Page:History of Freedom.djvu/31

 INTRODUCTION

XXVl1

and could not understand Döllinger's condemnation of it, or reconcile it with his previous utterances. He had great sympathy with the position of Liberal High Anglicans; but then . is not the slightest reason to suppose that he ever desired to join the English Church. Even with the old Catholic movement he had no sympathy, and dis- suaded his friends from joining it. I All forms of GalIi- canism were distasteful to Acton, and he looked to the future for the victory of his ideas. His position in the Roman Church symbolises in an acute form what may be called the soul's tragedy of the whole nineteenth century, but Acton had not the smallest inclination to follow either Gavazzi or Lamennais. I t was, in truth, the un\vavering loyalty of his churchman ship and his far-reaching historical sense that enabled him to attack with such vehemence evils which he believed to be accidental and temporary, even though they might have endured for a millennium. Long searching of the vista of history preserved Acton from the common danger of confusing the eternal with what is merely lengthy. To such a mind as his, it no more occurred to leave the Church because he disapproved some of its official pro- ced ure, than it would to an Englishman to surrender his nationality when his political opponents came into office. He distinguished, as he said Froschammer ought to have done, between the authorities and the authority of the Church. He had a strong belief in the doctrine of development, and felt that it would prove impossible in the long run to bind the Christian community to any ex- planation of the faith which should have a non-Christian or immoral tendency. He left it to time and the common

1 There is no foundation for the statement of Canon Meyrick in his Re11li- niscences, that Acton, had he lived on the Continent, would have undoubtedly become an Old Catholic. He did very largely live on the Continent, Nor did even Ðöllinger, of whom Dr, Meyrick also asserts it, ever become an adherent of that movement.