Apologia pro vita sua being a history of his religious opinions
which demanded it, I felt it a duty to give out plainly all that I
thought, though I did not like to do so. One such instance occurred,
when I had to publish a Letter about Tract 90. In that Letter, I said,
"Instead of setting before the soul the Holy Trinity, and heaven and
hell, the Church of Rome does seem to me, as a popular system, to preach
the Blessed Virgin and the Saints, and purgatory." On this occasion I
recollect expressing to a friend the distress it gave me thus to speak;
but, I said, "How can I help saying it, if I think it? and I _do_ think
it; my Bishop calls on me to say out what I think; and that is the long
and the short of it." But I recollected Hurrell Froude's words to me,
almost his dying words, "I must enter another protest against your
cursing and swearing. What good can it do? and I call it uncharitable to
an excess. How mistaken we may ourselves be, on many points that are
only gradually opening on us!"
Instead then of speaking of errors in doctrine, I was driven, by my
state of mind, to insist upon the political conduct, the controversial
bearing, and the social methods and manifestations of Rome. And here I
found a matter ready to my hand, which affected me the more sensibly for
the reason that it lay at our very doors. I can hardly describe too
strongly my feeling upon it. I had an unspeakable aversion to the policy
and acts of Mr. O'Connell, because, as I thought, he associated himself
with men of all religions and no religion against the Anglican Church,
and advanced Catholicism by violence and intrigue. When then I found him
taken up by the English Catholics, and, as I supposed, at Rome, I
considered I had a fulfilment before my eyes how the Court of Rome
played fast and loose, and justified the serious charges which I had
seen put down in books against it. Here we saw what Rome was in action,
whatever she might be when quiescent. Her conduct was simply secular and
political.
This feeling led me into the excess of being very rude to that zealous
and most charitable man, Mr. Spencer, when he came to Oxford in January,
1840, to get Anglicans to set about praying for Unity. I myself, at that
time, or soon after, drew up such prayers; their desirableness was one
of the first thoughts which came upon me after my shock; but I was too
much annoyed with the political action of the Catholic body in these
islands to wish to have any thing to do with them personally. So glad in
my heart was I to see him, when he came to my rooms with Mr. Palmer of
Magdalen, that I could have laughed for joy; I think I did laugh; but I
was very rude to him, I would not meet him at dinner, and that, (though
I did not say so,) because I considered him "in loco apostatæ" from the
Anglican Church, and I hereby beg his pardon for it. I wrote afterwards
with a view to apologize, but I dare say he must have thought that I
made the matter worse, for these were my words to him:--
"The news that you are praying for us is most touching, and raises a
variety of indescribable emotions.... May their prayers return
abundantly into their own bosoms.... Why then do I not meet you in a
manner conformable with these first feelings? For this single reason, if
I may say it, that your acts are contrary to your words. You invite us
to a union of hearts, at the same time that you are doing all you can,
not to restore, not to reform, not to re-unite, but to destroy our
Church. You go further than your principles require. You are leagued
with our enemies. 'The voice is Jacob's voice, but the hands are the
hands of Esau.' This is what especially distresses us; this is what we
cannot understand; how Christians, like yourselves, with the clear view
you have that a warfare is ever waging in the world between good and
evil, should, in the present state of England, ally yourselves with the
side of evil against the side of good.... Of parties now in the country,
you cannot but allow, that next to yourselves we are nearest to revealed
truth. We maintain great and holy principles; we profess Catholic
doctrines.... So near are we as a body to yourselves in modes of
thinking, as even to have been taunted with the nicknames which belong
to you; and, on the other hand, if there are professed infidels,
scoffers, sceptics, unprincipled men, rebels, they are found among our
opponents. And yet you take part with them against us.... You consent to
act hand in hand [with these and others] for our overthrow. Alas! all
this it is that impresses us irresistibly with the notion that you are a
political, not a religious party; that in order to gain an end on which
you set your hearts,--an open stage for yourselves in England,--you ally
yourselves with those who hold nothing against those who hold something.
This is what distresses my own mind so greatly, to speak of myself,
that, with limitations which need not now be mentioned, I cannot meet
familiarly any leading persons of the Roman Communion, and least of all
when they come on a religious errand. Break off, I would say, with Mr.
O'Connell in Ireland and the liberal party in England, or come not to us
with overtures for mutual prayer and religious sympathy."
And here came in another feeling, of a personal nature, which had little
to do with the argument against Rome, except that, in my prejudice, I
viewed what happened to myself in the light of my own ideas of the
traditionary conduct of her advocates and instruments. I was very stern
in the case of any interference in our Oxford matters on the part of
charitable Catholics, and of any attempt to do me good personally. There
was nothing, indeed, at the time more likely to throw me back. "Why do
you meddle? why cannot you let me alone? You can do me no good; you know
nothing on earth about me; you may actually do me harm; I am in better
hands than yours. I know my own sincerity of purpose; and I am
determined upon taking my time." Since I have been a Catholic, people
have sometimes accused me of backwardness in making converts; and
Protestants have argued from it that I have no great eagerness to do so.
It would be against my nature to act otherwise than I do; but besides,
it would be to forget the lessons which I gained in the experience of my
own history in the past.
This is the account which I have to give of some savage and ungrateful
words in the British Critic of 1840 against the controversialists of
Rome: "By their fruits ye shall know them.... We see it attempting to
gain converts among us by unreal representations of its doctrines,
plausible statements, bold assertions, appeals to the weaknesses of
human nature, to our fancies, our eccentricities, our fears, our
frivolities, our false philosophies. We see its agents, smiling and
nodding and ducking to attract attention, as gipsies make up to truant
boys, holding out tales for the nursery, and pretty pictures, and gilt
gingerbread, and physic concealed in jam, and sugar-plums for good
children. Who can but feel shame when the religion of Ximenes, Borromeo,
and Pascal, is so overlaid? Who can but feel sorrow, when its devout and
earnest defenders so mistake its genius and its capabilities? We
Englishmen like manliness, openness, consistency, truth. Rome will never
gain on us, till she learns these virtues, and uses them; and then she
_may_ gain us, but it will be by ceasing to be what we now mean by Rome,
by having a right, not to 'have dominion over our faith,' but to gain
and possess our affections in the bonds of the gospel. Till she ceases
to be what she practically is, a union is impossible between her and
England; but, if she does reform, (and who can presume to say that so
large a part of Christendom never can?) then it will be our Church's
duty at once to join in communion with the continental Churches,
whatever politicians at home may say to it, and whatever steps the civil
power may take in consequence. And though we may not live to see that
day, at least we are bound to pray for it; we are bound to pray for our
brethren that they and we may be led together into the pure light of the
gospel, and be one as we once were one. It was most touching news to be
told, as we were lately, that Christians on the Continent were praying
together for the spiritual well-being of England. May they gain light,
while they aim at unity, and grow in faith while they manifest their
love! We too have our duties to them; not of reviling, not of
slandering, not of hating, though political interests require it; but
the duty of loving brethren still more abundantly in spirit, whose
faces, for our sins and their sins, we are not allowed to see in the
flesh."
No one ought to indulge in insinuations; it certainly diminishes my
right to complain of slanders uttered against myself, when, as in this
passage, I had already spoken in disparagement of the controversialists
of that religious body, to which I myself now belong.
* * * * *
I have thus put together, as well as I can, what has to be said about my
general state of mind from the autumn of 1839 to the summer of 1841;
and, having done so, I go on to narrate how my new misgivings affected
my conduct, and my relations towards the Anglican Church.
When I got back to Oxford in October, 1839, after the visits which I had
been paying, it so happened, there had been, in my absence, occurrences
of an awkward character, compromising me both with my Bishop and also
with the authorities of the University; and this drew my attention at
once to the state of the Movement party there, and made me very anxious
for the future. In the spring of the year, as has been seen in the
Article analyzed above, I had spoken of the excesses which were to be
found among persons commonly included in it:--at that time I thought
little of such an evil, but the new views, which had come on me during
the Long Vacation, on the one hand made me comprehend it, and on the
other took away my power of effectually meeting it. A firm and powerful
control was necessary to keep men straight; I never had a strong wrist,
but at the very time, when it was most needed, the reins had broken in
my hands. With an anxious presentiment on my mind of the upshot of the
whole inquiry, which it was almost impossible for me to conceal from men
who saw me day by day, who heard my familiar conversation, who came
perhaps for the express purpose of pumping me, and having a categorical
_yes_ or _no_ to their questions,--how could I expect to say any thing
about my actual, positive, present belief, which would be sustaining or
consoling to such persons as were haunted already by doubts of their
own? Nay, how could I, with satisfaction to myself, analyze my own mind,
and say what I held and what I did not hold? or how could I say with
what limitations, shades of difference, or degrees of belief, I still
held that body of Anglican opinions which I had openly professed and
taught? how could I deny or assert this point or that, without injustice
to the new light, in which the whole evidence for those old opinions
presented itself to my mind?
However, I had to do what I could, and what was best, under the
circumstances; I found a general talk on the subject of the Article in
the Dublin Review; and, if it had affected me, it was not wonderful,
that it affected others also. As to myself, I felt no kind of certainty
that the argument in it was conclusive. Taking it at the worst, granting
that the Anglican Church had not the Note of Catholicity; yet there were
many Notes of the Church. Some belonged to one age or place, some to
another. Bellarmine had reckoned Temporal Prosperity among the Notes of
the Church; but the Roman Church had not any great popularity, wealth,
glory, power, or prospects, in the nineteenth century. It was not at all