Ambrosia by the City of Baltimore. This lady, the daughter of the
venerable Mrs. Collins, who died at the age of nearly one hundred
years, and was one of those who welcomed Mr. Baker most warmly
into the Catholic Church, and the sister of the Very Rev. Mr.
Collins, of Cincinnati, was universally regarded as a saint, both
by Catholics and Protestants. She had been very intimate in Dr.
Baker's family, and attended his two elder sons during their last
illness. She fell herself a victim to her charity in attending
the sick in the hospitals, leaving the sweet fragrance of her
sanctity to linger in the memories of those who knew her. We
visited also the graves of those brothers of Mr. Baker whose
death had produced so great a change in his character and
prospects.
{32}
They were buried in a Methodist grave-yard, adjoining the
beautiful Green Mount Cemetery. Francis had erected a marble
tombstone to their memory, on which was carved a cross, and the
Catholic inscription, _Requiescant in pace_. When I returned
to Baltimore, after my ordination to the Catholic priesthood, I
revisited the spot, but found the cross and prayer had been
removed. When I had the opportunity of asking Mr. Baker for an
explanation of this, he informed me that he had removed them of
his own accord, because he thought it an indelicate intrusion on
the religious sentiments and feelings of those to whom the
burial-place belonged, to leave there a Catholic inscription.
Meanwhile we were studying and reading regularly. Bishop
Whittingham had a very fine and extensive library, and was
constantly supplied with the choicest books and periodicals of
the Anglo-Catholic party. The remarkable movement led by Dr.
Pusey and Mr. Newman was at its height. In this country we were
somewhat behindhand, and were following at some distance in the
wake of the most advanced English leaders, so that the later
developments rather took us by surprise. We were reading Mr.
Newman's earlier works, and only partly aware of the great change
taking place in himself and others. The accusation of Romanizing
was treated as a calumny, and we had no thought of any thing
except bringing our own Church up to what we thought to be the
Catholic level, and endeavoring to establish an intercommunion
between it and the Roman and Greek Churches through mutual
consultation and concession, and a return to the supposed state
of things "before the separation of East and West." At least this
is true of us in Maryland, whatever might have been the case with
a small number elsewhere. Probably the effort to make the
Protestant Episcopal Church take the attitude of being Catholic
was never made more earnestly and with better hope of success
than in Maryland.
{33}
The bishop headed the movement, and, besides the clergymen
already in his diocese who were ready to second him, he attracted
thither a number of young men who were devoted to his person and
who sympathized in his views. I have no wish to speak
disrespectfully or unkindly of Dr. Whittingham. He has always
been a most violent opponent of the Catholic Church, and he has
seen fit, like some others of the clergy of his peculiar stripe,
to break off all intercourse with those who have left his
communion to join it. I do not, however, attribute to him any
personal animosity as the motive for this, but merely a mistaken
religions zeal. He was always very kind and generous to his young
clergymen, strict and self-denying in his life, and laborious in
the fulfilment of his official duties. His vigorous
administration infused a new energy and activity into the
Episcopal Church in his diocese, and gave a powerful impetus to
what was called the "Catholic" movement. A periodical entitled
_The True Catholic, Reformed, Protestant, and Free_, was
established, under the care of Hugh Davey Evans, a learned lawyer
and very able theological disputant. A college, conducted by
young men trained at the celebrated St. Paul's College, Flushing,
by Dr. Muhlenberg, was founded at a beautiful and extensive old
country-seat, known as "Fountain Rock," near Hagerstown, and a
school, called "St. Timothy's Hall," near Baltimore. The bishop
and a large number of his clergy went about dressed in long
cassocks; altars, crosses, frequent services, ecclesiastical
forms and observances, and other outward signs and accompaniments
of an approximation to Catholic doctrines and rites, were to be
seen everywhere. The Protestant Episcopal Church was loudly
proclaimed to be the Catholic Church of the country, and, in a
word, the theory taught in the Oxford Tracts and in the earlier
writings of Mr. Newman was sought to be put in actual practice.
An unusual number of the clergy were unmarried men, and the
project of founding a monastic order was entertained by several.
{34}
Those were stirring times. Of course opposition was excited in
the bosom of the Episcopal Church. The Low Churchmen formed a
strong and active minority in the Convention, and did their
utmost to thwart the projects of the bishop. Very spicy debates
took place in consequence, and as there were very able and
distinguished men among the lay delegates, who brought all their
legal skill and forensic eloquence into play, the sessions of the
Convention were often intensely interesting and exciting. The
pulpit, the newspapers, and controversial pamphlets were employed
in the warfare by both sides, and the community generally,
outside of the Episcopal Church, were quite alive with interest
in the questions discussed.
We had a little society called the "Church Reading Society," of
which Mr. Evans was president, and Mr. Baker and myself were
members, where certain prayers for Catholic unity were offered,
and papers bearing on the topics which interested us were read by
the members in turn. The different seasons of the ecclesiastical
year were very strictly observed, especially Advent, Christmas,
Lent, and Holy Week. The English press was at that time pouring
forth a stream of books of devotion and sacred poetry, sermons
and spiritual instructions, borrowed or imitated from the
treasures of Catholic sacred literature. There was a tide setting
strongly backward toward the faith and practice of ancient times,
and we surrendered ourselves to its influence, without thinking
where it would eventually land us. We had no thought of ever
leaving the communion to which we belonged. Never, in any of our
conversations, did we even speak of such a thing as possible, or
call in question the legitimate claim of the authority, under
which we were living, to our obedience. We did not sympathize
with the bishop and the larger number of the clergymen of our
theological party in their sentiment of hostility and antipathy
to the Roman communion.
{35}
The common ground taken was that the Roman Catholic bishops in
England and the United States are schismatical intruders upon the
lawful jurisdiction of the English and Anglo-American bishops of
the Protestant succession. Bishop Whittingham maintained the
stronger ground that the Roman Church throughout the world is
schismatical and all but formally heretical. He retained the old
spirit of vehement dislike and opposition to the See of Rome and
every thing in the doctrine and policy of the church connected
with the Papal supremacy, which characterized the old divines of
the Church of England. He had in his mind an ideal of the
primitive Church, according to which he wished and hoped that a
Reformed Catholic Church should be reconstructed by the common
consent of all the bishops of the world, and which should absorb
into itself all the Christian sects. This idea is necessarily
common to all who profess to hold Catholic principles in the
Anglican communion. The profession of the doctrine of unity in
one, visible, Catholic Church, of itself qualifies the isolation
of any body of Christians from the great Christian family, as an
anomalous and irregular condition. A return to unity or union of
some kind must necessarily become an object of desire and effort.
So long as one maintains that the Anglican Church is essentially
Catholic, he must maintain also that the Roman Church is in some
way wrong in refusing to recognize it, and that the Greek Church
is likewise wrong in refusing to do so. Hence he must look on
some concessions to be made by both Churches as the necessary
condition of the reunion of Christendom. So far, all who profess
to be "Anglo-Catholics" must agree. But when the question
becomes, how much concession must be made to the Anglican
communion, or how much concession must be made by her, how far
the Greek Church, the Roman Church, or the Anglican Church have
erred; and upon what basis of doctrine and ecclesiastical polity
they are to be reformed or restored to union, the agreement is
ended.
{36}
Each individual attributes as much or as little error and
corruption to other Churches, or his own Church, as suits his own
notions. Each one, or each separate clique, has a peculiar ideal
of the true Catholic Church. One may regard the Anglican Church
as almost perfect, and wish to bring all Christendom to imitate
it. Another finds his beau ideal in the Greek Church. Another
regards his own Church as very defective, and the Roman Church as
the most perfect, desiring that the Holy See should only abate
just enough of its claims to let in Greeks without any
acknowledgment of their schismatic contumacy, and Anglicans
without giving up that they are in heresy and destitute of any
legitimate episcopacy.
It is impossible to draw any exact line of demarcation between
the adherents of these different views. At the same time, we may
say that, in a general sense, one class held the Anglican Church
as paramount in its claim of allegiance, and the Church Catholic
as subordinate; while the other held the Church Catholic to be
paramount, and the Anglican Church subordinate. With the first
class, Catholic principles and doctrines were taken hold of as a
means of strengthening and exalting the Protestant Episcopal
Church as such, and giving her a victory over the rest of
Christendom; with the other class, they were embraced in a spirit
of deep sympathy with universal Christendom, and with the view of
bringing back the Protestant world to the great Christian family.
The first class alone can be relied on as devoted adherents of
Anglicanism, and they only hold a strong polemical position
against the claim of the Roman See to unconditional submission.
The other class have their minds and their hearts open to all
Catholic influences. They advance continually nearer and nearer
in belief and sympathy to the great Catholic body, and great
numbers of them pass over to the Catholic communion. Hence we
find that almost all the bishops and dignitaries who have joined
in the Oxford Movement have belonged decidedly to the first
class, and have always tried to hold the second class in check.
{37}
The few who have belonged to the second class, such as Bishop
Ives and the Archdeacons Manning and Wilberforce, have eventually
found allegiance to the Anglican Church incompatible with the
paramount claims of the Church Catholic, and have openly
renounced it.
But while it is evident that the position of decided and
determined hostility to Rome is absolutely necessary, as Mr.
Newman long ago remarked, to High Church Anglicanism, it is
equally evident that it is the most narrow, inconsistent, and
inconsequent position taken by any class of Protestants. It cuts
them off from all real sympathy and community of feeling with the
great Catholic body; and although there may be a pretence of
sympathy with the Oriental Church, it is a mere pretence, and a
most illogical and baseless one. It cuts them off equally from
all the rest of Protestant Christendom. Yet, it is only the
Catholic and Greek Churches which offer a solid and substantial
basis for those doctrinal and hierarchical principles which make
their only distinctive character; and it is only the Protestant
portion of their Church, and its close intellectual, social,
political, moral, and religious alliance with the other
Protestant Churches, which gives them any standing, influence, or
power in the world. A man of liberal, enlarged, and Christian
temper of mind, cannot live in such narrow limits or breathe such
a confined air. He must have communion with something greater
than the Protestant Episcopal Church. If he regards the great
Catholic Church as essentially corrupt, he must sympathize with
the Protestant Reformation. If the ground which, as I shall
presently show, the High Church bishops maintain, is correct,
then the continental Protestants were bound to come out when they
did and form new churches. Where were they to get bishops? How
were they to preserve the continuity of organization and the
apostolic succession? The Church of England did not admonish them
of the necessity of doing so. She did not proffer them episcopal
ordination.
{38}
But she made common cause with them, and supported them in their
revolt, invited them over to England, and gave them places in the
English Church, sent delegates to their great Calvinistic Synod
of Dort, and in other ways lent them sanction and countenance,
without breathing a hint that she was a whit better than they.
Arguments from Scripture and ancient authors in favor of three
orders and a liturgy may be very solid and conclusive, but they
are also very petty and miserable when they are made the basis of
arrogant claims by those whose very existence sprang from the
assumption that the universal episcopate had betrayed its trust
and apostatized from the true doctrine of Christ. The learned
William Palmer has seen the necessity of justifying the attitude
of the continental Protestant Churches, and therefore concedes to
them, on the plea of necessity, valid ordination and a legitimate
constitution. An Anglican, who is a thorough and consistent
opponent of Rome, ought to take common ground with Protestants.
One who turns his back on Protestantism, and abjures the
Reformation, ought to make common cause with Rome and the
Catholic Church, even though he as yet holds the opinion that his
communion is a true and living branch of the Church of Christ.
It may seem strange to those who have never studied or
sympathized in the Oxford movement, that men who adopted certain
fundamental Catholic principles did not at once embrace the faith
and submit to the authority of the Catholic Church, but remained
a long time in the Episcopal communion, or even deliberately
chose it, after having passed their early life in some other
Protestant sect. This seems strange to those who have always been
Catholics, and equally strange to the majority of Protestants. So
much so, that we have been suspected, and by many fully believed
to have been all along concealed Roman Catholics, working in the
Episcopal Church for the purpose of "Romanizing" it.
{39}
A few days before I was received into the Catholic Church, a near
and venerable relative of mine said to me: "I am very glad you
have become a Catholic, for I can respect a sincere Roman
Catholic, but I cannot respect a Puseyite; you will now sail
under your true colors. When will H. B. (a cousin of mine, who is
an Episcopalian clergyman) do the same thing?"
The truth of the matter is, that we all had imbibed such an
intense prejudice from our early education against the Roman
Church, that we were appalled at the thought of joining her
communion. When certain Catholic truths began to dawn upon our
minds, it was indistinctly. To those who were bred in the
Anglican Church, it was the natural and obvious course to remain
there as long as their consciences would permit. To others, it
was natural to look for a resting-place in that communion of
which our own particular sects were only offshoots, with which
educated people of English descent are so familiar through the
history and literature of our native language, whose services
many of us had frequently attended from childhood, and where many
of us likewise had relatives and friends. It is a small matter to
go from one Protestant sect to another, in itself considered, and
it is no wonder that any orthodox Protestant should prefer the
Episcopal Church to any of the religious bodies which have
seceded from it. Besides this, there was a _via media_
offered to us by a great body of divines in the Episcopal Church,
between Rome on the one hand and Protestantism on the other,
which appeared to be exactly the thing we wanted. I acknowledge
that I was too easily allured by this specious pretence, and
failed to examine with due care the claims of the Church in
communion with the See of Rome to be the true and only Church of
Christ. I do not think Mr. Baker, notwithstanding that his
prejudices were far less than mine, ever gave the subject serious
and careful consideration, until long after he had become an
Episcopalian minister.
{40}
We knew too little, however, of the subject, to feel any
conscientious obligations in that direction. I can truly say that
I never for one moment deliberated on the question of becoming a
Catholic, even when I had the fear of death before my eyes, until
after I left Baltimore in the autumn of 1845. I never heard from
Mr. Baker, up to that time, a word which betrayed the existence
in his mind of any practical doubt about his duty in this
respect. The growth of Catholic principles in our minds was
gradual. By degrees, the mists of misrepresentation, prejudice,
and ignorance which obscured the Catholic Church and her
doctrines were dissipated and vanished. Our feelings of
veneration and love for the great Church of Christendom
increased. Still, as long as we were not convinced that actual
communion with the Church of Rome and submission to her supremacy
was necessary, _jure divino_, to the catholicity of any
local Church, we remained firm in our allegiance to the
ecclesiastical authority of our bishop. This is only an instance
of what was going on in the case of many both in England and the
United States. And it appears from this statement, that whereas
all the disciples of the Oxford movement began on essentially the
same ground, and that, one which implied strong and decisive
opposition to Rome, one portion of them progressed continually,
and another remained stationary or retrograded, thus producing
separation and division in the ranks. What I wish to show now is,
that those who progressed were logically compelled to do so by
the principles of the movement itself, and that those who
remained stationary, although they held a position which was
necessary to the maintenance of Anglicanism, were illogical and
inconsequent.
The advocates of the claim of the Church of England to be the
only legitimate and Catholic Church in England, and of the same
claim for the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States,
were obliged to make out some case against the bishops of these
two countries who were under the jurisdiction of the Roman See
and who proclaimed themselves to be the only lawful and Catholic
bishops, sustained as they were in this claim by all the other
bishops of Western Christendom.
{41}
The possession of the titles and temporalities of the ancient
sees in England by the Established Church naturally suggested the
plausible pretext that the Church of England of to-day is the
legitimate successor of the Church of England before the
separation under Henry VIII. Hence, other bishops, exercising
episcopal functions within the dioceses of the bishops of the
Church of England, are schismatical intruders, and their
congregations are schismatical. The same principle was extended
to the United States, on the plea that the Bishop of London had
episcopal jurisdiction over the English colonies, and moreover
that the Protestant Episcopal bishops were first on the ground,
and had acquired possession before the "Romish" bishops, as they
chose to call them, came. Now this theory is forced to answer one
question: Are the bishops of France, Spain, &c., the legitimate
Catholic bishops of those countries, and is their communion the
true and only Catholic Church there, or not? Is this question
answered in the affirmative? Then, who are the Catholic bishops
in Canada, Louisiana, Alabama, Florida, Texas, and California?
Who went first to China and India? Are the Anglican bishops in
these places schismatical intruders or not? If not, why not? And
if not, why are Roman Catholic bishops schismatical intruders in
London and New-York? The Protestant Episcopal Churches of England
and the United States pay no attention whatever to any claim of
jurisdiction by the Catholic Church in any part of the world, but
seek to thrust themselves in and make converts wherever they can.
In order to justify this attitude, and at the same time to
profess Catholic principles, it is necessary to maintain that the
entire Roman communion is schismatical and heretical, and the
Protestant Episcopal Church is the true and only Catholic Church,
at least in Western Christendom.
{42}
This idea is the real _animus_ of the Protestant Episcopate,
and its highest expression is found in the opinion so common
among Protestants, and held even by Mr. Newman some years after
he commenced the Oxford Tracts, that the Pope is Antichrist. The
charges of the English bishops, especially those delivered after
the publication of the Oxford Tract No. 90, all breathe this
spirit. Bishop Elliott, of Georgia, in a sermon preached at the
consecration of the missionary bishops, Boone and Southgate, in
St. Peter's Church, Philadelphia, in 1843 or '44, spoke of the
Catholic missionaries as "dealing out death instead of life" to
the heathen. Bishop Whittingham held this view, and "Tridentine
Schismatic" was one of the appellations he gave to the Rev. Dr.
White, of Baltimore, in a pamphlet which he published against
that gentleman. In his Annual Address for 1846 he speaks of me
and other converts in the following language: "The lapse of
several prominent members of our English sister, and of one even
in our own little band, _into the defilements of the Romish
communion_, has but too far justified others in sounding the
note of alarm," &c.[Footnote 2] The language he made use of in
one of his addresses was such, that Mr. Baker, then one of his
presbyters, positively declined to read it for him in the
Convention, his own voice being too weak to do so. The Rev. A. C.
Coxe, now a bishop, published a poem on the occasion of the
ordination of the present Bishop of Newark to the diaconate, in
Rome, entitled "Hymn of the Priests, to lament one of their
number who has been sacrilegiously reordained a deacon, _after
abjuring the Catholic communion_, at Rome." In contrast with
this is the following, which was copied into the _True
Catholic_ for December, 1843. [Footnote 3]
[Footnote 2: Journal of Convention of Maryland, 1846, p. 25.]
[Footnote 3: Journal of Convention of Maryland, 1846, p. 383.]
{43}
Conversion Of A Popish Priest To The Catholic Church At
Chicester.
The Cathedral, _Sunday, October_ 15.
In residence, the Lord Bishop, the very Rev. the Dean, the Ven.
Arch-deacon Webber, and the Rev. Charles Webber, can. res. We
have to record this week one of the most interesting ceremonies
ever performed within the walls of this sacred edifice, namely,
the public admission of a clerical convert from the Church of
Rome, into the bosom of the Holy Catholic Church in this
country. The morning prayers were chanted by the Rev. J. P.
Roberts, Sub-dean. The _Te Deum_ and _Jubilate_ was
Boyce in A. At the ending of the Litany, the Bishop and the
Dean proceeded to the altar, while the choir performed Weldon's
_Sanctus_; after which (the penitent, Mr. Vignati, an
Italian gentleman, who had been for two years a priest in the
Romish Communion, standing without the rails) the bishop
addressed the congregation in the following words:--
"Dearly beloved, we are here met together for the reconciling
of a penitent (lately of the Church of Rome) to the Established
Church of England, as to a true and sound part of Christ's Holy
Catholic Church. Now, that this weighty affair may have its due
effect, let us, in the first place, humbly and devoutly pray to
Almighty God for his blessing upon us in that pious and
charitable office we are going about.