His farewell interviews with exponents of the Protestant claims were mainly, if not wholly, with representatives of Anglicanism. This did not arise from any grounded hope of getting all he wanted there, but from an insensible drift of his mind upon those currents of thought set in motion by the great power of Newman. The air was full of promise of non-Roman Catholicity, and the voices which called the English-speaking world to listen were the most eloquent since Shakespeare. It needed but a dim hope pointing along any road to induce the delicate conscience of Isaac Hecker to try if it might not be a thoroughfare. But neither in his copious entries in the diary at this period, nor in his articles in this magazine for the year 1887 on Dr. Brownson's difficulties—and these were much like his own—do we find any trace of his discovering in Anglicanism a germ of Catholicity unfolding from the chrysalis of genuine Protestantism and casting it off. This was readily perceived in Isaac Hecker's bearing and conversation by acute Episcopalians themselves, as in the case of Dr. Seabury, who, as Father Hecker relates in the articles above referred to, prophesied Brownson's conversion to Catholicity, and did so for reasons which Seabury must have known would apply to young Hecker also.
Many at this time were being drawn by poetical sentiment to the beautiful and religious forms of Episcopalian worship; drawn and held rather by imagination and feeling than by any adhesion of their minds to distinctive Anglican doctrines. Father Hecker was, indeed, more poetical in temperament than at first acquaintance he seemed to be, but his mind was so constituted that he must have the main reasons of things, whether religious or not, firmly settled before he could enjoy their use. Nor could he be content with fragments of revealed truth, such as are found in all denominations of non-Catholics. "There is a large floating body of Catholic truth in the world," says Newman; "it comes down by tradition from age to age. . . . Men [outside the church] take up and profess these scattered truths, merely because they fall in with them." Not so Father Hecker: no flotsam and jetsam of doctrine for him, unless some fragment would reveal to him the name of the ship from which it had been torn, and the port from which she had sailed, and so lead him to the discovery of the ship herself, crew, cargo, port, and owner.
Yet he lingered long over the claim of Anglicanism to be the Catholic religion. Of Mr. Haight and of his interviews with him we have already spoken. Through him he came across a published letter of a Mr. Norris, Episcopal minister in Carlisle, Pa., which so pleased him for its Catholic tendency that he wrote to him, asking to be allowed to go to Carlisle and live there as the writer's pupil. The answer, though a refusal of this request, was kind, and contained a cordial invitation to visit Mr. Norris after Easter. On his way to Concord, in the following spring, Isaac made a long detour to the little town in southern Pennsylvania, interviewed Mr. Norris, and came away no wiser than before.
The following words of the diary, under date of March 30, 1844, refer to an Episcopal dignitary of higher grade:
"Mr. Haight gave me a note of introduction to Dr. Seabury. I called to see him two evenings ago and had a very pleasant conversation with him. His sociableness and perfect openness of expression I was quite delighted with. He frankly acknowledged that he thought that error had been committed on both sides in the controversy of the Reformation between the Pope and the Anglican Church. He recommended me to examine those points which kept me from joining the Anglican or Roman Church before I should do anything further, as there was the charge of schism against the Anglican Church and neglect of discipline among the members of her communion. I told him that though the Church of Rome may commit errors in practice, she had not committed any in principle, and that it was easier to prune a luxuriant tree than to revivify a tree almost exhausted of life. I left him with an earnest invitation to call again."
This half-confession of schism and frank avowal of lack of discipline on the part of a perfectly representative official of the Anglican Church was something singularly Providential, for it came within a fortnight after Isaac Hecker's first interview with Bishop Hughes, described in the diary under date of March 22. That powerful man and great prelate was a type of the best form of Catholicism at that day. He was of the Church militant in more senses than one; and the military qualities which have inspired the public action of Catholic champions for the past three centuries were strongly developed in him. That it was for the good of religion that it should have such characters as John Hughes to care for its public welfare there is no room to doubt. Since then the temper of Protestant Americans has undergone a change which is almost radical. It has grown infinitely more just and kindly towards Catholics. The decay of the Protestant bond of cohesion from lapse of time and from the unsettlement of belief in its chief doctrines; the fighting of two wars, one of them the great Rebellion, which fused the populations of States and acquainted men better with their neighbors; the coming in of millions of Catholic foreigners whose every breath was an aspiration for liberty; the rise, culmination, and collapse of the anti-Catholic movement termed Know-nothing-ism; the polemical warfare of Bishop Hughes himself and of his contemporaries—these and other causes have made it possible, nay necessary, to treat non-Catholics in a different spirit from what wisdom dictated fifty years ago.
If Dr. Seabury owned to schism and lack of discipline in Anglicanism, Bishop John Hughes brought out to Isaac Hecker the very contrary as the attractive qualities of Catholicity. He was questioned by the young inquirer about the latter's chances for studying for the priesthood should he decide on entering the Church, and he answered according to rigid notions of the place of authority in religion.
"He said," are the words of the diary, ending a summary of the interview, "that their Church was one of discipline. I thanked him for the information that he gave, and told him that it was for just such instruction that I sought him. He seemed to think that I had some loose notions of the Church. So far, this settles my present intention of uniting myself with the Roman Catholic Church. Though I feel not in the least disinclined to be governed by the most rigid discipline of any church, yet I am not prepared to enter the Roman Catholic Church at present. It is not national with us, hence it does not meet our wants, nor does it fully understand and sympathize with the experience and dispositions of our people. It is principally made up of adopted and foreign individuals."
To us this is exceedingly instructive, for it tells us how not to meet the earnest seeker after Catholic truth. Even a good-natured dog does not show his teeth when caressed, nor is an artillery salute the only show of amity between even warlike powers. Yet the repellant attitude of the great controversialist was that of very many representative Catholics of his time, especially those holding his high office. For although he really did know the American people, and although their country was fully his own, and was by him deeply and intelligently loved, yet he did not understand or sympathize with the religious movements of which his strange young visitor was the truest type. He afterwards knew him better and loved him.
The toss thus given Isaac Hecker by Bishop Hughes's catapult of "discipline" had the good effect of throwing him again upon a full and perfect and final investigation of Protestantism. With what immediate result is shown by the Seabury interview already related, and with what honesty of purpose is shown by the following words written the same day: