Chapter M: Renan's Hibbert Lectures15 (6)

His misapprehensions shall be corrected; his ignorance of what is Roman theology fully, and at any length, enlightened. There is no desire to shrink from the fullest and most patient argument in its favour, and he may call it, if he likes, explanation. But there is only one practical issue to what he has proposed--not to stand bargaining for impossible conditions, but thankfully and humbly to join himself to the true Church while he may. It is only the way in which the answer is given that varies. Here characteristic differences appear. The authorities of the Roman Catholic Church swell out to increased magnificence, and nothing can exceed the suavity and the compassionate scorn with which they point out the transparent absurdity and the audacity of such proposals. The Holy Office at Rome has not, it may be, yet heard of Dr. Pusey; it may regret, perhaps, that it did not wait for so distinguished a mark for its censure; but its attention has been drawn to some smaller offenders of the same way of thinking, and it has been induced to open all the floodgates of its sonorous and antiquated verbiage to sweep away and annihilate a poor little London periodical--"_ephemeridem cui titulus, 'The Union Review_.'" The Archbishop of Westminster, not deigning to name Dr. Pusey, has seized the opportunity to reiterate emphatically, in stately periods and with a polished sarcasm, his boundless contempt for the foolish people who dare to come "with swords wreathed in myrtle" between the Catholic Church and "her mission to the great people of England." On the other hand, there have been not a few Roman Catholics who have listened with interest and sympathy to what Dr. Pusey had to say, and, though obviously they had but one answer to give, have given it with a sense of the real condition and history of the Christian world, and with the respect due to a serious attempt to look evils in the face. But there is only one person on the Roman Catholic side whose reflections on the subject English readers in general would much care to know. Anybody could tell beforehand what Archbishop Manning would say; but people could not feel so certain what Dr. Newman might say.

Dr. Newman has given his answer; and his answer is, of course, in effect the same as that of the rest of his co-religionists. He offers not the faintest encouragement to Dr. Pusey's sanguine hopes. If it is possible to conceive that one side could move in the matter, it is absolutely certain that the other would be inflexible. Any such dealing on equal terms with the heresy and schism of centuries is not to be thought of; no one need affect surprise at the refusal. What Dr. Pusey asks is, in fact, to pull the foundation out from under the whole structure of Roman Catholic pretensions. Dr. Newman does not waste words to show that the plan of the _Eirenicon_ is impossible. He evidently assumes that it is so, and we agree with him. But there are different ways of dispelling a generous dream, and telling a serious man who is in earnest that he is mistaken. Dr. Newman does justice, as he ought to do, to feelings and views which none can enter into better than he, whatever he may think of them now. He does justice to the understanding and honesty, as well as the high aims, of an old friend, once his comrade in difficult and trying times, though now long parted from him by profound differences, and to the motives which prompted so venturous an attempt as the _Eirenicon_ to provoke public discussion on the reunion of Christendom. He is capable of measuring the real state of the facts, and the mischiefs and evils for which a remedy is wanted, by a more living rule than the suppositions and consequences of a cut-and-dried theory. Rightly or wrongly he argues--at least, he gives us something to think of. Perhaps not the least of his merit is that he writes simply and easily in choice and varied English, instead of pompously ringing the changes on a set of _formulae_ which beg the question, and dinning into our ears the most extravagant assertions of foreign ecclesiastical arrogance. We may not always think him fair, or a sound reasoner, but he is conciliatory, temperate, and often fearlessly candid. He addresses readers who will challenge and examine what he says, not those whose minds are cowed and beaten down before audacity in proportion to its coolness, and whom paradox, the more extreme the better, fascinates and drags captive. To his old friend he is courteous, respectful, sympathetic; where the occasion makes it fitting, affectionate, even playful, as men are who can afford to let their real feelings come out, and have not to keep up appearances. Unflinching he is in maintaining his present position as the upholder of the exclusive claims of the Roman Church to represent the Catholic Church of the Creeds; but he has the good sense and good feeling to remember that he once shared the views of those whom he now controverts, and that their present feelings about the divisions of Christendom were once his own. Such language as the following is plain, intelligible, and manly. Of course, he has his own position, and must see things according to it. But he recognises the right of conscience in those who, having gone a long way with him, find that they can go no further, and he pays a compliment, becoming as from himself, and not without foundation in fact, to the singular influence which, from whatever cause, Dr. Pusey's position gives him, and which, we may add, imposes on him, in more ways than one, very grave responsibilities:--

You, more than any one else alive, have been the present and
untiring agent by whom a great work has been effected in it; and,
far more than is usual, you have received in your lifetime, as
well as merited, the confidence of your brethren. You cannot speak
merely for yourself; your antecedents, your existing influence,
are a pledge to us that what you may determine will be the
determination of a multitude. Numbers, too, for whom you cannot
properly be said to speak, will be moved by your authority or your
arguments; and numbers, again, who are of a school more recent
than your own, and who are only not your followers because they
have outstripped you in their free speeches and demonstrative acts
in our behalf, will, for the occasion, accept you as their
spokesman. There is no one anywhere--among ourselves, in your own
body, or, I suppose, in the Greek Church--who can affect so vast a
circle of men, so virtuous, so able, so learned, so zealous, as
come, more or less, under your influence; and I cannot pay them
all a greater compliment than to tell them they ought all to be
Catholics, nor do them a more affectionate service than to pray
that they may one day become such....

I recollect well what an outcast I seemed to myself when I took
down from the shelves of my library the volumes of St. Athanasius
or St. Basil, and set myself to study them; and how, on the
contrary, when at length I was brought into Catholicism, I kissed
them with delight, with a feeling that in them I had more than all
that I had lost, and, as though I were directly addressing the
glorious saints who bequeathed them to the Church, I said to the
inanimate pages, "You are now mine, and I am now yours, beyond any
mistake." Such, I conceive, would be the joy of the persons I
speak of if they could wake up one morning and find themselves
possessed by right of Catholic traditions and hopes, without
violence to their own sense of duty; and certainly I am the last
man to say that such violence is in any case lawful, that the
claims of conscience are not paramount, or that any one may
overleap what he deliberately holds to be God's command, in order
to make his path easier for him or his heart lighter.

I am the last man to quarrel with this jealous deference to the
voice of our conscience, whatever judgment others may form of us
in consequence, for this reason, because their case, as it at
present stands, has as you know been my own. You recollect well
what hard things were said against us twenty-five years ago which
we knew in our hearts we did not deserve. Hence, I am now in the
position of the fugitive Queen in the well-known passage, who,
"_haud ignara mali_" herself, had learned to sympathise with those
who were inheritors of her past wanderings.

Dr. Newman's hopes, and what most of his countrymen consider the hopes of truth and religion, are not the same. His wish is, of course, that his friend should follow him; a wish in which there is not the slightest reason to think that he will be gratified. But differently as we must feel as to the result, we cannot help sharing the evident amusement with which Dr. Newman recalls a few of the compliments which were lavished on him by some of his present co-religionists when he was trying to do them justice, and was even on the way to join them. He reprints with sly and mischievous exactness a string of those glib phrases of controversial dislike and suspicion which are common to all parties, and which were applied to him by "priests, good men, whose zeal outstripped their knowledge, and who in consequence spoke confidently, when they would have been wiser had they suspended their adverse judgment of those whom they were soon to welcome as brothers in communion." It is a trifle, but it strikes us as characteristic. Dr. Newman is one of the very few who have carried into his present communion, to a certain degree at least, an English habit of not letting off the blunders and follies of his own side, and of daring to think that a cause is better served by outspoken independence of judgment than by fulsome, unmitigated puffing. It might be well if even in him there were a little more of this habit. But, so far as it goes, it is the difference between him and most of those who are leaders on his side. Indirectly he warns eager controversialists that they are not always the wisest and the most judicious and far-seeing of men; and we cannot quarrel with him, however little we may like the occasion, for the entertainment which he feels in inflicting on his present brethren what they once judged and said of him, and in reminding them that their proficiency in polemical rhetoric did not save them from betraying the shallowness of their estimate and the shortness of their foresight.

When he comes to discuss the _Eirenicon_, Dr. Newman begins with a complaint which seems to us altogether unreasonable. He seems to think it hard that Dr. Pusey should talk of peace and reunion, and yet speak so strongly of what he considers the great corruptions of the Roman Church. In ordinary controversy, says Dr. Newman, we know what we are about and what to expect; "'_Caedimur, et totidem plagis consumimus hostem_.' We give you a sharp cut and you return it.... But we at least have not professed to be composing an _Eirenicon_, when we treated you as foes." Like Archbishop Manning, Dr. Newman is reminded "of the sword wreathed in myrtle;" but Dr. Pusey, he says, has improved on the ancient device,--"Excuse me, you discharge your olive-branch as if from a catapult."

This is, no doubt, exactly what Dr. Pusey has done. Going much further than the great majority of his countrymen will go with him in admissions in favour of the Roman Catholic Church, he has pointed out with a distinctness and force, never, perhaps, exceeded, what is the impassable barrier which, as long as it lasts, makes every hope of union idle. The practical argument against Rome is stated by him in a shape which comes home to the consciences of all, whatever their theological training and leanings, who have been brought up in English ways and ideas of religion. But why should he not? He is desirous of union--the reunion of the whole of Christendom. He gives full credit to the Roman communion--much more credit than most of his brethren think him justified in giving--for what is either defensible or excellent in it. Dr. Newman must be perfectly aware that Dr. Pusey has gone to the very outside of what our public feeling in England will bear in favour of efforts for reconciliation, and he nowhere shows any sign that he is thinking of unconditional submission. How, then, can he be expected to mince matters and speak smoothly when he comes to what he regards as the real knot of the difficulty, the real and fatal bar to all possibility of a mutual understanding? If his charges are untrue or exaggerated in detail or colouring, that is another matter; but the whole of his pleading for peace presupposes that there are great and serious obstacles to it in what is practically taught and authorised in the Roman Church; and it is rather hard to blame him for "not making the best of things," and raising difficulties in the way of the very object which he seeks, because he states the truth about these obstacles. We are afraid that we must be of Dr. Newman's opinion that the _Eirenicon_ is not calculated to lead, in our time at least, to what it aims at--the reunion of Christendom; but this arises from the real obstacles themselves, not from Dr. Pusey's way of stating them. There may be no way to peace, but surely if there is, though it implies giving full weight to your sympathies, and to the points on which you may give way, it also involves the possibility of speaking out plainly, and also of being listened to, on the points on which you really disagree. Does Dr. Newman think that all Dr. Pusey felt he had to do was to conciliate Roman Catholics? Does it follow, because objections are intemperately and unfairly urged on the Protestant side, that therefore they are not felt quite as much in earnest by sober and tolerant people, and that they may not be stated in their real force without giving occasion for the remark that this is reviving the old cruel war against Rome, and rekindling a fierce style of polemics which is now out of date? And how is Dr. Pusey to state these objections if, when he goes into them, not in a vague declamatory way, but showing his respect and seriousness by his guarded and full and definite manner of proof, he is to be met by the charge that he does not show sufficient consideration? All this may be a reason for thinking it vain to write an Eirenicon at all. But if one is to be attempted, it certainly will not do to make it a book of compliments. Its first condition is that if it makes light of lesser difficulties it should speak plainly about greater ones.

But this is, after all, a matter of feeling. No doubt, as Dr. Newman says, people are not pleased or conciliated by elaborate proofs that they are guilty of something very wrong or foolish. What is of more interest is to know the effect on a man like Dr. Newman of such a display of the prevailing tendency of religious thought and devotion in his communion as Dr. Pusey has given from Roman Catholic writers. And it is plain that, whoever else is satisfied with them, these tendencies are not entirely satisfactory to Dr. Newman. That rage for foreign ideas and foreign usages which has come over a section of his friends, the loudest and perhaps the ablest section of them, has no charms for him. He asserts resolutely and rather sternly his right to have an opinion of his own, and declines to commit himself, or to allow that his cause is committed, to a school of teaching which happens for the moment to have the talk to itself; and he endeavours at great length to present a view of the teaching of his Church which shall be free, if not from all Dr. Pusey's objections, yet from a certain number of them, which to Dr. Newman himself appear grave. After disclaiming or correcting certain alleged admissions of his own, on which Dr. Pusey had placed a construction too favourable to the Anglican Church, Dr. Newman comes to a passage which seems to rouse him. A convert, says Dr. Pusey, must take things as he finds them in his new communion, and it would be unbecoming in him to criticise. This statement gives Dr. Newman the opportunity of saying that, except with large qualifications, he does not accept it for himself. Of course, he says, there are considerations of modesty, of becomingness, of regard to the feelings of others with equal or greater claims than himself, which bind a convert as they bind any one who has just gained admission into a society of his fellow men. He has no business "to pick and choose," and to set himself up as a judge of everything in his new position. But though every man of sense who thought he had reason for so great a change would be generous and loyal in accepting his new religion as a whole, in time he comes "to have a right to speak as well as to hear;" and for this right, both generally and in his own case, he stands up very resolutely:--

Also, in course of time a new generation rises round him, and
there is no reason why he should not know as much, and decide
questions with as true an instinct, as those who perhaps number
fewer years than he does Easter communions. He has mastered the
fact and the nature of the differences of theologian from
theologian, school from school, nation from nation, era from era.
He knows that there is much of what may be called fashion in
opinions and practices, according to the circumstances of time and
place, according to current politics, the character of the Pope of
the day, or the chief Prelates of a particular country; and that
fashions change. His experience tells him that sometimes what is
denounced in one place as a great offence, or preached up as a
first principle, has in another nation been immemorially regarded
in just a contrary sense, or has made no sensation at all, one way
or the other, when brought before public opinion; and that loud
talkers, in the Church as elsewhere, are apt to carry all before
them, while quiet and conscientious persons commonly have to give
way. He perceives that, in matters which happen to be in debate,
ecclesiastical authority watches the state of opinion and the
direction and course of controversy, and decides accordingly; so
that in certain cases to keep back his own judgment on a point is
to be disloyal to his superiors.

So far generally; now in particular as to myself. After twenty
years of Catholic life, I feel no delicacy in giving my opinion on
any point when there is a call for me,--and the only reason why I
have not done so sooner or more often than I have, is that there
has been no call. I have now reluctantly come to the conclusion
that your Volume _is_ a call. Certainly, in many instances in
which theologian differs from theologian, and country from
country, I have a definite judgment of my own; I can say so
without offence to any one, for the very reason that from the
nature of the case it is impossible to agree with all of them. I
prefer English habits of belief and devotion to foreign, from the
same causes, and by the same right, which justifies foreigners in
preferring their own. In following those of my people, I show less
singularity, and create less disturbance than if I made a flourish
with what is novel and exotic. And in this line of conduct I am
but availing myself of the teaching which I fell in with on
becoming a Catholic; and it is a pleasure to me to think that what
I hold now, and would transmit after me if I could, is only what I
received then.

He observes that when he first joined the Roman Catholic Church the utmost delicacy was observed in giving him advice; and the only warning which he can recollect was from the Vicar-General of the London district, who cautioned him against books of devotion of the Italian school, which were then just coming into England, and recommended him to get, as safe guides, the works of Bishop Hay. Bishop Hay's name is thus, probably for the first time, introduced to the general English public. It is difficult to forbear a smile at the great Oxford teacher, the master of religious thought and feeling to thousands, being gravely set to learn his lesson of a more perfect devotion, how to meditate and how to pray, from "the works of Bishop Hay"; it is hardly more easy to forbear a smile at his recording it. But Bishop Hay was a sort of symbol, and represents, he says, English as opposed to foreign habits of thought; and to these English habits he not only gives his preference, but he maintains that they are more truly those of the whole Roman Catholic body in England than the more showy and extreme doctrines of a newer school. Dr. Pusey does wrong, he says, in taking this new school as the true exponent of Roman Catholic ideas. That it is popular he admits, but its popularity is to be accounted for by personal qualifications in its leaders for gaining the ear of the world, without supposing that they speak for their body.

Though I am a convert, then, I think I have a right to speak out;
and that the more because other converts have spoken for a long
time, while I have not spoken; and with still more reason may I
speak without offence in the case of your present criticisms of
us, considering that in the charges you bring the only two English
writers you quote in evidence are both of them converts, younger
in age than myself. I put aside the Archbishop of course, because
of his office. These two authors are worthy of all consideration,
at once from their character and from their ability. In their
respective lines they are perhaps without equals at this
particular time; and they deserve the influence they possess. One
is still in the vigour of his powers; the other has departed amid
the tears of hundreds. It is pleasant to praise them for their
real qualifications; but why do you rest on them as authorities?
Because the one was "a popular writer"; but is there not
sufficient reason for this in the fact of his remarkable gifts, of
his poetical fancy, his engaging frankness, his playful wit, his
affectionateness, his sensitive piety, without supposing that the
wide diffusion of his works arises out of his particular
sentiments about the Blessed Virgin? And as to our other friend,
do not his energy, acuteness, and theological reading, displayed
on the vantage ground of the historic _Dublin Review_, fully
account for the sensation he has produced, without supposing that
any great number of our body go his lengths in their view of the
Pope's infallibility? Our silence as regards their writings is
very intelligible; it is not agreeable to protest, in the sight of
the world, against the writings of men in our own communion whom
we love and respect. But the plain fact is this--they came to the
Church, and have thereby saved their souls; but they are in no
sense spokesmen for English Catholics, and they must not stand in
the place of those who have a real title to such an office.

And he appeals from them, as authorities, to a list of much more sober and modest writers, though, it may be, the names of all of them are not familiar to the public. He enumerates as the "chief authors of the passing generation," "Cardinal Wiseman, Dr. Ullathorne, Dr. Lingard, Mr. Tierney, Dr. Oliver, Dr. Rock, Dr. Waterworth, Dr. Husenbeth, Mr. Flanagan." If these well-practised and circumspect veterans in the ancient controversy are not original and brilliant, at least they are safe; and Dr. Newman will not allow the flighty intellectualism which takes more hold of modern readers to usurp their place, and for himself he sturdily and bluffly declines to give up his old standing-ground for any one:--

I cannot, then, without remonstrance, allow you to identify the
doctrine of our Oxford friends in question, on the two subjects I
have mentioned, with the present spirit or the prospective creed
of Catholics; or to assume, as you do, that because they are
thoroughgoing and relentless in their statements, therefore they
are the harbingers of a new age, when to show a deference for
Antiquity will be thought little else than a mistake. For myself,
hopeless as you consider it, I am not ashamed still to take my
stand upon the Fathers, and do not mean to budge. The history of
their time is not yet an old almanac to me. Of course I maintain
the value and authority of the "Schola," as one of the _loci
theologici_; still I sympathise with Petavius in preferring to its
"contentious and subtle theology" that "more elegant and fruitful
teaching which is moulded after the image of erudite antiquity."
The Fathers made me a Catholic, and I am not going to kick down
the ladder by which I ascended into the Church. It is a ladder
quite as serviceable for that purpose now as it was twenty years
ago. Though I hold, as you remark, a process of development in
Apostolic truth as time goes on, such development does not
supersede the Fathers, but explains and completes them.

Is he right in saying that he is not responsible as a Roman Catholic for the extravagances that Dr. Pusey dwells upon? He is, it seems to us, and he is not. No doubt the Roman Catholic system is in practice a wide one, and he has a right, which we are glad to see that he is disposed to exercise, to maintain the claims of moderation and soberness, and to decline to submit his judgment to the fashionable theories of the hour. A stand made for independence and good sense against the pressure of an exacting and overbearing dogmatism is a good thing for everybody, though made in a camp with which we have nothing to do. He goes far enough, indeed, as it is. Still, it is something that a great writer, of whose genius and religious feeling Englishmen will one day be even prouder than they are now, should disconnect himself from the extreme follies of his party, and attempt to represent what is the nobler and more elevated side of the system to which he has attached himself. But it seems to us much more difficult for him to release his cause from complicity with the doctrines which he dislikes and fears. We have no doubt that he is not alone, and that there are numbers of his English brethren who are provoked and ashamed at the self-complacent arrogance and childish folly shown in exaggerating and caricaturing doctrines which are, in the eyes of most Englishmen, extravagant enough in themselves. But the question is whether he or the innovators represent the true character and tendencies of their religious system. It must be remembered that with a jealous and touchy Government, like that of the Roman Church, which professes the duty and boasts of the power to put down all dangerous ideas and language, mere tolerance means much. Dr. Newman speaks as an Englishman when he writes thus:--

This is specially the case with great ideas. You may stifle them;
or you may refuse them elbow-room; or you may torment them with
your continual meddling; or you may let them have free course and
range, and be content, instead of anticipating their excesses, to
expose and restrain those excesses after they have occurred. But
you have only this alternative; and for myself, I prefer much,
wherever it is possible, to be first generous and then just; to
grant full liberty of thought, and to call it to account when
abused.

But that has never been the principle of his Church. At least, the liberty which it has allowed has been a most one-sided liberty. It has been the liberty to go any length in developing the favourite opinions about the power of the Pope, or some popular form of devotion; but as to other ideas, not so congenial, "great" ones and little ones too, the lists of the Roman Index bear witness to the sensitive vigilance which took alarm even at remote danger. And those whose pride it is that they are ever ready and able to stop all going astray must be held responsible for the going astray which they do not stop, especially when it coincides with what they wish and like.

But these extreme writers do not dream of tolerance. They stoutly and boldly maintain that they but interpret in the only natural and consistent manner the mind of their Church; and no public or official contradiction meets them. There may be a disapproving opinion in their own body, but it does not show itself. The disclaimer of even such a man as Dr. Newman is in the highest degree guarded and qualified. They are the people who can excite attention and gain a hearing, though it be an adverse one. They have the power to make themselves the most prominent and accredited representatives of their creed, and, if thoroughgoing boldness and ability are apt to attract the growth of thought and conviction, they are those who are likely to mould its future form. Sober prudent people may prefer the caution of Dr. Newman's "chief authors," but to the world outside most of these will be little more than names, and the advanced party, which talks most strongly about the Pope's infallibility and devotion to St. Mary, has this to say for itself. Popular feeling everywhere in the Roman communion appears to go with it, and authority both in Rome and in England shelters and sanctions it. Nothing can be more clearly and forcibly stated than the following assertions of the unimpeachable claim of "dominant opinions" in the Roman Catholic system by the highest Roman Catholic authority in England. "It is an ill-advised overture of peace," writes Archbishop Manning,

to assail the popular, prevalent, and dominant opinions,
devotions, and doctrines of the Catholic Church with hostile
criticism.... The presence and assistance of the Holy Ghost, which
secures the Church within the sphere of faith and morals, invests
it also with instincts and a discernment which preside over its
worship and doctrines, its practices and customs. We may be sure
that whatever is prevalent in the Church, under the eye of its
public authority, practised by the people, and not censured by its
pastors, is at least conformable to faith and innocent as to
morals. Whosoever rises up to condemn such practices and opinions
thereby convicts himself of the private spirit which is the root
of heresy. But if it be ill-advised to assail the mind of the
Church, it is still more so to oppose its visible Head. There can
be no doubt that the Sovereign Pontiff has declared the same
opinion as to the temporal power as that which is censured in
others, and that he defined the Immaculate Conception, and that he
believes in his own infallibility. If these things be our
reproach, we share it with the Vicar of Jesus Christ. They are not
our private opinions, nor the tenets of a school, but the mind of
the Pontiff, as they were of his predecessors, as they will be of
those who come after him.--Archbishop Manning's _Pastoral_, pp.
64-66, 1866.

To maintain his liberty against extreme opinions generally is one of Dr. Newman's objects in writing his letter; the other is to state distinctly what he holds and what he does not hold, as regards the subject on which Dr. Pusey's appeal has naturally made so deep an impression:--

I do so, because you say, as I myself have said in former years,
that "That vast system as to the Blessed Virgin ... to all of us
has been the special _crux_ of the Roman system" (p. 101). Here, I
say, as on other points, the Fathers are enough for me. I do not
wish to say more than they, and will not say less. You, I know,
will profess the same; and thus we can join issue on a clear and
broad principle, and may hope to come to some intelligible result.
We are to have a treatise on the subject of Our Lady soon from the
pen of the Most Rev. Prelate; but that cannot interfere with such
a mere argument from the Fathers as that to which I shall confine
myself here. Nor, indeed, as regards that argument itself, do I
profess to be offering you any new matter, any facts which have
not been used by others,--by great divines, as Petavius, by living
writers, nay, by myself on other occasions. I write afresh,
nevertheless, and that for three reasons--first, because I wish to
contribute to the accurate statement and the full exposition of
the argument in question; next, because I may gain a more patient
hearing than has sometimes been granted to better men than myself;
lastly, because there just now seems a call on me, under my
circumstances, to avow plainly what I do and what I do not hold
about the Blessed Virgin, that others may know, did they come to
stand where I stand, what they would and what they would not be
bound to hold concerning her.

If this "vast system" is a _crux_ to any one, we cannot think that even Dr. Newman's explanation will make it easier. He himself recoils, as any Englishman of sense and common feeling must, at the wild extravagances into which this devotion has run. But he accepts and defends, on the most precarious grounds, the whole system of thought out of which they have sprung by no very violent process of growth. He cannot, of course, stop short of accepting the definition of the Immaculate Conception as an article of faith, and, though he emphatically condemns, with a warmth and energy of which no one can doubt the sincerity, a number of revolting consequences drawn from the theology of which that dogma is the expression, he is obliged to defend everything up to that. For a professed disciple of the Fathers this is not easy. If anything is certain, it is that the place which the Blessed Virgin occupies in the Roman Catholic system--popular or authoritative, if it is possible fairly to urge such a distinction in a system which boasts of all-embracing authority--is something perfectly different from anything known in the first four centuries. In all the voluminous writings on theology which remain from them we may look in vain for any traces of that feeling which finds words in the common hymn, "_Ave, marls Stella_" and which makes her fill so large a space in the teaching and devotion of the Roman Church. Dr. Newman attempts to meet this difficulty by a distinction. The doctrine, he says, was there, the same then as now; it is only the feelings, behaviour, and usages, the practical consequences naturally springing from the doctrine, which have varied or grown:--

I fully grant that the _devotion_ towards the Blessed Virgin has
increased among Catholics with the progress of centuries. I do not
allow that the _doctrine_ concerning her has undergone a growth,
for I believe it has been in substance one and the same from the
beginning.

There is, doubtless, such a distinction, though whether available for Dr. Newman's purpose is another matter. But when we recollect that modern "doctrine," besides defining the Immaculate Conception, places her next in glory to the Throne of God, and makes her the Queen of Heaven, and the all-prevailing intercessor with her Son, the assertion as to "doctrine" is a bold one. It rests, as it seems to us, simply on Dr. Newman identifying his own inferences from the language of the ancient writers whom he quotes with the language itself. They say a certain thing--that Mary is the "second Eve." Dr. Newman, with all the theology and all the controversies of eighteen centuries in his mind, deduces from this statement a number of refined consequences as to her sinlessness, and greatness, and reward, which seem to him to flow from it, and says that it means all these consequences. Mr. Ruskin somewhere quotes the language of an "eminent Academician," who remarks, in answer to some criticism on a picture, "that if you look for curves, you will see curves; and if you look for angles, you will see angles." So it is here. The very dogma of the Immaculate Conception itself Dr. Newman sees indissolubly involved in the "rudimentary teaching" which insists on the parallelism between Eve and Mary:--

Was not Mary as fully endowed as Eve?... If Eve was (as Bishop
Bull and others maintain) raised above human nature by that
indwelling moral gift which we call grace, is it rash to say that
Mary had a greater grace?... And if Eve had this supernatural
inward gift given her from the moment of her personal existence,
is it possible to deny that Mary, too, had this gift from the very
first moment of her personal existence? I do not know how to
resist this inference:--well, this is simply and literally the
doctrine of the Immaculate Conception. I say the doctrine of the
Immaculate Conception is in its substance this, and nothing more
or less than this (putting aside the question of degrees of
grace), and it really does seem to me bound up in that doctrine of
the Fathers, that Mary is the second Eve.

It seems obvious to remark that the Fathers are not even alleged to have themselves drawn this irresistible inference; and next, that even if it be drawn, there is a long interval between it and the elevation of the Mother of Jesus Christ to the place to which modern Roman doctrine raises her. Possibly, the Fathers might have said, as many people will say now, that, in a matter of this kind, it is idle to draw inferences when we are, in reality, utterly without the knowledge to make them worth anything. At any rate, if they had drawn them, we should have found some traces of it in their writings, and we find none. We find abundance of poetical addresses and rhetorical amplification, which makes it all the more remarkable that the plain dogmatic view of her position, which is accepted by the Roman Church, does not appear in them. We only find a "rudimentary doctrine," which, naturally enough, gives the Blessed Virgin a very high and sacred place in the economy of the Incarnation. But how does the doctrine, as it is found in even their rhetorical passages, go a step beyond what would be accepted by any sober reader of the New Testament? They speak of what she was; they do not presume to say what she is. What Protestant could have the slightest difficulty in saying not only what Justin says, and Tertullian copies from him, and Irenaeus enlarges upon, but what Dr. Newman himself says of her awful and solitary dignity, always excepting the groundless assumption which, from her office in this world takes for granted, first her sinlessness, and then a still higher office in the next? We do not think that, as a matter of literary criticism, Dr. Newman is fair in his argument from the Fathers. He lays great stress on Justin Martyr, Tertullian, and Irenaeus, as three independent witnesses from different parts of the world; whereas it is obvious that Tertullian at any rate copies almost literally from Justin Martyr, and it is impossible to compare a mere incidental point of rhetorical, or, if it be so, argumentative illustration, occurring once or twice in a long treatise, with a doctrine, such as that of the Incarnation itself, on which the whole treatise is built, and of which it is full. The wonder is, indeed, that the Fathers, considering how much they wrote, said so little of her; scarcely less is it a wonder, then, that the New Testament says so little, but from this little the only reason which would prevent a Protestant reader of the New Testament from accepting the highest statement of her historical dignity is the reaction from the development of them into the consequences which have been notorious for centuries in the unreformed Churches. Protestants, left to themselves, are certainly not prone to undervalue the saints of Scripture; it has been the presence of the great system of popular worship confronting them which has tied their tongues in this matter. Yet Anglican theologians like Mr. Keble, popular poets like Wordsworth, broad Churchmen like Mr. Robertson, have said things which even Roman Catholics might quote as expressions of their feeling. But Dr. Newman must know that many things may be put, and put most truly, into the form of poetical expression which will not bear hardening into a dogma. A Protestant may accept and even amplify the ideas suggested by Scripture about the Blessed Virgin; but he may feel that he cannot tell how the Redeemer was preserved from sinful taint; what was the grace bestowed on His mother; or what was the reward and prerogative which ensued to her. But it is just these questions which the Roman doctrine undertakes to answer without a shadow of doubt, and which Dr. Newman implies that the theology of the Fathers answered as unambiguously.

But from what has happened in the history of religion, we do not think that Protestants in general who do not shrink from high language about Abraham, Moses, or David, would find anything unnatural or objectionable in the language of the early Christian writers about the Mother of our Lord, though possibly it might not be their own; but the interval from this language to that certain knowledge of her present office in the economy of grace which is implied in what Dr. Newman considers the "doctrine" about her is a very long one. The step to the modern "devotion" in its most chastened form is longer still. We cannot follow the subtle train of argument which says that because the "doctrine" of the second century called her the "second Eve," therefore the devotion which sets her upon the altars of Christendom in the nineteenth is a right development of the doctrine. What is wanted is not the internal thread of the process, but the proof and confirmation from without that it was the right process; and this link is just what is wanting, except on a supposition which begs the question. It is conceivable that this step from "doctrine" to "devotion" may have been a mistake. It is conceivable that the "doctrine" may have been held in the highest form without leading to the devotion; for Dr. Newman, of course, thinks that Athanasius and Augustine held "the doctrine," yet, as he says, "we have no proof that Athanasius himself had any special devotion to the Blessed Virgin," and in another place he repeats his doubts whether St. Chrysostom or St. Athanasius invoked her; "nay," he adds, "I should like to know whether St. Augustine, in all his voluminous writings, invokes her once." What has to be shown is, that this step was not a mistake; that it was inevitable and legitimate.

"This being the faith of the Fathers about the Blessed Virgin," says Dr. Newman, "we need not wonder that it should in no long time be transmuted into devotion." The Fathers expressed a historical fact about her in the term [Greek: Theotokos]; therefore, argues the later view, she is the source of our present grace now. It is the _rationale_ of this inference, which is not an immediate or obvious one, which is wanted. And Dr. Newman gives it us in the words of Bishop Butler:--

Christianity is eminently an objective religion. For the most part
it tells us of persons and facts in simple words, and leaves the
announcement to produce its effect on such hearts as are prepared
to receive it. This, at least, is its general character; and
Butler recognises it as such in his _Analogy_, when speaking of
the Second and Third Persons of the Holy Trinity:--"The internal
worship," he says, "to the Son and Holy Ghost is no farther matter
of pure revealed command than as the relations they stand in to us
are matters of pure revelation; but the relations being known, the
obligations to such internal worship are _obligations of reason
arising out of those relations themselves_."

We acknowledge the pertinency of the quotation. So true is it that "the relations being known," the obligations of worship arise of themselves from these relations, that if the present relation of the Blessed Virgin to mankind has always been considered to be what modern Roman theology considers it, it is simply inconceivable that devotion to her should not have been universal long before St. Athanasius and St. Augustine; and equally inconceivable, to take Dr. Newman's remarkable illustration, that if the real position of St. Joseph is next to her, it should have been reserved for the nineteenth century, if not, indeed, to find it out, at least to acknowledge it; but the whole question is about the fact of the "relations" themselves. If we believe that the Second and Third Persons are God, we do not want to be told to worship them. But such a relation as Dr. Newman supposes in the case of the Blessed Virgin does not flow of itself from the idea contained, for instance, in the word [Greek: Theotokos], and even if it did, we should still want to be told, in the case of a creature, and remembering the known jealousy of religion of even the semblance of creature worship, what _are_ the "religious regards," which, not flowing from the nature of the case, but needing to be distinctly authorised, are right and binding.

The question is of a dogmatic and a popular system. We most fully admit that, with Dr. Newman or any other of the numberless well-trained and excellent men in the Roman Church, the homage to the Mother does not interfere with the absolutely different honour rendered to the Son. We readily acknowledge the elevating and refining beauty of that character, of which the Virgin Mother is the type, and the services which that ideal has rendered to mankind, though we must emphatically say that a man need not be a Roman Catholic to feel and to express the charm of that moral beauty. But here we have a doctrine as definite and precise as any doctrine can be, and a great system of popular devotion, giving a character to a great religious communion. Dr. Newman is not merely developing and illustrating an idea: he is asserting a definite revealed fact about the unseen world, and defending its consequences in a very concrete and practical shape. And the real point is what proof has he given us that this is a revealed fact; that it is so, and that we have the means of knowing it? He has given us certain language of the early writers, which he says is a tradition, though it is only what any Protestant might have been led to by reading his Bible. But between that language, taken at its highest, and the belief and practice which his Church maintains, there is a great gap. The "Second Eve," the [Greek: Theotokos], are names of high dignity; but enlarge upon them as we may, there is between them and the modern "Regina Coeli" an interval which nothing but direct divine revelation can possibly fill; and of this divine revelation the only evidence is the fact that there is the doctrine. So awful and central an article of belief needs corresponding proof. In Dr. Newman's eloquent pages we have much collateral thought on the subject--sometimes instinct with his delicacy of perception and depth of feeling, sometimes strangely over-refined and irrelevant, but always fresh and instructive, whether to teach or to warn. The one thing which is missing in them is direct proof.

He does not satisfy us, but he does greatly interest us in his way of dealing with the practical consequences of his doctrine, in the manifold development of devotion in his communion. What he tells us reveals two things. By this devotion he is at once greatly attracted, and he is deeply shocked. No one can doubt the enthusiasm with which he has thrown himself into that devotion, an enthusiasm which, if it was at one time more vehement and defiant than it is now, is still a most intense element in his religious convictions. Nor do we feel entitled to say that in him it interferes with religious ideas and feelings of a higher order, which we are accustomed to suppose imperilled by it. It leads him, indeed, to say things which astonish us, not so much by their extreme language as by the absence, as it seems to us, of any ground to say them at all. It forces him into a championship for statements, in defending which the utmost that can be done is to frame ingenious pleas, or to send back a vigorous retort. It tempts him at times to depart from his generally broad and fair way of viewing things, as when he meets the charge that the Son is forgotten for the Mother, not merely by a denial, but by the rejoinder that when the Mother is not honoured as the Roman Church honours her the honour of the Son fails. It would have been better not to have reprinted the following extract from a former work, even though it were singled out for approval by the late Cardinal. The italics are his own:--

I have spoken more on this subject in my _Essay on Development_,
p. 438, "Nor does it avail to object that, in this contrast of
devotional exercises, the human is sure to supplant the Divine,
from the infirmity of our nature; for, I repeat, the question is
one of fact, whether it has done so. And next, it must be asked,
_whether the character of Protestant devotion towards Our Lord has
been that of worship at all_; and not rather such as we pay to an
excellent human being.... Carnal minds will ever create a carnal
worship for themselves, and to forbid them the service of the
saints will have no tendency to teach them the worship of God.
Moreover, ... great and constant as is the devotion which the
Catholic pays to St. Mary, it has a special province, and _has far
more connection with the public services and the festive aspect of
Christianity_, and with certain extraordinary offices which she
holds, _than with what is strictly personal and primary in religion_".
Our late Cardinal, on my reception, singled out to me this last
sentence, for the expression of his especial approbation.

Can Dr. Newman defend the first of these two assertions, when he remembers such books of popular Protestant devotion as Wesley's Hymns, or the German hymn-books of which we have examples in the well-known _Lyra Germanica_? Can he deny the second when he remembers the exercises of the "Mois de Marie" in French churches, or if he has heard a fervid and earnest preacher at the end of them urge on a church full of young people, fresh from Confirmation and first Communion, a special and personal self-dedication to the great patroness for protection amid the daily trials of life, in much the same terms as in an English Church they might be exhorted to commit themselves to the Redeemer of mankind? Right or wrong, such devotion is not a matter of the "festive aspect" of religion, but most eminently of what is "personal and primary" in it; and surely of such a character is a vast proportion of the popular devotion here spoken of.