"There was a large class of persons in this country," continued the archdeacon, "who, having no definite religion of their own, and being slenderly endowed with common sense, were indebted to the Roman Catholic Church both for employment and maintenance. Let Mr. Kidds restrain his excitement; he would explain his meaning. He did not, of course, include Mr. Kidds among the class in question, though he believed that gentleman would willingly accept the statement of Sterne, who candidly confessed, that, 'when he had little to say or little to give his people, he had resource to the abuse of popery. Hence he called it his "Cheshire Cheese." It had a twofold advantage; it cost him very little, and he found by experience that nothing satisfied so well the hungry appetites of his congregation. They always devoured it greedily.'
"Perhaps Mr. Kidds was not aware that in his zeal to hasten the downfall of popery—which, even according to modern prophets, had still a few years to last, and which, judging by a recent tour he had made on the continent, presented anything but a moribund aspect—he was in violent opposition with many active and devoted Protestants. The persons to whom he alluded were, at this moment, full of anxiety lest popery should perish too soon! They could not afford to say farewell to their old friend at present, and desired only to keep him on his legs a little longer. Mr. Kidds was probably ignorant that a society had recently been formed in London, in connection, he believed, with the Protestant Reformation Society, to which it was designed to act as a timely and important auxiliary. The title of this new association was: 'Society for considering the best means of keeping alive the corruptions of Popery in the interests of Gospel Truth' It was, of course, a strictly secret organization, but he had been favored, he knew not why, with a copy of the prospectus, and as he had no intention of becoming a member, he would communicate it to the house. It appeared from this document, and could be confirmed from other sources, that a deputation was sent last year to Rome, to obtain a private interview with the pope, in order to entreat his holiness not to reform a single popish corruption. He was assured that they had reason to believe, he did not know on what grounds, that the pope was about to make extensive reforms, beginning with the substitution of the thirty-nine articles for the creed of Pope Pius, and a permanent Anglican convocation in lieu of an occasional oecumenical council. A handsome present was entrusted to the deputation, and a liberal contribution to the Peter's Pence Fund. The motives set forth in the preamble of the address presented to his holiness were, in substance, of the following nature: They urged that a very large body of most respectable clergymen, who had no personal ill-will toward the present occupant of the Holy See, had maintained themselves and their families in comfort for many years exclusively by the abuse of popery; and if popery were taken away, they could not but contemplate the probable results with uneasiness and alarm. Moreover, many eminent members of the profession had gained a reputation for evangelical wit, learning, and piety, as well as high dignities in the Church of England, by setting forth in their sermons and at public meetings, with all their harrowing details, the astounding abominations of the Church of Rome. The petitioners implored his holiness not to be indifferent to the position of these gentlemen. Many of their number had privately requested the deputation to plead their cause with the amiable and benevolent Pius IX. Thus the great and good Doctor M'Nickel represented respectfully that he had filled his church, and let all his pews, during three-and-twenty years, by elegantly slandering priests and nuns, and powerfully illustrating Romish superstitions. A clergyman of noble birth had attained to the honors of the episcopate by handling alternately the same subjects, and a particularly pleasing doctrine of the Millennium, and had thus been enabled to confer a valuable living on his daughter's husband, who otherwise could not have hoped to obtain one. An eminent canon of an old Roman Catholic abbey owed his distinguished position, which he hoped to be allowed to retain, to the fact of his having proved so clearly that the pope was Antichrist; and earnestly entreated his holiness to do nothing to forfeit that character. A well-known doctor of Anglican divinity was on the point of quitting the country in despair of gaining a livelihood, when the idea of preaching against popery was suggested to him, and he had now reason to rejoice that he had abandoned the foolish scheme of emigration. Even a high-church bishop had been so hampered by suspicions of Romanistic tendencies, which were perfectly unfounded, that he had only saved himself from general discredit by incessant abuse of popery, though he was able to say, in self-defence, that he did not believe a word of his own invectives. Finally, a young clergyman, who had not hitherto much distinguished himself, having often but vainly solicited a member of his congregation to favor his evangelical attachment, at length hit upon a new expedient, and preached so ravishing a discourse on the matrimonial prohibitions of the Romish Church, and drew so appalling a picture of the domestic infelicities of the Romish priesthood, that on the following Monday morning the young lady made him an offer of her hand and fortune. It was hoped that his holiness would give due consideration to interests so grave and manifold, and not peril them by hasty reforms, which nobody desired, and which nobody would receive with satisfaction.
"Another class of clergymen appealed still more urgently to the forbearance of the pope. They represented that they were in the habit of realizing large sums by the publication of prophetical works of which the whole interest turned upon the approximate destruction of 'the beast,' and that while they indicated, by the help of the apocalypse, the precise hour of his fall, they yet managed to put off the final catastrophe from year to year, and could hardly supply the successive editions which the curiosity of the public demanded. They hoped that his holiness would do nothing rash and imprudent which might compromise their particular industry. One of these gentlemen ingenuously confessed that without Antichrist, who was his best friend, and the invaluable book of Revelation, which was his chief source of income, he saw nothing before him but the workhouse. He begged to forward to the pope a copy of each of his works, including the following: 'Horns of the Beast,' neatly bound, with gilt edges; 'Antichrist,' handsomely got up, 'positively his last appearance in 1864, in consequence of other engagements,' with new editions in 1865, 1866, and 1867; also, 'Answer to an insolent pamphlet, entitled the "The Number and Street of the Beast proved to be that of the Rev. Dr. Comeagain."'
"Lastly, even members of parliament to whom nature had not been prodigal in intellectual endowments, urged with great force that they were able to get on their legs, and to stay there, detailing the prodigious incidents of conventual turpitude; making the blood to curdle, and the hair to stand on end, by thrilling narratives of nuns immured, and clanking chains, and bereaved mothers, invoking in agonized chorus, 'Liberty and Mr. Newdegate.' They hoped the pope would see in this fact the necessity of caution, lest he should unwittingly put to silence more than one independent member of parliament, deprive an illustrious assembly of its chief amusement, and rashly change the composition of the British House of Commons.
"Dean Pompous inquired (with a somewhat thick utterance, but with great dignity of manner) whether he understood the archdeacon to say that he had actually seen this document?
"Archdeacon Jolly: He had certainly said so; it had been shown to him in Rome by Cardinal Antonelli."
Archdeacon Chasuble held the theory that the Anglican establishment is a branch of the Catholic Church, and proved that the Catholic Church was necessarily infallible at one period of her existence. The gift of infallibility was suspended when Christendom became divided, and will be recovered when the Russian, the Roman, the Greek, the Anglican, and the Oriental branches reunite—a happy period, of whose arrival, he regretted to say, there was no immediate prospect. To this Dr. Candour undertook to reply:
"When the Roman, Greek, and Anglican communities should all become one, the church would once more become infallible. Three spurious and defective Christianities fused together, if anybody could persuade them to coalesce, would make one true and perfect Christianity. The giving up what each believed specifically true, and the uniting in what each believed specifically false, was that travail in the womb of Christendom which would give birth to the new infallibility. He would only say, as the professor of theology had disposed of that point, that this was an obstetrical phenomenon which he did not think any one present would live long enough to witness.
"But he would now approach another aspect of the question, to which the archdeacon had attracted their attention. The low-church theory, he had told them, and the language of their articles and homilies, which assumed the defection of the Catholic Church, 'made void the promises of God.' Was the archdeacon quite sure that low-churchmen were the real or sole offenders? He thought not. Let him ask his friend whether even the 'diabolical millennium' of the English reformers, that dismal interval between the sixth and sixteenth centuries, was a conception more insolently subversive of the promises of God, more fatal to the Catholic idea of a divine, indefectible, and 'teaching church,' than the well-known Anglican conceit, that the early church was wholly pure, the mediaeval much less pure, and the modern quite unworthy of their obedience? Was it really so very respectful to the catholic idea, of which the archdeacon claimed to be the advocate, to assert, as he and his party did in every act of their lives, that, in spite of the 'promises of God,' the only really perfect church at this hour, protesting at once against Protestant heresies and popish corruptions, was the little group of Puseyites and ritualists within the national establishment? (Great laughter.)
"The archdeacon had reproached the low-church school, and the founders of Anglicanism, with making void the promises of God. Let the house consider how the high-church party interpreted those promises for themselves. According to their theory, the promise to be 'always' with the church applied only to the beginning and the end of her career, but not to the long interval between the two, during which the whole of Christendom was hopelessly sunk in error and corruption. It was curious to see that the high-church party cordially agreed with ultra-Protestants, that the Catholic Church during long ages had been teaching falsehoods! This was their reverence for 'the promises of God!'