Letters from Spain

by Joseph Blanco White

Forth reaching to the fruit, she pluck’d, she ate,

could not have beaten more convulsively than mine, as I opened the forbidden book. Vague fears and doubts haunted my conscience for many days. But my friend, besides being a sound Catholic, was a devout man. He had lately taken priest’s orders, and was now not only my literary but my spiritual director. His abilities and his affection to me had obtained a most perfect command over my mind, and it was not long before I could match him in mental boldness, on points unconnected with articles of faith.

“This was, indeed, the happiest period of my life. The greatest part of my time, with the exception of that required for my daily attendance at the dull lectures of the divinity professors, was devoted to the French critics, André, Le Bossu, Batteux, Rollin, La Harpe, and many others of less note. The habit of analyzing language and ideas, which I acquired in the perusal of such works, soon led me to some of the French metaphysicians, especially Condillac.

“It was the favourite amusement of myself and those constant associates of my youth that formed the knot of friends, of whom the often mentioned Colegial Mayor was the centre and guide; to examine all our feelings, in order to resolve them into some general law, and trace them to their simple elements. This habit of analysis and generalization extended itself to the customs and habits of the country, and the daily incidents of life, till in the course of time it produced in me the deceitful, though not uncommon notion, that all knowledge is the result of developed principles, and gave me a distaste for every book that was not cast into a regular theory.

“While I was thus amused and deceived by the activity of my mind, without endeavouring to give it the weight and steadiness which depends upon the knowledge of facts; Catholicism, with its ten thousand rules and practices, was mechanically keeping up the ill-contrived structure of devotion, which it had raised more in my fancy than my heart. It had now to contend, however, with an enemy whom nothing but fixed hope can keep within bounds—but religion had left me no hope. Instead of engaging love on her side, she had forced him into an inseparable league with immorality. I will not describe the misery that embittered my youth, and destroyed the peace of my maturer years—the struggles, perhaps the crimes, certainly the remorse, that were in me the consequence of the barbarous laws of my country. They are too intimately blended with self, too intricately entwined with the feelings of others, to be left exposed for ever to the cold indifference of the multitude. Whatever on this point is connected with the general state of Spain, has already been touched upon. Mine, indeed, is the lot of thousands. Often did I recoil at the approach of the moment when I was to bind myself for ever to the clerical profession, and as often my heart failed me at the sight of a mother in tears! It was no worldly interest—it was the eternal welfare of my soul, which she believed to depend on my following the call of Heaven, that made the best of mothers a snare to her dearest child. The persuasions of my confessor, and, above all, the happiness I experienced in restoring cheerfulness to my family, deluded me into the hope of preserving the same feeling through life. A very short time, however, was sufficient to open my eyes. The inexorable law that bound me, was the bitterest foe to my virtue. Yet devotion had not lost her power over my fancy, and I broke loose, more than once, from her thraldom, and was as often reclaimed, before the awful period which was to raise me to the priesthood.

“If mental excitement, attended with the most thrilling and sublime sensations, the effect of deception, could be indulged without injury to our noblest faculties—if life could be made a long dream without the painful startings produced by the din and collision of the world—if the opium of delusion could be largely administered without a complete enervation of our rational energies—the lot of a man of feeling, brought up in the undisturbed belief of the Catholic doctrines, and raised to be a dispenser of its mysteries; would be enviable above all others. No abstract belief, if I am to trust my experience, can either soothe our fears or feed our hopes, independently of the imagination; and I am strongly inclined to assert, that no genuine persuasion exists upon unearthly subjects, without the co-operation of the imaginative faculty. Hence the powerful effects of the splendid and striking system of worship adopted by the Roman church. A foreigner may be inclined to laugh at the strange ceremonies performed in a Spanish cathedral, because these ceremonies are a conventional language to which he attaches no ideas. But he that from the cradle has been accustomed to kiss the hand of the priest, and receive his blessing—that has associated the name and attributes of the Deity with the consecrated bread—that has observed the awe with which it is handled—how none but annointed hands dare touch it—what clouds of incense, what brilliancy of gems surround it when exposed to the view—with what heartfelt anxiety the glare of lights, the sound of music, and the uninterrupted adoration of the priests in waiting, are made to evince the overpowering feeling of a God dwelling among men—such a man alone can conceive the state of a warm-hearted youth, who, for the first time approaches the altar, not as a mere attendant, but as the sole worker of the greatest of miracles.

“No language can do justice to my own feelings at the ceremony of ordination, the performance of the first mass, and during the interval which elapsed between this fever of enthusiasm and the cold scepticism that soon followed it. For some months previous to the awful ceremony I voluntarily secluded myself from the world, making religious reading and meditation the sole employment of my time. The Exercises of Saint Ignatius, which immediately preceded the day of ordination, filled my heart with what appeared to me a settled distaste for every wordly pleasure. When the consecrating rights had been performed—when my hands had been annointed—the sacred vesture, at first folded on my shoulders, let drop around me by the hands of the bishop—the sublime hymn to the all-creating Spirit uttered in solemn strains, and the power of restoring sinners to innocence, conferred upon me—when, at length, raised to the dignity of a ‘fellow-worker with God,’ the bishop addressed me, in the name of the Saviour: ‘Henceforth I call you not servant ... but I have called you friend;’ I truly felt as if, freed from the material part of my being, I belonged to a higher rank of existence. I had still a heart, it is true—a heart ready to burst at the sight of my parents, on their knees, while impressing the first kiss on my newly-consecrated hands; but it was dead to the charms of beauty. Among the friendly crowd that surrounded me for the same purpose, were those lips which a few months before I would have died to press; yet I could but just mark their superior softness. In vain did I exert myself to check exuberance of feelings at my first mass. My tears bedewed the corporals on which, with the eyes of faith, I beheld the disguised lover of mankind whom I had drawn from heaven to my hands. These are dreams, indeed,—the illusions of an over-heated fancy; but dreams they are which some of the noblest minds have dreamt through life without waking—dreams which, while passing vividly before the mental eye, must entirely wrap up the soul of every one who is neither more nor less than a man.

“To exercise the privileges of my office for the benefit of my fellow-creatures, was now my exclusive aim and purpose. I daily celebrated mass, with due preparation, preached often, and rejected none that applied to me for confession. The best ascetic writers of the Church of Rome were constantly in my hands. I made a study of the Fathers; but, though I had the Scriptures among my books, it was, according to custom, more for reference than perusal. These feelings, this state of mental abstraction, is by no means uncommon, for a time, among young priests whose hearts have not been withered by a course of premature profligacy. It would be absurd to expect it in such as embrace the clerical state as a trade, or are led to the church by ambition, and least of all among the few that would never bind themselves with the laws of celibacy, had they not previously freed their minds from all religious fears. Yet, among my numerous acquaintance in the Spanish clergy, I have never met with any one, possessed of bold talents, who has not, sooner or later, changed from the most sincere piety to a state of unbelief.[21] Were every individual who has undergone this internal transformation to describe the steps by which it was accomplished, I doubt not but the general outline would prove alike in all. I shall, however, conclude my narrative by faithfully relating the origin and progress of the total change that took place in my mind within little more than a year after taking priest’s orders.

“The ideas of consistency and perfection are strongly attached by every sincere Catholic to his system of faith. The church of Rome has played for many centuries a desperate though, till lately, a successful game. Having once proclaimed the necessity of an abstract creed for salvation, and made herself the infallible framer and expounder of that creed, she leaves her votaries no alternative but that of receiving or rejecting the whole of her doctrines. Luckily for her interests, men seldom go beyond a certain link in the chain of thought, or allow themselves to look into the sources of traditionary doctrines. Her theological system on the other hand, having so shaped its gradual growth as to fill up deficiencies as they were perceived, affords an ample range to every mind that, without venturing to examine the foundations, shall be contented with the symmetry, of the structure. I have often heard the question, how could such men as Bossuet and Fenelon adhere to the church of Rome and reject the Protestant faith? The answer appears to me obvious. Because, according to their fixed principles on this matter, they must have been either Catholics or Infidels. Laying it down as an axiom, that Christianity was chiefly intended to reveal a system of doctrines necessary for salvation, they naturally and consistently inferred the existence of an authorized judge upon questions of faith, otherwise the inevitable doubts arising from private judgment would defeat the object of revelation. Thus it is that Bossuet thought he had triumphantly confuted the Protestants by merely shewing that they could not agree in their Articles. Like Bossuet, most Catholic divines can see no medium between denying the infallible authority of the Church and rejecting revelation.