are very significant. Let it be observed, that the bishops who
signed the letter to the Patriarch of Constantinople, both
distinctly repudiate the Reformation of Luther and Calvin, and
consent to waive all questions of difference between the Greek
and the Protestant Episcopal Churches, until they can be decided
by a _General Council_. This reduces the _gravamen_ of
the charges against Rome to the only point of difference which
exists between herself and the Greek Church; that is, to the
claim of supremacy of the Roman Pontiff.
{52}
This is, then, the sum and substance of the "_defilements of
the Romish Communion_." Here lies the whole _casus belli_
between the champions of Anglicanism and the Catholic Church.
There is no hope of reconciliation on equal terms with the See of
Rome and her vast communion. Therefore, a rival claim of
Catholicity must be set up, and supported by every possible
charge that can be made to tell against the mighty Church whose
Bishop claims the dignity and authority of successor to the
Prince of the Apostles. Hence the odious names of "Roman Schism,"
"Romanist," "Romish," "Tridentine Schism," "Popery," "Popish,"
and all the other party catch-words of corruption in doctrine,
bondage, tyranny, idolatry, etc., which are studiously employed,
in order to throw dust in the eyes of the simple and unwary.
Hence the effort to appropriate the name of Catholic, and to use
all the phraseology associated with it, in connection with the
Protestant Episcopal communion. Rome will not abate one jot or
tittle of her divine rights, or of the Catholic doctrine of which
she is the principal bulwark; and she will not treat the Church
of England as a branch of the Christian Church. Therefore a rival
must be set up against her, backed by the power and the prestige
of the English name, and, if possible, also by those of the
mighty Russian Empire and the ancient Eastern Church. The
Nonjurors proposed to the Eastern prelates sitting in the Synod
of Bethlehem, a plan for combining against Rome under an
ecclesiastical organization whose head should be the Patriarch of
Jerusalem. It was scornfully rejected, together with all their
other overtures. No doubt, if the Church of England and the
Episcopal Church of the United States could make a combination
with the Greek Church, on the basis of the Oriental standards of
doctrine, it would be the most formidable rival possible to the
Catholic Church. But such a union is impossible. The Providence
of God does not permit heresy and schism to assume the attitude
of Catholicity, but compels them to manifest their true character
by disintegration.
{53}
And here lies another mark of the inconsistency of the theory of
those who set up this claim of rival Catholicity against Rome.
The Protestant Episcopal Churches, as such, do not sanction and
assert in their public and official action the claim made for
them by a certain portion of their members. The utmost that can
be said of them is, that they affirm and exact episcopal
ordination as requisite to a complete conformity to the polity
established by the Apostles. They do not, however, assert, or
require their clergy to believe, the necessity of apostolic
succession to the being of a Church. Their standards are so
constructed as to afford a shelter and a warrant to those who
hold this and several other Catholic doctrines and principles.
These doctrines are not, however, officially put forward as a
term of communion, or a condition for ordination. The official
doctrine of a Church is limited to that which it exacts by
authority and under penalty of its teachers to hold and profess.
It comes down to the lowest level of doctrine, which its teachers
can hold, and still be reputed sound and orthodox clergymen. Now
a very low Protestantism is all that even High Church bishops can
exact from candidates for the priesthood or the episcopacy.
"Anglo-Catholic" doctrine is nothing but the tolerated opinion of
a certain party. Therefore, on these "Anglo-Catholic" principles,
and according to the doctrine and decisions of the Greek Church,
the Protestant Episcopal Church is schismatical and heretical,
because she enforces nothing by her authority beyond
Protestantism, which is heresy according to that standard of
doctrine which was universally acknowledged before the
"separation of the East and West," and accepted both by Greeks
and "Anglo-Catholics." According to those principles, then, which
would condemn the Roman Church of heresy and schism, all
Episcopal Churches in the world have fallen away from the unity
of faith established by our Lord, and the Catholic Church exists
no more.
{54}
Hence, even an "Anglo-Catholic," if he would not be driven into
the arms of pure Protestantism, and consort with those followers
of Luther and Calvin who are disowned by Bishop Griswold and his
associates, are forced to make common cause with Rome and her
Catholic communion.
The progressive portion of those who were engaged in the Oxford
movement saw and felt all this, and, therefore, in a strict
consistency with their Catholic principles, and by a logical
necessity, they advanced in a Romeward direction. It has been
necessary to make this long explanation in order to show how
matters stood at the time when Mr. Baker and myself were
connected with the ecclesiastical movement in Baltimore, under
Bishop Whittingham. The Oxford movement was then ten years old.
The celebrated Ninetieth Tract, in which Mr. Newman took the
ground that several Roman dogmas were permitted by the
Thirty-nine Articles, and that the Articles were to be explained
according to the Catholic sense of the general body of the
Universal Church, had been some time published, and the
controversy excited by it was nearly completed. Mr. Newman was
about resigning St. Mary's, and soon after went into retirement
at Littlemore. A great number of the ablest writers of his party
had advanced very far beyond the position taken by the earlier
Oxford Tracts, and by Palmer, Percival, Keble, and others, at the
outset. In the United States, the ordination of the Rev. Arthur
Carey had taken place, under circumstances of the most peculiar
character, which deserve a passing notice.
Arthur Carey was a young student of the New York Theological
Seminary, barely twenty years of age, of an English family, and
descended from several bishops of the English Church. He was a
youth of rare intellectual gifts and acquirements, as well as of
the most gentle and lovely character. Bishop Whittingham, who had
been his preceptor, said that he possessed the wisdom of a man of
fifty.
{55}
In some way, the suspicions of a number of the principal Low
Church rectors had been excited in regard to him, and he was
subjected to a most rigorous examination for orders, in which he
manifested his profound theological science and his brilliant
parts, together with a magnanimity of spirit which won for him a
wide-spread admiration, especially among all High Church
Episcopalians. In the course of his examination, he avowed the
most advanced opinions of the Oxford party, and expressed his
belief in the sound orthodoxy of the decrees of the Council of
Trent. He was violently attacked by some members of the examining
committee, and defended by others, the majority finally
recommending him for ordination. Bishop Onderdonk determined to
ordain him, and was proceeding in the ceremony of ordination,
when he was interrupted by two doctors of divinity in gowns, who
publicly protested against the ordination, and then left the
church. Bishop Whittingham urged him very strongly, after his
ordination, to come to his diocese, which he declined doing.
About this time, I read, in manuscript, a beautiful philosophical
essay on Transubstantiation, which he wrote, according to the
system of Leibniz, proving the futility of all the rational
arguments urged against it. The circumstances of his ordination
made him suddenly famous. He was assistant minister to Dr.
Seabury, at the Church of the Annunciation, and every Sunday his
sermons were reported for the secular papers, with minute
accounts of his appearance, and all his sayings and doings. This
publicity was insufferable to him; and in a letter of his, which
I saw, he said that it made life a burden to him. His
constitution was extremely delicate, and weakened by close
application to study. He was a boy in years, and unable to breast
the moral shock which he had received. He speedily sank into a
decline, and died at sea, off the Moro of Havana, whither he had
been sent for the benefit of his health, his body being committed
to the deep by his fellow-passengers, who were all strangers to
him, and one of whom read the Burial Service over his remains.
{56}
For a long time afterward, his poor father might be seen every
day standing on the Battery, and gazing wistfully out to sea,
with mournful thoughts, longing after the son whom he had lost.
There is something in the history of Arthur Carey assimilating it
to that of Richard Hurrell Froude. Each of them, in his sphere,
did more than any other to arrest the anti-Roman tendency of the
Oxford movement, and give it a Romeward direction. In Mr. Carey's
instance, it was not the mere effect of his own personal avowal
of holding Roman doctrine, but the protection given him in doing
so by the bishop of the principal diocese, the directors of the
General Seminary, and a large number of other bishops and
clergymen, which was significant. It was this which led to the
persecution of Bishop Onderdonk; and it was believed that a plan
was on foot for similar attacks on the other bishops who were
regarded as Puseyites.
The reader of these pages can now understand something of the
nature of those stirring and exciting times in the ecclesiastical
world in which Mr. Baker began his career, and of the events and
questions about which we were daily conversing together. Bishop
Whittingham approved of the principle of interpreting the
Articles laid down in the Ninetieth Tract. On this principle, I
gave my assent to them at my examination for orders, and could
not otherwise have assented to them with a safe conscience. The
ordination of Mr. Carey opened the way for us to go forward to
the full extent of holding all the doctrines of the Council of
Trent. The current of Oxford thought and literature was sweeping
us in that direction. We had full access to it, and felt its
power, although, as I have said, we were a good deal behind the
movement, and ignorant of many things which were taking place in
England. Mr. Baker was far in advance of me at the time our
friendship began. He never had that feeling of hostility to the
Roman Church with which so many were filled.
{57}
His early education, and the knowledge he had of Catholicity and
of the Catholic clergy and laity in Baltimore, preserved him from
that strong prejudice which I retained from the impressions of
childhood, and which he aided me greatly to overcome. Neither of
us ever looked on the Roman communion as heretical, schismatical,
or essentially corrupt. We adopted, at first, the prevalent idea
that it was in a schismatical position in England, and in those
parts of the United States where we supposed the Protestant
Episcopal Church had prior possession. We dropped this notion,
however, after a while; and I remember well that it was a friend
of ours, who was then and is now a minister of the Episcopal
Church, who drove it finally out of my head by solid and
unanswerable arguments. We could not agree with the bishop and
his party in their anti-Roman sentiments, and disliked the
offensive use of the terms "Romish" and "Romanist." We regarded
the Catholic Church as composed of three great branches--the
Latin, Greek, and Anglican--unhappily estranged from each other,
and all more or less to blame for the separation. We did not
believe in the supremacy of the Pope, in the full Catholic sense,
as constituting the e essential principle of Catholic unity, or
that communion with the Holy See was necessary to the very being
of a Church. We did, however, come to believe by degrees in a
certain Primacy, partly divine and partly ecclesiastical, as
necessary to order, and the means of preserving intercommunion
among all bishops. What we regarded as errors in Roman doctrine,
we looked upon as much less fundamental than those Protestant
errors which pervaded so extensively our own Church; we
considered them much in the same light with which Bishop Griswold
and his brethren regarded the peculiar doctrines of the Greek
Church, as matters to be tolerated, until all branches of the
Church could meet in a general council and make a final decision
upon all controversies. Considering the divided and anomalous
state of Christendom, we thought that both the Roman and Anglican
bishops had an equally legitimate jurisdiction over their
congregations, and that we were alike Catholics, and in real
communion with the Universal Church of all ages and nations.
{58}
We thought it to be the duty of each one to remain in the
communion where he had been baptized or ordained, and would have
dissuaded any Episcopalian from joining the Roman communion, or
any Roman Catholic from joining ours. I remember, one evening,
after hearing an account given with great glee by a young man of
the perversion of a Catholic, that Mr. Baker said, after the
person in question had gone, "What a miserable story that was
which M---- just related!" In my own little parish, there was an
Irish servant-girl, whom I married to a young Englishman, my
parishioner. I had no scruple in doing this, not reflecting that
I was the occasion of the girl committing a sin against her own
conscience. But when her mistress expressed great hopes of her
coming over to our Church, and I began to think she might apply
to me for confirmation, I carefully avoided encouraging the plan,
and considered seriously what I ought to do if any such case
should arise. Very strangely and inconsistently, Bishop
Whittingham used to confirm the occasional perverts that fell in
his way, although they had received Catholic confirmation. And
this increased my difficulty. For I regarded an act of that kind
as a sacrilege, and could not have been a party to it in any
case, unless I had thought it right, according to my overstrained
notions of obedience, to throw the whole responsibility on the
bishop. As I have often said, we never entertained the thought of
leaving our own Church. The conversation of those who talked
doubtfully on this point was always most disagreeable to us both,
although it was only in one or two instances that we fell in with
any such persons.
Toward our own bishop we were strictly obedient. His violent
antipathy to Rome and strong Anglican party spirit, joined with a
timid, politic course of action toward the Low Church,
ultra-Protestant party, prevented our giving him full and
unreserved confidence.
{59}
Mr. Baker had seldom the occasion of conversing much with him. I
was, however, constantly in his family, and very much in his
society. I confided in him as a man of integrity, a sincere and
generous friend, and a just and kind superior. But, from the
first, there was a barrier which I had not expected to full and
unreserved confidence, and a feeling that there was a secret and
fundamental difference in our apprehension of the ideas which are
contained in the forms of Catholic language. I have since
discovered what this difference was, and I see now that he really
believed in an invisible, ideal Catholic Church only, and in no
other outward, visible unity, except that which is completed in a
single bishop and congregation. This explains a remark made at
that time by my father, who is thoroughly acquainted with the
Protestant theology, on one of the bishop's essays; that, except
his doctrine of three orders in the ministry, he was a pure
Congregationalist. Mr. Newman, also, held the same view, until
quite a late period in his Anglican life, as appears from his
"Apologia." In Bishop Whittingham's own eyes, he was himself the
equivalent of the whole Catholic episcopate. Consequently, what
he and his colleagues and predecessors in the Anglican Church had
decreed had full Catholic authority, and was just as final and
authoritative as if the whole world had taken part in it. Hence
the assertion of a despotic, exclusive authority of the Anglican
Church, concentrated in his person, over everyone who
acknowledged his jurisdiction. He would not permit us to attend
any Catholic services, or read any Catholic books, as an ordinary
thing. I read the tract of Natalis Alexander on the Eucharist,
and the Life of St. Francis of Sales, in his library, before he
made his prohibition. Afterward, he gave me himself a volume of
Tirinus's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures; and these were the
only Catholic books I read while I was in his family. I was very
anxious to read Möhler's "Symbolism," but I did not; nor did I
read Ward's "Ideal of a Christian Church;" because he desired me
not to do so.
{60}
I even gave up using approved Anglican books of devotion in
church, because he expressed his disapprobation of using any
other book but the "Common Prayer." Mr. Baker was equally
obedient with myself at that time; although afterward, when he
was governed more by common-sense and a just sentiment of his own
rights, he read whatever he thought proper. It was Anglican books
which brought us onward toward the Catholic Church, and the
attempt to live up to and carry out Anglo-Catholic principles.
Those who are familiar with the Anglo-Catholic movement will
understand at once what these principles and doctrines were. But
for the information of others it may be proper to state them
distinctly, as they were understood by Mr. Baker, and others like
him, who approximated more or less toward the Catholic Church,
whether they eventually joined her communion or not:
1. The visible unity of the Catholic Church.
2. The final authority of the Church in deciding doctrine,
and the authority of General Councils.
3. The necessity of an Apostolic Succession, and the divine
institution of the episcopate.
4. Baptismal Regeneration and Sacramental Grace.
5. The strictly sacerdotal character of the priesthood,
including the power of consecrating, and of absolution.
6. The Real Presence in the Eucharist.
7. The sacrificial character of the Eucharist.
8. The propriety of praying for the dead.
9. The merit of voluntary chastity, poverty, and obedience,
and of penitential works.
10. The value of ceremonies in religion, and the sanctity
of holy places and holy things.
{61}
However certain persons may modify and explain certain of these
doctrines, no one can deny that the general drift of the writings
of the Oxford or Anglo-Catholic school, together with that of the
writings of the ancient Fathers and of the earlier English
divines which are translated or republished by them, was to
create and strengthen a belief in these doctrines. They were
allowed to be tenable without infidelity to the Anglican Church,
by persons in authority and others, who were themselves lower and
more Protestant in their opinions. Now, I will take for a moment
the position of an Anglo-Catholic, and, upon the basis of the
principles I have just enunciated, I will prove that an attitude
of hostility to the Roman Church is wrong and absurd, and that
the only consistent and tenable ground is that now taken by the
Unionists, represented by the _Union Review_.
"The Latin, Greek, and Anglican branches of the Catholic Church
constitute but One Visible Church, though their unity is
impaired and in part interrupted by mutual estrangement. As a
member of the Anglican Church, I look upon the Greek Church as
essentially sound and orthodox, and, if allowed to do so, would
wish to receive the sacraments, or, if a clergyman, to
officiate as such, in the churches of that Rite, if I happened
to be in a place where it was established. I look upon the
Latin Church, whose doctrine is the same with that of the Greek
Church, with the single exception of the Papal Supremacy, in
precisely the same light. Whatever I may think of the extent of
power claimed by the Bishop of Rome, I must allow that, in a
state of perfect intercommunion between all parts of the
Church, the chief place in the Catholic hierarchy and the right
of presidency in a general council belong to him. It is most
desirable that the Greek and Anglican Churches should be
restored again to communion with the Roman Church, and all
controversies respecting doctrine be definitely settled.
Meanwhile, the spirit of charity ought to be cultivated, and
all possible means taken to remove prejudice and
misunderstanding. In the present state of confusion and
irregularity, the ancient canons respecting one bishop in a
city cannot be considered as binding; and therefore Roman,
Greek, and Anglican congregations, formed under the authority
of bishops who are in regular communion with their own branch,
are equally legitimate and Catholic, wherever they may be.
{62}
The decisions of the particular national synods of the Anglican
branch have no final authority, and are only binding so far as
they declare the doctrines of the Universal Church. They are to
be interpreted in the 'Catholic sense,' and are strictly
obligatory only on those who have made a promise to maintain
them, and upon those only in the sense in which they are
imposed by authority, under censure. It is the Catholic Church,
and not the Church of England or the Protestant Episcopal
Church of the United States, of which I am a member by baptism,
and therefore I have no duties to either of those
ecclesiastical organizations, except such as arise out of their
relation to the great Catholic body, and are compatible with
the absolute allegiance I owe to its teaching and law's."
Such I conceive to be a statement of the only view an Anglican
can consistently take, unless he plants himself upon the common
Protestant ground. According to this, it is ridiculous for him to
abstain from going to Catholic services, reading Catholic books,
and cultivating the acquaintance of Catholic clergymen and
lay-people. The pretence of deposing or degrading clergymen,
because they pass to the communion of Rome, is an absurd and
impotent attempt at retaliation. What sin can there be in going
from St. Paul's Church, where the Mass is in English, celebrated
by a priest of the Anglican Rite, under the obedience of the
Catholic Bishop Whittingham, to the Cathedral, where the Mass is
in Latin, celebrated by a priest of the Latin Rite, under the
obedience of the Catholic Archbishop Spalding? How can there be
the guilt of apostasy involved in such an act? How can a person
"abjure the Catholic Communion" at Rome, by joining that which is
confessedly the principal branch of the Catholic Church?
{63}
A person who believes in this theory of branches may say it is
inexpedient and unwise for individuals to leave their particular
connection, that it perpetuates the estrangement, and that it is
better to wait for the time when the "English Branch" will be
reunited bodily to the parent tree. They cannot pretend, however,
that this is any thing more than a matter of private opinion. The
only legitimate means they have for keeping their adherents from
leaving them are argument and persuasion. It avails nothing to
say that if free access to Roman Catholic services and books,
and, in general, free intercourse with us is permitted, and the
charge of schism, violation of baptismal or ordination
obligations, &c., is abandoned, we shall gain over a great number
of their members. What of that? Those who adopt a theory are
bound to adhere to it. If this Anglo-Catholic theory has any
thing in it, it ought to be able to sustain the shock of a
collision. We have nothing but argument and persuasion on our
side. Why should their influence be dreaded? If Catholic
principles, sympathies, and practices gravitate toward Rome, let
them gravitate; it is a sign that the centre of gravity is there.
That the Oxford movement did gravitate toward Rome by its
original force is a plain fact, proved by the number, the
character, and the acts of those who have become converts to the
Catholic Church. Not that their testimony is a direct proof that
the Catholic Church is divine and infallible. This rests on
extrinsic, objective evidence. But it is a direct proof that the
pretence of the Catholicity of the Anglican communion cannot
furnish full and complete satisfaction to conscientious minds
that have imbibed Catholic principles. It professed to do so; but
it has failed. Those who still cling to it cannot deny that the
dissemination of their views generally produces in those who
embrace them, at some period of their mental history, a deep
misgiving respecting the safety of their position. This is not so
in the Catholic Church. Catholics, who retain a firm faith in the
principles of Catholicity, and endeavor to obey their
consciences, never have a misgiving that they are out of the
Church, or that there is any other church which has a better
claim to be regarded as the Catholic Church.
{64}
If human reason has any certitude, if the human mind is governed
by any fixed laws, if the concurrent judgments and convictions of
great numbers of the wisest and best men have any value, if there
is any such thing as logic, these considerations ought to have
weight.
But I am weary of chasing this Protean phantom of
Anglo-Catholicism through its shifting disguises, and its
labyrinthine mazes. And I gladly return to the theme of my
narrative.