I KNOW, indeed, and feel deeply, that your frequent references, in your Volume, to what I have lately or formerly written, are caused by your strong desire to be still one with me as far as you can, and by that true affection, which takes pleasure in dwelling on such sayings of mine as you can still accept with the full approbation of your judgment. I trust I am not ungrateful or irresponsive to you in this respect; but other considerations have an imperative claim to be taken into account. Pleasant as it is to agree with you, I am bound to explain myself in cases in which I have changed my mind, or have given a wrong impression of my meaning, or have been wrongly reported; and, while I trust that I have higher than mere personal motives for addressing you in print, yet it will serve to introduce my main subject, and give me an opportunity for remarks which bear upon it indirectly, if I dwell for a page or two on such matters contained in your Volume as concern myself.
1. The mistake which I have principally in view is the belief which is widely spread, that I have publicly spoken of the Anglican Church as “the great bulwark against infidelity in this land.” In a pamphlet of yours a year old, you spoke of “a very earnest body of Roman Catholics,” who “rejoice in all the workings of God the Holy Ghost in the Church of England (whatever they think of her), and are saddened by what weakens her who is, in God’s hands, the great bulwark against infidelity in this land.” The concluding words you were thought to quote from my Apologia. In consequence, Dr. Manning, now our Archbishop, replied to you, asserting, as you say, “the contradictory of that statement.” In that counter-assertion, he was at the time generally considered (rightly or wrongly as it may be), though writing to you, to be really glancing at my Apologia, and correcting it, without introducing my name, where he thought it needed correction. Further, in the Volume, which you have now published, you recur to the phrase; and you speak of its author in terms which, did I not know your partial kindness for me, would hinder me from identifying him with myself. You say, “The saying was not mine, but that of one of the deepest thinkers and observers in the Roman Communion,” p. 7. A friend has suggested to me that perhaps you mean De Maistre; and, from an anonymous letter which I have received from Dublin, I find it is certain that the very words in question were once used by Archbishop Murray; however, you speak of the author of them as if now alive. At length, a reviewer of your Volume in the “Weekly Register,” distinctly attributes them to me by name, and gives me the first opportunity I have had of disowning them; and this I now do. What, at some time or other, I may have said in conversation or in private letter, of course I cannot tell; but I have never, I am sure, used the word “bulwark” of the Anglican Church deliberately, or speaking of it in its religious aspect, nor, as I think, at all 1. What I said in my Apologia was this:—that that Church was “a serviceable breakwater against errors more fundamental than its own.” A bulwark is an integral part of the thing it defends; whereas the word “breakwater” implies such a protection of the Catholic truth, as is, in its nature, accidental and de facto,—and again, such a protection as does not utterly exclude error, but detracts from its volume and force. “Serviceable,” too, implies a something external to the thing served. Again, in saying that the Anglican Church is a defence against “errors more fundamental than its own,” I imply that it has errors, and those fundamental.
2. There is another passage of your book, at p. 337, which it may be right to observe upon. You have made a collection of passages from the Fathers, as witnesses in behalf of your doctrine that the whole Christian faith is contained in Scripture, as if, in your sense of the words, Catholics contradicted you here. And you refer to my Notes on St. Athanasius as contributing passages to your list; but, after all, neither do you, nor do I in my Notes, affirm any doctrine which Rome denies. Those Notes also make frequent reference to a traditional teaching, which (be the faith ever so certainly contained in Scripture), still is necessary as a Regula Fidei, for showing us that it is contained there; vid. pp. 283, 341 2; and this tradition, I know, you uphold as fully as I do in the Notes in question. In consequence, you allow that there is a two-fold rule, Scripture and Tradition; and this is all that Catholics say. How, then, do Anglicans differ from Rome here? I believe the difference is merely one of words; and I shall be doing, so far, the work of an Irenicon, if I make clear what this verbal difference is. Catholics and Anglicans (I do not say Protestants), attach different meanings to the word “proof,” in the controversy as to whether the whole faith is, or is not, contained in Scripture. We mean that not every article of faith is so contained there, that it may thence be logically proved, independently of the teaching and authority of the Tradition; but Anglicans mean that every article of faith is so contained there, that it may thence be proved, provided there be added the illustrations and compensations supplied by the Tradition. And it is in this latter sense that the Fathers also speak in the passages which you quote from them. I am sure at least that St. Athanasius frequently adduces passages in proof of points in controversy, which no one would see to be proofs, unless Apostolical Tradition were taken into account, first as suggesting, then as authoritatively ruling their meaning. Thus you do not say, that the whole revelation is in Scripture in such sense that pure unaided logic can draw it from the sacred text; nor do we say, that it is not in Scripture, in an improper sense, in the sense that the Tradition of the Church is able to recognize and determine it there. You do not profess to dispense with Tradition; nor do we forbid the idea of probable, secondary, symbolical, connotative, senses of Scripture, over and above those which properly belong to the wording and context. I hope you will agree with me in this.