Salmeron, Vega, Granado, and others. It is very safe, therefore, to say, and it is all we wish to infer, that if our readers are impressed by the theological arguments above adduced for our Lady's immunity, there is no objection whatever, on the ground of authority, against their embracing the conclusion to which those arguments point.

One remark in conclusion. In both the passages cited by F. Harper, Suarez expressly states that there is no unsoundness whatever in believing Mary's immunity, if her redemption by Christ's death be also believed; nor, indeed, does either F. Harper or any other theologian accuse this doctrine of unsoundness. Now, many good Catholics follow S. Alphonsus's advice we endeavour to follow it ourselves-of ascribing to the Mother of God every privilege, resting on any solid ground whatever, which can be ascribed to her without theological unsoundness. All such persons, therefore, will embrace the doctrine of her immunity from the "debitum proximum.'

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We now pass to the doctrine of her Assumption. Under this doctrine, strictly so called, are not included, of course, the various circumstances mentioned by tradition as accompanying the event, but the event itself: the fact that Mary's body was not permitted to see corruption, but, on the contrary, was speedily reunited to her soul and raised into heaven Dr. Pusey complains (p. 150) that on Roman Catholic principles this doctrine is no less certain now, than the Immaculate Conception was before it had been defined. But we think that he has under-stated the matter, as we said in April (p. 430); we maintain that the doctrine of the Assumption, as being everywhere taught by Pope and bishops, is infallibly guaranteed as true. Even apart from the Church's authority, we cannot imagine any Catholic to ponder on the other Marian doctrines, and then to doubt that this is their legitimate consequence and completion. We have nowhere seen this argu

* We have very great pleasure in quoting from F. Harper the following strong corroboration of everything which we advanced on this subject in April. Dr. Pusey "complains that any doctrine being taught everywhere at this present moment was to be a proof of a Divine tradition that it had been always' (implicitly at least) taught, i. c., that it had been always contained, at least virtually, in the sacred deposit of the Faith. Yet who would suppose otherwise, who really and honestly believes in the infallibility of the Church? Would the Holy Spirit-the Spirit of the truth-allow the whole Church to go wrong, for one moment of time, in Her collective doctrinal teaching? For that moment, the mystical Body of Christ is involved in error. For that moment, the gates of hell have prevailed. For that moment, our Lord's solemn promise has been broken" (p. 390). See our own remarks in April, pp. 422-426.

ment so powerfully enforced, as it was some years ago by F. Newman :

It was surely fitting then, it was becoming, that she should be taken up into heaven and not lie in the grave till Christ's second coming, who had passed a life of sanctity and of miracle such as hers. It would be a greater miracle if, her life being what it was, her death was like that of other men, than if it were such as to correspond to her life. Who can conceive, my brethren, that God should so repay the debt He condescended to owe to His Mother, for His human Body, as to allow the flesh and blood from which it was taken to moulder in the grave? Do the sons of men thus deal with their mothers? Do they not nourish and sustain them in their feebleness, and keep them in life while they are able? Or who can conceive that that virginal frame, which never sinned, was to undergo the death of a sinner? Why should she share the curse of Adam, who had no share in his fall? "Dust thou art, and into dust thou shalt return," was the sentence upon sin; she then who was not a sinner, fitly never saw corruption. She died then, my brethren, because even our Lord and Saviour died; she died, as she suffered, because she was in this world, because she was in a state of things in which suffering and death was the rule. . . . Her departure made no noise in the world. The Church went about her common duties, preaching, converting, suffering; there were persecutions, there was fleeing from place to place, there were martyrs, there were triumphs; at length the rumour spread through Christendom that Mary was no longer upon earth. Pilgrims went to and fro; they sought for her relics, but these were not; did she die at Ephesus? or did she die at Jerusalem? accounts varied; but her tomb could not be pointed out, or, if it was found, it was open; and instead of her pure and fragrant body, there was a growth of lilies from the earth which she had touched. So inquirers went home marvelling, and waiting for further light. And then the tradition came, wafted westward on the aromatic breeze, how that when the time of her dissolution was at hand, . . . the Apostles were suddenly gathered together in one place, even in the Holy City, to bear part in the joyful ceremonial; how that they buried her with fitting rites; how that the third day, when they came to the tomb, they found it empty, and angelic choirs with their glad voices were heard singing day and night the glories of their risen Queen. But, however we feel towards the details of this history (nor is there anything in it which will be unwelcome or difficult to piety), so much cannot be doubted, from the consent of the whole Catholic world and the revelations made to holy souls, that, as is befitting, she is, soul and body, with her Son and God in heaven, and that we have to celebrate, not only her death, but her Assumption.-(Discourses to Mixed Congregations, pp. 396–9.)

The Church then teaches infallibly the doctrine of the Assumption: yet she does not teach it as of faith; its denial would be theologically unsound, but would not be heretical. A Catholic, then, has no call whatever to maintain that the Apostles actually taught the doctrine, but only that they taught premisses from which it legitimately results. Dr. Pusey

is pained, indeed, by the reflection, that at some future time it may possibly be defined as of faith; and Suarez tells us that no Catholic in his day even doubted of this possibility.* But as there is no thought at present of any such definition, we need not discuss the question before it practically arises. All then that would here remain for us to do, would be to meet the objections against the doctrine raised by Dr. Pusey, whether from Scripture or from Antiquity. But he raises none such. He merely (p. 150) calls it a "bold conception;" and recites, with a kind of querulousness but without attempting to answer them, such arguments in its favour as we have quoted above from F. Newman.

The body of Mary, then, so far enjoys the same privilege with the body of Jesus, that it has never been permitted to see corruption. Some remarks, however, of Dr. Pusey, in p. 171, induce us to protest against an accusation there contained; for he alleges that the Church encourages those who press, to a truly monstrous extent, this similarity of circumstance between the Blessed Virgin's body and her Son's. A young ecclesiastic, named Oswald, went the extravagant length of maintaining that Mary's body-and by concomitance, therefore, her person-are co-present with our Lord's in the Eucharist. Oswald's work was promptly put on the Index, and the author "laudably submitted himself: " but long before his time, as appears from a statement of Benedict XIV.'s which we shall presently cite, the same tenet had been condemned by ecclesiastical authority as "erroneous, dangerous, and scandalous." The instinct of a good Catholic would have anticipated this condemnation. From Oswald's tenet two consequences immediately follow: viz., (1) that in Communion Catholics receive Mary as well as Christ; and (2) that in the very act of worshipping the Sacred Host, they should pay the homage of hyperdulia to the former as well as of latria to the latter. We have not a syllable to say, then, in behalf of so shocking a notion, as that our Lady's body, or any part of it, is co-present in the Eucharist. No one approved writer has ever approached to any such language; nor has Dr. Pusey the slightest vestige of foundation, for supposing that the Church has been slow or neglectful in repressing it wherever it may have appeared. It is really unworthy of him to lay stress (p. 169) on "the authority of one staying at Rome," in regard to "a belief existing among the poorer people there; "without giving his opponents any means what

* De Incarnatione, tom. ii. d. 3, s. 6, “Nullus dubitat quin tandem possint definiri."

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ever of encountering and grappling with so shadowy and indefinite a statement.*

The fact is, that Dr. Pusey has confused this tenet with another which differs from it in every relevant particular. Various Catholics have held that a certain portion of matter, which once belonged to the Blessed Virgin, now belongs unchanged to her Son; and is therefore, of course, present in the Eucharist. To this F. Faber apparently inclines, who cites in its behalf a vision of S. Ignatius. Either this or some similar tenet was accepted, as Dr. Pusey's quotations evince, by Cornelius à Lapide; by Salazar, who also quotes S. Ignatius; and probably by several others whom Dr. Pusey has not seen.† But the radical distinction between this tenet and the preceding is manifest from the fact, that this latter does not tend ever so remotely to the two practical consequences which we deduced above from the former. Now let us in the first instance assume, that the Church has pronounced no decision one way or another on this second tenet. We speak with extreme diffidence; but the bias of our own private opinion would be this:-Firstly, we should see nothing in this tenet at all unwelcome to an orthodox Catholic; but very much the contrary. Secondly, however, we are not aware of any evidence for it which can be accounted sufficient. Do you consider that this portion of matter remains unchanged by a natural law? or by a miracle? If the former, we reply that

* F. Harper (p. lxxiii.) animadverts very justly on Dr. Pusey's habit of "filling up lacuna" of argument "with hearsay and private reports, which can tell upon the credulous, but escape the possibility of exposure."

+ Mary of Agreda is one of those who held this. She mentions "illam partem Carnis et Sanguinis quæ in Isto Sacramento est, sicuti de meis visceribus illam accepit Sanctissimus Filius meus."-(Mystica Civitas, p. 3, n. 117.) In the Analecta Juris Pontificii, t. 6, pp. 2075, 2117, 2154, some criticisms of this chapter are quoted, which, as it seems to us, do not represent this part of her doctrine quite fairly. It is true that she counsels a special genuflection in honour of this particular portion of flesh; but (as every one may see who reads the chapter) it is not the worship of hyperdulia as to Mary, but the worship of latria as to Christ, which she considers its due.

A Lapide says, as quoted by Dr. Pusey himself, "that flesh of Christ, before it was detached, was the own flesh of the Blessed Virgin." Salazar adopts S. Ignatius's view, that as, according to Aristotle, the flesh of mother and son is one and the same, in receiving Christ's flesh we receive His Mother's. But of course neither S. Ignatius nor any one else ever thought that the same flesh belongs at the same time to mother and son; and S. Ignatius therefore cannot by possibility have meant anything more extreme than what we state in the text. And so Salazar concludes" Eucharistia. . . . modo jam insinuato, Deiparæ carnem et sanguinem quodammodo includit." Mr. Rhodes has done excellent service (see Weekly Register of Aug. 11) in calling attention to F. Faber's most valuable and thoughtful remarks in his work on the Blessed Sacrament, pp. 514-516.

on the contrary such a fact would be in direct opposition to the laws of nature; if the latter, we ask for evidence of the miracle. We are not aware of any evidence, except that S. Ignatius was led to this tenet by pondering on a physical opinion of Aristotle's, which every one now knows to be false; and that he afterwards considered himself to have received at Mass a "spiritual perception " in accordance with the same tenet.* It will have been observed, too, that S. Ignatius himself did not regard this unchangedness of matter as occurring by miracle, but in the ordinary way of nature. If no evidence beyond this is producible, surely it is a most precarious foundation for belief in so amazing a reversal of physical laws. Yet, thirdly, if there were ground for holding the tenet in question, the pious inferences drawn by Salazar and à Lapide seem to us apt and congruous. If it were indeed true that Catholics receive in the Eucharist flesh which once was Mary's, it may well be supposed that by this means they are drawn towards her by a certain special sympathy and attraction. It should finally be addedsince F. Harper speaks severely of Salazar as a theologian, that he in particular had no other responsibility in the matter, beyond cordially accepting the doctrine of his holy founder, S. Ignatius.

There seems, however, much reason for thinking, that even this second opinion has been authoritatively censured. F. Newman very opportunely reprints (pp. 156-159) a section from Benedict XIV.'s work on canonization. F. Faber + understands this able and most learned theologian, as merely saying that the monstrous tenet of Mary's co-presence was condemned; but Benedict XIV. certainly impresses us as making a similar statement concerning this second opinion also. See particularly his first paragraph. We need hardly say that, for ourselves, we have no doubt whatever of the opinion fully deserving any censure which may have been passed on it by a Roman congregation; that had it been condemned in their time, S. Ignatius, Salazar, and à Lapide would have heartily rejected it; and that had F. Faber considered it to have been condemned, he would have rather died than given it the slightest countenance.

It is of course, however, abundantly possible, since we differ from so very great an authority as F. Faber, that our interpetation of Benedict XIV. is totally mistaken. It is also possible, even if we rightly understand him, that he may

Quoted by F. Faber on the Blessed Sacrament, p. 514. ↑ On the Blessed Sacrament, p. 515.