Edward Bouverie Pusey · 8 of 21

Main Body · Part 8

These details show, that it is in no figurative or general way that one lays down, “What I say absolutely of Jesus Christ, I say relatively of our Blessed Lady. Jesus

Christ, having chosen her for the inseparable companion of His life, of His death, of His glory, and of His power in heaven and upon earth, has given her by grace, relatively to His Majesty, all the same rights and privileges which He possesses by nature. ‘All that is fitting to God by nature is fitting to Mary by grace,’ say the saints; so that, according to them, Mary and Jesus, having but the same will and the same power, the two have the same subjects, servants, and slaves.”

And so they declare her the centre of creation. “Mary,” they say, “is that ring in the chain of creatures, wherein, seizing, the Son of God drew up the universe again to the Godhead. Therefore, Mary is not only the middle point of mankind, but the centre of the whole universe.” Again, an expression, whose whole force is derived from applying to the B. V. what belongs to our Lord Alone, “in Whom God gathered together in one all things, both which are in heaven and which are on earth.” Blessed be His goodness that He, being God, for our sake became Man, and, by the ineffable condescension of the Incarnation, knit in one the Creator and the creature! But plainly He, in “Whose Divine Person the Godhead and Manhood, the Uncreated and the created nature, were united, not His creature, is the Centre of creation.

Nay, one ventures to state, that she, to be born of a fallen race, obtained grace for those who never fell. “The Virgin, the associate and coöperatress of the merits of Christ, obtained for the angels themselves and our first parents that grace wherein they were first created.” “The Virgin is mediatress not of men only, but of the Angels.”

The title, “the Complement of the Trinity “(founded originally on a strange mistake of the meaning of an unknown author), is still said to be one which she has merited. It was (and I suppose is) the basis of speculations as to the way in which a

creature, however exalted, could be said to fill up the eternal and infinite God. Again, the belief (founded on what is now owned to be an error, which crept into the Latin translation about the close of the fourth century), that the Blessed Virgin was prophesied of as “she” who should “bruise the serpent’s head,” became the support of the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, and gives rise to the statements, “God has never made or formed but one enmity; but it is an irreconcilable one, which shall endure and develope even unto the end. It is between Mary, His worthy Mother, and the devil; between the children and the servants of Mary and the children and instruments of Lucifer.”

This system is, I understand, developing. Certainly the Bishops, in their answer to the Encyclical, speak of the diligence of the priests in preaching it. Some who did not wish the doctrine to be defined, wished the more that it should be diligently preached. As one instance of this development, in 1841 I mentioned a belief, said to exist among the poorer people in Rome, that in the Holy Eucharist not only our Lord, but His mother is present. True, that Jesus took the Flesh of His Mother; but in those gracious thirty-three years it was all changed by the laws of our mortality. Yet the belief is defended by one who writes with confidence, as a necessary consequence of their theory as to the Blessed Virgin. “We maintain a (co-)presence of Mary in the Eucharist. This is a necessary inference from our Marian theory, and we shrink back from no consequence.” “We are much inclined,” he says afterwards, “to believe an essential co-presence of Mary in her whole person, with body and soul, under the sacred species. Certainly to such a presence in the Eucharist 1) there is required a glorious mode of being of the Virgin body of the Holy Mother. “We are not only justified in holding this as to Mary, but we have well-nigh proved it. 2) The assumption of a bodily presence of Mary in the Eucharist compels self-evidently the assumption of a multilocation (i. e. a contemporaneous presence in different portions of space) of Mary, according to her flesh too. 3) One who would receive this must be ready to admit a compenetration of the Body of Christ and of that of the Virgin in the same portion of space, i. e. under the sacred species.” The writer subsequently explains that “the ‘lac virginale’ must be looked upon as that of Mary, which is primarily present in the Eucharist, whereto, in further consequence, the whole corporality of the Blessed Virgin, as also her soul, would be joined.” “The Blood of the Lord, and the lac of His Virgin Mother, are both present in the Sacrament.”

This same doctrine was indeed stated of old by one of their most popular and careful Commentators on Holy Scripture. “As this saying, ‘Those who eat me, shall still hunger,’ is literally true of Christ, “Whom we eat in the Eucharist, and again hunger for Him and long again to eat Him; so can it in like way be said truly and literally of the Blessed Virgin. Wondrous is this, but true. For as often as we eat the Flesh of Christ in the Eucharist, so often do we in it really eat the Flesh of the Blessed Virgin. For the Flesh of Christ is the flesh of the Blessed Virgin. Yea, that very Flesh of Christ, before it was detached from the flesh of the Blessed Virgin in the Incarnation, was the own flesh of the Blessed Virgin, and was informed and animated by her soul. As then we daily hunger after the flesh of Christ in the Eucharist, so too we hunger for that same flesh of the Blessed Virgin that we may drink her virgin endowments and ways, and incorporate them in ourselves. And this do not only priests and religious, but all Christians; for the Blessed Virgin feeds all with her own flesh equally with the Flesh of Christ in the Eucharist. And hence that love of virginity and angelic purity in those who worthily and frequently communicate. For this cause all the faithful ought to bear about the Blessed Virgin, as well as Christ, assiduously in heart, in word, and in work; yea, as it were, to pass into and be transmuted into the Blessed Virgin, as iron glowing with fire passes into fire, or as bread seasoned with leaven, passes, as it were, into leaven.”

This same conclusion, the presence and consequent reception of something at least of the Blessed Virgin in the Holy Eucharist, appears to be involved in the statement of one whose writings have a large circulation in England, at least, and America:—

“There is some portion of the Precious Blood which once was Mary’s own blood, and which remains still in our Blessed Lord, incredibly exalted by its union with His Divine Person, yet still the same. This portion of Himself, it is piously believed, has not been allowed to undergo the usual changes of human substance. At this moment, in heaven, He retains something which was once His Mother’s, and which is, possibly, visible, as such, to the saints and angels. He vouchsafed at mass to show to S. Ignatius the very part of the Host which had once belonged to the substance of Mary. It may have a distinct and singular beauty in heaven, where, by His compassion, it may one day be our blessed lot to see it and adore it. But with the exception of this portion of it, the Precious Blood was a growing thing, &c.”

The way in which the practical Roman system has been enlarged by later visions or revelations, is a perplexing subject. 1) Because the Roman Divines themselves do not allege them as grounds of faith. For, as such, the Council of Trent alleges only Scripture and continuous tradition. 2) These revelations contradict one another; as when the Immaculate Conception is supported by a revelation of S. Brigit, contradicted by one of

S. Catherine of Sienna. 3) Roman Divines accept one revelation, as establishing what is contained in it, and set aside another. Thus, Bellarmine quotes one revelation of S. Brigit in support of a matter of belief, and sets aside another as contrary to the received belief. But the same revelations cannot be, and not be, an authority for our belief.

Benedict XIV. lays down, “The approbation of such revelations is no more than a permission, that, after a mature examination, they may be published for the benefit of the faithful. Though an assent of Catholic faith be not due nor can be given to these revelations so approved, a human assent is due to them according to the rules of prudence, by which such revelations are probable and piously credible, as in regard to the revelations of B. Hildegardis, which are said to have been approved by Eugenius III., Boniface IX., S. Brigit, S. Catherine of Sienna, and Gregory XI.” Yet the revelations of S. Brigit have been a support of the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, as other visions were of details as to Purgatory, which visions were, however, set aside in other points, as those ascribed to S. Fursey.

I see not why this doctrine, then, of the reception of the blood of the Blessed Virgin in the Holy Eucharist should not prevail, on the ground of the revelation alleged to have been made to S. Ignatius Loyola; as that of her Immaculate Conception was upheld by the revelation to S. Brigit. Nay, further, it is involved in the “pious belief” mentioned by Faber, that Jesus shed, for us sinners, the unchanged blood of Mary; which, whereunto it may lead, one had rather not think.

No one, of course, is responsible for the bold imagination of one who had as yet joined neither Greek nor Roman communion although he despised our own. Still the conception is illustrative, the more, since prayers originally addressed to God have been altered into prayers to the Blessed Virgin.

“Whatever point,” Mr. Palmer wrote, “may have been reached, there must always be room in what is of its own nature limited for further addition and increase; and it is not difficult to imagine to ourselves very considerable additions and developments which might yet be made to the worship of the Blessed Virgin.” And then Mr. Palmer gave as instances:

“Assuming that, in and under Christ the Head, the Blessed Virgin is, after her Assumption, as it were, the neck of the Church, so that all grace whatever flows to the

Body through her, that is, through her prayers, it might be argued, that, for such as have this belief to ask any thing of or through her, is identical in sense, but in point of form better, than to ask it directly of Christ, in like manner as to ask any thing of or through Christ, is identical in sense, but clearer and fuller in point of form, than to ask it directly of the Father. And hence, it might seem that it would be an improvement, if, reserving only the use of the appointed Forms for the making of the Sacraments, and an occasional use of the Lord’s Prayer (and this rather from respect to the letter of their outward Institution than from any inward necessity or propriety), every prayer, both of individuals and of the Church, were addressed to or through Blessed Mary, a form beginning, ‘ Our Lady, which art in heaven,’ &c., being preferred for general use to the original letter of the Lord’s Prayer; and the Psalter, the Te Deum, and all the daily Offices, being used in preference with similar accommodation.”

We see the growth. The doctrine of the Immaculate Conception has prevailed, although opposed at its first appearance by S. Bernard,341 with no foundation in antiquity, 342 grounded on the fact of the celebration of the Feast of the Conception343

341 Ep. 172, ad Canon. Lugd. Opp. i. 169.342 “All the saints, who speak of it, say with one voice, that the Blessed Virgin was conceived in original sin.” Melchior Canus (a Tridentine Doctor), Loci Theol. vii. 1. “Arguments (from reason) do not place the opinion as to the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin in any degree of certainty, since neither any convincing place of Scripture, nor the traditions of the ancient Church, nor consent of fathers or schoolmen favour it.” Card. Pallavacini, in MS. Diss. lent to Perrone. See Episcopate Cat-tolico, vi. 520. S. Augustine, in his often-quoted passage (in answer to Pelagius, who had alleged the Blessed Virgin with many others to have lived free from sin), manifestly refers to “actual sins,” as the use of the plural “sins” in itself shows. “Excepting then the holy Virgin Mary, of whom, out of honour to the Lord, I wish no question to be made when sins are treated of,—for how do we know what more of grace, wholly to conquer sin, may have been bestowed upon her, who was found meet to conceive and bear Him, of Whom it is certain that He had no sin? “(De Nat. et Grat. c. 36.) S. Augustine does not even rule that she never sinned actually, by any sin of infirmity; he marks it to be uncertain, by the contrast which he draws with our Lord, of Whom he says, “it is certain (constat) that He had no sin.” On the other hand, S. Augustine most distinctly says, that the Blessed Virgin was born in original sin (de Gen. ad lit. x. 18 and 20; de Pecc. Mer. et. Rem. ii. 24; cont. Julian. Pelag. iv. 122; v. 15; vi. 22; in Ps. 34, § 2, n. 3). In the Greek Church, S. Johann. Damascene speaks of her (as we should), as purified by the overshadowing of God the Holy Ghost. “After the consent of the Holy Virgin, the Holy Ghost came upon her, according to the Word of the Lord which the Angel spake, purifying her.” De Orthod. Fide, iii. 2.343 Some make a fifth festival, viz., of the Conception of the Blessed Mary, saying, “that as the death of saints is celebrated, not on account of their death, but because they were then received to the everlasting nuptials, so may the Conception be celebrated as a festival, not because she was conceived (since she was conceived in sin), but because the Mother of the Lord was conceived.” Durandus à S. Porc. (A.D. 1320.) Rational. D. Offic . vii. 7. Bellarmine agrees that this is admissible. De Cult. Sanct. iii. 16. The explanation that the festival was kept only as “the Conception of the Immaculate Mary,” not as “the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Mary,” was forbidden by Alexander VII. (A.D. 1661). Bullar. Rom. T. vi. par. v.

p. 182, § 4. He declared that the feast “did not relate to her sanctification, but most strictly to her preservation from original sin at the first moment of her Conception.” Archbishop of Sassari, i. 388.

(which yet related at first to “the sanctification of the Blessed Virgin,” the contradictory of her Immaculate Conception), opposed by a chain of later writers whom Rome too has canonized, and even at the last by grave bishops on the ground of the inadequacy of the proof or the injury which they apprehended to their flocks, or the increased difficulties to those external to the Roman Communion. The decree which defines that the doctrine, that “the most Blessed Virgin Mary was, in the first instant of her conception, preserved free from all stain of original sin by the singular grace and privilege of Almighty God, in view of the merits of Christ Jesus, the Saviour of Mankind, was revealed by God, and is therefore to be firmly and stedfastly believed by all the faithful;”—that same decree exhorts all in the Roman Communion, to what, it seemed to us, most Roman Catholics are of themselves inclined, an exceeding devotion to the Blessed Virgin. “Our mouth is filled with joy and our tongue with exultation, and we do render and ever will render most great and most humble thanks to our Lord Jesus Christ, that, of His singular goodness, He has granted to us, although unworthy, to offer and decree this honour and this glory and praise to His most holy Mother. But we rest our

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most certain hope and certain confidence, that it will be, that that most Blessed Virgin— (who, all beautiful and immaculate, bruised the poisonous head of the most cruel serpent, and brought salvation to the world; who is also the glory of the Apostles and Prophets, and the honour of Martyrs, and of all the saints the joy and crown; who also, being the safest refuge of all in peril, and most faithful helper, and the most powerful mediatress and reconciless (conciliatrix) of the whole world with her only-begotten Son, and the most illustrious glory and ornament and most firm protection of the Holy Church, ever slew all heresies and delivered the faithful people and nations from the greatest calamities of all sorts, and has freed us too from so many gathering perils)—will, by her most mighty patronage, effect, that the holy mother, the Catholic Church, all difficulties removed and all errors dispersed, may, throughout all nations and all places, daily more thrive, flourish, and reign from sea to sea, and from the river to the ends of the earth, so that the guilty may obtain pardon; the sick, healing; the fainthearted, strength; the afflicted, consolation; the imperilled, help; and all in error, the darkness of mind being dispersed, may return to the way of truth, and

there be one fold and one Shepherd.” “Let all the sons of the Catholic Church, most dear to us, hear these our words, and with a yet more ardent zeal of piety, religion, and love, continue to worship, invoke, pray, the most blessed Mother of God, the Virgin Mary, conceived without original stain, and to flee unto this most sweet Mother of mercy and grace, in all perils, distresses, necessities, and doubtful and anxious circumstances. For nothing is to be feared, nothing despaired of, when she is the Captain, she the Author, she propitious, she protecting, who, bearing a motherly mind towards us, and having in hand the affairs of our salvation, is anxious about the whole human race, and having been made by the Lord Queen of heaven and earth, and exalted above all the orders of angels and saints, standing at the Right Hand of her only-begotten Son our Lord Jesus Christ, does by her mother’s prayers, most potently impetrate and find what she seeks, and cannot be frustrated.”

It may be, in God’s Providence, that disappointment may check this course. The hopes have not yet been realized. For the years which have elapsed since that decree, have been years of singular trouble. Else this decree, in the legitimate application of its principles, would be but the beginning of a vast transmutation of doctrine; now practically taught with all authority in the Roman Church, into matter of faith, as to the Blessed Virgin, until she be proclaimed as “bearing all the titles and names which are wont to be ascribed to Christ,” as the Co-Redeemer of the human race, the only access to Jesus, the Indweller of the soul, to prepare it for the Indwelling of God the Holy Ghost. In the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception there was the more difficulty, because it bore closely upon the doctrines of the transmission of original sin and the universality of redemption, and so, careful and deliberate judgments, stating the exact contrary of the doctrine, had been elicited by the Pelagian controversy. This having been surmounted,

there is no fresh difficulty as to any other. The tendency of every decisive act, moreover, both in a body and in an individual, is to produce other similar acts. And that portion of the Roman Church, which is most devoted to the cultus of the Blessed Virgin, is most persuaded of the personal infallibility of the Pope, and of a continual flow of inspiration, which may at any time change popular opinion into infallible truth.

This question of reliance upon the Blessed Virgin as the being in whose hands our salvation is virtually to be placed, is quite distinct from that other question of the nature of the worship paid to her. The one is a practical question, affecting our whole eternity, “What shall I do to be saved?” The practical answer to the Roman Catholic seems to me to be, “Go to Mary, and you will be saved;” in our dear Lord’s own words, it is, “Come unto Me;” in our own belief it is, “Go to Jesus and you will be saved.”

The answer which is commonly made, that devotion to the Blessed Virgin is but relative, does not touch this. No one would impute to the Marian writers that they mean that she is Dea, although, notoriously, some of them have called her so. But they speak of what comes to the same, of her “delegated omnipotency;” and a recent writer says, “when Mary, in her office of Advocate, is named ‘Omnipotency kneeling,’ or ‘interceding Omnipotency,’ this will now, I hope, appear to be saying not too much hut too little.” The human mind is narrow, and easily filled with one thought, especially when that thought relates to one’s all. When, then, the soul is taught that the devotion to Mary is essential, that she is “the nearest to us, and the most suited to our capacity,” that “to go to Jesus, we must go to Mary; she is our Mediatrix of intercession;” that she repels none; “she is good and tender; she has nothing in her austere and repulsive;” it seems inconceivable that many should not stop short in her, with, at best, a more or less indistinct reference to Jesus. It is difficult to see how direct heresy should not be suggested by sentences such as these (and they are so common): “If we fear to go directly to Jesus Christ our God, whether because of His infinite greatness or because of our vileness, or because of our sins, let us boldly implore the aid of Mary our Mother. She is so charitable that she repels none of those who ask for her intercession, no matter how great sinners they have been; for, as the saints say, never has it been heard, since the world was the world, that any one has confidently and perseveringly had recourse to our

Blessed Lady and yet has been repelled.” For, for this argument to have any force, it must be implied to be possible that any could “confidently and perseveringly have recourse to our Divine Lord and yet be repelled,” which is, of course, directly against the Gospel.

But also, in regard to the mode of worship itself, the “more than servitude,” the “hyperdouleia “which is intended to separate the cultus of the Blessed Virgin from all advocacy of the Saints or asking for their prayers, “douleia,” melts very much into the “latreia” or the worship due to God. “Jesus is altogether in Mary, and Mary is altogether in Jesus,” so that to pray to Mary is to pray to Jesus in her. “Some say that that special worship to her is a sort of latreia, so that the cultus of the Blessed Virgin proceeds from the same habit of religion, from which arises the adoration of God and Christ. They prove it, first, because although the excellence of the mother is created, yet it has respect to the uncreated excellence, from which it takes its value; secondly, because this dignity appertains to the order of the Hypostatic Union, on the ground whereof the adoration of latreia is due to the Humanity of Christ. So then, by reason thereof there is due to the Blessed Virgin, as the Mother of God, the same adoration, but inferior; whence Caietan teaches that the Blessed Virgin has a consanguinity with Christ, as God, and so that a special adoration is due to her, because ‘by an operation of her own she touched the bounds of Divinity, i. e. because she conceived, bore, nourished God. And the fathers often assert that’ the whole honour of the Mother is referred to the Son.’ Thirdly, because in human things the same habit, which inclines to honour a king, inclines also to honour the king’s mother, as such. But this adoration is not absolute, which is due to God only; but diminished, participated, and respective: for it has respect to the dignity and Divinity of the Son, for which the mother of God is honoured, as such: wherefore this honour does not stop in the Mother, but through her tends to the Son; and the Mother is not so much adored in herself, as the Son is adored in the Mother.” Yet we are told, that “after devotion to our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament, devotion to our Lady is the holiest and solidest of all devotions; “that the devotion to the Blessed Virgin comes first in order; that “the difference between the ‘pray for us’ and the ‘have mercy upon us,’ is not so complete, as is commonly thought. As it is dogmatically admissible, to approach the God-Man, Who in the days of His Flesh prayed the Father for us, and Who now too, as the Apostle says, ‘intercedeth for us,’ with a ‘Pray for us,’ so perhaps there would not be much to be objected to, if only rightly understood, were one to cry out to the Queen of heaven, ‘Have mercy upon us.’ “But as, practically, no one would say to our Lord, “Pray

for me,” because it would be a passing by of His Divine Nature and irreverence to Him; so, to say to the Blessed Virgin, “Have mercy upon us,” is indistinguishable, except in intention, from prayer to the Holy Trinity.

We have been told that the devotion of the people to the Blessed Virgin outruns the judgment of the priests; but if the whole weight of Papal authority is added to the popular devotions, and the people are bidden, on what is to them the highest authority, to be still more devoted to the Blessed Virgin as the mediatrix with “the One Mediator between God and man, the Man Christ Jesus,’’ our Adorable Lord, one sees not where there shall be any pause or bound, short of that bold conception that “every prayer, both of individuals and of the Church, should be addressed to S. Mary.” Popular devotion now is already very different from what it was in the time of S. Bernard. S. Bernard has strong passages, grounded on what the Breviary stated to be the language of S. Athanasius, S. Augustine, &c., which Roman Catholic critics have discovered not to be theirs. But the devotion of S. Bernard is concentrated on Christ crucified. In S. Bernard on the Canticles, one is in a different atmosphere from that of e. g. Faber. Pius IX. gave permission throughout the Roman Communion to substitute special Hours recently composed on the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin for those in the common Breviary, apparently in order to give an impulse to this devotion. At the beginning of the last century, De Montfort complained of two classes of “false devotees to our Lady,” “the “critical devotees “and “the scrupulous devotees,” both of whom checked in some degree the devotion to the Blessed Virgin. The “critical devotees,” he says, “do an infinite wrong to the devotion to our Lady; and they are but too successful in alienating people from it, under the pretext of destroying its abuses.” “The scrupulous devotees are those who fear to dishonour the Son by honouring the Mother, to abase the one by elevating the other; they say, ‘We must have recourse to Jesus Christ; He is our only Mediator. “We must preach Jesus Christ, this is the solid devotion.’” “Instead of the Rosary, they counsel to any poor client of our Lady the seven Penitential Psalms. Instead of devotion to the holy Virgin, they counsel him devotion to Jesus Christ.” Both these classes seem to have passed away; there seem to be now those only who are silent, or who intensify the devotion to the Blessed Virgin. The Clergy, according to the answers of the Bishops to the Pope, seem to be everywhere earnest in promoting it. If the system should grow, as seems likely, and it should be discovered in Roman Catholic countries, that this vast range of doctrine which the people have been taught or encouraged in, in the name of the

Church, has no foundation in either of the two authorities alleged by the Council of Trent—Holy Scripture or continuous tradition from our Lord or His Apostles—it is an anxious thought what the result might be. Such an authoritative explanation, as might be satisfactory to the English Church, might hereafter be of benefit to the Roman also. The Saxon mind is a large element in the Christian body.

The solemn words addressed to Pius IX. in answer to his Encyclical Letter by the Metropolitan of Gorizia and Gradisca in Austria (and that, as it seems, from a synod of several Bishops), shows that the anxiety for the faith of those now outwardly Catholics is shared by some in the Communion of Rome too.

“If,” he says, “the present state of all Germany, and the condition of the Austrian provinces in particular, be considered attentively, as it ought, the proposition about deciding the scholastic question as to the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary, in such wise, that a pious belief should be transformed into an article of Faith and a Catholic dogma, in face of, or rather over against, the Protestants, but especially over against that sect which presumes to be called German Catholic, and which strains day by day with incredible effort to extend itself more and more, and in sight of such numbers of languid Catholics, who, both in Germany and Italy, call themselves Catholic Christians, but who have, in fact, either cast off all faith in God, or have abandoned themselves to absolute religious indifferentism, in the actual state of political liberty, seems to me a matter full of peril.