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LETTER

ADDRESSED TO A REVEREND MEMBER OF

THE CAMDEN SOCIETY,

ON THE

ARCHITECTURAL. ARTISTICAL, AND
ARCBJEOLOGICAL MOYEMENTS

OF

THE PUSEYITES.

BY
LE COMTE m MONTALEMBERT.

PRINTED AT THE PRIOR PARK PRESS.
Price Twopence,

A LETTER, &c

Funchal (Madeira), 1844.
To THE Rev. —  — ^ — --—^
Member of the Cambridge Camden Society.
The Camden Society having done me the unsolicited
and unmerited honor of placing my name among its honorary
itoemhers, T feel not only authorized, but conscientiously obliged
to speak out what I inwardly think of its efforts and object: and
I am happy to be able to do so, in addressing myself, not only to
one of its most influential members, but to one for whom I feel a
most lively sympathy, on account of his talent, scieace, courage,
and, indeed, of every thing except what the Church which I be
heve to be infallible reproves in him.
I first thought that the Camden Society was merely a scientific
body, pursuing an object which, like- all branches of history, is of
the utmost importance to religion, and to which all religious minds
could associate, but, like the French Comite Historique, not setting
Up the flag of any special ecclesiastical denomination. On a
nearer study of your publications, I have perceived that they are
carried on, with the professed intention of blending together the
&terrests of Catholic Art and of the Church of England, and of
identifying the Catholic Church of the Middle Ages in England,
with the Anglican schism begun by Henry VIII and Cranmer,
and professed at present by all those who; agree to the Thirty-nine
Articles. Against this intention, I, as an honorary member of the
said society, beg to enter my most earnest and most Catholic pro
test. First, and principally, I protest against the most unwar
ranted and most unjustifiable assumption of the name of Catholic
by people and things belonging to the actual Church of England.
It is easy to take up a name, but it is not so easy to get it recog
nized by the world and by competent authority. Any man] for ex
ample, may come out to Madeira and call himself a Montmorency
or a Howard, and even enj^y the honor and consideration belong
ing to such a name, till the real Montmorencys and Howards hear
about it, and denounce him, and then such a man would be justly
scouted from society, and fall down much lower than the lowhness
t

4
from which he had attempted to rise. The attempt to steal away
from us and appropriate to the use of a fraction of the Church of
England that glorious title of Catholic, is proved to be an usurpa
tion by every monument of the past and present ; by the corona
tion oath of your sovereigns, by the laws that have established
your Church, even by the recent answer of your own university
of Oxford to the lay address against Dr. Pusey, &c., where the
Church of England is justly styled the Reformed Protestant
Church. The name itself is spurned at with indignation by the
greater half, at least, of those who belong to the Church of Eng
land, just as the Church of England itself is rejected with scorn
and detestation by the greater half of the inhabitants of the
United Kingdom. The judgment of the whole indifierent world,
the common sense of humanity, agrees with the judgment of the
Church of Rome, and with the sense of her 150,000,000 of
children, to dispossess you of this name. The Church of Eng
land, who has denied her mother, is rigidly without a sister. She
has chosen to break the bonds of unity and obedience. Let her,
therefore, stand alone before the judgment-seat of God and of
man. Even the debased Russian Church, that Church where lay
despotism has closed the priest's mouth and turned him into a
slave, disdains to recognize the Anglicans as Catholics : even the
Eastern heretics, although so sweetly courted by Puseyite missio
naries, sneer at this new and fictitious Catholicism. It is repu
diated even by your own hero, Laud, whose dying words on the
scafibld, according to the uncontradicted version of contemporary
history, were, I die in the Protestant Faith, as by law
ESTABLISHED (a pretty epitaph, by-the-bye, for the life of the future
St. William of Canterbury !*) Consistent Protestants and Ratio
nalists are more Catholic, in the etymological sense of the word,
than the AngHcans : for they at least can look upon themselves as
belonging to the same communion as those who, in every country,
deny the existence of Church authority, or of revealed religion ;
they have at least a negative bond to link them one with another :
but that the so-called Anglo- Catholics, whose very name betrays
their usurpation and their contradiction, whose doctrinal articles,
whose liturgy, whose whole history, are such as to disconnect
them from all mankind, except those who are born English and
speak English ; that they should pretend, on the strength of their
private judgment alone, to be what the rest of mankind deny
them to be, will assuredly be ranked among the first of the
follies of the 19th century. That such an attempt, however,
should succeed, is, thank God, not to be expected, unless it should
please the Almighty to reverse all the laws that have hitherto
• See Hierohgus.

directed the course of human events. You may turn aside for
three hundred years to come, as you have done for three, hundred
years past, from the torrent of living waters ; but to dig out a
small channel of your own, for your own private insular use,
wherein the living truth will run apart from its ever docile and
ever obedient children — that will no more be granted to you, than
it has been to the Arians, the Nestorians, the Donatists, or any
other triumphant heresy.
I therefore protest, first, against the usurpation of a sacred
name by the Camden Society, as iniquitous ; and I next protest
Against the object of this society, and all such efforts in the
Anglican Church, as absurd. When the clergy and Catholic
laymen in France and Germany, when Mr. Pugin and the Ro
manists of England, labour with all their might to save and restore
the monuments of their faith — unworthily set aside by the influ
ence of that fatal spirit which broke out with the so-called Refor
mation, and concluded with the French Revolution — they know
that they are labouring at the same time to strengthen, in an
indirect manner, their own faith and practice, which are exactly
and identically the same as those followed by the constructors of
those glorious piles, and by all the artists of Catholic ages : and
this object sanctifies their labour. But is this the case with the
members of the Camden Society ? Not in the least. They are,
most of them, ministers of the " Reformed Protestant Church as
by law established ;" pledged under oath to the Thirty-nine
Articles, which were drawn up on purpose to separate England
from Catholic Christendom,* and to protest against all the barba
rous superstitions of the dark ages. By attempting to reeestablish
their churches, chalices and vestments, in their original form, they
are only setting under the most glaring light the contradiction
which exists between their own faith, and that of the men who
built Salisbury and York. Surely no man in his senses can pre
tend that Dr. Howley and Dr. Mant profess the same faith, and
follow the same discipline, and acknowledge the same spiritual
head, as William of Wykeham, or Gundulph of Rochester : and
no man in his senses can deny that Dr. Wiseman and Dr. M'Hale
do at least profess to obey the same Holy See, to preach the same
• It is asserted by modem High-Church Anglicans, that the Church of
England never rejected the communion of Catholic Christendom, but merely
threw off the usurped supremacy of the Roman Pontiff. This assertion is over
thrown by the history of the Reformation. It was the unanimous opinion of
the British Reformers, that the visible Church had apostatized, that her chief
bishop was Antichrist, and that communion with her was unlawful. The
Homilies of the Church of England assert this in the most decisive maimer.
(Vid. Third part of the sermon against peril of idolatry, p. 224, ed. Oxon. 1831).
For testimonies of individual reformers, and other Anglican divines, see Essays
on the Church, p. 323, ed. 1838. See also the Archbishop of Canterbury's charge
just delivered.

doctrines, and to practise the same spiritual fites and sacraments,
as all the English Episcopacy of the middle ages. Let, then, the
Camden Society put itself iinder the authority of Dr. ]V['|Iale
and Dr. Wiseman, and then every thing will be right: but as:
long as they do not, and remain under Dr. Howley and Dr. Mant,
and their fellows, they are nothing hut parodists, ^.nd inconsistent
parodists. If St. Dunstan and St. Anselm, St. Lanfranc, St.
Thomas of Canterbury, or Archbishop Chichley, could be called
out of their tombs to resume their crosiers in any English cathe
dral, their horror would be great at seeing married priests readiug
English prayers in those desecrated edifices. But assuredly their
horror would be much greater still, if they were to find, beneath
copes like their own, and at the foot of altars like theirs, and rood-
lofts with crucifixes, and every other exterior identity, these same
married priests carrying in their hearts the spirit of schism, glory-.
ing in the revolt of their forefathers, and pledged by insular pride
to insult and deny that infallible See of S,t. Peter, from which all
those great Saints had humbly solicited the pallium, and for whose
sacred rights they so nobly fought, and conquered the insular
pride and prejudices of their time.
Catholic Architecture, and Catholic Art in all its branches, are
but a frame for the sacred picture of truth. This one holy truth
is beautiful and pure, even amidst the worthless clergy and de
cayed discipline of Funchal, even, and still more so, amidst the
missionary dioceses of Polynesia ; although, both here and there,
she is deprived of the frame which the humble genius of Cathohc
generations has worked out for her in Western Europe. But
without her — or with her, defaced and adulterated by insular
pride — the most beautiful frame is flt for nought but for the an-.
tiquary's shop. Supposing the spirit of the Camden Society ul
timately to prevail over its Anglican adversaries — supposing you
do one day get every old thing back again — copes, letterns, rood-
lofts, candlesticks, and the abbey lands into the bargain, what
will it all be but an empty pageant, like the tournament of Eglin-
ton Castle, separated from the reality of Catholic truth and unity
by the abyss of three hundred years' schism ? The question then
is — Have you. Church of England, got the picture for your frame?
have you got the truth — the one truth — the same truth as the men
of the middle ages ? The Camden Society says, "Yes": but the
whole Christian world, both Protestant and Catholic, says. No !
and the Catholic world adds, that there is no truth but in unity,
and this unity you certainly have not.
Who is to judge between these conflicting assertions, on earth ?
Before what tribunal, before what assembly, is this most vital
cause to be brought forward, to the satisfaction of those who have
renounced the jurisdiction of the Holy See, and that of the last

oecumenical council ? I know of none ; but one lulling I know,
thathefore whatever earthly tribunal it may he, ^s well a,s b^feg
ihe judgment-;seat of God in heaven, against the Church of 'Eng^
land and her so-called Anglo-Catholics, will appejir in formidable
array the seven millions of real Catholics, whom you call British
and- Irish Ropianists, and who will thus arraign the Angiiea^js on
behalf of ten generations of their ancestors, and on their oi^vb;:— r
"For the love of unityand obedience, we have endured .from
the hands of, these pseudo-Catholics every extremity of cruelty, of
robbery, and of insult ; we have stoQd firm through every variety
of military, legal, civil, and religious persfecution ; in the holes and
corners where thes$ persecutors have confined us, We haye kept
true to every traditional beauty which they would .fein now ne-
cover. We have nothing to , fre&torc, because we hatie neiier de
stroyed mything. We want no erudite quibbles like No. 90 ; no
dissertations on long-£3rgotjten rubrics, to enable us to believe in
justification hy works, or in baptismal regener^tioji, to" honour the
Blessed Virgin, to pray for our departed. We haye never douhl;^
ed any article of Catholic faith, and never interrupted any prac
tice of Cathblio; devotion. Here we are with our priests, our
monks,- and our bishops, and with the flame of Catholic ujiityj
which we have fed with our substance, and with our blood. If
these men, who, after having robbed us of every temporal good,
would fain now rob us of our name, are Catholics, then we are
not; then we have been mistaken fools, and, not we alone, but
thirty-five Popes, and all the Catholic Bishops, and all the Catho
lic nations in the world, who have till noW praised -us, helped us,
loved us, prayed for us and with us, as their brethren, li they
are Catholics, then Catholicism is but a shadow and a name, and
a paltry vestment, fit to be put on and off" at the world's pleasure."
To this language the Church has answered long ago, in the
words, of the Divine Spouse : Ones mece vocem meam audiuntj et
EGO coGNOsco EAS, ct sequUntur me; et ego vitamceternam do
eis  et non rapiet eas quisquam de manu mea. '
Does the Camden Society, which lays such a stress on history
and tradition, think that these mines are closed to every body ex
cept itself, or that the world will not dive into them for any other
•purpose than for archaeological or architectural curiosities ? Do
the Anglo-Catholics think that the world is blind to their own
history ? that the events of the Reformation in England are un-
Jtnown abroad ? that the word apostacy is effaced from the dic
tionary of mankind ?
If you'had pushed on a little further your Spanish tour, yoa
would have found at Granada, depicted by the pencil of a monk,
the martyrdom of those holy Carthusians of London, who were
hanged, disembowelled, and quartered, for having, denied ^he su-

8
premacy of the author of Anglo-Catholic Reformation. Whdtl
shall the tombs of unknown knights and burgesses he treated with
the deepest reverence, and singled out for admiration and imita
tion, because they are in brass, or with a cross fleiurie, or a dos
d'ane.? and shall the blood of our martyrs he silent, and their
noble memory buried in darkness and oblivion? Believe it not;
such will not be the case ; no, not even in this world of sin and
error, and how much less before the justice of God ? Believe
not that we shall ever forget or betray the glory of Fisher, of
More, of Garnet, of those abbots who were hanged before the
gates of their suppressed monasteries ; of so many hundreds of
monks, of Jesuits, of laymen, who perished under the execu
tioner's knife, from the reign of Henry VIII down to the palttiy
days of Anglican episcopacy, under the first Stuarts? Were they
not all Romanists ? did they not all die for the defence of the su
premacy of the See of Rome against the blood-thirsty tyranny of
Anglican kings ? Were they not the victims of the same glorious
cause which St. Dunstan, St. Elphege, St. Anselm, and St. Tho
mas had struggled for ? and were they ours or yours ? I know
that the modern Anglo-Catholics would attempt to throw back on
the Puritans of 1640, most of the sacrilegious devastations that
attended the Reformation ; but I know also that Pugin, in that
article of the Dublin Review which you were good enough to lend
me, has completely demolished that false pretence ; and irrefut
ably demonstrated, that every sacrilege committed by the Puritans
had been inaugurated on a much larger scale by Cranmer and
Elizabeth : and I have looked in vain through all the publications
of the Camden Society for one word of answer to this most damn
ing accusation. As for moral sacrilege, if I may so say, as for
the surrender of spiritual independence and Christian freedom to
the sanguinary pride of royal theologians, assuredly the Anglo-
Catholic fathers of the sixteenth century have surpassed in that
respect every example of the kind, both in Pagan and Christian
times. That debauched and murderous tyrant, called Henry
the Eighth, could find his models amongst the monsters who
reigned at Rome while the Church was in the Catacombs. But
the slavish subserviency of the English apostate bishops, to this
baptized monster's caprices, has remained unequalled since their
days, as it had been before them. Where was Latimer, that
father and martyr of the Anglican Church, om the 30th of May
1538 ? preaching at the stake where a Catholic friar was burning,
for having denied the king's supremacy over the Church, of which
Latimer was a bishop ! Where were Cranmer and the other
prelates, from whom the modern EngHsh bishops pretend to
derive apostolical succession ? sitting at the council-board of the
tyrant, voting in his pariiament, helping him to butcher his wives.

his pi*incipal nohihty, his best and most innocent subjects, arid
acquiescing in his judgment against St. Thomas of Canterbury!
Has not Cranmer come down to posterity branded' with the mon
ster's eulogium, " that he- was the only man who had loved his
sovereign so well, as never to have opposed the royal pleasure."
(Fii:'Cranm.MS.apudLegrand,n.l03J.
-- Is tlitere anything, even in the annals of continental Protestan-
tism^ to be compared to this origin of a Reformed Church ? And
has this Church purifledthe dark and hloody stain of its origin by
its subsequent conduct ? Was there ever a Church, except per
haps- the Greco-Russian since Peter I, which has so basely ac-
knowl«ged the supreme right of secular power, the absolute de
pendence of spiritual jurisdiction on royal and parliamentary
authority, from the days of Cranmer down to Archbishop Whately's
last motion on Church government, debated upon, as he says
in print, "with' the tacit acquiescence of the. whole episcopal
hody?" was there ever a Church, not even excepting the Russian,
which so completely sacrificed the rights and dignities of the poor
to the rich, as the writer of the History of Pnes must know better
than any one ? Was there ever, under the face of heaven, a more
glaring focus of iniquity, oppression, and corruption, than the
existence of the Church of England in Ireland, as denounced, not
only by the groans of the Catholic victims, or by those foreigners
who, like myself, have seen and cursed the abomination in its own
den, but by your own authorities, such as Strafford's Correspon
dence with Laud, and Monk Mason's Life of Bishop. Bedell? Have
not these pseudo-Catholic bishops been sitting for centuries as Lords
spiritual in a parliament whence has issued that penal code against
fellow Christians, the like of which has never been seen or imagined
even under the reign of terror and atheism in France ? Have
they not fgr centuries, and without ever lifting up a dissentient
voice, witnessed, approved, and, for all I know, themselves taken
those tremendous oaths against the most sacred mysteries of the
¦faith of the whole Catholic world, both Greek and Latin, in that
assembly, " where," to use the words of an English writer, " the
Holiest of hoHes has been chosen as the favourite object of the
profanest treatment, and pierced day after day by the jeer of the
scoffer; where alone denial of the blessed Eucharist has. been
made a public, a legal, a national, a royal act ; and where more
impious blasphemies have been uttered, more sacrileges com
mitted, more perjuries pronounced, against the divine Sacrament,
than in the whole world besides ?" And shall these men, forsooth,
be acknowledged by us as our brethren, or as our spiritual fathers ?
Shall the perpetrators and inheritors of these unexpiated, unre-
pented, unforgiven sins, come in quietly and sit down among the
Catholic churches and nations of the world, with bundles of tracts

10
about hierurgical antiquities and monumental brasses under their
arms: and shall we not one and all arise to reject and expel them?
God forbid that we should do otherwise ! There is a place in the
Catholic Church for public , penitents, whence many saints have
risen on the wings of humility and contrition to the glorious
eminence of an Augustine : but there is no place for proud sinners,
who would shake off the chains of isolated error, without confess
ing their guilt and that of their forefathers.
I dislike every mixture of nationality with Catholicity ; and the
fatal example of England is well calculated to justify this dislike
in every Catholic heart. But I cannot, in this circumstance, re
frain from reverting, with legitimate pride, to the difference be
tween the conduct of the English bishops of the sixteenth century,
and that of the French hierarchy, when exposed in 1790 to the
fury of a much more formidable tyrant than Henry VIII, to the
whole French nation. The French bishops of that period were
far from being saints or ascetics ; their high birth had been gene
rally the only reason for their promotioiu —They had to struggle^
not like the English bishops, at the issue of long ages of faith, of
devotion, of popular enthusiasm for the Church; but after more
than two long centuries of secular invasion and monarehicaLdespo-
tism. Their people were not, like the people of Englandj up in
arms for their monasteries and their orthodoxy : but, on the con
trary, had been intoxicated during a hundred years by the poison
of scepticism and philosophical scurrility. Lastly, the Gallican
Church was not, like the Anglican, the immediate daughter of the
See of Rome : she had not been founded by a papal legate in the
sixth century, but by St. Irenseus, St. Denis the Areopagite, and
other disciples of the Apostles. The reformation which was im
posed on her, was not obedience to a theological tyrant, but a
pretended return to the primitive Church, giving the election of
bishops to the people, and allowing them to communicate with the
Holy See. And yet, out of a hundred and thirty-six French
bishops, four alone betrayed their trust ; the hundred and thirty-
two others gladly went forth to imprisonment, to exile,, to death.
When you go to Paris, pray visit the Carmes, an ugly, insignifi
cant, low, square-built modern chapel, without any vestige of
archaeological symbolism, but where the pavement is still red with
the blood of the bishops and priests, who were murdered there for
having refused the oath to the civil constitution of the clergy.*
There you will learn at what price a national Church can purchase
the rights of talking about apostolical succession, and styhng itself
" a branch of the Church Catholic."
But now let me suppose that the Camden Society and the new
* See the British Critid, No. LXIV, p. 286-288,

11
Anglo- Catholic school have both gained their point ; that liturgy,
architeoture, and theology, are brought back precisely to the point
they were, at the close of the reign of Henry VIII, when, as
Dr. Lingard so justly says, " to reject the papal creed was heresy,
and to admit the papal supremacy was treason." Supposing all
this, what will you have gained after all ? Nothing at all, I should
say, grounding myself on Mr. Newman's own words. Does he
not say, " We cannot hope for the recovery of dissenting bqdies,
¦while we are ourselves alienated from the great body of Christen
dom. We cannot hope for unity of faith, if we, at our own private
will, make a faith for ourselves, in this our small corner of the
earth. We cannot hope for the success among the heathen of
St, Augustine or St. Boniface, unless, like them, we go forth with
the apostolical benediction. Break unity in one point, and the
fault runs through the whole body." (Sermons hearing on the
subjects of the day, 1843, pp. 149-50 J. But when the work in
which, you are engaged shall he achieved, you will be as far from
unity as ever, and you will only have alienated your Church from
the great body of Protestant Christendom, to which you were
formerly accounted to belong, by that general feeling which led
the poor king of Prussia to give you his Protestant money and
Protestant sympathies, in order to endow Protestant bishoprics in
Syria. But you will not have come one step nearer to vnityt
because, as Mr. Newman says, " Break unity in one point" &c 
The Greek Church has been at the point you aspire to ever since
the eleventh century ; and can any thing be further from unity
with the Latin Church than she in the nineteenth? Every
Catholic will repeat to you the words of Manzoni, as quoted by
Mr. Faber : " The greatest deviations are none, if the main point
be recognized; the smallest are damnable heresies, if it be denied.
That main point is, the infaUibility of the Church, or rather of the;
Pope." The Coptic, Maronite, and Catholic Armenian Churches,
although differing in every thing outward from the Church of
Rome, are in unity, since they acknowledge her supreme authority.
The Anglican Church, even brought back to the most Catholic
externals, can never be in unity as long as she denies her legiti
mate mother.
One thing quite certain is, that individuals or Churches cannot
he both Catholic and Protestant ; they must choose between one
and the other. In politics, in literature, transactions and com
promises are advisable, and indeed are often the only thing pos
sible ; but in religion, in eternal truth, there is none. Notwith
standing Dr. Jelf, there will never be any via media between truth
and error, between authority and rebelhon, no more than there is
between heaven and hell. If Fisher was right, then was Cranmer
wrong; they cannot be hoth. right, both the murderer and the

13
vJetiin. If Archbishop Plunke|t was a martyr, then Archbishop
Laud was not. If the Church of France is to be admired for
having held out against schism through martyrdom and exile, then
the Church of England must be blamed for having given way to
schism. It is like the ostrich, that thinks it saves itself from the
hunter by refusing to look at him, to say that the present English
Church is a holy although less distinguished branch of the Church
than that of Rome. If the Church of Rome, when she maintains
that out of her pale there is no salvation, and that she alone has
the power of governing the Christian world, is not infallibly rightj
then she is infallibly wrong ; and so far from being a distinguished
branch of truth, she is founded on imposture or error ; and in
neither case can be a true Church. On the other hand, if the
Church of England is not the only true Church on earth, then she
is an apostate rebel.
There is only one sure way of passing from error to the one sure
truth ; that which St. Remigius showed to the first Christian king
of France. When baptizing him, he said, " Bow thy head, proud
Sicamber ; burn what thou hast adored, and adore what thou hast
burned." It is true that to reconciled and forgiven rebellion may be
granted certain privileges, as conformable to the weakness of a
feUen Church. The Anglican Church may demand what was
granted in 1595 to the united Greeks of Poland — the degrading
exception of married clergy, and the use of national language in
the Liturgy. These concessions are not incompatible with the
essentials of faith or authority; but they would make the re-united
Church of England sadly different from what she was in the days
of St. Dunstan or St. Anselm.
. I am not a doctor, nor a minister of the Church ; I am only her
soldier, faithful though unworthy. But I can fearlessly assert that
among the millions who belong, like me, to the Church of Rome,
there is not one who, being led by leisure or duty to consider
attentively what is now going on in England, would arrive at a
different conclusion from mine. Seeing the profound ignorance
which reigns among even the best informed Anglicans (such as
Mr. Faber) on the feelings and duties of churchmen out of Eng
land — seeing also the furious prejudices which animate the new
school against the English and Irish Catholics, probably on the old
pagan principle of Odisse quern Iceseris, I have presumed to think
that it might not be quite useless to you to hear the opinion of a
continental Catholic, than whom no one can be more interested
in England's welfare, or more attentive to her present struggles.
Fas est et ab hoste doceri.
Need I beg of you to acquit the warmth and asperity of my
language of any intention of personal disrespect to you ? No/

13
surely not, I have much too hi^h an opinion of you not to be
certain that you will perfectly understand the motives that have
dictated my words ; and I hope that you will see, on the contrary,
a mark of deep respect on my part for your turn of mind, and
your personal character, I have written to you as a man who
knows the value of truth, and the value of a soul, I should cer
tainly not have done so to most members of your schism. Al
though taught by conscience and authority to look upon the
Church of England as one of the most awful forms of sin and pride
that ever appeared in the world, I have loved and esteemed
several of her children. I feel a compassionate sympathy for
those of her ministers who know the weight of their present
degradation. But, at the same time, I feel a most legitimato
terror for the fate of their souls, when I see them, after having
removed the rubbish which their forefathers had piled up to thff
very clerestory of the church, close their eyes against the light
which, from the past and present, is now pouring down upon them.
They are thus losing that invincible ignorance, which is the only
reason which the Church admits for not belonging toher ! This
feeling has inspired me with the thought of thus writing to you.
This feeling must plead my excuse, if I have wounded your feel
ings. Indeed, I wish I may have done so. Truth is a weapon
intended to wound and destroy everything that is not truth. Non
veni pacem mittere sed gladium. Convinced as I am that you do
not belong, as you say I do, to a distinguished branch of the
Church, but that you are in error, and that wilful error is mortal
sin, I have spoken for the love of your immortal soul. If I have
done so roughly,, it is the roughness of love. Is there not
more charity in pulling roughly back a man who is on his way
to perdition, than in bowing him civilly on to the brink of the
precipice ?
This letter requires no answer. We are not called upon to
carry on a controversy with each other. The ground on which we
stand is unequal, and the odds between us would be uneven. To
convert you, as well as all heretics, is and must be my desire, hut
not my province. To convert me can neither be your province
nor your desire. You cannot look upon me as being in a state of
rebellion, as I do you. What would become of me, if I was to be
convinced of the truth and right of the Church of England ? I
must then immediately doubt the truth and right of the Church
of France, which acts and teaches the very reverse ; for what is
true and right on the north of the Channel cannot surely be other
wise on the south. And yet, according to the principles laid
down by Mr. Faber and the British Critic, supposing myself
convinced of the error and misconduct of my ovra Church, I must
wait till she recognizes it herself, before I have a right to act up

14
to what I think true, and to s.ave toy own soul. Alas! what a
lamentable nondescript sort of thing 1 should he ! _
Our position is, therefore, quite different. The faith I profess,
the authority I obey, the holy Sacrifice of the Mass at which I
assist, the very prayers I daily say, are fitted for you, for me, for
the Portugese ox-driver who is passing under our windows, as Well
as for the savage who is at this moment being baptized in Oceania.
Your faith, your spiritual superiors, your liturgy, can be of no use
hut to those who are English born and English bred. This shall
be my last argument, for it would alone suffice to show which of us
is the Catholic. You cannot, in conformity with your own doctrine,
wish me to be what you are. I can, and indeed I must, wish you
to be what I am. To you I can say, hke Paul to Agrippa,
" Opto apud Deum et in modico et in magno...ie...hodie fieri
talem qualis et ego sum exceptis vinculis his;" or rather as
Bossuet beautifully modifies this text in speaking, I belieVe, to
one of your own communion, pressertim vinculis his, the bonds of
faith, of obedience, of unity with the past, the present, and the
future. In conclusion, let me beg your acceptance of the enclosed
papers, * that will show you how the torrent of grace is flowing
among Romanists, and what are the fruits of Mariolatry. It is a
good thing to write books, like Mr. Newman, about the miracles
of the fourth century ; but it is better still to acknowledge and
experience miracles in the nineteenth. Never, assuredly, were
miracles more wanted than in these ages of light, and never I may
say, were they more abundant; for can there be a greater miracle
in the world than the sudden and mysterious conversion of sinners
in an age like this ?
May that Blessed Lady, who has been so long the object of the
jeers and blasphemies of Anglican divines and Anglican travellers,
and who seems now at last-to inspire your countrymen with some
degree of Veneration— jmay she use her omnipotentia supplex to
enlighten, to bless, and to console you ! Such will ever be the
prayer of Your obedient servant,
And sincere well wisher,
Le Comte de Montalembert.
* Annals of the Archconfraternity of the Holy and Immaculate Heart of Mary.

Printed at the Plior Park Press., by W. Murray.

In the Press, and shortly will he Published,
THE SECOND EDITION OF
THE ANIMA DIVOT A,
OR,
DEVOUT SOUL. /
TRANSLATED FROM THE ITALIAN OF
The Rkv. J, B, PAGANI, professor of theology, and vice-provin
cial OF the institute op charity in ENGLAND,
By The Rev. JAMES SHEPHERD.
The Work contains Thirty-one IVIeditations on the Blessed
Sacrament, each of which is followed by an appropriate Preparation
for and Thanksgiving after Communion; and it terminates with instruc
tions, &c. relative to the Sacrament of Penance, and a Concise Method
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The original has passed through no less than fifty editions within
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(1,000 copies) has been entirely disposed of within the last six months.
Just published, price \s. each,
THlL VTGIL OF ST. LAURENCE,
Or, An Infant's Baptism.
BLANCHE'S CONFIRMATION,
Or, The Tower of London.
Being the first and second of a
SERIES OF TALES EXPLANATORY OF THE SACRAMENTS,
"  To neglect them is spiritual death by starvation — to approach
them unworthily is spiritual death by sacrilege. That they may be
approached, by the young Catholic, with awe, with gratitude, with love,
and with a full comprehension of the specific nature and value of each
Sacrament, is the design of these Explanatory Tales." — Preface.
Price One Shilling,
AN EXPLANATION
or THE CONSTRUCTION, FURNITURE & ORNAMENTS OF
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OF THE VESTMENTS OF THE CLERGY, AND OF
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