Sermons of the Rev. Francis A. Baker, Priest of the Congregation of St. Paul: With a Memoir of His Life — John Shaqi
Sermons of the Rev. Francis A. Baker, Priest of the Congregation of St. Paul: With a Memoir of His LifeBaker, Francis A. (Francis Aloysius)
Religion
Sermons of the Rev. Francis A. Baker, Priest of the Congregation of St. Paul: With a Memoir of His Life
Baker, Francis A. (Francis Aloysius)
Baker, Francis A. (Francis Aloysius), 1820-1865; Catholic Church -- Sermons; Sermons, American -- 19th century
The progressive portion of those who were engaged in the Oxford
movement saw and felt all this, and, therefore, in a strict
consistency with their Catholic principles, and by a logical
necessity, they advanced in a Romeward direction. It has been
necessary to make this long explanation in order to show how
matters stood at the time when Mr. Baker and myself were
connected with the ecclesiastical movement in Baltimore, under
Bishop Whittingham. The Oxford movement was then ten years old.
The celebrated Ninetieth Tract, in which Mr. Newman took the
ground that several Roman dogmas were permitted by the
Thirty-nine Articles, and that the Articles were to be explained
according to the Catholic sense of the general body of the
Universal Church, had been some time published, and the
controversy excited by it was nearly completed. Mr. Newman was
about resigning St. Mary's, and soon after went into retirement
at Littlemore. A great number of the ablest writers of his party
had advanced very far beyond the position taken by the earlier
Oxford Tracts, and by Palmer, Percival, Keble, and others, at the
outset. In the United States, the ordination of the Rev. Arthur
Carey had taken place, under circumstances of the most peculiar
character, which deserve a passing notice.
Arthur Carey was a young student of the New York Theological
Seminary, barely twenty years of age, of an English family, and
descended from several bishops of the English Church. He was a
youth of rare intellectual gifts and acquirements, as well as of
the most gentle and lovely character. Bishop Whittingham, who had
been his preceptor, said that he possessed the wisdom of a man of
fifty.
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In some way, the suspicions of a number of the principal Low
Church rectors had been excited in regard to him, and he was
subjected to a most rigorous examination for orders, in which he
manifested his profound theological science and his brilliant
parts, together with a magnanimity of spirit which won for him a
wide-spread admiration, especially among all High Church
Episcopalians. In the course of his examination, he avowed the
most advanced opinions of the Oxford party, and expressed his
belief in the sound orthodoxy of the decrees of the Council of
Trent. He was violently attacked by some members of the examining
committee, and defended by others, the majority finally
recommending him for ordination. Bishop Onderdonk determined to
ordain him, and was proceeding in the ceremony of ordination,
when he was interrupted by two doctors of divinity in gowns, who
publicly protested against the ordination, and then left the
church. Bishop Whittingham urged him very strongly, after his
ordination, to come to his diocese, which he declined doing.
About this time, I read, in manuscript, a beautiful philosophical
essay on Transubstantiation, which he wrote, according to the
system of Leibniz, proving the futility of all the rational
arguments urged against it. The circumstances of his ordination
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