The Catholic World Volume Iii Part 10

The words of the man born blind speak the common sense of nature: "If any man be a worshipper of G.o.d, him he heareth." {74} And apostles confirm them: "The prayer of a just man availeth much," and "whatever we ask we receive, because we keep his commandments." Then, as for examples, we read of Abraham and Moses as having the divine purpose of judgment revealed to them beforehand, in order that they might deprecate its execution. To the friends of Job it was said, "My servant Job shall pray for you; his face I will accept." Elias by his prayer shut and opened the heavens. Elsewhere we read of "Jeremias, Moses, and Samuel," and of "Noe, Daniel, and Job," as being great mediators between G.o.d and his people. One instance is given us, which testifies the continuance of so high an office beyond this life.

Lazarus, in the parable, is seen in Abraham's bosom. It is usual to pa.s.s over this striking pa.s.sage with the remark that it is a Jewish expression; whereas, Jewish belief or not, it is recognized and sanctioned by our Lord himself. What do we teach about the Blessed Virgin more wonderful than this? Let us suppose that, at the hour of death, the faithful are committed to her arms; but if Abraham, not yet ascended on high, had charge of Lazarus, what offence is it to affirm the like of her, who was not merely "the friend," but the very "Mother of G.o.d?"

It may be added that, though it availed nothing for influence with our Lord to be one of his company if sanct.i.ty was wanting, still, as the gospel shows, he on various occasions allowed those who were near him to be the means by which supplicants were brought to him, or miracles gained from him, as in the instance of the miracle of the loaves; and if on one occasion he seems to repel his mother when she told him that wine was wanting for the guests at the marriage feast, it is obvious to remark on it that, by saying that she was then separated from him _because_ his hour was not yet come, he implied that, when that hour was come, such separation would be at an end. Moreover, in fact, he did, at her intercession, work the miracle which she desired.

I consider it impossible, then, for those who believe the church to be one vast body in heaven and on earth, in which every holy creature of G.o.d has his place, and of which prayer is the life, when once they recognize the sanct.i.ty and greatness of the Blessed Virgin, not to perceive immediately that her office above is one of perpetual intercession for the faithful militant, and that our very relation to her must be that of clients to a patron, and that, in the eternal enmity which exists between the woman and the serpent, while the serpent's strength is that of being the tempter, the weapon of the second Eve and Mother of G.o.d is prayer.

As then these ideas of her sanct.i.ty and greatness gradually penetrated the mind of Christendom, so did her intercessory power follow close upon and with them. From the earliest times that mediation is symbolized in those representations of her with uplifted hands, which, whether in plaster or in gla.s.s, are still extant in Rome--that church, as St. Irenaeus says, with which "every church, that is, the faithful from every side, must agree, because of its more powerful princ.i.p.ality;" "into which," as Tertullian adds, "the apostles poured out, together with their blood, their whole doctrines." As far, indeed, as existing doc.u.ments are concerned, I know of no instance to my purpose earlier than A.D. 234, but it is a very remarkable one; and, though it has been often quoted in the controversy, an argument is not the weaker for frequent use.

St. Gregory Nyssen, [Footnote 18] a native of Cappadocia in the fourth century, relates that his namesake, Bishop of Neo-Caesarea, surnamed Thaumaturgus, in the century preceding, shortly before he was called to the priesthood, received in a vision a creed, which is still extant, from the Blessed Mary at the hands of St. John.

[Footnote 18: _Vid_. "Essay on Doctr. Dev." p. 386.]

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The account runs thus: He was deeply pondering theological doctrine, which the heretics of the day depraved. "In such thoughts," says his namesake of Nyssa, "he was pa.s.sing the night, when one appeared, as if in human form, aged in appearance, saintly in the fashion of his garments, and very venerable both in grace of countenance and general mien. Amazed at the sight, he started from his bed, and asked who it was, and why he came; but, on the other calming the perturbation of his mind with his gentle voice, and saying he had appeared to him by divine command on account of his doubts, in order that the truth of the orthodox faith might be revealed to him, he took courage at the word, and regarded him with a mixture of joy and fright. Then, on his stretching his hand straight forward and pointing with his fingers at something on one side, he followed with his eyes the extended hand, and saw another appearance opposite to the former, in the shape of a woman, but more than human... . When his eyes could not, bear the apparition, he heard them conversing together on the subject of his doubts; and thereby not only gained a true knowledge of the faith, but learned their names, as they addressed each other by their respective appellations. And thus he is said to have heard the person in woman's shape bid 'John the Evangelist' disclose to the young man the mystery of G.o.dliness; and he answered that he was ready to comply in this matter with the wish of 'the Mother of the Lord,' and enunciated a formulary, well turned and complete, and so vanished. He, on the other hand, immediately committed to writing that divine teaching of his mystagogue, and henceforth preached in the church according to that form, and bequeathed to posterity, as an inheritance, that heavenly teaching, by means of which his people are instructed down to this day, being preserved from all heretical evil." He proceeds to rehea.r.s.e the creed thus given, "There is one G.o.d, father of a living Word,"

etc. Bull, after quoting it in his work upon the Nicene faith, alludes to this history of its origin, and adds, "No one should think it incredible that such a providence should befal a man whose whole life was conspicuous for revelations and miracles, as all ecclesiastical writers who have mentioned him (and who has not?) witness with one voice."

Here she is represented as rescuing a holy soul from intellectual error. This leads me to a further reflection. You seem, in one place in your volume, to object to the antiphon, in which it is said of her, "All heresies thou hast destroyed alone." Surely the truth of it is verified in this age, as in former times, and especially by the doctrine concerning her on which I have been dwelling. She is the great exemplar of prayer in a generation which emphatically denies the power of prayer _in toto_, which determines that fatal laws govern the universe, that there cannot be any direct communication between earth and heaven, that G.o.d cannot visit his earth, and that man cannot influence his providence.

I cannot help hoping that your own reading of the fathers will on the whole bear me out in the above account of their teaching concerning the Blessed Virgin. Anglicans seem to me to overlook the strength of the argument adducible from their works in our favor, and they open the attack upon our mediaeval and modern writers, careless of leaving a host of primitive opponents in their rear. I do not include you among such Anglicans; you know what the fathers a.s.sert; but, if so, have you not, my dear friend, been unjust to yourself in your recent volume, and made far too much of the differences which exist between Anglicans and us on this particular point? It is the office of an Irenicon to smooth difficulties; I shall be pleased if I succeed in removing some of yours. Let the public judge between us here. Had you {76} happened in your volume to introduce your notice of our teaching about the Blessed Virgin with a notice of the teaching of the fathers concerning her, ordinary men would have considered that there was not much to choose between you and us. Though you appealed ever so much to the authority of the "undivided church," they certainly would have said that you, who had such high notions of the Blessed Mary, were one of the last men who had a right to accuse us of quasi-idolatry. When they found you calling her by the t.i.tles of Mother of G.o.d, Second Eve, and Mother of all Living, the Mother of life, the Morning Star, the Stay of Believers, the Expression of Orthodoxy, the All-undefiled Mother of Holiness, and the like, they would have deemed it a poor compensation for such language that you protested against her being called a co-redemptress or a priestess. And, if they were violent Protestants, they would not have read you with that relish and grat.i.tude with which, as it is, they have perhaps accepted your testimony against us. Not that they would have been altogether right in their view of you;--on the contrary, I think there is a real difference between what you protest against and what with the fathers you hold; but unread men and men of the world form a broad practical judgment of the things which come before them, and they would have felt in this case that they had the same right to be shocked at you as you have to be shocked at us;--and further, which is the point to which I am coming, they would have said that, granting some of our modern writers go beyond the fathers in this matter, still the line cannot be logically drawn between the teaching of the fathers concerning the Blessed Virgin and our own. This view of the matter seems to me true and important; I do not think the line _can_ be satisfactorily drawn, and to this point I shall now direct my attention. It is impossible, I say, in a doctrine like this, to draw the line cleanly between truth and error, right and wrong. This is ever the case in concrete matters, which have life. Life in this world is motion, and involves a continual process of change. Living things grow into their perfection, into their decline, into their death. No rule of art will suffice to stop the operation of this natural law, whether in the material world or in the human mind. We can indeed encounter disorders, when they occur, by external antagonisms and remedies; but we cannot eradicate the process itself out of which they arise. Life has the same right to decay as it has to wax strong. This is specially the case with great ideas. You may stifle them; or you may refuse them elbow-room; or you may torment them with your continual meddling; or you may let them have free course and range, and be content, instead of antic.i.p.ating their excesses, to expose and restrain those excesses after they have occurred. But you have only this alternative; and for myself, I prefer much, wherever it is possible, to be first generous and then just; to grant full liberty of thought, and to call it to account when abused.

If what I have been saying be true of energetic ideas generally, much more is it the case in matters of religion. Religion acts on the affections; who is to hinder these, when once roused, from gathering in their strength and running wild? They are not gifted with any connatural principle within them which renders them self-governing and self-adjusting. They hurry right on to their object, and often in their case it is, more haste and worse speed. Their object engrosses them, and they see nothing else. And of all pa.s.sions love is the most unmanageable; nay, more, I would not give much for that love which is never extravagant, which always observes the proprieties, and can move about in perfect good taste, under all emergencies. What mother, what husband or wife, what youth or maiden in love, {77} but says a thousand foolish things, in the way of endearment, which the speaker would be sorry for strangers to hear; yet they were not on that account unwelcome to the parties to whom they are addressed. Sometimes by bad luck they are written down, sometimes they get into the newspapers; and what might be even graceful, when it was fresh from the heart, and interpreted by the voice and the countenance, presents but a melancholy exhibition when served up cold for the public eye. So it is with devotional feelings. Burning thoughts and words are as open to criticism as they are beyond it. What is abstractedly extravagant, may in religions persons be becoming and beautiful, and only fall under blame when it is found in others who imitate them. When it is formalized into meditations or exercises, it is as repulsive as love-letters in a police report. Moreover, even holy minds readily adopt and become familiar with language which they would never have originated themselves, when it proceeds from a writer who has the same objects of devotion as they have; and, if they find a stranger ridicule or reprobate supplication or praise which has come to them so recommended, they feel as keenly as if a direct insult were offered to those to whom that homage is addressed. In the next place, what has power to stir holy and refined souls is potent also with the mult.i.tude; and the religion of the mult.i.tude is ever vulgar and abnormal; it ever will be tinctured with fanaticism and superst.i.tion while men are what they are. A people's religion is ever a corrupt religion. If you are to have a Catholic Church, you must put up with fish of every kind, guests good and bad, vessels of gold, vessels of earth. You may beat religion out of men, if you will, and then their excesses will take a different direction; but if you make use of religion to improve them, they will make use of religion to corrupt it. And then you will have effected that compromise of which our countrymen report so unfavorably from abroad:--a high grand faith and worship which compel their admiration, and puerile absurdities among the people which excite their contempt.

Nor is it any safeguard against these excesses in a religious system that the religion is based upon reason, and develops into a theology.

Theology both uses logic and baffles it; and thus logic acts both as a protection and as the perversion of religion. Theology is occupied with supernatural matters, and is ever running into mysteries which reason can neither explain nor adjust. Its lines of thought come to an abrupt termination, and to pursue them or to complete them is to plunge down the abyss. But logic blunders on, forcing its way, as it can, through thick darkness and ethereal mediums. The Arians went ahead with logic for their directing principle, and so lost the truth; on the other hand, St. Augustine, in his treatise on the Holy Trinity, seems to show that, if we attempt to find and tie together the ends of lines which run into infinity, we shall only succeed in contradicting ourselves; that for instance it is difficult to find the logical reason for not speaking of three G.o.ds as well as of one, and of one person in the G.o.dhead as well as of three. I do not mean to say that logic cannot be used to set right its own error, or that in the hands of an able disputant the balance of truth may not be restored. This was done at the Councils of Antioch and Nicaea, in the instances of Paulus and Arius. But such a process is circuitous and elaborate; and is conducted by means of minute subtleties which will give it the appearance of a game of skill in the case of matters too grave and practical to deserve a mere scholastic treatment. Accordingly, St.

Augustine simply lays it down that the statements in question are heretical, for the former is trltheism and the latter Sabellianism.

That is, good sense and a large {78} view of truth are the correctives of his logic. And thus we have arrived at the final resolution of the whole matter; for good sense and a large view of truth are rare gifts; whereas all men are bound to be devout, and most men think they can argue and conclude.

Now let me apply what I have been saying to the teaching of the church on the subject of the Blessed Virgin. I have to recur to a subject of so sacred a nature, that, writing as I am for publication, I need the apology of my object for venturing to pursue it. I say then, when once we have mastered the idea that Mary bore, suckled, and handled the Eternal in the form of a child, what limit is conceivable to the rush and flood of thoughts which such a doctrine involves? What awe and surprise must attend upon the knowledge that a creature has been brought so close to the Divine Essence? It was the creation of a new idea and a new sympathy, a new faith and worship, when the holy apostles announced that G.o.d bad become incarnate; and a supreme love and devotion to him became possible which seemed hopeless before that revelation. But beside this, a second range of thoughts was opened on mankind, unknown before, and unlike any other, as soon as it was understood that that incarnate G.o.d had a mother. The second idea is perfectly distinct from the former, the one does not interfere with the other. He is G.o.d made low, she is a woman made high. I scarcely like to use a familiar ill.u.s.tration on such a subject, but it will serve to explain what I mean when I ask you to consider the difference of feeling with which we read the respective histories of Maria Theresa and the Maid of Orleans; or with which the middle and lower cla.s.ses of a nation regard a first minister of the day who has come of an aristocratic house and one who has risen from the ranks. May G.o.d's mercy keep me from the shadow of a thought dimming the light or blunting the keenness of that love of him which is our sole happiness and our sole salvation! But surely, when he became man he brought home to us his incommunicable attributes with a distinctiveness which precludes the possibility of our lowering him by exalting a creature.

He alone has an entrance into our soul, reads our secret thoughts, speaks to our heart, applies to us spiritual pardon and strength. On him we solely depend. He alone is our inward life; he not only regenerates us, but (to allude to a higher mystery) _semper gignit;_ he is ever renewing our new birth and our heavenly sonship. In this sense he may be called, as in nature, so in grace, our real father.

Mary is only our adopted mother, given us from the cross; her presence is above, not on earth; her office is external, not within us. Her name is not heard in the administration of the sacraments. Her work is not one of ministration toward us; her power is indirect. It is her prayers that avail, and they are effectual by the _fiat_ of him who is our all in all. Nor does she hear us by any innate power, or any personal gift; but by his manifestation to her of the prayers which we make her. When Moses was on the Mount, the Almighty told him of the idolatry of his people at the foot of it, in order that he might intercede for them; and thus it is the Divine presence which is the intermediating power by which we reach her and she reaches us.

Woe is me, if even by a breath I sully these ineffable truths! but still, without prejudice to them, there is, I say, another range of thought quite distinct from them, incommensurate with them, of which the Blessed Virgin is the centre. If we placed our Lord in that centre, we should only be degrading him from his throne, and making him an Arian kind of a G.o.d; that is, no G.o.d at all. He who charges us with marking Mary a divinity, is thereby denying the divinity of Jesus. Such a man does not know what divinity is. Our Lord cannot {79} pray for us, as a creature, as Mary prays; he cannot inspire those feelings which a creature inspires. To her belongs, as being a creature, a natural claim on our sympathy and familiarity, in that she is nothing else than our fellow. She is our pride,--in the poet's words, "Our tainted nature's solitary boast." We look to her without any fear, any remorse, any consciousness that she is able to read us, judge us, punish us. Our heart yearns toward that pure virgin, that gentle mother, and our congratulations follow her, as she rises from Nazareth and Ephesus, through the choirs of angels, to her throne on high. So weak, yet so strong; so delicate, yet so glory-laden; so modest, yet so mighty. She has sketched for us her own portrait in the magnificat. "He hath regarded the low estate of his handmaid; for behold, from henceforth all generations shall call me blessed. He hath put down the mighty from their seat; and hath exalted the humble. He hath filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he hath sent empty away." I recollect the strange emotion which took by surprise men and women, young and old, when, at the coronation of our present queen, they gazed on the figure of one so like a child, so small, so tender, so shrinking, who had been exalted to so great an inheritance and so vast a rule, who was such a contrast in her own person to the solemn pageant which centred in her. Could it be otherwise with the spectators, if they had human affection? And did not the All-wise know the human heart when he took to himself a mother? did he not antic.i.p.ate our emotion at the sight of such an exaltation? If he had not meant her to exert that wonderful influence in his church which she has in the event exerted, I will use a bold word, he it is who has perverted us. If she is not to attract our homage, why did he make her solitary in her greatness amid his vast creation? If it be idolatry in us to let our affections respond to our faith, he would not have made her what she is, or he would not have told us that he had so made her; but, far from this, he has sent his prophet to announce to us, "A virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel," and we have the same warrant for hailing her as G.o.d's Mother, as we have for adoring him as G.o.d.

Christianity is eminently an objective religion. For the most part it tells us of persons and facts in simple words, and leaves the announcement to produce its effect on such hearts as are prepared to receive it. This at least is its general character; and Butler recognizes it as such in his "a.n.a.logy" when speaking of the Second and Third Persons of the Holy Trinity: "The internal worship," he says, "to the Son and Holy Ghost is no further matter of pure revealed command than as the relations they stand in to us are matters of pure revelation; for the relations being known, the obligations to such internal worship are _obligations of reason arising out of those relations themselves_." [Footnote 19]

[Footnote 19: _Vid_. "Essay on Doctr. Dev.," p. 50.]

It is in this way that the revealed doctrine of the incarnation exerted a stronger and a broader influence on Christians, as they more and more apprehended and mastered its meaning and its bearings. It is contained in the brief and simple declaration of St John, "The Word was made flesh;" but it required century after century to spread it out in its fulness and to imprint it energetically on the worship and practice of the Catholic people as well as on their faith. Athanasius was the first and the great teacher of it. He collected together the inspired notices scattered through David, Isaias, St. Paul, and St.

John, and he engraved indelibly upon the imaginations of the faithful, as had never been before, that man is G.o.d, and G.o.d is man, that in Mary they meet, and that in this sense Mary {80} is the centre of all things. He added nothing to what was known before, nothing to the popular and zealous faith that her Son was G.o.d; he has left behind him in his works no such definite pa.s.sages about her as those of St.

Irenaeus or St. Epiphanius; but he brought the circ.u.mstances of the incarnation home to men's minds by the manifold evolutions of his a.n.a.lysis, and secured it for ever from perversion. Still, however, there was much to be done; we have no proof that Athanasius himself had any special devotion to the Blessed Virgin; but he laid the foundations on which that devotion was to rest, and thus noiselessly and without strife, as the first temple in the holy city, she grew up into her inheritance, and was "established in Sion and her power was in Jerusalem." Such was the origin of that august _cultus_ which has been paid to the Blessed Mary for so many centuries in the East and in the West. That in times and places it has fallen into abuse, that it has even become a superst.i.tion, I do not care to deny; for, as I have said above, the same process which brings to maturity carries on to decay, and things that do not admit of abuse have very little life in them. This of course does not excuse such excesses, or justify us in making light of them, when they occur. I have no intention of doing so as regards the particular instances which you bring against us, though but a few words will suffice for what I need say about them:--before doing so, however, I am obliged to make three or four introductory remarks.

1. I have almost antic.i.p.ated my first remark already. It is this: that the height of our offending in our devotion to the Blessed Virgin would not look so great in your volume as it does, had you not placed yourself on lower ground than your own feelings toward her would have spontaneously prompted you to take. I have no doubt you had some good reason for adopting this course, but I do not know it. What I do know is that, for the fathers' sake, who so exalt her, you really do love and venerate her, though you do not evidence it in your book. I am glad, then, in this place, to insist on a fact which will lead those among us who know you not to love you from their love of her, in spite of what you refuse to give her; and Anglicans, on the other hand, who do know you, to think better of us, who refuse her nothing, when they reflect that you do not actually go against us, but merely come short of us in your devotion to her.

2. As you revere the fathers, so you revere the Greek Church; and here again we have a witness on our behalf of which you must be aware as fully as we are, and of which you must really mean to give us the benefit. In proportion as this remarkable fact is understood, it will take off the edge of the surprise of Anglicans at the sight of our devotions to our Lady. It must weigh with them when they discover that we can enlist on our side in this controversy those seventy millions (I think they so consider them) of Orientals who are separated from our communion. Is it not a very pregnant fact that the Eastern churches, so independent of us, so long separated from the West, so jealous of antiquity, should even surpa.s.s us in their exaltation of the Blessed Virgin? That they go further than we do is sometimes denied, on the ground that the Western devotion toward her is brought out into system, and the Eastern is not; yet this only means really that the Latins have more mental activity, more strength of intellect, less of routine, less of mechanical worship among them, than the Greeks. We are able, better than they, to give an account of what we do; and we seem to be more extreme merely because we are more definite. But, after all, what have the Latins done so bold as that subst.i.tution of the name of Mary for the name of Jesus at the end of the collects and pet.i.tions in the breviary, nay, in the ritual and liturgy? Not {81} merely in local or popular, and in semi-authorized devotions, which are the kind of sources that supplies you with your matter of accusation against us, but in the formal prayers of the Greek eucharistic service, pet.i.tions are offered, not "in the name of Jesus Christ," but "of the Theotocos." Such a phenomenon, in such a quarter, I think, ought to make Anglicans merciful toward those writers among ourselves who have been excessive in singing the praises of the Deipara. To make a rule of subst.i.tuting Mary with all saints for Jesus in the public service, has more "Mariolatry" in it than to alter the Te Deum to her honor in private devotion.

3. And thus I am brought to a third remark supplemental to your accusation of us. Two large views, as I have said above, are opened upon our devotional thoughts in Christianity; the one centring in the Son of Mary, the other in the Mother of Jesus. Neither need obscure the other; and in the Catholic Church, as a matter of fact, neither does. I wish you had either frankly allowed this in your volume, or proved the contrary. I wish, when you report that "a certain proportion, it has been ascertained by those who have inquired, do stop short in her," p. 107, that you had added your belief, that the case was far otherwise with the great bulk of Catholics. Might I not have expected it? May I not, without sensitiveness, be somewhat pained at the omission? From mere Protestants, indeed, I expect nothing better. They content themselves with saying that our devotions to our Lady _must necessarily_ throw our Lord into the shade, and thereby they relieve themselves of a great deal of trouble. Then they catch at any stray fact which countenances or seems to countenance their prejudice. Now I say plainly I never will defend or screen any one from your just rebuke who, through false devotion to Mary, forgets Jesus. But I should like the fact to be proved first; I cannot hastily admit it. There is this broad fact the other way: that if we look through Europe we shall find, on the whole, that just those nations and countries have lost their faith in the divinity of Christ who have given up devotion to his Mother, and that those, on the other hand, who have been foremost in her honor, have retained their orthodoxy.

Contrast, for instance, the Calvinists with the Greeks, or France with the north of Germany, or the Protestant and Catholic communions in Ireland. As to England, it is scarcely doubtful what would be the state of its Established Church if the Liturgy and Articles were not an integral part of its establishment; and when men bring so grave a charge against us as is implied in your volume, they cannot be surprised if we in turn say hard things of Anglicanism. [Footnote 20]

In the Catholic Church Mary has shown herself, not the rival, but the minister of her Son. She has protected him, as in his infancy, so in the whole history of the religion. There is, then, a plain historical truth in Dr. Fisher's words which you quote to condemn: "Jesus is obscured, because Mary is kept in the background."

[Footnote 20: I have spoken more more on this subject in my "Essay on Development," p. 438. "Nor does it avail to object, that, in this contrast of devotional exercises, the human is sure to supplant the divine, from the infirmity of out nature; for, I repeat, the question is one of fact, whether it has done so. And next, it must be asked, _whether the character of Protestant devotion toward our Lord has been that of worship at all:_ and not rather such as we pay to an excellent human being? ... Carnal minds will ever create a carnal worship for themselves; and to forbid them the service of the saints will have no tendency to teach them the worship of G.o.d.

Moreover... . great and constant as is the devotion which the Catholic pays to St. Mary, it has a special province, and _has far more connection with the public services and the festive aspect of Christianity,_ and with certain extraordinary offices which she holds, _than with what is strictly personal and primary_ in religion." Our late cardinal, on my reception, singled out to me this last sentence for the expression of his especial approbation.]

This truth, exemplified in history, might also be abundantly ill.u.s.trated, did my s.p.a.ce admit, from the lives and writings of holy men in modern times. Two of them, St. Alfonso Liguori and the Blessed Paul of the Cross, for all their notorious devotion {82} to the Mother, have shown their supreme love of her divine Son in the names which a have given to their respective congregations, viz, "of the Redeemer," and "of the Cross and Pa.s.sion." However, I will do no more than refer to an apposite pa.s.sage in the Italian translation of the work of a French Jesuit, Fr. Nepveu, "Christian Thoughts for every Day in the Year," which was recommended to the friend who went with me to Rome by the same Jesuit father there with whom, as I have already said, I stood myself in such intimate relations; I believe it is a fair specimen of the teaching of our spiritual books:

"The love of Jesus Christ is the most sure pledge of our future happiness, and the most infallible token of our predestination.

Mercy toward the poor, devotion to the Holy Virgin, are very sensible tokens of predestination; nevertheless they are not absolutely infallible; but one cannot have a sincere and constant love of Jesus Christ without being predestinated... . The destroying angel which bereaved the houses of the Egyptians of their first-born, had respect to all the houses which were marked with the blood of the Lamb."

And it is also exemplified, as I verily believe, not only in formal and distinctive confessions, not only in books intended for the educated cla.s.s, but also in the personal religion of the Catholic populations. When strangers are so unfavorably impressed with us, because they see images of our Lady in our churches, and crowds flocking about her, they forget that there is a Presence within the sacred walls, infinitely more awful, which claims and obtains from us a worship transcendently different from any devotion we pay to her.

That devotion might indeed tend to idolatry if it were encouraged in Protestant churches, where there is nothing higher than it to attract the worshipper; but all the images that a Catholic church ever contained, all the crucifixes at its altars brought together, do not so affect its frequenters as the lamp which betokens the presence or absence there of the blessed sacrament. Is not this so certain, so notorious, that on some occasions it has been even brought as a charge against us, that we are irreverent in church, when what seemed to the objector to be irreverence was but the necessary change of feeling which came over those who were there on their knowing that their Lord was away?

The ma.s.s again conveys to us the same lesson of the sovereignty of the incarnate Son; it is a return to Calvary, and Mary is scarcely named in it. Hostile visitors enter our churches on Sunday at mid-day, the time of the Anglican service. They are surprised to see the high ma.s.s perhaps poorly attended, and a body of worshippers leaving the music and the mixed mult.i.tude who may be lazily fulfilling their obligation, for the silent or the informal devotions which are offered at an image of the Blessed Virgin. They may be tempted, with one of your informants, to call such a temple not a "Jesus Church," but a "Mary Church." But, if they understood our ways, they would know that we begin the day with our Lord and then go on to his mother. It is early in the morning that religious persons go to ma.s.s and communion. The high ma.s.s, on the other hand, is the festive celebration of the day, not the special devotional service; nor is there any reason why those who have been at a low ma.s.s already, should not at that hour proceed to ask the intercession of the Blessed Virgin for themselves and all that is dear to them.

Communion, again, which is given in the morning, is a solemn, unequivocal act of faith in the incarnate G.o.d, if any can be such; and the most gracious of admonitions, did we need one, of his sovereign and sole right to possess us. I knew a lady who on her death-bed was visited by an excellent Protestant friend. She, with great tenderness for her soul's welfare, asked her whether her prayers to the {83} Blessed Virgin did not, at that awful hour, lead to forgetfulness of her Saviour. "Forget him!" she replied with surprise; "why, he has just been here." She had been receiving him in communion. When, then, my dear Pusey, you read anything extravagant in praise of our Lady, is it not charitable to ask, even while you condemn it in itself, did the author write nothing else? Did he write on the blessed sacrament? Had he given up "all for Jesus?" I recollect some lines, the happiest, I think, which that author wrote, which bring out strikingly the reciprocity, which I am dwelling on, of the respective devotions to Mother and Son:

"But scornful men have coldly said Thy love was leading me from G.o.d; And yet in this I did but tread The very path my Savior trod.

"They know but little of thy worth Who speak these heartless words to me; For what did Jesus love on earth One half so tenderly as thee?

"Get me the grace to love thee more; Jesus will give, if thou wilt plead; And, Mother, when life's cares are o'er, Oh, I shall love thee then indeed.

"Jesus, when his three hours were run, Bequeathed thee from the cross to me; And oh I how can I love thy Son, Sweet Mother, if I love not thee?"

4. Thus we are brought from the consideration of the sentiments themselves, of which you complain, to the persons who wrote, and the places where they wrote them. I wish you had been led, in this part of your work, to that sort of careful labor which you have employed in so masterly a way in your investigation of the circ.u.mstances of the definition of the immaculate conception. In the latter case you have catalogued the bishops who wrote to the Holy See, and a.n.a.lyzed their answers. Had you in like manner discriminated and located the Marian writers, as you call them, and observed the times, places, and circ.u.mstances of their works, I think they would not, when brought together, have had their present startling effect on the reader. As it is, they inflict a vague alarm upon the mind, as when one hears a noise, and does not know whence it comes and what it means. Some of your authors, I know, are saints; all, I suppose, are spiritual writers and holy men; but the majority are of no great celebrity, even if they have any kind of weight. Suarez has no business among them at all, for, when he says that no one is saved without the Blessed Virgin, he is speaking not of devotion to her, but of her intercession. The greatest name is St. Alfonso Liguori; but it never surprises me to read anything unusual in the devotions of a saint.

Such men are on a level very different from our own, and we cannot understand them. I hold this to be an important canon in the lives of the saints, according to the words of the apostle, "The spiritual man judges all things, and he himself is judged of no one." But we may refrain from judging, without proceeding to imitate. I hope it is not disrespectful to so great a servant of G.o.d to say, that I never read his "Glories of Mary;" but here I am speaking generally of all saints, whether I know them or not; and I say that they are beyond us, and that we must use them as patterns, not as copies. As to his practical directions, St. Alfonso wrote them for Neapolitans, whom he knew, and we do not know. Other writers whom you quote, as De Salazar, are too ruthlessly logical to be safe or pleasant guides in the delicate matters of devotion. As to De Montford and Oswald, I never even met with their names, till I saw them in your book; the bulk of our laity, not to say of our clergy, perhaps know them little better than I do.

Nor did I know till I learnt it from your volume that there were two Bernardines. St. Bernardine, of Sienna, I knew of course, and knew too that he had a burning love for our Lord. But about the other, "Bernardine de Bustis," I was quite at fault. I find from the Protestant Cave that he, as well as his name-sake, made himself conspicuous also for his zeal for the holy name, {84} which is much to the point here. "With such devotion was he carried away," says Cave, "for the bare name of Jesus (which, by a new device of Bernardine, of Sienna, had lately began to receive divine honors), that he was urgent with Innocent VIII. to a.s.sign it a day and rite in the calendar."

One thing, however, is clear about all these writers; that not one of them is an Englishman. I have gone through your book, and do not find one English name among the various authors to whom you refer, except, of course, the name of that author whose lines I have been quoting, and who, great as are his merits, cannot, for the reasons I have given in the opening of my letter, be considered a representative of English Catholic devotion. Whatever these writers may have said or not said, whatever they may have said harshly, and whatever capable of fair explanation, still they are foreigners; we are not answerable for their particular devotions; and as to themselves, I am glad to be able to quote the beautiful words which you use about them in your letter to the "Weekly Register" of November 25th last. "I do not presume,"

you say, "to prescribe to Italians or Spaniards what they shall hold, or how they shall express their pious opinions; and least of all did I think of imputing to any of the writers whom I quoted that they took from our Lord any of the love which they gave to his Mother." In these last words, too, you have supplied one of the omissions in your volume which I noticed above.

5. Now, then, we come to England itself, which after all, in the matter of devotion, alone concerns you and me; for though doctrine is one and the same everywhere, devotions, as I have already said, are matters of the particular time and the particular country. I suppose we owe it to the national good sense that English Catholics have been protected from the extravagances which are elsewhere to be found. And we owe it, also, to the wisdom and moderation of the Holy See, which in giving us the pattern for our devotion, as well as the rule of our faith, has never indulged in those curiosities of thought which are both so attractive to undisciplined imaginations and so dangerous to grovelling hearts. In the case of our own common people I think such a forced style of devotion would be simply unintelligible; as to the educated, I doubt whether it can have more than an occasional or temporary influence. If the Catholic faith spreads in England, these peculiarities will not spread with it. There is a healthy devotion to the Blessed Mary, and there is an artificial; it is possible to love her as a Mother, to honor her as a Virgin, to seek her as a Patron, and to exalt her as a Queen, without any injury to solid piety and Christian good sense: I cannot help calling this the English style. I wonder whether you find anything to displease you in the "Garden of the Soul," the "Key of Heaven," the "Vade Mec.u.m," the "Golden Manual,"

or the "Crown of Jesus?" These are the books to which Anglicans ought to appeal who would be fair to us in this matter. I do not observe anything in them which goes beyond the teaching of the fathers, except so far as devotion goes beyond doctrine.

There is one collection of devotions, beside, of the highest authority, which has been introduced from abroad of late years. It consists of prayers of various kinds which have been indulgenced by the popes; and it commonly goes by the name of the "Raccolta." As that word suggests, the language of many of the prayers is Italian, while others are in Latin. This circ.u.mstance is unfavorable to a translation, which, however skilful, must ever savor of the words and idioms of the original; but, pa.s.sing over this necessary disadvantage, I consider there is hardly a clause in the good-sized volume in question which even the sensitiveness of English Catholicism would wish changed. Its anxious observance of doctrinal exactness is almost a fault. {85} It seems afraid of using the words "give me," "make me,"

in its addresses to the Blessed Virgin, which are as natural to adopt as in addressing a parent or friend. Surely we do not disparage divine Providence when we say that we are indebted to our parents for our life, or when we ask their blessing; we do not show any atheistical leanings because we say that a man's recovery must be left to nature, or that nature supplies brute animals with instincts. In like manner it seems to me a simple purism to insist upon minute accuracy of expression in devotional and popular writings. However, the "Raccolta," as coming from responsible authority, for the most part observes it. It commonly uses the phrases, "gain for us by thy prayers," "obtain for us," "pray to Jesus for me," "speak for me, Mary," "carry thou our prayers," "ask for us grace," "intercede for the people of G.o.d," and the like, marking thereby with great emphasis that she is nothing more than an advocate, and not a source of mercy.

Nor do I recollect in this book more than one or two ideas to which you would be likely to raise an objection. The strongest of these is found in the novena before her nativity, in which, _apropos_ of her birth, we pray that she "would come down again and be re-born spiritually in our souls;" but it will occur to you that St. Paul speaks of his wish to impart to his converts, '"not only the gospel, but his own soul;" and writing to the Corinthians, he says he has "begotten them by the gospel," and to Philemon, that he had "begotten Onesimus in his bonds;" whereas St. James, with greater accuracy of expression, says "of his own will hath G.o.d begotten us with the word of truth." Again we find the pet.i.tioner saying to the Blessed Mary, "In thee I place all my hope;" but this is explained in another pa.s.sage, "Thou art my best hope after Jesus." Again, we read elsewhere, "I would I had a greater love for thee, since to love thee is a great mark of predestination;" but the prayer goes on, "Thy Son deserves of us an immeasurable love; pray that I may have this grace --a great love for Jesus;" and further on, "I covet no good of the earth, but to love my G.o.d alone."

Then, again, as to the lessons which our Catholics receive, whether by catechizing or instruction, you would find nothing in our received manuals to which you would not a.s.sent, I am quite sure. Again, as to preaching, a standard book was drawn up three centuries ago, to supply matter for the purpose to the parochial clergy. You incidentally mention, p. 153, that the comment of Cornelius a Lapide on Scripture is "a repertorium for sermons;" but I never heard of this work being used, nor indeed can it, because of its size. The work provided for the purpose by the church is the "Catechism of the Council of Trent,"

and nothing extreme about our Blessed Lady is propounded there. On the whole, I am sanguine that you will come to the conclusion that Anglicans may safely trust themselves to us English Catholics as regards any devotions to the Blessed Virgin which might be required of them, over and above the rule of the Council of Trent.

6. And, now at length coming to the statements, not English, but foreign, which offend you in works written in her honor, I will frankly say that I read some of those which you quote with grief and almost anger; for they seemed to me to ascribe to the Blessed Virgin a power of "searching the reins and hearts" which is the attribute of G.o.d alone; and I said to myself, how can we any more prove our Lord's divinity from Scripture, if those cardinal pa.s.sages which invest him with divine prerogatives after all invest him with nothing beyond what his Mother shares with him? And how, again, is there anything of incommunicable greatness in his death and pa.s.sion, if he who was alone in the garden, alone upon the cross, alone in the resurrection, after {86} all is not alone, but shared his solitary work with his Blessed Mother--with her to whom, when he entered on his ministry, he said for our instruction, not as grudging her her proper glory, "Woman, what have I to do with thee?" And then again, if I hate those perverse sayings so much, how much more must she, in proportion to her love of him? And how do we show our love for her, by wounding her in the very apple of her eye? This I said and say; but then, on the other hand, I have to observe that these strange words after all are but few in number, out of the many pa.s.sages you cite; that most of them exemplify what I said above about the difficulty of determining the exact point where truth pa.s.ses into error, and that they are allowable in one sense or connection, and false in another. Thus to say that prayer (and the Blessed Virgin's prayer) is omnipotent, is a harsh expression in everyday prose; but, if it is explained to mean that there is nothing which prayer may not obtain from G.o.d, it is nothing else than the very promise made us in Scripture. Again, to say that Mary is the centre of all being, sounds inflated and profane; yet after all it is only one way, and a natural way, of saying that the Creator and the creature met together, and became one in her womb; and as such, I have used the expression above. Again, it is at first sight a paradox to say that "Jesus is obscured, because Mary is kept in the background;"

yet there is a sense, as I have shown above, in which it is a simple truth.

And so again certain statements may be true, under circ.u.mstances and in a particular time and place, which are abstractedly false; and hence it may be very unfair in a controversialist to interpret by an English or a modern rule whatever may have been a.s.serted by a foreign or mediaeval author. To say, for instance, dogmatically, that no one can be saved without personal devotion to the Blessed Virgin, would be an untenable proposition: yet it might be true of this man or that, or of this or that country at this or that date; and if the very statement has ever been made by any writer of consideration (and this has to be ascertained), then perhaps it was made precisely under these exceptional circ.u.mstances. If an Italian preacher made it, I should feel no disposition to doubt him, at least as regards Italian youths and Italian maidens.

Then I think you have not always made your quotations with that consideration and kindness which is your rule. At p. 106 you say, "It is commonly said, that if any Roman Catholic acknowledges that 'it is good and useful to pray to the saints,' he is not bound himself to do so. Were the above teaching true, it would be cruelty to say so; because, according to it, he would be forfeiting what is morally necessary to his salvation." But now, as to the fact, where is it said that to pray to our Lady and the saints is necessary to salvation? The proposition of St. Alfonso is, that "G.o.d gives no grace except through Mary;" that is, through her intercession. But intercession is one thing, devotion is another. And Suarez says, "It is the universal sentiment that the intercession of Mary is not only useful, but also in a certain manner necessary;" but still it is the question of her intercession, not of our invocation of her, not of devotion to her. If it were so, no Protestant could be saved; if it were so, there would be grave reasons for doubting of the salvation of St. Chrysostom or St. Athanasius, or of the primitive martyrs; nay, I should like to know whether St. Augustine, in all his voluminous writings, invokes her once. Our Lord died for those heathens who did not know him; and his mother intercedes for those Christians who do not know her; and she intercedes according to his will, and, when he wills to save a particular soul, she at once prays for it. {87} I say, he wills indeed according to her prayer, but then she prays according, to his will.

Though then it is natural and prudent for those to have recourse to her who, from the church's teaching, know her power, yet it cannot be said that devotion to her is a _sine qua non_ of salvation. Some indeed of the authors whom you quote go further; they do speak of devotion; but even then they do not enunciate the general proposition which I have been disallowing. For instance, they say, "It is morally impossible for those to be saved who _neglect_ the devotion to the Blessed Virgin;" but a simple omission is one thing, and neglect another. "It is impossible for any to be saved who _turns away_ from her;" yes; but to "turn away" is to offer some positive disrespect or insult toward her, and that with sufficient knowledge; and I certainly think it would be a very grave act if, in a Catholic country (and of such the writers were speaking, for they knew of no other), with ave-marias sounding in the air, and images of the Madonna at every street and road, a Catholic broke off or gave up a practice that was universal, and in which he was brought up, and deliberately put her name out of his thoughts.