BOOK III
F. Ignatius, a Secular Priest.

BOOK III.
F. Ignatius, a Secular Priest.

CHAPTER I.
His First Days In The Church.

Conversions to Catholicism were not such every-day occurrences, some thirty years ago, as they are now. The disabilities under which Catholics laboured politically, before 1829, made them hide their heads, except when forced into public notice by efforts to break their shackles. The religion that civilized England, and consecrated every remarkable spot in it to the service of God, had become a thing of the past, and the relics of Catholic piety that studded the land were looked upon as the gravestones of its corse, or the trophies of vanquishing Protestantism. Not only was Catholicity supposed to be dead in England, but its memory was in execration; nurses frightened the children with phantoms of monks, and mountebank preachers took their inspiration from the prejudices they had imbibed in childhood. The agitation about the Veto, and the Debates on the Catholic question, which filled the public mind about the year 1830, and for some ten years before, showed that Catholicity had not died, but only slept. The Catholics emerged from their dens and caverns; they bought and sold, spoke and listened, like their neighbours; and the King was not afraid of a Catholic ball when he took his next airing in Hyde Park. The Catholic Church had been barely given leave to eke out its declining days, with something like the indulgence allowed a condemned criminal, when, to the astonishment of all, it sprung up with new vigour, and waxed and throve in numbers and in position. It was considered worth a hearing now, and faith came by hearing to many, who would have been horrified before at opening by chance such an antichristian thing as a Catholic book. A conversion, then, rather stunned than embittered the relatives of the convert. The full tide of Tractarianism had not yet set in, and the systematic pitchforks of private persecution and stately rebuke, that were afterwards invented to stop it, were not so much as thought of. The conversion of the Honourable George Spencer happened in those peculiar times. His family were partially prepared for it, for fluctuating between so many religious opinions as he had been for so long, and earnest, too, in pushing arguments to their furthest length, it was often half suspected that he would go to Popery at last. There he was now, a child of the Catholic Church, shrived and baptized according to her ritual. His die was cast. He was fixed for ever. His wandering was at an end. With the exception of his house-keeper, who laid her down to die for sheer affliction at the news, we are not aware that many others were much moved by what they considered his defection. Doubtless, his father and the immediate family circle felt it deeply; his Protestant vagaries had caused them sleepless nights and silent afternoons, and the Church of which he became a member was not likely to seem less absurd to them than it once seemed to himself. But then he was incorrigible; there was no use talking to him; he would have his own way, and there was what it led to.

Lord Spencer was always favourable to Catholics, but it was in the spirit of generosity to a fallen, or justice to an injured people. He never dreamt his own son would be one of the first to reap the benefit of the measures he advocated in Parliament. The letter he received from Leicester in January, 1830, must have been a shock indeed. Besides, a member of this aristocratic house descending to such a level must be considered a family disgrace—an event to be wept over as long as there was one to glory in the name of Spencer, or feel for its prestige. Taking all these things into account, and many other minor considerations, it would be no wonder if Mr. Spencer was treated with harshness, and banished Althorp for ever. Nothing of the kind. His father was very considerate; and liberal, too, in making a provision for his son's future maintenance. George himself was received on friendly terms by every branch of the family, and, so far from avoiding him or mortifying him, they seemed all to have respected his sincerity. He wrote to Dr. Walsh, the Vicar Apostolic of the central district, immediately after his reception into the Church, placing himself as a subject at his lordship's disposition. Mr. Spencer's idea was to be ordained as soon as possible, and come back to his own parish to preach, like St. Paul, against his former teaching. This intention was checked by the Bishop's writing word for him to put off his first Communion a little longer, and to come and meet his Lordship in Wolverhampton towards the middle of February. This letter he received in F. Caestryck's, in Leicester, three days after his reception. He thinks the arrangement excellent. He spent a fortnight in the priest's house at Leicester, and he used often to say that this good priest's way of settling difficulties, though it might look unsatisfactory, was the very best thing that ever occurred to him. He made Mr. Spencer fully aware of the great dogma of the Church's infallibility before he received him. F. Caestryck was one of those good emigre priests who were well up in the Church's positive and moral theology, but cared very little for polemics. Whenever Mr. Spencer asked him "Why was anything such a way in Catholic teaching?" the old man simply replied: "The Church says so." This was very wise at such a time; the period for reasoning and discussion was passed, and the neophyte had to be taught to exercise the faith he had adopted now. He learnt the lesson very well, and was saved from the danger of arguing himself out of the Church again, as some do who do not leave their private judgment outside the Church-door, at their conversion.

Scarcely anything is so remarkable as the readiness with which, on his reception, he laid down all notions of his being a minister of God. One short extract from a letter to his housekeeper, enclosing money from Leicester, to pay bills, will illustrate this: "If you have an opportunity, tell those who choose to attend, that I have acknowledged the authority of the Catholic Church, and therefore resigned my ministry for the present. If they care for my advice, tell them to send for Mr. Foley (the priest at Northampton), and hear him as the minister of God." This letter was written before he was a week a Catholic, and it promises well for his future that he does not arrogate to himself the office of teacher before he is commissioned, much less before he is sufficiently instructed. Many, in their first fervour, make false steps in the way he avoided which it is often difficult to retrace. The glow of happiness at finding one's self in the Church ought to be allowed to subside, and to allow the newborn judgment to be capable of discretion, before beginning to dabble in theology.

He pays a visit to Brington in a few days, in company with F. Caestryck, and writes beforehand to his housekeeper to collect a few of his faithful listeners, that he may get them a few words of advice from a real live priest. It seems, from hints thrown out here and there in his letters, that Bishop Walsh was for his going to Rome to prepare himself for Orders. This was a drawback to his own plan, but events will show how wisely the Bishop arranged. Mr. Spencer's anxiety to be ordained at once and sent out to preach is an evidence of the strength of his faith. He imagined the Sacrament of Orders would have infused all ecclesiastical knowledge into his soul, and it was only when he had to work hard at the study of theology that he perceived the wisdom of blind submission to the judgment of his superiors. He goes to London to consult Dr. Bramston as to what he had better do, and he gives the result in a letter to Mr. Phillipps.

"London, Feb. 18, 1830.

"My Dear Ambrose,—I write from Bishop Bramston's study; he has left me there, and is gone to transact a little business in another room. I have passed through my interview with my father, and thank God for it. His kindness was very great, joined with great depth of feeling. I will tell you more of it soon, when we meet. I shall leave London on Saturday for Northampton, where I am to be at Lady Throckmorton's till Monday. I shall then proceed to Birmingham by a coach which passes through Northampton from Cambridge, at one or two o'clock. On the next day, Tuesday, I will go to Wolverhampton, where I hope to meet you, my dear brother. I shall have plenty more to tell you then. Now, let it suffice to say that all my family and Bishop Bramston are decidedly for the Roman plan. I suppose the Lord so intends it. His will be done and His glory advanced; I will be as wax in His hand. My father has made me quite comfortable for money, and in the most prudent way. Farewell, my brother, and believe me,
"Your affectionate
"George Spencer."

He expressed his gratitude, again and again, for the manner in which his family received him, especially as he knew that his late step was looked upon by them as "an unmixed evil." They were even willing to receive him as a guest wherever they might be staying except at Althorp; and, at Dr. Bramston's suggestion, he agreed to these terms, as well as made up his mind not to go to Brington again, in compliance with his father's wishes. These matters he arranged in a few days; he pensioned off one or two of his servants, he made his will about his stock of sermons, and it was, "Give them to the new incumbent, and let him do what he likes with them."

He had some difficulty in obeying his Bishop with regard to "the Roman plan," as he calls it. It was the first test of his obedience. He thought it was because the Bishop was weak enough to yield to the wishes of his family that he was sent. These wishes appeared to him to proceed from principles to which the Church's policy should not suit itself. There would be a noise made in the papers about his conversion, and his friends would have to answer questions about him in inquisitive circles. His father did not wish him to go to Brington, and he himself was most anxious to use the influence he possessed over his dependants in order to their conversion. To avoid these inconveniences and clashing of motives they desired he might be absent from England for some time. Some of his friends also thought going to Rome would make him Protestant again; for, he says in a letter written a few days after his arrival in Rome, "You see now that coming to Rome does not open my eyes and make me wish myself a Protestant again. You may tell all Protestants that I am under no charm, and if anything occurs to make me see that ours is an apostate Church, I shall not, I trust, perversely suffer my fate to be bound up with hers, and consent to die in her plagues." The public parade of Catholic ceremonial had not formerly produced the best of effects upon him, and perhaps it was expected the old feelings would be revived by seeing the same things once more.

The very reasons his friends had for detaining him might urge the Bishop to hasten his departure. His anxiety to go and preach Catholicity in Brington was not quite according to prudence, for though he might know the principal dogmas of faith and believe them firmly, he still needed that Catholic instinct and mode of thought which can nowhere be imbibed so quickly or so surely as in Rome. There are many traits of Protestant viewiness to be seen in his letters at this period, but,

"Quo semel imbuta est recens servabit odorem, Testa din."

It would not have been so easy to bring these properly into subjection whilst he had the thousand-and-one forms of Protestant errors seething around him, and would be forced by his zeal to seek out ways of making Catholic truth approach them. Where everything was Catholic to the very core, in might and majesty, was the best school for tutoring him into Catholic feelings and ideas. It was well also to let him see the force of prejudice, by making him experience in himself how differently things seem according to the state of one's mind. If he was shocked at Rome as a Protestant, it was well to let him know that it was because he was unable to understand as a Protestant what gave him so much joy and edification, when he could see with Catholic eyes.

A courier was leaving London for Ancona, and as he did not see any reason for delay, he took a seat with him, and started for Rome on the 1st March, and arrived on the 12th, the feast of St. Gregory. He contrived to make the acquaintance of Mr. Digby in Paris, and hear mass three times during his journey, which was considered a very quickly made one in those days. He also had a very pleasing interview with Cardinal Mezzofanti in passing through Bologna.

CHAPTER II.
Mr. Spencer In The English College, Rome.

On the evening of his arrival in Rome he went to the English College and presented himself to Dr. Wiseman, the late Cardinal, who was the rector. Dr. Wiseman had heard of his conversion, but did not expect to see him so soon, and while they were conversing and giving and receiving explanations, two letters arrived by post from Bishops Bramston and Walsh, which put everything in its proper place. Here then we have this distinguished convert lodged in a student's cell to prepare for receiving real Orders in due time. He gives his impressions of the college in a letter to Mr. Phillipps, written about a week after his arrival, as follows:—

"I have felt most completely comfortable and happy ever since I have been here. The life of the college is of course regular and strict. I could not have believed in the existence of a society for education such as this, half a year ago. Such discipline and obedience, united with perfect freedom and cordiality, is the fruit of the Catholic religion alone, in which we learn really to look on men as bearing rule in God's name, so that they need not keep up their influence by affectation of superiority and mysterious reserve. I do not know all the members of the college by name even yet, but, as far as I do, I can speak only in one language of them all. I have kept company principally with the rector and vice-rector, as I am not put on the footing of the ordinary students, being a convictor, that is, paying my own way, and also brought here under such peculiarity of circumstances as warrants some distinction, though I desire to make that as little as possible. I do not go with the others to the public schools, but am to study at home under Dr. Wiseman and Dr. Errington. The rules of the house I observe, and indeed so do the rectors as the rest."

The peace of sober college life could not long remain unalloyed, if it were to be lasting. Whilst Mr. Spencer was studying his Moral or Dogma by the little lamp, and unmoved except by the anxiety to read faster, in order to be sooner in the field to work for God, the world outside was not disposed to forget him. Various rumours were set afloat about Northampton concerning him; one would account for his sudden disappearance, another for his resignation of his living, a third would set about unravelling the popish plots of which he must have been a dupe. These were trifling pastimes, which could be ungrudgingly permitted for the better savouring of devout tea-parties: but surmise will not be content with all this. There was his housekeeper, who became ill immediately, and was near dying. What did that mean? Slanderous reports were set on foot, and the answer to them is the most complete refutation that could possibly be given, while it is at the same time a proof of his virtue. On May 17th, 1830, he thus writes from the English college to the housekeeper, who had mentioned the matter in a letter to him:

.... "I see that it has pleased God that you should suffer under calumny; thank God, most undeserved. It is evident that this slander affects my character as much as yours, and there is hardly a state of life to be conceived where such imputations are more injurious than a priest's; yet if all men should believe it, and I should live and die under this evil report, God forbid I should willingly repine. It would be no trial to suffer calumny, if it was not at first a painful thing; and therefore I do not wonder, nor find fault with you, at your being greatly afflicted when you were so insulted and abused as you describe; but, my dear girl, you should not have allowed this to weigh upon your mind. You have more reason to grieve for this proof of how weak your faith and love to God is, than for the slander. I think it was a mistake that you did not tell me of this at Northampton. I trust I should then and shall always rejoice, when I am counted worthy to suffer reproach for the sake of Christ; and I thank God that such is this reproach. I deserve reproach enough, it is true; and both you and I, if we look through our past lives, shall see that we deserve this and much more for our sins. Let us then learn to accept the bitter words of unfeeling men, as David did the curses of Semei, as ordered by God for our chastening, that we may be purified by them, and He will then turn their calumnies into greater honour one day or other. Though you had better have told me, as I might have helped you at once to overcome your annoyance, yet it may have been better for you to suffer it thus long, that you may learn how much you do care for character, and may henceforth give that up as well as everything besides that you love on earth. If you are so afflicted at a false reproach against you, what would your feelings have been if the Lord had seen fit to prove you, by suffering you indeed to fall; and where is your strength or mine, that we should be innocent in anything for a day, except through His grace? Just think over the matter with yourself, and let this word of advice be sufficient, and let me have the happiness of knowing that you are again what I remember you, patient, and meek, and cheerful, and allowing nothing to concern you but to please God more and more, and work out your salvation. I see by your letter, which I look at again, that you certainly would have told me of this at Northampton, had you judged for yourself, and perhaps it was right that you should act in it as you were advised. Therefore, do not take what I say now as if I had anything but the sincerest love and respect for you; I only speak to warn you of your spiritual wants, in which I partake with you. A woman's feelings are more tender, of course, under such cruel insults. When my feelings are hurt I find the same proof that I do not love God as I ought to do, and surely we never can have too much of that love. How infinitely blessed are you that you are singled out from the herd of those who prosper in the world, and have all men speaking well of them, and are permitted to walk in the way by which alone we can attain to the kingdom set before us. Remember the most blessed and glorious Virgin, Mary, of all creatures the most beloved and most worthy to be loved of God, who was saluted by an angel as full of grace, and is now in heaven, Queen of Angels, and Prophets, and Apostles, and Martyrs. How was her infinite honour of being mother of God made the occasion of most cruel suspicions against her heavenly purity. If she was content to bear this with perfect meekness and humility for God's sake, surely you may say with her, 'be it done unto me according to thy word,' whether He shall order you to bear this or any other trouble. If occasion is put before you to prove yourself undeserving of such imputations, do not neglect to use it, for God's honour, which suffers by our being supposed guilty, and for the good of your slanderers, who may be brought to repentance by a due reproof; but take no pains about it, except in prayer to God, and in examining throughout all your past ways, what may be the cause of the affliction as ordered by Him. I am sure I can hardly find anything to accuse you of. I used to delight in your conversation, and you did in mine; but, thank God, great as my sins have been, I never, I believe, said a word to wound your delicacy, and you never transgressed the bounds of respect which a servant ought to show towards a master. But those who, for their own sorrow, will not learn what the joys of spiritual friendship are, cannot understand any intimacy but that which is sensual and gross. As, therefore, I left home so suddenly, and they could not again understand the possibility that my faith should be so suddenly established, and that, for the sake of it, I was willing to give up my home, and as you showed such emotion at learning that I was to leave you, these people had no way to account for the whole matter but imputing to us shameful guilt."

From Mr. Spencer's charity before he became a Catholic we may conclude what it must have been now. It would seem that, in temporals, he had not those difficulties in the way of his conversion that beset many Protestant clergymen who depend solely on their livings. But, the sacrifices he willingly made, prove that the prospect of sheer want even would not have deterred him from following God's call. A few days after his conversion he went to see the Dominican Fathers at Hinckley, and said, in conversation, "I suppose it is not lawful for me to receive the fruits of my benefice, now that I have ceased to be a minister of the Establishment." One of them said, "Certainly not." Whereupon he asked for a sheet of paper, wrote a letter to the Protestant bishop in a few minutes, resigning his cure, and simply said, as he impressed the seal, "There goes £3,000 a year." He was then wholly dependent on his father's bounty, and if unworthy motives had had any force with Earl Spencer, his son might have found himself penniless. From the allowance granted him he received monthly whilst in Rome much more than was sufficient to pay his way in the college. It was remarked, however, that the day after he got his money he had not a farthing in his possession, and on inquiry it was found that what remained from the college pension he distributed regularly among the poor. Dr. Wiseman turned the channel of his charity to a more profitable object, knowing how much he would be imposed on by the Roman beggars, and several monuments still look fresh in the chapel of the English College, which were repaired by what remained over and above what was absolutely necessary of his income. It seems as if he never could bear to be the possessor of money; he would scruple having it about him. He was known, even when a minister, to draw money out of the bank in Northampton, and give the last sixpence of it to the poor before he got to Brington.

Before August, 1830, he received minor orders, and immediately after hears the news that Mary Wykes, his housekeeper, has become a Catholic. It is a singular fact that she took his conversion so to heart that she nearly died, and was yet the first to follow his example. She was delicate in health, of a respectable family in his parish, and Mr. Spencer acknowledges that he is under many obligations to her father. He settles an annuity of £25 or £30 a year upon her for life, and writes to her from the English College thus: "Pray to God to give you a tender devotion to her whom He loves above all creatures, and who of all creatures is the most pure, amiable, and exalted. I dare say you will have found difficulty, as I have done, in overcoming the prejudices in which we have been brought up against devotion to the Saints of God; but let this very thing make you the more diligent in asking of God to give you that devotion to them which He delights in seeing us cultivate."

On the 13th of March, Sabbato Sitientis, 1831, he received the Subdiaconate, This is the great step, as Catholics know, in the life of one destined for the priesthood. The Subdiaconate imposes perpetual celibacy, with the obligation of daily reciting the divine office, and it is then the young cleric is first styled Reverend. It is said that a few days after his receiving this sacred order, a message was sent him by his family not to become a priest, as it was feared his brother would have no issue, and George was looked to as the only source whence an heir presumptive could arise for the earldom. He simply answered, "You spoke too late," an answer he would have given whether or no, as he had long ago determined never to marry. It was at this time also he wrote, at the request of the Bishop of Oppido, the Account of my Conversion,—a work well known to English readers.

CHAPTER III.
F. Spencer Is Ordained Priest.

Father Spencer, ever since he first turned completely to the service of God, was determined to do whatever he knew to be more perfect. He did not understand serving God by halves; he thought He deserved to be loved with "all our strength, all our mind, and above all things." This he knew to be a precept, a strict command given by our divine Lord. How it was to be observed was his difficulty. He was groping in the dark hitherto, and though not making many false steps, still far from clearly seeing his way to perfection. The exactness of Catholic theology, which sifts every question to the last atom, made him meet this one face to face.

The first difficulty he had to master was the received axiom that the religious state is more perfect than the secular. He could not see how a vow, which apparently takes away a man's liberty, could increase the merit of actions done under it. As the vow of obedience is the principal one in religion, so much so that in some orders subjects are professed by promising obedience according to the rule, its explanation would remove the difficulty. Two things principally constitute the superiority of vowed actions. One, that they must be of a better good; the second, that the will is confirmed in the doing of them. A vow must be of a good better than another good—such as celibacy better than marriage, poverty better than riches, obedience to proper authority better than absolute liberty. The state of religion which takes these three walks of life as essential to its constitution is insomuch better than any other state. But the question comes, why not observe poverty, chastity, and obedience, without vowing them? "Would it not be better that the practice of these virtues should be spontaneous, than that a person should put himself under the moral necessity of not deviating from it? No; because it is a weak will which reserves to itself the right of refusing to persevere in a sacrifice. If a man intends to observe chastity, but reserves to himself the right to marry whenever he pleases, he signifies by his state of mind that he may some day repent of his choice, and makes provision for that defalcation. That is a want of generosity, it is a safety valve by which trusting to God's grace escapes, and perfection can never be attained while one has the least notion of the possibility of doing less for God than he does. "He that puts his hand to the plough and turns back is not worthy." By a vow, a person not only resolves to do for the present what is perfect, but to continue doing it for life, and as the person knows right well that his natural strength will not carry him through, he trusts the issue to God's goodness. This fixing of the will, and narrowing, as far as possible, the range of our liberty, is an assimilation of the present state to the state of the blessed. They do the will of God and cannot help doing it, they have no liberty of sinning, and the vow of obedience by which a man binds himself to do God's will, manifested to him through his superiors or his rule, takes away from him the least rational inclination for liberty to sin. Not only that, but he makes it a sin to recede from God one step, and he sacrifices to his Creator a portion of the liberty that is granted to us all. It is a sin for a man who has a vow of chastity to marry, though naturally he was perfectly free to do so. He sacrificed that freedom to God, and lest he might be inclined to backslide at any future day he put the barrier of this moral obligation behind him. The person under vow is God's peculiar property; all his actions are in a certain sense sacred, and of double merit in His sight. Be it remembered that a religious makes this sacrifice freely, and it is in this free dedication to God's service perpetually of body, soul, and possessions, without reserving the right to claim back anything for self, that the special excellence of the religious state consists.

There are several other less cogent arguments in favour of the religious state, as that without it we should not have the Evangelical virtues practised which form the principal part of the note of holiness in the Church. That it is easier to practice great virtue in a monastery than in the world, and that more religious have been canonized than seculars since the time of the martyrs.

Father Spencer came to understand that the religious state is more perfect than the secular, though he knew that many seculars are far more perfect than some religious, but one point he could never get over, and that was since vows undoubtedly do raise the merit of one's actions, why cannot people take and observe vows without shutting themselves up within the walls of a convent? He consulted many grave theologians, doctors, and even cardinals, for the solution of this problem. He was told, to be sure, that it was quite possible in the abstract to have a people observing vows, but that in practice it proved to be chimerical and Utopian. What is possible can be done, was his maxim, and he resolved to begin with himself. He was told by Dr. Wiseman and Cardinal Weld that he seemed to have a religious vocation. He wrote accordingly to his diocesan, Dr. Walsh, who dissuaded him from becoming a religious by saying that, though it was a better state, a secular priest could be more useful in England. Others differed from this opinion, but F. Spencer heard in it the voice of his Superior, and resolved to obey it for the present. This settled matters for the time, but his view could never be got out of his head. He gets thoroughly engrossed now with his approaching ordination. It grieves him to see souls lost in heresy and sin in a way that few grieve; for, the concern he felt for the spiritual destitution of his country began to tell upon his health. It is feared he will die; he begins to spit blood, and several consumptive symptoms alarm his physicians. He is removed to Fiumicino, and writes a long letter from his sick bed there to Mr. Phillipps. In this letter he hopes his friend may be caught into the Church like his patron, St. Ambrose. Here we have the first evidence of his getting thoroughly into a Catholic way of thinking. Nothing strikes a cold, careful, Catholic, who has been brought up in a Protestant atmosphere, so much as the wonderful familiarity of Spanish and Italian boys with the lives of the Saints. They quote a Saint for everything, and they can tell you directly how St. Peter of Alcantara would season his dinner, or how St. Rose of Lima would make use of ornaments. Father Spencer has paragraphs in every letter at this time full of hints taken from Saints' lives, showing that he evidently gave a great portion of his time to learn ascetic theology in these remarkable volumes. He is wishing also that Mr. Digby should become a priest, but in both cases he was doomed to be disappointed so far, though both his friends graced, by their virtues, the state of life in which they remained. He was ordained Deacon on the 17th December, Quater tense, 1831; and on the 26th of May, 1832, two years and four months after his reception into the Church, he was ordained Priest by Cardinal Zurla. He thus writes to Mr. Phillipps on the event: "I made my arrangements directly (on being called off suddenly to England) for ordination to the priesthood on St. Philip Neri's Day, and saying my first mass on the day following, which was Sunday. How will you sympathise with my joy when, in the middle of my retreat, Dr. Wiseman told me, what none of us had observed at first, that the 26th May was not only St. Philip's feast at Rome, but in England that of St. Augustine, our Apostle, and that he should ask Cardinal Zurla to ordain me in St. Gregory's Church, which his Eminence did. It was at St. Gregory's only that we learned from the monks that the next day was the deposition of Venerable Bede."

The coincidences are really remarkable with regard to his destination for the English mission. He was born on the feast of the Apostle St. Thomas; he arrived in Rome, as a Catholic, on the feast of St. Gregory; he was ordained on the feast of St. Augustine of Canterbury; he said his first mass of St. Bede, by special leave from the Pope, on that Saint's day. He was ordained by a Cardinal of the Camaldolese branch of the Benedictine Order, to which St. Augustine belonged; and he got the blessing and commission of Pope Gregory XVI., a member of the same order; and under all these auspices set out directly for England.

During his stay in Rome he made the acquaintance of our Father Dominic. This was a great happiness to him. Father Dominic was on fire for the conversion of England, and Father Spencer echoed back, with additions, every sentiment of his zealous soul. They spoke together, they wrote to each other, they got devout people to pray, and prayed themselves every day, for the conversion of England. We cannot know how far prayers go, we only know that the continual prayer of the just man availeth much; and therefore, it might not seem safe reasoning, to attribute effects that can be traced to other causes to the prayers of some devout servants of God. Without attempting to assign causes, we cannot help remarking the fact that these two holy souls began to pray, and enlist others in praying, for England's conversion in 1832, and that the first number of the "Tracts for the Times" appeared before the end of 1833. Neither of them had anything to do with the Tracts, if we except a few letters from Father Dominic in a Belgian newspaper, as writers or suggestors of matter; but both took a deep interest in them, and fed their hopes, as each appeared more Catholic than the one before. He spends a week with Father Dominic in Lucca, on his way to England, and in Geneva happened one of those interesting events with which his life was chequered. He thus tells it in a letter to the Catholic Standard in 1853:—

"I went one day, at Genoa (see Chap. IX., Bk. i.), in 1820, to see the great relics in the treasury of the Cathedral. Relics, indeed, were little to me; but to get at these, three keys from various first-rate dignitaries, ecclesiastical and civil, were necessary. This was enough to make a young English sight-seer determined to get at them. A young priest, the sacristan of the Cathedral, received me and the party I had made up to accompany me, and showed us the precious treasures. I did nothing but despise; and yet why should I, or other Protestants, look on it as a kind of impossibility that any relic can be genuine? However, so I did; and I let the sacristan plainly know it. Yet he was not vexed. Nay, he treated me with great affection, and said, among other things, 'The English are a worthy, good people, brava nazione; if only it had not been for that moment, that unhappy moment!' 'What moment do you mean?' said I. 'Ah! surely,' he replied, 'when Henry VIII. resolved on revolting against the Church.' I did not answer, but I thought within myself, 'Poor man, what ignorance! what infatuation! And what were my thoughts of that moment of which he spoke? My thoughts on this head had been formed in my young days, and, oh! how deep are first young thoughts allowed to take firm root undisturbed! When I was a child"——

Here he relates the discourse of his sisters' governess about the English Reformation, given in a former chapter. "When, accordingly, the Genoese priest thus spoke I thought, Poor, blind man! little he knows what England gained at that same moment for which he pities it. ... I cannot but add to this last circumstance, that twelve years later I was returning from Rome—a priest! I came by sea. Stopping one day in the harbour of Genoa, I went on shore to say mass at the Cathedral, and found the same priest still at the head of the sacristy—the same benign features I saw, but somewhat marked with age. I asked him did he remember and recognise the young English disputer? O altitudo! .... And is it I whom they would expect to give up my poor countrymen for hopeless? No! leave this to others, who have not tasted like me the fruits of the tender mercies of God."

As soon as he arrived in England, he went to see his family, who were in Ryde for the summer, according to their custom. He was cordially welcomed; but it must seem a cold thing for a newly-ordained priest to come to a home where not a brother or sister would kneel to get his blessing, nor father nor mother be in ecstacy of joy at hearing him say mass for the first time. This was in July, 1832. Early in August he met several priests at Sir Edward Doughty's, Upton House, Dorsetshire; and Lady Doughty says:—"Mr. Spencer greatly edified all who then met him by his humility, fervour, and earnest desire for the conversion of England. On the 11th of August he left Upton, accompanied by Dr. Logan, for Prior Park. On that morning, as the coach from Poole passed at an early hour, Mr. Spencer engaged one of the men servants to serve his mass at five o'clock. The servant went to call him soon after four, but finding the room apparently undisturbed, he proceeded to the little domestic chapel, and there he found Mr. Spencer prostrate before the altar in fervent prayer, and he then rose and said mass; the servant's conviction being, that he had been there in prayer all night."

An incident occurred, as Father Spencer was passing through Bordeaux on his way to England, which deserves especial mention, if only to recall the droll pleasure he used to experience himself, and create in others, while relating it. He met there a great, big, fat convert, who had just made his abjuration and been baptised. Father Spencer questioned him about his first communion, and the trouble of preparing himself "in his then state of body" seemed an awful exertion. However, after a great deal of what the gentleman termed "painful goading," Father Spencer succeeded in bringing him to the altar. The fat gentleman sat him down afterwards to melt in the shade of a midsummer June day in Bordeaux, grumbling yet delighted at the exertion he had made. The Bishop of Bordeaux was giving confirmation in some of the churches in the town, and Father Spencer thought he should not lose the opportunity of getting his fat friend to the sacrament. He knew how hateful exertion of any kind was to the neophyte, who, though he believed all the Catholic doctrines in a kind of a heap, was not over-inclined for works of supererogation. He resolved to do what he could. He went to him, and boldly told him that he ought to prepare himself for confirmation. "What!" exclaimed the gentleman, making an effort to yawn, "have I not done yet? Is there more to be got through before I am a perfect Catholic? Oh, dear!" And he moved himself. He was brought through, however, to the no small inconvenience of himself and others, and many was the moral Father Ignatius pointed afterwards with this first essay of his in missionary work.

At Prior Park, Father Spencer met Dr. Walsh, and he was appointed to begin a new mission in West Bromwich; he sets about it immediately, and gets an altar for it from Lord Dormer in Walsall. He met Dr. Wiseman, who came to England about this time, and they are both invited by Earl Spencer to spend a day at Althorp. The Earl was charmed with Dr. Wiseman, and Father Spencer exclaims, in a letter, "What a grand point was this! A Catholic priest, and a D.D., rector of a Catholic college, received with distinction at a Protestant nobleman's!" He met some of his old parishioners, and was welcomed by them with love and kind remembrances. His church in West Bromwich was opened on the 21st November, 1832, and he was settled down as a Catholic pastor near where he hunted as a Protestant layman, and preached heresy as a Protestant minister.

CHAPTER IV.
F. Spencer Begins His Missionary Life.

Far different is the position on which Mr. Spencer enters towards the close of 1832, from that which he was promoted to in 1825. Then he took the cure of souls with vague notions of his precise duty; now he took the cure of souls as a clearly defined duty, for the fulfilment of which he knew he should render a severe account. Then he received a large income from the bare fact of his being put in possession of his post; now he has to expend even what he has in trying to provide a place of worship for his flock. Then, there were eight hundred souls under his charge, most of them wealthy and comfortable, and all looking up to him with respect for being his father's son; now he could scarcely count half that number as his own, scattered among hovels and garrets; amid their more opulent neighbours, who mocked him for being a priest. He then dwelt with pleasure on his rich benefice, and on the rising walls of his handsome rectory; now he prayed the bishop to put him into the poorest mission in the diocese, and delighted in being housed like the poor. The life he led as a priest in West Bromwich is worthy of the ancient solitaries. He began by placing all his property in the bishop's hands, and his lordship appointed an Econome, who gave him now and again such sums as he needed to keep himself alive, give something to the poor, and supply his church with necessaries. He keeps an account of every farthing he spends, and shows it to the Bishop at the end of the quarter, to see if his lordship approves, or wishes anything to be retrenched for the future. His ordinary course of life was—rise at six, Meditation Office and Mass, hear some confessions, and, after breakfast, at ten, go out through the parish until six, when he came home to dinner, and spent the time that was left till supper in instructing catechumens, reading, praying, or writing. He had no luxuries, no comforts, he scarcely allowed himself any recreation, except in doing pastoral work. He leaves two rooms of his little house unfurnished, and says he has something else to do with the money that might be thus spent. Much as he loved Mr. Phillipps, he did not go to see him after his marriage, because he thought it was not necessary to spend money in that way which could alleviate the poverty of a parishioner; and because he did not like to be a day absent from his parish work as long as God gave him strength. During the first year of his residence at West Bromwich he opens three schools; one of them had been a pork-shop, and was bought for him by a Catholic tradesman. Here he used to come and lecture once or twice a week, and is surprised and pleased to find a well-ordered assembly ready to listen to him. He says in a letter at this time: "I go to bed weary every night, and enjoy my sleep more than great people do theirs; for it is the sleep of the labourer." He is rather sanguine in his hopes of converting Protestants; but, although he receives a good many into the Church, he finds error more difficult to root out than he imagined. He bears up, however, and a letter to Mr. Phillipps will tell us what he thought; he says: "Keep England's conversion always next your heart. It is no small matter to overturn a dynasty so settled and rooted as that of error in this country; and how are we possibly to expect that we shall be made instruments to effect this, unless we become in some measure conformable to the characters of the Saints who have done such things before us? Yet let us not give up the undertaking, for as, on the one hand, no one has succeeded without wonderful labour and patience, so, on the other, none ever has failed when duly followed up. Let us not be discouraged by opposition, but work the more earnestly: and as we see people about some hard bodily exertion begin with their clothes on, but, when they find the difficulty of their job, strip first the coat, then the waistcoat, then turn up their sleeves, and so on, we must do the same. God does not give success at once, because He wishes us better than to remain as we are, fettered and attached to the world. If we succeeded before all this encumbrance is stripped off, we should certainly not get rid of it afterwards." He did "turn up his sleeves," and toil, no doubt, at converting his neighbours; he opened a new mission in Dudley towards the Christmas of 1833; he first began in an old warehouse, which he fitted up with a chapel and seats, and turned one or two little houses adjoining into a sacristy and sitting-room for the priest who might come there to officiate.

He goes on in this even course for the whole of the two first years of his life in West Bromwich, without any striking event to bring one part more prominently forward than another. His every day work was not, however, all plain sailing; in proportion as his holiness of life increased the reverence Catholics began to conceive for him, it provoked the persecution and contempt of the Protestants. He was pensive generally, and yet had a keen relish for wit and humour. He was one day speaking with a brother priest in his sacristy, with sad earnestness, about the spiritual destitution of the poor people around him, who neither knew God, nor would listen to those who were willing to teach them. A poor woman knocked at the sacristy door, and was ordered to come in; she fell on her knees very reverently, to get Father Spencer's blessing, as soon as she approached him. His companion observed that this poor woman reminded him of the mother of the sons of Zebedee, who came to Our Saviour adorans. "Yes," replied Father Spencer, with a very arch smile, "and not only adorans, but petens aliquid ah eo" Such was his usual way; he would season his discourse on the most important subject—even go a little out of his way for that purpose—with a pointed anecdote, or witty remark.

All did not feel inclined to follow the old woman's example in the first part of the above scene, though many were led to do so through their love and practice of the second. A person sent us the following letter, who still lives on the spot that was blessed by this holy priest's labours, and as it bears evidence to some of the statements we have made from other sources, it may be well to give it insertion:—

"I was one of his first converts at West Bromwich, and a fearful battle I had; but his sublime instructions taught me how to pray for the grace of God to guide me to his true Church. He was ever persecuted, and nobly overcame his enemies. I remember one morning when he was going his accustomed rounds to visit the poor and sick, he had to pass a boys' school, at Hill Top; they used to hoot after him low names, but, seeing he did not take any notice, they came into the road and threw mud and stones at him; he took no notice. Then they took hold of his coat, and ripped it up the back. He did not mind, but went on all day, as usual, through Oldbury, Tipton Oudley, and Hill Top, visiting his poor people. He used to leave home every morning, and fill his pockets with wine and food for the poor sick, and return home about six in the evening, without taking any refreshment all day, though he might have walked twenty miles in the heat of summer. One winter's day he gave all his clothes away to the poor, except those that were on him. He used to say two Masses on Sunday, in West Bromwich, and preach. I never saw him use a conveyance of any kind in his visits through his parish."

It could not be expected that the newspapers would keep silence about him. He gets a little in that way, which he writes about, as follow:—"Eliot (an apostate) has been writing in divers quarters that I know of, and I dare say in many others (for he was very fond of letter-writing), the most violent abuse of the Catholic Church, and of all her priests, excepting me, whom he pities as a wretched victim of priest-craft. I still hope there is some strange infatuation about him which may dissipate, and let him return; but if not, the Church has ramparts enough to stand his battering, and I am not afraid of my little castle being shaken by him. I feel desirous rather than not that he should publish the worst he can about me and mine in the Protestant papers. It will help to correct us of some faults, and bring to light, perhaps, at the same time, something creditable to our cause."

He must have felt the extraordinary change in his state of mind and duty now to what he experienced some four or five years before. There are no doubts about doctrines, nor difficulties about Dissenters; his way is plain and clear, without mist or equivocal clause; there is but one way for Catholics of being united with heretics—their unconditional submission to the Church. There is no going half-way to meet them, or sacrificing of principles to soothe their scruples; either all or none—the last definition of the Council of Trent, as well as the first article of the Apostles' Creed. If he has difficulties about any matter, he will not find Bishops giving him shifting answers, and seemingly ignorant themselves of what is the received interpretation of a point of faith. He will be told at once by the next priest what is the doctrine of the Church, and if he refuses to assent to it he ceases to be a Catholic. This looks an iron rule in the Church of God, and those outside her cannot understand how its very unbending firmness consoles the doubtful, cheers the desponding, strengthens the will and expands and nourishes the intellect.

A priest has many consolations in his little country parish that few can understand or appreciate. It is not the number and efficiency of his schools, the round of his visits, or the frequency of his instructions. No; it is the offering of the Victim of Salvation every morning for his own and his people's sins, and it is the conveying the precious blood of his Saviour to their souls, through the Sacraments he administers. Only a priest can understand what it is to feel that a creature kneels before him, steeped in vice and sin, and, after a good confession, rises from his knees, restored to God's grace and friendship. All his labours have this one object—the putting of his people into the grace of God, and keeping them in it until they reach to their reward. There is a reality in all this which faith alone can give that makes him taste and feel the good he is doing. A reality that will make him fly without hesitation to the pestilential deathbed, and glory in inhaling a poison that may end his own days, in the discharge of his duty. He must be ever ready to give his life for his sheep, not in fancy or in words, but in very deed, and thus seal by his martyrdom both the truth which he professes, and his love for the Master whom he has been chosen to serve.

The number of priests who die every year, and the average of a missionary priest's life, prove but too clearly how often the sacrifice is accepted.