PATTISON\'S ESSAYS[28]

  [28]
  Essays by the late Mark Pattison, sometime Rector of Lincoln
  College. Collected and arranged by Henry Nettleship, M.A., Corpus
  Professor of Latin in the University of Oxford. Guardian, 1st May
  1889.

This is a very interesting but a very melancholy collection of papers. They are the remains of the work of a man of first-rate intellect, whose powers, naturally of a high order, had been diligently and wisely cultivated, whose mind was furnished in a very rare degree with all that reading, wide and critical, could give, and which embraced in the circle of its interest all that is important to human life and society. Mr. Pattison had no vulgar standard of what knowledge is, and what goodness is. He was high, sincere, exacting, even austere, in his estimates of either; and when he was satisfied he paid honour with sometimes unexpected frankness and warmth. But from some unfortunate element in his temperament, or from the effect upon it of untoward and unkindly circumstances at those critical epochs of mental life, when character is taking its bent for good and all, he was a man in whose judgment severity—and severity expressing itself in angry scorn—was very apt to outrun justice. Longing for sympathy and not ill-fitted for it, capable of rare exertions in helping those whom he could help, he passed through life with a reputation for cynicism which, while he certainly exhibited it, he no less certainly would, if he had known how, have escaped from. People could easily tell what would incur his dislike and opposition, what would provoke his slow, bitter, merciless sarcasm; it was never easy to tell what would satisfy him, what would attract his approval, when he could be tempted to see the good side of a thing. It must not be forgotten that he had gone through a trial to which few men are equal. He had passed from the extreme ranks and the strong convictions of the Oxford movement—convictions of which the translation of Aquinas\'s Catena Aurea, still printed in the list of his works, is a memorial—to the frankest form of Liberal thought. As he himself writes, we cannot give up early beliefs, much less the deep and deliberate convictions of manhood, without some shock to the character. In his case the change certainly worked. It made him hate what he had left, and all that was like it, with the bitterness of one who has been imposed upon, and has been led to commit himself to what he now feels to be absurd and contemptible, and the bitterness of this disappointment gave an edge to all his work. There seems through all his criticism, powerful as it is, a tone of harshness, a readiness to take the worst construction, a sad consciousness of distrust and suspicion of all things round him, which greatly weakens the effect of his judgment. If a man will only look for the worst side, he will only find the worst side; but we feel that we act reasonably by not accepting such a teacher as our guide, however ably he may state his case. There is a want of equitableness and fairness in his stern and sometimes cruel condemnations; and yet not religion only, but the wisest wisdom of the world tells of the indispensable value of this equitableness, this old Greek virtue of [Greek: epieikeia], in our views of men and things. It is not religion only, but common sense which says that "sweetness and light," kindliness, indulgence, sympathy, are necessary for moral and spiritual health. Scorn, indignation, keenly stinging sarcasm, doubtless have their place in a world in which untruth and baseness abound and flourish; but to live on these is poison, at least to oneself.

These fierce antipathies warped his judgment in strange and unexpected ways. Among these papers is a striking one on Calvin. If any character in history might be expected to have little attraction for him it is Calvin. Dogmatist, persecutor, tyrant, the proud and relentless fanatic, who more than any one consecrated harsh narrowness in religion by cruel theories about God, what was there to recommend him to a lover of liberty who had no patience for ecclesiastical pretensions of any kind, and who tells us that Calvin\'s "sins against human liberty are of the deepest dye"? For if Laud chastised his adversaries with whips, Calvin chastised his with scorpions. Perhaps it is unreasonable to be suprised, yet we are taken by surprise, when we find a thinker like Mr. Pattison drawn by strong sympathy to Calvin and setting him up among the heroes and liberators of humanity. Mr. Pattison is usually fair in details, that is, he does not suppress bad deeds or qualities in those whom he approves, or good deeds or qualities in those whom he hates: it is in his general judgments that his failing comes out. He makes no attempt to excuse the notorious features of Calvin\'s rule at Geneva; but Mr. Pattison reads into his character a purpose and a grandeur which place him far above any other man of his day. To recommend him to our very different ways of thinking, Mr. Pattison has the courage to allege that his interest in dogmatic theology was a subordinate matter, and that the "renovation of character," the "moral purification of humanity," was the great guiding idea of him who taught that out of the mass of human kind only a predestined remnant could possibly be saved. It is a singular interpretation of the mind of the author of the Institutes:—

The distinction of Calvin as a Reformer is not to be sought in the doctrine which now bears his name, or in any doctrinal peculiarity. His great merit lies in his comparative neglect of dogma. He seized the idea of reformation as a real renovation of human character. The moral purification of humanity as the original idea of Christianity is the guiding idea of his system…. He swept away at once the sacramental machinery of material media of salvation which the middle-age Church had provided in such abundance, and which Luther frowned upon, but did not reject. He was not satisfied to go back only to the historical origin of Christianity, but would found human virtue on the eternal antemundane will of God.

Again:—

Calvin thought neither of fame or fortune. The narrowness of his views and the disinterestedness of his soul alike precluded him from regarding Geneva as a stage for the gratification of personal ambition. This abegnation of self was one great part of his success.

And then Mr. Pattison goes on to describe in detail how, governed and possessed by one idea, and by a theory, to oppose which was "moral depravity," he proceeded to establish his intolerable system of discipline, based on dogmatic grounds—meddlesome, inquisitorial, petty, cruel—over the interior of every household in Geneva. What is there fascinating, or even imposing, in such a character? It is the common case of political and religious bigots, whether Jacobin, or Puritan, or Jesuit, poor in thought and sympathy and strong in will, fixing their yoke on a society, till the plague becomes unbearable. He seeks nothing for himself and, forsooth, he makes sacrifices. But he gets what he wants, his idea carried out; and self-sacrifice is of what we care for, and not of what we do not care for. And to keep up this supposed character of high moral purpose, we are told of Calvin\'s "comparative neglect of dogma," of his seizing the idea of a "real reformation of human character," a "moral purification of humanity," as the guiding idea of his system. Can anything be more unhistorical than to suggest that the father and source of all Western Puritan theology "neglected dogma," and was more of a moralist than a divine? It is not even true that he "swept away at once the sacramental machinery" of mediaeval and Lutheran teaching; Calvin writes of the Eucharist in terms which would astonish some of his later followers. But what is the reason why Mr. Pattison attributes to the historical Calvin so much that does not belong to him, and, in spite of so much that repels, is yet induced to credit him with such great qualities? The reason is to be found in the intense antipathy with which Mr. Pattison regarded what he calls "the Catholic reaction" over Europe, and in the fact that undoubtedly Calvin\'s system and influence was the great force which resisted both what was bad and false in it, and also what was good, true, generous, humane. Calvinism opposed the "Catholic reaction" point-blank, and that was enough to win sympathy for it, even from Mr. Pattison.

The truth is that what Popery is to the average Protestant, and what Protestant heresy is to the average Roman Catholic, the "Catholic reaction," the "Catholic revival" in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and in our own, is to Mr. Pattison\'s final judgment. It was not only a conspiracy against human liberty, but it brought with it the degradation and ruin of genuine learning. It is the all-sufficing cause and explanation of the mischief and evil doings which he has to set before us. Yet after the violence, the ignorance, the injustice, the inconsistencies of that great ecclesiastical revolution which we call by the vague name of Reformation, a "Catholic reaction" was inevitable. It was not conceivable that common sense and certain knowledge would submit for ever to be overcrowed by the dogmas and assertions of the new teachers. Like other powerful and wide and strongly marked movements, like the Reformation which it combated, it was a very mixed thing. It produced some great evils and led to some great crimes. It started that fatal religious militia, the Jesuit order, which, notwithstanding much heroic self-sacrifice, has formed a permanent bar to all possible reunion of Christendom, has fastened its yoke on the Papacy itself, and has taught the Church, as a systematic doctrine, to put its trust in the worst expedients of human policy. The religious wars in France and Germany, the relentless massacres of the Low Countries and the St. Bartholomew, the consecration of treason and conspiracy, were, without doubt, closely connected with the "Catholic reaction." But if this great awakening and stimulating influence raised new temptations to human passion and wickedness, it was not only in the service of evil that this new zeal was displayed. The Council of Trent, whatever its faults, and it had many, was itself a real reformation. The "Catholic revival" meant the rekindling of earnest religion and care for a good life in thousands of souls. If it produced the Jesuits, it as truly produced Port Royal and the Benedictines. Europe would be indeed greatly the poorer if it wanted some of the most conspicuous products of the Catholic revival.

It is Mr. Pattison\'s great misfortune that through obvious faults of temper he has missed the success which naturally might have seemed assured to him, of dealing with these subjects in a large and dispassionate way. Scholar, thinker, student as he is, conversant with all literature, familiar with books and names which many well-read persons have never heard of, he has his bitter prejudices, like the rest of us, Protestants or Catholics; and what he hates is continually forcing itself into his mind. He tells, with great a............