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sinking. He thought, in February 1829,* the Church of England retained too much of the spirit of popery. By March 1833 he had reduced the Gospel once more to "sublime simplicity"; to the reception of Christ as our "moral king," as our "saviour from moral evils or spiritual fears;" and had determined that the doctrine of His divinity, as it was disputed, could not be essential. Up to May 1834 he disapproved of definite denials of the Trinitarian doctrines.§ In December of the same year he recorded himself a deliberate Unitarian.|| He determined, with great delicacy of feeling, to remove himself from the house of the Archbishop of Dublin, in which he had been residing for some time, before he should separate from the Church. In January 1835 he effected this removal, and placed himself at Liverpool, where he joined the Unitarian Society. In that town and in its neighbourhood he lived until his death, in May 1841. Here we bring this general outline to a close; proposing to take more particular notice of some of the passages of his chequered and disastrous career.

9. We may regard Mr. Blanco White in several characters; first as a witness to facts, and next as the expositor, and still more as the victim, of opinions. With regard to the first of these capacities, he had abundant talent, remarkable honesty and singleness of purpose, and large and varied means of information and of comparison, from the several positions which he occupied at different times; and we think that the dispassionate reader of his works will be disposed to place almost implicit reliance upon his accounts of all such matters as are the proper subjects of testimony.

* Life, 457.
† Ibid. II. 4.
§ Ibid. I., II, 42.

Ibid. II. 61.

Ibid. 20.

Regarding him then in this capacity, we naturally look in the first instance to the representations which he has given us of the state of things in Spain. Of these the most prominent characteristic certainly is the unbelief which he declares to have prevailed among the Spanish clergy. We have seen his view of the operation of the law of celibacy; but he is much more definite and explicit upon the other subject. In Doblado's Letters* he says, “Among my numerous acquaintance in the Spanish clergy I have never met with any one possessed of bold talents who has not, sooner or later, changed from the most sincere piety to a state of unbelief."

10. Such a circumstance suggests very serious questions with regard to the actual system of the Church of Rome, under which it had come to pass. It goes far to explain the sad phenomenon, when we recollect (for instance) that the immaculate conception of the Blessed Virgin passed in Spain for an article of the Christian faith, practically no less sacred and certain than the mystery of the Incarnation. As to the accuracy of the statement, we believe it may be corroborated by the testimony of Roman Catholic witnesses, particularly with reference to the capitular and dignified clergy of Spain as they then were. But the passage also establishes the fact that the state from which the transition took place was usually one of earnest devotion, and that the life of the young priest opened at least in piety. It would seem, therefore, that there was at least a wellmeant endeavour to impart a religious education, and to impress the mind of the young candidate for orders with an adequate sense of his vocation.

11. Mr. Blanco White has, however, again and again

* P. 126.

repeated his assertion with regard to unbelief, in his 'Practical and Internal Evidence against Catholicism' :

"I do attest, from the most certain knowledge, that the history of my own mind is, with little variation, that of a great portion of the Spanish clergy. The fact is certain."*

In another passage he testifies still more broadly, but rather to a matter of opinion than one of fact:—

"I have been able to make an estimate of the moral and intellectual state of Spain, which few who know me and that country will, I trust, be inclined to discredit. Upon the strength of this knowledge, I declare, again and again, that very few among my own class (I comprehend clergy and laity) think otherwise than I did before my removal to England."+

And, once more, in contrast with a different state of things among the English clergy:

"I cannot dismiss this subject without most solemnly attesting, that the strongest impressions which enliven and support my Christian faith are derived from my friendly intercourse with members of that insulted clergy: while, on the contrary, I know but very few Spanish priests, whose talents or acquirements were above contempt, who had not secretly renounced their religion."

It

12. In his Autobiography he gives point to these statements by reference to individuals: but nothing more. is but just also to record that, while his evidence bears hard upon the morals of the friars § in Spain, he declares unequivocally in favour of the Jesuits, both as to their purity of character and as to the practical effects of their influence. Again, with regard to nunneries, although he states that he never knew "souls more polluted than

*Practical and Internal Evidence,' p. 8. Ibid. p. 60.

Ibid. pp. 86, 87, and 474,

† Ibid. p. 28.
§ Doblado, p. 475,

those of some of the professed vestals of the Church of Rome," yet he represents the opposite case to be the rule:

"The greater part of the nuns whom I have known were beings of a much higher description: females whose purity owed nothing to the strong gates and high walls of the cloister."t

13. When we turn to Mr. Blanco White's evidence upon the state of religion and of the clergy in England, we must of course make liberal allowance with regard to so much as he said at a time when his mind was, as he subsequently considered, carried away by the returning tide of his religious sympathies. Indeed, for some time he had no eye for our faults and shortcomings: and, in the very unqualified praises that were bestowed upon his works by some persons of authority,‡ we cannot but trace the reciprocal operation of a principle analogous to that of the proverb that forbids us "to look a gift horse in the mouth." The members of all Christian communities must be conscious of the temptation not to scrutinise over-rigidly the pretensions of a convert from a rival persuasion. Otherwise, we cannot but think that, in the works which Mr. White published while he was ostensibly of the Church of England, there were ominous indications, and a vagueness which now in retrospect tends to convey the impression, that he never at any period recovered an intelligent and firm hold even of the great Catholic dogmas concerning the nature of God.

14. It is consolatory, however, to find that his final lapse could not have been owing to any of his associates among

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*Life, I. p. 70. + Practical and Internal Evidence,' p. 135. Life, I. pp. 415, 419, 424, 433, 440.

our clergy. For in his 'Observations on Heresy and Orthodoxy,'* published in 1835, he says, with regard to his friends of that order,

"Without exception, all and every one of them are, to my knowledge, conscientious believers in the divinity of Christ."

He writes indeed, in the year 1829 †:

"In England unbelief has made a rapid progress, both among the higher and the lower classes."

In 1835 he states that "the days of orthodoxy are certainly gone by,"‡ and further, "artificial belief" § is "easier and more powerful in complete popery than in mixed," by which he means Athanasian "Protestantism." And again :

"What is called the Protestant religion is nothing but a mutilated system of popery; groundless, incongruous, and full of contradictions. I am not at all surprised when I hear that the number of Roman Catholics is increasing."

15. In short, he now repeatedly indicates the opinion that, if there is to be fixed dogmatic faith, it will be most naturally sought in the system of the Church of Rome. T Such is at this stage his theory; but it will be seen that it was almost still-born. He bears very important testimony to the fact that dogmatic faith is most extensively and most tenaciously held in England, and that too among classes who seem to have surrendered many of its supports. Of course it would be expected that he would regard with horror any assertion of the authority of the Church, or of the spiritual gifts of the sacred ministry:

*Preface, p. ix.
§ Ibid. p. 126.
Ibid. III. p. 106,

† Life, I. p. 458.
‡ II. p. 139.
|| In 1835, Life, II. p. 140.

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