brought into such prominence in practice, and are in their own nature
so very powerful, that they make that faith appear _in its actual
exercise_ quite another thing from the faith prevailing among
ourselves, although there be really no essential difference between
the _true mind_ of the English, and that of the Roman Church. I say
the _true mind_, that which forms the basis of the Prayer Book; that
of which the Prayer Book faithfully carried out would be the verbal
developement. Whether the true ἠθος of the English Church will ever
prevail actually within her, cast out the puritan virus, and collect
and animate the whole body of Catholic truth which her formularies
still contain, remains yet to be seen.
In the meantime I am greatly struck with the power exercised in the
Roman Church by the great dogma of the Real Presence. It is the centre
and life of the whole. It is the secret support of the priest's
painful self-denying mission; by it mainly the religious orders
maintain themselves; the warmest, deepest, lowliest, most triumphant
and enraptured feelings surround it: the nun that adores in
silence for hours together, one from the other taking up that solitary
awful watch in the immediate presence of the King of Kings; the crowd
of worshippers that kneel at the blessed yet fearful moment when earth
and heaven are united by the coming down of the mystical Bridegroom
into the tabernacle of His Church; the pious soul that not once or
twice but many times during the day humbles itself before Him; the
congregations which close the day by their direct homage to Him, as
present to the three-fold nature of man, body, soul, and spirit; all
these attest the deep practical import which the dogma of the Real
Presence exerts on the Catholic mind. Are not their churches holier to
the believing soul, than was the temple of Jerusalem when the visible
glory of the Lord descended on it? For does not the single lamp
burning before the shrine indicate a Presence inexpressibly more
condescending, gracious, and exalting to man? In Catholic countries
the offering of direct adoration, the contemplation of the mind
absorbed in the abyss of the Incarnation, never ceases one instant of
the day or night. It is the response of the redeemed heart for ever
making to Him, "Who when He took upon Him to deliver man did not abhor
the Virgin's womb." When I contrast this with--what is still too
common in this country, though happily growing less so daily--the
beggarly deal or oak table covered with worm-eaten cloth, or
left bare in its misery--with the deserted or pew-encumbered chancel,
from which every feeling of reverence seems for ages to have
departed--or with the pert enclosure domineered over by reading-desk
and pulpit, and commanded all round by galleries: and on which,
perhaps once a month, the highest mystery of the faith is commemorated
among us, I do not wonder at the Roman Catholic, who regards the
English Church as a sheer apostacy, a recoil from all that is
controlling, ennobling, and transcendental in faith to a blank gulf of
unbelief.
The very existence of the Roman priest, the compensation for all he
does or suffers, depends on that half-hour of the day when he meets
his Lord. What an inexpressible privilege to have been preserved to,
nay, almost enjoined upon, all her ministers. And how could the monk
and the nun live but on the continual food of the Holy Eucharist, and
the steadfast contemplation of the Incarnation? England has banished
the monk and the nun, and popularly, in spite of her formularies,
accounts the priesthood more than half a heresy; she has no provision
among her institutions for the Christian Brother and the Sister of
Charity, though her poor are perishing for lack of the bread of
heaven, and her sick dying in uninstructed heathenism, and her young
carried about with every blast of doctrine, ever learning and
never coming to the knowledge of the truth. And together with those
self-denying orders, which bear witness to the exuberant life welling
forth out of the depth of the Church of Christ, England has banished
the dogma of the Real Presence, not indeed from her theory, but still
from being that vital and pervading practical truth which should
animate and reward the labours of every day, and turn into consolation
all the sorrows of humanity.
O that the Spirit of God might breathe the life of every day's
practical action into those ancient Catholic formularies which are at
present a reproach to our degeneracy! O that our deep and large
chancels of old time, the figure of our buried Lord's sepulchre, might
once more be the Bridechamber, where the risen Saviour descending
should hold daily communing with His Church!
Most intimately connected with the dogma of the Incarnation, and its
symbol, the Real Presence, is that of the Intercession of all Saints,
especially of the Blessed Mother of God: nay, this may be said to be
the continuation and carrying out of the Real Presence, so that
wherever that is truly and heartfully believed, this will be, within
due bounds, cherished and practised. For the truth that our Lord has
assumed our flesh, and communicates that flesh to His true believers,
leads directly to the faith that they who are departed and at rest
with Him, and delivered from all stain of sin, do indeed "live
and reign" with Him, and have power with God. And if this be true of
the least saint, who by the mercy of God has been thought worthy of
the Beatific Presence, in how much higher a degree is it true of Her,
to whom by the assumption of her pure flesh Christ was brought so
inconceivably near? And shall not we who are engaged in so weary a
conflict call upon all saints, and Her especially, to aid and befriend
us? "O ye spirits and souls of the righteous, bless ye the Lord,
praise Him and magnify Him for ever!" Yea, praise Him, and magnify
Him, by praying and interceding for us, who, high as ye are, and low
as we, you exalted to glory, and we buffeted by the flesh, and led
into error in the spirit, are yet your brethren by virtue of the Flesh
and Blood of the Incarnate God, which made you what you are, which is
the earnest to us of being one day what you are. Praise and magnify
the common Lord who bought us, by supplicating larger supplies of His
grace on us His suffering members. And may not we ask you, who dwell
in sight of the Eternal Throne, but who once, like ourselves, bore the
burden and heat of the day in this earthly wilderness, may we not ask
you to turn your regards on us, to intercede for us before Him, whose
members you are in glory, and we in trial? Of the redeemed family one
part is with God and one on earth. Is there to be no communion
between them, when one part most needs the aid of the other? Is this
derogating from the glory of Christ? What a strange perversion of
error which can so esteem it! Surely it is a sense, a spiritual touch,
as it were, of the "cloud of witnesses," which inspirits Catholic
hearts to win the battle, which enables the most lonely to feel that
he is not alone, that he is encompassed and aided by heavenly hosts.
Accordingly the intercession of saints, especially of the Blessed
Virgin Mother, is a living truth in Catholic countries: it accompanies
the doctrine of the Real Presence, and works in subservience to it.
Doubtless where the former is not vividly held, the latter will be
repudiated, and, perhaps, counted idolatrous. It would, indeed, be
wholly out of proportion with the cold creed of the Unitarian or the
Sectary: it might lead those to fall down and worship at the feet of a
servant who did not behold in that servant the one image of the Lord,
the seal and impress of the only Begotten, which claims all glory for
the Lord of glory.
And a concomitant of the true doctrine of the priesthood is that
system of confession which is the nerve and sinew of religion in
Catholic countries. The English prayer-book says of every individual
priest, "whose sins thou dost forgive, they are forgiven; and whose
sins thou dost retain, they are retained." Here is the whole Catholic
doctrine stated. Now this the Roman Church not only says, but
acts upon. And its strength lies, accordingly, not in anything that
meets the eye, gorgeous cope, or chasuble, or procession, or majestic
ceremonies symbolising awful doctrines; not in anything that meets the
ear, whether chanted psalm, or litany, or sermon touching the
feelings, or subduing the understanding; though all these it has, its
strength lies deeper in the hidden tribunal of conscience. The good
Christian is not he who attends mass or sermon, but he who keeps his
conscience clean from the attacks of sin, who, overtaken in a fault,
has straightway indignation upon himself, and submits himself to the
discipline which Christ has appointed for restoring him. The efficacy
of the pastor must entirely depend on the knowledge of his people's
state, and his power to correct their sins, and to guide them in their
penitence. How he can possibly have this knowledge, or power, or guide
them at all without special confession, I see not: nor how he can ever
exercise the power conveyed to him at his ordination, and lodged by
Christ in His Church for ever. This is the true bond between the
pastor and his flock: the true maintainer of discipline, and
instrument of restoration. Accordingly, in Catholic countries, we see
the priest truly respected, cherished, and obeyed _by his flock_,
however much he may earn the dislike and suspicion of the worldly and
unconverted: in Protestant countries we see the pastoral office
a nonentity; the shepherd of his flock is virtually a preacher of
sermons. He knows the plague is ravaging them, but they will not bear
the touch of his hand: he must see them perish one by one, but they
will not let him help them: when mortification has begun, then he is
called in to witness a hopeless dissolution, or to speak peace, peace,
where there is no peace.
The dogma of the Incarnation and the Real Presence has again the
closest affinity with that of the Priesthood. Christ is present in His
Church, for the Priest in the tribunal of penitence is as God Himself.
How vain, how worse than blasphemous, would be the attempt to absolve
from sin,--surely the maddest infringement of Divine Power which
mortal ever imagined,--had not He, the partner of our flesh and blood,
said, "Receive ye the Holy Ghost: whosesoever sins ye remit, they are
remitted unto them, and whosesoever sins ye retain, they are
retained;" and "Lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the
world." No blasphemy can approach the Church's blasphemy, if it be not
God's truth; and if it be, so deeply touching the secret springs of
discipline, in what state is a branch of the Church of Christ, which
utterly neglects this truth in practice, and allows it with impunity
to be denied, and derided, and calumniated? Whose children from their
infancy have scarcely ever heard it? Whose full-grown men turn
from it in all the hardness of rebellious manhood? And if it be what
it is, either a Divine Power, or a diabolic deceit, can that be at
once the Gospel, which has it and which has it not?
Here then, again, we have no new thing to take up with, but simply to
practise what we already solemnly profess.
Thus the perpetual recurrence to the doctrine of the Real Presence,
the prominence given to the Intercession of Saints, especially of the
Blessed Virgin, and the real putting forth of apostolic power in the
tribunal of penitence, are striking features in the Roman Communion.
By these she proves that she has living power as a portion of Christ's
Church, by living upon and dealing with the most awful powers: as she
holds the true doctrine, "Believe that this is so, because I say it,
and I say it because it has come to me from Christ through His
Apostles," so she exhibits the convincing proof of her mission:
"Believe that I am the Church, for behold me exercising the
supernatural powers of the Church." This is that inward proof which
convinces, which is nothing technical, merely intellectual, or matter
of argument, but like St. Augustine's "Securè judicat orbis
terrarum,"--"A city that is set on a hill cannot be hid." And the
Anglican portion must prove, in act as well as in theory, her identity
with this of Rome, from whom she has her succession, and with
that other great Oriental Communion, the joint-witness herein of
Catholic truth and practice. Her prayer-book has the deepest
accordance with the Catholic system. Will she in act continue to put a
false interpretation on the words of her own formularies, or will she
read them practically in the sense of those from whom she took them?
Among minor things, which yet we have suffered loss and harm in giving
up, may be reckoned the custom of crossing with holy water on entering
a church, with hearts as directed, full of reverend thoughts, and of
"trust in the merits of Jesus Christ," and the custom of bowing on
passing the altar. It is sad to contrast the manner in which English
abroad and at home enter the House of God with the reverence shown by
the right-minded in Catholic communities. A still more to be regretted
omission is that of the Crucifix, which might, with much edification,
appear prominently at least in one part of the church, over the
rood-screen or over the altar. How often, in France or Italy, passing
some retired village, or at a turn in the road, may one admire a
Crucifix, large as life, sanctifying the village green, or making a
shrine of some leafy recess? How often does the tedious ascent of a
hill bring to mind, by its wayside memorials, the hill of scorn up
which He, our only hope, slowly toiled in suffering? Is it not a
tenderness to the tired wayfaring man to bring before his
thoughts the very form of Him in whom all labour is made sweet? Who
that has climbed the rocky stairs of the S. Gothard pass has not felt
refreshed and inspirited by the Cross crowning the heights which look
down on the last valley of the Italian side? As the way before him
becomes narrower and steeper, frowning in arid desolation, and shut in
as it seems on all sides, that Cross is to Christian thought a sign
and token, that through the sternest valley and up the hardest height
there is yet a way, though we see not our path before us. In faith the
traveller goes on till height after height is won, and terrace after
terrace surmounted, and the one road opens before him. Shall then the
English labourer, doomed beyond most others to be a hewer of wood and
drawer of water, be deprived of the aid of those symbols which shall
tell him that this too may be made the way of salvation? Has his
duller eye and less imaginative thought less need of the painting and
the sculpture to inform them? Has he become more reverential since
remembrances of his Saviour have been put out of his sight? Does his
bearing in the House of God show a more chastened and humbled spirit
of contrition since the Rood has been taken from before his eyes on
which the God-Man was portrayed in suffering? What!--are those who
deem it almost the whole of religion to put forward continually the
sacrifice of the Cross, consistent in removing carefully out of
sight the visible representation of that sacrifice? Is every memorial
of our redemption to be scrupulously swept away from the face of the
country?--nay, even from the interior of our churches? Out upon that
detestable puritanism, devoid alike of heart and imagination, which
has so successfully laboured to take away from England--once
pre-eminently the isle of faith and love--every outward characteristic
of a Christian land. I am, with shame, obliged to feel and confess
that a pious Roman Catholic, coming to England, so far from being
touched by the purity of our faith, or the warmth of our love, would
probably be shocked at every step by a subtle irreverence, which has
affected our whole tone of thought and mode of action in holy things.
It is become the atmosphere which we breathe, by which even the
instinct of the true Christian mind is so deadened, that it cannot be
aware, without going out of it, how much we have lost
On the other hand, there are parts of the Roman discipline which have
struck me very unfavourably. First, the employment of the Latin
language in all the administration of sacraments, and in most of the
public services. That in the middle ages, before modern languages had
attained order, consistency, and beauty, and while they still appeared
mere hewings of Latin by the barbaric sword, ecclesiastics
should have been unwilling to desecrate, as it were, so solemn a
service as the Mass, by rendering it into misshapen ever-changing
sounds, I can well conceive. But this state of things has long passed
away: nor can I imagine how a devout population can endure to have the
Psalms of David chanted, and the most holy and most beautiful form of
words which ever was put together, recited in a tongue they understand
not. Even those who can fully enter into the stateliness and
imperishable beauty of the Latin tongue must surely feel it a grievous
disadvantage, that devotions, which should carry the whole heart with
them, are not presented through the medium of that mother tongue, the
accents of which speak to every man's heart by the force of a thousand
nameless associations, as those of no other tongue can. How, indeed,
in country parishes, where there is little music, interest can be kept
up in the services, I do not understand. It is true the Sacrifice of
the Mass does not depend on the language by enunciating which it is
consummated; but was that sublime harmony of thoughts and words the
most elevating intended to be inaudible? For even at a Low Mass, when
I had the book before me, and the officiating priest at the distance
of ten feet, the whole Canon of the Mass was inaudible. In a chanted
Mass it is out of the question distinguishing any words. I should feel
this more than I can express. Besides that it gives scoffers the
pretext of saying that the Roman Church aims at making her services a
mere spectacle, or mainly a spectacle,--an infamous calumny indeed,
but which this unhappy locking up her praises and prayers in the Latin
tongue tends to substantiate. Sure I am that if the Anglo-German race
be ever restored to the communion of the Latin Church, as I fervently
pray that mercy may be reserved for them by God, this custom as
regards _them_ must be changed. It is a matter of discipline, merely,
of course; or, whatever I might be tempted to think of it, I should
not so speak.
Again the reservation of the cup to the sacrificing priest, an
admitted innovation and exercise of authority, is one for which I can
see no adequate reason. And though the doctrine of concomitancy seems
involved in that of the Real Presence, and I, for one, should recoil
with horror from the thought that almost every one in the Latin
Communion has been for ages deprived of the participation of the chief
Sacrament, and though one may allow that this custom was very
prevalent before it was enacted, and arose out of reverence, and
renders the administration of the Sacrament much easier, still I
cannot reconcile myself to the necessity of it. Granting that power
exists in the Church to order it in case of necessity, wherein lies
that necessity? In case of a reconciliation this point must surely be
granted, as it was granted to the grand Duke of Bavaria, though
he was induced not to avail himself of the grant.
Preachers in the Roman Church use no book: it seems the people would
not tolerate a written discourse. The result is, that sermons are much
more rhetorical, and rather appeal to the affections and feelings than
to the understanding. The French mind certainly would not endure the
sort of cut and dried essay which is often given in England; yet an
appreciation of logical order and sound reasoning is the very
characteristic of the French mind. More southern nations would still
less enter into the style of preaching in vogue with ourselves. I
think it is a grave question whether the faculty of expressing one's
thoughts in public without book should not be made a part of every
priest's education. The ancient Fathers all did so. Is not our own the
only portion of the Church where a contrary practice prevails? And
dangerous as it would be for the generality of Anglican priests to
attempt to speak on grave points of doctrine without their book before
them, yet surely by a special education the power may be acquired to
combine accuracy of thought with readiness of expression. Orthodoxy
has no natural connexion with a written sermon. At least the power of
illustrating any given subject without book is a precious means of
influence. And what is the priest without influence?
No more interesting spectacle is there in the world, to my eyes, than
the aspect and attitude of the French Church. Fifty years after such
an overthrow as no other Church ever survived, behold forty thousand
priests at work, under eighty bishops, in the great task of winning
back their country to the faith. Despoiled of all territorial power,
of all political authority as priests, of the possession even in fee
of a single church, parsonage, or palace; reduced to a state of even
apostolical poverty, and receiving a miserable salary paid as to
merchants' clerks by the government; with a temporal power jealous of
all spiritual influence, and the whole mind of the nation infected
with infidelity--year after year they are winning ground, they are
making themselves felt; they present a front before which even the
tyranny of centralisation pauses in its career, counts ever and anon
the cost of the conflict, and recoils from its aggression. In the very
midst of the corruptions of Paris we are told that fifty thousand
converts, the pure gold of the Church, exist as a centre which is ever
drawing more around them. Infidelity itself talks of the religious
movement, and fears it, and would fain expel its most tried and
valorous champions--two hundred destitute men, who begin their
profession by the renunciation of their goods. How is all this done?
What power is this which makes its way against such tremendous odds?
If any fact was ever patent in history, it is this--let us not
be ashamed to own it--_it is the power of the Cross_. The bishop,
residing in a palace which he has not the funds even to keep in
repair, with a smaller income than a little tradesman or a country
attorney, has no other channel for his cares and affections than those
five hundred priests, who, with the pay of day-labourers, yet charged
with the intimate knowledge and perilous guidance of souls, look up to
him as their head and support, their defender and champion. And in
every village there is one at least, linked to earth but by a
spiritual tie, a member of a great hierarchy, through whom the
Redeemer rules visibly on the earth. He is cut off from almost all
participation of temporal things, but the larger is his portion of
things spiritual: he reflects, in his degree, the true Melchizedek.
Removed from us but by a narrow strait we see bishops at 400_l._ a
year, archbishops at 600_l._, bound to celibacy, truly ruling their
clergy, serrying their ranks against the enemy, and fearing nothing,
were it but that they have nothing to lose; standing, where the bishop
ought to stand, in the first ranks against the attacks of infidelity.
There, again, the priest detached from all human ties, representing in
his life already that state where they neither marry nor are given in
marriage, in his spiritual character greater than all other men,
in his temporal condition lower than most.