LETTERS TO THE EDITOR.
ARCHBISHOP MANNING AND "THE SACRED HEART." ere THE EDITOR OF THB"SPECTATOR."] • have just read your comments and those of the Guardian newspaper upon a statement made by me oh the subject of the Adoration due to the Sacred Heart of our Divine Redeemer. You -correctly say that I affirmed two propositions :—First, that the human Heart of Jesus was deified by union with the Godhead of 'the Son ; secondly, that it is, therefore, to be adored with Divine -worship. Both these propositions are true, and no one who knows 'the Catholic doctrine of the Incarnation would question either of -them. The attack made upon them proves how profoundly the *Nestorian heresy and errors akin to it exist in the minds of these who are now assailing the Devotion of the Sacred Heart.
In proof of the first proposition, namely, that the human Heart IA Jesus was deified by union with His Godhead, it is enough to say that the whole humanity was deified by assumption into God. In proof of this, I refer you to Petavius, " De Incarnatione," lib. iv. passim, and to St. Athanasius' Orations against the Arians.
As to the second, I would refer you to St. Thomas I'. Tertia, quest. xxv., art. ii., " Utrum humanitas Christi adoranda sit adoratione latrine." He answers affirmatively, in accordance with the Ninth Canon of the Fifth (Ecumenical Council, which con- -demos under anathema the notion of two adorations.
I answer your criticisms rather than those of the Guortrod, because I believe you to be in earnest. If the Sacred Humanity, as a whole, be an object of Divine worship, because it is the humanity of God, then every part of it, being indissolubly united with God, and incapable of separation from God, partakes of the same Divine worship. The Sacred Heart, therefore, is to be worshipped with Divine worship, because it is the Heart of God, subsisting in the one Divine Person of the Eternal Word. You will oblige me by inserting this letter in your next number.—I am, [We have no pretence to the theological knowledge requisite to .criticise the statements of such a theologian as Dr. Manning, but ,certainly our impression was that he himself virtually gave up the sword " deify " when he distinguished between the sense of " Dei -facere," by which we suppose he means, ' to make a part of God,' and " Deum facere," which is what our word deify' generally implies., Certainly we do think that the great danger of the Roman Catholic Church at the present day is that of setting up 'before the people all sorts of finite signs or symbols of God as if -they stood for the whole. Now, that in the human heart even of Christ, the whole of God could be contained, Archbishop Manning -would be the last to assert. Even the Athanasian Creed says,
• ° Equal to the Father, as touching his Godhead; and inferior to the 'Father, as touching his manhood ;" but if Christ's manhood, nay, not even his whole manhood, but his affections, are to be
• " deified," he is not inferior to the Father as touching his enanhood.—En. Spectator.]
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