DR. LITTLEDALE'S TWO RELIGIONS.
[TO THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."]
have received, probably from some kind friend, anxious to expose my errors and set right my opinions, a lecture entitled -" The Two Religions." It is said to have been delivered in the Town Hall, Oxford, on November 7, 1870, by Richard F. Littledale, LL.D., D.C.L, priest of the Church of England. I am unwilling nitt to acknowledge the gift of my unknown bene- -factor ; perhaps you will allow me to state in your columns what the aim of the lecture is, and what I think may be learnt from it.
The lecture is intended to contrast the two religions, one of -which is called Protestantism; the other, Catholicism. Pro- testantism is described as the religion of Individualism, built on private judgments, without a creed, without morals, without wor- ship, essentially centrifrugal and destructive. Catholicism is the =reverse of Protestantism, a divine system,—a system of solidarity, -setting forth a kingdom "which is a real entity," which has "posi- tive laws," "definite relations," these laws and relations being -called Dogma and Discipline. To deliver the young men of -Oxford from the Protestant system, to establish them in the -Catholic system, is the purpose of Dr. Littledale's lecture.
1. Attacks upon Individualism, vindication's of solidarity, are -sufficiently numerous in our day ; I should not feel especially -grateful to Dr. Littledale for adding one to the list. But he has done much more. He has exhibited in a perfection which I have never seen before, all the characteristic evils which lie has discovered, or any one else has discovered, in =the Individualism which he has attacked. If Individualism is -shown forth in glorifying a system which a particular man has =adopted, in denouncing what seems to his understanding to his taste undevout ; if it involves a disposi- tion to trample upon all the traditions in which he, and
-those whom he is addressing, have been educated ; if its -tendency is to cultivate in young men a habit of contempt for :all who surround them, as well as for the teaching of their own lathers and mothers, spiritual pastors and masters ; then Dr.
Littledale supplies the most splendid example of it which is to be -found in our age and country. Esteeming self-devotion the -highest of Catholic virtues, he has evidently resolved, whatever may be his personal sacrifice, to present in a concrete form that which no mere general rhetoric would have sufficed to expose.
2. Dr.' Littledale has done us another service, greater even than this. He has shown what must be the consequence of treating Catholicism and Protestantism as two religions between which a comparison and a selection may be made. That has =been a popular method in all our controversies. Dr. Littledale has proved by a crucial instance that it must lead not only to a -rniserable caricature of all that is dear and sacred either to Catholics -or Protestants, but to the special injury of that which he -cares to defend. Protestantism may be treated very hardly in this lecture. Catholicism has much stronger grounds of com- plaint against it. It appears as the negation of a negation. It =is a system setting forth certain relations between man and God, =certain relations between man and man. Those who have struggled feebly, but with earnest effort, to realize these relations, and -to tell other men that they exist, are called before Dr. Littledale's tribunal, are denounced as mere plagiarists from -" his system," or as rebels against it. The relations, then, -are not actual relations between a living God and his creatures. They are not established in Christ ; the relations only exist in the -system ; apart from it they are nothing. It is not to be imputed to Dr. Littledale as a fault that he forces this conclusion on his
-readers. Those who compare two religions for the purpose -of establishing one and putting down the other, must fall into it. They may conceal it from us by the warmth of their sympathy with men or the earnestness of their treat in God. Dr. Littledale, giving full scope to his self-satisfaction and his -scorn of all who dissent from him, brings the vice of the .method into full and clear manifestation. If any one is still -disposed, from any motive, to adopt it, let him study this Lecture, and he will be convinced that if he would hold the =Catholic faith,—if he would assert a Protestant's right to hold it =for himself, and not at second-hand,--he must abandon for ever
the balancing of two religions. That balancing involves the substitu- tion of one of two sets of opinions for the acknowledgment of a God who has created and redeemed mankind in his Son, for the belief that he educates them in divers ways by his Spirit, drawing them out of warring sects, out of a dead uniformity, into a real and living unity. - 3. The third advantage which I think may be gained from Dr. Littledale's lecture has reference to the weary conflict between faith and science. As he desires that his system should chime in with the modern dogmas about Individualism and Solidarity, as he hopes to make Comteism a lever for the overthrow of Protes- tantism, he is obliged to admit that the " Catholics " of a certain period were mistaken in trying to uphold Scholasticism, so far as it bore upon physics, against the preachers of experiment. But then these "Catholics," he contends, were perfectly right in maintaining Scholasticism against Experiment, so far as theology was concerned.
That opinion brings the question to a true issue. The battle is, whether Theology dwells in certain dogmatical statements, or whether it testifies of a God who is actually guiding his creatures by ways most various to a knowledge of himself. If theology means dogmas (dogmas pies discipline, since Dr. Littledale prefers to put it so), then, beyond all doubt, the experiments of men which indicate that they are seeking after God, and have a need of him, must be all treated as Dr. Littledale has treated them. His doctrine is this : that we have got all the knowledge in a System ; that priests can impart as much of it as is good for us ; that our questionings are profane, and ought to be suppressed. If the other position is true, every such experiment has an awfulness and a divinity in it; a believer in God will feel that in crushing it, whatever form it may take, he would be fighting against him ; the more he confesses that there is a Truth, to know which is everlast- ing life, the more blasphemous such an attempt must appear to him. Whenever he is betrayed into it, as he will continually be by his own arrogance and distrust, he will feel that he has com- mitted a sin which he must confess, and of which he must repent.
Dr. Littledale has helped to deepen in me the conviction of these truths, to show me what need a real Catholic Faith has of a real Protestant Individuality,—how false mere Catholicism and mere Individualism must be ; for that service I heartily thank him.—I
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