knew was that it was an Association to promote Christian Unity. Indeed, the Encyclic with which the Pope has recently astonished the world is proof positive that he could not have meant anything in particular, or known anything about the Association, when he gave that blessing.
However, the 'Vert's paper changed everything. It is absurd to deny that the tone in which he talked of the existing Roman Church, and in particular of its recent English manifestation, was, as might have been expected, uncomplimentary and aggravating, however true in Anglican eyes. To a zealous Roman Catholic his outspoken language might not unreasonably wear an even darker colour, as a deliberate attempt to check the work of God, in the reclamation one by one of individual souls from heresy to the true fold. We cannot therefore much wonder, nor, from their point of view, blame very severely the Roman Court, moved thereto it is said by Dr. Manning, and the Pope as prompted by the Court, for answering Mr. Ffoulkes by a very peremptory condemnation of the whole Association, so far as it was participated in by Roman Catholics, and by placing the Review in the Index. It is, perhaps, equally true to nature that the Association cannot see the matter in the same light, and resents the Papal condemnation, although obtained subsequently to the provoking article, as if it were inconsistent with the antecedent blessing, valeat quantum.
With all sympathy for the excellent members of the Association, placed as they are in so disagreeable a dilemma, we really think that the embranglement has its value, and may even help the object they have at heart—the visible reunion of Christendom. It is well that they should learn thus early in their career that, short of an immediate, visible, overruling miracle, the task on which they are embarked is, in its merely human aspect, the most perplexingly difficult undertaking in which the human mind ever engaged itself. An association to restore the 'Holy Roman Empire,' would be (we talk of the labour of the work, not of its utility if accomplished) a mere trifle in comparison. The reason is plain; it is an undertaking to the accomplishment of which the highest and the lowest motives alike of people, sects, and classes, are variously and discordantly, yet strongly opposed. One, as the Anglican, the Roman, and the Greek Churches are in their belief in the Creeds, in the possession of Holy Orders, and in the consequent validity of their sacraments; they are in all innumerable secondary matters—to the naked eye in short—quite different bodies, and the satisfactory adjustment of these innumerable secondary matters is an enterprise before whose difficulty the most daring and the most patient might stand
