CHAPTER II.

ROMANIST THEORY OF DEVELOPMENT.*

An important crisis has taken place in the history of the High Church or Tractarian movement, which has of late years excited so much interest in this country. Almost all who were capable of rightly appreciating that movement believed and declared that its character and tendency were Popish, while its friends maintained that it was the best preservative against the reviving influence of Rome. This point, at least, may be regarded as being now practically decided. The leader of the movement, the most able and learned man among the whole body of the Tractarians, accompanied by a large number of followers, has abandoned the ministry of the Church of England, and joined the communion of the Church of Rome. No event of a similar character has taken place in any Protestant church since the Reformation. Individual instances of the apostasy of Protestant ministers to the Church of Rome have occurred in almost all the Reformed churches, but never before has it been exhibited on so large a scale. It is true that the great body of the English clergy, who had been Protestants under King Edward, became Roman Catholics under Queen Mary, and returned to Protestantism upon the accession of Queen Elizabeth; but these were manifestly men of no religion, who regulated their ecclesiastical profession by regard to the law of the land, and the object of keeping their benefices. Some French Protestant ministers went over to the Church of Rome both before and after the revocation of the edict of Nantes; but they were few in number, and were evidently influenced by merely secular considerations. The last Popish movement in the Church of England, under the reign of Archbishop Laud,—a movement singularly similar, both in its general features and in

many of its details, to that which we have witnessed in our own day,—was prevented from reaching its full development ecclesiastically, by the great political changes which it contributed to produce. The secession of Mr Newman and his friends is the first instance in the history of the Reformed churches, in which a considerable body of Protestant clergymen have simultaneously, and from conviction, gone over to the Church of Rome; and the event thus standing, as it does, single and alone, is well fitted to arrest attention, and to afford useful lessons and solemn warnings to the churches of Christ. In saying that Mr Newman has acted from conviction in this matter, we do not mean that he has incurred no additional guilt by falling into still deeper error than before, for we have no doubt that he has; but only that he had really come to be convinced that he ought to enter the Church of Rome, and that he has not joined it merely in outward profession, without a real corresponding conviction, or under the influence of secular motives. Most men would probably have had a higher opinion of the integrity of Mr Newman and his friends, if they had left the Church of England somewhat sooner than they did. But we are not disposed to make much of the difficulties and inconsistencies of a transition process, because we are persuaded that men's opinions may gradually undergo a change, requiring them in consistency to alter their ecclesiastical position, without being themselves able to fix the precise period when the change really took place, and without even being very distinctly aware for a time that they had overleaped, in the progress of their views, the barriers which had once restrained them. Having this persuasion, we do not doubt the truth of the declaration which Mr Newman makes in his Postscript to the "Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine:"-" Since the above was written, the Author has joined the Catholic Church. It was his intention and wish to have carried his Volume through the Press before deciding finally on this step. But when he had got some way in the printing, he recognised in himself a conviction of the truth of the conclusion to which the discussion leads, so clear as to supersede further deliberation. Shortly afterwards, circumstances gave him the opportunity of acting upon it, and he felt that he had no warrant for refusing to do so."

Mr Newman and his friends have not been driven from

* P. x.

the Church of England, as they ought to have been. They have retired voluntarily, and in doing so they have not been influenced by a regard to merely worldly or secular interests; and, therefore, though we have no doubt that they have incurred guilt in the sight of God by the adoption of the errors which have led them to take this step, we must admit that they have joined the Church of Rome from a real conviction that it was their duty to do so. The voluntary secession of Mr Newman, and so many of his friends, places the Church of England in a very awkward and somewhat degrading position, proving, as it does, that, from some cause or other, she is either unable or unwilling to execute aright the proper functions of a church of Christ in the exercise of discipline. Some of these men had long publicly manifested unsoundness in the faith and decidedly Romanizing tendencies; and, though they might deceive themselves upon the point, there could be little doubt in the minds of others, that, from the views they professed and the course they were pursuing, they were unworthy to be allowed to hold the cure of souls in a church which professed to adhere to the Thirty-nine Articles. But no ecclesiastical discipline was brought to bear upon them. Though they had given sufficient evidence that they were heretics, they were not "rejected," nay, they were not even judicially admonished by their ecclesiastical superiors; and at length, when it pleased themselves, they coolly and deliberately marched out in triumph, looking down, no doubt, with contempt, as they were well entitled to do, upon the church which ought to have expelled them from its communion. Will the Church of England always be contented with an annual wish for the restoration of the "godly discipline of the primitive church," without making one serious attempt to restore it? Will Archbishop Whately now resume his unsuccessful attempt to discover or establish a just power of internal self-government in the United Church of England and Ireland? or will he be satisfied in the meantime with the power of preventing his inferior clergy from joining the Evangelical Alliance?

One lesson is most impressively taught us by the late secession from the Church of England; and this is, that the mere diffusion of education and of general knowledge does not, of itself, afford any adequate security against the revival and extension of Romanism. Many have been accustomed to cherish the notion that, in the midst of the light and liberty of the nineteenth century, it was

quite chimerical to apprehend that Popery, with all its fooleries and absurdities, could ever again acquire any influence over the minds of men. But we have seen a system which is in substance Popery, and includes a great deal of what is usually reckoned most irrational and absurd in the tenets and practices of the Church of Rome, spread with marvellous rapidity among the most highly educated youth of our country, the men who are likely to be the future legislators of the British empire. We have seen this system embraced, more or less fully, by a large number of the clergy of a church which has long boasted, and not without cause, of its literary reputation, and of its efficiency as a bulwark of Protestantism. And at length we have seen the leader of this section of the clergy, with a considerable number of followers, openly profess himself a thorough convert to the Popish system in all its details, and throw himself into the arms of the Church of Rome. These facts will surely dispel from men's minds, for a time at least, the delusion, that the extension of education and the spread of secular knowledge afford of themselves an adequate security against the extension of Romanism. That system, we know, is to be consumed by the spirit of Jehovah's mouth, and destroyed by the brightness of His coming; and no agency of inferior potency will be able to resist its progress, now that it has begun to revive and to exert itself.

Although Mr Newman's Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine was written and partly printed, as we have seen, before he saw it to be his duty to abandon the Church of England, and to join the Church of Rome, it may be justly regarded as being substantially an exposition of the process of thought by which he convinced himself of the truth of Romanism, and of the course of argumentation by which he thinks that system can be best defended. It is in this light chiefly that the work ought to be viewed; and it is only when we try it by this standard that we can form a just estimate of its value and importance. Mr Newman's general character as an author is well known to the British public, and we do not mean to attempt to give anything like an analysis of his merits or defects. It is enough to say, that this work will not detract from his reputation in a merely literary point of view, and that it affords satisfactory proof that there is no ground whatever to ascribe his conversion to Romanism to the decay of his intellectual powers, or to the loss of any portion of the ecclesiastical erudition which he had acquired.

The work would probably have possessed a larger measure of personal interest, if Mr Newman had more formally set himself to describe the steps of his progress from the via media, which he formerly occupied, to the extreme of Romanism,-developing the changes which had taken place in his views from the commencement of the Tractarian movement till he found rest in an infallible church, and the grounds on which he would defend them. He does, we think, owe such a work to his former friends, who have not yet seen their way to follow him in joining that church, out of which he now, of course, believes that there is no salvation. There is not much, however, in the present work which bears very directly upon this view of the subject, as it is mainly devoted to the object of expounding one general argument in favour of Romanism, or rather, for we will show that this is the whole. amount of the logical result of the book,-evading one obvious and important argument against the claims of the Church of Rome. We are naturally curious to know what Mr Newman now makes of the views which he formerly held, and to learn how he has disposed of them. But he has not thought proper to give us much satisfaction upon this point. In his Advertisement he repeats a retractation, which he admits that he had published "some years since," of all the principal statements which his works contained, in opposition to the doctrines and practices of the Church of Rome; but he gives no specification of the grounds of the changes which had taken place in his opinions. In the course of the work he gives many quotations from his former productions, but generally for the purpose of showing that, without any, or with very slight modifications, they express the views which he still entertains, and continue to serve the purposes of his present argument. This is about all that the work presents to us, fitted to throw any direct light upon the relation between his present and his former opinions, with one important exception, to which we may advert before proceeding to explain the argument and object of the book.

In his Introduction he explains at some length to what extent, and upon what grounds, he has now modified, or rather abandoned, his former views of the fundamental principle of the Tractarians, or Anglo-Catholics, as they call themselves, about Catholic consent, and of the truth and practical utility of the famous rule of Vincentius of Lerins, quod semper, quod ubique, quod ab omnibus. The Tractarians in general, and Mr Newman himself while be