(1) The Incarnation,
(2) The Real Presence,
i. Regeneration,
ii. Eucharist, and
(3) The Exaltation of S. M. and Saints.
His twenty-second strange thought was as follows: ‘How do I know where I may be two years hence? Where was Newman five years ago?’
It was significant, but hardly surprising, that, after his illness, Manning should have chosen to recuperate in Rome. He spent several months there, and his Diary during the whole of that period is concerned entirely with detailed descriptions of churches, ceremonies, and relics, and with minute accounts of conversations with priests and nuns. There is not a single reference either to the objects of art or to the antiquities of the place; but another omission was still more remarkable. Manning had a long interview with Pius IX, and his only record of it is contained in the bald statement: ‘Audience today at the Vatican’. Precisely what passed on that occasion never transpired; all that is known is that His Holiness expressed considerable surprise on learning from the Archdeacon that the chalice was used in the Anglican Church in the administration of Communion. ‘What!’ he exclaimed, ‘is the same chalice made use of by every one?’ ‘I remember the pain I felt,’ said Manning long afterwards, ‘at seeing how unknown we were to the Vicar of Jesus Christ. It made me feel our isolation.’
On his return to England, he took up once more the work in his Archdeaconry with what appetite he might. Ravaged by doubt, distracted by speculation, he yet managed to maintain an outward presence of unshaken calm. His only confidant was Robert Wilberforce, to whom, for the next two years, he poured forth in a series of letters, headed ‘Under the Seal’ to indicate that they contained the secrets of the confessional, the whole history of his spiritual perturbations. The irony of his position was singular; for during the whole of this time Manning was himself holding back from the Church of Rome a host of hesitating penitents by means of arguments which he was at the very moment denouncing as fallacious to his own confessor. But what else could he do? When he received, for instance, a letter such as the following from an agitated lady, what was he to say?
MY DEAR FATHER IN CHRIST,
… I am sure you would pity me and like to help me, if you knew the unhappy, unsettled state my mind is in, and the misery of being entirely, wherever I am, with those who look upon joining the Church of Rome as the most awful ‘fall’ conceivable to any one, and are devoid of the smallest comprehension of how any enlightened person can do it…. My old Evangelical friends, with all my deep, deep love for them, do not succeed in shaking me in the least…
My brother has just published a book called Regeneration, which all my friends are reading and highly extolling; it has a very contrary effect to what he would desire on my mind. I can read and understand it all in an altogether different sense, and the facts which he quotes about the articles as drawn up in 1536, and again in 1552, and of the Irish articles of 1615 and 1634, startle and shake me about the Reformed Church in England far more than anything else, and have done ever since I first saw them in Mr Maskell’s pamphlet (as quoted from Mr Dodsworth’s).
I do hope you have sometimes time and thought to pray for me still. Mr Galton’s letters long ago grew into short formal notes, which hurt me and annoyed me particularly, and I never answered his last, so, literally, I have no one to say things to and get help from, which in one sense is a comfort, when my convictions seem to be leading me on and on and gaining strength in spite of all the dreariness of my lot.
Do you know I can’t help being very anxious and unhappy about poor Sister Harriet. I am afraid of her going out of her mind. She comforts herself by an occasional outpouring of everything to me, and I had a letter this morning…. She says Sister May has promised the Vicar never to talk to her or allow her to talk on the subject with her, and I doubt whether this can be good for her, because though she has lost her faith, she says, in the Church of England, yet she never thinks of what she could have faith in, and resolutely without inquiring into the question determines not to be a Roman Catholic, so that really you see she is allowing her mind to run adrift, and yet perfectly powerless.
Forgive my troubling you with this letter, and believe me to be always your faithful, grateful and affectionate daughter,
EMMA RYLE.
P.S. I wish I could see you once more so very much.
How was Manning, a director of souls, and a clergyman of the Church of England, to reply that in sober truth there was very little to choose between the state of mind of Sister Emma, or even of Sister Harriet, and his own? The dilemma was a grievous one: when a soldier finds himself fighting for a cause in which he has lost faith, it is treachery to stop, and it is treachery to go on.
At last, in the seclusion of his library, Manning turned in an agony to those old writings which had provided Newman with so much instruction and assistance; perhaps the Fathers would do something for him as well. He ransacked the pages of St Cyprian and St Cyril; he went through the complete works of St Optatus and St Leo; he explored the vast treatises of Tertullian and Justin Martyr. He had a lamp put into his phaeton, so that he might lose no time during his long winter drives. There he sat, searching St Chrysostom for some mitigation of his anguish, while he sped along between the hedges to distant sufferers, to whom he duly administered the sacraments according to the rites of the English Church. He hurried back to commit to his Diary the analysis of his reflections, and to describe, under the mystic formula of secrecy, the intricate workings of his conscience to Robert Wilberforce. But, alas! he was no Newman; and even the fourteen folios of St Augustine himself, strange to say, gave him very little help.
The final propulsion was to come from an entirely different quarter. In November 1847 the Reverend Mr Gorham was presented by the Lord Chancellor to the living of Bramford Speke in the diocese of Exeter. The Bishop, Dr Phillpotts, was a High Churchman, and he had reason to believe that Mr Gorham held evangelical opinions; he therefore subjected him to an examination on doctrine, which took the form partly of a verbal interrogatory, lasting thirty-eight hours, and partly of a series of one hundred and forty-nine written questions. At the end of the examination he came to the conclusion that Mr Gorham held heretical views on the subject of Baptismal Regeneration, and he therefore refused to institute. Mr Gorham thereupon took proceedings against the Bishop in the Court of Arches. He lost his case; and he then appealed to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council.
The questions at issue were taken very seriously by a large number of persons. In the first place, there was the question of Baptismal Regeneration itself. This is by no means an easy one to disentangle; but it may be noted that the doctrine of Baptism includes (1) God’s intention, that is to say, His purpose in electing certain persons to eternal life – an abstruse and greatly controverted subject, upon which the Church of England abstains from strict definition; (2) God’s action, whether by means of sacraments or otherwise – concerning which the Church of England maintains the efficacy of sacraments, but does not formally deny that grace may be given by other means, repentance and faith being present; and (3) the question whether sacramental grace is given instrumentally, by and at the moment of the act of baptism, or in consequence of an act of prevenient grace rendering the receiver worthy – that is to say, whether sacramental grace in baptism is given absolutely or conditionally: it was over this last question that the dispute raged hottest in the Gorham Case. The High Church party, represented by Dr Phillpotts, asserted that the mere act of baptism conferred regeneration upon the recipient and washed away his original sin. To this the Evangelicals, headed by Mr Gorham, replied that, according to the Articles, regeneration would not follow unless baptism was rightly received. What, then, was the meaning of ‘rightly’? Clearly it implied not merely lawful administration, but worthy reception; worthiness, therefore, is the essence of the sacrament; and worthiness means faith and repentance. Now, two propositions were accepted by both parties – that all infants are born in origin
al sin, and that original sin could be washed away by baptism. But how could both these propositions be true, argued Mr Gorham, if it was also true that faith and repentance were necessary before baptism could come into operation at all? How could an infant in arms be said to be in a state of faith and repentance? How, therefore, could its original sin be washed away by baptism? And yet, as every one agreed, washed away it was. The only solution of the difficulty lay in the doctrine of prevenient grace; and Mr Gorham maintained that unless God performed an act of prevenient grace by which the infant was endowed with faith and repentance, no act of baptism could be effectual, though to whom, and under what conditions, prevenient grace was given, Mr Gorham confessed himself unable to decide. The light thrown by the Bible upon the whole matter seemed somewhat dubious, for whereas the baptism of St Peter’s disciples at Jerusalem and St Philip’s at Samaria was followed by the gift of the Spirit, in the case of Cornelius the sacrament succeeded the gift. St Paul also was baptized; and as for the language of St John iii, 5; Rom. vi, 3, 4; 1 Peter iii, 21, it admits of more than one interpretation. There could, however, be no doubt that the Church of England assented to Dr Phillpotts’ opinion; the question was whether or not she excluded Mr Gorham’s If it was decided that she did, it was clear that henceforward there would be very little peace for Evangelicals within her fold.
But there was another issue, even more fundamental than that of Baptismal Regeneration itself, involved in the Gorham trial. An Act passed in 1833 had constituted the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council the supreme court of appeal for such cases; and this Committee was a body composed entirely of laymen. It was thus obvious that the Royal Supremacy was still a fact, and that a collection of lawyers appointed by the Crown had the legal right to formulate the religious doctrine of the Church of England. In 1850 their judgement was delivered; they reversed the decision of the Court of Arches, and upheld the position of Mr Gorham. Whether his views were theologically correct or not, they said, was not their business; it was their business to decide whether the opinions under consideration were contrary or repugnant to the doctrine of the Church of England as enjoined upon the clergy by its Articles, Formularies, and Rubrics; and they had come to the conclusion that they were not. The judgement still holds good; and to this day a clergyman of the Church of England is quite at liberty to believe that Regeneration does not invariably take place when an infant is baptized.
The blow fell upon no one with greater violence than upon Manning. Not only was the supreme efficacy of the sign of the cross upon a baby’s forehead one of his favourite doctrines, but up to that moment he had been convinced that the Royal Supremacy was a mere accident – a temporary usurpation – which left the spiritual dominion of the Church essentially untouched. But now the horrid reality rose up before him, crowned and triumphant; it was all too clear that an Act of Parliament, passed by Jews, Roman Catholics, and Dissenters, was the ultimate authority which decided upon the momentous niceties of the Anglican faith. Mr Gladstone, also, was deeply perturbed. It was absolutely necessary, he wrote, to ‘rescue and defend the conscience of the Church from the present hideous system’. An agitation was set on foot, and several influential Anglicans, with Manning at their head, drew up and signed a formal protest against the Gorham Judgement. Mr Gladstone, however, proposed another method of procedure: precipitate action, he declared, must be avoided at all costs, and he elaborated a scheme for securing procrastination, by which a covenant was to bind all those who believed that an article of the creed had been abolished by Act of Parliament to take no steps in any direction, nor to announce their intention of doing so, until a given space of time had elapsed. Mr Gladstone was hopeful that some good might come of this – though indeed he could not be sure. ‘Among others’ he wrote to Manning, ‘I have consulted Robert Wilberforce and Wegg-Prosser, and they seemed inclined to favour my proposal. It might, perhaps, have kept back Lord Feilding. But he is like a cork.’
The proposal was certainly not favoured by Manning. Protests and procrastinations, approving Wegg-Prossers and cork-like Lord Feildings – all this was feeding the wind and folly; the time for action had come. ‘I can no longer continue,’ he wrote to Robert Wilberforce,
under oath and subscription binding me to the Royal Supremacy in Ecclesiastical causes, being convinced:
(1) That it is a violation of the Divine Office of the Church.
(2) That it has involved the Church of England in a separation from the universal Church, which separation I cannot clear of the character of schism.
(3) That it has thereby suspended and prevented the functions of the Church of England.
It was in vain that Robert Wilberforce pleaded, in vain that Mr Gladstone urged upon his mind the significance of John iii, 8.* ‘I admit,’ Mr Gladstone wrote, ‘that the words might in some way be satisfied by supposing our Lord simply to mean “the facts of nature are unintelligible, therefore be not afraid if revealed truths be likewise beyond the compass of the understanding”; but this seems to me a meagre meaning.’
Such considerations could hold him no longer, and Manning executed the resignation of his office and benefice before a public notary. Soon afterwards, in the little Chapel off Buckingham Palace Road, kneeling beside Mr Gladstone, he worshipped for the last time as an Anglican. Thirty years later the Cardinal told how, just before the Communion service commenced, he turned to his friends with the words: ‘I can no longer take the Communion in the Church of England.’ ‘I rose up, and laying my hand on Mr Gladstone’s shoulder, said “Come”. It was the parting of the ways. Mr Gladstone remained; and I went my way. Mr Gladstone still remains where I left him.’
On 6 April, 1851, the final step was taken: Manning was received into the Roman Catholic Church. Now at last, after the long struggle, his mind was at rest. ‘I know what you mean,’ he wrote to Robert Wilberforce, ‘by saying that one sometimes feels as if all this might turn out to be only another “Land of Shadows”. I have felt it in time past, but not now. The θεολογία from Nice to St Thomas Aquinas, and the undivided unity suffused throughout the world, of which the Cathedra Petri is the centre – now 1800 years old, mightier in every power now than ever, in intellect, in science, in separation from the world; and purer too, refined by 300 years of conflict with the modern infidel civilization – all this is a fact more solid than the earth.’
5
WHEN Manning joined the Church of Rome he acted under the combined impulse of the two dominating forces in his nature. His preoccupation with the supernatural might, alone, have been satisfied within the fold of the Anglican communion; and so might his preoccupation with himself: the one might have found vent in the elaborations of High Church ritual, and the other in the activities of a bishopric. But the two together could not be quieted so easily. The Church of England is a commodious institution; she is very anxious to please; but, somehow or other, she has never managed to supply a happy home to superstitious egotists. ‘What an escape for my poor soul!’ Manning is said to have exclaimed when, shortly after his conversion, a mitre was going a-begging. But, in truth, Manning’s ‘poor soul’ had scented nobler quarry. To one of his temperament, how was it possible, when once the choice was plainly put, to hesitate for a moment between the respectable dignity of an English bishop, harnessed by the secular power, with the Gorham judgement as a bit between his teeth, and the illimitable pretensions of the humblest priest of Rome?
For the moment, however, it seemed as if the Fates had at last been successful in their little game of shunting Manning. The splendid career which he had so laboriously built up from the small beginnings of his Sussex curacy was shattered – and shattered by the inevitable operation of his own essential needs. He was over forty, and he had been put back once more to the very bottom rung of the ladder – a middle-aged neophyte with, so far as could be seen, no special claim to the attention of his new superiors. The example of Newman, a far more illustrious convert, was hardly reassuring: he had been relegated to a complete
obscurity, in which he was to remain until extreme old age. Why should there be anything better in store for Manning? Yet it so happened that within fourteen years of his conversion Manning was Archbishop of Westminster and the supreme ruler of the Roman Catholic community in England. This time the Fates gave up the unequal struggle; they paid over their stakes in despair, and retired from the game.
Nevertheless it is difficult to feel quite sure that Manning’s plunge was as hazardous as it appeared. Certainly he was not a man who was likely to forget to look before he leaped, nor one who, if he happened to know that there was a mattress spread to receive him, would leap with less conviction. In the light of after-events, one would be glad to know what precisely passed at that mysterious interview of his with the Pope, three years before his conversion. It is at least possible that the authorities in Rome had their eyes on Manning; they may well have felt that the Archdeacon of Chichester would be a great catch. What did Pio Nono say? It is easy to imagine the persuasive innocence of his Italian voice. ‘Ah, dear Signor Manning, why don’t you come over to us? Do you suppose that we should not look after you?’
At any rate, when he did go over, Manning was looked after very thoroughly. There was, it is true, a momentary embarrassment at the outset: it was only with the greatest difficulty that he could bring himself to abandon his faith in the validity of Anglican Orders, in which he believed ‘with a consciousness stronger than all reasoning’. He was convinced that he was still a priest. When the Rev. Mr Tierney, who had received him into the Roman Catholic communion, assured him that this was not the case, he was filled with dismay and mortification. After a five hours’ discussion, he started to his feet in a rage. ‘Then, Mr Tierney,’ he exclaimed, ‘you think me insincere.’ The bitter draught was swallowed at last, and, after that, all went smoothly. Manning hastened to Rome, and was immediately placed by the Pope in the highly select Accademia Ecclesiastica, commonly known as the ‘nursery of Cardinals’, for the purpose of completing his theological studies. When the course was finished, he continued, by the Pope’s special request, to spend six months of every year in Rome, where he preached to the English visitors, became acquainted with the great personages of the Papal court, and enjoyed the privilege of constant interviews with the Holy Father. At the same time he was able to make himself useful in London, where Cardinal Wiseman, the newly created Archbishop of Westminster, was seeking to reanimate the Roman Catholic community. Manning was not only extremely popular in the pulpit and in the confessional; he was not only highly efficient as a gleaner of souls – and of souls who moved in the best society; he also possessed a familiarity with official persons and official ways, which was invaluable. When the question arose of the appointment of Catholic chaplains in the Crimea during the war, it was Manning who approached the Minister, interviewed the Permanent Secretary, and finally succeeded in obtaining all that was required. When a special Reformatory for Catholic children was proposed, Manning carried through the negotiation with the Government. When an attempt was made to remove Catholic children from the Workhouses, Manning was again indispensable. No wonder Cardinal Wiseman soon determined to find some occupation of special importance for the energetic convert. He had long wished to establish a congregation of secular priests in London particularly devoted to his service, and the opportunity for the experiment had clearly now arisen. The order of the Oblates of St Charles was founded in Bayswater, and Manning was put at its head. Unfortunately no portion of the body of St Charles could be obtained for the new community, but two relics of his blood were brought over to Bayswater from Milan. Almost at the same time the Pope signified his appreciation of Manning’s efforts by appointing him Provost of the Chapter of Westminster – a position which placed him at the head of the Canons of the diocese.
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