The history of the Church in the middle ages has ever forced upon
Protestant minds a difficulty which they have met by many various methods
of solution. The middle age exhibits so much of precious side by side with
so much of base, so much of the beauty of holiness in the midst of
ungodliness, so much of what all Christians admit as truth with what
Protestants call fatal error, that the character of the whole cannot
readily be taken in at first sight from the Protestant point of view. Some
there are who dwell so long on the shadows that they close their eyes to
the light, and these declare the medieval Church to have been a scene of
unmitigated evil. To their minds the whole theology of the period is
useless, or worse than useless, harmful. They connect the middle ages with
wickedness as thoroughly as the Manicheans connected matter with the evil
principle.
Others there are who honestly admit that these ages, especially their
earlier part, are not Protestant, but at the same time contend that
neither are they favourable to Roman doctrine. These believe that facts
abundantly prove that in the bosom of the Church which was then, the two
Churches were to be found, which afterwards disengaged themselves from one
another at the Reformation. This is the philosophy of medieval history
which, as we learn from the preface to his collection of _Sacred Latin
Poetry_,(1) has recommended itself to Dr. Trench, the present Protestant
Archbishop of Dublin. “In Romanism we have the residuum of the middle-age
Church and theology, the lees, after all, or well nigh all the wine was
drained away. But in the medieval Church we have the wine and lees
together—the truth and the error, the false observance and yet at the same
time the divine truth which should one day be fatal to it—side by side.”
For such thinkers the sum of all the history of that period amounts to
this: a long struggle between two Churches—one a Church of truth, the
other a Church of error—a struggle which, however, ended happily in the
triumph of the Church of truth by the Reformation, in which the truth was
purified from its contact with error.
It is not without its advantages to know what views the occupant of an
Irish see so distinguished, is led to take, of the Church to which
seventy-seven out of every hundred Irishmen belong, with all the
convictions of their intellects, and all the love of their hearts. It
seems to us that his theory is not likely to satisfy any party; it goes
too far to please some, and stops short too soon to be agreeable to
others. But what strikes us most of all in it is the fatal inconsistency
of its parts. Of this the very book to which it serves as preface is proof
enough. Dr. Trench’s position is this. He tells his Protestant readers
that whereas in the medieval Church there was a good church, and an evil,
all the good has found its resting place in Protestantism, all the evil in
tyrannical Rome. Whatever of good, of holy, of pure, has ever been said or
done within the Church, Protestants are the rightful inheritors of it all.
From the treasury of the Church before the Reformation he proposes to
draw, and to collect in this work what his readers may live on and love,
and what he is confident will prove wholesome nourishment for their souls.
He would set before them the feelings of the Church during these thousand
years of her existence, and would summon from afar, from remote ages,
“voices in which they may utter and embody the deepest things of their
hearts”. Such, he assures them, are the voices of the writers whose poems
have found a place in his book. Now, if we are to understand that the two
ante-Reformation Churches stood out quite distinctly, one from the other,
in open antagonism, like Jerusalem and Babylon, each having its own
position more or less clearly defined, we should naturally expect to find
in Dr. Trench’s book the thoughts and words only of the Reformers before
the Reformation, of the men, that is, who never bent the knee to Baal, but
ever cherished in their hearts the true doctrine of salvation. If his own
theory be worth anything, he must have recourse for his present purposes,
to that one of the two Churches which alone has been perpetuated,
victorious after conflict, in Protestantism. Where else shall he find
sympathies that answer to those of Protestants? But he does not do so. For
in the beginning of his preface he tells us that he has not admitted each
and all of the works of the authors whose productions he inserts. He tells
us that he has carefully excluded from his collection “all hymns which in
any way imply the Romish doctrine of transubstantiation”, or, “which
involve any creature-worship, or speak of the Mother of our Lord in any
other language than that which Scripture has sanctioned, and our Church
adopted”, or which “ask of the suffrages of the Saints”? These certainly
are not the doctrines which have been perpetuated in Protestantism.
His own practice, therefore, is inconsistent with his theory, if that
theory means to assert the existence of two Churches in the middle age,
distinctly antagonistic, one to the other.
The only escape from this tangle is to reply, that Dr. Trench, although he
may find two Churches in the bosom of the middle-age Church, does not,
however, place between them a separation so sharp as to suppose the Church
of good absolutely without evil, nor the Church of evil altogether
destitute of good. In each there is good and some mixture of evil: error
relieved by a vein of truth. His favourite authors, by whose labours he
wishes to make his readers profit, are, in this last hypothesis, men who
are subject to the influence of both Churches; men who belong partly to
each in turn, whose doctrines are a pitiable admixture of truth with
falsehood—who, in one word, are visited both by “airs from Heaven and
blasts from Hell”. At times they say what all, even Protestants, may
treasure up in their hearts, to live on and love; at times, again, they
are made to utter what all should reject and condemn, as so many snares
for unwary feet. We shall say nothing of the difficulty the mind feels in
accepting such a description of the position of these writers, nor of the
task we have to persuade ourselves that those who teach belief in deadly
heresies to be essential to salvation, can be, at the same time, the
chosen tabernacles wherein the pure spirit of real piety can ever take up
its abode. Such was not the feeling of the ancient Church. We ask,
instead, who are the men upon whose writings Dr. Trench would sit in
judgment, “to sunder between the holy and profane”, to distinguish between
the errors and the truth, to decide what we are “to take warning from and
to shun, what to live upon and love”. With the exception of the two, Alard
and Buttmann, all are men highly honoured by the whole Catholic world, and
all, without exception, are praised for their excelling virtues by Dr.
Trench himself. Among the twenty-three names we read with reverence those
of Saint Ambrose, Saint Bonaventure, Venerable Bede, Saint Bernard, Saint
Peter Damian, Thomas a-Kempis, Peter the Venerable, Jacopone, and others
of great reputation for sanctity and learning. These are the men whose
writings Dr. Trench is to parcel out into two portions; this to be
venerated as sacred, that to be condemned as profane. It needs great faith
in the censor, to accept readily his decision in such a case. What test
does he undertake to apply? what criterion is to influence his choice? Why
does he cast away the poems which celebrate St. Peter as Prince of the
Apostles, and approve of those that extol St. Paul? Why should he style
Adam of St. Victor’s hymn on the Blessed Virgin an exaggeration, and quote
as edifying his _Laus S. Scripturae_? Why are St. Bonaventure’s pieces in
honour of Mary visited with censure, and his lines _In Passione Domini_
made the theme of praise? Dr. Trench gives us his reasons very plainly.
“If our position mean anything”, says he (page x.), “we are bound to
believe that to us, having the Word and the Spirit, the power has been
given to distinguish things which differ.... It is our duty to believe
that to us, that to each generation which humbly and earnestly seeks, will
be given that enlightening spirit, by whose aid it shall be enabled to
read aright the past realizations of God’s divine idea in the wise and
historic Church of successive ages, and to distinguish the human
imperfections, blemishes, and errors, from the divine truth which they
obscured and overlaid, but which they could not destroy, being, one day,
rather to be destroyed by it”. That is to say, we, as Protestants, in
virtue of our position as such, are able by the light of the Holy Spirit
to discern true from false doctrine, the fruits of the good Church from
the fruits of the evil Church. This enlightening Spirit will be given to
each generation which humbly and earnestly seeks it. But, we ask, what are
we to believe concerning the working of the same enlightening Spirit in
the hearts of the holy men whose exquisitely devotional writings Dr.
Trench sets before us? Were they men of humility and earnestness? If they
were not, Dr. Trench’s book appears under false colours, and is not a book
of edification. And if they were, as they certainly were, who is Dr.
Trench that he should take it on himself to condemn those who enjoyed the
very same light which he claims for himself? And why should we not then
rather believe that as these holy men had, on his own showing, the spirit
of God, Dr. Trench, in condemning their doctrine does in truth condemn
what is the doctrine of the Church of the Holy Spirit.
The theory is therefore as inconsistent as on historical grounds it is
false. Such as it is, however, the conclusions we may draw from it are of
great importance.
1. Dr. Trench declares that, both by omitting and by thinning, he has
carefully removed from his selection, all doctrine implying
transubstantiation, the cultus of the Blessed Virgin, the invocation of
saints, and the veneration of the cross. Now, as the great bulk of the
poems he publishes belong to the middle ages, strictly so called, it
follows, on Dr. Trench’s authority, that these doctrines of the Roman
Catholic Church were held long before the Reformation, and that the Church
was already in possession when Luther came.
2. Since he tells us (page vi) that he has counted inadmissible poems
which breathe a spirit foreign to that tone of piety which the English
Church desires to cherish in her children, it follows that the spirit of
piety in the Church of old is not the same as that in the present Church
of England. Now in such cases the presumption is against novelty.
3. Dr. Trench (page vii) reminds his readers that it is unfair to try the
theological language of the middle ages by the greater strictness and
accuracy rendered necessary by the struggle, of the Reformation. A man who
holds a doctrine _implicitly_ and in a confused manner, is likely to use
words which he would correct if the doctrine were put before him in
accurate form. This is a sound principle, and one constantly employed by
Catholic theologians, when they have to deal with an objection urged by
Protestants from some obscure or equivocal passage of a Father. It is
satisfactory to be able for the future to claim for its use the high
authority of Dr. Trench.
4. A special assistance of the Holy Spirit is claimed for all those who
humbly and earnestly invoke him. This assistance is to enable those
blessed with it to distinguish between error and divine truth. Is this
happy privilege to be exercised either independently, without the
direction of the ministers of the Church, or is it one of the graces
peculiar to the pastoral office? In the former case, every fanatical
sectary may judge in matters of religion as securely as if he had the
whole world on his side. In the latter case, it would be interesting to
know how much does this privilege differ from the infallibility claimed by
the Catholic Church.
5. Finally, the contradictions inherent to the whole theory are most
clearly to be seen in the following passage about the noble lines which
Hildebert, Archbishop of Tours, in the beginning of the twelfth century,
places on the lip of the city of Rome:
“I have not inserted these lines”, says Dr. Trench, “in the body
of this collection, lest I might seem to claim for them that
entire sympathy which I am very far from doing. Yet, believing as
we may, and, to give any meaning to a large period of Church
history, we must, that Papal Rome of the middle ages had a work of
God to accomplish for the taming of a violent and brutal world, in
the midst of which she often lifted up the only voice which was
anywhere heard in behalf of righteousness and truth—all of which
we may believe, with the fullest sense that her dominion was an
unrighteous usurpation, however overruled for good to Christendom,
which could then take no higher blessing—believing this, we may
freely admire these lines, so nobly telling of that true strength
of spiritual power, which may be perfected in the utmost weakness
of all other power. It is the city of Rome which speaks:
Dum simulacra mihi, dum numina vana placerent,
Militiâ, populo, moenibus alts fui:
At simul effigies, arasque superstitiosas
Dejiciens, uni sum famulata Deo;
Cesserunt arces, cecidere palatia divum,
Servivit populis, degeneravit eques.
Vix scio quae fuerim: vix Romae Roma recordor;
Vix sinit occasus vel meminisse mei.
Gratior haec jactura mihi successibus illis,
Major sum pauper divite, stante jacens.
Plus aquilis vexilla crucis, plus Caesare Petrus,
Plus cinctis ducibus vulgus inerme dedit.
Stans domui terras; infernum diruta pulso;
Corpora stans, animas fracta jacensque rego.
Tunc miserae plebi, nunc principibus tenebrarum
Impero; tunc urbes, nunc mea regna polus.
Quod ne Caesaribus videar debere vel armis,
Et species rerum meque meosque trahat,
Armorum vis illa perit, ruit alta Senatûs
Gloria, procumbunt templa, theatra jacent.
Rostra vacant, edicta silent, sua praemia desunt
Emeritis, populo jura, colonus agris.
Ista jacent, ne forte meus spem ponat in illis
Civis, et evacuet spemque bonumque crucis.