felt that he had a special mission which no other man could so
adequately fulfil, and this was to establish and popularize in England
his own robust faith in the cause of the Papacy as identical with the
cause of God. There never lived a stronger Papalist. He was more
Ultramontane than the Ultramontanes. Everything Roman was to him divine.
Italian architecture, Italian vestments, the Italian mode of pronouncing
ecclesiastical Latin were dear to him, because they visibly and audibly
implied the all-pervading presence and power of Rome. Rightly or
wrongly, he conceived that English Romanism, as it was when he joined
the Roman Church, was practically Gallicanism; that it minimized the
Papal supremacy, was disloyal to the Temporal Power, and was prone to
accommodate itself to its Protestant and secular environment. Against
this time-serving spirit he set his face like a flint. He believed that
he had been divinely appointed to Papalize England. The cause of the
Pope was the cause of God; Manning was the person who could best serve
the Pope's cause, and therefore all forces which opposed him were in
effect opposing the Divine Will. This seems to have been his simple and
sufficient creed, and certainly it had the merit of supplying a clear
rule of action. It made itself felt in his hostility to the Religious
Orders, and especially the Society of Jesus. Religious Orders are
extra-episcopal. The Jesuits are scarcely subject to the Pope himself.
Certainly neither the Orders nor the Society would, or could, be subject
to Manning. A power independent of, or hostile to, his authority was
inimical to religion, and must, as a religious duty, be checked, and, if
possible, destroyed. Exactly the same principle animated his dealings
with Cardinal Newman. Rightly or wrongly, Manning thought Newman a
half-hearted Papalist. He dreaded alike his way of putting things and
his practical policy. Newman's favourite scheme of establishing a Roman
Catholic college at Oxford, Manning regarded as fraught with peril to
the faith of the rising generation. The scheme must therefore be crushed