Skip to main content

Full text of "Catholic controversy : a reply to Dr. Littledale's Plain reasons"

See other formats 


^ 


CATHOLIC 


TO  DR.  LITTLEDALE'S 
"PLAIN  REASONS." 


BY 


H.   I.   D.   RYDER, 

OP    THE    ORATORY. 


Dilexisti  omnia  verba  praecipitationis,  lingua  dolosa. 


REV.  JAMES  A.  GRANT  BEQUEST  TO 
ST.  MARY'S  COLLEGE  LIBRARY,  1926 


LONDON :  BURNS  &  GATES,  LIMITED. 

NEW  YORK,  CINCINNATI,  CHICAGO:  BENZIGER  BROTHERS. 


NOTICE  TO  SECOND  EDITION. 

I  WISH  to  draw  attention  to  the  following  corrections, 
which  I  believe  are  the  only  ones  of  importance.  Page 
42,  "A  Council  of  Constantinople,  A.D.  382,"  for  The 
Second  General  Council,  A.D.  381.  Page  43,  see  Ap- 
pendix, Note  B.  Page  102-3.  the  withdrawal  of  a  stric- 
ture upon  a  note  of  Dr.  Littledale's. 

My  Appendix  contains  notes  on  the  Galileo  case ;  on 
Pope  Julius,  Socrates,  and  Sozomen ;  on  the  theophanies 
of  the  Old  Testament ;  on  the  Tridentine  Decree  con- 
cerning Holy  Scripture ;  on  Canon  Jenkins'  tract,  "  The 
Devotion  of  the  Sacred  Heart ;"  on  a  fresh  charge  of 
Dr.  Littledale's  against  St.  Alfonso ;  on  Pope  Zosimus 
and  Celestius;  on  "The  Church  Quarterly's"  attack 
upon  Cardinal  Newman;  and  on  a  misquotation  by 
Dr.  Littledale  of  the  Tax-Tables. 


NOTICE  TO  THIRD  EDITION. 

SEE  corrections  and  notes  at  pp.  42,  59,  79,  and  146. 

An  Index  Rerum  has  been  supplied  me  by  a  learned 
and  untiring  friend. 


NOTICE  TO  FOURTH  EDITION. 

As  it  is  considered  inadvisable  to  load  this  volume 
with  any  fresh  matter,  it  may  be  as  well  to  refer 
such  of  my  readers  as  are  interested  in  the  pro- 
gress of  the  controversy  between  Dr.  Littledale 
and  myself  to  a  correspondence  in  the  "  Guardian" 
for  November  2,  9,  16,  and  23,  1881,  and  to  my 
Reply  to  Dr.  Littledale's  "  Additions  and  Correc- 
tions" in  the  "Tablet"  for  July  8,  1882. 


NOTICE  TO  SIXTH  EDITION. 

SEE  note  p.  79 ;  addition  of  passage  from  Stephen  Lang- 
ton,  p.  82  ;  and  note  and  correction,  p.  83. 


TABLE  OF  CONTENTS. 


TAG* 

INTRODUCTION .      i* 

PART  I. 

THE   PRIVILEGE   OF  PETER    AND   HIS  SUCCESSORS 
IN  THE   ROMAN  SEE. 

§    I.  Scripture  Texts I 

§    2.  St.  Peter  and  St.  Paul 9 

§    3.  What,    according  to  Dr.    Littledale,   the  privilege  of 

Peter  really  was .         .10 

§    4.  Papal  Prerogative  and  the  Creeds         .         .         .        .II 
§    5.   Papal  Infallibility  and  the  Fathers        .         .         .         .12 

§    6.  Dr.  Littledale  and  St.  Jerome 21 

%    7.  Dr.  Littledale's  Disproofs  of  Papal  Infallibility     .         .       26 
(i).  The  Fallibility  of  the  Church        ....       26 

(2).  The  Jewish  Church     .         .         .         .     '   .         .27 

(3).  Fall  of  Pope  Liberius  .         .         .         .        .         .27 

(4).  Condemnation  of  Pope  Honorius          ...       28 

(5).  The  Deposition  of  Popes 30 

(6).  Infallibility  in  the  past 31 

(7).  The  Council  of  Trent  and  Leo  X.         ...       32 

(8).  The  Sixtine  Bible 33 

(9).  The  Condemnation  of  Galileo      .         .  33 

(10).  Infallibility  in  the  future 36 

(n).  Obscurity  of  the  Vatican  definition        ...       36 

(12).  The  anti- Vatican  dilemma 37 

|    8.  The  Pope's  supremacy  of  jurisdiction,  and  the  Fathers  .       38 


VI  CONTENTS. 

PAGB 

§    9.  Dr.  Littledale's  objections  to  Papal  supremacy      .        •  45 

(i).  Honorary  titles 45 

(2).  St.  Peter's  connection  with  Rome         ...  48 

(3).  Papal  Prerogative  and  Conciliar  Canons       .         .  49 

(4).  The  Pope  and  Canon  law 55 

§  10.  Communion  with  Rome 56 

§  ii.  St.  Firmilian,  St.  Cyprian,  and  Pope  St.  Stephen         .  58 

§  12.  St.  Meletius  and  the  Holy  See 59 

§  13.  St.  Augustine  and  the  Holy  See — the  case  of  Apiarius  60 

§  14.  Pope  St.  Celestine  and  the  Council  of  Ephesus     .         .  63 

§  15.  Pope  St.  Leo  and  Chalcedon 64 

§  1 6.   St.  Leo  and  St.  Hilary  of  Aries 65 

§  17.  Pope  Vigilius  and  the  Fifth  Council     ....  68 
§  1 8.  St.    Gregory  the  Great    and   the  title  of  "Universal 

Bishop" 70 

§19.  Gerbert  and  Pope  John  XV 71 

§  20.   Breaks  and  uncertainty  in  the  succession  in  the  Roman 

See 72 

§  21.  The  Roman  Catholic  Church  not  the  whole  Church       .  75 

§  22.  England  and  Papal  Prerogative 76 

§  23.  A  Catena  of  English  Authorities  on  Papal  Prerogative .  79 

§  24.  Development 83 


PART  II. 

CHARGES    AGAINST   THE    CATHOLIC    CHURCH    IN 
COMMUNION    WITH    THE    SEE   OF   PETER. 

CHARGE  I. 

Creature- Worship 86 

§    I.  The  Theology  of  Creature- Worship    ...         .86 

§    2.  Cultus  of  the  Saints  according  to  the  Fathers     .         .  89 

§    3.  The  Cultus  of  Mary 92 

(i).  Theology  of  the  Cultus,  with  Catena     ...  92 

(2).  Summary  of  Evidence 103 

(3).  Imperfect  development  of  the  Cultus  of  Our  Lady 

in  the  Early  Church 104 


CONTENTS.  Vll 

MO* 

(4).  Scripture  objections  to  the  Cultus  of  Mary  .  106 

(5).  Patristic  objections  to  the  Cultus  of  Mary  .  .  108 

§  4.  I  mage- Worship Ill 

(i).  The  Theology  of  Image-Worship  .  .  .  in 
(2).  The  Seventh  Council  and  the  Council  of  Frankfort  115 
(3).  Devotion  to  particular  shrines  and  images  .  .118 
(4).  The  Early  Fathers  and  Image- Worship  .  .120 

§    5.  Alleged  excess  in  the  Worship  of  Mary     .        .        .124 

CHARGE  II. 
Uncertainty  and  error  in  Faith        .        .        .        .        »        .132 

§    i.  Dependence  upon  One 132 

§  2.  The  Immaculate  Conception  .  .  .  .  .134 
§  3.  Communion  under  One  Species  .  .  .  .138 
§  4.  Disregard  of  the  Dogma  of  the  Incarnation  ,  .143 
§  5.  The  Cultus  of  the  Sacred  Heart  .  .  .  .  147 
§  6.  The  Church  and  the  Bible 152 

CHARGE  III. 

Uncertainty  and  Unsoundness  in  Morals         .        .        .  .     159 

§    I.  Probabilism  and  St.  Alfonso  Liguori .         .        .  .     159 

§    2.  Cardinal  Bellarmine .171 

§    3.  Condemnation  of  Private  Judgment  .  .      .         .  .172 

CHARGE  IV. 

Untrust  worthiness «        .        .175 

§    I.  The  Nicene  and  Sardican  Canons       .        .        .         -175 

§    2.  The  Sixth  Canon  of  Nicgea 175 

§    3.  The  Baptism  of  Constantine       .        .        .        .        .176 

§    4.  St.  Peter's  Letter 177 

§    5.  The  False  Decretals  .      - 177 

§    6.  The  Cyprianic  Interpolations 1 88 

§    7.  Roma  locuta  est          .......     189 

§    8.  Forged  Greek  Catena         .        ,        .        .        .        .190 

§    9.  Cardinal  Baronius       .         .        .         ,        .        .        .190 

§  10.  Cardinal  Newman 194 

§11.  Some  other  Controversialists 196 

§  12.  Faith  not  to  be  kept  with  Heretics    ."      .         .         .198 


Vlll  CONTENTS. 

CHARGE  V. 

PAGE 

Cruelty  and  Intolerance 202 

§  i.  The  General  Character  of  the  Imputation          .        .     202 

§  2.  Urban  II.  and  the  Excommunicate  ....     204 

§    3.  Pius  IV.  and  Lucca 206 

§  4.  Pius  V.  and  Queen  Elizabeth                     .                       207 

§  5.  The  Massacre  of  St.  Bartholomew    ....     208 

§  6.  Jacques  Clement,  Ravaillac,  and  sundry   .         .         .     209 

§    7.  The  Inquisition ,  209 

§  8.  Busembaum's  Teaching    .         .        .        .        .        .211 

§    9.  Toleration .         .211 

CHARGE  VI. 
Uncertainty  and  Error  in  the  Sacraments       .        .        .        .213 

§    i.  Intention .  213 

§    2.  Penance— Satisfaction       .         .        .        .        .         .217 

§    3.  Indulgences — Purgatory    .         .         .        .         .         .220 

§    4.  The  Roman  Penitentiary  .         .         .         .         ,         .223 

§    5.  The  Mass  Honorarium      ......     239 

§    6.  Marriage  Dispensations     ......     239 

CHARGE  VII. 

Lack  of  the  Four  Notes  of  the  Church 240 

§  i.  Unity  of  Faith  and  Charity 240 

§  2.  Sanctity 242 

§  3.  Catholicity 248 

§  4.  Apostolicity 252 

Conclusion .  253 

APPENDIX 260 

INDEX ...     281 


12208 

INTRODUCTION. 


DR.  LIITLEDALE  has  brought  out,  under  the  auspices  of 
the  Christian  Knowledge  Society,  a  little  manual  entitled 
11  Plain  Reasons  against  Joining  the  Church  of  Rome." 
With  considerable  ingenuity,  in  the  brief  space  of  some 
two  hundred  pages,  he  manages  to  pack  most  of  the 
hardest  things  that  have  been  said  against  Catholics,  and 
especially  against  Popes.  He  has  neglected  no  source 
of  information,  from  the  pages  of  Fathers  and  historians 
to  the  fly-leaf  of  modern  gossip.  It  is  the  work  of  one 
whose  heart  is  in  his  work  and  whose  hand  has  not  for« 
got  its  cunning.  The  form  he  has  chosen  is  that  of  the 
modern  Primer,  in  which  it  is  the  dainty  privilege  of  an 
age  impatient  of  toil  to  imbibe  so  much  of  its  knowledge 
of  science  and  of  history.  It  is  a  form  which,  for  all  its 
rigid  condensation,  admits  of  keen  momentary  flashes  of 
rhetoric,  such  as  the  sober  solid  work  might  almost  seem 
to  yield  spontaneously,  as  sparks  fly  up  under  the  steady 
blows  of  the  pickaxe,  and  which  are  so  doubly  telling  as 
the  eloquence  of  reserve.  When  applied  to  history,  how- 
ever, this  form  is  specially  exposed  to  the  danger  of  sub- 
stituting rhetorical  selection  for  scientific  condensation. 


X  INTRODUCTION. 

• 

Dr.  Littledale's  theory,  as  I  understand  it,  may  be  thus 
summed  up.  All  that  answers  to  the  name  "  Church  of 
Christ,"  at  present  in  being,  are  certain  scattered  orga- 
nisms with  more  or  less  of  local  life  and  action.  There 
is  no  such  thing  as  "  ecclesiastical  infallibility"  (p.  132), 
but  only  an  assurance  that  the  Church  is  "  indefectible  in 
the  long  run."  It  is  a  "legal  fact'7 — whatever  that  may 
mean — that  General  Councils  are  not  general,  "no 
matter  how  many  bishops  have  sat  in  them,  till  they 
have  been  accepted  by  the  main  body  of  Christendom." 
In  some  subtle  deference  to  this  "  in  the  long  run >;  inde- 
fectibility,  and  acceptance  "  of  the  main  body  of  Chris- 
tendom," each  member  of  the  Church  is  to  exercise,  his 
private  judgment  as  to  what  is  scriptural  or  sufficiently 
patristic,  and  to  cleave  thereto  despite  the  assumptions 
of  authority.  The  Church  of  England,  as  contrasted 
with  the  Church  of  Rome,  presents  exceptional  advan- 
tages for  carrying  out  this  ideal  of  Church-life  ;  whereas 
the  Roman  Church  means  tyranny,  uncertainty  and  un- 
soundness  in  faith  and  morals,  repudiation  of  Scripture 
and  antiquity,  an  absolute  void,  or  at  least  a  complete 
uncertainty,  as  to  orders  and  jurisdiction,  and  a  con- 
spicuous absence  of  the  notes  of  the  Church,  Unity, 
Sanctity,  Apostolicity,  Catholicity.  I  readily  admit  that 
no  Anglican  who  can  be  prevailed  upon  to  accept 
Dr.  Littledale's  "  Plain  Reasons  "  as  truths,  will  see  his 
way  towards  bettering  himself  either  morally  or  spiritually 
in  what  he  would  call  the  "  Roman  Communion."  It  is 
hardly  likely  that  the  Catholicism  of  any  one  who  has  sat 
at  Dr.  Littledale's  feet  will  any  more  be  troublesome,  for 
the  dangerous  substance  will  have  become  thoroughly 


INTRODUCTION.  xi 

disintegrated  by  the  stream  of  what  I  may  call  ecclesi- 
tical  scepticism  to  which  it  is  exposed.  Ritualism  so 
qualified  makes  very  fair  Protestantism  ;  and  this  perhaps 
is  the  key  to  what  at  first  is  so  very  astonishing,  the 
appearance  of  Dr.  Littledale  in  the  livery  of  the  S.P.C.K. 
What,  one  is  tempted  to  ask,  can  a  society  supposed  to 
represent  the  sober  middle  majority  of  High  and  Low- 
Church,  the  staple  of  moderate  Church  of  Englandism, 
have  to  do  with  an  ultra-Ritualist  who  denounces  the 
Reformers  as  ruffians,  and  celebrates  daily  with  wafer  and 
chasuble,  unless,  indeed,  under  all  these  offensive  trap- 
pings the  true  Protestant  is  recognised?  This  being 
supposed,  however,  one  can  understand  that  the  outward 
incongruity  may  lend  a  zest  to  the  alliance.  We  know 
that  this  same  society  has  before  now  availed  itself  of 
the  services  of  an  apostate  priest,  but  such  genuine 
apostates  are  not  to  be  met  with  every  day.  It  is  not 
always  possible  for  it  to  feather  its  arrows  from  the 
wing  of  its  soaring  quarry ;  but  here  is  one  so  like  a 
Roman  priest,  whose  daily  idolatry  has  such  a  Roman 
flavour,  that  Protestants,  when  pressing  Dr.  Littledale 
into  their  service,  are  not  without  a  triumphant  sense 
of  turning  our  own  arms  against  us. 

Dr.  Littledale  is  persuaded  that  the  only  valid  grounds 
for  a  change  of  religion  involve  an  affirmative  answer  to 
the  following  questions  : — "  i.  Shall  I  know  more  about 
God's  will  and  word  than  now  I  do  ?  2.  Shall  I  be 
more  likely  to  obey  that  will  as  He  has  been  pleased  to 
declare  it  ?  3.  Shall  I  have  a  surer  warrant  than  now  that 
I  shall  have  access  to  those  means  of  grace  which  God 
has  ordained  for  the  spiritual  profit  of  His  people  ?  "  On 


Xll  INTRODUCTION. 

the  contrary,  these  questions  in  no  way  represent  what 
should  be  the  motives  of  a  convert.  Their  position  here 
implies  a  complete  ignorance  of  the  point  at  issue,  an 
assumption  that  what  is  in  dispute  is  not  the  esse  but 
the  bene  esse  in  the  Church  of  Christ.  They  are  pre- 
cisely the  questions  a  man  in  doubt  as  to  his  vocation 
to  a  religious  order  would  put  to  himself.  No  priest 
would  dream  of  receiving  a  convert  on  such  simply  in- 
adequate subjective  grounds.  The  real  questions  an 
Anglican  who  is  seriously  considering  the  point  of  his 
conversion  to  Rome  must  put  to  himself  are  very 
different.  They  are  such  as  these : — i.  Does  the  Christian 
idea  require  that  any  existing  organisation  be  identified 
with  the  Church  of  Christ?  2.  What  are  the  notes  of 
Christ's  Church  ?  3.  Do  I  find  these  in  the  Anglican 
or  in  the  Roman  Communion  ?  To  an  Anglican  who  is 
not  merely  in  pursuit  of  spiritual  improvement,  but  who 
is  actually  craving  for  some  assurance  that  he  is  a 
member  of  Christ's  Holy  Catholic  Church,  Dr.  Little- 
dale's  arguments  will  appear  some  of  them  irrelevant, 
some  suicidal.  He  will  have  an  uncomfortable  suspicion, 
at  least,  that  "  in  the  long  run  "  infallibility  is  an  exorbit- 
ance, which  will  practically  allow  heresies  to  run  on  as 
long  as  they  like,  and  would  prove  as  unpractical  a 
theory  now  as  it  would  have  done  had  it  prevailed 
at  Nicaea  or  Chalcedon.  Again,  when  he  is  told 
(p.  177)  that,  as  regards  "the  grace  of  duly  trans- 
mitted orders  with  their  accompanying  privileges  of 
valid  sacraments,"  "  the  Roman  doctrine  of  intention " 
(viz.,  that,  whatever  the  faith  of  "the  minister,  an  inten- 
tion to  do  and  not  merely  to  simulate  what  the  Church 


INTRODUCTION.  Xlll 

does,  is  necessary)  has  created  "  the  greatest  possible 
doubt  as  to  the  validity  of  every  sacramental  office  or 
act  performed  in  the  Roman  Church;"  it  can  hardly 
escape  an  honest  inquirer  that  this  was  the  very  doctrine 
of  intention  in  which  the  English  clergy  had  been  edu- 
cated, for  centuries  before  the  Separation,  in  the  Scotist 
and  Thomist  schools  of  Oxford ;  that,  in  fact,  till  the 
Tridentines  Salmeron  and  Catharinus,  the  contrary 
doctrine  (even  at  this  moment  tolerated  by  Rome)  had 
hardly  found  a  voice.*  Again,  if  Papal  jurisdiction, 
owing  to  broken  succession  or  violation  of  the  canons, 
or  what  not,  is  long  since  extinct,  or  if  Papal  jurisdic- 
tion has  never  extended  to  England,  with  what  dismay 
must  an  Anglican  inquirer  regard  the  various  interven- 
tions of  Papal  (pretended)  jurisdiction  in  the  gravest  and 
most  vital  concerns  of  the  English  Church ;  the  many 
acts  demanded  of  the  Holy  See  for  which  the  only  title 
of  validity  pretended  was  the  Pope's  "  plenitudo  potes- 
tatis  "  ?  Take  what  view  he  will  of  the  independence  of 

*  Even  more  extravagant  is  the  assertion  (p.  189)  that  our  practice 
of  conditionally  baptizing  converts  from  Anglicanism  entails  the 
irregularity  of  both  ministers  and  recipients,  whereby  all  their  sub- 
sequent sacramental  action  is  invalidated,  even  though  the  latter 
may  have  been  ignorant  of  any  previous  baptism.  I.  Irregularity  is 
an  impediment  prohibent  not  diriment  or  invalidating.  2.  Irregu- 
larity "ex  delicto,"  as  this  is,  requires  a  knowledge  of  the  criminality, 
and  so  cannot  affect  persons  in  bonafide.  3.  It  is  an  open  question 
amongst  theologians  whether  even  the  culpably  rash  administration 
of  conditional  baptism  involves  irregularity. 

The  practice  in  question,  based  as  it  is  upon  the  grave  doubts 
arising  from  that  ostentatiously  inadequate  use  of  the  necessary 
matter  of  baptism,  so  long  and  so  extensively  prevalent  in  the  Estab- 
lishment, is  in  perfect  accord  with  the  tradition  of  the  Church. 


XIV  INTRODUCTION. 

episcopal  jurisdiction,  of  its  inherence  in  the  ancient 
sees ;  however  confident  he  may  be  of  the  persistence  of 
jurisdiction  somewhere  or  other  in  the  Church  of  Eng- 
land, yet  merely  on  the  ground  of  past  Papal  interven- 
tions, to  say  nothing  of  the  disturbing  element  of  Pro- 
testant state  interference,  it  will  be  impossible  for  him 
"even  to  guess"  where  that  jurisdiction  lies,  and  to 
what  it  extends.  The  history  of  any  local  Church,  if 
you  venture  to  pick  out  the  threads  of  Papal  jurisdiction 
which  cross  and  recross  it  in  every  direction,  becomes  a 
mere  tangle,  in  which  it  is  impossible  to  appreciate  the 
conveyance  of  any  authority.  There  is  nothing,  of 
course,  in  this  line  of  Dr.  Littledale's  which  need  shock 
the  ordinary  Church  of  England  Protestant ;  but  I  ear- 
nestly recommend  the  question  of  its  propriety  to  the 
consideration  of  the  English  Church  Union. 

The  scope  of  this  "  Reply  "  is  twofold,  i.  To  show 
that  these  "  Plain  Reasons  "  for  not  joining  the  Church 
fail  either  as  statements  of  fact  or  as  deductions  from 
fact.  2.  To  show  that  amongst  unfair  controversialists 
Dr.  Littledale  is  unfair  in  a  pre-eminent  degree,  although 
we  have  every  right  to  try  him  by  a  very  high  standard 
indeed,  seeing  that  he  comes  forward  emphatically  as  the 
representative  of  Anglican  honesty  as  contrasted  with 
the  dishonesty  of  Rome.  He  ventures  to  speak  thus 
(p.  100): — "  Things  have  come  to  this  pass,  that  no  state- 
ment whatever,  however  precise  and  circumstantial,  no 
reference  to  authorities  however  seemingly  frank  and 
clear,  to  be  found  in  a  Roman  controversial  book,  or 
to  be  heard  from  the  lips  of  a  living  controversialist,  can 
be  taken  on  trust,  without  a  rigorous  search  and  veri- 


INTRODUCTION. 

fication.  The  thing  may  be  true,  but  there  is  not  &o 
much  as  a  presumption  of  its  proving  so  when  tested. 
The  degree  of  guilt  varies,  no  doubt,  from  deliberate 
and  conscious  falsehood  with  fraudulent  intent,  down 
through  reckless  disregard  as  to  whether  the  thing  be 
true  or  false,  to  mere  overpowering  bias  causing  mis- 
representation ;  but  truth,  pure  and  simple,  is  almost 
never  to  be  found,  and  the  whole  truth  in  no  case  what- 
ever." I  cannot  allow  myself  to  exchange  this  sort  of 
compliment  with  Dr.  Littledale,  even  though  he  is  par- 
ticularly fond,  in  his  controversy  with  us,  of  imputing 
the  first  degree  of  falsehood,  as,  for  instance,  when  he 
tells  us  that  Pope  St.  Nicholas  I.  "  solemnly  and  pub- 
licly lied."  We  may  be  content  to  leave  "  conscious 
falsehood  "  and  "  fraudulent  intent "  to  their  own  forum, 
where  we  can  make  no  claim  to  sit  in  judgment.  All 
that  I  pretend  to  prove  is,  that  Dr.  Littledale  has  re- 
peatedly asserted  the  thing  that  is  not,  with  the  evidence 
that  it  is  not  staring  him  in  the  face,  and  in  cases,  too, 
involving  the  gravest  imputations  upon  the  character 
of  an  adversary.  If  I  establish  this  charge  beyond  the 
shadow  of  exception,  I  submit  that  the  Society  for 
Promoting  Christian  Knowledge  has  no  more  right  to 
patronise  the  controversial  efforts  of  such  an  author, 
than  a  mercantile  firm  has  to  recommend  a  man  for  the 
post  of  cashier,  who — though  they  think  him  to  mean 
honestly — they  know,  steals. 

I  have  thought  it  well  to  bring  out  a  "  Reply "  in 
detail,  covering  the  whole  of  my  adversary's  ground,  and 
as  nearly  as  possible  in  the  same  form  as  the  "Plain 
Reasons,"  hoping  that  it  may  serve  as  a  manual  on  the 


Xvi  INTRODUCTION. 

Catholic  side.  It  will  anyhow  be  useful  as  supplying  a 
considerable  number  of  passages  on  such  subjects  as 
the  Papacy  and  the  cultus  of  our  Lady  in  a  short  com- 
pass. I  have  not  followed  Dr.  Littledale's  arrangement, 
as  I  have  failed  to  discover  that  this  has  been  carried 
out  upon  any  fixed  principle ;  one  detects  certain  pun- 
gent transitions  of  offensiveness,  and  that  is  all. 

I  divide  my  "Reply"  into  two  parts.  The  first  will 
be  directly  engaged  in  vindicating  the  privilege  of  St. 
Peter  and  his  successors  in  the  Roman  See,  both  as 
regards  teaching  and  government ;  the  second  part  will 
meet  the  various  charges  brought  against  the  Catholic 
Church  in  communion  with  the  See  of  Peter. 

My  references  throughout  will  be  to  Dr.  Littledale's 
first  edition,  whilst  noticing  the  principal  variations  he  has 
introduced  in  editions  two  and  three.  I  do  so,  because  I 
can  in  nowise  regard  mere  emendations  introduced  with- 
out note  or  explanation  into  the  text  as  retractations ; 
moreover,  the  course  which  the  variations  pursue  is 
sometimes  highly  instructive. 

Amongst  various  modern  Catholic  works,  to  none  of 
which,  as  I  trust,  I  have  failed  to  acknowledge  my  obli- 
gations in  their  proper  place,  I  will  content  myself 
with  mentioning  here  Mr.  Allnatt's  invaluable  publica- 
tion, "  Cathedra  Petri,"  of  which  I  have  made  a  very 
free,  though  not  a  blind,  use.  My  references  to  the 
"  Councils  "  are  invariably  to  Collet's  edition  of  Labbe 
and  Cossart,  Venice,  1729. 


CATHOLIC    CONTROVERSY. 


PART    I. 

THE  PRIVILEGE  OF  PETER  AND  HIS  SUCCESSORS 
IN  THE  ROMAN  SEE. 


§  1.  Scripture  Texts. 

DR.  LITTLEDALE  (p.  15)  says  that  "  the  Ultramontane 
interpretation  put  on  the  three  great  texts,  ...  St.  Matt. 
xvi.  1 8,  that  St.  Peter  is  the  Rock  and  foundation  of  the 
Church;  St.  Luke  xxii.  31,  32,  that  St.  Peter  was  in- 
fallible, and  charged  with  guiding  the  faith  of  the  other 
-Apostles;  and  St.  John  xxi.  15,  17,  that  he  was  given 
jurisdiction  over  the  Apostles  and  the  whole  Church,  is 
contrary  to  the 'unanimous  consent  of  the  Fathers;'  .  .  . 
so  it  is  not  lawful  for  any  Roman  Catholic,  in  the  face  of 
the  Creed  of  Pius  IV.  (which  forbids  the  interpretation 
of  Scripture  otherwise  than  in  accordance  with  such  con- 
sent), to  maintain  the  Ultramontane  view  of  these  three 
texts."  Even  in  the  very  act  of  appealing  to  the  "unani- 
mous consent  of  the  Fathers,"  Dr.  Littledale's  courage 
seems  somewhat  to  have  failed  him ;  for  he  immediately 
subjoins  that  in  regard  to  Matt.  xvi.  18,  the  Fathers 
"  agree,  by  a  great  majority,  that  either  Christ  Himself,  or 
St.  Peter's  confession  of  Christ,  is  the  Rock  and  founda- 
tion of  the  Church."  This  modification  b  farther  carried 
out  in  the  admission  that  "  St.  Epiphanius,  doctor,  St. 

A 


2  SCRIPTURE  TEXTS. 

Basil  the  Great,  St.  Ambrose  and  St.  Jerome,  doctors, 
take  it  both  ways,"  i.e.,  admit  as  an  alternative  meaning 
that  St.  Peter  is  the  Rock,  leaning,  however,  more  to  the 
view  that  Christ  is  the  Rock.  Anyhow,  this  is  some- 
thing short  of  the  unanimity  required  by  Pope  Pius, 
and  before  unanimity  can  be  contradicted  it  must  be 
obtained. 

I  shall  now  proceed  to  examine  Dr.  Littledale's  great 
majority.  But  before  doing  so,  it  must  be  clearly  under- 
stood that  we  in  no  wise  reject  the  application  of  the 
"Rock"  to  Christ,  or  to  faith  in  Christ.  We  maintain 
that  such  interpretation  does  not  at  all  militate  against 
its  application  directly  to  St.  Peter ;  not  indeed  to  his 
-person,  but  to  his  office,  in  which,  both  as  regards  himself 
and  his  successors,  he  represents  Christ  and  supports 
his  brethren.  Peter  is  no  other  foundation  beside  the 
one  ultimate  foundation,  Christ;  but  he  is  the  first  visible 
stone  of  the  visible  Church,  immediately  resting  upon 
and  representing  the  invisible  Rock,  Christ  This  is 
precisely  the  doctrine  of  St.  Leo  :  "  '  For  thou  art  Peter,' 
that  is,  whereas  I  am  the  inviolable  Rock ;  I  the  corner- 
stone, who  made  both  one;  I  the  foundation,  besides 
which  no  one  can  lay  another ;  yet  thou  also  art  a  Rock, 
because  thou  art  consolidated  by  My  might,  that  what 
things  alone  are  Mine  by  My  power  may  be  common  to 
thee  by  participation  with  Me"  (Serm.  iv.  in  Natal.  Ordin. 
c.  2,  ed.  Bailer.).  Thus  I  strike  off  one  of  the  ten 
Fathers  to  whom  Dr.  Littledale  appeals  (p.  16)  as  ex- 
plaining the  Rock  to  be  Christ  and  not  St.  Peter. 

I  will  now  proceed  to  consider  the  remaining  nine. 

i.  Origen.  This  Father,  in  as  many  as  four  passages, 
declares  that  St.  Peter  is  the  Rock.  For  example  :  "  See 
what  is  said  by  the  Lord  to  that  great  foundation  of  the 
Church  and  most  solid  Rock  upon  which  Christ  founded 
His  Church"  (in  Exod.  Horn.  v.  n.  4).* 

*  Cf.  in  Joan.  torn.  iv.  p.  95 ;  in  Matt.  tr.  xiv.  n.  5,  torn.  iii.  p. 
620  j  in  Rom.  lib.  v.  c.  10,  torn.  iv.  p.  568. 


SCRIPTURE  TEXTS.  3 

2.  St.   Hilary,  in  three   passages,   e.g.,    "  Oh,   in    thy 
designation  by  a    new  name,   happy  foundation  of  the 
Church  and  the  Rock,  worthy  of  the  building  of  that 
which  was  to  unloosen  the  infernal  laws  and  the  gates 
of  hell,   and    all   the    bars   of  death"    (in    Matt.    xvi. 
7)* 

3.  St.  John  Chrysostom,  in  not  less  than  six  passages, 
e.g.,  "When  I  name  Peter  I  name  that  unbroken  Rock, 
that  firm  foundation"  (Horn.  iii.  de  Poenit.  n.  4).t 

4.  St.  Augustine  in  one  passage,  e.g.,  "Peter,  who  had 
confessed  Him  the  Son  of  God,  and  in  that  confession 
had  been  called  the  Rock  upon  which  the  Church  should 
be  built "  (in  Ps.  Ixix.).    Although  preferring  to  interpret 
the  Rock  of  Christ,  he  admits  (Retract,  i.  n.  2)  that  either 
interpretation  is  allowable. 

5.  St.    Cyril   of  Alexandria,    in    two    passages,    e.g., 
"Allusively  to  the  name  from  the  rock,  He  changes  his 
name  to  Peter ;  for  on  him  He  was  about  to  found  His 
Church  "  (in  Joan.  i.  n.  2).J 

Dr.  Littledale's  imposing  list  of  ten  is  now  reduced  to 
four — St.  Gregory  the  Great,  St.  Isidore  of  Pelusium, 
Venerable  Bede,  and  St.  Gregory  VII.  Upon  these  I 
remark  that  the  passage  which  Dr.  Littledale  quotes 
from  St.  Gregory  the  Great,  and  which  I  believe  to  be 
the  only  place  in  St.  Gregory's  works  where  the  text  is 
quoted,  is  from  a  commentary  on  the  Seven  Penitential 
Psalms,  a  work  which  may  be  fairly  classed  amongst 
the  "  Dubia."  The  Benedictine  editor,  though  inclined 
to  attribute  it  to  St.  Gregory  I.,  admits  that  the  question 
of  the  authorship  is  a  very  difficult  one.  As  to  St 

*  Cf.  Tract,  in  Ps.  cxxxi.  n.  4 ;  in  Ps.  cxli.  n.  8 ;  de  Trin.  vi. 
n.  20. 

t  Cf.  In  illud,  Hoc  scitote,  n.  4 ;  Ad  eos  qui  scandalizati  sunt, 
n.  17  ;  in  illud,  Vidi  Dom.  Horn.  iv.  n.  3  ;  Horn,  de  dec.  mil.  talent, 
n.  3  ;  in  Matt.  Horn.  54,  n.  2. 

J  Cf.  in  Isai.  lib.  iv.  p.  593,  torn.  iii.  See  Allnatt's  "  Cathedra 
Petti" 


4  SCRIPTURE  TEXTS. 

Gregory  VII.,  an  Anglican  must  be  surely  very  hard 
pressed  who  can  admit  into  his  list  of  Fathers  a  writer 
of  the  eleventh  century,  who,  glorious  champion  of  the 
Faith  as  he  was,  has  left  behind  him  nothing  but  a  very 
moderate  collection  of  letters,  mostly  of  a  practical 
character.  Of  the  whole  list,  St.  Isidore  of  Pelusium 
and  Venerable  Bede,  who,  by  the  way,  is  not  as  yet  a 
doctor  except  by  diploma  of  Dr.  Littledale,  are  the  only 
Fathers  to  whom  his  appeal  can  be  made  with  any 
show  of  propriety. 

Without  going  beyond  Dr.  Littledale's  own  list,  we 
have  a  large  majority  of  the  Fathers  who  assert  precisely 
what,  according  to  him,  first,  all  the  Fathers,  secondly. 
a  large  majority  of  the  Fathers,  have  denied,  viz., 
that  St.  Peter  was  the  rock  upon  which  Christ  founded 
His  Church.  Our  majority  might  be  vastly  increased 
were  it  supplemented,  as  it  might  be,  from  Mr.  Allnatt's 
collection,  already  referred  to.  I  will  content  myself 
with  two  out  of  many  authorities.  Tertullian  de  Prae- 
script,  c.  xxii. :  "  Was  anything  hidden  from  Peter,  the 
Rock  whereon  the  Church  was  to  be  built?"  and  St. 
Cyprian  (Ep.  Ixxi.  ad  Quint.):  "Peter,  whom  the  Lord 
chose  as  first,  and  upon  whom  He  built  His  Church." 
The  overwhelming  majority  is  in  our  favour,  and  so  we 
are  told  that  we  are  contradicting  unanimity !  It  is,  as 
we  shall  see,  Dr.  Littledale's  way. 

"As  to  Luke  xxii.  31,  32,"  says  Dr.  Littledale  (p.  17), 
"no  father  whatever"  (the  italics  are  his  own)  "  explains  it 
in  the  modern  Ultramontane  fashion,  which  is  not  even 
found  till  Cardinal  Bellarmine  invented  it  about  A.D. 
1621."  Dr.  Littledale's  account  (p.  15)  of  this  "Ultra- 
montane fashion "  is  "  that  Peter  was  infallible  and. 
charged  with  guiding  the  faith  of  the  Apostles."  Now 
this  is  a  most  infelicitous  rendering  of  Ultramontane 
doctrine.  All  theologians,  whether  Gallican  or  Ultra- 
montane, admit  that  after  Pentecost  St.  Peter  was  in- 
fallible, and  that  all  the  other  Apostles  were  infallible 


REV.  JAMES  A.  GRANT  BEQUEST  TO 
ST.  MARY'S  COLLEGE  LIBRARY,  1 

SCRIPTURE  TEXTS.  5 

too,  and  did  not  require  any  other  guidance  for  their 
faith  than  that  of  the  Holy  Spirit.  If  St.  Peter  struck 
the  keynote  of  the  apostolic  teaching,  it  was  for  the 
guidance  rather  of  the  other  brethren  outside  the  Apos- 
tolic College,  lest  the  disciples  of  the  different  Apostles 
should  set  up  the  dicta  of  one  against  those  of  another, 
and  so  schism  and  error  should  arise. 

And  now,  is  it  true  that  this  text  is  quoted  by  no 
Father  whatsoever  in  behalf  of  an  unfailing  office  and 
privilege  inherent  in  St.  Peter  and  his  successors  of 
confirming  his  brethren  in  the  faith  ?  There  are  degrees 
of  indiscretion,  and  even  that  very  indiscreet  writer, 
Janus,  might  have  taught  Dr.  Littledale  a  lesson.  Janus 
•maintains,  not  that  the  Ultramontane  interpretation  was 
introduced  in  the  seventeenth  century  by  Bellarmine, 
but  that  it  was  first  taught  in  the  seventh  century  by 
Pope  Agatho  in  his  great  letter  read  at  the  Sixth 
Council  (Janus,  Eng.  trans,  p.  93).  Neither  does  he 
deny  its  subsequent  appearance  in  such  writers  as 
John  VI.,  Patriarch  of  Constantinople  (an.  715),  St. 
Theodore  the  Studite,  and  Theophylact.  But  Janus' 
position  is  respectable  only  in  comparison  with  Dr. 
Littledale's.  St.  Agatho  was  preceded,  even  in  his  explicit 
application  of  the  text  to  St.  Peter's  successors,  by  St. 
Leo  (Serin,  iv.  c.  3,  4),  St.  Gelasius,  Pelagius  II.,  and  St. 
Gregory  the  Great  (see  Cardinal  Hergenrother's  Anti- 
Janus,  Eng.  trans,  p.  60).  It  is  explicitly  referred  to  St. 
Peter  himself,  implicitly  at  least  to  his  successors,  by  St. 
Ambrose  :  "  Peter  ...  is  set  over  the  Church ;  ...  for 
to  him  He  said  :  but  thou,  when  thou  art  converted,  con- 
firm thy  brethren  (in  Ps.  xliii.  n.  40).  To  whom,  by  His 
authority,  He  gave  the  kingdom,  his  faith  could  He  not 
confirm?"  (De  Fide,  lib.  iv.  n.  56);  by  St.  John  Chry- 
sostom  on  the  words,  "  In  those  days  Peter  rose  up  in 
the  midst  of  the  disciples"  (Acts  i.  15) :  "  Both  as  being 
ardent  and  as  intrusted  by  Christ  with  the  flock,  .  .  . 
he  first  acts  with  authority  in  the  matter,  as  having  all 


O  SCRIPTURE  TEXTS. 

put  in  his  hands ;  for  to  him  Christ  had  said,  '  And  thou, 
being  converted,  confirm  thy  brethren'"  (Horn.  Hi.  in 
Act.  Apost.) ;  by  St.  Cyril  of  Alexandria :  "  '  Confirm  thy 
brethren/  that  is,  become  the  support  and  teacher  of  those 
who  come  to  Me  by  faith"  (in  Luc.  xxii.  Maii  Bibl.  Nov.  torn. 
ii.  p.  420).  That  there  can  be  no  exclusion  in  the  above 
passages  of  St.  Peter's  successors,  see  the  words  of  the 
Council  of  Aries  (an.  314)  regarding  Rome,  "the  place 
in  which  the  Apostles  daily  sit  in  judgment "  (Ep.  Syn.  ad 
Sylvest.  ap.  Labbe,  torn.  i.).  See,  too,  the  words  of  the 
Legate  Philip  at  Chalcedon  (Act.  Hi.)  of  Peter,  "who 
even  until  now,  and  always,  lives  and  judges  in  his  suc- 
cessors ; "  and  many  other  testimonies  to  the  same  effect 
(Cath.  Pet.  pp.  55,  57,  and  61). 

As  Cardinal  Bellamiine  has  always  been  accounted 
sufficiently  well  read  in  the  Fathers,  we  can  hardly  give 
what  Dr.  Littledale  calls  his  "invention  "  credit  for  much 
originality.  I  am  the  less  disposed  to  do  so,  as  Bellar- 
mine  was  certainly  acquainted  with  the  writings  of  Pighius 
and  Catharinus,  since  he  quotes  them  both  frequently. 
Now  both  these  writers,  the  former  (an.  1538)  (Hierarch. 
Eccles.  lib.  iv.  c.  8),  the  latter  (an.  1551)  (in  Galat.  ed. 
Venice,  p.  276),  derive  Papal  infallibility  in  quite  its  pre- 
sent "  Ultramontane  fashion  "  from  this  text.  Moreover, 
St.  Thomas  of  Villanova,  with  whose  writings  Dr.  Little- 
dale  professes  some  acquaintance  (see  p.  15,  note), 
has  written,  "  Neither  for  the  person  of  Peter  only 
did  He  pray;  for  that  in  some  sort  failed  in  Christ's 
Passion,  but  for  the  See  of  Peter.  For  this  from  the 
first  moment  of  the  Church's  birth  never  fell  away 
from  the  faith,  but,  as  the  Lord  said,  being  converted, 
confirmed  his  brethren"  (Cone.  iii.  de.  Nat.  Virg.  p.  505). 
I  think  the  originality  of  Dr.  Littledale's  "invention" 
has  been  sufficiently  proved.  Indeed,  I  hardly  know 
how  it  could  be  bettered,,  unless  in  some  future  edition 
he  should  assert  that  the  Ultramontane  application  of  the 
text  was  "invented"  by  Cardinal  Manning  about  A.D. 


SCRIPTURE  TEXTS.  7 

1870.  The  new  statement  would  be  much  more  telling, 
and  quite  as  true  as  the  old  one. 

As  to  John  xxi.  15,  17,  it  is  against  the  unanimous 
consent  of  the  Fathers,  Dr.  Littledale  says,  to  interpret 
it  as  giving  jurisdiction  over  the  Apostles  and  the  whole 
Church;  and  the  "great  majority"  regard  it  as  "no 
more  than  the  reinstatement  of  St.  Peter  in  that  apos- 
tolic office  from  which  he  had  been  degraded  by  his 
denial  of  Christ."  Dr.  Littledale  appeals  to  St.  Gregory 
Nazianzen,  St.  Ambrose,  St.  Augustine,  and  St.  Cyril 
of  Alexandria.  But  numbers  of  the  Fathers  interpret 
the  text  as  giving  to  St.  Peter  precisely  this  jurisdiction, 
and,  amongst  them,  three  out  of  Dr.  Littledale's  four 
authorities.  St.  Ambrose  says  that  Christ  left  St.  Peter 
"  as  it  were,  the  vicar  of  His  love  ;  .  .  .  and  now  he  is  not 
ordered,  as  at  first,  to  '  feed  His  lambs/  .  .  .  but  '  His 
sheep,'  that  the  more  perfect  might  govern  the  more 
perfect"  (in  Luc  lib.  x.  n.  175  and  329). 

St.  Augustine  :  "  I  am  held  in  the  communion  of  the 
Catholic  Church  by  ...  the  succession  of  priests  from 
the  very  chair  of  the  Apostle  Peter,  to  whom  the  Lord 
after  the  resurrection  committed  His  sheep  to  be  fed, 
even  to  the  present  episcopate"  (Ep.  cont.  Manich. 
Fund.  n.  5). 

St.  Cyril  of  Alexandria :  "  Over  the  Church  He  sets 
Peter  as  Shepherd "  (in  Matt.  xvi.  Maii  Bibl.  Nov.  torn. 
Hi.  p.  131). 

St.  John  Chrysostom  on  the  text  says :  "  He  puts  into 
his  hands  the  presidency  over  the  brethren,  .  .  .  the 
presidency  over  His  own  sheep ;  .  .  .  and  if  any  one 
should  say,  How  then  did  James  receive  the  throne  of 
Jerusalem  ?  this  I  would  answer,  that  He  appointed  this 
man  (Peter)  teacher  not  of  that  throne,  but  of  the 
world  "  (in  Joan.  Horn.  Ixxxviii.  n.  i). 

St.  Eucherius  of  Lyons  (or  more  probably  St.  Bruno 
of  Asti,  op.  torn.  ii.  Rome,  p.  294,  in  Joan.)  :  "Peter  .  .  . 
is  Shepherd  of  shepherds ;  ...  he  feeds  the  lambs,  he 


8  SCRIPTURE  TEXTS. 

feeds  also  the  sheep ;  ...  he  rules  both  subjects  and 
prelates." 

St.  Gregory  the  Great :  "  By  the  voice  of  the  Lord  the 
care  of  the  whole  Church  is  committed  to  Peter,  the 
head  of  the  Apostles  ;  for  to  him  it  was  said,  Peter, 
lovest  thou  me?  Feed  My  sheep  ';  (Lib.  iv.  Ep.  32). 

What  Father  ever  suggests  that  St.  Peter  "  had  been 
degraded "  from  his  apostolic  office  so  as  to  require 
reinstatement  ?  All  admit  that  his  sin,  whatever  it  was, 
was  absolutely  forgiven  when  he  "  wept  bitterly."  What- 
ever renewal  may  be  implied  in  the  text  is  a  renewal  of 
the  office  of  Rock  and  confirmer  of  the  brethren.  It 
may  be  regarded  as  introducing  a  development  of  that 
office  in  distinguishing  the  two  classes  of  confirmandi, 
and  as  enunciating  that  highest  characteristic  of  St 
Peter's  vicariate,  the  representation  of  Christ's  love. 

Even  those  Fathers  who  do  not  attribute  the  word 
"  Rock  "  precisely  to  St.  Peter  derive  exactly  the  same 
Petrine  prerogatives  from  the  other  texts.  St.  Gregory 
the  Great  writes  to  Eulogius  (Ep.  xl.  ed.  Ben.  torn.  ii. 
p.  888).  "Who  knows  not  that  Holy  Church  is  estab- 
lished in  the  solidity  of  the  Prince  of  the  Apostles,  who 
hath  expressed  the  firmness  of  his  mind  in  his  name, 
being  called  Peter,  from  the  rock,  to  whom  it  was  said 
by  the  Voice  of  Truth,  *  To  thee  will  I  give  the  keys  of 
the  kingdom  of  heaven ; '  to  whom  again  it  was  said, 
'And  thou,  when  thou  art  converted,  confirm  thy 
brethren ; '  and  again,  *  Simon,  son  of  John,  lovest  thou 
me?'"  Venerable  Bede  (Horn,  in  Die  SS.  Petri  et  Pauli) : 
"  Blessed  Peter  in  a  special  manner  received  the  keys  of 
the  kingdom  of  heaven  and  the  headship  of  judiciary 
power,  that  all  believers  throughout  the  world  might  un- 
derstand that  all  those  who  in  any  way  separate  themselves 
from  the  unity  of  His  faith  and  communion  can  neither 
be  absolved  from  the  bonds  of  their  sins  nor  enter  the 
gate  of  the  heavenly  kingdom." 

St.  Peter  Damian  heads  the  list  (note  p.  16)  of  "  famous 


ST.  PETER  AND  ST.  PAUL.  9 

Roman  Catholic  divines  who  deny,  expressly  or  indirectly, 
that  St.  Peter  is  the  Rock."  I  submit  that  Papal  prero- 
gative is  sufficiently  safe  in  his  hands.  He  says  (Opusc.  v. 
ap.  torn.  iii.  ed.  Bass.  p.  77) :  "The  Roman  Church  (in 
contrast  to  all  others)  He  alone  founded,  who  built  it 
upon  the  Rock  of  the  new  springing  faith,  who  gave  the 
rights  of  empire  upon  earth  and  in  heaven  to  the  blessed 
Keyward  of  eternal  life."  And  again  (Prec.  et  Carm.  ap. 
torn.  iv.  p.  25),  addressing  St.  Peter :  "  Tu  petram  verae 
fidei.  Tu  basim  sedificii  Fundas,  in  qu&  Catholica  Fixa 
surgit  Ecclesia." 

St.  Thomas  of  Villanova  (Serm.  Fer.  vi.  post  Dom.  2 
quadrag.,  ed.  Ven.  p.  201)  argues  that  the  Church  need 
not  fear  the  fate  of  the  Synagogue,  "  For  it  is  written, 
'  This  is  the  blood  of  the  new  and  eternal  covenant ; ' 
and  again,  '  Upon  this  Rock  I  will  build  My  Church,  and 
the  gates  of  hell  shall  not  prevail  against  it ; '  and  again, 
4 1  have  prayed  for  thee,  Peter,  that  thy  faith  fail  not.' " 

Of  no  writer  in  this  list,  with  the  exception  of  Tos- 
tatus,  can  it  be  said  that  he  denies  the  attribution  of  the 
Rock  to  St.  Peter. 

If  Dr.  Littledale  had  tried  ever  so  little  to  ascertain 
the  truth  on  these  matters,  could  he  have  possibly  accom- 
plished so  many  misstatements  in  so  brief  a  space  ? 


§  2.  St.  Peter  and  St.  Paul. 

Whatever  may  have  once  been  the  extent  of  St 
Peter's  privileges,  says  Dr.  Littledale  (p.  136),  "St.  Peter 
is  after  a  time  divinely  restricted  to  the  Apostleship  of 
the  Circumcision,  that  is,  the  Church  of  the  Jews  by 
birth,  as  we  read  Gal.  ii.  7,  8,  '  When  they  had  seen  that 
to  me  was  committed  the  gospel  of  the  uncircumcision, 
as  to  Peter  was  that  of  the  circumcision  (for  he  who 
wrought  in  Peter  to  the  apostleship  of  the  circumcision 
wrought  in  me  also  among  the  Gentiles).' "  It  is  hardly 


10     PETRINE  PRIVILEGE  ACCORDING  TO  DR.  LITTLEDALE. 

necessary  to  say  that  this  interpretation  directly  con- 
tradicts the  whole  current  of  ecclesiastical  tradition. 
There  is  indeed  patristic  authority  for  the  opinion  that 
St.  Paul  shared  in  a  special  way  with  St.  Peter  in  the 
princedom  of  the  Church,  in  the  foundation  and  govern- 
ment of  the  See  of  Rome,  and  so  of  the  whole  Church. 
But  the  primacy  or  headship  was  not  divided ;  St.  Paul 
was  St.  Peter's  divinely  appointed  coadjutor  for  the 
special  behoof  of  Gentile  converts,  but  with  a  subor- 
dinate jurisdiction.  This  is  the  utmost  that  antiquity 
accords  to  St.  Paul.  As  Dr.  Dollinger  argues  (First 
Age  of  the  Church,  vol.  i.  pp.  28-31,  Eng.  trans.) :  "There 
were  not  two  Churches,  one  of  the  circumcision,  one  of 
the  uncircumcision ;  but  there  was  one  olive-tree,  into 
which  the  Gentiles  were  grafted  ; "  .  .  .  therefore  "  the 
Apostle  to  whom  Israel  is  specially  intrusted  by  God  is 
necessarily  the  head  of  the  Apostolic  College  and  the 
whole  Church."  But  even  if  we  suppose  a  Pauline  as 
well  as  a  Petrine  prerogative,  of  that  power  and  dignity 
the  Pope  remains  the  sole  possible  inheritor.  (See 
Bellarmine,  de  Rom.  Pont.  lib.  i.  cap.  27.) 


§  3.  What  according  to  Dr.  Littledale  the 
Privilege  of  Peter  really  was. 

Something  special,  Dr.  Littledale  admits  (p.  140),  was 
really  given  to  St.  Peter  (Matt.  xvi.  19).  There  is  really 
a  sense  in  which  the  words,  "  To  thee  will  I  give  the 
keys  of  the  kingdom  of  heaven,"  apply  "  to  St.  Peter 
alone,"  and  it  is  this :  "  St  Peter  was  granted  the  incom- 
municable and  unrepeatable  privilege  and  glory  of  being 
the  first  to  unlock  the  door  of  the  kingdom  of  heaven  to 
both  Jews  (Acts  ii.  14-41)  and  Gentiles  (Acts  x.  34-48) ; " 
a  possession,  Dr.  Littledale  truly  remarks,  as  untransfer- 
able as  "  a  monopoly  of  continuing  to  discover  America. '* 
The  authority  he  gives  for  this  ingenious  theory  is 


PAPAL  PREROGATIVE  AND  THE  CREEDS.        1 1 

Tertullian  (De  Pudic.  xxi.).  My  first  remark  is,  that 
the  treatise  "  De  Pudicitia"  is  one  of  the  works  un- 
doubtedly written  after  Tertullian's  perversion  to  Mon- 
tanism.  Still  there  is  often  much  valuable  instruction 
even  in  this  class  of  Tertullian's  writings.  When,  how- 
ever, we  turn  to  the  reference  and  examine  Tertullian's 
argument,  we  find  that  Dr.  Littledale  has  done  a  very 
clumsy  thing  indeed.  Tertullian,  in  the  place  referred  to, 
is  formally  maintaining  that  there  is  no  forgiveness  for 
grave  sin  committed  after  baptism,  and  he  supposes  his 
Catholic  opponent  to  urge  Matt.  xvi.  19,  the  gift  of  the 
keys.  He  answers  that  this  was  a  merely  personal  gift  to 
St.  Peter,  which  he  used  and  exhausted  in  admitting  Jews 
and  Gentiles  into  the  Church.  His  one  object  in  limit- 
ing the  privilege  of  the  keys  to  an  incommunicable 
privilege  is  to  bar  the  existence  of  any  absolving  power 
in  the  Church,  and  to  effect  this  purpose  he  feels  that  it 
is  quite  sufficient  to  tie  St.  Peter's  hands.  An  excellent 
text  surely  for  those  who  maintain  that  the  Pope  is  the 
one  immediate  source  of  jurisdiction,  the  original  deposi- 
tory of  the  power  of  the  keys,  from  whom  all  others  must 
receive  it,  but  hardly  acceptable,  one  should  fancy,  to  Dr. 
Littledale's  Ritualist  supporters. 


§  4.  Papal  Prerogative  and  the  Creeds. 

"There  is  nothing,"  urges  Dr.  Littledale  (p.  4),  "of 
distinctive  Romanist  doctrine  in  the  Apostles',  Nicene, 
and  Athanasian  Creeds."  Neither,  I  reply,  is  there  any- 
thing there  about  bishops,  or  general  councils,  or  the 
Holy  Eucharist,  or  the  Bible.  A  creed  was  never  meant 
to  be  an  exhaustive  corpus  of  doctrine.  Its  main  idea 
was  that  of  a  symbol  or  watchword,  expressing  and  en- 
forcing adhesion  to  the  Church,  and  opposition  to  its 
enemies.  Its  contents,  as  well  as  the  prominence  and 
emphasis  given  to  this  or  that  doctrine,  varied  with  the 


12  PAPAL  INFALLIBILITY  AND  THE  FATHERS. 

exigencies  of  controversy.  There  is  one  document, 
however,  which  has  all  the  character  of  a  symbol  and  is 
very  distinctly  Roman — the  Formulary  of  Pope  Hor- 
misdas,  a  profession  of  faith  concluding  with  a  promise 
of  allegiance.  It  was  signed  in  519  by  the  Eastern 
emperor,  patriarchs,  and  bishops,  and  confirmed  in  869 
by  the  eighth  General  Council.  It  is  computed  to  have 
received  the  signatures  of  as  many  as  2500  bishops.  It 
is  perhaps  the  most  symbolic  expression  of  the  belief  of 
united  East  and  West  in  the  rightfulness  of  Papal  prero- 
gative. "  Forasmuch  as  the  statement  of  our  Lord  Jesus 
Christ,  when  He  said,  '  Thou  art  Peter,  and  upon  this 
Rock  I  will  build  My  Church,'  &c.,  cannot  be  set  aside, 
this  which  is  said  is  proved  by  the  results ;  for  in  the 
Apostolic  See  religion  has  always  been  preserved  without 
spot.  ...  In  which  (See)  is  the  perfect  and  true  solidity 
of  the  Christian  religion.  ...  In  the  Apostolic  See  the 
Catholic  religion  has  always  been  kept  undefiled,  and  its 
holy  doctrine  proclaimed.  Desiring,  therefore,  not  to 
be  in  the  least  degree  separated  from  the  faith  and  doc- 
trine of  that  See,  we  hope  that  we  may  deserve  to  be  in 
the  one  communion  with  you  which  the  Apostolic  See 
preaches,  in  which  is  the  entire  and  true  solidity  of  the 
Christian  religion ;  promising  also  that  the  names  of 
those  who  are  cut  off  from  the  communion  of  the 
Catholic  Church  that  is  not  consentient  with  the  Apos- 
tolic See  shall  not  be  recited  during  the  Holy  Mysteries." 


§  5.  Papal  Infallibility  and  the  Fathers. 

The  Church's  unity  is  at  once  a  unity  of  faith  and  a 
unity  of  hierarchical  obedience.  The  Roman  Pontiff 
has  ever  been  regarded  in  the  Church  as  the  centre  of 
both  unities.  In  other  words,  the  Pope  has  ever  held, 
and  been  acknowledged  to  hold,  the  supreme  office  of 
teaching  and  governing  the  whole  Church,  an  office  con- 


PAPAL  INFALLIBILITY  AND  THE  FATHERS.  1 3 

noting  in  its  highest  function,  on  the  one  hand,  a  divine 
assurance  of  the  truth  of  his  definitive  exposition  of  the 
faith,  or  infallibility ;  on  the  other,  the  right  of  universal 
jurisdiction  The  truth  that  the  Pope  is  the  centre  of 
faith  has  from  the  beginning  found  expression  in  the 
acceptance  of  communion  with  Rome  as  a  test  of  ortho- 
doxy, and  the  acknowledgment  that  the  Pope's  confir- 
mation is  the  all-sufficient  and  essential  seal  of  orthodox 
instruction.  This  truth  has  in  our  day  found  its  fullest 
expression  in  the  definition  of  the  Vatican  Council : 
"The  Roman  Pontiff,  when  he  speaks  ex  cathedra,  i.e., 
when,  exercising  the  office  of  pastor  and  doctor  of  all 
Christians,  of  his  supreme  authority  he  defines  a  doc- 
trine of  faith  or  morals  to  be  held  by  the  whole  Church, 
is  possessed  of  that  infallibility  with  which  the  Divine 
Redeemer  has  willed  His  Church  to  be  endowed  in 
defining  a  doctrine  of  faith  or  morals  ;  whence  it  follows 
that  such  definitions  of  the  Roman  Pontiff  are  of  them- 
selves, and  not  in  virtue  of  the  consent  of  the  Church, 
irreformable." 

Besides  the  broad  historical  lines  which  have  ever 
marked  out  the  Roman  Church  as  the  seat  of  ecclesi- 
astical authority,  we  meet  with  a  succession  of  utterances, 
more  or  less  explicit,  on  the  part  of  Popes,  Councils,  and 
Fathers,  which  show  most  unmistakably  the  influence 
of  the  doctrine  defined  at  the  Vatican  Council.  The 
presence  of  this  doctrine  in  the  mind  of  the  Church 
in  varying  moments  of  realisation  accounts  for  and 
harmonises  the  many  accents  of  the  early  Church  which 
have  come  down  to  us;  whereas  for  those  who  deny 
Papal  infallibility  these  expressions  are  almost  meaning- 
less, and  startling,  extravagant,  and  incoherent,  as  the 
words  of  one  talking  in  his  sleep.  Several  of  such 
passages  are  given  in  the  above  section  on  the  Petrine 
texts  and  elsewhere.  I  subjoin  here  the  following : — 


14  PAPAL  INFALLIBILITY  AND  THE  FATHERS. 

Sac.  i. 

ST.  CLEMENT  OF  ROME  (A.D.  96)  thus  concludes  an 
exhortation  to  peace  and  submission  addressed  to  the 
Church  of  Corinth  during  the  lifetime  of  St.  John  : — "  If 
any  disobey  the  words  spoken  by  God  through  us,  let 
them  know  that  they  will  entangle  themselves  in  trans- 
gression and  no  small  danger,  but  we  shall  be  clear 
of  this  sin"  (Newly  Discovered  Fragment,  Ep.  ad  Cor.). 
Of  this  letter  St.  Irenaeus  says,  "  The  Church  which  is 
at  Rome  wrote  a  most  powerful  letter  to  the  Corinthians, 
gathering  them  together  to  peace  and  repairing  their 
faith,  and  announcing  the  tradition  which  it  had  so 
recently  received  from  the  Apostles"  (Adv.  Haer.  lib. 
iii.  c.  3). 

Sue.  ii. 

ST.  IGNATIUS  OF  ANTIOCH  (A.D.  114*): — "Ye  have 
taught  others.  I  would  therefore  that  those  things  may  be 
firmly  established  which  teaching  you  have  commanded. 
...  I  do  not  as  Peter  and  Paul  command  you  "  (Ep. 
ad  Rom.  n.  3,  4). 

ST.  IREN/EUS  (A.D.  202): — "But  as  it  would  be  very 
long  to  enumerate  in  such  a  volume  as  this  the  succession 
of  all  the  Churches;  pointing  out  that  tradition — which 
the  greatest  and  most  ancient  and  universally  known 
Church  constituted  at  Rome  by  the  two  most  glorious 
Apostles  Peter  and  Paul  derives  from  the  Apostles,  and 
that  faith  announced  to  all  men  which  through  the 
succession  of  the  bishops  has  come  down  to  us — we 
confound  all  those  who  in  any  way  through  caprice  or 
vainglory,  or  blindness,  or  perverse  opinion  gather  other 
than  it  behoveth.  For  with  this  Church,  on  account  of 
her  supremacy,  it  is  necessary  that  every  Church,  that 
is,  the  faithful  everywhere,  should  be  in  communion, 

*  As  a  rule,  where  the  date  of  the  document  quoted  has  not  been 
ascertained,  the  date  given  is  that  of  the  author's  death. 


PAPAL  INFALLIBILITY  AND  THE  FATHERS.  15 

"  propter  potentiorem  principalitatem,"  "  convenire,"  in 
which  Church  has  ever  been  preserved  by  the  faithful 
everywhere  that  tradition  which  is  from  the  Apostles " 
(Adv.  Ha*,  loc.  at.). 

Sac.  in. 

ST.  CYPRIAN  (A.D.  258)  speaks  of  "the  Romans,  .  .  , 
unto  whom  heresy  can  have  no  access"  (Ep.  55). 

Sac.  iv. 

ST.  AMBROSE  (A.D.  379)  says  of  his  brother  Satyrus, 
who  had  been  cast  away  on  a  strange  shore,  "  He  called 
the  bishop  to  him,  and  not  accounting  any  grace  true 
which  was  not  of  the  true  faith,  he  inquired  of  him 
whether  he  was  in  communion  (conveniret,  St.  Irenaeus1 
word)  with  the  Catholic  bishops,  that  is,  with  the  Roman 
Church"  (De  Excess.  Frat.  n.  47,  torn.  ii.  p.  1126). 

ST.  ASTERIUS  (circ.  A.D.  400): — "Through  Peter, 
therefore,  become  the  true  and  faithful  teacher  of  the 
faith,  the  Church  is  preserved  incapable  of  fall  and 
unswerving  "  (Horn,  in  S.  A.  Pet.  et  Paul,  ed.  Combefis, 
p.  128).  See,  too,  the  testimonies  of  St.  Jerome  and 
St.  Augustine,  given  elsewhere. 

Sac.  v. 

THE  GENERAL  COUNCIL  OF  EPHESUS  (A.D.  431): — 
"  To  no  one  is  it  doubtful,  nay,  in  all  ages  has  it  been 
recognised,  that  the  holy  and  most  blessed  Peter,  Prince 
and  head  of  the  Apostles,  the  pillar  of  the  faith,  the 
foundation  of  the  Catholic  Church,  received  from  our 
Lord  Jesus  Christ,  the  Saviour  and  Redeemer  of  the 
human  race,  the  keys  of  the  kingdom,  and  that  to  him 
was  given  the  power  of  binding  and  loosing  sins :  who 
even  unto  this  day  lives  and  judges  in  his  successors " 
{Philip  the  Legate,  Act.  iii.  Labbe,  torn.  iii.  p.  1153). 

ST.  PETER  CHRYSOLOGUS  (A.D.  450) : — "Blessed  Peter, 
who  lives  and  presides  in  his  own  See,  gives  the  truth  of 
faith  to  those  who  ask  it "  (Ep.  ad  Eutych). 


1 6         PAPAL  INFALLIBILITY  AND  THE  FATHERS. 

THE  GENERAL  COUNCIL  OF  CHALCEDON  (A.D.  451)  :— 
"  St.  Peter  is  the  Rock  and  foundation  of  the  Catholic 
Church  and  the  foundation  of  the  Orthodox  faith  "  (Act. 
iii.  Labbe,  torn.  iv.  p.  1306).  "  Peter  hath  spoken  through 
Leo"  (Act  ii.  p.  1235). 

COUNCIL  OF  TARRAGON  (A.D.  464) : — "Even  if  there 
were  no"  necessity  of  ecclesiastical  discipline,  we  should 
be  bound  to  have  recourse  to  that  privilege  of  thy  See,  in 
virtue  of  which,  when  he  had  received  the  keys  of  the 
kingdom  after  the  Saviour's  resurrection,  the  unique  pro- 
nouncement of  the  most  blessed  Peter  throughout  the 
whole  world  provided  for  the  illumination  of  all :  of 
whose  Yicar  the  rule  (principatus)  for  its  eminence 
must  be  at  once  feared  by  all  and  loved.  Wherefore  we, 
first  worshipping  in  thee  the  God  whom  thou  servest 
without  reproach,  have  recourse  to  the  faith  praised  by 
the  mouth  of  the  Apostle,  thence  seeking  replies  where 
nothing  is  prescribed  falsely,  nothing  presumptuously, 
but  all  with  pontifical  deliberation  "  (Ep.  ad  Hilar.  Pap. 
n.  i,  ed.  Thiel). 

Sac.  vi.     • 

FORMULA  OF  POPE  HORMISDAS.     (See  above,  p.  12.) 
Sac.  vn. 

ST.  MAXIMUS,  MARTYR  (A.D.  662) : — "  All  the  ends  of 
the  earth,  and  everywhere  those  who  confess  the  Lord 
truly  with  a  right  faith,  fasten  their  eyes  as  on  a  sun  of 
everlasting  light  upon  the  Holy  Roman  Church,  her  con- 
fession, and  her  faith,  -awaiting  the  ray  of  the  doctrine  of 
Fathers  and  Saints  flashing  therefrom,  as  the  divinely  in- 
spired six  Holy  Councils  *  have  declared  it,  giving  forth 
most  explicitly  their  symbol  of  the  faith.  From  the 
beginning,  when  the  Incarnate  Word  of  God  came 
down,  all  the  Christian  Churches  obtained  and  possess 

*  The  sixth  is,  in  all  probability,  Lateran  J. 


PAPAL  INFALLIBILITY  AND  THE  FATHERS.  I  7 

as  their  one  firm  basis  and  foundation  that  greatest 
Church  which  is  there.  So  that  she  against  whom, 
according  to  the  Saviour's  promise,  the  gates  of  hell 
shall  in  nowise  prevail,  and  which  holds  the  keys  of  the 
orthodox  and  right  faith  in  Him,  may  to  those  who 
approach  with  real  piety  open  the  treasure  of  piety,  and 
may  shut  and  fasten  every  heretical  mouth  speaking  un- 
righteousness loftily"  (Opusc.  Theol.  ed.  Combefis,  torn.. 
ii.  p.  72).  Again:  "  For  if  the  Roman  See  refuses  to 
recognise  Pyrrhus  (Patriarch  of  Constantinople),  as  one 
being  not  only  bad,  but  of  ill  sentiment  and  faith,  it 
is  quite  clear  that  every  one  who  anathematises  those 
who  have  condemned  Pyrrhus  anathematises  the  Roman 
Church,  that  is,  the  Catholic  Church. .  .  .  If  he  (Pyrrhus) 
wishes  not  to  be  or  to  be  called  a  heretic,  ...  let  him 
hasten  to  make  satisfaction  for  all  things  to  the  Roman 
See ;  for  when  she  is  satisfied,  all  everywhere  will  pro- 
nounce him  pious  and  orthodox.  But  he  is  merely 
talking  idly  when  he  thinks  to  persuade  or  draw  to  him- 
self such  as  I  am,  and  does  not  make  satisfaction  to  and 
implore  the  most  Blessed  Pope  of  the  Church  of  the 
Romans,  that  is,  the  Apostolic  See,  which,  by  the  Incar- 
nate Word  of  God  Himself,  and  by  all  the  Holy  Synods, 
and  according  to  the  sacred  canons  and  definitions,  hath 
received  and  holds,  throughout  all  the  Holy  Churches 
of  God  in  the  universe,  empire  and  authority,  and  the 
power  to  bind  and  loose ;  for  with  him  binds  and  looses 
even  in  heaven  the  Word  who  rules  over  the  powers  of 
heaven.  And  if  he  deem  that  others  should  be  satisfied 
and  implores  not  the  most  Blessed  Pope  of  Rome,  he 
does  as  one  who,  being  charged  with  homicide  or  some 
other  crime,  hastens  not  to  manifest  his  innocence  to 
him  who,  according  to  law,  has  the  right  of  passing 
judgment,  but  only  uselessly  and  unprofitably  tries  to 
prove  the  innocence  of  his  action  to  other  private  per- 
sons who  are  without  any  power  of  acquitting  him  of 
the  charge''  (Deflor  ex  Ep.  ad  Pet.  Illustr.  1.  c.  p.  76). 

u 


1 8  PAPAL  INFALLIBILITY  AND  THE  FATHERS. 

STEPHEN  OF  DORA,  representing  the  Church  of  Jeru- 
salem, at  the  Lateran  Council  (A.D.  649): — "We  have 
sought  to  fly  and  announce  these  matters  (the  Mono- 
thelite  heresy)  to  the  all-ruling  (rjj  VO.GW  agxpuffy)  pre- 
siding cathedra,  the  one,  I  mean,  which  is  the  pre- 
eminent and  head  amongst  you,  for  the  healing  of  all 
our  wounds,  since  the  exercise  of  this  right  is  a 
wont  from  of  old  in  accordance  with  apostolical  and 
canonical  authority,  forasmuch  as  manifestly  the  truly 
great  Head  of  the  Apostles  has  not  only  been  honoured, 
one  above  all,  by  the  intrustment  of  the  keys  of  the 
kingdom,  to  open  to  true  believers,  and,  as  is  just,  to 
shut  to  those  who  disbelieve  the  gospel  of  grace,  but 
he  was  the  first  enjoined  to  feed  the  sheep  of  the  whole 
Catholic  Church.  '  Peter,'  He  said,  « lovest  thou  Me  ? 
Feed  My  sheep ; '  and  again,  having  peculiarly  and  pro- 
perly a  firmer  and  more  immutable  faith  than  any  in  our 
Lord,  he  deserved  to  be  able  to  turn  to  and  confirm  his 
troubled  spiritual  brethren  and  associates,  as  formally 
invested  by  the  God  who  for  us  took  flesh  with  His 
authority  (rb  xD^og)  and  sacerdotal  power. 

"  All  which  Sophronius  of  blessed  memory,  whilome 
Patriarch  of  the  holy  city  of  Christ  our  God,  knowing 
well,  .  .  .  applied  himself  to  send  forthwith  our  lowliness 
on  this  so  great  business  with  his  own  communication 
to  this  apostolical  and  great  throne."  He  goes  on  to  say 
that  Sophronius,  having  led  him  up  Mount  Calvary,  did 
there  bind  him  with  indissoluble  bonds  (ffwedqee  (te  dsff/^oTf 
aXuro/f),  as  he  should  answer  the  terrible  Judge  who  had 
been  crucified  in  that  holy  place,  never  to  rest  until 
he  had  performed  his  mission  "  to  the  apostolic  throne, 
where  are  the  foundations  of  orthodox  instruction" 
(evse(3uv  doypdruv  at  xzijirfde;),  which  he,  Sophronius,  was 
debarred  from  "  by  the  incursion  of  the  Saracens."  These 
may  be  regarded  as  the  dying  words  of  the  Church  of  Jeru- 
salem (Labbe,  torn.  vii.  p.  108). 

THREE  AFRICAN  COUNCILS  (A.D.  646) : — "  No  one  can 


REV,  JAMES  A.  GRANT  BEQUEST  TO 
3T,  MARY'S  COLUSQE  LIPSAST,  1 

PAPAL  INFALLIBILITY  AND  THE  FATHERS.  19 

doubt  that  there  is  in  the  Apostolic  See  a  great  un- 
failing fountain  pouring  forth  waters  for  all  Christians. 
By  the  ancient  discipline  it  is  ordained  that  whatsoever 
be  done,  even  in  provinces  remote  and  afar  off,  shall 
neither  be  treated  of  nor  accepted  unless  it  be  first 
•brought  to  the  knowledge  of  your  august  See,  so  that  a 
just  sentence  may  be  confirmed  by  its  authority,  and  the 
other  Churches  may  thence  receive  the  original  preach- 
ing as  from  its  native  source,  and  that  the  mysteries  of 
saving  faith  may  remain  in  incorrupt  purity  throughout 
the  various  regions  of  the  world  "  (Ep.  Syn.  ap.  Lat.  I. 
Labbe,  vii.  p.  131). 

SERGIUS,  METROPOLITAN  OF  CYPRUS  (A.D.  643),  to 
Pope  Theodore :  "  O  Holy  Head !  Christ  our  God 
hath  destined  thy  Apostolic  See  to  be  an  immovable 
foundation :  pillar  of  the  Faith  !  For  thou  art,  as  the 
Divine  Word  truly  said,  Peter,  and  on  thee  as  a  foun- 
dation-stone have  the  pillars  of  the  Church  been  fixed  " 
(Lat.  I.  Sess.  ii.,  Labbe,  torn.  vii.  p.  125). 

POPE  AGATHO  (A.D.  680),  Letter  read  at  Sixth  Coun- 
cil, proclaims  "  the  evangelical  and  apostolical  recti- 
tude of  the  faith  which  is  founded  upon  the  firm  Rock 
of  this  Church  of  the  Blessed  Peter,  Prince  of  the 
Apostles,  which,  by  his  favour  and  protection,  remains 
unsullied  by  any  error  ; "  and  exhorts  the  wanderers  to 
return  to  the  orthodox  faith,  "  that  they  may  not  alienate 
themselves  from  our  communion,  that  is,  Blessed  Peter's 
the  Apostle,  whose  office"  (i.e.,  of  confirming  his  brethren 
— he  had  quoted  the  text  just  before)  "  we,  though  un  • 
worthy,  fulfil,  and  the  formula  of  whose  tradition  we. 
enunciate"  (Labbe,  torn.  vii.  p.  798). 

Sczc.  ix. 

ST.  THEODORE  OF  STUDIUM  (A.D.  826)  addresses  the 
Pope :  "  O  Apostolic  Head  !  O  Shepherd  of  the  sheep 
of  Christ,  set  over  them  by  God  !  O  doorkeeper  of  the 
Kingdom  of  Heaven !  O  Rock  of  the  faith  upon  which 


2O  PAPAL  INFALLIBILITY  AND  THE  FATHERS. 

the  Catholic  Church  is  built !  For  Peter  thou  art,  who 
adornest  and  governest  the  See  of  Peter  "  (Ep.  lib.  ii.  ep. 
xii.)  ;  and  again,  "  The  See  in  which  Christ  has  deposited 
the  keys  of  faith  "  (Ep.  Ixiii.) ;  and  again,  "  From  thence 
let  the  certainty  of  faith  be  received "  (Ep.  Ixiii.  ap 
Sirmond.  varia,  torn.  v.). 

POPE  ST.  NICHOLAS  I.  (A.D.  860) : — "The  whole  body 
of  the  faithful  from  this'  Holy  Roman  Church,  which  is 
the  head  of  all  the  Churches,  seeks  instruction,  demands 
the  integrity  of  the  faith,  and  those  who  are  worthy  and 
redeemed  by  the  grace  of  God  do  entreat  the  absolution 
of  their  sins"  (Ep.  ad  Phot.  Labbe,  torn.  x.  p.  539). 

Sczc.  XL 

POPE  ST.  LEO  IX.  (A.D.  1053),  after  quoting  Luke 
xxii.  31,  32,  proceeds  :  "  Shall  there  be  any  one  so  de- 
mented as  to  dare  to  think  that  the  prayer  of  Him  with 
whom  to  will  is  to  be  able  can  in  aught  be  made  void  ? 
Have  not  the  inventions  of  all  the  heretics  been  reproved 
and  convicted  both  by  the  same  Peter  and  his  successors, 
and  the  hearts  of  the  brethren  confirmed  in  the  faith  of 
Peter,  which  hitherto  hath  not  failed,  nor  to  the  end  shall 
fail  ?  "  (Ep.  ad  Mich.  Cserular.). 

Sczc.  xn. 

ST.  BERNARD  (A.D.  1153) : — "I  think  it  right  that  the 
wounds  of  faith  should  there,  in  the  first  place,  be  healed 
where  faith  can  know  no  defect "  (Prol.  Opusc.  xi.  cont. 
Abelard). 

These  are  only  a  few  passages  out  of  many  that  might  be 
quoted.  The  general  outcome  of  their  teaching  is  that  the 
Roman  Church — i.e.,  the  Pope  in  his  official  capacity,  the 
normal  expression  of  which  is  the  assent  of  the  Roman 
clergy — is  the  supreme  expounder  of  the  divine  craga3o<r/£, 
which  is  in  a  special  manner  a  deposit  of  the  Roman 
Church.  The  Pope's  definitive  judgment  is  irretractable 


DR.  LITTLEDALE  AND  ST.  JEROME.  2T 

in  the  immutable  subject-matter  of  faith  and  morals;  and 
so  in  defining  such  points  he  must  possess  "  that  (active) 
infallibility  with  which  the  Divine  Redeemer  willed  that 
His  Church  should  be  endowed."  I  do  not  pretend  that 
this  doctrine  was  articulately  present  in  the  mind  of  each 
one  of  the  Fathers  I  have  quoted.  But  I  maintain  that 
there  is  at  least  no  evidence  that  any  other  system  was ; 
and  that  in  this  system,  and  in  no  other,  are  fully  verified 
those  patristic  appreciations  which  have  been  uttered  in 
so  many  tones  and  under  such  various  circumstances. 
The  eleventh  and  twelfth  centuries  had  nothing  really 
new  to  learn  from  philo-Roman  forgeries,  which  only 
afforded  a  few  more  texts  to  enforce  an  ancient  theme. 
The  condemnation  of  Pope  Honorius  in  the  seventh 
•century  did  not  stint  either  the  magnificats  of  Popes  or 
the  encomiums  of  Fathers,  nor  pluck  one  feather  from 
the  mighty  wings  that  were  gathering  the  Christian  world 
beneath  their  fostering  shadow.* 

§  6.  Dr.  Littledale  and  St.  Jerome. 

"The  most  direct  and  cogent  passage  in  favour  of 
Papalism  in  the  whole  of  the  Fathers,"  says  Dr.  Little- 
dale  (p.  194),  "is  this  from  St.  Jerome,  in  an  epistle  to 
Pope  Damasus,  written  A.D.  376: — 'I  speak  with  the 
successor  of  the  Fisherman  and  the  disciple  of  the  Cross. 
I,  following  no  chief  save  Christ,  am  counted  in  com- 
munion with  your  Blessedness,  that  is,  with  the  chair  of 
Peter.  On  that  Rock  I  know  the  Church  is  built ;  whoso 
«ats  the  Lamb  outside  this  house  is  profane.' "  The 
passage  from  the  next  letter,  Ep.  xvi.,  might  be  added: 
""  I  cry  out,  if  any  one  is  joined  with  the  chair  of  Peter, 
he  is  mine." 

I  am  very  glad  that  Dr.  Littledale  can  appreciate  the 
thoroughness  of  this  testimony.  But  he  goes  on  to  say 
that  "  it  is  as  unfair  to  quote  "  it  "  without  mentioning 
*  For  English  authorities  see  below,  §  23. 


22  DR.  LITTLEDALE  AND  ST.  JEROME. 

his  later  change  of  view,  as  it  would  be  to  bring  up 
schoolboy  mistakes  against  a  man  when  writing  in  the 
maturity  of  his  age  and  powers." 

His  instances  of  change  are,  first,  that  A.D.  393,  in  his 
work  against  Jovinian  (lib.  i.  p.  279,  ed.  Vallarsi),  St. 
Jerome  says:  "  But  thou  say'st  the  Church  is  founded  on 
Peter,  although  the  same  is  also  done  in  atwt her  passage  " 
(the  italicised  words  are  omitted  by  Dr.  Littledale)  "on  all 
the  Apostles,  and  they  all  receive  the  keys  of  the  kingdom 
of  heaven,  and  the  strength  of  the  Church  is  stablished 
on  them  all  equally."  Perfectly  true,  we  reply :  the  Apos- 
tles as  Apostles,  as  inspired  teachers  and  writers,  were 
equal,  and  their  equality  had  to  be  enforced  against 
Jovinian,  who  was  trying  to  set  aside  St.  Paul's  doctrine 
by  appealing  to  St.  Peter.  St.  Jerome's  words  are  most 
true,  and  they  only  want  their  immediate  context  for  the 
doctrine  to  be  complete  :  "  Nevertheless  one  was  chosen 
amongst  the  twelve  in  order  that  by  the  institution  of  a 
head  all  opening  for  schism  might  be  avoided."  I  would 
ask  of  what  use  would  be  a  mere  headship  of  honour, 
without  authority,  towards  quelling  schism  ?  In  this 
very  same  .book  (p.  248),  St.  Jerome  exclaims  in  refer- 
ence to  some  words  of  St  Peter,  "  Oh,  word  worthy 
of  the  Apostle  and  Rock  of  Christ ! "  So  far,  then,  he 
has  proved  faithful  enough  to  the  "  schoolboy  mistake," 
which  he  committed,  by  the  by,  in  his  thirty-fourth  year. 
Second  instance  of  change. — Twenty-seven  years  later, 
in  an  epistle  of  St.  Jerome's  to  Evangelus  or  Evagrius, 
"  written  A.D.  420  or  thereabouts,"  for  Vallarsi,  as  Dr. 
Littledale  bids  us  observe,  has  put  it  quite  among  the 
last  of  the  epistles,  we  read  :  "  Wherever  a  bishop  is, 
whether  at  Rome  or  Gubbio,  at  Constantinople  or  at 
Reggio,  at  Alexandria  or  at  Thanis,  he  is  of  the  same 
dignity  and  of  the  same  priesthood  ;  the  power  of 
wealth  or  the  lowness  of  poverty  does  not  make  a  bishop 
higher  or  lower,  but  all  are  successors  of  the  Apostles. 
.  .  .  But  you  say  that  at  Rome  a  priest  is  ordained  on 


DR.  LITTLEDALE  AND  ST.  JEROME.  23 

the  testimony  of  a  deacon.  Why  do  you  quote  to  me 
the  custom  of  a  single  city  ?  Why  do  you  urge  a  solitary 
instance  (paiicitatem\  whence  pride  has  arisen,  against  the 
laws  of  the  Church?"  I  must  begin  by  observing  that 
the  passage  in  italics  is  a  very  palpable  mistranslation. 
The  immediate  context — Dr.  Littledale's  b£te  noire — 
makes  it  quite  clear  that  "  paucifatem  "  does  not  mean 
the  solitary  instance  of  the  Roman  Church,  but  the  few- 
ness of  the  deacons  as  compared  with  the  priests.  "  All 
that  is  rare  is  on  that  account  the  more  desired.  Flea- 
bane  among  the  Indians  is  more  prized  than  pepper. 
Their  fewness  (paucitas)  ennobles  the  deacons,  whilst 
their  numerousness  degrades  the  priests."  And  so  the 
pride  (supercilium)  is  not  that  of  the  Roman  Church  in 
regard  to  the  rest  of  Christendom,  but  of  its  deacons 
towards  its  priests.  Neither,  though  it  is  of  no  consider- 
able moment,  should  I  be  inclined  to  translate  "  vindi- 
care  in  leges  ecclesise,"  "  to  urge  against  the  laws  of  the 
Church,"  but  rather  "  to  claim  as  a  law  of  the  Church." 
The  analogous  phrase,  "  vindicare  in  libertatem,"  "  to 
claim  as  free,"  is  sufficiently  common  in  Cicero. 

The  meaning  of  the  letter  is  evidently  this :  some 
one  who  had  witnessed  the  behaviour  of  the  Roman 
deacons — be  it  remembered  that  the  Diaconi  Regionarh 
were  important  functionaries  as  well  as  ecclesiastical 
ministri — contended  that  deacons  were  superior  to 
priests.  St.  Jerome's  argument  is  this  :  The  sacerdotium, 
which  in  its  fulness  in  the  Episcopate  constitutes  its 
possessor  a  successor  of.  the  Apostles,  makes  all  the 
difference  betwixt  priests  and  deacons.  All  bishops,  so 
far  as  the  "  sacerdotium  "  is  concerned,  are  equal,  whether 
metropolitans  in  the  centres  of  wealth  and  influence,  or 
suffragans  in  remote  villages,  and  deacons  are  an  utterly 
inferior  order,  whatever  accidental  importance  may  accrue 
to  them  from  their  wealth  and  position.  I  can  detect 
no  word  here  which  contradicts  the  "  schoolboy  mis- 
take." 


24  DR.  LITTLEDALE  AND  ST.  JEROME. 

Dr.  Littledale  has  coolly  assigned  to  this  letter  the  date 
420,  that  of  St.  Jerome's  death,  "  or  some  other  very 
late  period  of  his  life,"  "  because  it  stands  nearly  last  in 
Vallarsi's  great  edition."  Unfortunately  for  this  conjec- 
ture, Vallarsi  (Praef.  p.  Ixiv.)  tells  us  that  the  reason  this 
letter  was  so  placed  was  because  "  neither  on  grounds  ot 
intrinsic  probability,  nor  on  the  concordant  testimony  of 
the  learned,  was  it  possible  to  assign  a  certain  date."  It 
occupies  a  position  at  the  end  of  the  volume  because, 
as  far  as  date  is  concerned,  it  may  be  regarded  as 
amongst  the  "  Dubia."  Vallarsi  himself  thinks  that  it 
probably  was  written  after  386,  and  Tillemont,  who 
thinks  he  has  identified  Evagrius  as  the  Bishop  of 
Antioch,  insists  that  it  could  not  have  been  later  than 
392,  the  date  of  Evagrius's  death,  and  may  well  have 
been  before  387,  at  the  time  when  Evagrius  was  only  a 
priest.  Its  subject  and  style  naturally  connect  it  with 
the  celebrated  letter  to  Eustochium  (Ep.  xxii.  A.D.  384), 
in  which  the  abuses  of  the  Roman  clergy  and  laity  are 
painted  in  such  vivid  colours.  It  must  be  remembered 
that  when  in  Rome,  St.  Jerome  was  the  Pope's  champion 
against  considerable  numbers  of  his  rebellious  clergy. 
In  this  letter  to  Evagrius,  the  deacons'  worst  behaviour 
is  spoken  of  as  taking  place  "  in  the  bishop's  absence." 
It  was  written  doubtless  soon  after  his  return  to  Pales- 
tine (A.D.  386),  when  Roman  memories  were  fresh  in 
his  mind ;  so  much  for  Dr.  Littledale's  arguments  for 
change.  Here  follow  my  proofs  of  constancy.  In  A.D. 
402  (Adv.  Ruffin.  lib.  i.  p.. 461),  St.  Jerome  asks,  "What 
does  he  call  his  faith  ?  that  which  is  the  strength  of  the 
Roman  Church,  or  that  which  is  in  the  volumes  of 
Origen  ?  If  he  answer,  '  The  Roman,'  then  are  we 
Catholics  who  have  borrowed  nothing  of  Origen's  error." 
Again,  A.D.  414  (Ad  Demetriad.  ep.  cxxx.  n.  16,  p. 
992),  after  recording  the  triumph  of  Pope  Anastasius 
over  Eastern  heresy,  he  gives  this  solemn  direction  to 
his  spiritual  daughter  just  six  years  before  his  death : 


DR.  LITTLEDALE  AND  ST.  JEROME.  25 

"  I  think  that  I  ought  to  give  you  this  warning,  that  you 
hold  fast  the  faith  of  Holy  Innocent,  who  is  both  the 
successor  and  the  son,  of  the  Apostolic  chair,  and  of  the 
aforesaid  man ;  nor,  however  prudent  and  wise  you  may 
seem  to  yourself,  receive  any  strange  doctrine." 

Was  there  ever  an  old  man  more  constant  to  the 
tradition  of  his  youth?  When  the  shadows  of  earth 
were  fleeing,  and  the  light  of  eternity  orbing  itself 
beneath  his  earnest  gaze,  and  the  fierce  pulsations  of  an 
energy  which  no  ascetic  discipline  could  wholly  tame, 
nor  strife  of  almost  endless  controversy  exhaust,  were 
steadying  beneath  the  Great  Master's  hand,  he  had  no 
more  precious  legacy  to  bequeath  to  those  he  loved 
than  that  faith  of  his  youth  which  Dr.  Littledale  has 
ventured  to  denounce  as  a  schoolboy  mistake  ! 

Since  the  above  appeared  in  the  "Tablet"  of  Feb- 
ruary 28.  1880,  Dr.  Littledale,  in  his  third  edition,  has 
very  much  remodelled  his  treatment  of  St.  Jerome,  in  ac- 
cordance with  this  criticism,  but,  as  usual,  without  the 
slightest  acknowledgment,  i.  He  makes  the  addition 
to  the  passage  from  the  work  against  Jovinian  about 
the  "institution  of  a  head,"  with  the  deprecating  remark 
that  this  did  not  involve  "any  need  of  agreeing  with 
the  Pope."  As  though  having  a  head  could  prevent  a 
schism  if  you  cut  it  off.  2.  The  attempt  to  make  the 
letter  to  Evagrius  St.  Jerome's  last  word  is  abandoned. 
It  is  enough,  he  says,  that  it  is  long  subsequent  to 
the  letter  to  Damasus.  3.  The  translation  given  above 
of  the  "  paucitatem  "  is  adopted,  and  for  the  charge 
against  Roman  pride,  founded  on  a  mistranslation,  is 
substituted  the  mild  suggestion  that  a  local  custom, 
even  in  Rome,  need  not  involve  a  general  rule.  No 
notice  whatever  is  taken  of  the  passages  from  the  "Adv. 
Rufin."  and  the  "  Ep.  ad  Demetriad."  because  it  was 
necessary  to  retain  the  conclusion  that  St.  Jerome  had 
repented  of  his  Papalism  as  a  "schoolboy  mistake," 
although  somehow  the  premisses  had  gone  to  pieces. 


26  DR.  LITTLEDALE'S  DISPROOFS  OF  PAPAL  INFALLIBILITY. 


§  7.  Dr.  Littledale's  Disproofs  of  Papal 
Infallibility. 

i.   The  Fallibility  of  the  Church. 

The  Pope  is  not  infallible,  Dr.  Littledale  maintains,  for 
the  very  sufficient  reason  that  "  there  is  in  Scripture  no 
promise  of  infallibility  to  the  Church  at  any  given  time  " 
(p.  132).  "  The  Church  is  indefectible  in  the  long-run, 
though  the  teaching  voice  may  be  fallible  at  any  given 
time."  In  support  of  this  view  he  has  the  audacity 
to  appeal  to  an  article  of  Cardinal  Newman  in  the 
"Rambler"  for  July  1859,  in  which  the  Cardinal  con- 
trasts favourably  the  orthodoxy  of  the  general  run  of  the 
laity  with  that  of  the  general  run  of  the  bishops  during 
a  certain  period  of  the  Arian  controversy,  observing 
that  "  the  Ecclesia  Docens  is  not  at  every  time  the  active 
instrument  of  the  Church's  infallibility."  But  there  is 
all  the  difference  between  saying  that  the  mass  of  those 
who  form  the  teaching  body  may  be  at  a  certain  time 
notably  and  culpably  inoperative,  whilst  their  flocks 
may  energetically  retain  what  they  have  indeed  origin- 
ally received  from  the  Ecclesia  Docens,  but  which  the 
particular  generation  of  their  teachers  is  neglecting  to 
inculcate,  and  saying  that  the  Ecclesia  Docens,  speaking 
as  the  Pope  ex  cathedra  or  as  an  (Ecumenical  Council, 
can  ever  define  falsely.  It  is  hardly  necessary  to  say 
that  it  was  in  the  former  sense  only  that  Cardinal  New- 
man was  speaking. 

Dr.  Littledale  is  very  severe  upon  the  a  priori  argu- 
ment that  the  God  who  gave  the  revelation  must  have 
provided  an  infallible  interpreter.  No  doubt  the  a 
priori  argument,  .as  applied  to  the  dealings  of  God  with 
His  creatures,  admits  of  being  pushed  to  extremes ;  but 
here,  I  submit,  its  use  is  absolutely  legitimate.  A  reve- 
lation, of  the  divinely  authorised  exponents  of  which,  it 
can  never  be  said  that  they  have  spoken  definitively 


FALL  OF  POPE  LIBERIUS.  27 

and  truly,  is  a  revelation  that  each  one  may  interpret  at 
his  pleasure.  What  practical  effect  upon  the  minds  of 
the  present  generation  can  an  "  in  the  long-run  indefec- 
tibility "  of  truth  exercise  ?  Questions  may  run  on  as 
long  as  the  questioner  pleases,  and  modern  Arians  and 
Eutychians  have  as  much  right  to  contest  the  finality  of 
Nicaea  and  Chalcedon  as  Dr.  Littledale  the  finality  of 
the  Vatican  Council.  It  is  not  essential  to  a  revelation 
that  first  announced  itself  by  miracles  to  continue  to 
explain  itself  miraculously,  but  an  authority  which  ceases 
to  speak  authoritatively  is  absurd. 

2.   The  Jewish  Church. 

"  One  very  plain  disproof,"  Dr.  Littledale  thinks,  "  of 
the  Roman  a  priori  argument "  is  the  Jewish  Church, 
"  which  no  one  pretends  ever  had  an  infallible  living 
voice,"  though  it  wanted  one  more  than  we  do.  My 
answer  is  threefold — i.  The  Jews  did  not  want  an 
infallible  voice  as  much  as  we  do,  because  they  were 
comparatively  without  intellectual  life.  There  was  no 
"fides  quaerens  intellectum "  with  them.  2.  They  were 
meant  to  be  in  a  worse  condition  than  we.  They 
inhabited  the  twilight ;  we  are  in  the  perfect  day.  3.  So 
far  from  no  one  pretending  that  the  Jews  ever  had 
an  infallible  living  voice,  if  Dr.  Littledale  had  a  fuller 
acquaintance  with  Catholic  theology,  he  would  know 
that  their  possession  of  such  a  voice  in  the  high-priest 
and  Sanhedrim  is  maintained  by  various  theologians  of 
name ;  amongst  others,  by  Becanus,  Analog.  1.  vi.  qu.  2, 
cap.  12,  and  Amort,  Demonstrat.  Critic,  p.  4,  qu.  8. 

3.  Fall  of  Pope  Liberius. 

3.  "  Liberius  subscribed  an  Arian  creed  and  anathema- 
tised St.  Athanasius  as  a  heretic."  Dr.  Littledale  must 
be  aware  that  the  character  of  the  creed  subscribed  to  by 
Liberius  is  a  matter  of  complete  uncertainty.  The  more 
common  opinion,  supported  by  Tillemont  and  Constant, 


28  CONDEMNATION  OF  POPE  HONORIUS. 

is  that  the  creed  signed  by  Liberius  was  the  first  Sirmian,  a 
creed  not  positively  unorthodox,  but,  so  far  as  it  omitted 
to  assert  the  Nicene  formula,  favouring  the  "  pravitas 
hseretica"  (see  Coustant,  Ep.  R.  P.  p.  442,  note).  Peta- 
vius,  in  an  appendix  to  his  edition  of  Epiphanius,  opines 
that  it  was  the  second,  the  strictly  Arian  creed,  but  only 
in  a  mutilated  state,  the  really  offensive  part  having 
been  suppressed  before  it  was  presented  to  the  Pope. 
Others,  with  Pagi  and  Hefele,  contend  that  it  was  the 
third  Sirmian,  another  creed  which  only  sinned  by 
omission.  The  statement  that  Liberius  "  anathematised 
St.  Athanasius  as  a  heretic  "  is  a  purely  gratuitous  asser- 
tion. At  the  most,  he  withdrew  from  his  communion  as 
a  disturber  of  the  peace  of  the  Church  and  commu- 
nicated with  his  enemies.  By  so  doing  he  grievously 
scandalised  the  faithful,  but  there  was  certainly  neither 
definition  nor  anathema.*  But  more  than  this,  even  if 
there  had  been  a  definition  in  every  other  respect  com- 
plete, it  would  have  lacked  one  admitted  requirement 
for  an  ex  cathedra  pronouncement,  I  mean  freedom. 
The  Pope  was  manifestly  before  the  eyes  of  all  Chris- 
tendom under  coercion,  and,  as  St.  Athanasius  says, 
threatened  with  death.  As  soon  as  he  was  stti  juris  he 
reverted  to  his  previous  orthodox  course. 

4.    Condemnation  of  Pope  Honorius. 

11  Pope  Honorius  was  unanimously  condemned  by  the 
Sixth  General  Couricil  as  a  heretic  for  having  publicly 
sided  with  the  Monothelite  heresy,  and  officially  taught  it 
in  pontifical  letters.  .  .  .  And  Gregory  II.  wrote  to  assure 
the  Spanish  bishops  that  Honorius  was  certainly  damned." 
The  truth  of  this  charge,  and  its  effectiveness  against  Papal 
infallibility,  may  be  tested  by  the  answers  to  be  given  to 
the  following  three  questions  : — i.  Did  the  CEcumenical 

*  The  only  evidence  that  any  formal  act  of  separation  from  St. 
Athanasius  took  place  is  the  sixth  Hilarian  fragment,  rejected  by  Dr. 
Hefele  as  spurious. 


CONDEMNATION  OF  POPE  HONORIUS.  29 

Sixth  Council,  /.*.,  the  assembled  Fathers  and  Pope  Leo 
II. ,  who  confirmed  it,  combine  to  declare  as  a  dogmatic 
fact  that  Honorius'  letters  to  Sergius  contained  heresy  ? 
2.  Did  Honorius  define  anything  in  faith  or  morals 
to  be  held  by  the  whole  Church  ?  3.  Did  his  letters 
contain  heresy?  (i.)  No  such  dogmatic  fact  as  the 
heresy  of  the  Honorian  letters  was  defined  by  the  Sixth 
Council  and  Leo  II.,  inasmuch  as  no  such  statement 
appears  either  in  the  definition  or  in  the  Papal  confir- 
mation. It  is  true  that  the  letters  are  produced  and 
spoken  of  (Actio  xiii.)  in  equivalent  terms  as  heretical ; 
but  they  are  merely  used  as  t\\e  pieces  justifaatives  of  a 
criminal  trial.  They  were  brought  in  to  afford  practical 
evidence  of  a  conspiracy  (wilful  or  otherwise)  with  heresy. 
That  they  were  generally  thought  by  the  Fathers  to  go 
farther  than  this,  and  to  exhibit  themselves  Monothelite 
doctrine,  would  seem  highly  probable  ;  but  they  were 
subjected  to  no  final  dogmatic  scrutiny,  and  appear  no 
more.  Whereas,  to  take  an  example  of  a  quite  oppo- 
site treatment,  the  "Three  Chapters"  at  the  Fifth 
Council  were  made  the  subject-matter  of  the  definition 
and  of  Vigilius'  confirmation.  (2.)  Honorius'  letters 
define  nothing.  In  no  less  than  four  places  in  the  two 
letters  the  Pope  deprecates  all  idea  of  definition  on  one 
side  or  the  other,*  and  he  makes  not  the  slightest  effort 

*  "  We  must  not  wrest  what  they  say  into  Church  dogmas." 
"We  leave  the  matter  to  grammarians."  "We  must  not  define 
either  one  or  two  operations."  "We  must  not  defining  pronounce 
one  or  two  operations."  As  to  the  "I  confess  one  will  of  Christ 
the  Lord,"  of  which  so  much  has  been  made,  it  certainly  defines 
nothing.  It  is  merely  a  recognition — though  in  language  under 
the  circumstances  inadequate  and  misleading,  and,  after  the  Mono- 
thelite condemnation,  no  longer  admissible — of  the  moral  unity  of 
Christ's  two  wills,  which,  in  virtue  of  the  supreme  direction  (^ye- 
fiovia)  of  the  Divine  will,  may  be  called  one — the  Divine.  Just  as  St. 
Athanasius  (Cont.  Apollinar.  lib.  ii.  c.  10)  asserted  "  the  will  was  of 
the  Godhead  only,"  without  prejudice  to  his  maintaining  the  two 
natural  wills  (5vo  tfeX^ctra).  See  De  Incarn.  cont.  Arian.  c.  21,  a 
work  unhesitatingly  ascribed  to  him  by  the  Benedictines. 


30  THE  DEPOSITION  OF  POPES. 

to  impose  his  letters  on  the  assent  of  the  Church,  or  even 
to  publish  them.  (3.)  It  is  almost  critically  demon- 
strable that  such  Monothelitish  phraseology  as  he  uses 
he  uses  with  an  orthodox  meaning. 

No  Pope  ever  wrote  to  the  Spanish  bishops,  or  to  any 
one  else,  to  the  effect  that  Honorius  was  "damned" 
Gregory  II.  had  never  any  occasion  to  touch  upon  the 
Honorian  matter,  but  Leo  II.,  in  his  letter  to  the  Spanish 
bishops,  in  which  he  gives  an  account  of  the  procedure 
of  the  Sixth  Council,  refers  to  Honorius  as,  amongst 
others,  "seterna  damnatione  mulctati,"  which  simply 
means  involved  in  a  final  anathema.  See  the  expression 
in  the  Professio  in  the  "  Liber  Diurnus,"  "  nexu  per- 
petui  anathematis."  The  Church  has  never  allowed 
herself  to  define  any  one's  eternal  damnation,  and  still 
less  supposed  herself  empowered  to  inflict  it 

5.   The  Deposition  of  Popes. 

11  The  Western  Church  has  deposed  "  various  Popes, 
says  Dr.  Littledale  (p.  143).  I  answer :  i.  That  it  has 
always  been  maintained  by  Catholic  theologians  that  for 
heresy  the  Church  may  judge  the  Pope,  because,  as  most 
maintain,  by  heresy  he  ceases  to  be  Pope.  There  is  no 
variance  on  this  head  amongst  theologians  that  I  know  of, 
except  that  some,  with  Turrecremata  and  Bellarmine,  hold 
that  by  heresy  he  ipso  facto  ceases  to  be  Pope ;  whilst 
others,  with  Cajetan  and  John  of  St.  Thomas,  maintain 
that  he  would  not  formally  cease  to  be  Pope  until  Jie  was 
formally  deposed.  2.  The  privilege  of  infallible  teach- 
ing only  belongs  to  an  undoubted  Pope ;  and  on  the 
claims  of  a  doubtful,  disputed  Pope  the  Church  has  the 
right  of  judging.  No  single  example  can  be  produced  of 
a  Pope  whose  orthodoxy  and  succession  was  undoubted 
upon  whom  the  Church  pretended  to  sit  in  judgment. 

As  to  Dr.  Littledale's  instances,  John  XII.,  bad  as  he 
was,  was  deposed  by  no  legitimate  Council,  but  by  an  Im- 
perialist gatheringunder the  EmperorOtho.  Benedict  IX. 


INFALLIBILITY  IN  THE  PAST.  fll 

was  deposed  violently  from  his  See  by  the  Roman  people, 
recovered  it  soon  after,  and  was  quietly  removed  at  a 
time  when  there  were  two  if  not  three  other  claimants  for 
the  Papacy.  Both  Benedict  IX.  and  Gregory  VI.  were 
simoniacs,  and  therefore  justly  liable  to  be  dealt  with  as 
intruders.  (See  Pagi  in  an.  1044.) 

Gregory  XII.  and  John  XXIII.  were  rival  claimants, 
and  in  that  respect  open  to  the  judgment  of  the  Church. 
Gregory  was  allowed  to  resign  at  Constance,  his  previous 
deposition  at  Pisa  being  practically  ignored,  though  with- 
out prejudice  to  the  claims  of  Pisa,  on  the  great  practical 
principle  which  had  become  the  cry  at  Constance  "  Non 
via  facti  sed  via  cessionis,"  not  the  way  of  a  contestation 
of  rights,  but  the  way  of  renunciation.*  John,  though 
admitted  to  be  Pope  by  the  great  mass  of  Christendom, 
had  promised  renunciation,  and  was  under  charge  of 
heresy.  When  he  appeared  determined  to  break  his 
engagement,  he  was  deposed,  and  afterwards  confirmed 
his  deposition  by  resignation. 

During  a  contested  Papacy  the  state  of  things  approxi- 
mates to  that  of  an  interregnum.  The  exercise  of  active 
infallibility  is  suspended.  This  is  the  normal  condition 
of  the  Church  according  to  Dr.  Littledale  ;  with  us,  it  is 
a  paralytic  seizure  which  has  been  permitted  now  and 
again  to  afflict  the  Church  for  a  brief  space,  in  order  that 
we  may  know  the  more  how  to  appreciate  the  vigour  of  our 
normal  ecclesiastical  life.  The  possibility  of  the  existence 
of  a  disputed  Pope  cannot  affect  the  privileges  of  one  who 
is  undisputed. 

6.  Infallibility  in  the  Past. 

"  Papal  infallibility  .  .  .  has  been  entirely  useless  in  the 
past,"  says  Dr.  Littledale  (p.  145).  Why  so?  Because 
there  has  not  been  any  line  of  great  theological  writers 

*  It  is  only  fair  to  note  that  Gregory  was  allowed  to  exercise  to 
the  full  his  Papal  prerogative  in  reinitiating  the  Council  and 
approving  the  A  eta. 


32  THE  COUNCIL  OF  TRENT  AND  LEO  X. 

in  the  chair  of  Peter,  and  because  the  schools  of  Pans 
and  of  Oxford  have  been  more  famous  than  those  of  Rome. 
But  what  has  this  to  do  with  it?  You  might  as  well  argue 
against  the  authority  of  the  judge  on  the  ground  of  the 
superior  legal  eloquence  usually  displayed  by  the  bar.  The 
Popes  have  ordinarily  been  far  too  busy  framing  and 
administering  the  laws  of  the  Church,  and  applying  the 
rule  of  faith  to  emergent  questions  on  which  they  have 
pronounced  the  last  word,  to  write  treatises  on  canon 
law  or  courses  of  theology.  How  many  kings,  I  wonder, 
or  prime  ministers,  have  been  great  authors  ?  Infallibility 
not  useful  in  the  past  !  Why,  what  but  the  ingrained 
conviction  of  the  truth  involved  in  the  "  Roma  locuta 
est "  has  preserved  the  unity  of  the  Church  through  such 
a  multitude  of  heretical  storms  from  Berengarius  to  Jan- 
senius  ? — just  as  a  belief  in  the  Pope's  divinely  appointed 
headship  had  saved  the  Catholic  Church  in  all  lands  from 
the  degradation  of  secular  masterdom  until  the  Reformers 
erected  state  slavery  into  an  article  of  faith. 

That  the  Popes  have  not  settled  a  number  of  important 
theological  questions  offhand  does  not,  as  Dr.  Littledale 
imagines,  disprove  infallibility;  it  simply  shows,  what 
Catholics  have  all  along  maintained,  that  infallibility  does 
not  mean  inspiration,  or  any  faculty  inherent  in  the  Pope 
which  he  can  call  into  operation  at  will ;  but  that,  on  the 
contrary,  it  means  an  assistance  external  and  conditional, 
which  secures  that  when  the  Pope  decides  a  point  of 
faith  or  morals  ex  cathedra  he  shall  decide  it  truly.  This 
is  the  whole  of  what  is  meant  by  infallibility,  although, 
of  course,  we  rightly  presume  that  numberless  preventions 
and  inspirations  will,  in  the  ordinary  course  of  God's 
providence,  encompass  His  Vicar. 

7.   The  Council  of  Trent  and  Leo  X. 

The  Council  of  Trent  did  not  notice  Leo  X.'s  Bull 
against  Luther  by  no  means  because  it  did  not  accept 
it,  but  for  these  very  good  reasons : — i.  Because  Leo 


THE  CONDEMNATION  OF  GALILEO.  33 

dealt  with  a  number  of  propositions  extracted  from 
Luther's  books,  whilst  the  object  of  the  Council  was  to 
decide  matters  on  a  broad  theological  basis.  2.  The 
Lull  was  minatory  and  penal,  whereas  the  idea  of  the 
Council  was  conciliation.  With  this  idea  the  Church 
has  often  consented,  not,  indeed,  to  call  in  question,  but 
to  restate  in  a  new  form  and  with  fresh  authority  her  old 
decisions. 

8.    The  Sixtine  Bible. 

The  mistakes  in  Sixtus  V.'s  edition  of  the  Bible  only 
prove,  what  it  never  entered  into  an  Ultramontane's 
heart  to  deny,  that  a  Pope  may  issue  an  edition  of  the 
Bible,  and  inaugurate  it  as  the  standard  edition  in  the 
most  emphatic  manner,  without  any  security  against  mis- 
takes. The  Tridentine  Decree  (sess.  iv.),  which  in- 
fallibly declared  the  Vulgate  authentic,  i.e.,  a  sufficient 
rendering  of  the  original,  neither  guaranteed  any  exist- 
ing recension  from  minor  errors,  nor  secured  such  im- 
munity for  the  future. 

9.   The  Condemnation  of  Galileo. 

There  can  be  no  doubt  that  the  Congregations  both  of 
the  Inquisition  and  the  Index  censured  as  false  and 
unscriptural  Galileo's  doctrine  of  the  movement  of  the 
earth  round  the  sun.  The  practical  question  is,  are  we 
in  the  dilemma  of  having  to  reject  either  the  earth's 
movement  or  the  Pope's  infallibility  as  defined  by  the 
Vatican  Council?  The  decree  of  the  Index  against 
Galileo  is  not  formally  a  Papal  document ;  it  neither  runs 
in  the  Pope's  name  nor  bears  any  pledge  of  his  authority. 
The  simplest  and  fairest  way  of  deciding  the  question  is 
to  see  how  the  condemnation  was  taken  at  the  time  it 
was  pronounced.  If  we  find  anything  approaching  a 
consensus  of  writers,  who  are  at  once  Ultramontanes  and 
anti-Copernicans,  to  the  effect  that  this  condemnation 
was  no  final  irreformabk  decision,  then  we  may  be  satis- 


34  THE  CONDEMNATION  OF  GALILEO. 

fied  that  its  error  involves  no  breakdown  of  infallibility. 
The  decrees  of  the  Inquisition  and  of  the  Index  against 
Copernicanism  were  respectively  in  the  February  and 
March  of  1616 ;  the  Inquisitional  process  against  Galileo 
in  1633.  In  1651  the  Jesuit  Riccioli  speaks  of  the  ne- 
cessity of  respecting  the  censure  "until  the  judges,  either 
by  themselves  recognising,  or  being  shown  by  others,  the 
truth  of  the  demonstration,  withdraw  it"  (Almagest  Nov. 
torn.  ii.  p.  489).  In  1661  the  Grand  Penitentiary  Fabri, 
after  pointing  out  that  the  Copernicans  have  not  as  yet 
been  able  to  produce  a  demonstration,  continues,  "  But  if 
haply  one  should  be  some  time  excogitated  by  you  (which 
I  should  hardly  fancy),  the  Church  will  in  no  wise  hesitate 
to  declare  that  those  passages  (of  Scripture)  are  to  be 
understood  in  a  figured  and  improper  sense  "  (quoted  in 
a  letter  of  Auzout  to  the  Abbe  Charles,  1664,  Memoires 
de  1'Acade'mie  des  Sciences,  Paris,  1729,  torn.  vii.  part 
2).  Exactly  the  same  sentiment  is  attributed  by  Father 
Grassi,  S.J.,  to  Cardinal  Bellarmine,  Ep.  Castelli  ap. 
Galilei  Opere,  torn.  ix.  p.  174.*  See,  to  the  same  effect, 
Fromond  of  Louvain,  Antaristarchus,  chap.  v.  p.  28, 
Antwerp,  1634,  and  the  Cistercian  Caramuel,  TheoL 
Moral.  Fundam.  lib.  i.  p.  104,  Lyons,  1676.  On  the 
other  hand,  there  was  not  wanting  a  minority  though 
small  and  insignificant,  of  maximisers,  who  insisted  that 
the  decision  was  final.  This  judgment  of  the  Index, 
then,  was  not  regarded  by  the  "  major  et  sanior  pars  "  of 
the  community  as  a  final  expression  of  Papal  authority 
commanding  the  assent  of  the  faithful,  therefore  the 
doctrine  of  Papal  infallibility  cannot  be  regarded  as 
affected  by  the  truth  or  falsity  of  the  censure  on 
Galileo. 

But  the  whole  matter  has  been  settled,  and  all  chance 
of  escape,  Dr.  Littledale  thinks,  cut  off  for  us  by  a  Brief 
of  Pius  VI.,  dated  1786,  addressed  to  the  Jansenist 

*  These  three  passages  are  quoted  in  the  articles  on  Galileo  in 
the  "  Revue  Catholique,"  torn,  i,,  Louvain,  1869. 


THE  CONDEMNATION  OF  GALILEO.  35 

Bishop  of  Chiusi,  who  had  been  guilty  of  approving 
certain  Jansenistic  catechisms  condemned  by  the  Index. 
The  Brief  speaks  of  the  Bishop  as  having  violated  "  the 
dogmatic  judgments  pronounced  by  the  See  of  Peter," 
which  statement  Dr.  Littledale,  following  Canon  Jenkins' 
"  Privilege  of  Peter,"  takes  as  equivalent  to  a  declara- 
tion that  all  decisions  of  the  Index  are  dogmatic  ex 
cathedra  judgments.  Any  one,  however,  who  recollects 
the  significance  of  the  Pistoja  movement,  of  which  the 
Bishop  of  Chiusi  was  one  of  the  leaders,  will  understand 
that  the  "  dogmatic  judgments  "  of  which  the  Pope  is 
speaking  are  nothing  less  than  the  whole  line  of  Jan- 
senist  condemnations,  several  of  which  were  undoubtedly 
<l  dogmatic  judgments  pronounced  by  the  See  of  Peter."* 
It  was  the  tactics  of  the  Italian  Jansenists  to  try  and 
fight  the  battle  over  again  upon  small  practical  issues, 
and  this  condemnation  of  the  Jansenistic  catechisms 
was  part  of  the  battle-ground  upon  which  they  hoped  to 
reverse  the  ancient  defeats,  which  it  was  necessary  they 
should  seem  to  have  accepted.  They  thought  the  Gali- 
leo case  gave  them  a  handle  for  pooh-poohing  the  Index, 
and  the  Pope  recognised  that  this  was  not  only  an  act 
of  insubordination  against  lawful  authority,  but  by  im- 
plication and  intention,  a  violation  of  the  dogmatic 
judgments  upon  Jansenism.  I  may  add,  that  the  ex- 
tremest  advocate  of  the  authority  of  the  Roman  Congre- 
gation has  never  claimed  for  their  decrees,  as  such,  the 
character  of  a  Papal  ex  cathedra  judgment,  t  Father 
Faure,  S.J.,  who  was  such  a  favourite  with  Pius  VI.  that 
the  Pope  always  kept  his  works  beside  him,  though  him- 
self an  anti-Copernican,  lays  great  stress  upon  the  fact 
that  Copernicanism  was  never  condemned  by  any  Pon- 
tifical Bull  or  any  decree  of  a  General  Council.  (See 
Annot.  to  Notae  in  Enchirid.  St.  August.  Romas,  1775.) 

*  This  is  sufficiently  clear  from  the  context  of  the  Brief  of  1786  ;  but  yet 
more  so  from  a  second  Brief  of  February  1787,  in  answer  to  the  Bishop's 
question,  how  he  had  transgressed  the  "  dogmatic  judgments."  See 
too  "  Istoria  dell'  Assemblea,"  Part  i.  Sess.  iv. 

•f  See  Appendix,  Note  A. 


36  OBSCURITY  OF  THE  VATICAN  DEFINITION. 

Whatever  may  be  thought  of  the  advisability  of  the 
steps  taken  by  the  authorities  of  the  Index  and  In- 
quisition in  the  Galileo  matter,  the  idea  of  their  action 
is  sufficiently  clear  and  intelligible.  It  was  simply  to 
protect  the  natural  sense  of  the  Scripture  text,  entering 
as  it  did  into  the  very  framework  of  the  believer's  imagi- 
native apprehension,  from  the  sallies  of  scientific  hypo- 
thesis. They  never  pretended  finally  to  settle  the  abso- 
lute truth  of  the  matter. 

10.  Infallibility  in  the  future. 

As  infallibility  was  no  help  in  the  past,  Dr.  Littledale 
concludes,  not  unnaturally,  that  it  will  be  no  help  in  the 
future.  We.  from  its  supreme  usefulness  in  the  past,  may 
well  augur  its  continued  usefulness  in  the  future.  But 
of  course  it  will  continue  to  fulfil  the  Catholic  idea  of" 
infallibility,  and  not  its  Protestant  caricature.  It  will 
neither  usurp  the  functions  of  common  sense  nor  of 
theological  inquiry,  whilst  deciding  such  questions  as  are 
necessary  for  preserving  the  integrity  of  the  faith  inviolate 
amidst  hostile  criticism  and  theological  disputation. 

With  characteristic  recklessness,  Dr.  Littledale  (p.  150) 
falls  back  upon  Chillingworth's  shallow  scepticism  of 
"  an  infallible  mean."  What  is  the  good  of  an  infallible 
teacher  without  an  infallible  hearer  ?  Of  course  this 
strikes  at  the  root  of  all  certainty,  not  only  in  matters  of 
religion,  but  throughout  the  whole  sphere  of  knowledge. 
As  well  ask  what  is  the  good  of  objective  truth  unless 
we  are  infallibly  certain  that  we  cannot  misuse  our 
faculties.  It  is  something,  anyhow,  that  a  mistake  can 
only  arise  from  such  a  cause,  that  there  is  an  external 
reality  to  which  in  our  better  moments,  when  our  senses 
are  clear,  we  may  attain. 

ii.    Obscurity  of  the  Vatican  Definition. 

The  Vatican  definition  is  hopelessly  obscure.  "At 
this  moment,"  urges  Dr.  Littledale,  "  in  spite  of  the 
definition,  Roman  theologians  are  at  hopeless  variance 


THE  ANTI-VATICAN  DILEMMA.  37 

on  three  questions  raised  by  this  decree: — z.  When 
does  the  Pope  speak  ex  cathedra  ?  2.  How  is  the  fact 
to  be  known  publicly  ?  3.  What  is  that  infallibility  in 
kind  and  degree  mentioned?"  I  answer,  that  no  con- 
ceivable enactment  of  a  general  principle,  as  long  as 
it  is  couched  in  human  language,  can  preclude  all  ques- 
tion as  to  the  particular  instance.  But  is  it,  therefore, 
useless?  Is  an  act  of  Parliament  necessarily  useless 
because  in  its  application  questions  may  arise  which  it 
has  not  answered  by  anticipation  ?  (i.)  The  first  ques- 
tion is  answered  by  the  Vatican  Council  thus :  When 
"  he  defines  a  doctrine  of  faith  and  morals  to  be  held  by 
the  whole  Church,"  and  this  question  is  in  debate  amongst 
no  Catholic  theologians  ;  though,  of  course,  the  further 
question  maybe  asked,  "When  does  he  define?"  &c., 
which  resolves  itself  into  Dr.  Littledale's  second  question. 
(2.)  The  fact  is  known  publicly  when  the  Pope  either 
declares  in  words  or  equivalently  implies  that  he  is  so 
defining.  (3.)  The  exclusion  of  all  error  from  the  sub- 
stance of  the  proposition  of  faith  or  morals  so  defined. 
The  only  possible  scope  for  discussion  amongst  Catholics 
here  is  in  cases  in  which  it  is  doubted  whether  the  de- 
finitive character  of  a  document  is  sufficiently  expressed. 
The  very  question  is  an  appeal  to  fresh  interpretative  legis- 
lation. As  long  as  human  minds  and  human  language 
are  what  they  are,  this  uncertainty  must  be  possible ;  but 
are  we,  therefore,  in  a  paroxysm  of  a  priori  criticism, 
because  infallibility  cannot  bar  every  sort  of  dispute,  and 
procure  on  the  spot  in  every  case  unbroken  peace,  to 
forget  that  it  has  built  up  peace  in  the  past,  and  promises 
to  build  up  peace  in  the  future  ? 

1 2.    The  Anti-  Vatican  Dilenuna, 

Dr.  Littledale  has  found  a  notable  dilemma  by  which 
the  Vatican  definition  is  to  be  hoist  as  with  its  own 
petard.  It  is  as  follows  :  Either  the  Pope  defined  his 
infallibility,  and  thereby  acted  invalidly  as  judge  in  his 


38  THE  POPE'S  SUPREMACY. 

own  cause,  or  the  Council  did  so ;  and  in  this  latter  case,, 
by  the  act  of  definition,  the  substance  of  which  was  a 
confession  of  fallibility,  acknowledged  the  uncertainty  of 
the  definition.  I  wonder  what  manner  of  man  he  may 
be  who  thinks  this  clever !  First,  there  is  no  dilemma, 
for  the  division  is  not  exhaustive.  Neither  the  Pope  by 
himself  nor  the  Council  by  itself  passed  the  definition, 
but  the  Council  and  Pope  together — a  combination  the 
infallible  authority  of  which  has  always  been  explicitly 
acknowledged  by  Catholics — passed  it.  But  though  Dr. 
Littledale's  logical  prank  is  thus  quashed"^^  initio^  it  may 
be  amusing  to  see  how,  under  tolerance  of  his  initial 
absurdity,  he  may  proceed  to  play  it.  The  Church,  he 
contends,  by  defining  that  the  Pope  by  himself,  without 
her  assent,  is  infallible,  confesses  her  own  fallibility. 
How,  in  the  name  of  logic  ?  Because  I  acknowledge 
that  you  can  stand  alone,  does  it  follow  that  I  can't  ? 
Assuredly  the  Vatican  Council  has  not  defined  that  ail 
the  other  bishops  together,  the  Pope  apart,  can  define 
an  error  in  faith  and  morals. 


§  8.  The  Pope's  Supremacy  of  Jurisdiction 
and  the  Fathers. 

Jurisdiction  is  the  moral  power  or  right  of  exercising 
a  variety  of  functions  towards  others,  of  pronouncing 
judgment  and  enforcing  obedience.  It  is  either  ordinary, 
i.e.,  in  virtue  of  office,  or  delegated  by  a  superior  ad  hoc. 
Christ,  who  hath  all  power  in  heaven  and  upon  earth, 
gave  jurisdiction  to  all  His  Apostles.  "  Go  ye  and  teach 
(make  disciples  of)  all  nations."  But  in  the  gift  of  the 
keys  (Matt.  xvi.  19)  and  the  charge  of  the  flock  (John 
xxi.  15-17),  to  use  St.  Jerome's  words,  one  was  chosen 
amongst  the  twelve,  in  order  that  by  the  institution  of  a 
head  all  opening  for  schism  might  be  avoided.  The 
other  Apostles  exercised  a  jurisdiction  derived  imme- 
diately from  Christ,  but  submitted  by  him  quoad  exer- 


THE  POPE'S  SUPREMACY  39 

citium  to  the  superintendence  of  St.  Peter,  so  that 
wherever  the  interests  of  faith  and  charity  demanded, 
the  divinely  appointed  Head  might  interfere  authorita- 
tively. Each  of  the  other  Apostles  was  inspired,  con- 
firmed in  grace,  and  his  jurisdiction,  though  subordinate, 
was  universal ;  that  is  to  say,  not  confined,  as  a  bishop's 
is,  to  this  or  that  particular  diocese  or  province.  Hence 
it  is  obvious  that  the  necessity  for  a  head  was  a  hundred 
times  more  cogent  in  post-apostolic  than  in  apostolic 
times,  and  that  anything  the  Fathers  say  about  the  office 
of  St.  Peter  towards  the  other  Apostles  presumably 
holds  good  for  his  successors,  even  where  this  is  not 
precisely  stated.  As  the  Apostles  went  to  their  reward, 
neither  inspiration  nor  confirmation  in  grace  became 
the  inheritance  of  the  bishops  who  succeeded  them ; 
and  the  one  See  in  which  the  apostolic  universality  of 
jurisdiction  persevered  was  the  See  of  Rome.  In  that 
See,  indefectibility  of  faith  and  infallibility  of  teaching 
remained,  whilst  the  personal  charismata  of  inspiration 
and  confirmation  in  grace  ceased. 

Our  thesis,  then,  is  that  the  successor  of  St.  Peter  in 
the  Roman  See  has  by  Divine  institution  a  supreme  and 
immediate  jurisdiction  throughout  the  Church.  He  can 
make  such  reservation  of  the  powers  of  his  subordinates 
as  he  may  think  advisable,  and  he  has  the  armoury  of 
spiritual  penalties  and  the  treasury  of  spiritual  favours 
at  his  disposal.  This  is  the  Catholic,  or,  as  Protestants 
still  affect  to  call  it,  the  Ultramontane  thesis.  As  a 
counter-thesis  Dr.  Littledale  advances  (pp.  135-142) 
that  the  Pope  has  no  authority  whatsoever  outside  his 
own  patriarchate,  which  is  confined  to  ten  provinces  in 
Central  and  Southern  Italy,  with  the  islands  of  Sicily, 
Sardinia,  and  Corsica ;  but  beyond  these  narrow  limits 
merely  possesses  the  right  of  "  an  honorary  presidency 
such  as  the  Duke  of  Norfolk  enjoys  amongst  English 
peers;"  and  that  the  Papacy  is  of  "purely  human 
authority  and  origin  "  (note,  p.  142). 


4O  THE  POPE'S  SUPREMACY. 

Before  criticising  the  arguments  by  which  this  counter- 
thesis  is  supported,  and  the  objections  of  Dr.  Littledale 
against  the  Catholic  thesis,  I  shall  present  certain  further 
patristic  authorities  for  Papal  jurisdiction,  whilst  re- 
minding my  readers  that  many  of  the  passages  already 
quoted  for  infallibility  bear  emphatic  testimony  to  Rome's 
jurisdiction. 

Sac.  in. 

TERTULLIAN  (A.D.  240)  De  Pudic.  c.  i,  is  a  witness 
that  Pope  Zephyrinus  claimed  the  right  of  acting  as 
"  Bishop  of  bishops,"  whilst  his  then  opposition  to  the 
Pope  is  deprived  of  all  weight  by  his  manifest  heresy. 
With  this  compare  the  still  earlier  passages  from  Clement 
and  Irenaeus,  already  quoted. 

ST.  CYPRIAN  : — "  The  Church,  which  is  one,  and  was 
by  the  voice  of  the  Lord  founded  upon  one,  who  also 
received  the  keys  thereof"  (Ep.  Ixxiii.  ad  Jubaian). 
"The  chair  of  Peter  and  the  ruling  (principalem) 
Church,  whence  the  unity  of  the  priesthood  has  its 
source"  (Ep.  Iv.  ad  Cornel.).  Compare  with  this  St. 
Ignatius'  "  Church  which  presides,"  and  St.  Irenaeus' 
"  propter  potentiorem  principalitatem."  As  to  the  force 
of  the  word  "  principalitas,"  the  original  Greek  of 
Irenaeus,  lib.  iv.  c.  38,  n.  3,  "  principalitatem  habebit  in 
omnibus  Deus,"  is  "  cr^wrsu?/  l\>  vaffiv  6  ©soc."  And  in  two 
other  passages  where  the  Greek  of  Irenaeus  is  preserved 
(ap.  Philosophum.  x.  21,  and  ap.  Theodoret  Haeret 
Fab.  i.  15),  the  Greek  word  answering  to  "  principalitas" 
is  Avfavria,  "absolute  sway."  *  Fr.  Schneeman  has  shown 
that  in  the  thirteen  places  in  Irenaeus  in  which  "  prin- 
cipalitas "  or  its  equivalent  "  principatus "  is  used,  it  is 
always  in  the  sense  of  power  or  rule.f  Tertullian  (De 
Anima,  c.  13^  defines  "principalitas"  "qui  cui  praeest," 
and  applies  it  to  the  relation  of  the  soul  to  the  body. 

*  See  Fr.  Addis,  "Anglicanism  and  the  Fathers,"  p.  12. 
t  See  "Cathedra  Petri,"  p.  71,  note,  and  p.  72. 


REV.  JAMES  A.  GRANT  BEQUEST  TO 
ST.  MARY'S  COLLEGE  LIBRARY,  1926 

THE  POPE'S  SUPREMACY.  4* 


S(ZC.  IV. 

ST.  HILARY  OF  POICTIERS  (A.D.  347) : — "This  will  be 
seen  to  be  best,  and  by  far  the  most  fitting  thing,  if  to 
the  Head,  that  is,  to.  the  See  of  the  Apostle  Peter,  the 
priests  of  the  Lord  report  from  every  one  of  the  pro- 
vinces" (Fragm.  ii.  n.  9,  ed.  Ben.  p.  1290). 

ST.  OPTATUS  OF  MILEVIS  (A.D.  370): — "Thou  canst 
not  deny  that  thou  knowest  that  in  the  city  of  Rome  to 
Peter  first  the  episcopal  chair  was  given,  in  which  sat 
the  first  of  all  the  Apostles,  Peter;  ...  in  which  one 
chair  unity  might  be  preserved  by  all  (compare  St.  Irenaeus), 
lest  the  other  Apostles  should  arrogate  each  one  his 
own,  and  that  he  might  be  convicted  at  once  of  being 
a  schismatic  and  a  sinner  who  against  that  one  chair 
should  set  another.  And  so  in  that  one  chair,  which  is 
the  first  endowment "("  dos,"  mark  of  the  Church),"  Peter 
sat  first."  He  then  enumerates  all  the  Popes  down  to 
the  Pope  of  his  day.  "  With  whom,  along  with  us,  the 
whole  world,  by  the  intercourse  of  literce  formates. 
agrees  in  one  bond  of  communion  (De  Schism.  Donat. 
lib.  ii.  c.  2,  3,  p.  31,  ed.  Du  Pin.).  "Of  the  aforesaid 
prerogatives  the  chair  is,  as  we  have  said,  the  first,  which 
we  have  proved  is  ours  through  Peter,  and  this  mark 
carries  with  it  the  Angel  (lawful  bishop  or  jurisdiction). 
.  .  .  Recognise,  then,  though  late,  that  you  are  impious 
children,  branches  broken  from  the  tree,  tendrils  torn 
from  the  vine,  a  stream  cut  off  from  its  source.  For  a 
stream  that  is  small  and  does  not  spring  from  itself 
cannot  be  a  fountain  source,  nor  a  lopped  branch  be  a 
tree,  since  a  tree  flourishes  resting  on  its  own  roots,  but 
a  branch  which  is  cut  off  withers.  Seest  thou  not, 
now,  brother  Parmenianus,  .  .  .  that  thou  hast  fought 
against  thyself?  whereas  it  has  been  proved  that  we  are 
in  the  Catholic  Church,  .  .  .  and  through  the  chair  of 
Peter,  which  is  ours,  the  other  prerogatives  are  ours  also  " 
(c.  9>  P-  37)- 


4.2  THE  POPE'S  SUPREMACY. 

ST.  AMBROSE  WITH  THE  COUNCIL  OF  AQUILEIA  (A.D. 
381)  calls  the  Roman  Church  "the  Head  of  the  whole 
Roman  world,  .  .  .  whence  flow  unto  all  the  rights  of 
venerable  communion"  (ap.  Coustant,  p.  554). 

A  COUNCIL  OF  CONSTANTINOPLE  (Ep.  Syn.  ad  Damas 
et  Syn.  Rom.,  A.D.  382): — "Ye  have  summoned  us  as 
your  own  members  (uc,  oixnTa  ^eXjj)  by  the  letters  of  the 
most  religious  emperor"  (ap.  Coustant,  p.  562). 

POPE  ST.  SIRICIUS  (A.D.  385): — "  The  aforesaid  rule 
let  all  priests  observe  who  do  not  wish  to  be  plucked 
from  the  solidity  of  the  Apostolic  Rock  upon  which 
Christ  built  His  whole  Church,  .  .  .  and  be  deprived  of 
the  whole  ecclesiastical  dignity  which  they  have  used 
unworthily,  by  the  authority  of  the  Apostolic  See  "  (Ep. 
i.  ad  Himer.  n.  3,  n). 

"  To  none  of  the  Lord's  priests  is  it  allowable  that 
they  should  be  ignorant  of  the  statutes  of  the  Apostolic 
See  and  the  venerable  decisions  of  Councils  "  (Ib.  n.  20, 
ap.  Coustant,  pp.  627-637). 

POPE  ANASTASIUS  I.  (A.D.  400) : — "  Certainly  care  shall 
not  be  wanting  on  my  part  to  guard  the  faith  of  the 
Gospel  as  regards  my  peoples,  and  to  visit  by  letter,  as 
far  as  I  am  able,  the  parts  of  my  body  throughout  the 
divers  regions  of  the  earth  "  (Ep.  i.  ad  Joan.  Hieros.  n. 
5,  ap.  Coustant,  p.  728). 


Sac. 


v. 


ST.  CYRIL  OF  ALEXANDRIA  (A.D.  444)  addresses  Pope 
Celestine  as  "  Archbishop  of  the  Universe,"  a  title  adopted 
by  the  Fourth  Council  (Horn,  in  Deip.  p.  384,  ed. 
Aubert). 

PHILIP,  THE  LEGATE  AT  THIRD  GENERAL  COUNCIL  : — 
"  You  have  united  your  holy  members  by  your  holy  ac- 
clamations to  your  holy  Head  "  (Labbe,  Act  ii.  torn.  iii. 
p.  1150). 

FOURTH    GENERAL    COUNCIL  : — "  Over   whom    (the 


THE  POPE'S  SUPREMACY.  43 

Fathers  of  the  Council)  thou  (Leo)  didst  rule  as  a  Head 
over  the  members,  in  those  who  filled  thy  place "  (Ep. 
Syn.  ad  Leon.  Labbe,  torn.  iv.  p.  1775). 

ST.  LEO  THE  GREAT  (A.D.  461)  claims  to  be  "not  only 
the  prelate  of  this  See  (Rome),  but  the  Primate  of  all 
Bishops"  (Serm.  iii.  de  Natal.  Ord.  c.  4).  "The  Prince 
of  the  whole  Church  "  (Serm.  iv.  c.  4) ;  and  again,  "  Our 
care  is  extended  throughout  all  the  Churches,  this 
being  required  of  us  by  the  Lord,  who  committed  the 
Primacy  of  the  apostolic  dignity  to  the  most  Blessed 
Apostle  Peter"  (Ep.  v.  ad  Episc.  Illyr.  c.  2). 

SOZOMEN  (A.D.  440) : — "  It  is  a  sacerdotal  law  that  the 
things  done  contrary  to  the  judgment  (y^w)  of  the  Bishop 
of  the  Romans  be  looked  upon  as  null "  (paraphrase  from 
Pope  Julius'  Letter,  H.  E.  lib.  iii.  c.  10);  and  again,  of  Pope 
Julius,*  to  whom  St.  Athanasius  and  the  other  Bishops  de- 
posed by  the  Arians  had  appealed  : — "  And  as,  on  account 
of  the  dignity  of  his  throne,  the  care  of  all  belongs  to  him, 
he  restored  to  each  his  own  Church."  (Ibid.  c.  8.) 

POPE  ST.  GELASIUS  (A.D.  496): — "The  canons  them- 
selves willed  the  appeals  of  the  whole  Church  to  be  referred 
to  the  examination  of  this  See.  From  it  they  decreed  also 
that  no  appeal  whatever  ought  to  be  made,  and  thereby, 
that  it  judged  of  the  whole  Church  and  itself  passed  under 
the  judgment  of  none.  .  .  .  Timothy  of  Alexandria,  Peter 
of  Antioch,  Peter,  Paul,  John,  not  one,  but  many,  bearing 
the  name  of  the  priesthood,  were  deposed  by  the  sole 
authority  of  the  Apostolic  See  "  (Ep.  ad  Faust.  Labbe,  v. 
pp.  295-297).  Again,  "The  first  See  both  confirms  every 
Synod  by  its  authority,  and  guards  it  by  its  continual  rule, 
by  reason,  to  wit,  of  its  supremacy,  which,  received  by  the 
Apostle  Peter  from  the  mouth  of  the  Lord,  the  Church 
nevertheless  seconding  it,  both  always  has  held  and  re- 
tains. .  .  .  We  will  not  pass  over  in  silence  what  every 
Church  throughout  the  world  knows,  that  the  See  of  the 
Blessed  Apostolic  Peter  has  the  right  to  absolve  from 
what  has  been  bound  by  the  sentence  of  any  prelates 
*  See  Appendix,  Note  B. 


44  THE  POPE'S  SUPREMACY. 

whatsoever,  in  that  it  has  the  right  of  judging  of  the 
whole  Church"  (Ep.  xiii.  pp.  326-328). 

Sac.  vi. 

ST.     AVITUS     OF     VlENNE     (A.D.     523): "  You     knOW 

that  it  is  the  law  of  the  Councils  that,  if  any  doubt  have 
arisen  in  matters  which  regard  the  state  of  the  Church, 
we  are  to  have  recourse  to  the  Chief  Priest  of  the  Roman 
Church,  like  members  adhering  to  our  Head"  (Ep.  xxxvl 
Galland.  torn.  x.  p.  726). 

Sac.  vii. 

ST.  ISIDORE  HISPAL.  (A.D.  636) : — "  In  so  far  do  we 
recognise  ourselves  as  presiding  in  the  Church  of  Christ, 
as  we  confess  that  we  do  reverently,  humbly,  and  de- 
voutly render  due  obedience  in  all  things  to  the  Roman 
Pontiff  as  the  Vicar  of  God,  to  whom  whosoever  insolently 
goeth  contrary,  him  we  decree  to  be  as  a  heretic,  alien 
from  the  community  of  the  faithful  "  (Ep.  ad  Claud, 
ducem.).* 

Sac.  xii. 

ST.  BERNARD  to  Pope  Eugenius  III.  : — "  Who  art 
thou?  The  High  Priest,  the  Supreme  Bishop.  .  .  . 
Thou  art  he  to  whom  the  keys  of  heaven  are  given,  to 
whom  the  sheep  are  intrusted.  There  are  indeed  other 
doorkeepers  and  other  shepherds  of  the  flocks  ;  but  thou 
art  more  glorious  in  proportion  as  thou  hast  also  in  a 
different  fashion  inherited  before  others  both  these 
names.  The  former  have  their  flocks  assigned  to  them, 
each  one  his  own.  To  thee  all  are  intrusted,  one  flock 
for  the  one.  Not  merely  for  the  sheep,  but  for  all  the 
shepherds  also  thou  art  the  one  shepherd.  .  .  .  The 
power  of  others  is  limited  by  definite  bounds ;  thine 

*  The  authenticity  of  this  epistle,  disputed  by  Ceillier,  is  main- 
tained by  Natalis  Alexander  and  by  St.  Isidore's  editor,  Arevalo. 
The  latter  combats  very  successfully  each  point  of  adverse  criticism. 


OBJECTIONS  TO  PAPAL  SUPREMACY.  45 

extends  over  those  who  have  received  authority  over 
others.  Canst  thou  not,  when  a  just  reason  occurs,  shut 
up  heaven  against  a  bishop,  depose  him  from  the  epis- 
copal office,  and  deliver  him  over  to  Satan.  Thus  thy 
privilege  is  immutable,  as  well  in  the  keys  committed 
to  thee  as  in  the  sheep  intrusted  to  thy  care "  (De 
Consid.  lib.  ii.  c.  8). 

What  substantial  change  is  there  from  the  doctrine  of, 
say,  the  sixth  or  seventh  centuries,  the  days  of  united 
Christendom,  to  the  doctrine  of  the  twelfth,  when,  as 
Anglicans  try  to  persuade  themselves,  the  False  Decretals 
had  transformed  the  discipline  of  the  Church  ?  What 
more  does  St.  Bernard  say  of  Papal  prerogative  than  he 
might  have  learned  from  the  lips  of  St.  Isidore  or  St. 
Gelasius  ? 

One  thing  at  least  we  may  assure  ourselves  of  from 
these  passages,  that  Dr.  Littledale's  theory  of  the  human 
institution  of  the  Papacy,  of  the  Pope's  merely  honorary 
precedency  over  other  bishops,  of  the  strict  limitation 
of  his  authority  to  a  portion  of  Italy  and  certain  islands, 
was  not  shared  by  the  Fathers  of  the  Church.  (For 
English  authorities  see  below.) 


§  9.  Dr.  Littledale's  Objections  to  Papal 
Supremacy. 

i.  Honorary  Titles. 

Dr.  Littledale  says  these  are  merely  so  many  "  lauda- 
tory epithets,"  and  "  go  no  farther  towards  conferring,  or 
even  confirming,  a  Divine  charter  of  privilege,"  "  than  a 
vote  of  thanks  in  Parliament,  or  a  number  of  newspaper 
panegyrics  in  our  own  day,  bestowed  upon  a  victorious 
general,  goes  towards  making  him  a  royal  duke."  It 
would  be  absurd  indeed  to  suppose  that  we  were  quoting 
the  Fathers  as  conferring,  or  even  as  officially  confirming, 
a  Papal  prerogative  conferred,  as  Fathers  and  Popes  are 


46  OBJECTIONS  TO  PAPAL  SUPREMACY. 

never  tired  of  affirming,  by  the  mouth  of  Christ  Himself. 
They  are  quoted  as  the  best  representatives  of  the  con- 
sciousness of  the  Church,  whose  knowledge  is  indisput- 
able, and  whose  motives  are  above  suspicion,  and  as 
authorities  likely  to  carry  some  weight  with  all  who  pray 
"  May  my  soul  be  with  the  saints."  Many  of  these 
passages  are  in  the  language  of  grave  and  precise  asser- 
tion, and  as  unlike  "  newspaper  panegyrics"  as  can  well 
be.  That  these  ascriptions  of  dignity  and  authority  are 
no  mere  idle  compliments — a  suspicion  which  one  would 
have  thought  the  character  of  the  authors  might  have  pre- 
cluded— is  proved  by  the  fact  that  although  the  Popes 
acted  up  to  the  highest  of  the  titles  given  them,  and 
dwelt  upon  them  upon  every  occasion,  they  were  nevei 
either  withdrawn  or  modified,  but,  on  the  contrary,  con- 
stantly repeated.  When  a  Spanish  entertainer  puts  his 
estate  entirely  at  his  guest's  disposal,  we  know  that  it  is 
a  mere  compliment,  which  would  not  survive  for  a 
moment  the  slightest  attempt  on  the  guest's  part  to  take 
action  upon  it ;  but  these  patristic  compliments  have 
repeatedly  survived  the  ordeal.  Now  and  again,  indeed, 
a  Father  resists  the  Pope,  and  the  resistance  takes 
various  shapes,  according  to  the  circumstances  and 
character  of  the  individual ;  but  one  quality  it  invariably 
lacks,  and  that  is  the  quiet  dignity  of  the  Anglican  con- 
troversialist, who  takes  his  stand  upon  the  assumption 
that  the  Pope  is  merely  a  Patriarch,  and  really  must  let 
bishops  outside  his  patriarchate  alone. 

Nothing  can  better  illustrate  the  difference  between 
mere  titles  of  honour  and  such  as  convey  the  recognition 
of  a  right  or  office  than  the  consideration  Dr.  Littledale 
forces  upon  us  (p.  193)  of  the  titles  bestowed  now  and 
again  upon  Antioch  and  Jerusalem.  The  first  is  styled 
"  the  throne  of  Peter,  the  eldest  and  genuinely  apostolical 
Church,"  by  a  Council  of  Constantinople,  A.D.  382,  and 
the  second  by  the  same  Council  was  entitled  "  Mother 
of  all  the  Churches."  These  titles,  as  far  as  words  go, 


OBJECTIONS  TO  PAPAL  SUPREMACY.  47 

express  no  authority  whatever ;  they  are  merely  records 
of  historical  facts.  In  the  case  of  Antioch,  that  it  "  once 
possessed  him  (Peter)  in  transitu"  to  use  the  words  of 
Innocent  I.,  whom  Rome  enjoyed  "susceptum  apud  se 
et  consummatum  "  ("Ep.  ad  Alex.  Antioch.  Constant,  p. 
851):  in  the  case  of  Jerusalem,  that  the  earliest  Christian 
Church  was  established  there.  It  certainly  did  not  mean 
that  Peter  and  the  other  Apostles  obtained  their  mission 
and  jurisdiction  from  St.  James  and  the  elders  of  the 
Church  at  Jerusalem.  Jerusalem  is  the  natural  mother, 
the  historical  starting-point,  not  the  supernatural  mistress 
and  queen,  of  Christendom.  It  is  the  cradle,  and  not 
the  throne  of  the  king  ;  the  object  of  tender  memories, 
not  of  present  homage.  If  we  look  at  the  history  of 
that  Church,  we  find  that  at  the  time  of  Nicaea  it  was 
subject  to  the  Metropolitan  of  Caesarea ;  and  though 
the  Council  recognises  that  honour  is  due  to  it,  and 
grants  it  a  quasi-patriarchal  dignity,  it  is  careful  to 
provide  that  the  Metropolitan's  rights  should  remain 
intact.  At  Ephesus,  Juvenal  of  Jerusalem  tried  hard 
to  establish  an  independent  possession  of  five  provinces 
of  the  Antiochene  patriarchate,  but  was  sternly  re- 
pressed by  St.  Cyril.  He  continued  the  struggle 
under  Imperial  favour,  and  finally  a  compromise  was 
made  at  Chalcedon,  and  Jerusalem  contented  with  the 
three  Palestines.  Here  then  are  titles  of  honour  repre- 
senting no  authority,  and  a  contest  for  mere  territory 
ending  in  a  compromise  in  the  interests  of  peace  and 
convenience.  Can  anything  be  less  like  the  history 
of  the  Roman  See?  (See  Natalis  Alexander,  saec.  v. 
diss.  xiv.) 

As  to  the  enthusiastic  encomium  of  St.  John 
Chrysostom  on  St.  John  as  "  the  pillar  of  all  the 
Churches,"  and  as  having  "the  keys  of  the  kingdom 
of  heaven,"  this  is  true  of  all  the  Apostles,  and  especially 
of  St.  John,  apostle,  evangelist,  and  prophet.  Unfor- 
tunately, however,  for  Dr.  Littledale,  St.  Chrysostom 


48  ST.  PETER'S  CONNECTION  WITH  ROME. 

leaves  us  m  no  doubt  of  his  view  of  the  relative  position 
of  St.  Peter  and  St.  John.  "  Peter,  the  leader  of  that 
choir,  the  mouth  of  the  Apostles,  the  head  of  that  family, 
the  governor  of  the  whole  world,  the  foundation  of  the 
Church"  (Horn,  in  illud,  hoc  scitote,  torn.  vi.  p.  282). 
Of  St.  John  he  says,  "  He  yields  everywhere  the  primacy 
to  Peter"  (Horn.  65  in  Matt.,  and  Horn.  50  the  same  is 
said  of  the  other  Apostles ;  see  too  Horn.  88  in  Joan, 
already  quoted,  p.  6). 

2.  St.  Peter's  Connection  with  Rome. 

"It  is  only  a  guess,"  says  Dr.  Littledale  (p.  15)  .  .  . 
"that  St.  Peter  was  ever  at  Rome  at  all;  it  is  only  a 
guess  that  he  was  ever  Bishop  of  Rome."  The  following 
passages  (see  "Cathedra  Petri,"  Append,  p.  114)  from 
Protestant  authorities  may  stand  as  a  sufficient  com- 
mentary upon  Dr.  Littledale's  "only  a  guess."  Chamier, 
whose  words  are  quoted  with  approval  by  Cave,  says, 
'•'All  the  Fathers  with  great  unanimity  have  asserted 
that  Peter  did  go  to  Rome,  and  that  he  did  govern  that 
Church"  (Panstrat.  Cath.  de  Rom.  Pont.  lib.  xiii.  c.  4). 
Grotius  says  in  his  note  on  i  Peter  v.  13,  "  Ancient  and 
modern  interpreters  differ  about  this  *  Babylon.'  The 
ancients  understood  it  of  Rome,  where  that  Peter  was  no 
true  Christian  will  doubt."  Pearson  wrote  a  treatise  on 
the  subject,  in  which  he  proves  that  St.  Peter  was  Bishop 
of  Rome,  and  that  the  Popes  are  his  legitimate  suc- 
cessors (Op.  posth.  London,  1688).  Archbishop  Brain- 
hall  also  says,  "  That  St.  Peter  had  a  fixed  chair  at 
Antioch,  and  after  that  at  Rome,  is  what  no  man  who 
giveth  any  credit  to  the  ancient  Fathers  and  Councils 
and  historiographers  of  the  Church  can  either  deny  or 
will  doubt"  (Works,  ed.  Oxon.  p.  628). 

Dr.  Littledale's  attempt  to  reduce  the  express  ante- 
Nicene  testimony  for  St.  Peter's  Roman  episcopate  to 
the  passage  from  the  spurious  Clementines  was  met 
by  Mr.  Arnold  in  the  "Contemporary"  for  May  1880, 


PAPAL  PREROGATIVE  AND  CONC1LIAR  CANONS.          49 

by  the  production  of  the  following  passage  from  St. 
Cyprian,  who  says  that  "Cornelius  was  chosen  Bishop 
of  Rome  when  the  place  of  Fabian  (his  immediate  pre- 
decessor), that  is,  when  the  place  of  Peter  and  the  rank 
of  the  sacerdotal  chair  was  vacant."  Dr.  Littledale,  in 
the  same  number,  shelters  himself  under  his  use  of  the 
adverb  "  expressly,"  which  he  declares  to  have  been 
"  emphatic,"  and  persists  that  St.  Cyprian's  testimony  is 
not  "express."  It  is  not  "express"  in  the  sense  of 
formal,  categorical,  inasmuch  as  St.  Cyprian  does  not 
use  the  precise  words  "  St.  Peter  was  Bishop  of  Rome ; " 
but  it  is  express  in  the  sense  of  unequivocal,  as  im- 
peratively demanding  for  its  truth  the  fact  of  St.  Peter's 
Roman  episcopate,  which  is  all  that  we  are  really  con- 
cerned with.  With  this  passage  we  may  compare  the 
following  from  Tertullian  (De  Prsescript.  c.  36) : — "  The 
Apostolic  Churches,  in  which  the  very  chairs  of  the 
Apostles  to  this  very  day  preside  over  their  own  places." 
In  reality,  such  indirect  reference  to  the  fact,  as  long  as 
it  is  unmistakable,  is  often  stronger  than  a  categorical 
statement  would  be,  because  it  implies  that  it  is  uncon- 
tradicted.  And  that  such  a  claim  in  patristic  times 
should  remain  absolutely  uncontradicted,  though  it  was 
every  one's  interest  to  sift  it  to  the  utmost,  and  the  in- 
terest of  numbers  to  deny  it  if  possible,  is  in  itself  tanta- 
mount to  a  proof. 

3.  Papal  Prerogative  and  Conciliar  Canons. 

Papal  universal  jurisdiction  is  opposed  by  the  canons 
of  Councils,  insists  Dr.  Littledale,  and  here  he  evidently 
thinks  is  his  strongest  point  against  Rome.  The  Popes, 
it  would  seem,  have  appealed  to  patristic  panegyric  whilst 
violating  Church  law.  The  relations  between  the  Pope 
and  the  Church  are,  he  considers,  the  creation  of  certain 
disciplinary  canons  of  General  Councils,  and  it  is  to 
these  canons,  and  nothing  else,  to  which  we  must  refer  if 
we  wish  to  know  the  extent  of  the  Pope's  lawful  prero- 

D 


50         PAPAL  PREROGATIVE  AND  CONCILIAR  CANONS. 

gative.  Now  there  are  few  documents  so  difficult  to 
estimate  as  laws,  especially  when  they  are  couched  in  the 
sententious  form  of  a  canon.  The  canons  of  Nicaea  and 
Sardica  were  not,  as  some  critics  seem  to  imagine,  uttered 
in  a  vacuum.  They  supposed  a  vast  deal  more  than 
they  created,  and  it  is  absolutely  necessary  to  know 
something  of  the  system  under  which  they  came  into 
being  if  we  are  to  appreciate  their  force  and  bearing. 
Dr.  Littledale's  view  may  be  thus  summed  up.  The 
Council  of  Sardica  gave  the  Pope  the  power  of  receiving 
the  appeals  of  bishops.  The  decree,  however,  was 
rejected  by  the  Eastern  and  African  Churches,  and 
repealed  by  the  ninth  canon  of  Chalcedon,  "  which 
instituted  a  system  of  appeals  in  which  the  name  of  the 
Roman  See  does  not  so  much  as  appear"  (p.  190); 
whilst  the  twenty-eighth  canon  claimed  to  give  to 
Constantinople  like  privileges  to  those  of  Rome,  and 
declared  the  latter  to  be  of  merely  human  origin,  which 
declaration  Pope  Leo  not  repudiating,  may  be  supposed 
to  have  consented  to.  I  shall  hope  gradually  to  do 
justice  to  all  these  statements. 

The  Popes,  and  the  Church  with  them,  have  always 
maintained  that  they  have  received  their  jurisdiction 
from  Christ  Himself,  which  jurisdiction  was,  therefore, 
incapable  of  abrogation  or  restriction  by  any  authority 
whatsoever.  "  The  Holy  Roman  Church  has  been  raised 
above  the  other  Churches,  not  by  any  synodal  decrees, 
but  from  the  evangelical  voice  of  our  Lord  and  Saviour 
has  it  obtained  the  primacy  "  (Cone.  Rom.  Decret.  in 
Script.  Can.  A.D.  496).  The  Council  of  Milevis  (416) 
had  already  spoken  of  "  the  authority  of  your  Holiness, 
derived  as  it  is  from  the  authority  of  the  Holy  Scriptures." 
No  doubt  the  Popes  have  often  appealed  to  both  ancient 
custom  and  canon  as  well  as  to  their  Divine  right,  but 
never  to  the  derogation  of  the  last.  Custom  and  canon 
represent  a  recognition  on  the  part  of  the  Church  which 
is  a  precedent  for  continuing  to  recognise.  It  also  often 


PAPAL  PREROGATIVE  AND  CONCILIAR  CANONS.  5  I 

represents  a  standard  of  practical  expediency,  and 
limitations  of  right  to  which  Popes  have  acceded,  and 
which  experience  has  shown  to  be  for  the  advantage  of 
order.  The  basis  of  Divine  right  was  never  forfeited  or 
lost  sight  of.  Christ  Himself  appealed  to  precedent  for 
the  title  of  "  Son  of  God,"  but  He  did  not  the  less  claim 
it  as  a  privilege. 

As  to  the  canons  of  Sardica,  it  is  disputed  how  far  they 
were  accepted  in  the  East  before  they  were  embodied  in 
the  canons  of  the  Council  in  Trullo  (A.D.  691).  The 
arguments  for  their  earlier  acceptation  are  strong  enough 
to  have  convinced  writers  of  such  opposite  schools  as 
Natalis  Alexander  and  the  Ballerini.  They  are  principally 
these  : — i.  The  friends  of  St.  John  Chrysostom  appeal 
on  his  behalf  to  the  Sardican  canons  against  those  of 
Antioch.  2.  The  Synod  of  Constantinople  of  382  appeals 
to  one  of  those  canons  in  its  letter  to  Damasus.  3. 
The  Sardican  canons  appear  in  the  collection  of  John 
Scholasticus,  Patriarch  of  Constantinople,  in  the  sixth 
century. 

They  appear  amongst  the  canons  of  the  Council  in 
Trullo,  which  the  Greeks  accounted  oecumenical,  and 
again  m  Photius'  Novocanon  (see  Ball,  de  Ant  Coll.  Can. 
pars.  L  c.  vi  14,  and  Nat  Alex,  in  ssec.  iv.  diss.  xxvii.) 

In  Africa  the  Sardican  canons  in  the  fourth  century 
were  not  accepted,  but  this  was  out  of  sheer  ignorance. 
The  Africans  did  not  identify  the  Council  of  Sardica, 
but  confused  it  with  an  Arian  assembly  which  met  at 
Philippopolis. 

The  Council  of  Chalcedon,  if  it  had  not  the  Sardican 
canons  on  its  codices,  which  the  Ballerini  have  shown 
to  be  highly  probable,  assuredly  never  rejected  or  abro- 
gated one  of  them.  No  one,  so  far  as  I  know,  before 
Dr.  Littledale,  ever  dreamed  of  such  an  absurdity.  The 
9th  canon,  by  which  he  supposes  the  Sardican  decrees 
in  question  were  repealed  at  Chalcedon,  is  quite  in- 
capable of  effecting  any  such  catastrophe.  The  last 


52          PAPAL  PREROGATIVE  AND  CONCILIAR  CANONS. 

half,  with  which  alone  we  are  concerned,  runs  as 
follows  : — "  But  if  a  cleric  hath  a  dispute  with  his  own 
bishop  or  with  another  not  his  own,  let  him  be  judged 
by  the  Synod  of  the  province.  But  if  a  bishop  or  cleric 
hath  a  dispute  with  the  Metropolitan  of  the  province, 
let  him  have  recourse  either  to  the  Primate  (Primas, 
"Eja^og)  of  the  diocese  or  to  the  see  of  the  royal  city 
of  Constantinople."  I  observe,  first,  that  this  canon  does 
not  pretend  to  arrange  for  appeals  from  outside  the 
Constantinopolitan  patriarchate,  as  is  clear  from  the 
enactment  of  Justinian,  Novel,  i.  123,  c.  22,  and  the 
unanimous  testimony  of  the  Greek  canonists  that  there 
must  be  no  appeal  from  one  patriarchate  to  another,* 
whereas  the  appellation  to  Rome  asserted  at  Sardica  is 
world-wide.  2.  This  ninth  canon  is  not  concerned  with 
appeals  proper.  Its  main  object  is  to  discourage  secular 
litigation  on  the  part  of  clerics.  It  contemplates  two 
litigants,  and,  on  the  principle  that  no  one  should  be 
judge  in  his  own  cause,  provides,  in  cases  where  such  a 
conjunction  would  take  place,  an  alternative  tribunal 
There  is  nothing  in  it  to  suggest  "causae  majores,"  such 
as  those  involving  the  deposition  of  a  bishop,  where  it 
would  be  natural  to  call  for  the  Pope's  interference,  and 
so  his  name  is  not  mentioned.  The  limitation  of  the 
canon  to  the  Constantinopolitan  patriarchate  is  farther 
established  by  the  identification  of  the  primate  or  exarch 
with  the  Bishop  of  Heraclea,  once  Metropolitan  of  the 
Bishop  of  Constantinople,  but  at  the  time  of  Chalcedon 
having  become  his  contented  vicegerent.  Flavian  of 
Constantinople  had  only  just  before  himself  appealed  to 
Leo  from  the  Latrocinium  of  Ephesus.  If  this  canon  had 
been  meant  to  abrogate  those  of  Sardica  and  bar  appeals 
to  Rome,  is  it  conceivable  that  Leo  would  have  swallowed 
such  a  camel  in  the  9th  canon  whilst  straining  at  a  very 
gnat  by  comparison  in  the  28th  ? 

Dr.  Littledale's  idea  of  a  Church  government  resident  in 
*  See  Christ.  Lupus  Schol.  in  Can.  ix.  Chalced. 


PAPAL  PREROGATIVE  AND  CONCILIAR  CANONS.          53 

conciliar  canons,  which  exercise  a  dictatorial  authority  and 
must  hopelessly  invalidate  every  action  which  in  any  de- 
gree contravenes  their  letter,  until  they  are  slain  by  con- 
trary canons  of  an  equal  or  superior  force,  is  in  no  way 
borne  out  by  Church  history,  and  is  a  violation  of  com- 
mon sense.  The  Church  would  have  long  since  arrived 
at  a  dead-lock  if  the  principle  "  fieri  non  debet,  factum 
valet"  had  not  found  a  place  in  her  economy.  She  could 
not  have  existed  as  many  years  as  she  has  centuries  unless 
she  had  been  governed  by  one  who,  in  the  plenitude  of 
his  authority,  could  at  once  defend  the  rights  in  possession 
of  ancient  laws  and  at  the  same  time,  to  use  the  words  of 
St.  Gelasius  (ap.  Labbe,  torn.  v.  p.  313),  "might  attemper 
such  of  them  as  the  necessity  of  the  times  and  the  wel- 
fare of  the  Churches  required  to  be  relaxed." 

The  Ephesine  decree  which  forbids  one  bishop  to 
invade  the  rights  of  another,  Dr.  Littledale  quotes  as 
invalidating  all  action  of  the  Pope  beyond  his  own  patri- 
archate ;  and  he  considers  that  the  Pope  has  accepted 
such  invalidation,  inasmuch  as  he  swears,  or  once  swore, 
to  observe  the  eight  Holy  Councils  unmutilated.  Now, 
in  his  extreme  anxiety  to  prove  his  charge  of  felo  de  se 
against  the  Holy  See,  he  quite  forgets  how  terribly  this 
charge  lies  against  Constantinople,  which,  in  the  teeth 
of  the  Ephesine  canon,  had  in  the  interval  between  the 
Councils  of  Ephesus  and  Chalcedon  gradually  absorbed 
Heraclea  (the  seat  of  its  old  metropolitan),  Ephesus,  and 
Caesarea;  whereas  Rome  can  answer  that  she  had  always 
rested  her  claim  to  interfere,  wherever  the  interests  of 
faith  or  order  required  it,  upon  hyper-patriarchal  right, 
and  that  the  subordination  of  one  right  to  another  did 
not  make  a  wrong. 

As  to  the  28th  canon,  Dr.  Littledale  tries  to  make  a 
point  out  of  the  fact  that  St.  Leo  does  not  object  to  it 
on  account  of  its  attribution  of  an  ecclesiastical  origin 
to  Roman  privilege,  but  on  what  Dr.  Littledale,  oddly 
enough,  calls  the  "purely  technical  ground"  that  the 


54         PAPAL  PREROGATIVE  AND  CONCILIAR  CANONS. 

Fathers  at  Chalcedon  could  not,  in  the  teeth  of  Nicaea, 
rank  Constantinople  above  Alexandria  and  Antioch.  But 
what  could  be  more  natural  than  that  Leo  should  have 
addressed  his  objection  to  the  direct  scope  of  the  canon, 
instead  of  attacking  a  reason  which  might  possibly  admit 
of  an  orthodox  interpretation,  and  which  could  not  well 
be  supposed  to  gainsay  the  explicit  acknowledgment  in 
the  Synodical  Letter  that  he  was  the  "  very  one  com- 
missioned with  the  guardianship  of  the  vine  by  the 
Saviour"?  The  28th  canon  undoubtedly  deals  profes- 
sedly with  patriarchal  rights  only,  and  not  with  those 
of  the  primacy.  Now,  of  the  Roman  patriarchate,  as  of 
the  other  patriarchates,  it  may  be  admitted  that  its  limits 
were  matters  of  ecclesiastical  arrangement ;  inasmuch  as 
it  was  found  convenient  for  both  Pope  and  bishops,  that 
Papal  authority,  which  in  its  supreme  function  was  pre- 
sent in  every  part  of  the  vineyard,  should,  under  certain 
special  and  inferior  aspects,  be  localised  in  such  or  such 
extent  of  patriarchate.  Again,  if  we  include  under  the 
name  "  Fathers  "  "  Peter  and  those  that  were  with  him," 
there  is  no  difficulty  in  admitting  that,  as  the  28th  canon 
runs,  the  Fathers  "  bestowed  the  precedency  on  the  chair 
of  old  Rome  "  by  making  it  the  chair  of  Peter,  just  as 
they  might  have  done  with  Byzantium  had  it  presented 
the  same  advantages  of  convenience.  This  leaves  a 
quite  sufficient  ground  on  which  to  base  the  Constantino- 
politan  argument  for  the  second  place. 

The  canon  as  a  canon  had  simply  no  legal  existence. 
St.  Leo  formally  rejected  it,  and  so,  even  according  to 
the  Greek  canonists  (see  the  passage  from  Sozomen 
quoted  above),  it  was  simply  null.  The  Greek  Patriarch 
Anatolius,  though  with  no  intention,  it  would  seem,  of 
altering  his  practice,  wrote  to  excuse  himself  for  the 
share  he  had  taken  in  the  canon,  and  declared  that 
"  the  whole  ground  and  confirmation  of  what  had  been 
done  was  reserved  to  your  Blessedness."  The  entire 
Western  Church  repudiated  it,  and  the  Greeks  them- 


THE  POPE  AND  CANON  LAW.  55 

selves,  until  the  rebellion  of  Photius,  did  not  venture 
to  insert  it  in  their  codices.  Gradually  the  practice  it 
embodied  was  allowed  for  peace's  sake,  and  also  because 
it  was  based  on  a  ground  of  growing  convenience  in 
the  relative  importance  of  Constantinople  (cf.  Graveson 
Hist.  Eccles.  torn.  i.  p.  102,  ed.  Mansi).  The  Greek 
Church  had  no  canonical  sanction  for  their  position 
from  the  fifth  century  to  the  thirteenth,  unless  it  were 
the  tacit  assent  of  the  Holy  See. 

4.   The  Pope  and  Canon  Law. 

Dr.  Littledale  makes  a  bold  appeal  (p.  140)  to  Roman 
canon  law  against  the  Roman  See,  and  he  seems  deter- 
mined not  to  be  put  out  of  conceit  with  it.  The  Petrine 
texts,  he  urges,  "Thou  art  Peter,"  and  the  rest,  make  no 
mention  of  any  successors,  but,  since  the  privilege  they 
convey  is  a  personal  one,  it  must  die  with  the  person 
named.  Now  it  is  obviously  absurd  to  erect  a  system  of 
positive  law  into  the  test  of  a  charter  issued  when 
that  system  had  no  existence.  A  scripture  grant  must  be 
tested  by  the  interpretation  of  the  Fathers,  not  by  the 
dicta  of  canonists.  If  the  canonists  have  laid  down  any 
principle  inconsistent  with  such  a  charter  so  interpreted, 
so  much  the  worse  for  them.  If  Dr.  Littledale  has 
really  discovered  an  instance,  he  will  have  made  a 
valuable  contribution  towards  the  reform  of  the  canon 
law.  As  it  is,  he  has  only  made  a  blunder.  He  has 
misunderstood  the  term  "privilegium  personale  "  to  be 
a  privilege  granted  to  a  person,  whereas  "personale"  so 
understood  would  be  no  distinction  of  privilege  at  all, 
since  all  privileges  are  granted  to  persons.  "  Privilegium 
personale,"  in  canon  law,  is  distinguished  from  "privi- 
legium reale  "  by  reason  of  the  final  cause,  or  object.  In 
the  former  this  is  purely  personal,  i.e.,  regarding  the  person 
in  favour  of  whom  the  privilege  is  granted;  e.g.,  money 
is  granted  to  a  father  for  his  sustenance ;  when  the 
father  dies,  it  cannot  be  claimed  6v  an  uncle — unless  his 


56  COMMUNION  WITH  ROME. 

name  is  mentioned  in  the  deed — on  the  ground  that  he 
occupies  the  position  of  nearest  kin.  A  real  privilege, 
on  the  contrary,  is  when  the  cause  of  granting  the 
privilege  is  distinct  from  the  person  to  whom  it  is 
granted,  as  when  a  tenure  is  granted  to  a  certain  official 
in  order  to  carry  out  the  duties  of  his  office,  then  if  the 
office  be  perpetual,  the  privilege  is  presumably  handed 
down.  Any  one  who  will  consult  a  manual  of  canon 
law  may  assure  himself  of  Dr.  Littledale's  mistake;  e.g., 
Maschat.  Instit.  Canonic,  pars.  ii.  lib.  v.  tit.  33.  If  Dr. 
Littledale  had  used  the  term  "  personal  privilege  "  in  its 
proper  sense  as  explained  above,  he  would  be  convicted 
of  having  begged  the  point  which  he  undertook  to 
prove ;  for,  of  course,  a  personal  privilege  expires  with 
the  person.  La  Marca,  who  is  an  authority  Anglicans 
are  very  fond  of  quoting,  is  much  to  our  purpose  (Tract, 
de  Singulari  Primatu  Petri) : — "  Since  a  Head  was  con- 
stituted in  the  Church  of  Christ  to  remove  the  occasion 
of  schism,  as  Jerome  remarks,  therefore  was  Peter's 
privilege  a  real  one,  to  the  perpetual  advantage  of  the 
Church,  and  not  personal,  since  the  form  of  the  Church, 
which  must  needs  be  perpetual,  was  set  forth  in  the 
Apostolic  College  with  its  Head." 

§  10.  Communion  with  Rome. 

Communion  with  the  Holy  See  has  ever  been  counted 
a  necessity  in  this  sense  : — i.  That  no  one  might  sepa- 
rate himself  from  Rome,  or,  if  separated  by  Rome's 
act  for  whatever  cause,  relax  in  his  efforts  for  restoration. 
2.  That  where  the  state  of  separation  was  complete,  you 
thereby  lacked  the  one  seal  of  orthodoxy  and  pledge  of 
jurisdiction,  and  had  no  longer  any  share  in  Christ's 
promise  to  His  Church  that  the  gates  of  hell  should  not 
prevail  against  it.  I  speak  of  a  complete  separation, 
because  it  is  clear  from  history  that  a  suspension  of 
immediate  communion  with  Rome  did  not  necessarily 


COMMUNION  WITH  ROME.  5 1 

involve  a  separation  from  the  whole  of  the  Church  in 
communion  with  Rome,  i.e.,  a,  rupture  of  all  communion, 
even  mediate.  In  this  way,  when  the  contest  was  one 
on  a  point  of  discipline  or  disputed  succession,  Rome, 
whilst  refusing  her  letters  of  communion  to  the  party 
she  deemed  in  the  wrong,  did  not  therefore  refuse  her 
communion  to  those  who  communicated  with  it.  For 
instances  of  such  partial  excommunications,  see  Constant, 
Ep.  R.  P.  p.  250;  Morinus  Exercit.  Eccles.  xvi.  pp. 
137,  138;  a  Bennettis,  Priv.  R.  P.  torn.  iii.  p.  543,  and  torn. 
v.  p.  289;  and  Natalis  Alexander,  Saec.  iv.  Diss.  34,  p. 
381.  For  the  reverse  process,  the  gradual  restoration  to 
the  grace  of  full  communion,  see  St.  Leo,  Ep.  38  ad 
Anatol.,  in  which  he  restores  certain  penitent  partisans 
of  Dioscorus  to  the  communion  of  their  own  Churches, 
as  a  first  step  in  the  process  of  restoration.  Pope  St. 
Boniface  (A.D.  422),  ap.  Constant,  p.  1037,  speaking  of 
the  Roman  Church,  says:  —  "It  is  certain  that  this 
Church  is  to  the  Churches  scattered  over  the  world  as 
the  head  to  its  members;  from  which  if  any  one  cut 
himself  off,  he  becomes  an  outcast  from  the  Christian 
religion,  since  he  has  begun  to  be  external  to  its  frame- 
work." With  this  compare  the  passages  already  quoted 
from  Irenaeus,Optatus,  Jerome,  Hormisdas,  and  Maxirnus. 
One  fact  brings  out  most  strikingly  the  unique  char- 
acter of  Roman  communion,  and  that  is,  that  whilst  the 
Holy  See  repeatedly  enforced  her  commands  by  threats 
of  excommunication,  even  in  her  dealings  with  orthodox 
bishops,  the  idea  of  retaliation  was  almost  unknown. 
Excommunication  is  obviously  a  game  two  can  play  at, 
but  to  excommunicate  the  Pope  was  simply  a  monstrosity 
reserved  for  a  ruffian  like  Dioscorus  or  a  scamp  like 
Photius.*  When  Pope  St.  Victor,  in  the  second  century, 

*  The  Council  of  Chalcedon  (Ep.  ad  Imperatores,  Labbe,  torn, 
iv.  p.  1352)  expresses  its  horror  that  Dioscorus  should  have,  as  the 
climax  of  his  villanies,  ventured  to  "bark  against  the  Apostolic  See 
itself,  and  tried  to  frame  letters  of  excommunication  against  the  most 


58    ST.  FIRMILIAN,  ST.  CYPRIAN,  AND  POPE  ST.  STEPHEN. 

withdrew  his  communion,  with  what  looks  like  unjust 
precipitation,  from  the  Asiatics,  St.  Irenaeus  expostulates 
with  him  and  entreats  his  charity,  but  neither  questions 
his  right  nor  hints  at  retaliation.  St.  Firmilian,  in  the 
third  century,  though  beside  himself  with  passion,  never 
implies  that  the  Pope  can  be  excommunicated  except 
equivalently  by  his  own  act  in  separating  himself  from 
so  many. 


§  ii.  St.  Firmilian,  St.  Cyprian,  and  Pope 
St.  Stephen. 

St.  Firmilian,  Bishop  of  Caesarea  in  Cappadocia,  ob- 
jects Dr.  Littledale  (p.  182),  was  excommunicated  by 
Pope  St.  Stephen,  and  yet  presided  at  the  great  Council 
of  Antioch  in  264  against  Paul  of  Samosata,  and  both  he 
and  St.  Cyprian  died  excommunicate  so  far  as  Rome 
could  make  them  so  (p.  166).  According  to  the  more 
probable  opinion,  neither  St.  Firmilian  nor  St.  Cyprian 
were  ever  excommunicated  in  any  sense  (see  Coustant, 
Ep.  R.  P.  252-256;  Natalis  Alexander,  Saec.  iii.  Diss. 
12  ;  Graveson,  Hist.  Eccles.  ed.  Mansi,  coll.  i.  p.  42,  &c. ; 
a  Bennettis,  Priv.  R.  P.  torn.  ii.  p.  264,  &c.).  It  is  certain 
that  all  that  can  be  proved  on  Stephen's  part  is  a  threat 
of  excommunication.  Firmilian's  own  letter  indeed  cer- 
tainly does  speak  in  the  present  and  past  tense,  "pacem 
rumpentem,"  "  excidisti,"  but  the  whole  letter  is  in  such 
a  strain  of  passionate  invective  as  to  make  it  quite  use- 
less as  a  vehicle  of  minute  evidence.  St.  Cyprian,  both 
as  regards  himself  and  Firmilian,  does  not  say  more  than 
this,  that  Stephen  "  abstinendos  putat,"  "ab  illorum  com- 
munione  discessurum."  St.  Augustine's  phrase  is  "ex- 
communicandos  esse  censeret;"  and  elsewhere  he  insists 

holy  Pope  Leo."  (For  Photius,  see  Vit.  Ignat.  Labbe,  torn.  x.  p.  728.) 
The  only  exception  that  occurs  to  me  is  when  the  well-meaning  but 
feeble  Mennas,  under  pressure  from  Justinian,  allowed  for  a  brief 
period  the  name  of  Vigilius  to  be  removed  from  the  diptychs. 


ST.  MELETIUS  AND  THE  HOLY  SEE.  59 

that  Cyprian  "  remained  with  Stephen  in  the  peace  of 
unity ; "  and  again,  that  Cyprian  and  Stephen,  "  though 
they  quarrelled  somewhat  fiercely,  yet  it  was  in  a 
brotherly  fashion,  so  that  no  ill  of  schism  arose  between 
them."  St.  Jerome  says  of  Cyprian  that  "he  remained 
in  their  communion  who  gainsayed  his  opinion"  (see 
Coustant,  1.  c.,  and  Allies'  "Per  Crucem  ad  Lucem  "). 

The  very  utmost  that  can  be  reasonably  supposed  is 
such  partial  suspension  of  the  full  rights  of  communion 
as  I  have  spoken  of  above. 

§  12.  St.  Meletius  and  the  Holy  See. 

"St.  Meletius  of  Antioch,"  says  Dr.  Littledale  (p.  182), 
"  who  was  formally  put  out  of  communion  by  the  Pope, 
was  nevertheless  chosen  to  preside  over  the  second 
General  Council  in  381,  and  actually  did  so  till  his 
death."  One  wonders  that  it  did  not  strike  Dr.  Little- 
dale  as  anomalous,  that  Bishops*  who  tell  the  Pope  and 
his  Synod  in  their  letter  of  382,  "Ye  have  summoned  us 
as  your  own  members,"  should  have  been  so  lately  under 
the  presidency  of  an  excommunicate.  See  too  the 
Pope's  letter  to  the  Eastern  Bishops,f  "most  honoured 
sons,  &c."  (Theod.  lib.  v.  cc.  9,  10).  Meletius'  history 
is  as  follows.  The  Holy  See,  along  with  the  rest  of 
the  West  and  the  Egyptians,  acknowledged  Paulinus  as 
Bishop  of  Antioch,  who,  although  elected  subsequently 
to  Meletius,  had  been  chosen  by  the  distinctively  Catholic 
party,  the  adherents  of  the  late  Bishop  Eustathius ;  where- 
as Meletius  had  been  elected  by  a  party  the  majority  at 
least  of  which  were  Arians.  Meletius,  upon  his  election, 
boldly  enounced  the  Nicene  faith,  and  underwent  a 
lengthened  persecution  at  the  hands  of  the  disappointed 
and  enraged  Arians.  The  taint  of  his  election,  as 
compared  with  the  orthodox  prestige  of  Paulinus,  pre- 

*  "Very  nearly  the  same  Bishops" :  Hefele,  Eng.  tr.,  torn.  ii.  p.  378. 
t  Damasus'  letter  was  not  an  answer  to  the  Synod,  but  for  pro- 
bable date  see  Coustant,  p.  570. 


60  ST.  AUGUSTINE  AND  THE  HOLY  SEE. 

vented  the  former  being  acknowledged  as  Bishop  of 
Antioch  either  by  Rome  or  Alexandria;  but  there  was 
no  other  excommunication.  Rome  freely  communicated 
with  those  who  communicated  with  Meletius.  More- 
over, as  time  went  on,  he  was  explicitly  acknowledged 
as  an  orthodox  bishop  by  various  of  the  Western 
Churches,  and  by  Alexandria,  and  finally  entered  into 
terms  of  communion  with  his  rival  Paulinus.  In  the 
Synod  of  Antioch  of  379,  it  was  Meletius  who  first  of  all 
received  and  signed  the  letters  of  the  Roman  Synod, 
which  letters  so  signed  were  received  and  laid  up  in  the 
Roman  archives.  Thus  before  the  date  381,  at  which 
Dr.  Littledale  asserts  Meletius  presided  as  an  excom- 
municate over  the  Second  Council,  he  had  been  admitted 
even  to  immediate  communion  with  Rome,  although  his 
right  to  the  See  of  Antioch  was  not  admitted  to  the 
prejudice  of  Paulinus,  nor  was  it  insisted  upon  by  him- 
self, and  he  soon  after  entered  into  terms  of  communion 
with  his  rival  (see  Tillemont,  St.  Melece.  Act.  13,  15, 
and  Ballerini,  de  Vi  ac  Rat.  Prim.  R.  P.,  Append,  i). 

§  13.  St.  Augustine  and  the  Holy  See -The  Case 
of  Apiarius. 

Apiarius  was  a  wicked  priest  of  Sicca,  whose  cause 
was  taken  up,  most  imprudently,  as  it  would  seem,  by 
Pope  Zozimus,  after  he  had  been  condemned  by  his  own 
bishop.  He  was  understood  to  have  appealed  to  Rome. 
Whether  he  had  done  so  formally  or  not  is  uncertain. 
The  African  bishops  maintained  that  he  could  give  no 
proof  of  his  appeal.  Anyhow,  he  was  taken  under  the 
protection  of  the  Pope's  representatives  in  Africa,  and 
his  reinstatement  or  a  fresh  trial  demanded.  There 
are  two  letters  extant  on  the  subject  from  African 
Synods.  The  first,  in  419,  to  Pope  Boniface  (Zozimus' 
immediate  successor),  is  signed  amongst  others  by  St. 
Augustine.  It  relates  that  Apiarius  has  begged  pardon, 


ST.   AUGUSTINE  AND  THE  HOLY  SEE.  6 1 

and  been  given  a  licence  (epistolium)  to  exercise  his 
priestly  office  anywhere  but  in  his  own  diocese.  It 
informs  the  Pope  that  their  copies  of  the  Nicene  canons 
do  not  contain  what  he  had  quoted — really  from  the 
Sardican  canons — concerning  appeals  to  Rome;  that 
they  were  sending  for  authentic  MSS.,  and  hoped  the 
Pope  would  do  the  same;  meanwhile  they  would  stand 
by  his  enactments.  They  expressed  their  confidence 
that  whatever  might  prove  to  be  the  case  with  the 
Nicene  canons,  they  will  never  under  his  Holiness's 
auspices  be  called  upon  to  suffer  as  they  had  suffered 
from  the  arrogant  bearing  (typhus)  of  the  Papal  "exe- 
cutores,"  and  trusted  that,  unless  the  Nicene  canons 
were  against  them,  they  might  be  left  to  go  on  as  usual. 
The  second  letter,  in  425,  to  Celestine,  relates  the 
breaking  down  of  Apiarius,  and  his  public  confession  of 
the  justice  of  his  former  sentence,  just  as  the  African 
bishops,  in  deference  to  Rome,  were  proceeding  to  a 
fresh  trial.  They  inform  the  Pope  that  authentic  MSS. 
from  Alexandria  and  elsewhere  do  not  bear  out  his 
reading ;  therefore,  they  say,  "  We  earnestly  entreat  thee 
not  to  admit  to  a  hearing  very  easily  thtfse  who  come 
from  hence."  They  again  deprecate  the  ostentatious 
arrogance  of  the  Papal  "  executores,"  and  beg  the  Pope 
to  send  no  more  of  them.  They  end  by  expressing  their 
confidence  in  the  "  goodness  and  moderation  of  your 
Holiness."  I  shall  speak  elsewhere  of  the  mixture  of  the 
Sardican  and  Nicene  canons.  I  am  only  here  concerned 
with  Dr.  Littledale's  comment  upon  these  letters,  or 
rather  upon  the  first  of  them — that  of  419 — to  which  St. 
Augustine's  name  is  attached.  His  account  (p.  101)  is 
that  this  letter  informed  the  Pope  that  the  Africans  had 
discovered  his  "attempted  fraud"  from  authentic  MSS. 
from  Greece,  Syria,  and  Egypt,  and  then  told  him  that 
"  nothing  should  make  them  tolerate  such  insolent  con- 
duct on  his  part"  The  real  fact  is  that  in  this  letter  the 
Africans  acknowledge  that  the  authentic  MSS.  are  still 


62  ST.  AUGUSTINE  AND  THE  HOLY  SEE. 

to  seek,  and  neither  in  this  letter  nor  in  the  second, 
when  they  have  learned  that  their  reading  is  right,  do 
they  ever  go  beyond  the  language  of  entreaty  (u  impendio 
deprecamur ").  The  "typhus"  or  arrogance  of  which 
they  complained  was  that  of  the  "  executores,"  whose 
ostentation  and  peremptoriness  at  once  hurt  and  scan- 
dalised them.  Of  Dr.  Littledale's  travesty  I  can  only 
say  that  it  is  worthy  of  a  place  in  a  comic  history  of  the 
Church  yet  to  be  written.  In  order  to  justify  it  he 
inserts  in  his  third  edition  these  words  in  a  footnote : 
"  Non  sumus  jam  istum  typhum  passuri,"  by  which  his 
offence  is  rendered  considerably  graver;  the  African 
Fathers  having  said  nothing  of  the  kind,  although  these 
six  words  actually  occur  in  what  they  do  say.  The 
whole  passage  is  as  follows :  "  Sed  credimus  adjuvante 
misericordia  Domini  Dei  nostri  quod  tua  sanctitate 
Romanse  Ecclesiae  praesedente  non  sumus  jam  istum 
typhum  passuri."  That  the  "  typhus  "  which  they  believe 
they  will  not  be  called  upon  any  more  to  suffer  is  the 
institution  and  behaviour  of  the  "executores"  is  evident 
from  the  following  passage  in  the  second  letter  :  "  Exe- 
cutores .  .  .  nolite  mittere  .  .  .  ne  fumosun  typhum 
saeculi  in  ecclesiam  Dei  .  .  .  videamur  inducere."  For 
the  two  letters  in  extenso  see  Coustant,  Ep.  R.  P.  pp. 
1010  and  1058. 

St.  Augustine  could  not,  with  any  show  of  consistency, 
have  contested  the  principle  of  appeals  to  Rome  and 
Roman  interference.  In  his  43rd  letter  (A.D.  398)  he 
had  suggested  an  appeal  to  Rome  as  a  course  that  had 
been  open  to  the  Donatists  in  311  when  their  schism 
first  began.*  Again,  in  423,  whilst  the  Apiarius  dispute 
was  going  on,  St.  Augustine  has  nothing  to  urge  against 
the  appeal  and  threatened  restoration  of  the  bishop 
Antonius,  save  entreaty,  and  a  suggestion  that  it  may 
force  him  to  resign  (see  Coustant,  p.  1051). 

In  416  St.  Augustine  and  the  bishops  of  Africa  refer 
*  See  Allies'  "  Per  Cruc.  ad  Luc.,"  vol.  i.  p.  341. 


POPE  ST.  CELESTINE  AND  THE  COUNCIL  OF  EPHESUS.    63 

the  question  of  Pelagianism  to  Pope  St.  Innocent.  The 
Pope  in  his  answer  praises  the  bishops  for  following  ''the 
regulation  of  the  Fathers,  which  they,  in  pursuance  of 
no  human  but  a  divine  sentence,  have  decreed,  viz.,  that 
whatever  was  being  carried  on,  although  in  the  most 
distant  and  remote  provinces,  should  not  be  terminated 
before  it  was  brought  to  the  knowledge  of  this  See,  by 
the  full  authority  of  which  the  just  sentence  should  be 
confirmed,  and  that  thence  all  the  other  Churches  might 
derive  what  they  should  order,  whom  they  should  absolve, 
whom  avoid."  He  had  previously  referred  to  St.  Peter, 
"  from  whom  the  very  episcopate  and  all  the  authority 
of  this  title  spring."  St.  Augustine's  comment  (Ep.  186) 
is  as  follows : — "  He  answered  to  all  as  it  becomes  the 
Prelate  of  the  Apostolic  See." 

§  14.  Pope  St.  Celestine  and  the  Council  of 
Bphesus. 

"The  Third  General  Council  of  Ephesus,"  says  Dr. 
Littledale  (p.  191),  "disregarded  the  synodical  deposi- 
tion of  Nestorius  by  Pope  Celestine  and  allowed  him  to 
take  his  seat  as  Patriarch  of  Constantinople."  This  is 
quite  curiously  untrue,  even  for  Dr.  Littledale.  i.  Pope 
Celestine  never  deposed  Nestorius  until  he  did  so  by 
the  hands  of  the  Council  of  Ephesus.  What  he  did  was 
to  prescribe  his  deposition  if  within  ten  days  of  his  noti- 
fication he  did  not  abjure  his  heresy.  He  did  not,  how- 
ever, send  this  ultimatum  directly  to  Nestorius,  but  put 
it  into  St.  Cyril's  hands,  whom  he  constituted  his  vicar 
in  the  matter,  as  he  says  repeatedly  in  so  many  words 
(see  Ep.  14  and  15,  ap.  Coustant).  Some  time  seems  to 
have  passed  before  Cyril  could  formally  serve  the  notice, 
and  it  was  nearly  a  year  before  he  was  able  to  bring  the 
heretic  to  trial  and  subsequent  deposition.  2.  Nestorius 
never  took  his  seat  in  any  capacity  whatsoever  at  the 
Council  of  Ephesus  :  although  in  their  neighbourhood,  he 


64  POPE  ST.  LEO  AND  CHALCEDON. 

obstinately  refused  to  face  his  judges.  3.  Some  such 
scruple  as  Dr.  Littledale  suggests  did  actually  occur  to 
St.  Cyril,  and  he  writes  to  St.  Celestine  to  ask  whether, 
"  considering  the  time  granted  has  elapsed,"  the  previous 
sentence  may  be  regarded  as  passed,  or  whether  the 
Synod  may  give  him  another  chance  of  escape  by  ab- 
juration. The  Pope  answers  to  the  effect  that  he  leaves 
the  whole  matter  to  Cyril's  discretion,  and  trusts  that  he 
will  be  as  charitable  as  he  can  (see  Ep.  16,  ap.  Cou- 
stant).  Each  act  of  the  Council  is  introduced  by  a 
reference  to  Cyril  as  the  Pope's  vicar,  and  the  Fathers 
declare  that  they  depose  Nestorius,  "  necessarily  com- 
pelled thereto  by  the  canons  and  by  the  letter  of  our 
most  Holy  Father  and  fellow-servant  Celestine,  bishop 
of  the  Roman  Church."  It  would  be  hard  to  cram  more 
misstatement  into  a  single  sentence  than  Dr.  Littledale 
has  done  here. 


§15.  Pope  St.  Leo  and  Chalcedon. 

"  The  Fourth  General  Council,"  says  Dr.  Littledale, 
"accepted  the  tome  of  Pope  St.  Leo  on  the  express  ground 
that  it  agreed  in  doctrine  with  St.  Cyril  of  Alexandria 
at  Ephesus."  In  accepting  St.  Leo's  tome  the  Council 
certainly  expressed  its  sense  of  St.  Leo's  perfect  agree- 
ment with  St.  Cyril's  teaching,  />.,  with  the  Church's 
teaching,  at  Ephesus.  Agreement  with  the  explicit 
teaching  of  the  Church  must  surely  ever  be  a  note,  a 
sine  qua  non,  of  all  orthodox  teaching,  and  this  "  examen 
elucidationis  "  bringing  out  the  correspondence  between 
the  different  portions  of  the  Church's  teaching  is  part  of 
the  duty  of  a  General  Council.  The  shepherd  judges  the 
sheep,  "I  know  my  sheep;"  but  there  is  a  sense  in 
which  the  sheep  judge  the  shepherd,  "  My  sheep  know 
me."  If  the  shepherd  were  inconsistent  with  himself  he 
would  not  be  the  shepherd.  Repeatedly,  for  the  sake 
of  bringing  out  this  consistency,  have  even  the  decrees 


ST.  LEO  AND  ST.  HILARY  OF  ARLES.  65 

of  General  Councils  universally  accepted  been  submitted 
to  a  "judicium  elucidationis."  The  true  ground  of  this 
Council's  acceptance  of  St.  Leo's  tome  it  has  itself 
expressed  in  words  which  will  bear  repeating  :  "  St.  Peter 
is  the  Rock  and  foundation  of  the  Catholic  Church;" 
"Peter  hath  spoken  through  Leo." 

§  16.  St.  Leo  and  St.  Hilary  of  Aries. 

Dr.  Littledale  (p.  191)  brings  this  case  forward  as  an 
instance  of  tyrannical  interference  on  the  part  of  a  Pope, 
resisted  by  a  saint.  St.  Hilary  had  tried  and  deposed  a 
certain  Bishop  Chelidonius,  who  appealed  to  Rome.  St. 
Hilary  resisted  the  appeal,  and  the  reinstatement  which 
the  Pope  after  a  fresh  trial  had  commanded.  St.  Leo 
obtained  an  order  from  the  Emperor  Valentinian  III.  to 
the  effect  that  the  bishops  of  Gaul  and  other  bishops 
should  attempt  nothing  against  ancient  custom,  and  that 
the  authority  of  the  Apostolic  See  should  be  supported 
by  the  secular  power,  so  that  a  bishop  refusing  to  appear 
in  answer  to  a  Papal  summons  should  be  compelled  to 
obey  by  the  governor  of  the  province.  Dr.  Littledale 
says  that  Chelidonius  was  one  of  St.  Hilary's  suffragans ; 
that  Leo  knew  therefore  that  St.  Hilary  was  quite  in  his 
right,  and  that  he  (the  Pope)  had  no  business  to  interfere 
in  another  province.  His  demand  for  imperial  action 
he  characterises  as  "  an  appeal  to  brute  force  and  sheer 
Erastianism." 

In  reality  it  is  quite  a  matter  of  dispute  amongst  the 
learned  whether  Chelidonius  was  in  any  sense  a  subject 
of  St.  Hilary's.  Tillemont  (St.  Hilaire,  art.  xiv.)  says 
that  Baronius,  Papebroch,  and  Quesnel  consider  that  he 
was  a  bishop  of  the  province  of  Vienne,  which  was  at 
this  time,  by  concession  of  the  Holy  See,  under  the  jurisdic- 
tion of  Aries  ;  but  he  adds  :  "  Je  ne  voy  rien  qui  nous 
empeche  de  suivre  le  sentiment  des  plus  habiles  de  ce 
temps,  qui  est  que  Quelidoine  estoit  evesque  de  Besan^on. 


66  ST.  LEO  AND  ST.  HILARY  OF  ARLES. 

et  me'me  metropolitaine  comme  le  soutient  M.  de  Marca." 
Tillemont  indeed  shrinks  from  the  natural  conclusion 
urged  by  the  Ballerini  (Observ.  in  im  partm  Dissert11  v. 
Quesnel,  St.  Leo,  Op.  torn,  ii.),  viz.,  that  St.  Hilary  having 
interfered  where  he  had  no  jurisdiction,  his  action  was 
null  ab  mitio,  and  takes  refuge  in  a  series  of  conjectures  ; 
thus — Besangon  may  not  then  have  been  a  metropolitan 
Church,  and  so  it  would  fall  within  the  province  of  Lyons, 
whose  bishop,  St.  Eucherius,  may  have  yielded  his 
judiciary  right  to  St.  Hilary ;  or  if  Besangon  was  then 
metropolitan,  then  St,  Hilary  may  have  had  some  right 
over  it  in  virtue  of  being  the  oldest  Metropolitan,  or 
because  Aries  was  the  seat  of  the  civil  prefecture.  But 
as  long  as  these  remain  mere  conjectures,  we  can  hardly 
blame  St.  Leo  for  regarding  St.  Hilary's  proceedings  as 
null  and  void.  Natalis  Alexander  (Ssec.  v.  c.  iv.  art.  8), 
whilst  following  Quesnel  as  to  the  position  of  Cheli- 
donius'  See  within  the  jurisdiction  of  Aries,  admits  that 
in  his  attempt  to  ordain  a  successor  to  the  sick  Projectus 
— a  part  of  the  case  against  him  before  Leo — St.  Hilary 
had  really  been  interfering  in  a  province  not  his  own  ;  in 
fact,  had  been  doing  precisely  what  Dr.  Littledale  charges 
the  Pope  with  doing.  The  truth  is,  St.  Hilary,  instead 
of  being  the  grave  stickler  for  law  and  precedent  in  the 
teeth  of  usurpation  that  Dr.  Littledale  represents  him,  was, 
for  all  his  sanctity,  so  far  as  ecclesiastical  restrictions 
went,  "  a  chartered  libertine."  In  fact,  wherever  he  dis- 
covered an  abuse,  he  never  seems  to  have  stopped  to 
ask  himself  how  far  it  was  his  place  to  set  it  right,  but 
down  he  swept  upon  it  with  a  force  of  Imperial  police. 
This  was  always  at  his  service,  for  the  prefects  loved 
him  heartily — to  their  great  credit  be  it  said — for  he 
was  no  accepter  of  persons,  and  sometimes  rated  them 
soundly  in  public.  Even  granting,  against  the  great 
weight  of  probability,  that  the  subjects  of  St.  Hilary's 
proceedings  were  within  his  jurisdiction,  he  had  no 
excuse  for  trying  to  bar  the  appeal.  The  canons  of 


ST.  LEO  AND  ST.  HILARY  OF  ARLES.  67 

Sardica,  as  the  Ballerini  have  shown,  were  in  all  the 
old  Gallican  collections,  to  say  nothing  of  the  "  ancient 
custom,"  to  which  St.  Leo  appeals.  See  too  Pope  St. 
Innocent  ad  Victric.  Rothomag.  n.  6 : — "  Si  majores 
causse  in  medium  fuerint  devolutse,  ad  sedem  Apostolicam 
recurrendum  sicut  Synodus  statuit,  et  beata  consuetude." 

We  have  only  to  turn  to  the  "Vita  Hilarii "  by  a 
disciple,  the  great  authority  on  the  Hilarian  side,  to  see 
that  it  was  no  question  with  the  Bishop  of  Aries  of 
canon  or  canonical  interpretation.  His  plea  may  be 
thus  condensed  :  "The  man  deserved  it.  Let  me  go  on 
as  usual ;  I  protest  against  having  the  matter  all  over 
again  and  my  procedure  ignored.  Don't  make  a  scandal, 
and  I  will  be  careful  not  to  be  troublesome  for  the 
future."  This  is  how  I  understand  the  almost  untrans- 
latable bit  of  Latin  I  give  below.*  I  can  well  understand 
how  the  Roman  instinct  of  decorum  must  have  been  out- 
raged by  opposition  at  once  so  irregular  and  so  pertina- 
cious !  St.  Hilary  had  been  simply  acting  "  papaliter," 
with  the  very  best  intentions,  but  without  any  Papal 
prerogative  to  justify  him,  and  the  Pope  could  not  do 
otherwise  than  repel  and  punish  him.  The  breach  ap- 
pears not  to  have  been  fully  healed  during  St.  Hilary's 
life,  but  after  his  death  it  seems  to  have  come  home  to 
St.  Leo  that  his  adversary  was,  after  all,  a  holy  man,  for 
he  speaks  of  him  as  "  sanctae  memoriae,"  and  readily 
sanctions  the  succession  of  his  disciple  Ravennius. 

As  to  the  invocation  of  the  secular  arm  to  enforce 
religious  discipline,  its  prudence  in  a  variety  of  cases 

*  "  Apostolorum  ac  martyrum  occursu  peracto,  Beato  Leoni  Papa 
illico  se  prsesentat,  cum  reverentia  impendens  obsequium,  et  cum 
humilitate  deposcens  ut  ecclesiarum  statum  more  solito  ordinaret : 
astruens  aliquos  apud  Gallias  publicam  merito  excepisse  sententiara 
et  in  urbe  sacris  altaribus  interesse.  Rogat  atque  constringit  ut  si 
suggestionem  suam  libenter  excepit,  secrete  jubeat  emendari ;  et  se 
ad  officia  non  ad  causam  venisse ;  protestandi  ordini  non  accusandi 
quse  sunt  acta  suggerere.  Porro  autem  si  aliud  velit  se  non  futurum 
molestum  "  (Vita  ap.  Op.  S.  Leon,  ed.  Bal.  ii.  p.  333). 


68  POPE  VIGILIUS  AND  THE  FIFTH  COUNCIL. 

may  be  questioned,  but  the  right  to  do  so  has  always 
been  claimed,  and  from  time  to  time  exercised,  ever 
since  the  conversion  of  Constantine  made  it  a  possibility. 
Identically  the  same  appeal  as  St.  Leo's  was  made  in 
378  by  the  Roman  Synod  to  the  Emperors  Gratian  and 
Valentinian,  />.,  that  offenders  against  the  canons  wha 
should  refuse  their  summons  might  be  forced  to  obey 
by  the  prefects  (Ep.  vi.  Damas.  ap.  Constant,  p.  527). 
St.  Hilary  was  certainly  the  last  person  in  the  world 
who  had  any  right  to  complain  of  the  secular  arm. 

Dr.  Littledale  has  made  this  incident  the  plea  for 
solemnly  degrading  St.  Leo  from  his  rank  of  Saint  and 
Doctor,  which  he  enjoys,  it  appears,  "  durante  bene- 
placito."  Only  four  pages  before  (p.  188)  he  figures  as 
St.  Leo  the  Great,  but  here  he  is  "Leo,  a  man  devoured 
with  ambition,  and  by  no  means  particular  as  to  the 
means  of  acquiring  power  so  that  it  be  got  somehow." 


§  17.  Pope  "Vigilius  and  the  Fifth  Council. 

Dr.  Littledale  (p.  191)  says,  "The  Fifth  General 
Council  refused  to  permit  a  decree  sent  by  Pope 
Vigilius  to  be  read;  decided  against  its  ruling,  and 
struck  his  name,  as  contumacious,  out  of  the  registers 
of  the  Church."  There  is  no  record  of  any  such  sending 
on  the  part  of  the  Pope,  or  rejection  on  the  part  of  the 
Council.  The  Fifth  Council  began  its  sittings  on  May 
5,  553.  Vigilius,  who  was  then  in  Constantinople,  was 
invited  to  preside,  but  declined  on  the  formal  plea  of 
ill-health ;  but  really,  as  he  made  no  secret  of  acknow- 
ledging, because  he  was  afraid  that  the  Oriental  bishops* 
under  the  influence  of  the  irrepressible  Justinian,  would 
so  word  their  condemnation  of  the  three  chapters  as  to 
compromise  the  dignity  of  the  Council  of  Chalcedon  and 
wound  orthodox  susceptibilities  in  the  West.  He  did 
not  enter  any  caveat  to  their  proceedings,  but  insisted 
that  he  preferred  registering  his  own  independent  judg- 


POPE  VIGILIUS  AND  THE  FIFTH  COUNCIL.  69 

by  himself.  On  May  14  he  issued  his  "Consti- 
tutum,"  in  which  he  condemned  the  first  chapter  from 
Theodore  of  Mopsuestia,  partially  excused  the  second 
from  Theodoret,  and  defended  the  third,  the  Epistle 
of  Ibas,  "ex  verbis  rectissimo  ac  piissimo  intellectu  per- 
spectis,"  that  is,  interpreted  favourably  in  accordance  with 
the  man's  character.  This  "  Constitutum "  does  not 
appear  in  the  acts  of  the  Fifth  Council,  but  there  is  no 
record  of  its  rejection,  although  in  their  definition  they 
simply  condemn  all  three  chapters,  neither  did  Vigilius 
make  any  attempt  to  enforce  it;  the  intimation  of  penalties 
<it  the  end  is  reserved  for  those  who  shall  attempt  any- 
thing against  Chalcedon.  The  statement  that  the  Fifth 
Council  struck  out  the  name  of  Vigilius  from  the  dip- 
tychs  rests  upon  a  single  MS.  discovered  by  Baluze.  Its 
-authenticity  is  denied  by  the  Ballerini,  and  by  Constant 
in  an  unpublished  essay  (see  Ballerini,  Defens.  Dissert. 
Noris.  in  Syn.  v.  c.  6).  Even  if  its  genuineness  be  ac- 
cepted, it  falls  short  of  Dr.  Littledale's  statement.  The 
Emperor  notifies  that  he  will  strike  out  Vigilius'  name, 
but  that  the  bishops  are  to  keep  in  union  with  the  Holy 
See.  They  answer  that  the  Emperor  has  acted  con- 
sistently, and  that  they  will  keep  in  union.  There  is  no 
record  that  such  an  act  ever  took  place.  In  its  defini- 
tion the  Fifth  Council  is  careful  to  urge  that  the  Pope 
had  really  committed  himself  to  their  view.  The  notion 
mat  Vigilius  was  banished  for  resistance  to  the  Fifth 
Council  is  rejected  by  Cardinal  Noris  and  the  Ballerini, 
and  it  is  certainly  hard  to  reconcile  it  with  the  fact  that  his 
''confirmation  "  of  the  Council — or  rather  of  the  outcome 
of  the  Council,  for  of  the  Council  Vigilius  says  nothing — 
is  dated  December  9  of  the  same  year,  553.  The  words 
attributed  to  Justinian,  viz.,  that  the  Pope  was  to  be 
-excommunicated  whilst  communion  was  to  be  kept  with 
the  Holy  See,  could  indicate  nothing  less  than  his  depo- 
sition, and  at  any  attempt  at  this  there  has  never  been 
a  hint.  Vigilius  was,  no  doubt,  inconsistent  in  his  view 


70  ST.  GREGORY  THE  GREAT. 

of  the  policy  of  dealing  with  the  three  chapters,  but 
there  is  nothing  to  argue  any  change  of  theological  view. 
It  must  be  remembered  that  the  chapters  affected  Nes- 
torianism,  whereas  Vigilius'  antecedents  all  tended  to 
incline  him  in  the  opposite  direction.  There  is  no  real 
inconsistency  in  saying  that  the  Epistle  of  Ibas  is,  accord- 
ing to  strict  theological  language,  Nestorian,  and  at  the 
same  time,  when  interpreted  kindly  and  fairly  by  what 
may  be  presumed  to  have  been  the  author's  intention,  it 
is  orthodox.  Whilst  we  cannot  but  regret  in  Vigilius  a 
course  of  conduct  at  once  impulsive  and  vacillating,  we 
should  remember  that  through  it  all  this  quondam  protdge* 
of  the  Eutychian  Empress  Theodora,  from  the  moment 
that  he  became  the  legitimate  successor  of  St.  Peter, 
fought  pertinaciously  for  the  very  shadow  of  Chalcedon, 
and  for  freedom  from  the  uncanonical  influence  of  the 
Imperial  Court. 

§  18.  St.  Gregory  the  Great  and  the  Title  of 
"  Universal  Bishop." 

Dr.  Littledale  (p.  144),  against  the  definition  of  the 
Vatican  Council  that  the  Pope  has  universal  immediate 
jurisdiction,  urges  St.  Gregory's  rejection  of  the  title 
"universal  bishop."  But  surely  the  Council  of  Chalce- 
don, which  accorded  that  title  to  the  Pope,  ought  to  have 
more  weight  with  Dr.  Littledale  than  even  St.  Gregory. 
Anyhow,  its  action  should  suggest  that  there  is  a  true 
sense  in  which  the  title  might  be  accepted,  as  well  as  a 
false  sense  in  which  it  must  be  rejected.  St.  Gregory 
rejected  it — so  he  himself  says — because  he  took  it  to 
involve  a  claim  of  being  the  one  bishop  (solus  conetur 
appellari  episcopus — Lib.  v.  Ep.  21  ad  Const.  Aug.). 
It  is  at  least  demonstrable  that  in  his  rejection  of  this 
title  he  does  not  deny  his  universal  jurisdiction,  and 
acquiesce  in  Dr.  Littledale's  thesis  that  it  is  limited  to 
the  Roman  patriarchate.  The  "servus  servorum  Dei'* 


GERBERT  AND  POPE  JOHN  XV.  7 1 

— the  title  of  St.  Gregory's  choice — has  written,  "As  to 
what  they  say  of  the  Church  of  Constantinople,  who 
doubts  that  it  is  subject  to  the  Apostolic  See?  This  is 
constantly  owned  by  the  most  pious  Emperor  and  by  our 
brother  the  Bishop  of  that  city "  (Lib.  ix.  Ep.  1 2) ;  and 
again,  "  If  any  fault  is  found  amongst  bishops,  I  know 
not  any  one  who  is  not  subject  to  it  (the  Apostolic  See) ; 
but  when  no  fault  requires  otherwise,  all  are  *  secundum 
rationem  humilitatis'  equal"  (Lib.  ix.  Ep.  59).  See  too 
lib.  iv.  ep.  7,  and  lib.  vii.  ep.  64,  in  which  he  establishes 
his  vicariate  in  Illyria  and  Gaul. 

§  19.  Gerbert  and  Pope  John  XV. 

Dr.  Littledale  has  chosen  for  his  motto  an  indignant 
passage  from  a  letter  of  Gerbert,  Archbishop  of  Rheims, 
afterwards  Pope  Silvester  II.,  to  Segwin  of  Sens,  in  which 
he  speaks  of  the  Pope  as  regularly  subject  to  the  Church's 
judgment.  Of  this  sentiment  I  can  only  say,  that  if  it  be 
meant,  as  it  seems,  to  apply  to  the  offences  (other  than  that 
of  heresy)  of  an  undoubted  Pope,  it  is  opposed  to  the  cur- 
rent of  patristic  and  medieval  teaching.  It  must  be  re- 
membered, however,  in  Gerbert's  excuse,  that  the  Papacy 
in  the  tenth  century  had  been  so  much  obscured  by 
simoniacal  intrusion  and  contention,  which  laid  it  legiti- 
mately open  to  the  judgment  of  the  Church,  that  some 
exaggeration  on  this  point  was  not  unnatural.  When 
Gerbert  proceeds  to  say  that  if  the  Pope  excommunicates 
a  man  for  not  believing  contrary  to  the  Gospel,  this  will 
not  cut  the  victim  of  the  excommunication  off  from 
Christ,  he  asserts  a  truth  all  Catholics  believe,  though  he 
does  so  violently,  offensively,  and  needlessly.  As  to  the 
particular  dispute,  Gerbert  had  been  elected  Archbishop 
of  Rheims  in  the  place  of  Arnulf,  who  had  been  de- 
posed for  his  crimes  by  a  national  council  without  the 
Pope's  cognisance  and  assent.  There  was  here,  at  least, 
a  -prima  facie  ground  for  the  Pope's  interference.  The 


72  BREAKS  IN  THE  ROMAN  SUCCESSION. 

Gallic  bishops  had  committed  an  outrage  upon  recognised 
Papal  right,  which  they  only  attempted  to  justify  on  the 
plea  that  their  repeated  efforts  to  have  recourse  to  the 
Pope  had  been  baffled  by  the  Prefect  Crescentius. 
Gerbert's  subsequent  action  presents  a  remarkable  con- 
trast to  the  passionate  protest  of  his  letter  to  Segvvin. 
The  letter  was  written  in  994.  He  afterwards  consents 
to  plead  his  cause  before  the  Papal  Legate,  submits  to 
the  suspension  pronounced  upon  all  who  had  taken  part 
in  the  deposition  of  Arnulf,  and  relinquishes  the  See  of 
Rheims.  In  998  we  find  him  receiving  the  pallium  from 
Pope  Gregory  V.  as  Archbishop  of  Ravenna.  One  of 
Gerbert's  first  acts,  when  as  Silvester  II.  he  became  Pope 
(A.D.  999),  was  formally  to  reinstate  Arnulf  in  the  Arch- 
bishopric of  Rheims.  He  reminds  him  that  he  was  de- 
prived for  certain  excesses,  "quibusdam  excessibus ;"  but 
that,  "as  thy  abdication  lacked  the  assent  of  Rome,  we  have 
thought  well  to  come  to  thy  succour,  that  it  may  be 
understood  that  thou  canst  be  restored  by  the  office  of 
Roman  mercifulness.  For  that  high  power  belongs  to 
Peter,  unto  which  no  hap  of  mortal  man  is  equal  to 
attaining."  As  Aimoin,  a  contemporary  authority,  makes 
the  statement  that  Arnulf  was  restored  by  Gregory  V., 
Cossart  is  inclined  to  regard  this  document,  although  in- 
scribed Silvester  and  published  as  his  by  Sirmond,  as 
really  his  predecessor's.  On  the  other  hand,  there  is  no 
evidence  that  the  reinstatement  was  actually  carried  out 
by  Gregory,  and  there  is  internal  evidence,  as  Cossart 
notices,  of  the  Silvestrine  authorship  in  the  evident  de- 
sire of  the  Pope,  whilst  restoring  Arnulf,  to  justify  the 
action  previously  taken  against  him  (Labbe,  torn.  xi. 
pp.  999-1038). 

§  20.  Breaks  and  Uncertainty  in  the  Succession 
in  the  Roman  See. 

Breaks  of  one  sort  or  another  have  doubtless  occurred 
from  time  to  time,  intervals  of  contention  between  rival 


BREAKS  IN  THE  ROMAN  SUCCESSION.  ?J 

claimants,  and  of  uncanonical  intrusion.  The  ultimate 
decision,  however,  of  the  Roman  Church  and  the  assent  of 
Christendom  has  always  been  accounted  sufficient  to 
supply  any  defect  caused  by  canonical  impediment. 
Even  on  the  extreme  supposition  that  all  the  Cardinals 
met  to  elect  should  be  irregular,  a  titulus  coloratus^  with 
the  assent  of  the  Church,  makes  their  act  valid,  except 
so  far  as  the  irregularity  is  made  manifest,  and  so  is  open 
to  amendment.  "The  very  fact  that  the  Papacy  is  an 
intermittent  office,"  urges  Dr.  Littledale  (p.  142),  "  be- 
coming continually  vacant,  and  then  filled  and  conferred 
by  a  merely  human  election,  proves  its  merely  human 
authority  and  origin."  Not  so  surely,  unless  the  election 
by  lot  of  Matthias  proved  the  same  of  the  Apostolate. 
What  the  election  of  the  Pope  by  his  brethren  does 
prove  is,  that  no  mere  break  invalidates  the  succession, 
since  it  moves  by  a  succession  of  breaks.  If  it  be 
insisted  that  the  election  of  Matthias  was  not  "merely 
human,"  I  answer,  Neither  is  that  of  the  Popes.  Both 
are  divine,  as  involving  the  same  appeal  to  God,  "Show 
which  of  these  Thou  hast  chosen."  Both  are  human,  as 
conducted  by  men  after  a  human  method.  Providence 
as  easily  finds  room  amid  the  interaction  of  human  wills, 
as  in  the  falling  of  lots. 

It  may  be  urged  that  there  are  certain  irregularities 
which,  though  secret,  would  invalidate  a  Pope's  election, 
and  so  all  his  Papal  acts ;  such  as  simony  in  his  election 
(see  Constit.  Julii  II.  in  Lat.  v.  sess.  v.*);  or  heresy 
held  at  any  previous  time  (see  Constit.  Pauli  IV.,  "  Ex 
Apostolatus  officio"t).  It  must  be  remembered  that, 
after  all,  some  such  invalidating  possibilities  are  inherent 
throughout  the  whole  sacramental  system.  If  a  man  is 
not  baptized,  he  is  not  validly  ordained  \  if  not  ordained, 
he  is  no  valid  subject  for  the  Episcopate  or  the  Papacy. 
One  can  only  fall  back  upon  God's  providence  over  His 
Church  and  His  promise  that  the  gates  of  hell  shall 
*  Labbe,  xix.  768.  t  Bullar.  Rom.  A.D.  1559. 


74  BREAKS  IN  THE  ROMAN  SUCCESSION. 

not  prevail  against  her.  Whatever  may  have  been  the 
secret  irregularity  of  a  Pope's  election  or  his  previous 
unorthodoxy,  it  must  either  be  made  manifest  to  the 
Church,  so  that  she  perceives  that  he  is  not  her  legitimate 
pastor  and  looks  for  another,  or  if  he  define,  he  defines 
truly.  As  to  the  validity  of  the  other  Papal  acts  done 
by  a  simoniacal  or  otherwise  illegitimate  Pope — which 
it  is  the  object  of  these  Papal  acts  to  invalidate — when- 
ever they  are  not  capable  of  being  recognised  as  the 
outcome  of  illegitimate  authority,  and  so  of  being 
formally  amended,  they  are  certainly  indirectly  and 
virtually  redintegrated  by  the  recognition  of  legitimate 
authority.  Neither  of  these  Bulls  referred  to  above  have 
the  least  pretence  to  be  ex  cathedra  in  the  Vatican 
sense  of  the  term,  i.e.,  to  be  definitions  in  faith  and 
morals ;  they  are  simply  laws  making  what  they  assert, 
and  prevailing  just  so  long  as  they  are  not  repealed  or 
let  fall  into  desuetude.  The  latter  is  clearly  modelled 
upon  the  former,  and  the  only  difference  between  them 
is  that  Julius  treats  of  what  he  calls  the  heresy  of 
simony  in  the  electing,  Paul  of  heresy  in  general  previous 
to  election.  We  find  that  Julius'  Constitution  was  sub- 
mitted by  Leo  X.  to  the  Fathers  of  the  Fifth  Lateran, 
five  of  whom  suggested  emendations,  although  overruled 
by  the  majority  (see  Labbe,  1.  c.). 

With  this  same  Bull  of  Paul  IV.  Dr.  Littledale  (p. 
194)  attempts  to  deal  the  Papacy  a  crushing  blow.  On 
ihe  authority  of  the  Capitate  of  Rome,  an  infidel  and 
republican  newspaper,  he  asserts  that  Pius  IX.  was  in 
his  youth  a  Freemason,  or  tantamount  to  a  heretic,* 
whence  it  follows,  in  virtue  of  Paul's  Bull,  that  he  was 
never  Pope,  and  that  none  of  his  acts,  nominatim  the 
establishment  of  the  Catholic  hierarchy  in  this  country, 
were  valid.  Without  going  into  any  question  as  to  the 
force  of  the  clauses  in  Paul's  Bull,  which  I  conceive^ 

*  An  assumption  :  Freemasonry,  though  forbidden,  has  nevet 
been  pronounced  heresy  by  the  Church. 


THE  ROMAN  CHURCH  NOT  THE  WHOLE  CHURCH.    75 

if  they  were  ever  acted  on,  to  have  long  ago  become 
obsolete,  it  is  quite  sufficient  to  remark  that  the  assertion 
of  an  infidel  paper,  even  when  repeated  by  a  Protestant 
minister,  would  not  have  been  deemed  by  Paul  IV. 
equivalent  to  the  proof  of  anything,  except  perhaps  of 
a  common  parentage  of  a  very  unpleasant  character; 
not  to  lay  stress  upon  a  fact  of  which  Dr.  Littledale 
tells  us  nothing,  viz.,  that  the  statement  was  officially 
contradicted  at  the  time  in  the  Osservatore  Romano. 

In  his  third  edition  (p.  221)  it  occurs  to  Dr.  Little- 
dale  that  I  have  introduced  ("  Contemporary  Review,'' 
February  1879)  a  new  element  of  uncertainty  by  quoting 
the  common  opinion  that  a  Pope  by  manifest  heresy  ceases 
to  be  Pope,  and  by  defining  heresy,  were  that  possible, 
would  unpope  himself.  On  the  contrary,  this  theory 
eliminates'  all  uncertainty  in  requiring  that  the  heresy 
should  be  manifest.  A  Pope  can  cease  to  be  Pope,  and 
so  capax  definiendi,  only  by  an  act  that  shall  make  all 
doubt  of  his  heresy  impossible. 

§  21.  The  Roman  Catholic  Church  not  the  Whole 
Church. 

If  all  that  is  meant  by  this  ill-sounding  proposition  is 
that  there  are  numbers  of  baptized  persons  who  so  far 
belong  to  the  Catholic  Church,  although  not  in  com- 
munion with  Rome,  or,  again,  that  there  are  others  whose 
state  yet  more  closely  approximates  to  Church  member- 
ship, in  that  they  have  other  valid  sacraments  besides 
baptism,  and  a  public  Catholic  ritual,  it  is  sufficiently 
undeniable.  All  that  we  insist  upon  is,  that  disunion  with 
Rome  of  itself  breaks  a  bond  essential  to  that  fulness  of 
Church  life  to  which  Christ's  promise  assures  security  of 
faith  and  permanence  of  jurisdiction.  There  is  nothing 
inconsistent  in  speaking  of  the  Church  being  divided, 
although  the  principle  of  life  remains  with  one  only  of 
the  divisions.  As  long  as  in  a  Church  which  has  broken 


76  ENGLAND  AND  PAPAL  PREROGATIVE. 

communion  with  Rome  a  certain  organic  form  persists, 
and  the  corruption  of  formal  heresy  or  of  solidarity  with 
heretics  has  not  set  in,  it  is  as  it  were  a  dislocated  limb, 
that  may  be  reset  and  the  Church  "  restoratively  united," 
to  use  the  expression  of  Gregory  IX.,  quoted  by  Dr 
Littledale.  Beyond  this  the  simile  of  the  physical  body 
cannot  be  carried.  The  Church,  in  union  with  the  See 
of  Peter,  though  grieved  and  scandalised  at  the  defection 
of  schismatics,  cannot  be  regarded  as  organically  maimed 
thereby.  The  restorative  virtue  which  should  operate 
in  their  behalf  is  operative  without  them. 

§  22.  England  and  Papal  Prerogative. 

Dr.  Littledale  (pp.  184-189)  considers  that  the  Pope 
had  no  jurisdiction  in  England;  that  he  was  barred  by 
the  Ephesine  canon  from  claiming  any  or  from  accepting 
it  if  offered ;  that  the  British  and  Celtic  Churches  were 
wholly  independent  of  Rome ;  that  St.  Gregory  did  not 
give  St.  Augustine  his  mission  but  his  consecrator, 
Vigilius  of  Aries ;  that  St.  Gregory  irrevocably  lost  what- 
ever rights  upon  England  he  might  be  supposed  to  have, 
by  his  concession  of  the  election  and  confirmation  of  the 
English  metropolitans  to  the  local  Provincial  Synods ; 
that  no  cession  to  the  Pope  of  English  Church  liberties 
ever  took  place ;  that  what  cession  there  may  conceivably 
have  been  was  due  to  the  False  Decretals,  and  therefore 
worth  nothing  ;  that  anyhow  such  cession  was  barred  by 
the  Ephesine  canon,  and  so  the  present  Roman  Catholic 
hierarchy  in  this  country  is  schismatical.  I  shall  now 
proceed  to  examine  point  by  point  this  amazing  piece  of 
English  Church  history. 

As  to  this  Ephesine  canon,  it  forbids  a  bishop's  intru- 
sion into  another  province  "  which  has  not  been  from  the 
first  under  himself  and  his  predecessors."  But  it  has 
always  been  the  Pope's  contention  that  every  part  of  the 
vineyard  has  ever  been  "under  himself  and  his  prede- 


ENGLAND  AND  PAPAL  PREROGATIVE.  77 

cessors."  Again,  though  conversion  does  not  of  itself 
give  any  right  of  jurisdiction,  it  at  least  secures  that  the 
country  in  question  could  not  have  already  belonged  to 
any  other  diocese  or  province.  As  to  the  British  Church, 
it  certainly  was  not  independent  of  Rome,  for  we  know 
that  British  bishops  took  part  in  the  Councils  of  Aries 
and  Sardica,  and  were  committed  to  the  assertions  there 
made  of  Papal  prerogative.  Again,  we  have  the  following 
testimony  of  Prosper  of  Aquitaine,  Pope  Celestine's 
secretary: — "Pope  Celestine  sent  Germanus  (Bishop  of 
Auxerre)  as  his  vicegerent  (vice  sua)  to  drive  out  the 
heretics  and  guide  the  Britons  to  the  Catholic  faith." 
To  show  that  the  early  Irish  Church,  to  whose  mission- 
aries so  many  of  the  Northern  Saxons  owed  their  conver- 
sion, was  not  independent  of  Rome,  it  may  be  sufficient 
to  quote  the  appeal  of  their  great  patriarch,  St.  Colum- 
banus,  to  Pope  Boniface  IV.  :  "  Wherefore  use,  O  Pope, 
the  pipe  and  well-known  cry  of  the  Good  Shepherd,  and 
stand  between  thy  sheep  and  the  wolves,  so  that,  casting 
away  their  fears,  thy  sheep  may  in  everything  know  thee 
the  first  Pastor"  (ap.  Galland.  xii.  352). 

St.  Augustine  was  ordained  by  Vigilius  of  Aries,  but, 
as  Venerable  Bede  tells  us,  in  obedience  to  the  Pope's 
order,  "juxta  quod  jussa  Sancti  Patris  Gregorii  accepe- 
rant"  (Hist.  1.  i.  c.  27).  Gregory's  own  words  are, 
"data  a  me  licentia"  (Epist  Iviii.  ep.  30).  The  Gallic 
ordination  was  thus  in  virtue  of  an  act  of  the  same 
jurisdiction  that  sent  the  missionaries  to  England  and 
which  issued  in  the  Papal  mandate  to  Augustine  (Bede, 
1.  i.  c.  29) :  "  Your  brotherhood  will,  moreover,  have 
subject  to  you  not  only  the  bishops  which  you  or  the 
Bishop  of  York  may  ordain,  but  all  the  bishops  of 
Britain,  by  authority  of  our  God  and  Lord  Jesus  Christ"  ' 
Dr.  Littledale's  acknowledgment  that  Gregory  conceded 
"  by  special  grant "  "  the  election  and  confirmation  of 

*  See  Lingard's  Hist,  and  Arxtiq.  of  the  Anglo-Saxon  Church, 
vol.  i.  c.  2. 


7 8        ENGLAND  AND  PAPAL  PREROGATIVE 

English  metropolitans  and  bishops  to  the  Local  Synods," 
is  nothing  less  than  an  acknowledgment  that  the  Popes 
exercised  jurisdiction  in  England.  According  to  no 
principles,  either  of  civil  or  ecclesiastical  law,  can  an 
act  of  grace  be  construed  into  a  renunciation  of  right. 
The  summumjusy  in  virtue  of  which  the  concessions  can 
be  revoked  at  will,  is  inalienable.  The  fact  that  there  is 
no  formal  concession  of  Church  liberties  to  the  Pope 
extant  is  obviously  entirely  in  our  favour.  England 
found  itself  on  its  conversion  in  a  system  in  which  the 
supremacy  of  the  Pope  was  accepted.  Canon  Bright, 
although  belonging  to  a  class  of  writers  committed,  more 
or  less,  by  the  exigencies  of  their  position  to  the  depa- 
palisation  of  history,  honestly  recognises  that  Gregory, 
despite  his  protest  against  "the  title  of  Universal  Bishop," 
"  always  acted  on  that  theory  respecting  his  own  office, 
which  had  been  gradually  developing  itself  from  the 
early  part  of  the  fifth  century,  and  was  to  develop  itself 
yet  more  in  after  times.  .  .  .  This  system  Gregory 
inherited,  believed  in  it  firmly,  acted  on  it  persistently."  * 
It  would  have  been  odd  if  his  converts  believed  other- 
wise, and  the  whole  course  of  their  Church  history  is  a 
proof  that  they  did  not. 

As  to  the  False  Decretals,  they  were  not  known  for 
nigh  upon  two  centuries  after  England  had  accepted  the 
Pope's  supremacy,  and  therefore  certainly  did  not  influ- 
ence her  in  doing  so.  Moreover,  Anglicans  are  bound 
to  tell  us  what  these  new  rights  were  with  which  they 
suppose  the  False  Decretals  invested  the  Pope  before 
they  attempt  to  depreciate  the  force  of  our  later  testi- 
monies. Lingard  t  gives  the  following  enumeration 
of  only  one  class  of  such  acts : — "  Gregory  the  Great 
divided  the  Anglo-Saxon  territory  into  two  provinces ; 
Vitalian  placed  all  the  Anglo-Saxon  Churches  under  the 
jurisdiction  of  Theodore  ;  Agatho  limited  the  number  of 

*  Early  English  History,  c.  ii.  p.  62. 

t  Hist,  and  Antiq.  of  the  Anglo-Saxon  Church,  vol.  i.  c.  3,  p.  118. 


ENGLISH  AUTHORITIES  ON  PAPAL  PREROGATIVE.       79 

bishops  to  one  metropolitan  and  eleven  suffragans;  Leo 
II.  established  a  second  metropolitan  at  York  ;  Adrian 
a  third  at  Lichfield,  and  confirmed  to  the  Church  of 
Canterbury 'that  precedence  of  rank  and  authority  which 
it  has  since  possessed  down  to  the  present  day."  In 
676  St.  Wilfrid  appeals  from  the  metropolitan  Theodore 
to  the  Pope,  and  the  rightfulness  of  the  appeal  was  un- 
questioned, although  the  execution  of  the  Papal  decision 
in  his  favour  was  long  deferred,  owing  to  the  hostility  of 
the  Court.  At  the  Council  of  Cloveshoe  in  747,  Pope 
Zachary  enforces  the  reformation  of  abuses  under  threat 
of  excommunication. 

23.  A  Catena  of  English  Authorities   on   Papal 
Prerogative. 

ST.  ALDHELM  (A.D.  709)  : — "  If,  then,  to  Peter  the  keys 
of  the  heavenly  kingdom  have  been  delivered  by  Christ, 
of  whom  the  poet  sings — 

'  Celestial  keyward,  opener  of  heaven  gates,' 

who,  I  ask,  despising  the  principal  statutes  and  doctrinal 
mandates  of  his  Church,  enters  rejoicing  the  gate  of  the 
heavenly  paradise  ?  .  .  .  To  conclude  everything  in  the 
casket  of  one  short  sentence.  In  vain  of  the  Catholic 
faith  do  they  vainly  boast  who  follow  not  the  teaching 
and  rule  of  St.  Peter.  For  the  foundation  of  the  Church 
and  ground  of  the  faith  laid  primarily  in  Christ  and  then 
in  Peter,  unrocked  by  the  stress  of  tempests,  shall  not 
waver,  the  Apostle  so  pronouncing  (i  Cor.  iii.  u) ;  other 
foundation  no  one  can  lay  beside  that  which  is  laid, 
which  is  Jesus  Christ.  But  to  Peter  has  the  Truth  thus 
sanctioned  the  Church's  privilege  (Matt,  xvi.),  'Thou 
art  Peter,  and  upon  this  Rock  I  will  build  my  Church.' " 
VENERABLE  BEDE  (A.D.  735)  says  of  Pope  Gregory: 
"  And  whereas  he  bore  the  Pontifical  power*  over  all  the 

*  The  rendering  of  the  Anglican  editor,  Dr.  Giles,  but  better 
"  was  the  Primate  all  over."  For  the  force  of  "  Pontificatus  "  here, 
see  Collect  in  Fest.  Cath.  Antioch.  "  Deus  qui  beato  Petro  .... 
ligandi  atque  solvendi  pontificium  tradidisti,"  and  Bede's  Horn,  in 
Fest.  SS.  Pet.  et  Paul,  "principatum  judiciarise  potestatis." 


80      ENGLISH  AUTHORITIES  ON  PAPAL  PREROGATIVE. 

world,  and  was  placed  over  the  Churches  already  reduced 
to  the  faith  of  truth,  he  made  our  nation,  till  then  given  up 
to  idols,  the  Church  of  Christ"  (Hist.  Eccles.  lib.  ii.  c.  i). 

ALCUIN  (A.D.  798) : — "  Lest  he  be  found  to  be  a  schis- 
matic or  a  non-Catholic,  let  him  follow  the  most  approved 
authority  of  the  Roman  Church,  that  whence  we  have 
received  the  seeds  of  the  Catholic  faith  there  we  may 
find  the  exemplars  of  salvation,  lest  the  members  be 
severed  from  the  head,  lest  the  Key-bearer  of  the 
heavenly  kingdom  exclude  such  as  he  shall  recognise 
as  alien  from  his  teaching  "  (Ep.  75). 

LANFRANC  (A.D.  1072) : — "When  our  Lord  and  Saviour 
Jesus  Christ  said  to  Blessed  Peter,  'Thou  art  Peter,'  &c., 
He  might  have  added,  had  He  so  pleased,  '  The  same 
power  I  grant  to  your  successors ; '  but  His  not  having 
done  so  has  in  naught  detracted  from  our  reverence  for 
the  successors  of  St.  Peter.  Wilt  thou  gainsay  this?  wilt 
thou  urge  objections  ?  Verily  is  it  ingrained  in  the  con- 
sciences of  all  Christians  that,  in  respect  to  St.  Peter's 
successors  no  less  than  to  himself,  they  must  tremble  at 
their  threats  and  yield  joyful  acclamation  to  their  lofty 
graciousness  when  they  indulge  ;  and  in  all  ecclesiastical 
matters  then,  at  last,  a  dispensation  is  valid  when  it  has 
been  approved  by  the  judgment  of  the  successors  of  the 
Blessed  Peter.  How  comes  about  what  here  is  operative 
unless  it  be  the  plenitude  of  the  Divine  liberality  through 
Jesus  Christ,  poured  out  by  Blessed  Peter  upon  his 
vicars?"  (Orat.  in  Cone.  ap.  Guil.  Malmesb.  lib.  i.  de 
Gest.  Pont.  Angl.). 

ST.  ANSELM  (A.D.  1092)  apostrophises  the  Pope : — 
"  Since  Divine  Providence  has  chosen  your  Holiness  to 
whom  to  commit  the  guardianship  of  Christian  life  and 
faith  and  the  government  of  His  Church,  to  no  one  else  can 
recourse  be  more  fitly  had,  if  aught  against  the  Catholic 
faith  should  arise  in  the  Church,  that  it  may  be  corrected 
by  his  authority ;  nor  if  any  reply  be  made  to  error,  can 
it  with  more  security  be  shown  to  any  one  that  it  may 
be  examined  by  his  prudence"  (De  Fide  Trin.  ed.  Ben, 


ENGLISH  AUTHORITIES  ON  PAPAL  PREROGATIVE.       8  I 

p.  41  ;  cf.  lib.  iii.  ep.  xl,  and  lib.  iv.  ep.  ii.).  "It  is 
certain  that  he  who  does  not  obey  the  ordinances  of  the 
Roman  Pontiff,  which  are  issued  for  the  maintenance  of 
the  Christian  religion,  is  disobedient  to  the  Apostle  Peter, 
whose  vicar  he  is,  nor  is  he  of  that  flock  which  was  given 
to  him  (Peter)  by  God.  Let  him  then  find  some  other 
gates  of  the  kingdom  of  heaven,  for  by  those  he  shall 
not  go  in,  of  which  the  Apostle  Peter  holds  the  keys  " 
(lib.  iv.  ep.  xiii.). 

ST.  AELRED  (A.D.  1167):  — "  Brethren,  let  no  one 
seduce  you  with  vain  words.  Let  no  one  say  to  you,  Lo 
here  is  Christ  or  there,  since  Christ  ever  abides  in  the 
faith  of  Peter,  which  the  Holy  Roman  Church  has  es- 
pecially received  from  Peter,  and  retains  in  that  Rock, 
which  is  Christ.  ...  Of  this  Church  Peter  was  the  first 
Prince,  to  whom  it  was  said,  'Upon  this  Rock  I  will 
build  My  Church  ; '  and  again,  '  Feed  My  sheep  ; '  and 
again,  '  To  thee  will  I  give  the  keys  of  the  kingdom  of 
heaven,  and  whatsoever  thou  shalt  bind  upon  earth  shall 
be  bound  too  in  heaven,'  and  the  rest.  This  is  the 
Church  which  the  Holy  Apostle  calls  of  the  first-born,  the 
plenitude  of  whose  power  in  the  person  of  its  Prince 
passing  over  from  the  East  to  the  West  by  the  authority 
of  the  Holy  Spirit  established  itself  in  the  Roman 
Church.  .  .  .  This  is  the  Roman  Church,  with  whom 
he  who  communicates  not  is  a  heretic.  To  her  it 
belongs  to  advise  all,  to  judge  of  all,  to  provide  for  all, 
to  whom  in  Peter  that  word  was  addressed,  '  And  thou, 
some  time  converted,  confirm  thy  brethren.'  Whatsoevei 
she  decrees  I  receive ;  I  approve  what  she  approves  ; 
what  she  condemns  I  condemn"  (In  cap.  xv.  Isai. 
Serm.  23). 

ST.  THOMAS  OF  CANTERBURY  (A.D.  1170): — "Who 
doubts  that  the  Roman  Church  is  the  head  of  all  the 
Churches  and  the  source  of  Christian  doctrine?  Who  is 
ignorant  that  to  Peter  were  given  the  keys  of  the  kingdom 
of  heaven  ?  In  the  faith  and  teaching  of  Peter  doth  noi 

F 


82       ENGLISH  AUTHORITIES  ON  PAPAL  PREROGATIVE. 

the  structure  of  the  whole  Church  rise  until  we  all  attain 
in  Christ  unto  the  perfect  man,  unto  the  unity  of  faith, 
and  the  knowledge  of  the  Son  of  God  ?  .  .  .  Whosoever 
he  be  who  waters  or  who  plants,  God  giveth  to  no  one 
increase  save  to  him  who  shall  plant  in  the  faith  of  Peter 
and  acquiesce  in  his  teaching.  Verily  to  him  are  referred 
the  chiefest  judgments  of  the  people,  that  they  may  be 
examined  by  the  Roman  Pontiff;  and  disposed  under 
him  are  the  judges  of  Holy  Church,  inasmuch  as  they 
are  called  to  a  part  of  his  solicitude"  (Ep.  97  ad  Episc. 
Angl.);  and  again,  "  Only  an  unbeliever  or  one  who  goeth 
worse  wrong,  a  heretic,  or  a  schismatic,  refuses  obedience 
to  the  Apostolic  commands"  (Ep.  122  ad  Gilb.  Londin). 

STEPHEN  LANGTON  (1208)  (Wilkins  Concil.  vol.  i.  p. 
520) : — "  We  have  received  the  government  of  the  Church 
of  Canterbury  from  the  mandate  of  our  Superior  "  (the 
Pope).  St.  Thomas,  he  argues,  at  the  beginning  of  his 
exile  resigned  his  archbishoprick,  but  Pope  Alexander, 
"inasmuch  as  he  possessed  the  plenitude  of  power,"  gave 
it  him  back  "independently  of  the  royal  assent  or  any 
election  of  the  monks."  But  King  Henry  never  at- 
tempted to  gainsay  this,  although  a  schism  gave  him  the 
opportunity.  How  much  worse  then  for  John  to  dispute 
the  appointment  of  an  undisputed  Pope. 

GROSTETE,  BISHOP  OF  LINCOLN  (1253) : — "Whosoever 
receives  the  power  of  any  office  from  the  primary  source, 
and  hands  it  over  to  others,  as,  e.g.,  a  bishop  receiving 
from  our  Lord  the  Pope  and  handing  on  to  lesser 
directors  of  souls,  will  he  not  act  more  efficaciously 
towards  lightening  the  burthen  of  our  Lord  the  Pope,  to 
whom  belongs,  under  Heaven,  the  Supreme  care  of  all 
Churches  and  of  all  souls,  if  he  pass  on  to  his  inferiors  in 
order  that  they  may  share  his  burthen  and  that  of  my 
Lord  the  Pope  part  of  his  power  without  taking  from  his 
own— since  he  can  and  ought  to  do  this  according  to  the 
teaching  of  the  Scripture — than  by  taking  from  and 
diminishing  his  own?  .  .  .  There  is  therefore  nothing 
that  can  be  truly  alleged  for  the  diminution  of  the  epis- 


DEVELOPMENT.  83 

copal  power  which  the  bishop  has  by  the  canon  law, 
which  has  the  same  from  our  Lord  the  Pope,  and  from 
Jesus  Christ  through  him,  unless  our  Lord  the  Pope,  to 
whom  belongs  the  plenitude  of  power,  curtail  of  the 
episcopal  power  something  which  the  canon  law  grants 
usually,  on  account  of  some  gain  to  the  Church  known 
to  him,  and  not  to  be  questioned  by  others,  and  which 
affords  large  compensation  for  this  curtailment "  (Letter 
127,  Rolls  Publication). 

This  was  the  doctrine  concerning  Papal  prerogative 
that  prevailed  in  England  from  the  seventh  to  the 
sixteenth  century.  It  was  against  the  abandonment  of 
this  doctrine,  and  exchanging  the  supremacy  of  the  Pope 
for  the  supremacy  of  the  king,  that  Fisher  and  More 
protested,  and  sealed  their  protest  in  their  blood.  * 

§  24.  Development. 

I  am  not  maintaining  that  each  one  of  the  writers  I 
have  appealed  to  had  the  precise  doctrine  of  the  Pope's 
immediate  universal  jurisdiction  denned  at  the  Vatican 
Council  articulately  before  his  mind.  All  that  I  insist 
upon  is,  that  from  the  beginning  so  much  was  acknow- 
ledged, that  there  really  was  no  logical  standpoint  short 
of  the  Vatican  definition.  From  the  first  the  Papal 
power  was  in  itself  so  strong,  and  each  step  of  its 
inevitable  development  was  left  so  completely  without 
provision  of  counterpoise,  that,  philosophically  con- 
sidered, it  meant  nothing  less  than  it  ultimately  asserted. 
Striking  as  are  the  positive  statements  regarding  Papal 
power  made  by  Fathers  and  Councils,  yet  still  more 
significant  is  the  fact  that  no  one  of  these  authorities 
ventures  to  assign  it  any  limit,  although  from  the  first  it 
was  a  power  as  persistently  aggressive  as  the  sea.  It 
should  be  impossible  for  those  who  believe  that  Church 

*  The  supposed  Convocation  speech  of  Blessed  Fisher  quoted 
here  in  previous  editions,  and  which  has  been  unhesitatingly  ac- 
cepted by  Protestant  as  well  as  Catholic  writers,  is  not  genuine. 
See  Fr.  Bridget's  recent  "Life  of  Blessed  John  Fisher." 


84  DEVELOPMENT. 

history  is  the  record  of  a  divinely  ordered  life,  and  not 
of  a  congenital  corruption,  to  regard  the  growth  "  quoad 
externum"  of  Papal  power  as  other  than  a  legitimate 
dynamic  development,  the  result  of  an  impulse  given  to 
the  Church  by  its  Creator  and  first  mover. 

Start  any  element  in  a  constitution  with  the  prestige 
that  it  cannot  go  wrong  and  has  a  mission  to  set  every- 
thing else  right ;  under  the  condition  of  affairs  essential 
to  a  Church  militant,  it  will,  little  by  little,  surely  gather 
all  the  reins  of  government  into  its  own  hand.  Of  course 
such  a  development  may  be  retarded,  on  the  one  hand, 
by  the  character  and  circumstances  of  the  possessor  of  such 
authority,  or,  on  the  other,  accelerated  by  such  accidents 
as  the  severance  of  the  East,  or  the  influence  of  the 
feudal  system  with  its  passion  for  stereotyping  powers  in 
material  forms  ;  but  the  development  itself  was  an  intrinsic 
necessity.  That  it  met  an  external  necessity,  a  Protes- 
tant writer  like  Dr.  Milman  is  able  honestly  to  confess, 
"On  the  rise  of  a  power  both  controlling  and  conserva- 
tive hung,  humanly  speaking,  the  life  and  death  of  Chris- 
tianity— of  Christianity  as  a  permanent,  aggressive, 
expansive,  and,  to  a  certain  extent,  uniform  system."  * 

"As  to  development,"  says  Dr.  Littledale  (p.  152), 
"there  are  two  or  three  things  to  be  said."  I  will  only 
here  concern  myself  with  what  he  says  about  the  theory 
of  development  itself.  "It  is  only  a  modern  excuse  put 
forward  by  private  persons  in  the  attempt  to  get  out  of  a 
difficulty.  But  the  authoritative  assertion  of  the  Roman 
Church  is  that  its  teaching  now  is  exactly  what  it  has 
been  from  the  beginning."  Then  follow  quotations  from 
the  Tridentine  and  Vatican  Councils,  which  do  not,  as 
Dr.  Littledale  imagines,  reject  development,  but  both 
the  theory  of  accretions,  which  is  the  opposite  of 
development,  and  that  of  purely  human  amplifications. 
It  must  be  remembered  that  General  Councils  are 
not  in  the  habit  of  ventilating  theological  theories, 
*  Lat.  Christ,  bk.  iii.  c.  vii. 


DEVELOPMENT.  85 

'however  unexceptionable,  but  of  teaching  truths  of 
faith.  As  to  the  theory  being  modern,  although  I 
suppose  it  had  never  been  brought  out  before  so  syste- 
matically and  in  such  detail  as  in  Cardinal  Newman's 
"  Essay,"  it  is  certainly  laid  down  in  principle  by  St. 
Vincent  of  Lerins  (cap.  xxiii.  ed.  Oxf.).  "But  per- 
^.dventure  some  will  say,  Shall  we  have  no.  advancement 
of  religion  in  the  Church  of  Christ  ?  Surely  let  us  have 
the  greatest  that  may  be  ;  for  who  is  either  so  envious  of 
men  or  hateful  of  God  which  would  labour  to  hinder 
that?  but  yet  in  such  sort  that  it  may  be  truly  an 
increase  in  faith,  and  not  a  change ;  since  this  is  the 
nature  of  an  increase,  that  in  themselves  severally  things 
grow  greater ;  but  of  a  change,  that  something  be  turned 
from  one  thing  which  it  was  to  another  thing  which  it 
was  not."  His  examples  are  the  change  from  childhood 
to  manhood,  from  the  seed  to  the  plant,  in  which 
qualities  are  observed  in  the  after-phase  which  lay 
hidden  in  the  previous,  and  in  which  I  would  add  the 
proportion  is  sometimes  considerably  altered.  Cardinal 
Newman's  "  Essay  "  is  mainly  occupied  with  laying  down 
the  criteria  for  distinguishing  between  such  doctrinal 
germination  and  corruption.  Which  is  it,  I  wonder, 
that  has  taken  place  in  Dr.  Littledale  since  1868,  when 
in  his  tract  "  Innovations"  (p.  6)  he  thus  speaks  of  what 
he  now  denounces  as  a  modern  excuse  ?  "  '  Growth,'  as 
Thomas  Scott,  the  great  Evangelical  leader,  once  said, 
*  Growth  is  the  only  evidence  of  life ; '  and  if  Chris- 
tianity be  a  living  power,  it  must  grow  and  in  a  sense 
change  as  time  goes  on.  That  is  what  Dr.  Newman 
expressed  long  ago  under  the  name  of  development" 


PART    II. 

CHARGES  AGAINST'THE  CHURCH  IN  COMMUNION 
WITH  THE  SEE  OF  PETER. 


Charge  /. — Creature-  Worship. 

§  1.  The  Theology  of  Creature- Worship. 

To  withdraw  one  tittle  of  God's  rights  and  bestow  it 
upon  another,  however  exalted,  is  to  forsake  the  living 
God.  The  question  is,  What  is  that  worship  which  we 
must  give  to  God  only  and  to  give  which  to  others  in- 
volves apostasy?  It  is,  according  to  St.  Thomas  and  all 
theologians,  that  homage  called  "  latria"  which,  involving 
as  it  does  a  recognition  of  its  immediate  object  as  the 
beginning  and  end  of  all  things,  as  the  ultimate  scope, 
therefore,  of  all  our  worship,  must  needs  belong  to  God 
alone.  Other  worship,  that  of  dulia,  though  never  given 
to  God  except  supereminently  in  the  act  of  latria,  is  also 
due  to  Him  as  our  supreme  Lord  and  Master;  and,  as  a 
recognition  of  His  supreme  sovereignty,  of  course  can  never 
be  shared  with  another.  Yet  this  mastership,  with  its 
rights  of  reverence,  is  in  various  degrees  communicated  to 
creatures.  We  are  bidden  to  be  subject  to  all  power, 
to  pay  reverence  to  all  creatures,  to  hold  in  honour  all 
beauty,  and  goodness,  and  truth,  and  so  especially  those 
creations  of  spiritual  beauty,  the  holy  ones  of  God,  and 
first  amongst  these  that  highest  of  God's  spiritual  crea- 


THE  THEOLOGY  OF  CREATURE-WORSHIP.  87 

tions,  His  Immaculate  Mother.  Not  that  this  lower 
worship  is  without  reference  to  God,  whom  we  recognise 
as  the  "  glory  of  the  Saints,"  and  to  whom  all  their  glory 
is  referred.  Ever  are  the  elders  crowned,  and  ever  do 
they  lay  their  crowns  before  the  throne. 

Dr.  Littledale  says  (p.  1 8)  that  "we  have  only  four 
examples  in  the  New  Testament  of  acts  of  reverence 
being  done  to  saints,  and  in  all  these  cases  they  were 
promptly  rejected  and  forbidden,  showing  that  they  were 
offensive  to  the  saints,  as  savouring  of  disloyalty  to  that 
God  whom  they  love  and  serve."  The  instances  are 
Cornelius's  falling  down  at  St.  Peter's  feet  (Actsx.  25,  26), 
the  people  of  Lycaonia  and  Barnabas  and  Paul  (Acts  xiv. 
13,  14),,  and  St.  John  and  the  angel  twice  (Rev.  xix.  10, 
and  Rev.  xxii.  8,  9),  "  whereas  Christ  never  refused  nor 
blamed  an  act  of  worship  offered  to  Himself." 

We  may  let  drop  the  second  instance  as  clearly  a  re- 
jection of  nothing  short  of  divine  honours.  As  regards 
the  other  cases,  Dr.  Littledale  observes  in  a  note  to  p. 
19,  that  it  cannot  be  supposed  that  either  Cornelius  or 
St.  John  meant  to  offer  divine  homage,  nor  indeed,  I 
may  add,  that  St.  John,  at  least,  could  have  offered  any 
worship  which  it  was  sinful  to  offer,  or  in  any  way  re- 
pugnant to  the  injunction  of  the  Holy  Spirit,  written 
long  before,  Col.  ii.  18 — "Let  no  man  beguile  you  in 
worshipping  of  angels." 

It  must  be  remembered  that  angels  in  Holy  Scripture 
sometimes  present  themselves  as  angels,  i.e.,  as  mes- 
sengers or  ministering  spirits,  sometimes  as  represen- 
tatives and  images  (dtopdvtia)  of  Him  from  whom  they 
are  sent  and  in  whose  person  they  speak.  In  the  latter 
case  they  were  worshipped  with  a  relative  latria,  or 
made  the  vehicle  of  a  divine  worship,  as  when  Abraham 
prostrated  himself  before  the  three  angels,  and,  as  St. 
Augustine  says,  "seeing  three,  adored  one."  We  may 
very  reasonably  conceive  that  St.  John  had  taken  an 
angel  messenger  for  a  theophany,  and  that  the  angel 


88  THE  THEOLOGY  OF  CREATURE-WORSHIP. 

would  not  allow  him  to  worship  in  the  porch  when  his 
mission  was  to  conduct  him  within  the  shrine.  Again, 
it  is  quite  conceivable  that  the  angel  may  have  refused, 
what  it  was  quite  right  for  the  saint  to  offer,  viz.,  a  service 
of  dulia  or  reverence,  and  this  in  honour  of  Him  who, 
being  so  much  higher  than  the  angels,  had  assumed 
man's  lower  nature.  The  case  of  Cornelius  admits  of  a 
precisely  similar  treatment.  It  was  St.  Peter's  mission 
to  present  the  first-fruits  of  the  Gentiles  to  his  Master, 
and  he  was  eager  to  fulfil  it ;  moreover,  the  humility  of 
a  saint  while  on  earth  is  ever  fearful. 

That  there  is  a  lawful  worship  of  the  creature,  Christ 
himself  testifies.  Rev.  iii.  9 — "To  the  Angel  of  the 
Church  of  Philadelphia  write  ...  I  will  make  them 
come  and  adore  (vcoffxvvqauffiv)  before  thy  feet." 

As  to  our  Lord  never  having  refused  an  act  of  wor- 
ship, the  statement  cannot  be  borne  out.  He  certainly 
did  refuse  an  act  of  worship  when  he  met  the  "  Good 
Master"  with  "  There  is  none  good  but  God  ;"  and  again 
when  he  said  to  St.  Mary  Magdalene  "  Touch  me  not," 
thereby  showing  that  the  act  may  be  refused  without  im- 
plying any  condemnation  of  the  principle. 

Many  acts  of  adoration  are  recorded  as  offered  to 
creatures  in  the  Old  Testament — -the  three  angels  who 
appeared  to  Abraham  in  the  plain  of  Mambre ;  the 
angel  from  whom  Jacob  asked  a  blessing ;  the  angel  who 
appeared  to  Moses  in  the  bush ;  the  bowing  to  the  pillar 
of  the  cloud ;  the  prostration  before  the  ark,  and  the 
worship  of  the  angel  by  Josue.  It  is  not  necessary  to 
decide  how  many  of  these  were  acts  of  dulia,  how 
many  of  " relative  latria"  The  one  makes  for  the  wor- 
ship of  saints,  the  other  for  the  worship  of  images.* 

That  the  angels  and  saints  exercise  in  our  regard  a 
subordinate  mediatorship  of  prayer  and  good  works 
appears,  among  other  places,  in  Dan.  x.  21,  Tobias  xii. 
12,  and  Rev.  viii.  3.  The  Catholic  doctrine  on  the 
subject  perfectly  harmonises  with  these  texts,  those  con. 
*  See  Appendix,  Note  C. 


CULTUS  OF  THE  SAINTS.  89 

cerning  the  one  object  of  worship,  and  the  one  mediator 
quoted  by  Dr.  Littledale  (p.  17).  Dr.  Littledale  seeks 
no  harmony,  but  is  contented  to  array  Scripture  against 
Scripture,  Fathers  against  Fathers.  So  is  it  ever  with 
heresy  in  its  unconcern  for  "all  the  counsel  of  God," 
crying,  like  the  false  mother  before  Solomon,  "Let  it 
be  neither  thine  nor  mine,  but  divide  it." 

On  the  passages  from  the  Fathers  quoted  by  Dr. 
Littledale  (p.  23)  I  remark,  that  St.  Irenaeus  and  the 
Council  of  Laodicea  are  directly  combating  the  angel- 
worship  of  the  Gnostics,  the  Spiritualists  of  their  day. 
The  passage  from  St.  Clement  of  Alexandria  merely 
asserts  that  angels  and  men  had  not  different  Gods,  as 
in  the  Gnostic  scheme,  but  one  only.  St.  Athanasius, 
in  his  conflict  with  the  Arians,  was  almost  constrained 
to  emphasise  exclusively  the  incommunicableness  of  the 
Divine  worship.  Origen  (cont.  Cels.  vii.  13)  actually 
explains  that,  had  his  opponent  meant  to  charge  him 
with  worshipping  real  angels,  "Gabriel,  Michael,  &c.," 
he  (Origen)  would  have  had  to  distinguish  the  senses 
of  the  word  "worship"  (^a-Trgug/v),  but  as  he  means  de- 
mons he  must  simply  deny.  In  an  exquisite  passage 
(Horn.  i.  in  Ezech.  n.  7)  he  addresses  the  newly  bap- 
tized :  "  Thou  wert  yesterday  under  the  demon,  now 
thou  art  under  the  angel."  Then,  invoking  the  angel, 
he  cries,  "Come,  angel,  and  receive  him  ...  as  the 
good  physician."  St.  John  Chrysostom  sufficiently 
vindicates  his  Catholic  creature- worship  in  the  passage 
quoted  in  the  ensuing  section. 

•§  2.  Cultus  of  the  Saints  According  to  the  Fathers. 

The  distinction  between  the  worship  of  latria,  supreme 
worship,  and  the  worship  of  dulia,  inferior  worship, 
has  always  been  substantially  recognised,  although 
there  is  nothing  in  the  etymology  of  the  two  words 
to  indicate  the  distinction  between  service  paid  to 


90  CULTUS  OF  THE  SAINTS. 

the  saints  and  the  supreme  worship  of  God,  which  th* 
words  are  used  to  express.  The  first  use  of  the  term 
dulia  in  contrast  with  latria  is  attributed  to  St.  Au- 
gustine. The  words  KDOGX.WWK;  (adoratio)  and  Oeeowtic* 
(servitium)  are  commonly  used  by  the  Greek  Fathers 
instead  of  dulia  to  express  the  cultus  of  the  saints. 
The  distinction  is  very  precisely  expressed  by  St,  Cyril 
of  Alexandria  (c.  Julian  vi.  pp.  203,  204) — "The  holy 
martyrs  we  neither  call  gods  nor  are  wont  to  worship 
them,  to  wit,  with  latria,  but  only  relatively  and  reverently; 
but  we  the  rather  crown  them  with  the  highest  reverence, 
because  they  have  wrestled  honourably  for  the  truth,  and 
have  so  preserved  sincerity  of  faith  as  to  be  unsparing 
even  of  their  life,  and  to  bid  adieu  to  the  fear  of  death, 
and  nobly  to  triumph  over  every  danger,  and  set  up  to 
mankind,  as  it  were,  certain  images  of  their  marvellous 
manfulness,  their  own  brave  doings.  There  is  nothing 
unreasonable  then,  rather,  doubtless,  it  was  even  neces- 
sary, that  those  who  had  such  splendid  achievements  to 
exult  in  should  be  crowned  with  never-ending  honours. '* 
He  appeals  to  the  Greek  cultus  of  their  heroes  and  quotes 
Plato  (Repub.  v.  c.  15) :  "  For  the  future  we  will  reverence 
men  who  have  died  thus,  as  men  who  have  become  genii, 
and  will  worship  their  graves." 

For  the  intercession  of  the  saints,  out  of  numberless 
passages  that  might  be  quoted,  these  two  may  serve. 
St.  Augustine  (in  Ps.  85,  n.  24) :  "  Our  Lord  Jesus  Christ 
yet  intercedes  for  us  (Rom.  viii.  34) ;  all  the  martyrs  who 
are  with  Him  intercede  for  us.  Nor  ever  do  their  inter- 
cessions cease  until  our  groanings  have  passed  away." 
St.  Jerome  (Adv.  Vigilant,  n.  6) :  "  If  the  Apostles  and 
the  martyrs,  whilst  yet  in  the  flesh,  could  pray  for  others 
whilst  they  had  still  cause  for  anxiety  on  their  own 
account,  how  much  more  after  their  crowns,  their  vic- 
tories, and  their  triumphs  ?  "  The  practice  of  direct  in- 
vocation is  urged  on  the  faithful  by  St.  John  Chrysostom 
(Horn,  de  SS.  Berenice  et  Prosdoce,  n.  7,  ed.  Ben.  torn* 


CULTUS  OF  THE  SAINTS.  91 

rii.  p.  645) :  "  Not  only  on  this  festal  day,  but  on  other 
days,  let  us  cleave  unto  them,  let  us  entreat  them,  and 
pray  them  to  become  our  patrons.  Not  only  when 
living  have  they  a  great  confident  claim  upon  God,  but 
even  when  dead,  nay,  the  more  by  far  when  dead,  for 
they  are  bearing  now  the  stigmata  of  Christ,  and  show- 
ing these  stigmata,  there  is  nothing  they  cannot  win  of 
the  King."  And  by  St.  Asterius  Amas.  (Encom.  SS. 
Mart.  ed.  Combefis,  torn.  i.  p.  194) :  "  Forasmuch  as 
our  prayer  is  the  less  fitted  to  prevail  with  the  Lord  in 
times  of  necessity  and  distress,  inasmuch  as  our  prayer 
is  not  so  much  a  deprecation  as  a  memorial  of  sins, 
therefore  let  us  fly  to  our  fellow-servants,  the  well-beloved 
of  the  Lord."* 

Dr.  Littledale  quotes  St.  Gregory  Nyssen's  statement, 
"  that  nothing  created  could  be  worshipped  by  man,"  as 
though  it  was  meant  to  preclude  even  inferior  worship, 
whereas  we  know  that  St.  Gregory  was  an  ardent  saint- 
worshipper.  In  his  sermon  De  xl.  Martyr.  (Op.  torn, 
ii.  p.  206)  he  speaks  of  the  miracles  wrought  at  their 
invocation  and  by  their  relics;  rejoices  that  he  possesses 
a  portion  of  the  inestimable  treasure,  and  praises  St.  Basil 
for  his  saint-worship  as  "  ay/oj  ruv  ay'iuv  dspaKtvrqi;"  a 
holy  servant  of  the  holy  ones.  For  the  cultus  of  saints' 
bodies  and  relics  we  have  St.  Jerome  (c.  Vigilant,  n.  5) : 
"  Are  we  guilty  of  sacrilege  when  we  enter  the  basilicas 
of  the  Apostles  ?  Was  the  Emperor  Constantine  sacri- 
legious who  brought  the  holy  relics  of  Andrew,  Luke, 
and  Timothy  to  Constantinople,  at  whose  coming  the 
demons  yelled,  and  whom  the  indwellers  of  Vigilantius 
acknowledged  ?  And  at  the  present  time  is  he,  Augustus 
Arcadius,  to  be  called  sacrilegious  for  translating  the 
bones  of  the  Blessed  Samuel  from  Judea  into  Thrace  ? 
are  all  those  bishops  to  be  accounted  not  merely  sacri- 

*  For  inscriptions  of  the  third  century  containing  the  direct  in- 
vocation of  martyrs,  see  "Roma  Sotterranea "  (Northcote  and 
Brownlow),  vol.  i.  p.  290. 


92  THE  CULTUS  OF  MARY. 

legious,  but  fools,  for  carrying  a  worthless  thing,  some 
crumbled  ashes,  in  silk  and  gold  ?  are  the  crowds  through- 
out all  the  Churches  foolish  who  ran  out  to  meet  the 
holy  relics,  and  received  them  with  as  great  a  joy  as 
though  they  beheld  the  prophet  living  among  them, 
so  that  from  Palestine  to  Chalcedon  swarming  crowds 
chanted  with  one  voice  the  praises  of  Christ?"  And 
Theodoret(De  Cur.  Affect.  Graec.  Disp.  viii.):  "How  many 
were  made  free  of  their  desire  who  asked  faithfully, 
clearly  testify  the  gifts  indicative  of  their  cures.  Some 
have  hung  up  representations  of  eyes,  some  of  feet, 
fashioned  of  gold  or  silver.  .  .  .  These  indicate  that 
disease  has  been  driven  out,  as  evidence  of  which,  these 
things  are  hung  up  by  those  who  received  their  health, 
and  their  (the  saints')  power  witnessed!  that  theirs  is  the 
true  God."  Compare,  too,  St.  Augustine's  account  of 
the  miracles  wrought  by  St.  Stephen's  relics,  and  those 
of  St.  Gervase  and  St  Protase  (De  Civ.  Dei,  lib.  xxii. 
c.  viii.). 

That  there  are,  and  have  always  been,  false  or  doubt- 
ful relics  is  nothing  to  the  point.  This  must  have  been 
inevitable  in  any  case ;  but,  granting  the  existence  of  any 
degree  of  carelessness  at  certain  times  and  in  certain 
localities,  the  authorities  of  the  Church  might  well  hesi- 
tate to  undertake  an  antiquarian  investigation  of  almost 
hopeless  arduousness,  to  the  great  disturbance  of  much 
traditional  local  piety.  The  doubtful  relic,  even  granting 
its  falsity,  is  still,  as  an  image,  capable  of  transmitting 
the  cultus  of  the  saint  to  its  object 


§  3.  The  Cultus  of  Mary. 
T.    Theology  of  the  Cultus,  with  Catena. 

Devotion  to  the  Blessed  Virgin  is  the  natural  correla- 
tive of  her  dignity  of  Mother  of  God,  and  of  her  special 
position  in  regard  to  us,  involved  in  her  relations  to 


THE  CITLTUS  OF  MARY.  93 

Him  in  whom  we,  who  died  in  Adam,  live  again.  Mary 
appears  in  the  earliest  patristic  writings,  in  Justin,  Ter- 
tullian,  and  Irenseus,  as  the  Mother  of  God  made  man, 
and  so  as  the  Mother  of  the  living,  the  second  Eve,  by 
whom  reparation  is  made  for  the  fault  of  the  first,  and 
through  whose  free  co-operation  with  Christ  we  are  put 
in  possession  of  our  lost  birthright.  The  same  tradition 
is  carried  on  after  Nicsea  by  St.  Cyril  of  Jerusalem,  St. 
Ephrem  Syrus,  St.  Epiphanius,  St.  Jerome,  and  St. 
Augustine  (see  Cardinal  Newman's  Letter  to  Dr.  Pusey, 
p.  35  et  seq.).  The  following  florilegium  of  the  patristic 
cultus  of  our  Lady  is  given  by  the  Cardinal  (ib.  p.  71 
et  seq.)\  "She  was  alone,  and  wrought  the  world's  salva- 
tion and  conceived  the  redemption  of  all,"  says  Ambrose. 
"  She  had  so  great  grace,  as  not  only  to  preserve  virginity 
herself,  but  to  confer  it  upon  those  whom  she  visited." 
"  The  rod  out  of  the  stem  of  Jesse,"  says  Jerome,  "  and 
the  Eastern  gate  through  which  the  High  Priest  alone 
goes  in  and  out  and  yet  is  ever  shut."  "The  wise 
woman,"  says  Nilus,  who  "  hath  clad  believers,  from  the 
fleece  of  the  Lamb  born  of  her,  with  the  clothing  of 
incorruption,  and  delivered  them  from  their  spiritual 
nakedness."  "  The  mother  of  life,  of  beauty,  of  majesty, 
the  morning  star,"  according  to  Antiochus.  "  The 
mystical  new  heavens,"  "the  heavens  carrying  the 
Divinity,"  "  the  fruitful  vine,"  "  by  whom  we  are  trans- 
lated from  death  to  life,"  according  to  St.  Ephrem.  "  The 
manna  which  is  delicate,  bright,  sweet,  and  virgin,  which 
as  though  coming  from  heaven  has  poured  down  upon 
all  the  people  of  the  Churches  a  food  pleasanter  than 
honey,"  according  to  St.  Maximus.  ..."  Hail,  Mother 
clad  in  light,  of  the  light  that  sets  not,"  says  Theodotus, 
or  some  one  else  at  Ephesus ;  "  hail,  all  undented  Mother 
of  holiness ;  hail,  most  pellucid  fountain  of  the  life-giving 
stream."  And  St.  Cyril  too  at  Ephesus,  "  Hail,  Mar}', 
Mother  of  God,  majestic  common  measure  of  the  whole 
world,  the  lamp  unquenchable,  the  crown  of  virginity, 


94  THE  CULTUS  OF  MARY. 

the  staff  of  orthodoxy,  the  indissoluble  temple,  the 
dwelling  of  the  illimitable,  Mother  and  Virgin,  through 
whom  he  in  the  Holy  Gospels  is  called  blessed  who 
cometh  in  the  name  of  the  Lord,  .  .  .  through  whom 
the  Holy  Trinity  is  sanctified,  .  .  .  through  whom 
Angels  and  Archangels  rejoice,  devils  are  put  to  flight, 
.  .  .  and  the  fallen  creature  is  received  up  into  the 
heavens,"  &c.,  &c. 

"He  who  confesses  not,"  says  St.  Maximus  (Relat.  de 
Dogm.  inter  Max.  et  Theod.  torn.  i.  p.  Ixiv.  ed.  Combefis), 
"  that  our  all -praise -surpassing,  most  holy,  inviolate, 
and  by  all  intelligent  natures  to  be  venerated  Lady,  truly 
became  the  natural  mother  of  God,*  ...  let  him  be 
anathema  from  the  Father  and  the  Son  and  the  Holy 
Spirit  and  from  every  super-celestial  virtue,  and  from  the 
choir  of  the  holy  Apostles  and  prophets,  and  from  the 
countless  multitude  of  the  most  holy  martyrs,  and  from 
every  spirit  made  perfect  in  justice  now  and  forever  and 
ever.  Amen."  And  St.  Sophronius  :  "With  thee  is  the 
Lord  ;  who  shall  dare  to  strive  against  thee  ?  From  thee 
is  God;  who  does  not  yield  to  thee  at  once,  rejoicing 
rather  to  render  thee  the  primacy  of  excellence  ? "  (De 
Annunc.  n.  2i).f 

These  are  evidences  of  patristic  cultus;  but,  it 
may  be  urged,  This  is  rather  praise  than  prayer, 
there  is  a  dearth  of  "  help  me,"  "  protect  me,'*  nay,  or 
" intercede  for  me;"  although  it  is  hard  to  conceive 
that  this  is  not  repeatedly  implied  in  what  has  been 
already  quoted.  It  may  be  convenient  to  take  a  period 
when  the  doctrine  of  both  East  and  West  had  articulated 
itself  clearly  in  favour  of  the  present  Roman  Catholic 
practice  of  the  invocation  of  our  Lady  and  the  Saints, 
and  then  see  how  far  we  can  trace  it  back  in  earlier 
times.  My  starting-point  shall  be  the  eighth  century. 

*  Already  defined  under  anathema  by  the  Third  and  Fifth 
Councils. 

t  See  Hurter,  Mariologia,  Theol.  Dogm.  Thes.  civ. 


THE  CULTUS  OF  MARY.  95 

THE  SEVENTH  COUNCIL  (A.D.  787)  frequently  exhorts 
us  to  seek  "the  intercession  of  our  inviolate  Lady,  the 
natural  mother  of  God,  the  ever  Virgin  Mary,  and  of  the 
holy  Angels." 

POPE  GREGORY  II.  (A.D.  726),  in  his  letter  to  the  Em- 
peror Leo  the  Isaurian,  lays  down  carefully  the  Church's 
doctrine  on  this  point  as  well  as  upon  that  of  holy 
images :  "  Thou  sayest  that  we  worship  stones  and  walls  and 
pictures.  It  is  not,  Emperor,  as  thou  sayest,  but  that  our 
memory  may  be  stimulated,  and  that  our  stupid  inexpert 
heavy  mind  may  be  roused  and  borne  on  high  by  those 
whose  names  and  titles  and  images  these  are.  Not  that 
these  are  gods,  as  thou  sayest ;  far  be  it ;  for  we  put  not 
our  hope  in  them.  And  if  it  be  an  image  of  the  Lord, 
we  say,  'O  Lord  Jesus  Christ,  Son  of  God,  succour  and 
save  us;'*  but  if  of  His  Holy  Mother,  we  say,  *  Holy 
Mother  of  God,  Mother  of  the  Lord,  intercede  with  thy 
Son,  our  true  God,  that  He  save  our  souls  ; '  but  if  of  a 
martyr  :  '  Holy  Stephen,  who  didst  shed  thy  blood  for 
Christ,  who  as  protomartyr  hast  a  claim  to  plead  boldly, 
intercede  for  us"  (Labbe,  torn.  viii.  p.  658). 

ST.  JOHN  DAMASCEN  (circa  A.D.  740)  calls  the  Blessed 
Virgin  "Domina  Angelorum,"  queen  of  angels  (Serm. 
in  Nat.  B.  M.  V.  Op.  torn.  ii.  ed.  Lequien);  and  in 
his  sermon  De  Dormit.  B.  V.  M.  ibid.  p.  864,  thus 
apostrophises  her :  "  Thou  too  fulfilling  the  office  of 
Mediatrix,  and  made  the  ladder  of  God  coming  down  to 
us  to  assume  our  feeble  nature,  and  couple  and  unite  it 
with  Himself,  and  so  render  man's  mind  capable  of  seeing 
God,  didst  unite  what  was  severed.  .  .  .  Wherefore  let 

*  Wordsworth   testifies    to   the   wholesome   naturalness   of  this 
"  relative  latria"  in  his  "Boatmen's  Hymn  :" — 
"  Saviour,  for  our  warning  seen 

Bleeding  on  that  precious  Rood, 
If,  while  through  the  meadows  green 

Gently  wound  the  peaceful  flood, 
We  forgot  Thee,  do  not  Thou 
Disregard  Thy  suppliants  now." 


g6  THE  CULTUS  OF  MARY. 

us  all  hasten,  old  and  young,  ...  to  honour  our  Lady, 
our  nature's  Queen.  .  .  .  Let  us  say,  *  O  maiden's  glory, 
O  mother's  pride,  Mother  that  knewest  not  man,  O 
miracle  with  which  the  prophets  sent  of  God  were 
smitten,  and  whose  glory  overpowereth  the  holy  angels, 
be  propitious  to  the  prayers  of  thy  servants  who  implore 
thy  aid.  .  .  .  O  thou  Mary  whose  intercession  suffers  no 
repulse  nor  prayer  refusal ;  thou  that  art  nearest  to  the 
pure  Godhead,  coming  nighest  to  the  Holy  Trinity; 
lifted  up  above  the  ranks  of  the  Cherubim,  more  exalted 
than  the  squadrons  of  the  Seraphim ;  through  thee,  as 
long  as  we  shall  remain  in  this  fleeting  world,  may  we 
obtain  aid  to  perform  good  works  and  be  delivered 
from  our  evil  deeds,  and  after  our  passage  hence  may  we 
attain  to  the  most  high  and  everlasting  God,  to  the  glory 
of  the  kingdom  of  heaven,  and  to  an  habitation  in  the 
land  of  the  living." 

ST.  COSMAS  OF  JERUSALEM  (circa  A.D.  740),  Hymn  ii. 
Bib.  Max.  Pat.  Lugd.  1677, torn.  xii. : — "Every  tongue  fails 
to  celebrate  worthily,  even  heavenly  minds  grow  dim  in 
thy  praises,  O  Deipara ;  yet  in  thy  goodness  receive  our 
homage,  for  thou  knowest  our  God-inspired  desire.  Thou 
art  the  champion  of  Christians,  we  magnify  thee."  And 
Hymn  v.  : — "  With  pure  hearts  and  undefiled  lips  we 
magnify  the  Immaculate  and  wholly  pure  Mother  of 
Emmanuel,  through  her  and  from  her  offering  divine 
worship  to  her  Son."  Prayer — "Open  unto  us  the  gate 
of  mercy,  Blessed  Deipara.  Let  not,  therefore,  us  who 
hope  in  thee  go  astray ;  deliver  us  from  our  calamities, 
for  thou  art  the  Salvation  of  the  race  of  man."  "  Vast 
are  the  multitudes  of  my  sins,  O  Deipara ;  to  thee  I  fly, 
thou  holy  one,  craving  salvation.  Visit  my  soul  in  its 
sickness  and  ask  of  thy  Son  and  God  that  He  give  me 
remission  of  all  the  evil  I  have  done,  O  thou  uniquely 
holy,  uniquely  blessed."  "  All  my  hope  I  place  in  thee. 
Mother  of  light,  keep  me  under  thy  protection." 

ST.  GREGORY  THE  GREAT  (A.D.  604)  in  i  Reg.  c  i.  n. 


THE  CULTUS  OF  MARY.  97 

5,  says  of  Mount  Ephraim  : — "  Under  the  name  of 
this  mountain  the  most  Blessed  Virgin  Mary,  Mother 
of  God,  may  be  designated.  She  was  indeed  a  mountain 
which  transcended  all  heights  of  created  election  in  the 
dignity  of  her  election.  And  is  not  Mary  a  lofty  moun- 
tain, who,  that  she  might  attain  to  the  conception  of 
the  eternal  Word,  lifted  the  summit  of  her  merits  above 
the  choirs  of  the  Angels?  Of  the  exceeding  dignity  of 
this  mountain  Isaias,  prophesying,  saith,  '  There  shall 
be  prepared  in  the  last  days  a  mountain,  a  house  of 
the  Lord  upon  the  top  of  the  mountains/  A  mountain 
upon  the  top  of  the  mountains  was  she,  because  the 
loftiness  of  Mary  hath  shone  above  all  the  saints  ;  .  .  . 
A  mountain  upon  the  top  of  the  mountains  she  had  not 
bc-en,  unless  her  divine  fruitfulness  had  raised  her  above 
the  heights  of  the  angels."  * 

Ep.  52,  lib.  ix.  he  informs  Secundinus  that  he  has 
sent  him  two  pictures  of  Christ  and  the  Blessed  Virgin, 
and  SS.  Peter  and  Paul.  Of  the  former  he  says  :  "We 
prostrate  not  ourselves  before  it  as  a  divinity,  but  we  adore 
Him  whom  through  the  image  we  recall  to  mind,  as  born, 
or  suffering,  or  seated  on  His  throne."  t  Ep.  6,  we  have 
an  account  of  an  ardent  convert  from  Judaism  who  takes 
violent  possession  of  a  synagogue  in  which  he  sets  up  a 
cross  and  a  picture  of  the  Madonna.  St.  Gregory  orders 
the  removal  of  the  cross  and  the  picture  "  with  that 
reverence  which  is  their  due."  Again,  Dial.  1.  iv.  c.  17. 
he  relates  the  story  of  Musa,  a  little  girl  to  whom  our 
Lady  appeared,  and  warned  her  to  be  very  good,  and 
she  would  fetch  her  in  a  few  days.  As  the  time  drew 
near  the  child  fell  sick,  and  on  the  thirtieth  day  our 

*  The  genuineness  of  this  commentary,  disputed  by  Gussanville, 
is  defended  by  Cave.  It  is  supposed  by  Du  Pin  and  Thomassin 
to  have  been  put  together  from  notes  by  a  disciple,  and  to  this  the 
Benedictines  incline. 

t  This  letter  is  in  sundry  places  corrupt,  but  these  words  ate 
quoted  by  Gregory  II.  and  Adrian  I. 

G 


98  THE  CULTUS  OF  MARY. 

Lady  appeared.    The  child  dies  with  the  words,  "  Behold, 
Lady,  I  come ;  behold,  Lady,  I  come." 

THE  SACRAMENTARY  OF  POPE  GELASIUS  (A.D.  492- 
496)  contains  several  prayers  in  which  our  Lady's  inter- 
cession is  invoked.  The  following  for  vespers  of  the 
Annunciation  may  serve  as  a  specimen  : — "We  beseech 
Thee,  O  Almighty  God,  that  the  glorious  intercession  of 
the  Blessed  and  ever-glorious  Virgin  Mary,  Mother  of 
God,  may  protect  us  and  bring  us  to  eternal  life."  (See 
Muratori,  Liturg.  Rom.  et  Vet.  p.  643.) 

ST.  BASIL  OF  SELEUCIA  (A.D.  458),  one  of  the  Fathers  of 
Chalcedon (in Deip.  Combefis, Biblioth.  Pat. pp.  590-595) : 
— "  What  shall  we  say  of  the  Deipara,  who  in  splendour 
outshines  all  the  martyrs  as  much  as  the  sun's  bright- 
ness doth  the  twinkling  rays  of  the  stars  ?  "  "  Hail,  full  of 
grace,  most  flourishing  Paradise  of  Chastity,  in  which  the 
tree  of  life  was  planted  which  shall  yield  unto  all  the 
fruits  of  salvation,  from  which  the  four-mouthed  fountain 
of  the  Gospels  pours  forth  its  streams  of  mercy  to 
believers.  Hail,  full  of  grace,  Mediatrix  betwixt  God 
and  man,  through  whom  the  middle  wall  of  enmity  was 
removed,  earth  is  wed  with  heaven,  and  is  made  one 
with  it."  "Who  does  not  admire  the  power  of  the 
Deipara  and  her  eminence  above  all  the  saints  whom 
we  honour?  For  if  God  gave  such  grace  to  His  servants 
that  they  not  only  healed  the  sick  by  their  touch,  but 
even  by  their  shadow,  how  great  a  power  must  He  be 
conceived  to  have  bestowed  upon  His  Mother  !  A  much 
greater  than  upon  His  servants ;  that  is  evident.  What 
wonder  that  yet  amongst  men  and  walking  upon  the 
earth  the  saints  were  operative,  when  after  death  the 
tarth  cannot  hide  their  power?  For  although  stones 
conceal  their  bodies,  yet  in  necessity  they  can  save,  if 
only  recourse  is  had  to  them  duly.  But  if  He  grants  to 
these  the  power  of  working  miracles,  what  in  reward  for 
her  nurture  will  He  not  grant  to  His  Mother,  and  with 
what  gifts  has  He  not  adorned  her,  and  deservedly  !  For 


THE  CULTUS  OF  MARY.  99 

if  that  sun  by  whose  light  we  are  illumined  from  without 
so  fills  us  with  brightness,  how  much  more  He  who  is 
the  sun's  Lord,  that  luminary  of  brightness  and  splendour, 
dwelling  in  the  most  chaste  Virgin,  hath  filled  her  with 
divine  light!  If  Peter  was  called  ' Blessed]  and  had 
intrusted  to  him  the  keys  of  the  kingdom  of  heaven  foi 
acknowledging  Christ  as  the  Son  of  the  living  God,  how 
should  she  by  all  not  be  pronounced  '  more  Blessed ' 
who  merited  to  bring  forth  Him  whom  he  confessed  ! 
If  Paul  was  called  a  vessel  of  election  because  he  carried 
the  august  name  of  Christ  and  preached  it  throughout 
the  world,  what  a  vessel  was  God's  Mother,  who  did 
not  merely  as  the  golden  vase  hold  manna,  but  carried 
in  her  womb  that  Bread  of  Heaven,  that  Bread,  I  say, 
which  is  given  to  the  faithful  for  their  nourishment  and 
support ! " 

ST.  PROCLUS,  secretary  to  St.  John  Chrysostom,  and, 
A.D.  437,  his  successor  (Orat.  v.  Combefis,  Auctar.  Nov.), 
says  that  Mary  is  above  all  the  prophets  and  holy 
men  of  old.  "They  have  nothing  that  can  be  compared 
to  Mary  the  Mother  of  God,  for  Him  whom  they  saw  in 
figure  she  bore  incarnate  in  her  womb.  .  .  .  Run  through 
all  created  things,  O  man,  in  thy  thought,  traverse  earth, 
and  cast  thine  eyes  over  the  sea,  examine  diligently  the 
air,  let  thy  soul  search  out  the  heavens,  intellectually 
weigh  all  the  invisible  powers,  and  see  if  any  other  such 
wonder  can  be  found  in  the  whole  of  creation.  For  the 
heavens  indeed  are  telling  the  glory  of  God ;  the  angels, 
in  fear,  render  service ;  the  archangels  worship  trembling ; 
the  Cherubim  shudder,  overpowered  by  His  glory ;  the 
Seraphim  hover  round  and  dare  not  draw  near,  quivering 
as  they  cry,  Holy,  Holy,  Holy,  Lord  of  Sabaoth.  The 
heavens  and  the  earth  are  full  of  His  glory.  .  .  .  Marvel 
at  the  Virgin's  conquest,  in  that  Him  whom  all  creation 
extols  with  fear  and  trembling,  she  alone,  in  a  man- 
ner unspeakable,  hath  received  within .  her  chamber." 
"Through  her  all  women  are  blessed.  .  .  .  Eve  is 


100  THE  CULTUS  OF  MARY. 

healed.  .  .  .  Mary  is  worshipped  (<rec>a-/.uviTr(xi)  as  be* 
comes  the  mother,  the  handmaid,  the  cloud,  the  bride- 
chamber,  the  ark  of  the  Lord.  .  .  .  Therefore  we  say,. 
'  Blessed  art  thou  amongst  women,'  who  alone  hast  found 
a  remedy  for  Eve's  sorrow,  hast  alone  wiped  away  the 
tears  of  that  mourner,  didst  carry  the  price  of  the 
world's  redemption,  didst  receive  the  treasure  of  the 
pearl  in  trust." 

ST.  PETER  CHRYSOLOGUS  (A.D.  449),  Serm.  74,  cannot 
speak  of  the  Mary,  the  sister  of  Martha,  at  the  raising  of 
Lazarus,  without  reminding  us  that  she  is  fitly  present, 
because  she  bears  the  name  of  Mary,  "without  whom 
death  could  not  be  chased  away  nor  life  restored  ; "  and 
again  (Serm.  143) :  "To  each  of  the  other  children  of 
men  grace  gave  itself  by  part,  but  to  Mary  the  whole 
fulness  of  grace  gave  itself  at  once."* 

ST.  JEROME  says  that  Mary  is  the  hundredfold  yield 
of  the  divine  field,  compared  with  whom  others,  nomi- 
natim  St.  Elizabeth  and  Zachary,  are  "much  inferior" 
(Dial.  cont.  Pelag.  i.  s.  16).  We  see  the  place  our  Lady 
occupied  in  St.  Jerome's  devotion  in  his  consolatory 
letter  to  Paula  (Ep.  xxxix.).  He  puts  these  touching 
words  into  her  daughter's  mouth  :  "  In  thy  place  I  have 
Mary  the  mother  of  the  Lord ;"  and  again  (Ep.  xxii.),  to 
Eustochium  :  "  What  a  day  will  that  be  when  the  Mother 
of  the  Lord  comes  to  meet  thee,  accompanied  by  her 
choirs  of  virgins  ! " 

ST.  AUGUSTINE  (Serm.  cxci.  s.  4)  makes  Mary  the  very 
well-spring  of  the  interior  life  of  nuns.  "  From  Mary's 
unspoiled  virginity  holy  virgins  are  born ;  you  who, 
despising  the  world's  marriage,  have  chosen  to  be  virgins 
even  in  your  flesh,  celebrate  with  solemn  joy  the  birth 
from  a  virgin  this  day.  .  .  .  She,  then,  whose  footsteps 
you  are  following,  abode  not  with  any  man  in  order  to 
conceive,  and,  when  she  was  bearing  the  child,  remained 
a  virgin.  Imitate  her  as  much  as  you  can.  .  .  .  That 
*  See  Morris,  "Jesus  the  Son  of  Mary,"  vol.  ii.  p.  167. 


THE  CULTUS  OF  MARY.  1O1 

\vhich  you  wonder  at  in  the  flesh  of  Mary  do  within  the 
recesses  of  your  soul." 

ST.  AMBROSE  (lib.  ii.  De  Virg.) :  "Let  the  virginity  and 
life  of  the  Blessed  Mary  be  drawn  before  you  as  if  in  a 
picture,  from  whom,  as  in  a  mirror,  is  reflected  the  face 
of  Chastity,  and  Virtue's  figure.  .  ,  .  In  learning,  the  prime 
stimulus  is  to  be  found  in  the  nobleness  of  the  teacher. 
Now  what  has  more  nobleness  than  God's  mother  ? 
What  brighter  than  she  whom  Brightness  selected? 
What  chaster  than  she  who,  without  the  contact  of  a 
body,  gave  birth  to  a  body  ?  " 

ST.  EPHREM  SYRUS  (A.D.  379)  thus  presents  Mary  in 
her  character  of  "advocate"  at  the  foot  of  the  Cross  : 
"Adam  was  naked  and  beautiful,  his  thrifty  wife  wrought 
and  made  for  him  a  garment  of  shame ;  the  garden  which 
he  had  polluted  saw  it  and  bewailed  it.  Mary  begged  for 
the  garment  that  adorned  the  thief,  and  she  cheered  him 
by  the  promise  ("  This  day,"  &c.).  The  garden  (i.e.  Para- 
dise) saw  him  and  embraced  him  in  Adam's  stead"  (vol. 
iii.  p.  572  d.  ap.  Morris  /.  ^.). 

ST.  GREGORY  NYSSEN  (A.D.  395)  relates  that  our  Lady 
appeared  to  St.  Gregory  of  Neocaesarea  in  a  shape  "  more 
than  human,"  and  bade  St.  John  the  Evangelist  disclose  to 
him  "  the  mystery  of  godliness,"  which  he  did  in  the 
form  of  a  profession  of  faith,  which  the  saint  ever  after 
made  use  of.  (See  Card.  Newman's  Letter,  p.  79.) 

ST.  GREGORY  NAZIANZEN  (A.D.  329-389),  Orat.  xxiv. 
sec.  n,  relates  how  St.  Justina,  when  her  chastity  was 
endangered,  betook  herself  to  our  Lady,  "suppliantly 
beseeching  the  Virgin  Mary  to  give  succour  to  a  mai- 
den in  peril."  St.  Gregory's  view  that  the  Cyprian  who 
was  Justina's  persecutor  after  his  conversion  became  St. 
Cyprian  of  Carthage  is  of  course  untenable,  but  this  in 
no  way  derogates  from  his  evidence  as  to  the  sentiment 
of  his  day. 

ST.  IREN^EUS  (A.D.  135-202): — "As  she  (Eve),  having 
indeed  Adam  for  a  husband,  but  as  yet  being  a  virgin, 


IO2  THE  CULTUS  OF  MARY. 

becoming  disobedient,  became  the  cause  of  death  to  her* 
self  and  to  the  whole  human  race,  so  also  Mary  having 
the  predestined  man,  and  being  yet  a  virgin,  being  obed- 
ient, became  both  to  herself  and  to  the  whole  human 
race  the  cause  of  salvation"  (Adv.  Haer.  iii.  22,  n.  4),  and 
(v.  19,  n.  i)  "though  the  one  had  disobeyed  God,  yet 
the  other  was  drawn  to  obey  God ;  so  that  of  the  virgin 
Eve  the  Virgin  Mary  might  become  the  advocate."  The 
advocate,  intercessor  of  Eve  and  of  Eve's  children — ist, 
by  her  participation  in  the  act  of  redemption  ;  2d,  by  her 
continued  pleading  in  their  behalf.  No  doubt  the  first 
sense  is  the  primary  one  in  this  passage,  but  the  second 
is  not  excluded.  Dr.  Littledale  has  tried  (see  note  to 
p.  67,  3d  ed.)  to  limit  the  meaning  of  advocate  to  that 
of  consoler,  in  the  sense  that  women  who  lamented  be* 
cause  of  Eve  may  now  rejoice  because  of  Mary.  His 
argument  is  that  the  Greek,  which  is  lost,  is  generally 
supposed  to  have  been  UaoaxXyros.  But  Dr.  Littledale 
should  have  told  his  readers  that  comforter  in  its  ordinary 
sense  is  by  no  means  the  proper  word  for  Paraclete, 
which  is,  after  all,  as  much  a  technical  legal  word  as  the 
Latin  advocatus^  and  has  precisely  the  same  meaning  of 
advocate  or  patron.  It  is  the  word  used  of.  Christ, 
"  advocatum  habemus,"  we  have  an  advocate,  mediator. 
Moreover,  the  word  and  its>  derivatives  are  used  three 
times  by  Irenaeus,  and  each  time  in  this  same  sense  of 
advocacy:  lib.  iii.  c.  18,  n.  7,  " advocationem  prsebentes 
peccato,"  patronising  sin;  lib.  iv.  c.  34,  n.  8,  "si  aliquis 
Judaeis  advocationem  prsestans,"  if  any  one  taking  up  the 
cause  of  the  Jews ;  lib.  iii.  c.  23,  n.  8,  "  qui  contradicunt 
saluti  Adae  .  .  .  advocates  se  serpentis  et  mortis  osten- 
dunt,"  those  who  gainsay  the  salvation  of  Adam  show 
that  they  are  the  advocates  of  the  serpent  and  death 
(cf.  Massuet.  in  Iren.  diss.  ii.  art.  6).  Dr.  Littledale  has 
authority  in  the  Benedictine  Latin  Glossary  to  Irenaeus. 
for  taking  "advocabat  plangentes"  (iii.  9,  3),  as  'He 
consoled  the  mourners ; '  although  there  seems  to  be  no. 


SUMMARY  OF  EVIDENCE.  103 

reason  here  for  bringing  in  any  variation  upon  the 
normal  sense  of  '  invite '  (vocare  ad).  Granting,  however, 
such  a  use  of  "  advocare,"  the  point  is  that  it  would  not 
tend  to  give  "  advocata  "  in  the  sense  of  consoler,  but  only 
in  the  sense  of  consoled. 

2.  Summary  of  Evidence. 

The  Blessed  Virgin  is  the  highest  and  holiest  of  God's 
creatures,  and  therefore  the  most  worthy  of  our  honour. 
She  is  the  most  powerful  of  intercessors  with  God,  there- 
fore her  cultus  must  be  the  most  beneficial  to  man.  St 
Ephrem  and  St.  Gregory  Nyssen  give  instances  of  her 
intercession.  St.  John  Damascen  and  St.  Cosmas  give 
direct  prayers  to  Mary;  the  Sacramentary  of  Gelasius 
indirect  prayers.  St.  Gregory  Nazianzen  puts  a  direct 
invocation  of  Mary  in  the  mouth  of  the  Virgin  Martyr,  SL 
Justina.  A  Father  of  Chalcedon  vehemently  encourages 
her  invocation  by  enlarging  on  her  immense  superiority 
to  all  the  other  saints,  precisely  as  to  her  power  of  bene- 
faction. In  St.  Gregory  the  Great's  time,  Mary's  picture 
is  with  the  crucifix  shown  to  be  the  very  insignia  of  a 
Christian  church.  That  this  had  been  more  or  less  the 
case  from  the  beginning  is  proved  by  the  frescoes  of  the 
Madonna  and  Child  in  the  Catacombs,  ascribed  by  the 
best  authorities  to  the  first,  second,  and  third  centuries. 
Before  any  division  of  East  and  West,  the  Church  of  the 
eighth  century,  as  represented  by  St  John  Damasceu 
and  St.  Cosmas,  is  as  direct  and  free  in  its  invocation  of 
Mary  as  the  Catholic  Church  of  the  nineteenth.  Our 
Lady's  cultus  has  ever  been,  to  say  the  least  of  it,  equally 
pronounced  in  the  scrupulously  conservative  Greek 
Church  as  in  the  Latin  ;  witness  the  collection  of  prayers 
from  the  Greek  office-books  in  Cardinal  Newman's 
"Letter,"  Note  D.  Indeed,  if  we  admit  the  position  of 
our  Lady  as  presented  to'  us  by  the  early  Fathers,  and 
the  principle  of  the  invocation  of  saints,  established  as 
it  is  over  and  over  again  in  the  cultus  of  martyrs,  and 


IO4        CULTUS  OF  OUR  LADY  IN  THE  EARLY  CHURCH. 

witnessed  to  so  abundantly  in  passages  already  quoted, 
the  cultus  of  Mary  is  a  logical  necessity.  If  we  found 
no  traces  of  it  whatever,  we  should  stand  aghast  as 
though  before  some  stately  edifice  which  cast  no  shadow 
under  a  brilliant  sun.  That  there  was  some  cultus  of 
Mary  during  the  first  four  centuries  has  been  sufficiently 
established ;  we  have  now  to  answer  the  question  why 
this  did  not  assume  larger  proportions  and  assert  itself 
more  prominently  than  it  did. 

3.  Imperfect  Development  of  the  Cultus  of  Our  Lady  in  the 
Early  Church. 

This  is  to  be  attributed,  primarily,  to  the  fact  that  the 
system  with  which  Christianity  found  itself  in  immediate 
conflict  was  polytheism,  and  the  truth  which  it  was  above 
all  necessary  to  inculcate  was  the  unity  of  the  object  of 
worship.  On  this  account  the  direct  worship  of  Christ 
and  of  the  Holy  Ghost  as  Almighty  God  was  to  a  certain 
extent  in  abeyance  during  the  first  three  centuries ;  at 
least  it  was  not  given  anything  approaching  the  promi- 
nence it  assumed  in  the  ensuing  centuries.  How  many 
instances,  I  would  ask,  of  direct  invocation  of  Christ  or 
of  the  Holy  Ghost  as  Almighty  God  are  to  be  found  in 
the  New  Testament  or  in  the  writings  of  the  Fathers  of 
the  first  three  centuries?  For  example,  is  there  one 
such  invocation  in  the  works  of  Justin  or  Tertullian  or 
Gregory  Thaumaturgus  or  Cyprian?*  "It  required 
century  after  century,"  says  Cardinal  Newman,  "  to  spread 
it  out  (the  doctrine  of  Christ's  Divine  personality),  and  to 
imprint  it  energetically  on  the  worship  and  practice  of  the 
Catholic  peoples  as  well  as  on  their  faith.  Athanasius  was 
the  first  and  the  great  teacher  of  it"  f  It  was  prac- 
tically impossible  to  present  to  a  polytheistic  world  a 
Trinity  of  Divine  persons  without  seeming  polytheis- 
tically  to  divide  the  object  of  Divine  worship;  and  to  a 

*  See  "Home  and  Foreign  Review,"  April  1864,  pp.  658,  659. 
t  Letter  to  Dr.  Pusey,  p.  92. 


CULTUS  OF  OUR  LADY  IN  THE  EARLY  CHURCH.        105 

rorld  which  had  lost  the  tradition  of  the  relations  between 
Creator  and  creature,  a  subordinate  worship,  in  which 
the  Creator  should  be  worshipped  in  His  creature,  could 
only  very  gradually  be  made  intelligible.  Especially  was 
the  worship  of  the  "  Mother  of  God,"  the  "  Queen  of 
Heaven  " — a  title  which  almost  seemed  to  reintroduce 
the  banished  dynasty  of  Olympus — open  to  difficulty 
and  abuse,  such  as  we  see  was  the  case  with  the  Colly- 
ridians  Combated  by  St.  Epiphanius.  Naturally,  then, 
and  inevitably,  it  was  only  when  the  Divine  cultus  of 
Christ  was  established  in  perfect  harmony  with  the  wor- 
ship of  one  only  God  that  it  was  safe  to  give  free  scope 
to  the  worship  of  His  Mother.  At  the  same  time  it 
must  be  remembered  that  the  writings  of  the  early 
Fathers  took  for  the  most  part  the  form  of  doctrinal 
exposition  or  of  apology,  and  that  neither  is  the  natural 
field  of  devotion.  When  we  come  to  the  sermons,  e.g., 
those  of  St.  John  Chrysostom  and  St.  Augustine,  we 
are  met  with  various  panegyrics  of  the  Blessed  Virgin, 
the  false  attribution  of  which  to  the  Fathers  whose 
names  they  bear  is  very  generally  admitted.  But  what 
does  this  come  to  ?  For  the  most  part  the  adverse 
criticism  falls  upon  certain  forms  of  expression,  certain 
presentations  of  doctrine,  or  references  to  events,  which 
are  recognised  as  belonging  to  a  subsequent  date.  Any 
one  who  knows  what  is  the  fate  of  sermons,  even  in  our 
own  day,  will  hesitate  to  regard  much  of  this  criticism 
as  conclusive,  at  least  in  regard  to  the  result  of  com- 
plete disappropriation.  How  many  sermons  of  popular 
preachers  of  the  present  day  have  been  broken  up  in 
sermon  cases,  and  received  variations,  both  in  idea  and 
phraseology,  from  their  new  enunciators,  which  nothing 
but  the  modern  distinction  between  print  and  manuscript 
has  kept  out  of  the  text.  Of  course  this  is  no  excuse 
for  uncritical  quotation,  but  it  does  suggest,  I  conceive, 
a  reasonable  caveat  against  assuming  that  St.  John 
Chrysostom  and  St.  Augustine  never  panegyrised  our 


106    SCRIPTURE  OBJECTIONS  TO  THE  CULTUS  OF  MARY. 

Lady,  because  their  panegyrics,  as  they  stand,  must  needs 
be  relegated  to  the  list  of  spuria  or  dubia.  Any- 
how, my  hypothesis  is  far  more  reasonable  than  that 
which  supposes  a  sudden  birth  of  Marian  devotion 
between  Chrysostom  and  Damascen,  nay,  in  the  quarter 
of  a  century  between  Chrysostom  and  Proclus,  and  this 
in  a  Church  which  was  a  model  of  conservatism. 

4.  Scripture  Objections  to  the  Cultus  of  Mary. 

1.  Luke  ii.  41-50.    Our  Lady  is  "rebuked,"  Dr.  Little- 
dale  thinks,  for  her  search  of  Him.     For  what  conceiv- 
able fault  ?  I  would  ask.     Nothing  short  of  a  command- 
ment no  longer  to  exercise  a  mother's  part  towards  Him 
could  have  justified  her  in  not  seeking.     Was  it  that  she 
sought   Him  amongst  her  kinsfolk  instead  of  at  once 
betaking  herself  to  the  Temple  ?    But  she  thought  He  had 
left  the  Temple.      Who  would  conceive   a   fault  here 
unless  he  thought  himself  compelled  to  look  for  matter 
for  a  rebuke?     There  is  no  more  rebuke  on  the  one  side 
than  on  the  other.    "  Son,  why  hast  Thou  done  so  to  us  ? 
Thy  father  and   I   have  sought  Thee  sorrowing/'  is  at 
least  as  much  a  rebuke  as  "  Why  is  it  that  you  sought 
Me  ?    Knewest  thou  not  that  about  those  things  that  are 
My  Father's  I  must  needs  be?"     This — not  to  speak 
of  the  mystic  lesson    of  detachment  conveyed  to   us 
in  our  Lord's  words — is  the  natural  antithesis  of  affec- 
tion, in  which  only  Protestant  dulness  could  suspect  a 
quarrel 

2.  Matt.  xii.  46-50  ;  Mark  iii.  31-36.     Christ's  answer, 
when   told  that    His  Mother   and   brethren   desired  to 
speak  with    Him,   extolling  as   higher  than  any  casual 
relationship  the    spiritual  relationship    of  good  works; 
and  Luke  ii.  27,  28,  when  Christ  replies  to  the  woman 
who  extols  the  blessedness  of  His  Mother,  "  Yea,  rather 
blessed  are  they  that  hear  the  word  of  God  and  keep  it." 
On  both  occasions  He  commends  spiritual  nearness  to 
Himself  as  something  higher  than  any  other.     The  com- 


REV.  JAMES  A.  GRANT  BEQUEST 
8T.  MARY'S  COLLEGE  LIBRARY,  X926 

SCRIPTURE  OBJECTIONS  TO  THE  CULTUS  OF  MARY.     107 

parison  is  one  of  relations,  not  of  persons,  and  the  per- 
fection of  both  relationships  might  culminate  in  the  one 
person,  as  indeed  was  the  case;  for  was  she  not  "the 
handmaid  of  the  Lord"  as  well  as  His  Mother?  and  did 
she  not  "  keep  all  these  things  and  ponder  them  in  her 
heart "  ?  If  in  Christ's  "  yea  rather  "  He  be  supposed  to 
deprecate  His  Mother's  cultus,  He  must  no  less  be  sup- 
posed to  deprecate  His  own,  for  the  woman  in  the 
crowd  primarily  extolled  Him,  and  His  Mother  only 
for  His  sake.  Doubtless  He  would  turn  men's  minds 
from  the  external  greatness  of  His  Mother's  prerogative 
as  of  His  own,  to  fix  them  rather  upon  His  and  His 
Mother's  truer  glory,  as  when  He  said,  "  Callest  thou 
Me  good  ?  "  * 

3.  John  ii.  4.  When  our  Lady  pleads  "  they  have  no 
wine,"  Christ  answers,  "What  is  there  between  Me  and 
thee  ?  Mine  hour  is  not  yet  come."  These  are  mysterious 
words,  but  can  we  be  surprised  that  the  mystic  lessons 
given  by  Jesus  to  Mary  are  hard  to  understand  ?  One 
thing  is  clear,  that  she  did  not  -ask  for  anything  she 
should  not  have  asked  for,  because  He  granted  it ;  nor 
inopportunely,  except  in  that  sense  in  which  we  are 
all  bidden  to  pray  "in  season  and  out  of  season."  St. 
Cyril  of  Alexandria  says  that  Christ  wrought  the  miracle 
then  which  He  was  Himself  unwilling  to  work,  in  order 
to  show  "  reverence  to  His  mother ; "  and  that  "  she, 
having  great  authority  for  the  working  of  the  miracle, 
got  the  victory,  persuading  the  Lord  as  being  her  son, 
as  was  most  fitting."  (See  Cardinal  Newman's  Letter,  C. 
p.  140.)  And  Mary  knew  that  she  had  "  got  the  victory," 
that  there  was  no  rejection  of  prayer  in  Christ's  words, 
or  tone,  or  look  ;  and  she  said  to  the  waiters,  "  Whatso- 
ever He  shall  say  unto  you,  do  ye."  He  called  her 
"woman"  (yvvat),  a  name  which,  in  its  ordinary  use,  is 
expressive  at  once  of  tenderness  and  respect,  t  a  name 

*  See  Dr.  Ward's  Essays,  Devotional  and  Scriptural,  pp.  218-225. 
t  This  is  abundantly  recognised  by  Protestant   critics.     Tritler 


108       PATRISTIC  OBJECTIONS  TO  THE  CULTUS  OF  MARY. 

with  which  Christ  addressed  her  in  their  hour  of  closest 
union,  when  she  stood  at  the  foot  of  His  Cross.  It  is 
a  name,  as  Fr.  Coleridge  remarks,  which  may  well  have 
been  used  advisedly,  for  a  reason  "kindred  to  that  for 
which  He  called  Himself  so  constantly  the  Son  of  Man. 
He  was  the  second  Adam,  '  the  Father  of  the  world  to 
come,'  as  she  was  the  Mother."  The  other  words, 
'What  is  there  between  Me  and  thee?  Mine  hour  is  not 
yet  come,'  express  the  mystic  violence  of  prayer,  like  the 
cry  of  the  angel  with  whom  Jacob  wrestled,  '  Let  me 
go  ; '  or  God's  words  to  Moses,  '  Leave  me  alone,  that 
My  wrath  may  be  kindled  against  them.'  The  hour  of 
prayer  is  the  penultimate  hour  immediately  preceding 
God's  hour  of  grace.* 

5.  Patristic  Objections  to  the  Cultus  of  Mary. 

j.  Tertullian,  Origen,  Basil,  Chrysostom,  and  Jerome 
conceive  that  Mary  fell  into  slight  sin  now  and  again. 
Cyril  of  Alexandria  thinks  she  was  violently  tempted  by 
interior  temptations  during  our  Lord's  Passion;  whereas 
Gregory  the  Great,  Ambrose,  Augustine,  and  others  sup- 
port the  view  which  gradually  prevailed  in  the  Church 
that  our  Lady  was  simply  sinless.  Dr.  Littledale  tries  to 
argue  that  the  Fathers  who  could  attribute  any  sort  of 
sin  to  Mary  must  on  that  account  be  opposed  to  her 
cultus ;  but  that  is  absurd,  for  Chrysostom  and  Basil 
and  Jerome,  e.g.,  were,  as  we  have  seen,  ardent  advocates 
of  the  cultus  of  the  martyrs,  all  of  whom  had  committed 
sin,  and  some  of  them  grievous  sin.  Neither  can  the 
attribution  of  such  sin  be  taken  as  necessarily  implying 
a  disbelief  in  her  Immaculate  Conception  ;  for  original  sin 
implies  a  total  absence  of  the  supernatural  life  of  grace, 
whereas  venial  sin  does  not.  Cardinal  Newman  (Letter, 

^ap.  Wolf  in  Joan.)  paraphrases  it  as  "sestimatissima  femina,"  or 
Lady.  Kuinoel  (Comment,  in  Nov.  Test.)  has  collected  a  number 
of  passages  from  the  classics  to  prove  the  point. 

*  See  Fr.  Coleridge,  Public  Life  of  Our  Lord,  vol.  i.  pp.  159-161 


PATRISTIC  OBJECTIONS  TO  THE  CULTUS  OF  MARY.        109 

Note  C.)  thus  accounts  for  the  inadequate  view  of 
Mary's  sinlessness  taken  by  several  of  the  Fathers : — "In 
the  broad  imperial  world  the  conception  entertained  of 
womankind  was  not  high  ;  it  seemed  only  to  perpetuate 
the  poetical  tradition  of  the  '  varium  et  mutabile  semper.' 
Little  then  was  known  of  that  true  nobility  which  is  ex- 
emplified in  the  females  of  the  Gothic  and  German  races, 
and  in  those  of  the  old  Jewish  stock,  Miriam,  Deborah, 
Judith,  Susanna,  the  forerunners  of  Mary.  When,  then, 
Chrysostom  imputes  vainglory  to  her,  he  is  not  imputing 
to  her  anything  worse  than  an  infirmity,  the  infirmity  of 
a  nature  inferior  to  man's  and  intrinsically  feeble ;  as 
though  the  Almighty  could  have  created  a  more  excel- 
lent being  than  Mary  but  could  not  have  made  a  greater 
woman."  Graeco-Roman  rhetoric,  I  may  add,  which 
furnished  the  form  to  so  much  of  the  patristic  writings, 
never  sought  its  topics  in  the  exalted  ideal  of  the 
Greek  tragedy,  where  it  would  have  met  with  the  stately 
figure  of  an  Antigone  or  an  Alcestis  ;  it  sought  its  topics 
in  common  life  or  in  that  art  which  was  least  removed 
from  common  life,  and,  until  Christianity  came,  enthu- 
siasm was  a  transport  and  not  a  way  of  life.  Chrysostom 
and  Basil  drew  their  commonplaces,  new  TO  ywaiov,  from 
the  pages  of  Homeric  scholiasts,  and  Hecuba  and  An- 
dromache, as  the  representatives  of  womankind,  were 
ever  holding  back  their  hero  from  the  paths  of  dangerous 
glory  to  which  a  higher  duty  impelled  him,  whilst  the 
loftiest  of  their  female  virtues  were  hardly  more  than  a 
foil  to  set  off  manliness.  If  any  one  is  inclined  to  doubt 
the  power  of  a  paganised  imagination  amongst  the  saints 
and  martyrs  of  the  early  Church,  let  him  recollect  the 
countless  quaint  disguises  under  which  our  Lord  appears, 
as  Orpheus,  Hercules,  &c.,  in  the  frescoes  of  the  Roman 
Catacombs.  Then,  as  Cardinal  Newman  points  out,  there 
were  special  reasons  for  the  obscuration  of  the  tradition 
of  Mary's  sinlessness  in  the  homes  of  Chrysostom  and 
Basil.  "  It  is  not  surely  wonderful  if  in  Syria  and  Asia 


110       PATRISTIC  OBJECTIONS  TO  THE  CULTUS  OF  MARY. 

Minor,  the  seat  in  the  fourth  century  of  Arianism  and 
Semi-Arianism,  the  prerogatives  of  the  Mother  were  ob- 
scured, together  with  the  essential  glory  of  the  Son,  or  if 
they  who  denied  the  tradition  of  His  divinity  forgot  the 
tradition  of  her  sinlessness." 

2.  St.  Hilary  of  Poictiers  (in  ?s.  cxviii.  n.  12)  urges 
Dr.  Littledale  (p.  56),  speaks  of  the  "fire"  of  the  day 
of  judgment,  and  of  "the  severity  of  the  judgment"  into 
which  even  "the  Virgin  who  conceived  God  is  to  come." 
I  answer  that,  as  gold  is  tried  in  the  fire,  yet,  if  quite  pure, 
loses  nothing;  so,  St.  Hilary  does  not  say  that  our  Lady 
will  suffer,  but  that  she  will  pass  through  that  fire  of 
judgment  through  which  all  must  pass,  as  he,  with  other 
Fathers,  understood   to  be  represented  by  the  flaming 
sword  barring  Paradise.     Both  St.  Ambrose  (in  Ps.  cxviii. 
Serm.   20,  n.  12)  and  St.  Hilary  (n.  13)  contemplate  an 
innocence  that  need  not  fear.     St.  Ambrose  instances 
St.  John  the  Evangelist  and  St.  Peter,  and  lays  down 
generally  (n.  13)  that  "  whosoever  hath  here  the  fire  of 
charity,  there  will  not  be  able  to  be  afraid  of  the  fire 
of  the  sword."     Much  the  same  idea  is  expressed  in 
Cardinal  Newman's  "  Dream  of  Gerontius."     It  is  only 
because  Gerontius'  soul  is  not  quite  pure,  that  ..."  the 
keen  sanctity  which,  with  its  influence  like  a  glory  clothes 
and  circles  round  the  Crucified,  has  seized,  and  scorched, 
and  shrivelled  it." 

3.  St.   Epiphanius  condemned  the  Collyridians,  who 
worshipped  Mary  as  a  goddess,  offering  her  sacrifice ; 
and  Dr.  Littledale  (p.  56)  tries  to  make  a  point  of  the 
Saint's  wholesale  condemnation  of  this  cultus,  as  though, 
had  he  held  the  present  Marian  doctrine,  he  would  have 
said,  "Worship,  but  do  not  offer  sacrifice."     But  the 
Collyridian  cultus  was  in  itself  bad,  being  based  upon 
the  heretical  assumption  that  Mary  was  something  more 
than  human,  therefore  none  of  its  acts  could  be  innocent. 
In  laying  the  blame  upon  "excessive  adoration  of  that 
Holy  Virgin,"  St.  Epiphanius  equivalently  admits  that 


IMAGE-WORSHIP.  I  T  t 

there  may  be  an  adoration  not  excessive,  such  as  a 
cultus  of  dulia  or  hyperdulia,  including  direct  invocation 
but  rejecting  sacrifice,  which  yet,  as  compared  with 
latria,  is  no  worship  at  all  (Epiph.  Op.  torn.  i.  p.  1064). 


§  4.  Image-Worship. 
i.   The  Theology  of  Image- Worship. 

Dr.  Littledale  asserts  (p.  26)  "that  all  that  part  (of  the 
first  commandment)  which  forbids  the  making  of  graven 
images  for  the  purpose  of  religious  honour  is  suppressed 
in  every  popular  Roman  catechism"  The  italics  are  his 
own.  This  statement  was  so  simply  untrue,  or,  what  was 
more  to  the  purpose,  was  so  immediately  and  completely 
disposed  of  by  the  production  of  a  number  of  our  Catholic 
catechisms  with  the  clause  in  question,  that  in  Dr. 
Littledale's  second  edition  the  passage  is,  without  how- 
ever a  word  of  acknowledgment,  let  drop,  and  the  follow- 
ing substituted — "No  Roman  Catholic  catechism  teaches 
that  there  is  either  danger  or  sin  in  any  making  or  using 
of  images  for  religious  honour  short  of  actual  paganism;" 
a  most  ambiguous  sentence  in  Dr.  Littledale's  mouth, 
as  any  one  may  see  who  will  compare  what  he  says 
about  the  doctrine  of  "intelligent  and  shrewd  heathens" 
being  identical  with  that  of  Roman  Catholic  controversi- 
alists. So  read,  it  involves  a  quasi-justification  of  Roman 
Catholic  catechisms,  inasmuch  as  they  all  stop  short  of 
Roman  Catholic  idolatrous  doctrine.  Having  found, 
however,  that  several  Roman  Catholic  catechisms  have 
abridged  what  is  with  us  the  first  commandment,  so  as 
to  leave  out  the  part  about  graven  images,  in  his  third 
edition  Dr.  Littledale  makes  his  sentence  run  thus: — 
"  Many  Roman  catechisms  omit  the  second  command- 
ment, while  no"  &c.  Dr.  Littledale  would  seem  to  have 
adopted  the  view  that,  in  order  to  attain  the  truth  re- 
garding the  Holy  Catholic  Church,  you  have  only  to 


112  IMAGE- WORSHIP. 

provide  a  sufficient  block  of  accusation,  and  gradually 
beneath  the  blows  of  controversy  the  figure  of  truth, 
which  Dr.  Littledale  knows  must  be  lurking  there,  will 
come  to  light.  I  can  only  say  that  there  is  something 
still  to  be  done  to  Dr.  Littledale's  statement  before  the 
truth  is  beaten  out  of  it.  It  is  not  true  that  "  no  Roman 
Catholic  catechism  teaches  that  there  is  either  danger 
or  sin  in  any  making  or  using  of  images  for  religious 
honour  short  of  actual  paganism,"  .i.e.,  direct  worship 
of  idols  as  gods.  The  catechism  of  the  Council  of 
Trent  (i.  8)  enumerates  several.  "In  what  principal 
ways  can  the  Deity  be  offended  through  images  ?  Mainly 
in  two  ways.  As  regards  this  precept,  it  is  clear  that  the 
majesty  of  God  may  be  vehemently  offended  :  the  one  if 
idols  and  images  are  worshipped  as  God,  or  it  is  believed 
that  there  is  in  them  any  divinity  or  virtue  on  account  of 
which  they  are  to  be  worshipped,  or  that  anything  is  to  be 
asked  of  them ^  or  that  faith  is  to  be  put  in  the  images  them- 
selves" The  other  principal  way  which  the  catechism 
goes  on  to  mention  is  anthropomorphism. 

As  regards  the  first  commandment,  embracing  as  it 
does  the  Anglican  first  and  second,  I  conceive  that  the 
second  part  is  only  forbidding  a  subdivision  of  the  matter 
forbidden  by  the  first  part,  as  thus — (i.)  Thou  shalt  not 
have  other  gods  beside  Me ;  (2.)  Thou  shalt  not  make 
lor  worship,  or  worship,  any  images  of  those  other  gods. 
The  matter  forbidden  by  the  second  is  not  outside  the 
matter  forbidden  by  the  first.  This  is  the  view  of  Paley 
(Sermon  on  Exod.  xx.  5) : — "The  first  and  second  com- 
mandment may  be  considered  as  one,  inasmuch  as  they 
relate  to  one  subject,  or  nearly  so.  For  many  ages  and 
by  many  Churches  they  were  put  together  and  con- 
sidered as  one  commandment.  The  subject  to  which 
they  both  relate  is  false  worship,  or  the  worship  of  false 
gods.  This  is  the  single  subject  to  which  the  prohibition 
of  both  commandments  relates,  the  single  class  of  sins 
which  is  guarded  against"  (vol.  iii.  p.  320,  London,  1825). 


IMAGE- WORSHIP.  1 13 

It  follows,  then,  that  an  abbreviation  which  omits  the 
second  part,  as  in  some  of  our  catechisms,  and,  as  Dr. 
Littledale  tells  us,  in  the  Shorter  Lutheran,  is  quite 
natural  and  legitimate. 

No  doubt  it  is  true  that  the  Jews  were  not  allowed  to 
use  images  in  their  religious  worship  at  their  own  dis 
cretion.  Everything  regarding  their  religious  worship 
was  prescribed,  and  the  slightest  deviation,  any  going 
beyond  the  letter  of  their  rule  in  this  direction,  would 
create  a  suspicion  that  the  Jew  was  hankering  after  the 
idolatrous  worship  of  the  nations  round  about  him.  But 
the  fact  that  God  made  an  image  for  them  in  the  cloud 
and  the  brazen  serpent,  showed  that  the  use  of  images 
was  not  in  itself  wrong  or  prohibited.  So  far  as  such 
prohibition  was  implied  in  the  first  commandment,  we 
know  that  it  no  more  continued  obligatory  under  the 
Christian  dispensation  than  the  ceremonial  observance 
of  the  seventh  day.  We  have  evidence  of  this  in  the 
frescoes  in  the  Roman  Catacombs  of  the  Madonna  and 
Child,  and  again  of  our  Lady  as  an  Orante  in  the  exercise 
of  her  intercessory  power.  A  specimen  of  the  former  is 
attributed  by  the  highest  authority — the  Cavaliere  de 
Rossi — to  the  first  or  second  centuries  (see  Roma 
Sotterranea,  Northcote  and  Brownlow,  vol.  ii.  pp.  134- 
143).  Dr.  Arnold  (Letter  xlii.,  Life  by  Stanley)  urges  that 
"  the  second  commandment  is  in  the  letter  utterly  done 
away  with  by  the  fact  of  the  Incarnation.  To  refuse,  then, 
the  benefit  which  we  might  derive  from  the  frequent  use 
of  the  crucifix,  under  pretence  of  the  second  command- 
ment, is  a  folly ;  because  God  has  sanctioned  one  con- 
ceivable similitude  of  Himself  when  He  declared  Him- 
self in  the  person  of  Christ." 

One  other  abiding  prohibition  is  certainly  implied  in 
this  commandment,  and  that  is,  to  make  idols  for  heathen 
worship,  with  which  offence  certain  manufacturers  in 
this  Protestant  country  were  loudly  and  widely  charged 
some  years  ago,  with  how  much  truth  I  do  not  know. 


114  IMAGE-WORSHIP. 

Dr.  Littledale  has  entirely  distorted  the  doctrine  of 
St.  Thomas  concerning  the  worship  of  the  cross,  by 
omitting  his  explanation  that  the  cross  as  an  image  is 
only  the  conduit  of  latreutic  adoration,  or,  as  others 
prefer  to  express  it,  the  material  image  has  an  analogous 
use  in  adoration  with  that  of  the  imaginative  image — 
say  of  the  crucifixion — in  our  own  minds,  forming  as  it 
were  one  object  with  its  prototype ;  or  again,  more  pre- 
cisely, it  is  laid  down  that  no  interior  act  of  adoration 
finds  its  object  in  the  image ;  although  this  is  the  object, 
for  the  sake  of  its  prototype,  of  exterior  acts  when  it  is 
kissed  and  embraced,  whilst  the  interior  act  passes  en- 
tirely on  to  the  exemplar.  In  this  way  Vasquez  (2*  2* 
Disp.  108),  Coninck  (De  Incarn.  disp.  25,  dub.  7),  the 
Theologians  of  Wurtzburg(DeIncarn.  sec.  3,  art.  4,n.  515), 
understand  St.  Thomas,  who  says  (2*  2*  qu.  81,  art.  3), 
"  Religious  worship  is  not  given  to  images  considered 
in  themselves  as  such  or  such  things,  but  according  as 
they  are  images  leading  up  to  the  incarnate  God.  The 
movement  of  the  soul  towards  the  image,  as  an  image, 
does  not  stay  in  it,  but  passes  on  to  that  of  which  it  is 
the  image,  and  therefore  the  fact  that  religious  worship 
is  given  to  the  images  of  Christ  does  not  introduce  dis- 
tinctions into  the  character  of  latria  or  the  virtue  of 
religion."  So  taken,  St.  Thomas's  doctrine  would  seem 
to  harmonise  perfectly  with  that  of  the  Seventh  Council, 
which,  when  denying  that  latria  proper  is  due  to  the 
images  of  Christ,  clearly  admits  this  relative  latria  when 
insisting  that  images  transmitted  the  whole  worship 
given  them  to  their  exemplars.  Other  writers,  e.g., 
Bellarmine  (lib.  ii.  de  Imag.  cap.  21),  and  Suarez  (2*  2* 
disp.  54,  sec.  5),  deny  that  the  above  is  an  adequate 
explanation  of  image-worship,  and  insist  that  a  certain 
lower  but  interior  worship  really  rests  upon  the  image, 
though,  of  course,  in  virtue  of  its  prototype.  It  is  true 
that  the  subject  has  been  a  field  for  much  scholastic 
discussion,  but  the  difference  has  been  rather  one  of 


THE  SEVENTH  GENERAL  COUNCIL.  115 

philosophical  analysis  and  nomenclature  than  of  theology. 
On  this  point  all  are  agreed,  that  no  act,  either  of  latria 
ordulia,  can  find  its  adequate  object  in  an  image,  although 
images  must  invariably  be  treated  with  reverence,  at 
least,  as  belonging  to  the  order  of  sacred  utensils. 

2.    The  Seventh  General  Council  and  the  Council  of 
Frankfort. 

The  Seventh  General  Council  defined  that  an  adora- 
tion of  honour  (r///,7jr/xjj  </r|offxui?jc'/$),  but  not  latria^  was 
clue  to  holy  images,  whether  of  Christ,  the  Blessed  Virgin, 
angels  or  saints.  Dr.  Littledale  objects  that  this  second 
Council  of  Nicaea  was  no  General  Council,  and  that  its 
doctrine  was  repudiated  by  the  great  Western  Council  of 
Frankfort.  Now,  Dr.  Littledale  has  laid  it  down  as  his 
one  test  of  oecumenicity — of  the  validity  of  a  General 
Council — its  acceptance  by  the  Church.  I  contend,  then, 
that,  on  his  own  ground,  he  is  bound  to  accept  this 
Second  Council  of  Nicaea  as  the  Seventh  General 
Council,  for  though  it  was  long  before  it  was  universally 
recognised  as  such,  yet  such  has  been  the  fate,  in 
varying  degrees,  of  other  admittedly  General  Councils, 
such  as  the  Second  and  Fifth.  Anyhow,  the  whole 
Church,  East  and  West,  ended  in  the  conclusion  that 
the  doctrine  concerning  holy  images  defined  at  Nicaea 
was  true,  and  that  the  Council  was  oecumenical.  No 
doubt  as  to  either  point  had  prevailed  for  centuries 
before  the  Western  schism.  As  regards  the  Council 
of  Frankfort,  there  can  be  no  doubt  that,  opposed 
though  it  was  to  the  general  character  of  the  discipline 
established  at  Nicaea,  it  never  condemned  the  doctrine 
there  defined.  What  it  did  condemn  was  the  opinion 
falsely  attributed  to  the  Metropolitan  of  Cyprus,  for 
which  it  held  the  Fathers  of  Nicsea  responsible,  viz., 
that  latria — direct  divine  worship — the  same  as  that 
given  to  the  Trinity,  was  to  be  given  to  images  (see 
Cone.  Franc,  can.  2).  In  one  of  its  chapters  sent  to 


lib  THE  SEVENTH  GENERAL  COUNCIL. 

Pope  Adrian  it  says,  "  We  permit  the  images  of  saints, 
whosoever  may  choose  to  make  them,  either  inside  the 
church  or  out,  for  the  love  of  God  and  His  saints,  but 
we  in  no  ivise  compel  those  to  worship  them  who  do  not 
choose."  *  There  is  much  to  excuse  the  suspicion  with 
which  the  Gallic  prelates  regarded  the  action  of  the 
Greek  Church.  This  had  exhibited  a  long  succession 
of  contradictory  movements,  anon  tearing  down  its 
icons,  anon  caressing  them,  and  thrusting  them  upon 
every  one's  worship,  with  an  Oriental  fervour  with  which 
the  Church  of  Gaul,  not  possessing  any  traditional  art, 
could  not  at  all  sympathise.  Both  the  Gallic  and  Saxon 
Churches  were  absolutely  committed  to  the  principle  of 
the  Greek  definition.  The  cultus  of  the  Cross,  of  the 
Book  of  the  Gospels,  and  of  relics,  a  cultus  including 
genuflections  and  prostrations,  had  prevailed  amongst 
them  from  the  earliest  times.  See  the  passages  from 
Jonas  of  Orleans  and  the  Irish  monk  Dungal  in  defence 
of  the  "adoration"  of  the  Cross  against  the  iconoclastic 
Claudius  of  Turin. t  See,  too,  the  extracts  from  the  Life 
of  Alcuin  and  the  works  of  Bede  and  Aldhelm.t  Dungal 
taunts  his  iconoclastic  opponent  with  having  to  listen 
"to  the  frequent  chanting  in  the  church  of  the  'Crucem 
tuam  adoramus  Domine.' "  In  another  passage  he  thus 
enunciates  a  doctrine  identical  with  that  of  the  Nicene 
Council : — "  God  alone  is  to  be  adored  and  worshipped, 
as  it  becomes  the  Lord  and  Creator  of  all  things  to  be 
adored  and  worshipped  by  His  creature,  inasmuch  as  in 
Him  alone  we  believe  and  hope,  and  to  Him  we  daily 
sacrifice.  But  the  good  and  holy  creature  of  God,  that 
is  to  say,  a  holy  angel,  a  holy  man,  or  the  holy  Cross> 
according  to  the  degree  of  their  worthiness  we  adore 
and  worship,  that  is,  we  humbly  honour  and  embrace  for 
God's  sake,  and  in  God,  but  in  a  widely  different  fashion 

*  Natalis  Alexander,  ssec.  viii.  diss.  vi.  sec.  8. 
•f  Natalis  Alexander,  ssec.  vii.  diss.  vii. 
tLingard,  Ang.-Sax.  Church,  vol.  i.  chap.  10. 


THE  SEVENTH  GENERAL  COUNCIL.  I  I  7 

from  that  in  which  we  worship  and  adore  Him."  How 
perfectly  just  are  the  strictures  of  Anastasius  Bibliothe- 
•carius  upon  the  attitude  of  the  Gallic  gainsayers  Of" 
Nicasa  (Praef.  in  Act.  Syn.  vii.) : — "  Just  as  if  the  Book  of 
the  Gospels  was  not  the  work  of  man's  hand,  which  they 
daily  kiss  and  worship,  .  .  .  and  in  like  manner  the 
figure  of  the  Holy  Cross,  which  Christians  everywhere 
profess  to  worship.  Wherefore  it  is  well  to  note  that  if 
we  worship  every  gold  or  silver  or  wooden  cross,  which 
is  really  not  that  very  same  cross  upon  which  our  salva- 
tion was  wrought  out,  but  the  figure  and  image  of  that 
one,  why  should  we  not  worship  the  figure  and  image  of 
Him  who  wrought  that  same  salvation  in  the  midst  of 
the  earth?  For  more  venerable  is  He  who  wrought  the 
salvation  than  the  wood  upon  which  He  wrought  the 
salvation ;  and,  therefore,  the  image  of  Christ,  who 
wrought  the  salvation,  is  more  worthy  of  adoration  than 
the  image  of  that  Cross  which  only  bore  the  salvation." 

Although  the  Holy  See  made  common  cause  with 
the  Seventh  Council,  and  it  was  recognised  within  the 
ensuing  century  as  oecumenical  by  the  vast  majority  of 
Catholics,  yet  the  Pope  did  not  give  it  that  public 
•confirmation  as  an  CEcumenical  Council  which  involved 
his  enforcing  its  statutes  as  a  condition  of  communion. 
He  saw  that  there  was  no  real  difference  of  faith  between 
Nicaea  and  Frankfort,  and  left  the  Gallic  Church  to 
modify  its  devotional  discipline  in  accordance  with  its 
religious  sentiment.  The  gradual  extinction  of  such 
difference  as  really  existed  between  Gaul  and  England 
on  the  one  hand,  and  Italy  and  the  East  on  the  other, 
may  be  attributed  more  perhaps  to  the  rise  in  the  former 
countries  of  religious  art  than  to  anything  else.  As 
regards  the  Eastern  struggle,  which  resulted  in  the 
triumph  of  the  image-worshippers  at  Nicaea,  Archbishop 
Trench  (Mediaeval  History,  chap,  vii.)  remarks  that 
"  no  one  will  deny  that,  with  rarest  exceptions,  all  the 
religious  earnestness,  all  which  constituted  the  quicken- 


Il8       DEVOTION  TO  PARTICULAR  SHRINES  AND  IMAGES. 

ing  power  of  a  Church,  was  ranged  upon  the  other  (the 
Nicene)  side.  Had  the  iconoclasts  triumphed,  when 
their  work  showed  itself  at  last  in  its  true  colours,  it  would. 
have  proved  to  be  the  triumph,  not  of  faith  in  an  invisible 
God,  but  of  frivolous  unbelief  in  an  incarnate  Saviour." 


3.  Devotion  to  Particular  Shrines  and  Images. 

Dr.  Littledale  (p.  28)  insists  that  the  existence  of  such 
particular  devotions  in  the  Catholic  Church  establishes 
the  charge  of  "  idolatry  in  the  strictest  sense."  Why? 
I  would  ask.  Is  there  anything  idolatrous  in  the  con- 
sciousness that  a  special  representation,  say,  of  Christ's 
sufferings,  has  more  power  to  excite  your  devotion  than 
another,  and  your  consequent  preference  of  it  ?  And 
is  not  the  mere  fact  of  a  tradition  of  devotion  to  a  par- 
ticular image,  or  the  belief  that  special  favours  have  been 
shown  to  worshippers  at  a  particular  shrine,  whether  in 
reward  of  saintly  founders  or  saintly  worshippers,  itself 
an  incentive  to  devotion?  And  the  fact  of  the  con- 
course of  devout  worshippers  is  the  reason  why  the  Holy 
See  attaches  special  indulgences  to  the  image  or  shrine 
in  question,  because  it  is  there  that  they  will  be  most 
abundantly  used  and  bear  most  fruit.  Was  there  ever  a 
time,  either  in  the  East  or  West,  when  there  was  not  a 
special  devotion  to  certain  holy  places,  and  a  belief  that 
there  the  rain  of  God's  blessings  was  more  abundant 
than  elsewhere  ?  The  devotion  to  particular  pictures 
and  images  is  on  precisely  the  same  principle  ;  for  such 
an  image  itself  constitutes  and  indicates  a  place  where 
God  is  believed  to  have  shown  great  mercies,  the  recol- 
lection of  which  is  likely  to  excite  the  very  sentiments 
that  would  merit  a  repetition  of  those  favours.  If  such 
special  devotion  is  idolatrous,  then  surely  the  Greek 
Church  in  its  immemorial  devotion  to  its  favourite  icons> 
and  especially  to  the  great  icon  of  St.  Luke's  Madonna, 
is  peculiarly  obnoxious  to  the  charge. 


DEVOTION  TO  PARTICULAR  SHRINES  AND  IMAGES.       I  I  9 

In  order  to  prove  his  point,  Dr.  Littledale  introduces 
as  a  type  of  pagan  idolatry,  of  "  idolatry  in  its  strictest 
sense,"  a  philosophical  apologist,  a  pagan  sceptic,  anxious 
to  avoid  the  charge  of  superstition,  who  explains  that  he 
does  not  believe  there  is  anything  divine  in  his  idol. 
What  is  really  to  the  point  is  not  to  learn  what  account 
such  an  one  would  give  of  his  tenets,  or  even  what  he 
really  held,  but  what  form  of  idolatry  was  attributed  as 
a  crime  by  the  early  Christians  to  their  pagan  contem- 
poraries. I  venture  to  say  that  no  single  passage  from 
the  Fathers  can  be  produced  which  describes  it  as  any- 
thing less  than  the  attribution  of  a  divine  personality  to 
the  image  itself,  or  at  least  a  divine  virtue.  The  idolatry 
recorded  in  Scripture  consists  of  a  distinct  identification 
of  the  idol  with  the  divinity  it  represented,  as  when 
Dagon  lay  prostrate  and  mutilated  before  the  ark,  and 
the  Philistines  exclaimed :  "  Let  not  the  ark  of  the  God 
of  Israel  remain  among  us,  for  His  hand  is  hard  upon 
us  and  upon  Dagon  our  God"  (i  Kings  i.  5) ;  and,  again, 
Dan.  iv.,  the  king  says,  "Does  not  Bel  seem  to  you  a 
living  god?  seest  thou  not  how  much  he  eats  and  drinks 
daily ;  and  Daniel,  smiling,  saith  he  is  clay  within  and 
brass  without,  and  he  eateth  not  at  all."  The  most 
refined  form  of  idolatry  contemplated  by  the  Fathers  was 
that  ascribed  by  St.  Augustine  to  Trismegistus  (De  Civit. 
Dei,  1.  viii.  c.  23)  : — "  The  visible  and  palpable  images  he 
asserted  to  be  as  it  were  the  bodies  of  the  gods ;  that 
there  were  in  them  certain  active  spirits,  who  to  a  certain 
extent  were  able  to  injure  or  to  gratify  those  who  offered 
them  divine  honours  and  the  service  of  worship  ;  that 
these  invisible  spirits  were  by  a  peculiar  art  wedded  to 
visible  material  corporal  substances,  and  the  idols  dedi- 
cated and  submitted  to  those  spirits  ;  and  this,  he  said, 
was  to  make  gods,  and  that  man  had  received  that  great 
and  wonderful  power  of  making  gods."  For  this  same  idea 
of  imprisoned  divinity  see  Chrys.  in  Geneth.  ap.  .Theo- 
doret,  Eranist.  i.;  for  the  coarser  idea  of  absolute  identifi- 


120         THE  EARLY  FATHERS  AND  IMAGE-WORSHIP. 

cation,  see  Athanasius,  Orat.  cont.  Gent.  sect.  13,  "They 
burn  that,  part  of  which  they  worship;"  and  Cyril  of 
Alexandria,  cont.  Jul.  lib.  vi.  p.  194,  "  He  is  not  ashamed 
to  make  sticks  and  stones  gods"  (ap.  Nat.  Alex.  ssec. 
viii.  diss.  vi.  sec.  i). 

4.   The  Early  Fathers  and  Image-  Worship. 

I  admit  that  the  early  Fathers  were  shy  of  the  use  of 
images,  even  more  than  they  were  of  the  cultus  of  the 
saints.  In  the  face  of  an  idolatrous  world,  they  were 
naturally  afraid  lest  even  the  most  pious  and  orthodox 
use  of  images  might  open  the  way  to  or  suggest  a 
suspicion  of  idolatry.  This  much  was  inevitable.  I  will 
now  notice  in  more  or  less  detail  the  various  passages 
collected  by  Dr.  Littledale,  from  p.  31  to  p.  34. 

1.  The  Carpocratians,  denounced   by  Irenaeus  (cont. 
Haer.  i.  25),  are  said  to  pay  "  Gentile,"  i.e.,  divine  honours 
to  the  images   of  Christ,  and  to  worship  them  in  con- 
junction with  an  assemblage  of  Pagan  worthies.     Thus 
the  saint's  denunciation  cannot  be  shown  to  fall  upon  a 
worship  such  as  Catholics  use. 

2.  Minucius   Felix,  when   (Octav.  xxix.)  he  protests 
against  worshipping  crosses,  must  be  understood  to  rebut 
the  charge  in  the  sense  in  which  it  was  made,  viz.,  of 
yielding  the  Cross  divine  honours. 

3.  The  passages  from  Origen  (cont.  Cels.  vi.    14,  and 
viii.  17)  are  a  protest  against  anthropomorphism,  against 
the  idea  that  you  "can  fashion  likenesses  of  Divinity." 

4.  Lactantius  (Div.  Inst.  ii.    19)  must  be  understood 
as  denouncing  a  religion    of  image-worship,  that  is,  a 
worship   of  images  that  stops  in  images,   of  which  an 
image  is  the  centre. 

5.  The  thirty-sixth  canon  of  Elvira,  forbidding  religious 
pictures  in  churches,  seems  clearly  directed  against  an- 
thropomorphism, not  the  worshipping  what  is  painted, 
but  the  painting  what  is  worshipped,  i.e.,  the  Divinity, 
"  ne  quod  colitur  et  adoratur  in  parietibus  depingatur." 


THE  EARLY  FATHERS  AND  IMAGE-WORSHIP.          121 

6.  The    passage   from    Eusebius    of   Csesarea    (Hist, 
ficcles.   vii.    18),   whilst  implying  that  the  use  of  holy 
images  was  foreign  to  his  own  Church,  at  least  testifies 
to  a  very  ancient  tradition  in  their  favour.     For  he  not 
only  mentions  having  seen  the  statue  of  Christ  supposed 
to  have  been  erected  by  the  woman  cured  of  an  issue  of 
blood,  but  also  testifies  to  his  knowledge  of  the  existence 
of  pictures  of  St.  Peter  and  St.  Paul  and  of  Christ,  the 
work  of  early  Christians.     He  says  that  they  naturally 
brought  into  Christianity  a  custom  common  amongst  the 
Gentiles  (IQvixfj  ouvqdeicf).     There  is  nothing  here  of  the 
reproach  conveyed  in  Dr.  Littledale's  italicised  render- 
ing "according  to  the  heathen  custom;"  many  Gentile  cus- 
toms have  been  laudably  naturalised  in  the  Church. 

7.  St.  Epiphanius'  action   in  tearing  down   from  the 
Church  door  the  veil  painted  with  the  figure  "  as  it  were 
of  Christ  or  some  saint "  may  probably  indicate  that  a 
scrupulous  avoidance  of  Church  pictures  was  customary 
in  Palestine  and  Cyprus.     Elsewhere  it  was  otherwise. 
A  similar  door-veil,  with  the  figure  of  St.  Stephen  wrought 
upon  it,  is  mentioned  as  part  of  the  adornment  of  his 
oratory  at  Uzalis  in  Africa,  in  a  report  of  the  miracles  of 
St.  Stephen,  drawn  up  by  order  of  the  Bishop  Evodius, 
St.  Augustine's  friend  (see  lib.  ii.  c.  4,  n.  2,  Append,  op. 
Aug.  ed.  Ben.).     St.  Paulinus  too,  so  celebrated  by  the 
praises  of  St.  Augustine   and   St.  Jerome,  adorned  his 
patron's  shrine  at  Nola  with  many  sacred  paintings  of 
Christ  and   the  saints,   although   for  the  most  part  of 
an   emblematic   character  (Ep.  xxxiii.  and  Vita,  c.   34, 
ed.  Muratori). 

8.  The  words  used  by  St.   Ambrose  of  St.    Helena 
(De  Obit.  Theod.)  are  continually  quoted  by  Catholics 
as  expressing  the  theology  of  the  adoration  of  the  Cross  : 
"  She  adored  the  King  truly,  not  the  wood."     The  words 
are  evidently  a  record  and  justification  of  an  act  on  the 
part  of  St.  Helena  corresponding  to  our  Good  Friday 
adoration.     She   doubtless  knelt  down   and   kissed  the 


122    THE  EARLY  FATHERS  AND  IMAGE- WORSHIP. 

Cross.  If  she  did  not,  what  need  of  the  explanation  that 
it  was  "  the  King,  not  the  wood  "  ?  Were  I  to  suggest  that 
she  chanted  the  "  O  crux,  ave  spes  unica,"  or  "  Adore- 
mus  crucem  tuam  Domine,"  I  could  hardly  be  con- 
victed of  a  serious  anachronism,  for  within  a  century  of 
St.  Helena  St.  Paulinus  sang : — 

"  Nunc  ad  te  veneranda  Dei  crux  verto  loquelas 
O  crux  magna  Dei  pietas,  crux  gloria  cceli, 
Crux  seterna  salus  hominum,  crux  terror  iniquis." 

And  in  Epistle  xxxi.  (A.D.  403),  after  describing  the  "  In- 
vention," he  goes  on  to  say  that  once  every  year  the 
Cross  is  exposed  to  the  adoration  of  the  faithful,  as  well  as 
at  other  times  for  the  benefit  of  pilgrims  from  a  distance, 
(quam  episcopus  urbis  ejus  quotannis,  cum  Pascha 
Domini  agitur,  adorandam  populo  princeps  ipse  vener- 
intium  promit). 

St.  Ambrose  (/.  <r.)  goes  on  to  praise  St.  Helena  for 
promoting  the  adoration  of  the  Cross  by  setting  it  in 
the  royal  crown,  "  ut  crux  Christi  in  regibus  adoretur." 

The  words  from  St.  Ambrose's  Epistle  xviii.  (ad 
Valentin.),  to  the  effect  that  Pagan  apologists  "  talk  about 
God  and  worship  an  image,"  in  no  way  prove  that 
Christians  cannot  use  images  in  worshipping  God. 

9.  Dr.  Littledale  quotes  what  he  calls  "  a  very  valuable 
testimony  "  from  St.  Augustine,  Enarr.  in  Ps.  xcvl  2,  and 
contends  that  the  Saint  therein  puts  exactly  the  same 
"get  off"  from  the  charge  of  idolatry  in  the  mouth  of  a 
Pagan  apologist  that  Catholics  use,  and  rejects  it  as 
futile.  The  passage  from  St.  Augustine  containing  the 
Pagan  apology  is  printed  in  parallel  columns  with  one 
in  which  the  Council  of  Trent,  sess.  xxv.,  expounds  her 
doctrine  concerning  holy  images.  There  can  be  no- 
doubt  that  the  two  explanations  are  substantially  the 
same.  The  Pagan  apologist  says,  "I  do  not  worship 
that,  but  I  bow  down  before  what  I  see  and  serve  him 
whom  I  do  not  see  ;'•'  and  the  Council  of  Trent,  "  Through 


THE  EARLY  FATHERS  AND  IMAGE-WORSHIP.          12$ 

the  images  which  we  kiss  ...  we  adore  Christ."  So 
far  Dr.  Littledale  may  be  congratulated  on  his  par- 
allelism, but  why  does  he  not  continue  his  quotation  a 
sentence  or  so  further?  St.  Augustine's  most  pertinent 
question  "Who  is  He?"  which  occurs  in  his  quotation, 
should  have  warned  him  of  what  was  coming.  Dr. 
Littledale  ends  his  quotation  with  the  words  "they  think 
themselves  very  clever  as  not  worshippers  of  idols,"  as 
though  the  Saint  had  said,  "  You  try  to  escape  from  the 
charge  of  idolatry  in  vain ;  the  'get  off'  common  to  you 
and  modern  Papists  is  no  get  off  at  all;"  whereas  what 
St.  Augustine  really  says  is  this,  "  They  think  themselves 
very  clever  because  they  do  not  worship  idols,  And 
they  worship  devils"  (quia  non  colunt  idola  sed  colunt 
dsemonia) ;  and  then  goes  on  to  show  that  this  is  far 
worse  and  more  dangerous ;  for  the  Pagan  had  answered 
to  the  question  "  Who  is  He  ?  "  "  some  invisible  power 
which  presides  over  that  image."  Augustine's  retort 
comes  to  this,  "  You  fall  out  of  the  frying-pan  into  the 
fire,  you  have  disproved  the  charge  of  idolatry  indeed, 
but  at  the  cost  of  admitting  the  far  more  grievous 
imputation  of  demon-worship."  Supposing  the  Pagan 
had  been  able  to  answer,  with  the  Council  of  Trent, 
"  We  adore  Christ  .  .  .  whose  likeness  the  image  bears," 
who  does  not  see  that  Augustine's  words  convey  a  perfect 
acquittal,  being  equivalent  to  "You  have  succeeded  in 
showing  that  you  are  not  idolaters,  but  worshippers  of 
Christ"?  "A  very  valuable  testimony,"  surely,  but  not 
for  Dr.  Littledale. 

As  to  the  passage  from  De  Mor.  Eccles.  I.  xxxiv.  75, 
76,  in  which  St.  Augustine  acknowledges  the  existence 
in  the  Church  of  "  many  who  are  worshippers  of  tombs 
and  pictures,"  and  reprobates  them,  the  context  goes  on, 
"  I  have  known  many  who  drink  to  most  luxurious  excess 
over  the  dead."  No  doubt  he  is  condemning  the  mingled 
debauchery  and  superstition  of  certain  wakes  and  me- 
morial celebrations,  relics  of  Paganism  ;  the  character  of 


I  24        ALLEGED  EXCESS  IN  THE  WORSHIP  OF  MARY. 

the  passage  as  a  whole  hardly  looks  like  a  reflection  upon 
anything  resembling  the  modern  Catholic  usage. 

Amongst  authorities  for  the  use  of  holy  images  these 
may  be  cited  : — Tertullian  (De  Pudic.  c.  10),  who  thus 
taunts  his  Catholic  opponents,  "  Perhaps  your  shepherd 
will  stand  your  friend  whom  you  paint  on  your  chalices." 
Theodoret  (Relig.  Hist.  n.  26),  who  says  that  such  was 
the  devotion  in  Rome  to  St.  Simeon  Stylites  that  the 
shops  were  full  of  his  images.  St.  Cyril  of  Alexandria 
(in  Ps.  cxiii.  16,  Maii.  Bib.  Pat.  Nov.  torn.  iii.  p.  431), 
"Though  we  make  images  of  holy  men,  it  is  not  to  adore 
them,  but  that  by  looking  at  them  we  may  be  excited  to 
emulation.  And  for  this  do  we  make  an  image  of  Christ, 
that  we  may  be  lifted  up  as  on  wings  unto  His  love." 
St.  John  Chrysostom  (Horn,  in  S.  Barlaam  Martyr,  n.  3, 
inter,  op.  S.  Basil,  ed.  Ben.  torn,  iii.),  "  Arise,  O  noble 
painters  of  deeds  of  combat,  adorn  with  your  arts  the 
maimed  form  of  this  leader,  light  up  with  the  colours  of 
your  industry  the  crowned  warrior  whom  I  have  painted 
so  dully." 

§  5.  Alleged  Excess  in  the  Worship  of  Mary. 

Dr.  Littledale  has  not  hesitated,  as  we  have  seen,  to 
appeal  to  the  crudest  form  of  Protestant  sentiment, 
making  as  though  he  would  bring  every  sort  of  cultus  of 
our  Lady  under  the  ban  of  idolatry.  But  he  does  not 
forget  that,  besides  the  ordinary  English  Protestant,  he 
is  also  writing  for  Ritualists,  who  have  in  their  own  way 
a  cultus  of  the  saints,  and  of  St.  Mary  amongst  the  rest ; 
who  ask,  many  of  them,  some  directly,  others  in  some 
sidelong  fashion,  that  Mary  would  pray  for  them.  He 
knows — who  better ! — that  here  and  there  a  Ritualist  lamp 
is  lit  before  her  image,  and  her  Son's  Cross  is  kissed  and 
pressed  to  brow  and  heart ;  and  so  a  tiny  platform  is 
provided,  from  which,  under  Dr.  Littledale's  precentor- 
ship,  even  Ritualists  may  denounce  the  Mariolatry  of 


ALLEGED  EXCESS  IN  THE  WORSHIP  OF  MARY.         12$ 

Rome.  .The  objection  now  is  to  the  quantity  rather  than 
the  quality.  Mary-worship — an  excellent  thing  when 
kept  within  strict  bounds — has  been  unfortunately 
allowed  to  overflow  the  Roman  Church  so  as  really  to 
oust  the  worship  of  her  Son.  She  is  everywhere,  has 
so  many  festivals,  when  her  image — modern  tawdry 
thing — breaks  the  perspective  of  solemn  cathedrals, 
and  is  evidently  the  great  centre  of  attraction.  Then 
so  much  of  the  devotion  is  in  such  deplorably  bad 
taste,  so  florid,  so  un-English,  and  the  expressions 
used  so  extravagant,  as  in  fact  to  assert  that  she  is  her 
Son's  superior.  They  would  like  to  give  Mary  her  due ; 
they  have  no  objection  to  the  "  six-and-thirty  modern 
churches  in  or  round  London  dedicated  in  her  honour;" 
though  why  they  are  not  haunted  by  the  many  texts 
which  speak  of  "  my  house,"  it  is  hard  to  see.  But 
they  are  shocked  that  she  should  have  more  festivals  in 
the  year  than  our  Lord  has ;  that  there  should  be  more 
churches  dedicated  to  her  than  to  her  Son  or  to  the 
Blessed  Trinity.  They  want  something  like  a  decent 
proportion  to  be  observed.  A  proportion !  But  what 
proportion,  I  would  ask,  can  there  be  betwixt  the  Creator 
and  the  creature,  although  the  highest  and  holiest  of 
creatures  ?  Suppose  for  one  moment  the  interests  and 
honour  of  Jesus  and  Mary  to  be  other  than  identical,  the 
slightest  diversion,  the  slightest  alienation,  of  devotion, 
though  but  for  one  Ave's  space  in  a  lifetime,  would  be 
blasphemous.  If  we  are  not  worshipping  Christ  when  we 
pay  the  "worship  of  honour"  to  His  Mother,  then  let 
there  be  no  talk  of  proportion,  no  compromise,  but  away 
with  the  saints  and  angels  and  their  Queen  at  once  and 
for  ever.  If  Ritualists  cannot  see  how  to  worship  Jesus 
in  Mary,  they  must  not  worship  Mary  at  all.  All  honour, 
however  stinted  with  conditions,  however  coldly  qualified, 
would  be  at  least  so  much  taken  from  the  Creator,  since 
thereby  we  should  be  giving  Him  something  less  than  He 
claims,  who  claims  all.  Once  understand  that  the  Son 


126         ALLEGED  EXCESS  IN  THE  WORSHIP  OF  MARY. 

is  worshipped  in  the  Mother  in  a  manner  most  perfect 
and  well-pleasing  to  Him,  and  the  fear  of  excess  in  the 
quantity  of  devotion  becomes  an  absurdity.  The  truth 
is  that  Ritualists,  in  order  to  defend  the  slender,  hesitat- 
ing cultus  they  are  yielding  to  God's  Mother  and  the 
saints,  need  a  principle  which  must  justify  the  fullest 
Catholic  practice.  In  order  properly  to  appreciate  this 
principle,  we  should  compare  the  presentation  of  the 
object  of  worship  in  the  Old  and  New  Testaments.  The 
object  is  of  course  the  same  in  each,  but  in  the  latter 
the  mysterious  unimaginable  God  condescends  to  make 
for  Himself  an  image  in  our  human  nature,  an  image 
which  He  takes  up  into  and  makes  one  with  Himself; 
and  which  therefore  He  demands  should  be  worshipped 
with  one  and  the  same  act  of  latria  with  which  we 
worship  His  Divinity.  Moreover,  He  so  becomes  in- 
carnate as  with  our  human  nature  to  take  also  to  Himself 
a  Mother  and  a  home,  the  type  and  original  of  that 
society  of  the  Church  which,  in  its  ideal  perfection  as 
realised  in  heaven,  is  a  society  of  grace,  of  those  who 
all  in  their  degree  are  Christ's  mother,  and  sisters,  and 
brothers.  This  life  of  grace  is  a  certain  participation  of 
the  Divine  life  in  which  the  Scripture  phrase  is  verified, 
"Ye  are  gods."  After  all  "  Divus,  Diva,"  the  name 
which  shocks  Dr.  Littledale  so  much,  is  scriptural 
name  for  the  saint  made  perfect,  and  is  so  used  again 
and  again  by  the  early  Fathers.  It  is  this  divinisation, 
this  capacity  of  reflecting  the  brightness  of  the  eternal 
light,  which  is  the  formal  object  of  the  cultus  of  the 
saint.  Because,  after  all,  it  is  a  reflection  in  a  created 
mirror,  a  mirror  not  hypostatically  one  with  its  object, 
the  worship  is  of  dulia  rather  than  latria;  but  within 
this  limit  there  can  be  no  excess,  no  insubordination,  for 
the  light  that  we  worship  is  virtually  one,  whether  we 
worship  it  in  itself  or  in  its  reflection.  The  evening  sun 
is  the  more,  not  the  less,  admired  because  our  admiration 
dwells  upon  the  golden  and  purple  clouds  which  are  its 


ALLEGED  EXCESS  IN  THE  WORSHIP  OF  MARY.         127 

pomp  and  circumstance;  and  the  God  who  dwells  in 
light  inaccessible  has  deigned  to  weave  a  rainbow  about 
his  throne — the  Iris  of  Apocalyptic  vision — which  is  the 
glory  of  the  saints. 

As  to  a  partition  of  our  devotion  amongst  the  saints 
according  to  a  theological  appreciation  of  their  merits, 
as  suggested  in  Dr.  Littledale's  grotesque  criticism  upon 
"Roman  Inconsistency"  (p.  24),  I  can  only  say  that  the 
whole  idea  of  devotion  would  be  thereby  destroyed.  Devo- 
tion must  be  free,  following  the  natural  lines  of  individual 
and  national  character  and  experience.  Although  of  course 
the  theological  position  of  our  Lady  puts  her  cultus  in  a 
category  of  its  own,  still  even  here  the  absolute  freedom, 
within  certain  theological  lines,  of  devotion  is  strikingly 
illustrated.  There  was  doubtless  a  cultus  of  Mary  from 
the  beginning,  inseparable  from  her  recognition  as  the 
great  advocate,  the  second  Eve,  the  Mother  of  God ;  but 
it  is  undeniable  that  the  first  cultus  of  the  saints  which 
asserts  itself  with  precision  and  emphasis  in  the  early 
Church  is  the  cultus  of  the  martyrs — although  no  Chris- 
tian ever  thought  of  putting  these  on  an  equality  with 
God's  Mother — and,  in  each  place,  of  its  local  martyr. 
In  the  fierce  hand-to-hand  conflict  in  which  they  were 
engaged,  the  early  Christians  eagerly  ranged  themselves 
each  under  his  natural  leader,  some  glorious  fellow- 
citizen  of  whose  victory  he  had  himself  been  a  witness, 
and  whose  relics  he  still  recognised  as  a  source  of  fre- 
quent benediction.  But  gradually  as  the  glorious  army 
of  those  who  had  suffered  and  died  for  Christ  was 
recruited  from  all  parts  of  the  Church,  men's  minds  and 
hearts  were  led  on  and  up,  through  the  brightest  of  those 
dazzling  ranks,  to  one  who,  as  she  was  the  Virgin  of 
virgins,  so  also  assuredly  was  the  Martyr  of  martyrs; 
for  what  sufferings  could  compare  with  hers  who  had 
stood  beneath  the  Cross  of  her  dying  Son  !  And  so  as 
each  new  height  of  sanctity  gave  a  measure  for  con- 
ceiving of  her  matchless  excellence,  the  conception  of 


128         ALLEGED  EXCESS  IN  THE  WORSHIP  OF  MARY. 

our  Lady's  glory  in  the  reflex  mind  of  the  Church  became 
at  once  higher  and  more  homely,  and  the  thought  and 
love  of  her  more  and  more  a  necessary  part  of  the  daily 
life  of  the  faithful. 

The  great  end  of  our  cultus  of  the  saints  is  the  detach- 
ment of  our  hearts  from  earth,  that  our  conversation  may 
be  in  heaven,  and  so  whithersoever  the  tide  of  devotion 
may  set,  though  to  the  least  in  the  kingdom  of  heaven,  it 
will  doubtless  be  given  freest  vent  by  the  Church,  and 
encouraged  by  indulgences.  This  freedom,  too,  which  is 
of  the  essence  of  devotion,  extends  also  to  its  language. 
Theology  has  its  formulas,  its  common  language ;  devo- 
tion has  no  common  language,  unless  it  be  kisses  and 
tears.  Its  language  may  be  theological  or  childish, 
reserved  or  effusive,  paradoxical  or  measured.  It  may, 
of  course,  offend  against  some  theological  principle,  and 
so  necessarily  demand  theological  correction  ;  but  short 
of  this,  it  claims  the  amplest  latitude  of  indulgence  for 
the  form  in  which  it  pours  out  its  intense  appreciation 
of  all  those  looks,  and  tones,  and  lights,  those  aspects 
and  half- truths,  which  come  so  keenly  home,  and  are  a 
very  food  to  those  who  love.  It  is  thus  that  we  interpret 
various  expressions  in  the  devotional  language  of  holy 
persons ;  as,  for  instance,  that  one  which  Dr.  Littledale 
objects  to  so  intensely,  and  which  is  certainly  the 
strongest  of  all  his  quotations  from  the  "  Glories  of 
Mary."  "At  the  command  of  the  Virgin  all  things 
obey,  even  God"  Surely  this  would  have  been  no  rash 
comment  upon  our  Lord's  first  miracle  wrought  at  Mary's 
prayer.  It  expresses  fitly  the  Church's  experience  of 
the  might  of  that  prayer,  but  it  in  no  way  implies  that 
the  self-imposed  duty  of  filial  subjection  fulfilled  by 
Christ  upon  earth  continues  in  heaven.  Is  not  precisely 
the  same  comment  made  by  the  inspired  writer  upon 
Josue's  staying  the  sun,  "  And  God  obeyed  the  voice 
of  a  man  "  ?  Does  not  Dr.  Littledale  believe  that  God 
obeys  the  priest's  voice  when  he  uses  the  words  of  con- 


ALLEGED  EXCESS  IN  THE  WORSHIP  OF  MARY.         129 

secration  Christ  has  put  into  his  mouth  ?  and  can  He  do 
otherwise  than  hear  His  Mother's  prayer,  which  must  be 
so  true  a  reflection  of  the  desire  of  His  own  most  Sacred 
Heart  ?  The  other  passages  from  St.  Alfonso  only  repre- 
sent what  must  surely  be  regarded  as  a  truism,  if  Mary 
be  given  to  us  as  our  intercessor  at  all,  viz.,  that  we  gain 
more  in  approaching  Jesus  through  her  than  in  approach- 
ing Him  without  her.  What  do  those  who  go  furthest 
on  this  theme  intend?  Is  it  ever  that  she  should  be 
instead  of  Him  ?  Is  she  a  shut  and  not  an  open  door 
between  ourselves  and  Him?  If  she  is  never  to  be 
absent  from  our  prayers,  if  they  are  all  to  be  offered  as 
at  our  mother's  knee,  is  not  Jesus  in  her  arms,  and  is 
not  He  the  one  burden  of  all  our  intercourse  ?  Mediate 
invocation  is,  after  all,  more  immediate  than  any  other  if 
it  more  quickly  brings  Christ  closer ;  in  any  other  sense 
it  is  a  mistake. 

It  is  something  monstrous  that  an  age,  which  protests 
against  anything  like  definite  theological  formulary  or 
article  of  faith,  should  affect  precision  in  devotion.  We 
may  do  what  we  like,  it  would  seem,  with  God  and  His 
saints,  ring  all  the  changes  from  doubt  to  denial;  but 
one  thing  we  may  not  do,  love  them,  and  express  our 
love  in  the  language  most  natural  to  our  various  habits 
and  temperaments. 

It  is  sufficiently  obvious  that  unless  the  whole  atmo- 
sphere of  religion  made  it  practically  impossible,  unless 
it  carried  in  itself  its  own  antidote,  the  cultus  of  Mary,  in 
its  immense  extension,  might  make  such  substitution  of 
Mary  for  Jesus,  as  Dr.  Littledale  dreams  of,  a  practical 
danger.  But  has  any  priest  with  the  cure  of  souls, 
amongst  the  many  dangers  which  threaten  his  flock  both 
from  within  and  from  without,  ever  had  any  practical 
cognisance  of  the  substitution  of  the  image  for  its 
object,  or  of  the  Mother  for  her  Son  ?  What  is  the  gist 
of  all  those  Month  of  May  devotions,  those  Marian  con- 
fraternities, but  to  bring  souls  to  the  feet  of  Christ  in 

I 


130         ALLEGED  EXCESS  IN  THE  WORSHIP  OF  MARY. 

the  Sacrament  of  Penance,  and  to  the  feast  of  His  love 
in  the  Holy  Eucharist?  Superstitious  abuses  of  the 
quaintest  and  most  unlikely  character  do  from  time  to  time 
appear  in  the  field  of  our  poor  fallen  nature  even  within 
the  precincts  of  the  Church ;  but  have  we  met  with  a 
single  instance  of  one  who,  increasing  in  devotion  to  Mary, 
did  not  also  indefinitely  increase  in  devotion  to  her  Son  ? 

Even  in  mere  volume  of  devotion,  in  the  multiplication 
of  intense  acts  of  direct  worship,  the  Blessed  Sacrament, 
with  its  Mass — the  one  service  of  obligation — its  com- 
munions, and  Benediction,  outweighs,  even  on  Dr. 
Littledale's  gross  principle  of  computation,  all  devotions 
to  our  Lady  and  the  saints  put  together ;  and  this,  in 
spite  of  the  prayers  mainly  of  thanksgiving  for  the 
graces  given  her,  attached  to  certain  masses,  and  of  her 
Litany  sung  at  Benediction.  When  Dr.  Littledale  brings 
forward  Bellarmine's  admission  that  "it  is  not  easy  to 
make  distinction  " — so  far  as  external  acts  of  adoration 
go — between  the  worship  of  God  and  other  worships, 
almost  all  such  acts  being  common  except  sacrifice,  as 
though  it  was  an  acknowledgment  that  we  had  given  to 
the  saints  what  should  have  been  reserved  for  God,  he 
does  not  see  that  the  great  mass  of  these  external  acts 
— indeed  it  might  be  fairly  maintained  of  all  except 
sacrifice — are  common,  not  merely  to  the  cultus  of  God 
and  His  saints,  but  even,  in  addition,  to  the  cultus  of 
our  earthly  friends  and  patrons.  Were  such  a  distinction 
of  external  acts  of  any  serious  importance,  we  ought 
neither  to  bow  to  our  friends  nor  kneel  to  our  sovereign. 

A  Catholic  is  tempted  to  compare  the  grudging  wonder 
with  which  Protestants  regard  the  honours  paid  to  the 
saints,  to  the  ignorant  rusticity  of  those  who  mistake  a 
rich  uniform  for  the  insignia  of  empire,  and  exalt  the 
servant  above  his  master  on  the  score  of  a  stripe  or  two 
of  gold  lace. 

Before  leaving  the  subject  of  creature- worship,  it  may 
be  as  well  to  notice  formally,  what  has  been  already 


ALLEGED  EXCESS  IN  THE  WORSHIP  OF  MARY.          131 

answered  indirectly,  Dr.  Littledale's  express  statement 
{p.  21)  that  "not  one  syllable  can  be  discovered  in  the 
Old  or  New  Testament  which  gives  the  least  ground  or 
suggestion  "  of  the  practice  of  the  invocation  of  saints, 
"  nor  can  the  smallest  evidence  or  trace  of  it  be  found 
for  nearly  four  hundred  years  after  Christ."  I  answer 
that  it  is  impossible  to  deny  that,  when  both  the  Old  and 
New  Testaments  *  speak  of  the  saints  and  angels  praying 
for  us,  presenting  our  prayers  to  God,  and  rejoicing  in 
our  spiritual  good,  they  at  least  contain  very  strong 
grounds  and  suggestions  for  our  thanking  the  saints  and 
angels  and  asking  for  their  continued  assistance.  But 
more  than  this,  according  to  Butler's  well-known  principle 
(see  Cardinal  Newman's  Letter  to  Dr.  Pusey,  p.  92),  such 
worship  is  an  obligation  of  reason  arising  out  of  the  re 
vealed  relations  in  which  these  benefactors  stand  toward 
us,  and  requires  no  further  to  be  prescribed. 

The  practice  was  restrained  more  or  less,  inevitably, 
by  circumstances  of  time  and  place,  as  the  early  Christians 
had  to  reckon  with  the  scandal  of  the  Jews,  the  mis- 
interpretation of  the  Polytheists,  and  the  yet  more 
offensive  abuses  of  the  Gnostics.  For  all  that,  some  of 
the  earliest  inscriptions  in  the  Catacombs,  as  I  have 
noticed,  contain  direct  invocations  of  martyrs ;  and 
Origen,  though  in  conflict  with  the  Gnostic  angel-worship, 
admitted  that  we  praise  and  bless  (Eu^wD/*i>  xcti  /aaxa- 
$'i£o{Mv)  the  angels  (Cont.  Cels.  viii.  p.  57).t  Thus  there  is 
not  wanting  distinct  evidence  and  trace  of  the  usage 
before  it  was  so  strongly  advocated  by  the  Fathers  of  the 
fourth  and  fifth  centuries,  such  as  St.  Chrysostom  and  St. 
Paulinus,  who,  if  Dr.  Littledale  were  right,  must  have 
invented  it.  Neither  did  Peter  Lombard,  in  the  twelfth 
century,  regard  the  knowledge  of  our  prayers  on  the  part 
of  the  saints  and  angels  as  doubtful.  His  words  (Sent. 

*  Dan.  xii.  7  ;  Zach.  i.  12  ;  2  Mace.  xv.  12 ;  Tobias  xii.  12  ; 
Luke  xv.  10 ;  Apoc.  v.  8,  and  viii.  3. 

+  See  too  the  yet  stronger  passages  quoted  above. 


132  UNCERTAINTY  AND  ERROR  IN  FAITH. 

iv.  dist  45),  "It  is  not  incredible,"  apply,  not  to  their 
knowing,  but  to  his  theory  as  to  how  they  know.  Dr. 
Littledale's  words,  "  It  is  a  very  perilous  thing  to  fly  in 
the  face  of  His  Holy  Word  on  the  mere  chance  that  a 
guess  of  ours  may  be  correct,"  must  mean  one  of  two 
things  :  either  that  "  His  Holy  Word  "  may  possibly  be 
wrong,  or  that  "  His  Holy  Word "  is  synonymous  with 
Dr.  Littledale's  interpretation — an  interpretation  in  its 
certainty  presenting  a  striking  contrast  to  the  Church's, 
"guess." 


Charge  2.   Uncertainty  and  Error  in  Faith. 
§  1.  Dependence  upon  One. 

The  Roman  Church,  says  Dr.  Littledale  (p.  7),  has, 
by  the  Vatican  decree  of  infallibility,  brought  things  to 
such  a  pass  that  "  the  faith  of  Roman  Catholics  depends 
now  on  the  weakness  or  caprice  of  a  single  man,  who 
may  himself  be  unsound  in  the  faifh,  wicked,  or  mad,  as 
several  Popes  have  been.  .  .  .  Another  Pope  may  invent 
some  other  new  tenet  (like  the  Immaculate  Conception) 
and  declare  it  part  of  the  Gospel;  or  may  deny,  and 
order  others  to  deny,  some  ancient  and  universally 
received  Christian  doctrine,  .  .  .  and  'thus  no  Roman 
Catholic  can  any  longer  tell  what  his  religion  may  be  at 
any  future  time." 

I  observe,  first,  that  it  is  scarcely  fair  not  to  notice 
that  the  theory  of  Papal  infallibility  defined  at  the  Vatican 
Council — viz.,  that  in  virtue  of  Christ's  promise  to  St. 
Peter  the  Pope  is  preserved  from  defining  anything 
untrue  in  faith  and  morals — if  it  be  true,  renders  the 
faith  of  Catholics  quite  independent  of  "  the  weakness 
or  caprice  of  a  single  man."  2.  That  the  infallibility- 
of  a  General  Council,  or  of  a  majority  of  the  Episcopate 
with  the  Pope,  the  alternative  theory,  does,  as  well  as 
the  infallibility  of  a  single  man,  require  some  super- 


UNCERTAINTY  AND  ERROR  IN  FAITH.  133 

natural  security.  The  history  of  General  Councils  shows 
that  they  present  a  very  wide  and  sensitive  surface  to 
the  action  of  secular  influences,  and  so  to  the  intrusion 
of  human  error.  At  most  the  difference  of  the  two 
difficulties  is  one  of  degree  only  and  not  of  kind.  3. 
The  notion  that  a  Roman  Catholic's  act  of  faith  is 
conditional,  that  he  holds  the  different  articles  "durante 
Papae  beneplacito,"  is  simply  untrue.  If  the  Pope  were 
{ex  hypothesi  adversariorum)  to  define  the  contrary  or 
contradictory  of  an  undoubted  article  of  faith,  we  are 
perfectly  certain  that  the  Church,  in  virtue  of  the 
passive  infallibility — bestowed  in  the  unconditional  pro- 
mise, "The  gates  of  hell  shall  not  prevail  against  it" — 
would  not  and  could  not  receive  it,  and  that  the 
seemingly  canonical  definition  would  turn  out  to  be 
manifestly  irregular,  either  on  the  score  of  coercion,  or 
madness,  or  because  its  Papal  utterer  was  no  Pope  when 
he  uttered  it.  Of  course  there  is  an  extravagance  in  any 
such  hypothesis,  for  such  startling  sensational  providence 
is  not  God's  wont  in  the  ordering  of  His  Church,  and  it 
is  improbable  in  the  highest  degree  that  any  such  ex- 
tremity will  be  allowed.  I  only  notice  it  in  order  to 
bring  out  the  unconditional  character  of  a  Catholic's 
faith.  On  this  point  there  was  never  any  discordance, 
that  I  ever  heard  of,  in  the  Catholic  Church.  St. 
Vincent  of  Lerins,  commenting  on  the  "If  any  one  shall 
announce  to  you  other  than  what  has  been  received  let 
him  be  anathema,"  says,  "Separated,  severed,  excluded  ; 
though  Peter,  though  Andrew,  though  John,  though  the 
whole  Apostolic  choir  should  preach  another  Gospel  than 
that  which  has  been  preached  "  (Common,  c.  13);  and 
St.  Maximus,  when  asked  what  he  would  do  if  Rome 
took  the  Monothelite  side,  answered,  "The  Holy  Spirit 
anathematises  even  angels  that  should  bring  in  some  new 
thing  beside  what  has  been  delivered"  (Dial,  cum  Pyrrho); 
and  Pope  St.  Agatho  (Letter  to  the  Sixth  Council,  a  p. 
Labbe,  vii.  p.  662),  after  rejecting,  on  the  part  of  the 


134  THE  IMMACULATE  CONCEPTION. 

Holy  See,  the  policy  of  a  guilty  silence  as  something 
equivalent  to  a  positive  advocacy  of  evil,  "  Woe  unto  me 
if  I  shall  hide  the  truth  which  I  ought  to  have  delivered 
out  to  the  money-changers,"  goes  on  to  quote  the 
Apostle's  words,  "  But  though  we  or  an  angel  from  heaven 
should  preach  to  you  otherwise  than  we  have  preached, 
let  him  be  anathema." 

When  upon  any  question  which  arises  upon  a  point  of 
faith  or  morals  the  Pope  pronounces  a  final  decision, 
then,  according  to  the  doctrine  of  the  Vatican  Council, 
he  is  infallible.  Protestants,  who  have  no  conception  of 
the  structural  unity  of  a  body  of  theological  doctrine, 
and  to  whom  almost  everything  is  a  matter  of  possible 
question,  fail  to  see  how  sharply  defined  is  the  outline 
of  each  question  that  comes  before  the  Pope,  by  previous 
definitions.  It  is  for  the  most  part  a  question  whether 
a  certain  brick  is  to  be  laid  at  this  or  that  angle,  in 
the  very  limited  space  that  is  open  to  it,  or  rejected 
altogether. 

A  Roman  Catholic  knows  that  "  at  any  future  time  '* 
he  will  hold  every  one  of  the  articles  of  faith  he  holds  at 
present,  with  the  possible  addition  of  certain  others, 
which,  as  they  grow  out  of  the  twilight  of  doubt  into  the 
light  of  certainty,  beneath  the  articulation  of  the  Church, 
will  present  themselves  as  the  natural  complement  and 
explication  of  those  he  already  possesses.  With  regard 
to  the  articulation  of  this  truth  or  that,  it  may  fairly  be 
said  that  we  do  not  know  "  what  we  shall  be,"  but  such 
criticism  is  sufficiently  audacious  when  proceeding  from 
those  who  are  utterly  unable  to  tell  us  what  they  are. 
Ask  any  chance  hundred  of  Anglican  clergymen,  not 
what  their  Church  will  teach  in  the  next  century,  but 
what  it  actually  teaches  now. 

§  2.  The  Immaculate  Conception. 

Of  the  doctrine  of  the  Immaculate  Conception  of  the 
Blessed  Virgin — that  is,  of  her  immunity,  through  the 


THE  IMMACULATE  CONCEPTION.  135 

merits  of  her  Son  from  the  very  first  moment  of  the 
union  of  her  soul  with  her  body,  from  all  stain  of  original 
sin — Dr.  Littledale  says  that  it  is  implicitly  contradicted 
by  St.  Augustine,  explicitly  denied  by  St.  Bernard  and 
St.  Thomas  Aquinas,  and  "  openly  disputed  as  false  by 
orthodox  Roman  Catholics  for  many  centuries,"  and  "  so 
therefore"  cannot  be  maintained  by  any  Roman  Catholic 
without  offending  against  Pope  Pius'  creed,  which  obliges 
us  not  to  interpret  Scripture  "  otherwise  than  according 
to  the  unanimous  consent  vi  the  Fathers."  *  i.  To  begin 
with  the  passage  from  Pope  Pius'  creed  :  its  meaning  is 
just  this  and  nothing  more,  viz.,  that  where  the  Fathers 
are  unanimous  in  their  interpretation  of  a  particular 
passage,  we  must  not  maintain  any  interpretation  which 
is  inconsistent  with  the  one  they  have  agreed  in  (see 
Barbosa  de  Trident,  deer,  de  S.  Script).t  Dr.  Littledale 
apparently  gives  it  the  ridiculous  sense  of  a  prohibition 
to  maintain  any  interpretation  of  Scripture  for  which 
the  unanimous  consent  of  the  Fathers  cannot  be  cited, 
Avhence  it  would  follow  that  we  must  never  prefer  one 
Father's  interpretation  to  another's.  2.  If  Dr.  Little- 
dale's  facts  be  admitted,  they  come  to  no  more  than 
this  :  that  a  doctrine  has  been  defined  as  an  article  of 
faith  which,  though  notoriously  accepted  as  a  truth  by 
the  vast  majority  of  Catholics  for  centuries,  was  implicitly 
rejected  by  one  Father,  formally  rejected  by  two  Fathers 
or  quasi-Fathers,  and  long  doubted  of  or  even  denied 
by  many  orthodox  Catholics.  3.  Dr.  Littledale's  facts 
require,  as  usual,  some  discounting.  The  passage  in 
which  St.  Augustine  is  supposed  implicitly  to  have 
rejected  the  Immaculate  Conception  is  as  follows  : — 
*'  Mary  sprung  from  Adam,  died  because  of  sin  ;  Adam 
died  because  of  sin  ;  and  the  Flesh  of  the  Lord  sprung 
from  Mary,  died  to  blot  out  sin  "  (Enarr.  in  Ps.  xxxiv.  3). 
There  is  nothing  more  here  than  a  statement  of  what 
has  always  been  the  explicit  teaching  of  the  Church, 

*  See  Appendix,  Note  D. 

f  He  appeals  to  Banes,  Azor,  Vasquez,  and  Becanus. 


136  THE  IMMACULATE  CONCEPTION. 

viz.,  that  through  sin  death  came  into  the  world,  and  so 
those  who  died  died  as  a  natural  consequence  of  sin, 
except  Christ,  who,  by  His  conception  de  Spirit*  Sancto, 
had  not  contracted  the  debt  of  sin  and  death,  but  chose 
the  latter  freely  in  order  to  effect  the  work  of  our 
redemption.  There  is  nothing  to  imply  that  the  cause 
of  our  Lady's  death  was  the  fact  that  sin  had  once 
possessed  her  person.  Our  Lord,  in  virtue  of  His  Divine 
personality  and  through  His  conception  by  the  Holy 
Ghost,  contracted  neither  culpa,  nor  debitum  culp&  nor 
debitum  mortis ;  the  Blessed  Virgin,  although  preserved 
in  her  conception  from  all  stain  of  original  sin,  yet  as  a 
child  of  Adam,  by  natural  generation,  contracted  the 
debitum  culpa,  i.e.,  was  only  preserved  from  the  common 
lot  by  a  special  decree  applying  to  her  beforehand  the 
merits  of  the  redemption,  without  which,  conception  in 
sin  was  her  due.  From  which  ratio  peccati  attaching  to 
her  she  also  contracted  the  debitum  mortis.  This,  which 
is  certainly  the  more  common  opinion,  harmonises  per- 
fectly with  the  teaching  of  St.  Augustine.*  In  another 
passage  (De  Nat.  et  Grat  c.  36)  St.  Augustine  speaks 
thus  :  "  Except,  therefore,  the  Holy  Virgin  Mary,  about 
whom,  on  account  of  .the  honour  of  the  Lord,  I  will  not 
allow  the  question  to  be  entertained,  when  sins  are  under 
discussion  ;  for  how  do  we  know  what  increase  of  grace, 
was  bestowed  on  her,  to  enable  her  to  overcome  sin  in 
every  way,  who  merited  to  conceive  and  bring  forth  Him 
who,  as  is  plain,  had  no  sin  ? — with  the  exception,  there- 
fore, of  this  Virgin,  if  we  could  gather  all  those  male  and 
female  saints  while  they  were  living  here  below  and  ask 
them  whether  they  were  without  sin,  what  answer  do 
we  think  that  they  would  give?"  Here  it  must  be 
remembered  that  the  Saint  is  meeting  Pelagius'  argu- 
ment against  original  sin,  grounded  on  the  sinlessness 
of  the  saints,  of  whom  he  gives  a  list.  What  St. 
Augustine  says  is  that  they  would  all  plead  guilty  to 
*  Father  Harper,  "Peace  Through  the  Truth,"  pp.  329-337. 


THE  IMMACULATE  CONCEPTION.  137 

that  sinfulness  which  is  a  manifestation  of  original  sin, 
except  the  Blessed  Virgin,  in  connection  with  whom  no 
sin  whatever  is  to  be  so  much  as  mentioned.  When  we 
recollect  that  St.  Augustine  was  one  of  the  supporters  of 
the  great  patristic  tradition  of  the  second  Eve,  it  seems 
reasonable  to  suppose  that  he  held  her  to  be  free  from 
all  personal  taint  as  of  actual  so  of  original  sin,  although 
she  incurred  the  debitum  peccati  as  a  child  of  Adam. 

The  form  in  which  the  Immaculate  Conception  was 
implicitly  taught  in  the  early  Church  was  the  tradition 
of  Mary  as  the  second  Eve ;  for  Eve  was  immaculate, 
and  the  second  but  far  higher  and  holier  Eve  could  not 
be  less  than  immaculate.  Of  this  tradition  I  have 
already  spoken  in  treating  of  the  cultus  of  our  Lady. 
I  will  content  myself  here  with  two  passages  from  the 
Nisibine  hymns  of  St.  Ephrem,  with  Father  Addis'  com- 
mentary. "  In  hymn  27,  strophe  8,  St.  Ephrem  speaks 
thus  :  'Truly  it  is  Thou,  and  Thy  Mother  only,  who  are 
fair  altogether.  For  in  Thee  there  is  no  stain,  in  Thy 
Mother  no  spot.  But  my  sons  (it  is  the  Church  of 
Edessa  which  is  speaking)  are  far  from  resembling  this 
twofold  fairness  (duabus  pulchritudinibus)?  Elsewhere 
Ephrem  places  first  amongst  fallen  men,  infants  who  die 
in  baptismal  innocence;  so  that  it  must  be  freedom  from 
original,  not  actual,  sin  which  he  ascribes  to  Mary.  So 
{ii.  327,  a):  '  Two  were  made  simple,  innocent,  perfectly 
like  each  other,  Mary  and  Eve ;  but  afterwards  one 
became  the  cause  of  our  death,  the  other  of  our  life.'"  * 

The  passage  from  St.  Bernard  (Ep.  clxxiv.)  certainly 
contains  no  rejection,  explicit  or  implicit,  of  the  doctrine 
of  the  Immaculate  Conception.  He  objects  to  the  Feast 
of  the  Conception  on  the  understanding,  as  he  says  him- 
self in  so  many  words,  that  it  is  the  celebration  of  the 
active  conception,  and  is  equivalent  to  claiming  for  St. 
Anne  a  virginal  divine  child-bearing,  our  Blessed  Lady's 
exclusive  privilege.  The  same  substitution  of  the  ques- 
*  Anglican  Misrepresentations,  p.  33, 


138  COMMUNION  UNDER  ONE  SPECIES. 

tion  of  the  active  for  that  of  tne  passive  conception  is 
sufficiently  manifest  in  St.  Thomas,  but  in  one  place  he 
seems  to  have  committed  himself,  as  far  as  words  go, 
against  the  doctrine. 

The  Protestant  notion  that  the  doctrine  of  the  Im- 
maculate Conception  involved  an  attribution  to  the 
Blessed  Virgin  of  our  Lord's  character  of  sinlessness, 
shows  a  painful  ignorance  that  Christ's  sinlessness  is  not 
a  mere  freedom  from  sin,  but  an  utter  incapacity  of  sin 
in  right  of  His  Divine  Person,  which  sinlessness  no 
creature  can  share  with  Him,  whereas  Mary's  freedom 
from  sin  is  a  privilege  bestowed  by  God's  free  gift. 

§  3.  Communion  under  One  Species. 

Dr.  Littledale  regards  what  he  ventures  to  call  the 
practice  of  half-communion  as  nothing  less  than  a  defec- 
tion in  faith.  He  insists  (p.  62)  that  the  Roman  Church 
in  administering  communion  under  the  one  species  of 
bread,  violates  a  distinct  and  absolute  Divine  command  : 
"Drink  ye  all  of  this"  (Matt.  xxvi.  27),  and  "Except  ye 
eat  the  Flesh  of  the  Son  of  Man,  and  drink  His  Blood, 
ye  have  no  life  in  you"  (John  vi.  54). 

As  to  the  texts  themselves  apart  from  ecclesiastical 
tradition  on  the  subject,  High  Churchmen  of  Dr.  Little- 
dale's  school  will  not  be  inclined  to  dispute  that  the 
Scriptures  record  the  institution  in  one  rite  of  a  sacrament 
and  a  sacrifice ;  and  that  when  Christ  said,  "  Do  this  in 
memory  of  Me,"  either  the  whole  of  the  company  were 
constituted  priests  or  He  was  only  addressing  those  of 
them  who  were  so  constituted.  But  it  is  to  precisely 
the  same  persons,  so  far  as  Scripture  evidence  goes,  that 
He  says,  "  Drink  ye  all  of  this ; "  therefore  it  is  not  neces- 
sary to  interpret  these  words  as  a  precept  obliging  all 
and  each  to  receive  under  the  species  of  wine.  To  the 
argument  that  the  Apostles  were  priests,  Dr.  Littledale 
replies  that  the  Roman  Church  does  not  treat  her  priests, 


COMMUNION  UNDER  ONE  SPECIES.  139 

when  not  celebrating,  as  Christ  treated  the  Apostles,  f.e.9 
communicate  them  sub  utr&quc.  This  leaves  the  original 
argument  precisely  as  it  was  ;  all  that  it  does  is  to  raise 
a  new  issue  as  to  whether  the  Roman  Church  commits  a 
fresh  offence  in  not  administering  to  her  non-celebrating 
priests  sub  utr&que.  But  such  priests  are,  for  the  time, 
as  distinctly  excluded  from  the  precept  by  the  form,  "  Do 
this,"  as  are  the  laity. 

As  to  John  vi.  54.  it  is  admitted  on  all  hands  that  it 
does  not  imply  that  the  actual  reception  of  Holy  Com- 
munion is  a  sine  qua  non  of  eternal  salvation  for  every 
one.  The  necessity  is  what  is  called  "de  necessitate 
praecepti,"  not  "de  necessitate  medii,"  except  in  the 
indirect  sense  that  it  must  be  implicitly  in  voto.  What 
it  means,  in  common  language,  is  that  the  Holy  Eucharist 
is  an  integral  part  of  the  Christian  dispensation,  which 
no  one  can  reject  and  live.  Any  argument  from  the 
words  "  and  drink  His  Blood,"  for  the  application  of  the 
precept  of  reception  sub  utraque — which  all  had  to  accept 
as  an  institution — to  universal  individual  practice,  is  pre- 
cluded by  the  general  character  of  this  sixth  chapter. 
The  form  of  the  passages  from  i  Cor.  xi.  doubtless 
implies  that  communion  was  habitually  administered 
sub  utrdqne.  It  would  have  been  utterly  unnatural  and 
confusing  if  the  Apostle  had  used  words  suggesting  a 
possible  change  of  discipline  which  was  in  none  of  his 
readers'  minds.  He  spoke  of  the  communion  according 
to  the  manner  then  prevailing,  but  this  need  not  imply 
that  the  manner  itself  was  a  necessity  any  more  than 
when  Christ  said,  "  Go  and  teach  all  nations,  baptizing 
(i.e.,  dipping)  them  in  the  name,"  &c.  He  implied,  whilst 
enjoining  a  sacrament  that  was  necessary,  in  the  terms 
of  its  common  use,  that  such  common  use  was  un- 
alterable. Thus  it  is  clearly  impossible  to  show  from 
Scripture  that  the  administration  or  not  under  both 
species  lies  outside  the  discretion  of  the  Church. 

When  we  turn  to  the  use  of  the  early  Church  we  find 


140  COMMUNION  UNDER  ONE  SPECIES. 

that  beyond  a  doubt  such  discretion  has  been  used 
Sick  persons  and  prisoners  were  frequently  communi- 
cated under  the  one  species  of  bread  ;  such,  too,  was 
the  practice  amongst  the  Egyptian  solitaries ;  children, 
again,  were  communicated  under  the  species  of  wine. 
It  is  nothing  to  the  purpose  to  put  this  aside  as  though 
no  valid  argument  could  be  drawn  from  exceptional 
cases ;  the  whole  question  is,  Did  the  decision  lie  within 
the  Church's  discretion  or  not  ?  To  insist  upon  the 
necessity  in  these  cases  is  futile — for,  first,  no  necessity 
can  justify  the  deliberate  mutilation  of  a  sacrament,  if 
mutilation  it  be ;  and,  second,  there  is  no  pretence  that 
necessity  prescribed  the  act  in  each  case.  It  was  a 
change  of  ritual  founded  upon  reasons  of  grave  con- 
venience. As  a  desperate  escape,  Dr.  Littledale  suggests 
that  as  the  Greeks  sometimes  steeped  the  consecrated 
bread  in  the  consecrated  wine,  the  same  may  have 
occurred  in  the  instances  quoted.  But  even  granting 
this,  which  is  quite  gratuitous,  how,  I  would  ask,  would 
the  eating  a  piece  of  moistened  bread  satisfy  the  precept, 
"  Drink  ye  all  of  this  "  ?  After  all  there  would  be  only 
one  species  communicated  in,  the  species  of  bread ; 
especially  when,  as  Thomassin  points  out,  the  bread  was 
carefully  dried  at  a  fire  before  use  (Thomassin,  De  1'Unite' 
de  1'Eglise,  torn.  ii.  p.  544).  Thus,  in  fact,  communion 
under  both  species  was  abandoned  by  the  Greek  Church 
some  four  or  five  centuries  before  the  Latin,  and  for  the 
same  reasons  ;  the  difficulty  of  preserving  the  species  of 
wine  from  corruption  and  irreverence,  and  of  supplying 
the  necessities  of  frequent  communion.  Of  the  pre- 
valence of  the  custom  of  frequent  private  communion 
under  the  one  species  of  bread  throughout  considerable 
portions  of  the  East,  and  this  over  and  above  the  cases 
of  persecution,  sickness,  and  solitude  already  mentioned, 
see  St.  Basil,  Ep.  289,  ap.  Thomassin,  ibid.  p.  513. 
Whatever  benefit  in  the  way  of  a  longer  continuance  in 
the  communicant  of  the  sacramental  species  is  lost  in 


COMMUNION  UNDER  ONE  SPECIES.  £41 

the  communion  under  one  kind,  is  made  up  a  thousand- 
fold by  the  increased  opportunity  of  communion. 

The  Council  of  Constance,  sess.  xiii.,  at  the  beginning 
of  the  fifteenth  century,  only  sanctioned  what  had  long 
been  the  prevailing  practice,  when  it  ordained  that  no 
one  might  reprobate  the  Church's  use,  nor  introduce 
communion  under  both  species  without  her  autho- 
risation (pro  libito  suo).  It  is  manifest  that  to  charge 
the  Church  with  sacrilege  or  heresy  is  nothing  less  than 
heresy,  and  well  deserving  of  the  pains  of  heresy  what- 
ever they  may  be ;  and  persons  who  are  committing  an 
act  of  rebellion  against  the  present  discipline  of  the 
Church  upon  heretical  motives  have  always  been  ac- 
counted heretics.  Gelasius  condemned  those  who  refused 
the  cup  on  the  Manichaean  ground  that  wine  was  evil 
and  of  the  evil  one,  as  St.  Leo  had  done  before  him  ;  so 
that  his  decree  in  no  way  bears  upon  the  present  usage : 
so  too  the  passage  ap.  Ivo.  pars.  ii.  89,  is  against  super- 
stitious abstinence.*  In  the  thirteenth  century  we  find  St. 
Thomas  noting  the  practice  of  communion  under  one 
kind  with  approval  (III.  qu  80,  act.  12),  "  Provide  in 
quibusdam  Ecclesiis  observatur  ut  populo  sumendus  non 
detur."  In  his  earlier  work  on  the  Sentences,  he  says, 
"  Populo  sanguis  non  datur."  St.  Bonaventure  says  the 
same,  and  adds,  "  Neither  would  it  be  right  on  account 
of  the  danger  of  spilling  and  error ; "  and  a  somewhat 
earlier  writer,  Alexander  Hales  (Summa,  torn.  iv.  p.  406), 
says  of  communion  under  one  species,  "  Sicut  fere  ubique 

*  The  28th  canon  of  the  Council  of  Clermont,  though  it  of  course 
supposes  the  sub  utr&que  discipline,  is  directed  against  the  Greek 
custom  which  was  creeping  in  of  giving  ordinarily  the  dipped  bread. 
It  says  that,  with  certain  exceptions,  the  communicant  must  receive 
"the  Body  separately  and  the  Blood  likewise  separately,"  not  as 
Dr.  Littledale  renders  it  "  the  Body  and  Blood  separately  and  alike  " 
(see  La  Marca,  Dissert,  in  Syn.  Clar.)  La  Marca  goes  on  to  say 
that  our  present  use  began  to  spread  rapidly  soon  after  the  establish- 
ment of  the  Latin  Kingdom  at  Jerusalem,  in  which  place  the  ase  had 
prevailed  from  Apostolic  times. 


142  COMMUNION  UNDER  ONE  SPECIES. 

fit  a  laicis  in  Ecclesia."*  The  words  of  the  Angelic 
Doctor,  the  Doctor  of  the  Blessed  Sacrament,  whose 
eucharistic  hymns  Ritualists  are  never  tired  of  trans- 
lating, should  have  some  weight  with  them,  and  might 
be  accepted,  one  would  think,  as  some  security  that 
the  change  of  discipline  was  not  dictated  by  levity  or 
irreverence,  but  by  grave  convenience.  The  history  of 
Wickliffites,  Hussites,  and  Anglicans  gives  unmistakable 
evidence  that  a  pertinacious  stickling  for  what  they  call 
the  "  unmutilated  "  rite  is  only  too  apt  to  be  accompanied 
by  a  failing  sense  of  the  real  presence. 

Dr.  Littledale  urges  that  the  doctrine  of  concomitance, 
viz.,  that  Christ  is  whole  and  entire  under  each  portion 
of  each  species — a  doctrine  essential  to  the  validity  and 
licitness  of  communion  under  one  kind — is  "at  best  a 
guess,"  grounded  on  a  doubtful  reading  of  a  single  text,  i 
Cor.  xi.  27 ;  and  a  guess,  it  would  appear,  demonstrably 
wrong,  if  Dr.  Littledale's  words  as  to  "  a  perfectly  clear 
text  which  makes  the  other  way,"  viz.  i  Cor.  x.  16, 
have  any  real  meaning.  As  to  the  "perfectly  clear 
text,"  "the  cup  of  blessing  which  we  bless,  is  it  not 
the  communion  of  the  Blood  of  Christ?  The  bread 
which  we  break,  is  it  not  the  communion  of  the  Body  of 
Christ?" — making  the  other  way,  I  can  only  say,  that  no 
doctrine  of  concomitance  is  possible  which  does  not 
begin  with  the  assertion  contained  in  the  text.  It  is 
precisely  because  the  Blood  is  in  the  chalice  that,  in 
virtue  of  concomitance  under  that  same  species  of  wine, 
there  is  with  the  Blood  the  Body,  Soul,  and  Divinity. 
Taken  in  Dr.  Littledale's  exclusive  sense,  this  text  would 
preclude  all  communication  of  Christ's  Soul  and  Divinity 
even  in  a  communion  under  both  kinds.  So  little  true 
is  it  that  the  doctrine  of  concomitance  depends  upon  a 
doubtful  reading  of  i  Cor.  xi.  27:  "Therefore  whoso- 
ever shall  eat  this  bread  or  f  drink  the  chalice  of  the 
Lord  unworthily,  shall  be  guilty  of  the  body  and  of  the 
*  Ap.  Thomassin,  1.  f.  p.  674.  t  And. 


DISREGARD  OF  THE  DOGMA  OF  THE  INCARNATION.     143 

"blood  of  the  Lord  " — that  in  treating  of  concomitance 
the  text  is  sometimes  not  even  mentioned.  Concomi- 
tance is  simply  an  axiom  of  the  natural  reason  applied 
to  an  article  of  faith.  It  is  the  assertion  that  no  kind  of 
separation  being  any  more  possible  in  Christ,  it  follows 
that  where  He  is  at  all  there  He  is  wholly.  To  deny  or 
to  doubt  of  the  doctrine  of  concomitance  involves  nothing 
less  than  the  heresy  of  the  denial,  or  doubt,  of  Christ's 
real  presence  under  the  sacramental  species. 

§  4.  Disregard  of  the  Dogma  of  the  Incarnation. 

On  this  subject  Dr.  Littledale  thus  expresses  himself 
{p.  81) : — "  In  truth  there  is  not  such  zeal  for  the  Incarna- 
tion itself  in  the  Roman  Church  as  to  inspire  confidence 
in  its  own  permanent  hold  of  that  article  of  the  Faith." 
In  proof  he  quotes  Gury's  "Compendium  of  Moral 
Theology"  (vol.  i.  pp.  124,  125)  as  asking  the  question, 
"  Is  explicit  belief  in  the  mysteries  of  the  Trinity  and  the 
Incarnation  matter  of  necessity?"  and  answering  that 
the  more  probable  opinion  is  the  negative ;  from  which 
Dr.  Littledale  draws  the  conclusion  that  a  Catholic  is 
"at  liberty  to  believe  no  more  than,  say,  Judas  Mac- 
cabseus."  Now  I  have  before  me  the  edition  mentioned 
by  Dr.  Littledale  as  from  the  Propaganda  press  of  1872. 
It  is  really  that  of  1873,  as  we  iearn  fr°m  tne  editor  that 
there  was  no  Propaganda  edition  between  1862  and  1873. 
I  am  in  a  condition  then  to  assert  that  Dr.  Littledale 
never  found  in  F.  Gury  the  question  which  he  has  had 
the  audacity  to  print  between  inverted  commas.  F. 
Gury's  question  is  this  :  "  Is  explicit  faith  in  the  mystery 
of  the  Holy  Trinity  and  the  Incarnation  necessary  with 
the  necessity  of  a  means"  (necessitate  medii)  ?  Now,  it 
is  conceivable  that  Dr.  Littledale  may  be  simply  ignorant 
of  the  force  of  the  distinction  "de  necessitate  medii"  as 
.contrasted  with  that  of  "de  necessitate  prsecepti,"  but 
this  does  not:  justify  him  in  concluding  that  it  is  meaning- 


144     DISREGARD  OF  THE  DOGMA  OF  THE  INCARNATION. 

less,  and  may  just  as  well  be  left  out  as  not  By 
"necessary  with  the  necessity  of  a  means"  is  meant, 
necessary  from  the  nature  of  the  case  as  a  means  to  an 
end.  Faith  is  necessary  for  justification,  whether  outside 
or  inside  the  visible  Church.  It  is  a  necessary  con- 
stituent of  justification,  so  that  it  could  not  be  made  up 
for  *  even  if  it  could  be  shown  that  it  was  lacked  inno- 
cently. Now,  belief  in  God,  the  rewarder  of  the  good 
and  the  punisher  of  the  bad,  is  admitted  by  all  to  be 
the  minimum  of  the  explicit  faith  which  is  thus  necessary. 
Beyond  this,  theologians  ask  whether,  since  the  Christian 
dispensation,  an  explicit  faith  in  the  Trinity  and  the 
Incarnation  is  also  thus  absolutely  necessary  as  a 
means  to  justification,  and  it  is  the  negative  answer  to 
this  question  which  Gury  thinks  the  more  probable. 
" Necessary  with  the  necessity  of  a  precept"  means 
morally  necessary  in  virtue  of  a  Divine  command.  It 
involves  the  strictest  necessity  of  obedience,  but  still  a 
moral  necessity,  as  in  the  case  of  all  positive  law;  a 
necessity,  where  obedience  is  possible,  i.e.,  where  the 
law  is  known  and  the  person  capable.  That  explicit 
faith  in  the  Trinity  and  in  the  Incarnation  is  necessary 
with  the  necessity  of  a  precept — and  therefore  necessary 
in  the  only  sense  in  which  the  question  is  treated  of  by 
Dr.  Littledale — neither  Gury  nor  any  other  theologian 
doubts  for  a  moment.  But  he  thinks  that  here  innocent 
invincible  ignorance  would  not  bar  justification,  so  that 
absolution  given  to  such  an  one  would  be  more  probably 
valid  than  not,  though  it  could  not  be  lawfully  given  except 
in  extremity,  where  instruction  was  impossible.  Gury 
could  hardly  have  precluded  more  scrupulously  than  he 
has  done  the  opinion  which  Dr.  Littledale  imputes  to  him, 
that  "  a  Catholic  is  at  liberty  to  believe  no  more,  say, 
than  Judas  Maccabseus." 

Since  the  above  appeared  in  the  "Tablet"  of  January 
31,  1880,  Dr.  Littledale,  in  his  second  and  third  editions, 
•  At  least  "de  potestate  Dei  ordinaria." 


DISREGARD  OF  THE  DOGMA  OF  THE  INCARNATION.     145 

instead  of  Gury's  true  context,  "with  the  necessity  of 
a  means,"  substitutes  the  following  "(/>.,  so  as  to  be 
indispensable  to  salvation);"  an  explanation  perfectly 
calculated  to  elude  the  force  of  the  distinction.  There 
is  no  dispensing  with  an  explicit  belief  in  the  Trinity  and 
the  Incarnation,  any  more  than  there  is  with  an  explicit 
belief  in  a  Creator  and  Judge.  The  question  is,  whether 
such  explicit  belief  in  the  two  first-named  doctrines  is 
so  far  a  necessary  constituent  of  the  act  of  justifying  faith, 
since  the  promulgation  of  Christianity,  that  an  innocent 
believer  in  God,  who  has  sincerely  repented  of  his  sins, 
but  has  without  his  own  fault  remained  to  the  end  of  his 
life  in  ignorance  of  these  doctrines,  necessarily  fails  of 
justification,  and  so  of  salvation.  Is  this  the  doctrine 
Dr.  Littledale  and  his  party  would  like  to  advocate,  or  be 
supposed  to  advocate,  that  he  should  denounce  the  oppo- 
site as  un-Christian  ?  It  is  simply  untrue  that  any  Catholic 
writer  out  of  a  lunatic  asylum  ever  taught  that  explicit 
belief  in  the  Pope  was  necessary  "necessitate  medii." 

Dr.  Littledale  cannot  be  excused  here  of  a  gross  and 
wanton  ignorance  of  a  very  ancient  and  commonly  used 
distinction  amongst  Anglicans  as  well  as  Catholics ; 
"  usitata  distinctio,"  the  Protestant  John  Forbes  calls  it 
(Theol.  Mor.,  lib.  i.  c.  2).  Stillingfleet  uses  it  (Grounds 
of  Pro t.  Religion,  part  i.  c.  ii.  p.  51),  and  Bramhall,  in 
words  which  are  very  applicable,  exclaims  against  an 
adversary,  "Doth  he  know  no  distinction  of  things 
necessary  to  be  known,  that  some  things  are  not  so 
necessary  as  other?  Some  things  are  necessary  to  be 
known  necessitate  medii — to  obtain  salvation  ;  some  things 
are  necessary  to  be  known  only  necessitate pracepti,  because 
they  are  commanded" — and  concludes  with  the  taunt, 
"  Art  thou  a  master  in  Israel  and  knowest  not  these 
things  ?"  (Schism  Guarded,  part  i.  p.  492,  vol.  ii.  Oxford, 
1842). 

Of  an  addition  which  Dr.  Littledale  has  allowed  him- 
self to  make  in  his  third  edition  I  must  speak  much 

E 


146     DISREGARD  OF  THE  DOGMA  OF  THE  INCARNATION. 

more  severely.  It  is  as  follows  :  After  "  Judas  Maccabasus 
did,"  we  read  in  the  text,  "Or  than  the  Jesuits  exacted 
from  their  Chinese  converts  at  the  beginning  of  the  last 
century,"  and  to  this  is  appended  a  still  more  outrageous 
note  :  "They  did  to  death  in  1710,  in  the  Inquisition  of 
Macao,  Cardinal  Tournon,  the  Papal  legate  sent  by 
Clement  XL  to  stop  their  paganisation  of  Christianity. 
Cartwright,  'The  Jesuits,'  c.  xii."  Now,  observe,  the 
charge  to  be  substantiated  is  the  Roman  Church's  dis- 
regard of  a  fundamental  doctrine  of  Christianity,  viz., 
the  Incarnation ;  whereas  the  instance  urged  is  of  the 
precise  contrary,  viz.,  of  that  Church's  censuring  even 
her  choicest  missionaries  for  over  leniency  in  allowing  a 
practice  which  savoured  of  paganism.  Their  opponents 
have  certainly  not  shown  that  the  Jesuits  neglected 
to  teach  the  Incarnation  in  its  fulness;  the  question 
turned  upon  whether  a  certain  practice  prevailing  amongst 
the  Chinese  of  honouring  their  ancestors  was  to  be  re- 
garded as  a  civil  and  so  permissible,  or  as  a  religious 
and  so  superstitious  and  unpermissible,  act.  The  Jesuits 
took  the  first  view,  the  Dominicans  the  second,  and  the 
Holy  See  decided  against  the  former.  I  am  not  prepared 
to  say  that  the  Jesuit  missionaries  submitted  as  promptly 
as  they  ought  to  have  done  to  the  decision  of  authority ; 
but  it  was  a  case  to  try  the  holiest.  They  fully  believed 
that  the  best  interests  of  the  Chinese  mission  were  at 
stake,  and  it  is  scarcely  wonderful  that,  in  their  anxiety  to 
carry  out  their  cause  to  the  last,  they  should  hardly  have 
realised  that  it  was  over,  and  that  authority  had  pro- 
nounced finally.  As  to  the  charge  of  murdering  the 
legate,  the  facts  are  these:  Cardinal  Tournon  died 
when  in  the  hands  of  certain  Portuguese  officials  who 
had  made  common  cause  with  the  Chinese  government 
against  one  whom  they  regarded  as  a  disturber  of  a 
lucrative  intercourse.  There  is  simply  no  ground  for 
implicating  a  single  Jesuit  in  the  matter,  beyond  the 
fact  that  the  cardinal  was  a  judge  who  had  decided  an 


THE  CULTUS  OF  THE  SACRED  HEART.  147 

important  case  against  them.  Is  this,  I  would  ask, 
enough  to  justify  a  charge  of  murder  against  men  who 
were  preaching  Christ  at  the  risk  of  their  lives  ?  As  to 
the  cardinal  being  killed  by  Jesuits  in  the  Inquisition,  it 
is  something  like  saying  that  Lord  Penzance  was  slain 
by  Ritualists  in  Exeter  Hall,  and  certainly  requires  some 
explanation.  The  Dominicans  were  the  Inquisitors,  and 
they  were  the  opponents  of  the  Jesuits,  and  had  every 
reason  to  be  satisfied  with  the  cardinal  who  had  just 
pronounced  in  their  favour. 

Dr.  Littledale  and  his  friends  for  him  have  protested 
against  creating  a  prejudice  against  his  book  on  a  single 
count.  I  think  no  one  will  complain  that  my  counts  are 
either  few  or  slender ;  but  I  wish  to  express  my  convic- 
tion that  this  one  page,  if  properly  appreciated  (ed.  iii. 
p.  73),  should  make  any  honest  reader  throw  the  book 
into  the  fire,  and  console  himself  with  the  thought  that 
Dr.  Littledale  was  no  fair  representative  of  any  one  but 
himself,  and  perhaps  not  even  of  himself. 


§  5.  The  Cultus  of  the  Sacred  Heart. 

"The  modern  worship  of  the  Sacred  Heart  is,"  Dr. 
Littledale  says  (p.  121),  "  sheer  heresy,  condemned  by  the 
two  General  Councils  of  Ephesus  and  Chalcedon,  which 
forbade  any  worship  being  paid  to  a  divided  Christ." 
The  condemnation  at  Ephesus,  Chalcedon,  and,  I  may 
add,  Constantinople  (II. ),  of  the  worship  of  a  divided 
Christ,  is  simply  a  condemnation  of  Nestorianism — of 
a  worship  terminating  in  a  twofold  personality.  The 
Catholic  doctrine  on  the  subject  is  as  follows : — "  The 
object  of  the  worship  yielded  to  the  Incarnate  Word  is  the 
whole  Christ ;  hence  as  Christ  possesses  a  double  nature, 
human  and  divine,  a  partial  object  of  that  worship  is  the 
humanity  including  His  body ;  and  inasmuch  as  the  body 
consists  of  various  members,  each  of  these  members  con- 
stitutes a  partial  object :  but  the  formal  object,  the  where* 


148  THE  CULTUS  OF  THE  SACRED  HEART. 

fore  of  the  direction  of  such  and  so  great  a  worship  uport 
them,  is  the  Divinity  of  the  Word  whose  own  they  are  in 
virtue  of  the  hypostatic  union.  .  .  .  The  faithful  do  not 
adore  the  Heart  of  Jesus  separating  or  prescinding  from 
•the  Divinity,  when  they  worship  it  as  it  is,  the  Heart  of 
Jesus — the  Heart  of  the  Person  of  the  Word  to  which  it  is 
inseparably  united.  .  .  .  The  reason  why  the  faithful  in 
worshipping  Christ  specially  direct  their  worship  to  His 
most  Sacred  Heart,  rather  than  to  any  other  member  of 
His  most  Sacred  Body,  such  as  the  eyes  or  ears,  &c.,  is 
not  an  arbitrary  one,  but  very  consonant  to  reason ;  for 
the  heart  is  the  natural  symbol  of  that  infinite  love  with 
which  Christ  loved  us  even  unto  death — even  unto  the 
shedding  of  His  blood,  and  which  was  the  inexhaustible 
fountain  of  all  those  graces  with  which  He  enriched  us  " 
(Hurter,  Theol.  Dogm.  Tract,  vii.  n.  430).  Thus  we 
see  that  the  symbolic  character  of  the  Sacred  Heart 
is  not  the  formal  object  or  reason  of  its  being  worshipped 
at  all,  which  can  be  nothing  else  than  the  Divine  persona- 
lity with  which  it,  together  with  the  rest  of  the  humanity, 
is  united  ;  whereas  this  symbolic  character  is  precisely  the 
reason  of  the  special  prominence  and  articulation  given 
to  its  worship.  The  devotion  to  the  Sacred  Heart  prac- 
tised in  that  great  devotion  of  the  Middle  Ages,  that  to 
the  Five  Wounds,  was  of  precisely  the  same  theological 
character  as  the  modern  cultus.  The  wounded  hands 
and  feet  and  Heart  as  they  really  existed  were  the  partial 
objects  of  the  worship  of  Christ,  and  were  specially 
selected  as  symbolising  Christ's  zeal  and  beneficence. 
You  may  as  well  charge  St.  Mary  Magdalene  with  divid- 
ing Christ  when  she  kissed  His  feet,  as  the  modern 
devotee  of  the  Sacred  Heart.  Neither  can  it  at  all  be 
maintained  that  the  formal  and  direct  cultus  of  the 
Sacred  Heart  had  no  existence  before  its  enunciation  in 
the  seventeenth  century.  In  the  "Vitis  Mystica,"  a 
series  of  meditations  on  the  Passion,  of  the  twelfth 
century,  published  amongst  the  works  of  St.  Bernard, 


THE  CULTUS  OF  THE  SACRED  HEART.  149 

ve  read :  "  But  because  we  are  once  come  to  the  most 
sweet  Heart  of  Jesus,  and  it  is  good  for  us  to  be  here, 
let  us  not  easily  suffer  ourselves  to  be  drawn  away  from 
Him  of  whom  it  is  written,  '  They  that  depart  from  Thee 
are  written  on  the  ground.'  But  what  of  those  that 
approach  Thee  ?  Do  Thou  teach  us.  Thou  hast  said 
to  those  that  approach  Thee,  *  Rejoice,  for  your  names 
are  written  in  heaven.'  Let  us  put  these  together,  and 
if  it  be  so  with  those  who  are  written  in  heaven,  how 
shall  it  be  with  those  who. are  written  upon  the  earth? 
verily  they  shall  mourn ;  but  who  would  not  willingly 
rejoice?  Let  us  approach  unto  Thee,  and  we  will  exult 
and  rejoice,  remembering  Thy  Heart.  Oh,  how  good  and 
pleasant  a  thing  is  it  to  dwell  in  that  Heart !  A  goodly 
treasure,  a  goodly  pearl,  is  Thy  Heart,  O  good  Jesus, 
which  in  the  trenched  field  of  Thy  body  we  shall  find. 
Who  would  throw  away  this  pearl?  Nay,  rather  would 
I  give  all  things,  and  exchange  all  the  thoughts  and 
affections  of  my  mind,  and  purchase  it  for  me,  casting  all 
my  thought  upon  the  Heart  of  my  Lord  Jesus,  and  that 
Heart  without  fail  will  nourish  me  "  (c.  iii.  8). 

Again,  in  the  early  part  of  the  sixteenth  century,  the 
Carthusian  Lansperg,  in  his  "  Divini  Amoris  Pharetra " 
(ed.  1572,  p.  76),  exhorts  the  faithful  most  earnestly  to 
a  devotion  to  the  Sacred  Heart  as  "  the  treasury  and 
door  of  all  graces,  through  which  we  approach  unto  God 
and  God  unto  us."  In  order  to  keep  that  Heart  before 
our  minds,  he  suggests  that  we  should  have  a  figure  of  it 
made,  on  which  we  may  satisfy  our  devotion.  "  Most 
expedient  is  it,  and  a  great  act  of  piety,  devoutly  to 
honour  the  Heart  of  the  Lord  Jesus,  to  which  in  all 
thy  necessities  thou  mayst  fly,  whence  too  thou  mayst 
draw  all  comfort  and  all  succour.  For  when  the  hearts 
of  all  mortals  shall  have  forsaken  thee,  be  assured  this 
most  faithful  Heart  will  neither  betray  nor  forsake  thee." 
This  serves  as  the  introduction  to  an  act  of  consecration 
to  the  Sacred  Heart,  beginning,  "  O  most  noble,  most 


150  THE  CULTUS  OF  THE  SACRED  HEART. 

kind,  most  sweet  Heart  of  my  most  faithful  Lover,  Jesus. 
Christ,  my  God  and  my  Lord,  draw  to  Thyself  and 
absorb,  I  beseech  Thee,  my  heart  and  all  my  thoughts  and 
affections,  and  all  my  powers  of  soul  and  body,  and  all 
that  I  am  and  can,  unto  Thy  glory  and  most  holy  plea- 
sure. To  Thy  Heart  I  commend  and  resign  myself 
wholly." 

After  this  we  may,  perhaps,  be  in  a  condition  to 
appreciate  a  certain  "curious  fact"  with  which  Dr. 
Littledale  supplies  us  in  a  note  (p.  137,  ed.  3),  viz., 
"  that  Father  la  Colombiere,  the  inventor  of  the  cult," 
"  borrowed  it "  from  a  book  of  Goodwin's,  Cromwell's 
chaplain,  "  which  he  met  with  during  his  two  years'  stay 
in  England."  Father  la  Colombiere  was  a  director  of 
Blessed  Margaret  Mary,  and  one  of  the  first  promoters 
of  the  cult  of  the  Sacred  Heart,  though  he  did  not  invent 
it ;  the  "  curious  fact,"  I  am  afraid,  Dr.  Littledale  did  in- 
vent, or  borrowed  from  a  genius  yet  more  audacious  than 
his  own.  There  are  just  two  grains  of  truth  in  his  state- 
ment, viz.,  that  Goodwin  wrote  a  book  on  the  Heart  of 
Christ,  entitled  "  The  Heart  of  Christ  in  Heaven  towards 
Sinners  on  Earth,"  *  and  that  Father  la  Colombiere  was 
two  years  in  England;  the  rest  is  pure  conjecture,  and 
of  the  unlikeliest.  It  is  certainly  more  "curious"  than 
natural  that  a  seventeenth-century  French  Jesuit,  attached 
to  the  English  Royalist  party,  should  have  deliberately 
preferred  to  draw  his  inspiration  on  a  point  of  mystical 
theology  from  a  Puritan  and  a  Roundhead  instead  of 
from  the  far  more  copious  sources  within  his  own  Church. 
Moreover,  we  have  a  recorded  revelation  of  Blessed 
Margaret  Mary's  in  1673  ;  she  was  in  intimate  com- 
munication with  Father  La  Colombiere  on  the  subject  in 

*  Not  "  Saints,"  as  Dr.  Littledale  has  it.  This  tract,  the  first 
edition  (1642)  of  which  I  have  before  me,  has  no  suggestion  of  any 
cultus  of  the  Sacred  Heart.  Its  object  is  to  encourage  penitents  with; 
the  thought  that  Christ  still  retains  in  heaven  the  human  heart  where* 
with  He  loved  sinners  on  earth,  but  it  does  not  go  further. 


THE  CULTUS  OF  THE  SACRED  HEART.  1 5  1 

1675,  until  his  mission  to  England;  and  in  one  of  his 
retreats  preached  before  the  English  Court  he  recounts 
that  revelation.  Nothing  can  be  clearer  than  that  the 
devotion  of  the  Blessed  Margaret  Mary  to  the  Sacred 
Heart  was  a  direct  outcome  of  her  devotion  to  the  Blessed 
Sacrament.  (See  Pere  Croiset,  La  Devotion  au  Sacre" 
Coeur,  c.  i.).  There  is,  of  course,  practically  no  limit  to 
the  "  curious  facts  "  that  may  be  produced  by  reckless 
conjecture.* 

As  an  instance  of  the  Holy  See  contradicting  itself 
on  a  point  of  faith,  Dr.  Littledale  (p.  8,  note)  asserts 
that  the  Quietist  propositions  condemned  by  Innocent 
XL  in  1687,  especially  i,  2,  4,  5,  20,  21,  25,  43,  61,  and 
62,  are  reproduced  in  Blessed  Margaret  Mary  Alacoque's 
"La  Devotion  au  Cceur  de  J£sus,"  published  in  1698; 
which  Quietism  was  virtually  approved  by  the  Holy  See 
when  it  beatified  Blessed  Margaret  Mary  in  1864.  Per- 
haps, if  Dr.  Littledale  had  trusted  himself  to  explain  what 
he  understands  to  be  that  doctrine  of  Quietism  which  he 
supposes  to  have  been  alternately  condemned  and  ap- 
proved by  the  Holy  See,  the  public  might  be  better  able 
to  appreciate  the  justice  of  his  charge.  As  it  is,  I  would 
observe,  first,  that  the  work  which  Dr.  Littledale  speaks 
of  as  the  Saint's,  was  the  work  of  Father  Croiset,  S.J., 
and  is  published  as  "  par  un  P.  de  la  Compagnie  de  Je'sus," 
although  understood,  I  believe  justly,  to  represent  her 
doctrine.  Secondly,  that  not  all  the  propositions  of 
Molinos  are  condemned  by  Innocent  as  in  all  respects 
false,  but  some  only  as  being  "  suspect  of  heresy," 
regard  being  had  to  their  context.  Now,  if  we  read 
through  these  propositions  we  shall  see  that  with 
regard  to  the  spiritual  life,  their  teaching  is  that  the 
only  state  which  is  pleasing  to  Almighty  God,  nay, 
the  only  state  which  does  not  offend  Him,  is  one  in 
which  the  soul  is  absolutely  passive  ;  and  again,  that 
the  purgative  and  illuminative  ways  are  to  be  entirely 
rejected  in  favour  of  the  unitive,  thus  destroying  the 
*  See  Appendix,  Note  E. 


152  THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  BIBLE. 

very  idea"  of  Christian  asceticism.  This  doctrine  issued, 
if  not  in  Molinos,  at  least  in  his  disciples,  in  the  gravest 
irregularities.  Nothing  in  the  least  degree  resembling 
such  doctrine  appears  in  the  teaching  of  the  humble  and 
mortified  sister  of  the  Visitation,  who,  even  in  her  state 
of  ecstasy,  fulfilled  the  humblest  duties  of  obedience,  and 
who  might  have  taken  her  motto  from  the  Office  of  St. 
Cecilia,  "  Sicut  apis  argumentosa  Domino  deserviebat." 
When  she  spoke  of  the  prayer  of  quiet,  it  was  as  a  tran- 
sient condition,  the  outcome  of  generous  effort,  and  the 
reward  of  victory.  Her  language  on  this  point  in  no 
way  differs  from  the  ordinary  language  of  Catholic 
mystics. 

§  6.  The  Church  and  the  Bible. 

Scripture,  says  Dr.  Littledale  (p.  3),  is  admitted  by 
the  Roman  Church  to  be  "  the  chief  source  of  all  our 
knowledge,  as  Christians,  of  the  nature  and  will  of 
Almighty  God."  "The  chief  source  of  all  our  know- 
ledge," &c.,  through  the  instruction  of  the  Church, — I 
grant ;  "  of  our  knowledge,"  through  our  own  study  in 
independence  of  the  Church's  instruction, — I  deny. 
Nothing  can  be  more  emphatic  than  the  teaching  of  the 
Fathers  of  the  advantage  of  the  one  and  of  the  danger 
of  the  other.  The  following  passages  are  taken  from 
the  work  of  Mgr.  Malou,  "  L'Ecriture  Sainte,"  torn.  i. 
pp.  255-285  : — St.  John  Chrysostom  bids  his  congrega- 
tion read  up  the  passages  which  he  will  interpret  for 
them  in  the  Church  (Horn.  i.  on  Matt.  n.  6,  t.  vii.  p.  13), 
and  (Horn.  ix.  in  Ep.  ad  Col.  n.  2,  t.  xi.  p.  392)  he  says 
to  the  fathers  of  families,  "  You  must  learn  from  me  only, 
your  wives  and  children  from  you."  St  Augustine  (cont. 
Ep.  Fund.  c.  5,  t.  viii.  col.  153):  "I  would  not  believe 
the  Gospel  unless  the  authority  of  the  Catholic  Church 
moved  me  thereto."  And  of  the  light  which  the  Church 
and  Scripture  throw  upon  one  another,  he  says  that 


THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  BIBLE.  153 

although  authority  for  this  or  that  point  "is  not  pro- 
duced from  the  canonical  Scriptures,  still  the  Scriptural 
truth  is  retained  by  us  in  the  matter  when  we  do  that 
which  the  whole  Church  approves  whom  the  authority 
of  the  same  Scripture  commends.  So  that  inasmuch  as 
Holy  Scripture  cannot  deceive,  let  whosoever  fears  de- 
ception on  the  obscurity  of  this  question  consult  the 
Church,  which  Holy  Scripture,  without  any  ambiguity, 
points  out  to  him"  (Cont.  Crescon.  lib.  i.  c.  33,  n.  39,  t. 
ix.  col.  407).  St.  John  Chrysostom  :  "  It  is  clear  the 
Apostles  did  not  deliver  everything  in  epistles,  but 
much  without  writing ;  and  that  also  is  worthy  of  faith. 
Wherefore  we  account  the  tradition  of  the  Church  also 
worthy  of  faith  :  it  is  the  tradition  ;  ask  no  more"  (Horn, 
iv.  in  Ep.  ii.  ad  Thess.  cap.  ii.  t.  xi.  p.  582).  St  Jerome 
(in  Isai.  i.  6,  c.  13,  t.  iv.  p.  236) :  "The  leaders  of  the 
Church  enter  the  gates  of  the  mysteries  of  God,  and, 
having  the  key  of  knowledge,  understand  the  mysteries 
of  the  Scriptures,  and  open  them  to  the  people  intrusted 
to  them."  "  A  man  sustained  by  faith,  hope,  and  chanty 
does  not  require  the  Scriptures  except  for  the  instruction 
of  others ;  so  it  is  that  many,  by  means  of  these  three, 
live  even  in  the  desert  without  books." 

Of  the  dangers  of  independent  study,  St.  Augustine 
says :  "  They  are  deceived  by  many  and  manifold 
obscurities  and  ambiguities  who  read  rashly,  mistaking 
one  thing  for  another,  and  what  they  wrongly  look  for 
in  certain  places  they  find  not,  to  such  an  extent  do 
certain  obscure  sayings  involve  in  deepest  darkness  "  (De 
Doct  Christ,  lib.  ii.  c.  6,  t.  iii.  pars.  i.  col.  21).  St.  Jerome, 
in  a  well-known  passage,  denounces  the  grotesque  and 
mischievous  results  of  promiscuous  Bible-reading  (Ep. 
liii.  ad  Paulin.  n.  16).* 

St.  Irenaeus   (Cont.  Haer.  lib.  iv.  c.  26,  n.  i,  p.  262) 

*  "  Hanc  (artem)  garrula  anus,  hanc  clelirus  senex,  hanc  sophista 
verbosus,  hanc  universi  prsesumunt,  lacerant,  decent  antequam 
discant." 


J54  THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  BIBLE. 

had  long  before  told  Christians  how  to  escape  these 
dangers.  "  There  where  are  the  charismata  of  the  Lord, 
it  is  necessary  that  we  should  learn  the  truth,  amongst 
those  with  whom  is  that  Church  succession  which  is 
from  the  Apostles,  and  that  which  is  assuredly  sound 
and  blameless  teaching.  For  they  preserve  our  faith 
both  in  the  one  God  who  made  all  things  .  .  .  and 
without  danger  expound  to  us  the  Scriptures." 

Origen  (in  Cant.  Cant.  Prol.  t.  iii.  p.  26),  and  St. 
Jerome  (Prol.  in  Jerem.  t.  v.  p.  3),  speak  with  approval 
of  the  rule  prevailing  amongst  the  Jews  that  certain 
portions  of  Scripture — the  beginning  of  Genesis,  the 
beginning  and  end  of  Ezechiel,  and  the  Canticle  of 
Canticles — should  be  forbidden  to  all  under  thirty ;  and 
Gregory  Nazianzen  exclaims  that  a  similar  rule  ought  to 
prevail  amongst  Christians,  curtailing  promiscuous  Scrip- 
ture-reading (Orat.  xxxii.  n.  32,  p.  600,  t.  i.  p.  35,  and 
Orat.  ii.  n.  48). 

When  St.  John  Chrysostom  urges  us,  as  he  does,  to  the 
study  of  the  Scriptures,  not  only  is  it  not  independent 
study,  but  it  is  not  study  of  the  Bible  at  all  in  the 
modern  sense.  He  speaks  primarily  of  the  Gospels  and 
Acts  and  of  the  Psalms,  and  then  of  the  Epistles,  but 
by  no  means  with  the  same  insistence. 

The  principle  of  the  Eible  Societies,  viz.,  a  wholly 
undirected  reading  by  every  one  of  the  entire  Bible,  is 
utterly  repudiated  by  the  Fathers ;  and  the  Popes  who 
condemned  these  societies  only  followed  strictly  in  the 
lines  of  the  early  Church,  with  an  additional  justification 
in  their  experience  of  the  Biblical  aberrations  of  Pro- 
testantism. The  Society's  Bibles  are  "  poisonous  pas- 
tures ;;  (to  use  Leo  XII. 's  words,  which  give  such  offence 
to  Dr.  Littledale),  although  all  but  a  fraction  of  their 
contents  is  the  Word  of  God  ;  because  they  represent  the 
principle  of  heresy  in  their  rejection  of  the  Church's 
canon  and  interpretation,  not  to  speak  of  particular 
errors  ;  and  the  poison  thus  contained  is  certainly  none 


THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  BIBLE.  155 

the  less  dangerous  because  conveyed  in  what  is,  sub- 
stantially, the  Bread  of  Life. 

Of  the  passages  which  Dr.  Littledale  has  quoted  from 
the  Fathers  on  behalf  of  promiscuous  independent  Bible- 
reading,  I  would  observe  that,  with  two  exceptions,  they 
do  not  present  even  a  superficial  difficulty.  The  excep- 
tions are  (p.  83), — i.  A  passage  given  as  from  "  St.  Chry- 
sostom, Horn.  xlix.  on  St.  Matt.  ii.  3,"  which  speaks  of 
the  Scriptures  being  the  one  way  of  finding  out  the  true 
Church,  and  its  being  useless  to  look  for  other  proof. 
2.  A  passage  from  St.  Isidore  of  Pelusium  (Ep.  iv.  67- 
91),  which  declares  the  Scriptures  to  be  such  "  that  the 
learned  and  the  ignorant,  women  and  children,  may 
alike  teach  themselves  from  it."  I  have  something  to 
say  on  both  these  passages. 

St.  Chrysostom,  "  Horn.  xlix.  on  St.  Matt.  ii.  3."  The 
careless  reference,  which  has  passed  unamended  through 
three  editions,  tells  its  own  tale  at  once, — an  old  one 
indeed  to  all  who  have  concerned  themselves  with  the 
"  Plain  Reasons," — that  Dr.  Littledale's  quotations  are, 
as  a  rule,  second-hand  and  unverified.  He  troubles  him- 
self with  their  accuracy  as  little  as  a  man  does  with  the 
geological  formation  of  a  stone  he  picks  up  to  throw  at 
a  dog.  But  there  is  something  really  cynical  in  the  care- 
less anachronism  which  exhibits  a  forty-ninth  homily  on 
the  beginning  of  a  second  chapter.  St.  Chrysostom  has 
no  homily  on  Matt.  ii.  3.  The  passage  does  not  appear 
in  any  of  St.  Chrysostom's  homilies  on  St.  Matthew,  nor 
in  any  other  homily  of  that  Father,  but  the  passage  has 
been  found  nevertheless,  although,  with  Dr.  Littledale's 
leave,  I  must  amend  the  reference,  thus,  "  Pseudo-Chry- 
sostom,  Opus  Imperfectum  in  St.  Matt.  Horn.  xliv.  e 
cap.  24."  This  work,  say  the  Benedictines,  is  not,  and 
cannot  by  any  possibility  be,  Chrysostom's  ;  Erasmus 
rejected  it,  so  did  Usher  and  CaVe ;  it  is  abandoned  by 
critics  of  every  school.  But  not  only  is  it  not  Chry- 
sostom's, but,  as  the  Benedictines  point  out,  the  author 


156  THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  BIBLE. 

is  clearly  an  Arian,  nay,  an  Anomoean.  Even  the  few 
defenders  in  an  uncritical  age  of  the  Chrysostomic  attri- 
bution admitted  that  the  work  was  overlaid  with  the 
faces  hareticorum. 

It  is  simply  impossible  that  any  one  with  the  most 
rudimentary  critical  sense  could  compare  the  mystical 
strain  of  this  homily  with  the  grave  literalness  of  the 
genuine  homily  on  the  same  text,  and  believe  the  two  to 
be  by  the  same  author,  and  that  author  Chrysostom. 

In  the  passage  from  St.  Isidore  the  phrase  "may 
alike  teach  themselves"  (ftddoiev)  is  a  gross  mistranslation, 
rendered  the  less  excusable  as  the  same  word  is  rightly 
rendered  a  line  or  so  below,  "are  able  to  learn"  (/jLaw&uvovreg). 
Dr.  Littledale  has  corrected  this  in  his  second  edition 
into  "  may  alike  learn"  according  to  his  invariable 
wont,  without  a  word  to  indicate  that  there  is  a  cor- 
rection. 

Independent  universal  Scripture-reading  has  always 
resulted  in  the  tyranny  of  certain  texts.  One  lives  by 
the  eye  alone,  and  he  adopts  anthropomorphism  ;  another 
is  a  metaphysician,  and  to  him  everything  is  spiritual  and 
the  history  becomes  mere  allegory.  The  pessimist  is  led 
to  argue  like  Marlowe's  Faustus  :  "  Stipendium  peccati 
mors  est,  ha  !  Stipendium,"  &c.,  "  Si  peccasse  negamus, 
fallimur  et  nulla  est  in  nobis  veritas  ; "  "  why,  then,  belike 
we  must  sin  and  so  consequently  die ;  aye,  we  must  die 
an  everlasting  death  : "  the  optimist  sees  only  that  "  God 
is  love."  I  admit  fully  that  Bible-reading  has  been  the 
great  source  of  practical  piety  amongst  English  sectarians ; 
but  none  the  less  its  exclusive  first-hand  use  has  been  the 
source  of  every  Protestant  aberration  from  Calvinism 
down  to  "Eternal  Hope."  The  only  security  for  the 
whole  Bible  being  taught  is  its  embodiment  in  an  in- 
fallible ecclesiastical  tradition,  and  its  dispensation  ac- 
cording to  a  living  "rule  of  faith,"  which  shall  regulate 
the  focus  for  its  many  distances  and  resolve  its  discords. 
This  is  what  we  should  expect  a  priori  from  the  general 


THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  BIBLE.  157 

character  of  the  sacred  volume.  The  Bible  was  evidently 
never  meant  for  a  complete  course  of  religious  instruction. 
It  is  in  no  sense  a  whole,  but  a  collection  of  fragments, 
of  Sybilline  leaves ;  and  to  regard  it  as  a  whole  involves 
an  arbitrary  selection,  in  which  violence  is  done  to  what- 
ever does  not  harmonise  with  what  you  are  pleased  to 
consider  the  leading  idea.  If  all  the  particles  are  to  be 
preserved,  if  they  are  to  coalesce  in  a  symmetrical  whole, 
it  must  be  when  the  ideal  context  is  partly  hermeneutically 
educed,  partly  supplemented  by  ecclesiastical  tradition. 
This  is  altogether  confirmed  by  experience ;  for  Catholics 
alone  are  faithful  to  the  whole  of  Scripture ;  have  no  pet 
texts  to  which  all  else  must  give  way  :  whereas  Protestants 
have  always  had  their  special  attractions  and  aversions, 
from  Luther's  "  stramineous  "  Epistle  of  St.  James  to  the 
"Church  Times,"  which  charged  an  opponent  with 
Calvinism  for  suggesting  that  "  strait  is  the  gate,"  &c., 
might  be  regarded  as  throwing  light  upon  the  partial 
success  of  the  Church. 

Dr.  Littledale  complains  that  Rome — the  local  Church 
of  Rome — has  done  nothing  for  Biblical  studies.  Biblical 
criticism  is  one  thing,  and  the  ascetic  study  of  Scripture 
which  the  Fathers  urge  by  precept  and  example  another ; 
neither  do  they  always  advance  hand  in  hand.  As 
regards  the  first,  we  must  recollect  Sixtus  V.'s  great 
edition  of  the  Septuagint,  for  the  merits  of  which  see 
Tischendorf,  "Introd.  ad  Vet.  Test."  Proleg.  vii.  <tf^.,and 
the  recent  labours  of  Vercellone  on  the  Vulgate.  As  to 
commentaries  of  the  character  of  a  Lapide,  Rome  has 
always  been  most  fruitful.  If  there  have  not  been 
"full  commentaries  on  the  entire  Bible"  published  in 
Rome  of  late,  at  any  rate  there  is  no  portion  of  Scrip- 
ture on  which  commentaries  have  not  appeared  in 
Rome,  almost  continuously,  from  the  introduction  of 
printing. 

No  doubt  the  portentous  mischief  resulting  from  the 
almost  idolatrous  misuse  of  their  Bibles  by  Protestants 


158  THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  BIBLE. 

has,  very  naturally,  tended  to  disincline  the  ordinary 
Catholic  layman  even  from  its  legitimate  use,  and  this  to 
his  very  great  disadvantage.  That  such  abstention  in 
no  way  accords  with  the  natural  Catholic  instinct  is 
proved  by  facts  such  as  Janssen  brings  out  (Geschichte 
des  Deutschen  Volkes,  vol.  i.  p.  43),  when  he  tells  us 
that  in  little  more  than  half  a  century  between  the  inven- 
tion of  printing  and  Luther's  outbreak  no  less  than  fifteen 
editions  of  the  whole  Bible,  to  say  nothing  of  portions, 
had  been  issued  in  German,  five  in  Flemish.  "  In  Italian 
eleven  complete  editions  of  the  Bible  appeared  before 
the  year  1500,  and  were  reprinted  eight  times  more 
before  the  year  1567,  with  the  express  permission  of  the 
Holy  Office.  More  than  forty  editions  are  reckoned 
before  the  appearance  of  the  first  Protestant  version 
in  Italian."  See  Mr.  Allnatt's  "Which  is  the  True 
Church?"  p.  40,  for  this  and  other  valuable  informa- 
tion concerning  the  Catholic  versions  of  the  Bible  in 
different  countries. 

As  regards  the  use  of  the  Bible  amongst  the  Catholic 
clergy,  Dr.  Littledale  is  utterly  at  sea.  There  is  not  a 
seminary  in  the  Church  in  which  Scripture  does  not 
enter  largely  into  every  treatise  of  theology;  in  which 
Scripture  lectures  do  not  form  an  important  feature  in 
the  curriculum ;  and  in  which  Scripture  is  not  presented 
as  the  main  source  of  religious  instruction  and  sacred 
eloquence ;  a  daily  conference  on  Holy  Scripture  is  part 
of  the  rule  of  the  Sulpician  seminaries.  Hardly  a  year 
passes  without  commentaries  upon  some  portion  of 
Scripture  appearing,  principally  in  Latin ;  and  the  poorest 
priest's  library  is  almost  sure  to  contain  one  or  more  of 
them.  Of  the  Spanish  clergy,  who  rank  lowest  in  Dr. 
Littledale's  list,  for  neglect  of  Scripture,  it  was  specially 
noted  at  the  Vatican  Council  that  their  acquaintance  with 
Holy  Writ  was  perfect. 


UNCERTAINTY  AND  FAILURE  IN  MORALS.  159 

Charge  3.    Uncertainty  and  Failure  in  Morals. 
1 1.  Probabilism  and  St.  Alfonso  Liguori 

Dr.  Littledale  tells  us  (p.  n)  that  "all  Roman  Catholic 
confessors  are  now  bound  to  follow  in  the  confessional " 
the  teaching  of  St.  Alfonso  Liguori,  "since  he  has  been 
raised  to  the  rank  of  a  doctor  of  the  Church."  "As  a 
saint,"  he  continues,  "according  to  Roman  doctrine, 
there  can  be  no  error  in  his  writings ;  but  as  a  doctor, 
not  only  is  there  no  error,  but  it  is  necessary  to  submit  to 
his  teaching  (Benedict  XIV.,  de  Canonizatione,  iv.  2,  xi. 
1 1)."  No  authority  could  have  greater  weight  with  Catho- 
lics than  Benedict  XIV.  ;  but  "fas  et  ab  hoste  doceri;:? 
Dr.  Littledale's  own  words  about  ourselves  are  ringing 
in  my  ears,  "No  reference  to  authorities,  however  seem- 
ingly frank  and  clear,  .  .  .  can  be  taken  on  trust."  And 
so  I  turn  to  Benedict  XIV.,  de  Canoniz.  lib.  iv.  par.  2, 
cap.  xi.  I  find  that  he  treats  of  the  qualities  of  a  doctor 
of  the  universal  Church  from  No.  8  to  the  end  of  the 
chapter.  Nothing  even  remotely  resembling  Dr.  Little- 
dale's  statement  occurs  therein.  The  highest  apprecia- 
tion of  the  doctrine  of  doctors  is  (No.  14)  in  a  quotation 
from  a  decree  of  Boniface  VIII.,  where  we  read  that  for 
one  to  be  raised  to  such  rank  it  should  be  verified  that 
by  his  doctrine  "  the  darkness  of  errors  was  dispersed, 
light  thrown  upon  obscurities,  doubts  resolved,  the  hard 
knots  of  Scripture  unloosed."  There  is  nothing  here  to 
suggest  that  our  obligation  in  regard  to  the  teaching  of 
doctors  differs  at  all  in  kind  from  our  obligation  in 
regard  to  the  teaching  of  saints  who  are  not  doctors ; 
and  if  we  turn  back  to  lib.  ii.  cap.  xxxiv.  we  shall  see 
what  that  is  and  what  it  is  not.  "  It  can  never  be  said 
that  the  teaching  of  a  servant  of  God  has  been  approved 
by  the  Holy  See ;  at  the  most  it  can  be  said,  when  the 
revisers  have  reported  that  nothing  has  been  found  in 
his  works  contrary  to  the  decree  of  Urban  VIII.,  and 


l6o  PROBABILISM  AND  ST.  ALFONSO  LIGUORI. 

the  judgment  of  the  revisers  has  been  approved  by  the 
Sacred  Congregation,  and  confirmed  by  the  Supreme 
Pontiff,  that  it  was  not  reproved.  Wherefore  the  afore- 
said doctrine  may  be  with  due  reverence  impugned, 
without  incurring  any  note  of  temerity,  if  the  modest 
objection  be  supported  by  good  reasons ;  and  this  even 
after  the  servant  of  God,  the  author,  has  been  ranked 
among  the  blessed  or  the  saints.  It  is  a  famous  saying 
of  the  monk  Nicholas,  in  his  Epistle  to  Peter  of  Celle, 
which  is  9,  lib.  9,  among  the  Letters  of  Peter  of  Celle  : — 
'That  St.  Bernard,  whom  you  say  I  have  mulcted  of  due 
reverence,  .  .  .  was  long  ago  reckoned  in  the  number 
of  the  saints,  and  of  late  canonised  in  the  Church,  and 
exempted  from  the  judgment  of  men.'  He  is  exempt, 
I  say,  so  that  we  may  not  doubt  of  his  glory,  but  not 
that  we  may  not  dispute  his  word."  It  may  be  as  well 
to  let  St.  Alfonso  decide  the  question  of  a  doctor's 
rights  for  himself.  Does  he,  or  does  he  not,  claim  the 
right,  from  time  to  time,  of  differing  with  the  great  Doctors 
of  the  Church,  St.  Thomas  and  St.  Bonaventure?  Any 
one  who  will  take  the  trouble  to  run  his  eye  through 
a  volume  of  his  "  Moral  Theology  "  will  find  several 
instances ;  here  is  one  (lib.  iv.  Tract  i.  cap.  2,  dub.  3, 
art  i.  n.  104):  "St.  Thomas  and  Hales  take  the  nega- 
tive ;  .  .  .  but  Lessius  and  Hadrian  do  rightly  take  the 
affirmative." 

Now,  as  to  the  character  of  St.  Alfonso  as  a  teacher. 
i.  He  is  a  casuist,  and  by  his  example  at  least  teaches 
casuistry;  and  Dr.  Littledale  (p.  10)  tells  us  what 
casuistry  is.  It  is  "  a  system  for  dealing  with  separate 
cases  of  sins."  "  It  has  come  about  in  this  way,"  partly 
from  a  desire  "  to  make  religion  a  very  easy  thing,  partly 
to  provide  excuses  for  many  evil  things  constantly  said 
and  done  to  promote  the  interests  of  Romanism  itself." 
Now,  observe  this  is  not  an  account,  true  or  false,  of  an 
abuse  into  which  casuistry  may  have  fallen  in  the  hands 
of  certain  theologians,  but  it  is  an  account  of  casuistry 


PROBABILISM  AND  ST.  ALFONSO  LIGUORI.  l6l 

in  se,  the  casuistry  of  St.  Antoninus  and  St.  Charles 
Borromeo,  as  well  as  of  St.  Alfonso,  of  Probabiliorists 
as  well  as  of  Probabilists.  There  would  seem  to  be 
something  inherently  wrong  in  "  dealing  with  separate 
cases  "  instead  of  cleaving  to  "  God's  law."  But  is  not 
every  sin  a  separate  case  ;  and  does  not  the  confessional 
imply  a  dealing  with  separate  cases ;  and  have  not 
Ritualists  found  the  necessity  of  issuing  a  manual  for 
treating  such  cases  systematically,  i.e.,  a  Manual  of 
Casuistry?  we  say  nothing  of  earlier  Anglican  writers 
like  Taylor  and  Sanderson.  The  ordinary  English  Pro- 
testant need  have  no  difficulty  in  understanding  what 
casuistry  is,  if  he  will  recollect  that  the  confessional  is  a 
court  in  which  the  penitent  is  accuser  and  accused,  and 
the  confessor  judge.  Does  not  every  legal  trial  involve 
a  point,  nay,  many  points,  of  casuistry?  Is  not  the 
question,  whether  or  not  the  particular  case  falls  under 
a  law,  the  bone  of  contention  betwixt  eager  men,  skilful 
expounders,  or  unscrupulous  wresters,  as  it  may  happen, 
of  the  law,  but  whose  employment  neither  in  theory  nor 
in  practice  is  accounted  dishonourable  ?  God's  law  is  un- 
changeable and  stainless,  "  Lex  Dei  immaculata ;"  but  in 
its  application  to  the  various  circumstances  and  accidents 
of  life  there  must  always  be  a  sphere  of  speculative 
probability  falling  more  or  less  short  of  certainty.  "  Life, 
like  a  dome  of  many-coloured  glass,  stains  the  white 
radiance  of  eternity." 

2.  St.  Alfonso  is  a  Probabilist  and  a  teacher  of  Proba- 
bilism.  This  system  of  casuistry,  bad  enough  in  itself, 
is  now,  Dr.  Littledale  says,  "governed  by  a  principle 
called  Probabilism,  the  simple  meaning  of  which  is  this, 
that  if  something  be  plainly  forbidden  by  God's  law  of 
morals,  and  if  you  have  a  mind  to  do  it,  you  may  do  it, 
in  the  teeth,  not  only  of  the  Bible,  but  of  most  of  the 
chief  writers  on  morals,  if  only  you  can  get  an  opinion 
of  one  casuistical  writer  in  your  favour,  even  though  it 
be  plainly  weaker  and  less  probable  than  that  of  those 


l62  PROBABILISM  AND  ST.  ALFONSO  LIGUORI. 

who  bid  you  obey  God's  law."  Observe  the  monstrous 
assumption,  that  a  probable  opinion  can  exist  in  the 
teeth  of  a  plain  prohibition  of  the  Bible  or  "  God's  law 
of  morals."  As  though  there  was  any  room  for  proba- 
bility within  the  pale  of  certainty,  or  as  if  the  slenderest 
probability  could  exist  in  the  teeth  of  such  opposition, 
whereas  upon  such  probability  even  the  extremest  Pro- 
babilist  dares  not  pretend  to  act ! 

The  theory  of  Probabilism  is  simply  this  :  (i.)  A  doubt- 
ful law,  /.<?.,  doubtful  in  its  application  to  the  particular 
case  in  question,  does  not  ordinarily  bind.  (2.)  Such 
application  is  doubtful  when,  after  the  best  consideration 
and  advice,  there  remains  solid  ground  for  the  opinion 
favouring  liberty.  The  origin  of  Probabilism  as  distin- 
guished from  Probabiliorism — which  latter  is  the  theory 
imposing  an  obligation  of  following  every  seeming  pre- 
ponderance of  likelihood  on  the  side  of  law — is  (i)  an 
anxiety  not  to  impose  by  way  of  obligation  anything 
beyond  that  which  Christ  has  clearly  imposed ;  and  (2) 
the  belief  that  in  appealing  to  probability  you  are  ap- 
pealing to  something  more  absolute,  more  stable,  more 
publici  juris,  less  open  to  the  tyranny  of  private  pre 
possession,  than  would  be  the  case  in  appealing  to  mere 
preponderance.  Confessors — who  have  been  always 
practically  Probabilists— when  beyond  that  region  within 
which  God's  law  speaks  plainly,  exhort  and  encourage 
to  what  may  appear  the  higher  and  safer  road,  but  they 
dare  not  oblige.  The  lines  of  legal  obligation  and  heroic 
sanctity  do  not  always  coincide,  and  the  confessor  is  not 
only  director  and  physician,  but  also  primarily  judge, 
and  as  judge  he  must  not  go  beyond  the  law,  whilst  in 
his  other  two  relations  his  action  is  entirely  subordinate 
to  the  spiritual  interests  of  his  penitent 

If  St.  Alfonso  be  a  Probabilist,  he  is  at  least  so 
moderate  a  Probabilist  that  it  is  disputed  amongst  his 
disciples  whether  he  be  a  Probabilist  at  all  and  not 
rather  an  ^qui-Probabilist,  /".<?.,  one  who  requires  an 


PROBABILISM  AND  ST.  ALFONSO  LIGUORI.  1 63 

equal  probability  in  the  two  opinions  to  justify  the 
adoption  of  the  one  favouring  liberty.  The  JEqui- 
Probabilists  appeal  with  some  effect  to  this  passage 
(Theol.  Mor.  lib.  i.  Tract  i.  n.  56):  "If  the  opinion  which 
makes  for  the  law  should  seem  to  be  certainly  the  more 
probable,  we  are  bound  to  follow  it."  He  here  seems 
to  imply  that  solid  probability  cannot,  under  certain 
circumstances  at  least,  exist  in  the  face  of  a  notable 
probabiliority. 

Dr.  Littledale  (/.  c.  note)  refers  to  Gury  (Compend. 
Theol.  Mor.  vol.  i.  p.  39)  in  proof  that  he  has  rather 
understated  than  not  the  enormities  of  Probabilism. 
Here  he  grossly  misrepresents  and  even  misquotes  Gury. 
What  Gury  says  (see  ed.  Ballerini,  torn.  i.  p.  58)  about 
the  "doctus,"  "  mediocriter  doctus,"  and  "rudis,"  is  a 
commonplace  in  every  system  of  morals ;  it  belongs  to 
Probabiliorism  as  much  as  to  Probabilism.  It  comes 
to  this :  the  trained  theologian,  if  conscious  that  he  is 
sufficiently  dispassionate,  may  trust  himself  to  appreciate 
the  intrinsic  arguments  as  well  as  the  extrinsic  autho- 
rities for  an  opinion,  and  what  he  concludes  to  be  true 
he  may  regard  as  probable ;  one  less  trained  must  content 
himself  with  reckoning  authorities ;  whilst  a  third,  who 
is  wholly  ignorant,  must  take  the  best  advice  he  can, 
and  trust  the  judgment  of  any  one  whom  he  has  reason 
to  regard  as  well  informed.  A  single  author  against  the 
rest  may  be  sufficient  to  constitute  a  probable  opinion,  if 
he  be  quite  beyond  exception  (omni  exceptione  major), 
not,  as  Dr.  Littledale  renders  it,  "of  exceptional  supe- 
riority;" and  if,  moreover — as  further  conditions  which 
Dr.  Littledale  completely  ignores — he  has  not  only 
solved  the  arguments  of  the  supporters  of  the  opposite 
opinion,  but  has  introduced  what  is  practically  a  new 
argument.  On  what  principle,  one  is  tempted  to  ask, 
can  Dr.  Littledale  object  to  so  modest  an  exercise,  in 
an  uncertain  matter,  of  private  judgment? 

Amongst  various  instances  of  immoral  doctrine,  St 


164  PROBABILISM  AXD  ST.  ALFONSO  LIGUORI. 

Alfonso  teaches,  Dr.  Littledale says — (i.)  "That  the  actual' 
assassins  of  a  man  are  not  equally  guilty  with  their 
instigator,  whom  he  admits  to  incur  excommunication" 
(Theol.  Mor.  iv.  394).  On  the  contrary,  St.  Alfonso 
never  attempts  to  compare  the  guilt  of  the  two  parties. 
What  he  says  is,  that  the  employers  ("  mandantes  ")- 
alone  are  excommunicate,  because  so  runs  the  particular 
decree  of  excommunication  in  question,  and  we  must  not 
extend  the  penalty  beyond  the  letter.  He  accounts  for 
the  actual  assassins  not  being  included  in  the  decree  by 
the  very  sufficient  reason  that,  in  the  case  contemplated 
by  the  decree,  the  assassins  were  infidels  and  so  not 
possible  subjects  for  excommunication.  (2.)  "  If  A 
murder  B,  in  order  that  C  may  be  suspected,  and  thereby 
suffer  loss  of  any  kind,  A  is  not  bound  to  make  C  any 
compensation,  unless  he  be  a  worthy  person"  (iv,  587). 
Now  there  is  nothing  on  the  subject  of  homicide  at 
Dr.  Littledale's  reference  No.  587,  but  at  No.  586  the 
question  is  put,  and  you  are  referred  for  the  solution  to 
No.  636  ;  and  there  St.  Alfonso  maintains  that,  however 
A  may  have  intended  the  murder  to  be  imputed  to  C,  if 
in  fact  he  has  done  nothing  to  cause  that  imputation,  he 
cannot  be  regarded  as  "  efficax  causa  damni,"  and  so  as 
obliged  to  compensation.  Of  course  the  presumption  is 
entirely  against  the  murderer.  It  is  a  thousand  to  one 
that  he  has  done  something  to  cause  the  imputation; 
but  if  he  has  not,  following  the  case  out  speculative,  you 
cannot  impute  to  him  what  ex  hypothesi  he  did  not  do. 
The  little  clause,  "unless  the  person  be  worthy,"  is  a. 
gratuitous  and  absurd  importation  by  Dr.  Littledale  from 
No.  587,  where  a  quite  other  question  is  discussed,  viz., 
that  of  the  obligation  of  one  who  has  prevented  another 
by  unfair  means  from  obtaining  a  benefit.  He  is  bound, 
the  Saint  says,  to  compensate  in  proportion  to  the  ex- 
pectations frustrated,  provided  only  the  intended  subject 
was  worthy  of  the  benefit.  This  clause  Dr.  Littledale  has.: 
inserted  in  the  question  of  imputed  murder  asked  in  No. 


1ROBABILISM  AND  ST.  AL1ONSO  LIGUORI.  165 

$86  and  discussed  in  No.  636,  whilst  omitting  the  vital 
point  that  A  is  supposed  to  have  had  nothing  to  do  with 
the  imputation  upon  C  beyond  creating  the  fact  imputed, 
viz.,  the  murder,  and  mentally  intending  it  should  be 
imputed.  (3.)  "  That  if  a  clerical  adulterer  be  caught 
by  the  husband,  he  may  lawfully  kill  the  husband,  and 
does  not  incur  irregularity  thereby,  provided  his  visit 
was  secret,  so  that  he  had  a  reasonable  expectation  of 
escaping  detection,  though,  if  he  had  openly  braved  the 
clanger,  he  does  incur  irregularity"  (iv.  398).  This  is 
perhaps  the  most  monstrous  of  all  Dr.  Littledale's 
enormities.  For,  taking  his  words  as  they  stand,  they 
have  one  meaning  and  one  only,  viz.,  that  the  offender 
in  question  may  lawfully  proceed  to  cut  the  throat  of  the 
man  he  has  so  basely  injured,  if  by  so  doing  he  may 
reasonably  hope  to  escape  detection.  No  other  danger 
save  that  of  detection  does  Dr.  Littledale  so  much  as 
hint  at,  as  entering  the  case.  The  circumstance,  more- 
over, of  the  culprit  being  a  cleric  naturally  suggests  that 
this  singular  license  is  accorded  to  him  that  he  may  save 
the  honour  (!)  of  his  cloth.  The  truth  is  as  follows: — 
St.  Alfonso  is  considering  the  question  of  irregularity 
(a  condition  of  legal  inability  to  perform  clerical  func- 
tions) ;  and  irregularity  is  incurred,  as  is  most  reasonable, 
not  by  accidental  or  justifiable,  but  only  by  culpable, 
homicide.  St.  Alfonso's  condition,  which  Dr.  Littledale 
quietly  omits  from  the  case,  is  that  the  homicide  in 
question  is  committed  by  the  cleric  in  the  strictest  self- 
defence  when  every  other  alternative  of  escape  with  life 
had  been  closed.  The  question  is,  whether  the  act  of 
homicide,  in  se  inculpable  being  an  act  of  self-defence,  did 
or  did  not  contract  culpability,  and  so  the  penalty  of 
irregularity,  from  the  illicit  act,  the  adultery,  with  which 
it  was  connected.  St.  Alfonso  takes  a  middle  course 
betwixt  the  affirmative  and  negative,  distinguishing  thus : 
The  irregularity  would  be  incurred,  supposing  the  adultery 
"\vas  so  far  open  as  to  constitute  an  affront  naturally 


1 66  PROBABILISM  AND  ST.  ALFONSO  LIGUORI. 

entailing  the  violence  which  ensued,  and  so  forming  one 
act  with  it ;  not  so  if  the  violence  was  an  unforeseen 
accident.  The  difference  to  the  culprit  practically  comes 
to  this :  if  the  irregularity  is  incurred  for  the  homicide, 
he  is  suspended  ipso  facto  ;  if  it  is  not  incurred,  he  cannot 
be  suspended  until  after  sentence  pronounced  upon  the 
adultery,  /".*.,  when  his  case  no  more  belongs  to  the 
forum  sacramentale  but  to  the  forum  externum. 

Dr.  Littledale's  charges  (4),  (5),  and  (6),  all  fall  under 
one  category,  St.  Alfonso's  allowance,  under  certain  cir- 
cumstances, of  equivocation,  even  supported  by  an  oath. 
What  Dr.  Littledale  omits  to  tell  us  is  that  such  equivo- 
cation is  only  admitted  in  defence  of  an  undoubted  right 
which  the  questioner  is  seriously  invading.  The  right 
to  plead  "not  guilty,"  acknowledged  in  our  law,  St. 
Alfonso  maintains  to  be,  under  certain  circumstances,  a 
natural  right.  Where  the  questioner  has  a  right  to  the 
truth,  there  the  equivocation  is  forbidden ;  where,  as  far 
as  the  rights  of  the  questioner  are  concerned,  a  lie  is  law- 
ful, there,  out  of  a  reverence  for  God's  verbal  currency, 
which,  to  most  modern  Englishmen,  appears  fantastic, 
literal  truth  is  laboriously  preserved.  Where  St.  Alfonsa 
would  allow  of  equivocation,  his  Protestant  critics  would, 
in  all  probability,  lie  more  or  less  clumsily ;  that  is  about 
the  difference  between  them. 

(7.)  "That  a  nobleman,  ashamed  to  beg  or  work, 
may  steal  to  supply  his  needs  if  he  be  poor"  (iv.  520). 
Supposing,  says  St.  Alfonso,  that  he  is  in  extreme  or 
most  grievous  necessity,  not  merely  "poor,"  as  Dr. 
Littledale  puts  it,  and  the  disgrace  of  begging  or  work- 
ing "  worse  to  him  than  death."  This  is  an  extreme 
specimen  of  a  race  of  noblemen  happily  now  extinct, 
but  which  existed  in  St.  Alfonso's  day.  The  Saint  is  in 
no  way  responsible  for  such  a  social  product ;  but  when 
he  comes  across  it,  he  naturally  treats  it  as  tenderly  as 
he  may.  Supposing  a  young  lady  were  offered,  as  her 
one  resource  from  starvation,  the  post  of  assistant 


PROBABIL1SM  AND  ST.  ALFONSO  LIGUORI.  167 

slaughterman,  St.  Alfonso  would  say,  and  I  suppose 
every  one  else  would  say,  that  she  might  take  what  was 
sufficient  for  the  moment,  instead  of  attempting  to  earn 
a  respectable  livelihood  in  the  shambles. 

St.  Alfonso  brought  out  an  edition  of  Busembaum's 
theology,  and  from  Busembaum  Dr.  Littledale  takes 
the  following  maxims: — (i.)  "A  very  poor  man  may 
steal  what  is  necessary  for  the  relief  of  his  own  want, 
and  what  a  man  may  steal  for  himself  he  may  steal  for 
another  very  destitute  person.  (2.)  Any  person  trying 
to  prevent  such  a  theft,  may  be  lawfully  killed  by  the 
thief"  (torn.  iii.  lib.  iii.  par.  i,  tract  5,  c.  i).  The  first 
maxim,  if  for  Dr.  Littledale's  "  very  poor  "  be  substituted 
Busembaum's  "  in  extreme  necessity,"  is  the  universal 
teaching  of  theologians;  for,  in  extreme  necessity,  to 
take  what  is  necessary  is  not  theft,  but  the  use  of  what 
the  law  of  nature  has  made  your  own ;  and  so  emended 
the  maxim  is  found  in  Busembaum.  As  to  the  second 
maxim,  it  would  seem  to  result  that  if  you  are  attacked 
when  in  the  enjoyment  of  your  strict  right,  you  may 
defend  yourself,  or  another  in  like  circumstances,  to  the 
death.  The  supposition  of  the  circumstances  is  prac- 
tically an  extravagance,  from  their  extreme  unlikelihood  ; 
but,  speculatively,  the  case  admits  of  no  other  solution. 
I  do  not  know  that  Orlando,  in  "  As  you  Like  it,"  has  ever 
been  reproached  for  his  vindication  of  his  own  and  old 
Adam's  necessities.  Act.  ii.  scene  7  :  "  Forbear,  and 
eat  no  more.  .  .  .  He  dies  that  touches  any  of  this 
Iruit  till  I  and  my  affairs  are  answered."  For  all  that, 
this  second  maxim  does  not  appear  in  the  place  referred 
to,  neither  can  I  find  it  anywhere  in  Busembaum,  St. 
Alfonso,  or  Gury. 

From  Escobar,  the  casuist  with  whom  Dr.  Littledale 
winds  up,  it  might  not  perhaps  be  impossible  to  extract  one 
or  more  condemned  propositions  on  the  side  of  laxity. 
With  his  usual  ill-fortune,  however,  Dr.  Littledale  has 
pitched  on  one  which  is  quite  unexceptionable.  To  cast  ofl 


1 68  PROBABILISM  AND  ST.  ALFONSO  LIGUORI. 

the  religious  habit  is  regarded  as  an  act  of  apostasy  from 
that  religion,  and,  as  such,  has  been  visited  by  excommu- 
nication. But  if  done  for  the  moment,  with  no  inten- 
tion of  leaving  the  order,  even  though  for  the  bad  object 
of  escaping  detection  in  wrongdoing,  it  is,  of  course,  not 
reckoned  apostasy,  and  the  excommunication  attached 
to  that  crime  is  not  incurred;  and  this  is  Escobar's  state- 
ment. Some  seven  or  eight  grossly  false  statements,  not 
to  mention  misrepresentations,  is  no  bad  crop  from  less 
than  three  pages.  Assuredly  the  laxest  Probabilism  ever 
condemned  by  the  Church  would  fail  to  justify  Dr. 
Littledale's  interpretation  of  the  commandment  against 
false  witness. 

Since  the  appearance  of  the  above  section  in  the 
"Tablet"  of  February  7, 1880,  Dr.  Littledale  has  published 
his  second  and  third  editions.  Both  the  emendations 
he  has  thought  fit  to  make  therein,  and  those  he  has 
dispensed  himself  from  making,  deserve  notice. 

i.  The  passage  which  runs  in  the  first  edition,  "St. 
Alfonso  Liguori,  whose  teaching  all  Roman  Catholic 
confessors  [are  now  bound  to  follow  in  the  confessional]  " 
substitutes  for  the  words  I  have  bracketed,  ed.  2,  "are 
now  free  to  follow,"  ed.  3,  "are  now  encouraged  to  fol- 
low.'* Ed.  i,  "  As  a  doctor,  not  only  is  there  no  error 
in  his  writings  [but  it  is  necessary  to  submit  to  his  teach- 
ing] j "  ed.  2,  "  but  it  is  necessary  to  admit  his  teaching ; " 
ed.  3,  "  but  his  teaching  is  to  guide  bishops  and  clergy 
in  forming  their  judgments  on  difficult  cases,  and  to  be 
a  standard  whereby  they  are  themselves  to  be  judged. 
(Leo  IV.  cited  by  Benedict  XIV.,  de  Canonizatione, 
iv.  xi.  15)." 

As  I  have  noticed  before,  Dr.  Littledale's  theory  of 
religious  controversy  is  evidently  this  :  to  say  as  many 
awkward  things  of  an  antagonist  as  you  can  lay  your 
tongue  to,  backed  with  references  here  and  there  to  any 
authoritative  writer  who  comes  to  hand,  and  sooner  or 
later  the  truth  will  articulate  itself  to  your  advantage. 


PROBABILISM  AND  ST.  ALFONSO  LIGUORI.  169 

Benedict  XIV.  is  chosen,  and  Dr.  Littledale  boldly 
appeals  to  him  for  a  variety  of  statements  of  which  he 
has  not  one  syllable.  There  is  nothing  about  a  saint's 
writings  "containing  no  error;"  nothing  about  having 
to  "submit"  to  a  doctor's  teaching:  but  never  mind; 
what  with  slightly  changing  the  reference  and  modifying 
the  sentiment,  it  will  go  hard  if  Dr.  Littledale  cannot 
find  something  to  back  up  his  theory  about  doctors,  in 
Benedict  XIV. ;  and  by  the  time  he  has  arrived  at  his 
third  edition  he  has  found  a  passage,  quoted  by  Benedict 
XIV.  from  Leo  IV.,  to  the  effect  that  bishops  are  not 
only  to  judge  but  even  to  be  judged  in  accordance  with 
the  teaching  of  doctors.  It  would  have  been  well  for 
Dr.  Littledale  had  he  contented  himself  with  the  modest 
vagueness  of  his  second  edition,  "it  is  necessary  to 
admit,"  and  let  Benedict  XIV.  alone;  as  it  is  he  has 
blundered  again.  Leo  IV.  is  not  speaking  of  the 
writings  of  doctors  when  he  says,  "It  is  these  according 
to  which  bishops  judge,  and  bishops  are  judged  and 
clergy,"  but  of  the  canons  of  General  Councils  and  the 
decrees  of  the  Popes.  The  passage,  indeed,  goes  on  to 
say  that  if  the  above  do  not  suffice  for  a  decision,  then, 
if  they  can  find  dicta  to  the  point  of  "  Jerome,  Augustine. 
Isidore,  and  other  like  holy  doctors,  these  are  to  be 
confidently  adopted  and  published,  or  recourse  is  to  be 
had  to  the  Apostolic  See  on  the  matter"  (see  Labbe, 
lorn.  ix.  p.  1027).  No  doubt  this  is  high  testimony  to 
the  authority  of  doctors,  but  I  would  observe  (i)  that 
it  is  not  clear  that  the  authority  contemplated  is  not  a 
consensus  doctorum ;  (2)  that  it  is  not  final,  since  there 
is  the  alternative  of  a  "recourse"  to  the  Holy  See. 
Benedict  XIV.  simply  quotes  the  passage  for  the  sake  of 
Isidore's  name,  whose  doctorate  he  is  discussing. 

Dr.  Littledale's  readers  are  never  warned  of  the  various 
retractations  in  his  second  and  third  editions,  and  he 
must  know  full  well  that  not  one  reader  in  a  thousand 
dreams  of  collating. 


1 70  PROBABILISM  AND  ST.  ALFONSO  LIGUORI. 

In  his  "Rejoinder"  to  Mr.  Arnold  (Contemporary 
Review,  May  1880,  p.  811),  he  insists  that  if  Catholics 
may  dissent  from  saints  and  doctors,  it  is  only  on  such 
"minor  and  open  questions  as,  e.g.,  how  many  nails  were 
used  at  the  crucifixion."  This  is  not  the  opinion  either 
of  St.  Alfonso  or  of  Benedict  XIV.,  the  latter  specially 
points  out  that  even  an  error  in  faith,  if  it  was  a  point  in 
the  Saint's  time  not  yet  decided  by  the  Church,  is  no 
bar  to  canonisation.  The  instance  I  have  given  above 
is  on  a  grave  question  of  simony,  and  Dr.  Littledale  seems 
to  forget  that  he  has  himself  quoted  the  Angelic  Doctor 
against  the  Immaculate  Conception. 

In  this  same  "Rejoinder"  (p.  811),  he  calmly  puts 
aside  the  disproofs  of  his  account  of  Probabilism  pro- 
duced from  the  works  of  its  professors,  and  appeals  to 
the  "Provincial  Letters"  and  the  Rigorist  "  Biblio- 
theque  "  of  Richard  and  Giraud.  Now  it  is  conceivable 
that  some  special  weight  should  be  conceded  to  a  hostile 
criticism  either  of  admitted  principles  or  of  results,  but 
for  a  statement  of  principles  it  is  but  reasonable  to  go  to 
the  authors  themselves  and  not  to  their  opponents.  What 
would  be  thought  of  a  man  who,  setting  up  for  a  sober 
biographer  of  Mr.  Gladstone,  should  draw  his  account  of 
that  gentleman's  sentiments,  not  from  his  speeches  and 
writings,  but  exclusively  from  the  pages  of  *'  Vanity  Fair  " 
and  the  "  Daily  Telegraph  "  ? 

In  a  letter  to  the  "Guardian"  of  April  14,  1880,  Dr. 
Littledale  professes  to  adhere  to  all  his  citations  from 
St.  Alfonso.  Now  I  have  no  intention  of  making  the 
slightest  appeal  to  Dr.  Littledale ;  my  appeal  is  to  that 
large  proportion  of  Englishmen  who  really  hold  that 
justice  is  a  divine  right  which  no  one  can  forfeit.  I  will 
ask  them  to  turn  again  to  what  I  have  said  on  Dr. 
Littledale's  charges,  i,  2,  and  3.  For  instance,  take  the 
last  and  worst.  1  maintain  that  he  has  quoted  St.  Alfonso 
as  saying  that  under  certain  circumstances  a  man  may 
kill  another  without  incurring  a  particular  ecclesiastical 


CARDINAL  BELLARMINE.  I  ^  I 

penalty,  and  that  he  has  left  out  the  circumstance  on 
which  St.  Alfonso's  whole  decision  turns,  viz.,  that  it  is 
a  case  of  strictest  self-defence.  There  is  no  English 
authority  on  criminal  law,  from  Blackstone  downwards, 
which,  under  such  unscrupulous  excision,  may  not  be 
made  to  justify  murder.  Three  courses  are  open  to 
Dr.  Littledale  :  either  to  deny  that  self-defence  is  a 
circumstance  in  the  case,  or  to  maintain  that  under 
the  circumstances  self-defence  is  unlawful,  or  to  with- 
draw the  charge  and  justify  St.  Alfonso.* 

§  2.  Cardinal  Bellarmine. 

Dr.  Littledale  (p.  114)  appeals  to  Bellarmine  as  teach 
ing  the  supremacy  of  the  Pope  over  the  commandments 
of  God  and  the  dictates  of  conscience,  and  he  quotes  the 
well-known  passage,  De  Rom.  Pont.  iv.  5 :  "If  the-  Pope 
should  err  by  enjoining  vices,  or  forbidding  virtues,  the 
Church  would  be  obliged  to  believe  vices  to  be  good 
and  virtues  bad,  unless  it  would  sin  against  conscience." 
Had  Dr.  Littledale  ventured  to  make  an  appreciation  of 
the  whole  of  this  chapter  v. — a  very  short  one, — or  had 
he  even  pursued  his  quotation  a  line  or  two  further,  the 
complete  unappositeness  of  the  quotation  would  have 
appeared  at  once.  The  thesis  of  Bellarmine's  fifth 
chapter  is  this  :  the  Pope  cannot  err  in  the  substantial 
morality  of  a  law  in  which  he  prescribes  or  forbids,  in  a 
matter  of  morals,  a  certain  course  of  action  to  the  whole 
Church ;  *>.,  he  cannot  make  such  a  law  for  the  whole 
Church  as  would  involve  those  who  obeyed  it  in  a  breach 
of  the  moral  law.  He  proves  this :  First,  because  the 
very  fact  of  the  Pope,  the  Church's  God-given  guide,  so 
doing  would  be  a  grievous  injury  to  the  Church,  deroga- 
ting from  her  security  and  sanctity.  Secondly,  he  en- 
deavours to  show  that  the  Church's  faith  is  in  a  certain 
manner  involved  in  his  thesis,  inasmuch  as  it  is  part  of 
that  faith  that  every  virtue  is  good  and  vice  bad  ;  and  at  last 
*  See  Appendix,  Note  F. 


172  CONDEMNATION  OF  PRIVATE  JUDGMENT. 

comes  the  passage  quoted  by  Dr.  Littledale,  "If  the  Pope,n 
&c.,  with  the  following  words  as  its  immediate  context : 
tf  For  the  Church  is  bound,  in  doubtful  matters,  to  acquiesce 
in  the  judgment  of  the  Supreme  Pontiff,  and  to  do  what 
he  commands,  and  to  abstain  from  doing  what  he  forbids ; 
and  lest  perchance  she  should  act  against  her  conscience, 
she  is  bound  to  believe  that  good  which  he  commands, 
that  bad  which  he  forbids."  The  argument  is,  in  doubt- 
ful matters,  i.e.,  where  the  right  and  wrong  of  the  course 
prescribed  is  not  apparent,  the  Church  must  obey  the 
Pope's  command, — an  application  of  the  common  prin- 
ciple "  in  doubtful  matters  the  presumption  is  always  in 
favour  of  any  command  of  a  legitimate  superior."  But 
every  moral  agent  who  would  not  act  against  his  con- 
science must  say  to  himself,  "This  action  I  am  doing  is 
right ; "  and  Bellarmine  considers  that  such  a  testimony 
on  the  part  of  the  Church  equivalently  pledges  her  faith 
to  the  objective  righteousness  of  the  course.  Various 
points  in  this  difficult  chapter  admit  of  controversy ;  but 
one  point  at  least  is  clear,  Bellarmine  is  speaking  here 
exclusively  of  the  Church's  duty  towards  a  Papal  precept 
in  doubtful  matters. 

Bellarmine  is  not  proposing  to  himself,  as  St.  Paul 
did,  the  case  of  authority  contradicting  revealed  truth ; 
but  in  doubtful  matters,  where  the  practical  duty  of 
obedience  is  fairly  assumed  to  be  dictated  by  con- 
science, he  argues  from  the  seriousness  of  an  error  upon 
such  a  scale  to  its  impossibility,  and  so  to  infallibility. 
Thus  the  infallibility  he  invokes  sanctions  the  rights  of 
conscience. 


§  3.  Condemnation  of  Private  Judgment. 

The  case  as  between  Catholic  and  Protestant  on  thi« 
point  loses  all  consistency  in  Dr.  Littledale's  hands. 
•When  the  Church  condemns  private  judgment,  she  does 
not  condemn  conscience,  which  she  admits  to  have  the 


CONDEMNATION  OF  PRIVATE  JUDGMENT.  173 

inalienable  right  of  constituting  the  immediate  rule  of  all 
moral  action.  Neither  does  she  condemn  all  exercise  of 
private  judgment  in  the  sense  of  all  free  exercise  of  the 
reason  in  matters  of  religion  ;  for,  as  Dr.  Littledale  fairly 
points  out,  it  is  as  much  an  act  of  private  judgment  to  say, 
This  is  an  authority  whose  dicta  I  shall  accept  without 
question,  as  to  say,  I  will  only  accept  what  I  can  get 
direct  proof  of;  or,  to  make  the  parallel  more  pertinent, 
the  recognition  that  an  authority  is  such  that  I  ought  to 
submit  to  it  without  question,  is  no  less  the  result  of  an  act  of 
private  judgment  than  the  recognition  that  I  must  receive 
nothing  without  direct  proof.  The  difference  between 
the  two  states  is  not  in  their  origin,  but  in  their  relation 
to  the  future  exercise  of  private  judgment.  The  one  has 
found  an  authority  limiting  that  exercise  in  certain  direc- 
tions, the  other  has  found  that  no  such  authority  exists. 
What  the  Church  condemns  is  the  extension  of  the 
exercise  of  private  judgment  to  this  exclusion  of  all 
authority;  this  refusal  to  accept  even  on  an  authority 
presumably  divine  what  you  cannot  get  other  proof  of. 
When  private  judgment  is  denounced  as  an  evil  by 
Catholic  writers,  it  is  this  usurpation  of  private  judgment 
that  is  meant ;  just  as  when  we  condemn  egotism,  we  are 
not  condemning  the  action  of  the  self-regarding  principle 
itself,  but  its  tyranny  over  the  legitimate  claims  of  other 
interests. 

Of  course,  no  religious  Protestant  allows  himself  to  reject 
altogether  an  authority  demanding  the  submission  of  his 
reason.  He  accepts  what  he  conceives  to  be  clear  state- 
ments of  Scripture  for  which  he  can  obtain  no  other  proof 
whatever.  But  such  Protestant  believer  in  authority,  though 
that  of  the  Bible  only,  has  always  been  felt  by  the  common 
instinct  of  mankind  to  be  an  anomaly,  and  is  now  a  fast- 
diminishing  survival ;  and  so  the  terms  "  authority  "  and 
"  private  judgment "  have  come  to  be  looked  upon,  and 
not  unfairly,  as  the  distinguishing  symbols  of  the  Ca- 
tholic who  believes  in  an  abiding  divine  authority  in 


174  CONDEMNATION  OF  PRIVATE  JUDGMENT. 

the  Church,  and  the  Protestant  who  believes  that  no  such 
authority  exists. 

Dr.  Littledale's  passages  from  Scripture  on  behalf  of 
private  judgment  do  not  suggest  even  a  superficial 
difficulty,  but  not  so  with  his  passage  from  St.  Augus- 
tine, which  is  as  follows :  "  Authority  is  first  in  time, 
but  reason  in  fact.  The  learner  must  believe,  but  when 
taught  he  ought  to  judge"  (De  Ord.  ii.  c.  ix.).  The 
latter  half  which  we  have  underlined  certainly  looks  as 
if,  according  to  St.  Augustine,  private  judgment  was  to 
supersede  authority.  On  turning,  however,  to  the  "  De 
Ordine,"  one  is  relieved  to  find  that  this  telling  sentence 
is  certainly  not  the  immediate  context  of  the  words  with 
which  Dr.  Littledale  has  united  it  in  one  continuous  quo- 
tation ;  nor  is  it  any  part  of  chapter  ix.  The  sentence  is 
a  gloss  of  Dr.  Littledale's  which  has  unfortunately  slipped 
into  the  text  between  the  inverted  commas ;  and,  more- 
over, it  is  a  gloss  which  no  one  who  has  taken  the  trouble 
to  read  the  whole  of  n.  26  can  possibly  accept  as  con- 
veying the  Saint's  meaning.  St.  Augustine  is  engaged  in 
illustrating  his  favourite  idea,  "  fides  quaerens  intellectum." 
faith  learning  how  to  reason ;  or  theological  apprehen- 
sion, especially  the  theology  of  the  spiritual  life,  the  dis- 
cipline of  the  law  of  God.  Authority  is  first  in  time,  but 
"  ratio,"  /.£,  the  perfection  of  theological  knowledge,  is 
first,  "  in  re  "  or  idea,  inasmuch  as  it  is  the  end  to  which 
authority  is  the  means.  "  None  but  authority  opens  the 
gate,  which  each  one  having  entered  without  any  doubt- 
fulness follows  the  precepts  of  the  most  excellent  life, 
through  which  when  he  has  become  a  pupil,  then  at 
length  he  shall  learn  with  what  reason  they  are  endued 
which  he  followed  before  reasoning  on  them,  and  what 
that  reason  is  which,  after  the  nursery  of  authority,  he 
now,  firm  and  fit,  doth  pursue  and  lay  hold  of."  The 
function  here  of  reason  is  intellectually  to  assimilate  the 
teaching  of  authority,  not  to  question  its  truth ;  and  so 
to  be  taught  of  God,  who  is  at  once  the  reason  of 
authority  and  the  authority  of  reason. 


THE  SIXTH  CANON  OF  NIOEA.  175 

Charge  IV. —  Untrustworthiness. 

Dr.  Littledale  (p.  100),  in  words  which,  having  already 
quoted  at  length,  I  do  not  care  to  repeat,  charges  the 
Roman  Church,  from  the  fifth  to  the  nineteenth  century, 
with  systematic  fraud  and  misrepresentation ;  and  her  cpn- 
troversialists  with  "almost  never"  telling  the  truth,  and 
"  the  whole  truth  in  no  case  whatsoever."  I  will  take  his 
instances  in  order. 

§  1.  The  Nicene  and  Sardican  Canons. 

Various  Popes — Zosimus,  Leo,  and  Felix  III. — quoted 
in  bad  faith  the  Sardican  Canons  for  the  Nicene.  I 
answer  that  numbers  of  the  ancient  codices  of  the 
Councils  had  the  Sardican  Canons  with  the  Nicene  under 
the  title  of  Nicene,  and  not  merely  Roman  codices,  but 
others  of  Gaul,  Spain,  and  Ireland.  This  is  the  case 
with  the  very  ancient  codex  published  by  Justellus.  The 
Sardican  Council  was  regarded  as  an  appendix  of  the 
Nicene  even  in  the  East ;  the  Council  of  Constantinople 
of  382,  in  its  letter  to  the  Pope,  quotes  a  Sardican  canon 
as  Nicene  (see  Ballerini,  St.  Leo,  torn.  iii.  De  Antiq. 
Collect.  Can.  pars.  i.  cap.  6,  n.  14,  and  Coustant,  p. 
566,  note).  De  Marca  and  Baluze — severe  critics  as 
they  are  where  the  Pope  is  concerned — admit — to  use 
the  words  of  the  latter  (ap.  Ballerini,  /.  c.  pars.  2,  cap.  i, 
n.  xiii.) — "that  Innocent,  Zosimus,  and  Leo  are  to  be 
wholly  acquitted  of  fraud  (alieni  sunt  ab  omni  dolo)  in 
quoting  the  Sardican  Canons  as  belonging  to  the  Council 
of  Nicsea,  since  they  were  supported  by  the  authority  of 
their  scrinia  and  the  old  collection." 

§  2.  The  Sixth  Canon  of  Nicaea. 

"The  Roman  legates,"  says  Dr.  Littledale,  "at  the 
Council  of  Chalcedon  produced  a  forged  copy  of  the 
Nicene  Canons,  containing  in  the  sixth  canon  the  words, 


1)6  THE  BAPTISM  OF  CONSTANTINE. 

'The  Roman  See  has  always  had  the  primacy/  which 
were  promptly  repudiated  by  the  Council."  I  answer 
that  the  Roman  copy  was  never  repudiated  by  the 
Council.  A  Greek  copy  without  the  clause  in  question 
appears  in  the  Acts,  besides  the  one  read  by  the  legates ; 
but,  according  to  the  Ballerini  and  Hefele,  this  was  a 
later  interpolation  in  the  Acts,  and  the  only  one  read  at 
the  Council  was  that  of  the  legates.  Anyhow,  as  Hefele 
observes,  there  is  not  a  word  suggestive  of  repudiation 
(Councils,  vol.  i.  p.  402,  Eng.  tr.).  After  the  reading 
of  this  sixth  canon,  and  the  first,  second,  and  third  canons 
of  Constantinople,  "the  imperial  commissioners  who 
were  present  at  the  Synod"  acknowledged  that  "the 
most  ancient  right  of  all  (ir?b  ndvrcav  r«  KguTtfa)  and  the 
pre-eminence  (xa/  n$*  Jga/psrov  r/pw)  belong  to  the  Arch- 
bishop of  old  Rome,"  and  then  went  on  to  make  an 
analogous  claim  on  behalf  of  Constantinople.  As  to 
the  clause  itself,  its  genuineness  has  been  maintained  by 
several  distinguished  modern  scholars,  amongst  others 
by  the  learned  Jesuit  Zaccaria  (Eccles.  Hist,  dissert,  v. 
cap.  2).  It  is  probably  a  gloss,  but  one  almost  syn- 
chronous with  the  original ;  its  appearance  in  so  many 
and  such  various  ancient  codices  shows  that  there  is  not 
the  slightest  ground  for  regarding  it  as  a  Roman  forgery. 

§  3.  The  Baptism  of  Constantine. 

The  myth  of  Constantine's  baptism  in  Rome  by  St. 
Sylvester  was,  Dr.  Littledale  maintains,  a  Roman  forgery 
to  secure  the  possession  of  territory,  "  the  famous  so- 
called  Donation  of  Constantine." 

I  answer  that  the  legend  of  Constantine's  Roman 
baptism  originated  in  the  fifth  century,  but  the  "  Dona- 
tion of  Constantine  "  belongs  at  the  earliest  to  the  middle 
of  the  eighth  century,  so  that  the  former  could  hardly 
have  been  invented  to  provide  for  the  latter.  Again, 
the  Legend  of  Sylvester  makes  no  mention  of  territorial 


THE  FALSE  DECRETALS.  177 

right.  Dr.  Dollinger  (Papstfabeln,  Eng.  tr.  pp.  89- 
100)  remarks  that  "the  true  account  of  the  first  Christian 
emperor's  baptism  at  the  end  of  his  life  by  an  Arian 
bishop  soon  became  quite  incredible  both  to  West  and 
East." 

§  4.  St.  Peter's  Letter. 

In  754,  says  Dr.  Littledale,  Pope  Stephen  III.  forged 
a  letter  in  the  name  of  the  Apostle  St.  Peter,  and  sent 
it  to  Pepin,  king  of  France,  urging  him  to  come  to  his 
defence. 

I  answer  that  there  is  nothing  in  the  letter  to  suggest 
more  than  a  rhetorical  impersonation.  Neither  Pepin 
nor  his  Franks  were  fools  to  be  so  played  on.  More- 
over, had  the  letter  pretended  to  be  a  literal  missive 
from  St.  Peter,  there  would  necessarily  be  some  legend 
to  explain  the  Pope's  getting  it,  of  angelic  visitation,  or 
the  like,  but  there  is  nothing  of  the  kind.  When  Fleury 
is  appealed  to  on  the  subject,  it  should  be  remembered 
that  he  belongs  to  a  strain  of  writers  to  whom  any  license 
of  the  imagination  was  an  unintelligible  abomination. 
Even  Fe'ne'lon  himself  had  no  word  to  say  of  the  Gothic 
cathedrals  of  France,  except  to  apologise  for  their  bar- 
barism. Gibbon  acquits  the  Pope  of  any  dishonest  in- 
tention. (D.  and  F.  vol.  vi.  ch.  49  note.) 

§  5.  The  False  Decretals. 

The  "  False  Decretals,"  a  collection  of  letters  and 
decrees  of  early  Popes  and  Councils,  "  all  intended  to 
augment  the  Papal  authority,"  we  are  told,  "were  fabri- 
cated in  Western  Gaul  about  845,  and  were  eagerly 
seized  on  by  Pope  Nicholas  I.,  an  ambitious  and  per- 
fectly unscrupulous  pontiff,  to  aid  in  revolutionising  the 
Church,  as  he,  in  fact,  largely  succeeded  in  doing."  As  a 
specimen  of  the  principles  by  which  the  Church  was 
"  revolutionised,"  Dr.  Littledale  produces  the  following : 
"  Not  even  amongst  the  Apostles  was  there  equality,  but 

if 


178  THE  FALSE  DECRETALS. 

one  was  set  over  all."  "The  head  of  the  Church  is  the 
Roman  Church."  "  The  Church  of  Rome,  by  a  unique 
privilege,  has  the  right  of  opening  and  shutting  the  gates 
of  heaven  to  whom  she  will"  Now,  so  far  from  these 
being  new  principles,  any  one  who  will  turn  to  the 
patristic  passages  I  have  collected  on  Papal  prerogative 
will  find  them  almost  word  for  word.  The  first  is 
asserted  by  St.  Chrysostom,  in  Joan.  Horn.  Ixxxviii.  n.  i. 
(quoted,  p.  7) ;  the  second  by  St.  Ambrose  and  Council 
of  Aquileia  (quoted,  p.  42) ;  and  the  third  by  St.  Maxi- 
mus  (quoted,  p.  17). 

As  to  the  contents  of  these  decretals  a  large  number 
of  critics,  Protestant  as  well  as  Catholic,  are  quite  in 
accord  with  the  Ballerini's  summing  up  (1.  c.  pars.  iii. 
cap.  6,  sec.  3),  viz.,  that  when  they  appeared  they  repre- 
sented a  discipline  "  which  had  either  been  long  estab- 
lished, or  had  been  already  introduced."  For  Protestant 
authorities,  see  Neander,  "Church  History,"  vol.  vi.  p. 
7,  ed.  Bohn;  Bowden,  "Life  of  Gregory  VII.,"  p.  56; 
and  Milman,  "  Lat.  Christ,"  vol.  ii.  p.  307.* 

As  to  the  statement  in  the  False  Decretals  that  no  Coun- 
cil can  be  held  without  the  leave  of  the  Roman  Pontiff,  I 
grant  that,  as  applied  to  all  diocesan  or  provincial  synods, 
this  involves  a  disciplinary  innovation ;  but  it  is  certain, 
says  Blascus  (Comment  in  Pseudo-Isidore,  cap.  9,  sec. 
2),  that  the  Popes  did  not  apply  it  to  any  synod  but  such 
as  pretended  in  some  sense  to  be  general,  or  to  deal  with 
the  reserved  cases  of  bishops.  No  writer,  says  the  same 
authority,  before  the  twelfth  century  applies  this  prohi- 
bition to  synods  generally;  and  the  Roman  correctors 
of  Gratian,  Annot,  ad  Can.  4,  diss.  17,  limit  it  expressly 
to  synods  pretending  to  judge  General  Synods.  As  to 
CEcumenical  Councils,  Socrates  (A.D.  429)  testifies  that 
"our  ecclesiastical  canon  decrees  that  the  Churches 

*  The  whole  of  what  I  say  here  on  the  False  Decretals  is  taken 
almost  word  for  word  from  my  "Critique  on  Mr.  Ffoulkes," 
Longmans,  1869. 


THE  FALSE  DECRETALS.  179 

should  not  pass  laws  without  consulting  the  Roman 
Bishop"  (Hist.  Eccles.  ii.  8),  a  canon  which  he  quotes 
Pope  Julius  as  appealing  to  more  than  a  century  before 
(ib.  ii.  17);  and  Sozomen,  in  a  passage  already  quoted, 
asserts  that  it  is  a  law  that  what  is  passed  in  opposition 
to  the  Pope  is  null. 

As  regards  the  forgery  itself,  critics,  Protestant  and 
Catholic,  are  agreed  that  the  Pope  had  nothing  to  do 
with  it ;  nay,  that  it  was  not  executed  directly  in  his 
interest.  These  decretals  were  forged  in  Gaul,  not  in 
Rome;  and  their  immediate  object  was  to  relieve  the 
bishops  and  the  inferior  clergy  from  the  tyranny  of  the 
metropolitans,  who  were  but  too  frequently  the  tools  of 
the  secular  power.  In  pursuit  of  this  end,  they  aimed 
at  equalising,  to  a  certain  extent,  the  different  orders  of 
the  clergy,  by  uniting  them  all  equally  with  their  head 
and  centre,  the  Pope,  and  so  giving  them  a  point  (Pappui 
outside  the  sphere  of  lay  influence.  When  they  exalt 
the  Pope,  it  is  only  to  pull  themselves  out  of  the  mire  ; 
and  it  has  been  observed  (see  Blascus,  ib.  c.  10),  that 
these  decretals,  where  the  interests  of  the  Episcopate 
are  not  at  stake,  do  not  concern  themselves  to  uphold 
even  the  well-established  privileges  of  the  Holy  See,  and 
in  some  cases  (whether  wittingly  or  not  is  uncertain) 
actually  contravene  them. 

But  it  is  urged,  if  the  Pope  be  not  a  coiner,  he  is  at 
least  the  conscious  utterer  of  false  coin  :  he  had  dupli- 
cates of  all  the  genuine  letters  of  his  predecessors  in  his 
portfolio ;  and  if  he  did  not  actually  discover  that  these 
were  forgeries,  it  was  because  he  felt  they  were,  and  would 
not  look.  As  to  St.  Nicholas  I.,  the  Pope  in  whose  time 
the  False  Decretals  first  appeared,  Protestant  as  well  as 
Catholic  writers  bear  witness  to  his  heroic  character, 
his  unflinching  championship  of  oppressed  innocence, 
his  magnanimity  in  times  of  peril  and  affliction:  It  is 
impossible  not  to  feel  that  he  is  as  unlikely  a  man  to 
have  lent  himself  to  a  lie  as  can  well  be  imagined.  As 


l8o  THE  FALSE  DECRETALS. 

to  the  solemn  and  public  lie  with  which  Dr.  Littledale- 
charges  him,  it  has  no  existence  out  of  Dr.  Littledale's 
imagination.  The  Pope  never  asserted  that  he  had 
copies  of  these  documents,  or,  rather,  of  these  extracts 
from  documents,  for  nothing  more  had  come  under  his 
notice ;  he  only  insisted  that  the  fact  of  not  being  in  the 
codex  of  Adrian  did  not  prevent  a  document  extant 
in  the  Roman  archives  or  elsewhere  from  having  autho- 
rity. It  is  not,  however,  upon  the  Pope's  good  character 
alone  that  I  would  ground  my  defence.  Dr.  Littledale 
grounds  his  charge  upon  the  assumption  that  the  Pope 
was  in  a  position  naturally  and  easily  to  detect  any  fraud 
that  should  take  the  form  of  a  Papal  letter.  This  as- 
sumption I  maintain  to  be  utterly  false.  The  fact  of 
the  duplicate  of  a  Papal  letter  not  being  found  in  the 
Roman  archives,  not  only  did  not  prove  it  spurious,  but 
in  very  many  instances  could  not  create  any  fair  pre- 
sumption against  it.  It  is  true  that  the  Popes,  like  other 
bishops,  were  by  the  way  of  laying  up  in  their  archives 
copies  of  the  letters  they  wrote,  and  of  the  more  im- 
portant letters  which  they  received.*  We  have  frequent 
references  and  appeals  in  the  letters  to  and  from  the 
Holy  See  to  the  contents  of  the  Roman  archives  ;  but 
it  is  impossible  not  to  be  struck  with  the  short  periods 
of  time  which  these  appeals  cover.  I  think  I  am  right 
in  saying  that,  with  one  exception,  they  do  not  extend 
beyond  a  century,  and  that  most  fall  far  short  of  it.  I 
know  of  only  one  exception,  and  that  was  when  in  531 
Theodore  of  Thessalonica  produced  from  his  archives 
Papal  letters  from  Damasus  downwards,  a  space  of  about 
150  years,  all  extant  and  all  genuine,  and  asked  Boni- 
face II.  to  verify  them  from  the  Roman  scrinia.  Curi- 
ously enough,  we  do  not  know  how  far  the  Roman 

*  There  must  have  been  many  accidental  exceptions  to  this  rule* 
Nicholas  I.  (Ep.  27)  mentions  that  this  letter  of  his  had  not  been 
officially  transcribed,  owing  to  his  "  scriniarii  "  not  being  at  ths 
time  available. 


THE  FALSE  DECRETALS.  l8l 

scrinia  stood  the  trial,  for  the  narrative  document  (see 
Labbe,  torn.  v.  p.  843)  is  imperfect. 

Mabillon  (De  Re  Diplom.  suppl.  p.  5)  enumerates  the 
many  dangers  that  beset  the  ancient  archives.  They 
were,  moreover,  peculiarly  liable  both  to  be  neglected 
-and  tampered  with,  owing  to  the  fact  that  the  notarii 
and  scriniarii,  who  were  alone  capable  of  reading,  trans- 
scribing,  and  classifying  the  manuscripts,  were  a  small 
and  consequently  irresponsible  class.  This  was  so  much 
felt  to  be  the  case,  that  from  time  to  time  custodes  were 
appointed  to  watch  over  the  honesty  of  the  notarii^  and 
keep  them  to  their  duty.  The  responsibility  of  these 
officials  was,  of  course,  in  direct  ratio  to  the  want  of  cul- 
ture of  their  time  and  country ;  thus  in  Italy  we  may 
presume  they  must  have  had  things  very  much  their  own 
way  for  several  centuries  preceding  the  era  we  are  con- 
sidering. Under  these  circumstances,  nothing  is  more 
natural  than  that  the  Roman  archives  should  have  sus- 
tained vast  and  frequent  losses  ;  and  we  are  not  surprised 
when  Baronius  (torn.  v.  an.  381,  xxxi.)  points  out  to  us 
that  the  Roman  archives  had  evidently  suffered  a  serious 
loss  between  the  times  of  Damasus  and  Gregory  I.  He 
quotes  St.  Gregory,  lib.  vi.  ep.  15  (Ed.  Ben.  lib.  vii.  ep. 
34)  to  the  effect  that  the  Roman  Church  knew  nothing 
of  the  condemnation  of  the  Eudoxians,  except  from 
doubtful  or  corrupt  sources ;  and  remarks  that,  seeing 
that  several  of  the  ancient  Fathers  speak  of  Eudoxius  as 
accused  and  convicted  of  frightful  heresy,  St.  Gregory's 
words  clearly  show,  "jacturam  passa  esse  Romana  arch- 
ivia."  I  may  observe  that  the  letter  of  Liberius  to  Con- 
stantius  (see  Coustant,  p.  423)  speaks  of  Eudoxius  as 
having  refused  to  condemn  Arius,  and  being  therefore 
excommunicate ;  and  this  letter  must  have  been  origi- 
nally in  the  Roman  archives. 

In  this  same  letter  Liberius  testifies  that  he  has  got 
the  letter  of  Alexander  of  Alexandria  to  Pope  Sylvester 
concerning  the  Arian  controversy;  "  manent  literse  ;"  and 


1 82  THE  FALSE  DECRETALS. 

Constant  remarks  that,  of  course,  there  were  numbers  of 
letters  to  and  from  Sylvester  on  the  same  subject,  though 
none  have  come  down  to  us  (p.  247). 

In  the  eighth  century  St.  Boniface  of  Mainz  (Ep.  40) 
tells  Nothelm  of  Canterbury  that,  as  regarded  the  famous 
letter  of  St.  Gregory  I.  to  St.  Augustine,  the  Roman 
scriniarii  had  looked  in  the  archives  of  the  Roman 
Church  and  could  not  find  it. 

In  743  the  Germans  rested  their  right  to  marry  "  in 
quarta  generatione"  upon  an  indult  of  Pope  Gregory  II., 
which  could  not  be  discovered  in  the  Roman  archives, 
but  which  Pope  Zachary  did  not  on  that  account  reject 
as  spurious.  These  are  his  words  :  "  We  must  confess 
that  in  Germany  a  document  has  been  for  some  time 
current  which  we  do  not  find  in  our  archives.  We  are 
told  by  the  Germans  that  Pope  Gregory,  of  blessed 
memory,  when  he  was  leading  them  by  the  light  of 
divine  grace  to  the  religion  of  Christ,  granted  them 
leave  to  marry  in  quarta  generatione,  whilst  they  were  yet 
rude  and  had  to  be  solicited  to  the  faith.  Although  we 
cannot  find  the  document,  we  do  not  hesitate  to  believe 
it  genuine"  (Labbe,  torn.  vii.  p.  287). 

We  have  only  to  look  through  Coustant's  volume  to 
see  that  numbers  of  the  Papal  letters  do  not  come  from 
the  Roman  archives,  but  from  those  of  other  sees,  par- 
ticularly Vercellae  and  the  famous  Gallic  sees  of  Aries 
and  Vienne.  The  editor  of  the  "  Bullarium  Romanum, 
Rome  1739,"  in  his  preface,  after  'noticing  the  losses 
which  the  Roman  archives  had  sustained,  particularly  in 
Papal  letters,  from  Leo  I.  to  Innocent  III.,  observes 
that  numbers  of  these  autographs,  "  of  which  no  longer 
any  mention  or  trace  remains  in  the  Roman  archives," 
have  been  found  intact  in  the  archives  of  other 
cathedral  towns  and  monasteries. 

It  has  been  said  that  the  fact  that  so  many  of  the 
Pseudo- Decretals  profess  to  be  the  letters  of  Popes  of 
the  times  of  persecution,  should  have  awakened  sus- 


THE  FALSE  DECRETALS.  183 

picion.  But  it  must  be  remembered,  first,  that  there  is 
great  reason  for  supposing  that  Pope  Nicholas  never 
saw  more  than  certain  portions  of  these  decretals,  with 
which  he  indicates  an  acquaintance,  although  nowhere 
formally  quoting  them ;  secondly,  that  it  is  well  known 
that  the  Popes,  in  the  times  of  persecution,  did  write 
and  write  frequently;  witness  the  genuine  fragments 
of  their  letters  in  Eusebius,  Hilary,  and  elsewhere. 
Moreover,  the  Fathers  testify  an  acquaintance  with  other 
documents  which  are  wholly  lost;  St.  Augustine,  for 
instance  (Ep.  43,  n.  16),  shows  that  he  knew,  in  extenso, 
the  decree  of  Melchiades  condemning  Donatus  ;  and 
St.  Jerome  speaks  of  the  four  letters  written  by  St.  Cor- 
nelius to  Fabius  of  Antioch  as  extant  in  his  time. 

There  was  nothing  in  these  relics  of  the  times  of  per- 
secution in  that  age  to  awaken  suspicion,  whilst  there 
was  much  to  attract  devotion.  Men  naturally  welcomed 
their  discovery  with  the  same  devotion,  and  certainly 
with  no  greater  surprise,  than  they  did  the  kindred  dis- 
covery of  the  martyrs'  bodies.  St.  Nicholas  in  his  letter 
to  the  Bishops  of  Gaul  (Labbe,  torn.  x.  p.  282)  shows 
what  idea  was  uppermost  in  his  mind  when  he  refers  to 
these  decrees,  of  which  he  had  seen  something  and 
heard  more,  as  the  decrees  of  those  "  quorum  videmus 
Deo  auctore  Sanctam  Ecclesiam  aut  roseo  cruore  flori- 
dam,  aut  rorifluis  sudoribus  et  salubribus  eloquiis  adorna- 
tam."  Again,  it  must  be  remembered  that  the  Holy  See 
received  these-  decretals  from  the  Gallic  Church,  upon 
whose  learning  it  had  been  taught  to  depend  in  its  con- 
troversies with  the  civil  power  and  Greek  heresy. 

We  find  a  remarkable  instance  of  this  dependence 
recorded  by  Paschasius,  in  his  "Life  of  Wala"  (ap. 
Mabillon,  Act.  S.  Ord.  Ben.  sec.  iv.  pars,  i,  p.  511).  He 
relates  that  he  and  Wala  (A.D.  833)  showed  Gregory  IV. 
— then  in  France,  engaged  in  the  difficult  and  dangerous 
task  of  reconciling  the  king  and  his  sons — "sundry 
documents,  confirmed  by  the  authority  of  the  holy  Fathers 


184  THE  FALSE  DECRETALS. 

and  his  own  predecessors,  against  which  none  might  deny 
that  he  had  the  power — forsooth  God's,  the  blessed 
Apostle  Peter's,  and  his  own — to  go  and  send  unto  all 
nations  for  the  faith  of  Christ,  the  peace  of  the  Churches, 
the  preaching  of  the  Gospel,  and  the  assertion  of  the 
truth;  and  that  in  him  resided  the  supreme  authority 
and  living  power  of  blessed  Peter,  in  virtue  of  which 
he  might  judge  all  and  himself  be  judged  of  none.  Which 
documents  he  graciously  received,  and  was  exceedingly 
comforted." 

Some  writers  have  thought  that  they  discerned  here 
evidence  of  the  Pseudo-Decretals,  but  the  idea  is  very 
generally  abandoned.  One  strong  argument  against  it 
appears  to  me  to  be  the  fact  that  Agobard,  who  belonged 
to  the  same  party  as  Wala  and  Paschasius,  in  his  letter  to 
the  king,  which  exactly  coincides  in  time  with  his  friend's 
mission  to  Gregory,  and  in  which  he  has  the  same  object 
in  view  with  them,  viz.,  the  exaltation  of  Papal  pre- 
rogative, grounds  his  argument  exclusively  upon  genuine 
documents.  However  this  may  be,  the  whole  account 
is  curiously  illustrative  of  the  influence  of  the  French 
Church  upon  the  Holy  See. 

But  not  only  did  the  Pope  receive  these  False  Decretals 
from  the  French  bishops,  but  the  French  bishops  them- 
selves furnished  him  with  what  he  might  well  regard  as 
a  crucial  test  of  their  genuineness.  For  even  when 
Hincmar  in  his  controversy  with  Nicholas  does  his  best 
to  disprove  their  cogency  at  law,  he  never  so  much  as 
suggests  a  doubt  of  their  genuineness.  It  is  true  that  in 
his  subsequent  dispute  with  Adrian  II.  Hincmar  uses 
rather  different  language;  but  even  then  he  hints  at 
nothing  more  than  that  they  have  been  garbled  and 
interpolated  by  his  own  nephew  and  others,  to  serve 
their  private  ends. 

In  the  letter  to  the  Bishops  of  Gaul,  quoted  above, 
the  Pope  clearly  assumes  that  there  may  be  other  re- 
servoirs of  authentic  decretals  besides  the  archives; 


THE  FALSE  DECRETALS.  185 

when,  in  meeting  Hincmar's  attempt  to  restrict  the  legal 
cogency  of  decretals  to  those  contained  in  the  codex 
of  Adrian  I.,  he  says,  "  God  forbid  that  we  should  not 
embrace  the  decretals  which  the  Roman  Church  penes  se 
in  suis  archivis  et  vetustis  rite  monument's,  recondita 
venerantur."  The  "vetusta  monumenta,"  no  doubt,  in- 
cluded all  such  well-authorised  collections  as  the  Pseudo- 
Isidorian  professed  to  be. 

Besides  the  fact  of  the  frequent  losses  which  the 
R  man  archives  had  sustained,  rendering  their  contents 
at  any  given  time  an  unsafe  criterion  of  genuineness,  it 
was  exceedingly  difficult  to  find  out  what  they  did  con- 
tain ;  for,  as  I  have  said,  only  a  very  small  class,  the 
"  scriniarii,"  were  competent  to  engage  in  the  search. 
These  were  put  upon  their  oath  that  they  had  produced 
all  that  they  could  find  regarding  the  cause  in  hand,  as 
we  find,  e.g.,  in  the  Acts  of  the  Sixth  Council.  And,  for 
these  experts,  the  search  was,  doubtless,  exceedingly 
difficult  when  covering  any  considerable  length  of  time, 
and  when  documents  were  wanted  that  had  not  been 
previously  arranged  for  controversial  purposes.  Often, 
indeed,  it  could  have  been  little  else  than  a  wild  hunt 
amongst  boxes  of  manuscripts  in  various  stages  of  decay, 
when  the  subject  of  any  successful  discovery  might  well 
be  described  as  "Deo  revelante  reperta"  (see  Nicholas' 
Letter  to  Herard,  Labbe,  torn.  x.  p.  298). 

The  Ballerini  (St.  Leo,  torn.  i.  p.  511),  after  remarking 
upon  the  number  of  St.  Leo's  letters  that  were  lost,  thus 
account  for  these  and  other  losses  : — "After  the  general 
collections  of  the  canons  and  Papal  letters,  originally 
-compiled  by  private  persons  for  private  use,  had  got  so 
generally  into  circulation  that  the  Popes  themselves  took 
their  predecessors'  letters  oftener  from  these  private 
collections  than  from  the  Apostolic  scrinia,  it  came 
about  that  the  autographs  of  these  same  letters  which  were 
in  the  Apostolic  scrinia,  gradually  falling  into  neglect 
as  time  went  on,  perished." 


1 86  THE  FALSE  DECRETALS. 

This,  then,  is  St.  Nicholas'  position.  He  is  presented 
with  portions  of  documents — for  we  have  no  proof  they 
were  more — which  accurately  represent  the  ecclesias- 
tical spirit  of  the  day,  a  recommendation  rather  than  a 
difficulty  in  an  uncritical  age.  Their  genuineness  was 
attested  by  the  Church  of  Gaul,  a  Church  incomparably 
more  learned  than  his  own  ;  and  attested,  moreover, 
even  against  its  own  interests.  The  genuineness  of 
these  documents  was  in  no  sense  on  its  trial ;  it  was  un- 
disputed. The  presumption  must  have  appeared  strongly 
in  favour  of  the  genuineness  of  documents  at  once  so 
orthodox  and  so  apposite ;  had  any  heresy  cropped  up 
in  them,  then,  indeed,  it  would  have  been  another  matter. 
But  more  than  this:  the  Pope,  even  if  a  doubt  had 
crossed  his  mind,  which  is  in  the  highest  degree  impro- 
bable, had  not  in  the  Roman  archives  any  satisfactory 
test  of  their  genuineness. 

It  is  sometimes  said  that  the  detection  of  the  Pseudo- 
Decretals  was  the  work  of  the  reformers,  and  would 
never  have  taken  place  without  them.  £t  may  be  as  well, 
before  leaving  the  subject,  briefly  to  notice  this  point. 
The  war  which  the  German  reformers  began  in  the 
sixteenth  century  to  wage  with  Rome  naturally  gave  a 
peculiar  zest  to  the  pursuit  of  any  discovery  which  might 
seem  detrimental  to  their  great  adversary;  and  it  is 
undeniable  that  the  Magdeburg  Centuriators,  as  early 
as  1559,  exposed  the  Pseudo-Decretals  with  a  degree  of 
completeness  which  had  not  been  reached  before.  The 
controversial  prominence  which  they  naturally  gave  to 
the  subject  obtained  for  them  very  generally  the  credit 
of  the  discovery ;  but  it  is  a  mistake  to  suppose  that  the 
forgery  had  not  been  substantially  discovered  before.  As 
early  as  1431  Cardinal  de  Cusa  in  his  work,  "  De  Con- 
cordia  Catholica"  (lib.  iii.  cap.  2),  gives  it  as  his  opinion 
that  the  Donation  of  Constantine,  as  well  as  the  writings 
attributed  to  St.  Clement,  St.  Anastasius,  and  StMelchiades, 
were  apocryphal ;  and  urges  against  them  exactly  the  same 


THE  FALSE  DECRETALS.  187 

critical  arguments — viz.,  their  anachronisms,  the  silence 
of  antiquity,  &c. — which  were  afterwards  applied  by  the 
Centuriators  to  others  of  the  False  Decretals.     More- 
over, neither  the  Centuriators  nor  their  successor  in  the 
next  century,  Blondel,  by  any  means  completed  the  dis- 
covery  of  the  Pseudo-Isidorian  forgery.     Many  of  the 
documents   which   had  passed  these  critics,  keen  and 
eager  as  they  were,  as  genuine,  were  exploded  as  forgeries 
by  the  laborious  industry  and  acumen  of  the  Ballerini 
in  the  last  century.  Bellarmine  and  Baronius,  who  followed 
close  upon  the  Centuriators,  rejected  the  Pseudo-Decretals; 
and  no  one  who  at  all  realises  what  the  spirit  of  historical 
criticism  is,  and  to  what  an  extent  the  great  Catholic 
writers  of  the  last  three  centuries,  Baronius,  the  Bolland- 
ists,  and  the  Ballerini,  were  animated  by  it,  can  doubt  that 
the  Pseudo-Decretals  died  a  natural,  not  a  violent,  death. 
Dead  !  it  may  be  urged ;  but  they  are  not   dead,   the 
Church  uses  them  still.     Is  it  not  intelligible  that  pas- 
sages from  the  Pseudo-Decretals  may  be  used  as  texts,  a? 
convenient  traditionary  formulae,  simply  for  what  they 
represent,  and  in  no  sense  as  authorities ;  that  they  may 
be  too  closely  associated  with  the  practice  of  the  ecclesias- 
tical courts  to  be  eliminated  without  inconvenience  ?    The 
right  which  they  represent  is  established  on  other  grounds, 
and  has  long  ago  been  realised  by  prescription  ;   and 
what  the  Canonist  Wilhelm  (ap.  Mabillon  de  Re  Diplom. 
torn.  i.  p.  248)  says  of  "  documenta  suffecta,  substituta, 
vicaria  legitimorum,"  may  be  well  applied  to  the  Pseudo- 
Decretals.    "  Public  instruments,  sealed  in  court,  strong  in 
the  authority  of  great  names,  are  called  in  question  by 
historians;   and  often  what  the  judge  has  approved  in 
the  forum  the  man  of  letters  condemns  in  his  study.     In 
which  case  I  would  compound  and  so  attemper  matters 
as  that,   whilst  the  learned  should  rightly  reject   such 
documents  as  historical  evidence,  their  forensic  repute 
and  authority  might  still  remain  to  them." 


f  88  THE  CYPRIANIC  INTERPOLATIONS. 

§  6.  The  Cyprianic  Interpolations. 

The  following  probably  spurious  passages  appear  im- 
bedded in  the  "  De  Unitate  Ecclesise,"  n.  4  :— "  Upon 
him  (Peter)  alone  He  builds  His  Church  and  commits 
His  sheep  to  be  fed  ;  .  .  .  and  the  primacy  is  given  to 
Peter,  that  it  might  be  shown  that  the  Church  is  one  and 
the  Chair  one.  .  .  .  He  who  opposes  and  resists  the 
Church,  who  forsakes  the  Chair  of  Peter  upon  which  the 
Church  is  built,  can  he  trust  that  he  is  in  the  Church  ?  " 
The  whole  of  this  is  very  probably  a  gloss  slipped  into  the 
text.  It  has  a  large  weight  of  codices  against  it,  some 
twenty-seven  to  eight.  It  is  first  quoted  in  the  letter  of 
Pelagius  II.  to  the  bishops  of  Istria,  written  at  the  end  of 
the  sixth  century,  and  often  ascribed  to  Gregory  the  Great, 
who  was  at  that  time  Pelagius'  secretary.  It  was  first 
introduced  into  the  text  by  Manutius  on  the  authority  of 
a  Vatican  MS. ;  but,  as  Fell  remarks,  not  without  a  note 
to  say  what  he  was  doing.  There  has  been  nothing 
underhand  whatever  in  our  treatment  of  the  text.  The 
Benedictine  editor,  whilstretainingthe  text,  has  introduced 
Baluze's  damaging  criticism  in  a  note.  If  "  Ultramon- 
tanes,"  as  Dr.  Littledale  says,  are  constantly  quoting  this 
passage,  it  is  not  for  lack  of  other  Cyprianic  passages  to 
their  purpose.  Neander  admits  that  these  clauses  contain 
nothing  that  St.  Cyprian  has  not  taught  elsewhere  in 
passages  of  admitted  authenticity,  one  of  which  he  regards 
as  stronger  than  anything  in  the  controverted  clauses 
(ed.  Bohn,  v.  i,  p.  298).  The  following  passages  are 
uncontroverted  : — "  There  is  one  Church  and  one  Chair, 
founded  by  the  voice  of  the  Lord  upon  a  rock  "  (Ep.  43, 
n.  5).  "  Peter,  whom  the  Lord  chose  as  chief,  and  upon 
whom  he  built  His  Church  "  (Ep.  71  ad  Quint).  "The 
Chair  of  Peter  and  the  ruling  Church,  whence  the  unity 
of  the  priesthood  has  its  source,  and  to  which  heretical 
perfidy  cannot  gain  access  "  (Ep.  59  ad  Cornel.) ;  and 
(Ep.  45)  St.  Cyprian  speaks  of  Pope  Cornelius  and  "his 


"ROMA  LOCUTA  EST."  189 

communion,  that  is  to  say,  the  unity  and  charity  of  the 
Catholic  Church,"  and  of  the  Roman  Church,  as  "  the 
root  and  womb  of  the  Catholic  Church."  The  Protestant 
historian  Mosheim  expresses  his  conviction  that  they 
must  be  blind  who  do  not  see  that  St.  Cyprian's  theory  of 
the  Papacy  must  issue  in  the  modern  Catholic  system 
(De  Gall,  appell.  ad  Cone.  Univ.  sec.  13).  (See  Allnatt, 
Cath.  Pet.  p.  41,  and  p.  93.) 


§  7.  "  Roma  locuta  est." 

The  attribution  to  St.  Augustine  of  the  phrase,  "  Rome 
has  spoken,  the  cause  is  ended,"  no  doubt  involves  a 
certain  rhetorical  exaggeration.  The  sentiment  is  far 
more  intense  in  this  terse  form  than  as  it  really  runs  : 
"  The  results  of  two  Councils  on  the  matter  (Pelagianism) 
have  been  sent  to  the  Apostolic  See,  and  replies  have 
come  thence ;  the  cause  is  ended,  would  that  the  error 
may  end  some  time."  Still  the  substance  is  the  same. 
St.  Augustine  said  that  the  cause  was  over  when  a  report 
had  been  made  to  the  Holy  See  and  an  answer  received. 
The  cause  was  over,  />.,  the  plea  of  error  that  it  was,  or 
might  possibly  be,  Catholic  truth ;  just  as  Arius'  cause 
was  over  after  Nicaea,  though  his  error  endured  much 
longer.  As  to  the  Council  of  Ephesus,  there  is  no  proof 
that  it  decided  anything  on  the  subject  of  Pelagianism  ; 
but  supposing  it  to  have  done  so,  yet  this,  according  to 
ecclesiastical  usage,  need  have  involved  no  denial  of 
the  legal  finality  of  the  previous  judgment;  no  con- 
tradiction of  St.  Augustine's  "the  cause  is  ended  ;"  but 
only  an  implication  that  the  error  still  endured  though 
it  had  no  legal  leg  to  stand  on.  Pope  Zosimus  never 
manifested  the  slightest  sympathy  with  Pelagianism ;  his 
fault  was  an  over-readiness  in  accepting  the  explanations 
of  the  plausible  Pelagian  Celestius  as  real,  in  spite  of 
the  warnings  of  the  African  Church.* 
*  See  Appendix,  Note  G. 


1 90  CARDINAL  BARONIUS. 


§  8.  Forged  Greek  Catena. 

This  was  a  forgery  introduced  into  the  West  by  Latin 
missionaries  from  the  East  in  the  thirteenth  century; 
undoubtedly  of  Latin  origin,  the  Greek  being  clearly  a 
translation  from  the  Latin.  But  there  is  nothing  to 
make  one  suppose  that  the  Pope  (Urban  IV.)  was  not 
as  honest  as  every  one  admits  St.  Thomas  was,  in  his 
acceptance  of  it 

§  9.  Cardinal  Baronius. 

"  Baronius,"  says  Dr.  Littledale,  "  has  also  falsified 
the  Roman  Martyrology  by  inventing  statements  that 
various  early  bishops,  whose  mere  names  stand  in  the 
old  editions,  were  consecrated  and  given  mission  by  St. 
Peter  from  Rome,  so  as  to  make  Rome  appear  the 
mother  Church  of  these  places,  and  he  has  altered  the 
date  of  St.  Denis  of  Paris  by  200  years  with  the  same 
view."  He  refers  to  Janus,  "  The  Pope  and  the  Council," 
pp.  399,  400.  But  how,  I  would  ask,  can  a  man  be  said 
to  "  invent  a  statement "  when  he  gives  careful  references 
to  ancient  authors,  whose  works,  when  consulted,  are 
found  actually  to  contain  that  very  statement  ?  But  this 
is  Baronius'  case.  Dr.  Littledale  cannot  have  consulted 
the  very  work  he  is  maligning,  but  has  contented  him- 
self with  borrowing  the  convenient  slander  from  "Janus." 
In  his  "Rejoinder"  to  Mr.  Arnold  he  renews  his  appeal 
to  "Janus,  a  title  which — it  is  an  open  secret — veils 
the  most  illustrious  modern  name  in  ecclesiastical 
learning."  Well,  but  no  "illustrious  name,"  whether 
"veiled"  or  otherwise,  can  gild  an  open  falsehood. 
The  three  specimens  of  what  Dr,  Littledale  calls  an 
"invented  statement"  are  nothing  of  the  kind.  The 
statements  are  as  follow : — that  St.  Memmius  (August  5) 
and  St.  Julian  (January  27)  were  consecrated  and  sent 
to  Gaul  by  St.  Peter;  and  that  Denis  the  Areopagite 


CARDINAL  BARONIUS.  19! 

is  identical  with  St.  Denis  of  France,  (i.)  As  to  St 
Memmius,  the  statement  appears  in  Frodoard,  a  monk 
of  Rheims  (A.D.  951),  and  also  in  an  ancient  biography 
attributed  to  the  sixth  century  (see  Ruinart's  note  in  his 
edition  of  Gregory  of  Tours,  p.  947.)  (2.)  As  to  St.  Julian, 
the  statement  occurs  in  his  biography  by  Lethald  in  the 
tenth  century,  an  abstract  from  early  sources  (see  "  Acta 
Sanctorum"  in  die).  (3. )  The  theory  of  the  identity  of  the 
Areopagite  with  St.  Denis  of  France,  and  his  mission 
from  St.  Clement,  is  allowed  byLabbe  (De  Script.  Eccles.) 
and  by  Morinus  (De  Ordinat.  Sacr.  par.  ii.  p.  26) — the 
last  being  its  resolute  opponent — to  have  very  generally 
prevailed  in  the  East  and  West  ever  since  the  ninth 
century.  For  ancient  authorities  on  its  behalf,  both 
Gallic  and  Greek,  see  Halloix,  Vita  S.  Dionysii,  op. 
Dion.  torn.  ii.  p.  522,  ed.  Paris,  1644. 

Baronius'  connection  with  the  Roman  Martyrology 
which  bears  his  name  is  as  follows  : — He  was  employed 
on  the  work  in  1580  when  a  simple  Oratorian  priest 
• — his  cardinalate  only  dates  from  1596 — by  Cardinal 
Sirlet,  who  had  been  put  by  Gregory  XIII.  at  the  head 
of  a  commission  for  editing  the  Martyrology.  The  first 
edition  appeared  in  1584,  to  the  correction  of  the  text 
of  which  Baronius  contributed  ;  but  it  is  quite  impossible 
to  regard  him  as  solely  or  even  mainly  responsible  for 
the  text.  The  second  edition  appeared  in  1586,  to 
which  Baronius  furnished  a  mass  of  learned  annotations, 
after  the  accession  of  Sixtus  V.  These  notes  naturally 
led  the  whole  work  to  be  appropriated  to  him  in  the 
popular  estimation.  It  must  be  remembered  that  there 
was  no  adequate  textus  receptus  of  the  Martyrology  for 
its  editors  to  work  on.  In  the  city  of  Rome  itself  the 
different  great  Churches  had  for  long  had  their  own 
Martyrologies,  and  in  Baronius'  day  there  were  two  still 
in  use — Usuard's  and  the  old  Vatican.  The  object  cf 
the  editors  was  to  make  one  Martyrology  that  should 
embrace  and  supersede  all  others,  and  to  that  end  they 


IQ2  CARDINAL  BARONIUS. 

drew  from  every  source  available  to  them.  The  sources 
are  thus  enumerated  by  Laemmer  (De  Martyrol.  Rom. 
Parerg.  p.  22): — "A  very  ancient  Greek  Menology, 
Latinised  by  Cardinal  William  Sirlet,  various  writings 
of  the  Fathers,  especially  St.  Gregory's  Dialogues,  and 
various  catalogues  and  monuments,  especially  from  the 
Churches  of  Italy."  As  to  the  Breviary,  there  was  no 
textus  receptus  of  the  hagiographies  of  the  second  nocturn 
till  Pius  V.'s  Breviary  of  1568.  With  this  edition  no  one 
has  pretended  that  Baronius  had  anything  whatever  to 
do ;  and  it  is  in  this  edition  that  some  of  the  state- 
ments about  the  early  Popes  which  so  excite  Janus  and 
Dr.  Littledale's  indignation  first  make  their  appearance. 
Here  use  has  been  made  of  various  uncritical  sources, 
such  as  the  Papal  Acts  contained  in  the  collection  of 
Isidore  Mercator,  and  the  Liber  Pontificalis.  The  sources 
are  scrupulously  indicated.  There  is  not  the  least 
ground  for  supposing  that  even  the  passages  taken  from 
Isidore  were  recognised  as  spurious,  although  the  col- 
lection itself  was  beginning  to  be  viewed  with  suspicion. 
When  these  lections  reappear  substantially  as  they  were, 
in  Clement  VIII.'s  Breviary  of  1602,  revised  by  Bellar- 
mine,  Baronius,  and  their  coadjutors,  the  worst  that  can 
be  said  is  that  they  let  the  original  statements  stand, 
which,  if  they  had  been  true  to  their  critical  instinct, 
they  would  have  eliminated.  But  it  is  hard  to  say  what 
degree  of  liberty  the  commission  may  have  enjoyed. 
For  a  list  of  their  emendations,  exclusively  verbal  and 
chronological,  "see  De  Smedt  (Introd.  Gen.  ad  Hist. 
Eccles.  Appendix  C).  Gavantus,  a  member  of  the 
Clementine  Commission  (Comment,  in  Rubric.  Brev. 
sect.  5.  cap.  xii.  n.  16),  gives  the  following  account :— 
"  That  it  seemed  good  to  them  to  restore  the  lections  of 
the  saints  bona  fide  in  correspondence  to  historical  fact, 
and  that  with  as  little  change  as  possible ;  and  where 
there  was  any  controversy,  and  the  statement,  supported 
as  it  was  by  the  authority  of  a  grave  author,  might  seem 


CARDINAL  BARONIUS.  193 

to  have  some  probability,  it  was  retained  as  it  was,  since 
it  could  not  be  charged  with  untruth,  although  perhaps 
the  opposite  opinion  might  be  more  generally  received  ;" 
and  Baronius  himself,  when  people  expressed  their 
astonishment  that  he  should  have  passed  the  legend  of 
Marcellinus'  sacrifice  which  he  had  rejected  in  his 
Annals,  answered  (Insert,  ad  An.  302,  n.  103),  "  I  would 
have  men  to  know  that  the  Roman  Church,  in  her 
excessive  tenacity  of  old  usage,  has  considered  that 
what  she  has  found  to  have  been  publicly  read  for  more 
than  eight  hundred  years  should  not  so  lightly  be  done 
away,  even  though  very  irksome  to  her.  For  the  rest, 
the  same  Roman  Church  (as  Gelasius  admonisheth)  is 
not  accustomed  to  read  or  put  out  for  reading  any  saint's 
Acts  as  a  Gospel,  but  rather  leaves  them  all  to  be  weighed 
in  those  scales  of  the  Apostle :  "  Prove  all  things ;  what  is 
good,  keep."*  This  is  quite  intelligible,  and  suggests 
anything  but  disingenuousness. 

Doubtless  the  Annals  of  Baronius  contain  a  multitude 
of  statements  and  conclusions  which  have  been  rejected 
by  subsequent  criticism  ;  but  the  vastness  of  the  erudition, 
the  perseverance,  which  itself  has  something  of  the 
character  of  genius,  and  the  candour  which  never  cloaks 
a  wrong,  have  been  abundantly  acknowledged  by  even  his 
most  unsparing  critics.  What  Protestant  ever  lashed 
more  fearlessly  the  vices  of  Popes  than  this  their  devoted 
champion  ?  Is  not  the  denunciation  of  the  tenth-century 
Popes  inseparably  connected  with  his  name  ?  And  yet, 
because  the  too  realistic  colouring  of  his  conception  of 
the  Papacy  now  and  again  overpowered  his  historical 
sense,  and  gave  rise  to  such  theories  as  that  of  the  falsifi- 
cation of  the  Acts  of  the  Sixth  Council,  it  has  become  the 
fashion  amongst  modern  enemies  of  Rome  to  call  Baronius 
dishonest.  Critics,  the  eve\yday  outcome  of  modern 
"learning  made  easy,"  with  its  infinite  choice  of  apparatus, 

*  For  this  and  other  passages  proving  the  absolute  freedom  of 
Catholic  criticism  on  the  subject,  see  De  Smedt,  I.e.  pp.  181-192. 

N 


194  CARDINAL  NEWMAN. 

think  they  may  take  a  sort  of  "lion's  ride,"  snarling  and 
tearing,  as  they  go,  upon  one,  but  for  whose  labours  they 
tvould  have  chosen  some  easier  profession  than  that  of 
ecclesiastical  historian.  Baronius  in  his  lifetime  had  often 
to  defend  himself  against  the  charge  of  ultra-criticism,  for 
not  presenting,  to  use  his  own  metaphor,  the  whole  mass 
of  what  came  up  in  his  net,  instead  of  sitting  on  the  shore 
and  choosing  out  the  good  from  the  bad.  See  Laemmer,  /.  c. 
p.  69,  and  again  p.  41,  where  Baronius  complains  of  the 
jeopardy  his  Annotations  were  in,  until  God  put  "  the 
spirit  of  Daniel  in  Cardinal  Caraffa  to  defend  his  in- 
tegrity *  contra  seniores  Israel.'" 

Naturally  and  fairly  the  Church  has  been  ever  slow, 
and  will  be  ever  slow,  in  breaking  with  ancient  traditions, 
especially  such  as  are  intertwined  with  popular  devotion, 
at  the  bidding  of  criticism  ;  but  gradually  the  final  word 
of  mature  criticism  is  accepted.  It  would  certainly  be 
rash  to  reform  our  chronology  at  the  suggestion  of  Dr. 
Littledale.  In  his  "  Rejoinder  "  to  Mr.  Arnold  he  says, 
"  The  plain  fact  that  cannot  be  evaded  is,  that  Baronius 
was  intrusted  by  Urban  VIII.  with  the  reform  of  the 
Breviary  and  Martyrology."  Now  I  have  no  wish  to 
evade  anything,  but  "the  plain  fact"  happens  to  be  that 
Baronius,  who  died  1607,  had  been  in  his  grave  some  six- 
teen years  before  Urban  came  to  the  throne  in  1623. 

Professor  Lsemmer,  a  most  careful  student  of  Baronius 
and  everything  connected  with  him,  pronounces  that  in 
all  his  work  he  showed  himself  "  a  most  sincere  seeker 
after  truth,  a  man  who  deemed  it  criminal  and  impious  to 
assert  or  defend  anything  unsupported  by  some  evidence 
of  its  truth  "  (/.  c.  p.  38).  The  words  might  serve  as  his 
epitaph. 

§  10.  Cardinal  Newman. 

"  Even  Cardinal  Newman's  '  natural  love  of  truth  ' n  as 
early  as  1856  succumbed,  Dr.  Littledale  informs  us 


CARDINAL  NEWMAN.  1 95 

(p.  in),  inthe  atmosphere  of  Roman  untruthfulness.*  For, 
after  pledging  himself  that  "  Callista  "  "  has  not  admitted 
any  actual  interference  with  known  facts  without  notice 
being  taken  of  its  having  done  so,"  he  describes  one 
picture  of  our  Lady  between  St.  Peter  and  St.  Paul  in 
the  attitude  of  prayer,  of  a  type  unknown  till  the  century 
after  St.  Cyprian's,  and  another  of  a  still  more  recent  type  ; 
and  under  the  first  he  has  inscribed  the  word  "  advocata," 
which  Dr.  Littledale  has  not  met  with  as  an  independent 
title  before  the  Salve  Regina  of  the  eleventh  century. 

I  answer — (i.)  Picture  No.  i  is  taken  from  an  ancient 
gilt  glass,  one  of  a  number  found  in  the  catacombs  and 
assigned  to  the  third  century,  the  century  of  St.  Cyprian, 
by  the  principal  authority  on  such  matters  when  Cardinal 
Newman  was  in  Rome  in  1847.  Subsequently  to  that 
date  De  Rossi,  on  the  score  not  of  the  design  but  of  the 
material,  the  gilt  glass,  "  assigns  them  to  a  period  ranging 
from  the  middle  of  the  third  century  to  the  beginning  of 
the  fourth  century "  (Roma  Sotterranea,  Northcote  and 
Brownlow,  part  ii.  p.  302).  Now  it  must  be  remembered 
that  St.  Cyprian  did  not  die  till  258.  (2.)  In  the  Orante 
of  the  catacomb  frescoes — a  female  figure  in  the  attitude 
of  prayer — both  De  Rossi  and  his  English  exponents 
repeatedly  recognise  the  Blessed  Virgin,  and  this  where 
they  ascribe  an  earlier  date  to  the  painting  than  the  third 
century.  There  is  nothing,  therefore,  in  the  second 
picture  in  "  Callista  " — our  Lady  as  an  Orante  at  the  back 
of  the  altar — to  distinguish  it  as  belonging  to  a  later 
type  than  the  first.  As  to  the  use  of  the  word  "advocata" 
— taken  from  the  famous  passage  of  St.  Irenseus,  who 
wrote  in  the  previous  century — as  an  independent  title,  I 
answer,  Cardinal  Newman  did  not  pledge  himself  in  a 
work  of  fiction  to  put  in  nothing  for  which  he  could  not 
produce  a  distinct  authority,  but  only  to  abstain  from 
"  actual  interference  with  known  facts." t  What,  I  would 
ask,  is  the  known  fact  interfered  with  here  ?  St.  Gregory 

*  See  Appendix,  Note  H. 

t  See  remarks  prefixed  to  the  new  edition  of  "  Callista. " 


196  SOME  OTHER  CONTROVERSIALISTS. 

Nazianzen  (vid.  sup.)  puts  a  direct  invocation  of  our  Lady's 
patronage  into  the  mouth  of  St.  Justina,  whom  he  supposes. 
to  have  been  a  contemporary  of  St.  Cyprian's;  and  the  word 
"advocata''  even  as  a  title  of  invocation — though  there- 
is  nothing  to  show  that  the  Cardinal  so  uses  it — was  used 
centuries  before  the  Salve  Regina.  The  title  "  advocata  " 
appears  in  the  Serm.  de  Laudibus  B.  V.  M.,  attributed, 
though  improbably,  to  St.  Ephrem,  op.  Graec.  et  Lat. 
ed  Asseman,  vol.  iii.  ;  and  such  Greek  equivalents  as 
sra^axXjjroc,  adixovftetuv  Kgoffrarqs  (patron),  /agff/V?j£ 
(mediator),  swarm  in  the  Precationes  (ib.  vol.  iii.),  which, 
though  probably  not  St.  Ephrem's,  no  one  has  as  yet  rele- 
gated to  the  eleventh  century. 

According  to  the  Benedictine  Index  it  would  appear^ 
as  Dr.  Littledale  says,  that  the  Blessed  Virgin  is  not 
once  mentioned  by  St.  Cyprian ;  but  to  talk  as  he  does 
of  that  Father's  "  copious  pen,"  is  nonsense.  Why,  of 
the  single,  thin  volume  which  contains  his  "  Opera 
Omnia  "  in  the  Benedictine  edition,  nearly  half  is  doubt- 
ful or  spurious.  Dr.  Littledale  has  looked  out  "Maria" 
in  the  Benedictine  Index ;  let  him  look  out  "  Scriptura 
Sacra,"  and  he  will  find,  if  I  am  not  mistaken,  that  it 
is  not  once  mentioned,  except  in  spurious  or  doubtful 
works.  After  all,  Dr.  Littledale  is  mistaken  when  he  says> 
"  there  is  not  one  solitary  mention  direct  or  indirect"  Our 
Lady  is  mentioned  by  St.  Cyprian,  Ep.  Ixxii.  "  Christum, 
de  Maria  Virgine  natum." 

§  11.  Some  other  Controversialists. 

The  honesty  of  St.  Alfonso  and  of  Cardinal  Wiseman  is 
called  in  question,  because  they  have  been  convicted  of 
quoting  spurious  patristic  authorities.  I  suppose  we  may 
say  of  both  that  they  were  brought  up  in  an  uncritical 
school.  It  is  by  no  means  easy  to  wield  vast  learning 
like  Cardinal  Wiseman's,  especially  at  the  call  of  the 
moment,  with  perfect  accuracy.  Dr.  Littledale's  success 


SOME  OTHER  CONTROVERSIALISTS.  197 

in  this  line,  with  what  excuse  of  learning  I  know  not, 
has  hardly  been  such  as  to  warrant  him  in  any  great 
punctiliousness  in  his  demands  upon  others. 

Catholics  have  inherited  a  vast  mass  of  literary  pro- 
perty from  their  predecessors  of  different  ages ;  and,  as 
is  often  the  case  with  members  of  one  household,  there 
has  been  considerable  misappropriation  of  things  prac- 
tically held  in  common.  Criticism  had  been  for  long 
more  or  less  in  abeyance ;  and  until  controversy  has 
forced  us  to  be  critical,  we  have  been  contented  to  enjoy 
a  sort  of  literary  communion  of  saints.  I  have  no 
sympathy  with  an  uncritical  use  of  authorities;  but  I 
conceive  that  there  is  all  the  difference  between  the 
culpability,  so  to  call  it,  of  such  uncritical  enjoyment 
and  the  criminality  of  the  uncritical  aggressor — the  man 
who  supposes  away  a  character  when  he  should  prove 
a  charge,  and  claims  a  verdict  in  his  favour  by  a  dexter- 
ous misquotation  or  a  non-existent  precedent. 

Father  Anderdon  and  Padre  Faa  di  Bruno  are  attacked 
for  some  very  innocent  remarks.  Father  Anderdon,  in  a 
small  tract,  "What  do  Catholics  Really  Believe  ?"  had 
written,  "  It  is  false  to  say  that  the  Church  forbids  the 
reading  Scripture  in  the  true  and  correct  translation." 
So  it  is;  as  false  as  any  statement  in  the  "  Plain  Reasons." 
And,  again,  "  When  Protestants  invented  their  religion, 
they  split  the  commandment  (i.e.,  Com.  I.)  and  the  ex- 
planation (/>.,  Com.  II.)  in  two,  by  way  of  being  differ- 
ent from  the  Church."  This  is  a  popular  rendering 
doubtless,  but  perfectly  true  as  far  as  it  goes.  How  is 
it  to  the  purpose  to  appeal  to  Origen  and  Jerome? 
Doubtless  it  gave  the  Protestant  division  a  convenient 
precedent;  but  this  does  not  interfere  with  the  fact 
that  Protestants  found  the  commandment  one,  and  out 
of  no  reverence  for  Origen  or  Jerome,  but  solely  to  make 
a  point  against  the  Catholic  Church,  split  it  in  twain. 

Father  Anderdon  is  much  too  acute  to  have  appealed 
to  the  cultus  of  mayors,  except  as  proving,  what  ordinary 


198  FAITH  NOT  TO  BE  KEPT  WITH  HERETICS. 

Englishmen  are  so  apt  to  forget,  that  "  worship  "  need 
not  mean  divine  worship. 

For  a  defence  of  Padre  Faa  di  Bruno's  appeal  in 
"  Catholic  Belief"  to  the  ancient  Eastern  liturgies  on 
behalf  of  the  doctrine  of  purgatory,  I  must  refer  to  what 
I  say  below  (p.  222)  under  the  head  of  Indulgences. 

I  know  two  very  honest  and  able  persons  who  are 
devout  believers  in  the  reality  of  the  "  Nag's  Head 
Fable,"  and  who  are  ever  ready  to  undertake  its  defence 
against  all  comers.  The  weight  of  historical  probability 
is,  to  my  mind,  strongly  against  it;  but  as  a  myth,  its 
growth  was,  under  the  circumstances,  most  natural  and 
reasonable.  As  to  disproof,  it  requires  more  than  the 
disproof  of  a  single  circumstance,  even  if  the  fact  of 
Scory's  Edwardine  consecration  can  be  regarded  as  dis- 
proving its  repetition  at  the  Nag's  Head,  which  I  do  not 
see.  With  regard  to  the  recognition  of  the  validity  of 
the  Edwardine  rite,  supposed  to  be  involved  in  Bonner's 
license  to  Scory,  Canon  Estcourt  has  pointed  out  that 
the  license  has  not  one  word  of  any  episcopal  function 
or  of  coadjutorship,  and  need  mean  nothing  more  than 
his  rehabilitation  as  priest,  an  order  he  had  received  ac- 
cording to  the  Roman  rite. 


§  12.  Faith  not  to  be  kept  with  Heretics. 

Inserted  in  the  course  of  Dr.  Littledale's  treatment  of 
Roman  untrustworthiness,  is  a  section  on  the  old  charge 
of  "faith  not  to  be  kept  with  heretics."  At  first  one  is 
a  little  startled,  and  inclined  to  ask  what  a  question  of 
allegiance  or  safe  conduct  has  to  do  with  misstatement 
and  misquotation.  But  Dr.  Littledale's  meaning  is,  after 
all,  sufficiently  clear.  He  would  suggest  that  the  rationale 
of  what  he  calls  our  systematic  untruthfumess  is  that 
faith  is  not  to  be  kept  with  heretics,  who  are  outlawed 
from  truth  as  well  as  from  charity.  Now,  as  I  under- 
stand the  charge,  it  is  nothing  less  than  this :  that 


OLLKOI 

FAITH  NOT  TO  BE  KEPT  WITH  HERETICS.  *99Lw- 


Roman  Catholics  justify  the  making  promises  to 
which  they  have  no  intention  of  keeping  —  promises 
which  they  could  keep  without  sin,  but  because  the 
recipients  are  heretics  they  may  break  without  sinning. 
Now,  I  can  only  answer  that  this  has  always  been  de- 
nounced as  abhorrent  to  the  first  principles  of  morality 
by  every  Catholic  writer  on  the  subject.  At  the  same 
time,  if  a  promise  has  been  made  to  a  heretic  to  assist 
him  in  any  such  evil  purpose  as  the  furtherance  of  his 
heresy  or  the  injury  of  the  Church,  it  follows  the  law  of 
a  promise  to  commit  any  other  unlawful  act,  such  as 
theft  or  murder,  and  not  only  need  not,  but  must  not. 
be  fulfilled.  Again,  when  an  act  of  allegiance  has  been 
made  to  a  Christian  suzerain,  the  existence  of  an  im- 
plicit contract  has  always  been  assumed  by  which  the 
suzerain  is  pledged  to  remain  what  he  was  —  a  son  of 
the  Church  —  as  a  condition  of  retaining  his  vassal  ;  so 
that  the  tatter's  repudiation  of  allegiance  is  only  lawful 
when  ensuing  upon  its  ipso  facto  dissolution.  This  is 
the  Catholic  teaching  on  the  subject,  and  the  passages 
quoted  by  Dr.  Littledale  from  the  Canon  Law  have  no 
other  meaning. 

But  John  Huss,  in  spite  of  a  safe  conduct  granted  by 
the  Emperor  Sigismund,  "  to  go,  stay,  and  return,"  was 
put  to  death  by  the  Council  of  Constance.  Upon  this 
charge  of  Dr.  Littledale  I  observe  —  ist.  That  one  who 
stands  up  for  the  continuity  of  the  Church  of  England, 
as  Dr.  Littledale  does,  can  no  more  disclaim  his  share  in 
the  shame  of  any  barbarity  that  may  have  been  practised 
by  the  Council  of  Constance  than  I  can.  It  was  a 
council  in  which  England  was  thoroughly  represented, 
and  the  Papal  power  reduced  to  its  lowest  function. 
2d.  That  a  pledge  granted  by  one  party  cannot  be  vio- 
lated by  another.  The  General  Council  of  Constance 
claimed  a  jurisdiction  of  its  own,  independent  of  the 
Emperor,  so  that  no  imperial  safe  conduct  as  such,  what- 
ever force  it  might  have  as  a  recommendation,  could  be 


200  FAITH  NOT  TO  BE  KEPT  WITH  HERETICS. 

sufficient  to  pledge  the  Council  This  is  clearly  recog- 
nised by  Huss,  who  no  less  than  four  times  (Ep.  5,  6, 
and  49)  boasts  that  he  has  come  to  Constance  without 
the  Pope's  safe  conduct  (sine  salvo  conductu).  3d.  The 
safe  conduct  given  in  extenso  by  Natalis  Alexander  (sec. 
15  diss.  vi.  p.  499)  is  a  mere  passport,  addressed  to 
those  communes  through  which  Huss  would  have  to 
pass  to  and  from  Constance,  ordering  protection  and 
assistance  for  his  transit,  tarriance,  and  return  (transire, 
stare,  morari,  et  redire).  It  never  pretends  to  address 
itself  to  the  Council,  and  still  less  to  speak  in  its  name. 
4th.  It  was  never  understood  either  by  the  Emperor  or 
by  Huss  himself  to  bar  the  sentence  of  the  Council,  to 
which  the  latter  had  appealed,  and  at  whose  hands  he 
had  expressed  his  willingness  to  accept  the  punishment 
of  heretics  if  convicted.  All  that  the  Emperor,  and 
indeed  Huss  himself  until  the  last  desperate  moment, 
claimed  on  the  strength  of  his  safe  conduct  was  pro- 
tection from  violence  and  liberty  to  plead.  5th.  The 
utmost  that  the  safe  conduct  could  by  any  possibility  be 
supposed  to  grant  is  immunity  from  the  consequences 
of  past  crimes;  it  could  have  no  effect  upon  subsequent 
crimes.  Even  if  it  may  be  supposed  to  hold  Huss 
harmless,  as  regards  any  judicial  action  with  regard  to 
his  past  heresies  and  seditions,  it  could  in  no  way  cover 
the  fresh  offence  he  committed  in  persisting  in  his  heresy 
after  the  decision  of  the  Council.  This  the  Emperor 
implies  repeatedly  (see  Acta  Hussii — a  Hussite  com- 
pilation— fol.  24,  ap.  Nat.  Alex.  /.  c.  p.  503)  when  he 
insists  that  if  he  will  submit  to  the  Council  he  will  stand 
his  friend  and  hold  him  harmless,  but  if  he  will  not 
then  he  will  be  the  first  to  move  his  burning.  The 
status  of  heresy,  as  distinct  from  any  other  form  of 
criminality,  with  rights  of  its  own,  had  never  been  con- 
ceived at  the  time  of  the  Council  of  Constance,  and 
Huss  had  come  facing  the  alternative  of  triumph  or 
death,  as  his  own  words  show  (Act  Hussii,  fol.  2)  :  "  If 


FAITH  NOT  TO  BE  KEPT  WITH  HERETICS.  2OI 

it  convicts  me  of  error,  or  shall  prove  me  to  have  taught 
contrary  to  the  faith,  I  do  not  refuse  to  undergo  any 
punishment  of  heretics."  He  procured  the  imperial 
safe  conduct,  which  was  formally  a  mere  passport  and 
security  against  violence,  and  was  anyhow  a  fair  pretext, 
valeat  quantum,  for  claiming  that  the  Emperor  should 
stand  his  friend  and  hold  him  harmless  as  regards  the 
past ;  and  all  this  the  Emperor  certainly  fulfilled  to  the 
utmost. 

So  far  from  its  being  true  that,  as  Dr.  Littledale  says, 
Huss  "  was  at  once  imprisoned,  tried,  and  burnt,"  the 
exact  contrary  was  the  case.  He  arrived  at  Constance 
on  the  3d  of  November  1414,  and  certainly  remained  in 
perfect  liberty  till  his  examination  on  the  28th,  when  it 
was  proved  that  he  had  violated  the  express  condition 
of  the  Council,  that  as  an  excommunicate  he  should 
neither  celebrate  nor  preach.  He  was  not  sentenced 
until  July  6,  1415,  seven  months  after  his  arrest,  during 
which  time  the  Fathers  and  the  Emperor  did  all  they 
could  to  win  him  to  a  better  mind.  "  This  great  crime," 
as  Dr.  Littledale  calls  it,  far  from  arousing  "  a  general 
outcry,"  was  approved  by  the  whole  Christian  world  of 
the  day,  with  the  exception  of  the  heretics  who  regretted 
their  leader. 

Of  the  two  canons  with  which  the  Council  is  sup- 
posed to  have  met  the  Hussite  charge  against  the  Em- 
peror, the  second  is  generally  abandoned  as  spurious. 
The  first,  under  Dr.  Littledale's  manipulation,  has  cer- 
tainly assumed  an  ugly  look.  "  Notwithstanding  safe  con- 
ducts .  .  .  the  competent  judge  may,"  &c.,  looks  as  if 
the  judge  had  granted  a  safe  conduct,  protecting  against 
judgment,  and  might  in  the  case  of  heretics  then  pro- 
ceed to  violate  it ;  but  when  we  supply  the  context  after 
"  safe  conduct,"  "  of  kings  or  other  secular  princes,  in 
the  case  of  heresy,"  we  encounter  the  obvious  statement 
that  one  jurisdiction  cannot  bind  another  which  is  inde- 
pendent of  it,  and  an  assertion  concerning  the  character 


202  THE  GENERAL  CHARACTER  OF  THE  IMPUTATION. 

of  "  safe  conducts,"  viz.,  that  they  are  not  "  contra  jus  " 
but  "  contra  vim."  That  this  was  the  admitted  charactei 
of  the  "salvus  conductus"  amongst  jurists  of  every 
school,  is  abundantly  proved  by  Natalis  Alexander  (/.  <:. 
p.  499).  Whatever  may  be  our  sentiments  of  pity  for 
Huss,  who  certainly  displayed  a  courage  of  a  very  noble 
type ;  however  much,  in  the  light  of  subsequent  events, 
we  may  deplore  his  execution  as  a  mistake,  it  is  a  simple 
fact  that  the  Council  violated  no  safe  conduct,  and  only 
acted  on  a  maxim  of  criminal  jurisprudence,  which  at  that 
day  was  regarded  as  nothing  less  than  a  truism,  when 
they  dealt  with  an  obstinate  heretic  in  the  one  way  in 
which  it  was  considered  reasonable  to  deal  with  an  obsti- 
nate heretic.  At  the  time  of  the  Council  of  Trent  heresy 
had  vindicated  for  itself  a  status  de  facto  though  not  de 
jure,  and  the  Council,  wishing  to  treat  with  it  on  that 
basis,  formally  set  aside  all  possible  precedent  to  the 
contrary,  which  it  might  be  attempted  to  draw  from  the 
Council  of  Constance;  but  it  certainly  did  not  thereby 
sanction  any  particular  version  of  what  took  place  there. 

Charge  V. — Cruelty  and  Intolerance. 
I  1.  The  General  Character  of  the  Imputation. 

The  Roman  Church  is  specially  cruel  and  intolerant, 
says  Dr.  Littledale  (p.  115-20);  witness  the  massacre 
of  St.  Bartholomew  and  various  assassinations  of  kings 
and  others,  successful  or  attempted,  with  which  Popes 
or  Jesuits,  or  at  least  Catholics,  are  supposed,  rightly  or 
wrongly,  to  have  had  something  to  do.  Once  Dr.  Little- 
dale  thought  and  wrote  differently.  In  his  lecture  entitled 
"  Innovations  "  (1868,  p.  19),  he  says,  "  Everybody  knows 
there  was  a  horrible  massacre  of  the  French  Protestants 
on  St.  Bartholomew's  Day,  1572;  but  few  know  that 
the  atrocities  which  the  Protestants  themselves,  ten  years 
before,  had  committed  at  Beaugeney,  Montauban, 


THE  GENERAL  CHARACTER  OF  THE  IMPUTATION.  2OJ 

Nismes,  Montpellier,  Grenoble,  and  Lyons  equalled,  if 
they  did  not  exceed,  that  terrible  crime.  Again,  I  do 
not  suppose  there  are  ten  people  in  this  room  who  ever 
heard  of  the  Nones  of  Haarlem.  William  the  Silent, 
Prince  of  Orange,  the  famous  leader  of  the  revolt  of  the 
Netherlands  against  Spain,  posted  a  large  body  of 
soldiers  round  the  square  of  Haarlem  one  Corpus 
Christi  Day  when  the  Catholics  were  all  at  church.  As 
soon  as  service  was  over,  the  congregation  streamed  out 
and  were  hemmed  in  and  massacred  by  the  Protestant 
soldiery.  A  slaughter  of  not  much  less  atrocity  signa- 
lised the  introduction  of  Lutheranism  into  Sweden  by 
the  butcherly  tyrant,  Gustavus  Wasa.  Once  more,  dwell 
as  much  as  you  like  upon  Mary's  three  hundred  victims ; 
she  honestly  thought  (and  she  had  a  great  deal  to  make 
her  think)  that  she  was  saving  England  from  a  horde  of 
licentious  infidels."  A  very  different  writer,  Mr.  Lecky, 
"Rationalism  in  Europe"  (vol.  i.  p.  51,  ed.  1870),  thus 
contrasts  Catholic  and  Protestant  intolerance  :  "  Catholi- 
cism was  an  ancient  Church.  She  had  gained  a  great 
part  of  her  influence  by  vast  services  to  mankind.  She 
rested  avowedly  on  the  principle  of  authority.  She  was 
defending  herself  against  aggression  and  innovation.  .  .  . 
She  might  point  to  the  priceless  blessings  she  had  be- 
stowed upon  humanity,  to  the  slavery  she  had  destroyed, 
to  the  civilisation  she  had  founded,  to  the  many  genera- 
tions she  had  led  with  honour  to  the  grave.  She  might 
show  how  completely  her  doctrines  were  interwoven 
with  the  whole  social  system,  how  fearful  would  be  the 
convulsion  if  they  were  destroyed,  and  how  absolutely 
incompatible  they  were  with  the  acknowledgment  of 
private  judgment.  These  considerations  would  not 
make  her  blameless,  but  they  would  at  least  palliate  her 
guilt.  But  what  shall  we  say  of  a  Church  that  was  but 
a  thing  of  yesterday,  a  Church  that  had  as  yet  no  services 
to  show,  no  claims  upon  the  gratitude  of  mankind,  a 
Church  that  was  by  profession  the  creature  of  private 


2O4  URBAN  II.  AND  THE  EXCOMMUNICATE. 

judgment,  and  was  in  reality  generated  by  the  intrigues 
of  a  corrupt  court,  which  nevertheless  suppressed  by 
force  a  worship  that  multitudes  deemed  necessary  to 
their  salvation ;  and  by  all  her  organs  and  with  all  her 
energies  persecuted  those  who  clung  to  the  religion  of 
their  fathers?  What  shall  we  say  of  a  religion  which 
comprised  at  most  but  a  fourth  part  of  the  Christian 
world,  and  which  the  first  explosion  of  private  judgment 
had  shivered  into  countless  sects,  which  was  nevertheless 
so  pervaded  by  the  spirit  of  dogmatism  that  each  of 
these  sects  asserted  its  distinctive  doctrines  with  the 
same  confidence,  and  persecuted  with  the  same  un- 
hesitating violence,  as  a  Church  which  was  venerable 
with  the  homage  of  twelve  centuries  ?  .  .  .So  strong  and 
so  general  was  its  intolerance  that  for  some  time  it  may, 
I  believe,  be  truly  said  that  there  were  more  instances 
of  partial  toleration  being  advocated  by  Roman  Catholics 
than  by  orthodox  Protestants." 

§  2.  Urban  II.  and  the  Excommunicate. 

Urban  II.,  we  are  told  (p.  117),  lays  down  the  maxim, 
"We  do  not  account  them  as  murderers  who,  burning  with 
zeal  for  their  Catholic  mother  against  excommunicate 
persons,  have  happened  to  slay  some  of  them  "  (Ep.  xxii. 
ed.  Migne).  The  words  quoted  are  the  central  sentence 
of  the  following  fragment : — "  Enjoin  upon  slayers  of  ex- 
communicate persons  a  measure  of  suitable  satisfaction, 
according  to  their  intention,  as  you  have  learned  in  the 
practice  of  the  Roman  Church  (here  follows  the  sentence 
quoted).  But  in  order  that  the  discipline  of  the  said 
mother  Church  may  not  be  departed  from,  impose  upon 
them  in  the  manner  we  have  said  a  suitable  penance, 
by  means  of  which  they  may  appease  the  eyes  of  the 
divine  simplicity  in  case  they  may  have  incurred  any 
guilt  of  mixed  motive  (dupliritatis)  through  human 
frailty  in  the  said  deed  of  violence."  This  is  a 


URBAN  II.  AND  THE  EXCOMMUNICATE.  2O$ 

mere  fragment  imbedded  in  Gratian,  from  which  it 
is  taken  to  do  duty  as  Urban's  Ep.  cxxii.  (not  xxii.)  in 
Migne's  edition.  It  is  quoted  by  Dr.  Littledale  as 
though  it  were  a  Papal  license  to  private  individuals  to 
kill  excommunicated  persons  at  their  discretion.  This 
view  of  the  passage  is  put  out  of  court  by  the  writer  of 
"  Replies  to  Lord  Acton,"  "  Dublin  Review,"  January  7, 
1875.  I  shall  attempt  a  summary  of  his  argument. 
Gratian  where  he  quotes  this  passage  is  exclusively  dis- 
cussing such  legalised  puttings  to  death  as  that  by 
soldiers  in  time  of  war,  or  by  the  officers  of  a  court  of 
justice.  The  penance  was  imposed  for  slaying  in  a  just 
war  "according  to  their  intention,"  i.*.,  so  far  as  the 
soldier  acknowledged  an  admixture  of  corrupt  motives, 
such  as  greed  or  vengeance.  The  existence  of  this 
practice  in  the  Church  of  that  period  is  confirmed  "by  a 
passage  from  a  Council  of  Mayence  quoted  by  Ivo 
(Dec.  x.  152) :  "  Concerning  those  who  commit  homicide 
in  public  war."  The  Pope  speaks  here  of  excommuni- 
cate, instead  of  any  other  form  of  public  enemy,  because 
he  was  legislating  with  a  special  view  to  the  pertinacious 
breakers  of  the  "  Truce  of  God  "  who  had  incurred  ex- 
communication, and  whom  all  Christians  in  a  position 
to  do  so  were  exhorted  to  repress  by  force.  If  acting 
from  pure  motives,  with  an  honest  desire  to  reduce  the 
rebels  against  the  Church's  law  to  obedience,  "  they  may 
happen  to  slay  some  of  them  ; " — Clearly  this  is  no  deli- 
berate making  away  with  an  excommunicated  person, 
but  a  reference  to  the  chances  of  battle  ; — then  it  was  to 
be  accounted  no  homicide,  nor  deserving  of  penance ;  not 
so  if  other  evil  motives  had  intruded.  This  is  substan- 
tially the  view  of  writers  as  different  as  De  Marca*  (Notae 
ad  Cone.  Claremont,  ad  can.  i.),  Berardi  and  Hergen- 
rother. 

*  De  Marca  maintains  that  the  reference  is  not  to  public  war  strictly 
ipeaking,  but  to  righteous  armed  repression  on  the  part  of  individuals. 


2O6  PIUS  IV.  AND  LUCCA. 

§  3.  Pius  IV.  and  Lucca. 

Pius  IV.,  say?  Dr.  Littledale,  approved  of  a  decree  of 
the  state  of  Lucca  setting  a  large  price  upon  the  heads 
of  "  Protestant  refugees  who  had  fled  from  that  city," 
and  described  it  as  a  pious  and  praiseworthy  decree,  and 
that  nothing  could  redound  more  to  God's  honour,  pro- 
vided it  were  thoroughly  carried  into  execution."  Now 
any  one  would  gather  from  this  indictment  that  this 
judgment  of  death  was  the  substance  of  the  Lucca  decree, 
or  at  least  that  this  special  enactment  had  been  singled 
out  by  the  Pope  for  commendation.  Neither  is  the  case. 
The  decrees,  copies  of  which  have  been  sent  to  the  Pope, 
contain  a  variety  of  regulations  for  the  conduct  of  Lucca 
merchants  in  such  places  as  were  open  to  Protestant 
influence,  securing  the  fulfilment  of  their  religious  duties 
and  their  abstinence  from  any  communication  in  sacred 
matters  with  heretics.  We  meet  with  much  the  same 
sort  of  legislation  in  the  Councils  of  St.  Charles  Borromeo 
(see  Acta  Eccles.  Mediolan.  passim).  Amongst  these 
regulations  it  is  laid  down  that  if  "certain  declared 
heretics  and  rebels"  among  the  refugees  from  Lucca 
should  after  a  certain  date  be  found  in  certain  specified 
localities  where  the  Lucca  merchants  were  wont  to  resort, 
a  price  is  set  upon  their  heads.  The  government  was 
driven  to  these  strong  measures  by  the  number  of  hereti- 
cal and  seditious  pamphlets  introduced  by  the  exiles 
into  their  city  in  the  bales  of  merchandise.  Especial 
precautions  were  taken  to  prevent  this  dangerous  inter- 
course in  Lyons,  one  of  their  principal  markets,  which 
in  1562  was  a  chief  headquarter  of  the  Huguenots.  It 
must  be  remembered  that  outlawry  in  the  legislation  of 
the  time  all  over  Europe,  England  included,  involved 
the  condition  that  the  outlaw  might  be  slain  with  im- 
punity; and  here  the  outlaw  was  not  unreasonably 
regarded  as  an  aggressor,  and  as  such  was  condemned  to 
death.  The  points  which  Pius  selects  for  commendation 


PIUS  V.  AND  QUEEN  ELIZABETH.  207 

are  precisely  those  regulating  the  conduct  of  the  Catholic 
Lucca  merchants.  Of  this  penalty  upon  "declared 
rebels  and  heretics  "  he  says  no  word  whatever.  See  the 
Letter  of  Pius  IV.  ap.  Raynald.  in  an.  1562,  n.  cxxxviii 
containing  all  the  material  clauses,  and,  in  extenso^ 
Archivio  Storico  Italiano,  torn,  x.,  ap.  Bodl.  Arm.  i. 
n.  65,  and  the  original  Letter,  Arch.  Vat.  Arm.  xli.  Ep. 
Pius  IV.  lib.  \\.  p.  244,  of  which  last  I  have  a  copy 
before  me. 

§  4.  Pius  V.  and  Queen  Elizabeth. 

Pius  V.,  says  Dr.  Littledale,  "plotted  with  Ridolfi,  a 
Florentine,  the  assassination  of  Queen  Elizabeth."  He 
refers  to  Lord  Acton's  letters  to  the  "Times"  of  November 
9  and  27,  1874.  Now  any  one  who  chooses  to  read  the 
two  articles  entitled  "  The  Mission  of  Ridolfi  "  in  the 
"  Month  "  for  February  and  March  1875,  in  which  Lord 
Acton  is  answered,  may  assure  himself  that  Pius  V.  never 
did  anything  of  the  kind.  The  plot  approved  of  was 
nothing  less  than  an  armed  rising  of  the  English  Catholics 
under  the  leadership  of  the  Duke  of  Norfolk.  That  the 
assassination  of  Elizabeth  formed  no  part  of  the  English 
project  submitted  to  the  king  of  Spain  and  the  Pope,  is 
made  quite  clear  by  detailed  references  to  all  the  con- 
temporary state  papers. 

The  following  is  a  brief  abstract  of  the  evidence  : — 

1.  Norfolk  says  that  he  and  his  friends  are  determined 
to  hazard  a  battle,   "  ed  insignorirmi  a  un  tempo  della 
propria  persona  della  Regina  d'Inghilterra  per  assicu- 
rarmi  di  quella  della  Regina  di  Scotia."     Another  of  the 
conspirators,  the  Bishop  of  Ross,  expressly  provides  that 
the  life  of  the  queen  of  England  should  "  no  way  be  put 
in  peril." 

2.  No  word  of  the  intended  assassination  is  to  be 
found  in  any  one  of  the  trials  of  the  conspirators ;  nor  in 
the  detailed  Spanish  report  on  the  English  proposition ; 


208  THE  MASSACRE  OF  ST.  BARTHOLOMEW. 

nor  in  the  report  from  Rome  by  the  Spanish  ambassador 
of  Ridolfi's  mission  there  ;  nor  again  in  Ridolfi's  official 
report  to  the  Spanish  Court  of  what  he  had  done  in  Rome. 

3.  The  first  appearance  of  the  assassination  project  in 
the  state  papers  of  the  time  occurs  in  the  shape  of  a  sug- 
gestion of  Alva's  to  the  king,  that  it  should  be  exacted  as 
a  pledge  from  the  conspirators  before  giving  them 
substantial  assistance.  When,  however,  Ridolfi,  on  his 
return  from  Rome,  found  that  the  king  and  Alva  had 
taken  up  the  idea,  he  at  once  volunteers  the  statement 
that  the  English  lords  were  ready  to  kill  the  queen ;  but 
the  Spaniards  did  not  attach  any  credence  to  this  im- 
promptu, and  Ridolfi,  whom  they  have  all  along  suspected 
to  be  a  mere  wind-bag,  is  quietly  shelved. 

The  Spanish  court  never  ventured  to  propose  the 
assassination  of  the  queen  to  the  English  conspirators, 
and  we  have  a  letter  of  Philip's  to  Alva  in  1571,  saying 
that  it  certainly  must  not  be  exacted  as  a  condition 
of  assistance.  The  idea  of  suggesting  it  to  the  Pope 
never  seems  to  have  entered  any  one's  head.  Thus  the 
assassination  plot  ended,  where  it  began,  in  the  Spanish 
minds  which  invented  it. 


§  5.  The  Massacre  of  St.  Bartholomew. 

As  to  this  massacre  of  the  Huguenots,  the  most  recent 
researches  have  failed  to  show  that  Pope  Gregory  XIII. 
had  either  suggested  or  approved  what  he  knew  to  be 
an  act  of  treachery ;  although  he  certainly  approved  the 
violent  repression  of  a  truculent  heresy  when  it  had  taken 
place.  It  must  be  remembered  that  the  Huguenots 
were  in  a  state  of  almost  chronic  conspiracy.  It  was 
admitted  by  contemporary  Protestants,  Lutherans  of 
Germany,  "  that  the  Huguenots  were  not  martyrs,  but 
rebels  who  had  died  not  for  religion  but  for  sedition," 
and  their  own  patriarch,  Beza,  protested  that  "  nobody 
who  had  known  the  state  of  the  French  Protestants 


THE  INQUISITION.  209 

could  deny  that  it  was  a  most  just  judgment  upon  them,'* 
quoted  in  an  article  on  the  subject  in  the  "  North  British 
Review"  for  October  1869. 

§  6.  Jacques  Clement,  Bavaillac,  and  Sundry. 

As  to  the  assassins  of  Henry  III.  and  Henry  IV.  of 
France,  they  were  both  men  whose  fanaticism  had  more 
or  less  upset  their  reason,  and  who,  so  far  as  can  be 
discovered,  drew  their  inspiration  entirely  from  their  own 
disordered  fantasy.  To  this  isolation  Ravaillac  testified 
calmly  and  persistently  throughout  the  course  of  his 
tremendous  torments.  The  Catholic  party  was  com- 
pletely reconciled  with  the  king  at  the  time  of  his  death  ; 
and  the  Jesuits  especially  were  his  staunch  allies,  whom 
he  had  bound  to  himself  by  signal  favours.  The  as- 
sassin and  the  would-be  assassin  of  William  of  Orange 
would  seem  to  have  been  fanatics  of  much  the  same 
type,  although  the  former  appears  to  have  been,  at  least 
after  the  act,  formally  approved  by  the  Court  of  Spain. 
Dr.  Littledale's  statement  that  the  Jesuits  ventured  upon 
the  public  cultus  of  the  would-be  assassin  will  appear 
sufficiently  incredible  if  we  recollect  that — to  say  nothing 
of  its  monstrous  impolicy — Rome  has  absolutely  for- 
bidden any  such  anticipation  of  her  judgment,  even  in 
the  case  of  a  notoriously  holy  person.  The  Gunpowder 
Plot  the  Jesuits  did  all  they  could  to  hinder,  short  of 
violating  the  seal  of  confession,  which,  I  suppose,  Dr. 
Littledale  will  hardly  insist  that  it  was  their  duty  to  do. 

§  7.  The  Inquisition. 

Heresy  presented  itself  to  the  medieval  mind  as  the 
extremest  form  of  high  treason,  the  most  unnatural  and 
the  least  excusable  of  crimes.  The  medieval  heretic 
was,  as  a  rule,  a  very  loathsome  combination  of  the 
scamp  and  the  ruffian.  The  English  reformers  as  de- 
scribed by  Dr.  Littledale's  eloquent  pen  (Innovations) 


2IO  THE  INQUISITION. 

are  no  unfit  representatives  of  the  class,  profane, 
bloody,  and  treacherous,  beside  whom  their  Catholic 
opponents  show  as  angels  of  light,  and  even  the  monsters 
of  the  French  Revolution  look  almost  amiable.  Against 
such  persons  the  action  of  the  Inquisition,  if  severe, 
might  well  appear  most  necessary  and  salutary.  What- 
ever may  be  said  of  its  severity,  it  well  deserved  its 
reputation  of  ihejustesf  tribunal  in  Christendom  \  and  its 
penal  code,  when  contrasted  with  those  of  contemporary 
secular  courts,  may  be  fairly  accounted  mild.  Bishop 
Hefele  (Life  of  Ximenes,  chap,  xvii.),  after  giving  a  list 
of  tortures  from  the  code  of  Charles  V.,  such  as  burying 
alive,  red-hot  pincers,  mutilation,  &c.,  continues,  "the 
Inquisition  knows  nothing  of  such  barbarous  punish- 
ments." He  quotes  the  admission  of  Llorente,  the 
hostile  historian  of  the  Spanish  Inquisition,  that  the 
Inquisitorial  prisons,  in  marked  contrast  to  all  others, 
were  decent  and  wholesome,  and  their  inmates  never 
weighed  down  by  heavy  "chains,  handcuffs,  iron  collars," 
&c.  Again,  Hefele  observes,  while  civil  legislation 
admitted  the  repetition  of  the  rack,  the  Inquisition 
allowed  it  but  once  in  the  same  case ;  and  it  took  every 
precaution  to  ensure  an  absolutely  fair  trial,  punishing 
with  severity  anything  of  the  nature  of  false  witness. 
"  The  Holy  Office  was  not  allowed  to  pronounce  sen- 
tence as  long  as  one  witness  for  the  defence  remained 
unexamined,  even  if  this  witness  lived  in  America;  it 
was  equally  forbidden  to  protract  the  imprisonment  by 
awaiting  evidence  against  the  prisoner  from  distant 
countries."  (See  Hefele,  /.  t.) 

Dr.  Littledale  (116,  note)  asserts  that  10,220  persons 
were  burned  in  Spain  by  Torquemada  in  eighteen  years. 
Llorente  had  put  the  number  at  8800,  but  Hefele  shows 
that  this  is  a  monstrous  exaggeration,  and  that  2000  is 
nearer  the  mark.  There  is  something  very  cynical  in 
thus  exaggerating  an  exaggeration.  Again,  there  is  another 
important  consideration  tending,  as  Dr.  Hefele  reminds 


TOLERATION.  211 

us,  still  further  vastly  to  reduce  the  numbers  of  the  victims 
of  religious  intolerance.  The  Inquisition  had  to  deal 
with  "  Sodomites,  polygamists,  blasphemers,  church- 
robbers,  usurers,  &c.,  &c.,"  and  even  with  murderers  and 
rebels,  if  their  deeds  were  in  any  way  connected  with  the 
affairs  of  the  Inquisition." 

§  8.  Busembaum's  Teaching-. 

"The  Medulla  Theologiae  Moralis "  of  Herman 
Busembaum,  S.J.,  we  are  told,  contains  a  defence  of  parri- 
cide and  regicide — why  omit  prelaticide  ? — on  theological 
grounds.  Now  this  is  true  precisely  in  the  sense,  and 
in  no  other,  in  which  it  is  true  that  every  English  law- 
book  from  Blackstone  downwards  contains  a  defence  of 
murder  upon  legal  grounds.  The  passage  from  Busem- 
baum is  as  follows  (lib.  iii.  Tract  iv.  cap.  i.,  Dub.  3,  n.  8) : 
— "  To  defend  life  and  limb,  a  son,  a  religious,  a  subject,  if 
it  be  necessary,  to  the  length  of  slaying,  may  defend  him- 
self  against  his  parent,  abbot,  prince  ;  unless,  perchance, 
from  his  death  should  arise  great  inconvenience,  such  as 
wars,"  &c.  I  challenge  the  production  of  a  single  writer 
of  repute  on  English  law  who  speaks  otherwise,  unless  it 
be  to  omit  the  amiable  scruple  of  the  "  unless  perchance." 
Will  Dr.  Littledale  pretend  that  if  once  the  hands  of  his 
angry  Ordinary  had  made  good  their  grasp  upon  his 
throat,  he  must  submit  to  be  strangled,  and  could  not,  if 
the  worst  came  to  the  worst,  slay  him  and  escape,  without 
incurring  the  guilt  of  prelaticide  ?  or  have  Dr.  Littledale 
and  his  party  any  such  tender  scruples  about  kings  as 
beset  the  Gallican  and  Anglican  Churches  of  the  seven- 
teenth century  ? 

§  9.  Toleration. 

Mr.  Lecky  has,  as  we  have  seen,  given  it  as  his  judg- 
ment that,  for  some  time,  there  was  more  of  toleration 
amongst  Catholics  than  amongst  Protestants.  I  will  add 


212  TOLERATION. 

that,  in  spite  of  this,  Catholics  have  far  more  commonly- 
proved  the  loyal  subjects  of  a  Protestant  govern- 
ment than  Protestants  have  of  a  Catholic  government. 
This  is  made  out  very  clearly  in  a  little  book  entitled 
"  Rome  and  Babel,"  ed.  2,  1653.  But,  urges  Dr.  Little- 
dale,  "  all  other  Christian  bodies  have  repented  of  their 
intolerance.  Rome  alone  refrains  from  persecution 
because  she  cannot  help  it."  I  answer,  that  this  repen- 
tance of  the  other  Christian  bodies  is  a  mere  figure  of 
speech;  they  look  as  if  they  would  never  any  more 
commit  the  hideous  anomaly  of  persecuting  in  the  name 
of  liberty,  but  that  is  all ;  there  is  something  in  their 
initial  inconsistency  which  precludes  all  confidence.  As 
to  actual  cruelty,  I  do  not  suppose  anybody  believes 
that  even  such  ardent  Catholics  as  Pius  IX.  or  the 
Cardinal  Archbishop  of  Westminster  would  be  one  whit 
more  likely  to  exercise  it,  if  they  could,  in  the  cause  of 
religion,  than  Dr.  Pusey  or  Archbishop  Tait.  The  real 
difference  lies  in  this,  that  the  Roman  Church  has  been 
always  careful  to  prevent  at  all  costs  the  false  principle 
of  religious  in  differ entism  being  introduced  under  the 
cloak  of  a  sentimental  reaction  from  persecution,  how- 
ever natural  and  however  right.  The  duty  of  all  men 
in  regard  to  the  support  of  what  they  are  convinced  is 
true  and  salutary,  and  the  extinction  of  what  they  know 
to  be  false  and  mischievous,  cannot  be  less  than  com- 
mensurate with  their  power ;  and  so  in  days  when 
government » could  practically  do  what  it  would,  its 
responsibility  in  this  respect  was  enormous  ;  whereas  to 
enforce  a  mere  opinion  one  way  or  the  other  would  be 
immoral.  The  only  legitimate  qualification  of  this  duty 
is  introduced  by  the  question  of  expediency,  which  prac- 
tically may  altogether  suspend  the  legitimate  exercise  of 
the  power  in  various  spheres  and  under  special  conditions. 
This  is  admitted  by  all  persons  who  regard  religious, 
truth  as  an  attainable  certainty,  and  are  speaking  ad- 
visedly, as,  for  instance,  Mr.  Gladstone,  "A  Chapter  of 


INTENTION.  213 

Autobiography,"  p.  58.  This  truth  the  Catholic  Church 
has  never  lost  sight  of,  and  therefore  alone,  or  at  least 
sufficiently  alone,  to  contrast  sharply  with  "  other  Chris- 
tian bodies,"  she  has  declined  to  erect  the  toleration, 
which  in  various  degrees  she  does  not  hesitate  to  practise, 
into  a  moral  principle  applicable  to  all  times  and  cir- 
cumstances. 

Charge  VI. —  Uncertainty  as  regards  the  Sacraments. 

§  1.  Intention. 

"  There  is  the  greatest  possible  doubt,"  says  Dr.  Little- 
tkle  (p.  12),  "as  to  the  validity  of  every  sacramental 
office  or  act  performed  in  the  Roman  Church,"  because 
of  the  Tridentine  doctrine  of  the  necessity  of  an  intention 
on  the  part  of  the  minister  to  do  what  the  Church  does 
in  that  act.  But  it  is  only  when  the  minister  withholds 
his  intention,  or  intends  not  to  act  as  the  minister  of 
the  sacrament  he  pretends,  that  there  would  be  an  in- 
validating want  of  intention.  There  is  nothing,  e.g.,  to 
prevent  the  operation  of  a  sufficient  intention,  in  the 
infidelity  which  would  necessarily  bar  all  formal  intention 
of  giving  sacramental  grace,  or  again  in  a  positive  inten- 
tion to  bar  one  or  more  of  the  effects  of  the  sacrament. 
That  such  necessary  intention  may  conceivably  be 
absent,  is  the  common  doctrine  in  the  Church ;  but  the 
opinion  of  Catharinus  and  Salmeron,  that  an  intention 
such  as  must  inevitably  accompany  any  externally  proper 
performance  of  the  rite  is  sufficient  for  validity,  is  ten- 
able ;  and  this  opinion  is  practically  identical  with  that 
which  Dr.  Littledale  defends.  Whilst  insisting  that  this 
question  is  not  closed  amongst  us,  I  profess  my  unhesi- 
tating adhesion  to  the  common  opinion,  and  deny  that  it 
is  open  in  any  way  to  Dr.  Littledale's  objection.  The 
point  in  dispute  admits  of  a  very  simple  solution.  We 
•Catholics  think  that,  in  addition  to  the  matter  and  form 


214  INTENTION. 

of  a  sacrament,  the  intention  to  perform  the  rite  qua  rite 
is  necessary  ;  whilst  Anglicans  deny  that  any  such  inten- 
tion is  necessary.  It  is  only  fair  to  suppose  that  each 
party  will,  as  a  general  rule,  perform  what  they  regard  as 
necessary,  and  that  each  will  from  time  to  time  omit 
what  they  consider  irrelevant;  now,  if  Anglicans  are 
right,  the  surplusage  in  our  practice  can  have  no  possible 
tendency  to  make  the  sacrament  as  administered  by  us 
invalid  ;  whereas,  if  our  view  be  right  and  intention 
necessary,  Anglicans  are  so  far  on  the  way  to  administer 
invalid  sacraments.  Thus,  in  proportion  to  the  proba- 
bility of  the  Catholic  view  the  Anglican  sacraments  are 
doubtful,  whilst  the  probability  of  the  Anglican  view  has 
no  tendency  to  make  Catholic  sacraments  doubtful.* 

What  Dr.  Littledale  should  have  said  is,  not  that 
sacraments  in  the  Roman  Catholic  Church  have  been 
rendered  doubtful  by  the  prevalent  theory  regarding 
intention,  but  that  Catholics,  if  consistent,  ought  to  feel 
doubtful,  which  is  a  very  different  matter.  To  this  other 
objection  I  answer,  that  our  confidence  in  God's  provi- 
dence over  His  Church  assures  us  that  He  would  never 
allow  any  serious  disturbance  in  the  economy  of  the 
sacraments.  Our  efforts,  meanwhile,  are  directed  to- 
securing  as  far  as  possible  that  the  "  tutior  pars," — the 
safer  course — should  ever  be  taken  in  the  administration 
of  the  sacraments,  and  not  to  denaturalising  the  theology 
of  the  sacraments  in  order  to  bar  an  objection.  The 
common  view,  supported  by  the  great  weight  of  both 
pre-Tridentine  and  post-Tridentine  authorities,  so  far 
from  being  a  piece  of  gratuitous  subtlety,  is  the  natural  if 
not  the  inevitable  outcome  of  the  sacramental  idea.  In 
drawing  this  out,  theologians  have  not  been  inventing  a 

*  As  a  logical  appreciation  of  Dr.  Littledale's  charge  this  is  fair 
and  just,  but  the  argument  does  not  admit  of  being  pressed  against 
ihe  certainty  of  Anglican  sacraments,  inasmuch  as  no  intention 
lhat  mere  carelessness  can  eliminate  is  necessary  according  to  the 
Catholic  view. 


INTENTION.  215 

system,  but  only  analysing  revealed  facts  by  the  light  of 
reason,  doing,  indeed,  in  regard  to  the  sacraments  pre- 
cisely what  the  Fathers  did  in  regard  to  the  two  natures 
of  Christ. 

The  argument  runs  thus  : — i.  The  valid  administration 
of  a  sacrament  must  be  an  "  actus  humanus,"  an  intelli- 
gent, moral  act,  since  the  administration  of  the  sacra- 
ments is  presented  as  a  matter  of  moral  obligation. 
"  Go  and  teach  all  nations,  baptizing  them,"  &c.  This 
will  exclude  the  action  of  drunkards,  madmen,  or 
sleepers.  2.  The  action  must  be  intended,  and  intended 
not  merely  as  a  certain  material  movement  of  the  hands 
and  lips,  but  with  a  sufficient  specification  of  its  object 
or  idea,  to  distinguish  it  from  other  possible  combina- 
tions of  the  same  words  and  actions  which  have  no  sac- 
ramental effect.  As  St.  Bonaventure  says  (4  Dist.  6, 
qu.  i,  art.  2),  "  Christ's  institution,  although  He  ordained 
the  words  and  matter  to  one  object,  limited  them  not  to 
it ;  for  they  can  be  adapted  and  are  adapted  to  other 
uses.  Therefore  that  in  the  particular  case  they  be  so 
applied,  it  is  necessary  that  the  intention  of  the  minister 
should  come  in  wherewith  he  intends  by  that  act  and 
^ford  to  produce  that  effect,  or  at  least  to  do  what  the 
Church  does,  or  to  dispense  what  Christ  instituted." 

In  respect  to  the  ultimate  effect,  the  sacramental  grace 
-••-take  Baptism,  for  instance — the  minister  is  merely  an 
instrument,  a  conduit ;  and,  supposing  the  baptism  per- 
formed, no  defect  of  intention,  or  contrary  intention  on 
the  minister's  part,  in  regard  to  the  subsequent  effect, 
can  prove  a  bar.  But,  as  regards  the  ablution,  />.,  its 
specification  as  a  sacred  ablution,  the  minister  is  no 
mere  instrument  but  an  intelligent  second  cause,  acting 
from  internal  motives,  and  with  an  intention  of  its  own 
(cf.  Scotus,  lib.  iv.  Dist.  6,  qu.  5).* 

*  See  remark  in  the  Introduction,  to  the  effect  that,  so  far  as 
Anglicans  had  orders,  they  were  derived  from  persons  brought  up 
in  the  Roman  doctrine  of  intention. 


2 1 6  INTENTION. 

But,  our  adversaries  urge,  this  makes  everything  un- 
certain ;  for  instance,  it  is  uncertain  if  the  priest  has  the 
proper  intention  of  consecrating,  and  so,  if  our  Lord  is 
present  under  this  or  that  particle.  But  just  so  is  it 
uncertain,  in  nine  cases  out  of  ten,  to  the  individual 
worshipper,  whether  this  or  that  wine  or  flour  was  what 
•t  pretended  to  be.  It  comes  to  this,  that  after  every 
precaution  has  been  taken  we  must  accept  the  rest  on 
trust.  Certainly,  when  we  compare  the  likelihood  of 
the  two  cases,  defect  of  intention  and  defect  of  matter, 
it  irmst  be  evident  that,  whilst  the  latter  may  easily  occur 
from  accident,  the  former  could  only  be  the  result  of  a 
malice  so  deliberate  and  so  extravagant  as  almost  to 
cross  the  bounds  of  sanity. 

Dr.  Littledale,  in  his  third  edition,  appeals  to  the 
recent  decision  as  to  the  nullity  of  the  marriage  of  the 
Prince  of  Monaco  and  Lady  Mary  Hamilton,  as  though 
it  illustrated  the  uncertainty  introduced  by  the  common 
doctrine  of  intention.  The  instance  is  quite  beside  the 
mark.  The  contract  is  the  essence  of  the  marriage,  its 
matter  and  form,  and  the  intention  to  contract  is  of  the 
essence  of  the  contract.  Thus  intention  occupies  a 
position  in  matrimony  quite  different  from  that  which  it 
occupies  in  other  sacraments.  Proof  that  the  consent 
to  the  external  ceremony  was  unlawfully  constrained,  and 
the  internal  "animus  contrahendi"  entirely  wanting, 
would  have  sufficed  for  a  declaration  of  nullity,  although 
no  theory  as  to  the  general  necessity  of  sacramental 
intention  had  prevailed.  The  " animus  contrahendi" 
is  required  for  the  validity  of  a  contract  by  the  great 
majority,  not  only  of  theologians,  but  of  the  writers  on 
civil  law,  although,  of  course,  an  obligation  either  to 
contract  or  compensate  would  lie  upon  the  fraudulent 
contractor.  The  nullity  of  the  marriage  in  question 
turned,  not  merely  on  the  lack  of  internal  consent,  but 
on  the  lack  of  freedom.  In  the  case  of  marriage,  that 
Church  which  almost  alone  maintains  its  strict  indis- 


PENANCE. — SATISFACTION.  21  7 

solubleness  naturally  and  most  righteously  insists  that 
the  contract  should  be  absolutely  free. 

§  2.  Penance— Satisfaction. 

Dr.  Littledale  (p.  127)  lays  down  that  the  modern 
discipline,  which  gives  absolution  before  penance  and 
prescribes  penance  for  forgiven  sin,  contradicts  the 
teaching  both  of  Scripture  and  the  Fathers;  and  that 
when  once  "absolution  had  been  received,  the  sin  and 
its  consequences,  temporal  and  eternal,  were  blotted  out 
by  God's  merciful  forgiveness."  On  the  contrary,  Scrip- 
ture and  the  Fathers  are  at  hopeless  variance  with  Dr. 
Littledale.  Nathan  said  at  once  upon  David's  repent- 
ance, "  The  Lord  also  hath  taken  away  thy  sin :  thou 
shalt  not  die;"  and  as  immediately  subjoins,  "nevertheless 
because  thou  hast  given  occasion  to  the  enemies  of  God 
to  blaspheme,  for  this  thing  the  child  that  is  born  to 
thee  shall  surely  die,"  on  which  St.  Gregory  the  Great 
(lib.  9,  Moral,  c.  34,  op.  t.  i,  p.  313)  remarks,  "In  no- 
wise is  sin  spared,  because  it  is  never  absolved  without 
punishment.  Thus  David  deserved  to  hear  after  his 
confession,  '  The  Lord  hath  taken  away  thy  sin,'  and  yet, 
afflicted  with  many  torments,  he  often  paid  the  debt 
of  the  sin  which  he  had  committed ; "  and  St.  Augustine 
in  Ps.  1.,  "'Thou  hast  loved  truth,'  that  is,  Thou  hast 
not  left  unpunished  their  sins,  even  whom  Thou  hast 
forgiven  :  Thou  hast  so  far  deferred  mercy  that  Thou 
mightest  preserve  truth."  And  again  (in  Joan.  Tract  124, 
lorn.  iii.  pars.  2,  p.  821) :  "Man  is  obliged  to  suffer  even 
after  his  sins  have  been  forgiven,  although  the  cause  of 
his  coming  into  that  misery  was  sin ;  for  the  punishment 
is  prolonged  beyond  the  guilt,  lest  the  guilt  be  accounted 
little  if  the  punishment  end  with  it,  and  so,  either  to 
show  what  misery  is  due,  or  for  the  amendment  of  an 
unstable  life,  or  the  practice  of  necessary  patience, 
temporal  punishment  holdeth  the  man  whom  guilt  doth 
not  retain  unto  everlasting  punishment." 


2 1 8  PENANCE. — SATISFACTION. 

When  Dr.  Littledale  says  of  the  ancient  penances 
(p.  126),  "Their  object  was  on  the  one  hand  to  be  tests 
of  sincerity,  and  on  the  other  to  associate  suffering  with 
sin  in  the  penitent's  memory,"  he  falls  lamentably  short 
of  the  doctrine  of  the  early  Church.  St.  Cyprian,  for 
example  (Ep.  55  ad  Corn.),  speaks  of  penance  "  satisfying 
an  indignant  God,"  "  redeeming  sins,"  "  washing  away 
wounds."  This  is  recognised  by  the  Protestant  Chem- 
nitius  in  his  "  Examination  of  the  Council  of  Trent," 
who  allows  that  Tertullian,  Ambrose,  and  Augustine 
used  equivalent  language.  Another  famous  Protestant 
controversialist,  Flaccus  Illyricus,  denounces  Tertullian, 
Origen,  Cyprian,  Hilary,  Gregory  Nazianzen,  Ambrose, 
Jerome,  Chrysostom,  Augustine,  Leo,  Prosper,  Maxitnus, 
Paulinus,  Gregory  the  Great,  Bede,  and  many  others, 
for  teaching  the  Roman  doctrine  of  satisfaction.* 

The  Catholic  doctrine  now,  as  it  was  always,  is  that 
the  penitential  works  done  by  one  in  a  state  of  justi- 
fication satisfy,  in  the  sense  of  applying  to  the  individual 
penitent  the  satisfactions  of  Christ,  through  whose  merits 
alone  the  penitential  works  are  accepted  as  satisfactory ; 
whilst  penitential  works  done  out  of  a  state  of  justifica- 
tion satisfy  "de  congruo"  in  the  sense  that  they  inv 
petrate  and  dispose  towards  the  grace  of  justification, 
wherein  real  satisfaction  may  be  made.  Granting  that 
it  was  the  rule  in  the  early  Church  to  exact  the  penance 
before  absolution,  yet  it  is  quite  certain  that  this  did  not 
arise  from  any  scruple  at  penance  after  forgiveness ;  for 
penitents  absolved  on  what  was  supposed  to  be  their 
deathbed  were,  on  recovery,  required  to  complete  their 
penance,  and  Dr.  Littledale  can  hardly  suppose  that 
their  guilt  returned  with  their  restoration  to  health, 
Again,  perfect  contrition,  involving  justification,  must 
have  been  frequent  enough  amongst  the  early  penitents, 
and  in  those  cases  a  large  part  of  the  penance  would  be 

*  See  Hurter,  TheoL  Dogm.,  torn.  iii.  n.  553,  and  note. 


PENANCE. — SATISFACTION.  2  1 9 

for  forgiven  sin.  Moreover,  it  is  highly  probable  that, 
even  in  the  early  Church,  absolution  was  frequently 
given  immediately  after  confession,  and  that  the  post- 
penitential  absolution  was  only  a  formal  admission  to 
communion.  (See  Hurter,  /.  c.  note  to  p.  551.) 

As  to  the  modern  practice  suggesting,  as  Dr.  Little- 
dale  insists,  some  insufficiency  in  Christ's  blood  to  obtain 
redemption,  it  is  obvious  that  a  system  in  which  forgive- 
ness is  granted  previous  to  the  performance  of  the 
penance,  tends  not  to  make  more,  but  rather  to  make 
less,  of  human  satisfaction.  That  there  is  some  special 
worth  in  suffering,  not  regarded  in  itself  but  as  an  -ex- 
pression of  love,  can  hardly  be  denied  in  the  presence 
of  Christ's  passion ;  that  punishment  avails  not  merely 
so  far  as  it  is  remedial,  but  also  as  an  expiation  to 
Divine  justice,  can  hardly  be  denied  by  any  honest 
believer  in  hell  torments. 

It  is  the  sinner,  Dr.  Littledale  complains,  "  for  whom 
Rome  makes  things  easy,"  while  the  saint  "  must  lead  a 
life  of  incessant  torture."  This  complaint  of  the  pro- 
digal's elder  brother  has  ever  been  found  in  the  mouths 
of  heretics  of  the  Montanist  and  Novatian  type.  It 
must  be  remembered — (i.)  That  what  is  made  easy  for  the 
sinner  is  escape  from  hell,  whilst  the  difficult  labours  of 
the  saints  are  not  a  point  of  necessity  but  of  love.  (2.) 
That  on  the  one  hand,  from  him  to  whom  much  has  been 
given  much  will  be  required,  and  none  have  received  so 
bountifully  of  God  as  the  saints  have ;  and  on  the  other, 
that  this  very  love  makes  the  hardest  labours  light. 

In  conclusion,  I  would  ask  how  Dr.  Littledale  recon- 
ciles his  denunciation  of  the  Roman  practice  of  giving 
absolution  before  penance  with  the  well-known  fact  that 
Ritualist  clergymen  habitually  do  the  same?  In  the 
"Priest's  Prayer- Bo  ok"  (fourth  edition,  Masters,  1870) 
the  cases  are  enumerated  in  which  absolution  is  to  be 
deferred — which  do  not  differ  substantially  from  those 
in  Catholic  books — but  such  enumeration  is  absurd  if 
absolution  is  habitually  deferred  until  after  penance. 


320  INDULGENCES. 

§  3.  Indulgences— Purgatory. 

Dr.  Littledale  (p.  87)  informs  us  that,  on  the  subject 
of  indulgences  "the  actual  Roman  doctrine  is  this: 
there  are  penalties  attached  to  all  sin,  culpa  or  eternal 
punishment ;  pcena  or  temporal  punishment,  including 
that  of  purgatory."  This  is  only  the  outset  of  his  ex- 
position, but  I  am  obliged  to  stop  short.  What  Roman 
theologian  ever  used  culpa  in  the  sense  of  "eternal 
punishment"?  Culpa  is  guilt,  and  never  has  any  other 
meaning  or  shade  of  meaning;  poena,  punishment,  is 
divided  into  two,  eternal  and  temporal;  indulgences 
deal  exclusively  with  the  last  subdivision,  temporal 
punishment.  The  blunder  is  a  convenient  one,  as  en- 
abling Dr.  Littledale  to  misread  in  his  own  favour  "The 
Master  of  the  Sentences."  God  alone,  the  Church  only 
intra  sacramentum  where  God's  action  predominates, 
can  absolve  from  guilt  and  from  eternal  punishment. 
This  is  the  doctrine  of  Lombard  (Dist.  xviii.  lib.  4),  to 
which  Dr.  Littledale  appeals.  The  pcena  he  is  speaking 
of,  when  he  says  that  it  is  God  who  absolves  "a  pcena," 
is  eternal  punishment.  He  repeatedly  uses  the  term 
" eternal"  or  its  equivalent  in  this  very  distinction,  never 
once  the  term  "temporal."  But  Dr.  Littledale  having 
settled  that  culpa  means  "  eternal  punishment,"  there  is 
nothing  else  for  posna  to  mean  except  "  temporal  pun- 
ishment,"  and  the  qualification  "eternal,"  by  which  the 
" Master"  thought  that  he  had  secured  his  meaning,  is 
quietly  ignored. 

No  doubt  the  modern  use  of  indulgences  did  not 
begin  till  the  Middle  Ages.  But  the  question  is,  whether 
the  change  of  practice  involved  any  real  change  of 
principle  or  doctrine.  Dr.  Littledale  deprecates  our 
appeal  to  the  indulgence  of  penance  shown  to  the  in- 
cestuous Corinthian,  and  to  the  lapsed  at  the  martyrs' 
intercession;  but  both  are  assertions  of  principles 
which  form  the  theological  justification  of  the  modern 


INDULGENCES.  221 

use,  viz.,  vicarious  satisfaction,  and  its  application  by 
Church  authority.  Neither  can  it  be  maintained  for  a 
moment  that  these  ancient  indulgences,  so  to  call  them, 
had  no  effect  beyond  the  ecclesiastical  forum,  for  Christ 
had  promised  that  what  was  loosed  upon  earth  should 
be  loosed  in  heaven.  Nothing  indeed  but  the  confidence 
inspired  by  this  promise  would  justify  such  indulgences 
from  the  charge  of  grievous  cruelty,  for  they  would  other- 
wise be  simply  reservations  for  other  and  more  grievous 
torments. 

Indulgences,  Dr.  Littledale  insists,  "  destroy  devo- 
tion." What,  such  a  manifestation  of  God's  mercy?  In 
which  the  penitent  finds  Christ  and  His  saints  assisting 
him  in  his  path  of  penance  by  helping  him  to  bear  his 
cross.  Again,  we  are  told  it  is  "a  coarse  attempt  at 
making  a  huckstering  bargain  with  Almighty  God." 
But  we  suppose  that  the  bargain,  such  as  it  is,  is  made 
by  God  and  not  by  the  sinner.  The  Church,  in  virtue 
of  Christ's  promise,  and  in  His  name,  accepts  in  lieu  of 
periods  of  canonical  penance  certain  pious  or  beneficent 
acts.  She  absolves  directly  from  the  canonical  periods, 
indirectly  from  the  unknown  purgatorial  periods  which 
these  anticipated  and  corresponded  with.  A  knowledge 
of  this  might  have  saved  Dr.  Littledale  from  charging 
Catholic  apologists,  like  Bishop  Milner  and  Cardinal 
Wiseman,  who  speak  of  indulgences  as  absolutions  from 
canonical  penance,  with  the  Lutheran  doctrine  which 
denies  the  extension  of  indulgences  beyond  the  eccle- 
siastical forum. 

The  application  of  indulgences  to  the  souls  in  purga- 
tory is  only  "  per  modum  suffragii,"  *>.,  it  is  a  ransom 
offered,  admittedly  sufficient,  but  the  application  of  which 
in  this  or  that  degree,  to  this  or  that  person,  is  not 
covenanted,  though  confidently  expected  in  answer  to 
the  Church's  prayer. 

Dr.  Littledale  objects  that,  since  God  loves  the  souls 
in  purgatory,  it  is  for  their  disadvantage  that  they  should 


222  INDULGENCES. 

be  delivered  from  their  prison  before  the  term  of  their 
sentence  has  expired.  But  this,  surely,  is  an  objection  to 
prayer  altogether;  if  suffering  enters  into  God's  scheme 
of  mercy  in  our  regard,  so  too  may  deliverance  therefrom 
by  prayer.  Souls  in  purgatory  are  not  merely  under- 
going a  process  of  cleansing  but  of  expiation,  and  it  is 
in  both  processes  that  the  suffrages  of  the  Church  militant 
bear  a  part. 

Dr.  Littledale  quarrels  with  the  conception  of  purga- 
tory as  a  place  at  once  of  rest  and  of  suffering.  Of 
course  it  is  impossible  to  conceive,  in  the  sense  of  picturing 
to  oneself,  that  which  has  no  precise  parallel  upon  earth; 
but  one  can  perfectly  understand  the  elements  out  of 
which  such  an  intellectual  conception  inevitably  results, 
viz.,  on  the  one  hand  a  perfect  resignation  to  the  Divine 
will,  and  freedom  from  that  which  alone  can  disturb  an 
immortal  soul  fully  self-conscious,  that  is,  from  sin ;  and, 
on  the  other,  separation  from  Him  who  is  the  one  centre 
of  their  attraction. 

Dr.  Littledale  protests  against  the  existence  of  any 
torment  in  purgatory  besides  that  of  loss;  but  what 
spiritual  torture  can  approach  in  intensity  the  conscious- 
ness of  such  loss  ?  He  insists  that  the  Greek  Church 
has  always  rejected  the  idea  of  any  other  suffering. 
Now,  it  is  true  that  the  Greeks  are  not  wont  to  represent 
to  themselves  purgatorial  sufferings  under  the  form  of 
fire,  but  on  the  other  hand  they  frequently  speak  of  its 
pains  under  forms  quite  as  material,  "  darkness  "  and 
"  bonds  "  and  "  stripes."  See  the  passages  from  Greek 
offices  collected  by  Leo  Allatius,  "Consens.  de  Purgat." 
Nos.  xii.  xiii. 

Dr.  Littledale  is  indignant  at  the  advantage  the  rich, 
who  can  leave  copious  alms  for  masses,  may  get  in  the 
way  of  indulgences  and  suffrages  over  the  poor.  He 
proceeds  to  denounce  the  Roman  Church  as  the  Church 
of  the  rich  rather  than  of  the  poor.  Nay,  she  is  the 
Church  of  Him  who,  whilst  He  spake  of  the  difficulty  of 


THE    ROMAN    PENITENTIARY.  223 

the  rich  man  entering  heaven,  yet  sufficiently  indicated 
that  riches  well  used  had  their  own  advantage,  when  He 
bade,  "  Make  to  yourselves  friends  of  the  Mammon  of 
unrighteousness,  that  when  you  are  cast  out  they  may 
receive  you  into  everlasting  tabernacles."  This  advan- 
tage, such  as  it  is,  is  part  of  the  Christian  system.  But 
can  it  in  any  sense  be  considered  as  turning  the  scale  of 
spiritual  advantage  in  favour  of  the  rich  ?  Certainly  not ; 
the  difficulty  under  which  the  rich  labour  is  something 
much  more  serious  than  that  of  getting  out  of  purgatory, 
viz.,  that  of  saving  their  souls.  And  then  each  fresh 
degree  of  eternal  glory,  such  as  the  poor  have  exceptional 
means  of  acquiring,  would  far  more  than  compensate  for 
any  prolongation  of  purgatorial  pains  ;  to  say  nothing  of 
the  poor  being  more  likely  to  satisfy  for  their  sins  here, 
and  so  to  anticipate  purgatory.  As  to  this  last  point 
Dr.  Littledale  demurs,  and  expresses  a  doubt  as  to 
whether  it  be  generally  received.  I  should  like  to  know 
what  other  view  he  would  suggest  as  conceivable. 

As  to  the  poor  being  comparatively  ill  off  for  masses, 
it  may  be  true  that  those  who  do  not  by  an  alms  secure 
a  special  application  to  themselves,  do  not  get  so  many 
masses  specially  offered  for  them,  yet  the  effective 
application  of  the  mass  cannot  be  supposed  to  be  so 
limited  as  that  there  should  not  be  abundant  fruit  for 
others  both  in  the  way  of  impetration  and  of  satisfaction ; 
and  the  poor  and  the  neglected  occupy  the  next  place 
naturally  in  every  priest's  intention  to  the  giver  of  the 
alms,  to  say  nothing  of  the  numberless  masses  in  which 
the  celebrant  is  free  to  follow  his  own  intention.  After 
all,  according  to  the  theory  of  a  special  fruit  accruing  to 
the  giver  of  the  alms,  he  is  enriched  without  making 
others  poorer. 

§  4.  The  Roman  Penitentiary. 

Dr.  Littledale  not  only  tells  us  what  is  "  the  actual 
Roman  doctrine"  on  the  subject  of  indulgences,  but  he 


224  THE    ROMAN    PENITENTIARY. 

proceeds  to  give  us  some  curious  information  (p.  85 )  as- 
to  "what  indulgences  used  to  be."  Previous  to  the 
Council  of  Trent,  he  says  there  were,  ist,  "pardons"  for 
sin  ;  2d,  "  licenses  to  commit  sin"  both  purchasable  for 
money.  His  grounds  for  this  horrible  charge  are — ist. 
Its  appearance  in  more  or  less  equivalent  terms  in  the 
"  Centum  Gravamina,"  a  list  of  grievances  urged  against 
Rome  by  what  Dr.  Littledale  is  pleased  to  describe  as 
the  "  Roman  Catholic  princes  of  Germany  alarmed  at 
the  progress  of  Lutheranism,"  who  had  assembled  at 
Nuremberg  in  1522.  2d.  The  fact  that  "the  Pope 
(Adrian  VI.),  instead  of  indignantly  denying  the  truth  of 
these  horrible  charges,  implicitly  admitted  the  facts  to  be 
as  stated.  Indeed  he  could  not  have  done  otherwise, 
for  the  book  entitled  *  Taxes  of  the  Sacred  Apostolic 
Penitentiary '  was  then  and  is  still  extant  with  a  regular 
tariff  for  the  absolution  of  all  kinds  of  sin."  Dr.  Little- 
dale  concludes  with  referring  his  readers  to  a  reprint  of 
the  Roman  and  Parisian  editions,  1510  and  1520  re- 
spectively, of  the  "  Taxae  "  by  Professor  Gibbings,  where 
the  whole  matter  is  fully  treated. 

I  must  premise  that  I  have  no  intention  of  denying 
that  various  abuses  were  rife  in  the  action  of  the  Roman 
curia  previous  to  the  Council  of  Trent  of  a  more  or  less 
indefensible  character.  At  the  same  time  I  do  not 
include  among  abuses  the  Pope's  claim  to  tax  the 
revenues  of  the  Church  for  the  support  of  the  curia,  to 
impose  pecuniary  fines  for  various  offences  of  a  public 
character,  and  to  direct  their  application  to  such  object& 
of  common  religious  interest  as  he  might  think  fit,  such 
as  the  building  of  churches  or  the  repulse  of  the  infidel. 
That  such  a  right  was  sometimes  abused,  that  certain 
exercises  thereof  as  specially  liable  to  abuse  were  to  be 
deprecated  in  toto,  cannot  invalidate  the  right  itself. 
Neither  am  I  concerned  to  discuss  the  extravagant  stories 
which  the  local  distributors  of  indulgence,  without  the 
countenance  of  authority,  may  have  put  in  circulation 


THE    ROMAN    PENITENTIARY.  225 

concerning  the  extent  of  the  privileges  at  their  disposal. 
The  idea  of  a  money  payment  for  an  indulgence  was, 
that  in  lieu  of  other  penance  you  were  giving  an  alms  for 
a  pious  or  charitable  purpose,  though  in  the  hands  of 
unscrupulous  persons  it  may  have  sometimes  become 
nothing  less  than  a  traffic.  I  admit  that  there  is  a  fair 
field  here  for  a  Protestant  critic,  who  is  careful  to  dis- 
tinguish history  from  hearsay  and  invective  from  sober 
accusation,  to  select  such  charges  as  Catholics  could  only 
meet  by  an  acknowledgment  that  various  crying  abuses 
in  high  places  did  exist  which  needed  reformation,  but 
which  were  reformed.  The  point  here  to  be  considered 
is,  whether  amongst  other  abuses,  this  particular  one 
with  which  Dr.  Littledale  charges  us  ever  existed,  viz., 
that  pardon  for  past  sin  and  license  for  future  sin,  wa? 
sold  by  Rome. 

We  shall  take  the  various  points  of  Dr.  Littledale's 
accusation  in  order,  i.  The  charges  of  the  German 
princes.  If  it  be  true  that  "the  Catholic  princes  of  Ger- 
many," i.e.,  the  princes  of  the  Catholic  party  in  opposition 
to  that  of  the  Lutherans,  really  charged  the  Holy  See 
with  such  a  practice,  this,  without  going  any  further, 
would  be  a  most  damaging  fact.  But  instead  of  the  con- 
stituents of  the  Assembly  of  Nuremberg  of  1522  being 
properly  described  as  "the  Catholic  princes  of  Germany 
alarmed  at  the  progress  of  Lutheranism,"  it  is  on  all 
hands  admitted  that  Luther's  sympathisers  constituted 
by  far  the  most  active  element  in  the  Assembly.  See 
Rinaldus(*Vz  fl/z;20),Fleury's  "Continuator,"and  Cochlaeus' 
"  Acta  Lutheri."  To  speak  precisely,  it  was  an  assembly 
of  German  princes,  the  great  majority  of  whom,  even 
where  least  committed  to  Luther's  religious  tenets,  yet  had 
the  strongest  sympathy  for  him  on  political  grounds,  and 
were  wholly  adverse  to  taking  any  active  measures  against 
him.  The  formal  enactment  passed  by  the  Assembly,  in 
deference  to  the  Emperor,  against  the  Lutherans,  was  stu- 
diously calculated  to  leave  them  practically  unmolested. 


226  THE    ROMAN    PENITENTIARY. 

1  The  hundred  grievances "  were  notoriously  brought 
forward  at  the  time  to  stop  the  legate's  mouth  when  he 
urged  on  his  master's  part  the  adoption  of  active  measures 
against  the  heretics. 

But  what  were  the  charges  brought  by  the  princes, 
be  they  Catholic  or  Lutheran  ?  Do  they  amount  to  Dr. 
Littledale's  ? 

The  ones  bearing  on  the  subject  are  as  follows : — 
(Cap.  i.)  They  charge,  not  Rome,  but  the  local  pur- 
veyors with  attaching  to  their  indulgences  the  promise  of 
the  forgiveness  of  "  past  and  future  sin."  This  is  clearly 
an  exaggerated  representation  of  a  dispensation  called 
"  confessionale,"  by  which  the  reservation  of  certain  sins 
and  censures  to  the  bishop  or  the  Pope  is  taken  off  in 
favour  of  the  recipient,  so  that  he  can  get  absolution  for 
these  sins  on  confessing  them  to  a  priest  with  ordinary 
faculties.  This  dispensation,  though  not  itself  an  indul- 
gence, was  often  connected  therewith  ;  and  a  survival  of 
the  connection  remains  to  this  day  in  the  suspension  of 
such  reservations  on  the  occasion  of  a  jubilee. 

It  has  been  suggested  with  some  probability  by  Sylvius, 
that  this  withdrawal  of  the  reservation  of  sins  often 
accompanying  an  indulgence,  affords  an  explanation  of 
the  form  in  which  some  of  the  more  ancient  indulgences 
were  wont  to  run  "  a  culpa  et  pcena."  *  Before  the  rise 
of  sectarian  polemic  this  form  had  exercised  the  minds 
of  theologians,  and  it  makes  conclusively  against  the 
Protestant  interpretation,  that  it  never  entered  into  any 
theologian's  head  to  interpret  it  as  expressing  a  direct 
remission  of  guilt.  St.  Antoninus,  in  the  fifteenth  cen- 
tury, regards  it  as  a  mere  expression  of  plenariness,  and 
as  only  true  as  supposing  the  sacramental  absolution 
of  which  the  indulgence  formed  the  complement.t 
Morinus  explains  it  as  dispensing  from  that  part  of  the 

*  In  3m  qu.  xxv.  art.  2. 

t  "Locutio  tamen  talis  proprie  non  est  vera."  Summ.  Pars  i. 
Tit.  x.  cap.  iii.  p.  603. 


THE    ROMAN    PENITENTIARY.  22 / 

ancient  penance  which  preceded  absolution,  and  so  carry- 
ing with  it,  as  it  were,  the  absolution  which  it  procured 
should  be  no  longer  deferred.*  However  this  may  be, 
the  "  confessionale  "  for  a  certain  single  time  or  number 
of  times — the  only  extant  examples,  I  believe,  avail  once 
and  at  the  hour  of  death — removed  the  reservation  with 
regard  not  only  to  past  sins  but  also  to  such  sins  as  might 
be  subsequently  committed.  It  came  practically  to  this, 
that  the  recipient,  so  far  as  it  availed,  might  find  a  con- 
fessor, even  for  such  of  his  sins  as  were  reserved,  in  any 
priest  with  ordinary  faculties  ;  but,  in  itself,  it  gave  him 
no  absolution  for  the  past,  and  secured  him  none  for  the 
future ;  he  must  still  satisfy  his  confessor,  whoever  he 
might  be,  of  his  good  dispositions,  and  accept  the  pen- 
ance imposed,  or  he  could  not  be  absolved.  For  such 
an  one  matters  were  so  far  reduced  to  the  original  con- 
dition in  which  they  were  before  the  action  of  the  Pope 
or  bishop  in  reserving  the  sin.  It  is  this  freedom  of 
confession,  operative  both  for  the  present  and  for 'the 
future,  which  the  princes  denounce  as  a  license  to  com- 
mit fresh  sin.  But  it  is  obvious  that  this  could  only 
have  had  such  an  effect  quite  accidentally,  as  any  copia 
confessoris  might. 

(Cap.  iv.)  They  charge  "his  Papal  Holiness  and 
the  other  bishops  and  pillars  of  the  Roman  Church  with 
obliging  penitents  to  pay  for  receiving  absolution  from 
reserved  sins."  Here,  at  least,  there  is  no  suggestion  of  an 
absolution  or  license  to  commit  fresh  sin.  It  is  probably 
a  misrepresentation  of  the  practice  of  exacting  a  "  mulcta 
pecuniaria "  or  fine  from  such  penitents  as,  in  addition 
to  their  absolution  in  the  sacrament,  required  a  writ  of 
absolution  "  in  foro  externo," — that  is  in  the  ecclesiastical 
public  courts — from  public  excommunication  or  other 
censure, t  by  the  production  of  which  writ  they  might 

*  De  Poen.  Lib.  x.,  cap.  22. 

t  A  stigma  barring  the  exercise  of  certain  ecclesiastical  functions 
and  privileges. 


228  THE    ROMAN    PENITENTIARY. 

stop  legal  action  to  their  disadvantage.  This  custom 
was  in  no  way  peculiar  to  the  Roman  Curia,  but  prevailed 
in  every  episcopal  chancery  in  Christendom.  Although 
the  "forum  internum  "  (the  private  court  of  the  sacra- 
ment of  Penance,  and  of  other  business  of  analogous 
privacy)  has  always  been  the  proper  field  of  the  Peniten- 
tiary, yet  until  the  office  of  the  Dataria  was  erected  by 
Pius  IV.  into  a  distinct  congregation,  the  Penitentiary 
had  to  deal  with  various  business  belonging  to  the 
"forum  externum,"  in  which 'case  a  fine  called  a  "  com- 
positio"  was  sometimes  imposed. 

Pope  Adrian  VI.  during  the  few  months  of  life  remain- 
ing to  him — he  died  in  1523 — may  well  have  been  too 
much  engrossed  in  his  measures  of  reform  to  criticise 
the  insolent  exaggerations  of  the  German  princes.  These 
"  Gravamina,5'  with  other  documents  and  amongst  them 
the  "  Taxae,"  were  printed  and  circulated  by  the  Lutheran 
party.  Their  edition  of  the  "  Taxae  "  was  interpolated  for 
controversial  purposes,  as  were  also  a  variety  of  other 
editions.  They  were  made  to  do  duty  in  controversy  as 
nothing  less  than  the  Church  of  Rome's  price-list  of  sins, 
in  which  you  may  discover  the  precise  sum  for  which  you 
can  purchase  forgiveness  for  the  past,  and  immunity  for 
the  future,  in  regard  to  any  sin  you  had  committed  or 
were  minded  to  commit.  The  charge  was  so  gross  and 
so  pestilent  that  Catholic  apologists  may  well  have  felt 
that  they  had  no  resource  but  to  rebut  it  roundly  as  an 
heretical  forgery — as  it  stood  it  was  nothing  less.  To 
analyse  the  elements  of  forgery  and  misinterpretation 
under  the  circumstances  might  naturally  appear  beside 
the  mark,  even  where  a  criterion  for  such  an  analysis 
\vas  available.  In  the  latest  and  by  far  the  most  learned 
Catholic  treatise  on  the  subject,  "Indulgences,  Absolu- 
tions, and  Tax  Tables  "  (by  the  Very  Rev.  T.  L.  Green, 
Washbourne,  1872),  the  author  admits  that  the  Roman 
editions  of  the  Penitentiary  "  Taxse  "  are  genuine.  In  the 
same  year,  but  subsequently,  appeared  "  The  Taxes  of 


THE    ROMAN    PENITENTIARY.  2  29 

the  Apostolic  Penitentiary,"  by  Professor  Gibbings,  the 
work  to  which  Dr.  Littledale  refers.  Professor  Gibbings 
nowhere,  so  far  as  I  know,  commits  himself  to  what  is  by 
far  the  most  outrageous  part  of  Dr.  Littledale's  charge, 
viz.,  that  Rome  sold  absolution  for  future  sin.  He  is 
contented  with  maintaining  that  the  sums  mentioned  in 
the  Tax  Tables  are  bona-fide  prices  for  which  absolution 
could  be  obtained  for  past  crimes  "toties  quoties."  So 
far  as  collecting  authorities  goes  for  the  genuineness  of 
the  Tables,  Professor  Gibbings'  work  gives  evidence  of 
considerable  industry  and  research,  and  I  must  confess 
that  so  far  as  I  have  tested  his  quotations  their  fairness 
stands  in  marked  contrast  to  those  of  Dr.  Littledale. 
The  only  marvel  is  his  not  seeing  that  the  very  same 
authorities  which  make  for  the  genuineness  of  the  Tables 
go  far  to  prove  that  they  could  not  possibly  be  a  price- 
list  of  sins,  but  were  a  tariff-list  of  official  fees  for  the 
expedition  of  documents,  in  some  cases  of  a  public 
character,  accompanied  by  a  fine  under  the  title  of  "  com- 
positio." 

Before  entering  upon  any  detailed  appreciation  of 
these  Tables,  I  must  insist  that  it  is  quite  gratuitous  of 
Dr.  Littledale  to  connect  them  in  any  way  with  the 
traffic  of  indulgences.  Indulgences  proper  are  not  once 
mentioned  in  them  from  first  to  last.  It  is  true  that  the 
"  confessionale,"  or  license  to  confess  a  reserved  sin  to 
an  ordinary  confessor,  does  appear  j  but  this,  although 
it  sometimes  accompanied  an  indulgence,  has  nothing 
really  to  do  either  with  the  essence  of  an  indulgence — 
the  remission  of  temporal  punishment  due  to  sin,  in  this 
world  or  in  the  next — or  with  the  Protestant  misconcep- 
tion thereof,  the  remission  of  sins. 

I  am  inclined  to  accept  Professor  Gibbings'  edition 
of  Paris,  1520,  as  genuine,  but  I  must  nevertheless  take 
exception  to  his  misleading  title,  "  The  Taxes,  &c., 
reprinted 'from  the  Roman  edition  of 1500,  and  the  Pari- 
sian edition  of  1520."  In  reality  he  has  made  no  attempt 


230  THE    ROMAN    PENITENTIARY. 

at  collating  the  Roman  edition,  but  gives  the  Parisian 
pure  and  simple-.  No  formal  notice  has  been  taken  of 
the  fact  that  the  "  Summarium  Litterarum,"  occupying 
the  last  ten  pages  of  the  twenty-one  pages  of  the 
"  Taxes,"  is  altogether  wanting  in  the  Roman  edition ; 
nor  that  the  phrase  "  in  foro  conscientiae  " — upon  which 
both  Professor  Gibbings  and  Dr.  Green  consider  that  a 
good  deal  turns — is  found  exclusively  in  this  "  Summa- 
rium." These  are  grave  editorial  faults,  whatever  may  be 
their  controversial  importance. 

The  Tax  Table  of  the  Roman  Penitentiary — assum- 
ing its  genuineness  precisely  as  it  stands  in  Professor 
Gibbings'  volume — consists  of  Dispensations,  or  releases 
from  legal  obligations  and  impediments ;  Commuta- 
tions, or  exchanges  of  one  prescribed  work  for  another; 
Licenses,  perpetual  or  temporary,  e.g.,  to  say  mass  in 
places  unlicensed  by  the  Ordinary ;  and  Absolution,  the 
meaning  of  which  is  in  dispute  ;  to  each  of  which  -\ 
sum  of  money  is  appended.  A  single  entry  will  serve 
as  an  example  : — "  Absolution  for  a  canon  who  has 
elected  an  unworthy  prelate,  G.  vii.,"  that  is  to  say, 
seven  grosse  or  is.  5jd.,  which  might  represent,  accord- 
ing to  present  value,  from  8s.  to  143.  Two  points  have 
to  be  considered  : — I.  What  is  this  an  absolution  from? 
2.  In  what  relation  does  this  tax  of  seven  grosse  stand 
to  the  absolution  ? 

(i.)  Can  this  "absolutio"  be  an  act  of  sacramental 
absolution  from  sin  ?  Now,  on  the  face  of  it,  it  is  a 
document,  as  the  frequent  expression  "  littera  "  and  the 
title,  "  Summarium  Litterarum  Expediendarum,"  suffi- 
ciently prove.  But  no  letter  or  document  can  be 
made  a  medium  of  sacramental  absolution.  No  such 
use  is  admitted  to  be  valid,  or  is  recorded  at  any  time 
to  have  prevailed  in  the  Church.  At  most,  then,  this. 
"  absolution  "  is  a  certificate  that  absolution  has  been 
given,  or  a  form  in  which  absolution  may  be  given  by 
the  person  to  whom  it  is  transmitted.  That  it  is  a 


THE    ROMAN    PENITENTIARY.  231 

transmission  of  powers  of  some  sort  would  appear  from 
expressions  such  as  this:  "  Absolutio  ista  committitur 
suo  rectori."  "  "Si  tamen  sit  clericus,  committitur  ordi- 
nario  suo  et  non  altero."  But  is  it  from  sin  at  all  that 
the  form  absolves?  I  believe  it  certainly  is  not.  I 
believe  it  to  be  an  absolution  from  a  reserved  censure, 
in  virtue  of  which  censure  the  sin  was  reserved,  and  on 
absolution  from  which  the  sin  ceases  to  be  reserved. 
My  reasons  for  so  believing  are  as  follows  : — i.  As  a 
general  rule,  the  sins  mentioned  in  the  Tax  Tables  are 
known  to  have  a  reserved  censure  attached  to  them.  2. 
It  is  certain  that  some  of  these  absolutions,  which  are 
prima  facie  absolutions  from  sin,  are  really  absolutions 
from  censure,  e.g.  (p.  n.),  "absolution  for  a  priest, 
who,  bouna  by  a  certain  special  sentence,  celebrates  the 
divine  offices,  and  does  not  care  whether  he  is  absolved 
or  not,  G.  vii."  Now,  if  this  were  an  absolution  from 
sin,  it  would  merely  IDC  a  bad  joke,  because  the  not 
caring  would,  as  every  Catholic  knows,  prove  an  effec- 
tual bar  to  any  such  absolution;  but  not  so,  neces- 
sarily, in  the  case  of  absolution  from  censure  which  is 
of  ecclesiastical  imposition,  and  may  demand  removal 
on  grounds  of  expediency  and  charity  quite  independ- 
ently of  the  dispositions  of  the  culprit.  If  it  be  urged 
that  certain  of  the  sins  mentioned  have  no  censure 
attached  to  them,  it  must  be  remembered  that  many- 
sins  once  incurred  the  grievous  censure  of  excommuni- 
cation which  do  so  no  more ;  again,  that  in  such  excep- 
tional cases,  if  there  be  any,  the  absolution  is  anyhow  a 
form  directly  affecting  the  reservation  of  the  sin  and  not 
the  sin  itself. 

The  following  passage  from  St.  Antoninus,  the  chief 
theological  authority  of  the  fifteenth  century  (Summ. 
Theol.  pars.  ii.  tit.  i.  cap.  4),  is  much  to  the  purpose, 
though  the  money  payment  which  he  mentions  is  clearly 
not  the  taxa  of  the  Tables,  but  the  compositio  of  which 
I  have  yet  to  speak.  Money  may  be  lawfully  exacted, 


232  THE    ROMAN    PENITENTIARY. 

he  says,  "  on  the  score  of  punishment,  as,  in  the  case 
of  absolution  from  excommunication,  a  sum  is  some- 
times exacted,  not  for  the  absolution,  because  that  would 
be  simony,  but  in  punishment ;  and  so  too  in  the  reserved 
cases  of  sins.  For  a  pecuniary  penance  may  be  imposed 
as  a  penalty  for  the  foregoing  sin.  .  .  .  But  inasmuch 
as  this  looks  to  have  the  colour  of  avarice,  therefore 
people  had  better  refrain,  or  they  should  act  at  once 
so  carefully  and  so  openly  as  that  it  should  be  clear 
to  those  who  pay,  that  the  absolver  in  this  way  is  not 
keeping  such  money  for  himself,  but  is  distributing  it 
to  the  poor."  St.  Antoninus  is  clearly  contemplating 
public  cases  external  to  the  sacrament ;  and  the  clause 
"  so  too "  (sic  etiam),  by  which  "  the  absolution  from 
reserved  cases  of  sins  is  subjoined  to  the  absolution 
from  excommunication,"  suggests  that  the  latter  is  a  sub- 
division and  partial  example  of  the  former,  the  absolution 
in  the  latter  instance  being  effected  by  an  absolution 
from  excommunication. 

I  believe,  then,  the  "  absolution  "  in  question  to  be 
a  form  of  absolution  from  censure,  the  transmission 
of  which  form  to  the  ordinary  or  a  selected  confessor, 
removed  the  reservation  pro  hac  vice,  so  that  he  might, 
after  absolving  the  offender  from  the  censure,  afterwards 
proceed  or  not,  according  to  the  dispositions  of  the 
penitent,  to  absolve  him  in  the  sacrament  of  Penance. 

As  I  have  already  observed,  I  can  see  no  intrinsic 
grounds  for  objecting  to  the  genuineness  ofthe  Paris  edition. 
I  cannot  reject  the  "  Summarium,"  because  it  is  precisely 
this  "Summarium"  and  nothing  else  which  figures  as 
the  Tax  Table  of  the  Penitentiary  in  the  Tractatus 
Univ.  Juris,  Venice,  1584,  torn.  xv.  p.  i,  p.  376,  "Duce 
et  auspice  Greg,  xiii."  Moreover,  this  same  volume  is 
appealed  to  as  an  authority  on  the  Roman  chancery  by 
Rigaltius  in  his  great  work  "  De  Cancellaria  Romana," 
written  under  the  eye  of  Pope  Benedict  XIV.,  without 
any  hint  of  suspicion,  as  Professor  Gibbings  has  pointed 
out. 


THE    ROMAN    PENITENTIARY.  235 

Both  Professor  Gibbings  and  Dr.  Green  regard  the 
expression  "  in  foro  conscientiae,"  which  appears  thrice 
in  the  "  Summarium,"  and  nowhere  else,  as  equivalent 
to  "  in  foro  sacramentali,"  that  is,  in  the  sacrament  of 
Penance.  This,  however,  is  certainly  a  mistake.  The 
learned  Franciscan  Elbel  (Theol.  Decal.  pars.  v.  p.  253) 
tells  us  that  the  "  forum  internum  "  is  divided  into  the 
"forum  pcenitentiae  seu  sacramentale,"  and  the  "forum 
conscientise  seu  non  sacramentale."  Ferraris'  nomencla- 
ture, though  differing  slightly,  substantially  comes  to  the 
same  thing  (Bibl.  verb.  Forum).  Whilst  making  the  same 
division  of  the  "  forum  internum  "  into  "  sacramentale  " 
and  non  "sacramentale,"  he  uses  the  term  "forum  con- 
scientiae"  as  its  equivalent  and  so  as  applicable  to  either 
division.  A  matter  was  not  considered  as  properly 
belonging  to  the  "  forum  externum  "  until  some  kind  of 
legal  action  had  commenced.  Certainly  matters  that 
concerned  more  than  one  person,  which  on  the  one 
hand  had  never  come  and  were  never  meant  to  come 
into  court,  and  on  the  other  were  no  mere  concern 
between  confessor  and  penitent,  were  designated  as 
appertaining  to  the  "forum  internum"  or  " conscientiae." 
When  the  phrase  occurs  in  the  "  Summarium  "  it  does  not, 
as  I  conceive,  exceptionalise  those  particular  cases  in 
contradistinction  to  the  rest,  which  must  be  supposed  to 
belong  to  the  "  forum  externum,"  but  merely  lays  stress 
upon  the  fact  that  certain  particular  cases  which  might 
naturally  seem  to  belong  to  the  external  forum  here,  on 
one  account  or  other,  do  not  or  need  not.  The  practical 
difference  was  sufficiently  important,  as  the  documents 
issued  "  in  foro  externo  "  could  be  produced  in  court  as 
legal  evidence,  not  so  those  issued  "in  foro  interno." 
In  criminal  cases  belonging  to  the  "forum  externum," 
and  therefore  requiring  the  writ  of  absolution  to  run  in 
the  same  forum,  a  penal  fine  was  sometimes  imposed 
under  the  title  of  "compositio"  or  commutation — a  relic 
of  the  old  "redemptio  pecuniaria."  But  this,  as  the 


234  THE    ROMAN    PENITENTIARY. 

Tax  Tables  are  careful  to  say  (p.  15),  never  takes 
place  when  the  matter  is  secret,  therefore  a  fortiori  never 
in  that  most  secret  matter  which  lies  between  the  con- 
fessor and  his  penitent. 

(2.)  But  what  are  the  "  taxse ; "  are  they  prices,  or 
fines,  or  expeditionary  fees  ?  I  consider  the  arguments 
for  their  being  expeditionary  fees  to  be  simply  irresis- 
tible. Nothing  can  be  clearer  than  that  the  taxes  of  the 
Chancery  occupy  exactly  the  same  position  in  regard 
to  the  documents  to  which  they  are  attached  as  these 
Penitentiary  taxes ;  but  John  XXII. ,  in  instituting  the 
former,  lays  down  (see  Green,  p.  169),  respecting  the 
taxes  of  certain  clauses,  "that  no  account  shall  be 
taken  of  the  greater  or  less  value  of  the  favour  which 
is  granted,  or  of  the  greater  or  less  amount  of  revenue 
or  income  which  may  probably  accrue  from  the  same, 
so  as  on  that  account  proportionately  to  tax  the  letter 
containing  the  said  clauses  ;  but  that  such  regard  should 
be  paid  to  the  labour,  as  that  a  longer  writing  should 
be  charged  more  and  a  shorter  writing  less."  The 
Penitentiary  tables,  moreover,  speak  for  themselves  to 
the  same  effect  (p.  12)  :  "  Note,  that  when  a  letter  is  re- 
quired to  be  redated,  a  third  part  of  the  taxation  is  paid 
to  the  redater;"  again,  every  time  the  conjunction  "et" 
occurs  the  tax  is  doubled.  Again,  if  we  turn  to  the 
entry  at  the  bottom  of  page  20,  concerning  the  "  compo- 
sitio  "  or  fine  paid  in  a  public  case  to  the  Datary  for  con- 
tracting marriage  in  the  second  or  third  degree,  we  find 
that  "  it  is  very  commonly  twenty-five  ducats,  and  four  for 
the  expediting  of  the  Bulls"  Whereas  in  the  private  case 
at  p.  12,  for  contracting  in  the  third  degree  the  "  taxa ;;  is 
four  ducats  one  grosse,  as  nearly  as  possible  the  expedi- 
tionary fee  of  the  public  case.  The  taxes  were,  then, 
expeditionary  fees. 

This  view  is  further  borne  out  by  the  English  Act  of 
Parliament  of  1583  (see  Green,  p.  163),  by  which  the 
whole  tax  system,  "all  the  customable  dispensations, 


THE    ROMA>*    PENITENTIARY.  235 

faculties,  licenses,  and  other  writings  wont  be  sped  at 
Rome"  are  transferred  to  Canterbury ;  and  order  is  taken 
"  that  no  man  suing  for  dispensation,  &c.,  shall  pay  any 
more  for  their  dispensations,  &c.,  than  shall  be  contained, 
taxed,  and  limited,  in  the  said  duplicate  books  of  taxes 
(the  drawing  up  of  two  books  had  been  previously  pre- 
scribed). Only  composition  excepted,  of  which  being 
arbitrary  no  tax  can  be  made,  wherefore  the  tax  thereof 
shall  be  set  and  limited  by  the  discretion  of  the  Arch- 
bishop of  Canterbury,  and  the  Lord  Chancellor  of  Eng- 
land, or  the  Lord  Keeper  of  the  Great  Seal  for  the  time 
being,"  which  tax,  if  it  extend  to  £4  or  above,  <;  shall  be 
divided  into  three  parts,  whereof  two  shall  be  perceived 
by  the  said  clerk  of  Chancery,  .  .  .  and  the  third  shall 
be  taken  by  the  said  clerk  of  the  Archbishop,  and  his 
commissary,  and  his  said  clerk  and  registrar."  Dr. 
Green  (p.  167)  quotes  from  Burns'  "Ecclesiastical  Law," 
the  fees  for  absolution  from  excommunication  and  sus- 
pension, "  one  shilling  and  sixpence." 

These  taxes  of  the  Roman  Penitentiary,  moderate  as 
they  were,  were  wholly  suppressed  by  Pius  V.  His 
predecessor,  Pius  IV.,  had  by  erecting  the  Dataria  into  a 
separate  court  effectually  restricted  the  Penitentiary  to  the 
internal  forum.  These  measures  were  dictated  by  a  sense 
of  the  importance  of  guarding  the  neighbourhood  of  the 
confessional  from  all  semblance  or  possible  suspicion  of 
avarice,  in  accordance  with  the  warning  of  St.  Antoni- 
nus, and  in  no  sense  because  the  practice  of  exacting 
such  fees  was  in  itself  simoniacal. 

As  to  simony,  the  whole  question  is  a  most  complicated 
and  difficult  one.  There  is,  of  course,  simony  proper, 
the  direct  bartering  of  spiritual  goods  for  temporal,  which, 
explicitly  forbidden  by  the  Word  of  God,  the  instinct  of 
Christendom  has  always  regarded  as  one  of  the  most 
heinous  sins  that  can  possibly  be  committed.  At  the 
same  time  it  has  always  been  allowed,  in  accordance 
with  Scripture,  that  the  minister  of  the  Gospel  should 


236  THE    ROMAN    PENITENTIARY. 

live  by  the  Gospel ;  and  that  he  should  be  maintained  in 
that  status  which  belongs  to  his  position  in  the  hierarchy 
of  the  Church.  Whatever  may  have  been  the  complain  ir 
made  from  time  to  time  against  particular  exactions,  it 
was  a  principle  recognised  thoroughly  by  the  conscience 
of  medieval  Christendom,  that  the  Pope  and  the  whole 
apparatus  of  his  world-wide  government,  as  it  certainly 
existed  to  the  advantage,  so  had  a  right  to  exist  at  the 
expense,  of  universal  Christendom.  In  taxing  its  various 
spiritual  favours  and  dispensations,  the  Roman  Curia  was 
only  carrying  out  on  a  scale  proportionate  to  its  larger 
wants  a  system  that  prevailed  everywhere. 

On  the  whole  the  money  exacted  as  alms,  or  fine,  or 
onus,  or  fee,  was  righteously  expended  in  the  interests  of 
Christendom,  but  grievous  abuses  there  doubtless  were, 
ana  yet  more  grievous  reports.  The  vast  machinery, 
compared  with  which  the  chancery  of  England  or  France 
was  a  trifle,  was  excessively  difficult  to  revise  and  regulate. 
But  Pope  after  Pope  busied  himself  in  the  work  of  refor- 
mation, and  the  issue  of  the  Tax  Tables  of  the  Roman 
Penitentiary,  and  of  the  Roman  Chancery,  which  re- 
pressed arbitrary  exaction  by  attaching  a  fixed  fee  to  the 
deed,  and  the  confining  all  "  composition  "  to  cases  of 
public  legal  cognisance,  were  most  important  steps  in  the 
process  of  reformation.  It  was  practically  completed,  as 
far  as  the  Penitentiary  was  concerned,  by  the  regulations 
of  Pius  IV.  and  Pius  V.  to  which  I  have  already  referred. 

As  to  the  charge  of  reserving  spiritual  favours  for  the 
rich  who  could  pay  for  them,  nothing  can  be  more 
grossly  unjust.  Roman  ecclesiastical  legislation  teems 
with  provisions  for  the  gratuitous  ministration  of  favours 
to  the  poor.  In  numberless  cases  they  were  excused 
from  applying  to  the  Curia  at  all,  but  might  obtain  the 
satisfaction  they  needed  from  their  own  ordinaries ;  and 
where  they  were  obliged  to  have  recourse  to  Rome, 
advocates,  as  Dr.  Green  points  out,  were  appointed  to 
plead  their  causes  gratuitously.  What  can  better  prove 


THE    ROMAN    PENITENTIARY.  237 

the  reality  of  the  provision  made  for  the  poor  man  in 
this  respect  than  the  fact  of  the  frequent  abuse  of  the 
rich  man's  pleading  "  in  forma  pauperis  "  ? 

Of  course  where  there  was  question  of  commuting 
other  penance  for  alms,  the  poor  were  so  far  at  a  dis- 
advantage. But  this  disadvantage  was  shared  by  Rome's 
other  darlings,  the  monks  and  friars.  St.  Peter  Damian 
(ap.  Morin.  de  Poen.  lib.  x.  cap.  18)  tells  us  that  in  the 
tenth  century  the  monk's  penance  of  fasting,  watching, 
&c.,  was  often  commuted  to  stripes,  a  commutation  cor- 
responding to  that  of  the  lay  proprietor's  into  alms. 

An  intense  appreciation  of  the  advantage  in  which  the 
poor  stood,  as  compared  with  the  rich,  in  respect  to 
Christ's  blessing,  was  a  characteristic  of  the  Middle  Ages. 
It  only  seemed  fair  to  the  medieval  mind  that  the  rich 
should  have  what  advantage  in  the  way  of  almsgiving 
their  wealth  might  give,  towards  redressing  the  balance. 
A  great  deal  has  been  said  about  the  brutality  of  the 
following  note  in  the  Paris  edition  of  the  Chancery  Tax 
Tables  : — "  Note  carefully  that  graces  and  dispensations 
of  this  sort  are  not  granted  to  the  poor,  because  they  are 
not,  and  therefore  cannot  be,  consoled  (quia  non  sunt  ideo 
non  possunt  consolari)."  Dr.  Green  points  out  that  it  is 
appended  to  dispensations  for  contracting  and  solemni- 
zing marriages  within  the  second  degree  of  relationship, 
which  the  Council  of  Trent  directs  (sess.  xxiv. )  should  not 
be  granted  except  to  great  princes,  and  only  upon  public 
grounds.  Of  course  the  poor  had  no  place  here.  I 
demur  at  the  justice  of  Dr.  Green's  remark  as  to  the 
profanity  of  the  supposed  Scriptural  allusion  to  Matt.  ii. 
1 8.  "  Consolari"  was  the  technical  term  for  receiving  a 
dispensation  grace,  and  medieval  Latin  ever  ran  quite 
naturally  in  the  track  of  Scripture  phraseology.* 

We  are  now  in  a  position  to  appreciate  the  gratuitous 

malignity  of  Dr.  Littledale's  calumny,  that  the  Popes 

affixed  prices  to  licenses  for  future  and  absolutions  for 

past  sin,  in  the  tax-book  of  the  Roman  Penitentiary. 

*  See  Appendix,  Note  I. 


238  THE    ROMAN    PENITENTIARY. 

I  have  proved,  in  detail,  that  they  have  done  neither 
the  one  nor  the  other. 

The  first  is  a  monstrosity  so  subversive  of  the  first 
principles  of  natural  morality  that  we  find  no  trace  of 
its  existence  even  in  the  records  of  ecclesiastical  condem- 
nation. Had  the  Papacy  ever  identified  itself  with  such 
a  practice,  it  is  no  exaggeration  to  say  that  it  would  long 
ago  have  been  swept  away  by  the  just  indignation  of 
Christendom.  The  second — an  indefinitely  milder  charge 
— has  ever  been  condemned  as  a  most  grievous  form 
of  simony,  for  which  no  shadow  of  excuse  has  ever  been 
suggested.  Every  Pope,  every  theologian  denounces  it, 
and  yet  Dr.  Littledale  and  Professor  Gibbings  would 
have  us  believe  that  Pope  after  Pope,  reaching  even  into 
post-Tridentine  times,  in  open  defiance  of  the  eagei 
criticism  of  hostile  Protestants,  has  embodied  this  prac- 
tice in  an  official  manual,  and  sanctioned  its  insertion  in 
repeated  collections  of  canon  law.  Is  this  charge  in- 
telligible on  any  other  ground  than  that  embodied  in 
the  title  of  one  of  Cardinal  Newman's  Lectures,  "  Truth 
not  sufficient  for  the  Protestant  view  "  ? 

In  Dr.  Littledale's  third  edition,  whilst  the  text  remains 
unaltered,  there  is  appended  the  following  note  (p.  100) : 
— "  No  doubt  these  charges  began  as  mere  legal  costs  in 
the  ecclesiastical  courts  in  suing  out  pardons,  but  there 
is  no  avoiding  the  conclusion  that  they  were  perverted 
into  a  tariff  for  sins  themselves,  though  probably  never 
by  any  lawful  or  binding  authority."  In  this  note  Dr. 
Littledale  talks  of  the  "  taxae "  beginning  as  one  thing 
and  ending  as  another,  quite  forgetting  that  it  is  a  docu- 
ment and  not  merely  a  practice  to  which  he  has 
appealed,  and  which  is  under  consideration.  A  docu- 
ment cannot  change.  In  the  text  the  tax- book  is  sup- 
posed to  have  shut  the  Pope's  mouth  because  it  is  a 
price-list  of  sins ;  but  if  it  was  ever  a  table  of  expedi- 
tionary fees,  instead  of  shutting  the  Pope's  mouth  it 
would  have  strengthened  his  hands.  Even  Dr.  Littledale 


REV.  JAMES  A.  GRANT  BEQUEST  TO 
ST,  MARY'S  COLLEGE  LIBRARY,  1926 

MARRIAGE   DISPENSATIONS.  239 

can  hardly  suppose  that  the  Holy  See  had  turned  the 
identical  fixed  expeditionary  fees  in  the  tax-book  into 
prices  of  sins,  for  the  mere  sake  of  playing  at  simony 
gratuitously. 

The  text  remaining  in  its  original  offensiveness,  "there 
is  no  avoiding  the  conclusion "  that  the  note  is  a  mere 
expedient  to  bar  criticism  upon  the  falsehood  which  it 
does  nothing  effectually  to  correct. 

§  5.  The  Mass  Honorarium. 

As  to  what  Dr.  Littledale  is  pleased  to  call  the  mass- 
traffic,  he  ought  to  know  that  no  priest  is  allowed  to 
require  as  a  mass-honorarium  more  than  the  slender  alms 
fixed  by  the  diocesan  tax ;  and  that  where  he  is  obliged 
to  get  the  mass  said  by  another,  he  is  forbidden  to  retain 
any  portion  of  the  alms  for  himself.  No  mass-traffic 
is  possible,  except  in  direct  violation  of  the  Church's 
ordinances ;  and  such  violation  even  the  prohibition  of 
all  honorarium  would  make  no  whit  less  possible. 

§  6.  Marriage  Dispensations. 

As  to  marriage  dispensations,  Dr.  Littledale  insists 
that  either  there  should  be  no  prohibitory  law  or  no 
dispensation.  But  this  is  certainly  not  in  accordance 
with  the  general  experience.  It  is  often  very  important 
that  the  existence  of  a  general  law  should  bar  a  contrary 
use,  and  at  the  same  time  that  some  relaxation  should 
be  possible  in  particular  cases.  It  is  precisely  the  want 
of  such  dispensing  authority  in  this  country  which  has 
made  the  demand  for  the  "Deceased  Wife's  Sister's" 
Bill  so  urgent.  The  dispensation  may  be  thus  indirectly 
as  much  in  favour  of  the  law  as  of  the  individual.  The 
pecuniary  fine  or  compensation  exacted  in  such  cases 
has  at  least  the  advantage  of  making  the  suit  onerous 
and  therefore  more  exceptional,  whilst  it  can  always  be 
remitted  in  cases  of  real  necessity. 


240  UNITY    OF    FAITH    AND    CHARITY. 

Charge  VI L — Lack  of  the  Four  Notes  of  the  Church. 

Dr.  Littledale  (pp.  153-180)  argues  that  the  notes  of 
the  Church  of  Christ  are  conspicuously  wanting  to  the 
Roman  Catholic  Church.  I  have  already  met,  directly 
or  indirectly,  in  other  parts  of  this  "  Reply "  much  of 
what  he  says  here,  but  something  still  remains  to  answer, 
and  the  roundness  of  Dr.  Littledale's  accusation  here 
almost  demands  a  special  notice. 

§  1.  Unity  of  Faith  and  Charity. 

This  unity  we  do  not  possess,  says  Dr.  Littledale, — (i.) 
Because  "there  is  a  marked  distinction  between  the 
religion  of  the  vulgar  and  that  of  the  educated."  I 
insist  that  there  is  not  the  slightest  doctrinal  distinction 
between  the  devotion  of  the  two  classes ;  and  that,  for 
the  rest,  you  may  as  well  deny  the  existence  of  a  com- 
mon English  language  because  the  educated  and  un- 
educated articulate  it  differently.  But,  in  reality,  the 
wonder  is  all  the  other  way.  The  striking  thing  about  our 
Catholic  Churches  is  precisely  the  unanimity  of  the  de- 
votion, the  absence  of  class  distinction.  At  Mass  and 
Benediction,  Rosary  and  Stations,  the  educated  and 
uneducated  are  equally  at  home.  (2.)  Because  some 
persons  shrink  from  using  devotional  language  in  regard 
to  the  Blessed  Virgin  which  others  approve  of.  I  answer 
that,  either  this  involves  some  doctrinal  difference  in 
their  appreciation  of  the  prerogatives  of  Mary,  which  Dr. 
Littledale  does  not  venture  to  assert,  or  the  difference 
is  one  of  taste  and  temperament,  and  does  not  militate 
against  unity  of  faith.  (3.)  Because  there  are  maxi- 
misers  and  minimisers ;  the  former  inclined  to  regard 
any  Papal  utterance  as  a  final  expression  of  authority, 
and  so  as  an  exercise  of  infallibility ;  the  latter  more 
cautious  and  critical — unduly  so,  their  adversaries  would 
say — in  their  estimate  of  the  functions  and  action  of 


UNITY    OF    FAITH    AND    CHARITY.  241 

authority,  and  more  apprehensive  of  the  dangers  of  pre- 
cipitation than  of  the  inconvenience  of  delay,  in  any 
matter  admitting  of  a  doubt.  Whence  it  arises  that 
several  important  Papal  documents  can  be  pointed  to, 
wherein  it  is  disputed  amongst  Catholics,  whether  the 
Pope  has  spoken  infallibly.  But  here  again  the  differ- 
ence is  not  one  of  doctrine ;  and  even  as  to  the  point 
of  difference,  viz.,  the  formal  authority  of  the  particular 
document,  there  is  a  virtual  agreement,  a  unity  in  posse, 
implied  in  the  submission  of  both  parties  to  the  autho- 
rity from  which  the  document  emanated.  Of  course  it 
is  impossible  that  many  minds  should  be  actively  en- 
gaged upon  various  theological  questions  without  differ- 
ing upon  numberless  important  points.  The  distinction 
between  the  condition  of  Roman  Catholics  and  that  of 
the  sects  in  this  respect  is  that,  as  regards  a  certain 
body  of  explicit  doctrine,  there  is  a  unity  of  belief  in 
esse;  and  as  regards  other  theological  points  there  is  a 
unity  of  belief  in  posse,  in  the  possession  of  an  authority 
which  alternately  tolerates  and  settles  these  disputes  with 
a  discretion  which  is  beyond  question.  On  the  con- 
trary, when  we  turn  to  the  sects,  and  notably  to  Angli- 
canism, we  find  that  this  unity  of  faith  exists  neither 
in  esse  nor  in  posse.  There  is  no  body  of  doctrine  in 
regard  to  which  Anglicans  can  be  said  to  be  at  one, 
or  in  defence  of  which  they  can  eliminate  gainsayers  \ 
and  no  authority  to  deal  with  emergent  questions. 

The  phenomenon  of  unity,  which  Dr.  Littledale  is 
obliged  in  some  sort  to  concede  to  us,  he  insists  is  of 
artificial  production,  the  result  of  a  long  course  of  re- 
pressive action  on  the  part  of  authority.  Of  course  it  is 
to  the  persistent  energy  of  a  living  authority  that  we  owe 
oui  unity ;  but  when  Dr.  Littledale  would  make  out  that 
it  has  this  effect,  not  in  virtue  of  the  moral  weight  of  a 
Divine  sanction,  but  by  a  sort  of  physical  terrorism,  he 
should  ask  himself  what  physical  material  hold  has  the 
Holy  See  upon,  say,  the  unendowed  clergy  of  England 

Q 


*4  2  SANCTITY. 

or  France  ?  What  material  loss  would  the  priest  have  to 
face  who  should  be  forced  to  abandon  his  meagre  hardly- 
earned  stipend  for  any  other  pursuit  that  can  be  sug- 
gested? Of  the  few  who  here  and  there  have  aban- 
doned their  vocation,  I  do  not  think  their  acquaintance 
are  ever  tempted  to  feel  that  there  has  been  any  excep- 
tional courage  on  the  part  of  the  seceders  which  can 
reflect  upon  the  courage  of  those  who  remain. 

§  2.  Sanctity. 

Anyhow,  says  Dr.  Littledale,  "  the  standard  of  life  and 
conduct  is,  to  say  the  very  least,  no  higher  in  Roman 
Catholic  populations  than  elsewhere.  In  England,  on 
the  contrary,  whereas  Roman  Catholics  are  less  than  five 
per  cent,  of  the  population,  they  contribute,  wherever 
they  are  collected — for,  of  course,  there  are  many  parts 
of  England  and  Wales  where  there  are  none  or  few — from 
sixteen  to  more  than  twenty-four  (in  second  and  third 
editions  "  to  sixty-seven  ")  per  cent,  of  criminals  to  our 
prisons ;  that  is  to  say,  from  three  to  five  (eds.  2  and  3, 
"  thirteen  ")  times  their  fair  share  of  crime." 

I  do  not  intend  to  follow  Dr.  Littledale  into  the  sta- 
tistics he  gives  of  various  prisons  (note,  third  edition), 
but  one  piece  of  unfairness  I  must  point  out  which  his 
statistics  bear  on  their  very  face.  Being,  as  we  are, 
about  five  per  cent,  of  the  whole  population,  five  per 
cent,  is  supposed  to  be  our  proper  criminal  proportion 
throughout  England;  but  against  this  is  set  the  fact,  not  of 
our  criminal  proportion  throughout  England,  but  of  our 
proportion  in  places  like  Clerkenwell,  Liverpool,  or 
Manchester,  where  Catholics,  instead  of  being  five  per 
cent.,  are  from  ten  to  thirty  per  cent,  of  the  population. 
Whatever  may  be  said  of  the  accuracy  of  the  statistics 
of  the  various  prisons,  quoted  by  Dr.  Littledale,  I  deny 
that  they  can  afford  any  criterion  of  the  moral  condition 
of  the  different  denominations  until  (i)  the  proportion 


SANCTITY.  243 

of  the  very  poor  belonging  to  each  denomination  is 
discounted;  and  (2)  the  various  crimes  for  which  the 
prisoners  are  committed  are  tabulated.  The  moral 
quality  of  the  causes  of  committal  admits  of  almost  in- 
finite variations.  My  own  belief,  grounded  on  a  gaol 
experience  of  some  years,  is,  that  the  admittedly  large 
Catholic  percentage  is  to  be  attributed  to  an  excess  of 
morally  venial  offences,  which  only  just,  but  repeatedly, 
bring  their  perpetrators  within  the  grasp  of  the  law. 
The  poor  Irish,  of  whom  our  town  congregations  mainly 
consist,  in  their  non-natural  condition  of  close  packing  in 
the  lowest  parts  of  our  great  towns,  are  peculiarly  liable 
to  the  temptations  of  a  row,  and  are  always  getting  into 
trouble  from  such  causes.  I  believe  the  statistics  of  such 
crimes  as  deliberate  murder,  rape,  or  the  more  serious 
sort  of  fraud,  would  tell  a  very  different  tale. 

As  to  a  comparison  of  populations  it  is  hard  to  find  any 
satisfactory  basis  for  the  calculation.  I  can  only  express 
my  belief  that  the  morality  of  the  average  Irish,  Italian, 
Breton,  and  Spanish  village  is  as  superior  to  its  English 
counterpart — the  village  that  has  grown  up  beneath  the 
fostering  care  of  the  Establishment — as,  let  us  say,  the 
spiritual  life  of  a  St.  Vincent  of  Paul  to  that  of  an  aver- 
age Low  Church  bishop. 

The  Roman  Church  is  not  holy  (p.  167),  because  the 
Liguorianism  she  has  adopted  is  "  fatal  to  holiness."  I 
fully  admit  that  if  the  Church  had  adopted  the  opinions 
Dr.  Littledale  attributes  to  St.  Alfonso,  it  would  dis- 
tinctly militate  against  her  holiness;  but  then  I  have 
already  shown  that  those  opinions  are  falsely  imputed  to 
the  Saint. 

But  the  local  Church  of  Rome  is  so  particularly  wicked, 
insists  Dr.  Littledale.  Here  one  subject  of  discussion  is 
exchanged  for  another.  We  have  been  speaking  of  the 
Roman  Catholic  Church,  i.e.,  of  a  body  which,  embracing 
the  vast  majority  of  Christians,  is  in  communion  with 
the  See  of  Rome.  Still,  any  reproach  thrown  upon  the 


244  SANCTITY. 

local  Church  of  Rome  is  indirectly  a  reproach  to  the 
whole  Church,  and  merits  a  careful  scrutiny. 

No  doubt  there  have  been  bad  Popes  and  grievous 
disorders  of  one  kind  or  another  in  the  Roman  Church. 
It  must  be  remembered  that  the  Pope's  lot  was  cast  in 
a  city  which  was  not  merely  the  centre  of  Pagan  supersti- 
tion but  of  national  degeneration — a  very  focus  of  active 
dissolution.  There  were  no  materials  there  for  forming 
an  organic  whole.  When  the  Papal  rule  began  the 
Roman  people  were  a  mixed  race,  without  any  national 
character  to  build  upon,  and  their  city  a  hostelry  of  nations. 
And  yet  Rome  under  the  Popes  has  produced  a  con- 
tinual succession  of  brilliant  examples  of  sanctity;  has 
been  ever  foremost  in  the  interests  of  religion,  charity, 
and  education.  In  no  city  in  the  world  are  there  more 
institutions,  such  as  hospitals,  and  refuges  of  all  sorts  for 
the  needy  and  afflicted.  In  no  city  in  the  world  are 
there  fuller  opportunities  of  education  of  the  highest 
order,  absolutely  gratis,  offered  to  all  classes  alike.  And 
these  advantages  existed  in  Rome  when  they  did  not 
exist  in  any  parallel  degree  elsewhere. 

Various  inaccuracies  doubtless  have  crept  into  the 
catalogue  of  the  Roman  Pontiffs,  and  it  may  fairly  be 
maintained  that  one  or  two  amongst  them  have  been 
accredited  with  a  title  of  sanctity  to  which  they  had  no 
rigj.it ;  but  there  still  remains  a  goodly  number  of  indis- 
putable saints.  Dr.  Littledale's  attempts  at  correction 
can  hardly  be  regarded  as  felicitous.  He  rejects  Liberius, 
whose  holy  life  and  labours  are  attested  by  so  many 
witnesses,  on  the  ground  of  his  having  accepted,  in  a 
moment  of  weakness,  a  temporising  creed  which  at  least 
contained  no  positive  error,  and  consented  to  a  breach 
of  communion  with  St.  Athanasius  ;  although  his  whole 
subsequent  career  was  a  protestation  of  orthodoxy.  It 
is  obvious  that  such  a  line  of  criticism  would  tell  severely 
against  St.  Peter's  claims  to  a  place  in  the  calendar. 

Again,  he  denounces  St.  Damasus  as  "a  murderous 


SANCTITY.  245 

rioter,"  because  he  is  charged  by  two  partisans  of  the 
-anti-Pope  Ursicinus  with  usurping  the  Papacy  and  taking 
an  active  share  in  the  conflicts  of  the  time.  He  enunci- 
ates this  view  as  though  there  were  no  other,  in  the  face 
of  a  cloud  of  witnesses  including  St.  Jerome,  his  adver- 
sary Rufinus,  St.  Ambrose,  and  the  Council  of  Aquileia, 
of  which  last  testimony  Tillemont  (Mem.  torn.  viii.  St. 
Damase,  art.  i.)  says,  after  recounting  the  calumnies  Dr. 
Littledale  has  made  his  own,  "  Mais  il  vaut  mieux  en 
juger  par  l'assemble"e  des  eveques  les  plus  saints  et  les 
plus  £clairez  qui  fussent  alors  dans  1'Occident,  et  qui 
n'avoient  point  d'autre  interest  dans  cette  affaire  que 
celui  de  la  ve'rite'  et  la  justice." 

Once  indeed  Dr.  Littledale  was  far  less  indisposed  to 
recognise  the  note  of  sanctity  in  the  Roman  Catholic 
Church.  I  have  before  me  a  sermon  published  by  him 
in  1868,  preached  at  the  eleventh  anniversary  of  the 
A.  P.  U.  C.,  in  which  the  Roman  Catholic  Church  is 
presented  under  a  very  different  aspect  from  that  of  the 
hideous  beldame,  idolatrous,  mendacious,  greedy,  cruel, 
and  unholy,  of  the  "Plain  Reasons;"  with  whom, 
•assuredly,  any  exchange  of  the  offices  of  intercommunion 
would  be  nothing  less  than  sacrilegious.  In  those  days, 
however  serious  may  have  been  the  doctrinal  misappre- 
hensions of  Dr.  Littledale  and  his  friends,  however  im- 
possible for  Catholics  formally  to  co-operate  with  them 
upon  the  doctrinal  basis  of  a  "divided  Church,"  we 
could  not  but  sympathise  deeply  with  their  yearnings,  not 
merely  for  union  in  the  abstract,  but  for  union  with  us. 
Dr.  Littledale  selects  with  admirable  felicity  for  the  text 
of  his  sermon  on  reunion  Isaiah  xix.  24,  25  :  "In  that 
day  shall  Israel  be  third  with  Egypt  and  Assyria,  even  a 
blessing  in  the  midst  of  the  land ;  whom  the  Lord  of 
Hosts  shall  bless,  saying,  '  Blessed  be  Egypt  my  people, 
and  Assyria  the  work  of  my  hands,  and  Israel  mine  in- 
heritance. ' '  He  then  in  a  triptych  picture  presents  us, 
tinder  the  figures  of  Egypt,  Israel,  and  Assyria,  with  his 


246  SANCTITY. 

conceptions  of  the  Greek,  Roman,  and  English  commu- 
nions. In  each  portraiture,  as  the  necessity  of  his  theory 
'required,  there  is  a  distinctive  excellence;  in  each,  a 
particular  want,  which  union  with  the  other  two  is  to 
supply.  But  that  of  the  Roman  Church  is  indefinitely 
the  most  noble  portrait  of  the  three,  and  indeed  the  only 
one  in  which  the  marks  of  the  true  Church,  the  traits  of 
primitive  Christianity,  are  distinctly  visible.  "  The  zeal 
(he  says)  of  her  priests,  her  monks,  and  her  nuns  (and 
below,  'the  faith  and  holiness  of  her  leaders ')  remains 
undiminished.  They  teach  by  precept  and.  example, 
patience,  hope,  and  repentance,  to  the  suffering  and 
dying  outcast,  .  .  .  while  a  noble  army  of  martyrs  has 
come  forward  even  in  our  days  to  bear  the  message  of 
the  cross  to  heathen  nations."  Shadows  are  thrown  in, 
no  doubt,  but  these  cannot  be  said  to  fall  so  much  upon 
the  formal  character  of  the  Church  as  upon  those  masses 
of  her  subjects  who  inherit  the  Catholic  name  without 
attempting  to  lead  Catholic  lives.  Whereas  his  criticism 
upon  the  Greek  Communion  is,  that  it  possesses  a  'eposit 
of  truth  which  is  no  "  vital  principle  ; "  upon  Anglicanism, 
that  it  is  "  a  religion,  calm,  equable,  comforting,  useful 
in  its  degree,"  and,  as  a  fact,  has  had  more  success  in 
keeping  out  downright  irreligion  from  the  sheltered 
nationality  to  which  it  is  confined  than  the  Roman 
Church  from  her  storm-swept  masses  ;  "  but  that  it  rarely 
shows  supernatural  powers,  or  kindles  amongst  us  the 
spirit  which  educates  saints  and  martyrs,  or  trains  its 
priestly  members  as  leaders  of  the  people,  whom  they 
will  follow  because  of  their  holy  life  and  burning  words." 
What  have  the  last  twelve  years  done  to  Dr.  Littledale 
that  he  should  feel  it  his  vocation  to  rake  every  gutter, 
old  and  new,  for  wherewithal  to  cast  at  her  whom  he 
once  acknowledged  as  "  Israel,  mine  inheritance "  ? 
Perhaps  she  whom  he  designates  "the  great  Latin 
Church,"  "the  mightiest  Church  in  the  world,"  has 
failed  to  appreciate  his  proposal  of  an  alliance  upon 


SANCTITY.  247 

equal  terms,  and  has  hardly  seen  that  she  had  aught  to 
learn  from  "a  religion"  which,  though  "calm,  equable, 
comforting,  useful  in  its  degree,"  yet  "  rarely  shows  super- 
natural powers."  Whatever  may  be  the  cause,  the  fact 
is  certain:  Dr.  Littledale  spurns  what  he  once  almost 
worshipped. 

And  yet,  even  in  the  "  Plain  Reasons,"  he  acknow- 
ledges that  Rome  can,  and  does,  produce  examples  of 
heroic  sanctity  the  like  of  which  is  not  to  be  found  else- 
where. I  must  allow  that  his  one  redeeming  point  is  a 
certain  obstinate  instinct  for  the  reality  of  Catholic 
sanctity  ;  but  after  kneeling  for  a  moment  at  the  shrines 
of  St.  Charles  Borromeo,  St.  Francis  Xavier,  and  St. 
Vincent  of  Paul,  he  leaps  up  in  the  very  spirit  of  an 
energumen,  and  strives  desperately  to  wrest  the  fact  of 
the  existence  of  such  saints  into  an  argument  against 
the  Church  which  has  produced  them.  They  are,  for- 
sooth, the  prize  scholars  to  whose  elaborate  training  the 
interests  of  the  community  have  been  sacrificed  ;  the 
precious  crop  whose  costly  production  exhausts  the  soil, 
leaving  it  too  utterly  impoverished  for  any  further 
growth.  Will  any  honest  student  of  hagiography, 
whether  appreciating  the  Catholic  idea  of  sanctity  or 
not,  admit  that  this  is  the  history  of  "  the  saint," 
either  as  distinguished  from  the  worldling  or  from 
other  good  and  edifying  persons — that  he  is  the  prize 
outcome  of  systematic  training?  For  the  model  semi- 
narist to  turn  out  a  saint,  is  surely  an  exception;  whilst 
saints  are  met  with  in  every  class  and  condition  of  life, 
beggars  and  nobles,  bishops  and  needlewomen,  the 
rejected  of  all  systems  as  often  as  the  prizemen  of  any. 

So  far  as  the  saints  are  taught  of  any  save  of  God,  it 
is  by  other  saints,  whose  teaching  is  not  so  much  a 
system  as  the  manifestation  of  the  Divine  light  within 
them  in  the  intercourse  of  daily  life.  And  what  is  there 
more  generous,  more  overflowing,  than  sanctity,  what 
less  confined  to  system  and  routine,  what  more  universal 


248  CATHOLICITY. 

in  its  influence  ?  Where  do  we  ever  meet  with  a  saint 
in  the  pages  of  history  without  finding  other  saints  about 
him,  or  at  least  a  large  circle  of  saintly  souls,  of  disciples 
who  can  say  in  some  degree  of  their  earthly  master  what 
they  say  of  their  heavenly,  "  In  thy  light  we  have  seen 
light "  ?  Is  it  not  a  fact  that  every  saint  pays  back  a 
thousand  times  over  all  that  he  has  ever  drawn  in  the 
way  of  sanctity  from  any  human  system,  however  en- 
lightened? Is  not  the  whole  world  the  richer,  the 
better,  the  happier  for  him  ?  I  wonder  how  much  the 
three  who  occupy  the  foremost  place  in  Dr.  Littledale's 
calendar,  St.  Charles  Borromeo,  St.  Francis  Xavier,  and 
St.  Vincent  of  Paul,  owed  to  systematic  training.  St. 
Charles  had  about  as  much  of  it  as  Joseph  in  Potiphar's 
house,  St.  Francis  passed  his  novitiate  in  heroic  vaga- 
bondage with  St.  Ignatius,  and  St.  Vincent's  sanctity 
was  educated  amid  the  jeers  of  Moslem  taskmasters. 
No !  sanctity  is  not  the  result  of  any  system ;  it  is  the 
product  of  the  Word  of  God,  of  the  action  of  the  sacra- 
ments, under  the  special  instinct  and  seal  of  the  Holy 
Spirit.  It  is  the  hundredfold  yield  of  the  same  divine 
seed  which,  with  some,  brings  forth  thirtyfold,  and  with 
others  lies  idle.  In  a  field  where  this  highest  yield  is 
conspicuously  wanting,  there,  assuredly,  is  some  admix- 
ture of  an  alien  seed,  or  some  systematic  frustration  of 
the  Divine  sower. 

§  3.  Catholicity. 

The  Roman  Catholic  Church  is  not  Catholic,  Dr. 
Littledale  says,  because — ist,  she  sometimes  calls  herself 
"  Roman  Catholic  "  and  sometimes  "  Roman  ;"  2dly,  she 
is  not  as  numerous  as  some  people  consider,  and  her 
increase  does  not  keep  up  to  the  ratio  of  the  increase 
of  the  population ;  3dly,  in  the  centralising  movement 
which  has  long  been  going  on,  many  local  and  national 
religious  usages  have  disappeared,  and  there  is  every- 


CATHOLICITY.  249 

where  an  increasing  tendency  to  assimilation  with  the 
use  of  Rome  ;  4thly,  certain  works  which  either  repudi- 
ated the  thesis  of  Papal  infallibility  as  part  of  the  neces- 
sary credettda,  or  rejected  it  altogether  when  urged  in 
the  form  of  a  Protestant  objection,  are,  since  the  Vatican 
decree,  no  longer  tolerated. 

I  answer — (i.)  The  note  of  Catholicity  is  in  contrast 
with  that  of  nationality.  It  involves  a  claim  to  have 
been  given  a  world-wide  mission  in  the  text,  "  Go  and 
teach  all  nations,"  and  by  its  historical  position  in  the 
world  to  have  realised  that  mission.  It  is  precisely 
because  it  is  "  Roman,"  />.,  because  it  starts  from  a 
centre  whose  circumference  is  not  commensurate  with 
any  national  boundaries,  but  world- wide,  that  it  can 
claim  to  be  Catholic. 

(2.)  Though  not  all  it  is  everywhere ;  and  if  it  does 
not  increase  in  a  corresponding  ratio  to  the  increase  of 
the  world's  population,  of  what  Christian  body  can  the 
reverse  be  said  ?  Anyhow,  it  has  still  to  be  proved  that 
the  Catholic  Church  does  not  increase  in  a  larger  ratio 
than  the  sects.  There  is  no  tendency,  as  population 
increases,  in  men  to  cease  to  be  men  or  Englishmen  to 
be  Englishmen  ;  but,  alas  !  there  is  a  strong  tendency  in 
the  members  of  a  religious  body,  as  generations  succeed 
one  another,  to  cease  first  from  the  practice  and  then 
from  the  name  of  religion.  It  may  well  be  that  our 
conversions  are  not  sufficient  to  keep  up  a  religious 
growth  proportionate  to  the  increase  of  the  population. 

(3.)  Such  assimilation  of  religious  observance  as  Dr. 
Littledale  points  to,  certainly  cannot  be  construed  into 
a  derogation  from  Catholicity,  the  very  idea  of  which 
is  world-wide  unity.  This  centralisation,  whatever  may 
be  thought  of  this  or  that  manifestation,  is  the  result  of 
an  instinctive  defensive  action  against  aggressive  secu- 
larism. It  is  the  more  natural  in  places  where  the  local 
traditional  usage  has  been  to  a  great  extent  broken  by 
a  phenomenon  like  the  French  Revolution. 


250  CATHOLICITY. 

(4.)  The  very  idea  of  a  development  of  doctrine 
necessarily  implies  a  corresponding  change,  in  an  op- 
posite direction,  in  the  economy  of  toleration.  Lan- 
guage that  was  allowed  before  Nicsea,  ceased  to  be 
tolerable  after  that  Council. 

One  very  striking  manifestation  of  the  note  of  Catho- 
licity is  the  persistence  and  success  of  the  Church's 
missionary  labours  amongst  the  heathen,  in  which  she 
presents  a  very  marked  contrast  to  every  other  Christian 
body.  How  does  Dr.  Littledale  face  this  ?  By  repeating 
the  manoeuvre  noted  in  the  preceding  section,  and  again 
adroitly  changing  the  subject  of  debate  from  the  Roman 
Catholic  Church  to  the  local  Church  of  Rome.  He 
observes  that  the  Church  of  Rome  is  not  the  great 
missionary  centre  she  has  been  taken  for  ;  that  she  only 
originated  one  ancient  Church  outside  Italy,  the  North 
African ;  cannot  prove  that  she  really  started  the 
Churches  of  Gaul ;  did  really  start  the  English  mission, 
but  did  no  more  than  aid  and  authorise  the  other  medi- 
eval missions,  the  German,  for  instance  ;  only  took  to 
originating  missions  with  the  Jesuits  in  1527,  or  more 
strictly  with  the  Propaganda  (1622-27),  when  she  planted 
the  Churches  of  Southern  and  Central  America,  and  made 
more  or  less  conversions  in  the  East  Indies,  China, 
Japan,  and  the  Pacific  Islands.  If  this  is  the  worst 
Dr.  Littledale  can  say  in  depreciation  of  Rome  as  a 
missionary  centre,  one  hardly  sees  that  he  has  gained 
much.  Here  one  naturally  expects  some  comparison 
with  the  missionary  exploits  of  other  Christian  bodies. 
Only  one  such  attempt  is  made,  and  it  is  a  sufficiently 
audacious  one;  he  hurls  the  colossal  empire  of  Russia  at 
our  heads.  "The  Eastern  Church  has  made  one  mis- 
sionary conquest  since  its  quarrel  with  Rome,  greater 
than  all  Roman  missionary  efforts  put  together."  But 
what  sort  of  a  Russia  does  Dr.  Littledale  suppose  it  to 
have  been  that  the  Church  of  Constantinople  converted? 
The  barbarous  tribes  on  the  shores  of  the  Euxine  and  the 


CATHOLICITY.  251 

Caspian  were  indeed  the  germs  of  the  mighty  Russian 
empire,  but  their  future  greatness  can  hardly  be  allowed 
to  enter  into  pur  estimate  of  the  missionary  effort  in- 
volved in  their  original  conversion  before  they  had 
grown  to  be  great.  At  the  same  time  I  am  not  denying 
that  the  conversion  of  Russia  was  a  real  and  very  magni- 
ficent missionary  achievement ;  and  it  took  place  after 
the  schismatical  quarrel  of  the  Greek  Church  had 
begun.  To  quote  the  words  of  one  of  the  profoundest 
students  of  Russian  history,  Mr.  W.  Palmer  (Preface  to 
"The  Replies  of  Nicon"),— "It  was  obtained  chiefly 
during  those  two  centuries  of  alternate  schisms  and 
reunions  which  intervened  between  Photius  and  Cerula- 
rius,  and  it  by  no  means  stopped  short  on  the  consum- 
mation of  the  schism  by  Cerularius,  but  continued  still  to 
spread  till  1240.''  This  phenomenon  is  not  the  difficulty 
to  us  which  Dr.  Littledale  supposes.  The  main  work 
was  done  before  the  consummation  of  the  schism  ;  and 
even  into  the  schism  was  carried  an  orthodox  belief, 
true  sacraments,  and  a  widely  distributed  stock  of  invin- 
cible ignorance.  The  half-felled  tree  bore  its  crop  of 
fruit  for  a  season  or  two,  and  then  acquiesced  in  hopeless 
barrenness,  as  the  schism  gradually  hardened  down  from 
an  act  into  a  state,  and  a  dogmatic  apology  for  schism 
became  more  and  more  incorporated  with  it,  and  so  in- 
vested it  more  and  more  with  the  character  of  heresy. 
Protestant  missions,  Anglican  or  otherwise,  Dr.  Littledale 
has  not  thought  it  wise  to  mention. 

In  a  note  which  appears  ed.  3,  p.  205,  Dr.  Littledale 
says  that  nothing  so  Erastian  can  be  laid  to  the  charge 
of  the  Anglican  clergy  as  the  official  erection  of  the  con- 
fessional into  an  organ  of  political  information,  which  he 
says  was  done  in  Naples  under  the  Bourbons.  I  demur 
at  any  acute  phase  of  Erastianism  however  monstrous, 
in  the  teeth  of  Church  authority,  being  accepted,  even  if 
it  were  true,  as  an  equivalent  to  the  quiet  functionalising 
as  a  state-creature,  which  has  ever  characterised  Angli- 


252  APOSTOLICITY. 

canism.  But  the  real  difference  here  is,  that  whilst  the 
facts  of  our  charge  of  Erastianism  against  the  Church  of 
England  are  matters  of  history,  admitted  on  all  hands, 
Dr.  Littledale's  charge  against  the  Church  in  Naples 
rests  exclusively  upon  the  bon  motoia.  French  infidel  racon- 
teur. M.  Mazade,  Dr.  Littledale's  authority,  recounts, 
"Revue  des  Deux  Mondes,"  December  i,  1866,  that 
when  Victor  Emmanuel  was  entering  Naples  in  triumph, 
an  ecclesiastical  dignitary  stepped  up  and  asked  in  a 
low  voice  "  to  whom  were  the  reports  of  confessions  to 
be  transmitted  thenceforward  ?  "  He  adds  that  such  was 
found  to  have  been  the  practice.  But  it  is  precisely  the 
evidence  for  this  practice  that  is  completely  wanting. 
Thus  it  is  in  a  "  mauvaise  plaisanterie,"  whether  on  the 
part  of  the  actor  or  the  narrator,  that  Dr.  Littledale  is 
reduced  to  look  for  his  equivalent  to  Anglican  Erastian- 
ism. Had  the  monstrous  charge  been  true,  does  any  one 
believe  that  there  would  have  been  this  jaunty  publicity 
with  its  stage  whisper  ?  Assuredly,  long  before  such 
a  usage  could  have  been  established,  a  Neapolitan  mob 
would  have  made  short  work  with  the  Bourbons. 


§  4.  Apostolicity. 

Dr.  Littledale's  charge  of  deviation  from  Apostolic  doc- 
trine has  been  answered  by  me  in  other  places.  As  to 
lapse  of  succession,  owing  to  a  defective  intention,  which 
Dr.  Littledale  would  argue  from  the  supposed  infidelity  of 
certain  priests  and  bishops,  I  answer  that  it  is  no  part  of 
the  Catholic  doctrine  of  intention  that  any  invalidating 
defect  therein  can  be  argued  from  defect  in  faith. 
Neither  do  we  hold  that  consecration  by  one  bishop  only, 
when  authorised  by  the  Holy  See,  imports  any  doubt  of 
the  validity  of  a  consecration — which  is  another  of  Dr. 
Littledale's  arguments  for  an  interrupted  succession. 
The  truth  is,  all  these  charges  are  in  their  very  nature 
beside  the  mark.  We  are  discussing  a  note  of  the  Church, 


CONCLUSION.  253 

and  a  note  is  a  conspicuous  quality,  not  an  obscure 
suspicion,  or  a  far-fetched  and  doubtful  conclusion. 
Apostolicity  of  doctrine,  or  the  personal  faith  of  a 
minister,  or  canonical  observance,  cannot  possibly  form 
a  note  of  the  Church,  which,  to  be  a  note,  should  appeal 
at  once  to  the  understanding  of  commonly  intelligent 
persons.  The  note  of  Apostolicity  means  simply  the 
continuous  solidarity  of  the  institution.  It  necessarily 
assumes  that  an  institution  founded  by  the  Apostles  is 
extant  somewhere,  for  without  this  assumption  it  would 
be  open  to  the  objection  that  it  could  only  manifest  itself 
as  the  result  of  an  antiquarian  investigation,  which  few  are 
capable  of  understanding,  fewer  of  conducting.  On  the 
aforesaid  assumption  the  note  vindicates  itself  by  an 
exhaustive  process  intelligible  to  every  one.  The  con- 
clusion that  the  Roman  Catholic  Church  is  Apostolic 
results  from  the  fact  that  every  other  body  of  Christians 
started  with  a  schism,  the  leaders  and  date  of  which  are 
a  matter  of  history ;  whereas  nothing  of  the  kind  can  by 
any  possibility  be  said  of  the  Roman  Catholic  Church, 
the  Apostolicity  of  which  therefore  you  can  only  escape 
admitting,  by  maintaining  that  the  institution  of  the 
Apostles  is  no  longer  extant.* 

Conclusion. 

I  have  now  finished  my  defence  of  the  various  points 
of  Catholic  faith  and  practice  which  it  has  pleased  Dr. 
Littledale  to  impugn.  I  have  no  desire  to  convert  my 
defence  into  an  attack.  It  is  notorious  that  we  are  for 
ever  standing  on  the  defensive,  whilst  assaults  are  made 
upon  us  from  every  point  of  the  compass ;  and  we  may 
be  tempted  from  time  to  time  to  complain  that  this 
should  be  the  case.  It  is  so  much  more  easy  to  catch 
popular  approval  by  the  brilliancy  of  an  assault,  than  to 

*  Various  points  brought  by  Dr.  Littledale  under  this  head  I 
have  answered,  p.  10,  pp.  21-25,  PP-  38-83. 


254  CONCLUSION. 

command  it  by  the  steady  virtues  of  a  defence.  But  a 
little  consideration  should  convince  us  that  our  relative 
positions  are  precisely  what  they  should  be.  We  are  on 
the  defensive,  because  we  alone  hold  a  position  that  is 
worth  defending.  We  are  in  possession  of  the  tradition 
of  the  medieval  Church,  itself  an  outgrowth  of  the  Church 
of  the  Fathers,  and  severed  from  it  by  no  period  of 
convulsion  and  division  such  as  brought  our  adversaries 
into  the  world.  On  this  ground,  if  on  no  other,  the 
presumption  is  in  our  favour  that  the  territory  we  oc- 
cupy is  our  own,  and  it  must  remain  in  our  favour  until 
we  are  proved  wrong.  We  must,  then,  look  to  be 
incessantly  attacked,  and  we  must  be  prepared  for  some- 
thing less  than  justice  even  from  the  fairest  of  our  foes. 
To  establish  our  hopelessly  evil  character,  if  not  in  one 
way  then  in  another,  is,  for  them,  a  matter  of  life  and 
death.  It  is  necessary  for  them  to  prove  that  we  are 
antichrist,  otherwise  they  are  shown  to  be  Christ's 
enemies  by  the  mere  fact  of  their  division  from  us.  On 
our  side  there  is  not  the  same  temptation  to  be  aggres- 
sive ;  we  are  not  called  upon  to  establish  anything  in 
our  enemy's  regard,  they  are  "  jam  judicati ; ';  their 
initial  act  presumably  condemns  them,  and  renders  their 
position  to  the  end  of  time  damnable,  whatever  may  be 
said  of  the  personal  innocence  of  individuals  who  have 
inherited  a  state  they  had  no  part  in  forming.  We  are 
not  distressed,  but  pleased,  when  we  meet  with  a  true 
zeal  for  Christianity  amongst  Protestants,  because  it 
makes  the  distanc;  between  us  less,  and  suggests  that 
ultimate  union  is  less  .  mprobable  than  it  might  seem.  We 
cannot,  for  the  sake  of  an  additional  argument  that  we 
do  not  want,  wish  our  adversaries  one  whit  worse  than 
they  are.  And  yet,  although  this  is  true  on  the  whole, 
and  will  remain  true  to  the  end,  there  is  nothing  in  the 
nature  of  things  to  prevent  our  taking  up  the  aggressive. 
There  is  no  reason  why  we  should  not  make  as  much 
of  their  ill  deeds  as  they  have  tried  to  make  of  ours; 


CONCLUSION.  255 

only  "  bad  luck  to  us,"  to  use  Cardinal  Newman's  word, 
"  we  have  never  kept  a  register  of  Protestant  scandals."* 
However,  we  may  be  fairly  content  to  let  Protestant 
authorities  speak  for  themselves ;  and  I  would  have 
my  readers  forecast  as  a  possible  contribution  for 
"  promoting  Christian  knowledge "  "  a  History  of  the 
Church  of  England,"  of  which  the  first  chapter  should 
contain  a  vivid  description,  by  Dr.  Littledale,  of  the 
unmitigated  scoundrelism  of  the  reformers ;  t  in  which 
the  same  author  should  be  allowed  to  carry  on  a  history 
of  the  episcopate  down  to  the  present  date,  and  that  of 
the  second  order  of  the  clergy  down  to  the  recent  High 
Church  revival ;  and  of  which  the  last  chapter  should 
be  a  reproduction  of  himself  as  the  modern  Anglican 
controversialist,  whose  "Plain  Reasons"  High  Church 
and  Low  Church  have  been  contented  to  accept  as  a 
model  of  English  integrity. 

I  have  no  intention  of  becoming  a  chronicler  of  An- 
glican scandals.  Nevertheless,  I  cannot  admit  that 
there  is  anything  either  in  their  past  history  or  their 
present  condition  to  make  us  reconsider,  were  that  pos- 
sible, our  judgment  that  Anglicans  ceased  to  be  part  of 
the  Church  of  Christ  when  they  forsook  Rome.  We  may 
have  a  certain  regard  for  Anglicanism  as  a  state  function, 
as  representing  the  adhesion  of  a  great  nation  to  Chris- 
tianity, nay  a  sentiment  for  it  as  the  religious  habitat 
of  many  whose  memories  we  cherish  with  affection  and 
respect.  Anglicanism  so  considered  is  the  creation  of 
its  best  men,  and  lives  only  in  their  memories.  But 
as  a  kingdom,  a  fold,  a  ship,  a  mother,  all  images 
under  which  Christ's  Church  is  presented  to  us,  it  is 
absolutely  featureless,  it  is  simply  nothing.  Like  the 
room  set  apart  for  family  prayers,  it  may  deserve  re- 


*  Speech  at  the  Catholic  Reunion,  Jan.  27,  1880. 
t  "Cruelty,  impiety,  and   licentious  foulness"  are  Dr.  Little- 
dale's  words. — "  Innovations,"  note  F. 


256  CONCLUSION. 

spect  as  a  place  where  good  men  have  worshipped,  but 
it  is  not  a  consecrated  Church,  has  no  sacramental  pre- 
sence, is  no  House  of  God. 

Anglicanism  is  no  Church,  because  it  has  not,  and 
never  has  had,  any  effective  spiritual  authority ;  it  can- 
not eject  from  its  body  manifest  heretics ;  nor  even  pro- 
nounce with  a  recognised  voice  that  such  ought  to  be 
ejected.  It  escapes  formal  heresy  in  its  Articles,  if  it 
does  escape,  only  in  virtue  of  its  not  being  quite  sure 
what  it  meant  by  its  Articles,  and  what  it  did  not  mean. 
Again,  those  who  allow  themselves  to  form  one  church 
with  persons  they  regard  as  heretics  cannot  belong  to 
the  Church  of  Christ,  for  "  what  communication  has 
light  with  darkness?"  This  last  argument  applies  to 
Ritualists  with  special  force,  because  they  regard  nine- 
tenths  of  their  brethren,  and  almost  all  their  superiors, 
as  nothing  less  than  heretics ;  and  when  they  are  called 
upon  to  prove  a  continuity  of  Catholic  doctrine  in  the 
Church  of  England,  are  just  able  here  and  there  to  lay 
their  finger  upon  a  single  thread  of  orthodox  testimony 
which,  absolutely  invisible  in  the  storm  of  the  Reforma- 
tion, shines  out  for  a  moment  among  the  Caroline 
divines,  and  then  once  again  under  Victoria.  If  ortho- 
dox doctrine  just  now  asserts  itself  in  fuller  volume  and 
more  sonorous  tone,  it  is  precisely  because  all  legal 
repression  in  this  country  is  fast  becoming  impossible. 

Pope  Pelagius  II.,  writing  to  schismatics  pure  and 
simple,  insists  that  they  are  "  without  the  fold/'  "  torn 
from  the  vine,"  whilst  the  "  unity  "  and  "  soundness  "  of 
the  Church  remains,  though  she  suffers  in  the  sympathy 
of  charity  with  those  who  are  parted  from  her.  (Ep. 
ad.  Episcopos  Istriae.  Labbe,  torn.  vi.  p.  259).  But  of 
schismatics  in  heretical  communion  Pope  St.  Gelasius 
speaks  far  more  severely.  "  You  say,  it  is  not  read 
anywhere  that  Acacius  said  aught  against  the  faith,  as 
did  Eutyches  and  his  successors ;  as  though  it  were  not 
worse  to  know  the  truth  and  yet  to  communicate  with 


CONCLUSION.  257 

the  enemies  of  the  truth.  ...  Of  such  indeed  it  is 
well  said — '  they  go  down  alive  into  hell ; '  who,  whilst 
they  seem  to  live  with  that  true  and  Catholic  life  by 
which  *  the  just  man  liveth/  do  straightway  fall  down 
the  precipice  of  evil  into  the  hell  of  heretical  communion  " 
(Ep.  i,  ad.  Euphem.  Labbe,  torn.  v.  p.  286). 

I  have  said  that  we  must  be  prepared  for  something 
less  than  justice.  We  can  hardly  look  for  the  philo- 
sophical appreciation  of  a  Guizot  or  a  Hurter  in  any 
mere  writer  of  polemic ;  and  we  must  expect  to  hear  the 
changes  rung  upon  such  topics  as  the  " St.  Bartholomew" 
and  the  "  False  Decretals  "  with  a  somewhat  wearisome 
persistency.  But  even  polemical  license  has  its  limits ; 
a  controversialist  is  bound  to  ask  himself  whether  the 
particular  statement  he  is  making  is  in  itself  true; 
whether  it  comes  from  a  respectable  source  or  is  mere 
gossip.  It  is  not  enough  to  say,  "  The  cause  I  oppose  is 
so  very  evil,  that  whatever  may  be  the  truth  of  my  par- 
ticular imputation,  its  equivalent  if  not  itself  is  deserved  ;" 
or  again,  "  The  effect  of  my  statements  or  misstatements 
on  the  public  is  to  produce,  on  the  whole,  a  very  righteous 
impression  of  my  enemy;  and  thus  the  very  misstate- 
ments become  in  a  certain  sense  truths,  inasmuch  as  they 
contribute  to  truth."  This  would  seem  to  be  the  theory 
upon  which  many  an  electioneering  speech  is  made; 
but  then  it  is  excused,  I  will  not  say  justified,  by  the 
implication  that  it  is  only  for  the  moment,  as  a  set-off  to 
the  other  side;  that  it  is  an  understood  thing  that  all 
floating  unpleasantnesses  may  be  utilised,  without  any 
call  to  test  their  value,  by  either  side  against  its  opponent ; 
that  nothing  of  this  sort  is  exactly  believed.  It  would 
be  sad  indeed  if  religious  controversy  should  be  reduced 
to  such  a  level.  And  yet  Dr.  Littledale  has  gone  far 
towards  recognising  it  as  his  own.  ("  Rejoinder,"  Con- 
temporary Review,  May  1880) — the  italics  are  mine  : — '*  I 
have  been  unable  to  find  room  for  digressions,  explana- 
tions, and  guardings  of  statements.  Knowing  how  hard 

R 


258  CONCLUSION. 

it  is  to  drive  ideas  into  untutored  minds,  I  have  been 
compelled  to  aim  primarily  at  incisiveness,  and  to  omit 
nearly  all  qualifications  of  leading  propositions,  which  I 
could  and  would  use  in  fuller  writing  for  a  more  learned 
class  of  readers,  or  in  detailed  conversation  with  any  one. 
For  ordinary  persons,  to  set  down  everything  which  con- 
ditions a  statement  is  not  to  make  their  view  more 
accurate,  but  to  attenuate  it  till  it  eludes  their  grasp 
altogether."  I  see,  Dr.  Littledale — in  view  probably  of 
uniting  Christendom  against  the  advance  of  infidelity — 
presents  one  body  of  Christians  to  another  in  a  series  of 
"unqualified  propositions  "  for  the  sake  of  "incisiveness;" 
or,  in  other  words,  deliberately  paints  us  ten  times 
blacker  than  he  really  thinks,  and  under  other  circum- 
stances would  not  mind  acknowledging,  that  we  are,  lest 
we  should  somehow  be  thought  too  well  of. 

This  is  my  solution  of  a  problem  which  has  been 
teasing  me  through  many  a  weary  month,  viz.,  how  Dr. 
Littledale  could  possibly  have  said  a  number  of  the  things 
he  has  said.  I  am  wholly  unable  to  treat  such  points 
after  the  summary  fashion  of  my  antagonist.  _The 
"  solemn  lie  "  theory,  to  which  he  is  so  partial,  is  utterly 
repulsive  to  me,  and  is  so  contrary  to  my  experience  of 
human  nature  that  my  relief  at  being  thus  helped  to  an 
explanation  is  considerable. 

Dr.  Littledale  then,  I  am  willing  to  admit,  has  com- 
mitted himself  to  an  illicit  pursuit  of  truth,  truth  politic, 
truth  artistic,  it  may  be,  at  the  expense  of  truths  of  detail, 
a  respect  for  which  ordinary  folks  associate  with  common 
honesty ;  and  he  has  failed,  as  such  unscrupulous  efforts 
deserve  to  fail.  His  theory  is  an  utterly  dangerous  one, 
and  it  is  excessively  difficult  to  keep  it  within  any  sort 
of  bounds.  It  has  led  Dr.  Littledale  into  a  variety  of 
scrapes,  amongst  others,  that  of  quoting  a  nameless  Arian 
for  a  Father,  and  putting  his  own  words  into  St.  Augus- 
tine's mouth.  Nay,  the  very  last  sentence  of  his  book,  with 
its  triumphant  ring,  in  which  the  great  Doctor  of  Hippo 


CONCLUSION.  259 

is  made  to  do  duty  as  such  an  uncompromising  anti- 
papalist,  is  a  mere  misquotation.  The  words  he  quotes 
are,  "  We  who  are  Christians  in  name  and  deed  do  not 
believe  in  Peter,  but  in  Him  on  whom  Peter  himself 
believed"  (De  Civit.  Dei.  xviii.  54).  Neither  do  we  believe 
in  Peter,  *>.,  as  the  supreme  object  and  ultimate  autho- 
rity of  our  belief.  But  are  we  to  believe  Peter  ?  Hear 
St.  Augustine  in  the  words  immediately  following  those 
quoted  by  Dr.  Littledale  :  "  Built  up  by  the  words  of  Peter 
concerning  Christ,  not  charm-poisoned,  not  deceived  by 
his  witchcraft,  but  supported  by  his  beneficence ;  that 
Master  of  Peter  in  the  doctrine  which  leads  to  eternal 
life,  the  same  is  our  Master." 


APPENDIX  TO  SECOND  EDITION. 


Note  A,  p.  35. 

DR.  LlTTLEDALE  says  (p.  147)  that  the  Inquisition's 
formal  notice  to  Galileo  (1633)  "states  expressly  that 
the  declaration  of  1616  was  made  by  the  Pope  himself, 
and  that  resistance  to  it  was  therefore  heresy."  This  is 
anything  but  the  case.  Galileo  had  put  into  court  in 
1633,  as  a  defence  against  the  charge  of  relapse  and  dis- 
obedience, a  certificate  in  Italian  which  he  had  obtained 
from  Bellarmine  in  1616,  to  the  effect  that  he  had  never 
been  made  to  abjure,  or  submitted  to  penance,  but  merely 
had  communicated  to  him  "una  dichiarazione  fatta  da 
nostro  Signore  (the  Pope),  e  publicato  dalla  Sacra  Con- 
gregatione  dell'  Indice,"  containing  the  statement  that  the 
Copernican  doctrine  was  "  contrary  to  Holy  Scripture,  and 
therefore  could  not  be  defended  or  held."  In  the  notice 
of  1633  the  Inquisitors,  in  their  recapitulation  of  Galileo's 
defence,  simply  recite  the  words  of  the  certificate  which  he 
had  put  in.  Whilst  remarking  upon  its  inadequacy  as  a  plea, 
they  do  nothing  to  make  its  description  of  the  document  of 
1616  their  own.  They  make  no  charge  of  heresy  on  the 
ground  of  resistance  to  a  declaration  of  the  Pope,  neither 
does  the  certificate.  No  doubt,  the  Index  decree  of  1616, 
as  well  as  the  Inquisitional  Process  of  1633,  are  fairly 
regarded  as  in  some  sense  Papal  acts ;  but  this  does  not 
make  them  definitions  ex  cathedra. 


APPENDIX.  26l 

The  attempt  to  establish  the  ex  cathedra  character  of 
decrees  of  the  Index  as  such,  by  an  appeal  to  Pius  VI., 
may  be  best  tested  by  the  words  of  his  two  Briefs  to  the 
Bishop  of  Chiusi. 

In  his  first  Brief  the  Pope  charges  the  Bishop  with 
deliberately  departing  "  ab  Apostolica  doctrina  non  semel ; " 
with  favouring  propositions  already  "  ab  ea  proscriptis  ;  " 
and  finally  with  recommending  catechisms  "  censura 
Apostolicae  sedis  notatos."  Again,  "  If  you  had  submitted 
to  us  "  the  two  pastorals,  one  of  which  contained  '  speci- 
men catecheseos,'  "  you  would  not  have  dared  to  embrace 
propositions  often  proscribed  by  the  definitive  judgment  of 
the  Roman  Pontiffs." 

In  reply,  the  Bishop  asks  what  are  his  "  errors,"  what 
the  sentiments  in  any  degree  deflecting  "dalle  decisioni 
dommatiche." 

In  his  second  Brief  the  Pope  answers,  "  You  ask  an 
explanation  as  to  what  your  letter  contains  at  variance 
"  cum  dogmaticis  Apostolicae  sedis  judiciis ;  "  and  then 
tells  him  that  it  is  principally  his  maintaining  that  "  the 
Jansenist  heresy  is  a  mere  phantasm  and  pretence," 
although  so  many  Popes  have  condemned  it ;  and  his  use 
and  praise  of  books  in  which  "  the  decrees  of  the  Apostolic 
See  are  attacked  and  detracted  from  ;  "  and  his  "  making 
light  of  the  censures  attached  to  them."  Amongst  the 
books  praised  and  distributed  by  the  Italian  Jansenists 
was  the  "  Reflections  "  of  Quesnel,  the  subject  matter  of 
the  "  Unigenitus"  condemnation,  which  Ricci  was  never 
tired  of  pronouncing  "a  golden  book." 

Throughout  these  two  Briefs  the  Pope  is  careful  to  treat 
the  neglect  of  the  "censura"  of  the  Index  merely  as  an 
aggravating  circumstance  or  specification  of  the  substantial 
charge,  which  was  the  maintenance  of  propositions  already 
condemned  by  the  "judicia  dogmatica,"  although  subse- 
quently the  Bishop  tried  to  make  capital  out  of  the  Galileo 
case  by  identifying  them.  Nothing  but  a  belief  in  the 
infallibility  of  any  one  who  contradicts  the  Pope  even  in  his 


262  APPENDIX. 

interpretation  of  his  own  acts,  can  account  for  Canon 
Jenkins  maintaining  that  Pius  VI.  has  declared  a  mere 
censure  of  the  Index  to  be  a  dogmatic  judgment  ex 
cathedra. 


Note  B,  p.  43. 

Pope  Julius,  in  his  letter  to  the  Eusebians,  preserved  by 
St.  Athanasius  (Hist  Tract.,  Eng.  tr.,  p.  56),  thus  asserts 
his  prerogative  :  "  Supposing,  as  you  assert,  that  some 
offence  rested  upon  these  persons,  the  case  ought  to  have 
been  conducted  against  them,  not  after  this  manner,  but 
according  to  the  canon  of  the  Church.  Word  should  have 
been  written  of  it  to  us  all  (the  Pope  and  the  Synod  over 
which  he  was  presiding),  that  so  a  just  sentence  might 
proceed  from  all ;  for  the  sufferers  were  Bishops  and 
Churches  of  no  ordinary  note,  but  those  which  the 
Apostles  themselves  had*  governed  in  their  own  persons. 
And  why  was  nothing  said  to  us  concerning  the  Church  of 
the  Alexandrians  in  particular  ?  Are  you  ignorant  that  the 
custom  has  been  for  word  to  be  written  first  to  us,  and  then 
for  a  just  sentence  to  be  passed  from  this  place  ?  If  then 
any  such  suspicion  rested  upon  the  Bishop  there,  notice 
thereof  ought  to  have  been  sent  to  the  Church  of  this 
place  ;  whereas,  after  neglecting  to  inform  us,  and  proceed- 
ing on  their  own  authority  as  they  pleased,  now  they 
desire  to  obtain  our  concurrence  in  their  decision,  though 
we  never  condemned  him.  Not  so  have  the  constitutions 
of  Paul  (dictrdfyis),  not  so  have  the  traditions  of  the  Fathers 
directed ;  this  is  another  form  of  procedure,  a  novel 
practice.  I  beseech  you  readily  bear  with  me ;  what  I 
write  is  for  the  common  good.  For  what  we  have  received 
from  the  blessed  Apostle  Peter,  that  I  signify  to  you  ;  and 
I  should  not  have  written  this,  as  deeming  that  these 
things  were  manifest  unto  all  men,  had  not  these  proceed- 
ings so  disturbed  us." 


APPENDIX.  263 

Sozomen's  paraphrase  of  what  Julius  says  is  in  my  text. 
Socrates,  H.  E.,  lib.  ii.  c.  8,  commits  himself  to  the  follow- 
ing direct  statement  in  regard  to  the  Council  of  Antioch : — 
"  Neither  was  Julius  the  bishop  of  the  city  of  Rome 
there,  neither  did  he  send  any  one  thither  to  fill  his 
place,  although  a  canon  of  the  Church  forbids  that  the 
Churches  should  make  laws  against  the  judgment  (votoct 
rqv  yv<jj[*w}  of  the  Bishop  of  Rome."  This  reappears  (c.  17) 
as  a  paraphrase  of  Pope  Julius'  letter. 


Note  C,*  p.  88. 

That  the  theophanies  of  the  Old  Testament  are  repre- 
sentations of  the  Divinity  by  the  medium  of  created  angels, 
and  not  direct  manifestations  of  the  Second  Person  of  the 
Blessed  Trinity,  is  the  view  which,  since  its  exposition  by 
St.  Augustine  in  the  second  and  third  books  of  his  "  De 
Trinitate,"  gradually  prevailed  in  the  Church.  It  was  the 
view  of  the  old  synagogue,  according  to  Delitzsch  (in  Gen. 
ed.  4,  p.  484),  perhaps  the  most  learned  Hebraist  amongst 
orthodox  Protestants,  who  advocates  it ;  of  the  Septuagint, 
as  Keil,  who  opposes  it,  admits.  It  is  defended  by  Kalisch, 
an  equally  learned  Jew  (on  Leviticus,  vol.  ii.  p.  295),  and 
by  Dr.  Pusey  (on  Daniel,  pp.  515-521).  The  scriptural 
objections  to  the  uncreated  theophany  are  very  serious, 
and  to  my  mind  irresistible.  I.  Acts  vii.  30:  St.  Stephen, 
referring  to  Exodus  iii.,  says,  "There  appeared  to  him  in 
the  desert  of  Mount  Sinai  an  angel  (ayyjXo?)  in  a  flame  of 
fire  in  a  bush."  This,  which  is  the  Vulgate  reading,  the 
"Revised  Version"  has  adopted  for  "an  angel  of  the  Lord" 
of  the  "Authorised."  Now  "an  angel"  cannot  possibly 
mean  "Almighty  God."  2.  Heb.  ii.  2,  3:  "  For  if  the  word 

*  The  substance  of  this  note,  together  with  the  German  references, 
has  been  supplied  me  by  the  kindness  of  the  Rev.  Fr.  Addis. 


264  APPENDIX. 

spoken  by  angels  became  steadfast,  and  every  transgression 
and  disobedience  received  a  just  recompense  of  reward  ; 
how  shall  we  escape  if  we  neglect  so  great  salvation,  which 
having  begun  to  be  declared  by  the  Lord,  was  confirmed 
unto  us  by  them  that  heard  Him  ?  "  "  Angels  "  (dyyiXwv) 
cannot  mean  God.  Moreover,  St.  Paul's  distinction  between 
the  "  word  spoken  by  angels "  and  "  declared  by  the  Lord" 
would  be  lost  if  the  "  angel  of  the  Lord  "  of  the  Old  Testa- 
ment  is  God  the  Son.  See,  too,  Gal.  iii.  19,  on  the  law 
"  ordained  by  angels  in  the  hand  of  a  Mediator ;  "  and 
Acts  vii.  53  (the  last  words  of  St.  Stephen's  speech), 
"  who  have  received  the  law  by  the  disposition  of  angels, 
and  have  not  kept  it "  (sis  3/arayag,  Vulg.  "  ex  dispositione," 
St.  Augustine  "ex  edictis").  St.  Paul  and  St.  Stephen 
are  witnesses  for  the  teaching  of  the  ancient  synagogue  and 
the  Gentile  dispersion,  and  their  words  are  a  portion  of 
Holy  Writ.  See  St.  Augustine's  argument  (De  Trin.,  lib. 
iii.  in  fin.) 

It  is  admitted,  of  course,  that  the  "angel  of  the  Lord" 
in  a  certain  sense  identifies  himself  with  God ;  so  too  do 
the  prophets  in  different  degrees.  But  he  also  emphatically 
distinguishes  himself  from  Him.  Thus,  Gen.  xxii.  16,  he 
says,  "'I  have  sworn  by  myself,'  saith  the  Lord  (or  'it 
is  an  oracle  of  the  Lord '),"  the  very  formula  the  prophets 
use  in  repeating  God's  words;  he  contrasts  himself  with 
the  Lord  to  whom  sacrifice  is  to  be  offered  (Judges  xiii.  16), 
and  prays  to  the  Lord  of  Hosts  (Zach.  i.  12). 

As  regards  the  three  who  appeared  to  Abraham  (Gen. 
xviii.),  it  has  been  maintained  that  the  one  whom  he 
addressed  (ver.  3)  as  "Lord"  (Adonai),  did  not  merely  repre- 
sent God  but  was  God,  whereas  if,  following  St.  Augustine 
(De  Trinitate,  lib.  ii.  in  fin.),  we  compare  this  chapter 
with  the  next,  we  find  that  though  the  Lord  or  the  one 
more  specially  representing  God  stayed  to  converse  with 
Abraham,  whilst  the  two  others  fulfilled  their  mission  to 
Sodom,  yet  Lot  prostrates  himself  before  the  latter,  and 
(vers.  1 8,  19)  addressed  one  of  them  by  the  same  Divine 


APPENDIX.  265 

name  (Adonai),  showing  that  each  was  capable  of  repre- 
senting the  Divinity  according  as  the  Divine  countenance 
was  sealed  upon  him,  whereas  only  one  could  ever  have 
been  God. 

Although  great  names  are  quoted  amongst  the  early 
Fathers  for  the  uncreated  theophany  (see  Petavius  de  Trin., 
lib.  viii.  c.  2),  it  is  fair  to  remark — I.  That  the  scope  of 
many  of  these  Fathers  is  rather  to  appropriate  the  mani- 
festations to  the  Second  Person  than  to  deny  His  repre- 
sentation by  angels.  St.  Athanasius,  e.g.  (Orat.,  iii.  c. 
Arian,  §  14)  ap.  Puseyin  Dan.,  p.  5 1 6,  says  of  the  manifes- 
tation to  Moses  in  the  wilderness,  "  He  who  appeared  was 
an  angel,  but  God  spoke  in  him."  2.  That  the  language  of 
Borne  of  them,  e.g.,  Justin  and  Tertullian,  is  hardly  to  be 
reconciled  with  any  adequate  conception  of  the  Son's 
Divinity.  A  middle  theory  is  maintained  by  Mill  in  his 
"  Essay  on  the  Historical  Character  of  St.  Luke's  First 
Chapter"  (note  A),  which  distinguishes  the  theophanies 
subsequent  to  the  idolatrous  worship  of  the  calf,  as  appear- 
ances of  created  angels,  from  the  preceding  ones,  in  which 
God  manifested  Himself  immediately.  He  maintains 
especially  that  "  the  leader  of  the  army  of  the  Lord," 
before  whom  Josue  bows  down,  is  a  created  angel,  quoting 
in  this  sense,  and  for  his  general  theory,  Theodoret 
(Quaest.  IV.  in  Jesum  filium  Nave). 

In  conclusion,  I  would  submit  that  even  precluding  the 
interposition  of  any  angelic  intelligence,  the  appearance  of 
a  human  or  an  angelic  figure  performing  a  variety  of  material 
actions,  such  as  eating,  &c.,  implies  a  created  objective 
phenomenon,  a  true  image  essentially  distinct  from  the 
Creator ;  for  no  Father,  unless  it  be  Tertullian  (Adv. 
Marc.,  iii.  9),  has  ventured  to  suggest  an  hypostatic  union. 


266  APPENDIX. 

Note  D,  p.  135. 

The  words  of  the  Council  of  Trent  (Decretum  de  edi- 
tione  et  usu  sacrorum  librorum,  sess.  iv.)  prohibit  an  inter- 
pretation "contra  unanimem  consensum  Patrum."  The 
Profession,  or  Creed,  of  Pius  IV.  enacted  on  admission  to 
"  ecclesiastical  cures,  benefices,  or  dignities,"  promises  not 
to  interpret  Scripture  "  Nisi  juxta  unanimem  consensum 
Patrum."  An  attempt  has  been  made  to  insist  upon  this 
difference,  as  though  it  were  a  setting  aside  on  the  part  of 
the  Pope  of  the  previous  decree,  and  a  substitution  of  the 
prohibition  of  any  interpretation  of  Scripture  unsupported 
by  a  unanimous  consent  of  the  Fathers.  To  this  absurd 
suggestion  it  is  a  sufficient  answer  to  insist  that  in  order 
to  go  "  otherwise  than  according  to,"  even  as  to  go  "  con- 
trary to,"  a  unanimous  consent,  the  unanimous  consent 
must  be  first  obtained,  seeing  that  where  it  does  not  exist, 
neither  prohibition  finds  its  subject  matter  ;  and  this  is 
quite  sufficient  for  my  controversial  purpose.  But  it  may 
be  further  asked  whether  some  alteration  of  the  Tridentine 
decree  in  the  direction  of  increased  stringency,  is  not 
implied  in  the  new  phrase  in  Pope  Pius'  Creed.  I  answer 
that  this  is  precluded  by  the  character  of  the  latter 
document.  A  profession  of  faith  exacted  from  certain 
individuals  under  special  circumstances  is  not  the  form  in 
which  an  alteration  in  a  decree  of  a  General  Council  con- 
firmed by  the  Pope  could  be  introduced.  Moreover,  the 
Vatican  Council  (Constit.  de  Fid.  Cath.,  c.  2),  in  renewing 
the  Tridentine  decree,  adopts  the  phrase  "contra,"  not 
"  nisi  juxta."  Cardinal  Franzelin  (De  Div.  Trad,  et 
Script.,  Thes.  xviii.  p.  186)  lays  down  that  what  is 
forbidden  by  both  phrases  is  neither  more  nor  less  than 
this — (i.)  the  formal  rejection  of  a  sense  defined  by  the 
unanimous  consent  of  the  Fathers  ;  (2.)  any  interpreta- 
tion so  different  as  to  be  incompatible  with  that  sense. 
Thus  no  additional  sense,  however  new,  need  on  this 
account  be  regarded  as  transgressing  the  "  nisi  juxta." 


APPENDIX.  207 

Note  E,  p.  151. 

Since  my  first  edition  Canon  Jenkins  has  published 
(Religious  Tract  Society)  "The  Devotion  of  the  Sacred 
Heart."  This  tract,  as  others  from  the  same  pen,  deserves 
the  praise  of  considerable  industry  of  a  certain  kind, 
though,  I  cannot  but  think,  most  captiously  and  perversely 
applied.  It  affords  an  opponent  a  fair  opportunity  for  an 
exhaustive  treatment  of  the  whole  subject,  but  I  must 
content  myself  here  with  noticing  a  few  points  bearing 
more  or  less  directly  upon  what  I  have  written. 

i.  A  passage  is  quoted  by  Canon  Jenkins  (p.  27)  from 
the  pastoral  of  the  Jansenist  Bishop  of  Chiusi,  attributing 
the  origin  of  the  cult  of  the  Sacred  Heart  to  Goodwin. 
"  It  is  certain  that  it  has  its  origin  from  Thomas  Goodwin 
of  the  Calvinistic  or  Nestorian  sect."  Thus  Dr.  Littledale 
is  relieved  of  the  credit  of  its  first  attribution  to  Goodwin. 
Canon  Jenkins,  after  professing  a  perfect  reliance  on  the 
trustworthiness  of  the  Italian  Jansenists,  hardly  compatible 
with  much  knowledge  of  their  history,  proceeds,  as  he  says, 
"  to  trace  the  connection  "  for  himself.  All  that  he  does, 
however,  is  to  show  that  Goodwin's  book  has  a  certain 
character  of  devotion  which,  if  Fr.  Colombiere  came  across 
it,  might  suggest  that  it  was  possible  to  introduce  the 
devotion  to  the  Sacred  Heart  into  England.  The  fact 
that  Goodwin  (The  Heart  of  Christ,  p.  128)  quotes  a 
certain  Catholic  theologian  whom  he  calls  Justinian  as 
coinciding  with  him,  proves,  I  would  submit,  that  the 
Puritan  borrowed  from  the  Catholic  rather  than  the 
Catholic  from  the  Puritan.  Justinian  is  none  other, 
according  to  Canon  Jenkins,  than  "  one  of  the  greatest  of 
the  practical  and  devotional  writers  of  the  Church  of  Rome, 
St.  Laurence  Justiniani."  Now,  the  quotation  in  question 
is  a  grave  piece  of  scholastic  insistence  upon  the  duration 
in  heaven  of  such  affections  as  are  unconnected  with  sin 
and  shame,  and  is  as  unlike  in  texture  and  colour  the 
writings  of  St.  Laurence  as  may  well  be.  The  passage,  m 


268  APPENDIX. 

fact,  forms  part  of  the  commentary  of  a  very  different 
writer,  Benedict  Justiniani,  SJ.  (published  in  Lyons, 
J^is),  on  St.  Paul's  Epistles.  It  comments  on  Hebrews 
iv.  15, — "  For  we  have  not  a  high  priest  who  cannot  have 
compassion  on  our  infirmities "  ("  that  cannot  be  touched 
with  the  feeling  of  our  infirmities,"  Authorised  and  Re- 
vised versions).  There  are  no  more  indications  here  of  a 
cultus  of  the  Sacred  Heart  than  there  are  in  Goodwin  ;  but 
there  is  much  on  the  tenderness  of  Christ  for  sinners,  and 
of  a  special  readiness  arising  from  past  human  experience 
to  have  pity,  but  which  excludes  all  present  suffering. 
This  is  substantially  the  teaching  of  all  Catholic  theologians 
on  the  subject,  and  I  do  not  think  Goodwin  means  to  go 
beyond  it  :  his  strongest  phrases  are  qualified  with  an  "  as 
it  were." 

Before  Canon  Jenkins  complains  that  a  present  suffering 
in  heaven  is  taught  in  the  devotional  language  addressed  to 
Christ  in  heaven  outraged  by  sinners,  it  is  but  fair  that  he 
should  handle  the  many  passages  in  Scripture  to  the  full  as 
anthropomorphic,  e.g.,  Eph.  iv.  30,  Heb.  iv.  15,  Micheas 
vii.  i,  Ezechiel  xvi.  43.  Whether  we  understand  this 
heavenly  grief  in  Justiniani's  sense,  or  content  ourselves 
with  contemplating  the  sympathetic  union  of  Christ's 
mystic  body,  it  can  hardly  be  unsafe  that  our  devotional 
language  should  run  in  the  lines  of  Scripture  phraseology. 
"Who,"  exclaims  St.  Augustine  (Enarr.  in  Ps.  lii.,  torn, 
iv.  p.  486),  "brings  forth  and  is  in  anguish?  The  faithful 
know  well,  for  from  thence  they  spring.  Here  Christ 
brings  forth,  here  Christ  suffers,  the  Head  is  above,  the 
members  below.  Nor  otherwise  than  as  bringing  forth  and 
suffering  pain  would  He  have  cried  out,  '  Saul,  Saul,  why 
persecutest  thou  me?'"  We  are  cruel  to  Christ  in  heaven, 
inasmuch  as  we  are  cruel  to  ourselves  and  others  for  whom 
Christ  died,  and  whom  He  espoused  in  His  Blood. 

2.  Canon  Jenkins  lays  great  stress  (p.  46  and  se.q^  upon 
the  fact  that  Cardinal  Lambertini,  afterwards  Benedict  XIV., 
opposed,  as  "  Promotor  Fidei,"  the  institution  of  the  Feast 


APPENDIX.  269 

of  the  Sacred  Heart  with  a  vast  array  of  arguments  ;  which 
opposition  was  never  retracted.  Canon  Jenkins  can  never 
have  realised  the  meaning  of  the  office  of  "  Promotor 
Fidei."  This  is  explained  by  Lambertini  himself  (De  Serv. 
Dei  Beatif.,  lib.  i.  c.  18,  n.  I  and  2)  to  involve  the  duty 
"  of  raising  difficulties  of  all  sorts  for  the  better  bringing 
out  the  truth."  He  points  out  that  since  the  decrees  of 
Urban  VIII.,  the  "  Promotores  "  have  never  failed  to  raise 
objections,  though  often,  "  ex  defectu  materise,"  of  the 
slightest  kind,  in  order  "  not  to  seem  to  fall  short  of  their 
office."  He  insists  that  there  is  no  necessary  correspond- 
ence between  the  Promoter's  real  opinion  and  the  difficulties 
which  he  raises  "  officially  "  (ratione  officii).  To  his  own 
animadversions  on  this  very  case,  he  is  careful  to  append  a 
protestation,  "eas  omnes  exaratas  a  se  fuisse  ut  munus 
sibi  commissum  adimpleret "  (Posit.  Causse,  an.  1765,  part 
iii.  p.  8  ;  ap  Nilles  de  Sac.  Cord.,  torn.  i.  p.  n.)  As 
Pope,  he  issued  no  less  than  419  Briefs  of  Indulgence 
to  as  many  confraternities  of  the  Sacred  Heart.  Canon 
Jenkins  pooh-poohs  any  argument  being  drawn  from  these 
concessions,  as  to  the  Pope's  sentiment ;  and  he  does  so  on 
the  singular  ground  that  Cajetan  will  not  allow  the  indul- 
gence on  the  Feast  of  the  Conception  to  militate  for  the 
doctrine  of  the  Immaculate  Conception  of  the  Blessed 
Virgin.  The  Canon  forgets  that  Cajetan  only  justifies 
himself  by  the  alleged  uncertainty  of  the  object  of  the  feast 
and  indulgence,  which  might,  he  thinks,  be  the  "  sancti- 
fication  in  utero"  and  not  the  conception.  (See  Tract,  de 
Concep.  B.  V.,  c.  v.) 

3.  The  charge  of  Nestorianism  made  against  the  cult  of 
the  Sacred  Heart  is  to  the  last  degree  baseless.  The  Nesto- 
rians  actually  separated  in  their  belief  the  human  nature 
from  the  Divine  by  the  introduction  of  a  human  personality, 
thus  depriving  the  human  nature  of  all  claim  to  Divine 
worship  ;  whereas  the  Catholic  worshipper  of  the  Sacred 
Heart  "  praecisione  pure  mentali,"  by  a  mere  concentration 
of  the  attention,  dwells  on  one  part  in  order  more  perfectly 
to  worship  the  whole  as  its  perfections  are  symbolised  in 


2  70  APPENDIX. 

that  part.  It  is  in  this  sense  only  that  the  worship  is 
accounted  symbolic.  Not  that  in  this  devotion  the  heart 
is  a  mere  figure  under  which  Christ's  love  is  symbolised, 
but  that  in  the  worship  of  the  whole  Christ  His  most 
Sacred  Heart  is  explicitly  and  precisely  contemplated, 
because  it  is  the  natural  symbol  of  His  love  for  us  and  of 
the  virtues  of  which  He  is  the  exemplar,  according  to  His 
own  words,  "  Learn  of  Me,  for  I  am  meek  and  humble  of 
heart." 

Such  division  of  its  subject  matter  naturally  belongs  to 
all  vehement  human  affection,  whether  bestowed  on  the 
creature  or  the  Creator.  It  is  not  the  "  disjecta  membra  " 
of  childhood  that  Longfellow  addresses  so  pathetically  in 
his  "  Weariness "  through  the  successive  stanzas  which 
begin  «  O  little  feet,"  "  O  little  hands,"  "  O  little  heart ; " 
but  it  is  the  pathos  and  beauty  of  childhood  contemplated 
in  symbolic  parts  that  we  may  the  better  grasp  the  whole. 
It  is  another  thing  to  say  that  amongst  Nestorians  such  a 
cult  would  be  suspicious ;  so  too  would  be  the  use  of  the 
crucifix  in  its  representation  of  bare  humanity.  In  matter 
of  fact,  it  is  precisely  in  England,  where  the  cult  of  the 
Sacred  Heart  is  regarded  as  superstitious,  that  religious 
literature  and  religious  art  reek  of  Nestorianism,  whereas 
in  France  and  Italy,  as  a  religious  feature,  it  is  not  known. 

4.  In  conclusion,  it  may  be  as  well  to  point  out  to 
Ritualists  who  are  inclined  to  welcome  Canon  Jenkins  as 
an  ally,  that  he  admits  (p.  21)  that  the  cult  of  the  Sacred 
Heart  which  he  denounces  is  the  natural  outcome  of  that 
"  gravest  and  most  fruitful  of  all  the  errors  of  mediae val 
Romanism,  the  doctrine  of  the  Corporeal  Presence  of 
Christ  in  the  Eucharist,  absolutely,  and  without  respect  to 
the  recipient." 


APPENDIX.  271 

Note  F,  p.  171. 

Dr  Littledale,  in  his  leaf  of  additions  and  corrections 
prefixed  to  his  fourth  edition,  throws  another  stone  at  St. 
Alfonso.  '  Add  "  that  a  litigant  in  a  just  cause  may 
suborn  perjured  evidence,  in  order  to  obtain  a  judgment  in 
his  own  favour  (III.  iii.  77.)"'  He  charges  St.  Alfonso 
with  teaching  that  such  a  litigant  may  bribe  a  man  to 
•swear  what  he  knows  to  be  false,  in  order  that  he,  the 
litigant,  may  obtain  a  verdict.  If  this  is  Dr.  Littledale's 
meaning,  and  I  can  divine  no  other,  I  answer  that  St.  Alfonso 
teaches  nothing  of  the  kind.  The  question  he  is  consider- 
ing is  this  :  "  whether  it  is  lawful  to  put  a  man  who  will 
perjure  himself  upon  his  oath  "  (an  liceat  petere  juramen- 
tum  a  pejeraturo)  ;  and  he  answers,  following  the  Salmanti- 
censes,  the  Continuator  of  Tournely,  Cajetan,  Suarez,  &c., 
that,  "  if  there  be  a  sufficient  reason  "  (modo  adsit  justa 
causa),  not  "in  a  just  cause,"  as  Dr  Littledale  translates 
it,  it  is  lawful.  The  instances  he  gives  of  such  lawful 
action  are  that  of  a  judge  administering  an  oath,  "  ratione 
officii,"  and  that  of  a  litigant  who  has  a  strong  interest  in 
putting  a  scamp  into  the  witness-box  in  order  to  expose  a 
conspiracy  by  exhibiting  one  of  the  conspirators  as  a 
perjurer.  It  is  hardly  necessary  to  say  that  the  justice  of 
such  a  course  is  recognised  every  day  in  the  practice  of  our 
law  courts.  Even  if  St.  Alfonso  were  in  any  degree 
obscure,  a  reference  to  any  of  the  authorities  to  which 
he  appeals  would  sufficiently  show  that  this  is  the  point 
under  consideration,  and  no  other.  All  theologians  unite 
in  condemning  the  procuring  any  sort  of  false  evidence, 
whether  it  is  believed  true  by  the  suborner  and  disbelieved 
by  the  witness,  or  believed  true  by  the  witness  and  false 
by  the  suborner.  No  moral  theologian  could  express  the 
opinion  Dr.  Littledale  attributes  to  St.  Alfonso  and  retain 
his  reputation  for  sanity  Has  Dr.  Littledale  no  friend  to 
tell  him  that,  if  he  is  an  honest  man,  he  is  not  doing  him- 
self justice  ? 


272  APPENDIX. 

Note  G,  p.  189. 

The  perfect  orthodoxy  of  Pope  Zosimus  in  the  affair  of 
Celestius  is  repeatedly  asserted  by  St.  Augustine.  Celestius 
vfas  not  indeed  submitted  to  penitence.  St.  Augustine's 
word  is  "purgatio,"  which  here  means  the  exaction  of 
a  profession  of  faith  by  authority ;  Zosimus  obliged 
Celestius  to  make  a  profession  in  the  words  of  Pope 
Innocent,  and  suffered  him  to  explain  the  "libellus"  which' 
he  had  offered  Pope  Zosimus,  in  the  sense  of  the  profes- 
sion ;  and  so  Celestius  was  sent  back  to  Africa,  to  use  St. 
Augustine's  words,  "  tied  in  a  wholesome  knot "  (vinculo 
saluberrimo  obstrictus.)  This  is  his  comment  on  the 
whole  proceeding: — "  Profecto  quidquid  interea  lenius 
actum  est  cum  Celestio,  servata  dumtaxat  antiquissimae  et 
robustissimae  fidei  firmitate,  correctionis  fuit  clementissimae 
suasio,  non  approbatio  exitiosissimse  pravitatis.  Et  quod 
ab  eodem  sacerdote  (Zosimo)  postea  Celestius  et  Pelagius 
repetita  auctoritate  damnati  sunt  paululum  intermissae 
jam  necessario  proferendae  severitatis  fuit,  non  pnevaricatio 
prius  cognitae,  vel  nova  cognitio,  veritatis."  (See  Hurter, 
Ep.  Sel.  Pont.  Rom.,  note,  pp.  133-136  ;  and  Coustant,  Ad- 
monitio  in  Duas  Epistolas,  Ep.  R.  P.,  pp.  938-943.) 


Note  H,  p.  195. 

The  "  Church  Quarterly "  in  its  article  "  Fr.ther  Ryder 
and  Dr.  Littledale"  (July  1881,  p.  566)  remarks  that  "if 
Cardinal  Newman's  most  unfortunate  preface  to  Mr. 
Hutton's  work  on  the  Anglican  ministry,  to  which  we 
have  called  particular  attention  ourselves,  had  been  in 
existence  when  '  Plain  Reasons '  was  on  the  stocks,  Dr. 
Littledale  would  have  had  ample  materials  for  a  much 
graver  charge  than  that  of  mere  bias  in  that  eminent  person, 
which  he  based  on  a  passage  in  *  Callista.'"  It  is  highly 


APPENDIX.  273 

characteristic  of  the  school  of  controversy  to  which  the 
"  Church  Quarterly  "  belongs,  to  meet  the  refutation  of  one 
charge  by  the  production  of  a  second. 

The  writer's  reference  is  to  an  article  in  the  same  Review 
of  April  1880,  entitled  "Anglican  Orders."  Here  the 
Cardinal's  preface  is  styled  "  disingenuous,"  inasmuch  as 
he  "  therein  pledges  himself  to  this  belief  on  a  point  of 
history ;  that  Anglican  doctrine  upon  the  Christian  sacrifice 
does  not  rise  higher  than  in  the  quotation  from  Water- 
land,"  whereas,  of  course,  he  was  well  aware  of  the  catena 
of  Anglican  divines  in  the  appendix  to  Dr.  Pusey's  tract 
on  the  Eucharist  (No.  81,  Tracts  for  the  Times),  some  of 
whom  held  a  far  higher  doctrine  than  the  highest  indicated 
by  Waterland.  The  Cardinal  quotes  (Pre£,  pp.  xi.  xii. ) 
Waterland's  enumeration  of  the  various  forms  of  Anglican 
doctrine  on  the  Eucharistic  sacrifice,  to  the  effect  that, 
setting  aside  the  spiritual  sacrifice  of  the  heart,  the  highest 
view  of  what  is  sacrificed  therein  does  not  rise  above  the 
idea  of  a  sacrifice  of  Bread  and  Wine.  The  Cardinal 
instances,  among  others,  Hickes  and  Johnson  as  maintain- 
ing this  doctrine.  The  reviewer  quotes  nearly  three  pages 
of  extracts  from  the  appendix,  insists  that  the  Cardinal 
(Apologia,  p.  181)  had  already  admitted  the  exhibition  of  a 
far  higher  doctrine  in  Andrews  when  he  says,  "  I  claimed 
in  behalf  of  who  would,  that  he  might  hold  in  the  Anglican 
Church  the  mass  all  but  transubstantiation  with  Andrews ;  " 
u  can  it  be,"  exclaims  the  reviewer,  "  that  the  habit  of 
saying  the  things  required  for  his  position,  which  formerly 
produced  utterances  against  Rome,  is  now  producing  utter- 
ances against  Anglicanism  ?  It  is  no  moral  blessing,  but 
an  immense  moral  calamity,  when  a  habit  of  thinking  what 
one's  controversial  position  requires,  and  saying  it,  obtains 
the  sanction  of  infallibility,  and  so  passes  beyond  reforma- 
tion, probably  beyond  consciousness."  Nothing  can  make 
this  language  other  than  indecent ;  the  question  is  whether 
the  charge  of  error  has  any  basis  in  fact. 

The  Cardinal  contrasts  the  doctrine  of  the  Sacerdotium 


274  APPENDIX. 

held  by  Catholics  and  Ritualists,  that  "in  the  Holy  Eucharist 
the  Gospel  priest  offers  Christ  in  His  Body  and  Blood  for 
the  living  and  the  dead,  and  that  by  virtue  of  such  offering 
he  is  a  priest,"  with  the  highest  doctrine  on  the  subject 
previously  maintained,  and  asks,  "  Is  there  not  an  infinite 
difference  "  between  them  ?  The  "  Church  Quarterly"  does 
not  complain  that  the  Cardinal  has  set  the  Ritualist  doctrine 
too  high,  but  that  in  order  to  support  his  charge  of  innova- 
tion he  has  set  the  previous  teaching  too  low. 

The  question  to  be  considered  is,  what  theological  posi- 
tion these  Anglican  divines  took  up  with  regard  to  the 
Eucharistic  sacrifice  ;  not  whether  there  are  not  expres- 
sions here  and  there  in  their  writings  which,  taken  by 
themselves,  might  seem  by  the  higher  level  of  their  devo- 
tional appreciation  to  suggest  a  higher  doctrine.  The 
Caroline  divines  were  exceedingly  anxious  to  make  every 
patristic  expression  they  came  across  their  own,  and  the 
Nonjurors,  rejected  by  their  Church  of  the  present,  naturally 
turned  with  the  stronger  yearning  to  the  Church  of  the  past. 
As  a  whole,  the  writers  in  Dr.  Pusey's  Catena  held  a 
sacrifice  of  Bread  and  Wine  representing  the  expiatory 
sacrifice  of  the  Cross,  in  which  the  Bread  and  Wine  after 
consecration  became  the  instrument  to  the  faithful  communi- 
cant of  a  union  with  Christ's  Body  and  Blood,  i.e.,  with  the 
merits  of  His  Passion.  But  did  any  of  them  reach  a  higher 
doctrinal  level  ?  I  believe  that,  as  regards  the  sacrifice, 
they  certainly  did  not. 

When  asked  the  precise  question  what  is  it  that  is  offered, 
they  had  only  one  answer,  "  Bread  and  Wine."  Indeed 
there  was  no  other  answer  they  could  make,  whilst  reject- 
ing the  doctrine  of  Trent  (Sess.  xiii.  c.  i),  that  Christ  is 
really  present  on  the  altar  after  consecration  and  (Sess.  xii. 
c.  2 )  is  indeed  offered  up  in  the  sacrifice. 

They  never  answered  "  Christ,"  nor  even  "  the  Body  and 
Blood  of  Christ,"  unless  with  the  qualification,  "  mystically 
present,"  which  they  always  took  —  at  least  except  in 
the  act  of  communion — in  the  sense  of  "  symbolically 


APPENDIX.  275 

represented."  Neither  does  Dr.  Pusey's  own  doctrine  in 
the  tract  go  beyond  this  (p.  6).  "  They  first  offered  to  God 
His  gifts  in  commemoration  of  His  inestimable  gift,  and 
placed  them  upon  His  altar  here,  to  be  received  and  pre- 
sented on  the  heavenly  altar  by  Him  our  High  Priest ;  and 
then  trusted  to  receive  them  back,  conveying  to  them  the 
ttfe-giving  Body  and  Blood."  And  then  (p.  10),  after 
rejecting  transubstantiation  with  Bishop  Andrews,  whose 
words  he  quotes  (Respons.  ad  Card.  Bellarm.,  c.  8),  "  Do 
ye  take  away  from  the  mass  your  transubstantiation,  and 
we  shall  not  long  have  any  question  about  the  sacrifice," 
Dr.  Pusey  involves  in  this  rejection  the  whole  edifice  of 
Catholic  doctrine  concerning  the  real  presence  and  the 
sacrifice  built  upon  it,  by  identifying  himself  with  Ridley, 
whom  he  thus  quotes  (Brief.  Declaration,  p.  6),  "What  is  the 
matter  of  the  sacrament  ?  whether  it  is  the  natural  substance 
of  bread,  or  the  natural  substance  of  Christ's  own  Body? 
For  if  it  be  Christ's  own  natural  Body,  born  of  the  Virgin, 
then  assuredly  they  must  needs  grant  transubstantiation, 
that  is,  a  change  of  the  substance  of  bread  into  the  substance 
of  Christ's  Body.  Then  also  they  must  needs  grant  the 
carnal  and  corporeal  presence  of  Christ's  Body.  Then 
must  the  sacrament  be  adored  with  the  honour  due  to 
Christ  Himself  for  the  unity  of  the  two  natures  in  one  per- 
son.  Then  if  the  priest  do  offer  the  sacrament,  he  doth 
offer  indeed  Christ  Himself." 

When  Hickes  says  that  "the  mystical  or  sacramental 
Body  and  Blood  of  Christ "  is  "  offered  up  unto  God  "  (ap. 
"  Church  Quarterly,"  p.  213),  it  is  certain  that  he  simply 
means  the  Bread  and  Wine  symbolising  Christ's  Body  and 
Blood  ;  for  he  says  that  Christ's  presence  is  "imputed"  by 
a  sort  of  "  legal  fiction  "  (Christian  Priesthood  Asserted,  p. 
151),  which  virtually  by  its  effects  makes  as  though  He  were 
present.*  This  too  is  Johnson's  doctrine  (The  Unbloody 

*  A  doctrine  identical  with  his  own  is  attributed  by  Hickes  to 
Thorndike  (Account  of  Third  Edit.,  p.  xxxi.)  and  by  Johnson  to 
Hickes  (Pref.  Ep.,  p.  xv.) 


276  APPENDIX. 

Sacrifice,  vol.  i.  p.  214).  Under  the  title  "A  distinct 
answer  to  those  who  ask  what  is  offered,"  he  says,  "  We 
offer  the  Bread  and  Wine,  separated  from  all  other  obla- 
tions of  the  people  ;  we  offer  them  as  having  been  solemnljr 
pronounced,  by  the  words  of  institution,  to  be  the  full 
representatives  of  Christ's  Body  and  Blood.  And  we  make 
propitiation  with  them,  after  God  has  first  by  the  illapse  of 
the  Holy  Spirit  perfected  the  consecration  of  them.  When 
we  say  we  offer  Bread  and  Wine,  and  that  we  offer  the 
Body  and  Blood  of  Christ,  we  mean  the  same  material 
things.  .  .  .  When  we  say  we  offer  Bread  and  Wine,  we 
don't  mean  the  products  and  first-fruits  of  the  earth  ;  but 
the  memorials  of  Christ's  Passion,  the  authoritative  repre- 
sentations of  Christ's  Body  and  Blood ;  or,  if  you  will 
speak  with  the  primitive  Church,  the  true  Body  and  Blood 
of  Christ ;  and  on  the  other  side,  when  we  say  we  offer  the 
Body  and  Blood,  we  don't  mean,  what  is  commonly  called 
the  sacrifice  of  the  mass,  not  the  substantial  Body  and 
Blood  of  Christ,  much  less  His  divinity  ;  but  the  Bread  and 
Wine  substituted  by  the  Divine  Word  for  His  own  Body  and 
Blood  j  and  upon  which  God,  at  the  prayers  of  the  priests 
and  people,  sends  down  His  peculiar  spiritual  benediction, 
by  which  it  becomes  a  sacrifice  of  a  sweet-smelling  savour, 
as  being  therefore  fully  consecrated  into  the  spiritual  Body 
and  Blood  of  Christ,  and  therefore  fit  wherewith  to  propitiate 
the  Divine  mercy." 

Again,  in  his  "  Propitiatory  Oblation,"  published  anony- 
mously (Pusey's  Append.,  p.  310): — I.  "The  Papists  hold 
that,  in  the  sacrifice  of  the  mass,  the  whole  Christ,  God 
and  man,  is  offered  up  hypostatically  to  the  Father  in  the 
Eucharist,  and  is  to  be  worshipped  there  by  men  under  the 
species  of  bread  and  wine.  This  doctrine  is  utterly  re- 
nounced by  all  Protestants,  by  those  who  assert  the  Eucha- 
ristic  oblation  as  well  as  by  those  who  deny  it.  2.  The 
Papists  assert  the  substantial  presence  of  Christ's  Body  and 
Blood,  under  the  species  of  bread  and  wine  in  the  Holy 
Eucharist ;  and  that  the  sacrifice  of  the  cross  and  altar  are 


APPENDIX.  277 

substantially  the  same.  But  this  is  peremptorily  denied  by 
those  who  declare  for  the  oblation  of  the  Eucharist  in  the 
Church  of  England." 

Again  (Preface  to  vol.  ii.  p.  xxviii. )  :  "  Dr.  Wise  slily  in- 
sinuates that  it  is  my  practice  to  elevate  the  bread  and 
ivine^  and  it  is  true,  that  I  did  sometimes,  about  four  or 
five  years  ago,  in  the  act  of  consecration,  lift  up  the  bread 
and  wine  higher  than  usual,  that  the  people  might  see  the 
bread  broken,  and  the  cup  taken  into  my  hand,  as  the 
rubric  directs,  and  for  no  other  reason,  some  people  who 
seemed  very  desirous  to  see  the  holy  action  sitting  at  a 
great  distance  from  the  Lord's  table  in  this  very  large 
church  •  but  I  never  elevated  the  elements  after  consecra- 
tion; nay,  I  believe  it  horrible  superstition  in  those  that  do  it, 
if  any  such  there  be  ;  and  I  do  further  solemnly  declare  it  to 
be  my  sentiment,  that  to  elevate  and  adore  the  sacrament, 
according  to  the  practice  of  the  Church  of  Rome,is  downright 
idolatry."  All  this,  be  it  remembered,  whilst  maintaining  (see 
vol.  i.  p.  249,)  that  the  "  consecration  was  permanent," 
and  approving  of  reservation.  Neither  could  the  real  pre- 
sence of  the  Body  and  Blood  of  Christ  be  supposed  without 
His  hypostatic  presence,  for  that  would  be  the  heresy  of 
dividing  Christ;  therefore  there  can  be  no  real  presence 
but  such  as  demands  the  adoration  these  writers  persistently 
refuse. 

With  the  passages  just  given  contrast  the  manuals  of 
modern  Ritualism,  e.g.,  Mr.  Carter's  "  Treasury  of  Devo- 
tion," so  cordially,  and,  I  would  add,  so  justly,  approved  by 
the  late  Bishop  of  Salisbury. 

"  After  the  Act  of  Consecration." 

"  Hail !  most  Holy  Flesh  of  Christ."  "  Hail  !  heavenly 
Drink  of  Jesus'  Blood." 

"Acts  of  Adoration."  "  Hail  to  thee,  true  Body  sprung 
from  the  Virgin  Mary's  womb  !  The  same  that  on  the  Cross 
was  hung  and  bore  for  man  the  bitter  doom."  ft  I  adore. 
Thee,  O  Lord  my  God,  whom  I  now  behold  veiled  beneath 
these  earthly  forms.  Prostrate  I  adore  Thy  Majesty."  Again, 


278  APPENDIX. 

"  O  most  merciful  Father,  who  hast  so  loved  me  as  to  give 
to  me  Thy  only-begotten  Son  for  my  food  and  drink,  and 
with  Him  all  things,  look  upon  the  face  of  Thy  anointed,  in 
whom  Thou  art  well  pleased.  This  Thy  Beloved  Son,  and 
with  Him  my  heart,  I  offer  and  present  to  Thee."  Again, 
compare  "  The  Priest's  Prayer-Book"  (p.  16,  London:  1 870): 
"  Let  this  holy  mixture  of  the  Body  and  Blood  of  Our  Lord 
Jesus  Christ  be  to  me  and  all  who  partake  thereof  salvation 
of  body  and  soul,"  and  (p.  1 7),  addressing  Christ,  Thou 
"  dost  still  expose  Thyself  to  the  profanity  of  ungodly  men 
rather  than  withdraw  Thy  Sacred  Body  from  our  churches/' 
Neither  of  these  manuals  are  accounted  at  all  extreme,  and 
yet  they  exhibit  Christ  upon  the  altar  as  hypostatically  pre- 
sent under  the  sacramental  veils,  and  thus  offered,  worshipped, 
and  reserved.  All  which  points  of  doctrine  are  emphatically 
rejected  by  Hickes  and  Johnson,  and  certainly  never  have 
been  produced  from  the  works  of  earlier  writers.* 

It  is  true,  however,  that,  as  regards  the  real  presence, 
Andrews  and  Cosin,  in  words  at  least,  go  further  than 
Hickes  and  Johnson.  Andrews  in  his  answer  to  Bellarmine, 
c.  i.  p.  1 1  (ap.  Cosin.  Hist,  of  Transub.,p.  21),  admits  a  "vera 
praesentia "  (transl.  "  real "),  and  says,  that  it  is  only  the 
manner  of  the  presence  that  is  in  dispute.  And  again,  in 
words  already  quoted,  "  But  do  ye  take  away  from  the  mass 
your  transubstantiation-,  and  there  will  not  be  long  any  con^ 
troversy  with  us  concerning  the  sacrifice."  And  Cosin  (see 
p.  53)  speaks  of  the  "real  and  substantial  presence  of  the 
Body  of  Christ  in  the  sacrament."  Yet  when  these  writers 
come  to  speak  of  the  sacrifice,  it  is  never  the  real  substantial 
body,  still  less  the  whole  Christ,  that  is  offered,  but  a  symbolic 
commemoration  of  the  past  sacrifice  of  the  Cross,  only  not 
a  "naked  commemoration"  (See  Cosin  ap.  Pusey,  Append., 
p.  136),  in  virtue  of  a  presence  of  the  "Body  and  Blood"  "to 
all  that  faithfully  receive  it"  That  this  presence  is  merely 
"  in  usu  "  and  relative  is  brought  out  with  perfect  clearness 

*  This  is  not  the  case,  I  admit,  with  Sir  W.  Palmer,  who  wrote  his  hook 
**  On  the  Church ''  after  the  Movement  had  begun. 


APPENDIX.  279 

by  Cosin  (Hist,  of  Transub.,  p.  61)  :  "  We  also  deny  that 
the  elements  still  retain  the  nature  of  sacraments  when  not 
used  according  to  Divine  institution,  that  is  given  by  Christ's 
ministers,  and  received  by  His  people ;  so  that  Christ  in  the 
consecrated  bread  ought  not,  cannot  be  kept  and  preserved, 
to  be  carried  about,  because  He  is  present  only  to  the  com- 
municants." Andrews  himself  gives  plain  proof  that  when 
he  said,  "  Do  ye  take  away  .  .  .  your  transubstantiation," 
he  did  in  fact  put  away  all  substantial  presence  "  extra 
usum,"  all  presence  that  could  be  offered,  or  reserved,  and 
not  merely  a  particular  manner  of  substantiation.  For  thus 
he  speaks  of  the  words  of  institution  : — "  De  '  hoc  est '  fide 
firma  tenemus  quod  sit,  de  *  hoc  modo  est/  ut  sit  Per,  sive 
In,  sive  Cum,  sive  Sul>,  sive  Trans,  nullum  inibi  Verbum 
est."  Thus,  in  the  language  of  Andrews,  a  "real  presence" 
need  not  involve  the  presence  of  a  substantial  reality  ;  and 
"  trans  "  and  "  sub  "  disappear  together.  In  this  sense,  as 
we  have  seen,  does  Dr.  Pusey  understand  Andrews  to  reject 
transubstantiation  ;  and  in  this  sense,  assuredly,  did  Cardinal 
Newman  in  his  Apologia  accredit  Andrews  with  holding 
"the  mass  short  of  transubstantiation." 

I  think  I  have  made  it  sufficiently  clear  that  Dr.  Water- 
land's  and  Cardinal  Newman's  doctrinal  estimate  of  Anglican 
teaching  on  the  Eucharistic  sacrifice  is  the  true  one,  and 
that  the  "Church  Quarterly"  is  left  without  any  cloak  in  fact, 
to  cover  its  solemn  impertinence. 

There  is  something  irresistibly  amusing  in  the  reproaches 
which  the  "Church  Quarterly"  addresses  to  the  "great 
apostle  of  development  "  for  not  applying  its  principles  to 
their  teaching  on  the  Eucharistic  sacrifice  as  related  to 
that  of  their  predecessors.  No  theory  of  development  that 
I  ever  heard  of,  certainly  not  Cardinal  Newman's,  could 
pretend  to  recognise  the  germ  of  a  doctrine  in  a  system 
which  begins  with  a  rejection  of  that  doctrine  in  its  fully 
developed  form,  with  which  it  finds  itself  face  to  face.  The 
gradual  process  by  which  Anglicans  have  worked  their  way 
back  to  the  doctrine  of  the  Eucharistic  sacrifice  which  they 


280  APPENDIX. 

originally  rejected  may  doubtless  be  regarded  as  a  process 
of  moral  and  intellectual  recovery,  but  it  certainly  is  not  a 
development  in  the  theological  sense  of  the  word,  the 
gradual  maturing  and  realisation  of  a  theological  idea.  The 
bud  indeed  develops  into  the  full  flower,  and  we  may 
recognise  in  its  earlier  stages  its  ultimate  outcome,  but  the 
stamen  of  the  fully  developed  bloom  when  once  stripped  of 
its  leaves  has  no  future  contained  within  itself;  it  can 
only  give  place  to  another  flower. 


Note  I,  p.  237. 

Dr.  Green,  in  the  preface  to  his  second  edition  (p.  vi.), 
points  out  that  Dr.  Littledale  had  in  his  first  and  second 
editions  left  out  the  word  "  hujusmodi,"  "  of  this  sort," 
which  limited  the  application  of  the  note  excluding  the  poor 
to  dispensations  "in  secundo  gradu;"  when,  however,  in  his 
third  edition  he  finds  it  necessary  to  insert  the  word,  the 
amended  sentence  retains  its  place  immediately  after  a 
recapitulation  of  the  whole  subject  matter  of  the  Peniten- 
tiary Taxae,  "parricide,  incest,"  &c.,  as  though  these  were 
all  taken  in  by  what  is  really  a  form  of  exclusion.  Neither 
does  Dr.  Littledale  notice  that  the  note  appears,  not  in  the 
Penitentiary  Taxae  at  all,  but  in  those  of  the  Chancery, 
which  are  of  a  very  different  character  (See  Gibbings,  Pre- 
face, p.  95).  Dr.  Green,  it  is  only  fair  to  say,  regards  the 
note  as  the  sarcastic  comment  of  a  hostile  critic.  The  only 
editions,  he  considers,  in  which  it  occurs  bear  all  the  marks 
of  private  compilation. 


INDEX. 


ABSOLUTION,  from  poena,  217  seg.  mis- 
rep,  by  Dr.  L.,  218,  219,  220;  among 
Ritualists,  219 ;  from  culpa.  et  poena, 
not  always  meaning  directly  from 
"guilt,"  226  ;  in  foro  extemo,  227  J 
from  "future  sin,"  sold,  a  false  charge, 
224-229 ;  in  connection  with  the  taxae, 
230,  231 

Addis,  Fr.,  40,  137,  263 

Adoration,  acts  of,  88,  90;  of  the  image  of 
Christ,  97  ;  of  the  cross,  114,  116,  121,  122 

Advocate,  advocata,  title  of  Mary,  101, 
102,  195,  196 

Aelred,  St.,  on  Papal  Supremacy,  81 

Agatho,  P.,  5,  19,  78,  133 

Alcuin,  on  Papal  Prerogative,  80 ;  on 
images,  116 

Aldhelm,  St.,  on  Papal  Prerogative,  79 ; 
on  images,  116 

Alfonso,  St.  Liguori,  on  Mary,  129 ;  his 
authority  as  Doctor  of  the  Church  ex- 
aggerated by  L.,  159  ;  his  Probabilism, 
161-163  ;  falsely  charged  by  L.  with 
teaching  immoral  doctrine,  163,  164, 
271  ;  on  equivocation  and  stealing  in  ex- 
trentfi,  166,  167 

Allatius,  Leo,  on  Purgatory,  222 

Allies,  Mr.,  59,  62 

Allnatt,  Mr.,  4,  158,  186,  xvi. 

Ambrose,  St.,  on  the  Peti  ine  texts,  2,  7  ;  on 
Infallibility,  15  ;  on  Jurisdiction,  42 ;  on 
Mary,  93,  101 ;  on  adoration  of  the  cross, 

121,    122 

Anastasius,  I.  P.,  24 ;  on  Jurisdiction,  42 

Anastasius,  Bibl.,  on  the  cross  and  images, 
117 

Andrews,  273,  279 

Angels,  worship  of,  87,  88;  of  the  Gnostics, 
89  ;  the  Angel  of  the  Lord,  263-265 

Anglican,  controversialists,  46,  78;  first 
and  second  commandment,  112;  sacra- 
ments, 214  ;  Divines  on  the  Eucharistic 
sacrifice,  273  seq. 

Anglicanism,  no  Church,  255,  256 

Ansel m,  St.,  on  Papal  Prerogative,  80 

Anthropomorphism,  112,  120 

Ante-Nicene,  testimony  for  St.  Peter's  Ro- 
man Episcopate,  48  ;  Fathers  on  Mary,  93 

Anti-Vatican  dilemma,  37,  38 


Antoninus,  St.,  161,  226,  231,  435 

Apiarius,  60 

Apostles,  how  infallib'e,  4  ;  whether  all 
equal,  22  ;  as  to  Jurisdiction,  39,  41 

Apostolicity,  Note  of  the  Church,  252,  253 

Apostolic  See,  its  importance  as  to  Chris- 
tian religion,  12,  19 

Apparition  of  our  Lady,  97,  101. 

Appeals,  43  ;  of  Bishops,  49,  52,  60,  61 ;  not 
contested  by  St.  Augustine,  62 ;  resisted 
by  Hilary  of  Aries,  65 

Archives,  Roman,  180-182  ;  losses  of,  185 

Arian  heresy,  26 ;  appealed  against  to  the 
Pope,  43  ;  an  Arian  taken  by  L.  for  a 
Father,  258 

Arnold,  Dr.,  or  the  second  commandmenti 
113 

Asterius,  on  Infall.,  15  ;  on  Intercession,  91 

Athanasius,  St.,  and  Liberius,  27,  28;  on 
Angel-worship,  89 ;  on  Idolatry,  120 

Augustine,  St.,  on  the  Petrine  texts,  3,  7 ; 
on  Primacy,  63  J  on  St.  Stephen  and  St. 
Cyprian,  58,  59 ;  and  the  Holy  See,  60 
seg.  ;  on  Intercession,  90  ;  on  miracles  by 
relics,  92  ;  on  Mary,  93, 100 ;  on  Idolatry, 
119,1122,  123;  on  BibleJ  authority,  152, 
153  ;  on  private  judgment,  174  ;  on  pen- 
ance, 217 ;  on  the  Immaculate  Concep- 
tion, 135,  136 ;  on  Theophanies,  263  ;  mis- 
2uoted  by  L.,  258,  259 ;  his  "  Roma 
icuta.  est,"  189 

Augustine,  St.,  of  England,  ordained  by 
order  of  the  Pope,  77 

Authority  and  private  judgment,  173 

Avitus  of  Vienne,  on  Supremacy,  44 

BALUZE,  69,  175 

Ballerini,  51,  60,  66,  69,  175,  176,  178,  185, 

187 
Baptism,    minister   of,   215 ;     conditional, 

xiii. ;  of  Constantine,  176,  177 
Barbosa,  135 
Baronius,  Card.,  65,  187  ;  wrongly  charged 

by  L.  with  falsifying  the  Roman  Martyr- 

ology  and  Breviary,  190 
Basil,  St.,  on  the  Petrine  texts,  2  ;  on  sin 

in  Mary,  108 ;  on  Communion  sub  un&,  140 
Basil,  of  Seleucia,  on  Mary,  98 
Becanus,  27,  135 


232 


INDEX. 


Societies  heretical  in  principle,  154 
Biblical  studies  in  the   Catholic   C! 


hurch, 


bede,  Yen.,  on  the  Petrine  texts,  8  ;  on  Pa- 
pal Prerogative,  77,  79  ;  on  images,  116 

Bellarmine,  Card.,  10,  30,  34  ;  charged  by 
L.  with  having  invented  the  Catholic  in- 
terpretation of  Luke  xxii.,  4,  6 ;  on  im- 
ages, 114;  on  external  acts  of  worship, 
130  ;  on  Pope  and  conscience,  171  ;  his 
share  in  the  R.  Breviary,  192 

Benedict  IX.,  30,  31 

Benedict  XIV.,  misquoted  by  L.,  159,  169. 
See  also  JLambertini 

Bennettis,  57,  58 

Bernard,  St.,  on  Infallibility,  20;  on  Supre- 
macy, 44  ;  on  Immaculate  Conception, 
J35>  I37  J  explained,  138 

Bib.e,  Sixtine  Edition  of,  33  ;  Editions  be- 
fore Reformation,  158  ;  and  Church,  152  ; 
Bible- reading  pernicious  if  independent, 
153-157  ;  B.  Interpretation,  135,  266  ;  B. 
il  in 
L  the 
154-158 

Bishop,  his  authority  limited,  53 ;  B.  of 
bishops,  40  ;  universal,  70.  See  Title 

Bishops,  equality  of,  23,  71  ;  contrasted 
with  Apostles,  39  ;  their  relation  to  the 
Pope,  44,  82 

Bonaventure,  St.,  on  Communion  sub  utra- 
que,  141 ;  on  Intention  in  Sacraments, 
215 

Boniface  L,  57,  60;  II.,  180 ;  IV.,  77; 
VIII.,  on  Doctors  of  the  Church,  159 

Boniface,  St.   of  Mainz,  182 

Borromeo,  St.  Charles,  161,  206,  247,  248 

Bramhall,  48,  145 

Bieen,  83 

Breviary.     See  Baronius 

Bright,  Canon,  78 

Bruno,  of  Asti,  on  the  Petrine  texts,  7 

Bull  of  Leo  X.,  32,  33  ;  of  Paul  IV.,  ex 
apostolatus  officio,  73,  74 

Burns,  on  fees  fur  absolution  from  cen- 
sures, 235 

Busenbaum,  S.  ].,  167  ;  misrepr.  by  L.,  211 

CAJETAN,  30,  269 

Canons  of  Councils  and  Papal  Supremacy, 

Canons  of  Nicea  and  Sardica,  50,   51,  61 ; 

how  these  came  to  be  confused,  175 
Canons  of  Sardica  in  the  old  Gallican  col- 
lections, 57 

Canons  the  Sixth  of  Nicea,  175,  176 
- —  the  Ninth  of  Chalcedon,  50,  51,  52 

the  Twenty-eighth  of  Chalcedon,  50,  54 

• of  Elvira,  120  ;  of  Trullo,  51  ;  of  Cler- 

mont,  141 
Canterbury,  its  rank   and    authority  from 

the  Pope,  79 
Caramue!,  34 


Carpocratians,  120 ;  and  image  of  Christ,  fa 

Cartwright,  146 

Casuistry,  its  origin  and  nature  according 
to  L. ,  160,  161 

Catacombs,  103,  109,  113,  131 

Catechisms,  Jansenistic,  35  ;  Catholic  cal- 
umniated by  L.,  in;  of  Council  of 
Trent,  112;  Lutheran,  113 

Catena.  See  England  and  Papal  Preroga- 
tive. Greek  forged,  190 

Catharinus,  6,  213 

"Cathedra,"  Petri,  the  all-ruling,  pre- 
siding, 18 ;  "ex  cathedra,"  13,  26;  re- 
quirements for,  28,  37,  74 

Catholic  and  Roman,  17,  20,  41,  75,  seq. 
See  also  248  seq. 

Catholicity,  as  a  Note  of  the  Church,  248- 
250 

"  Causae  maiores,"  52,  67 

Cave,  48,  97;  on  Opus  Imperfectum,  155 

Ceillier,  44 

Celestine,  P.,  42,  61,  63,  77 

Celestius,  189,  272 

Centuriators,  186,  187 

Chair  of  Peter,  40,  41 ;  of  Antioch,  47,  48 

Chancery.     See  Taxes 

Charges,  L.'s,  against  the  Church,  reduced 
to  seven,  86-240.  See  vi.-viii. 

"  Charismata,"  personal,  39,  154 

Chillingworth,  36 

Chiusi,  Bishop  of,  35;  and  Pius  VI.,  261, 
267 

Christ,  divine  personality  and  invocation 
of,  104 ;  not  divided,  147 ;  not  suffering 
in  heaven,  268  seq. 

Chrysologus,  St.  Peter,  on  Infallibility,  15 

Chrysostom,  St.  John,  on  the  Petrine 
texts,  3,  7 ;  on  Papal  Supremacy,  47,  48  ; 
on  angel  worship,  89;  on  Intercession, 
90,  91 ;  on  images,  124,  131 ;  on  Bible 
reading,  152,  153,  154;  false  passage 
quoted  by  L.,  155 

Church,  of  Antioch,  46,  47 ;  of  Corinth, 
14  ;  of  Constantinople,  71 ;  of  Gaul,  179- 
186;  of  Ireland,  77;  of  Jerusalem,  18  ; 
how  mother  of  all  the  churches,  47 ;  her 
dying  words,  18  J  the  Jewish,  27 ;  of 
Rome,  its  praises  by  the  Fathers,  14,  16, 
17  ;  by  L.  formerly,  246,  247  ;  head  of  all 
the  churches,  20,  81,  passim',  ambiguity 
of  the  term  in  L.'s  mouth,  243,  250; 
whether  the  whole  Church,  75 ;  seq. ; 
charged  by  L.,  with  depending  on  one, 
132 

Church  Quarterly,  its  impertinent  charg* 
against  Cardinal  Newman,  272-280 

Clement,  St.,  of  Rome,  14,  40,  186 

Clement,  of  Alexandria,  on  Worship  o£ 
Angels,  89 

Cloveshoe,  Council  of,  79 


INDEX. 


283 


Coleridge,  Fr.,  108 

Collyridians,  105,  no 

Commandment,  the  Fiist,  111-113 

Communion,  with  Apostolic  See,  12,  14, 
15,  19,  21,  25;  necessary,  56-58.  See  also 
81,  83 

Communion,  under  one  and  two  kinds, 
138-143 

"Compositio,"  an  ecclesiastical  fine,  228, 
235 

Conception,  of  Christ  afc  Spir.  S.t  its  signi- 
ficance, 136.  See  Immaculate 

Concomitance,  its  denial,  a  heresy,  142, 
143 

"  Confessionale, "  an  ecclesiastical  dispen- 
sation, 226,  227,  229 

Confessors,  and  St.  Alfonso's  Theology, 
159  ;  physicians  and  judges,  162  ;  prac- 
tically Probabi lists,  ib.  Special  faculties 
for,  see  ' '  Confessionale  " 

Confirmation,  Papal,  of  a  sentence,  13,  19  ; 
of  a  Synod,  43 ;  of  the  Fifth  Council,  69 

Coninck,  114 

Conscience,  its  rights,  172,  173 

Consent,  of  the  Fathers,  falsely  stated  by 
L.,  1-9  ;  as  a  rule  of  interpretation,  135, 
266  ' 

Constance,  31 ;  on  communion,  141  ;  and 
Huss,  199 

Constantinople,    its   privileges   and   rank, 

"  Constitutum"  of  P.  Vigilius,  69 
Controversialists,  Catholic  and  Protestant, 

^75,  196.  253»  254»  257 
Converts,  their  motives,  XL,  xn. 
Copernicanism,  34-36  ;  also  260,  261 
Cosmas,  of  Jerusalem,  on  Mary,  96 
Cossart,  72 

"  Contemporary  Review,"  48,  75,  170,  257 
Council,  of  Antioch,  58 ;  Aries,  6,  77 ; 
Aquileia,  42 ;  Chalcedon,  16,  42,  43,  64, 
68,  69,  147,  175, 176  ;  Constantinople,  42  ; 
Ephesus,  15,  63,  147 ;  Frankfort,  115  ; 
Laodicea,  98  ;  Lateran,  18  ;  Milevis,  50  ; 
Nicea,  47  ;  Rome,  50  j  Tarragon,  16  ; 
Trent,  32,  33  ;  on  images,  misrepresented 
by  L.,  122,  123;  Sardica,  77  the  Va- 
tican, 13  ;  the  Third  on  Mary,  93,  94 ; 
the  Fourth,  42,  43  ;  the  Fifth,  29,  68  ;  on 
Mary,  94  ;  the  Sixth,  5,  9  ;  in  re  Hon- 
orius,  28  seq.  ;  acts  of,  185  ;  the  Seventh 
on  Intercession,  95  ;  on  images,  114  seq.  ; 
its  cecumenicity,  115,  117  ;  the  Eighth, 

12 

Constant,  27,  57,  58,  62,  63,  64,  69,  182,  272 
Creeds,  see   Papal  Prerogative  ;    the   Sir- 
mian,  27,  28  ;  of  Pope  Pius  IV.,  185,  266 
Creature  worship,  86  seq. 
Croiset,  151 
Cultus,  of  Christ,   104,  105  ;   of  hi»  human 


nature,  126;  of  the  Sacred  Heart,  its  ob- 
ject, 147  ;  not  new,  148  ;  absurd  charge 
of  heresy  against  it,  147,  267,  269,  270 
Cultus  of  AJary,  92-111;  its  logical  ne 
cessity,  104  ;  authority  in  Scripture,  106, 
108;  in  Fathers,  108-110;  its  imperfect 
development  in  early  church  accounted 
for,  104-108;  see  also  127;  alleged  ex- 
cess in,  124  seq. ;  L.'s  objections  from 
Scripture,  131 
Cultus,  of  Relics,  91 

of  the  Cross,  114,  116,  121,  122 
of  the  Book  of  Gospels,  116,  117 
of  saints,  89  ;  its  end,  128  ;  an  obli- 


gation  of  reason,  131  ;  character  of  saint 
worship  among  Anglicans,  124,  125 

Cures,  by  relics,  91,  92 

Cyprian,  St.,  on  the  Petrine  texts,  4 ;  on 
Infallibility,  15  ;  on  Jurisdiction,  40  ;  on 
Peter's  Roman  Episcopate,  49  ;  whether 
excommunicated,  58  ;  on  penance,  218  J 
mentions  our  Lady,  196 

Cyprianic  Interpolations,  188 

Cyril,  St.,  of  Alexandria,  on  the  Petrine 
texts,  3,  6,  7 ;  on  Papal  Supremacy,  42, 
63 ;  on  worship  of  God  and  saints,  90 ; 
on  Mary,  107,  108  ;  on  idolatry,  120 ;  on 
images,  124 

DAMASUS,  P.  21 ;  his  moral  character  vin 

dicated  against  L.,  244,  245 
Debituin,  culpae  et  mortis,  136 
De  Cusa,  Cardinal,  186 
Defensive,  why   Catholics  always  on  the 

254 
Definition,  of  faith,   condition  of,   28  ;  bj 

Pope  alone,  37,  38 
"  Deipara,"  96,  98 
Deluzsch,  263 
De  Maica,  66,  175,  205 
Denis,  St.,  the  Areopagite,  and  of  Paris, 
90,  191 


Deposition,  of  Nestorius,  63  ;  of  Arnulf, 
71 ;  of  popes,  30  ;  of  a  bishop,  a  causti 
inaior,  52 ;  of  bishops  by  Apostolic  See 
alone,  43 

De  Rossi,  113 

De  Smedt,  192 

Development,  83-85,  134.     See  C.  of  Mary 

,  Anglican,  279,  280 

Devotion,  its  true  idea  and  conditions,  126, 
127 :  see  also  105  ;  its  language,  128  ;  10. 
particular  shrines  and  images,  118;  of 
Ritualists  to  Mary,  124,  127  ;  not  de- 
stroyed by  Indulgences,  221 

Dioscorus,  57 


Diptychs,  57,  58,  note,  69 
Dispensation,  in  marriage,  239. 

fessionale" 
" Diurnut  liber,"  30 


See  "Ccn 


INDEX. 


"  Divided"  church,  in  what  sense,  75 

Divinisation,  of  creatures  by  grace,  126 

•Divus,  Diva  (title  of  Mary),  really  taken 
from  Scripture  and  Fathers,  126 

Doctor,  of  the  Church,  his  authority,  159, 
160, 169 

Doctor,  omni  exceptione  tnaior  mistrans- 
lated by  L.,  163 

Dollinger,  Dr.,  10,  177 

Donation  of  Constantine,  176,  177,  186 

Donatists,  62 

Donatus,  183 

Doubts,  religious,  how  solved,  44 

Dulia,  86,  90,  115,  126 

Dungal,  116 

Du  Pin,  97 

EDWARDINE  Rite,  198 

Election,  of  Pope,  73 

Elizabeth,  plotted  assassination  of,  207, 
208 

England,  and  Papal  Prerogative,  76-83 

Ephrem,  St.  Syrus,  on  Mary,  93,  101,  137, 
196 

Epiphanius,  St.,  on  the  Petrine  texts,  2; 
on  Mary,  93  ;  against  Collyridians,  105, 
no  ;  on  images,  xai 

Error,  charge  of,  in  faith,  132  ;  in  morals, 
159 

Escobar,  167 

Estcourt,  Canon,  198 

Eucharist,  its  connection  with  devotion  to 
the  Sacred  Heart  recognised  by  Canon 
Jenkins,  270;  as  a  sacrifice  among  An- 
glicans, 273  seq. 

Eusebius,  of  Cesarea,  on  images,  121 

Eusebians,  262 

Evagrius,  22,  24 

"  Exarch,"  52 

Excommunication,  sometimes  partial  only, 
57  ;  of  a  Pope  monstrous,  57,  58,  69  ;  of 
Meletius,  59  ;  absolution  from,  232 

Excommunicate  persons,  their  murder, 
204  seq. 

"  Execittores"  Papal,  in  Africa,  61 

FABIAN,  49 

Fabius,  of  Antioch,  183 

Fabri,  34 

Faith,  its  certainty  and  integrity,  how 
through  the  Pope,  20  ',  its  wounds,  how 
healed,  20,  80 ;  its  unconditional  charac- 
ter, 132,  133  ;  articles  of,  their  growth, 
134 ;  necessity  of,  143,  144  ;  whether  to  be 
kept  with  heretics,  198  seq. 

False  Decretals,  45,  76,  78  ;  examined,  177 
seq. ;  how  still  used  by  the  Church,  187 

Fathers  (see  Consent),  term  including  the 
Apostles,  54 ;  quoted  by  L.  against  cultus 
< if  Saints.  89 


Faure,  S.  J.,  35 

Felix  III.,  P.,  175 

Firmilian,  St.,  58 

Fisher,  Cardinal,  83 

Flacius  Illyricus,  218 

Flavian,  52 

Flemish  Editions    of    the     Bible    before 

Luther,  158 
Foundation  of  the  Church,  16,    17,  18,  19, 

65,  79 

Forbes,  John,  145 
"Formula,"  the,  of  St.  Peter's  tradition  is 

enunciated  by  the  Pope,  19 
Forgeries,  21  ;  alleged  Roman,  175  seq 
Forum    intemum,    externum,    Sacrameo- 

tale,  conscientiae,  166,  227,  228,  233 
Franzelin,  Cardinal,  266 
Frodoard,  monk,  191 
Fromond  of  Louvain,  34 
"  Full  of  grace,"  98,  100 

GALILEO,  33,  34,  35,  36,  260,  261 

Gavantus,  192 

Gelasius,    P.,  on   Papal    Supremacy,    43 ; 

Sacramentary   of,    98 ;    on    comm.    sub. 

•uir&que,  141  ;  on  schismatics,  256 
General    Councils,    their   object,    84,    85 ; 

L.'s  test  of  their  validity,  115  ;  infall.  of, 

132,  133,  178,  179 
Gebert,  71 
German  Editions  of   Bible  before  Luther, 

158 
Gibbings,   Taxae,  224,  229  ;    Parisian  not 

Roman  Edition,  230 
Gibbon, 177 
"  Glories  of  Mary,  '  128 
Gnostics,  89,  131 
Goodwin,  150,  267 
Grace,  what  it  is,  126 ;  Sacramental,  2131 

215 

Grassi,  S.  J.,  34 
"  Gravamina  centum,"  224 
Giaveson,  58 
Green,  Dr.,  228,  237,  280 
Gregory,  St.  Naz.,  on  Petrine  texts,  7,  8; 

on    Mary's  intercession,    101,  195,   196  ', 

on  Bible-reading,  154 
Gregory,  St.  Nyssen,  on  c.   of  Saints,  91  ; 

on  Mary,  101 
Gregory,  St.,  the    Great,  on   the    Petrine 

texts,'  3,  s,  8  ;  rejects  the  title  of  "  Uni- 
versal Bishop,  70  ;  and  England,  76,  80, 

182  ;   on  Mary,  96,  97  ;    on  Roman  Ar- 
chives, 181  ;  on  Satisfaction,  217 

Gregory  II.,  P.,  28,  30  ;  on  picture-worship, 
95,  97!    his  marriage  Indult,   182;    IV^, 

183  ;  V.,  72;  VI.,  31;  VII.  invoked  by 
L.,  4;    IX.,  76;  XII  ,  31;  XIII.  and 
the   massacre  of  St.  Bartholomew,   208  ; 
and  Tax-tables,  232 


INDEX. 


23, 


Grostete,  on  Papal  supremacy,  82 
Grotius,  48 

Growth  of  Papal  power,  83,  85 
Gunpowder  Plot,  209 

Gury,  143,  144;  misquoted  by  L.,  145; 
misrepresented,  163 

HAKPER,  S.  J.,  136 

Hearer,  must  be  infallible?  answer  to  L.'s 
sceptical  remark,  36 

Hefele,  28,  176,  210 

Helena,  St.,  adoring  the  cross,  121,  122 

Heresy,  the  Monothelite,  18 ;  whether  in 
the  letters  of  Honorius,  29,  30  ',  in  Popes, 
30 ;  before  election,  73 ;  its  status  at  the 
Council  of  Trent,  202 ;  its  nature  in 
Middle  Ages,  209;  its  unconcern  for 
truth,  89 

Heretical  mouth,  "shut  and  fastened  "by 
Rome,  17 

Heretics,  how  convicted,  20,  44,  81,  82 

Hergenrother,  Cardinal,  5,  205 

Hilary,  St.,  on  the  Petrine  texts,  3  ;  on 
supremacy,  41 ;  on  Mary  in  judgment, 
no 

Hilary,  St.,  of  Aries,  and  St.  Leo,  65 

Hilarian  fragment,  the  Sixth,  28 

Hincmar,  184 

Holiness.     See  Sanctity 

Honorary  titles,  45 

Honorius,  P.,  21,  28—30 

Hormisdas,  formula  of,  12 

Hurter,  S.  J.,  94,  148,  218,  272 

Huss,  199,  200 

Hussites,  142 

"  Hyperdulia,"  in 

IB  AS,  69  ;  epistle  of,  70 

Idolatry,  charged  on  Catholics,  118,  122, 
123,  124  ;  in  Scripture,  119 

Ignatius,  St.,  on  Infallibility,  14 

Images,  88,  in,  124 

Immaculate  Conception,  134-138 

Incarnation  not  disregarded  in  the  Ro- 
mish Church,  143  ;  L.'s  self-contradic- 
tion, 146 

Indefectibility  of  the  Church,  how  under- 
stood by  L.,  26 

Index,  Congregation,  33,  34;  its  decisions 
not  ex  cathedra,  35,  also  260,  261 

Indulgences,  principle  of,  use  ancient  and 
modern,  220-223  ',  local  abuses,  224,  225  ; 
their  connection  with  dispensation  from 
reserved  sin,  226;  whether  a  disadvan- 
tage to  the  poor,  222,  223  ;  horribly  mis- 
represented, 224 

Infallibility,  Papal  (see  also  xii.,  xiii.),  6, 12, 
13;  proofs  from  the  Fathers  from  the 
First  to  the  Twelfth  century,  14-20  ;  not 
articulately  present  in  the  minds  of  all 


the  Fathers,  21 ;  the  a  priori  argument 
for,  misunderstood  by  L.,  26;  L.'s  dis- 
proofs, 26-33  »  belongs  to  an  undoubted 
Pope,  30,  31  ;  is  not  Inspiration,  32  ; 
passive,  133  ;  Bellarmine's  argument,  172 

Innocent  I.,  25,  47,  63,  67 ;  XL,  and 
Quietism,  151 

Inquisition,  Congregation,  33,  34 

Intention,  in  Sacraments  generally,  213 
seq.  ;  in  matrimony  specially,  216,  252. 
See  also  xii.,  xiii. 

Intercession  of  Saints,  90,  91,  95  seq. 

Intolerance,  Catholic  and  Protestant,  2oa 
seq. 

Invocation,  of  Angels,  89 ;  of  Saints,  90, 
91 ;  of  Christ  in  the  New  Testament  and 
early  Church,  104  J  mediate,  129 

Irenaeus,  St.,  on  Infallibility,  14  ;  on  Su- 
premacy, 40  ;  on  Angel  worship,  89 ;  on 
Mary,  93,  101,  102  ;  against  image  wor- 
ship, 89  ;  onr  danger  of  Bible  reading, 
153,  154 

Irregularity,  73,  165 

Isidore,  St.,  Hisp.,  on  Supremacy,  44 

Isidore,  of  Pelusium,  on  Bible  reading,  155, 
156 

Isidore,  Mercator,  192 

Italian  Editions  of  Bible  before  Luther, 
158 

Ivo,  on  Communion  sub  utr&que,  141,  205 

JACQUES  Clement,  209 
Jansenists,  35,  261 
Jansenius,  32 
Janssen,  158 

Jerome,  St.,  on  the  Petrine  texts,  2  ;   on 
I       Infallibility,  21 ;  never  changed  his  view, 

22-25  ;  see  also,  38  ;  on  intercession,  90  ; 

on  worship  of  relics,  91  ;  on  Mary,  93, 

j      IO° 

I  Jesuits,   cruelly  accused  by  L.,   146  ;  also 

I      202 
Jews,  their  worship,  113 
,  John,  St.,  pillar  of  all   the  churches,  47; 
!      his  relation  to  St.  Peter,  48 
I  John,  St.,  Damascene,  on  worship  of  Saints, 


Jonas,  of  Orleans,  116 
Jovinian,  22 

"Judicia.  dogmatica"  35,  261 
Judicium  elucidationis,  65 
Julian,  St.,  190 
Julius,  P.,  43,  262 

Jurisdiction,  definition  and  division  of,  38  ; 
source  of,  50  ;  the  Pope's,  in  England,  76 
Justin,  St.,  on  Mary,  93 


286 


INDEX. 


Justina,  St.,  101,  196 

fustiniani,    St.    Laurence,    confused   with 

Benedict,  S.J.,  267,  268 
Juvenal,  of  Jerus.,  47 

'CALISCH,  263 
Keil,  263 

Keys,  of  the  Kingdom  of  Heaven,   15  ',  of 
aith,    20  ;    how  far   common   to  all  the 
Apostles,  47 
tCuinoel,  108 

LABBB,  passim 

I^actantius  quoted  against  image  worship, 

120 

Laemmer,  on  the  Roman  Martyrology, 
192,  194 

La  Marca,  56, 141 

Lambertini,  Cardinal,  268,  269 

Lanfranc,  on  Papal  Supremacy,  80 

Lansperg,  on  the  Sacred  Heart,  149 

Latria,  86,  90,  126.     See  also  114,  115 

Latrocinium,  of  Ephesus,  52 

Lecky,  203,  211 

f^eo,  St.,  on  the  Petrine  texts,  2,  § ;  on 
Papal  Supremacy,  43  ;  on  restoration  to 
communion,  57  ;  and  Chalcedon,  64  ;  and 
Hilary,  65  ;  degraded  by  L.,  68,  175  ; 
lost  letters  of,  185 

Leo  II.,  29,  30,  79  ;  IX.,  on  Infallibility, 
20;  XII.,  on  Protestant  Bibles,  154 

Liber  diurnus,  30  ;  Pontificalis,  192 

Liberius,  P.,  27,  181  ;  his  character,  244 

Licenses,  to  commit  sin,  a  false  charge, 
224  seq. 

Lingard,  77,  78,  116 

"  Litterae  formatae"  41 

Ultledale,  Dr.,  his  retractations  without 
Acknowledgment,  144,  145,  156,  168,  169, 
238,  242  ;  his  ignorance  of  theology  and 
theological  language,  27,  55,  142,  145  ; 
his  method  of  controversy,  89,  112,  124  ; 
146,  147,  168,  224,  243,  250,  258  ;  his  mis- 
quotations, 163,  164,  167,  174,  259  ;  his 
misrepresentations,  172,  220,  224,  271 ; 
his  mis-statements,  9,  63,  64,  69,  159, 
168,  169,  196,  224,  271  ;  his  mistransla- 
tions, 156,  163,  167,  220,  271 

Llorente,  210 

London,  churches  of,  in  honour  of  Mary, 

Lucca,  decrees  of,  against  Protestant  refu- 
gees, 206 
Luther,  32,  33,  157 

Mabillon,  181     _ 

Macao,  Inquisition  of,  146 

Madonna  and  Child,  103,  113  ;  of  St.  Luke, 

118 
Vlalou,  152 


Margaret  Mary,  Alacoque,  150 

Marcellinus,  P.,  193 

Marriage,  a  declaration  of  nullity,  216 ; 
dispensation,  239 

Martyrology,  Roman.     See  Baronius 

Mary,  according-  to  the  Fathers  t  tlie 
second  Eve,  who  wrought  the  world's 
salvation,  93  ;  staff  of  orthodoxy,  94 ; 
Domino.  Angelorum,  above  Angels  and 
Saints,  nearest  to  God,  95,  96,  97,  99 ; 
Mediatrix  and  ladder  of  God,  95,  98,  196 ; 
Champion  of  Christians,  all  hope  in  her, 
whose  intercession  suffers  no  refusal, 
96  ;  to  be  venerated  by  all,  94,  96  ;  her 
superior  power  of  working  miracles,  98  ; 
in  Scripture,  not  rebuked,  106,  107  ;  sin- 
less, 108,  109;  as  liOrante"  113,  195 

Mass,  application  of,  223  ;  honorarium, 
239  ;  traffic,  charge  of  L. ,  239 

Massacre  of  St.  Bartholomew,  202,  208 

Massacres  by  Protestants,  203 

Maximus,  St.,  on  Infallibility,  16 ;  on 
Mary,  93,  94 

Mayence,  Council  of,  205 

Melchiades,  P.,  183,  186 

Meletius  and  the  Holy  See,  59 

Memmius,  St.,  190,  191 

Members  of  the  Church,  who?  75  seq, 

Mennas,  58 

Metropolitans,  of  Cesarea,  47  ;  of  Cyprus, 
115  ;  of  England,  78,  79 

Mill,  on  Theophanies,  265 

Milman,  84,  178 

Milner  misrepresented,  221 

Miracles  wrought  through  invocation  of 
Saints  and  by  relics,  91,  92.  See  also 
98,  107 

Minucius  Felix,  his  protest  against  wor- 
ship of  crosses,  120 

Missions,  Catholic  and  Schismatic,  250,  251 

Molinos,  151 

Morinus,  57,  191,  226 

Muratori,  98 

NAG'S  Head  fable,  198 

Natalis,  Alexander,  44,  47,  51,  57,  58,  66, 
1 1 6,  120,  200,  202 

Neander,  178,  188 

Necessitas,  praecepti  et  medii,  139  ;  not 
understood  by  L.,  143  ;  admitted  by  An- 
glican Divines,  145 

Nestorianism,  70 

Mestorius,  63 

Newman,  Cardinal,  26,  85,  93,  101,  103. 
104,  107,  109,  131,  238,  255 ;  L.'s  wan- 
ton charge  against  him,  194,  195;  vin- 
dicated against  the  Church-Quarterly, 
273-279 

Nicolas  I.,  20;  defamed  by  L.,  176,  177; 
his  true  character,  179,  186 


INDEX. 


287 


Nilles,  269 
Nil  us,  on  Mary,  93 
Norfolk,  Duke  of,  207 
Noris,  Cardinal,  69 
Northcote  and  Brownlow,  91,  113,  195 
Notes  of  the  Church  ;  what  a  Note  is,  253  ; 
not  wanting  in  the  Roman  Church,  240 

Nothelm  of  Canterbury,  182 
Nuremberg,  Assembly  of,  225 

OBEDIENCE,  of  Mary,  102;  of  God  to  man, 
128;  to  the  Pope  in  matters  doubtful, 
172 

Obscurity  of  the  Vatican  definition  al- 
leged, 36 

"  Operations"  in  Christ,  29  seg. 

Optatus  of  Milevis,  41 

"  Orante,"  113,  195 

Origen,  on  the  Petrine  texts,  2 ;  on  Angel- 
worship,  89;  quoted  against  image- 
worship,  120,  131 ;  on  Bible-reading,  154 

Original  sin,  136 

Osservatore  Romano,  75 

PAGI,  28,  31 

Paley,  on  the  First  Commandment,  112 

Pallium,  72 

Papacy,  no  human  institution,  39,  45,  73  ; 
in  the  tenth  century,  71 J  contested,  31 

Papal,  Prerogative  and  the  Creeds,  n, 
12  ;  Infallibility  and  the  Fathers,  12  seg. 
Prerogative  and  Conciliar  Canons,  49 
seg. ;  Prerogative  and  England,  76 ; 
proved  from  catena  of  English  authori- 
ties, 79 

Papebroch,  65 

Paschasius,  183 

Patriarchate,  of  the  Pope,  39,  46,  54  ;  of 
Antioch,  47 

Paul,  St.,  9,  10,  87 

Paul  IV.,  73 

Paulinus,  of  Antioch,  59 ;  of  Nola  on 
images,  121;  on  adoration  of  the  cross, 
122,  131 

Pearson,  48 

Pelagius,  136,  189 

Pelagius,  P.  II.,  5,  188;  on  schismatics, 
256 

Penance.     See  Satisfaction 

Penitentiary,  congregation.     See  Taxae 

Petavius,  28 

Peter,  St.,  his  privilege  and  titles,  1-9; 
never  degraded  from  Apostolic  office,  8  ; 
not  restricted,  9,  10 ;  his  privilege  accord- 
ing to  L.,  10,  ii  ;  his  praises  in  the 
Church  of  Ephesus  and  Chalcedon,  15, 
16 ;  his  connection  with  Rome,  48  ;  his 
so-called  letter,  177 

Peter,  of  Antioch,  43  ;  of  Celle,  160;  Chry- 


sologus,  on  Mary,  100;  Damiun,  8,  9; 
Lombard,  on  the  knowledge  Saints  have 
of  our  prayers,  131,  132 

Philip,  the  Legate,  15,  42 

Photius,  51,  57 

Pictures.     See  Images 

Pisa,  31 

Pistoja,  35 

Pius  IV.,  i,  135  ;  and  decrees  of  Lucca, 
206 ;  erects  Dataria,  235 

Pius  V.,  his  Breviary,  192  ;  charged  falsely 
with  plotting  against  the  life  of  Eliza- 
beth, 207  ;  suppresses  Penitentiary  taxes, 
235 

Pius  VI.,  34,  35 

Pius  IX.,  calumniously  called  afree-mason, 

Pope,  the  centre  of  a  twofold  unity  in  the 
Church,  12,  13;  apostolic  head,  19;  suc- 
cessor of  St.  Peter,  10,  19,  20,  72,  184 ', 
Prince  of  the  whole  Church,  43  ;  vicar  ol 
God,  44  ;  and  Canon  law,  55  ;  un-poping 
himself,  48,  75  ;  if  doubtful,  30,  31 

Popes,  32  ;  quoting  Sardican  Canons,  175  J 
have  no  share  in  the  issue  of  the  false 
Decretals,  179  ;  their  moral  character 
and  sanctity  maintained  against  L.,  244 

Prayers,  of  saints,  90  ;  to  saints,  91,  94-96 

Price  list,  falsely  supposed  for  sins,  229  ; 
calumny  in  regard  to,  237;  L.'s  shift, 
238 

Primacy.     See  Papal  Prerogative 

Private  judgment,  172,  173 

Privilegiutn,  personate,  reale,  55 

Privilege,  meaning  of,  50 

Probabilisrn,  159 ;  wrongly  described  by 
L.,  160,'  itsjorigin  and  true  notion,  162 

Proclus,  St.,  on  Mary,  99,  100 

Promoter fidei,  office  of,  269 

Protestant,  authorities  for  Peter  in  Rome, 
48  ;  on  the  necessity  of  Papal  power,  84 ; 
on  the  false  Decretals,  178 ;  on  the  Cy- 
prianic  testimonies  as  to  the  Papacy,  188, 
189 ;  on  Protestant  intolerance,  203,  208, 
209  ;  on  satisfaction,  218 

Purgatory,  L.'s  strange  objections,  222 

Pusey,  Dr.,  212,  263,  273  seg 

QUALITY  and  quantity  in  devotion,  125 
Quesnel,  65 
Quietism,  151 

RAVAILLAC,  209 

Reformers,  32  ;  and  Pseudo-decretals,  186 ; 

those  of  England  characterised  by  L., 

209,  210,  255 
Relative  latria,  87 
Relics.    See  Cultus 
Resistance  to  Pope,  46  ;  but  cf.  57.  59 
Revelation,  its  interpreter,  26,  27 


288 


INDEX- 


Ricci,  261. 
Ridolfi,  207 

Kigali! us,  239 
Rinaldus,  225 
Ritualists,  and  comm.  sub  utr&que,  142 ; 

and  casuistry,  101  ;  and  absolution,  219  ; 

their  Eucharistic  Manuals,  277 
*  Roma  locuta  est"    See  St.  Augustine 
"  Roma  Sotteranea,"  91,  113,  195 
Russia,  conversion  of,  251 

SACRAMENTAL  system,  73 

Sacraments,  uncertainty  in,  213  seq 

Sanctity  in  the  Church  of  Rome,  247,  248 

Satisfaction,  217  seq. 

Schism  guarded  against  by  Peter's  privi- 
lege, 22,  38. 

Schismatics,  who  are,  41,  80,  82,  256 

Schneeman,  S.J.,  40 

Self-defence,  167,  17^1,  211 

Seminaries,  studies  in,  158 

Simon  Stylites,  devotion  to  in  Rome,  124 

Simony,  73,  170,  235 

Smcius,  P.,  42 

Sirlet,  Cardinal,  191,  192 

Sixtus  V.,  33,  157 

Socrates,  178,  263 

Sozomen,  on  Papal  supremacy,  43,  179, 
263 

Statistics  of  L.  regarding  Catholic  prison- 
ers, unfair,  242,  243 

Stephen,  of  Dora,  on  Infallibility,  18 

Stephen  III.  and  St.  Peter's  letter,  177 

Stigmata,  borne  by  saints  in  heaven,  91 

Suarez  on  image-worship,  114 

Succession  in  the  Roman  See,  72 ;  uninter- 
rupted, 252 

Successors  of  Peter,  15,  20,  21,  25,  80 

Sylvester,  St.,  176,  181,  182 

Sylvius,  226 

TABLET,  25,  144,  168 

Taxae,  Tax-tables,  224-238 

Tertullian,  4,  n,  40,  49,  93,  108,  265 

Theodoret,  59,  69,  92,  119, 124 

Theophanies,  87,  88,  263-265 

Thomas,  St.,  of  Canterbury,  on  Papal 
Supremacy,  81,  82 

Thomas,  St.,  Aquinas,  86  ;  doctrine  dis- 
torted by  L.,  114;  on  Immaculate  Con- 
ception, 135,  138 ;  on  Communion  sub 
utrdque,  141 

Thomassin,  97,  140,  142 

"  Three  Chapters,"  29,  68 

Tillemont,  24,  27,  60,  65,  243 

Title,  of  Son  of  God,  51 ;  of  Universal 


Bishops,    70,   78 ;   of  servus  servonan 

Dei,  71 

Titles,  honorary,  45,  46 
Titles  of  Mary,  93  seq. 
Toleration  in  principle  and  fact,  211,  213 
Tostatus,  9 

Tournon,  Cardinal,  146 
Trinity,  belief  in,  143-145 
Truilo,  council  in,  51 
Turrecremata,  30 

UNCERTAINTY.     See  Faith  and  Sacrament 
Unity  of  the  Church,  12  ;  how  preserved, 

32,  40,  4xk  188  :  possible  and  actual  in  the 

Roman  Cfcurui,  241,  242 
Untrustworthiness,  charge  of,  175 
Unfaithfulness,  charge  of,  195,    198.    See 

also     St.     Alfcnso,    Cardinal    Newman, 

Controversialists 

Urban  II.,  204;  IV.,  190  ;  VIII.,  159 
Ursicinus,  Antipope,  245 

VALLARSI,  22,  24 

Vasquez,  114,  135 

Vatican.     See  Council  and  Definition 

Vercellone,  157 

Vicar,  of  Christ's  love  (Peter),  7 ;  of  God, 

44 ;  Popes,  Vicars  of  Peter,  16,  80,  81 
Vicariate,  its  highest  characteristic,  8 
Victor,  St.,  57 
Vigilantius,  91 

Vigilius,  P.,  29,  58,  68;  of  Aries,  76 
Vincent,  St.,  of  Lerins,  83,  133;  of  Paul, 

247,  248 
Vitalian,  P.,  78 
"  Voto,  in"  139 
Vulgate,  33 

WARD,  Dr.,  107 

Wasa,  Gustav,  203 

Wicliffites,  142 

Wilfrid,  St.,  79 

Wilhelm,  Canonist,  187 

Wills,  in  Chri>t,  two  morally  one,  99 

Wiseman,   Cardinal,   false  charge  against, 

196,  197  ;  misrepresented,  221 
Wordsworth,  95 
Worship.    See  Cultus,  Latria,  and  Dulia 

YORK,  raised  to  metropolitan  rank  by  Pope 
Leo  II.,  79 

ZACHARIA,  S.  J.,  176 
Zachary,  P.,  79,  182 
Zephyrinus,  P.,  40 
Zosimus,  P.,  60,  175,  189,  £73 


Date  Due 


12208