Part 7

We talked about the Anglican movement. He spoke also of the miserable state of the University in France; that, instead of being local, it was extended every where, and so had no body, no coherence. Its professors were bandied about, from one end of France to the other, at the pleasure of the government. He said they were engaged in a great contest for the liberty of the religious orders: that was nearly won: it would certainly arrive. Protestantism showed its deadness by producing no monastic institutions: there was no sign more convincing to his mind than this. If we had a true spring of life among us, how could we have failed to put forth what is so undeniably accordant with the spirit of the cross? After we had talked some time, I said, 'I should like to put a question to you. Suppose a person of intelligence, of perfect good faith, who is ready to make any sacrifice for religion, who uses all possible means to attain to the truth; suppose such a person, firmly convinced that the English Church is a branch of the Catholic Church; though unhappily separated from the Roman Church; would you condemn him--that is, put him out of the pale of salvation?' 'Monsieur,' said he, 'there is only one thing which can excuse a person for not belonging to the Church, and that is invincible ignorance. You know in certain cases even the heathen may be saved. But such a person cannot be in invincible ignorance; for there are only three things by which a man can be prevented from seeing the truth: either the truth in itself must be of insufficient power to convince him; or there must be a defect of understanding; or a corruption of will. But the first is out of the question. The truth of itself must always be sufficient: to suppose otherwise would be to censure God. Either then there must be a defect of understanding, but in the cases of the leaders of the Anglican movement, that is out of the question, because they are men of great powers of mind, of great distinction; there remains only then the corruption of the will, which, indeed, is often so subtle, that men are unconscious of its influence. Nevertheless, in the sight of God it is the will which in such cases leads astray, and then such men are condemned, and cannot plead invincible ignorance--when indeed you come to the individual, I will not attempt to judge: it is written, "nolite judicare," for it is utterly impossible for any human being to know the inward state of another. But I only say of the class that such persons cannot plead invincible ignorance--for the truth itself, as I have said, cannot be insufficient; and their intellectual powers are such, that in these also there can be no impediment; consequently the obstacle must be in the will, however unconscious the individual may be of it. A thousand considerations of family, of fortune, of habit, and what not, surround a man, and insensibly warp him, but he is still under condemnation, for it is his own will that is corrupt. If I were to go into a public square in Paris and raise three men from the dead, would all that saw it believe?' 'Certainly not,' I said. 'Why then is that? There is some secret obstacle in their will.' We tried in vain to make him understand that a person might be conscientiously convinced, after the most patient study, that the Church of England was part of the true Church, but in vain. It was plainly an idea that he could not and would not receive.

I put the case of the Greek and Russian Churches. He exempted the poor and illiterate from censure, but in the case of the instructed he said it must be the spirit of schism which secretly turned them away from the truth. I said there were bishops and monks and multitudes of persons of a devoted and severe life on their side, who failed to see the claims of the Roman See. 'Ah,' he said, 'it has always been so; in our Saviour's time they ascribed his miracles to Beelzebub; how was it that they who saw Lazarus raised from the dead went and informed the chief priests of it?' In short, so complete a conviction of the truth of the whole Roman system possessed his mind, that he was utterly unable to conceive a person of ability and sincerity coming to any other conclusion. We only put the case hypothetically, but he would not admit it even so; he said, it is morally and metaphysically impossible.

"I said, 'I wish I could show you the interior of a mind like that of ----. Born and educated in Anglicanism, he has given great attention to religious truth, and in particular to the points in question. He has no desire but to be in the Catholic Church and to labour for it, but he believes that the Church of England is a branch of it, unhappily separated for a time by peculiar circumstances from the rest; and now in a state of appeal. In remaining where he is, he believes he is doing his duty. What do you think of such a case?' He said, 'I cannot judge of individuals,' but, &c. over again. He spoke as if he did not know much of England. I said to him, 'the question after all is one of fact: there are facts in England with which you are not acquainted.'"--_M._

He did not seem acquainted with the peculiarities of our position. He spoke with great energy and ability. I can fancy what his force in the pulpit must be.

We went to M. D'Alzon, who conducted us to Dom Guéranger; he received us with great kindness. The Pope has just erected a bishopric at Perth, in New South Wales, and one of his élèves is going out there; he suddenly resolved upon it three weeks ago, and seems quite in high spirits at the thought of it. There are now one Roman Catholic archbishopric and three bishoprics there,--Sydney, Hobartown, Adelaide, and Perth. They said Dr. Flaget, Bishop of Bardstown, had been sent out with his pontifical and a paper mitre; 'as for his cross,' said Dom Guéranger, 'he could cut that out of a tree.' We put nearly the same question to him as to the Père Lacordaire, but he was more indulgent in his answer. He said, provided such a person was strictly sincere, and used every means to discover the truth, he must be judged to belong to the soul of the Church, though he was separated from its body, and would be saved. He said our formularies for the consecration of bishops and priests were deficient, so that, granting the succession even, it would be more than doubtful whether they were true bishops and priests; but being pressed he admitted that the Roman Church had never yet been called upon to decide the point, and that in fact it was not decided, though there was a general opinion among them about it. When I told him that Coleridge had collected 50,000_l._ for St. Augustine's, and what was the object of it, he was much astonished. 'If you English were restored to the Church,' he said, 'you would evangelise the world; Spaniards and Portuguese, Italians and French, must yield to you, with the resources you command.' Talking of liturgies, he remarked spontaneously, how those of the East were full of addresses to the Blessed Virgin: half or a third of every page was devoted to her. They went before the Roman Church in that respect. When the Council of Ephesus gave her the title of 'Mother of God,' there were public rejoicings throughout the city in consequence. He did not seem to like admitting that the prayers of St. Ephrem to the Blessed Virgin were not authentic; said it was his style. (Morris tells me the style of his Syriac works is very different from that of his Greek, and the matter much deeper.) At parting he expressed a wish, that if we came to Paris again, we would come and see him. We took a look at the beautiful chapel of the Sœurs Garde-Malades, with fresh admiration of it. We had expressed a wish to M. D'Alzon to see some sackcloth and instruments of penitence; so he took us to a house of Carmelite nuns of St. Therèse, near the Luxembourg: one of them conversed behind the grille and curtain, which was quite impervious to the sight on both sides. It is part of their special duty to pray for the conversion of Protestants. These Carmelites discipline themselves every Friday. The sister showed us some of their instruments of discipline; corporal austerities, however, by all that we could learn, are not common, nor are they generally allowed by confessors, partly that the health of few will allow of them; partly, there is a danger of pride thence arising.

_Wednesday, July 16._--M. D'Alzon came and breakfasted with us, and afterwards took us to the establishment of the Frères Chrétiens, Rue du Faubourg St. Martin, 165., where the Supérieur Général, Frère Philippe, received us. There was little to see in the house, as they expected the Strasburg railway would come through them and drive them away. He said the number of brethren altogether was 4000; of pupils under them, adult and children, 198,000: they increase yearly. They were almost dispersed at the first revolution, but returned again through Cardinal Fesch, who found four of the brethren, who had taken refuge at Lyons, and brought them to Paris. Frère Philippe is very plain and homely: his picture, by Horace Vernet, has made a great sensation here.

M. D'Alzon then took me to a house of priests in the Rue de la Planche. I had a long talk with two of them. The first was a confessor to a penitentiary, in which eighty women are received at the cost of the city of Paris. His account of their penitence was touching. It is rare that any leave them without being thoroughly changed, provided they stay long enough. But the picture which he gave of the depravity general in Paris on this head was frightful. It is a wonderful spectacle, the close contact into which the most sublime self-devotion and the most abandoned sensuality are brought in this great city; on the one hand, consider the daily prayers and mortifications, and works of charity of those Carmelites, who are ever engaged in interceding for the conversion of sinners; of those nuns of the Adoration, who are ever contemplating the most wonderful of mysteries; of those Ladies of the Assumption, who dedicate the talents and accomplishments God has given them, under the vows of poverty, obedience, and chastity, to the direct furtherance of his kingdom; of those solitary and homeless priests--without father and without mother, without ties of family or worldly possessions, truly after the order of Melchisedec--who are ever offering the most holy Sacrifice, and building up the mystical body: on the other hand, think of that gulph of libertinage and selfishness, which is ever swallowing fresh victims--hearts young and unsuspicious, warm and confiding--polluting body and soul with the dregs of uncleanness, and hurrying them away too often into the presence of the Judge. No tale of misery ever told in fiction surpasses that which is daily enacting in Paris again and again. Amid such things we live, and truly we have need both to pray ourselves, and to call upon all spirits of the just made perfect to intercede for us and for our brethren. And yet it is the same flesh and blood--the same body, soul, and spirit--the same _man_, which is thus fearfully working for the devil, or thus heroically fighting for God. O mystery of the grace of God and of the human will, which is past finding out!

In the evening we visited, for a short time, the church of Notre Dame de Lorette, which is sumptuously decorated inside with paintings all over; it has a double row of pillars each side. The subjects seem chosen with great judgment, and the legends are more truly Catholic than one often sees. The expense of this church must have been enormous. We also looked into La Madeleine--very beautiful indeed it is, and as grand as the Grecian style can be, but it furnishes one with the best proof that such is not the proper style for a church.

_Thursday; July 17._--We looked into La Madeleine again, at the Messe du midi. Its sumptuousness is astonishing. If, however, it were not safer to admire than to criticise in such cases, one might observe how vast a space is lost in the walls and arrangements of the interior, the breadth which strikes the eye being only fifty feet, while the real breadth of the side walls is at least eighty. Its architecture seems the inversion of that of St. Ouen or Amiens, inasmuch as it makes the least effect out of the greatest means, while the other makes the greatest effect out of the least means; all seems aerial and heaven-pointing in the one style; while the other seems unable, with its vast bulk, to rise from the earth, and perpetually crosses the eye with its horizontal lines--faithful images both of the religions they represent.

We found l'Abbé Ratisbonne at home, and had a long talk with him. I mentioned to him the objectionable words addressed to the Blessed Virgin, which I had seen at Montmartre and in the little book; he made the usual excuse that such things are not done by authority, and also that the French language was weak, and so, in expressing heavenly affections, it might so happen that they used words which, in strictness of speech, were too strong, but the conventional use of which formed their exculpation. Thus it was common to say of a very fine picture, 'quel _adorable_ tableau,' and so the word 'infiniment;' but these applied to the Blessed Virgin in strictness of speech become objectionable. Much therefore must be allowed to the weakness and indistinctness of human language, on the one hand, and to the fervour of filial love longing to pour itself forth, on the other. 'We are children of God,' he said; 'we speak to him as children, not as wise men; we ask the indulgence given to infants.' And so again, as respects the Blessed Virgin. He said he had been converted from Judaism at twenty-three, had seen much of Protestants before that time, but their prayers and their whole style of thinking had disgusted him; he had never been at all drawn to them. He had been a priest ten years, and was now forty-two. We had much talk on the Anglo-Roman controversy. I said, we thought ourselves Catholics already, that we had been born and bred in the English Church, which was to us the portal of that great building of the Catholic Church. He approved of that metaphor, which served to give him a better notion of our position than anything else we said, though, like every other Roman Catholic, he could not admit for a moment that we were in the Church. He said, a Protestant minister, an optician, had expressed to him his belief in the efficacy of prayers for the dead, which appeared to him under this image: it was as if a number of figures were thrown into the shade, out of the sun's rays; while between them and the sun are other figures who enjoy his full light: these, like certain glasses, reflect that light upon the figures in the shade. Thus it is that the prayers of the blessed especially succour the faithful dead. He had often used this image in sermons. I pressed him with the existence of the Greek Church, on the one hand, and the acknowledged developement of Papal power, on the other; but no Roman Catholic ever hesitates to excommunicate individual or church which is not _de facto_ united to the Roman See; unity with them is indeed a first principle--a sublime and true belief in itself, though perhaps certain facts may modify the application of it. He said he had thought continually of us since our visit, and had the greatest esteem for us, that he had prayed for us daily, as he did for England; that fair England, if she could be again, as she once was, the Island of Saints--what a means for the conversion of others! At our parting, he begged our prayers for himself. I said, if I came again to Paris, I should hope to be allowed to see him again. Our conversation was so disjointed that I can remember but little of it, but it turned on the _offences_ which alienated us from them. He denied repeatedly the thought of adoring the Blessed Virgin. He had moved his lodgings to the Rue du Regard, 14., in order to overlook a house and garden opposite, in which were lodged a female community of converts from Judaism, over whom he watched. The Supérieure was with him when we came. He spoke of our silence as to the Blessed Virgin and all saints; that we made a wall of separation between them and us, whereas the whole Church was one, vividly affected with the joys and sorrows of its several members. M. tried to show that, in the present state of things, silence might conceal very deep and reverential feelings. He seemed not to think this satisfactory, and in truth it applies only partially.

We went to the Pantheon; its interior has the coldness and deadness which naturally belongs to the tombs of those who die without the Christian's hope. It looks exactly what it is,--the shrine of human ambition--a vast coffin holding a skeleton. If it were made a church hereafter, as surely it must be, it might be made to equal the Madeleine in magnificence. We mounted and enjoyed the fine view: there is a triple dome,--sufficiently bungling, I think.

We called in at Toulouse's, and while there he discovered that I was not a Roman Catholic; whereupon he began to persuade me, with the most affectionate solicitude, that I was in a self-evidently wrong position. He asked how I justified the schism. 'I don't understand,' he said, 'how you could be Catholic, Apostolic, and Roman one day, and wake the next and find yourselves Catholic, Apostolic, and not Roman.' I answered that we had indubitably the ancient succession; that the evil passions of men on the one hand, and the extravagant claims of the Papacy on the other, had caused the separation, which I deplored. But still I hoped, that, though in an anomalous state, we had what was strictly necessary to the essence of a Church. I mentioned, too, the position of the whole Eastern Church. I showed him the dangerous and extravagant language used towards the Blessed Virgin in the Psaltery of St. Bonaventure: he could not answer that, and reserved it to show to a priest; but he maintained that the work was St. Bonaventure's. I said, 'All that St. Gregory the Great, who sent St. Augustine into England, claimed for himself; all that St. Leo demanded, or that St. Athanasius and St. Basil granted to the Holy See, I am ready to give.' He finished with expressions of kind concern for us.

_Friday, July 18._--Went to M. Bonnetty, who, with M. D'Alzon, took us to the Hôtel de Cluny: it is full of curious objects of the Middle Ages. I remarked one exquisite bit of glass--a pretty chapel--the remains of the Roman baths. There was something in the air of to-day which inspired me with such lassitude that I could hardly drag myself about, so we did very little. After dinner we looked into La Madeleine and went on to Bishop Luscombe's, where we took tea.

_Saturday, July 19._--A little better to-day. At La Madeleine during part of a Low Mass; my admiration for this building increases greatly; it produces much the same effect as St. Peter's, deceiving the eye by its great proportions. We spent a couple of hours in the boundless galleries of the Louvre. The long gallery contains few pictures that I should much desire to possess: save in the last compartment, and the first room, and none certainly interest me more than that great picture of the battle of Eylau. Thence we went to M. L'Abbé Gaduel, 1. Rue Madame, who took us to the Maison de Campagne of S. Sulpice, at Issy. It is an old royal chateau, much dilapidated, for the good seminarists do not pretend to much comfort in their house; it would seem as if they intended their discipline to serve as a winnowing fan for all light and worldly spirits. They have, however, spacious gardens behind. We were shown a summer house in which Bossuet and Fénélon held a long conference on the subject in dispute between them, and agreed on statements together, which are put up in the room, though the interest of the latter is much gone by in the totally different state of things at present. Eighty young men study philosophy here. We saw and talked some little time with M. Faillon, the Supérieur, a man of learning. M. Galais was out, and we only met him returning on his way from Paris on foot. Coming home we went into the Maison des Carmes, now in repair. M. Gaduel took us into the passage out of which the priests, after stating to the authority the act of their death, were led forward down three steps into the garden, at the bottom of which the assassins fell upon them and murdered them. No spot in Paris touched me more than this. There is what appears to be the marks of a bloody hand in the passage still; but there is no other record of that ruthless deed. The church has nothing remarkable about it: but what devoted heroism on the one side, and what infernal madness on the other, have this house and garden witnessed! How many martyrs here won their crown. Truly it is holy ground, and the blood there shed is yielding a rich harvest of Christian grace in the Church which has sprung up out of its ashes with the strength of a young eagle. In the evening we went to the assemblée générale of S. Vincent de Paul, 2. Rue neuve Notre Dame, under the patronage of the Archbishop of Chalcedoine. The president gave in a long speech an account of their doings; but he was old, had lost his teeth, and dropped his voice, so that we lost very much of it.

"The beginning of his speech was about S. Vincent de Paul himself. The society had just come into possession of some relics of him, and especially a letter in his own handwriting, containing some counsels of charity. For some reason or other he was not able to produce the letter this evening; I should have liked to hear it, for his words are worth gathering up. He also said that he had been to see his birth-place; and that the house he was born in had been removed stone by stone, and a chapel put in its place. The village had lost its old name, and taken his; an old oak, known in his history, where he kept pigs for his father, was still alive, and came out in leaf before the other trees. The president cautioned them against any departure from their rules; against admitting members who were only 'braves hommes,' without being religious; against attempting to bring in secondary motives to induce the members of any 'conférence' to work; against reserving their money for their own districts, instead of putting it into the common fund of the conférence: against a slight and lazy way of visiting the poor, a 'visite de corridor,' as he called it, instead of a 'visite assise.' He said they ought to sit down and talk familiarly, and take the little dirty children by the hand, &c. &c. Finally, a good many of them being students, he gave them some advice about young students recommended to them from the country, especially to take care that they were sent straight to them, and not left first to get into bad company. He described how some friend in one of the provinces sends you a note by some youth whom he describes as a 'petit ange,' and who, after six weeks' residence in Paris, comes and brings you his note, his eye already tarnished, his manner bold and loose, 'un ange déchu.'"--_M._

There were present full two hundred, chiefly young men, in a little amphitheatre. It was commenced and ended with prayer, which claimed the intercession of S. Vincent. This is his fête day. They mentioned four branch societies established at Manchester, Liverpool, Dublin, and Edinburgh.