The Catholic World Volume I Part 108

The doctrine relies upon Matt, xviii. 20. Here the Catholic acceptation of a realization of the essence of the Church, historically manifested, would appear to be directly excluded. The pa.s.sage adduced makes Christ abide among us, and accordingly makes the true Church come into being simply in consequence of the casual a.s.semblage of two or three, so that it takes place in his name--a condition the performance or breach of which is a matter by no means patent to the senses. But these words are to be read in connection with what precedes them. Verses 17 and 18 allude to the authority of'

the Church as historically manifest. The resolutions of that authority are ratified in heaven, and are valid before G.o.d. For--such is the logical thread of the discourse of Jesus--what the Church, as historically manifested, ordains, is at the same time ordained by the Holy Ghost dwelling within her. That such is actually the case, the Lord then proceeds to show by the concluding ill.u.s.tration. The agreement of two is alone sufficient to secure a fulfilment of the prayer: for where two or three are a.s.sembled together in the name of Christ, there is he in the midst of them: how much more amply then is the presence and the countenance of Christ a.s.sured to the entire Church, and to the organ intrusted with the execution of her {745} power! [Footnote 55] True, Christ is present even where only two or three are a.s.sembled in his name; but the result of his presence corresponds to the extent of the a.s.sembly. There Christ simply effects the fulfilment of the common prayer. That the arbitrary concourse of a few individuals in the name of Christ is the realization of the essence of the Church, nowhere in the whole pa.s.sage is there a word to confirm such an interpretation.

[Footnote 155: This is the interpretation of this pa.s.sage by the council of Chalcedon, in its missive to Pope Leo the Great. Compare _Ballerini, op. S. Leonis_ t. i., p. 1087.]

The advocates of the ideal Church also cite Eph. v. 27. [Footnote 156] There the Church is called holy and without blemish, not having spot or wrinkle; a description supposed to be applicable exclusively to the Church that is to be, and by no means to the Church as it is.

The remark is an idle one, and does not touch the real question. In our view it is the work of the present to lay the foundation for the future glory of the Church. This position is fully borne out by the words of Scripture. For in verse 26 the apostle points out the sanctification of the Church as the immediate object of the sacrifice of Christ, and at the same time indicates the means by which the Church is to be sanctified. This is done by the washing of water, which owes its purifying efficacy to the simultaneous utterance of the word. The presentation of the Church in unblemished holiness and glory, the object of the sacrificial death of Christ, is therefore gradually effected in the present world in proportion as the purification by the sacrament, under the continued influence of Christ, exerts its efficacy in he Church.

[Footnote 156: Hase, _Handbuch der prot. Polemik_ (Manual of Protestant Polemics), p. 42. ]

If the apostle were here speaking simply of a remote future holiness of the Church, his whole course of reasoning would lose its point. The love of Christ is here presented to husbands and wives as a model for their own connubial relations. As the self-sacrifice of Christ for the Church has for its object the sanctification of the latter, so the mutual self-devotion of husbands and wives is to invest their lives with a higher grace. It is not the mere act of the self-sacrifice of Christ which is to be emulated in marriage. No admonition would be needed for such a purpose. Marriage is necessarily a type of this relation. The discourse of the apostle tends, on the contrary, to recommend the motive of the sacrifice of Christ, and its influence upon the sanctification of the Church, to husbands and wives for imitation. How feeble, how little calculated to fortify the admonition of the apostle, would be their reference to the relation of Christ to the Church, if the sanctification of the Church by Christ, thus held up to husbands and wives for emulation, were something totally unreal, a mere creature of reflection! If the purpose of the sacrifice of Christ, the sanctification of the Church, were still unattained, how could husbands and wives be expected to make their intercourse bear those moral fruits by which it is to approve itself a type of the relation of Christ to the Church?

The holiness of the Church, then, has its origin in the sacraments.

But that which makes the Church holy appertains to her essential character. It follows that this character also is evolved by means of the sacraments. This proves, finally, that this evolution of the character of the true Church is only possible in a single, individual historical manifestation, that is to say, only within, or at least by the agency [Footnote 157] of, that visible body politic which is in possession of the sacraments.

[Footnote 157: The means of grace administered by the Church sometimes exert their influence beyond the pale, _i.e._, outside of, her historical image. This is seen in the validity of the baptism of heretics. ]

Protestantism is untrue to its own principle in representing the administration of the sacraments according to their inst.i.tution as an index of the true Church. The whole force of this position lies in the presumption of a {746} distinct historical organization as the necessary exponent of the inward essence of the true Church. A contrary doctrine is in danger of bestowing the name of the true Church on a society which may possibly be composed exclusively of hypocrites. The inference is obvious. If the essence of the true Church is only to be found in the domain of the mind, or if it even remains a mere ideal, where is the guarantee that the mantle of the sacramental organization covers that silent, invisible congregation of spirits in which alone the Protestant looks for the essence of the true Church? The reformer's idea of the Church is here entangled in a contradiction in terms. On the principle of justification by faith alone, the character of the true Church must be wholly expressed in something incorporeal. And yet the true Church is to be recognized by the use of the sacraments according to their inst.i.tution. Where is the connecting link between the external and the internal Church? The congruence of the Spirit and the body of the Church, if it occurs, is purely accidental. The visible Church, taken by itself, is a mere external thing, possibly void of all substantial essence. The doctrine of _sola fides_ is incapable of a profound appreciation of the visible Church. This, taken in connection with the old Protestant theory that the phase of the Church manifested in preaching and in the sacraments is of the essence of the Church, makes it clear that the attempt of the reformers to spiritualize Christianity leads on the contrary to a materialization of the idea of the Church.

The modern Protestant theology was far from being deterred by its reverence for the reformers from laying bare this unsound portion of their system. They attempted to make up for it by the well known theory of the ideal Church, which begins by renouncing, in entire consistency with the Protestant principle of justification by faith alone, every outward manifestation of the essence of the Church.

The manifold forms in which Christianity becomes palpable as a power in history are here treated as something purely accidental, easily capable of severance from the essence of the true Church. How does this explanation comport with the doctrine of Scripture just expounded?

The Church of Christ, says Holy Writ, receives her unseen bridal ornaments by means of the palpable sacraments. In consequence of their efficacy she conceals the germs of her future glory under the guise of her temporal image. The most profound and super-sensual characteristic of the Church is, therefore, closely though mysteriously allied with the palpable exterior. It is not our present task to show how this alliance is formed. We simply inquire into the foundation of this necessary combination of the spirit and the form of the Church. This foundation we claim to discover in the sublimity of the principle heretofore recognized by us as the marrow, the heart of the Church.

If that which const.i.tutes the heart of the Church is supernatural, and beyond the reach of the natural powers of the human mind, its impartment and preservation necessarily presuppose a peculiar influence of G.o.d upon man, different from the creative power. Under these circ.u.mstances, the precise method of the divine influence pervading the Church is only to be learned with certainty from revelation. And here we find the most explicit teachings on this subject. According to the testimony of Scripture, the Lord promotes the growth of the Church by means palpable to the senses. This suggests inquiry into the laws under which these means of grace find their application. Those laws are derived from the object of their inst.i.tution. It consists in the adhibition of instrumentalities in the production of a divine effect. Consequently the means employed, or the sacraments, can manifest their efficacy only under certain conditions divinely ordained.

The correct understanding of the {747} mutual relations subsisting between the spirit and the body of the Church is further a.s.sisted by reference to another idea also derived from the Church. The regular growth of the Church is made intelligible to us as a self-edification in love. The means required for the attainment of this purpose have been given into the hands of the Church herself. For this end Peter received the keys of the kingdom of heaven. He is not only the thread of the historical development of the Church, but the interior organization also necessarily presupposes a union with Peter. The organs of this organization are the sacraments. But they manifest their saving efficacy on those only who have not knowingly interrupted the chain of union between themselves and Peter, and their use is totally void of effect if the party by whom they are administered is not actuated by the desire of doing that which is done in sacramental ceremonies by the Church, united with Peter (_intentio faciendi quod facit ecclesia._)

The inmost principle, the heart of the Church, is inseparably connected with these visible actions, which are efficaciously administered only according to the intention and in the name of the visible Church, and in virtue of their efficacy the latter approves herself as holy. Thus the present inquiry leads to the same result already reached by other investigations. The spirit and the body of Catholicism are not to be separated. The connecting link which binds them together is Peter, the bearer of the keys of the kingdom of heaven, who still lives in his successors. But the fountain-head of this necessary relationship is in the vital principle of the Church, in her supernatural principle.

The idea of a supernatural principle, and that of the papacy, together const.i.tute the principle of Catholicism. In the former we behold its fundamental essence, in the latter the cement of its historical unity, as well as the connecting link between the interior and the exterior catholicity of the Church.

From The Month.

SONNET.

UNSPIRITUAL CIVILIZATION.

We have been piping, Lord; we have been singing; Five hundred years have pa.s.sed o'er lawn and lea, Marked by the blowing bud and falling tree, While all the ways with melody were ringing: In tented lists, high-stationed and flower-flinging, Beauty looked down on conquering chivalry; Science made wise the nations; laws made free; Art, like an angel ever onward winging, Brightened the world. But, O great Lord and Father!

Have these, thy bounties, drawn to thee man's race, That stood so far aloof? Have they not rather His soul subjected? with a blind embrace Gulfed it in sense? Prime blessings changed to curse 'Twixt G.o.d and man can set G.o.d's universe.

AUBREY DE VERE.

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From The Month

CONSTANCE SHERWOOD.

AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY.

BY LADY GEORGIANA FULLERTON.

CHAPTER XI.

During the two years which followed the Duke of Norfolk's death I did only see my Lady Surrey once, which was when she came to Arundel House, on a visit to her lord's grandfather; and her letters for a while were both scanty and brief. She made no mention of religion, and but little of her husband; and chiefly touched on such themes as Lady Margaret's nuptials with Mr. Sackville (Lord Dorset's heir) and Mistress Milicent's with Sir Hammond l'Estrange. She had great contentment, she wrote, to see them both so well married according to their degree; but that for herself she did very much miss her good sister's company and her gentlewoman's affectionate services, who would now reside all the year at her husband's seat in Norfolk; but she looked when my lord and herself should be at Kenninghall, when he left the university, that they might yet, being neighbors, spend some happy days together, if it so pleased G.o.d. Once she wrote in exceeding great joy, so that she said she hardly knew how to contain herself, for that my lord was coming in a few days to spend the long vacation at Lord Suss.e.x's house at Bermondsey. But when she wrote again, methought--albeit her letter was cheerful, and she did jest in it somewhat more than was her wont--that there was a silence touching her husband, and her own contentment in his society, which betokened a reserve such as I had not noticed in her before. About that time it was bruited in London that my Lord Surrey had received no small detriment by the bad example he had at Cambridge, and the liberty permitted him.

And now, forsaking for a while the theme of that n.o.ble pair, whose mishaps and felicities have ever saddened and rejoiced mine heart almost equally with mine own good or evil fortune, I here purpose to set down such occurrences as should be worthy of note in the more obscure sphere in which my lot was cast.

When I was about sixteen, my cousin Kate was married to Mr. Lacy; first in a secret manner, in the night, by Mr. Plasden, a priest, in her father's library, and the next day at the parish church at Holborn. Methinks a fairer bride never rode to church than our Kate.

Her mother went with her, which was the first time she had been out of doors for a long s.p.a.ce of time, for she feared to catch cold if the wind did blow from the north or the east; and if from the south she feared it should bring noxious vapors from the river; and the west, infection from the city, and so stayed at home for greater safety. But on Kate's wedding day we did all protest the wind blew not at all, so that from no quarter of the sky should mischief arise; and in a closed litter, which she reckoned to be safer than a coach, she consented to go to church.

"Marry, good wife," cried Mr. Congleton, when she had been magnifying all the dangers she mostly feared, "thou dost forget the greatest of all in these days, which doth hold us all by the neck, as it were. For hearing ma.s.s, as we did in this room last night, we do all run the risk of being hanged, which should be a greater peril methinks than a breath of foul air."

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She, being in a merry mood, replied: "Twittle t.w.a.ttle, Mr. Congleton; the one may be avoided, the other not. 'Tis no reason I should get a cold to-day because I be like to be hanged to-morrow."

"I' faith," cried Polly, "my mother hath well parried your thrust, sir; and methinks the holy Bishop of Rochester was of the same mind with her."

"How so, Polly?" quoth her father; and she, "There happened a false rumor to rise suddenly among the people when he was in the prison, so I have heard Mr. Roper relate, that he should be brought to execution on a certain day; wherefore his cook, that was wont to dress his dinner and carry it daily unto him, hearing of his execution, dressed him no dinner at all that day. Wherefore, at the cook's next repair unto him, he demanded the cause why he brought him not his dinner.

'Sir,' said the cook, 'it was commonly talked all over the town that you should have died to-day, and therefore I thought it but vain to dress anything for you.' 'Well,' quoth the bishop merrily, 'for all that report, thou seest me yet alive; and therefore, whatsoever news thou shalt hear of me hereafter, prithee let me no more lack my dinner, but make it ready; and if thou see me dead when thou comest, then eat it thyself. But I promise thee, if I be alive, by G.o.d's grace, to eat never a bit the less.'"

"And on the day he was verily executed," said Mistress Ward, "when the lieutenant came to fetch him, he said to his man, 'Reach me my furred tippet, to put about my neck.' 'O my lord!' said the lieutenant, 'what need you be so careful of your health for this little time, being not much above in hour?' 'I think no otherwise,' said this blessed father; 'but yet, in he mean time, I will keep myself as well as I can; for I tell you truth, though I have, I thank our Lord, a very good desire and a willing mind to die at this present, and so I trust of his infinite mercy and goodness he will continue it, yet I will not willingly hinder my health one minute of an hour, but still prolong the same as long as I can by such reasonable ways as Almighty G.o.d hath provided for me.'" Upon which my good aunt fastened her veil about her head, and said the holy bishop was the most wise saint and reasonablest martyr she had yet heard of.

Kate was dressed in a kirtle of white silk, her head attired with an habiliment of gold, and her hair, brighter itself than gold, woven about her face in cunningly wrought tresses. She was led to church between two gentlemen--Mr. Tresham and Mr. Hogdson--friends of the bridegroom, who had bride-laces and rosemary tied about their silken sleeves. There was a fair cup of silver gilt carried before her, wherein was a goodly branch of rosemary, gilded very fair, and hung about with silken ribbons of all colors. Musicians came next; then a group of maidens bearing garlands finely gilded; and thus we pa.s.sed on to the church. The common people at the door cheered the bride, whose fair face was a pa.s.sport to their favor; but as Muriel crept along, leaning on my arm, I caught sound of murmured blessings.

"Sweet saint," quoth an aged man, leaning on his staff, near the porch, "I ween thine espousals be not of earth." A woman, with a child in her arms, whispered to her as she past, "He thou knowest of is dead, and died praying for thee." A man, whose eyes had watched her painfully ascending the steps, called her an angel; whereupon a beggar with a crutch cried out, "Marry, a lame angel!" A sweet smile was on her face as she turned toward him; and drawing a piece of silver from her pocket, she bestowed it on him, with some such words as these--that she prayed they might both be so happy, albeit lame, as to hobble to heaven, and get there in good time, if it should please G.o.d.

Then he fell to blessing her so loud, that she hurried me into the church, not content to be thanked in so public a manner.

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After the ceremony, we returned in the same order to Ely Place. The banquet which followed, and the sports succeeding it, were conducted in a private and somewhat quiet fashion, and not many guests invited, by reason of the times, and Mr. Congleton misliking to draw notice to his house, which had hitherto been but little molested, partly for that Sir Francis Walsingham had a friendship for him, and also for his sister, Lady Egerton of Ridley, which procured for them greater favor, in the way of toleration, than is extended to others; and likewise the Portuguese amba.s.sador was his very good friend, and his chapel open to us at all times; so that priests did not need to come to his house for the performance of any religious actions, except that one of the marriage, which had taken place the night before in his library.

Howsoever, he was very well known to be a recusant, for that neither himself, nor any belonging to him, attended Protestant worship; and Sir Francis sometimes told him that the clemency with which he was treated was shown toward him with the hope that, by mild courses, he might be soon brought to some better conformity.

Mr. Lacy's house was in Gray's Inn Lane, a few doors from Mr. Swithin Wells's; and through this proximity an intimate acquaintanceship did arise between that worthy gentleman and his wife and Kate's friends.

He was very good-natured, pleasant in conversation, courteous, and generous; and Mrs. Wells a most virtuous gentlewoman. Although he (Mr.

Swithin) much delighted in hawking, hunting, and other suchlike diversions, yet he so soberly governed his affections therein, as to be content to deprive himself of a good part of those pleasures, and retire to a more profitable employment of training up young gentlemen in virtue and learning; and with such success that his house has been, as it were, a fruitful seminary to many worthy members of the Catholic Church. Among the young gentlemen who resided with him at that time was Mr. Hubert Rookwood, the youngest of the two sons of Mr. Rookwood, of Euston, whom I had seen at the inn at Bedford, when I was journeying to London. We did speedily enter into a somewhat close acquaintanceship, founded on a similarity of tastes and agreeable interchange of civilities, touching the lending of books and likewise pieces of music, which I did make fair copies of for him, and which we sometimes practiced in the evening; for he had a pleasant voice and an aptness to catch the trick of a song, albeit unlearned in the art, wherein he styled me proficient; and I, nothing loth to impart my knowledge, became his instructor, and did teach him both to sing and play the lute. He was not much taller than when I had seen him before; but his figure was changed, and his visage had grown pale, and his hair thick and flowing, especially toward the back of the head, discovering in front a high and thoughtful forehead. There was a great deal of good young company at that time in Mr. Wells's house; for some Catholics tabled there beside those that were his pupils, and others resorted to it by reason of the pleasant entertainment they found in the society of ingenuous persons, well qualified, and of their own religion. I had most days opportunities of conversing with Hubert, though we were never alone; and, by reason of the friendship which had existed between his father and mine, I allowed him a kindness I did not commonly afford to others.

Mr. Lacy had had his training in that house, and, albeit his natural parts did not t.i.tle him to the praise of an eminent scholar, he had thence derived a great esteem for learning, a taste for books, of the which he did possess a great store (many hundred volumes), and a discreet manner of talking, though something tinctured with affectation, inasmuch as he should seem to be rather enamored of the words he uttered, than careful of the {751} substance. Hubert was wont to say that his speech was like to the drawing of a leaden sword out of a gilded sheath. He was a very virtuous young man; and his wife had never but one complaint to set forth, which was that his books took up so much of his time that she was almost as jealous of them as if they had been her rivals. She would have it he did kill himself with study; and, in a particular manner, with the writing of the life of one Thomas a Kempis, which was a work he had had a long time on hand. One day she comes into his library, and salutes him thus: "Mr. Lacy, I would I were a book; and then methinks you would a little more respect me." Polly, who was by, cried out, "Madam, you must then be an almanac, that he might change every year;" whereat she was not a little displeased. And another time, when her husband was sick, she said, if Mr. Lacy died, she would burn Thomas a Kempis for the killing of her husband. I, hearing this, answered that to do so were a great pity; to whom she replied, "Why, who was Thomas a Kempis?" to which I answered, "One of the saintliest men of the age wherein he lived."

Wherewith she was so satisfied, that she said, then she would not do it for all the world.

Methinks I read more in that one year than in all the rest of my life beside. Mine aunt was more sick than usual, and Mistress Ward so taken up with the nursing of her, that she did not often leave her room.

Polly was married in the winter to Sir Ralph Ingoldby, and went to reside for some months in the country. Muriel prevailed on her father to visit the prison with her, in Mistress Ward's stead, so that sometimes they were abroad the whole of the day; by reason of which, I was oftener in Gray's Inn Lane than at home, sometimes at Kate's house, and sometimes at Mistress Wells's mansion, where I became infected with a zeal for learning, which Hubert's example and conversation did greatly invite me to. He had the most winning tongue, and the aptest spirit in the world to divine the natural inclinations of those he consorted with. The books he advised me to read were mostly such as Mistress Ward, to whom I did faithfully recite their t.i.tles, accounted to be not otherwise than good and profitable, having learned so much from good men she consulted thereon, for she was herself no scholar; but they bred in me a great thirst for knowledge, a craving to converse with those who had more learning than myself, and withal so keen a relish for Hubert's society, that I had no contentment so welcome as to listen to his discourse, which was seasoned with a rare kind of eloquence and a discursive fancy, to which, also, the perfection of his carriage, his p.r.o.nunciation of speech, and the deportment of his body lent no mean l.u.s.tre. Naught arrogant or affected disfigured his conversation, in which did lie so efficacious a power of persuasion, and at times, when the occasion called for it, so great a vehemency of pa.s.sion, as enforced admiration of his great parts, if not approval of his arguments. I made him at that time judge of the new thoughts which books, like so many keys opening secret chambers in the mind, did unlock in mine; and I mind me how eagerly I looked for his answers--how I hung on his lips when he was speaking, not from any singular affection toward his person, but by reason of the extraordinary fascination of his speech, and the interest of the themes we discoursed upon; one time touching on the histories of great men of past ages, at another on the changes wrought in our own by the new art of printing books, which had produced such great changes in the world, and yet greater to be expected. And as he was well skilled in the Italian as well as the French language, I came by his means to be acquainted with many great writers of those nations. He translated for me sundry pa.s.sages from the divine play of Signor Dante Alighieri, in which {752} h.e.l.l and purgatory and heaven are depicted, as it were by an eye-witness, with so much pregnancy of meaning and force of genius, that it should almost appear as if some special revelation had been vouchsafed to the poet beyond his natural thoughts, to disclose to him the secrets of other spheres. He also made me read a portion of that most fine and sweet poem on the delivery of the holy city Jerusalem, composed by Signor Torquato Ta.s.so, a gentleman who resided at that time at the court of the Duke of Ferrara, and which one Mr. Fairfax has since done into English verse. The first four cantos thereof were given to Mr. Wells by a young gentleman, who had for a while studied at the University of Padua. This fair poem, and mostly the second book thereof, hath remained imprinted in my memory with a singular fixity, by reason that it proved the occasion of my discerning for the first time a special inclination on Hubert's side toward myself, who thought nothing of love, but was only glad to have acquired a friend endowed with so much wit and superior knowledge, and willing to impart it. This book, I say, did contain a narration which bred in me so great a resentment of the author's merits, and so quick a sympathy with the feigned subjects of his muse, that never before or since methinks has a fiction so moved me as the story of Olindo and Sophronisba.