If the arguments used in the foregoing Essay did not retain me in the Anglican Church, I do not see what could keep me in it; yet the time came, when I wrote to Mr. Keble, “I seem to myself almost to have shot my last arrow [against Rome], in the article on English Catholicity.”—Apolog. Ed. 2, p. 134.
The truth is, I believe, I was always asking myself what would the Fathers have done, what would those whose works were around my room, whose names were ever meeting my eyes, whose authority was ever influencing my judgment, what would these men have said, how would they have acted in my position? I had made a good case on paper, but what judgment would be passed on it by Athanasius, Basil, Gregory, Hilary, and Ambrose? The more I considered the matter, the more I thought that these Fathers, if they examined the antagonist pleas, would give it against me.
I expressed this feeling in my Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine. “Did St. Athanasius, or St. Ambrose, come suddenly to life, it cannot be doubted,” I said ironically, “what communion they would mistake for their own. All surely will agree that these Fathers, with whatever differences of opinion, whatever protests, if we will, would find themselves more at home with such men as St. Bernard, or St. Ignatius Loyola, or with the lonely priest in his lodgings, or the holy sisterhood of Charity, or the unlettered crowd before the altar, than with the rulers or members of any other religious community. And may we not add, that were the two Saints, who once sojourned in exile or on embassage at Treves, to come more northward still, and to travel until they reached another fair city, seated among groves, green meadows, and calm streams, the holy brothers would turn from many a high aisle and solemn cloister which they found there, and ask the way to some small chapel, where mass was said, in the populous alley or the forlorn suburb? And, on the other hand, can any one who has but heard his name, and cursorily read his history, doubt for one instant, how the people of England, in turn, ‘we, our princes, our priests, and our prophets,’ Lords and Commons, Universities, Ecclesiastical Courts, marts of commerce, great towns, country parishes, would deal with Athanasius,—Athanasius, who spent his long years in fighting against kings for a theological term?”—P. 138.
I recommend this passage to the consideration of those more than friendly critics of mine, who, in their perplexity to find a motive sufficient for my becoming a Catholic, attribute the step in me personally (without any warrant, I think, from anything that I have said or written) to a desire for a firmer ground of religious certitude, and a clearer view of revealed truth, than is furnished in the Church of England 1. I should also venture respectfully to offer the same passage to the notice of an eminent statesman and brilliant writer, who has lately gone out of his way to observe that “the secession of Dr. Newman” is an “extraordinary event,” which, “has been ‘apologized for,’ but has never been explained;” except that I doubted whether a genuine politician could possibly enter into any motives of action, not political, and was not likely, even in the province of physics, to demand reasons of state or party interests in explanation of a chimpanzee being delivered of a human baby, or a Caucasian man developing into an Archangel. But to our immediate subject:—
The foregoing Essay calls on me for a reconsideration of its contents in three respects: as regards, first, the validity of Anglican Orders; secondly, the unity of ecclesiastical jurisdiction; thirdly, the apparent exceptions to that unity in the history of the early Church. And first as to Anglican Orders.
1.
As to the Anglican Orders, I certainly do think them doubtful and untrustworthy; and that, independent of any question arising out of Parker’s consecration, into which I will not enter. Granting, for argument’s sake, that that consecration was in all respects what its defenders say it was, still I feel a large difficulty in accepting the Anglican Succession and Commission of Ministry, arising out of the historical aspect of the Anglican Church and of its prelates, an aspect which suggests a grave suspicion of the validity of their acts from first to last. I had occasion to make some remarks on this subject several years ago; but I left them unfinished, as feeling that I was distressing, without convincing, men whom I love and respect, by impugning an article of their belief, which to them is sacred, in proportion as it is vital. Now, however, when time has passed, and I am opposing not them but my former self, I may be allowed, pace charissimorum virorum, to explain myself, and leave my explanation on record, as regards some points to which exception was then taken. And, in so doing, I do but profess to be setting down a view of the subject which is very clear to my own mind, and which, as I think, ought to be clear to them: but of course I am not laying down the law on a point on which the Church has not directly and distinctly spoken, nor implying that I am not open to arguments on the other side, if such are forthcoming, which I do not anticipate.