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ROADS TO ROME

Z. N\ K

"^^-^.vV

/

^

ROADS TO ROME

BEING

PERSONAL RECORDS OF SOME OF
THE MORE RECENT CONVERTS TO THE

CATHOLIC FAITH

WITH AN INTRODUCTION

BY

HIS EMINENCE CARDINAL VAUGHAN

ARCHBISHOP OP WESTMINSTER

COMPILED AND EDITED

BY

THE AUTHOR OF " TEN YEARS IN ANGLICAN ORDERS "

LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.

39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON
NEW YORK AND BOMBAY

1901
AU rigkU tturv€d

Jtfl

INTRODUCTION

This unpretending volume is full of interest and personal
incident. Both psychologically and religiously the accounts,
written independently by sixty-five men and women of
education, of their return to the Catholic Church, will
naturally excite attention, as they will certainly call forth
many and diverse reflections.

The fact of the existence of any religious conviction,
capable of creating in men's minds, one after another, and
quite independently of each other, a revolution involving
the greatest losses in the natural order and oftentimes the
most acute personal agony, challenges the attention of the
most languid as it does of the worldly. It is a practical
declaration that there are people who really live upon a
belief and a hope in the invisible, and who count all as
dross to win Christ

Then there are hundreds of thousands all round us, lay
and clerical, men and women, who feel that the foundations
of Protestantism have broken down under them ; who are
secretly asking themselves whether there be any solid and
divinely inspired religion ; who are half and more than

« 3

vi INTRODUCTION

half convinced of the claim of the old Church to their
submission. Many of these will eagerly peruse and ex-
amine a book full of such personal experiences, in the
expectation of obtaining useful and instructive information.

There will also be others who will make it their
business to throw discredit on everything that points to-
wards Rome. It is easy to foresee many of the criticisms
they will level against a book like this. But the answer
is : The book must not be taken to be what it is not, and
what it does not profess to be.

First, it is not a full and exhaustive consecutive narrative
or argument. It is rather a collection of indications, sug-
gestions, reminiscences, and facts. It is a miscellany of
episodes, of phases of thought, all ending in the same con-
clusion. It is a book of sketches of many minds in their
search after Divine truth.

It stands to reason that a perfect and adequate history
of the individual lives of nearly seventy persons, widely
diflfering in character and antecedents, could not be com-
passed within a small volume of 350 pages.

To take such a step as that of becoming a Catholic
may seem to be a very simple process ; and so it is, if by
this is meant merely the last step, the last act of reception
into the Church. But, before a person reaches this last
step, he has spent perhaps a lifetime, sensibly or insensibly,
alternately advancing and standing still, balancing, doubt-
ing, inquiring. His moral nature and his intellectual, his
prejudices and his instincts, his whole life and character,

INTRODUCTION vii

have been subjected, perhaps imperceptibly, to the gentle
action of a long period of growth.

He may, indeed, have been affected and driven by a
single argument, by a single line of thought, so strongly
and visibly, that in any brief record he may have to
pen, this comes uppermost and stands out alone. But
he cannot publicly take into account, he cannot portray,
all the subtle growth of his intellectual, moral, and spiritual
life. The conviction and the last step come as the formal
conclusion to much that no man can accurately and fully
describe. Hence there must always be many forces and
ailments that are absent and wanting to such narratives
as those contained in this book. And many a man will
say, after he has perused the ablest of them, ** I am not
satisfied by So-and-so's account of himself — that is, it does
not convince me." Of course it does not, for he was
unable to tell you all ; there is a long, a deep, a minute
history that is lacking, simply because space and time and
ability do not admit of the reproduction of a soul's inner
life, which is the real field upon which the grace of God
has been secretly working for years.

Lord Brampton, who is perhaps the most widely known
contributor to this book, seems to illustrate what I am
saying in the few lines he has written. So careful and
judicial a mind as his, with his long experience and facility
in summing up, dismisses the question, " Why I became a
Catholic?*' in a dozen lines. To reason out such a matter in
a manner thoroughly satisfactory to himself would require,

viii INTRODUCTION

he says, much more time and care and space than were at
his immediate command. A particular argument might be
easily stated, but the accumulative argument, made up of
a thousand converging experiences and convictions, which
carries the whole soul with it, is not to be set forth within
a few pages, even by the ablest of Judges. He, therefore,
with characteristic directness, contents himself with saying,
** 1 have unwavering satisfaction in the conclusion at
which I have arrived, and my conscience tells me it is
right."

Finally, some persons may expect to find the gift of
Faith within the covers of this volume. They will be
disappointed. They will not find it within any volume,
not even within the volume of the Gospels. Divine Faith
is a supernatural gift. It is as direct a g^ft of God as
the created human souL The latter is never created until
certain definite antecedent conditions have been laid by
man ; and the former is never bestowed until man has
fulfilled the conditions required for the reception of the
gift of Faith. These conditions are ordinarily : corre-
spondence with God's light and invitation, prayer, humility,
and self-deniaL '' If any man will come after Me, abneget
semetipsumy

The present volume is an unconscious record of the
fulfilment of such conditions.

HERBERT, CARDINAL VAUGHAN,

Archbishop of Westminster.

LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS

PACE

Angus, Rev. George, M.A i

A.,W. D 5

Bellingham, Sir Henry, Bart 7

Berdoe, Edward, Esq., M.R.C.S., etc 9

Bracey, Rev. Robert, O.P 10

Brampton, Rt. Hon. Lord 13

Bredin, Rev. James Crawford 14

Britten, James, Esq., K.S.G 17

Browne, Rev. Henry, M.A., S.J 25

Brownlow, Rt. Rev. Bishop 27

Camm, Rev. Bede, B.A., O.S.B 29

Carson, Rev. W. R 34

Catholic Lawyer 44

Chapman, Rev. John, B.A., O.S.B 51

Corrance, H. C, Esq., B.A 57

CULLEY, Rev. Matthew, J.P 62

Daniels, Rev. Augustin, B.A 65

Duffus-Harris, J., Esq 72

Fellows, Reginald B., Esq., M.A 81

X LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS

PAGB

FiLMER, Rev. John H 84

Fletcher, Rev. Philip, MJL 87

Gainsford, W. D., Esq., J.P 98

Gorman, Rev. W. T., B.A. loa

Grissell, H. db la Garde, Esq., M.A no

Hall, Rev. H. F. 114

H., Mrs. C 119

Hanson, Rev. Eric D., M.A., S.J 126

K., C. H., M.A. 144

Langrishe, Mrs. Helen 150

Leslie, Mrs. Cuthbert 151

Livius, Rev. T., M.A., C.SS.R. 153

LODER, Maria G 157

May, Herbert H., Esq., M.A 159

Moody, R. S., Esq., M.A 162

M., A. T 165

M., E 168

M., R. S. P 170

^ 175

Paget, Commander Claude, R.N 178

Patterson, Geo. Hare, Esq 183

Patterson, Rt. Rev. Bishop 192

Paul, C. Kegan, Esq., M.A 196

Poyer, Rev. Chas. 206

Rivers, Rev. C. E., M.A 208

Robinson, Rt. Rev. Mgr. W. Croke, M.A 219

LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS xf

PAGB

Ross, Robert, Esq., B^ 234

Russell, H. P^ Esq 237

Sergeant, Miss Adeline 239

Sharpe^ Rev. A. B., MJV 246

Stokes, Mrs. £. Scott 253

SuTCLiFFK, J. G., Esq., M.A 257

SUTCLIFFE, Rev. W. O., M.A. . . * 264

T., J. E 270

Vassall, Rev. O. R., CSS.R 273

Watson, Rev. Edward J., M.A. 283

Watts, C. J., Esq 296

Waugh, Rev. Norman 305

Westall, a. St. Leger, Esq., M.A. 309

Wilkinson, Rt. Rev. Bishop 316

Williams, Rev. D 318

Willis, T. F., Esq., B.A 320

WiNDLE, Bertram C. A., Esq., M.A., M.D., etc 326

Worth, H. G., Esq., M.A 329

Y., D. S 339

ZiMMERMANN, REV. BENEDICT, O.D.C 342

The Rev. GEORGE ANGUS, M.A..

St. Edmund Hall, Oxford ; formerly Lieutenant H.M. Indian
Army and Curate of Prestbury, Gloucestershire; Catholic
Church, St. Andrews, N.B.

In becoming a Catholic, I was not troubled with the diffi-
culties which I believe stood in the way of others who
are, like myself, converts. I mean such matters as — Mass
in Latin ; the veneration given to Mary and the Saints
and Servants of God ; Anglican Orders ; Indulgences ;
Popular Devotions, and some other things. All these I
put away as side-issues. I addressed myself to one point :
What, and Where, is the Church of God ?

What ? Now, the way was so far easy, as both High
Anglicans and Catholics were, and are, quite agreed that
the Church is a Visible Body. " A city set on an hill that
cannot be hid."

Three things, then, might be asserted concerning this

Visible Body.

(i) This Visible Body has a Visible Head— the Pope.

(2) This Visible Body has no Visible Head.

(3) This Visible Body has several Visible Heads — the
Bishops ; the Universal Episcopate.

Now take (2) and (3). The Visible Body has no Visible
Head. Then it is an abortion or a corpse.

I B

Ti.

2 ROADS TO ROME.

Or, This Visible Body has several heads. Then it is
hydra-headed, and is — ^a monster.

I really could not have anything to do with (2) or (3),
so had to fall back upon (i), a Visible Body with a Visible
Head. This brought me to, Where ?

Was there any society claiming to be the Visible Body
with its Visible Head ? If so — where ? The Church of
England ? No. She claims to be a Church, but not tin
Church. The Greek Church ? No, again. For if she
claims to be t/ie Church, she neglects her obvious duty of
trying to persuade all men to belong to her. In a word,
she docs not '' go and make disciples of all nations," nor
does she even attempt to preach the gospel to all men.

There remained, then, the Roman Church — using popular
language. About her position there could be no doubt
She is a Visible Body with a Visible Head. She daims
to be the One Universal Church. She tries to make dis-
ciples from all nations. She endeavours to preach the
gospel to all mankind. She knows no limits of nationality
or geography. Judgment, I think, goes by default There
is no other claimant

After this, there was no course open but to submit to
her claims, as those of the One Divine Teacher, commis-
sioned to guide men into all truth. So I submitted, and
was received.

Was it pleasant ? Not at all It was going out, like
Abraham — " not knowing where he went" It was a break-
up. It was "the parting of friends." It was b^inning
all over again. And after? Well, for the first three or
four days, there was a sense of bewilderment and confusion.
" I am really now a Roman Catholic — is it possible ? "

ROADS TO ROME. 3

This was a Sunday, nearly twenty-e^ht years ago. Then,
on the Thursday, I was confirraed by Cardinal Manning,
and, on that day, there came upon me the "sensible
sweetness" which, amid all the changes and chances of
this mortal life, has never left me, It was, realized, the
" joy and peace of believing."

Do I like everything in the Catholic religion now i By
no means. As the Church has her human element, as she
is composed of men and women, of course I do not like
eveiytliing — or, for that matter, everybody — with which,
or with whom, I come in contact But these things are
matters of taste.

In ibe Catholic rel^ion there is an amount of freedom
found nowhere else. We believe whatever the Church
teaches, simply because she is the Church, and, in all
else, she allows her children a wide liberty. I do not say
that she authorizes, or even approves, every popular devo-
tion, practice^ habi^ or custom to be found here or there.
But, as a loving mother, she tolerates what she may not
approve, and would not authorize. To tolerate is one
thing ; to approve, or authorize, is another.

Have I ever repented the step I took in becoming a
Catholic ? Never. I am in communion with the See of
Peter. I have part and lot with that See — its past, its
present, its future. I find it "as the shadow of a great
rock in a weary land." I say, with Lady Georgiana
Fullerton —

" ' Oh that thy creed were sound ! ' I cried.
Until 1 felt its power ;
And almost prayed to find it false,
In that last sotemo hour.

4 ROADS TO ROME.

Great was the straggle, fierce the strife,

But wonderful the gain ;
And not one trial, not one pang.

Was sent, or felt, in vain.''

I say with St Teresa, "Well, after all, I am a
Catholic."

Ne queer as quis lioc dixit f Sed, quid dicatur, atiende.

W. D. A.

As a schoolboy I was tutored in the tenets of the
English Establishment Subsequently I imbibed the
agnostic views prevailing in the Cambridge science schools,
where my education was continued. In the medical
schools of London I had no inclination to ponder over
metaphysics, and indeed little time for it.

Many years afterwards the following questions sug-
gested themselves to me : —

(i) Is there a revealed religion }

(2) If so, is that religion Christianity ?

To both these I found an affirmative answer. More-
over, on its own showing, Christianity involved a Catholic
and Apostolic Church, if it involved anything.

Where was this to be found ? Not in Protestantism,
which appeared to me already moribund. Was it to be
found in that section of the Anglican community which
repudiated the name "Protestant"? "We are catholic
and apostolic," they said. Whether they were or were not,
this at least was obvious, namely, that they were falsifying
history to assert their claims, and insanely aping Roman
Catholic ritual to support them.

I turned then to the Church which, at any rate, did not

5

d

ROADS TO ROMK

deny the facts of yesterday, nor attempt to bolster itself
up by adopting beliefs and practices which it had only
just ceased to condemn. To this Church, the Roman and
Catholic, I eventually submitted, conduced that it was She
who had received the original commission. In Her fold,
thank God, I have ever found shelter and rest

Sir henry BELLINGHAM, Bart.,

Of Castlx Bklungham, Co. Louth, Ireland.

The chief thing that attracted me to the Church was its
universality, as opposed to the insularity of Episcopalianism,
in which form of Christianity I was brought up. And I
felt this very strongly during my first visit to the Con-
tinent Detail had never much difficulty for me, for when
once I had grasped the notion of a Teaching Church, all
followed as a matter of course.

My first impressions of Catholicism were amongst the
poor in Ireland, where I was bom. Brought up myself in
a school of extreme Low Churchism of a deeply religious
character, but surrounded by masses of practical good-
living Catholics, I was struck by the little impression
the educated Protestant classes made on their poorer
brethren, and was very favourably impressed with the
simple devotion and faith of these latter.

As years went by, and I mixed with Catholics of position
and education, I found the same devotion and faith amongst
them that I had admired amongst the poor.

Previous to this, my education at Oxford had thrown
me more or less under the influence of the High Church
party, and I drifted thenceforward almost insensibly into

7

8

ROADS TO ROME.

the bosom of the Church, and had ceased to believe in
Protestant Episcopacy or any other form of Protestantism
some time before taking the final step.

But the personal example and simple faith of the Irish
poor were the first things that impressed me. I compared
it favourably with the class of Protestants in Ireland
amongst whom I mixed, and whose doctrines consisted
more in hatred of Rome than in any definite belief.
The language they used first irritated and then disgusted
me, and predisposed me to make inquiries. At Oxford
I was still further impressed by the conversion of many of
my acquaintances, especially of the late Fr. Clarke, S. J., then
a Protestant minister and fellow of St. John's Collie,
who lost his fellowship and sacrificed his career for his
faith. He put things before me in an altogether new way,
and I always consider that my conversion was lai^ely owing
to him.

EDWARD BERDOE, Esq., M.R.C.S., etc.,

Tynemouth House, Victokia Pake Gate, N.E.

«

I WAS bred in the Nonconformist ranks and educated
amongst men of science. Always of a religious turn of
mind, with strong leanings to mental analysis and logical
deduction, I turned to the study of Anglicanism and the
Catholic Faith out of a desire for knowledge, and espe-
cially to gratify my taste for the study of comparative
religions. At last, and after many years of anxious
thought, I found the claims of the Catholic Religion on
every ground to be irresistible. I embraced it. It satisfies
my reason and solaces my heart, stirs my emotions and
convinces my intellect

It has often been said that there is no logical stand-
point between Agnosticism and the Catholic Faith. Were
I not a Catholic, I should be a Buddhist. I cannot be an
Agnostic, because I consider Jesus Christ the greatest Fact
in human history. He was either what He claimed to be,
or the greatest of impostors. But He was more than man,
and the Catholic Church knew Him, spoke with Him, and
she speaks now with an authority no other Church claims
or dares to usurp. This compels my obedience. All else
is shifting sand.

9

The Rev. ROBERT BRACEY,

Priest of thb Okdbr of St. DoBnNic, Holt Ckoss PKIOKT9 Lbicistbx.

When I seek to give an account of the manner in which
I found my way into the Catholic Church, I have no
complicated process of thought or painful grappling with
difficult intellectual problems to record. Faith (if one may
dare so to couple the great and heroic with the very little)
came to me as it came to St Paul, by means of a sudden
illumination, without struggle or effort on my own part

As a small boy, I lived in an atmosphere of ecclesias-
ticism of a decidedly Low Church type. Those members
of my family under whose influence I chiefly fell, were
immersed in Church and parochial work. My uncle was
the Evangelically-minded vicar of the parish, my grand-
father the still more Evangelical churchwarden. Ser-
mons, conversations, books, all alike breathed a hatred
of Popery and Ritualism, and shaped and moulded my
character to such an extent that, before I was twelve, the
mere sight of a priest or a crucifix excited my contemp-
tuous horror, and 1 spent my pocket-money with the
utmost willingness in subscribing to the funds of the
''Church Association," and my time in attending its
meetings, and in the delightful perusal of the " Rock^ Of

10

ROADS TO ROME. ii

the Catholic Church I had heard and read nothing but
evil ; my conception of it was pure caricature, and I thought
all Catholics must be either dupes or rc^es. In church-
going and church affairs generally I took a thorough
delight ; and yet I doubt if I ever really believed anything,
or if my fervour in the cause of Evangelicalism and the
Established Church was anytbing more than a mere attach-
ment to a party, and the outcome of an hereditary tendency
to fall down and worship existing institutions. Certainly
from a very early age I never said any prayers, and ex-
perienced no sense of responsibility to a higher Power.
I think this was the result of a conversation I once over-
heard on the impersonal nature of God and the Devil

One unforgotten day, being then in my sixteenth year,
I went to the Oratory at Edgbaston to High Mass. I had
been once or twice before, chiefly out of a desire to see
Newman, and had not been at all impressed. And, on
this occasion, I remember well my contempt for all I saw,
and my complete ignorance of the meaning of everything.
The sermon that morning happened to be a very poor one
indeed, and the preacher floundered about sadly. And
yet it was in the midst of that very sermon that Faith
came to me. I suddenly found — how, I know not— that
I believed in this religion of which I knew so little, and
that (to my own utter dismay, for I foresaw the troubles
and difficulties such a change would involve) I was a
Catholic. I went out of that church with my brain in a
whirl, but as certain of the truth of Catholicism as I am
to-day, and quite prepared to give up everything for its
sake. That night, for the first time since I was eight
years old, I said my prayers, and on the morrow bought

12 ROADS TO ROME.

some Catholic books and began to study them with great
earnestness.

The more I read, the more satisfied I was ; very socm
I felt able to give reasons for the faith that was in me;
but the firm conviction was there before ever the readii^
began. Yet, terribly afraid lest I might be under an
hallucination, it was some time before I had the courage
and assurance to give outward expression to the alteration
in my mind ; and, when I did, there were the inevitable
arguments, letters, and entreaties to answer and to with-
stand. Among books sent to me at this time was one
which was an especial help, and took away the very last
lingering doubt — Littledale's "Plain Reasons." I com-
pared it with Father Ryder's reply, and it had upon me
an effect hardly intended by its author.

In eighteen months from that memorable Sunday, I was
received into the Catholic Church. That which I think
seemed to attract me most in her was her claim to infalli-
bility. I saw clearly the uselessness of revelation without
a key, of the Bible without an interpreter. Every page of
the Gospel bore upon it an indication of our Lord's own
provision of such a key and such an interpreter ; and the
fact that only one claimant for this absolutely necessary
position of infallible guide existed, seemed to leave me
no power of choice save that between Catholicism and an
unreasoning scepticism.

The Right Hon. LORD BRAMPTON
(Sir Henry Hawkins),

Formerly Judge of the Queen's Bench.

5, Tilnqr Street, Park Lane, May g, 1901.

My dear Sir,

It is not very easy to write a definite reply to
the question — Why I became a Catholic? I will not
therefore make the attempt. To reason the matter out
would require much more time than I have at my com-
mand, and I would not undertake the task unless I felt
that I could accomplish it thoroughly and with satisfaction
to myself. To undertake a work and fail to perform it
would distress me. Those, therefore, who look for my
reasons for taking the important step I took so late in
life, cannot have their expectations satisfied by me. It
must suffice them to know that it was the result of my
deliberate conviction that the truth — which was all I
sought — lay within the Catholic Church. I thought the
matter out for myself, anxiously and seriously, uninfluenced
by any human being, and I have unwavering satisfaction
in the conclusion at which I arrived, and my conscience
tells me it is right.

Believe me, truly yours,

(Signed) Brampton.

13

The Rev. JAMES CRAWFORD BREDIN,

Priest of the Birmingham Diocesb, and Profsssor of Scixnci at

St. Mary's College, Oscott.

My reasons for leaving the Church of England were not,
I think, theological. I knew little or no theology till many
years after I had become a Catholic. The unscrupulous
mendacity of the average Anglican controversialist, or
" Church Defence " lecturer ; the crawling subserviency of
the Anglican clergy to the State — ^speaking of them, of
course, as a class, and allowing for exceptions; the utter
impossibility of pinning the Anglican body down to any
definite statement ; — these were the reasons that forced me
to seek rest elsewhere.

I know these are hard words, but I must be honest if
this statement is to be of any use. Dr. Littledale's
"Plain Reasons'' is a book gangrened with falsehood.
These falsehoods have been exposed over and over
again by Catholic writers, and yet the book is sown
broadcast by clergymen. I had a copy given me fifteen
years ago after Dr. Ryder's "Answer" had been
published. I have heard clergymen since say they
considered it a most useful book. I think I have always
thought such conduct entirely without excuse.

The "Church Defence" lecturer was beginning his

14

ROADS TO ROME. 15

career in my day. I need not insist on the reckless un-
veracity of his statements. Yet educated clei^men, who
have read their history, employ him and never think of
correcting or of modifying what he says.

A third feature of controversial literature which struck
me was the occasional wanton attacks on the Catholic
body. Without any provocation, without any reason
that one could discover, a pamphlet on " Roman Misquo-
tations" or '' Italian Inaccuracies" would appear — fully
as untrustworthy as Dr. Littledale.

As to the second point the conduct of the Anglican
High Church body in regard to the Jerusalem bishopric
in 1888 may serve as an example. "The State," say they,
** is going to commit an act of schism " — *' We hope we are
misinformed." By-and-by the intentions of the Govern-
ment are unmistakable. " We won't endure it ; we shall
all be involved in the guilt of schism if we stay ; " and some
are heard to threaten that they will "go over to Rome."
The Government calmly proceeds on its way, and the blow
falls. The Anglican bishop is appointed in Jerusalem,
and then every one discovers that things are not so bad
after all, and the "Church" is more beautiful and more
Catholic than ever after her last trial. One is inclined to
ask : will the worm never turn ?

It would be superfluous to insist here on the third
point The Gorham decision — to which the Church of
England is bound — will serve as an example.

The late Dr. Rivington, I believe, defined a Ritualist
as a person without a sense of humour. Their obvious
imitation of Catholic practices, even down to having colour-
able imitations of our religious Orders and Congregations,

i6

ROADS TO ROME.

as FJ. (Fraternity of Jesus) for S.J., O.H.R. for C.S.S.R ;
their perpetual insistence on the titles of "Father,"
"Priest," and the like, did much to dii^st me with them,
long before I had any clear idea of the nature of the
Catholic priesthood I knew they were imitation priests,
though I did not know what the reality was like.

I have many dear friends still in the Ai^lican body-
one or two clei^men. How they stay there, I cannot
think ; but I hope that one day their eyes may be opened
and they may see the true character of the body to which
they belong. There may be heresies more fundamental
than Anglicanism ; there are few so contemptible.

JAMES BRITTEN, Esq., K.S.G.,

Of the Natural History Museum, South Kensington.

From my earliest days, I was brought up at St.
Barnabas', Pimlico — one of the churches most intimately
associated with the growth of High Church views in
London.

My memory dates, I suppose, from somewhere about
1856. The two great waves of conversion to the Catholic
Church which followed the secession of Newman in 1845,
and Manning in 1851, had passed ; and in spite of
occasional Protestant outbursts, the efforts of Protestant
lecturers, and the adverse judgments of Privy Councils
and other bodies, the High Church movement was
steadily and everywhere gaining ground.

Here I was taught that our Lord founded a Church,
which He had built upon the foundation of his Apostles,
He Himself being the chief comer-stone ; that He had
conferred on His Apostles certain powers by which they
were enabled to carry on His work ; that the Apostles
had the power of forgiving sin, of consecrating the
Eucharist, and of transmitting to their successors the
supernatural power which they had themselves received ;

17 C

i8 ROADS TO ROME.

that the Apostles and those whom they consecrated were
the rulers of the Christian Church ; that this Church had
ix>wer to define what was to be believed, and that it
could not err, because of the promise of Christ that He
would be with it, even to the end of the world ; that the
Church, moreover, was divinely guided in a very special
manner by the Holy Ghost, and that its definitions to
the end of time were inspired by the Holy Ghost, of
whom Christ had said, " When He, the Spirit of Truth, is
come, He shall lead you into all truth ; " that the Church
and not the Bible was God's appointed teacher ; that the
traditions of the Church were of equal authority with the
Bible ; and that the Church was its only authorized
interpreter.

I was further taught that the grace of God was con-
veyed to the soul principally by means of the Sacraments,
and that by Baptism the stain of original sin was removed.
With regard to the Real Presence of our Lord in the
Holy Communion, I can best explain the teaching I
received by saying that, when I became a Catholic, I was
never conscious of any change of belief. The books
which I used as an Anglican I could use equally well as
a Catholic ; they were compiled almost exclusively from
Catholic sources, and, before I had ever entered a Catholic
church or read a Catholic book, I was familiar with the
wonderful Eucharistic hymns of St. Thomas, and the
other doctrinal hymns, modem as well as ancient, of
the Catholic Church.

With regard to the Church, I was taught that there
were three branches — ^the Anglican, the Greek, and the
Roman — and that of these three the Catholic Church was

ROADS TO ROME. 19

made up: that in this country the Church of England
represented the Catholic Church, and that the Roman
branch had no business here — ^yet, I am thankful to say,
that I cannot remember ever having heard at St
Barnabas' a single sermon against Roman Catholics, or
an uncharitable word regarding them.

I remember one sermon on the honour due to the
Blessed Vii^in, in which the Roman devotion to her was
spoken of as excessive ; and another on St. Peter, in
which his primacy, as distinct from his supremacy, was
acknowledged: but, until I was seventeen, I never heard
the Protestant side of the Church of England advanced
from the pulpit, although then, as now, the itinerant
Protestant lecturer presented to those who were credulous
enough to accept his statements, a caricature of the
Catholic Church.

I never attended a Roman Catholic service, and had
only once entered a Catholic church. This was the old
Oratory, into which I went one winter afternoon on my
way to the South Kensington Museum. One of the few
things I knew about what I considered the Roman branch
of the Church was that the Blessed Sacrament was re-
served on its altars, and I remember kneeling in the
dark, flat-roofed Oratory, with its lamp burning before
the altar, in adoration of the Presence which I felt to be
there.

This was my position until, at about the age of
eighteen, I went down to High Wycombe to study
medicine. I shall never forget my first Sunday there.
There was a magnificent old parish church, with deep
chancel and broad aisles, choked up with pews of the

20 ROADS TO ROME.

most obstructive design. A small table with a shabby
red cloth stood away under the picture which concealed
the east window ; a choir of a handful of men and boys,
unsurpliced and untidy, sang the slender allowance of
music ; a parish clerk responded for the congregation ;—
these were the objects that met my eyes and ears that
first Sunday of my exile. But that was not alL We had
a sermon, delivered by a preacher in a black gown on
behalf of the Sunday schoob. That sermon I shall
always remember. In the course of it, the preacher
enumerated the things they did not teach the children in
the schools: they did not teach them they were bom
again in baptism, they did not teach that the clergy were
descended from the Apostles, they did not teach that they
had power to forgive sins, they did not teach a real
presence in the Communion — ** Real presence/** I heard a
parson say in that church ; " / believe in a real absence ! "
— they did not teach the doctrine of good works. I began
to wonder what was left to be taught, until the preacher
explained that predestination and salvation by faith alone
were inculcated upon the children. On the next Sunday
the Holy Communion was administered — haw^ I can
hardly describe, except by saying that it was manifest
that no belief in its supernatural aspect was maintained
I can see now the parish clerk, at the end of the service,
walking up the chancel, and the minister coming towards
him with the paten in one hand and the chalice in the
other, waiting while he, standing, ate and drank the
contents of each.

My first feeling was that these clergy had no right or
place in the Church of England. There was a moderately

ROADS TO ROME. 21

"high" church five miles off, and whenever I could, I
found my way there. But it became unpleasantly plain
that the Church of England, which I had regarded as an
infallible guide, spoke with two voices : — I began to
realize that even on vital matters two diametrically
opposed opinions not only could be, but were, held and
preached. I knew my Book of Common Prayer, and its
rubrics, as well as I knew my Bible ; but to one part of it
my attention had never been called, as it now was Sunday
by Sunday. I had known without realizing all that it
implied, that the Queen was, in some way, the Head of
the Church — or rather, of two Churches, one in England
and one in Scotland ; but I now found that she declared
herself to be "Supreme Governor of the Church of
England, and, by God's ordinance, Defender of the
Faith : " that General Councils, which I had been taught
to believe infallible, could not be held "without the com-
mandment and will of princes," and not only might err,
but had erred, in things pertaining to God ; that Con-
firmation, Penance, and the like, were not Sacraments
of the Gospel ; that the benefits of Baptism were confined
to " they that receive it rightly ; " that the reception of the
body of Christ in the Holy Communion is dependent on
the faith of the recipient; and that "the sacrifices of
Masses . . . were blasphemous fables and dangerous
deceits." This last was indeed a trial to me. It is
true that twenty-five years ago the word "Mass" was
not in common use among Anglicans as it is now, and
I do not think an Anglican clergyman would have been
found to say in public, as one said the other day, that "he
would not stay a minute in a Church where the Mass was

22 ROADS TO ROME.

not, for if they had not got the Mass, they had no warship
whatever/' But we knew that the term was retained in
the first reformed Prayer-book, and that it was the name
employed throughout the Western Church for the Eo-
charistic service.

Here, then, was my difficulty ; and the more I faced it,
the more I found that the ground which I had thought
so sure was slipping away from under me. Not, thank
God, that I ever doubted any of the truths which had
been implanted in me: but I b^an to see, more and
more clearly, that the authority on which I had thought
them to rest was altogether lacking. I found that what
I had received as the teaching of a Church was only
the teaching of a certain section of its clergy ; and that
other clergy, with exactly as much authority, taught
exactly opposite opinions: they were not priests, they
said ; they claimed to offer no sacrifice ; no office of for-
giving sin was theirs ; they possessed no supernatural
powers.

This was bad enough, but there was worse behind.
The other branches of the Church — ^what did they say on
these momentous points? Alas! there was no room for
doubt here. Neither the Eastern nor Western " branches,"
each of them far larger than the Anglican, would admit
for a moment the claims of the Anglican clergy to be
priests ; and a large section of themselves equally denied
it. The bishops in some cases expressly told the candi-
dates for ordination that they were not made priests;
and if there were no priests, how could the sacraments,
depending on them, be celebrated ? It was no special
ill-will to Anglicans that Rome showed by refusing to

ROADS TO ROME. 23

recognize their Orders; for she never denied those of
the ^Greeks, although these were equally separated from
her unity. The Branch Theory broke down — it would
not work.

Then I read other books — many of them by Newman,
for whom Anglicans in those days cherished a warm
affection and respect, in spite of his secession. And more
and more the conviction was forced upon me that the
beliefs in which I had been brought up I had received on
the authority of certain individual members of a body
which not only tolerated, but taught with equal authority,
the exact opposite of these beliefs — that the Anglican
communion, even as represented by those who claimed
for it Catholicity, was a mere Protestant sect— differing
only from more recent denominations in that it retained
certain shreds and patches of the old faith. It was, in
short, a compromise — a via media between Rome and
Dissent — and it was as unsatisfactory as compromises
usually are.

Meanwhile, there came upon me more and more plainly
the claims of a Church which taught with authority and
uniformity all that I believed ; which claimed to be the
One Body having a right to teach ; and which, without
equivocation or hesitation, pointed out to its members
one only means of salvation. By one of those occurrences
which we call accidents I became acquainted with Canon
Bernard Smith, of Marlow — one of the first of those
Anglicans who gave up friends and position and everything
that could make life happy at the call of their Master.
From him I learnt what was hitherto lacking to my
knowledgip of the Church ; I realized, as I had never done

24

ROADS TO ROME.

before, that the first mark of God's Church was Unity-
mark which no one can pretend to find in the Church of
England ; and, after a period of anxiety such as none can
know who have not experienced it, I was received into
that Unity, on May 26, 1867,

The Rev. HENRY BROWNE, M.A.,

New College, Oxford; Priest of the Society of Jesus ; Univbesity

College, Dublin.

Before having to face the question of the claims of the
Roman Church, I had previously, as an Anglican, made
up my mind on another momentous controversy : the
question of the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist.
As my process of thought was identical in the two cases,
and, in fact, the latter decision depended on the former,
I will here briefly explain both and their connection.

As to the Eucharistic question, having read a good
deal about it, having discussed it with others, and having
pondered and prayed over it with much earnestness, I felt
bewildered by the arguments, metaphysical, scriptural,
and historical, which were used on both sides of the
controversy. What finally led me to a conclusion, to an
acquiescence in the doctrine of the Real Presence (the
question of Transubstantiation I did not enter into), was
the following train of thought. I do not know how it came
first into my mind, but I felt with more and more certainty
that if Christ was God, and therefore foresaw the course
of events. He must have known that, as a matter of fact,
the enormous bulk of His followers would take (as, indeed,
they have taken) His words in the most literal sense — in

25

26 ROADS TO ROME.

a sense which, if false, has led and leads them into prac-
tices which are really, though unconsciously, idolatrous.
Now, I convinced myself, gradually but more and more
clearly, that Christ, foreseeing this effect following from
His words, and foreseeing, on the one hand, that the
effect would be most widespread, and, on the other, that
it came from a too simple and too literal interpretation of
His own words, would have been bound, as the God of
Truth, to take some effective means towards guarding His
followers against such a pernicious and (at least to take
a thousand years) universal error. Now, so far from this,
He had used expressions which, even though we leave
their hidden meaning an open question, yet certainly give
a very good primA facie ground for the belief in question.
Consequently, I felt with more and more certainty that
the belief in the Real Presence is bound up with and
included in belief in the Divinity of Christ I held then,
long before I had any doubt as to Anglicanism in general,
to the belief that the process of reasoning I have indicated
is perfectly unanswerable and perfectly sound, and I hold
to it still.

At a later date, when I came to consider the validity
of the Roman claims, I saw that the position which I had
previously accepted as to the Real Presence could be, and
ought to be, applied to the question of the Papal Supre-
macy as of Divine origin. For it rests on words of Christ
which, however they may be discussed and tortured by
controversialists, are in reality as direct and simple, as
naturally understood in the Roman sense, as are the words
of institution of the Eucharist : " Thou art Peter ... to
thee I give the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven."

The Rt. Rev. W. R. BROWN LOW, D.D., M.A.,

Trinity Collboe, Cambridge.
LORD BISHOP OF CLIFTON.

St. Edmund's College, Old Hall, Ware, March 6, 1900.

My dear Sir,

Your letter reached me here, where I am staying

until Thursday.

If you are in the library of the British Museum, and
care to look at a little pamphlet I published in 1864,
** How and Why I became a Catholic," you are at liberty
to make any use of it that you like. I have no copies of
it lejft, or I would send you one. There were so many
different matters which all pointed me in the direction of
Rome that I could not put them into a short paragraph.
It was history that more than anything else brought me
into the Church. And among Christian writers, St. Irenaeus
and SL Vincent of Lerins influenced me more than any
others. Then the history of the English Reformation —
the violent break of continuity under Elizabeth, etc., etc. ;
the utter inability of the Anglican Bishops to defend any
Catholic Doctrine : Baptism, the Holy Eucharist, Absolu-
tion, Inspiration of Scripture, and the Eternity of Heaven
and Hell ; — all this traceable to the surrender to the Crown

27

28

ROADS TO ROME.

of the Keys of the Kingdom of Heaven, and contrasted
with the attitude and action of the Pope in every page
of the history of the past eighteen hundred years. Evils,
scandals, abuse of power, and all these sort of things,
did not affect me in the least, but rather showed that
the institution that could survive all these abuses must be
Divine.

Yours sincerely,
(Signed) W. R. Brownlow,

Bishop of Clifton.

The Rev. BEDE CAMM, B.A.,

(3ND Class Thbol., 1S87), Ksblb College, Oxford; formerly
Curate of St. Agnes', Kennington Park, London, S.E. ; Priest
OF THE Order of St. Benedict ; St. Thomas' Abbey, Erdington,
Birmingham.

It is very difficult indeed to set down concisely in black
and white the reasons which led one to submit to the
Catholic Church. Or I would rather say it is impossible.
The introit for the Mass for the Third Sunday after Pente-
cost, the day when at last I found the light so long sought
for, seemed to me then, as now, to express the whole truth.
^^ Foetus est Dominus protector nteus et eduxit nie in latitu-
dinem, salvum me fecit quoniam voluit me^ The Lord
had become my Saviour; it was all His doing, none of
mine. He had led me out of the confined prison of heresy
in latitudinem "into a broad place," even into the liberty
of the sons of God. He had set my weary feet upon the
Rock, and ordered my goings. And the reason ? Ah !
that was His secret " Salvum mefecit^ quoniam voluit nu^
He saved me because He wanted me. Why He should
want one so useless, one so worthless, — that was His secret ;
a mystery of His predestinating love, which I can only
wonder at and adore.

I had been long tossed about with doubt, weary of con-
troversy, sick of strife. Over and over again I had flung

29

30 ROADS TO ROME.

aside the whole subject, disgusted and wearied All I
read seemed only to confuse me more.

I had been brought up to love the Church of England,
to believe in her with all my heart The figment of her
"continuity" had been so ingrained into my very being,
that it seemed as if I could as soon doubt my own identity.
For years I had not a doubt All my Oxford time was
cloudless. When, however, I went to Cuddesdon, doubts
began to spring up thick and fast They were partly
suggested by companions, partly by my environment,
principally, I think, by the official lectures on the Thirty-
nine Articles and on Church History. I conscientiously
tried to fight these doubts as temptations. Yet, once
aroused, they could never be stilled, or at least for more
than a short time. When I was ordained deacon and
began work in a London parish, these doubts grew stronger
till they held me by the throat The whole system was
such a miserable fiasco. Here was a Church that had had,
for three hundred years and more, full power, enormous in-
fluence, over the whole land. She claimed to be Catholic,
a branch of the Church of Grod. Yet the people knew
nothing of this, nothing of the faith — ^were practically
pagans, in fact. They had lost all idea of sin (the Church
had practically abolished the Sacrament of Penance) ; they
did not know how to make an act of contrition ; the com-
monest Catholic duties, such as the obligation to hear
Mass on Sundays, to receive Holy Communion at Easter,
were utterly unknown. Next door to us was a Church of
the extreme Protestant type, where all we held most sacred
was denounced unsparingly every Sunday. There was no
unity of belief anywhere, because there was no unity of

ROADS TO ROME. 31

teaching. Even among my colleagues, who were of the
extreme High Church party, there was no agreement on
such vital points as Schism, Transubstantiation, the neces-
sity of the Sacrament of Penance for those in mortal sin,
even Eternal Punishment I felt more and more that the
Church of England was a failure, and, considering her
claims, a ghastly failure. But were not these claims a
delusion ? Were they not, indeed, of recent date ? I saw
that the Bishops were, to a man, heretical on one or other
point of the Catholic Faith ; that heresy among the clergy
was not only tolerated but approved; that the people had
lost all sensitiveness as to it, all horror for it. I felt more
and more that the arguments which were uiged against the
Roman Church, and in defence of our abnormal position,
were such as all heretics had urged from the beginning.
I thought, '' If I could see it from the outside, should I not
see clearly then that all these pleas were mere specious
delusions ? " I went about with a sorrow at my heart that
was real physical pain. For I could not be sure, and I
was afraid, so afraid, to take an irrevocable step in the
dark — a step which might be, and which I was told would
be, an act of apostasy, of wilful schism. And then I read
three books which helped me more than any others —
Newman's "Development," Manning's "Temporal Mission
of the Holy Ghost," and Faber's " Life and Letters." I
also read AUnatt's "Cathedra Petri," and the catena of
Fathers there quoted made an immense impression on my
mind. I began to see that communion with the See of
Peter was of old the essential test of orthodoxy, the signum
stantis vel cadentis ecclesice ; and if so, why should it not
be so still? St Augustine's words haunted me: ''Extra

32 ROADS TO ROME.

Ecclesiam Catholkam totum potest prater salutem. Potest
habere honorem, potest habere sacramentum, potest cantare
Alleluia, potest respondere Amen, potest Evangelium
tenere, potest in nomine Fetris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti
fidem et habere et pra&dicare, sed nusquam nisi in Ecclesia
Catholica salutem poterit invenire " (Serm. ad Caes. Excles.
plebem, No. 6). And when I turned to Rome, and saw
her so firm, so invincible, so serene, so unfaltering in her
teaching, so uncompromising with heretics, so sure of her
own rights, so immovable throughout the ages, I fancied
that to her, and to her alone, could apply those other words
of the Saint : " Ipsa est Ecclesia sancta, Ecclesia una, Ecclesia
Catholica, contra omnes haereses pugnans ; pugnare potest,
expugnari tamen non potest. Haereses omnes de ilia
exierunt, tanquam sarmenta inutilia de vite praecisa : ipsa
autem manet in radice sua, in vite sua, in caritate sua.
Portae inferi non vincerit earn " (De Symbolo Sermo ad
Catech.). But still I was tormented with fears and anxieties,
still I did not see clearly. At last I went abroad for a
holiday, and there, kneeling one day in a monastic church,
I heard the brethren chant those words of the Credo : " Et
unam sanctam Catholkam et Apostolicam Ecclesiam^ And
as they sang them the clouds rolled away from off my
soul, andthe light of faith shone on it once for all. I saw
then, in a way which I cannot describe, but, like the blind
man of old, " One thing I know^ titat wliereas I wets blind,
now I see^^ I saw that all this time I had not been be-
lieving in One Church. I saw what the unity of the
Church really was, and seeing, I rejoiced and thanked God.
A conversion, then, is, and must always be, the work
of God. No amount of reading, no amount of controversy.

ROADS TO ROME.

33

will ever bring to a soul the Divine light of faith. It is
dark till God illuminate it Nevertheless, to the soul who
humbly seeks it and earnestly prays for it, surely He will
never deny this grace.

*' O gift of gifts, the gift of faith !
My God, how can it be,
That Thou Who art discerning Love
Should'st give this gift to me ? "

For that gift I thank Him, and shall thank Him for
all time and eternity.

Misericordias Domini in (Bternum caniabo.

The Rev. W. R. CARSON,

Of Trinity College, Dublin.

Cardinal Newman was, under God, the chief factor in
my conversion. Not that I was acquainted with any
Catholic, clerical or lay : until the day of my reception I
had scarcely even spoken to one. I became of my own
accord painfully alive — how could it be otherwise ? — to the
babel of discord that the Church of England had substi-
tuted for the sweet harmony of the city of peace — the
Jerusalem whose Maker was God. Everywhere I was
confronted with a different doctrine, a different interpreta-
tion. No two authorized representatives of the religious
body in which I found myself agreed together — except to
differ.^ I could not disguise from myself that the very note
of comprehensiveness, which is the life and soul of Angli-
canism — although it had its attractions for the natural man
— differed totocceloy not merely from the characteristics of

* My frame of mind was very similar to that of a " learned Tractarian
writer," quoted by Dr. F. G. Lee in his recent instructive brochure^ "The
Ecclesiastical Situation in 1899,*' as writing to him : "I do not at all want to
know the faith or opinions of any bishop — Ryle or King, Carpenter or
Creighton ; but I am anxious to learn what doctrines our Church teaches,
and what it forbids " (p. 14, note). He continues : "I have been referred to
a book, but the book never speaks ; and to a vellum document, but the
document owns neither mind nor mouth" (ibid.).

34

ROADS TO ROME. 35

the two largest portions of Christendom to-day— the Eastern
and the Western ; not merely from the uncompromising
hatred of indefiniteness in belief, and communion in sacris
with heretics, that sent Athanasius into exile ^ and made
the Apostle of Love refuse to hold even social intercourse
with a disciple who had denied an article of faith ; but plainly
and unmistakably from the salient features delineated
in Holy Scripture of a " Church " which, if a man neglect
to "hear," he is placed inexorably with the "heathen
and the publican " ' outside the Palace and the Feast

All this I felt keenly, — ^the diversity of doctrine ; the
inability of any one — ^be he bishop, priest, or layman — ^to
tell me what was the teaching of the Church of England,
and, more important still, the teaching of "the whole
Catholic Church of Christ ; " the universally condoned
fellowship with unbelievers, condemned as it was by the
Apostle; the lack, except in favoured quarters^ where
the atmosphere was exotic and Catholic, of supernatural
religion, as distinct from mere sentimental pietism ; above
all, the practical denial of three of the latter articles of
the Creed—" the Holy Ghost, the Holy Catholic Church,
the Communion of Saints."

* C£ Newman, "Essay on Development:" "Can any one who has but
heard his name . . . donbt for one instant how ... the people of England,
' we, oar princes, our priests, and our prophets ' . . . would deal with Athana-
sius, — Athanasius who spent his long years in fighting against sovereigns
for a theological term? " (ed. 1878, p. 98).

Cf. St. Irenteus' account to the heretic Florinus of St. PoIycarp*s hatred of
heresy (Euseb., H. £., iv. 14).

• St. Matt, xviii. 17.

' I should be the last to deny the devoted work done in such parishes as
St. Peter's, London Docks, by devoted and apostolic men like the Rev. L. S.
Wainwright, or the reality of the religious life practised at Cowley and
elsewhere.

36 ROADS TO ROME.

But I also saw as clearly that antagonism to one
religious system was no valid reason for embracing another.
Why could I not be content to stay where I was ? A
leap in the dark is always dangerous ; it may land one in
worse places than one has quitted. He who takes it '* may
chance to alight upon his feet, ... or, on the contrary,
be dashed to pieces " (Balzac).

The Church of England was in possession ; I was her
son, bound to her by many ties ; my grandfather was one
of her bishops, my father died her faithful presbyter ; and
I belonged to her communion through no act of my own.
Unless I could be convinced that her rival's claims on my
allegiance were absolutely and imperatively sound, I did
not see that I was justified in leaving her. But my mind
was still perplexed and uneasy. I became a prey to
doubts on point after point of the Christian Creed. I had
no sheet-anchor for my faith. If the individual judgment
was at liberty to decide for itself as to what was or was
not an essential matter of belief — ^to reject Transubstantia-
tion and to hold fast the doctrine of the Trinity — I could
not see how any one could be sure that he personally had
not made a mistake in choosing the dross for the gold.

I made a careful study of Newman's works ; and at
last one day there came to me, with all the clearness and
peremptoriness of a distinct call, that passage in one of
his Catholic sermons (which seems to me still to give the
key to his change of faith, and the position from which,
in spite of misunderstanding, trouble, and manifold trial,
he never afterwards swerved by a hair's breadth) where
he shows there can be no lexical alternative between a
Divine Teacher and the uncertain guidance of one's own

ROADS TO ROME. 37

fickle judgment and changeable mind — ^between Agnosti-
cism, on the one hand, with all its painful indecision, and
the safe haven of Catholicism, on the other. "The
question," he says, "lies between the Church and no
Divine Messenger at all. There is no Divine revelation
given us, unless she is the organ of it, for where else is
there a prophet to be found ? " ^

These words rang in my ears like the " ToUe : lege "
that allured the great introspective doctor of the West
from the sensual charms of Manichaenism to the pure
doctrine of Ambrose; or like the "securus judicat orbis
terrarum " that led the latter-day Augustine home. The
whole question at issue seemed to me to be summed up
in this short phrase. What had puzzled me for so long —
the impossibility of being certain that the overwhelming
claims of Rome were true — received a satisfactory and a
final solution.

Either Grod had revealed Himself to us in a way so
plain that he who runs may read ; or His revelation was
useless — nay, no revelation at all, for each man would
take his own different subjective meaning out of it. A
message implies a messenger ; a revelation, an interpreter
and a guide. Unless God intended men to make havoc
of His Truth — to rend it piecemeal, to mistake the tares
for the wheat — He must have instituted on earth a means
by which they could know infallibly and surely, without
danger of mistake, what He actually taught, and what
they must believe if they would inherit eternal life. A
Revelation, a manifestation of the Divine Will, implies an
exponent of it — possessed with like authority, capable of

* ** Discourses," p. 278.

3<S ROADS TO ROME.

teaching it to the individual, independently altogether of
his natural predilection or judgment That need for a
Divine Teacher, telling me in the name of God His
authentic doctrine, I saw to be satisfied by the Catholic
and Roman Church, and by her alone.^ She claims to
be the one Oracle of Truth, the sole Depository and
Unfolder of the Christian revelation as a wftole. He
who rejects one part of her message because it is unpala-
table to him personally, has no logical reason for not
rejecting the rest. If he once ignores her authority, he
has none other to substitute for it but his own. Ultimately,
the issue lies between a Teacher sent from Grod, and the
clouded guidance of the natural unaided reason. " Reve-
lation is not discovery, or rather revelation is the discovery
of Himself by God to man, not by man for himself. It
is not the activity of the human reason which discovers
the truths of revelation. It is God*s discovery or with-
drawing the veil from His own intelligence, and casting
the light of it upon us." * " There can be no intermediate
between the Divine Mind declaring itself through an organ
of its own creation, or the human mind judging for itself
upon the . . contents of revelation. There is or there is
not a perpetual Divine Teacher in the midst of us. The

* Cf. Fr. G. Tyrrel, S.J. : " [Rome^s] exdusiveness and dogmatism is at
once conspicuous and altogether distinctive. It is to us the mark or character-
istic of Christ, to others of anti-Christ. But all alike allow that it is notorious
and peculiar to Rome alone. Other bodies claim to have the true interpretation
of Christianity ; . . . but there is some modesty in their claim ; they do not
pretend to be infallibly right ; they are open to conviction ; they allow outsiders
a right to their opinion. But Rome alone claims living infallibility, to be
not only true, but certainly true, and alone true" (Hard Sayings^ ed. i,

p. 443).

' Manning, <* Temporal Mission of the Holy Ghost," p. 91.

ROADS TO ROME. 39

human reason must be either the disciple or the critic
of revelation." ^

When I came to examine attentively the method
chosen by Christ to propagate His doctrine, I found the
fact of the institution of a definite teaching office in the
Church as plainly taught in the Scriptures as the fact of
a Divine Revelation itself. Christ spoke with authority
the message of the Kingdom, and He commissioned His
Apostles in no different way to go out among men to
teach them the authentic doctrines which He taught " As
the Father hath sent Me, I also send you." The claim,
the authority, the commission, are the same. ''Go ye,"
He says to His Apostles on the eve of His Ascension,
^ into the whole world, and preach the gospel to every
creature." *

He appointed, therefore, a messenger-^the Holy
Catholic Church, the Bride of His love — to carry in His
name, with the voice of His authority. His revelation to
the ends of the earth. He left behind Him a way by
which men could know certainly and infallibly His pure
doctrine, as it flowed unsullied from His lips, when He
committed to an organized society the task of continuing
His office of Teacher.

He gives, moreover, to His representative a promise
and a guarantee of infallibility and indefectibility. For
He makes this solemn promise, twice spoken : " I will
ask the Father, and He shall give you another Paraclete,
that He may abide with you for ever^ the Spirit of Truth,
. . . He will teach you all things ; ... He will lead you

* Manning, op, cit,^ pp. 71, 72.

' St. Mark xvi. 16 ; cf. St. Matt, xxviii. 19.

40 ROADS TO ROME.

into all Truth." * Again, « Lo, I am with you all days,
even unto the consummation of the world." * Our Lord
thereby showed quite plainly that this method of bringing
home His Truth to individual souls was not temporary
and transient, confined to the Apostolic age, or ending
with the fourth, fifth, or seventh CEcumenical Council " I
am with you all days; ... the Paraclete shall abide with
you for ever'' is His distinct promise. The gospel was
to be promulgated throughout the " whole world." " All
nations" were to be "taught" This the Apostles did
not do. Their short day was soon cut short by sword,
cross, and flame ; it was left to their successors in the
government of the Church, and especially to him in whom
was centred the fulness of the Apostolic power 8— the
heir from age to age of Peter's supreme and infallible
authority — ^to carry on their mission, to teach through all
time the very doctrine that Christ taught on earth.

Such a Teacher I found in the world to-day. The
Roman Catholic Church alone laid claim to be one and
the same with the Church of Pentecost, possessed of its

* St. John xiv. l6, 26 ; xvi. 12.
' St. Matt, xxviii. 19.

• A point often lost sight of, which, however, came home to me very
forcibly before my conversion, is that, on the Anglican theory, the Apostolate
has to all intents and purposes ceased to be. Bishops are not ApostUs ; they
have neither universality of jurisdiction nor, taken singly, official infallibility ;
and, if there is no Apostolic See in which is concentrated the peculiar powers
of the Twelve, one is compelled to admit that the Apostolate, given to the
Church at a time when heresies had scarcely arisen, and the aroma of the
Lord's visible Presence was an abiding reality, died out at the very moment
when there was most need for it. The Catholic Church has preserved in
Peter*s successor the office, not merely of the chief Apostle — the ** first " (itpwrQ%\
of them, as St. Matthew (x. 2) calls him — but of the whole Apostolic Band for
the precise end for which it was instituted, the preservation of unity of faith
and government.

ROADS TO ROME. 41

authority, commissioned uniquely to guard and teach the
revelation of God given in His only-begotten Son.

The fact of the existence amongst us of a Guardian
and an Expounder of Truth, bearing the authentic authority
of the Redeemer, professing to teach every soul in His
name the doctrines of salvation, carried with it to my
mind a corresponding obligation of obedience.^ If Christ
really spoke to me through a Society identified with
Himself — His Body and His Bride ; if the Church spread
throughout the world, united to Peter (the rock-bed of its
solidity), of whom St. Ambrose in the fifth century could
say, " Where Peter is, there is the Church ; where the
Church, there no death but life eternal ; " * " Upon whom,"
in SL Cyprian's words, " Christ built the Church," ^ " from
whose chair [which he calls in the same epistle the root
and womb {radix et matrix) of the Catholic Church] the
unity of the Priesthood took its rise," * where " faithlessness
can have no access ; " ^ if that Church to-day, alone among
the religious bodies surrounding it, claimed to represent
that Society and to possess its authority; I saw that
nothing was left for me but unquestioning obedience to
its rule. Christ's words were solemn, searching, unmis-

' Cf. Fr. Tjrrrel, S.J. : " We have to seek a body that claims to carry on
the work of Him Who came to teach not the few, but the millions ; not the
learned, but the rude ; not the science of earth or the philosophy of man, but
the wisdom of God and the mysteries of heaven ; and \\'ho, therefore, taught,
not as the scribes by reasonings and discussion, but with authority as God^
claiming the obeditnce of the mind, not its patronage ; the assent of faith, not the
critical approval of reason" {Op, anica cit,, p. 443).

* In Ps. xl. n. 30.

' £p. Ixxiii. ad Jubaian.

* Ep. Iv. ad Cornel.

* Ibid. The reference is lo the ** Roman Church," which is called in the
same letter the ** ruling " or " principal " Church {ccclesia principalis).

42 ROADS TO ROMK

takably plain : ** If any man hear not the Church, let
him be ... as a heathen and a publican."^ "Go ye,"
My successors in teaching, "go ye" in My Name, with
My authority, "into the whole world" — into England as
much as into Asia Minor — "and preach the gospel to
every creature. . . . He that believeth . . . shall be saved ;
... he that believeth not shall be condemned." ^ I saw
with St. Jerome that I must " speak with the successor of
the Fisherman " and be " in communion with the See of
Peter" ("that rock," I knew, "on which the Church was
built"), if I would escape being numbered with the
"profane" who attempt to "eat the Lamb outside the
House," * which is " the Church of the living God, the pillar
and ground (iSpdiwiia) of the Truth." *

Other arguments shone upon my soul— especially the
marvellous coherence and unity of dogmatic truth, one
part connected with another (as limb with limb in a living
organism) by the joints and bands of vital membership,
forming a definite homogeneous whole ; and the orderly
harmonious development, age after age, of each separate
doctrine, from the protoplasmic germ in the almost form-
less embryo, to the highly specialized structure of well-
defined and articulated formulae in creeds, canons, and
conciliar decrees. But to develop this line of thought
would lengthen unduly the present paper. I have treated
it with some fulness in a recent article in the Weekly
Register!!' to which I would refer those readers who are
interested in the subject

« St. Matt, xviii. 17. • St. Mark xvi. 15, 16.

' In £p. ad Damasum, written in the fourth century.

♦ I Tim. iii. 15.

• On <' The Evolution of Catholicism," Wetkly R^ter^ December 30, 1 899.

ROADS TO ROME. 43

As soon as I realized, in all its significance, that there
was a Church on earth, i^. a Depository of Truth, a Teacher
sent from God, having Divine sanctions for the fulfilment
of its office, possessing an equal authority with the doctrine
committed to its care, that idea (which Manning has
acutely declared to have died out of the English mind)
expanded within me ; its bearings became clearly marked
out, its consequences unmistakable. Newman's voice
spoke to me imperatively through the closing lines, full of
infinite pathos, of his " Essay on Development : " '' Time is
short; eternity is long. Put not from you what you have
here found ; r^^d it not as mere matter of present contro-
versy ; set not out resolved to refute it ; . . . seduce not
yourself with the imagination that it comes of disappoint-
ment, or disgust, or restlessness, or wounded feeling, or
undue sensibility, or other weakness. Wrap not yourself
round in the associations of years past ; nor determine
that to be truth which you wish to be so, nor make an
idol of cherished imaginations. Time is short, eternity is
long." »

' Ed, cit.y p. 443. Cf. the beautiful appeal in his "Discourses to Mixed
Congregations : " " Oh ! long sought after, tardily found, desire of the eyes, joy
of the heart, the truth after many shadows, the fulness after many foretastes,
the home afterjmany storms, . . . how can yc doubt that she (the Catholic and
Roman Church) is the messenger for whom ye seek ? . . . Come to her, poor
wanderers, come to her, for she it is, and she alone, who can unfold to you
the meaning of your being and the secret of your destiny'' (p. 281).

A CATHOLIC LAWYER,

A Doctor of Laws,

Gives an account of his conversion to the Catholic faith in
these words : —

What led me to embrace the Catholic faith, when a law-
student of twenty-two, was the many and serious differ-
ences of belief prevailing in the different Protestant sects,
and even within the Church of England itself; and yet
all these disputants appealed to the Sacred Scriptures as
their one standard of truth, interpreted, however, by each
individual for himself and upon his own responsibility.

I was brought up by a pious widowed mother in the
so-called Evangelical school of the Church of England, as
modified by John Wesley. I received reg^ar religious
instruction, which consisted of the Church of England Cate-
chism and Scripture history, and I learnt by heart every day
at least two texts of Scripture. I also had pecuniary re-
wards occasionally given to me for learning by heart certain
entire chapters in the Bible, and a special " tip " (I think
half a crown) for committing to memory the whole of Dr.
Watts's "Divine and Moral Songs." My mother's views
were, in fact, a mixture of Calvinism and Arminianism,
though, like Wesley, she scouted the natne of Calvinism as

44

ROADS TO ROME. 45

dangerous heresy. I was taught that man was justified
by faith alone without good works — which, however, must
be done after justification ; that when he put his trust
in Christ as his own individual Saviour, he was at once
converted and justified, the righteousness of Christ was
imputed to him, and he felt within himself the infallible
assurance of pardon. But, on the other hand, she taught
me, in opposition to the strict Calvinists, that we had free
will, were accountable for our actions, and were not sure
of final perseverance, but might, after conversion, become
backsliders and be eventually lost I was, of course, also
taught that the Pope was antichrist. It may seem strange
that such comparatively abstruse theology should be taught
to children under twelve years of age, but my dear mother
thought that religious truth could not be taught too early
or too often ; and in my case the result was that, at the
a^e of sixteen, I had developed an acquaintance with the
differences prevailing between the different Protestant sects,
and with some of the distinctive doctrines of the Catholic
Church, that might be expected from a theological student
rather than from a schoolboy.

At about the age of fifteen I was prepared for con-
firmation by an " Evangelical " clergyman. His views were,
like my mother's, virtually a modified Calvinism, but
shorn of such of its doctrines as are most dangerous in
practice.

Up to this point I had learned the Catechism of the
Church of England by heart, but I was not taught clearly
or emphatically that the sacraments were channels of grace
to the soul ; on the contrary, it was tacitly assumed that
Baptism was merely a formal admission into the visible

^

46 ROADS TO ROME.

Church, and that the Eucharist was a mere commemorative
rite to recall to our memories the Passion of our Lord.
I was, of course, also told that we as Protestants only
recognized two sacraments, while the Catholics claimed
seven. I doubt whether I was validly baptized in my
infancy, for the clergyman who performed the ceremony
probably did not believe in baptismal regeneration, and
would therefore not be careful that the essentials of
baptism were duly performed.

Although I was brought up in the Church of England,
my mother occasionally took me to the Nonconformists to
hear popular preachers ; amongst others, to the Wesleyan
Methodists, Congregationalists, and the Baptists.

Mr. Spurgeon made a great impression on me by his
controversy with the Evangelical Church party. He pointed
out that baptismal regeneration was clearly taught in the
Church of England Prayer-book, and that no one could
honestly remain in the Church who did not believe in that
doctrine.

At about the age of sixteen I used occasionally to go
to High Anglican churches. I was at this time studying
logic, so I did not take much interest in the details of
ritual, but I took a keen and even precocious interest in
doctrine. At these churches I did not hear anything
about justification by faith alone, or about imputed right-
eousness, but I heard a great deal about grace and
salvation to be obtained by the right use of the sacra-
ments, of regeneration by baptism, of the real presence
of our Lord in the Eucharist, of the power given by Christ
to his Apostles (and the clergy as their successors) to give
absolution to penitent sinners. In other words, I heard,

ROADS TO ROME. 47

for the first time in my life, the sacramental system and
the Apostolical Succession expounded by their advocates
instead of their adversaries, who had always told me
before, that the High Church party put the sacraments
in the place of Christ, and Apostolical Succession in the
place of the inward conversion of the heart I now learned
that the High Churchmen had been entirely misre-
presented.

About the same time a public discussion took place in
London between two clei^men (one a Ritualist and the
other an Evangelical) on Catholic doctrine generally, and
the sacrifice of the Mass in particular. I carefully weighed
and considered the arguments on both sides, and took
especial pains to look up the texts of Scripture relied on by
both disputants. After prayer and careful deliberation, I
came to the conclusion that the High Church view was
the scriptural one, and in accordance with the teaching
of the primitive Church, and I renounced for ever such
of the doctrines of Calvin and Wesley as were opposed
to that view. From that time I attended a church where
High Church doctrines were taught ; but the ritual was not
very advanced, and I read with pleasure Keble's '^ Christian
Year " as containing the true and sound Anglican doctrine.

Some time after this Dr. Pusey's "Eirenicon" came
under my notice, and made a great impression upon my
mind. This book urged that the Roman, Anglican, and
Greek Churches should sink their differences, meet on the
common ground of their Apostolical Succession, and
again become the one and undivided Catholic and Apos-
tolic Church. The refusal of the Catholic Church to accept
this invitation roused my indignation, and seemed to

48 ROADS TO ROME.

resuscitate my old Protestant prejudices against the
Catholic Church.

It did not, however, shake my belief in the High
Church doctrines, but rather intensified and extended it

When I was about twenty-two I made the acquaintance
of a law-student who had been brought up as a rigid,
uncompromising, supralapsarian Calvinist ; he had, how-
ever, been induced to examine the claims of the Catholic
Church, and after research, deliberation, and prayer, had
become a Catholic He challenged me to investigate the
teaching of the Catholic Church, boldly predicting that, if
I did this carefully and impartially, I should certainly
become a Catholic. I ridiculed the idea of such a result,
saying that I was satisfied that the Church of England
had the true sacraments and the Apostolical Succession,
and that I was contented with her ministrations; but I
said that I always acted on the principle audi alteram
partem^ and I would therefore read the best books on
both sides of the controversy. I began by praying for
light, making the resolution, with the help of God, to live
a higher life, and begging the saints to pray for me. I
then commenced my reading. On the Catholic side of
the question I read Milner's "End of Controversy,"
Marshall's "Comedy of Convocation in the English
Church," Cardinal Wiseman's sermons. Cardinal Manning's
"Grounds of Faith," and Abbot Sweeny's sermons. On
the Protestant side I read Chillingworth's " Religion of
Protestants," Dr. Cumming's " Hammersmith Discussion,"
Isaac Barrow's sermons, Stillingfleet's sermons, and various
histories of the Reformation on both sides. I also found
my intimate acquaintance with the text of Scripture taught

ROADS TO ROME. 49

me by my mother of immense service ; and I may add
that I did not take Bishop's Milner's authorities on trust,
but verified many of his references to the works of the
Fathers for myself, because many Protestant controver-
sialists had said that Catholic quotations were often
garbled, misinterpreted, or misapplied. I also made other
laborious researches.

This long and anxious inquiry occupied six months.
My eyes were now opened to the fact that the Catholic
Church had been shamefully slandered by her enemies,
who had, for three hundred years, used all the arts of
falsehood, with painfully successful results ; that Angli-
canism had been founded and propagated by cruelty,
injustice, crooked statecraft, and even murder ; that I had
not believed all the Catholic faith, but only part of it;
that although I believed a great mass of Catholic doctrine,
as taught by High Anglicans, I accepted it only on the
Protestant principle of private judgment and interpretation,
whereas our Lord had taught us that we must believe His
truth on the authority of one universal Church divinely
guaranteed by Him against the possibility of error. This
naturally led to the inquiry, " Which is this Church ? " I
then examined the notes of the true Church as indicated
in the Bible, and was forced to the conclusion that, if I
sought for the true Church, I must look for the Chair of
St. Peter — ubi Petrtis ibi ecclesia.

My reason was now convinced of the Divine authority
of the Catholic Church, but I shrank from cutting myself
off from all intercommunion with my High Anglican and
even Evangelical friends, and I realized for the first time
in my life that one can have intellectual conviction without

E

i

50

ROADS TO ROME.

faith. I prayed for light, and a holy religious prayed too,
and offered the Holy Sacrifice on my behalf. The result
was that in a few days he had the happiness of receiving
me into the one Holy Catholic Apostolic and Roman
Church.

That is many years ago. Since then I have had no
more doubts on religious questions, though I am a doubter
of doubters in matters outside religious truth, such as
politics, law, history, etc. I have been happily married to
a Catholic wife, herself the granddaughter of a Scotch
officer, a convert from Presbyterianism. My son is a science
student at a German University, surrounded by unbelievers ;
but his faith is clear and strong, he is regular in attending
to his religious duties, under the direction of a good
German Dominican friar, and he sees nothing in science
or nature to contradict God's holy revelation.

I can truly say with the Apostle, but in all humiUty,
[Det/s] inquirentibus se remunerator (Heb. xi. 6).

The Rev. JOHN CHAPMAN, B.A.,

{1ST Class Lit. Hum., 2nd Class Theol., 1887), Christ Church,
OxFOED ; Priest of the Order of St. Benedict ; Sub-Prior,
Erdington Abbey, Birmingham.

It was not till about the time I took my degree at Oxford
that I had any thought of taking Orders. Brought up at
home, and in clerical society, and quite familiar with
bishops, deans, and canons, I had no particular veneration
for the eminence of their vocation, nor did it strike me to
think of ** going into the Church " as an5^ing but a pro-
fession. But it so happened that a large number of my
friends at Oxford were High Church, and intended to
become clergymen. They had a serious view of their call,
and one or other of them even went to confession. I was
easily persuaded to go with them, a few times, on Sunday
evenings to St. Barnabas'. I was so far pious that I had
been accustomed never to miss my early Sunday Com-
munion ; and now I began to wonder whether the expres-
sions about the love of God in the " Imitation of Christ "
meant anything real. In a vague way I felt some sort of
a call to God. I have now not the least doubt that it was
the beginning of a gracious call from God to the religious
life.

52 ROADS TO ROME.

I went to Cuddesdon eventually, and there began my
gradual movement towards the true Church, which lasted
some two years and a half.

I wanted, in the first place, to learn what I could of
the spiritual life. I saw plainly that the ordinary teaching
of the Anglican Church ignored the spiritual life altogther,
and went in for respectability and propriety, and nothing
further. The Evangelical school I admired, but I thought
it logically led to the Salvation Army, and had no historical
basis. But the Catholic devotional literature, which I now
began to use, opened to me a new world ; and I could
not go back, I could only go forward. I began to laugh
at adaptations, and to use Catholic books as they stood ;
and also to say part of the Breviary in English. I did not
care for ritual; I might almost say I disliked it, except
as the ancient and historical custom of the Catholic Church.

This was only one side of the movement of my whole
self. The other, and far the more important, was the dog-
matic side. I had to study doctrine and Church history,
and soon came to see in the Reformation the uprooting of
all that I was just beginning to love and venerate. For
the purpose of elucidating some points in the Thirty-nine
Articles, I began to examine the Scholastic theologians,
and many later ones. I went to the Bodleian, and con-
sulted Scotus and Aleusis, Vasquez and Soto and Stapyl-
ton, and such-like. Aristotelian training had made St.
Thomas easy to me. I have still a hundred pages of
analysis of a volume of Suarez. The amount altogether
was not very great ; but I learned for the first time that
Anglicans, whether present or past, knew no theology in
the strict sense. I lost all confidence in them as guides,

ROADS TO ROME. 53

just as I gained my first love of what little I knew of
Catholic ascetics.

After a year at Cuddesdon, I had not a single practical
temptation to leave the Anglican communion, here and
now. But I looked upon the idea as one that would pro-
bably develop some day.

I went as a deacon to a parish where the clergy were
as extreme in their views as they were moderate in their
practice, "for fear of the Jews." In fact, to my great dis-
tress, I had to wait some months before even a daily
Communion was instituted.

Now began my troubles in earnest I had to teach.
I asked myself on what authority. Not the bishop's. Not
that of the Articles, which I hated ; nor that of the Prayer-
book, which we all laughed at Not of the present Catholic
Church ; for East and West agreed only in holding me to
be a heretic. As to antiquity, if I took in the fourth and
fifth centuries, why not the sixteenth or nineteenth? If
I stopped at the first, should I agree with Lightfoot, and
lose religion as I understood it, or with Hamack, and give
up Christianity ? It seemed to me that Christianity must
be continuous, and the Church infallible. But, if Rome
was right, I must be wrong. My friends told me I wanted
to be too logical. I merely urged that they were illogical,
and enjoyed it ; but that I was not made like that I had
not been brought up to High Church views. I would not
take them from my friends without authority, and they
had none to allege.

I hated parish work, because I felt I was doing no
good with such uncertainty. I used to wish to go, but
my vicar would not let me ; and I used to find also that

54 ROADS TO ROME.

the work itself was somehow wound round my heart — the
slums, and the choir-boys, and so on. I used to rush away
and pray in open — and empty — churches (Reservation, now
claimed by Anglicans as a part of their " Catholic heritage,"
was unknown to London churches, with one exception, in
1889). I sometimes talked or wrote to a friend, a curate at
the other end of London, who was in the same difficulties
as myself; and I prayed that he might be the first to go.
I was much nearer the Church than he was ; but he was
a Ritualist, and I was not I read controversy, when I
had time, and sometimes the Fathers.

After nearly a year, I went up to Oxford in Lent to
study, for ten days. I talked to Gore and Bright, who
were kind. They told me history made it impossible
to become a Romanist I had already tried,' and failed,
to convince myself of the fact, and there was nothing else
to keep me back. I remember reading all the acts of the
Council of Chalcedon in Mansi, with Hefele to help me,
at the Bodleian, and studying St Basil's letters in the
quiet Pusey library.

I returned, and told my sympathetic friend that I could
find no difficulties in history, which disappointed him
somewhat But I added that there seemed to be grace
in the English Church, and that I was not ready to move
yet — I ought to wait

We both made the novena of the Holy Ghost from
Ascension Day till Whit-Sunday. That day was the last
on which I preached in an Anglican Church, and it was
the last on which he worshipped in one. On the feast of
Corpus Christi, he was converted in Belgium, and I first felt
I was not sure of Anglican Orders.

ROADS TO ROME. 55

Directly I heard of his conversion, I left my parish for
a holiday, and from home wrote to my vicar, explaining
that I could not conscientiously return ; and this time he
saw it was useless to resist.

But I could decide nothing. I was afraid to go to a
Catholic priest, knowing too well that I should make up
my mind at once. I stayed six months at home, in un-
certainty. I had to go on Sundays to the village church.
I used to rub my eyes, and say to myself, " Is that man a
Catholic priest," as the grey-bearded parson read '* Dearly
beloved " in a sing-song, or sprawled over the north end
of the Communion table. I could not stay away from
Communion on Sundays ; yet I thought it almost certain
that I made only a spiritual Communion.

And yet I did not move. The truth of the Catholic
position was so absolutely clear to my mind, that I could
not see how good and clever and learned men could deny
it And this made a new difficulty. The case was so
clear to me, that perhaps somehow I was wrong. I in-
tended to go away, and make a sort of retreat alone, to
pray and think. But I knew what would be the result.
I waited, and waited, to satisfy my father, and to give
myself the chance of getting over the fever of internal
impatience and anxiety that held me. But at the same
time I was conscious that the worldly and idle life I was
leading was bad for me, and that I was praying less often
and less well. At last, on one of the last days of
November, I summoned courage to tell my father I
must settle matters. I went to a small seaside place,
and took a lonely lodging, and read and thought and
prayed. I remember writing a list of controversial books

56 ROADS TO ROME.

for my father, all of which I had studied. It would
prove, not that I had studied deeply, but that I could
not have overlooked any important difficulty. I again
read through Gore's " Roman Catholic Claims " and Canon
Carter's "The Roman Question," and I found that there
was nothing in them to which I could not give a suffi-
ciently satisfactory answer* There was only one Church
possible, and that must be the Church of Rome. There
must be authority and a living voice to decide controversies,
and there must be supernatural sanctity and religious
orders, and miracles and signs and wonders.

I was sure that I had a vocation to the religious life,
and this increased my anxiety to join the true Church.
But I had never spoken to any Catholic, still less to a
priest, on the subject.

I went up to London, took the underground to South
Kensington, and, leaving my portmanteau at the station, I
went with trembling heart to ring the bell of the Oratory
and to ask " for one of the Fathers." A good Father duly
appeared in a parlour. "I have come," I said rather
feebly, "because I have been for a long time troubled
about the claims of the Roman Church. Will you give me
some advice ? " I was relieved when he laughed : " Well,
if you want my advice, of course I advise you to join it ! "
After this I laughed too, and we were at once excellent
friends. The next day (St. Nicholas*) I was reconciled,
and the day following I made my first Communion. The
happiness with which I was flooded is unspeakable. I
have had plenty of trials since then, but a doubt about
the true Faith, never.

H. C. CORRANCE, Esq., B.A.,

Christ Church, Oxford; formerly Rector of West

Bbrgholt, Essex.

I DO not suppose that my path to the Catholic Church
differs very greatly from that which many others have
trod of recent years. But, as I have been asked to con-
tribute to this volume some account of the reasons which
convinced me of the truth of the Church's claims, I will
endeavour to present as briefly as possible the main line
of thought by which I reached that conclusion. I say
advisedly "the main line," as it is of course impossible,
within the necessary limits of such a contribution as this,
to even touch upon all the causes and influences which
co-operated to the final result.

Brought up in the old-fashioned school of High Church
Anglicanism, I was early convinced from the reading of
the New Testament Scriptures that Christ founded a
Visible and Universal Church, and also of the reasonable-
ness of such an idea on a priori grounds. This outline
was gradually filled in, partly by study, and partly by the
influences of the so-called Ritualistic movement, which was
making itself felt at Oxford while I was there.

57

58 ROADS TO ROME.

Naturally, at first, I accepted the idea that the body to
which I belonged formed part of that Church, though for
many years I was neither offered, nor did I form for my-
self, any definite theory of its relation to the existing whole.
Apostolic succession was the only principle which in my
mind distinguished the Church from the sects. Questions
of government and jurisdiction had not yet presented
themselves to me. This vagueness of view as to what
constitutes the Church continued, along with steady growth
in Catholic ideas and practices, throughout my theological
studies at Oxford, and until after my ordination in the
Church of England. It was not till soon after this that I
became acquainted with the theory, through a tract that I
had chanced to buy, that the Roman, Greek, and Anglican
are three branches of one Catholic Church. This theory
was then in its first beginnings, but has since become
popularized among High Church Anglicans.

Later on, when I had come to hold nearly all the
distinctive doctrines of Catholicism, I met with another
theory invented by the extremest section of the Ritualistic
party to account for and to justify their position. This
was, in brief, that the two Anglican provinces of Canterbury
and York form an integral part of Western Christendom,
though communion has been unhappily suspended for a
time between the severed portion and the main body. I
may say that I was present at the birth of this theory,
when first propounded in an address given by a well-known
Anglican clergyman to some of his fellows. Since then
this theory, like the former one, has left the esoteric stage,
and has been steadily winning its way to acceptance by
the extremest wing of the High Church party. The former.

ROADS TO ROME. 59

however, is still the favourite, as it accommodates itself
better to the vagueness of moderate High Churchmanship.

To the "Two-Province theory" (as I may call it), its
very definiteness is its danger, as the safety of the " Three-
Branch '* theory lies in its vagueness. The former, indeed,
supplies a more plausible explanation of the position of
Ai^licanism in England in relation to "the rest of the
Church," but it does not attempt to meet the insuperable
difficulties presented by foreign jurisdictions. Consequently,
I cannot say that I ever made the theory my own. I can
see now that its very definiteness rendered clearer the
inconsistencies of my then position, though I could not at
once realize the consequences, being held by so many
sentimental ties to the Church of England.

So for a time I left theory alone, and continued my
work as a parochial clergyman. But the changes of mental
attitude in the advanced party to which I belonged had
produced in me a certain state of unrest, and their formu-
lating of new theories in the place of old was preparing
the way for my acceptance of one more in accordance
with facts. At length I made up my mind to study the
whole subject, with the result that I became convinced of
the essential nature of the Church's unity in all time.
This "theory," if I may call it so, had great advantages
over the other in its simplicity and harmony with the past
and present states of Christendom. Having thus been
brought to recognize that a Visible and Catholic Church
must have an actual, and not merely a theoretical, unity ;
that it must be subject to one system of government, be
international, and be able to speak with a living and
authoritative voice, I could see none possessing these marks

6o ROADS TO ROME.

except that of which the Pope is the head. The theory of
the development of doctrine enabled me to understand that
the Papacy, my one-time crux, had attained its present
prominence, in common with other matters of government
and doctrine, through a steady and orderly process of
growth which was natural and inevitable. In this theory
of development lies the reconciliation between the Church's
past and present, and it illuminates the progressive con-
tinuity of the Catholic system, a continuity which Angli-
canism does not possess.

On the one side was the Church's actual and magnifi-
cent unity; on the other, the modem, conflicting and
changing theories of Anglicanism, each one accepted by
but a portion of the whole body, and, for the most part,
totally at variance with the existing conditions of their
Church. Their plea of continuity in doctrine and govern-
ment had no foundation in history, and the same was true
of their claim that conditions parallel to their own existed
in the early Church which justified their present position.
On the contrary, the position of Anglicanism in almost
every respect is unique in the history of Christendom.
The genius and spirit of that body, which is avowedly
"comprehensive," is neither that of the early Church nor
early schisms, of the present Eastern Churches, or of the
Catholic Church. The claim, therefore, that these form
part of one whole, possessing, de jure if not de facto ^ the
same faith and discipline, seemed wholly unreal.

But if the question had been simply an historical one,
I should have been left in uncertainty. I have no wish
to decry the appeal to history. But so many controversial
writers of equal learning and ability have been able to

ROADS TO ROME. 6i

make it yield the conclusions they desire, that every one
must either follow the lead of some school or form his own
theories. I realized that the surest guide to the past is
the present state of Christendom. The opposite (Anglican)
method of interpreting the present by the past is to sub-
stitute opinion for fact, the contradictory conclusions of
biased scholars for the direct appeal to existing evidence.
And present-day facts are against the Anglican theory of
Christendom. When I had reached this point there were
only two courses open to me — either to renounce for ever
the possibility of forming a rational theory of my position,
or to secede. I chose the latter.

Those points which I have mentioned as seeming to
me fatal to the pretensions of High Anglicans are referred
to by some of them as " difficulties," which should no more
induce a man to secede than the difficulties of Theism
justify the surrender of the belief in God. But the two
cases are not parallel. The difficulties of Theism are
inherent in the nature of the subject which lies on the
spiritual and transcendental plane, and is therefore
mysterious. But the "Sacramentum Unitatis" is quite
different It was designed by Christ, according to His
own statement which Anglicans accept, as a witness of
His mission to the world, and is therefore on the plane of
phenomena. It is chiefly a matter of external evidence.
To ignore this important aspect of the question, and to
deny that the argument from " simplicity " is valid in such
a case, seems to me to misunderstand and confuse the
whole question by postulating an ideal Church which has
no concrete existence, and is therefore not "Visible" in
any sense of the word.

The Rev. MATTHEW CULLEY,

Of Coupland Castle, Northumberland, Priest of All Saints,
Thropton, Northumberland, and J. P. for the same County.

I WAS bom in i860, in Northumberland, the eldest son
of the late Matthew T. CuUey, of Coupland Castle in that
county, of an old northern family that certainly remained
true to the Catholic faith (in some of its members, at
least) for some time after the change of religion in
England, but apparently fell away in the latter part of
the sixteenth century or early in the seventeenth. Like
most Northumbrian families, we could count Catholics
among our kith and kin not very far back. My great-
grandmother had many Catholic relatives — amongst them
a Dominican Father who, as I always heard, was found
dead in the attitude of prayer before the altar, early in
the last century. Then, again, Northumbrian-like, we had
Catholic neighbours and friends ; for Northumberland, like
Lancashire, is pretty full of Catholics.

My father and mother both belonged to the Established
Church (so-called) of England My father, though his
tendencies were High Church, could hardly be called a
High Churchman ; on the other hand, my mother was a

6a

ROADS TO ROME. 63

H^^h Church woman, of the old Tractarian
type, and belonged to a very High Church family (of
Jacobite traditions), who were to a great extent the
pioneers of High Anglicanism in Northumberland. I
lost my mother when in my twelfth year. Her example
and teaching had left a deep impression on my mind.
Within two years after her death I began to pray, of my
own accord, before a picture of Our Lady and the Holy
Child that my mother had given me some years previously,
and which always hung in my room. At the same time,
having strung some beads together, I taught myself to
say the Rosary, learning it from a book I found in the
library at Coupland. I ought to mention that our parish
church, the last in England in that direction — for the parish
was bounded for many miles by Scotland — was of a most
Evangelical type, and the prevailing atmosphere of the
whole district was, and still is, Protestant and Presbyterian.
Whenever I had the opportunity, in London and else-
where, I attended advanced High Church places of wor-
ship, and, of my own initiative, I went to confession to
a clergyman at St Cyprian's, Dorset Square, when seven-
teen years of age. Owing to very delicate health, I was
educated for some years at home, but, just after my
eighteenth birthday, was sent to a tutor at Oxford to
prepare for the University. At Oxford I was a regular
attendant at a very advanced church, and sometimes went
to the Jesuit Church in the evenings. I recollect being
more and more dissatisfied with the inconsistent teaching
of the High Church party ; I heard some of their leading
men preach at this time. My chief difficulty with regard
to Rome was that I failed to understand or to see the

64

ROADS TO ROME.

reason for the doctrine of Papal Supremacy and of the
infallibility of the Holy Father. I think I believed every-
thing else taught by the Catholic Church, at least as far
as I knew at this time. Fortunately for me, during the
autumn of that year (1878), a distinguished Catholic
preacher and controversialist came to Oxford and gave
a course of sermons on Sunday evenings in the Jesuit
Church on the very subject that had been a difficulty to
me. He put the whole question of the Pope's supremacy
and the universality of the Roman Church in a light in
which I had never seen it before. I had no conversation
with the preacher, nor indeed with any other priest, but
his sermons helped me immensely, and by degrees the
way became quite easy before me. On the 21st of the
following April, 1879, being eighteen years of age, I was
received into the Church. Until I went to the priest — the
late Mgr. Canon Clarke, V.G., of Clifton (R.I.P.)— to ask
to be received, I had never spoken to a Catholic priest,
nor had I had any consultation with Catholics on the step
I then took.

The Rev. AUGUSTIN DANIELS, B.A.,

King's College, Cambridge ; Priest op the Order op St. Benedict.

In the early days of my undergraduate life at King's
Collie, Cambridge, I entertained hopes of one day
becoming an Anglican clergyman. I was at that time
much attracted to the teaching of the late F. D. Maurice,
Charles Kingsley, and other members of what is called
the Broad Church School. For two or three terms I even
attended some Divinity Lectures. Gradually, however, a
change took place in my religious opinions. Beginning
with doubts as to the historical truth of the principal events
recorded in the Gospels, I drifted away from positive
Christianity and fell under the influence of Spinoza's
philosophy. By the time I took my degree in 1885, my
views had developed further, and in matters of religion
and philosophy, I had adopted a very anti-metaphysical
Agnosticism. My ethical ideal at that time was that of
modem Humanism. A life devoted to the pursuit of
science and the solution of social problems seemed to me
the only one worth living. From time to time, in the
course of the next few years, I came into occasional contact
with Catholicism, and this mighty Creed under whose

65 F

66 ROADS TO ROME.

shadow I had fallen, produced no small influence upon
me. The tendencies to which such impressions gave rise
seemed to me to be emotional and consequently anti-
social, and so I repressed them and continued along the
old path. At the date of which I am speaking I had
already spent some time as a student at the University of
Heidelberg. Here I became sceptical as to the funda-
mental principles of my Agnosticism. My theory of the
universe seemed to me to be based upon fallacies and
false hypotheses. I was driven to admit, not only the
possibility, but also the reasonableness of a revelation. It
was obvious to my mind that no actual antagonism could
exist between any well-established or even reasonably
probable result of science and the Christian revelation as
far as I understood it This speculative revolution was
followed a little later on by a practical change. I was dis-
atisfied with my ethical ideals, and Darwinism no longer
sufficed to account for the phenomena of conscience. The
words of the poet were ringing perpetually in my ears,
and gave utterance to the most intense convictions of
my soul —

'' . . . aliudque cupido,
Mens aliud suadet. Video meliora proboque,
Deteriora sequor."

I recognized clearly that the only sufficient explanation
of the inward voice of conscience was the existence of
One without, Whose Voice it is. I had become a Theist
again. I found, however, that the knowledge of God
which my conscience was able to supply was insufficient
to satisfy my needs. How was the sense of sin to be
removed ? I began to pray, and, in answer, heard the

ROADS TO ROME. ej

v(»ce of One sa}ring, '' Come unto Me, all ye that labour
and are heavy laden, . . . and ye shall find rest for your
souls." The wish to believe was already present, and I
yearned to respond to this invitation. I began to re-
examine the evidences for the Divine authority and
supernatural origin of Christianity.

The truth of the Resurrection was the principal question
to which I turned my attention. Amongst my German
friends I had a number of Rationalistic theologians, who
also admitted the fact which must strike every reader of
the New Testament I mean the prominence assigned by
the Apostles to the doctrine that their Lord had really
risen from the dead. My friends, however, would not
admit what seemed to me to be the only reasonable
explanation of this fact, viz. the historical reality of
Christ's resurrection. They essayed to explain away the
supernatural element, and I found their attempt unsatis-
factory. The causes assigned were inadequate to account
for the effects which were to be explained. The existence
of Christianity and the growth of the Christian Church
are facts so weighty that they cannot be reasonably sup-
posed to have their origin in the ecstatic illusions or
spiritualistic fancies of the first disciples and followers of
Jesus. Such an assumption would involve such an enor-
mous number of difficulties, that common sense and reason
both prefer to accept the simple statement of the Evange-
lists as historical fact

Further inquiries led to the confirmation of my belief
in the genuineness of the New Testament as a whole. I
found that a false assumption, expressed or implied, invari-
ably underlay all the ailments of the negative critics, viz.

68 ROADS TO ROME.

the impossibility of miracles. This supposition, however,
seemed to me to be entirely untenable, and indeed philo-
sophically absurd. Thus I was led by the grace of God
to accept the Christian revelation as contained in the
New Testament.

Like many others, I soon found in this collection of
books many " things which are hard to be understood " —
things capable of various, even apparently contradictory,
explanations. Which of these was I to accept ? Certainly
the one suggested by that Spirit Whom Christ had
promised to send to lead His disciples into all truth. The
question then arose in my mind, Where is this Holy Spirit
now to be found ? I knew that the Roman Church
claimed to be the sole heir of this promise, and, as I
have already hinted, I had a certain predisposition of mind
towards Catholicism. The wondrous unity of its doctrine,
the unsurpassed beauty of its liturgy, and the glorious
traditions of its past, had often combined to impress me
in the course of my studies. The step of entering into
its communion was, however, one of far-reaching conse-
quences, and for a time I shrank back. I knew that many
Anglicans professed their Church to be the legitimate heir
of Christ's promise in England. They predicated of the
Church "established in these realms" the notes of unity,
sanctity, catholicity, and apostolicity. I therefore began
to examine the Anglican claims. The result, however,
was that at the end of my investigation I found myself
nearer to Rome. My first impression had been favourable
to the presence of a valid priesthood in the Anglican
Establishment It seemed to me at least very probable
that the material and formal apostolical succession had

ROADS TO ROME. 69

not been broken on Parker's elevation to the see of
Canterbury. I was, however, afraid that, owing to the
defective intention of so many bishops, the number of true
priests amongst the ranks of the English clergy could not
be very large.

On proceeding to an examination of the apostolicity
of the Anglican teaching, I soon found myself in great
difficulties. The Book of Common Prayer contained
much that easily bore a Catholic interpretation, whereas
the Articles, according to their plain and literal sense,
were opposed to the historical practice of the Church and
the explicit teaching of the Councils and Fathers. I
wanted to know the doctrine of the Anglican Church.
Its own authoritative formulae and liturgy were inconsistent
with one another. Naturally, I turned to the official
exponents of the system, and found the bishops in hopeless
disagreement as to some of the most vital points of the
Christian revelation. I found, too, that episcopal utter-
ances on matters of faith seemed not to be binding either
upon clergy or laity. My question as to what to believe
in order to be saved must remain unanswered in the
Anglican Church, and my only consolation was the advice
of a learned and earnest theologian to wait for the re-
union of Christendom and the next General Council for
a settlement of all my difficulties. I could not, however,
afford to wait so long. I had a soul to save, and was
perfectly certain that our Lord could not have failed to
fulfil His promise, and that if I were only to find my
way into the true Church, I should attain certainty as to
what to believe, I began to see that the Church of
England could be no part of Christ's visible kingdom on

70 ROADS TO ROME.

earth, for the latter, according to the explicit statements
of the Gospel, must not only possess the potestas docendi,
but also exercise it.

I began now to attend Mass r^^larly, and also to
examine what are often called the '' Roman pretensions "
— the Supremacy of the Holy Roman See, etc. Point for
point I was led by God's grace to acknowledge their
validity. The Anglican claims appeared to me now in
quite a different light. Granted the presence of validly
ordained bishops and priests in the Church of England,
they were nevertheless schismatics, having no lawful juris-
diction and mission to use their episcopal and sacerdotal
powers. This could only be obtained from Rome, whose
bishop they were bound to declare to have " no authority
or jurisdiction in this realm of England." The question
then arose, Could not I remain in the Anglican Church in
the hope of reunion with the Roman See? By God's
grace I was able to reply with a negative answer. He
who recognizes the schismatic nature of a Church, and
remains in it under whatever pretext, is guilty of the sin
of schism. It was just about this time that I came across
Father Wilmers* "Lehrbuch der Religion," and I was
much struck by his treatment of the question of Anglican
Orders. Putting the historical problem of Parker's succes-
sion and the thorny question of intention on one side, the
learned German Jesuit shows clearly, on theological grounds,
that the formulae of the Anglican Ordinal have always
been totally inadequate to serve as the farvt of a valid
ordination. I was now completely convinced that it was
my duty to seek admission into the communion of the
Holy Roman Church. Before long I became acquainted

ROADS TO ROME.

71

with a Benedictine Father of St Martin's Abbey, Beuron.
I asked him to receive me into the Church. His reply
was an invitation to visit Beuron, and there prepare myself
for the great step which I was about to take. I accepted
this kind invitation, and was received during Holy Week,
1893. Such is a brief outline of the path along which the
Good Shepherd vouchsafed to lead an erring soul into
that one Fold of which He is the Door.

J. DUFFUS-HARRIS, Esq.,

QuBBN Annb*s Mansions, St. James's Park, London.

I HAVE for a long time thought that if the ordinary man
of the world who has been happy enough to arrive at a
definite and settled religious faith were to relate the
processes by which that goal was reached, more good
would result to doubters and inquirers than is likely to
be effected by volumes of professional theology. I con-
sider it necessary, therefore, to explain that I am a man
of good social position and of fair means, and that I have
been leading the life of hundreds who are situated in
London similarly to myself. I was for several years
engaged in an active financial business in New York, which
occupation was arrested by a breakdown of health, ending
in a long and tedious illness, during which — I wish this to be
specially noted — I cannot recollect having given a moment's
thought to religious matters. I cannot, therefore, admit
that my conversion to the Catholic Church was in any
way brought about by mental depression or by my
condition of physical weakness. Indeed, I did not begin
to occupy myself with religious inquiries until my health
was sufficiently re-established to enable me to resume what

7a

ROADS TO ROME. 73

is known as "enjo3ring life." I had for nearly twenty
years given up all practice of religion. I had silently
accepted the usual agnostic position, although I confess
to a secret feeling of repugnance which I experienced
when open attacks were being made upon that very
orthodox belief which I had long ceased to hold myself
Although my faith appeared to me to be irretrievably
lost, I mourned that loss sincerely. Up to my twelfth year
I had been educated in the principles of the Church of
Scotland, and that education had been of a most uncom-
promising character. My family regarded even the re-
vising of the Authorized Version of the Bible as a device
inspired by Satan. There was, however, no austerity
connected with our form of religion. We had a cheerful
and luxurious home. Our Sundays began with attendance
at church, followed, as far as I was concerned, by Bible
and Catechism ; but it invariably ended in our receiving
visitors at our house. We had many Catholic friends,
and I cannot remember to have heard in my childhood
much of that vituperation of the Catholic Church which is
generally so marked amongst Protestants, and of which I
have had more than enough since my conversion. From
the age of twelve to past twenty, I was at various
educational establishments in England, and the services
of the Scotch Church being generally inaccessible at
these places, my family allowed me to join in the
Anglican form of worship. By my twenty-second year
I had made up my mind that the Anglican Church
was a Church of mere forms and shadows, and that if
any one inquired what these meant, he was sure to
receive an answer which was both vague and unsatisfactory.

74 ROADS TO ROME.

Subsequent to this I entered upon that long period of
doubt and agnosticism to which I have already referred.
During this time I examined some of the many philoso-
phical systems which have all had their day and their
influence, but which appeared to me to prove nothing.
They had all passed out of fashion, much as fiction and
other literature is apt to do. Emerson attracted me at
first, but he seemed to me to have no definite hold upon
any fundamental religious principle, and so he wearied me
at length, and I ceased to read his works. Then there
came the time when the possibility of the Catholic Church
first presented itself to my mind. I had already proved
the truth of the saying that " a little study leads to doubt,
but that further and more accurate study leads to belief."
I read and thought a good deal, and had an opportunity
of observing human life, both in business and in society, in
different parts of the world, and, afler a time, became not
only firmly convinced of the existence of God, but began
once more to read the Gospels. A peculiar unaccountable
something, which was so strong that it quite angered me,
made me feel sure that the essential doctrines of the
Gospels were true. My next step was belief in the reality
of sin, and in the debt which we owed God as a conse-
quence. This conviction came upon me more by intuition
than by reasoning. I felt that the reasons which can be
adduced in favour of our Lord's Divinity were more power-
ful than the objections which were urged against it, and,
in the coiu^e of time, the difficulties of my mind yielded to
faith. I had therefore now reached a point at which I
felt that my convictions would have to be supported by
some definite and regular practice corresponding with them.

ROADS TO ROME. 75

Circumstances naturally pointed to the Anglican Church ;
but, on confronting it afresh, all my early objections seemed
to return with tenfold strength. There was, in the first
place, the diss^^reement amongst her clergy as to funda-
mental doctrine, and her adoption of certain forms and
ritual which were the cause of endless controversy. Then
there was the stress which was laid upon her Nationalism,
as though God had made contrary and different reve-
lations to different peoples. There was, finally, the circum-
stance that, in spiritual and theological disputes, the court
of final appeal was Parliament, a lay body among whose
members there might be Hebrews and Atheists, possessed
of the right to pronounce binding opinions upon matters
of Christian faith and practice. It seemed to me that
the Anglican Church as a body had actually lost the
faith, that she taught nothing definite, that she was a
mere quicksand to a mind in distress. At that very
time struggles were going on about such trivialities as
lights and incense, while some of her highest dignitaries
were allowed to cast doubts upon parts of the Gospels which
were clearly essential to the very being of Christianity.
Even bishops sneered at great principles, and one of the
most prominent of these had only just proclaimed him-
self an Englishman first and a Churchman afterwards, and
had said in public that the right thing to discover was what
the British wanted in matters of religion. To discover
the commands of our Lord seemed the last thing that
this eminent prelate was thinking of. The sermons
which were being preached in great churches seemed to
me to be either ethical essays or glorifications of national
pride. The Great Preacher of the mountain seemed to

yfi ROADS TO ROME.

be either foi^otten or to be treated to a mere perfunctory
and formal salute.

The various books which were appearing, with a view to
establishing the continuity and Catholicism of the Anglican
Church, caused me to reject this position more and more.
They might suit those people to whom nationalism was
of more importance than Christ's teaching ; their very
premises, it was clear, were rejected with derision by all
impartial thinkers outside of England, and their reason-
ing seemed sometimes absolutely puerile. I shall never
forget how, one day, when thinking of these matters, the
word "Rome" suddenly thrust itself upon me, flashing
through my brain like a piercing sword. I had, of course,
during my life been present at Catholic services ; but my
attitude had always been a purely impersonal one, such
as I would have maintained in a Buddhist temple or a
Mohammedan mosque. When, however, the possibility of
Catholicism being applicable to myself came home to me,
I was seized with an agitation the like of which I had
never experienced before. But in spite of an inner feeling
of revolt and repulsion, not unmixed with a feeling of
attraction, it very soon became my imperative duty to
give the Roman Church a hearing. The first time I went
to Mass it was as an interested spectator only, but I
thoroughly realized the truth of Thackeray's passage in
which he says, that he is always conscious of a kind of
vague dread in Catholic churches — of a sort of holy and at
the same time uncanny feeling.

A course of lectures was at this time being given in
the Farm Street Church which I attended. It soon became
clear to me that, instead of trying to grapple with this or

ROADS TO ROME. J7

that doctrine, perhaps specially obnoxious to Protestants,
the following were really the questions which would have
to be answered : —

" Do I believe in our Lord's charge to Peter ?

''Do I believe that He founded an indestructible
Church on earth ?

" Is the Roman Church that Church, or is it not ? "

The books which helped me most in the attempt to
answer these questions were De Maistre on " The Pope,"
Cardinal Gibbon's "Faith of our Fathers," Pascal's "Divinity
of our Lord," and, of course. Cardinal Newman's writings.
But I think I was more helped by his sermons than by
his controversial works, as I had already by thought and
reflection arrived at many of his conclusions — in a much-
clumsier manner, of course. Some unbiassed non-Catholics,
however, aided me more, I think, than any purely Catholic
writer, and I would strongly advise all inquirers to examine
the writings of such men as Leibnitz, and to study care-
fully Macaulay's Essay on " Von Ranke's History of the
Popes." Another thing which influenced me greatly was
the circumstance that I was constantly meeting with
scientific men of mark from celebrated American Uni-
versities, such as Harvard and Pennsylvania, who were
without any definite religious convictions, but who seemed
to take it for granted that if our spiritual knowledge
justified acceptance of any definite Creed and Church, no
other Church but that of Rome was worth considering.
One of the most prominent Biblical critics of Harvard,
Professor Toy, has lately given a course of lectures at that
university, in which he has demonstrated that every
Catholic doctrine to which Protestants most strenuously

78 ROADS TO ROME.

object, such as that of Purgatory and Indulgences, is an
inevitable consequence of the teaching of the Gospels
provided ordinary methods of reasoning be employed.
Thus obstacle after obstacle disappeared, until I found
myself convinced intellectually that to refuse to become
a Catholic was to refuse to obey the conclusions of my own
reasoning and to quarrel with my destiny. I was accord-
ingly received into the Church at Farm Street by the
Reverend Father Rickaby on May 7, 1898, being then
forty-three years old. I suppose that few people have
found their way into the Church with as little human aid
as I have. I trod most of my '' Road to Damascus " alone,
and consulted priests for the purpose of verification rather
than for that of receiving instruction. Delicacy and tact
I found everywhere. No priest ever called upon me in
London, though it was known to two or three that I was
studying Catholicism. My Catholic friends in England
and in France never approached the subject of religion,
although I discovered afterwards that my French friends
had formed a little league of prayer for me.

I have heard it said of many thoughtful men that, but
for the solemn and awe-inspiring general confession, they
would become Catholics. I adopted a more logical course
than this ; nevertheless, I must confess that the prospect
of a general confession filled me with dismay. I was forty-
three years old, had lived but little or no better than my
neighbours, and I had a painfully accurate memory which
extended back to my eighth or ninth year. I made up my
mind that I would choose a confessor whom I would never
be likely to see again. Circumstances at the last moment
caused me to go to the very priest whom I knew best

ROADS TO ROME. 79

of alL He was patience, kindness, and encouragement
personified, and, instead of experiencing a kind of degra-
dation according to the conventional view of the matter, I
felt a sense of relief and happiness such as I cannot
describe. When I see my confessor now — he has left
London — we talk on every subject quite naturally and
without restraint, and I quite forget at the time that he
was the witness of a moral cleansing which had been
waiting its accomplishment for thirty-eight years. I do
not go often enough to confession ; but I consider it
one of the most inestimable blessings which God has
conferred upon man. Little more remains to be told.
Would that what I have written would go to encourage
others, and show them where an inward happiness, such
as they do not dream of, is to be found I The Church
has widened my sympathies, it has cast down many pre-
judices, it has provided me with a spiritual support such
as outsiders can have no possible idea of. My intellect is
satisfied, and if there be trials and discouraging moments
in life, the Church has innumerable remedies to cure
them : they all proceed from and return to the one point —
the manger of Bethlehem. Let no one say that submis-
sion is an act of servility. Submission of our individual
opinions to the Vicar of Christ is no more servility
than is an inferior officer's submission to his superior. He
may not be able to see the situation in all its bear-
ings, but he obeys because he believes that his superior
represents his country and his Sovereign. In like manner,
when the Vicar of Christ speaks to define a disputed
question of faith, or to give a moral counsel, or to warn
the world of certain dangers, the Catholic humbly and

8o

ROADS TO ROME.

cheerfully obeys, because he believes that God is true to
His promises, and that He is teaching truth by the mouth
of His Vicar on earth.

Note. — I have omitted to state that I consider " Chris-
tianity or Agnosticism," by the Abb6 Picard (an excellent
translation of which can be found at the libraries), perhaps
the clearest, most convincing, and most readable book on
this subject which I have ever seen. I would strongly
ui^e all inquirers to study this work.

REGINALD B. FELLOWS, Esq., M.A.,

Trinity College, Cambridge ; Barrister-at-Law.

Some years ago I became convinced that the doctrine of
the Real Presence was of the essence of Christ's teaching,
that it had been taught by the Apostles and insisted on by
the primitive Church, and that the same doctrine had been
taught as essential by the Church of England down to the
time of the Reformation. At that period, however, it
appeared that a belief in the doctrine of the Real Presence
ceased to be any longer necessary for membership in the
Established Church. It seemed to me that strong and
cumulative evidence of this change — this protest against the
ancient faith — was found in the incidental notices which we
have, e.g.y in Churchwardens' Accounts, both of the pay-
ments which were made for the removal of altar stones and
for the demolition of altars, and also of the sales of those
sacred vessels and vestments which had for centuries formed
part of a ritual which had been the expression of a belief
in the doctrine of Christ's Presence on the Altar. It
further appeared to me that, although a certain number of
the members of the Anglican Church believed in the

8i G

82 ROADS TO ROME.

Catholic doctrine of the Real Presence, the Church as such
had ceased to consider it to be of the essence of Christianity ;
that a belief in the doctrine was at the best merely allow-
able, and that for a very considerable period in the history
of the Anglican Church after the Reformation, any belief in
the doctrine was most exceptional.

But if the doctrine of the Real Presence is really an
essential part of Christ's teaching, it must also (I argued)
form an essential part of the Christianity of this or of any
other age. Now, it appeared to me that there actually
existed in England a body corporate claiming to be the
Church of Christ, and also to be the legitimate descendant
of the Pre-Reformation Church and teaching ; moreover,
that a belief in the Real Presence was absolutely essential
for Church membership. The conclusion at which I arrived
was that this body, the Catholic and Roman Church, was
primd facie ih^ true Church of Christ Since, then, a strong
presumption was raised in favour of the claims of this
Church to be the true Church, I felt that it was incumbent
upon me to ascertain, to the best of my ability, if there was
anything in her general teaching to rebut that presumption.
Although I found that there were difficulties in accepting
the teaching of the Catholic Church, I found that these diffi-
culties were not insuperable, and that they were not greater
than those which exist in accepting any form of dogmatic
Christianity.

Further evidence in favour of submitting to the Catholic
Church was found in the fact that Protestantism tended to
reject, or at least to minimize, those precepts of Christ which
are difficult to obey and irksome to human nature : e,g.

ROADS TO ROME.

83

abstinence and fasting ; confession ; voluntary poverty and
the other counsels of perfection. A strong presumption
appeared to me to be raised by this consideration alone
against the claim of any Protestant Church to be the true
Church of Christ

The Rev. JOHN H. FILMER,

King's College, London ; formerly Curate of St. Margaret, Roath,
Cardiff ; now a Student at the Collegio Bbda in Rome.

I AM afraid that I cannot say anything very interesting or
helpful with regard to my conversion, for its history can
be set forth in the few words that God gave me grace to
see His light and then to walk in it.

To set down in any helpful way the arguments by
which He led me, or the motives with which He prompted
me, would need a treatise such as I have not time at
present to write.

But since I am asked for some account, however short,
I may say that, broadly speaking, I regard my conversion
as the result of the Holy Spirit's gradual education in the
truth of God, and my submission to the Church as the logical
consequence of principles which"^! learnt to hold while still
a member of the English Church. For I had learnt, step
by step, to believe the whole body (with one exception) of
Catholic Doctrine, from the Church as a teaching body,
through the whole list of distinctively Catholic tenets, such
as the Seven Sacraments, Invocation of Saints, Purgatory,
finding each in turn (to my surprise, for I had at one time

84

ROADS TO ROME. 85

held them in abhorrence) bear the tests of Scripture and
of Reason. And I remained a member of the Church of
England, and for five years was one of her ministers,
merely because I believed her to be a true part of God's
One Church, and that therefore her formularies must be,
and honestly could be, interpreted in the Catholic sense ;
while their mistiness, tc^ether with the difficulties en-
countered by any Catholic-minded person within her
Communion, were simply the natural result of the sins of
our forefathers who at the Reformation compromised them-
selves and their Church with foreign Protestantism. This
was my position when it dawned upon me that I had built
up this superstructure of Catholicity upon two foundations,
the truth of which I had taken for granted, viz. that the
Church of England was a true part of the One Catholic
Church, in spite of appearances to the contrary, and that
the claim of the first bishop in Christendom to be infallible
was a new and a false claim.

Then asking myself. Why do I believe Infallibility
alone of all other Catholic doctrines to be false ? I found
I only rejected it (not knowing anything about it) because
I was prejudiced against it, and because to accept it meant
to give up the whole Anglican position. I had accepted all
other truths which at one time in my ignorance I rejected,
simply because I had learnt more about them. I now
knew what they meant I saw they were scripturally and
reasonably sound ; might it not be the same with this one ?
So I felt bound to learn more about it, and, applying the
same tests of Scripture and Reason, I was convinced first
of its necessity, then of its reasonableness, last of its scrip-
tural authority. But I remained long in doubt because of

86 ROADS TO ROME.

the maze I got into with the historical evidences on both
sides — historians, apparently of equal renown, absolutely
contradicting one another — until I saw that those historians
who had the plain meaning of Scripture, together with the
plain common sense of Reason on their side, must be right ;
then, by the grace of God, I was convinced of its Divine
institution.

Having thus destroyed the foundation of my faith in
the Church of England, I saw the rest crumble away, and
understood why that Church is never able to teach defi-
nitely what is of Faith, why its formulas are capable of
two opposite meanings, why it is so comprehensive as to
allow all shades of thought to be believed and taught
within her, and saw the true answer to a question I could
never solve before, viz. why England alone should have
received a special revelation of a pure gospel, while all
other enlightened nations were still steeped in the super-
stitions of Popery.

So, God helping me, I made my submission to His
Vicar on earth, and found the Catholic Church not, as I had
been led to expect, a community of uneducated clergy and
of an irreverent, superstitious, priest-ridden laity, the whole
in the last stages of discontent and decay, but a living,
thriving Church, with enlightened minds and devoted, holy
lives among priests and people, lived in an atmosphere
of religious freedom, such as Anglicans, Protestant and
Catholic-minded alike, never dream of.

The Rev. PHILIP FLETCHER, M.A.,

ExiTKR College, Oxford ; Master and Founder of the

Guild of Ransom.

QUOMODO ?

That, in one word, is the question I am asked to answer.
Quofnodot "How?" How did you become a Catholic?
What were the grounds and leading motives which
prompted you to abandon your former religious position,
and to submit to the authority and claims of the Catholic
Church ? Let me look back once more and trace the way
by which I came.

I was brought up by a saintly mother in what she
believed to be the principles of the Church of England, to
which she was sincerely attached. During this period of
"home influence," which lasted till I was sixteen and a half
years old, and which was supplemented by four or five
years of sojourn at two quiet Church of England schools,
my religious knowledge was chiefly composed of the text
of the Catechism, of the Collects, and of the Christian
Year, Old Testament history, and a few parables, weak
health hindering me from going to a public school. I
studied from about fourteen and a half years to seventeen

87

88 ROADS TO ROME.

and a half years at home, going afterwards to tutors, and
finally, for four years, to Oxford. The home part of this
period increased my acquaintance with the text of Holy
Scripture, both Old and New Testaments, for it was the
custom at home to read the Psalms and Lessons every
day. Yet, in spite of this head knowledge, and in spite
of the " good home," I had, up till sixteen and a half years
old, the vaguest ideas of God, scarcely any of the Blessed
Trinity, or of the Incarnation. Sunday was tedious to me,
and prayer a form. Confirmation and Communion were
not thought suitable until after sixteen. Still, I owe this
to the home training: an intimate acquaintance with the
English and the subject-matter of the Bible. Reading for
Honours in the Theological School at Oxford made me
further familiar, not only with the English, but, in the
New Testament, with the Greek text, and I became, I
may say, so drenched with Holy Scripture, that it ran off
me at my very fingers* ends. At sixteen and a half an
entirely new light broke in upon me, and in it I was able
to see that the Bible had a soul as well as a body, and,
after that date, I added to a knowledge of the text, a deep
appreciation of the mind of Holy Scripture.

About this time I reached a turning in the way, which
took me out of the gloom in which I was walking and
showed me a new country. It was called " Religion," but
was quite different to the country which I had hitherto
thought was "Religion," and which I had voted dreary
and uninteresting. This new view, now spreading before
me, was, on the contrary, bright and fascinating. The
"wicket-gate" by which I entered it was "St. Michael's,
Brighton," where the services, though out of the same

ROADS TO ROME. 89

Prayer-book as we had at " St John the Baptist's," were yet
as different as a fine day is from a wet one. I became
OHiverted at once. Yes, it was a case of instantaneous
conversion. I was introduced to Mr. Beanlands, the
Incumbent of St. Michael's, at the house of the Rev. John
Purchas, whither a friend took me for an evening party.
I took to Mr. Beanlands and he to me. I went to his
churchy and from that day until I became attached to St.
Bartholomew's, I loved that little church with a passionate
devotion, being never happy away from it. I became
detached from my home in a degree which would not be
commended to a Catholic, and spent every spare moment
at St Michael's. Its friends became mine ; its religion
mine. There I made my first Communion on a Maundy
Thursday, having been prepared for it and for Confirmation
by Mr. Beanlands. My view of Religion, now that I had
turned that comer and had passed through the wicket-gate,
was quite changed. It became my one absorbing subject ;
not merely feasting my eyes with bright ritual, nor my
ears with beautiful hymns and " Mass "-music, but really
changing my heart, turning it to and throwing it upon
One Whom hitherto I had only known by name — Jesus
Christ, Son of God, Saviour. The influence of St. Michael's
upon me was good, very good, at the time, and for the
future. Undoubtedly, it led to my future being a Catholic
one.

As my home training had grounded me well in know-
ledge of the Bible, so the St. Michael's training introduced
me to the idea of a Church, and particularly to a delight
in Liturgical services. At first, my knowledge of these
was limited to the Matins and Evensong of the Prayer-book.

90 ROADS TO ROME.

Evensong became my beau-ideal of a Liturgical service,
and I still think it by far the best thing the Church of
England has got, and a very beautiful thing in itself.
Here, too, I got my first ideas of " Mass," and these ideas
were very richly clothed at St. Michael's, so that a banner
was easily deceived into supposing that the Anglican
G^mmunion service, dressed as it was at St. Michael's,
was really the Mass. In those days, however, the word
" Mass " was not so well known to me as it became after-
wards at St. Bartholomew's. The whole idea of the Real
Presence was new to me, and I was taken up with that,
without looking much into details.

During my four years at Oxford my love for St.
Michael's never waned, and in the vacations I was always
there. Whilst in residence I was assiduous in attendance
at chapel (Exeter College), and was in the choir. I easily
dropped into a quiet set, and my friends were T. B. Dover,
George Dover (afterwards a Catholic), Sidney Little (after-
wards a Catholic), W. Lovell (afterwards a Catholic),
Egerton Harding (afterwards a Catholic), the two Adyes,
the two Moores (sons of the Rev. Daniel Moore), George
Druitt, and J. M. Davenport. The last named and I
were great friends, and it was he who brought me into
contact with the Cowley Fathers, whom I got to know
very well. He and I at one time used to start off
every morning (often in the dark) down the " High," over
Magdalen Bridge, and along the Iffley Road to the
" Monastery," and there join with the Fathers in " Prime,"
coming back in time for College Chapel at eight. At first
my favourite "outside" church was St. Philip and St.
James', but later I went to St Barnabas'. I had a district

ROADS TO ROME. 91

in Holy Trinity parish, though the vicar there, Mr. Linton,
was " low ; ** but Edmund Garnet, a deacon, was attached
ther^ and he and I became great friends until he ''went
over," Happily we were able afterwards to renew and
increase our friendship in the bosom of the Catholic Church,
when I found him as Father Garnet of the Oratory.

The most important event of my spiritual life, during
my sojourn at Oxford, probably was my introduction to the
principal of Cuddesdon College, Dr. King. To him I was
persuaded to pay a visit and to make my first confession.
I went full of trepidation and came back full of joy. From
that time till my conversion, Dr. King's influence was
strong with me. I saw much of him and of Cuddesdon
during my sojourn at Garsington, close by, where I spent
the last " Long " reading for Honours. After taking my
degree, I went to Cuddesdon (January, 1872) and read
"Theology" there, till my ordination as Deacon in May.
I became a fervent disciple of the " Principal " along with
most of my companions. The influences of Oxford and
Cuddesdon were to make me loyally Anglican. I had
once at Oxford had a Roman flt when Monsignor Capel
made a raid and captured George Dover and others. But
it passed away, J. M. Davenport being very Anglican and
at that time my chief friend.

The last period I have to deal with is my time at St.
Bartholomew's, Brighton, to the curacy of which I was
appointed in 1872. My time of hard reading was now
over for six years, and I plunged into work among the
poor with great eagerness. Though a convinced Anglican,
I was extreme in spite of the influence of Dr. King.
Leanings to Rome had begun, though I cannot remember

92 ROADS TO ROME.

how. But I know that the Bishop of Chichester had
thought it necessary to have a quiet talk with me after
my examination for either Deacon's or Priest's Orders,
because, in one paper, I had given it as my opinion that
Transubstantiation was a possible explanation of '' This is
My Body."

I was at St. Bartholomew's for six years all but two
or three months, and my time, interests, head and heart
were absorbed in the services, schools, confraternities,
clubs, entertainments, etc, of the parish. Yet through all
the happy hubbub of children's voices, bright evenings,
processionals and recessionals. High Celebrations, school-
treats, choir breakfasts, concerts and entertainments, there
was a word which rang ever and louder in my ears, and
that word was ROME.

Somehow it seemed to me to rhyme with " Home " (as,
indeed, it did). When I come to search for the influence
which drew me to Rome, it seems to me that it was
something external to myself. Rome pulled me to
herself. It was the hand of my mother which would not
let me go. There were hundreds pulling at me to
prevent my going : my mother who bore me and brought
me up, and who loved me even more than I loved her
(if that were possible) ; my family, my flock. " I am so
fast in prison that I cannot get forth." Chains bound me
tightly to the Church of England: every convert knows
how it hurts to wrench one's self away from these chains.
Yet, all the while, something was pulling, pulling away
from the Church of England. Was there anything push-
ing as well as pulling ? Well, yes, the state of the Church of
England, its divisions, its want of discipline, the arguments

ROADS TO ROME. 93

which a Catholic can bring against it All these, no doubt,
pushed But I think I was pulled rather than pushed.
A voice was calling me, a grace was drawing me which, in
spite of the many voices b^ging me to stay where I was,
obliged me at length to break away. It was not, I think,
so much di^fust with the Church of England as love for
the Church of Rome. I became, during my time at St.
Bartholomew's, better acquainted with the devotions and
the teaching of the Catholic Church. At my ordination,
the chaplain of Cuddesdon College had given me as a
present the " Paradisus Animae Christianas." This thence-
forth became my daily companion instead of the " Treasury
of Devotion." I am sure that the prayers of that " Para-
disus" helped me as much as anything. I bought also
a ''Vade Mecum" and used that much. I purchased a
Missal and a Breviary, and began saying the Day Hours
in Latin every day. I also at this time read the Lives of
SL Dominic (by Lacordaire), of St. Francis of Sales,
the Cur^ d'Ars. All these gradually imbued me with the
spirit of the Catholic Church, and made me long in my
heart for it as an exile from home. Only the journey
was difficult, and had I the courage to make it ?

I dreaded the journey, and tried to find excuses. " So-
and-so, so-and-so, so-and-so ; therefore I cannot come."
Fortunately I could not say, " I have married a wife, and

therefore " I only had myself to look after, which

immensely simplified the problem. To the married clergy-
man and even lay-person, how terribly is the trial aggra-
vated ! I must bolster myself up. Let me look around
for stuff (the word sounds satirical in this connection !) to
put into my bolster. The Branch theory, will that do?

94 ROADS TO ROME.

Dead leaves. I had been taught it, of course. I had seen
it flourishing like a green bay tree. But now, " I went by,
and lo! it was gone. I sought it, but its place could
nowhere be found." Once I sang the song, "Woodman,
spare that tree!^ Since then my common sense had
become the woodman, and the tree had come down. I
had become convinced that Rome was the real centre of
the real Christendom. We in the Church of England
were cut off — at least were outside the circle. But where
I was, I was not by my choice. I was where, apparently,
God had put me. Ought I not to remain ? But could I
remain and yet be a Catholic ? Well, could I not imagine
that God had work for me to do where I was ? Was He
limited to that circle around Rome ? Did He not wish all
to be drawn in, and might not I, and others of like ideas,
help to draw the Church of England, or at least a part of
it, into that circle ? We could reach where Rome could not.
We could work for Rome from outside. How dishonest !
Traitors within the camp I So, many said. But wait a
minute. Were there not such things as Uniat Churches ?
Why not an English Uniat Church? The Pope might
arrange it — for us advanced Anglicans, at all events. He
might allow priests already married to remain married ; a
vernacular Liturgy for those who preferred it, and some
such concessions. Anything short of the pain of complete
separation from our old ties and associations. And were
there not signs that the Holy Spirit was working in the
Church of England? How otherwise account for the
wonderful movement upward which we had witnessed, in
which we had taken some part ? Had we not felt grace
in our confessions, our communions? Had we not seen

ROADS TO ROME. 95

that virtae had gone out of us in our confessionals ?
Sufely we could work for God and the Catholic Church
where we were, at least for a time — even though Rome
was the centre. And lastly, in spite of the many clerical
witnesses against us, were we not priests — sacerdotes f The
Pope had never distinctly condemned Anglican Orders. I
could not give up my Orders, but if I " went over " I should
have to ; I should be reckoned a mere layman.

Up to the last day of my ministry in the Church of
England, I believed in my Orders. It was the last rope
to which I clung. That did not snap till the final day ;
and then? The rolling, tossing sea; the blackness of
storm ; the danger of being lost ; until, through the mercy
of God, He set my feet upon the rock and ordered my
goings. But the shipwreck came before the last rope
snapped. The ship in which I had been sailing for well-
nigh thirty years, in which I had been comfortably happy,
where I had found work and comrades equally congenial,
where I had a comfortable cabin, and in which I had hoped
to reach the last port without changing,— this ship broke up
under me. The storm burst midway in the reading of the
"Apologia." When the last page was reached — indeed
before, I was a castaway. I could not resist the logic of
the great thinker, the great convert. He held out as long
as he could, but /tad to let go. So must I. It was painful
holding on by that one rope ; but I did for more than a
year. Other ropes, too, were tugging hard — " the cords of
a man;" my love for my family and my people. They
pulled at my heart My mind still clung to the hope that
I was a priest Meantime, Rome was drawing, drawing
still. Who was that in the October of my last year,

96 ROADS TO ROME.

drawing so gently, yet so strongly — in the month of his
Feast, too, though I knew it not ? Ah I it was St Francis
of Assisi. In my last retreat at Cowley I took in with me
the Life of St. Francis by St. Bonaventura and read it —
a new Saint to me. He won me to himself completely.
And when one of the Cowley Fathers, whose name I will
not mention, spoke disparagingly to me of this Saint, of
whom my heart was now full, I was indignant, and there and
then said within myself, " I will never come into this house
(Cowley) again." And I never did. His was the influence
— ^his, St. Francis* — which I am sure, under God, drew me
at length to the shore. Four months afterwards. Pope Pius
IX. died. I read with intense eagerness every detail about
that last illness and death, and was impressed with the
world-wide interest displayed in the Pope. On the
Monday, or Monday week, afterwards, the senior curate of
St. Bartholomew's, my dear friend, expressed the thought
that he must go away to think things over. He doubted
if he could hold out. He and I, I should say, had walked
together in the same direction for a long time, and I doubt
not that he helped me immensely in my own journey.
But my duty is only to speak of my own. The next
morning, Tuesday, after celebrating the Communion, and
whilst coming down the steps, I seemed to hear a voice,
at least with the ears of my mind, saying, " You are not a
priest, you are not a priest " — perhaps only the echo of my
own fears. All day long the same voice persisted, and in
the evening I came to the conclusion that I too would
go away with my friend and think it all out — away from
the distractions of work. We left Brighton on the Satur-
day, remained together quietly with some friends until

ROADS TO ROME.

97

Ash Wednesday, when we went to Manresa Roehampton.
There we made a little retreat, and on the Eve of St
Gregory^ 1878, Father George Porter (God rest his soul I)
received us into the Church.

Looking back upon the road which led to this happy
portal, I find that it may be divided into four stages: (i)
Home, (2) St Michael's, (3) Oxford and Cuddesdon, (4) St.
Bartholomew's. Each stage was a step forward and higher,
and I may perhaps give the steps these names: (i) The
Bible, (2) Evensong, (3) Anglicanism, (4) Romeward. And
then Civitas Dei.

II

W. D. GAINSFORD. Esq., J.R,

Of Skbndleby Hall, Spilsby.

I AM not| strictly speaking, a convert ; since I belong to
a family always Catholic, and was myself baptized and
educated a Catholic But as I lived for many years as a
Protestant, professed myself an Anglican, and honestly
thought I was one, perhaps my experience may be not
less useful than that of a convert properly so called.
Anyhow, to tell it will be a small penance.

The outcome of twenty-eight years' honest trial of
Anglicanism is the conviction that its fons et origo malt
is far more serious and far more deeply rooted than
Catholics usually suppose. When remorselessly probed to
the bottom, I found it to be nothing less than a positive
(though unconscious) disbelief in a present supernatural.

I mean that Anglicans do not believe in any super-
natural existence hie et nunc.

They believe there was a supernatural creation and a
supernatural Incarnation, and that in days long ago physics
and miracles were mixed up in a very perplexing manner ;
and, moreover, they believe that a similar condition of
things will again arise at the Last Day.

* 98

ROADS TO ROME. 99

Buty kic it nunc, all is understandable enough. Both
God and the devil, no doubt, exist somewhere, but they
don't interfere with the decent order of things here below
nowadays.

Of course, no Anglican would admit that to be his
belief; he would most strenuously deny it. But such is
really his unconscious conviction — the real belief on which
his life and conduct are based.

That such is so is apparent in many outward indica-
tions ; e^. by his contemptuous rejection of all latter-day
miracles— though he readily admits the principle of miracle
formerly ; by his disbelief in the intercession ojf saints —
which really means that he does not believe the saints to
be now actually existing in Heaven ; by his disbelief in
prayer for the dead, and the general doubt of any conscious
existence between death and the Last Judgment {i.e. no
supernatural state now) ; and lastly, by his utter repudiation
of all notion of sacerdotalism (by which I mean the
administration of supernatural power through human beings
and the existence of supernatural function in a material
object).

For a long time I held these rationalistic prejudices,
without realizing that it is upon an exclusively materialistic
basis alone that such can be held consistently.

I believe that the great majority of educated Anglicans
hold similar views in utter unconsciousness of the principles
thereby necessarily implied, and that they are denying all
supernatural existence, were they but consistent

Educated Anglicans, for the most part, take too little
interest in such matters to analyze their concrete opinions,
and to arrive at the principles on which they are founded.

2,Z^Qi<c{

100 ROADS TO ROME.

But there are a few who do so, and some of these
leading Anglican thinkers I have had the advantage of
conversing and of corresponding with.

I find that these eventually fall without an exception
into two classes (i>. when they do not join the Church).
Either —

1. They become actual agnostics, or even positive dis-
believers, regarding religion as no more than a popular
fancy, useful in promoting morality and humanitarianism ;
prayer, for instance, held to have no objective validity, but
to be an excellent exercise for inducing subjectively a
moral frame of mind ; and Christian dogma being legendary
folk-lore, more valuable in the government and guidance
of the uneducated. Or —

2. If their faith be strong enough to hold out against
what they conceive to be their reason, they give up the
question in despair, saying, "Well, our religion is not
satisfactory. I can make out nothing clear or straight-
forward. But it's the best I know, and I must believe
something."

For my own part, I took the first line. The super-
natural seemed to me to contradict reason, and since God
had given me reason. He could not intend me to act in
defiance of it.

In a lucky moment I read Kant's " Critique of the Pure
Reason," and when I could understand what he meant
(which took two years), I saw that reason was limited,
and moreover that beyond its scope there was still an
existence, or at least the possibility of such.

So that, after all, there was not, nor could there ever
be, any contradiction between reason and revelation.

ROADS TO ROME.

lOI

So the difficulty vanished, and I was able to be a
Catholic again.

What all really thoughtful Anglicans have found out,
or are finding out, is that Protestantism is positively irra-
tianalf but that there is existing a supernatural system
which is not irrational^ but is ultra-rational.

Such is the pith of ray story.

The Rev. W. T. GORMAN, B.A.,

Royal University of Ireland, Queen's College, Belfast ; formerly
Curate of St. Luke's, Cambridge, and Novice S.S.J.E., Cowley,
Oxford ; St. Mary's, Kinnoul, Perth, N.B.

It is obviously impossible, in a short space, to do more
than briefly indicate the leading consideration which the
Holy Spirit used to bring one into His true fold : to do
more would need a volume, and the analytical pen of a
Newman. The religious position in which I was for many
years was that which is most conveniently described as
that of the most ** extreme" school of the Church of
England. I had grasped early in life the Catholic principle
of the authority of the Church {congregata vel dispersd) as
the only basis on which a secure belief could rest, and I held
and taught the Infallibility of the Universal Church as a
necessary consequence of our Lord's promises. So in every
part of theology but one I employed Catholic methods, and
followed, as best I could, approved Catholic writers. There
was no Catholic doctrine or practice which I did not strive
to teach, as far as was possible, to those whom I had
opportunity to influence, except Indulgences, which could
have no practical place in any tenable Anglican theory
of jurisdiction. The part of my theolc^, however, where,

103

ROADS TO ROME. 103

iina»)sdously, I abandoned Catholic methods, and took
to the ways of the most thoroughgoing Protestantism,
was in that fundamental and important part, viz. the
definition of the true Church. Under the influence of
prejudice and early teaching, I looked upon the Catholic
view of the Church and the claims of the Holy See as a
question very little more open to discussion than the re-
volution of the earth round the sun. The Anglican and
the Eastern Churches were as surely parts of the Catholic
Church as was the Roman Church, and it was to the
consentient teaching of all three parts that I looked for
my authority in faith and morals. The proof of this
theory of the Church was chiefly negative, and drawn from
Anglican books of controversy, but I contented myself
with a more or less superficial study of the question, on
the perfectly reasonable plea that my duties in large and
poor parishes did not leave me sufficient leisure, even had
I the ability, for a careful investigation at first hand. My
only answer to Anglicans who had doubts as to their
position was: "The whole question is so difficult and
involved that we ordinary and busy people must leave
large tracts of it to experts. We have got the Apostolic
ministry, and valid Sacraments, and the submission to the
Holy See is far too serious a step to take on a mere doubt"
So far was I from seeing the real issues involved, and the
inherent absurdities of my position. It cam>s to pass, in
the good providence of Grod, that several people of ordinary
education, and of the most conspicuous singleness of
purpose, came to consult me early in 1900 on doubts that
they had as to their safety in the English Church. I
was thinking one day how strange it was that such souls

104 ROADS TO ROME.

should be troubled about the very foundation of their
faith, and was casting about for some legitimate ground of
justification for telling them to put their doubts away as
a temptation, when the Holy Spirit brought to my recol-
lection Isaiah's prophecy of the Church (ch. xxxv.), with its
promise that " the wayfaring man, though a fool, shall not
err therein." Well as I had known the words before, it
was then for the first time that I saw their force, and
that they contained the answer to my perplexity. The
finding of the true Church of God (and the consequent
certainty about revealed truth) was not really a matter
for learned investigation at all, otherwise there could be
no responsibility to find it resting on almost any one, and
the only alternative was the ultra-Protestant dogma, " One
Church is as good as another." God had promised by
His prophet that the "fool" — ^the ordinary unlearned
person — should be able (at the very least) to find the
Catholic Church, and so with certainty to avoid error. So
the actual facts of the realization gained a new meaning —
" To the poor the gospel is preached ; " " How hardly
shall they that have riches enter the Kingdom of Heaven I "
" Except ye be converted, and become as little children^ ye
shall in no wise enter the Kingdom of Heaven." The
marks or signs which God had given by which to dis-
tinguish the true Church from all false religions must
absolutely be of such a character that they would appeal
to, and be discernible by, "the fool," "the poor," "the
little children," and all other considerations were simply
beside the point So that it was quite certain that what-
ever difficulties might be raised (and one must expect
many), there must be a satisfactory answer to them, and

ROADS TO ROME. 105

one was not merely entitled, but bound, to trust Almighty
God about them.

I therefore had to look, in a candid and simple way,
for the body which obviously and clearly presented those
characteristics which God had appointed to be the signs
or marks of His Church — Unity, Sanctity, Catholicity,
and Apostolicity. Any body which failed in any one of
these points might be dismissed at once, and, unless Christ's
promises had failed utterly, there must be a Church which
showed them unmistakably. They must be, moreover, signs
or marks of such an evident character as to be real guides
to unlearned people of ordinary common sense, and not
merely spiritual properties, necessitating proof from other
considerations ; for this would be to reverse the Divine
method under the dispensation of the Incarnation, and to
make them something quite different from marks or notes.

So, still more or less under the influence of my old
habits of thought, and with every desire to justify the
Church of England, I began slowly and laboriously to
apply this test to her. I could hardly bring myself to
believe that Christ's gospel was so simple, and so I tried
to turn the matter over in every possible way, endeavour-
ing to And some weak spot in the argument, or to make
the English Church flt in with it. But it could not be
done. Not merely in one, but in all of the four notes of
the Church, she broke down. Obviously she was not one^
either by herself, or even still more obviously, with that
which her keenest advocates acknowledged to be the " rest
of the Catholic Church," in any such sense that could
appeal to those to whom the appeal lay, so that the plain
evidence of one's senses had to say, when the fact was

io6 ROADS TO ROME.

pointed out, ** Yes I the English Church and the Roman
Church and the Greek Church obviously form one external
body." It was only by a logical hysteron-proteran that the
many good people to whom I went for help, could meet
my difficulty: "We have the Sacraments, therefore we
are united to Christ the Head, therefore we are one
with all Catholics." But the Sacraments are guaranteed
by the Unity, and not vice versd (not to dwell on the fact
that the argument included equally well all Protestant
sects, and also assumed that a bishop could not fall into
schism). Moreover, the Anglican theory of unity involved
one in all sorts of absurdities as to jurisdiction {e.g. as was
pointed out to me by a dear and revered friend, very
obviously in the diocese of Montreal), and reduced matters
of faith to a question of geography.

Again, the note of Sanctity was not clearly shown by
the Anglican Church ; for even admitting all that could be
said about the possession of valid Sacraments, and the
ordinary type of sanctity in her people (which experience
would not let me admit), there was not even an attempt to
assert the heroic sanctity of any of the children of her
^ miscarrying womb and dry breasts," ever since the time
when the rest of Catholic Christendom asserted her schis-
matic position. While all the time the Catholic Church
had been bringing forth her eminent saints, whom every
one acknowledged, in great numbers, as St Teresa, St.
Alphonsus, St. Philip Neri, St Vincent de Paul, St Francis
Xavier ; and even in England, that which it was fashion-
able to call the " Italian Schism " had borne its ripe and
perfect fruits of a Blessed John Fisher, Thomas More, and
countless others.

ROADS TO ROME. 107

And likewise with the note of Apostolicity. Here it
was that most of all I departed from the simplicity of the
Divine method, and involved myself in reading and col-
lateral questions. The Primacy of Peter — was it of Divine
right, and such as the present occupant of the Throne of
the Fisherman asserted ? After the failure of the English
Church to exhibit Unity and Sanctity, it was not really
necessary to examine this point, for the present teaching
of God's Church must, by virtue of His promises, be in
accordance with her teaching from the beginning. How-
ever, one does not always see everything very clearly
while in the actual grip of a great question ; and so, that I
might leave nothing undone to gain still clearer grounds for
the action that seemed inevitable, I waded again through
the maze of the controversy as well as one who was very
far indeed from being competent for the task could do.
But to argument after argument I had to reply either
nikil ad renty or " How could it ever have imposed upon
me?" The absolute irrelevancy, even where they were
fair, of such books as " The Primitive Saints and the See
of Rome ; " the special pleading and astonishing misrepre-
sentation of Regius Professors when they tried to explain
away as " fulsome adulation " the utterances of CEcumeni-
cal Councils ; the sheer unabashed Protestantism of such
controversialists as Canon Gore ; — all became, step by step,
in God's mercy, clear to me. The one fact that stood out
as the sun in a cloudless sky was that, in order to over-
throw the claims of Leo XHI. to my submission and
allegiance, I should have to admit methods of argument in
the interpretation of Holy Scripture, of the Fathers, and of
tradition, which would tell with infinitely greater weight

io8 ROADS TO ROME.

against every Catholic doctrine which I held dear, and
would bring me with irresistible force to a sheer agnos-
ticism. With what relief and gratitude one kept listening
to the words of the good priest who later on received me
into the Church: "Remember, our Lord really did say,
' Tu es Petrus: "

* Of course the matter was then ended ; for the positive
side, the recognition of all the notes of the Church, clearly,
evidently, and indisputably in the Holy Roman Church had
proceeded /^jrZ/^jw with the perception of their absence in
the Anglican body. No one who accepted Catholic prin-
ciples made any serious attempt to deny her possession of
them ; that she was One, Holy, Catholic, Apostolic, was
obvious to the man in the street, once the terms were ex-
plained to him and the fact pointed out. Plain hard fact as
to the actual belief even of those who rejected the Catholic
idea of the Church abundantly proved this.

Such, then, is the outline map of the way by which God
led me into the Fold of the Good Shepherd. I should have
liked to mark on it some of the pitfalls and bypaths which
He showed me, and enabled me to avoid ; and to expose
some of the counterfeit maps which well-meaning friends,
much more fit than I was to make the journey, tried to put
into my hands, for they deceive many ; but the limits
assigned me forbid.

The two chief things that the process of my conversion
has impressed on me are — that faith is the gift of God,

' For the sake of brevity I have omitted to speak of the note of Catholicity ;
more particularly as it was only the assumption that she was in the Unity of
the Church, and therefore must be Catholic, that had enabled me to explain
away the clear evidence to the contrary, and to teach and act as a Catholic in
the English Church.

ROADS TO ROME.

109

given according to the inscrutable mysteries of the Divine
Vocation ; and that the means to obtain it are in the hands
of eveiy one who perseveringly prays, and has recourse to the
unfailing patronage of our Blessed Lady, Sedes Sapientia.
** Thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent,
and hast revealed them unto babes." Fundamental truths,
indeed, and simple ; but, alas I put quite out of sight, from
the necessities of their position, by Anglican controver-
sialists.

HARTWELL DE LA GARDE
GRISSELL, Esq., M.A.,

Brasenose College, Oxford ; Cambrie&b d*Onore di Numero di

Sua SantitA.

It is difficult to touch, however briefly, on such a subject
as I am asked to write about, without appearing unduly
egotistical ; and I only do so in the hope that this slight
record of my experiences may be of use to others.

When an undergraduate at Brasenose College, Oxford,
in the early sixties, I became much interested in the High
Church Movement, and fell under the influence of Dr.
Liddon and other well-known leaders of the party. I
joined the English Church Union, and was a Secretary of
the Association for the Promotion of the Unity of Christen-
dom. I was admitted by Dr. Liddon into the Brotherhood
of the Holy Trinity, which was a society of which he was
Master, and which had been established for the promotion
of High Church principles within the University. I was in
the habit of attending compline every evening in a private
oratory which certain undergraduates used for devotional
purposes. In due course I, in company with a friend,
opened a private oratory on our own account, and several
Oxford clergymen were in the habit not only of taking part
in the services, but of celebrating the Holy Communion

no

ROADS TO ROME. in

there. In the year 1865 I was requested by Dr. Wilberforce,
the then Bishop of the Diocese, to discontinue these cele-
brations, and I at once obeyed his directions. About this
period I published a book on ceremonial, called ''Ritual
Inaccuracies, or Errors commonly made in the Celebration
of the Holy Eucharist" This was drawn up in the humble
belief that it would prove a means of insuring greater ritual
accuracy, and of teaching ritual to those who otherwise
might find the subject dry or difficult It was taken
almost entirely from Roman sources, and intended to help
my friends in their difficult endeavour to bring the rubrics
of the Protestant Communion Service into line with those
of the Roman Missal. This brought me into corre-
spondence with several Catholic priests whom I had con-
sulted on certain details of ceremonial ; and they very
naturally did their best to show me my illogical position.
I soon came to the conclusion myself that this exhumation
of scraps and snatches of an ancient rite, and the profane
distortion (as a Catholic friend had the courage of his
convictions to call it) of the rubrics of the Roman Missal
for the disguise of Protestant worship was little better than
an imposture. At the same time, my love for liturgical
studies, so far from leading me to become a Catholic, had
the very opposite effect, and I well remember, when at last
I made up my mind to join the Church, the regret I felt in
the thought that I should no longer be able to take part in
the Church of England services to which I was still so
greatly attached.

At the suggestion of the Rev. Father Edward Caswall
of the Birmingham Oratory, I commenced reading Catholic
books, both historical and dogmatic, among them being

112 ROADS TO ROME.

a vindication of the Primacy of the Apostolic See by Dr.
Kenrick, Archbishop of Baltimore ; and I came, after care-
ful study of the question, to the conclusion that the Church
of England, being a purely national church, could hardly
be considered Catholic and universal, in the sense of its
being the Divine teacher of all nations, and that it was in
schism. I believed nevertheless firmly in the priesthood of
the Anglican Church, and was sensible that I received grace
from her ordinances ; although, as I know now, such graces
derive their efficacy rather from the dispositions of the re-
cipient than from the ordinances themselves. At the same
time, I felt that even if her Orders were absolutely un-
doubted, it would be still my duty to get out of schism, just
as it is a man's duty to get out of any other wicked state.
The Catholic Church I knew from our Lord's promise was
one^ and could not be divided, although it could be diminished
in size. I began to see that at the Reformation it was not
divided but only diminished, and that there were still many
old Catholic families in England who had never ceased to
belong to the pre-Reformation Church and had kept the
faith, though the majority of the English people had fallen
away from it. I saw that its unity still remained, after this
loss, the same as before. I also learnt that the Catholic
Church is not so exclusive as is sometimes supposed, and
that while remaining one and undivided by reason of her
Divine institution, she includes within her borders very
many more than those belonging to her visible communion.
For a while I hoped that I myself was but in invincible
ignorance, and might belong at least to the soul of the
Church, although not actually united to her corporate body.
St. Augustine says there are many wolves within the fold

ROADS TO ROME. 113

and many sheep without, and I felt satisfied, as I still am,
that many of my Protestant friends and relations were
living in union with God and in a state of grace. I felt,
on the other hand, that any bodies which formally separated
themselves from union with Rome, ceased to be in the
visible Church, which would still remain one, in spite of
their departure, though numerically smaller. I at last
seriously asked myself: Am I in that good faith which
would allow me to be reckoned as invisibly united with
the One Visible Church? Am I ready to obey those
promptings which invite me to abandon my present sec-
tarian position, or is there some secret influence at work
which prevents me from listening to them? Prayer at
length obtained for me the inestimable happiness of sub-
mitting myself to the Church, and of obtaining thereby
the full certitude of my possessing undoubted and valid
sacraments, and the enjoyment of that peace on earth
which the true old faith can alone assure.

I should like to say, in reference to one's attitude
towards those outside the Church, that I have always felt
that argument and controversy more often provokes than
does good. We should endeavour, it seems to me, to show
our separated brethren that we Catholics love truth for the
truth's sake, and that we sympathize with the struggles of
those who are groping their way towards the light I feel
persuaded that merely controversial victories and smart
sayings in many cases repel rather than attract Men are
convinced not so much by reasoning as by a clear conception
of positive truth. As Cardinal Newman so justly remarks,
false ideas may be refuted hy argument, but only by true
ideas can we hope to expel them.

I

The Rev. H. F. HALL,

Op the Pro-Cathedral* Kensington, W.

I AM bound to regard myself as belonging to the
category of the least worthy of those who have come
home to the Church from the ranks of Protestantism ; for
inclination, with me, preceded grace.

My childhood's training was not such as directly to
encourage a Catholic bent except in two particulars. My
father sometimes took me to the Children's Benediction at
St. Joseph's Old Church, Highgate, and there I received my
first impressions — and a very impressionable mind I always
had — of Catholic worship. Later on, during annual visits
to Brighton, we used to visit High Churches upon Sunday.
This always seemed to me a very agreeable but rather
naughty proceeding, as became, perhaps, the relaxation of
holiday-time. Apart from these things, I was nurtured on
such food as is to be found in the Sunday at Home
and Scriptural picture-books. At all times "Pilgrim's
Progress" and the Bible were a delight to me. Perhaps
as the natural result of all this, and although my father
was a devout Churchman, I seemed to grow up with an
instinctive feeling that Dissenters were somehow or other

114

ROADS TO ROME. 115

really the best kind of Christians, but that Church was
much nicer ; while with regard to the Catholic Church,
my childish judgment was, I think, in a state of suspense
altogether, being always strangely attracted by a feeling
of its warmth and reality, yet tinged somewhat and repelled
by a lurid fire of seeming corruption and past tyranny.

I remember the relish with which I recited the clause
in the Nicene Creed, '' I believe in one Holy Catholic and
Apostolic Church," in which in some confused way I
thought we professed a sort of attachment to the Roman
Catholic Church ; and the same indefinite charm belonged
to the "Te Deum Laudamus," especially in the verses,
" The glorious company of the Apostles praise Thee. . . .
The noble army of Martyrs praise Thee. . . . The Holy
Church throughout all the world doth acknowledge Thee."
All these things brought to my mind pictures of majestic
beauty which I could not have expressed, but which I after-
wards saw reflected in the conceptions of Fra Angelico.
Between, I think, my tenth and thirteenth year I was
a choir-boy in the church of the parish. This was to
me at the time the summit of my ambition. A Mission
held, I believe, in the year 1883 at this church by a very
zealous country clergyman whose name I forget, but who
was, I know, of the strictly Evangelical type, gave me, I
think, my first real sense of spiritual responsibility, and at
about this time I was baptized. Strangely enough, during
these years I had been attending the Baptist Sunday
school, and there too I do not forget, even at this distance
of time, my indebtedness to a still respected inhabitant of
the district for his earnest and manly teaching and his
own personal goodness. Even more was I indebted, in

ii6 ROADS TO ROME.

after-years, to a Churchman in the parish, who on Sunday
afternoons held a Bible-class for young men in his own
house, to which work he sacrificed a large portion of his
only holiday — for he was a busy city man.

My indebtedness to my parents for the personal
example of their lives, and their real loving affection for
our Divine Saviour and the characters of Bible history —
among whom the holy name of Mary was held in honour,
in spite of Protestant prejudice — I can never properly
know or appreciate in this world.

At sixteen or seventeen years of age, my voice having
broken, I was free to attend some other church, and it
was then the subtle attraction for ornate service that drew
me off to a neighbouring High Church Mission : there I
entered with zest upon the work connected with the
worship of the Church, and there I was enlightened for
the first time as to what is called the Anglo-Catholic
position. Yet, while growing day by day to love more
and believe intensely the doctrines of the Real Presence, of
the Teaching Church, etc., I do not think I ever sincerely
accepted the High Church branch theory. I passed through
that phase in the space of two years or thereabouts, but my
nineteenth year found me a Catholic, and I was only kept
back so long by the influence of a friend, whom I hope I
am not wrong in believing to be sincerely good, but who
could never give me a satisfactory answer to the radical
difficulty — the absence of definite, living teaching, and
God-representing* authority. After the departure of my
friend from England, I was not long in taking the inevi-
table step. Some few things stand out conspicuously as
giving me a helping hand in that direction. The first was

ROADS TO ROME. 117

the action of a Wesleyan friend with whom I became ac-
quainted during a visit to Folkestone. Going with me to
the High Celebration at midday at the parish church —both
of us having comfortably breakfasted — he to my indignant
amazement walked up to the Altar rails and received the
Communion. Think of that to a High Churchman I A
Wesleyan, to him a schismatic and heretic, receiving the
Sacred Mysteries at midday on a well-filled stomach !

This incident was enough to revive all my perplexities
with a vengeance. I now began to read Roman Catholic
sermons ; and one sermon in particular by, I think, Bishop
Bagshawe, on the Unity of the Church, affected me very
deeply. For some long time, too, I had recited the " Ave
Maria " daily ; in fact, I took to Our Lady like a child to
its mother very soon after my High Church experience
began.

The greatest factor, however, of my preparation for the
Church was a visitation made by Cardinal Manning to the
church of the neighbouring Roman Catholic Mission. I
attended the High Mass, and with the man's history
and his ever-present personality in my mind, his ascetic
and emaciated form and features ; the princely and yet
tender pastoral bearing — the glory of his pontifical dress
making him look like one of the old stained-glass figures
which I loved so much ; — the beautiful simplicity of his
homily on the Gospel of the day : all these things drew
me like a magnet ever nearer and nearer. Inclination was
all towards the Church. The will moved by grace — as I
firmly believe and know — was not long behind. I spoke
to the priest : it was the first time to my knowledge that
I had ever spoken to a real Catholic. I thought in my

ii8 ROADS TO ROME.

simplicity he would receive me into the Church the next
morning. Instead of that he said, '' This is a grave step,
my boy, and requires prayer and preparation. I will lend
you a book to read." Though it mortified and humbled
me, there could not have been an attitude more calculated
to confirm me in my resolution if confirmation were
wanted. It was my first experience of the thorough
genuineness and reality of Catholicism, and was fraught
with influence for good. After a time of careful instruction
I had the happiness of becoming a Catholic There is no
need to speak at length of the intense joy and freshness
of one's neoph)rte days. The buoyancy, the light-hearted
Christian gaiety of that time, is common, I suppose, to
most converts; but it is a time to look back to with
gratitude to Almighty God, and it ought to be a constant
source of strength and confidence in the future.

It was some few years afterwards that I received the
unspeakable additional grace of vocation to the priest-
hood.

P.S. — Perhaps I ought to add that the most astonishing
thing in my conversion to my parents and friends was, I
believe, my perseverance in it ; for I had always been
fond of " some new thing," and oflener than not I wearied
of any undertaking directly use or reflection had sobered
my first enthusiasm.

Mrs. C. H.,

Tbrtiary of thb Order of St. Dominic

I WAS brought up under strictly Evangelical influences,
and looked upon religion as an affair to be confined to
Sundays^ and to perhaps a few week-day services in Lent.
I was glad to escape from it at other times as a dreary bore
indeed. But at length I chanced to stray, on a certain
Ash Wednesday, into a Ritualistic church — one of the
first to introduce ornate services and to teach some measure
of Catholic doctrine in the American city in which I then
resided. I was bewildered and fascinated at the same
time. Could this be the service I had been listening to all
my life ? How different the pretty altar, with its cross
and candles, and the clergymen in their purple vestments,
to the " three-decker " pulpit and reading-desk combined,
of good old St. M.'s, to the parson in his Geneva gown and
bands, and, ye gods! black silk gloves I The gilt rays
over the tables of commandments, supposed to represent
a glory but strongly suggesting an arrangement of brass
stair-rods ; Jackson's " Te Deum ; " " Greenland's icy moun-
tains," and the like ; — how different these from the sweet
harmonies of the vested choir, which, to my enraptured

119

120 ROADS TO ROME.

eyes, might have been the very white-robed army of
martyrs itself. Then the, to me, mysterious decorations
and pictures of St A/s— stations and the like, as I soon
after discovered them to be, — ^what a revelation they were !
For the first time in my life it struck me that there might
be something interesting in religion, and I determined
to frequent for the future the free seats of St. A.'s —
another delightful contrast to the locked-up pews I had
been used to. It was not, however, till some two years
later that I became acquainted with the Rector of St A«'s,
and that I made some dear and intimate friends in the
altar and other societies. It was to one of these friends
that I owed my acquaintance with Catholic writings,
and my earliest doubts as to the truth and reality of
" Anglo-Catholicism."

The "Introduction to the Devout Life" was the first
Catholic work I had ever seen, and, while reading it, the
thought came home to me: "If this good bishop (St
Francis) were now living, and I were to tell him how
much I was impressed by his book, I think he would say
to me : ' If you like my book so much, why don't you
belong to my Church?'" Shortly after, however, asking
the Rector of St A.'s to explain to me just what was the
Catholic Church, and in what way he and I were members
of it, I was told of the "branch theory," which, for the
time, satisfied me. But there came a disturbing incident
Attending another Episcopal church, and making a genu-
flexion to the altar, as I had been taught to do at St A.'s,
I heard it said afterwards that there had been a crazy lady
at service last Sunday, who must have thought she was
in a Catholic church ! Then came the famous " Gorham

ROADS TO ROME. 121

decision," and again I was troubled to the utmost. Could
this be the true Church, with authority to teach, wherein
every teaching, from the Real Presence to the non-essen-
tiality of Baptism, could flourish side by side ? For the first
time I read over the Thirty-nine Articles, and saw at once
how completely they were at variance with the tenets of the
Rector of St. A.'s, and thought : Can a man be honest who
has subscribed all this, and yet preaches the doctrines he
does ? But now God in His great mercy prepared the way
for me still further by means of a series of most eloquent
sermons — I do not remember the author's name — on the
parable of the Prodigal Son. While reading these one
evening, all at. once a powerful conviction came over me
that I had never known what it was to have real contrition,
that I had never realized that I was a sinner, who had
need to draw near to God in deepest humility to implore
His pardon, and that I did not even know how this
coming to Him must be accomplished. I felt I must
have help and counsel ; and the following day I hastened
to pour my trouble into the ear of the Rector of St. A.'s.
He advised me to come to him for confession. I hope
and trust the poor man sincerely believed that he had
a right to receive such a confession, and that he could
truly impart absolution. Certainly / was too ignorant
even to wonder where, and from whom, he had got
his faculties. The remedy was tried, and I tasted a
partial peace ; but the more I thought and read, the more
my mind misgave me. At last, in a crisis of anxiety, and
of even positive terror as to my spiritual state, I took a
desperate resolve. I would go to a real Catholic priest
and make my confession. Little did I dream that what I

122 ROADS TO ROME.

thought of doing would be hardly less than a sacrilege 1
I bought a Catholic Prayer-book — it was "The Catholic's
Vade Mecum," I remember — and carefully read over the
" confiteor " and " examen of conscience ; " then I slipped
one afternoon into the nearest Catholic church, having given
notice at the presb)rtery that I wished to go to confession.
Thank God ! the priest must have suspected that something
was wrong, for, after hearing what I had to say, he replied,
" I cannot give you absolution ; you must go away now,
and return another time." I went home bewildered, and
almost in despair, when it dawned upon me what I had
done — that I had attempted to steal a Sacrament^ so to
speak. There remained but one logical conclusion to the
matter: — I must seek admission to the Catholic Church,
if I was ever again to know peace of mind. I knew no
priest personally, but I had heard of the late Father Hecker
and his community, and I thought : He is a convert ; he
would be more likely to understand a convert's difficulties
than a bom CathoUc. A letter addressed to this holy
priest elicited the reply, that he was himself too ill just
then to receive me, but that if I would ask at the convent
for Father A. or Father H., either would gladly give me
all the information I desired. I at once hastened to avail
myself of this permission.

The first thing that struck me, on entering the Paulist
house, was the look of poverty and austerity that pervaded
it. I was shown from a bare entry into a carpetless room,
furnished only with a table, two wooden chairs, and a
cheap crucifix against the wall. What a contrast to the
luxurious drawing-room of the Rector of St A.'s ! Father
H. entered the room, wearing his biretta. I thought : How

ROADS TO ROME, 123

strange, and how very rude, that he does not remove his
hat in presence of a lady ! However, I said, " Father, I
am thinking of being received into your Church. I am
ahready well instructed, but there are some little points of
your faith I feel I don't quite understand."

''Yes, my child, we will begin with the Creeds if you
please ! "

I was taken by surprise! To be told I did not so
much as understand the Creed! There seemed nothing
for it but to attend to the instructions of this masterful
man, who spoke "as one having authority." But not
quite prepared as yet for unconditional surrender, I soon
recovered sufficiently to ply him with questions, many and
various. Puigatory — ^that was a sad stumbling-block;
did it not seem to set at nought our Lord's atonement ?
St Joseph — ^who was he in particular? and why did the
Church make so much of him.^ (God and St Joseph
foigive me!) Then reh'cs. Did he, an educated gentle-
man, a graduate of Oxford (I soon found he was an
Englishman), mean to tell me that /te really attributed
any virtue to a parcel of old bones? And as to the
Rosary — no, indeed ! I would never use t/iat That was
only for the old women who couldn't read! But still I
continued to visit the good Father at frequent intervals,
and, one by one, found my objections melting away, and
my convictions of the truth deepening. At last I said :
"Father, I ought to tell you that I have been going to
confession to the Rector of St. A.'s, and, before I go any
further with you, I think it would be only fair to let him
know that I have nearly decided on leaving the Anglican
Church." To this Father H. courteously agreed, and the

124 ROADS TO ROME.

next day I called, for the last time, at the beautiful rectory,
and frankly told my story. But oh, what a tempest I
stirred up ! The rector raged ; he stamped about the
room ; he used such intemperate language against the
Church that I could not but think : Is this the conduct of
a humble, charitable Christian ? Finally, as a crowning
argument, he exclaimed, "You are going from a clean
Church into a dirty one ; there are so many poor^ dirty
people attending Romish churches " !

This was a touch too much. "Sir," I said, rising, "I
read in my Bible that one of the proofs Christ gave of
His mission was, that 'to the poor the gospel is preached.*
I am very glad to know there is a church to which the
poor are welcome. I wish you good morning." And I
beat a retreat, the rector shouting after me the pleasing
information that I was going straight to the devil. So
much for the " Branch theory ! "

Again I was seated in the poor little room at the
convent, telling all this to my new-found friend. Father H.
— for by this time I had come to feel that he was the
first real friend I had ever had — and after a short conver-
sation —

" Well," said he, " are you ready to be baptized } "

" Oh, I can't tell ! " I cried, much agitated and almost
in tears. "It seems such a tremendous, almost terrible,
change, now I am really come to the point."

" Oh, you be baptized, and the faith will soak in I " he
answered, in a quaint, comical way he had, which turned
my tears into cheery laughter.

Just at that moment a message was brought — " a poor
woman wanted to see him." He went into the adjoining

ROADS TO ROME. 125

room, and, as I sat awaiting his return, the following
thought came into my head — " Now, this good Father has
been very kind to you, but perhaps it was because he
thought he had secured a rich convert ; perhaps he is
short and disagreeable enough with this poor woman."
The doubt was overwhelming. I felt that everything
depended upon my knowing the truth, and I did a most
unladylike thing — I stole to the half-open door of the other
room, and listened ! But when I heard the pleasant, sym-
pathetic tones of Father H., when I found that he was just
as kind and patient towards the poor woman as he had
been to me, 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." And on Father H.'s return I said at once, " It
is all right now, Father ; I beg you to give me baptism as
soon as possible." So, in a few days more, I made my
general confession, and was reconciled to holy Mother
Church. I pass over the domestic storms in consequence
of my action — a light trial, indeed, compared with the
great grace I had received. Twenty-two years have passed
since then. Father H. still continues my fast friend, and
two of my dear children have consecrated themselves to
the service of God — the one in the cloister, the other at the
altar. Deo gratias^ et Maria semper Virgine I

The Rev. ERIC D. HANSON, M.A.,

Christ Church, Oxford ; Prikst of the Society of Jesus ;

Ancienne Abbaye, Belgium.

I HAVE been asked to describe the principal reasons which
led me, fourteen years ago, to embrace the Catholic religion.
The task is not a congenial one to me. No importance
whatever, except to myself, attaches to my conversion.
I was never in any sense before the public, as, for instance,
an Anglican clergyman is. If my narrative is an unpro-
voked display of egotism, I must leave the responsibility
with the editor of this volume, but for whose representa-
tions I should never have contemplated writing anything
of the kind. I am well aware that I can hardly fail to
offend many of my readers. Catholics will be displeased
on account of the intolerable slowness with which at length
I succeeded in arriving at a conclusion which to them has
always been as clear as day. Many Protestants will take
offence at the unpleasant things which, to my sincere
regret, I cannot avoid saying. And the wholly undenomi-
national and indescribable person, who is superior to any
kind of religious conviction, oflen has reasons of his own
for impartially disliking all people who, by a deliberate
change of faith, purely for conscience' sake, seem to imply

126

ROADS TO ROME. 127

that it is seriously worth a man's while to seek first the
kingdom of God and His justice, and that there is a right
and a wrong way in the service of Almighty God as in
most other matters. With all due apology to the reader,
therefore, I will b^n my story, which shall be as plain
and honest as I can make it

My home was in Protestant Clapham. The presiding
genius of the " Clapham Sect " or of its heirs and assigns,
guarded or rather haunted my childhood, and an un-
speakably gloomy and dismal tutelage was the result.
But at the age of fourteen I was rescued, religiously, by
a kind Providence, and brought under High Church
influences. After a prodigious amount of Bible-reading
and other studies, not commonly pursued by a public
schoolboy, I surrendered in course of time to the new
doctrines, and became, as I grew up, increasingly attached
to the High Church party, and really devoted to the prac-
tice and spread of what I believed to be the Catholic
religion. When I was seventeen I began going to con-
fession, a practice which was continued with exactness till
close upon my becoming a Roman Catholic at the age of
twenty-six — that is, long after I had ceased to believe in
Anglicanism, as will be seen in the sequel. At the least
it was a means of my making a good act of contrition, and,
until my mind had arrived at a positive and definite con-
clusion, I was unwilling to break with religious observance
externally. But this is anticipating. I became a member
of the " English Church Union," and an associate of the
" Confraternity of the Blessed Sacrament" It was a time
of many leg^l prosecutions for Ritualism, and I accepted
without question the theory maintained by the Ritualist

128 ROADS TO ROME.

party of the canonically illegal constitution of the tribunals
before which these ecclesiastical matters came for trial.
The Courts were incompetent because they were secular.
The Reformation Settlement had in no way compromised
the spiritual freedom of the Church of England. The
Judicial Committee of the Privy Council was secular in
origin, in authority, and in its members; the Church,
whether by Convocation or otherwise, had never sanctioned
or recognized such a tribunal Similar objections attached
to the Court presided over by Lord Penzance under the
P.W.R. Act

Now, it was the "discovery" (in the sense in which a
short-sighted man, or a man in a London fog, may be
said to "discover" the sun) of the historical absurdity
underlying this contention which was the first conscious
blow to my belief in Anglicanism. It gave me intense
pain. The discovery was merely the result of studying
patiently the Reformation period of our history. I found
that at no time since the breach with Rome was the final
Court of Appeal one whit less secular in its source and
authority than at present ; in short, I saw for the first time
that the Reformation Settlement was in this and many
other respects a rendering to Caesar of the things of God.
A forcible pamphlet by Mr. Dibdin (an expert authority
on the ecclesiastical Courts) chanced then to fall into my
hands. He criticized the E.C.U. thesis from the Erastian
standpoint, and quoted a passage from a charge of Arch-
deacon Palmer (the brother of the late Lord Selbome)
somewhat to this effect: "I am not aware that, at any
time since the separation from Rome, when ecclesiastical
Courts have been created or remodelled. Convocation has

ROADS TO ROME. 129

ever been consulted by the Crown or been allowed any
voice in the matter."

I submitted that sentence, which gave authority to my
own conclusions, to the late Archdeacon Denison, to the
Hon. C. L. Wood (now Viscount Halifax), and to several
other prominent persons, asking them whether they were
willing to admit the truth of the statement Further, I
urged that the whole of our case, based on the supposed
illegal character of the Courts, was rotten, so long as we
continued to appeal to the Reformation Settlement; in
honesty we were bound to avow that the Reformation was
against us, that it placed the Church in a condition of
shameful subjection to the State in things spiritual, and
especially in regard to legislative and judicial functions ;
we ought to admit frankly that we wanted a new Settle-
ment, a new Reformation.

Archdeacon Denison sent me two immensely long
letters, mainly concerned with his own personal history,
and leaving my plain question unanswered. Mr. Wood
also was misty and evasive. Two things became clear to
me: (i) That the Tudor Settlement of religion left the
spiritual independence of the Church at zero point; and
(2) that a frank admission of this, an avowed policy of
" undoing the Reformation," would be fatal to the position
of the E.C.U. Hence it did not surprise me that I
received evasive answers to my question. The conclusions
at which I had arrived did not necessarily point to Rome.
But I had come to see that I professed a State-made
religion ; I was a member of a Church made by the State
and controlled by the State. And a conviction of that
sort in the mind of a young and ardent High Churchman

K

130 ROADS TO ROME.

is disturbing. It was the first blow, but it did not mean
Rome yet.

The second blow came from a book ; it was a book
written by one of the deepest and clearest thinkers of our
age — a man whose secession to Rome was only second in
significance to that of John Henry Newman. Archdeacon
Wilberforce's " Principles of Church Authority ; or, Reasons
for withdrawing my Subscription to the Thirty-nine Arti-
cles/' which by a strange providence I found and read at
this time, has long been out of print The book might be
republished most advantageously with annotations by a
Catholic theologian. It would be unreasonable to expect
from an Anglican, however learned, a faultless treatment
of the theme which the first title indicates. Yet the value
of the book is immense. I remember its quiet dignity, its
calm theological tone, the scientific orderliness of the
argument, the patristic learning, the insistence on the
Church's living magisterium^ and on her essential and
inviolable unity in communion with and dependence upon
the Apostolic See of Rome ; and lastly, in his chapters on
the Royal Supremacy, the unanswerable demonstration
that the Reformation in England was mere State-craft,
that at every stage it was marked by the surrender of
inalienable spiritual prerogatives to Caesar, that it was
heretical and schismatical in the most exact sense of those
words as used by the Fathers; in short, that it was an
apostasy. And to these qualities of the book one must
add the personal element arising from the author's great
name and position, and from one's consciousness of the
immense sacrifice made to the sacred cause of truth by
this truly courageous confession of his faith.

ROADS TO ROME. 131

It has often been to me a melancholy reflection that
I could not see my way at this stage to beg for admission
into Christ's One Fold. But I felt alarmed at so great
a step. And I was alone, with none to guide me. Much
pressure was brought to bear on me by persons to whom
I owed great consideration. I resolved at length to enter
upon a course of protracted inquiry into all the principal
chaiges brought against Roman Catholicism by Anglican
writers. Above all, I would do nothing in a hurry. How-
ever, the long persistence of these inquiries and the inde-
terminate character of my religious position exposed me
to much danger from the prevalent religious scepticism
with which I came into contact at Oxford. Externally I
continued to practise my religion as an Anglican, but to
one or two intimate friends I spoke in this way : " These
religious problems are insoluble. I think I have no real
faith. I see no means of attaining to the certainty which
faith implies. No, I have only hope." The possession of
hope without faith may be difficult theologically, but the
meaning of the remark is sufficiently clear. Throughout
those four years at Oxford, a time for me so troubled re-
ligiously, a time of interior darkness suspected by few who
knew me, I found comfort especially in two prayers which I
think I said every evening. One was the Salve Regina; it
exactly expressed my trouble and my longings: . . . et Jesum
. . . nobis post hoc exilium ostende I The other was the
hundred and forty-second psalm (Vulg.). I clung to the con-
viction that before long the clouds would lift Atiditamfac
mihi mane misericordiam ttiam^ quia in te speravi. Notam
fac mihi viam in qua ambulem . . . doce mefacere voluntatem
tuam, . . . Spiritus tuus bonus deducet me in terram rectam.

132 ROADS TO ROME.

The book which helped me most in my conflict with
the philosophical difficulties brought against both natural
and revealed religion was Mansel's Bampton Lectures on
"The Limits of Religious Thought" And I still think
that no apolc^etic is secure, especially in these days, which
does not include somewhere in its foundations a really
active appreciation of the principles emphasized by Mansel.
I say the principles which he emphasized, for, on the one
hand, these principles were well known to the Schoolmen,
and are in no sense new or a concession to the modem
mind ; and, on the other hand, in his development of those
principles Mansel cannot everywhere be safely followed.
The affinity between the minds of Mansel and Newman
needs no demonstration here. Any careful reader of New-
man's "Apologia" and of the "Arians," not to mention
certain significant sayings in his sermons, and the touching
epitaph he wrote for his gravestone, will understand in what
light Newman viewed the Mansel-Maurice controversy. But
I am reluctant to speak here more particularly of Mansel's
teaching. To one class of readers it would be superfluous,
and to another possibly open to misunderstanding. Not
every science, not even every doctrine, can be securely
packed into a single sentence.

Now, this work of rebuilding my faith from what is
called in the Epistle to the Hebrews the inclioatianis
ChrisH sermo had one unexpected result. It gave me a
fresher appreciation of Christian doctrine. Somebody once
said that if only it was possible to discard all the old words
and adopt new ones to describe the articles of our Faith,
many people would be helped to exchange a merely
notional for a real assent to those truths. We talk so

ROADS TO ROME. 133

easily of the Incarnation ! Convention and usage dull the
edge of words which otherwise would cut so deep I They
do not get into our understandings. They are sounds
rather than words, or they are symbols of ideas rather
than of things. Professor Seeley's " Ecce Homo " impressed
men because of its freshness, its manifest sincerity, the
absence of nearly all prajudicia. I read this book with
singular delight during this time of doubt. By degrees
I came to see in some measure what was the extent of
the marvel which I was asked to credit. I forced myself
to look with new eyes, as it were, upon the Christ as
portra)red to us by His contemporaries. Like a flash at
length this thought burnt me : Suppose that this Wonder
ended here, ended where the story ends, would it be
credible f Is it credible that God did this thing, if He
did not go further with it ? Is it credible that, after ages
upon ages of waiting, during which the weary earth groaned
to heaven with the weight of sin upon it, and after an
infinity of labour in preparing the nations for His Advent,
He should come and depart in such sort as to leave us a
cruel inheritance of perplexity about Himself, His com-
mands. His work. His wishes ? It means that, coming to
visit and redeem His people. He tabernacles among them
for a brief space ''as a wayfaring man that tumeth aside
to lodge for the night," and then goes His way! Thus
the very memory of His presence. His strange beauty,
His piercing words, become a trouble haunting men's
minds. He raises our hopes, only to cast them to the
ground. He adds yet another riddle to the tragical
enigmas of life. He comes to cast fire on the earth, and
His light shines in the darkness ; and then, like other lights

134 ROADS TO ROME.

before and since, the darkness overwhelms it, and it is
gone — leaving, let us say, a name in history, a topic for
disputation, a worthy subject of study and research.

To some readers this will seem mere satire. It will
seem that the refutation of such a conception of Christ's
coming and work is to kill the slain, or to seek to kill what
never lived. But this is not so. All Anglicans are com-
pelled, as it seems to me, to adopt this conception of
Christ's mission in greater or less d^^ee. I found it the
prevailing opinion of Anglicans at Oxford, though admitted
only grudgingly and painfully by some religious minds as
the least intolerable and least impossible explanation of the
divisions among Christians. Others felt no such hesitation.
They were eloquent on the normal duty and privilege of
every man to discover the truth for himself from the Scrip-
tures and the Fathers and Reason. And in that sense they
boasted of their Christian liberty and dignity. The tradi-
tional Catholic doctrine of the Church's magisterium, and
any conception of faith as an obedience, as a submission
of the reason, found no favour with them. The religious
anarchy of Anglicanism was best palliated by boldly
elevating it into a virtue. The magisterium of the Church
was a "Western growth," "legal and Roman," "unknown
to St. Athanasius and St Chrysostom and the East gene-
rally." (Surely, too, the commission Qui vos audita me
audit must be a Western interpolation, and the entire
history and Acta of the early Councils Western forgeries !)
More boldly still this was said: "It is a thing to be
expected that Revelation should come to us crossed by
the same difficulties and uncertainties as Natural Religion "
— an assertion which ought to make Bishop Butler turn in

ROADS TO ROME. 135

his grave, so perversely does it misrepresent his mind.
Thus my inquiry was a most practical one. Is the Incar-
nation of the Son of God historically credible when ex-
amined under the limitations imposed by this Anglican
point of view? It was with extreme pain that I was
driven to confess that to me the Incarnation, when thus
regarded, ceased to be credible. The value of all historical
evidence is relative to the intrinsic probability of the event.
But there is an overwhelming antecedent improbability, as
Newman politely expressed it, in Almighty God announcing
a Revelation, and then equivalently revealing nothing.
Deny the doctrine de ecclesia (as and so far as an An-
glican denies it), and the Incarnation becomes incredible
to me, not for want of extrinsic evidence, but for want of
intrinsic possibility. It is dishonouring to God ; for it
implies that He left man with no adequate means of
knowing the truths which He came to reveal, that He left
us worse off than were the Jews before, that He frustrated
the purpose of His own work and deceived us with high-
sounding promises destined to come to nothing.

My readers will see the dilemma which now confronted
me. Let me remind them that I am not defending
Catholicism. I am narrating facts from my past story.
I am tracing, with the sincerest accuracy to which my
memory, with the help of some old letters and memoranda,
can reach, the stages in the growth of a mind. I found
that the Christian ecclesia^ living in some way by the breath
of Christ Himself, teaching with authority His own infal-
lible truth, ruling the souls of men by His power and in
His name, is contained as it were by an inner necessity
in the doctrine of the Incarnation ; that the natural Body

136 ROADS TO ROME.

involves the mystical. Both or neither! — ^such were the
conditions by which I saw that I was limited in my awful
decision.

For the sake of brevity I will not here enter upon the
arguments which compelled me to refuse — indeed, to regard
at length as an intellectual absiu'dity and a moral suicide
— ^the latter of these alternatives. Only the former was
admissible. The issue, then, became further narrowed to
this: "Where is this ecclesiaf As an Anglican am I
within the limits of this visible Christian ecclesia, so that
therein and thereby I may be 'taught of God;' or am I
excluded from that august company, an alien to that
Divine teaching ? " I made every possible effort at this
stage to justify to myself the religious isolation and the
doctrinal confusion of Anglicanism. It would be weari-
some to enumerate the successive pleas which I adopted
and abandoned. They could not take root in me. I
always came back to my first principle. If the Christ has
come. He must have provided us, here and now, with
ready and certain means of access to His revealed truth.
Moreover, what my reason demanded, His own word had
promised and guaranteed for all time. No "appeal to
Antiquity" could survive that test For you can make
no adequate use of the early Christian records for this
purpose without immense labour. Do what you will, you
must distinguish between essentials and accidentals, the
permanent and the temporary elements, the explicit and
the implicit; you have to estimate how much is due to
exaggeration, to reactionary influences within, to local and
secular influences without ; you have to deal with schools
of thought, differences of practice, novelties and individual

\

ROADS TO ROME. I37

mistakes. You cannot aim simply at a blind reproduction
of all that was currently accepted and practised during a
certain more or less arbitrarily selected century or age.
You must largely exercise your critical faculties. And
then, what principles are to guide you in this work of
discrimination ? And where are you going to stop ? You
will have embarked on an enterprise of a lifetime, with
no prospect of attaining any certain result at the end
of it

A concrete example of these difficulties, and one which
made a deep impression upon me at the time, and will
serve to illustrate my meaning here, is concerned with
what a non-Catholic would call the origin and growth of
Sacerdotalism in the Church. What can be learnt from
the early Christian documents as to the powers left by
Christ to be exercised by His ministers in the economy of
redemption? Certainly it is a sufficiently vital question.
It was Dr. Lightfoot's little treatise on the Christian
Ministry (in his Commentary on St. Paul's Epistle to the
Philippians) which first repealed to me some of the diffi-
culties of this subject. Here was a profound scriptural
and patristic scholar " appealing to Antiquity ; " and with
what result ? Startling to me as were then his conclusions
as to the origin of the episcopal order, far more so was
his judgment that no traces of distinctive " Sacerdotalism "
(if the word may be allowed) occur before TertuUian, nor
any clearly defined evidence before Cyprian, and that it
was a foreign element imported into Christian belief and
practice from paganism and Judaism. One need hardly
remark that these conclusions are by no means peculiar
to Dr. Lightfoot, nor is there any lack of opponents to

138 ROADS TO ROME.

his view. But the effect of the dispute was to impress
upon me forcibly the ambiguities of these early documents
and the difficulty of piecing tc^ther the fragmentary
evidence which they afford. In other words, both the
process involved in a prodigious ''appeal to Antiquity"
of this sort and the uncertainty of the ultimate result more
than sufficed to condemn such a method of learning God's
revealed truth on a matter of vital importance to all men
— not, let it be observed, a matter of merely speculative
interest or the like. I was sincerely seeking for the truth.
Most assuredly I was not in the position of a man seeking
for premises which will establish a previously determined
conclusion. I was perfectly ready to believe, if necessary,
that Lightfoot was right, and to deny the Sacerdotium.
My only fixed prepossession was the conviction that there
must be some less cumbrous and less uncertain method
of answering this question, one way or the other.

Among my High Church friends and guides I found
a marked difference in their methods of dealing with this
question of the Sacerdotium. What may be called the
New Oxford party, which boldly reduces to the lowest
minimum the idea of ecclesiastical authority, would en-
deavour to overthrow one by one Dr. Lightfoot's argu-
ments, and pursuing the same method of inquiry (though
with less erudition) would conclude that he had misinter-
preted the evidence. I have said enough already to show
why I could not rest satisfied with that method of arriving
at the truth. But the mind of the Old Oxford party was
far less Protestant in its attitude. Their answer to Light-
foot might be worded as follows : " The scantiness of the
early evidence, and the guarantee of Divine assistance

ROADS TO ROME. 139

promised to the Church as the depository of the Apostolic
teaching, justify us, in a case like this, in reversing the
order of our inquiry. Every one admits the highly sacer-
dotal character of the doctrine and institutions of later
ages, e^. the fourth or fifth or sixth centuries. Therefore
the earlier ages also were sacerdotal. And if they seem
to be otherwise, it is either because insufficient evidence
has come down to us, or because these elements were for
various reasons more or less implicit at first, and thus have
escaped your notice."

It is an excellent reply, and the only proper reply,
I think, on the part of one who really believes in the
Christian ecclesia. But it is a reply which no Anglican
can consistently make. It is to expose himself instantly
to this retort from the opponent of sacerdotal doctrine :
"You tell me that subsequent agreement by the whole
Church is alone adequate proof of earlier acceptance, at
least of implicit acceptance. If that is so, why, then, have
you yourself abandoned the later for what you conceive
to be the earlier expressions of the Church's mind ? Why
have you set yourself in opposition to all Christendom, on
the plea of a return to primitive purity ? By the same
right that you deny the papacy, I deny the episcopate
and the priesthood. The clearness and universality of the
later evidence for priesthood and episcopate and papacy
may conceivably be destructive of your position and of
mine — ^but certainly not of mine alone. I will go further :
taking the New Testament and all subsequent evidence
down to the end of the third century, I say that there is
stronger evidence for the institution, jure divino, of the
papal primacy than for that of episcopacy or of the priestly

140 ROADS TO ROME.

power. If ecumenical acceptance is so sacred to you and
so unerring a test of truth, how is it that the whole
Church, East as well as West, has committed itself over
and over again, directly and formally no less than indi-
rectly and informally, to the belief that the Bishop of
Rome, as Peter's successor, is by Christ's ordinance Head
and Pastor of the entire Catholic Church? Or again,
consider the Canon of Scripture. You have rejected some
of the books received by all Christendom as inspired.
Where is your Extreme Unction, )rour Chrism, your cultus
of Mary and the Saints, the doctrine of Purgatory, and the
Sacrifice of the Mass for living and dead? Why have
you made these and other similar changes? I will tell
you : it is because you have not hesitated to judge the
later Church by the earlier, which is precisely what you
will not allow me to do 1 "

The retort is unanswerable. And it throws light on
the changed attitude of the High Church party in regard
to authority and faith. The older Tractarian party were
experimenting ; they were proving untried armour. Their
successors have seen with greater clearness that the defence
of the position which they have inherited necessitates the
elimination of authority from the grounds of faith, and the
substitution of what in practice amounts to mere eclec-
ticism for the older and now exploded idea of submission
to a Divine Teacher!

Such, then, were the two methods of dealing with
Protestants of the type of Dr. Lightfoot, the methods
of the New and of the Old Oxford party. The first
^vas inconsistent with the Incarnation, for it tended to
make havoc of all faith and certainty. The second was

ROADS TO ROME. 141

inconsistent with Anglicanism, for it made havoc of the
Reformation and rendered untenable the separation from
Rome.

Enough has been said to explain the motives which
led me to become a Catholic. There is but one society
in the world answering to the ecclesia which Christ founded.
Only one possesses, and has continuously possessed, the
distinguishing features of that mystical Kingdom of which
He spoke so often and so profoundly. If Anglicanism,
in any of its many varieties, is true, that Kingdom has
come to nought, Christ's word has failed, and the Incarna-
tion, on intrinsic grounds, is incredible ; for on that hypo-
thesis (i>. of the Establishment being the visible Church of
Christ or any part of it) it would follow that the essential
notes of Christ's Kingdom, its most elementary and indis-
pensable functions, have become not only inoperative but
impossible. Christ is the Truth, the essential Truth of
God. And the fulness of that living Truth was committed
to His Church, that thereby He might be with us always.
Whom God has joined together let not man think to put
asunder. You cannot part Christ and His Bride. If the
ChunJi has spoken falsely, whether early or late, then
Christ is false. If the Church is divided, then is Christ
divided. If Christ "taught as one having authority, and
not as the scribes," so also must the Church teach her
disciples. If Christ is risen from the dead, if Death
has no more dominion over Him, neither shall the
gates of Death prevail against His Church built upon
Peter.

By the summer of 1886 all this had become clear to
me. What reason remained worthy to hold me back

142 ROADS TO ROME.

from ''the obedience of faith/' from the homage and
service to which Jesus Christ called me

". , . Beneath Mary's smile,
And Peter's royal feet " ?

There were only imaginary difficulties left (which are now
hard even to remember, so purely imaginary were they),
and the inevitable pain of flesh and blood. ... I made
my perplexities known to one of St. Philip's devoted sons
in London, Father Gordon of the Oratory, and he, after
the example of Philip himself, sent me to St Ignatius.
"You have studied too much," he said. "Gro and pray.
Make a retreat at the Jesuit Novitiate at Roehampton."
Father Gordon told me afterwards that he had little hope
that I would follow his advice. But by God's grace I
went, and in the course of that retreat I saw the folly of
my cowardice. It was Father Richard Clarke who helped
me through this last ordeal. I told him my story, and
said that I believed, or was ready to believe, the whole
Catholic faith. He produced a copy of the Penny Cate-
chism, asking me to read it very carefully. At this I
laughed, protesting that I was familiar with it already ;
would he not question me on Perrone's " Praelectiones
Theologicae," which I had been recently studying?

"No, no," he cried, "let us stick to the Catechism.
I knew you would say something like that. But I treat
you exactly as Father Coleridge treated me, when I too
was a catechumen."

I made my renunciation of heresy, and was reconciled
with the Catholic Church before the retreat ended. It

ROADS TO ROME.

H3

was on the Feast of the Transfiguration, and fervently I
prayed with St Peter, " Lord, it is good for us to be here."
With reluctance I left that holy place. Two years later
I had the happiness of again entering Manresa, and of
being admitted among the novices of St Ignatius.

C H. K., M.A.

The first real doubt of my position as an Anglican
arose while studying for Orders in the Theological College
of Cuddesdon, near Oxford. We had been studying the
early heresies, and were somewhat perplexed by the many
and nice metaphysical distinctions which in so many cases
separated Truth from Error. I could not but see, how-
ever, that the primary cause of the final destruction of
these heresies was the direct action of Church Authority,
which was both organized and effective. Furthermore, I
noticed that the rulers of the Church knew that they
possessed this authority, and were moreover certain in
their own minds of what really was "the Faith once
delivered to the Saints." I could not but contrast this
^' certainty ^^ and this *^ aut/iority'* with the uncertain teach-
ing prevalent in the Church of England, as, ^^., on such
important dogmata as the Eternity of Punishment, the
Inspiration of Scripture, the Eucharistic Sacrifice, and the
Communion of Saints, to say nothing of the equally
tenable but vastly different views held by Churchmen on
Justification and the Sacramental System.

I remember interviewing our much-esteemed Principal
(the present Bishop of Lincoln) on the subject, and asking

144

ROADS TO ROME. 145

him where at the present time was that motive power
which was so effective in the past, that Divine Authority
which so successfully protected the original deposit of
faith. He quieted me at the time by assuring me that,
up to the time of the great Schism that rent in twain
Eastern and Western Christendom, the Church had un-
doubtedly possessed the precious gift of Infallibility, on
the strength of which all heresies had been condemned
which attacked the fundamental doctrines of Christianity,
and that now, if we wished to be assured of the Truth, all
we had to do was to study the early Fathers who had
written, and the Councils which had defined, before that
lamentable separation had taken place. I say it quieted
me for a time, while I gave myself up to study and prayer
in the daily routine of collie life, but ever and anon
doubts and perplexities would arise and take possession
of my mind, during which I could not help realizing that,
as regards myself at least, I was not in firm possession
of that certainty which was clearly the privilege of the
Primitive Church.

At the same time, I thankfully acknowledge I derived
much spiritual comfort and strength from the reception
of the Anglican Sacraments, not distinguishing then the
difference which exists between the grace coming directly
from the Sacraments and that which rewards the pious
effort of the recipient ; and so I deluded myself with the hope
that, divided as Christendom might be, I had all that was
necessary for my sanctification and salvation. Under that
quieting delusion I was ordained deacon by Dr. Wilberforce,
and devoted myself to the pastoral duties which fell to
my lot as curate in a parish near Maidenhead.

L

146 ROADS TO ROME.

It was a shock, however, to find that my good old vicar,
a pronounced High Churchman, who, by his writings, had
done good service in the Tractarian movement, and more
particularly in bringing out a little devotional book on the
benefits of the Sacrament of Penance, enjoined on me to
be most careful, in my visits to the parishioners, never to
allude to the subject in my conversations with them.
And again I could not fail to see a vast contrast between
his undoubted maintenance in the pulpit of the doctrine
of the Real Presence in the Holy Eucharist, and his
practical treatment of that Adorable Mystery. I compared
all this with the practice of the Roman Church, who so
carefully in her rubrics protected the Adorable Presence
from the least profanation, and who, by her zealous
missioners, was ever attracting penitents to the Sacrament
of Reconciliation. I left this curacy in consequence of
my distress, and returned once more to Cuddesdon, by the
kind permission of the Bishop of Oxford, who did his
best to convince me that work, and work alone, was the
remedy for all my ills. With his advice and leave I took
duty under a more advanced and consistent High Church-
man, the Reverend James Skinner, of Newland, near
Great Malvern. Here we had a daily Celebration, very
good musical services, and a most lovely church to
worship in. During the year and a half spent in this
place a constant conflict was going on within me. All
my sentiments and afTections, as well as my worldly
interest, seemed to wed me to the Church of England ;
but my conscience and reason were ever in rebellion,
urging me to look for a more perfect ideal of the Church
than that in which I was — an ideal where all Church

ROADS TO ROME. 147

members believed alike, and where authority was exercised
to repel all strange and erroneous teaching. Never shall I
foiget the shock it was to me when a neighbouring vicar
refused my invitation to be present at our Evensong, on
the occasion of a visit by Dr. Gray, late the Bishop of
Capetown, on the ground that we at Newland preached a
different gospel from that which he had received and
taught Where was the living authority of the Church to
decide which of us was preaching error ? What was the
use of the High Churchman denouncing "private judg-
ment" when it was the foundation of all our different
beliefs ? If the principle was wrong in itself, it did not
become right when exercised on the writings of the
Fathers any more than when confined to the private
interpretation of Scripture. It seemed to me that, as
long as one remained apart from that Church which had
undoubtedly come down in its chief See in an unbroken
line from the Apostles, and which had even claimed the
allegiance of mankind on the basis of Divine Authority,
it was impossible to escape from making **self*^ and
^* private Judgment " the sole arbiter in matters of faith.
It was leaning on a very fallible and insecure foundation.
Christ had " taught with autltorityy and not as the scribes^**
and He sent forth His first representatives armed with
like authority to make His supernatural Religion known
to all nations. " He who heareth you heareth Me, and he
wJio despiseth you despiseth Me ; " and " Lo^ I am with you
all daySf even to the consummation of the world ;** ^^ If a
man will not hear the Churchy let him be to you as a /teat/ten
man and a publican*' These were the words which kept
ringing in my ears as I vainly strove to do my duty as

148 ROADS TO ROME.

a minister of the Church of England ; but stn^fgle as I
would to fancy that the Church was my guide and teachcTt
I was bound to confess that it was a Church of a b3^gone
age, a Church of my own imagining, and which now no
longer invited unless (and dreadful was the thought) the
living Church of Rome was it. Then, too, I was forced to
acknowledge that if the voice of the Church was hushed in
consequence of its divisions, it was utterly impossible for
the nineteenth-century Christian to know for certain what
the Revelation of jESUS CHRIST really was, and faith was
no longer attainable.

It was an awful crisis to which I had come. I had
dug down to the foundations of my belief, and found them
based merely on the sands of my own private judgment.
I was completely unhinged Where was Truth ? Was it
to be found in some modem sect which professed to have
found it? Was the religion of Edward Irving a true
revelation? Were perchance the Quakers right? Or
worse still, was it all a dream, and Christianity but a fiction
of men anxious to know the unknowable ? If Christ had
really revealed a supernatural religion and intended it for
me, it could only be brought home to me (if I was to
have certitude, or, in other words, faith) by some living
organized teaching Body preserved from error, and so
infallible. To find this I had to go back to the Church
which had sent Augustine to England, and which, up to
the time of the so-called Reformation, had taught with
Divine Authority throughout the length and breadth of
the land ; and so, by the mercy and goodness of God, I
was led to look for the Rock out of which all dissentient
Churches at one time or another had been hewn — to the

ROADS TO ROME.

149

Rock of Peter, which alone now and at all times was able
to withstand the destructive forces of the ever-active mind
of man. It was, of course, intensely painful to leave all
that was most dear, and oppose the will of those one loved
best and admired most in the world ; but ^^fiat Voluntas
Tua" was all one could say and pray; and so I made
my way to Edgbaston to be further enlightened and con-
soled by the saintly Newman, to be by him in due time
reconciled to "the Church of the Living God, the pillar
and ground of the Truth,"

It is now thirty-two years since that event took place,
and I can truly say that each day, as it comes and goes,
adds to the debt of gratitude I feel for the unspeakable
mercy of God in thus calling me into the Unity of His
Mystical Body. Deo optimo et maxifno gratias in atemum.

Mrs. HELEN LANGRISHE.

Of Knocktopher Abbsy, Co. Kilkenny.

Believing as I did in the necessity of valid Orders for
valid Sacraments, I could not, once I had begun to ponder
on these matters, remain in the Church of England, whose
Orders are repudiated not only by the whole of Christen-
dom, but also by half her members and many of her
clergy.

The risk to my mind was too great. Rome might err,
but she could give me true Sacraments ; no one could
dispute that And what doubts or difficulties I might have
to encounter could come up to those I faced in the Anglican
Church, as to whether her Sacraments were genuine or not ?
What greater evil could befall me than the risk I might run
if they were not ? And so unhesitatingly I went over to
the old faith ; and I can safely say, once in the true fold, all
doubts and difficulties vanished. Everything seemed to
become clear, and I saw things in such a light, that if I did
not remember how they once appeared to me, I should fail
to understand how it could be possible to question the
Catholic Faith.

ISO

Mrs. CUTHBERT LESLIE,

Of Hassop Hall, Derbyshire.

When, before my conversion, I had to define for myself,
and for others, the reasons which forced me to enter the
Catholic Church, I wrote down several statements, the
substance of which I now give ; as they bring out very
clearly the motives which urged me to leave the Church of
England and to join the Church of Rome.

First of all, I could not understand any Church being
the true one in which the professing members are allowed
to hold such contradictory opinions on the most important
subjects.

Secondly, I had a very strong feeling that a Church
cannot be called Catholic in which there is no pretence
even of one central authority which all the world is
bound to obey, and in which every one is allowed what
is called liberty to accept one fundamental doctrine and
reject another, and in which such different and contra-
dictory practices are tolerated in dealing with the most
sacred subjects — as, for example. Holy Communion and
Devotion to Our Lady.

Thirdly, I never could understand the possibility of a

«5i

1 52

ROADS TO ROME.

Church teaching a consistent body of doctrine without the
presence in that Church of a teaching authority which
should not only be Universal but Infallible. The Church
of England was to me the best example of the chaos and
confusion of thought which resulti and must of necessity
result, from the absence in a Church of an Infallible teach-
ing authority which all are bound to obey.

Fourthly, I hoped and expected to get greater comfort
from the Catholic Church than I had ever got from the
cold formalism of the Establishment ; but I did not argue
that because the Catholic Church would be more consoling,
it must therefore be the right Church ; but I argued thus :
" If it be the Church of God, it will as a matter of fact
satisfy all the longings of the human heart better than the
Church established by law in this land."

The Rev. T. LIVIUS, M.A.,

O&iBL College, Oxford ; Priest of the Congrsoation of the

Most Holy Redeemer.

I PASSED the years of boyhood amongst the associations of
Church-of-England Evangelicalism, with which, through
circumstances, I was surrounded, but which had no effect
upon me intellectually or morally. Before going to Oxford,
I drifted into sentiments of attraction to the Fuseyite
movement, and the Branch theory of the Christian Church.
To prepare for Anglican Ordination, I read theology for
some time with Mr. Woodford (afterwards Bishop of Ely),
who held very orthodox views, especially on the Incarna-
tion and its relation to the Church of Christ From that
time these views stood by me.

During the nearly five years of my Anglican ministry
at SS. Kenwyn and Kea in Cornwall, I held on to the
"Branch theory," with moderate High Church teaching
and practice ; trying my best to conform them with what
I knew of Catholic doctrine.

Ere long I began to be troubled and dissatisfied on
many points, and especially that there was no recognized
mode or system in Anglicanism for reconciling the sinner's
soul with God ; and on many other matters.

153

154 ROADS TO ROME.

I went to Oxford to see Dr. Pusey, and made my
confession to him. But I saw that this was a most
exceptional step, whether for the clergy or laity ; and I
became more and more convinced that, save the Sacra-
ment of Baptism, Anglicanism was not a religion of Sacra-
ments at all; and that when it is attempted to make it
so, it is only a hollow outward imitation and shaoL

Since I became a Catholic, received the gift of faith,
and read something for myself on the whole question,
I have seen that the notion of the Church of England
having anything to do with the Holy Catholic Church in
its origin or principles, is the most absurd that can be
conceived. A very superficial glance over its history
from its first start in the sixteenth century abundantly
shows this ; and that its founders were actuated by the
very same Protestant anti-Catholic spirit as the continental
reformers, whom they even exceeded by their persecutions,
and in their destroying and plundering everything that
Catholics most cherished.

After a very brief glance over the history of the Church
of England, it has never appeared to me worth while to
take any notice of the various points of Anglican contro-
versy for their own sake. It has seemed to me a frivolous
and useless waste of time to go into them ; and all the more
so, because the h}^pocritical first reformers, with a view to
give a show of venerability to their new system, tacked on
to it certain external customs and practices which they had
borrowed from antiquity.

When one b^an to learn something of what true
Christian faith was, it became very clear that Anglicans
had it not, and, indeed, could not have it in any proper

ROADS TO ROME. 155

sense ; for it is quite evident that a Divine supernatural
revelation absolutely demands, for man to believe it, that
there be a Divine, external, infallible authority to set forth
to him the Divine supernatural truths and obligations which
it contains.

This infallible authority, once given, must ever exist
in the world, to preserve this Divine revelation, one and
the selfsame in its integrity and purity, free from error,
and to teach and explain it to men of all generations in
every land and age.

I saw that there is such an infallible authority, and
that there can be but one only — and that this is the
Roman Catholic Church, which has ever made itself
known to be such throughout the world from the begin-
ning of Christianity ; whereas it is held as a first principle
in every other so-called Christian Church, and in the
Anglican amongst the rest, that there is no such Divine
infallible authority existing on earth at all, and conse-
quently no means for man to know for certain what was
divinely revealed, and what he is properly to believe. For
it appeared to me utterly unreasonable and absurd to think
of believing with Divine infallible faith supernatural
mysteries, that are above the reach of reason, on merely
human and fallible teaching.

Another argument connected with the above, that
forced itself on my mind, is the marvellous harmony which
the authoritative teaching of the Church shows to exist
between the various Divine mysteries and supernatural
truths of revelation, one with another ; and at the same
time that there is no contradiction discoverable between any
of these and human reason, though they are impenetrable

156

ROADS TO ROMK

to man's finite reason : for if there was, he could not
believe them, since God is the Author of reason as well as
of faithi and faith must be reasonable.

How different is all this outside the Church I There,
there is no religious certsunty ; but all is opinion, doubt,
and contradiction.

These were some of the motives which, through God's
assisting grace, led me to become a Catholic

MARIA G. LODER.

Having been asked to contribute a short statement of the
condition of mind that led me to join the Church, the
following is a brief outline.

It was by degrees, and through long years, that the fact
forced itself upon me, that it was not possible to find in the
Anglican Establishment to which I belonged, the marks
of the true Church founded by our Divine Lord. The
anxieties, searchings, heart-rendings, and despondencies that
led me to this conclusion are common to so many that I
need not describe them, although they weighed upon me
and occupied my troubled mind for the best part of a life.
I tried to see what in truth I did not see ; to rely on the
statements of others, though unconvinced by their argu-
ments, and so to hug the belief that I might go on safely,
and put my doubts aside. Happily, after a while, I was
awakened from this slumbering condition, and resolved, by
prayer for light, and by examination of doubts and mis-
givings — consulting works of standing and ability on both
sides — to judge for myself on such vital points.

It was a time of anxious care, and I took no one into
my confidence for solid reasons. Not until I had passed
year after year so occupied, and had come to the conviction

157

1 58

ROADS TO ROME.

that salvation was not to be found where I was, did I for
the first time approach a Catholic priest By that time I
was convinced beyond a doubt that submission to the Holy
See would bring me into union with the One Holy Catholic
and Apostolic Church, and a partaker of those blessed
Sacraments which she alone can dispense. It remained,
therefore, but to crave for admission to that Communion
after which I had been groping so long. Deo grottos !

HERBERT H. MAY, Esq, M.A.,

And late Scholar of Wadham College, Oxford ; Private
Tutor for Pass Examinations at the University.

I WAS brought up for seventeen years in the Evangelical
section of the Church of England, and found an insuper-
able difficulty in deciding what exactly justified one in
making the assumption that one had obtained salvation.

Subsequently I went to confession to an Anglican in
Oxford, and was satisfied that I had an assurance of
pardon on the part of the Catholic Church which God
could not repudiate.

I then took Orders, and became a curate in a High
Church, but I was much exercised about the sentence : " Do
you feel that you are moved by the Holy Ghost to take
upon you this ministry ? " (After I had become a Catholic
it was pointed out to me that the Holy Ghost could not
move a man to preach a false religion.)

I was given by my vicar Salmon's '* Infallible Church,"
and I borrowed from a Catholic acquaintance Milner's " End
of Controversy," and I bought the " Catholic Belief." This
last book with great difficulty I persuaded my wife to read ;
then we went together to the Catholic priest's house and

159

i6o ROADS TO ROME.

asked to see a priest, and when he came I said : " I wish to
be taught the Catholic Faith." He gave us a lecture on
** Go and teach all nations/' to prove that there was one
body of men established by Christ as a Divine Teacher ;
and another on "Thou art Peter," to prove that where
Peter's successor was, there this Divine Teacher was. My
wife was at once convinced and received. I took a holiday
from my clerical work, went abroad for a few days to see
the Church in a Catholic country, read ceaselessly works of
controversy, but finally was received at Weston-super-Mare
by a priest whom I had known from a boy. I need hardly
say that to me my faith is the pearl of great price. Though,
after my conversion, I experienced many temptations
against faith, yet they were never logical ; nothing could
ever break the syllogism —

All things taught by the Church are true.
This is taught by the Church.
This is true.

As links in the chain of my conversion, I remember
when a boy being much struck by my brother's explaining
to me the verse " Thou art Peter ; " that Catholics think
their Church the voice of God, or something to that effect
I always called the Catholic priest at home " the holy father,"
and loved him, though he never said a word to me about
religion. And I always thought the Holy Communion the
sole service instituted by our Lord. I remember a sermon
preached by a Protestant clergyman, in which he said that
the words " Do this in remembrance of Me " meant " Offer
this sacrifice." When I was convinced of the necessity of
confession and the truth of the Real Presence, it seemed
to me that the Church which taught these doctrines always

ROADS TO ROME.

i6i

and eveiywhere was the true Church, rather than a Church
which, like the Church of England, taught them recently
and partially. Lastly, I attended several death-beds,
and felt my powerlessness to do anything except pray ;
and when it was suggested to me that a confession should
be exacted from the d)ring (not to me, for I was a deacon),
it followed to my mind that it would much more usefully be
exacted from every one and in time of health. It is with
unwillingness that I speak of myself, but I shall be glad
if these few notes make it easier for any one to submit
himself to that Divine Teacher, Who says of His Church,
" He that heareth you heareth Me."

M

R. S. MOODY, Esq., M.A.,

Christ Church, Oxford ; formerly a Clergyman of the
Church of England ; Little Malvern.

Perhaps the only thing worth mentioning would be that
I worked out the problem entirely by myself. I did not
know any Catholics, and I never spoke to a priest till
within a few days of my submission.

What, then, led me to take the step ? It was a belief
in the Visible Church, in the absolute necessity for that
Church having a Visible Head, and in the irresistible
evidence in favour of the supremacy of the Pope. This is
all. All other questions seemed to me to depend entirely
upon this one.

As to the steps that led up to this train of thought : —
I was at Oxford from 1840 to 1843, and I felt some attrac-
tion to the movement then at its height, mainly owing to
my hearing it so persistently abused. But I did not
belong to a religious set ; very few Eton men did so in
my day.

Towards the end of my Oxford days circumstances
occurred which induced me to think of taking Orders in
the English Church, and I went to the Wells Theological

162

ROADS TO ROME. 163

College for a year or more. Of course^ there was constant
discussion on the leading Church questions of the day,
mainly on doctrine. There was no interest felt then in
Ritualism and Church millinery. We were strong in
Baptismal Regeneration and Apostolical Succession.

My first curacy was under Lord Charles Thynne, at
Longbridge Deverill, Wilts. He afterwards became a
Catholic. After this I was in sole charge of the parish of
Radnage, Bucks., where I managed to rouse the suspicions
and opposition of some of the neighbouring clergy. Lastly,
I was for a short time at Aston, Salop.

I was not long in detecting the weakness of the Estab-
lished Church. I thought a married clergy a great mistake,
but what particularly disgusted me was the want of pluck
in the High Church party as shown in the Gorham case,
when the Bishop of Exeter, having brought us all up to the
fight, basely turned tail and instituted the very man whom
I had denounced as a heretic. All this made it plain that
the Royal Supremacy was a very real Power.

I made up my mind never to sign the Thirty-nine
Articles again, and when an illness took me abroad, I
finally severed my connection with the Established Church
in 1854, in Rome.

Of course, there followed the usual family estrangements,
more common then than now, together with alteration of
wills and the great difHculty of getting anything to do.
Still more painful was the strange feeling of finding one-
self in an entirely different state of society, and having, so
to speak, to begin life over again.

As to my reading : — I think that Robert Isaac Wilber-
force's " Doctrine of the Incarnation " was of more help to

164

ROADS TO ROME.

me than any other book ; but, of course, I read a g^at
deal of the controversial literature of the day. There are
too many books published now. I always advise people
in doubt to read the Bible, use their reason, and say their
prayers. If an exhaustive statement of the case is needed,
Allies' " Per Crucem at Lucem " gives it I can say no
more.

A. T. M.,

M.A. OP Cambridge.

Probably my experience is, in many respects, that of
others, who, after '' seeking rest and finding none " in false
and imperfect reh'gious systems, have at length found
peace in the One True Fold. The leading motives which
prompted me to abandon my former religious position,
and that, too, when in my sixtieth year, and when I had
been more than thirty-five years a clergyman in the
Anglican communion, were, briefly stated, as follows : —

Using my reason and judgment in weighing evi-
dence as I felt bound to do, I came to the conclusion
that the Church of England is the creation of the
State, and so is a department of the State ; that she
had no existence prior to the Reformation, at which time
she separated herself from the rest of Catholic Christen-
dom. Believing this, I could not possibly remain longer
in a communion which, I was convinced, was not the
Church founded by Christ and His Apostles, — not the
venerable and historic Church of this country, but a
mere creation of yesterday. I had been from child-
hood brought up in the belief that the Church of

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i66 ROADS TO ROME.

England of the present day is identically the same (only
purified and reformed) as the Church which had existed
in this country from the earliest times. I tried, and tried
honestly, to discover any points of similarity in things
essential between the Ante-Reformation and the Post-
Reformation Church, but in vain. I saw, not a reform
of the ancient Faith, but the raising up on its ruins of
a religious system, entirely alien to it in doctrine and
practice. I saw that the Church of England, as she is
now, and has been for more than three hundred years,
has cut herself off from the communion of the Catholic
church by rejecting her teaching and authority; for
surely there is abundant evidence to prove that, prior to
the Reformation, the Catholic Church in England held
and taught doctrines, such as the Real Presence of our
Lord in the Blessed Sacrament, devotion to our Lady
and the Saints, Purgatory, Prayers for the Faithful
departed, and other doctrines which the Established
Church repudiates and denies.

Then as to the question of discipline and authority.
A visible and infallible body, such as the Catholic Church
is, must have a visible and infallible Head. According
to our Lord's promise. His Church was to be kept for
all time from holding and teaching error, and the way in
which she was thus to be preserved was by having as
her Head an infallible Guide, from whose decisions, in
questions of faith and morals, there should be no appeal.
The Church of England asks her bishops for authori-
tative decisions in matters of faith, and she receives,
in response to her appeal, a judgment or " opinion "
which no episcopal or other authority can enforce. The

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167

Church of England, as a department of the State, can
have no authority except such as the State may see fit
to concede to it, and her bishops and archbishops have
no power by which they can enforce their decisions or
opinions without the consent of King and Parliament.

And in this State-made body, there is disunion, dis-
cord, and strife amongst her members. It is hard for
plain men like myself to see how she, any more than
the sects which have come out of her loins, can claim to
have received authority to make disciples of all nations
and to win the world for Christ, seeing that she is herself
a house divided against itself.

This is a brief and, I feel, a very incomplete and
sketchy account of some of the difficulties which were
presented by my former position, and of the processes
of thought by which I was finally led to embrace the
CathoUc Faith.

E. M.,

Sbnt by the Rev. C. Giles, Bishop's House, Shrewsbury.

I ATTRIBUTE my first attraction towards Catholicism to
reading, when a child, " Father Kennedy." The character of
Father Dormer attracted me strongly, and quite neutralized
the Protestantism of the book. The next influence I trace
to reading Newman's "Apologia," which was lent me to
counteract sceptical mystical tendencies. It showed me
the weakness of Anglicanism in which I was trying to
take refuge, and though for some years I embraced the
latter and Ritualism, I was never satisfied, and always felt
strongly attracted to everything Roman Catholic. To
enter a Catholic church, however plain, was a keen
pleasure to me, and I always felt drawn to the Blessed
Sacrament even before I understood the doctrine of the
Holy Eucharist.

That which most disgusted me with Anglicanism was
the irreverence with which the Holy Communion was
celebrated in some churches,^ and the want of definite

* I coald not help contrasting the want of reverence in this respect among
the Low Church party with the devotion of High Church people, as shown
particularly in a sisterhood where " reservation " was practised. Even in this
case all had to be done in secret, and the place of reservation was carefully
constructed in the roof of the house to escape the eye of the bishop.

i68

ROADS TO ROME.

169

authoritative teaching. I never could put any confidence
in the Anglican clergy, as I felt they were not backed up
by any authority, but that each man was a sort of Pope
in himself. Hence I never submitted to direction, though
I practised confession.

It was the holiness of the Church as exemplified in
the Saints, and the authority of her teaching, that finally
brought me to the Fold. The "Lives of the Saints,"
notably that of the Ven. Mother Pacat, influenced me
quite as much or more than controversial books. After
Catholic books on '' the Interior Life," all Anglican writings
appeared to me insipid, or as milk compared to cream.

For some years before the final grace, which actually
brought me into the Church, was given, I was persuaded
that the only other alternative, to be logically consistent,
was — infidelity. Yet, while intellectually convinced of the
truth of the claims of the Catholic Church, for some time
I lacked the courage to make the plunge. It was only
after my conversion that faith, in its fulness, was given
me, and that the beauty of the doctrines of the Church
was more fully disclosed to me. Never since have I for
one moment had a doubt or misgiving as to her Divine
origin and mission.

R. S. P. M.

When as a child in an Irish Dissenting Sunday school
I sang, '' God moves in a Mysterious Way/' I little thought
that in later years those words would have a very special
personal significance, and that my own spiritual career
would be a wonderful exemplification of the truth of the
old and familiar hymn.

Having been regularly sent to church and Sunday
school by my parents, who were deeply religious people,
I soon became thoroughly acquainted with the Bible, and,
by the time I was fourteen years old, I had passed many
searching examinations in its history, and secured a very
large number of prizes. I was thoroughly conversant with
the lives and actions of the Biblical heroes, and, in fact,
knew the sacred volume from cover to cover.

I had always been taught and believed that the
Protestant version of the Bible was the very Word of
God ; that it contained all things necessary for salvation ;
that it was the only revelation of God's will to man ; and
that it was the veritable sheet-anchor of religion. Coinci-
dent with these articles of faith, I was instructed that
although it was the Word of God, it was necessary to
construe its meaning by the light of reason ; so that when

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ROADS TO ROME. 171

a passage came up for criticism^ there was no appeal to
anything higher than my own intelligence, or that of some
commentator, or that of an uninformed but self-sufficient
Sunday school teacher.

It is little wonder, therefore, that when doubts suggested
themselves to my mind, and my minister or teachers
were unable to solve or answer them, I gradually fell
away into disbelief. There was much which I could not
reconcile with reason pure and simple ; and, as I had
always been taught to look on my own judgment as the
final arbiter, I naturally arrived at the conclusion that the
Bible had no other daim to credence than that possessed
by any other ancient volume.

Brought up as a Protestant in Ireland, I was also
taught that Roman Catholics — Papists! — were ignorant
and deluded idolaters, kept in mental and spiritual dark-
ness by cunning priests who flourished at the expense of
their flocks, and who were allied in one huge scheme of
imposture in order that they might wring money from
the peasantry for themselves, their bishops, and the Pope,
who, we were told, was the living representative of the
Scarlet Woman. In addition, I was taught to look down
on Catholics as inferiors — socially and mentally. They were
not allowed the inestimable privilege of private interpreta-
tion ; it was an open question if they were even permitted
to possess a Bible ; and it was perpetually dinned into my
ears that the prosperity of the Protestant community
was intimately associated with what was termed an " open
Bible," the poverty of the Catholics being attributed to
their real or supposed lack of Bibles. Further, were not
the '' Papists " thirsting to elevate all the Protestant heads

1/2 ROADS TO ROME.

on pikesy in obedience to the orders of the Inquisition
and the Jesuits I

Is it matter for wonder, therefore, that, breathing such
an atmosphere, it never entered into my mind to place
my doubts before a Catholic priest, and that, later in life,
after a long course of Paine and Voltaire, I joined the
ranks of active opponents of Christianity ? Doubts grow
by what they feed on, and, having convinced myself that
revealed religion was the enemy to be crushed, I became
associated with the late Mr. Bradlaugh and his party.
For a number of years I was a very active member of
the National Secular Society, and willingly gave money
and time to Freethought propaganda. Like St. Paul,
I honestly believed that I was doing my duty in "ex-
posing" the hoUowness of a great sham, and that the
more minds I unsettled the greater and nobler became
my work.

This went on for some years — years in which I utterly
disbelieved in spirit or in a hereafter, when I became
interested in spiritualism. Now, whatever be the source
of the phenomena termed spiritualistic — whether it be
angelic or devilish, I am unable to say — it performed
this important service for me : it opened my eyes to the
fact that there are intelligences outside ourselves, who in
many respects resemble us, and yet who are invisible.
After a fair examination of the subject in its various phases,
I became convinced of the existence of a future life, and
also came to the conclusion that some spirits, under certain
conditions, which are not and may never be properly under-
stood, are permitted to communicate with living people.

From inability to extract definite information from the

ROADS TO ROME. 173

spirits — many of whom lied in a most unblushing manner
when under interrelation — I gradually ceased to interest
myself in the subject ; but my materialism had vanished,
and I had taken a step — ^but how great a step ! — nearer
a true conception of spiritual life.

One memorable Easter Monday I was passing the
Oratory in the Brompton Road, when something induced
me to enter, accompanied by my wife and son. I had
not been in a Catholic church for over twenty-five years,
and thought I would like to have a look around ; but my
feelings of curiosity quickly gave place to sensations of
quite a different nature. I had barely opened the door
when I seemed to have entered the spiritual world. I
felt myself encompassed by the Unseen, and an awful
feeling took possession of me. I could hardly speak, and
felt humiliated and crushed. Then did I realize what
was meant by the power of the Spirit, and I remained
under its influence about an hour, unconsciously communing
with that One Whom I had all my life rejected and de-
spised. Profound sorrow took possession of my soul, and
I felt that here at last was Peace.

When leaving the Oratory, I bought a copy of *• Catholic
Belief," which corrected many of the absurd notions which
I had entertained with regard to the faith and practices
of the Church. Here, also, I was made aware of the fact
that the Catholic Church is, above all, a teaching Church,
and that her doctrines to-day are the same as those which
she taught before the sacred books which form the Bible
were collated and issued under her authority.

I had always thought that Protestants were in an utterly
false position, there being no logical middle ground between

174

ROADS TO ROME.

absolute authority and rationalism. When I was thus
happily brought to see that the Church possessed the
authority which she claimed, I felt it my duty — in the
highest exercise of my reason — to submit mysdl to her
discipline, with the best results to myself individually.

Leading as I do a very busy life, I have not the
necessary time at my disposal to study Catholicism as
closely as I would wish ; but the more I see of the Church,
the greater is my satisfaction. A lai^er-hearted charity is
taught than in the protesting communities, and her system
is meant as an everyday religion. The sermons which I
hear are not eloquent discourses to which art and literature
contribute, but plain words of warning, eminently calculated
to make a man do his duty to his God, to himself, and to
those with whom he comes in daily contact

Once accepted, it will be found that the Church gives
everything to be desired, requiring in return merely the
love and obedience of her children.

M.,

A Priest.

I DO not think I can lay anything like a sufficient claim
to being a "famous convert;" however, I will give you
my experiences such as they have been.

I was brought up in what would now be considered very
Low Church, not to say Nonconformist, principles and ideas.
On looking back, I do not think I was any better or worse
than the average Protestant boy. I learnt, and generally
said, some simple morning and night prayers. I learnt to
tell the truth, but also, I fear, to look upon religion
generally as a somewhat depressing exercise, to be avoided
on any possible pretext.

At an early age I knew portions of the Bible by heart,
and, I suppose, could have drawn a map of Palestine blind*
fold. From reading a certain class of Protestant literature,
the idea became fixed in my mind that somehow Catholics
were mistaken, and oftentimes wicked people, yet with a
certain amount of historical romance attached to them.

Losing my parents at the age of eighteen, I resided for
a time with some relations — Irish Catholics — ^whose faith
was of a very simple practical character. Under God, I
attribute the beginning of my conversion to their example,

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176 ROADS TO ROME.

and to the quiet influence of the priest of the place (whom
I had known from my boyhood). He was an old man,
an Oxford convert of the Tractarian times, of ripe learning
and saintly life.

About this time I was very much engaged with matters
pertaining to my secular profession. What made me
thinks however, was, that I was asked by the authorities of
the Low Church I sometimes attended, to fill a temporary
gap in the teaching staff of the Sunday school. I reluc-
tantly consented. Bible-reading was all very well, but when
it came to teaching my class something definite, I found
out the truth of the saying that " no man can give what
he hasn't got" I had no definite belief — no dogmas of
my own, and I could impart none.

I fear my efforts as a Sunday-school teacher were not
a success, but they made me think, and shortly afterwards
I placed myself under instructions with the priest to whom
I have referred. He kept me three months under careful
and constant instruction, during which I had to learn the
" Penny Catechism " by heart, page by page. This was a
salutary discipline, and it would be well, I think, if we had
more of it

I soon found that I had really nothing to unlearn, and
was simply ready to receive what I was taught What
impressed me most during my instructions was the
" Teaching Authority of the Church," its obvious existence
in the world, and its necessity. In matters of devotion, I
think that the " Real Presence of our Lord in the Blessed
Sacrament " and " Prayers for the Dead " drew me most
powerfully. I remained a layman for a couple of years
before I contemplated studying for the priesthood. I then

ROADS TO ROME.

177

did a year's private study with the venerable priest who
had received me into the Church, and whose memory I
shall always hold in respect, gratitude, and affection. He
most kindly resuscitated my Latin, and put me through a
course of Church history and through an elementary one
of dogmatic and moral theolc^^ ; so that I started my
college course less handicapped than might otherwise have
been the case. And now, looking back on some sixteen
years of life as a priest, I can only say in the words of
the Mass, ''Quid retribuam Domino pro omnibus quas
retribuit mihi ? "

N

Commander CLAUDE PAGET, R.N.,

FAIRHAVSN9 PoRTMO&E Park, Weybridgb.

It is now close upon ten years since I became a Catholic,
and I believe that I am now entitled to be called one
(although an unworthy one), because for the first ten years
after joining the Catholic Church one is only looked on
as a convert. I was at that time first lieutenant of the
Flora guardship at Simon's Bay, Cape of Good Hope,
and I was also the master and huntsman to the local pack
of hounds, so that I had plenty of occupation, and did
not take the matter up as a crank would — for the want of
something better to do.

My conversion, through the grace of God, came about
in this way. I made the acquaintance of a man whose
brother I had previously known. I discovered that he
was a Catholic, while I knew his brother to be a Protes-
tant, and in the course of conversation I asked him one
day how he explained the circumstance. His answer was
simply this : " Because the Catholic is the only safe religion
to die in." I said to myself: Good God! can this be
true? I had thought that one religion was as good as
another, and that it was merely a question of birth. I

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ROADS TO ROME. 179

had very little conversation with my friend, but I re-
member asking him: Were there not some very wicked
Popes ? to which he replied, " There may have been some
in the long list of Roman Pontiffs. One of our Saviour's
chosen disciples turned out to be a traitor." I expressed
a desire to read what the Catholic religion taught, as I
expected it to be a very different thing from what I had
heard non-Catholics describe it to be, and he gave me
the "Catholic Belief" by Fr. Bruno. My friend's words,
"It is the only safe religion to die in," kept ringing in
my ears.

But it may be well to state briefly what my religious
views were before I became a Catholic.

I was brought up in the Church of England by a very
good and pious mother, and all the religion I ever learnt
was from her. This early religious training had implanted
in me a belief in and a respect for Christianity in general,
and it was probably upon this foundation that my after-
belief was built up. I had travelled over the greater part
of the world, and had seen something of most of the
Protestant forms of worship, from the extreme Ritualist
to the Dutch Reformed Church. I did not know what
bigotry meant. I had seen Catholic priest and Protestant
parson dwell amicably together. Without, therefore, holding
any particular religious opinions myself, I respected those
of others.

With these impressions, therefore, and my friend's
words, " The Catholic religion is the only safe religion to
die in," prominently before my mind, I read the " Catholic
Belief" through very carefully, and was struck immensely
with its reasoning and good sense. I fdt that I had the

i8o ROADS TO ROME.

truth before me, and I thank God that I did not reject it
at this the turning-point of my life.

I was extremely elated with the discovery which I
had made, and which had caused the scales to fall from
my eyes; in fact, the truth and its beauty were quite
intoxicating to me.

I saw clearly how the Catholic Creeds fitted the
teaching of the Catholic Church and no other, and why
so many of the doctrines they contained were left untaught
by the Protestant sects.

I was also struck by the contrast between the clear
fulfilment in the Catholic Church of the Saviour's promise :
"the gates of Hell shall not prevail against it," and the
statement in the Homily of the Church of England, that
"all Christendom, old and young, ecclesiastics and lay
people, had been drowned in damnable idolatry for the
space of eight hundred years or more." Where, I asked
myself, was our Saviour's promise ?

Soon after reading the "Catholic Belief" I paid a visit
to my friend, Father Meagher, the Catholic priest at
Simonstown, and expected that when he heard the news
I had to tell him, he would forthwith receive me into the
Church. To this expectation I received a rude shock, for,
to my astonishment, he sent me away, telling me kindly
to look well into the matter, and to come again in a
fortnight's time, if of the same mind. But when I called
again in the hope of being received without further for-
malities, I received another shock. He told me that I
must now, if I would indeed be a Catholic, put myself
under instruction, and commence by learning the Catechism.
He quoted the text of Scripture, " Except ye be converted,

ROADS TO ROME. i8i

and become as little children, ye cannot enter into the
Kingdom of Heaven." I found that I had to become
again as a little child, and to sit down and be taught. I
learnt the Catechism by heart, and went to him daily
to repeat my lesson.

The good priest also lent me several Catholic books —
the first I had ever read in my life — and I began to study
history from the Catholic point of view. The first thing
that struck me was the fairness of Catholic historians, their
books being full of references, and mostly from the works
of their opponents. The Reformation period caused me
no little surprise and indignation. Indeed, I found so
much to learn and to unlearn, that it took me six or
seven years of hard reading to get myself up to date. But
I had the happiness, after three months' instruction, of
being received into the Catholic Church — on St. Joseph's
Day, 1887, the year of the Pope's and the Queen's
Jubilee.

It is often said that we Catholics are such "priest-
ridden " people. I answer : If this is because we honour
and obey our priests, and because we ask their advice
in things spiritual and temporal, we certainly are priest-
ridden, and we are proud of it. We obey our priests in
things spiritual, because Jesus Christ said, " He that heareth
you heareth Me, and he that despiseth you despiseth Me "
(St Luke X. 16) ; and, "If he will not hear the Church,
let him be to thee as the heathen and publican " (St.
Matt, xviii. 15-17). We honour our priests, because they
are the anointed of the Lord, who daily offer the Body
of our Lord in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. I know
that it is difficult for the non-Catholic to grasp the exalted

\

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ROADS TO ROME.

position which a priest must ever occupy hi the eyes of
a good Catholic. He is honoured, not because of any
good qualities which he may personally possess, but
because of his holy office and of the position which he
holds in the one Church of the Redeemer.

GEORGE HARE PATTERSON, Esq.,

Formerly a Unitarian Minister.

When a convert, looking back, sees the path by which
he has travelled homeward, notes its devious course, its
pitfalls, and its snares, and realizes that by the mercy of
God he is safe in the fold of Mother Church after all, he
feels impelled to chant his Te Deum in joy and thankful-
ness. But when such an one is asked to tell how it all
came about, what tended to produce so great a change in
his life, he is at first almost at a loss for a reply. The
Holy Spirifs leadings and promptings are in most cases
so subtle, that it is extremely difficult to say definitely:
This or that made me a Catholic.

But, having been asked to make some attempt to answer
this question, I will endeavour to give briefly some of the
reasons which weighed most strongly with me in making
this great change. I shall not pretend to present argu-
ments, writing, as I am, for inquirers rather than for con-
troversialists, but simply bear my testimony so far as it
is based upon personal experience.

As a Unitarian I invariably made a point of seeking
to understand both sides of any question of importance

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i84 ROADS TO ROME.

that presented itself to me, and so, upon casually forming
acquaintance with a Catholic priest, it struck me as being
a good opportunity of getting to know ** the other side of
the question" in the matter of Catholicism. I therefore
asked him to suggest some book that would briefly and
concisely give a statement of the actual claims and teach-
ing of the Church, and he recommended to me Father
Bruno's " Catholic Belief." I secured a copy, and read it
very carefully, with as fair and open a mind as was then
possible for me, and it taught me at least to understand
and to respect the Church's claims, however strongly I
might be inclined to dispute them. But this certainly
was a point gained, the full value of which I was to
experience later on. Not long after this I came to realize
the force of a view held by so many Unitarian thinkers,
that ''between Rome and Reason there could practically
be no alternative." But at that time Reason seemed to me
to be an all-sufficient guide. I was then serving as a lay
preacher for the Unitarian cause, and when, after several
years of study and experience, I entered upon regular
work, it was to take charge of the Domestic Unitarian
Mission Church at Belfast. I was now called upon to
study human life in its various phases — not as it is
presented in books, but as it really is, and to an extent
that had never been possible to me before. I was not
long in discovering that the views which I held, and which
I was earnestly seeking to inculcate amongst my people,
were to a great extent in flat contradiction to those held
by my predecessor, and this was by no means an en-
couraging discovery. But, strange to say, the awkwardness
of such a state of things had never before occurred to

ROADS TO ROME. 185

me ; on the contrary, I had rather gloried in what appeared
to me to be but the legitimate exercise of my individual
liberty of judgment But how great seemed the difficulty
which now presented itself to me ! While teaching from
the pulpit what I believed to be truth, it was my duty
to tell my people that they must after all think for
themselves as to what was truth and what was error.
And this to a working-class congregation, most of whom
were beset with difficulties and temptations on every hand,
and many of whom were enduring the terrible hardships
and privations of life !

To me, the existence of God and of the human soul
were certainties, and, as a spiritualist, I believed in the
reality of a spirit-world, in which we would have to reap
the fruits of our conduct and of our aspirations in this
earthly life. I would as soon have doubted my own
existence as to have doubted this. Hence my keen sense
of personal responsibility in the matter.

As time went on, there was brought home to me, with
increasing force, the full significance of the g^eat divergence
of opinion which prevailed among our ministers regarding
the most fundamental and central truths of Religion. The
miserable inadequacy of Unitarianism, when brought to
bear upon the evils of life, became increasingly apparent
to me as my work as a missionary led me among the
very poorest and distressed and vicious of mankind, and,
in spite of many prepossessions and of deeply rooted con-
victions, I was made, after a while, to feel the absolute
necessity of dogma. How to help poor struggling
humanity in face of all the terrible problems of pain, sin,
and death, without setting forth some objective truth.

i86 ROADS TO ROME.

seemed to me to be a question pressing for solution.
Some dogmatic basis of operation, some kind of infallible
truth, seemed to me to be the one thing needful; but
where was such a basis to be found ?

At this time, Orange influences were well in evidence in
Ireland, and the Ulster Unitarians, in spite of their profession
of liberality in religion, were to a great extent impregnated
with the Orange taint It was this spirit amongst my
own people which more than anything tended to drive
me into Catholic society. Almost innumerable were the
libels and charges trumped up against Catholics and
their Church, and,. but for my previous familiarity with
Catholic teachings, I might have been imposed upon and
imbibed the same poison. As it was, I often felt bound, in
the interests of common fairness, to contradict many a vile
assertion, and also to strongly condemn such gross violations
of the law of charity as were involved in the utterances of
what I knew to be malicious slander. Need it be said that
I soon became an object of suspicion to many who should
have known better ? In spite, however, of the tongue of
scandal which was at work, I persevered in my ministry ;
but those with and for whom I was working little knew
with how heavy a heart The daily familiar sights of poverty,
disease, and vice, visitations of the dying, and the witness-
ing of death-agonies, together with the sorrows of the
bereaved, left, I think, indelible impressions upon me.
Indeed the strain and distress of mind became at times
almost unbearable. "Is it possible," I asked myself,
"that in God's wide universe there is neither help nor
remedy ? Is there no hope or inspiration beyond what
is to be gained from scientific speculation and from

ROADS TO ROMK 187

guesses at truth?" I had, indeed, the undeniable facts
of Spiritualism to fall back upon ; but, real as they were
to me^ they were far too meager, and the truths they
demonstrated altogether too indefinite, to meet the wants
of the case. I knew, moreover, that they were put aside
as mere superstition by the majority of both ministers and
laymen in the Unitarian body. There was left, then, no
basis whatever to work upon, and there could be no
united effort of any kind in the least likely to meet
our burning necessities. Generous material help there
was, indeed, forthcoming from kindly hearted men and
women ^ but, taken by itself, how sadly inadequate it
was! Philanthropy, if confined to the merely material
plane of life, is clearly not the whole of Religion, however
necessary an adjunct to it it may be. True charity is the
love of man for God's sake, and when it is prompted by
supernatural motives, it has a Divine uplifting power.
Without it, how shall the broken-hearted find comfort, the
tempted receive strength, the dying find peace and for-
giveness — how shall the bow of promise be made visible
above the yawning grave ?

I found many valuable and sympathetic friends among
Catholics, specially amongst the Passionist Fathers of
Ardpyne, at whose monastery I was a frequent visitor.
But they never spoke to me on the subject of doctrine.
The initiative was in every case taken by myself. Vague
misgivings and forebodings were beginning to make life
almost intolerable to me. The very enthusiasm with
which I had hitherto advocated Unitarian principles was
making the present experience all the more painful to me.
I looked with inquiring eyes at all the Churches, and

1 88 ROADS TO ROME.

although I found good and earnest men in all, helpful
agencies here and there, I found only one Church whose
news had a clear and certain sound, an unequivocal claim.
With a distinctness, as though it was whispered by spirit-
voices, came to me the question, ** Is it not possible that
this despised, calumniated old Church may be the true
Church after all; that in her is to be found Divine
helpfulness and — ^truth?"

'' I at least believed in soul,
Was very sure of God."

And, granting the existence and reality of these, it was
clear to me that the soul must have been created for an
end ; and if for an end, how was man to know and attain
it, save by a revelation which in its own nature was in-
fallible ? Such were the questions and suggestions which
prompted a reconsideration of my whole position.

The re-reading of theology, of Christian history, very
soon led me to see that if the Catholic religion were not
true, the greater was the pity of it. Still the obstacles in
my way were considerable, it being no easy matter for a
rationalist to break away from the old moorings and to let
go his old ideals ; it was both a painful and a humiliating
process ! The task was made easier for me in that I did
not trouble over mere side issues, but went straight for the
main point : Authority and Divineness of commission. My
investigations were primarily directed to the credentials
of the Church, seeing that if they proved sound, all else
must follow in logical sequence. Granting the reality of
the Church's claim, no matter how great the difficulties in-
volved, there could be no longer room for doubt regarding

ROADS TO ROME. 189

anytMng contained in the 'deposit of Faith. I came to view
the Church as a living organism, following the natural laws
of development and of assimilation, yet ever preserving
its identity unchanged, by virtue, as I afterwards dis-
covered, of the perpetual indwelling of the Holy Ghost.
In no other way could its marvellous vitality be explained
or accounted for.

I cannot, of course, attempt to set down the entire
rationale of the process by which I arrived at these con-
clusions. This has been most ably done by other pens.
For the information, however, of any of those who are
travelling along a similar road, and who may be disposed
to reconsider their position, I would mention some works'
which have helped me materially in bringing my inquiry
to a successful issue. They are Hettinger's "Revealed
Religion," and "The Existence of God" by the great
German Jesuit Father Hammerstein. These two I found
simply invaluable. I would also particularly mention
Cardinal Manning's "Temporal Mission of the Holy
Ghost," and his smaller but very pithy volume, "The
Grounds of Faith." The book, however, that above all
others helped to clear away my intellectual difficulties,
and that showed me the soundness of the Church's
position, together with the Divine nature of its mission,
was Newman's " Grammar of Assent" The grace of God
did the rest.

But besides the influences thus indicated, there were
all this time other and, if I mistake not, still more po-
tent factors at work, deep down in the recesses of my
inner life. They are, however, of so sacred a nature that
I almost hesitate to set them down. There are some

190 ROADS TO ROME.

experiences in life so tender and so holy, that right feeling
would seem to forbid their being placed in detail before
the public gaze. Suffice it to say that I had a little
daughter who, strange to relate, had received the grace
of Catholic baptism. After four brief but very happy
years, she was taken from me. After that — I could not
have given a reason why — I often wandered into Catholic
churches, for it seemed to me as though I was nearer
to her there than in any other place on earth, and that
He too was nearer to me there as the Father of con-
solation and of comfort. A deep sense of peace, the
significance of which I could not then comprehend, at
such times stole into my inmost souL The initiated will
readily understand.

J* God has His mysteries of grace,
Ways that we cannot tell ;
He hides them deep like the hidden sleep
Of him He loved so well'* >

It seems but fitting that a word should be added as
to my experiences as a Catholic. To me it has been
indeed a taking up of the cross in the truest sense.
But what of that? I have found a deeper peace and
a greater all-pervading happiness, have found stronger
incentives and more powerful aids to pure living and high
thinking. I have received greater consolation in sorrow
and, certainly, an intenser realization of the Divine
Presence than I have ever known before in the history
of my life. A fuller light has for me been thrown upon
the intricate problems of humanity, and a key has been

> From " The Burial of Moses," by Mrs. Alexander.

ROADS TO ROME.

191

given me which, like the magic sesame, will open the doors
of the King's treasury, whence there are brought forth for
me jewels rich and rare. I have exchanged sophistry for
philosophy, chaos for order, uncertainty for certainty. The
Church has satisfied the deepest wants and longings of my
nature.

The Right Rev.
JAMES LAIRD PATTERSON. D.D., M.A..

Trinity College, Oxford ; LORD BISHOP OF EMMAUS ;
St. Mary% Cadogan Street, S.W.

I WAS bom in 1822, and brought up in the ordinary
Protestantism of the period on the " Bible only." When
I went to Oxford in 1840, and was asked, before signing
the Thirty-nine Articles, what they were, I answered that
they were "a protest against Catholic errors," which was
considered a satisfactory statement. In the set to which
I belonged (the scholars of Trinity) I heard for the first
time of the principle of authority as the basis of religious
belief, and I immediately, as by a sort of instinct, adhered
to it as a philosophy of belief and a rule of life, never for
an instant doubting that the exponent of this principle
was " the Church " — ^that is, the Church of England as by
law established. In the course of my first three years'
residence at Oxford, the conversation, and, above all, the
excellent example of my contemporaries, gradually deve-
loped more and more fully belief in the primary truths
of religion — the Trinity, the Incarnation, the Redemption,
the Sacramental System, Prayer, Alm^iving, Fasting,
reverence for holy things and persons, the Communion

19a

ROADS TO ROME. 193

of Saints, and Forgiveness of Sins. At the end of that
time a course of lectures on ecclesiastical history, given
by the Regius Professor, Hussey of Christ Church, and
a good deal of reading on cognate subjects, mediaeval
architecture, archaeolc^^y, and especially the study of our
ancient Churches in frequent excursions, brought home to
me the perception of the great difference which there is
between the mediaeval religion and that of the existing
Church of England ; it especially struck me as extra-
ordinary that the outcome of the changes of the sixteenth
century, which we were told to esteem as excellent and
admirable, should evidently have been an immense de-
crease of religious belief and religious practice throughout
the land. I had attached myself to one of the Oxford
parishes, and in 1845 I offered myself as a candidate for
Orders. This necessitated a reconsideration of the claims
of the Church of England to my allegiance, and, when I
presented myself to the Bishop of Oxford, I felt it
necessary to acquaint him with the fact that I had some
doubt as to the validity of those claims. The Bishop
(Wilberforce), however, overruled them, more by a show of
authority than by any process of reasoning, and I was
ordained deacon in December of that year. The ministry
and its obligations did not, as I was told it would, tend to
settle me, but, on the contrary, increased my doubts. Under
Dr. Pusey's direction I obeyed his counsels to leave aside
controversy and apply myself to active work in the parish of
St. Thomas' where I was curate ; but, from time to time, the
old difficulties returned, and the more I read and reflected,
and also (in visits to the Continent) saw and heard of the
working of the Catholic Church, of its absolute unity in faith

O

194 ROADS TO ROME.

and discipline, the more I perceived the absence of those
characteristics in the Anglican Communion. The strain
on mind and conscience broke down my health, and in
1849 I ^^ advised to go abroad for a year to rest At
that time a number of us " Anglo-Catholics," as we called
ourselves, were full of a speculative idea that we should find
in the East communities who, while they, like ourselves^
were not in union with the Papal Church, yet boasted of a
great antiquity and of Catholic doctrine and discipline.
I therefore, in company with a friend, like-minded, and
very earnest, went to Egypt and thence to Palestine. We
found a great variety of ancient local churches and repre-
senting some of the earliest heresies, often mutually con-
tradictory, but all agreeing in rejecting the supremacy of
the Pope. On the other hand, the Catholic Churches,
whether following the Latin or the Greek, the Armenian,
the Syrian, the Coptic, the Abyssinian, Maronite^ or any
other rite, were absolutely one in doctrine and in obedience
to the Pope as Vicar of Christ and Supreme Head of the
Catholic Church. If we were sometimes welcomed as
brethren by the Copts, etc, it was as Protestants and
Anti-papalists. The way towards the Church was thus no
doubt made plain, but as yet the hour of grace had not
arrived. It was in Holy Week, 1850, that we found our-
selves at Jerusalem, and there, in the midst of the scenes
hallowed by the Passion, Entombment, and Resurrection of
our Saviour, that we received and obeyed the Divine call,
and submitted to the One, Catholic, Holy, and Apostolic
Church.

On looking back to that time, I see no reason to accuse
myself of bad faith before the crisis came ; but neither can

ROADS TO ROME.

195

I hope to give reasons which would satisfy others for the
long delay in the process of conversion to the faith.
Doubtless God uses second causes to bring about His
merciful ends in the souls of men, but the whole is a super-
natural operation, and those who have undergone it can
only sum up all in the words of the man born blind : " One
thing I know, that whereas I was blind, now I see."

C. KEGAN PAUL, Esq., M.A.,

ExBTBR College, Oxford.

"THE END OF WANDERING" (1890):

Being the Concluding Chapter op his Work, "Memories,** pub-
lished BY Messrs. C. Kegan Paul, Trench, TrObner, & Co.

When I came to London I was able for the first time,
during many years, to consider my position calmly and
fairly. While doing my duties as best I could, it had not
been easy to realize how completely I had fallen away
from the faith. Now, as a layman, with no external
obligation to use words in which it was necessary to find
some meaning consistent with my opinions, the whole
services of the Church of England seemed distasteful and
untrue. The outward scaffolding on which I had striven
to climb to God, every sacramental sign under which I had
sought to find Him, had crumbled into nothingness. I
was in no conscious relation to Him, God had practically
no part in my life ; though I did not deny Him, nor cease
to believe that a First Cause existed : simple atheism is a
rare, and perhaps an impossible position. I was content
not to know, and to wait.

But in the mean time certain things were abundantly
clear. Human relationships exist — the family, society, the

196

ROADS TO ROME. 197

country, the race ; towards all these we have duties which
must be organized ; some conception of history, philosophy,
and science must be framed, if not depending on God, at
least in relation to man. The system formulated by
Auguste Comte had long attracted me on its historical
and social sides ; a friend who, in and since my Oxford
days, had swayed my life more than he knew, had found
it sufficient for himself, and he placed before me the
religious side of this grave and austere philosophy.

It is not a paradox, but sober truth, to say that Posi-
tivism is Catholicism without God. And it does, after a
fashion, give order and regularity to life, inculcates sim-
plicity of manners, aims at a certain amount of discipline,
and caricatures, unconsciously, and with some effect, the
Sacraments, the cultus of Saints, the place of our Lady in
worship, making of humanity the ideal woman, the great
mother and mistress of us all.

It should, in fairness, be said that in this faith, if so it
may be called, men and women live high, restrained, ascetic
lives, and find in humanity an object, not self, for their
devotion. Like the men of Athens they would seem
ignorantly, and under false names, to worship God. And
for myself I may say that I doubt if I should have known
the Faith but for Positivism, which gave me a rule and
discipline of which I had been unaware. The historical
side of Comte's teaching still remains in large measure true
to my mind, based as it is on the teaching of the Church.
Comte had the inestimable advantage of having been
Catholic in his youth, and could not, even when he tried,
put aside the lessons he had learnt.

So long as my Positivism lasted I brought in to it a

198 ROADS TO ROME.

fervour and enthusiasm to which I had been a stranger,
and I was therefore long in discovering that these were
unreal and forced. On many Sundays, when the service
was over, I was wont to walk home with a younger friend,
whose experiences had been largely my own, save that his
loss of faith had arisen from revolt against the extreme
Calvinism which had been presented to him in his youth.
He also had wandered out into Agnosticism, and dis-
covered that he needed an external rule against the
temptations of life which for a while he thought to find in
the religion of Humanity. In long walks across the park
homewards in summer and winter noons we both found
that the fervour of the services evaporated, and left nothing
behind them ; there was none of that sense of a power
abiding within us which the Catholic worshipper brings
away from the tabernacle, even if he cannot always maintain
the intensity of devotion which has been granted him during
the action of Holy Mass or in the Benediction Service.

Once more I saw that my soul was stripped and bare,
when it had seemed fully clothed. Such also was my
friend's experience, and God had given him grace to find,
as I have found, the truth after which we were both seek-
ing. Positivism is a fair-weather creed, when men are
strong, happy, untempted, or ignorant that they are
tempted, and so long as a future life and its dread possi-
bilities do not enter their thoughts ; but it has no message
for the sorry and the sinful, no restoration for the erring,
no succour in the hour of death.

In the training of my intellect and literary faculty, such
as it is, one man had always held predominant sway.
Those young men who entered on their Oxford careers

ROADS TO ROME. 199

towards the end of the decade, 1 840-1 850, found that one
prophet at least had gained honour in his own country,
even if he had experienced also scorn and rejection. John
Henry Newman was a moving intellectual force along
with Tennyson, Browning, Ruskin, and Carlyle. I came to
know the two poets as I know my Bible, if it be not
irreverent to say so, in such a way that, after a time, I
needed no longer to read them, because the exact words
surged up in memory when thought was directed to them,
and there was no need of the printed page. Ruskin and
Carlyle delivered their message and passed on, but
Newman abode, and his intellectual influence developed
into one that was moral and spiritual, preparing my soul
for the great grace and revelation God had yet in store.
Like Thomas k Kempis, so Newman, studied day by day,
sank into my soul and- changed it. Since Pascal none has
put so plainly as he the dread alternative — all or nothing,
faith or unfaith, God or the denial of God. I had not
denied Him, but had left Him on one side, and now as it
were God took His revenge. This is no place to explain
in detail how in sorrow and desolation of spirit God left
His servant alone for a while to clutch in vain for some
help in temptation, for some solution of doubt, and find
none, if it were not God and the old creeds. It were to
lay the secrets of the soul too bare to declare minutely
how each hesitation to submit to what was becoming
intellectually clear was followed by some moral or spiritual
fall, as though the Father would allow His child to slip
in miry ways, if nothing else would teach him the need of
guidance.

But, apart from the direct leadings of God's grace and

200 ROADS TO ROME.

the general effect of the " Imitation " and Newman's writ-
ings, it may be well to specify more closely some of the
arguments which weighed with me to accept the faith I
had so long set at nought

First, and above all, was the overwhelming evidence
for modern miracles, and the conclusions from their occur-
rence. A study of Pascal's life, when I was engaged in trans-
lating the " Pensdes," directed my special attention to the
cure of Pascal's niece, of a lachrymal fistula, by the touch
of the Holy Thorn, preserved at Port RoyaL It is impos-
sible to find anything of the kind better attested, and
readers may judge for themselves in the narrative written
by Racine, and the searching investigations by unpre-
judiced, and certainly not too credulous, critics, Saint-Beuve
and the late Charles Bread.

Next in importance were the miracles of Lourdes, one
of which, as wrought on a friend of my own, came under
my notice. I do not mean, especially in the former case,
that these facts proved any doctrines : that the miracle of
the Thorn made for Jansenist teaching, or those at Lourdes
for the Immaculate Conception ; but rather, that the Thorn
must, from its effects, have been one that had touched the
Sacred Head, that the spring at Lourdes could only have
had its healing powers by the gift of Clod, through our
Lady. It was not that miracles having been declared in
the Bible made these latter occurrences possible, but that
these, and in times so near our own, made the Bible
miracles more credible than they were before, adding their
testimony to that which the Church bears to Holy
Scripture. And it was on the testimony of a living Church
that I would accept the Scripture, if I accepted it at all ;

ROADS to ROME. 201

for surely, of all absurd figments, that of a closed revelation
to be its own interpreter is the most absurd.

The books which mainly aided me at this period, when
I had accepted in a more definite way than ever before the
being of a God Who actively, daily, and visibly interposes
in His own creation, were the " Grammar of Assent " by
Cardinal Newman, and "Religio Viatoris" by Cardinal
Manning. Both works postulate God and the human soul,
and on that foundation build up the Catholic Faith. They
are very different in their method, and perhaps, as a rule,
helpful to different classes of mind, but both aided me.
The re-reading the " Grammar of Assent " as a theological
treatise, and with the wish to believe, was quite a different
matter to my earlier study of it on its publication, when I
regarded it only as an intellectual effort, interesting as the
revelation of a great mind, but not as yet recognizing that
it had any special message for me. But in these later days
it proved to be the crowning gift of the many I received
from that great teacher, who had been my guide through
the years of my pilgrimage, little though I knew it

It is not possible to state precisely the moment at
which definite light came upon my soul in preparation
for the fuller day. As Clough says truly of earthly
dawn —

'^ And not by eastern windows only.

When daylight comes, comes in the light ;
In front, the sun climbs slow, how slowly 1
But westward look, the land is bright.''

About 1888 I had light enough to attend Mass pretty
frequently, but even then was not definitely Catholic in
my belief and sympathies. There was one of my own

202 ROADS TO ROME.

family, having a right to speak, who distrusted my evident
leanings, not so much from want of sympathy with rel%ioni
as from a fear that, as my opinions had been so long in a
state of change, this also might be a passing phase. I said
to myself, whether rightly or wrongly I cannot judge, that
a year should elapse before I made up my mind on the
question, though I began to see which way it must be
answered. This was in the spring of 1889 ; but so weak
is memory that towards the end of the year I was misled
by a date, and supposed it had been in the late summer.

In May, 1890, I went for a short tour in France, as
I had done for some years past, and a profound sense
of dissatisfaction with myself filled my whole souL In
other days the cathedrals and their services, the shrines and
their relics, places of pilgrimage, venerated images, had all
been connected with a faith in which no one who studied
the workings of the human mind could fail to take interest,
but they had no relation to my own. Now it seemed to
me that I was an alien from the family of God, unable to
take a part in that which was my heritage, shut out by
my own coldness of heart, my own want of will. And, as
had long been the case, what attracted me most were just
those things in the cult of Rome which most offended my
companions.

A distinguished ecclesiastic was talking in Rome with a
lady who, while in England, had shown some disposition
towards the Church, but lamented that in the Holy City
she had seen much that was to her quite disedifying, and
quite unlike the pious practices she had known at home.
He replied, " Ah^ madame^ il ne faut pas regarder de si
pris la cuisine du Bon Dieu^^ It was this which interested *

ROADS TO ROME. 263

me and drew me to it At Tours the heap of crutches id
the house devoted to the cultus of the Holy Face, the
pathetic agony of the engraving of the same, seen in so many
churches of that diocese, appealed more to me than the
celebration of High Mass in the cathedral ; the rude image
of our Lady at Chartres more than many a fairer statue.

At Beaulieu, near Loches, the end came. We had
walked there from Loches, and while my companions were
resting under the trees in the little Place^ and taking a
photograph of a neighbouring mill, I remained in conver-
sation with the curif who was superintending some change
in the arrangements of the altar. We spoke of Tours and
St. Martin, of the revived cult of the Holy Face, of M.
Dupont, "the holy man of Tours," whom the curi had
known, and at last he said, after a word about English
Protestantism, *'Mais Monsieur est sansdoute Catholiquet^^
I was tempted to answer, " A peu pris f " but the thought
came with overwhelming force that this was a matter in
which there was " no lore of nicely calculated less or
more;" we were Catholics or not. My interlocutor was
within the fold and I without ; and if without, then against
knowledge, against warning, for I recognized that my full
conviction had at last gone where my heart had gone before.
The call of God sounded in my ears, and I must perforce
obey. But when ?

The promise which I had made to myself that I would
wait a year was binding on me as though made to one
for whose sake I had made it, and the date at which the
promise would expire seemed far off. But early in August
I discovered that I had been in error as to the time, and
that I was already free. On the 12th of August, at

204 ROADS TO ROME.

Fulham, in the Church of the Servites, an Order to which
I had long felt an attraction, I made my submission with
deep thankfulness to God.

It was the day after Cardinal Newman's death, and the
one bitter drop in a brimming cup of joy was that he
could not know all he had done for me — that his was the
hand which had drawn me in when I sought the ark
floating on the stormy seas of the world. But a few days
afterwards, as I knelt by his coffin at Edgbaston and
heard the requiem Mass said for him, I felt that indeed
he knew, that he was in a land where there was no need
to tell him anything, for he sees all things in the heart
of God.

Those who are not converts are apt to think and say
that converts join the Church in a certain exaltation of
spirit, but that when it cools they regret what has been
done, and would return but for very shame. It has been
said of marriage that every one finds, when the ceremony
is over, that he or she has married another, and not the
bride or groom who seemed to have been won ; and
Clough takes the story of Jacob as a parable representing
this fact. We wed Rachel, as we think, and in the morn-
ing, behold it is Leah. So the Church bears one aspect
when seen from a distance, ab extra; another when we
have given ourselves into her keeping.

But the Church is no Leah, rather a fairer Rachel
than we dared to dream, her blessings are greater than
we had hoped. I may say for myself that the happy
tears shed at the tribunal of Penance, on that I2th of
August, the fervour of my first communion, were as
nothing to what I feel now. Day by day the mystery of

ROADS TO ROME.

205

the Altar seems greater, the unseen world nearer, God
more a Father, our Lady more tender, the great company
of saints more friendly — if I dare use the word — my
guardian angel closer to my side. All human relation-
ships become holier, all human friends dearer, because
they are explained and sanctified by the relationships and
the friendships of another life. Sorrows have come to me
in abundance since God gave me grace to enter His
Church, but I can bear them better than of old, and the
blessing He has given me outweighs them all. May He
foigive me that I so long resisted Him, and lead those I
love unto the fair land wherein He has brought me to
dwell I It will be said, and with truth, that I am very
confident My experience is like that of the blind man
in the Gospel who also was sure. He was still ignorant
of much, nor could he fully explain how Jesus opened his
eyes, but this he could say with unfaltering certainty:
'' One thing I know, that whereas I was blind, now I see."

The Rev. CHARLES POYER,

Private Secrstary to His Eminence Cardinal Vaughan,
Archbishop's House, Westminster, S.W.

I JOINED the Church from two motives only : the first the
authority of the Catholic Church, and the second her
unity of doctrine.

These two facts seemed to me to require explanation,
and after trying to discover authoritative teaching and
unity of faith amongst Low Churchmen, Broad Churchmen,
and lastly with the High Church party, I finally turned my
attention to the Catechism of the Council of Trent This
gave me, what for many years I had been seeking for — a
clear and logical reason for submitting my private judg-
ment, in matters of faith and morals, to that Divine
Institution which was founded by Jesus Christ to " teach
all nations."

Where that Institution was to be found, the unity of
its doctrine, its infallibility, its power, its sanctity, and
other prerogatives, were truths which, by the grace of
God, became to my mind logical conclusions from fol-
lowing step by step those marvellous explanations of the
teaching of the Holy Roman Catholic and Apostolic

ao6

ROADS TO ROME.

207

Church which are contained in the Catechism of the
Council of Trent.

The mind was convinced, but that was not sufficient.
The heart had to be converted. How this miracle was
effected only those will understand who have, in prayer,
sought for that peace which the world cannot give.

The Rev. C. E. RIVERS, M.A.,

Oriel College, Oxford ; Cathouc Church, Acton, London, W.

I WAS born in South Africa, in the year 1863, my
father being on the Governor's staff, and my childhood
was passed there until I was sent home to prepare for
an English public school at the age of ten. All the
Anglican influences of those early days were High Church.
The Bishop of Capetown had a convent of Sisters, and
the services in the cathedral were certainly not of a
Protestant description, though at the present day they
would probably be termed very moderate. Choral ser-
vices, Processions, the cross carried before the officiating
ministers : this was the utmost that was attempted in the
way of ritual development. I was taught to look upon
the Dutch Calvinists, who abounded there, as worthy
but misguided people; and what I remember of the
inside of their places of worship was a very dreary
expanse of pews, a huge pulpit, and a general absence
of artistic or musical accessories. I pitied them, and
thanked God that I was bom an Englishman, and that
I was not of the Dutch Reformed persuasion. The

208

ROADS TO ROME. 209

Superior of the Anglican Convent was good saintly
Mary Buller, Sir Redvers Buller's cousin, and my elder
sister was her pupil for several years in the first-rate
school which she had started in the neighbourhood. One
of her other nuns, Miss Andrews, is now Sister Mary
Monica, of the Assumption Convent, Kensington Square,
who was received into the Church quite late in life, and
who at once joined a religious order in spite of her
advanced age.

On coming home to England I had a strange religious

experience — even for a child. My aunt, Lady C , with

whom I was to stay until the return of my parents,
attended service at a certain West End church, where
the present Bishop of Manchester then ministered. Here
everything was different : an entirely new religion was pre-
sented to me. There were long and very learned sermons ;
no ceremonial of any kind, and the doctrine, little though
I understood it then, was of the broadest and most lati-
tudinarian type. I heard it whispered that I had been
brought up with very High Church ideas, and that I was
almost like a Roman Catholic boy, all of which made me
yearn for whatever that might mean, so much did I dislike
the cold, unattractive parish church, and its unintelligible
pulpit discourses. To comfort me I was told that "the
vicar was a very clever man, and that people came from
the other end of London to hear him." Since then, my
aunt, through the influence of her daughter, has in her
old age adopted the extreme of Ritualism, and now
worships in a church in which the Anglican archbishop's
" opinion " as to incense, portable lights, and reservation
are contemptuously defied.

2IO ROADS TO ROME.

On going to schooli I very soon discovered that there
were two distinct religions taught and practised there.
Each Sunday morning the boys were told off to go to
two different churches. One of the masters, I discovered,
was High Church, the other Low Church, and it was
in this way that the respective parents holding to these
different schools of thought were satisfied. By express
agreement with my relations in London, it had been
arranged that I was to attend the Low Church services,
which seemed worse to me even than the Broad Church
regime which I had experienced during the holidays. On
Sunday mornings, at ia30 a.m., we were drawn up in
double line in the garden of the school, one party to
follow one master, the other the other — to St. Peter's, or to
Holy Trinity, Bournemouth. Fortunately, I had made

friends with Tommy B ^ the eldest son of the present

peer, and he knew what a torture I endured at the
Evangelical place of worship. So in his unselfish little
heart it was devised that we should stand side by side in
the two lines, and that we should exchange places the
moment word was given to depart. I do not think that
we were ever discovered in this shocking act of deception
by either of the masters, and I rejoice to say that Tommy
was not killed in the Boer war with the many thousands
of his namesakes who have fallen on the field of battle,
but that he has returned home safe — unhappily, only to
receive a disastrous defeat, when standing for a Radical
constituency in the South of England. I am inclined to
think that he really did prefer Holy Trinity church, seeing
that he could sleep and even snore there in comfort during
service.

ROADS TO ROME. 211

My next experience was Marlborough, where the spirit
of Farrar yet abode. Religiously that spirit was sensuous
and aesthetic, and devoid of doctrine of any sort. Dry
moral truths only were inculcated ; no real Christianity was
either taught or practised. The natural virtues and Natural
Religion were the highest things that were ever aimed at
The music in the chapel was admirable, and it was generally
well rendered ; but I remember well the amusing incident
of my once being the innocent cause of my neighbours
in chapel coming to blows, when service was over. The
boy on my left had, like myself. High Church leanings,
although he was really a worthless fellow. As a protest
against our compulsory attendance at church twice a day,
he used to spend his time in reading a sensational novel
which he had carefully done up in the cover of an old
Bible. On this occasion he was aroused from these profit-
able studies by the boy on my right hand, who was Low
Church, stamping on my toes on account of my having
bowed low at the " Gloria Patri '' — a custom which I had
adopted years before in the cathedral, Capetown, and
which I had never relinquished. He was a precocious
little villain, this champion of mine, and I wonder where
he is now !

As I grew older I used to go to various London
churches, the more advanced in Ritual the better ; but it
was only when I made my first Communion that I began
to think seriously about the doctrinal basis of religion.
First of all there came to me the all-important question :
What was it that I received in Holy Communion ? Was
it God or was it Bread ? and if the first, why should I not
go into His Presence as oflen as others did, instead of

212 ROADS TO ROME.

following Him from afar off, when He was "made
known to the faithful in the breaking of bread " ? So
I adopted without hesitation the practice of non-com-
municating attendance at the Anglican G)mmunion
Service, and thus came unexpectedly upon a book com-
piled by Carter of Clewer, " The Treasury of Devotion."
Here was Catholicism in full bloom— eveiything but
the Pope, Our Lady, and the Saints ; and even they
were spoken of with respect, although kept at a respectful
distance.

Before going up to Oxford, where I matriculated at
Oriel College, I went to a tutor's in Germany to learn that
language thoroughly. The "Culturkampf" was at its
height, but never before had I seen such faith and devotion,
the churches being crowded, and devout multitudes hearing
Mass from outside the sacred buildings. (Numbers of
Catholic Churches had been handed over to the schis-
matics of 1870, who held with Dollinger, Reinkens, and
Co.) My tutor was a freethinker — although he posed
before my uncle, who was making terms with him for my
sojourn under his roof, as an Evangelical Protestant, what-
ever that may mean. His text-books in Theology were
Strauss and Renan, and there were two copies of the " Vie
de J^sus" on the shelves of my bedroom. He looked
rather contemptuously at the crucifix which I had with
me ; but he was a kind and genial man, a musical genius
and good scholar (an authority on Aristophanes), and he
had a supreme contempt for the new "old Catholic"
sect, which he described as being composed of tepid and
lukewarm Romans, who, finding the restraints of their
own Church discipline irksome and troublesome, were

ROADS TO ROME. 213

inconsistent and unreasonable in not going as far as
he did towards modem unbelief. His wife turned out
to be a fervent French Catholic, whose life was a
living sermon, and who, although refusing to enter into
controversy with me or her husband, had nevertheless
a quiet way of answering questions which was most
impressive and dignified. The good woman has since
died, and the professor has married a German of his
own way of thinking.

While at Heidelberg, which was my headquarters, I
made several pleasant holiday excursions, in company
with a young Englishman, a nephew of one of Mr. Glad-
stone's peers, who has since become a London doctor,
with a fashionable practice. He professed no religion
at all, and scoffed at revelation, but was clever and
highly cultured, and devoted 'to music and art. What
little I know of either I attribute to him. A visit to the
cathedral at Worms, during the octave of Corpus Christi,
showed that ancient Catholic building to be well used, as
though Luther had never existed ; while no one seemed
to trouble to look at the Reformer's monument, which
had been subscribed for by his admirers in other coun-
tries, and which occupies a commanding position in the
town.

On my return home I took up residence at Oriel,
where my religious difficulties at once began. I had
imagined this, as the home of Newman, Pusey, and
Keble, to be an ideal place as regards religious teaching,
but I found to my amazement that no such instruction
was even attempted. The chapel was a hideous bare
building ; the Holy Communion was celebrated only three

214 ROADS TO ROME.

times a term, and the sacred vessels, whether empty or not,
were removed immediately after the service by one of the
college servants, whose duty it was to cleanse them at
his own convenience in the college kitchen. This was
a shock to the feelings of the several young men, who,
like myself, believed in some sacramental presence ; we
soon, however, discovered the existence of Mr. Noel's
church, St Barnabas', and, confining our attendance at the
college chapel to what the strict letter of the law required,
we were happy for a time in what we saw and found in
that stronghold of advanced Ritualism.

But now the question came to us practically, What
was the teaching of the Church of England ? Was the
Anglican priest, who said Mass and heard confessions,
right, or were the ordained ministers, who held sway in
the Oriel College chapel, right ? Who was to decide
between them? Kind Dr. King, of Christ Church, now
Bishop of Lincoln, cheered us by " comfortable words "
as to our duty of improving the Church of England, and
of making it truly Catholic, seeing that it was for the
most part given over to the Protestants. Amongst our
number were Aymer Vallance, who became a clergyman
later on, and was then reconciled to the Church ; H. L.
Leverton, now a vicar in Cornwall ; young Cunninghame
Grahame, brother of the Socialist M.P., and a few others
similarly minded. I remember Frank Russell, son of
the late Chief Justice, expressing surprise at our eating
fish on Friday in Hall. I suppose he meant that, not
being Catholics, there was no obligation upon us to observe
the Church's laws.

A matter which greatly perplexed me about this time

ROADS TO ROME. 215

was the following practice which Dr. King had adopted.
I could not imagine how he could justify it to himself.
At 8 a.m. he would celebrate communion in Christ Church
Cathedral after the Low Church type, without any external
marks of reverence or adoration. At 11 a.m., he would
be present at a solemn High Mass at St Barnabas',
behaving just as any priest would to-day at the Brompton
Oratory. It seemed to my juvenile conception of things
that either gross irreverence was committed at the early
hour, or else shocking idolatry at the later service. I
mentioned this to one of the extreme party, who was
supposed to be a '* ductor dubitantium/' and he thought
that these things were, after all, merely external and
non-essential ; but I reflected afterwards that, if that
were so, how came it that the clergy of the same
school were ready to go to prison for their opinions,
and why was the English Church Union spending
thousands of pounds yearly for what was not really
worth fighting for ?

But before long Dr. King went to Lincoln, and I went
over to Rome, where things are managed difTerently. It
was very soon brought home to me that there must be
absolute truth somewhere ; that there must be an unvarying
moral standard; that we must know what we are to
believe, and how we are to act. I began to wonder if,
after all, the Roman Church might offer some security as
regards these matters, though I was told that most of her
clergy in this country were very ignorant, and a good
many grossly immoral. At any rate, I determined to
find out something about her in the proper place — the
Jesuit Church, St Giles', Oxford. Father Humphrey, S.J.,

2i6 ROADS TO ROME.

happened to be preaching that very evening on the subject
exercising my mind, from the text, " Many are called, bat
few are chosen/' and I began to see things in a new
light I read much of Newman's books, the "Apologia,"
the "Essay on Development," many simple manuals
and catechisms. I studied the devotional aspect of the
Church's life; I spent a holiday or two abroad in an
entirely Catholic atmosphere. I also examined a good
deal of the anti-Catholic literature, from various points
of view — ^the school of Charles Kingsley and of Robert-
son of Brighton, the pious Evangelical view of the matter.
I saw Dr. King several times ; I had an interesting corre-
spondence with the great Dr. Liddon. All disagreed with
one another, but all agreed against Rome. She must be
wrong. She was the stone of stumbling, and the rock of
offence. I was certain that the Christian Revelation was
Divine, but it was clear that the Church of England was
only a human institution. There was no definiteness
and certainty in her message. God was clearly calling
me to come out of her. I made my submission to the
late Father Gamett, of the Oratory, on the 17th of
December, 1883, and joined the Catholic Apostolic and
Roman Church, of whom I am now, though all unworthy,
a priest and servant.

What we should seek to point out to inquirers in the
present day is that the Catholic Church has all the good
that is contained in the various sects outside her pale.
We are High Church in the sense that our ceremonial
observances are sublime and elevating, that the teaching
of our spiritual writers and mystics is lofty beyond words
— " so high, who can attain unto it ? " Yet we care not

ROADS TO ROME. 217

for ritual for its own sake, but as the necessary attendant
upon the Heavenly M)^eries, and their expression and
accompaniment

We are Low Church in the sense that we can descend
to the level of the humblest intelligences. We give
missions to the poor and the unlettered ; we have plain
low Mass and devotions in the vernacular. The great
founder of the Friars Preachers is himself styled " Evan-
gelicus Pater Dominicus " — a true teacher of the simple
words of God.

We are Broad Church in the sense that there is
nothing provincial or insular in our gospel — "latum man-
datum tuum nimis," within the bounds of the Church's
dogmatic definitions all is free and wide ; " controvertitur "
is the summing up of many a discussion of the schools
— the theologians differ; but not concerning the Real
Presence or Real Absence in the Blessed Eucharist, or as
to whether there are two Sacraments or seven, or if the
Christian ministry implies a sacrificial priesthood or just
the reverse. These are matters which are vital and
essential ; they mean life or death, not only to the Oxford
student and undergraduate, but to the servant and the
tradesman ; not only to the refined and educated, but also
to the coarse and rough; either there is one Church,
infallible, eternal, or Christ has been a false prophet — the
gates of hell have already prevailed against her.

The Church has her conservative side, in that she
cannot change ; she is radical, in that she goes to the
root of all questions, social, political, scientific, and moral.
She appeals to all classes of society, and chooses her clergy
from every rank and station of life.

2l8

ROADS TO ROME.

However long the Anglican compromise may still
continue to exist, it is surely clear that it has the seeds of
decay and death within it Its testimony does not agrtc ;
it is of the earthy earthy : a mere State creation^ doomed
to failure and catastrophe. Unbelief^ of&dal and authori-
tative, is taught unrebuked by many of its clergy.^ The
Incarnation, Eternal Punishment, the Blessed Trinity, the
very existence of sin and virtue as such are denied. May
its best children leave it, and may they soon learn to know
with Catholics throughout the world, of every nation and
people and tongue, what is the length, and breadth, and
depth, and height of the all-embracing love of Christ;
may they receive that unction from the Holy One which
shall enable them to know all things, being made wise
unto salvation !

* See the case of Mr. Beeby, of Yardley Wood, and the Bishop of Wor-
cester, exposed by Lord Beauchamp, but with no result ; the former, though a
Unitarian in his views, still retaining his opinions, and writing and preaching
these deadly heresies, with the Bishop's tacit approval and sanction.

The Right Rev.
MoNSiGNOR W. CROKE ROBINSON, M.A.,

And Fellow op New College, Oxford ; Hammersmith, W.

It is difficult to know where to start in a subject so laige
and profound as the change of one's faith and the process
by which that change came about. I will endeavour to
trace the beginnings from which were evolved eventually
five conclusions which led me to the Catholic Church.

I must premise that I was brought up as a Low Church
Anglican, but that a very little serious thought brought
me to what is known as Tractarianism, as distinguished
from Evangelicanism on the one side and Ritualism on
the other, with neither of which I had any sympathy. I
thought the one narrow-minded and illogical, and the
other illogical and dishonest ; and I think so now. I very
soon began to be disturbed and unsettled by the confusion
worse confounded of Anglicanism. I asked myself. Can
Almighty God be the Author of this confusion ? Can our
Divine Saviour's promise be fulfilled, "that the gates of
hell shall not prevail against His Church " ? or His prayer
be answered, ." that they may be all one, as Thou, Father, in
Me, and I in Thee; that they also may be one in Us:

219

220 ROADS TO ROME.

that the world may believe that Thou hast sent Me " ? ^
I could neither explain this difficulty nor get it ex-
plained. As yet the Catholic and Roman Church, for
whatever reason, never entered into my thoughts. These
early troubles were the beginning of what I may truly call
my ten years' agony. For it took me all that time — ^that
is, from 1862 to 1872 — ^to find my way from darkness to
light.

It was not very long before it dawned upon me that
every Anglican, of whatever school, was in reality a law
to himself, and that he acted on his own authority ; and
then it was that the question of authority became to me the
'' articulus stantis vel cadentis ecdesics^^ and ever afterwards.
I asked every one I met, "By what authority dost thou
believe, and doest thou these things ? " Sometimes, on
my inquiry of this or that divine, I was referred to the
Prayer-book as my authority, sometimes to the Fathers
of the Church, sometimes to the Primitive Church. It
took me some years to discover the fallacy of such appeals
to authority ; why, I cannot think. But that is always the
way when one becomes a Catholic. One is sure to feel
and say. How could it have taken so long to discover
what a moment's serious thought and the exercise of a
little common sense ought to have revealed ? How is it
that every Anglican cannot see it ? The answer, of course,
is that they have not the gift of faith. They even might
see it — ^that is to say, might be intellectually convinced of
the fallacy of such appeals, and moreover of the logical
standpoint of the Catholic Church ; and yet, for all that,
they will not and cannot become Catholics. For — and

> StJjohn zvii. 21.

ROADS TO ROMK 221

here I must be pardoned for making a considerable
digression — intellectual conviction is not faith. It cannot
be too strongly insisted upon at this present moment
(January, 190 1). There are thousands and tens of thou-
sands to-day who are intellectually convincedi that of all
bodies of men calling themselves Christians,^the Catholic
Church alone is logical and unassailable in its credentials.
But they do not, and will not, ever become Catholics
because they have not faitL Let us give a homely illus-
tration of the difference between intellectual conviction
and faith. A clever botanist, bom blind, will discourse
learnedly about, say, an oak tree, and will be able with
marvellous accuracy to describe its appearance by the aid
of his imagination. Meanwhile those of his audience, who
have eyes, see. This similitude explains itself. God alone
can give the faculty of seeing as well in the order of
grace as in that of nature ; and until He gives it, no man
can attain to it by any process of scientific inference. And
here, let me observe, many of the so-called apostasies of
our days are to be explained. They are not really apos-
tasies. It is simply this, that certain men have reasoned
themselves into the Church and then have reasoned
themselves out again. They were merely intellectually
convinced, and were received on the strength of this
conviction by priests who possibly took too much for
granted, and who neglected to satisfy themselves about
the faith of their neophytes, accounting such precautions
as superfluous in the case of educated men or members of
the Universities. But these people are not apostates, for
they never had the faith. When a man has once the real
gift of faith — that is to say, the gift of God's grace, which

^

222 ROADS TO ROME.

elevates his reason above its natuiral powers and attain-
ments so that it rises and passes from intellectual conviction
into faith, which is an act of the reason but different
in kind as well as degree from intellectual consent, — when,
I say, a man once has this great gift of God, it is impos-
sible for him, so I think, to lose it, and to relapse into any
form of Protestantism. He may lose it by wilfully and
persistently sinning against the faith, and being punished
by judicial blindness, become an infidel This, of course,
is true in the abstract But, in the concrete, it may
well be doubted whether this or that person among the
exceedingly few apostates of to-day has really lost the
faith. For myself I do not believe they have.

But to return to my subject At length I saw through
the fallacy of any appeal to the Prayer-book, or the Fathers,
or the Primitive Church, or the Church of the Ritualists. To
begin with the last A Ritualist has always seemed to me
to be one who forms for himself his own theory of the
Church, and then religiously obeys, not the Church, but
his own theory of it He is as much a law to himself as
the extremest Evangelical. His is merely a case of obe-
dience to self once removed. All Anglicans likewise form
their own theory of the Prayer-book, their own commentary
on the Fathers of the Church, their own account of the
Primitive Church. They are simply a law to themselves,
and the slaves of a self-imposed obedience. This convic-
tion of my mind was, I know not why, very slow in its
growth, but it came at last, and was indeed a disillusion-
ment 1 But, besides this, it occurred to me to inquire of
what practical use is the dead letter of any book, whether
Prayer-book, or Patristic writings, or even the Bible itself ?

ROADS TO ROME. 223

For any practical purpose, what is wanted is the living
voice of authority to determine infallibly what the book
means or does not mean in the case of Holy Writ ; and
what is true or false doctrine in the pages of all other
writers, even those of the Fathers of the Church, all of
whom — ^with the solitary exception of Saint Gregory
Nazianzen — ^we as Catholics know have more or less
committed themselves, here and there, to false doctrine.
Where is the living voice among Anglicans ? Echo answers
" Where ? " It is quite past my comprehension how such
men as Lord Halifax fail to see what is so obvious, and
keep on appealing with wearisome monotony to what the
Frayer-book teaches, or the Church of England teaches,
when the fact must be patent to him, as it is to all the
world, that there is no living authorized interpreter of
either, and never can be, unless it be the Crown, which
of course they repudiate. Here I find I must relinquish
the continuous narrative of the process of my conversion for
want of space. I will proceed to notice one or two of the
chief difficulties which occurred to me on the march to the
Catholic Church, and the solution of them which satisfied
me, but may not, I am perfectly aware, satisfy everybody.

The first difficulty occurred to me in the condemnation
of Private Judgment by the Catholic Church. Catholic
teaching on this point seemed to me inconsistent with
itself; because at one moment it insists on the use of
Private Judgment, and in the next it absolutely forbids it.
The answer, however, is very simple ; though it was some
time in coming home to me. Of course, a man must use
his reason to examine the credentials of the Catholic
Church. When he is satisfied with them, and has found

224 ROADS TO ROME.

the true Church, he gives up his Private Judgment, and
submits to the judgment of the Church. As Cardinal
Newman writes in his own inimitable style : " Those who
are external to the Church must begin with Private
Judgment: they use it in order to ultimately supersede
it ; as a man out-of-doors uses a lamp on a dark night,
and puts it out when he gets home. What would be
thought of his bringing it into the drawing-room ? " ^

I was puzzled for a time with another plausible con-
tention. It occurred to me that it might be said, '* You
admit that by Private Judgment a man finds out the
Catholic Church. Well, then, although he subsequently
lays it aside, yet what was Private Judgment in the first
instance must always be Private Judgment By Private
Judgment he began ; Private Judgment, therefore, is the
real foundation of his subsequent belief." But I saw
before long that this objection proves a great deal too
much. It seems to imply, at least to me, that, in the
last resort, truth is nothing more to a man than what
seems to him to be truth. A most dangerous doctrine,
truly, as well as utterly false I It spells Idealism in
Philosophy ; Licentiousness in Morals ; and Anarchy in
Politics. Surely truth is not dependent for its being on
Private Judgment By Private Judgment we attain to it,
but the truth was there before we discovered it, and no
matter what we think about it ; and, the moment we
arrive at it, we rest upon the truth, not upon the Private
Judgment which brought us to it By Private Judgment,
at some time in my life, I apprehended the authority of
the English Crown ; the moment I did so, I gave my

* *' Loss and Gain," p. 203.

ROADS TO ROME. 225

intelligent allegiance to it. Henceforth, I rested upon the
authority of the Crown, not upon my mental apprehension
of it I am now a British subject, not because mentally I
have come to that conclusion, but because of the/^/. Or,
to adopt another illustration : by means of a ladder I
mount a platform ; I am then standing on the platform,
and not on the ladder which is left down below. By
Private Judgment, then, a man must find out the Catholic
Church. When he finds it, it is a huge objective fact.
All men must be agreed about it as a gigantic organiza-
tion, which has existed these nineteen hundred years.
For all that time — the name and date of every Pope being
historical facts — it has been a chief factor in the history
of Europe. AH that time it has taught with the living
voice, and ruled with an incomparable discipline. There
it is to-day as of old, independent altogether of what men
may think about it ; a stubborn, undeniable, unmistakable
fact. Whether it be true or false in its doctrine is beside
the mark : there it is, and there it will be ; that is all we
are maintaining. Well, then, a man discovers this Church ;
he makes his allegiance to it, and is formally accepted by
it Henceforth he rests upon the authority of the Catholic
Church, not upon his mental apprehension of it. He is a
Catholic, not because he thinks he is, but because of the
fact of his formal reception into the Catholic Church.
Whereas an Anglican rests, not in facts, but in his theory
of facts. Not one of the objects of his religious allegiance
really exists except in his imagination. He will say.
Surely the Prayer-book is a fact To which I reply. Well,
of course it is ; but not the Catholic interpretation of it ;
for all men are not agreed about that — indeed, the great

Q

226 ROADS TO ROME.

majority are violently opposed to it As long as there is
a Broad Church interpretation of it, or an Evangelical, so
long the High Church interpretation of it must be a
theory and not a fact The same with the Fathers of the
Church or the Primitive Church. These things are, of
course, facts in themselves, but not to the Anglican, only
the Anglican interpretation of them, which is a very
different thing. From beginning to end, therefore, the
Anglican is a creature of Private Judgment, not a child of
faith ; and from the extremest Ritualist down to the most
rabid Evangelical, he is a Protestant pure and simple.

But all this is reasoning in the mere natural order of
things. Let us go to the supernatural. By Private Judg-
ment, then, aided by grace — for without that he can do
nothing — a man finds out the Catholic Church ; then
Private Judgment is superseded by Faith, which, as has
been already said, elevates and sustains the reason above
the level of its own natural powers. It is on that platform
that he stands ever afterwards, and Private Judgment is the
ladder by which he reached it and is of no further use.

Upon this, another objection occurred to me, which
may be worded thus: "That is a convenient way of
getting out of a difficulty by appealing to faith which is
not cognizable by any human sense. It may be or it may
not be as you say, but that is not argument after all." To
this I reply : " Quite so ; to every one but a Catholic it is,
I grant, inconclusive. But, then, must it not of its very
nature be so ? I cannot show anybody my faith, as I can
show him a bunch of keys taken from my pocket All I
know is that I have it and that the non-Catholic has it not,
and that that great gift of God is my foundation, and no

ROADS TO ROME. 227

longer Private Judgment, which is, ipso facto^ driven out
by faith just as darkness is by light/'

I do not remember any other serious intellectual
difficulty, or one that detained me for long. Bad popes
and bad priests never troubled me for a moment. The
office and the man are so obviously distinct, that the mind
must be addled that does not see it at a glance. A police-
man may be an immoral man, but the 'bus-drivers and
cabmen will obey him, and rein in their horses at his
bidding, because he is a policeman. The sentence of an
immoral judge will avail to hang a guilty murderer, be-
cause it is the official act of a judge ; it is not invalid
because the judge is a bad man.

But, before I formulate my five conclusions, I must
here declare my greatest obstacle to my conversion, which
was not intellectual but moral. I loved the English
Church intensely. It was associated with everybody and
everything dear to me from the first dawn of conscious-
ness. From a worldly point of view, to change my faith
was to lose everything dear to me, and to gain nothing.
It meant the wreck of one's life, shattered nerves, and, for
all I knew, absolute destitution. Can it be wondered that
I felt reluctant to take the step ? Whilst I cannot accuse
myself positively of bad faith, yet I must own that the
terrible prospect before me made me dilatory in the work
of finding out the truth. I have always accounted it as
nothing short of a signal miracle of God's grace by which
a conversion such as mine was brought about. For ever
and for ever blessed be His Holy Name 1 and the interces-
sion of His Blessed Mother I

I come, then, finally to the five conclusions already

228 ROADS TO ROME.

alluded to which pointed unmistakably — in the reputed
language of Lord Macaulay after one of Cardinal
Wiseman's famous lectures — to '' either the Catholic Church
or Babeir

Point I. — If my soul is to be saved, God must shew me
tlie way. It is not for nie to choose my own way, and offer
t/tat to God These words may seem a truism, but they
are not really so ; on the contrary, they are most useful
as hitting off the Catholic and Protestant position exactly.
The Ritualist, the High Churchman, the Broad Churchman,
the Evangelical, the Nonconformist, all alike formulate
their own views of religion, and offer them for God's
acceptance as their account of salvation. The Catholic
calls that putting the cart before the horse. The Catholic
standpoint is this : that it is for God to reveal His own
way of salvation, and all that man has to do, is to find out
where that is, and to obey it Further, that God lias re-
vealed it, and has committed this revelation to a competent
authority upon earth, to guard it from error, and to enforce
its observance. It is the duty of man to find out where this
oracle of truth is, and submit mind and heart to it.

Point II. — When God does reveal the way of salvation,
it will and must be One —

(i) One in number,
(2) One in unity.

(i) One in number; i.e. "One Lord, One Faith,
One Baptism " (Eph. iv. 5). Nowhere does Scripture give
a hint as to more than one Church. When St John
writes to the Seven Churches of Asia, he is, of course,
writing to seven hierarchies of the One only Church.
And so historians sometimes speak of the English Church

ROADS TO ROME. 229

or French Church, meaning the Catholic Church in
England or France. But mere common sense postulates
oneness in number. It is impossible to imagine more
than one way of salvation. Of course, it is conceivable
that Almighty God could make many ways of salvation,
because He can do all things ; but it is not conceivable
how confusion worse confounded would be avoided if He
did. Supposing there was one way for Europe, another for
Asia, another for Africa, another for America, a man would
have to change his religion four times in a voyage round
the world ; and where could he tell where his good ship
passed from one way of salvation into that of another ? Some
spiritual Trinity House would have to mark the supremely
important boundaries by buoys. I know this is fooling ;
but, then, the theory I am trying to gibbet is fooling too.

(2) Next, if the revelation is one in number, it will
be one in unity too; that is to say, the earthly teachers
of it will be one, and the taught will be one. Why?
Because it is the truth. Truth is one : one in the teachers,
and one in the taught of its very nature. For instance,
London is a city on the Thames. That is truth ; and so all
schoolmasters are one in teaching it, and all scholars one
in learning it. Why ? Because it is true. About God's
way of salvation, then, wherever located on the earth — and
located it must be somewhere — there will be unity in the
teacher and unity in the taught. If I do not find unity
in the teacher and unity in the taught, then I shall know
that the truth is not there, from the very fact that there
is not unity about it. Let us be quite sure about this.
The following proposition is undeniable. Wherever the
truth is, there must be unity of the teacher and unity of

230 ROADS TO ROME.

the taught about it, because it is true. But the proposi-
tion, "wherever there is unity in the teacher and unity
in the taught, there is truth," cannot, of course, be main-
tained as it stands ; because teachers and scholars may
conceivably be agreed upon what is false. Yet, observe,
in religious ailment, even this last proposition is unde-
niable. For, as a matter of fact, no religious system of
human opinion has ever succeeded in maintaining unity,
and for this reason : because the moment you depart from
the Divine rule of faith, wherever it may be, you are landed,
ipso facto, in human opinion. There is no intermediate
position possible. Now, human opinion must of its very
nature be variable, because the human mind has been
created by God as variable as the human face. When
Dr. Benson, the late Archbishop of Canterbury, ordered
prayers for unity in belief among his flock, I remember
saying that he might just as usefully pray for unity of
countenance among them. Therefore, in point of fact,
though not perhaps in logic, the religious inquirer may
be quite sure, that where there is not unity in the teacher
and unity in the taught, there cannot be truth ; and that,
conversely, wherever there is unity in the teacher and
unity in the taught, there, ipso factOy is Divine truth.

Point III. — If God does make a revelation of the way by
which tlu soul is to be saved, tliat revelation will be infallible.

A, Infallible in its SUBJECT-MATTER—

(i) Because Almighty God delivers it. How can it be
otherwise ?

(2) Because my soul wants nothing less. I cannot
trifle with eternity. I cannot aflbrd to make a mistake
about it, which it is impossible to put right after death.

ROADS TO ROME. 231

B. Infallible in its EARTHLY MOUTHPIECE—

(i) For of what practical use would be infallible truth
with a fallible mouthpiece ?

(2) How can Almighty God punish me for ever, if I
refuse to believe a teacher who may mislead me ? It is
my solemn duty to refuse belief in such an one. Re-
member, we have to give an account of our faith as well
as of our morals, and of faith before morals. "He that
believeth and is baptized shall be saved : he that believeth
not shall be condemned" (St. Mark xvi. 16). How can
God punish me eternally for want of faith, unless He
gives me an infallible teacher, whereby I can secure
infallible truth ? An infallible teacher of salvation is the
most pressing of all the needs of the soul, and yet the
very mention of an infallible teacher makes the average
Englishman shiver in his shoes. This is indeed astound-
ing. Well, then, somewhere on earth, and in some
authoritative body of men, or in the office of one man,
must be placed by Almighty God the infallible oracle of
truth. The way of salvation, then, is reduced to great
simplicity by this time. All a man has to do, is to find
out where the oracle is, and then believe what it teaches,
and do what it commands.

Point IV. — This way of salvation will be exclusive.
That is to say, it will be the only one ; and every other
way of salvation will be false. This means that the true
Church, wherever it is, will not only be the best of all
Churches, but the only one. This point seems to require
no further remark ; and yet I remember a catechumen
once saying to me when teaching it, "Oh, Father, that is
a tall order and no mistake ! "

232 ROADS TO ROME.

Point V. — To accept when once seen or wilfully to
reject this way of salvation is a matter of life or death
eternal This seems obvious from the words of Scripture
already quoted. To see it not, by a man's own fault, is
likewise to be lost. Once the solid conviction has crossed
a man's brain, that if he inquired honestly into the cre-
dentials of the Catholic Church he would be convinced of
the truth of it, and bound to submit to it in mind and
will, — that man must go on in his inquiry, otherwise he
will be lost To see it not, not by a man's fault — ^that is
to say, in a case where it has never occurred to a man's
mind that his own religion is false or that any other
religion can be true, — ^then, not to believe in the Catholic
Church will not, of course, entail eternal loss on that
account All this was self-evident to me, but it may not
be so to others. With that I have nothing to do.

My task is nearly done. Only a few words are needed
to show that the Catholic and Roman Church alone can
satisfy these five points or conclusions. Let the religious
inquirer examine any system of religion other than that
of the Catholic Church, he will find that it breaks down
on one or more of these five points. Ask the Ritualist
first, who is in many ways nearest to the truth (and yet
of him I say, ''Thou art so near and yet so far"), is he
one with his brother Anglicans in faith } And what must
he answer if he speaks the truth ? Is he infallible, or the
Church of his invention ? Is the Church Times infallible ?
No ; he breaks down hopelessly, and all his fellow-Protestants
when submitted to the test of my five points. But ask next
the Catholic Church if it can satisfy those same points, and
you will soon see how perfectly she can stand the test

ROADS TO ROME. 233

Point I. — This point, as we have already seen, is the
Catholic standpoint par excellence.

Point II. — Is the Catholic and Roman Church one ?
Yes ; absolutely one in number and in unity all over the
world, in every climate, in every race of men : one in the
teachers, and one in the taught It is this marvellous fact
that in point of fact converted me. I have always con-
sidered this unity of nineteen hundred years as God's
greatest miracle.

Point III.— Is the Catholic Church infallible ? Yes ;
and it has always claimed to be, and has acted as the
infallible Divine teacher of truth from the time of Christ.
The Catholic Church alone of all religious bodies claims
infallibility. The very claim sufficiently proved its truth
to me.

Point IV. — Is the Catholic Church exclusive ? Yes ;
it says, " I, and I only, am the one, true religion. All
others are false, and not to be accounted religions at all."

Point V. — Is it a matter of life or death eternal to
accept when seen or wilfully reject the Catholic Church }
The Catholic Church replies "yes." She alone teaches
this ; no other system of Christianity has dared to teach it.

Here I conclude the history of my conversion. I do
not pretend to do anything more than show what led me
to the Catholic Church. I do not lay down any law for
others. All I know is that I have the faith, and in the
profession and peace of it I have lived twenty-nine years.
Not a shadow of a doubt in it has ever crossed my mind
during that long time. In this faith I still live, and in
this faith I hope to die. Amen.

ROBERT ROSS, Esq., B.A.,

King's College, Cambridge; Reform Club, S.W.

At a very early age I had an unusual predilection for
hearing sermons; but I was always bored with the
Anglican Morning Service, and I have never been able
to understand the enthusiasm with which Anglicans refer
to " our beautiful Liturgy." When I reached the age at
which I was allowed to remain for the Communion Service,
and the meaning of it was explained to me, although far
from having an irreligious bias, I was more bored than
formerly. I always preferred being taken to Presbyterian
churches, where I was sometimes allowed to go with an
aged servant who was Scotch. This was chiefly due to
the absence of what I must characterize as the tedious
ofiices of the English Church.

It was not, however, until I was about fifteen or sixteen
that I thought at all seriously about religious matters,
though I had always been fond of churches and interested
in everything ecclesiastical. About this time I was for-
tunate enough to be taken by some Catholic friends to
the services at the old Spanish Place Chapel, and here I
remember hearing sermons which deeply impressed me,
though I have no recollection, I am ashamed to say, of

234

ROADS TO ROME. 235

what they were about, except that they inclined me to
study the Authorized Version of the Bible with greater
care and attention than I had hitherto done.

From this time I alwa)rs had a distinct Catholic bias ;
but this was rather crushed for the moment by my being
sent to a High Church school, where the practice of
auricular confession was encouraged, and grossly abused.

I should say that I had always been given a religious
education, but on rather liberal lines. At the age of
seventeen I held strong enough views to refuse Confir-
mation in the English Church ; but this was due to a
momentary wave of scepticism rather than to anything else,
and I became attracted by the ecclesiastical side of things
rather than the theological or purely religious aspect of
religion. Conversations with excellent clergymen, High
and Low, convinced me that neither school was able to
answer for the entire Anglican Church on the important
subject of Transubstantiation, or the interpretation of
various passages in the Authorized Version of the New
Testament. In a small book (the name of which I cannot
recall) I found perfectly definite answers, at all events, to
the questions I had asked my Anglican advisers. But I
can honestly say that I read no books of controversy, and
the one I refer to was simply an exposition of Catholic
doctrine, with the various offices in English and Latin.
Careful reading of the New Testament (A.V.) and listen-
ing to Catholic sermons, and an intense dislike of the
Book of Common Prayer, produced the state of mind
which I had thus reached. Being rather a precocious
reader as a child, I noticed that the saints, historical and
legendary, whose lives I only knew through Protestant

236 ROADS TO ROME.

sources, were always spoken of with benevolent contempt or
apology, and reading somewhere that '• the English Church
has never produced saints but good practical citizens,"
any lingering belief in Anglicanism, either as an interpre-
tation of Scripture, a rule of life, or as a form of faith
entirely disappeared from my mind.

Though interested in the controversy about ritual, I
was never ritualistic; and I dislike music now, both in
and out of church, and I would prefer all instruments
banished from it.

I have recorded tendencies which led to my being
received into the Church rather than reasons ; but, unless
one is endowed with an intellectual and anal)^ical mind,
it is impossible almost to give reasons for arriving at the
truth. A receptive power and temperament have, I think,
more to do with the question than aigument. Speaking
for myself, I was never convinced by any argument in the
world. I believe this (with brilliant exceptions) to be
the case with most converts. They arrive at a certain
condition of mind, spiritual or intellectual or emotional, as
the case may be. If, however, reason enters into the con-
version of ordinary converts such as myself, it is rather
the absence of reason on the other side which renders the
Anglican and Protestant position so unsatisfactory. The
Anglican position seems to me to break down on its
defence. The Protestant position breaks down in its
attack on Catholicism ; at least, such has been my impres-
sion when I have followed discussion since I became a
Catholic Previous to being received I never aigued ; I
only inquired ; revolt against Sabbatarian tyranny being
the only exception.

H. P. RUSSELL, Esq.,

Formerly Vicar of St. Stephen's, Devonport ; Edgville House,

Leamington.

If I must give a reason in few words I will say that,
starting with the belief that our Lord has established an
ecclesiastical kingdom here on earth, Visible and Catholic,
I came to see that it cannot be as a house divided against
itself, with antagonistic forms of government ; but that it
is indivisible, and that its unity consists, not in identity of
institutions such as an episcopal hierarchy and sacraments
(else would Donatists and others have been parts of the
Church, which Anglicans themselves do not allow), but
that it consists in an unity of polity and government — in
a word, in the unity of a kingdom.

Now, it should surely be obvious to every one that there
is but one ecclesiastical body politic, which interpenetrates
every part of the world, and unites men of every nation and
race in a religion which is everywhere one and the same in
faith and obedience; that there is but one ecclesiastical
kingdom which can with any truth be described as the
Visible Church Catholic.

So true is this, that Anglicans admit (and, I presume.
Easterns also) that they depend upon Rome for the Catholic

237

238

ROADS TO ROME.

note ; that they would not, even though united with the
Eastern Churches, form, without Rome, a Catholic Church
in any true sense of the word, since such combination would
still be confined as to locality and race. Rome, however,
does not depend upon them for the Catholic note. She,
without them, is a (the) Catholic Church.

And herein do we see the necessity to Anglicans of their
contention that the Roman, Greek, and Anglican Com-
munions form one and the same visible Church. But if the
unity of the Church is the unity of a kingdom, we see also
the absurdity of the contention.

Miss ADELINE SERGEANT,

The Novelist.

I WAS brought up as a Nonconformist ; then led by cir-
cumstances to become a member of the Anglican Church,
from which I lapsed for some time into religious indiffer-
ence and unbelief. But in 1893 my religious impulses
reasserted themselves, and I associated myself with the
Ritualist section of the Church of England — a section which
had always attracted me. I became a member of various
Societies and Guilds, and an " outer Sister'' of a well-known
English community. For two or three years at least I was
completely satisfied with my form of belief, and I remember
the friends amongst whom I worked with deepest affection
and gratitude.

But I see now that, unknown to myself at first, a change
was gradually taking place in my mind. My teachers
" builded better than they knew." I learned a good deal
concerning Catholic faith and practice from the devotional
books which are largely used by Anglicans. In the book
I used I found not only the English Communion Service,
but the whole of the Canon of the Mass, Preparation for
Holy Communion, Prayers (such as the Memorare)^ and

339

240 ROADS TO ROME.

Intercessions for the dead taken word for word from
the " Garden of the Soul" I supplemented books of this
kind with biographies, sermons, etc, from St Josefdi's
Library in Farm Street, and for the ease with which
I obtained such books I owe this library a great deal
It was not long before I b^an to ask what right I had
to use the prayers of the Saints — ^prayers written by St.
Thomas Aquinas and St Bernard, which I found in my
Anglican books of devotion — when, as I gradually learned,
these Saints themselves would have utterly repudiated the
Church to which I belonged It was a great step forward
when I realized that the church of St Augustine, of Aquinas,
of Thomas of Canterbury, and of More was the Church of
Rome as it exists at the present time, and that the Saints
whom I venerated would pronounce me excommunicate if
they were living now ! It was hard to feel that I did not
belong to them ! The words of Flaubert, I think, used to
re-echo in my ears: "It is safest in religion to believe
like the Saints. " And it was my love for them that first
seemed to turn my face in the direction of the Church.

I became deeply troubled by the prayers and hymns
addressed to our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament If we
were indeed separated from the true Church, I said to my-
self, how vain was our adoration 1 This thought might
be forgotten for a time, but would almost invariably pierce
me like a sword at the most solemn moments of the
Anglican rites : it came at last utterly to destroy all peace
and all devotion, so that attendance at an Anglican Com-
munion Service became a source of misery to me. It was
owing almost entirely to this that I determined to do —
what I had previously shrunk with fear and dislike from

ROADS TO ROME. 241

doing — to examine, as far as I was able, the standpoint
of the Anglican Establishment and the claims of Rome.

I was under difficulties regarding this examination,
as I was bound by promises, made when I joined two
Confraternities, never to enter a " Roman ** church in Eng-
land ; and my sense of loyalty to my Anglican " confessor"
made it seem impossible for me to consult a priest with-
out applying to him first It may be of interest to some
persons to know that I had never spoken to a Catholic
priest in my life until the autumn of 1899 (I was received
in the October of that year) ; and that I had not entered
a Catholic church in England (except to look at the
architecture) for, I believe, more than ten years before
the day on which I went to Farm Street to be received.
I had certainly often attended Mass in other countries,
but with a great want of understanding.

I was, however, fortunate enough to possess two or
three Catholic friends, to whom I often applied for in-
formation. One of these friends pressed me to speak to
a priest ; and she obtained for me a list of some few
books that might be useful to me to read. But before
this, in the autumn of 1898, I spoke of my doubts to the
clergyman to whom I went for confession ; and he recom-
mended me to read Canon Gore's book on the "Roman
Claims." I remember that I mentioned in this interview
a question suggested by the sermons in his own church.
From these sermons I had learned to disavow the
principles of the Reformation and to believe in a divinely
instituted Church ; also in the doctrine of obedience to
authority. I asked, therefore, why we perpetuated the
errors of the Reformation by remaining in a Church

R

242 ROADS TO ROME.

without a head, cut off from the main body of Christen-
dom ? Would not the quickest way to reunion be that
of individual submission, if the whole body could not be
moved to submit ? Why not go over at once to the Holy
Catholic and Roman Church, as I had heard it called in
that stronghold of Ritualism ?

"The Supremacy of the Pope" was the stumbling-
block, my clergyman informed me ; and so far he helped
me very much, because he made me see the real point at
issue. Henceforth it was on this subject that I thought
most ; and I must confess that it was the last obstacle to
be removed out of the way.

In March, 1899, I visited the Holy Land, and, while
kneeling at the Holy Sepulchre, I received so vivid an
impression of the reality of the Church, and the futile
isolation of Anglicanism, that I only wonder I was not
converted there and then. Its only apparent result was
to make me add to my prayers a petition that I might
be directed into the true light ; and later on, I formulated
the somewhat presumptuous request that if the Roman
Catholic Church were the true Church, I might be guided
into the company of a priest who would instruct me, with-
out my putting forth a hand to find one. I had no right
to expect such a prayer to be answered, but I was very
much afraid of doing what would be disloyal or unfair
to my clergyman, for whom I have always had the
strongest esteem and affection, or to the English Church.
Aiid as it happened, shortly after my return to England
that summer, I was led, by circumstances which I could
not control, into the society of a Catholic priest, whom
I was obliged to see on business, and whom I could

ROADS TO ROME. 243

question on religious subjects without feeling that I had
gone out of my way to do so. He gave me much help,
and lent me several books of instruction. My distress
of mind soon became acute, and I was almost glad that
a severe attack of neuralgia kept me to the house for three
weeks or more, and thus prevented me from either going
to an Anglican church or seeking my Anglican confessor.
The thought of the Anglican rite became intolerable to
me, and yet I could not make up my mind to take the
final step. Foolish as it may appear, it seemed to me
then as though I were casting not only my Church, but
my family, my friends, my country, behind me ; I beheld
myself as giving up all I loved, and going into some far
country which was desolate and strange. No home-
sickness ever troubled me as did my desire, at the last
moment, for the hymns and prayers of the Church of
England. But — and it was my last argument — if the
Catholic Church were of God, as I had been mercifully
brought to believe, it was a Church for all nations and
peoples ; and I had neither friends, family, tastes, nor
opinions that I was not prepared to give up for the love
of God. I did indeed feel as if I were casting myself
into a gulf; but I was quite sure that I should be held
up by the Everlasting Arms.

It ended in my being received into the Church at Farm
Street on October 23, 1899. To my friends the decision
seemed a sudden one ; but it was preceded, as I have
shown, by a long period of reflection. Indeed, it is now a
matter of surprise to me that my hesitation lasted so long.
I dared not move without complete conviction, and I am
profoundly thankful that I did not wait too long, but was

244 ROADS TO ROME.

enabled to take the step which brought me into the haven
of my desires, the Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church of
God, in which I hope to live and die.

I have often heard curiosity expressed by Protestants
regarding the mental and spiritual condition of converts
after their reception into the Church. ''Are you really
satisfied ? " they ask. " Is it all you expected ? Are you
disappointed?" "Will you never come back?" With
these questions, I fancy, most converts are acquainted.

Answers in detail are apt to seem superfluous. But, for
the sake of readers who may not yet know the blessing
of the Catholic Faith, I will say a word or two in reply,
although " my soul hath her content so absolute " that it
is difficult to find words adequate for the " satisfaction "
that I feel. Mind, heart, conscience, are at rest ; no longer
tossed on the sea of opinion, but safely anchored in the
harbour of God's truth. But I cannot say that I realized
my great gain all at once. Little by little the order and
beauty and grace of the Church began to dawn upon me«
I had accepted its Divine origin and authority before I
loved it ; therefore my life after I was received into the
Church became a series of discoveries. I can almost
remember the moment when I first said to myself,
"This is more than I ever dreamed of! This is indeed
the Church, the Mother of us all, the Heavenly City, the
New Jerusalem, the Bride of God ! " And more and
more, as time goes on, I am permeated with reverence for
the Catholic Church, and filled with joy that I am no
longer a wanderer from that blessed Fold. For, when I
consider the infinite scope of the Church's manifestation,
the inspired wisdom of her counsels, the multitude of her

ROADS TO ROME.

245

devotions, the care and tenderness lavished on the smallest
and weakest of her children — equally dear to her with the
mightiest upon earth ; when I look at the roll of her
saints, evangelists, and martyrs, extending in unbroken
line from the days of the Apostles to our own, and thence
to the end of time ; when I think upon the prayers which
ascend continually from the lips of her saints, living and
dead, crowned by the intercession of the great Mother of
God ; last of all, when I adore upon the Church's Altars
the Sacred Body and Blood in which God's Presence
remains with us until the end of the world ; — ^then indeed
I humbly say with St. Augustine, " Too late have I known
Thee, O Ancient Beauty ! " while, at the same moment, my
soul re-echoes the Psalmist's exultant cry^ —

** Beati qui habitant in dofno ttia, Dotnine: in sacula
saculorum laudabunt TV."

The Rev. A, B. SHARPE, M.A.,

Christ Church, Oxford ; late Vicar op St. Peter's, Vauxhall,
London ; St. Mary's Church, Horseferry Road, S.W.

I FIND it difficult to give any clear or connected account
of the process which led to my conversion. Some, perhaps
most, converts have found themselves confronted, early or
late in their career, with some definite fact or argument
which stood clear-cut before them, and, like a sign-post,
pointed out the only road they could conscientiously
follow. Such was not my case. I cannot trace my con-
viction of the truth of the Catholic Faith to any single
cause, or precise set of causes. It is the result, so far as
it is due to any natural agency at all, of the innumerable
influences which are perpetually acting on a man's character
and modes of thought, and by which, concurrently with
his own free will, he is moulded for eternity. My submis-
sion to the Catholic Church may very well have been
immediately caused by one or other of those influences
which in itself was among the least important of the whole
series ; as the face of a cliff is detached by the unnoticed
and prolonged operation of the forces of nature, but is at
last precipitated into the valley by a mere trifle — the fall of
a stone, the touch of a finger, or the echo of a human voice.

246

ROADS TO ROME. 247

As one grows old, many things become clear and
certain which in earlier days seemed obscure, or doubtful,
or impossible ; and many others, which youth and inex-
perience took for substantial realities, are found in later
years to be no more than the creatures of a dream* My
dream was the catholicity of the Anglican Church ; and
the " soliditas Cathedrae Petri " was the reality that I
found when I awoke.

I am thus unable to formulate any single argument as
having preponderantly influenced me ; and to give all the
considerations which have helped to produce the final
result would be to write an autobiography.

I can trace, however, with more or less distinctness, as
I look back over the past thirty years, a progressive suc-
cession of states of mind, each of which seemed for the
time to be final, but was really only a resting-place on a
long journey. The processes by which I passed from one to
another are too obscure and complex to be recorded here.

I. My first difficulty was with the Christian revelation

as a whole. Though I had no deep tincture of philosophy,

I had caught the infection of philosophic doubt which

prevailed in certain places thirty years ago, and I could

not accept without question the claim of the Christian

religion to the possession of a Divine Founder. The

argument which helped me most to a conviction on this

point was that furnished by the continuous witness and

unique persistence of the Christian Church — which phrase

I then took to mean the aggregate of Christian societies,

which, though they differed on what I supposed to be

minor points, agreed as to the cardinal fact of the Incar-
nation.

248 ROADS TO ROME.

II. I came, in no long time after this, to perceive that
the Church could not be a mere congeries of independent
units, or a polycephalous body ; it must be an organism,
not a mechanism ; its local variations must be not organic,
but merely functional. Thus I came to accept the High
Church notion of a Church, divided indeed, but retaining
a common form in the separate parts and a common life,
of which that form is the external indication, and includes
valid orders and sacraments, with a somewhat indefinite
set of beliefs which is held to represent the faith of the
undivided Church.

III. Then the question naturally arose, Which of the
contending systems — Roman, Orthodox, and Anglican —
was the true one ? They undoubtedly were all true, so far
as they were agreed ; but in regard to the points on which
they differed, which was right and which was wrong?
This question I tried to answer by means of a prolonged
study of historical controversy. I found that the facts
which were the subjects of discussion were not themselves
in dispute, but that controversialists fought one another
about the deductions to be drawn from them. Thus the
question I had to decide, if I could, was this: Were the
historical instances of apparent opposition to the See of
Rome, or of denial of modem Roman doctrine, on which
Protestant controversialists relied, to be interpreted in their
sense, or in that of their Catholic opponents ? For a time
I was content to accept the interpretations given by
Anglican High Church authorities. How far my position
during that time may have been the result of prejudice,
of personal influence, or of disinclination to a revolutionary
change in my life and circumstances, I do not know.

■I

ROADS TO ROME. 249

Possibly all three may have been at work in my mind ;
I can only say that I was not conscious of any of them.

IV. I came later to distrust all interpretations of
Church history, and all controversy. I thought that
probably the history that was truly illuminating had never
been and never could be written. Historical records tell
of the crises of the Church and of society, and of actions
which illustrate only imperfectly, at best, the principles
on which they are based. To construct the true features
of the Church of the present day from the salient events
of its past history is like estimating a man's character from
the diseases and accidents which have befallen him. There
had been, apparently from the first, a Papal and an anti-
Papal school of thought in the Church, which had between
them produced a state of manifold schism. But which was
the healthy and which the diseased system — which was the
body and which the excrescence ? I doubted if any one
could solve the problem, and I was certain that I could
not do so for myself. I therefore decided to regard the
question as an open one; possibly the truth might lie
midway between the extremes. For my own part, my lot
was cast in the Church of England ; and though much
might be said against the Anglican position, I could not
leave the body in which God had placed me, and the
work I had undertaken in it, without a certainty which I
did not possess, and which seemed to me unattainable.
For many years I remained in this state of mind. I
studied little, being fully occupied with active work, and
I avoided controversy in every form. In my practice
and teaching, such as it was, I almost insensibly adopted
more and more of the methods and principles of the

2SO ROADS TO ROME.

Catholic Church; though I refused in this matter to go
beyond the line which I had drawn, perhaps somewhat
arbitrarily, as marking the limit of loyalty to Anglican
formularies.

V. Finally, I came — I could scarcely say how — ^to see
the Church in a new light I perceived that there was
no need to go to history, or to disputed points of theology.
The Church, if it existed at all, was a living body, and
must be sought for and tested as such. It could not, on
its own principles, be subject to decay; it claimed per-
petual youth in virtue of our Lord's promises ; it must
stand or fall by what it is to-day. Our Lord had intended
the Church to be recognizable by all, learned and ignorant
alike ; it was to be a city placed upon a mountain, a
light shining in the darkness. It might, indeed, need
practical reform on its human side from time to time, but
it could never forget, or deny, or obscure the truth into
which it was guided by the Holy Ghost, and of which it
claimed to be the divinely appointed witness and teacher.
Thus a Church which depended for evidence of its genuine-
ness solely or mainly on historical research and learned
argument was proved by that very fact to be no Church ;
and a Church which was uncertain as to the extent of the
revelation committed to it, or which failed to teach what
it held to be Divine truth, by positive declaration on the
one hand and by condemnation of error on the other,
must equally forfeit all claim to be considered.

It is obvious that these considerations must be fatal to
any form of Anglicanism ; and equally obvious that they
point unequivocally to the Catholic Church as the only
divinely accredited authority in religion. If theory is set

ROADS TO ROME. 251

aside, and regard is had only to contemporary facts, it is
obvious again that the Catholic Church alone among all
Christian societies bears the four notes of the Church
visibly impressed upon her. She alone is everywhere, and
goes into the whole world, preaching the gospel to every
creature, as exercising her certain right and duty ; she
alone can claim continuous solidarity with the Church of
the Apostles ; she alone has an ideal of sanctity, and holds
it up before the world in the multitude of her canonized
members. And as to doctrine, the question as to the true
Church must be decided before doctrine can be brought
to any test The Church is the pillar and ground of the
truth, and the true doctrine must be that of the true
Church, not vice versd. To test the claims of the Church
by the truth or falsehood of her teaching is to prejudge
the whole matter, and would imply that revelation is either
non-existent or superfluous.

Further, I saw that the Catholic Church was an insti-
tution that would work as no other would. It alone had
authority which sufliced for the guidance of its members
and for the due combination of its various forces. I per-
ceived that though the possession of this authority was
not of itself a sufficient evidence of the validity of the
claims of the Catholic Church, yet its absence sufficed to
rule all other claimants out of court. The one was a living
organism, whose every part gave evidence of its common
life ; the others were mechanical engines, more or less
skilfully put together, which were unable, and scarcely
even pretended, to show anything of that organic develop-
ment and progressive adaptation to environment which is
the surest evidence of life, and without which decay and

252 ROADS TO ROME.

impotence, such as has ab-eady overtaken all non-Catholic
religious bodies, is inevitable.

In a word, I saw clearly that the Catholic and Roman
Church was not merely a Church, or the best Church, but
the only Church. If the arguments of Protestants against
her were conclusive, the consequence would be, not that
some other Church must be held to be the only true one,
or a better one, but that there is no Church at all. But
those arguments are not conclusive — they are answered as
often as they are put forward ; and since the Roman Church
was so evidently the true Church, that is to say, the only
genuine form of Christianity, what should hinder me from
accepting her explanations ? Surely nothing.

Many things taught by the Roman Church would, a
priori, have appeared to me improbable. But since she
teaches them as certain, being what she is, I felt that I
could, and must, accept them as certain.

I had for long been conscious that my standing-ground
in the Anglican Church was a very narrow one. But to be
dissatisfied with Anglicanism is one thing; to believe in
the Catholic Church is quite another. So long as I could
not make an act of faith in the latter, I necessarily clung
to my foothold, slight as it had become in the former.
No other refuge was open to me, strongly convinced as I
was that individualism in religion is absolutely contrary to
fundamental Christian principles. As soon, however, as
I saw the true position and character of the Roman Com-
munion, Anglicanism ceased to exert any influence over my
mind. As a system, it seemed to shrink to nothing and
vanish before the light of truth ; and I had no choice but
to make my submission to the authority of the Church.

Mrs. E. SCOTT STOKES,

New Stanstead, PanLEY, Surrey.

[The following is by one who was brought up as a strict
Anglican, but whose faith in holiness, and as a consequence,
in God Himself, was much shaken between the ages of
twenty and thirty. She has been a Catholic over three
years.]

The need of a trustworthy and authoritative guide for
oneself and for one's children, in facing the daily problems
of life in all its relations, led me, at first by slow uncon-
scious d^rees, but later by rapid strides, to the following
conclusions. Faultily expressed I know them to be, but
they are the convictions by which I hope to stand and to
be judged, not here alone, but hereafter also. They are
these: —

I. The Catholic Church has the longest and the widest
experience in philosophical and practical dealing with every
problem of human life, public and private. To briefly
substantiate this assertion, it needs only to point out that
the theologians of the Church have for centuries been
occupied with the philosophical aspects of faith and un-
belief, of holiness and sin, as they affect the intellect and as
they influence the heart. The Catholic clergy, regular and

253

254 ROADS TO ROME.

secular, undergo a severe training, based on the teachings
of these centuries, for their duties in the confessional— a
training without parallel elsewhere. These duties bring
them in contact with all the so-called most modem problems
of the day : — the innumerable difficulties, for instance, that
beset the married life, the celibate life, and the much-
trodden yet unmapped country that lies between.

II. The uncompromising morality of the Catholic
Church, encompassed and pervaded at all costs by the
broadest and humblest charity, appears, in my judgment,
to be nearer to the spirit and teaching of Christ in the
Gospel than that of any other Christian communion.

The truceless war with sin, the lifelong endurance,
shown perhaps more often in sustaining a dreary siege
against temptation from without and within, than in
pitched and eager battle against the invigorating foe — this
on the one hand, and the meekness of charity to sinners,
well-nigh beyond and against all reason, on the other — ^these
are characteristics of the men who have the care of Catholic
morals which can hardly be known till the convert has spent
some time under their rule. But sufficient becomes dis-
cernible to make a mother recognize that the hearts and
minds of little children may here best find both grace and
discipline. And so it is. The joy of Christmas, the glory
of Easter, the wonders of the Incarnation, the unbounded
generosity of the Passion — imprinted by the use of the
rosary and by the habitual practice of other devotions
flowing straight from the fountain-head of faith— evidently
stir and expand many a child-heart with quiet and simple
enthusiasm which outlasts the changes and chances of life,
and is often only brightened by the fires of temptation.

ROADS TO ROME. 255

Nor is this all. The foundations of the family life, and
its very existence, depend upon our fidelity to the teaching
of Christ Himself.

Many among us who are not Catholics cling, thank
God I no less firmly than ourselves to Christ's doctrine. But
they cannot make a lasting and effectual stand (neither can
any save the infallible Church) against such infringements
of God's law as man by custom or enactment chooses to
sanction. For the children's sake and for our own, it is
good to embrace and to hold fast by that religion which
ennobles and sanctifies love in every relation, and which
raises aloft the standard of modesty, simplicity, and charity.
The Catholic Church holds the estate of virginity to be
holier and higher than the estate of marriage ; but none
the less she holds the estate of marriage higher and holier
than do any outside her communion who profess and call
themselves Christians, or who aim at ethical perfection.

III. The authority of the Pope and of the Councils of
the Church, that authority to give dogmatic definition of
the truth concerning God and His purposes, past, present,
and to come, of which we speak when we call the Church
infallible, seemed to me to be in no degree illogical or
spiritually improbable. The definitions themselves may,
being spiritually discerned, seem strange or even foolish, or
again over-wise, to the natural man. But that the revela-
tion of God, instead of ceasing should be expanded and
developed, albeit in language no longer actually inspired,
is no monstrous or incredible thing in a Church to which
the gift of the abiding presence of the Holy Ghost Himself
was emphatically assured. And once this presence, this
revelation, be granted, there is no question of hesitancy to

4

256

ROADS TO ROME.

accept this or that point of doctrine. What God shows us '
we believe, as though we saw it And having this faith,
it is not hard to trust one's self for guidance to those
servants of God of whom Christ said, ** He that receiveth
whomsoever I send, receiveth Me."

One more point regarding the Papal authority, and I
have done. It seems an obvious one, but in my limited
reading I have never seen it discussed. It is a single
prerogative, but so far as I am aware it has never been
either disputed or usurped, and this seems to me not a
little remarkable. I refer to the canonization of the saints.
The Holy Father alone can give this honour, and his power
so to do seems often to be tacitly admitted by many who
else would scorn his claims. Let those who unconsciously
have been illumined with this one flame from the searching
fire of Rome, take heart of grace and stand in its full
radiance.

J. G. SUTCLIFFE, Esq., M.A.,

And late Scholar op Clare College, Cambridge ; formerly
Curate of St. Nicholas*, Great Yarmouth ; Pau, France.

I AM to tell what shook my confidence in Protestantism ;
and what was the result of prayer, thought, and study,
when for a long period I sought earnestly the Faith "once
delivered to the Saints" — the Faith we may not change at
the word of an angel from heaven.

The proof of sincerity lies in giving up my prospect of
a benefice, and a life-work to which I was heart and soul
devoted, in my facing loss of friends and much obloquy.

More than twenty years* intimate knowledge of the inner
life of the Church in different countries has burnt deeply
into my soul the conviction, to which I then attained, that
she is indeed the One Living Church of the One Living
God.

I entered the ministry with full confidence in the
'* Church of England.'^ Christianity and Protestantism to
me were convertible terms. Before teaching I had tried
to learn. I had learnt and taught in the great model
Sunday schools at Cambridge, had attended lectures of
theological professors, had given up a Long Vacation to

257 S

25S ROADS TO ROME.

work in a dock parish, and, my d^ree taken in classii
honours, had entered a theological collie. I
the Principal to send me to that parish in all Engl
where he thought I should be best grounded in parodiiif ^
work. He chose an immense parish, where
churches, and some ten curates, are under one vicar.

I set out on my career as the guide of souls. I soOB
found that my Church had not provided me with suitable
armour or weapons. I could manage a savings banki
arrange a school treat, and other similar things. But that
is not direction of souls. Helpless misery soon filled my
own souL Our pulpits rang each with a different doctrine.
I asked myself, "What, then, did Jesus Christ teach?"
My Church sounded an uncertain note, and I, the guide
of others, could not guide myself.

Deep was my distress in visiting the sick and dying.
The Protestant delusion which passes for *' Faith only,"
but is not Faith at all, shut out from their souls the sense
of sin. Our pulpits fostered this self-righteousness. My
vicar, preaching on the "Mother of Jesus" in his vast
church, taught us she was " no better than any respectable
girl in our town." There is, then, no such thing as
sanctity. How could I hope to raise my flock to higher
things, whilst they were authoritatively taught that there
are none ?

I knew not that the missing weapon was the Sacra-
ment of Penance — that two-edged sword which pierces to
the depths of the souL I knew not the health so often
brought to the sick body by the Sacrament of Extreme
Unction, as promised in Holy Scripture ; or, if that may
not be, the strength and comfort given to the departing

\ ROADS TO ROME.

259

soul. I knew not the treasures of Divine Love contained
in the True Sacrament of the Holy Eucharist

In my distress I sought my vicar. He, I think, saw
the real difficulty, and wished to turn it. His advice was,
in visiting the sick poor, to place camphorated flannel in
my book ; I could then " recollect myself " in its pages,
and combat the odours. Unsatisfied, I sought my
senior curate. He advised me to explain a Scripture
text. " On my second visit ? " I inquired. " Read
another.'' But we had " Bible-readers " for this. * I sought
a fellow-curate, a popular preacher. He said, "Pilate
asked, What is Truth ? " and appeared to think the
question was yet unanswered.

During my distress, July 1878, the Anglican "Epis-
copate" met at the Lambeth Conference, and in their
" Pastoral Letter " implicitly approved what, in the Holy
Scriptures and the early Church, is called heresy and a
great evil, but, by Protestants, a virtue and the " ri^^At of
Private Judgment" They made no claim to the indwelling
of the Holy Spirit to guide them in the way of Truth.

And now a friend sent me a little book.^ Plainly, if its
statements were true, the " Church of England " had no
standing ground. I refer to the acts and claims of the
early Popes — e.£^, of St. Leo the Great and St. Gr^ory
— and the manner in which those claims were admitted by
patriarchs and councils. Eastern and Western alike. The
"Church of England" professes to mirror the doctrines
and practices of the early Church. If, then, the early
Church admitted the Papal claims, the "Church of

* "Lectures on Ritualism," No. vii., by Father GaUwey, S.J. Bums
and Gates.

26o ROADS TO ROME.

England ** is plainly the veriest pretender ever set up by
man to impose on his fellow-men.

I therefore resigned my charge, and devoted myweU to
the search for the Apostles, whom Jesus Christ sent to Uad
the whole world, and with whom He promised to dwell
unto the end of time.

I consulted others, High and Low. I found few with
any knowledge of the subject. A leading idea was^
" The great Church of the great British nation cannot be
wrong." Were, then, the Roman ''masters of aiany
legions " right ; the martyrs, wrong ? They defended an
existing state of things ; or, hoped " all would come right
in the end." Again, one seemed to hear the Pharisees —
" But we are so much better than others ! " The catch-
phrase, "You leave a pure for a corrupt Religion,"
satisfied many. But which is the pure Religion ? And
what means has Jesus Christ instituted to keep it pure ?
Some, plainly, had " married wives " or " bought farms,"
and therefore could not come. "And they began all to
make excuse."

A leading Suffolk rector came to prove to me that
" Rome has erred." He had two proofs, (i) He had once
seen in the lanes a man, surely a Jesuit, who seemed
tipsy. (2) The Church teaches that the Blood of our Lord
is really present at Mass ; yet she calls it " the Unbloody
Sacrifice." I said quietly, "There is blood in my hand,
but you would not call it a bloody hand." He said he had
thought me a serious young man, but now saw I was an
impertinent fellow, and closed the interview.

Dr. Littledale's book, " Plain Reasons against joining
the Church of Rome," gave me a push. It was approved

ROADS TO ROME. 261

by all parties in the " Church of England." I found it
a shameless mass of untruths, misrepresentations, and
misquotations. I said so in the public press, and quoted
from p. 48 : " It is impossible to find any serious warning
against this danger and sin [i.e. of image-worshipj, much
less any frank prohibition and condemnation of it, in any
popular Roman Catechism or manual of doctrine." I
then quoted seven answers from the authorized English
Penny Catechism. The first five ordain the worship of
the one, true, and living God, and forbid the worship of
false gods or idols, and the giving to any creature what-
soever the honour which belongs to God alone. The last
two, 188 and 189, regulate the use of Christian images :
" We should give to relics, crucifixes, and holy pictures an
inferior and relative honour, as they relate to Christ and
His saints, and are memorials of them." "We may not
pray to relics or images, for they can neither see, nor
hear, nor help us."

Dr. Littledale replied : " I simply repeat over again
my words, * It is impossible,' etc. If my readers will look
at the Penny Catechism, they will find my charge proved
— ^that is, that the impression which is intended " [note the
insinuation] " to be made on the mind of the child, is that
there is practically no way of breaking the Second Com-
mandment, except by being a Pagan outright ; and that no
hint of any abuse of the kind being possible for a Christian
is to be found." He added, " I have shown in my book
that Catholics really do pray to pictures and images," and
offered to correct any error in his book which might be
brought to his knowledge.

I replied : ** I can only say, that apparently no human

262 ROADS TO ROME.

powers could * bring an error to his knowledge ; * . . . other-
wise he could not have failed to observe, that the very
practice he adduces in his letter — that of praying to a picture
or image — is categorically forbidden in those passages."

To conclude : I found the Catholic Church the Church
of the New Testament.

1. She alone truly reverences it She alone, sole heiress
of the Jewish Church, chose out and arranged the books of
the New Law. She alone preserved them down the ages.
She alone to-day combats fearlessly for the preservation of
their meaning and integrity ; alone, as her Divine Master,
unmoved by the passing ideas of the world, and by fear
of results.

The " Reformers " came not to Holy Writ as disciples,
but as judges ; and would reject all that gainsaid their
new religion: The judgment of Solomon must again
decide 'between the two claimants — the one prepared to
suffer all, if only the object of her love be safe ; the other
prepared at once to sacrifice the object of pretended love,
if only her enemy be spited.

2. Our Lord and His Apostles taught Catholic
principles. The early Christians were Catholics heart and
soul.

I found that the " Church of England " was not in
earnest when it claimed to restore primitive Christianity.
Its true aim was, if possible, to satisfy both sides.

I found that the presentment of the Protestant
" Reformation," taken on trust by pious Protestants, is a
myth ; that its agents and its methods were not marked
by the seal of sanctity, the seal of Divine approval.

I remarked a general parallel between the refusal of

ROADS TO ROME.

263

the Jews to consider the credentials offered by our Lord,
and the refusal of Protestants to listen to those presented
by the Catholic Church. The objections raised by the
Jews against our Lord and His mission are those thrown
at the Church by Protestants. I noted the same con-
temptuous certainty, and the same d priori prejudices.

I remarked that Protestantism has not applied its
dissolving principles to the affairs of this world — e^. com-
merce, politics, the army or the navy — and has, a few
sectaries excepted, only pretended to do so in matters of
religioa

To prefer to the Church certain chief aids of the
'' Reformation '' and their work, is to cry again with the
Jews —

" Not this mau, but Barabbas.''

The Rev. W. O. SUTCLIFFE, M.A.,

St. John's College, Cambridge ; Master of St. Edmund's

House, Cambridge.

Brought up as a child after the Evangelical way of
thinking, I gradually became more " High Church," but
it was not until I was within a year of taking my degree
at Cambridge that the idea of the claims of Rome being
even possibly valid entered my head. At that time I
read a pamphlet by Father Gallwey, S.J., on "The
Position of St. Peter in the New Testament." This was
a revelation to me ; I saw the meaning and importance of
passages of the Gospels which had been familiar to me
from childhood, but for that very reason, if for no other,
had not impressed me before.

I was now struck by the great chain of passages bear-
ing on the Petrine claims : Simon when first called by our
Lord receiving from Him the promise that he should be
called Cephas, " rock," Peter (John i. 42) ; Simon, at the
calling of the Apostles, being specially mentioned as the
first — " The names of the twelve Apostles are these : The
first, Simon, who is called Peter " (Matt. x. 2) ; Simon
receiving his name Peter and our Lord's promise that the

264

ROADS TO ROME. 265

Church should be built upon him — " I say to thee, That thou
art Peter ; and upon this rock I will build My Church, and
the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. And I will
give to thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven " (Matt
XVI. 18, 19). A passage in St. Luke's description of the
Last Supper seemed to me very striking, where our Lord
said to St. Peter, "Simon, Simon, behold, Satan hath
desired to have you, that he may sift you as wheat : but I
have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not: and thou,
being once converted, confirm thy brethren " (Luke xxii.
31, 32). I was impressed by the fact that our Lord, while
saying that all the Apostles would be tempted, promised
to St. Peter alone the commission and the grace to
strengthen the rest. Finally, St. Peter, after such prepa-
ration, received his commission ; the Good Shepherd being
about to leave this world, commended His flock to the
care of a man, and that man was Simon Peter: "Feed
My lambs ; feed My lambs ; feed My sheep " (John xxi.

1S-17).

It seems to me now striking, but I do not know that

I noticed it then, that the Key-bearer of the House of
David gave the keys to St. Peter ; He Who is the
Foundation, than which no other can be laid, made St.
Peter to share in the work of supporting the Church when
He called him Rock ; and the Good Shepherd committed
His whole flock, lambs and sheep, to the care of St. Peter.
From this time the claims of the Catholic Church were
continually present to me. For about a year I did not
pay close attention to them, as I was occupied with pre-
paring for my tripos; but during the twelve months
succeeding, I was free, and gave much time to the study of

266 ROADS TO ROME.

the question. I considered the objections and the diffi-
culties ; the objections, for example, which are made to the
Catholic interpretation of—" Thou art Peter, and upon this
rock," and that which may be drawn from the fact that
St. Paul withstood St. Peter to the face.

My early training and prejudices naturally provided
me with difficulties, and Dr. Littledale's book, "Plain
Reasons against joining the Church of Rome," which was
recommended to me by clergymen on all hands, was a
perfect storehouse of objections. However, this book
finally helped me to become a Catholic; for knowing
Latin and Greek, and having access to the best libraries, I
was able to test his statements, with the result that I was
horrified at what seemed to me his extraordinary mis-
representations or misunderstandings of the passages he
quoted.

In course of time other reasons appeared to help to
convince me of the claims of the Catholic Church ; for
instance, the great argument that the New Testament
teaches that the Christian religion is to be preached to
men with aui/ioriiy^ and that they are bound to receive it
under pain of eternal condemnation. Our Lord said to
the Apostles, "Go ye into the whole world, and preach
the gospel to every creature. He that believeth and is
baptized shall be saved ; but he that believeth not shall
be condemned" (Mark xvi. 15, 16); and, "Going, teach
ye all nations: . . . teaching them to observe all things
whatsoever I have commanded you : and, behold, I am
with you all days, even to the consummation of the world "
(Matt, xxviii. 19, 20). But the Apostles to whom these
words were said were soon to die, whereas the promise

ROADS TO ROMK 267

was to endure to the consummation or end of the world ;
hence, I argued, the command and the promise were
made, not only to the Apostles then living, but to their
successors. Again it is written, "The gates of hell shall
not prevail against it [the Church] " (Matt xvi. 1 8) ; and,
" The Church of the living God, the pillar and ground of
the truth" (i Tim. iii. 15).

From these passages and others, such as Luke x, 16 ;
John xiv. 16, 17, 26; xvi. 13; xx. 21; Gal. i. 8; Eph.
iv. 11-14; Heb. xiii. 17; 2 Cor. x. 4, 5 ; and all those,
too, in which heresy and schism are spoken of as sins, it
seemed clear that our Lord intended to found a Church
with authority to teach and the promise of His perpetual
assistance, and I could find this Church nowhere but
in the Catholic Church. Those Churches of the East
which are separated from Western Christianity could not
appeal to me as representing the universal Church ; and
other Christian bodies did not even profess to do so,
Anglicans admitting that Roman Catholics and Eastern
Orthodox are part of the Church, and other bodies, such
as Wesleyans, Baptists, and Congr^ationalists, claiming
the right of private judgment for the individual, as indeed
do many Anglicans.

Again, it followed from the above passages that the
Protestant principle that the Church had erred was untrue.
But following the history of the Catholic Church back
into the past, I found no break in its continuity from the
beginning ; I found no point at which it could be said to
commence except the Day of Pentecost ; it seemed clearly
the continuation of the Church of the first centuries.
Therefore as the Church cannot fail, but is the pillar and

268 ROADS TO ROME.

ground of the truth, the CathoUc Church to-day had the
same authority as the Church in the lifetime of St Peter
and St Paul.

In the course of this year of consideration, I went to
France to see Catholicism at home ; for it seemed better
not to visit CathoUc churches in England, on the ground
that the Branch theory might possibly be true and the
Anglican Church a true branch of the Church, but there
could be no objection to my visiting a sister Church. I
spent six weeks in the guest-house of the Benedictine Abbey
of Solesmes, and while there received a remarkable letter
from an Anglican clergyman to whom I had spoken
about my new ideas in England, and to whom I had written
from the Abbey. He had no pastoral relation to me, but I
had consulted him once or twice on matters of conscience
besides the Roman claims. He explained to me after-
wards that he had understood that I wished him to direct
me, and thought that in France I had placed myself
" under Roman instruction," but admitted that " we clearly
misunderstood one another with reference to our mutual
position." He wrote as follows : " God knows, I would a
thousand times rather persuade than command you, but I
must no longer delay lest I share in the guilt of any sin
you may thus commit. In the name of God, therefore,
and by the authority of our Lord Jesus Christ, entrusted
to me through the English branch of the Catholic Church,
I solemnly enjoin you to leave accor^ng to your first
intention, and to take no further step whatever until after
seeing me on your return. . . . Let me hear of your
obedience soon." As I had never been taught that the
Anglican clergy had any such authority, I naturally held

ROADS TO ROME.

269

that this command had no binding force whatever
on me.

After my return to England, I consulted various other
Anglican clergymen, including four well-known men, but
none of them changed my growing convictions. Six or
seven months after my return I asked to be received into
the Church, and soon the doings of the Anglican Church
became to me like the sound of waves falling on a distant
shore.

J. E. T.,

Barrister-at-Law.

I WAS brought up amidst the narrowest of Evangelical
surroundings, with few or none of the nobler elements of the
older teachers of that school. But I was not influenced,
save in the way of repulsion, by any clerical teaching in
boyhood. At school I read a good deal of the Greek
Testament, and especially the Epistles to the Romans, the
Galatians, and the First to the Corinthians. At an early
period I revolted from the Sabbatarianism which was made
a chief article in the Christian Faith. I was attracted by
the ideals of voluntary poverty and virginity, and I dis-
covered in the First Epistle to the Corinthians a doctrine
of the Real Presence. Certain newspaper controversies
affected me, especially that between Dr. Pusey and Lord
Sydney Godolphin Osborne ; but my interest was mainly
academic. I was struck by the unfailing grace and
courtesy of Dr. Pusey ; but I read little of his writings,
and was never impressed by him. At Oxford, in the late
sixties, I read the " Christian Year ** diligently, and many of
Newman's sermons. These and the " Lyra Apostolica " im-
pressed me greatly. But I was not for any length of time

270

ROADS TO ROME. 271

a High Churchman, and have never been what may be
termed a "clerical." In my later time at Oxford I was
led philosophically by Mill, and thought his examination
of Hamilton convincing. I imagined myself to be a
Utilitarian, though the bent of my mind must have been
far otherwise, as I remember an intimate friend's taking
me to task for defending the theory. I used to go and
hear Monsignor Capel sometimes, and was much taken
by the argument that the Church was a awfia — a living
organism ; not an eZSoc, or mere aggregation of particles or
individuals. The real bent was perhaps indicated by the
first book I ever took out of the Union Library, Butler's
" Lives of the Saints," though I have read little of that
book or any other lives of saints. For the last year or
two at Oxford, and for some years after leaving the Uni-
versity, I was distinctly an agnostic. But throughout I took
pleasure in Plato — the " Republic " and the " Theaetetus "
particularly. The preference, in the former, of justice and
suffering over injustice and success, in combination with the
statement in Newman's " Anglican Difficulties " — ridiculed,
if I remember rightly, by Thirlwall — that the Catholic Church
deemed the smallest venial sin as incomparably a greater
evil than any physical catastrophe, immensely affected me.
Certainly I owe more to Newman than to any one else,
and among his books most to the " Grammar of Assent,"
the " University Lectures," " Loss and Gain," " Callista ; "
but far above the others (of which a word presently) to
the " Essay on Development." But I was repelled by his
" Sermons to Mixed Congregations." Ward's " Nature and
Grace " powerfully affected me, I was led to read it by
Mill's reference to it in his " Hamilton."

2/2 ROADS TO ROME.

From the practical and political point of view, Sir James
Stephen's " Essays in Ecclesiastical Bic^aphy '* did much
to lead me to the Church ; and, even in boyhood, the often-
quoted remarks of Macaulay (in his essay on **Ranke's
Popes ") on the Church's power of utilizing every form of
enthusiasm whereby what in the Chim:h of England
degenerates into a Joanna Southcote, is elevated in the
Catholic Church to a St. Theresa, had their effect But
the last operative cause (speaking humanly) was my read-
ing in succession, some years after I had left Oxford,
Butler's '* Analogy " and Newman's " Essay on Develop-
ment." The latter I still hold to be the greatest of New-
man's writings. His " Letter to the Duke of Norfolk " also
greatly influenced me.

I have here dealt merely with what I read and thought
before I entered the Church. But for myself, then as
now, the alternative in the world of thought is the Church
versus Agnosticism or rather Nihilism, with its inevitable
Pessimism and Materialism ; and, in the moral and prac-
tical sphere, between the presence versus the absence of a
perpetual witness for righteousness against brute force, and
individual as well as national selfishness. If the Church
were not what she claims to be, she must have been
swept away long ago as a ridiculous anachronism. I
remember marking, in one of Goldwin Smith's lectures,
the prophecy that the end of the century would see the
disappearance of the Papacy. But the Papacy has not
yet vanished.

The Rev. O. R. V ASS ALL,

Of Balliol College, Oxford ; a Priest of the Congregation of
THE Most Holy Redeemer, St. Joseph's, Bishop's Stortford.

This paper was written in 1878, when the author was still
an undergraduate, shortly after his own conversion, in the
form of a letter to a friend, who subsequently became a
Catholic and a priest. After the lapse of years he feels
that he should say very much the same now to any one
who, like himself and his friend, was already convinced
of the Godhead of Our Lord Jesus Christ and of the truth
of the religion which He revealed to men. The letter is
therefore reprinted as originally written.

On what Authority do I accept Christianity?

I.

If I am net to accept Christianity as a wholes as taught
by the One Catholic Church in union with St Peter's See
and on her evidence, on whose testimony am I to take it ?

I. If on the testimony of the Bible and the Fathers, by
whom are they to be interpreted ?

273 T

274 ROADS TO ROME.

2. If interpreted by myself, on what testimony is the
person that cannot read to take it ? and (at least so far as
regards the Bible) what becomes of St. Peter's warning that
" no Scripture is of any private interpretation " ?

3. And are we not all bidden to receive the kingdom
of God as little children ? but is it the part of a little
child to interpret a vast number of difficult and ancient
documents for himself ?

4. But if I am to accept Christianity on the testimony
of the Bible and the Fathers, as interpreted by the nine-
teenth-century Church of England, why am I to accept this
authority ?

5. Is it not a primary principle of the reformed Church
of England that ''as the Churches of Antioch and of
Alexandria have erred, so hath the Church of Rome
erred," and that, therefore, by a parity of reasoning, so may
the Church of England err }

6. Is it not another primary principle of the reformed
Church of England, that as a matter of fact she did once
err in various important matters {e,£^, the authority of the
Pope, and that " fond thing," as she now terms it, " the
Romish doctrine of the Invocation of Saints ") ? If, then,
the Church of England thus grievously erred for (at the
very least) a thousand years, what warrant have I that she
cannot err now ; why should I trust her now }

7. Again, to which of the authorities or sections in the
Church of England am I to listen ? for is it not a fact
that the Church of England, in its desire to be "com-
prehensive" and "national," admits all variety of con-
trarient beliefs and teachers to exist within its pale ?

8. Is it not also clear, that any body which claims to

ROADS TO ROME. 275

tell me what Christianity is, must exist throughout the
wide world to authoritatively deliver to other men the satne
message? but is not the Church of England merely a
local or at best a Pan-Anglican body ? Therefore if the
Church of England be the Divine interpreter of revelation,
it must follow that men, e.g. in France, cannot get the
perfect message, but must needs, at best, put up with a
" spurious Gospel." ^

9. Will the history of the Establishment of the English
Church as a body distinct from Rome in the reigns of
Henry VIII. and Edward VI. bear investigation ? Is
there not some point in the contrast that the contemporary
historian develops between the pure Spouse of Christ
formed out of His Sacred Heart, and the Church re-formed
from the vile lusts of a tyrant and his courtiers ? Again,
how can honest men who believe in " Sacerdotalism " bear
to read the history of the reign of Elizabeth, with its
butchery of more than two hundred priests for the crime
of saying Mass, and yet accept Elizabeth and Parker's
Church as the teacher of Divine truth ?

10. But if I am to believe Christianity on the authority
of the "Undivided Church," why am I to "hear the
Church " before the Photian schism (or any other date
you may name), and forget that obedience is better than
sacrifice for ever after } Also, who is to tell me, in case
I am unlearned, what the "Undivided Church" really
taught }

11. But if I am to accept Christianity as taught by

* The absurdity of supposing that there are, as it were, several editions
of Christianity (one to be used in England and a second in France, while yet
a third is required for Russia, and another for the peculiar use of those uxorious
people termed " Alt-Catholics ") is surely transparent.

2/6 ROADS TO ROME.

the *' Ecclesia diffusa^' — the term used by some High
Churchmen to express the united authority of (i) the
Eastern Churches, (i) the Catholic and Roman Church,
(3) the Church of England and Ireland (?) — on what
principle, I would ask, are these hostile bodies thus brought
together by individual members of one of them ; and how,
moreover, is it possible to learn what a thing is from three
teachers who all contradict each other, who have not, and
never have had, or so much as wished to have, a common
voice, and who in no assignable respect illustrate the
Apostolic assertion that '' we being many are one Bread " ?

II.

But why should I not accept the testimony of the
Catholic and Roman Church ?

1. The Fathers at the Council of Chalcedon cried out,
** Petrus per Leonent locutus est^ Why am I to be for-
bidden to believe them ? Why am I to be forbidden to
believe St. Ambrose when he says, " Ubi Petnis, ibi
Ecclesia " t Why am I to be forbidden to submit myself
to the Shepherd to whom our Blessed Lord when about to
leave this world committed all His sheep and all His
lambs ; for whom He prayed specially that his faith
should not fail, and to whom alone He gave a new name,
and the keys of the kingdom of heaven ?

2. I profess in the Creed that I believe the Church of
God to be One, and to be Catholic ; as a matter of plain
fact, is there any Christian body which is one, and which is
universal, save the Roman Church ? It was probably at
the first Eucharist that Christ prayed that His Church on

ROADS TO ROME. 277

earth should be by its visible unity a plain sign to men of
the unity of the Godhead (St John xvii.). Am I seriously
to believe that the prayer of my dying Lord has been
unanswered ? If there is one thing on which the great
Apostle St Paul insists, it is the absolute necessity of unity.
" Corpus unufn^ sicut unus est DominuSy una fides^ unum
baptismal "Is Christ then divided?" he asks indig-
nantly, when speaking of the deadly sin of schism, almost
as if he could foresee the time when "the divisions of
Christendom " should be a trite commonplace of discussion.
But can any one, on the one hand, pretend that the " unum
avile sub uno pastore " is to be found apart from the unity
of Rome? on the other, dare any one deny the super-
natural unity of faith, of worship, of discipline, among the
children of the mighty Mother ? As in the Apostles' days,
so it is now ; ' Roman Catholics, so far as their creed goes,
are undeniably of one heart and one mind.

Next, can any one deny the Catholicity of the Roman
Communion? There is no other Church in the world
which is not merely national. The Roman Catholic priest
alone dares grapple with his Saviour's command to teach
all nations.

3. I also profess my belief in the Creed that the
Church of God is Holy, and that she is Apostolic. Now,
with regard to sanctity as a simple matter of fact, who
is the Mother of the Saints ? To look merely at the
purely modern Roman Church — where, out of her fold,
can you find the like of St Ignatius Loyola and St
Francis Xavier, St Theresa and St Catherine, St Francis
of Sales and St. Vincent de Paul, St. Alphonsus Liguori,
St. Paul of the Cross, and St. Philip Neri? You will,

278 ROADS TO ROMR

I think, search in vain outside the Roman Church for
sanctity such as that of the three Jesuits — St. Aloysius,
St. Stanislaus, and the Blessed John Berchmanns — as 3^u
will search in vain for examples of heroism that may be
compared with the martyrs of Japan and of China. Many
good and kindly men as the Church of England has in
these latter days possessed, who would think of comparing
even the best evidences of her highest type of character
with, for instance, the saintly Cur6 d'Ars ? With regard
to Apostolicity, I am not going now to examine the claim
of the Anglican Establishment to that note of the Church ;
but I presume, at least, that no one would think of
denying it to the Church of Rome.

4. If I apply St. Augustine's test as to the true
Church, and ask which Church is called "Catholic"* in
popular parlance, what answer do I receive? If I ask
" the British Church " what I am to do, shall I not be told,
in the words of the Council of Sardica (A.D. 347), " to refer
to the head, that is to say, to the See of Blessed Peter " ?

5. If the Church is, as St. Paul teaches, the ^^columen
et firmammtum veritatis*' and if the doctrines of the
Real Presence and the Sacrifice of the Altar be truths,

* The term ** Catholic " is to-day as generally understood in Constantinople,
St. Petersbuig, or London, as in Vienna, Paris, or Rome. The schismatic
Greek Church may call itself" Orthodox ; " but the title " Catholic " it has never
ventured to arrogate to itself (for >/, at least, is no sham), A certain party of
recent growth in the English Establishment, it is true, loudly proclaims itself
*' Catholic," or *' Anglo-Catholic ;" by the outer world, however, this school
has been known successively and according to its various phases, as " Trac-
tarian," ** Puseyite," '* Ritualist " (its designations as shifting as its principles),
but ''Catholic" never. That title still is, as it ever will be, reserved for .
another and very different Communion. In this matter of names we may
fairly say, " Securus judicat** The world knows at least who's who. For
St. Augustine's words, see Appendix.

ROADS TO ROME. 279

which, as a matter of historical fact, is the Church that
has been " the pillar and ground " of these verities, and
which is the Church that has by an almost consistent
tradition rejected them ?

6. Has any adequate explanation from the non-Catholic
point of view ever been so much as offered, of the growth,
perpetuity, and ever-vigorous life of the Roman Catholic
Church — of that organic Society which Lord Macaulay
admitted to be, in his judgment, the most remarkable
phenomenon presented by the history of the world ? Are
not the very vicissitudes of her fortunes, and her constantly
recurring and unparalleled triumphs over every difficulty
which has temporarily threatened to bar her way, the
very strongest proof that she alone it is to whom it was
promised that the gates of hell should never prevail
against her ; as also the most magnificent witness to the
Divinity of Him Who (at a time when she existed only
potentially) promised her that Divine aid which should
enable her to perfectly accomplish her supernatural
mission, even unto the end of the world ?

7. Finally, are not the reasons which are usually given
for not submitting to the Roman See either sentimental
or baseless ? Sentimental, surely, is the unwillingness
to disbelieve in the efficacy of "sacraments," that after
all depend on the validity of Orders, which latter hardly
any one has ever recognized save those who lay claim to
them, and which must, therefore, at the best, be purely
hypothetical.^ And are not those reasons which are

* It can hardly be necessary to say that Catholics believe that God often
gives to those in good faith grace with (and not through) the Anglican
ordinances.

28o ROADS TO ROME.

not sentimental baseless? That is to say, have not a
host of candid inquirers, who were all originally strongly
biassed against Rome, examined them carefully and found
them one by one fade into thin air ? Such inquirers as
Schlegel, Newman, Manning, Wilberforce, Allies, Oakdey,
Ward, Faber, Coleridge, and many others, can hardly all
be dupes, nor can they be classed amongst wilful deceivers.
As the Evidences of Christianity are all when examined
equally evidences of Catholicism^ so may we not leave to
Voltaire or to Rousseau, and, alas ! to many free-thinking
Englishmen in our own day, the two-edged sword of
scepticism, which (originally directed against the Catholic
and Roman Church) is but too surely meant by the un-
seen and diabolic hand which guides the blow to pierce
the personality of Christ our Lord, to sap the very
foundations of Christianity, to lay low the belief in the
Incarnate Son of God Himself.

" Too late have I known Thee, O Thou Ancient Truth ;
too late have I found Thee, O Thou First and only Fair ! "

Appendix.

The following is the language of St. Augustine with respect to the
name " Catholic," which is referred to at p. 278 : —

'* For inquirers it is enough that there is one Catholic Church, to
which various heresies apply different names, while they themselves,
as they cannot deny, are called each by their own names. And hence
it is given to impartial judgments to understand to whom the name of
Catholic, to which all aspire, ought to be assigned." ^

And, again, when speaking of the reasons which then kept him
(reasons precisely similar to those which keep Catholics now) in the
Conmiunion of the Catholic Church, he says —

"The agreement of peoples and nations keeps me there; her

* St. Aug., De Util. Cred., c. 9.

ROADS TO ROME. 281

authority, founded by mirades, nourished by hope, increased by love,
strengthened by antiquity, keeps me there ; her succession of priests,
from the very See of Peter the Apostle, to whom the Lord after His
Resurrection committed His sheep to be fed, down to the present
Episcopate, keeps me there ; lastly, this very name of Catholic^ which,
not without a cause among so many heresies, that Church alone
possesses — so that all heretics wish themselves to be called Catholics,
yet if any traveller were to ask where the congregation meets at the
Catholic Churchy none of the heretics would dare to show him either
his own Church or house." ^

As abo St. Cyril —

'' The £uth has delivered to thee, by way of security, the Article,
' And in One Holy Catholic Church,' that thou mayest avoid their
wretched meetings, and ever abide with the Holy Church Catholic
in which thou wast regenerated. And if ever thou art sojourning in
any city, inquire not simply where the Lord's house is (for the sects
of the profane also make an attempt to call their own dens houses of
the Lord), nor merely which the Church is, but where the Catholic
Church is. For this is the peculiar name of this holy body, the
Mother of us all, which is the Spouse of our Lord Jesus Christ,'' etc'

How any man who professes reverence for '* the Fathers " can ac-
quiesce in his position in the " Church of England," after reading such
passages as these, is indeed an intellectual puzzle ; but let us always
remember that it is through no merit of ours that we have been
brought out of our darkness, which was once as dark as theirs is now,
and let us without any thought of bitterness say again and again from
our heart of hearts, *' Rabboni, that they may see 1 "

I should now like to add to this letter that I was
helped into the Church especially by reading, as a child,
a story called " Father Clement " and the Waverley Novels.
These books, together with the history of England and
of the Crusades, gave me, when very young, an interest
in Catholicism which I never lost. Later on, as a boy of
sixteen, I devoured Newman's "Apologia" and his work
on *' The Development of Christian Doctrine." From that

> St. Aug., Contr. Epist. Man., lib. i. c. 5.

* St. Cyril» Jenis. Cat» Lect. xviii 26, Oxf. trans.

282

ROADS TO ROME.

time on I knew in my heart that Christianity and
Catholicism were, in truth, convertible terms. Other books,
such as Milner's ''End of Controversy" and Cardinal
Wiseman's Lectures, helped me also; but to Cardinal
Newman I always feel that, under God, I owe my very
soul.

O. R. V.

Aprils 1901.

The Rev. EDWARD J. WATSON, M.A.,

Sometime Scholar op Christ's College, Cambridge ; called to the
Bar in 1871 ; now Parish Priest at St. Edmund's College, Ware.

If the reasons for conversion to the CathoUc religion are
plentiful, the circumstances under which souls are converted
must be almost as various as those of human life itself.
They range, at least, from the lofty and sudden illumina-
tion of a Paul down to the simple and lifelong development
of early impressions or of an innate tendency. In any
account of a conversion which, like my own, must be
classed in one of the humbler categories, it must be
difficult to separate the circumstances from the Reasons.
Let this excuse me from the charge of egotism or imper-
tinence, if I put into a somewhat autobiographical form my
answer to any one " that asketh me a reason of that hope
which is in me."

The idea of an innate tendency to Catholicism is not
likely to meet with much favour in this country, except
from those Philistines who consider Catholicism synonymous
with evil Nevertheless I make bold to say, that the
patristic maxim, Anima humana naturaliter Christiana^
might as truly run, Anima humana naturaliter Catholica ;

283

284 ROADS TO ROME.

and, if the fact is not noticeable, it is because education and
the second nature (habit) are so much stronger than any
religious tendency. Certain it is that children may be
brought up Catholics just as easily as Christians in any other
sense. Indeed, they take much more naturally and joyously
to an acquaintance with the ceremonial, sacerdotal, sacra-
mental systems, and the idea of the authority of the Church,
than to the profounder mysteries of the Trinity in Unity, the
Incarnation, the Redemption.

Protestant parents seem to feel this when they jealously
guard, as mine guarded me, from even the slightest Catholic
influence. My convert kinsfolk had not a chance with me.
I scarcely knew them ; yet no one but had a good word for
the saintly-minded priest amongst them, who died young
— dear to God, no doubt — and to whose prayers I largely
attribute the mercy I have received

Nevertheless, even in the nursery, probably through
some crypto-Catholic nurse, I imbibed some genuine
Catholic ideas : e,g, the existence of the Pope, and that
our Lord called Peter a rock, and that that was all on the
side of the Pope, — ^a seed which grew quite imperceptibly,
but which by the time I was sixteen proved to be an in-
eradicable plant I was also taken to Farm Street, to
a service since identified as Benediction, and was very
favourably impressed (whatever the critics may say about
some people's ceremonies).

And the atmosphere of a public school, even a day-
school, seems on the whole favourable to the growth of
Catholic impressions. Hard work, not mere bread-work,
obedience, reverence, and an intense regard for truth, are,
I believe, relics of the ancient Catholic discipline, and

ROADS TO ROME. 285

however much a boy may resist them in practice, they
must necessarily affect his mind ; he feels instinctively
that they are the right sort of thing. I fancy that I gave
in my adhesion to the theory, and I got some other
notions in the right direction from an elder brother (justly
held up to me as a reproachful pattern), who, during my
earlier years at Merchant Taylors* School, used to come
back from Oxford for the vacations full of High-Churchism.
He it was who led me astray from St. George's, Blooms-
bury, to St. Andrew's, Wells Street ; nay, even to All
Saints', Margaret Street, and St. Paul's, Brighton. From
him I learnt the doctrine of priestly absolution (though it
was a very long time before I asked for that grace), and
some great notions of the Church of England : ** It was
for the clergy to speak and the people to obey "—even he
laughed at this — and that there were no such beings as
Puseyites ; and I nearly caught that peculiar squint which
looks at things Anglican as though they were Catholic.
Also during the last few years of my school life I found
that other boys, too, were bitten with the Catholicizing
mania, notably Walter Mathews, who, however, died
Anglican Archdeacon of Ceylon (R.I.P.). And somehow
we got hold of that key to the Thirty-nine Articles known
as the non-natural interpretation — a blessed euphemism
not imparted to us, and not blurted out on the house-tops
at any time.

We learnt this important method just in time, for the
master of the sixth lectured every Monday morning on the
natural interpretation. With perfect fairness he would
state the Catholic doctrine in question, and it always and
instantly commended itself to my mind ; as I should say

286 ROADS TO ROME,

now, it seemed true and beautiful and lovable. Nor did
he suspect that we possessed a secret prism which refracted
all his light, and which could be adjusted to throw the
desired hue on any particular article.

So it came to pass that, before I left school, I had
acquired a considerable amount of Catholic doctrine : not
only the orthodox belief on non-contentious truths, such
as the Blessed Trinity, which was established for us at
considerable length as against all the leading heretics,
Arians, Semi-Arians, and others with all their formulas ;
and an orthodox belief in the Incarnation as against
Nestorius and Eutyches (how well I remember that
Low Church clei^^yman insisting that Mary was not simply
XpKTTOTOKog but deoroKoc !) ; but also a belief, Catholic so far
as I knew, in the Real Presence, the Sacrifice, relics,
images, Purgatory, the necessity of good works, and of
grace (with a sneaking sympathy, however, rather becoming
in a scapegrace, for Pelagianism). Of the Petrine claims
I did not learn much, but I shall not forget the surprise
and scorn with which I first heard that the " rock " is not
Peter, but Peter's confession.

Thus, though my equipment of Catholic doctrines was
meager in quantity and probably inaccurate below the
surface, still Catholicity, as I imagined it, had become my
standard, and even as an Anglican schoolboy I was not
far off having the Faith implicitly.

Among the influences leading me to Catholicism which
have to be classed as sentimental, but are not less powerful
on that account, I reckon first of all Westminster Abbey.
Taught from childhood to admire it, I was deeply im-
pressed with the sacred beauty of the place ; during many

ROADS TO ROME. 287

a holiday I fairly haunted it, and, to my schoolboy
thoughts, it seemed possible, certainly right, that monks
should people it again and quicken it with everlasting
song. And then George Herbert, with all his silly
Anglicanism, sounded a note, especially in his poems of
the Passion, which was entirely unlike anything I heard in
any Protestant church, and so affecting that I seem now
to recognize it as an echo of ancient love, in his day
perhaps not quite forgotten. Thus everything Protestant
grew more and more detestable, and especially sermons
whenever domestic politics made it necessary ''to hear
Mass'' at St George's, Bloomsbury! But let me never
forget my debt of gratitude to St Alban's, Holbom, " the
most Catholic" church, as it seemed, then accessible. I
am still grateful for the relief and delight of the services,
for the illuminating joy of so much true Catholic doctrine
(though I remember some strange things which would not
be said there now), and, above all, for the noble example
of the clei^y, whose manner of life became my ideal then,
and my ideal is not much lifted to this very day.

Such was my religion when I went to Cambridge, and
such essentially it remained till I changed it ten years
later. Paley's " Evidences " and St. Mark's Gospel helped
to strengthen my foundations ; but what could a university
course do for one whose real object of ambition (never
attained) was a light-blue oar, with a degree in the back-
ground } Religion was reduced to a crucifix in one room,
a statue of our Lady in the other, and occasional visits to
St Clement's, and (my nearest approach to piety) to the
pretty Catholic church now so gloriously superseded.

But even in that undergraduate soul there had lain

288 ROADS TO ROME.

dormant a half-formed purpose of some day ** taking Holy
Orders ; " and it was not till the time came to develop it,
that I seriously examined the grounds of the Anglo-Catholic
position in which I had grown up.

At once the Thirty-nine Articles (my old enemies) loomed
large across my path, and I sought a serious method of
getting over them without loss of the Catholic arms» supplies^
and treasures, which were to me of the last importance.
The difficulty (thought little of nowadays) was not one
of my own imagining. At one pole of Anglicanism, Mr.
Capel Cure (then Rector of Bloomsbury), and at the other
the Rev. A. H. Stanton, of St Alban's, both kindly warned
me. I was recommended to read " Forbes on the Thirty-
nine Articles," and I read it eagerly, and Cobb's " Kiss
of Peace," and other such special pleadings, as antidotes
to Harold Browne, and in order to learn how to interpret
the Thirty-nine Articles in a Catholic sense, and to sign
them with a good conscience. In the same way I balanced
a similar series against those works on the Reformation,
the Prayer-book, and early history which it was advis-
able to read for the Cambridge Voluntary Theological and
the Bishop's Examinations.

With such helps, and the argument ad verectindtam, in
view of the many men of high character who had gone
the same way, and the consideration that the Catholic
interpretation was known and tolerated, I made the assault,
and eventually effected my purpose. Indeed, there seemed
nothing else for it, if one was to be ordained at all. Had
not DoUinger, I argued (whose " tail was thought to draw
a third part of the stars of heaven *'), lately proved Rome
(of which I knew little at the time) to be impossible?

ROADS TO ROME. 289

Yes, " we must cling to the See of Canterbury ! " High
Heaven ! how grand it sounded ! And all the grander
that the occupant was a heretic !

However, I had not been ordained very long, when,
being out for a walk one day alone, I met a sly old fox.
He used to prowl along the hedgerows near Frome in
search of curates. Father Kyan, S.J., a holy old man, set
me thinking about Anglican Orders, and, in particular, about
the intention of a bishop in ordaining; for I could not
but remember that my own ordainer (the then Bishop of
Bath and Wells, Lord Arthur Charles Hervey), in a sermon
preparatory to ordination, had spoken of Masses for the dead
as a kind of crime into which a man might fall if he did
not take care, whereas one of my chief objects in getting
ordained was to say Masses for the dead. I set to work
and read much, if not all, there was then to be read on
either side of Anglican Orders. Dr. Lee and Canon
Estcourt were my chief counsel for and against, without
bringing me to a decision ; nor did a letter to the former
elicit all the satisfaction I wanted. But the Orders had
not been actually condemned, and a wider and deeper
question was presenting itself, and was peremptorily
demanding an answer. Leaving the Orders in abeyance,
I passed to the consideration of the whole Anglican
position.

I had long suspected that the Roman theory (as we
called it) of unity was the only logical one, and I had
arrived at that suspicion by the somewhat circuitous route
of the British colonies. If the present Church of England
could justify her opposition to Rome as heiress of the
mediaeval Church, still how in the world could she have

U

290 ROADS TO ROME.

jurisdiction in South Africa, New Zealand, Australia,
India, Canada? It was futile to talk of the missionaiy
spirit. Missionaiy spirit for England was missionary
spirit for France and missionary spirit for Russia. Pri-
ority of occupation or diocesan limitation had never been
regarded, nor could they be ; and even if they could be
sufficient as laws, they would still need an administrator
and arbiter. The evangelization of the world brought
home to me very forcibly the necessity of, to say the
least, a central executive — another road that seemed to
lead to Rome.

But we young men (I was still in the twenties) were
always being cautioned against trusting to too much logic !
There were other forces to deal with. I turned to history,
and began a mild course with Robertson as a text-book ;
but the controversial questions were what I wanted
answered. The answers were life or death to me, and I
plunged into a perplexing series on either side. Mr.
Allies, in his '' Church of England cleared from the charge
of schism," would have been conclusive, had not his " See
of St Peter" been unanswerable. "Janus," P^re Gratry,
id genus, would have been irresistible, had not the evidence
for the Papacy, such as that collected by Colin Lindsay
and others, and always turning up, been immovable.
Then came a course of Newman, and, entering into the
theory of development, I seemed to see the whole
Papacy, infallibility and all, as a corollary to Butler's
" Analogy."

But the work that settled all my doubts, perplexities, and
hesitations was one of a lighter sort In " Loss and Gain "
I found my fears drawn out and marshalled in dire array ;

■ —»•»-

ROADS TO ROME. 291

they pressed me close and pierced me through and through.
And then I saw my old bugbear, Catholic subscription to
the Thirty-nine Articles, in a light new to me indeed, but
true beyond dispute. And what an ugly monster it was ! —
ugly and monstrous, not because it disclosed itself as a
baser piece of quibbling than was ever invented by petti-
fogging attorney (though that was my ultimate and free
conclusion), but because I saw that there is something
lower than a quibble, and that is a religious compromise.^

Let it be granted that Catholic subscription is no
quibble ; let it be supposed that men who really hold
Catholic doctrines can sign without a qualm. Yet surely
all the world of sense and honesty allows that those same
Articles do at least admit of the opposite interpretation.
Such astounding propositions, however, are made nowadays
that it may be as well to illustrate my meaning. If it is

* It is most astonnding that the truth of this statement is only now begin-
ning to be recognized outside the Catholic Church. I have a vivid remem-
brance of hearing, some thirty years ago, a sermon even in St. Alban's in
which it was claimed, in perfect innocence, that res anglicana (whether church,
religion, prayer-book, or what precisely, I forget) was '*a compromise." As
recently as the autumn of 1898, a thinker of so high an order as the late Duke
of Argyll wrote a public letter (?to the Times) which drew of course great
attention, and in which with all sincerity he congratulated the Church of
England on being *' a compromise," one of her chief glories. I was immensely
surprised and pleased that the Spectator repudiated the compliment. I
had read that journal for years with the deepest interest, yet had never
observed that attitude before. Now there was virtually a seal put on words
which I had been allowed to say in the Pall Mall twenty-one years before,
(may I be allowed to repeat myself?) that "no one can enter into a com-
promise in religion without being himself compromised." Simple and obvious
as the truth is, its recognition by the Spectator promised to clear the air,
but the pleasing prospect was almost immediately clouded by the substitution
of the word " comprehensiveness.'' If that is anything but compromise in
action, on what principle can the comprehensiveness of the English Religion
be limited to narrower boundaries than the four seas ?

292 ROADS TO ROME.

too much to assume that Article XL, to the effect ^ that
we are justified by faith only/' was intended to teach
Luther's doctrine of justification by ''faith, alone,'' still
surely Luther's own words must be patient — at least patient,
I say-— of Luther's own meaning, so that a Lutheran can
honestly subscribe that Article. The same might be said
of words about the sacraments, which apparently admit
Calvin's doctrine, and which have, quite lately, been shown
to bejn Calvin's own words. Similarly of Article XXX VIL
If it is really a mistake to suppose this teaches the Royal
Supremacy, yet surely the attribution to "the Queen's
Majesty " of " the chief government of all estates of this
realm, whether they be ecclesiastical or civil, in all causes,"
saving only " the ministering of God's Word or of the Sacra*
ments," would satisfy Henry VI I L, or Elizabeth, or Sir
William Harcourt. Again, they who hold that the Church
should ever}rwhere be subject to the State, may surely say
that "General Councils may not be gathered together
without the commandment and will of princes," even
though Article XXL really means that they inay be
gathered together without the commandment and will of
princes ; and people who do not believe in the infallibility
of General Councils may surely be allowed to say that
"they may err and sometimes have erred even in things
pertaining to God," even though the plain meaning of the
Article is that General Councils cannot err and never have
erred in things pertaining to God. Once more, if people
believe that the Sacrifice of the Mass is a blasphemy, they
may say that " the Sacrifices of Masses were blasphemous
fables." They who do not believe that Transubstantiation
is a true doctrine may say that " it is repugnant to the

ROADS TO ROME. 293

plain words of Scripture ; " and if they do not believe that
confirmation, penance, orders, matrimony, extreme unction,
are sacraments at all, they may declare that they ** are
not to be counted for Sacraments of the Gospel," and
" have not the like nature of Sacraments with Baptism and
the Lord's Supper." I say such Protestant subscription
is surely admissible by the Articles, even though the
Articles were really and only intended to anticipate and to
promulgate the decrees of Trent on all these matters of
faith. Yes, even though they be traced backward to the
Council of London, which required Wiclifs subscription
to Transubstantiation, or to Archbishop Peckham's injunc-
tions for general instruction (and it is high time for such
research to be made), or if it be shown that they never
have been subscribed, except in a Catholic sense, until
our own time, still I maintain that Protestant subscription
is admissible.

For me it was no mere academic question. The Articles
were not obsolete, nor mere forms ; nor was there any
declaration of authority to overrule the Protestant inter-
pretation. Quite the contrary! — that was the prevalent
interpretation, and they were in full working order, and,
what was worst of all, I had given them my own unfeigned
assent and consent.

Therefore I could not, with some friends, stupidly beg
the question, and say, " The Church of England is Catholic,
therefore her Articles of Religion must be Catholic." If
her Articles of Religion admit Protestantism, s/ie cannot
be Catfiolic. Nor could I agjree with another, Quieta non
mover e. Still less could I say with a third, "I don't care
what they mean." No I the case was far too serious. I had

294 ROADS TO ROME.

agreed, and solemnly, to let the truths I held most sacred
be wrested to their very opposites, to a betrayal of the
kingdom which is not of this world, into the hands of the
civil power — a piece of treachery of which Wesleyans and
the humblest Dissenters might make us ashamed

I had agreed to let the Councils of God's Church be
called fallible ; to let the Mass and the Sacraments be
shamefully blasphemed, and the most pernicious false-
hoods about grace and works be taught with my unfeigned
assent and consent. There was no doubt about it I
came in personal contact with clergymen who did siK:h
things ; their religion was entirely different from mine,
and so for that matter was the religion of many persons
in the congr^ation, and the Church of England gave me
no authority to teach them otherwise. The ugly monster
was very much alive, and whichever way I turned there
was no escape. Did men, I asked myself, make such
arrangements in other circumstances of life } If a man's
own character is called in question, does he acquiesce in
an ambiguous apolc^^, which leaves it an open question ?
Or, if the physician's prescription is illegible, and it is
doubtful whether it means sal-volatile or strychnine, rhubarb
or Frussic acid, iron or arsenic — ^the quantities and frequency
of doses, too, being obscure — would the patient let the
chemist's boy do his best and take his interpretation of
it ? Nay, even in matters of money, would a man invest
in a company whose articles of association are so dubious
that the directors can carry on any business they like, and
as they like, some of them one way and some another?
No, not money, not health, not honour ; only the interests
of the Christian faith were to be treated in such manner.

ROADS TO ROME.

295

and that, so far, as I knew (or know), only by the extreme
section of the Church of England.

The genial, kindly, much-beloved Rector of Christ Church,
St Leonard's (Mr. Vaughan), and my chum among curates
(John Forbes) — God rest them both! — did their best to
console me. But I was past that kind of consolation, and
the former was constrained to own that " I had swallowed
the Thirty-nine and could not digest them." Most true,
and I only had to get rid of them by writing a polite letter
to Dr. Dumford, of Chichester, emphatically withdrawing
all my assent And I did so with the sense of having got
rid of a disgusting burden. There was no doubt now
which way to turn. I soon made an application to Doctor
Newman (not yet a Cardinal), and received from him the
honour of an invitation to the Oratory. Five days later,
in St Philip's Chapel, the venerable Father, with the
assistance of Father Bittlestone, received me into the
Church of the crucified and risen Saviour. It was the Feast
of St Thomas the Apostle, and all my doubts were at an
end. Beati qui non viderunt et crediderunL

C. J. WATTS, Esq.,

Formerly a Baptist Preacher.

On the twenty-first day of June, 1890, I was received into
communion with the Holy Roman Catholic Church, after
having for nearly forty years been associated with the
various Dissenting congregations of this country. This
may be of no particular interest to others, but, to myself,
it was the great turning-point of my life. When a man
has passed the age of fifty, he is not expected to make
so great a change without due thought and consideration.
The reasons that led up to such a step I desire now to
set forth, in the earnest hope that others who may be wan-
dering, as I once was, in the wilderness of Dissent and in
the quagmire of private interpretation and of free thought,
may be induced to consider their position, and, after full
inquiry, to find, as I have found, perfect rest and peace
in the " one fold under the one Shepherd." It is only as the
time of famine and of the hunger of the soul is realized,
and as that dissatisfaction which is engendered by religious
uncertainty is experienced, that any really earnest attempt
is made to arise and to seek for the Father's House, where
there is " bread enough and to spare " for the hungry and
weary soul.

296

ROADS TO ROME. 297

Dissenters, it is well known, have ever regarded
Catholic worship, with its elaborate symbolism, as some-
thing excessively formal and unspiritual, and they have
judged it so from the fact that the free and spontaneous
utterances of their own unliturgical services have made
them accustomed to such simple modes of worship. To
them worship consists of the uninspired utterances of the
human mind, expressive of want or entreaty, and addressed
to the Divine Redeemer, Who, because of His Divine man-
hood, feels our sorrows and knows our necessities. Any
pretence of priestly interference or anything approaching
sacerdotalism is resented by them, and is regarded as a
dangerous interference with the mediatorship of our Lord
and Saviour ( i Tim. ii. 5). And yet a moment's reflection
must surely show that each time a minister in prayer to
the Almighty becomes the spokesman or the mouthpiece
of others, he is in reality a " mediator " in a far truer sense
of the word than he who reads a prearranged and fixed
form of prayer which is known and followed by his congre-
gation. It seems to me that it is simply the non-recognition
of the fulness and perfection of the present intercessory
work carried on by our Redeemer, in pleading the Divine
sacrifice of Calvary and its precious efHcacy, which accounts
in some measure for this strange misapprehension. Dis-
senters are apt to dwell exclusively on the one offering
made on Calvary — an offering made once for all, and never
in any sense to be repeated. Their worship consequently
lacks the necessary elements of present sacrifice, except
perhaps sacrifice in the subjective sense, i>. that of a
humble spirit and a contrite heart But I am not using
the term in this subjective sense here, but in its true and

298 ROADS TO ROME.

generic sense — sacrifice in the sense of a victim offered as
a means of propitiation. I have always found it diflicult to
understand how, in the Protestant sense, an act accomplished
nineteen centuries ago could in any way be applied to me
individually so as to be incorporated in my very life, and
how I could thus be said to be made a partaker of Christy
and to appropriate Him as w^ Saviour and my Redeemer.
Although I tried hard to persuade myself that it was by
faith only that I could appropriate an absent Saviour, and
by faith only share in the merits of His death, I never-
theless yearned for a present Savioiur, and strained my
ears for the sound of the living Voice saying to me,
'' Thy sins are forgiven thee ; go in peace, sin no more."
But with what certainty is this provided for in the Catholic
Sacraments of the Holy Eucharist and of Penance! I
can give unhesitating testimony on this point, having
known the two states — that of yearning desire, and that of
realized certainty. The question, therefore, resolves itself
into this : Does the worship of God Incarnate on the
altars of the Catholic Church present a real and true
source of strength to the human soul ? Is it in its very
nature a means of grace of the highest order, filling the
soul with true joy and with calm rest ?

A correspondent wrote me shortly after I was brought
into the Catholic Church : " What have you found in the
Catholic Church that you did not find among the Baptists ?"
To which I replied, " When associated with my good friends
the Baptists my great wish was expressed in a single line
of a verse often on my lips, * Dear Jesus, make Thyself to
me a living bright reality.' And although I cannot but
acknowledge that I often felt a sense of restful repose in

ROADS TO ROME. 299

the thought that in some way I apprehended Christ, yet,
as compared with my apprehension of Christ now as 'a
living bright reality/ it is overwhelmingly in favour of
Catholic worship and doctrine," My experience of the
Blessed Eucharist is this, that while as a Baptist I had
to work myself up into a certain frame of mind and
"feelings," in order that I might, as it were, take the
Saviour with me to the Supper, I now find the Blessed
Redeemer there in His Church waiting to welcome me,
and to become mine in a way no language can express.
It is an experience to be realized. It has often occurred
to me since I have become a Catholic, that if non-Catholics
who are in earnest, and who are disposed to inquire con-
cerning the claims of the Church, would but ask themselves
the question (a sort of corollary to my correspondent's
question) : What has any one of the many religious sects
outside the Catholic Church got to offer that the Catholic
Church does not fully and perfectly supply, and in a far
more lasting and definite manner? such a question pon-
dered over and thoughtfully answered would lead, I think,
to very excellent results.

I will now quote a passage from Dr. James Martineau's
"Seats of Authority in Religion" (p. 169), seeing that it
is the testimony of one who is not only a non-Catholic,
but also a non-Protestant in the ordinary sense of the
term. He says —

" If somewhere among the communities of Christendom there
is a sovereign prescription for securing salvation, the Roman
Catholic Church has obvious advantages over its competing
claimants for possession of the secret. Regarded merely as an
agent for the transmission of an historical treasure, she has, at

300 ROADS TO ROME,

least, a ready answer for all her Western rivals and 2l prima fade
case of her own. They have to all appearance quite a recent
genesis, their whole tradition and literature lying within the last
three centuries and a half; and, in order to make good their
title-deeds as servitors of Christ, they must carry it over a period
of four times as long during which it was lost, and identify it at
the other end with the original instrument of bequest. Her plea,
on the other hand, is that she has been there all through ; that
there has been no suspension of her life, no break in her history,
no term of silence in her teaching ; and that, having been always
in possession, she is the vehicle of every claim and must be
presumed, until conclusive evidence of forfeiture is produced, to
be the rightful holder of what has rested in her custody. If you
would trace a divine l^acy from the age of the Oesars, would
you set out to meet it on the Protestant tracks, which soon lose
themselves in the forests of Germany or on the Alps of Switzer-
land, or on the great Roman road of history, which runs through
all the centuries and sets you down in Greece or Asia Minor at
the very doors of the Churches to which the Apostles wrote?
But it is not only to its superiority as a human carrier of a divine
tradition that Catholicism successfully appeals. It is not content
to hide away its signs and wonders in the past, and merely tell
them to the present, but it will take you to see them now and
here. It speaks to you not as the repeater of an old message,
but as the bearer of a living inspiration ; not as the archaeological
rebuilder of a vanished sacred scene, but as an apostolic age
prolonged with unabated powers. It tells you, indeed, whence
it comes ; but for the evidence even of this it chiefly asks you to
look at what it is, and undertakes to show you as you pass through
its interior all the divine gifts, be they miraculous gifts or heavenly
graces, by which the primitive Church was distinguished from the
imconsecrated world. This quiet confidence in its own divine
commission and interior sanctity simplifies the problem which it
presents to inquirers, and, dispensing with the precarious pleas
of learning, carries it into the court of sentiment and conscience.

ROADS TO ROME. 301

addressing to each candidate for discipleship only such prelimi-
naries as Peter or Philip might have addressed to their converts
— as if there had been no history between. No Protestant can
assume this position ; yet he can hardly assail the Roman Catholic
without resorting to weapons of argument which may wound
himself. Does he slight and deny the supematiual pretensions
of to-day — ^the visions, the healings, the saintly gifts of insight
and guidance more than human ? It is difficult to dp so except
on grounds more or less applicable to the reports of like pheno-
mena in the first ages. Does he insist on the evident growth,
age after age, of Catholic dogma as evidence of human corruption
tainting the divine mheritance of truth? The rule tells with
equal force against the scheme of belief retained by the Churches
of the Reformation ; there is a history no less explicit and pro-
longed of the doctrine of the Trinity and of the Atonement, than
the belief in Purgatory and Transubstantiation. Does he show
that there are missing links in the chain of Church tradition,
especially at its upper end, where verification ceases to be
possible? He destroys his own credentials along with his
opponent's, for his criticism touches the very sources of Christian
history. The answer of the Catholic Church to the question,
* Where is the holy ground of the world, where is the real
presence of the living God?' * Here within my precincts, here
alone,' has, at least, the merit of simpUcity, and is easier to test
than the Protestant reply, which points to a field of divine
revelation discoverable only by the telescope halfway towards
the horizon of history. ... It carries its supernatiural character
within it ; it has brought its authority down with it through time ;
it is the living organism of the Holy Spirit, the Pentecostal
dispensation among us still ; and if you ask about its evidence,
it offers the spectacle of itself."

This testimony from such a source had a great efTect
in helping me to make up my mind when I was inquiring
into the claims of the Catholic Church, and, together with

302 ROADS TO ROME.

the lucid teaching of Cardinal Wiseman in his splendid
lectures on the Catholic faith, and Cardinal Newman's
** Apologia '' and the lectures on *' The Present State (^
Catholics in England/' and Cardinal Manning's little treatise
on the " Grounds of Faith," secured for me not only a ready
and implicit assurance that it was God's Church, built upon
the impregnable foundation of apostolic truth, which I was
about to enter, but also furnished me with very explicit
groundwork on which my mind could feel and know that
the step taken was both a reasonable and a right one. I
had long felt that there was no via media between the
negations of doubt and the certain assurance of authority.
The difficulty had hitherto been to find out this one abiding
authority for Divine teaching, and I was forced to the con-
clusion that, if the concurrent testimony of history, tc^ether
with the inherent vitality of a Church of nineteen centuries,
did not prove the Church of Rome to be that authority,
then there was no Church at all in the world, and God
had left us all orphans indeed, piteously feeling about in
the darkness, '' with no language but a cry." Thank God
that to me, too, there came the Divine guidance, and that
the kindly light of faith dawned on my soul.

I was spending the season of Whitsuntide, 1890, at Stone^
in Staffordshire, and one Sunday afternoon I strolled into
the Church of St. Dominic and heard an address to the
candidates for Confirmation. The priest who gave the
address insisted on the presence and power of the Holy
Ghost in the Church, it being a Divine organization for
teaching the world, and he referred to the sacrament of
Confirmation to be administered on the following Thursday
as the blessed means by which Divine strength is imparted

ROADS TO ROME. 303

to the soul for its battle in life. The address was followed
by Benediction, a service at that time not only new but
exceedingly strange to me. However, I stayed for it, and
the force of the thought which it suggested — ^the presence
and power of the Holy Ghost in the Church — so acted
upon my mind, that, on the following Thursday, I attended
the same church, and witnessed the ceremony of Confir-
mation, given by the Bishop of Birmingham (Dr. Ilsley).
The bishop, in his address, practically repeated what the
priest had already expressed on the preceding Sunday.
In the course of a few days I returned to London, but the
thought of this Divine Presence and Power having a living
embodiment in a visible organization I could not shake off,
nor indeed did I wish to, and so I put myself under the
instruction of a Catholic priest near my residence, with, to
me, the happy result that, after forty years' wandering in
the wilderness of religious doubt and uncertainty, I at
last found rest in the certainty of the Divine unity of the
one Church.

In conclusion, I should like to point out that : i. The
right of private judgment, so much belauded and so highly
treasured by Protestants, and especially by Dissenters, is
practically given up by them when, submitting their in-
dividual judgments to some one amongst the many teachers
of their various and differing denominations, they are ad-
mitted to membership with some distinctive religious body.
2. That with non-Catholics, too, the realization of the deepest
religious life is more or less connected with the ordinance
and celebration of the Lord's Supper. 3. That the tendency
of all non-dogmatic forms of religious thought is towards
rationalism. 4. That there is no true religious sense of

304

ROADS TO ROME.

rest and peacefulness enjoyed and possessed by non-
Catholics which is not far more really and fully enjoyed by
every devout and earnest child of the Catholic Church. 5.
That the entire testimony of history g^ves the Catholic
Church the prescriptive right to say : I am the exclusive
teacher sent by God to instruct men in the way of salvation,
and the only custodian of those Divine gifts by which they
can alone find rest and peace for their souls. 6. That the
Catholic Church has not only invariably achieved the most
brilliant victories over human vice and sin, but that it has also
done the most beneficent work in the field of philanthropy
and charity. 7. That there is really nothing good in any
one of the many sects of the Protestant Churches that has
not its source and origin, either directly or indirectly, in
the Holy Catholic and Roman Church. 8. That although
the Bible, and the Bible only, is allied to be the rule of
faith among Protestants, this rule is almost always supple-
mented by some more or less defined creed which is said
to be drawn from the Bible only, but for the explanation
and defence of which the particular minister is appointed
and is made responsible.

The Rev. NORMAN WAUGH,

Op St. Anne's Cathsdral, Leeds.

Though heartily in sympathy with the object of this
publication, I cannot but feel doubtful as to how far any-
thing I may have to record of my own experience will be
either of interest or of use to others.

To begin with, I was not, as so many converts, a
member of the Established Church. On the contrary, I
had always been taught, what I still believe to be sound
sense and good logic, viz. that if the Pope is not the
Head of the Church, neither is the King or the Queen of
this realm. Under God, I believe that I owed my con-
version to the Catholic Faith to the startling originality
of certain sections of modem Nonconformity. The idea
gradually grew within me that if the doctrines, or rather
the views, adopted by a number of the more advanced
thinkers among educated and more thoughtful Noncon-
formists were indeed the reflected rays of Divine Truth,
that then not until the nineteenth century had the Word
of God been made manifest — and that to the few, and not
to the many.

It was this impossible thought which first led me to

305 X

I

!

appointed authority.

In my first contact with
startled by what some would p(
i I found it difficult to reconci

I J simplicity of primitive Chris

j'^i magnificence and ritual of

Cardinal Newman's " Develop

"■^^^nciled the oak and the acor;

j/l ^ *>*«« have learned, what 1

f i he loved so well had taught in

^ ! ^ "d <» the cross. I learned th«

i S as in the individual heart, so

« ^- society, is like unto ''the sma

one came to realize that, by a
and made intelligent as it is by
I j of Jesus Christ must, from age

1^ within itself the mysteries of «

adding nothing, taking nothing
according to the needs of natio

lY

i.

I

ROADS TO ROME. 307

say, as the necessity of baptisnii and Eternal Punishment.
Again, Providence placed in my hands Father Faber's
'* Creator and Creature." Such chapters of this work, as
" What it is to be a creature " and " What it is to have a
Creator," were a revelation to the reader. To have read
them was to understand that all the mysteries of faith
are easy of belief when compared with the greatest of
all mysteries, the one great leading truth of Christian
Revelation. And that mystery is the incomprehensible
fact, of which the Incarnation is the proof, that God,
though He knows us through and through, loves us ; and,
though He is all-holy and needeth nothing, desires our love !
Thus I came to learn in my own case the absolute truth-
fulness of Faber's words, in this key to all his works, when
he says that ''by far the greater number of objections
which are urged against Catholic doctrine have their root
in oblivion of the respective positions of the creature and
Creator."

Now, after the lapse of thirteen years, I have more
reason than ever to be thankful for the grace of submission
to the Holy Catholic and Roman Church — Catholic in its
circumference, and Roman in its centre. From then till
now, religion, whether it regard what we should believe or
what we should do for eternal life, has been — ^as it always
was and will be — a matter of fact and not a matter of
opinion. For, herein, in these two words, "fact" and
" opinion," we have the essential difference between what
is taught by Divine authority, and what is offered for our
belief as the outcome of private judgment. May the solid
realities of the Catholic Faith be the inheritance of all who
pray that theirs may be eternal life in the knowledge of

308

ROADS TO ROME.

the only true God, and of Jesus Christ His only Son I It
may be there are some who will read this publication,
of which my own contribution forms so small and unim-
portant a part, who, whilst they pray for this great graces
will do well to remember one of Cardinal Newman's
greatest thoughts, contained in two brief lines in his
" Dream of Gerontius " —

r

** It is thy very energy of thought
Which keeps thee firom thy God."

A. St. LEGER WESTALL, Esq., M.A.,

And Scholar op Queen's College, Cambridge ; Latin Essay and
College Prizeman ; 2nd Class Classical Tripos, 18S4 ; formerly
Curate op St. Mary's, Plaistow, St. Michael's, Brighton, and
St. Saviour's, Croydon ; Manor Park, £.

My father was an Anglican clergyman of High Church
opinions ; and home training, inclination, and study com-
bined to make me, at the time of my ordination as an
Anglican, an adherent of the most advanced High Church
school. For several years I worked as a curate, without
the smallest misgiving as to the soundness and consistency
of our religious position. The first shock came to me in
the course of an inquiry, undertaken from interest, not
from doubt, into the early evidence for the Papacy. I had
always taken for granted that the Pope's claim to be the
successor of St. Peter and Visible Head of the Church
rested upon no securer foundation than a dim and pre-
carious tradition. I was therefore deeply moved by the
discovery that the historical evidence was at least as strong
as the evidence for the authenticity of any single book of
the New Testament — stronger far than the evidence for
several of those books. Another severe shock to my faith
in the Anglican position resulted from reading Father

309

3IO ROADS TO ROME.

Richardson's little work on the " Catholic Claims," written
in answer to Canon Gore. Learning and scholarship lay
with Canon Gore, but the victory appeared to me to lie
with Father Richardson. If I had read at that time
Cardinal Newman's work on "Development," which con-
tained the solution of the difficulties I still felt, my sub-
mission to the Church would probably have taken place
then, eight years earlier than it actually did. As it was,
I did not see how to reconcile the claims and position of
the Papacy in the nineteenth century with its position in
the fourth or fifth, although I held that the Pope's primacy
was derived by succession from Peter, and was not merely
due to the consent of the Church. The latter was not
the origin of his position, but the witness to it. I was
a " moderate Gallican." As time went on I was compelled
to abandon the Tractarian appeal to the Primitive and
Undivided Church. The latter had ceased to exist for a
thousand years. How was her voice to be heard ? It was
an appeal to documents, to writings, with the individual
inquirer as interpreter. How did that differ in principle
from the Protestant appeal to the Bible ? In so far as it
differed it was for the worse. It substituted hundreds of
books for a score and a half. The former were to interpret
the latter, and the interpretation was harder to come by
than the matter to be interpreted. Eight hundred years
were to be studied instead of eighty, and private judg-
ment was the real interpreter of each several doctrine
after all. I fell back upon the theory that, as three
branches of the Church were living and teaching bodies
here and now, the Churchman's duty was to believe every
doctrine in which they agreed as a matter of faith ; and

ROADS TO ROME. 31 1

where two were agreed against the third, to regard the
matter as still subjudice. The chaotic condition of religious
teaching in the Anglican Church made her testimony in
all matters of dispute difficult to come by, and practically
one had to go by the teaching of the Roman and Greek
Churches, when they agreed. What was my dismay when
I realized that they cordially agreed in the rejection of
the Branch theory I They were also agreed that to be in
communion with avowed Protestants was to be guilty of
Protestantism — ^that is, of heresy. At this time, too, I
began to see that the Anglican Church, as a Church,
taught no definite faith at all. By the Church I found
that Church-people always meant the Prayer-book ; and
the Prayer-book not as traditionally expounded and acted
on during the three centuries of its existence, but the
Prayer-Book as interpreted by the extreme party. To
me a Church meant a living body of men, women, and
children, and the voice of that body was to be sought in
its authorized and official teachers, and in its traditional
interpretation of its documents. As far as our official
teachers were concerned, any heresy might be and was
taught without let or hindrance ; as far as immemorial
tradition went, it was, at best, " moderate High Church "
— that is, a timid heresy instead of a bold and uncompro-
mising one. Furthermore, the mere allowance of heresy
appeared to me to be fatal to a Church.

Matters were in this condition with me, when I
suddenly realized that another conviction had taken
firm possession of my mind. This was a realization that
from the beginnings of Christianity until the Reformation,
it was universally believed that the Church was one, in

312 ROADS TO ROME.

the sense that she was made by God to be One Visible
Body or Corporation, incapable of division into warring
fragments, and that this was her first or chief mark.
One Church, one Faith, one Voice ; that was the un-
doubted and undoubting testimony of all the ages. To
teach or to allow two faiths was as impossible as to believe
in two Gods ; to be divided into antagonistic " branches,"
each with its own belief, was as impossible as to divide
Christ into various antagonistic personalities. That our
Lord founded one Society, which was to remain one;
that He deposited in her one Faith, and endowed her
with the gift of infallibility in order that she might
ever teach this and no other ; that such a Society still
existed, and made these claims, and carried them into
effect, and that no other Society so much as claimed the
allegiance of the whole world ; that this Society was the
Catholic and Roman Church, and that her claims were
those of the Primitive and Mediaeval Church, while the
Anglican position was diametrically opposed to both ; —
all this gradually took possession of me as indubitable
truth. How else could we know what the Faith was
that He delivered to His Apostles ? When I had begun
to grasp this as the crucial fact, other difficulties began
to disappear. A Church, a visible organization, was the
vehicle of God*s revelation to man. From her I must
learn it. Whether or not bishops are essential to the
Church, whether there is a priesthood or not, whether
Saints may be invoked or not, whether the Mass is a
Propitiatory Sacrifice or not, whether the Pope is supreme
or not, — all these questions can be answered for certain
by the Church and by nobody else, for none but the

ROADS TO ROME. 313

Church has Christ's authority to declare them. A case
may be made out for and against any one of these, or
indeed any other Christian doctrines ; study might lead
one to form an opinion, and on many points the more
careful the study the more difficult it is to decide between
conflicting opinions. To give a decisive answer is the
raison S£tre of the Church in all ages and for all nations,
and the Church in communion with Rome alone claims
to do so, and acts on the claim.

Another feature in her seemed to me to point the same
way. The Roman Church never stirred from her position.
The separated Easterns, or many of them, had three or four
times surrendered to Rome, most notably at Florence ; never
had Rome surrendered to them. If the Anglican Church
were in continuity with the pre-Reformation Church, then,
on her own confession, she had agreed with Rome for a
thousand years of her existence. The efforts of Church
Defence lecturers to prove that the early English Church
was anti-papal or non-papal, I regarded with unmitigated
contempt. The popular Anglican falsification of early
Church history led me to question very seriously the
theory that " continuity," in any but an Act-of-Parliament
sense, was preserved at the Reformation. It was a waste
of time to trouble about Henry VIII. or even Edward VI. ;
all had been put right under Mary, and the question, for
all practical purposes, was confined to the Elizabethan
" settlement." To put in a few words what took me many
months, if not years, to grasp, I came to the conclusion
that the State destroyed the old Church, and erected a
brand-new one on its ruins.

When I had long been trembling on the brink of these

314 ROADS TO ROME.

conclusions, the Papal Bull on Anglican Orders was
published. I was well aware that the question of Angli-
can Orders was a very secondary one, and did not affect
the questions of schism, jurisdiction, heresy, or the neces-
sity of unity. Still, so habituated was I to being in a
state of separation from- Rome, that an acknowledgment of
the validity of those Orders by the Pope would very pro-
bably have dela)red or prevented my conversion, illogical
as that would have been ; indeed, I was quite aware of
the fact, and yet allowed the question of Orders to have
an undue influence. Probably it was due to the fact that I
was a married clergyman with a family, and that the future,
in the event of my conversion, looked so dark, that one
caught at straws. However, the Pope decided against us, and
the controversy that ensued convinced me that the Pope's
decision was right. The Holy Father was attacked by
Anglican speakers for being unhistorical, prejudiced, talked
round by enemies ; his arguments were called " shallow/'
"hollow," " exploded," "founded on fiction," and so forth.
To me the Bull seemed a singularly clear and logical
piece of reasoning, and in addition to that I had grasped
the fact that doubtful Orders could no more be used than
if they were certainly invalid. Rome had rejected ours
for three hundred years, and now had set the seal upon
that rejection ; now the case had been tried by a Pontiff
of lofty character, great learning, and a singular desire
to treat Anglicans with as much indulgence as his duty
admitted ; then surely the Orders must be doubtful, to
say no more. Finally, the study of the Councils of
Ephesus and Chalcedon set all doubts on the subject
of the Papacy at rest. By that time, indeed, I had come

ROADS TO ROME.

315

to the same conclusion by another road, namely, that
the Church alone could give certain information as to
the prerogatives of her visible Head ; and that the Church
in communion with Rome was alone the Catholic Church.
This had become with me a matter of absolute certainty.
For years, therefore, I had been growing nearer and
ever nearer to conviction ; and the Papal Bull, by making
me realize that my daily ministrations were null and void,
forced me to admit a conclusion which I had held, without
realizing it, for a long time.

The Right Rev.
THOMAS W. WILKINSON, D.D.. B.A.,

Of Durham University.
LORD BISHOP OF HEXHAM AND NEWCASTLE.

Ushaw Collie, Durham, Nov. ii, 1900.

My dear Sir,

It is quite true that I once had the misfortune of
being a Protestant of the Established sect I was bom in
1825, educated at Harrow, took my degree in 1844, and
was received into the Church at twenty-one from St.
Saviour's, Leeds, in 1846, where I was supposed to be pre-
paring for the Protestant ministry. I was ordained priest
in 1848 from Oscott, where I studied under Dr. Wiseman,
the then President and coadjutor Vicar Apostolic of the
Midland district of England. Since then I have laboured
in the mission in my own native county of Durham until
1887, when I was chosen Vicar Capitular to rule the
diocese sede vacante, and in July, 1888, was consecrated
Bishop. I fear I should find it now, in my seventy-sixth
year, very difficult to give you the history of my conver-
sion. I simply owe everything to Newman, " The Tracts
for the Times," and generally the Puseyite movement.

316

ROADS TO ROME.

317

St. Saviour's was founded and built by Dr. Pusey. It was
opened in 1845. I was present at the opening, and
remained there with the clei^ till my reception in 1840.
Mr. Macmullen and Mr. Haigh, founder and builder of the
glorious church at Erding^on, were received with me. I
have nothing to say of my conversion. God be thanked
for it After fifty-two years of priesthood I can only say
that I hardly as yet realize the great mercy God has
extended to me, in bringing me out of the darkness of
Fuseyite Protestantism into the glorious light of the One
True Faith, and making me a loyal and loving subject of
my Lord the Pope.

I remain, your faithful servant in Christ,
(Signed) Thomas William,

Bishop of Hexham and Newcastle.

The Rev. D. WILLIAMS,

St. Pbtkr and St. Paul's, Newport, Salop.

I BELONGED to the Anglican Church until I was eighteen
years of age. At the age of seventeen I saw, in the house
of a Catholic acquaintance, several copies of Duffy's '' Penny
Lives of the Saints." I read one and borrowed the others.
I was very much astonished at the suflferings of the Saints
and Martyrs (Catholic) for the Faith. This was all new to
me, and made a deep impression on me, and I b^an to
ask questions of our minister, who was a very amiable man.
On Sunday he preached a tirade against Transubstantia-
tion, in which he said that all Catholics were idolaters. I
had never heard of Transubstantiation before. Some time
afterwards I ventured to put a question to a gentleman,
with whom I was acquainted, on this subject of Transub-
stantiation. I remember well his friendly smile at my
simplicity. He was not offended, he was not astonished,
he was not amused, but I thought he was a little pleased
when I repeated the question, and when he saw that I was
in earnest. He was silent for a few minutes, and then,
turning to his bookshelf, he took down Power's " Cate-
chism '' in two volumes, and said to me, " I think you will

318

ROADS TO ROME.

319

find what you require to know here." He lent me the
two volumes. After reading them slowly through, I turned
back to the "Holy Eucharist" This I read through re-
peatedly, until I almost knew it by heart in every detail.
My faith in and my admiration for the doctrine of the
Real Presence increased daily, and, at the age of eighteen
years, I had the great happiness of being received into the
bosom of Holy Church.

I have been a Catholic so long a time that I feel a little
shyness in answering the question, '* Are you a convert ? "
In compliance with the wish expressed, however, I may
say that the above statement is, as far as I can remember,
the way by which grace drew me into the bosom of Holy
Church, and, although I hope it is in no way detrimental
to say so, I feel grateful to the Protestant minister who
preached the tirade against Transubstantiation,

Beata aures quce venas divini susurri suscifiunt^ et de
mundi hujus susurrattonibus^ nihil advertunt}

1 ((

Imita* Christi," lib. iii. cap. i.

T. F. WILLIS, Esq., B.A.,

ExsTER College, Oxford ; formerly Curate at St. Gsoroe's
Mission, London Docks ; 53, Caithness Road, W.

Short Summary of Reasons for thinking that
THE Church of England cannot be the Body
OF Christ.

I. Does she herself corporately assert, as our Blessed Lord
did before Caiaphas, " I am " ?

Is it not clear (when we remember that the Church is
not a collection of documents but a society of living souls,
and that her true organ of utterance is her episcopate), that
so far from asserting herself to be the Christ, she follows
John the Baptist's example, who " confessed and denied
not, but confessed, I am not the Christ." If she, then,
corporately asserts that she is not the Body of Christ, how
can I honestly assert that she is ? In other words, if she
corporately disclaims these prerogatives, how can I teach
that she undoubtedly possesses them ?

II. Submission of judgment in matters of faith, which
is a primary necessity in, nay, a very test of, a true mes-
senger of God, seems impossible in the Anglican Com-
munion, because the Anglican Church does not claim

320

ROADS TO ROME. 321

infallibility. For to submit absolutely to, i.e. to credit with
infallibility, one who declares himself fallible is surely
unreasonable.

That this submission of judgment is a primary condition
of truthfulness in God's messenger, is evident from our
Blessed Lord's mysterious sayings even about Himself and
the Holy Spirit. "The words that I speak unto you
I speak not of Myself; " " He that speaketh of himself
seeketh his own glory ; " " He shall g^ide you into all
truth, for He shall not speak of Himself r If even within
the Godhead it is in some mysterious way the law of truth-
fulness that the Person sent does not speak of Himself but
acts merely as the organ of the Person sending, how much
more must it be an indispensable law of truthfulness in the
Church which is the visible Image of God ?

Therefore to be compelled to act upon one's own
private judgment in regard to the substance of the message
to be delivered, is fatal to one's own belief in one's Divine
commission. But if we really and truly submit our judg-
ment to the Anglican Bishops and echo their views, we
must deny the essence of the Catholic Faith.

III. The most Catholic party in the English Church
are now declaring distinctly that they ask for nothing more
than toleration alongside of those who teach the exact
contrary. Now, that is nothing less than a definite sur-
render of the proposition that " the Church of England is
the Body of Christ." Can they who are commissioned to
carry Divine truth to a world which is eternally opposed to
God, and are commanded to seal their witness, if need be,
with their blood— can they dare to ask for Divine truth to
be tolerated side by side with its contradictory ? Surely to

Y

322 ROADS TO ROME.

do so is to deny that it is Divine truth. And if it is not
Divine truth, it is not truth at all ; it is blasphemy.

Of course, the toleration of which we speak is not
physical or civil toleration. It has nothing to do with the
enforcement of outward conformity by temporal penalties.
But clearly, if we are obliged by the expressions of doc-
trine, to which we are pledged either directly or indirectly,
to hold that he who denies the Real Presence or the
efficacy of Absolution can be a worthy communicant or a
faithful minister, we are certainly prevented from holding
that these doctrines are part of the Faith ; we are pledged
to a toleration which is destructive of faith.

IV. The principles on which the separated position of
Anglicanism is defended by various adherents are all
contrary to Christian doctrine as found in Scripture.

Nationalism, which has been, all through, the theory of
the High Church Tories, is plainly anti-Christian, because
our Blessed Lord came to destroy all barriers of race, as
far as religion was concerned, and to set up one world-wide
heavenly kingdom. "There is neither Greek nor Jew,
Barbarian nor Scythian ; " " He hath redeemed us out of
every kindred and tongue and nation." The very idea of
a National religion as an excuse for schism, i.e. as superior
and not subordinate to the oneness of the Church, is a
return to the pre-Christian state of things.

Congregationalism, which is practically the Anglican
system, is the same thing, only narrower. It makes every
clergyman a pope to his people, and throws to the winds
the One Faith and One Body, even if it retain the One
Spirit and One Lord and One Baptism. Also it involves
'' heaping to ourselves teachers."

- a. ^ -

ROADS TO ROME. 323

Private Jtidgtnent in the individual as to the doctrines
of faith is narrower still, and makes every one the whole
Church to himself. It makes all faith impossible, except
faith in oneself. And every defence of the Anglican posi-
tion that can be given seems to rest ultimately upon one
of these three principles.

V. It seems impossible to reconcile the oath of the
Royal Supremacy, which all Anglican clergy take at their
ordination, with a true belief in the Divine nature of the
Church, especially when we look at it in the light of history
and of present events.

VI. The animus of the Established Church as ex-
emplified in the bishops seems so like the animus of the
religion of ancient heathen Rome, which was an established
form of worship in the interest of morality and good order,
but tolerating every form of religious beliefs except the
special doctrines of the Incarnation, which it regarded as
'* blasphemous fables and dangerous deceits."

VI L The wording of the Thirty-nine Articles bears
a most suspicious resemblance to the wording of heretical
formulae in all ages by its adoption of equivocal expres-
sions. Heretical formulae have always been designedly
inclusive^ Catholic formulae designedly exclusive — ^the object
of Catholic formulae being to secure inward peace from
doubt at whatever cost of outward ; and the object of
heretical formulae being to secure outward peace at what-
ever loss of spiritual peace and inward clearness of faith.

VIII. All through the Anglican system there is such a
resting upon civilization, and worldly position, and respec-
tability and public opinion, that it looks much more like a
religion designed to make this world comfortable, than the

324 ROADS TO ROMR

religion of Him Who was born in a stable, and Whose
kingdom is not of this world, and Whose maxim was, *' He
that loveth his life shall lose it"

IX. Anglicans are separated from the main body of
Christendom, and their connection with our own pre-
Reformation Church is very slight and indirect It does
not appear from Scripture that Apostolical Succession alone
constitutes a valid ministry. All the early schismatical
bodies had that The thing which is evident from Scrip-
ture is, that our Lord gave the Holy Ghost unalienably
to a Society, not to individuals, and that he who separates
from that Society loses the gift

X. The oneness of the Church in which we, in the
Nicene Creed, express our belief must be an outward one-
ness (though of course it is an inward oneness too), because
it is by this oneness that she bears witness to the initial
truth of revelation, that God is one. Her visible oneness is
the outward witness in creation to the invisible oneness of
God. She preaches by her existence much more than by
her words. It is by being the Image of God, the Body of
God, the outward visible form which God designs to wear
when He comes among His creatures, that the Church
reveals God to the intelligences of men and angels. And,
therefore, so far as the Church gives up her outward one-
ness she is untrue to the first object of her existence, viz.
revealing the oneness of God : she practically denies the
first article of the Creed, " I believe in One God."

Again, the grammatical position of the word " one " in
the third part of the Creed implies that it signifies an out-
ward oneness. " Catholic " and " Apostolic " both e^cpress
characteristics of outward organisation rather than of

ROADS TO ROME. 325

inward essence, therefore it is natural to infer that " one "
at least inclusively denotes a characteristic belonging to the
same category.

This outward oneness of the Church Anglicanism seems
by its position to deny.

XL It is quite clear that the Ritualists are the only
persons in the Church of England whose teaching and
practice can be reconciled with Scripture and the faith of
the primitive Church ; but their position seems to be in-
defensible by reason of their want of submission to their
bishops, which submission is the one most essential thing
in the organization of the Church.

It is true that their attitude towards the bishops is
remarkably parallel to our Blessed Lord's attitude towards
His ecclesiastical superiors when He was on earth ; but in
order to accept this as a justification of themselves, they
must assume that the cases are parallel, i.e. that they are
commissioned by Grod to found a new order of religion
foretold in the prophets. This was the assumption of the
Montanists, of Luther, of the Irvingites ; but how is it
consistent with Catholicity ?

BERTRAM C A. WINDLE, Esq.

M«A«9 M»D«| D«SC«| r*R«S«9 r*S«A*

Professor of Anatomy and Dran of the Faculty of Medicine,

University Colleoe, Birmingham.

{Reprinted from an article in the " Weekly Register " of
March 9, 1900, entitled " Books that have influenced ftu^)

The most important book to me was that which even-
tually brought me into the Catholic Church, now more
than seventeen years ago. I am not going to narrate the
incidents which led to that important step, interesting
though they are to me. I think, perhaps, the first book
which turned my mind in that direction was Cardinal
Newman's "Apologia," a work which has doubtless had
the same effect upon many other minds. I read this
merely because, after I had taken up my residence in
Birmingham, I used to hear the Cardinal much spoken of,
and wanted to know something about him and his views.
But it was not the "Apologia" which brought me into
the Church. Interested in the question, I read many
other books, but without arriving at a conclusion. And
here I will break off for a moment to express my wonder
that at this stage of my life I never came across that
remarkable book, "The End of Religious Controversy."

326

ROADS TO ROME. 327

Why it was never placed in my hands has been an
unceasing source of marvel to me from the day when I first
read it, some years after I had entered the Church, down
to the present moment Well may Dr. Salmon admit
that our case is there presented in the most ''taking" way.
"Convincing" I should rather phrase it, for the solid
learning, the irresistible logic, the grave earnestness of
that work seem, to me at least, to be unequalled by any
other book on the same subject. The solemn adjuration
on the closing pages must certainly give pause to any one
who thinks upon such subjects, and many are the men
and women who can, from the bottom of their hearts,
re-echo its closing words, " You will no sooner have sacri-
ficed your own wavering judgment, and have submitted to
follow the guide, whom your Heavenly Father has pro-
vided for you, than you will feel a deep conviction that you
are in the right and secure way ; and very soon you will
be enabled to join with the happy converts of ancient and
modem times in this hymn of praise : ' I give thee thanks,

God, my enlightener and deliverer; for Thou hast
opened the eyes of my soul to know Thee. Alas I too
late have I known Thee, O ancient and eternal Truth I
too late have I known Thee.* "

But the book which was largely instrumental in making
a Catholic of me was Littledale's *' Plain Reasons against
joining the Church of Rome," which some friend sent to me
when I was embarked upon this course of reading. And
certainly, after I had finished it, the step which I had pre-
viously regarded as at least possible, seemed now to be one
which could never be taken. Whilst in this frame of mind

1 was walking down a street, idly looking into the shop

328

ROADS TO ROME.

windows, when, in those of a Catholic Repository, I saw
a book which purported to deal with that of which I was
then thinking. I went in at once and bought it, and
I suppose I need hardly say that it was ''Catholic
Controversy," by the dear friend of my later days, Dr.
Ryder. I carefully studied both these books together,
and, baffled by their discrepancies, determined to select
some dozen or so of the most divergent passages, and
consult the original authorities with a view of seeing for
myself which of the two authors was speaking the truth.
A few hours spent in a good library stocked with the
Fathers, sufficed to answer the question, and to enable
me to make up my mind The die was cast, and I was
received into the Church. And now I should like to know
which of those two books made a Catholic of me ? For I
should probably never have read " Catholic Controversy "
if I had not first read Littledale. It is an interesting
question to me, and I cannot solve it.

H. G. WORTH, Esq., M.A.,

St. John's College, Oxford ; formerly Chaplain to St. Katharine's
Anglican Convent, Queen's Square, Bloomsbury.

COWARDICE OR CONVICTION : WHICH IS IT ?

(A Letter to an Anglican Friend,)

My dear Friend,

You say that it cannot be right to leave the
Anglican Establishment in order to join the Roman
Catholic Church. You say that by so doing one leaves
the Church of one's baptism, and acts in a most cowardly
way, inasmuch as duty is n^lected.

I will endeavour, in a brief manner, to answer these
and like objections which have been raised.

In the first place, we are baptized into the Catholic
Church ; therefore, so long as we remain Catholics, we
cannot be said to have left the Church of our baptism.
If the Roman Catholics and Anglicans are all members
of the Catholic Church, the latter do not desert the
Church by joining the communion of the former. If the
Anglicans are in heresy or schism, then any one of them
who submits to the Catholic Church, returns to the

329

330 ROADS TO ROME.

•

Church of his baptism. If the Anglican is the only
true Church, then, of course, any one leaving her is leaving
the Church of his baptism ; but I do not think that many
High Church people, at any rate, deny that the Roman
Catholic is at least a portion of the Catholic Church.
We cannot be baptized into a particular diocese or
province, but into the whole Church.

You say, in the second place, that it is cowardly to
run away from duty.

This is perfectly true, if we are sure that it is our
duty to remain. If we are sure that a cause is right,
then it is cowardly to desert it ; but what if we think,
on due consideration, that the said cause is wrong ?
Then it would be cowardice to stick to it, as we should
be either lacking in courage to own ourselves wrong, to
face the contempt and disapproval of others, or we should
be guilty of sheer obstinacy.

The plea that we are bound to remain where God
has placed us seems plausible, but it might be argued
against Church-people by Dissenters with equal force.

Suppose any Dissenting preacher felt a drawing
toward the Church of England, would any Anglican
consider that he would be justified in remaining where
he was because he happened to be placed there, and did
so much good, and he felt that if he deserted his followers,
they might fall away into utter irreligion and indifference ?
Would such an one be considered justified in remaining
because he might thus in time bring many with him into
the Church ?

To argue in this way is practically to say that God
cannot possibly dispense with a particular individual, and

ROADS TO ROME. 331

any one who says this of himself is open to the chaise of
conceit, in thinking that he is necessary to accomplish God's
work. If God calls us to leave any position, we should be
wrong in refusing to do so, however much good we might
feel we were doing.

All agree that evil must not be done for the sake of
good. If we feel that we are in a false position, we must
leave it, otherwise we are tempting God, and instead of
benefiting others, are probably encouraging them to blind
themselves. If we n^lect what seems like a clear call from
God, we may lose His grace. We may think we are con-
verting the souls of others, but are in great danger of losing
our own.

If any one leaves the Church of England, believing in
her claims, and joins the Catholic Church merely because
he prefers the latter, he is acting upon sentiment only, and
is guilty of self-indulgence. Anglicans as a rule believe
that converts have no higher motive than this, even in the
case of those whom before they have esteemed and held
in honour. However high-principled, logical, and honest
they may have been considered previously, no sooner do
they "go over to Rome," as it is called, than they are
credited with being weak-minded, sentimental, dishonest,
and self-interested.

But, surely, Anglicans who remain should in all fairness
allow that those who leave them are actuated by motives
as honest as their own.

Abuse is no argument, and is generally only resorted to
by those who are doubtful of their own position.

But it will be urged that Dissenters are in a different
position from Anglicans, inasmuch as the latter have valid

332 ROADS TO ROME.

Orders, whereas the former have not Even if this were
the case, we must remember that the possession of Orders
is not everything ; the Monophysites and Donatists had valid
Orders, but they were not considered as part of the Catholic
Church : the former on account of their heresy, the latter
because of their schism.

Before we proceed, we must consider what schism is.
It is the being cut off from the unity of the Church.

The popular Anglican idea of schism is that it consists
in being out of communion with any particular Bishop.
They say that Roman Catholics in England are in schism
because they are not in communion with the Anglican
Bishops, whereas Anglican chaplains in France are in
schism because they are not in communion with the
Catholic Bishops of that country.

We must not, however, forget that, according to the
teaching of the ancient Fathers, those who communicate with
schismatics are guilty of schism. If, therefore, the Roman
Catholic Church is schismatic in England, she is guilty of
schism everywhere. The Pope and all the foreign Bishops
who are in communion with him, recognize the Roman
Catholic Bishops of England, not the Anglican ; if, then,
the former are in schism, the Pope and all the Bishops
and people who submit to him are in schism also.

On the other hand, it is clear that, on Anglican
principles, the English Bishops in Canada are schismatic,
therefore the Anglican Bishops who are in communion
with them are in schism.

Now, the result of this must be either that the whole
of Western Christendom is in schism and the Greek Church
is the sole representation of the Catholic Church, or that

ROADS TO ROMK 333

there is no Catholic Church remaining anywhere ; or else
either the Roman Catholic Church or the Anglican Church
is schismatic.

If we accept the first two alternatives, we are forced
to own that the gates of hell have prevailed against the
Church, and that our Lord, when He said that this
should never come to pass, spoke falsely. As also when
He said that the Holy Ghost would guide the Church
into all truth.

It remains, then, for us to consider, that either the Roman
Catholic Church or the Anglican is schismatic, and that
everyw/tere. Which is it ?

St Cyprian tells us that those who are not with the
Bishop, are not in the church. (Ep. Florentio, Ixvi.)
These words are quoted by Anglicans, to prove that
they are not in schism because they are in communion
with their Bishops.

But when there are two rival Bishops, as in the case
of the Bishop of London and the Archbishop of West-
minster, how can we tell which is the lawful Bishop ?
One must be in schism.

St Cyprian would tell us that he is the lawful
Bishop who has not separated himself from his fellow-
Bishops.

"For a man could not hold the episcopate, even
after his episcopal ordination, if he should fall away
from the body of his fellow-Bishops and from the unity
of the Church." (Cyp. Ep. Antoniano, Iv.)

The Anglican Bishops are not in communion with
the Catholic Bishops throughout the world, therefore they
are in schism.

334 ROADS TO ROME.

St. Augustine, writing against the Donatlsts^ says:
" You are with us in baptism, in the creed, in the other
sacraments of the Lord, but in the spirit of unity, in the
bond of peace^ — in fine, in the Catholic Church itself, you
are not with us." (Ad Vincent Rogat, Ep. xdii.)

Some people seem to think that schism is an unimpor-
tant matter ; such should study St Augustine's writings
against the Donatists. He shows that they might have
sacraments and the true doctrine, but being cut off from
the Catholic Church by schism they could not have
salvation.

"Extra Ecclesiam Catholicam totum potest praeter
salutem, potest habere honorem, potest habere sacra-
mentum, potest cantare Alleluia, potest respondere Amen,
in nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus sancti fidem et
habere et praedicare, sed nusquam nisi in Ecclesia Catholica
salutem poterit invenire." (St Aug. Sermo ad Coes. EccL
plebem, vi.)

'* Outside the Catholic Church you can have everything
except salvation ; you can have honour, the sacrament,
you may sing Alleluia, and answer Amen ; you may hold
and preach the faith in the name of the Father, the Son,
and the Holy Ghost ; but nowhere except in the Catholic
Church can you find salvation."

If we consider this we see at once how absurd is the
commonly received idea among Anglicans that it is
wrong to attend Roman Catholic services in England,
but right when we are abroad, because if the Roman
Catholic Church is in schism in England, she is guilty of it
everywhere, and it would therefore be a sin to communicate
with her anywhere.

»,_ . - .

ROADS TO ROME. 335

Anglicans say that the Pope is not the centre of unity,
but that each Bishop is in his own diocese. But we may
well ask, How can the faith be preserved entire in each
diocese ? If Bishop differs from Bishop, who can remedy
this ? Metropolitans may do so in their province, but who
can unite the Metropolitans? On Anglican principles
each province could have a different religion.

We sometimes hear Anglicans quote the Gallicans,
and especially Bossuet, as if they were in their favour ;
but if these insisted on anything, it was on the necessity
of communion with the see of Rome as the see of Peter :
how, then, can those who consider such communion as not
necessary gain any countenance from them }

Others, again, say that they are willing to accord to the
Pope such supremacy as was accorded to St. Gregory the
Great, and they lay great stress on the fact that the latter
did not approve of the title "Universal Bishop." They seem,
however, to ignore the fact that St Gregory rebuked the
Patriarch of Constantinople for taking to himself this title,
but that of his own prerogatives he speaks in these words :
"I know not who is not subject to the Apostolic see"
(St Greg. EpisL lib. ix. Epist. lix.).

Again, we must remark that if the Roman Catholic
Church is not right in making the claims she does, she is
heretical, for, be it remembered, the supremacy of the Pope
is not considered merely a pious opinion, but an article
of faith. Any body of men which insists on the necessity
of believing what is wrong is an heretical body. If the
Pope is not what he claims to be, he is an arch heretic ; if
the claims of the Roman Catholic Church are not Divine,
they are diabolical.

336 ROADS TO ROME.

If these claims are Divine, why do not Anglicans
submit to them ? If they are not, why attempt to make
terms with such an imposture ?

The Holy Spirit is the soul of the Church ; He cannot
teach different doctrines in different places.

The Roman Catholic Church teaches the supremacy
of the Pope as a dogma. The Anglican says this is not
true. Both cannot possibly be right

Many people seem almost to disbelieve in the Visible
Church, though strangely enough they see the absurdity
of this when Dissenters claim to be part of the Church.
They take their stand on their Orders ; but Holy Scripture
would seem to speak even more of the necessity o{ juris-
diction than of Orders. What authority can any Anglican
quote for insisting on the latter and depreciating the
former ? A Dissenter is more consistent in ignoring both
than an Anglican in insisting only on one.

If the Church is visible, surely its unity must be visible.
The Church is a body ; it cannot, then, be cut up into pieces.
Can we imagine that our Lord would have founded a body
which should become a mangled corpse, or a kingdom which
should be divided against itself? Could the Holy Spirit
be said to abide in the Church always if it fell into such
utter confusion ?

But you will say, "Many of us believe all Catholic
doctrines, therefore we are Catholics ; " but, in spite of this,
you are in visible communion with heretical bishops and
priests : how can those be Catholic who communicate with
heresy ? Others say, " We must have patience and wait ; **
but what are they waiting for ? If they are in a state of
schism they have no right to remain in it. Communion

ROADS TO ROME. 337

with the Holy See is either necessary or not If it is
necessary, every one who understands this should enter
into communion at once, and not wait in a state of wilful
schism under the plea of bringing others out of it later ;
if such communion is not necessary, then the whole Roman
Catholic Church is wrong, and union is not to be desired.
If both are wrong in some things, then our Lord's promises
were vain, and the gates of hell have prevailed for cen-
turies.

You say that in many Churches you have all that you
need, all Catholic doctrines are preached and customs
observed ; but in how many Churches is this the case ?
Is this done with the approval of the authorities of the
Anglican Church ? If they do not forbid such, they do
not encourage, and if in one Church the Bishop allows
Catholic doctrines to be taught, he allows what you con-
sider heresy to be taught in probably the next parish.

Can a Church be considered Catholic which, by its
chief authorities, sends one man who teaches the Sacrifice
of the Mass, Priestly Absolution, the Real Presence, and
another who denies all these ?

How can an Anglican know what to believe when he
hears one doctrine in one pulpit, another .doctrine in
another, and sometimes even contradictory teaching in the
same ?

How can any one fancy that he is a Catholic when, if
he believes aright himself, he is in communion with those
who teach the most flagrant heresy, and all the Fathers
taught that to be in communion with heresy was to incur
the guilt of heresy ?

This is what Newman, Faber, and others felt. You say

z

338

ROADS TO ROME.

perhaps that, had they remained, things would have improved.
It is far more likely that nothing of the kind would have
happened because, had they remained, they would have been
untrue to their convictions, and consequently in bad faith.
God doubtless does bless the work done by many Anglican
clei^, because they believe in their position ; could we
expect Him to do so in the case of any who should refuse
the light, or who, by refusing to face the question, make
for themselves a false conscience, and who^ though doubtful
themselves, should yet try to dispel the doubts of others ?
If you consider what I have said, you will, I think,
allow that logic is on my side; and even those who do
not see their way to enter the Catholic Church will admit,
that those who do so may be led by conviction rather than
cowardice.

D. S. Y.

It is difficult for one untrained in the art of committing
self-analysis to paper to give an accurate account of the
steps which led one from a home of deep Protestant piety
to the Catholic Church.

I must begin by enrolling myself among the many who
owe the grace of conversion, under God, to the example
and writings of the late Cardinal Newman.

I can never remember having much difficulty in accept-
ing any Catholic doctrine so soon as I found it could be
held (as I thought) in the Church of England ; in fact, on
understanding each and all, it was natural to me to accept
them.

Hence, when at Oxford I began seriously to think,
whenever a side was to be taken in a matter in dispute,
e.g. the doctrine of the Blessed Sacrament, I always took
the view held by Rome ; for here, at any rate, was an
intelligible doctrine held on intelligible authority.

At the time of my ordination to a title, the appeal
concerning Anglican Orders was being discussed, and I
had hopes that ours would be recognized as valid. When
the Bull actually appeared, hard work in an East London

339

340

ROADS TO ROME

parish, and the absorbing needs of tl
directed my mind from its importance.

But a change of life gave me raor
and reflection, and I gradually discovei
ments advanced against the claims of thi
with equal reason, be advanced against
held already, and even against Christiai

For instance, there is quite as much
ture and in the Fathers for the Vaticai
Chair of Peter as there is for the Div
Spirit, Grace, and Original Sin.

Again, the wars of Latitudinarif
Evangelical thought, which had passed
of England since the Reformation, wh
paralleled in her earlier history and in tl
Christendom, made me wonder whether v
Party" were not also upon the crest
before long might be succeeded by ai
tionate m;^itude.

The study of the history of the Refc
these ideas, and about the same time I
tolic Succession was in itself no guarai
which brought me up to a most impor
namely, that the validity of Anglican C
centra] question. Nestorianism, Jansen
Catholic Movements concreted this abst

Before arriving at this I had often b(
were a temptation, but now I saw that e
ligation allowable, but it was a duty.

The absence of the Teaching Voice
High Anglican theory by an appeal to

_^_._._ .•. _ . ,

ROADS TO ROME, 341

in diffusa ; whatever is taught by East and West together
is Catholic : " I disbelieve in the Papal claims for the same
reason as I believe in Purgatory, Invocation of Saints,
and Prayers for the Dead." But this canon broke down
over our Orders ; the East has done nothing to ratify
them ; the Western Patriarch had condemned them ; even
the Jansenists had refused to have anything to do with
them.

This enabled me to get over the greatest difSculty of
all: the denial of what had been the centre of one's
spiritual life — the Mass and the Confessional It appeared
to me in this light: For the sake of your people whom
you love it would be better to undergo the risk of reordina-
tion, than to try and bring them to sacraments which are
unrecognized by your own standard of authority (viz. East
and West), and therefore extremely doubtful.

And yet other men held out — one's dearest friends,
and those to whom one had looked up for counsel. Some
of those who had submitted were not near to them in
sanctity ; it must therefore be fancy, scruples, etc, etc So
I returned to hard work ; but not for long, for Newman's
words, which he put over his sermon ** Ventures for Christ,"
were always with

'* Est alius locus, quo te transferam,
Noli timere ne perdas :
Dator ego eram, custos ^o ero." ^

So I made the venture, and found them true.

* *' I have another place to which. I would lead thee ;
Fear not any loss that thU step may entail :
I gave thee all thoo hast, and I will keep it for thee."

The Rev. BENEDICT ZIMMERMANN,

Priest op thb Order op Our Lady of Mount Caricbl, and Sub-
Prior AT 47, Church Street, Kensington.

Briefly, I may say that I received an education which
was excellent in every respect, my father being a clergy-
man of the Swiss Church, and a dean. The Swiss Church,
though officially committed to the doctrines of Zwingli and
Calvin, was almost entirely in the hands of the Rational-
ists, and my father was the only clergyman of note in the
largest town of his country who upheld the belief in
the Blessed Trinity, the Divinity and Incarnation of Our
Lord, and the Inspiration of Holy Scripture. He fought
all his life for these fundamental dogmas, and suffered
severe persecution in their defence. It stands to reason
that his children could not remain ignorant of the dis-
cussion going on within the Church, and which for many
years formed the almost exclusive topic of conversation.
But a Church divided on points of such importance could
hardly be expected to command our love or respect.
Represented by a man of my father's piety and dignity,
it was worthy of sympathy; but, then, he was but one
against many of quite a different calibre.

342

ROADS TO ROME. 343

In addition to the dogmatic indifference of the Church,
its utter want of resource made a deep impression upon
me. At an age when one requires help and encourage-
ment, I found nothing of the sort At school I sometimes
got into trouble, but there was no one to whom I could
have addressed myself for advice. My father often said
to me afterwards, "Why did you not come to me, than
whom you have no better friend upon earth ? " But one
feels sometimes shy in the presence of one's nearest and
dearest friends. Moreover, I knew that he would have
referred me to the Bible. Now, I felt already at that
time, that we do not want the Church to tell us what is
right and what is wrong, because our conscience tells us
that clearly enough, but that we want her to stretch out
her hand when we are wrong, and to help us up again.
And in this the Swiss Church failed.

About this time, I began to take an interest in Catholic
matters, such as the Lituigy, Monastic Orders, and, finally,
Dogma. What struck me most was the promise made
by our Lord to St Peter, " Thou art Peter," etc., which
puts the difference between the Catholic Church and the
Protestant into the clearest possible light Again, the
Culturkampf, then raging in Germany and Switzerland,
proved to me the justice of the Catholic cause and the
palpable injustice of the Governments. Notwithstanding
all this, I was not aware whither I was drifting (though I
believe my parents were less shortsighted), until one day
an intimate friend wrote to me: "You cannot imagine
how glad I am to see that you have found that salvation
is only to be obtained in the Catholic Church." This was
a revelation to me, and came home like a shock ; but it

344

ROADS TO ROME.

also taught me not to beat about the bush» but to pursue
my aim steadily and systematically. Unable to bear the
strain any longer, I was received, at the age of eighteen,
unknown to my parents. This was a mistake, for not
only did the fact become public property within a few
weeks and give rise to recriminations in the daily papers,
and, in short, cause no end of trouble, btit it also put me
iiito a false position which my extreme shjmess prevented
me from setting right

Having spent some years in France, and afterwards
filled a not unimportant office in my native country, I at
last came to England, where I entered the Order to which
I now have the honour of belonging.

A temporary estrangement between my family and
myself, caused by my conversion and by my subsequent
entrance into a Religious Order, disappeared entirely after
a while, when it came to be better understood that such
steps could not have been taken for any motive but the
highest of all— the clear promptings of conscience.

THE END.

WniKTED BY WILLIAM CLOWB AND SOUS, LIMITBE»^ LONDON AND

o