+30

THE PROTESTANTISM OF THE ANGLICAN CHURCH

alternative that has prompted the curious outburst which has
found expression in this book. And the feay is well
grounded, as Mr. Coulton is quite aware. Though Mr.
Coulton hates the Catholic system, he respects Roman Catho­
lics, and this is what he prophecies in our regard:

If Roman Catholicism, while fearlessly facing the truth, could
still remain united, and if non-Roman Catholics, while insistting on truth of detail, failed finally to find any closer union
amongst themselves than the mere agreement to repudiate Roman
Catholicism, then in the long run Roman Catholicism would con­
quer and deserve to conquer (p. 120).

Of these two conditions, the first, as we know, has always
been verified, and the other, it seems to us, is in course of
verification; so that we may confidently look for the ful­
filment of Mr. Coulton’s prophecy in the divine victory to
follow.
Anglican Essays is an astounding book. Its inaccuracies
are so plentiful, its arguments so weak, that it will pro­
duce but little effect except on such as imbibe without critic­
ism every syllable that they read. The only telling argu­
ment is that which seeks to show that Anglo-Catholicism
is not Anglicanism, nor yet consistent with Anglican tradi­
tion. With this we agree. Yet in common fairness, must
confess that the fiercely dogmatic Anglicanism of Eliza­
bethan and even later days seems to us equally incompatible
alike with the “scientific” attitude towards Christian dogma
adopted by the Archbishop of Armagh, with its im­
plicit scepticism and its worship of the human goddess
“ Reason,” and with the vague demand for radical change,
so forcibly uttered by Mr. Raven, with its corollary that as
yet we know neither what Christianity is nor what it shall
become in the future.. While if this be in truth the sequel
to the Protestant factor in Anglicanism, the Anglo-Catholics
are right in thinking that the sooner this factor is eliminated
the better for all concerned, and the better chance too of
that reunion which even the most Protestant exponents of·
Anglicanism seem, though with misgivings bom of ignor­
ance and fear, to contemplate as at least a remote
possibility.
LESLIE J. WALKER.

THE SPIRIT OF ANTICHRIST
N every nation which has known Christianity, just as in
every Christian man, there is an endless conflict between
the natural and the supernatural, and a considerable
section will always be found that rejects the latter and pre­
fers to remain on the natural plane, limiting its vision to
this earth and hence falling easily into the vices of the pagan,
the deification of self and the deification of the State. We
are accustomed to speak of the two "Nations" in every
modern State, the Poor and the Rich, whose discord is a
national peril. Even were their interests harmonized, there
would still remain the two “ Nations ” of the religious and
the unregenerate to prevent, by their divergent views and
policies, any realization of the Perfect State in this world.:
Nowhere has this truth been better illustrated than in the
history of the great French nation. The two opposed spirits
are evident as early as the thirteenth century in Le Roman
de La Rose. Seldom has there been so strange a dove­
tailing of the work of two utterly different characters. The
Horatian maxim,

I

“servetur ad imum
Qualis ab incepto processerit et sibi constet,"1

has here been forgotten or ignored. The work of one author,
Guillaume de Lorris, has the freshness and purity of spring­
tide. Jean de Meun, the other, is sometimes as nasty as
Chaucer’s wife of Bath, and his mind is strongly tinged with
worldly cynicism. It is good to find such a critic as Pro­
fessor Saintsbury giving a decided preference to the work*
of the earlier poet.* Gaston Paris attributes to Jean de Meun

a bold, cynical, nowise religious, eminently burgess spirit and}
at times quite modern . . . there is an attack against celibacy,
even ecclesiastical, which Alain of Lille, . . . would not have
dared. In this, as frequently elsewhere, John of Meun reminds
Us of Rabelais.·
To pursue our sketch—the anti-papal tyranny of Philip the
• ·■ Let [the poem] pte*erre to the end the ctaraetetwtfcs with whkh it ttmrted
s Mriiarai frenth Liltreiert. Eo«· Trawl. Dent, p. It J.

pp·

432

THE SPIRIT OF ANTICHRIST

Fair was followed by civil wars and their moral ruin. In
the fifteenth century we have the strange pathetic career of
Villon, at his worst also a forerunner of Rabelais, at his
best a voice of touching penitence. In the sixteenth century
we have Rabelais himself, who lacks not apologists, but is,
no Christian can doubt, justly condemned by Kenelm Digby:
Than the spirit of Rabelais, perhaps no more deadly corrosive
exists on earth to destroy vital principles; honour, love, every
noble and heroic affection,, fade away before it; but nothing,
perhaps, throughout the whole range of human prevarication, can
be more contrary to nature, and to the very instinct of youth,
for it must be acknowledged, that the animal nature itself has a
certain delicate sense of what is becoming and graceful; the
whole man abhors whatever will not admit of being in some
degree elevated by the imagination to assume a beautiful or
noble aspect ; no antipathy between things most averse in nature,
holds a stronger enmity than his mind with what is essentially
and irredeemably foul.1
Apart from this monster of filth, who was also, terribile
dictu, a Catholic priest, the reign of the vicious Francis I.
was indeed a time of corruption, like that of Henry Π.,
well pictured in Walter Pater’s little masterpiece, Gaston de
Latour',

It was the reign of the Italians just then, a doubly refined,
somewhat morbid, somewhat ash-coloured Italy in France, more
Italian still. What our Elizabethan poets imagined about Italian
culture—forcing all they knew of Italy to an ideal of dainty
sin such as had never actually existed there,—that the court of
Henry so far as in it lay, realised in fact. Men of Italian birth,
“to the great suspicion of simple people," swarmed in Paris,
already “flightier,less constant than the girouettes on its steeples,”
and it was love for Italian fashions that had brought king and
courtiers here this afternoon, with great éclat, as they said,
frizzled and starched* (etc.)

More horrible even than Rabelais was the false prophet
of Geneva, Calvin, also an apostate cleric, whose Huguenot
sectaries carried a Mahommedan desolation far and wide
over France. Anything less like the real Huguenots than the
dashing cavaliers of Macaulay’s ballad could hardly be
imagined J
’ Compilant, Book VI., ch. vi., 1853, p. 295.
• Ch. vii., pp. 171—17a: ci. ch. iii., p. 81, etc.

Miàiiiiinir

THE SPIRIT OF ANTICHRIST

'

433

According to Mézeray the sacrileges everywhere committed:
by the Huguenots roused in the people feelings of horror and
indignation: for in all places where they became masters, the,
images of saints were,smashed, relics were thrown to the winds,
the altars and the sacraments were profaned, and priests and
religious outraged, so that all that history has recorded of the
atrocities perpetrated by the Goths was effaced by the barbarism
of the Huguenots. In 1562 they burned all the charters of the
cathedral of St. Theudere, near Vienne. At Tarbes they not only
burned the charters, but the cathedral itself, leaving mournful
traces of their sojourn throughout Béarn and Bigorre.1

In the seventeenth century the picture is on the whole
brighter:
,

Of what importance saintly men considered this sweet filial
feeling* towards God is shown very remarkably by an observation which Cardinal, Bellarmine made when he visited France. He
said he was struck with the devout piety,of the French, in this ■
sense of the word piety, and that the people seemed to him in
consequence better Catholics than the Italians. So at least he is
quoted by Lallemant.*
' '
And yet, this seventeenth century, whose Christian charac­
ter François Coppée championed against his friend Huysmans,’ saw the sceptical work of Bayle; father of the encydopædists, and the rise of Jansenism, while a truly horrible
demoralization, consequent upon civil wars, is-depicted in
a letter written by St. Vincent de. Paul to Pope Innocent X. · ■
in 1652:
, The Royal Family is torn by dissension, and the people are
divided in rival factions, the towns and the pro vinces are alike
made miserable by civil war; villages and cities are devastated,
burnt; the labourers do not reap; what they have sown, and
no longer sow for future years; everything is at the mercy of
the soldiers ; from them the people have to fear not robbery
only, but actual murder and every sort of torture; most of those
who dwell in the country perish of hunger if they escape the sword. Even the priests are not spared, but are cruelly treated,
tortured and put to death. Every maiden is dishonoured and the
nuns themselves are exposed to the wild excesses of the soldiers ;
churches are profaned and robbed and ruined; and almost all
those which are still standing are deserted by their pastors, to
that the people are left destitute either of Mass or of the Sacra• J. M. Stone, ReformaiionaaiR*naisaaertV-Ofirf.·,
« Faber, AU for leua, i»fi,
» far Bonne So·ffranee,
·
CC

VOL. CXLÏ.

‘t

Si f

ÎSÏZ

t Wlr
?f i ? *
s

43+

THE SPIRIT OF ANTICHRIST

ments, or of any spiritual "consolation. Also that happens of which
it is horrible to think and even more to speak, the most Blessed
Sacrament of the Body of our Lord is treated with: utter con­
tempt even by Catholics, «for they throw the Holy Eucharist to
the ground and trample It underfoot that they may steal the:
sacred vessels that contain It. And how far do the heretics go
who have no sense of this Mystery? I dare not and will not
enter on description.1
-

This state of things in the Christian seventeenth century
of civilized, chivalrous France, furnishes indeed a fruitful
theme for meditation.
The testimony could not be more unimpeachable nor the
picture more hideous; it rivals the sack of Rome in 1527
under the Catholic Emperor Charles V;, who loved to pose
as a Constantine, a sack wherein Catholic Spaniards . and
Lutheran Germans were rivals in sacrilege and horror. To
read the story, even in the sober pages of Pasteur, is enough
to bring physical nausea. Yet that were a small price to
pay for a realization pf the essential barbarity of war, the.
ultima ratio regum which is in fact a confession that reason
has failed. Call to mind after this the endless series of drum
and trumpet “history books”; they appear no more true
to life than the historical novels of Mr. G. A. Henty, against
which one’s instinct revolted even in boyhood. ■ Granting
that war is sometimes inevitable, sometimes just, there is
yet no need to lie about it, to suppress the truth about its
moral and material evils, to represent God’s punishments and
scourges as if. they were blessings to boast of ; there is no
need to describe purgatory in terms of a pleasure excur­
sion. This literary conspiracy to disguise the character of
warfare from the rising, generations explains: how it is
possible to send multitudes to the slaughter under lying
watchwords, multitudes who have no real quarrel one with
another, and who under wiser guidance might see that their
highest interest is peace and co-operation. Tolstoy, in his
earlier and better work, the artist Verestchagin and General
Sherman agree in thinking that “war is hell.” One would
think that it were wiser to appeal frankly to the latent
heroism of those called upon to endure the .rack than to
pretend that the endurance of the rack is a gay and splendid
adventure.
Among the fallacies diligently taught in 1914—1918
1 E. K. Saunders, Vincent de Pant, <913, ch. ix, p. 163.

-

THE SPIRIT OF ANTICHRIST

435

was the uplifting and regenerating'effect of war. Against
this I may quote an authority no militarist can well cavil at:"
It is a well-ascertained fact [writes Cardinal Gasquet] strange
though it may seem, that men are not as a rule made better by:
great and universal visitations of Divine Providence. It has been
noticed that this is the evident result of all such scourges, or,
as Procopius puts it, speaking of the Great Plague in the reign
of the Emperior Justinian, “whether by chance or Providential
design it strictly spared the most wicked.”1

j
j
I
i

It is a grievous pity that* these truths are not borne in:
mind by those who lightly appeal to arms whenever a national
crisis comes, a “crisis” which in its last analysis is most
often a dispute between rival traders regarding markets or
raw materials. War is the outcome of secularism ; Mam- '
mon, as this Review has heretofore explained,’ has Mars as
his henchman. And secularism thrives when the Church
grows weak. In his study of Gallicanism, de Maistre showed
clearly how the Jansenists (who, together with Calvinists,
exerted great influence through the Parlement) prepared the
way for the encyclopaedists. With Voltaire the two hosts
are definitely musterèd in hostile array, and his period finds
fit consummation in the horrors of thè Revolution.;·* To and
fro the fight has raged ever since, and the victory is not yet
won. Compromises, concordats, restorations there hâve been,
but no decisive triumph of the Faith, while the subversives
renew from time to time their efforts to abolish religion
and sanity.
. .. .
Ozanam and Lacordaire were under no'delusions as to the
restoration of religion in France,while the secular university’s
monopoly remained. Veuillot’s battle was a long and fierce
one, not only with infidels, but with. Gallicans also.. The
France of Veuillot and Count de Mun stood over against the
France of “George Sand,” de Maupassant, Zola and the
masonic politicians. The France of Combes and Viviani
found ranged against it the France of Réné Bazin, François
Coppée, and the Catholic rally. The present moment seems
in many ways ’ analogous to the treacherous Restoration
period. Avowed anticlericalism has now as then, for the
time being, lost the ascendancy, but is perhaps all the more
dangerous on that account, “ the viler as underhand, not
« 7Λ» Black Death, ch. x., pp.ajô—«5«·
.
• Thx Month, Oct. 19’·» “ Mammon and Mar».

i

ÿ

i.

i
!

436

I
t
I-

I

i

tft

;I

I

I
ΐ

s

i
f!
I
■

I-

i

lit

1

THE SPIRIT OF ANTICHRIST

openly bearing the sword.” Now as then, many, whose trust­
worthiness will need much testing, find it expedient or politic
to profess Catholic sympathies or allegiance, and the mili­
tarist mania, once more recurrent in some quarters, causes
a cross-division which may weaken the Catholic forces.
On the other hand, the utterly simple, unaffected piety
that so delighted Cardinal Bellarmine is found to-day, and
not in Brittany alone. The writer was at Chartres in July,
1914, and there and then some holy nun said to him,“mais
je pense que j’aime les bons un peu petit plus,” though
she loved les wiérAawZr also,;and “nous sommes trop mau­
vaises pour la France,” therefore expecting to be driven out,
but “ nous nous reverrons en Angleterre.” In all sincerity
these . saintly women thought they were so unworthy that
Almighty God would not allow them to remain in France.
There are characters up and down the pages of Huysmahs
and those of Réné Bazin that wanderers in provincial France
can hardly fail to come across, characters that prove la douce
France to be still living, utterly sincere, courteous, gener­
ous, devoted, like Rousseline and her father in Bazin’s La
Terre qui meurt, true children of the crusaders. In Brit­
tany and the Norman-Breton borderland nothing can exceed
the unaffected Catholic courtesy experienced by travellers.
Again: ·■· Thou-art praised for thy science;· thy art and thy grace,
For the courage so high that belongs , to thy race,
But when all is admired, and all has been said,
There’s nothing surpasses thy love for the dead. 1

Is this, I wonder, the dominant aspect of France to-day?
Is it still generally true that “no Frenchman, goes about
singing nowadays, whether in town or country, unless it be
a song of revolt or. bloodshed. · This disappearance of
healthy and calm, joy is one of the most serious heads of
4 accusation which our time can formulate against those who
dominate it. If England is no longer ‘merry England’ nor
France ‘ La Gaie France,’ it is because the vital principle has
been weakened in each, because men have despised and dis­
enchanted the soul of each of these nations, once so noble and
charming, by.robbing them of the Faith?.”’
In all great countries, as we said to start with,· there is, in
varying degree, this,great division, which answers to the

*··;

* Kenelm H. Digby, Short Poems, 1865, p. 43.
.
- ,
* Reginald Balfour, in Dublin jReview, Jan; 1907, p, 163.

THE SPIRIT OF ANTICHRIST

+37

cleavage between the Church and the world. Many change
sides, many are unconscious of the side on which they are
fighting. There are sincere Christians,—Lutheran, Angli­
can and others,—who are unconsciously fighting in Rome’s
cause, there are bad Catholics, lapsed and worldly Catholics,
whose lives aid the cause of Antichrist. In France, owing
to the clearness (which is compatible with a certain narrow­
ness) of the French mind, the division is perhaps easier to
mark than elsewhere. But the fact of this division is, I be­
lieve, the truth of the matter, and it is a great pity that
it should be lost sight of. Those who have been assuring
us so volubly these nine years past that all evils, past and
present, had their source in Germany, are now tending to
say the same of France, with the same reckless inconse­
quence, for unhappily it is true, wherever “public opinion’’
is manufactured by linotype, that “ even with men who hold
the Catholic faith with true loyalty, their vaster outlook upon
things is practically uninfluenced by a directly Christian
philosophy of things.’’1 Two fundamental truths in especial
are utterly forgotten, namely, the origin of evil, and the
permanent cleavage between the Church and the world in
all countries. None has the monopoly of good or bad. : In
the calm light of reason many of the axioms of 1914—1918
are seen to be palpably absurd. But amid the clash of arms
the laws are silent, the arts also, and, under modern con­
ditions at least, it would seem that reason follows in their
wake.
■■
H. E. G. ROPE.

» Abbot Vonier. The Christian Mind, p. 208. >