ART. V.-ARCHBISHOP MANNING ON ENGLAND AND CHRISTENDOM. England and Christendom. By HENRY EDWARD, Archbishop of Westminster. London: Longmans. THERE is probably no Catholic writer towards whom Anglicans in general and Tractarians in particular exhibit so much aversion as towards the Archbishop. If you ask their reason for this, they will be sure to reply that he is so narrow and exclusive; that he is so slow in seeing any good externally to the Roman Catholic Church; that he is so harsh and uncharitable in his judgment of those outside his own communion. It is very natural they should make this reply, because it supplies (so to speak) a moral basis for their antipathy: since it may well be accounted a moral defect that any one should be slow in appreciating and sympathizing with love of God, wherever that love may be found. But it is really not less than monstrous to accuse the Archbishop, as distinct from others belonging to his own communion, of any approach to this habit of mind. On the contrary, we will venture to say that there is no one Roman Catholic writer of eminence in the world who has spoken more emphatically than he-we doubt if there is one who has spoken with equal emphasis on the piety and salvability of persons external to the visible Church. Take the two following passages in illustration: how can there possibly be a more frank and cordial justice done to those without? First as to the Evangelicals. The sincere and excellent men who represented this school entirely believed themselves to be the direct opponents of Rationalism. They honestly feared and abhorred it as an impiety towards the Word of God; little knowing, from want of analyzing their own rule of Faith, that it was also essentially rationalistic. What has been the course and fate of these good men I know not. They seem to have melted away on every side. They do not appear to have replenished their number, nor to have held their ground, nor to have any succession. The so-called Evangelical school appears to have been a form of personal piety which could not perpetuate itself. It contained a multitude of the highest and noblest English natures, of whom invincible ignorance of the Catholic Church may be predicated with full confidence. The "Bible" and the "Following of Christ" were their text-books; and their lives were singularly conformed to the Catholic type of humility, patience, piety, submission, self-denial, and communion with God. Baptism had made them children of God and of His Church; conscious desire to believe all He had revealed, to obey all He had commanded, and to suffer all He might require, and unconsciousness of a thought in wilful deviation from His Truth, or of an intention at variance with His Will, sustained them in their innocence, or raised them again by repentance to union with their Father in Heaven (pp. xxxii., xxxiii.). Next on the Tractarian movement: though we cannot do justice to the Archbishop's language on this head, without giving an extract of considerable length. Truth and justice towards the Anglican system, and a grateful recognition of the working of the Spirit of Grace, demand a full acknowledgment of the change which has passed upon it. First, came a restoration of Divine worship on festivals and saints' days, extending sometimes even to daily service morning and evening; and that in the remotest country churches. Secondly, a restoration of frequent communion; what was before once a quarter became once a month, once a week, and now, in some places, is every day. Thirdly, arose one of the noblest and most beneficent works of the Anglican clergy-the education movement, which sprang up in 1837, and has continued to this day. Fourthly, came the Colonial bishoprics, which have called forth great energy and devotion, and by reaction have powerfully affected the Anglican clergy at home. Fifthly, sprang up a sense of the need of theological training for clergymen, which, through much opposition and evil report, succeeded at last in forming one or two Diocesan Colleges, and in' moving the Universities to a tardy and insufficient endeavour to provide for this obvious need. Sixthly, a restoration of sacred and religious literature; first Anglican, then patristic, next mediæval and scholastic, and finally Catholic; which has penetrated and elevated the Anglican system, both clergy and laity, with a higher knowledge, and with perceptions, aspirations, and sympathies which were extinct in the last century in England, and have their true home only in the ever-living and changeless Church of God. The doctrines taught and believed, the devotions and practices of piety now in use among Anglicans, show that the mind and spirit of the Church has breathed itself into multitudes who are still in the Anglican system. Over every instinct that opens in it, every pulse that beats in it, every aspiration which rises in it, every line of conformity to the Catholic Church which is retraced upon it, I rejoice with all my heart. Lastly, there has sprung up in the Anglican Church a consciousness that Protestantism cannot be the essence of its nature, but a mere attitude of supposed and transient necessity. It has become now the acknowledgment of calm and good men among them, that unless the Church of England be Catholic it is nothing; and that unless it be in substantial agreement of faith with the Christian world, it cannot be Catholic. This is to be found pervading the higher minds and natures of the Anglican clergy. In all this there is no disloyalty to their position, no unnatural appropriation of Roman doctrines, no unauthorized adoption of the Roman ritual. Of these two last phenomena I will speak hereafter. So far as I have described the steady ascending of the mind and spirit of "the the Church of England, it has my hearty and hopeful sympathy. I pray that showers of blessings may fall with the early and the latter rain, upon "flourish like the lily." land that was desolate," and that the wilderness may Every fresh light which springs up, every gleam of the true faith which spreads over England, is a cause of thankfulness to the Father of lights, from whom alone it comes. As I have said in the third of the letters here reprinted, it is a dictate of faith to believe that the Spirit of God is working mightily, sweetly, and wisely in all who are faithful to His grace. Catholic Church bears the heart of Him, "who will not break the bruised reed, nor quench the smoking flax." No one who has a love for souls can look upon this rising of the Spirit of Life in the Anglican system without a I pray God, day by day, to perfect the work which tender and loving care. He has begun, and never to stay His hand until He has reunited England to Christendom. Every scattered and isolated truth in the Anglican system is a germ of faith; every measure of grace is an earnest of more. In proportion as men know and love God they are nearer to the Council of Trent, and to the Vicar of the Incarnate Word (pp. xl.—xliii.). It is not only, however, that the Archbishop so warmly sympathizes with the piety of non-Catholic individuals and bodies: he has done much more than this, to give such good men their due place in a Catholic's judgment. For observe. It has been held by several theologians, that belief in the Church's infallibility is a strictly necessary condition of true faith; and, if this doctrine were true, it would follow of course that no non-Catholic could be saved, however invincible might be his ignorance of Catholicism. This question therefore is simply vital in its bearing on the point before us. We ask then, who is the one Roman Catholic who has taken the most prominent part, in encountering this objection and solving this difficulty? The Archbishop. Several years sermon in Rome, containing the same ago he preached a doctrine which appears in his present volume; viz. (p. 110) that "the infallibility of the Church does not enter of necessity into the essence of an act of faith," though it is the "Divine provision for " faith's "perfection and perpetuity, and the ordinary means whereby men are illuminated in the revelation of God." This sermon caused much excitement and discussion at the time; and it led many both to look more carefully into the matter, and ultimately to change their opinion. We repeat-it was Archbishop Manning who was thus zealous for the doctrine, that individuals can be saved Church's body; who saw the difficulty which |