the Popedom comes within the true meaning of the words used at the Vatican to describe the subjects on which the Pope is authorised to claim, under awful sanctions, the obedience of the "faithful." It is even possible that we have here the key to the enlargement of the province of Obedience beyond the limits of Infallibility, and to the introduction of the remarkable phrase ad disciplinam et regimen Ecclesiæ. No impartial person can deny that the question of the temporal power very evidently concerns the discipline and government of the Church-concerns it, and most mischievously as I should venture to think; but in the opinion, up to a late date, of many Roman Catholics, not only most beneficially, but even essentially. Let it be remembered, that such a man as the late Count Montalembert, who in his general politics was of the Liberal party, did not scruple to hold that the millions of Roman Catholics throughout the world were copartners with the inhabitants of the States of the Church in regard to their civil government; and, as constituting the vast majority, were of course entitled to override them. It was also rather commonly held, a quarter of a century ago, that the question of the States of the Church was one with which none but Roman Catholic Powers could have anything to do. This doctrine, I must own, was to me at all times unintelligible. It is now, to say the least, hopelessly and irrecoverably obsolete.

Archbishop Manning, who is the head of the Papal Church in England, and whose ecclesiastical tone is supposed to be in the closest accordance with that of his headquarters, has not thought it too much to say that the civil order of all Christendom is the offspring of the Temporal Power, and has the Temporal Power for its keystone; that on the destruction of the Temporal Power "the laws of nations would at once fall in ruins;" that (our old friend) the deposing Power "taught subjects obedience and princes clemency."* Nay, this high authority has proceeded further; and has elevated the Temporal Power to the rank of necessary doctrine.

"The Catholic Church cannot be silent, it cannot hold its peace; it cannot cease to preach the doctrines of Revelation, not only of the Trinity and of the Incarnation, but likewise of the Seven Sacraments, and of the Infallibility of the Church of God, and of the necessity of Unity, and of the Sovereignty, both spiritual and temporal, of the Holy See." †

I never, for my own part, heard that the work containing this remarkable passage was placed in the Index Prohibitorum Librorum. On the contrary, its distinguished author was elevated, on the first opportunity, to the headship of the Roman Episcopacy in England, and to the guidance of the million or thereabouts of souls in its communion. And the more recent utterances of thej oracle have not descended from the high level of those already cited. They have, indeed, the recommendation of a comment, not without fair claims to authority, on the recent declarations of the Pope and the Council; and of one which goes *Three Lectures on the Temporal Sovereignty of the Popes,' 1860, pp. 34, 46, 47, 58-9, 63.

The present Crisis of the Holy See.' By H. E. Manning, D.D. London, 1861, p. 73.

to prove how far I am from having exaggerated or strained in the foregoing pages the meaning of those declarations. Especially does this ho'd good on the one point, the most vital of the whole-the title to define the border line of the two provinces, which the Archbishop not unfairly takes to be the true criterion of supremacy, as between rival powers like the Church and the State.

"If, then, the civil power be not competent to decide the limits of the spiritual power, and if the spiritual power can define, with a divine certainty, its own limits, it is evidently supreme. Or, in other words, the spiritual power knows, with divine certainty, the limits of its own jurisdiction: and it knows therefore the limits and the competence of the civil power. It is thereby, in matters of religion and conscience, supreme. I do not see how this can be denied without denying Christianity. And if this be so, this is the doctrine of the Bull Unam Sanctam,* and of the Syllabus, and of the Vatican Council. It is, in fact, Ultramontanism, for this term means neither less nor more. The Church, therefore, is separate and supreme.

"Let us then ascertain somewhat further, what is the meaning of supreme. Any power which is independent, and can alone fix the limits of its own jurisdiction, and can thereby fix the limits of all other jurisdictions, is, ipso facto, supreme. But the Church of Jesus Christ, within the sphere of revelation, of faith and morals, is all this, or is nothing, or worse than nothing, an imposture and an usurpation—that is, it is Christ or Antichrist."‡

But the whole pamphlet should be read by those who desire to know the true sense of the Papal declarations and Vatican decrees, as they are understood by the most favoured ecclesiastics; understood, I am bound to own, so far as I can see, in their natural, legitimate and inevitable sense. Such readers will be assisted by the treatise in seeing clearly, and in admitting frankly that, whatever demands may hereafter, and in whatever circumstances, be made upon us, we shall be unable to advance with any fairness the plea that it has been done without due notice.

There are millions upon millions of the Protestants of this country, who would agree with Archbishop Manning, if he were simply telling us that Divine truth is not to be sought from the lips of the State, nor to be sacrificed at its command. But those millions would tell him, in return, that the State, as the power which is alone responsible for the external order of the world, can alone conclusively and finally be competent to determine what is to take place in the sphere of that external order.

I have shown, then, that the Propositions, especially that which has been felt to be the chief one among them, being true, are also material; material to be generally known, and clearly understood, and well considered, on civil grounds; inasmuch as they invade, at a multitude of points, the civil sphere, and seem even to have no very remote or shadowy connection with the future peace and security of Christendom.

On the Bull Unam Sanctam, "of a most odious kind;" see Bishop Doyle's Essay, already cited. He thus describes it.

The italics are not in the original.

Cæsarism and Ultramontanism.' By Archbishop Manning, 1874,

pp. 35-6.

VI. WERE THE PROPOSITIONS PROPER TO BE SET FORTH BY THE

PRESENT WRITER ?

There remains yet before us only the shortest and least significant portion of the inquiry, namely, whether these things, being true, and being material to be said, were also proper to be said by me. I must ask pardon if a tone of egotism be detected in this necessarily subordinate portion of my remarks.

For thirty years, and in a great variety of circumstances, in office and as an independent Member of Parliament, in majorities and in small minorities, and during the larger portion of the time* as the representative of a great constituency, mainly clerical, I have, with others, laboured to maintain and extend the civil rights of my Roman Catholic fellow-countrymen. The Liberal party of this country, with which I have been commonly associated, has suffered, and sometimes suffered heavily, in public favour and in influence, from the belief that it was too ardent in the pursuit of that policy; while at the same time it has always been in the worst odour with the Court of Rome, in consequence of its (I hope) unalterable attachment to Italian liberty and independence. I have sometimes been the spokesman of that party in recommendations which have tended to foster in fact the imputation I have mentioned, though not to warrant it as matter of reason. But it has existed in fact. So that while (as I think) general justice to society required that these things which I have now set forth should be written, special justice, as towards the party to which I am loyally attached, and which I may have had a share in thus placing at a disadvantage before our countrymen, made it, to say the least, becoming that I should not shrink from writing them.

In discharging that office, I have sought to perform the part not of a theological partisan, but simply of a good citizen; of one hopeful that many of his Roman Catholic friends and fellow-countrymen, who are, to say the least of it, as good citizens as himself, may perceive that the case is not a frivolous case, but one that merits their attention.

I will next proceed to give the reason why, up to a recent date, I have thought it right in the main to leave to any others, who might feel it, the duty of dealing in detail with this question.

The great change, which seems to me to have been brought about in the position of Roman Catholic Christians as citizens, reached its consummation, and came into full operation in July 1870, by the proceedings or so-called decrees of the Vatican Council.

Up to that time, opinion in the Roman Church on all matters involving civil liberty, though partially and sometimes widely intimidated, was free wherever it was resolute. During the Middle Ages, heresy was often extinguished in blood, but in every Cisalpine country a principle of liberty, to a great extent, held its own, and national life refused to be put down. Nay more, these precious and inestimable gifts had not infrequently for their champions a local prelacy and clergy. The Constitutions of Clarendon, cursed from the Papal throne, had the support of the English Bishops. Stephen Langton, appointed directly, through an extraFrom 1847 to 1865 I sat for the University of Oxford.

ordinary stretch of power, by Innocent III., to the See of Canterbury, headed the Barons of England in extorting from the Papal minion John, the worst and basest of all our Sovereigns, that Magna Charta, which the Pope at once visited with his anathemas. In the reign of Henry VIII., it was Tunstal, Bishop of Durham, who first wrote against the Papal domination. Tunstal was followed by Gardiner; and even the recognition of the Royal Headship was voted by the clergy, not under Cranmer, but under his unsuspected predecessor Warham. Strong and domineering as was the high Papal party in those centuries, the resist ance was manful. Thrice in history, it seemed as if what we may call the Constitutional party in the Church was about to triumph: first at the epoch of the Council of Constance; secondly, when the French Episcopate was in conflict with Pope Innocent XI.; thirdly, when Clement XIV. levelled with the dust the deadliest foes that mental and moral liberty have ever known. But from July 1870, this state of things has passed away, and the death-warrant of that Constitutional party has been signed, and sealed, and promulgated in form. Before that time arrived, although I had used expressions sufficiently indicative as to the tendency of things in the great Latin Communion, yet I had for very many years felt it to be the first and paramount duty of the British Legislature, whatever Rome might say or do, to give to Ireland all that justice could demand, in regard to matters of conscience and of civil equality, and thus to set herself right in the opinion of the civilised world. So far from seeing, what some believed they saw, a spirit of unworthy compliance in such a course, it appeared to me the only one which suited either the dignity or the duty of my country. While this debt remained unpaid, both before and after 1870, I did not think it my province to open formally a line of argument on a question of prospective rather than immediate moment, which might have prejudiced the matter of duty lying nearest our hand, and morally injured Great Britain not less than Ireland, Churchmen and Nonconformists not less than adherents of the Papal Communion, by slackening the disposition to pay the debt of justice. When Parliament had passed the Church Act of 1869 and the Land Act of 1870, there remained only, under the great head of Imperial equity, one serious question to be dealt with-that of the higher Education. I consider that the Liberal majority in the House of Commons, and the Govern-, ment to which I had the honour and satisfaction to belong, formally tendered payment in full of this portion of the debt by the Irish University Bill of February 1873. Some indeed think, that it was overpaid a question into which this is manifestly not the place to enter. But the Roman Catholic prelacy of Ireland thought fit to procure the rejection of that measure, by the direct influence which they exercised over a certain number of Irish Members of Parliament, and by the temptation which they thus offered-the bid, in effect, which (to use a homely phrase) they made, to attract the support of the Tory Opposition. Their efforts were crowned with a complete success. From that time forward I have felt that the situation was changed, and that important matters would have to be cleared by suitable explanations. The debt to Ireland had been paid: a debt to the country at large

had still to be disposed of, and this has come to be the duty of the hour. So long, indeed, as I continued to be Prime Minister, I should not have considered a broad political discussion on a general question suitable to proceed from me; while neither I nor (I am certain) my colleagues would have been disposed to run the risk of stirring popular passions by a vulgar and unexplained appeal. But every difficulty, arising from the necessary limitations of an official position, has now been removed.

66

VII. ON THE HOME POLICY OF THE FUTURE.

I could not, however, conclude these observations without anticipating and answering an inquiry they suggest. "Are they, then," it will be asked, a recantation and a regret; and what are they meant to recommend as the policy of the future?" My reply shall be succinct and plain. Of what the Liberal party has accomplished, by word or deed, in establishing the full civil equality of Roman Catholics, I regret nothing, and I recant nothing.

It is certainly a political misfortune that, during the last thirty years, a Church so tainted in its views of civil obedience, and so unduly capable of changing its front and language after Emancipation from what it had been before, like an actor who has to perform several characters in one piece, should have acquired an extension of its hold upon the highest classes of this country. The conquests have been chiefly, as might have been expected, among women; but the number of male converts, or captives (as I might prefer to call them), has not been inconsiderable. There is no doubt, that every one of these secessions is in the nature of a considerable moral and social severance. The breadth of this gap varies, according to varieties of individual character. But it is too commonly a wide one. Too commonly, the spirit of the neophyte is expressed by the words which have become notorious: "a Catholic first, an Englishman afterwards." Words which properly convey no more than a truism; for every Christian must seek to place his religion even before his country in his inner heart. But very far from a truism in the sense in which we have been led to construe them. We take them to mean that the "convert" intends, in case of any conflict between the Queen and the Pope, to follow the Pope, and let the Queen shift for herself; which, happily, she can well do.

Usually, in this country, a movement in the highest class would raise a presumption of a similar movement in the mass. It is not so here. Rumours have gone about that the proportion of members of the Papal Church to the population has increased, especially in England. But these rumours would seem to be confuted by authentic figures. The Roman Catholic Marriages, which supply a competent test, and which were 4.89 per cent. of the whole in 1854, and 4.62 per cent. in 1859, were 4.09 per cent. in 1869, and 4.02 per cent. in 1871. There is something at the least abnormal in such a partial growth, taking effect as it does among the wealthy and noble, while the people cannot be charmed, by any incantation, into the Roman camp. The original Gospel was supposed to be meant especially for the poor; but the gospel of the nineteenth century from Rome courts another and less