Part 25 (1/2)
”Can you not?” said Harrington. ”I cannot imagine any thing more likely than that, eighteen hundred and fifty years hence, such an event, on Strauss's principles, may be shown to be very problematical.”
”Will you endeavor to show how it may probably be?” rejoined Robinson.
”Well, I have no objection, if you will give me till this evening to prepare so important a doc.u.ment.”
In the evening, after supper, he amused us by reading us a brief paper, ent.i.tled
THE PAPAL AGGRESSION SHOWN TO BE IMPOSSIBLE.
”I shall proceed on the supposition that some Dr. d.i.c.kkopf or Dr. Scharfsinn, for either name will do, has to deal (as my uncle here believes our modern critics have to deal in the Gospels) with an account literally true. This learned man I shall imagine as existing in some nation at the antipodes eighteen hundred and fifty years hence, and intellectually, if not literally, descended from some erudite critics of our age. Let me further suppose that the princ.i.p.al memorials of the current events are found in the page of some continuator of Macaulay (may the Fates have pity on him! I am afraid he will be far worse than even Smollett after Hume), who publishes his work only sixty years hence. Let us suppose him (as surely we well may) proceeding thus: 'During the year 1850-51, our countrymen are represented to us, by the accounts of those who lived at the time (some few still survive), as having been in a condition of political and religious excitement almost unprecedented in their history. It was occasioned by the attempt of the Pope to reestablish the Roman Catholic hierarchy, which had been extinct since the Reformation. As these events, though all-absorbing to the actors in them, (as are so many others of very secondary importance,) have now shrunk to their true dimensions, and are, in fact, infinitely less momentous than others which were silently transpiring at the time almost without notice, I shall content myself with simply condensing a brief contemporaneous doc.u.ment which gives the chief points, without pa.s.sion or prejudice, in a narrative so simple that it vouches for its own veracity:--
”Without permission of the Crown, or any negotiations with the Government whatever, Pope Plus the Ninth divided the whole of England into twelve sees, and a.s.signed these to as many Roman Catholic bishops with local t.i.tles and territorial jurisdiction. The chief of them was one Nicholas Wiseman (by birth, it is said, a Spaniard), who was created Archbishop of Westminster and Cardinal.
”'The said Wiseman issued a pastoral letter, which was read on the 27th day of October, 1850, in all the churches and chapels of the Romanists, congratulating Catholic England on the reestablishment of the Roman hierarchy. In it he used the startling expression, ”Our beloved country has been restored to its...o...b..t in the ecclesiastical firmament, from which its light had long vanished.”
”'The nation was the more surprised at all this, inasmuch as the position of Pio Nono was not such as to warrant any expectation of a step so audacious. Little more than a year had elapsed since his own subjects in Rome itself rebelled against him, murdered his Prime Minister, and compelled him, in the disguise of a menial, to fly from Rome; nor was he restored except by the arms of the French, who besieged and took Rome in 1849.
”'That the Pope, while holding his own little dominions on so precarious a tenure, should venture to a.s.sume such an exercise of supremacy over the most powerful nation in the world,--a nation so jealous of its independence, which had so long been, and which still was, most averse to his claims,--seemed almost incredible to the people of England; and they were proportionably indignant.
”'Some affirmed that the aforesaid Cardinal Wiseman was the chief cause of it all,--the spectacle of many conversions from the Church of England to that of Rome having deceived him into a notion that the national mind was far more generally disposed to receive Romanism; and to make up the long-standing breach with the Papacy, than was really the case.
The princ.i.p.al cause of the conversions above mentioned was what was called the ”Oxford Movement.” In the University of Oxford had sprung up a body of men who had consecrated their lives to the diffusion of doctrines indefinitely near those of Rome. They spoke of the Reformation contemptuously; advocated very many, obsolete rites and usages; magnified the power of the church and the prerogatives of the priesthood. Many of them, at length, finding that they could not, with any shadow of consistency, remain in the English church, abandoned it; but many others remained, and propagated the same opinions with impunity. They were regarded as traitors by their brethren, though no steps were taken to prevent them from teaching their notions, nor to deprive them of their benefices and emoluments. Among those who gave up their livings, of their own accord, from the feeling that they could not hold them with a safe conscience, the princ.i.p.al was one afterwards called Father Newman.
”'Now this Newman must by no means be confounded with another of the same name, Professor Newman,--in fact his own brother,--who was also educated at Oxford, but whose history was in most singular contrast with his. While the one brother went over to Rome, exceeded in zeal and credulity even the Romanists themselves, and sighed for a restoration of mediaeval puerilities, the other lapsed into downright infidelity, and denied even the possibility of an external revelation.
”'Very many thought, that, if the Oxford party had been wise enough to proceed more gently in the propagation of their notions, they would have accomplished much greater things, and perhaps eventually brought the popular mind to embrace the Romish Church. But their later publications (and especially No. 90) opened the eyes of many, and the frequent defections from the English Church, which were almost daily announced in the papers, opened the eyes of many more.
”'But whether or not Wiseman and other princ.i.p.al persons were misled by erroneous representations of the state of the English mind, certain it is that he advised the Pope to take this perilous step. The Pope was persuaded; he a.s.sured the people of England, that he should not cease to supplicate the Virgin Mary and all the saints whose virtues had made this country ill.u.s.trious, that they would deign to obtain, by their intercessions with G.o.d, a happy issue to his enterprise.
”'The excitement produced by the publication of the Pope's proceedings throughout England was prodigious, and can hardly be conceived by us at this day. Every county, city, and almost every town, held meetings in the utmost alarm and indignation; and resolved on pet.i.tioning the Queen and Parliament to do something or other to prevent the Pope's measures from taking effect; and especially to annul all claims to local and territorial jurisdiction in this country. The universities; the clergy in their dioceses; the Bishops collectively,--even Philpotts of Exeter, though intoxicated with zeal for those Oxford notions which had done all the mischief; the munic.i.p.alities; almost all organized bodies, whether of Churchmen or Dissenters;--discussed and resolved.
Amongst these meetings one was held at the Guildhall of London, which was crowded with the merchant princes of that great city, and all that could represent its wealth, intelligence, and energy. One Masterman opened the proceedings, made a vehement speech against the Bishop of Rome and his pretensions, and proposed a stringent resolution, which was carried by acclamation.
”'At a dinner given by the Lord Mayor, at which were present many of the Ministers of the Crown, the Lord Chancellor Wilde spoke very boldly, and, as some thought, unadvisedly, on his possible future relations to the Cardinal.
”'Cardinal Wiseman published a subtle defence of himself and the Popish measure, which he addressed to the people of England; and, whether consistently or inconsistently, pleaded in the most strenuous manner for the inviolable observance of the principles of ”religious liberty.”
”'A singular and indeed inexplicable circ.u.mstance occurred in the course of this controversy. In a lecture, delivered at the Hanover Square Rooms, a certain Presbyterian clergyman had a.s.serted that the oath prescribed in the Pontificale Romanum, which the Cardinal Wiseman must have taken to the Pope when he received the Pallium as Archbishop of Westminster, notoriously contained a clause enjoining the duty of persecution. This clause, a facetious Englishman said, ought to be translated, ”I will persecute and pitch into all heretics to the utmost of my power”; and every one knew that the Pope of Rome looked upon the English as the greatest heretics in the world.
”'When Wiseman heard of the representations thus made, he caused his secretary to write to the Protestant lecturer, to say that the clause in the oath to which he had referred was not insisted upon, in his (the Cardinal's) case, by the Pope, and that, if his calumniator chose to go to the Cardinal's library, he would see that it was cancelled in his copy of the Pontifical. The Protestant accepted his challenge and went to the said library. He was then shown the oath, and found the clause in question, totidem verbis; not cancelled, however, but marked off by a line in black ink drawn over it, and (as it seemed) very recently.
”'Pamphlets were published on this curious circ.u.mstance on both sides; the Roman Catholics contended that the mere fact of Wiseman's challenge was a sufficient proof of his consciousness of rect.i.tude.
”'On the whole, after half a year of perpetual agitation, both in and out of Parliament, a measure was pa.s.sed which was notoriously inadequate to suppress the offence, and which was broken with impunity.
”'It is gratifying to add, that, notwithstanding the dangerous and vehement excitement which so long inflamed the minds of the people, no life was lost except on one occasion. The sufferer--contrary to what might have been expected--was of the dominant party a policeman, who was endeavoring to repress the party violence of some Irish Catholics in the North of England.'”
____
”Now it need not be said,” proceeded Harrington, ”that these sentences contain what is perfectly well known by you--for myself I say nothing--to be the merest matter of fact, narrated in the simplest language, without any art or embellishment. Would you like to hear how Dr. d.i.c.kkopf, of New Zealand, or Kamtschatka, or Caffre-land, might treat such a doc.u.ment eighteen hundred and fifty years hence, amidst that imperfect light which we well know rests upon so many portions of the past, and which may, very possibly, be felt in the future? I think it would not be difficult for him to show that the 'Papal Aggression' was impossible.”
”We will, at least, listen to you,” said Robinson.
”Let us suppose, then, some learned Theban stumbling upon this brief record of an obscure event, and, as usual, making (if only because he had discovered what n.o.body in the world either knew or cared about) a huge commentary upon it; concluding from the internal evidence, the simplicity of the style, the absence of all imaginable motives for misrepresentation, and some external corroborative fragments painfully gleaned from the history of the period, that these sentences formed a genuine, literal, historic account of certain events which transpired in England in the year 1850. This, of course, would of itself be sufficient to make ten Dr. d.i.c.kkopfs turn to and prove the contrary; and any one of them, I imagine, might, and probably would, thus reply. Excuse his clumsy style. He would say:--
”'That there may have been, and very probably was, some nucleus of fact which may have served as a groundwork for these pseudo-historical memorials, is not denied: but to regard that doc.u.ment of which it is professedly a condensation as a genuine record of the period in question, can only, we conceive, be the infelicity of an essentially uncritical mind. Most evidently, whether we regard the known events and relations of that age (as far as they have come down to us) or the internal characteristics of the doc.u.ment itself, we discover unequivocal traces of an unhistoric origin. Let us look at both these sources of evidence in order. If we mistake not, the doc.u.ment, even as it now stands, bears on its very front, that the original doc.u.ment, so far from being a literal description of the events of the time to which it professedly related, was allegorical, or at most historico- allegorical, and most likely designed broadly to caricature and satirize some perceived tendencies or conditions of the English religious development in certain parties of that age. But whether it be, or be not, reducible to the cla.s.s of allegorieo-ecclesiastico- political satire, certainly no person of critical discernment can for a moment allow it to be a literal statement of historic events. And first to look at the internal evidence.