He decided to mortify himself, to read St Thomas Aquinas, and to make
his 'night prayers forty instead of thirty minutes'. He determined
during Lent 'to use no pleasant bread (except on Sundays and feasts)
such as cake and sweetmeat'; but he added the proviso 'I do not include
plain biscuits'. Opposite this entry appears the word 'KEPT'. And yet
his back-slidings were many. Looking back over a single week, he was
obliged to register 'petulance twice' and 'complacent visions'. He heard
his curate being commended for bringing so many souls to God during
Lent, and he 'could not bear it'; but the remorse was terrible: 'I
abhorred myself on the spot, and looked upward for help.' He made out
list upon list of the Almighty's special mercies towards him, and they
included his creation, his regeneration, and (No. 5) 'the preservation
of my life six times to my knowledge:
(1) In illness at the age of nine.
(2) In the water.
(3) By a runaway horse at Oxford.
(4) By the same.
(5) By falling nearly through the ceiling of a church.
(6) Again by a fall of a horse. And I know not
how often in shooting, riding, etc.'
At last he became convalescent; but the spiritual experiences of those
agitated weeks left an indelible mark upon his mind, and prepared the
way for the great change which was to follow.
For he had other doubts besides those which held him in torment as to
his own salvation; he was in doubt about the whole framework of his
faith. Newman's conversion, he found, had meant something more to him
than he had first realised. It had seemed to come as a call to the
redoubling of his Anglican activities; but supposing, in reality, it
were a call towards something very different--towards an abandonment of
those activities altogether? It might be 'a trial', or again it might be
a 'leading'; how was he to judge? Already, before his illness, these
doubts had begun to take possession of his mind.
'I am conscious to myself,' he wrote in his Diary, 'of an extensively
changed feeling towards the Church of Rome ... The Church of England
seems to me to be diseased: 1. ORGANICALLY (six sub-headings). 2.
FUNCTIONALLY (seven sub-headings) ... Wherever it seems healthy, it
approximates the system of Rome.'
Then thoughts of the Virgin Mary suddenly began to assail him:
(1) If John the Baptist were sanctified from the womb,
how much more the B.V.!
(2) If Enoch and Elijah were exempted from death,
why not the B.V. from sin?
(3) It is a strange way of loving the Son to slight
the mother!'
The arguments seemed irresistible, and a few weeks later the following
entry occurs--'Strange thoughts have visited me:
(1) I have felt that the Episcopate of the Church of England is
secularised and bound down beyond hope....
(2) I feel as if a light had fallen upon me. My feeling about the
Roman Church is not intellectual. I have intellectual
difficulties, but the great moral difficulties seem melting.
(3) Something keeps rising and saying, "You will end in the Roman
Church".
He noted altogether twenty-five of these 'strange thoughts'. His mind
hovered anxiously round--
(1) The Incarnation,
(2) The Real Presence,
i. Regeneration,
ii. Eucharist, and
(3) The Exaltation of S. M. and Saints.
His twenty-second strange thought was as follows: 'How do I know where I
may be two years hence? Where was Newman five years ago?'
It was significant, but hardly surprising, that, after his illness,
Manning should have chosen to recuperate in Rome. He spent several
months there, and his Diary during the whole of that period is concerned
entirely with detailed descriptions of churches, ceremonies, and relics,
and with minute accounts of conversations with priests and nuns. There
is not a single reference either to the objects of art or to the
antiquities of the place; but another omission was still more
remarkable. Manning had a long interview with Pius IX, and his only
record of it is contained in the bald statement: 'Audience today at the
Vatican'. Precisely what passed on that occasion never transpired; all
that is known is that His Holiness expressed considerable surprise on
learning from the Archdeacon that the chalice was used in the Anglican
Church in the administration of Communion. 'What!' he exclaimed, is the
same chalice made use of by everyone?' 'I remember the pain I felt,'
said Manning, long afterwards, 'at seeing how unknown we were to the
Vicar of Jesus Christ. It made me feel our isolation.'
On his return to England, he took up once more the work in his
Archdeaconry with what appetite he might. Ravaged by doubt, distracted
by speculation, he yet managed to maintain an outward presence of
unshaken calm. His only confidant was Robert Wilberforce, to whom, for
the next two years, he poured forth in a series of letters, headed
'UNDER THE SEAL' to indicate that they contained the secrets of the
confessional--the whole history of his spiritual perturbations. The
irony of his position was singular; for, during the whole of this time,
Manning was himself holding back from the Church of Rome a host of
hesitating penitents by means of arguments which he was at the very
moment denouncing as fallacious to his own confessor. But what else
could he do? When he received, for instance, a letter such as the
following from an agitated lady, what was he to say?
'MY DEAR FATHER IN CHRIST,
' ... I am sure you would pity me and like to help me, if you knew the
unhappy, unsettled state my mind is in, and the misery of being
ENTIRELY, WHEREVER I AM, with those who look upon joining the Church of
Rome as the most awful "fall" conceivable to any one, and are devoid of
the smallest comprehension of how any enlightened person can do it....
My old Evangelical friends, with all my deep, deep love for them, do not
succeed in shaking me in the least....
'My brother has just published a book called "Regeneration", which all
my friends are reading and highly extolling; it has a very contrary
effect to what he would desire on my mind. I can read and understand it
all in an altogether different sense, and the facts which he quotes
about the articles as drawn up in 1536, and again in 1552, and of the
Irish articles of 1615 and 1634, STARTLE and SHAKE me about the Reformed
Church in England far more than anything else, and have done so ever
since I first saw them in Mr. Maskell's pamphlet (as quoted from Mr
Dodsworth's).
'I do hope you have some time and thought to pray for me still. Mr.
Galton's letters long ago grew into short formal notes, which hurt me
and annoyed me particularly, and I never answered his last, so,
literally, I have no one to say things to and get help from, which in
one sense is a comfort when my convictions seem to be leading me on and
on, and gaining strength in spite of all the dreariness of my lot.
'Do you know I can't help being very anxious and unhappy about poor
Sister Harriet. I am afraid of her GOING OUT OF HER MIND. She comforts
herself by an occasional outpouring of everything to me, and I had a
letter this morning.... She says Sister May has promised the Vicar never
to talk to her or allow her to talk on the subject with her, and I doubt
whether this can be good for her, because though she has lost her faith,
she says, in the Church of England, yet she never thinks of what she
could have faith in, and resolutely without inquiring into the question
determines not to be a Roman Catholic, so that really, you see, she is
allowing her mind to run adrift and yet perfectly powerless.
'Forgive my troubling you with this letter, and believe me to be always
your faithful, grateful and affectionate daughter,
'EMMA RYLE.
'P.S. I wish I could see you once more so very much.'
How was Manning, a director of souls, and a clergyman of the Church of
England, to reply that in sober truth there was very little to choose
between the state of mind of Sister Emma, or even of Sister Harriet, and
his own? The dilemma was a grievous one: when a soldier finds himself
fighting for a cause in which he has lost faith, it is treachery to
stop, and it is treachery to go on.
At last, in the seclusion of his library, Manning turned in agony to
those old writings which had provided Newman with so much instruction
and assistance; perhaps the Fathers would do something for him as well.
He ransacked the pages of St. Cyprian and St. Cyril; he went through the
complete works of St. Optatus and St. Leo; he explored the vast
treatises of Tertullian and Justin Martyr. He had a lamp put into his
phaeton, so that he might lose no time during his long winter drives.
There he sat, searching St. Chrysostom for some mitigation of his
anguish, while he sped along between the hedges to distant sufferers, to
whom he duly administered the sacraments according to the rites of the
English Church. He hurried back to commit to his Diary the analysis of
his reflections, and to describe, under the mystic formula of secrecy,
the intricate workings of his conscience to Robert Wilberforce. But,
alas! he was no Newman; and even the fourteen folios of St. Augustine
himself, strange to say, gave him very little help.
The final propulsion was to come from an entirely different quarter. In
November, 1847, the Reverend Mr. Gorham was presented by the Lord
Chancellor to the living of Bramford Speke in the diocese of Exeter. The
Bishop, Dr. Phillpotts, was a High Churchman, and he had reason to
believe that Mr. Gorham held evangelical opinions; he therefore
subjected him to an examination on doctrine, which took the form partly
of a verbal interrogatory, lasting thirty-eight hours, and partly of a
series of one hundred and forty-nine written questions. At the end of
the examination he came to the conclusion that Mr. Gorham held heretical
views on the subject of Baptismal Regeneration, and he therefore refused
to institute. Mr. Gorham, thereupon, took proceedings against the Bishop
in the Court of Arches. He lost his case; and he then appealed to the
judicial Committee of the Privy Council.
The questions at issue were taken very seriously by a large number of
persons. In the first place, there was the question of Baptismal
Regeneration itself. This is by no means an easy one to disentangle; but
it may be noted that the doctrine of Baptism includes: (1) God's
intention, that is to say, His purpose in electing certain persons to
eternal life--an abstruse and greatly controverted subject, upon which
the Church of England abstains from strict definition; (2) God's action,
whether by means of sacraments or otherwise--concerning which the Church
of England maintains the efficacy of sacraments,' but does not formally
deny that grace may be given by other means, repentance and faith being
present; and (3) the question whether sacramental grace is given
instrumentally, by and at the moment of the act of baptism, or in
consequence of an act of prevenient grace rendering the receiver
worthy--that is to say, whether sacramental grace in baptism is given
absolutely or conditionally.
It was over this last question that the dispute raged hottest in the
Gorham Case. The High Church party, represented by Dr. Phillpotts,
asserted that the mere act of baptism conferred regeneration upon the
recipient and washed away his original sin. To this the Evangelicals,
headed by Mr. Gorham, replied that, according to the Articles,
regeneration would not follow unless baptism was RIGHTLY received. What,
then, was the meaning of 'rightly'? Clearly it implied not merely lawful
administration, but worthy reception; worthiness, therefore, is the
essence of the sacrament; and worthiness means faith and repentance.
Now, two propositions were accepted by both parties--that all infants
are born in original sin, and that original sin could be washed away by
baptism. But how could both these propositions be true, argued Mr.
Gorham, if it was also true that faith and repentance were necessary
before baptism could come into operation at all? How could an infant in
arms be said to be in a state of faith and repentance? How, therefore,
could its original sin be washed away by baptism? And yet, as every one
agreed, washed away it was.
The only solution of the difficulty lay in the doctrine of prevenient
grace; and Mr. Gorham maintained that unless God performed an act of
prevenient grace by which the infant was endowed with faith and
repentance, no act of baptism could be effectual; though to whom, and
under what conditions, prevenient grace was given, Mr. Gorham confessed
himself unable to decide. The light thrown by the Bible upon the whole
matter seemed somewhat dubious, for whereas the baptism of St. Peter's
disciples at Jerusalem and St. Philip's at Samaria was followed by the
gift of the Spirit, in the case of Cornelius the sacrament succeeded the
gift. St. Paul also was baptised; and as for the language of St. John
iii 5; Rom. vi 3, 4; I Peter iii 21, it admits of more than one
interpretation. There could, however, be no doubt that the Church of
England assented to Dr. Phillpotts' opinion; the question was whether or
not she excluded Mr. Gorham's. If it was decided that she did, it was
clear that henceforward, there would be very little peace for
Evangelicals within her fold.
But there was another issue, even more fundamental than that of
Baptismal Regeneration itself, involved in the Gorham trial. An Act
passed in 1833 had constituted the Judicial Committee of the Privy
Council the supreme court of appeal for such cases; and this Committee
was a body composed entirely of laymen. It was thus obvious that the
Royal Supremacy was still a fact, and that a collection of lawyers
appointed by the Crown had the legal right to formulate the religious
doctrine of the Church of England. In 1850 their judgment was delivered;
they reversed the decision of the Court of Arches, and upheld the
position of Mr. Gorham. Whether his views were theologically correct or
not, they said, was not their business; it was their business to decide
whether the opinions under consideration were contrary or repugnant to
the doctrine of the Church of England as enjoined upon the clergy by its
Articles, Formularies, and Rubrics; and they had come to the conclusion
that they were not. The judgement still holds good; and to this day, a
clergyman of the Church of England is quite at liberty to believe that
Regeneration does not invariably take place when an infant is baptised.
The blow fell upon no one with greater violence than upon Manning. Not
only was the supreme efficacy of the sign of the cross upon a baby's
forehead one of his favourite doctrines, but up to that moment he had
been convinced that the Royal Supremacy was a mere accident--a temporary
usurpation which left the spiritual dominion of the Church essentially
untouched. But now the horrid reality rose up before him, crowned and
triumphant; it was all too clear that an Act of Parliament, passed by
Jews, Roman Catholics, and Dissenters, was the ultimate authority which
decided upon the momentous niceties of the Anglican faith. Mr. Gladstone
also, was deeply perturbed. It was absolutely necessary, he wrote, to
'rescue and defend the conscience of the Church from the present hideous
system'. An agitation was set on foot, and several influential
Anglicans, with Manning at their head, drew up and signed a formal
protest against the Gorham judgment. Mr. Gladstone however, proposed
another method of procedure: precipitate action, he declared, must be
avoided at all costs, and he elaborated a scheme for securing
procrastination, by which a covenant was to bind all those who believed
that an article of the creed had been abolished by Act of Parliament to
take no steps in any direction, nor to announce their intention of doing
so, until a given space of time had elapsed. Mr. Gladstone was hopeful
that some good might come of this--though indeed he could not be sure.
'Among others,' he wrote to Manning, 'I have consulted Robert
Wilberforce and Wegg-Prosser, and they seemed inclined to favour my
proposal. It might, perhaps, have kept back Lord Feilding. But he is
like a cork.'
The proposal was certainly not favoured by Manning. Protests and
procrastinations, approving Wegg-Prossers and cork-like Lord
Feildings--all this was feeding the wind and folly; the time for action
had come.
'I can no longer continue,' he wrote to Robert Wilberforce, 'under oath
and subscription binding me to the Royal Supremacy in Ecclesiastical
causes, being convinced:
(1) That it is a violation of the Divine Office of the Church.
(2) That it has involved the Church of England in a separation
from the Universal Church, which separation I cannot clear of the
character of schism.
(3) That it has thereby suspended and prevented the functions of
the Church of England.'
It was in vain that Robert Wilberforce pleaded, in vain that Mr.
Gladstone urged upon his mind the significance of John iii 8. ['The wind
bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst
not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth; so is everyone that is
born of the Spirit.']
'I admit,' Mr. Gladstone wrote, 'that the words might in some way be
satisfied by supposing our Lord simply to mean "the facts of nature are
unintelligible, therefore, be not afraid if revealed truths be likewise
beyond the compass of the understanding"; but this seems to me a meagre
meaning.'
Such considerations could hold him no longer, and Manning executed the
resignation of his office and benefice before a public notary. Soon
afterwards, in the little Chapel off Buckingham Palace Road, kneeling
beside Mr. Gladstone, he worshipped for the last time as an Anglican.
Thirty years later the Cardinal told how, just before the Communion
service commenced, he turned to his friends with the words:
'I can no longer take the Communion in the Church of England.' 'I rose
up, and laying my hand on Mr. Gladstone's shoulder, said "Come". It was
the parting of the ways. Mr. Gladstone remained; and I went my way. Mr.
Gladstone still remains where I left him.'
On April 6th, 1851, the final step was taken: Manning was received into
the Roman Catholic Church. Now at last, after the long struggle, his
mind was at rest.
'I know what you mean,' he wrote to Robert Wilberforce, 'by saying that
one sometimes feels as if all this might turn out to be only another
"Land of Shadows". I have felt it in time past, but not now. The
theologia from Nice to St. Thomas Aquinas, and the undivided unity
suffused throughout the world, of which the Cathedra Petri is the
centre, is now 1800 years old, and mightier in every power now than
ever--in intellect, in science, in separation from the world; and purer
too, refined by 300 years of conflict with the modern infidel
civilisation--all of this is a fact more solid than the earth.'