[X. Catholicity of the Anglican Church]7. It will be asked then, admitting as much as this, how do we escape from the conclusion which would seem to follow, and which St. Austin especially, as the spokesman of other Fathers, seems to urge upon us, that the {39} English Church is cut off from the Catholic body, a ray from the sun, a branch from the tree, a channel from the fountain? I answer,—by such considerations and facts as the following, which will be seen to be tenable without any breach of respect and piety towards those holy men, to whom both Roman Catholics and ourselves appeal. Now, first, the one Church was in the days of the Fathers, in matter of fact, in a state of perfect intercommunion; it is not then at all wonderful, rather it could not be otherwise, especially as such a state was a fulfilment of Divine prophecy, that they should appeal to that fact as a mark of its divine origin. It was a mark of the true Church; the only question is, whether it was an indispensable mark of truth, an essential condition, the absence of which was fatal. While it existed it was a divine witness; but it might possibly admit of being lost, and then the Church and the truth which the Church taught, would be so far obscured. While the Jewish Temple remained, that Temple was a proof of God's faithfulness to the Jews; its demolition was a trial, "they saw not their tokens;" but Israel was a holy people notwithstanding. And in the same way we may be part of the Church, even granting, for argument's sake, that as far as this particular note is concerned, we have it not in the degree in which the Roman Church has it. There are various notes of truth of various cogency; the only question is, what is the essential note? because intercommunion is an important one, it does not therefore follow that it is a sine quâ non, or that the essence of the Church does not rather lie in the possession of Apostolic Succession. Before the notes were impaired, the question of comparison between them would not arise. Till then, one might seem as strong as another. Again, the circumstance that a particular note was {40} wanting in a particular country, this would of course be an especially strong presumption against that country; and the Fathers, as was natural, treated what was mainly an antecedent probability as if it rose to the fulness of a principle; and because it was to be expected that the great body of the Church would always be in the right, they laid it down as a general truth that it would and must always be so. Nothing surely is more likely than that the unanimous opinion of ninety-nine men in a matter in which they can judge should be more correct than the contrary opinion of the hundredth. Might not we say, ninety-nine witnesses are sure to be right, without deciding, that in every particular instance the minority must for certain be in the wrong? We have such maxims as, "cuique credendum in arte suâ;" yet no one would take such maxims as rigorous regulations which admitted of no exception. All moral propositions are but general; nor is it any paradox to urge this consideration in ecclesiastical matters. It is hard upon the Fathers to convert their presages and vaticinations into unchangeable truths, as if earthly things might not in turn be their subject-matter as well as heavenly. It is hard upon St. Augustine to suppose that his striking and beautiful principle against the Donatists, "securus judicat orbis terrarum," was intended as a theological verity equally sacred as an article in the Creed [Note 1]. So many instances may be produced in illustration of this remark as to make selection difficult. For example, it is a great principle of the Fathers, recognized by the Church of Rome, to prefer what is old to what is novel; {41} yet, as they themselves maintain, the Church has power of altering or renovating in matters of discipline. They have dropped the practice of infant communion, they have prohibited the cup to the laity, they have enforced celibacy on the clergy; they will not, we conceive, deny that in these points they have never thought the apostolic age their necessary rule. Now might we not bring against them the great maxims of the Fathers about "standing on the old ways," with equal cogency, to say the least, as they urge us with St. Austin's maxim about authority of the "orbis terrarum"? Might we not insist on the "antiquitati inhærendum," "nihil innovandum nisi quod traditum est," [ta archaia krateito], and the like, as at once condemning them out of their own mouths? and how will they show themselves consistent except by such distinctions and explanations as we feel it equitable to adopt in the case of their charge against us? Or, again, how does the decision of Vincent of Lerins, "Quid si novella aliqua contagio, non jam portiunculam tantum, sed totam pariter Ecclesiam commaculare conetur? tunc item providebit ut antiquitati inhæreat,"—how does it stand with the "securus judicat" of Augustine, if we are bent on pressing the letter rather than the drift of the Fathers? Or again, how shall we account for Lactantius's "That is the true Catholic Church in quâ est confessio et pœnitentia," or Jerome's "ecclesia ibi est, ubi fides est," unless we understand them, not as strict definitions, but as great and general truths, useful for the occasion, elicited by the presence of the Novatian or Arian heresy? Or again, the words above quoted from Augustine, in which he says that the part must yield to the whole, run thus: "Et concilia posteriora prioribus apud posteros præponuntur, et universum partibus semper jure optimo præponitur." Is the Church of Rome willing {42} to stand by both clauses, and, while the English Convocation yields to a General Council, to supersede the Council of Trent by a Council yet to come? Or, if the former clause need limitation, why not the latter? Or again, it is well known what jealousy and dislike were felt, in the early Church, of dialectics, rhetoric, and the kindred sciences. Aristotle was looked upon as the teacher of all that was unfit for a Christian to hold, "That miserable Aristotle!" says Tertullian, "who invented dialects, the art of building up and pulling down."—De Præscr. 7. Nazianzen speaks of "the artifice of Aristotle's art as among the plagues of Egypt."—Orat. 26. Jerome says, that "the dialecticians, whose master is Aristotle, pass whole days and nights in asking and answering questions, giving or accepting a thesis, stating, proving, concluding."—In Tit. iii. 9. Faustinus, the Luciferian, calls Aristotle the Bishop of the Arians; and Damascene says that the Monophysites made him a thirteenth Apostle. All parts of the Church unite in condemning him and his art; we have a consensus veterum on the subject, and the general feeling is summed up by Ambrose in the beautiful apothegm, "Non in dialecticâ complacuit Deo salvum facere populum suum." Now, philosophical and undeniable as the statement is, would it not be altogether preposterous to take it as a necessary truth in the letter, instead of a truth relative to the thing spoken of, heresy; to deny that reasoning is of any use in theology, forbid the study of dialectics, and bring up an array of Fathers against Aristotle in defence of such a proceeding? Would it be wise or satisfactory, upon this basis, to denounce the dialectical labours of these very Fathers in theology, and (what is more to the purpose) the works of the Schoolmen, and to cherish and make much of {43} St. Ambrose's dictum, as supplying a safe rule and guide in matters of faith, to the sacrifice of creeds, to the triumph of infidels, and the utter dissolution of the Church? Not less unreasonable surely is it to make a saying of St. Augustine the turning-point of our religion, and to dispense with all other truths in order that we may maintain this in the letter [Note 2]. But here another instance occurs, which it would be superfluous to add, except that it carries us out from these disputes about syllables into a wider and more generous line of thought. When we object to the Romanists that their Church has changed in the course of years, they not unfrequently acknowledge it, and are philosophical on the subject. They say that all systems have their development; that nothing begins as it ends; that nothing can come into the world omnibus numeris, that the seed becomes a tree, and the child a man. And they urge, moreover, that the full-grown fulfilment, to superficial observers, necessarily seems different from what it was in its rudiments, just as a friend, not seen for many years, is strange to us at first sight, till, by degrees, we catch the old looks, or the well-remembered tones, or the smile or the remark, which assure us that, with whatever changes of age or circumstance, he is the same man. And so upon the present Church of Rome, its advocates grant that time has brought changes; that many things have been introduced which once were not; that the internal principles of the Church may have developed disproportionably compared with what they {44} once were. The relation of people to bishop, or of bishop to pope, or of pope to council, is not what it was; but so a child's face changes into a man's; the features are variously enlarged,—what was prominent, retires,—what was not a feature, becomes the ruling expression of the countenance,—yet the face is the same, and the child is the man. They will grant perhaps that the papacy is a development; but why, they ask, should not this be intended? why should it not be intended that, saving the Church and her faith, her internal constitution should determine in a monarchy, as the Mosaic polity might be intended in the counsels of Divine Wisdom to end in a dynasty of kings? And how groundless and peevish it is, they say, on such grounds to find fault with the Roman Catholic Church, as if it had departed from Antiquity and forfeited its trust! We think there is a great deal of force in this view; it does seem to reconcile one to much that otherwise it is difficult to comprehend in the history of religion; only we would propose to carry it out a little further. Why should it not be the intention of Divine Providence, as on the one hand, still to recognize His Church when contracted into a monarchy, so also not to forsake her when relaxed and dissolved again into a number of aristocratic fragments [Note 3]? why may not the impieties of the sixteenth century have been overruled by His sovereign arm as well as the ambition and superstition of the eighth or the eleventh? Children grow to men, as the Romanist reminds us; but, in like manner, men grow old and wax feeble, and their limbs drag after {45} them, and their voice falters; shall the decrepitude of the nineteenth century more interfere with the inward life and perfection of the Church than the inexperience and feebleness of the Antenicene era? Shall Dionysius be called the forerunner of Arius, yet in truth be a great saint? shall Cyprian live in the Church as a glorious martyr, though he erred in his controversy about baptism? and shall the names of Andrewes or Butler be erased from the catalogue, because they were in less intimate union than was abstractedly desirable with Christians of the south, or were prisoners in an Erastian court? It is surely unfair to carry on the development of the Church only just to the point which serves our purpose, and to be indulgent towards tyranny within it, while we make no allowance for insubordination. Now against this view of course will be brought to bear St. Austin's doctrine, already discussed, that the general Church's judgment is final against particular branches. Here then we come to the point from which we seem to have digressed; for, granting he says so, still we wish to urge this, viz., that just as he says the Church's judgment is above its branches, so does he elsewhere insist on its being above the decision of the Pope. He makes it final both against individual branches and against the Pope; and, as his decision against the Pope is not reckoned by Romanists fatal to their theory of development, neither need his decision against individual branches be considered as fatal to our theory of development. Here again we will avail ourselves of the labours of the learned Launoy, though Augustine's judgment on the subject is too well known to need assistance from any controversial writer. For instance, he speaks in the following manner of Pope Stephen's controversy with Cyprian about heretical baptism: "The obscurity of this question caused {46} in the early ages of the Church, before the schism of Donatus, such controversy and fluctuation, as far as peace would allow, in great men and endowed with great charity, that for a long while there was uncertainty in the decrees of councils in distinct places, until by a plenary council of the whole world the most sound view was confirmed to the removal of all doubt."—De Bapt. i. 9. In his letter to Glorius and others, having said that Melchiades, the Pope of the day, had in council condemned Donatus, Augustine proceeds to say: "Let us suppose that those bishops who gave sentence at Rome, were not fair judges; there still remained a plenary council of the Universal Church, in which the cause might be argued against those very judges, in order that if they had been convicted of wrong judgment, their sentence might be reversed."—Ep. 43, 19. And he thus speaks against Petilian: "Whatever Marcellinus was, or Marcellus, or Silvester, or Melchiades" (these were Popes), "or Mensurius, or Cæcilian, and others, to whom in their defence they object what they please, this does nothing to prejudice the Catholic Church diffused over the whole world; we in no measure are victorious in their innocence, in no measure are found guilty in their iniquity."—De Unic. Bapt. 30. It is a plain matter of fact, then, that, as far as the constitution of the Church is concerned, the division between Rome and England does not make so great a difference between this age and the age of St. Cyprian, as the Papal monarchy makes between the age of Hildebrand and the age of St. Augustine [Note 4]. On the whole then, it being considered that the dicta {47} of the Fathers upon the temporal state of the Church are not to be taken as first principles, and that from the happy circumstances of their times the Fathers may have been led to lay an extreme stress upon the necessity of intercommunion as a condition of Churchmanship, and that the Church may possibly be intended to bear a different appearance in different ages, and to wear her bridal ornaments and the signs of her rank, some at one time, some at another, and in consequence that branches estranged from the rest of the body, may, nevertheless be part of the body, let us proceed to show that what may possibly be, is probably, as regards the English Church. As soon as it is granted that active intercourse is not absolutely necessary as a note of the Church, an opening is made for adducing other circumstances which may serve to be an evidence of that, which such intercourse would evidence, if it existed. We conceive then that, in spite of our being separated from Greece and Rome, shut up in ourselves and our dependencies, and looked coldly on or forgotten by the rest of Christendom, there is sufficient ground for still believing that the English Church is at this time the Catholic Church in England. 8. Let it be considered then, first, that either we are the Catholic Church in England, or there is no Catholic Church here. There has been a Church here from the first, consisting of many sees; those sees remain, they are filled; the Church exists still; it may be schismatical, or heretical, but here it is. If it be in heresy or in schism, then, as Romanists say, it certainly is not a true branch; but then, if so, there is no other that is true. If so, England is lost to the Catholic world; no other bishops claim our sees. As far as the argument from {48} visibility goes, if it be a fact that we are estranged from the Continent, it is also a fact that we have possession of the thrones of Cuthbert, Becket, and Wykeham. Is it probable that the noble line of Canterbury should be extinct? has the blood of martyrs dried up, and the voice of the confessors failed? Have our cathedrals no living spirit in them, and is our hierarchy a form only, and not a power? Is it usual with Holy Church to retire where once she has stationed herself? shall she suddenly leave a haunt frequented and illustrated by her presence through 1300 years? Shall Cranmer, if so be single-handed, destroy the work of ages? So great, so monstrous an improbability, gives some weight of evidence on the other side that we are what our ancestors were. The Romanists urge against us as a providential badge that we dare not openly take the name of Catholic; and may we not retort that they too have not dared openly to fill our sees, and that the hand of Providence is seen in the fact? They have given us possession; we have it in the open face of day without rival interference from them; and the matter is reduced to a question of opposite probabilities, whether we shall suppose active communion dispensable, or shall proceed utterly to extinguish the candlesticks of an old and famous Christian country, dear to Christendom. Well were it if they would look back upon the past, and show us some little love "for the Fathers' sake." Would that both parties would look back on that ancient time which they both claim as theirs, and would love each other in it! Would that our Fathers could plead somewhat for us in the affections of our opponents, and bring them to relent from the cruel purpose with which they follow after us to destroy us! They delight to compare us to the Donatists, but these {49} surely were in a very different position. The Donatists had not possession; their only tenure of existence was hatred and opposition to all the rest of Christendom. They were forced to call the Catholic Church the "scortum diaboli," in order to justify their continuing a rival succession against her in their country. They could not acknowledge her abroad, without betraying the cause of Donatus at home. It was a decisive argument against the Donatists, to say that the Church was prophesied of as Catholic, diffused over various countries, and therefore could not be a Church, which was all but shut up in Africa. Their very principle of separation obliged them to deny that the Church elsewhere was the true Church; for, if true, why had they made a distinct and second succession in Africa? If the general Church was true, its African branch was true, and they were setting up a second Church without reason. It was a great inconsistency to say that the general Church was true and sound, yet not to join that branch of it which had been from the first among themselves. This was the great absurdity of a Donatist bishop, famous in those times, of the name of Tichonius. He gave up his point, and yet did not give up his Church. If altar cannot lawfully be erected against altar, Augustine and his rival bishop at Hippo could not both be free from schism; yet Tichonius seemed to affirm it. On the other hand, though we hold, as we do, that altar cannot be lawfully erected against altar, yet our bishops and those of France, ours and the German, ours and the Roman, may still both be free from schism. Nor would this view of the subject be affected, even were the Roman Catholics ill-advised enough at this time of day to fill our sees; for it would be absurd to suppose that at the end of three centuries they could claim what they had so long ago {50} abandoned. However, by the time they recover the sees of England, we on the other hand, perchance, shall have succeeded in regaining the name of Catholic. Here another thought is suggested to us. We have been saying that, unless the English be a Catholic branch, the Catholic Church is defrauded of the "orbis terrarum." This leads us to observe how much more real the fulfilment of the prophecies is on our interpretation than on the Roman. Insisting, as they do, on intercommunion as an essential mark of the Church, they are obliged to make its Catholicity in no small degree a mere fiction of law. Surely it is but a legal fiction to say that there is a Church in England, if the Roman communion be it, compared with the full and adequate truth of the proposition, supposing it be possible, in spite of the difference of faith and discipline between England and Rome, to call them one and the same Church, extending into the two countries. And this applies still more strongly to the case of the Greek Church; for in what sense can the Church of Rome be said to extend through the vast spaces of Russia, except on that pen-and-paper plan which gives them an indefinite abundance of bishops in partibus infidelium? If then intercommunion be a Note of the Church, reality is one also; and unless Roman divines are content to create a territory for themselves by merely mapping it, and to appropriate it by compasses, they must relax their ideas, high and primitive though they be, of the necessary intercommunion and mutual brotherly affection of the various portions of the present Catholic Church. But to return to our own. It is made an objection to us that we are not, and that we dare not call ourselves, Catholic; as if the common sense of mankind and our own conscience thereby gave judgment against us. Certainly {51} the title has been principally cherished by us with a sort of disciplina arcani, not claimed indeed, but not abandoned; and so far of course it has not served us as a Note of the Church. We should have thought, however, that our Church's being so often called Popish and Papistical by the world would have saved it from this reproach at the hands of the Romanists; for what do the speakers mean, and what can the Romanists wish to understand by "Popish," but just the very same thing as Catholic by another name? However, admitting the charge, which is hard as coming from them, still on the other hand it must be borne in mind as a very striking contrary fact, that if we do not possess the title Catholic, at least we have never borne the name of mortal man. Heretical and schismatical bodies are formed upon a certain doctrine, or begin in a certain leader. We have none such. What exact parallel is there to our position in former times? The Donatists formed a large Church and spread through Africa, yet they were called from Donatus; if they are our prototypes, why are we not called Cranmerites or Jewellists? The Monophysites got possession of whole districts, and might seem, if any men, identified with the local Churches in those districts, yet they are named from Eutyches, from Severus, from Jacob, from Gaianus, and from Theodosius; not to mention their more common title of Acephali, which implies that at least a great portion of them had lost the Succession altogether. If then our present forfeiture of the title Catholic be against us, our freedom from human title is for us, and is a Note of the true Church. Surely a note, even in Bellarmine's judgment; who thus speaks, even when he is explaining the force of the word Catholic: "Heretical sects," he says, are "branches or parts cut off from the tree of the Church." "There is no heresy," he {52} continues, "which does not take a name from some man as its author, and leave the name of Christian to them from whom it departs." And then he instances this remark from Justin Martyr, who says, "They (sectaries) are distinguished by surnames, called after individuals, according as each was the author of any new doctrine, some Marcionists, others Valentinians, others Basilidians, others Saturninians, others by other names from the first inventor of their respective doctrine."—In Tryph. 35. "When men are called Phrygians, or Marcionites, etc.," says Lactantius, "they cease to be Christians; for they have lost Christ's name, and put on human and foreign titles."—Inst. iv. 30. "Never has people," says Athanasius, "received name from their bishops, but from the Lord in whom they have believed; even from the blessed Apostles, our teachers, we have not received titles, but from Christ we are and are called Christians."—Orat. 2. contr. Arian. "Wherever you shall hear," says Jerome, "those who are called Christians, named not from the Lord Jesus Christ, but from any one else, as Marcionites, Valentinians, etc., know that it is not Christ's Church, but the synagogue of Antichrist."—In Lucif. fin. All this is almost prophetically fatal to Lutherans, Calvinists, Socinians, and Wesleyans; but for us it is a note of our Churchmanship, on Bellarmine's own admission, that we are proof against it. However, if Romanists among us still taunt us with our present loss of the name Catholic, as far as the world's witness goes, then we take leave to remind them that if we have let slip "Catholic," at least we have kept "Church," which in this country they have not; and thus we have a popular witness in our favour as well as they. It is a common reproach of theirs against us, that if we were to take St. Cyril's test, and ask in the street for the "Catholic" place of worship, no one would {53} dream of directing us to any but their's. Now it has been retorted, truly and happily, that in like manner, if they ask for the "Church," they will be directed to none other than our's. We go to church, and they to chapel. They possess Catholic meetings, conciliabula Apostolorum, a contradiction in terms. 9. While we are on the subject, we will notice another Note of the Church, which Bellarmine does not distinctly mention, but is equal to any, life. The Church is emphatically a living body, and there can be no greater proof of a particular communion being part of the Church than the appearance in it of a continued and abiding energy, nor a more melancholy symptom of its being a corpse than torpidity. We say an energy continued and abiding, for accident will cause the activity of a moment, and an external principle give the semblance of self-motion. On the other hand, even a living body may for a while be asleep. And here we have an illustration of what we just now urged about the varying cogency of the Notes of the Church according to times and circumstances. No one can deny that at times the Roman Church itself, restless as it is at most times, has been in a state of sleep or disease, so great as to resemble death; the words of Baronius, speaking of the tenth century, are well known: "Dormiebat tunc planè alto, ut apparet, sopore Christus in navi, cum hisce flantibus validis ventis, navis ipsa fluctibus operiretur. Una illa reliqua consolatio piis, quia, etsi Dominus dormivit, in eadem tamen navi dormivit." [Note 5] It concerns then, those, who {54} deny that we are the true Church because we have not at present this special note, intercommunion with other Christians, to show cause why the Roman Church in the tenth century should be so accounted, with profligates, or, rather, the profligate mothers of profligate sons, for her supreme rulers. And still, notwithstanding, life is a Note of the Church; she alone revives even if she declines; heretical and schismatical bodies cannot keep life; they gradually become cold, stiff and insensible. They may do some energetic work at first from excitement and remaining warmth, as the Arians converted the Goths, though even this seems, as the history shows us, to have been an accident, for which they can claim no praise; or as the Nestorians spread in the East, from circumstances which need not here be noticed. But wait awhile, and "see the end of these men." "I myself," says the Psalmist, "have seen the ungodly in great power, and flourishing like a green-bay tree. I went by, and lo, he was gone; I sought him, but his place could nowhere be found." Heresies and schisms, whatever be their promise at first, and whatever be their struggles, yet gradually and surely tend not to be. Utter dissolution is the scope to which their principles are directed from the first, and towards which for the most part they steadily and continually move. Or, if the principle of destruction in them be not so living as to hurry them forward in their career, then they remain inert and motionless, where they first are found, kept together in one by external circumstances, and going to pieces as soon as air is let in upon them. {55} Now if there ever were a Church on whom the experiment has been tried whether it had life in it or not, the English is that one. For three centuries it has endured all vicissitudes of fortune. It has endured in trouble and prosperity, under seduction and under oppression. It has been practised upon by theorists, browbeaten by sophists, intimidated by princes, betrayed by false sons, laid waste by tyranny, corrupted by wealth, torn by schism, and persecuted by fanaticism. Revolutions have come upon it sharply and suddenly, to and fro, hot and cold, as if to try what it was made of. It has been a sort of battle-field on which opposite principles have been tried. No opinion, however extreme any way, but may be found, as the Romanists are not slow to reproach us, among its bishops and divines. Yet what has been its career upon the whole? Which way has it been moving through three hundred years? Where does it find itself at the end? Lutherans have tended to Rationalism; Calvinists have become Socinians; but what has it become? As far as its formularies are concerned, it may be said all along to have grown towards a more perfect Catholicism than that with which it started at the time of its estrangement; every act, every crisis, which marks its course, has been upward. It never was in so miserable case as in the reigns of Edward and Elizabeth. At the end of Elizabeth's there was a conspicuous revival of the true doctrine. Advancements were made in the Canons of 1603. How much was done under Charles the First, need not be said; and done permanently, so as to remain to this day, in spite of the storm which immediately arose, sweeping off the chief agents in the work, and for a time levelling the Church to the ground. More was done than even yet appears, as a philosophical writer has {56} lately remarked, in the Convocation of 1661. One juncture there was of a later date (1688) which seemed to threaten a relapse; yet it was the only crisis in which no ecclesiastical act took place. The temper, however, of the Church certainly did go back; a secular and semi-sceptical spirit came in. Now then was the time when the Church lay open to injury; yet, by a wonderful providence, the Convocation being, during this period, suspended, there was no means of making permanent impressions on its character; and thus civil tyranny was its protection against itself. That very Convocation too expired in an act of zeal and faith. In our own times, temporal defences have been removed which the most strenuous political partisans of the Church considered essential to its well-being, and the loss of which they deplored as the first steps towards its ruin. To their surprise these well-intentioned men have beheld what they thought a mere establishment, dependent on man to create and destroy, rise up and walk with a life of its own, such as it had before they and their constitution came into being. How many learned divines have we had, even our enemies being judges? and in proportion to their learning, so on the whole has been their approximation towards the full ancient truth. Or take again those whom by a natural instinct "all the people count as prophets," and will it not be found that either altogether, or in those works which are most popular, those writers are ruled by primitive and Catholic principles? No man, for instance, was an abler writer in the last century than Warburton, or more famous in his day; yet the glare is over, and now Bishops Wilson and Horne, men of far inferior powers, but of Catholic temper and principles, fill the doctor's chair in the eyes of the many. What a {57} Note of the Church is the mere production of a man like Butler, a pregnant fact much to be meditated on! and how strange it is, if it be as it seems to be, that the real influence of his work is only just now beginning! and who can prophesy in what it will end? Thus our divines grow with centuries, expanding after their death in the minds of their readers into more and more exact Catholicism, as years rolled on. Nay, even our errors and heterodoxies turn to good: Wesleyanism in itself tends to heresy, if it was not heretical in the outset; but, so far as it has been in the Church, it has been overruled to rouse and stimulate us, when we were asleep. Moreover, look at the internal state of the Church at this moment; much that is melancholy is there, strife, division, error. But still on the whole, enlarge on the evils as you will, there is life there, perceptible, visible life [Note 6]; rude indeed, undisciplined, perhaps self-willed, but life; and not the life of death, not that heretical restlessness, which, as we have observed, only runs out the quicker for its activity, and hastens to be no more, but, as we may humbly trust, a heavenly principle after all, which is struggling towards development, and gives presage of truth and holiness to come. Look across the Atlantic to the daughter Churches of England in the States; shall one that is barren bear a child in her old age? yet "the barren hath borne seven." [Note 7] Schismatic branches put out their leaves at once in an expiring effort; our Church has waited three centuries, and then blossoms, like Aaron's rod, budding and blooming and yielding fruit, while the rest are dry. And lastly look at the present position of the Church at home; there too we shall find a note of the true city of God, the Holy Jerusalem. She is in warfare with the {58} world, as the Church Militant should be; she is rebuking the world; she is hated, she is pillaged by the world. And, as if it were providentially intended to show this resemblance between her and the sister branches, what place she has here, that they have there; the same enemies encompassing both them and her, and the same trials and exploits lying in prospect. She has a common cause with them, as far as they are faithful, if not a common speech and language; and is together with them in warfare, if not in peace. Much might be said on this subject. At all times, since Christianity came into the world, an open contest has been going on between religion and irreligion, and the true Church, of course, has ever been on the religious side. This then is a sure test in every age, where the Christian should stand. There may have been corruptions or errors, and great difficulties of judgment about details; but in spite of them all, he would feel no hesitation, did he live in the eleventh century, that Hildebrand was the champion of heaven, not the Cæsar; in the twelfth, Becket, not Henry. Now applying this simple criterion to the public parties of this day, it is very plain that the English Church is at present on God's side, and therefore so far God's Church;—we are sorry to be obliged to add, that there is as little doubt on which side English Romanism is. It must be a very galling thought to serious minds who profess it, to feel that they are standing with the enemies of God, co-operating with the haters of truth and haters of the light, and thereby prejudicing religious minds even against those verities which Rome continues to hold [Note 8]. As for the English Church, surely she has notes enough, {59} "the signs of an Apostle in all patience, and signs and wonders and mighty deeds;" she has the note of possession, the note of freedom from party titles; the note of life, a tough life and a vigorous; she has ancient descent, unbroken continuance, agreement in doctrine with the ancient Church. Those of Bellarmine's Notes, which she certainly has not, are intercommunion with Christendom, the glory of miracles, and the prophetical light; but the question is, whether she has not enough of divinity about her to satisfy her sister Churches on their own principles, that she is one body with them. 10. But we do not mean to leave the subject here. It has been observed above, that Augustine's maxim about submission to the orbis terrarum, as a sign of Churchmanship, is a presumption rather than a law, not a criterion but a general evidence; this will be confirmed by referring to transactions which took place in the Church shortly before his own day. We shall find instances in point in the history of Arianism, which serve to fix our sense upon his words. 1. Let us take the case of the Semi-Arians. These religionists had separated off from the Arians on the death of Constantius, who had managed to keep together a very miscellaneous party, and they formed a communion of their own under the name of Macedonians. After a little while, they determined on abjuring their heresy and professing the creed of Nicæa; and for this purpose they sent deputies to Pope Liberius, who received their adhesion, and reconciled them. On the return of the deputies, a portion of the body seceded again, refused to accept the word Homoüsion, though they seemed to have accepted the doctrine implied in it. As to the divinity {60} of the Holy Spirit, some of the seceders positively denied the doctrine, others doubted. Against these latter, then, who were merely in perplexity and suspense, there could be no real complaint on the part of the Church, except so far as they were in a state of separation. The seceding body were in possession of sees, at least to the number of thirty-four. Now one would have thought that a strong case might be made out in favour of any Catholic, who had kept aloof from them. They came of the Arians, had attempted to rival them in court favour, had separated from them of necessity, not of choice, had betaken themselves to Liberius in order to escape the persecution they had met at their hands, had cooled in their Catholicity as soon as they got reinstated in their sees, and a portion at least had retraced their steps and formed a separate connection. Their conduct had been of so marked a character that they gained from St. Athanasius the title of Tropici or Turn-abouts. Yet how did the Fathers treat them? had they rejected them in a mass from the first as schismatics? far from it; in spite of their separation from the general body, they took them one by one, rested their opinion of them solely on their personal faith, and were ready to honour and to communicate with those, whom, in spite of whatever perplexities of belief, they considered to be orthodox at bottom. Athanasius, Basil, Gregory Nazianzen, and Hilary, all take this view of the Semi-Arians. Of these, it may suffice to dwell upon the instance of St. Basil. He was baptized, probably between the ages of twenty and thirty, by a bishop who, for twenty years, had sided with the Arian party, and who soon afterwards signed the prevaricating symbol of Ariminum. Shortly after, he made the friendship of Eusebius of Samosata, who eventually indeed conformed to the Church, and lost his {61} life from Arian violence, but at the time in question was found among the Semi-Arians, and was accounted an Arian by Damasus, Bishop of Rome, up to the year before St. Basil's death. Next, while he was a reader, he attended the Council of Constantinople held at the end of the reign of Constantius, as the assistant of a celebrated Semi-Arian bishop, his namesake, Basil of Ancyra. And about the same time he became intimate with Eustathius, afterwards Bishop of Sebaste, a man far less sound in faith than the Eusebius above mentioned, and from whom, in the course of years, he was obliged to separate. At an earlier day he had also taken part in the Council held by the Semi-Arian party at Lampsacus. Silvanus of Tarsus was another Semi-Arian whom he visited at the same time. Now, though there could be no doubt about the estrangement of these men from the great Christian body, yet, as Basil tells us himself, he was attracted by the purity and strictness of their lives, and was persuaded, though in one instance wrongly, of the soundness of their faith. Their conspicuous seriousness of life indeed is especially insisted on by contemporaries and others, and though not an infallible sign of their communion with the invisible Church, as the event proved, yet was considered a note sufficient to outweigh many adverse suspicions. "No small portion of the people followed them," says Sozomen, "in Constantinople, Bithynia, Thrace, the Hellespont, and the neighbouring districts; for their lives, to which the multitude especially attends, were irreproachable; their address was grave, and their mode of living approaching to the monastic; their speech cultivated, and their moral qualities attractive. Such, they say, was Marathonius at that time; who, having made a large fortune as paymaster of the pretorian soldiers, gave up the army, and took the charge of a hospital of sick and poor."—Hist. iv. 27. {62} "May you be granted," says Nazianzen to them, "the reward of your manner of life, to confess the Spirit perfectly, and to preach with us, yea, before us, whatever is fitting. I dare to speak some great thing in your behalf, even the saying of the Apostle. So do I embrace you, and so much I reverence that decent dress of yours, and that complexion of continence, and those sacred assemblies, and that grave virginity and purity, and your psalmody through the night, and your love of the poor, and of the brethren, and of strangers, that I am ready even to be anathema from Christ, and to suffer somewhat as condemned, so that ye might stand with us, and that we might glorify the Trinity in common."—Orat. 41, p. 737. 2. The history of Meletius, Bishop of Antioch, at the same date, is still more in point, and will bear dwelling on somewhat at length. Summed up in a few words it is this:—he was the friend of St. Basil; he presided at the second General Council; his funeral sermon was preached by St. Gregory Nyssen; he is spoken of as a saint by St. Chrysostom, and has a place in the Roman calendar; yet, on the other hand, he was not acknowledged by the Pope of his day; he was denied litteræ formatæ; he was not in communion with Alexandria; he refused to communicate with Athanasius, and he is severely spoken of by Jerome. Let us review both sides of this contrariety. Meletius had been of the Semi-Arian party, but had after a time, with as much boldness as sincerity, avowed the orthodox doctrine. However, as was not unnatural, the Catholics, suspecting him, consecrated another bishop in his see, who was acknowledged by Rome, by all the West, and Alexandria. The East supported the claims of Meletius, and St. Basil interested himself at Rome and Alexandria in his behalf, but in vain. To Peter, the successor of Athanasius, he writes in a tone of serious disappointment at the failure of his attempt. "Dorotheus," he says, "related to us on his return the conversations {63} he had had in the presence of the most reverend Bishop Damasus" [of Rome] "with your excellency; and he pained us by saying that our most gracious brothers and fellows Meletius and Eusebius" [of Samosata] "were numbered among the Arian heretics. Yet the battle which the Arians wage against them is by itself no slight proof of their orthodoxy to candid judges."—Ep. 266. As to Athanasius himself, who seems to have been well inclined to Meletius, it happened, when he came to Antioch, that Meletius, for reasons unknown, refused to communicate with him.—(Vid. Basil, Epp. 89, 258.) Nor did Athanasius take any steps towards acknowledging Meletius, though he is said to have wished to do so. But audi alteram partem; thus separate from his brethren of the West and South was Meletius; yet even in his lifetime he had the affections of Christendom with him, and on his death the debt of reverence is paid him by three great Fathers, Nazianzen, Nyssen, and Chrysostom. As to his own day, Theodoret relates a curious account which we extract, not for its own sake, so much as to show how little his schismatical position affected his reputation even in his lifetime. "[The Emperor] Theodosius," he says, "thought he saw in a dream the divine Meletius, Bishop of Antioch, arraying him in a royal robe, and beautifying his head in a like crown. When the bishops were come together," [to the council of Constantinople] "being 150 in number, he forbade any to tell him which was the great Meletius; for he wished to single him out from the memory of his dream. When the whole multitude of bishops had entered into the palace, passing by all the rest, he ran up to the great Meletius, and as an affectionate son, enjoying the sight of his father after a long time, he embraced and kissed him, eyes, lips, breast, and head, and the hand which crowned him."—Hist. v. 6, 7. And after his death, Gregory Nazianzen says of him in verse, which we must be content to render in humble {64} prose—"Of whom" the bishops in the Council "there was one man, the president, most religious, simple, straightforward, full of God, of calm aspect, blending boldness with modesty in the eyes of beholders, a field cultivated by the Spirit."—De Vit. sua, p. 24. He adds with reference to his death, which took place while he was attending the General Council, "After many exhortations to peace, he departed to the company of Angels, and with a divine attendance and the outpouring of the city."—Carm. Pp. 24, 25. Gregory Nyssen's funeral sermon, which begins by calling him a new Apostle, who has increased the number of Apostles, proceeds:— "We have lost our head, and together with our head have disappeared our precious senses. No longer have we an eye, to gaze on things heavenly; nor ear, hearing the divine voice, nor that tongue, the pure consecrated organ of truth. Where is the sweet sereneness of the eyes? where the bright smile upon the lips? Where the ready hand, which moved its fingers in accordance with the blessing of his mouth? I pity thee, O Church; to thee I speak, O Antioch: who shall tell the children that they are made orphans? who shall take the news to the bride that she is a widow? Alas, for what they sent out and what they receive back! They sent forward an ark, and they receive back a bier. An ark, my brethren, was that man of God, an ark, containing in itself the divine mysteries; there the golden pot of the divine manna, of the heavenly food. In it were the tables of the Covenant, inscribed on tables of the heart by the Spirit of the living God, not with ink." Whatever is thought of such passages as these, so far is clear, that want of intercommunion with Rome, Italy, France, Spain, Africa, and Egypt, was thought no disadvantage to his memory. The saint's body was taken to Antioch, where a vast multitude met it, and was buried near his illustrious predecessor, St. Babylas, by the Orontes. The anniversary day seems to have been kept from the first, and the sermon of St. Chrysostom, which remains, was delivered by him on its fifth return. {65} "It is the way," he says, "with those who love, to cherish the very names of the objects beloved, and to kindle at the very sound; which is your feeling as regards this blessed saint. For from the time you first received him into this city, every one of you was wont to call his child after his name, thinking thus to introduce the saint into his own house; and mothers, passing over fathers, grandfathers, and forefathers, gave the name of the blessed Meletius to the children they had borne. Nor was it towards his name only that you felt thus affectionately, but towards his person too. What you did as to his name, that you were frequent in, as regards his likeness. On the stones of rings, on cups, on jugs, on the walls of their chambers, many there were who had engraved his sacred likeness." Epiphanius, who was of the Roman party, and acknowledged Meletius's rival in his see, uses the same language in his lifetime. "His life is serious," he says, "his conduct kind; he is entirely loved by the people, on account of his life, which all concur in extolling." We are told that, on occasion of his banishment for conforming to the Nicene doctrine, the governor of Antioch, who was conveying him out of the city, was imprudent enough to pass through the market-place, and the people greeted him with a shower of stones. His prisoner threw his cloak round him, and so saved his life. Such was Meletius. It is remarkable how distinct and consistent is the picture which all accounts give us of this holy and most amiable man; whose meekness, gentleness, sweetness of temper, and generosity of feeling, seem to have been notes of his churchmanship, which outweighed his separation from Rome and Alexandria, and prove that saints may be matured in a state which Romanists of this day would fain call schism. 3. Lucifer, Bishop of Cagliari in Sardinia, and the main author of Meletius's unsatisfactory position, affords another instance to our purpose. His noble efforts and his sufferings in the cause of orthodoxy against the {66} Arians are well known. When Julian put an end to their ascendancy, Athanasius, Eusebius of Vercellæ, Lucifer, and Hilary, seemed the four remaining beacons of the Church, "rari in gurgite," to whom her fortunes were committed. Yet in a very short time Lucifer had quarrelled with his brethren, and thrown himself out of communion with the whole of Christendom, on a ground not unlike that of the Donatists. The Bishops of the whole Catholic Church, with a few exceptions, had been seduced during the preceding two years, by Arian address, into signing the ambiguous formulary of Ariminum. Athanasius and the rest decided that, on submitting to the creed of Nicæa, they might be acknowledged in their sees. But Lucifer, refusing to hold any intercourse with bishops who had thus betrayed their trust, or with those who had intercourse with them, shut himself out from the whole Catholic world, and confined the Church of God to Sardinia. He died in this estrangement. Yet, in spite of the history of his latter years, he seems, after his death, to have been reverenced as a saint both in Sardinia and some parts of Italy. In the Church of Vercellæ he is named in an invocatory hymn with Eusebius, bishop of that city, and Dionysius of Milan; and in the middle of the seventeenth century the disputes seem to have run so high concerning him, that the Pope of the day published a decree, in which he forbids "all and every, for the future, from daring to treat publicly, dispute, or controvert about the sanctity, worship, and veneration of Lucifer, or write or print for it or against it, till it shall be otherwise ordered by his Holiness or the Holy See."—Vit. ed. Ven. But perhaps the strongest fact is St. Jerome's language about him, in his tract, written after Lucifer's death, against his followers; he calls him Beatus, a title which, {67} while explained away by some as a mere appendage to his episcopal office, has been the main cause of others maintaining, against the concurrent testimony of history, that he was either reconciled before his death, or never seriously opposed himself to the Catholic body. What makes Jerome's evidence the more valuable, is the circumstance that he felt the full difficulty of Lucifer's position, as having become the author of a real and serious schism; and yet, far from deciding that the mere fact of his personal estrangement decided against him, he thinks it worth while to mention and deny certain minor charges against him, such as vain-glory and resentment, charges which it would be superfluous to notice, were he by his estrangement notoriously put out of grace and beyond hope. "I am come," he says, "to a most difficult point, in which, against my own will and design, I am compelled to judge of the blessed Lucifer, somewhat otherwise than is accordant with his merits and my own kind feeling towards him. But what can I do? Truth unlocks my mouth, and a conscious heart forces into words an unwilling tongue. In that crisis of the Church, amid that fury of the wolves, he withdrew his few sheep, and abandoned the rest of his flock, good shepherd as he was himself, yet leaving much prey to the beasts. I pass over the charge which certain censorious speakers maintain to be true, viz., as that he acted thus from desire of notoriety and posthumous repute; or again, from the resentment which he felt towards Eusebius, on account of the misunderstanding at Antioch. I believe no such thing of such a man. One thing I will firmly maintain about him even now, that he differs from us in words, not in things, if he receives those who had obtained baptism from the Arians."—In Lucif. 20. Now what do all these instances show but this, that in troubled times of the Church much allowance ought to be made on all hands for jealousies, misunderstandings, estrangements between the parts of the Church; and that it is a very serious matter for any individual to {68} pronounce what perhaps the whole Church alone can undertake, that this or that part of itself is in formal and fatal schism. Nor are we aware, taking Romanists on their own principles, that their Church has ever given such a sentence against ours. 4. Again, the Church of Rome has, in ancient and modern times, canonized persons who have lived and died in communion with an anti-Pope, on the plea of involuntary ignorance. Some instances occur in the fourteenth century [Note 9]; but let us confine ourselves to one which Pope Gregory mentions, and which, by the way in which the doctrine of purgatory is introduced, shows incidentally, what we have had above to insist upon in another connexion, the unprimitive character of the Roman creed. Paschasius, a Roman deacon, took part with the anti-Pope Laurence against Pope Symmachus in the end of the fifth century; he died in schism, so to name it, yet he is on the list of saints in the Roman catalogue. Gregory speaks thus of him in his Dialogues:— "When I was yet quite a youth, and still had on my lay habit, I have heard from old and competent persons, that Paschasius, deacon of the Apostolic See, whose most orthodox and perspicuous treatises on the Holy Ghost are still extant among us, was a man of singular sanctity, especially devoted to alms deeds, a cherisher of the poor, and a neglecter of self. However, in the dispute which took place from the kindling of zeal of the faithful between Symmachus and Laurence, he chose Laurence for Pontiff, and, when he was worsted afterwards by the unanimity of all, yet he persisted in his own opinion even to the day of his death, in loving and preferring him who, by the judgment of the bishops, the Church had refused as her president. He then dying in the time of Symmachus, bishop of the Apostolic See, a possessed person touched his dalmatic, as it lay on the bier, and immediately was {69} cured. After a long time Germanus, bishop of Capua, was ordered by the physicians for his health to bathe in the hot wells at Angolos, who, on entering the said wells, saw the aforesaid deacon Paschasius, standing obediently in the heat. Exceedingly frightened at the sight, he asked what such a man was there doing. He made answer, 'For this sole cause I am placed here, because I sided with Laurence against Symmachus. But I pray thee, entreat the Lord for me, and thou wilt hereby know that thou art heard, if returning hither thou findest me not.' Therefore that man of the Lord, Germanus, devoted himself to prayer, and on returning after a few days, found the said Paschasius plainly gone from that place. For since he had sinned not from fault of wickedness but of ignorance, he could be purged from sin after death. We must believe, however, that it was through the largeness of his alms deeds that he obtained this power of thus meriting pardon, then when he could no longer work. Peter.—How is it that in these last times so many things dawn upon us about souls, which before lay hid; so that, by open revelations and disclosures, the world to come seems entering in and opening upon us? "—Dial. iv. 40. Let Roman Catholics be consistent. If they accept part of this alleged disclosure, let them take all. If such supernatural appearances prove the doctrine of purgatory, at least they also prove that schism is not necessarily a forfeiture of grace and hope. 11. But enough of an argumentum ad hominem, which certainly is not the highest line of controversy. Looking at this instance in itself, as well as at the foregoing, which the Arian history furnishes, we seem to see this clearly: that, much as Roman Catholics may denounce us at present as schismatical, they could not resist us, if the Anglican communion had but that one Note of the Church upon it, to which all these instances point,—sanctity. The Church of his day could not resist Meletius; his enemies were fairly overcome by him, by his {70} meekness and holiness, which melted the most jealous of them. He had the suffrages of all Christian people with him in life and death, and when the schism was happily ended at a late period, he was acknowledged as a saint by the whole Church. And so as regards ourselves; in vain would a few controversialists taunt us in that case with the disorders of the sixteenth century, or attempt to prove our alienation from the commonwealth of Israel. The hearts of their own people would be with us; we should have an argument more intelligible than any which the schools could furnish, could we appeal to this living evidence of truth, in our bishops, our chapters, our clergy, our divines, our laity, causing men to glorify our Father which is in heaven. We should not be unwilling to place the matter on this issue. We are almost content to say to Romanists, Account us not yet as a branch of the Catholic Church, though we be a branch, till we are like a branch, so that when we do become like a branch, then you consent to acknowledge us. Unless our system really has a power in it, making us neglectful of wealth, neglectful of station, neglectful of ease, munificent, austere, reverent, childlike, unless it is able to bring our passions into order, to make us pure, to make us meek, to rule our intellect, to give government of speech, to inspire firmness, to destroy self, we do not deserve to be acknowledged as a Church, and we submit to be ill-treated. And, on the other hand, we put the matter on the same issue as regards themselves. Without here speaking upon points of faith, without pressing on them what we account corruption in doctrine and cruelty in enforcing it,—we urge against them simply the lack of what in other respects we desiderate in ourselves. Till we see in them as a Church more straightforwardness, truth, {71} and openness, more of severe obedience to God's least commandments, more scrupulousness about means, less of a political, scheming, grasping spirit, less of intrigue, less that looks hollow and superficial, less accommodation to the tastes of the vulgar, less subserviency to the vices of the rich, less humouring of men's morbid and wayward imaginations, less indulgence of their low and carnal superstitions, less intimacy with the revolutionary spirit of the day, we will keep aloof from them as we do. In perplexed times such as these, when the landmarks of truth are torn up or buried, here is a sure guide providentially given us, which we cannot be wrong in following, "By their fruits ye shall know them." When we go into foreign countries, we see superstitions in the Roman Church which shock us; when we read history, we find its spirit of intrigue so rife, so widely spread, that "jesuitism" has become a by-word; when we look round us at home, we see it associated everywhere with the low democracy, pandering to the spirit of rebellion, the lust of change, the unthankfulness of the irreligious, and the enviousness of the needy. We see its grave theologians connecting their names with men who are convicted by the common sense of mankind of something very like perjury, and its leaders in alliance with a political party notorious in the orbis terrarum as a sort of standard in every place for liberalism and infidelity. We see it attempting to gain converts among us, by unreal representations of its doctrines, plausible statements, bold assertions, appeals to the weaknesses of human nature, to our fancies, our eccentricities, our fears, our frivolities, our false philosophies. We see its agents smiling and nodding and ducking to attract attention, as gipsies make up to truant boys, holding out tales for the nursery, and pretty pictures, and gold {72} gingerbread, and physic concealed in jam, and sugar-plums for good children. Who can but feel shame when the religion of Ximenes, Borromeo, and Pascal is so overlaid? Who can but feel sorrow when its devout and earnest defenders so mistake its genius and our capabilities? We Englishmen like manliness, openness, consistency, truth. Rome will never gain on us till she learns these virtues, and uses them; then she may gain us, but it will be by ceasing to be what we now mean by Rome, by having a right, not to "have dominion over our faith," but to gain and possess our affections in the bonds of the Gospel. Till she ceases to be what she practically is, a union is impossible between her and England; but if she does reform, (and who shall presume to say that so large a part of Christendom never can?) then it will be our Church's duty at once to join in communion with the Continental Churches, whatever politicians at home may say to it, and whatever steps the civil power may take in consequence. And though we shall not live to see that day, at least we are bound to pray for it; we are bound to pray for our brethren that they and we may be led together into the pure light of the Gospel, and be one as once we were; that Ephraim may no longer envy Judah, or Judah vex Ephraim; that "all who profess and call themselves Christians may be led into the way of truth, and hold the faith in unity of spirit, in the bond of peace, and in righteousness of life;" "that all who do confess" God's "holy name, may agree in the truth of His Holy Word, and live in unity and godly love." It was most touching news to be told, as we were lately, that Christians on the Continent were praying together for the spiritual well-being of England. We are their debtors thereby. May the prayer return {73} abundantly into their own bosom, and while they care for our souls may their own be prospered! May they gain light while they aim at unity, and grow in faith while they manifest their love! We too have our duties to them; not of reviling, not of slandering, not of hating, though political interests require it; but the duty of loving brethren still more abundantly in spirit, whose faces, for our sins and their sins, we are not allowed to see in the flesh. January, 1840. Notes1. [It is a great practical principle, not a
doctrine; and the question is, what array of arguments in a particular
case is sufficient to overcome it? For instance, is the argument for
Anglicanism of such an overpowering character as to be able, by a consensus
of opinion, in itself to overcome it?] 2. [My first feeling about this saying, I have
described Apol., p. 117, ed. 2, thus:—"A mere sentence
struck me with a power, which I never had felt from any words
before." My second thoughts are given above in the text. My third
thoughts came back to my first. In some matters, second thoughts are
not the best.] 3. ["Why not?" because, in fact, it is not
so dissolved; doubtless, were it so dissolved, were the Pope,
as indistinct a power as he was in the first centuries, and the
Bishops as practically independent, the Church would still be the
Church.] 4. [If so, then, the division between Jerusalem
and Samaria does not make so great a difference between the age of
Jeroboam and that of Joshua, as the Israelitish monarchy makes between
the age of Solomon and the age of Samuel.] 5. Ann. A.D.
912, n. 14, vol. 15, p. 571. Just before he had said:—"Quæ tunc
facies sanctæ Ecclesiæ Romanæ! quam fœdissima, cùm Romæ
dominarentur potentissimæ æquè ac sordidissimæ meretrices! quarum
arbitrio mutarentur sedes, darentur Episcopi, et, quod auditu
horrendum et infandum est, intruderentur in sedem Petri earum amasii
pseudo-pontifices, qui non sint nisi ad consignanda tantum tempora in
catalogo Romanorum Pontificum scripti." 6. [Vid. supr.
Note, vol. i., pp. 379,
380.] 7. [Vid. ibid., pp. 381-383.] 8. It cannot be said that this reproach now
applies to English Catholicism: witness the years 1850-1, and 1860-70. 9. Vide also Perrone, Prælect. Theol. t. i. pp.
263, 264 [p. 316.] Newman Reader — Works of John Henry Newman |