"To you, Our invitation is a means of repairing a single small defect in a praiseworthy career."
"It shall be repaired, Holy Father."
To the others the Pope said nothing: for He saw their clean souls.
In the Sacred Consistory, the Supreme Pontiff dictated to consistorial advocates a pontifical act, denouncing the Lord Francis Talacryn, Bishop of Caerleon, as Cardinal-presbyter of the Title of the Four Holy Crowned Ones:—the Lord George Semphill as Cardinal-deacon of St. Mary-in-Broad Street:—the Lord James Sterling as Cardinal-deacon of St. Nicholas-in-the-Jail-of-Tully:—the Lord George Leighton as Cardinal-deacon of The Holy Angel-in-the-Fish-Market:—the Lord Gerald Whitehead as Cardinal-deacon of St. George-of-the-Golden-Sail:—the Lord Robert Carvale as Cardinal-deacon of St. Cosmas and St. Damian. Then the six were brought in, and sworn of the College: their heads were hatted, their fingers ringed with sapphires, their mouths were closed and opened by the Pope; and they retired in ermine and vermilion.
What their emotions were, need not be inquired. Indeed, they had little time for emotion, seeing that during the rest of the day they sat in the secret chamber, writing writing writing from Hadrian's dictation. In the evening, Whitehead and Carvale put on their old cassocks and posted a carriage-full of letters at San Silvestro. These all were sealed with the Fisherman's Ring; and, as they were addressed to kings, emperors, prime-ministers, editors of newspapers, and heads of various religious denominations, it was considered undesirable to trouble Prince Minimo, the pontifical post-master, with material for gossip. Meanwhile Hadrian and Cardinal Semphill sat in the Vatican marconigraph office alone with the operators; and the Pope dictated, while the experts' fingers expressed His words in dots and dashes in London and New York. By consequence, what His Holiness called 'the five decent newspapers' came out on the first of May with an apostolic epistle, a pontifical bull, and editorial leaders thereupon.
The world found the Epistle to All Christians very piquant, not on account of novelty, but because of the nude vivid candour with which old and trite truths were enunciated dogmatically. Christianity, the Pope proclaimed, was a great deal more than a mere ritual service. It extended to every part of human life; and its rules must regulate Christians in all matters of principle and practice. He laid great stress on the assertion of the principle of the Personal Responsibility of the Individual. It was quite unavoidable, quite incapable of being shifted on to societies or servants. Each soul would have to render its own account to its Creator. In connection with the last doctrine, He denounced as damnable nonsense the fashionable heresy which is crystallized in the Quatrains of Edward Fitzgerald,
"O Thou, Who didst with pitfall and with gin
"Beset the road I was to wander in,
"Thou wilt not, with predestined evil, round
"Enmesh; and then impute my fall to sin.
"O Thou, Who man of baser earth didst make;
"And, e'en with paradise, devise the snake;—
"For all the sin, wherewith the face of man
"Is blackened, man's forgiveness give,—and take!"
He described those lines as the whine of a whimpering coward: pertinently inquiring whether a human father would be blameable, who, having taught his boy to swim, should fling him into the sea that he might have the merit of fighting his own way to shore where the rope was ready at hand? He condemned all attempts at uniformity as unnatural crimes, because they insulted the Divine intelligence Which had deigned to differentiate His creatures. He declared that God's servants were to be known by their broad minds, generous hearts, and staunch wills.
"The Church of God is not narrow, nor 'Liberal,' but Catholic with room for all: for 'there are diversities of gifts.'"
It was the individual soul which must be saved; and it was that which was addressed in the Evangel. He considered the immense strength of the single verse,