Hold Fast (part 2 of 2)

I do hope my Clergy in this day will stand firm on this subject. There is, I am afraid, a sad disposition to give way and recede from scriptural and Church of England truth in this direction. Partly from a fear of not honouring the sacraments enough, partly from the pressure of modern teaching, there is a strong tendency to exalt Baptism and the Lord’s Supper to a place never given to them in Scripture, and especially not in the pastoral Epistles. Let us set our foot down firmly on the wise and moderate principles laid down in our Articles, and refuse to go one inch beyond. Let us honour sacraments as holy ordinances appointed by Christ Himself, and blessed means of grace, though most shockingly neglected, I grieve to say, by many churchgoers who never go to the Lord’s Table. But let us steadily refuse to admit that Christ’s sacraments convey grace ‘ex opere operato,’ the external act, and that in every case where they are administered, good must of necessity be done, no matter how or by whom they are received. Let us refuse to admit that they are the principal ‘media’ between Christ and the soul--above faith, above preaching, above prayer, and above the Word. Let us maintain, with the judicious Hooker, that ‘all receive not the grace of God, who receive the sacraments of His grace.’ Above all, let us never encourage any one to suppose he will receive any benefit from the Lord’s Supper, unless he comes to it with the qualifications laid down at the end of the Church Catechism, ‘with repentance for sin, and lively faith in Christ, and charity toward all men.’ St. Paul says there is such a thing as ‘eating and drinking unworthily’ in the Lord’s Supper. To press men to become communicants who neither repent nor believe, is no kindness, and does more harm than good.

7. In the next place, let me charge you to hold fast the old doctrine of the Church of England about the sanctity and right observance of the Sabbath Day.

I name this point because our old English Sunday appears to me to be in great danger. We live in perilous times. Partly from the spread of infidelity, that old enemy of the Lord’s Day; partly from the morbid love of liberty, and letting every one do as he likes; partly from the exaggerated love of pleasure which marks this age; partly from the facilities afforded by railways for Sabbath travelling, of which our fathers knew nothing, and got on well enough without them; partly from one cause and partly from another, the devil is just now getting more help in his campaign against the Lord’s Day than he has done since the Reformation. You may see what I mean in the persistent attempts frequently made to throw open places of amusement, aquariums, libraries, theatres, museums, picture galleries, and the like, under the plausible pretence of ‘affording recreation to the working-classes’! All such attempts, I maintain, ought to be firmly and vigilantly resisted. They are the first steps towards a Continental Sunday, and a general flood of Sabbath desecration, Sunday shop-opening, and Sunday delivery of letters in London. I would not have you give way to such attempts. ‘No surrender!’ should be our cry. Let us fight to the last plank for the old English Sunday. Give up the outworks, and the citadel will soon fall.

That laymen of high position and education, noblemen, philosophers, and scientific lecturers, should assist the attempt to break down the standard of Sunday observance, is matter for deep regret. I can only suppose that they do it in ignorance. If they would only study hearts and consciences and death-bed feelings half as much as they study political economy, or stones and plants and beasts and geology and astronomy and light and chemistry and the secrets of earth and air and sea, I believe they would not act as they do. I pity and pray for them. ‘They know not what they do.’ But how any clergyman holding office in the Church of England, and reading the Fourth Commandment every Sunday to his congregation, can lend his aid to movements which must infallibly prevent the Sabbath being kept holy, if they succeed, is one of those mysteries of the nineteenth century which pass my understanding. I am amazed, pained, troubled, grieved, and astonished. The good that the best clergyman does at his very best in a fallen world is small. But he that expects to do good by introducing a Continental Sunday into his parish, exhibits, in my judgment, however excellent his intentions, great ignorance of human nature. He is cutting off his right hand, and destroying his own usefulness. Whatever may be the bad habits of the working-classes in large parishes, they will never be cured by organizing modes of breaking the Fourth Commandment. We should call that statesman a poor lawgiver who sanctioned petty larceny in order to prevent burglary; and I call that clergyman an unwise man, who, in order to stop drunkenness and its concomitants, is prepared to throw overboard the Sabbath Day. Surely to sacrifice one commandment in order to prevent the breach of another, is neither Christianity nor common-sense. It is, in my opinion, ‘doing evil that good may come.’

The best practical way of resisting the attack made on the Sabbath in the present day, is to supply the working-classes with plain instruction on the subject, and to open their eyes to all its bearings. I make no apology for urging my brethren in the ministry to do this continually.

Tell the working-classes never to be taken in and deluded by those who want the sanctity of the Lord’s Day to be more publicly invaded than it is, and yet say they are ‘their friends’! However well-meaning and fair-spoken such persons may be, they are not real friends. They are in reality their worst enemies. They are taking the surest course to add to their burdens. They do not mean it, very likely, but in reality they are doing them a cruel injury.

Tell the working-classes that if English Sundays are ever turned into days of play and amusement, they will soon become days of labour and work. It is vain to suppose that it can be avoided. It never has been in other countries. It never would be in our own land. Once establish the principle that libraries, picture galleries, aquariums, museums, and crystal palaces, are to be thrown open on Sundays, and you let in the thin edge of the wedge. The enemy would have got inside the walls. The sacredness of the day of rest would be gone. Shops would soon be opened. Farmers would insist on cultivating the land, or getting in hay or corn on Sundays. Factories would go on working. Contractors would press forward their operations. Tell the working-classes that if they ever lose their old English Sabbath, they will soon find that they have lost their best friend. Tell them that those who want to secure them a little more time for rest and relaxation should not try to take that time out of Sunday. Let them take a little piece out of one of the six working days, if possible, but not a bit out of the day of God. Tell them that as the world has got six days for its business, and God has only left Himself one for His, it is only fair and right that the world should give up some of its time before we begin robbing God of His.

After all, there is a world to come, a life after death, an eternity either in heaven or hell. We must all die at last, and stand before the judgment-seat of Christ, when we rise again. Never, never let us cease to maintain and proclaim these great realities, whether men will hear or whether they will forbear. Never let us forget that the value we put on the Lord’s Day, and the manner in which we spend it, are some of the most useful and searching tests of our fitness to die, and our readiness for heaven.

Footnote In September 1889, the French Government, anxious to take steps to win back ‘the lost Sabbath’, called an International Congress to consider what could be done to secure the Sabbath for France. Delegates attended from England, Germany, United States, Switzerland, Belgium, Italy, Norway, Austria, Brazil, and many other countries. M. Leon Say, the Minister of Commerce, presided, and forty-eight resolutions were passed, all in favour of the Sabbath Day.

8. Let me charge you, in the next place, to hold fast the teaching of Scripture and the Prayer-book about the state of man after death. This is a very solemn and painful topic, and flesh and blood naturally shrink from its contemplation. But so many strange doctrines are floating in the air about the whole subject, that I dare not refuse to consider it. The language of the Bible and the Liturgy about ‘judgment to come’ and the future punishment of those who die impenitent, appear to me so distinct, that I do not see how it can be explained away. Those who object to the doctrine of future punishment, talk loudly about love and charity, and say that it does not harmonize with the merciful and compassionate character of God. But what saith the Scripture? Who ever spoke such loving and merciful words as our Lord Jesus Christ? Yet His are the lips which three times over describe the consequence of impenitence and sin, as ‘the worm that never dies, and the fire that is not quenched.’ He is the Person who speaks in one sentence of the wicked going away into ‘everlasting punishment,’ and the righteous into ‘life eternal.’ (Mark 9:43-48; Matthew 25:46)

Footnote If God had intended to have told us that the punishment of wicked men shall have no end, the languages wherein the Scriptures are written do hardly afford fuller and more certain words than those that are used in this case, whereby to express a duration without end; and likewise, which is almost a peremptory decision of the thing, the duration of the punishment of wicked men is in the very same sentence expressed by the very same word which is used for the duration of happiness of the righteous.’ Archbishop Tillotson on Hell Torments. See Matthew Horbery: Scripture Doctrine of Eternal Punishment, 1744, vol. ii, p. 42.

Who does not remember the Apostle Paul’s words about charity? Yet he is the very Apostle who says the wicked ’shall be punished with everlasting destruction’ (2 Thessalonians 1:9). Who does not know the spirit of love which runs all through St. John’s Gospel and Epistles? Yet the beloved Apostle is the very writer in the New Testament who dwells most strongly, in the book of Revelation, on the reality and eternity of future woe. What shall we say to these things? Shall we be wise above that which is written? Shall we admit the dangerous principle that words in Scripture do not mean what they appear to mean? If so, where are we to stop? Is it not far better to lay our hands on our mouths and say, ‘Whatsoever God has written must be true.’ ‘Even so, Lord God Almighty, true and righteous are thy judgments.’ (Revelation 16:7)

The language of our Prayer-book on this deep and awful subject is very remarkable. Almost the first petition in our matchless Litany contains this sentence, ‘From everlasting damnation, good Lord, deliver us.’ The Catechism teaches every child who learns it, that whenever we repeat the Lord’s Prayer we desire our Heavenly Father to ‘keep us from our ghostly enemy and from everlasting death.’ Even in our Burial Service we pray at the grave-side, ‘Deliver us not into the bitter pains of eternal death.’ Once more I ask, ‘What shall we say to these things?’ Shall we teach our congregations that even when people live and die in sin, we may hope for their happiness in a remote future? Surely the common sense of many of our worshippers would reply, that if this is the case, Prayer-book words mean nothing at all.

I lay no claim to any peculiar knowledge of Scripture. I feel daily that I am no more infallible than the Bishop of Rome. But I must speak according to the light which God has given to me, and I do not think I should do my duty if I did not raise a warning voice on this subject, and try to put the clergy of my Diocese on their guard. Six thousand years ago, sin entered into the world by the devil’s daring falsehood: ‘Ye shall not surely die.’ (Genesis 3:4) At the end of six thousand years, the great enemy of mankind is still using his old weapon, and trying to persuade men that they may live and die in sin, and yet at some distant period may be finally saved. Let us not be ignorant of his devices. Let us walk steadily in the old paths. Let us hold fast the old truth, and believe that, as the happiness of the saved is eternal, so also is the misery of the lost.

Footnote ‘There is nothing that Satan more desires than that we should believe that he does not exist, and that there is no such place as hell, and no such things as eternal torments. He whispers all this into our ears, and he exults when he hears a layman, and much more when he hears a clergyman, deny these things for then he hopes to make them and others his victims’. Bishop Christopher Wordsworth, Sermon on Future Rewards and Punishments, p. 36.

(i) Let us hold it fast in the interest of the whole system of revealed religion. What was the use of God’s Son becoming incarnate, agonizing in Gethsemane, and dying on the cross to make atonement, if men can be finally saved without believing on Him? Where is the slightest proof that saving faith in Christ’s blood can ever begin after death? Where is the need of the Holy Ghost, if sinners are at last to enter heaven without conversion and renewal of heart? Where can we find the smallest evidence that any one can be born again after death, and have a new heart, if he dies in an unregenerate state? If a man may escape eternal punishment at last, without faith in Christ or sanctification of the Spirit, sin is no longer an infinite evil, and there was no need for Christ to die on Calvary. (2) Let us hold it fast for the sake of holiness and morality. I can imagine nothing so pleasant to flesh and blood, as the specious theory that we may live in sin and yet escape eternal perdition; and that, although we ’serve divers lusts and pleasures’ while we are here, we shall somehow or other all get to heaven hereafter! Only tell the young man who is ‘wasting his substance in riotous living,’ that there is a heaven at last, even for those who live and die in sin, and he is never likely to turn from evil. What does it signify how he lives, if there is no ‘judgment to come?’ Why should he repent and take up the cross, if he can get to heaven at last without trouble? (3) Finally, let us hold it fast for the sake of the common hopes of all God’s saints. Let us distinctly understand that every blow struck at the eternity of punishment, is an equally heavy blow at the eternity of reward. It is impossible to separate the two things. No ingenious theological definition can divide them. They stand or fall together. The same language is used, the same figures of speech are employed, when the Bible speaks about either condition. Every attack on the duration of hell is also an attack on the duration of heaven.

Footnote ‘If the punishment of the wicked is only temporary, such will also be the happiness of the righteous, which is repugnant to the whole teaching of Scripture; but if the happiness of the righteous will be everlasting (who will be equal to the angels, and their bodies will be like the body of Christ), such also will be the punishment of the wicked’. Bishop Christopher Wordsworth, Sermon on Future Rewards and Punishments, p. 36.

It is a deep and true saying, ‘With the sinner’s fear our hope departs.’

I turn from this part of my Charge with a strong sense of its painfulness. I feel keenly, with Robert M’Cheyne, that ‘it is a difficult subject to handle lovingly.’ But I turn from it with an equally strong conviction, that if we believe the Bible we must never give up anything which it contains. From hard, austere, and unmerciful theology, Good Lord, deliver us! If men are not saved, it is not because God does not love them, and is not willing to save them, but because they ‘will not come to Christ.’ (John 5:40) But we must not be wise above that which is written. No morbid liberality, so called, must induce us to reject anything which God has revealed about the next world. Men sometimes talk exclusively about God’s mercy and love and compassion, as if He had no other attributes, and leave out of sight entirely His holiness and His purity, His justice and His unchangeableness, and His hatred of sin. Let us beware of falling into this delusion. It is a growing evil in these latter days. Low and inadequate views of the unutterable vileness and filthiness of sin, and of the unutterable purity of the eternal God, are fertile sources of error about man’s future state. Let us think of the mighty Being with whom we have to do, as He Himself declared His character to Moses, saying, ‘The Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering and abundant in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity, and transgression, and sin.’ But let us not forget the solemn clause which concludes the sentence: ‘And that will by no means clear the guilty.’ (Exodus 34:6-7) Unrepented sin is an eternal evil, and can never cease to be sin; and He with whom we have to do is an eternal God.

9. In the last place, let me charge you to hold fast the great Protestant principles on which the Church of England was reformed three hundred and fifty years ago, and to resist firmly all attempts to promote reunion with the Church of Rome.

There was a time when it would have been needless for a Bishop to offer such advice to his clergy. But times have strangely altered. No intelligent observer can fail to observe that the tone of public feeling in England about Romanism has undergone a great change in the last sixty years. There is no longer that general dislike, dread, and aversion to Popery, which was once almost universal in this realm. The edge of the old British feeling about Protestantism seems blunted and dull. Some profess to be tired of all religious controversy, and are ready to sacrifice God’s truth for the sake of peace. Some look on Romanism as simply one among many English forms of religion, and neither worse nor better than others. Some try to persuade us that Romanism is changed, and not nearly so bad as it used to be. Some boldly point to the faults of Protestants, and loudly cry that Romanists are quite as good as ourselves. Some think it fine and liberal to maintain that we have no right to think any one wrong who pays taxes and is in earnest about his creed. And yet the two great historical facts, (1) that ignorance, immorality, and superstition reigned supreme in England four hundred years ago under Popery;

(2) that the Reformation was the greatest blessing God ever gave to this land--both these are facts which no one but a Romanist ever thought of disputing fifty years ago! In the present day, alas! it is convenient and fashionable to forget them. In short, at the rate we are going, I shall not be surprised if it is soon proposed to repeal the Act of Settlement as too narrow and illiberal for the nineteenth century, and to allow the Crown of England to be worn by a Papist. (See APPENDIX, CHAPTER 9.)

The causes of this melancholy change of feeling are not hard to discover.

(1) It arises partly from the untiring zeal of the Romish Church herself. Her agents never slumber or sleep, whatever English Churchmen may do. With unwearied zeal they compass sea and land to make one proselyte. With a watchful pertinacity, worthy of a better cause, they leave no stone unturned, in the palace or the workhouse, to promote their cause.

(2) It has been furthered immensely by the proceedings of a zealous, well-meaning, but sadly mistaken party within the Church of England, which has given many converts, like Newman and Manning, to the Church of Rome. The novel teaching and ritual of modern days have gradually familiarized people with every distinctive doctrine and practice of Roman-ism--the real presence, the mass, auricular confession and priestly absolution, the sacerdotal character of the ministry, the monastic system, and a histrionic, sensuous, showy style of public worship. The natural result is that many simple people see no mighty harm in downright genuine Popery.

(3) Last, but not least, the spurious liberality of the day we live in, helps on the Rome-ward tendency. It is fashionable now to say that all sects should be equal, that the State should have nothing to do with religion, that all creeds should be regarded with equal favour and respect, and that there is a substratum of common truth at the bottom of all religion, whether Buddhism, Mahometanism, or Christianity! The consequence is, that myriads of ignorant folks begin to think there is nothing peculiarly dangerous in the tenets of Papists any more than in the tenets of Methodists, Independents, Presbyterians, or Baptists, and that we ought to let Romanism alone, and never expose its unscriptural and Christ-dishonouring character.

The consequences of this changed tone of feeling, I am bold to say, will be most disastrous and mischievous, unless loyal Churchmen can be aroused to see their danger. Once let Popery get her foot again on the neck of England, and there will be an end of all our national greatness. God will forsake us, and we shall sink to the level of Portugal and Spain. With Bible-reading discouraged, with private judgment forbidden, with the way to Christ’s cross narrowed or blocked up, with priestcraft reestablished, with auricular confession set up in every parish, with monasteries and nunneries dotted over the land, with women everywhere kneeling like serfs and slaves at the feet of clergymen, with men casting off all faith, and becoming sceptics, with schools and colleges made seminaries of Jesuitism, with free thought denounced and anathematized--with all these things the distinctive manliness and independence of the British character will gradually dwindle, wither, pine away, and be destroyed; and England will be ruined. And all these things, I firmly believe, will come, unless the old feeling about the value of Protestantism can be revived.

I warn all who hear this Charge, that the times require you to awake and be on your guard. Be ready, with all diligence, according to your ordination vow, to ‘drive away all erroneous and strange doctrine contrary to God’s Word.’ Hold firmly, if you please, the old loyal High Church principles of Andrews and Hooker and Ken and Taylor and Barrow and Stillingfleet and Bull and Beveridge, if you conscientiously prefer them. But, like those great divines, resist Romanism, and beware of any religious teaching which, wittingly or unwittingly, paves the way to it. I beseech you to realize the painful fact that the Protestantism of this country is gradually ebbing away, and I entreat you, as Christians and patriots, to resist the growing tendency to forget the blessings of the English Reformation. For Christ’s sake, for the sake of the Church of England, for the sake of our country, for the sake of our children, let us not loose our moorings, and drift back into the waters which our fathers wisely left three hundred and fifty years ago. They separated from Rome for just and sufficient reasons, as Bishop Jewel has shown in his matchless, though little-read, Apology. Those reasons remain to the present day unshaken and un-refuted. Nine times over, your own Thirty-nine Articles condemn, in plain and explicit language, the leading doctrines of the Church of Rome; and these Articles are still binding on every minister of the Church of England. Then let us resolve to have no peace with Rome till Rome abjures her errors, and is at peace with Christ. Till Rome does that, the vaunted reunion of Western Churches, which some talk of, and press upon our notice, is an insult to the Church of England.

I must now bring this over-long Charge to a conclusion. I am afraid it will appear to some a mere dry statement of fossil theological points, unworthy of the nineteenth century. Be it so. I am content to wait. The dark days of sorrow, the sick-bed, the death-bed, and above all the day of judgment, will teach us all in a few years whether the old-fashioned theology which men are so fond of decrying in 1890, is a thing to be despised. I will wind up all with a few practical words about our present and our future duty. (1) As to the present, it is vain to deny that our beloved Church is placed in a most dangerous position by our ‘unhappy divisions,’ and the conspicuous absence of any attempt to heal them. Year after year the gulf between discordant parties within our pale seems to yawn wider and grow deeper, and some violent catastrophe appears ultimately inevitable. So long as that wretched puzzle, the Ornaments Rubric, which is interpreted in two diametrically opposite ways, remains in the Prayer-book; so long as the existing Ecclesiastical Courts are thought by many conscientious clergymen worthless and incompetent, and their decisions are ignored and disobeyed without any interference; so long as those who think the Courts incompetent decline to take any steps to have better Courts created; so long as it appears to be held, even by many in this Diocese, that no clergyman is ever to be called to account whatever he may teach and do, and every one is to do what is right in his own eyes; so long as that barbarous law remains unrepealed by which conscientious clergymen declared guilty of contumacy in doctrinal suits, may be sent to prison--so long, I say, as this miserable state of things continues, the present condition of the Church seems at first sight hopeless. A house divided against itself cannot stand; and sooner or later we shall be disestablished, disendowed, and broken up. But I said ’seems’ hopeless advisedly. When I read how wonderfully God kept our Church alive in the days of Queen Mary, in the times of the Long Parliament, and during the deathlike apathy of the last century, I refuse to despair. Nothing is impossible. Our present duty is to hope and pray and work on and wait. He that healed lepers and raised the dead can heal and revive the Church of England.

(2) As to the future, I lay no claim to the gift of prophecy, and I shall certainly not attempt to offer counsel as to the line of duty in certain hypothetical cases. ‘Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.’ (Matthew 6:34). It will be time enough to make up our minds when a crisis arrives. After all, it is the thing unexpected which often comes to pass.

In any case, as long as we live, I trust we shall always cultivate the habit of treating Churchmen of other schools of thought than our own, with kindness, courtesy, and respect. Let us give them credit for being as much in earnest as ourselves, though we may think them sadly mistaken. Let us believe that many Churchmen with whom we now disagree, may be, and often are, real Christians, in spite of all their errors. Their hearts may be right in the sight of God, though their heads seem to us very wrong. However erroneous we may consider their views, we must charitably hope that they are in the way of life and travelling toward heaven, and will be ’saved by the grace of God, even as ourselves.’ However much we may believe they mar their own usefulness by their imperfect statement of truth, we must not rashly pronounce them godless and graceless, lest we be found condemning those whom God has received. To speak plainly, it never will do to brand people as unconverted heretics and children of wrath, because they differ from us about the effect of the sacraments, or about ritual, or about the precise nature of inspiration. Firmly as we may cling to our own views of such subjects, we must carefully remember that it is possible to hold the Head, and stand on the Rock under a great cloud of error. In any case, let us not lightly forsake our mother, the Church of England. So long as the Church of England sticks firmly to the Bible, the Articles, and the principles of the Protestant Reformation, so long I advise you strongly to stick to the Church. When the Articles and Prayer-book are altered or thrown overboard, and the old flag is hauled down, then, and not till then, it will be time for us to launch the boats and quit the wreck. At present, let us stick to the old ship. So long as we preserve our Articles, Creed, and Prayer-book whole and unaltered, how can we better our position by secession? Where shall we enjoy such liberty, though now we may not have things all our own way, whether High or Low or Broad? To whom can we go? Where shall we find better prayers? In what communion shall we find so much good being done, in spite of the existence of much evil? No doubt there is much to sadden us; but there is not a single visible Church on earth at this day doing better. There is not a single communion where there are no clouds, and all is serene. ‘The evil everywhere are mingled with the good’. The wheat never grows without tares. But, for all that, there is much to gladden us--more good preaching than there ever was before in the pulpits of the Establishment, more good work done both at home and abroad. Then let us all work on, and fight on, and pray on, and stick to the Church of England, and make the best of our position. The Churchman who walks in these lines, I believe, is the Churchman who ‘understands the times,’ and does his duty.

I now close what may possibly be the last Charge I may ever be allowed to deliver, with St. Paul’s words: ‘I commend you to God, and the word of his grace, which is able to build you up, and give you an inheritance among all them which are sanctified.’ ‘Watch ye; stand fast in the faith; quit you like men; be strong. Let all your things be done with charity.’ (Acts 20:32; 1 Corinthians 16:13-14)

APPENDIX: CHAPTER 9

Some readers may think the statement of this paragraph extravagant and overdrawn. I request them to read the following passages from a statement recently made by the Roman Catholic Bishop of Salford, Manchester:

ENGLAND’S CONVERSION NO DREAM

I hear some one whisper: You are dreaming, you are raving; to talk of the conversion of England is childish babble. You are not two millions out of twenty-seven millions of the population. You lose thousands of your poor through the workhouse system and proselytism for hundreds you gain in the upper classes. You misunderstand the English race, you misread their strong Protestant character, if you expect their conversion to Catholicism.

THE PENAL TIMES

To this I reply: Compare the attitude of England during the last three hundred years towards the Catholic Church with her attitude today. For three hundred years Catholics were socially and civilly proscribed. They lived, or rather groaned, under all manner of disabilities. It was a crime to profess the Catholic religion, to hear Mass, to harbour a priest, to possess beads or medals blessed by the Pope, to communicate with Rome, to perform any act of the Catholic religion. The legal penalties were fines, confiscation, imprisonment, banishment, torture, and death, and they were all applied with a remorseless hand. No Catholic could hold a commission of the peace, a commission in the army or navy, or any civil position of trust and responsibility. Catholic education was proscribed, so that the children of Catholics had to grow up in ignorance, or to pass the seas if they would obtain education. Even the fathers of men now living remember the time when the only safe way for a Catholic to retain his estates was by legally conveying them to a Protestant, and when a Catholic could be compelled by any stranger on the road to give up his horse for a five-pound note. Not only were the laws of the land directed against Catholics, but for nigh three centuries the whole literature and the social and public life of the country seemed to combine with the Legislature for their degradation and utter extinction. But what is the attitude of England towards Catholics today?

ENGLISH CATHOLICS TODAY

They are in honour equal with their fellow-countrymen. They fill all posts of trust and honour save only the highest: they are viceroys, governors of colonies, lord-lieutenants, privy councillors, members of parliament, cabinet ministers, chairmen of county councils, and magistrates. They are generals in the army, admirals of the fleet, judges of the land. There is no path of civil or public service which is not now open to them, and in which they are not welcomed. Once and again there has been a brief outburst of the old Protestant fear and bigotry, as forty years ago, when it is thus that a Protestant contemporary writes: ‘Liberals and Conservatives vied with one another in uttering furious nonsense, and the whole heart of the nation went with them. But the legislative results were a miserable penal law, which was never put in force, and was repealed a few years ago with every expression of contempt.’ Now put this change down to whatever cause you please--to communication with the Continent, contact with Catholics, the abolition of class privileges and ascendency, indifference in matters of religion, the spread of education among all sections of the people, the decay of prejudice, critical research, which is causing the history of England to be rewritten--whatever be the causes, the result, the change is undeniable.

CHANGE IN THE ESTABLISHMENT

Nor is this all. Not only has the attitude of the population changed, but the very Establishment which was set up in rivalry to the Church, with a Royal supremacy triumphantly pitted against a Papal supremacy, this very Establishment has changed its temper and attitude. Its Bishops, ministers, and people are busily engaged in ignoring or denouncing those very Articles which were drawn up to be their eternal protest against the Old Religion. The sacramental power of orders, the need of jurisdiction, the Real Presence, the daily sacrifice, auricular confession, prayers and offices for the dead, belief in Purgatory, the invocation of the Blessed Virgin and the saints, religious vows, and the institution of monks and nuns--the very doctrines stamped in the Thirty-nine Articles as fond fables and blasphemous deceits all these are now openly taught from a thousand pulpits within the Establishment, and as heartily embraced by as many crowded congregations. Even the statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary has been set up with honour over the principal side entrance to Westminster Abbey, and she has been recently enthroned upon a majestic altar under the great dome of St. Paul’s. I give this passage without comment. If it does not open men’s eyes to the danger in which the Reformed Church of England stands at this moment, I fear nothing will. Unhappily none are so blind as those who will not see.