No, it was not unanimity as to the question debated among us which reigned ere I spoke. It was on the one side violence, and on the other side astonishment, silent and downcast. If any voice was raised, speedily was it covered with clamours and insults (p. 31).
This reply called down from Veuillot many pages of taunts, gibes, and sneers.
Means of humiliating the bishops of the Opposition were found by the sovereign, which seem new in both kingly and parliamentary warfare. Priests wrote against them, and the Pope sent to those priests for publication letters of approval, containing sharp cuts at the unfortunate prelates. To the Jesuit Ramière, the Pope said that he had set Maret "in contradiction with himself, so that you have constrained him to demolish the edifice with his own hands" (Friedberg, p. 490). The Vicar-General of Nimes had written against Dupanloup, and forth comes an epistle of Pius IX praising him for his elegant refutation of the empty sophisms which had caused a disturbance of minds deplored by all (Friedberg, p. 488).
Continental Catholic writers generally put Dr. Pusey as one of the most important promoters of the Church of Rome. Yet they were aware that he did not belong to it. In his second pamphlet Dupanloup spoke with feeling of the value of the Ritualistic party, both in England and America, as pointing to Rome. Ce Qui se Passe au Concile says (p. iii., troisième éd.),—"In England Dr. Pusey, the originator of the Ritualistic movement, which has led so many persons, eminent for intellect to the Catholic religion—Pusey, whose loyal sincerity no one ever suspected," had written that nothing would be more fatal to the prospect of reunion than a declaration of Papal infallibility. This was not likely to make much impression upon the Curia. They knew that what for England was called reunion, for Rome was called submission; which Manning told them would be facilitated by definition; and Manning served them so punctiliously that they were fain to believe him. Moreover, what Desanctis in that remarkable book Roma Papale, had many years previously described as the plan of the Curia for operations in England, would be little affected by a doctrine or two more or less. His account, in one word, was that they would mission England through the senses, leaving doctrines and arguments in the background. It was a question of spectacle, not of reason or Scripture. And love of spectacle was adorned with the name of aesthetics, and sensible Englishmen were to be led captive by the power of clothes. In this point of view, one who promoted the use of the chosen means might better serve the end from the very fact that he did not himself aim so low.
FOOTNOTES:
[293] We should be curious to know if the writer would now comment on these terms so doubtfully. Further study would probably have given greater decision. The meaning of the obedience of princes and nations was as distinct as possible from that of the obedience of private persons, whether Catholics or heretics. The Church is all through the movement proceeding, as mother of civil humanity, to secure the obedience of rulers and States.
[294] Quirinus, p. 195.
[295] Vol. i. p. 235.
[296] Serie VII. vol. ix. p. 685.
[297] Letter to the Débats, printed in Le Concile du Vatican, et le Mouvement Anti-infallibiliste, vol. ii. p. 63.