3.

There is a floating body of opinions in every Church, which varies with the age. They are held in one age, abandoned in the next. They are distinct from the Church’s own doctrines; they may be held or abandoned, not without criticism indeed, because every man has a right to have his opinion about another’s thoughts and deeds, and to tell him of it, but without denunciation. The English Church once considered persecution to be a duty; I am not here called on to give any opinion on the question; but certainly the affirmative side of it was not binding on every one of her members. The great body of English Churchmen have for three centuries past called the Lord’s Table an Altar, though the word is not in our formularies: I think a man wrong who says it is not an Altar, but I will not denounce him; I will not write in a hostile tone against any person or any work which does not, as I think, contradict the Articles or the Prayer Book. And in like manner, there has ever been in our Church, and is allowed by our formularies, a very great latitude as regards the light in which the Church of Rome is to be viewed. Why must this right of private judgment be infringed? Why must those who exercise that right be spoken of in terms only applicable to heretical works, and which might with just as much and just as little propriety be retorted upon the quarter they came from? Mr. Froude’s volumes are called in your Sermon an “offensive publication;” is this a term to be applied to writings which differ from us in essentials or non-essentials? they are spoken of not only as containing “startling and extravagant” passages, but “poison.” What words do you reserve for heresy, for plain denials of the Creed, for statements counter to the Articles, for preachings and practices in disobedience to the Prayer Book? If at any time the danger from Romanism was imminent, it was at the time when the Articles were drawn up; what right has any one now of his own private authority to know better than their compilers, and to act as if those Articles were more stringent in their protest against it than they are? If the Church of the nineteenth century outruns the sixteenth in her condemnation of its errors, let her mould her formularies accordingly. When she has so done, she has a claim on her members to submit; but till then, she has a claim on them to respect that liberty of thought which she has allowed, nor to denounce without stating the formal grounds of their denunciation.

4.

I am speaking, on the one hand, of a public, severe, deliberate condemnation; and on the other of the omission of the grounds on which it is made. If grounds can be produced, of course I do not object; and in such case I leave it for those to decide, whether they be tenable, with whom the decision lies. Nor on the other hand can any fair objection be made to friendly expostulation, nay or to public remonstrance even without grounds stated, if put forward as resting on the personal authority of the individual making them. Men of wisdom need not for ever be stating their grounds for what they say: but then they speak not ex cathedrâ, but as if “giving their judgment,” their own judgment, “as those that have been faithful;” as “Paul the aged.” The private judgment of one man is not the same as that of another; it may, if it so be, weigh indefinitely more than another’s; it may outweigh that of a number, however able, learned, and well-intentioned. But then he gives it as private judgment; he does not come forward to denounce. And, again, to take the case of men in general, there will ever be difference of opinion among them about the truth, fairness, propriety or expedience of things said and done by each other. They have full right, as I have already said, or are even under a duty to speak their mind, though they speak it with pain; and the parties spoken to must bear it, though they bear it with pain. All this need not infringe the bond of charity on the one side or the other. But to denounce publicly yet without stating grounds is a different procedure.

5.

And next, I am sorry, that, considering that you have used strong terms concerning Mr. Froude’s Volumes, you have not judged it right to state that they contain as strong expressions against Popery as your pamphlet contains against those Volumes. Nay, you might without much trouble have even cited these, especially as you cite so many others which seem to you to countenance the errors of the Papal system; but perhaps this was too much to expect. Yet at least you would have had no need to lose time in finding them, for some of the principal are brought together in the Preface, which you have evidently read. These strong disclaimers in the work in question tell the more from the unsuspicious way in which the Author made them; in private letters to friends, and in casual conversation, when nothing called for them but the genuine feeling of their truth on his part. They shall find here the place which you have denied them.

Speaking of Italy and Sicily, he says, “These Catholic countries seem in an especial manner to ‘hold the Truth in unrighteousness.’ And the Priesthood are themselves so sensible of the hollow basis upon which their power rests, that they dare not resist the most atrocious encroachments of the State upon their privileges … I have seen priests laughing when at the Confessional; and indeed it is plain, that, unless they habitually made light of very gross immorality, three-fourths of the population [of Naples] would be excommunicated.” ² vol. i. pp. 293, 4.

Such a protest against the practical working of the existing Roman system abroad, is not much like a recommendation of it at home. I am sure your readers cannot be prepared for it. All you tell them is, from your title, that there is a “Revival of Popery,” and, from your remarks, that Mr. Froude’s Volumes help it forward. Certainly you do concede that the persons you speak of are not “strictly Papists;” and that it would be “as uncharitable as it is untrue,” to say, “that within certain limits of their own devising they are not actually opposed to the corruptions and the communion of Rome.” p. 24. May I ask, whose “devising” the “limits” are, which enable you to assign to these persons their exact place in the scale of theology? Certainly not the devising of the Church; at least, you do not appeal to it. Such is the measure of consideration you show to them.

Again: on a friend’s saying that the Romanists were schismatics in England and Catholics abroad, “No,” he answered, “they are wretched Tridentines everywhere.” p. 434.

In another place he speaks of “the atrocious Council” of Trent; and adds, “I own, it” (information concerning that Council) “has altogether changed my notions of the Roman Catholics; and made me wish for the total overthrow of their system.” vol. i. pp. 307, 8 ³.

Now from such passages I gather, that the author did consider the existing system of Rome, since the Council of Trent, to be a most serious corruption. Nay, he adds himself, that he wishes for its “total overthrow.” This is not like giving a helping hand towards “the Revival of Popery.” However, the sole impression conveyed to your mind, by the passage, is, not the direct one that the Roman system has been hopelessly corrupt since, but, by inference that it was not hopelessly corrupt before. The latter point you enlarge upon; the former you let alone. Might I not put in a plea that you should not deduce from a premiss, without acknowledging that premiss itself?

6.

But now, as to this question concerning the Council of Trent, let us consider what it is Mr. Froude and others have said about it. Merely this,—not that the Church of Rome was not corrupt before the Council of Trent, but that its corruptions before that Council were for the most part in the Church but not of it; they were floating opinions and practices, far and wide received, as the Protestant opinions in our Church may be at this day, but, like these opinions in our own case, they were not, as a body, taken into the Church, and made the system of the Church till that Council ⁴. And this is what Mr. Froude means by his notions being “changed” about the Roman Catholics; he thought, till he was better informed, that the Church in Council might alter what the Church in Council had determined; but when he found that Romanists could not reduce to a matter of opinion what they had once exalted into a doctrine, that they could not unloose an anathema they had once tied, that, in his own words, “they were committed finally and irrevocably, and could not advance one step to meet us, even though the Church of England should again become what it was in Laud’s time,” then, while he called the Council “atrocious,” he went on to “wish for the total overthrow” of the system, which is built upon it.

How different is this from approving of everything that took place in the Church before it! While bitterly mourning over the degradation and divisions of the Church Catholic, he is oppressed with the sudden sight of an apparently insuperable difficulty in the way of any future healing her wounds, the great and formal decision of the Roman Church at Trent, that points which had been before but matters of opinion, should be henceforth terms of communion. There was hope till this decision; there were the means of reformation. In the words of one of the Tracts you refer to, “If she (Rome) has apostatized, it was at the time of the Council of Trent. Then, indeed, it is to be feared, the whole Roman Communion bound itself, by a perpetual bond and covenant, to the cause of Antichrist ⁵. But before that time, grievous as were the corruptions in the Church, no individual Bishop, Priest, or Deacon, was bound by oath to the maintenance of them. Extensively as they were spread, no clergyman was shackled by obligations which prevented his resisting them; he could but suffer persecution for so doing. He did not commit himself in one breath to two vows, to serve faithfully in the Ministry, and yet to receive all the superstitions and impieties which human perverseness had introduced into the most gracious and holiest of God’s gifts.” vol. i. No. 15.

I confess I wish this passage were not cast in so declamatory a form; but the substance of it expresses just what I mean. The Council of Trent did, as regards Roman errors, what, for all we know, (though God forbid!) some future synod of the English Church may do as regards Protestant errors,—take them into her system, make them terms of communion, bind upon her hitherto favoured sons their grievous chain; and what that unhappy Council ⁶ actually did for Rome, that does every one in his place and according to his power, who, by declaiming against and denouncing those who dare to treat the Protestant errors as unestablished, gives a helping hand towards their establishment.

7.

I will quote two passages from very different persons in corroboration of what has been said, Dean Field and Bernard Gilpin. Dean Field says, that “none of those points of false doctrine and error which Romanists now maintain and we condemn were the doctrines of the Church before the Reformation constantly delivered, or generally received, by all them that were of it, but doubtfully broached, and devised without all certain resolution, or factiously defended by some certain only, who, as a dangerous faction, adulterated the sincerity of the Christian Verity, and brought the Church into miserable bondage.” Of the Church, Append. to b. iii. Elsewhere he speaks as follows:—“There is therefore a great difference to be made, between the Church wherein our Fathers formerly lived and that faction of the Pope’s adherents, which at this day resist against the necessary reformation of the Churches of God, and make that their faith and religion, which, in farmer times, was but the private and unresolved opinion of some certain only … Formerly, the Church of Rome was the true Church, but had in it an heretical faction: now the Church itself is heretical, and some certain only are found in it in such degree of orthodoxy, as that we may well hope of their salvation.” iii. 47.

Bernard Gilpin, whom I shall quote next, is the stronger evidence, inasmuch as he considered what I certainly cannot, that the Pope was the Antichrist; yet he implies that he only became so at Trent ⁷ … “The Church of Rome kept the rule of faith entire, until that rule was changed and altered by the council of Trent; and from that time it seemed to him a matter of necessity to come out of the Church of Rome, that so that Church which is true and called out from thence might follow the word of God.” ⁸

8.

Nothing surely is more intelligible than being in a Church, and not approving of the acts of its rulers or of large bodies in it. At this day there are many things said and done among us which you would as little approve as myself; and are we answerable for them? and though we should be silent when great and grievous errors were put forth, though we allowed books to go out to the world as if with our sanction when they had it not, though we gave persons out of doors the impression that we approved of them, though when controversy began we took no prominent share in it, though we sat still and let others bear the brunt and odium of it, ought we therefore to be identified with those errors whatever they are? Certainly not; though blameless in such a case we certainly should not be, nor without some sort of debt to them who worked for us. If Albigenses or Waldenses can be found who really did the office of witnesses in those strange times of mixed good and evil, let them have the praise of it; let the Church have the shame of it, for not doing the work herself and in a better way. But it is one thing to say the rulers of the Church were remiss or incapable; quite another that they agreed with their more stirring brethren, who acted instead of them, and usurped the Church’s name, and abused her offices, and seemed to be more than they were. How then is it to the purpose to speak of the “systematic imposture of pretended miracles,” “the portentous delusions of Purgatory and Transubstantiation,” “the especial worship of the Virgin Mary,” “the prohibition of Scripture,” “the establishment of the Inquisition,” &c. as existing before Trent? Who defends such things as these? who says the Church of Rome was free from them before Trent? Are not the Tracts, which you refer to, full of protestations against them, protestations quite as strong as those I read in your pamphlet? Why are the Tracts to be censured for stating a plain historical fact, that the Roman Church did not, till Trent, embody in her creed the mass of her present tenets, while they do not deny but expressly acknowledge her great corruptions before that era, while they give the history of Transubstantiation prior to Trent, (Nos. 27, 28,) of the Breviary worship of the Blessed Virgin prior to Trent, (No. 75,) of Purgatory prior to Trent, (No. 79,) while they formally draw up points in which they feel agreement with Romanists to be hopeless, (Nos. 38, 71,) and while they declare, (in large letters, to draw attention,) that, so long as Rome is what it is, “union” with it “is impossible”? (No. 20.) All that can be said against them is, that in discussing the Roman tenets, they use guarded language; and this I will say, that the more we have personal experience of the arduous controversy in question, the more shall we understand the absolute necessity, if we are to make any way, of weighing our words, and keeping from declamation.

9.

You speak as if the opinions held by the writers you censure were novel in our Church, and you connect them with the “revival of Popery.” Does any one doubt that on all points of doctrine on which a question can occur, there is a large school in our Church, consisting of her far most learned men, mainly agreeing with those writers? Does any one doubt that their statements are borne out in the main by Hooker, Andrewes, Laud, Montague, Hammond, Bramhall, Taylor, Thorndike, Bull, Beveridge, Ken, and Wilson, not to mention others? how many are there of the doctrines you object to, which one or other or all of these great pastors and teachers do not maintain? I will confine myself to Bramhall, who flourished in the seventeenth century, and after holding the see of Derry in the reign of Charles the First, and suffering in the great Rebellion, was made Archbishop of Armagh. And let it be observed that in thus drawing out one or two of the opinions of this great man, I am not making myself or any one else responsible for them; I am but showing how far divines may diverge from the views now popular, and yet be held in reverence both in their own day and since.

1. Of the Real Presence he thus speaks: “So grossly is he” (his Roman opponent) “mistaken on all sides, when he saith that ‘Protestants’ (he should say the English Church if he would speak to the purpose) ‘have a positive belief that the Sacrament is not the Body of Christ;’ which were to contradict the words of Christ, ‘This is My Body.’ He knows better that Protestants do not deny the thing, but their bold determination of the manner by Transubstantiation.” Works, p. 226.—“Abate us Transubstantiation, and those things which are consequent of their determination of the manner of Presence, and we have no difference with them [the Romanists] to this particular. They who are ordained Priests ought to have power to consecrate the Sacrament of the Body and Blood of Christ, that is, to make Them present after such manner as they were present at the first institution, whether it be done by enunciation of the words of Christ, as it is observed in the Western Church, or by Prayer, as it is practised in the Eastern Church; or whether these two be both the same thing in effect, that is, that forms of the Sacraments be mystical prayers and implicit invocations.” Works, p. 485. “Whether it be corporeally or spiritually, (I mean not only after the manner of a spirit, but in a spiritual sense,) whether it be in the soul only or in the Host also, whether by consubstantiation or transubstantiation, whether by production, or adduction, or conservation, or assumption, or by whatsoever other way bold and blind men here conjecture, we determine not.” p. 21.

2. Concerning the Sacrifice of the Mass. “If his Sacrifice of the Mass have any other propitiatory power or virtue in it than to commemorate, represent, and apply the merit of the Sacrifice of the Cross, let him speak plainly what it is. Bellarmine knew no more of this Sacrifice than we.” p. 172. “We acknowledge an Eucharistical Sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving; a commendative Sacrifice, or a memorial of the Sacrifice of the Cross; a representative Sacrifice, or, a representation of the Passion of Christ before the eyes of His heavenly Father; an impetrative Sacrifice, or an inpetration of the fruit and benefit of His passion, by way of real prayer; and, lastly, an applicative Sacrifice, or an application of His merits unto our souls. Let him that dare go one step farther than we do, and say that it is a suppletory Sacrifice to supply the defects of the Sacrifice of the Cross; or else let them hold their peace, and speak no more against us in this point of Sacrifice for ever.” p. 255. “I have challenged them to go one step farther into it [the question of the Sacrifice of the Mass] than I do; and they dare not, or rather they cannot, without blasphemy.” p. 418.

3. Concerning adoration in the Sacrament. “We ourselves adore Christ in the Sacrament; but we dare not adore the species of Bread and Wine.” p. 356.

4. Concerning Prayers for the Dead in Christ. “We condemn not all praying for the dead; not for their resurrection and the consummation of their happiness; but their prayers for their deliverance out of Purgatory.” p. 356.

5. Concerning the Intercession of Saints. “For the ‘intercession, prayers, merits of the Saints,’ (taking the word ‘merit’ in the sense of the Primitive Church, that is, not for desert, but for acquisition,) I know no difference about them, among those men who understand themselves; but only about the last words, ‘which they invocate in their Temples,’ rather than Churches. A comprecation both the Grecians and we do allow; an ultimate invocation both the Grecians and we detest; so do the Church of Rome in their doctrine, but they vary from it in their practice.” p. 418.

6. Concerning Monasteries. “So as Monasteries were restrained in their number and in their revenues, so as the Monks were restrained from meddling between the Pastor and his flock; … so as the abler sort, who are not taken up with higher studies and weightier employments, were insured to bestow their spare hours from their devotions in some profitable labour for the public good, that idleness might be stripped of the cloak of contemplative devotion; so as the vow of celibacy were reduced to the form of our English Universities, so long a fellow, so long unmarried; … so as their blind obedience were more enlightened and secured by some certain rules and bounds; so as their mock poverty … were changed into competent maintenance; and lastly so as all opinion of satisfaction and supererogation were removed; I do not see why Monasteries might not agree well enough with reformed devotion.” p. 65.

7. Concerning the Pope. “He must either be meanly versed in the Primitive Fathers, or give little credit to them, who will deny the Pope to succeed St. Peter in the Roman Bishopric, or will envy him the dignity of a Patriarch within his just bounds.” p. 299.

8. Concerning the relation of the English Church to Protestantism. “In setting forth the moderation of our English Reformers, I showed that we do not arrogate to ourselves either a new Church, or a new religion, or new holy orders. Upon this he falls heavily two ways. First he saith, ‘It is false,’ as he hath showed by innumerable testimonies of Protestants … For what I said, I produced the authority of our Church, he letteth that alone, and sticketh the falsehood upon my sleeve. It seemeth that he is not willing to engage against the Church of England; for still he declineth it, and changeth the subject of the question from the English Church to a confused company of particular authors of different opinions, of dubious credit, of little knowledge in our English affairs, tortured and wrested from their genuine sense.” p. 225.

Certainly Bramhall was allowed more liberty of speech in matters of doctrine and opinion than is given to members of our Church now; yet his subscriptions were much the same as ours.

10.

I have been led to this subject from certain passages in Mr. Froude’s Volumes, about the Council of Trent, which you have treated, not as evidence (which it is) that he shrinks from the Church of Rome, being what it is, but as a ground of complaint against him for not shrinking from it, when it was what it is not; passages, which are not fairly quoted, merely used for your purpose. One other protest on Mr. Froude’s part against Romanism of a different character is still to come; I cannot find it in your publication.

He says, “Since I have been out here, I have got a worse notion of the Roman Catholics than I had. I really do think them idolaters, though I cannot be quite confident of my information as it affects the character of the priests … What I mean by calling these people idolaters is, that I believe they look upon the Saints and Virgin as good-natured people, that will try to get them let off easier than the Bible declares; and that, as they don’t intend to comply with the conditions on which God promises to answer prayers, they pray to them as a come-off.” ⁹ Pref. p. xiii.

Now since you are properly diffuse on the subject of Idolatry, I wish this passage had occurred to you, as showing that, however much you found to censure in Mr. Froude’s Volumes, he did concur in your view of Romanism on a point of no ordinary importance, viz. so far as “really to think the Roman Catholics idolaters.” And for a parallel reason I beg to offer my own avowal, which is pretty much the same. I would say then so much as this, that it is idolatry to bow down to any emblem or symbol as divine which God himself has not appointed ¹⁰; and since He has not appointed the worship of images, such worship is idolatrous; though how far it is so, whether itself or in given individuals, we may be unable to determine. So far, then, I am happy to follow you; however you then say, “Will it then be credited by any one not already cognizant of the fact, that the Crucifix, the effective engine, the notorious emblem of Romish superstition, is once more becoming, with some professed Protestants, an object, not indeed of worship,—scarcely let us hope even of reverence, yet at least of religious interest.” p. 30. Now that the crucifix, if possessed, ought not to be treated with reverence, is a sentiment into which I cannot enter. We treat the pictures of our friends with reverence. Statues of illustrious persons we treat with reverence; and we feel indignation, if they are damaged or insulted. Who among us would think better of a man, who, as being above prejudice, used his Bible for a footstool? yet what is it but an English printed book? Again, would it not offend the run of religious men, to hear of persons making it a point to keep their hats on in Church? yet what is a Church but a building of brick or stone? Surely then it is impossible for any religious man, having a Crucifix, not to treat it with reverence; and perhaps there are few religious people in the ordinary walks of life, (such, I mean, as live by good principles and good feeling, without having their intellect specially exercised,) who would not treat it with due respect. But, while I grant this, I more than doubt whether a Crucifix, carved to represent life as such memorials commonly are, be not too true to be reverent, and too painful for familiar contemplation. I state this, however, as merely my own opinion; without knowing the opinion of others. So much I know, that the use of the Crucifix is in this place no badge of persons whose mode of thinking you would condemn. How many Crucifixes could be counted up in Oxford, I know not; but you will find them in the possession of those who are no special friends or followers of Mr. Froude, and perhaps cordial admirers, except of course on this one point, of the tenor of your publication.

11.

A few words are now necessary on another subject,—Mr. Froude’s use of the word Protestantism, and his language concerning some of the Reformers. Your remarks here go to an encroachment on our liberty of thought and speech, such as I have before noticed. I will but ask by which of the Articles, by what part of the Prayer Book, is a member of our Church bound to acknowledge the Reformers, or to profess himself a Protestant? Nowhere. To force him then to do so, when he fain would not, is narrowing our terms of communion; it is in fact committing the same error which we urge against the Roman Catholics. The Church is not built upon, it is not bound up with, individuals. I do not see why Mr. Froude may not speak against Jewel, if he feels he has a reason, as strongly as many among us speak against Laud. Men are not denounced from high places for calling Laud a bigot or a tyrant, why then should not like terms be used against Jewel? One may dislike to hear Laud abused, and feel no drawings towards his abusers; yet may suffer it as a matter in which we must bear differences of opinion, however “offensive.” This is the very distinction between our Church and (for instance) the Lutherans; that they are Lutherans, but we are not Cranmerites, nor Jewelists, but Catholics, members not of a sect or party, but of the Catholic and Apostolic Church. And while the name of Luther became the title, his dogmata were made the rule of faith, of his followers; his phrases were noted, almost his very words were got by rote. He was, strictly speaking, the Master of his school. Where has the English Church any such head? Whom does she acknowledge but Christ and His Apostles, and as their witness the consent of Fathers? What title has she, but as an old Father speaks, “Christian for her name and Catholic for her surname?” If there is one thing more than another which tends to make us a party, it is the setting up the names of men as our symbols and watchwords. Those who most deeply love their teachers, will not magisterially bring them forward, and will rather shun than denounce those who censure them.

At the same time if such expressions concerning Jewel and others, as occur in the Volumes under consideration, have been painful to any person, I wish to express my own deep concern at it. With the prospect of such a contingency, nothing but a plain sense of duty could justify their publication; and a duty it may have been with those who considered that an historical name was at this day made the sanction of serious religious errors. The least said here on such a subject, the better; let it only be recollected, that what is said about Jewel, is supported by passages quoted from his works. Shall we defend such passages, or deny his trustworthiness?

12.

And in like manner, if persons, aware that names are things, conscientiously think that the name of Protestantism is productive of serious mischief,—if it be the property of heresy and schism as much as of orthodoxy,—if it be but a negative word, such as almost forces on its professors the idea of a vague indefinite creed, bringing before them how much they may doubt, deny, ridicule, or resist, rather than what they must believe,—if the religion it generates mainly consists in a mere attack upon Rome, and tends to be a mere instrument of state purposes,—if it tends to swallow up devotion in politics, and the Church in the executive,—if it damps, discourages, stifles that ancient Catholic spirit, which, if true in the beginning, is true at all times,—and if on the other hand there be nothing in our formularies obliging us to profess it,—and if external circumstances have so changed, that what it was inexpedient or impossible to do formerly, is both possible and most expedient now,—these considerations, I conceive, may form a reason for abandoning the word. But here it will be sufficient to keep to the question of our obligation to profess it, and with this view I quote the following passage from one of the “Tracts for the Times.”

“The English Church,” it says, “as such, is not Protestant, only politically; that is, externally or so far as it has been made an establishment, and subjected to national and foreign influences,” &c. ¹¹

13.

Another question, already touched on, as to which we claim a liberty of opinion is, whether or not the Church of Rome is “the mother of harlots,” and the Pope St. Paul’s “man of sin.” And as feeling it is fairly an open question, I see no need of entering at length into it, even did the limits of a Letter admit. How those divines who hold the Apostolical Succession can maintain the affirmative, passes my comprehension; for in holding the one and other point at once, they are in fact proclaiming to the world that they come from “the synagogue of Satan,” and (if I may so speak) have the devil’s orders. I know that highly revered persons have so thought; perhaps they considered that the fatal apostasy took place at Trent, that is, since the date of our derivation from Rome; yet if in “the seven hills,” in certain doctrines “about the souls of men,” in what you consider “blasphemous titles,” and in “lying wonders,” lies, as you maintain, the proper evidence that the Bishop of Rome is Antichrist, then the great Gregory, to whom we Saxons owe our conversion, was Antichrist, for in him and in his times were those tokens of apostasy fulfilled, and our Church and its Sees are in no small measure the very work of the “Man of Sin.”

And the dissenting bodies among us seem to understand this well; for they respond to our attack upon Rome, by briskly returning it on ourselves. They know none of those subtle distinctions by which we distinguish in this matter between ourselves and our ancient Mother, but they apply at once to our actual state what we confess of our original descent. If Rome has “committed fornication with the kings of the earth,” what must be said of the Church of England with her temporal power, her Bishops in the House of Lords, her dignified clergy, her prerogatives, her pluralities, her buying and selling of preferments, her patronage, her corruptions, and her abuses? If Rome’s teaching be a deadly heresy, what is our Church’s, which “destroys more souls than it saves”? If Rome be “Mystery” because it has mysterious doctrines, what are we with our doctrine of the Sacraments and those greater things which are in heaven? If “commanding to abstain from meats” be a mark of Antichrist’s communion, why do we observe days of fasting and abstinence, and why have our most revered teachers of times past been men of mortified lives? If Rome has put a yoke on the neck of Christians, why have not we, with our prescribed form of prayer, our Saints’ Days, our Ordinances, and our prohibition of irregular preaching? If Rome is accused of assuming divine titles and powers, is not our own Church vulnerable too, considering the Bishop ordains under the words, “Receive the Holy Ghost,” and the priest has power given him “to remit and retain sins.”

No; serious as are the corruptions of Rome, clear indeed as are the differences between her communion and ours, they do not lie in any prophetic criteria; we cannot prove her the enchantress of the Apocalyptic Vision, without incurring our share in its application; and our enemies see this and make use of it. I am not inventing a parallel; they see it, I say, and use it. They are now exulting, as they believe piously, in our Church’s troubles, for they consider, that while she is established, she is “partaker of the sins” of Rome, and they see in those troubles the fulfilment of the prophecy, that the “ten horns” should “hate” the woman, and “make her desolate and naked, and eat her flesh, and burn her with fire.” In the confiscations going on in Spain and Portugal, and in the acts against us of our own government at home, they recognize one and the same Retributive Dispensation. And they declare that we have not yet obeyed the exhortation which you address to your readers, “Come out of her, My people, that ye receive not of her plagues;” nor shall have, till we give up our stalls, our incumbencies, and our dignities, and are content to rest merely on our popularity, our powers of preaching, our acceptableness to our people, our efficiency, our industry, and our Christian perfection. Nor is this most odious, “offensive” view, as you will call it, a modern one, nor has it been used against us by orthodox dissenters only. It was carried out to its last consequences at the time of the Reformation. The followers of Socinus then proclaimed, as some of us do now, that Rome was Babylon, and then they went on to show that those who so thought could not consistently stop their reasoning till they were brought to the conclusion that Socinianism is the Gospel. According to the well-known lines they said,—

Tota jacet Babylon; destruxit tecta Lutherus,
Calvinus muros, sed fundamenta Socinus.

14.

I will say no more on this subject than this; that the 17th and 18th chapters of the Apocalypse, on which the supposed Scripture evidence against her principally rests, must either be taken literally, or figuratively; now they do not apply to her unless they are taken partly in the one way, partly in the other. Take the chapters literally, and sure it is, Rome is spoken of; but then she must have literal merchants, ships, and sailors; therefore is not Papal Rome but Pagan. Take them figuratively; and then, sure it is, merchants and merchandize, may mean indulgences and traffickers in them; but then the word Rome perhaps is figurative also, as well as her merchandize. Nay, I should almost say, it must be; for the city is called not only Rome but Babylon; and if Babylon is a figurative title, why should not Rome be? The interpretation then lies between Pagan Rome which is past, and some city, or power typified as a city, which is to come; and probably may be true both ways. But, if we insist on adapting the prophecy to Papal Rome, then we are reduced to take half of the one interpretation, half of the other; and by the same process, only taking in each case the other half, we may with equal success make it London, for London has literally ships and sailors, merchants and merchandise, and is a figurative Rome, as being an Imperial City.

And now I come to the main subject of discussion, which is so much more arduous than any of the others, that I fear it will occupy a long time; and that is the subject of the Holy Eucharist.

15.

Before entering upon it, I will notice three points in your publication connected with it, which call for remark.

You write as follows:—“The term Altar, as synonymous with the Lord’s Table, does not appear to have been adopted till about the end of the second century; and then merely in a figurative sense, and out of a spirit of accommodation, as it should seem, to the prejudices of Jews and Pagans, who habitually reproached the Christians as having neither Altar nor Sacrifice,” pp. 18, 19. You are of opinion that the word Altar was not used for the Lord’s Table “till about the end of the second century.” On the contrary I read it in as many as four out of the seven brief Epistles of St. Ignatius, at the end of the first. If you are right, even this glorious Saint and Martyr, the immediate companion of Apostles, acted in a “spirit of accommodation” to the “prejudices of Jews and Pagans.” Do my eyes play me false in reading Ignatius, or in reading your “Revival of Popery”?

First he uses it in his Epistle to the Ephesians:—“For if I in so short a season formed such an intimacy with your Bishop, not a human but a spiritual, how much more do I call you fortunate, who are so united to him, as the Church to Jesus Christ, and Jesus Christ to the Father, that all things may be concordant in unity? Let no one err; unless a man be within the Altar ([entos tou thusiasteriou]) he comes short of the bread of God. For if the prayer of one and a second has such power, how much more that of the Bishop and all the Church?” §. 5.

Next, in that to the Magnesians:—“Let there be one prayer, one supplication, one mind, one hope, in love, in that joy which is irreprovable. There is one Jesus Christ to whom nought is preferable; all of you then run together as to one Temple, as for one Altar ([epi en thusiasterion]), as for One Jesus Christ, who is come forth from One Father, and returned again to One.” §. 7.

Thirdly, in that to the Trallians:—“Guard against such [sectarians,] and this will be if we are not puffed up, nor separated from Jesus Christ our God, and the Bishop, and the ordinances of the Apostles. He who is within the Altar ([entos thusiasteriou]) is clean; that is, he who does any thing without Bishop, and Presbytery, and Deacons, such a one is not clean in conscience.” §. 7.

Lastly, in that to the Philadelphians:—“Be careful to use one Eucharist; for the Flesh of our Lord Jesus Christ is one, and one Cup for the uniting of His blood; one Altar ([en thusiasterion]), as one Bishop, together with the Presbytery, and Deacons my fellow-servants; that whatever ye do, ye may do after God.” §. 4.

And while the list of ecclesiastical witnesses to the use of the word Altar for the Lord’s Table begins as early as it can after the Apostles and Evangelists, (who use it also as I would contend, in Matt. v. 23. Heb. xiii. 10, but who are not at present under review,) it proceeds downwards, not only in an uninterrupted series, but with a sort of prerogative of usage; for it is very remarkable that, excepting one passage in a letter of St. Dionysius of Alexandria, no ecclesiastical writer at all is found to use the word “Table” till St. Athanasius in the fourth century; and what is also remarkable, when St. Athanasius uses it, he does so with the explanation, “that is, the Holy Altar;” as if he were not using a word commonly adopted. On the contrary, the word Altar is used after St. Ignatius by St. Irenæus, Tertullian, St. Cyprian, Origen, Eusebius, St. Athanasius, St. Ambrose, St. Gregory Nazianzen, St. Optatus, St. Jerome, St. Chrysostom, and St. Austin ¹².

16.

The next point on which it is necessary to remark, is your saying, that the Tracts for the Times “appeal” on the subject of the Eucharist to the “half-converted German Reformers,” that is, to Luther, and Melancthon, “and to the strong and unguarded expressions which their works supply;” and this you call an “alarming fact.” I am very glad to find we are so well agreed in our judgments as to the authority of Luther and Melancthon in our Church; but I cannot allow that the Tracts do appeal to them, as you assert, or wish to shelter themselves behind them. Bp. Cosin, in the Tract you refer to, certainly does quote the Lutherans, but he also quotes Calvin, Bucer, and the French Protestants; and that, in order to show, that “none of the Protestant Churches doubt of the real (that is, true and not imaginary) presence of Christ’s Body and Blood in the Sacrament;” and he “begins with the Church of England,” quoting first our formularies, then the words of Bilson and Andrewes. In what sense then do you mean that the writers of the Tracts appeal to the Lutherans, when, not the writers, but only Bp. Cosin in the Tracts, appeals, not to the Lutherans, but to the whole Protestant world? Concerning the Real Presence itself something shall be said presently; meanwhile I do not fear that any great number of readers will identify or connect with Luther’s the doctrine held by Hooker, Andrewes, Bramhall, Cosin, Bull, Ken, and Leslie. It may be well to quote the words of the last-mentioned Divine concerning this work of Bp. Cosin, whose views you consider do not “fall much, if at all, short of what has been commonly termed Consubstantiation.” “Bishop Cosin’s History of Transubstantiation,” he says to a Romanist, is “a little book, long printed both in English and Latin, not yet answered (that I hear), and I believe unanswerable, wherein you see a cloud of witnesses through the first ages of the Church, and so downwards, in perfect contradiction to this new article of your faith.” (Rome and England, vol. iii. pp. 130, 1.) This is not the language of one who felt Cosin’s book to be “an alarming fact.”

17.

And thirdly, let me refer to two statements in Mr. Froude’s Volumes, on which you dwell, to the effect that our present Communion Service is “a judgment on the Church,” and that there would be advantage in “replacing it by a good translation of the Liturgy of St. Peter.” The state of the case is this; the original Eucharistic form is with good reason assigned to the Apostles and Evangelists themselves. It exists to this day under four different rites, which seem to have come from four different Apostles and Evangelists. These rites differ in some points, agree in others; among the points in which they agree, are of course those in which the Essence of the Sacrament consists. At the time of the Reformation we in common with all the West possessed the rite of the Roman Church, or St. Peter’s Liturgy. This formulary is called the Canon of the Mass, and except a very few words, appears, even as now used in the Roman Church, to be free from interpolation, and thus is distinguished from the Ordinary of the Mass, which is the additional and corrupt service prefixed to it, and peculiar to Rome ¹³. This sacred and most precious monument, then, of the Apostles, our Reformers received whole and entire from their predecessors; and they mutilated the tradition of 1500 years. Well was it for us that they did not discard it, that they did not touch any vital part; for through God’s good providence, though they broke it up and cut away portions, they did not touch life; and thus we have it at this day, a violently treated, but a holy and dear possession, more dear perhaps and precious than if it were in its full vigour and beauty, as sickness or infirmity endears to us our friends and relatives. Now the first feeling which comes upon an ardent mind, on mastering these facts, is one of indignation and impatient grief; the second, is the more becoming thought, that, as he deserves nothing at all at God’s hand, and is blessed with Christian privileges only at His mere bounty, it is nothing strange that he does not enjoy every privilege which was given through the Apostles; and his third, that we are mysteriously bound up with our forefathers and bear their sin, or in other words, that our present condition is a judgment on us for what they did.

These, I conceive, to be the feelings which dictated to Mr. Froude the sentences on which you animadvert; the earlier is more ardent, the latter is more subdued. In the one he says of a friend, “I verily believe he would now gladly consent to see our Communion Service replaced by a good translation of the Liturgy of St. Peter, a name which I advise you to substitute in your notes to Hooker for the obnoxious phrase ‘Mass Book.’” vol. i. p. 287. Lest any misconception of the author’s meaning should arise from the use of the word “replaced,” I would observe, that such “replacing” would not remove one prayer, one portion of our present Service; it would consist but of addition and re-arrangement, of a return to the original Canon. The substance of this explanation is contained in the second volume of the Remains, (Essay on Liturgies ¹⁴,) and a reference to it would supersede it here. The other passage runs as follows: “By-the-bye, the more I think over that view of yours about regarding our present Communion Service, &c., as a judgment on the Church, and about taking it as crumbs from the Apostles’ table, the more I am struck with its fitness to be dwelt upon as tending to check the intrusion of irreverent thoughts without in any way interfering with one’s just indignation. If I were a Roman Catholic Priest, I should look on the administration of the Communion in one kind in the same light.” vol. i. p. 410.

You see, from this last sentence, he thought nothing would be gained by going to Rome, unsatisfactory as might be our present case. Nay that he was not in favour even of changes in our own services, to meet the defects he felt in them, appears from the following passages in his Tract on the Daily Service, 1. “This, it will be said, is an argument, not so much for retaining the present form of the Prayer Book, as for reverting to what is older. In my own mind, it is an argument for something different from either, for diffidence. I very much doubt, whether in these days the spirit of true devotion is at all understood, and whether an attempt to go forward or backward may not lead our innovations to the same result. ‘If the blind lead the blind, shall they not both fall into the ditch?’” vol. ii. 382.

[A Letter &c.]

18.

And now at length let me proceed to the doctrine itself to which these remarks relate, the doctrine of the Holy Eucharist. Here I could have much wished that you had, at least in your Notes, drawn out that view of it which you consider to be Scriptural and Anglican. It would have been a great satisfaction to know where we both are standing, how far I can assent, how far I am obliged to dissent from your opinion. But, excepting from one or two half-sentences, I really can gather nothing to the purpose; I only see you do not hold, but rather condemn, a view which Bp. Cosin declares to be that of all “the Protestant” or “Reformed Churches.” To this difficulty I must submit as I can; and instead of letting the course of my remarks run as a comment on your pages, shall be obliged against my will to answer you by a categorical view of my own ¹⁵.

As regards then this most sacred subject, three questions offer themselves for consideration; first, whether there is a Real Presence of Christ in this Holy Sacrament, next what It is, and thirdly where. 1. On the Real Presence I shall not use many words of my own, because on the one hand it is expressly recognized by the Catechism and Homilies, (not to mention the language of the Service itself,) and on the other because you do not absolutely condemn such language, only you think it “highly objectionable and dangerous” when “systematically and studiously adopted.” I shall not therefore debate a point which the formularies of our Church decide, when they declare that “the Body and Blood of Christ” are “verily and indeed taken and received by the faithful in the Lord’s Supper;” that “the Body of Christ is given, taken, and eaten in the Supper;” and that “thus much we must be sure to hold, that in the Supper of the Lord there is no vain ceremony, no bare sign, no untrue figure of a thing absent, but as the Scripture saith, … the communion of the Body and Blood of the Lord, in a marvellous incorporation, which by the operation of the Holy Ghost, the very bond of our conjunction with Christ, is through faith wrought in the souls of the faithful, whereby not only their souls live to eternal life, but they surely trust to win to their bodies a resurrection to immortality.” ¹⁶ These passages seem to determine that the Body and Blood of Christ are not absent but present in the Lord’s Supper; and if really, and in fact Christ’s Body be there, His Soul is there, and His Divinity; for as the Article says, the two natures are “never to be divided;” therefore He is there, “One Christ,” whole and entire. Nor does any one doubt of His Presence on our Altars as God, for He is everywhere; but the question is, whether His human nature also is present in the Sacrament.

In corroboration of the view here taken of the statements of our Church, I quote the following passage from Hooker, who, we all know, was not in this, any more than in other points, an extreme Divine. He argues that the three Schools of opinion in his day, the Romanists, the Lutherans, and the Sacramentaries, (the last, I need not say, being one which nowhere exists as a body at this day, but which originally was the school of Zuinglius and Œcolampadius,) might well waive the question among themselves, how Christ is present, upon the common confession that He is really present. And he defends the Sacramentaries from the objection then urged against them, and since fulfilled in their descendants, that they admitted a Presence in words and explained it away; and, as believing they did not explain it away, he admits them into this compact of charity, as it may be called. He says, “It is on all sides plainly confessed, … that this Sacrament is a true and real participation of Christ, who thereby imparteth Himself, even His whole entire Person, as a mystical head unto every soul that receiveth Him, and that every such receiver doth thereby incorporate or unite himself unto Christ as a mystical member of Him, yea of them also whom He acknowledgeth to be His own … It seemeth therefore much amiss, that against them whom they term Sacramentaries so many invective discourses are made, all running upon two points, that the Eucharist is not a bare sign or figure only, and that the efficacy of His Body and Blood is not all we receive in this Sacrament. For no man, having read their books and writings which are thus traduced, can be ignorant that both these assertions they plainly confess to be most true. They do not so interpret the words of Christ, as if the name of His Body did import but the figure of His Body; and to be were only to signify His Blood. They grant that these Holy Mysteries, received in due manner, do instrumentally both make us partakers of the grace of that Body and Blood which were given for the life of the world, and besides also impart to us, even in true and real, though mystical manner, the very Person of our Lord Himself, whole, perfect and entire, as hath been showed.” ¹⁷

Elsewhere he says, “Doth any man doubt, but that even from the flesh of Christ our very bodies do receive that life which shall make them glorious at the latter day; and for which they are already accounted parts of His Blessed Body? Our corruptible bodies could never live the life they shall live, were it not that here they are joined with His Body which is incorruptible, and that His is in ours as a cause of immortality, a cause by removing through the death and merit of His own Flesh that which hindered the life of ours. Christ is therefore, both as God and as man, that true Vine whereof we both spiritually and corporally are branches. The mixture of His bodily Substance with ours is a thing which the Ancient Fathers disclaim. Yet the mixture of His Flesh with ours they speak of, to signify what our very bodies, through mystical conjunction, receive from that vital efficacy which we know to be in His; and from bodily mixtures they borrow diverse similitudes, rather to declare the truth than the manner of coherence between His Sacred, and the sanctified bodies of saints.” ¹⁸

19.

2. So much on the testimony of our Church and of her celebrated Divine to the doctrine of the Real Presence. But here it is objected that such a Presence is impossible; and this brings us to the question how Christ is present, which stands next for consideration. The objection takes this form,—if He is really here, He is locally here, but He is locally in heaven not here, therefore He cannot really be here, but is only said to be here. Now to take in hand this question.

In answer, Bellarmine maintains that our Lord can be locally here, though He is in heaven; for he lays it down as a certain truth that a body can be in two places at once ¹⁹. Accordingly he would say, that in the Sacrament that very Body, which died upon the Cross, and rose again and ascended, is locally present under the accidents of Bread.

Our Church, however, incidentally argues that a body cannot be in two places at once ²⁰; and that the Body of Christ is not locally present, in the sense in which we speak of the Bread as being locally present. On the other hand she determines, as I have already said, that the Body of Christ is in some unknown way, though not locally yet really present, so that we after some ineffable manner partake of it. Whereas then the objection stands, Christ is not really here, because He is not locally here, she answers, He is really here, yet not locally.

20.

I will say directly what is meant by this; before doing so, however, let me briefly observe that there is nothing (as far as I am aware) in Mr. Froude’s writings in countenance of the local presence on earth, as it is commonly understood, though he certainly did not sympathize with the Reformers at all in their mode of arguing on the subject. When he speaks of “making the Body and Blood of Christ,” or indirectly adopts the phrase of “making the Bread and Wine the Body and Blood of Christ,” he does not go beyond the doctrine of the Real Presence, which, as we shall see, need not be local; and in the use of the one phrase he is borne out by Hooker, who speaks of the Christian Ministry as having “power imparted” to it by Christ, “both over that mystical body which is the society of souls, and over that Natural, which is Himself, for the knitting of both in one, a work which Antiquity doth call the making of Christ’s Body;” while he brings forward the other, not in his own words, but in the words of Bishop Bull, who says, “We are not ignorant that the ancient Fathers generally teach that the Bread and Wine in the Eucharist, by or upon the consecration of them, do become and are made the Body and Blood of Christ.”

Mr. Froude’s strong language, then, had the sanction of our Divines; how far, on the other hand, he was from agreeing with the Roman doctrine will be clearly seen from a passage of his writings, not yet published. In an unfinished Essay on Rationalism, speaking of the interpretation which supposes “This is My Body” to mean “This is a sign of My Body,” he says, “This mode of speaking … is true in one sense, and in every other gratuitous and improper. If it is intended simply to deny, that by the words ‘This is My Body’ our Lord meant, ‘This is that very Body of Mine which you see before you sitting at the Table,’ then indeed the sentiment is true, however awkward may be the expression of it ²¹. But if the words ‘Sign of My Body,’ are understood to convey any idea more definite and intelligible than that which is conveyed in our Lord’s own words, then most certainly that idea is unscriptural, it is a mere human invention fabricated to set the mind at rest, where God has seen fit to leave it in uncertainly.” Hence he says the very thing which I conceive our Church holds, that Christ’s Body is present, but how it is present is a mystery; it being hidden from us how Christ can be really here, yet not locally. Both Protestant and Romanist attempt to explain how; Protestants by saying it is a mere figurative or nominal presence, and as to Romanists, I will quote Mr. Froude’s own words about them which occur soon after: “Opposed to these errors, (the Protestant,) but erroneous much for the same reason, is the Roman Catholic dogma about Transubstantiation. Unlike the Protestant glosses, this does not attempt to explain away everything miraculous in the history of the Last Supper; but by explaining precisely wherein the miracle consists and how it is brought about, it aims like them at relieving us from a confession of ignorance ²², and so far must be regarded as a contrivance of human scepticism, to elude the claims of Faith, and to withdraw from the hidden Mysteries of religion the indistinctness in which God has thought fit to envelope them.” ²³

21.

But now to return, what is the meaning of saying that Christ is really present, yet not locally? This was the second point I had to consider, and I will make two suggestions upon it, in both of which the Sacramental Presence shall be viewed as real, yet in neither local.

First, as to material things, what do we mean, when we speak of an object being present to us? How do we define and measure its presence? To a blind and deaf man that only is present which he touches. Give him hearing, and the range of things present to him enlarges; everything is present to him which he hears. Give him at length sight, and the sun may be said to be present to him in the daytime, and myriads of stars by night. Presence then is a relative word, depending on the channels of communication existing between the object and the person to whom it is present. It is almost a correlative of the senses. A fly may be as near an edifice as a man: yet we do not call it present to the fly, because he cannot see it, and we do call it present to the man, because he can.

But we must add another element to the idea expressed by the word in the case of matter. A thing may be said to be present to us, which is so circumstanced as immediately to act upon us and to influence us, whether we are sensible of it or no. Perhaps then our Lord is present to us in the Sacrament in this sense, that, far as He is off us, He in it acts personally, bodily, and directly upon us, though how He does so is as simply beyond us, as the results of eyesight are inconceivable to the blind. We know but of five senses,—we know not whether human nature is capable of more; we know not whether the soul possesses any instruments of knowledge and moral advantage analogous to them; but neither have we any reason to deny that the soul may be capable of having Christ present to it by the stimulus of dormant or the development of possible energies. As sight for certain purposes annihilates space, so other unknown conditions of our being, bodily or spiritual, may practically annihilate it for other purposes. Such may be the Sacramental Presence. We kneel before the Heavenly Throne, and distance vanishes; it is as if that Throne were the Altar close to us.

22.

This is my first suggestion; my second is as follows:—

Our Lord, not only “did rise again from death,” as the Article says, “and took again His Body with flesh, bones, and all things appertaining to the perfection of man’s nature,” but He rose with what St. Paul terms “a spiritual body;” so that now that He is in heaven, He is not subject to the laws of matter, and has no necessary relations to place, no dependence on its conditions; and, for what we know, His mode of making Himself present on earth, of coming and going, is as different from the mode natural to bodies by locomotion,—nearness being determined by intervals and absence being synonymous with distance,—as spirit is different from matter. He may be literally present in the Holy Eucharist, yet, not having become present by a movement and a transit, He may still be continuously on God’s right hand: so that, though He be present with us in deed and in truth, it may be impossible, it may be untrue, to determine that He is in or about the elements, or in the soul of the communicant. These may be serviceable modes of speech according to the occasion; but the true result of all such inquiries is no more than the assertion with which we began, that He is present in the Holy Eucharist but not locally present. We, to whom the idea of space is a necessity, and who have no experience of spirits, are of course unequal to the conception of such an idea, and can only call a mystery what is as transporting and elevating to the religious sense, as it is difficult to the intellect.

Let it be observed that I am not proving or determining anything; I am only showing how it is that certain propositions which at first sight seem contradictions in terms, are not so; I am but pointing out ways of reconciling them. If even there is only one way assignable, the force of any antecedent objection against the possibility of reconciling them is removed, and there may be other ways supposable though not assignable.

23.

3. And now the way is clear to add a few words on the third point, viz. the relation of the consecrated elements to those Realities of which they are the outward signs.

The Roman Church, we know, considers that the elements of Bread and Wine depart or are taken away on Consecration, and that the Body and Blood of Christ take their place. This is the doctrine of Transubstantiation; and in consequence they hold that what is seen, felt, and tasted, is not Bread and Wine but Christ’s Flesh and Blood, though the former look, feel, and taste remains ²⁴. This is what neither our Church, nor any of the late maintainers of her doctrine on the subject, even dreams of holding. Again, the Lutherans say that, though the Bread remains, the body of Christ is within [intra] the Bread; neither is this countenanced by any of the persons on whom you animadvert. These hold a Spiritual Presence to be such as not to allow of being strictly co-extensive with place, in the way in which a bodily substance is, in the way in which the Bread is: therefore they cannot be said to countenance the Lutheran doctrine of Consubstantiation. What they do say is that Christ’s Body is really and literally present, but they do not know how; it being a mystery, as I have said already, how, as being spiritual it can be really present, yet not locally or as bodies are.

It is true there is a passage in Mr. Froude’s Letters in which he seems to assert that the Body of Christ is locally in the Bread; though this is, I apprehend, not really the case on a candid judgment of it. He finds fault with an expression in a Poem, which, speaking of the Lord’s Supper, says, “There present in the heart, not in the hands, &c.” He adds, “How can we possibly know that it is true to say, ‘not in the hands’?” p. 404; that is, he much disliked dogmatic decisions of any kind upon the subject. He does not rule that it is in the hands, but, with Hooker, he wishes the question left open; be disliked its being determined that it was in the heart in a sense in which it was not in the hands, seeing we know nothing of the matter. To say it was in both did not interfere with the doctrine of Christ’s local presence in heaven; but to say that Christ is in the heart and not in the hands, did so fix His presence here as to make it local, and in consequence might be taken to interfere with that His one abiding presence at God’s right hand. I am certain, from what I know of his opinions, that he did not mean, that the Body of Christ which is on God’s right hand, was literally in the Bread.

But, without limiting our Lord’s presence to the consecrated elements, it seems nothing but the truth to say that they are His immediate antecedents; so that whoever in faith receives them, at once and without assignable medium, is gifted with His Presence who is on God’s right hand. As the breath is the immediate forerunner of the voice, as the face is the image of the soul, as a garment marks a bodily presence, so, I conceive, the elements are the antecedents of His Body and Blood, or what our Article calls, the “efficacious signs by the which He doth work invisibly in us,” or, as Hooker calls them, His “instruments.” And hence, whereas He is unseen, and His Presence ineffable, and known only by Its outward signs, we say that, when we receive them, we receive the awful Realities which follow on them; when we touch the one, with our spirit we touch the Other, when we eat the one, we eat the Other, when we drink the one, we drink the Other. And, whereas what is spiritual has no parts, and what is spiritual cannot receive in part, therefore when we speak of eating Christ’s Body with our souls, the words cannot be grossly or absurdly taken to mean a partial or gradual communication of so Heavenly a Treasure, as happens in carnal eating; but in some unknown way the soul becomes possessed at once of Christ according to its nature, and as bodily contact is the mode in which Bread nourishes our bodies, so the soul, and the motions of the soul, and faith which is of the soul, as by an inward contact, is the mean and instrument of receiving Christ.

24.

Now let it be considered whether the following extracts from the Homilies and the Ecclesiastical Polity do not bear out the main points which have been insisted on. In consideration of the importance of the subject, I hope you will pardon their length.

“The true understanding,” says the first part of the Sermon concerning the Sacrament, “of this fruition and union, which is betwixt the body and the Head, betwixt the true believers and Christ, and the Ancient Catholic Fathers both perceiving themselves and commending to their people, were not afraid to call this supper, some of them the Salve of immortality and sovereign preservative against death; other, a deifical communion; other, the sweet dainties of our Saviour, the pledge of eternal health, the defence of faith, the hope of the resurrection; other, the food of immortality, the healthful grace, and the conservatory to everlasting life … It is well known that the meat we seek for in this supper is spiritual food, the nourishment of our soul, a heavenly refection, and not earthly; an invisible meal, and not bodily; a ghostly substance, and not carnal … Take then this lesson, O thou that are desirous of this Table, of Emissenus, a godly father, that when thou goest up to the reverend Communion, to be satisfied with spiritual meats, thou look up with faith upon the Holy Body and Blood of thy God, thou marvel with reverence, thou touch It with thy mind, thou receive It with the hand of thy heart, and thou take It fully with thy inward man.”

Such is the language of the Homily, nor does Hooker come short of it. “The Bread and Cup,” he says, “are His Body and Blood, because they are causes instrumental, upon the receipt whereof the participation of His Body and Blood ensueth … Our souls and bodies quickened to eternal life are effects, the cause whereof is the Person of Christ: His Body and Blood are the true well-spring out of which this life floweth. So that His Body and Blood are in that very subject whereunto they minister life; not only by effect or operation, even as the influence of the heavens is in plants, beasts, men, and in everything which they quicken; but also by a far more divine and mystical kind of union, which maketh us one with Him, even as He and the Father are one. The Real Presence of Christ’s most Blessed Body and Blood is not therefore to be sought for in the Sacrament, but in the worthy receiver of the Sacrament.” ²⁵

Soon after follows the well-known passage: “Such as love piety, will, as much as in them lieth, know all things that God commandeth, but especially the duties of service which they owe to God. As for His dark and hidden works, they prefer, as becometh them in such cases, simplicity of faith before that knowledge, which, curiously sifting what it should adore, and disputing too boldly of that which the wit of man cannot search, chilleth for the most part all warmth of zeal, and bringeth soundness of belief many times into great hazard. Let it therefore be sufficient for me, presenting myself at the Lord’s Table, to know what there I receive from Him, without searching or inquiring of the manner how Christ performeth His promise. Let disputes and questions, enemies to piety, abatements of true devotion, and hitherto in this cause but overpatiently heard, let them take their rest. Let curious and sharp-witted men beat their heads about what questions themselves will; the very letter of the Word of Christ giveth plain security, that these Mysteries do, as nails, fasten us to His very Cross, that by them we draw out, (as touching efficacy, force, and virtue,) even the blood of His gored side; in the wounds of our Redeemer we there dip our tongues, we are dyed red both within and without; our hunger is so satisfied, and our thirst for ever quenched. They are things wonderful which he feeleth, great which he seeth, and unheard of which he uttereth, whose soul is possessed of this Pascha Lamb, and made joyful in the strength of this new wine. This bread hath in it more than the substance which our eyes behold; this Cup hallowed with solemn benediction availeth to the endless life and welfare both of soul and body; in that it serveth as well for a medicine to heal our infirmities and purge our sins, as for a sacrifice of thanksgiving. With touching it sanctifieth, it enlighteneth with belief; it truly comforteth us unto the Image of Jesus Christ. What these elements are in themselves, it skilleth not; it is enough, that to me which take them they are the Body and Blood of Christ. His promise in witness hereof sufficeth; His word He knoweth which way to accomplish. Why should any cogitation possess the mind of a faithful communicant but this, O my God, Thou art True—O my soul, thou art happy?” ²⁶

25.

What a contrast do glowing thoughts like these present to such teaching as has been too much in esteem among us of late years! For instance, to glean from your pages the few notices of your own opinion which are scattered there; what a difference there is between “visible symbols” of “His absent Body and Blood,” and “Mysteries which, as nails, fasten us to His very Cross;“—between “the communion of the benefits of His sufferings and death,” and “Holy Mysteries imparting not grace only, but besides, even in true and real though mystical manner, the Very Person of our Lord Himself, whole, perfect, and entire;“—between “signs attended by the blessings, of Christ” and “doth any man doubt but that even from the flesh of Christ our very bodies do receive” everlasting “life;“—between “the body and blood of Christ” not “spiritually included in the elements” but “spiritually received by the faithful,” and “Bread which hath in it more than the substance which our eyes behold,” “a ghostly substance,” “an invisible meal!” Alas! what a decrepiture has come on us since Hooker’s day! “How has the fine gold become dim!” How has the promise of the spring played us false in the summer! How have the lean kine eaten up the fat kine, and the thin ears choked the full ones! What a spiritual famine, or rather what locusts and cankerworms are our portion! the olive-tree can be content with its own fatness, and the fig-tree with its sweetness, and the vine reckons it much “to cheer god and man;” but the thin and empty ears of Zurich and Geneva think it scorn unless they devour and make a clean end of the pleasant and fair pastures of Catholic doctrine, which are our heritage:

Interque nitentia culta
Infelix lolium et steriles domiuantur avenæ.

Indeed, the change, which the tone of our theology has undergone in the last two centuries, is almost too much for belief. Then, on the one hand, we find Hooker, earnest in vindicating even the Zuinglians from the charge of denying that Christ’s Person as well as His grace, His Person whole and entire, is in the Lord’s Supper, and Cosin confident in the agreement of all Protestants in the same doctrine; and now on the other hand we witness, not Zuinglians merely and Calvinists abjuring it, but even the Margaret Professor of Divinity in Oxford unable even in thought to distinguish it from Consubstantiation, considering it “highly objectionable and dangerous,” and in spite of Hooker and Cosin, denying that individuals holding it, are “safe and consistent members of the Church of England.” However, it is out of place to lament over these things, at a time when one trusts that they are (as it were) at low water mark and that the tide is turning. It is more to the purpose to remove every obstacle, however small, to its natural return; and under this feeling I proceed to notice the only argument you use against the Real Presence, which has any plausibility.

26.

You state it thus: “The case of the profane Corinthians is a sufficient proof that they had never heard of Transubstantiation. Had St. Paul inculcated upon them that doctrine or any other modification of the Real Presence of Christ’s Body and Blood in the elements of Bread and Wine, their conduct would have been not simply incredible, but morally impossible.” p. 18. Let us then consider the state of the case.

Whether it was possible for men, believing that in drinking of “the Cup of blessing” they communicated in Christ’s blood, to drink of that Cup to intoxication, I need not determine, for I do not think the Corinthians were guilty of this crime. At the same time, if I must answer, it is enough to say, that, in truth, as no assignable limits can be put to the self-delusion and perverseness of the human heart, it would not surprise me if they were. The sins of the Israelites, such as the golden calf, murmuring at the manna, or looking into the ark; the dreadful history of Balaam, and the waywardness of Jonah; exhibit far stronger instances of inconsistency, than could have been anticipated beforehand as possible: and if human nature can go so far beyond our anticipations, I do not see why it should not go further. There is nothing to show that the intoxication in question had occurred before, or that it was intentional; and I think many persons will recollect particular occasions, when their own conduct before and after the Holy Communion has been such as to fill them with astonishment, as well as dismay, ever since. I do not then see any reason for deciding, that, had any very sacred idea been connected with the Eucharist in the minds of the Corinthians, they must of necessity have abstained from profaning it. A man must be very good and innocent to have a right to imagine, that such excess as theirs in spite of their knowledge was impossible; and since the majority of men are not such, I think that, plausible as the objection in question is at first sight, yet, even when made the most of, it will not weigh with that majority.

Have we never heard in our own times of the most shocking sins committed in prayer-meetings? Cannot persons possibly be betrayed, while the name of Christ is on their lips, into deeds of darkness?

Again, is there anything more terrible than instances of persons, while they lie, calling on God to strike them dead if they are lying? Yet are not instances recorded of the sin and the infliction? A monument is set up at Devizes in memory of such a dreadful occurrence. If we cannot help acknowledging that the one enormity has occurred, I see no reason for deciding that the other cannot occur. I do not say which is the greater sin; but it does seem as if one might more easily be seduced into fancying sensual indulgence to be a part of religion, and the excitement arising from excess to be devotional feeling, than into taking a false oath, and calling on Almighty God to curse and smite us for it.

The profession, then, that the Cup of blessing is really the communication of the Lord’s Blood is no infallible safeguard against very heinous acts of sacrilege towards it; nor the circumstance of their profaning it, a proof that they did not believe in it. Indeed, does not the punishment inflicted on the offending Corinthians imply some dreadful profanation of something very sacred? Ananias and Sapphira were struck dead for lying to the Holy Ghost; the unworthy communicant is “weak and sickly,” or “sleeps,” that is, is visited by death. If we suppose that he does profane the Lord’s Body and Blood, the punishment is intelligible; it is not intelligible, if it be but a want of self-restraint after a commemoration or an appropriation of Christ’s merits. Death seems like the punishment of blasphemy; there is no blasphemy, whatever sin there be, in turning religious feasting into excess. Again, the phrases “eating and drinking judgment unto himself;” as not “discerning the Lord’s body,” and being “guilty of the body and blood of the Lord,” certainly do seem to imply some special act of blasphemy, of which the doctrine of the Real Presence does, and the doctrine of a mere appropriation does not, supply a sufficient explanation.

27.

So much taking the offence at the worst; but in matter of fact there does not seem any good reason for supposing that, strictly speaking, the excess in question was occasioned by the consecrated Cup; nor is such the interpretation given to the passage by St. Chrysostom, and other ancient commentators. In those early times it would appear, that the celebration of the Eucharist was often the first act of that social meal which Christians partook when they met together. Men under every dispensation, have, in their religious meetings, taken the firstfruits of their substance, and have solemnly offered them to God, in grateful acknowledgment of His bounty to them, and with prayer that they might be blessed to them, not only for bodily nourishment, but as a means of gaining His favour. Such were the sacrifices of thanksgiving among the Jews; and Christ retained the ordinance in His Church, only annexing to it a higher meaning, and more varied purposes, and more sacred benefits. The feast of God’s visible good gifts was continued; but it was held chiefly for the poorer members of the Church, and furnished by the more wealthy, in accordance with the Divine command, “When thou makest a dinner or a supper, call not thy friends, nor thy brethren, neither thy kinsmen, nor thy rich neighbours, lest they also bid thee again, and a recompense be made thee. But when thou makest a feast, call the poor, the maimed, the lame, the blind; and thou shalt be blessed, for they cannot recompense thee, for thou shalt be recompensed at the resurrection of the just.” And, whereas the choicest produce, whether of the earth, or of flocks or herds, had been selected for the sacred rite in the former sacrifices, the appointed materials of the Christian offering are Bread and Wine, the chief stays of bodily life; and whereas the old sacrifice had been both an acknowledgment to God, and a pledge of favour from Him, these holy elements were this and much more, at once a thankful remembrance, and also a symbolical pleading before Him of that all-sufficient Sacrifice which had once been offered on the Cross, and next, the actual means by which that Sacrifice is brought home in spirit and in truth to each believer.

28.

When then the Corinthians are said to have committed excess, there is no reason for supposing that the consecrated elements were the materials of it; rather the meal, which followed, which ought to have been a frugal repast, not to satisfy hunger so much as to be an opportunity of mutual friendliness, nor for the rich but for the poor, was made a mere animal refreshment or carnal indulgence, altogether out of character with a religious meeting. Hence he says, “What, have ye not houses to eat and drink in? or despise ye the Church of God, and shame them that have not,” i.e. that are poor? Moreover, it is not certain that the word translated “is drunken” has strictly that meaning. It is the word in the Septuagint version in Gen. xliii. 34, which our Translation renders “they drank and were merry with him.” Joseph’s brethren ate and drank freely, indulged themselves as men who had met with unexpected good; which need not imply gross intemperance. And such seems to have been the sin of the Corinthians; they turned a religious meeting into a mere festivity, and thus evidenced a state of mind which could not have seriously and reverently taken part in the High Mystery with which it commenced. They who could end a religious rite by freely indulging in wine which had been offered up to God, and in part consecrated and given back to them as His blood, could not have really come in faith to that offering, consecration, and communion.

29.

The feast I have been describing seems to have been that which was called Agape, or the feast of charity, and is alluded to by St. Jude in a passage which corroborates what has been said. He mentions certain heretics who among their other sins committed in their love-feasts the same kind of fault as the Corinthians. “These are spots in your feasts of charity, when they feast with you feeding themselves without fear;” words which are parallel to St. Peter’s, concerning those who “shall receive the reward of unrighteousness, as they that count it pleasure to riot in the daytime. Spots they are and blemishes, sporting themselves with their own deceivings, while they feast with you.”

Such abuses as these, whether from the intrusion of heretics or the frailness of Christians, led to a speedy suppression of the Agape, as far as the Church could do so. But the practice lingered on in one shape or other for some centuries. The growth of the Christian body brought it into contact in various ways with heathenism; and those excesses, which had been in favour with a gross populace before their conversion were introduced into it by means of the Agape. Even at the end of the fourth century, St. Austin had to defend the Church against Faustus the Manichee, who maintained, on the ground of such irregularities, that the practice itself had had a heathen origin. In his reply he allows that the feast was abused, but he traces it to its original source, the Apostolic feast of charity, the real object of which was to provide a meal for the poor ²⁷. Shortly before, St. Ambrose had succeeded in suppressing it at Milan; but in Greece it continued even as late as the seventh century, as we learn from the Council in Trullo, which renewed against it a Canon passed at Laodicea in the fourth.

30.

However, though such was the perversion and consequent inexpedience of this primitive feast, and such the earnestness with which the Church even in the Apostles’ days set herself against it, yet it must not be supposed that it was never anything but a scandal. In some of the descriptions left us of it by Antiquity, it appears as an innocent, or rather a beautiful and impressive ordinance. St. Chrysostom’s account of it is very near the same as what I have been drawing out. He observes that the first Christians had all things in common; and that when the distinction of property came to be observed, which took place even in the Apostles’ time, then this usage remained as a sort of shadow and symbol of it; that on certain days, after Sermon, Prayers, and Holy Communion, they did not break up at once, but took part rich and poor in a common feast, the rich supplying provisions, the poor feasting ²⁸. St. Chrysostom seems to speak of the earliest times; for shortly after or in other parts of the Church the feast seems to have been delayed till the evening. Pliny in his celebrated Letter to Trajan speaks of Christians as first “meeting on a certain stated day before it was light,” and “addressing Christ in prayer as some God,” and “binding themselves with a solemn oath” to keep the commandments, and next as “separating and then re-assembling and eating in common a harmless meal.” Tertullian says the same thing in his Apology, and an extract from him will serve to show how suitable a sequel to the Eucharist the feast might be made.

“Our feast,” he says, “admits nothing indecorous, nothing indecent. We sit not down to eat, until prayer to God be made, as it were, the first morsel. We eat as much as will satisfy hunger, and drink as much as is useful for the temperate. We commit no excess, for we remember that even during the night we are to make our prayers to God. Our conversation is that of men who are conscious that the Lord hears them. After water is brought for the hands, and lights, we are invited to sing to God, according as each one can propose a subject from the Holy Scriptures, or of his own composing. This is the proof in what manner we have drunk. Prayer in like manner concludes the feast. Thence we depart, not to join a crowd of disturbers of the peace, nor to follow a troop of brawlers, nor to break out in any excess of wanton riot: but to maintain the same staid and modest demeanour, as if we were departing, not from a supper, but from a lecture.” ²⁹

31.

And now enough has been said concerning the primitive Agape or Feast of Charity, a sacred rite yet a social meal,—so far a bodily refreshment as to become an occasion of excess, and so far under the shadow of the Sacramental feast as to make that excess sacrilege. Such an excess is spoken of by St. Jude and St. Peter and in both Apostles stands connected with divine judgments; why then should it not be the sin of the Corinthians? and if so, what is there more heinous, than unhappily we witness in other times and places, in persons first partaking the Lord’s Supper, and afterwards proceeding to excess, and thus showing that they had partaken in a light and thoughtless spirit because they proceed to excess?

32.

I regret I cannot close this Letter without something like a protest respecting one matter. There is nothing unbecoming in any one, who has means of judging, interposing when he sees an ordinance of the Church disparaged, and I think your tone as regards mortification and penance, is such as to discourage persons from obeying certain rules of the Church respecting them. I much regret that, while censuring “rigid mortifications and painful penances,” you have not given us to understand whether you mean “rigid mortifications and painful penances” or “mortifications and penances,” as such; whether you object to them in toto, or only in excess. I wish, when speaking of “self-abasement” as Papistical, and of “gloomy views of sin after Baptism,” you had said what views of it are at once appropriate to backsliders and yet not gloomy; whether you consider repentance itself cheerful or gloomy; whether every feeling must be called gloomy which is mixed with fear; whether every purpose is gloomy which leads to self-chastisement; whether every self-abasement savours of Popery, or what those are which do not so savour; whether any self-abasements are pleasant; whether the “indignation, fear, and revenge,” of the Corinthians was pleasant or “gloomy;” or whether St. Paul’s “bruising his body” was a mortification; whether (to come to our Church’s words and rules) to confess an “intolerable burden of sins” is “gloomy;” whether it is pleasant to be “tied and bound with the chain of our sins,” or to be “grieved and wearied with their burden;” whether “to bewail our own sinfulness” is a cheerful exercise; whether absolution does not imply a previous bond; whether “days of fasting or abstinence” are pleasant or “painful;” whether the “godly discipline,” the restoration of which, as we yearly protest, is much to be wished, would not be “rigid” and “painful,” and likely to “call us back at once to the darkest period of Roman superstition;” whether “turning to God with weeping, fasting, and praying,” and “subduing by abstinence the flesh to the Spirit,” is or is not likely “hopelessly to alarm and repel those abettors of low and rationalistic views of the Sacramental Ordinances, whom it is our especial object to win and persuade to a saving faith in their genuine and inestimable importance.”

33.

Nor is this all; what the Church has enjoined, her most distinguished sons, of whatever school of thought, have practised. Let me then lay out some additional matter, besides her authorized documents, the details of which I wish duly adjusted with those vague and frightful words, “rigour,” and “gloom,” and “pain,” and “Popery,” to which otherwise the untaught may improperly refer them.

(1.) I begin with Jewel, because you have a zeal for him:—“being forewarned to leave the hold of his body … he did not after the custom of most men seek by all means violently to keep possession … to surfeit the senses, and stop all the passages of the soul. No; but by fasting, labour, and watching, he openeth them wider.” Life, c. 32 fin.

(2.) B. Gilpin says to a friend, “As for the arguments touching fasting, God forbid that either I or any one should deny, yea rather we exhort all persons to the practice of it, only we desire to have the superstition and wicked opinions removed.” Wordsworth’s Eccl. Biog. iv. 148.

(3.) Hooker. “There might be many more and just occasions taken to speak of his books, which none ever did or can commend too much; but I decline them, and hasten to an account of his Christian behaviour and death at Borne; in which place he continued his customary rules of mortification and self-denial; was much in fasting, frequent in meditation and prayers, enjoying those blessed returns, which only men of strict lives feel and know, and of which men of loose and godless lives cannot be made sensible; for spiritual things are spiritually discerned.” Life, ed. Keble, vol. i. p. 94.

(4.) Herbert. “Mr. Herbert took occasion to say, ‘One cure for these distempers would be, for the Clergy themselves to keep the Ember-weeks strictly, and beg of their parishioners to join with them in fasting and prayers for a more religious Clergy.’” Wordsw. E. B. vol. iv. p. 538.

Again: “This Lent I am forbid utterly to eat any fish, so that I am fain to diet in my chamber at my own cost; for in our public halls, you know, is nothing but fish and whit-meats: out of Lent also, twice a week, on Fridays and Saturdays, I must do so, which yet sometimes I fast.” Ibid. p. 560.

(5.) Hammond. “He both admitted and solemnly invited all sober persons to his familiarity and converse; and beside that, received them to his weekly office of Fasting and Humiliation.” Life by Fell, p. 50.

“And now, though his physicians had earnestly forbidden his accustomed Fastings, and his own weaknesses gave forcible suffrages to their advice; yet he resumed his rigours, esteeming this calamity such a one as admitted no exception, which should not be outlived, but that it became men to be martyrs too, and deprecate even in death.” Ibid. p. 73.

(6.) Bull. “Now Mr. Bull did not satisfy himself only with giving notice to his parishioners, which he could not well omit without neglecting his duty, but he led them to the observation of such holy institutions by his own example. For he had so far a regard to these holydays, as to cause all his family to repair to the church at such times; and on the days of fasting and abstinence, the necessary refreshments of life were adjourned from the usual hours till towards the evening. He was too well acquainted with the practice of the primitive Christians, to neglect such observances as they made instrumental to piety and devotion, and had too great a value for the injunctions of his mother the Church of England, to disobey where she required a compliance; but above all, he was too intent upon making advances in the Christian life, to omit a duty all along observed by devout men and acceptable to God under the Old and New Testament, both as it was helpful to their devotion, and became a part of it.” Life by Nelson, ed. Burton, p. 54.

(7.) Leighton. “He had no regard to his person, unless it was to mortify it by a constant low diet, that was like a perpetual fast.” Burnet’s Lives, p. 282. ed. Jebb.

(8.) Kettlewell too “observed likewise the days of fasting and humiliation, both those appointed by the Church, and those which were enjoined by the civil authorities. Wednesdays and Fridays in Lent he abstained from flesh and drank small beer, according to the Canon.” Life, part ii. p. 24.

(9.) Lastly, Ken, in his Sermon on Daniel, thus speaks: “I do not exhort you to follow them [the ancients] any further than either our climate or our constitutions will bear; but we may easily follow Daniel, in abstaining from wine, and from the more pleasurable meats, and such an abstinence as this, with such a mourning for our own sins, and the sins of others, and the proper exercise of a primitive spirit during all the weeks of Lent. For what is Lent, in its original institution, but a spiritual conflict, to subdue the flesh to the Spirit, to beat down our bodies and to bring them into subjection? What is it, but a penitential martyrdom for so many weeks together which we suffer for our own and others’ sins! A devout soul, that is able duly to observe it, fastens himself to the Cross on Ash Wednesday, and hangs crucified by contrition all the Lent long; that having felt in his closet the burthen and the anguish, the nails and the thorns, and tasted the full of his own sins, he may by his own crucifixion be better disposed to be crucified with Christ on Good Friday, and most tenderly sympathize with all the dolours, and pressures, and anguish, and torments, and desertion, infinite, unknown, and unspeakable, which God incarnate endured, when He bled upon the Cross for the sins of the world; that being purified by repentance, and made conformable to Christ crucified, he may offer up a pure oblation at Easter, and feel the power, and the joys, and the triumph of his Saviour’s resurrection.” Sermon on Daniel.

34.

I think then, if I may say so with due respect, that those who wish to obey their Church in the matter of fasting and abstinence, yet fear that “revival of Popish error” to which these practices tend, have a claim on you to draw some broad lines of distinction, or, in your own phrase, to “devise some limits,” which may enable them safely to do the one yet not encourage the other; lest they be saved from the “natural consequence” of such practices only by what you call elsewhere “a happy inconsistency,” and “for the present;” and lest “their credulous flocks” at length fall under “the yoke of spiritual bondage,” from which we have been set free by the Reformation.

35.

O that we knew our own strength as a Church! O that instead of keeping on the defensive, and, thinking it much not to lose our niggardly portion of Christian light and holiness, which is getting less and less, the less we use it, instead of being timid, and cowardly, and suspicious, and jealous, and panic-struck, and grudging, and unbelieving, we had the heart to rise, as a Church, in the attitude of the Spouse of Christ and the Treasure-House of his grace; to throw ourselves into that system of truth which our fathers have handed down even through the worst times, and to use it like a great and understanding people! O that we had the courage and the generous faith to aim at perfection, to demand the attention, to claim the submission of the world! Thousands of hungry souls in all classes of life stand around us; we do not give them what they want, the image of a true Christian people, living in that Apostolic awe and strictness which carries with it an evidence that they are the Church of Christ. This is the way to withstand and repel Roman Catholics; not by cries of alarm, and rumours of plots, and dispute, and denunciation, but by living up to the creeds, the services, the ordinances, the usages of our own Church without fear of consequences, without fear of being called Papists; to let matters take their course freely, and to trust to God’s good Providence for the issue.

36.

And now to conclude. I am quite aware that some of the subjects I have treated might be treated more fully and clearly. But neither the limits of a pamphlet, nor the time allotted me, admitted it. Yours did not appear till yesterday, and the Term ends in a very few days.

I am, Reverend Sir,
Your faithful Servant,
John H. Newman.
Oriel College, June 22, 1838.

Footnotes

1. [To this Letter, as originally published, applied the well-known paradox, “The author had not time to make it shorter.” In consequence, he has now omitted or abridged some superfluous paragraphs which, as they stood, weakened its controversial force or were irrelevant to his purpose.] ↩

2. [Such language arises from a misconception of the rules and the action of the Catholic system. Immoral men are not publicly excommunicated in foro externo, but, being deprived of the sacraments, or at least of their grace, till they repent, they are but dead branches of the True Vine, and in a truer sense excommunicate than if they were cut off from the visible body.] ↩

3. [I cannot in fairness withdraw specimens such as these of the view taken by my very dear friend of Italy and its religion, though of course I leave them in the text with much pain. He was a man who did nothing by halves. He had cherished an ideal of the Holy See and the Church of Rome partly erroneous, partly unreal, and was greatly disappointed when to his apprehension it was not fulfilled. He had expected to find a state of lofty sanctity in Italian Catholics, which he considered was not only not exemplified, but was even contradicted in what he saw and heard of them. As to the Tridentine definitions he simply looked at them in the light of obstacles to the union of Anglicans with the See of Rome, not having the theological knowledge necessary for a judgment on their worth.] ↩

4. Image worship had been sanctioned at the second Council of Nicæa; transubstantiation at the fourth Lateran. ↩

5. [What the writer meant by these very strong words in 1833 “bound to the cause of Antichrist,” except that he thought it right to follow the teaching of Field and Gilpin, presently quoted, it is difficult to say. That he did not in 1838 subscribe to the Protestant notion that “the Pope was Antichrist” is plain from what follows; it is also plain that he was ashamed of his language by the time he wrote this Letter.] ↩

6. [It is observable that at the commencement of the Oxford movement in 1833 the insuperable obstacle, felt by high Anglicans, to communion with Rome, was the doctrine of the Tridentine Council. By 1865 they seem to have got over it, and the Vatican decrees are the obstacle now. Will they be such in another forty years?] ↩

7. [“As a boy of fifteen,” I have said of myself, “I had … fully imbibed [pure Protestantism] … The effect of this early persuasion remained a stain upon my imagination … I began in 1833 to form theories on the subject, which tended to obliterate it; yet by 1838 I had got no farther than to consider Antichrist as, not the Church of Rome, but the spirit of the old Pagan city, the fourth monster of Daniel, which was still alive, and which had corrupted the Church which was planted there … I had a great and growing dislike, after the summer of 1839, to speak against the Roman Church herself or her formal doctrines.” Apolog. pp. 120, 121.] ↩

8. Wordsworth, Eccles. Biogr. vol. iv. p. 94. ↩

9. [If by “good-natured people who will try to get them let off easier than the Bible declares,” is implied that we hold that the saints are willing to encourage us in living without faith, hope, and charity, without the practice of virtue, and without habitual self-rule, or are able to help us at the last after a bad life, except by gaining for us, what is so rare and so difficult on a death-bed, a true contrition, and a real detestation of our sins, and profound sorrow for our past bad life, our cultus of the saints certainly is idolatry. But we do not hold this; on the contrary we denounce it.] ↩

10. [What emblems or symbols did the author consider that “God Himself had appointed”? I suppose the Lamb and the Dove. Would he say then that we might bow down to these as divine yet not to a crucifix? But if to the crucifix, why not to an image or picture of the Blessed Virgin? or of St. Joseph? &c. We say God has (by His Church) sanctioned images.] ↩

11. [Vid. the passage supr. pp. 137-139.] ↩

12. Vid. Johnson, Unbl. Sacr. vol. i. pp. 306-9. ↩

13. [What can this mean? The Ordinary consists of Gloria in excelsis, Collects, Epistle, Gospel, Creed, Offertory.] ↩

14. Vid. also the Introduction of Tract, No. 81. ↩

15. [The Catholic doctrine is as follows; authorities for it shall be given lower down.

    Our Lord is in loco in heaven, not (in the same sense) in the Sacrament. He is present in the Sacrament only in substance, substantivè, and substance does not require or imply the occupation of place. But if place is excluded from the idea of the Sacramental Presence, therefore division or distance from heaven is excluded also, for distance implies a measurable interval, and such there cannot be except between places. Moreover, if the idea of distance is excluded, therefore is the idea of motion. Our Lord then neither descends from heaven upon our altars, nor moves when carried in procession. The visible species change their position, but He does not move. He is in the Holy Eucharist after the manner of a spirit. We do not know how; we have no parallel to the “how” in our experience. We can only say that He is present, not according to the natural manner of bodies, but sacramentally. His Presence is substantial, spirit-wise, sacramental; an absolute mystery, not against reason, however, but against imagination, and must be received by faith.] ↩

16. Sermon of the Sacrament, Part I. ↩

17. Eccl. Pol. v. 67, § 7, 8. ↩

18. Ibid. 56. § 9. ↩

19. [He does; however, St. Thomas says on the contrary that our Lord is not under the species localiter, but to show how much this difference is a mere matter of words, I will set down the chief points of the doctrine in statements of Bellarmine on the one hand, and of Billuart on the other, who professes to write as a Thomist. And I will begin with a passage from the Council of Trent, as a sort of text.

    Concil. Trid. Sess. 13, c. 1.—Nec hæc inter se pugnant, ut ipso Salvator noster semper ad dexteram Patris in cœlis assideat juxta modum existendi naturalem, et in multis nihilominus aliis locis sacramentaliter præsens suâ substantiâ nobis adsit.
    Billuart, pp. 356, 392, &c.—Corpus Christi est præsens in speciebus, non circumscriptivè, nec definitivè, sed sacramentaliter.
    Ibid. p. 393, col. 1.—Corpus Christi est in Eucharistiâ ad modum substantiæ, seu sacramentaliter.
    Bellarm. col. 349, 350.—Totus Christus existit in Sacramento ad modum substantiæ, non quantitatis.
    Billuart, p. 357, col. 1.—Quantitas non est essentialis corpori, sed ejus proprietas.
    Bellarm. col. 390.—Substantia cujuslibet rei non est per se divisibilis.
    Ibid. col. 350.—Per substantiam non occupat locum.
    Billuart, p. 393, col. 1.—Christus non est in hoc Sacramento ut in loco.
    Bellarm. col. 350.—Substantia secundum se neque ordinem habet ad locum, neque ad corpora circumstantia.
    Billuart, p. 357, col. 1.—[Ut] Corpus Christi in cœlo et altari [sit] à se divisum, requiritur ut medium [quoddam] sit contiguum extremis, seu illa secundum extremitates tangat, quod non fit respectu Corporis Christi.
    Ibid. p. 393, col. 1.—Corpus Christi non se habet sub speciebus sicut qui movetur in navi.
    Bellarm. col. 580.—Corpus Christi [dicitur] videri, tangi, frangi, et teri, mediantibus speciebus panis.
    Billuart, p. 357, col. 1.—Non Corpus Christi propriè manducatur, sed species manducantur.
    Bellarm. col. 351.—Christus in Eucharistiâ modum existendi corporum non habet, sed potius spirituum.
    Billuart, p. 357, col. 1.—Hæc transcendunt imaginationem, quia imaginatio non transcendit continuum … Imaginatio corrigenda est per fidem et rationem.] ↩

20. Vid. Notice at the end of the Communion Service. ↩

21. [I do not understand this. If it is beyond our power of conception that our Lord’s body should be in two places at once, at least it is against the Christian faith that He should have two bodies.] ↩

22. [It is difficult for any one who really knows what the Catholic Church teaches on this subject, to understand how that teaching can be accused of “relieving our ignorance.”] ↩

23. [He called the Roman view sceptical and rationalistic because, together with men of his day, he really did not know what the Roman view was, nor that he did not know it.] ↩

24. [This is not accurate, vid. supr. note, p. 232.] ↩

25. Eccles. Pol. v. 67. § 4, 5. ↩

26. Ibid. p. 67. § 5. ↩

27. Vid. August. in Faust xx. 21. ↩

28. De Bapt. Christi, c. 4. (ii. 374. A.) vid. et in Nativ. c. 7. (364. E.) de S. Philogon. c. 4. (i. 449. E. et seqq.) in 1 Cor. 11. 27. c. 8. (x. 245.) et c. 5. (247, 248.) in Rom. xvi. Hom. 30. (ix. 739. E.) ↩

29. Apolog. 39. Mr. Chevallier’s Translation has been borrowed, who adds the following beautiful passage from St. Cyprian. Et quoniam feriata jam quies, ac tempus est otiosum, quicquid inclinato jam sole in vesperam diei superest, ducamus hanc diem læti; nec sit vel hora convivii gratiæ cœlestis immunis. Sonet psalmos convivium sobrium; et ut tibi tenax memoria est, vox canora, aggredere hoc munus ex more. Magis carrissimos pasces, si sit nobis spiritalis auditio; prolectat aures religiosa mulcedo. Ad Don. fin. ↩