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Updated: May 22, 2025
A poem intended to appear in the "Lyra Apostolica" but suppressed at the time in deference to the wishes of cautious friends and now published by his biographer proves that he was, as a Protestant putting it plainly would say, an advanced Mariolater. He was a thoroughgoing sacerdotalist and believer in the authority of the Church in matters of opinion.
I am quite sure He never thought of such a thing, and historical criticism of Christian origins does not leave the sacerdotalist much to stand on. Jesus appointed neither bishop nor priest, and never ordained that any merely mechanical ceremony should be the means of admission to the Christian society or be necessary to the eternal welfare of anyone.
At the same time it is important that the doctrine of the ministry should not be allowed to become "sacerdotalist" in a wrong sense. The Christian priesthood is not in possession of any magical or exclusive powers.
He is a sacerdotalist and a chess player, and suspected by many of the secret practice of the higher mathematics creditable rather than interesting things. His conversation is copious and given much to needless detail. By many, indeed, his intercourse is condemned, to put it plainly, as "boring," and such have even done me the compliment to wonder why I countenance him.
In his heart of hearts he would appear to be a fervent institutionalist, a lover of ceremonial, and a convinced sacerdotalist. To hear him use the word Catholic is to make one understand how the Church of Rome dazzles certain eyes, and to hear him claim that he is in the apostolical succession is to make one realise afresh how broad is the way of credulity.
He remonstrated vigorously against an "anti-Christian article" which crept into the Edinburgh Review; and felt, as keenly as the strongest sacerdotalist or the most fervent Evangelical, the bounden duty of defending the body of truth to which his Ordination had pledged him. It can scarcely be contested that his conceptions of that truth were, in some grave respects, defective.
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