The light thrown by the Bible upon the whole
matter seemed somewhat dubious, for whereas the baptism of St.
matter seemed somewhat dubious, for whereas the baptism of St.
Strachey - Eminent Victorians
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. He had a lamp put into his
phaeton, so that he might lose no time during his long winter drives.
There he sat, searching St. Chrysostom for some mitigation of his
anguish, while he sped along between the hedges to distant sufferers, to
whom he duly administered the sacraments according to the rites of the
English Church. He hurried back to commit to his Diary the analysis of
his reflections, and to describe, under the mystic formula of secrecy,
the intricate workings of his conscience to Robert Wilberforce. But,
alas! he was no Newman; and even the fourteen folios of St. Augustine
himself, strange to say, gave him very little help.
The final propulsion was to come from an entirely different quarter. In
November, 1847, the Reverend Mr. Gorham was presented by the Lord
Chancellor to the living of Bramford Speke in the diocese of Exeter. The
Bishop, Dr. Phillpotts, was a High Churchman, and he had reason to
believe that Mr. Gorham held evangelical opinions; he therefore
subjected him to an examination on doctrine, which took the form partly
of a verbal interrogatory, lasting thirty-eight hours, and partly of a
series of one hundred and forty-nine written questions. At the end of
the examination he came to the conclusion that Mr. Gorham held heretical
views on the subject of Baptismal Regeneration, and he therefore refused
to institute. Mr. Gorham, thereupon, took proceedings against the Bishop
in the Court of Arches. He lost his case; and he then appealed to the
judicial Committee of the Privy Council.
The questions at issue were taken very seriously by a large number of
persons. In the first place, there was the question of Baptismal
Regeneration itself. This is by no means an easy one to disentangle; but
it may be noted that the doctrine of Baptism includes: (1) God's
intention, that is to say, His purpose in electing certain persons to
eternal life--an abstruse and greatly controverted subject, upon which
the Church of England abstains from strict definition; (2) God's action,
whether by means of sacraments or otherwise--concerning which the Church
of England maintains the efficacy of sacraments,' but does not formally
deny that grace may be given by other means, repentance and faith being
present; and (3) the question whether sacramental grace is given
instrumentally, by and at the moment of the act of baptism, or in
consequence of an act of prevenient grace rendering the receiver
worthy--that is to say, whether sacramental grace in baptism is given
absolutely or conditionally.
It was over this last question that the dispute raged hottest in the
Gorham Case. The High Church party, represented by Dr. Phillpotts,
asserted that the mere act of baptism conferred regeneration upon the
recipient and washed away his original sin. To this the Evangelicals,
headed by Mr. Gorham, replied that, according to the Articles,
regeneration would not follow unless baptism was RIGHTLY received. What,
then, was the meaning of 'rightly'? Clearly it implied not merely lawful
administration, but worthy reception; worthiness, therefore, is the
essence of the sacrament; and worthiness means faith and repentance.
Now, two propositions were accepted by both parties--that all infants
are born in original sin, and that original sin could be washed away by
baptism. But how could both these propositions be true, argued Mr.
Gorham, if it was also true that faith and repentance were necessary
before baptism could come into operation at all? How could an infant in
arms be said to be in a state of faith and repentance? How, therefore,
could its original sin be washed away by baptism? And yet, as every one
agreed, washed away it was.
The only solution of the difficulty lay in the doctrine of prevenient
grace; and Mr. Gorham maintained that unless God performed an act of
prevenient grace by which the infant was endowed with faith and
repentance, no act of baptism could be effectual; though to whom, and
under what conditions, prevenient grace was given, Mr. Gorham confessed
himself unable to decide.
The light thrown by the Bible upon the whole
matter seemed somewhat dubious, for whereas the baptism of St. Peter's
disciples at Jerusalem and St. Philip's at Samaria was followed by the
gift of the Spirit, in the case of Cornelius the sacrament succeeded the
gift. St. Paul also was baptised; and as for the language of St. John
iii 5; Rom. vi 3, 4; I Peter iii 21, it admits of more than one
interpretation. There could, however, be no doubt that the Church of
England assented to Dr. Phillpotts' opinion; the question was whether or
not she excluded Mr. Gorham's. If it was decided that she did, it was
clear that henceforward, there would be very little peace for
Evangelicals within her fold.
But there was another issue, even more fundamental than that of
Baptismal Regeneration itself, involved in the Gorham trial. An Act
passed in 1833 had constituted the Judicial Committee of the Privy
Council the supreme court of appeal for such cases; and this Committee
was a body composed entirely of laymen. It was thus obvious that the
Royal Supremacy was still a fact, and that a collection of lawyers
appointed by the Crown had the legal right to formulate the religious
doctrine of the Church of England. In 1850 their judgment was delivered;
they reversed the decision of the Court of Arches, and upheld the
position of Mr. Gorham. Whether his views were theologically correct or
not, they said, was not their business; it was their business to decide
whether the opinions under consideration were contrary or repugnant to
the doctrine of the Church of England as enjoined upon the clergy by its
Articles, Formularies, and Rubrics; and they had come to the conclusion
that they were not. The judgement still holds good; and to this day, a
clergyman of the Church of England is quite at liberty to believe that
Regeneration does not invariably take place when an infant is baptised.
The blow fell upon no one with greater violence than upon Manning. Not
only was the supreme efficacy of the sign of the cross upon a baby's
forehead one of his favourite doctrines, but up to that moment he had
been convinced that the Royal Supremacy was a mere accident--a temporary
usurpation which left the spiritual dominion of the Church essentially
untouched. But now the horrid reality rose up before him, crowned and
triumphant; it was all too clear that an Act of Parliament, passed by
Jews, Roman Catholics, and Dissenters, was the ultimate authority which
decided upon the momentous niceties of the Anglican faith. Mr. Gladstone
also, was deeply perturbed. It was absolutely necessary, he wrote, to
'rescue and defend the conscience of the Church from the present hideous
system'. An agitation was set on foot, and several influential
Anglicans, with Manning at their head, drew up and signed a formal
protest against the Gorham judgment. Mr. Gladstone however, proposed
another method of procedure: precipitate action, he declared, must be
avoided at all costs, and he elaborated a scheme for securing
procrastination, by which a covenant was to bind all those who believed
that an article of the creed had been abolished by Act of Parliament to
take no steps in any direction, nor to announce their intention of doing
so, until a given space of time had elapsed. Mr. Gladstone was hopeful
that some good might come of this--though indeed he could not be sure.
'Among others,' he wrote to Manning, 'I have consulted Robert
Wilberforce and Wegg-Prosser, and they seemed inclined to favour my
proposal. It might, perhaps, have kept back Lord Feilding. But he is
like a cork. '
The proposal was certainly not favoured by Manning. Protests and
procrastinations, approving Wegg-Prossers and cork-like Lord
Feildings--all this was feeding the wind and folly; the time for action
had come.
'I can no longer continue,' he wrote to Robert Wilberforce, 'under oath
and subscription binding me to the Royal Supremacy in Ecclesiastical
causes, being convinced:
(1) That it is a violation of the Divine Office of the Church.
(2) That it has involved the Church of England in a separation
from the Universal Church, which separation I cannot clear of the
character of schism.
(3) That it has thereby suspended and prevented the functions of
the Church of England. '
It was in vain that Robert Wilberforce pleaded, in vain that Mr.
Gladstone urged upon his mind the significance of John iii 8. ['The wind
bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst
not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth; so is everyone that is
born of the Spirit. ']
'I admit,' Mr. Gladstone wrote, 'that the words might in some way be
satisfied by supposing our Lord simply to mean "the facts of nature are
unintelligible, therefore, be not afraid if revealed truths be likewise
beyond the compass of the understanding"; but this seems to me a meagre
meaning. '
Such considerations could hold him no longer, and Manning executed the
resignation of his office and benefice before a public notary. Soon
afterwards, in the little Chapel off Buckingham Palace Road, kneeling
beside Mr. Gladstone, he worshipped for the last time as an Anglican.
Thirty years later the Cardinal told how, just before the Communion
service commenced, he turned to his friends with the words:
'I can no longer take the Communion in the Church of England. ' 'I rose
up, and laying my hand on Mr. Gladstone's shoulder, said "Come". It was
the parting of the ways. Mr. Gladstone remained; and I went my way. Mr.
Gladstone still remains where I left him. '
On April 6th, 1851, the final step was taken: Manning was received into
the Roman Catholic Church. Now at last, after the long struggle, his
mind was at rest.
'I know what you mean,' he wrote to Robert Wilberforce, 'by saying that
one sometimes feels as if all this might turn out to be only another
"Land of Shadows". I have felt it in time past, but not now. The
theologia from Nice to St. Thomas Aquinas, and the undivided unity
suffused throughout the world, of which the Cathedra Petri is the
centre, is now 1800 years old, and mightier in every power now than
ever--in intellect, in science, in separation from the world; and purer
too, refined by 300 years of conflict with the modern infidel
civilisation--all of this is a fact more solid than the earth. '
V.
WHEN Manning joined the Church of Rome, he acted under the combined
impulse of the two dominating forces in his nature. His preoccupation
with the supernatural might, alone, have been satisfied within the fold
of the Anglican communion; and so might his preoccupation with
himself--the one might have found vent in the elaborations of High
Church ritual, and the other in the activities of a bishopric. But the
two together could not be quieted so easily. The Church of England is a
commodious institution; she is very anxious to please, but somehow or
other, she has never managed to supply a happy home to superstitious
egotists. 'What an escape for my poor soul! ' Manning is said to have
exclaimed when, shortly after his conversion, a mitre was going
a-begging. But, in truth, Manning's 'poor soul' had scented nobler
quarry. To one of his temperament, how was it possible, when once the
choice was plainly put, to hesitate for a moment between the respectable
dignity of an English bishop, harnessed by the secular power, with the
Gorham judgment as a bit between his teeth, and the illimitable
pretensions of the humblest priest of Rome?
For the moment, however, it seemed as if the Fates had at last been
successful in their little game of shunting Manning. The splendid career
which he had so laboriously built up from the small beginnings of his
Sussex curacy was shattered--and shattered by the inevitable operation
of his own essential needs. He was over forty, and he had been put back
once more to the very bottom rung of the ladder--a middle-aged neophyte
with, so far as could be seen, no special claim to the attention of his
new superiors. The example of Newman, a far more illustrious convert,
was hardly reassuring: he had been relegated to a complete obscurity, in
which he was to remain until extreme old age. Why should there be
anything better in store for Manning? Yet it so happened that within
fourteen years of his conversion Manning was Archbishop of Westminster
and the supreme ruler of the Roman Catholic community in England. This
time the Fates gave up the unequal struggle; they paid over their stakes
in despair, and retired from the game.
Nevertheless it is difficult to feel quite sure that Manning's plunge
was as hazardous as it appeared. Certainly he was not a man who was
likely to forget to look before he leaped, nor one who, if he happened
to know that there was a mattress spread to receive him, would leap with
less conviction. In the light of after-events, one would be glad to know
what precisely passed at that mysterious interview of his with the Pope,
three years before his conversion. It is at least possible that the
authorities in Rome had their eye on Manning; the may well have felt
that the Archdeacon of Chichester would be a great catch. What did Pio
Nono say? It is easy to imagine the persuasive innocence of his Italian
voice. 'Ah, dear Signor Manning, why don't you come over to us? Do you
suppose that we should not look after you? '
At any rate, when he did go over, Manning was looked after very
thoroughly. There was, it is true, a momentary embarrassment at the
outset: it was only with the greatest difficulty that he could bring
himself to abandon his faith in the validity of Anglican Orders, in
which he believed 'with consciousness stronger than all reasoning'. He
was convinced that he was still a priest. When the Rev. Mr. Tierney, who
had received him into the Roman Catholic communion, assured him that
this was not the case, he was filled with dismay and mortification.
After a five hour discussion, he started to his feet in a rage. 'Then,
Mr. Tierney,' he exclaimed, 'you think me insincere. '
The bitter draught was swallowed at last, and, after that, all went
smoothly. Manning hastened to Rome, and was immediately placed by the
Pope in the highly select Accademia Ecclesiastica, commonly known as the
'Nursery of Cardinals', for the purpose of completing his theological
studies. When the course was finished, he continued, by the Pope's
special request, to spend six months of every year in Rome, where he
preached to the English visitors, became acquainted with the great
personages of the Papal court, and enjoyed the privilege of constant
interviews with the Holy Father. At the same time, he was able to make
himself useful in London, where Cardinal Wiseman, the newly created
Archbishop of Westminster, was seeking to reanimate the Roman Catholic
community. Manning was not only extremely popular in the pulpit and in
the confessional; he was not only highly efficient as a gleaner of
souls--and of souls who moved in the best society; he also possessed a
familiarity with official persons and official ways, which was
invaluable. When the question arose of the appointment of Catholic
chaplains in the Crimea during the war, it was Manning who approached
the Minister, interviewed the Permanent Secretary, and finally succeeded
in obtaining all that was required. When a special Reformatory for
Catholic children was proposed, Manning carried through the negotiation
with the Government. When an attempt was made to remove Catholic
children from the Workhouses, Manning was again indispensable. No wonder
Cardinal Wiseman soon determined to find some occupation of special
importance for the energetic convert. He had long wished to establish a
congregation of secular priests in London particularly devoted to his
service, and the opportunity for the experiment had clearly now arisen.
The order of the Oblates of St. Charles was founded in Bayswater, and
Manning was put at its head. Unfortunately, no portion of the body of
St. Charles could be obtained for the new community, but two relics of
his blood were brought over to Bayswater from Milan. Almost at the same
time the Pope signified his appreciation of Manning's efforts by
appointing him Provost of the Chapter of Westminster--a position which
placed him at the head of the Canons of the diocese.
This double promotion was the signal for the outbreak of an
extraordinary internal struggle, which raged without intermission for
the next seven years, and was to end only with the accession of Manning
to the Archbishopric. The condition of the Roman Catholic community in
England was at that time a singular one. On the one hand the old
repressive laws of the seventeenth century had been repealed by liberal
legislation, and on the other a large new body of distinguished converts
had entered the Roman Church as a result of the Oxford Movement. It was
evident that there was a 'boom' in English Catholicism, and, in 1850,
Pius IX recognised the fact by dividing up the whole of England into
dioceses, and placing Wiseman at the head of them as Archbishop of
Westminster. Wiseman's encyclical, dated 'from without the Flaminian
Gate', in which he announced the new departure, was greeted in England
by a storm of indignation, culminating in the famous and furibund letter
of Lord John Russell, then Prime Minister, against the insolence of the
'Papal Aggression'. Though the particular point against which the outcry
was raised--the English territorial titles of the new Roman bishops--was
an insignificant one, the instinct of Lord John and of the English
people was in reality sound enough. Wiseman's installation did mean, in
fact, a new move in the Papal game; it meant an advance, if not an
aggression--a quickening in England of the long-dormant energies of the
Roman Church. That Church has never had the reputation of being an
institution to be trifled with; and, in those days, the Pope was still
ruling as a temporal Prince over the fairest provinces of Italy. Surely,
if the images of Guy Fawkes had not been garnished, on that fifth of
November, with triple crowns, it would have been a very poor compliment
to His Holiness.
But it was not only the honest Protestants of England who had cause to
dread the arrival of the new Cardinal Archbishop; there was a party
among the Catholics themselves who viewed his installation with alarm
and disgust. The families in which the Catholic tradition had been
handed down uninterruptedly since the days of Elizabeth, which had known
the pains of exile and of martyrdom, and which clung together an alien
and isolated group in the midst of English society, now began to feel
that they were, after all, of small moment in the counsels of Rome. They
had laboured through the heat of the day, but now it seemed as if the
harvest was to be gathered in by a crowd of converts who were
proclaiming on every side as something new and wonderful the truths
which the Old Catholics, as they came to be called, had not only known,
but for which they had suffered for generations. Cardinal Wiseman, it is
true, was no convert; he belonged to one of the oldest of the Catholic
families; but he had spent most of his life in Rome, he was out of touch
with English traditions, and his sympathy with Newman and his followers
was only too apparent. One of his first acts as Archbishop was to
appoint the convert W. G. Ward, who was not even in holy orders, to be
Professor of Theology at St. Edmund's College--the chief seminary for
young priests, in which the ancient traditions of Douay were still
flourishing. Ward was an ardent Papalist and his appointment indicated
clearly enough that in Wiseman's opinion there was too little of the
Italian spirit in the English community. The uneasiness of the Old
Catholics was becoming intense, when they were reassured by Wiseman's
appointing as his co-adjutor and successor his intimate friend, Dr.
Errington, who was created on the occasion Archbishop of Trebizond in
partibus infidelium. Not only was Dr. Errington an Old Catholic of the
most rigid type, he was a man of extreme energy, whose influence was
certain to be great; and, in any case, Wiseman was growing old, so that
before very long it seemed inevitable that the policy of the diocese
would be in proper hands. Such was the position of affairs when, two
years after Errington's appointment, Manning became head of the Oblates
of St. Charles and Provost of the Chapter of Westminster.
The Archbishop of Trebizond had been for some time growing more and more
suspicious of Manning's influence, and this sudden elevation appeared to
justify his worst fears. But his alarm was turned to fury when he
learned that St. Edmund's College, from which he had just succeeded in
removing the obnoxious W. G. Ward, was to be placed under the control of
the Oblates of St. Charles. The Oblates did not attempt to conceal the
fact that one of their principal aims was to introduce the customs of a
Roman Seminary into England. A grim perspective of espionage and
tale-bearing, foreign habits, and Italian devotions opened out before
the dismayed eyes of the Old Catholics; they determined to resist to the
utmost; and it was upon the question of the control of St. Edmund's that
the first battle in the long campaign between Errington and Manning was
fought.
Cardinal Wiseman was now obviously declining towards the grave. A man of
vast physique--'your immense', an Irish servant used respectfully to
call him--of sanguine temperament, of genial disposition, of versatile
capacity, he seemed to have engrafted upon the robustness of his English
nature the facile, child-like, and expansive qualities of the South. So
far from being a Bishop Blougram (as the rumour went) he was, in fact,
the very antithesis of that subtle and worldly-wise ecclesiastic. He had
innocently looked forward all his life to the reunion of England to the
See of Peter, and eventually had come to believe that, in God's hand, he
was the instrument destined to bring about this miraculous consummation.
Was not the Oxford Movement, with its flood of converts, a clear sign of
the Divine will? Had he not himself been the author of that momentous
article on St. Augustine and the Donatists, which had finally convinced
Newman that the Church of England was in schism? And then, had he not
been able to set afoot a Crusade of Prayer throughout Catholic Europe
for the conversion of England?
He awaited the result with eager expectation, and in the meantime he set
himself to smooth away the hostility of his countrymen by delivering
courses of popular lectures on literature and archaeology. He devoted
much time and attention to the ceremonial details of his princely
office. His knowledge of rubric and ritual, and of the symbolical
significations of vestments, has rarely been equalled, and he took a
profound delight in the ordering and the performance of elaborate
processions. During one of these functions, an unexpected difficulty
arose: the Master of Ceremonies suddenly gave the word for a halt, and,
on being asked the reason, replied that he had been instructed that
moment by special revelation to stop the procession. The Cardinal,
however, was not at a loss. 'You may let the procession go on,' he
smilingly replied. 'I have just obtained permission, by special
revelation, to proceed with it. ' His leisure hours he spent in the
writing of edifying novels, the composition of acrostics in Latin Verse,
and in playing battledore and shuttlecock with his little nieces. There
was, indeed, only one point in which he resembled Bishop Blougram--his
love of a good table. Some of Newman's disciples were astonished and
grieved to find that he sat down to four courses of fish during Lent. 'I
am sorry to say,' remarked one of them afterwards, 'that there is a
lobster salad side to the Cardinal. '
It was a melancholy fate which ordained that the last years of this
comfortable, easygoing, innocent old man should be distracted and
embittered by the fury of opposing principles and the venom of personal
animosities. But so it was. He had fallen into the hands of one who
cared very little for the gentle pleasures of repose. Left to himself,
Wiseman might have compromised with the Old Catholics and Dr. Errington;
but when Manning had once appeared upon the scene, all compromise became
impossible. The late Archdeacon of Chichester, who had understood so
well and practised with such careful skill the precept of the golden
mean so dear to the heart of the Church of England, now, as Provost of
Westminster, flung himself into the fray with that unyielding intensity
of fervour, that passion for the extreme and the absolute, which is the
very lifeblood of the Church of Rome. Even the redoubtable Dr.
Errington, short, thickset, determined, with his `hawk-like expression
of face', as a contemporary described him, 'as he looked at you through
his blue spectacles', had been known to quail in the presence of his,
antagonist, with his tall and graceful figure, his pale ascetic
features, his compressed and icy lips, his calm and penetrating gaze. As
for the poor Cardinal, he was helpless indeed.
Henceforward, there was to be no paltering with that dangerous spirit of
independence--was it not almost Gallicanism which possessed the Old
Catholic families of England? The supremacy of the Vicar of Christ must
be maintained at all hazards. Compared with such an object, what were
the claims of personal affection and domestic peace? The Cardinal
pleaded in vain; his lifelong friendship with Dr. Errington was plucked
up by the roots, and the harmony of his private life was utterly
destroyed. His own household was turned against him. His favourite
nephew, whom he had placed among the Oblates under Manning's special
care, left the congregation and openly joined the party of Dr.
Errington. His secretary followed suit; but saddest of all was the case
of Monsignor Searle. Monsignor Searle, in the capacity of confidential
man of affairs, had dominated over the Cardinal in private for years
with the autocratic fidelity of a servant who has grown indispensable.
His devotion, in fact, seemed to have taken the form of physical
imitation, for he was hardly less gigantic than his master. The two were
inseparable; their huge figures loomed together like neighbouring
mountains; and on one occasion, meeting them in the street, a gentleman
congratulated Wiseman on 'your Eminence's fine son'. Yet now even this
companionship was broken up. The relentless Provost here too brought a
sword. There were explosions and recriminations. Monsignor Searle,
finding that his power was slipping from him, made scenes and protests,
and at last was foolish enough to accuse Manning of peculation to his
face; after that it was clear that his day was over; he was forced to
slink snarling into the background, while the Cardinal shuddered through
all his immensity, and wished many times that he were already dead.
Yet, he was not altogether without his consolations; Manning took care
to see to that. His piercing eye had detected the secret way into the
recesses of the Cardinal's heart--had discerned the core of simple faith
which underlay that jovial manner and that facile talk. Others were
content to laugh and chatter and transact their business; Manning was
more artistic. He watched his opportunity, and then, when the moment
came, touched with a deft finger the chord of the Conversion of England.
There was an immediate response, and he struck the same chord again, and
yet again. He became the repository of the Cardinal's most intimate
aspirations. He alone sympathised and understood. 'If God gives me
strength to undertake a great wrestling-match with infidelity,' Wiseman
wrote, 'I shall owe it to him. '
But what he really found himself undertaking was a wrestling-match with
Dr. Errington. The struggle over St. Edmund's College grew more and more
acute. There were high words in the Chapter, where Monsignor Searle led
the assault against the Provost, and carried a resolution declaring that
the Oblates of St. Charles had intruded themselves illegally into the
Seminary. The Cardinal quashed the proceedings of the Chapter;
whereupon, the Chapter appealed to Rome. Dr. Errington, carried away by
the fury of the controversy, then appeared as the avowed opponent of the
Provost and the Cardinal.
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. He had a lamp put into his
phaeton, so that he might lose no time during his long winter drives.
There he sat, searching St. Chrysostom for some mitigation of his
anguish, while he sped along between the hedges to distant sufferers, to
whom he duly administered the sacraments according to the rites of the
English Church. He hurried back to commit to his Diary the analysis of
his reflections, and to describe, under the mystic formula of secrecy,
the intricate workings of his conscience to Robert Wilberforce. But,
alas! he was no Newman; and even the fourteen folios of St. Augustine
himself, strange to say, gave him very little help.
The final propulsion was to come from an entirely different quarter. In
November, 1847, the Reverend Mr. Gorham was presented by the Lord
Chancellor to the living of Bramford Speke in the diocese of Exeter. The
Bishop, Dr. Phillpotts, was a High Churchman, and he had reason to
believe that Mr. Gorham held evangelical opinions; he therefore
subjected him to an examination on doctrine, which took the form partly
of a verbal interrogatory, lasting thirty-eight hours, and partly of a
series of one hundred and forty-nine written questions. At the end of
the examination he came to the conclusion that Mr. Gorham held heretical
views on the subject of Baptismal Regeneration, and he therefore refused
to institute. Mr. Gorham, thereupon, took proceedings against the Bishop
in the Court of Arches. He lost his case; and he then appealed to the
judicial Committee of the Privy Council.
The questions at issue were taken very seriously by a large number of
persons. In the first place, there was the question of Baptismal
Regeneration itself. This is by no means an easy one to disentangle; but
it may be noted that the doctrine of Baptism includes: (1) God's
intention, that is to say, His purpose in electing certain persons to
eternal life--an abstruse and greatly controverted subject, upon which
the Church of England abstains from strict definition; (2) God's action,
whether by means of sacraments or otherwise--concerning which the Church
of England maintains the efficacy of sacraments,' but does not formally
deny that grace may be given by other means, repentance and faith being
present; and (3) the question whether sacramental grace is given
instrumentally, by and at the moment of the act of baptism, or in
consequence of an act of prevenient grace rendering the receiver
worthy--that is to say, whether sacramental grace in baptism is given
absolutely or conditionally.
It was over this last question that the dispute raged hottest in the
Gorham Case. The High Church party, represented by Dr. Phillpotts,
asserted that the mere act of baptism conferred regeneration upon the
recipient and washed away his original sin. To this the Evangelicals,
headed by Mr. Gorham, replied that, according to the Articles,
regeneration would not follow unless baptism was RIGHTLY received. What,
then, was the meaning of 'rightly'? Clearly it implied not merely lawful
administration, but worthy reception; worthiness, therefore, is the
essence of the sacrament; and worthiness means faith and repentance.
Now, two propositions were accepted by both parties--that all infants
are born in original sin, and that original sin could be washed away by
baptism. But how could both these propositions be true, argued Mr.
Gorham, if it was also true that faith and repentance were necessary
before baptism could come into operation at all? How could an infant in
arms be said to be in a state of faith and repentance? How, therefore,
could its original sin be washed away by baptism? And yet, as every one
agreed, washed away it was.
The only solution of the difficulty lay in the doctrine of prevenient
grace; and Mr. Gorham maintained that unless God performed an act of
prevenient grace by which the infant was endowed with faith and
repentance, no act of baptism could be effectual; though to whom, and
under what conditions, prevenient grace was given, Mr. Gorham confessed
himself unable to decide.
The light thrown by the Bible upon the whole
matter seemed somewhat dubious, for whereas the baptism of St. Peter's
disciples at Jerusalem and St. Philip's at Samaria was followed by the
gift of the Spirit, in the case of Cornelius the sacrament succeeded the
gift. St. Paul also was baptised; and as for the language of St. John
iii 5; Rom. vi 3, 4; I Peter iii 21, it admits of more than one
interpretation. There could, however, be no doubt that the Church of
England assented to Dr. Phillpotts' opinion; the question was whether or
not she excluded Mr. Gorham's. If it was decided that she did, it was
clear that henceforward, there would be very little peace for
Evangelicals within her fold.
But there was another issue, even more fundamental than that of
Baptismal Regeneration itself, involved in the Gorham trial. An Act
passed in 1833 had constituted the Judicial Committee of the Privy
Council the supreme court of appeal for such cases; and this Committee
was a body composed entirely of laymen. It was thus obvious that the
Royal Supremacy was still a fact, and that a collection of lawyers
appointed by the Crown had the legal right to formulate the religious
doctrine of the Church of England. In 1850 their judgment was delivered;
they reversed the decision of the Court of Arches, and upheld the
position of Mr. Gorham. Whether his views were theologically correct or
not, they said, was not their business; it was their business to decide
whether the opinions under consideration were contrary or repugnant to
the doctrine of the Church of England as enjoined upon the clergy by its
Articles, Formularies, and Rubrics; and they had come to the conclusion
that they were not. The judgement still holds good; and to this day, a
clergyman of the Church of England is quite at liberty to believe that
Regeneration does not invariably take place when an infant is baptised.
The blow fell upon no one with greater violence than upon Manning. Not
only was the supreme efficacy of the sign of the cross upon a baby's
forehead one of his favourite doctrines, but up to that moment he had
been convinced that the Royal Supremacy was a mere accident--a temporary
usurpation which left the spiritual dominion of the Church essentially
untouched. But now the horrid reality rose up before him, crowned and
triumphant; it was all too clear that an Act of Parliament, passed by
Jews, Roman Catholics, and Dissenters, was the ultimate authority which
decided upon the momentous niceties of the Anglican faith. Mr. Gladstone
also, was deeply perturbed. It was absolutely necessary, he wrote, to
'rescue and defend the conscience of the Church from the present hideous
system'. An agitation was set on foot, and several influential
Anglicans, with Manning at their head, drew up and signed a formal
protest against the Gorham judgment. Mr. Gladstone however, proposed
another method of procedure: precipitate action, he declared, must be
avoided at all costs, and he elaborated a scheme for securing
procrastination, by which a covenant was to bind all those who believed
that an article of the creed had been abolished by Act of Parliament to
take no steps in any direction, nor to announce their intention of doing
so, until a given space of time had elapsed. Mr. Gladstone was hopeful
that some good might come of this--though indeed he could not be sure.
'Among others,' he wrote to Manning, 'I have consulted Robert
Wilberforce and Wegg-Prosser, and they seemed inclined to favour my
proposal. It might, perhaps, have kept back Lord Feilding. But he is
like a cork. '
The proposal was certainly not favoured by Manning. Protests and
procrastinations, approving Wegg-Prossers and cork-like Lord
Feildings--all this was feeding the wind and folly; the time for action
had come.
'I can no longer continue,' he wrote to Robert Wilberforce, 'under oath
and subscription binding me to the Royal Supremacy in Ecclesiastical
causes, being convinced:
(1) That it is a violation of the Divine Office of the Church.
(2) That it has involved the Church of England in a separation
from the Universal Church, which separation I cannot clear of the
character of schism.
(3) That it has thereby suspended and prevented the functions of
the Church of England. '
It was in vain that Robert Wilberforce pleaded, in vain that Mr.
Gladstone urged upon his mind the significance of John iii 8. ['The wind
bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst
not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth; so is everyone that is
born of the Spirit. ']
'I admit,' Mr. Gladstone wrote, 'that the words might in some way be
satisfied by supposing our Lord simply to mean "the facts of nature are
unintelligible, therefore, be not afraid if revealed truths be likewise
beyond the compass of the understanding"; but this seems to me a meagre
meaning. '
Such considerations could hold him no longer, and Manning executed the
resignation of his office and benefice before a public notary. Soon
afterwards, in the little Chapel off Buckingham Palace Road, kneeling
beside Mr. Gladstone, he worshipped for the last time as an Anglican.
Thirty years later the Cardinal told how, just before the Communion
service commenced, he turned to his friends with the words:
'I can no longer take the Communion in the Church of England. ' 'I rose
up, and laying my hand on Mr. Gladstone's shoulder, said "Come". It was
the parting of the ways. Mr. Gladstone remained; and I went my way. Mr.
Gladstone still remains where I left him. '
On April 6th, 1851, the final step was taken: Manning was received into
the Roman Catholic Church. Now at last, after the long struggle, his
mind was at rest.
'I know what you mean,' he wrote to Robert Wilberforce, 'by saying that
one sometimes feels as if all this might turn out to be only another
"Land of Shadows". I have felt it in time past, but not now. The
theologia from Nice to St. Thomas Aquinas, and the undivided unity
suffused throughout the world, of which the Cathedra Petri is the
centre, is now 1800 years old, and mightier in every power now than
ever--in intellect, in science, in separation from the world; and purer
too, refined by 300 years of conflict with the modern infidel
civilisation--all of this is a fact more solid than the earth. '
V.
WHEN Manning joined the Church of Rome, he acted under the combined
impulse of the two dominating forces in his nature. His preoccupation
with the supernatural might, alone, have been satisfied within the fold
of the Anglican communion; and so might his preoccupation with
himself--the one might have found vent in the elaborations of High
Church ritual, and the other in the activities of a bishopric. But the
two together could not be quieted so easily. The Church of England is a
commodious institution; she is very anxious to please, but somehow or
other, she has never managed to supply a happy home to superstitious
egotists. 'What an escape for my poor soul! ' Manning is said to have
exclaimed when, shortly after his conversion, a mitre was going
a-begging. But, in truth, Manning's 'poor soul' had scented nobler
quarry. To one of his temperament, how was it possible, when once the
choice was plainly put, to hesitate for a moment between the respectable
dignity of an English bishop, harnessed by the secular power, with the
Gorham judgment as a bit between his teeth, and the illimitable
pretensions of the humblest priest of Rome?
For the moment, however, it seemed as if the Fates had at last been
successful in their little game of shunting Manning. The splendid career
which he had so laboriously built up from the small beginnings of his
Sussex curacy was shattered--and shattered by the inevitable operation
of his own essential needs. He was over forty, and he had been put back
once more to the very bottom rung of the ladder--a middle-aged neophyte
with, so far as could be seen, no special claim to the attention of his
new superiors. The example of Newman, a far more illustrious convert,
was hardly reassuring: he had been relegated to a complete obscurity, in
which he was to remain until extreme old age. Why should there be
anything better in store for Manning? Yet it so happened that within
fourteen years of his conversion Manning was Archbishop of Westminster
and the supreme ruler of the Roman Catholic community in England. This
time the Fates gave up the unequal struggle; they paid over their stakes
in despair, and retired from the game.
Nevertheless it is difficult to feel quite sure that Manning's plunge
was as hazardous as it appeared. Certainly he was not a man who was
likely to forget to look before he leaped, nor one who, if he happened
to know that there was a mattress spread to receive him, would leap with
less conviction. In the light of after-events, one would be glad to know
what precisely passed at that mysterious interview of his with the Pope,
three years before his conversion. It is at least possible that the
authorities in Rome had their eye on Manning; the may well have felt
that the Archdeacon of Chichester would be a great catch. What did Pio
Nono say? It is easy to imagine the persuasive innocence of his Italian
voice. 'Ah, dear Signor Manning, why don't you come over to us? Do you
suppose that we should not look after you? '
At any rate, when he did go over, Manning was looked after very
thoroughly. There was, it is true, a momentary embarrassment at the
outset: it was only with the greatest difficulty that he could bring
himself to abandon his faith in the validity of Anglican Orders, in
which he believed 'with consciousness stronger than all reasoning'. He
was convinced that he was still a priest. When the Rev. Mr. Tierney, who
had received him into the Roman Catholic communion, assured him that
this was not the case, he was filled with dismay and mortification.
After a five hour discussion, he started to his feet in a rage. 'Then,
Mr. Tierney,' he exclaimed, 'you think me insincere. '
The bitter draught was swallowed at last, and, after that, all went
smoothly. Manning hastened to Rome, and was immediately placed by the
Pope in the highly select Accademia Ecclesiastica, commonly known as the
'Nursery of Cardinals', for the purpose of completing his theological
studies. When the course was finished, he continued, by the Pope's
special request, to spend six months of every year in Rome, where he
preached to the English visitors, became acquainted with the great
personages of the Papal court, and enjoyed the privilege of constant
interviews with the Holy Father. At the same time, he was able to make
himself useful in London, where Cardinal Wiseman, the newly created
Archbishop of Westminster, was seeking to reanimate the Roman Catholic
community. Manning was not only extremely popular in the pulpit and in
the confessional; he was not only highly efficient as a gleaner of
souls--and of souls who moved in the best society; he also possessed a
familiarity with official persons and official ways, which was
invaluable. When the question arose of the appointment of Catholic
chaplains in the Crimea during the war, it was Manning who approached
the Minister, interviewed the Permanent Secretary, and finally succeeded
in obtaining all that was required. When a special Reformatory for
Catholic children was proposed, Manning carried through the negotiation
with the Government. When an attempt was made to remove Catholic
children from the Workhouses, Manning was again indispensable. No wonder
Cardinal Wiseman soon determined to find some occupation of special
importance for the energetic convert. He had long wished to establish a
congregation of secular priests in London particularly devoted to his
service, and the opportunity for the experiment had clearly now arisen.
The order of the Oblates of St. Charles was founded in Bayswater, and
Manning was put at its head. Unfortunately, no portion of the body of
St. Charles could be obtained for the new community, but two relics of
his blood were brought over to Bayswater from Milan. Almost at the same
time the Pope signified his appreciation of Manning's efforts by
appointing him Provost of the Chapter of Westminster--a position which
placed him at the head of the Canons of the diocese.
This double promotion was the signal for the outbreak of an
extraordinary internal struggle, which raged without intermission for
the next seven years, and was to end only with the accession of Manning
to the Archbishopric. The condition of the Roman Catholic community in
England was at that time a singular one. On the one hand the old
repressive laws of the seventeenth century had been repealed by liberal
legislation, and on the other a large new body of distinguished converts
had entered the Roman Church as a result of the Oxford Movement. It was
evident that there was a 'boom' in English Catholicism, and, in 1850,
Pius IX recognised the fact by dividing up the whole of England into
dioceses, and placing Wiseman at the head of them as Archbishop of
Westminster. Wiseman's encyclical, dated 'from without the Flaminian
Gate', in which he announced the new departure, was greeted in England
by a storm of indignation, culminating in the famous and furibund letter
of Lord John Russell, then Prime Minister, against the insolence of the
'Papal Aggression'. Though the particular point against which the outcry
was raised--the English territorial titles of the new Roman bishops--was
an insignificant one, the instinct of Lord John and of the English
people was in reality sound enough. Wiseman's installation did mean, in
fact, a new move in the Papal game; it meant an advance, if not an
aggression--a quickening in England of the long-dormant energies of the
Roman Church. That Church has never had the reputation of being an
institution to be trifled with; and, in those days, the Pope was still
ruling as a temporal Prince over the fairest provinces of Italy. Surely,
if the images of Guy Fawkes had not been garnished, on that fifth of
November, with triple crowns, it would have been a very poor compliment
to His Holiness.
But it was not only the honest Protestants of England who had cause to
dread the arrival of the new Cardinal Archbishop; there was a party
among the Catholics themselves who viewed his installation with alarm
and disgust. The families in which the Catholic tradition had been
handed down uninterruptedly since the days of Elizabeth, which had known
the pains of exile and of martyrdom, and which clung together an alien
and isolated group in the midst of English society, now began to feel
that they were, after all, of small moment in the counsels of Rome. They
had laboured through the heat of the day, but now it seemed as if the
harvest was to be gathered in by a crowd of converts who were
proclaiming on every side as something new and wonderful the truths
which the Old Catholics, as they came to be called, had not only known,
but for which they had suffered for generations. Cardinal Wiseman, it is
true, was no convert; he belonged to one of the oldest of the Catholic
families; but he had spent most of his life in Rome, he was out of touch
with English traditions, and his sympathy with Newman and his followers
was only too apparent. One of his first acts as Archbishop was to
appoint the convert W. G. Ward, who was not even in holy orders, to be
Professor of Theology at St. Edmund's College--the chief seminary for
young priests, in which the ancient traditions of Douay were still
flourishing. Ward was an ardent Papalist and his appointment indicated
clearly enough that in Wiseman's opinion there was too little of the
Italian spirit in the English community. The uneasiness of the Old
Catholics was becoming intense, when they were reassured by Wiseman's
appointing as his co-adjutor and successor his intimate friend, Dr.
Errington, who was created on the occasion Archbishop of Trebizond in
partibus infidelium. Not only was Dr. Errington an Old Catholic of the
most rigid type, he was a man of extreme energy, whose influence was
certain to be great; and, in any case, Wiseman was growing old, so that
before very long it seemed inevitable that the policy of the diocese
would be in proper hands. Such was the position of affairs when, two
years after Errington's appointment, Manning became head of the Oblates
of St. Charles and Provost of the Chapter of Westminster.
The Archbishop of Trebizond had been for some time growing more and more
suspicious of Manning's influence, and this sudden elevation appeared to
justify his worst fears. But his alarm was turned to fury when he
learned that St. Edmund's College, from which he had just succeeded in
removing the obnoxious W. G. Ward, was to be placed under the control of
the Oblates of St. Charles. The Oblates did not attempt to conceal the
fact that one of their principal aims was to introduce the customs of a
Roman Seminary into England. A grim perspective of espionage and
tale-bearing, foreign habits, and Italian devotions opened out before
the dismayed eyes of the Old Catholics; they determined to resist to the
utmost; and it was upon the question of the control of St. Edmund's that
the first battle in the long campaign between Errington and Manning was
fought.
Cardinal Wiseman was now obviously declining towards the grave. A man of
vast physique--'your immense', an Irish servant used respectfully to
call him--of sanguine temperament, of genial disposition, of versatile
capacity, he seemed to have engrafted upon the robustness of his English
nature the facile, child-like, and expansive qualities of the South. So
far from being a Bishop Blougram (as the rumour went) he was, in fact,
the very antithesis of that subtle and worldly-wise ecclesiastic. He had
innocently looked forward all his life to the reunion of England to the
See of Peter, and eventually had come to believe that, in God's hand, he
was the instrument destined to bring about this miraculous consummation.
Was not the Oxford Movement, with its flood of converts, a clear sign of
the Divine will? Had he not himself been the author of that momentous
article on St. Augustine and the Donatists, which had finally convinced
Newman that the Church of England was in schism? And then, had he not
been able to set afoot a Crusade of Prayer throughout Catholic Europe
for the conversion of England?
He awaited the result with eager expectation, and in the meantime he set
himself to smooth away the hostility of his countrymen by delivering
courses of popular lectures on literature and archaeology. He devoted
much time and attention to the ceremonial details of his princely
office. His knowledge of rubric and ritual, and of the symbolical
significations of vestments, has rarely been equalled, and he took a
profound delight in the ordering and the performance of elaborate
processions. During one of these functions, an unexpected difficulty
arose: the Master of Ceremonies suddenly gave the word for a halt, and,
on being asked the reason, replied that he had been instructed that
moment by special revelation to stop the procession. The Cardinal,
however, was not at a loss. 'You may let the procession go on,' he
smilingly replied. 'I have just obtained permission, by special
revelation, to proceed with it. ' His leisure hours he spent in the
writing of edifying novels, the composition of acrostics in Latin Verse,
and in playing battledore and shuttlecock with his little nieces. There
was, indeed, only one point in which he resembled Bishop Blougram--his
love of a good table. Some of Newman's disciples were astonished and
grieved to find that he sat down to four courses of fish during Lent. 'I
am sorry to say,' remarked one of them afterwards, 'that there is a
lobster salad side to the Cardinal. '
It was a melancholy fate which ordained that the last years of this
comfortable, easygoing, innocent old man should be distracted and
embittered by the fury of opposing principles and the venom of personal
animosities. But so it was. He had fallen into the hands of one who
cared very little for the gentle pleasures of repose. Left to himself,
Wiseman might have compromised with the Old Catholics and Dr. Errington;
but when Manning had once appeared upon the scene, all compromise became
impossible. The late Archdeacon of Chichester, who had understood so
well and practised with such careful skill the precept of the golden
mean so dear to the heart of the Church of England, now, as Provost of
Westminster, flung himself into the fray with that unyielding intensity
of fervour, that passion for the extreme and the absolute, which is the
very lifeblood of the Church of Rome. Even the redoubtable Dr.
Errington, short, thickset, determined, with his `hawk-like expression
of face', as a contemporary described him, 'as he looked at you through
his blue spectacles', had been known to quail in the presence of his,
antagonist, with his tall and graceful figure, his pale ascetic
features, his compressed and icy lips, his calm and penetrating gaze. As
for the poor Cardinal, he was helpless indeed.
Henceforward, there was to be no paltering with that dangerous spirit of
independence--was it not almost Gallicanism which possessed the Old
Catholic families of England? The supremacy of the Vicar of Christ must
be maintained at all hazards. Compared with such an object, what were
the claims of personal affection and domestic peace? The Cardinal
pleaded in vain; his lifelong friendship with Dr. Errington was plucked
up by the roots, and the harmony of his private life was utterly
destroyed. His own household was turned against him. His favourite
nephew, whom he had placed among the Oblates under Manning's special
care, left the congregation and openly joined the party of Dr.
Errington. His secretary followed suit; but saddest of all was the case
of Monsignor Searle. Monsignor Searle, in the capacity of confidential
man of affairs, had dominated over the Cardinal in private for years
with the autocratic fidelity of a servant who has grown indispensable.
His devotion, in fact, seemed to have taken the form of physical
imitation, for he was hardly less gigantic than his master. The two were
inseparable; their huge figures loomed together like neighbouring
mountains; and on one occasion, meeting them in the street, a gentleman
congratulated Wiseman on 'your Eminence's fine son'. Yet now even this
companionship was broken up. The relentless Provost here too brought a
sword. There were explosions and recriminations. Monsignor Searle,
finding that his power was slipping from him, made scenes and protests,
and at last was foolish enough to accuse Manning of peculation to his
face; after that it was clear that his day was over; he was forced to
slink snarling into the background, while the Cardinal shuddered through
all his immensity, and wished many times that he were already dead.
Yet, he was not altogether without his consolations; Manning took care
to see to that. His piercing eye had detected the secret way into the
recesses of the Cardinal's heart--had discerned the core of simple faith
which underlay that jovial manner and that facile talk. Others were
content to laugh and chatter and transact their business; Manning was
more artistic. He watched his opportunity, and then, when the moment
came, touched with a deft finger the chord of the Conversion of England.
There was an immediate response, and he struck the same chord again, and
yet again. He became the repository of the Cardinal's most intimate
aspirations. He alone sympathised and understood. 'If God gives me
strength to undertake a great wrestling-match with infidelity,' Wiseman
wrote, 'I shall owe it to him. '
But what he really found himself undertaking was a wrestling-match with
Dr. Errington. The struggle over St. Edmund's College grew more and more
acute. There were high words in the Chapter, where Monsignor Searle led
the assault against the Provost, and carried a resolution declaring that
the Oblates of St. Charles had intruded themselves illegally into the
Seminary. The Cardinal quashed the proceedings of the Chapter;
whereupon, the Chapter appealed to Rome. Dr. Errington, carried away by
the fury of the controversy, then appeared as the avowed opponent of the
Provost and the Cardinal.
