THE ROMAN QUESTION
The Hampden controversy had contributed to bring to the front a
question, which from the first starting of the Tracts had made itself
felt, but which now became a pressing one. If the Church of England
claimed to be part of the Catholic Church, what was the answer of the
Church of England to the claims and charges of the Church of Rome? What
were the true distinctions between the doctrines of the two Churches on
the great points on which they were supposed to be at issue? The vague
outcry of Popery had of course been raised both against the general
doctrine of the Church, enforced in the Tracts, and against special
doctrines and modes of speaking, popularly identified with Romanism; and
the answer had been an appeal to the authority of the most learned and
authoritative of our writers. But, of course, to the general public this
learning was new; and the cry went on with a dreary and stupid monotony.
But the charges against Dr. Hampden led his defenders to adopt as their
best weapon an aggressive policy. To the attack on his orthodoxy, the
counter buffet was the charge against his chief opponents of secret or
open Romanising. In its keenest and most popular form it was put forth
in a mocking pamphlet written probably under Whately's inspiration by
his most trusted confidant, Dr. Dickinson, in which, in the form of a
"Pastoral Epistle from his Holiness the Pope to some Members of the
University of Oxford," the Tract-writers are made to appear as the
emissaries and secret tools of Rome, as in a _jeu d'esprit_ of Whately's
they are made to appear as the veiled prophets of infidelity.[68] It was
clever, but not clever enough to stand, at least in Oxford, against Dr.
Pusey's dignified and gravely earnest _Remonstrance_ against its
injustice and trifling. But the fire of all Dr. Hampden's friends had
been drawn on the leaders of the movement. With them, and almost alone
with them, the opposition to him was made a personal matter. As time
went on, those who had been as hot as they against Dr. Hampden managed
to get their part in the business forgotten. Old scores between
Orthodox, Evangelicals, and Liberals were wiped out, and the Tractarians
were left to bear alone the odium of the "persecution" of Dr. Hampden.
It must be said that they showed no signs of caring for it.
But the Roman controversy was looming in earnest, and it was idle to
expect to keep it long out of sight. The Tracts had set forth with
startling vehemence the forgotten claims of the Church. One reason why
this had been done was the belief, as stated in the first volume of
them, "that nothing but these neglected doctrines, faithfully preached,
will repress the extension of Popery, for which the ever-multiplying
divisions of the religious world are too clearly preparing the way."[69]
The question, What _is_ the Church? was one which the conditions of the
times would not permit men any longer to leave alone. It had become
urgent to meet it clearly and decisively. "We could not move a step in
comfort till this was done."[70] "The controversy with the Romanists,"
writes Mr. Newman in No. 71 of the Tracts, about the end of 1835, "has
overtaken us 'like a summer's cloud.' We find ourselves in various parts
of the country preparing for it, yet, when we look back, we cannot
trace the steps by which we arrived at our present position. We do not
recollect what our feelings were this time last year on the subject;
what was the state of our apprehensions and anticipations. All we know
is, that here we are, from long security ignorant why we are not Roman
Catholics, and they on the other side are said to be spreading and
strengthening on all sides of us, vaunting of their success, real or
apparent, and taunting us with our inability to argue with them."
The attitude taken by Mr. Newman at this time, as regards the Roman
Church, both in the Tracts and in his book on _Romanism and Popular
Protestantism_, published in the early months of 1836, was a new one. He
had started, as he tells us, with the common belief that the Pope was
Antichrist, and that the case was so clear against the whole system,
doctrinal and practical, of the Church of Rome, that it scarcely needed
further examination. His feeling against Rome had been increased by the
fierce struggle about Emancipation, and by the political conduct of the
Roman Catholic party afterwards; and his growing dissatisfaction with
the ordinary Protestantism had no visible effect in softening this
feeling. Hurrell Froude's daring questions had made his friends feel
that there might be more to be known about the subject than they yet
knew; yet what the fellow-travellers saw of things abroad in their visit
to the South in 1832 did not impress them favourably. "They are wretched
Tridentines everywhere," was Froude's comment. But attention had been
drawn to the subject, and its deep interest and importance and
difficulty recognised. Men began to read with new eyes. Froude's keen
and deep sense of shortcomings at home disposed him to claim equity and
candour in judging of the alleged faults and corruptions of the Church
abroad. It did more, it disposed him--naturally enough, but still
unfairly, and certainly without adequate knowledge--to treat Roman
shortcomings with an indulgence which he refused to English. Mr. Newman,
knowing more, and more comprehensive in his view of things, and
therefore more cautious and guarded than Froude, was much less ready to
allow a favourable interpretation of the obvious allegations against
Rome. But thought and reading, and the authority of our own leading
divines, had brought him to the conviction that whatever was to be said
against the modern Roman Church--and the charges against it were very
heavy--it was still, amid serious corruption and error, a teacher to the
nations of the Christian creed and hope; it had not forfeited, any more
than the English Church, its title to be a part of that historic body
which connects us with the Apostles of our Lord. It had a strong and
consistent theory to oppose to its assailants; it had much more to say
for itself than the popular traditions supposed. This was no new idea in
Anglican divinity, however ill it might sort with the current language
of Protestant controversy. But our old divines, more easily satisfied
than we with the course of things at home under the protection of the
Stuart kings, and stung to bitter recrimination by the insults and the
unscrupulous political intrigues of Roman Catholic agents, had exhausted
the language of vituperation against a great aggressive rival, which was
threatening everything that they held dear. They had damaged their own
character for fairness, and overlaid their substantial grounds of
objection and complaint, by this unbalanced exaggeration. Mr. Newman, in
his study of these matters, early saw both the need and the difficulty
of discrimination in the Roman controversy. It had to be waged, not as
of old, with penal legislation behind, but against adversaries who
could now make themselves listened to, and before a public sufficiently
robust in its Protestantism, to look with amused interest on a
dialectical triumph of the Roman over the Anglican claims. Romanism, he
thought, was fatal both to his recent hopes for the English Church, and
to the honour and welfare of Christianity at large. But in opposing it,
ground loosely taken of old must be carefully examined, and if
untenable, abandoned. Arguments which proved too much, which availed
against any Church at all, must be given up. Popular objections, arising
from ignorance or misconception, must be reduced to their true limits or
laid aside. The controversy was sure to be a real one, and nothing but
what was real and would stand scrutiny was worth anything in it.
Mr. Newman had always been impressed with the greatness of the Roman
Church. Of old it had seemed to him great with the greatness of
Antichrist. Now it seemed great with the strange weird greatness of a
wonderful mixed system, commanding from its extent of sway and its
imperial authority, complicated and mysterious in its organisation and
influence, in its devotion and its superstitions, and surpassing every
other form of religion both in its good and its evil.[71] What now
presented itself to Mr. Newman's thoughts, instead of the old notion of
a pure Church on one side, and a corrupt Church on the other, sharply
opposed to one another, was the more reasonable supposition of two great
portions of the divided Church, each with its realities of history and
fact and character, each with its special claims and excellences, each
with its special sins and corruptions, and neither realising in practice
and fact all it professed to be on paper; each of which further, in the
conflicts of past days, had deeply, almost unpardonably, wronged the
other. The Church of England was in possession, with its own call and
its immense work to do, and striving to do it. Whatever the Church of
Rome was abroad, it was here an intruder and a disturber. That to his
mind was the fact and the true position of things; and this ought to
govern the character and course of controversy. The true line was not to
denounce and abuse wholesale, not to attack with any argument, good or
bad, not to deny or ignore what was solid in the Roman ground, and good
and elevated in the Roman system, but admitting all that fairly ought to
be admitted, to bring into prominence, not for mere polemical
denunciation, but for grave and reasonable and judicial condemnation,
all that was extravagant and arrogant in Roman assumptions, and all that
was base, corrupt, and unchristian in the popular religion, which, with
all its claims to infallibility and authority, Rome not only permitted
but encouraged. For us to condemn Rome wholesale, as was ordinarily the
fashion, even in respectable writers, was as wrong, as unfair, as
unprofitable to the cause of truth and Christianity, as the Roman
charges against us were felt by us to be ignorant and unjust. Rome
professes like England to continue the constitution, doctrine,
traditions, and spirit of the ancient and undivided Church: and so far
as she does so--and she does so in a great degree--we can have no
quarrel with her. But in a great degree also, she does this only in
profession and as a theory: she claims the witness and suffrage of
antiquity, but she interprets it at her own convenience and by her own
authority. We cannot claim exemption from mistakes, from deviations from
our own standard and principles, any more than Rome; but while she
remains as she is, and makes the monstrous claims of infallibility and
supremacy, there is nothing for English Churchmen but to resist her.
Union is impossible. Submission is impossible. What we have to beware of
for our own sake, as well as for our cause, are false arguments, unreal
objections, ignorant allegations. There is enough on the very surface,
in her audacious assertions and high-handed changes, for popular
arguments against her, without having recourse to exaggeration and
falsehood; she may be a very faulty Church, without being Babylon and
Antichrist. And in the higher forms of argument, there is abundance in
those provinces of ancient theology and ecclesiastical history and law,
which Protestant controversialists have commonly surrendered and left
open to their opponents, to supply a more telling weapon than any which
these controversialists have used.
This line, though substantially involved in the theory of our most
learned divines, from Andrewes to Wake, was new in its moderation and
reasonable caution; in its abstention from insult and vague abuse, in
its recognition of the _primâ facie_ strength of much of the Roman case,
in its fearless attempt, in defiance of the deepest prejudices, to face
the facts and conditions of the question. Mr. Newman dared to know and
to acknowledge much that our insular self-satisfaction did not know, and
did not care to know, of real Christian life in the Church of Rome. He
dared to admit that much that was popularly held to be Popish was
ancient, Catholic, edifying; he dared to warn Churchmen that the loose
unsifted imputations, so securely hazarded against Rome, were both
discreditable and dangerous. All this, from one whose condemnation of
Rome was decisive and severe, was novel. The attempt, both in its spirit
and its ability, was not unworthy of being part of the general effort to
raise the standard of thought and teaching in the English Church. It
recalled men from slovenly prejudices to the study of the real facts of
the living world. It narrowed the front of battle, but it strengthened
it enormously. The volume on _Romanism and Popular Protestantism_ is not
an exhaustive survey of the controversy with Rome or of the theory of
the Church. There are great portions of the subject, both theological
and historical, which it did not fall within the scope of the book to
touch. It was unsystematic and incomplete. But so far as its argument
extended, it almost formed an epoch in this kind of controversial
writing. It showed the command of a man of learning over all the
technical points and minutiae of a question highly scholastical in its
conceptions and its customary treatment, and it presented this question
in its bearings and consequences on life and practice with the freedom
and breadth of the most vigorous popular writing. The indictment against
Rome was no vague or general one. It was one of those arguments which
cut the ground from under a great established structure of reasonings
and proofs. And its conclusions, clear and measured, but stern, were
the more impressive, because they came from one who did not disguise his
feeling that there was much in what was preserved in the Roman system to
admire and to learn from.
The point which he chose for his assault was indeed the key of the Roman
position--the doctrine of Infallibility. He was naturally led to this
side of the question by the stress which the movement had laid on the
idea of the Church as the witness and teacher of revealed truth: and the
immediate challenge given by the critics or opponents of the movement
was, how to distinguish this lofty idea of the Church, with its claim to
authority, if it was at all substantial, from the imposing and
consistent theory of Romanism. He urged against the Roman claim of
Infallibility two leading objections. One was the way in which the
assumed infallibility of the present Church was made to override and
supersede, in fact, what in words was so ostentatiously put forward, the
historical evidence of antiquity to doctrine, expressed by the phrase,
the "consent of the Fathers." The other objection was the inherent
contradiction of the notion of infallibility to the conditions of human
reception of teaching and knowledge, and its practical uselessness as an
assurance of truth, its partly delusive, partly mischievous, working.
But he felt, as all deep minds must feel, that it is easier to overthrow
the Roman theory of Church authority than to replace it by another,
equally complete and commanding, and more unassailable. He was quite
alive to the difficulties of the Anglican position; but he was a
disciple in the school of Bishop Butler, and had learned as a first
principle to recognise the limitations of human knowledge, and the
unphilosophical folly of trying to round off into finished and
pretentious schemes our fragmentary yet certain notices of our own
condition and of God's dealings with it. He followed his teacher in
insisting on the reality and importance of moral evidence as opposed to
demonstrative proof; and he followed the great Anglican divines in
asserting that there was a true authority, varying in its degrees, in
the historic Church; that on the most fundamental points of religion
this authority was trustworthy and supreme; that on many other questions
it was clear and weighty, though it could not decide everything. This
view of the "prophetical office of the Church" had the dialectical
disadvantage of appearing to be a compromise, to many minds a fatal
disadvantage. It got the name of the _Via Media_; a satisfactory one to
practical men like Dr. Hook, to whom it recommended itself for use in
popular teaching; but to others, in aftertimes, an ill-sounding phrase
of dislike, which summed up the weakness of the Anglican case. Yet it
only answered to the certain fact, that in the early and undivided
Church there was such a thing as authority, and there was no such thing
known as Infallibility. It was an appeal to the facts of history and
human nature against the logical exigencies of a theory. Men must
transcend the conditions of our experience if they want the certainty
which the theory of Infallibility speaks of.
There were especially two weak points in this view of Anglicanism. Mr.
Newman felt and admitted them, and of course they were forced on his
attention by controversialists on both sides; by the Ultra Protestant
school, whose modes of dealing with Scripture he had exposed with
merciless logic and by the now eager Roman disputants, of whom Dr.
Wiseman was the able and not over-scrupulous chief. The first of these
points was that the authority of the undivided Church, which Anglicanism
invoked, though it completely covered the great foundations of Christian
doctrine, our faith as to the nature of God, did not cover with equal
completeness other important points of controversy, such as those
raised at the Reformation as to the Sacraments, and the justification of
the sinner. The Anglican answer was that though the formal and conciliar
authority was not the same in each case, the patristic literature of the
time of the great councils, all that it took for granted and preserved
as current belief and practice, all that resulted from the questions and
debates of the time, formed a body of proof, which carried with it moral
evidence only short of authoritative definition, and was so regarded in
the Anglican formularies. These formularies implied the authority of the
Church to speak; and what was defined on this authority was based on
good evidence, though there were portions of its teaching which had even
better. The other point was more serious. "Your theory," was the
objection, "is nothing but a paper theory; it never was a reality; it
never can be. There may be an ideal halting-place, there is neither a
logical nor an actual one, between Romanism and the ordinary negations
of Protestantism." The answer to the challenge then was, "Let us see if
it cannot be realised. It has recognised foundations to build upon, and
the impediments and interruptions which have hindered it are well known.
Let us see if it will not turn out something more than a paper theory."
That was the answer given at the time, abandoned ten years afterwards.
But this at least may be said, that the longer experience of the last
fifty years has shown that the Church of England has been working more
and more on such a theory, and that the Church of England, whatever its
faults may be, is certainly not a Church only on paper.
But on the principles laid down in this volume, the Roman controversy,
in its varying forms, was carried on--for the time by Mr. Newman,
permanently by the other leaders of the movement. In its main outlines,
the view has become the accepted Anglican view. Many other most
important matters have come into the debate. The publicly altered
attitude of the Papacy has indefinitely widened the breach between
England and Rome. But the fundamental idea of the relations and
character of the two Churches remains the same as it was shadowed forth
in 1836.
One very important volume on these questions ought not to be passed by
without notice. This was the _Treatise on the Church of Christ_, 1838,
by Mr. W. Palmer, who had already by his _Origines_ of the English
Ritual, 1832, done much to keep up that interest of Churchmen in the
early devotional language of the Church, which had first been called
forth by Bishop Lloyd's lectures on the Prayer Book. The _Treatise on
the Church_ was an honour to English theology and learning; in point of
plan and structure we have few books like it.[72] It is comprehensive,
methodical, well-compacted, and, from its own point of view,
exhaustive. It is written with full knowledge of the state of the
question at the time, both on the Anglican side and on the Roman. Its
author evades no objection, and is aware of most. It is rigorous in
form, and has no place for anything but substantial argument. It is a
book which, as the _Apologia_ tells us, commanded the respect of such an
accomplished controversialist as Perrone; and, it may be added, of a
theologian of an opposite school, Dr. Döllinger. It is also one on which
the highest value has been set by Mr. Gladstone. It is remarkable that
it did not exercise more influence on religious thought in Oxford at the
critical time when it appeared. But it had defects, and the moment was
against it. It was dry and formal--inevitably so, from the scientific
plan deliberately adopted for it; it treated as problems of the
theological schools, to be discussed by the rules of severe and
passionless disputation, questions which were once more, after the
interval of more than a century, beginning to touch hearts and
consciences, and were felt to be fraught with the gravest practical
issues. And Mr. Newman, in his mode of dealing with them, unsystematic,
incomplete, unsatisfactory in many ways as it was, yet saw in them not
abstract and scholastic inquiries, however important, but matters in
which not only sound argument, but sympathy and quick intelligence of
the conditions and working of the living minds around him, were needed
to win their attention and interest. To persons accustomed to Mr.
Newman's habit of mind and way of writing, his ease, his frankness, his
candour, his impatience of conventionality, his piercing insight into
the very centre of questions, his ever-ready recognition of nature and
reality, his range of thought, his bright and clear and fearless style
of argument, his undisplayed but never unfelt consciousness of the true
awfulness of anything connected with religion, any stiff and heavy way
of treating questions which he had treated would have seemed
unattractive and unpersuasive. He had spoiled his friends for any mere
technical handling, however skilful, of great and critical subjects. He
himself pointed out in a review the unique merit and the real value of
Mr. Palmer's book, pointing out also, significantly enough, where it
fell short, both in substance and in manner. Observing that the
"scientific" system of the English Church is not yet "sufficiently
cleared and adjusted," and adding a variety of instances of this
deficiency, he lets us see what he wanted done, where difficulties most
pressed upon himself, and where Mr. Palmer had missed the real substance
of such difficulties. Looking at it by the light of after-events, we can
see the contradiction and reaction produced by Mr. Palmer's too
optimist statements. Still, Mr. Newman's praise was sincere and
discriminating. But Mr. Palmer's book, though never forgotten, scarcely
became, what it at another time might well have become, an English
text-book.
FOOTNOTES:
[68] Whately's _Life_, ed. 1875, pp. 187-190.
[69] Advertisement to vol. i. 1st Nov. 1834.
[70] _Apologia_, p. 139.
[71] Vide _Lyra Apostolica_, Nos. 170, 172:
How shall I name thee, Light of the wide West,
Or heinous error-seat?...
Oh, that thy creed were sound!
For thou dost soothe the heart, thou Church of Rome,
By thy unwearied watch and varied round
Of service, in thy Saviour's holy home.
And comp. No. 171, _The Cruel Church_.
[72] "The most important theological work which has lately appeared is
Mr. Palmer's _Treatise on the Church_.... Whatever judgment may be
formed of the conclusions to which he has come on the variety of points
which he had to consider, we cannot contemplate without admiration, and
(if it were right) without envy, the thorough treatment which his
subject has received at his hands. It is indeed a work quite in
character with the religious movement which has commenced in various
parts of the Church, displaying a magnificence of design similar to that
of the Bishop of London's plan of fifty new churches, and Dr. Pusey, of
Oxford's, projected translation of the Fathers."--_Brit. Crit._. July
1838. Short Notices.