significance of John iii. 8.[1] "I admit," Mr. Gladstone wrote, "that the words might in some way be satisfied by supposing our Lord simply to mean 'the facts of nature are unintelligible, therefore be not afraid if revealed truths be likewise beyond the compass of the understanding'; but this seems to me a meagre meaning." Such considerations could hold him no longer, and Manning executed the resignation of his office and benefice before a public notary. Soon afterwards, in the little chapel off Buckingham Palace Road, kneeling beside Mr. Gladstone, he worshipped for the last time as an Anglican. Thirty years later the Cardinal told how, just before the Communion service commenced, he turned to his friend with the words: "I can no longer take the Communion in the Church of England." "I rose up, and laying my hand on Mr. Gladstone's shoulder, said 'Come.' It was the parting of the ways. Mr. Gladstone remained; and I went my way. Mr. Gladstone still remains where I left him."
On April 6th, 1851, the final step was taken: Manning was received into the Roman Catholic Church. Now at last, after the long struggle, his mind was at rest. "I know what you mean," he wrote to Robert Wilberforce, "by saying that one sometimes feels as if all this might turn out to be only another 'Land of Shadows.' I have felt it in time past, but not now. The θεολογία from Nice to St. Thomas Aquinas, and the undivided unity suffused throughout the world, of which the Cathedra Petri is the centre,—now 1800 years old, mightier in every power now than ever, in intellect, in science, in separation from the world; and purer too, refined by 300 years of conflict with the modern infidel civilisation—all this is a fact more solid than the earth."
- ↑ "The wind bloweth where it listeth, find thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit."
