When Mr. Gladstone accuses us of “repudiating ancient history,” he means the ancient history of the Church; also, I understand him to be viewing that history under a particular aspect. There are many aspects in which Christianity presents itself to us; for instance, the aspect of social usefulness, or of devotion or again of theology; but, though he in one place glances at the last of these aspects, his own view of it is its relation towards the civil power. He writes “as one of the world at large;” as a “layman who has spent most and the best years of his life in the observation and practice of politics” (p. 7); and, as a statesmen, he naturally looks at the Church on its political side. Accordingly, in his title-page, in which he professes to be expostulating with us for accepting the Vatican Decrees, he does so, not for any reason whatever, but because of their incompatibility with our civil allegiance. This is the key-note of his impeachment of us. As a public man, he has only to do with the public action and effect of our Religion, its aspect upon national affairs, on our civil duties, on our foreign interests; and he tells us that our Religion has a bearing and behaviour towards the State utterly unlike that of ancient Christianity, so unlike that we may be even said to repudiate what Christianity was in its first centuries, so unlike to what it was then, that we have actually forfeited the proud boast of being “Ever one and the same;” unlike, I say, in this, that our action is so antagonistic to the State’s action, and our claims so menacing to civil peace and prosperity.
Indeed! then I suppose that St. Ignatius of Antioch, and St. Polycarp of Smyrna, and St. Cyprian of Carthage, and St. Laurence of Rome, that St. Alexander and St. Paul of Constantinople, that St. Ambrose of Milan, that Popes Leo, John, Sylverian, Gregory, and Martin, all members of the “undivided Church,” cared supremely and laboured successfully, to cultivate peaceful relations with the government of Rome. They had no doctrines and precepts, no rules of life, no isolation and aggressiveness, which caused them to be considered, in spite of themselves, the enemies of the human race! May I not, without disrespect, submit to Mr. Gladstone that this is very paradoxical? Surely it is our fidelity to the history of our forefathers, and not its repudiation, which Mr. Gladstone dislikes in us. When, indeed, was it in ancient times that the State did not show jealousy of the Church? Was it when Decius and Dioclesian slaughtered their thousands who had abjured the religion of old Rome? or, was it when Athanasius was banished to Treves? or when Basil, on the Imperial Prefect’s crying out, “Never before did any man make so free with me,” answered, “Perhaps you never before fell in with a Bishop”? or when Chrysostom was sent off to Cucusus, to be worried to death by an Empress? Go through the long annals of Church History, century after century, and say, was there ever a time when her Bishops, and notably the Bishop of Rome, were slow to give their testimony in behalf of the moral and revealed law and to suffer for their obedience to it? ever a time when they forgot that they had a message to deliver to the world,—not the task merely of administering spiritual consolation, or of making the sick-bed easy, or of training up good members of society, or of “serving tables” (though all this was included in their range of duty),—but specially and directly, a definite message to high and low, from the world’s Maker, whether men would hear or whether they would forbear? The history surely of the Church in all past times, ancient as well as medieval, is the very embodiment of that tradition of Apostolical independence and freedom of speech which in the eyes of man is her great offence now.
Nay, that independence, I may say, is even one of her Notes or credentials; for where shall we find it except in the Catholic Church? “I spoke of Thy testimonies,” says the Psalmist, “even before kings, and I was not ashamed.” This verse, I think Dr Arnold used to say, rose up in judgment against the Anglican Church, in spite of ifs real excellences. As to the Oriental Churches, every one knows in what bondage they lie, whether they are under the rule of the Czar or of the Sultan. Such is the actual fact that, whereas it is the very mission of Christianity to bear witness to the Creed and Ten Commandments in a world which is averse to them, Rome is now the one faithful representative, and thereby is heir and successor, of that free-spoken dauntless Church of old, whose political and social traditions Mr. Gladstone says the said Rome has repudiated.
I have one thing more to say on the subject of the “semper eadem.” In truth, this fidelity to the ancient Christian system, seen in modern Rome, was the luminous fact which more than any other turned men’s minds at Oxford forty years ago to look towards her with reverence, interest, and love. It affected individual minds variously of course; some it even brought on eventually to conversion, others it only restrained from active opposition to her claims; but none of us could read the Fathers, and determine to be their disciples, without feeling that Rome, like a faithful steward, had kept in fulness and in vigour what our own communion had let drop. The Tracts for the Times were founded on a deadly antagonism to what in these last centuries has been called Erastianism or Cæsarism. Their writers considered the Church to be a divine creation, “not of men, neither by man, but by Jesus Christ,” the Ark of Salvation, the Oracle of Truth, the Bride of Christ, with a message to all men everywhere, and a claim on their love and obedience; and, in relation to the civil power, the object of that promise of the Jewish prophets, “Behold, I will lift up My Hand to the Gentiles, and will set up My standard to the peoples: kings and their queens shall how down to thee with their face toward the earth, and they shall lick up the dust of thy feet.” No Ultramontane (so called) could go beyond those writers in the account which they gave of her from the Prophets, and that high notion is recorded beyond mistake in a thousand passages of their writings.