A Roman Catholic priest is bound by the rules of his Church, and in doubtful cases by the decisions of eminent canonists. The “Rituale Romanum” for the baptism of adults provides for the baptism of those who are unconscious, and even raving mad, on the near approach of death, if there have appeared in them, when conscious, a desire for baptism;[[46]] and the apparent satisfaction expressed by Mr. Hawker’s face on Saturday morning was sufficient to express acquiescence, passive if not active. How far he was aware of what was proposed, with his brain partly paralysed, is open to question. However, in the case of such a sickness, the patient is regarded in the same light as an infant, and passive acquiescence is admitted as sufficient to justify the administration of the sacrament.
Dens, a great authority, in his Theologia Moralis et Dogmatica, says that in the case of those who are out of their mind, with no prospect of a lucid interval—which would, of course, include the period of unconsciousness before death—baptism may be administered, if there be reason to conjecture that the patient desired it when of sound mind. And, as no proofs are laid down for testing the desire, the rule is a very elastic one.[[47]]
Billuart, however, asserts that, for the sacrament of penitence, full consciousness is necessary, as an act of penitence is an essential part of it; so that, though a man may be baptised who is insane or unconscious, such a man cannot be absolved. Marchantius, in his Candelabrum Mysticum, lays down that a man may be baptised when drunk, as well as when unconscious, or raving mad, if he had before shown a disposition to receive the sacrament.
Practically, no doubt, moved by desire to assure the salvation of the patient, Roman Catholic clergy will charitably trust to there being a disposition, on very slight grounds. The following instance will show this, communicated to me by a learned English divine: “Some time ago a lady wrote to me for counsel, on this ground. Her father-in-law, a very aged man, a Unitarian, had died whilst she was helping to nurse him, and had been unconscious for some days before his death. A very well-known and distinguished Roman Catholic wrote a letter to her, which she forwarded to me to read, blaming her very severely for not having seized the opportunity for baptising him, on the ground that he might have changed his views, and might have desired baptism, and that the sacrament, so administered, would have been his passport to heaven. She consulted me as to her blameworthiness, and as to whether she had, in fact, to reproach herself with a failure of duty. I replied in the negative, and stated that the purely mechanical view of the sacrament taken by her correspondent was, to say the least, highly untheological. I do not give the names, but you may cite me as having supplied you with this fact, which happened this year (1875).”
A case was brought before my notice also, of a man being baptised when dying in a condition of delirium tremens. To the English mind such a case is very shocking, but it is one provided for by Marchantius. In this case it was conjectured that the man had desired baptism into the Roman communion: he had previously been a member, though an unworthy one, of the English Church, and had shown no desire of secession.
I cannot dismiss this part of my subject without dealing briefly with an accusation made against Mr. Hawker by certain correspondents in the papers. They did not shrink from charging him with having been for many years a Roman Catholic at heart, only holding on his position of the Church of England for the sake of the loaves and fishes it offered him.
If I had considered there were grounds for this charge, his life would never have been written by me.
How far Mr. Hawker was a consenting party to the reception, how far he had gone towards contemplating such a change when incapacitated by paralysis from forming a decision, I cannot decide. The testimony is conflicting. I hesitate to believe that it was his intention to leave the Church of England before he died. He was swayed this way or that by those with whom he found himself. He was vehement in one direction one day, as impetuous in another direction on the day following.
No one who knew Mr. Hawker intimately, not one of his nearest relatives, his closest friends to whom he opened his heart, can believe that he was a conscious hypocrite. If there was one quality which was conspicuous in his character it was his openness. He could not act a part, he could not retain unspoken a thought that passed through his brain, even when common judgment would have deemed concealment of the thought advisable. He was transparent as a Dartmoor stream; and all his thoughts, beliefs and prejudices lay clearly seen in his mind, as the quartz and mica and hornblende particles on the brook’s white floor.
If there was one vice which, with his whole soul, he abhorred, it was treachery in its every form.