1497. EBB to William Merry
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 8, 148–151.
50 Wimpole Street.
Jan 8. 1844.
My dear friend,
I hasten to reply to your kind letter because the matter of it will not suffer me to be more patient. [1] With all my heart I rejoice in the effect likely to follow on those wise suggestions, which the true bravery of your friendship ventured,—& with all my mind, I subscribe to the discretion of your delicacy, which wd refrain from obtruding in anything, after the good had been done. I perfectly understand the advantage of silence both on my part & yours—and I feel also that you will need no further recompense than the consciousness of having been made an instrument of doing good, either from the person benefited or from society. May God’s blessing wait upon the performance of this obvious duty of public prayer, & open out vista beyond vista of mercy & joy for our very dear friend! That she is not a unitarian I know—and I thank God she is not. For the rest, if the gospel is preached simply in the place of worship to which she is about to go, let us hope that the want of an attractive medium will not be felt very drearily by her,—& that the spirit of God will give of His beauty & fragrance to the least word. [2]
I have not referred to your personal affliction in these two pages, dear Mr Merry,—but I have thought of it all the while I was writing. [3] And my thought was,—if I may tell it,—that your reflections upon this good which you have done, must have carried a sweetness into your sadness, [4] & modified it with the most persuasive earthly comforting, there is in the world. For the species of sadness, .. I know what it is. I had heard of your affliction from Miss Mitford, & felt what the depth of it must be. Blessed are they nevertheless, who have a double lot—the consolations of Heaven, as well as the sorrows of the Earth!—& yet more blessed they, who, in addition to their personal consolations, have the privelege of giving a gift, or teaching a truth,—or suggesting a hope to their fellows,—while suffering the common lot of grief!–
And as to my being Pope Joan the second, [5] why believe me I have no manner of pretension to any such dignity,—as you wd say if you knew me better. If we do not think & feel for ourselves in matters of religion, we may as well give away our responsibility to the priest, like other Roman Catholics, & cease to call ourselves Protestant Christians—and it is very clear to me, that every man or woman of us all is bound to receive into practice, the truth he or she consciously discerns, & as he or she consciously discerns it. The true schismatic is the other he or she who shall refuse to tolerate the brother or sister in Christ, on account of his or her holding a truth or a form in a different manner from the holding of his truth or form. The Universal Church of Christ is one & indivisible—& large shd be the heart of its members, even as Christ’s heart to them all. But the churches of Christ are many,—and the ministrations of the one spirit are many [6] —and the aspects of Truth to the human mind are many indeed. Also there may be schism (according to my view of the term) within a separate church—for instance, where the members of a Baptist Church differ & divide, .. or where the members of a Church of England differ & divide, .. as in the present actual case of the Puseyites & the evangelical party. [7] But the Baptist-Christian is no schismatic towards the Church of England-Christian, nor vice versâ—nor can either be considered a schismatic towards the universal Christian Church. Do you not believe my dear friend, in the unity of the Church, pure & undivided in the midst of the sects? Is the dissenter a schismatic in your eyes, because he does not belong to your national Church, when, in Christ’s eyes, he is a member of the invisible Church? For this last position is no begging of the question as long as you admit,—as I am sure you do,—that the believer, let him be dissenter or not, is safe in Christ. [8]
Will you,—if I read about your liturgy,—read Binney’s pamphlet on “Schism” for me? [9] Will you promise to do it?
For the rest, .. what if every word of the liturgy were taken from scripture? The argument of the deduction does not favor you but the Church of Rome, to whom that liturgy belongs. Without reading any book, I will admit at once that much of the liturgy is from scripture, & that it is, .. with some reserved points for objection, .. as beautiful a liturgy as cd be written or read. But why should not we, for whom Christ died, & in whom the spirit ‘maketh intercession,’ [10] —speak to God out of the fulness of our hearts? If the spirit crieth Abba in us, [11] why shd we not cry it with our lips,—without reading a form of speech from a prayer-book. Was the publican’s prayer “a beautiful liturgy,”—either drawn from scripture or invented or arranged by men? And where many publicans meet together, who shall forbid that, all “being agreed,” they all “pray together,” [12] as well, as unitedly, as ‘you of the church’ do? I entreat you to consider these things. The mystery of Love in Unity is very little understood—our hearts are not large enough for the comprehension of the comprehensiveness of Christ’s divine Heart; and perhaps when we are free from the body, and the Heavenly surprise brightens round us, nothing will astonish us more than a perception of the real character of our former divisions. The crooked shall be straight, & the rough places plain, [13] in a new sense, yet unconceived of. You shake your head perhaps. Never mind! You will smile, perhaps, then.
In all this, I would not appear to arrogate any peculiar degree of large-heartedness to myself. We all have our prejudices—some on one subject, & some on another,—& I, consciously to myself, with the rest. Only I would aspire to Love even as to Truth,—& in speaking of Christ’s Church, I wd not lift one denomination over the head of another—I wd reverence the Churches. Also .. I am not a Baptist—but a Congregational Christian,––in the holding of my private opinions. Altogether you will be gentle,—& not call me Pope Joan any more. Shall it not be so?
And now I come to speak of Mr Reade—and one of my particular reasons for troubling you in such a hurry with Pope Joanisms, is my eagerness to explain my whole mind respecting his message to me. I am very very sorry, .. I need scarcely tell you I hope,—that Mr Reade shd lie under the impression of my being aggrieved by any word of his, or any supposed word of his—and certainly to nobody in the world, did I ever complain of his speaking such a word. The faults of my writings are unfortunately such obvious ones,—that the very poet does not deny them, & the best friends of the said poet can give no offence to her by admitting them. Will you say this from me to Mr Reade? It will convince him that if the bird in the air misapprehended the matter, he (Mr Reade) was at least wrong in supposing me offended or even ruffled or thrown into any attitude of complaint whatever, by the hypothesis of a criticism from him. Whatever I said about the hypothetical criticism, was simply historical .. only by no means intended for tradition—& I am much vexed that it shd have come to that estate. Beg Mr Reade to forget as fast as possible, everything which has been unpleasant to him in this matter, and to accept the expression of my respect in exchange for his kindness.
And this is all with which I shall trouble you for the present–
For the sake of the Truth which we both love, forgive the differences of opinion which it is as difficult for me to prevent as for you—and believe me none the less on their account. <***> [14]
Publication: Nicoll, II, 138–142.
Manuscript: Armstrong Browning Library.
1. Letter 1493.
2. The “very dear friend” is, of course, Miss Mitford. EBB must be referring to that part of Merry’s letter forwarded to Horne with letter 1495 and now lost to us.
3. Merry’s wife, Elizabeth, had died in Cheltenham on 6 December, aged 79.
4. Cf. Shelley, “Ode to the West Wind” (1820), line 61.
5. The mythical Pope Joan was first mentioned in the 13th century. She was supposed to have been born in England and enthroned as John VIII ca. 855. EBB, in her review of Wordsworth’s Poems, had commented on “the difference of dignity between the Popes and the Pope Joans” (p. 757).
6. Cf. I Corinthians, 12:8–14.
7. For comments on the identity and aims of the Puseyites and the Evangelicals, see letters 803, note 2 and 910, note 9.
8. Cf. Proverbs, 29:25.
9. Merry had urged EBB to read Bailey’s Liturgy in letter 1493; she now asks him to read Dissent Not Schism (1835) by Thomas Binney (1798–1874), a Non-Conformist minister who created a furor with his comment that “the established church is a great national evil … it destroys more souls than it saves; and therefore its end is devoutly to be wished” (DNB).
10. Romans, 8:26.
11. Cf. Romans, 8:15.
12. Cf. Amos, 3:3.
13. Isaiah, 40:4.
14. Signature excised. In Nicoll it appears as “Faithfully yours, / Elizabeth Barrett.”
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