true surrender of the will, and of its surrender to a loved and loving God; and that we likewise steadily maintain the Catholic faith to be the only covenanted source of spiritual blessings; and that we also understand that faith as it was understood at Nice and at Constantinople, and when the note of unity was upon the Church, and she bore a universal and consistent witness to herself in her whole office still we have before us the juxtaposition of what we cannot deny to be true though morbid and mutilated piety, with what we must assert to be in itself rank unbelief, not many degrees removed from speculative pantheism. And how then are we to deal with the distinct promise of our Lord" If a man desires to do His will, he shall know of the doctrine whether it be of God ?" In the endeavourthus we may be challenged to frame such an explanation of a particular case as will pass current among men, are we not stumbling against the adamantine rock of Holy Scripture? 52. We cannot pretend to give a complete answer to the objection; because it is not to be done without that knowledge of the secrets of the heart, which we cannot possess, and will not pretend. But the aspect, in which Mr. Blanco White's case presents itself to us, is not so perplexing as at first sight it appears. He supplies us in part at least with the keys to the comprehension of it when he says that* " an indiscriminate warmth of the social affections often took the lead of his judgment;" that he had always had† much more practical belief than logical conviction: that he had long struggled against the intellectual notions which at last led him captive; and especially that, after his understanding was utterly disturbed with regard to fundamental articles of belief, he † Ibid. II. p. 32. *Life, I. p. 393. read the New Testament daily to foster his religious feelings and habits,* cherished the constant desire to follow God's will, and even attended the Holy Eucharist.† In fact, the religious tempers and sympathies, which had taken root in his mind, survived, at least in part, the dogmatic faith of which they were the proper fruits and accompaniments. How long they would have so continued to subsist in isolation from their trunk we do not presume to judge; but from some of the indications of his later life, it would appear that they did deriye, indeed they could derive, but very little positive sustenance from his later creed. 53. But although this explanation may serve to solve or at least to relieve from some of its complications, one portion of the problem, namely the coexistence of religious affections with departure from the faith, and with sentiments of an almost blasphemous character, still it rather aggravates the other side of the difficulty, which stands thus: if his will was so truly set upon doing the will of God, how came he to lose the fruit of the promise that the willing shall be taught aright; that truth in intention shall be a guide to truth in knowledge? Now Mr. Blanco White himself tells us of his own "restlessness of character." Again, it is natural to suppose that he had all along a resentment towards the Roman Church, as the original cause of his calamities, which could not be favourable to the maintenance of a really dispassionate tone of mind with regard to any matter of doctrine held by her and such an antipathy, we have learned, he actually did entertain. This work also bears evidence of a peculiar and morbid sensitiveness; § *Life, I. p. 367. † Ibid. Ibid. III. p. 346. § Life, II. 107, 123, 165; III. 347. and, on the other hand, we see no reason to suppose that his character had at any time arrived at that high elevation and thorough discipline which would warrant the immediate and peremptory application of the promise we have quoted to his peculiar case. Still the case stands thus here was a man who sought, and sought, humanly speaking, with integrity, for truth, and yet almost wholly missed it. We are disposed to look for the solution of this dilemma chiefly in the fact that the mind of Mr. Blanco White had in his early years suffered a wrench from which it never recovered; that the natural relation between his speculative and his practical life was then violently and fundamentally disturbed; and that any promise of Scripture which describes the influence to be produced by one part of our human constitution upon the other, by the will upon the intellect, must be understood with regard to those cases, in which the laws of our nature are left fundamentally undisturbed. 54. But, as the arrow which may have been ever so truly shot misses the target if this chances to be moved during its flight, such a promise must necessarily fail to operate in cases where, both before the period of anything like full free agency is attained and after it, the orderly connexion ordained to subsist between conviction and conduct has been not only impaired, but deliberately and systematically severed. Now so it was in Mr. Blanco White's original adoption of the ecclesiastical career, and in the fatal necessities subsequently entailed upon him by that false position. He accepted that calling, as we have seen, because it was the key which alone could unlock to him the golden stores of literature that The artful piety of his mother, or her advisers, instead of proceeding by the rude he panted to enjoy. method of sheer force, applied to him the principle of the common curb, which becomes tighter as the horse pulls harder. It was determined to conquer him through himself. He was not obliged to become a priest; oh, no: there was the counting-house open to him; and it was well known that his abhorrence of this latter calling would stand instead of an attachment to the former, especially when it was backed by an enthusiastic love of his mother, and a disposition strongly sympathetic. It is not for us to condemn those who thus drove him into holy orders. There is every proof that his mother's motives were pure and high. The error of a want of due respect to natural bent is too common to excite surprise; but the case before us is one that loudly calls upon us to mark its fatal operation. 55. It was not merely that his judgment was thus taken by storm, but it was in a matter where the decision was irrevocable for the day that made him a sub-deacon, cut him off for ever from domestic life. Such a life appears, we should say, to have been an essential part of his natural vocation. And so he was placed in a course of daily and continual action, which had no support in the convictions of his interior mind. He had indeed called in the aid of powerful religious excitement; yet, as we have seen above, he records that even at the time he never overcame an inward sentiment of loathing for the peculiar exercises of devotion which produced it. Nature had been expelled with a pitchfork; and she took her revenge on her return. The knowledge of physical truth had placed the youth in collision with his ecclesiastical preceptors at the age of fourteen or fifteen; and as all instruction was delivered to him in one and the same tone, under one and the same seal of authority, it was natural and consequent that, when a part had exploded, he should vehemently question the rest. Upon the single issue whether the Church, that is to say, the Church of Rome, had ever been mistaken, there was ventured the whole fabric of his belief. No assimilating process had mixed it with the courses of his nature. The internal and experimental evidences which familiarity supplies, and the rooted persuasion which it thus engenders, had no existence for him. And when we recollect that he appears to have stood well, at the very time when he was an unbeliever, as a theologian, confessor, and preacher; and that he maintained, for some period after his receiving holy orders, purity of conduct; all this opens to us clearly the yawning chasm within him, the total want of moral choice in the determining action of his life, and the fundamental discord, between himself and his position, that ensued. 56. Yet that which was fundamental for the time, needed not therefore have been perpetual and incurable. But, as is usual, error bred error. He found himself at once a priest and an atheist. When, in this awful state, he began to seek guidance and relief by touching timidly the minds of other priests, his friends, he found that "With him in dreadful harmony they joined;" they re-echoed the note of his total unbelief. We assent, of course, to the proposition, that he ought to have quitted his position in the Church at all hazards. But we shall plead, in mitigation of judgment, that we believe few, perhaps even of those who may say so, would, under all the circumstances of his time and place, have done it. In the first place, a man cannot justifiably overturn the whole structure of his life, and violently disturb the society in which he lives, except upon a full and mature conviction. |