'
Father Smith described what he had seen.
Father Smith described what he had seen.
Strachey - Eminent Victorians
All the lady could do, to indicate her disapprobation,
was to put a copy of Mr. Bowdler's book in a conspicuous position on the
drawing-room table, when he came to pay his respects at the Palace.
Among the letters of congratulation which Manning received, was one from
Mr Gladstone, with whom he had remained on terms of close friendship
since their days together at Oxford.
'I rejoice,' Mr Gladstone wrote, 'on your account personally; but more
for the sake of the Church. All my brothers-in-law are here and scarcely
less delighted than I am. With great glee am I about to write your new
address; but, the occasion really calls for higher sentiments; and sure
am I that you are one of the men to whom it is specially given to
develop the solution of that great problem--how all our minor
distractions are to be either abandoned, absorbed, or harmonised through
the might of the great principle of communion in the body of Christ. '
Manning was an Archdeacon; but he was not yet out of the woods. His
relations with the Tractarians had leaked out, and the Record was
beginning to be suspicious. If Mrs. Shuttleworth's opinion of him were
to become general, it would certainly be a grave matter. Nobody could
wish to live and die a mere Archdeacon. And then, at that very moment,
an event occurred which made it imperative to take a definite step, one
way or the other. That event was the publication of Tract No. 90.
For some time it had been obvious to every impartial onlooker that
Newman was slipping down an inclined plane at the bottom of which lay
one thing, and one thing only--the Roman Catholic Church. What was
surprising was the length of time which he was taking to reach the
inevitable destination. Years passed before he came to realise that his
grandiose edifice of a Church Universal would crumble to pieces if one
of its foundation stones was to be an amatory intrigue of Henry VIII.
But, at last he began to see that terrible monarch glowering at him
wherever he turned his eyes. First he tried to exorcise the spectre with
the rolling periods of the Caroline divines; but it only strutted the
more truculently. Then in despair he plunged into the writings of the
early Fathers, and sought to discover some way out of his difficulties
in the complicated labyrinth of ecclesiastical history. After months
spent in the study of the Monophysite heresy, the alarming conclusion
began to force itself upon him that the Church of England was perhaps in
schism. Eventually he read an article by a Roman Catholic on St.
Augustine and the Donatists, which seemed to put the matter beyond
doubt. St. Augustine, in the fifth century, had pointed out that the
Donatists were heretics because the Bishop of Rome had said so. The
argument was crushing; it rang in Newman's ears for days and nights;
and, though he continued to linger on in agony for six years more, he
never could discover any reply to it. All he could hope to do was to
persuade himself and anyone else who liked to listen to him that the
holding of Anglican orders was not inconsistent with a belief in the
whole cycle of Roman doctrine as laid down at the Council of Trent. In
this way he supposed that he could at once avoid the deadly sin of
heresy and conscientiously remain a clergyman in the Church of England;
and with this end in view, he composed Tract No. 90.
The object of the Tract was to prove that there was nothing in the
Thirty-nine Articles incompatible with the creed of the Roman Church.
Newman pointed out, for instance, that it was generally supposed that
the Articles condemned the doctrine of Purgatory; but they did not; they
merely condemned the Romish doctrine of Purgatory--and Romish, clearly,
was not the same thing as Roman. Hence it followed that believers in the
Roman doctrine of Purgatory might subscribe the Articles with a good
conscience. Similarly, the Articles condemned 'the sacrifices of
masses', but they did not condemn 'the sacrifice of the Mass'. Thus, the
Mass might be lawfully celebrated in English Churches. Newman took the
trouble to examine the Articles in detail from this point of view, and
the conclusion he came to in every case supported his contention in a
singular manner.
The Tract produced an immense sensation, for it seemed to be a deadly
and treacherous blow aimed at the very heart of the Church of England.
Deadly it certainly was, but it was not so treacherous as it appeared at
first sight. The members of the English Church had ingenuously imagined
up to that moment that it was possible to contain, in a frame of words,
the subtle essence of their complicated doctrinal system, involving the
mysteries of the Eternal and the Infinite on the one hand, and the
elaborate adjustments of temporal government on the other. They did not
understand that verbal definitions in such a case will only perform
their functions so long as there is no dispute about the matters which
they are intended to define: that is to say, so long as there is no need
for them. For generations this had been the case with the Thirty-nine
Articles. Their drift was clear enough; and nobody bothered over their
exact meaning. But directly someone found it important to give them a
new and untraditional interpretation, it appeared that they were a mass
of ambiguity, and might be twisted into meaning very nearly anything
that anybody liked. Steady-going churchmen were appalled and outraged
when they saw Newman, in Tract No. 90, performing this operation. But,
after all, he was only taking the Church of England at its word. And
indeed, since Newman showed the way, the operation has become so
exceedingly common that the most steady-going churchman hardly raises an
eyebrow at it now.
At the time, however, Newman's treatment of the Articles seemed to
display not only a perverted supersubtlety of intellect, but a temper of
mind that was fundamentally dishonest. It was then that he first began
to be assailed by those charges of untruthfulness which reached their
culmination more than twenty years later in the celebrated controversy
with Charles Kingsley, which led to the writing of the Apologia. The
controversy was not a very fruitful one, chiefly because Kingsley could
no more understand the nature of Newman's intelligence than a subaltern
in a line regiment can understand a Brahmin of Benares. Kingsley was a
stout Protestant, whose hatred of Popery was, at bottom, simply
ethical--an honest, instinctive horror of the practices of priestcraft
and the habits of superstition; and it was only natural that he should
see in those innumerable delicate distinctions which Newman was
perpetually drawing, and which he himself had not only never thought of,
but could not even grasp, simply another manifestation of the inherent
falsehood of Rome. But, in reality, no one, in one sense of the word,
was more truthful than Newman. The idea of deceit would have been
abhorrent to him; and indeed it was owing to his very desire to explain
what he had in his mind exactly and completely, with all the refinements
of which his subtle brain was capable, that persons such as Kingsley
were puzzled into thinking him dishonest. Unfortunately, however, the
possibilities of truth and falsehood depend upon other things besides
sincerity. A man may be of a scrupulous and impeccable honesty, and yet
his respect for the truth--it cannot be denied--may be insufficient. He
may be, like the lunatic, the lover, and the poet, 'of imagination all
compact'; he may be blessed, or cursed, with one of those 'seething
brains', one of those 'shaping fanatasies' that 'apprehend more than
cool reason ever comprehends'; he may be by nature incapable of sifting
evidence, or by predilection simply indisposed to do so. 'When we were
there,' wrote Newman in a letter to a friend after his conversion,
describing a visit to Naples, and the miraculous circumstances connected
with the liquefaction of St. Januarius's blood,
'the feast of St. Gennaro was coming on, and the Jesuits were eager for
us to stop--they have the utmost confidence in the miracle--and were the
more eager because many Catholics, till they have seen it, doubt it. Our
father director here tells us that before he went to Naples he did not
believe it. That is, they have vague ideas of natural means,
exaggeration, etc. , not of course imputing fraud. They say conversions
often take place in consequence. It is exposed for the Octave, and the
miracle continues--it is not simple liquefaction, but sometimes it
swells, sometimes boils, sometimes melts--no one can tell what is going
to take place. They say it is quite overcoming-and people cannot help
crying to see it. I understand that Sir H. Davy attended everyday, and
it was this extreme variety of the phenomenon which convinced him that
nothing physical would account for it. Yet there is this remarkable fact
that liquefactions of blood are common at Naples--and, unless it is
irreverent to the Great Author of Miracles to be obstinate in the
inquiry, the question certainly rises whether there is something in the
air. (Mind, I don't believe there is--and, speaking humbly, and without
having seen it, think it a true miracle--but I am arguing. ) We saw the
blood of St Patrizia, half liquid; i. e. liquefying, on her feast day. St
John Baptist's blood sometimes liquefies on the 29th of August, and did
when we were at Naples, but we had not time to go to the church. We saw
the liquid blood of an Oratorian Father; a good man, but not a saint,
who died two centuries ago, I think; and we saw the liquid blood of Da
Ponte, the great and holy Jesuit, who, I suppose, was almost a saint.
But these instances do not account for liquefaction on certain days, if
this is the case. But the most strange phenomenon is what happens at
Ravello, a village or town above Amalfi. There is the blood of St.
Pantaleon. It is in a vessel amid the stonework of the Altar-it is not
touched but on his feast in June it liquefies. And more, there is an
excommunication against those who bring portions of the True Cross into
the Church. Why? Because the blood liquefies, whenever it is brought. A
person I know, not knowing the prohibition, brought in a portion, and
the Priest suddenly said, who showed the blood, "Who has got the Holy
Cross about him? " I tell you what was told me by a grave and religious
man. It is a curious coincidence that in telling this to our Father
Director here, he said, "Why, we have a portion of St. Pantaleon's blood
at the Chiesa Nuova, and it is always liquid. "'
After leaving Naples, Newman visited Loreto, and inspected the house of
the Holy Family, which, as is known to the faithful, was transported
thither, in three hops, from Palestine.
'I went to Loreto,' he wrote, 'with a simple faith, believing what I
still more believed when I saw it. I have no doubt now. If you ask me
why I believe it, it is because everyone believes it at Rome; cautious
as they are and sceptical about some other things. I have no antecedent
difficulty in the matter. He who floated the Ark on the surges of a
world-wide sea, and enclosed in it all living things, who has hidden the
terrestrial paradise, who said that faith might move mountains, who
sustained thousands for forty years in a sterile wilderness, who
transported Elias and keeps him hidden till the end, could do this
wonder also. '
Here, whatever else there may be, there is certainly no trace of a
desire to deceive. Could a state of mind, in fact, be revealed with more
absolute transparency?
When Newman was a child he 'wished that he could believe the Arabian
Nights were true'. When he came to be a man, his wish seems to have been
granted.
Tract No. 90 was officially condemned by the authorities at Oxford, and
in the hubbub that followed, the contending parties closed their ranks;
henceforward, any compromise between the friends and the enemies of the
Movement was impossible. Archdeacon Manning was in too conspicuous a
position to be able to remain silent; he was obliged to declare himself,
and he did not hesitate. In an archidiaconal charge, delivered within a
few months of his appointment, he firmly repudiated the Tractarians. But
the repudiation was not deemed sufficient, and a year later he repeated
it with greater emphasis. Still, however, the horrid rumours were
afloat. The "Record" began to investigate matters, and its vigilance was
soon rewarded by an alarming discovery: the sacrament had been
administered in Chichester Cathedral on a weekday, and 'Archdeacon
Manning, one of the most noted and determined of the Tractarians, had
acted a conspicuous part on the occasion'. It was clear that the only
way of silencing these malevolent whispers was by some public
demonstration whose import nobody could doubt. The annual sermon
preached on Guy Fawkes Day before the University of Oxford seemed to
offer the very opportunity that Manning required. He seized it; got
himself appointed preacher; and delivered from the pulpit of St. Mary's
a virulently Protestant harangue. This time there could indeed be no
doubt about the matter: Manning had shouted 'No Popery! ' in the very
citadel of the Movement, and every one, including Newman, recognised
that he had finally cut himself off from his old friends. Everyone, that
is to say, except the Archdeacon himself. On the day after the sermon,
Manning walked out to the neighbouring village of Littlemore, where
Newman was now living in retirement with a few chosen disciples, in the
hope of being able to give a satisfactory explanation of what he had
done. But he was disappointed; for when, after an awkward interval, one
of the disciples appeared at the door, he was informed that Mr. Newman
was not at home.
With his retirement to Littlemore, Newman had entered upon the final
period of his Anglican career. Even he could no longer help perceiving
that the end was now only a matter of time. His progress was hastened in
an agitating manner by the indiscreet activity of one of his proselytes,
W. G. Ward. a young man who combined an extraordinary aptitude for a
priori reasoning with a passionate devotion to Opera Bouffe. It was
difficult, in fact, to decide whether the inner nature of Ward was more
truly expressing itself when he was firing off some train of scholastic
paradoxes on the Eucharist or when he was trilling the airs of Figaro
and plunging through the hilarious roulades of the Largo al Factotum.
Even Dr. Pusey could not be quite sure, though he was Ward's spiritual
director. On one occasion his young penitent came to him, and confessed
that a vow which he had taken to abstain from music during Lent was
beginning to affect his health. Could Dr. Pusey see his way to releasing
him from the vow? The Doctor decided that a little sacred music would
not be amiss. Ward was all gratitude, and that night a party was
arranged in a friend's rooms. The concert began with the solemn
harmonies of Handel, which were followed by the holy strains of the 'Oh
Salutaris' of Cherubini. Then came the elevation and the pomp of
'Possenti Numi' from the Magic Flute. But, alas! there lies much danger
in Mozart. The page was turned and there was the delicious duet between
Papageno and Papagena. Flesh and blood could not resist that; then song
followed song, the music waxed faster and lighter, until, at last Ward
burst into the intoxicating merriment of the Largo al Factotum. When it
was over, a faint but persistent knocking made itself heard upon the
wall; and it was only then that the company remembered that the rooms
next door were Dr. Pusey's.
The same entrainment which carried Ward away when he sat down to a piano
possessed him whenever he embarked on a religious discussion. 'The thing
that was utterly abhorrent to him,' said one of his friends, 'was to
stop short. ' Given the premises, he would follow out their implications
with the mercilessness of a medieval monk, and when he had reached the
last limits of argument, be ready to maintain whatever propositions he
might find there with his dying breath. He had the extreme innocence of
a child and a mathematician. Captivated by the glittering eye of Newman,
he swallowed whole the supernatural conception of the universe which
Newman had evolved, accepted it as a fundamental premise, and 'began at
once to deduce from it whatsoever there might be to be deduced. ' His
very first deductions included irrefutable proofs of (I) God's
particular providence for individuals; (2) the real efficacy of
intercessory prayer; (3) the reality of our communion with the saints
departed; (4) the constant presence and assistance of the angels of God.
Later on he explained mathematically the importance of the Ember Days:
'Who can tell,' he added, 'the degree of blessing lost to us in this
land by neglecting, as we alone of Christian Churches do neglect, these
holy days? ' He then proceeded to convict the Reformers, not only of
rebellion, but'--for my own part I see not how we can avoid adding--of
perjury. ' Every day his arguments became more extreme, more rigorously
exact, and more distressing to his master. Newman was in the position of
a cautious commander-in-chief being hurried into an engagement against
his will by a dashing cavalry officer. Ward forced him forward step by
step towards-no! he could not bear it; he shuddered and drew back. But
it was of no avail. In vain did Keble and Pusey wring their hands and
stretch forth their pleading arms to their now vanishing brother. The
fatal moment was fast approaching. Ward at last published a devastating
book in which he proved conclusively, by a series of syllogisms, that
the only proper course for the Church of England was to repent in
sackcloth and ashes her separation from the Communion of Rome. The
reckless author was deprived of his degree by an outraged University,
and a few weeks later was received into the Catholic Church.
Newman, in a kind of despair, had flung himself into the labours of
historical compilation. His views of history had changed since the days
when, as an undergraduate, he had feasted on the worldly pages of
Gibbon.
'Revealed religion,' he now thought, 'furnishes facts to other sciences,
which those sciences, left to themselves, would never reach. Thus, in
the science of history, the preservation of our race in Noah's Ark is an
historical fact, which history never would arrive at without
revelation. '
With these principles to guide him, he plunged with his disciples into a
prolonged study of the English Saints. Biographies soon appeared of St.
Bega, St. Adamnan, St. Gundleus, St. Guthlake, Brother Drithelm, St.
Amphibalus, St. Wuistan, St. Ebba, St. Neot, St. Ninian, and Cunibert
the Hermit. Their austerities, their virginity, and their miraculous
powers were described in detail. The public learned with astonishment
that St Ninian had turned a staff into a tree; that St. German had
stopped a cock from crowing, and that a child had been raised from the
dead to convert St. Helier. The series has subsequently been continued
by a more modern writer whose relation of the history of the blessed St.
Mael contains, perhaps, even more matter for edification than Newman's
biographies.
At the time, indeed, those works caused considerable scandal. Clergymen
denounced them in pamphlets. St. Cuthbert was described by his
biographer as having 'carried the jealousy of women, characteristic of
all the saints, to an extraordinary pitch'. An example was given,
whenever he held a spiritual conversation with St Ebba, he was careful
to spend the ensuing ours of darkness 'in prayer, up to his neck in
water'. 'Persons who invent such tales,' wrote one indignant
commentator, 'cast very grave and just suspicions on the purity of their
own minds. And young persons, who talk and think in this way, are in
extreme danger of falling into sinful habits. As to the volumes before
us, the authors have, in their fanatical panegyrics of virginity, made
use of language downright profane. '
One of the disciples at Littlemore was James Anthony Froude, the younger
brother of Hurrell, and it fell to his lot to be responsible for the
biography of St. Neot. While he was composing it, he began to feel some
qualms. Saints who lighted fires with icicles, changed bandits into
wolves, and floated across the Irish Channel on altar-stones, produced a
disturbing effect on his historical conscience. But he had promised his
services to Newman, and he determined to carry through the work in the
spirit in which he had begun it. He did so; but he thought it proper to
add the following sentence by way of conclusion: 'This is all, and
indeed rather more than all, that is known to men of the blessed St.
Neot; but not more than is known to the angels in heaven. '
Meanwhile, the English Roman Catholics were growing impatient; was the
great conversion never coming, for which they had prayed so fervently
and so long? Dr. Wiseman, at the head of them, was watching and waiting
with special eagerness. His hand was held out under the ripening fruit;
the delicious morsel seemed to be trembling on its stalk; and yet it did
not fall. At last, unable to bear the suspense any longer, he dispatched
to Littlemore Father Smith, an old pupil of Newman's, who had lately
joined the Roman communion, with instructions that he should do his
best, under cover of a simple visit of friendship, to discover how the
land lay. Father Smith was received somewhat coldly, and the
conversation ran entirely on topics which had nothing to do with
religion. When the company separated before dinner, he was beginning to
think that his errand had been useless; but, on their reassembling, he
suddenly noticed that Newman had changed his trousers, and that the
colour of the pair which he was now wearing was grey. At the earliest
moment, the emissary rushed back post-haste to Dr. Wiseman. 'All is
well,' he exclaimed; 'Newman no longer considers that he is in Anglican
orders. " Praise be to God! ' answered Dr Wiseman. 'But how do you know?
'
Father Smith described what he had seen. 'Oh, is that all? My dear
father, how can you be so foolish? ' But Father Smith was not to be
shaken. 'I know the man,' he said, and I know what it means. 'Newman will
come, and he will come soon. '
And Father Smith was right. A few weeks later, Newman suddenly slipped
off to a priest, and all was over. Perhaps he would have hesitated
longer still, if he could have foreseen how he was to pass the next
thirty years of his unfortunate existence; but the future was hidden,
and all that was certain was that the past had gone forever, and that
his eyes would rest no more upon the snapdragons of Trinity.
The Oxford Movement was now ended. The University breathed such a sigh
of relief as usually follows the difficult expulsion of a hard piece of
matter from a living organism, and actually began to attend to
education. As for the Church of England, she had tasted blood, and it
was clear that she would never again be content with a vegetable diet.
Her clergy, however, maintained their reputation for judicious
compromise, for they followed Newman up to the very point beyond which
his conclusions were logical, and, while they intoned, confessed, swung
incense, and burned candles with the exhilaration of converts, they yet
managed to do so with a subtle nuance which showed that they had nothing
to do with Rome. Various individuals underwent more violent changes.
Several had preceded Newman into the Roman fold; among others an unhappy
Mr. Sibthorpe, who subsequently changed his mind, and returned to the
Church of his fathers, and then--perhaps it was only natural--changed
his mind again. Many more followed Newman, and Dr. Wiseman was
particularly pleased by the conversion of a Mr. Morris, who, as he said,
was 'the author of the essay, which won the prize on the best method of
proving Christianity to the Hindus'. Hurrell Froude had died before
Newman had read the fatal article on St. Augustine; but his brother,
James Anthony, together with Arthur Clough, the poet, went through an
experience which was more distressing in those days than it has since
become; they lost their faith. With this difference, however, that while
in Froude's case the loss of his faith turned out to be rather like the
loss of a heavy portmanteau, which one afterwards discovers to have been
full of old rags and brickbats, Clough was made so uneasy by the loss of
his that he went on looking for it everywhere as long as he lived; but
somehow he never could find it. On the other hand, Keble and Pusey
continued for the rest of their lives to dance in an exemplary manner
upon the tight-rope of High Anglicanism; in such an exemplary manner,
indeed, that the tight-rope has its dancers still.
IV
MANNING was now thirty-eight, and it was clear that he was the rising
man in the Church of England. He had many powerful connections: he was
the brother-in-law of Samuel Wilberforce, who had been lately made a
bishop; he was a close friend of Mr. Gladstone, who was a Cabinet
Minister; and he was becoming well known in the influential circles of
society in London. His talent for affairs was recognised not only in the
Church, but in the world at large, and he busied himself with matters of
such varied scope as National Education, the administration of the Poor
Law, and the Employment of Women. Mr. Gladstone kept up an intimate
correspondence with him on these and on other subjects, mingling in his
letters the details of practical statesmanship with the speculations of
a religious thinker. 'Sir James Graham,' he wrote, in a discussion of
the bastardy clauses of the Poor Law, 'is much pleased with the tone of
your two communications. He is disposed, without putting an end to the
application of the workhouse test against the mother, to make the remedy
against the putative father "real and effective" for expenses incurred
in the workhouse. I am not enough acquainted to know whether it would be
advisable to go further. You have not proposed it; and I am disposed to
believe that only with a revived and improved discipline in the Church
can we hope for any generally effective check upon lawless lust. ' 'I
agree with you EMINENTLY,' he writes, in a later letter, 'in your
doctrine of FILTRATION. But it sometimes occurs to me, though the
question may seem a strange one, how far was the Reformation, but
especially the Continental Reformation, designed by God, in the region
of final causes, for that purification of the Roman Church which it has
actually realised? '
In his archdeaconry, Manning lived to the full the active life of a
country clergyman. His slim, athletic figure was seen everywhere in the
streets of Chichester, or on the lawns of the neighbouring rectories, or
galloping over the downs in breeches and gaiters, or cutting brilliant
figures on the ice. He was an excellent judge of horse-flesh, and the
pair of greys which drew his hooded phaeton so swiftly through the lanes
were the admiration of the county. His features were already beginning
to assume their ascetic cast, but the spirit of youth had not yet fled
from them, so that he seemed to combine the attractions of dignity and
grace. He was a good talker, a sympathetic listener, a man who
understood the difficult art of preserving all the vigour of a manly
character and yet never giving offence. No wonder that his sermons drew
crowds, no wonder that his spiritual advice was sought for eagerly by an
ever-growing group of penitents; no wonder that men would say, when his
name was mentioned, 'Oh, Manning! No power on earth can keep HIM from a
bishopric! '
Such was the fair outward seeming of the Archdeacon's life; but, the
inward reality was different. The more active, the more fortunate, the
more full of happy promise his existence became, the more persistently
was his secret imagination haunted by a dreadful vision--the lake that
burneth forever with brimstone and fire. The temptations of the Evil One
are many, Manning knew; and he knew also that, for him at least, the
most subtle and terrible of all temptations was the temptation of
worldly success. He tried to reassure himself, but it was in vain. He
committed his thoughts to a diary, weighing scrupulously his every
motive, examining with relentless searchings into the depths of his
heart. Perhaps, after all, his longings for preferment were merely
legitimatehopes for 'an elevation into a sphere of higher usefulness'.
But no, there was something more than that. 'I do feel pleasure,' he
noted, 'in honour, precedence, elevation, the society of great people,
and all this is very shameful and mean. '
After Newman's conversion, he almost convinced himself that his 'visions
of an ecclesiastical future' were justified by the role that he would
play as a 'healer of the breach in the Church of England'. Mr. Gladstone
agreed with him; but there was One higher than Mr. Gladstone, and did He
agree?
'I am pierced by anxious thoughts. God knows what my desires have been
and are, and why they are crossed. . . . I am flattering myself with a
fancy about depth and reality. . . . The great question is: Is God enough
for you now? And if you are as now even to the end of life, will it
suffice you? . . . Certainly I would rather choose to be stayed on God,
than to be in the thrones of the world and the Church. Nothing else will
go into Eternity. '
In a moment of ambition, he had applied for the Readership of Lincoln's
Inn, but, owing chiefly to the hostile influence of the Record, the
appointment had gone elsewhere. A little later, a more important
position was offered to him--the office of sub-almoner to the Queen,
which had just been vacated by the Archbishop of York, and was almost
certain to lead to a mitre. The offer threw Manning into an agony of
self-examination. He drew up elaborate tables, after the manner of
Robinson Crusoe, with the reasons for and against his acceptance of the
post:
FOR AGAINST
1. That it comes unsought. 1. Not therefore to be accepted. Such
things are trials as well as leadings.
2. That it is honourable. 2. Being what I am, ought I
not therefore to decline it--
(1) as humiliation;
(2) as revenge on myself
for Lincoln's Inn;
(3) as a testimony?
And so on. He found in the end ten 'negative reasons', with no
affirmative ones to balance them, and, after a week's deliberation, he
rejected the offer.
But peace of mind was as far off from him as ever. First the bitter
thought came to him that 'in all this Satan tells me I am doing it to be
thought mortified and holy'; and then he was obsessed by the still
bitterer feelings of ineradicable disappointment and regret. He had lost
a great opportunity, and it brought him small comfort to consider that
'in the region of counsels, self-chastisement, humiliation,
self-discipline, penance, and of the Cross', he had perhaps done right.
The crisis passed, but it was succeeded by a fiercer one. Manning was
taken seriously ill, and became convinced that he might die at any
moment. The entries in his Diary grew more elaborate than ever; his
remorse for the past, his resolutions for the future, his protestations
of submission to the will of God, filled page after page of parallel
columns, headings and sub-headings, numbered clauses, and analytical
tables. 'How do I feel about Death? ' he wrote.
'Certainly great fear:
1. Because of the uncertainty of our state before God.
2. Because of the consciousness--
(1) of great sins past,
(2) of great sinfulness,
(3) of most shallow repentance.
What shall I do? '
He decided to mortify himself, to read St Thomas Aquinas, and to make
his 'night prayers forty instead of thirty minutes'. He determined
during Lent 'to use no pleasant bread (except on Sundays and feasts)
such as cake and sweetmeat'; but he added the proviso 'I do not include
plain biscuits'. Opposite this entry appears the word 'KEPT'. And yet
his back-slidings were many. Looking back over a single week, he was
obliged to register 'petulance twice' and 'complacent visions'. He heard
his curate being commended for bringing so many souls to God during
Lent, and he 'could not bear it'; but the remorse was terrible: 'I
abhorred myself on the spot, and looked upward for help. ' He made out
list upon list of the Almighty's special mercies towards him, and they
included his creation, his regeneration, and (No. 5) 'the preservation
of my life six times to my knowledge:
(1) In illness at the age of nine.
(2) In the water.
(3) By a runaway horse at Oxford.
(4) By the same.
(5) By falling nearly through the ceiling of a church.
(6) Again by a fall of a horse. And I know not
how often in shooting, riding, etc. '
At last he became convalescent; but the spiritual experiences of those
agitated weeks left an indelible mark upon his mind, and prepared the
way for the great change which was to follow.
For he had other doubts besides those which held him in torment as to
his own salvation; he was in doubt about the whole framework of his
faith. Newman's conversion, he found, had meant something more to him
than he had first realised. It had seemed to come as a call to the
redoubling of his Anglican activities; but supposing, in reality, it
were a call towards something very different--towards an abandonment of
those activities altogether? It might be 'a trial', or again it might be
a 'leading'; how was he to judge? Already, before his illness, these
doubts had begun to take possession of his mind.
'I am conscious to myself,' he wrote in his Diary, 'of an extensively
changed feeling towards the Church of Rome . . . The Church of England
seems to me to be diseased: 1. ORGANICALLY (six sub-headings). 2.
FUNCTIONALLY (seven sub-headings) . . . Wherever it seems healthy, it
approximates the system of Rome. '
Then thoughts of the Virgin Mary suddenly began to assail him:
(1) If John the Baptist were sanctified from the womb,
how much more the B. V. !
(2) If Enoch and Elijah were exempted from death,
why not the B. V. from sin?
(3) It is a strange way of loving the Son to slight
the mother! '
The arguments seemed irresistible, and a few weeks later the following
entry occurs--'Strange thoughts have visited me:
(1) I have felt that the Episcopate of the Church of England is
secularised and bound down beyond hope. . . .
(2) I feel as if a light had fallen upon me. My feeling about the
Roman Church is not intellectual. I have intellectual
difficulties, but the great moral difficulties seem melting.
(3) Something keeps rising and saying, "You will end in the Roman
Church".
He noted altogether twenty-five of these 'strange thoughts'. His mind
hovered anxiously round--
(1) The Incarnation,
(2) The Real Presence,
i. Regeneration,
ii. Eucharist, and
(3) The Exaltation of S. M. and Saints.
His twenty-second strange thought was as follows: 'How do I know where I
may be two years hence? Where was Newman five years ago? '
It was significant, but hardly surprising, that, after his illness,
Manning should have chosen to recuperate in Rome. He spent several
months there, and his Diary during the whole of that period is concerned
entirely with detailed descriptions of churches, ceremonies, and relics,
and with minute accounts of conversations with priests and nuns. There
is not a single reference either to the objects of art or to the
antiquities of the place; but another omission was still more
remarkable. Manning had a long interview with Pius IX, and his only
record of it is contained in the bald statement: 'Audience today at the
Vatican'. Precisely what passed on that occasion never transpired; all
that is known is that His Holiness expressed considerable surprise on
learning from the Archdeacon that the chalice was used in the Anglican
Church in the administration of Communion. 'What! ' he exclaimed, is the
same chalice made use of by everyone? ' 'I remember the pain I felt,'
said Manning, long afterwards, 'at seeing how unknown we were to the
Vicar of Jesus Christ. It made me feel our isolation. '
On his return to England, he took up once more the work in his
Archdeaconry with what appetite he might. Ravaged by doubt, distracted
by speculation, he yet managed to maintain an outward presence of
unshaken calm. His only confidant was Robert Wilberforce, to whom, for
the next two years, he poured forth in a series of letters, headed
'UNDER THE SEAL' to indicate that they contained the secrets of the
confessional--the whole history of his spiritual perturbations. The
irony of his position was singular; for, during the whole of this time,
Manning was himself holding back from the Church of Rome a host of
hesitating penitents by means of arguments which he was at the very
moment denouncing as fallacious to his own confessor. But what else
could he do? When he received, for instance, a letter such as the
following from an agitated lady, what was he to say?
'MY DEAR FATHER IN CHRIST,
' . . . I am sure you would pity me and like to help me, if you knew the
unhappy, unsettled state my mind is in, and the misery of being
ENTIRELY, WHEREVER I AM, with those who look upon joining the Church of
Rome as the most awful "fall" conceivable to any one, and are devoid of
the smallest comprehension of how any enlightened person can do it. . . .
My old Evangelical friends, with all my deep, deep love for them, do not
succeed in shaking me in the least. . . .
'My brother has just published a book called "Regeneration", which all
my friends are reading and highly extolling; it has a very contrary
effect to what he would desire on my mind. I can read and understand it
all in an altogether different sense, and the facts which he quotes
about the articles as drawn up in 1536, and again in 1552, and of the
Irish articles of 1615 and 1634, STARTLE and SHAKE me about the Reformed
Church in England far more than anything else, and have done so ever
since I first saw them in Mr. Maskell's pamphlet (as quoted from Mr
Dodsworth's).
'I do hope you have some time and thought to pray for me still. Mr.
Galton's letters long ago grew into short formal notes, which hurt me
and annoyed me particularly, and I never answered his last, so,
literally, I have no one to say things to and get help from, which in
one sense is a comfort when my convictions seem to be leading me on and
on, and gaining strength in spite of all the dreariness of my lot.
'Do you know I can't help being very anxious and unhappy about poor
Sister Harriet. I am afraid of her GOING OUT OF HER MIND. She comforts
herself by an occasional outpouring of everything to me, and I had a
letter this morning. . . . She says Sister May has promised the Vicar never
to talk to her or allow her to talk on the subject with her, and I doubt
whether this can be good for her, because though she has lost her faith,
she says, in the Church of England, yet she never thinks of what she
could have faith in, and resolutely without inquiring into the question
determines not to be a Roman Catholic, so that really, you see, she is
allowing her mind to run adrift and yet perfectly powerless.
'Forgive my troubling you with this letter, and believe me to be always
your faithful, grateful and affectionate daughter,
'EMMA RYLE.
'P. S. I wish I could see you once more so very much. '
How was Manning, a director of souls, and a clergyman of the Church of
England, to reply that in sober truth there was very little to choose
between the state of mind of Sister Emma, or even of Sister Harriet, and
his own? The dilemma was a grievous one: when a soldier finds himself
fighting for a cause in which he has lost faith, it is treachery to
stop, and it is treachery to go on.
At last, in the seclusion of his library, Manning turned in agony to
those old writings which had provided Newman with so much instruction
and assistance; perhaps the Fathers would do something for him as well.
He ransacked the pages of St. Cyprian and St. Cyril; he went through the
complete works of St. Optatus and St. Leo; he explored the vast
treatises of Tertullian and Justin Martyr.
was to put a copy of Mr. Bowdler's book in a conspicuous position on the
drawing-room table, when he came to pay his respects at the Palace.
Among the letters of congratulation which Manning received, was one from
Mr Gladstone, with whom he had remained on terms of close friendship
since their days together at Oxford.
'I rejoice,' Mr Gladstone wrote, 'on your account personally; but more
for the sake of the Church. All my brothers-in-law are here and scarcely
less delighted than I am. With great glee am I about to write your new
address; but, the occasion really calls for higher sentiments; and sure
am I that you are one of the men to whom it is specially given to
develop the solution of that great problem--how all our minor
distractions are to be either abandoned, absorbed, or harmonised through
the might of the great principle of communion in the body of Christ. '
Manning was an Archdeacon; but he was not yet out of the woods. His
relations with the Tractarians had leaked out, and the Record was
beginning to be suspicious. If Mrs. Shuttleworth's opinion of him were
to become general, it would certainly be a grave matter. Nobody could
wish to live and die a mere Archdeacon. And then, at that very moment,
an event occurred which made it imperative to take a definite step, one
way or the other. That event was the publication of Tract No. 90.
For some time it had been obvious to every impartial onlooker that
Newman was slipping down an inclined plane at the bottom of which lay
one thing, and one thing only--the Roman Catholic Church. What was
surprising was the length of time which he was taking to reach the
inevitable destination. Years passed before he came to realise that his
grandiose edifice of a Church Universal would crumble to pieces if one
of its foundation stones was to be an amatory intrigue of Henry VIII.
But, at last he began to see that terrible monarch glowering at him
wherever he turned his eyes. First he tried to exorcise the spectre with
the rolling periods of the Caroline divines; but it only strutted the
more truculently. Then in despair he plunged into the writings of the
early Fathers, and sought to discover some way out of his difficulties
in the complicated labyrinth of ecclesiastical history. After months
spent in the study of the Monophysite heresy, the alarming conclusion
began to force itself upon him that the Church of England was perhaps in
schism. Eventually he read an article by a Roman Catholic on St.
Augustine and the Donatists, which seemed to put the matter beyond
doubt. St. Augustine, in the fifth century, had pointed out that the
Donatists were heretics because the Bishop of Rome had said so. The
argument was crushing; it rang in Newman's ears for days and nights;
and, though he continued to linger on in agony for six years more, he
never could discover any reply to it. All he could hope to do was to
persuade himself and anyone else who liked to listen to him that the
holding of Anglican orders was not inconsistent with a belief in the
whole cycle of Roman doctrine as laid down at the Council of Trent. In
this way he supposed that he could at once avoid the deadly sin of
heresy and conscientiously remain a clergyman in the Church of England;
and with this end in view, he composed Tract No. 90.
The object of the Tract was to prove that there was nothing in the
Thirty-nine Articles incompatible with the creed of the Roman Church.
Newman pointed out, for instance, that it was generally supposed that
the Articles condemned the doctrine of Purgatory; but they did not; they
merely condemned the Romish doctrine of Purgatory--and Romish, clearly,
was not the same thing as Roman. Hence it followed that believers in the
Roman doctrine of Purgatory might subscribe the Articles with a good
conscience. Similarly, the Articles condemned 'the sacrifices of
masses', but they did not condemn 'the sacrifice of the Mass'. Thus, the
Mass might be lawfully celebrated in English Churches. Newman took the
trouble to examine the Articles in detail from this point of view, and
the conclusion he came to in every case supported his contention in a
singular manner.
The Tract produced an immense sensation, for it seemed to be a deadly
and treacherous blow aimed at the very heart of the Church of England.
Deadly it certainly was, but it was not so treacherous as it appeared at
first sight. The members of the English Church had ingenuously imagined
up to that moment that it was possible to contain, in a frame of words,
the subtle essence of their complicated doctrinal system, involving the
mysteries of the Eternal and the Infinite on the one hand, and the
elaborate adjustments of temporal government on the other. They did not
understand that verbal definitions in such a case will only perform
their functions so long as there is no dispute about the matters which
they are intended to define: that is to say, so long as there is no need
for them. For generations this had been the case with the Thirty-nine
Articles. Their drift was clear enough; and nobody bothered over their
exact meaning. But directly someone found it important to give them a
new and untraditional interpretation, it appeared that they were a mass
of ambiguity, and might be twisted into meaning very nearly anything
that anybody liked. Steady-going churchmen were appalled and outraged
when they saw Newman, in Tract No. 90, performing this operation. But,
after all, he was only taking the Church of England at its word. And
indeed, since Newman showed the way, the operation has become so
exceedingly common that the most steady-going churchman hardly raises an
eyebrow at it now.
At the time, however, Newman's treatment of the Articles seemed to
display not only a perverted supersubtlety of intellect, but a temper of
mind that was fundamentally dishonest. It was then that he first began
to be assailed by those charges of untruthfulness which reached their
culmination more than twenty years later in the celebrated controversy
with Charles Kingsley, which led to the writing of the Apologia. The
controversy was not a very fruitful one, chiefly because Kingsley could
no more understand the nature of Newman's intelligence than a subaltern
in a line regiment can understand a Brahmin of Benares. Kingsley was a
stout Protestant, whose hatred of Popery was, at bottom, simply
ethical--an honest, instinctive horror of the practices of priestcraft
and the habits of superstition; and it was only natural that he should
see in those innumerable delicate distinctions which Newman was
perpetually drawing, and which he himself had not only never thought of,
but could not even grasp, simply another manifestation of the inherent
falsehood of Rome. But, in reality, no one, in one sense of the word,
was more truthful than Newman. The idea of deceit would have been
abhorrent to him; and indeed it was owing to his very desire to explain
what he had in his mind exactly and completely, with all the refinements
of which his subtle brain was capable, that persons such as Kingsley
were puzzled into thinking him dishonest. Unfortunately, however, the
possibilities of truth and falsehood depend upon other things besides
sincerity. A man may be of a scrupulous and impeccable honesty, and yet
his respect for the truth--it cannot be denied--may be insufficient. He
may be, like the lunatic, the lover, and the poet, 'of imagination all
compact'; he may be blessed, or cursed, with one of those 'seething
brains', one of those 'shaping fanatasies' that 'apprehend more than
cool reason ever comprehends'; he may be by nature incapable of sifting
evidence, or by predilection simply indisposed to do so. 'When we were
there,' wrote Newman in a letter to a friend after his conversion,
describing a visit to Naples, and the miraculous circumstances connected
with the liquefaction of St. Januarius's blood,
'the feast of St. Gennaro was coming on, and the Jesuits were eager for
us to stop--they have the utmost confidence in the miracle--and were the
more eager because many Catholics, till they have seen it, doubt it. Our
father director here tells us that before he went to Naples he did not
believe it. That is, they have vague ideas of natural means,
exaggeration, etc. , not of course imputing fraud. They say conversions
often take place in consequence. It is exposed for the Octave, and the
miracle continues--it is not simple liquefaction, but sometimes it
swells, sometimes boils, sometimes melts--no one can tell what is going
to take place. They say it is quite overcoming-and people cannot help
crying to see it. I understand that Sir H. Davy attended everyday, and
it was this extreme variety of the phenomenon which convinced him that
nothing physical would account for it. Yet there is this remarkable fact
that liquefactions of blood are common at Naples--and, unless it is
irreverent to the Great Author of Miracles to be obstinate in the
inquiry, the question certainly rises whether there is something in the
air. (Mind, I don't believe there is--and, speaking humbly, and without
having seen it, think it a true miracle--but I am arguing. ) We saw the
blood of St Patrizia, half liquid; i. e. liquefying, on her feast day. St
John Baptist's blood sometimes liquefies on the 29th of August, and did
when we were at Naples, but we had not time to go to the church. We saw
the liquid blood of an Oratorian Father; a good man, but not a saint,
who died two centuries ago, I think; and we saw the liquid blood of Da
Ponte, the great and holy Jesuit, who, I suppose, was almost a saint.
But these instances do not account for liquefaction on certain days, if
this is the case. But the most strange phenomenon is what happens at
Ravello, a village or town above Amalfi. There is the blood of St.
Pantaleon. It is in a vessel amid the stonework of the Altar-it is not
touched but on his feast in June it liquefies. And more, there is an
excommunication against those who bring portions of the True Cross into
the Church. Why? Because the blood liquefies, whenever it is brought. A
person I know, not knowing the prohibition, brought in a portion, and
the Priest suddenly said, who showed the blood, "Who has got the Holy
Cross about him? " I tell you what was told me by a grave and religious
man. It is a curious coincidence that in telling this to our Father
Director here, he said, "Why, we have a portion of St. Pantaleon's blood
at the Chiesa Nuova, and it is always liquid. "'
After leaving Naples, Newman visited Loreto, and inspected the house of
the Holy Family, which, as is known to the faithful, was transported
thither, in three hops, from Palestine.
'I went to Loreto,' he wrote, 'with a simple faith, believing what I
still more believed when I saw it. I have no doubt now. If you ask me
why I believe it, it is because everyone believes it at Rome; cautious
as they are and sceptical about some other things. I have no antecedent
difficulty in the matter. He who floated the Ark on the surges of a
world-wide sea, and enclosed in it all living things, who has hidden the
terrestrial paradise, who said that faith might move mountains, who
sustained thousands for forty years in a sterile wilderness, who
transported Elias and keeps him hidden till the end, could do this
wonder also. '
Here, whatever else there may be, there is certainly no trace of a
desire to deceive. Could a state of mind, in fact, be revealed with more
absolute transparency?
When Newman was a child he 'wished that he could believe the Arabian
Nights were true'. When he came to be a man, his wish seems to have been
granted.
Tract No. 90 was officially condemned by the authorities at Oxford, and
in the hubbub that followed, the contending parties closed their ranks;
henceforward, any compromise between the friends and the enemies of the
Movement was impossible. Archdeacon Manning was in too conspicuous a
position to be able to remain silent; he was obliged to declare himself,
and he did not hesitate. In an archidiaconal charge, delivered within a
few months of his appointment, he firmly repudiated the Tractarians. But
the repudiation was not deemed sufficient, and a year later he repeated
it with greater emphasis. Still, however, the horrid rumours were
afloat. The "Record" began to investigate matters, and its vigilance was
soon rewarded by an alarming discovery: the sacrament had been
administered in Chichester Cathedral on a weekday, and 'Archdeacon
Manning, one of the most noted and determined of the Tractarians, had
acted a conspicuous part on the occasion'. It was clear that the only
way of silencing these malevolent whispers was by some public
demonstration whose import nobody could doubt. The annual sermon
preached on Guy Fawkes Day before the University of Oxford seemed to
offer the very opportunity that Manning required. He seized it; got
himself appointed preacher; and delivered from the pulpit of St. Mary's
a virulently Protestant harangue. This time there could indeed be no
doubt about the matter: Manning had shouted 'No Popery! ' in the very
citadel of the Movement, and every one, including Newman, recognised
that he had finally cut himself off from his old friends. Everyone, that
is to say, except the Archdeacon himself. On the day after the sermon,
Manning walked out to the neighbouring village of Littlemore, where
Newman was now living in retirement with a few chosen disciples, in the
hope of being able to give a satisfactory explanation of what he had
done. But he was disappointed; for when, after an awkward interval, one
of the disciples appeared at the door, he was informed that Mr. Newman
was not at home.
With his retirement to Littlemore, Newman had entered upon the final
period of his Anglican career. Even he could no longer help perceiving
that the end was now only a matter of time. His progress was hastened in
an agitating manner by the indiscreet activity of one of his proselytes,
W. G. Ward. a young man who combined an extraordinary aptitude for a
priori reasoning with a passionate devotion to Opera Bouffe. It was
difficult, in fact, to decide whether the inner nature of Ward was more
truly expressing itself when he was firing off some train of scholastic
paradoxes on the Eucharist or when he was trilling the airs of Figaro
and plunging through the hilarious roulades of the Largo al Factotum.
Even Dr. Pusey could not be quite sure, though he was Ward's spiritual
director. On one occasion his young penitent came to him, and confessed
that a vow which he had taken to abstain from music during Lent was
beginning to affect his health. Could Dr. Pusey see his way to releasing
him from the vow? The Doctor decided that a little sacred music would
not be amiss. Ward was all gratitude, and that night a party was
arranged in a friend's rooms. The concert began with the solemn
harmonies of Handel, which were followed by the holy strains of the 'Oh
Salutaris' of Cherubini. Then came the elevation and the pomp of
'Possenti Numi' from the Magic Flute. But, alas! there lies much danger
in Mozart. The page was turned and there was the delicious duet between
Papageno and Papagena. Flesh and blood could not resist that; then song
followed song, the music waxed faster and lighter, until, at last Ward
burst into the intoxicating merriment of the Largo al Factotum. When it
was over, a faint but persistent knocking made itself heard upon the
wall; and it was only then that the company remembered that the rooms
next door were Dr. Pusey's.
The same entrainment which carried Ward away when he sat down to a piano
possessed him whenever he embarked on a religious discussion. 'The thing
that was utterly abhorrent to him,' said one of his friends, 'was to
stop short. ' Given the premises, he would follow out their implications
with the mercilessness of a medieval monk, and when he had reached the
last limits of argument, be ready to maintain whatever propositions he
might find there with his dying breath. He had the extreme innocence of
a child and a mathematician. Captivated by the glittering eye of Newman,
he swallowed whole the supernatural conception of the universe which
Newman had evolved, accepted it as a fundamental premise, and 'began at
once to deduce from it whatsoever there might be to be deduced. ' His
very first deductions included irrefutable proofs of (I) God's
particular providence for individuals; (2) the real efficacy of
intercessory prayer; (3) the reality of our communion with the saints
departed; (4) the constant presence and assistance of the angels of God.
Later on he explained mathematically the importance of the Ember Days:
'Who can tell,' he added, 'the degree of blessing lost to us in this
land by neglecting, as we alone of Christian Churches do neglect, these
holy days? ' He then proceeded to convict the Reformers, not only of
rebellion, but'--for my own part I see not how we can avoid adding--of
perjury. ' Every day his arguments became more extreme, more rigorously
exact, and more distressing to his master. Newman was in the position of
a cautious commander-in-chief being hurried into an engagement against
his will by a dashing cavalry officer. Ward forced him forward step by
step towards-no! he could not bear it; he shuddered and drew back. But
it was of no avail. In vain did Keble and Pusey wring their hands and
stretch forth their pleading arms to their now vanishing brother. The
fatal moment was fast approaching. Ward at last published a devastating
book in which he proved conclusively, by a series of syllogisms, that
the only proper course for the Church of England was to repent in
sackcloth and ashes her separation from the Communion of Rome. The
reckless author was deprived of his degree by an outraged University,
and a few weeks later was received into the Catholic Church.
Newman, in a kind of despair, had flung himself into the labours of
historical compilation. His views of history had changed since the days
when, as an undergraduate, he had feasted on the worldly pages of
Gibbon.
'Revealed religion,' he now thought, 'furnishes facts to other sciences,
which those sciences, left to themselves, would never reach. Thus, in
the science of history, the preservation of our race in Noah's Ark is an
historical fact, which history never would arrive at without
revelation. '
With these principles to guide him, he plunged with his disciples into a
prolonged study of the English Saints. Biographies soon appeared of St.
Bega, St. Adamnan, St. Gundleus, St. Guthlake, Brother Drithelm, St.
Amphibalus, St. Wuistan, St. Ebba, St. Neot, St. Ninian, and Cunibert
the Hermit. Their austerities, their virginity, and their miraculous
powers were described in detail. The public learned with astonishment
that St Ninian had turned a staff into a tree; that St. German had
stopped a cock from crowing, and that a child had been raised from the
dead to convert St. Helier. The series has subsequently been continued
by a more modern writer whose relation of the history of the blessed St.
Mael contains, perhaps, even more matter for edification than Newman's
biographies.
At the time, indeed, those works caused considerable scandal. Clergymen
denounced them in pamphlets. St. Cuthbert was described by his
biographer as having 'carried the jealousy of women, characteristic of
all the saints, to an extraordinary pitch'. An example was given,
whenever he held a spiritual conversation with St Ebba, he was careful
to spend the ensuing ours of darkness 'in prayer, up to his neck in
water'. 'Persons who invent such tales,' wrote one indignant
commentator, 'cast very grave and just suspicions on the purity of their
own minds. And young persons, who talk and think in this way, are in
extreme danger of falling into sinful habits. As to the volumes before
us, the authors have, in their fanatical panegyrics of virginity, made
use of language downright profane. '
One of the disciples at Littlemore was James Anthony Froude, the younger
brother of Hurrell, and it fell to his lot to be responsible for the
biography of St. Neot. While he was composing it, he began to feel some
qualms. Saints who lighted fires with icicles, changed bandits into
wolves, and floated across the Irish Channel on altar-stones, produced a
disturbing effect on his historical conscience. But he had promised his
services to Newman, and he determined to carry through the work in the
spirit in which he had begun it. He did so; but he thought it proper to
add the following sentence by way of conclusion: 'This is all, and
indeed rather more than all, that is known to men of the blessed St.
Neot; but not more than is known to the angels in heaven. '
Meanwhile, the English Roman Catholics were growing impatient; was the
great conversion never coming, for which they had prayed so fervently
and so long? Dr. Wiseman, at the head of them, was watching and waiting
with special eagerness. His hand was held out under the ripening fruit;
the delicious morsel seemed to be trembling on its stalk; and yet it did
not fall. At last, unable to bear the suspense any longer, he dispatched
to Littlemore Father Smith, an old pupil of Newman's, who had lately
joined the Roman communion, with instructions that he should do his
best, under cover of a simple visit of friendship, to discover how the
land lay. Father Smith was received somewhat coldly, and the
conversation ran entirely on topics which had nothing to do with
religion. When the company separated before dinner, he was beginning to
think that his errand had been useless; but, on their reassembling, he
suddenly noticed that Newman had changed his trousers, and that the
colour of the pair which he was now wearing was grey. At the earliest
moment, the emissary rushed back post-haste to Dr. Wiseman. 'All is
well,' he exclaimed; 'Newman no longer considers that he is in Anglican
orders. " Praise be to God! ' answered Dr Wiseman. 'But how do you know?
'
Father Smith described what he had seen. 'Oh, is that all? My dear
father, how can you be so foolish? ' But Father Smith was not to be
shaken. 'I know the man,' he said, and I know what it means. 'Newman will
come, and he will come soon. '
And Father Smith was right. A few weeks later, Newman suddenly slipped
off to a priest, and all was over. Perhaps he would have hesitated
longer still, if he could have foreseen how he was to pass the next
thirty years of his unfortunate existence; but the future was hidden,
and all that was certain was that the past had gone forever, and that
his eyes would rest no more upon the snapdragons of Trinity.
The Oxford Movement was now ended. The University breathed such a sigh
of relief as usually follows the difficult expulsion of a hard piece of
matter from a living organism, and actually began to attend to
education. As for the Church of England, she had tasted blood, and it
was clear that she would never again be content with a vegetable diet.
Her clergy, however, maintained their reputation for judicious
compromise, for they followed Newman up to the very point beyond which
his conclusions were logical, and, while they intoned, confessed, swung
incense, and burned candles with the exhilaration of converts, they yet
managed to do so with a subtle nuance which showed that they had nothing
to do with Rome. Various individuals underwent more violent changes.
Several had preceded Newman into the Roman fold; among others an unhappy
Mr. Sibthorpe, who subsequently changed his mind, and returned to the
Church of his fathers, and then--perhaps it was only natural--changed
his mind again. Many more followed Newman, and Dr. Wiseman was
particularly pleased by the conversion of a Mr. Morris, who, as he said,
was 'the author of the essay, which won the prize on the best method of
proving Christianity to the Hindus'. Hurrell Froude had died before
Newman had read the fatal article on St. Augustine; but his brother,
James Anthony, together with Arthur Clough, the poet, went through an
experience which was more distressing in those days than it has since
become; they lost their faith. With this difference, however, that while
in Froude's case the loss of his faith turned out to be rather like the
loss of a heavy portmanteau, which one afterwards discovers to have been
full of old rags and brickbats, Clough was made so uneasy by the loss of
his that he went on looking for it everywhere as long as he lived; but
somehow he never could find it. On the other hand, Keble and Pusey
continued for the rest of their lives to dance in an exemplary manner
upon the tight-rope of High Anglicanism; in such an exemplary manner,
indeed, that the tight-rope has its dancers still.
IV
MANNING was now thirty-eight, and it was clear that he was the rising
man in the Church of England. He had many powerful connections: he was
the brother-in-law of Samuel Wilberforce, who had been lately made a
bishop; he was a close friend of Mr. Gladstone, who was a Cabinet
Minister; and he was becoming well known in the influential circles of
society in London. His talent for affairs was recognised not only in the
Church, but in the world at large, and he busied himself with matters of
such varied scope as National Education, the administration of the Poor
Law, and the Employment of Women. Mr. Gladstone kept up an intimate
correspondence with him on these and on other subjects, mingling in his
letters the details of practical statesmanship with the speculations of
a religious thinker. 'Sir James Graham,' he wrote, in a discussion of
the bastardy clauses of the Poor Law, 'is much pleased with the tone of
your two communications. He is disposed, without putting an end to the
application of the workhouse test against the mother, to make the remedy
against the putative father "real and effective" for expenses incurred
in the workhouse. I am not enough acquainted to know whether it would be
advisable to go further. You have not proposed it; and I am disposed to
believe that only with a revived and improved discipline in the Church
can we hope for any generally effective check upon lawless lust. ' 'I
agree with you EMINENTLY,' he writes, in a later letter, 'in your
doctrine of FILTRATION. But it sometimes occurs to me, though the
question may seem a strange one, how far was the Reformation, but
especially the Continental Reformation, designed by God, in the region
of final causes, for that purification of the Roman Church which it has
actually realised? '
In his archdeaconry, Manning lived to the full the active life of a
country clergyman. His slim, athletic figure was seen everywhere in the
streets of Chichester, or on the lawns of the neighbouring rectories, or
galloping over the downs in breeches and gaiters, or cutting brilliant
figures on the ice. He was an excellent judge of horse-flesh, and the
pair of greys which drew his hooded phaeton so swiftly through the lanes
were the admiration of the county. His features were already beginning
to assume their ascetic cast, but the spirit of youth had not yet fled
from them, so that he seemed to combine the attractions of dignity and
grace. He was a good talker, a sympathetic listener, a man who
understood the difficult art of preserving all the vigour of a manly
character and yet never giving offence. No wonder that his sermons drew
crowds, no wonder that his spiritual advice was sought for eagerly by an
ever-growing group of penitents; no wonder that men would say, when his
name was mentioned, 'Oh, Manning! No power on earth can keep HIM from a
bishopric! '
Such was the fair outward seeming of the Archdeacon's life; but, the
inward reality was different. The more active, the more fortunate, the
more full of happy promise his existence became, the more persistently
was his secret imagination haunted by a dreadful vision--the lake that
burneth forever with brimstone and fire. The temptations of the Evil One
are many, Manning knew; and he knew also that, for him at least, the
most subtle and terrible of all temptations was the temptation of
worldly success. He tried to reassure himself, but it was in vain. He
committed his thoughts to a diary, weighing scrupulously his every
motive, examining with relentless searchings into the depths of his
heart. Perhaps, after all, his longings for preferment were merely
legitimatehopes for 'an elevation into a sphere of higher usefulness'.
But no, there was something more than that. 'I do feel pleasure,' he
noted, 'in honour, precedence, elevation, the society of great people,
and all this is very shameful and mean. '
After Newman's conversion, he almost convinced himself that his 'visions
of an ecclesiastical future' were justified by the role that he would
play as a 'healer of the breach in the Church of England'. Mr. Gladstone
agreed with him; but there was One higher than Mr. Gladstone, and did He
agree?
'I am pierced by anxious thoughts. God knows what my desires have been
and are, and why they are crossed. . . . I am flattering myself with a
fancy about depth and reality. . . . The great question is: Is God enough
for you now? And if you are as now even to the end of life, will it
suffice you? . . . Certainly I would rather choose to be stayed on God,
than to be in the thrones of the world and the Church. Nothing else will
go into Eternity. '
In a moment of ambition, he had applied for the Readership of Lincoln's
Inn, but, owing chiefly to the hostile influence of the Record, the
appointment had gone elsewhere. A little later, a more important
position was offered to him--the office of sub-almoner to the Queen,
which had just been vacated by the Archbishop of York, and was almost
certain to lead to a mitre. The offer threw Manning into an agony of
self-examination. He drew up elaborate tables, after the manner of
Robinson Crusoe, with the reasons for and against his acceptance of the
post:
FOR AGAINST
1. That it comes unsought. 1. Not therefore to be accepted. Such
things are trials as well as leadings.
2. That it is honourable. 2. Being what I am, ought I
not therefore to decline it--
(1) as humiliation;
(2) as revenge on myself
for Lincoln's Inn;
(3) as a testimony?
And so on. He found in the end ten 'negative reasons', with no
affirmative ones to balance them, and, after a week's deliberation, he
rejected the offer.
But peace of mind was as far off from him as ever. First the bitter
thought came to him that 'in all this Satan tells me I am doing it to be
thought mortified and holy'; and then he was obsessed by the still
bitterer feelings of ineradicable disappointment and regret. He had lost
a great opportunity, and it brought him small comfort to consider that
'in the region of counsels, self-chastisement, humiliation,
self-discipline, penance, and of the Cross', he had perhaps done right.
The crisis passed, but it was succeeded by a fiercer one. Manning was
taken seriously ill, and became convinced that he might die at any
moment. The entries in his Diary grew more elaborate than ever; his
remorse for the past, his resolutions for the future, his protestations
of submission to the will of God, filled page after page of parallel
columns, headings and sub-headings, numbered clauses, and analytical
tables. 'How do I feel about Death? ' he wrote.
'Certainly great fear:
1. Because of the uncertainty of our state before God.
2. Because of the consciousness--
(1) of great sins past,
(2) of great sinfulness,
(3) of most shallow repentance.
What shall I do? '
He decided to mortify himself, to read St Thomas Aquinas, and to make
his 'night prayers forty instead of thirty minutes'. He determined
during Lent 'to use no pleasant bread (except on Sundays and feasts)
such as cake and sweetmeat'; but he added the proviso 'I do not include
plain biscuits'. Opposite this entry appears the word 'KEPT'. And yet
his back-slidings were many. Looking back over a single week, he was
obliged to register 'petulance twice' and 'complacent visions'. He heard
his curate being commended for bringing so many souls to God during
Lent, and he 'could not bear it'; but the remorse was terrible: 'I
abhorred myself on the spot, and looked upward for help. ' He made out
list upon list of the Almighty's special mercies towards him, and they
included his creation, his regeneration, and (No. 5) 'the preservation
of my life six times to my knowledge:
(1) In illness at the age of nine.
(2) In the water.
(3) By a runaway horse at Oxford.
(4) By the same.
(5) By falling nearly through the ceiling of a church.
(6) Again by a fall of a horse. And I know not
how often in shooting, riding, etc. '
At last he became convalescent; but the spiritual experiences of those
agitated weeks left an indelible mark upon his mind, and prepared the
way for the great change which was to follow.
For he had other doubts besides those which held him in torment as to
his own salvation; he was in doubt about the whole framework of his
faith. Newman's conversion, he found, had meant something more to him
than he had first realised. It had seemed to come as a call to the
redoubling of his Anglican activities; but supposing, in reality, it
were a call towards something very different--towards an abandonment of
those activities altogether? It might be 'a trial', or again it might be
a 'leading'; how was he to judge? Already, before his illness, these
doubts had begun to take possession of his mind.
'I am conscious to myself,' he wrote in his Diary, 'of an extensively
changed feeling towards the Church of Rome . . . The Church of England
seems to me to be diseased: 1. ORGANICALLY (six sub-headings). 2.
FUNCTIONALLY (seven sub-headings) . . . Wherever it seems healthy, it
approximates the system of Rome. '
Then thoughts of the Virgin Mary suddenly began to assail him:
(1) If John the Baptist were sanctified from the womb,
how much more the B. V. !
(2) If Enoch and Elijah were exempted from death,
why not the B. V. from sin?
(3) It is a strange way of loving the Son to slight
the mother! '
The arguments seemed irresistible, and a few weeks later the following
entry occurs--'Strange thoughts have visited me:
(1) I have felt that the Episcopate of the Church of England is
secularised and bound down beyond hope. . . .
(2) I feel as if a light had fallen upon me. My feeling about the
Roman Church is not intellectual. I have intellectual
difficulties, but the great moral difficulties seem melting.
(3) Something keeps rising and saying, "You will end in the Roman
Church".
He noted altogether twenty-five of these 'strange thoughts'. His mind
hovered anxiously round--
(1) The Incarnation,
(2) The Real Presence,
i. Regeneration,
ii. Eucharist, and
(3) The Exaltation of S. M. and Saints.
His twenty-second strange thought was as follows: 'How do I know where I
may be two years hence? Where was Newman five years ago? '
It was significant, but hardly surprising, that, after his illness,
Manning should have chosen to recuperate in Rome. He spent several
months there, and his Diary during the whole of that period is concerned
entirely with detailed descriptions of churches, ceremonies, and relics,
and with minute accounts of conversations with priests and nuns. There
is not a single reference either to the objects of art or to the
antiquities of the place; but another omission was still more
remarkable. Manning had a long interview with Pius IX, and his only
record of it is contained in the bald statement: 'Audience today at the
Vatican'. Precisely what passed on that occasion never transpired; all
that is known is that His Holiness expressed considerable surprise on
learning from the Archdeacon that the chalice was used in the Anglican
Church in the administration of Communion. 'What! ' he exclaimed, is the
same chalice made use of by everyone? ' 'I remember the pain I felt,'
said Manning, long afterwards, 'at seeing how unknown we were to the
Vicar of Jesus Christ. It made me feel our isolation. '
On his return to England, he took up once more the work in his
Archdeaconry with what appetite he might. Ravaged by doubt, distracted
by speculation, he yet managed to maintain an outward presence of
unshaken calm. His only confidant was Robert Wilberforce, to whom, for
the next two years, he poured forth in a series of letters, headed
'UNDER THE SEAL' to indicate that they contained the secrets of the
confessional--the whole history of his spiritual perturbations. The
irony of his position was singular; for, during the whole of this time,
Manning was himself holding back from the Church of Rome a host of
hesitating penitents by means of arguments which he was at the very
moment denouncing as fallacious to his own confessor. But what else
could he do? When he received, for instance, a letter such as the
following from an agitated lady, what was he to say?
'MY DEAR FATHER IN CHRIST,
' . . . I am sure you would pity me and like to help me, if you knew the
unhappy, unsettled state my mind is in, and the misery of being
ENTIRELY, WHEREVER I AM, with those who look upon joining the Church of
Rome as the most awful "fall" conceivable to any one, and are devoid of
the smallest comprehension of how any enlightened person can do it. . . .
My old Evangelical friends, with all my deep, deep love for them, do not
succeed in shaking me in the least. . . .
'My brother has just published a book called "Regeneration", which all
my friends are reading and highly extolling; it has a very contrary
effect to what he would desire on my mind. I can read and understand it
all in an altogether different sense, and the facts which he quotes
about the articles as drawn up in 1536, and again in 1552, and of the
Irish articles of 1615 and 1634, STARTLE and SHAKE me about the Reformed
Church in England far more than anything else, and have done so ever
since I first saw them in Mr. Maskell's pamphlet (as quoted from Mr
Dodsworth's).
'I do hope you have some time and thought to pray for me still. Mr.
Galton's letters long ago grew into short formal notes, which hurt me
and annoyed me particularly, and I never answered his last, so,
literally, I have no one to say things to and get help from, which in
one sense is a comfort when my convictions seem to be leading me on and
on, and gaining strength in spite of all the dreariness of my lot.
'Do you know I can't help being very anxious and unhappy about poor
Sister Harriet. I am afraid of her GOING OUT OF HER MIND. She comforts
herself by an occasional outpouring of everything to me, and I had a
letter this morning. . . . She says Sister May has promised the Vicar never
to talk to her or allow her to talk on the subject with her, and I doubt
whether this can be good for her, because though she has lost her faith,
she says, in the Church of England, yet she never thinks of what she
could have faith in, and resolutely without inquiring into the question
determines not to be a Roman Catholic, so that really, you see, she is
allowing her mind to run adrift and yet perfectly powerless.
'Forgive my troubling you with this letter, and believe me to be always
your faithful, grateful and affectionate daughter,
'EMMA RYLE.
'P. S. I wish I could see you once more so very much. '
How was Manning, a director of souls, and a clergyman of the Church of
England, to reply that in sober truth there was very little to choose
between the state of mind of Sister Emma, or even of Sister Harriet, and
his own? The dilemma was a grievous one: when a soldier finds himself
fighting for a cause in which he has lost faith, it is treachery to
stop, and it is treachery to go on.
At last, in the seclusion of his library, Manning turned in agony to
those old writings which had provided Newman with so much instruction
and assistance; perhaps the Fathers would do something for him as well.
He ransacked the pages of St. Cyprian and St. Cyril; he went through the
complete works of St. Optatus and St. Leo; he explored the vast
treatises of Tertullian and Justin Martyr.
