Edward Bouverie Pusey · 5 of 21
Main Body · Part 5
It is matter of faith that the whole Church shall never be led into any formal acceptance of error by virtue of our Lord’s promise; and on this ground the Church of England receives the Six General Councils. But it is not matter of faith that the Church will always be able to hold General Councils, as in fact, important as the issues were, God allowed a time to elapse before the Second and Fourth General Councils could be called.
Meanwhile God the exercises the office of Teacher, which He vouchsafed to take, both by teaching the children of God (as it is said, “they shall all be taught of God”), and by giving them the supernatural gift of faith, as of ; and He maintains in the Church every where the tradition of the great body of the faith, infallibly fixed. And this is not impaired, although there are other points not yet cleared up, both with the Greek Church and our own, e. g. as to the Papal claims, so different from the relation of the Patriarchates to one another in early times, or indulgences which the Greek Church never knew, or the denial of the cup, which the Greek Church ever gave, or the marriage-law of the Council of Trent, which allows what the whole Church from the first, until the miserable Alexander VI. (Borgia), held to be incest. Largely, moreover, as invocation of the Blessed Virgin is used in the Greek Church, it has nowhere adopted that vast formulized theory as to her place as the channel of all to the Church, and to each single soul, which is to us the especial “crux” in the Roman system. It has protested against the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin, which Pius
IX. defined, as “attested” by “the monuments of the Eastern Church,” as well as the “Western.”
Dr. Manning has invented a new heresy, which he charges upon us. The Church of England nowhere denies that General Councils can be held, nor that any doctrine could be vindicated simultaneously throughout the whole Church. The time may come, when this will have to be done. True, that the first office of a General Council now would be to reunite Christendom. But until this be (which may God, in His mercy, bring to pass), truth, when occasion shall require, may be vindicated by the whole Church simultaneously, without any meeting, as was done in the early Church, after the Council of Nice as well as before. There are indications of clouds lowering on the horizon of the Roman Church, in regard to Holy Scripture, which have discharged their first burst upon ourselves. There have appeared already among Roman Catholics symptoms of a tendency
to hold cheaply by Holy Scripture, as being comparatively unimportant to them, who have the authority of an infallible Church, forgetting that the authority of the Church depends upon Holy Scripture. There are those among them who seem inclined to indemnify themselves for their submission to the Church in things formally laid down by it, by a licence as to things, not so distinctly defined. Whereto this may grow, or whether He will nip it, God alone knows! But the need may arise among them, as well as among ourselves, to lay down formally the truth of all Holy Scripture, as given by inspiration. of God, which has been presupposed by all, everywhere, at all times, from the first. Such a simultaneous decree would, by general consent, have the authority of a General Council, as without any General Council was condemned by the whole Church.
Why, then, since we believe the teaching of God the in the Church to be infallible, is it to be made a heresy to say that man does not use the gift as much as he might, as e. g. if God’s constraining were to move the whole Church everywhere to seek visible ? The question does not relate to that which has once been settled by the whole Church. Nothing, of course, can add to the authority of what has ever been ruled by an infallible authority. We ourselves have, equally with those in the Roman Church, infallible truth, as resting on infallible authority. We do not need the present agency of an infallible Church to assure us of the truth of what has been ruled infallibly. Nor, in fact, have Roman Catholics any more infallible authority for what they hold than we, seeing that it was ruled by the Church in past ages, to whom, so far, the present Church submits. The later General Councils began by accepting what had been ruled before them. The second received, while it enlarged, the creed of the first; the third premised to its own acts the confession of the creeds of the two first; the fourth received the decree of Ephesus too, and accepted the wonderful clearness of the exposition of faith by St. Leo, as agreeing with those previous authorities. They accepted those creeds before them, not thereby adding to their authority, but as authenticating their own orthodoxy. The question, then, is not whether the doctrine laid down in General Councils, and received by the whole Church, is certain truth (on this both agree); nor whether the whole doctrine of the Holy , of the , of , and whatsoever else has been received formally by the whole Church, is infallibly settled (on this, too, both are at one); nor whether an (Ecumenical Council, if such were now held and received by the whole Church, would, by that reception, have the seal of infallibility (oil this, too, according to the principles of the Gallican Church and our own, there is no question); nor whether, in fact, if the same doctrines were enunciated at once by the who le Church, the East, West, our own, separately, but concordantly (e. g. as to the character of the inspiration of Holy Scripture), the doctrine, so simultaneously enunciated, would be infallibly certain (which it would be);—but whether what should be enacted, either by the Greek or Horn an Church, would be infallible, unless received by the other. This (granted that the Eastern Church is a part of the Church), it would not be according to the principles of the Gallican divines too, because there would not be universal reception.
This, then, which is to destroy the whole faith among us, resolves itself into the
fact, that we acknowledge the Greek Church, as well as the Roman, to be part of the Church of Christ. If it is, the Western Councils alone, not having yet had universal reception, have not received the seal of infallibility; and the Roman Church itself owned that those intermediate Councils might be counted to be wanting in something, since it was willing, in prospect of union with the East, to ignore them as General Councils.
vii.
a. In regard to the Invocation of , the Council of Trent lays down this only, “It is good and useful suppliantly to invoke the , and to have recourse to their prayers, help, and assistance, to obtain favours, from God, through His Son Jesus Christ our Lord, Who is alone our Redeemer and Saviour;” and direct prayer to the to “give us good things, and deliver us from evil things,” seems to be directly prohibited by the Catechism of the Council. And there is the popular explanation, that we are to ask for their prayers in no other sense than we ask for each other’s prayers, and that “they do nothing for us mortals in heaven, but what they did while they were here on earth, and what all good Christians are bound to do for each other, namely, they help us by their prayers. The only difference is, that as the in heaven are free from every stain of sin and imperfection, and are confirmed in and glory, so their prayers are far more efficacious for obtaining what they ask for than are the prayers of us imperfect and sinful mortals.”
Now, were this all, the difficulty never could have arisen. The mere “ora pro nobis,” so explained, could not have led any to stop short in the , nor have called forth any protest, out of zeal for God’s honour. But, along with this, was that vast system as to the Blessed Virgin, which to all of us has been the special “crux” of the Roman system. This we have often insisted upon, as did those before us. It is impossible to condense the statements of a doctrine which presents itself in so many startling forms, coextensive with the present Office of our Dear Lord for us. His Precious Blood, they of course say with us, is alone the meritorious cause of our salvation. But her is held to be co-extensive with His, “Who ever liveth to make for us,” our Divine Lord, and to be the access to His . And this is taught, not as the glowing expression of Southern feeling, but as the deliberate mind of the present Roman Church. It was one who has since been beatified, who formally rejected the “opinion of a certain modern author, who has written with great piety and learning on true and false devotion,” that “the proposition, ‘God gives no except through Mary,’ is an hyperbole and exaggeration, which fell from some of the in a moment of , and is to be understood to mean that from Mary we have received Jesus Christ, through Whose merits we receive all graces.” God, it is granted, “could grant His graces without the of Mary;” but it is asserted that “He will not.” It is one of their most learned writers who says, “it is the universal sentiment of the [Roman] Church that the of Mary is not only useful, but also in a certain manner necessary;”
“necessary, with a moral necessity, because the Church seems to think, with St. Bernard, that God has determined to give us no except through the hands of Mary.” So, then, it is taught in authorized books? that “it is morally impossible for those to be saved who neglect the devotion to the Blessed Virgin;” that “it is the will of God that all graces should pass through her hands;” that “no creature obtained any from God, save according to the dispensation of His holy mother;” that Jesus has, in fact, said, “no one shall be partaker of My Blood, unless through the of My mother;” that “we can only hope to obtain through her;” that “God granted all the pardons in the Old Testament absolutely for the reverence and love of this Blessed Virgin;” that “our salvation is in her hand;” that “it is impossible for any to be saved, who turns away from her, or is disregarded by her; or to be lost, who turns to her, or is regarded by her;” that “whom the justice of God saves not, the infinite mercy of Mary saves by her ;” that God is “subject to the command of Mary;” that “God has resigned into her hands (if one might say so) His omnipotence in the sphere of ;” “that it is safer to seek salvation through her than directly from Jesus.”
It seemed to me to bear very closely upon the mediatorial Office of our Lord, when M. Olier, founder of the seminary of St. Sulpice, said, “The intention of the Church is, that we seek Jesus Christ in His ; and we are much more sure of finding Him in His , for instance, in the Blessed Virgin, St. Joseph, St. John, St. Peter, than when we seek Him immediately and of ourselves.—We are very unworthy to draw near unto Jesus; and He has a right to repulse [rebuter] us, because of His justice, since, having
entered into all the feelings of His Father from the time of His blessed Resurrection, He finds Himself in the same disposition with the Father towards sinners, i. e., to reject them; so that the difficulty is to induce Him to exchange the office of Judge for that of Advocate; and, of a Judge, to make Him a suppliant. Now this is what the effect, and especially the most Blessed Virgin.” To me this seemed unintentional heresy, sanctioned by the two Gallican Bishops who recommended the book. I understand that an apology has been made for it, that M. Olier was a devotional, not a dogmatic writer, and so did not express himself with formal accuracy. Of course, I never thought of to a pious writer, like M. Olier, conscious heresy. The assertion itself, however, that “our Lord had changed since His Resurrection, and was now of one mind with the Father,” in a way in which He had not been before, must, in any plain meaning of the words, be heretical. The statement, moreover, that the are more ready to with Jesus, than Jesus is to with the Father, is, in fact, a denial of His mediatorial office, and is by no means peculiar to M. Olier. It was said of old, too,” no sinner doth deserve that Christ should any more make for him with the Father, without Whose none can be delivered either from the eternal punishment or the temporal, nor from the fault which he has voluntarily committed, and therefore it was necessary that Christ should constitute His well-beloved mother a mediatrix betwixt us and Him,— that she would appease the wrath of her Son;” “that God retained justice unto Himself, and granted mercy to her;” that “she is the throne of , whereof the Apostle speaketh;” that “she appeaseth the just anger of her Son;” that “to sinners, who have lost Divine , there is no more sun “(the symbol of Jesus) “for him, but the moon is still on the horizon; let him address himself to Mary;” that “she is the only refuge of those who have incurred the Divine indignation;” that “Jesus, being no less our Judge than our Saviour, He must avenge the wrongs we do Him by our sins; while the holy Virgin, being solely our Advocate, is obliged to entertain only sentiments of pity for us.”
It is commonly said, that if any Roman Catholic acknowledges that “it is good and useful to pray to the ,” he is not bound, himself, to do so. Were the above teaching true, it would be cruelty to say so; because, according to it, he would be forfeiting what is morally necessary to his salvation. So then it seems as if the Roman
Church must either advance in her theoretical teaching, or recede in her practical teaching. At present this sort of teaching is in the advance. One should have thought that, at least, when our Lord gives Himself to us in the Holy Eucharist, this must be direct communion with Himself. But a new ritual has arisen, which seems to be intended to symbolize that we do not gain access even to Holy Communion, except through the Blessed Virgin. This is but the carrying out of the old principle, that “it is the will of God that all graces should come through her hands.” Before, it had been taught, “Jesus Christ is, in the Holy , risen again and full of glory; and though He be in a of goodness and mercy, He nevertheless therein exercises His judgments very commonly by condemnations. We must then go to a solely of mercy, wherein Jesus Christ exercises no judgments. This is the most Blessed Virgin. It is through her that we have access to Jesus Christ in full confidence.” But now, those collossal figures of the Blessed Virgin, which are carried in procession, and placed before or by the side of the Altar, seem intended to represent, that, through her mediation only, those who are in the of Christ become fitted to become partakers of His blessed Body and Blood. In Southern India and Ceylon, our Churches are called by the natives “Jesus-Churches;” the Roman Catholic Churches “Mary-Churches.”
It is, of course, an abuse of this teaching, when any confine their prayers to the Blessed Virgin. A certain proportion, it has been ascertained by those who have inquired, do stop short in her. I have myself been asked by Roman Catholics to pray for my : once only I was asked to pray our Lord. On the othe r occasions, I was exclusively asked to pray the Blessed Virgin for it. In an edition of “the Glories of Mary,” I have seen one objection so far attended to, that notes were added upon the direct prayers to the Blessed Virgin for spiritual graces, stating that it was meant only that she should obtain these graces by her . Still, the teaching remains, that we are even surer to obtain them from her, than if we go directly to the One between God and man, Our Divine Lord, “Who ever liveth to make for us.”
The Homilies illustrate what it is, which our Articles condemn, viz., Invocations, which seem to interfere with the all-sufficiency of the of our Divine Redeemer, or any act of devotion which is “proper unto God.” Bishop Andrewes also, in his summary, explains what those of his day believed to be condemned by the article, not requests for the prayers of departed, but direct addresses to them, as if they could themselves give what we ask. “They
not only ‘Ora pro nobis,’ but ‘Succurre miseris, juva pusillanimes, refove flebiles, accipe quod offerimus, dona quod rogamus, excusa quod timemus.’— All which and many more show plainly that the practice of the Church of Rome, in this point of invocation of , is far otherwise than Cardinal Perron would bear the world in hand; and that prier pour prier is not all, but that, ‘Tu dona coelum, Tu laxa, Tu sana, Tu solve crimina, Tu duc, conduc, induc, perduc, ad gloriam, Tu serva, Tu fer opem, Tu aufer, Tu confer vitam,’ are said to them, totidem verbis; more than which cannot be said to God Himself. And again, ‘Hic nos solvat a peccatis, hic nostros tergat reatus, hic arma conferat, hic hostem fuget, hic gubernet, hic aptet tuo conspectui,’ which, if they be not direct and absolute, it would be asked of them, “What is absolute or direct?” And this impression, that more is intended than the asking of their prayers, as we do those of members of Christ still in the flesh, is strengthened by the statement, not contained in the Council of Trent, that invocation is “an eminent kind of adoration;” that “we [Roman Catholics] do not honour the with that worship only, wherewith we do men which excel in virtue, &c., but also with Divine worship and honour, which is an act of religion,” only that they “do not give Divine worship and honour unto the for themselves, but for God Who hath made them .”
The large system as to the B. V., of which I have given specimens, unknown as it was to the Ancient Church, has a quasi-authority in the Roman Church (at least, it is set forth in her name), moulds, and necessarily must mould, a great part of the private devotions in the Roman Church. Yet Dr. Manning too, I suppose, would not allege it as the teaching of God the , which a man could not reject without sin: for then it would be de fide and infallible, which yet it is alleged not to be. Yet devotions to the Blessed Virgin have been and are assigned as penance in the Roman Church, and consequently as a condition of forgiveness of sin. It is notorious that this system is the great barrier and ground of alienation of pious minds in England. “It comes,” said one who appreciated highly what is good and holy in the Roman Church, “as near to idolatry, as can be supposed in a Church, of which it is said, ‘the idols He shall utterly abolish.’“ I
have often myself had to try to remove the rooted that Roman Catholics are actual “idolaters.” Since then the lawfulness or usefulness of asking the to pray for us is alone laid down as “of faith,” there is a large scope for providing that, in case of a reunion, our people should not be flooded with these devotions, which to us are most alien. Nothing which seems to interfere with exclusive trust and reliance on Jesus will, without some great revolution, gain hold of the hearts of the English people.
And here, for the sake of others, it may perhaps be well to repeat a statement which I made above seventeen years ago, why, in a book of devotions, which I transplanted into the English Church, I “omitted all mention of the Invocation of .” I said:—
“However it may be explained by Roman Catholic controversialists, to be no more than asking the prayers of members of Christ yet in the flesh, still, in use, it is plainly more; for no one would ask those in the flesh to ‘protect us from the enemy,’ ‘receive us in the hour of death,’ ‘lead us to the joy of heaven,’ ‘may thy [the Blessed Virgin] abundant love cover the multitude of sins,’ ‘heal my wounds, and to the mind which asketh thee, give the gifts of ,’or use any of the direct prayers for graces which God Alone can bestow, which are common in Roman Catholic devotions to the Blessed Virgin. No one can look uncontroversially at such occasional addresses, as there are to martyrs in the fourth century (and those chiefly prayers at their tombs through their for miraculous aid of God), and such books as ‘the Glories of Mary,’ ‘the Month of Mary,’ and say that the character of the modern reliance on and invocation of was that of the ancient Church. No one could (it should be thought) observe how through volumes of S. Augustine or S. Chrysostom, there is no mention of any reliance except on Christ Alone; and how in modern books, S. Mary is held out as ‘the refuge of sinners,’ as having ‘the goats committed to her, as Christ the sheep,’ as ‘the throne of ,’ to whom a sinner may have easier access than to Christ, and seriously say, that the ancient and modern teaching and practice are the same. We could preach whole volumes of the sermons of S. Augustine or S. Chrysostom to our people to their edification and without offence: were a Roman Catholic preacher to confine himself to their preaching, he would (it has been said among themselves) be regarded as ‘indevout towards S. Mary,’ as ‘one whose religion was more of the head than of the heart.’ The Editor, then, has not ventured even upon the outskirts of so vast a system, which, even according to Roman Catholic testimony which he has had, does practically occasion many uninstructed minds to stop short in the mediation of S. Mary. When Holy Scripture is not even alleged (as no text for the invocation of either is or can be quoted by Roman Catholic controversialists), and primitive antiquity is equally silent (now that passages as to S. Mary once attributed to S. Athanasius, S. Augustine, S. Ephrem, S. Chrysostom, under the shadow of whose great names this system grew up, are acknowledged to be spurious), and the language of great fathers (as S. Cyril of Alexandria) has to be explained away; there was no authority to which the Editor dared to yield his faith. Taught by the Church to receive that and that alone, as a matter of faith, which was part of the ‘ good deposit,’ ‘ once for all committed to the ,’ and which had been held ‘ always, everywhere, and by all,’ he did not venture to receive what was confessedly of a more recent origin, and whose tendency seemed at variance with Holy Scripture itself. While acknowledging the ‘authority of the Church in controversies of faith’ (Art. XX.), he
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could not understand on what ground that vast system, as to S. Mary, could be rested, except that of a new revelation. ‘Development’ must surely apply to the expression, not to the substance of belief. It must be the bringing out iu words of what was always inwardly held; the securing of the old, not the addition of any thing new. However the language of the Church on the doctrine of the Holy may have, in time, become more fixed and definite, any one would think it an impiety to imagine that S. John and S. Peter had not received, and did not deliver, all which has ever since been believed. He ‘who lay on Jesus’ Breast,’ and he on whose confession of faith the Church was built, could not be ignorant of any thing belonging to that faith. Neither can it be believed that they withheld any thing belonging to that faith. To imagine either, was of old accounted to be ‘subjecting’ Christ to reproach. Yet it seems inconceivable that S. Peter, S. John, and S. Paul should have believed what is now earnestly taught and believed upon authority within the Roman Church, as to the present office of the Blessed Virgin, or that believing it, they could have written as (e. g.) S. Paul wrote through the , in the Epistle to the Hebrews; or that, if Almighty God had willed it to be believed in the Church, it should have been so excluded from Holy Scripture, and the doctrine itself not have appeared for centuries. The Editor, then, in a former work, while
excluding invocations, admitted what is involved in the word qeotokoV, as sanctioned by an Œcumenical Council, to whose authority the English Church yields unquestioning submission. In the present, he has omitted the whole second section ‘Of the Worship and Veneration of ,’ and half of the seventh, ‘On the Worship and Veneration of the Blessed Virgin Mary.’ And, generally, for members of the English Church, who desire the prayers of the departed, it has to him ever seemed safest to pray for them to Him, ‘of Whom and through Whom and to Whom are all things,’ our God and our All, Who, according to the current Roman explanation also, reveals to them the desire of those below to have their prayers.”
In the years which have passed since I wrote that Preface, the actual state of the Cultus of the Blessed Virgin within the Roman Communion has been set forth in an authentic and official way in the answers sent by the Archbishops and Bishops to the inquiry of Pius IX. in regard to the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception. It appears from those answers, that the poorer classes are not, for the most part, even acquainted with the distinction between what is to be believed to be de fide, and what is popularly taught them as truth. They receive all which they are taught, alike as matter of faith, whether in the minds of their teacher it is a pious opinion or de fide. There was even a difficulty or a risk in acting upon the Pope’s desire, that the Bishops would have public prayers in their Dioceses, that God would “pour on him the heavenly light of His Divine Spirit, that in a matter of so much moment he might take that counsel which should be to the greater glory of His Holy Name, to the praise of the most Blessed Virgin, and to the advantage of the Church militant.” The difficulty (at least in some places or countries) was, lest it should shake the people’s faith, if they were told plainly, that the doctrine which they had always been taught to believe, had never been declared to be matter of
faith, and that its being so made was yet uncertain. So, some of the Bishops reported to the Pope that they had veiled the object of the public prayers; some, I think, had not ventured to direct any public prayers at all. I fear that an opening has been made for the extension of that cultus, both in regard to the doctrines which shall, in fact, be part of the faith in the Roman Communion, and their relation to other fundamental doctrines of the faith, which is altogether incalculable. A very popular devotional writer, once among ourselves, spoke lately of “the speedy coming of that great age of the Church which is to be the Age of Mary,” with which he prayed that “the , the Divine Zealot of Jesus and Mary, may be pleased quickly to console us;” and of one, “an Elias-like Missionary of the and of Mary,” who “proclaims that he brings an authentic message from God about the greater honour and wider knowledge and more prominent love of His Blessed Mother and her connexion with the second advent of her Son.” Here, in England, we are told, that Roman Catholics too know little or nothing of the true devotion to the Blessed Virgin, because it is kept in check by what F. Faber calls “the sneers of heresy,” and what we believe to be sensitiveness to the honour and glory of JESUS.
I remember that the late Cardinal Wiseman, many years past, blamed English Roman Catholics as having been ashamed of their distinctive doctrines. The doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, if I understand the statement aright, has only been introduced of late years into their public services, and that, through an impulse given by an individual. F. Faber, in his popular books, is always bringing in the devotion to the Blessed Virgin. He believes that the shortcomings of English Roman Catholics is owing to the inadequacy of their devotion to her. After instancing people’s failures in overcoming their faults, want of devotion, unsubmission to God’s special for them, feeling domestic troubles almost incompatible with salvation, and that “for all these things prayer appears to bring so little remedy,” he asks,