Part VII

General answer to Mr. Kingsley

From the time that I became a Catholic, of course I have no further

history of my religious opinions to narrate. In saying this, I do not

mean to say that my mind has been idle, or that I have given up

thinking on theological subjects; but that I have had no changes to

record, and have had no anxiety of heart whatever. I have been in

perfect peace and contentment. I never have had one doubt. I was

not conscious to myself, on my conversion, of any difference of

thought or of temper from what I had before. I was not conscious of

firmer faith in the fundamental truths of revelation, or of more

self-command; I had not more fervour; but it was like coming into

port after a rough sea; and my happiness on that score remains to

this day without interruption.

Nor had I any trouble about receiving those additional articles,

which are not found in the Anglican Creed. Some of them I believed

already, but not any one of them was a trial to me. I made a

profession of them upon my reception with the greatest ease, and I

have the same ease in believing them now. I am far of course from

denying that every article of the Christian Creed, whether as held by

Catholics or by Protestants, is beset with intellectual difficulties;

and it is simple fact, that, for myself, I cannot answer those

difficulties. Many persons are very sensitive of the difficulties of

religion; I am as sensitive as any one; but I have never been able to

see a connection between apprehending those difficulties, however

keenly, and multiplying them to any extent, and doubting the

doctrines to which they are attached. Ten thousand difficulties do

not make one doubt, as I understand the subject; difficulty and

doubt are incommensurate. There of course may be difficulties in

the evidence; but I am speaking of difficulties intrinsic to the

doctrines, or to their compatibility with each other. A man may be

annoyed that he cannot work out a mathematical problem, of which the

answer is or is not given to him, without doubting that it admits of

an answer, or that a particular answer is the true one. Of all points

of faith, the being of a God is, to my own apprehension, encompassed

with most difficulty, and borne in upon our minds with most power.

People say that the doctrine of Transubstantiation is difficult to

believe; I did not believe the doctrine till I was a Catholic. I had

no difficulty in believing it as soon as I believed that the Catholic

Roman Church was the oracle of God, and that she had declared this

doctrine to be part of the original revelation. It is difficult,

impossible to imagine, I grant--but how is it difficult to believe?

Yet Macaulay thought it so difficult to believe, that he had need of

a believer in it of talents as eminent as Sir Thomas More, before he

could bring himself to conceive that the Catholics of an enlightened

age could resist "the overwhelming force of the argument against it."

"Sir Thomas More," he says, "is one of the choice specimens of wisdom

and virtue; and the doctrine of transubstantiation is a kind of proof

charge. A faith which stands that test, will stand any test." But for

myself, I cannot indeed prove it, I cannot tell _how_ it is; but I

say, "Why should it not be? What's to hinder it? What do I know of

substance or matter? just as much as the greatest philosophers, and

that is nothing at all;"--so much is this the case, that there is a

rising school of philosophy now, which considers phenomena to

constitute the whole of our knowledge in physics. The Catholic

doctrine leaves phenomena alone. It does not say that the phenomena

go; on the contrary, it says that they remain: nor does it say that

the same phenomena are in several places at once. It deals with what

no one on earth knows anything about, the material substances

themselves. And, in like manner, of that majestic article of the

Anglican as well as of the Catholic Creed--the doctrine of the

Trinity in Unity. What do I know of the essence of the Divine Being?

I know that my abstract idea of three is simply incompatible with my

idea of one; but when I come to the question of concrete fact, I have

no means of proving that there is not a sense in which one and three

can equally be predicated of the Incommunicable God.

But I am going to take upon myself the responsibility of more than

the mere creed of the Church; as the parties accusing me are

determined I shall do. They say, that now, in that I am a Catholic,

though I may not have offences of my own against honesty to answer

for, yet, at least, I am answerable for the offences of others, of my

co-religionists, of my brother priests, of the Church herself. I am

quite willing to accept the responsibility; and, as I have been able,

as I trust, by means of a few words, to dissipate, in the minds of

all those who do not begin with disbelieving me, the suspicion with

which so many Protestants start, in forming their judgment of

Catholics, viz. that our creed is actually set up in inevitable

superstition and hypocrisy, as the original sin of Catholicism; so

now I will go on, as before, identifying myself with the Church and

vindicating it--not of course denying the enormous mass of sin and

ignorance which exists of necessity in that world-wide multiform

communion--but going to the proof of this one point, that its system

is in no sense dishonest, and that therefore the upholders and

teachers of that system, as such, have a claim to be acquitted in

their own persons of that odious imputation.

Starting then with the being of a God (which, as I have said, is as

certain to me as the certainty of my own existence, though when I try

to put the grounds of that certainty into logical shape I find a

difficulty in doing so in mood and figure to my satisfaction), I look

out of myself into the world of men, and there I see a sight which

fills me with unspeakable distress. The world seems simply to give

the lie to that great truth, of which my whole being is so full; and

the effect upon me is, in consequence, as a matter of necessity, as

confusing as if it denied that I am in existence myself. If I looked

into a mirror, and did not see my face, I should have the sort of

feeling which actually comes upon me, when I look into this living

busy world, and see no reflexion of its Creator. This is, to me, one

of the great difficulties of this absolute primary truth, to which I

referred just now. Were it not for this voice, speaking so clearly in

my conscience and my heart, I should be an atheist, or a pantheist,

or a polytheist when I looked into the world. I am speaking for

myself only; and I am far from denying the real force of the

arguments in proof of a God, drawn from the general facts of human

society, but these do not warm me or enlighten me; they do not take

away the winter of my desolation, or make the buds unfold and the

leaves grow within me, and my moral being rejoice. The sight of the

world is nothing else than the prophet's scroll, full of

"lamentations, and mourning, and woe."

To consider the world in its length and breadth, its various history,

the many races of man, their starts, their fortunes, their mutual

alienation, their conflicts; and then their ways, habits,

governments, forms of worship; their enterprises, their aimless

courses, their random achievements and acquirements, the impotent

conclusion of long-standing facts, the tokens so faint and broken,

of a superintending design, the blind evolution of what turn out

to be great powers or truths, the progress of things, as if from

unreasoning elements, not towards final causes, the greatness and

littleness of man, his far-reaching aims, his short duration, the

curtain hung over his futurity, the disappointments of life, the

defeat of good, the success of evil, physical pain, mental anguish,

the prevalence and intensity of sin, the pervading idolatries, the

corruptions, the dreary hopeless irreligion, that condition of the

whole race, so fearfully yet exactly described in the Apostle's

words, "having no hope and without God in the world,"--all this is a

vision to dizzy and appal; and inflicts upon the mind the sense of a

profound mystery, which is absolutely beyond human solution.

What shall be said to this heart-piercing, reason-bewildering fact? I

can only answer, that either there is no Creator, or this living

society of men is in a true sense discarded from His presence. Did I

see a boy of good make and mind, with the tokens on him of a refined

nature, cast upon the world without provision, unable to say whence

he came, his birthplace or his family connections, I should conclude

that there was some mystery connected with his history, and that he

was one, of whom, from one cause or other, his parents were ashamed.

Thus only should I be able to account for the contrast between the

promise and condition of his being. And so I argue about the

world;--_if_ there be a God, _since_ there is a God, the human race

is implicated in some terrible aboriginal calamity. It is out of

joint with the purposes of its Creator. This is a fact, a fact as

true as the fact of its existence; and thus the doctrine of what is

theologically called original sin becomes to me almost as certain as

that the world exists, and as the existence of God.

And now, supposing it were the blessed and loving will of the Creator

to interfere in this anarchical condition of things, what are we to

suppose would be the methods which might be necessarily or naturally

involved in His object of mercy? Since the world is in so abnormal a

state, surely it would be no surprise to me, if the interposition

were of necessity equally extraordinary--or what is called

miraculous. But that subject does not directly come into the scope of

my present remarks. Miracles as evidence, involve an argument; and of

course I am thinking of some means which does not immediately run

into argument. I am rather asking what must be the face-to-face

antagonist, by which to withstand and baffle the fierce energy of

passion and the all-corroding, all-dissolving scepticism of the

intellect in religious inquiries? I have no intention at all to deny,

that truth is the real object of our reason, and that, if it does not

attain to truth, either the premiss or the process is in fault; but I

am not speaking of right reason, but of reason as it acts in fact and

concretely in fallen man. I know that even the unaided reason, when

correctly exercised, leads to a belief in God, in the immortality of

the soul, and in a future retribution; but I am considering it

actually and historically; and in this point of view, I do not think

I am wrong in saying that its tendency is towards a simple unbelief

in matters of religion. No truth, however sacred, can stand against

it, in the long run; and hence it is that in the pagan world, when

our Lord came, the last traces of the religious knowledge of former

times were all but disappearing from those portions of the world in

which the intellect had been active and had had a career.

And in these latter days, in like manner, outside the Catholic Church

things are tending, with far greater rapidity than in that old time

from the circumstance of the age, to atheism in one shape or other.

What a scene, what a prospect, does the whole of Europe present at

this day! and not only Europe, but every government and every

civilization through the world, which is under the influence of the

European mind! Especially, for it most concerns us, how sorrowful, in

the view of religion, even taken in its most elementary, most

attenuated form, is the spectacle presented to us by the educated

intellect of England, France, and Germany! Lovers of their country

and of their race, religious men, external to the Catholic Church,

have attempted various expedients to arrest fierce wilful human

nature in its onward course, and to bring it into subjection. The

necessity of some form of religion for the interests of humanity, has

been generally acknowledged: but where was the concrete

representative of things invisible, which would have the force and

the toughness necessary to be a breakwater against the deluge? Three

centuries ago the establishment of religion, material, legal, and

social, was generally adopted as the best expedient for the purpose,

in those countries which separated from the Catholic Church; and for

a long time it was successful; but now the crevices of those

establishments are admitting the enemy. Thirty years ago, education

was relied upon: ten years ago there was a hope that wars would cease

for ever, under the influence of commercial enterprise and the reign

of the useful and fine arts; but will any one venture to say that

there is anything anywhere on this earth, which will afford a fulcrum

for us, whereby to keep the earth from moving onwards?

The judgment, which experience passes on establishments or education,

as a means of maintaining religious truth in this anarchical world,

must be extended even to Scripture, though Scripture be divine.

Experience proves surely that the Bible does not answer a purpose,

for which it was never intended. It may be accidentally the means of

the conversion of individuals; but a book, after all, cannot make a

stand against the wild living intellect of man, and in this day it

begins to testify, as regards its own structure and contents, to the

power of that universal solvent, which is so successfully acting upon

religious establishments.

Supposing then it to be the Will of the Creator to interfere in human

affairs, and to make provisions for retaining in the world a

knowledge of Himself, so definite and distinct as to be proof against

the energy of human scepticism, in such a case--I am far from saying

that there was no other way--but there is nothing to surprise the

mind, if He should think fit to introduce a power into the world,

invested with the prerogative of infallibility in religious matters.

Such a provision would be a direct, immediate, active, and prompt

means of withstanding the difficulty; it would be an instrument

suited to the need; and, when I find that this is the very claim of

the Catholic Church, not only do I feel no difficulty in admitting

the idea, but there is a fitness in it, which recommends it to my

mind. And thus I am brought to speak of the Church's infallibility,

as a provision, adapted by the mercy of the Creator, to preserve

religion in the world, and to restrain that freedom of thought, which

of course in itself is one of the greatest of our natural gifts, and

to rescue it from its own suicidal excesses. And let it be observed

that, neither here nor in what follows, shall I have occasion to

speak directly of the revealed body of truths, but only as they bear

upon the defence of natural religion. I say, that a power, possessed

of infallibility in religious teaching, is happily adapted to be

a working instrument, in the course of human affairs, for smiting

hard and throwing back the immense energy of the aggressive

intellect:--and in saying this, as in the other things that I have to

say, it must still be recollected that I am all along bearing in mind

my main purpose, which is a defence of myself.

I am defending myself here from a plausible charge brought against

Catholics, as will be seen better as I proceed. The charge is

this:--that I, as a Catholic, not only make profession to hold

doctrines which I cannot possibly believe in my heart, but that I

also believe in the existence of a power on earth, which at its own

will imposes upon men any new set of _credenda_, when it pleases, by

a claim to infallibility; in consequence, that my own thoughts are

not my own property; that I cannot tell that tomorrow I may not have

to give up what I hold today, and that the necessary effect of such

a condition of mind must be a degrading bondage, or a bitter inward

rebellion relieving itself in secret infidelity, or the necessity of

ignoring the whole subject of religion in a sort of disgust, and of

mechanically saying everything that the Church says, and leaving to

others the defence of it. As then I have above spoken of the relation

of my mind towards the Catholic Creed, so now I shall speak of the

attitude which it takes up in the view of the Church's infallibility.

And first, the initial doctrine of the infallible teacher must be an

emphatic protest against the existing state of mankind. Man had

rebelled against his Maker. It was this that caused the divine

interposition: and the first act of the divinely accredited messenger

must be to proclaim it. The Church must denounce rebellion as of all

possible evils the greatest. She must have no terms with it; if she

would be true to her Master, she must ban and anathematise it. This

is the meaning of a statement which has furnished matter for one of

those special accusations to which I am at present replying: I have,

however, no fault at all to confess in regard to it; I have nothing

to withdraw, and in consequence I here deliberately repeat it. I

said, "The Catholic Church holds it better for the sun and moon to

drop from heaven, for the earth to fail, and for all the many

millions on it to die of starvation in extremest agony, as far as

temporal affliction goes, than that one soul, I will not say, should

be lost, but should commit one single venial sin, should tell one

wilful untruth, or should steal one poor farthing without excuse." I

think the principle here enunciated to be the mere preamble in the

formal credentials of the Catholic Church, as an Act of Parliament

might begin with a "_Whereas_." It is because of the intensity of the

evil which has possession of mankind, that a suitable antagonist

has been provided against it; and the initial act of that

divinely-commissioned power is of course to deliver her challenge

and to defy the enemy. Such a preamble then gives a meaning to her

position in the world, and an interpretation to her whole course of

teaching and action.

In like manner she has ever put forth, with most energetic

distinctness, those other great elementary truths, which either are

an explanation of her mission or give a character to her work. She

does not teach that human nature is irreclaimable, else wherefore

should she be sent? not that it is to be shattered and reversed, but

to be extricated, purified, and restored; not that it is a mere mass

of evil, but that it has the promise of great things, and even now

has a virtue and a praise proper to itself. But in the next place

she knows and she preaches that such a restoration, as she aims at

effecting in it, must be brought about, not simply through any

outward provision of preaching and teaching, even though it be her

own, but from a certain inward spiritual power or grace imparted

directly from above, and which is in her keeping. She has it in

charge to rescue human nature from its misery, but not simply by

raising it upon its own level, but by lifting it up to a higher level

than its own. She recognises in it real moral excellence though

degraded, but she cannot set it free from earth except by exalting it

towards heaven. It was for this end that a renovating grace was put

into her hands, and therefore from the nature of the gift, as well as

from the reasonableness of the case, she goes on, as a further point,

to insist, that all true conversion must begin with the first springs

of thought, and to teach that each individual man must be in his own

person one whole and perfect temple of God, while he is also one of

the living stones which build up a visible religious community. And

thus the distinctions between nature and grace, and between outward

and inward religion, become two further articles in what I have

called the preamble of her divine commission.

Such truths as these she vigorously reiterates, and pertinaciously

inflicts upon mankind; as to such she observes no half-measures, no

economical reserve, no delicacy or prudence. "Ye must be born again,"

is the simple, direct form of words which she uses after her Divine

Master; "your whole nature must be re-born, your passions, and your

affections, and your aims, and your conscience, and your will, must

all be bathed in a new element, and reconsecrated to your Maker, and,

the last not the least, your intellect." It was for repeating these

points of her teaching in my own way, that certain passages of one of

my volumes have been brought into the general accusation which has

been made against my religious opinions. The writer has said that I

was demented if I believed, and unprincipled if I did not believe, in

my statement that a lazy, ragged, filthy, story-telling beggar-woman,

if chaste, sober, cheerful, and religious, had a prospect of heaven,

which was absolutely closed to an accomplished statesman, or lawyer,

or noble, be he ever so just, upright, generous, honourable, and

conscientious, unless he had also some portion of the divine

Christian grace; yet I should have thought myself defended from

criticism by the words which our Lord used to the chief priests,

"The publicans and harlots go into the kingdom of God before you."

And I was subjected again to the same alternative of imputations,

for having ventured to say that consent to an unchaste wish was

indefinitely more heinous than any lie viewed apart from its causes,

its motives, and its consequences; though a lie, viewed under the

limitation of these conditions, is a random utterance, an almost

outward act, not directly from the heart, however disgraceful it may

be, whereas we have the express words of our Lord to the doctrine

that "whoso looketh on a woman to lust after her, hath committed

adultery with her already in his heart." On the strength of these

texts I have surely as much right to believe in these doctrines

as to believe in the doctrine of original sin, or that there is a

supernatural revelation, or that a Divine Person suffered, or that

punishment is eternal.

Passing now from what I have called the preamble of that grant of

power, with which the Church is invested, to that power itself,

Infallibility, I make two brief remarks: on the one hand, I am not

here determining anything about the essential seat of that power,

because that is a question doctrinal, not historical and practical;

nor, on the other hand, am I extending the direct subject-matter,

over which that power has jurisdiction, beyond religious

opinion:--and now as to the power itself.

This power, viewed in its fulness, is as tremendous as the giant evil

which has called for it. It claims, when brought into exercise in the

legitimate manner, for otherwise of course it is but dormant, to have

for itself a sure guidance into the very meaning of every portion of

the divine message in detail, which was committed by our Lord to His

Apostles. It claims to know its own limits, and to decide what it can

determine absolutely and what it cannot. It claims, moreover, to have

a hold upon statements not directly religious, so far as this, to

determine whether they indirectly relate to religion, and, according

to its own definitive judgment, to pronounce whether or not, in a

particular case, they are consistent with revealed truth. It claims

to decide magisterially, whether infallibly or not, that such and

such statements are or are not prejudicial to the apostolic

_depositum_ of faith, in their spirit or in their consequences, and

to allow them, or condemn and forbid them, accordingly. It claims to

impose silence at will on any matters, or controversies, of doctrine,

which on its own _ipse dixit_, it pronounces to be dangerous,

or inexpedient, or inopportune. It claims that whatever may be the

judgment of Catholics upon such acts, these acts should be received

by them with those outward marks of reverence, submission, and

loyalty, which Englishmen, for instance, pay to the presence of their

sovereign, without public criticism on them, as being in their matter

inexpedient, or in their manner violent or harsh. And lastly, it

claims to have the right of inflicting spiritual punishment, of

cutting off from the ordinary channels of the divine life, and of

simply excommunicating, those who refuse to submit themselves to its

formal declarations. Such is the infallibility lodged in the Catholic

Church, viewed in the concrete, as clothed and surrounded by the

appendages of its high sovereignty: it is, to repeat what I said

above, a supereminent prodigious power sent upon earth to encounter

and master a giant evil.

And now, having thus described it, I profess my own absolute

submission to its claim. I believe the whole revealed dogma as taught

by the apostles, as committed by the apostles to the Church, and

as declared by the Church to me. I receive it, as it is infallibly

interpreted by the authority to whom it is thus committed, and

(implicitly) as it shall be, in like manner, further interpreted by

that same authority till the end of time. I submit, moreover, to the

universally received traditions of the Church, in which lies the

matter of those new dogmatic definitions which are from time to time

made, and which in all times are the clothing and the illustration of

the Catholic dogma as already defined. And I submit myself to those

other decisions of the holy see, theological or not, through the

organs which it has itself appointed, which, waiving the question of

their infallibility, on the lowest ground come to me with a claim to

be accepted and obeyed. Also, I consider that, gradually and in the

course of ages, Catholic inquiry has taken certain definite shapes,

and has thrown itself into the form of a science, with a method and

a phraseology of its own, under the intellectual handling of great

minds, such as St. Athanasius, St. Augustine, and St. Thomas; and

I feel no temptation at all to break in pieces the great legacy of

thought thus committed to us for these latter days.

All this being considered as the profession _ex animo_, as on my own

part, so also on the part of the Catholic body, as far as I know it,

it will at first sight be said that the restless intellect of our

common humanity is utterly weighed down to the repression of all

independent effort and action whatever, so that, if this is to be the

mode of bringing it into order, it is brought into order only to be

destroyed. But this is far from the result, far from what I conceive

to be the intention of that high Providence who has provided a great

remedy for a great evil--far from borne out by the history of the

conflict between infallibility and reason in the past, and the

prospect of it in the future. The energy of the human intellect "does

from opposition grow;" it thrives and is joyous, with a tough elastic

strength, under the terrible blows of the divinely-fashioned weapon,

and is never so much itself as when it has lately been overthrown. It

is the custom with Protestant writers to consider that, whereas there

are two great principles in action in the history of religion,

Authority and Private Judgment, they have all the Private Judgment to

themselves, and we have the full inheritance and the superincumbent

oppression of Authority. But this is not so; it is the vast Catholic

body itself, and it only, which affords an arena for both combatants

in that awful, never-dying duel. It is necessary for the very life

of religion, viewed in its large operations and its history, that

the warfare should be incessantly carried on. Every exercise of

Infallibility is brought out into act by an intense and varied

operation of the Reason, from within and without, and provokes again

a re-action of Reason against it; and, as in a civil polity the

State exists and endures by means of the rivalry and collision, the

encroachments and defeats of its constituent parts, so in like manner

Catholic Christendom is no simple exhibition of religious absolutism,

but it presents a continuous picture of Authority and Private

Judgment alternately advancing and retreating as the ebb and flow of

the tide;--it is a vast assemblage of human beings with wilful

intellects and wild passions, brought together into one by the beauty

and the majesty of a superhuman power--into what may be called a

large reformatory or training-school, not to be sent to bed, not to

be buried alive, but for the melting, refining, and moulding, as in

some moral factory, by an incessant noisy process (if I may proceed

to another metaphor), of the raw material of human nature, so

excellent, so dangerous, so capable of divine purposes.

St. Paul says in one place that his apostolical power is given him to

edification, and not to destruction. There can be no better account

of the Infallibility of the Church. It is a supply for a need, and it

does not go beyond that need. Its object is, and its effect also,

not to enfeeble the freedom or vigour of human thought in religious

speculation, but to resist and control its extravagance. What have

been its great works? All of them in the distinct province of

theology:--to put down Arianism, Eutychianism, Pelagianism,

Manichaeism, Lutheranism, Jansenism. Such is the broad result of its

action in the past;--and now as to the securities which are given us

that so it ever will act in time to come.

First, infallibility cannot act outside of a definite circle of

thought, and it must in all its decisions, or _definitions_, as they

are called, profess to be keeping within it. The great truths of the

moral law, of natural religion, and of apostolical faith, are both

its boundary and its foundation. It must not go beyond them, and it

must ever appeal to them. Both its subject-matter, and its articles

in that subject-matter, are fixed. Thus, in illustration, it does not

extend to statements, however sound and evident, which are mere

logical conclusions from the articles of the apostolic _Depositum_;

again, it can pronounce nothing about the persons of heretics, whose

works fall within its legitimate province. It must ever profess

to be guided by Scripture and by tradition. It must refer to the

particular apostolic truth which it is enforcing, or (what is called)

_defining_. Nothing, then, can be presented to me, in time to come,

as part of the faith, but what I ought already to have received, and

have not actually received, (if not) merely because it has not been

told me. Nothing can be imposed upon me different in kind from what I

hold already--much less contrary to it. The new truth which is

promulgated, if it is to be called new, must be at least homogeneous,

cognate, implicit, viewed relatively to the old truth. It must be

what I may even have guessed, or wished, to be included in the

apostolic revelation; and at least it will be of such a character,

that my thoughts readily concur in it or coalesce with it, as soon as

I hear it. Perhaps I and others actually have always believed it, and

the only question which is now decided in my behalf, is that I am

henceforth to believe that I have only been holding what the apostles

held before me.

Let me take the doctrine which Protestants consider our greatest

difficulty, that of the Immaculate Conception. Here I entreat

the reader to recollect my main drift, which is this. I have no

difficulty in receiving it: if _I_ have no difficulty, why may not

another have no difficulty also? why may not a hundred? a thousand?

Now I am sure that Catholics in general have not any intellectual

difficulty at all on the subject of the Immaculate Conception; and

that there is no reason why they should. Priests have no difficulty.

You tell me that they _ought_ to have a difficulty;--but they have

not. Be large-minded enough to believe, that men may reason and feel

very differently from yourselves; how is it that men fall, when left

to themselves, into such various forms of religion, except that there

are various types of mind among them, very distinct from each other?

From my testimony then about myself, if you believe it, judge of

others also who are Catholics: we do not find the difficulties which

you do in the doctrines which we hold; we have no intellectual

difficulty in that in particular, which you call a novelty of this

day. We priests need not be hypocrites, though we be called upon to

believe in the Immaculate Conception. To that large class of minds,

who believe in Christianity, after our manner,--in the particular

temper, spirit, and light (whatever word is used) in which Catholics

believe it--there is no burden at all in holding that the Blessed

Virgin was conceived without original sin; indeed, it is a simple

fact to say, that Catholics have not come to believe it because it is

defined, but it was defined because they believed it.

So far from the definition in 1854 being a tyrannical infliction on

the Catholic world, it was received everywhere on its promulgation

with the greatest enthusiasm. It was in consequence of the unanimous

petition, presented from all parts to the holy see, in behalf of a

declaration that the doctrine was apostolic, that it was declared so

to be. I never heard of one Catholic having difficulties in receiving

it, whose faith on other grounds was not already suspicious. Of

course there were grave and good men, who were made anxious by the

doubt whether it could be proved apostolical either by Scripture or

tradition, and who accordingly, though believing it themselves, did

not see how it could be defined by authority; but this is another

matter. The point in question is, whether the doctrine is a burden.

I believe it to be none. So far from it being so, I sincerely think

that St. Bernard and St. Thomas, who scrupled at it in their day, had

they lived into this, would have rejoiced to accept it for its own

sake. Their difficulty, as I view it, consisted in matters of words,

ideas, and arguments. They thought the doctrine inconsistent with

other doctrines; and those who defended it in that age had not that

precision in their view of it, which has been given to it by means of

the long controversy of the centuries which followed. And hence the

difference of opinion, and the controversy.

Now the instance which I have been taking suggests another remark;

the number of those (so called) new doctrines will not oppress us,

if it takes eight centuries to promulgate even one of them. Such is

about the length of time through which the preparation has been

carried on for the definition of the Immaculate Conception. This of

course is an extraordinary case; but it is difficult to say what is

ordinary, considering how few are the formal occasions on which the

voice of infallibility has been solemnly lifted up. It is to the

Pope in ecumenical council that we look, as to the normal seat of

infallibility: now there have been only eighteen such councils since

Christianity was--an average of one to a century--and of these

councils some passed no doctrinal decree at all, others were employed

on only one, and many of them were concerned with only elementary

points of the Creed. The Council of Trent embraced a large field of

doctrine certainly; but I should apply to its canons a remark

contained in that University Sermon of mine, which has been so

ignorantly criticised in the pamphlet which has led to my writing;--I

there have said that the various verses of the Athanasian Creed are

only repetitions in various shapes of one and the same idea; and in

like manner, the Tridentine decrees are not isolated from each other,

but are occupied in bringing out in detail, by a number of separate

declarations, as if into bodily form, a few necessary truths. I

should make the same remark on the various theses condemned by popes,

and on their dogmatic decisions generally. I acknowledge that at

first sight they seem from their number to be a greater burden to the

faith of individuals than are the canons of councils; still I do not

believe in matter of fact that they are so at all, and I give this

reason for it:--it is not that a Catholic, layman or priest, is

indifferent to the subject, or, from a sort of recklessness, will

accept anything that is placed before him, or is willing, like

a lawyer, to speak according to his brief, but that in such

condemnations the holy see is engaged, for the most part, in

repudiating one or two great lines of error, such as Lutheranism or

Jansenism, principally ethical not doctrinal, which are foreign to

the Catholic mind, and that it is expressing what any good Catholic,

of fair abilities, though unlearned, would say himself, from common

and sound sense, if the matter could be put before him.

Now I will go on in fairness to say what I think _is_ the great trial

to the reason, when confronted with that august prerogative of the

Catholic Church, of which I have been speaking. I enlarged just now

upon the concrete shape and circumstances, under which pure

infallible authority presents itself to the Catholic. That authority

has the prerogative of an indirect jurisdiction on subject-matters

which lie beyond its own proper limits, and it most reasonably has

such a jurisdiction. It could not act in its own province, unless it

had a right to act out of it. It could not properly defend religious

truth, without claiming for it what may be called its _pomoeria_;

or, to take another illustration, without acting as we act, as a

nation, in claiming as our own, not only the land on which we live,

but what are called British waters. The Catholic Church claims, not

only to judge infallibly on religious questions, but to animadvert on

opinions in secular matters which bear upon religion, on matters of

philosophy, of science, of literature, of history, and it demands our

submission to her claim. It claims to censure books, to silence

authors, and to forbid discussions. In all this it does not so much

speak doctrinally, as enforce measures of discipline. It must of

course be obeyed without a word, and perhaps in process of time it

will tacitly recede from its own injunctions. In such cases the

question of faith does not come in; for what is matter of faith is

true for all times, and never can be unsaid. Nor does it at all

follow, because there is a gift of infallibility in the Catholic

Church, that therefore the power in possession of it is in all its

proceedings infallible. "O, it is excellent," says the poet, "to have

a giant's strength, but tyrannous, to use it like a giant." I think

history supplies us with instances in the Church, where legitimate

power has been harshly used. To make such admission is no more than

saying that the divine treasure, in the words of the apostle, is "in

earthen vessels;" nor does it follow that the substance of the acts

of the ruling power is not right and expedient, because its manner

may have been faulty. Such high authorities act by means of

instruments; we know how such instruments claim for themselves the

name of their principals, who thus get the credit of faults which

really are not theirs. But granting all this to an extent greater

than can with any show of reason be imputed to the ruling power in

the Church, what is there in this want of prudence or moderation more

than can be urged, with far greater justice, against Protestant

communities and institutions? What is there in it to make us

hypocrites, if it has not that effect upon Protestants? We are called

upon, not to profess anything, but to submit and be silent. Such

injunctions as I have supposed are laid merely upon our actions, not

upon our thoughts. How, for instance, does it tend to make a man a

hypocrite, to be forbidden to publish a libel? his thoughts are as

free as before: authoritative prohibitions may tease and irritate,

but they have no bearing whatever upon the exercise of reason.

So much at first sight; but I will go on to say further, that,

in spite of all that the most hostile critic may say upon the

encroachments or severities of high ecclesiastics, in times past, in

the use of their power, I think that the event has shown after all,

that they were mainly in the right, and that those whom they were

hard upon mainly in the wrong. I love, for instance, the name of

Origen: I will not listen to the notion that so great a soul was

lost; but I am quite sure that, in the contest between his doctrine

and his followers and ecclesiastical power, his opponents were right,

and he was wrong. Yet who can speak with patience of his enemy

and the enemy of St. John Chrysostom, that Theophilus, bishop of

Alexandria? who can admire or revere Pope Vigilius? And here

another consideration presents itself to my thoughts. In reading

ecclesiastical history, when I was an Anglican, it used to be

forcibly brought home to me, how the initial error of what afterwards

became heresy was the urging forward some truth against the

prohibition of authority at an unseasonable time. There is a time for

everything, and many a man desires a reformation of an abuse, or the

fuller development of a doctrine, or the adoption of a particular

policy, but forgets to ask himself whether the right time for it is

come; and, knowing that there is no one who will do anything towards

it in his own lifetime unless he does it himself, he will not listen

to the voice of authority, and spoils a good work in his own century,

that another man, as yet unborn, may not bring it happily to

perfection in the next. He may seem to the world to be nothing else

than a bold champion for the truth and a martyr to free opinion, when

he is just one of those persons whom the competent authority ought to

silence, and, though the case may not fall within that subject-matter

in which it is infallible, or the formal conditions of the exercise

of that gift may be wanting, it is clearly the duty of authority to

act vigorously in the case. Yet that act will go down to posterity as

an instance of a tyrannical interference with private judgment, and

of the silencing of a reformer, and of a base love of corruption or

error; and it will show still less to advantage, if the ruling power

happens in its proceedings to act with any defect of prudence or

consideration. And all those who take the part of that ruling

authority will be considered as time-servers, or indifferent to the

cause of uprightness and truth; while, on the other hand, the said

authority may be supported by a violent ultra party, which exalts

opinions into dogmas, and has it principally at heart to destroy

every school of thought but its own.

Such a state of things may be provoking and discouraging at the time,

in the case of two classes of persons; of moderate men who wish to

make differences in religious opinion as little as they fairly can

be made; and of such as keenly perceive, and are honestly eager to

remedy, existing evils--evils, of which divines in this or that

foreign country know nothing at all, and which even at home it is not

every one who has the means of estimating. This is a state of things

both of past time and of the present. We live in a wonderful age; the

enlargement of the circle of secular knowledge just now is simply

a bewilderment, and the more so, because it has the promise of

continuing, and that with greater rapidity, and more signal results.

Now these discoveries, certain or probable, have in matter of fact an

indirect bearing upon religious opinions, and the question arises how

are the respective claims of revelation and of natural science to be

adjusted. Few minds in earnest can remain at ease without some sort

of rational grounds for their religious belief; to reconcile theory

and fact is almost an instinct of the mind. When then a flood of

facts, ascertained or suspected, comes pouring in upon us, with a

multitude of others in prospect, all believers in revelation, be

they Catholic or not, are roused to consider their bearing upon

themselves, both for the honour of God, and from tenderness for those

many souls who, in consequence of the confident tone of the schools

of secular knowledge, are in danger of being led away into a

bottomless liberalism of thought.

I am not going to criticise here that vast body of men, in the mass,

who at this time would profess to be liberals in religion; and who

look towards the discoveries of the age, certain or in progress, as

their informants, direct or indirect, as to what they shall think

about the unseen and the future. The Liberalism which gives a colour

to society now, is very different from that character of thought

which bore the name thirty or forty years ago. It is scarcely now a

party; it is the educated lay world. When I was young, I knew the

word first as giving name to a periodical, set up by Lord Byron and

others. Now, as then, I have no sympathy with the philosophy of

Byron. Afterwards, Liberalism was the badge of a theological school,

of a dry and repulsive character, not very dangerous in itself,

though dangerous as opening the door to evils which it did not itself

either anticipate or comprehend. Now it is nothing else than that

deep, plausible scepticism, of which I spoke above, as being the

development of human reason, as practically exercised by the natural

man.

The Liberal religionists of this day are a very mixed body, and

therefore I am not intending to speak against them. There may be, and

doubtless is, in the hearts of some or many of them a real antipathy

or anger against revealed truth, which it is distressing to think of.

Again; in many men of science or literature there may be an animosity

arising from almost a personal feeling; it being a matter of party, a

point of honour, the excitement of a game, or a consequence of

soreness or annoyance occasioned by the acrimony or narrowness of

apologists for religion, to prove that Christianity or that Scripture

is untrustworthy. Many scientific and literary men, on the other

hand, go on, I am confident, in a straightforward impartial way, in

their own province and on their own line of thought, without any

disturbance from religious opinion in themselves, or any wish at all

to give pain to others by the result of their investigations. It

would ill become me, as if I were afraid of truth of any kind, to

blame those who pursue secular facts, by means of the reason which

God has given them, to their logical conclusions: or to be angry with

science because religion is bound to take cognizance of its teaching.

But putting these particular classes of men aside, as having no

special call on the sympathy of the Catholic, of course he does most

deeply enter into the feelings of a fourth and large class of men, in

the educated portions of society, of religious and sincere minds, who

are simply perplexed--frightened or rendered desperate, as the case

may be--by the utter confusion into which late discoveries or

speculations have thrown their most elementary ideas of religion. Who

does not feel for such men? who can have one unkind thought of them?

I take up St. Augustine's beautiful words, "Illi in vos saeviant,"

etc. Let them be fierce with you who have no experience of the

difficulty with which error is discriminated from truth, and the way

of life is found amid the illusions of the world. How many Catholics

have in their thoughts followed such men, many of them so good, so

true, so noble! how often has the wish risen in their hearts that

some one from among themselves should come forward as the champion of

revealed truth against its opponents! Various persons, Catholic and

Protestant, have asked me to do so myself; but I had several strong

difficulties in the way. One of the greatest is this, that at the

moment it is so difficult to say precisely what it is that is to be

encountered and overthrown. I am far from denying that scientific

knowledge is really growing, but it is by fits and starts; hypotheses

rise and fall; it is difficult to anticipate which will keep their

ground, and what the state of knowledge in relation to them will be

from year to year. In this condition of things, it has seemed to me

to be very undignified for a Catholic to commit himself to the work

of chasing what might turn out to be phantoms, and in behalf of some

special objections, to be ingenious in devising a theory, which,

before it was completed, might have to give place to some theory

newer still, from the fact that those former objections had already

come to nought under the uprising of others. It seemed to be a time

of all others, in which Christians had a call to be patient, in which

they had no other way of helping those who were alarmed, than that of

exhorting them to have a little faith and fortitude, and to "beware,"

as the poet says, "of dangerous steps." This seemed so clear to me,

the more I thought, as to make me surmise, that, if I attempted what

had so little promise in it, I should find that the highest Catholic

authority was against the attempt, and that I should have spent my

time and my thought, in doing what either it would be imprudent to

bring before the public at all, or what, did I do so, would only

complicate matters further which were already complicated more than

enough. And I interpret recent acts of that authority as fulfilling

my expectation; I interpret them as tying the hands of a

controversialist, such as I should be, and teaching us that true

wisdom, which Moses inculcated on his people, when the Egyptians were

pursuing them, "Fear ye not, stand still; the Lord shall fight for

you, and ye shall hold your peace." And so far from finding a

difficulty in obeying in this case, I have cause to be thankful and

to rejoice to have so clear a direction in a matter of difficulty.

But if we would ascertain with correctness the real course of a

principle, we must look at it at a certain distance, and as history

represents it to us. Nothing carried on by human instruments, but has

its irregularities, and affords ground for criticism, when minutely

scrutinised in matters of detail. I have been speaking of that aspect

of the action of an infallible authority, which is most open to

invidious criticism from those who view it from without; I have tried

to be fair, in estimating what can be said to its disadvantage, as

witnessed in the Catholic Church, and now I wish its adversaries to

be equally fair in their judgment upon its historical character. Can,

then, the infallible authority, with any show of reason, be said in

fact to have destroyed the energy of the intellect in the Catholic

Church? Let it be observed, I have not to speak of any conflict which

ecclesiastical authority has had with science, for there has been

none such, because the secular sciences, as they now exist, are a

novelty in the world, and there has been no time yet for a history of

relations between theology and these new methods of knowledge, and

indeed the Church may be said to have kept clear of them, as is

proved by the constantly cited case of Galileo. Here "exceptio probat

regulam:" for it is the one stock argument. Again, I have not to

speak of any relations of the Church to the new sciences, because my

simple question is whether the assumption of infallibility by the

proper authority is adapted to make me a hypocrite, and till that

authority passes decrees on pure physical subjects and calls on me

to subscribe them (which it never will do, because it has not the

power), it has no tendency by its acts to interfere with my private

judgment on those points. The simple question is whether authority

has so acted upon the reason of individuals, that they can have no

opinion of their own, and have but an alternative of slavish

superstition or secret rebellion of heart; and I think the whole

history of theology puts an absolute negative upon such a

supposition. It is hardly necessary to argue out so plain a point. It

is individuals, and not the holy see, who have taken the initiative,

and given the lead to Catholic minds, in theological inquiry. Indeed,

it is one of the reproaches urged against the Church of Rome, that it

has originated nothing, and has only served as a sort of _remora_ or

break in the development of doctrine. And it is an objection which I

embrace as a truth; for such I conceive to be the main purpose of its

extraordinary gift. It is said, and truly, that the Church of Rome

possessed no great mind in the whole period of persecution.

Afterwards for a long while, it has not a single doctor to show; St.

Leo, its first, is the teacher of one point of doctrine; St. Gregory,

who stands at the very extremity of the first age of the Church, has

no place in dogma or philosophy. The great luminary of the western

world is, as we know, St. Augustine; he, no infallible teacher, has

formed the intellect of Europe; indeed to the African Church

generally we must look for the best early exposition of Latin ideas.

The case is the same as regards the ecumenical councils. Authority

in its most imposing exhibition, grave bishops, laden with the

traditions and rivalries of particular nations or places, have been

guided in their decisions by the commanding genius of individuals,

sometimes young and of inferior rank. Not that uninspired intellect

overruled the super-human gift which was committed to the council,

which would be a self-contradictory assertion, but that in that

process of inquiry and deliberation, which ended in an infallible

enunciation, individual reason was paramount. Thus the writings of

St. Bonaventura, and, what is more to the point, the address of a

priest and theologian, Salmeron, at Trent, had a critical effect on

some of the definitions of dogmas. Parallel to this is the influence,

so well known, of a young deacon, St. Athanasius, with the 318

Fathers at Nicaea. In like manner we hear of the influence of St.

Anselm at Bari, and St. Thomas at Lyons. In the latter cases the

influence might be partly moral, but in the former it was that of a

discursive knowledge of ecclesiastical writers, a scientific

acquaintance with theology, and a force of thought in the treatment

of doctrine.

There are of course intellectual habits which theology does not

tend to form, as for instance the experimental, and again the

philosophical; but that is because it _is_ theology, not because of

the gift of infallibility. But, as far as this goes, I think it could

be shown that physical science on the other hand, or mathematical,

affords but an imperfect training for the intellect. I do not see

then how any objection about the narrowness of theology comes into

our question, which simply is, whether the belief in an infallible

authority destroys the independence of the mind; and I consider that

the whole history of the Church, and especially the history of the

theological schools, gives a negative to the accusation. There never

was a time when the intellect of the educated class was more active,

or rather more restless, than in the middle ages. And then again

all through Church history from the first, how slow is authority

in interfering! Perhaps a local teacher, or a doctor in some local

school, hazards a proposition, and a controversy ensues. It smoulders

or burns in one place, no one interposing; Rome simply lets it alone.

Then it comes before a Bishop; or some priest, or some professor in

some other seat of learning takes it up; and then there is a second

stage of it. Then it comes before a University, and it may be

condemned by the theological faculty. So the controversy proceeds

year after year, and Rome is still silent. An appeal perhaps is next

made to a seat of authority inferior to Rome; and then at last after

a long while it comes before the supreme power. Meanwhile, the

question has been ventilated and turned over and over again, and

viewed on every side of it, and authority is called upon to pronounce

a decision, which has already been arrived at by reason. But even

then, perhaps the supreme authority hesitates to do so, and nothing

is determined on the point for years; or so generally and vaguely,

that the whole controversy has to be gone through again, before it is

ultimately determined. It is manifest how a mode of proceeding, such

as this, tends not only to the liberty, but to the courage, of the

individual theologian or controversialist. Many a man has ideas,

which he hopes are true, and useful for his day, but he wishes to

have them discussed. He is willing or rather would be thankful to

give them up, if they can be proved to be erroneous or dangerous, and

by means of controversy he obtains his end. He is answered, and he

yields; or he finds that he is considered safe. He would not dare to

do this, if he knew an authority, which was supreme and final, was

watching every word he said, and made signs of assent or dissent to

each sentence, as he uttered it. Then indeed he would be fighting, as

the Persian soldiers, under the lash, and the freedom of his

intellect might truly be said to be beaten out of him. But this has

not been so:--I do not mean to say that, when controversies run high,

in schools or even in small portions of the Church, an interposition

may not rightly take place; and again, questions may be of that

urgent nature, that an appeal must, as a matter of duty, be made at

once to the highest authority in the Church; but, if we look into the

history of controversy, we shall find, I think, the general run of

things to be such as I have represented it. Zosimus treated Pelagius

and Coelestius with extreme forbearance; St. Gregory VII. was

equally indulgent with Berengarius; by reason of the very power of

the popes they have commonly been slow and moderate in their use of

it.

And here again is a further shelter for the individual reason:--the

multitude of nations who are in the fold of the Church will be found

to have acted for its protection, against any narrowness, if so,

in the various authorities at Rome, with whom lies the practical

decision of controverted questions. How have the Greek traditions

been respected and provided for in the later Ecumenical Councils, in

spite of the countries that held them being in a state of schism!

There are important points of doctrine which have been (humanly

speaking) exempted from the infallible sentence, by the tenderness

with which its instruments, in framing it, have treated the opinions

of particular places. Then, again, such national influences have a

providential effect in moderating the bias which the local influences

of Italy may exert upon the See of St. Peter. It stands to reason

that, as the Gallican Church has in it an element of France, so Rome

must have an element of Italy; and it is no prejudice to the zeal and

devotion with which we submit ourselves to the holy see to admit this

plainly. It seems to me, as I have been saying, that Catholicity is

not only one of the notes of the Church, but, according to the divine

purposes, one of its securities. I think it would be a very serious

evil, which Divine Mercy avert! that the Church should be contracted

in Europe within the range of particular nationalities. It is a great

idea to introduce Latin civilization into America, and to improve

the Catholics there by the energy of French religion; but I trust

that all European races will have ever a place in the Church, and

assuredly I think that the loss of the English, not to say the

German element, in its composition has been a most serious evil.

And certainly, if there is one consideration more than another which

should make us English grateful to Pius the Ninth, it is that, by

giving us a Church of our own, he has prepared the way for our own

habits of mind, our own manner of reasoning, our own tastes, and our

own virtues, finding a place and thereby a sanctification, in the

Catholic Church.

There is only one other subject, which I think it necessary to

introduce here, as bearing upon the vague suspicions which are

attached in this country to the Catholic priesthood. It is one of

which my accuser says much, the charge of reserve and economy. He

founds it in no slight degree on what I have said on the subject in

my History of the Arians, and in a note upon one of my sermons in

which I refer to it. The principle of reserve is also advocated by an

admirable writer in two numbers of the Tracts for the Times.

Now, as to the economy itself, I leave the greater part of what I

have to say to an Appendix. Here I will but say that it is founded

upon the words of our Lord, "Cast not your pearls before swine;"

and it was observed by the early Christians more or less in their

intercourse with the heathen populations among whom they lived. In

the midst of the abominable idolatries and impurities of that fearful

time, they could not do otherwise. But the rule of the economy, at

least as I have explained and recommended it, did not go beyond (1)

the concealing the truth when we could do so without deceit, (2)

stating it only partially, and (3) representing it under the nearest

form possible to a learner or inquirer, when he could not possibly

understand it exactly. I conceive that to draw angels with wings is

an instance of the third of these economical modes; and to avoid the

question, "Do Christians believe in a Trinity?" by answering, "They

believe in only one God," would be an instance of the second. As to

the first, it is hardly an economy, but comes under what is called

the "Disciplina Arcani." The second and third economical modes

Clement calls _lying_; meaning that a partial truth is in some sense

a lie, and so also is a representative truth. And this, I think, is

about the long and the short of the ground of the accusation which

has been so violently urged against me, as being a patron of the

economy.

Of late years I have come to think, as I believe most writers do,

that Clement meant more than I have said. I used to think he used the

word "lie" as an hyperbole, but I now believe that he, as other early

Fathers, thought that, under certain circumstances, it was lawful

to tell a lie. This doctrine I never maintained, though I used to

think, as I do now, that the theory of the subject is surrounded with

considerable difficulty; and it is not strange that I should say so,

considering that great English writers simply declare that in certain

extreme cases, as to save life, honour, or even property, a lie is

allowable. And thus I am brought to the direct question of truth, and

the truthfulness of Catholic priests generally in their dealings with

the world, as bearing on the general question of their honesty, and

their internal belief in their religious professions.

It would answer no purpose, and it would be departing from the line

of writing which I have been observing all along, if I entered into

any formal discussion on the subject; what I shall do here, as I have

done in the foregoing pages, is to give my own testimony on the

matter in question, and there to leave it. Now first I will say,

that, when I became a Catholic, nothing struck me more at once than

the English out-spoken manner of the priests. It was the same at

Oscott, at Old Hall Green, at Ushaw; there was nothing of that

smoothness, or mannerism, which is commonly imputed to them, and they

were more natural and unaffected than many an Anglican clergyman. The

many years, which have passed since, have only confirmed my first

impression. I have ever found it in the priests of this Diocese; did

I wish to point out a straightforward Englishman, I should instance

the Bishop, who has, to our great benefit, for so many years presided

over it.

And next, I was struck, when I had more opportunity of judging of the

Priests, by the simple faith in the Catholic Creed and system of

which they always gave evidence, and which they never seemed to feel,

in any sense at all, to be a burden. And now that I have been in the

Church nineteen years, I cannot recollect hearing of a single

instance in England of an infidel priest. Of course there are men

from time to time, who leave the Catholic Church for another

religion, but I am speaking of cases, when a man keeps a fair outside

to the world and is a hollow hypocrite in his heart.

I wonder that the self-devotion of our priests does not strike

Protestants in this point of view. What do they gain by professing a

Creed, in which, if my assailant is to be believed, they really do

not believe? What is their reward for committing themselves to a

life of self-restraint and toil, and after all to a premature and

miserable death? The Irish fever cut off between Liverpool and Leeds

thirty priests and more, young men in the flower of their days, old

men who seemed entitled to some quiet time after their long toil.

There was a bishop cut off in the North; but what had a man of his

ecclesiastical rank to do with the drudgery and danger of sick calls,

except that Christian faith and charity constrained him? Priests

volunteered for the dangerous service. It was the same on the first

coming of the cholera, that mysterious awe-inspiring infliction.

If priests did not heartily believe in the Creed of the Church,

then I will say that the remark of the apostle had its fullest

illustration:--"If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are

of all men most miserable." What could support a set of hypocrites in

the presence of a deadly disorder, one of them following another in

long order up the forlorn hope, and one after another perishing? And

such, I may say, in its substance, is every mission-priest's life. He

is ever ready to sacrifice himself for his people. Night and day,

sick or well himself, in all weathers, off he is, on the news of a

sick call. The fact of a parishioner dying without the sacraments

through his fault is terrible to him; why terrible, if he has not a

deep absolute faith, which he acts upon with a free service?

Protestants admire this, when they see it; but they do not seem to

see as clearly, that it excludes the very notion of hypocrisy.

Sometimes, when they reflect upon it, it leads them to remark on the

wonderful discipline of the Catholic priesthood; they say that no

Church has so well ordered a clergy, and that in that respect it

surpasses their own; they wish they could have such exact discipline

among themselves. But is it an excellence which can be purchased? is

it a phenomenon which depends on nothing else than itself, or is it

an effect which has a cause? You cannot buy devotion at a price. "It

hath never been heard of in the land of Chanaan, neither hath it been

seen in Theman. The children of Agar, the merchants of Meran, none

of these have known its way." What then is that wonderful charm,

which makes a thousand men act all in one way, and infuses a prompt

obedience to rule, as if they were under some stern military

compulsion? How difficult to find an answer, unless you will allow

the obvious one, that they believe intensely what they profess!

I cannot think what it can be, in a day like this, which keeps up the

prejudice of this Protestant country against us, unless it be the

vague charges which are drawn from our books of moral theology; and

with a notice of the work in particular which my accuser especially

throws in our teeth, I shall in a very few words bring these

observations to a close.

St. Alfonso Liguori, it cannot be denied, lays down that an

equivocation, that is, a play upon words, in which one sense is taken

by the speaker, and another sense intended by him for the hearer, is

allowable, if there is a just cause, that is, in a special case, and

may even be confirmed by an oath. I shall give my opinion on this

point as plainly as any Protestant can wish; and therefore I avow at

once that in this department of morality, much as I admire the high

points of the Italian character, I like the English character better;

but, in saying so, I am not, as will be seen, saying anything

disrespectful to St. Alfonso, who was a lover of truth, and whose

intercession I trust I shall not lose, though, on the matter under

consideration, I follow other guidance in preference to his.

Now I make this remark first:--great English authors, Jeremy Taylor,

Milton, Paley, Johnson, men of very distinct schools of thought,

distinctly say, that under certain special circumstances it is

allowable to tell a lie. Taylor says: "To tell a lie for charity, to

save a man's life, the life of a friend, of a husband, of a prince,

of a useful and a public person, hath not only been done at all

times, but commended by great and wise and good men. Who would not

save his father's life, at the charge of a harmless lie, from

persecutors or tyrants?" Again, Milton says: "What man in his senses

would deny, that there are those whom we have the best grounds for

considering that we ought to deceive--as boys, madmen, the sick, the

intoxicated, enemies, men in error, thieves? I would ask, by which of

the commandments is a lie forbidden? You will say, by the ninth.

If then my lie does not injure my neighbour, certainly it is not

forbidden by this commandment." Paley says: "There are falsehoods,

which are not lies, that is, which are not criminal." Johnson: "The

general rule is, that truth should never be violated; there must,

however, be some exceptions. If, for instance, a murderer should ask

you which way a man is gone."

Now, I am not using these instances as an _argumentum ad hominem_;

but this is the use to which I put them:--

1. First, I have set down the distinct statements of Taylor, Milton,

Paley, and Johnson; now, would any one give ever so little weight to

these statements, in forming a real estimate of the veracity of the

writers, if they now were alive? Were a man, who is so fierce with

St. Alfonso, to meet Paley or Johnson tomorrow in society, would he

look upon him as a liar, a knave, as dishonest and untrustworthy?

I am sure he would not. Why then does he not deal out the same

measure to Catholic priests? If a copy of Scavini, which speaks

of equivocation as being in a just cause allowable, be found in

a student's room at Oscott, not Scavini himself, but the unhappy

student, who has what a Protestant calls a bad book in his

possession, is judged for life unworthy of credit. Are all Protestant

text-books at the University immaculate? Is it necessary to take for

gospel every word of Aristotle's Ethics, or every assertion of Hey or

Burnett on the Articles? Are text-books the ultimate authority, or

are they manuals in the hands of a lecturer, and the groundwork of

his remarks? But, again, let us suppose, not the case of a student,

or of a professor, but of Scavini himself, or of St. Alfonso; now

here again I ask, if you would not scruple in holding Paley for an

honest man, in spite of his defence of lying, why do you scruple at

St. Alfonso? I am perfectly sure that you would not scruple at Paley

personally; you might not agree with him, but you would call him a

bold thinker: then why should St. Alfonso's person be odious to you,

as well as his doctrine?

Now I wish to tell you why you are not afraid of Paley; because, you

would say, when he advocated lying, he was taking _special cases_.

You would have no fear of a man who you knew had shot a burglar dead

in his own house, because you know you are _not_ a burglar: so you

would not think that Paley had a habit of telling lies in society,

because in the case of a cruel alternative he thought it the lesser

evil to tell a lie. Then why do you show such suspicion of a

Catholic theologian, who speaks of certain special cases in which an

equivocation in a penitent cannot be visited by his confessor as if

it were a sin? for this is the exact point of the question.

But again, why does Paley, why does Jeremy Taylor, when no practical

matter is before him, lay down a maxim about the lawfulness of lying,

which will startle most readers? The reason is plain. He is forming a

theory of morals, and he must treat every question in turn as it

comes. And this is just what St. Alfonso or Scavini is doing. You

only try your hand yourself at a treatise on the rules of morality,

and you will see how difficult the work is. What is the _definition_

of a lie? Can you give a better than that it is a sin against

justice, as Taylor and Paley consider it? but, if so, how can it be a

sin at all, if your neighbour is not injured? If you do not like this

definition, take another; and then, by means of that, perhaps you

will be defending St. Alfonso's equivocation. However, this is what I

insist upon; that St. Alfonso, as Paley, is considering the different

portions of a large subject, and he must, on the subject of lying,

give his judgment, though on that subject it is difficult to form any

judgment which is satisfactory.

But further still: you must not suppose that a philosopher or

moralist uses in his own case the licence which his theory itself

would allow him. A man in his own person is guided by his own

conscience; but in drawing out a system of rules he is obliged to

go by logic, and follow the exact deduction of conclusion from

conclusion, and be sure that the whole system is coherent and one.

You hear of even immoral or irreligious books being written by men of

decent character; there is a late writer who says that David Hume's

sceptical works are not at all the picture of the man. A priest may

write a treatise which would be called really lax on the subject of

lying, which might come under the condemnation of the holy see, as

some treatises on that score have been condemned, and yet in his

own person be a rigorist. And, in fact, it is notorious from St.

Alfonso's Life, that he, who has the repute of being so lax a

moralist, had one of the most scrupulous and anxious of consciences

himself. Nay, further than this, he was originally in the Law, and on

one occasion he was betrayed into the commission of what seemed like

a deceit, though it was an accident; and that was the very occasion

of his leaving the profession and embracing the religious life.

The account of this remarkable occurrence is told us in his Life:--

"Notwithstanding he had carefully examined over and over the details

of the process, he was completely mistaken regarding the sense of one

document, which constituted the right of the adverse party. The

advocate of the Grand Duke perceived the mistake, but he allowed

Alfonso to continue his eloquent address to the end without

interruption; as soon, however, as he had finished, he rose, and said

with cutting coolness, 'Sir, the case is not exactly what you suppose

it to be; if you will review the process, and examine this paper

attentively, you will find there precisely the contrary of all you

have advanced.' 'Willingly,' replied Alfonso, without hesitating;

'the decision depends on this question--whether the fief were granted

under the law of Lombardy, or under the French Law.' The paper being

examined, it was found that the Grand Duke's advocate was in the

right. 'Yes,' said Alfonso, holding the paper in his hand, 'I am

wrong, I have been mistaken.' A discovery so unexpected, and the fear

of being accused of unfair dealing, filled him with consternation,

and covered him with confusion, so much so, that every one saw his

emotion. It was in vain that the President Caravita, who loved him,

and knew his integrity, tried to console him, by telling him that

such mistakes were not uncommon, even among the first men at the bar.

Alfonso would listen to nothing, but, overwhelmed with confusion, his

head sunk on his breast, he said to himself, 'World, I know you now;

courts of law, never shall you see me again!' And turning his back on

the assembly, he withdrew to his own house, incessantly repeating to

himself, 'World, I know you now.' What annoyed him most was, that

having studied and re-studied the process during a whole month,

without having discovered this important flaw, he could not

understand how it had escaped his observation."

And this is the man who is so flippantly pronounced to be a patron of

lying.

But, in truth, a Catholic theologian has objects in view which men in

general little compass; he is not thinking of himself, but of a

multitude of souls, sick souls, sinful souls, carried away by sin,

full of evil, and he is trying with all his might to rescue them from

their miserable state; and, in order to save them from more heinous

sins, he tries, to the full extent that his conscience will allow

him to go, to shut his eyes to such sins, as are, though sins, yet

lighter in character or degree. He knows perfectly well that, if he

is as strict as he would wish to be, he shall be able to do nothing

at all with the run of men; so he is as indulgent with them as ever

he can be. Let it not be for an instant supposed, that I allow of the

maxim of doing evil that good may come; but, keeping clear of this,

there is a way of winning men from greater sins by winking for the

time at the less, or at mere improprieties or faults; and this is the

key to the difficulty which Catholic books of moral theology so often

cause to the Protestant. They are intended for the confessor, and

Protestants view them as intended for the preacher.

2. And I observe upon Taylor, Milton, and Paley thus: What would a

Protestant clergyman say to me, if I accused him of teaching that a

lie was allowable; and if, when he asked for my proof, I said in

reply that Taylor and Milton so taught? Why, he would sharply retort,

"_I_ am not bound by Taylor or Milton;" and if I went on urging that

"Taylor was one of his authorities," he would answer that Taylor was

a great writer, but great writers were not therefore infallible. This

is pretty much the answer which I make, when I am considered in this

matter a disciple of St. Alfonso.

I plainly and positively state, and without any reserve, that I do

not at all follow this holy and charitable man in this portion of his

teaching. There are various schools of opinion allowed in the Church:

and on this point I follow others. I follow Cardinal Gerdil, and

Natalis Alexander, nay, St. Augustine. I will quote one passage from

Natalis Alexander:--"They certainly lie, who utter the words of an

oath, without the will to swear or bind themselves: or who make use

of mental reservations and _equivocations_ in swearing, since they

signify by words what they have not in mind, contrary to the end for

which language was instituted, viz. as signs of ideas. Or they mean

something else than the words signify in themselves and the common

custom of speech." And, to take an instance: I do not believe any

priest in England would dream of saying, "My friend is not here;"

meaning, "He is not in my pocket or under my shoe." Nor should any

consideration make me say so myself. I do not think St. Alfonso would

in his own case have said so; and he would have been as much shocked

at Taylor and Paley, as Protestants are at him.

And now, if Protestants wish to know what our real teaching is, as on

other subjects, so on that of lying, let them look, not at our books

of casuistry, but at our catechisms. Works on pathology do not give

the best insight into the form and the harmony of the human frame;

and, as it is with the body, so is it with the mind. The Catechism

of the Council of Trent was drawn up for the express purpose of

providing preachers with subjects for their sermons; and, as my whole

work has been a defence of myself, I may here say that I rarely

preach a sermon, but I go to this beautiful and complete Catechism to

get both my matter and my doctrine. There we find the following

notices about the duty of veracity:--

"'Thou shalt not bear false witness,' etc.: let attention be drawn to

two laws contained in this commandment:--the one, forbidding false

witness; the other bidding, that removing all pretence and deceits,

we should measure our words and deeds by simple truth, as the Apostle

admonished the Ephesians of that duty in these words: 'Doing truth in

charity, let us grow in Him through all things.'

"To deceive by a lie in joke or for the sake of compliment, though to

no one there accrues loss or gain in consequence, nevertheless is

altogether unworthy: for thus the Apostle admonishes, 'Putting aside

lying, speak ye truth.' For therein is great danger of lapsing into

frequent and more serious lying, and from lies in joke men gain the

habit of lying, whence they gain the character of not being truthful.

And thence again, in order to gain credit to their words, they find

it necessary to make a practice of swearing.

"Nothing is more necessary than truth of testimony, in those things,

which we neither know ourselves, nor can allowably be ignorant of,

on which point there is extant that maxim of St. Augustine's; Whoso

conceals the truth, and whoso puts forth a lie, each is guilty; the

one because he is not willing to do a service, the other because he

has a wish to do a mischief.

"It is lawful at times to be silent about the truth, but out of a

court of law; for in court, when a witness is interrogated by the

judge according to law, the truth is wholly to be brought out.

"Witnesses, however, must beware, lest, from over-confidence in their

memory, they affirm for certain, what they have not verified.

"In order that the faithful may with more good will avoid the sin of

lying, the Parish Priest shall set before them the extreme misery and

turpitude of this wickedness. For, in holy writ, the devil is called

the father of a lie; for, in that he did not remain in Truth, he is a

liar, and the father of a lie. He will add, with the view of ridding

men of so great a crime, the evils which follow upon lying; and,

whereas they are innumerable, he will point out [at least] the

sources and the general heads of these mischiefs and calamities, viz.

1. How great is God's displeasure and how great His hatred of a man

who is insincere and a liar. 2. What security there is that a man

who is specially hated by God may not be visited by the heaviest

punishments. 3. What more unclean and foul, as St. James says, than

... that a fountain by the same jet should send out sweet water and

bitter? 4. For that tongue, which just now praised God, next, as far

as in it lies, dishonours Him by lying. 5. In consequence, liars are

shut out from the possession of heavenly beatitude. 6. That too is

the worst evil of lying, that that disease of the mind is generally

incurable.

"Moreover, there is this harm too, and one of vast extent, and

touching men generally, that by insincerity and lying faith and truth

are lost, which are the firmest bonds of human society, and, when

they are lost, supreme confusion follows in life, so that men seem in

nothing to differ from devils.

"Lastly, the Parish Priest will set those right who excuse their

insincerity and allege the example of wise men, who, they say, are

used to lie for an occasion. He will tell them, what is most true,

that the wisdom of the flesh is death. He will exhort his hearers to

trust in God, when they are in difficulties and straits, nor to have

recourse to the expedient of a lie.

"They who throw the blame of their own lie on those who have already

by a lie deceived them, are to be taught that men must not revenge

themselves, nor make up for one evil by another." ...

There is much more in the Catechism to the same effect, and it is of

universal obligation; whereas the decision of a particular author in

morals need not be accepted by any one.

To one other authority I appeal on this subject, which commands from

me attention of a special kind, for they are the words of a Father.

They will serve to bring my work to a conclusion.

"St. Philip," says the Roman oratorian who wrote his Life, "had a

particular dislike of affectation both in himself and others, in

speaking, in dressing, or in anything else.

"He avoided all ceremony which savoured of worldly compliment, and

always showed himself a great stickler for Christian simplicity in

everything; so that, when he had to deal with men of worldly

prudence, he did not very readily accommodate himself to them.

"And he avoided, as much as possible, having anything to do with

_two-faced persons_, who did not go simply and straightforwardly to

work in their transactions.

"_As for liars, he could not endure them_, and he was _continually

reminding_ his spiritual children, _to avoid them as they would a

pestilence_."

These are the principles on which I have acted before I was a

Catholic; these are the principles which, I trust, will be my stay

and guidance to the end.

I have closed this history of myself with St. Philip's name upon St.

Philip's feast-day; and, having done so, to whom can I more suitably

offer it, as a memorial of affection and gratitude, than to St.

Philip's sons, my dearest brothers of this house, the priests of the

Birmingham Oratory, Ambrose St. John, Henry Austin Mills, Henry

Bittleston, Edward Caswall, William Paine Neville, and Henry Ignatius

Dudley Ryder? who have been so faithful to me; who have been so

sensitive of my needs; who have been so indulgent to my failings; who

have carried me through so many trials; who have grudged no

sacrifice, if I asked for it; who have been so cheerful under

discouragements of my causing; who have done so many good works, and

let me have the credit of them;--with whom I have lived so long, with

whom I hope to die.

And to you especially, dear Ambrose St. John; whom God gave me, when

He took every one else away; who are the link between my old life and

my new; who have now for twenty-one years been so devoted to me, so

patient, so zealous, so tender; who have let me lean so hard upon

you; who have watched me so narrowly; who have never thought of

yourself, if I was in question.

And in you I gather up and bear in memory those familiar affectionate

companions and counsellors, who in Oxford were given to me, one after

another, to be my daily solace and relief; and all those others, of

great name and high example, who were my thorough friends, and showed

me true attachment in times long past; and also those many younger

men, whether I knew them or not, who have never been disloyal to me

by word or by deed; and of all these, thus various in their relations

to me, those more especially who have since joined the Catholic

Church.

And I earnestly pray for this whole company, with a hope against

hope, that all of us, who once were so united, and so happy in our

union, may even now be brought at length, by the Power of the Divine

Will, into One Fold and under One Shepherd.

May 26, 1864.

In Festo Corp. Christ.

Appendix

Answer in Detail to Mr. Kingsley's Accusations

In proceeding now, according to the engagement with which I entered

upon my undertaking, to examine in detail the Pamphlet which has been

written against me, I am very sorry to be obliged to say, that it is

as slovenly and random and futile in its definite charges, as it is

iniquitous in its method of disputation. And now I proceed to show

this without any delay; and shall consider in order,

1. My Sermon on the Apostolical Christian.

2. My Sermon on Wisdom and Innocence.

3. The Anglican Church.

4. The Lives of the English Saints.

5. Ecclesiastical miracles.

6. Popular Religion.

7. The Economy.

8. Lying and Equivocation.

1. My Sermon on "The Apostolical Christian," being the 19th of

"Sermons on Subjects of the Day"

This writer says, "What Dr. Newman means by Christians ... he has

not left in doubt;" and then, quoting a passage from this sermon

which speaks of "the humble monk and the holy nun" being "Christians

after the very pattern given us in Scripture," he observes, "This is

his _definition_ of Christians."--p. 9.

This is not the case. I have neither given a definition, nor implied

one, nor intended one; nor could I, either now or in 1843-4, or

at any time, allow of the particular definition he ascribes to me. As

if all Christians must be monks or nuns!