Mr. Hawker, holding, as has been shown, that mediation was distinct from intercession, admitted that the dead in Christ could pray for their brethren struggling in the warfare of life, as really and more effectually than they could when living. If the souls under the altar seen by St. John could cry out for vengeance on those upon earth, surely they could also ask for mercy to be shown them.
He thought that all the baptised had six sponsors, the three on earth and three in heaven. Those in heaven were the guardian angel of the child, the saint whose name the child bore, and the saint to whom the church was dedicated in which the baptism took place; and that, as it was the duty of earthly sponsors to look after and pray for their godchildren, so it was the privilege and pleasure of their heavenly patrons to watch and intercede for their welfare.
He did not see why Christians should not ask the prayers of those in bliss, as well as the prayers of those in contest; and he contended that this was a very different matter from Romish invocation of saints, that invested the blessed ones with all but Divine attributes, and which he utterly repudiated. He quoted Latimer, Bishop Montague, Thorndike, Bishop Forbes, in the seventeenth century; and Dean Field, and Morton, Bishop of Durham, etc., as holding precisely the same view as himself.
Of course his doctrines to some seem to be perilously high. But in the English Church there are various shades of dogmatism, and the faintest tinge to one whose views are colourless is a great advance. The slug at the bottom of the cabbage-stalk thinks the slug an inch up the stalk very high, and the slug on the stalk regards the slug on the leaf as perilously advanced, whilst the slug on the leaf considers the snail on the leaf-end as occupying an equivocal position.
Catholicism and Popery have really nothing necessarily in common. The first is a system of belief founded on the Incarnation, the advantages of which it applies to man through a sacramental system; while the latter is a system of ecclesiastical organisation, which has only accidentally been linked with Catholicism, but which is equally at home in the steppes of Tartary with Buddhism.
Popery is a centralisation in matter of Church government: it is autocracy. A man may be theoretically an Ultramontane without being even a Christian, for he may believe in a despotism. And a man may be a Catholic in all his views, without having the smallest sympathy with Popery. As a matter of fact, the most advanced men in the English Church are radically liberal in their views of Church government; and if they strive with one hand to restore forgotten doctrines, and reinstate public worship, with the other they do battle for the introduction of Constitutionalism into the organisation of the Church of England, the element of all others most opposed to Popery.
It is quite possible to distinguish Catholicism from Romanism. Romanism has developed a system—a miserable system of indulgences and dispensations on one side, and restraints on the other—all issuing from the throne of St. Peter, as an impure flood from a corrupt fountain, and which has sadly injured Christian morals. A student of history cannot fail to notice that the Papacy has been a blight on Christianity, robbing it of its regenerating and reforming power, a parasitic growth draining it of its life-blood. He may love, with every fibre of his soul, the great sacramental system, the glorious Catholic verities, common to Constantinople and Rome, to Jerusalem and Moscow; but it is only to make him bitterly regret that they have been used as a vehicle for Romish cupidity, so as to make them odious in the eyes of Protestants. Holding Catholic doctrines, and enjoying Catholic practices, an English Churchman may be as far removed in temper of soul from Rome as any Irish Orangeman.
Mr. Hawker held the Blessed Virgin in great reverence. The ideal of womanhood touched his poetical instincts. Yet he checked his exuberant fancy, when dealing with this theme, by his conscience of what was right and fitting. He says, in a sermon on the text: “He stretched forth His hand towards His disciples, and said, Behold My mother and My brethren; for whosoever shall do the will of God, the same is My brother and sister and mother:” “His mother also, whom the angel had pronounced blessed among women, because on her knees the future Christ should lie, sought to usurp the influence of nature over the Son Divine. But to teach that although in the earth He was not all of the earth, and aware of the blind idolatry which future men would yield unto her who bare Him, and those to whom His Incarnation in their family gave superior name, Jesus publicly renounced all domestic claim to His particular regard. More than once did He remind Mary, His mother, that in His miraculous nature she did not partake; that in the functions of His Godhead she had nothing to do with him.”
The Rev. W. Valentine, rector of Whixley, perhaps the most intimate friend Mr. Hawker had, writes to me of him thus:—
During the first six months of my residence at Chapel House, Morwenstow, September, 1863, to April, 1864, I and he invariably spent our evenings together; and although for ten weeks of that period I took the Sunday morning and evening duties at Stratton Church, during the illness of the vicar, I always rode round by Morwenstow vicarage on Sundays to spend an hour with him, at his urgent request, though it took me some miles out of my way over Stowe Hill and by Combe. I thus got to know Mr. Hawker thoroughly, more intimately perhaps, as to character and social habits, than any other friend ever did; and on two important points no one will ever shake my testimony, viz. (a) his desire to be buried by me beneath the shadow of his own beloved church, “That grey fane, the beacon of the Eternal Land”; and (b) his constant allusions to the Roman Catholics as “Romish Dissenters”.