Apologia pro vita sua being a history of his religious opinions
office in its service, if I were not allowed to hold the Catholic sense
of the Articles; 6. I could not go to Rome, while she suffered honours
to be paid to the Blessed Virgin and the Saints which I thought in my
conscience to be incompatible with the Supreme, Incommunicable Glory of
the One Infinite and Eternal; 7. I desired a union with Rome under
conditions, Church with Church; 8. I called Littlemore my Torres Vedras,
and thought that some day we might advance again within the Anglican
Church, as we had been forced to retire; 9. I kept back all persons who
were disposed to go to Rome with all my might.
And I kept them back for three or four reasons; 1. because what I could
not in conscience do myself, I could not suffer them to do; 2. because I
thought that in various cases they were acting under excitement; 3.
because I had duties to my Bishop and to the Anglican Church; and 4, in
some cases, because I had received from their Anglican parents or
superiors direct charge of them.
This was my view of my duty from the end of 1841, to my resignation of
St. Mary's in the autumn of 1843. And now I shall relate my view, during
that time, of the state of the controversy between the Churches.
* * * * *
As soon as I saw the hitch in the Anglican argument, during my course of
reading in the summer of 1839, I began to look about, as I have said,
for some ground which might supply a controversial basis for my need.
The difficulty in question had affected my view both of Antiquity and
Catholicity; for, while the history of St. Leo showed me that the
deliberate and eventual consent of the great body of the Church ratified
a doctrinal decision as a part of revealed truth, it also showed that
the rule of Antiquity was not infringed, though a doctrine had not been
publicly recognized as so revealed, till centuries after the time of the
Apostles. Thus, whereas the Creeds tell us that the Church is One, Holy,
Catholic, and Apostolic, I could not prove that the Anglican communion
was an integral part of the One Church, on the ground of its teaching
being Apostolic or Catholic, without reasoning in favour of what are
commonly called the Roman corruptions; and I could not defend our
separation from Rome and her faith without using arguments prejudicial
to those great doctrines concerning our Lord, which are the very
foundation of the Christian religion. The Via Media was an impossible
idea; it was what I had called "standing on one leg;" and it was
necessary, if my old issue of the controversy was to be retained, to go
further either one way or the other.
Accordingly, I abandoned that old ground and took another. I
deliberately quitted the old Anglican ground as untenable; though I did
not do so all at once, but as I became more and more convinced of the
state of the case. The Jerusalem Bishopric was the ultimate condemnation
of the old theory of the Via Media:--if its establishment did nothing
else, at least it demolished the sacredness of diocesan rights. If
England could be in Palestine, Rome might be in England. But its bearing
upon the controversy, as I have shown in the foregoing chapter, was much
more serious than this technical ground. From that time the Anglican
Church was, in my mind, either not a normal portion of that One Church
to which the promises were made, or at least in an abnormal state; and
from that time I said boldly (as I did in my Protest, and as indeed I
had even intimated in my Letter to the Bishop of Oxford), that the
Church in which I found myself had no claim on me, except on condition
of its being a portion of the One Catholic Communion, and that that
condition must ever be borne in mind as a practical matter, and had to
be distinctly proved. All this is not inconsistent with my saying above
that, at this time, I had no thought of leaving the Church of England;
because I felt some of my old objections against Rome as strongly as
ever. I had no right, I had no leave, to act against my conscience. That
was a higher rule than any argument about the Notes of the Church.
Under these circumstances I turned for protection to the Note of
Sanctity, with a view of showing that we had at least one of the
necessary Notes, as fully as the Church of Rome; or, at least, without
entering into comparisons, that we had it in such a sufficient sense as
to reconcile us to our position, and to supply full evidence, and a
clear direction, on the point of practical duty. We had the Note of
Life,--not any sort of life, not such only as can come of nature, but a
supernatural Christian life, which could only come directly from above.
Thus, in my Article in the British Critic, to which I have so often
referred, in January, 1840 (before the time of Tract 90), I said of the
Anglican Church that "she has the note of possession, the note of
freedom from party titles, the note of life,--a tough life and a
vigorous; she has ancient descent, unbroken continuance, agreement in
doctrine with the Ancient Church." Presently I go on to speak of
sanctity: "Much as Roman Catholics may denounce us at present as
schismatical, they could not resist us if the Anglican communion had but
that one note of the Church upon it,--sanctity. The Church of the day
[4th century] could not resist Meletius; his enemies were fairly
overcome by him, by his meekness and holiness, which melted the most
jealous of them." And I continue, "We are almost content to say to
Romanists, account us not yet as a branch of the Catholic Church, though
we be a branch, till we are like a branch, provided that when we do
become like a branch, then you consent to acknowledge us," &c. And so I
was led on in the Article to that sharp attack on English Catholics, for
their shortcomings as regards this Note, a good portion of which I have
already quoted in another place. It is there that I speak of the great
scandal which I took at their political, social, and controversial
bearing; and this was a second reason why I fell back upon the Note of
Sanctity, because it took me away from the necessity of making any
attack upon the doctrines of the Roman Church, nay, from the
consideration of her popular beliefs, and brought me upon a ground on
which I felt I could not make a mistake; for what is a higher guide for
us in speculation and in practice, than that conscience of right and
wrong, of truth and falsehood, those sentiments of what is decorous,
consistent, and noble, which our Creator has made a part of our original
nature? Therefore I felt I could not be wrong in attacking what I
fancied was a fact,--the unscrupulousness, the deceit, and the
intriguing spirit of the agents and representatives of Rome.
This reference to Holiness as the true test of a Church was steadily
kept in view in what I wrote in connexion with Tract 90. I say in its
Introduction, "The writer can never be party to forcing the opinions or
projects of one school upon another; religious changes should be the act
of the whole body. No good can come of a change which is not a
development of feelings springing up freely and calmly within the bosom
of the whole body itself; every change in religion" must be "attended by
deep repentance; changes" must be "nurtured in mutual love; we cannot
agree without a supernatural influence;" we must come "together to God
to do for us what we cannot do for ourselves." In my Letter to the
Bishop I said, "I have set myself against suggestions for considering
the differences between ourselves and the foreign Churches with a view
to their adjustment." (I meant in the way of negotiation, conference,
agitation, or the like.) "Our business is with ourselves,--to make
ourselves more holy, more self-denying, more primitive, more worthy of
our high calling. To be anxious for a composition of differences is to
begin at the end. Political reconciliations are but outward and hollow,
and fallacious. And till Roman Catholics renounce political efforts, and
manifest in their public measures the light of holiness and truth,
perpetual war is our only prospect."
According to this theory, a religious body is part of the One Catholic
and Apostolic Church, if it has the succession and the creed of the
Apostles, with the note of holiness of life; and there is much in such a
view to approve itself to the direct common sense and practical habits
of an Englishman. However, with the events consequent upon Tract 90, I
sunk my theory to a lower level. For what could be said in apology, when
the Bishops and the people of my Church, not only did not suffer, but
actually rejected primitive Catholic doctrine, and tried to eject from
their communion all who held it? after the Bishops' charges? after the
Jerusalem "abomination[8]?" Well, this could be said; still we were not
nothing: we could not be as if we never had been a Church; we were
"Samaria." This then was that lower level on which I placed myself, and
all who felt with me, at the end of 1841.
[8] Matt. xxiv. 15.
To bring out this view was the purpose of Four Sermons preached at St.
Mary's in December of that year. Hitherto I had not introduced the
exciting topics of the day into the Pulpit[9]; on this occasion I did. I
did so, for the moment was urgent; there was great unsettlement of mind
among us, in consequence of those same events which had unsettled me.
One special anxiety, very obvious, which was coming on me now, was, that
what was "one man's meat was another man's poison." I had said even of
Tract 90, "It was addressed to one set of persons, and has been used and
commented on by another;" still more was it true now, that whatever I
wrote for the service of those whom I knew to be in trouble of mind,
would become on the one hand matter of suspicion and slander in the
mouths of my opponents, and of distress and surprise to those on the
other hand, who had no difficulties of faith at all. Accordingly, when I
published these Four Sermons at the end of 1843, I introduced them with
a recommendation that none should read them who did not need them. But
in truth the virtual condemnation of Tract 90, after that the whole
difficulty seemed to have been weathered, was an enormous disappointment
and trial. My Protest also against the Jerusalem Bishopric was an
unavoidable cause of excitement in the case of many; but it calmed them
too, for the very fact of a Protest was a relief to their impatience.
And so, in like manner, as regards the Four Sermons, of which I speak,
though they acknowledged freely the great scandal which was involved in
the recent episcopal doings, yet at the same time they might be said to
bestow upon the multiplied disorders and shortcomings of the Anglican
Church a sort of place in the Revealed Dispensation, and an intellectual
position in the controversy, and the dignity of a great principle, for
unsettled minds to take and use,--a principle which might teach them to
recognize their own consistency, and to be reconciled to themselves, and
which might absorb and dry up a multitude of their grudgings,
discontents, misgivings, and questionings, and lead the way to humble,
thankful, and tranquil thoughts;--and this was the effect which
certainly it produced on myself.
[9] Vide Note C. _Sermon on Wisdom and Innocence._
The point of these Sermons is, that, in spite of the rigid character of
the Jewish law, the formal and literal force of its precepts, and the
manifest schism, and worse than schism, of the Ten Tribes, yet in fact
they were still recognized as a people by the Divine Mercy; that the
great prophets Elias and Eliseus were sent to them; and not only so, but
were sent to preach to them and reclaim them, without any intimation
that they must be reconciled to the line of David and the Aaronic
priesthood, or go up to Jerusalem to worship. They were not in the