Volume 2 — From The Month. DR. PUSEY ON THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND.

It is just twenty years since the great movement in the Anglican Church, which took its rise and its name from the University of Oxford and the "Tracts for the Times," was broken, as it were, into two streams of very different direction by the submission of Mr. Newman to the Catholic Church. It happens that the circumstances of the last year and a half have brought the history of the movement prominently before the world; and they have occasioned an interesting set of publications from men of eminent position, whose names were at the time hardly less watchwords than at present. No one of the few most conspicuous Oxford leaders of thought who belonged in any sense to the Tractarian party has yet been removed by death. Dr. Pusey is still at Christ Church, Mr. Keble still at Hursley; but Mr. Newman has become the founder of the English Oratory of St. Philip Neri, and Archdeacon Manning is the present Catholic archbishop of Westminster. These four names were more than any others in the mouths of the adherents of the Oxford movement twenty years ago. Archdeacon Wilberforce lived in the country, and had, we believe, hardly begun to publish that series of theological treatises which soon after made his name second to none in the Anglican Church as a writer on doctrine: Isaac Williams, loved and venerated by all who knew him, had left Trinity and was occupied on his "Commentary on the Gospels" without taking any further part in the movement: the influence of Charles Marriott was hardly felt except by his immediate acquaintance. There were of course others whose position—such as that of Mr. Oakeley and Mr. Dodsworth in London —gave them much influence in particular places; but, speaking broadly, and without reference to the actual connection of individuals with the "Tracts"—in which, we think, Archdeacon Manning took no part at all—the four names we have just mentioned might be said to constitute the High-Church Quadrilateral. It must be remembered, moreover, that among the Anglicans, whose church had at that time not even so much liberty to speak in convocation as has since been allowed to it, and whose bishops were probably unanimous in nothing except in suspicion of Tractarianism, personal influence went for far more than is ever the case among Catholics. Whether they liked it or not, the position and responsibilities of party leaders were thrust upon the persons we have named; veneration and confidence haunted them, and their words were made into oracles. A little later than the time of which we are speaking, an enthusiastic admirer—now a colonial bishop—dedicated a volume of sermons to the three first, under the name of the three valiant men of David's band, who had broken through the ranks of the enemy to fetch water from the well of Bethlehem, the fountain of ancient doctrine; one of the three, he plaintively added in his dedication, was taken prisoner by the enemy in the attempt! This was after the submission of Dr. Newman.

Recent circumstances, as we have said, have drawn from three of these four distinguished persons declarations of opinion and feeling with regard to the Anglican establishment which it may well be worth while to place {531} side by side. The first in point Of time was Dr. Newman, in his celebrated "Apologia pro Vita suâ," in the appendix to which he had occasion to speak his mind about Anglicanism. The passage will be fresh in the memories of most of our readers; and it has been preserved as part of a note in the second edition of the "Apologia" lately published by Dr. Newman as the "History of my Religions Opinions." It contains, as a passage from Dr. Newman was sure to do, most that can be said for or against the establishment in the happiest words:

"When I looked back upon the poor Anglican Church" [after becoming acquainted with Catholicism], "for which I had labored so hard, and upon all that appertained to it, and thought of our various attempts to dress it up doctrinally and aesthetically, it seemed to me to be the veriest of nonentities."

He then says that, looked at as a human institution, it is great:

"I recognize in the Anglican establishment a time-honored 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: . . . . but that it is something sacred; that it is an oracle of revealed doctrine; that it can claim a share in St. Ignatius and 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 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 nowhere be found, 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."

Dr. Newman then expresses his sense of the benefits he received by being born an Anglican, not a Dissenter, and so having been baptized and sent to Oxford:

"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, the balance is in our favor" (p. 342).

Here is a plain, definite view about the establishment—giving it certainly not less than its full meed of praise as a human institution, and acknowledging benefits providentially received in it with all the warmth of a most affectionate heart, which never lets a single touching memory fade away. But its claim to a divine origin and supernatural character is set aside as a palpably absurd one. Without questioning whether it be heretical or schismatical or both, Dr. Newman declares that he cannot even believe its orders to be valid unless the Holy See declares them so to be. But Dr. Newman does not wish for the destruction of the establishment until the Catholic ministry is numerous enough to supply its place as the teacher of the mass of the population—an office at present discharged by Anglicans, not indeed adequately, not without many shortcomings and some errors, but still better {532} than might be the case if no such institution existed.

In expressing his own views about the establishment, Dr. Manning was obliged in the course of last year to speak at greater length, and to explain more in detail the Catholic doctrine with regard to baptized persons involuntarily outside the pale of the visible Church. The occasion of his declaration was the judgment of the Privy Council on the case of the "Essays and Reviews." This last of the series of similar decisions of the same tribunal, the ultimate court of appeal for Anglicans in matters of doctrine, naturally gave an opportunity for reviewing the gradual retirement of the High-Church party from the bold ground which they had taken up in 1850, at the time of the Gorham case. The facts only required to be pointed out; the mere narrative spoke more forcibly than any possible commentary. History, either political or ecclesiastical, scarcely contains such another example of a set of high-minded and earnest men having so ostentatiously to shrink from their implied pledges, and belie their most solemn declarations. Immediately after the Gorham decision the leaders of the High-Church party published a series of resolutions, the purport of which was that the Church of England would be "eventually" committed to heresy unless she "openly and expressly" rejected the erroneous doctrine sanctioned by the decision. The consequences were drawn out, involving the loss on the part of the Church of England of the office and authority to witness and teach as a member of the universal church; and it was said that she would thus become "formally separated from the Catholic body, and be no longer able to assure to her members the grace of the sacraments and the remission of sins." Dr. Manning's task was therefore easy; here were men who had pledged themselves in this way in 1850, and, as far as in them lay, pledged the party of which they were leaders. What were they doing in the Church of England in 1864, after fourteen years in which she had not only not cleared herself from the Gorham judgment, but acquiesced in it? She had spoken in convocation on a number of subjects, never on this; she had moreover seen a controversy on the Lord's Supper within her pale, the issue of which was thought a triumph to the High-Church party—not because it proscribed the heretical doctrine held by the larger number of clergy in the Church, but because it just shielded their own doctrine from being proscribed in turn; finally, the "Essays and Reviews" had appeared, and their writers also had been protected from proscription by the crown in council. Dr. Manning might well say that it seemed as if Providence had been mercifully striving to open men's eyes to the position of the Church of England. On the ground taken by the resolutionists of 1850, she had forfeited whatever claim she ever had to allegiance over and over again.

This is hard truth; but it was not urged by Dr. Manning in a hard way, nor with the intention of taunting with their inconsistencies men of whom he has always spoken with respect and affection. The only important matter, after all, is, whether the High-Church party, whose opinions were expressed by the resolutions lately referred to, have in reality receded from their former ground. This is a very serious question; because, unless it can be answered in the negative, it involves an abandonment on their part, not of this or that particular doctrine, but of the whole Catholic idea of a church. The resolutions of 1850 proceeded on the hypothesis that a church that tolerated heresy became itself guilty of it; and that the Church of England was responsible for the acts of the courts to which she submitted without protest. From a Catholic point of view, a very grave change must have come over a set of men who held this principle, if they afterward contented themselves with a church that tolerates heresy on {533} the ground that it also tolerates orthodoxy; that its prayers are orthodox, that its formularies admit of an orthodox sense. Yet it seems quite impossible to draw from the declarations of Dr. Pusey and others anything but an acknowledgment that such a change has taken place. It is not therefore a question as to their view of the present effect of the Gorham decision or any other, but as to their view of the character of the Church in which they hope to be saved.

Dr. Manning's pamphlet was noticed by Dr. Pusey, in a preface placed by him before a legal statement as to the immediate effect of Lord Westbury's decision in the case of the "Essays and Reviews." This preface, like many of Dr. Pusey's brochures, was marked by considerable strength of language against those whom he was assailing, and contained distinct threats that he and his friends might set up a free church if their demands for a reconstitution of the court of appeal were disregarded. It was implied that the chancellor had acted from "the pure love of the heresy, and the desire of throwing open to unbelief an article of faith against which rationalism rebels," at the price "of breaking off churches of the colonies from the Mother Church" (no colonial churches are named), "and familiarizing devoted minds among us at home to thoughts of organic severance from the Church whose discipline is fettered by such a tribunal;" and so on. "The Church of England has necessarily more tenacity than the Scotch establishment. For, having a divine original" [origin?], "it is an organic body, and knows more of the value of intercommunion, not indeed as a condition absolutely necessary, but as the natural fruit of divine unity. It is then the more remarkable when members of the Church of England begin to speak (as they have) of a free church. Our extension in the colonies, which has so enlarged the Church and its episcopate, makes such a rent possible, even though not one bishop in England should join it. And 'if ever there should be a rent in the Church of England,' said one, 'the rent in Scotland would be nothing to it.'" At the end of the preface, men were urged to league together as in the days of the Anti-Corn-Law agitation: no candidate was to receive support at the next election who would not pledge himself to do his best to bring about a change in the court of appeal. And a note was appended, suggesting that "no church should be offered for consecration, no sums given for the building of churches, which by consecration should become the property of the present Church of England, no sums given for endowment in perpetuity, until the present heresy-legalizing court shall be modified."

It must surely have occurred to Dr. Pusey, as it did to so many of his readers, that this threatening language accorded very ill with another passage in his pamphlet, in which he avowed his retirement from the threats he had joined in making in 1850. No fair-minded man can doubt that the resolutions to which we have alluded implied a threat of secession from Anglicanism, unless the Church of England cleared herself from the Gorham decision. Unless she cleared herself, the resolutionists declared she would "eventually" be bound. Dr. Pusey in explanation says that he wished the word to be "ultimately." We can see no great difference between the two. He then (p. 17, note) says that the resolutions were modified so as to be made acceptable to him; all the more, we suppose, is he responsible for their wording, having signed them. He also says that the difference between the line of action adopted by the different persons who signed them is to be accounted for by the fact that some of them thought that the judgment, in itself, committed the Church of England; others, that it did not. Surely men must be judged by their words. We may think as we please of the conduct of those who afterward left {534} the Church of England, or of those who remained in it; but it cannot be doubted that, as far as these resolutions are concerned, the former acted consistently, the Latter inconsistently, with them. Moreover, in the page we are quoting, Dr. Pusey seems to us to retire altogether from his position, without saying so openly. He tells us that when he signed the resolutions, "not having a parochial cure, and worshipping mostly in a cathedral where baptism did not enter into the service, I felt the value of the baptismal office as a witness to truth rather than as a teacher of it." Since that time he has come to realize more distinctly "the value of the Prayer-book, speaking, as it does, to the hearts of the people in their own tongue, in teaching and impressing on the people the doctrines which it embodies." This seems to us to imply, that as long as the formularies used in public offices speak an orthodox language, the Church may in other ways be committed to heresy without losing her character. On the same ground, as long as the words of consecration are used in the "Lord's Supper," any doctrine whatever may be taught concerning it. At all events, this is all that Dr. Pusey says as to his adherence to or disavowal of the resolutions of 1850. He cannot be surprised if his threats in 1864 have been taken as worth no more than his declarations fourteen years ago—if the politicians on whose will the decision of these questions depends have found out that the bark of the High-Church leaders is worse than their bite.

So long as the Bible is read and the Prayer-book used, they will impress on the people the doctrines which they embody; and the Essayists and Reviewers and Dr. Colenso will labor so entirely in vain to pervert them, that no court at all will be necessary to punish the propagators of false doctrines. At all events, it may fairly be presumed that the threats about a free church are worth just as much, and no more, as the threats about secession.

But our immediate subject is the course of the controversy about the Anglican establishment. Some expressions in Dr. Pusey's preface, in which he said that some Catholics "seemed to be in an ecstasy at this victory of Satan" (the decision of the Privy Council as to the "Essays and Reviews") appear to have suggested attacks on Dr. Manning with reference to his "Crown in Council," in which he was said to have rejoiced in the troubles of his former friends, and to be merry over the miseries of the Church of England. The same kind of charge has often been made against Catholics, especially converts; and it is in the nature of things that it should be made. Every "trouble" in the Church of England of the kind of which we are speaking, while it weakens it as a teacher of fragments of Catholic truth, weakens also its hold on the minds of many who have hitherto been in the habit of making it the object of that allegiance and that obedience which the instincts of every Christian heart urge it to pay to the one mother of the children of God. So far, therefore, as the Gorham case or the Denison case, or the question of the "Essays and Reviews" and the Colenso decision, tend to expose the true and simply human character of the institution that calls itself the Church of England, so far, many good and loyal souls are set free from a delusion, and their affections transferred to their right and legitimate object. This, in the case of individuals, is a matter of rejoicing. On the other hand, on the grounds stated so clearly by Dr. Newman, it is no matter of rejoicing that a body which has to teach so large a number of baptized souls all that they will ever know of Catholic truth should have the truths that it yet retains diminished in number and in certainty, and should lose all power of preserving them from corruption.

{535}

Dr. Manning's letter to Dr. Pusey contains a clear and calm statement of the doctrines on which the feelings of Catholics toward bodies like the Church of England are based. Dr. Pusey had declared that he knew that "a very earnest body of Roman Catholics rejoice in all the workings of God the Holy Ghost in the Church of England," and had contrasted them with others who are in "ecstasy at the victory of Satan." It became necessary therefore to state in what sense a Catholic can admit that the Holy Ghost works in the Church of England. No Catholic, then, by denying utterly and entirely anything like the character of a church to the Church of England, denies thereby the workings of the Holy Ghost or the operations of grace among those who are its members; nor when these operations are affirmed and rejoiced in is any affirmation thereby made that the Church of England is in any sense whatever a church at all. Dr. Manning states in full the reasons why we affirm the workings of the Holy Ghost among the English people; and these parts of his pamphlet—indeed, the whole of it—are extremely valuable, as a clear statement of truths which it is very difficult to get Englishmen generally to understand, on account of their prevalent ignorance or misconception of the doctrine of grace. The truths in question, we need hardly say, enable Catholics to rejoice heartily in the effects of grace among the Dissenters, not less than among Anglicans. Dr. Manning has a few pages also on the specific truths that have been preserved by Anglicanism, and the fear with which he regards the process of undermining the Christianity of England which is going on. He also explains how naturally he rejoices at conversions, which are to him the bringing of souls from the imperfect to the perfect knowledge of the truth; and sums up by an argument to prove that the Anglican establishment, instead of being, as Dr. Pusey had called it, "the great bulwark against infidelity in this land," is in reality responsible for that infidelity; as having been the source of the present spiritual anarchy in England; as having weakened even those truths which it retains by detaching them from others and from the divine voice of the Church, which is the guarantee of their immortality; and as being a source of unbelief by the denial of the truths it has rejected and also of the perpetual and ever-present assistance of the Holy Ghost to preserve the Church from error. We may add, having quoted Dr. Newman on the subject of Anglican orders, that Dr. Manning speaks with equal clearness as to their entire invalidity.

Dr. Pusey's controversial appearances are generally rather late in the day: the method of his mind is inductive, and he rejoices above all things in the accumulation of a vast amount of materials, which he does not always succeed in clearly arranging or lucidly epitomizing. He has taken a year to answer Dr. Manning's short pamphlet of less than fifty pages, or rather a part of it. The volume teems with undigested learning; and a very large share of it is taken up with a long postscript and a set of notes. It will not be our business at present to do more than state concisely in what the answer to Dr. Manning consists, and endeavor to draw out from the pages of Dr. Pusey what his idea is of the Anglican Church, and what his own position in her.

There is nothing in direct answer to Dr. Manning's explanation of the doctrine as to the working of the Holy Ghost outside the visible Church—an explanation which of course places the Anglican Church on the same ground with the Dissenting sects. The satisfactory answer to this would of course be some proof that the Anglicans have orders and sacraments, and that grace is given through them, not merely to the dispositions of the individual who receives it. Dr. Pusey, of coarse, maintains the {536} validity of Anglican orders, but he adds nothing to the controversy, except the remark that the form of consecration used in the case of Parker was taken from that used in the case of Chichele a century before. As the controversy does not turn solely upon the form used in Parker's consecration, the fact adduced by Dr. Pusey has little to do with it. [Footnote 74]

With regard to the other point, it is of course impossible, or very difficult, to prove the connection between the effect of a supposed means of grace and that supposed means itself, independent of the subjective dispositions and belief of the recipient. Dr. Pusey has no proofs which would not equally show that any one who thought himself a priest was one, and that any one who thought he received a sacrament from him would receive it. But the statement of Dr. Manning on which Dr. Pusey fastens more particularly is that which accuses the Anglican establishment of being the "cause and spring of the prevailing unbelief." Dr. Pusey remarks first that there is plenty of unbelief everywhere. That is true; and everywhere it can be traced to some cause; the charge is, that the Reformation has produced it in England, which was free from it before. Dr. Manning's first proof—that Anglicanism rejects much Christian truth—is met by a statement of the amount of truth which both communions hold. In this part of his argument Dr. Pusey seems to us to avoid the real question at issue. Dr. Manning speaks of the formularies of the Church of England, no doubt, as well as of her practical teaching, such as it has been for the last three hundred years, and such as it is throughout the length and breadth of England at this day. But in a question as to the amount of truth with which she claims to be "the great bulwark against infidelity," it is obvious that her formularies must be judged according to the sense commonly attached to them, and according to the interpretation of them supplied by the ordinary teaching of her clergy. Every one knows that various senses have been applied to the Anglican formularies; and it was the object of the celebrated No. 90 of the "Tracts for the Times" to prove that, in some cases, it was the intention of the compilers of the articles to allow men of various schools to sign them. Still, it is going far beyond this to put forward the so-called "Catholic" interpretation of the formularies as the sense of the Church of England. It would be untrue even if we consider the matter as a simply literary question; much more is it in the highest degree unfair to put forward this interpretation in a controversy which turns upon what actually has been and is taught by her. If a foreigner—as unacquainted with the real teaching of Anglicanism as Dr. Pusey is with that of Catholicism—were to take up this book and believe what he finds in it, he would, we venture to say, derive a totally false impression of the doctrine of the English Church as it lies on the face of her formularies, and as it has always been understood and acted upon by nine-tenths of her clergy and people. He would find an assurance that she holds the three creeds, which would give him to understand that she interpreted them in the same sense as the Catholic Church. {537} He would learn with surprise that there is no difference between Anglicans and Catholics on justification. "There is not one statement in the elaborate chapters on justification in the Council of Trent which any of us could fail in receiving," says Dr. Pusey. He would find that Dr. Manning had quite falsely said that "the Church of England sustains a belief in two sacraments, but formally propagates unbelief in the other five." In fact, that the Church of England holds all seven to be sacraments, with only a difference in dignity. Still more to his astonishment, he would read that the Church of England does not, in particular, object to extreme unction; she "only objects to the later abuse of it," which is not the Catholic practicer—namely, the custom of not administering it except to the dying. Then, if some one told him that the Church of England has discontinued the practice altogether, and that any one would be called a simple papist who attempted to introduce it in any way, he might naturally be inclined to find fault with the treacherous guide who had so misled him. It is the same with other points. Dr. Pusey tells us that the Church of England does not deny the infallibility of general councils or of the Church. His reasoning on this last head is so good a specimen of his method, that we may dwell on it for a moment. One of the articles teaches, that as the other churches have erred, so also the Church of Rome hath erred —even in matters of faith. Dr. Manning sums this up, very naturally, as a statement that all churches have erred. "The article," says Dr. Pusey, "was a puzzle to me when young." He supposed, it seems, that the condemnation must have been meant to fall on doctrinal decrees. "The two clauses, being put antithetically, must correspond. On further information, I found that there were no canons of Jerusalem, Alexandria, and Antioch that were intended; then it followed—the same principle of the correspondence of the two clauses—that neither were canons of the Church of Rome spoken of. The article moreover does not say that the Church of Rome is in error in the present, but hath erred in time past."

It is strange to see so much ingenuity wasted in a hopeless cause. Dr. Pusey remembers perfectly that the attempt to put forward the interpretations for which he contends, not as the sense or teaching of the Church of England, but as a sense of her articles barely tolerated by her in certain individuals of Catholic opinions whom she wished to retain, as others, in her service, was met many years ago by an outcry such as has not been heard in our day in England, save in the case of the Catholic hierarchy. And yet he thinks it fair and just to argue as if the Church of England not only allowed such interpretations, but as if the views which they embody were her regular teaching, so that she has a right to claim that she has put forward boldly in face of the infidelity around her those portions of Christian truth to which they relate. Her people then are, and always have been, really taught that there are seven sacraments, that there is a real presence on the altar, that there is a eucharistic sacrifice, that the Church is infallible, and so on. And as he speaks of her ministers being vowed to banish and drive away strange doctrine, his position implies that any heresy which might contradict these great Catholic truths could not be permitted within her pale. And now, suppose he was taken at his word; suppose, in consequence of this so-called Eirenicon, negotiations were opened and emissaries sent from Rome to the bishops and convocation of the English Church to treat of reunion. What would be the first step of the Anglican authorities, those who really have a right to speak for their communion, and who would be backed by the great body of the clergy and laity in the country? It would certainly be to repudiate the false face put upon their teaching by Dr. Pusey, and to {538} declare that their Church had always been, and meant to be, thoroughly and simply Protestant on the points at issue.

If, therefore, Dr. Pusey cannot answer Dr. Manning's charge except by attributing to the Church of England the ordinary and regular teaching, as against infidelity, of doctrines which she practically disclaims—even if it be allowed that she does not formally proscribe them—it is clear that he thinks little better of that ordinary and regular teaching as it is in fact than Dr. Manning himself. His book is in reality more a long excuse of himself and others for remaining in her than anything else. This is quite a different question. She may tolerate Catholic opinions in her ministers, and Catholic interpretations of her articles. Her defenders have then to give an account of what sort of church it is which can compromise truth by purposely ambiguous formularies, and allow side by side in her pulpits men who must consider each other as heretics. But Dr. Manning's question relates to her actual teaching as a "bulwark against infidelity;" and Dr. Pusey knows very well that for every clergyman who teaches more sacraments than two, or the eucharistic sacrifice, there are twenty who deny them.

Perhaps the most elaborate part of Dr. Pusey's volume is that in which he endeavors to prove that the unity of the visible church need not be visible, and that it is sufficiently secured by orders and sacraments, "through its union with Christ, as head, by the sacraments, and the indwelling of God the Holy Ghost." He naively asks, How can we be said to deny the indissoluble unity of the Church when we cannot approach communion without repeating the Nicene Creed? Certainly, few people could ever be convicted of false doctrine if the repetition of the creed in public service was enough to absolve them. In this part of the work, however, Dr. Pusey more than ever leaves out of sight the real nature of the charge which he has undertaken to answer—the charge of having denied the indissoluble unity of the Church, its visible head, and its perpetual voice. The question is, whether these truths can be considered as a part of the system which the Church of England teaches and defends. Here, of course, there is more divergence as to the doctrine between the two controversialists; and Dr. Pusey answers only by a theory of his own. But in fact, even if he fairly represents Anglicanism, he cannot escape the charge, as to the unity of the Church, any more than that as to its infallibility. He really maintains that for all practical purposes the Church was infallible up to the division of East and West—we meet in his pages that phrase of which his friends are so fond, the "Holy Undivided Church." Now it is difficult to find what infallible teacher Dr. Pusey acknowledges; to what he would submit a conclusion, we will say, as to the Immaculate Conception, which he has drawn by his own reason from his study of Scripture or the fathers. His position may be understood from the following passage:

"This, I understand, is a favorite formula with Dr. Manning—'By whom does God the Holy Ghost speak? By the Roman Church? or by the Eastern? or by the Anglican?' I have been wont to say, by all concurrently, in so far as they teach the same faith which was from the beginning, which is the great body of all their teaching; and, if need require, they could at this day declare concurrently any truth, if it should appear that it had not as yet been sufficiently defined, against some fresh heresy which should emerge" (p. 84).

The faith of Christians is therefore proposed to them by an authority on which they are bound to receive it; but that authority has in the first place to be tested by Christians themselves, who must decide by their own reason—for they can have no other guide—whether in any particular point the three churches teach the same faith which was from the beginning. {539} Further this authority cannot speak at all precisely on those points as to which Christians must most desire its guidance—those points on which these three churches differ. Dr. Pusey speaks of his reciting the Nicene Creed. On what authority does he believe that the Holy Ghost proceeds from the Father and the Son? He may think that the Eastern faith comes to much the same thing as the Western; but that is a conclusion of his own reason. And we must leave to our readers to make out for themselves the way in which he tries to show that the churches could still act concurrently, if the occasion were to arise; especially in the very obvious and, according to the Anglican teaching, perfectly possible case, that one of these three churches themselves should be the victim of the new heresy, which, according to him, would constitute the occasion for a new definition. [Footnote 75]

It is clear that, according to Dr. Pusey, we must ascertain what the "Undivided Church" taught for ourselves, and then receive it on her authority. Far more than this in reality; for we are to find out for ourselves negative conclusions as well as positive. There is what he speaks of as a vast practical system in the Catholic Church, the honor paid to our Blessed Lady, and other things of that kind, which penetrate the daily life and the ordinary thoughts of the great mass of her children. On this Dr. Pusey sits in judgment, and declares it to be alien to the teaching of the "Undivided Church," because he does not find it himself in the fathers. We do not see that he places his objections to it on the authority of his own Church. This leads us to our question, what, to him, is Anglicanism? Is he content to be its dutiful child, to catch its genuine spirit, to echo without further question its definitions, to "rest and be thankful" with whatever it may give him? We believe that no one who has ever known anything about the subject has suspected Dr. Pusey of any intention to secede from the Anglican Church: this makes it all the more strange that he should give it so wavering and niggardly an allegiance. Other people openly avow that they simply put up with it as a convenient lodging-place for men of no particular opinions; it exacts little, leaves them pretty much alone, and yet furnishes them handsomely with the outward paraphernalia of a church. Like the Roman Senate in the old story about Tiberius, it admits the gods of all nations easily into its Pantheon. One set of opinions alone it objects to, because they are so exclusive! Except in that case, its courts always shield the persecuted. Mr. Gorham is attacked for a heresy, and they shield him; Mr. Denison for a truth, and they absolve him; even the "Essays and Reviews" do not deprive their authors of this comprehensive protection. Its toleration gives, as a statesman expressed it, "general {540} satisfaction." Who can refuse to be loyal, when the yoke is so light?

and so Dr. Pusey himself seems to feel, save in those moods of rebelliousness which now and then come over him. We have seen how he once almost pledged himself to secede if the Gorham judgment was not disavowed. He was too old then to be excused on the plea of youthful impetuosity; at all events, the fit passed away: the baptismal service contents him. We have seen the threats he threw out more than a year ago about a free church if the court of appeal were not modified: that mood too has passed away. His present book speaks in the most contented manner: "Essay and Reviewism a passing storm," is the title that runs along the top of one of his pages; and he speaks of "the bright promise of the year of ingathering which the Lord has blessed!" He has forgotten his despair of last year, and boldly proposes to the Catholic Church terms on which reunion may be made,—terms, we venture to say, which would be rejected at once by every authority of the Church of England itself. Still, with all this, we do not see in his book any indication that, except as to the validity of Anglican orders, he really thinks much better of Anglicanism than Dr. Manning or Dr. Newman. Its authority is nothing to him; and they, on the other hand, do not deny that, though a mere human institution, it teaches many truths which might otherwise be untaught. He is ready to leave it if it "accepts heresy;" but it seems that what is heresy, and what is its acceptance, must be left to himself to decide. This is the language of one party in a contract or a compromise to another; not that of a pupil to a teacher, a child to a parent—above all, not that of a Catholic to his Church. He does not aver that "the Church of England is the best possible bulwark against infidelity," but only "as a matter of fact, that it is at this moment, under God's providence, a real and chief bulwark against it." He complains of Dr. Manning's statement that she "rejects much Christian truth" in a way that looks very much as if he thought she rejected some and he only defends her even then by putting an entirely strange face upon her. He hoists a false flag, and fights for her under it.

We are unwilling to speak personally of an amiable and excellent man; but Dr. Pusey, if there are few exactly like him, is still in his way a representative man; and his work shows thus the position of many others beside himself. It is obvious that he is really in the Church of England because he has nowhere else to go. He is loyal to her, not because he loves and admires her, but because he thinks he can find no other resting-place. Deeply versed in the Scriptures, especially of the Old Testament, and with a large acquaintance with some of the fathers, he has studied them under that fatal disadvantage which consists in the entire ignorance of the living system in which the authors whom he has read lived and breathed. The fathers especially, if they are studied without a knowledge of the ever-living Church, are certain to be misunderstood and to convey inadequate ideas of their own practice and belief. The Church alone explains and completes their testimony. It is exactly the everyday life, the things and customs and ideas that are too familiar to be chronicled, that must ever be unknown to those who have a merely literary knowledge of any system or any set of men. The strange thing is that any reasonable man should suppose it to be otherwise. Dr. Pusey, if we may judge from the opening of his postscript, really seems to think that if St. Augustine were to arrive to-morrow in London, he would go to worship in St. Paul's or Westminster Abbey, rather than at Moorfields or Warwick Street—St. Augustine, who, in a well-known passage, {541} has pointed out the unfailing mark which the common sense of mankind has fixed upon the true Church by the simple popular use of the name Catholic!

The result of Dr. Pusey's thought and study may be summed up in two simple heads. The first is an attitude of mind utterly and entirely alien from that which is the first condition of the relation of a Catholic to the Church. He has never been taught by a church, guided by a church, moulded by a church; he is self-educated and self-reliant; he has made his own teacher for himself, and has never sat at the feet of any other, except of the author of a book of which he was himself the interpreter. Speaking of the possibility of "secession" in his own case, he tells us, "I have always felt that I could have gone in on no other way than that of closing my eyes and accepting whatever was put before me" (p. 98). What a revolution that would be! This attitude of simple, uncriticising, ungrudging docility and obedience, is a thing which to him is a perfect novelty. It is one thing to take our faith from an abstraction of our own brain; quite another to receive it from a living reality, outside and independent of ourselves. This is the first thing that strikes us in men like Dr. Pusey, as their minds are reflected in books such as that before us. The second is an amount of misconception, misunderstanding, and positive ignorance of the Catholic system, which would be simply unintelligible did we not consider the great disadvantages under which any one in his position must have studied it. He is not one of the more rabid school of Anglican controversialists; his character and habits of mind are quite alien from wilful misrepresentation and conscious unfairness. And yet there is hardly a fair statement in his book on matters which belong to Catholicism; and there are many most provoking misstatements, as well as many most ludicrous and childish blunders. The book presents an easy victory to any moderately-informed Catholic theologian who may take the trouble to refute it. This has not been our purpose at present. We have been content with pointing out that his defence of Anglicanism really condemns it, because it implies that he cannot defend it without misrepresenting it. In a future article we may deal with him as a controversialist, and point out, by way of specimen, some few of the mistakes into which he has fallen in his attack on the Catholic Church.