Before proceeding, however, with our examination of that change, by which alone the word "conversion" can be properly defined, it will be necessary to consider and refute those definitions of it which are false. Conversion is a transformation in itself so simple, yet involving so many and such vast collateral changes in the inner and exterior man—it is at once so definite in its own nature, and yet as widely and, in point of time, so intimately knit together with its antecedents and its consequences, that a clear view of it apart from these is almost impossible, until, by a process of negation, it is separated from its surroundings, and stands out alone, defined as well by what did is not as by what it is. And this is, above all, important, when we desire to present this subject to the understandings of non-Catholics. The lines between their religious bodies are so faintly drawn, and depend so much upon the social and political circumstances by which the members of those bodies are controlled, that conversion from one denomination to another is not regarded as reaching to the very marrow of the spiritual being, or compassing the salvation or destruction of the soul. Such changes are often matters of taste or policy or friendship; sometimes of personal pride and pique, and sometimes, but more rarely, of actual principle; though even this principle never rests upon higher ground than individual points of faith or systems of ecclesiastical organization. It thus seems almost impossible that, left to their own definitions of that to which we give the technical name "conversion," persons outside the church could ever arrive at an appreciation of its extent and power. And this is especially true in this country, where the Catholic Church externally occupies the position of a sect among sects; the most numerous, perhaps, certainly the most prosperous and aggressive of them all, but in their view ranking as but one of many forms of Christianity, and but one of many branches of Christ's earthly fold. No care that we can take can be superfluous, no precision we can use can be in vain when we attempt to define the position of the church on any question which interests our age, or to delineate the relations which she occupies to that great chaos of religions in the midst of which she dwells. At the risk, therefore, of consuming time unnecessarily for some, we feel it none the less our duty to leave upon the minds of others no doubt upon this subject which we can remove, and no obscurity around it which it is in our power to thrust away.
(1.) First, then, the adoption of the articles of the Catholic faith into the individual's creed is not conversion.
The idea of conversion entertained by nine-tenths of Protestants is precisely that which we have here denied. It has hardly ever been our lot to meet one, either in print or conversation, whose arguments and reasonings with [{462}] us did not presuppose this definition to be true. It is very natural, for the reasons before mentioned, that this should be so. From Unitarian to Methodist, from Methodist to Anglican, is but a journey from one set of doctrines to another. The same grand underlying features of Christianity remain. The organic existence is an accident arising from substantial doctrinal affinity. And, judging by their own experience and observations, Protestants almost invariably conclude that we became converts to Catholicity as a logical result of our faith in individual Catholic doctrines; and that a so-called Protestant, who holds any or all of these distinctive dogmas, is not a Protestant in reality, and has no right or title to the name. Of how much petty persecution this mistake has been the cause, and how many parishes and pastors it has kept in perpetual commotion during the past thirty years, hundreds of the unfortunate victims can remember.
Yet no definition of conversion could be more totally erroneous. Belief in Catholic doctrines is often chronologically precedent to a real conversion; but it is not always so. It certainly operates as a powerful antagonist of prejudice, and determines the interest and sympathies of the believer toward the church. Candor, humility, and earnestness being equal, such a believer is far more likely to become a Catholic than another who does not believe. But, for all that, such faith does not result in conversion as its necessary, scarcely as its probable, consequence. We have in our memory, just now, a clergyman who has for years openly professed his firm belief in transubstantiation, purgatory, and other equally extreme Catholic articles of faith. He goes into our churches, and adores the holy eucharist upon our altars. He venerates the Mother of our Lord, and supplicates God's mercy on the faithful dead. In all these he is perfectly sincere, and of the truth of what he believes, and of the piety of what he does, he is as well convinced as any Protestant can ever be. Still he is not a Catholic, and we are almost satisfied he never will become one. Years have found him and left him as we find him now, and other years will probably work no change upon him in the nature of conversion. Nearly the same maybe said of Dr. Pusey. His symbolism in many, if not in most, particulars is Catholic. His tastes and sympathies are Catholic. Those who have been his nearest and dearest friends are Catholics. If similarity of doctrine were all that constitutes conversion, the venerable father of Tractarianism would long ere this have found the rest we tremble now lest he should never find. But his life rolls away, and years and honors multiply upon his head; yet who can say that he is nearer than in the distant and more hopeful days, when his, now our, "beloved" struggled and prayed with him for the light of God? The reasons for this are perfectly apparent to us, and will be reached and dealt with by-and-bye. At present it suffices, by these statements and illustrations, to have made it clear that belief in Catholic doctrine is not conversion to the Catholic Church. No, not if a man can tell over on his fingers, one by one, the definitions of the councils and the traditions of the fathers, and pronounce a credo over every one of them, is he necessarily a Catholic, nor must he have passed through that vital transformation without which there never has been and never can be a true conversion.
(2.) Second: the adoption of our extreme ritualism in worship is not conversion.
There is but one denomination of Protestants among whom this false definition is likely to obtain. That one is the Episcopal; and by large numbers of its members (if we may judge their opinions from their words), it is actually believed that a fondness for rites and ceremonies is evidence of Catholicity. Some years ago the church of the Holy Innocents, and the [{463}] Madison Street mission chapel of New York, and the church of St. James the Less, Philadelphia, were, by this class of persons, uniformly regarded and denounced as Romanizing; as the church of St. Albans in this city and some others are to-day. Candles and flowers upon the altar, crosses and paintings on the walls, the bowed head at the name of Jesus, the cassock-skirted coat, and other innumerable minutiae, are to these people indubitable evidence of Popery, and have often served, as they do now, for a sufficient cause of congregational disunion and parochial decline. It would seem foolish, in a discussion like the present, to notice an error so shallow and so reasonless as this, were it not for the magnitude of its results, and were it not, also, that so many of these very ritualists themselves imagine that, in mimicking Catholic forms and ceremonies, they have secured in Anglicanism all that the Catholic Church can give.
But ritualism is not Catholicism: nor is Catholicism so vitally connected with ritualism that it may not exist in the entire fulness of its powers and graces independent of external magnificence and show. St. Antony in his desert, St. Simeon Stylites on his pillar, were as true Catholics as St. Ambrose in his basilica, or St. Leo on his throne. Even the public worship of the church, when stripped to its essentials, is almost devoid of any outward sign or sound that can properly be characterized as ceremonial. And the same priest who stands today before the gorgeous altar of a metropolitan cathedral amid clouds of incense, will start to-morrow on a year's missionary journey through the wilderness, with all the "pomp and circumstance of Romanism" contained within the narrow limits of his carpet-bag. Ritualism is a means used by the church to accomplish certain ends; and so used, because the example of the divinely instituted Jewish church, and her own ages of experience, have convinced her that by it those ends can most surely be attained. But it is no more an essential element of her being than royal robes are of the being of a king; and the weak caricature of her stately ceremonial, in which some Protestant experimentalists indulge, converts them into Catholics as little as the tinsel crown and sceptre of the stage gives royal birth and power to the actor in a play.
(3.) Third: union with the visible body of the Catholic Church is not conversion.
This is the definition which most of those who are born Catholics would give. Unconscious, as they happily are, of the religious state of mind in which pure Protestantism rears its children, it is difficult for them to imagine that a man can be, or can become, nominally Catholic for any other reason than the simple one that binds them to their faith; and this habitude of thought leads them inevitably to confound the outward consequence of an internal change with that internal change itself.
They also are in error. External union with the church is the best possible primâ facie evidence of conversion, but it alone is not conversion. That men have came into the body of the Catholic Church from motives of business, or of politics, or of family sympathy there can be no doubt. But in these cases there was no real conversion. The deep, radical changes which so thoroughly unmake and then remake the spiritual man, never could have taken place in such souls as these. Their outward act was perfect, their visible communion with us was all we could demand; but in their inmost heart they were as much Protestants as ever; and, when they went, acted on the same principles as when they came. Such examples are not numerous, it is true; but still they are sufficient to demonstrate that "joining the church" is not conversion, and to deny the minor premise of those who argue the church's incapacity to satisfy our nature from the fact that these have tried her and found her wanting. [{464}] When one man can be cited who, in his soul of souls, has undergone the work of grace which we now pass on to consider, and who, in calmness and in piety, and not in rashness or in mortal sin, has voluntarily apostatized, and who, in life and in death, has adhered to his apostasy, and has died in the confident and humble hope of heaven; then, and not till then, can such an argument be worth our while to meet.