[183] We are authorized by Father Tondini to remark that, for the purpose of his argument, he has confined himself to speaking of the non-popular election of bishops; but in case any one should say that Mr. Gladstone referred not to bishops only, but also, and very largely, to clergy, besides that Mr. Gladstone’s expressions do not naturally lead the reader to make any exception for himself, Father Tondini is able to show that even with respect to the inferior clergy Mr. Gladstone’s statement is inaccurate.
[184] In the appendix to the second edition of The Pope of Rome, etc., will be found a prayer composed of texts taken from the Greco-Sclavonian Liturgy, where are quoted some of the titles given by the Greco-Russian Church to S. Peter, and, in the person of the great S. Leo, even to the Pope. This appendix is also to be had separately, under the title of Some Documents Concerning the Association of Prayers, etc., London, Washbourne, 1875.
[185] See “Future of the Russian Church” in The Catholic World, 1875 (amongst others).
[186] Expostulation, p. 30.
[187] “More than once,” says Father Tondini in a note on this subject—“more than once, in reading defences of the Catholic Church, written with the best intentions, we could not resist a desire that in the ‘Litanies of the Saints,’ or other prayers of the church, there might be inserted some such invocation as this: A malis advocatis libera nos, Domine.’—‘From mischievous advocates, O Lord! deliver us.’ We say this most earnestly, the more so that it applies also to ourselves. Many a time, when preparing our writings, we have experienced a feeling not unlike that of an advocate fully convinced of the innocence of the accused, but dreading lest, by want of clearness or other defect in putting forth his arguments, he might not only fail to carry conviction to the mind of the judges, but also prejudice the cause he wishes to defend. Never, perhaps, is the necessity of prayer more deeply felt.”
[188] With regard to the powers of the sovereign over the episcopate we quote the following from the London Tablet for March 27, 1875: “Among other tremendous stumbling-blocks against the claims for the Church (of England) by the High Church party a candid writer in the Church Herald is ‘sorely staggered by the oath of allegiance, according to which we have the chief pastors of the church declaring in the most solemn manner that they receive the spiritualities of their office only from the queen, and are bishops by her grace only.’”
In connection with the foregoing we cannot refrain from citing a passage from Marshall, which is as follows: “Any bishops can only obtain spiritual jurisdiction in one of two ways—either by receiving it from those who already possess it, in which case their (the English bishops’) search must extend beyond their own communion, or by imitating the two lay travellers in China of whom we have somewhere read, who fancied they should like to be missionaries, whereupon the one ordained the other, and was then in turn ordained by him, to the great satisfaction of both.”
[189] See Contemporary Review for July.
[190] Since writing the above we happened to see the following case in point, in the Church Times of September 10, 1875, in which a clergyman, signing himself “a priest, not of the Diocese of Exeter,” writes a letter of remonstrance against the violent abuse heaped by “a priest of the Diocese of Exeter” against the late learned and venerable Vicar of Morwenstow, Mr. Hawker, who, on the day before his death, made his submission to the Catholic Church. From this letter, which contains many candid and interesting admissions, we quote the following: “In these days, when we have among us so many dignitaries and popular preachers of the Established Church who in their teaching deny all sacramental truth, while others cannot repeat the Nicene and Athanasian Creeds without a gloss, and others again boldly assert that ‘the old religious ideas expressed in the Apostles’ Creed must be thrown into afresh form, if they are to retain their hold on the educated minds of the present generation, it appears monstrous that a clergyman whose faithful adhesion to the Prayer Book during a ministry of forty years was notorious should be denounced as a ‘blasphemous rogue and a scoundrel’ because he held opinions which are considered by some individual members of either church as denoting ‘a Roman at heart,’ or, in the exercise of a liberty granted to everyone, thought fit to correspond with influential members of the Church of Rome.”
[191] Expostulation, page 21; iv. “The third proposition.”