THE CATHOLIC WORLD,
VOL. I., NO. 3. JUNE, 1865.
THE WORKINGS OF THE HOLY SPIRIT IN THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND.
A LETTER TO THE REV. E. B. PUSEY, D.D. BY HENRY EDWARD MANNING, D.D.
MY DEAR FRIEND,—I do not know why twelve years of silence should forbid my calling you still by the name we used both to give and to accept of old. Aristotle says indeed—
but he did not know the basis and the affections of a Christian friendship such as that to which—though I acknowledge in myself no claim to it—you were so kind as to admit me. Silence and suspension of communications cannot prevail against the kindliness and confidence which springs from such years and such events as once united us. Contentions and variances might indeed more seriously try and strain such a friendship. But, though we have been both parted and opposed, there has been between us neither variance nor contention. We have both been in the field indeed where a warfare has been waging, but, happily, we have not met in contest. Sometimes we have been very near to each other, and have even felt the opposition of each other's will and hand; but I believe on neither side has there ever been a word or an act which has left a needless wound. That I should have grieved and displeased you is inevitable. The simple fact of my submitting to the Catholic Church must have done so, much more the duties which bind me as a pastor. If, in the discharge of that office, I have given you or any one either pain or wound by personal faults in the manner of its discharge, I should be open to just censure. If the displeasure arise only from the substance of my duties, "necessity is laid upon me," and you would be the last to blame me.
You will perhaps be surprised at my beginning thus to write to you. I will at once tell you why I do so. Yesterday I saw, for the first time, your pamphlet on the legal force of the Judgment of the Privy Council, and I found my name often in its pages. I have nothing to complain of in the way you use it. And I trust that in this reply you will feel that I have not forgotten your example. But your mention of me, and of old days, kindled in me a strong desire to pour out many things which have been for years rising in my mind. I have long wished for the occasion to do so, but I [{290}] have always felt that it is more fitting to take than to make such an occasion: and as your kindness has made it, I will take it.
But before I enter upon the subject of this letter I wish to say a few words of yourself, and of some others whom I am wont to class with you.
Among the many challenges to controversy and public disputation which it has been my fortune to receive, and, I may add, my happiness to refuse, in the last twelve or thirteen years, one was sent me last autumn at Bath. It was the only one to which, for a moment, I was tempted to write a reply. The challenger paid me compliments on my honesty in leaving the Church of England, denouncing those who, holding my principles, still eat its bread. I was almost induced to write a few words to say that my old friends and I are parted because we hold principles which are irreconcileable; that I once held what they hold now, and was then united with them; that they have never held what I hold now, and therefore we are separated; that they are as honest in the Church of England now as I was once; and that our separation was my own act in abandoning as untenable the Anglican Church and its rule of faith, Scripture and antiquity, which you and they hold still, and in submitting to the voice of the Catholic and Roman Church at this hour, which I believe to be the sole authoritative interpreter of Scripture and of antiquity. This principle no friend known to me in the Church of England has ever accepted. In all these years, both in England and in foreign countries, and on occasions both private and public, and with persons of every condition, I have borne this witness for you and for others.
I felt no little indignation at what seemed to me the insincerity of my correspondent, but on reflection I felt that silence was the best answer.