science of the Divina Commedia are obscure when we translate them, but in their original diction are as clear as crystal. The reputation of Dante has passed through many vicissitudes. Read and commented upon in Italian Universities in the generation immediately succeeding his death his name became obscured as the sun of the renascence rose higher towards its meridian. In the seventeenth century he was less read than Petrarch, Tasso, or Ariosto; in the eighteenth century he was almost universally neglected. Nothing is more strange than the indifference of Goethe for Dante, as shown in the writings and conversations of his later years. His fame is now fully vindicated. Translations and commentaries teem from the presses of Europe and America. Societies are formed to investigate the difficulties of his works. He occupies in the lecture-rooms of regenerated Italy a place by the side of those masters whose humble disciple he avowed himself to be.

The Divine Comedy is, indeed, as true an epic as the Eneid, and Dante is as real a classic as Vergil. His metre is as pliable and flexible to every mood of emotion, his distress is as plaintive and as sonorous. Like Vergil, he could immortalize by a single epithet a person or place or a phase of nature. Dante is indeed a better observer and a more faithful describer of nature than Vergil, whether he is painting the falling of snow in the high Alps, or the homeward flight of birds, or the swelling of an angry torrent. But under the gorgeous pageantry of poetic description there lies an unity of conception, a power of philosophic grasp, an earnestness of religion, which are entirely unknown to the Roman poet. Dante is too essentially a Christian to be fitly compared with a pagan poet. More striking is the similarity between Dante and our own Milton. Yet it lies rather in the kindred nature of their subjects and in the parallel development of their minds, than in any mere external resemblance. In both the man was greater than the poet; the soul of each was "like a star and dwelt apart." Both were academically trained in the deepest studies of their age. The labours which made Dante lean made Milton blind. The "Doricke sweetnesse" of the English poet is not absent from the tender pages of the Vita Nuova. Better, perhaps, it would have been for Milton if, like Dante, he had known in youth an absorbing passion. The middle life of each was spent in active controversy; each lent his services to the State; each felt the quarrels of his age to be "the business of posterity," and left his warnings to ring in the ears of a later time. The lives of both were failures. "On evil days though fallen, and evil tongues," they gathered the concentrated experiences of their lives into one immortal work-the quintessence of their hopes, their knowledge, and their sufferings.

But Dante is something more than this. Milton's voice has grown faint to us; we have passed into other modes of experience and of thought. If we had to select two names in literature of men who are still exercising their full influence on mankind, and whose teaching is thus developing

new sides to coming generations, we should choose the names of Dante and Goethe. Goethe preached a new gospel to the world, the pagan virtue of self-culture, a sympathy with every form of human feeling, which declines to judge and which often passes into indifference. There is no department of modern literature or thought which does not bear upon it the traces of the sage of Weimar. But if we rebel against this teaching and yearn once more for the ardour of belief, the fervour of self-sacrifice, the scorn of scorn and the hate of hate which is the meed of the coward and the traitor, where shall we find them but in the pages of the Florentine? The religion of the future, if it be founded on faith, will demand that faith be reconciled with all that the mind can apprehend of knowledge, or the heart experience of emotion. The saints of these days will be trained, not so much on the ascetic counsels of the Imitation of Christ, or on thoughts which, like those of Pascal, base man's greatness in the consciousness of his fall, as in the verse of the poet, theologian, and philosopher, who is placed by Raphael with equal right among the conclave of the doctors and on the slope of Parnassus, in whom the ardour of study is one with the love of Beatrice-while both were made subservient to that burning zeal which lifts the soul from the abyss of Hell, up the terraces of Purgatory, to the spheres of Paradise, till it gazes on the ineffable revelation of the existence of God Himself, which can only be apprehended by the eye of faith.

VOL. I.-pt. 2.

LL

498

OLD CATHOLICISM.

BY THE REV. R. S. OLDHAM, M.A.,

Rector of Little Chart, Kent.

I WISH to say a few words by way of Preface.

It seems to me that, from the Christian standpoint, which is of course emphatically my own, there is a special value in such a conspectus of the religious systems of the world as your Committee have sought to put before us. For, starting from the conviction that Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is "the True Light which lighteth every man that cometh into the world" (St. John i. 9), we can thus see more readily how that Light has shone upon various peoples and various individuals in all ages. As we read of the 276 persons who were on board the ship which was conveying St. Paul to Rome, but was wrecked off the island of Malta, that while some swam ashore, "the rest, some on boards, and some on broken pieces of the ship," " escaped all safe to land," so we may recognise as made available for the moral salvation of the most diverse persons in every part of the world, fragments of the Divine Truth which is centered in Christ. St. Paul himself would certainly have done so. He knew intimately the heathendom of his day, and he told the heathen of Athens that he came to make known to them the will of God whom they already ignorantly worshipped. We have only to bear in mind that Christ is not the less the Redeemer of all mankind, because the larger portion of them have no present knowledge of Him. If they live up to such Light as has been granted to them, His redemption will avail for their salvation. And they may come to know this clearly enough when they pass into another world.

Then, further, it is assuredly a wise provision you have made, in arranging that all Lectures designed to explain or illustrate religious systems, past and present, should be delivered by those who write from a sympathetic point of view. It is only common fairness, that any system should address itself to us through the voice of a friend. Criticism may come later, and be useful enough then. But what is to be criticized should be the presentment of one who has himself felt the attraction of the system, whatever it may be. If there be Truth in it, it is well that that Truth should be arrayed in its fairest dress; and, if there be error, there will be the more merit in refuting it when presented at its best.

Coming now to the subject of my own Lecture here this afternoon, it might perhaps be thought by some persons a matter for surprise that it should have been included in your programme. For Old Catholicism is not a philosophy, appealing to the intellect, or fascinating the imagination.

and in either case all the more seductive because-as happens with philosophies-making but small demands upon the outward life and conduct. Nor is it anything novel. It is not attractive as solving moral or spiritual problems in new and startling ways. Its very name warns us off from any expectations of that kind. And, once more, there is nothing dazzling about it. It has not taken the world by storm, or swept large multitudes along with it. The Old Catholics number at present only about 120,000 or 130,000.

And yet I am persuaded that your Committee exercised a wise discretion—or, it may be, were guided by a sound instinct-in regarding Old Catholicism as deserving their attention. For on the future Church life of Europe it can hardly fail to have an important influence. Unless the universal belief that we are at present passing through a period of transition be an erroneous one, there will be much resettled by-and-by in European ecclesiastical affairs. And in any such resettlement the principles for which the Old Catholics are contending will certainly make themselves heard.

In the year 1870, a thrill of indignation went through the Continent of Europe at the result of the Vatican Council, held under the presidency of Pope Pius IX. It was felt most strongly in Roman Catholic countries, where the pressure of the new dogma of the personal infallibility of the Pope would naturally be greatest. And as the terms in which the dogma was promulgated are by no means commonly known in England, it is perhaps well that I should quote them.

"If, therefore, any one says that the Roman Pontiff possesses only the office of Inspection or Direction, but not the full and highest power of Jurisdiction over the Universal Church, not only in things pertaining to faith and morals, but also in those pertaining to the discipline and government of the Church spread over the whole world; or that he has only the more important share, but not the fulness of this highest power; or that such his power is not an ordinary and immediate one, as well over all and several Churches as over all and several pastors and faithful, let him be anathema."

And again: "We therefore, faithfully adhering to the tradition of the Christian Faith from the beginning, with the approval of the Council, to the glory of God our Saviour, and in the interests of the Catholic religion and the welfare of Christian peoples, teach and define as a dogma Divinely revealed, that when the Roman Pontiff speaks ex cathedra, i.e., when in the exercise of his office as the Pastor and Doctor of all Christians, through his supreme apostolic authority, he defines the teaching which is to be received by the Universal Church regarding faith or morals, then, by virtue of the Divine assistance promised to him in St. Peter, he is invested with the infallibility with which it was the will of the Divine Redeemer that His Church should be endowed, in the definition of doctrine touching faith and morals; and that therefore such definitions

of the Roman Pontiff are unalterable in themselves, and not by consent of the Church." (Chapters iii. and iv.)

Thoughtful men saw at once to what serious consequences this por tentous dogma must lead. In large numbers of towns-more especially in Germany and Austria-public meetings were held. Resolutions and protests against it were passed. Even Governments were roused. It seemed likely for a time that national Catholic churches, independent of Rome-like that of England in the 16th century-would be established.

All this, however, passed away, for which there were two causes. First, the great Franco-German War broke out in that very year, 1870, and pre-occupied the Governments that were most concerned; and, second, ¦ the Catholic bishops of Germany and Austria, all the more distinguished of whom had strongly opposed the new dogma, both before and during the Council, not only, without exception, submitted to it themselves, but enforced it with the greatest severity on others.

It seemed therefore as though the triumph of the Jesuit party, which had brought about the promulgation of the dogma, were complete.

But there was a not inconsiderable body of priests and laymen who could not reconcile it to their conscience to accept as a Divinely-revealed truth what they had satisfied themselves was radically false. It happened that the Catholic theological faculty in Germany at the time included an unusual number of Professors distinguished alike for their learning and their piety. Döllinger, Reusch, Reinkens, Michelis, Knoodt, Friedrich, were great names; and the first of them was a man so renowned as an ecclesiastical historian, so lofty in his aims, and so courageous in character, that he seemed marked out at once as a leader, in whatever course they might adopt. After much consultation, all these and many othersnotably the layman, von Schulte, the eminent Professor of Law at Bonnresolved at all costs to refuse assent to the dogma. In a document that has now itself become historical, Döllinger declared: "As a Christian, as a theologian, as an historian, as a citizen, I cannot accept this teaching. As a Christian; for it is irreconcilable with the spirit of the Gospel, and with the clearest utterances of Christ and the Apostles; it seeks to establish the very kingdom of this world which Christ refused, and to set up the rule over the faithful which Peter forbade for himself and all others. As a theologian; for the entire genuine tradition of the Church is absolutely opposed to it. As an historian; for, as such, I know that the persistent endeavour to realize this theory of a universal dominion has cost Europe streams of blood, has disturbed and lowered whole nations, has overthrown the best organizations of the early Church, and has produced, and nourished, and maintained in the Church the most grievous abuses. Lastly, as a citizen; I must reject it, because with its demand for the submission of States and monarchs, and the whole political order to the papal power, and by the false position which it claims for the clergy, it lays the foundation of endless ruinous strifes between State and Church,