permanent and undisturbed. For the more complete attainment of this object, I must now proceed to gather together the many threads of the controversy, as it has been left by my numerous opponents. This I shall do, not from any mere call of speculation or logical consistency, but for strong practical reasons.

Dr. Newman's letter to the Duke of Norfolk is of the highest interest as a psychological study. Whatever he writes, whether we agree with him or not, presents to us this great attraction as well as advantage, that we have everywhere the man in the work, that his words are the transparent covering of his nature. If there be obliquity in them, it is purely intellectual obliquity; the work of an intellect sharp enough to cut the diamond, and bright as the diamond which it cuts. How rarely it is found in the wayward and inscrutable records of our race, that with these instruments of an almost superhuman force and subtlety, robustness of character and energy of will are or can be developed in the same extraordinary proportions, so as to integrate that structure of combined thought and action, which makes life a moral whole! "There are gifts too large and too fearful to be handled freely." ""* But I turn from an incidental reflection to observe that my duty is to appreciate the letter of Dr. Newman exclusively in relation to my Tract. I thankfully here record, in the first place, the kindliness of his tone. If he has striven to minimise the Decrees of the Vatican, I am certain he has also striven to minimise his censures, and has put words aside before they touched his paper, which must have been in

* Dr. Newman, p. 127.

his thoughts, if not upon his pen. I sum up this pleasant portion of my duty with the language of Helen respecting Hector: πατὴρ ὡς ἤπιος αἰεί.*

It is, in my opinion, an entire mistake to suppose that theories like those, of which Rome is the centre, are not operative on the thoughts and actions of men. An army of teachers, the largest and the most compact in the world, is ever sedulously at work to bring them into practice. Within our own time they have most powerfully, as well as most injuriously, altered the spirit and feeling of the Roman Church at large; and it will be strange indeed if, having done so much in the last half-century, they shall effect nothing in the next. I must avow, then, that I do not feel exactly the same security for the future as for the present. Still less do I feel the same security for other lands as for this. Nor can I overlook indications which lead to the belief that, even in this country, and at this time, the proceedings of Vaticanism threaten to be a source of some practical inconvenience. I am confident that if a system so radically bad is to be made or kept innocuous, the first condition for attaining such a result is that its movements should be carefully watched, and, above all, that the bases on which they work should be faithfully and unflinchingly exposed. Nor can I quit this portion of the subject without these remarks. The satisfactory views of Archbishop Manning on the present rule of civil allegiance have not prevented him from giving his countenance as a responsible editor** to the lucubrations of a gentleman, who * Iliad, xxiv. 770.

**

'Essays,' edited by Archbishop Manning, pp. 401—5, 467.

Rome.

7

denies liberty of conscience, and asserts the right to persecute when there is the power; a right which, indeed, the Prelate has not himself disclaimed.

Nor must it be forgotten, that the very best of all the declarations we have heard from those who allow themselves to be entangled in the meshes of the Vatican Decrees, are, every one of them, uttered subject to the condition that, upon orders from Rome, if such orders should issue, they shall be qualified, or retracted, or reserved.

"A breath can unmake them, as a breath has made."

But even apart from all this, do what we may in checking external developments, it is not in our power to neutralise the mischiefs of the wanton aggression of 1870 upon the liberties-too scanty, it is excusable to think-which up to that epoch had been allowed to private Christians in the Roman communion. Even in those parts of Christendom where the Decrees and the present attitude of the Papal See do not produce or aggravate open broils with the civil power, by undermining moral liberty they impair moral responsibility, and silently, in the succession of generations if not even in the lifetime of individuals, tend to emasculate the vigour of the mind.

In the tract on the Vatican Decrees I passed briefly by those portions of my original statement which most lay within the province of theology, and dwelt principally on two main propositions.

I. That Rome had reproduced for active service those doctrines of former times, termed by me "rusty tools," which she was fondly thought to have disused.

II. That the Pope now claims, with plenary authority, from every convert and member of his Church, that he "shall place his loyalty and civil duty at the mercy of another:" that other being himself.

These are the assertions, which I now hold myself bound further to sustain and prove.

II. THE RUSTY TOOLS. THE SYLLABUS.

1. Its Contents.
2. Its Authority.

WITH regard to the proposition that Rome has refurbished her "rusty" tools, Dr. Newman says it was by these tools that Europe was brought into a civilized condition: and thinks it worth while to ask whether it is my wish that penalties so sharp, and expressions so high, should be of daily use.*

I may be allowed to say, in reply to the remark I have cited, that I have nowhere presumed to pronounce a general censure on the conduct of the Papacy in the middle ages. That is a vast question, reaching far beyond my knowledge or capacity. I believe much is to be justly said in praise, much as justly in blame. But I cannot view the statement that Papal claims and conduct created the civilization of Europe as other than thoroughly unhistorical and one-sided: as resting upon a narrow selection of evidence, upon strong exaggeration of what that evidence imports, and upon an "invincible ignorance" as to all the rest.

Many things may have been suited, or not unsuited, to rude times and indeterminate ideas of political right, the reproduction of which is at the least strange, perhaps even monstrous. We look back with interest

* Dr. Newman, p. 32.