feels but little interest in their polemical bearings, may still peruse these pages with profit and delight ; may find here disquisitions upon topics the most engaging, philosophical as well as ecclesiastical, 1 An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine. By- John Henry Newman, Author of Lectures on the Prophetical Office of the Church. London, 1845. X PREFACE. adorned with the richest drapery of imagination, and clothed in language of unexceeded power and beauty. But these Letters, although thus occasioned by it, are not to be regarded as a Reply to the single Essay of Mr. Newman. They are a comprehensive refutation of a System , of which he indeed was the ablest exponent, but which many other thinkers had partially propounded as absolutely necessary for the preservation of the Romish cause. In the present state of critical learning, the spurious authorities, and the misquotations from genuine writings, which too often formed the case of Romish controversialists when appealing to antiquity, can no longer obtain even a temporary currency. The Theory of Develop¬ ment is a last effort to buttress the novelties, which can find no sanction in ancient Catholicity, by a still more novel speculation. Mr. Newman is the spokes¬ man of a powerful School, who have surrendered the claim of antiquity, and substituted this theory in its stead : that the Christian Revelation was at first in¬ tentionally incomplete ; “ that the original doctrines of the Christian Church were intended by its founder to be subsequently developed into a variety of new forms and aspects ; that such a development was an¬ tecedently natural and necessary; that the process was conducted under infallible guidance; and that the existing belief of the Roman Communion is its PREFACE. xi mature result1.” To this entire School, and to their whole system of argument, the following pages sup¬ ply a full, and still unanswered, refutation. Whatever novelty may justly be attributed to the performance of Mr. Newman, it is matter of history that he was not the originator of the Theory which he so elaborately advocates. He has, however, re¬ duced to systematic form, and expanded into logical proportions, the rude outlines and imperfect sketches of other thinkers. “ Though the evidence,” says Dr. Wordsworth2, “is abundant and strong, that the Theory of Development is the only consistent theory of Romanism , yet it has never, I believe, been pro¬ pounded so distinctly, or worked out so elaborately, as by the author of this volume. Your theologians have sighed for it, and have cherished it secretly, but they have been afraid to own it publicly. This theory has had many a Copernicus among you, but he is its Newton ; and we would indulge a sanguine hope, that the cause of truth will be promoted in due time by the unreserved manner in which this theory, and this only theory, of Romanism, has been stated in this Essay.” The power of the present Church to develope new Articles of Faith has long been main¬ tained by Romish theologians. It was alleged by a 1 See infra , p. 3. 2 Letters to M. Gondon, p. 26. Xll PREFACE . writer1 of tlie fourteenth century, as the prerogative of the Pontiff, novum symbolum condere , novos arti - culos supra alios multiplicare. “ That which I charge upon the Homan doctors,” says Bishop Taylor, “is, that they give to their Church a power of introducing and imposing new articles of belief ” — Diss. (p. 287: Ed. Cardwell.) Such a claim was shown by our di¬ vines to be wholly incompatible with any settled Rule of Faith. It was proved to be an abnegation of the authority both of Holy Scripture and of Ca¬ tholic Tradition. “Our most beloved Mother, the Church of England,” says the admirable Hr. Ham¬ mond2, “is certainly solicitous to avoid, with all cau¬ tious diligence, this rock of innovators. It is her ambition to be distinguished through the whole Christian world, and judged by an equitable pos¬ terity, under this character, that, in deciding contro¬ versies of faith and practice, it has ever been her fixed and firm resolution, and on this basis she has rested the British Reformation, that, in the first place, respect be had to the Scripture ; and then, in the second place, to the Bishops, Martyrs, and Eccle¬ siastical Writers of the first ages. Therefore, what¬ soever hath been affirmed by the Scriptures in mat- 1 Augustinus Triumphus de Ancona. Summ. de Eccl. Pot. q. 59, Art. 3. 2 Quoted by Bishop Jebb, Appendix to Sermons , p. 393. PREFACE. xm ter of Faith ; whatsoever, concerning ecclesiastical government, she hath discovered to be the appoint¬ ment of the Universal Church throughout the world, after the Apostles, these things she hath taken care to place, as fixed and established, among the Articles of Religion, determined never to permit her sons to alter or abolish what hath been thus decided.” (Translated from Hammond’s Works, Vol. iv. p. 470.) To the readers of this controversial work, it may be interesting to learn something of its author’s sen¬ timents upon an important practical point, the de¬ sirableness of polemically assailing the faith of the simple and destitute Romanists by whom he was sur¬ rounded. The following pages, indeed, are sufficient evidence that Professor Butler was alive to the im¬ portance of the doctrinal differences between us and Rome ; that he was cordially attached to the princi¬ ples of the Reformation ; and ready to spend his best powers, under circumstances of peculiar trial, in vindicating those principles against an accomplished and most formidable antagonist. But though he was thus zealous, before meet audience, to give a reason for his faith, and in its defence to bring forth out of his treasures things new and old, it was his opinion (an opinion which derives peculiar weight from the circumstance that he himself was a convert from Romanism, and intimately acquainted with the whole XIV PREFACE. controversy), that no small degree of mental cultiva¬ tion was required to understand the points in debate, and the arguments employed in their discussion. In cases where universal ignorance overspread the mind, respecting the first principles of Christianity, he thought that there was room for instruction , but that it was absurd, ex vi termini , to talk of proselytism, for that there could be no change of creed, when no creed at all had been received. And with respect to those who were not uninstructed in their own system, and were endeavouring to serve God as they thought right, the minds of peasants such as these, he shrank from disturbing and unsettling in their faith. He feared lest, in the attempt to pluck out the tares, he might root up the wheat also ; lest this process of disturbance might eventuate in total scepticism, and so the last state of the convert become worse than the first. He especially deprecated the idea of em¬ ploying a season of unwonted distress as an opj3or- tunity of controversy, and mingling temporal relief with exhortations to conformity. Such ill-timed pro¬ jects he deemed far more likely to corrupt the neces¬ sitous by hopes of gain, than to win them over to the pure and undefiled religion of the Gospel. His feelings on the subject are best expressed in his own language, which I am glad to embrace another occa¬ sion of repeating: “For my own part, I will not PREFACE. xv scruple to say, though, perhaps, it is scarcely wise to enter upon such a topic without more room than I can now demand, to explain and defend my mean¬ ing, — it is not without fear and trembling that I should at any time receive into the Church a convert from any of the forms of Christianity outside it, whom I had known to he sincerely devoted according to the measure of his light. The duty of so doing may arise ; and, when the duty is plain, it must of course be done ; I only say, that I should feel very great anxiety in doing it. Men ought never to forget how fearfully heavy is the responsibility of a new convert. You have unsettled all the man’s habitual convictions ; are you prepared to labour night and day to replace them with others as effective over the heart and life ? If not, you have done him an ir¬ reparable wrong. Motives to righteousness, low, mixed, uncertain, as it may be, are greatly better than none ; and there can be no doubt that he who has lost so many he once possessed, requires con¬ stant, earnest, indefatigable exertion on the part of the teacher who undertakes to supply their place. What care, what skill, what persevering patience does it need to repair the shattered principle of Faith in one whom you have succeeded in convincing, that all the deepest practical convictions of his whole past life are delusion !” XVI PREFACE. My best acknowledgments are due to the Rev. Richard Gibbings, rector of Raymunterdoney in the diocese of Raphoe, for most valuable assistance af¬ forded me in preparing for publication this work of our mutual friend. A considerable number of anno¬ tations, kindly furnished to me by that critical and accomplished scholar, will be found in the sequel, and may be distinguished by the letter G, subjoined. T. Woodward. Mullingar, 1850. The scrupulous care, bestowed by Dean Wood¬ ward and Mr Gibbings on the first edition of this masterly work, has so exhausted the verification of each dubious statement, and so added to the bulk of the entire volume, that, except in some few cases, I have deemed all further annotation both unneces¬ sary and inexpedient. C. Hardwick. St Catharine’s College, Cambridge. 12 July, 1858. CONTENTS. LETTER I. PAGE Occasion of the present work . 1 Object not detailed investigation of Mr. Newman’s authorities, and why . 2 Mr. Newman’s theory of development stated . 2, 3 I. Opposed to the received doctrine of the Romish Church . . 3, 4 Mohler, De Maistre, and La Mennais . 4 Earlier forms of the theory already condemned ... 5 Case of Petavius . ib. Case of Bossuet . 6, 7 4 ) Opposed to the Tridentine Canons respecting the sole matter e of Faith, and interpretation of Scripture .... 8 Council of Trent invariably appeals to perpetual tradition . 9 — 11 The same is the doctrine of the chief expositors of Romanism . 12 Mr. Newman’s attempted defence of his hypothesis from phi¬ losophical analogies . ib. Condemned by anticipation by the Romish authorities . . 13 Disciplina arcani admitted by Mr. Newman to be inadequate to solve the “difficulty” of the variation of mediaeval from primitive Christianity . 13, 14 Mr. Newman’s theory is an attempt to account for this difficulty 14 This variation is a “difficulty” only to the Romanist . . 15 II. Development theory is a plain surrender of the claims of Romanism to satisfactory evidence from antiquity . . 16 Developments are admitted not to be themselves primitive doctrine . 17 “Deification of St Mary ” . ib. Mr. Newman rejects the rule of Yincentius .... 18 h CONTENTS. xvm PAGE Charges the Ante-Nicene Fathers with inaccuracy respecting the Trinity . 19 His unfair treatment of the Fathers ...... 20 The Syrian School . ib. Testimony of Chrysostom, Theodoret, and Facundus, against Transubstantiation, resolved into peculiarities of that school 20—22 Mr. Newman’s instances of the completion of primitive views : “ Deification of St. Mary Purgatory .... 22 — 24 It follows from Mr. Newman’s argument that it is positively injurious to study the early wTriters . 25 Mediseval religion, according to him, an improvement upon primitive Christianity : in doctrine . ib. In practice . 26 “ Expurgating” Fathers is consequently the obligatory func¬ tion of the growing Church . ib. Application of this argument to the Bible . . . . 26, 27 To the teaching of our blessed Lord . 28 Mr. Newman’s decisive admissions respecting the late intro¬ duction of Image Worship . ib. Worship of Saints and Angels . 29 Worship of the Virgin Mary . ib. Purgatory . ib. Evidence of Ignatian epistles to the definiteness of doctrine from the very first . 30—33 Importance of Mr. Newman’s admissions . 33 Peculiarity of his position and value of his testimony . 33—36 LETTER II. Mr. Newman’s theory contrary to the Tridentine Canons . , 37 His Book formally implicated in the anathema of Trent . . 38 His mode of Scriptural interpretation forbidden . . . . ib. Early anticipations of his theory . 39 Fisher on Purgatory and Indulgences , . , . , . 38, 39 Cardinal Cajetan and Durandus on Indulgences .... 40 Alphonsus de Castro on Transubstantiation . 41 Peter Lombard and Sirmondus on Transubstantiation . . . 41, 42 Similar views to Mr. Newman’s entertained by Salmeron . . 43 CONTENTS . xix PAGE Traces of Mr. Newman’s doctrine in Gregory VII. ... 43 Gregory I. traced his developments to a different source . . 44 Proved by Stillingfleet, that the assertion of unbroken Aposto¬ lical Tradition, as a separate source of articles of belief is, in the Roman Church, comparatively modern . . . . 44, 45 Gradual elevation of Tradition to co-ordinate authority with the written Word . .45 Forgeries employed to gain credit for Romish Traditions . . 46 Effect of the forged Decretals . 47, 48 Newr measures rendered necessary by their exposure ... 49 “ Mediaeval development” now substituted for “Apostolical Tra¬ dition” . 50 Inconsistency of Mr. Newman respecting the “leading idea of Christianity” 51 Analysis of Mr. Newman’s argument . 51, 52 “ Development of an idea” explained . 51 Kinds of development . 52 “ Moral developments” explained . ib. Unfair citation of Bishop Butler . . ib. Instances of moral development . 52, 53 Tests of genuine development . 54, 55 Antecedent probability of developments, and of a developing au¬ thority, in Christianity . . . . 55 Term development used ambiguously by Mr. Newman ... 56 There are “legitimate developments” of doctrine in Christianity . ib. Of two kinds, intellectual and practical . 57 Intellectual developments, or logical inferences, explained and illustrated . 58 — 61 Practical developments explained . . . , , . . 61 Two elements in their production, the Divine truth, and the human recipient . 61, 62 “Practical developments” may grow from the corruption of human nature . 63—66 No universality or permanence of admitted innovation can be sufficient to authorize it . 66 Example of idolatry . 66, 67 Mr. Newman’s principle an invention; his facts cannot be reduced under even that invented principle . 68 His principle . * , . . . ib. b 2 XX CONTENTS. PAGB His facts . . 69 He prepares the way for his principle by arguing the antecedent probability of developments in Christianity . . . . ib. But he only proves that there are such developments as none deny 69—71 Kind of developments which Anglicans deny . . . . 71 Mr. Newman’s alleged analogy of prophetic revelation . . . 72 Failure of the analogy ; prophecy distinguished from doctrinal teaching . ib. Mr. Newman’s perverted use of the parables . . . . 73 Scriptural statements respecting the completeness of the original revelation, irreconcileable with his doctrinal development . 73, 74 How far, according to him, the Apostles were acquainted with the developments of modern Romanism . 74, 75 Argument from their silence respecting them . . . . 75 Unfair appeal to Bishop Butler . 76 State of the case between Anglican antiquity and Roman develop¬ ment upon the supposition that the Apostles were ignorant of these new doctrines . 77, 78 Application of the principle of development to our Lord’s own teaching . 78 — 80 Recapitulation . 80, 81 LETTER III. Inadequacy of the development hypothesis unless combined with the further hypothesis of an infallible directive authority . 82, 83 Coincidence of Mr. Newman’s “moral development” with various fanatical and heretical extravagances ..... 83 Found in its perfection in Tertullian’s Montanism . . .83, 84 Necessity of an external authority to warrant Roman developments 85 Inconsistency of this authority with the theory of development . ib. Mr. Newman’s chief art is the substitution of historical eventua- tion for logical connexion of disputed with admitted doctrines. 86 Tendency of his theory to perplex all the evidences of religion . 87 Identity of Kant’s and Newman’s “process of development” . 88, 89 Positive tendency of Mr. Newman’s development does not vindi¬ cate it from Rationalism . 90 Formal nature of Rationalism . ib. CONTENTS. XXI PAGE Rationalism of superstition . 90 Internal spirit and scope of Mr. Newman’s theory . . . ib. The Church’s office of instruction lies not in unlimited develop¬ ment but in cautious moderation . 91, 92 This alleged incompleteness is the perfection of practical wisdom. 92 It was Christ’s intention to withhold information on certain sub¬ jects . ib. Real limits to our knowledge . 93 Claim of infallibility leads to irreverent scrutiny into the divine mysteries . ib. Feeble and ambiguous decisions of Rome inconsistent with in¬ fallible authority . * . 94 Restraint within appointed limits is characteristic of the Church’s wisdom and humility . 95—97 Limitation and mystery the will of God for the discipline of man . 97 Human pride and curiosity dissatisfied — twofold result . . ib. Romish development debases the true sublimity of Christianity . 97, 98 True development would be a progress from simpler to sub- limer things . 99 Romish developments, e.g. image-worship, are a descent and . 100 ib. 101, 102 103, 104 . 105 retrogradation God’s reality sublimer than man’s imagination . Apostolic and mediseval Christianity contrasted . The “dark ages” the great period of development . Mediseval Christianity Mr. Newman’s ideal of perfection . What was the character and condition of the average instructors of the middle ages ? . . . 105,106 Council of Aix-la-Chapelle . 107 Archbishop Hincmar . 107, 108 Thcodulphus 108 Ratherius . 109 Gregory VII. . 110 — 112 Application to the argument of this test of the intellectual and moral condition of middle ages . 113 Mr. N ewman’s hypothesis cannot be referred to any historical tests ib. May be applied by any sect to the proof of an y thing . . 113,114 This new rule of faith clouds the evidences of Christianity . . 115 Mr. Newman’s gloomy picture of the difficulty of knowing what to believe, . . . 115, 116 CONTENTS. xxii PAGE Import of his maxim, that “principles are responsible for doc¬ trines” . 116, 117 Any doctrine may be thus proved by evidence of antiquity . . 117 Illustrated by an imaginary sect of sun-worshippers. Applica¬ tion of Mr. Newman’s principles to prove sun-worship a true development of Christian doctrine . 117 — 125 The burning of heretics proved to be a true development accord¬ ing to Mr. Newman’s principles . 126 — 129 Application to this doctrine of his seven tests of a true develop¬ ment . 129 — 139 Fearful consequences of this theory of development . . .139 LETTER, I Y. The theory of development stamps with inspiration equally the whole succession of doctrines in the Latin Church . . 140 All Romish developments authorized by the same authority . 141, 142 Mr. Newman’s hypothesis “accounts for” the Creed of Pope Pius as well as for that of Athanasius . 142 His rule of Faith must apply to all the Romish peculiarities, or can apply to none . 143, 144 Fundamental error of his system is, making history the law of doctrine . 144 Confounds the functions of historian and divine . . , .145 Pernicious practical results of this fundamental error . . 145, 146 “Philosophy of Romanism” derived from this error,— definition of it . 146 The past history of the Church thereby made the model of per¬ fection-examples . 147, 149 This criterion of Faith must be applied universally . . . 148 The development theory employed by Mr. Newman to defend the authority of the past, but really tends to endless alteration 149, 150 Impossible to set any limits to this progression of doctrine . . 150 Examples of possible future developments .... 150 _ 154 Infallible decisions of the Church no check to innovation . . 154 Development theory sanctions other great changes, as well as the formation of Roman system . . Case of the Reformation . 156 CONTENTS. xxm PAGE 171 172 ib. From the beginning Christianity combined tico powerful princi¬ ples, individual Obedience and individual Inquiry . . . 156 Principle of individual Inquiry sanctioned in the New Testament. 157 Recognised by the primitive Church, Tertullian, Cyprian, Fir- milian . 158, 159 Universal perusal of Holy Scripture enjoined by Chrysostom, Au¬ gustine, and Gregory 1 . 160, 161 First synodical prohibition of the general use of the Scriptures . 161 If the papal supremacy be the development of the principle of Obedience, the Reformation may be of the principle of Inquiry 162— 166 The cessation of the Papacy may be a development as well as its growth . . . 166 Gradual depression of the papal power correspondent to its rise 166 — 171 Mr. Newman’s theory triumphantly vindicates the principle of the Reformation . The same argument applies to place as well as time The bond of the Papacy has always slackened in proportion to the distance from Rome . The independence of the Anglican Church may thus be a develop¬ ment, as well as the first local extension of the papal con¬ nexion . 172, 173 Phocas and St. Gregory the Great . 173 Genuine historical development to be traced in the progress of the Anglican Church . 175 Analogies of civil and ecclesiastical government . . . . ib. Resemblance in their respective objects and means . . 175, 176 Presumption that nations may be left to see their way with the same comparative perspicacity in both . . . . .176 Connexion and unrivalled excellence of the Anglican civil and ecclesiastical constitution . 177, 178 Mr. Newman’s limitations of progressive revelation are altogether arbitrary . 178 His system justifies all developments as well as the Roman . 178, 179 Collateral supposition of Romish Infallibility is an abandonment of his principles . 180, 181 Those principles sanction Lutheran as much as Roman develop¬ ments . 182 18-1 Gradual formation of the papal power . l s° Justification of the Anglican separation . 186 XXIV CONTENTS. PAGE Mr. Newman’s theory is the philosophy, not of one form of Chris¬ tianity, but of all . 186 — 187 Application of it to the Greek Church . 187 Difficulty of determining precise amount of difference between the doctrines of Greek and Latin Churches . . . 187 — 190 Theory of development inconsistent with the undeniable differ¬ ences between East and West . 191, 192 Their separation not a mere schism . 192 The East is in heresy , if Rome be infallible . . . .193 Other important disagreements . 194—197 Bearing of the single fact, that the East rejects the Romish unity on the theory of development . 197, 198 History furnishes a true experimentum crucis between . . 198 Rival suppositions of Rome and England to explain facts in the history of Christianity . 199 The testimony of the Eastern Church confirms the Anglican hypothesis . 200 The theory of development, as an internal principle evolving truth by uniform processes, cannot stand the test of history to which it appeals . 201, 202 Mr. Newman has substituted a fond hypothesis about the Roman peculiarities for a theory of the universal Church . . . 202 Circumstances, under God’s high providence, have equally mould¬ ed the religious history of East and West . . . 203 — 205 LETTER Y. Principle of development in its nature unlimited .... 206 Romanist restriction not only arbitrary, but destructive of the principle . 207 Mr. Newman’s system is Rationalism under Roman colours . . 208 His inconsistency, and probable causes of it . . . . 209 Natural result of the development theory . ib. Its inapplicability to Mr. Newman’s purpose . . 209, 210 The history of speculative philosophy has probably given rise to and illustrates danger of this theory of Christianity . . . 210 Variation of doctrine in the ancient teachers . . . .211 They delivered not definite doctrines , but ideas to be developed 211, 212 CONTENTS. XXV TAGE Analogy of Christianity, according to Mr. Newman, and conse¬ quent uncertainty . 212 The doctrines of Christianity alleged to be only samples of its ideas . 212, 213 If so, the Apostles had but a defective knowledge of Christianity 214,215 Imperfect information of the first centuries according to this theory . 215, 216 The Apostles knew and communicated all necessary doctrine 218, 219 Their account of the high attainments of the primitive Christians incompatible with this theory of development . . . 220 — 223 No speculative difficulties can disprove that all necessary doctrine was delivered by the Apostles, for it is asserted by them . 223 — 228 Alleged errors of the Ante-Nicene Teachers .... 226, 227 Function of the early Councils in respect of doctrine, — to define and condemn, but not to reveal . 228, 229 Grounds on which the first four (Ecumenical Councils professed to proceed. Council of Nicsea . 229, 230 Constantinople . 231 Ephesus . ib. Chalcedon . 232 — 234 They re-stated and defined Church’s primitive belief . . . 235 Same principles avowed in subsequent Councils . . . . ib. In the form and disposition of the doctrine, the resolutions of Councils will differ considerably from Scripture expressions . 236 Reason of this difference . 237 They may present Christian doctrine in new aspects and relations ib. Special measure of divine blessing to be anticipated for Councils assembled under just conditions . 238,239 Peculiar claims of the early Councils to authoritative decision on fundamental doctrine . 239 — 242 The controversy respecting the ancient digests of Christian doc¬ trine resolves itself into two questions ; one, regarding the Ob¬ ligation; the other, the Matter , of these dogmatic decisions 242, 243 The work of systematizing and applying doctrine, by Synods and Doctors, is the reality which Mr Newman distinguishes under the term Development . 243 XXVI CONTENTS. LETTER VI. PAGE Process by which Christian doctrines have become gradually sys¬ tematized . 245 Concession that theological knowledge is capable of a real move¬ ment . ib. This movement takes place in two ways : 1. By logical development . ib. 2. By positive discovery, — examples of 246, 247 Process of logical development accounts for the history and the errors of dogmatic theology . 247, 248 Unlikely, from nature of the case, that the form of Christian doc¬ trine should continue exactly the same during the inspired and subsequent uninspired period . 248 Inspired men would not require a systematized creed ib. Uninspired teachers would require formal scheme of doctrines . 249 Presumption against the inspiration of elaborate definitions of doctrine . 249, 250 General character of inspired teaching, — Prophets, our Lord, St. Paul . 250 Important that the unscientific statements of Scripture should come before their logical version, and why . . . 251 — 254 Difficulty of regulating the proper exercise of this systematizing process by a priori canons . 254 In what senses logical development may introduce doctrines ap¬ parently new . 255 — 257 Difficulty in certain cases of deciding upon the novelty or anti¬ quity of doctrines . 257, 258 The conciliar determinations were the results of a process of systematizing begun by individual teachers .... 258 Importance of a due estimate of these first systematizers . . 259 Their advantage, in recent inheritance of original doctrine . 259 — 261 Their disadvantage in inexperience, and its consequences . 261, 262 The evidence of antiquity is not the same in amount for all the doctrines we are bound to receive . 263 Quantity of historical proof varies in different cases . . . 264 Vincentian rule not to be strictly interpreted .... 265 CONTENTS. XXVll PAGE Judicious generality of terms in the canon “ Concionatores ” . 265 Amount of evidence required for doctrine is not revealed, and must be determined inductively . 266 No antecedent reason to suppose that even the most important doctrines will be sustainable by the same amount of proof 267, 268 The apparent plausibility of the Romanist claim of certainty in religion is traceable to an ambiguity of the word “ Faith” . 268 This word Faith used in two senses . ib. Both forms of belief equally applicable to all modifications, true or false, of revealed religion . 269, 270 A constant sophism of Romish controversialists is to confound these two senses of Faith . 270, 271 LETTER VII. Mr Newman’s attempt to sustain his hypothesis of Development by the auxiliary hypothesis of a “Developing authority in Christianity” . .273 Statement of his argument . ib. His argument for the likelihood of developments framed with a view to the very developments to be accounted for . . .274 Antiquity would have disowned this a priori argument . 275, 276 His whole argument is a vicious circle . 277 Examination of his arguments for a Developing Authority . . ib. The Infallibility at issue is that alleged to be vested in the Church of Borne . 277, 278 Importance of remembering that the real question is the localiza¬ tion of Infallibility in Romish Patriarchate . . . . ib. No connexion between Infallibility of the Universal Church and Romish Infallibility . 278, 279 Theory of development viewed in connexion with local Infalli¬ bility : I. Alleged necessity of papal Infallibility to guide Development 280 And yet the Papacy itself admitted to be a development 280, 281 II. Fallacy involved in making one development give authority to others . 281, 282 XXV111 CONTENTS. PAGE III. The Roman tribunal, which is supposed necessary to guide Development, did not arise until after period when it would have been most necessary . 282 Such a tribunal most needed in first centuries . . . 283 And no allusion is made to any such in those ages . 284, 285 More needed in East than West . 286, 287 IV. First development of the Roman Supremacy not doctrinal, but disciplinary . 287, 288 V. The history of dogmas contradicts the fancy of regular deve¬ lopment guided by this local directory .... 288 Examples of various developments inconsistent with such in¬ fallibility of Rome . 289 — 295 History of heresies contradicts infallibility of Roman See . 295 VI. Christianity admits of “ Historical Development” (see Lett. II. p. 61) . 296 These historical developments are adaptations to diversities of circumstances . ib. A local infallible authority incompatible with such develop¬ ments . 296—299 Out of this incompatibility arose the Reformation . . 299, 300 VII. This principle of local developments explains the exterior similarity between present and ancient Church of Rome 300 — 303 Probable impression which present Romanism would produce on primitive saints . 303, 304 This power of adaptation a proof of divine origin of Chris¬ tianity . 305 Unalterable in doctrine, Christianity may vary in external presentation . ib. Rome exactly reverses this rule . 305—307 VIII. The most specious claim of the Papacy, its expediency, really contradicts its permanence . . . . 307, 308 Foregoing observations directed to the specific theory of Roman infallibility : Roman falsely assumed as synonymous with Catholic infallibi¬ lity . 309, 310 Infallibility never consigned by the Universal Church to Rome 311 CONTENTS. XXIX PAGE Such a consignment would involve the power to withdraw it . 311 Utter insufficiency of the alleged proofs that the Catholic Church thus surrendered its right to the Papacy .... 312 — 314 Permanence of Rome as a sacred locality not without parallel . 315 The Papacy, as an historical fact, not more unaccountable than the sacerdotal sovereignty of the Tibetian Lama . . 315—318 LETTER VIII. The development hypothesis considered in connexion with Church infallibility in general . 319 The principle of development in Germany is a general law of pro¬ gress equally serviceable to all schools .... 319 — 321 Limitation of the principle as connected with claimed infallibility 321 No contradiction in the abstract conception of a knowledge always right and always progressing . 322 But this sort of progress is essentially inapplicable to the history of the doctrines in controversy, for two reasons . . . ib. Preliminary observations on the state of the question . . 322, 323 Comparison of development hypothesis with rival hypotheses , as a concession to Mr Newman . 323 Problem : to connect the actual facts of Church History with the original revelation, by some general view of the way it was 4 % meant to operate . . 323, 324 Three hypotheses for its solution : 1. The Anglo-Catholic . 2. The Roman . 3. The development, or Rationalistic-Roman 324, 325 . 325 326—328 Consideration of the positive merits of the development hypo¬ thesis combined with infallibility. Examination of the con¬ sistency of the combination . . 328 Even granting progression of doctrine, and its danger without special direction, the alleged infallible guidance does not follow . 328, 329 Assuming infallibility, then progressive discovery of doctrines, supposes previous errors of doctrine and practice, at variance XXX CONTENTS. with such infallible guidance. Examples. Divinity of Christ PAGE and Holy Spirit . • • 330 Corruption of human nature . • ib. Invocation of saints and angels . 330, 331 Separate state of the blessed . • • 322 Purgatory . ib. Adoration of the Host and images . • • 333 Five additional sacraments • • ib. These are difficulties as regards the past in the hypothesis which connects perpetual infallibility with perpetual development: difficulties as regards the future . 334 Decisions of a developing Church can be only provisional . 334 — 339 May be set aside by the “ Church of the future” . . . 339, 340 Practical working of infallible development as an ecclesiastical principle . . 340 Use of infallibility is authoritative guidance; but the exercise of authority is incompatible with hypothesis of development . 341 Three conceivable relations of an infallible authority to a develop¬ ing Church examination of development hypothesis under each of these relations . 341, 342 1. Supreme Authority viewed as dependent on general movement of the Church . 342 The infallible Authority cannot decide on a subject insuffi¬ ciently developed . . 342 — 344 Infallibility thus made dependent on the date of the decision 345—348 2. The supreme Authority viewed as independent and controlling general movement of the Church . 348 But, by the hypothesis, the process of development is itself in¬ spired . . 349—351 No authority, therefore, can control what is itself divine . 351, 352 3. The supreme Authority viewed as the organ declarative of the Church’s belief . 352, 353 Such an organ is no directive authority ; but varies as the Church itself . 353, 354 Preceding observations refer to the exercise of authority in the regular way of Councils . 354 But infallible Authority, if essential to the Church, must have preceded Councils . . CONTENTS . XXXI PAGE How exercised during the interval of Councils, i.e. during almost the entire existence of the Church ? . • . 354 — 356 Authority , of any kind, an inconsistency within a developing Church . 356 Position of an individual speculator in the Roman Church on this hypothesis of development . 357—359 Mr. Newman’s system incurably sceptical . . . 359—362 LETTER IX. Examination of Mr. Newman’s arguments for an infallible develop¬ ing authority resident in the Roman Church .... 363 General object of the first, or theoretical, part of his treatise . 364 Summary of his arguments . 364—366 Charge against Barrow of logical deficiency . 367 Mr. Newman’s self-contradiction with respect to the primitive evi¬ dence for the Papacy ........ 367, 368 His instances of hypotheses similar to his own . . . 369 — 371 Admission of Mr. Newman’s general principles respecting moral evidence . 371 They are applicable only under certain qualifications : Qualification 1 . 372 Qualification 2 . ib. Qualification 3 . 373, 374 Mr Newman’s proofs of an infallible director of developments . 375 1. Presumption that there must be such an authority to distin¬ guish true developments . 375, 376 Reason and sympathy as competent to decide on the develop¬ ments as upon the authorizing infallibility . . . .376 Mr. Newman admits that the idea of a revelation includes all clear conclusions from the truths originally revealed . 377, 378 2. His second and third heads of argument are answers to objec¬ tions against infallibility resting upon moral certainty . 378, 379 His misconception of this objection . 380 3. His answer to the objection that the supposed infallibility would destroy probation by dissipating all doubt . . . 380, 381 Bishop Butler has foreclosed all anticipations of what God will or must do in giving a revelation . 382 CONTENTS. xxxii PAGE Mr. Newman’s attempt to show that Butler’s reasoning does not apply against his presumptions . 382 Plainly opposed to the assumption of a necessary infallibility 383, 384 Analogy of the Jewish Church ; a developing system, yet without an infallible directory . 385, 386 4. Main distinction, according to Mr. Newman, of natural and re¬ vealed religion, and consequent necessity of a visible and per¬ manent infallible authority . 386, 387 Inaccuracy of his distinction between natural and revealed reli¬ gion ; confounds rule of right and obligation of the rule 387, 388 Special evil of this confusion ; exalts authority above conscience 388 5. Various advantages alleged as secured by an infallible external directory . 389, 390 The chief force of this hypothesis lies in contrasting it with an opposite extreme equally gratuitous . 391 Importance of Church decisions even without infallibility. Opi¬ nions of Vincentius . 392 — 398 Superintending Providence, not absolute infallibility, is the Church’s true gift, and the true key to ecclesiastical history 398, 399 Sublime ideal of Christianity to conceive it originally delivered in its full perfection . 399 Proof of its Divine origin that it provides for all possible variety of circumstances . 400 LETTERS ON ROMANISM. LETTER I. When I had last the pleasure of seeing you, you were so good as to request me to give you an opinion of the work1 of Mr. Newman, which has been so long and anxiously expected. I am at present obliged to undertake the fulfil¬ ment of my promise at some disadvantage as to time and leisure. I have, however, read the work with the attention which the performance of such a writer, at such a crisis, justly demands ; and I trust I can answer, that any obser¬ vations I may offer you shall be the result of a tolerably unprejudiced estimate of its merits. Absolute impartiality can, indeed, seldom be secured, except at the heavy cost of absolute indifference ; and I cannot pretend to be in¬ different to the fearful amount of evil, which (with of course the purest intentions) the Author of this work and his com¬ panions are exerting all the energies of accomplished minds to achieve. Mr. Newman, in a very solemn and affecting address at the close of his volume, warns us against undue prepossessions; bids us “ not determine that to be truth which we wish to be so, nor make an idol of cherished anticipations.” Alas! the Author is, doubtless, too humble- 1 [Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine. Lond. 1845.] 1 2 LETTERS [LETT. I. minded to think it strange, that many will rise from his work with the profound conviction, that had not the mournful delu¬ sion against which he cautions us been his own, the book itself had never been written ! The reasonings and speculations of this remarkable volume suggest a multitude of considerations, for which it would be unreasonable to expect you could supply space. I shall, therefore, confine myself as much as possible to ob¬ servations of a very general character, such as I may trust to make tolerably intelligible within a narrow compass. Detailed investigations of Mr. Newman’s citations and authorities will, I doubt not, be furnished abundantly in the progress of the controversy. This latter part of the inquiry, moreover, appears to me of the less importance, that the volume does not seem to add many new contribu¬ tions to the passages already so familiar to every student of the Romish controversy ; and because, granting the genu¬ ineness and authenticity of every single passage cited, the conclusion intended by the Author appears as hopelessly inadmissible as it could be conceived to be by the denial of them all. The same limitation of space must induce me to depend, that a majority of your readers, having already perused the book, will not require a detailed exposition of its argument. Those who have not, must be content to learn, that Mr. New¬ man’s theory is simply this: — That the original doctrines of the Christian Church were intended by its Founder to be subsequently “ developed” into a variety of new forms and aspects ; that such a development was antecedently LETT. I.] ON ROMANISM. natural and necessary; that the process was conducted under infallible guidance ; and that the existing belief of the Roman communion is its mature result. Those who have but this conception of Mr. Newman’s views can, of course, scarcely do full justice to his argument; I must, however, add, that this limited acquaintance with his performance is almost as injurious to the full appreciation of the objections to it. I should certainly desire no other reader than one who had carefully studied the whole volume from beginning to end; not only because such a perusal can alone make objec¬ tions fully intelligible, but because I think I could safely rely, that on the mind of every such reader, if sufficiently unprejudiced, would crowd, in forms more or less palpable, the very objections I am about to state. I. I must, in the first place, observe that it is much more than doubtful, how far Mr. Newman’s doctrine is at all the received doctrine of the Roman Church, or would be regarded by its authorities as any other than a most perilous innovation. Convenient as it may now be to tolerate it (or anything else from the same author), for temporary purposes, and to meet the present state of speculation, I shall be much surprised if, as the controversy proceeds, it be not in substance disavowed1 as a private and unauthoritative 1 [Mr. Newman’s Theory has been already denounced by the first authorities of American Romanism as subversive of the Catho¬ lic Faith, and of revelation itself. It has been assailed by their leading organ, Brownson s Quarterly Review (Boston, U. S.) in a series of very able articles. “We have consulted, says the re¬ viewer (Jan. 1847,) as high living authorities on the subject as there are in this country, and they all concur in saying that the 1 — 2 4 LETTERS [LETT. I. hypothesis. It has been said that Mohler1 and De Maistre2, to whom Mr. Newman refers as having adopted somewhat similar views (p. 27), have not at all met with universal con¬ currence among the members of their own communion ; yet, neither of them has dared to approach the candid and Church can propose only what was revealed, and that the revela¬ tion committed to the Church was perfect.” This revelation is divided by Romish theologians into Scripture and Tradition, but all, except the new school of development, have agreed as to the 'perfection of the revelation. In direct opposition to the Americans, and to the consentient teaching of the Romish divines, Dr Wise¬ man and the Dublin Review warmly espouse the cause of Mr. Newman, and assert the incompleteness of the original revelation.] 1 [This celebrated Bavarian professor of theology was born in 1796, and died in 1838. In his Symbolik, Part i. chap. v. he ex¬ pounds his theory of development (edit. Tubingen, 1832 ; Munich, 1838).] 2 Mr. Newman might, perhaps, have added the eloquent, enthu¬ siastic, wrong-headed La Mennais : “ On la voit (la religion) tou- jours ancienne et toujours nouvelle, conserver son unite cm milieu des developpemens successifs par lesquels elle passe.” “Elle n’a pas change en passant d’une revelation a 1’ autre ; elle n’a fait que se developper et paraitre avec un nouveau degre de lumiere et d’ au¬ torite, &c.” La Mennais, however, applies the principle chief y (where it is perfectly legitimate) to the progressive character of the three dispensations in relation to each other; and but faintly and secondarily to any imaginary progression of doctrine in the last. — \Essai sur V Indifference?^ [It is a mistake to regard De Maistre as a favourer of the theory of development. On the contrary, he contends, “that there is nothing new in the Church of Rome, and that she will never believe anything which she has not always believed.” — Du Pape , Liv. i. edit. Paris, 1841. See Dr. Wordsworth’s Letters to M. Gondon, p. 31.] LETT. I.] ON ROMANISM. 5 courageous avowals of Mr. Newman. The more cautious and long-sighted theologians of the Roman communion have always discountenanced the earlier forms1 of the present venturous hypothesis. The case of Petavius2, and the cordial adoption3 1 [For an interesting sketch of the rise and progress of the theory of development, see Dr. Wordsworth’s Letters to M. Gondon, pp. 23-36.] [A very clear example, not mentioned by Dr. Words¬ worth, will be found in the Sermon of Gerson Be Conceptione B. Marice Virginis (Opp. in. 1330, ed. Dupin) : where the preacher says distinctly that many new truths have been added to the body of revelation, as made known to the Apostles. — H.] 2 [Petavius and Newman both employ depreciation of ancient Christianity as their best defence of modern Romish corruptions. They both contend that the Tridentine Creed is a correction of its errors, or an enlargement of its imperfect knowledge. The words of Bishop Bull respecting Petavius might have been written for a description of the development school. From the supposition, that the primitive fathers were in error, or imperfectly instructed in Christian doctrine, says the learned Bishop, “ Hsec duo facile consequentur ; 1. Patribus trium primorum sseculorum, quos im¬ primis appellare solent Catholici Reformati, parum tribuendum esse : utpote quibus nondum satis perspecta et patefacta fuerunt prsecipua Christianse fidei capita. 2. Concilia cecumenica potes- tatem habere novas fidei articidos condendi , sive (ut Petavius loquitur) constituendi et patefaciendi ; unde satis prospectum videatur additamentis illis, quae regulse fidei assuerunt quseque Christiano orbi obstruserunt Patres Tridentini. Sed istius scholse magistris nulla religio est pseudo-catholicam suam fidem super fidei vere Catholicse ruinas sedificare.” — Befi Rid. Nic. Prooem. § 8.] 3 [The thanks of the Gallican Church, synodically assembled at St Germain-en-Laye, for Bull’s Judicium Ecc. Cath. (pour le / service qu’il rend a l’Eglise Catholique en defendant si bien le jugement qu’elle a porte sur la necessity de croire la Divinite du Fils de Dieu), were communicated by Bossuet, in a letter to 6 LETTERS [LETT. I. by the Gallican Church of even his heretical refuter, will at once occur to every one. [I have but to add, for the fact is instructive, that on the question then at issue Mr. Newman appears fully to sympathise with the rejected doctrine of Petavius; e. g. p. 12, &c. 297, where he distinctly denies any Ante-Nicene consensus on the doctrine of the Trinity, “ as the word ( consensus ) is now commonly understood” — whatever that qualification may import. See also p. 398.] In the memorable first edition of Bossuet’s1 “ Exposition,” suppressed, and recovered2 by our excellent Wake3, the fol¬ lowing passage occurred ( Wake, p. xxiv.) : Mr. Nelson, who had presented the volume to the Archbishop, dated July 24, 1700. The letter is given in Nelson’s Life of Bishop Bull, p. 330, Oxford, 1846.] 1 [Bossuet was, however, no favourer of the doctrine of 'pro¬ gressive Christianity. In his controversy with the Calvinist, Ju- rieu ( Avertissemens , passim ), he explicitly condemns the theory of a progressive religion, which was advocated by that minister, and which agrees in many particulars with the new theory of develop¬ ment.] 2 [Archbishop Wake should not receive credit for having been the earliest observer of the variations which are manifest upon a collation of the first and second editions of Bossuet’s book. The discovery had been made thirteen or fourteen years previously by M. de la Bastide ; and though the Reponse to Bossuet, published by this writer, appeared without the author’s name, yet the learned and accurate Bayle did not fail to trace its origin. — See his Epist. ad fin. Deckherri De Scriptt. adesp. Goniectur p. 398. Amstel. 1686. — G.] 3 [Archbishop Wake (Exposition of the Doctrine of the Church of England in the several Articles proposed by AT. de Aleaux , &c. 3rd edit. London, 1687) states that Bossuet’s Exposition of the Doctrine LETT. I.] ON. ROMANISM. i “For M. Daille, he thinks fit to confine himself to the first three centuries , in which it is certain that the Church has left many things to he cleared afterwards, both in its doctrine and in its practice.” This was erased by the doctors of the Sorbonne, as wholly inadmissible, even with the authority of a Bossuet to back it: what would they have said to Mr. Newman’s enterprise, which risks the authority and obligation of nearly all the chief dif¬ ferences between us and the Roman Church upon the fortunes of a theory, itself a more novel “development” of theological teaching than even they, by his own admission, are now conceded of the Catholic Church first appeared in manuscript, and was com¬ posed either to “satisfy or seduce the late Mareschal de Turenne,” wanting then the chapters “of the Eucharist, Tradition, the Autho¬ rity of the Church and Pope, which now make up the most consider¬ able part of it.” The other parts were so loosely expressed, that ^ Protestants who saw it generally believed that Mons. de Meaux durst not publicly own what in his Exposition he privately pretend¬ ed to be” the doctrine of the Church of Pome. In the beginning of 1671, the Exposition, having been approved by the Archbishop of Rheims and nine other bishops, was sent to press. Previously to publication, Bossuet, anxious to obtain the imprimatur of the Sor¬ bonne, submitted it to some of their doctors, who “marked several of the most considerable parts of it, wherein the Exposition , by the too great desire of palliating, had absolutely perverted the doctrine of their Church.” At the end of the same year, an altered impres¬ sion was struck off, and published as the first edition. And Arch¬ bishop Wake adds : “ Since a copy of that very book so marked, as has been said, by the doctors of the Sorbonne, is fallen into my hands, I shall gratify the reader’s curiosity,” &c. — Prefi p. iv. At the end of the Preface follows, “A collection of passages altered by Mons. de Meaux C from which Professor Butler quotes in the text.] LETTERS 8 [LETT. I. to be? Where has the Church of Rome ever sanctioned such a solution of its controversial embarrassments? Its au¬ thorized doctrine is unquestionably that the very teaching of the present hour, in all its fulness and precision, has itself been uninterruptedly preserved from the days of the Apostles. “ Hsec veritas et disciplina continetur1 in libris scriptis et sine scripto traditionibus, quae ipsius Christi ore ab Apostolis acceptce , aut ab ipsis Apostolis, Spiritu Sancto dictante, quasi per manus 'traditce, ad nos usque pervenerunt.” . “ Tra- ditiones ipsas, turn ad fidem, turn ad mores pertinentes, tan- quam vel ore tenus a Christo, vel a Spiritu Sancto dictatas, et continud successione in Ecclesia Catholica conservatas , pari pietatis affectu [ac reverentia] suspicit [et veneratur] (Syno- dus).” — ConciL Trident. Sess. iv. And a little after this clear statement of the sole matter of faith, the Council adds, with relation to the interpretation of the Scriptures (a solemn prohibition, to which I beg to draw Mr. Newman’s attention, as bearing on his views of the vision in Rev. xii., the Second Commandment, and some other cri¬ tical novelties he has hazarded or sanctioned), that no one “contra unanimem consensum Patrum ipsam Scripturam sa- cram interpretari audeat.” Mr. Newman, himself, if admitted into the Roman communion according to the usual “ Form of reconciling Converts2,” has solemnly sworn and professed that he would “ never take and interpret the Scriptures otherwise 1 [“Sy nodus Tridentina . . . . perspiciensque lianc veritatem et disciplinam contineri.” — Gr.] 2 [The absolution of an heretic is a matter specially reserved for the Pope (Sacerdotale, foil. 42, 44, Venet. 1579); and in the Pon¬ tifical, where the “Ordo ad reconciliandum Apostatam, Scliismati- LETT. I.] ON ROMANISM. 9 than according to the unanimous consent of the Fathers /’ a vow palpably irreconcileable with the theory, that on many most important points of doctrine, proveable (as Mr. Newman asserts all true doctrine is by all admitted to be, p. 323) from Scripture, the Fathers had no definite consciousness at all . Accordingly, to this test of perpetual tradition, rightly or wrongly affirmed, the Council invariably appeals: u Ea verba {Rom. iii. 28, &c.) in eo sensu intelligenda sunt, quern per¬ petuus Ecclesise Catholics consensus tenuit et expressit.” — Sess. vi. Cap. 8. In the administration of the Eucharist, — “ qui mos tanquam ex traditione apostolicd descendens jure ac merito retineri debet.” — Sess. xiii. Cap. 8. [De Euchar.] Of Confession to a Priest. “ Universa Ecclesia semper intellexit , institutam [etiam] esse a Domino integram peccatorum confessionem, et omnibus post baptismum lapsis jure divino necessariam existere.” — Sess. xiv. Cap. 5. [De PoenitentiA] I cannot but interrupt my citations to ask Mr. Newman — does he, with his knowledge of ecclesiastical and ritual history, believe that assertion? To proceed — Of Extreme Unction [Sess. xiv. Cap. 1. De Extrem. Unct.] “ Quibus verbis [James, v. 14, 15,] ut ex apostolicd tra¬ ditione per manus acceptd Ecclesia didicit, docet materiam, formam, proprium ministrum, et effectum hujus salutaris sacramenti.” cum, vel Hsereticmn” is found, there is not any such oath or obli¬ gation enjoined as that which was prescribed, in the year 1564, by the Bulls In sacrosancta and Injunctum nobis of Pope Pius IY . — G.] 10 LETTERS [LETT. I. Once more I cannot help asking the writer who has found a theory of development absolutely necessary to account for the actual phenomena of Romanism, does he believe that affirm¬ ation of the infallible Council? — does he believe that direct apostolical authority taught the Church in these words the matter, form, minister, and effect of a sacrament as real and universal as the Holy Communion; and that this belief, in all its fulness, was uninterruptedly held in the universal Church ? But again — Of the entire Doctrine of the Mass (including the ordination of priesthood at the Last Supper, the celebration of masses to obtain the intercession of saints, the custom of masses in which the priest alone communicates, the custom of whispering the words of consecration and other parts of the “ Canon Missss,” and the mixture of water with the wine), it declares — not merely that such beliefs and practices are legiti¬ mate, are allowable deductions from other tenets, are enacted by simple authority, are correct developments of primitive beliefs, but that they are a “tides fundata in sacrosancto evan- gelio, apostolorum traditionibus, sanctorumque patrum doc¬ trinal which last, it lias been previously assumed, must be ‘tunanimis,, to be authoritative. Sess. xxi. [xxii.] Cap. 9, [De Sac. Missse], et Canon. Of all the inferior orders of the ministry it declares that — u Ah ipso initio Ecclesice secpientium ordinum nomina, atque uniuscujusque eorum propria minister ia., subdiaconi scilicet, acolythi, exorcistse, lectoris, et ostiarii, in usu fuisse cognoscuntur.” — Sess. xxiii. Cap. 2. [De Sacr. Ord]. Of Marriage as a genuine sacrament, as real as Baptism, conferring an ineffable grace as certain as the Eucharist, the lett. i.] ON ROMANISM. 11 Council affirms, that “ Concilia et universalis Ecclesice tra- ditio semper docuerunt ” this truth, and that the heretics, who hesitate to admit that somewhat startling proposition, “multa ah Ecclesim Catholicse sensu et ab apostolorum tem- poribus probata consuetudine aliena [scripto et verho] asseru- erunt.” — Sess. xxiv. [De Sac. Mat.] Of Purgatory it pro¬ nounces that it teaches it “ ex antiqua Patrum traditione.” — Sess. xxv. [De Pur.] Masses for souls in Purgatory are “ juxta apostolorum traditionem;” as we are infallibly assured. — Sess. xxii. Cap. 2. [De Sacrific. Missse]. The intercession of saints, the invocation of saints, the honour due to relics, and even the “legitimus imaginum usus,” the Council gravely declares to be “juxta [Catholicse et Apostolicae] Ecclesiae usum a primcevis Christiance religionis temporibus receptumC — [Sess. xxv. De Invoc. &c.] And even in admitting, as the notoriety of the fact compels, that the half-communion is an innovation, it reduces the alteration under the principle that the Church has power over the mere circumstantials of the sacraments (which, of course, in its right application, we all admit), “licet ab initio Christianas religionis non infrequensi}.) utriusque speciei usus fuisset.” — Sess. xxi. Cap. 2. [. Be Commun. ] Such are most of the principal passages of the Council in which its views with regard to the rule of Catholic faith are stated or illustrated. And these are not to be mistaken. The distinct dogmatical enunciation of the fundamental principle at the outset, and all its subsequent applications to special cases as they arose, are quite sufficient to evince that between Mr. Newman’s theory and the views of the Tridentine Synodists, 12 LETTERS [LETT. I. there is an irreconcileable discrepancy; that they assuredly would never have tolerated his venturesome surrender of an¬ tiquity ; that those who are induced by his statements to accept the theology of Rome, are in fact adopting for that theology a hypothesis her gravest authorities have, by their solemn and inspired1 decision, for ever precluded. And this is notoriously the doctrine of the chief expositors of Romanism. They nearly all earnestly maintain that all her tenets, not expressly delivered in Scripture, are, in the clear literal sense, genuine apostolic traditions; that the Holy Virgin was worshipped, that images were publicly bowed before in the churches, that saints and angels were solemnly invoked, by the immediate disciples of the apostles. Hoav they have insulted at times, and in particular instances, the venerable writers of antiquity, is indeed well known2 ; but it was only after the most laborious efforts to force upon their words the modern sense; and always with the general assertion that the “ unanimous consent of the Fathers” was strictly theirs. Indeed Mr. Newman himself seems in some degree aware that this hypothesis requires some apology. He proceeds to defend it by philosophical analogies; without at all remember¬ ing that, whatever may be its interest or value as a philo- 1 [“ Sacrosancta Tridentina Synodus, in Spiritu Sancto legitime congregata,” passim.^ 2 See for a cluster of instances, the Fourth Part of James’s Treatise on Romish “ Corruption of Scripture, Councils, and Fa¬ thers,” &c. (p. 359, edit. 1688 — On “Contemning and Condemning of Fathers”). LETT. I.] ON ROMANISM. 13 sophical speculation, it is by anticipation condemned by the very authorities to whose support it is devoted. After ad¬ mitting that the Disciplina Arcani1, so long the favourite 1 [An excellent account of this matter may be found in Bing¬ ham’s Antiquities , Book x. Chapter v. The most celebrated trea¬ tises on the Bomisli side of the question were published by the Vatican librarian Schelstrate, and the Benedictine Scholliner; the former, Roma?, 1685, and the latter, typis Monast. Tegerns. 1756. Daille maintains that the ancient Discipline was not introduced previously to the year 260 (Be libris suppos. Dion, et Ignat, i. xxii. 142) ; but Tertullian has plainly spoken of the silence observed with respect to mysteries. (Apol. Cap. vii.) It remains, nevertheless, for Romanists to adduce even the shadow of a proof that the peculiarities of their system were among the sacred truths in which catechumens were gradually initiated. — G.] [See Faber’s Apostolicity of Trinitarianism, Book i. Chap, viii., also Newman’s Arians , Chap. i. sect. iii. To the objection of the Reformed, that the Roman peculiarities are not to be found in the early records of the Church, Schelstrate replied by this bold asser¬ tion, that all these (e. g. Transubstantiation, Seven Sacraments, Image Worship, &c.) formed part of the disciplina arcani , and were not committed to writing, lest they should come to the knowledge of the uninitiated. It is hard to say whether this or the development hypothesis is the more daring and comprehensive. “ It is but work¬ ing with this admirable tool, called disciplina arcani , and then all the seeming contradictions between the ancient doctrines and prac¬ tices of the Church universal, and the novel corruptions of the modern Church of Rome, will vanish and disappear.” — Bingham, ubi sup. The origin of this secret discipline seems to have been the dis¬ tinction between prepared and unprepared hearers, in conformity with our Lord’s precejot, “ Give not that which is holy unto the dogs.” This rule of communicating religious knowledge was deve¬ loped into a regular system. Allusions to a certain reserve occur in 14 LETTERS [LETT. I. resource of Roman controversialists, is utterly inadequate to solve the admitted “ difficulty” of the “ variation” of mediaeval from primitive Christianity, or, in other words, to account for the difference between the general systems of doctrine of which Rome and England are the existing representatives — he proceeds, p. 27: “It is undoubtedly a hypothesis to account for a diffi¬ culty ; and such are the various explanations given by astronomers, from Ptolemy to Newton, of the apparent mo¬ tions of the heavenly bodies. But it is unphilosophical on that account to object to the one as to object to the other. Nay, more so; for a hypothesis, such as the present, rests upon facts as well as accounts for them; and independently of the need of it, it is urged upon us by the nature of the case. Nor is it more reasonable to express surprise, that at this time of day a theory is necessary, granting for argu¬ ment sake that the theory is novel , than to have directed preceding writers, but Tertullian first speaks of the discipline as a formal system. He points it out as a characteristic of heretics {Be prcescr. Hcer. xli.) that they are “ without discipline; it is doubtful who is a catechumen, who a believer; they have all access alike, they hear alike, they pray alike. Even if heathens come in upon them, they will cast that which is holy unto dogs, and pearls, false though they be, before swine.” — Oxford Transl. Vol. x. p. 476. In after ages we have a detailed account of the mysteries which were concealed from catechumens, viz. : — 1. The manner of ad¬ ministering Baptism. 2. The unction of chrism, or Confirmation. 3. The Ordination of Priests. 4. The manner of celebrating the Eucharist. 5. The Divine Service of the Church. 7. The mys¬ tery of the Trinity, the Creed, and Lord’s Prayer, until they were ready for Baptism.] LETT. I.] ON ROMANISM. 1 5 a similar wonder in disparagement of the theory of gravi¬ tation or the Plutonian theory in geology. Doubtless, the theory of the Secret and the theory of Developments are expedients, and so is the dictum of Vincentius, so is the art of grammar or the use of the quadrant, it is an expedient to enable us to solve what has now become a necessary and an anxious problem.” And he adds, that “ the reception of the Homan doctrine cannot be immediately based on the results 5 5 of the theory ; an assertion which (however incompatible with the declaration in the postscript to Mr. Newman’s prefatory advertisement, that a “ conviction of the truth of the conclusion to which the discussion leads superseded further deliberation ” about joining the Homan communion) is undoubtedly true, if it be certain the Homan doctrine of tradition flatly contradicts the new theory. It will, I think, be moreover admitted that the passage just cited is somewhat obscure. The “ difficulty” of which Mr. Newman speaks as if it were a perplexity common to us all, is surely a difficulty to none but a person who has em¬ braced the Romish theory / to him (and Mr. Newman abund¬ antly discloses the feeling) the variations in question are indeed a most formidable difficulty; to others they bring but the regret which charity must ever prompt when it witnesses the noblest gift of God — His holy and unchange¬ able truth — abused and sullied by the wanton perversity of man. And then the theory of Gravitation, in which the Principle and the Facts to be explained thereby are both unquestionable realities of experience, is compared to a solution 16 LETTERS [LETT. I. resting upon two enormous hypothetical assumptions, — in¬ fallible guidance to a particular Church, and a divine design of constantly manifesting new progressive forms and varieties of doctrine in the history of the Church at large1. What the nature of the analogy may be between Vincentius’ Rule2 (which simply expresses what he considered the ideal of perfect historical evidence) and the hypothesis of develop¬ ment, I am really unable even to conjecture. II. In the mean time I am, I apprehend, perfectly justi¬ fied in affirming, in the second place, that this theory — whatever judgment may be passed by the Roman authorities upon its prudence or validity — is in reality what I have called it, a plain surrender of the claims of Romanism to satis¬ factory evidence from antiquity. The claim of antiquity and the hypothesis of development (in Mr. Newman’s ap¬ plication of the term) are absolutely incompatible. They are so ex vi terminorum. Even conceding (what no human 1 “Some hypothesis,” says Mr. Newman, “all parties, all con¬ troversialists, all historians, must adopt, if they would treat of Christianity at all.” — p. 129. And he then mentions the supposi¬ tion of Papal Infallibility as a hypothesis of the sort that a histo¬ rian must adopt. This is, in truth, to confuse the proper and undoubted office of the philosophical historian (to reduce his facts as well as he can to general principles of human nature or divine government) with that which is the very essence of false philoso¬ phy — the invention of gratuitous and superfluous suppositions, — suppositions which can neither be previously proved to be facts, nor are required by the facts. 2 [In ipsa item Catholica Ecclesia magnopere curandum est ut id teneamus, quod ubique, quod semper , quod ab omnibus , creditum est. — Advers. H ceres. Oxon. a.d. 1631, Cap. iii. fol. 8.] LETT. I.] ON ROMANISM. 17 ingenuity will ever make commonly plausible to unprejudiced minds,) that the mediaeval corruptions are legitimate deve¬ lopments of primitive doctrine, it is manifest that they are admitted not to be themselves primitive doctrine. Unless the acorn be the oak, the doctrine of the Incarnation is not “ the deification1 of St. Mary;” — unless the oak can be “ developed” 1 I adopt Mr. 1ST ewman’s own most awful expression, p. 405, et seq. The phrase itself, except as a metaphor, belongs to the extra¬ vagances of mystical theology, in which it was built upon a pre¬ posterous application of 2 Pet. i. 4. Mr. Newman’s use of it is, however, different from that of Puysbrock or Harphius ; and in¬ finitely more dangerous and unwarrantable. [Mr. Newman honestly confesses the “Deification of St Mary” to be the doctrine of the Pomish Church, a confession which would have saved previous controversialists an infinity of toil. The Bishop of Exeter, in the second of his admirable Letters to Charles Butler , Esq., has proved but too clearly how correct is the term used by Mr. Newman to express the Pomish cultus of the Blessed Virgin. But on no point have Pomish polemics spent more subtlety, than in denying this deification, and reconciling the denial with their teaching respecting her whom we, as well as they, call blessed.] [Dr. Milner ( End of Controv. Letter xxxiii.) cites with approba¬ tion the following words which occur in Bp. Challoner’s abridgment of Gother’s Rapist misrepresented and represented : “Cursed is every Goddess- worshipper,” &c. It is remarkable, however, that Justus Lipsius, in his Virgo Hallensis , has frequently styled the Virgin Mary “Goddess” (Molinsei Iconomacli. 94 : Tenison Of Idol. 230); and Cardinal Bembo, writing in the name of Pope Leo X., has also given to her the same name. ( Epistt . viii. xvii. 294. Basil. 1566.) No longer then can it be said with truth,, that “ in- auditum est Catholicis Mariam pro Dea colendam.” (Canisius, Be Maria Beip. iii. x. 300. Ingolst. 1583.) Bellarmin does not hesi¬ tate to declare that the Saints are “Dii per participationem ” (Be 18 LETTERS [LETT. I. from the acorn, yet be with it simultaneous, these doctrines did not originally exist together. I have, indeed, not the least doubt that this theory will but add another to Mr. New¬ man’s retractations before long, its controversial inconveni¬ ences being so pressing and palpable; but, in the mean time, be it remembered that the concession has been made — made by a writer whose competency in point of learning no one, I suppose, will doubt, and who has proved, by the most decisive of all tests, his attachment to the system whose peculiarities he thus candidly admits to have no distinct and definite model in antiquity. And having once adopted his theory, Mr. Newman is too candid, his unquestioning “ faith” too fearless, to evade the admission. We have already seen how he styles his hypo¬ thesis an “ expedient” to remedy the great and oppressive “difficulty” of the “apparent variation” of the Romanism of Pius IV. from that of Clemens Romanus. He follows the difficulty through all its details. At the outset he meets and rejects the time-honoured canon of Vincentius; how much trouble would have been spared our divines, had this honest policy been adopted in earlier days! The rule of Vincentius is “ hardly available now, or effective of any satisfactory result.” — p. 24. He argues, with abundance of references, cult. Sanctt. iii. ix.); and this is likewise the doctrine of Cajetan. {In S. Thomce Secundam Secundce, Qusest. lxxxviii. Art. v. fol. 145, b. Lugd. 1540. Conf. Hadr. Lyrsei Trisagion Marianum , p. 10. Antv. 1648.) Accordingly in the preface to the second Book of sacred Ceremonies mention is distinctly made of “Divofrim nostro- rum Apotheoses.” (fol. 148. Colon. Agripp. 1557.) — G.] LETT. I.] ON ROMANISM. 19 that the ante-Nicene Fathers spoke vaguely and inaccurately about the Trinity; apparently forgetting, that if these cita¬ tions do not express positive error of doctrine, they can be of very little real service, in a question where the scriptural evidence is so clear, to his argument as against the Anglican Rule of Faith; and that if they do, they are utterly incom¬ patible — 1, with the doctrine of perpetual infallibility; 2, with that of “the unanimous consent of the Fathers;” and 3, with the theory of development itself, unless (admitting the early Church in partial error, and the latter wholly right) we hold that a germ can be “developed” into its own contradictory . Mr. Newman, indeed, seems to consider it a sort of proof of the vitality of (what he calls) Catholicism, that it can survive incessant self-contradictions. “ The theology of St. Thomas, nay, of the very Church of his period, is built on that very Aristotelism, which the Early Fathers denounce as the source of all misbelief, and in particular, of the Arian and Mono- physite heresies.” — p. 451. And he exults, that the Roman Church can achieve these mysterious transmutations of belief, with a dignity, grace, and security the various sects would emulate in vain: an argument of divine protection which can only be compared with its moral counterpart, the celebrated inference of Baronius1 from the wickedness of the Popes of 1 [See Ussher’s Works, Yol. ii. p. 69: Ed. Elrington.] [The allusion is to the Cardinal’s observations in his Annals of the end of the ninth and the commencement of the tenth age. He attributes the evils of that dismal period not, of course, to the Papacy itself; but he laments, as the greatest misfortune, the arro¬ gance of some ungodly Princes, who usurped the power of electing 2—2 20 LETTERS [LETT. I. the tenth century, that the See of Peter must be the object of special favour from heaven, to have outlived such unparalleled monsters. As might be expected from this course of argu¬ ment, Mr. Newman treats the lights of the early Church with strong general approbation and keen particular censure. When it becomes apparently dangerous to admit a doctrine of great importance to be altogether a modern “ development,” the ancient testimonies that oppose it are easily resolved into the peculiarities of a “ school. ” Thus there was (which, indeed, is true enough) the “Syrian school1”, p. 287: and this Syrian school appears to have been strangely blind to the Lateran dogma of “ Transubstantiation;” for “ certainly some of the most cogent passages brought by moderns against the Catholic doctrine of the Eucharist, are taken from writers who are connected with that school /” in support of which Mr. Newman specifies St. Chrysostom’s memorable letter to Cfcsarius2, (of great importance, as being a direct dogmatical to the Pontificate, and through whose tyranny even into the see of Pome were intruded “visu horrenda monstra.” — G-.] 1 [The Syrian School is meant by Mr. Newman to express not any localized institution (such as the school of Alexandria), but a “ method characteristic of the Syrian churches,” which method was an application to the critical and literal sense of Scripture, as dis¬ tinguished from the mystical and allegorical. Of this school Doro- theus was one of the earliest teachers; its great exegetical doctor was Theodore of Mopsuestia. Mr. Newman refers further to this school St. Cyril of J erusalem, and also St. Chrysostom and Theodo- ret, both Syrians.] 2 [“ Sicut enim antequam sanctificetur panis, panem nomina- mus ; divina autem ilium sanctificante gratia, mediante Sacerdote, liberatus est quidem ab appellatione panis, dignus autem habitus LETT. I.] ON ROMANISM. 21 statement, of perfect clearness and simplicity, and so forming a key to all that great preacher’s lofty metaphors in other places,) Theodoret’s1 similar and irresistible statement, and Dominici Corporis appellatione, etiamsi natura panis in ipso per- mansit, et non duo Corpora, sed iinum Corpus Filii prsedicamus,” &c. (Opp. Tom. iii. p. 744. edit. Bened.) The Epistle of St. Chrysostom to the Monk Csesarius was adduced in controversy by Peter Martyr about the year 1548, and he deposited a transcript of it, taken from a Florentine manuscript, in the library of Abp. Cranmer. After this Prelate’s death the document was destroyed or lost, and Cardinal Du Perron availed himself of the opportunity thus pre¬ sented of pronouncing it to be a forgery. (De VEucliar. pp. 381 — 3.) However, after much discussion and recrimination between the contending parties, the letter was published at Paris, in 1680, by Emericus Bigotius, in company with Palladius’s Life of Chry¬ sostom. This proceeding was not acceptable to some Doctors of the Sorbonne; and they actually caused the printed leaves to be exterminated, without providing anything to supply their place. An Expostulatio with reference to this disreputable conduct of the Parisian Divines was prefixed by Peter Allix to St. Anastasius In Hexaemeron , Bond. 1682; and a very minute description of the mutilation may be found in the Preface to Mr. Mendham’s Index of Pope Gregory XVI., pp. xxxii — iv. Bond. 1840. Be Moyne put forth this important Epistle at the end of the first volume of his Varia Sacra , in 1685; and the reprint by J. Bas- nage appeared in 8vo, at Utrecht, in 1687. At length a Jesuit, Hardouin, came forward as a publisher of it in the year 1689 ; and in 1721 it was edited by the Marquis Mafiei from a MS. in the library of the Dominicans of St. Mark at Florence. See it in the Lectiones Antiquce of Canisius, according to Basnage’s impression, Tom. i. pp. 233 — 237. Antverp. 1725. Cf. Bouth, Scriptorum Eccles. Opusc. ii. 127. Oxon. 1840. — G.] 1 [Afros ret opdpev a avpfdoXa rfj tov ^gj/xcitos /cat Ai/xaTOS 7 rpoa- rjyopiq TCTLp.r]K€v , of rrjv (jivatv p.€Ta/3aXdv, dXX a rfj (frvaei rrjv LETTERS •2*2 JmJ — [LETT. I. Facundus1. At other times, he admits that the earlier writers were “ left in ignorance ,” and subsequent teachers “completed their work;” and he proceeds to specify the following instances of a “ completion” of primitive views, which will give your readers a fair exemplification of the meaning of the “ theory of development,” and its admirable uses in controversy: — “ Clement MAY hold a purgatory, yet tend to consider all punishment purgatorial, . St. Hilary may believe in a purgatory, yet confine it to the day of judgment . Prayers for the faithful departed may be found in the early liturgies, yet with an indistinctness which included St. Mary and the Martyrs in the same rank with the imperfect Christians, whose sins were as yet unexpiated, . and suc¬ ceeding times might keep what was exact, and supply what was deficient 2.” — p. 354. yd piv TrpocTTe^eiKais. — Dial. i. Tom. iv. p. 18: edit. Lutetiae, 1642. (For a 'powerful argument on these words, see Taylor’s Real Pre¬ sence , Sect. xii. 30.) And again (Dial. ii. p. 85) : OvSk yap /xera tov ayiaapov ra pvarLKa avp/3o\a rrjs ot/cetas e^tcrrarat tfycre cos* /xeve t yap e7rt rrjs rrpoTepas ova las Kal tov ay^/xaTOS, /cat tov etSors, Kat opara iarl /cat aVra oia Kal 7 rporepov ^v.] 1 [“Potest Sacramentum adoptionis adoptio nuncupari, sicut Sacramentum corporis et sanguinis Ejus, quod est in pane et poculo consecrato, corpus Ejus et sanguinem dicimus : non quod proprie corpus Ejus sit panis, et poculum sanguis ; sed quod in se mysterium corporis Ejus sanguinisque contineant.” (Facundus, Episc. Hermianens., Pro Defens, trium Capitulor. Lib. ix. Cap. v. p. 144. Paris. 1679: vel inter Opp. Sirmondi, Tom. ii. col. 507. Venet. 1728.)— G.] 2 Other instances of a different kind, and bearing no direct reference to Roman doctrine, are mingled with these. Mr. New- LETT. I.] ON ROMANISM. 23 “ Deficient!” The belief that it might be right to solemnly commend the faithful dead to the care of God, and to include among the number the Virgin Mary, as one of God’s honoured servants who had departed this life “in the true faith of his holy name,” was a deficient belief, because it did not add to that tenet and practice the further supplementary belief that the Virgin thus commended to God’s care and mercy in the general roll of His deceased, was, in reality, already exalted to the throne of the universe, to be prayed to , not (without unspeakable insult) prayed for — “the refuge of sinners,” the “channel of all graces to man,” the “ deified St. Mary!” In other words, the early notion was deficient, because it did not include its own direct contradiction. Again: it was “de¬ ficient” because it commended to God the care of His holy servants as those who alone were fitly to be commemorated in the meetings of the Christian household, and forgot to add another completory statement of a fact, in its whole spirit dia¬ metrically opposed to the former, and which, itself an absolute invention, is now formally founded upon a theory of satis¬ factions wholly unknown to primitive times. To take another of the cases specified, — among those who did, vaguely and indecisively, venture to speculate about possible purifications after death, St. Hilary1, as a private conjecture, thought some man forgets that in those cases there is (so far as they were errors — one is not quite satisfied about corrective “developments” of the Athanasian Greed, ibid.) abundant contemporary evidence to oppose individual errors; whereas the Roman innovations can produce none, or next to none, in their favour synchronizing with the tes¬ timonies that oppose them. 1 [The language of St. Hilary (Homil. 22, 26) is wholly irrecon¬ cilable with the Romish Purgatory. “He that can reconcile them 24 LETTERS [LETT. I. passages in Scripture (as Mai. iii. 2) seemed to point to some universal trial of all mankind (Hilary specially included the Virgin Mary) by fire at the day of judgment. How St. Hi¬ lary’s notion was “ deficient,” because he should have combined with his conception of an universal fire of probation at the day of judgment the additional idea of that fire not being universal at all but particular; not at all at the day of judg¬ ment, but directly after death, and for hundreds of thousands of years; not at all probatory, but punitive; as well as de¬ vising for it further reasons , objects, and purposes of which the good man never dreamed, and which were equally and manifestly inconsistent with his own notions; with (to crown all, in this simple and uniform process of natural development) a firm belief and clear perception that the substituted doctrine was no longer, as his had been, a matter of free though inter¬ esting speculation, but a tenet of such fundamental importance, that no man could at all understand Christianity without it, and no man have the remotest chance of salvation who denied it. This is what Mr. Newman calls “the Fathers fixing their minds on what they taught, grasping it more and more closely, viewing it on various sides , trying its CONSISTENCY, weighing their own separate expressions,” and thus arriving at further percejDtions of truth (p. 353). With such speci¬ mens as these (and these are far more plausible than some others on which Mr. Newman boldly tries to fit his theory) of the facility with which modern Romanism may be seminally found in the records of early Christianity, who shall any will be a most mighty man in controversy.” — Bp. Taylor’s Dissua¬ sive, Part ii. Book ii. sect, ii.] LETT. I.] ON ROMANISM. 25 longer regard as extravagant the “shoulder-knot” argument in Swift’s ludicrous parody1? There is a conclusion which must at once occur to every one in perusing such speculations as these of Mr. Newman; namely, that if things he really as he represents them, it must be not only useless but positively injurious to study the early writers at all. Useless, surely — for who that can enjoy the noon¬ day would linger in the dawn? — but, moreover, pernicious, for in so faint a twilight not only the eyes are injured by straining the vision, but objects themselves are liable to be seen in the most mistaken and distorted aspects. Whether considered doctrinally or practically, Mr. Newman manifestly thinks the religion of the Middle Ages a vast improvement on the reli¬ gion of St. Cyprian and St. Iren^eus. As regards DOCTRINE, this is plainly and confessedly the substance and tendency of his whole argument; he, undoubtedly, holds it was given to Aquinas and Scotus to reach dogmatic apprehensions, of which those “children in understanding” above mentioned had sometimes imperfect conceptions, sometimes no conceptions at all. If there be a difference of any sort between Au¬ gustine and Liguori (and if there be not, what becomes of Mr. Newmaft’s theory?), it must manifestly be incalculably to the advantage of the latter. Nay, as persons of feeble powers of vision, in the midst of a bright and abounding illumina¬ tion, will see better than the strongest eyes in glimmer and haze, minds of very inferior faculties now-a-days must be strangely wanting to themselves if they are not far advanced in theological attainments beyond such beginners as Basil and 1 [ Tale of a Tub , sect. 3.] 26 LETTERS [LETT. 1. Chrysostom; to compare the catechetical schools of Alexandria, Antioch, Caesarea, with our Irish Maynooth, would palpably be an insult to the latter, too gross for even the licensed bit¬ terness of religious controversy. While again, as to practice, Mr. Newman explicitly speaks of such men as St. Bruno and his fellows as specimens of an excellence of which early days presented but immature types; nor, indeed, if doctrine be eminently practical, can it be doubted that with the increase of doctrinal development piety must have, on the whole, pro- portionably increased; and thus the primitive martyrs and confessors come to be but meagre models of perfection after all. It will also very plainly follow, that the custom of “expurgating” Fathers, which we have so long ignorantly regarded as the vilest process of dishonesty extant in the his¬ tory of religion, is no other than the obligatory function of the growing Church. What mature mind would allow its juvenile efforts at authorship to circulate uncorrected? But, now, is this inference capable of no further application? Have we yet seen the termination of the prospect it opens? An Object stands at the end of this long vista of the past history of the Church’s dogmatical and devotional literature,- — an Object venerable, indeed, yet scarcely more venerable than the Church’s own conscious belief at any epoch, if both be alike inspired. What can subtract the Bible itself from the grasp of this argument? If the developed organism should fitly supersede the elementary germ, to no book does this latter character (according to the very spirit of this theory) more perfectly apply than to the Holy Scriptures themselves. If the Athanasian Creed, authenticated by an infallible Church, LETT. I.] ON ROMANISM. 27 was, as Mr. Newman observes in a place already alluded to, susceptible of alteration, on what conceivable principle should the Bible be respected? Can one infallibly authorized docu¬ ment rank higher than another? or is the Bible, consisting chiefly of insinuations and hints of doctrine rather than ex¬ press enunciations, as we are perpetually told, clearer, plainer, more distinct as an expression of truth, than the Athanasian Creed? When we weigh all this, we can see some consistency in the principles which in the Boman expurgatory Index1 led to the jealous precaution, “ Expungi etiam oportet verba Scrijpturce s acrce, qusecunque ad profanum usum impie accom- modantur.” Why, indeed, should the “verba Scriptural sacras be treated with more ceremony than the words of any received doctor in a Church under guidance as constant and unfailing as the Scriptures themselves could claim, and per¬ petually, as the new theory would maintain, growing in f uller and yet fuller knowledge? Why should the authentic book of the apostolic age be regarded as any more than the 1 [More accurately the Index of prohibited books , issued by Pope Clement VIII., lionise, 1596. § ii. De correct, libror. — The letter of this law, which may, perhaps, be considered scarcely objectionable, seems to be a carrying out of the Tridentine Decre- tum de editione et usu sacrorum librorum: (Sess. iv.) “Post hsec temeritatem illam reprimere volens, qua ad profana quseque con- vertuntur et torquentur verba et sententise saerse Scripturse; ad scurrilia scilicet, fabulosa, vana, adulationes, detractiones, supersti- tiones, impias et diabolicas incantationes, divinationes, sortes, libellos etiam famosos, mandat et prsecipit [Synodus,] ad tollendam hujusmodi irreverentiam et contemptum, ne de csetero quisquam quomodolibet verba Scripturse saerse ad hsec et similia audeat usur- pare.” — G.] 28 LETTERS [LETT. I. authentic book of any other equally inspired age? Why so much , since it was the earliest, and, therefore, the most un¬ formed, and indecisive, and immature? There is a further application of these considerations which perhaps my last remarks will have suggested to your readers. I may yet refer to it; though, I confess, I scarcely like drawing forth, even in argument, such inferences to the public view. Those who are at all acquainted with the views of modern neologism relative to our blessed Lord himself will understand what I mean; and will observe this new and in¬ structive exemplification of the invariable law which (though she boasts to be our only preservative from such evils) ever¬ more identifies the philosophy of Romanism and Rationalism as fundamentally one. Habit, or a kind of instinct of preservation, does indeed induce Mr. Newman at times to bring together what proofs he can from the early ages, of practices that may countenance the Roman innovations. But his admissions are nevertheless de¬ cisive. For example, 1st, of Image Worship, after telling us that the early Christians used the sign of the cross, that Constantine had a cross on his standard, and that Julian the Apostate1 charged them with worshipping the cross (a con¬ clusive authority, doubtless), he adds, with perfect simplicity, “in A later age [he might have added, after violent strug¬ gles] the worship of images was introduced.” — p. 357. Again: “The introduction of images was still later , and met with more opposition in the West than in the East.” And 1 [Yid. S. Cyrill. Alex. Cont. Julian. Lib. vi. p. 194. ed. Span- hem. Lips. 1696. — G.] LETT. I.] ON ROMANISM. 29 he adds the hollow sophistry of Damascene1, who unfortu¬ nately became the defender of this lamentable corruption, that the worship of images was a sin only because the Gentiles made them gods; whereas to Christians images are a triumph, &c. — pp. 362, 363. This, it will be remembered, was far in the eighth century. Again, 2nd, of the Worship of Saints and Angels he tells us (p. 400): “ The treatment of the Arian and Monophysite errors [in the fourth and fifth centuries] became the natural INTRODUCTION of the cultus sanctorum .” 3rd, Of the Worship of the Virgin Mary: “As is well known, the special prerogatives of St. Mary were not fully recognized in the Catholic ritual till a late date.” — p. 384. And again: “ There was in the first ages no public and eccle¬ siastical [as if there was any other!] recognition of the place which St. Mary holds in the economy of grace.” 4th, Of Purgatory: “As time went on” — [my readers know that the “public and ecclesiastical recognition” of Purgatory took place a full thousand years later than even St. Augustine’s varying and contradictory speculations2 about its possibility] — “ as time went on , the doctrine of Purgatory was opened upon the apprehension of the Church;” “the mind of the Church working out dogmatic truths from implicit feelings." — p. 417. But “Catholic principles” were even “ later in development than Catholic doctrines;” and “ to this day ,” among other matters, “ the seat of infallibility remains more or less unde¬ veloped, or at least undefined by the Church.” — p. 368. Why 1 \Apol. pro ven. sand. Imagg. L. ii. fol. 39. Paris. 1555. — G.] 2 [For a full discussion of St. Austin’s Purgatorial opinions, see Bp. Taylor’s Dissuasive , Part ii. Book ii. sect, ii.] 30 LETTERS [LETT. I. this last most important “Catholic principle” should still re¬ main “undeveloped” we are not very satisfactorily informed: # it certainly is not that the whole mind of the Roman Church has not been most anxiously, eagerly, and incessantly “ work¬ ing” on the subject; for there is scarcely any other which has so completely busied her from the Council of Constance to the present day. I cannot derive much light from Mr. Newman’s solution, that such a matter as this is rather her “ assumption than her objective profession.” Does he really mean to con¬ vey that the doctrine of infallibility and its accompaniments rank anywhere but among the most deliberate formal dogmas of the Roman Church? Does he mean to say that the seat of infallibility is only tacit “assumption,” when he cannot but know that it is the ground of constant disputation, and of a bitter though decorous schism between the two great divisions of the Roman Communion? To all these ample admissions that the primitive theology was destitute of the subsequent Romish elements — admissions which are ill compensated by apparently anxious, but cer¬ tainly not very successful, efforts to detect traces sufficient to supply some germ for the “development” which is, at the distance of some centuries, faithfully to follow — Mr. New¬ man subjoins, near the close of his volume, a very valuable illustration. He cites a former paper of his own upon those most remarkable and important relics, the Epistles of St. Ignatius. The object of the paper is to exhibit the maturity of doctrine contained in these epistles of a disciple of St. John; to shew how much which Dissenters from the Church are in the habit of regarding as modern corruptions is there fully LETT. I.] ON ROMANISM. 31 recognized. I need not recount the particulars, as I may take for granted your readers are acquainted with the Epistles themselves, and will readily admit the general as¬ sertion: — “ Let it be granted only so far as this,” argues Mr. New¬ man, “ that the substance of them is what Ignatius wrote, and those who deny this may wrestle as they best can with the greater difficulties in which they will find themselves, and is any further witness wanting to prove that the Catholic system [I am quoting Mr. Newman of 1839, it will be remem¬ bered], not in an inchoate state, not in doubtful dawnings, not in tendencies or in implicit teaching , or in temper , or in surmises , but in a definite , complete , and dogmatic , form was the religion of St. Ignatius; and if so, where in the world did he come by it? How came he to lose, to blot out from his mind, the true Gospel, if this was not it? How came he to possess this, except it be apostolic? One does not know which of the two most to be struck with, his precise, unhesitating tone, or the compass of doctrine he goes through,” &c. — p. 395. It was characteristic of Mr. Newman’s fearless candour to quote this; for the application to the question before us is surely obvious. Here is a plain avowal of the definiteness of Christian doctrine from the very first; an admission that the future belief was even then no mere “ temper” or “ ten¬ dency;” yet here , with almost all the leading features of doctrinal and practical Catholicism, there is not even a trace of any one of the distinctive peculiarities of Romanism. Not a trace, through the whole seven epistles of this propounder 32 LETTERS [LETT. I« of a distinct and complete dogmatic Christianity1. If, as Mr. Newman afterwards urges, two or three subjects are not specially mentioned (“original sin, &c.” — p. 396), will this explain the fact that no allusion is made to topics that must (on supposition of their existence) have lain directly in the writer’s way? Perpetually enforcing Church unity through cordial submission to the Church’s governors, how does it happen that the blessed martyr makes not the remotest reference to that which the authentic champions of Romanism have constantly affirmed to have been from the first the admitted guarantee of unity? Even Mr. Newman endeavours to show that the Papacy was already in at least embryonic existence; and condescends to revive the long-exploded argu¬ ment from the title of St. Clement’s contemporary epistle2. If, then, Clement was really a seminal Hildebrand, and de¬ scribed his Church as “presiding in the Roman region,” from some dim, half conscious, but real anticipations of future greatness, it is surely somewhat strange that the “ definite, complete, and dogmatic” system of Ignatius’ theology should have been absolutely without this important element. Truly 1 The Eucharistic passages, I need not say, are nowhere stronger in Ignatius than in our own Service and Catechism, and of course admit of exactly the same interpretation. 2 [Mr. Newman’s argument is not derived from the title of St. Clement’s epistle, but from the fact that “St. Clement, in the name of the Roman Church, writes a letter to the Corinthians, when they were without a bishop.” — p. 22. The description of the Church of Rome as “ 'presiding in the Roman region” occurs not in St. Clement, but in St. Ignatius. — Epist. ad. Rom. ed. Jacobson, Tom. ii. p. 344.] LETT. I.] ON ROMANISM. 33 Mr. Newman had best adhere steadily to his “ development” theory; and not suffer himself to be thus at times betrayed into the fond dream of really verifying modern Romanism in the Catholicism of the Apostolic Fathers. Meanwhile, the Church of England is content with the theology which con¬ tented Ignatius. It is scarcely possible to overstate the importance of this admission, that, after all the long and earnest efforts of her devoted advocates to demonstrate that the Roman Church has delivered to us the simple Christianity of antiquity, the attempt must honestly be given up as hopeless. There is, indeed, something very providential in the case. Scarcely any one but a person situated just as Mr. Newman has been, could have prosecuted such an argument, and brought it so satis¬ factorily to this result. A professed Anglican theologian de¬ nying the antiquity of Romanism, would have been regarded as a mere partisan controversialist, echoing what others had said, and speaking rather what he wished than what he knew. A professed Romanist, on the other hand, would scarcely have ventured to risk his Church’s reputation upon the chances of a semi-philosophical theory of “ development;” knowing that, though the theory might go the way of a thousand theories before it, the fatal admission it involved would not be readily forgotten. Mr. Newman being in a transitional state, neither Anglican nor formally and definitely Roman, was emancipated from both these restraints, and has accordingly opened his mind freely, fairly, and irrecover¬ ably. His previous education in our great Anglican Uni¬ versity had fortunately expanded to him the whole field of 3 34 LETTERS [LETT. I. antiquity, without those perverting biasses by which Romish training would have prepossessed his judgment; accordingly he could not be deceived by the hollowness of the common pretences of the Roman theologians on behalf of their tenets ; whatever merits mediaeval Romanism might claim, he knew antiquity too well not to know it could not really claim that . It might be (as he seems to dream) something better than antiquity, but it was not antiquity. Still, — if I may without presumption go on and venture to sketch what I have little doubt is nearly the true history of this case, and of many others, — his imagination and feelings were irreparably en¬ gaged; and reason, as usual, was soon busily active in devising subtle argumentative grounds to justify his choice. He had before his fancy a bright ideal of Unity, Perpetuity, Holiness, Self-denial, Majesty, — in short, that “ glorious Church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing,” which the Lord of the whole Church is yet to present to Himself “ holy and without blemish;” in the impatience of desire he had come to identify his ideal with the actual Church of history; by constantly dwelling among the highly-wrought devotional works of holy men in the Roman communion — works which utterly spoil the taste for the calmer and more intellectualized piety of our divines (very much as romances debauch the taste for solid reading), his heart was seduced into forgetting the vices of thousands in the heroic virtues of comparatively few, and (what is much worse) the gross doctrinal errors of those few for the sake of the ardent piety their effusions seemed to embody ; until at length the errors became tolerable, became acceptable, became welcome, were received as truths ; LETT. I.] ON ROMANISM. 35 and then the work was accomplished. But all was not jet secure. In this crisis arose the necessity of accounting for the undeniable absence of certain prominent peculiarities of the system from the records, not only of inspiration but of antiquity for centuries. Others might not feel the difficulty; he could not escape it. And so by degrees the thought grew into shape, fitting itself as it grew with goodly apparel from the “wardrobe” of one of the richest imaginations of our time, that the Church of Christ might perhaps be meant to embody one living, growing, self-organizing scheme of belief; that it might have been intended spiritually to nourish itself by imbibing and assimilating materials from all around it; incor¬ porating into itself all the truths of all mankind, permeating them with its own transforming spirit, and moulding them into neAV shapes, so that what was before gentile error and worthless superstition became merely, by virtue of this re¬ generating adoption, high and holy truth; nor this alone, — but that by brooding over its original store of doctrine, it might be endowed with a faculty of expanding it into totally neAV and unsuspected forms, even into collecting neAV Objects of Worship, legitimate sharers in divine adoration, from their relation to Him, whom it once seemed the first principle of all religion to maintain in sole and incommunicable supre¬ macy. Such was the “theory of development,” — a hypothesis in many respects brilliant, attractive, imposing; having against it only such objections as these, — that it Avas utterly destitute of evidence beyond its utility for the explanation of the (unnecessary) difficulty that suggested it; and that in some- 3—2 LETTERS 36 [LETT. I. what alleviating that difficulty, it introduced others of tenfold magnitude peculiar to itself. But the dimensions of your Journal are not calculated for lengthy disquisitions, and I must pause. I have endeavoured to show, that Mr. Newman’s theory is profitless to Romanism, for it is flatly contradictory to her own recorded and un¬ alterable decisions; that it is dangerous to Romanism, for it surrenders her long-cherished claim to evidence from an¬ tiquity, and gives her in return only a precarious hypothesis which she has herself in substance repeatedly disavowed. With all this, however, I have only now approached the main theory itself, and its merits. LETT. II.] ON ROMANISM. 37 LETTER II. In the letter which appeared in your last Number I drew the attention of your readers to the very important fact, that the theory of Mr. Newman is absolutely inconsistent with the deliberate affirmation of the most authoritative of all Roman Councils; that Council, whose definitions and Canons are, in the peculiar creed of the modern Romish Church, alone specially and by name commended to the undoubting reception of all her members1. Artfully ambiguous and elaborately qualified as are many of the declarations of Trent (for the prelates of that Council were themselves not uninfluenced2 by 1 [The following are the terms in which all ecclesiastics and converts are required to profess their assent to the Tridentine Canons : “ Caetera item omnia a sacris Canonibus, et (Ecumenicis Conciliis, ac prcecipue a Sacrosancta Tridentina Synodo tradita, definita, et declarata, indubitanter recipio, atque profiteor, simul- que contraria omnia, atque lisereses quascunque ab Ecclesia damnatas, rejectas, et anathematizatas, ego pariter damno, rejicio, et anathematizo.” “ Pius IV. not only enjoined all ecclesiastics to swear to his new creed, but he imposed it on all Christians as ‘ veram fidem Catholicam extra quam nemo salvus esse potest.’ ” — Vid. Abp. Bramhall, Works , Vol. ii. p. 201, in Anglo- Cath. Libi\ 2 [Cardinal Pole was one of the three legates commissioned by Paul III. to open the Council in 1542. Pole had been, along 38 LETTERS [LETT. II. the movement they met to resist), on this the deliverance is decided and unequivocal. Beyond all doubt, Mr. Newman’s book is formally implicated in the anathema of Trent; the Council’s prophetic condemnation, to which time can set no limits, has already made it, ipso facto, heretical. The “de¬ velopment” of this theorist is every where confronted by utraditiones continud successione conservator E Not only are such important matters as the seven Sacraments declared to be, every single one, ua Jesu Christo Domino nostro insti- tutumf [Sess. vii.], but even such minute particulars of discipline as secret sacramental confession (as distinguished from public) are “a sanctissimis et antiquissimis Patribus magno unanimigue consensu semper commendata,” and such as uab initio Ecclesia sancta usa est.” — Sess. xiv. c. 5. \De Poenitentia. ] Interpretations of Scripture, in which an in¬ ventive genius, like our Author’s, would find a peculiarly fertile source of subsequent development, are stringently forbidden, — “contra unanimem consensum Patrum” (Sess. iv. Be Canonic. SS.); nay, the very thought of such, “etiamsi hujusmodi interpretationes nullo unquam tempore in lucem edendse forent;” and the expression of the decree is put yet more beyond the possibility of evasion in the Creed, where with the excellent Cardinal Contarini, engaged in preparing the “ Consilium delectorum Cardinalium et aliorum Prcelatorum de emendanda Ecclesia which in 1537 was presented to the Pontiff as a plan for the reformation of the Church. It was not until December, 1545, that the opening of the Council actually took place. “Contarini was now no more; but Pole was present; and there were in the assembly many others warmly attached to their opinions.” — Ranke’s History of the Popes. ] LETT. II.] ON ROMANISM. 39 the divine, or the convert, solemnly promises “never to take and interpret the Scripture otherwise than according to the unanimous consent of the Fathers.” The decision of the Council can, therefore, he made to square with the new theory only by the most palpable distortion of its express, repeated, and positive affirmations ; and the illustrious convert will require to apply to the creed of Pius IV. the same inge¬ nious process by which he contrived, some years since, to disembarrass himself of the burden of the Thirty-nine Articles. But though the authoritative doctrine of the Roman Church is thus unquestionable, Mr. Newman’s speculations, as might be expected, are not without what the technical phraseology of his theory would style some scattered “early anticipations.” Some of these will, I dare say, have already occurred to your readers, as our divines have frequently cited them with no unjustifiable triumph. Such is the well-known admission of Fisher: “Aliquando Pur gator ium incognitum fuit, sero cognitum universes Ecclesias.” “Legat qui velit Grascorum veterum commentaries, et nullum , quantum opinor, aut quam rarissimum de Purgatorio sermonem inveniet. Sed neque Latini simul omnes, at sensim , hujus rei veritatem conceperunt.” — Contr. Luther. Art. 18. But what avails the precipitate honesty of Fisher or Mr. Newman against the solemn verdict of Trent, revealing to us, with direct authority from Heaven, that “Catholica Ecclesia ex antiqua Patrum traditione docuit Purgatorium esse” (Sess. xxv.) ; and that the Sacrifice of the Mass “pro defunctis in Christo nondum ad plenum purgatis , rite, juxta APOSTOLORUM traditionem, offer- tur.” (Sess. xxi. cap. 2). — Or again, — of Indulgences, the 40 LETTERS [LETT. II. same candid Cardinal admits1, that “ Earnm usus in Ecclesia videtur fuisse recentior , et admodum serd repertus and that u coeperunt Indulgentise postquam ad Purgatorii cruciatus aliquamdiu trepidatum est” [Assert. Luther. Confut. 1523, p. Ill); and Cajetan 2 confesses, “ nulla sacrse Scripturse, nulla priscorum Doctornm, Graecorum ant Latinorum, auctoritas scripta hanc [“hunc” scil. ortum\ ad nostram deduxit noti- tiam” [Opusc. Tom. i. Tractat. xv. c. 1); and Durandus, that “ sancti etiam minimi loquuntur de Indulgentiis.” (IV. Dist. xx. 2, 3.) But what profits all this ill-timed candour, except 1 [Bishop Fisher is here stating the opinion of others rather than his own : “ Multos fortasse mo vet Indulgentiis istis non usque adeo fidere, quod earum usus in Ecclesia videatur recentior, et admodum sero apud Christianos repertus. Quibus ego respondeo , non certo constare a quo primum tradi cceperint : fuit tamen nonnullus earum usus, ut aiunt, apud Bomanos vetustissimus ; quod ex Stationibus intelligi potest.” This passage is transcribed from the work of Polydore Vergil, De Rerum Inventoribus , Lib. viii. Cap. i. p. 484. Basil. 1550. It is a remarkable fact that the entire citation from Bishop Fisher, and Vergil’s words which accompany it, (in all thirty-six lines,) have been sentenced to expurgation by the Vatican Index in 1607, and by that of Cardinal Zapata, in 1632: an instance of the watchful jealousy of the Church of Borne respecting questions raised as to the date of the introduction of her novelties. — Gf.] [The entire passage from Polydore Vergil, including the citation from Fisher, will be found in Bishop Taylor’s Dissuasive , Part ii. B. ii. sect. ii. p. 391. Ed. Cardwell.] 2 [It must be acknowledged that Cardinal Cajetan’s expressions have reference to the difficulty of tracing the rise of Indulgences. He asserts in the same place that “ Indulgentiarum gratia antiqua est in Christi Ecclesia, et non nova adinventio.” — G-.] LETT. II.] ON ROMANISM. 41 to excite strange heretical surmises, when the infallible Coun¬ cil, “ Spiritu Sancto adjuvante,” pronounces that the Church “ hujusmodi potestate divinitus sibi tradita, antiquissimis etiam temporibus, usa fuerit;” which, unless the Council be guilty of the grossest deception, we must, of course, understand of indulgences in the only sense in which they were at the time contested. Of even the characteristic Roman doctrine of the physical annihilation of the bread and wine in the Holy Eucharist, the able Franciscan, Alphonsus de Castro, admits that “ de transubstantiatione panis [in corpus Christi] rara est in antiquis scriptoribus mentio.” (. Advers . Ilceres. viii. [verb. Indulgentia]); and the oracular Master of the Sentences, in a well-known passage (iv. 11), declares that he cannot venture to pronounce anything definite on the subject, and would ad¬ vise all pious persons to avoid the inquiry1. While the very learned Jesuit, Sirmondus, informs us that Paschasius “ ita primum explicuit genuinum Ecclesise Catholic® sensum ut viam casteris aperuit2.” — Vit. Paschas. But, once more, how 1 [Peter Lombard’s words, “ definire non snificio,” are not to be understood as intimating a doubt of the truth of the doctrine of Transubstantiation ; for in the preceding sentence he had explicitly declared, “substantiam panis in corpus, vinique sub- stantiam in sanguinem converti.” The question discussed in this Distinction is “ De modis conversionis : ” and the advice about avoiding an inquiry into a mysterious subject is simply this; “ Mysterium fidei credi salubriter potest, investigari salubriter non potest;” an observation which is made in the following page, re¬ lative to the assertion that the body and blood of Christ are not increased by the continued exercise of the sacerdotal office. — G.] [In this extract we must read “primus” and “ ap emeriti' The passage is : “ in eoque ” (scil. Libro) “ genuinum Ecclesise 42 LETTERS [LETT. II. can the pacific counsels of Lombard, or tlie plain admissions of many other Boman divines (to whose opinions, concerning the obscurity of early testimonies on the whole subject, Mr. Newman appears in no small degree inclined, pp. 19, 20), as to the absence from antiquity of any unequivocal evidence to a belief in the physical change of substance, avail against the distinct assertion of the Council, that the very special and particular mode of change, and no other, which is now styled Catholics sensum ita primus explicuit, ut viam caeteris aperuerit, qui de eodem argumento multi postea scripsere.” (Sirmondi Opp. iv. 448. Yenet. 1728.) It is scarcely fair to interpret this description of St. Badbert’s work otherwise than with relation to the manner in which he treated of the Sacramental question, in consequence of it having been “a nonnullis temere jactata” in the reign of Ludovicus Pius. Bellarmin’s language (. Be Scriptt. Eccl. ad an. 820), which is frequently misquoted, is to the same effect : “ Hie auctor primus fuit, qui serio et copiose scripsit de veritate corporis et sanguinis Domini in Eucharistia, contra Bertramum Presbyterum, qui fuit ex primis qui earn in dubium revocarunt.” — G. ] [Sinnondus and Bell arm in seem to intimate that Paschasius first reduced to dogmatic form what had always been implicitly believed. Mabillon suggests a very different explanation of the strangeness of his statements in the eyes of his contemporaries; namely, that they had lost the true doctrine once held by the Fathers, and now restored by him : “ Ante Paschasii librum confi- tebantur Catholici omnes Christi Domini verum corpus, verumque sanguinem revera existere in Eucharistia, itemque panem et vinum in ilia converti; at nemo Paschasii tempore illud corpus esse idem quod ex Maria Yirgine natum est, tarn directe asserere auditus fuerat. Id quidem antea ex Patribus tradiderant non pauci, sed ignota erant illo sevo, aut certe non observata, eorum hac de re testimonia.” — Yid. Du Pin, Yol. ii. p. 80, English Trans.] LETT. II.] ON ROMANISM. 43 “ transubstantiation,” was that which “ persuasion semper in Ecclesia Dei fuit” (Sess. xiii. cap. 4). Nay, some of the con¬ temporary and post-Tridentine schoolmen (of course without the slightest authority, after the conciliar decision), — members of “ those modern schools in and through which,” as Mr. Newman, with incomparable coolness, observes, “ the subse¬ quent developments of Catholic doctrines have proceeded” (p. 333), — have at times, in the stress of argument, ventured to approach the views of our author. “This,” says Bishop Patrick (. Discourse about Tradition , Part ii.) , “is the doctrine of Salmeron, and others of his fellows1, that ‘ the doctrine of faith admits of additions in essential things / for all things were not taught by the Apostles, but such as were then neces¬ sary and fit for the salvation of believers;’ by which means,” as he adds, “ we can never know when the Christian religion will be perfected.” Indeed, Mr. Newman might possibly find some traces of his doctrine in an authority which he, I doubt not, ranks among the very highest in the calendar of Roman hagiology, the meek, unworldly “ Saint Gregory VII.” “ Primitiva Ecclesia,” observes that Pope, “ multa dissimida- 1 Bishop Patrick’s assertion is no exaggeration; e. g. u Non omnibus omnia dedit Deus, ut qucelibet cetas suis gaudeat revela- tionibus .” — Salmer. In Ejnst. ad Roman. Diss. lvii. “ Unius Augustini doctrina assumptions B. Deiparae cultum in Ecclesiam introduxitd — Ibid. [The “ Liber de Assumptione beatse Virginis Marise,” here alluded to, is unquestionably spurious. — G.] [It is a sermon of some author of the twelfth century or thereabouts. — Yid. Du Pin, Yol. i. p. 404, English Trans.] Mr. Newman may compare this with his citation from this Jesuit, in p. 321, in proof of his having held an opinion of the supremacy of Holy Scripture. 44 LETTERS [LETT. II. verat, quce a sanctis Patribus, postmodum firmata Christiani- tate et religione crescente, subtili examinatione correcta sunt." (In bis Answer to the Duke of Bohemia, inter Epp.) Though, on the other hand, it must be confessed, his great namesake Gregory I., traced his developments to a different and more direct source. To an inquirer who bluntly asks how it hap¬ pens that, at the opening of the seventh century, “ tam multa de animabus clarescunt quae ante latuerunt ,” or, in Mr. New¬ man’s phraseology, how “ Purgatory was opened upon the mind of the Church,” the worthy Pope replies by referring the fact to the approaching end of the world: “ quantum prge- sens sseculum propinquat ad finem , tantum futurum speculum signis manifestioribus aperitur” (Dial.1 iv. 40, 41); a view of the case which, possibly, by some profound mystical interpre¬ tation (such as Mr. Newman in this volume advocates so strenuously) , may be made to square with the theory of deve¬ lopment; but the very allegation of which (with the numerous visions and supernatural revelations likewise affirmed) would, at first sight, and to superficial reasoners, appear to demon¬ strate how very little the patrons themselves of the innovations on Christian doctrine, knew of the process by which our deeper theorist would account for their proceedings. The history, indeed, of the successive “expedients” (to employ Mr. Newman’s term) for reconciling the Boman faith with primitive doctrine would be, had I time or space here to pursue it, exceedingly curious and instructive. It is not gene¬ rally observed (what Bishop Stillingfleet has very clearly 1 [The genuineness of these Dialogues cannot be safely as¬ sumed. — G.] LETT. II.] ON ROMANISM. 45 established), that the distinct and formal assertion of Un¬ broken Apostolic Tradition, as a separate source of articles of belief is itself, even in the Roman Church, comparatively modern. The great divine whom I have named has demon¬ strated this point convincingly, from the history of the discus¬ sions in the Council of Trent itself, as reported by Pallavicini ; from the assertions of the divines of the Roman Church pre¬ vious to the Council for many centuries; from the express statements of the Roman Canon Law, and from ancient offices of the Roman Church, and the glossers who have commented on them. Exactly in proportion as innovations grew more and more irreconcileable with Holy Scripture, we can trace the slow, gradual elevation of a vague, undefined tradition to a sort of co-ordinate authority with the written Word of God1, until at length, in the Council of Trent, which had been pre- 1 Perhaps the first complete authoritative appeal to Tradition, in tacit preference to the written Word (though even then not distinctly alleged as an absolutely separate ground for faith), may be considered to have occurred in support of the peculiarly unscriptural innovation of Image- Worship. “ We,’ say the Bishops of the Second Nicene Council, “ following the divine instructions of the holy Fathers, and the traditions of the Catholic Church, decree, with all accuracy, &c., that the venerable and holy images shall be placed in the holy churches of God. Thus, the instruction of our holy Fathers is established, to wit, the tradition of the Catholic Church, &c.” — Art. vii. [Act. vii. — The sentences here cited are not consecutive. It was an express declaration of this Council, while it boasted of its not adding to, or taking from, the truth of the Gospel, “ omnes Ecclesiasticas, sive scripto, sive sine scripto , sancitas nobis Traditiones, illibate servamus.” (Concill. Gen. iii. 661. Romte, 1612.) — G.] Yet at 46 LETTERS [LETT. II. ceded by fierce Protestant discussions of the Rule of Faith, this convenient voucher was deliberately exalted to share the same throne1; and an expedient which itself grew out of inno¬ vation was made to authenticate the innovations that origi¬ nated it. These imaginary Apostolic Traditions for modern Romanism, were supposed to be partly oral, partly preserved in the written records of the Church; the latter having been long before (a fact now notorious, and admitted by all parties) flagrantly interpolated and corrupted in such instances as the forged Decretals2, and the numerous medieval treatises attri¬ buted to the early writers. In either sense of it, the plea of Apostolic Tradition in behalf of the mediaeval dogmas could only pass current with the uninformed classes, and could never be expected to last very long. The shrewd and daring Jesuits, men fitted to grapple with the intellect and learning of the age, while making desperate efforts (Turrianus3, &c.) to that time, and long after, the doctrine appears very undecided. For instance, at the Fourth Council [The eighth General Council, probably the thirty-sixth Synod of Constantinople, was the fourth there held, to which the name of (Ecumenical is commonly at¬ tached. — G.] of Constantinople (A. D. 869), a tradition is claimed to be obligatory, delivered “ etiam a quolibet Deiloquo patre ac magistro” (Can. i.) — an extension inadmissible on almost any conceivable theory. 1 “ Traditiones ipsas, &c., pari pietatis ajfectu ac reverentia suscipit et veneratur.” — Sess. iv. [For an account of these Decretals , vid. infra , p. 48.] \Turrianus, or Francis de la Torre , a Jesuit of Herrera, in the diocese of Yalentia, in Spain, published a work in defence of the forged Decretals, entitled, u Adversus Magdeburgenses Centuriatores pro Canonibus Apostolorum, et Epistolis decreta- LETT. II.] ON ROMANISM. 47 vindicate the genuineness of the forgeries, plainly manifest, by glimpses of the very views now given to the public, how little they really relied for permanent success on these spu¬ rious testimonies; though, fettered as they were by the un¬ manageable decisions of Trent, they were forced to tender a simulated allegiance to the doctrine of continuous primitive Tradition. But now, when, before the light of a just and honest criticism, the gloomy spectres of Decretal and Canon, that so long stalked through the twilight of the Middle Ages, have for ever vanished, and even the most reckless controver¬ sialist is ashamed to recall them, — when, as Mr. Newman de¬ plores, “ infidelity is in a more hopeful position as regards Christianity” (he means, more hopeful of gaining its object), because “ the facts of revealed religion present a less compact and orderly front to the attacks of its enemies,” and this again, because “ the state of things is not as it was when an appeal lay to the supposed works of the Areopagite1, or to the libus Pontificum Apostolicorum, Libri quinque.” Florent. 1572. Gieseler, ii. 335, in Clark’s For. Theol. Lib.~\ 1 [These writings, ascribed to St. Dionysius of Athens, are now universally admitted to be spurious. Thorndike supposes them to have been composed in the fourth century ( Works, in Lib. Anglo-Catli. Theology , Vol. i. Part i. p. 321). Le Quien regards them as the work of a Monophysite heretic. Du Pin considers that they must be subsequent to the fourth century, from various internal evidences. They were unknown in the west until much later. “ The Grecian Emperor, Michael Balbus, sent to Lewis the Meek, in the year 824, a copy of the pretended works of Dionysius the Areopagite, which fatal present kindled imme¬ diately the holy flame of mysticism in the western provinces.” — 48 LETTERS [lett. ii. primitive Decretals1, or to St. Dionysius’s answers to St. Paul2, Moslieim, Eccles. Hist. Cent. ix. The work was translated into Latin by the order of Lewis. A new translation was made by John Scot Erigena, at the request of Charles the Bald, a very interesting account of which is given by him in a letter to the emperor, which is preserved in Ussher’s Sylloge Veterum Epistola- rum Hibernicarum. Works, Yol. iv. p. 476. Edit. Elrington.] 1 [For an able sketch of the vast and permanent effect of these Decretals in supporting the encroachments of the Papacy, see Allies’ Church of England cleared from the charge of Schism , Ch. vii. sect. 2 ; and Gieseler, Eccles . Hist. ii. 330, et seqq., in Clark's Foreign Theol. Lib. “ A new canonical jurisprudence began to be introduced into the Gallican Church, as well as into the other provinces of the west (from the year 836) by the invention for that purpose of the supposititious Letters of the ancient Roman Pontiffs, in which there are a great number of regulations altogether opposed to the statutes of the ancient Canons. These were edited in a collection of Canons which is commonly attri¬ buted to Isidore Mercator, which Riculph, Bishop of Mayence, brought from Spain into Gaul .... It is indeed certain, and beyond all doubt, according to the judgment of all learned men, and also the Cardinals Baronius and Bellarmin, that those letters of the ancient Pontiffs, namely, Clement, Anterus, Euari- stus, Telesphorus, Callistus, Julius, Damasus, and generally all those which precede the times of Siricius (384 — 398), and Inno¬ cent, were fabricated by this Isidore.” — De Marca, De Concord ., quoted by Allies. Pope Nicholas I. warmly maintained the authority of these Decretals, because they sanctioned his assump¬ tion in the celebrated dispute between the French Bishops and Rothadus, Bishop of Soissons, who appealed to the Pope against the sentence of his brethren. “ He wrote a large letter to all the Bishops to oblige them, to receive Rothadus ; and taking this occa¬ sion to greaten his authority, he claims as his due that all causes of the bishops should be brought to the Holy See. He upholds LETT. II. J ON ROMANISM. 49 or to the Coena Domini3 of St. Cyprian4” (p. 28); in other words, when, according to Mr. Newman, Christianity is in great danger, because she can no longer employ in her de¬ fence the most execrable weapons that hypocrisy and false¬ hood ever invented; in this alarming state of things for “ Christianity,” new measures must be adopted; Apostolic this pretence by the false Decretals, which he vouches to be genuine, ancient, and very authentic. This letter is dated J anuary. Indict. 13. A.D. 866.” — Du Pin, Yol. ii. p. 62. The Magdeburgh Centuriators first gave copious proof of their spuriousness, which was admitted by Bellarmine and Baronius. They were defended by Turrianus; but “ the question was decided by Dav. Blondelli Pseudo-Isidorus et Turrianus vapulantes. Genev. 1628.” — Yid. Gieseler, Ecc. Hist. ii. p. 341, in Clark’s Foreign Theolog. Lib.~\ 2 [Not “St. Paul,” but “Paul;” for the allusion evidently is to the disputable Answers of St. Dionysius of Alexandria to ten propositions of the heretic Paul of Samosata. Yid. Tillemont, iv. Notes, pp. 42 — 3. ed. Brux. Yalesii Annot. in Lib. vii. Euseb. Cap. xxx. — G.] 3 [It is very well known that the tract Be Coena Domini is the sixth of twelve treatises Be Cardinalibus Operibus Christi , written by Arnoldus Carnotensis, Abbas Bome-vallis, about the year 1160.— G.] 4 On reperusing the entire of this extraordinary passage, I think I can plainly perceive that it was meant (though somewhat covertly), in anticipation of objections from the Romanist divines themselves. This is instructive, in relation to what has already been observed of the absence of all ecclesiastical authority for the new system. Meanwhile, it must be remembered, that Mr. New¬ man has solemnly committed his hazardous theory to the “judg¬ ment of the Church” (Pref. p. 11), and, utterly subversive as it is of all her theological bulwarks for centuries, “the Church” has not ventured to discountenance it. 4 50 LETTERS [LETT. II. Tradition has had its day, and the Roman Proteus exhibits himself in a form not only different from, but absolutely incompatible with, the argumentative grounds on which, by infallible authority , the belief of centuries has been built. Apostolic Tradition, itself a comparatively modern pretext, slowly retires, and makes way for Mediaeval Development. To the brief consideration of this latest “ variation of Romanism” I now proceed. I am, however, well aware how arid and uninviting the cold process of argumentative dissection must appear, when contrasted with the commanding pretensions and engaging brilliancies of a speculation like Mr. Newman’s. Probably nothing would wholly destroy the effect of such a work but some equally clever rival theory. An intellectual romance of this kind is, in this respect, like a religious or political novel; you cannot meet it effectively by mere argument; to put it down at all you must win the public ear and fancy by a counter novel. Whether it would be very difficult to string together an equally plausible series of opposing hypotheses, I shall not undertake to pronounce; I am certainly not about, for my own humble part, to attempt the unequal contest. I do not undertake to present Mr. Newman with a lofty and attractive system like his own; unfolded with all the pomp of scientific method, and branching into its infinity of applica¬ tions and illustrations. Hypotheses non fingo. I do not pre¬ tend to have penetrated all the minutiae of the providential government of the Church; nor can I dare to approach a sub¬ ject so awful, except in the cautious and careful guise either (so far as it is at all practicable) of demonstrated theory — laws LETT. II.] ON ROMANISM. 51 patiently educed from distinct and ascertained facts, or of humble and confessed conjecture. Indeed, Mr. Newman him¬ self furnishes me with a warning on this head, which it may not be the less prudent to adopt, that its author has himself rested the main pillar of his theory on neglecting it. “ Some¬ times,” he tells us, with evident disapprobation, “ an attempt has been made to ascertain ‘ the leading idea,’ as it has been called, of Christianity: a remarkable essay, as directed to¬ wards a divine religion, when, even in the existence of the works of man, the task is beyond us.” — p. 34. In which point of view unquestionably the author’s own is an exceed¬ ingly “remarkable Essay,” inasmuch as its principal test of genuine development, and that on whose application the greatest amount of labour is bestowed, consists in the “ pre¬ servation of the idea ’ of Christianity, which it is here pre¬ viously pronounced chimerical to profess to determine at all. Let me first attempt to communicate some conception (of course a very faint and ineffective one, within so limited a compass) of the course of the author’s argument. “ The Development of an Idea,” according to Mr. New¬ man, is “ the germination, growth, and perfection of some living, that is, influential, truth, or apparent truth, in the mind of men, during a sufficient period.” — p. 37. And as this period closes, or advances to its close, “ the system or body of thought thus laboriously gained will, after all, be only the adequate representation of the original idea.” — p. 36. The necessary characteristic of this process is, that “ an idea cannot develop at all except either by destroying or modifying and incorporating with itself, existing modes of acting and 4—2 LETTERS [LETT. II. 52 thinking.” And as it modifies, so also “it is modified or at least influenced by the state of things in which it is carried out, and depends in various ways on the circumstances around it.” — p. 38. From this (which seems intelligible enough) Mr. Newman next proceeds to specify the hinds of develop¬ ment, and, after rejecting certain literal or physical significa¬ tions, he insists chiefly on what he styles political, p. 45; lo¬ gical, p. 48; historical, p. 49; moral, p. 50; and metaphysical, p. 54, developments. I cannot say much for the perspicuity of his eloquent exposition of these classes, which principally consists in a rapid aggregate of illustrations, the precise point of which is not in all instances very obvious to readers of a fancy less excursive than the gifted author’s. It is not diffi¬ cult, however, for such readers to perceive that the class of developments with which the work is likely to make them most familiar are those which it styles “moral.” “ Moral developments are not properly matters of contro¬ versy [a convenient maxim, as the reader will perceive, when admitted to the intended applications of this law or class of developments] , but are natural and personal, substituting what is congruous, desirable , pious, decorous, generous , for strictly logical inference.” — p. 50. And after quoting a passage of Bishop Butler, which he considers applicable to his argument, and stating from the “Analogy,” as an instance of a “moral development,” the obligation of worship which at once, even without express revelation, arises from the knowledge of the deity of the Second and Third Persons of the Trinity1, he 1 It is observable, that the very passage which Mr. Newman cites from the Analogy contains (in his own quotation) a quali- LETT. II.] ON ROMANISM. 53 adds (an analogical corollary which would have somewhat astonished the great philosophic theologian): “Here is a de¬ velopment of doctrine into worship. In like manner the doc¬ trine of the Beatification of the Saints has been developed into their cultus ; of the fleoroKos, or Mother of Glod, into hyperdulia; and of the Beal Presence into adoration of the Host.” Not content with this satisfactory deduction, Mr. Newman proceeds to observe, that there is a “ converse de¬ velopment” that still more completely overleaps the bounds of “strict logical inference;” a development of feelings into the assumption of Objects; and (for I have no room here to analyse his other examples, and hasten at once to the main scope of his work) of this we have manifest and irresistible theological instances in “ the doctrine of post-baptismal sin, and the usage of prayers for the faithful departed, developing into the doctrine of Purgatory.” Accordingly, at the close of a section in which he care¬ fully and scrupulously separates faith and reason, he observes that to those who hold this safe and dignified view of a Christian’s faith (p. 337) “ arguments will come to be con- fication which is all but a direct contradiction of the unbridled license of “moral development” he contends for in religious wor¬ ship. Even of such unquestioned duties as the worship of Beings who are themselves the very and eternal God, Bishop Butler adds : “ In what external manner this inward worship is to be expressed is a matter of pure revealed command .” Whereas, if the worship of holy men and women deceased be but a mere development of the Church’s feelings , the “ external manner in which this inward worship is to be expressed” must, it is pretty plain, be still more utterly resolvable into the same shadowy original. 54 LETTERS [LETT. II. sidered rather as representations and persuasives than as logi¬ cal proofs; and developments as the spontaneous, gradual, and ethical growth, not as intentional and arbitrary deductions, of existing opinions.” On a basis so wide as this, it obviously needs not an architect of Mr. Newman’s powers to raise any superstructure he pleases. After thus explaining the varieties of development, our author proceeds to investigate the tests by which a genuine development may be distinguished from a corruption. A multitude of illustrations, more or less applicable, make up the bulk of this discussion ; the general result of which, upon any candid reader, will, I am quite satisfied, be a conviction of the utter uncertainty of rules and applications so vague, shifting, and flexible; and the absolute unfitness of such a method of inquiry for any man honestly desirous to know and adhere to the truth in the most momentous of all human con¬ cerns. Indeed, of the first and most important of them all, the author admits that it is “ not of easy application in par¬ ticular cases,” and that it implies what “ often will lead to mere theorizing” — p. 66; requiring, in truth, nothing less than (I have alluded to the point already) an accurate and complete knowledge of “ the essential idea of Christianity;” in other words, requiring what the loftiest faculties, and (what is better) the deepest habitual spirituality, will be the first to confess themselves poorly competent to grasp: and what, if grasped, would surely presuppose the point already settled, to which it is here made subordinate; for, what further has he to seek in the way of religious belief and knowledge who has already mastered, in the clear and perfect degree required for LETT. II.] ON ROMANISM. 55 a secure application of this theory, “ the essential Idea of Christianity?” With regard to these tests, in general, they are better considered in their application in a subsequent part of the volume. It is there the lofty, various, and discursive style of the author can best be fixed and interpreted. Mr. Newman’s composition has great rhetorical merits, and among them that of often producing a strong general impression, without leav¬ ing anything very definite, in either fact or reasoning, to which the impression can be distinctly traced. With such an adversary it is always of importance to come as speedily as possible to the specific case, or cases, to which all these im¬ posing abstractions are skilfully meant to be subservient. Moreover, I presume, it is not the abstract theorist, but the Romanist polemic, that chiefly interests the public at present in Mr. Newman. Well had it been, if his soaring specula¬ tions had for ever remained unembodied in their native regions of air; nor thus descended to earth and taken tangible form, in the vain attempt to give soul and spirit to the dull and lifeless dogmas in which the second half of his volume endeavours to realize them! Having enlarged on the tests which he considers adequate to distinguish between genuine development and corruption, Mr. Newman next argues for the antecedent probability of developments in Christianity . This he considers he has esta¬ blished from the necessity of the case; from the history of sects and parties in religion; and from the analogy and ex¬ ample of Scripture. Such is his own summary of his antece¬ dent argument (p. 113), which I purposely adopt, in order to 56 LETTERS [LETT. II. avoid misapprehension of a style of disquisition which is cer¬ tainly somewhat liable to it. He adds the general analogy of developments in the natural and moral world. Your limited space will not allow me to extract the whole of this argument, which extends to twenty pages; and I should unfairly risk an effect, which so largely depends on power of style, by any awkward abridgments of mine. Your more thoughtful readers will, however, be probably at no loss to conjecture the general purport of the argument, when they remember the exceed¬ ingly vague and indefinite sense in which Mr. Newman em¬ ploys the leading term of his theory, and that he finds himself at liberty to cite nearly every variety of successive change to which the word development can be, with any plausibility, applied, as witnessing to the validity of his hypothesis of doctrinal development in the Christian faith. From this he proceeds to contend for the probability of a developing authority in Christianity, a supposition which I trust hereafter to show you is, by a singular combination of logical embarrassments, at once absolutely necessary to, and absolutely inconsistent with, his entire theory. And he then endeavours to establish a presumption in favour of the existing (Roman) developments of Christianity, as being its genuine products. And with this the abstract or theoretical part of his work concludes. I have just observed that it is, in a great measure, by the indefinite use of language, especially of the term Develop¬ ment itself (notwithstanding much apparent accuracy of dis¬ tinction), that Mr. Newman gives colour and plausibility to his hypothesis. Let me, in all humility, endeavour to remedy LETT. II. ] ON ROMANISM. 57 this; and without professing to state anything very new, very profound, or very complete, on the subject, let me, as the sim¬ plest way of opening the question, try to offer some brief answer to the problem — Are there admissible developments of doctrine in Christianity? Unquestionably there are. But let the term be understood in its legitimate sense or senses to warrant that answer; and let it be carefully observed how much, and how little, the admission really involves. All varieties of real development, so far as this argument is concerned, may probably be reduced to two general heads, intellectual developments, and practical developments of Chris¬ tian doctrine. By “intellectual developments I understand logical inferences (and that whether for belief or practical dis¬ cipline) from doctrines, or from the comparison of doctrines; which, in virtue of the great dialectical maxim, must be true, if legitimately deduced from what is true. “ Practical de¬ velopments” are the living , actual , historical results of those true doctrines (original or inferential), when considered as influential on all the infinite varieties of human kind ; the doctrines embodied in action; the doctrines modifying human nature in ways infinitely various, correspondently to the infi¬ nite variety of subjects on whom they operate, though ever strictly preserving, amid all their operations for effectually transforming and renewing mankind, their own unchanged identity. Intellectual Developments, it is thus obvious, are in the same sphere with the principles out of which they spring: they are (even when regarded with a view to rite and practice) unmingled doctrine still : they are propositions. Practical 53 LETTERS [LETT. II. Developments, on the other hand, essentially consist of two very different, though connected, elements; divine doctrine, and human nature as affected by it ; they are historical events. I am not aware of any thing reasonably to be called a de¬ velopment of Christian doctrine which is not reducible to either of these classes, the Logical or the Historical. Let me exemplify. 1. In the former case, revealed doctrines may be com¬ pared with one another, or with the doctrines of “natural religion;” or the consequences of revealed doctrines may be compared with other doctrines, or with their consequences, and so on in great variety: the combined ultimate result being what is called a System of Theology. What the first princi¬ ples of Christian truth really are, or how obtained, is not now the question. But in all cases equally, no doctrine has any claim whatever to be received as obligatory on belief, unless it be either itself some duly authorized principle, or a logical deduction, through whatever number of stages, from some such principle of religion. Such only are legitimate develop¬ ments of doctrine for the belief of man ; and such alone can the Church of Christ — the Witness and Conservator of His Truth — -justly commend to the consciences of her members. To take one or two examples that present themselves at the first moment : — it is thus, that, when we have learned, on the infallible authority of inspiration, that the Lord Jesus Christ is himself Very God, and when we have learned from the same authority, the tremendous fact of His Atoning Sa¬ crifice, we could collect (even were Scripture silent) the priceless value of the Atonement thus made ; the wondrous LETT. II.] ON ROMANISM. 59 humiliation therein involved ; the unspeakable love it ex¬ hibited ; the mysteriously awful guilt of sin ; which would again reflect a gloomy light upon the equally mysterious eternity of punishment: — and similar deductions of immense practical importance. These would be just and legitimate developments of Christian doctrine. But in truth, as our own liability to error is extreme, especially when immersed in the holy obscurity (“the cloud on the mercy-seat”) of such mysteries as these, we have reason to thank God that there appear to be few doctrinal developments of any importance which are not from the first drawn out and delivered on divine authority to our acceptance. Or again — to take another instance, the evidence of which the Author of the work before me has most lamentably la¬ boured to involve in doubt and perplexity: — When Three Beings are, on divine authority, represented to us as acting with mysterious, but real, distinctness of operation, yet each possessing the attributes of supreme Godhead — that Godhead which is, and can be, but One — we can scarcely be said to “ de¬ velop,” we do little more than express these combined truths, when we acknowledge, and bend in adoration before, the Ever- Blessed Trinity. And we can easily perceive, that wherever or whenever there may have been, or is, any difficulty in arriving at this truth, it is not as if in the nature of things this truth could be had only by long processes of conjecture and slow successive contemplation, — it is not as if after it had been revealed in Holy Writ, men must err and stumble on the road to receive it, and pass through a discipline of centuries before they can arrive at admitting that Father, Son, and no LETTERS [LETT. II. Holy Spirit are One God ; but simply from the fact (granting for a moment any sucli supposed or imputed charge of error), that the numerous and melancholy causes that impede the perception of valuable truth in so many other departments of human knowledge, may be conceived more or less to have operated in this, incomparably the most precious of all. Or again — to come somewhat nearer the favourite region of false and spurious “development” — when we remember the Divinity of Christ, combined in one personality with His manhood, at His Incarnation through the Holy Virgin, we can readily deduce (with the Angel) that she was indeed eminently “blessed among women,” or (with herself) that she ought fitly to be “called blessed” by “all generations.” We cannot deduce by exactly the same process, that that blessed Person has been for eighteen centuries the “Queen of Heaven,” exalted above every created thing, and to be worshipped with the veneration due to a being possessing all of Godhead, ex¬ cept its absolute infinity, as Mr. Newman proclaims (p. 406), that she is (as the present Bishop of Pome not long since declared, from the inmost sanctuary of infallible truth), “Our greatest hope, yea, the entire ground of our hope1!” I have thus instanced what may exemplify legitimate “intellectual developments.” Such justly carry authority, for such bring with them their own credentials. To make such comparisons and conclusions with accuracy, is, doubtless, a fruit of divine favour, blessing the just researches of faith (Prov. ii. 4, &c.) ; to perceive some of them more prominently than others, may be the characteristic of different ages or 1 Encyclical Letter, 1832. LETT. II.] ON ROMANISM. 61 crises in the history of theology, and unquestionably has ever been the object of a very special providence in the divine government of the Church1; to receive such conclusions with practical effect on heart, spirit, and life, is above all, the peculiar and supernatural gift of God; but as truths of theo-. logy, evolved from its revealed principles, such developments are, in all cases, since the close of the Canon of Scripture, commended to us, through the ministry of enlightened and sanctified reason. 2. The other class I have called “Practical Develop¬ ments’ ’ of Christianity; the innumerable instances which are furnished in the history of the Church, of the effects of revealed truth upon individuals, nations, manners, laws, in¬ stitutions, and the like. These form a profoundly interesting- subject of meditation; beyond all doubt their course, whe¬ ther in purity or corruption, is (like the former) under the special and over-ruling government of Providence ; doubt¬ less too, they frequently suggest valuable rules of Christian discipline, valuable results of Christian experience, noble examples of Christian fortitude; nay, sometimes tend, to a cautious, careful, and reverential inquirer, to throw some light upon God’s own purposes, and correct fallacious antici¬ pations as to His designs2; but they can have, simply as 1 I presume I need scarcely remind any reader of the number¬ less fine and profound suggestions on this interesting topic, that abound in the Remains of the late Mr. Knox. 2 I would venture to refer to a Letter in this J ournal (occa¬ sioned by some acute objections to a Visitation Sermon), in, I think, the latter part of 1842, or beginning of the following year, 62 LETTERS [LETT. II. historical events, no authority in matter of faith, and they are utterly inadequate to warrant new articles of belief. The reason is abundantly obvious from what I have already ob¬ served in introducing them. In the production of every such “practical development,” there are two elements conjointly at work, the truth, which is divine, and the recipient, who is human : the conclusion cannot be stronger than the weaker premiss ; the result (which is the development itself) cannot be trusted. That men in high authority in the Church have felt, after the lapse of centuries, ever and anon, a tacit, growing tendency (such as Mr. Newman so seductively por¬ trays) to incorporate some new tenet into the primitive system of belief, can persuade us to credit their “tendencies,” only when we believe these men to have possessed the purity and the intelligence of angels. And if we are to argue from the analogy of providential dispensations in general, it is certain God never yet sent a gift into the world which man did not deteriorate in the using it. The treatment of Him who was to us the Gift of all perfections embodied in one, is but the master instance of an universal principle; the primeval revela¬ tion of Paradise was corrupted; the patriarchal truth was corrupted; the Jewish religion was corrupted (and what appa¬ rently absolute promises of infallible guidance had Israel!); human reason and conscience, a sort of interior revelation, are perpetually corrupted. To deny the analogy in the one merely as helping to illustrate what I mean by this clause, which I have now no space to expand. [This Letter is reprinted in the volume of Sermons of Professor Butler, published some months ago.] LETT. II.] ON ROMANISM. 63 case now before us, is to assume the Roman infallibility, which cannot, of course, be admitted without distinct and separate proof ; and which, in point of fact, is absolutely inconsistent with the long course of previous weakness, uncer¬ tainty, and error, which the theory of development supposes. But some one of these admitted innovations on the pri¬ mitive belief and practice is, we will suppose, “a practical development” of comparatively early growth, is of very general prevalence, is of very long continuance ; have we not, in these characteristics of an innovation, some proof of its claims to being a genuine product of Christian principles and doctrines? The observations just made at once answer the question. It is manifest that if there are principles capable of development in Christianity, there are parallel principles, equally capable of development , in frail and erring human nature. Both elements are busy in the history of the Church of Christ; and we have, first, and before we can concede one tittle to the demand, sternly and rigorously to determine, by appeal to some extrinsic standard, of which is the innovation a product ? When the advocate of certain admitted innova¬ tions found in the Roman theology, pleads the universality or long continuance of these errors as establishing their claim to the dignity and authority of truth, he commits the astonishing oversight of forgetting that the identity of human nature, and hence the similarity of human weaknesses, already furnish an abundant ground for anticipating the very result he pleads. “ Christianity,” he cries, “must itself tend to this result, for it has done so, soon, and generally, and for a long period.” “Human nature,” I reply, “is inherently apt to lead to this 04 LETTERS [LETT. II. result, and therefore we need not marvel that it has done so, soon, and generally, and for a long period.” “I undertake,” proclaims Mr. Newman, “to account for these novelties (for I fully admit them to be such) out of the original fact of Chris¬ tianity.” “I undertake” (his critic will be permitted humbly to reply) “to account for them with infinitely more probability, illustrated by the very history of the innovations themselves, and supported by a host of analogies in every other department of religious history since the Fall, out of the inherent tenden¬ cies of human nature.” “I will vindicate them,” declares the new theorist, “out of Christianity, a fact absolutely unique in the world’s history, and from its leading Idea (which I confess it is presumptuous for any man to profess to master).” — “And I,” is the reply, “will show them to be the manifest growth of that human nature with which every man is familiar every hour of his life, and of which all the volumes of all history are but repositories of the true and unquestionable developments.” This is the first stage of the pleadings; no equitable judge will deny that the rejoinder is full, fair, and to the point : issue, therefore, must now be joined, and the question as to the real source of the innovation determined by appealing at once to some standard of truth distinct from either party's allegation , separate, and incor¬ ruptible. Nor could the pleader deserve for one moment the attention of the tribunal to which he addresses his argument, should he refuse to advance beyond his first position, and, in the fancied security of his own private and arbitrary hypo¬ thesis, call aloud and at once for the judgment of the court in his favour. LETT. II.] ON ROMANISM. 60 For example, — Man — and, above all, southern Man — has a strong tendency to a sensuous religion ; no fact is, on the whole, authenticated by a more universal experience. The need is provided for in exactly the right degree by Him Who “knew what was in man,” in the original draft of Chris¬ tianity. But it is antecedently most improbable that, without direct Divine interposition (of course not to be assumed at this stage of the argument), the mass of men will limit themselves accurately within the appointed boundaries. If, then, this tendency begin, in some form or other, early to show itself, it is precisely what we might anticipate ; for the tendency was latently present, even when most restrained. If it begin generally to show itself, unhappily it is equally what we might expect ; for the tendency was not that of one man or two men, but of Human Nature itself; and, as before observed (for it is most important), specially and peculiarly of the section of human nature — the countries, clime, and people in which the holy religion was first propagated, and which thence exercised so remarkable and almost necessary an in¬ fluence upon all its subsequent history among other races — the imaginative, symbolizing, pomp-loving children of the South. If the tendency continue long to operate, we can surely be just as little surprised, for it has a ground in man as permanent as his imagination and feelings. Not to insist at present upon the obvious solution for the duration of all such unhappy phenomena in the fact, that the great Catholic prin¬ ciple of adhering to what has once heen fixed and transmitted , which, in the fundamentals of faith, has ever been so invalu¬ able a protection to every branch of the Church, must work 5 66 LETTERS [LETT. II. to perpetuate circumstantial error, when such has unfortu¬ nately gained currency, and has secured the authority of commanding names. No universality , no permanence of admitted innovation, therefore, can simply, and of itself, authorize it. It may give a claim to respectful inquiry — no more. Whatever is not originally contained in the standard of truth, whatever was confessedly unnecessary to man s salvation or spiritual well¬ being from the first , must make good its claim upon other grounds than its existence ; and it is as justly liable to that demand at its twentieth century as at its first,. Examples of the utter feebleness of a claim to absolute authority on such a basis, are innumerable ; the only difficulty is in selection. Take one — prominent and universal. What is all Idolatry but a corruption of primitive revelation; a “ development” that, doubtless, began (for in religious belief, as in practical morality, nemo repente fit turpissimus) exactly as the melan¬ choly parallel “development” began in Christianity, — and was, we know, defended by the wiser heathens on precisely the same plea; — a corruption early , general, permanent; — for it began in the infancy of the world; it has, at one time or other, covered its whole surface, and to this day retains most of it; and it has in its favour a prescription of near six thou¬ sand years. What can the worship of Januarius or Dominic, the half-adoring invocation of men whose very salvation is too often doubtful, the prostration before the theatrical Virgins and imaginary relics of the religion of Italy and Spain, offer to our acceptance, in comparison with the venerable antiquity — the “chronic continuance,” as Mr. Newman would style it — LETT. II.] ON ROMANISM. 67 of Idolatry itself f Nor let men attempt to evade this by urging (comp. pp. 62, 63, &c.), that in this instance the “development” proved itself a corruption by destroying the original; it did not, and in the case of cultivated heathens very seldom does, destroy the original belief of a single Su¬ preme God. In all the long succession of heathen wisdom, from its earliest dawn in the twilight of profane history up to the present hour, — up to the living sages of India and China, and the wild men of the western forests, — the recognition has ever, more or less directly, been preserved of a Great Spiritual Being Who has graciously manifested Himself in these dele¬ gates of His omnipotence, and in their “sacred images.” Even mere unassisted oral tradition, backed by the unconquer¬ able affirmations of natural reason, has effected this ; can we in the least degree wonder that the corrupt element should exist side by side with the revealed truth without destroying or absorbing it, in a case where that original truth is every¬ where affirmed in the primary documents of the Beligion, and in fact, from the very nature of the Beligion, must con¬ tinue to be involved and assumed in its very existence — an existence guaranteed by the express promise of its Founder? At the same time, — how far in Boman Christianity the cor¬ ruption has eventuated in practically superseding the rights of the Supreme God, by intercepting the tribute of trusting and dependent affection due to Him from His children, wast¬ ing those precious impulses upon imaginary human mediators of intercession and even of grace, and thus reserving for the Heavenly Father only that residue of distant awe and terror that can reach Him after all the tenderness and confidence 68 LETTERS [LETT. II. of the heart have been lavished away upon the intermediate agents between Him and His, — how far, especially among the mass of the people (learned divines have securities of their own in the very nature of their studies), in purely Romish countries, this is the case, it would indeed be very painful to dwell on, but, I fear, far too easy to determine. And now let me come closer to the exposition and the defences of the new theory. Though Mr. Newman takes judicious care to emancipate himself from the bonds of the received logic of philosophical theory (pp. 179, 180), he must not be surprised if in a matter which involves the faith and peace of millions, his critics refuse to accompany him into those licenses of conjecture which his rhetorical skill would artfully substitute for the old-fashioned process of proving facts, and thence deriving principles. I shall, therefore, in despite of his very natural disclaimer of the severity of the Baconian method, take the liberty of observing that his system violates every one of its rules of genuine philosophical proof, without a single excep¬ tion. To bring the whole series of his logical offences to a head; his Principle is an invention, and — his Facts cannot be reduced under even that invented principle. What is his Principle? It is the hypothesis, that God intended to reveal dogmas of overwhelming importance, only by degrees to His Church ; in such a sense as that later cen¬ turies, by the mere process of dwelling on the primitive creed, and the insensible operation of moral feeling, were to find their way to a large body of most momentous speculative and practical doctrine, of which the bishops, martyrs, and the LETT. II.] ON ROMANISM. 69 whole body of the faithful of the first ages, were wholly, or almost wholly, ignorant. What are his Facts to be explained by this principle? The special doctrines and practices of Romanism ; its worship of the Blessed Virgin, Saints, and Angels — its religious pros¬ tration before images of wood and stone — its purgatorial fire — its gradual formation of a despotic spiritual monarchy — and the rest ; all of which, he informs us, can be easily developed by patient reflection and moral sensibility, out of the religion of the New Testament and the first Churches. Th q former of these assertions, — for this must first occupy our attention, — is not only a mere creation of the fancy, but is encompassed with manifold and manifest difficulties. Mr. Newman, indeed, endeavours (of course) to prepare his way, by arguing the antecedent probability of such developments in Christianity, in a chapter (pp. 94 — 114) to which I have already alluded. But not one of his arguments really reaches the required mark. For instance — “ Christianity is a fact, and can be made subject-matter of the reason.” — It is seen in “ aspects” that must vary to different persons; and must, as a living, influential thing, “ expand” in the mind. — Again, we are told that it is a universal religion, and must have great varieties of local application. — Again, its peculiar phrases, such as “the Word of God,” require much thought; and many deduced and connected considerations will gather round mysterious expressions like these. — Again, there are very interesting questions not solved in Scripture — the Canon of Scripture, Sin after Baptism, the Intermediate State, and the like. — Again, Prophecy was a progressive thing, the 70 LETTERS [LETT. II. Mosaic history was so, and our Lord’s sayings are remarkably brief and pregnant. — Again, the style of Holy Scripture is such that “ of no doctrine whatever , which does not actually contradict what has been delivered, can it be peremptorily asserted, that it is not in Scripture!” (p. 110). Once more: Scripture itself proclaims Mr. Newman’s theory in the parable of the Mustard Seed, and the Seed sown, and the Leaven. Now, I request the reader to recall the observations made above on the two classes, or senses, of real development ; and I ask him, is there a single one of these considerations, giving them all the weight they can possibly claim, which establishes more than I have already abundantly conceded? Indeed, the accomplished Author himself at times admits it. When he would, in this very chapter, describe how theological ques¬ tions have arisen and been settled, he observes that in such cases ‘‘the decision has been left to time, to the slow process of thought, the influence of mind upon mind, the issues of controversy, and the growth of opinion” — p. 99 h Does Mr. Newman really suppose that any one denies the existence of such processes in the history of the Church, and of the heresies that have assailed or infested it? Were this the only question at issue, between what two individuals who had ever read a volume of any elementary Church history could there be a difference about it ? Or, if this were a fair account of his real 1 “Argument implies deduction , that is, development ” — p. 97. Mr. Newman will, unquestionably, number a large sect of disci¬ ples, if every man who holds that a theological deduction can be made, is to be regarded as a votary of “ the theory of develop¬ ment.” LETT. II.] ON ROMANISM. 71 theory, how could the very arguments that are used to refute it escape being its verification? Truly, Mr. Newman must effect something more for his adopted cause than thus elabo¬ rately prove what nobody denies, and then pass off this weighty conclusion for the proof of his real but unmanageable thesis. If his object be to demonstrate that various theo¬ logical questions have been raised and settled by discussion, and often by laborious, and animated, and protracted discussion, he is not likely to meet many adversaries. It has assuredly been the Will of God that reasonable creatures should duly employ their reason on His Divine Religion ; nor is any legi¬ timate conclusion of the reason unacceptable to Him Who gave the faculty that made it. No conclusion, that, by any reach or grasp of thought, can be logically deduced from the matter of faith as originally revealed, do we refuse. What we do refuse, — and refuse as the very principle of all the extrava¬ gancies of fanatical heresy, as (so to speak) the very logic of enthusiasm, — is the position, that doctrines unknown to the primitive creed of the Church, nay the knowledge of actual facts in the realm of Spirits (as Purgatory or the Saints’ power of hearing prayer), were to be gained by processes, avowedly not ratiocinative , but emotional , impulsive , sponta¬ neous ; that men charged with the awful responsibility of guarding and expounding God’s Truth were not logically to infer, but infallibly to feel; and to “feel” not merely moral convictions, but downright physical facts, actual phenomena of the invisible world ! — What we do yet further assert — we, “ insulated” and heretical Anglicans — on behalf of the in¬ sulted Catholicity of primitive saints and martyrs, is, that no 72 LETTERS [LETT. II. truth of the importance which the special Roman Dogmas , if true, must possess, was unknown from the beginning; that no doctrine granted to be thus unknown for ages, can now, on pretence of subsequent discovery, be pressed on the belief of all Christians on pain of everlasting damnation. Any appeal to Holy Scripture, however vague, transitory, and fanciful, has a claim to respectful attention. Mr. Newman alleges the analogy of the prophetic revelations. In every possible point of view the analogy fails. Prophecy was es¬ sentially mysterious and enigmatical ; doctrinal teaching was meant to be plain and intelligible. Prophecy was usually to grow in clearness as it advanced to the event, and there alone to find its full explanation ; but what imaginable ground is there for assuming that doctrinal exposition was thus to post¬ pone its purport to the distant future? The excellence, the adaptation of the doctrine would, indeed, perpetually receive new illustration as it extended through peoples and ages ; but the very marvel of its perfection, the growing authentication of its high celestial birth, would consist in the wondrous fit¬ ness by which, itself substantially unchanged, it matched itself to every race and people, transmuting them into its own likeness, not moulding itself after their carnal wants and wishes. Alas ! had the wilfulness of man always recognised this great office and high supremacy of Divine Truth, should we have had such instances of the “ development” of God’s awful Word, as are cited with approbation in the chapter before me,— “ developments” which, by whatever weight of individual authority they be recommended, God grant the conservators of His Truth grace ever to denounce with indig- LETT. II.] ON ROMANISM. 73 nation and scorn, — “ Praise the Lord in His saints,” as a command to worship men ; “Adore His footstool1,” as a com¬ mand to fall down and literally worship in His honour the lifeless matter He has made ! As to the Parables which Mr. Newman cites, I hope it can hardly be necessary to ob¬ serve how utterly they are perverted from their true signifi¬ cation to the profit of his theory of doctrinal innovation ; parables which manifestly shadow forth the spread of the Gospel among the nations of the earth, or in their internal application symbolize its gradually pervading and transform¬ ing power upon the souls of those who embrace it. But as the topic of scriptural proof has come before us, I can scarcely avoid, though I ought perhaps to apologise for, recommending to Mr. Newman’s meditation, in contrast to the convincing instances just quoted of what he styles “the Church’s subtler and more powerful method of proof” (p. 323) by mystical interpretation, such unfortunately clear (and therefore, of course, miserably feeble and inconclusive) testi¬ monies concerning his system as St. Paul’s memorable affirma¬ tions: “I kept back nothing that ivas profitable /’ “I have not shunned to declare unto you all the counsel of God f “ I have showed you all things;” “We use great plainness of speech , and not as Moses, which put a veil over his face;” being “ not rude in knowledge , we have been thoroughly made manifest among you in all things y” “Though we or an angel from heaven preach any other Gospel unto you than that 1 “ Adorate scabellum Ejus,” Ps. xcix. 5. Better “ at — towards — His footstool.” It is thought to refer to the Divine manifesta¬ tion in the Jewish sanctuary. 74 LETTERS [LETT. II. which we have 'preached — than that ye have received — let him be accursed.” “ Keep that which is committed to thy trust R “ Hold fast the form of sound words — that good thing which was committed unto thee keep by the Holy Ghost;” “ The things which thou hast heard of me the same commit unto faithful men;” “ Continue thou in the things which thou hast learned “ Be not carried about with divers and strange (£emis) doctrines.” Or St. John’s, “Ye have an unction from the Holy One, and ye know all things :” or the Lord’s own solemn promise, “ the Comforter shall teach you ALL things;” “the Spirit of truth will guide you into ALL truth:” expres¬ sions which, to plain people, may possibly appear somewhat inconsistent with the doctrine, that they who were thus “taught all things,” and who “kept back nothing” of what they were taught, left it to future centuries, to the prelates and monasteries of the Middle Ages, to discover and declare articles of transcendent importance to the very substance, and the whole practical operation of Christianity. Upon the obvious question which here arises, and which, indeed, must be one of the earliest to occur to every reader, — how far the Apostles themselves are held in this system to have known the developments of modern Komanism? — Mr. Newman delivers himself as follows, which is the only dis¬ tinct reference I can remember to the subject in his entire volume: “ The holy Apostles would know , without words, all the truths concerning the high doctrines of theology, which controversialists after them have piously and charitably re¬ duced to formulas, and developed through argument.” — p. 83. LETT. II.] ON ROMANISM. 75 And he then proceeds, as if somewhat afraid of so delicate an inquiry, to talk about the knowledge St. Justin and St. Irenceus “might” have of (it is one of the usual artifices of his rhetoric to class such things together) Purgatory or Ori¬ ginal Sin. Meanwhile the above sentence affords all the light Mr. Newman is pleased to furnish us as to his views of St. Paul’s knowledge of the propriety of invoking, in reli¬ gious worship, St. James after his martyrdom ; or St. John’s conceptions of the duty of depending for his “ entire hope,” with Pope Gregory XVI., upon the boundless influence in Heaven of her whom he “took unto his own home;” or St. Peter’s notions of the absolute supremacy of himself, and of a line of prelates professing to occupy his place; or St. Mat¬ thew’s thoughts about the utility of bowing in “ relative adoration” before wooden images of deceased men and women. The Apostles would know all these things “with¬ out words.” But now, if the Apostles not only “ would know” — a form of expression which I do not pretend precisely to under¬ stand — but really did know these things, it may be per¬ mitted me, without presumption, to ask, on what conceivable ground is their silence regarding them to be explained ? Their love of souls was unquestionable ; the practical im¬ portance of the doctrines in question, if true, was equally so. If souls elect, saved, forgiven, are, after death, to be tortured for thousands of years in Purgatorial flames, and depend for their sole chance of alleviation or release upon masses on Earth, how incomprehensible was the abstinence of earnest, loving Paul (knowing all this thoroughly) from any allusion 76 LETTERS [LETT. II. to the necessity of such helps for these wretched spirits ! If the invocation of the Blessed Virgin be one of the chief in¬ struments of grace in the Gospel, how inexplicable that, in all the many injunctions of prayer and supplication, no syl¬ lable should ever be breathed of this great object of prayer; on the contrary, that numerous apparent implications should occur of the sole and exclusive right of the Deity to such addresses ! If the Bishop and Church located at the city of Home were, by Divine appointment, ever to carry with them a gift of infallible guidance to itself and all Churches in their communion, — how utterly inconceivable that the Apostles, knowing this, above all that St. Peter himself, the conscious fountain of all this mighty stream of living waters ordained to flow to the end of time should, while constantly predicting the growth of heresies, the prevalence of false knowledge, the glory of steadfastness in the faith, never, even by incidental allusion, refer to this obvious, safe, immediate security against error ! And so of the rest. Nor let Mr. Newman here interpose with the dictum of that great divine, whom, I fear, he rather affects to quote than loyally follows1, “We are in no sort judges of how a 1 There is something, to me, unspeakably melancholy in the repeated and respectful mention that occurs in this volume of Bishop Butler. Bishop Butler! between whom and his still lin¬ gering disciple there is now, in that disciple’s estimation, a barrier fixed everlasting as eternity; whom, with all his early associations of veneration for one to whose deep sayings no thoughtful mind was ever yet introduced, for the first time, without acknowledging the period an epoch in its intellectual history, he must now regard as, after all, a poor benighted dreamer, falling ever and anon upon LETT. II.] ON ROMANISM. 77 revelation would be made.” Mr. Newman cannot, with any argumentative justice, first violate that just and profound maxim by assuming the way in which the revelation was made (namely, in his own way of so-called development), and then retreat behind the principle he has disregarded, in order to shelter himself from the manifest improbabilities of his own arbitrary scheme. No ; let the truth be plainly spoken. Mr. Newman knows well the Apostles knew none of these things. And yet, by no human ingenuity can it be proved that these things were not as needful to be known at first as they could ever be. By no art can it be shown that, if real , they must not ever have been among those “ things profitable ” of which St. Paul declares he kept back none. By no subtlety can the ignorance of such things be reconciled with the express pro¬ mise of Him who was Himself substantial truth, that the Spirit should lead His Apostles into all truth. And now see, on this supposition that the Apostles had no real knowledge of these doctrines, how the case stands between Anglican antiquity and Boman development. The fragments of truth, and binding them together into the illusory harmony to which alone heresy can ever attain ; in reality inferior for spiritual vision to the paltriest inditer of “ Devotions to the Heart of Mary,” or the most verbose schoolman that ever compiled his page of indistinguishable distinctions ! Thoughts like these would lead me far. What a horrible confusion of all the standards of true and false, valuable and worthless, yea, even right and wrong, must be produced in any consistent mind by the unfortu¬ nate step this gifted but mistaken man has taken, and would seduce others to take! 78 LETTERS [LETT. II. English Church, it appears, is content to believe as Paul and John believed; as those believed who heard and transmitted their teaching; as those who followed them for centuries (equitable allowance made for necessary change of circum¬ stances, for mere private opinions, for incidental fashions, and even that allowance requisite, in a very trifling degree, for at least a period more than equal to our own distance from the Reformation), expounded and delivered the original belief. Rome, on the other hand, must, on the new theory, maintain that the Gospel, imperfect in the hands and hearts of Paul, and Peter, and John, has since their day advanced in purity, perfection, completeness ; that men in the mediaeval monas¬ teries, literally, and in all the fulness of the phrase, under¬ stood and unfolded it better than the disciples of inspired Apostles, better than inspired Apostles, better than — I pause. There is a great future event, of which it is written, that neither the angels know it nor the Son of Man, There was a sense in which the knowledge of the Son of Man was pro¬ gressive. He grew in wisdom and stature1 ; He “ learned obedience;” He was “ perfected through sufferings;” and, having suffered, was thence qualified to help them that suffer. There was a sense in which the believers on Him were to do even “ greater works” than He. The blasphemy against the Holy Ghost (the Church’s inspirer) was to be a more fearful crime than that against the Son of Man. There is a Chris¬ tian communion in which it has been gravely maintained, and 1 “ The Church,” says Mr. Newman, to illustrate its develop¬ ment, “grows in wisdom and stature” — p. 96. Is my application unwarrantable after this suggestion? LETT. II.] ON ROMANISM. 79 formally decreed1, that a man, in the thirteenth century, sur¬ passed the Lord himself; a fact which may at least be admitted to indicate a tendency. Considering the mysterious but manifest distinction which the Incarnation, as unfolded in the Gospel history, involves, between that Godhead in which Christ was equal to the Father, and that manhood in which He was to the Father inferior, men of less ingenuity than the author before me might extend his theory somewhat further than he has yet ventured to carry it. Apostolic in¬ spiration and knowledge once undervalued, who shall protect from dishonour unspeakable the attainments of the Son of Man Himself — the Teacher of those half-illumined Apostles, the Inspirer of that imperfect inspiration? If the develop¬ ment of Gospel in Epistles (p. 102) be the adequate justifi¬ cation of the development of the middle centuries from the 1 The Liber Con formitatum (between S. Francis and the Lord), in which this was done, was solemnly approved by the Chapter of Assisi, in 1390,* and was for a long period a performance of un¬ restricted circulation and popularity. This is the Church whose advocate, in the volume before me, charges us with being called by the names of men ! * [Aug. 2, 1399. The author was Barth. Albizi, or De Albizis, (Lat. Albicius,) who was surnamed De Pisa. The words of the Approbation of this work by the general Chapter of the Franciscan Order may be seen in L' Alcoran des Cordeliers , Tome i. p. 344. A Amst. 1734. It may be added, that this last-named book is the French version, with additions, by the Genevan printer Conrad Ba- dius, (the volumes were afterwards illustrated with Picart’s plates,) of the original, Der Barfiisser Munch Eulen- spieg el und Alcoran, 1531, which was composed by Erasmus Alberus of Brandenburg; not Albertus, as he is styled by Gesner, Simler, Oudin, Bayle, Du Pin, and others. — G.] 80 LETTERS [LETT. II. primitive, who shall say that the reason , mode , and process of improvement were not the same ; or, rather, is it not strongly insinuated that they were ? The Germany where Mr. New¬ man found the seeds of his theory will also supply him with its fruits. But here I must, for the present, cease. Let me recapitu¬ late. Mr. Newman’s system, we have seen, to be even nomi¬ nally a theory, must consist of two elements ; the supposition of real and important doctrinal innovation in the Christian Creed to be attained in the way of development; and the attempt to reduce the peculiarities of Bomanism under a de¬ veloping process. The latter of these points I have, as yet, scarcely touched at all; on the former I have offered you some observations in this paper, and more remain. But we must remember that that supposition of development (as I have already intimated) does not stand alone ; it is conjoined with another supposition — infallible guidance for the Boman Church in the developing process. Nor can Mr. Newman’s hypothesis, in its full integrity, be understood without com¬ bining them both. I shall do so, and it will then remain for me to show you (as concerns this first division of his general argument) that not only is the supposition of development (in Mr. Newman’s sense of it) itself gratuitous, unsupported, im¬ probable — as, I think, we may have already in some degree collected — but that, when united to the notion of constant in¬ fallibility, the theory adds to these characteristics the further attributes, partly, of assuming, in the most important stage of the whole argument, the very point to be established — partly, of involving, even after the assumption has been made, direct LETT. II.] ON ROMANISM. 81 and manifest self-contradiction. Such, unless I have strangely misconceived the purport of Mr. Newman’s own exposition, may that theory be shown to be before which the theology of England is to crumble into dust ; and which has certainly been attractive enough to replace that theology in the con¬ victions of one of the most accomplished, if not always the most judicious, of its expounders. Certainly such a case as this is not without its lesson to us all. AYith what renewed caution, with what reverent dread of substituting in matters of religion our imaginations for Divine ideas, our wishes for God’s will, ought we to walk — we ordinary men — when the spectacle is here presented to us of a man such as this, of genius the most brilliant, subtle in reason, affluent in fancy, prompt, various, and versatile in the use of all the mental powers, diligent too, and eager in the pursuit of knowledge, industrious in moulding and repro¬ ducing it in all the forms of literary labour ; thus, in the very restlessness of his own high gifts, abandoning a faith which even he himself can hardly avoid implying to be a closer copy than his adopted creed of the belief with which Paul and Peter went to martyrdom, — and abandoning it to risk his own salvation, and that of the numbers his personal in¬ fluence and authority can sway, upon the solidity of a phan¬ tom like the theory I have been exposing — it being a most awful but inevitable fact, that if this daring theory be not true, he has, in the very conditions and construction of it, completely cut off his own retreat upon any other ! 6 82 LETTERS [LETT. III. LETTER III. The hypothesis of Mr. Newman in reality consisting in the assumption that the mere historical eventuation of dogmas in a certain particular division of the Christian Church, is a sufficient evidence of dogmatic truth , and a sufficient ground for the absolute authority of these dogmas over the belief and conscience of all mankind; and its power of persuasion con¬ sisting almost wholly in a dexterous substitution of this mere historical eventuation — or, at best, of some imaginary con¬ necting process of moral and emotional impulse — for plain logical deduction; he himself soon saw that his hypothesis must ever be feeble and inadequate (indeed must differ in nothing, except its imposing garb of learning and research, from the most pitiful enthusiasm that ever bewildered igno¬ rance1), unless combined with the further supposition of an ! The complete coincidence between Mr. Newman’s u moral development,” and the ordinary ground on which enthusiastic separatists have ever vindicated their fantasies, it would not be very edifying, and, I presume, must be nearly unnecessary to evince by examples. No reader who has ever studied (surely one of the saddest chapters in the story of our race) the melancholy history of such leaders and their disciples, can require to be told that the substitution of vague impulse (under claim of Divine LETT. III.] ON ROMANISM. 83 infallible directive authority to govern the course of these vague spontaneous evolutions of doctrine. — (See p. 117, &c.) direction too) for intelligible deduction, is the very basis of all fanaticism. But Mr. Newman’s sovereign alchemy of the “sacra¬ mental principle” (by which, according to his exposition, p. 359 — for so sacred an expression requires explanation in its new signifi- cancy — heathen and heretical extravagancies are suddenly trans¬ muted into Church truths) will, of course, stand him in good stead in this strait. The doctrine itself of progressive development (we shall pre¬ sently see it in its infidel aspect) is also no novel form of Christian heresy. Mr. Newman admits it is to be found in all its perfection, in the Montanism of Tertullian ; whom he censures solely, it would seem, for having arrived at perfection too soon (p. 351); for having ambitiously presumed to be a mediaeval saint before his time : per¬ fect excellence in the tenth century being palpable heresy in the second. Few of our author’s positions are more characteristically courageous than this. “ Equally Catholic in their principle, whether in fact or anticipation, were most of the other peculiarities of Montanism. The doctrinal determinations , and the ecclesiastical usages of the Middle Ages, are the true fulfilment of its self-willed and abortive attempts at precipitating the growth of the Church,” &c. &c. There is, by-the-by, a happy prophetic ambiguity in one of Tertullian’s expositions of development*, which suits it per¬ fectly to Mr. Newman’s Papal Montanism, and would form a good * [Though Tertullian believed that Montanus was commissioned to per¬ fect the Christian dispensation, it is evident that in the passage referred to he is not speaking of him, but of the Holy Spirit, who, after the ascension of our Lord, was substituted in His place. The words in the original are not “ Yicario Dei,” but “ Yicario Do¬ mini, Spiritu Sancto and they relate only to the Saviour’s declaration, (St. John xvi. 12, 13,) “I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now. Howbeit when He, the Spirit of Truth, is come. He will guide you into all truth.” — G.] 6 — 2 84 LETTERS [LETT. III. Had the “developments” for whose defence the theory was constructed, been logical deductions from revealed principles, theme for his ingenuity of mystical interpretation. (Be Virgin. V eland, c. i.) “ Quoniam humana mediocritas omnia semel caper e non poterat, paulatim dirigetur, et ordinaretur, et ad perfectum perduceretur disciplina ah illo viCAiuo dei” [the Paraclete]. “Sum¬ mits Pontifcx ,” proclaims Innocent III., “non hominis pun sed veri Dei Yicarius appellatur.” (Lib. i. Epist. 326, ad FaventinP) [The original title having been “ Yicarius Petri,” which was gradu¬ ally thus “developed,” and the former indignantly rejected!.] Mr. Newman will also find some instructive exemplifications of his principle in the remains of the teaching of the spiritualist followers * [Faventinus was not a man’s name, but signifies the Bishop of Faenza. Another Epistle of this same Pope, which is found in the Canon Law, (Decret. Greg. IX. Lib. i. Tit. vii. Cap. Quanto personam,) contains the following similar decision : “Non enim homo, sed Deus separat, quos Pom. Pontifex (qui non puri hominis, sed veri Dei vicem gerit in terris,)” &c. — G.] ! [This observation has been taken from Gieseler (ii. 254): but though “Christi Yicarius” is, as might be ex¬ pected, among the fifty titles of honour assigned to the Pope by Bzovius, (Pont. Rom. Colon. Agripp. 1619,) yet Bishop Barlow (Brutum Fulmen, pp. 54 — 61) has abundantly shown that there is no extraordinary peculiarity nor “De¬ velopment” connected with this name. “We pray you in Christ's stead" is the earnest language of S. Paul. (2 Cor. v. 20.) A Bishop, says S. Cyprian, (Bp. lix.) is “Judex vice Christi;” and Firmilian (lxxv.) dwells upon the fact of episcopal succession from the Apostles “ ordinatione vicarid." The Council of Trent itself assures us, that “Dominus noster Jesus Christus, b terris ascensurus ad ccelos, Sacerdotes Sui Ipsius Vicarios reliquit.” (Sess. xiv. De Pcen. Cap. v.) — G-.] [For the distinction of Petri et Christi Vicarius, see Allies, p. 231. “ The power of the Roman Pontiff in the fourth, fifth, and sixth centuries, stood on a different basis from his power in the Middle Ages. The dif¬ ference, perhaps, may be summed up by saying that in the former he was Yicarius Petri, in the latter Yicarius Christi ; in the former he had a more or less defined Primacy, in the latter he laid claim to a complete Supre¬ macy; he was exalted as a Monarch above his Councillors. A Primate is one idea, a Monarch is another. It seems to be the great tour de force of Roman writers to prove the second by the first. ”] LETT. III.] ON ROMANISM. 8 5 and so, capable of approving tliemselves to candid reason, this, of course, could scarcely have been required ; they would, in that case, have vindicated themselves. But the actual Roman developments being too manifestly such as can claim little or no internal validity in preference to a hundred other conceivable forms of doctrine, it became abso¬ lutely necessary to warrant them by some constant external authority; an authority which, at the same time, if it exists, renders the whole elaborate theory of development super¬ fluous, except as a matter of speculative curiosity. A Church of the Abbot J oachim, and of Peter J. Olivi ; whose highly philo¬ sophical developments enlightened the thirteenth century. It must be confessed, however, these resolute Franciscans* were not con¬ tent with the more decorous process of making Scripture speak their mind by “mystical interpretation “adveniente Evangelio Spiritus Sancti, evacuabitur Evangelium Cliristi,” is their decisive maxim t. (Eccardi Gorp. Hist. Medii JEvi, ii. 850.) It is certainly plainer speaking. * [Joachim, Abbot of Flora in Calabria, was not a Franciscan, but of the Cistercian Order. — G.] + [Eymericus the Inquisitor has thus set down the entire sentence: “Undecimus error, qu5d adveniente Evangelio Spiritus Sancti, sive cla- rescente opere Joachim, (quod ibidem dicitur Evangelium iEternum, sive Spiritus Sancti,) evacuabitur Evange¬ lium Christi.” ( Director . Inquis. Par. ii. p. 189. Romse, 1578.) This writer and his annotator Pegna (p. 57) con¬ cur in the ascription of the Evangelium EEternum, commonly attributed to the Abbot Joachim, (for whose Life, Acts, and Prophecies see Wolfius, Lectiones Memorabiles, i. 361 — 409. Francof. 1671), to Joannes de Parma, an Ita¬ lian Monk. It would appear certain, however, that the language above quoted belongs not to the original fantastic book, but to the Introduction to, or Exposition of, it, which was condemned by Pope Alexander IV. in the year 1255, and has been since prohibited. Consequently the person upon whom censure must fall is the Franciscan Friar Gerhard. Vid. Quetif et Echard Scriptt. Ord. Prced. i. 202. Lut. Par. 1719. Moshemii Inst. Hist. Eccl. Scec. xiii. ii. ii. xxxiv. — G.] 86 LETTERS [LETT. III. absolutely infallible can need to vindicate its decisions out of a theory of development no more than St. Paul would have needed to prove the resurrection of the body out of the books of Moses. Such theories as these, indeed, with what¬ ever air of submissiveness propounded, are almost always in reality the work of half-believing disciples of the systems they are brought to support; they are the last hesitating parley of “faith” with still remonstrant Reason. We are, as yet, however, — postponing the element of in¬ fallibility, — to be engaged for a while longer with the internal claims of the Development-Hypothesis itself. I. I have said that the chief art of this performance consists in substituting high-toned and elaborate descriptions of the course of mere historical eventuation , or little more than this, for the legitimate logical connexion of the disputed with admitted doctrines. Now it must be quite plain, that, ante¬ cedently to all inquiry, such a management of the subject, indeed of any liistorico-dogmatical subject (especially where the materials are very extensive), must be easily practicable. Historically, nothing is without a cause, whether change of action or change of belief, whether deed or dogma. And where a system begins in perfect truth, and perpetually pro¬ fesses a respect for its origin, a pleader of very moderate skill will almost always be able to show that its variations have some point or other whereby they grapple with real truth; corruptions, especially the earlier corruptions of such a system, are seldom so utterly monstrous as to have no corner where they are in contact with truth, no small link by which they hook themselves on to genuine religion. The LETT. III.] ON ROMANISM. 87 art of the advocate is, of course, to magnify to the utmost this little link, to gild and burnish it by all the devices of eloquence. The human hypotheses and imaginations by the aid of which alone it can really make good its position as a member of the true theological system, it is easy to leave in comparative obscurity. And then the work is consider¬ ably advanced, and the effect skilfully heightened, by in¬ variably stating, in the most exaggerated terms, the adver¬ sary’s view (that, for example, “a counterfeit Christianity” was early substituted for the Gospel, p. 2), so as to contrast his stern, intemperate condemnation with the meekness and innocence of the little stranger-dogma (whatever it be); or else by the equally ingenious method of vividly describing infidelity1, and calling it Protestantism, and under the “ Pro¬ testantism” so described, covertly leaving to be included the Catholic Church of England. And, as the link of connexion between the development and the original, is usually of the most attenuated dimen¬ sions, and yet the connexion affirmed to be irresistibly proven, the tendency of the whole theory must, of course, be to involve all the evidences of all religion in perplexity, to sink the proofs of the whole to the level of these miserable de¬ monstrations. An organ of investigation being introduced, which may be employed for any purpose indifferently, the tendency of such a theory of religious inquiry will just tell according to the spirit on which it acts. A sceptic will develope the principle into infidelity, a believer into super- 1 See pp. 368, 406, 438, kc. 88 LETTERS [LETT. III. stition; but the principle itself remains accurately the same in both. The very same developing process thkt led Kant, and his innumerable followers, to find at last Christianity complete u within the limits of the Pure Reason1,” has led 1 The reader who doubts this, I refer to Kant’s own famous (and undeniably very able) work on “ Religion within the Boun¬ daries of Pure Reason.” Mr. Newman considers Christianity in¬ tended to develope, so as to adopt new dogmas; Kant, so as to set itself free of the old. The one would encumber the spirit with an unwieldy body, the other would disembody it altogether; but both equally affect to preserve the spirit itself of the religion. In the Kantean “ development,” mysteries “ must eventually pass into the form of moral notions, by a metempsychosis, if they are ever to become generally intelligible” — (Pref.) ; or, as again : “ The Church creed contains within, the germ of a principle whereby it is urged to a continual and more close approximation towards pure ethics and religion, until, at length, these last being attained, the other be superseded and dispensed with” — Book iii. Apot. i. § 7. Religion gradually disengages itself. “ . . . . The swaddling-bands beneath which the embryo shot up to manhood must be laid aside when the season of maturity is come. The leading-strings of sacred traditions [here we have a really edifying coincidence], &c., which, in their time may have been of service, grow, by degrees, super¬ fluous, &c.” — Ibid. Tlie general object of the work is to unfold this in detail. So too Mr. Newman and the great Patriarch of Rationalism agree perfectly on the necessity of “mystical interpretations” (Newman, 319 — 327), to reconcile their respective “developments” with Scripture ; with Kant, much “ depends on the mode in which the revealed text is expounded, so as to receive a perpetual inter¬ pretation parallel (to modern Romanism, in Mr. Newman’s view) to the religion of Pure Reason.” “ An interpretation of this sort,” continues Kant, “ may often be strained, but the text must then be forced in preference to the literal meaning, &c.” — Ibid. § 6. So LETT. III.] ON ROMANISM. 80 Mr. Newman to find it complete only in Popery. If Mr. Newman lias not ended where the fashionable German school has ended, most assuredly it is not his theory or his method which has saved him. The instant that the plain principle is rejected, of man’s obligation to bend his faith in humble submission (however taste, fashion, associations, peculiar habits of reading, or personal inclinations, may urge him) to the original Message of God (in whatever way, once for all, communicated), and the truths therein involved; the instant that for this — the old and recognised maxim of the Catholic Church through all its divisions, up to the fatal period when vain and ill-conceived additions to belief and worship forced the theologians committed to them to cast about for some new principle to defend new practices, — he substitutes his own calculations of what may be (in Mr. Newman’s phrase) “congruous, desirable, decorous, &c.” — from that instant he has adopted a maxim which may lead to any results, and is equally illegitimate, to whatever result it lead. It is, therefore, quite vainly that Mr. Newman would vindicate his system from being a defence of Pomanism on Mr. Newman too, after similar pleadings, formally lays it down, u that the mystical interpretation and orthodoxy will stand or fall together,” p. 324. How instructive, yet how awful, this coincident anxiety to provide for the felt hostility of the solemn Word of the Most High to the results of both schemes alike ! Meanwhile I cannot venture to compliment Mr. Newman, in¬ genious as his book often is, and always eloquent, with having made his scheme of the development of the Gospel into Mediaeval belief, anything like so plausible as Kant’s development of the same Gospel, by the same method, into ultra-rationalism. 90 LETTERS [LETT. III. the principles of Rationalism, by alleging that the tendency of the Development Theory is positive, and to extend belief; of Rationalism negative, and to contract it (p. 83). The formal nature of Rationalism is — the undue employment of mere human reason in the things of religion, with a view to evade in some way the simplicity of the obedience of faith. Now this may manifest itself either in the result arrived at, or in the method employed; even supposing that Mr. Newman were to be acquitted on the former ground, he cannot on the latter. A man who should affect to discard all revealed testimonies, and to prove the Divinity of Christ or the Doctrine of the Trinity exclusively by internal reason, would be a rationalist, though his conclusion be not a nega¬ tive, but a most positive dogmatic truth. It is, moreover, a great mistake to assume that superstition (i.e. the unwar¬ rantable superaddition of beliefs or practices) has not its own rationalism ; in point of fact, the various practical corruptions that have been superadded to Christianity have all been first justified less by an appeal to authority (for they could have little at that stage of their history) than on plausibilities of reasoning, imaginary analogies, alleged expediency — that is, by essentially rationalistic processes. When Mr. Newman lays it down as a great practical axiom preliminary to his theory, that “to be perfect is to have changed often ” (p. 39), of what school does he echo the principles? in what Catholic Doctor will he find his model? In truth, this slippery theory can avoid the title of rationalist only by not being even worthy of the name; this scheme for evacuating the Catholic Rule of Faith does not even profess to rest on distinctly LETT. III.] ON ROMANISM. 91 rational grounds; capricious and unlicensed as are the ven¬ tures of rationalism, even they are not so precarious as the emotionalism of Mr. Newman. II. However the theory may be modified by the sub¬ sequent additional supposition of infallible guidance, it is quite evident that, considered in itself, its internal spirit and scope (especially as illustrated by its alleged Romish in¬ stances) are nothing short of this, that everything which certain good men in the Church, or men assumed to be such, can, by reasoning or feeling, collect from a revealed truth, is, by the mere fact of its recognition, admissible and au¬ thoritative. Now, against this (and I repeat that nothing short of this can cover the instances in question), I venture to affirm the broad principle,— that the very perfection of the Church’s discharge of her office of instruction and ex¬ position lies not in unlimited development, but in cautious moderation; in being not “wise beyond;” that the great problem in theological deductions and applications consists in exactly the very thing this speculation overlooks, the admitting a certain tone of thought , and guarding against its extravagancies. What this theorist would call timidity and incompleteness is just the perfection of practical wisdom. The Aristotelian “ mediocrity,” imperfect as an ultimate criterion of right and wrong, is yet a great and almost uni¬ versal practical truth; man himself is a sort of mean term' between the extremes of being; and the very essence of practical wisdom in almost every department of human life seems to consist in carrying out this condition of his nature, in the sagacity that accurately determines where to stop. 92 LETTERS [LETT. III. Rare and inestimable as is this gift, it is of all high qualities the easiest to ridicule and depreciate. The Socinian regards the Anglican Catholic as a superstitious bigot; the Romanist regards him as a frigid rationalizer, whose religion is one universal negative. The Puritan enters an English Cathe¬ dral (that almost miraculously felicitous realization of the precise degree in which religion may rightly invoke the aid of sense and imagination!) to smile or scowl on the “ ill-said mass;” the Italian churchman, to deplore the lingering in¬ fidelity that will not go farther, and dissolve in tears before the Madonna’s pictured purity. In this, as in so many other respects, English theology recalls the theology of An¬ tiquity. The object of all the first controversies and councils was to fix that middle truth of which rival heresies were the opposite distortions; in Mr. Newman’s forcible and happy figure (p.448), “ The series of ecclesiastical divisions alter¬ nate between the one and the other side of the theological dogma especially in question, as if fashioning it into shape hi/ opposite strokes .” It is not, then, to such an antiquity of careful conscientious limitation that we must look for the model of unchecked and unqualified “ development.” III. This consideration becomes the more momentous, when we remember how it may have been — in some respects, certainly was — the intention of the Author of the Christian Revelation to withhold information upon subjects on which His high wisdom saw it as well or better that we should not possess distinct knowledge. In such a case we can scarcely imagine a more unwarrantable contravention of His will than presumptuously to intrude into such “hidings of His power,” LETT. III.] ON ROMANISM. 93 and authoritatively to propound in relation to them, obligatory articles of belief. Such subjects are, among others — the state of departed souls in general, and all its connected topics ; the exact estimate the Supreme God may make of the works of His saints, or of the spiritual condition of special indi¬ viduals before Him ; the beatification of particular deceased Christians (and that with the certainty required to make them secure objects of religious devotion!); the precise and (so to speak) metaphysical nature of that ineffable Commu¬ nion of the Body of Christ, which He Himself describes in those profound sentences in St. John vi., and which St. Paul peculiarly connects with “ the Bread which we break;” — and numbers of similar subjects of speculation. That there are real limits to all attainable knowledge on such matters in our present state, is internally evident from the very nature of the case, and abundantly confirmed by such solemn warnings as that of St. Paul, Col. ii. 18 ; nor even if inspired men actually possessed such knowledge, does it follow that they would be permitted to publish it ; increased knowledge, merely as such, being by no means necessarily a blessing; especially where no new duty arises in consequence, or no new light is thrown upon the old. But it is one of the practical evils of a claim such as the Church of Pome makes to infallible authority (and no small presumption against its legitimacy), that she is inevitably driven to this profane and irreverent scrutiny and determination of things mysterious ; for when controversies arise, she often cannot in very shame » but profess to decide them ; and is thus forced to folloio all the abstruse distinctions and difficulties that any subtle 94 LETTERS [LETT. III. teacher may propose for public disputation. We know indeed how often (especially in more inquiring times) Rome has felt the burden of this inconvenient accompaniment to the claim of theological omniscience, and endeavoured to escape it ; for example, in the controversies about Grace and Free Will in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, which she so long strove to evade, partly by adjourning the decision, partly by enforcing silence on the contending factions. While, on the other hand (I cannot help observing, as the subject is before me), it is certainly surprising that her votaries are not struck by the presumption against her preter¬ natural wisdom involved in the lameness and feebleness of these decisions. If she declined deciding at all, we could ascribe it to a Divine impulse to reserve , and see in it perhaps some resemblance to God’s own ways of partial disclo¬ sure in Revelation; but to decide, and decide poorly, and ambiguously (so as to “more embroil the fray”), and in the technical terms, and (apparently) borrowed inferences of mere human wisdom, without throwing a ray of light upon the real question beyond what all the world possessed before, — this surely reveals little of a power beyond human, little of the Voice of the Holy Spirit Himself condescending to enlighten men. There is a very important distinction to be preserved here. In things where there can be no human test of consciousness or observation, any arbiter who assumes infallibility can carry off his pretensions easily ; he can map out the invisible world with as confident a security against all opposing claimants, as astronomers have divided among themselves the titles of districts in the lunar globe. LETT. III.] ON ROMANISM. 05 Such are the dogmatical affirmations of a Purgatorial region, of a secret physical Transubstantiation, of the beatification of eminent defenders of the Roman claims and belief, of the omnipresent attention of such to their innumerable vota¬ ries at the same moment ; and the like ; — things of which the scene is carefully placed so as to remove them from the reach of direct counterproof. It is otherwise where (as in the controversy referred to above) the whole question and all its grounds are within the grasp of the ordinary student ; and accordingly, we may observe (though it would take too long to establish it in detail), that exactly in proportion as questions are of that description, is there real and energetic disunion about them, under the imposing external uniformity of the Roman Church. Restraint within appointed limits, then, not unchecked development of the kind here contemplated, is the true cha¬ racteristic both of the Church’s toisdom and of her humility ; not the accumulation of new doctrines, but the deep and earn¬ est practical realization of the all-sufficing doctrine she already and from the beginning possesses. She believes that the more “ living” and influential that doctrine, the more will it trans¬ form others to its likeness, the less will it yield itself to theirs. The Truth of God stoops to men from on high; though it be among them, it is among them as a superior; it is but to con¬ found earth and heaven to compare (p. 45) its intended course to the wavering miscellaneous fortunes of a political principle or a political party. The true Catholic reveres too deeply the mysteries of Divine Truth to take them from their own appro¬ priate region, and, casting them into the heated alembic of 96 LETTERS [LETT. III. human feeling, to try how, by this subtle theological chemis¬ try, he may be able to distil the pure essence into new forms of belief and worship. The man violates the first principle of ecclesiastical wisdom and duty, who would thus counsel the Church of Christ to idolize itself as the source and centre of Truth; to take its own half-disciplined tendencies for principles of Divine knowledge ; and, insincerely using the oracles of God as the convenient occasion of new doctrines, not as the warrant of the old, to advance rashly into the very heart of God’s own secrets, and whatever its feeble eye coidd catch, or seem to catch, amid those awful depths, to stamp as portions of eternal truth, authentic revelations, supplementary scrip¬ tures. These are not the enterprises for which the Catholic Church was chartered: “ Teach them” was His word, “ what¬ soever I have commanded you,” it was never, — “ Modify the simplicity of truth to suit accidental circumstances as they rise; or expand hints designedly faint; or make all clear where God would have mystery, or recommend doctrines to gross minds, by adopting and consecrating their grossnesses (see p. 359, &c.); and thus, out of these few primary elements, de- velope according to your wisdom a system that may awe, attract, and govern mankind.” No provision whatever is made in the original documents of the religion, for such sub¬ sequent incorporations; the warnings are careful and reiterated against it. With what scrupulous caution did the model of teachers himself, and on an inspired page, distinguish between what he spake of command from God, and what he offered as a private suggestion ! Hoav earnestly did “ the wise master- builder,” who had “laid the foundation,” bid “every man LETT. III.] ON ROMANISM. 97 take heed how he should build thereupon;” adding the solemn warning, that “ the wisdom of this world was foolishness with God,” as if to urge men to distrust the most plausible sug¬ gestion, when not marked with the signet of God’s declared approbation. Mysteries abound in God’s dispensations, both of Nature and of Grace. “ Sin after Baptism,” on which the present author enlarges, as if it was a problem on which the Gospel can throw no light, without help from the Council of Florence, is surely, at worst, no greater mystery than number¬ less others that we must contentedly endure; all are equally trials of faith, humility, patience ; and many might, for aught we can tell, require for their satisfactory disclosure, a degree and kind of knowledge impossible to our present faculties, or a change of faculties unsuited to our present state. But though limitation and mystery are thus manifestly the will of God, and subserve ends most important in the disci¬ pline of Man, it is seldom that human pride and curiosity are satisfied with such a dispensation. This restlessness manifests itself in a twofold result. Man’s impatient spirit will either tolerate no mystery at all with the Socinian, or, if he must have it, will take care to handle, shape, and vulgarize it after his own coarse fashion, with the monk and schoolman of the Middle Ages. It is thus that, in melancholy truth, Bomisli “ development,” in every point, debases the true sublimity of Christianity; as, indeed, might be expected, when we remem¬ ber the period when, and the artists by whom, the attempt was undertaken, of completing the Divine outline. The re¬ former of Christianity (for really that title, so unpopular with Mr. Newman’s friends, must, by his own confession, be lience- 7 98 LETTERS [LETT. III. forth allowed to belong most appropriately to the devisers of his own creed) — the reformer, or developer, of primitive Christianity will suffer no mystery to be safe from his de¬ grading explanations. He will not have the blessed mystery of the “ Communion of the Body of Christ ;” it must be squared and fashioned into a precise and definite Transubstan- tiation of sacramental bread and wine. He will not leave in all its grand and pathetic mystery the state of the disem¬ bodied; it must be a Limbo or a Purgatory, the exact tem¬ perature of whose penal fires1, and number of whose years of woe he will undertake to demonstrate. He will not tolerate the profound mystery of the Communion of Saints, that fear¬ ful and glorious spiritual advent of the Christian to “ the hea¬ venly Jerusalem, and the general assembly and Church of the first-born;” it must be a semi-idolatrous Invocation, for that every body can understand. He will not receive the parallel mystery of earthly Christian unity, unless it be substantiated in a visible monarchy, which effectually relieves it of any mystery at all. He cannot accept the admirable mystery (so abundantly sufficient and consoling for genuine faith), of God’s secret Providence governing the Church Catholic from age to age; securing its promised permanence, and bestowing His Spirit according to His own all-wise distribution ; it must be a downright infallibility of a kind all can comprehend, and even attached to a place and a person, to make the conception 1 Thorn, in 4 Sentent. Dist. 21. Q. 1. [ Super quart, lib. Mag. Sent. Dist. xxi. Qu. i. foil. 123 — 6. Yenet. 1497. — G.] Bellarm. De Purgat. ii. 6. § Delude, &c. &c. [Opp. Tom. ii. col. 790. Ingolst. 1601.— G.] LETT. III.] ON ROMANISM. 99 more utterly on a level with the vulgar capacity. It is thus that all the dim and shadowy features of mystery are sharp¬ ened into cold and hard details ; its majestic distance brought near, its sublime immensity contracted, its grandeur made mean and paltry; and this, this condensation of awful mystery into frigid fact, is what we are to venerate as the “ develop¬ ment of Christian doctrine.” IV. For it might, surely, be reasonably expected that were this progression of revelations designed to be the real law of the promulgation of Christian truth, the growth would be, as in parallel cases, from things simple, easy, obvious, to matters of a character sublimer and yet sublimer; such as would exalt the human spirit to a loftier elevation, and open a vaster horizon to its gaze. Even in the great his¬ torical instance of the simple logical fixation of a disputed truth by appeal to the written testimony of God and the transmitted belief of the Churches, the discussion and settle¬ ment of the doctrine of the Trinity, we find it perfectly so. The doctrine of the Trinity, which simply designates by one name, and thus brings together into one luminous focus, the distinct and numerous intimations of the original revelation, is a grander thing than any single portion or detached ground of itself; in combining the separate elements into one, it heightens by mutually reflected splendour the glory of each, and magnifies the awful mystery of the whole. But Iioav incomparably different is the character of the Homan pecu¬ liarities ! Scarcely any man will venture to . deny — indeed Mr. Newman’s “sacramental principle” involves a plain admission — that they are, for the most part, of a lower 7—2 100 LETTERS [LETT. III. character than the truths out of which they are held to grow. Invest it with all the brilliancy of imaginative colouring, philosophize it into all the dignity of metaphysical abstrac¬ tion, and, after all, who, not irrevocably committed to the system, will have the face to say that Image Worship was not a descent and a retro-gradation? Who that remembers the laborious foundation laid for securing the unity of the Object of worship in the Old Testament — the supply specially made (in this connexion) for the just satisfaction of man’s human longings and sympathies by the Incarnation in the New, — the miserable and universal tendency of men to inter¬ pose men between themselves and the awful purity of God,—- but will see that Saint-worship was below, not above, or upon, the level of the religion of John and Paul ? Not such are faithful “ developments,” — if we must employ a term, whose ambiguity — the word being equally employed (in its common application to the growth of organic structures) for the unfolding of original elements and the further incorporation of foreign materials — perpetually darkens the whole subject. Such combinations and comparisons of doctrine — humbly, reverentially, patiently prosecuted — attest the glory of the Divine religion, and maintain it perpetually in its own celestial sphere. It will be found so in all that is really of God, and uncorrupted by weak human qualifications, whether in the departments of Nature or of Grace; truth steadily adhered to, the more admirable will it grow with every new combination! But all depends on that scrupulous adherence. It is hard to persuade men of this, hard to con¬ vince them that God’s Beality is everywhere essentially sub- LETT. III.] ON ROMANISM. 101 limer than Man’s Imagination. Yet every step in the march of human knowledge has shown it. The real law of the physical universe is a nobler conception, even in its imagina¬ tive aspect, than all the brightest philosophical visions that went before it; patient science, which deals with the creations of God, is continually arriving at conclusions not merely more valuable, but even poetically more brilliant and beautiful, than man ever attained when giving loose to all the capri¬ cious evolutions of fancy or conjecture. Let any man in this point of view compare the Tinueus and the Principia! Just so is it in the revealed system too. Christianity itself is infinitely beyond the best human and philosophical concep¬ tions of a religion; and such likewise will invariably be the superiority of the theology that originally grew out of the strict and scrupulous meditation of the revelation itself, over any which ever has been, or will be, generated by the un¬ licensed aid of human feelings, sensibilities, adaptations, ex¬ pediencies. Amply does experience prove it in the great * example before us! The pretended “ development” of the Mediaeval centuries is, in truth, no advance, but a confused retreat upon the old Pagan associations, so dear, so natural to man. Human nature has pretty extensive experience of its own tendencies in the construction or corruption of religions, and it can very safely depose to its own manufacture in the religion of images and “ deified saints.” This was no “ shining more and more unto the perfect day.” The Christianity of the Apostles was profound, pure, lofty; the spirit of man feels that, deep as it may plunge, it can never touch ground in that nnfathomed ocean, nor in its strongest soarings reach 102 LETTERS [LETT. III. the heights of that unbounded sky. The public and autho¬ rized Christianity of the Middle Ages (save for the corrective virtue of the precious body of fundamental truths it preserved) was the religion — unless all the analogies of history and travel are a delusion — of the decrepitude or the infancy of the human spirit. It bears not one token of true growth, or ex¬ pansion, or vigour; save what inseparably belonged to its original inheritance of truth. It enlarged indeed its multi¬ tude of subject minds ; but, for the most part, what minds ! and how utterly has it ever since, on any large scale, failed where true Christianity has so often among us achieved its noblest victories, in proving its innate vigour, by commanding the allegiance of perfectly free and deeply thoughtful spirits ; the educated classes, through almost its entire dominion, be¬ ing at this moment (oh, shame and disgrace !) notoriously and avowedly infidel ; and the Romanism which would now storm or seduce the intellect of England, having become, on its own ground — Giod forbid I should say it otherwise than in sorrow for the suffering cause of Christianity ! — the scoff and scorn of the leading intelligences within its nominal communion. To resume. In the profound providence of Grod, such a modi¬ fication of the Primitive revelation as the Medimval may have been suited in some respects, — not in the chief respects, for the glory of the pure religion is its universal applicability and power, — but yet in some respects, for the semi-barbarous races it addressed, it might have bridged the passage from their national superstitions, by (as sainted Popes were not ashamed even then to recommend, and modern Jesuits long after exemplified) adopting and imitating their weaknesses. LETT. III.] ON ROMANISM. 103 I do not deny such overruling mercies possible to Him who can extort good out of the worst of evil; but I do reclaim against the monstrous pretence that this clumsy and uncouth scaffolding (whatever its temporary uses) is to be regarded as a genuine member of the majestic architecture it disfigures: that this hypertrophy is to be taken as a healthy and natural growth of the divinely-organized frame it encumbers and corrupts. Let us not be deceived by the literary fashion of an hour. The “Dark Ages” have, no doubt, been unreasonably dark¬ ened; keen and learned explorers1 have shown us how unfair it is to make a starless midnight of that twilight of the mind ; but, in the name of common sense and reason, let us beware of the most absurd and irrational of all reactions ; and amid all the learned revolutions that in so many departments are reversing around us the old judgments of history, let us pause yet a while, before we consent to call the age of the monas¬ tic miracles and the Lateran Councils the beau ideal of Chris¬ tian sincerity, humility, and wisdom! For, in truth, this important consideration must not be overlooked in dealing with this daring hypothesis. I have already in this paper argued that this system is but a Romish application of the method by which all the peculiarities of Christianity may be, and have been subverted ; I have argued 1 I need scarcely mention Mr. Maitland’s acute and agreeable Essays. [For a discussion of the literary attainments of the “ Dark Ages” see also Hallam’s View of the State of Europe during the Middle Ages, Chap. ix. note 203, and M. Ampere, Histoire Litter air e de la France avant le douzieme Siecle. Paris, 1 840.] 104 LETTERS [LETT. III. that the theory rests upon ideally substituting the extrava¬ gant straining of doctrine for that moderation which is the true perfection of the Church’s wisdom, in the discharge of her prophetical function. I have argued that such a system essentially contravenes the purpose of God to withhold super¬ fluous knowledge, and to discourage vain curiosity on the “ secret things” that “ belong” to Him alone. I have argued that (as might be expected) the unblest attempts of divines (who often foresaw not the peril of the example they set), to intrude into the Unrevealed, have only terminated in degrad¬ ing the Revealed; and thus that, in point of fact, the pre¬ tended “ developments” of the Roman theology, are them¬ selves a palpable descent from the level of Christianity, in¬ stead of being, as all true growths of primitive doctrine would assuredly be, undiminished manifestations of its principles and power — advanced apprehensions of the one unchangeable truth, in proportion to the advanced experience of the Church, — “wisdom” for them that were become more and more “per¬ fect,” and whose “senses” were “ exercised to discern” with a yet more exquisite and instantaneous tact. But this argu¬ ment becomes still more convincing when we recal the period at which these improvements of the Gospel were in¬ vented or methodized, the sort of guides at whose feet, as being the only safe developers of Christianity, we primitive Catholics are now summoned to surrender our faith. This topic I cannot wholly omit, although I can do it but little justice here. Y. That traces of some of these notions are to be found as early as the fourth and fifth centuries, is well known ; though LETT. III.] ON ROMANISM. 105 the lowest degree of competent criticism can separate between them and authoritative dogmas at that period ; and every one interested in this controversy must take special care to re¬ member, that the Roman hierarchy is not censured merely for retaining (in despite of all the opportunities of inquiry, and all the merciful teachings of Providence) these follies and weaknesses, but for enforcing them as essential to the right conception of Christianity; essential to the salvation of every human soul; essential in such a degree, as to justify convulsing the whole Church of Christ to its centre, and sundering its visible communion, rather than recognize their omission in any national Church. But it is not in the fourth and fifth centuries Mr. Newman delights to find his model ; he knows well how the great names of those days, even when betrayed into countenancing (or, like St. Jerome, too angrily championing) some of these weaknesses, yet, in their more reflective hours, expressly speak of them as things uncertain, optional, circumstantial, at best. The Mediceval Christianity is Mr. Newman’s true Ideal of absolute perfection ; is it not fair then to ask my readers to reflect what was the real height of learning and morals in the period to which we are no longer called to do even-handed justice (it is delightful to be shown how to render that), but which is boldly set before us as the culminating point — at least till the next “ develop¬ ment” — of Christian knowledge and Christian holiness? The devotional habits attributed in the monastic histories and legends to that period, recommend it to men who have to lament (what, however, the better prelates themselves of that day lamented with at least equal energy) the prevalence of 106 LETTERS [LETT. III. indifference and scepticism; and numerous individual in¬ stances of excellence, no doubt, there were, though it requires some ingenuity and perseverance to detect them through the mist of extravagance with which the Middle-Age mythology has invested its heroes. But it is not individual instances that determine the tone and character of the times. The Mediaeval treatises that make up so large a portion of the huge Bibliothecae Patrum (even supposing them to be of far higher quality than most of them can pretend to), were the attempts of pious men not so much to elevate and reform a declining Church, as to adorn and recommend what they found to be its general belief. The doctrine of an age cannot well rise above the level of its average instructors. What was the condition of the clergy at large, when the “ develop¬ ments of Christian doctrine” became fixed integral portions of the Gospel ? W as it such as to form a legitimate presump¬ tion in favour of these innovations? Of what class and character were the men to whom it was given to see mysteries of faith, on which he who was “ caught up to the third heaven” was silent, to which, hundreds of years after him, Chrysostom and Augustine were blind, or but feebly and indistinctly alive1? I open an ordinary authority2 almost at hazard; and 1 “ Nunquid Patribus,” asks St. Bernard, who, if unfortunately he did not always follow his own maxim, always, we may presume, imagined he was strictly doing so, — “doctiores aut devotiores sumus 1 Periculose praesumimus quicquid ipsorum in talibus pru- dentia prceterivitT — Epist. clxxiv. 2 [Viz. Gieseler, ii. 33, where the first three quotations are more fully given. This Text-Book of Ecclesiastical History , trans- LETT. III.] ON ROMANISM. 107 I transcribe nearly the first sentences I meet. I have no room for (wliat would be very easy) lengthened citations; but the candid student will understand what such as these imply, and “develope” for himself. The following, for example, is a decree of the very important and influential Council of Aix-la-Chapelle, A.D. 789, intended apparently for the prelates at large of the Western Churches1: “ Vide- ant Episcopi ut presbyteri missarum preces bene intelligant . . . ut Dominicam orationem ipsi intelligant , et omnibus prsedicent intelligendam.,, In an episcopal mandement 2, some time lated by Cunningham, Philadelphia, 1836, is almost exclusively the source of Mr. Butler’s references, and is the work intended when the writer’s name occurs in any of the notes signed G. The editor occasionally cites another performance by the same author, published ten years later. — G.] 1 [The Capitulary of Aix-la-Chapelle, addressed by Charlemagne to Ecclesiastics, may be seen among the Laws collected by Ansegisus Abbas and Benedictus Levita. On account of the omission of a clause after the word “ intelligant,” where it first occurs, it may be well to set down the entire passage : — “Ut Episcopi diligenter dis- cutiant per suas parochias Presbyterorum fidem, Baptisma Catholi- cum, et Missarum celebrationes, ut fidem rectam teneant, et Bap¬ tisma Catholicum observent, et Missarum preces bene intelligant, et ut Psalmi digne secundum divisiones versuum modulentur, et Bo- minicam orationem ipsi intelligant, et omnibus prsedicent intelli- gendam, ut quisque sciat quid petat a Deo, et ut Gloria Patri cum omni honore apud omnes cantetur.” (Cap. lxx. fol. 14. Paris. 1603.)— G.] 2 [Of Archbishop Hincmar ( Capitula Presbyteris data , ann. 852, c. i.). See Mansi, xv. 475, in Gieseler, Ecc. Hist. ii. 263. Ed. Clark. The injunction of Hincmar, from which the citation in the text is made, does not imply that his clergy were remarkably low in their 108 LETTERS [LETT. III. later, it is earnestly pressed, that “ Sermonem Athanasii de Fide, cujns initium est Quicumque vult salvus esse, me¬ morise commendet [unusquisque presby terorum] , et sensum illius intelligat , et verbis commnnibus enuntiare queat” — Mansi , xv. 475. And there is no reason for supposing that the clergy of Hincmar, the bishop who issued these instructions, were not up to the level of their day. A little farther on, and some sixty years after1 — “ Qui Scripturas scit, prsedicet Scripturas ; qui vero nescit , saltern hoc quod notissimum est plebibus dicat [ut declinent a malo, et faciant bonum, inquirant pacem et sequantur earn.”] — Theo- dulph.2 ad Paroch. [ Cajgit . ad Preshy ter os parocMae suce, — G.] attainments : “ Ut unusquisque Presbyterorum expositionem Sym- boli, atque orationis Dominicae juxta traditionem orthodoxorum Patrum plenius discat, exinde prsedicando popnlum sibi commissum sedulo instruat. Prefationem quoqne Canonis, et eundem Canonem intelligat, et memoriter ac distincte proferre valeat, et orationes Missarum, Apostolnm quoqne et Evangelium bene legere possit; Psalmorum etiam verba et distinctiones regulariter et ex corde cum canticis consuetudinariis pronuntiare sciat. ISTecnon et Sermonem Athanasii,” &c.] 1 [Father, fifty-five years before. Archbishop Hincmar’ s Cap i- tula were issued in 852, and those of Theodulphus, Bishop of Orleans, (first published by Baronius,) about A. I). 797. — G.] 2 [It must be admitted, in fairness to the Middle Ages , that the Capitular of Theodolphus does not involve such ignorance as is implied in the text. One of his directions is as follows (Cli. 20); “ Presbyteri per villas et vicos scholas liabeant, et si quilibet fide- lium suos parvulos ad discendas literas eis commendare vult, eos suscipere et clocere non renuant, sed cum gumma caritate eos do- ceant. Cum ergo eos docent nihil ab eis pretii pro liac re exigant, nec aliquid ab eis accipiant, excepto quod eis parentes caritatis LETT. III.] ON ROMANISM. 109 c. 28. Sometime after, Rather ius1, in an age of still further development, enforces sternly upon the clergy of one of the most important dioceses in the Western Church the absolute necessity of knowing the three Creeds2; and seems to add his earnest admonition, that they would try to learn the meaning of the Sunday3: “ Moneo etiam vos de Die Dominico ut cogitetis, ciut si cogitare nescitis, interrogetis, quare ita vocetur , . . . . ut unusquisque vestrum, si fieri potest, expositionem Symboli et Orationis Dominicas juxta traditionem ortho- doxorum penes se scriptam habeat, et earn pleniter intelligat / et inde, si novit , prsedicando populum sibi commissum sedulo instruat; si non, saltern teneat vel credatS ’ and he similarly recommends to those who do not understand4 the prayers studio suavoluntate obtulerunt.” — Yid. Mansi, xiii. 993, quoted by Gieseler, ii. 265, Ed. Clark.] 1 [Ratherius became Bishop of Yerona in the year 931. — See Du Pin.] 2 \il Memoriter” should have been added. In fact, notwith¬ standing the enlightenment of the nineteenth century, if a Bishop in the present day were to require his Clergy, at a Yisitation, to re¬ peat from memory the three Creeds, with the alternative of leaving his diocese in disgrace, it may be apprehended that many a heart would tremble. — G.] 3 [By looking at the original in the Spicilegium of D’Achery, (i. 376, nov. ed.) it will become quite manifest, that this statement, hastily copied from Gieseler (ii. 98), does not rightly represent the Bishop of Yerona’ s meaning. His object was to prevent irrever¬ ence and profaneness ivith regard to Sunday ; and he therefore di¬ rects that it may be borne in mind Whose day it is : “ si enim Do¬ minica est Domini, utique non nostra dies est : si Domini est, reve- rentia Domini est lionoranda.” — G.] 4 [Dr. Maitland, if speaking of this passage, would doubtless LETTERS 110 [LETT. III. they utter at Mass, that “ saltern memoriter et clistincte pro- ferre valeant.” Listen again to the testimony of one who wms himself one of the great instruments of ecclesiastical “ developments “ Populus,” he writes1, “ nullo prcdatorum moderamine, nul- lisque mandatorum frsenis in viam justitnu directus, immo eorum qui prcesunt2 exemplo qugecnnque noxia et qnae Chris- ask for attention to the circumstance that the not unimportant word “bene” has been here omitted. On a similar occasion he observes, that “surely there was no proof of brutal ignorance in inquiring whether a candidate for holy orders could read Latin well in public — could repeat, understand, and explain the Athanasian Creed, and preach the doctrine contained in it in the vernacular tongue.” {Dark Ages, p. 18. Lond. 1844.) — G.] 1 [See Gieseler, ii. 159. Pope Gregory is lamenting the world¬ liness and ambition prevalent among the Clergy : but the depressed condition and imperfections of the Church he attributes to a most efficient cause, the insubjection and hostility of the State. “ Pec- tores et principes hujus mundi singuli quserentes quae sua sunt, non quae Jesu Christi.” — G.] 2 It is to be observed that (with, of course, brilliant exceptions, as no doubt there were many brilliant exceptions for ever lost to human fame, but known and dear to God, in all classes), there is very little reason to exclude the 'prelacy of the Mediaeval Church from this general character of its clergy. Whether we regard the warrior bishops of the empire, or the more luxurious and magnifi¬ cent courtiers of Pome and Avignon, it would certainly appear that “the development of Christian doctrine” was not likely to be a whit safer in their hands than in those of the inferior clergy. As for the Scholastic Doctors, their office (not to insist on their inces¬ sant mutual disputes) was, for the most part, to methodize, and to defend at all hazards, what had already, in spirit and substance, grown up before them amid such a clergy and such a laity as the LETT. III.] ON ROMANISM. Ill tianse religioni sunt contraria edoctus, ad omnia pene qua; nefaria sunt proni et studio currentes, [corruentes, — G.] Christianum nomen, non dico absque operum observantia, sed pene absque fidei religione gerunt.” — Gregor. VII. Epp. i. 42. But such passages as this bring one to the further ground of the moral condition of the clergy ; a matter ob¬ viously as important in relation to the present theory, but on which to accumulate citations applicable to every succes¬ sive century, would be a work literally endless. They shall be forthcoming in shoals, if they are asked for. One remark may be made on them all. In every case, the evil seems to grow directly as we approach the very focus of “ develop¬ ment,” Rome itself. “ Prse cseteris gentibus baptismo re- natis1,” is the declaration of Ratherius, echoed on every side — a contemptores canonical legis et vilipensores clericorum previous centuries afforded. The monastic bodies in the mass, re¬ main; but the perpetual story of their reforms , and of the difficulty and rapid decay of these reforms, too clearly indicates their average state. Not to add, that mere monastics must ever be essentially unqualified to understand Christianity in all the fulness of its prac¬ tical application, from inevitable lack of experience ; and must, therefore, be, of all Christian men, the most incompetent to legis¬ late for universal Christian belief. And yet the Church was, in its saddest obscuration, a light and blessing to the world, — a priceless blessing ! With all the infirm¬ ities and errors of its hierarchy, it retained the great lines of Catholic truth, and the blessing that truth inherits. It is only melancholy that the preposterous and extravagant claims of the advocates of its corruptions, should force men to seem to throw any doubt upon that consoling belief. 1 [“ Quserat et aliquis, cur prse cseteris .... sint . . .” — G.] 112 LETTERS [LETT. III. sunt magis Italici1.” Though certainly the latter article of the charge can scarcely move much surprise, when we re¬ member of- what description the vilipended clerici truly were, on the testimony of the Veronese bishop himself. From Hincmar’s exhortations to Bernard’s2 more awful denuncia¬ tions, from Bernard to the dreadful revelations of the Council of Constance, the report is miserably uniform ; till the very expression, ut populus sic sacerdos, seems to have become a sort of mediaeval proverb3. 1 [D’Achery, i. 354. Pope Pius IX. might perhaps be disposed to ask the same question as that which Batherius undertook to an¬ swer respecting the Italian laity. Possibly he might consider these words also not to be inappropriate : “ sine formidine suis volupta- tibus, et mortiferis voluntatibus passim deserviunt omnes.” — G.] 2 [Bernard in Cantic. Semi. 33. Opp. Tom. i. p. 1397. item Serm. ad Cleruni in Concilio Rhemensi, cited by IJssher, Works, Vol. ii. p. 68. Ed. Elrington. The following words are a specimen: “ Olim prsedictum est, et nunc tempus impletionis advenit, Ecee in pace amaritudo mea amarissima. (Esai. Cap. 38, Ver. 17.) Amara prius in nece martyrum • amarior post in conflictu hsereticorum ; amaris¬ sima nunc in moribus domesticorum. Xon fugare, non fugere eos potest, ita invaluerunt et multiplicati sunt super numerum. Intes- tina et insanabilis est plaga Ecclesise, et ideo in pace amaritudo ejus amarissima. Sed in qua pace? Et pax est, et non est pax; pax a paganis, pax ab hsereticis, sed non profecto a filiis.”] 3 [See Glaber Ilodulphus ap. Ussher, Works, ii. 107, eel. Elring¬ ton. The monk thus speaks of the pontificate of Benedict IX. commencing A.D. 1033 : “ Quis enim unquam antea tantos inces- tus, tanta adulteria, tantas consanguinitatis illicitas permixtiones, tot concubinarum ludibria, tot malorum aemulationes aucliverat? . Insuper ad cumulum tanti mali, cum non essent in populo, vel rari, qui cseteros corrigentes talia redarguerent, impletum est Prophets vaticinium, quod ait, et erit sicut populus sic sacerdosT] LETT. III.] ON ROMANISM. 113 This is a subject on which there is little pleasure in enlarging, and our common historians certainly speak too unsympathizingly of even the harmless peculiarities of the Mediaeval Church, for me to desire to carry such descriptions beyond their legitimate applications. But in relation to the present question, that application is obvious, and it is indispensable. In lieu of the ancient Catholic Buie of Faith, given up as unmanageable, an author stands forward, avowedly substituting “the mind of the Church working out dogmas from feelings.” Surely, we have a right to inquire in what state was the “mind” that took upon itself this tremendous function ? Surely, we may fairly ask, what was the previous discipline, and what the existing cultivation of this ecclesiasti¬ cal “mind,” that thus undertook to improve on the religion of the Apostles, that saw the true answer to problems they preferred to leave unsolved, and was favoured with revelations the Paraclete of “ all truth” forgot to impart to them ! VI. But untenable as is this claim of authoritative de¬ velopment when confronted with history, distorted and dis¬ coloured as we may expect the beams of celestial light to issue from this medium of impure, uncertain refraction, it is really, I must say, doing the whole hypothesis too much honour to refer it gravely to historical tests at all . Every one who is in the least competent to judge, and who knows the legerdemain that learned ingenuity can perform in such uncertainty of light, and with such an infinity of pliable materials, must be at once satisfied that the theory of this volume could be made with equal facility to 'prove any tlimg whatever. Mr. Newman himself seems at times pretty well 8 114 LETTERS [LETT. III. aware of this ; and while in one page proclaiming his “ de¬ velopments” as little short of demonstration, and “Pro¬ testants ” blinded and undevout and unbelieving, who can¬ not at once recognize their force, in others he depresses the demands of his argument, and speaks of it as merely evincing it not impossible that the Mediaeval- divinity might possibly have issued legitimately out of earlier doctrine. “ The drift of this argument,” he tell us, p. 388, “ is merely to determine whether certain developments [in that term simply assuming the question] which did afterwards and do exist, have not sufficient countenance in early times, that we may pronounce them to be true developments:” .... and he proceeds to urge that, even if very little countenance could be found for them, nay, if the anticipations of them “ were much fewer than those of a contrary character, they would be the rule, and the majority would he the exception ;” the entire reason for this portentous affirmation (which really renders his whole inquiry nearly superfluous) being, that “ they have a principle of consistence , and tend to something ,” whereas the others “have no meaning, and come to nothing;” it being perfectly manifest that any permanent corruption (and I have already shown that the continuity of human nature lays an adequate foundation for the permanence of religious corrup¬ tions), may be similarly vindicated by the fact of its existence ; and that all corruptions are likely to be more or less connected , and thus to have a sort of internal “ consistency,” if they be the common growth of tendencies in themselves so connected as are the various superstitious impulses commonly observable in our imperfect nature. But it is not on this I now insist. LETT. III.] ON ROMANISM. 115 My present object is simply to lead Mr. Newman’s disciples to do justice to their master, by observing and admiring the universality and flexibility of tliis new instrument of theo¬ logical investigation, which can be applied, for the common benefit of all sects and parties in religion, to the proof of any¬ thing they please. In order to clear the way for this modern Rule of Faith, of course (as I have before observed) it becomes necessary to cloud the luminous simplicity of all the evidences of reli¬ gion. The “Catholic Fathers and ancient bishops” w^ere accustomed to speak somewhat triumphantly in their con¬ tests with heretics of the plainness and certainty of the rule of belief. Not so the school of which Mr. Newman aspires to be the founder. He admits that the tests he had himself so laboriously fixed for the ascertainment of correct deve¬ lopments are (p. 117) “insufficient for the guidance of indi¬ viduals in the case of so long and complicated a problem as Christianity,” and he hesitates not to generalize this unhappy principle of scepticism in that usual fearful way in which Romish controversialists prefer sinking the vessel itself of Christianity, to lightening it of their own superfluous burden, and had rather men were utter Deists than rebels to tlieir authority. “We must,” he mournfully declares (p. 180), in order to discover (what he calls) “the formal basis on which God has rested His Revelations” — “ we must do our best with what is given us, and look about for aid from any quarter;” and the aid we are to expect, after this long and dubious search, is to consist of “the opinions of others, the traditions of ages, the prescriptions of authority, antecedent 8 — 2 116 LETTERS [lett. III. auguries , analogies, parallel cases, and the like;” for the basis of belief, for which we are thus groping through the twilight, is of “a historical and philosophical character.” This gloomy picture of the difficulties of knowing what to believe (which will answer excellently for our next ex¬ portation to Germany, in order duly to maintain the lite¬ rary balance of trade between us and the philosophers of Bonn and Berlin), and the convenient facility it at the same time presents for believing whatever we choose, is admirably applied in other parts of the work in the establishment of particular doctrines. The following struck me especially, in perusing the volume, as perhaps the happiest specimen of the art of proving by waiving all proof, that the annals of even Homan divinity can furnish. “If it be true,” observes Mr. Newman, in laying down the canons of his theological Novum Organum (p. 366), “that the principles [the reader must recur to the author for the distinctive meaning of this term1; the explanation takes up four pages, 70 — 73] of the later Church are the same as those of the earlier, then, what¬ ever are the variations of belief between the two periods , the earlier, in reality, agrees more than it differs with the later ; for principles are responsible for doctrines .” 1 “ Principles are abstract and general; doctrines relate to facts; doctrines develope, and principles do not; [compare p. 368, where we are told that “ the principles of Catholic Development admit of development themselves,” Qu. xii. Art. 2,1 2) and that heretics may well and fitly be murdered (‘ Eradicentur per mortem' ) wherever the work can wholly (‘ totaliter ’) be done. [Qu. xi. Art. 3.] 2 A doctrine which the Church has (I need not say) confirmed, alike by the voice of (Ecumenical Councils, and by the canonization of the author just named, as the greatest and soundest of all her developers of religious truth. But, even in earlier times, it is manifest that ‘ the hor¬ ror of heresy, the law of implicit obedience to ecclesiastical authority, and the doctrine of the mystical virtue of unity, as active then as in the Church of St. Carlo and St. Pius V.’3 1 [fol. 23, b. Lugd. 1540.— G.] 2 [fol. 22, b. “ Si tamen totaliter eradicentur per mortem hsere- tici, non est etiam contra mandatum Domini ; quod est in eo casu intelligendum, quando non possunt extirpari zizania sine extirpa- tione tritici.” — G.] 3 The citation of this personage, as an illustration of the just “horror of heresy” and the “law of obedience to ecclesiastical authority,” is another of those many passages which throw an unhappy light upon Mr. Newman’s notions of both. St. Pius Y. was conspicuous, not only for a peculiar measure of the papal talent for stirring up nation against nation to mutual slaughter, for the good of the Church, but as being nearly the most persevering — perhaps, in heart and temper the very most cordial — burner of heretics in the annals of the papacy. This — added to those sterner ascetic vir¬ tues, which were a novelty on the papal throne in an age, when one of the commonest causes of political disturbance in Europe was the arrangement of principalities for the sons, and alliances lor the 134 LETTERS [LETT. III. (see p. 367), involved the germ of the doctrine before us; it being plain, whatever romantic maxims may have got cur¬ rency in modern days about the power of truth, rational per¬ suasion, and the like, that constraints more intelligibly effica¬ cious are necessary, if the uniform testimony of the Catholic Church (fairly interpreted by that Illustrious Saint, whom I have just mentioned) is to be received as the voice of heaven. “ But it is when we advance somewhat further, that we begin to find this principle effectively manifest itself, — enough, at least, which is all my argument contemplates, to counte¬ nance its subsequent recognition by willing disciples. I have already hinted at the opinion of St. Augustine ; though I grieve to reflect how wavering and unsettled was that great prelate on this question1. When Priscillian was executed, daughters of the successors of St. Peter — secured the canonization of St. Pius Y. ; and Mr. Newman has now the privilege of offering up his daily devotions to this gentle Pastor, one of whose dearest designs was to head, in person, an armed invasion against England. {Ranke, Book iii. § 8 .)* 1 See S. Aug. ad Dideit. (Ep. 61, al. 204), ad Vincent. (48, al. 113), [xciii. — G-.] and Be correct. Donatist. Also Ad Marcellin. Ad Donat. Proconsul . &c. Slowly and unwillingly he seems, by the difficulties of the time and the incorrigible insubordination of the Donatists, to have been led to this; “ Corrigi eos cupimus non necari, ”....“ poena illorum rogo te ut pneter supplicium mortis sit _ propter Catholicam mansuetudinem commendandam,” _ “pro lenitatis Christianae consideratione, &c.” He admits that it was a change in his former views to countenance force at all ; but that he * [The Rev. Joseph Mendham is Life and Pontificate of Saint Pius the the author of the best account of the Fifth. Lond. 1832. — G.] LETT. III.] ON ROMANISM. 135 the first heretical blood judicially shed, I confess that St. Martin of Tours, and St. Ambrose of Milan1, loudly pro¬ tested against the innovation ; for even strong spiritual vision cannot be expected to bear unwinking the first blaze of such light as this. But if Chrysostom and Hilary object2, I can cite strong sayings from Jerome3 and Leo4, that 'Leo, Bishop was shaken by observing the advantageous results of severity in producing peace, “ timore legum imperialium.” The full results of the principle this most holy man thus unwarily, and in its milder application, countenanced, it would, perhaps, have required little short of inspiration to have foreseen. 1 Sulpic. Severus, iii. 11 et seqq. [Dial. iii. § xv. Amstel. 1G65. — G.] S. Ambros. Epp. 24, 26. 2 “Terret exiliis et carceribus Ecclesia ; credique sibi cogit, quse exiliis et carceribus est credita,” &c., a very eloquent remonstrance which I wish I had room to quote. ( Contr . Auxent. Mediol.) [Opp. col. 1265. ed. Ben. — G.] 3 “Non est crudelitas pro Deo pietas,” &c.* He goes on to quote the Old Testament injunctions, something too much, I fear, in the spirit of the Balfour of Burley theology. (Ep. ad Bipar.) 4 “ Profuit diu ista districtio” (the severities to the Priscillian- ists,) “ Ecclesiastics lenitati, quae etsi..:.cruentas refugit ultiones, sevens tamen Cliristianorum principum constitutionibus adjuva- tur,” &c. (Leo, Ep. ad Turrib. [S. Leonis Opp. i. 227. Lugd. 1700. — G.] See it turned to good account in 3 Later. Canon 27 ; [Cap. 27. Concill. Gen. Tom. iv. p. 33. Boms, 1612. — G.] Sicut ait beatus * [The words are, “Non est crude¬ litas pro Deo, sect pietas,” and are . used to justify his own severity of lan¬ guage, while they refer especially to some instances of zeal in God’s ser¬ vice recorded in Scripture ; such as the conduct of St. Peter with regard to Ananias and Sapphira, and the sentence passed upon the sorcerer Elymas by St. Paul. (St. Hieron. Ad- vers. Vigilant, ad Ripar. Opp. Tom. ii. p. 1 19. Basil. 1565.) — G.] 136 LETTERS [LETT. III. of Rome,’ whom I have already celebrated (p. 302), as the bulwark of orthodoxy when every other had failed. These foreshadowings of Mediaeval truth, combined with the unre¬ sisting admission by the Church of the imperial severities against heresy, supply an array of ‘early anticipations’ quite sufficient to save the blushes of the most timidly sensitive inquisitor of more enlightened times. “5. For my fifth test (‘Logical Sequence’), no difficulty at all remains. The body is inferior in importance to the soul ; any pain of body which brings even the remotest chance of securing the welfare of the soul (or even of other souls, by terror of example), is, therefore, only an indication of the tenderest affection on the part of the torturer. And this instance of logical connexion has the advantage, that, whereas, in other cases, I confess (p. 388), I have been re¬ duced to imagining a connexion of my own, without any proof that it ever existed in the minds of the original de¬ velopers themselves, in this the course of thought, in those who first ventured to countenance civil penalties for heresy, seems actually to have been very much what I have here sug¬ gested. I need not add how this is confirmed by the expres¬ sion of St. Paul himself about ‘ delivering’ an offender ‘ unto Satan for the destruction of the flesh, &c.’ (1 Cor. v. 5); a maxim which the Catholic Church has very properly verified, by making its inquisitorial punishments and dungeons bear Zee, &c., where it is developed into “ fidelibus, qui contra eos (hsere- ticos) anna susceperint, biennium de pcenitentia injuncta relaxa- mus,” — as well as a “relaxatio” from all bond of fealty or obe¬ dience. LETT. III.] ON ROMANISM. 137 the most striking resemblance (according to the universal tes¬ timony of historians, travellers, and the records themselves of the Holy Office) to those which are attributed to the agency and the abode of the Spirit of Evil himself. “ 6. That racking and burning dissenters from the Ro¬ man orthodoxy is a ‘Preservative Addition,’ (my sixth test), no man can well deny, who is not prepared to affirm that the rack and the stake have no natural tendency to inculcate the expediency of obedience to ecclesiastical authority1. “ 7. Lastly, that ‘ Chronic Continuance’ attests the doc¬ trine of torturing or destroying the heretic and infidel, there can surely be no reasonable doubt. A catena of centuries establishes this to be at least as real a ‘ development ’ as any single peculiarity of the Roman practical theology2. Indeed it had arrived at its fullest height before some of them were definitively settled. From the persecutions of Jews in the sixth century to the crusades against Saracens in the twelfth, from the slaughter of Albigeois in the thirteenth, and the 1 It was left to M. deMaistre, of whose hardihood Mr. Newman, is, or seems, a disciple, to discover the value of the Inquisition as a “preservative” of national character and spirit; “Si la nation Espagnole,” declares this preacher of paradoxes, “ a conserve ses maximes, son unite, et cet esprit public qui l’a sauvee, elle le doit uniquement a 1’ Inquisition.” — Lettres ct un Gentilhomme Russe, &c. Lett. 4ieme. Strangely enough, M. Quinet has adopted this notion in a passage in his eloquent, inaccurate, Lectures on “ Ultramonta- nism.” Lee. viii. 2 “A corruption is of brief duration, runs itself out quickly, and ends in death. This general law gives us additional assurance in determining” true developments. — p. 446. 138 LETTERS [LETT. HI. establishment of the Holy Office, and the infallible Canons of the (Ecumenical Council of Lateran, commanding the purga¬ tion of heretical filth, to the crowning achievement of St. Bar¬ tholomew’s Day (applauded and confirmed by a blessed Pope), in the sixteenth, it may be confidently affirmed, that continuous attestation , accredited by the supreme authority of Rome , can prove no doctrine ivhatsoever to be a genuine development of Christianity if it fail to demonstrate that the dungeon , rack, and stake , are the true and legitimate growth of the religion of Him Who said , 4 Ye know not what spirit ye are of ; for the Son of Man is NOT COME to destroy men’s lives, but to save them ! ’ ” Such is the contribution, brief and unpolished (I have no space here for decoration) as to style, but, as I believe, per¬ fectly unimpeachable as regards argumentative application, which I beg leave to tender to the Theory of Development. I have some apology to make for presuming to adopt the Author’s personality; and I am sufficiently aware that, in assuming the tripod, I have not inherited the energy and in¬ spiration of the oracle. The designed inference, however, I suppose, is tolerably plain. Let any man compare the case (of which the above is the most meagre of outlines), that can be made for the Holy Inquisition and its agonies, with develop¬ ments argued in this volume to be , as such , of the essence of Christianity; let him remember the words of the Author him¬ self (p. 154), “you must accept the whole , or reject the whole;” 44 it is trifling to receive all but something which is as integral as any other portion and let him then estimate to what they are committed, who, abandoning the old immutable LETT. III.] ON ROMANISM. 139 rule of faith, shall adopt as obligatory matter of belief, under the delusive pretext of development, whatsoever any cause, or combination of causes, shall have made permanent in the Roman Communion ; who shall suffer themselves to be en¬ trapped by this fallacious artifice, into accepting as the inspi¬ ration of the Holy Ghost, whatsoever inexperience, or preci¬ pitancy, or ambition, or resentment, or faithless mistrust of God’s sufficient protection, or false logic, or a dominant phi¬ losophy, or evil example, or condescension to Heathen pre¬ judices, or narrow views of expediency, or the misdirected energy of individual minds, may have introduced ; and the haughtiness of power, or the indolence of rulers and mere vis inertice of all that is once established, or the misapplication of true Catholic firmness to vain un-Catholic novelties, or grow- ing ignorance of the original standards, may have confirmed ; until, with the claim of absolute infallibility in all possible controversies of religion, it became impracticable to reject, and almost a deadly sin even to question, the innovation. There are some other applications of this hypothesis to the general history of Christianity, which may justly make its Romanist vindicators pause, and of which I hope to say some¬ thing. 140 LETTERS [LETT. IV. LETTER IV. In the close of Letter III, I endeavoured to illustrate, in one remarkable point of view, the perilous tendency of a theory whose object is to substitute for the primitive Rule of Faith “ once delivered to the Saints,” “ sola immobilis et irre- formabilis1,” the historical succession of doctrines, practices, feelings, fashions, in the Latin Church. I have observed that such a# theory cannot be maintained without stamping with the signet of Inspiration everything equally which that Church has unequivocally patronized ; that it is preposterous to affirm us bound, on pain of eternal perdition, to admit the definition of Lateran2 (merely as such) on Transubstantiation3, and deny 1 [“ Regula quidem fidei una omnino est, sola immobilis et irreformabilis.” Tert. De Veland. Virg. c. i.] 2 [Fourth Lateran, in 1215, under Innocent III.] 3 [it seems almost certain that Transubstantiation, as it is understood by later Romanists, was not intended by the decree of the Fourth Lateran Synod. The word Transubstantiation indeed, was used to express the /xeracrTot^etwo-ts, by which the sacramental elements become the Body and Blood of Christ; but nothing is determined as to the nature of the mystery, whether the change be physical, or spiritual and sacramental. It is “ very probable,” says Mr. Palmer, in his invaluable Essay, “that the LETT. IV.] OH ROMANISM. 141 that the Holy Ghost spoke in the contemporary exhortations of the same Council to fire and blood ; the difference, if any, being only that the essential spirit — the true “ethical develop¬ ment” — of this Roman Catholicity, must have been even more intensely manifested in a practical matter, such as the torture and slaughter of dissentients, than in any enunciation of a purely dogmatic decision. The subtle distinctions which Roman divines endeavour to establish with regard to the com¬ parative authority of the various classes of Church-decrees (even if they did not abundantly contradict and confute each other, and even if they were here, in point of fact, applicable), are altogether irrelevant to this argument. Mr. Newman him¬ self is eager to urge that the general spirit of the Church’s teaching and practice is that which, after all, bespeaks its heavenly origin, and its uninterrupted inspiration. It is in this — unfolding, adorning, enthusiastically celebrating this — that the power and seductiveness of his volume consists ; this — Synod of Lateran did not intend to establish anything except the doctrine of the Real Presence. In fact the question was not then with those who denied the modern doctrine of Transubstantiation ; it was with the Manicheans, who denied the real presence of Christ’s Body in the Eucharist.” — Vol. ii. p. 224. Pope Innocent himself asserts {Be Myster. Missce , lib. iv.) that the total change of the substance is not de fide; and it is notorious that many opinions irreconcileable with Tridentine Transubstantiation were openly and without censure taught by Romish theologians, subsequent to the Fourth Lateran Synod, as, for example, Durandus a S. Porciano, and Cardinal D’Ailly, who presided at the Council of Constance in 1415. — Vid. Palmer, ubi sup. See also Hagenbach’s History of Doctrines , Vol. ii. p. 96, et seqq.\ 142 LETTERS [LETT. IV. the Catholic spirit and Catholic principles — is just what he tells ns Rome possesses, and we have lost ; and this, unques¬ tionably, is not more vividly manifested in the formal decrees of Councils (which Councils, however, are abundantly com¬ mitted to the maxims I speak of) than in the whole ecclesias¬ tical tone and practices of an age. Let, then, the test be impartially applied ; let there be no shrinking from the full acceptance of these infallible Roman developments, no elo¬ quent celebration of some, and modest suppression of others ! The same authority authorizes all. If it must be so, that the Mediaeval Church surpassed us in the principle of religious reverence, I beg it may not be altogether forgotten that she surpassed us also in the principle of religious massacre ; and that it is really quite impossible to accept the former develop¬ ment on the simple basis of her authority , without accepting the latter development on precisely the same plea. “ No one,” declares Mr. Newman, very justly — p. 29 — “has power over the issues of his principles. We cannot manage our argu¬ ment, and have as much of it as we please, and no more.” “That the hypothesis here to be adopted,” he had said just before, apparently distressed at the overwhelming force of his own arguments, “ accounts not only for the Athanasian Creed, but for the Creed of Pope Pius, is no fault of those who adopt it.” I may be permitted to continue the series of its achieve¬ ments, and add, — that if it accounts not only “ for the Creed of Pope Pius,” but for the policy , practices , and spirit of that prelate, his successors, and his predecessors for centuries, it may possibly become “the fault” of those who, with con¬ clusions so fearful, palpably involved in the hypothesis, still LETT. IV.] ON ROMANISM . 143 wilfully persist “ to adopt it.” In a system such as Mr. New¬ man’s, in Romanism itself, there is no eclecticism possible; let our unfortunate brethren in peril of this temptation remem¬ ber it betimes ! They who sigh for Catholic unity may, per¬ haps, pause when they see in the papal history of the Middle centuries — in the merciless tyranny of the Roman, in the vo¬ luptuous infamies of the Avignon papacy — that there can be worse evils for the Church of Christ than the independence of national churches ; they who long to grovel in the dust before the successor of St. Peter, may, perhaps, start and reflect when they find their idol besmeared with blood. The Rule of Faith which Mr. Newman would establish, then, applies to all the characteristics of Roman Christianity , or it can apply to none ; no middle course is, on his theory, possible. His code of belief is a deduction from a vast series of historical facts ; and all facts , as such, are on a level ; all equally claim to be weighed in the theological balances ; all equally claim to be ingredients in the immense and diversified combination, out of which, in the last result, the genuine doc¬ trines and principles of Christianity are to be extracted. With such a theory as his, he cannot select at his own will what he shall be pleased to style Catholic development, and what he shall prefer to slur over as temporary discipline. There is no discipline — least of all, a discipline explicitly de¬ duced from principles, embodied under anathema in Canons, permanent and energetic for centuries — which does not involve and express a real corresponding doctrine . If the Roman Church was indeed mistaken , when that fearful war-cry was heard for centuries from the Vicars of the Prince of Peace — 144 LETTERS [LETT. IV. each taking up, with terrible continuity, the maxims of his predecessor, and transmitting them undecayed to the aged, pitiless priest that succeeded to the throne, — if it was wrong thus to incite the ruthless baron and his wild soldiery to mas¬ sacre the poor Waldensian, and the half-crazed Beghard, and promise the murderers heaven for their labours, — if the Roman Church, which did this as a body, and under the authority of her appointed head, and the instruction of her canonized saints, with all the fulness of united decision and corporate will, was in error so to do — intoxicated, not informed, pos¬ sessed, not inspired — who shall demonstrate that this utterly mistaken “development,” this perversion, doctrinal, practical, intimate, pervading, permanent, stands alone in her history? This way of arguing (and how many similar misconcep¬ tions of duty, and the doctrines involved in duty, may be easily adduced !) is, I repeat, perfectly applicable as a test of the validity of Mr. Newman’s theory. It is essential to this theory to abide all true historical conclusions ; the theorist of “development” is bound as stringently to the history of the Church as he is to the Four Gospels. History with him is not merely the narrative of facts, but the law of doctrine ; his theology can as little neglect a fact in History, as the An¬ glican can a verse in the New Testament. The fundamental error of the whole system indeed may probably be stated to consist in this very thing, that it con¬ ceives Christianity is to be investigated as a mere succession of historical events in order to determine Faith. He commences with it in the very first page and sentence of his Essay. “ Christianity has been long enough in the world to justify us LETT. IV.] ON ROMANISM. 145 in dealing with it as a fact in the worlds history .” — p. 1. “ To know what it is , we must seek it in the world , and hear the world’s witness of it.” — p. 2. We must study it in this way, as we would “ the Spartan institutions, or the religion of Mahomet.” This is indeed a great error. It is wantonly to confound the functions of the historian and of the divine ; and in the confusion, inevitably to generate a history that is un¬ faithful, to harmonize with the divinity, and a divinity cor¬ rupted, to harmonize with the history. It is to confound the knowledge of Church History as a succession of historical facts, with the knowledge of Christianity as a Hule of Duty; to confound Christianity as a mixed earthly Reality, with Christianity as a pure heavenly Ideal. The former, doubt¬ less, is a profoundly interesting inquiry, but the latter alone is essentially theological. A conception so fundamentally erroneous is enough to vitiate all subsequent processes, and in point of fact (for it must in spirit be the maxim of every Church claiming infallibility) its practical results have been pernicious beyond description. It is not difficult to analyse them. When, instead of the original divine Ideal, ever to be indefinitely approached, perhaps never absolutely, in this world, attainable, we substitute the actual past Church His¬ tory of eighteen centuries as our model of Christian perfec¬ tion, we irreparably degrade, in its very essence, our own high aim and vocation ; we are almost inevitably tempted to play false with the records of history themselves (as in the miserable inventions of the legendary biographies of saints), in order to give some elevation to our substituted model of excellence; and we condemn the Church herself 10 146 LETTERS [LETT. IV. to retrogression or sterility, — forcing her and ourselves to reverse the maxim of him whose noble ambition for ever impelled him, “ forgetting those things which are behind,” to “ reach forth unto those things which are before.” Out of this primary error nearly all the philosophy (so to speak) of Romanism derives; for it all consists in the contrivance of maxims and principles such as may demonstrate (as it were a priori) the past history of the Church, dogmatical and practical, to be, in all respects, a model of absolute perfec¬ tion. This, of course, can only be done by, in some way, attributing to men the peculiar and incommunicable charac¬ teristics of The Great Model Himself. It is thus that there has gradually been formed a sort of “ heroic age” of Chris¬ tianity, peopled by demigods, having in them a kind of inchoate divinity, and to be spoken of, not as blessed and venerable Christian men and women, but as objects awful and superhuman, breathing, while in this world, an atmo¬ sphere already midway between earth and heaven, and, when departed from this world, invocable in the same prayers that invoke God. It is thus that the sacred mystery of the in¬ dwelling of Christ and of the Holy Spirit is exaggerated into the Deification of Saints; thus that such devices as the “ Sacramental Principle” of our author (in his novel sense of the phrase) have their rise; thus that we find again recommended the extravagant exaltation of the mystical sense of Scripture from its proper place (when not applied by special Divine authority) as an illustration more or less pertinent, to the dangerous and delusive — but, for such pur¬ poses, convenient — position of an 07'iginal and adequate LETT. IV.] ON ROMANISM. 147 proof of doctrine. The source and principle of all such reasonings seems the same; the misguided effort to make the past Historical Church, through all its ages, a model and an authority co-ordinate with Christ Himself; the very conception, in short, that is involved in Mr. Newman’s opening assertion, that “Christianity” (that is — as his argu¬ ment requires — Christianity in its true design, spirit, and doctrine) is to be studied “as a fact in history,” that to know ivhat it is, we must see it [not in the Life and the Teaching of its Author, not in the writings of His disciples, but] uin the world /” that “ history is the true mode of determining the character of Christianity.” Briefly, — we are in the New Testament presented with the true transcendent Model of all human perfections, embodied in the Holy One of God, illus¬ trated and applied in the inspired writings. Towards this — all-sufficient labour for man’s short life! — we are to strain; all other examples of sanctity shining only by its reflected light, and, however profitable in many ways, never to be suffered to occupy His place, to stand upon His level, or to intercept the full, constant, unclouded view of Him. The object of all systems like the present is — never, indeed, avow¬ edly, perhaps never even consciously, — to pervert this order; but nevertheless, and in the practical effect, so to blend toge¬ ther the past human imitators of Christ with Christ Him¬ self, that He and they may always be seen in one complex view ; or rather, that He may be seen only through them as the medium of beholding Him, that no ray of His light may be suffered to reach us except under the refraction of their subsequent comments and example; a process which, 10—2 148 LETTERS [LETT. IV. of course, unless they be really His equals, must reduce His brightness by the whole amount of their human den¬ sity and dimness, — in other words, and without a figure, must, unless we falsify history to idealize our Saints, prevent the Christian Life and Teaching from ever rising higher ♦ than the average good men of past ages have reached, or ever getting free from the errors and misapprehensions they may have adopted. • This great fundamental and pervading mistake then, — the degradation of the Christian’s habitual Standard of Per¬ fection from the Ideal to the Actual, from the celestial Model suspended above and beyond us, to such exhibitions of holiness as past ages (the purer primitive being cited even less than the grosser modern) may have realized — must, it is clear, when once adopted as the one criterion of Faith and Life, be — the most fatal of its evils! — applied universally ; and, above all, be applied to the whole 'practical operation of the Mediaeval Church, and to all the recognized practical maxims, without exception, of its sainted instructors. Whe¬ ther the system rest on the old ground of simple authority, or on the new ground of gradual development, selections and omissions are equally precluded; if the huge complex of dogma and practice was not right in every point, it may have been wrong in every point. Those who refer all — even the best and holiest spirits — to a standard above them, may, — indeed ought to — exercise discrimination in their ap¬ proval; those who allow no standard at all but the mere fact: that certain divine men entitled Saints have so taught, and the Church so acted — cannot, on their own principle, but LETT. IV.] ON ROMANISM. 149 approve all in approving any. They cannot quote St. Ber¬ nard, for example, as a being of gifts altogether unearthly and superhuman, whose very name is to be mentioned with awe, when he discourses — as he often does with such exqui¬ site truth and power — of general Christian morality, and simply regard him (with us Anglicans) as an admirable but very fallible human theologian, when he stimulates the wild fanaticism of the Crusades. We cannot defend the papal primacy arrogated by Leo the Great, as a true development, simply because the claim was made , and assert that the absolute secular supremacy, asserted with much more success in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, was not, on the same or deeper grounds, an equally genuine theological truth; — even as we cannot, on the other hand, say that the latter was only intended in the divine purpose to be temporary, without admitting that the former may have been intended to be only temporary also. Such is the manifest scope of the Development Theory when it applies to the Past ; it can defend any only on the principles on which it must defend all. It shares this indeed in common with the rest of the Homan theories. But it is one of the peculiarities of this unfortunate device, that, while it is in the volume before us devoted to defending the unchangeable authority of the Past, its inherent spirit and bearing really tend much more to indefinite alteration; for it is in truth only on the principle of the legitimacy of endless alteration that it can defend the Past itself — that Past which was once all future. It is the principle of revolution enlisted in behalf of the principle of immutability ; perpetual 150 LETTERS [LETT. IV. motion demonstrating tlie absolute duty of perpetual repose ; it is — to apply Mr. Robert Hall’s designation of the Methodist leader — “the very quiescence of turbulence .” The notion of Development itself is plainly unlimited in time : we have not, therefore (on this system), any grounds whatever for determining whether Christianity is even half-developed yet. Mr. Newman himself seems strongly to incline to the nega¬ tive, if I may venture to interpret by ordinary rules a passage in one of his eloquent panegyrics of the Roman Communion : “ Corruptions are to be found which sleep and are suspended; and these are usually called decays ; such is not the case with Catholicity; it does not sleep , it is not stationary even now , &c.” — p. 446. With a Church thus “ever learning and never able to come to the [full] knowledge of the truth,” it is impossible to set any definite limits to the progression of doctrine. I have before referred to this topic in a different connexion; it meets me here again. Half-Communion de¬ fended on the principle of concomitance, may hereafter become the model of a Baptism in the Name of One Person of the Trinity, the other Two being inferred “concomitantly” present, whenever one is invoked; and the original Divine command being not more peremptory against the latter altera¬ tion than against the former. The veneration of Images has been before now, on the highest individual1 Roman authority, 1 [The ascription of Latvia to the Cross does not rest simply on the authority of an individual. It is fully sanctioned by the words “ Debetur ei Latria,” which occur both in the old Innocentian Pontifical, and in the reformed impression patronised by Popes LETT. IV.] ON ROMANISM. 151 elevated to a divine Latvia1 ; the Cross is, as far as human language and gesture can express absolute adoration, adored in every Good Friday Service2; there may yet be some formal (Ecumenical decree that shall compel avowed, un¬ mitigated, unqualified Idolatry. The Blessed Virgin, already so wondrously elevated, may yet be pronounced (the Imma¬ culate Conception, &c., are but the preludes of such a deve¬ lopment), to have so shared in the mystery of Christ’s Incarnation, as to have become one with God in the most absolute sense, and to require the worship due to the Holy Trinity3; as perhaps, in right of maternity she may be pronounced mightier in Heaven (this too has been hinted4) Clement and Urban VIII. — ( Ord . ad recip. Iinperator. fol. clxxxv. Lugd. 1511: p. 486. Antverp. 1663.) — G.] 1 “ Crucis effigies latrid adoranda est.” — Thomas, 3 P. Q. 25, Art. 4. 2 “ After this, the Priest alone carries the Cross to a place pre¬ pared before the Altar ; and on bended knees fixes it there. Then, taking off his Shoes, he draws near to adore the Cross (ad ado - randam Crucem ), three times bending his knees before he kisses it. This done, he retires and puts on his Shoes, &c. After him the Ministers of the Altar, and then the other Clergy and Laity, advancing in pairs, and thrice bending the knee, adore the Cross.” — Missale Roman. [Feria sexta in Parasceve, pp. 188—9. Antverp. 1765. — G.] Alas! and these are the precious privileges men of learning and piety have forsaken the Church of England to enjoy! 3 [She has actually been styled by the Jesuit Ferd. Quir. de Salazar “the completion of the whole Trinity!” — (Expos, in Proverb. Salom. Tom. i. p. 261. Lugd. 1636.) — G.] 4 [It has been in fact many times expressly stated. A single example will suffice; namely, the notable words of an authorized Hymn, “ O felix Puerpera, Nostra pians seel era, Jure Matris 152 LETTERS [LETT. IV. than Christ Himself; yea, in virtue of the Ocotokos, greater 1 than even the pure Godhead; — and all this may be then seen to be the simple development of past or existing beliefs, and contained in the popular worship and the devotional books of this very age , just as the present Virgin- worship is now maintained to have been held in invisible solution in the early creeds and writings. If any one looks upon such modi¬ fications as improbable, I ask him to reflect — why are they so ? Not, assuredly, because they are contrary either to the genius of Romanism, or (still less) to the principle of Deve- impera Redemptori,” found in the old Parisian and Roman Missals, as well as in those of Tournay, Liege, Amiens, and Artois. — G.] 1 [“ Cum B. Virgo sit mater Dei , et Deus filius ejus ; et omnis filius sit naturaliter inferior matre et subditus ejus, et mater prse- lata et superior filio ; sequitur quod ipsa benedicta virgo sit supe¬ rior Deo , et ipse Deus sit subditus ejus ratione humanitatis ab ea assumptse.” — Bernardin. de Bust. Marial. Par. 9, Serm. 2. Quoted by Ussher {Works, iii. 482. Edit. Elrington). This very quotation is produced as conveying the present au¬ thoritative teaching of the Roman Catholic Church, in a work entitled, The Glories of Mary, Mother of God, by St. Alphonsus Liguori , and carefully revised by a Catholic Driest. (Third ed. Dublin, 1837.) Similar statements occur almost at every page, of which the following may serve as specimens : — “ The King of Heaven, whose bounty is infinite, has given us his Mother for our mother, and in her hands resigned (if we may so speak) His omni¬ potence in the sphere of grace.” — p. 85. “ When St. Mary,” says St. Peter Damian, “presents herself before Jesus, the Altar of reconciliation, she seems to dictate rather than supplicate; and has more the air of a queen than a .subject.” — p. 138. “St. Ger- manus says to Mary, You, O holy Virgin, have over God the authority of a mother .” — p. 139.] LETT. IV.] ON ROMANISM. 153 lopment ; but solely because the progress of general enlighten¬ ment external to the Roman ecclesiastical system (and, without pretending to champion that very variable progress as infal¬ lible, I will not be guilty of the treason against God’s providence involved in contemning and maligning it), would be likely to prevent the dogmatic formations of the mediaeval theology from being paralleled now. But let any man endea¬ vour to conceive what would be the character of a religion advancing as much upon present Romanism, as Romanism advanced upon the religion of the New Testament and the early Churches ; and he may then form some estimate of the chances of safety for Christianity (if indeed, after such a series of revolutions, any faint trace of Christianity would survive), under the unrestricted dominion of the principle of Development. Take, for example, Aquinas’ development1 of Works of Supererogation and the transferable merits of the Saints out of the Unity of the Mystical Body, and imagine where a few more such strides would leave primitive Christianity. Or take our present instructor’s favourite development of Purgatory out of Baptism, and Relic-worship out of Resurrection ; and conceive a similar generation out of Purgatory and Relic-Worship themselves, these second¬ ary developments in their turn begetting their respective 1 Supplem. III. 25, Art. 1, &c. [See Gieseler, ii. 359, note 17. What is called the Supplement of the third part of the Summa of Aquinas is merely an excerpt from his Commentary on the fourth book of the Master of the Sentences. In this work (Dist. xx. Qu. i. Art. iii. fol. 121, b. Yenet. 1497) the passage referred to may be seen. — G.] 154 LETTERS [LETT. IV. descendants, and all manner of collateral alliances1 taking place between tbe various members of this immense and ever-growing population ; and then compute how much of the family-likeness of the original parent — the religion of the Apostles — would be likely to be discernible among the later generations of this huge promiscuous progeny ! It may, indeed, be urged, that the Church’s infallible decision upon all points has dammed up the stream, and checked for ever the further progress of the current of innova¬ tion. But has not the Church, in every age, equally con¬ sidered itself to possess all necessary doctrine? Was it far in the fifth century when an (Ecumenical Council pro¬ hibited2 all additions to the Church’s brief digest of necessary truths ; and was Pius IV. the less resolute to rend Europe in sunder, rather than leave to men’s option a single one of that vast and various accumulation of theological inventions, hypotheses, and surmises, that had got currency in the long period between Ephesus and Trent? How, again, can we tell whether there may not be a kind of development impos¬ sible to preclude because wholly unsuspected ? How do we know but the Creed of the Church may sprout out in some direction altogether novel; some train of yet unimaginable 1 “ Nor do these separate developments stand independent of each other, but by cross relations they are connected, and grow together while they grow from one.” — p. 154. 2 [The Seventh Canon of the Council of Ephesus (A. D. 431) contains this prohibition, T ovtwv tolvvv dvayvoicrOivTwv, oopicrev rj ayia avvoSos, irepav ttl€LV ir) crvvTiOivaL irapa rrjv opujOeicrav izapa rah dy'nav 7raTepo)v rwr iv rfj NiKaewv crwaydeVrcov 7roX«, cruv dytio Ilved/xcm, k.t.A.] LETT. IV.] ON ROMANISM. 155 doctrines about the Holy Ghost, or about the place, nature, and occupations of Heaven, or about the propriety of adding (though this, indeed, has been deliberately done already) to the number of Sacraments, or about the prerogatives of the glorified body, and the like, — all to be enjoined on pain of damnation, all essential to the very Idea of Christianity, all to be enforced by the developing theorist of that favoured day as truths self-evident to all genuine Catholics, and which only the blindness and indevotion of “protestant” infidelity can possibly reject? But whatever provisions Mr. Newman’s system may supply against such future consequences as these (which it is quite beyond my power to divine), it may be assumed that he prefers to have his theory viewed in his own application of it to the past actual history of the Christian Religion. In that point of view, to which I readily return, there are one or two very obvious considerations, which I shall now proceed to suggest, that appear to me very nearly decisive against the whole scheme when designed as an exclusive vindication of the claims of the Romish Communion. I. Setting apart, for the present, as hitherto, the assump¬ tion of the exclusive infallibility of the Roman hierarchy, and all similar mere hypotheses, and continuing to view the Development theory simply and per se, I beg to inquire, in the first place, by what means the inventor of this system can fairly prevent its application to several other great and prominent events, or series of events, in the Christian history, as well as to the special formation of the Church and dog¬ matic system of Rome ? How can he possibly demonstrate, 156 LETTERS [LETT. IV. in consonance with the spirit of his system and in analogy with the sort of facts he has himself professed to reduce under it, that these other events may not have been equally in the intention of God, and projected in the original design of Him, Who sees the end from the beginning, to have their place, in due time, as ulterior developments of the original principles of Christianity ? I take, for instance, the Reformation of the Sixteenth Century. I ought, perhaps, to observe (to prevent idle cavils) that I am at present in no wise engaged in either vindicating or assailing that memorable revolution. The question is merely, whether the champion of the claims asserted at the Reformation, if fully indoctrinated in the theory of Develop¬ ment, can be fairly considered as departing from the spirit of that theory when he proceeds to discourse to something of the following effect. From the very outset of Christianity we observe in it the combination of two powerful principles, the duty of indi¬ vidual Obedience and the duty of individual Inquiry. The accurate conciliation of these contrasted principles, the fix¬ ation of that precise medial point at which these two polar forces shall be blended or equilibrated, is indeed a great problem — perhaps the hardest practical problem in Christian polity. The resolution of the parallel problem in civil legis¬ lation God has, wTe know, left to be determined in a great measure by human reason and circumstances (in constant subordination to His overruling providence) ; perhaps He may have chosen to act analogously in the dispensation of the Church. However this be, there can be no question LETT. IV.] ON ROMANISM. 157 whatever of the fact, that in the original records the seeds of both principles are involved; and that no single system, or portion of history, can he regarded as an adequate expo¬ nent and representative of the original design, which does not express both. If the New Testament abounds (as it amply does) with earnest admonitions to humility, obedience, subjection, and earnest denunciations of them that cause divisions, it is equally certain that the Lord of the Church has bade the mingled multitudes who heard Him “ beware of false prophets,” personally testing and judging them by their “fruits,” — that He subjected his own doctrine to the standard of Scripture examined and applied by His Jewish hearers, — that He asked them with sorrowful indignation, “why even of themselves they judged not what was right?” — nay, that His whole mission and office consisted in an appeal against established ecclesiastical authority, against that very authority of which it was said — what surely no such authentic voice from Heaven has ever said of Rome — “ thou shalt not decline from the sentence which the Priests and the Judge shall show thee, to the right hand nor to the left; thou shalt observe to do according to all that they inform thee.” It is certain that His Apostles, acting on the same principles, applauded those who individually “ searched the Scriptures daily,” and so decided “whether these things were so;” that they hesitated not to exhort the whole mass1 1 Unquestionably the whole body of the Faithful at Thessalo- nica; for they are the same to whom he had said just before, “ we beseech you, brethren, to know them which are over you in the Lord , and admonish you.” — 1 Ep. v. 12. 158 LETTERS [LETT. IV. of their hearers to “prove all things;” that they besought them to “try the spirits whether they were of God;” that they desired that every man should be “ fully persuaded in his own mind;” that they bade them “be ready to give an answer to every man that asked them a reason” for their hope, which necessarily implies a complete previous examina¬ tion of all the intellectual grounds of faith. Nor, again, is there the least reason to doubt that this great principle (of course in due harmony with its correlative) was recognized and preserved in the Early Church after its inspired guides had left it; the motives to belief, the refutations of heresy, were at that period invariably argumentative; derived now from the affirmations of Scripture, now from the testimony of natural reason, now from the uniform tradition of the Churches (at that time so decisive an evidence !) but argu¬ mentative still. Even he who with such vigour of thought and language fulminated his “ Prescription against Heretics,” does not forget that “ hoc exigere veritatem, cui nemo jprce- scribere jjotest, non spatium temporum, non patrocinium per- sonarum, non privilegium regionum1.” Even the holy mar¬ tyr of Carthage, one surely not disposed to surrender the rights of ecclesiastical authority and the presumption in favour of settled practice, saw clearly that, after all, “ non debemus2 1 [Read “ patrocinia personarum,” and “ privilegia regionum.” (Tertull. De Virg. veland. Cap. i.) — Gr.] 2 [“ Quare si solus Christus audiendus est, non debemus atten- dere quid alius ante nos faciendum esse putaverit, sed quid qui ante omnes est Christus prior fecerit. Neque enim hominis con- suetudinem sequi oportet, sed Pei veritatem, cum per Esaiam LETT. IV.] ON ROMANISM. 159 attendere quid alius ante nos faciendum putaverit, sed quid qui ante omnes est Christus prior fecit; neque enim homi- nis consuetudinem sequi oportet sed Dei veritatem.” And St. Cyprian’s illustrious friend and supporter1 against the arrogance of a Roman bishop of that day, could use words which surely it can scarcely be deemed heretical for England to echo; thus spake “ Firmilian of blessed memory” — as the Churches of the East were wont to style him : — “ quis tam vanus sit ut veritati consuetudinem prceferat , aut qui per- specta luce tenebras non derelinquat? . vos dicere potestis, cognita veritate errorem vos consuetudinis reliquisse2.” And he adds the remarkable, the prophetic words (if we too may claim our mystical prophecies) : “ Caeterum nos veritati et consuetudinem jungimus, et consuetudini Romanorum con¬ suetudinem, sed veritatis, opponimus ; ab initio hoc tenentes Prophetam Deus loquatur et dicat; sine causa auteni colunt me, mandata et doctrinas hominum docentes. S. Cyp. Epist. lxiii. Ad Ccecil. In the context St. Cyprian is arguing against the Heretics called Aquarians, who used water only, instead of wine, in the Eucharist : “ Quorundam consuetudinem, si qui in praeteritum in calice Dominico aquam solam offerendam putaverunt.”] 1 [Firmilian, Metropolitan of Caesarea in Cappadocia, sup¬ ported St. Cyprian against Stephen on the question of rebaptization. His Letter to St. Cyprian is still extant. — Inter Gypr. Epis. 74, at. 75.] 2 [Quod autem pertinet ad consuetudinem refutandam, quam videntur opponere veritati, quis tam vanus sit ut veritati consue¬ tudinem praeferat, aut qui perspecta luce tenebras non derelinquat % Nisi si et Judaeos Christo adventante, id est, veritate, adjuvat in aliquo antiquissima consuetudo, quod relicta nova veritatis via in vetustate permanserint.] 160 LETTERS [LETT. IV. quod a Christo et ab Apostolis [Apostolo] traditum est1.” The universal perusal and unparticipated supremacy of Holy Scripture bears upon the same inference. How the ardent and impassioned Chrysostom2 has spoken upon this point, how Augustine3, how even Pope Gregory the First4, I need 1 Inter Opp. Cypr. Ep. 74.* 2 [Vid. Chrysos. in Matt. Horn. 1 ; in 2 Timoth. Horn. 9 ; in Colos. Horn. 9; in Johan. Horn. 1 : “Let us set time apart to be conversant in the Scripture, at least in the Gospel; let us fre¬ quently handle them, to imprint them on our minds; which be¬ cause the Jews neglected, they were commanded to have their books in their hands. But let us not have them in our hands, but in our houses and in our hearts.” — Translated by Bishop Taylor, Dissuas. p. 463, ed. Cardwell.] 3 [For St. Augustine’s opinion of the Scriptures as alone free from error, see Lib. iii. Contr. Lit. Petiliani , c. 6 ; Lib. de Bono Viduit. Cap. i. ; De U nit. E coles, c. 1 6 ; and numerous passages in his Epistles. Comp. Taylor’s Lib. of Proph. sect. viii. For a sum¬ mary of the opinions of the primitive fathers on this important subject, see Dissuas . Part ii. Book i. sect. 2.] 4 [See Morals on the Book of J oh, by St. Gregory the Great, in Oxford Library of the Fathers, Mol. xxi. p. 344; xviii. 178.] * [Epist. lxxv. p. 22 6, ed. Fell. — We must not forget that Firmilian’s Epistle was omitted by Manutius in the Roman edition of St. Cyprian’s works. Pamelius (in Argum.) conjec¬ tured that this was done by him “ consultb but the following is the shameless confession of the real of¬ fender, Latinus Latinius : “Ego La- tinus omisi, non Manutius; chm majorum exempla secutus, thm liomi- nis petulantiam detestatus.” ( Biblioth . p. 1 17. Romae, 1677.) Mr. Husen- beth would fain persuade himself that a ‘‘very learned divine” [Molken- buhr] “has demonstrated the spu¬ riousness of this Epistle by powerful arguments.” (St. Cyprian vindicated , p. 101. Norwich, 1839.) See the Letters between Bishop Bedell and Waddesworth, p. 336. Dublin, 1736. -G.] LETT. IV.] ON ROMANISM. 161 hardly remind any student of the ancient writers. Involved as was the Early Church, and that for centuries (until, as it were, the whole fund of possible human extravagance, in all its varieties, had at last nearly exhausted itself), in the misery and the warfare of perpetual heresy, it is most re¬ markable that there is no trace of any suspicion on the part of the great prelates of those days, that the universal perusal of the written Word of God was the real source of the evil ; or even if through human abuse they saw it sometimes became so, that the Church could dare to arrogate the right of preventing a practice enjoined by God Him¬ self; — it being certain that there can be remedies for even great evils, more dangerous and sinful than the evils they are brought to remedy. The faith of these men in Divine protection was too secure and magnanimous to allow them to stoop to those questionable devices that undertake to mend God’s defective provisions, and repair the neglects of His dormant providence. The first formal synodical prohibition of the Scriptures to the general body of the Faithful is com¬ monly held to have dated in the Thirteenth Century1. s [Gieseler, ii. 392. — Mr. Lewis also tells us, that “ the first synodical prohibition or restraint ” of the liberty of Christians to use the Scriptures in their own language “ was in a Synod held at Toulouse, A. D. 1228.” {Hist, of Eng. Trans, of Bible, p. 2. Lond. 1739.) That this interdict extended to the laity only appears from the words of the Decree : “ Prohibemus etiam ne libros Veteris et Novi Testamenti laid permittantur habere,” &c. (D’Achery, Spidleg. i. 711.) The year 1228 has been erroneously assigned by D’Achery and Lewis to this Synod, as it was really held in September, 1229. With regard to the origin of this 11 162 LETTERS [LETT. IV. But now for the application. Let us then suppose, for argument sake, that the principle of Christian submission to those who watch for souls, involved as its natural, neces¬ sary, pre-ordained result, the realization of ecclesiastical des¬ potism; or even that (as Mr. Newman sticks not to affirm), “dogmatism involves infallibility.” — p. 368. These involved elements, he himself maintains (directly against the Homan creed indeed, but apparently quite to his own satisfaction), evolved themselves slowly and gradually ; the form of Chris¬ tianity was “first Catholic — then Papal1.” For a long period both the principles that I have named seem to have been equally energetic ; the prelates and other clergy of the injunction it is to be observed, that it was mainly intended to repress the anticlerical fanaticism of the Waldenses. See a mar¬ ginal note by Pegna on one of the Literce Apostolicce annexed to the Directorium Inquisitorum, p. 2; as also Eymer. Dir. Par. ii. Qusest. xiv. et Schol. xxx. ejusd. Par., and Pegna’s remarks (p. 123) upon the authority of this Council of Toulouse. In Ussher, De Scripturis et Sacris vernaculis, pp. 151—2, the references are incorrectly given. — G.] 1 “ Christianity developed in the form, first, of a Catholic, then of a Papal Church.” — p. 319. This unfortunate expression, which apparently imports that the Catholicity ceased when the Papacy began, will have, with some others, to be modified in future editions. Assuredly the Quesnels and the Fenelons have suffered the terrors of the Vatican for much less than may be found in every chapter of this performance ; a performance which will secure its numerous converts by teaching them (I speak most deliberately) a theory of Bomanism, which it must be their first care to unlearn as a heresy, the moment they have entered the Communion into which it has beguiled them. LETT. IV.] ON ROMANISM. 163 Church assuming and realizing with perfect confidence, in¬ deed, their high office as “the ambassadors” not of men to their brethren, but “of Christ” to men, — yet never claiming that “ dominion over the faith” of their charges, which even an inspired Apostle rejected. At length, from a complication of causes, the principle of authority began perceptibly to weigh down its own side of the equipoise ; and from another complication of causes (Mr. Newman is willing to accept Barrow’s account as sufficiently accordant with his argument — p. 178), the western patriarch obtained a primacy long in dispute between him and the rival patriarch of the other imperial city ; and by degrees, a real supremacy ; and by degrees, a complete ordinary jurisdiction over a majority of * the European Churches ; and by further degrees, a secular supremacy over Churches and kingdoms both. All this Mr. Newman regards, of course, as essentially involved in the New Testament account of Christianity, and wrought out by a Providence slowly but surely realizing its own pre-con¬ ceptions in the fulness of fore-ordained time. Grant it ; but on what principle are you now to stop the successive evolu¬ tion of providential purposes? What provision is contained in the theory itself— in the notion of a developing Chris¬ tianity, that should oblige it to pause at this stage rather than at any other? Perhaps the same Providence that developed Gregory VII. and Boniface VIII. out of one element of the Christian Polity, — the element of authority and obedience — may (when they had sufficiently done their work, like others in the preparatory stages before them), have developed the Refor¬ mation leaders and their views, as the designed instruments 11 — 2 164 LETTERS [LETT. IV. of recovering for the world that other element of the same system — the element of individual inquiry and individual responsibility. Perhaps He who considered a stern and severe discipline to be the one best fitted for a succession of ignorant and barbarous centuries, may have equally con¬ sidered that a more intellectual presentation of religion, one appealing for its authority more directly to the learning and the reason of those to whom the faith was to be delivered, was best fitted for the centuries — at least for certain races and countries in the centuries — next to succeed them. The two forms of the hypothesis but reflect each other. From the beginning “two nations” seem as it were “ struggling in the womb” of Christianity; their harmonious manifesta¬ tion and perpetual alliance would be perfection ; but that once lost, this painful separate birth of the great principle of Personal Inquiry, “as of one born out of due time,” with all the agonising throes that attended it, may have become inherently necessary. It was a mighty shock doubtless ; but to restore the balance of the heavens this thunder-storm might perhaps alone suffice. Meanwhile it is quite certain that no disciple of Development can deny the plausibility of such a statement, without grievously belying his own principles ; and it is in that point of view alone I here present it. — It is no valid answer to this, to say that the representative of the Principle of Authority rejected and op¬ posed the new development when it came ; its own develop¬ ment long before was not achieved without a protracted struggle. Nor indeed (as a moment’s reflection will show) could , unless by miracle, the lost principle have been re- LETT; IV.] ON ROM AUTISM. 165 covered without, in the very nature of things, provoking hostility from the dominant one ; the crisis being more vio¬ lent in proportion to the disease ; the more exaggerated the principle of authority, the more certain its resistance to be obstinate. Nor, again, will it at all discredit this new hypo¬ thesis — or rather this slight extension of our Author’s — to allege (what I now neither concede nor deny) the follies, or the errors, or the vices, or the indifferent success, of the first Reformers : when has it ever been that providential pur¬ poses of mercy have not been more or less counteracted by the frailties of man ? Even that mighty Artist, Whose work makes the history of nations, is in a manner (if we may dare to say so), reduced to suit His designs to the poverty of His human materials. And, after all (whatever the advo¬ cates of the Papacy may say), candid bystanders, after honestly examining the records of the times, will determine how far the Church of the Mediaeval popes — nay, of the very contemporaries of the Reformation movement — has a fair right to press so very triumphantly on the blunders, or the extravagancies, or the vices, of even the least credible of the Continental Reformers. While — if the usual charges be ad¬ vanced, of Socinian, or Rationalistic, or Infidel results, as ultimate consequences of the original rejection of authority, it must be remembered, that my hypothetical Protestant developer holds precisely the same opinion (in which he is steadily sustained by the most respectable division of the Roman obedience), on the papal despotism of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, as parallel exaggerations of the principle of maintaining authority ; and that it the general 166 LETTERS [LETT. IV. principle of development be held capable of surviving the latter form of extravagance, it may be quite as fairly sup¬ posed not necessarily responsible for the former. That as the Papacy had thus its beginning long subse¬ quent to the full establishment of the Church of Christ in the World, so it may have been designed to have its end long before the Church’s close ; that, even supposing it was ever a legitimate development of the Gospel, every argument which proves it so, must equally prove the possible legiti¬ macy of its entire, or partial cessation , — will appear yet more manifest, if we recall the slow successive process by which the papal supremacy was gradually depressed, and the balance of ecclesiastical authority partially rectified within the Church of Rome, in the period preceding and following the Refor¬ mation ; and the perfect correspondence of this downward movement to the upper movement of the power in its original growth1. The orb descends the western sky by a path ac¬ curately answering to that eastern arch of growing splendour and growing strength, by which it rose to its noontide culmi¬ nation. What, indeed, was the continued object of Pisa, and Constance, and Basle2, but to replace the Papacy in the 1 [For an able sketch of the Progress of the Papal Domination, see Palmer’s Essay , &c. Yol. ii.] 2 [A.D. 1409, 1414, 1431. — While the Synod of Basle is ranked as the Eighteenth General Council by the French Benedictines in the Art de verifier les Dates, its Acts were, through the influence of Cardinal Bellarmin, contemptuously omitted in the Roman edition of the General Councils, published by the Jesuit Sirmon- dus, “ex typographia Yaticana,” ann. 1608-1612. Yid. Richerii Apolog. pro Joanne Gersonio , p. 127. Lugd. Bat. 1676. — G.] LETT. IV.] ON ROMANISM. 167 position it occupied, when having attained a primacy of honour and executive power, it yet saw and revered above it the great Councils of the United Christian Episcopate ? The whole question of the grounds and origin of the papal authority was, at that period, boldly brought before the public, and that, not by irreverent Dissenters, but by the best and ablest men of the Church — such Romanist Reform¬ ers as Grerson, or the Cardinal of Cambray1, or Cusanus; and if the wild theories of Augustinus2 or Turrecremata3 (the Montalemberts and De Maistres of their age4), had a place in 1 [Petrus de Alliaco. — G.] 2 [Vid. inf. p. 165. Augustinus Triumphus de Ancona. This monk maintained that it was the Pope’s prerogative “ novum symbolum condere; novos articulos supra alios multiplicare.” — Summ. de Eccles. Pot. q. 59, Art. 3.] 3 [“ It is easy to understand that it belongs to the authority of the Pope of Rome, as to the general and principal Master and Doctor of the whole world, to determine those things which are of faith, and by consequence to publish a symbol of faith.” — Turrecrem. Lib. ii. cap. 107. Quoted by Bp. Taylor, Piss. p. 280.] 4 Mr. Newman, and his party universally, seem to have adopt¬ ed this sect of the Roman theologians. It is worth remarking, that the foreign and isolated dependencies of all communities seem to have a tendency to adopt the extremes of the parent creed; the Irish Presbyterians, almost to a man, sympathize with the Free Kirk; the leaders of the Romish schism in England are Ultramontanes. The reason may partly be, that these extern sympathisers, having comparatively little practical connexion with the main body, escape all the practical inconveniences of the ultr'aisms they advocate, and so can afford to display the elo¬ quence and energy that almost always belong to extreme prin¬ ciples, at a cheap cost. 168 LETTERS [LETT. IV. the literature of the times, one can but see in their very extravagancies the infatuation of a despotism already passing into dotage. Slowly and carefully did the French and German divines untwist the knot which centuries had been doubling and tightening; with such criticism as the age afforded (which, to be sure, was scanty and imperfect enough1) they laboured to explain historical text and docu¬ ments ; even early in the fourteenth century the personal prerogative of St. Peter himself had been powerfully im- [Augustinus Triumphus, an Augustinian monk of Ancona, flourished from 1274 to 1328. Johannes de Turrecremata, so called from Torquemado , the name of his birth-place in Spain, died in 1468. He maintained the absolute supremacy of the Pope at the Council of Basle. — See Du Pin. For specimens of the extravagancies of the Papal advocates in the fourteenth century, see Gieseler, iii. pp. 18—21, 45—47.] 1 “ Sunt, meo judicio ,” is all that Cusanus can venture, “ ilia de Constantino apocrypha ; sicut forlassis etiam qnmdam alia longa et magna scripta Sanctis Clementi et Anacleto Papre at- tributa, in quibus volentes Bomanam sedem, omni laude dignam, plus quam Ecclesiae sanctse expedit et decet, exaltare, se penitus fundant.” — De Cathol. Concord . iii. 2*. The discourse of Lauren- tius Yalla was, however, written as early as 1440t. * [The extract is from Gieseler, iii. 190, with the exception of the omitted qualification “ aut quasi ” before “fun¬ dant.” — G.] + [The date of Valla’s Reclamatio is a matter of considerable interest, but there does not appear to be any reason for fixing upon this year. Gieseler (ii. 69) only states that the author died in 1457. This is, how¬ ever, a mistake, for Aug. 1, 1465, was the day of his death. From internal evidence it would seem that this treatise must have been composed at Naples, whither Laurentius fled in the year 1443. After this time, then, and previously to 1447, when, accord¬ ing to Spondanus, ( Annall . Baron. LETT. IV.] ON ROMANISM. 169 pugned by writers 1 of credit ; and there is no question that in the middle of the fifteenth, had the mind of the Church been free to evolve and declare itself, the very claims of Leo2, who had mounted to almost this stage just a thousand years before, would have been thought barely excusable. Not to speak of the repeal of Annates, Reservations, Expectatives, &c. (to which, as themselves recent inventions, antiquity cannot be expected to furnish any parallel), the old usurpa¬ tion of Appeals on which the African Church and the per¬ sonal authority of St. Augustine had resisted the claims of Pope Zosimus and Pope Celestine, was, in a great measure, reversed at Basle ; the old conflict of the Gallican Church and Rome in the fifth century, is revived in the Pragmatic Sanction of the fifteenth ; the old theology of the coequal rights of episcopacy, unfolded as against the Roman claims 1 [^Egidius Romanus, Marsilius Patavinus, Ockam.] 2 [That these claims of St. Leo (A.D. 461) were the “germ of the present Roman system;” that they were novel , and resolutely resisted in Africa and the East, see fully proved by Allies, p. 249 et seqql\ Contin. ii. 3) he received a private castigation from the Neapolitan In¬ quisitors, I believe that this most remarkable tract was written. Valla’s Apologia pro se et contra Calumniatores, in which he speaks of the virulence of his persecutors, and of the harbour to which he had come being utterly inopportune, was addressed to Pope Eugenius IV., and this Pontiff died in Feb. 1447. The Apologia was printed at Basle in 1518, and in the preceding year Ulric de Hutten dedi¬ cated to Pope Leo X. the first edition of the De falso credita et ernentita Con- stantini Donatione Declamatio. The latter was republished A.D. 1535* by Orthuinus Gratius; — not in “the Collection of Ch'otius ,” as we read in the English version of Du Pin, iii. 65. Dubl. 1723.— G.] 170 LETTERS [LETT. IV. by Jerome in his sterner mood, is the very foundation prin¬ ciple on which the reforming Councils build their case ; nay, even the old claim of an Apostolic see (to which, as being ♦he only plausible claimants of that envied honour in the entire western side of Christendom, the early Popes owed so much of their distinction), seems hardly to have escaped question1. It is true that the unscrupulous use of force, and the matchless diplomatic skill of the Roman Court, checked any effective explosion ; afterwards swamped, with a subservient majority, the Council at Trent, and by its superior organization, and powerful political connexions, 1 “Legant,” says Innocent I. triumphantly, “si in his pro- vinciis (Italia, Gallia, Hispania, Africa, Sicilia, et insulis inter- jacentibus), alius Apostolorum invenitur aut legitur docuisse, &c.” — Epist. ad Eecentium*. As the primitive deposit of doctrine was understood to be carefully preserved in the separate Churches, on the separate responsibility of each Church, there was (even over and above the honour reflected from an Apostolic founder) a claim, not destitute of plausibility, to peculiar authenticity in the doctrine transmitted from an inspired teacher; and this is often alleged, even before the supposed Petrine prerogative of absolute authority was brought into full light. Its influence in the contest with Constantinople was manifest and decisive. Cusanus, how¬ ever, treads rudely enough upon this delicate ground, when he hazards the bold hypothesis that if the Archbishop of Treves was elected by the general voice of the Church, he would possess a higher claim than the Roman Pontiff. — De Concord. Lib. ii. [Gieseler, iii. 189—90. — G.] * [Gieseler, i. 261. — This Epistle tium istum producendo, innocens non has bepn by some condemned as coun- erit Bellarminus.” {De AuriculariCon - terfeit. Denison says that, “Inn ocen- fessione, p. 65. Oxon. 1621.) — G.] LETT. IV.] ON ROMANISM. 171 (helped by the mismanagement of the continental Reformers — above all, by their fatal blunder of deserting the Consti¬ tution, and neglecting the standards of the Ancient Church), drove back the tide of the Reformation itself; but had the movement succeeded universally, Mr. Newman’s theory would justify that configuration of events quite as cogently as it, justifies the particular development to which he arbitrarily dedicates it ; nor, on his principle — admitting as he must and does, that several of the Roman peculiarities are little earlier than the Reformation itself1 — can there remain the smallest reason for regarding that as perpetually or uni¬ versally obligatory, which he himself proclaims to have been the slow growth of events, and whose fluctuating existence, as, after centuries of gestation, it developed at last into visible birth, may quite as naturally develope into senility and death likewise. We are thus, it appears, indebted to Mr. Newman for a theory triumphantly vindicating the principle of the Re¬ formation. The admirers of that remarkable epoch would, at the same time, be more grateful for his assistance, if they could avoid seeing that unfortunately the theory may be made 1 “It is equally certain, that the doctrine of Justification de¬ fined at Trent was, in some sense, new also.” — Essay , p. 26. I need not observe how many other doctrines there were in the system then deliberately ratified, which were substantially newer still. Think what must be the claim of the rest of the Tridentine “ Catholic developments,” if the cautious, measured statements about Justification are admitted to have been, “in some sense,” the creation of doctors in the sixteenth century ! LETTERS 172 [LETT. IV. to vindicate every historical variety of religious revolution altogether as well. But now for another slight modification of the principle of religious Development. Palpably the same argument which applies to time applies quite as irresistibly to place also. Regard, for example, in the light of this theory, the case of our own Anglican Church. It is a simple fact, that in proportion to the distance from Rome the bond of the Papacy has always slackened in strength and firmness ; to¬ wards the North-AVest, especially, the interval is hardly less from the intense temperature of the A7atican to the climate of the Gallican Liberties, than from the latter to the inde¬ pendent Catholic Episcopacy of England. Surely it is no great licence of supposition (for one whose digestion has been vigorous enough for the theory of Development itself) to conceive that this gradual relaxation and final liberation, according to the circumstances of various districts in the universal Church, may have been as really in the original scheme of Providence as the first formation and equally gra¬ dual local extension of the papal connexion ; that Cranmer, and Ridley, and the rest, by whose ministry the connexion was dissolved, may have been as truly within the horizon of the Divine contemplation and of the Divine affections, as Gregory the First and Augustine of Canterbury. Surely the same Providence which has been pleased to permit — or, if you will have it so, to maintain — a perpetual papacy in the South of Europe, may have seen fit that a different development of the Christian polity — retaining all the essen¬ tial but dismissing this circumstantial — should arise and LETT. IV.] ON ROMANISM. 173 flourish on English soil. The separation was wrought through the partial instrumentality of a tyrannical king ; true — and the original concession of universal papal supremacy was obtained through flattering a murderer1; the Henry of Cranmer is but 1 “ Benignitatem vestrce pietatis ad imperiale fastigium perve- nisse gaudemus. Lcetentur coeli et exultet terra; et de vestris benignis actibus universse reipublicse populus nunc usque velie- inenter afflictus hilarescat, &c. &c.” It is thus that St. Gregory the Great, to depress his rival at Constantinople*, addressed the * [The account here given of St. Gregory’s motives and conduct is very far from fair ; and I would venture to say without doubt that Mr. Butler unsuspiciously adopted the malevolent statement of Gibbon. That the ex¬ tract was derived from this source would seem altogether probable from the use of the “&c.,” and from the reading “ universee,” instead of “uni- versus,” before “ Beipublicse.” (See Decline and Fall, iv. 299. ed. Milman.) It must be borne in mind that the character of the Emperor Maurice had become deeply degraded by extreme avarice, and unrelenting cruelty. Even in the sentence adduced the continual and vehement affliction of the people is spoken of ; and the disaffection and revolt of the imperial army could scarcely excite surprise after their dis¬ covery of the conspiracy formed for their destruction, and after Maurice had refused to part with a very tri¬ fling ransom in order to prevent the massacre of twelve thousand prisoners. Phocas having been elected Emperor, his liberality and kindness to his sub¬ jects were for a while conspicuous, and the contrast between him and bis pre¬ decessor was not advantageous to the latter. St. Gregory traces a dispen¬ sation of Providence in the revolution ; and adores the wisdom of the Most High, who, as he reminds the usurper, “ruleth in the kingdom of men, and giveth it to whomsoever He will.” At this time, remarks De Sainte- Marthe, the Benedictine editor, “non divinabat S. Gregorius mores ejus bre- vi mutatos iri in pejus, et Phocam postmodum obscoenis se libidinibus mancipaturum, ac optimorum virorum cruore satiaturum. Im6 etiamsi futu- rum id prsevideret, de prsesenti rerum statu, non de futuro, suis in Epistolis loqui debuit.” (S. Greg. Mag. Opp. ii. 1239. Paris. 1705. Compare Maim- bourg, Histoire da Pontificat de St. Gre- gnirele Grand, p. 180. A Paris, 1686.) Not with much more reason, then, could we (after the example of the infidel Gibbon, and the sceptic Bayle,) accuse Pope Gregory of having in effect participated in the guilt of mur¬ der, than censure for the same sin those who peacefully submitted to the Prince of Orange, and acquiesced in the government of one whom they looked upon as a parricidal rebel. — G.] 174 LETTERS [LETT. IV. a feeble copy of the Phocas of Boniface. But, dismissing a topic, to which the advocates of the Papacy will be wise to savage who had mounted to a throne of drunkenness and debauch¬ ery by the murder of his monarch and the whole royal seed, butchered before their father’s eyes. Boniface III. persevering in the same flattery of the same usurper, obtained'55', according to Baronius, the coveted titled. It is painful, though a painful necessity in times like these, to recall such guilt, especially in a character undoubtedly possessing so many admirable traits as the first Gregory. But when the Bishops who broke the Roman bond are assailed for their court connexions, it may be well to remember what were the court connexions of the Pope who formed it. By the bye, as “ developments” may be supposed usually to require a considerable 'period for their completion, Mr. Newman may usefully employ himself in solving the curious anomaly, of St. Gregory’s rejection of the “ Universalis Episcopus,” as a title betokening the precursor of Antichrist, and the speedy subsequent adoption of the substance, and even the literal words, of that de¬ signation, by his own successors. The cause of this lxot-bed ra¬ pidity of growth in one of the Fundamentals of Roman Chris¬ tianity after so protracted a delay, and in a century which has at length been unanimously decided by historical critics (the tenth * [The authenticity of this grant is not only questionable, but the asser¬ tion of Baronius and other Pontifi- cians cannot be supported by a sha¬ dow of ancient evidence. With the subversion of this imaginary privilege falls the Faberian theory relative to the twelve hundred and sixty days. — G.] + [Not “coveted” certainly by St. Gregory, for he rejected with horror the title of Universal Pope, when ap¬ plied to himself, as much as when given to the Patriarch of Constantino¬ ple, as the “invention of the first Apo¬ state and “an anticipation of Anti- Christ. ” — See Allies ( Church of Eng¬ land cleared from the Charge of Schism, pp. 356 — 8.) The statement that this “coveted title” was conferred by Pho¬ cas on Boniface III. rests “upon the sole authority of Baronius, for none of the ancient writers have mentioned it.” — Mosheim, Hist, of Ch. cent, vii.] LETT. IV.] ON ROMANISM, 175 draw as little attention as they can help, let us now reflect whether the student of genuine historical development — in other words, the reverential investigator of the path of Provi¬ dence through events — may not in this English case discover matter for meditation more truly interesting than many of the boasted achievements and miraculous recoveries of the Papacy itself. I have already hinted something of the analogies1 of civil and ecclesiastical government; the disciple of St. Paul will not be slow to recognise a sacred character — of different degree and grounds, no doubt, but yet a sacred character — in both. In many particulars there is a strong resemblance in the right practical maxims of each ; for the plain reason that in many particulars the objects of both, in their respective spheres, are literally the same. The due conciliation of liberty and order, a paternal spirit in government, the fair discussion and effective settlement (so far as expedient) of disputed questions, justice between man and man, and the like, are objects which the Civil and the Ecclesiastical polity equally propose to realize for their members, and usually attempt more or less to realize by very similar means. When used to bear the palm) to have been the “darkest” of the whole nineteen, would surely reward investigation. 1 [Compare Leslie, Case of the Regale and Pontificate stated. — Works, vol. viii. p. 292 et seqq. (Oxf. 1832.) Abp. Laud, Confer¬ ence with Fisher , pp. 169-176. (Oxford, 1839.) Hooker, Eccles. Pol. viii. 1, 2. (Ed. Keble.) Thorndike, Review of the Right of the Church in a Christian State. — Works, Vol. i. p. 662, (in Lib. oj Anglo-Catholic Theology N\ 176 LETTERS [LETT. IV. we remember that it is chiefly to the Church that modern Europe owes the principle of Representative Government1 — pronounced by many philosophers the greatest advance man ever made in political discovery, certainly the character¬ istic principle of the best civil constitutions — the analogy becomes peculiarly close and striking. Now, if this re¬ semblance of their respective means and objects hold in these two departments, is there no presumption at all that nations may perchance be found to see their way pretty nearly with the same comparative perspicacity in both? and when we hear the great Master of human wisdom bidding us with “pious admiration” observe2, “eadem calcata vestigia ad erro- rem ducentia in Divinis et humanis,” may we expect no antecedent probability that those who, above all European races, have failed in securing even the commonest objects of Civil government, tolerable security of person and property, may have shown no superhuman sagacity in fixing and re- 1 It was not that Bishops at Councils were the mere delegates of their respective flocks, or even of their respective clergy (though into their original election, when their future presence at Councils was of course foreseen, the spirit of modern “ constituency” must, to a certain degree, have entered) — but that the Bishops present and voting in the Councils were regarded as collectively the repre¬ sentatives of the entire Episcopate, and so of the whole Church. Hence Councils came to be actually designated the “ Church Representative.” Such “representation” may be compared to our own “Representative Peerage” of Ireland; elected for life, and thenceforward ordinarily irresponsible and irremoveable ; and when convened for legislative purposes sitting as the representa¬ tives of their own order at large. 2 De Augment . Scient. V. ii. LETT. IV.] ON ROMANISM. 177 taming their Ecclesiastical? If the Anglican Ecclesiastical constitution is singular (which however, in the sense intended, is not the case), so too is its Civil constitution; and one of these, at least, is the envy and admiration of the world. The principle which, for so many ages, made the strength and union of the Church — representative government — is the very principle which these British islanders have realized with unequal perfection in their political system. The prin¬ ciple which formed the characteristic of the Mediaeval papacy — arbitrary monarchy — is the very principle whose subversion opened the way for this marvellous British constitution, and whose retention is still the characteristic of the imperfect constitutions of Europe. He who denies such considerations to be of any force-, who regards such success in one most momentous department of practical wisdom to be no augury at all of success in another which is in many respects closely analogous to it, will probably be found to do so upon grounds that preclude all reasoning alike ; he, however, least of all, can fairly take this course whose whole argument is framed upon presumptions infinitely more shifting and shadowy. Without, however, insisting further upon this in its argumen¬ tative application (which, possibly, our new guides will regard as something very profane), I may be allowed to invite those who do believe the Anglican Church (when fairly carried out according to her own express prescriptions) to be, after all, the nearest approach the frailty and perverseness of human nature have made to combine the primitive elements with the modern application, to suit the Church of Ambrose and Chrysostom — itself essentially unchanged — to the needs of a 178 LETTERS [LETT. IV. different race, a different climate, and, above all, a totally dif¬ ferent stage of man’s intellectual history — those who do be¬ lieve, that, with whatever practical shortcomings, for which we need to humble ourselves in the dust (who, alas ! were they that undertook to show us how to repair them, and how have they kept their plighted faith?) and notwithstanding the worse evil of the evasion of her own plain teaching by too many of her own commissioned teachers, — this Church was never more than in these later years conspicuously graced with tokens of the Divine blessing — organized anew through her colonial dependencies, augmenting and methodizing her missionary spirit, growing in the liberality and the self-denial of her members — those who so believe and so hope I may surely invite to recognize and adore this twofold mercy of our God, and to remind them, that, in thus giving us a distinctive character in the World and in the Church, in the sphere of Time and in that of Eternity, in the organization of our Political and in that of our Ecclesiastical constitution, He has also charged us with a responsibility of as singular weight, and has made the Church-history and the State- history of Britain, perhaps, the two most awful and solemn chapters of all that, daily recorded, are yet to be pronounced on, in the Book of the final Judgment. I must, however, resist the temptation of further digressing (if it be a digression) on this topic ; and return at once to the argument. On the whole, then, it will, I imagine, be evident to every competent critic, that Mr. Newman’s limitations of his system of progressive revelation are altogether arbitrary : LETT. IV.] ON ROMANISM. 179 that it is quite as just to conceive a development of all Christianity as a development of the Roman Church ; that if it he urged that these contemporary developments contra¬ dict in different countries, it is no more than he himself admits of his alleged developments in different ages ; that these other candidates for the honour of legitimate “ develop¬ ment” can trace themselves in Scripture at least as well — surely in some instances far better ; that many of their prin¬ ciples will always be able to show themselves (at least infe- rentially) recognized in Antiquity with as much plausibility as the others [e.g. individual judgment as much as unques¬ tioning-obedience), whenever their respective defenders may chance to possess as much command as our present Author of the ancient sources ; and that the objection of late evo¬ lution, long obscuration, conflict, and disorder, is perfectly preposterous from the reasoner who acknowledges the bloody struggle of the Image-Development for more than a century, and the protracted birth of the Virgin service, and the Half- Communion, and others. While, at worst, and supposing the Roman “ developments” to be all genuine and divine, this theory beyond all others, palliates their rejection; for, after all, a Church which omits them (as the Anglican) is, on this view, no worse off than the whole Christian Church was, in what have been hitherto commonly regarded as the model ages of the faith ; and surely it would be somewhat hard measure if we were to be unpardonable heretics for limiting our belief to the amount at which it is now conceded that the Fathers fixed theirs for centuries ! Assuredly, no view could be con¬ trived more admirably calculated for justifying an Anglican 12—2 180 LETTERS [LETT. IV. in remaining exactly where lie is ; others may possibly “do better,” but he at least (on this theory) is secure of “doing well.” More particularly, — we cannot but see that, as regards the Papacy, which so largely modified the external history of the Church for ages, he who gives it a beginning, must give it the possibility of an end ; he who allows that the Church could (for it did) exist without it, cannot argue it necessary to the Church; he whose ground for admitting its right to include the nations gradually, is just that it did so, cannot well refuse their right to exclude themselves from its control when they have done so likewise. What possible escape is there from this obvious and manifest application of his own principle? What, except a mere hypothetical as¬ sumption that that, which in its own nature applies to all , can be valid only when applied to one? It is true, if he can indeed establish an a priori exclusive claim of infallible guid¬ ance for all developments connected with the Bishop, or the City, of Home, his point is gained ; but, after all, it is gained by really abandoning the high ground of scientific theory, by giving up that universality of the principle which is of the very essence of a scientific proof, and contracting a nominally general conception so as to force it to suit a certain exclusive series of phenomena in history. While again, as I have already more than once observed, the admitted neces¬ sity of this collateral supposition of Roman Infallibility in effect leaves the whole controversy pretty much where it found it ; for if that can, indeed, be established with the force, clearness, and precision fairly required for a pro¬ position which, if true, would be of more importance than LETT. IV.] ON ROMANISM. 181 the whole Apostles’ Creed put together, does not all further argument become little better than superfluous and trifling ? Who would hesitate to receive any infallible decision, whether it were a development or not? Who would refuse to receive the truths contained in the Second Epistle to the Corinthians unless they could be shown to be developments from the First? or the truths in St. John’s Gospel, unless they could be proved developments from the sayings in St. Matthew’s ? If the Roman gift of infallibility be only to expound and aPPbh it has gone palpably beyond its commission; if it be to deduce logical inferences from primitive belief, let it produce the logical inferences and we will gladly receive them, even without the need of its authority ; but if the original gift conferred the right of revealing essentially new doctrine, what avails a theory of development (professing to be universally applicable to all Roman doctrines), ex¬ cept to restrict the mysterious gift within narrower bounds than God intended? But this is to anticipate a subject to be hereafter considered. Meanwhile I must express the conviction, which alone concerns my immediate argument, that no “ tests” that Mr. Newman has yet contrived, will ever prevent the spirit of the development theory from being of universal application to all forms of Christian belief and feeling ; however temporarily restrained, the de¬ velopment principle will assuredly thus develope itself ; every historical fact is a development of some sort; and every fact in the history of the Christian religion is a development (right or wrong) out of some Christian principle or some original Christian authority. Men will say — and how will this Theorist on his own principles answer them? 182 LETTERS [LETT. IV. — that if Rome got hold of certain truths and developed them after its own fashion, Luther and his contemporaries got hold of others and developed them after thews; both series of developments have taken place under the mysterious over¬ sight of one Divine Providence; both are events in the history of Christianity ; nor, apart from all extrinsic grounds, has any one an antecedent right to affirm that, for example, Pope Alexander VI. was a man beloved and inspired of God while actively busy in providing for his children and poisoning his Cardinals, — and Martin Luther a child of the devil, while (nearly at the same time) straining in sore perplexity for Christian truth, and groping in his solitude, huge and Cy¬ clops-like, around the walls of that gloomy cavern of unquiet thought, of which his dim monastic cell was but the image. I say merely that, apart from satisfactory separate proof (and we have hardly had that yet) , the former of these personages can scarcely be assumed, individually and per se, more likely to develope Christian principles correctly1 than the latter. 1 Leopold Ranke — among the most candid and conscientious of historians — attributes a most momentous “ development of Chris¬ tian Doctrine” to Alexander VI. “ Alexander VI. being the first who officially declared that indulgences delivered souls out of Purgatory.” — Hist, of Ropes , &c. Book i. chap. ii. § 2. That Alex¬ ander asserted the power there can be no doubt. I think it will be found, however, that it had been assumed in papal bulls before him * ; and the theological vindication of the principle is as old as * [Gieseler, iii. 325. — Professor tion of this authority to a period an- Ranke is certainly mistaken, and not tecedent to the year 1500, the date of a little intricacy is connected with the Alexander’s Jubilee-hull. In the first investigation of this matter. Let us place, Trithemius informs us that in endeavour briefly to trace the assump- 1490, Pope Innocent VIII. (not In- LETT. IV.] ON ROMANISM. 183 Both parties in this argument, admitting that God has per¬ mitted great and permanent error somewhere , the Romanist Aquinas*. That unhappily dexterous methodizer of all popular corruptions saw, that “ non est aliqua ratio qua Ecclesia transferre nocent X., as Gieseler calls him,) sent plenary Indulgences into Germany, applicable not only to the living hut the dead, and declared to be founded on such plenitude of power in the Pontiff that “ipsum Purgatorium, si velit, penitus evacuare possit.” ( Cliro - nicon Hirsaugiense , ii. 535.) Until this time, according to Trithemius, such Indulgences were u rarse ; ” and a belief in the truth of his assertion will naturally add to an inquirer’s dili¬ gence. We come next to the decisive Declaratio of Pope Sixtus IV., men¬ tioned by Gieseler (ubi sup.) and Ga¬ briel Biel, or Eggeling of Brunswick, (Canon. MissceExpos. Lect. lvii. Addit.) which was put forth in the year 1477. This Summaria Declaratio should not be confounded with the Bull itself, which was issued in favour of the church of Saintes in Saintogne, 3 Non. Aug. 1476, and for which see (not the ordinary Bullarium, but) Euseb. Amort, De Indulgentiis, pp. 417-18. Venet. 1738. Ur. Kloss ( Catal . p. 107. Lond. 1835) possessed a copy of the former, and this has been carefully republished by that excellent preserver of Bomanistic treasures, the Bev. Jo¬ seph Mendham. ( Venal Indulgences and Pardons, Lond. 1839.) Without further delay we may take a leap backward to A.D. 1350, on the occa¬ sion of the Jubilee for which year Pope Clement VI. announced his do¬ minion over Purgatory in the case of the souls of his absolved subjects. His language is full of arrogant impiety : “ mandamus Angelis Paradisi qua- tenus animam illius a Purgatorio prorsus absolutam in Paradisi gloriam introducant.” (Baluzii Vitae Papp. Aven. i. 310.) This passage is repeat¬ ed as a “clausula” in the Bull of Pope Sixtus before spoken of; and the ge¬ nuineness of the Clementine Constitu¬ tion is proved by the testimony of Wesselus. (Contra Jac. Hoeck, Capp. vii. viii. Farrago rerum Theol. Basil. 1522. Drelincourt, DuJubile, p. 172. A Paris, 1627.) If we may believe Hen. Cornelius Agrippa with regard to the antiquity of absolutions for the dead, Boniface VIII., in the year 1300, “illas primus in Purgatorium extendit:” (De incert. et vanit. Scientt. Cap. lxi. sig. M iij. Colon. 1531. Cf. Bibl. Patt. vi. 546. Par. 1610,) and should we desire a fabulous conclusion to our pursuit, Gabriel Biel (loc. sup. cit.) provides it in the assurance that an Indulgence for the departed was granted by Pope Paschasius V. As such a Prelate, however, is merely an ens rationis, Bellarmin thinks it pru¬ dent to alter the name to Paschal I., who lived in the year 820. (De Indulg. i. xiv. 1549.) — G.] * [The references here to Aquinas and Alexander de Hales are from Gieseler, ii. 359-61. This writer at- 184 LETTERS [LETT. IV. will impute the wrong development to the Reformation champion, the Reformer to the Romanist, and, as far as this accommodating theory is concerned, with, I dare say, a very pretty case on either side; while the philosophic Latitudi- narian (to whom this new view of the Christian Creed cannot fail to prove quite a treasure) will see in both manifestations collateral developments out of the inexhaustible bosom of original Christianity, suited by the wisdom and goodness of Providence to just the ages and the countries in which they have respectively emerged. Which of these employers of the argument is actually right, or whether all are wrong, I am not now canvassing ; I again request it may be under¬ stood that I am at present delivering no judgment whatever on that very distinct question; I simply affirm, that all may, with perfect equality of claims, assert their respective interests in the all-proving, all-confuting “ Theory of Development.” Condillac relates an anecdote of a theorist who imagined he had discovered a Principle adequate to explain all the phenomena of chemistry. He flew with his principle to a practical chemist, who heard him with exemplary patience, possit communia merita quibus Indulgentise innituntur in vivos et non in mortuosT Summa, Suppl. P. iii. Qu. 71. Hales (whom Field with some justice calls “ the first and greatest of the school¬ men,” for where he is sound he is excellent,) seems to have held the power effective only per modum suffragii — a distinction after¬ wards much controverted. tributes to the latter, and not to the pensed by the Popes alone. Aquinas former, the discovery of the Thesaurus perfected the doctrine of his predeces- supererogationis perfectorum, to be dis- sor. — G.] LETT. IV.] ON ROMANISM. 1 85 and then, after proper compliments to the discoverer’s inge¬ nuity, expressed his regret that there was still one difficulty in the way of applying the Principle, — namely, that all the facts were just the reverse of what the inventor had imagined. “ Do tell me what they are, then,” was the answer, “that I may at once make my doctrines explain them1.” This theorist ought to have given up the unmanageable regions of chemistry ; so promising a genius should at once have betaken itself to theology ; a little reflection might have suggested to so independent a speculator the “Theory of Development,” which would have answered all his wishes — a theory which no fact is “stubborn” enough to resist, and which will, with equal cogency, demonstrate all — or their opposites, if required. And now, for a moment, to throw aside polemics, let us, before closing the subject, recall the simple historical truth as regards the Papacy. That it teas a gradual formation, few honest men will now dispute. He who would refer its first rise, with some of our ardent controversialists, to mere unmingled ambition, is as much (and more uncharitably) 1 u He Men, reprit le physicien, apprenez-les moi, afin que je les explique” — that is, as Condillac understands it, “ parce qu’il croit avoir la raison de tous les phenomenes quels quits puissent etre : ” — and he justly enough adds, “ II n’y a que des hypotheses vagues qui puissent donner une confiance mal fondee.” — Traite des Sys- temes , Ch. xii. Edit. 1803, Tom. iii. I should not be much surprised if Mr. Newman had yet to experience the truth of another little maxim of the cautious Abbe, that catches my eye as I turn over the leaves of the volume : “ L'Eglise n ctpprouve point les tlieo- logiens qui entreprennent de tout expliquerl — Ch. ii. LETTERS 186 [LETT. IV. mistaken as lie wlio sees in it the absolute and exclusive ordinance of Heaven. The government of the Early Church was one resting on voluntary consent; rulers neither pos¬ sessed, nor would, at that period, have desired, the command of physical force to support their judgments. In such a state of things the personal influence of bishops (as St. Cyprian), the comparative importance of Sees (as those of the imperial cities), would almost unavoidably give them a sort of habitual directive authority. And, in order to perpetuate that inci¬ dental influence, not only ambitious men (such as Stephen, or Damasus long after, seem to have been), but even meek and humble bishops, with a view to the convenience of re¬ cognized authority in difficult conjunctures, would be tempted to adopt very questionable arguments, which those who sought their favour would reiterate, and which, once current, would be sure to become at last traditionally venerable. But as, in reality, the only true ground for the assumption would still be its utility , so when that utility became clearly overbalanced by accompanying evils, the obligation would cease with it. That just such was the case in the Anglican separation, our divines have repeatedly demonstrated, and the world has not yet seen their refutation. But such as I have described is, at all events, the real spirit and bearing of the hypothesis of Development, as ap¬ plied to the history of Beligion. It is the philosophy, not of one form of Christianity, but of all. This, of course, will be resolutely denied. There is but one possible true develop¬ ment in all the innumerable plans of Providence; a certain communion says it possesses it — therefore it does possess it ; LETT. IV.] ON ROMANISM. 187 the immensity of the Divine power and wisdom cannot over¬ flow the limits assigned by the theology of the Vatican ; the immensity of the Divine Love cannot conceivably include the objects of papal excommunication. Development is indefinite; its very essence is variety, modification, change : nevertheless, every development but one shall be heresy. Those Secre¬ taries of Heaven who are familiar enough with the Counsels of the Most High to assure us He always purposed to reveal Christianity in successive fragments and portions, must, of course, be believed when they make this slight further de¬ mand upon our credulity. Nevertheless, even accepting this limitation, since they will have it so, — the history of the Church seems still to present a problem, the bearing of which upon this theory appears to demand rather more attention than Mr. Newman has thought proper to give it. II. It is well known how complicated a subject of con¬ troversy it has been made, to determine the precise amount of difference between the doctrines of the Greek and Latin Churches. The difficulty is increased — on the one hand by the general ignorance and depression of the Greek Church, which has left its prelates almost wholly incompetent to test their tenets and practices by a critical investigation of even their own ecclesiastical antiquities, and has made it easy to impose on them almost any modification of the tenets they profess to maintain — and on the other, by the disingenuous¬ ness of the Latins, who (especially through the indefatigable agency of the Jesuits) have spared neither money (miserably effective in this case), nor personal and political influence, to Latinize the more modern Greek theology, and who have 188 LETTERS [LETT. IV. laboured to pass off upon the learned world in the West these Latinized testimonies as the genuine and unprompted voice of the Oriental Churches1. This artifice has, indeed, been in some degree detected, partly by the internal evidence of the documents adduced, which abound with a phraseology mani¬ festly borrowed from the Western Scholasticism2; partly by the evidence of travellers and divines (as Covel, &c.), who were themselves personally cognizant of the intrigues em¬ ployed, more particularly at one important stage of the pro¬ cess3. But the influence of the more powerful, organized, 1 [Aymon declares that he has annihilated more than five hundred testimonies in his Monumens authentiques de la Religion des Grecs, et de la faussete de plusieurs Confessions de Foi des Chretiens Orientaux. 4to. A la Haye, 1708. — G.] 2 The jaerovcriWig, so prominent in some of the testimonies adduced for the Greek Eucharistic doctrine, is a modernism, and a mere echo of the western “ Transubstantiation.” In like manner the application of the Aristotelian (TvgfiefirjKOTa to the species, instead of the older elSrj, betrays the adoption of the Latin hypothesis of accidents. 3 This chiefly relates to the Transubstantiation55' Controversy. Arnauld and Nicole were very solicitous to enrich their collection of testimonies to the perpetuity of the Homan doctrine of the * [It is extremely difficult to as¬ certain how far the Romish idea of Transubstantiation has ever attained a place in Oriental theology. The word, in a Greek form, is used; but many who so use it expressly deny that they understand it in the Romish sense. The following is the language of Plato, Archbishop of Moscow, in his answer to M. Dutens on the doctrines of the Oriental Church: “Ecclesia Catholica Orientalis et Grseco-Russica, admittit quidem vocem Transubstantio, Grseck fjL€Tovcrloj