The first difficulty he had to master was the received axiom that the religious state is more perfect than the secular. He could not see how a vow, which apparently takes away a man's liberty, could increase the merit of actions done under it. As the vow of obedience is the principal one in religion, so much so that in some orders subjects are professed by promising obedience according to the rule, its explanation would remove the difficulty. Two things principally constitute the superiority of vowed actions. One, that they must be of a better good; the second, that the will is confirmed in the doing of them. A vow must be of a good better than another good—such as celibacy better than marriage, poverty better than riches, obedience to proper authority better than absolute liberty. The state of religion which takes these three walks of life as essential to its constitution is insomuch better than any other state. But the question comes, why not observe poverty, chastity, and obedience, without vowing them? "Would it not be better that the practice of these virtues should be spontaneous, than that a person should put himself under the moral necessity of not deviating from it? No; because it is a weak will which reserves to itself the right of refusing to persevere in a sacrifice. If a man intends to observe chastity, but reserves to himself the right to marry whenever he pleases, he signifies by his state of mind that he may some day repent of his choice, and makes provision for that defalcation. That is a want of generosity, it is a safety valve by which trusting to God's grace escapes, and perfection can never be attained while one has the least notion of the possibility of doing less for God than he does. "He that puts his hand to the plough and turns back is not worthy." By a vow, a person not only resolves to do for the present what is perfect, but to continue doing it for life, and as the person knows right well that his natural strength will not carry him through, he trusts the issue to God's goodness. This fixing of the will, and narrowing, as far as possible, the range of our liberty, is an assimilation of the present state to the state of the blessed. They do the will of God and cannot help doing it, they have no liberty of sinning, and the vow of obedience by which a man binds himself to do God's will, manifested to him through his superiors or his rule, takes away from him the least rational inclination for liberty to sin. Not only that, but he makes it a sin to recede from God one step, and he sacrifices to his Creator a portion of the liberty that is granted to us all. It is a sin for a man who has a vow of chastity to marry, though naturally he was perfectly free to do so. He sacrificed that freedom to God, and lest he might be inclined to backslide at any future day he put the barrier of this moral obligation behind him. The person under vow is God's peculiar property; all his actions are in a certain sense sacred, and of double merit in His sight. Be it remembered that a religious makes this sacrifice freely, and it is in this free dedication to God's service perpetually of body, soul, and possessions, without reserving the right to claim back anything for self, that the special excellence of the religious state consists.
There are several other less cogent arguments in favour of the religious state, as that without it we should not have the Evangelical virtues practised which form the principal part of the note of holiness in the Church. That it is easier to practice great virtue in a monastery than in the world, and that more religious have been canonized than seculars since the time of the martyrs.
Father Spencer came to understand that the religious state is more perfect than the secular, though he knew that many seculars are far more perfect than some religious, but one point he could never get over, and that was since vows undoubtedly do raise the merit of one's actions, why cannot people take and observe vows without shutting themselves up within the walls of a convent? He consulted many grave theologians, doctors, and even cardinals, for the solution of this problem. He was told, to be sure, that it was quite possible in the abstract to have a people observing vows, but that in practice it proved to be chimerical and Utopian. What is possible can be done, was his maxim, and he resolved to begin with himself. He was told by Dr. Wiseman and Cardinal Weld that he seemed to have a religious vocation. He wrote accordingly to his diocesan, Dr. Walsh, who dissuaded him from becoming a religious by saying that, though it was a better state, a secular priest could be more useful in England. Others differed from this opinion, but F. Spencer heard in it the voice of his Superior, and resolved to obey it for the present. This settled matters for the time, but his view could never be got out of his head. He gets thoroughly engrossed now with his approaching ordination. It grieves him to see souls lost in heresy and sin in a way that few grieve; for, the concern he felt for the spiritual destitution of his country began to tell upon his health. It is feared he will die; he begins to spit blood, and several consumptive symptoms alarm his physicians. He is removed to Fiumicino, and writes a long letter from his sick bed there to Mr. Phillipps. In this letter he hopes his friend may be caught into the Church like his patron, St. Ambrose. Here we have the first evidence of his getting thoroughly into a Catholic way of thinking. Nothing strikes a cold, careful, Catholic, who has been brought up in a Protestant atmosphere, so much as the wonderful familiarity of Spanish and Italian boys with the lives of the Saints. They quote a Saint for everything, and they can tell you directly how St. Peter of Alcantara would season his dinner, or how St. Rose of Lima would make use of ornaments. Father Spencer has paragraphs in every letter at this time full of hints taken from Saints' lives, showing that he evidently gave a great portion of his time to learn ascetic theology in these remarkable volumes. He is wishing also that Mr. Digby should become a priest, but in both cases he was doomed to be disappointed so far, though both his friends graced, by their virtues, the state of life in which they remained. He was ordained Deacon on the 17th December, Quater tense, 1831; and on the 26th of May, 1832, two years and four months after his reception into the Church, he was ordained Priest by Cardinal Zurla. He thus writes to Mr. Phillipps on the event: "I made my arrangements directly (on being called off suddenly to England) for ordination to the priesthood on St. Philip Neri's Day, and saying my first mass on the day following, which was Sunday. How will you sympathise with my joy when, in the middle of my retreat, Dr. Wiseman told me, what none of us had observed at first, that the 26th May was not only St. Philip's feast at Rome, but in England that of St. Augustine, our Apostle, and that he should ask Cardinal Zurla to ordain me in St. Gregory's Church, which his Eminence did. It was at St. Gregory's only that we learned from the monks that the next day was the deposition of Venerable Bede."
The coincidences are really remarkable with regard to his destination for the English mission. He was born on the feast of the Apostle St. Thomas; he arrived in Rome, as a Catholic, on the feast of St. Gregory; he was ordained on the feast of St. Augustine of Canterbury; he said his first mass of St. Bede, by special leave from the Pope, on that Saint's day. He was ordained by a Cardinal of the Camaldolese branch of the Benedictine Order, to which St. Augustine belonged; and he got the blessing and commission of Pope Gregory XVI., a member of the same order; and under all these auspices set out directly for England.
During his stay in Rome he made the acquaintance of our Father Dominic. This was a great happiness to him. Father Dominic was on fire for the conversion of England, and Father Spencer echoed back, with additions, every sentiment of his zealous soul. They spoke together, they wrote to each other, they got devout people to pray, and prayed themselves every day, for the conversion of England. We cannot know how far prayers go, we only know that the continual prayer of the just man availeth much; and therefore, it might not seem safe reasoning, to attribute effects that can be traced to other causes to the prayers of some devout servants of God. Without attempting to assign causes, we cannot help remarking the fact that these two holy souls began to pray, and enlist others in praying, for England's conversion in 1832, and that the first number of the "Tracts for the Times" appeared before the end of 1833. Neither of them had anything to do with the Tracts, if we except a few letters from Father Dominic in a Belgian newspaper, as writers or suggestors of matter; but both took a deep interest in them, and fed their hopes, as each appeared more Catholic than the one before. He spends a week with Father Dominic in Lucca, on his way to England, and in Geneva happened one of those interesting events with which his life was chequered. He thus tells it in a letter to the Catholic Standard in 1853:—
"I went one day, at Genoa (see Chap. IX., Bk. i.), in 1820, to see the great relics in the treasury of the Cathedral. Relics, indeed, were little to me; but to get at these, three keys from various first-rate dignitaries, ecclesiastical and civil, were necessary. This was enough to make a young English sight-seer determined to get at them. A young priest, the sacristan of the Cathedral, received me and the party I had made up to accompany me, and showed us the precious treasures. I did nothing but despise; and yet why should I, or other Protestants, look on it as a kind of impossibility that any relic can be genuine? However, so I did; and I let the sacristan plainly know it. Yet he was not vexed. Nay, he treated me with great affection, and said, among other things, 'The English are a worthy, good people, brava nazione; if only it had not been for that moment, that unhappy moment!' 'What moment do you mean?' said I. 'Ah! surely,' he replied, 'when Henry VIII. resolved on revolting against the Church.' I did not answer, but I thought within myself, 'Poor man, what ignorance! what infatuation! And what were my thoughts of that moment of which he spoke? My thoughts on this head had been formed in my young days, and, oh! how deep are first young thoughts allowed to take firm root undisturbed! When I was a child"——
Here he relates the discourse of his sisters' governess about the English Reformation, given in a former chapter. "When, accordingly, the Genoese priest thus spoke I thought, Poor, blind man! little he knows what England gained at that same moment for which he pities it. ... I cannot but add to this last circumstance, that twelve years later I was returning from Rome—a priest! I came by sea. Stopping one day in the harbour of Genoa, I went on shore to say mass at the Cathedral, and found the same priest still at the head of the sacristy—the same benign features I saw, but somewhat marked with age. I asked him did he remember and recognise the young English disputer? O altitudo! .... And is it I whom they would expect to give up my poor countrymen for hopeless? No! leave this to others, who have not tasted like me the fruits of the tender mercies of God."
As soon as he arrived in England, he went to see his family, who were in Ryde for the summer, according to their custom. He was cordially welcomed; but it must seem a cold thing for a newly-ordained priest to come to a home where not a brother or sister would kneel to get his blessing, nor father nor mother be in ecstacy of joy at hearing him say mass for the first time. This was in July, 1832. Early in August he met several priests at Sir Edward Doughty's, Upton House, Dorsetshire; and Lady Doughty says:—"Mr. Spencer greatly edified all who then met him by his humility, fervour, and earnest desire for the conversion of England. On the 11th of August he left Upton, accompanied by Dr. Logan, for Prior Park. On that morning, as the coach from Poole passed at an early hour, Mr. Spencer engaged one of the men servants to serve his mass at five o'clock. The servant went to call him soon after four, but finding the room apparently undisturbed, he proceeded to the little domestic chapel, and there he found Mr. Spencer prostrate before the altar in fervent prayer, and he then rose and said mass; the servant's conviction being, that he had been there in prayer all night."
An incident occurred, as Father Spencer was passing through Bordeaux on his way to England, which deserves especial mention, if only to recall the droll pleasure he used to experience himself, and create in others, while relating it. He met there a great, big, fat convert, who had just made his abjuration and been baptised. Father Spencer questioned him about his first communion, and the trouble of preparing himself "in his then state of body" seemed an awful exertion. However, after a great deal of what the gentleman termed "painful goading," Father Spencer succeeded in bringing him to the altar. The fat gentleman sat him down afterwards to melt in the shade of a midsummer June day in Bordeaux, grumbling yet delighted at the exertion he had made. The Bishop of Bordeaux was giving confirmation in some of the churches in the town, and Father Spencer thought he should not lose the opportunity of getting his fat friend to the sacrament. He knew how hateful exertion of any kind was to the neophyte, who, though he believed all the Catholic doctrines in a kind of a heap, was not over-inclined for works of supererogation. He resolved to do what he could. He went to him, and boldly told him that he ought to prepare himself for confirmation. "What!" exclaimed the gentleman, making an effort to yawn, "have I not done yet? Is there more to be got through before I am a perfect Catholic? Oh, dear!" And he moved himself. He was brought through, however, to the no small inconvenience of himself and others, and many was the moral Father Ignatius pointed afterwards with this first essay of his in missionary work.