subjects, as the priest was about to leave, Overberg reverted to the same topic mentioned above; he once more thanked him, and could not find words adequately to express his joy. In the last years of his life, when other temptations had well-nigh ceased to trouble him, Overberg must have suffered greatly by the temptation to dejection, and have stood many a hard struggle on account of it. (To be continued.) VENERABLE PAUL OF THE CROSS ON THE (To the Editor of the Catholic Magazine.) SIR, I have lately met with a life of the Venerable Paul of the Cross, founder of the order of the Passionists, a community of which has been established in the central district in the present year. I have before written to you upon the zeal of the fathers of this institute for the conversion of England, and I believe their establishment in this country is an event very interesting to all who are sighing for its return to the faith. I think the following extract from his life, which was written in 1785, ten years after his death, will be read by them with pleasure. On the subject of the ardent love and zeal which this venerable servant of God had for the Catholic faith, it is said," There is no telling how many tears he shed, how many burning sighs he sent forth to Heaven, how much he prayed to God, for the conversion of heretics, and particularly for the return of England to the holy Catholic Church. Many a time was he heard to say, that England was near his heart. Oh! England, England!' would he repeat at other times with the most moving affection. On other occasions, he used to say, 'Let us pray for England: I cannot help doing it; I could not, though I should endeavour to do so; for as soon as ever I take to prayer, this unhappy kingdom comes before me, and it is now more than fifty years since I began praying for the conversion of England: I do the same again every morning in the holy sacrifice of the mass. What God has it in view to do with that kingdom, I know not: perhaps he will have pity on it, and will lead it one day by his mercy to the true faith: well, let us at least pray for this blessing and leave the event to God.'—Another time, while thinking on the loss of that kingdom, once so fruitful a nursery of saints, he was found, as it were, rapt out of himself; for happening to be recovering from a sickness, the infirmarian, on entering his room to take him some refreshment, found him out of himself as though in an ecstacy; and after he had shaken him at least three times, the venerable servant of God, returning to himself, said with deep heartfelt emotion: "Oh! where was I just now? I was in spirit in England, contemplating her great martyrs of other times, and praying God for that kingdom.' Such were the desires and hopes of this holy man for England, at a period during which as little outward signs as can be well conceived existed of their being likely to be realised. What would his feelings have been had he lived in these times ? Certainly he would, if possible, have redoubled his prayers. And ought not we to do so, who have, from day to day, such bright encouragement. St. Mary's College, April 15th, 1842. I am, sir, Your faithful servant in Christ, REVIEW. NEW BISHOPRIC OF JERUSALEM. Protestantism and Churches in the East. A Tract for the Times, with a Postscript, published under the Superintendence of the Catholic Institute of Great Britain: 1842. WHEN the future Church historian shall give an account of the religious crotchets of this our age, the appointment of a Protestant bishop of Jerusalem will certainly not be overlooked. A bishop without a see or a flock is certainly an anomaly; yet such is Dr. Michael Solomon Alexander, who, in virtue of an act of the Imperial Parliament (5 Vic. 6, c. 6) was consecrated on Sunday, November 7th, 1841, by the Most Rev. Dr. William Howley, Archbishop (by law) of Canterbury, a Bishop of the Protestant united Church of England and Ireland in Jerusalem! It appears from a statement "published by authority," that this ridiculous affair originated with "his majesty the king of Prussia, who made it the subject of a special mission to the queen of England, and of a particular communication to the Archbishop of Canterbury." His Lutheran majesty regarded the Church of England as by origin and doctrine most intimately akin to the German Evangelical Church,' and it appears that "the heads [how many we are not told] of the English Church entered with warm interest into the proposition, that evangelical Christianity should present itself, under the protection of England and Prussia, to the Turkish government as a unity." It is farther stated, that "there was an agreement in the conviction that the diversities of Christian worship, according to tongues and races, and according to the peculiarities and historical development of such notion,.... is upheld by a higher unity, -the Lord of the Church himself." The subject of this appointment is handled by Dr. Pusey in his letter to the Archbishop of Canterbury, which we have noticed last month. The Doctor says that "circumstances connected with the plan of sending a bishop of the English succession to Jerusalem, have awakened very deep and serious misgivings in the minds of those who can best judge of the state of feeling among" the members of the establishment, and that he himself partakes in these misgivings. He remarks that the stability of the Established Church at present seems to depend in great measure upon our remaining where we are,'' i. e. we presume in confining itself strictly to her own concerns, for he thinks that "any step which has a tendency to bring her into relations with foreign un-Catholic bodies will be unsettling," and he fears that " any advance to Protestantism will produce a counter-movement towards Romanism " (Catholicism). At first Dr. Pusey viewed the plan with interest, having received an erroneous impression with regard to it; but now he regards the affair in a different light, and we believe his opinions are those also of the section of the Church of which section he is considered the chief. "I was then at first led to imagine that there was already a Church of Jewish converts and of English at Jerusalem, and that the bishop was to be sent over primarily for their sake. This seemed to me a legitimate object; for since people who spoke different languages, though living together, were allowed by the ancient rule each to enjoy the blessing of a bishop, there seemed no reason why Jewish converts should be obliged to use a ritual in a language they do not understand, or be placed under the bishop of another nation and speech; there seemed no reason why the Hebrew Psalms should not be once 19 VOL. VI. more sung in a church at Jerusalem; and those who used the Hebrew ritual, be gathered under a bishop of their own nation. It was also a thing allowed in early times that one bishop should enter into a district nominally in the diocese of another, in order to convert heathens whom the other failed to win. Viewed then as a missionary bishop whose office was confined to the Jews, there seemed to me no principle opposed to such an appointment. Again, if Prussians, owing no obedience to the Patriarch of Jerusalem, placed themselves under our bishop, neither did this (whatever my judgment may have been) seem to me a dangerous measure. I hoped that they would be absorbed into our Church to which they had united themselves, and gradually imbibe her spirit and become Catholicized. . . . . But now that various competent authorities combine to state that the congregation at Jerusalem consists of but very few, (more than one traveller has stated its amount at about four,) the case is widely different. The whole is an experiment, and that in so serious a thing as a Christian Church. The mingled Church, to be formed under one bishop, of Lutheran and Jewish converts, has been truly but painfully designated an 'Experimental Church.' And what an experiment? to bring together persons, one knows not whom, sound or unsound, pious or worldly, bound together by no associations, accustomed to no obedience, who on the very Lord's Day have practically but one service, and scarcely any through the year besides, never kneel at the public worship of God, sitting when they sing their hymns, standing when they receive the Eucharist-under pastors consenting to receive Episcopal ordination, but not, as themselves contend, valuing it— if this may even be regarded without profanation, and make ourselves responsible for them, and exhibit them as specimens of the English Church to the Greek Communion, which has just heard again of us, and is beginning to love us (?) To think for the time only of its effect on the orthodox Greek communion, (apart from the graver and deeper question of the responsibility we should ourselves incur,) what suspicion must needs be cast upon us, that we thus, in their very presence, sanction bodies whom they have anathematised, not incorporating them into ourselves, nor infusing into them our principles, but joined in a sort of awkward alliance with them, each pursuing its distinct course, worshipping in its own way, except that their ministers would receive Episcopal ordination, and engraft the Thirty-nine Articles on the confession of Augsburg, without our Catholic Liturgy, whereby to interpret them, and accepting either in so far as (quatenus), they individually found them to correspond with their views of Holy Scripture. What an outward and unspiritual view of the Church and of Episcopacy would it seem to imply us to hold, who could think that such a juxtaposition of discordant elements under the— one cannot say government, but the-presidency of our bishop, could constitute a Church."--Letter, pp. 113-116. Dr. Pusey gives a host of powerful reasons for avoiding any connexion with the Lutherans of Germany. He repudiates the hope expressed by the Archbishop in his "Statement," that the new Church to be formed at Jerusalem will present to the ancient Churches of the East"the pattern of a Church essentially Scriptural in doctrine, and apostolical in practice." He says that he cannot be→ 66 Sanguine about the effects of the exhibition of our English Church, until she realizes in practice what your Grace in theory describes and longs that she may be. Amid her notorious neglect of fasting, the infrequency of her communions, and the neglect of her daily service, I fear she will little impress upon the 'ancient Churches of the East,' her adhesion to the Apostolic practice,' when in the Holy City they held fast to the Apostles' fellowship, and to breaking of bread, and to prayer, continuing daily with one accord in the temple.' I fear, until she become other than for some time she has been, she can be no spectacle of a Church holding the faith in the unity of the spirit, and in the bond of peace."". 129. We must take leave of Dr. Pusey, but not till we give another extract, in which he shows the singular spectacle exhibited of a Church composed of English Protestants (Catholics according to Dr. P.) and German Lutherans. "Still less I own can I see... how the picture of an united Church could be preserved by an English and Lutheran congregation, of which the one holds One Holy Catholic Church throughout all the world,' knit together by its bishops as 'joints and hands,' under its one Head, CHRIST, and joined on by unbroken succession to the apostles [a pure assumption by the bye]; the other, an indefinite number of churches hanging together by agreement, in a scheme of doctrine framed by themselves and modified by the civil power,* of which one holds confirmation to be an act of the bishop, the other deems such unnecessary, but accepts it for its younger members; the one holds ordination to be derived from the apostles; the other, that Presbyters commissioned may confer it, and that those on whom it has been so conferred, may consecrate the holy Eucharist; the one recites the creed of Nicea, the other has laid it aside; in the one, ancient prayer, the inspired psalms, and hearing God's word, are the chief part of their weekly service; in the other, uninspired hymns and preaching, with prayer extempore; the one kneel in prayer, the other not even at the holy Eucharist; with the one, the Lord's day is a holy day, with the other, a holiday; the one receives 'the Faith' [Qu. Thirty-nine Articles?] as once for all delivered to the saints;' the other is susceptible of subsequent correction and development;* the one rests her authority and the * Pray, Dr. Pusey, is not the "scheme of doctrine" of your Church embodied in the Thirty-nine Articles framed by Cranmer & Co.; and were not these sanctioned and modified by the civil power? * E. g. The forty Articles of Edward VI., and the 39 of Elizabeth ?-Ed. |