The Catholic World Volume Iii Part 32

[Footnote 39: We have found it impossible to deal with so important and authoritative a e as his Grace's "Letter" in our present paper.]

We must first, however, speak of a work put forth by Dr. Pusey as a sequel or a companion to the "Eirenicon." This is a republication (with leave of the author) of the celebrated Tract 90, preceded by an historical preface from Dr Pusey's own pen, and followed by a letter of Mr. Keble on "Catholic Subscription to the Articles," which was widely circulated, though not published, in 1861. Of the tract itself we need not, of course, speak. Dr. Pusey's preface, however, is open to one or two obvious remarks. It is remarkable for the manner in which he identifies himself with the Mr. Newman of the day, though it appears that the proof of the tract in question was submitted to Mr.

Keble, and its publication urged by him, while Dr. Pusey himself was only made aware of its existence by the clamor with which it was received. Then, again, the remarkable difference of view between Dr.

Pusey and Mr. Newman as to the "Catholic" interpretation of the Articles forces itself again upon our notice. From the tract itself all through, and its explanations by its author at the time and since, it is perfectly clear that nothing more was meant by it than to claim such lat.i.tude of interpretation of the Thirty-nine Articles as would admit the "Catholic" sense on equal terms, as it were, with the anti-Catholic; and the same view is urged by Mr. Keble in his letter.

The writer of the tract supposes that the Anglican formularies were drawn {220} up with designed ambiguity, in order to catch Catholic subscriptions. He compares the tactics adopted by the framers of the Articles to those which were followed by M. Thiers: "A French minister, desirous of war, nevertheless, as a matter of policy, draws up his state papers in such moderate language that his successor, who is for peace, can act up to them without compromising his own principles... . The Protestant confession was drawn up with the purpose of including Catholics; and Catholics now will not be excluded. What was an economy in the reformers is a protection to us"

(Tract 90, conclusion). This is a plain common-sense view of the matter, and is abundantly supported by history. But it obviously leaves a stain on the Anglican establishment, which will appear of vital or of trifling importance according to the different views under which that community is regarded. If it is looked upon as a political and national organization, it was no doubt a stroke of prudence so to frame the formularies as to include both sides. If it is considered as a church of Christ, it can hardly be anything but discreditable that it should thus compromise divine truth. But Dr. Pusey's view of the "Catholic interpretation," as expressed both in his present preface and in the "Eirenicon," claims for it the exclusive t.i.tle of the natural and legitimate sense. It may seem almost incredible that any one should maintain this; but so it is. Dr. Pusey thus speaks of the "Protestant" interpretations: "We had all been educated in a traditional system, which had practically imported into the Articles a good many principles _which were not contained in them nor suggested by them;_ yet which were habitually identified with them... . . We proposed no system to ourselves, but laid aside piece by piece the system of ultra-Protestant interpretation, which had incrusted round the Articles. This doubtless appeared in our writings from time to time; but the expositions to which we were accustomed, and which were to our minds the genuine expositions of the Articles, had never before been brought into one focus, as they were in Tract 90... . Newman explained that it was written solely against this system of interpretation, which brought meanings into the Articles, not out of them, and also why he wrote it at all" (Pref., v.-vii.) Yet the words of Mr. Newman's explanation, which are quoted immediately after this last pa.s.sage, distinctly contradict the interpretation of the tract put forward by Dr. Pusey. Mr. Newman says that the Anglican Church, as well as the Roman, in his opinion, has a "traditionary system beyond and beside the letter of its formularies... . . And this traditionary system not only inculcates what I cannot conceive (receive?), but would exclude any difference of belief from itself.

_To this exclusive modern system_ I desire to oppose myself; and it is as doing this, doubtless, that I am incurring the censure of the four gentlemen who have come before the public. _I want certain points to be left open which they would close._... In thus maintaining that we have open questions, or, as I have expressed it in the tract, 'ambiguous formularies,' I observe, first, that I am introducing no novelty." He then gives an instance which shows that the principle is admitted. Again, he says: "The tract is grounded on the belief that the Articles _need_ not be so closed as the received methods of teaching closes them, and _ought_ not to be for the sake of many persons" (Letter to Dr. Jelf, quoted by Dr. Pusey, p. vii.)

It is obvious that the interpretations contained in the tract, however admissible on the hypothesis of their author, become little less than extravagant when they are considered in the light in which Dr. Pusey now puts them forward; and it is but fair to Dr. Newman and others to point out the change. Moreover, it is not {221} impossible that this republication of the tract, together with the avowals made in the "Eirenicon" as to the interpretation of the Articles, may be considered as a kind of challenge thrown out on the part of Dr. Pusey and his followers to the authorities of the establishment and the parties within it that are most opposed to "Catholic" opinions. It may be considered fairly enough that if this "claim to hold all Roman doctrine"--as far as those well-used words apply to it--is allowed to pa.s.s unnoticed, the position of the "Anglo-Catholic" clergy in the establishment will be made as secure as silent toleration on the part of authorities can make it. [Footnote 40] Be it so by all means; but let it be understood that the claim now made is quite different from that made by Mr. Newman in 1841; and that if it enjoys immunity from censure, on account of the far greater lat.i.tude now allowed in the establishment to extreme opinions of every color except one, it has still to free itself from the charge of being one of the most grotesque contortions of language that has ever been seriously advocated as permissible by reasonable men. One of the Articles, for instance--to take the case adduced by Canon Oakeley--says that "transubstantiation (or the change of the substance of the bread and wine) in the Supper of the Lord cannot be proved by Holy Writ; but is repugnant to the plain words of Scripture, overthroweth the nature of a sacrament, and hath given occasion to many superst.i.tions." On the other hand, let us place the Tridentine Canon: "If any one saith that in the sacred and holy sacrament of the eucharist the substance of the bread and wine remains conjointly with the body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, and denieth that wonderful and singular conversion of the whole substance of the bread into the body, and of the whole substance of the wine into the blood--the species only of the bread and wine remaining--which conversion the Catholic Church most aptly calls transubstantiation, let him be anathema." (Sess. xiii.) Not only does Dr. Pusey a.s.sert that there is a sense in which the two statements are compatible, but he maintains that such an interpretation is the one single obvious grammatical and legitimate interpretation of the words of the Anglican Article. We can only imagine one process of reasoning by which this conclusion can be maintained; and we have little doubt that if Dr. Pusey's argument were drawn out it would come to this. The Articles must mean "Catholic"

doctrine, whether they seem to do so or not, because the Anglican Church is a true and orthodox portion of the Catholic Church. And a part of the proof that she is such a portion consists in the fact that her formularies signify Catholic doctrine!

[Footnote 40: Canon Oakeley, in the pamphlet of which we shall presently speak, says of Dr. Pusey's interpretation: "Dr. Pusey's avowal, moreover, not merely involves the acceptance of that interpretation of the Thirty-nine Articles for which Mr. Newman was censured by nearly every bishop of the establishment, but goes beyond that interpretation in a Catholic direction, inasmuch as it comprehends the doctrine of transubstantiation, which Mr. Newman, I believe, never thought to be included within the terms of the Articles. It also goes beyond Mr. Newman's argument in his tract, _in that it supports the Catholic sense of the Articles to be their obvious and only true sense._ Instead of being merely one of the senses which are compatible with honest subscription. And here I must say, in pa.s.sing, that I think Dr. Pusey somewhat unfair on Mr.

Ward in attributing to him the unpopularity of Tract 90, since, in extending the interpretation of the tract to our doctrine of the blessed eucharist. Dr. Pusey is in fact adopting Mr. Ward's Construction of the Articles, and not Mr. Newman's" (p, 6).]

The other noticeable feature in Dr. Pusey's preface is an attempt to throw the blame of the undoubted unpopularity of Tract 90 upon Mr.

Ward rather than on the tract itself. Mr. Ward was probably at one time the best-abused person of all the followers of the tractarian movement; and if powerful reasoning, keen logic, unflinching openness, and courageous honesty are enough to make a person merit wholesale abuse, Mr. Ward certainly deserved it. But to attribute the unpopularity of No. 90 to him is simply to forget dates and distort facts. {222} In 1841, when the clamor against No. 90 was at its height, Mr. Ward, though well known in Oxford for his decided opinions and thorough honesty in avowing them, and though highly influential (as he could not fail to be) over those who came within his reach, was hardly known in the country at large. Dr. Pusey's mistake has been pointed out by Canon Oakeley in the appendix to his pamphlet, of which we shall speak presently. He observes that the word "non-natural"--of which he gives a very plain and simple explanation, which quite vindicates it from the interpretation commonly put upon it--was not used till the appearance of "The Ideal of a Christian Church" in 1844.

Canon Oakeley's pamphlet, like everything that he writes, is graceful and courteous, lucid and cogent; and it ought to have all the greater weight with Dr. Pusey from the evident disinclination of the author to think or speak with severity. In fact, Dr. Pusey has already [Footnote 41] had occasion to correct an over-sanguine conclusion as to his own position which had been formed by Canon Oakeley in consequence of certain explanations which he addressed to a Catholic paper.

[Footnote 41: In his second letter to the "Weekly Register."]

We think that the fullest credit should be given to Dr. Pusey for these explanations; but they must not be allowed to counterbalance a.s.sertions which he has never withdrawn, and seems never to have meant to withdraw. He has only negatively declared something about the intention he had in making them. He says they were not meant to hurt Catholics; he does not say that they were not meant to frighten Anglicans. We refer, of course, to the large number of pages which he has devoted to attacks on what he chooses to consider as the practical system of Catholicism, chiefly with regard to the _cultus_ of our Blessed Lady, and which no Catholic can read without intense indignation. He has heaped up a number of extracts from books of very little authority, and put forward as characteristics of the Catholic system the pious contemplations of individuals, as well as tenets which have been actually condemned. The charge is urged with all the recklessness of an advocate, with eager rhetoric rather than calm argument, with all the looseness of insinuation and inaccuracy of quotation which mark the productions of a heated partizan. [Footnote 42]

[Footnote 42: A writer in the current number of "Macmillan's Magazine" (Feb., 1866) observes: "We could scarcely transcribe all that is here set forth without offending the religious taste of our readers, and appearing to gloat over the degradation of a church which, amidst all its aberrations and after all ita crimes, is a part of Christendom. We may reasonably hope, also, that there is something to be said upon the other side: for, without casting any suspicion upon Dr. Pusey's honesty, we must remember that he is personally under a strong temptation to scare the wavering members of his party from defection to the Church of Rome" (p. 277). This is the opinion of an intensely anti-Catholic writer; and it would be easy to quote scores of similar criticisms. A letter from Oxford, in the "London Review" of February 3, says: "It seems a gentle irony, certainly, to call a book an 'Eirenicon' which most mercilessly exposes the errors, perversions, and tendencies of those whom it proposes to conciliate. A great portion of the book might have been written by the most distinguished Papophobe--we will not say Dr.

c.u.mming, for the style does not remind us of his publications." The writer in "Macmillan" adds an observation on another point which is well worthy of Dr. Pusey's consideration: "Dr. Pusey's argument, both against Mariolatry and Papal infallibility, _appeals to principles essentially rationalistic_, which are capable, as we conceive, of being turned with fatal effect against himself" (p.

230).]

No part of his book shows more earnestness than this. Such being the case, it seems to us very strange that any one should expect Catholics to be satisfied with a simple a.s.surance from Dr. Pusey that "nothing was further from my wish than to write anything which should be painful to those in your communion." [Footnote 43]

[Footnote 43: Dr. Pusey to the "Weekly Register," Nov. 25, 1865.]

We suppose that if some one were to write a pamphlet of a hundred pages full of the hardest and most vulgar insinuations against something that Dr. Pusey holds dear and sacred, his opinion of it would hardly be changed by the a.s.surance, unaccompanied by a single retraction, "I never meant to hurt your feelings." He would naturally ask in what sort of atmosphere such a person had lived, to be able to think that such things _could_ be said without being "painful." He disclaims {223} all desire to "prescribe to Italians and Spaniards what they shall hold, or how they shall express their pious opinions."

But he is not speaking of Spaniards or Italians only in many of the most offensive pa.s.sages of his work. He says, for instance, that it "is a practical question, affecting our whole eternity: What shall I do to be saved? The practical answer to the Roman Catholic seems to me to be, Go to Mary, and you will be saved; in our dear Lord's own words it is, Come unto me; in our own belief it is, Go to Jesus, and you will be saved" (p. 182). Can anything be more shocking than the contrast insinuated here? Or, again, when he says in another place, "One sees not where there shall be any pause or bound, short of that bold conception, 'that every prayer, both of individuals and of the church, should be addressed to St. Mary?'" Dr. Pusey must be perfectly aware of the effect of words like these from him upon the ma.s.s of his readers. It is certainly no sufficient _withdrawal_ of them to write a letter to a Catholic newspaper, of limited circulation, saying that he "never thought of imputing to any of the writers whom he quoted that they took from our Lord any of the love which they gave to his mother." Whatever he may think about the writers themselves, he certainly a.s.serts in the face of the world that they teach others to do this. He a.s.serts that there is a "system" in the Catholic Church, of which this is the effect. If he "had no thought of criticising holy men who held it," he still will not take Catholic explanations of their words, which show that they did _not_ hold it; and his own words imply, or at all events admit of, a reservation, that such is the tendency of the system, from which certain individuals escape in consequence of their holiness. Now, it is this a.s.sertion about the system of the church which offends Catholics. They care little about their own "feelings;" they resent false charges against the church all the more when they proceed from one who professes to be nearer to them than others, and to be a lover of peace, and who might easily have satisfied himself that his accusations were groundless. People have not complained of Dr. Pusey's intention in saying these things, but of his having said them. They willingly accept his statement as to his intention; but misrepresentations retain their mischievous character till they have been formally withdrawn, whatever may have been the temper in which they have been put forward.

It is, moreover, obvious that this, which to ordinary eyes is the prominent feature in Dr. Pusey's volume, must be taken into account in all conclusions concerning the present state of mind among Anglicans that are founded upon the reception which the "Eirenicon" has met with among them. We think that there are but few among them, as there are certainly very few among Catholics, who attach much practical importance to the vague and dreamy ideas about corporate union by means of mutual explanations which are put forward in other parts of the work. It is perfectly clear that Dr. Pusey's account of the Articles would be repudiated at once by all the Anglican authorities; and equally clear that the points to which he still objects, such as the papal infallibility and the dogma of the immaculate conception, are among those which can never be conceded on the side of the church.

The proposals for union are not, therefore, generally looked upon as matters for practical consideration; though, as Dr. Newman has remarked, they may hereafter lead to results of the highest importance. What has struck the Anglican public in the book is its attack on Catholicism, which has, no doubt, surprised Protestants as much as Catholics by its violence. We say, therefore, that to consider Dr. Pusey's unrebuked declaration about the possibility of union as a great sign of progress among Anglicans, without {224} taking into consideration the other features of the work which he has put forth, is to ignore the most essential circ.u.mstances of the case. Canon Oakeley compares the outcry with which similar declarations were once received on Mr. Ward's part and his own with the indifference and absence of opposition now evinced toward Dr. Pusey. It is true that the cases are in some respects parallel; but there is this vital difference, that neither Mr. Ward nor Canon Oakeley accompanied their declarations as to Roman doctrine with virulent abuse of Roman practice; and we may feel pretty certain that the "Ideal of a Christian Church" would never have been made the ground of an academical condemnation of its author if it had contained the hundred pages on the _cultus_ of the Blessed Virgin on which Dr. Pusey has expended so much care, and which he has adorned with so much apparent erudition. Englishmen judge roughly, and in the main fairly; and they will look on the proposals for union as an amiable eccentricity in a writer who has pandered so lovingly to their favorite prejudices.

Canon Oakeley has drawn out very clearly another very important qualification, which must modify our feelings of joy at the apparent progress of Anglicans in general toward greater tolerance of Catholic opinions among themselves. He has shown that this seemingly good sign is in reality only an indication of increasing indifference to doctrine of every kind. It is the reflection on the broad mirror of public opinion of the uniformly lat.i.tudinarian tendency of the authorities of the establishment, as evinced in the succession of judicial decisions of which we have all heard so much. It is not wonderful that Puseyism should share in this universal indulgence. We have also to thank Canon Oakeley for a calm and forcible vindication of the Catholic devotion to our Blessed Lady, which has been made the subject of so violent an attack by Dr. Pusey--perhaps more in the form of an apology than was necessary--and for some very sensible remarks on the dream of "corporate union."

There is one writer in England whose words on this subject will be listened to with almost equal interest by Catholics and Protestants.

The conflict pa.s.ses into a new phase with the appearance of Dr. Newman upon the scene. It is "the great Achilles moving to the war." The gleam of well-worn armor flashes on the eye, and the attention of both armies is riveted on him as he lifts his spear. He cannot mutter his favorite motto:

[Greek text]

for it is but lately that he struck down and kicked off the field a swaggering bully from the opposite ranks hardly worthy of his steel.

It is different now. He will begin in Homeric fashion with a complimentary harangue to the champion on the other side; but then will come the time for blows--blows of immense force, dealt out with a gentle affectionateness which enhances their effect tenfold. Dr.

Newman begins by a generous tribute to Dr. Pusey himself, and to those whom he may be supposed to influence. No one can speak more strongly on the paramount rights of conscience, which is not to be stifled for the sake of making a path easy or removing a wearisome difficulty. Dr.

Pusey is allowed to have every right to mention the conditions on which he proposes union, though Dr. Newman does not agree with them, and thinks that he would himself not hold to them; he has also the right to state what it is that he objects to, as requiring explanation, in the Catholic system. But then the tone changes, and business begins. Dr. Newman tells his old friend in the plainest way that "there is much both in the matter and manner of his volume calculated to wound those who love him well, but truth more;" and he points out the {225} glaring inconsistency of "professing to be composing an Irenicon while treating Catholics as foes;" and characterizes, in his happy way, the proceeding of Dr. Pusey as "discharging an olive branch as from a catapult." The hundred pages on the subject of the Blessed Virgin which are contained in the "Eirenicon" are so palpably "one-sided" that no one can venture to deny it. Few have characterized them in stronger terms than Dr.

Newman. "What could an Exeter Hall orator, what could a Scotch commentator on the Apocalypse, do more for his own side of the controversy by the picture he drew of us?" Further on he pointedly reminds Dr. Pusey that he all the time knew better. After a proof from the fathers as to the doctrine in question, he says, "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" (p.

83); and again, "As you revere the fathers, so you revere the Greek Church; and here again we have a witness in 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" (p. 95); and again, "Then I think you have not always made your quotations with that consideration and kindness which is your rule" (p. 111). The calm gentleness of the language will certainly not conceal from Dr. Pusey the gravity and severity of the rebuke thus administered. Moreover, Dr. Newman has complaints of his own to urge. With the most questionable taste Dr. Pusey has actually brought "to life one of" Dr. Newman's "own strong sayings, in 1841, about idolatry;" he has at least been understood to father upon him the well-known saying, that "the establishment is the great bulwark against infidelity in this land;" he has used some words from Dr.

Newman's notes to St. Athanasius in a collection of pa.s.sages from the fathers, the apparent purpose of which is to defend some Anglican doctrine about the sufficiency of Holy Scripture against a supposed Catholic contradiction. Dr. Newman also most clearly distinguishes his own intention in publishing Tract 90 from that of Dr. Pusey in its recent republication.

The introduction to the letter before us concludes with a pa.s.sage of singular interest, in which Dr. Newman vindicates the right of a convert to speak freely about the system of the church to which he has submitted. We must confess that we hardly understood the pa.s.sages in Dr. Pusey's work, to which reference is here made, as denying the right of free comment to a convert, in the sense in which Dr. Newman affirms it. Dr. Pusey has a standard and measure of his own (external to the Anglican establishment), by which he criticises, approves, or condemns this or that feature in it; and he distinctly contemplates at least the possibility of his being driven to quit it by its formal adoption of heresy. Certainly, to submit to the Catholic Church, and yet retain the right of measuring her in such a way by an external standard, would be a contradiction in terms. But this does not touch the right of a convert either to choose freely, according to his own tastes and leanings, among those varieties of devotion and practice which the church expressly leaves to his choice, or to express his opinion on such subjects (so that it be done with charity), or on any other matters which fall within the wide and recognized range of open questions. If Dr. Pusey meant to deny this right, he will be convinced by the frank use made of it by Dr. Newman in the pa.s.sage before us. No one, certainly, will a.s.sail _him_ as unorthodox; yet he takes his stand openly on one particular side with regard to some of the moot questions of the day, as to which certainly a large {226} number of English Catholics will be as ready to say that they do not altogether agree with him as to acknowledge that he has a perfect right to the opinions which he expresses. Perhaps we should rather say that they will profess their admiration for the authors whom he so far at least disavows as to question their right to be treated in controversy as the legitimate and exclusive representatives of English Catholicism; for we need not understand Dr. Newman's words about the late Father Faber and the editor of the "Dublin Review" as meaning more than this; and his point, as against Dr. Pusey, is fully secured by the indisputable fact that those distinguished men have never considered themselves, or let others consider them, as such representatives.

The greater part, however, of Dr. Newman's present letter is given to an exquisite defence of Catholic doctrine and devotion as regards our Blessed Lady. Its power and beauty are so great as to fill us with inexpressible sadness at the thought that Dr. Newman has written comparatively so little on similar subjects since he has been a Catholic. This short and very condensed sketch on one particular point has given him an opportunity of exercising, on however limited a scale, those powers as to which he is simply unrivalled. There is the keen penetration of the sense of Scripture, and of the relation between different and distinct parts of the Holy Volume. After putting forward the patristic view of our Blessed Lady as the second Eve, Dr.

Newman has occasion to defend that interpretation of the vision of the woman in the Apocalypse which understands it of her. This has given him occasion to explain how it is that this interpretation may be the true one, although there is no great amount of positive testimony for it in the fathers, and to refute from the general principles of scriptural language that which looks upon the image as simply a personification of the church. This pa.s.sage is a real and great gain in scriptural interpretation. Then, again, here is the masterly and discriminating erudition, not dealing with the fathers as an ill-arranged and incoherent ma.s.s of authorities, but giving to each witness his due place and weight, pointing out what parts of the church and what apostolical tradition he represents, and blending the different sufferages into one harmonious statement. History is brought in to trace the gradual development of devotion on points as to which doctrine, on the other hand, was always uniform; and to give a natural and simple explanation of the chronological order in which the heart, as it were, of the church seems to have mastered the different portions of the wonderful deposit which the apostles sowed in her mind. The effect of Dr. Newman's explanation of the comparatively later growth of certain devotions, which in themselves might have been expected to precede others, is not only to remove the apparent difficulty, but to make every other view appear more difficult than that which he gives. Equally beautiful and convincing is his explanation in the appendix of the historical account which may be given of the strange sayings of certain fathers as to our Blessed Lady having possibly fallen into faults of infirmity. Some most accurate and delicate tests for the discernment of a real tradition are here given, as well as reasons for the apparent absence of such a tradition in a special case. Dr. Newman is one of the few writers who show us, first, that they thoroughly understand a difficulty or an objection; then, that they can make it even stronger; and then, that they can not only say something against it, or crush it, but even unravel it, and show that it was to be expected. In every one of these respects Dr.

Pusey is his exact contrary. Then again, Dr. Newman brings together a series of pa.s.sages from the fathers of the "undivided church"--to use the now term invented, we believe, by Mr. Keble--of which, of course, {227} Dr. Pusey was aware, but of which he has said nothing in his "Eirenicon." These testify amply not only to the doctrine but to the devotion of the fourth and fifth centuries as to our Blessed Lady. He is, of course, sparing of quotations in a work like the present; but he crowns his argument from authority by a number of pa.s.sages not from popular books of devotion among the Greeks, but from their liturgies and authoritative formularies--on which Dr. Pusey would have founded a strong argument to the effect that our Lady is elevated to the place of our Lord, if he had been able to find them in circulation among Catholics. In fact, a number of formal Greek devotions end with the words, "through the Theotocos," instead of "per Dominum nostrum Jesum Christum." The contrast between the cogency and appositeness of every word of Dr. Newman's few quotations (almost universally given at length), and the utter illusiveness and bewildering misapplication of the clouds upon clouds of citations paraded in Dr. Pusey's volume, is wonderfully striking. Nor, again, is the difference less great between the two when a personal remark has to be made. Dr. Newman has no hard words for any one. He does not shrink from pointing out faults, as we have already said. He tells Dr. Pusey plainly enough that he does not think that he even understands what the immaculate conception means; and when he speaks of Anglicans being ignorant of the Catholic doctrine of original sin, he seems carefully to omit exempting Dr.

Pusey from the general statement. He says again pointedly, "He who charges us with making Mary a divinity is thereby denying the divinity of Jesus. _Such a man does not know what divinity is._" He complains of the unfairness--of which, we are sorry to say, Dr. Pusey seems habitually guilty--of taking a strong and apparently objectionable pa.s.sage from an author who, either in the immediate context or elsewhere, has qualified it by other statements, which any one but a partizan writer would feel bound to take into consideration and to place by its side, without giving the reader any intimation that such qualifications exist. "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?"

(p. 101). He refuses to receive Dr. Pusey's collection of strong pa.s.sages as a fair representation of the minds of the authors from whom they are quoted. He speaks of their "literal and absolute sense, as any Protestant would naturally take them, and as the writers doubtless did not use them" (p. 118). And again: "I know nothing of the originals, and cannot believe that they have meant what you say"

(p. 120). But with all this strong and decisive language, which we may be sure is the very gentlest that he can use, and implies an estimate of the "Eirenicon" by no means in accordance with that of its admirers, he is so uniformly calm and affectionate in manner that we cannot but hope that Dr. Pusey and others who think with him will be won over to think more seriously of the extreme gravity of their step in casting forth upon the world of English readers so extremely intemperate an accusation against the Catholic Church as that which they have put in circulation. Nor can we abandon the hope that they will listen to Dr. Newman's clear and unanswerable statement of the doctrine of the fathers as to our Blessed Lady, and see how truly he has pointed to the flaws and defects in their own thoughts with regard to her. They will certainly be hardly able to deny that they have misunderstood not only the immaculate conception, against which they have talked so loudly, but even, it may be, original sin itself; nor do we think that it can be questioned that he has put his finger upon the fundamental error--not to say heresy---to which all their low conceptions as to the Blessed Mother of G.o.d {228} are to be a.s.signed as their ultimate cause. Dr. Pusey, as Dr. Newman remarks, seems to have no idea that our Blessed Lady had any other part or position in the incarnation than as its _physical instrument_--much the same part, as it were, that Juda or David may have had. The fathers, on the contrary, from the very first, speak of her "as an intelligent, responsible cause of our Lord's taking flesh;" "her faith and obedience being accessories to the incarnation, and gaining it as her reward" (p. 38). Dr. Newman insists on this vital and all-important difference more than once, and seems to consider it the explanation of the strange blindness of these students of antiquity. If they can once gain a new and more Catholic idea as to that which is the foundation alike of our Blessed Lady's greatness and the devotion of the church to her--and certainly they must be very blind or very obstinate not to see the reasons for such an idea in Dr. Newman's pages--then the "Eirenicon" will have produced incidentally a far greater blessing to themselves and others than if its strange interpretation of the Anglican Articles had been allowed as legitimate in England, and there had been half a score of Du Pins in France ready to enter into negotiations with the Archbishop of Canterbury on the basis of its propositions. These good men have in fact been living and teaching and studying the fathers with one of the great seminal facts, so to speak, of Christianity absent from their minds or entirely undeveloped in them. "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 had become incarnate; we 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."_ We conceive that these words will fall strangely on the ears of Dr. Pusey, though they might not perhaps do so on those of the author of the "Christian Year" and the "Lyra Innocentium;" and if they do so, after the incontestable proof which Dr. Newman has adduced from the early fathers of their view of the position of our Blessed Lady in the economy of the incarnation, it will only remain for Dr. Pusey either to confute that proof or to acknowledge that he has been reasoning on that great mystery without the guidance of the church, deaf to the teaching of the fathers, and that he has incurred the usual fate of men who so reason. May the prayers of the Blessed Mother, against whose honor he has raised his voice so harshly, save him from closing his eyes still more firmly!

It appears to be one of the characteristics of Dr. Newman to look at particular questions and phases of opinion with regard to a wider and more comprehensive range of thought than other men. Possibly his retired position favors this habit of mind; but it is, of course, far more naturally to be attributed to a loftier intellectual stature and a wider knowledge of history than others possess. Such a man is eminently fitted for a controversy like the present, in which the word peace has been blurted forth in so uncouth a manner, while yet it is not the less the expression of the real and powerful longings of a thousand hearts. It is a most unpromising overture, but it is an overture nevertheless. Dr. Newman is not only fitted to deal with it on account of his tender and large sympathies, and of the affectionate solicitude with which he has always treated his former friends; he is able also not indeed to go to the very verge of Catholic doctrine for their sakes, or to encourage delusive hopes of a compromise which would patch up rather than unite, but to speak with calm {229} accuracy, looking on his own times as a philosophical historian of the church may look at them by-and-bye, and point out what may be accidental, transient, local, in the features of the religion of the present day. No one can be less inclined to exaggerate, for instance, the differences between English and Italian devotion; and we have seldom felt ourselves in a more Italian atmosphere, out of Italy, than in the oratory at Edgbaston. But he is not afraid of giving full weight to national differences of character, nor of avowing himself a hearty Englishman. In the same way, without going into the question of fact as to alleged extravagances--which, after all, is of no real cogency in the argument--he is ready to admit that there may be such, and puts forward a simple common-sense argument to show that such may be expected in the living working of energetic ideas generally, and especially of such ideas in matters of religion, which acts on the affections. This is the true philosophical answer; and it by no means excludes other answers that might be given to particular charges, which might be proved to be false in fact, or to apply to matters so grave as that the church would never be allowed to permit the alleged corruption.

Dr. Newman never shrinks from allowing the full force of any principle that he has laid down. Thus, he has distinguished between faith as to our Blessed Lady's position in the kingdom of her Son and the devotion to her founded upon that faith. The faith may have been from the beginning, and actually was so, as he proves from the early fathers; but the full devotion may not all at once have been developed; or again, it may have been checked in particular countries at a particular time, and so make no show in the writings of some fathers of that age, in consequence of the baneful influence of a prevalent heresy which cut at the faith itself. This, which is really almost self-evident, enables him not only to explain the pa.s.sages in St.

Chrysostom and St. Basil which are sometimes objected to, but to grant that there are no certain traces of _devotion_, strictly so called, to our Blessed Lady in the writings of others beside these. There need not be, according to his principles. It must be remembered that all these statements admit of great development and explanation; they are germs of thought, and are only put forward most concisely in Dr.

Newman's present letter. It is more to our present purpose to observe how ready he is to look through the cloud of charges, great and small, which Dr. Pusey has blown in the face of Catholics, and to discern in the book of his old friend a new and important turning-point in the Anglican controversy. He thinks that the indignation of Catholics has led them in consequence to misconceive Dr. Pusey, so as not, it would seem, to give him credit for really pacific intentions. We think that no one has denied--what, indeed, it does not become a critic to question--the reality of a purpose distinctly avowed; but at the same time we must repeat that it has never been denied by Dr. Pusey, nor do we think it ever can be denied, that the book was written with a clear and distinct intention so to represent Catholicism as to deter people from submitting to it except on certain terms pointed out by the author. Possibly Dr. Newman only means that Catholics have been more alienated by Dr. Pusey's most unhandsome attack than attracted by his professions of friendship; and certainly never was a friendly expostulation, never was an earnest request for explanation on certain points which appear to be difficulties in the way of a much-desired union, proposed in a way less calculated to conciliate. Dr. Newman, therefore, neither wonders nor complains at the strong feeling with which the "Eirenicon" has been received; but he looks beyond the present moment, and, recalling the former phases of opinion as to {230} Catholicism which have prevailed among Anglicans, he sees in Dr.

Pusey's proceeding nothing less than the putting "the whole argument between you and us on a new footing"--a footing which may really and profitably be used by those who desire peace. No English Catholic but will most heartily rejoice in this statement of Dr. Newman; and surely one of our first feelings must be that of thankfulness that he is among us at a time like this, and that circ.u.mstances will give him a more patient hearing and a more ready acceptance, on the part of those whose souls may be staked on the issue of this controversy, than he might otherwise meet with. From him, at least, Anglicans will hear no extreme or novel doctrine; him, at least, they will never accuse of not loving everything that is English. He, if any one, may convince them that no true child of the "undivided church" would be found at the present day outside the communion of the Holy See; that the church is the same now as she ever was, and as she ever will be; that she can never compromise with her enemies, though she yearns with unutterable love to take back every wanderer to her heart.

Experience has happily shown that the great Shepherd of souls leads men on in a way they neither discern nor desire, when they have once set themselves to wish and pray for greater light; and that prophecies of ill and suspicions of sinister purposes, which have not lacked ample foundation, have yet been often defeated in the indulgent dispensations of grace. Nor, indeed, at the present time, are all the signs of the sky evil. In its most disagreeable and inexcusable features the "Eirenicon" is not, we are convinced, a fair representation of the mind of a great number who might commonly be supposed to sympathize with its author. He has put himself for the moment at their head; and they are, of course, slow to repudiate his a.s.sistance; but we do not believe that the earnest men who publish so many Catholic devotions, and who, however mistakenly, attempt to reproduce in their own churches the external honors paid by Catholics to him whom they also think that they have with them, would willingly make themselves responsible for the hundred pages with which Dr.

Newman's present pamphlet is engaged. The advance toward Catholicism among the Anglicans has, in fact, left Dr. Pusey some way behind other and younger men. Even as to himself, he is hardly further away than others have been who are now within the church.

Only it must not be forgotten that the largest and most charitable thoughts as to the meaning and intentions of individuals, and the most hopeful antic.i.p.ations as to the ultimate result of their movements, do not exhaust the duties imposed upon Catholic writers at the present moment. Let us see ever so much of good in demonstrations such as this, and believe that there is a still greater amount of good which we do not see. We may forbear to press men harshly, to point out baldly the inconsistencies of their position; we may put up with the rudeness of the language in which they propose peace. They may be haughty and ungenerous now; but this is not much to bear for the sake of that unity which those who know it love better than those who are strangers to it. Let us be ready, as far as persons are concerned, to be tender in exposing faults even wanton, and misconceptions which, as we think, common industry and fairness might have obviated. For Dr.

Pusey himself we can wish no severer punishment than that he should be able some day to look upon his own work with the eyes of a Catholic.

He has himself shown us, by the use which he has made of old expressions of Dr. Newman and others, who have long since repudiated them, that the retraction of charges against the Catholic Church by their authors does not prevent {231} others from repeating them. We are sorry to say--what we still believe will be acknowledged as true by all who have been at the pains--pains not taken by some who have written on this subject--of not merely considering the animus and motives of Dr. Pusey, but of examining his book in detail, and taking its measure as a work of erudition and controversy--that, unattractive in style, rambling, incoherent, vague, and intentionally "loose" as it is, it has one great quality, however unintentional--that of being a perfect storehouse of misrepresentation. We speak simply as critics, and we disclaim all attempts to account for the phenomenon. It contains an almost unparalleled number of misstatements of every kind and degree. Its author's reputation will give weight and currency to these. Though never perhaps likely to be a popular book, it will still take its place in Protestant libraries, and will be much used in future controversies. No one can tell how often we shall have certain extraordinary statements about the sanctification of the Blessed Virgin, her active and pa.s.sive conception, the protest of the Greek Church against the doctrine, Bellarmine's a.s.sertion about general councils, transubstantiation, extreme unction, and the like, brought up against us; and the erroneous conclusions founded upon them cannot be neglected by the defenders of Catholic truth. It is, therefore, essential not that Dr. Pusey should be attacked in an unkindly spirit, but that his book should be handled critically, and, as far as may be, whatever it contains of misstatement, misquotation, unfair insinuation and conclusion catalogued and exposed. It must be remembered that there is a great demand for the materials of anti-Catholic controversy. Dr. Pusey does not subscribe to the societies which mostly hold their meetings in Exeter Hall in the month of May; but he might well be made a life-governor of all of them in consideration of this book. It will be used by the zealots who try to win the poor peasants of Connaught to apostasy by means of food and clothing, and by the more decorous "Anglo-Continentals," who are just now rubbing their hands at the prospects of infidelity in Italy. Alas! it not only teems with snares for the learned and conscientious, but it is full of small insinuations for the ign.o.bler herd of paid agents and lecturers--"what the poorer people believe in Rome," what Catholic churches are called in south India, what Cardinal Wiseman is reported to have said of Archbishop Affre, "who died in recovering his people at the barricades." These things may be pa.s.sed by as simply faults of taste; but the pretensions of the book to learning, and its historical and doctrinal statements, cannot be admitted without sifting. Dr.

Pusey has imposed an unwelcome task on Catholic critics. At the very time that they would be conciliating his followers, they are forced to attack him. It has seemed to us indeed that ordinary care in examining authorities, an attention to the common-sense rule that strangers cannot understand a system from without, the use of the many means at his disposal of ascertaining the Catholic meaning of Catholic language, more self-restraint in a.s.sertion, in urging arguments that appeared telling and conclusions that were welcome to himself, and somewhat less of confidence in his own attainments as a theologian, would have spared those who wish him well this painful undertaking at a time when they would gladly say no word that may sound harsh to his ears. But, after all, truth is more precious than peace, and peace can only be had through the truth; and we can cordially return to Dr.

Pusey the a.s.surance which he himself has proffered to Catholics, that those engaged in the ungrateful task of subjecting his volume to the a.n.a.lysis of criticism have no intention whatever of wounding his feelings.

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[ORIGINAL.]

CURIOSITIES OF ANIMAL LIFE.

There is an old aphorism which says that "all life comes from an egg"--_omne vivum ex ovo_; but this, like a good many other old aphorisms, is only a convenient and attractive way of stating a falsehood. It is very true that almost all animals, from man down to the mollusk, pa.s.s through the egg stage at an early period of their existence; but we purpose to show our readers in this article that there are others which appear to be sometimes exempted from the common lot of their kind, and which indeed come into the world in such curious fashions that we may almost say of them, in the words of Topsey, that they "never were born; 'spect they _growed_."

To begin with, what is an egg? According to the popular idea, it is an oval-shaped body, consisting of a hard, thin sh.e.l.l inclosing a whitish substance called the alb.u.men, within which is a yellowish matter called the yolk; it is the embryo form of the young of birds and some other animals, which finally emerge from the sh.e.l.l after the egg has been acted upon for some time by the heat of the parent's body. Now this definition may do well enough as a loose description of the more familiar varieties of eggs, but it will not do for all. It will perhaps surprise the unscientific reader to be told that every animal whatever produces eggs. A "mare's nest" is the popular expression of a myth, an absurdity; but _mare's eggs_ are no myths; they are just as real as hen's eggs; only we never see them, because they are hatched in the parent's body before the young colt is brought forth. The same is true of the eggs of all the other quadrupeds and of viviparous animals in general.

An egg, therefore, like the seed of a plant, is the germ from which the embryo is developed. It may have a sh.e.l.l, or it may not; it may be comparatively large, like birds' eggs, or it may be so small as to be with difficulty discerned by the naked eye. When it is first formed it is simply an aggregation of fluid matter, very minute in size, and exceedingly simple in structure. By degrees this fluid is transformed into the small particles or granules which form the yolk; the yolk shapes itself into a mult.i.tude of _cells_--little microscopic bodies consisting of an external membrane, or cell-wall, and of an inner nucleus, which may be either solid or fluid; and in due process of time a number of cells combine and form a living being. The alb.u.men, or "white," is, like the sh.e.l.l, an accessory. It performs important functions in the development of the young from the germ, but we will not stop to explain them here; the true egg is the yolk. In the lowest forms of animal life the egg is a mere cell, with a light spot in one part of it, and the creature which is developed from it is almost as simple in structure as the egg itself.

The ordinary mode of reproduction, as we have already said, is by the formation of an egg in the body of the parent, from which the young may be hatched either before or after they are brought into the world.

But there are certain of the lower orders of animals which sometimes multiply and {233} perpetuate their kind in other ways also. Professor Henry James Clark, of Harvard University, has lately published an interesting treatise [Footnote 44] on animal development, in which he gives some curious instances of the phenomena to which we refer. We have drawn a good deal of what we have just said about the structure of eggs from his valuable work, and we purpose now to follow him in his remarks upon the processes of reproduction by what is called _budding_ and _division_.

[Footnote 44: "Mind in Nature; or, The Origin of Life and the Mode of Development of Animals." 8vo. New York: D. Appleton & Co.]

Let us look first at that exceedingly beautiful and wonderful animal commonly called the sea anemone, on account of the delicate fringed flower so much loved by poets. You may often find it on our coasts contracted into a lump of gelatinous substance looking like whitish-brown jelly; [Footnote 45] watch it for a while, and you will see the body rise slightly, while a delicate crown of tentacles, or feelers, steals out at the top. The jelly-like ma.s.s continues to increase in height, and the wreath of tentacles gradually expands.

Soon you will perceive that this graceful fringe surrounds a wide opening; this is the animal's mouth. When expanded to its full size the anemone is about three or four inches in height. The body consists of a cylindrical gelatinous bag, the bottom of which is flat and slightly spreading at the margin. The upper edge of this bag is turned in, so as to form a sack within a sack; this is the stomach. The whole summit of the body is crowned by the soft plumy fringes which give it such a remarkable resemblance to a flower. At the base it has a set of powerful muscles, by which it attaches itself to rocks and sh.e.l.ls so firmly that it can hardly be removed without injury. Another set of muscles enables it to contract itself almost instantaneously into a shapeless lump. It is extremely sensitive, not only shrinking from the slightest touch, but even drawing in its tentacles if so much as a dark cloud pa.s.ses over it. Anemones may be found, say the authors of "Sea-side Studies," "in any small pools about the rocks which are flooded by the tide at high water. Their favorite haunts, however, where they occur in greatest quant.i.ty, are more difficult to reach; but the curious in such matters will be well rewarded, even at the risk of wet feet and a slippery scramble over rocks covered with damp sea-weed, by a glimpse into their more crowded abodes. Such a grotto is to be found on the rocks of East Point at Nahant. It can only be reached at low tide, and then one is obliged to creep on hands and knees to its entrance in order to see through its entire length; but its whole interior is studded with these animals, and as they are of various hues, pink, brown, orange, purple, or pure white, the effect is like that of brightly-colored mosaics set in the roof and walls.