The invitation heeded : reasons for a return to Catholic unity

Front matter

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Part I. The Church Considered In Certain Historical Aspects

Chapter I. The Attitude of the World towardsthe Church, - Chapter II, The Perpetuity of the Church, - - - Chapter III. The Church the Guardian of Morals, - - Chapter IV. The Failure of Protestantism, - - - Chapter V. The Church and Civilization, - - - - Chapter VI. The Charge of Persecution, - - ~ -

Chapter I. The Incarnation and the Mission of the Holy Ghost

Chapter II. Infallibility, - - - - - - Chapter III. The Appeal to Scripture, - > . ° Chapter 1V. The Appeal to Antiquity, - ah AS -

Chapter V. The Notes of the Church, >

PAGE.

20 Contents,

Part III. The Church Considered As An Organization

PAGE, Chapter I. The Primacy and Christianity, - - - - 207 Chapter II. The Primacy and Prophecy, - - - - 1 aes Chapter III. The Primacy and Antiquity, - - - - - 248 Chapter IV. The Primacy and Unity, - - - - - 276 Chapter V. The Primacy and Authority, - - - - - 285

Chapter VI. The Primacy and Infallibility, - - - - 34

PREBATORY CREAR EER:

Bem AY God pardon my hasty pride, but I used to fancy ‘| myself quite free from prejudice, and boasted in

<2 my heart of a readiness to welcome truth wherever found, and to follow it in whatever hard path it might lead. I remember long ago copying a golden sentence from one who has done me more service than all other Anglican teachers combined—my beloved Richard Hooker— and how, in a figure, I hung the words as a memorial before my eyes: “If truth do anywhere manifest itself, seek not to smother it with glossing delusions; acknowledge the greatness thereof; and think it your best victory when the same doth prevail over you.”* If I may confess a thing so sacred, the prayers which for years were oftenest on my lips were those beautiful Collects, which I had learned through the English Prayer-Book—petitions for the light of the Holy Spirit, that I might have a right judgment in all things; and that I might not only know what things I ought to do, but also have power faithfully to fulfil the same.t ‘The prayers were, indeed, graciously answered; but

* Ecclesiastical Polity, Pref. ch. ix.

+ Deus, qui corda fidelium Sancti Spiritus illustratione docuisti: da nobis in eodem Spiritu recta sapere, et de ejus semper consolatione gaudere. Per Dominum, in unitate ejusdem.—/xz Dom. Pent. et in Missa Vot. de S. S.

Vota, quesumus Domine, supplicantis populi ccelesti pietate not according to the imperfect intention of him who uttered them. |

When the Letter Apostolic of Pius IX., ‘To all Protestants and other Non-Catholics,’ first came under my notice, I read it with interest, indeed, but, incredible though it now seems, with little other emotion than one of rather contemptuous pity for the august Wniter. I supposed that I had mastered the Roman question, which I always thought the greatest of all questions in theology or history ; and imagined myself familiar with the strong ground upon which every true Catholic ought to stand. For I looked upon myself as a genuine Catholic—an Israelite indeed. I do not mean that I ever had any sympathy with the Ritualistic movement. I never could regard the leaders of that movement with any other feeling than one, I fear, of impatience. I considered them, I regret to say, the most illogical of all thinkers. If the Ritualists were right, the Reformers were wrong. The great sin of schism could never have been justified by any such paltry differences as separate our ‘advanced’ friends from the great Roman Communion. The only consistent course for men to take who believed in the Sacrifice of the Altar and in the Invocation of Saints was to go back, promptly and penitently, to the ancient Church which had proved its litem ats by being in the right after all.

No; I defended the Anglican Reformation with all my soul. J did so upon what I called high ground, in company with such sturdy Catholics (so I termed them) as Andrewes, and Bull, and Hammond. I threw myself back prosequere: ut et que agenda sunt, videant ; et ad implenda que viderint, convalescant. Per Dominum nostrum.—Dom, inf. Oct. Epiph.

Prefatory Chapter. 29 upon ‘the primitive Church,’ and upheld the doctrinal standards of the Anglican Communion as faithfully reproducing the uncorrupted model. I loved this reformed Church, supposing her to be indeed Apostolic, both in succession and in creed, and not knowing an Older and a Better; I gave her all my devotion (my eyes being blinded), as the Mother and Mistress of my soul; and I hoped to die, as Bishop Ken declared that he died, “in the Holy, Catholic, and Apostolical Faith, professed by the whole Church before the disunion of East and West—more particularly in the communion of the Church of England, as it stands distinguished from all Papal and Puritan innovation, and as it adheres to the doctrine of the Cross.”

The Resfonsio Anglcana of Canon (now Bishop) Wordsworth did not satisfy me. The writer, I thought, wasted his strength on minor points. It was not such an answer as I conceived Bishop Bull would have given; who, by one short move, would have carried the war into Africa, and would have put the Bishop of Rome immediately on the defensive, by denouncing “zm as the innovator, the wanderer, the schismatic, and by calling upon zm to return to that Catholic Unity which the arrogance of his predecessors had first broken.

Well, time went on; and I was not conscious of the smallest change in my theological opinions and sympathies ; when all at once the ground upon which I had stood, with such careless confidence, gave way. Like a treacherous island, it sank without warning from beneath my feet, and left me struggling in the wide waters. Thanks be to God that I was not left to perish in that cold and bitter flood, and that my feet so soon rested for ever on the eternal Rock! How it came about—by what intellectual process my position had been undermined—by what unconscious steps my feet had been led to an unseen brink, I did not know. I was only aware of the sudden terror with which I found myself slipping and going, and the darkness which succeeded the swift plunge.

So far as I can recall the order of impressions, the first intimation which I received of my insecurity was the return to my mind, unbidden, of some of the words of the Holy Father; they would not be dismissed; they haunted me, uncomfortably: “Domini Nostri Jesu Christi, qui pro universi humani generis salute tradidit animam suam, caritate excitati et compulsi;” “id agimus, ut omni studio et caritate eos vel maxime moneamus, exhortemur, et obsecremus, ut serio considerare et animadvertere velint, num ipsi viam ab eodem Christo Domino preescriptam sectentur, quze ad eternam perducit salutem.” There was something in the tone of this appeal which compelled me to listen. The image of the apostolic Pleader came up before me; I saw the beautiful, benignant face again, which I saw as a boy in Rome; I beheld the outstretched hand, extended then in blessing, now in gracious invitation and entreaty: “ Errantium filiorum ad catholice Ecclesiz reversionem expansis manibus ardentissime expectamus, ut eos in ccelestis Patris domum amantissime excipere, et inexhaustis ejus thesauris ditare possimus.”

At the same time (strange that passages from such remote sources should appear in conjunction) a detached sentence from that extraordinary book, Zcce Homo, came floating into consciousness on some breeze of memory, and caught, and would not be brushed away: “ Habit dulls the senses and puts the critical faculty to sleep.” It suggested to me —whether legitimately or not, I am not sure; for I do not

Prefatory Chapter. 25 remember the context—the possibility that my familiarity with my position was no real assurance of its impregnability, and that the very frequency with which I had gone over its defences had rendered me incapable of detecting the weak points. There was a quick misgiving; I feared blankly that there were realities which others were able to ‘see clearly, but from which my eyes were holden; that there might be some deep undertone of truth which I had never been able to catch, like the cosmic harmony of the ancients, which to gross mortal ears, alive to lesser but sharper sounds, was inaudible.* I found myself reflecting upon the immeasurable influence of education, and how incalculable must be the power over a mind of opinions -imbibed from infancy through every pore and never counteracted. If these opinions were prejudices, how almost impossible would it be for truth to penetrate them! I thought of the English Language, in which I had learned to think and to express my thoughts; and I remembered how for three hundred years that tongue had been one vast engine of ceaseless attack upon the Roman Catholic Church ; how its literature was saturated with a spirit of the most deadly antagonism to that Church, not in the department of theology only, but of history, and poetry, and travels, and fiction, aye! and the very primers in the hands of the little children. If such a fountain should prove to be poisoned, what effect might not be anticipated in those who all their lives long had drunk of its streams! All this passed through my mind more rapidly than I have been able to record it; and I felt my heart growing faint at a whisper—to which

Seip.

nevertheless I listened intently—that perhaps I had prejudged the case after all.

The effect of this impression was soon after indefinitely increased by a passage of Moehler, which forcibly arrested my attention. Speaking of the delusions of the early heretics, the learned writer-says: “There are certainly few who have studied the Gnostic errors, that are not seized with the deepest astonishment, how their partisans could possibly deem their whimsical opinions, the fantastic forms of their demonology, and the rest, to be Christian apostolic doctrines; and many a man among us perhaps believes, that he could in a single hour confute thousands of them by the Bible, and bring them back to pure Christianity ; so much so indeed, that he is even disposed to accuse their then opponents of a want of dexterity, because they did not succeed.* _ But, when once a peculiar system of moral life hath been called into existence, should it even be composed of the most corrupt elements, no ordinary force of external proofs, no conclusions of ratiocination, no eloquence, are able to destroy it: its roots le mostly too deep to be pervious to mortal eye: it can only perish of itself, become gradually exhausted, spend its rage, and disappear. But, as long as it flourishes, all around is converted into a demonstration in its favor: the earth speaks for it, and the heavens are its warranty. Meanwhile, a new age, with another spirit and other elements of life, springs up: this, without any points of internal contact with the past, is often at a loss to comprehend it, and demands with astonishment how its existence had been possible. But, should Divine Grace, which can alone kindle the opposite ¢rue Zife, suc-

* Mr. Robertson’s translation of this sentence is so imperfect that I have ventured to alter it.

Prefatory Chapter. a7, ceed in delivering one individual from such errors, then he expresses the incomprehensible and inconceivable nature of his former state, by saying that he had been, as it were, enchanted, and that something, like scales, has fallen from Misceves; *

| I remembered how St. Augustine, “one of the profoundest thinkers of antiquity,’t even for four years after he had become a catechumen under St. Ambrose, was entangled in the meshes of his Manichzean heresy. I admitted instantly that I, too, mzght be under a spell; that my case might be—I do not dare to say like that of the great Saint and Father, but that of the Donatists or the Gnostics ; since I was certainly not more positive in my convictions than’ they, neither could I furnish myself with any satisfactory reason for believing that I was blessed with greater light. And then the Hand of God drew back the veil of my heart; and I saw for the first time, and all at once, how - utterly steeped I had been in prejudice, how from the beginning I had, without a question or suspicion, assumed the very point about which I ought reverently to have enquired with an impartial and a docile mind. J had studied the Roman controversy; so I thought—if in my short life I could fairly be said to have studied anything; but ow had I studied it? Had there ever been a time when it was an open question in my mind whether the claims of the Roman Church were valid? Had I begun by admitting that the Pope might be nght? Had it ever crossed my thoughts that the Church in communion with the See of Peter might be indeed the one only Catholic Church of our Lord Jesus

* Symbolism, part i. ch. v. § xxxix.. ¢ Sir William Hamilton.

Chnst? And had I ever resolved, with all my soul, as one standing on the threshold and in the awful light of eternity, to begin by tearing down every assumption and divesting myself of.every. prejudice, and then, wherever truth should lead the way, to follow—“leave all and follow”? Alas! never. I had studied simply to combat and refute. The suggestion that ‘Romanism’ might after all be identical with Christianity was preposterous. ‘The Papacy was the great Apostasy, the mystery of iniquity; it was the master-piece of Satan, who had made his most successful attack upon the Church of God by entering and corrupting it. The rise of the Papal pretensions was matter of the plainest history; and every well-instructed child could point out how one fiction after another had been grafted into the creed of that apostate Church, until now the simple faith of early days was scarce recognizable under the accumulated error of centuries. ‘History’—who wro/e that history? ‘ Well-instructed child ’—why, that was the very point at issue! Of course I had not yet begun to examine and appreciate the Catholic argument (I may as well use the word at once as synonymous with Roman Catholic); I merely saw that there had been an appeal, and that the case which I had supposed settled had been carried into a higher court. The decision of the past had not been reversed; but it mzght be reversed. I discovered that I had been laboriously building without thoroughly inspecting my foundation, and that I would have to do my work all over again. I saw that I had committed “the very illogical mistake” against which I had often warned young men under my instruction, the error of those who first canvass “all the objections against any particular system whose pretensions to truth they would examine, before they consider the direct arguments in its

Prefatory Chapter. 29 favor.”* I saw that I had been guilty of what Bossuet calls “a calumny,” and what I now acknowledged to be an act of injustice, namely, of charging upon Catholics zferences which I had myself drawn from their doctrines, but against which Catholics indignantly protest.t I could not say with St. Augustine that “I blushed with joy,” but with "shame I blushed, “at having so many years barked not against the Catholic faith, but against the fictions of carnal imaginations. For so rash and impious had I been, that what I ought by enquiring to have learned, I had pronounced on,condemning. . . . I should have knocked and proposed the doubt, how it was to be believed, not insultingly opposed it as if believed.’”’¢

This is the ‘plunge’ I spoke of. I used the word because it expressed, as well perhaps as any other, the terrifying rapidity which marked the steps of my intellectual crisis. Upon some men the discovery of a life-long error may break gradually; truth may be said to have its dawning; but to me it came with a shock. ‘The rain descended and the floods came; my house fell; and great was the fall of it.

Then followed a sense of blank desolateness. I was groping among ruins; and wherewith should I go to work to build again? Ido not mean that I faltered. Thank God that he kept me true, and suffered me not to shrink from the sharp agony which I perceived was Zossidly in store for me. To borrow words of the great Father from whose experience I have already drawn, “God gave me

* Dr. Hawkins, Essay on Tradition, p. 82. + Exposition, ch. ii. + Confessions, lib. vi. c. 4, 5.

that mind, that I should prefer nothing to the discovery of truth, wish, think of, love naught besides.” But the task of reconstruction seemed almost hopeless.

I began by taking note of, and ruling out, all considerations which could conceivably stand in the way of an impartial investigation. I challenged the witnesses. On the one hand, I put aside such as these: cherisheé opinions; hallowed associations; the intellectual and social accumulations of my life thus far ; a useful and honorable position ; fair hopes, and plans long pondered ; the grief of hearts more dear than hopes, or plans, or life itself. On the other side, I had to be on my guard against—what? Aye,what! Ah, dear souls! who can talk so bravely about the fascinations of Romanism and the duty of resisting its seductive charms, what do you know of the anguish of a heart that is called to give up all for truth, and is ready, if need be, to make the sacrifice? No; on the side of the Church of Rome there was adsolutely nothzng—unless, indeed, it might be some attraction lurking in the very completeness of the immolation. Well, there might be something in this; so I marked it down as a danger to be _ carefully watched against.

And so I set my face forward with desperate earnestness ; and in due time—it may seem, avery short time—I had not a trace of doubt left that I had all along been a vain enemy of the One, Catholic, and Apostolic Church. Why zo¢ in a short time? Why not in a month, or a week, or a day? Is it any reflection upon Truth that she surrenders herself quickly to a soul whose every nerve is strained in her pursuit ? Is it any argument against the Church of God that it is easily _ identified ? Surely, if there be a Kingdom of Heaven upon earth, it must be known by marks which cannot be mistaken. Yes! I knew it when I had found it. And I found it as in

Prefatory Chapter. an the parable, like a treasure hidden in a field—in the self-same field up and down which I had wandered for years, and where I had often trampled it under my feet. And when I had found it, I hid it, scarce daring to gaze at its splendor, and crying, as St. Augustine cried, “Too late, alas! have I known thee, O ancient and eternal Truth!” And then, for joy thereof, I went and sold all that I had, and bought that field.

What were the signs by which I recognized this divine Church, I shall endeavor to state in the following pages. I shall not attempt to suppress or disguise the earnestness of an advocate. For let me say at once, that I do not write in the forlorn hope of winning a brief and profitless notoriety ; nor yet in needless vindication of the step I have taken; but with the sole desire, in God’s sight, of doing possible good to the few whose attention may have been momentarily arrested by what they deem my perversion. J must improve an opportunity which will never recur. I know well that the same things, and better things than I can ever hope to say, have been said already by those who have travelled the same path before me; but then—wtile est plures a pluribus fieri libros, diverso stylo non diversa fide, ut ad plurimos res ipsa perveniat, ad alios sic,ad alios autem sic.* Need I confess also that these pages are written with many prayers, and by a hand which trembles lest through its unskilfulness it should distort the fair features of the truth it would portray ?

Yes, this is my only apology for writing. I was once deceived by the unreal charms of a false prophetess ; but now the thin mask has been torn away. I once had only bitter

* St. Augustine, De Z7rinttate, lib.i.c. 5.

32 Lhe Invitation fTeeded.

thoughts and scornful words for her whose glories I had never seen, and to whom I did not know that my soul owed high allegiance ; but now divine compassion has led me to the feet of my true Mother, who through all my railing stood patiently and with tearful love awaiting my return. And in the joy of the present I cannot forget what now seems the gloom of the past. I have been brought into the fragrant garden ; and I think of the weary wilderness. I have drunk of the flowing fountain ; and I remember the broken cisterns over which I once labored—

“ The toil Of dropping buckets into empty wells, And growing old in drawing nothing up.”

Therefore I am fain to look back, and call to those whom I have left behind.

O my brother! am I taking too much upon myself, shall I say what becomes me not to say, when I ask you to look anxiously at the grounds of your faith, and to do so in a spirit of unflinching truthfulness, with a candor which you are sure is not tarnished bya reservation? Fear not the frown, or the scorn, of those who would stigmatize your honest enquiry as vacillation and weakness. ‘“ Let those treat you harshly who are not acquainted with the difficulty of attaining truth and avoiding error ;”—it is St. Augustine who addresses you— “let those treat you harshly who know not how hard it is to get rid of old prejudices; let those treat you harshly who have not learned how very hard it is to purify the interior eye, and render it capable of contemplating the sun of the soul, truth.” And do not forget to begin and to continue your work of examination with importunate prayer for that assistance without which we cannot hope to be guided aright. I donot ask you

Prefatory Chapter. 33 to pray that you may become a Roman Catholic; that would be most irrational. But pray earnestly that, 7f the Roman Catholic Church de Chnist’s true Church, your eyes may be opened to see the truth and your heart fortified to embrace it. Surely, if you are, I do not say a brave man, but a sin cere man, living for God alone and for eternity, you cannot hesitate to do this—even though you know I believe from the bottom of my heart that God will answer your petition as, in his mercy, he answered mine. You are not willing— you do not dare—to offer such a prayer? Ah! there is only one thing that ever can, and that ever will, enable you with all your soul to make it—and that is, the grace of God.

Bow Riles le

THE CHURCH CONSIDERED IN CERTAIN HISTORICAL ASPECTS.

CTEARTE RTL THE ATTITUDE OF THE WORLD TOWARDS THE CHURCH.

eerees) IE Catholic Church is the great incubus which is Ye ve, perpetually haunting and troubling the dreams of (azesil} the world. Men try to ignore it; but it obtrudes itself upon their unwilling notice. They would fain remand it to a place among the effete superstitions of the past; but when they think the spectre is laid, it returns unbidden, and casts its vast shadow over the present. In that shadow the world lies uneasily; and, consciously or unconsciously, it betrays its dissatisfaction. In every great political and social movement, in the literature of the day, nay, in every magazine and newspaper which drops from the teeming press, the influence may be more or less distinctly discerned of the mysterious presence of this great spiritual organization. ‘The world has always been puzzled to account for this influence. Protestantism it can understand perfectly— there is nothing unearthly or mysterious about chat, but in the life and progress of the Catholic Church there is something which defies every attempt at rational and systematic explanation.

To be sure, men have their theories; but, if the truth be told, they are by no means so satisfactory as might be wished. Such expressions as ‘the consummate policy of Rome,’ and ‘the marvellous machinery of the Catholic Church,’ are after all but stock phrases, with which men dispose of phenomena which must have at least a nominal resolution. What is there behind the policy? What puts

38 The L[nvitation Fleeded.

fife into the machinery, and guides the great engine in its noiseless, frictionless activity? Will ‘discipline’ explain the devotion of the Catholic Priesthood? Men donot turn hypocrites in order to spend their years in prayer and fasting; neither do they voluntarily elect to become the passive tools of a sordid despotism, to be rewarded only by a life of sacrifice and toil. Indeed, the world does not believe its own slanders. And now and then, when some periodic gust of persecution assails the Church, and not a martyr flinches; or when pestilence goes through the land, and faithful seekers of souls follow quickly in the trail of the destroyer, and the places of those who fall are instantly and noiselessly filled; or when tidings come that a score or so of missionaries and a few thousand converts have been massacred in some hitherto unheard-of province of China; the world, conscience-smitten, holds its peace, and pays to the Kingdom which is ‘not of this world’ the tribute of a sullen, if not a respectful silence.

One of the best things ever said by that acute thinker, the Count de Maistre, was that “no test is so infallible as the instinct of infidelity.”* Certainly in examining the claims of rival Christian bodies it will be the part of prudence to watch narrowly the tactics of the opponents of all Christianity. And here at once we come upon something definite ; for the application of this criterion gives us results which no sincere lover of truth can disregard. Infidelity does not stop to make war upon Protestantism; it is too cunning by far to quarrel with those who are ignorantly doing its own work ; it greets them with a covert sneer, or an insolent nod of recognition, and goes on to do battle with its ancient and

* Du Pape, liv. iv. ch. xi. § 14.

The Attitude of the World. 39 inveterate foe. Look at the character of the unbelief of Catholic and of Protestant countries. Doubtless some of my readers are amazed at this challenge. They have been accustomed to regard the religious condition of Catholic nations as one of the strongest arguments against the Catholic Church; nowhere, say they, is infidelity so thoroughgoing and so bold; and in no way can this virulent scepticism be explained but as the inevitable reaction from the degrading superstition in which the people have for centuries been held. Surely observation was never more hasty nor inference more illogical. There is less of real irreligion in Catholic than in Protestant countries. What there is, is indeed rampant. And why? Not as a necessary recoil from a religion which degrades rather than enlightens. I am convinced, from my own experience in Catholic countries, that this supposed religious degeneracy is a huge bugbear. The explanation is far more simple. The Catholic Church makes no truce, holds no parley, with the world, the flesh, nor the devil. Her enemies can neither frighten her into silence nor cajole her into compromise. At every point they find her guarded, vigilant, and unrelenting ; and, driven from her citadel, they are forced to stand forth in open warfare and rail at her in furious defiance. In France and Spain and Italy a man is either a Catholic or an infidel. But in Protestant countries unbelief salutes Christianity; it puts on the livery of the saints, and builds its chapels, and pays its preachers; and in the course of a generation or two it has made Protestantism as godless as itself.

Read the history of Europe for the last two centuries. It is that of one long, desperate struggle, waged by all the anarchic powers of human nature, and with all the weapons which craft and hatred could furnish—against what? Not against Protestantism, but against the Catholic Church. Deists, Encyclopzedists, Republicans, Jacobins, Rationalists, Free-thinkers—they are good Protestants all; they laud the Reformation; they boast that they carry out its principles ; and with one consent, though by divers arts—by argument, by satire, by blasphemy, and by the guillotine—they assail Her within whom dwells the everlasting Presence, before which the devils of old cried out, saying, ‘Let us alone; what have we to do with thee, Jesus of Nazareth? Art thou come to destroy us? I know thee who thou art, the Holy One of God.’

If all the cruel things which in a single day are wnitten and spoken throughout the world against the Roman Catholic Church could be brought together, they would make a volume which few would have the stomach to read. Every hour calumnies are uttered against that Church which in their essence are but repetitions of the dreary tales refuted by Tertullian and St. Justin seventeen centuries ago. Surely this undying hate of the world is a sign which cannot be misunderstood. ‘To be hated of the world is a note of the Church. “If the world hate you; know ye that it hated me before you. If you had been of the world, the world would love its own: but because you are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you. Remember my word that I said to you: The servant is not greater than his lord. If they have persecuted me, they will also persecute you: if they have kept my word, they will keep yours also. But all these things they will do to you for my name’s sake, because they know not him that sent me.”