for it is but lately that he struck down and kicked off the field a swaggering bully from the opposite ranks hardly worthy of his steel. It is different now. He will begin in Homeric fashion with a complimentary harangue to the champion on the other side; but then will come the time for blows--blows of immense force, dealt out with a gentle affectionateness which enhances their effect tenfold. Dr. Newman begins by a generous tribute to Dr. Pusey himself, and to those whom he may be supposed to influence. No one can speak more strongly on the paramount rights of conscience, which is not to be stifled for the sake of making a path easy or removing a wearisome difficulty. Dr. Pusey is allowed to have every right to mention the conditions on which he proposes union, though Dr. Newman does not agree with them, and thinks that he would himself not hold to them; he has also the right to state what it is that he objects to, as requiring explanation, in the Catholic system. But then the tone changes, and business begins. Dr. Newman tells his old friend in the plainest way that "there is much both in the matter and manner of his volume calculated to wound those who love him well, but truth more;" and he points out the [{225}] glaring inconsistency of "professing to be composing an Irenicon while treating Catholics as foes;" and characterizes, in his happy way, the proceeding of Dr. Pusey as "discharging an olive branch as from a catapult." The hundred pages on the subject of the Blessed Virgin which are contained in the "Eirenicon" are so palpably "one-sided" that no one can venture to deny it. Few have characterized them in stronger terms than Dr. Newman. "What could an Exeter Hall orator, what could a Scotch commentator on the Apocalypse, do more for his own side of the controversy by the picture he drew of us?" Further on he pointedly reminds Dr. Pusey that he all the time knew better. After a proof from the fathers as to the doctrine in question, he says, "You know what the fathers assert; but if so, have you not, my dear friend, been unjust to yourself in your recent volume, and made far too much of the differences which exist between Anglicans and us on this particular point? It is the office of an Irenicon to smooth difficulties" (p. 83); and again, "As you revere the fathers, so you revere the Greek Church; and here again we have a witness in our behalf, of which you must be aware as fully as we are, and of which you must really mean to give us the benefit" (p. 95); and again, "Then I think you have not always made your quotations with that consideration and kindness which is your rule" (p. 111). The calm gentleness of the language will certainly not conceal from Dr. Pusey the gravity and severity of the rebuke thus administered. Moreover, Dr. Newman has complaints of his own to urge. With the most questionable taste Dr. Pusey has actually brought "to life one of" Dr. Newman's "own strong sayings, in 1841, about idolatry;" he has at least been understood to father upon him the well-known saying, that "the establishment is the great bulwark against infidelity in this land;" he has used some words from Dr. Newman's notes to St. Athanasius in a collection of passages from the fathers, the apparent purpose of which is to defend some Anglican doctrine about the sufficiency of Holy Scripture against a supposed Catholic contradiction. Dr. Newman also most clearly distinguishes his own intention in publishing Tract 90 from that of Dr. Pusey in its recent republication.
The introduction to the letter before us concludes with a passage of singular interest, in which Dr. Newman vindicates the right of a convert to speak freely about the system of the church to which he has submitted. We must confess that we hardly understood the passages in Dr. Pusey's work, to which reference is here made, as denying the right of free comment to a convert, in the sense in which Dr. Newman affirms it. Dr. Pusey has a standard and measure of his own (external to the Anglican establishment), by which he criticises, approves, or condemns this or that feature in it; and he distinctly contemplates at least the possibility of his being driven to quit it by its formal adoption of heresy. Certainly, to submit to the Catholic Church, and yet retain the right of measuring her in such a way by an external standard, would be a contradiction in terms. But this does not touch the right of a convert either to choose freely, according to his own tastes and leanings, among those varieties of devotion and practice which the church expressly leaves to his choice, or to express his opinion on such subjects (so that it be done with charity), or on any other matters which fall within the wide and recognized range of open questions. If Dr. Pusey meant to deny this right, he will be convinced by the frank use made of it by Dr. Newman in the passage before us. No one, certainly, will assail him as unorthodox; yet he takes his stand openly on one particular side with regard to some of the moot questions of the day, as to which certainly a large [{226}] number of English Catholics will be as ready to say that they do not altogether agree with him as to acknowledge that he has a perfect right to the opinions which he expresses. Perhaps we should rather say that they will profess their admiration for the authors whom he so far at least disavows as to question their right to be treated in controversy as the legitimate and exclusive representatives of English Catholicism; for we need not understand Dr. Newman's words about the late Father Faber and the editor of the "Dublin Review" as meaning more than this; and his point, as against Dr. Pusey, is fully secured by the indisputable fact that those distinguished men have never considered themselves, or let others consider them, as such representatives.
The greater part, however, of Dr. Newman's present letter is given to an exquisite defence of Catholic doctrine and devotion as regards our Blessed Lady. Its power and beauty are so great as to fill us with inexpressible sadness at the thought that Dr. Newman has written comparatively so little on similar subjects since he has been a Catholic. This short and very condensed sketch on one particular point has given him an opportunity of exercising, on however limited a scale, those powers as to which he is simply unrivalled. There is the keen penetration of the sense of Scripture, and of the relation between different and distinct parts of the Holy Volume. After putting forward the patristic view of our Blessed Lady as the second Eve, Dr. Newman has occasion to defend that interpretation of the vision of the woman in the Apocalypse which understands it of her. This has given him occasion to explain how it is that this interpretation may be the true one, although there is no great amount of positive testimony for it in the fathers, and to refute from the general principles of scriptural language that which looks upon the image as simply a personification of the church. This passage is a real and great gain in scriptural interpretation. Then, again, here is the masterly and discriminating erudition, not dealing with the fathers as an ill-arranged and incoherent mass of authorities, but giving to each witness his due place and weight, pointing out what parts of the church and what apostolical tradition he represents, and blending the different sufferages into one harmonious statement. History is brought in to trace the gradual development of devotion on points as to which doctrine, on the other hand, was always uniform; and to give a natural and simple explanation of the chronological order in which the heart, as it were, of the church seems to have mastered the different portions of the wonderful deposit which the apostles sowed in her mind. The effect of Dr. Newman's explanation of the comparatively later growth of certain devotions, which in themselves might have been expected to precede others, is not only to remove the apparent difficulty, but to make every other view appear more difficult than that which he gives. Equally beautiful and convincing is his explanation in the appendix of the historical account which may be given of the strange sayings of certain fathers as to our Blessed Lady having possibly fallen into faults of infirmity. Some most accurate and delicate tests for the discernment of a real tradition are here given, as well as reasons for the apparent absence of such a tradition in a special case. Dr. Newman is one of the few writers who show us, first, that they thoroughly understand a difficulty or an objection; then, that they can make it even stronger; and then, that they can not only say something against it, or crush it, but even unravel it, and show that it was to be expected. In every one of these respects Dr. Pusey is his exact contrary. Then again, Dr. Newman brings together a series of passages from the fathers of the "undivided church"--to use the now term invented, we believe, by Mr. Keble--of which, of course, [{227}] Dr. Pusey was aware, but of which he has said nothing in his "Eirenicon." These testify amply not only to the doctrine but to the devotion of the fourth and fifth centuries as to our Blessed Lady. He is, of course, sparing of quotations in a work like the present; but he crowns his argument from authority by a number of passages not from popular books of devotion among the Greeks, but from their liturgies and authoritative formularies--on which Dr. Pusey would have founded a strong argument to the effect that our Lady is elevated to the place of our Lord, if he had been able to find them in circulation among Catholics. In fact, a number of formal Greek devotions end with the words, "through the Theotocos," instead of "per Dominum nostrum Jesum Christum." The contrast between the cogency and appositeness of every word of Dr. Newman's few quotations (almost universally given at length), and the utter illusiveness and bewildering misapplication of the clouds upon clouds of citations paraded in Dr. Pusey's volume, is wonderfully striking. Nor, again, is the difference less great between the two when a personal remark has to be made. Dr. Newman has no hard words for any one. He does not shrink from pointing out faults, as we have already said. He tells Dr. Pusey plainly enough that he does not think that he even understands what the immaculate conception means; and when he speaks of Anglicans being ignorant of the Catholic doctrine of original sin, he seems carefully to omit exempting Dr. Pusey from the general statement. He says again pointedly, "He who charges us with making Mary a divinity is thereby denying the divinity of Jesus. Such a man does not know what divinity is." He complains of the unfairness--of which, we are sorry to say, Dr. Pusey seems habitually guilty--of taking a strong and apparently objectionable passage from an author who, either in the immediate context or elsewhere, has qualified it by other statements, which any one but a partizan writer would feel bound to take into consideration and to place by its side, without giving the reader any intimation that such qualifications exist. "When, then, my dear Pusey, you read anything extravagant in praise of our Lady, is it not charitable to ask, even while you condemn it in itself, Did the author write nothing else?" (p. 101). He refuses to receive Dr. Pusey's collection of strong passages as a fair representation of the minds of the authors from whom they are quoted. He speaks of their "literal and absolute sense, as any Protestant would naturally take them, and as the writers doubtless did not use them" (p. 118). And again: "I know nothing of the originals, and cannot believe that they have meant what you say" (p. 120). But with all this strong and decisive language, which we may be sure is the very gentlest that he can use, and implies an estimate of the "Eirenicon" by no means in accordance with that of its admirers, he is so uniformly calm and affectionate in manner that we cannot but hope that Dr. Pusey and others who think with him will be won over to think more seriously of the extreme gravity of their step in casting forth upon the world of English readers so extremely intemperate an accusation against the Catholic Church as that which they have put in circulation. Nor can we abandon the hope that they will listen to Dr. Newman's clear and unanswerable statement of the doctrine of the fathers as to our Blessed Lady, and see how truly he has pointed to the flaws and defects in their own thoughts with regard to her. They will certainly be hardly able to deny that they have misunderstood not only the immaculate conception, against which they have talked so loudly, but even, it may be, original sin itself; nor do we think that it can be questioned that he has put his finger upon the fundamental error--not to say heresy---to which all their low conceptions as to the Blessed Mother of God [{228}] are to be assigned as their ultimate cause. Dr. Pusey, as Dr. Newman remarks, seems to have no idea that our Blessed Lady had any other part or position in the incarnation than as its physical instrument--much the same part, as it were, that Juda or David may have had. The fathers, on the contrary, from the very first, speak of her "as an intelligent, responsible cause of our Lord's taking flesh;" "her faith and obedience being accessories to the incarnation, and gaining it as her reward" (p. 38). Dr. Newman insists on this vital and all-important difference more than once, and seems to consider it the explanation of the strange blindness of these students of antiquity. If they can once gain a new and more Catholic idea as to that which is the foundation alike of our Blessed Lady's greatness and the devotion of the church to her--and certainly they must be very blind or very obstinate not to see the reasons for such an idea in Dr. Newman's pages--then the "Eirenicon" will have produced incidentally a far greater blessing to themselves and others than if its strange interpretation of the Anglican Articles had been allowed as legitimate in England, and there had been half a score of Du Pins in France ready to enter into negotiations with the Archbishop of Canterbury on the basis of its propositions. These good men have in fact been living and teaching and studying the fathers with one of the great seminal facts, so to speak, of Christianity absent from their minds or entirely undeveloped in them. "It was the creation of a new idea and a new sympathy, a new faith and worship, when the holy apostles announced that God had become incarnate; we a supreme love and devotion to him became possible, which seemed hopeless before that revelation. But beside this, a second range of thoughts was opened on mankind, unknown before, and unlike any other, as soon as it was understood that that incarnate God had a mother. The second idea is perfectly distinct from the former--the one does not interfere with the other." We conceive that these words will fall strangely on the ears of Dr. Pusey, though they might not perhaps do so on those of the author of the "Christian Year" and the "Lyra Innocentium;" and if they do so, after the incontestable proof which Dr. Newman has adduced from the early fathers of their view of the position of our Blessed Lady in the economy of the incarnation, it will only remain for Dr. Pusey either to confute that proof or to acknowledge that he has been reasoning on that great mystery without the guidance of the church, deaf to the teaching of the fathers, and that he has incurred the usual fate of men who so reason. May the prayers of the Blessed Mother, against whose honor he has raised his voice so harshly, save him from closing his eyes still more firmly!
It appears to be one of the characteristics of Dr. Newman to look at particular questions and phases of opinion with regard to a wider and more comprehensive range of thought than other men. Possibly his retired position favors this habit of mind; but it is, of course, far more naturally to be attributed to a loftier intellectual stature and a wider knowledge of history than others possess. Such a man is eminently fitted for a controversy like the present, in which the word peace has been blurted forth in so uncouth a manner, while yet it is not the less the expression of the real and powerful longings of a thousand hearts. It is a most unpromising overture, but it is an overture nevertheless. Dr. Newman is not only fitted to deal with it on account of his tender and large sympathies, and of the affectionate solicitude with which he has always treated his former friends; he is able also not indeed to go to the very verge of Catholic doctrine for their sakes, or to encourage delusive hopes of a compromise which would patch up rather than unite, but to speak with calm [{229}] accuracy, looking on his own times as a philosophical historian of the church may look at them by-and-bye, and point out what may be accidental, transient, local, in the features of the religion of the present day. No one can be less inclined to exaggerate, for instance, the differences between English and Italian devotion; and we have seldom felt ourselves in a more Italian atmosphere, out of Italy, than in the oratory at Edgbaston. But he is not afraid of giving full weight to national differences of character, nor of avowing himself a hearty Englishman. In the same way, without going into the question of fact as to alleged extravagances--which, after all, is of no real cogency in the argument--he is ready to admit that there may be such, and puts forward a simple common-sense argument to show that such may be expected in the living working of energetic ideas generally, and especially of such ideas in matters of religion, which acts on the affections. This is the true philosophical answer; and it by no means excludes other answers that might be given to particular charges, which might be proved to be false in fact, or to apply to matters so grave as that the church would never be allowed to permit the alleged corruption.
Dr. Newman never shrinks from allowing the full force of any principle that he has laid down. Thus, he has distinguished between faith as to our Blessed Lady's position in the kingdom of her Son and the devotion to her founded upon that faith. The faith may have been from the beginning, and actually was so, as he proves from the early fathers; but the full devotion may not all at once have been developed; or again, it may have been checked in particular countries at a particular time, and so make no show in the writings of some fathers of that age, in consequence of the baneful influence of a prevalent heresy which cut at the faith itself. This, which is really almost self-evident, enables him not only to explain the passages in St. Chrysostom and St. Basil which are sometimes objected to, but to grant that there are no certain traces of devotion, strictly so called, to our Blessed Lady in the writings of others beside these. There need not be, according to his principles. It must be remembered that all these statements admit of great development and explanation; they are germs of thought, and are only put forward most concisely in Dr. Newman's present letter. It is more to our present purpose to observe how ready he is to look through the cloud of charges, great and small, which Dr. Pusey has blown in the face of Catholics, and to discern in the book of his old friend a new and important turning-point in the Anglican controversy. He thinks that the indignation of Catholics has led them in consequence to misconceive Dr. Pusey, so as not, it would seem, to give him credit for really pacific intentions. We think that no one has denied--what, indeed, it does not become a critic to question--the reality of a purpose distinctly avowed; but at the same time we must repeat that it has never been denied by Dr. Pusey, nor do we think it ever can be denied, that the book was written with a clear and distinct intention so to represent Catholicism as to deter people from submitting to it except on certain terms pointed out by the author. Possibly Dr. Newman only means that Catholics have been more alienated by Dr. Pusey's most unhandsome attack than attracted by his professions of friendship; and certainly never was a friendly expostulation, never was an earnest request for explanation on certain points which appear to be difficulties in the way of a much-desired union, proposed in a way less calculated to conciliate. Dr. Newman, therefore, neither wonders nor complains at the strong feeling with which the "Eirenicon" has been received; but he looks beyond the present moment, and, recalling the former phases of opinion as to [{230}] Catholicism which have prevailed among Anglicans, he sees in Dr. Pusey's proceeding nothing less than the putting "the whole argument between you and us on a new footing"--a footing which may really and profitably be used by those who desire peace. No English Catholic but will most heartily rejoice in this statement of Dr. Newman; and surely one of our first feelings must be that of thankfulness that he is among us at a time like this, and that circumstances will give him a more patient hearing and a more ready acceptance, on the part of those whose souls may be staked on the issue of this controversy, than he might otherwise meet with. From him, at least, Anglicans will hear no extreme or novel doctrine; him, at least, they will never accuse of not loving everything that is English. He, if any one, may convince them that no true child of the "undivided church" would be found at the present day outside the communion of the Holy See; that the church is the same now as she ever was, and as she ever will be; that she can never compromise with her enemies, though she yearns with unutterable love to take back every wanderer to her heart.
Experience has happily shown that the great Shepherd of souls leads men on in a way they neither discern nor desire, when they have once set themselves to wish and pray for greater light; and that prophecies of ill and suspicions of sinister purposes, which have not lacked ample foundation, have yet been often defeated in the indulgent dispensations of grace. Nor, indeed, at the present time, are all the signs of the sky evil. In its most disagreeable and inexcusable features the "Eirenicon" is not, we are convinced, a fair representation of the mind of a great number who might commonly be supposed to sympathize with its author. He has put himself for the moment at their head; and they are, of course, slow to repudiate his assistance; but we do not believe that the earnest men who publish so many Catholic devotions, and who, however mistakenly, attempt to reproduce in their own churches the external honors paid by Catholics to him whom they also think that they have with them, would willingly make themselves responsible for the hundred pages with which Dr. Newman's present pamphlet is engaged. The advance toward Catholicism among the Anglicans has, in fact, left Dr. Pusey some way behind other and younger men. Even as to himself, he is hardly further away than others have been who are now within the church.
Only it must not be forgotten that the largest and most charitable thoughts as to the meaning and intentions of individuals, and the most hopeful anticipations as to the ultimate result of their movements, do not exhaust the duties imposed upon Catholic writers at the present moment. Let us see ever so much of good in demonstrations such as this, and believe that there is a still greater amount of good which we do not see. We may forbear to press men harshly, to point out baldly the inconsistencies of their position; we may put up with the rudeness of the language in which they propose peace. They may be haughty and ungenerous now; but this is not much to bear for the sake of that unity which those who know it love better than those who are strangers to it. Let us be ready, as far as persons are concerned, to be tender in exposing faults even wanton, and misconceptions which, as we think, common industry and fairness might have obviated. For Dr. Pusey himself we can wish no severer punishment than that he should be able some day to look upon his own work with the eyes of a Catholic. He has himself shown us, by the use which he has made of old expressions of Dr. Newman and others, who have long since repudiated them, that the retraction of charges against the Catholic Church by their authors does not prevent [{231}] others from repeating them. We are sorry to say--what we still believe will be acknowledged as true by all who have been at the pains--pains not taken by some who have written on this subject--of not merely considering the animus and motives of Dr. Pusey, but of examining his book in detail, and taking its measure as a work of erudition and controversy--that, unattractive in style, rambling, incoherent, vague, and intentionally "loose" as it is, it has one great quality, however unintentional--that of being a perfect storehouse of misrepresentation. We speak simply as critics, and we disclaim all attempts to account for the phenomenon. It contains an almost unparalleled number of misstatements of every kind and degree. Its author's reputation will give weight and currency to these. Though never perhaps likely to be a popular book, it will still take its place in Protestant libraries, and will be much used in future controversies. No one can tell how often we shall have certain extraordinary statements about the sanctification of the Blessed Virgin, her active and passive conception, the protest of the Greek Church against the doctrine, Bellarmine's assertion about general councils, transubstantiation, extreme unction, and the like, brought up against us; and the erroneous conclusions founded upon them cannot be neglected by the defenders of Catholic truth. It is, therefore, essential not that Dr. Pusey should be attacked in an unkindly spirit, but that his book should be handled critically, and, as far as may be, whatever it contains of misstatement, misquotation, unfair insinuation and conclusion catalogued and exposed. It must be remembered that there is a great demand for the materials of anti-Catholic controversy. Dr. Pusey does not subscribe to the societies which mostly hold their meetings in Exeter Hall in the month of May; but he might well be made a life-governor of all of them in consideration of this book. It will be used by the zealots who try to win the poor peasants of Connaught to apostasy by means of food and clothing, and by the more decorous "Anglo-Continentals," who are just now rubbing their hands at the prospects of infidelity in Italy. Alas! it not only teems with snares for the learned and conscientious, but it is full of small insinuations for the ignobler herd of paid agents and lecturers--"what the poorer people believe in Rome," what Catholic churches are called in south India, what Cardinal Wiseman is reported to have said of Archbishop Affré, "who died in recovering his people at the barricades." These things may be passed by as simply faults of taste; but the pretensions of the book to learning, and its historical and doctrinal statements, cannot be admitted without sifting. Dr. Pusey has imposed an unwelcome task on Catholic critics. At the very time that they would be conciliating his followers, they are forced to attack him. It has seemed to us indeed that ordinary care in examining authorities, an attention to the common-sense rule that strangers cannot understand a system from without, the use of the many means at his disposal of ascertaining the Catholic meaning of Catholic language, more self-restraint in assertion, in urging arguments that appeared telling and conclusions that were welcome to himself, and somewhat less of confidence in his own attainments as a theologian, would have spared those who wish him well this painful undertaking at a time when they would gladly say no word that may sound harsh to his ears. But, after all, truth is more precious than peace, and peace can only be had through the truth; and we can cordially return to Dr. Pusey the assurance which he himself has proffered to Catholics, that those engaged in the ungrateful task of subjecting his volume to the analysis of criticism have no intention whatever of wounding his feelings.