274

THE TWO JOHN NEWMANS CONTRASTED.

and to the Scripture. The modern Oxford John Newman, speaking theoretically, assures us that the Church of Rome alone, amid all the errors and evils of her practical system, has given free scope to the feelings of awe, mystery, reverence, devotedness, tenderness, and other feelings which may be especially called Catholic.* The former Maidstone or Tenterden John Newman, understood experimentally, the real meaning of these kind and courteous words. Free scope was given to his feelings of awe, when he gazed, with mournful firmness, on the fire which burnt him. Deep was the feeling of mystery, which Rome inspired, when he endeavoured to comprehend the doctrine of the sacrament, and the possible connection between the truth of transubstantiation and the faggots of Smithfield. The feeling of reverence, he certainly did not experience so singularly, as his descendant of Oriel: neither was the devotedness of John Newman, senior, to the Church of Rome, equal to the devotedness of the modern John Newman, junior. With respect to the feelings of tenderness with which Rome inspired John Newman, senior, he certainly did not at all understand the tenderness which bound him to the stake, set fire to the faggots, and consumed him to ashes; but with respect to the feelings of tenderness with which Rome inspired John Newman, junior; he possibly imputes that to Rome which he may owe to the Ultra-Protestant laws, which he so thoroughly despises: for he

* Newman's letter to Dr. Jelf, pp. 27 and 28.

WHICH JOHN NEWMAN IS THE PROTESTANT?

275

may be assured that the tenderness which Rome now displays to the Protestants, who hate the word "Protestant," and pay court to Rome, without marrying that Lady, is very different from the tenderness it might exert towards them, if the strong hand of the Protestant laws did not direct and regulate the manifestation of its love. The first John Newman found the difference between the Church of England reconciled to Rome, and the Church of England unreconciled to Rome, to be so great, that he died at the stake on account of that difference. The second John Newman assures us, that " Popery being a corruption of the truth, must be so like "the truth it counterfeits, that the resemblance of "his doctrines to Popery cannot be the proof of any "essential approximation to the same. It would, on "the contrary, be an argument against his doctrines, "if they did not resemble Popery. For if they bore "no likeness to it, Ultra-Protestantism could never "have been silently corrupted into Popery."* The force of this learned, ingenious, candid, and convincing argument, to prove to us that the doctrines of the Protestant and Papistical Church of England resembled each other; and, therefore, if they did so, that a man must have been absurd to have been burnt for his opinions-while the poor martyr esteemed the difference between them to be as great as that of life from death, darkness from light, or

* Introduction to the third volume of Newman's Sermons. Oxford, 1837.

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276 ANCESTOR OF DR. HOOK BURNT FOR PROTESTANTISM.

God from Satan; did not satisfy the first John Newman, for he went to the stake, and was burnt. Neither did it satisfy the ancestor of another eminent modern theologian, Richard Hook, the next martyr to John Newman,* who suffered about the same season, and for the same matter, at Chichester. He, too, in spite of the apostolical succession, could not perceive that the authority of the Church was to be employed in preserving the "Unity of the Church," when the uninspired Church taught doctrines which the individual believer in the Gospel of Christ was convinced were contrary to the inspired Scriptures of God. Neither the Newmans nor Hooks of the reign of Mary were convinced that to submit to the authority of the Church, unless they believed the Church to speak the truth, was a proof of Christian meekness.† "The unity of the Church," said Bonner, "makes me burn Newman and Hook." If another reconciliation with Rome were again to take place, by the submission of the Sovereign, the Senate, the Clergy, and the Convocation to the Papal mandate, commended by the blindness or eloquence of a Papal Legate; and if other Bonners should arise among us to enforce by severity the laws which are enacted in such tenderness, and from love to the "unity of the Church," we may at least congratulate ourselves on one anticipation. If all such Newmans and Hooks

* Foxe, vol. viii., p. 339.

+ See Newman's Sermon on Submission to the Church, vol. iii., p. 223,

PAST AND PRESENT NEWMANS AND HOOKS CONTRASTED. 277

as lived in the reign of Mary were to become so changed that they are as unable to perceive the great difference between the Church of Rome and the Edwardian, or existing Church of England, as the modern Newmans and Hooks of the reign of Victoria; then the laws to burn heretics might be again revived with perfect harmlessness and safety: for the fires of Smithfield, of Saffron Walden, and of Chichester, could never again be kindled, not for want of persecutors to burn, but for want of victims to endure the burning.

I could refer to other proofs that the enforcement of the unity of the Church by submission to Rome was one great object of all the Anti-Protestant party; and that both they and the Ultra-Protestant party considered the difference between Rome and themselves to be as great as between happiness and misery: but I wish to prove that the other objects of Bonner, the affirmation of a sacrifice in the Eucharist, the offering of prayers for the dead, and the condemnation of the Service Book of King Edward, the modern Prayer-Book, because of the manner in which the first of these doctrines was taught, and the second omitted-are the same with those of the "Tractarian British Critics," and that on these accounts also we are justified in defending the calumniated Bonner.

With respect to the doctrine of an actual sacrifice in the Eucharist, it can, I think, be proved that no one victim was burnt, no one prisoner was accused of Protestantism or heresy, without this charge being

278 BONNER ENFORCES THE TRUTH OF THE EUCHARIST.

implied, or expressed, as one of the articles of their indictment; that they disbelieved in the actual sacrifice of the body and blood of Christ in the Holy Communion. This was done before the Articles of the Creed of Pope Pius were drawn up; that is, before the Council of Trent had ceased to sit. This doctrine was held in the reign of Henry VIII. It was rejected in the reign of Edward the Sixth, when the articles of the existing Church of England, as we now hold them, were drawn up partly against this very doctrine. It was revived in the reign of Mary, and rejected again by the restoration of those Articles, in an abridged form, in the reign of Elizabeth, to be once more advocated by me and by my brethren in the present day. We agree with my dear friend, Dr. Pusey, that the Eucharist is the true commemorative sacrifice, representing to God the death and passion of his Son*-that in the Eucharist a sacrifice is made by the Church to God-that this sacrifice was predicted by Malachi, as that which the Gentiles should offer-and that it is enjoined in the words "do this, "or sacrifice this, in remembrance of me." This we affirm to be the doctrine of the early Church, and this we affirm to be our doctrine.† The Thirty-nine Articles, therefore, were intended to exclude from the Church of England those who held the doctrine of an actual sacrifice in the Eucharist; before the Council of Trent, in the Creed of Pope Pius, af

* Pusey's Letter to the Bishop of Oxford, p. 140, Tracts, No. 81, p. 4.