Veni, Domine, et noli tardare,
relaxa facinora plebi tuae;
et rovoca dispersos in terram suam.
No one who desires the union of
Christendom, after its many and
long-standing divisions, can have any other
feeling than joy, my dear Pusey, at
finding from your recent volume that
you see your way to make definite
proposals to us for effecting that
great object, and are able to lay down
the basis and conditions on which you
could co-operate in advancing it. It
is not necessary that we should concur
in the details of your scheme, or
in the principles which it involves, in
order to welcome the important fact
that, with your personal knowledge of the Anglican body, and your
experience of its composition and tendencies, you consider the time to
be come when you and your friends may, without imprudence, turn your
minds to the contemplation of such an enterprise. Even were you an
individual member of that church, a watchman upon a high tower in a
metropolis of religious opinion, we should naturally listen with
interest to what you had to report of the state of the sky and the
progress of the night, what stars were mounting up or what clouds
gathering; what were the prospects of the three great parties which
Anglicanism contains within it, and what was just now the action upon
them respectively of the politics and science of the time. You do not
go into these matters; but the step you have taken is evidently the
measure and the issue of the view which you have formed of them all.
However, you are not a mere individual; from early youth you have
devoted yourself to the Established Church, and after between forty
and fifty years of unremitting labor in its service, your roots and
your branches stretch out through every portion of its large
territory. You, more than any one else alive, have been the present
and untiring agent by whom a great work has been effected in it; and,
far more than is usual, you have received in your lifetime, as well as
merited, the confidence of your brethren. You cannot speak merely for
yourself; your antecedents, your existing influence, are a pledge to
us that what you may determine will be the determination of a
multitude. Numbers, too, for whom you cannot properly be said to
speak, will be moved by your authority or your arguments; and numbers,
again, who are of a school more recent than your own, and who are only
not your followers because they have outstripped you in their free
speeches and demonstrative acts in our behalf, will, for the occasion,
accept you as their spokesman. There is no one anywhere--among
ourselves, in your own body, or, I suppose, in the Greek Church--who
can affect so vast a circle of men, so virtuous, so able, so learned,
so zealous, as come, more or less, under your influence; and I cannot
pay them all a greater compliment, than to tell them they ought all to
be Catholics, nor do them a more affectionate service than to pray
that they may one day become such. Nor can I address myself to an act
more pleasing, as I trust, to the Divine Lord of the church, and more
loyal and dutiful to his Vicar on earth, than to attempt, however,
feebly, to promote so great a consummation.
I know the joy it would give those conscientious men of whom I am
speaking to be one with ourselves. I know how their hearts spring up
with a spontaneous transport at the very thought of union; and what
yearning is theirs after that great privilege, which they have not,
communion with the See of Peter and its present, past, and future. I
conjecture it by what I used to feel myself, while yet in the Anglican
Church. I recollect well what an outcast I seemed to myself when I
took down from the shelves of my library the volumes of St. Athanasius
or St. Basil, and set myself to study them; and how, on the contrary,
when at length I was brought into Catholicism, I kissed them with
delight, with a feeling that in them I had more than all that I had
lost, and, as though I were directly addressing the glorious saints
who bequeathed them to the Church, I said to the inanimate pages, "You
are now mine, and I am now yours, beyond any mistake." Such, I
conceive, would be the joy of the persons I speak of, if they could
wake up one morning and find themselves possessed by right of Catholic
traditions and hopes, without violence to their own sense of duty;
and, certainly, I am the last man to say that such violence is in any
case lawful, that the claims of conscience are not paramount, or that
any one may overleap what he deliberately holds to be God's command,
in order to make his path easier for him or his heart lighter.
I am the last man to quarrel with this jealous deference to the voice
of our conscience, whatever judgment others may form of us in
consequence, for this reason--because their case, as it at present
stands, has, as you know, been my own. You recollect well what hard
things were said against us twenty-five years ago, which we knew in
our hearts we did not deserve. Hence, I am now in the position of the
fugitive queen in the well-known passage, who, "haud ignara mali"
herself, had learned to sympathize with those who were inheritors of
her past wanderings. There were priests, good men, whose zeal
outstripped their knowledge, and who in consequence spoke confidently,
when they would have been wiser had they suspended their adverse
judgment of those whom they had soon to welcome as brethren in
communion. We at that time were in worse plight than your friends are
now, for our opponents put their very hardest thoughts of us into
print. One of them wrote thus in a letter addressed to one of the
Catholic bishops:
"That this Oxford crisis is a real progress to Catholicism, I have
all along considered a perfect delusion. ... I look upon Mr. Newman,
Dr. Pusey, and their associates as wily and crafty, though
unskilful, guides. . . . The embrace of Mr. Newman is the kiss that
would betray us. . . . But--what is the most striking feature in the
rancorous malignity of these men--their calumnies are often lavished
upon us, when we should be led to think that the subject-matter of
their treatises closed every avenue against their vituperation. The
three last volumes [of the Tracts] have opened my eyes to the
craftiness and the cunning, as well as the malice, of the members of
the Oxford convention. . . . If the Puseyites are to be the new
apostles of Great Britain, my hopes for my country are lowering and
gloomy. . . . I would never have consented to enter the lists
against this strange confraternity ... if I did not feel that my own
prelate was opposed to the guile and treachery of these men. . . . .
I impeach Dr. Pusey and his friends of a deadly hatred of our
religion. . . . . What, my lord, would the Holy See think of the
works of these Puseyites? . . ."
Another priest, himself a convert, wrote:
"As we approach toward Catholicity our love and respect increases,
and our violence dies away; but the bulk of these men become more
rabid as they become like Rome, a plain proof of their designs. ...
I do not believe that they are any nearer the portals of the
Catholic Church than the most prejudiced Methodist and Evangelical
preacher. . . . Such, rev. sir, is an outline of my views on the
Oxford movement."
I do not say that such a view of us was unnatural; and, for myself, I
readily confess that I had used about the church such language that I
had no claim on Catholics for any mercy. But, after all, and in fact,
they were wrong in their anticipations--nor did their brethren agree
with them at the time. Especially Dr. Wiseman (as he was then) took a
larger and more generous view of us; nor did the Holy See interfere,
though the writer of one of these passages invoked its judgment. The
event showed that the more cautious line of conduct was the more
prudent; and one of the bishops, who had taken part against us, with a
supererogation of charity, sent me on his death-bed an expression of
his sorrow for having in past years mistrusted me. A faulty
conscience, faithfully obeyed, through God's mercy, had in the long
run brought me right.
Fully, then, do I recognize the rights of conscience in this matter. I
find no fault in your stating, as clearly and completely as you can,
the difficulties which stand in the way of your joining us. I cannot
wonder that you begin with stipulating conditions of union, though I
do not concur in them myself, and think that in the event you yourself
would be content to let them drop. Such representations as yours are
necessary to open the subject in debate; they ascertain how the land
lies, and serve to clear the ground. Thus I begin; but, after allowing
as much as this, I am obliged in honesty to say what I fear, my dear
Pusey, will pain you. Yet I am confident, my very dear friend, that at
least you will not be angry with me if I say, what I must say, or say
nothing at all, that there is much both in the matter and in the
manner of your volume calculated to wound those who love you well, but
love truth more. So it is; with the best motives and kindest
intentions, "Caedimur, et totidem plagis consumimus hostem." We give
you a sharp cut, and you return it. You complain of our being "dry,
hard, and unsympathizing;" and we answer that you are unfair and
irritating. But we at least have not professed to be composing an
Irenicon, when we treated you as foes. There was one of old time who
wreathed his sword in myrtle; excuse me--you discharge your
olive-branch as if from a catapult.
Do not think I am not serious; if I spoke seriously, I should seem to
speak harshly. Who will venture to assert that the hundred pages which
you have devoted to the Blessed Virgin give other than a one-sided
view of our teaching about her, little suited to win us? It may be a
salutary castigation, if any of us have fairly provoked it, but it is
not making the best of matters; it is not smoothing the way for an
understanding or a compromise. It leads a writer in the most moderate
and liberal Anglican newspaper of the day, the "Guardian," to turn
away from your representation of us with horror. "It is language,"
says your reviewer, "which, after having often heard it, we still can
only hear with horror. We had rather not quote any of it, or of the
comments upon it." What could an Exeter Hall orator, what could a
Scotch commentator on the Apocalypse, do more for his own side of the
controversy by the picture he drew of us? You may be sure that what
creates horror on one side will be answered by indignation on the
other, and these are not the most favorable dispositions for a peace
conference. I had been accustomed to think that you, who in times past
were ever less declamatory in controversy than myself, now that years
had gone on, and circumstances changed, had come to look on our old
warfare against Rome as cruel and inexpedient. Indeed, I know that it
was a chief objection urged against me only last year by persons who
agreed with you in deprecating an oratory at Oxford, which at that
time was in prospect, that such an undertaking would be the signal for
the rekindling of that fierce style of polemics which is now out of
date. I had fancied you shared in that opinion; but now, as if {49} to
show how imperative you deem its renewal, you actually bring to life
one of my own strong sayings in 1841, which had long been in the
grave--that "the Roman Church comes as near to idolatry as can be
supposed in a church, of which it said, 'The idols he shall utterly
abolish,'" p. 111.
I know, indeed, and feel deeply, that your frequent references in your
volume to what I have lately or formerly written are caused by your
strong desire to be still one with me as far as you can, and by that
true affection which takes pleasure in dwelling on such sayings of
mine as you can still accept with the full approbation of your
judgment. I trust I am not ungrateful or irresponsive to you in this
respect; but other considerations have an imperative claim to be taken
into account. Pleasant as it is to agree with you, I am bound to
explain myself in cases in which I have changed my mind, or have given
a wrong impression of my meaning, or have been wrongly reported; and,
while I trust that I have better than such personal motives for
addressing you in print, yet it will serve to introduce my main
subject, and give me an opportunity for remarks which bear upon it
indirectly, if I dwell for a page or two on such matters contained in
your volume as concern myself.
1. The mistake which I have principally in view is the belief, which
is widely spread, that I have publicly spoken of the Anglican Church
as "the great bulwark against infidelity in this land." In a pamphlet
of yours, a year old, you spoke of "a very earnest body of Roman
Catholics" who "rejoice in all the workings of God the Holy Ghost in
the Church of England (whatever they think of her), and are saddened
by what weakens her who is, in God's hands, the great bulwark against
infidelity in this land." The concluding words you were thought to
quote from my "Apologia." In consequence, Dr. Manning, now our
archbishop, replied to you, asserting, as you say, "the contradictory
of that statement." In that counter-assertion he was at the time
generally considered (rightly or wrongly, as it may be), though
writing to you, to be really correcting statements in my "Apologia,"
without introducing my name. Further, in the volume which you have now
published, you recur to the saying, and you speak of its author in
terms which, did I not know your partial kindness for me, would hinder
me from identifying him with myself. You say, "The saying was not
mine, but that of one of the deepest thinkers and observers in the
Roman communion," p. 7. A friend has suggested to me that, perhaps,
you mean De Maistre; and, from an anonymous letter which I have
received from Dublin, I find it is certain that the very words in
question were once used by Archbishop Murray; but you speak of the
author of them as if now alive. At length a reviewer of your volume,
in the "Weekly Register," distinctly attributes them to me by name,
and gives me the first opportunity I have had of disowning them; and
this I now do. What, at some time or other, I may have said in
conversation or private letter, of course, I cannot tell; but I have
never, I am sure, used the word "bulwark" of the Anglican Church
deliberately. What I said in my "Apologia" was this: That that church
was "a serviceable breakwater against errors more fundamental than its
own." A bulwark is an integral part of the thing it defends; whereas
the words "serviceable" and "breakwater" imply a kind of protection
which is accidental and de facto. Again, in saying that the Anglican
Church is a defence against "errors more fundamental than its own," I
imply that it has errors, and those fundamental.
2. There is another passage in your volume, at p. 337, which it may be
right to observe upon. You have made a collection of passages from the
fathers, as witnesses in behalf of your doctrine that the whole
Christian faith is contained in Scripture, as if, in your sense of the
words. Catholics contradicted you here. {50} And you refer to my notes
on St. Athanasius as contributing passages to your list; but, after
all, neither do you, nor do I in my notes, affirm any doctrine which
Rome denies. Those notes also make frequent reference to a traditional
teaching, which (be the faith ever so certainly contained in
Scripture) still is necessary as a Regula Fidei, for showing us that
it is contained there--vid. pp. 283, 344--and this tradition, I
know, you uphold as fully as I do in the notes in question. In
consequence, you allow that there is a twofold rule. Scripture and
tradition; and this is all that Catholics say. How, then, do Anglicans
differ from Rome here? I believe the difference is merely one of
words; and I shall be doing, so far, the work of an Irenicon, if I
make clear what this verbal difference is. Catholics and Anglicans (I
do not say Protestants) attach different meanings to the word "proof,"
in the controversy whether the whole faith is, or is not, contained in
Scripture. We mean that not every article of faith is so contained
there, that it may thence be logically proved, independently of the
teaching and authority of the tradition; but Anglicans mean that every
article of faith is so contained there, that it may thence be proved,
provided there be added the illustrations and compensations of the
tradition. And it is in this latter sense, I conceive, the fathers
also speak in the passages which you quote from them. I am sure at
least that St. Athanasius frequently adduces passages as proofs of
points in controversy which no one would see to be proofs unless
apostolical tradition were taken into account, first as suggesting,
then as authoritatively ruling, their meaning. Thus, you do not deny
that the whole is not in Scripture in such sense that pure unaided
logic can draw it from the sacred text; nor do we deny that the
faith is in Scripture, in an improper sense, in the sense that
tradition is able to recognize and determine it there. You do not
profess to dispense with tradition; nor do we forbid the idea of
probable, secondary, symbolical, connotative senses of Scripture, over
and above those which properly belong to the wording and context. I
hope you will agree with me in this.
3. Nor is it only in isolated passages that you give me a place in
your volume. A considerable portion of it is written with reference to
two publications of mine, one of which you name and defend, the other
you tacitly protest against: "Tract 90," and the "Essay on Doctrinal
Development," As to "Tract 90," you have from the first, as all the
world knows, boldly stood up for it, in spite of the obloquy which it
brought upon you, and have done me a great service. You are now
republishing it with my cordial concurrence; but I take this
opportunity of noticing, lest there should be any mistake on the part
of the public, that you do so with a different object from that which
I had when I wrote it. Its original purpose was simply that of
justifying myself and others in subscribing to the Thirty-nine
Articles while professing many tenets which had popularly been
considered distinctive of the Roman faith. I considered that my
interpretation of the Articles, as I gave it in that Tract, would
stand, provided the parties imposing them allowed it, otherwise I
thought it could not stand; and, when in the event the bishops and
public opinion did not allow it, I gave up my living, as having no
right to retain it. My feeling about the interpretation is expressed
in a passage in "Loss and Gain," which runs thus:
"'Is it,' asked Reding, 'a received view?' 'No view is received,'
said the other; 'the Articles themselves are received, but there is
no authoritative interpretation of them at all.' 'Well,' said
Reding, 'is it a tolerated view?' 'It certainly has been strongly
opposed,' answered Bateman; 'but it has never been condemned.' 'That
is no answer,' said Charles. 'Does any one bishop hold it? Did any
one bishop ever hold it? Has it ever been formally admitted as
tenable by any one bishop? Is it a view got up to meet existing
difficulties, or has it an historical existence?' Bateman could give
only one answer to {51} these questions, as they were successively
put to him. 'I thought so,' said Charles; 'the view is specious
certainly. I don't we why it might not have done, had it been
tolerably sanctioned; but you have no sanction to show me. As it
stands, it is a mere theory struck out by individuals. Our church
might have adopted this mode of interpreting the Articles; but,
from what you tell me, it certainly has not done so.'"--Ch. 15.
However, the Tract did not carry its object and conditions on its
face, and necessarily lay open to interpretations very far from the
true one. Dr. Wiseman (as he then was), in particular, with the keen
apprehension which was his characteristic, at once saw in it a basis
of accommodation between Anglicanism and Rome. He suggested broadly
that the decrees of the Council of Trent should be made the rule of
interpretation for the Thirty-nine Articles, a proceeding of which
Sancta Clara, I think, had set the example; and, as you have observed,
published a letter to Lord Shrewsbury on the subject, of which the
following are extracts:
"We Catholics must necessarily deplore [England's] separation as a
deep moral evil--as state of schism of which nothing can justify the
continuance. Many members of the Anglican Church view it in the same
light as to the first point--its sad evil; though they excuse their
individual position in it as an unavoidable misfortune. . . . We may
depend upon a willing, an able, and a most zealous co-operation with
any effort which we may make toward bringing her into her rightful
position, in Catholic unity with the Holy See and the churches of
its obedience--in other words, with the church Catholic. Is this a
visionary idea? Is it merely the expression of strong desire? I know
that many will so judge it; and, perhaps, were I to consult my own
quiet, I would not venture to express it. But I will, in simplicity
of heart, cling to hopefulness, cheered, as I feel it, by so many
promising appearances. . . .
"A natural question here presents itself--what facilities appear in
the present state of things for bringing about so happy a
consummation as the reunion of England to the Catholic Church,
beyond what have before existed, and particularly under Archbishops
Laud or Wake? It strikes me, many. First, etc. . . . A still more
promising circumstance I think your lordship will with me consider
the plan which the eventful 'Tract No. 90' has pursued, and in
which Mr. Ward, Mr. Oakeley, and even Dr. Pusey have agreed. I
allude to the method of bringing their doctrines into accordance
with ours by explanation. A foreign priest has pointed out to us a
valuable document for our consideration--'Bossuet's Reply to the
Pope,' when consulted on the best method of reconciling the
followers of the Augsburg Confession with the Holy See. The learned
bishop observes, that Providence had allowed so much Catholic truth
to be preserved in that Confession that full advantage should be
taken of the circumstance; that no retractations should be demanded,
but an explanation of the Confession in accordance with Catholic
doctrines. Now, for such a method as this, the way is in part
prepared by the demonstration that such interpretation may be given
of the most difficult Articles as will strip them of all
contradiction to the decrees of the Tridentine Synod. The same
method may be pursued on other points; and much pain may thus be
spared to individuals, and much difficulty to the church."--Pp. 11,
35, 38.
This use of my Tract, so different from my own, but sanctioned by the
great name of our cardinal, you are now reviving; and I gather from
your doing so, that your bishops and the opinion of the public are
likely now, or in prospect, to admit what twenty-five years ago they
refused. On this point, much as it rejoices me to know your
anticipation, of course I cannot have an opinion.
4. So much for "Tract 90." On the other hand, as to my "Essay on
Doctrinal Development," I am sorry to find you do not look upon it
with friendly eyes; though how, without its aid, you can maintain the
doctrines of the Holy Trinity and incarnation, and others which you
hold, I cannot understand. You consider my principle may be the means,
in time to come, of introducing into our Creed, as portions of the
necessary Catholic faith, the infallibility of the Pope, and various
opinions, pious or profane, as it may be, about our Blessed Lady. I
hope to remove your anxiety as to these consequences, before I bring
my {52} observations to an end; at present I notice it as my apology
for interfering in a controversy which at first sight is no business
of mine.
5. I have another reason for writing; and that is, unless it is rude
in me to say so, because you seem to think writing does not become me.
I do not like silently to acquiesce in such a judgment You say at p.
98:
"Nothing can be more unpractical than for an individual to throw
himself into the Roman Church because he could accept the letter
of the Council of Trent. Those who were born Roman Catholics have a
liberty which, in the nature of things, a person could not have who
left another system to embrace that of Rome. I cannot imagine how
any faith could stand the shock of leaving one system, criticising
it, and cast himself into another system, criticising it. For
myself, I have always felt that had (which God of his mercy avert
hereafter also) the English Church, by accepting heresy, driven me
out of it, I could have gone in no other way than that of closing my
eyes, and accepting whatever was put before me. But a liberty which
individuals could not use, and explanations which, so long as they
remain individual, must be unauthoritative, might be formally made
by the Church of Rome to the Church of England as the basis of
reunion."
And again, p. 210:
"It seems to me to be a psychological impossibility for one who has
already exchanged one system for another to make those distinctions.
One who, by his own act, places himself under authority, cannot make
conditions about his submission. But definite explanations of our
Articles have, before now, been at least tentatively offered to us,
on the Roman and Greek side, as sufficient to restore communion; and
the Roman explanations too were, in most cases, mere supplements to
our Articles, on points upon which our Church had not spoken."
Now passages such as these seem almost a challenge to me to speak, and
to keep silence would be to assent to the justice of them. At the
cost, then, of speaking about myself, of which I feel there has been
too much of late, I observe upon them as follows: Of course, as you
say, a convert comes to learn, and not to pick and choose. He comes in
simplicity and confidence, and it does not occur to him to weigh and
measure every proceeding, every practice which he meets with among
those whom he has joined. He comes to Catholicism as to a living
system, with a living teaching, and not to a mere collection of
decrees and canons, which by themselves are of course but the
framework, not the body and substance, of the church. And this is a
truth which concerns, which binds, those also who never knew any other
religion, not only the convert. By the Catholic system I mean that
rule of life and those practices of devotion for which we shall look
in vain in the Creed of Pope Pius. The convert comes, not only to
believe the church, but also to trust and obey her priests, and to
conform himself in charity to her people. It would never do for him to
resolve that he never would say a Hail Mary, never avail himself of an
indulgence, never kiss a crucifix, never accept the Lent
dispensations, never mention a venial sin in confession. All this
would not only be unreal, but dangerous, too, as arguing a wrong state
of mind, which could not look to receive the divine blessing.
Moreover, he comes to the ceremonial, and the moral theology, and the
ecclesiastical regulations which he finds on the spot where his lot is
cast. And again, as regards matters of politics, of education, of
general expedience, of taste, he does not criticise or controvert. And
thus surrendering himself to the influences of his new religion, and
not losing what is revealed truth by attempting by his own private
rule to discriminate every moment its substance from its accidents, he
is gradually so indoctrinated in Catholicism as at length to have a
right to speak as well as to hear. Also, in course of time, a new
generation rises round him; and there is no reason why he should not
know as much, and decide questions with as true an instinct, as those
who perhaps number fewer years than he does Easter communions. {53} He
has mastered the fact and the nature of the differences of theologian
from theologian, school from school, nation from nation, era from era.
He knows that there is much of what may be called fashion in opinions
and practices, according to the circumstances of time and place,
according to current politics, the character of the Pope of the day,
or the chief prelates of a particular country, and that fashions
change. His experience tells him, that sometimes what is denounced in
one place as a great offence, or preached up as a first principle, has
in another nation been immemorially regarded in just a contrary sense,
or has made no sensation at all, one way or the other, when brought
before public opinion; and that loud talkers, in the church as
elsewhere, are apt to carry all before them, while quiet and
conscientious persons commonly have to give way. He perceives that, in
matters which happen to be in debate, ecclesiastical authority watches
the state of opinion and the direction and course of controversy, and
decides accordingly; so that in certain cases to keep back his own
judgment on a point is to be disloyal to his superiors.
So far generally; now in particular as to myself. After twenty years
of Catholic life, I feel no delicacy in giving my opinion on any point
when there is a call for me, and the only reason why I have not done
so sooner, or more often than I have, is that there has been no call.
I have now reluctantly come to the conclusion that your volume is a
call. Certainly, in many instances in which theologian differs from
theologian, and country from country, I have a definite judgment of my
own; I can say so without offence to any one, for the very reason that
from the nature of the case it is impossible to agree with all of
them. I prefer English habits of belief and devotion to foreign, from
the same causes, and by the same right, which justify foreigners in
preferring their own. In following those of my people, I show less
singularity and create less disturbance than if I made a flourish with
what is novel and exotic. And in this line of conduct I am but
availing myself of the teaching which I fell in with on becoming a
Catholic; and it is a pleasure to me to think that what I hold now,
and would transmit after me if I could, is only what I received then.
The utmost delicacy was observed on all hands in giving me advice;
only one warning remains on my mind, and it came from Dr. Griffiths,
the late vicar-apostolic of the London district. He warned me against
books of devotion of the Italian school, which were just at that time
coming into England; and when I asked him what books he recommended as
safe guides, he bade me get the works of Bishop Hay. By this I did not
understand that he was jealous of all Italian books, or made himself
responsible for all that Dr. Hay happens to have said; but I took him
to caution me against a character and tone of religion, excellent in
its place, not suited for England. When I went to Rome, though it may
seem strange to you to say it, even there I learned nothing
inconsistent with this judgment. Local influences do not supply an
atmosphere for its institutions and colleges, which are Catholic in
teaching as well as in name. I recollect one saying among others of my
confessor, a Jesuit father, one of the holiest, most prudent men I
ever knew. He said that we could not love the Blessed Virgin too much,
if we loved our Lord a great deal more. When I returned to England,
the first expression of theological opinion which came in my way was
apropos of the series of translated saints' lives which the late Dr.
Faber originated. That expression proceeded from a wise prelate, who
was properly anxious as to the line which might be taken by the Oxford
converts, then for the first time coming into work. According as I
recollect his opinion, he was apprehensive of the effect of Italian
{54} compositions, as unsuited to this country, and suggested that the
lives should be original works, drawn up by ourselves and our friends
from Italian sources. If at that time I was betrayed into any acts
which were of a more extreme character than I should approve now, the
responsibility of course is mine; but the impulse came not from old
Catholics or superiors, but from men whom I loved and trusted who were
younger than myself. But to whatever extent I might be carried away,
and I cannot recollect any tangible instances, my mind in no long time
fell back to what seems to me a safer and more practical course.
Though I am a convert, then, I think I have a right to speak out; and
that the more because other converts have spoken for a long time,
while I have not spoken; and with still more reason may I speak
without offence in the case of your present criticisms of us,
considering that, in the charges you bring, the only two English
writers you quote in evidence are both of them converts, younger in
age than myself. I put aside the archbishop, of course, because of his
office. These two authors are worthy of all consideration, at once
from their character and from their ability. In their respective lines
they are perhaps without equals at this particular time; and they
deserve the influence they possess. One is still in the vigor of his
powers; the other has departed amid the tears of hundreds. It is
pleasant to praise them for their real qualifications; but why do you
rest on them as authorities? Because the one was "a popular writer;"
but is there not sufficient reason for this in the fact of his
remarkable gifts, of his poetical fancy, his engaging frankness, his
playful wit, his affectionateness, his sensitive piety, without
supposing that the wide diffusion of his works arises out of his
particular sentiments about the Blessed Virgin? And as to our other
friend, do not his energy, acuteness, and theological reading,
displayed on the vantage ground of the historic "Dublin Review," fully
account for the sensation he has produced, without supposing that any
great number of our body go his lengths in their view of the Pope's
infallibility? Our silence as regards their writings is very
intelligible: it is not agreeable to protest, in the sight of the
world, against the writings of men in our own communion whom we love
and respect. But the plain fact is this--they came to the Church, and
have thereby saved their souls; but they are in no sense spokesmen for
English Catholics, and they must not stand in the place of those who
have a real title to such an office. The chief authors of the passing
generation, some of them still alive, others gone to their reward, are
Cardinal Wiseman, Dr. Ullathorne, Dr. Lingard, Mr. Tierney, Dr.
Oliver, Dr. Rock, Dr. Waterworth, Dr. Husenbeth, and Mr. Flanagan;
which of these ecclesiastics has said anything extreme about the
prerogatives of the Blessed Virgin or the infallibility of the Pope?
I cannot, then, without remonstrance, allow you to identify the
doctrine of our Oxford friends in question, on the two subjects I have
mentioned, with the present spirit or the prospective creed of
Catholics; or to assume, as you do, that, because they are
thorough-going and relentless in their statements, therefore they are
the harbingers of a new age, when to show a deference for antiquity
will be thought little else than a mistake. For myself, hopeless as
you consider it, I am not ashamed still to take my stand upon the
fathers, and do not mean to budge. The history of their times is not
yet an old almanac to me. Of course I maintain the value and authority
of the "Schola," as one of the loci theologici; still I sympathize
with Petavius in preferring to its "contentious and subtle theology"
that {55} "more elegant and fruitful teaching which is moulded after
the image of erudite antiquity." The fathers made me a Catholic, and I
am not going to kick down the ladder by which I ascended into the
church. It is a ladder quite as serviceable for that purpose now as it
was twenty years ago. Though I hold, as you remark, a process of
development in apostolic truth as time goes on, such development does
not supersede the fathers, but explains and completes them. And, in
particular, as regards our teaching concerning the Blessed Virgin,
with the fathers I am content; and to the subject of that teaching I
mean to address myself at once. I do so because you say, as I myself
have said in former years, that "that vast system as to the Blessed
Virgin . . . . to all of us has been the special crux of the Roman
system," p. 101. Here, I say, as on other points, the fathers are
enough for me. I do not wish to say more than they, and will not say
less. You, I know, will profess the same; and thus we can join issue
on a clear and broad principle, and may hope to come to some
intelligible result. We are to have a treatise on the subject of our
Lady soon from the pen of the most reverend prelate; but that cannot
interfere with such a mere argument from the fathers as that to which
I shall confine myself here. Nor indeed, as regards that argument
itself, do I profess to be offering you any new matter, any facts
which have not been used by others--by great divines, as Petavius, by
living writers, nay, by myself on other occasions; I write afresh
nevertheless, and that for three reasons: first, because I wish to
contribute to the accurate statement and the full exposition of the
argument in question; next, because I may gain a more patient hearing
than has sometimes been granted to better men than myself; lastly,
because there just now seems a call on me, under my circumstances, to
avow plainly what I do and what I do not hold about the Blessed
Virgin, that others may know, did they come to stand where I stand,
what they would and what they would not be bound to hold concerning
her.
I begin by making a distinction which will go far to remove good part
of the difficulty of my undertaking, as it presents itself to ordinary
inquirers--the distinction between faith and devotion. I fully grant
that devotion toward the Blessed Virgin has increased among
Catholics with the progress of centuries; I do not allow that the
doctrine concerning her has undergone a growth, for I believe that
it has been in substance one and the same from the beginning.
By "faith" I mean the Creed and the acceptance of the Creed; by
"devotion" I mean such religious honors as belong to the objecis of
our faith, and the payment of those honors. Faith and devotion are as
distinct in fact as they are in idea. We cannot, indeed, be devout
without faith, but we may believe without feeling devotion. Of this
phenomenon every one has experience both in himself and in others; and
we express it as often as we speak of realizing a truth or not
realizing it. It may be illustrated, with more or less exactness, by
matters which come before us in the world. For instance, a great
author, or public man, may be acknowledged as such for a course of
years; yet there may be an increase, an ebb and flow, and a fashion,
in his popularity. And if he takes a lasting place in the minds of his
countrymen, he may gradually grow into it, or suddenly be raised to
it. The idea of Shakespeare as a great poet has existed from a very
early date in public opinion; and there were at least individuals then
who understood him as well, and honored him as much, as the English
people can honor him now; yet, I think, there is a national devotion
to him in this day such as never has been before. This has happened
because, as education spreads in the country, there are more men able
to enter into his {56} poetical genius, and, among these, more
capacity again for deeply and critically understanding him; and yet,
from the first, he has exerted a great insensible influence over the
nation, as is seen in the circumstance that his phrases and sentences,
more than can be numbered, have become almost proverbs among us. And
so again in philosophy, and in the arts and sciences, great truths and
principles have sometimes been known and acknowledged for a course of
years; but, whether from feebleness of intellectual power in the
recipients, or external circumstances of an accidental kind, they have
not been turned to account. Thus, the Chinese are said to have known
of the properties of the magnet from time immemorial, and to have used
it for land expeditions, yet not on the sea. Again, the ancients knew
of the principle that water finds its own level, but seem to have made
little application of their knowledge. And Aristotle was familiar with
the principle of induction; yet it was left for Bacon to develop it
into an experimental philosophy. Illustrations such as these, though
not altogether apposite, serve to convey that distinction between
faith and devotion on which I am insisting. It is like the distinction
between objective and subjective truth. The sun in the springtime will
have to shine many days before he is able to melt the frost, open the
soil, and bring out the leaves; yet he shines out from the first,
notwithstanding, though he makes his power felt but gradually. It is
one and the same sun, though his influence day by day becomes greater;
and so in the Catholic Church, it is the one Virgin Mother, one and
the same from first to last, and Catholics may acknowledge her; and
yet, in spite of that acknowledgment, their devotion to her may be
scanty in one time and place and overflowing in another.
This distinction is forcibly brought home to a convert, as a
peculiarity of the Catholic religion, on his first introduction to its
worship. The faith is everywhere one and the same; but a large liberty
is accorded to private judgment and inclination in matters of
devotion. Any large church, with its collections and groups of people,
will illustrate this. The fabric itself is dedicated to Almighty God,
and that under the invocation of the Blessed Virgin, or some
particular saint; or again, of some mystery belonging to the Divine
name, or to the incarnation, or of some mystery associated with the
Blessed Virgin. Perhaps there are seven altars or more in it, and
these again have their several saints. Then there is the feast proper
to the particular day; and, during the celebration of mass, of all the
worshippers who crowd around the priest each has his own particular
devotions, with which he follows the rite. No one interferes with his
neighbor; agreeing, as it were, to differ, they pursue independently a
common end, and by paths, distinct but converging, present themselves
before God. Then there are confraternities attached to the church: of
the sacred heart, or the precious blood; associations of prayer for a
good death, or the repose of departed souls, or the conversion of the
heathen: devotions connected with the brown, blue, or red scapular;
not to speak of the great ordinary ritual through the four seasons,
the constant presence of the blessed sacrament, its ever recurring
rite of benediction, and its extraordinary forty hours' exposition.
Or, again, look through some such manual of prayers as the Raccolta,
and you at once will see both the number and the variety of devotions
which are open to individual Catholics to choose from, according to
their religious taste and prospect of personal edification.
Now these diversified modes of honoring God did not come to us in a
day, or only from the apostles; they are the accumulations of
centuries; and, as in the course of years some of them spring up, so
others decline and die Some are local, in memory of some particular
saint who happens to be the evangelist, or patron, or pride of the
{57} nation, or who is entombed in the church, or in the city where it
stands; and these, necessarily, cannot have an earlier date than the
saint's day of death or interment there. The first of such sacred
observances, long before these national memories, were the devotions
paid to the apostles, then those which were paid to the martyrs; yet
there were saints nearer to our Lord than either martyrs or apostles;
but, as if these had been lost in the effulgence of his glory, and
because they were not manifested in external works separate from him,
it happened that for a long while they were less thought of. However,
in process of time the apostles, and then the martyrs, exerted less
influence than before over the popular mind, and the local saints, new
creations of God's power, took their place, or again, the saints of
some religious order here or there established. Then, as comparatively
quiet times succeeded, the religious meditations of holy men and their
secret intercourse with heaven gradually exerted an influence out of
doors, and permeated the Christian populace, by the instrumentality of
preaching and by the ceremonial of the church. Then those luminous
stars rose in the ecclesiastical heavens which were of more august
dignity than any which had preceded them, and were late in rising for
the very reason that they were so specially glorious. Those names, I
say, which at first sight might have been expected to enter soon into
the devotions of the faithful, with better reason might have been
looked for at a later date, and actually were late in their coming.
St. Joseph furnishes the most striking instance of this remark; here
is the clearest of instances of the distinction between doctrine and
devotion. Who, from his prerogatives and the testimony on which they
come to us, had a greater claim to receive an early recognition among
the faithful? A saint of Scripture, the foster-father of our Lord, was
an object of the universal and absolute faith of the Christian world
from the first, yet the devotion to him is comparatively of late date.
When once it began, men seemed surprised that it had not been thought
of before; and now they hold him next to the Blessed Virgin in their
religious affection and veneration.
As regards the Blessed Virgin, I shall postpone the question of
devotion for a while, and inquire first into the doctrine of the
undivided church (to use your controversial phrase) on the subject of
her prerogatives.
What is the great rudimental teaching of antiquity from its earliest
date concerning her? By "rudimental teaching" I mean the primâ facie
view of her person and office, the broad outline laid down of her, the
aspect under which she comes to us in the writings of the fathers. She
is the second Eve. [Footnote 11] Now let us consider what this
implies. Eve had a definite, essential position in the first covenant.
The fate of the human race lay with Adam; he it was who represented
us. It was in Adam that we fell; though Eve had fallen, still, if Adam
had stood, we should not have lost those supernatural privileges which
were bestowed upon him as our first father. Yet though Eve was not the
head of the race, still, even as regards the race, she had a place of
her own; for Adam, to whom was divinely committed the naming of all
things, entitled her "the mother of all the living;" a name surely
expressive not of a fact only but of a dignity; but further, as she
thus had her own general relation to the human race, so again had she
her own special place, as regards its trial and its fall in Adam. In
those primeval events, Eve had an integral share. "The woman, being
seduced, was in the transgression." She listened to the evil angel;
she offered the fruit to her husband, and he ate of it. She
co-operated not as an irresponsible instrument, but intimately and
personally in the sin; she brought it about. As the history stands,
she was a sine qua non, a positive, active cause of it. {58} And she
had her share in its punishment; in the sentence pronounced on her,
she was recognized as a real agent in the temptation and its issue,
and she suffered accordingly. In that awful transaction there were
three parties concerned--the serpent, the woman, and the man; and at
the time of their sentence an event was announced for the future, in
which the three same parties were to meet again, the serpent, the
woman, and the man; but it was to be a second Adam and a second Eve,
and the new Eve was to be the mother of the new Adam. "I will put
enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed."
The seed of the woman is the word incarnate, and the woman whose seed
or son he is is his mother Mary. This interpretation and the
parallelism it involves seem to me undeniable; but, at all events (and
this is my point), the parallelism is the doctrine of the fathers,
from the earliest times; and, this being established, by the position
and office of Eve in our fall, we are able to determine the position
and office of Mary in our restoration.
[Footnote 11: Vid. "Essay on Development of Doctrine," 1845, p.
384, etc.]
I shall adduce passages from their writings, with their respective
countries and dates; and the dates shall extend from their births or
conversions to their deaths, since what they propound is at once the
doctrine which they had received from the generation before them, and
the doctrine which was accepted and recognized as true by the
generation to whom they transmitted it.
First, then, St. Justin Martyr (A.D. 120-165), St. Irenaeus (120-200),
and Tertullian (160-240). Of these Tertullian represents Africa and
Rome, St. Justin represents Palestine, and St. Irenaeus Asia Minor and
Gaul--or rather he represents St. John the Evangelist, for he had been
taught by the martyr St. Polycarp, who was the intimate associate, as
of St. John, 60 of the other apostles.
1. St. Justin: [Footnote 12]
"We know that he, before all creatures proceeded from the Father by
his power and will, . . . and by means of the Virgin became man,
that by what way the disobedience arising from the serpent had its
beginning, by that way also it might have an undoing. For Eve, being
a virgin and undefiled, conceiving the word that was from the
serpent, brought forth disobedience and death; but the Virgin Mary,
taking faith and joy, when the angel told her the good tidings, that
the Spirit of the Lord should come upon her and the power of the
highest overshadow her, and therefore the holy one that was born of
her was Son of God, answered. Be it to me according to thy
word."--Tryph. 100.
2. Tertullian:
"God recovered his image and likeness, which the devil had seized,
by a rival operation. For into Eve, as yet a virgin, had crept the
word which was the framer of death. Equally into a virgin was to be
introduced the Word of God which was the builder-up of life; that,
what by that sex had gone into perdition, by the same sex might be
brought back to salvation. Eve had believed the serpent; Mary
believed Gabriel; the fault which the one committed by believing,
the other by believing has blotted out."--De Carn. Christ, 17.
3. St Irenaeus:
"With a fitness, Mary the Virgin is found obedient, saying, 'Behold
thy handmaid, O Lord; be it to me according to thy word.' But Eve
was disobedient; for she obeyed not, while she was yet a virgin. As
she, having indeed Adam for a husband, but as yet being a virgin,
. . . becoming disobedient, became the cause of death both to herself
and to the whole human race, so also Mary, having the predestined
man, and being yet a virgin, being obedient, became both to herself
and to the whole human race the cause of salvation. . . . And on
account of this the Lord said, that the first would be last and the
last first. And the prophet signifies the same, saying, 'Instead of
fathers you have children.' For, whereas the Lord, when born, was
the first begotten of the dead, and received into his bosom the
primitive fathers, he regenerated them into the life of God, he
himself becoming the beginning of the living, since Adam became the
beginning of the dying. Therefore also Luke, commencing the lines of
generations from the Lord, referred it back to Adam, signifying that
he regenerated the old fathers, not they him, into the gospel of
life. And so the knot {59} of Eve's disobedience received its
unloosing through the obedience of Mary; for what Eve, a virgin,
bound by incredulity, that Mary, a virgin, unloosed by faith."--
Adv. Haer, iii. 22. 34.
And again:
"As Eve by the speech of an angel was seduced, so as to flee God,
transgressing his word, so also Mary received the good tidings by
means of the angel's speech, so as to bear God within her, being
obedient to his word. And, though the one had disobeyed God, yet the
other was drawn to obey God; that of the virgin Eve the virgin Mary
might become the advocate. And, as by a virgin the human race had
been bound to death, by a virgin it is saved, the balance being
preserved, a virgin's disobedience by a virgin's obedience."
--Ibid. v. 19.
Now, what is especially noticeable in these three writers is, that
they do not speak of the Blessed Virgin as the physical instrument of
our Lord's taking flesh, but as an intelligent, responsible cause of
it; her faith and obedience being accessories to the incarnation, and
gaining it as her reward. As Eve failed in these virtues, and thereby
brought on the fall of the race in Adam, so Mary by means of them had
a part in its restoration. You imply, pp. 255, 256, that the Blessed
Virgin was only a physical instrument in our redemption; "what has
been said of her by the fathers as the chosen vessel of the
incarnation, was applied personally to her" (that is, by Catholics),
p. 151; and again, "The fathers speak of the Blessed Virgin as the
instrument of our salvation, in that she gave birth to the
Redeemer," pp. 155, 156; whereas St. Augustine, in well-known
passages, speaks of her as more exalted by her sanctity than by her
relationship to our Lord. [Footnote 13] However, not to go beyond the
doctrine of the three fathers, they unanimously declare that she was
not a mere instrument in the incarnation, such as David, or Judah, may
be considered; they declare she co-operated in our salvation, not
merely by the descent of the Holy Ghost upon her body, but by specific
holy acts, the effect of the Holy Ghost upon her soul; that, as Eve
forfeited privileges by sin, so Mary earned privileges by the fruits
of grace; that, as Eve was disobedient and unbelieving, so Mary was
obedient and believing; that, as Eve was a cause of ruin to all, Mary
was a cause of salvation to all; that, as Eve made room for Adam's
fall, so Mary made room for our Lord's reparation of it; and thus,
whereas the free gift was not as the offence, but much greater, it
follows that, as Eve co-operated in effecting a great evil, Mary
co-operated in effecting a much greater good.
And, beside the run of the argument, which reminds the reader of St.
Paul's antithetical sentences in tracing the analogy between Adam's
work and our Lord's work, it is well to observe the particular words
under which the Blessed Virgin's office is described. Tertullian says
that Mary "blotted out" Eve's fault, and "brought back the female
sex," or "the human race, to salvation;" and St. Irenaeus says that
"by obedience she was the cause or occasion" (whatever was the
original Greek word) "of salvation to herself and the whole human
race;" that by her the human race is saved; that by her Eve's
complication is disentangled; and that she is Eve's advocate, or
friend in need. It is supposed by critics, Protestant as well as
Catholic, that the Greek word for advocate in the original was
paraclete; it should be borne in mind, then, when we are accused of
giving our Lady the titles and offices of her Son, that St. Irenaeus
bestows on her the special name and office proper to the Holy Ghost.
So much as to the nature of this triple testimony; now as to the worth
of it. For a moment put aside St. Irenaeus, and put together St.
Justin in the East with Tertullian in the West. I think I may assume
that the doctrine of these two fathers about the Blessed Virgin was
the received doctrine of their own {60} respective times and places;
for writers after all are but witnesses of facts and beliefs, and as
such they are treated by all parties in controversial discussion.
Moreover, the coincidence of doctrine which they exhibit, and, again,
the antithetical completeness of it, show that they themselves did not
originate it. The next question is, Who did? For from one definite
organ or source, place or person, it must have come. Then we must
inquire, what length of time would it take for such a doctrine to have
extended, and to be received, in the second century over so wide an
area; that is, to be received before the year 200 in Palestine,
Africa, and Rome? Can we refer the common source of these local
traditions to a date later than that of the apostles, St. John dying
within thirty or forty years of St. Justin's conversion and
Tertullian's birth? Make what allowance you will for whatever possible
exceptions can be taken to this representation; and then, after doing
so, add to the concordant testimony of these two fathers the evidence
of St. Irenaeus, which is so close upon the school of St. John himself
in Asia Minor. "A three-fold cord," as the wise man says, "is not
quickly broken." Only suppose there were so early and so broad a
testimony to the effect that our Lord was a mere man, the son of
Joseph; should we be able to insist upon the faith of the Holy Trinity
as necessary to salvation? Or supposing three such witnesses could be
brought to the fact that a consistory of elders governed the local
churches, or that each local congregation was an independent church,
or that the Christian community was without priests, could Anglicans
maintain their doctrine that the rule of episcopal succession is
necessary to constitute a church? And recollect that the Anglican
Church especially appeals to the ante-Nicene centuries, and taunts us
with having superseded their testimony.
Having then adduced these three fathers of the second century, I have
at least got so far as this, viz., no one, who acknowledges the force
of early testimony in determining Christian truth, can wonder, no one
can complain, can object, that we Catholics should hold a very high
doctrine concerning the Blessed Virgin, unless indeed stronger
statements can be brought for a contrary conception of her, either of
as early, or at least of a later date. But, as far as I know, no
statements can be brought from the ante-Nicene literature to
invalidate the testimony of the three fathers concerning her; and
little can be brought against it from the fourth century, while in
that fourth century the current of testimony in her behalf is as
strong as in the second; and, as to the fifth, it is far stronger than
in any former time, both in its fulness and its authority. This will
to some extent be seen as I proceed.
4. St Cyril, of Jerusalem (315-386), speaks for Palestine:
"Since through Eve, a virgin, came death, it behoved that through a
virgin, or rather from a virgin, should life appear; that, as the
serpent had deceived the one, so to the other Gabriel might bring
good tidings."--Cat. xii. 15.
5. St. Ephrem Syrus (lie died 378) is a witness for the Syrians proper
and the neighboring Orientals, in contrast to the Graeco-Syrians. A
native of Nisibis, on the farther side of the Euphrates, he knew no
language but Syriac:
"Through Eve the beautiful and desirable glory of men was
extinguished; but it has revived through Mary."--Opp. Syr., ii. p.
318.
Again:
"In the beginning, by the sin of our first parents, death passed
upon all men; to-day, through Mary, we are translated from death
unto life. In the beginning, the serpent filled the ears of Eve, and
the poison spread thence over the whole body; to-day, Mary from her
ears received the {61} champion of eternal happiness; what,
therefore, was an instrument of death, was an instrument of life
also."--iii. p. 607.
I have already referred to St. Paul's contrast between Adam and our
Lord in his Epistle to the Romans, as also in his first Epistle to the
Corinthians. Some writers attempt to say that there is no doctrinal
truth, but a mere rhetorical display, in those passages. It is quite
as easy to say so as to attempt so to dispose of this received
comparison, in the writings of the fathers, between Eve and Mary.
6. St. Epiphanius (320-400) speaks for Egypt, Palestine, and Cyprus:
"She it is who is signified by Eve, enigmatically receiving the
appellation of the mother of the living. . . . It was a wonder that
after the fall she had this great epithet. And, according to what is
material, from that Eve all the race of men on earth is generated.
But thus in truth from Mary the Life itself was born in the world,
that Mary might bear living things and become the mother of living
things. Therefore, enigmatically, Mary is called the mother of
living things. . . Also, there is another thing to consider as to
these women, and wonderful--as to Eve and Mary. Eve became a cause
of death to man . . . and Mary a cause of life; . . . that life
might be instead of death, life excluding death which came from the
woman, viz., he who through the woman has become our life."
--Haer. 78. 18.
7. By the time of St. Jerome (331-420), the contrast between Eve and
Mary had almost passed into a proverb. He says (Ep. xxii. 21, ad
Eustoch.), "Death by Eve, life by Mary." Nor let it be supposed that
he, any more than the preceding fathers, considered the Blessed Virgin
a mere physical instrument of giving birth to our Lord, who is the
life. So far from it, in the epistle from which I have quoted, he is
only adding another virtue to that crown which gained for Mary her
divine maternity. They have spoken of faith, joy, and obedience; St.
Jerome adds, what they had only suggested, virginity. After the manner
of the fathers in his own day, he is setting forth the Blessed Mary to
the high-born Roman lady whom he is addressing as the model of the
virginal life; and his argument in its behalf is, that it is higher
than the marriage state, not in itself, viewed in any mere natural
respect, but as being the free act of self-consecration to God, and
from the personal religious purpose which it involves:
"Higher wage," he says, "is due to that which is not a compulsion,
but an offering; for, were virginity commanded, marriage would seem
to be put out of the question; and it would be most cruel to force
men against nature, and to extort from them an angel's life."--20.
I do not know whose testimony is more important than St. Jerome's, the
friend of Pope Damasus at Rome, the pupil of St. Gregory Nazianzen at
Constantinople, and of Didymus in Alexandria, a native of Dalmatia,
yet an inhabitant, at different times of his life, of Gaul, Syria, and
Palestine.
8. St. Jerome speaks for the whole world, except Africa; and for
Africa in the fourth century, if we must limit so world-wide an
authority to place, witnesses St. Augustine (354-430). He repeats the
words as if a proverb; "By a woman death, by a woman life" (Opp. t. v.
Serm. 233); elsewhere he enlarges on the idea conveyed in it. In one
place he quotes St. Irenaeus's words as cited above (adv. Julian i.
4). In another he speaks as follows:
"It is a great sacrament that, whereas through woman death became
our portion, so life was born to us by woman; that, in the case of
both sexes, male and female, the baffled devil should be tormented,
when on the overthrow of both sexes he was rejoicing; whose
punishment had been small, if both sexes had been liberated in us,
without our being liberated through both."--Opp. t. vi. De Agon,
Christ, c. 24.
9. St. Peter Chrysologus (400-450), Bishop of Ravenna, and one of the
chief authorities in the fourth General Council:
"Blessed art thou among women; for among women, on whose womb Eve,
who was cursed, brought punishment, Mary, being blest, rejoices, is
honored, and is looked up to. And woman now is truly made through
grace the mother of the living, who had been by nature the mother of
the dying. . . . Heaven feels awe of God, angels tremble at him, the
creature sustains him not, nature sufficeth not, and yet one maiden
so takes, receives, entertains him, as a guest within her breast,
that, for the very hire of her home, and as the price of her womb,
she asks, she obtains, peace for the earth, glory for the heavens,
salvation for the lost, life for the dead, a heavenly parentage for
the earthly, the union of God himself with human flesh."--Serm.
140.
It is difficult to express more explicitly, though in oratorical
language, that the Blessed Virgin had a real, meritorious
co-operation, a share which had a "hire" and a "price" in the reversal
of the fall.
10. St. Fulgentius, Bishop of Ruspe in Africa (468-533). The homily
which contains the following passage is placed by Ceillier (t. xvi. p.
127) among his genuine works:
"In the wife of the first man, the wickedness of the devil depraved
her seduced mind; in the mother of the second Man, the grace of God
preserved both her mind inviolate and her flesh. On her mind he
conferred the most firm faith; from her flesh he took away lust
altogether. Since then man was in a miserable way condemned for sin,
therefore without sin was in a marvellous way born the God
man."--Serm. 2, p. 124, De Dupl. Nativ.
Accordingly, in the sermon which follows (if it is his), he continues,
illustrating her office of universal mother, as ascribed to her by St.
Epiphanius:
"Come ye virgins to a virgin, come ye who conceive to her who
conceived, ye who bear to one who bore, mothers to a mother, ye that
suckle to one who suckled, young girls to the young girl. It is for
this reason that the Virgin Mary has taken on her in our Lord Jesus
Christ all these divisions of nature, that to all women who have
recourse to her she may be a succor, and so restore the whole race
of women who come to her, being the new Eve, by keeping virginity,
as the new Adam, the Lord Jesus Christ, recovers the whole race of
men."
Such is the rudimental view, as I have called it, which the fathers
have given us of Mary, as the second Eve, the mother of the living. I
have cited ten authors. I could cite more were it necessary. Except
the two last, they write gravely and without any rhetoric. I allow
that the two last write in a different style, since the extracts I
have made are from their sermons; but I do not see that the coloring
conceals the outline. And, after all, men use oratory on great
subjects, not on small; nor would they, and other fathers whom I might
quote, have lavished their high language upon the Blessed Virgin, such
as they gave to no one else, unless they knew well that no one else
had such claims as she had on their love and veneration.
And now I proceed to dwell for a while upon two inferences, which it
is obvious to draw from the rudimental doctrine itself; the first
relates to the sanctity of the Blessed Virgin, the second to her
greatness.
1. Her sanctity. She holds, as the fathers teach us, that office in
our restoration which Eve held in our fall. Now, in the first place,
what were Eve's endowments to enable her to enter upon her trial? She
could not have stood against the wiles of the devil, though she was
innocent and sinless, without the grant of a large grace. And this she
had--a heavenly gift, which was over and above and additional to that
nature of hers, which she received from Adam, as Adam before her had
also received the same gift, at the very time (as it is commonly held)
of his original creation. This is Anglican doctrine as well as
Catholic; it is the doctrine of Bishop Bull. He has written a
dissertation on the point. He speaks of the doctrine which "many of
the schoolmen affirm, that Adam was created {63} in grace--that is,
received a principle of grace and divine life from his very creation,
or in the moment of the infusion of his soul; of which," he says, "for
my own part I have little doubt." Again, he says: "It is abundantly
manifest, from the many testimonies alleged, that the ancient doctors
of the church did, with a general consent, acknowledge that our first
parents, in the state of integrity, had in them something more than
nature--that is, were endowed with the divine principle of the
Spirit, in order to a supernatural felicity."
Now, taking this for granted, because I know that you and those who
agree with you maintain it as well as we do, I ask, Was not Mary as
fully endowed as Eve? is it any violent inference that she, who was to
co-operate in the redemption of the world, at least was not less
endowed with power from on high, than she who, given as a helpmate to
her husband, did in the event but co-operate with him for its ruin? If
Eve was raised above human nature by that indwelling moral gift which
we call grace, is it rash to say that Mary had a greater grace? And
this consideration gives significance to the angel's salutation of her
as "full of grace"--an interpretation of the original word which is
undoubtedly the right one, as soon as we resist the common Protestant
assumption that grace is a mere external approbation or acceptance,
answering to the word "favor;" whereas it is, as the fathers teach, a
real inward condition or superadded quality of soul. And if Eve had
this supernatural inward gift given her from the moment of her
personal existence, is it possible to deny that Mary too had this gift
from the very first moment of her personal existence? I do not know
how to resist this inference--well, this is simply and literally the
doctrine of the immaculate conception. I say the doctrine of the
immaculate conception is in its substance this, and nothing more or
less than this (putting aside the question of degrees of grace); and
it really does seem to me bound up in that doctrine of the fathers,
that Mary is the second Eve.
It is to me a most strange phenomenon that so many learned and devout
men stumble at this doctrine, and I can only account for it by
supposing that, in matter of fact, they do not know what we mean by
the immaculate conception; and your volume (may I say it?) bears out
my suspicion. It is a great consolation to have reason for thinking
so--for believing that in some sort the persons in question are in the
position of those great saints in former times who are said to have
hesitated about it, when they would not have hesitated at all if the
word "conception" had been clearly explained in that sense in which
now it is universally received. I do not see how any one who holds
with Bull the Catholic doctrine of the supernatural endowments of our
first parents, has fair reason for doubting our doctrine about the
Blessed Virgin. It has no reference whatever to her parents, but
simply to her own person; it does but affirm that, together with the
nature which she inherited from her parents, that is, her own nature,
she had a superadded fulness of grace, and that from the first moment
of her existence. Suppose Eve had stood the trial, and not lost her
first grace, and suppose she had eventually had children, those
children from the first moment of their existence would, through
divine bounty, have received the same privilege that she had ever had;
that is, as she was taken from Adam's side, in a garment, so to say,
of grace, so they in turn would have received what may be called an
immaculate conception. They would have been conceived in grace, as in
fact they are conceived in sin. What is there difficult in this
doctrine? What is there unnatural? Mary may be called a daughter of
Eve unfallen. You believe with us that St. John Baptist had grace
given to him three months before his birth, at the time {64} that the
Blessed Virgin visited his mother. He accordingly was not immaculately
conceived, because he was alive before grace came to him; but our
Lady's case only differs from his in this respect, that to her grace
came not three months merely before her birth, but from the first
moment of her being, as it had been given to Eve.
But it may be said, How does this enable us to say that she was
conceived without original sin? If Anglicans knew what we mean by
original sin, they would not ask the question. Our doctrine of
original sin is not the same as the Protestant doctrine. "Original
sin," with us, cannot be called sin in the ordinary sense of the word
"sin;" it is a term denoting the imputation of Adam's sin, or the
state to which Adam's sin reduces his children; but by Protestants it
is understood to be sin in the same sense as actual sin. We, with the
fathers, think of it as something negative; Protestants as something
positive. Protestants hold that it is a disease, a change of nature, a
poison internally corrupting the soul, and propagated from father to
son, after the manner of a bad constitution; and they fancy that we
ascribe a different nature from ours to the Blessed Virgin, different
from that of her parents, and from that of fallen Adam. We hold
nothing of the kind; we consider that in Adam she died, as others;
that she was included, together with the whole race, in Adam's
sentence; that she incurred his debt, as we do; but that, for the sake
of him who was to redeem her and us upon the cross, to her the debt
was remitted by anticipation; on her the sentence was not carried out,
except indeed as regards her natural death, for she died when her time
came, as others. All this we teach, but we deny that she had original
sin; for by original sin we mean, as I have already said, something
negative, viz., this only, the deprivation of that supernatural
unmerited grace which Adam and Eve had on their creation--deprivation
and the consequences of deprivation. Mary could not merit, any more
than they, the restoration of that grace; but it was restored to her
by God's free bounty from the very first moment of her existence, and
thereby, in fact, she never came under the original curse, which
consisted in the loss of it. And she had this special privilege in
order to fit her to become the mother of her and our Redeemer, to fit
her mentally, spiritually, for it; so that, by the aid of the first
grace, she might so grow in grace that when the angel came, and her
Lord was at hand, she might be "full of grace," prepared, as far as a
creature could be prepared, to receive him into her bosom.
I have drawn the doctrine of the immaculate conception, as an
immediate inference, from the primitive doctrine that Mary is the
second Eve. The argument seems to me conclusive; and, if it has not
been universally taken as such, this has come to pass because there
has not been a clear understanding among Catholics what exactly was
meant by the immaculate conception. To many it seemed to imply that
the Blessed Virgin did not die in Adam, that she did not come under
the penalty of the fall, that she was not redeemed; that she was
conceived in some way inconsistent with the verse in the Miserere
psalm. If controversy had in earlier days so cleared the subject as to
make it plain to all that the doctrine meant nothing else than that,
in fact, in her case the general sentence on mankind was not carried
out, and that by means of the indwelling in her of divine grace from
the first moment of her being (and this is all the decree of 1854 has
declared), I cannot believe that the doctrine would have ever been
opposed; for an instinctive sentiment has led Christians jealously to
put the Blessed Mary aside when sin comes into discussion. This is
expressed in the well-known words of St. Augustine. All have sinned
"except the holy Virgin Mary, {65} concerning whom, for the honor of
the Lord, I wish no question to be raised at all, when we are treating
of sins" (de Nat. et Grat. 42); words which, whatever St. Augustine's
actual occasion of using them (to which you refer, p. 176), certainly,
in the spirit which they breathe, are well adapted to convey the
notion that, apart from her relation to her parents, she had not
personally any part in sin whatever. It is true that several great
fathers of the fourth century do imply or assert that on one or two
occasions she did sin venially or showed infirmity. This is the only
real objection which I know of; and, as I do not wish to pass it over
lightly, I propose to consider it at the end of this letter.
2. Now, secondly, her greatness. Here let us suppose that our first
parents had overcome in their trial, and had gained for their
descendants for ever the full possession, as if by right, of the
privileges which were promised to their obedience--grace here and
glory hereafter. Is it possible that those descendants, pious and
happy from age to age in their temporal homes, would have forgotten
their benefactors? Would they not have followed them in thought into
the heavens, and gratefully commemorated them on earth? The history of
the temptation, the craft of the serpent, their steadfastness in
obedience--the loyal vigilance, the sensitive purity of Eve--the great
issue, salvation wrought out for all generations--would have been
never from their minds, ever welcome to their ears. This would have
taken place from the necessity of our nature. Every nation has its
mythical hymns and epics about its first fathers and its heroes. The
great deeds of Charlemagne, Alfred, Coeur de Lion, Wallace, Louis the
Ninth, do not die; and though their persons are gone from us, we make
much of their names. Milton's Adam, after his fall, understands the
force of this law, and shrinks from the prospect of its operation:
"Who of all ages to succeed but, feeling
The evil on him brought by me, will curse
My head? Ill fare our ancestor impure;
For this we may thank Adam."
If this anticipation has not been fulfilled in the event, it is owing
to the needs of our penal life, our state of perpetual change, and the
ignorance and unbelief incurred by the fall; also because, fallen as
we are, from the hopefulness of our nature we feel more pride in our
national great men than dejection at our national misfortunes. Much
more then in the great kingdom and people of God--the saints are ever
in our sight, and not as mere ineffectual ghosts, but as if present
bodily in their past selves. It is said of them, "Their works do
follow them;" what they were here, such are they in heaven and in the
church. As we call them by their earthly names, so we contemplate them
in their earthly characters and histories. Their acts, callings, and
relations below are types and anticipations of their mission above.
Even in the case of our Lord himself, whose native home is the eternal
heavens, it is said of him in his state of glory, that he is a "priest
for ever;" and when he comes again he will be recognized, by those who
pierced him, as being the very same that he was on earth. The only
question is, whether the Blessed Virgin had a part, a real part, in
the economy of grace, whether, when she was on earth, she secured by
her deeds any claim on our memories; for, if she did, it is impossible
we should put her away from us, merely because she is gone hence, and
not look at her still, according to the measure of her earthly
history, with gratitude and expectation. If, as St. Irenaeus says, she
did the part of an advocate, a friend in need, even in her mortal
life, if, as St. Jerome and St. Ambrose say, she was on earth the
great pattern of virgins, if she had a meritorious share in bringing
about our redemption, if her maternity was earned by her faith and
obedience, if her divine Son was subject to her, and if she stood by
the {66} cross with a mother's heart and drank in to the full those
sufferings which it was her portion to gaze upon, it is impossible
that we should not associate these characteristics of her life on
earth with her present state of blessedness; and this surely she
anticipated, when she said in her hymn that "all generations shall
call her blessed."
I am aware that, in thus speaking, I am following a line of thought
which is rather a meditation than an argument in controversy, and I
shall not carry it further; but still, in turning to other topics, it
is to the point to inquire whether the popular astonishment, excited
by our belief in the Blessed Virgin's present dignity, does not arise
from the circumstance that the bulk of men, engaged in matters of the
world, have never calmly considered her historical position in the
gospels so as rightly to realize (if I may use the word a second time)
what that position imports. I do not claim for the generality of
Catholics any greater powers of reflection upon the objects of their
faith than Protestants commonly have, but there is a sufficient number
of religious men among Catholics who, instead of expending their
devotional energies (as so many serious Protestants do) on abstract
doctrines, such as justification by faith only, or the sufficiency of
holy Scripture, employ themselves in the contemplation of Scripture
facts, and bring out in a tangible form the doctrines involved in
them, and give such a substance and color to the sacred history as to
influence their brethren, who, though superficial themselves, are
drawn by their Catholic instinct to accept conclusions which they
could not indeed themselves have elicited, but which, when elicited,
they feel to be true. However, it would be out of place to pursue this
course of reasoning here; and instead of doing so, I shall take what
perhaps you may think a very bold step--I shall find the doctrine of
our Lady's present exaltation in Scripture.
I mean to find it in the vision of the woman and child in the twelfth
chapter of the Apocalypse. [Footnote 14] Now here two objections will
be made to me at once: first, that such an interpretation is but
poorly supported by the fathers; and secondly, that in ascribing such
a picture of the Madonna (as it may be called) to the apostolic age, I
am committing an anachronism.
As to the former of these objections, I answer as follows: Christians
have never gone to Scripture for proofs of their doctrines till there
was actual need from the pressure of controversy. If in those times
the Blessed Virgin's dignity were unchallenged on all hands as a
matter of doctrine, Scripture, as far as its argumentative matter was
concerned, was likely to remain a sealed book to them. Thus, to take
an instance in point, the Catholic party in the English Church (say
the Non-jurors), unable by their theory of religion simply to take
their stand on tradition, and distressed for proof of their doctrines,
had their eyes sharpened to scrutinize and to understand the letter of
holy Scripture, which to others brought no instruction. And the
peculiarity of their interpretations is this--that they have in
themselves great logical cogency, yet are but faintly supported by
patristical commentators. Such is the use of the word
or facere in our Lord's institution of the holy eucharist, which, by a
reference to the old Testament, is found to be a word of sacrifice.
Such again is
in the passage in the Acts, "As they
ministered to the Lord and fasted," which again is a sacerdotal
term. And such the passage in Rom. xv. 16, in which several terms are
used which have an allusion to the sacrificial eucharistic rite. Such,
too, is St. Paul's repeated message to the household of Onesiphorus,
with no mention of Onesiphorus himself, but in one place, with the
addition of a prayer that "he might find mercy of the Lord" in the day
of {67} judgment, which, taking into account its wording and the known
usage of the first centuries, we can hardly deny is a prayer for his
soul. Other texts there are which ought to find a place in ancient
controversies, and the omission of which by the fathers affords matter
for more surprise; those, for instance, which, according to
Middleton's rule, are real proofs of our Lord's divinity, and yet are
passed over by Catholic disputants; for these bear upon a then
existing controversy of the first moment and of the most urgent
exigency.
As to the second objection which I have supposed, so far from allowing
it, I consider that it is built upon a mere imaginary fact, and that
the truth of the matter lies in the very contrary direction. The
Virgin and Child is not a mere modern idea; on the contrary, it is
represented again and again, as every visitor to Rome is aware, in the
paintings of the Catacombs. Mary is there drawn with the Divine Infant
in her lap, she with hands extended in prayer, he with his hand in the
attitude of blessing. No representation can more forcibly convey the
doctrine of the high dignity of the mother, and, I will add, of her
power over her Son. Why should the memory of his time of subjection be
so dear to Christians, and so carefully preserved? The only question
to be determined, is the precise date of these remarkable monuments of
the first age of Christianity. That they belong to the centuries of
what Anglicans call the "undivided church" is certain; but lately
investigations have been pursued which place some of them at an
earlier date than any one anticipated as possible. I am not in a
position to quote largely from the works of the Cavaliere de Rossi,
who has thrown so much light upon the subject; but I have his "Imagini
Scelte," published in 1863, and they are sufficient for my purpose. In
this work he has given us from the Catacombs various representations
of the Virgin and Child; the latest of these belong to the early part
of the fourth century, but the earliest he believes to be referable to
the very age of the apostles. He comes to this conclusion from the
style and the skill of the composition, and from the history,
locality, and existing inscriptions of the subterranean in which it is
found. However, he does not go so far as to insist upon so early a
date; yet the utmost liberty he grants is to refer the painting to the
era of the first Antonines--that is, to a date within half a century
of the death of St. John. I consider then that, as you fairly use, in
controversy with Protestants, the traditional doctrine of the church
in early times, as an explanation of the Scripture text, or at least
as a suggestion, or as a defence, of the sense which you may wish to
put on it, quite apart from the question whether your interpretation
itself is traditional, so it is lawful for me, though I have not the
positive words of the fathers on my side, to shelter my own
interpretation of the apostle's vision under the fact of the extant
pictures of Mother and Child in the Roman Catacombs. There is another
principle of Scripture interpretation which we should hold with
you--when we speak of a doctrine being contained in Scripture, we do
not necessarily mean that it is contained there in direct categorical
terms, but that there is no other satisfactory way of accounting for
the language and expressions of the sacred writers, concerning the
subject-matter in question, than to suppose that they held upon it the
opinions which we hold; that they would not have spoken as they have
spoken unless they held it. For myself I have ever felt the truth of
this principle, as regards the Scripture proof of the Holy Trinity; I
should not have found out that doctrine in the sacred text without
previous traditional teaching; but when once it is suggested from
without, it commends itself as the one true interpretation, from its
appositeness, because no other view of doctrine, which can be ascribed
to the inspired writers, so happily {68} solves the obscurities and
seeming inconsistencies of their teaching. And now to apply what I
have said to the passage in the Apocalypse.
If there is an apostle on whom, à priori, our eyes would be fixed,
as likely to teach us about the Blessed Virgin, it is St. John, to
whom she was committed by our Lord on the cross--with whom, as
tradition goes, she lived at Ephesus till she was taken away. This
anticipation is confirmed à posteriori; for, as I have said above,
one of the earliest and fullest of our informants concerning her
dignity, as being the second Eve, is Irenaeus, who came to Lyons from
Asia Minor, and had been taught by the immediate disciples of St.
John. The apostle's vision is as follows:
"A great sign appeared in heaven; a woman clothed with the sun, and
the moon under her feet; and on her head a crown of twelve stars. And
being with child, she cried travailing in birth, and was in pain to be
delivered. And there was seen another sign in heaven; and behold a
great red dragon . . . And the dragon stood before the woman who was
ready to be delivered, that, when she should be delivered, he might
devour her son. And she brought forth a man-child, who was to rule all
nations with an iron rod; and her son was taken up to God and to his
throne. And the woman fled into the wilderness." Now I do not deny, of
course, that, under the image of the woman, the church is signified;
but what I would maintain is this, that the holy apostle would not
have spoken of the church under this particular image unless there
had existed a Blessed Virgin Mary, who was exalted on high, and the
object of veneration to all the faithful.
No one doubts that the "man-child" spoken of is an allusion to our
Lord; why, then, is not "the woman" an allusion to his mother? This
surely is the obvious sense of the words; of course it has a further
sense also, which is the scope of the image; doubtless the child
represents the children of the church, and doubtless the woman
represents the church; this, I grant, is the real or direct sense, but
what is the sense of the symbol? who are the woman and the child? I
answer, They are not personifications but persons. This is true of the
child, therefore it is true of the woman.
But again: not only mother and child, but a serpent, is introduced
into the vision. Such a meeting of man, woman, and serpent has not
been found in Scripture, since the beginning of Scripture, and now it
is found in its end. Moreover, in the passage in the Apocalypse, as if
to supply, before Scripture came to an end, what was wanting in its
beginning, we are told, and for the first time, that the serpent in
Paradise was the evil spirit. If the dragon of St. John is the same as
the serpent of Moses, and the man-child is "the seed of the woman,"
why is not the woman herself she whose seed the man-child is? And, if
the first woman is not an allegory, why is the second? if the first
woman is Eve, why is not the second Mary?
But this is not all. The image of the woman, according to Scripture
usage, is too bold and prominent for a mere personification. Scripture
is not fond of allegories. We have indeed frequent figures there, as
when the sacred writers speak of the arm or sword of the Lord; and so
too when they speak of Jerusalem or Samaria in the feminine; or of the
mountains leaping for joy, or of the church as a bride or as a vine;
but they are not much given to dressing up abstract ideas or
generalizations in personal attributes. This is the classical rather
than the Scripture style. Xenophon places Hercules between Virtue and
Vice, represented as women; AEschylus introduces into his drama Force
and Violence; Virgil gives personality to public rumor or Fame, and
Plautus to Poverty. So on monuments done in the classical style, we
{69} see virtues, vices, rivers, renown, death, and the like, turned
into human figures of men and women. I do not say there are no
instances at all of this method in Scripture, but I say that such
poetical compositions are strikingly unlike its usual method. Thus we
at once feel its difference from Scripture, when we betake ourselves
to the Pastor of Hermes, and find the church a woman, to St.
Methodius, and find Virtue a woman, and to St. Gregory's poem, and
find Virginity again a woman. Scripture deals with types rather than
personifications. Israel stands for the chosen people, David for
Christ, Jerusalem for heaven. Consider the remarkable representations,
dramatic I may call them, in Jeremiah, Ezechiel, and Hosea;
predictions, threatenings, and promises are acted out by those
prophets. Ezechiel is commanded to shave his head, and to divide and
scatter his hair; and Ahias tears his garment, and gives ten out of
twelve parts of it to Jeroboam. So, too, the structure of the imagery
in the Apocalypse is not a mere allegorical creation, but is founded
on the Jewish ritual. In like manner our Lord's bodily cures are
visible types of the power of his grace upon the soul; and his
prophecy of the last day is conveyed under that of the fall of
Jerusalem. Even his parables are not simply ideal, but relations of
occurrences which did or might take place, under which was conveyed a
spiritual meaning. The description of Wisdom in the Proverbs, and
other sacred books, has brought out the instinct of commentators in
this respect. They felt that Wisdom could not be a mere
personification, and they determined that it was our Lord; and the
later of these books, by their own more definite language, warranted
that interpretation. Then, when it was found that the Arians used it
in derogation of our Lord's divinity, still, unable to tolerate the
notion of a mere allegory, commentators applied the description to the
Blessed Virgin. Coming back then to the Apocalyptic vision, I ask, If
the woman must be some real person, who can it be whom the apostle
saw, and intends, and delineates, but that same great mother to whom
the chapters in the Proverbs are accommodated? And let it be observed,
moreover, that in this passage, from the allusion in it to the history
of the fall, she may be said still to be represented under the
character of the second Eve. I make a further remark; it is sometimes
asked, Why do not the sacred writers mention our Lady's greatness? I
answer, she was, or may have been, alive when the apostles and
evangelists wrote; there was just one book of Scripture certainly
written after her death, and that book does (if I may so speak)
canonize her.
But if all this be so, if it is really the Blessed Virgin whom
Scripture represents as clothed with the sun, crowned with the stars
of heaven, and with the moon as her footstool, what height of glory
may we not attribute to her? and what are we to say of those who,
through ignorance, run counter to the voice of Scripture, to the
testimony of the fathers, to the traditions of East and West, and
speak and act contemptuously toward her whom her Lord delighteth to
honor?
Now I have said all I mean to say on what I have called the rudimental
teaching of antiquity about the Blessed Virgin; but, after all, I have
not insisted on the highest view of her prerogatives which the fathers
have taught us. You, my dear friend, who know so well the ancient
controversies and councils, may have been surprised why I should not
have yet spoken of her as the Theotocos; but I wished to show on how
broad a basis her greatness rests, independent of that wonderful
title; and again, I have been loth to enlarge upon the force of a
word, which is rather matter for devotional thought than for polemical
dispute. However, I might as well not {70} write on my subject at all
as altogether be silent upon it.
It is, then, an integral portion of the faith fixed by ecumenical
council, a portion of it which you hold as well as I, that the Blessed
Virgin is Theotocos, Deipara, or Mother of God; and this word, when
thus used, carries with it no admixture of rhetoric, no taint of
extravagant affection; it has nothing else but a well-weighed, grave,
dogmatic sense, which corresponds and is adequate to its sound. It
intends to express that God is her Son, as truly as any one of us is
the son of his own mother. If this be so, what can be said of any
creature whatever which may not be said of her? what can be said too
much, so that it does not compromise the attributes of the Creator?
He, indeed, might have created a being more perfect, more admirable,
than she is; he might have endued that being, so created, with a
richer grant of grace, of power, of blessedness; but in one respect
she surpasses all even possible creations, viz., that she is Mother of
her Creator. It is this awful title, which both illustrates and
connects together the two prerogatives of Mary, on which I have been
lately enlarging, her sanctity and her greatness. It is the issue of
her sanctity; it is the source of her greatness. What dignity can be
too great to attribute to her who is as closely bound up, as
intimately one, with the Eternal Word, as a mother is with a son? What
outfit of sanctity, what fulness and redundance of grace, what
exuberance of merits must have been hers, on the supposition, which
the fathers justify, that her Maker regarded them at all, and took
them into account, when he condescended "not to abhor the Virgin's
womb?" Is it surprising, then, that on the one hand she should be
immaculate in her conception? or on the other that she should be
exalted as a queen, with a crown of twelve stars? Men sometimes wonder
that we call her mother of life, of mercy, of salvation; what are all
these titles compared to that one name, Mother of God?
I shall say no more about this title here. It is scarcely possible to
write of it without diverging into a style of composition unsuited to
a letter; so I proceed to the history of its use.
The title of Theotocos [Footnote 15] begins with ecclesiastical
writers of a date hardly later than that at which we read of her as
the second Eve. It first occurs in the works of Origen (185-254); but
he, witnessing for Egypt and Palestine, witnesses also that it was in
use before his time; for, as Socrates informs us, he "interpreted how
it was to be used, and discussed the question at length" (Hist. vii.
32). Within two centuries (431), in the general council held against
Nestorius, it was made part of the formal dogmatic teaching of the
church. At that time Theodoret, who from his party connections might
have been supposed disinclined to its solemn recognition, owned that
"the ancient and more than ancient heralds of the orthodox faith
taught the use of the term according to the apostolic tradition." At
the same date John of Antioch, who for a while sheltered Nestorius,
whose heresy lay in the rejection of the term, said, "This title no
ecclesiastical teacher has put aside. Those who have used it are many
and eminent, and those who have not used it have not attacked those
who did." Alexander again, one of the fiercest partisans of Nestorius,
allows the use of the word, though he considers it dangerous. "That in
festive solemnities," he says, "or in preaching or teaching,
theotocos should be unguardedly said by the orthodox without
explanation is no blame, because such statements were not dogmatic,
nor said with evil meaning." If we look for those, in the interval
between Origen and the council, to whom Alexander refers, we find it
used again and again by the fathers in such of their works as are
extant: by {71} Archelans of Mesopotamia, Eusebius of Palestine,
Alexander of Egypt, in the third century; in the fourth, by Athanasius
many times with emphasis, by Cyril of Palestine, Gregory Nyssen of
Cappadocia, Gregory Nazianzen of Cappadocia, Antiochus of Syria, and
Ammonius of Thrace; not to speak of the Emperor Julian, who, having no
local or ecclesiastical domicile, speaks for the whole of Christendom.
Another and earlier emperor, Constantine, in his speech before the
assembled bishops at Nicaea, uses the still more explicit title of
"the Virgin Mother of God;" which is also used by Ambrose of Milan,
and by Vincent and Cassian in the south of France, and then by St.
Leo.
So much for the term; it would be tedious to produce the passages of
authors who, using or not using the term, convey the idea. "Our God
was carried in the womb of Mary," says Ignatius, who was martyred A.D.
106. "The word of God," says Hippolytus, "was carried in that virgin
frame." "The Maker of all," says Amphilochius, "is born of a virgin."
"She did compass without circumscribing the Sun of justice--the
Everlasting is born," says Chrysostom. "God dwelt in the womb," says
Proclus. "When thou hearest that God speaks from the bush," asks
Theodotus, "in the bush seest thou not the Virgin?" Cassian says,
"Mary bore her Author." "The one God only-begotten," says Hilary, "is
introduced into the womb of a virgin." "The Everlasting," says
Ambrose, "came into the Virgin him." "The closed gate," says Jerome,
"by which alone the Lord God of Israel enters, is the Virgin Mary."
"That man from heaven," says Capriolus, "is God conceived in the
womb." "He is made in thee," says Augustine, "who made thee."
This being the faith of the fathers about the Blessed Virgin, we need
not wonder that it should in no long time be transmuted into devotion.
No wonder if their language should be unmeasured, when so great a term
as "Mother of God" had been formally set down as the safe limit of it.
No wonder if it became stronger and stronger as time went on, since
only in a long period could the fulness of its import be exhausted.
And in matter of fact, and as might be anticipated (with the few
exceptions which I have noted above, and which I am to treat of
below), the current of thought in those early ages did uniformly tend
to make much of the Blessed Virgin and to increase her honors, not to
circumscribe them. Little jealousy was shown of her in those times;
but, when any such niggardness of devotion occurred, then one father
or other fell upon the offender, with zeal, not to say with
fierceness. Thus St. Jerome inveighs against Helvidius; thus St.
Epiphanius denounces Apollinaris, St. Cyril Nestorius, and St. Ambrose
Bonosus; on the other hand, each successive insult offered to her by
individual adversaries did but bring out more fully the intimate
sacred affection with which Christendom regarded her. "She was alone,
and wrought the world's salvation and conceived the redemption of
all," says Ambrose; [Footnote 16] "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,
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
translated from death to life," according to St. Ephrem. "The manna
which is delicate, bright, sweet, and virgin, {72} which, as though
coming from heaven, has poured down on all the people of the churches
a food pleasanter than honey," according to St. Maximus.
Proclus calls her "the unsullied shell which contains the pearl of
price," "the church's diadem," "the expression of orthodoxy." "Run
through all creation in your thought," he says, "and see if there be
one equal or superior to the Holy Virgin, Mother of God." "Hail,
mother, clad in light, of the light which sets not," says Theodotus,
or some one else at Ephesus--"hail, all-undefiled mother of holiness;
hail, most pellucid fountain of the life-giving stream." And St. Cyril
too at Ephesus, "Hail, Mary, Mother of God, majestic common-treasure
of the whole world, the lamp unquenchable, the crown of virginity, 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, etc, etc." [Footnote 17] Such is but a
portion of the panegyrical language which St. Cyril used in the third
ecumenical council.
I must not close my review of the Catholic doctrine concerning the
Blessed Virgin without directly speaking of her intercessory power,
though I have incidentally made mention of it already. It is the
immediate result of two truths, neither of which you dispute: first,
that "it is good and useful," as the Council of Trent says,
"suppliantly to invoke the saints and to have recourse to their
prayers;" and secondly, that the Blessed Mary is singularly dear to
her Son and singularly exalted in sanctity and glory. However, at the
risk of becoming didactic, I will state somewhat more fully the
grounds on which it rests.
To a candid pagan it must have been one of the most remarkable points
of Christianity, on its first appearance, that the observance of
prayer formed so vital a part of its organization; and that, though
its members were scattered all over the world, and its rulers and
subjects had so little opportunity of correlative action, yet they,
one and all, found the solace of a spiritual intercourse, and a real
bond of union, in the practice of mutual intercession. Prayer, indeed,
is the very essence of religion; but in the heathen religions it was
either public or personal; it was a state ordinance, or a selfish
expedient, for the attainment of certain tangible, temporal goods.
Very different from this was its exercise among Christians, who were
thereby knit together in one body, different as they were in races,
ranks, and habits, distant from each other in country, and helpless
amid hostile populations. Yet it proved sufficient for its purpose.
Christians could not correspond; they could not combine; but they
could pray one for another. Even their public prayers partook of this
character of intercession; for to pray for the welfare of the whole
church was really a prayer for all classes of men, and all the
individuals of which it was composed. It was in prayer that the church
was founded. For ten days all the apostles "persevered with one mind
in prayer and supplication, with the women, and Mary the Mother of
Jesus, and with his brethren." Then again at Pentecost "they were all
with one mind in one place;" and the converts then made are said to
have "persevered in prayer." And when, after a while, St. Peter was
seized and put in prison with a view to his being put to death,
"prayer was made without ceasing" by the church of God for him; and,
when the angel released him, he took refuge in a house "where many
were gathered together in prayer."
We are so accustomed to these passages as hardly to be able to do
justice to their singular significance; and they are followed up by
various passages of the apostolic epistles. St. Paul enjoins his
brethren to '"pray with all prayer and supplication at all times in
the Spirit, with all instance and supplication for all saints," to
"pray in every place," "to make supplication, prayers, intercessions,
giving of thanks for all men." And in his own person he "ceases not to
give thanks for them, commemorating them in his prayers," and "always
in all his prayers making supplication for them all with joy."
Now, was this spiritual bond to cease with life? or had Christians
similar duties to their brethren departed? From the witness of the
early ages of the church, it appears that they had; and you, and those
who agree with you, would be the last to deny that they were then in
the practice of praying, as for the living, so for those also who had
passed into the intermediate state between earth and heaven. Did the
sacred communion extend further still, on to the inhabitants of heaven
itself? Here too you agree with us, for you have adopted in your
volume the words of the Council of Trent which I have quoted above.
But now we are brought to a higher order of thoughts.
It would be preposterous to pray for those who are already in glory;
but at least they can pray for us, and we can ask their prayers, and
in the Apocalypse at least angels are introduced both sending us their
blessing and presenting our prayers before the divine Presence. We
read there of an angel who "came and stood before the altar, having a
golden censer;" and "there was given to him much incense, that he
should offer of the prayers of all saints upon the golden altar which
is before the throne of God." On this occasion, surely, the angel
Michael, as the prayer in mass considers him, performed the part of a
great intercessor or mediator above for the children of the church
militant below. Again, in the beginning of the same book, the sacred
writer goes so far as to speak of "grace and peace" being sent us, not
only from the Almighty, but "from the seven spirits that are before
his throne," thus associating the Eternal with the ministers of his
mercies; and this carries us on to the remarkable passage of St.
Justin, one of the earliest fathers, who, in his "Apology," says, "To
him (God), and his Son who came from him, and taught us these things,
and the host of the other good angels who follow and resemble them,
and the prophetic Spirit, we pay veneration and homage." Further, in
the Epistle to the Hebrews, St. Paul introduces, not only angels, but
"the spirits of the just" into the sacred communion: "Ye have come to
Mount Sion, to the heavenly Jerusalem, to myriads of angels, to God,
the Judge of all, to the spirits of the just made perfect, and to
Jesus, the Mediator of the New Testament." What can be meant by having
"come to the spirits of the just," unless in some way or other they do
us good, whether by blessing or by aiding us? that is, in a word, to
speak correctly, by praying for us; for it is by prayer alone that the
creature above can bless or aid the creature below.
Intercession thus being the first principle of the church's life, next
it is certain again that the vital principle of that intercession, as
an availing power, is, according to the will of God, sanctity. This
seems to be suggested by a passage of St. Paul, in which the supreme
intercessor is said to be "the Spirit:" "The Spirit himself maketh
intercession for us; he maketh intercession for the saints according
to God." However, the truth thus implied is expressly brought out in
other parts of Scripture, in the form both of doctrine and of example.
The words of the man born blind speak the common sense of nature: "If
any man be a worshipper of God, him he heareth." {74} And apostles
confirm them: "The prayer of a just man availeth much," and "whatever
we ask we receive, because we keep his commandments." Then, as for
examples, we read of Abraham and Moses as having the divine purpose of
judgment revealed to them beforehand, in order that they might
deprecate its execution. To the friends of Job it was said, "My
servant Job shall pray for you; his face I will accept." Elias by his
prayer shut and opened the heavens. Elsewhere we read of "Jeremias,
Moses, and Samuel," and of "Noe, Daniel, and Job," as being great
mediators between God and his people. One instance is given us, which
testifies the continuance of so high an office beyond this life.
Lazarus, in the parable, is seen in Abraham's bosom. It is usual to
pass over this striking passage with the remark that it is a Jewish
expression; whereas, Jewish belief or not, it is recognized and
sanctioned by our Lord himself. What do we teach about the Blessed
Virgin more wonderful than this? Let us suppose that, at the hour of
death, the faithful are committed to her arms; but if Abraham, not yet
ascended on high, had charge of Lazarus, what offence is it to affirm
the like of her, who was not merely "the friend," but the very "Mother
of God?"
It may be added that, though it availed nothing for influence with our
Lord to be one of his company if sanctity was wanting, still, as the
gospel shows, he on various occasions allowed those who were near him
to be the means by which supplicants were brought to him, or miracles
gained from him, as in the instance of the miracle of the loaves; and
if on one occasion he seems to repel his mother when she told him that
wine was wanting for the guests at the marriage feast, it is obvious
to remark on it that, by saying that she was then separated from him
because his hour was not yet come, he implied that, when that hour
was come, such separation would be at an end. Moreover, in fact, he
did, at her intercession, work the miracle which she desired.
I consider it impossible, then, for those who believe the church to be
one vast body in heaven and on earth, in which every holy creature of
God has his place, and of which prayer is the life, when once they
recognize the sanctity and greatness of the Blessed Virgin, not to
perceive immediately that her office above is one of perpetual
intercession for the faithful militant, and that our very relation to
her must be that of clients to a patron, and that, in the eternal
enmity which exists between the woman and the serpent, while the
serpent's strength is that of being the tempter, the weapon of the
second Eve and Mother of God is prayer.
As then these ideas of her sanctity and greatness gradually penetrated
the mind of Christendom, so did her intercessory power follow close
upon and with them. From the earliest times that mediation is
symbolized in those representations of her with uplifted hands, which,
whether in plaster or in glass, are still extant in Rome--that
church, as St. Irenaeus says, with which "every church, that is, the
faithful from every side, must agree, because of its more powerful
principality;" "into which," as Tertullian adds, "the apostles poured
out, together with their blood, their whole doctrines." As far,
indeed, as existing documents are concerned, I know of no instance to
my purpose earlier than A.D. 234, but it is a very remarkable one;
and, though it has been often quoted in the controversy, an argument
is not the weaker for frequent use.
St. Gregory Nyssen, [Footnote 18] a native of Cappadocia in the
fourth century, relates that his namesake, Bishop of Neo-Caesarea,
surnamed Thaumaturgus, in the century preceding, shortly before he was
called to the priesthood, received in a vision a creed, which is still
extant, from the Blessed Mary at the hands of St. John.
The account runs thus: He was deeply pondering theological doctrine,
which the heretics of the day depraved. "In such thoughts," says his
namesake of Nyssa, "he was passing the night, when one appeared, as if
in human form, aged in appearance, saintly in the fashion of his
garments, and very venerable both in grace of countenance and general
mien. Amazed at the sight, he started from his bed, and asked who it
was, and why he came; but, on the other calming the perturbation of
his mind with his gentle voice, and saying he had appeared to him by
divine command on account of his doubts, in order that the truth of
the orthodox faith might be revealed to him, he took courage at the
word, and regarded him with a mixture of joy and fright. Then, on his
stretching his hand straight forward and pointing with his fingers at
something on one side, he followed with his eyes the extended hand,
and saw another appearance opposite to the former, in the shape of a
woman, but more than human. . . . When his eyes could not, bear the
apparition, he heard them conversing together on the subject of his
doubts; and thereby not only gained a true knowledge of the faith, but
learned their names, as they addressed each other by their respective
appellations. And thus he is said to have heard the person in woman's
shape bid 'John the Evangelist' disclose to the young man the mystery
of godliness; and he answered that he was ready to comply in this
matter with the wish of 'the Mother of the Lord,' and enunciated a
formulary, well turned and complete, and so vanished. He, on the other
hand, immediately committed to writing that divine teaching of his
mystagogue, and henceforth preached in the church according to that
form, and bequeathed to posterity, as an inheritance, that heavenly
teaching, by means of which his people are instructed down to this
day, being preserved from all heretical evil." He proceeds to rehearse
the creed thus given, "There is one God, father of a living Word,"
etc. Bull, after quoting it in his work upon the Nicene faith, alludes
to this history of its origin, and adds, "No one should think it
incredible that such a providence should befal a man whose whole life
was conspicuous for revelations and miracles, as all ecclesiastical
writers who have mentioned him (and who has not?) witness with one
voice."
Here she is represented as rescuing a holy soul from intellectual
error. This leads me to a further reflection. You seem, in one place
in your volume, to object to the antiphon, in which it is said of her,
"All heresies thou hast destroyed alone." Surely the truth of it is
verified in this age, as in former times, and especially by the
doctrine concerning her on which I have been dwelling. She is the
great exemplar of prayer in a generation which emphatically denies the
power of prayer in toto, which determines that fatal laws govern the
universe, that there cannot be any direct communication between earth
and heaven, that God cannot visit his earth, and that man cannot
influence his providence.
I cannot help hoping that your own reading of the fathers will on the
whole bear me out in the above account of their teaching concerning
the Blessed Virgin. Anglicans seem to me to overlook the strength of
the argument adducible from their works in our favor, and they open
the attack upon our mediaeval and modern writers, careless of leaving
a host of primitive opponents in their rear. I do not include you
among such Anglicans; you know what the fathers assert; but, if so,
have you not, my dear friend, been unjust to yourself in your recent
volume, and made far too much of the differences which exist between
Anglicans and us on this particular point? It is the office of an
Irenicon to smooth difficulties; I shall be pleased if I succeed in
removing some of yours. Let the public judge between us here. Had you
{76} happened in your volume to introduce your notice of our teaching
about the Blessed Virgin with a notice of the teaching of the fathers
concerning her, ordinary men would have considered that there was not
much to choose between you and us. Though you appealed ever so much to
the authority of the "undivided church," they certainly would have
said that you, who had such high notions of the Blessed Mary, were one
of the last men who had a right to accuse us of quasi-idolatry. When
they found you calling her by the titles of Mother of God, Second Eve,
and Mother of all Living, the Mother of life, the Morning Star, the
Stay of Believers, the Expression of Orthodoxy, the All-undefiled
Mother of Holiness, and the like, they would have deemed it a poor
compensation for such language that you protested against her being
called a co-redemptress or a priestess. And, if they were violent
Protestants, they would not have read you with that relish and
gratitude with which, as it is, they have perhaps accepted your
testimony against us. Not that they would have been altogether right
in their view of you;--on the contrary, I think there is a real
difference between what you protest against and what with the fathers
you hold; but unread men and men of the world form a broad practical
judgment of the things which come before them, and they would have
felt in this case that they had the same right to be shocked at you as
you have to be shocked at us;--and further, which is the point to
which I am coming, they would have said that, granting some of our
modern writers go beyond the fathers in this matter, still the line
cannot be logically drawn between the teaching of the fathers
concerning the Blessed Virgin and our own. This view of the matter
seems to me true and important; I do not think the line can be
satisfactorily drawn, and to this point I shall now direct my
attention. It is impossible, I say, in a doctrine like this, to draw
the line cleanly between truth and error, right and wrong. This is
ever the case in concrete matters, which have life. Life in this world
is motion, and involves a continual process of change. Living things
grow into their perfection, into their decline, into their death. No
rule of art will suffice to stop the operation of this natural law,
whether in the material world or in the human mind. We can indeed
encounter disorders, when they occur, by external antagonisms and
remedies; but we cannot eradicate the process itself out of which they
arise. Life has the same right to decay as it has to wax strong. This
is specially the case with great ideas. You may stifle them; or you
may refuse them elbow-room; or you may torment them with your
continual meddling; or you may let them have free course and range,
and be content, instead of anticipating their excesses, to expose and
restrain those excesses after they have occurred. But you have only
this alternative; and for myself, I prefer much, wherever it is
possible, to be first generous and then just; to grant full liberty of
thought, and to call it to account when abused.
If what I have been saying be true of energetic ideas generally, much
more is it the case in matters of religion. Religion acts on the
affections; who is to hinder these, when once roused, from gathering
in their strength and running wild? They are not gifted with any
connatural principle within them which renders them self-governing and
self-adjusting. They hurry right on to their object, and often in
their case it is, more haste and worse speed. Their object engrosses
them, and they see nothing else. And of all passions love is the most
unmanageable; nay, more, I would not give much for that love which is
never extravagant, which always observes the proprieties, and can move
about in perfect good taste, under all emergencies. What mother, what
husband or wife, what youth or maiden in love, {77} but says a
thousand foolish things, in the way of endearment, which the speaker
would be sorry for strangers to hear; yet they were not on that
account unwelcome to the parties to whom they are addressed. Sometimes
by bad luck they are written down, sometimes they get into the
newspapers; and what might be even graceful, when it was fresh from
the heart, and interpreted by the voice and the countenance, presents
but a melancholy exhibition when served up cold for the public eye. So
it is with devotional feelings. Burning thoughts and words are as open
to criticism as they are beyond it. What is abstractedly extravagant,
may in religions persons be becoming and beautiful, and only fall
under blame when it is found in others who imitate them. When it is
formalized into meditations or exercises, it is as repulsive as
love-letters in a police report. Moreover, even holy minds readily
adopt and become familiar with language which they would never have
originated themselves, when it proceeds from a writer who has the same
objects of devotion as they have; and, if they find a stranger
ridicule or reprobate supplication or praise which has come to them so
recommended, they feel as keenly as if a direct insult were offered to
those to whom that homage is addressed. In the next place, what has
power to stir holy and refined souls is potent also with the
multitude; and the religion of the multitude is ever vulgar and
abnormal; it ever will be tinctured with fanaticism and superstition
while men are what they are. A people's religion is ever a corrupt
religion. If you are to have a Catholic Church, you must put up with
fish of every kind, guests good and bad, vessels of gold, vessels of
earth. You may beat religion out of men, if you will, and then their
excesses will take a different direction; but if you make use of
religion to improve them, they will make use of religion to corrupt
it. And then you will have effected that compromise of which our
countrymen report so unfavorably from abroad:--a high grand faith and
worship which compel their admiration, and puerile absurdities among
the people which excite their contempt.
Nor is it any safeguard against these excesses in a religious system
that the religion is based upon reason, and develops into a theology.
Theology both uses logic and baffles it; and thus logic acts both as a
protection and as the perversion of religion. Theology is occupied
with supernatural matters, and is ever running into mysteries which
reason can neither explain nor adjust. Its lines of thought come to an
abrupt termination, and to pursue them or to complete them is to
plunge down the abyss. But logic blunders on, forcing its way, as it
can, through thick darkness and ethereal mediums. The Arians went
ahead with logic for their directing principle, and so lost the truth;
on the other hand, St. Augustine, in his treatise on the Holy Trinity,
seems to show that, if we attempt to find and tie together the ends of
lines which run into infinity, we shall only succeed in contradicting
ourselves; that for instance it is difficult to find the logical
reason for not speaking of three Gods as well as of one, and of one
person in the Godhead as well as of three. I do not mean to say that
logic cannot be used to set right its own error, or that in the hands
of an able disputant the balance of truth may not be restored. This
was done at the Councils of Antioch and Nicaea, in the instances of
Paulus and Arius. But such a process is circuitous and elaborate; and
is conducted by means of minute subtleties which will give it the
appearance of a game of skill in the case of matters too grave and
practical to deserve a mere scholastic treatment. Accordingly, St.
Augustine simply lays it down that the statements in question are
heretical, for the former is trltheism and the latter Sabellianism.
That is, good sense and a large {78} view of truth are the correctives
of his logic. And thus we have arrived at the final resolution of the
whole matter; for good sense and a large view of truth are rare gifts;
whereas all men are bound to be devout, and most men think they can
argue and conclude.
Now let me apply what I have been saying to the teaching of the church
on the subject of the Blessed Virgin. I have to recur to a subject of
so sacred a nature, that, writing as I am for publication, I need the
apology of my object for venturing to pursue it. I say then, when once
we have mastered the idea that Mary bore, suckled, and handled the
Eternal in the form of a child, what limit is conceivable to the rush
and flood of thoughts which such a doctrine involves? What awe and
surprise must attend upon the knowledge that a creature has been
brought so close to the Divine Essence? It was the creation of a new
idea and a new sympathy, a new faith and worship, when the holy
apostles announced that God bad become incarnate; and a supreme love
and devotion to him became possible which seemed hopeless before that
revelation. But beside this, a second range of thoughts was opened on
mankind, unknown before, and unlike any other, as soon as it was
understood that that incarnate God had a mother. The second idea is
perfectly distinct from the former, the one does not interfere with
the other. He is God made low, she is a woman made high. I scarcely
like to use a familiar illustration on such a subject, but it will
serve to explain what I mean when I ask you to consider the difference
of feeling with which we read the respective histories of Maria
Theresa and the Maid of Orleans; or with which the middle and lower
classes of a nation regard a first minister of the day who has come of
an aristocratic house and one who has risen from the ranks. May God's
mercy keep me from the shadow of a thought dimming the light or
blunting the keenness of that love of him which is our sole happiness
and our sole salvation! But surely, when he became man he brought home
to us his incommunicable attributes with a distinctiveness which
precludes the possibility of our lowering him by exalting a creature.
He alone has an entrance into our soul, reads our secret thoughts,
speaks to our heart, applies to us spiritual pardon and strength. On
him we solely depend. He alone is our inward life; he not only
regenerates us, but (to allude to a higher mystery) semper gignit;
he is ever renewing our new birth and our heavenly sonship. In this
sense he may be called, as in nature, so in grace, our real father.
Mary is only our adopted mother, given us from the cross; her presence
is above, not on earth; her office is external, not within us. Her
name is not heard in the administration of the sacraments. Her work is
not one of ministration toward us; her power is indirect. It is her
prayers that avail, and they are effectual by the fiat of him who is
our all in all. Nor does she hear us by any innate power, or any
personal gift; but by his manifestation to her of the prayers which we
make her. When Moses was on the Mount, the Almighty told him of the
idolatry of his people at the foot of it, in order that he might
intercede for them; and thus it is the Divine presence which is the
intermediating power by which we reach her and she reaches us.
Woe is me, if even by a breath I sully these ineffable truths! but
still, without prejudice to them, there is, I say, another range of
thought quite distinct from them, incommensurate with them, of which
the Blessed Virgin is the centre. If we placed our Lord in that
centre, we should only be degrading him from his throne, and making
him an Arian kind of a God; that is, no God at all. He who charges us
with marking Mary a divinity, is thereby denying the divinity of
Jesus. Such a man does not know what divinity is. Our Lord cannot {79}
pray for us, as a creature, as Mary prays; he cannot inspire those
feelings which a creature inspires. To her belongs, as being a
creature, a natural claim on our sympathy and familiarity, in that she
is nothing else than our fellow. She is our pride,--in the poet's
words, "Our tainted nature's solitary boast." We look to her without
any fear, any remorse, any consciousness that she is able to read us,
judge us, punish us. Our heart yearns toward that pure virgin, that
gentle mother, and our congratulations follow her, as she rises from
Nazareth and Ephesus, through the choirs of angels, to her throne on
high. So weak, yet so strong; so delicate, yet so glory-laden; so
modest, yet so mighty. She has sketched for us her own portrait in the
magnificat. "He hath regarded the low estate of his handmaid; for
behold, from henceforth all generations shall call me blessed. He hath
put down the mighty from their seat; and hath exalted the humble. He
hath filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he hath sent
empty away." I recollect the strange emotion which took by surprise
men and women, young and old, when, at the coronation of our present
queen, they gazed on the figure of one so like a child, so small, so
tender, so shrinking, who had been exalted to so great an inheritance
and so vast a rule, who was such a contrast in her own person to the
solemn pageant which centred in her. Could it be otherwise with the
spectators, if they had human affection? And did not the All-wise know
the human heart when he took to himself a mother? did he not
anticipate our emotion at the sight of such an exaltation? If he had
not meant her to exert that wonderful influence in his church which
she has in the event exerted, I will use a bold word, he it is who has
perverted us. If she is not to attract our homage, why did he make her
solitary in her greatness amid his vast creation? If it be idolatry in
us to let our affections respond to our faith, he would not have made
her what she is, or he would not have told us that he had so made her;
but, far from this, he has sent his prophet to announce to us, "A
virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name
Emmanuel," and we have the same warrant for hailing her as God's
Mother, as we have for adoring him as God.
Christianity is eminently an objective religion. For the most part it
tells us of persons and facts in simple words, and leaves the
announcement to produce its effect on such hearts as are prepared to
receive it. This at least is its general character; and Butler
recognizes it as such in his "Analogy" when speaking of the Second and
Third Persons of the Holy Trinity: "The internal worship," he says,
"to the Son and Holy Ghost is no further matter of pure revealed
command than as the relations they stand in to us are matters of pure
revelation; for the relations being known, the obligations to such
internal worship are obligations of reason arising out of those
relations themselves. " [Footnote 19]
It is in this way that the revealed doctrine of the incarnation
exerted a stronger and a broader influence on Christians, as they more
and more apprehended and mastered its meaning and its bearings. It is
contained in the brief and simple declaration of St John, "The Word
was made flesh;" but it required century after century to spread it
out in its fulness and to imprint it energetically on the worship and
practice of the Catholic people as well as on their faith. Athanasius
was the first and the great teacher of it. He collected together the
inspired notices scattered through David, Isaias, St. Paul, and St.
John, and he engraved indelibly upon the imaginations of the faithful,
as had never been before, that man is God, and God is man, that in
Mary they meet, and that in this sense Mary {80} is the centre of all
things. He added nothing to what was known before, nothing to the
popular and zealous faith that her Son was God; he has left behind him
in his works no such definite passages about her as those of St.
Irenaeus or St. Epiphanius; but he brought the circumstances of the
incarnation home to men's minds by the manifold evolutions of his
analysis, and secured it for ever from perversion. Still, however,
there was much to be done; we have no proof that Athanasius himself
had any special devotion to the Blessed Virgin; but he laid the
foundations on which that devotion was to rest, and thus noiselessly
and without strife, as the first temple in the holy city, she grew up
into her inheritance, and was "established in Sion and her power was
in Jerusalem." Such was the origin of that august cultus which has
been paid to the Blessed Mary for so many centuries in the East and in
the West. That in times and places it has fallen into abuse, that it
has even become a superstition, I do not care to deny; for, as I have
said above, the same process which brings to maturity carries on to
decay, and things that do not admit of abuse have very little life in
them. This of course does not excuse such excesses, or justify us in
making light of them, when they occur. I have no intention of doing so
as regards the particular instances which you bring against us, though
but a few words will suffice for what I need say about them:--before
doing so, however, I am obliged to make three or four introductory
remarks.
1. I have almost anticipated my first remark already. It is this: that
the height of our offending in our devotion to the Blessed Virgin
would not look so great in your volume as it does, had you not placed
yourself on lower ground than your own feelings toward her would have
spontaneously prompted you to take. I have no doubt you had some good
reason for adopting this course, but I do not know it. What I do know
is that, for the fathers' sake, who so exalt her, you really do love
and venerate her, though you do not evidence it in your book. I am
glad, then, in this place, to insist on a fact which will lead those
among us who know you not to love you from their love of her, in spite
of what you refuse to give her; and Anglicans, on the other hand, who
do know you, to think better of us, who refuse her nothing, when they
reflect that you do not actually go against us, but merely come short
of us in your devotion to her.
2. As you revere the fathers, so you revere the Greek Church; and here
again we have a witness on our behalf of which you must be aware as
fully as we are, and of which you must really mean to give us the
benefit. In proportion as this remarkable fact is understood, it will
take off the edge of the surprise of Anglicans at the sight of our
devotions to our Lady. It must weigh with them when they discover that
we can enlist on our side in this controversy those seventy millions
(I think they so consider them) of Orientals who are separated from
our communion. Is it not a very pregnant fact that the Eastern
churches, so independent of us, so long separated from the West, so
jealous of antiquity, should even surpass us in their exaltation of
the Blessed Virgin? That they go further than we do is sometimes
denied, on the ground that the Western devotion toward her is brought
out into system, and the Eastern is not; yet this only means really
that the Latins have more mental activity, more strength of intellect,
less of routine, less of mechanical worship among them, than the
Greeks. We are able, better than they, to give an account of what we
do; and we seem to be more extreme merely because we are more
definite. But, after all, what have the Latins done so bold as that
substitution of the name of Mary for the name of Jesus at the end of
the collects and petitions in the breviary, nay, in the ritual and
liturgy? Not {81} merely in local or popular, and in semi-authorized
devotions, which are the kind of sources that supplies you with your
matter of accusation against us, but in the formal prayers of the
Greek eucharistic service, petitions are offered, not "in the name of
Jesus Christ," but "of the Theotocos." Such a phenomenon, in such a
quarter, I think, ought to make Anglicans merciful toward those
writers among ourselves who have been excessive in singing the praises
of the Deipara. To make a rule of substituting Mary with all saints
for Jesus in the public service, has more "Mariolatry" in it than to
alter the Te Deum to her honor in private devotion.
3. And thus I am brought to a third remark supplemental to your
accusation of us. Two large views, as I have said above, are opened
upon our devotional thoughts in Christianity; the one centring in the
Son of Mary, the other in the Mother of Jesus. Neither need obscure
the other; and in the Catholic Church, as a matter of fact, neither
does. I wish you had either frankly allowed this in your volume, or
proved the contrary. I wish, when you report that "a certain
proportion, it has been ascertained by those who have inquired, do
stop short in her," p. 107, that you had added your belief, that the
case was far otherwise with the great bulk of Catholics. Might I not
have expected it? May I not, without sensitiveness, be somewhat pained
at the omission? From mere Protestants, indeed, I expect nothing
better. They content themselves with saying that our devotions to our
Lady must necessarily throw our Lord into the shade, and thereby
they relieve themselves of a great deal of trouble. Then they catch at
any stray fact which countenances or seems to countenance their
prejudice. Now I say plainly I never will defend or screen any one
from your just rebuke who, through false devotion to Mary, forgets
Jesus. But I should like the fact to be proved first; I cannot hastily
admit it. There is this broad fact the other way: that if we look
through Europe we shall find, on the whole, that just those nations
and countries have lost their faith in the divinity of Christ who have
given up devotion to his Mother, and that those, on the other hand,
who have been foremost in her honor, have retained their orthodoxy.
Contrast, for instance, the Calvinists with the Greeks, or France with
the north of Germany, or the Protestant and Catholic communions in
Ireland. As to England, it is scarcely doubtful what would be the
state of its Established Church if the Liturgy and Articles were not
an integral part of its establishment; and when men bring so grave a
charge against us as is implied in your volume, they cannot be
surprised if we in turn say hard things of Anglicanism. [Footnote 20]
In the Catholic Church Mary has shown herself, not the rival, but the
minister of her Son. She has protected him, as in his infancy, so in
the whole history of the religion. There is, then, a plain historical
truth in Dr. Fisher's words which you quote to condemn: "Jesus is
obscured, because Mary is kept in the background."
This truth, exemplified in history, might also be abundantly
illustrated, did my space admit, from the lives and writings of holy
men in modern times. Two of them, St. Alfonso Liguori and the Blessed
Paul of the Cross, for all their notorious devotion {82} to the
Mother, have shown their supreme love of her divine Son in the names
which a have given to their respective congregations, viz, "of the
Redeemer," and "of the Cross and Passion." However, I will do no more
than refer to an apposite passage in the Italian translation of the
work of a French Jesuit, Fr. Nepveu, "Christian Thoughts for every Day
in the Year," which was recommended to the friend who went with me to
Rome by the same Jesuit father there with whom, as I have already
said, I stood myself in such intimate relations; I believe it is a
fair specimen of the teaching of our spiritual books:
"The love of Jesus Christ is the most sure pledge of our future
happiness, and the most infallible token of our predestination.
Mercy toward the poor, devotion to the Holy Virgin, are very
sensible tokens of predestination; nevertheless they are not
absolutely infallible; but one cannot have a sincere and constant
love of Jesus Christ without being predestinated. . . . The
destroying angel which bereaved the houses of the Egyptians of their
first-born, had respect to all the houses which were marked with the
blood of the Lamb."
And it is also exemplified, as I verily believe, not only in formal
and distinctive confessions, not only in books intended for the
educated class, but also in the personal religion of the Catholic
populations. When strangers are so unfavorably impressed with us,
because they see images of our Lady in our churches, and crowds
flocking about her, they forget that there is a Presence within the
sacred walls, infinitely more awful, which claims and obtains from us
a worship transcendently different from any devotion we pay to her.
That devotion might indeed tend to idolatry if it were encouraged in
Protestant churches, where there is nothing higher than it to attract
the worshipper; but all the images that a Catholic church ever
contained, all the crucifixes at its altars brought together, do not
so affect its frequenters as the lamp which betokens the presence or
absence there of the blessed sacrament. Is not this so certain, so
notorious, that on some occasions it has been even brought as a charge
against us, that we are irreverent in church, when what seemed to the
objector to be irreverence was but the necessary change of feeling
which came over those who were there on their knowing that their Lord
was away?
The mass again conveys to us the same lesson of the sovereignty of the
incarnate Son; it is a return to Calvary, and Mary is scarcely named
in it. Hostile visitors enter our churches on Sunday at mid-day, the
time of the Anglican service. They are surprised to see the high mass
perhaps poorly attended, and a body of worshippers leaving the music
and the mixed multitude who may be lazily fulfilling their obligation,
for the silent or the informal devotions which are offered at an image
of the Blessed Virgin. They may be tempted, with one of your
informants, to call such a temple not a "Jesus Church," but a "Mary
Church." But, if they understood our ways, they would know that we
begin the day with our Lord and then go on to his mother. It is early
in the morning that religious persons go to mass and communion. The
high mass, on the other hand, is the festive celebration of the day,
not the special devotional service; nor is there any reason why those
who have been at a low mass already, should not at that hour proceed
to ask the intercession of the Blessed Virgin for themselves and all
that is dear to them.
Communion, again, which is given in the morning, is a solemn,
unequivocal act of faith in the incarnate God, if any can be such; and
the most gracious of admonitions, did we need one, of his sovereign
and sole right to possess us. I knew a lady who on her death-bed was
visited by an excellent Protestant friend. She, with great tenderness
for her soul's welfare, asked her whether her prayers to the {83}
Blessed Virgin did not, at that awful hour, lead to forgetfulness of
her Saviour. "Forget him!" she replied with surprise; "why, he has
just been here." She had been receiving him in communion. When, then,
my dear Pusey, you read anything extravagant in praise of our Lady, is
it not charitable to ask, even while you condemn it in itself, did the
author write nothing else? Did he write on the blessed sacrament? Had
he given up "all for Jesus?" I recollect some lines, the happiest, I
think, which that author wrote, which bring out strikingly the
reciprocity, which I am dwelling on, of the respective devotions to
Mother and Son:
"But scornful men have coldly said
Thy love was leading me from God;
And yet in this I did but tread
The very path my Savior trod.
"They know but little of thy worth
Who speak these heartless words to me;
For what did Jesus love on earth
One half so tenderly as thee?
"Get me the grace to love thee more;
Jesus will give, if thou wilt plead;
And, Mother, when life's cares are o'er,
Oh, I shall love thee then indeed.
"Jesus, when his three hours were run,
Bequeathed thee from the cross to me;
And oh I how can I love thy Son,
Sweet Mother, if I love not thee?"
4. Thus we are brought from the consideration of the sentiments
themselves, of which you complain, to the persons who wrote, and the
places where they wrote them. I wish you had been led, in this part of
your work, to that sort of careful labor which you have employed in so
masterly a way in your investigation of the circumstances of the
definition of the immaculate conception. In the latter case you have
catalogued the bishops who wrote to the Holy See, and analyzed their
answers. Had you in like manner discriminated and located the Marian
writers, as you call them, and observed the times, places, and
circumstances of their works, I think they would not, when brought
together, have had their present startling effect on the reader. As it
is, they inflict a vague alarm upon the mind, as when one hears a
noise, and does not know whence it comes and what it means. Some of
your authors, I know, are saints; all, I suppose, are spiritual
writers and holy men; but the majority are of no great celebrity, even
if they have any kind of weight. Suarez has no business among them at
all, for, when he says that no one is saved without the Blessed
Virgin, he is speaking not of devotion to her, but of her
intercession. The greatest name is St. Alfonso Liguori; but it never
surprises me to read anything unusual in the devotions of a saint.
Such men are on a level very different from our own, and we cannot
understand them. I hold this to be an important canon in the lives of
the saints, according to the words of the apostle, "The spiritual man
judges all things, and he himself is judged of no one." But we may
refrain from judging, without proceeding to imitate. I hope it is not
disrespectful to so great a servant of God to say, that I never read
his "Glories of Mary;" but here I am speaking generally of all saints,
whether I know them or not; and I say that they are beyond us, and
that we must use them as patterns, not as copies. As to his practical
directions, St. Alfonso wrote them for Neapolitans, whom he knew, and
we do not know. Other writers whom you quote, as De Salazar, are too
ruthlessly logical to be safe or pleasant guides in the delicate
matters of devotion. As to De Montford and Oswald, I never even met
with their names, till I saw them in your book; the bulk of our laity,
not to say of our clergy, perhaps know them little better than I do.
Nor did I know till I learnt it from your volume that there were two
Bernardines. St. Bernardine, of Sienna, I knew of course, and knew too
that he had a burning love for our Lord. But about the other,
"Bernardine de Bustis," I was quite at fault. I find from the
Protestant Cave that he, as well as his name-sake, made himself
conspicuous also for his zeal for the holy name, {84} which is much to
the point here. "With such devotion was he carried away," says Cave,
"for the bare name of Jesus (which, by a new device of Bernardine, of
Sienna, had lately began to receive divine honors), that he was urgent
with Innocent VIII. to assign it a day and rite in the calendar."
One thing, however, is clear about all these writers; that not one of
them is an Englishman. I have gone through your book, and do not find
one English name among the various authors to whom you refer, except,
of course, the name of that author whose lines I have been quoting,
and who, great as are his merits, cannot, for the reasons I have given
in the opening of my letter, be considered a representative of English
Catholic devotion. Whatever these writers may have said or not said,
whatever they may have said harshly, and whatever capable of fair
explanation, still they are foreigners; we are not answerable for
their particular devotions; and as to themselves, I am glad to be able
to quote the beautiful words which you use about them in your letter
to the "Weekly Register" of November 25th last. "I do not presume,"
you say, "to prescribe to Italians or Spaniards what they shall hold,
or how they shall express their pious opinions; and least of all did I
think of imputing to any of the writers whom I quoted that they took
from our Lord any of the love which they gave to his Mother." In these
last words, too, you have supplied one of the omissions in your volume
which I noticed above.
5. Now, then, we come to England itself, which after all, in the
matter of devotion, alone concerns you and me; for though doctrine is
one and the same everywhere, devotions, as I have already said, are
matters of the particular time and the particular country. I suppose
we owe it to the national good sense that English Catholics have been
protected from the extravagances which are elsewhere to be found. And
we owe it, also, to the wisdom and moderation of the Holy See, which
in giving us the pattern for our devotion, as well as the rule of our
faith, has never indulged in those curiosities of thought which are
both so attractive to undisciplined imaginations and so dangerous to
grovelling hearts. In the case of our own common people I think such a
forced style of devotion would be simply unintelligible; as to the
educated, I doubt whether it can have more than an occasional or
temporary influence. If the Catholic faith spreads in England, these
peculiarities will not spread with it. There is a healthy devotion to
the Blessed Mary, and there is an artificial; it is possible to love
her as a Mother, to honor her as a Virgin, to seek her as a Patron,
and to exalt her as a Queen, without any injury to solid piety and
Christian good sense: I cannot help calling this the English style. I
wonder whether you find anything to displease you in the "Garden of
the Soul," the "Key of Heaven," the "Vade Mecum," the "Golden Manual,"
or the "Crown of Jesus?" These are the books to which Anglicans ought
to appeal who would be fair to us in this matter. I do not observe
anything in them which goes beyond the teaching of the fathers, except
so far as devotion goes beyond doctrine.
There is one collection of devotions, beside, of the highest
authority, which has been introduced from abroad of late years. It
consists of prayers of various kinds which have been indulgenced by
the popes; and it commonly goes by the name of the "Raccolta." As that
word suggests, the language of many of the prayers is Italian, while
others are in Latin. This circumstance is unfavorable to a
translation, which, however skilful, must ever savor of the words and
idioms of the original; but, passing over this necessary disadvantage,
I consider there is hardly a clause in the good-sized volume in
question which even the sensitiveness of English Catholicism would
wish changed. Its anxious observance of doctrinal exactness is almost
a fault. {85} It seems afraid of using the words "give me," "make me,"
in its addresses to the Blessed Virgin, which are as natural to adopt
as in addressing a parent or friend. Surely we do not disparage divine
Providence when we say that we are indebted to our parents for our
life, or when we ask their blessing; we do not show any atheistical
leanings because we say that a man's recovery must be left to nature,
or that nature supplies brute animals with instincts. In like manner
it seems to me a simple purism to insist upon minute accuracy of
expression in devotional and popular writings. However, the
"Raccolta," as coming from responsible authority, for the most part
observes it. It commonly uses the phrases, "gain for us by thy
prayers," "obtain for us," "pray to Jesus for me," "speak for me,
Mary," "carry thou our prayers," "ask for us grace," "intercede for
the people of God," and the like, marking thereby with great emphasis
that she is nothing more than an advocate, and not a source of mercy.
Nor do I recollect in this book more than one or two ideas to which
you would be likely to raise an objection. The strongest of these is
found in the novena before her nativity, in which, apropos of her
birth, we pray that she "would come down again and be re-born
spiritually in our souls;" but it will occur to you that St. Paul
speaks of his wish to impart to his converts, '"not only the gospel,
but his own soul;" and writing to the Corinthians, he says he has
"begotten them by the gospel," and to Philemon, that he had "begotten
Onesimus in his bonds;" whereas St. James, with greater accuracy of
expression, says "of his own will hath God begotten us with the word
of truth." Again we find the petitioner saying to the Blessed Mary,
"In thee I place all my hope;" but this is explained in another
passage, "Thou art my best hope after Jesus." Again, we read
elsewhere, "I would I had a greater love for thee, since to love thee
is a great mark of predestination;" but the prayer goes on, "Thy Son
deserves of us an immeasurable love; pray that I may have this grace
--a great love for Jesus;" and further on, "I covet no good of the
earth, but to love my God alone."
Then, again, as to the lessons which our Catholics receive, whether by
catechizing or instruction, you would find nothing in our received
manuals to which you would not assent, I am quite sure. Again, as to
preaching, a standard book was drawn up three centuries ago, to supply
matter for the purpose to the parochial clergy. You incidentally
mention, p. 153, that the comment of Cornelius à Lapide on Scripture
is "a repertorium for sermons;" but I never heard of this work being
used, nor indeed can it, because of its size. The work provided for
the purpose by the church is the "Catechism of the Council of Trent,"
and nothing extreme about our Blessed Lady is propounded there. On the
whole, I am sanguine that you will come to the conclusion that
Anglicans may safely trust themselves to us English Catholics as
regards any devotions to the Blessed Virgin which might be required of
them, over and above the rule of the Council of Trent.
6. And, now at length coming to the statements, not English, but
foreign, which offend you in works written in her honor, I will
frankly say that I read some of those which you quote with grief and
almost anger; for they seemed to me to ascribe to the Blessed Virgin a
power of "searching the reins and hearts" which is the attribute of
God alone; and I said to myself, how can we any more prove our Lord's
divinity from Scripture, if those cardinal passages which invest him
with divine prerogatives after all invest him with nothing beyond what
his Mother shares with him? And how, again, is there anything of
incommunicable greatness in his death and passion, if he who was alone
in the garden, alone upon the cross, alone in the resurrection, after
{86} all is not alone, but shared his solitary work with his Blessed
Mother--with her to whom, when he entered on his ministry, he said for
our instruction, not as grudging her her proper glory, "Woman, what
have I to do with thee?" And then again, if I hate those perverse
sayings so much, how much more must she, in proportion to her love of
him? And how do we show our love for her, by wounding her in the very
apple of her eye? This I said and say; but then, on the other hand, I
have to observe that these strange words after all are but few in
number, out of the many passages you cite; that most of them exemplify
what I said above about the difficulty of determining the exact point
where truth passes into error, and that they are allowable in one
sense or connection, and false in another. Thus to say that prayer
(and the Blessed Virgin's prayer) is omnipotent, is a harsh expression
in everyday prose; but, if it is explained to mean that there is
nothing which prayer may not obtain from God, it is nothing else than
the very promise made us in Scripture. Again, to say that Mary is the
centre of all being, sounds inflated and profane; yet after all it is
only one way, and a natural way, of saying that the Creator and the
creature met together, and became one in her womb; and as such, I have
used the expression above. Again, it is at first sight a paradox to
say that "Jesus is obscured, because Mary is kept in the background;"
yet there is a sense, as I have shown above, in which it is a simple
truth.
And so again certain statements may be true, under circumstances and
in a particular time and place, which are abstractedly false; and
hence it may be very unfair in a controversialist to interpret by an
English or a modern rule whatever may have been asserted by a foreign
or mediaeval author. To say, for instance, dogmatically, that no one
can be saved without personal devotion to the Blessed Virgin, would be
an untenable proposition: yet it might be true of this man or that, or
of this or that country at this or that date; and if the very
statement has ever been made by any writer of consideration (and this
has to be ascertained), then perhaps it was made precisely under these
exceptional circumstances. If an Italian preacher made it, I should
feel no disposition to doubt him, at least as regards Italian youths
and Italian maidens.
Then I think you have not always made your quotations with that
consideration and kindness which is your rule. At p. 106 you say, "It
is commonly said, that if any Roman Catholic acknowledges that 'it is
good and useful to pray to the saints,' he is not bound himself to do
so. Were the above teaching true, it would be cruelty to say so;
because, according to it, he would be forfeiting what is morally
necessary to his salvation." But now, as to the fact, where is it said
that to pray to our Lady and the saints is necessary to salvation? The
proposition of St. Alfonso is, that "God gives no grace except through
Mary;" that is, through her intercession. But intercession is one
thing, devotion is another. And Suarez says, "It is the universal
sentiment that the intercession of Mary is not only useful, but also
in a certain manner necessary;" but still it is the question of her
intercession, not of our invocation of her, not of devotion to her. If
it were so, no Protestant could be saved; if it were so, there would
be grave reasons for doubting of the salvation of St. Chrysostom or
St. Athanasius, or of the primitive martyrs; nay, I should like to
know whether St. Augustine, in all his voluminous writings, invokes
her once. Our Lord died for those heathens who did not know him; and
his mother intercedes for those Christians who do not know her; and
she intercedes according to his will, and, when he wills to save a
particular soul, she at once prays for it. {87} I say, he wills indeed
according to her prayer, but then she prays according, to his will.
Though then it is natural and prudent for those to have recourse to
her who, from the church's teaching, know her power, yet it cannot be
said that devotion to her is a sine quâ non of salvation. Some
indeed of the authors whom you quote go further; they do speak of
devotion; but even then they do not enunciate the general proposition
which I have been disallowing. For instance, they say, "It is morally
impossible for those to be saved who neglect the devotion to the
Blessed Virgin;" but a simple omission is one thing, and neglect
another. "It is impossible for any to be saved who turns away from
her;" yes; but to "turn away" is to offer some positive disrespect or
insult toward her, and that with sufficient knowledge; and I certainly
think it would be a very grave act if, in a Catholic country (and of
such the writers were speaking, for they knew of no other), with
ave-marias sounding in the air, and images of the Madonna at every
street and road, a Catholic broke off or gave up a practice that was
universal, and in which he was brought up, and deliberately put her
name out of his thoughts.
7. Though, then, common sense may determine for us that the line of
prudence and propriety has been certainly passed in the instance of
certain statements about the Blessed Virgin, it is often not easy to
prove the point logically; and in such cases authority, if it attempt
to act, would be in the position which so often happens in our courts
of law, when the commission of an offence is morally certain, but the
government prosecutor cannot find legal evidence sufficient to insure
conviction. I am not denying the right of sacred congregations, at
their will, to act peremptorily, and without assigning reasons for the
judgment they pass upon writers; but, when they have found it
inexpedient to take this severe course, perhaps it may happen from the
circumstances of the case that there is no other that they can take,
even if they would. It is wiser then for the most part to leave these
excesses to the gradual operation of public opinion--that is, to the
opinion of educated and sober Catholics; and this seems to me the
healthiest way of putting them down. Yet in matter of fact I believe
the Holy See has interfered from time to time, when devotion seemed
running into superstition; and not so long ago. I recollect hearing in
Gregory the XVI.'s time of books about the Blessed Virgin which had
been suppressed by authority; and in particular of a representation of
the immaculate conception which he had forbidden, and of measures
taken against the shocking notion that the Blessed Mary is present in
the holy eucharist in the sense in which our Lord is present; but I
have no means of verifying the information I received.
Nor have I time, any more than you have had, to ascertain how far
great theologians have made protests against those various
extravagances of which you so rightly complain. Passages, however,
from three well-known Jesuit fathers have opportunely come in my way,
and in one of them is introduced, in confirmation, the name of the
great Gerson. They are Canisius, Petavius, and Raynaudus; and as they
speak very appositely, and you do not seem to know them, I will here
make some extracts from them:
(1.) Canisius:
"We confess that in the cultus of Mary it has been and is
possible for corruptions to creep in; and we have a more than
ordinary desire that the pastors of the Church should be carefully
vigilant here, and give no place to Satan, whose characteristic
office it has ever been, while men sleep, to sow the cockle amid the
Lord's wheat. . . . For this purpose it is his wont gladly to avail
himself of the aid of heretics, fanatics, and false Catholics, as
may be seen in the instance of this Marianus cultus. This
cultus, heretics, suborned by Satan, attack with hostility
Thus, too, certain mad heads are so {88} demented by Satan, as to
embrace superstitions and idolatries instead of the true
cultus and neglect altogether the due measures whether in
respect to God or to Mary. Such indeed were the Collyridians of old.
. . . Such that German herdsman a hundred years ago, who gave out
publicly that he was a new prophet and had had a vision of the
Deipara, and told the people in her name to pay no more tributes and
taxes to princes. .... Moreover, how many Catholics does one see
who, by great and shocking negligence, have neither care nor regard
for her cultus, but, given to profane and secular objects,
scarce once a year raise their earthly minds to sing her praises or
to venerate her!"--De Mariâ Deiparâ, p. 518.
(2.) Father Petau says, when discussing the teaching of the fathers
about the Blessed Virgin (de Incarn. xiv. 8):
"I will venture to give this advice to all who would be devout and
panegyrical toward the Holy Virgin, viz., not to exceed in their
piety and devotion to her, but to be content with true and solid
praises, and to cast aside what is otherwise. The latter kind of
idolatry, lurking, as St. Augustine says, nay implanted, in human
hearts, is greatly abhorrent from theology, that is from the gravity
of heavenly wisdom, which never thinks or asserts anything but what
is measured by certain and accurate rules. What that rule should be,
and what caution is to be used in our present subject, I will not
determine of myself, but according to the mind of a most weighty and
most learned theologian, John Gerson, who in one of his epistles
proposes certain canons, which he calls truths, by means of which
are to be measured the assertions of theologians concerning the
incarnation. . . By these truly golden precepts Gerson brings within
bounds the immoderate license of praising the Blessed Virgin, and
restrains it within the measure of sober and healthy piety. And from
these it is evident that that sort of reasoning is frivolous and
nugatory in which so many indulge, in order to assign any sort of
grace they please, however unusual, to the Blessed Virgin. For they
argue thus: 'Whatever the Son of God could bestow for the glory of
his mother, that it became him in fact to furnish;' or again,
'Whatever honors or ornaments he has poured out on other saints,
those all together hath he heaped upon his mother;' whence they draw
their chain of reasoning to their desired conclusion; a mode of
argumentation which Gerson treats with contempt as captious and
sophistical."
He adds, what of course we all should say, that, in thus speaking, he
has no intention to curtail the liberty of pious persons in such
meditations and conjectures, on the mysteries of faith, sacred
histories, and the Scripture text, as are of the nature of comments,
supplements, and the like.
(3.) Raynaud is an author full of devotion, if any one is so, to the
Blessed Virgin; yet, in the work which he has composed in her honor
("Diptycha Mariana"), he says more than I can quote here to the same
purpose as Petau. I abridge some portions of his text:
"Let this be taken for granted, that no praises of ours can come up
to the praises due to the Virgin Mother. But we must not make up for
our inability to reach her true praise by a supply of lying
embellishment and false honors. For there are some whose affection
for religious objects is so imprudent and lawless, that they
transgress the due limits even toward the saints. This Origen has
excellently observed upon in the case of the Baptist, for very many,
instead of observing the measure of charity, consider whether he
might not be the Christ"--p. 9. ". . . St. Anselm, the first, or
one of the first, champions of the public celebration of the Blessed
Virgin's immaculate conception, says (de Excell. Virg.) that the
church considers it indecent, that anything that admits of doubt
should be said in her praise, when the things which are certainly
true of her supply such large materials for laudation. It is right
so to interpret St. Epiphanius also, when he says that human tongues
should not pronounce anything lightly of the Deipara; and who is
more justly to be charged with speaking lightly of the most holy
Mother of God, than he who, as if what is certain and evident did
not suffice for her full investiture, is wiser than the aged, and
obtrudes on us the toadstools of his own mind, and devotions unheard
of by those holy fathers who loved her best? Plainly as St. Anselm
says that she is the Mother of God, this by itself exceeds every
elevation which can be named or imagined, short of God. About so
sublime a majesty we should not speak hastily from prurience of wit,
or flimsy pretext of promoting piety; but with great maturity of
thought; and, whenever the maxims of the church and the oracles of
{89} faith do not suffice, then not without the suffrages of the
doctors. . . . Those who are subject to this prurience of
innovation, do not perceive how broad is the difference between
subjects of human science and heavenly things. All novelty
concerning the objects of our faith is to be put far away; except so
far as by diligent investigation of God's word, written and
unwritten, and a well founded inference from what is thence to be
elicited, something is brought to light which, though already indeed
there, had not hitherto been recognized. The innovations which we
condemn are those which rest neither on the written nor unwritten
word, nor on conclusions from it, nor on the judgment of ancient
sages, nor sufficient basis of reason, but on the sole color and
pretext of doing more honor to the Deipara."--p. 10.
In another portion of the same work, he speaks in particular of one of
those imaginations to which you especially refer, and for which,
without strict necessity (as it seems to me), you allege the authority
of à Lapide:
"Nor is that honor of the Deipara to be offered, viz., that the
elements of the body of Christ, which the Blessed Virgin supplied to
it, remain perpetually unaltered in Christ, and thereby are found
also in the eucharist. . . . This solicitude for the Virgin's glory
must, I consider, be discarded; since, if rightly considered, it
involves an injury toward Christ, and such honors the Virgin loveth
not. And first, dismissing philosophical bagatelles about the
animation of blood, milk, etc., who can endure the proposition that
a good portion of the substance of Christ in the eucharist should be
worshipped with a cultus less than latria? viz., by the inferior
cultus of hyperdulia? The preferable class of theologians
contend that not even the humanity of Christ is to be materially
abstracted from the Word of God, and worshipped by itself; how then
shall we introduce a cultus of the Deipara in Christ, which is
inferior to the cultus proper to him? How is this other than
casting down of the substance of Christ from his royal throne, and a
degradation of it to some inferior sitting-place? Is is nothing to
the purpose to refer to such fathers as say that the flesh of Christ
is the flesh of Mary, for they speak of its origin. What will
hinder, if this doctrine be admitted, our also admitting that there
is something in Christ which is detestable? for, as the first
elements of a body which were communicated by the Virgin to Christ
have (as these authors say) remained perpetually in Christ, so the
same materia, at least in part, which belonged originally to the
ancestors of Christ, came down to the Virgin from her father,
unchanged, and taken from her grandfather, and so on. And thus,
since it is not unlikely that some of these ancestors were
reprobate, there would now be something actually in Christ which had
belonged to a reprobate and worthy of detestation."--p. 237.
8. After such explanations, and with such authorities, to clear my
path, I put away from me, as you would wish, without any hesitation,
as matters in which my heart and reason have no part (when taken in
their literal and absolute sense, as any Protestant would naturally
take them, and as the writers doubtless did not use them), such
sentences, and phrases, as these: that the mercy of Mary is infinite;
that God has resigned into her hands his omnipotence; that
(unconditionally) it is safer to seek her than her Son; that the
Blessed Virgin is superior to God; that he is (simply) subject to her
command; that our Lord is now of the same disposition as his Father
toward sinners, viz., a disposition to reject them, while Mary takes
his place as an advocate with Father and Son; that the saints are more
ready to intercede with Jesus than Jesus with the Father; that Mary is
the only refuge of those with whom God is angry; that Mary alone can
obtain a Protestant's conversion; that it would have sufficed for the
salvation of men if our Lord had died not to obey his Father, but to
defer to the decree of his mother; that she rivals our Lord in being
God's daughter, not by adoption, but by a kind of nature; that Christ
fulfilled the office of Saviour by imitating her virtues; that, as the
incarnate God bore the image of his Father, so he bore the image of
his mother; that redemption derived from Christ indeed its
sufficiency, but from Mary its beauty and loveliness; that us we are
clothed with the merits of Christ, so we are clothed with {90} the
merits of Mary; that, as he is priest, in like manner is she
priestess; that his body and blood in the eucharist are truly hers and
appertain to her; that as he is present and received therein, so is
she present and received therein; that priests are ministers, as of
Christ, so of Mary; that elect souls are born of God and Mary; that
the Holy Ghost brings into fruitfulness his action by her, producing
in her and by her Jesus Christ in his members; that the kingdom of God
in our souls, as our Lord speaks, is really the kingdom of Mary in the
soul--and she and the Holy Ghost produce in the soul extraordinary
things--and when the Holy Ghost finds Mary in a soul he flies there.
Sentiments such as these I never knew of till I read your book, nor,
as I think, do the vast minority of English Catholics know them. They
seem to me like a bad dream. I could not have conceived them to be
said. I know not to what authority to go for them, to Scripture, or to
the fathers, or to the decrees of councils, or to the consent of
schools, or to the tradition of the faithful, or to the Holy See, or
to reason. They defy all the loci theologici. There is nothing of
them in the Missal, in the Roman Catechism, in the Roman '"Raccolta,"
in the "Imitation of Christ," in Gother, Challoner, Milner, or
Wiseman, as far as I am aware. They do but scare and confuse me. I
should not be holier, more spiritual, more sure of perseverance, if I
twisted my moral being into the reception of them; I should but be
guilty of fulsome, frigid flattery toward the most upright and noble
of God's creatures if I professed them, and of stupid flattery too;
for it would be like the compliment of painting up a young and
beautiful princess with the brow of a Plato and the muscle of an
Achilles. And I should expect her to tell one of her people in waiting
to turn me off her service without warning. Whether thus to feel be
the scandalum parvulorum in my case, or the scandalum
Pharisaeorum, I leave others to decide; but I will say plainly that I
had rather believe (which is impossible) that there is no God at all,
than that Mary is greater than God. I will have nothing to do with
statements which can only be explained by being explained away. I do
not, however, speak of these statements as they are found in their
authors, for I know nothing of the originals, and cannot believe that
they have meant what you say; but I take them as they lie in your
pages. Were any of them the sayings of saints in ecstasy, I should
know they had a good meaning; still, I should not repeat them myself;
but I am looking at them not as spoken by the tongues of angels, but
according to that literal sense which they bear in the mouths of
English men and English women. And, as spoken by man to man, in
England, in the nineteenth century, I consider them calculated to
prejudice inquirers, to frighten the unlearned, to unsettle
consciences, to provoke blasphemy, and to work the loss of souls.
9. And now, after having said so much as this, bear with me, my dear
friend, if I end with an expostulation. Have you not been touching us
on a very tender point in a very rude way? Is not the effect of what
you have said to expose her to scorn and obloquy who is dearer to us
than any other creature? Have you even hinted that our love for her is
anything else than an abuse? Have you thrown her one kind word
yourself all through your book? I trust so, but I have not lighted
upon one. And yet I know you love her well. Can you wonder, then--can
I complain much, much as I grieve--that men should utterly misconceive
of you, and are blind to the fact that you have put the whole argument
between you and us on a new footing; and that, whereas it was said
twenty-five years ago in the "British Critic," "Till Rome ceases to be
what practically she is, union is impossible between her and
England," you declare, on the contrary, "It is possible as soon as
Italy and England, {91} haying the same faith and the same centre of
unity, are allowed to hold severally their own theological opinions?"
They have not done you justice here because, in truth, the honor of
our Lady is dearer to them than the conversion of England.
Take a parallel case, and consider how you would decide it yourself.
Supposing an opponent of a doctrine for which you so earnestly
contend, the eternity of punishment, instead of meeting you with
direct arguments against it, heaped together a number of extravagant
descriptions of the place, mode, and circumstances of its infliction,
quoted Tertullian as a witness for the primitive fathers, and the
Covenanters and Ranters for these last centuries; brought passages
from the "Inferno" of Dante, and from the sermons of Whitfield; nay,
supposing he confined himself to the chapters on the subject in Jeremy
Taylor's work on "The State of Man," would you think this a fair and
becoming method of reasoning? and if he avowed that he should ever
consider the Anglican Church committed to all these accessories of the
doctrine till its authorities formally denounced Taylor and Whitfield,
and a hundred others, would you think this an equitable determination,
or the procedure of a theologian?
So far concerning the Blessed Virgin, the chief but not the only
subject of your volume. And now, when I could wish to proceed, she
seems to stop me, for the Feast of her Immaculate Conception is upon
us; and close upon its octave, which is kept with special solemnities
in the churches of this town, come the great antiphons, the heralds of
Christmas. That joyful season, joyful for all of us, while it centres
in him who then came on earth, also brings before us in peculiar
prominence that Virgin Mother who bore and nursed him. Here she is not
in the background, as at Eastertide, but she brings him to us in her
arms. Two great festivals, dedicated to her honor, to-morrow's and the
Purification, mark out and keep the ground, and, like the towers of
David, open the way to and fro for the high holiday season of the
Prince of Peace. And all along it her image is upon it, such as we see
it in the typical representation of the Catacombs. May the sacred
influences of this time bring us all together in unity! May it destroy
all bitterness on your side and ours! May it quench all jealous, sour,
proud, fierce antagonism on our side; and dissipate all captious,
carping, fastidious refinements of reasoning on yours! May that bright
and gentle lady, the Blessed Virgin Mary, overcome you with her
sweetness, and revenge herself on her foes by interceding effectually
for their conversion!
I am, yours, most affectionately,
John H. Newman.
THE ORATORY, BIRMINGHAM,
In fest. S. Ambrosii, 1865.
From The Sixpenny Magazine. HAVEN'T TIME A CHAPTER FOR PARENTS.
"That boy needs more attention," said Mr. Green, referring to his
eldest son, a lad whose wayward temper and inclination to vice
demanded a steady, consistent, wise, and ever-present exercise of
parental watchfulness and authority.
"You may well say that," returned the mother of the boy, for to her
the remark had been made. "He is getting entirely beyond me."
"If I only had the time to look after him?" Mr. Green sighed as he
uttered these words.
"I think you ought to take more time for a purpose like this," said
Mrs. Green.
"More time!" Mr. Green spoke with marked impatience. "What time have I
to attend to him, Margaret? Am I not entirely absorbed in business?
Even now I should be at the counting-house, and am only kept away by
your late breakfast."
Just then the breakfast bell rang, and Mr. and Mrs. Green, accompanied
by their children, repaired to the dining-room. John, the boy about
whom the parents had been talking, was among the number. As they took
their places at the table he exhibited certain disorderly movements,
and a disposition to annoy his younger brothers and sisters. But these
were checked, instantly, by his father, of whom John stood in some
fear.
Before the children had finished eating, Mr. Green laid his knife and
fork side by side on his plate, pushed his chair back, and was in the
act of rising, when his wife said:
"Don't go yet. Just wait until John is through with his breakfast. He
acts dreadfully the moment your back is turned."
Mr. Green turned a quick, lowering glance upon the boy, whose eyes
shrank beneath his angry glance, saying as ho did so:
"I haven't time to stay a moment longer; I ought to have been at my
business an hour ago, But see here, my lad," addressing himself to
John, "there has been enough of this work. Not a day passes that I am
not worried with complaints about you. Now, mark me! I shall inquire
particularly as to your conduct when I come home at dinner-time; and,
if you have given your mother any trouble, or acted in any way
improperly, I will take you severely to account. It's outrageous that
the whole family should be kept in constant trouble by you. Now, be on
your guard!"
A moment or two Mr. Green stood frowning upon the boy, and then
retired.
Scarcely had the sound of the closing street-door, which marked the
fact of Mr. Green's departure, ceased to echo through the house, ere
John began to act as was his custom when his father was out of the
way. His mother's remonstrances were of no avail; and, when she
finally compelled him to leave the table, he obeyed with a most
provoking and insolent manner.
All this would have been prevented if Mr. Green had taken from
business just ten minutes, and conscientiously devoted that time to
{93} the government of his wayward boy and the protection of the
family from his annoyances.
On arriving at his counting-house, Mr. Green found two or three
persons waiting, and but a single clerk in attendance. He had felt
some doubts as to the correctness of his conduct in leaving home so
abruptly, under the circumstances; but the presence of the customers
satisfied him that he had done right. Business, in his mind, was
paramount to everything else; and his highest duty to his family he
felt to be discharged when he was devoting himself most assiduously to
the work of procuring for them the means of external comfort, ease,
and luxury. Worldly well-doing was a cardinal virtue in his eyes.
Mr. Green was the gainer, perhaps, of two shillings in the way of
profit on sales, by being at his counting-house ten minutes earlier
than would have been the case had he remained with his family until
the completion of their morning meal. What was lost to his boy by the
opportunity thus afforded for an indulgence in a perverse and
disobedient temper it is hard to say. Something was, undoubtedly,
lost--something, the valuation of which, in money, it would be
difficult to make.
Mrs. Green did not complain of John's conduct to his father at
dinner-time. She was so often forced to complain that she avoided the
task whenever she felt justified in doing so; and that was, perhaps,
far too often. Mr. Green asked no questions; for he knew, by
experience, to what results such questions would lead, and he was in
no mood for unpleasant intelligence. So John escaped, as he had
escaped hundreds of times before, and felt encouraged to indulge his
bad propensities at will, to his own injury and the annoyance of all
around him.
If Mr. Green had no time in the morning or through the day to attend
to his children, the evening, one might think, would afford
opportunity for conference with them, supervision of their studies,
and an earnest inquiry into their conduct and moral and intellectual
progress. But such was not the case. Mr. Green was too much wearied
with the occupation of the day to bear the annoyance of the children;
or his thoughts were too busy with business matters, or schemes of
profit, to attend to the thousand and one questions they were ready to
pour in upon him from all sides; or he had a political club to attend,
an engagement with some merchant for the discussion of a matter
connected with trade, or felt obliged to be present at the meeting of
some society of which he was a member. So he either left home
immediately after tea, or the children were sent to bed in order that
he might have a quiet evening for rest, business reflection, or the
enjoyment of a new book.
Mr. Green had so much to do and so much to think about that he had no
time to attend to his children; and this neglect was daily leaving
upon them ineffaceable impressions that would inevitably mar the
happiness of their after lives. This was particularly the case with
John. Better off in the world was Mr. Green becoming every day--better
off as it regarded money; but poorer in another sense--poorer in
respect to home affections and home treasures. His children were not
growing up to love him intensely, to confide in him implicitly, and to
respect him as their father and friend. He had no time to attend to
them, and rather pushed them away than drew them toward him with the
strong cords of affection. To his wife he left their government, and
she was not equal to the task.
"I don't believe," said Mrs. Green, one day, "that John is learning
much at the school where he goes. I think you ought to see after him a
little. He never studies a lesson at home."
"Mr. Elden has the reputation of being one of our best teachers. His
school stands high," replied Mr. Green. {94} "That may happen," said
Mrs. Green. "Still, I really think you ought to know, for yourself,
how John is getting along. Of one thing I am certain, he does not
improve in good manners nor good temper in the least. And he is never
in the house between school-hours, except to get his meals. I wish you
would require him to be at your counting-house during the afternoons.
School is dismissed at four o'clock, and he ranges the streets with
other boys, and goes where he pleases from that time until night.
"That's very bad,"--Mr. Green spoke in a concerned voice,--"very bad.
And it must be broken up. But as to having him with me, that is out of
the question. He would be into everything, and keep me in hot water
all the while. He'd like to come well enough, I do not doubt; but I
can't have him there."
"Couldn't you set him to do something?"
"I might. But I haven't time to attend to him, Margaret. Business is
business, and cannot be interrupted."
Mrs. Green sighed, and then remarked:
"I wish you would call on Mr. Elden and have a talk with him about
John."
"I will, if you think it best."
"Do so, by all means. And beside, I would give more time to John in
the evenings. If, for instance, you devoted an evening to him once a
week, it would enable you to understand how he is progressing, and
give you a control over him not now possessed."
"You are right in this, no doubt, Margaret."
But reform went not beyond this acknowledgment. Mr. Green could never
find time to see John's teacher, nor feel himself sufficiently at
leisure, or in the right mood of mind, to devote to the boy even a
single evening.
And thus it went on from day to day, from month to month, and from
year to year, until, finally, John was sent home from school by Mr.
Elden with a note to his father, in which idleness, disorderly
conduct, and vicious habits were charged upon him in the broadest
terms.
The unhappy Mr. Green called immediately upon the teacher, who gave
him a more particular account of his son's bad conduct, and concluded
by saying that he was unwilling to receive him back into his school.
Strange as it may seem, it was four months before Mr. Green "found
time" to see about another school, and to get John entered therein;
during which long period the boy had full liberty to go pretty much
where he pleased, and to associate with whom he liked. It is hardly to
be supposed that he grew any better for this.
By the time John was seventeen years of age, Mr. Green's business had
become greatly enlarged, and his mind more absorbed therein. With him
gain was the primary thing; and, as a consequence, his family held a
secondary place in his thoughts. If money were needed, he was ever
ready to supply the demand; that done, he felt that his duty to them
was, mainly, discharged. To the mother of his children he left the
work of their wise direction in the paths of life--their government
and education; but she was inadequate to the task imposed.
From the second school at which John was entered he was dismissed
within three months, for bad conduct. He was then sent to school in a
distant city, where, removed from all parental restraint and
admonition, he made viler associates than any he had hitherto known,
and took thus a lower step in vice. He was just seventeen, when a
letter from the principal of this school conveyed to Mr. Green such
unhappy intelligence of his son that he immediately resolved, as a
last resort, to send him to sea, before the mast--and this was done,
spite of all the mother's tearful remonstrances, and the boy's threats
that he would {95} escape from the vessel on the very first
opportunity.
And yet, for all this sad result of parental neglect, Mr. Green
devoted no more time nor care to his children. Business absorbed the
whole man. He was a merchant, both body and soul. His responsibilities
were not felt as extending beyond his counting-house, further than to
provide for the worldly well-being of his family. Is it any cause of
wonder that, with his views and practice, it should not turn out well
with his children; or, at least, with some of them?
At the end of a year John came home from sea, a rough, cigar-smoking,
dram-drinking, overgrown boy of eighteen, with all his sensual desires
and animal passions more active than when he went away, while his
intellectual faculties and moral feelings were in a worse condition
than at his separation from home. Grief at the change oppressed the
hearts of his parents; but their grief was unavailing. Various efforts
were made to get him into some business, but he remained only a short
time in any of the places where his father had him introduced.
Finally, he was sent to sea again. But he never returned to his
friends. In a drunken street-brawl, that occurred while on shore at
Valparaiso, he was stabbed by a Spaniard, and died shortly afterward.
On the very day this tragic event took place, Mr. Green was rejoicing
over a successful speculation, from which he had come out the gainer
by two thousand pounds. In the pleasure this circumstance occasioned,
all thoughts of the absent one, ruined by his neglect, were swallowed
up.
Several months elapsed. Mr. Green had returned home, well satisfied
with his day's business. In his pocket was the afternoon paper, which,
after the younger children were in bed, and the older ones out of his
way, he sat down to read. His eyes turned to the foreign intelligence,
and almost the first sentence he read was the intelligence of his
son's death. The paper dropped from his hands, while he uttered an
expression of surprise and grief that caused the cheeks of his wife,
who was in the room, to turn deadly pale. She had not power to ask the
cause of her husband's sudden exclamation; but her heart, that ever
yearned toward her absent boy, instinctively divined the truth.
"John is dead!" said Mr. Green, at length, speaking in a tremulous
tone of voice.
There was from the mother no wild burst of anguish. The boy had been
dying to her daily for years, and she had suffered for him worse than
the pangs of death. Burying her face in her hands, she wept silently,
yet hopelessly.
"If we were only blameless of the poor child's death!" said Mrs.
Green, lifting her tearful eyes, after the lapse of nearly ten
minutes, and speaking in a sad, self-rebuking tone of voice.
When those with whom we are in close relationship die, how quickly is
that page in memory's book turned on which lies the record of
unkindness or neglect! Already had this page been turned for Mr.
Green, and conscience was sweeping therefrom the dust that well-nigh
obscured the handwriting. He inwardly trembled as he read the
condemning sentences that charged him with his son's ruin.
"If we were only blameless of the poor child's death!"
How these words of the grieving mother smote upon his heart. He did
not respond to them. How could he do so at that moment?
"Where is Edward?" he inquired, at length.
"I don't know," sobbed the mother. "He is out somewhere almost every
evening. Oh! I wish you would look to him a little more closely. He is
past my control."
"I must do so," returned Mr. Green, speaking from a strong conviction
of the necessity of doing as his wife suggested; "if I only had a
little more time----"
He checked himself. It was the old excuse--the rock upon which all his
best hopes for his first-born had been fearfully wrecked. His lips
closed, his head was bowed, and, in the bitterness of unavailing
sorrow, he mused on the past, while every moment the conviction of
wrong toward his child, now irreparable, grew stronger and stronger.
After that, Mr. Green made an effort to exercise more control over his
children; but he had left the reins loose so long that his tighter
grasp produced restiveness and rebellion. He persevered, however; and,
though Edward followed too closely the footsteps of John, yet the
younger children were brought under salutary restraints. The old
excuse--want of time--was frequently used by Mr. Green to justify
neglect of parental duties; but a recurrence of his thoughts to the
sad ruin of his eldest boy had, in most cases, the right effect; and
in the end he ceased to give utterance to the words--"I haven't time."
However, frequently he fell into neglect, from believing that business
demanded his undivided attention.
[ORIGINAL.]
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