THE STRONG AND WEAK POINTS OF MR. GLADSTONE'S' ATTACK ON
ROME.
IN some respects Mr. Gladstone's last pamphlet is abler than- his first, but it is hardly in those respects which would best justify his first. The weakness of Mr. Gladstone's position is political; its strength is theological or quasi-theological—con- troversial. What he as a statesman was bound to consider was, whether there was any need or use in calling emphatic- attention to the civil dangers caused by the Vatican Decrees, unless he was prepared either to recomnaend- some new political check on the Roman system in England and Ireland ; or else to justify and confirm by his- hearty sympathy as a statesman, the measures which are being- taken by the foreign Governments with which Rome is most actively engaged on the Continent,—especially Germany an& - Switzerland. Now, Mr. Gladstone has had neither of these excuses. He is not prepared to propose, still less to justify, any new check whatever on the Roman Catholic- faith, either in England or Ireland. He is not pre- pared to justify and confirm withohis sympathy,—though the effect of his publications must neceesarily be to confirm with his sympathy,—the steps that have been taken by Germany and Switzerland to thwart and fetter the Roman Catholic Church in those countries. Therefore, we say his publication was politically a mischievous one. It threw Englishmen and Irishmen, both Roman Catholics and Protestants, into an anxious, unfriendly, and even quasi-belligerent frame of mind against each other, and this without the justification of mooting an express political measure. And, what seems to us infinitely worse, it gave a kind of indirect sanction to a series of Continental measures in which, as we read them, the cause of Liberal and Protestant freedom has been disgraced by tyrannical attempts to deal with Roman Catholics in the very way in which we accuse- Roman Catholics of desiring to deal with us, were they in the ascendant. Now, in excuse for this inevitable effect of Mr. Gladstone's publication, his new pamphlet has not brought forward a single fact or statement even tending to justify what his first pamphlet did. Indeed, he avoids, perhaps wisely,. but certainly illogically, the only part of his subject which would have tended to justify the first publication as a political manifesto. "I have above," he says, "hazarded an opinion- that in this country it [Ultramontane policy] may cause incon- venience; and I have had materials ready to hand which would, I think, have enabled me amply to prove this assertion. But to enter into these details might in- flame the dispute, and I do not see that it is abso- lutely necessary." Certainly not ; if it is only to justify a "hazarded opinion," it is not only not necessary but would be injurious. Let the inconvenience apprehended come, before we set the Roman Catholics against us by proving- that it is likely to come. But surely this tardy precaution of Mr. Gladstone's is virtually a censure on the political attack which he rashly made. Why tell our Roman Catholic fellow- subjects that they are dangerous persons and that we have every reason to look for disloyalty in men of their principles, if it is - merely" inflaming" and" not absolutely necessary," to explain - in what practical direction we may look for the signs of this dangerous temper ? We think Mr. Gladstone has made a great error as a statesman, and one which will continue to have very fatal consequences abroad, in choosing the moment he has for raising the alarm against Roman Catholic -principles, though-he- is not in the least prepared either to propose new safeguards-- against them at home, or to justify the perseetitien which has directed against them abroad. That Rome, with its great polity and extraordinary unity, must be a ranch-more perilous- political enemy, when she is an enemy at all, than any other- Church, we have always maintained. And no doubt the Vatican Decrees, by drawing that unity sothewhat tioser; have. made her, if she can carry out the new policy, even more for- midable. But all this is nothing to the point, unless a new policy of persecution against her can be sketched out and morally justified. And Mr. Gladstone has not attempted any- thing of the sort.
But if this pamphlet is even weaker than the first on that chosen political ground on which the first seemed to us weakest, it is a good deal stronger, and very able in its way as a controversial publication, that is, as attacking the ground-work of the position taken up by the apologists for the Roman Catholic Decrees. And we cannot help believing that it was really the theological and controversial, and not the political side of Mr. Gladstone's mind, which urged him to this enterprise. We only wish he had made it from the first a criticism on the new theological position of the Church of Rome, instead of a statesman's warning that some new attitude of political watchfu]ness,—nobody knows exactly what,—ought to be taken up by modern States in relation to the Vatican. If Mr. Gladstone had limited himself to criticism of this kind, and dis- claimed expressly all sympathy with the German and Swiss persecutions, his publications might we think, though less ap- propriate of course to a statesman, have been thoroughly justified and not a little useful. Certainly Mr. Gladstone seems to us to have shown with great completeness that, so far from the official infallibility of the Pope having been the reigning belief of the English and Irish Catholics between fifty and a hundred years ago, the opposite view was the reigning belief of both the English and Irish clergy. Nor is it easy to see how, if Archbishop Manning's theory is true,—that doubt of this infallibility was always proximate to heresy, if not absolute heresy,—the English and Irish Churches of the period between 1780 and 1830 were otherwise than in a condition proxi- mate to heresy, from which it would have been the duty of the Roman Church to extricate them, with all possible zeal, by the ut- most efforts of missionary exposition and ecclesiastical authority. We can hardly conceive what reply can be made to the state- ment already put forth by Mr. Martin Archer Shee, but vehe- mently challenged by the Roman Catholics, and now, apparently at least, substantiated by Mr. Gladstone, that all the four Vicars-Apostolic in England, besides 237 priests and all the more important English laity, signed a protest, in the year 1788-89, against Protestant misconstructions of Catholic doctrine, in which they declared that they "acknow- ledged no infallibility in the Pope." The expression is a very strong one. But according to Mr. Gladstone, the protest is still to be seen in the British Museum, where it was -deposited, with the signatures appended of two Vicars-Apostolic, 235 priests, and all but one of the laymen who originally signed it,—the signatures of the other two Vicars-Apostolic, of two other priests, and one layman, having for some reason been withdrawn before the protest was deposited in the Museum. If this be so, it is not possible to doubt that the English Church was at that time all but heretical in the sense of the Vatican of to-day, and yet that nothing was heard of the kind of protest against its heresy, which Athanasius raised against the Arian heresy, and all good Catholics have always raised against what they deemed, distinct heresies in times gone by. It is possible, of course, to say that the English Catholics either strained their faith or their honour in order to gain their civil rights ; but no one, least of all a Roman Catholic, will take this line of argument without producing substantial evidence against the fidelity and honesty of his brother-Church- men of that day. Yet no doubt it is a great blow to the doctrine of the Vatican Decrees to prove that the Roman Catholic Church of a whole nation lived for a generation or more in some- thing like total ignorance of one of the most important doctrines of the Church to which they belonged, and not merely in ignorance of it, but in the state of mind in which, -when their attention was challenged to it, they indignantly rejected it. Mr. Gladstone's discussion of the bearing of the Council of Constance on the belief in the Pope's infallibility is also a very effective piece of controversial statement. No doubt there is plenty of opening in this case for plausible, and perhaps equally plausible,—nay, it may even be more plausible- counter-statements, fer there is perhaps no more thorny passage to be found in ecclesiastical history than the confused story of the Council of Constance. But even if Mr. Gladstone's statement of the ease could be successfully impugned, he has no doubt set up a very strong objection to the doctrine of Papal Infallibility, merely by showing how distinctly the superficial view of the story of that Council tends to lead even candid persons into the belief that a General Council maintained ita right to command the sub- mission of the Pope to its judgment on matters of faith, and that a decree to this effect was confirmed by the Pope himself. We do not know that this is the upshot of the evidence. We only say that there is a great priced facie force in Mr. Gladstone's implicit belief that so it was. Certainly, it is a hard thing for Roman Catholics if, on a matter of faith, there be so much appearance of genuine external authority on the side of heresy.
Much stronger, however, is Mr. Gladstone's exposition of the complete logical inadequacy of any doctrine of infallibility to produce human certainty, if only on this ground,—that it takes a second infallibility to determine the true interpretation to be given to the first. That argument seems to us to have no less, and perhaps even more, application to the infallibility of the Bible than it has to that of the Pope, though Mr. Gladstone thinks it has less application, and seems in some way, which we cannot understand, to think that there is a satisfaction for Protestants in believing in the infallibility of the Bible which there cannot be for Catholics in believing in the infalli- bility of the Pope. Still, though he is rather obscure on this point, the following argument as to the inadequacy of the new dogma for its purpose of setting human doubt at rest seems to us perfectly unanswerable :—" 'Instances,' says Dr. Newman, 'frequently occur, when it is success- fully maintained by some new writer, that the Pope's act does not imply what it has seemed to imply ; and questions, which seemed to be closed, are after a course of years reopened.' It does not appear whether there is any limit to this 'course of years.' But whether there is or is not, one thing is clear : Between the solid ground, the terra firma of Infallibility, and the quaking, fluctuating mind of the individual, which seeks to find repose upon it, there is an interval over which he cannot cross. Decrees ex cathedrci are infallible ; but determinations what decrees are ex cathedrci are fallible ; so that the private person, after he has with all docility handed over his mind and its freedom to the Schola Theologorum, can never certainly know, never know with 'divine faith,' when he is on the rock of infallibility, when on the shifting quicksands of a merely human persuasion." These and similar arguments seem to us to show that Mr. Gladstone's real, though unconscious, motive in entering into this discussion was not so much political as controversial,—a deep desire to confute his opponents. At all events, it seems to us the only direction in which he has gained any success. The more he writes, the more convinced we are that, politi- cally, his sudden declaration of war against Rome has been a blunder for himself and a misfortune to the cause of civil and religious freedom. Had he limited himself to the contro- versial aspects of the dispute, he would have stirred up no political passion, and would have let in light on at least a few hesitating Catholics and wavering Anglicans. We wish Le had from the first confined himself to-the more congenial part of his task.
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