THE FRIENDS. The Friends have gone on in their quiet way filling the world with their beautiful philanthropies. At the end of the seventeenth century it is estimated that there were between eighty thousand and one hundred thousand Friends in England, and this in spite of large emigration stimulated in part by the atrocious penal code which in 1660 had put four thousand five hundred Friends in prison. About five hundred Friends per year emigrated between 1676 and 1700. About 1725 a decline took place in the sect, which lasted until 1860, due perhaps to the following causes: (1) The absorption of the religious energies of the nation by the Methodist revival. (2) The proclamation-even if in modified form-of some of the best of the Quaker doctrines by Wesley. The possible salvation of all men, the Light which lighteth every man, the witness of the Spirit, the present teaching and guiding Christ given to all who ask, the throwing into the background sacrament and rite, and the emphasis on life and truth and goodness, on substance instead of form, on spirit instead of letter-these and other Quaker teachings were reaffirmed by Wesley in proper perspective and with guards to save them from fanaticism. Of course this adoption by Wesley of the best things in Quakerism was not conscious imitation, but unconscious reproduction by obedience to the Scriptures and experience.' Even some of the practical results of Methodism were reminders of Quakerism. The plainness of dress on which Wesley insisted after St. Paul (1 Tim. ii, 9) was a Quaker requirement, and although Methodism has certainly not emphasized the need of quietness and meditation in religious service, and therefore has missed a certain richness and depth of soul development of which some Friends have given illustrious examples, yet by its freeing social worship from mechanical formalities and restrictions, and throwing it open to all who are moved by the Spirit to take part-women as well as men-it has proven its kinship to rights. In regard to the date of their first immersion Dr. Norman Fox, one of their most eminent scholars, anticipated Whitsitt in calling attention to its comparative lateness (in articles in The Religious Herald, Richmond, Va., in 1875), though he says that it is not absolutely certain that 1641 is the date of the first immersion in England, which may anticipate that date by a year or two. In his sermon on the Wisdom of God's Counsels (serm. 68, in Works, vi, 328) Wesley gives a harsh judgment of George Fox, and most unjust. "A wonderful saint," he says of Augustine, "as full of pride, passion, bitterness, censoriousness, and as foul-mouthed to all that contradicted him, as George Fox himself." Fox was one of the humblest of men, though with the dignity and loftiness of spirit which conscious sonship with God imparts to the soul. 8 the Friends in their noble dictum, Let us worship God in the Spirit. (3) All modern religious thought has emphasized the intuitional and spiritual, as all modern social progress has reinforced the altruistic enthusiasm of the Friends, so that many have found in their own folds what the higher spirits of the seventeenth century could only find in the Society of Fox. The narrowness and rigid discipline of the Society worked to its detriment. When the great statesman, as he afterwards became, William Edward Forster, married the oldest daughter of Dr. Arnold, of Rugby, in 1850, he was forthwith expelled from the Society, in which his father had been an honored minister. So every man and woman who married out of the connection met a like fate. What has been called the "peevish stepmotherly severity of the Quaker discipline" has had much to do with the Society's decline. "The effect of this minute scrupulosity-this excessive tithing of mint, anise, and cummin of social life-on men of broad sympathies and masculine culture was irksome in the extreme." "Instead of marveling at the decadence of Quakerism, one might be justified in wondering that it had any germs of vitality left."1 LATER QUA Since 1860 there has been a slow but steady growth of the Friends in England. As they have never been propagandists or proselyters, and have never even been revivalists, as Fox and his associates were in a real sense, this growth is all the KERISM. more significant. To what is it due? And here we are brought face to face with an issue which has caused great searching of heart among the more serious and devoted of the Friends, that is, those attached to the old ideals. Quakerism has to a greater or less degree left its old foundations both as to doctrine and usage, has adopted the methods of other churches, and this secularization of the Society, if we might so call it, has undoubtedly contributed to its popularity, though there is a grave question whether a growth at this cost will not in the long run be a loss to the world. 1 The Revival of Quakerism, in Edinburgh Rev., July, 1891, p. 207. CHAPTER VII. LATER DEVELOPMENTS OF ROMAN CATHOLICISM. DISABILITIES As late as 1778 it was felony in a foreigner and treason in a native to administer the rites of the Roman Catholic Church in England. Not allowed schools at home, if Catholics sent their sons abroad to be educated they were declared incapable to succeed to property, and their estates were forfeited to the next Protestant heir. No Catholic could hold his property against any near Protestant kinsman, and no Catholic could be a lawyer or guardian. These were the laws for both England and Ireland, and with all the liberalism of the eighteenth century they were not touched. Lecky believes-and there is truth in his idea that the evangelical revival postponed the OF ROMAN granting of justice to the Catholics. The intense religious feeling which characterized that movement naturally made its promoters jealous of the advance of those who were regarded as the enemies of religion. In 1778, Sir George Savile introduced a bill which later became a law and exempted Catholics from the harshest disabilities on their taking the oath of allegiance, abjuration of the Pretender, a disavowal of such doctrines as the lawfulness of putting heretics to death, no faith to be kept with heretics, and that princes excommunicated may be deposed or killed, and a denial of the temporal jurisdiction of the pope in England. CATHOLICS. SLOW MEAS- The Act of Savile aroused the Protestant fanatics, who formed the Protestant Association and elected Lord George Gordon as its president. He headed a vast crowd, swelled by roughs and rabble until it amounted to fifty thousand persons, who marched to the House of Commons to present a petition for the repeal of the Act of 1780. The House, of course, would not receive the petition presented under an aspect of force. The mob then turned, and for five days London was in its power. They burnt Catholic chapels and dwelling houses, Lord Chief Justice Mansfield's house and Newgate prison, and opened other prisons. At length the king called out the troops, who quelled the riot, after killing 210, wounding 248, and arresting 135, of whom 21 were afterward executed. In 1791, further relief was granted to the Catholics, and then the matter rested until early in the nineteenth century when one bill after another was introduced and defeated. Finally Catholic remonstrances became so effective, especially as helped by the eloquence of O'Connell, that the Duke of Wellington, though at first opposed to granting the Catholic claims, came to feel that the welfare, if not the safety, of the empire required the concession, and introduced and passed in 1829 the famous Catholic Emancipation Bill, which first admitted Catholics to Parliament and gave other privileges. JOHN HENRY The Oxford movement carried many into the Roman Catholic Church-among them John Henry Newman, whose writings have done more to attract Protestants toward Rome than NEWMAN. all other literature. He was made president of the new short-lived Catholic University in Dublin, where he delivered his masterly lectures on the Idea of a University (1853), perhaps his finest book. In 1864 Kingsley accused Catholics, including Newman, of indifference to the virtue of truthfulness, and this caused the latter to write the greatest and most important revelation of religious self-history in the language-the Apologia pro Sua Vita. Newman belonged to the liberal wing of strict Catholics, and once characterized the Jesuits as that "insolent faction," and was therefore bitterly opposed by Manning and Ward. After Leo XIII came to the papal throne he gave Newman the cardinal's hat, 1879, in keeping with his policy to conciliate the moderates in all countries and recommend the Church to the best thought of the age. 1 The Anglo-Catholic movement stimulated the Roman authorities to do their best for what they called the reconversion of England. "Money was lavishly devoted to the work; handsome churches were built, with beautiful choral services; priests and Sisters of Mercy were established in London and many other towns; institutions, educational and charitable, were founded to present religion in its beneficent aspect; social influences were brought to bear upon individuals; in short, all that statesmanship, skill, tact, zeal, and devotion could do was brought into play." This culminated in the "Papal Aggression," as the ProtesAGGRESSION. tants called the reestablishment of the Catholic hierarchy. In 1850 the pope parceled England out into dioceses, made Nicholas Wiseman cardinal and archbishop of Westminster, and Ullathorne bishop of Birmingham. All England was in a state of excitement; a veritable panic seized the public. Addresses poured in from every quarter of the country praying the queen 'E. L. Cutts, Book of the Church of England, Lond., 1897, p. 98. THE PAPAL and government to stop the papal aggression. But nothing came of it except the Ecclesiastical Titles Act of 1851 forbidding the assumption of territorial titles by Roman prelates, an act that was a dead letter as soon as passed, though it remained on the statute books until 1871. THE DOGMA FALLIBILITY. The adoption of the dogma of papal infallibility in 1870 made a profound impression in England. Manning, who succeeded Wiseman as archbishop in 1865, advocated the measure with intense zeal, and his able persevering support had oF PAPAL INno small part in carrying it through the council. English and Irish Catholic theologians had repeatedly declared that it was no Catholic doctrine and had used that fact to the authorities to gain toleration. And now its solemn definition as an ancient and permanent part of the Church's faith seemed to give the lie to the old disclaimers. Others thought of its bearing on civil allegiance, and wondered what would be the attitude of a good Catholic in the event of the pope announcing a decision which would precipitate a conflict between the duty to his country and his duty to the pope. Gladstone powerfully presented this dilemma in his pamphlet, The Vatican Decrees in their bearing on Civil Allegiance, November, 1874, and followed it by two others, Vaticanism, an Answer, February, 1875, and Speeches of Pope Pius IX. The new dogma has not had as much practical influence, however, as the Vatican principle that the pope has direct ordinary and extraordinary power in every diocese and parish in Christendom, thus destroying the ancient Catholic idea of Church government through the episcopate. The latest sensation in the development of this Church fruitful in surprises was the publication of the life of Cardinal Manning by Edmund S. Purcell in 1896. Its revelation of the wire-pulling and counter ambitions at work at Rome came as a shock, and Manning's fierce opposition to any advancement for LIFE OF MANNewman was not a pleasant commentary on the NING. apostolic injunction, "in honor preferring one another." But through it all, Manning was undoubtedly conscientious and sincere, believing with all his heart that Newman's promotion would be fraught with danger to Catholicism in England. In his later days Manning threw himself into social reform movements, and his great work for the poor, for temperance and for labor in the Dock Strike of 1889, reveals the greatest ecclesiastic in English Catholicism since the suppression of the hierarchy by Elizabeth. The last was published in the Quarterly Review, Jan., 1875. |