The Catholic World Volume Ii Part 84

Perhaps the most elaborate part of Dr. Pusey's volume is that in which he endeavors to prove that the unity of the visible church need not be visible, and that it is sufficiently secured by orders and sacraments, "through its union with Christ, as head, by the sacraments, and the indwelling of G.o.d the Holy Ghost." He naively asks, How can we be said to deny the indissoluble unity of the Church when we cannot approach communion without repeating the Nicene Creed? Certainly, few people could ever be convicted of false doctrine if the repet.i.tion of the creed in public service was enough to absolve them. In this part of the work, however, Dr. Pusey more than ever leaves out of sight the real nature of the charge which he has undertaken to answer--the charge of having denied the indissoluble unity of the Church, its visible head, and its perpetual voice. The question is, whether these truths can be considered as a part of the system which the Church of England teaches and defends. Here, of course, there is more divergence as to the doctrine between the two controversialists; and Dr. Pusey answers only by a theory of his own. But in fact, even if he fairly represents Anglicanism, he cannot escape the charge, as to the unity of the Church, any more than that as to its infallibility. He really maintains that for all practical purposes the Church _was_ infallible up to the division of East and West--we meet in his pages that phrase of which his friends are so fond, the "Holy Undivided Church." _Now_ it is difficult to find what infallible teacher Dr. Pusey acknowledges; to what he would submit a conclusion, we will say, as to the Immaculate Conception, which he has drawn by his own reason from his study of Scripture or the fathers. His position may be understood from the following pa.s.sage:

"This, I understand, is a favorite formula with Dr. Manning--'By whom does G.o.d the Holy Ghost speak? By the Roman Church? or by the Eastern? or by the Anglican?' I have been wont to say, by all concurrently, in so far as they teach the same faith which was from the beginning, which is the great body of all their teaching; and, if need require, they could at this day declare concurrently any truth, if it should appear that it had not as yet been sufficiently defined, against some fresh heresy which should emerge" (p. 84).

The faith of Christians is therefore proposed to them by an authority on which they are bound to receive it; but that authority has in the first place to be tested by Christians themselves, who must decide by their own reason--for they can have no other guide--whether in any particular point the three churches teach the same faith which was from the beginning. {539} Further this authority cannot speak at all precisely on those points as to which Christians must most desire its guidance--those points on which these three churches differ. Dr.

Pusey speaks of his reciting the Nicene Creed. On what authority does he believe that the Holy Ghost proceeds from the Father and the Son?

He may _think_ that the Eastern faith comes to much the same thing as the Western; but that is a conclusion of his own reason. And we must leave to our readers to make out for themselves the way in which he tries to show that the churches could still act concurrently, if the occasion were to arise; especially in the very obvious and, according to the Anglican teaching, perfectly possible case, that one of these three churches themselves should be the victim of the new heresy, which, according to him, would const.i.tute the occasion for a new definition. [Footnote 75]

[Footnote 75: We are not, of course, answering Dr. Pusey's book; but we cannot help quoting a single pa.s.sage from the treatise "On the Temporal Mission of the Holy Ghost," lately published by his grace the Archbishop of Westminster, which simply destroys the whole theory on which Dr. Pusey reasons. Few things of the kind can be more refres.h.i.+ng than to turn from the pages of Dr. Pusey to the clear, bright, simple, and precise statements of Dr. Manning. It is like breathing pure country air after groping about in a London fog; and the fanciful and unsubstantial images that bewilder the readers of the _Eirenicon_ vanish like so much mist and vapor as the majestic outlines of the Church, as sketched by the archbishop, take possession of the mind. No one who reads this book will need any other answer to that of Dr. Pusey. On the point before us the archbishop says: "There are some who appeal from the voice of the living Church to antiquity, professing to believe that while the Church was united was infallible; that when it became divided it ceased to speak infallibly; and that the only certain rule or faith is to believe that which the Church held and taught while yet it was united, and therefore infallible. Such reasoners fail to observe that since the supposed division and cessation of the infallible voice there remains no divine certainty as to what was then infallibly taught. To affirm that this or that doctrine was taught then where it is now disputed, is to beg the question. The infallible Church of the first six centuries--that is, before the division--was infallible to those who lived in those ages, but is not infallible to us. It spoke to them; to us it is silent. The infallibility does not reach to us; for the Church of the last twelve hundred years is by the hypothesis fallible, and may therefore err in delivering to us what was taught before the division. And it is certain that either the East or the West, as it is called, must err in this, for they contradict each other as to the faith before the division. I do not speak of the protests of later separations, because no one can invest them with an infallibility which they not only disclaim for themselves, but deny anywhere to exists" (pp. 74, 75).]

It is clear that, according to Dr. Pusey, we must ascertain what the "Undivided Church" taught for ourselves, and then receive it on her authority. Far more than this in reality; for we are to find out for ourselves negative conclusions as well as positive. There is what he speaks of as a vast practical system in the Catholic Church, the honor paid to our Blessed Lady, and other things of that kind, which penetrate the daily life and the ordinary thoughts of the great ma.s.s of her children. On this Dr. Pusey sits in judgment, and declares it to be alien to the teaching of the "Undivided Church," because he does not find it himself in the fathers. We do not see that he places his objections to it on the authority of his own Church. This leads us to our question, what, to him, is Anglicanism? Is he content to be its dutiful child, to catch its genuine spirit, to echo without further question its definitions, to "rest and be thankful" with whatever it may give him? We believe that no one who has ever known anything about the subject has suspected Dr. Pusey of any intention to secede from the Anglican Church: this makes it all the more strange that he should give it so wavering and n.i.g.g.ardly an allegiance. Other people openly avow that they simply put up with it as a convenient lodging-place for men of no particular opinions; it exacts little, leaves them pretty much alone, and yet furnishes them handsomely with the outward paraphernalia of a church. Like the Roman Senate in the old story about Tiberius, it admits the G.o.ds of all nations easily into its Pantheon. One set of opinions alone it objects to, because they are so exclusive! Except in that case, its courts always s.h.i.+eld the persecuted. Mr. Gorham is attacked for a heresy, and they s.h.i.+eld him; Mr. Denison for a truth, and they absolve him; even the "Essays and Reviews" do not deprive their authors of this comprehensive protection. Its toleration gives, as a statesman expressed it, "general {540} satisfaction." Who can refuse to be loyal, when the yoke is so light?

"Quod si nec nomen, nec me tua forma teneret, Posset servitiam mite tenere tuum;"

and so Dr. Pusey himself seems to feel, save in those moods of rebelliousness which now and then come over him. We have seen how he once almost pledged himself to secede if the Gorham judgment was not disavowed. He was too old then to be excused on the plea of youthful impetuosity; at all events, the fit pa.s.sed away: the baptismal service contents him. We have seen the threats he threw out more than a year ago about a free church if the court of appeal were not modified: that mood too has pa.s.sed away. His present book speaks in the most contented manner: "Essay and Reviewism a pa.s.sing storm," is the t.i.tle that runs along the top of one of his pages; and he speaks of "the bright promise of the year of ingathering which the Lord has blessed!"

He has forgotten his despair of last year, and boldly proposes to the Catholic Church terms on which reunion may be made,--terms, we venture to say, which would be rejected at once by every authority of the Church of England itself. Still, with all this, we do not see in his book any indication that, except as to the validity of Anglican orders, he really thinks much better of Anglicanism than Dr. Manning or Dr. Newman. Its authority is nothing to him; and they, on the other hand, do not deny that, though a mere human inst.i.tution, it teaches many truths which might otherwise be untaught. He is ready to leave it if it "accepts heresy;" but it seems that _what_ is heresy, and what is its acceptance, must be left to himself to decide. This is the language of one party in a contract or a compromise to another; not that of a pupil to a teacher, a child to a parent--above all, not that of a Catholic to his Church. He does not aver that "the Church of England is the best possible bulwark against infidelity," but only "as a matter of fact, that it is at this moment, under G.o.d's providence, a real and chief bulwark against it." He complains of Dr. Manning's statement that she "rejects _much_ Christian truth" in a way that looks very much as if he thought she rejected _some_ and he only defends her even then by putting an entirely strange face upon her. He hoists a false flag, and fights for her under it.

We are unwilling to speak personally of an amiable and excellent man; but Dr. Pusey, if there are few exactly like him, is still in his way a representative man; and his work shows thus the position of many others beside himself. It is obvious that he is really in the Church of England because he has nowhere else to go. He is loyal to her, not because he loves and admires her, but because he thinks he can find no other resting-place. Deeply versed in the Scriptures, especially of the Old Testament, and with a large acquaintance with some of the fathers, he has studied them under that fatal disadvantage which consists in the entire ignorance of the living system in which the authors whom he has read lived and breathed. The fathers especially, if they are studied without a knowledge of the ever-living Church, are certain to be misunderstood and to convey inadequate ideas of their own practice and belief. The Church alone explains and completes their testimony. It is exactly the everyday life, the things and customs and ideas that are too familiar to be chronicled, that must ever be unknown to those who have a merely literary knowledge of any system or any set of men. The strange thing is that any reasonable man should suppose it to be otherwise. Dr. Pusey, if we may judge from the opening of his postscript, really seems to think that if St. Augustine were to arrive to-morrow in London, he would go to wors.h.i.+p in St.

Paul's or Westminster Abbey, rather than at Moorfields or Warwick Street--St. Augustine, who, in a well-known pa.s.sage, {541} has pointed out the unfailing mark which the common sense of mankind has fixed upon the true Church by the simple popular use of the name Catholic!

The result of Dr. Pusey's thought and study may be summed up in two simple heads. The first is an att.i.tude of mind utterly and entirely alien from that which is the first condition of the relation of a Catholic to the Church. He has never been taught by a church, guided by a church, moulded by a church; he is self-educated and self-reliant; he has made his own teacher for himself, and has never sat at the feet of any other, except of the author of a book of which he was himself the interpreter. Speaking of the possibility of "secession" in his own case, he tells us, "I have always felt that I could have gone in on no other way than that of closing my eyes and accepting whatever was put before me" (p. 98). What a revolution that would be! This att.i.tude of simple, uncriticising, ungrudging docility and obedience, is a thing which to him is a perfect novelty. It is one thing to take our faith from an abstraction of our own brain; quite another to receive it from a living reality, outside and independent of ourselves. This is the first thing that strikes us in men like Dr.

Pusey, as their minds are reflected in books such as that before us.

The second is an amount of misconception, misunderstanding, and positive ignorance of the Catholic system, which would be simply unintelligible did we not consider the great disadvantages under which any one in his position must have studied it. He is not one of the more rabid school of Anglican controversialists; his character and habits of mind are quite alien from wilful misrepresentation and conscious unfairness. And yet there is hardly a fair statement in his book on matters which belong to Catholicism; and there are many most provoking misstatements, as well as many most ludicrous and childish blunders. The book presents an easy victory to any moderately-informed Catholic theologian who may take the trouble to refute it. This has not been our purpose at present. We have been content with pointing out that his defence of Anglicanism really condemns it, because it implies that he cannot defend it without misrepresenting it. In a future article we may deal with him as a controversialist, and point out, by way of specimen, some few of the mistakes into which he has fallen in his attack on the Catholic Church.

From The Literary Workman.

IRELAND BEFORE CHRISTIANITY.

The ignorance of true Irish history that prevails, and the absurdity of the things given as facts to a large ma.s.s of moderately educated people, is painfully surprising. For instance, it is generally believed among a great number of people, and it is taught to them in books, that Ireland was a land of desolate bogs, and forests filled with wolves, and inhabited by lawless savages, till converted to a "sort of Christianity" by the English, of which Christianity the remarkable part was that it had nothing to do with the Pope. Many people believe St. Patrick to have been an Englishman; others think he was a Welshman, and a few bold spirits of the present day declare that they can prove him to have been an excellent Protestant. Savages, bogs, wolves, and desolation, having been taken {542} compa.s.sion upon by the English, they subjugated the people, taught them, gave them laws, and in the reign of Henry II. of England attached Ireland to the British crown, when that country began to have a history. Before that date, that is, before the twelfth century, for Henry II. ascended the throne in 1154, Ireland had had no history worth remembering or worth noting. This is a short summary of the chief points of the Protestant belief on that matter. And although true knowledge concerning many things has struck root and spread amazingly of late years, there is so much still to learn about Ireland, and the history of that country is at once so interesting and so edifying, that "Papers on Irish History"

are offered to the readers of the "Workman" with a conviction that they will find a welcome both in that country and in England.

In looking back to the earliest years of the history of Ireland, our instructor is tradition. It is a very curious thing, however, to see that the old tales, which have pa.s.sed with many for poetic fables, have a.s.sumed in these days a remarkable importance, because in so many instances science is proving tradition to be truth. Speaking of Ireland, Camden says: "If what the Irish historians relate be true, this island was not without reason called _Agygia_ or _most ancient_, by Plutarch. For they begin their histories from the remotest period of antiquity, so that compared with them all other nations are of modern date, and but in a kind of infancy. They tell us that one _Caesarea_, granddaughter to Noah, lived here before the flood, and that afterward came _Barthola.n.u.s_ (_Parthola.n.u.s_), a Scythian, 300 years after the flood, and waged fierce war with the giants. Long after this, Nemethus, the Scythian, landed, and was presently driven off by the giants. Afterward, Dela, with some Greeks, made themselves masters of the island; then _Gaothelus_ with his wife _Scota_, daughter of Pharaoh, arrived here, and called the island from her Scotia, and from him _Gaothela_, and this at the time of the Israelites' departure out of Egypt. A few ages after, _Hiberus_ and _Hermione_ (or as the Irish called them, _Ever_ and _Erimon_), sons of _Milesius_, king of Spain, led some colonies into this island, which had been depopulated by a plague. These stories I neither mean to affirm nor refute, making all due allowance for antiquity." Then Camden gives his own opinion in these words: "That this island was originally inhabited upon the general dispersion of mankind, I have not the least doubt." And at this date, no one who may be quoted as understanding the subject, has any doubt of the immense antiquity of the Irish; an antiquity which, in fact, defies calculation. But it is in some measure proved by the discovery in Ireland of those weapons which are the earliest weapons of defence used by man. They are flints chipped into a shape like the head of a spear. They were used before men knew how to use metal; and they belong to that earliest time which geologists have called by the name of the stone age. Geologists have divided the early ages into three: the stone, the bronze, and the iron period. In the stone age, Ireland had a people, and the celts, or flint stones chipped into a form like a spear head, were their weapons.

The debated point of whether or not Ireland was peopled from England, is one which is of little interest. There was a time in the history of man when people could have walked over from France to England, and when Ireland was joined to Wales. Strange as this may read to some persons, it is less strange than the greater instance of, for example, Australia being found peopled, and yet parted from the rest of the world by a great sea. The people of Australia had not gone there in vessels. They had got there by land; and whether, by the gradual work of time, during which the land sunk, and the sea {543} flowed in over it, and by this means gave islands to the world, or whether by enormous convulsions rocks s.h.i.+vered, and the land was rent apart and sunk, as between us and France, where the chasm may be said to be filled in by the water that makes the Straits of Dover--however it was done, whether suddenly or not, the researches of modern science have settled that these things occurred, and that the people who were our forefathers in this manner were separated from each other. Accepting this theory as a truth, it is idle to ask whether Ireland was peopled from this country or not. But in the presence of such a theory, no person can any longer laugh at Ireland's traditional antiquity; it is more reasonable to accept it, and to allow that they have proved their ancient and hereditary intelligence by preserving history.

And this theory of the manner in which islands were divided from continents is, in fact, constantly proving itself before our eyes. Not to go out of England, we may see the progress of such a change now in Lincolns.h.i.+re. The reason why the great embankments against the sea are necessary there, and have become more than ever necessary of late years, is, that the land is sinking; and but for the preventions that science and labor effect, a part of Lincolns.h.i.+re would become an island.

There are now a few words to be said about the name Scotia, as applied to Ireland. The Romans called all the far "western people" Scots, or Scythians. It meant a people who sailed--a maritime people--they learnt the word in these countries, for it is _Teutonic_, or northern Celtic; and we use the word ourselves when we speak of a boat _scudding_ over the waves.

That the people from Spain came to Ireland, and that the existing Irish are their descendants, is not disputed. Hiberus and Hermione, called by the Irish Ever and Erimon, left their names in _Hibernia_, from the Spanish for one brother, and in the Irish _Erin_ for the other. But yet Hibernia is a comparatively modern name; and Ireland is the ancient _Scotia_, called Ierne by the Roman poet Claudian and other Roman writers, and Ivvorna by Diodoms Siculus, and many beside.

One word more about the rude flint weapon called everywhere a celt. It took its name undoubtedly from the people who used it. It was the weapon of the northern or Celtic nations. When Celts are found they indicate to us the existence of the men who used them, and their state of civilization. Wherever they are found they are called by this name, and their name is derived from the northern people.

Ireland has always been considered a most healthy country, and in Campbell's Philosophical Survey of Ireland, Dr. Rutty tells us, "The bogs are not injurious to health, and agues are very unfrequent here."

And again, these "bogs are not, as may be supposed from their blackness, ma.s.ses of putrefaction, but, on the contrary, are of such a texture as to resist putrefaction above any other substance we know of." Of such a.s.sertions we have now constant proof, and the durability of the beautiful and often highly polished ornaments made out of Irish bogwood is too well known to dwell upon.

The people seem to have been, in very early times, great feeders of sheep, cattle, and pigs. But the richness of the soil of this beautiful island yields to the labor of the scientific former great gain.

Very curious speculations have arisen as to the gold that has been found in Ireland. It remains a mystery. Mr. O'Connor, in his dissertations on the history of Ireland, says, "that, soon after the arrival of the Scots from Spain, we read of Uchadan of Cuala, who rendered himself famous by his skill in the fabrication of metals."

This places the civilization of Ireland very far back; and taken together with the early renown of the Irish in music, puts them at once in a {544} position of their own. When a people are musicians and workers in gold, Silver, and other metals, they have advanced a good way in what is meant by the word civilization. Their music is described as being of the most affecting and tender kind; and they seem to have met together, as afterward at Tara, for such accomplished recreations before anything of that kind would have been understood in England.

It will be interesting to give, from "Gough's Additions" to Camden's account of Ireland, some notes of the buried gold that has been found:

"In the bog near Cullen, in the county of Tipperary, in 1732, a laborer found a piece of worked gold, a little less than half the size of a small egg. It weighed 3 ozs. 4 dwts. and 7 grs."

"In 1739, a boy found a circular plate of beaten gold, about eight inches in diameter, which, lapped up in the form of a triangle, enclosed three ingots of gold, which they say could not weigh less than a pound; for the boy no sooner brought them home than his mother, a poor widow, gave them to a merchant, on whose land she had a cabin, as bra.s.s to make weights."

This is one of the great many instances in which large pieces of gold were sold as bra.s.s. Gold was found in these lumps, and in thin plates, as follows:

"1742. A child found on the brink of a hole a thin plate of gold.

1747. A girl found in the turf-dust a thin plate of gold, rolled on another, which when extended was 14 inches long, and a quarter of an inch broad; of which a fellow standing by took about half from her; what he left weighed 6 dwts. 13 grs. Soon after, an apprentice girl found 1 oz. 5 dwts. of the same kind, rolled after the same manner, in a sod of turf as she made the fire."

Vessels of a "yellow metal," as the people said, were frequently found in this bog. They used to sell them for bra.s.s. One was four-sided, and 8 inches high, with a handle on each side; the sisters who possessed it sold it to a tinker, who mended a pot and gave thirteenpence for it. The page of Irish history which the sight of these vessels, and the consideration of their shape and workmans.h.i.+p, might have revealed, has been, doubtless, lost with them in the melting pot.

From The St. James Magazine.

THE COLOSSUS OF RHODES.

In the elementary works for the instruction of young people we find every day frequent mention of the Colossus of Rhodes. The statue is always represented with gigantic limbs, each leg resting on the enormous rocks which face both sides of the entrance to the princ.i.p.al port of the island of Rhodes, and s.h.i.+ps in full sail pa.s.s easily, it is said, between its legs; for Pliny the ancient tells us that its height was seventy cubits.

This colossus was reckoned among the seven wonders of the world, the six others being, as is well known, the suspended gardens of Babylon, devised by Nitocris, wife of Nebuchadnezzar; the pyramids of Egypt; the statue of Jupiter Olympicus; the mausoleum of Halicarna.s.sus; the temple of Diana at Ephesus; and the pharos of Alexandria, erected in the year of Rome 470, and completely destroyed by an earthquake A.D.

1303.

{545}

Nowhere has any authority been found for the a.s.sertion that the Colossus of Rhodes spanned the entrance to the island, and admitted the pa.s.sage of vessels in fall sail between its wide-stretched limbs.

No old drawing even of that epoch exists, when the statue was yet supposed to be standing; several modern engravings may be seen, but they are mere works of the imagination, executed to gratify the curiosity of amateur antiquarians, or to feed the naive credulity of the ignorant.

A century ago, the Comte de Cayius, a distinguished French archaeologist, found fault with his countrymen for admitting this fiction into the schoolbooks [Footnote 76] for young people; but he sought in vain to trace its origin.

[Footnote 76: "_Memoires de l'Academie des Inscriptions_," t. xxiv., p. 369]

Vigenere, in his "_Tableaux de Philostrate_," is supposed to have been the first who ventured to make an imaginary drawing of the colossus.

He was followed by Bergier and Chevreau, [Footnote 77] the latter adding a lamp to the hand of the statue.

[Footnote 77: "_Histoire du Monde_," iv., p. 319.]

The greater number of French dictionaries, Rollin, in his "Ancient History," and even some encyclopaedic dictionaries, have adopted the fiction of their predecessors.

A fict.i.tious Greek ma.n.u.script, quoted by the mythologist Dachoul, [Footnote 78] further adorns the colossus by giving him a sword and lance, and by hanging a mirror round his neck.

[Footnote 78: "_Religion des Anciens Romains_," p. 211.]