All this has a marked place in Mr. Gladstone's mental progress. Though primarily and ostensibly the concern of the established church, yet the series of proceedings that had begun with the attack on Hampden in 1836, and then were followed down to our own day by academical, ecclesiastical and legal censures and penalties, or attempts at censure and penalty, on Newman, Pusey, Maurice, Gorham, Essays and Reviews, Colenso, and ended, if they have yet ended, in a host of judgments affecting minor personages almost as good as nameless—all constitute a chapter of extraordinary importance in the general history of English toleration, extending in its consequences far beyond the pale of the communion immediately concerned. It was a long and painful journey, often unedifying, not seldom squalid, with crooked turns not a few, and before it was over, casting men into strange companionship upon bleak and hazardous shores. Mr. Gladstone, though he probably was not one of those who are as if born by nature tolerant, was soon drawn by circumstance to look with favour upon that particular sort of toleration which arose out of the need for comprehension. When the six doctors condemned Pusey (June 1843) for preaching heresy and punished him by suspension, Mr. Gladstone was one of those who signed a vigorous protest against a verdict and a sentence passed upon an offender without hearing him and without stating reasons. This was at least the good beginning of an education in liberal rudiments.
III
NEWMAN'S SECESSION
In October 1845 the earthquake came. Newman was received into the Roman communion. Of this step Mr. Gladstone said that it has never yet been estimated at anything like the full amount of its calamitous importance. The leader who had wielded a magician's power in Oxford was followed by a host of other converts. More than once I have heard Mr. Gladstone tell the story how about this time he sought from Manning an answer to the question that sorely perplexed him: what was the common bond of union that led men of intellect so different, of character so opposite, of such various circumstance, to come to the same conclusion. Manning's answer was slow and deliberate: 'Their common bond is their want of truth.' 'I was surprised beyond measure,' Mr. Gladstone would proceed, 'and startled at his judgment.'[193]
Most ordinary churchmen remained where they were. An erastian statesman of our own time, when alarmists ran to him with the news that a couple of noblemen and their wives had just gone over to Rome, replied with calm, 'Show me a couple of grocers and their wives who have gone over, then you will frighten me.' The great body of church people stood firm, and so did Pusey, Keble, Gladstone, and so too, for half a dozen years to come, did his two closest friends, Manning and Hope. The dominant note in Mr. Gladstone's mind was clear and it was constant. As he put it to Manning (August 1, 1845),—'That one should entertain love for the church of Rome in respect of her virtues and her glories, is of course right and obligatory; but one is equally bound under the circumstances of the English church in direct antagonism with Rome to keep clearly in view their very fearful opposites.'
Tidings of the great secession happened to find Mr. Gladstone in a rather singular atmosphere. In the course of 1842, to the keen distress of her relatives, his sister had joined the Roman church, and her somewhat peculiar nature led to difficulties that taxed patience and resource to the uttermost. She had feelings of warm attachment to her brother, and spoke strongly in that sense to Dr. Wiseman; and it was for the purpose of carrying out some plans of his father's for her advantage, that in the autumn of 1845 (September 24-November 18), Mr. Gladstone passed nearly a couple of months in Germany. The duty was heavy and dismal, but the journey brought him into a society that could not be without effect upon his impressionable mind. At Munich he laid the foundation of one of the most interesting and cherished friendships of his life. Hope-Scott had already made the acquaintance of Dr. Döllinger, and he now begged Mr. Gladstone on no account to fail to present himself to him, as well as to other learned and political men, 'good catholics and good men with no ordinary talent and information.' 'Nothing,' Mr. Gladstone once wrote in after years, 'ever so much made me anglican versus Roman as reading in Döllinger over forty years ago the history of the fourth century and Athanasius contra mundum.' Here is his story to his wife:—
Munich, Sept. 30, 1845.—Yesterday evening after dinner with two travelling companions, an Italian negoziante and a German, I must needs go and have a shilling's worth of the Augsburg Opera, where we heard Mozart (Don Juan) well played and very respectably sung. To-day I have spent my evening differently, in tea and infinite conversation with Dr. Döllinger, who is one of the first among the Roman catholic theologians of Germany, a remarkable and a very pleasing man. His manners have great simplicity and I am astonished at the way in which a busy student such as he is can receive an intruder. His appearance is, singular to say, just compounded of those of two men who are among the most striking in appearance of our clergy, Newman and Dr. Mill. He surprises me by the extent of his information and the way in which he knows the details of what takes place in England. Most of our conversation related to it. He seemed to me one of the most liberal and catholic in mind of all the persons of his communion whom I have known. To-morrow I am to have tea with him again, and there is to be a third, Dr. Görres, who is a man of eminence among them. Do not think he has designs upon me. Indeed he disarms my suspicions in that respect by what appears to me a great sincerity....
DR. DÖLLINGER
Oct. 2.—On Tuesday after post I began to look about me; and though I have not seen all the sights of Munich I have certainly seen a great deal that is interesting in the way of art, and having spent a good deal of time in Dr. Döllinger's company, last night till one o'clock, I have lost my heart to him. What I like perhaps most, or what crowns other causes of liking towards him, is that he, like Rio, seems to take hearty interest in the progress of religion in the church of England, apart from the (so to speak) party question between us, and to have a mind to appreciate good wherever he can find it. For instance, when in speaking of Wesley I said that his own views and intuitions were not heretical, and that if the ruling power in our church had had energy and a right mind to turn him to account, or if he had been in the church of Rome I was about to add, he would then have been a great saint, or something to that effect. But I hesitated, thinking it perhaps too strong, and even presumptuous, but he took me up and used the very words, declaring that to be his opinion. Again, speaking of Archbishop Leighton he expressed great admiration of his piety, and said it was so striking that he could not have been a real Calvinist. He is a great admirer of England and English character, and he does not at all slur over the mischief with which religion has to contend in Germany. Lastly, I may be wrong, but I am persuaded he in his mind abhors a great deal that is too frequently taught in the church of Rome. Last night he spoke with such a sentiment of the doctrine that was taught on the subject of indulgences which moved Luther to resist them; and he said he believed it was true that the preachers represented to the people that by money payments they could procure the release souls from purgatory. I told him that was exactly the doctrine I had heard preached in Messina, and he said a priest preaching so in Germany would be suspended by his bishop.
Last night he invited several of his friends whom I wanted to meet, to an entertainment which consisted first of weak tea, immediately followed by meat supper with beer and wine and sweets. For two hours was I there in the midst of five German professors, or four, and the editor of a paper, who held very interesting discussions; I could only follow them in part, and enter into them still less, as none of them (except Dr. D.) seemed to speak any tongue but their own with any freedom, but you would have been amused to see and hear them, and me in the midst. I never saw men who spoke together in a way to make one another inaudible as they did, always excepting Dr. Döllinger, who sat like Rogers, being as he is a much more refined man than the rest. But of the others I assure you always two, sometimes three, and once all four, were speaking at once, very loud, each not trying to force the attention of the others, but to be following the current of his own thoughts. One of them was Dr. Görres,[194] who in the time of Napoleon edited a journal that had a great effect in rousing Germany to arms. Unfortunately he spoke more thickly than any of them.[195]