Therefore, as it was in the world, but not of the world, in the apostles' times, so it is now; as it was "in honor and dishonor, in evil report and good report, as chastised but not killed, as having nothing and possessing all things," in the apostles' times, so it is now; as then it taught the truth, so it does now; and as then it had the sacraments of grace, so has it now; as then it had a hierarchy or holy government of bishops, priests, and deacons, so has it now; and as it had a head then, so must it have a head now. Who is that visible head? who is the vicar of Christ? who has now the keys of the kingdom of heaven, as St. Peter had then? Who is it who binds and looses on earth, that our Lord may bind and loose in heaven? Who, I say, is the successor to St. Peter, since a successor there must be, in his sovereign authority over the church? It is he who sits in St. Peter's chair; it is the Bishop of Rome. We all know this; it is part of our faith; I am not proving it to you, my brethren. The visible headship of the church, which was with St. Peter while he lived, has been lodged ever since in his chair; the successors in his headship are the successors in his chair, the continuous line of Bishops of Rome, or Popes, as they are called, one after another, as years have rolled on, one dying and another coming, down to this day, when we see Pius the Ninth sustaining the weight of the glorious apostolate, and that for twenty years past—a tremendous weight, a ministry involving momentous duties, innumerable anxieties, and immense responsibilities, as it ever has done.
And now, though I might say much more about the prerogatives of the Holy Father, the visible head of the church, I have said more than enough for the purpose which has led to my speaking about him at all. I have said that, like St. Peter, he is the vicar of his Lord. He can judge, and he can acquit; he can pardon, and he can condemn; he can command, and he can permit; he can forbid, and he can punish. He has a supreme jurisdiction over the people of God. He can stop the ordinary course of sacramental mercies; he can excommunicate from the ordinary grace of redemption; and he can remove again the ban which he has inflicted. It is the rule of Christ's providence, that what his vicar does in severity or in mercy upon earth, he himself confirms in heaven. And in saying all this I have said enough for my purpose, because that purpose is to define our obligations to him. That is the point on which our bishop has fixed our attention; "our obligations to the Holy See;" and what need I say more to measure our own duty to it and to him who sits in it, than to say that, in his administration of Christ's kingdom, in his religious acts, we must never oppose his will, or dispute his word, or criticise his policy, or shrink from his side? There are kings of the earth who have despotic authority, which their subjects obey indeed and disown in their hearts; but we must never murmur at that absolute rule which the sovereign pontiff has over us, because it is given to him by Christ, and, in obeying him, we are obeying his Lord. We must never suffer ourselves to doubt, that, in his government of the church, he is guided by an intelligence more than human. His yoke is the yoke of Christ, he has the responsibility [{580}] of his own acts, not we; and to his Lord must he render account, not to us. Even in secular matters it is ever safe to be on his side, dangerous to be on the side of his enemies. Our duty is, not indeed to mix up Christ's vicar with this or that party of men, because he in his high station is above all parties, but to look at his acts, and to follow him whither he goeth, and never to desert him, however we may be tried, but to defend him at all hazards, and against all comers, as a son would a father, and us a wife a husband, knowing that his cause is the cause of God. And so, as regards his successors, if we live to see them; it is our duty to give them in like manner our dutiful allegiance and our unfeigned service, and to follow them also whithersoever they go, having that same confidence that each in his turn and in his own day will do God's work and will, which we felt in their predecessors, now taken away to their eternal reward.
2. And now let us consider our obligations to the sovereign pontiff in the second sense, which is contained under the word "obligation." "In the sermon in the mass," says the bishop, "it is our wish that the preacher should instruct the faithful on their obligations to the Holy See;" and certainly those obligations, that is, the claims of the Holy See upon our gratitude, are very great. We in this country owe our highest blessings to the see of St. Peter—to the succession of bishops who have filled his apostolic chair. For first it was a Pope who sent missionaries to this island in the beginning of the church, when the island was yet in pagan darkness. Then again, when our barbarous ancestors, the Saxons, crossed over from the continent and overran the country, who but a Pope, St. Gregory the First, sent over St. Augustine and his companions to convert them to Christianity? and by God's grace they and their successors did the great work in the course of a hundred years. From that time, twelve hundred years ago our nation has ever been Christian. And then in the lawless times each followed, and the break-up of the old world all over Europe, and the formation of the new, it was the Popes, humanly speaking, who saved the religion of Christ from being utterly lost and coming to an and, and not in England only, but on the continent; that is, our Lord made use of that succession of his vicars to fulfil his gracious promise, that his religion should never fail. The Pope and the bishops of the church, acting together in that miserable time, rescued from destruction all that makes up our present happiness, spiritual and temporal. Without them the world would have relapsed into barbarism—but God willed otherwise; and especially the Roman pontiffs, the successors of St. Peter, the centre of Catholic unity, the vicars of Christ, which primarily related to the Almighty Redeemer himself: "I have a lead help upon one that is mighty, and I have exalted one chosen quote of the people. I have found David my servant, with my holy oil have I anointed him. For my hand shall help him, and my arm shall strengthen him. The enemy shall have no advantage over him, nor the son of iniquity have power to hurt him. I will put to flight his enemies before his face, and them that hate him I will put to flight. And my truth and my mercy shall be with him, and in my name shall his horn be exalted. He shall cry out to me, Thou art my Father, my God, and the support of my salvation. And I will make him my first-born, high above the kings of the earth. I will keep my mercy for him for ever, and my coveted shall be faithful to him."
And the Almighty did this in pity toward his people, and for the sake of his religion, and by virtue of his promise, and for the merits of the most precious blood of his own dearly beloved Son, Whom the Popes represented. As Moses and Aaron, as Josue, as [{581}] Samuel, as David, were the leaders of the Lord's host in the old time, and carried on the chosen people of Israel from age to age, in spite of their enemies round about, so have the Popes from the beginning of the gospel, and especially in those middle ages when anarchy prevailed, been faithful servants of their Lord, watching and fighting against sin and injustice and unbelief and ignorance, and spreading abroad far and wide the knowledge of Christian truth.
Such they have been in every age, and such are the obligations which mankind owes to them; and, if I am to pass on to speak of the present pontiff, and of our own obligations to him, then I would have you recollect, my brethren, that it is he who has taken the Catholics of England out of their unformed state and made them a church. He it is who has redressed a misfortune of nearly three hundred years' standing. Twenty years ago we were a mere collection of individuals; but Pope Pius has brought us together, has given us bishops, and created out of us a body politic, which, please God, as time goes on, will play an important part in Christendom, with a character, an intellect, and a power of its own, with schools of its own, with a definite influence in the counsels of the Holy Church Catholic, as England had of old time.
This has been his great act toward our country; and then specially, as to his great act toward us here, toward me. One of his first acts after he was Pope was, in his great condescension, to call me to Rome; then, when I got there, he bade me send for my friends to be with me; and he formed us into and oratory. And thus it came to pass that, on my return to England, I was able to associate myself with others who had not gone to Rome, till we were so many in number that not only did we establish our own oratory here, whither the Pope had specially sent us, but we found we could throw off from's a colony of zealous and able priests into the metropolis, and establish there, with the powers with which the Pope had furnished me, and the sanction of the late cardinal, that oratory which has done and still does so much good among the Catholics of London.
Such is the Pope now happily reigning in the chair of St. Peter; such are our personal obligations to him; such has he been toward England, such toward us, toward you, my brethren. Such he is in his benefits, and, great as are the claims of those benefits upon us, great equally are the claims on us of his personal character and of his many virtues. He is one whom to see is to love; one who overcomes even strangers, even enemies, by his very look and voice; whose presence subdues, whose memory haunts, even the sturdy resolute mind of the English Protestant. Such is the Holy Father of Christendom, the worthy successor of a long and glorious line. Such is he; and great as he is in office, and in his beneficent acts and virtuous life, as great is he in the severity of his trials, in the complication of his duties, and in the gravity of his perils—perils which are at this moment closing him in on every side; and therefore it is, on account of the crisis of the long-protracted troubles of his pontificate which seems near at hand, that our bishop has set apart this day for special solemnities, the feast of the Holy Rosary, and has directed us to "instruct the faithful on their obligations to the Holy See," and not only so, but also "on the duty especially incumbent on us at this time of praying for the Pope."
II. This, then, is the second point to which I have to direct your attention, my brethren—the duty of praying for the Holy Father; but, before doing so, I must tell you what the Pope's long-protracted troubles are about, and what the crisis is which seems approaching, I will do it in as few words as I can.
More than a thousand years ago, nay, near upon fifteen hundred, began that great struggle, which I spoke of [{582}] just now, between the old and the new inhabitants of this part of the world. Whole populations of barbarians overrun the whole face of the country, that is, of England, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, and the re«t of Europe. They were heathens, and they got the better of the Christians; and religion seemed likely to fail together with that old Christian stock. But, as I have said, the Pope and the bishops of the church took heart, and set about converting the new-comers, as in a former age they had converted those who now had come to misfortune; and, through God's mercy, they succeeded. The Saxon English—Anglo-Saxons, as they are called—are among those whom the Pope converted, as I said just now. The new convert people, as you may suppose, were very grateful to the Pope and bishops, and they showed their gratitude by giving them large possessions, which were of great use, in the bad times that followed, in maintaining the influence of Christianity in the world. Thus the Catholic Church became rich and powerful. The bishops became princes, and the Pope became a sovereign ruler, with a large extent of country all his own. This state of things lasted for many hundred years; and the Pope and bishops became richer and richer, more and more powerful, until at length the Protestant revolt took place, three hundred years ago, and ever since that time, in a temporal point of view, they have become of less and less importance, and less and less prosperous. Generation after generation the enemies of the church, on the other hand, have become bolder and bolder, more powerful, and more successful in their measures against the Catholic faith. By this time the church has well-nigh lost all its wealth and all its power; its bishops have been degraded from their high places in the world, and in many countries have scarcely more, or not more, of weight or of privilege than the ministers of the sects which have split off from it. However, though the bishops lost, as time went on, their temporal rank, the Pope did lose his; he has been an exception to the rule; according to the providence of God, he has retained Rome, and the territories around about Rome, far and wide, as his own possession without let or hindrance. But now at length, by the operation of the same causes which have destroyed the power of the bishops, the Holy Father is in danger of losing his temporal possessions. For the last hundred years he has had from time to time serious reverses, but he recovered his ground. Six years ago he lost the greater part of his dominions—, all but Rome and the country immediately about it,—and now the worst of difficulties has occurred as regards the territories which remain to him. His enemies have succeeded, as it would seem, in persuading at least a large portion of his subjects to side with them. This is a real and very trying difficulty. While his subjects are for him, no one can have a word to say against his temporal rule; but who can force a sovereign on people which deliberately rejects him? You may attempt it for awhile, but at length the people, if they persist, will get their way.
They give out then, that the Pope's government is behind the age—that once indeed it was as good as other governments, but that now other governments have got better, and his has not—that he can either keep order within his territory, nor defend it from attacks from without—that his police and his finances are in a bad state—that his people are discontented within—that he does not show them how to become rich—that he keeps them from improving their minds—that he treats them as children—that he opens no career for young and energetic minds, but condemns them to inactivity and sloth—that he is an old man—that he is an ecclesiastic—that, considering his great spiritual duties, he has no time left him for temporal concerns—and that a bad rebellious government is a scandal to religion.