Be the issue what it may, there is in my view no room for doubt as to the attitude which has been taken by the actual head of the Roman Catholic Church in regard to them. It seems to me an attitude in the largest sense paternal... '

But if, in any such ways, the situation seemed at the time to be rich with the sense of untried possibilities,-what was it, in fact, which the supreme authority in the Roman Church did? There are, I conceive, two strains of description, by no means obviously identical, yet both alike true, which may be applied to the Papal action as a whole. The Pope, it may be said, adopted in effect no new decision: he only made articulate what the whole previous history and circumstances implied; he only formally expressed as conclusion, what was unmistakably contained, on their most natural interpretation, within the premisses. This is true. But that it should be true is the heart of the pathos. It is the very admirableness of the protagonist, it is the moral excellence of his purposes coupled with what seems the logical inexorableness of a perverse setting of preassumptions or preconditions, which is the familiar secret of living tragedy. For on the other hand, it would be no less true to pronounce of the Papal action as a whole, that, basing itself upon the lines of a warped continuity of tradition and theory, it reaffirmed every disproportion of the older conception, re-emphasized every externalizing and materializing tendency, and deliberately riveted, on the struggling intellect and conscience, every paralyzing fetter afresh. At a moment singularly rich with possibilities for the future, it made after all no new effort; it saw no glimpse of newly harmonizing or interpretative insight; it simply sank back-as it were exhausted and defeated-within the rigidities which had suited, which perhaps had sufficed for, a cruder and a rigider age. It was all most human, and most natural. It is just how tragedies happen, for lack of the transcendently creative genius-shall I say the divine inspiration -of some great master-mind. It is no case for censure-hardly even for disappointment; but it is infinitely sad. Not as a blow to 'Anglicanism'-for that, in fact, it is not-but as a blow to human effort of love and insight into Truth; as a blow, above all, to the identification with divine working of love and divine insight into truth of the organization of the Roman communion,

it is strangely sad to read this last utterance of authoritative Romanism.

First came the Encyclical, dated on St. Peter's Day. After much that is true and beautiful on the subject of the Church, it passes on to such teaching as this. 'From this text' (Matt. xvi. 18) it is clear that by the will and command of God the Church rests upon St. Peter, just as a building rests upon its foundation.' [God] invested [Peter] therefore with the needful authority, since the right to rule is absolutely required by him who has to guard human society really and effectively,' . . . 'and since all Christians must be closely united in the communion of one immutable faith, Christ the Lord, in virtue of His prayers, obtained for Peter that in the fulfilment of his office he should never fall away from the faith.' 'It was necessary that a government of this kind, since it belongs to the constitution and formation of the Church, as its principal element-that is as the principle of unity and the foundation of lasting stability-should in no wise come to an end with St. Peter, but should pass to his successors from one to another.' . . . 'For this reason Jesus Christ willed that Peter should participate in certain names, signs of great things which properly belong to himself alone, in order that identity of titles should show identity of power.' . . . For this reason the Pontiffs who succeed Peter in the Roman Episcopate receive the supreme power in the Church jure divino.' . . . ‘But if the authority of Peter and his successors is plenary and supreme, it is not to be regarded as the sole authority. For He who made Peter the foundation of the Church also chose twelve whom He called Apostles (Luke vi. 13), and just as it is necessary that the authority of Peter should be perpetuated in the Roman Pontiff, so by the fact that the Bishops succeed the Apostles they inherit their ordinary power, and thus the Episcopal order necessarily belongs to the essential constitution of the Church.' . . . 'But since the successor of Peter is one, and those of the Apostles are many, it is necessary to examine into the relations which exist between him and them according to the Divine constitution of the Church. Above all things the need of union between the Bishops and the successors of Peter is clear and undeniable.' . . . 'It is necessary, therefore, to bear this in mind, viz. that nothing was conferred on the Apostles apart from Peter, but that several things were con

ferred on Peter apart from the Apostles.' . . . 'From this it must be clearly understood that Bishops are deprived of the right and power of ruling if they deliberately secede from Peter and his successors, because by this secession they are separated from the foundation on which the whole edifice must rest. They are, therefore, outside the edifice itself, and for this very reason they are separated from the fold, whose leader is the Chief Pastor; they are exiled from the kingdom, the keys of which were given by Christ to Peter alone.' . . . 'The Episcopal Order is rightly judged to be in communion with Peter, as Christ commanded, if it be subject to and obeys Peter; otherwise it necessarily becomes a lawless and disorderly crowd. It is not sufficient for the unity of the faith that the head should merely have been charged with the office of superintendent, or should have been invested solely with a power of direction. But it is absolutely necessary that he should have received real and sovereign authority which the whole community is bound to obey.'. . . 'It is opposed to the truth, and' in evident contradiction with the Divine constitution of the Church, to hold that while each Bishop is individually bound to obey the authority of the Roman Pontiffs, taken collectively the Bishops are not so bound.' . . . 'As the Bishops, each in his own district, command with real power not only individuals, but the whole community, so the Roman Pontiffs, whose jurisdiction extends to the whole Christian commonwealth, must have all its parts, even taken collectively, subject and obedient to their authority. Christ the Lord, as we have quite sufficiently shown, made Peter and his successors His vicars, to exercise for ever in the Church the power which He exercised during His mortal life.'

Such are the statements which the Pope thought fit to reemphasize for the illumination of those who had ventured to discuss the validity of Anglican Orders; and of such nature, it must be added, are the considerations which, in the face of an intelligent Christendom, he seriously puts forward as proofs of his claim to a sovereignty unconditional and absolute. The claim, thus sharply articulated, is indeed as hopelessly irreconcilable alike with the theology of the Incarnation and even the broad truth of the history of Christendom, as it is with the picture of the Church community, the Apostolate in general, or St. Peter individually, within the pages of the New Testament. But it is no part

of my present task to analyze either the assumptions or the arguments of the Encyclical. That such teaching was really part of the Roman system was, of course, known to all the world. That individual Romanists could not venture to seem to contravene it was the main cause of the unreality of the previous stages of the controversy. But that it should, at such a moment, be reemphasized to the world, with all its unmeasured exaggeration, and in sharp dogmatic trenchancy, was for those who loved not the make-believe of the twilight but the openness of the day, with its freshness, its light, and its truth-a most melancholy symptom indeed.

There followed in the early days of September, the long promised Bull. It is not particularly kind to the French theologians. After reciting 'previous decisions,' the 'invariable practice of the Holy See,' and, as specially crucial, the degree of Clement XI in the matter of John Clement Gordon, it proceeds: 'Hence it must be clear to every one that the controversy lately revived had been already definitely settled by the Apostolic See, and that it is to the insufficient knowledge of these documents that we must perhaps attribute the fact that any Catholic writer should have considered it still an open question.'

Such a mistake, so far as infallibility can prevent it, shall never be made by a Roman writer again. 'We decree that these Letters and all things contained therein, shall not be liable at any time to be impugned or objected to by reason of any fault or any other defect whatsoever of subreption or obreption or of Our intention, but are and shall be always valid and in force, and shall be inviolably observed both juridically and otherwise by all of whatsoever degree and pre-eminence; declaring null

1 It is possible that the phrase 'these documents' in this context may be intended to refer not to the 'previous decisions,' &c., above recited, but rather to certain documents of incontestable authenticity,' to which the Bull vaguely refers as proving its contention that the decision of Clement XI about Gordon was wholly uninfluenced by the [faulty] arguments put forward by Gordon himself. This, no doubt, would soften the snub to the French divines. If there are such documents, they would be of real, though certainly not decisive, interest. But as the two Archbishops have pointed out, the Pope's reference to them is very uncertain; and they ought to be made public if the matter is to be put on a fair footing for judgement.'

and void anything which in these matters may happen to be contrariwise attempted, whether wittingly or unwittingly, by any person whatsoever, by whatsoever authority or pretext, all things to the contrary notwithstanding.' There is something magnificent, if melancholy, in the pretension of this final clause, to those who have any conception of what nature the 'all things to the contrary' will have to be.

Certainly no one can complain that the Pope has not been explicit. Ordinations carried out according to the Anglican rite have been and are absolutely null and void.' No 'Catholic' ever ought to have doubted this before. No 'Catholic' ever shall make any question about it again.

But these Letters and all things contained therein' mean not only a decision, but an argument. As a mode of showing 'the greatest consideration and charity,' the Pope has both re-examined and authoritatively restated the argumentative grounds upon which his decision rests. We know exactly now on what Romanists are to rely. The invalidating defects are entirely to be found in the Prayer Book. There is no longer a breath of doubt about Barlow's consecration, nor about Parker's either, if only the Edwardine form could have conferred consecration. The defect

is in the Prayer Book wholly.

This defect in the Prayer Book appears to be described as twofold. It is partly in 'form' and partly in 'intention'. Let

1 The section of the Bull in question stands, in full, as follows:

'In the examination of any rite for the effecting and administering of Sacrament, distinction is rightly made between the part which is ceremonial and that which is essential, usually called the matter and form. All know that the Sacraments of the New Law, as sensible and efficient signs of invisible grace, ought both to signify the grace which they effect, and effect the grace which they signify. Although the signification ought to be found in the whole essential rite that is to say, in the matter and form-it still pertains chiefly to the form; since the matter is the part which is not determined by itself, but which is determined by the form. And this appears still more clearly in the Sacrament of Orders, the matter of which, in so far as We have to consider it in this case, is the imposition of hands, which indeed by itself signifies nothing definite, and is equally used for several Orders and for Confirmation. But the words which until recently were commonly held by Anglicans to constitute the proper form of priestly Ordination-namely, "Receive the Holy Ghost"— certainly do not in the least definitely express the Sacred Order of Priesthood, or its grace and power, which is chiefly the power "of consecrating and of offering the true body and blood of the Lord" (Council of Trent, Sess. XXIII,