Note E. on Page 227 {in Chapter 4}
The Anglican Church
I have been bringing out my mind in this Volume on every subject which has
come before me; and therefore I am bound to state plainly what I feel and have
felt, since I was a Catholic, about the Anglican Church. I said, in a former
page, that, on my conversion, I was not conscious of any change in me of thought
or feeling, as regards matters of doctrine; this, however, was not the case as
regards some matters of fact, and, unwilling as I am to give offence to
religious Anglicans, I am bound to confess that I felt a great change in my view
of the Church of England. I cannot tell how soon there came on me,—but very
soon,—an extreme astonishment that I had ever imagined it to be a portion of the
Catholic Church. For the first time, I looked at it from without, and (as I
should myself say) saw it as it was. Forthwith I could not get myself to see in
it any thing else, than what I had so long fearfully suspected, from as far back
as 1836,—a mere national institution. As if my eyes were suddenly opened, so I
saw it—spontaneously, apart from any definite act of reason or any argument; and
so I have seen it ever since. I suppose, the main cause of this lay in the
contrast which was presented to me by the Catholic Church. Then I recognized at
once a reality which was quite a new thing with me. Then I was sensible that I
was not making for myself a Church by an effort of thought; I needed not to make
an act of faith in her; I had not painfully to force myself into a position, but
my mind fell back upon itself in relaxation and in peace, and I gazed at her
almost passively as a great objective fact. I looked at her;—at her rites, her
ceremonial, and her precepts; and I said, "This is a religion;" and then,
when I looked back upon the poor Anglican Church, for which I had laboured so
hard, and upon all that appertained to it, and thought of our various attempts
to dress it up doctrinally and esthetically, it seemed to me to be the veriest
of nonentities.
Vanity of vanities, all is vanity! How can I make a record of what passed
within me, without seeming to be satirical? But I speak plain, serious words. As
people call me credulous for acknowledging Catholic claims, so they call me
satirical for disowning Anglican pretensions; to them it is credulity, to
them it is satire; but it is not so in me. What they think exaggeration,
I think truth. I am not speaking of the Anglican Church with any disdain, though
to them I seem contemptuous. To them of course it is "Aut Cæsar aut nullus {"either a Caesar or nothing"}," but
not to me. It may be a great creation, though it be not divine, and this is how
I judge of it. Men, who abjure the divine right of kings, would be very
indignant, if on that account they were considered disloyal. And so I recognize
in the Anglican Church a time-honoured institution, of noble historical
memories, a monument of ancient wisdom, a momentous arm of political strength, a
great national organ, a source of vast popular advantage, and, to a certain
point, a witness and teacher of religious truth. I do not think that, if what I
have written about it since I have been a Catholic, be equitably considered as a
whole, I shall be found to have taken any other view than this; but that it is
something sacred, that it is an oracle of revealed doctrine, that it can claim a
share in St. Ignatius or St. Cyprian, that it can take the rank, contest the
teaching, and stop the path of the Church of St. Peter, that it can call itself
"the Bride of the Lamb," this is the view of it which simply disappeared from
my mind on my conversion, and which it would be almost a miracle to reproduce. "I went by,
and lo! it was gone; I sought it, but its place could no where be found," {Psalm 37 (Psalm 36)}
and nothing can bring it back to me. And, as to its possession of an episcopal
succession from the time of the Apostles, well, it may have it, and, if the Holy
See ever so decide, I will believe it, as being the decision of a higher
judgment than my own; but, for myself, I must have St. Philip's gift, who saw
the sacerdotal character on the forehead of a gaily-attired youngster, before I
can by my own wit acquiesce in it, for antiquarian arguments are altogether
unequal to the urgency of visible facts /*/. Why is it that I must pain dear friends
by saying so, and kindle a sort of resentment against me in the kindest of
hearts? but I must, though to do it be not only a grief to me, but most
impolitic at the moment. Any how, this is my mind; and, if to have it, if to
have betrayed it, before now, involuntarily by my words or my deeds, if on a
fitting occasion, as now, to have avowed it, if all this be a proof of the
justice of the charge brought against me by my accuser of having "turned round
upon my Mother-Church with contumely and slander," in this sense, but in no
other sense, do I plead guilty to it without a word in extenuation.
In no other sense surely; the Church of England has been the instrument of
Providence in conferring great benefits on me;—had I been born in Dissent,
perhaps I should never have been baptized; had I been born an English
Presbyterian, perhaps I should never have known our Lord's divinity; had I not
come to Oxford, perhaps I never should have heard of the visible Church, or of
Tradition, or other Catholic doctrines. And as I have received so much good from
the Anglican Establishment itself, can I have the heart or rather the want of
charity, considering that it does for so many others, what it has done for me, to
wish to see it overthrown? I have no such wish while it is what it is, and while
we are so small a body. Not for its own sake, but for the sake of the many
congregations to which it ministers, I will do nothing against it. While
Catholics are so weak in England, it is doing our work; and, though it does us
harm in a measure, at present the balance is in our favour. What our duty would
be at another time and in other circumstances, supposing, for instance, the
Establishment lost its dogmatic faith, or at least did not preach it, is another
matter altogether. In secular history we read of hostile nations having long
truces, and renewing them from time to time, and that seems to be the position
which the Catholic Church may fairly take up at present in relation to the
Anglican Establishment.
Doubtless the National Church has hitherto been a serviceable breakwater
against doctrinal errors, more fundamental than its own. How long this will last
in the years now before us, it is impossible to say, for the Nation drags down
its Church to its own level; but still the National Church has the same sort of
influence over the Nation that a periodical has upon the party which it
represents, and my own idea of a Catholic's fitting attitude towards the
National Church in this its supreme hour, is that of assisting and sustaining
it, if it be in our power, in the interest of dogmatic truth. I should wish to
avoid every thing (except indeed under the direct call of duty, and this is a
material exception,) which went to weaken its hold upon the public mind, or to
unsettle its establishment, or to embarrass and lessen its maintenance of those
great Christian and Catholic principles and doctrines which it has up to this
time successfully preached.
Trumbull's Notes:
/*/
Saint Philip Romolo Neri (1515-1595).
"Before the decrees of the Council of Trent were put force, while Philip was living at S. Girolarno, there
came into his hands a youth of about sixteen dressed a layman, named Tommaso da S. Geminiano.
The Saint, fixing his eyes upon him said, "Tell me the are you not a priest?"
The youth, very much surprised, answered that he was, and then related how
it was that he had been ordained priest, his family forced him into the priesthood in order that might succeed
to an inheritance of sixty thousand crowns. Philip, touched with compassion, made him stay at S. Girolamo,
found him the means of pursuing studies, obtained from his relatives an allowance proportioned to his rank,
and in the end sent him to own country happy and consoled. Speaking of this youth, the Saint told Francesco Maria Tarugi
that knew him to be a priest by the splendour of the character which shone upon his forehead."
–The Life of Saint Philip Neri Apostle of Rome, and Founder of the Congregation of the Oratory, from the Italian
of Father Bacci of the Roman Oratory, New and Revised Edition, Edited by Frederick Ignatius Antrobus
of the London Oratory, Vol. II, London, Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co. Ltd., Paternoster House, Charing Cross Road, 1902 (p. 23).