Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 63, No. 389, March 1848. Various
and upon our children.' The crowd approaches Golgotha! they halt to rear the fatal tree; methinks I hear the exulting outcries of his vindictive murderers as they fix it in the ground!" Here the curtain drawn between the preacher and the back of the stage fell, revealing three wooden crucifixes lit up by a lurid red light from above. The effect was startling, and produced a shudder of horror throughout the whole auditory. After a breathless pause, the preacher, turning towards the cross, exclaimed, "What! are we too late for the beginning of this tragedy! Is the Redeemer of mankind already nailed to the cross? Oh, cruel and fiendlike man, is this your triumph! surely he who came to save will reject you now! Such might be our feelings, but they were not Christ's. No, my brethren, far from it. Oh, let us contemplate, for our own future guidance, the behaviour of Jesus to his murderers, not after but at the moment of his extreme torture; and may the Holy Spirit give us grace to profit by the exercise. Look on your crucified Redeemer writhing and maddened with suffering; and listen to the first words uttered in the depth of his agony: he imprecates no curse upon these guilty men, but exclaims, 'Father, forgive them; they know not what they do!' Caro Jesu!" Here there was much emotion both in the preacher and in the congregation; when it had subsided, he added persuasively, "You have heard Christ pray that his murderers may be forgiven, and shall you hesitate to forgive one another?" Then, taking the words of our Saviour for a text, he delivered a short animated sermon upon the forgiveness of injuries; after which came a prayer for grace to perform this duty; the pause which succeeded being filled with music and chanting. Then again the dark form of the preacher rose up. "What, my brethren! did not Christ pass three hours in his agony, and shall we leave him in the midst? He has still more gracious words in store. My dear brethren and fellow sinners, now hear his dying address to the penitent thief, 'Verily I say unto thee, to-day shalt thou be with me in Paradise!' Ladro felice! but was he then predestinated to salvation, and his companion to be the victim of God's wrath? Niente, niente; believe, not a word of this false and heretical creed." Then followed a second discourse, with a diatribe against Calvin (who deserved it!) and all heretics (who might not deserve it), with an anathema against heresy in general, and a prayer for the pardon and acceptance of the true Catholic, id est Roman, Church. In like manner the preacher continued to set before his hearers all the circumstances of our Saviour's passion; pronouncing a short discourse upon every sentence uttered by him in his agony. Each sermonette was succeeded by prayer; and that by an interlude of music and chanting, which enabled him to recover himself, and proceed with undiminished energy during a three hours' service. We had listened attentively, not always agreeing with his doctrine, but without any great shock to our Protestant principles, when, in conclusion, he exclaimed, "Now, brethren, before we disperse, let us do homage to the blessed Virgin, and sympathise with the afflicted and inconsolable Mother of our Lord. Think of her sufferings to-day; think and weep over them; and forget not the worship due to her holy name; whom Christ honoured, shall not we honour too? Sons of the blessed Virgin! is not your brother Christ her son also? make her then your friend; propitiate her, in order to obtain pardon from him! Let us all, then, fall down upon our knees before the Indolorata." A long prayer to the Madonna followed, then a hymn in her honour; and after a last glorious outburst of the organ, accompanying the ardent and sustained Hallelujahs of both choir and congregation, the curtain falls, the doors are thrown open, daylight rushes in through the no longer darkened windows; and presently the thronged and noisy Corso has absorbed the last member of the much moved, slowly dispersing crowd.
A heartfelt and affecting ceremony was that we had just witnessed; every body had shed tears, and there had been evidently great attrition, and probably some contrition also. The strong appeals of the priest had told, though they were not legitimate; for what could be less so than, in the end, his misdirecting the thoughts from the true object of worship, to her, who was, after all, but a mere mortal like ourselves?
Yet devotional feelings had been called forth, and in this it was unlike, and surely better than, the ordinary cold, formal, glittering, shifting pantomimic service of Te-Deums, and high masses, which, instead of "filling the hungry with good things," send all "empty away;" or worse, satisfied with "that which is not bread." Could piety really be appealed to through the senses, then might the ceremonies of the Romish Church hope to reach it, captivating as they are to most of them. The ear is pleased with exquisite music; the eye is dazzled with pictures, processions, scenic representations, glittering colours, gorgeous robes, rich laces, and embroidery; and even the nostril is propitiated by the grateful odour of frankincense; but the only address to the heart and intellect is a barbarous Latin prayer, unintelligible (were it to be heard) to most of the congregation, and rendered so to all by the mode in which it is gone through. On returning from such exhibitions as these, we feel more forcibly than ever, how much reason we have to thank those pious compilers of our expurgated English prayer-book, who, renouncing an unknown tongue, and rejecting all unscriptural interpolations, drew from the rich stores of Rome herself, and from the primitive Church, an almost faultless Liturgy,7 where every desire of the human heart is anticipated, and every expression so carefully weighed, that not an unbecoming phrase can be found in it.
It is impossible for any one who has been much in Roman Catholic countries, to avoid drawing comparisons between the two services; and especially at this time, when many of our countrymen are halting between two opinions, and almost persuading themselves that there was no need of a Reformation, it behoves those not under the influence of
"That dark lanthorn of the Spirit
Which none see by but those that bear it;"
nor yet led away
"By crosses, relics, crucifixes,
Beads, pictures, rosaries, and pyxes;
Those tools for working out salvation
By mere mechanic operation,"
to protest against the return of Popery to this land, to the surrender of our consciences and our Bibles again into the hands of a fellow sinner.8 "Quis custodet custodem?" – who shall watch our watcher? – was a question that men had been asking themselves for many years in England, but hitherto without result; till our pious Reformers, addressing themselves to the study of the Scriptures, received the sword of the Spirit, with which they were enabled to wage successful war against that wily serpent, coiled now for centuries round the Church of Christ, and waiting but a little further development to crush her in his inextricable folds. Alike unallured by concessions and unterrified by threats, they boldly denounced the heretical usurpation of Rome; opposing an honest conscience, and Christ the only mediator, to the caprice of councils, and the false unity of a pseudo-infallible head;9 refusing to purchase their lives by rendering homage to any Phalaris of the Triple Crown.
Their perjured faith, though zealot Popes command,
Point to their Bull, and raise the threatening hand:
They deem'd those souls consummate guilt incurr'd,
At conscience' fearful price, who life preferr'd:
No length of days for bartered peace can pay,
And what were life, take life's great end away?10
"Sanctis Roma, suis jam tollere gestit ad astra,
Et cupit ad superos evehere usque deos."
To receive Beatification, which is the first step towards Canonisation, and may in time lead to a fellowship with the saints, – to be pronounced "blessed" by him who arrogates to himself the title of Holy, and must therefore know the full value of the dignity he confers —sic laudari a laudato, and that too in the finest church in Christendom, before the eyes of a countless assembly of all the nations of Europe, – is an honour indeed! No wonder, then, that every promotion should be jealously canvassed, and that sometimes the rumour of "unfairness," or "favouritism," should be heard among the people, when each fresh brevet comes
"We were not" (says Jeremy Taylor) "like women and children when they are affrighted with fire in their clothes; we shook off the coal, indeed, but not our garments; lest we should expose our Church to that nakedness which the excellent men of our sister Churches complained to be among themselves."
Bellarmine asserts (and who but a heretic shall dispute it with him?) that men are bound so far to submit their consciences to the Pope, as even to believe
"We must seek to enter into the real divine unity; if not, the
Imitated from Juvenal,