Pietas Anglicana

Extract

The second volume of Lord Halifax’s life completed a first-rate biography of a striking and dynamic personality. It gives to the many who only knew him externally, in his chivalrous championship of Reunion ideals, and in the part he played in the domestic politics of his own Church, a vivid picture of the whole man. Mr. Lockhart sketches with skilful pen Lord Halifax’s mental background, his temperament and character, his inner spiritual life and his family, social and ecclesiastical relationships. And this complete portrait, seen by most of us now for the first time, will compel thoughtful Catholics to search afresh for the answer to the question: What was it that kept so exceptionally gifted a man, whose high principle and personal integrity no one could question, unwaveringly faithful to the Church of England through a long life of incessant preoccupation with Catholicism, during which he came to hold almost every doctrinal truth which the Church proposes to the faith of its members? The answer to this question, if it could be found, is likely to provide the answer to another of great moment: Do the causes which operated to keep this one man faithful to the Church of England operate also to keep many others, similarly circumstanced, to the same allegiance?