PAPAL AGGRESSION.
The most striking home incident of the year, was the event which went generally under the name of papal aggression. England, since the Reformation, had been exceedingly jealous of any exercise of authority by the Roman pontiff within her dominions, and in consequence of this feeling it had been deemed politic at Rome to govern the Roman Catholics of England by vicars apostolic. For some years, however, the church and court of Rome had been encouraged by the Romanist tendencies of the “High Anglican” and Puseyite parties in the English church. Many clergymen and laymen went over to Rome, especially of the former, and very many more were known to be inclined to follow. It was also alleged that a large body of the clergy and gentry were favourable to a union of the Church of England with the Church of Rome. In many of the churches, the communion-table was turned into an altar; lighted candles were employed in the daytime, crucifixes were placed above what was called the altar, and the clergy practised genuflexions and intonations which were supposed to be peculiar to Roman Catholicism. All these things prepared the minds of the people, who were in the main attached to Evangelism, and were steady in their Protestantism, to meet any aggressive action on the part of Rome with anger, and even exasperation. An occasion arose to put this to the test. The pope issued “a brief,” constituting an episcopal hierarchy in England instead of the vicars apostolic. One archiepiscopal and twelve episcopal sees were created, and the territorial limits of the province and the sees were marked out. Dr. Wiseman, elevated to the rank of cardinal, was appointed Archbishop of Westminster. The language of the brief was arrogant in the extreme, and literally outraged the feelings and the honour of the English people. It was followed by a document still more offensive, written by Cardinal Wiseman, which he termed a pastoral, and dated “Out of the Flaminian Gate at Rome.” This was addressed to the faithful about to become, and whom he treated as though they had already become, his subjects. The arrogance of this document was such as to move the Protestant feeling of the country, and to awaken a spirit of hostility to the Church of Rome which seemed unlikely ever to be quenched. The irritation created among the Protestant population was greatly increased by the tone in which the cardinal and his newly-created bishops addressed their followers upon their appointment to their new offices. The cardinal adopted the style of a prince, commencing with the royal “We,” his authority to “rule over” the province to which he was nominated. His vindication of the course pursued by the pontiff was a bitter sneer at English and Protestant institutions, mingled with an insulting defiance of the established authorities of the British nation. He reminded his hearers and the whole British nation (whom he knew would at such a crisis peruse his address) that he had no authority in Westminster, or in Westminster Abbey, by law, and that he would still pay the entrance fee to go into Westminster Abbey like other liege subjects, resign himself meekly to the guidance of the beadle, and “listen without rebuke when he pointed out to his admiration detestable monuments, or show a hole in the wall for a confessional.” “He would still visit the shrine of St. Edward, and meditate on the olden times when the church would fill without a coronation, and multitudes hourly worshipped without a service.”
The popish Bishop of Birmingham, Dr. Ullathorn, went beyond his master in boasting, and uttered the following blasphemous address:—“The people of England, who for many years had been separated from the see of Rome, were about, of their own free will, to be added to the Holy Church. He did not recollect any people on earth, but those of Great Britain, who, having rejected the religion of God, were again restored to the bosom of the Church. The hierarchy was restored, the grave was opened, and Christ was coming out.”
Great as was the excitement produced throughout the country by the event itself, and by the preposterous pretensions of the new Roman bishops, the public feeling was much intensified by a letter of Lord John Russell’s to the Bishop of Durham. The prelate was supposed to be an ardent and consistent Protestant, and the circumstance of a man of such a character being selected by the premier as the medium through which to give his opinions to the public, parliament not being then sitting, led the country to believe that his lordship really sought its support for some great and practical purpose; that the letter was intended to indicate an anti-papal policy for the future, for which the support of the nation was sought. It was as follows:—
TO THE RIGHT REV. THE BISHOP OF DURHAM.
My dear Lord,—I agree with you in considering “the late aggression of the pope upon our Protestantism” as “insolent and insidious,” and I therefore feel as indignant as you can do upon the subject.
I not only promoted to the utmost of my power the claims of the Roman Catholics to all civil rights, but I thought it right, and even desirable, that the ecclesiastical system of the Roman Catholics should be the means of giving instruction to the numerous Irish immigrants in London and elsewhere, who, without such help, would have been left in heathen ignorance.
This might have been done, however, without any such innovation as that which we have now seen.
It is impossible to confound the recent measures of the pope with the division of Scotland into dioceses by the Episcopal Church, or the arrangement of districts in England by the Wesleyan Conference.
There is an assumption of power in all the documents which have come from Rome—a pretension to supremacy over the realm of England, and a claim to sole and undivided sway, which is inconsistent with the queen’s supremacy, with the rights of our bishops and clergy, and with the spiritual independence of the nation, as asserted even in Roman Catholic times.
I confess, however, that my alarm is not equal to my indignation.
Even if it shall appear that the ministers and servants of the pope in this country have not transgressed the law, I feel persuaded that we are strong enough to repel any outward attacks. The liberty of Protestantism has been enjoyed too long in England to allow of any successful attempt to impose a foreign yoke upon our minds and consciences. No foreign prince or potentate will be permitted to fasten his fetters upon a nation which has so long and so nobly vindicated its right to freedom of opinion—civil, political, and religious.
Upon this subject, then, I will only say, that the present state of the law shall be carefully examined, and the propriety of adopting any proceedings with reference to the recent assumption of power deliberately considered.
There is a danger, however, which alarms me much more than any aggression of a foreign sovereign.
Clergymen of our own church, who have subscribed the Thirty-nine Articles, and acknowledged in explicit terms the queen’s supremacy, have been the most forward in leading their flocks, “step by step, to the very verge of the precipice.” The honour paid to saints, the claim of infallibility for the church, the superstitious use of the sign of the cross, the muttering of the liturgy so as to disguise the language in which it is written, the recommendation of auricular confession, and the administration of penance and absolution, all these things are pointed out by clergymen of the Church of England as worthy of adoption, and are now openly reprehended by the Bishop of London in his charge to the clergy of his diocese.
What, then, is the danger to be apprehended from a foreign prince of no great power, compared to the danger within the gates from the unworthy sons of the Church of England herself?
I have little hope that the propounders and framers of these innovations will desist from their insidious course; but I rely with confidence on the people of England; and I will not bate a jot of heart or hope so long as the glorious principles and the immortal martyrs of the Reformation shall be held in reverence by the great mass of a nation which looks with contempt on the mummeries of superstition, and with scorn at the laborious endeavours which are now making to confine the intellect and enslave the soul.
I remain, with great respect, &c.,
J. Russell.
Downing-street, Nov. 4.
Whether the noble writer of this letter was sincere in the feelings he expressed was doubted by few at the time, although his subsequent turning and time-serving justified the public in believing that the letter was used merely for the party purpose of forestalling the opposition by an appeal to the Protestant feeling which then seemed irresistible. The immediate effect of the letter upon the country was to stimulate afresh the indignation which had been so keenly felt and warmly expressed. Public addresses were presented to the Queen, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and other notable persons, by the clergy of the various dioceses, the universities, the corporations of cities, and voluntary assemblies, pledging those who presented them to the most loyal support of her majesty and the legislature in resisting the pretensions of popery. On the 5th of November, the anniversary of the gunpowder plot, there was a burst of anti-popish feeling all over the kingdom, such as had not been witnessed since the glorious revolution of 1688. The pope, Cardinal Wiseman, the new bishops, members of the conclave at Rome, and various other persons, offensive by their popery, were burnt in effigy, and “Guys” were carried about through London and the provincial cities in mockery of their assumed dignity and pretensions.
These events produced very opposite effects upon the Roman Catholics themselves. Cardinal Wiseman manifested some alarm, and endeavoured to appease the popular wrath by directing his emissaries to speak slightingly of the importance of the matter, and to represent it as an ecclesiastical arrangement only of any interest to Roman Catholics themselves. Lord Beaumont, and other members of the Latin church, who were men of culture and enlightenment, deprecated the whole proceeding of the court of Rome, and the haughty spirit in which its English agents proclaimed them. In Ireland the Roman Catholic party were stirred up to perfect fury, and “Conciliation Hall” echoed with blustering attacks upon the government, and upon Protestantism. The following extract of a speech of John O’Connell’s depicts the spirit of the Irish sympathies with Cardinal Wiseman and his English coadjutors:—“If a cry be raised against the Catholic Church, cannot a cry be raised against the Protestant Church? In Ireland, at least, we shall do so. Does the Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster send tax-gatherers and bring the force of law to bear upon Protestants to compel them to contribute to the support of his dignity? No; he will be supported by the voluntary contributions of the Catholics; he will receive no money under false pretences; he will take no money for services he does not render. But the Protestant Archbishop of Dublin, and the Protestant archbishop and bishops of other sees are not so; they receive money under false pretenses—they exact money for services they do not perform. The Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster, or the other Catholic bishops in England or Ireland, do not enforce the payment of tithes at the point of the bayonet; the life of no widow’s son is taken on their account. The soil of Ireland has been saturated with blood in the forced collection of this odious impost, and the Catholic people are still compelled to pay it indirectly, for they cannot get their receipts for their rent until they pay the tithes to the landlord, who has to pay it to the parson in the first instance. We must put an end to this. I hope the country will rally, and meet the cry against popery by a cry against the Protestant Church establishment.”
The cardinal and his colleagues persisted in their assumption of territorial ecclesiastical authority, and the ceremony of his enthronisation was attended with extraordinary pomp and parade, while the doctrines propounded on the occasion showed Rome to be, as to her ambition and purpose, semper eadem.
Finally, a bill rendering illegal and punishable the assumption of ecclesiastical titles was brought into parliament under the auspices of the premier: the right of prosecution was, however, reserved to the government, and as it was well known that the Whigs would never exercise that right from fear of losing the parliamentary support of the Romanists, their bill was seen by the public to be a sham. This circumstance, taken in connection with the premier’s vehement letter to the Bishop of Durham, threw an imputation of inconsistency and insincerity upon the political character of Lord John Russell, which impaired his subsequent usefulness and credit.