thus to feel be the scandalum parvulorum in my case, or the scandalum Pharisæorum, I leave others to decide; but I will say plainly that I had rather believe (which is impossible) that there is no God at all, than that Mary is greater than God. I will have nothing to do with statements, which can only be explained, by being explained away. I do not, however, speak of these statements, as they are found in their authors, for I know nothing of the originals, and cannot believe that they have meant what you say; but I take them as they lie in your pages. Were any of them the sayings of Saints in ecstasy, I should know they had a good meaning; still I should not repeat them myself; but I am looking at them, not as spoken by the tongues of Angels, but according to that literal sense which they bear in the mouths of English men and English women. And, as spoken by man to man, in England, in the nineteenth century, I consider them calculated to prejudice inquirers, to frighten the unlearned, to unsettle consciences, to provoke blasphemy, and to work the loss of souls."*-(Pp. 118, 121.)

Here our extracts from Dr. Newman's Letter end, but we trust our readers will carefully study, if they have not already done so, every part of this most important and timely publication. And we cannot take leave of it without again recording our earnest hope that the illustrious author will remember that far weightier issues than any of mere personal convenience are at stake, and will not shrink from the risk, if so be, of petty annoyance and persecution involved in completing his great contribution to the cause of Christian truth and peace; knowing that nothing he writes can have a merely temporary interest or value, and that the silent blessings of thousands in his own communion, who dare not speak out for themselves, as well as of those among us who are incessantly praying that the universal Church may again be inspired "with the spirit of truth, unity, and concord," and of generations yet unborn, will more than compensate him for the unnatural and impudent assaults of men who, for the most part, owe solely to his teaching and example their knowledge of the very truths they are so shamelessly torturing into weapons of offence against him.

We have necessarily dwelt so long on Dr. Newman's Letter that we cannot do as much justice as we could wish to the other Roman Catholic comments on the Eirenicon named at the head of this article. It is now no secret that the review of Dr. Pusey, reprinted from the Weekly Register, is from the pen of one to whom we Anglicans owe a deep debt of gratitude

* The Dublin modestly announces its purpose of correcting Dr. Newman's little mistake, by defending all the statements he has denounced, in its next

number!

-first, for having the Christian manliness to resist the strong temptation to which so many of his fellow converts have given way, of purchasing "an easy life" by an at least outward conformity to that narrow, base, intolerant sectarianism, in the worst sense of the word, which happens just now to be in the ascendant in the communion of which Dr. Manning is the head; secondly, for not fearing to come forward with words of gentleness and hope, when those who ought to know better are doing all in their power to close that "great and effectual door" which has been so providentially opened to us. Father Lockhart, for it is of him we speak, has already had the satisfaction of calling forth a response in a quarter where, perhaps, he would hardly have expected it. To judge from the language of the first article on the Eirenicon in the Etudes Religieuses, by the Jesuit Fathers, we should almost imagine that the writer's appreciation of the character and significance of Dr. Pusey's book was due in no slight degree to what he himself calls "the chef d'œuvre of the venerable, religious, and learned Rosminian, who has so admirably seized the point of it in the Weekly Register." Of Father Lockhart's review-which he has republished with a dedication "to John Henry Newman, D.D., and E. B. Pusey, D.D., two venerable and beloved names, that one loves in thought to associate together"-we cannot do better than say, in the words of our contemporary, the Christian Remembrancer, in its excellent article on the Eirenicon :-" It is scarcely possible for anything to have been written in a fairer spirit, both on points in which the author agrees with the Eirenicon, and in positions which he feels it his duty to controvert."* This is, indeed, only what we should have expected from its authorship; and we will but express our hope that a new edition of the pamphlet (which includes some important letters from Dr. Pusey) may speedily appear in a form more calculated to attract attention. The get up and type of the present edition does not do it justice, and the absence of a publisher's name is another drawback. It is only thus that we can account for its not having gained as yet the publicity it deserves. Suffice it to say that the paper is conceived throughout in the most conciliatory spirit, and with the professed hope of "corporate reunion." Members of the A.P.U.C. will read with lively satisfaction the following beautiful passage:

66

"To all Anglicans who hold with Dr. Pusey, and would that we had reason to think that he represents the great body of his

Christian Remembrancer for Jan., p. 182.

Church, we would say from our hearts-God speed! And because the mighty changes in minds and wills, that must take place before such a consummation can be possible, must be simply the effect of grace and the fruit of prayer, therefore, placing our whole confidence in sincere and united prayer, do we hail it as the most hopeful sign of all, that Anglicans are themselves praying for unity. To the members of their Association we desire specially to address ourselves, promising our prayers and inviting them to join in the same petition, that all the Baptized may be brought within the Fold of Visible Unity under the Successor of Peter, whom Christ the Good Shepherd hath set over His whole Flock. It is this which we mean when we pray for the Unity of Christendom."-(P. 18.)

One more extract from the conclusion of the second article we must make room for :

"We know not whether this present Catholic movement in the Anglican Church may have any immediate issue other than that of the former movement twenty years ago. We pray heartily that its ultimate result may be a great corporate reunion of the National Church with the ancient Mother and Mistress of all the Churches. ** * * * May our Lord continue the good work which He has begun, in His own time, and in His own way; and may we cultivate amongst ourselves, and towards those without, a great spirit of charity and forbearance that charity which hopeth all things-that so all our prayers and good works may ascend "like incense before God," in neverceasing intercession for the peace and unity of our Jerusalem, for the conversion of pagans, infidels, and sinners, and for the Reunion of all the Baptized who have once been made Members of the Mystical Body of Christ, to the Visible Communion of the world-wide Catholic Church !"-(Pp. 32, 33.)

Such aspirations are worthy of the saintly founder of the order to which Father Lockhart belongs, and of himself.

We have already noticed in this REVIEW the Catholic Eirenicon, which we are informed in the preface is a reprint of Roman Catholic Principles in Reference to God and the King, a publication first put forth in 1680, under the sanction of the English Vicars Apostolic of that date, and often since reedited. It formed the text of Kirk and Berington's wellknown work, Faith of Catholics (to which, oddly enough, the Dublin referred with approval in its first article on Dr. Pusey,) and is now republished in a twenty-fifth edition by a Roman Catholic, and dedicated "to the Roman Catholic Hierarchy of Great Britain and Ireland," as a "Reprint of the Principles so often sanctioned and appealed to by their predecessors during the last 150 years." How far the statement that "the Church

proposes unto us matters of faith-first and chiefly by Holy Scripture secondly, by definitions of General Councils thirdly, by Apostolical Traditions"—no reference at all being even hinted at to the far higher and diviner authority of Papal Encyclicals and Briefs-may meet the concurrence of the present heads of that hierarchy, either in England or Ireland, is quite another affair! Nor will Dr. Manning or Dr. Cullen at all like being reminded, even on the testimony of the great body of their predecessors in the Anglo-Roman and Irish hierarchy, that the Church has no guarantee against error “in matters of fact or discipline, speculation or civil polity;" that no Council, "much less a "much less a Papal Consistory," can depose kings and absolve subjects from their allegiance; and that "Papal definitions or decrees, in whatever form pronounced, oblige none under pain of heresy to an interior assent." Nor will Dr. Manning like to hear that "we worship and adore God alone," seeing that a book on "the worship of the Blessed Virgin" is shortly to appear "from the pen of the Most Reverend Prelate." So much the more seasonable, however, is the republication of so authoritative a pronouncement of principles which those whose first duty is to guard and transmit them seem the most eager to trample under foot.

Canon Oakeley's letter puts forth in its most courteous and least offensive form the ultramontane view of things, which of course is not ours. It differs from Father Gallwey's sermon on the Eirenicon, much as the mistaken remonstrance of an educated gentleman, who is labouring under an incurable delusion, differs from the blundering abuse of a surly but incompetent rustic, who has failed to comprehend that you are not doing him an injury when you offer to teach him the alphabet. At the same time, there are many startling and extravagant statements in Mr. Oakeley's pamphlet, some of them in direct and almost verbal contradiction to Dr. Newman's, and we cannot help fancying that his pen has occasionally run away with him. His facility of language is considerably in advance of his depth or strength of thought. The Dublin Review could not possibly have paid him a worse compliment than to say that this shallow production "is about the best thing in prose he has ever done;" whereas it is of all his prose works we are acquainted with incomparably the poorest, and his prose is very superior to his verse. Nor is the Dublin more fortunate in its selection of particular passages for praise. We have already alluded to the Canon's very categorical contradiction of Dr. Newman, as to the spread of

that outrageous system of Mariolatry which both he and Dr. Pusey so righteously condemn. The Dublin reiterates his statement still more peremptorily, and with this important difference that Mr. Oakeley published his Letter before Dr. Newman, while the Dublin is writing afterwards and with the deliberate purpose of censuring him, which it does pretty freely. It informs Dr. Pusey that "Roman authorities, if called on to speak, would, of course, give just the opposite assurance [to what he desires, and Dr. Newman gives]. They would frankly promise to take every available method of spreading a devotion, which is infallibly guaranteed as true in principle, and which is demonstrated by experience as so inestimably beneficial in practice," as that of which Dr. Newman says to his friend" you so rightly complain!" And our contemporary improves the occasion by drawing up a portentous catalogue of credenda on "the truth as it is in"-Mary, as long as all the three creeds put together, which it would be heretical or at least damnable to deny. Moreover, the Dublin selects and quotes for peculiar praise, as "one of the very best passages in Canon Oakeley's pamphlet," a perversion of the evident meaning of Dr. Pusey's words so absolutely monstrous that we can only attribute it to the grossest and most blameworthy carelessness in the writer, while the reviewer who deliberately extracts and reaffirms it is guilty of something much worse than carelessness. We of course refer to the Canon's absurd travestie of Dr. Pusey's statement that our maximum and the Roman minimum might be found to harmonize. We shall not do him so unkind a turn as to reproduce, like his left-handed panegyrist in the Dublin, a passage which he is no doubt by this time heartily ashamed of, and would never have penned, had he taken the trouble to examine what Dr. Pusey was driving at, instead of seizing the opportunity of giving a broad hint that in his opinion those Roman Catholics who do not object to mixed marriages, or doubt the wisdom of compulsory clerical celibacy under existing circumstances, or are jealous of the honour of their country, or dislike devotions which place Mary above her Maker and represent her as "more ready to intercede with Jesus than Jesus with the Father," are "inclined to think that objective truth is a chimera," "to doubt whether supernatural virtues have any real existence," and to accept Pope's latitudinarian creed, that "he can't be wrong whose life is in the right!" We have heard but one opinion on the fairness of this notable passage in Mr. Oakeley's pamphlet from every one we have come across, Anglican or Roman, who has read it, always excepting the Dublin reviewer,