ning a single Protestant more favourably towards Rome, he left no
stone unturned to secure this all-important end. Hence it came that he
was constantly, and not wholly without reason, depicted as a man whom in
religious matters it was impossible to trust; with whom the end
justified the means; and whose every act and word, where the interests
of his Church were involved, must be watched with the most jealous
suspicion.
All this was grossly overstated. Whatever else Cardinal Manning was, he
was an English gentleman of the old school, with a nice sense of honour
and propriety. But still, under a mass of calumny and exaggeration,
there lay this substratum of truth--that he who wills the end wills the
means; and that where the interests of a sacred cause are at stake, an
enthusiastic adherent will sometimes use methods to which, in
enterprises of less pith and moment, recourse could not properly be had.
Manning had what has been called "the ambition of distinctiveness." He
felt that he had a special mission which no other man could so
adequately fulfil, and this was to establish and popularize in England
his own robust faith in the cause of the Papacy as identical with the
cause of God. There never lived a stronger Papalist. He was more
Ultramontane than the Ultramontanes. Everything Roman was to him divine.
Italian architecture, Italian vestments, the Italian mode of pronouncing
ecclesiastical Latin were dear to him, because they visibly and audibly
implied the all-pervading presence and power of Rome. Rightly or
wrongly, he conceived that English Romanism, as it was when he joined
the Roman Church, was practically Gallicanism; that it minimized the
Papal supremacy, was disloyal to the Temporal Power, and was prone to
accommodate itself to its Protestant and secular environment. Against
this time-serving spirit he set his face like a flint. He believed that
he had been divinely appointed to Papalize England. The cause of the
Pope was the cause of God; Manning was the person who could best serve
the Pope's cause, and therefore all forces which opposed him were in
effect opposing the Divine Will. This seems to have been his simple and
sufficient creed, and certainly it had the merit of supplying a clear
rule of action. It made itself felt in his hostility to the Religious
Orders, and especially the Society of Jesus. Religious Orders are
extra-episcopal. The Jesuits are scarcely subject to the Pope himself.
Certainly neith
|