BOOKS.
ROADS TO ROME.* THIS book bears a clever and catching, but perhaps slightly misleading, title. It describes, in truth, not so much the roads to Rome as certain pilgrims or travellers who have recently traversed them, and are willing to say something of the reasons and experience of their journey.• It is the per- sonal confessions, or professions, of some sixty-five English men and women who have at different times during the last half-century left another communion, in the majority of cases, though by no means all, the Anglican, and given in their adhesion to the Roman obedience. These conversions would seem all to have taken place after what one of the most notable of the converts describes as "the two great waves of conversion to the Catholic Church which followed the seces- sion of Newman in 1845 and Manning in 1851 " had passed. Those secessions and these waves, even if to-day we see their extent to have been exaggerated, were certainly at the time most striking, and even alarming. " The secession of New- man," to use the memorable language of Lord Beaconsfield, writing a quarter of a century later, dealt a blow' to the Church of England from which she still reels." Nothing like them has happened since, either in quality or quantity. This volume certainly reveals nothing like them. It is not professed, indeed, that any very remarkable or im- portant conversions are here put forward, but rather that conversion to Rome is an average phenonemon appearing chronically in many places and conditions. Still, the fact remains that in the last fifty years in England the conver- sions to Rome have not been considerable. What would strike any impartial person as remarkable is not that Rome has gained so many converts in England during that period, or, indeed, any period since the Reformation, but that she has gained so few. She has so many advantages and attractions. Her size, if not relatively to other communions so over- powering as it long was, is still absolutely great. Her historic position and tradition are uniquely imposing. She still sits, crowned with the triple tiara, on the Seven Hills, in that "Eternal City " which was the capital of the world when our Lord walked the earth. Her systein is vast and various. She has, moreover, among Churches an advantage somewhat like that of the Protective over the Free-trade States. She profits both by their Free-trade and her own Protection. Anglicans do not deny, they admit, that she is a part, and a very important part of the Church Catholic, though they claim to be a part also. She takes what they concede, but does not concede what they claim. It is her. claim that she alone is the true Church ; that all others are either, like the Greeks, in schism, or worse, heretical. And so it is suggested here that she alone, is the true ultimate goal of honest prayerful search. But is that so? "All roads lead to Rome" was the old saying. It had a sense politically when Rome was the capital of the world, but it is no longer true politically, and therefore less often quoted. There are, in truth, many roads that lead to Other centres and other shrines - • 'Roads to Rome. With-an -Introduction Vaughan. • London t
Longman and Co. [7s. 6d. net.] in Christendom now, and many travellers that walk thereon. Neither in number nor in importance can the English converts to Rome be compared for one moment with the multitudes of English men and women who have left other English com- munions in the last fifty years and joined the English Church. Again, we hear nothing in this book of the roads and the pilgrims from Rome. There are vestigia nulla retrorsum. That is fair enough in a book like this, yet we must remember that many such steps have been trodden.
There is, it may be said at once, much that is very Attractive and beautiful in these pages. The honest profes- sion of a number of eager souls who have sought the light, and, as they believe, found the light, is intensely touching. Sudden conversion, intense conviction, is all of which• most of them are conscious. " Faith came to me," says one of them, a strong Evangelical to begin with (like Newman him- self), " as it came to St. Paul, by means of a sudden illumina- tion without straggle or effort on my part." One of the most distinguished and worldly wise, Lord Brampton, better known as Sir Henry Hawkins, the eminent criminal lawyer and Judge, says little more than—" I have unwavering satisfac- tion in the conclusion at which I have arrived, and my con- science tells me it is right." But just such surely would be the profession of innumerable souls in the Anglican Com- munion, among the Wesleyans, nay, in the Salvation Army.
Others give their reasons. It is natural to attempt to classify them. If we ask what repelled or expelled most of these converts who came from the Anglican ranks, it must be admitted that the strongest and commonest reason is the want of unity, and in particular the presence in the English Church of the Low Church party and view. It is not so much that the High Church attracts, though it naturally would attract those likely afterward to go to Rome, as that the Low Church repels them, and that the presence of the Low Church makes them dissatisfied with the High as only part of the same communion.. This is a very old argument. Every one will remember how Gibbon fell "surely by a noble hand." What were the weapons that noble hand wielded? The "inconsistencies of the reformers, their variations, which are the mark of historical error, while the perpetual unity of the Catholic Church is the sign and test of infallible truth." This argument of unity and infallibility is still potent, and appears again and again in these pages ; and, in- deed, he who must have external unity and an external in- fallible oracle on earth must naturally be drawn towards Rome. It is a disadvantage we must accept The English Church is not logical any more than the British Constitution. Like that, it includes very divergent, and even opposed, principles. But if a Christian can recognise no " comprehension," if, like Mr. Berdoe in these pages, he can say that if he were not a Romanist he would not be a Christian at all but a Buddhist, perhaps he must be, and it is as well he should be, a ,Romanist. Thus some give no reason for their conversion ; others give reasons peculiar to the Church of Rome. A reason that influences many is the See of Peter. Ubi Petrus ibi ecelesia. In effect, "I am of Cephas." Others are attracted by a Visible Head. Others, oddly enough, give reasons which they think peculiar to the Romish Church, but which surely are not so. It is, they allege, the only Church in and by which the poor have the Gospel preached to them. It is the only truly missionary and international Church which goes into all the world and preaches the Gospel to every creature. That the Anglican Church is a Church of the poor can hardly be denied by any who know the Anglican Church or the poor, especially where they most abound, in the East End of London. That she does not go into the whole world, that she is not international, is hardly less obviously a mis- statement.
The Roman Church is historically the Church of the Roman Empire, which has split up into many separate nations. The Anglican Church is the Church of an Empire which has suffered one great political split, but it is to be hoped it may be long before it suffers any more. She is at least quite as much the Church of the United States, if not more 'so, than the Romish Church. She is the Church in Canada and Australia and New Zealand, daughter nations, if not separated nations. She is.the Church of Ilindoo and Chinese, of kaori and Red Indian. She has her coloured Bishops; and as Dr. Lightfoot said long ago in a fine and prophetic sermon, the Archbishop of Canterbury, if not infallible, is, hi a sense not realised when the phrase was coined in the Middle Ages, Papa alterius orbis. On the other hand, the • Papacy seems becoming more Italian and less cosmopolitan than of old, and the ultimate results of this have perhaps not yet been seen. Who will predict that in fifty years' time the English Church will not be more widely spread than the Latin ? These are dangerous and shifting arguments on which to build a claim to a monopoly of truth.
Of the individual stories perhaps the most attractive is that of Sir James Britten. He began as a decided High Churchman, and was happy in his life and creed. Then he went into the country and found a very low doctrine and irreverent service which shocked him. This was about 1866. Finally, distracted by the divergence, he fell in with Canon Bernard Smith of Marlow, who had the great attraction of having been " one of the first of those Anglicans who gave up friends, position, and everything that could make life happy at the call of their Master," and by his influence was finally converted. Very different is the experience of, it must be admitted, a rather silly American Evangelical lady. It is creditable to the honesty of the compilers of the volume that they admit her frank testimony. She was first repelled by an Evangelical parson who wore " a Geneva gown and bands, and, ye gods, black silk gloves." That drove her to a High Anglican church. Then she too was distressed by the want of unity, the Gorham decision, and the Protestantism of the Thirty- nine Articles. After some other experiences, she tried a Roman priest at a convent What convinced her was that she did, as she herself says, a " very unladylike thing,"—listened at a half-open do2r while the priest talked to a poor woman. To her anishment, the woman, though poor, was treated kindly and patiently. "I said in my heart as I returned to my chair, ' Well, that man is a real Christian, and his Church is the true one.' " Her Latin, with which she concludes, is not infallible. She ought not to attempt Latin, nor, indeed, ought another con- vert, a gentleman who writes, Portae inferi non vineerit earn. The few words of Bishop Brownlow—recently, we regretted to see, taken from us—are interesting. "An institution," he says, " which could survive all the abuses of Rome must be divine." This is an argument of more weight than might appear. The truth is, the impression produced by this book is that if the Romish Church would rely more purely on her evangelical character, if that were less overlaid with policy and manage- ment, she would be far more formidably attractive. She would be so too if she were a little less scornful. One of the most attractive confessions in this book is that of Mr. H. de la Garde Grissell, well known to many generations of Oxford men, who can write :—" I felt satisfied, and still am, that many of my Protestant friends and relations were living in union with God and in a state of grace. Prayer at length obtained for me the inestimable happiness of submitting myself to the Church." We can say no more. He had his answer, others have theirs ; only such an attitude is far more likely to convince others than that of Professor Bredin, who, though he has friends in the Anglican body, is constrained to say : " There may be heresies more fundamental than Angli- canism, there is none more contemptible."
We have said enough to show what the interest, and it is a real one, of these papers is. They are fragments of that most fascinating of all reading, sincere autobiography. These sixty-five men and women are not controversialists or confessors in the technical sense. They are hardly even a body of witnesses for Rome called to prove her case, and they are certainly liable to no cross-examination. If the book has weight, it will have it by virtue of the sympathy its sincerity will arouse. It will not, we think, convince or con- vert many. But it may serve another purpose if read with charity and allowance. It may enable Englishmen to under- stand the modern English Romanist, especially the Romanist by conversion, better ; neither to fear nor to dislike, much less to despise him, but to understand and appreciate more kindly what he is and how he comes to be what he is.
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