THE following pages contain five articles reprinted from the Tablet newspaper. To explain their purport it will be enough to say that the Guardian newspaper of September 17 published a correspondence between the Rev. Dr. Nicholson, a clergyman of the Church of England, and the Rev. F. Guiron, Secretary to the Archbishop of Westminster. Dr. Nicholson charged the Archbishop with heresy; and so far as his letters are comprehensible, the charge ranges over the following heads: 1. That the Archbishop had declared the Sacred Humanity to be deified; i.e. changed into God; or made 'God.' 2. That he had separated it from the Divinity and set it up as a deified object of separate worship: a 'quasi God,' as Dr. Nicholson calls it. 3. That he had thereby taught at one and the same time two heresies, namely, Nestorianism, which makes two Persons in Christ, and that thereby he fell under the anathema of the Fifth General Council, and Eutychianism, which taught that the human nature was so absorbed into the Divine, that there were no longer two natures but one only in Christ. It may seem wonderful that Dr. Nicholson as a Christian should have thought the first proposition to be a possible error in a human mind, even of a Romanist. That he should have accused anybody of two heresies which mutually and by necessity exclude each other, and cannot possibly be found in the same mind, howsoever heretical, would be wonderful to any one who has not read Dr. Nicholson's letters. But perhaps even they will wonder no longer after they have read the following pages. October 25, 1873. DR. NICHOLSON'S ACCUSATION OF THE ARCHBISHOP OF WESTMINSTER. SEPTEMBER 1873. 'Improbatio hæreticorum facit eminere quid Ecclesia Tua sentiat, et quid habeat sana doctrina.' S. AUG. Conf. lib. vii. c. xix. FIRST ARTICLE. THE RASHNESS OF THE 'GUARDIAN.' THE Guardian is beside itself with joy in the belief, that the Archbishop of Westminster has been trapped in a theological error condemned by an Ecumenical Council. The Guardian has been deceived by Dr. Nicholson, an Anglican minister, who appears to be the first to rake this moon out of the pond. The Archbishop, in preaching at the Pro-Cathedral, had stated two things: first, that the human heart of Jesus was deified by union with His Godhead; and, secondly, that it is therefore an object of divine worship. On this Mr. Nicholson, unconsciously perhaps, following the Jansenists, affirmed that by this doctrine the Archbishop introduced two adorations to the two natures separately, and had thereby fallen under the condemnation of the Fifth Ecumenical Council. We would therefore propose to the Guardian and to its theologian the following question: The Sacred Heart of Jesus, is it or is it not an object of divine worship? If the answer be, It is: then the Archbishop is justified out of the mouth of the Guardian. If the answer be, It is not: then the Guardian and its theology fall into the very pit which it dug for the Archbishop of Westminster. If the Sacred Heart of Jesus be not an object of divine worship, such divine worship can only be denied to it by asserting one or more of the following heresies: First, that the Sacred Humanity had a human personality of its own; which is the heresy of Nestorius, condemned by this same Fifth Ecumenical Council; or, Secondly, that the personality of the Son is inferior to the Father, which is the heresy of Arius; or, Thirdly, that the Sacred Heart of Jesus is not hypostatically and indissolubly united to the Person of the Eternal Word, and that it is not the Heart of the Incarnate Word in such wise as to entitle it to a communication and participation of the divine worship due to the Word as God. Now, even if this were true, the Guardian and its teachers will not say that the Sacred Humanity is not worthy of some honour, even if inferior to divine worship, of whatsoever degree and kind it may be. And this is precisely the heresy which the Fifth Council anathematises. This is precisely the bringing in of 'two natures, to be honoured separately, with two adorations.' How was it that the Guardian, in its haste to assail a Catholic Bishop, did not at least see that it was |