213 LETTER V. CONVERSION OF THE NORTHERN NATIONS. UPON the conversion of the Danes, Sir, and the other northern nations, your remarks are brief, and my comments upon them will not be longer. There is only one observation of yours which requires notice. After thanking me, where no thanks are due, for acknowledging the good effected in those ages by the clergy, and especially by the Benedictines, (which I had done as faithfully and far more fully than I had noted their errors or their corruptions,) you entreat me to keep in mind that the conversion which I describe to have been attended with so many spiritual and so many temporal blessings, were conversions effected by Roman Catholic missionaries to the Roman Catholic faith. And you add,* "Can such a faith deserve a harsh word?" What, Sir, if in reply to this appeal, I should * Page 56. entreat you to bear in mind that the persecution of the Albigenses in earlier, and of the Vaudois in later times, the autos-da-fe of Queen Mary's accursed reign, and the acts of the Inquisition, were acts of the Roman Catholic clergy, performed for the sake and in the name of the Roman Catholic faith; and then to say, Can such a faith deserve a good word? I propound the question only to show you the inconsequence of yours. We must look at the good as well as the evil, and the evil as well as the good. And were your mind, Sir, but as free to perceive and confess the misdeeds of the Papal Church, as mine is to feel and acknowledge the benefits which humanity during some ages derived from it, there would be little difference between us. The film would then fall from your eyes, and you would see things as they have been, and as they are. 215 LETTER VI. THE BRITISH AND ANGLO-SAXON CHURCHES. In this letter, Sir, I shall reply to the objections which you and your fellow-labourer the Titular Bishop Milner have advanced against certain positions in the Book of the Church relating to the British and Anglo-Saxon times, and in my turn offer a few remarks upon some of the assertions which you have both hazarded. First, with regard to the British Christians. You ask whether the slightest evidence can be produced that they possessed a purer faith than was introduced by the Anglo-Saxon missionaries? You maintain that the only difference between them and St. Augustine related to the computation of Easter, (a matter wherein no point of doctrine was implicated,) and you argue that their refusal to acknowledge his authority was merely asserting the indepen * Page 53. 216 THE BRITISH AND ANGLO-SAXON CHURCHES. dence of their church upon an intermediate prelate. It appears* that, upon this portion of our history, you have consulted the Annales Ecclesia Anglicana, by Father Alford,† and the scarce but noted Treatise of Father Persons, concern * Page 22. ↑ Michael Alford, alias Griffith, was a person of good family, born in 1585, either in London or somewhere in Surry. In the eleventh year of his age he was placed in the seminary at St. Omers. At twenty-two he professed among the Jesuits, and having taken the fourth and peculiar vow of that order (of special obedience to the Pope, to go upon whatever mission he may send them), and been twice at Rome on the affairs of the Company, he passed thirty years as a missionary in England, during which time he was employed, more harmlessly than most of his colleagues, in compiling these Annals. At the end of the second volume are these verses ad Lectorem :Scire cupis, Lector, quo tempore, quâ de causâ, Inculta prostant hæc mea scripta manu? Hos ego Depinxi Libros qvando Anglia beLLo The author returned to St. Omers for the purpose of printing this work, which purpose death prevented him from accomplishing. He died there in 1653, and the work was published at Liege ten years afterwards, chiefly, as it appears, at the cost of Lady Smith, mother to Viscount Carington. What sort of book this is may be judged by the title--Fides Regia, Britannica, Saxonica, Anglica, Una illa, eademque Sancta, Catholica Romana. Fides Regia he had resolved to call it, because Christianity had been so eminently promoted by the ing the Three Conversions of England. Both works are in my possession. That both were written by Jesuits will not be considered as Saxon Kings. But afterwards he was of opinion that a diviner* impulse had led him to chuse that epigraph, when he saw the mutability of the Protestant faith, and perceived it à vulgo hominum et imperitá plebe, nec aliunde uniformiter deformiter descendere. Unde cusa Fides in illâ officina, propriè dici debet + Plebæa Fides cum Regid Fide e diametro pugnans. He dedicated his book to the Trinity, and the frontispiece is worthy of the title and the dedication,...the editor, following, as he says, the intention of the author, having prefixed to the work the representation of the patron whom F. Alford had chosen! Occupat ergo, absque minima erroris suspicione, DEI TRINI ET UNIUS imago frontem libri. DEIPARA inter Divinas Personas coronanda conspicitur,... while a select company of personages, more or less connected with the ecclesiastical history of England, are assembled round the Cross, some of them looking up to behold the Mighty Mother receive her crown from the hands of the Father and the Son, the Spirit hovering over her. Certain Popes and Saints are in the group, with the Empress Helena, Constantius, King Lucius, and King William the Conqueror. The editor informs us that, if there had been room, the omnigenus numerus of English Saints ought to have been included, specifying among them St. Ursula, probably as the representative of her Eleven Thousand Companions... and had this ingenious editor possessed a spirit of prophecy, or of second sight, doubtless, between that illustrious * Divinior tamen impetus traxit me, opinor, ad illam Epigraphem. The printer has made nonsense of this passage by printing the word Phebaa. |