on authority, we yet agreed with it.

37

Christ's Holy Catholic Church, and therein for our own, when, in all her most solemn prayers, we prayed for that Catholic Church of which our own could but form a part, or, in the Ember Weeks, we prayed, not for the Bishops of our own Communion only, but for those of the "Universal Church which God had purchased to Himself by the Precious Blood of His Dear Son." We could not receive the decrees of the Council of Trent on the authority of the Roman Church alone, believing, as we did, that the Roman Church was a part only of a larger whole, which had not received them-the Universal Church. But we saw in the decrees of that Council much (as the decrees on original sin and on justification) which, without any explanations, and other portions which, with explanations, agreed with our inherited faith. This was not private judgment; it was sight. As to those points which we did not or do not receive, except in a certain sense, we did not or do not receive them otherwise, because they would have been at variance with our inherited faith, which, of course, we believe to have come to us grounded in Scripture and guarded by tradition. But then we believe that the Roman Church could explain those statements in a way which would not contradict our faith, or impose upon us terms inconsistent with our convictions, which have been inworked into our souls.

Plainly, neither the Greek nor the English

38 Moral certainty possible, what Rome cd. admit.

Church, while yet un-united with the Roman Church, can receive the Council of Trent, "because of its authority," inasmuch as its authority rests on the claim of the Roman Church to be alone the Church; and to own this would, either on the part of the great Eastern Church or ourselves, be to own ourselves to be no part of the Body of Christ. On this principle, when intercommunion had once been broken or suspended, re-union would be impossible or wrong, except by the absolute submission of that part of the Church which was not in communion with Rome to that portion which was. But we need be under no uncertainty whether the explanations which we propose would be accepted. We may have a moral conviction that Rome could accede, and, in charity, could not help acceding to the explanations which we desire. For if accredited writers among you have laid down that such and such statements are not "de fide," and that which is "de fide" is this or that only; and if they have held out these statements as grounds why individuals should not hesitate to join the Roman Church, then both truth and charity require that the Roman Church should accept from a whole body or from a Church, as terms of reunion, the same professions of faith which they stated to be adequate in the case of individuals. It was declared for the first time at the Council of Florence, that the term Sià Toû rioù had the same theological meaning as the

Probable reaction from prejudices.

39

"Filioque;" but there was a moral certainty beforehand, that it could be so pronounced; else the meeting of East and West in that Council would have been hopeless from the first.

In regard to our own people, I believe that their very prejudices against what they call "Popery" may be a help towards reunion hereafter, on this ground; that the English, like all other honest, generous natures, is very capable of reaction when it has found itself unjust. On some such ground the Roman Catholics of old calculated on a certain number of conversions whenever there had been strong declamation against them in a public controversy, and they had a right of answering. For, seeing that they were unjustly accused in this or that, it was supposed that they were so in the rest also. This has occurred ofttimes in those brought up in strong anti-Roman teaching: the reaction, when they found so much which they had been taught as to Roman Catholics to be untrue, carried them, without further inquiry, into the Roman Church.

Now, I suppose that the most common dread among us, in case of union with Rome, is, that we should be involved in a belief in justification, which would, in some way, substitute or associate our own works for or with the merits of Christ; in idolatry, not only in the cultus of the Blessed Virgin or of the saints, but in that of images, or in the Adoration in the Holy Eucharist, as being,

40 Practical evils popularly feared from Rome.

they suppose, an adoration of the Eucharistic symbols; or in a belief in an Eucharistic sacrifice, which should in some way interfere with and obscure the One meritorious Sacrifice on the Cross; or in a belief that sin might be remitted by absolution, though unrepented or half-repented of, or, as some imagine, even future; or in a Purgatorial fire, the same or like that of hell, in which the departed suffer torments unutterable without any consolation; or in indulgences, which should be a great interference with God's judgments in the unseen world, taught for the sake of gain; or that human traditions should interfere with the supreme authority of God's Word; or that we should be arbitrarily forbidden the use of Holy Scripture, or the gift of the Cup, or the use of prayers in a language which we understand; or people dread certain moral evils which they apprehend from a constrained celibacy of the Priesthood, or some interference with Christian liberty from an arbitrary, boundless authority of the Pope; or, perhaps, some interference with the due authority of a Christian Sovereign in matters temporal.

For, to our practical English minds, they are practical evils, real or apprehended, which press upon us; we view things, not so much in themselves, as in their bearing upon something else which is sacred or dear to us. And of these real or supposed evils, it is plainly of no use to attempt to remove some few. People are inured to their

Eucharistic Sacrifice, as stated by Molanus. 41

present evils; and it is, in itself, a right feeling which would endure whatever, in God's Providence, lie upon us, rather than risk entailing others by any choice of our own.

Now of these difficulties it is hopeful as well as instructive to see, how easily some of those, which to some of our people have seemed the most difficult, were composed between Molanus and Bossuet.

a) The Eucharistic Sacrifice Molanus placed as first in the class of those which were "verbal controversies."

"Is the Sacrament of the Altar, or the Eucharist, a sacrifice? To decide which, it is to be noted that it is not a question between us and the Roman Catholics, whether the Eucharist can be called a sacrifice, which is granted on both sides; but whether it is a sacrifice, properly so called, or no; which controversy (as is clear from the term) turns on the mode of speaking, since each party pre-supposes, as the foundation of its judgment, its own definition of sacrifice.' To the Protestants, nay, to Cardinal Bellarmine himself, 'a sacrifice is properly called of a living thing,' according to the language of the Old Testament (from which the doctrine of sacrifices is naturally to be sought), 'when an animal or animate substance is destroyed to the honour of God, by Divine precept;' in which sense the Roman Church simply denies that the Eucharist is a sacrifice, being, as well as we, most rightly persuaded that a sacrifice in that sense cannot be completed without a fresh shedding of blood and a fresh slaying; in one, and that an Ecclesiastical, word, that it is an 'unbloody sacrifice.' So far is it from wishing to define, according to our and Bellarmine's definition, that the Eucharist is a sacrifice, properly and strictly so called. But when the Roman Church calls the Eucharist a sacrifice properly so called, they then take the word either in opposition

8

Cogit. de Meth. Reunionis, &c., in Bossuet, xxv. 276–279.