8. After such explanations, and with such authorities, to clear my path, I put away from me, as you would wish, without any hesitation, as matters in which my heart and reason have no part (when taken in their literal and absolute sense, as any Protestant would naturally take them, and as the writers doubtless did not use them), such sentences, and phrases, as these: that the mercy of Mary is infinite; that God has resigned into her hands his omnipotence; that (unconditionally) it is safer to seek her than her Son; that the Blessed Virgin is superior to God; that he is (simply) subject to her command; that our Lord is now of the same disposition as his Father toward sinners, viz., a disposition to reject them, while Mary takes his place as an advocate with Father and Son; that the saints are more ready to intercede with Jesus than Jesus with the Father; that Mary is the only refuge of those with whom God is angry; that Mary alone can obtain a Protestant's conversion; that it would have sufficed for the salvation of men if our Lord had died not to obey his Father, but to defer to the decree of his mother; that she rivals our Lord in being God's daughter, not by adoption, but by a kind of nature; that Christ fulfilled the office of Saviour by imitating her virtues; that, as the incarnate God bore the image of his Father, so he bore the image of his mother; that redemption derived from Christ indeed its sufficiency, but from Mary its beauty and loveliness; that us we are clothed with the merits of Christ, so we are clothed with [{90}] the merits of Mary; that, as he is priest, in like manner is she priestess; that his body and blood in the eucharist are truly hers and appertain to her; that as he is present and received therein, so is she present and received therein; that priests are ministers, as of Christ, so of Mary; that elect souls are born of God and Mary; that the Holy Ghost brings into fruitfulness his action by her, producing in her and by her Jesus Christ in his members; that the kingdom of God in our souls, as our Lord speaks, is really the kingdom of Mary in the soul--and she and the Holy Ghost produce in the soul extraordinary things--and when the Holy Ghost finds Mary in a soul he flies there.
Sentiments such as these I never knew of till I read your book, nor, as I think, do the vast minority of English Catholics know them. They seem to me like a bad dream. I could not have conceived them to be said. I know not to what authority to go for them, to Scripture, or to the fathers, or to the decrees of councils, or to the consent of schools, or to the tradition of the faithful, or to the Holy See, or to reason. They defy all the loci theologici. There is nothing of them in the Missal, in the Roman Catechism, in the Roman '"Raccolta," in the "Imitation of Christ," in Gother, Challoner, Milner, or Wiseman, as far as I am aware. They do but scare and confuse me. I should not be holier, more spiritual, more sure of perseverance, if I twisted my moral being into the reception of them; I should but be guilty of fulsome, frigid flattery toward the most upright and noble of God's creatures if I professed them, and of stupid flattery too; for it would be like the compliment of painting up a young and beautiful princess with the brow of a Plato and the muscle of an Achilles. And I should expect her to tell one of her people in waiting to turn me off her service without warning. Whether thus to feel be the scandalum parvulorum in my case, or the scandalum Pharisaeorum, I leave others to decide; but I will say plainly that I had rather believe (which is impossible) that there is no God at all, than that Mary is greater than God. I will have nothing to do with statements which can only be explained by being explained away. I do not, however, speak of these statements as they are found in their authors, for I know nothing of the originals, and cannot believe that they have meant what you say; but I take them as they lie in your pages. Were any of them the sayings of saints in ecstasy, I should know they had a good meaning; still, I should not repeat them myself; but I am looking at them not as spoken by the tongues of angels, but according to that literal sense which they bear in the mouths of English men and English women. And, as spoken by man to man, in England, in the nineteenth century, I consider them calculated to prejudice inquirers, to frighten the unlearned, to unsettle consciences, to provoke blasphemy, and to work the loss of souls.
9. And now, after having said so much as this, bear with me, my dear friend, if I end with an expostulation. Have you not been touching us on a very tender point in a very rude way? Is not the effect of what you have said to expose her to scorn and obloquy who is dearer to us than any other creature? Have you even hinted that our love for her is anything else than an abuse? Have you thrown her one kind word yourself all through your book? I trust so, but I have not lighted upon one. And yet I know you love her well. Can you wonder, then--can I complain much, much as I grieve--that men should utterly misconceive of you, and are blind to the fact that you have put the whole argument between you and us on a new footing; and that, whereas it was said twenty-five years ago in the "British Critic," "Till Rome ceases to be what practically she is, union is impossible between her and England," you declare, on the contrary, "It is possible as soon as Italy and England, [{91}] haying the same faith and the same centre of unity, are allowed to hold severally their own theological opinions?" They have not done you justice here because, in truth, the honor of our Lady is dearer to them than the conversion of England.
Take a parallel case, and consider how you would decide it yourself. Supposing an opponent of a doctrine for which you so earnestly contend, the eternity of punishment, instead of meeting you with direct arguments against it, heaped together a number of extravagant descriptions of the place, mode, and circumstances of its infliction, quoted Tertullian as a witness for the primitive fathers, and the Covenanters and Ranters for these last centuries; brought passages from the "Inferno" of Dante, and from the sermons of Whitfield; nay, supposing he confined himself to the chapters on the subject in Jeremy Taylor's work on "The State of Man," would you think this a fair and becoming method of reasoning? and if he avowed that he should ever consider the Anglican Church committed to all these accessories of the doctrine till its authorities formally denounced Taylor and Whitfield, and a hundred others, would you think this an equitable determination, or the procedure of a theologian?
So far concerning the Blessed Virgin, the chief but not the only subject of your volume. And now, when I could wish to proceed, she seems to stop me, for the Feast of her Immaculate Conception is upon us; and close upon its octave, which is kept with special solemnities in the churches of this town, come the great antiphons, the heralds of Christmas. That joyful season, joyful for all of us, while it centres in him who then came on earth, also brings before us in peculiar prominence that Virgin Mother who bore and nursed him. Here she is not in the background, as at Eastertide, but she brings him to us in her arms. Two great festivals, dedicated to her honor, to-morrow's and the Purification, mark out and keep the ground, and, like the towers of David, open the way to and fro for the high holiday season of the Prince of Peace. And all along it her image is upon it, such as we see it in the typical representation of the Catacombs. May the sacred influences of this time bring us all together in unity! May it destroy all bitterness on your side and ours! May it quench all jealous, sour, proud, fierce antagonism on our side; and dissipate all captious, carping, fastidious refinements of reasoning on yours! May that bright and gentle lady, the Blessed Virgin Mary, overcome you with her sweetness, and revenge herself on her foes by interceding effectually for their conversion!
I am, yours, most affectionately,
John H. Newman.
THE ORATORY, BIRMINGHAM,
In fest. S. Ambrosii, 1865.
From The Sixpenny Magazine.
HAVEN'T TIME
A CHAPTER FOR PARENTS.
"That boy needs more attention," said Mr. Green, referring to his eldest son, a lad whose wayward temper and inclination to vice demanded a steady, consistent, wise, and ever-present exercise of parental watchfulness and authority.