Apologia Pro Vita Sua: History of His Religious Opinions

he following History of my Religious Opinions,

2 now that it is detached from the context in which

3 it originally stood, requires some preliminary explanation;

4 and that, not only in order to introduce

5 it generally to the reader, but specially to make

6 him understand, how I came to write a whole book

7 about myself, and about my most private thoughts

8 and feelings. Did I consult indeed my own impulses,

9 I should do my best simply to wipe out of

10 my Volume, and consign to oblivion, every trace of

11 the circumstances to which it is to be ascribed;

12 but its original title of "Apologia" is too exactly

13 borne out by its matter and structure, and these

14 again are too suggestive of correlative circumstances,

15 and those circumstances are of too grave a

16 character, to allow of my indulging so natural a

17 wish. And therefore, though in this new Edition

18 I have managed to omit nearly a hundred pages of

19 my original Volume, which I could safely consider

20 to be of merely ephemeral importance, I am even

21 for that very reason obliged, by way of making up

22 for their absence, to prefix to my Narrative some

23 account of the provocation out of which it arose.

24 It is now more than twenty years that a vague

25 impression to my disadvantage has rested on the

26 popular mind, as if my conduct towards the Anglican

27 Church, while I was a member of it, was inconsistent

28 with Christian simplicity and uprightness.

29 An impression of this kind was almost unavoidable

30 under the circumstances of the case, when a man,

31 who had written strongly against a cause, and had

32 collected a party round him by virtue of such

33 writings, gradually faltered in his opposition to it,

34 unsaid his words, threw his own friends into perplexity

35 and their proceedings into confusion, and

36 ended by passing over to the side of those whom

37 he had so vigorously denounced. Sensitive then

38 as I have ever been of the imputations which have

39 been so freely cast upon me, I have never felt much

40 impatience under them, as considering them to be

41 a portion of the penalty which I naturally and

42 justly incurred by my change of religion, even

43 though they were to continue as long as I lived.

44 I left their removal to a future day, when personal

45 feelings would have died out, and documents would

46 see the light, which were as yet buried in closets

47 or scattered through the country.

48 This was my state of mind, as it had been for

49 many years, when, in the beginning of 1864, I

50 unexpectedly found myself publicly put upon my

51 defence, and furnished with an opportunity of pleading

52 my cause before the world, and, as it so happened,

53 with a fair prospect of an impartial hearing.

54 Taken indeed by surprise, as I was, I had much

55 reason to be anxious how I should be able to acquit

56 myself in so serious a matter; however, I had long

57 had a tacit understanding with myself, that, in the

58 improbable event of a challenge being formally

59 made to me, by a person of name, it would be my

60 duty to meet it. That opportunity had now occurred;

61 it never might occur again; not to avail

62 myself of it at once would be virtually to give up

63 my cause; accordingly, I took advantage of it, and,

64 as it has turned out, the circumstance that no time

65 was allowed me for any studied statements has compensated,

66 in the equitable judgment of the public,

67 for such imperfections in composition as my want

68 of leisure involved.

69 It was in the number for January 1864, of a

70 magazine of wide circulation, and in an Article

71 upon Queen Elizabeth, that a popular writer took

72 occasion formally to accuse me by name of thinking

73 so lightly of the virtue of Veracity, as in set terms

74 to have countenanced and defended that neglect of

75 it which he at the same time imputed to the Catholic

76 Priesthood. His words were these:—

77 "Truth, for its own sake, had never been a virtue

78 with the Roman clergy. Father Newman informs

79 us that it need not, and on the whole ought

80 not to be; that cunning is the weapon which

81 heaven has given to the Saints wherewith to withstand

82 the brute male force of the wicked world

83 which marries and is given in marriage. Whether

84 his notion be doctrinally correct or not, it is at least

85 historically so."

86 These assertions, going far beyond the popular

87 prejudice entertained against me, had no foundation

88 whatever in fact. I never had said, I never

89 had dreamed of saying, that truth for its own sake

90 need not, and on the whole ought not to be, a

91 virtue with the Roman Clergy; or that cunning is

92 the weapon which heaven has given to the Saints

93 wherewith to withstand the wicked world. To

94 what work of mine then could the writer be referring?

95 In a correspondence which ensued upon the

96 subject between him and myself, he rested his

97 charge against me on a Sermon of mine, preached,

98 before I was a Catholic, in the pulpit of my Church

99 at Oxford; and he gave me to understand, that, after

100 having done as much as this, he was not bound, over

101 and above such a general reference to my Sermon,

102 to specify the passages of it, in which the doctrine,

103 which he imputed to me, was contained. On my

104 part I considered this not enough; and I demanded

105 of him to bring out his proof of his accusation in

106 form and in detail, or to confess he was unable to

107 do so. But he persevered in his refusal to cite any

108 distinct passages from any writing of mine; and,

109 though he consented to withdraw his charge, he

110 would not do so on the issue of its truth or falsehood,

111 but simply on the ground that I assured him

112 that I had had no intention of incurring it. This

113 did not satisfy my sense of justice. Formally to

114 charge me with committing a fault is one thing;

115 to allow that I did not intend to commit it, is

116 another; it is no satisfaction to me, if a man

117 accuses me of *this* offence, for him to profess that

118 he does not accuse me *of that*; but he thought

119 differently. Not being able then to gain redress

120 in the quarter, where I had a right to ask it, I

121 appealed to the public. I published the correspondence

122 in the shape of a Pamphlet, with some

123 remarks of my own at the end, on the course which

124 that correspondence had taken.

125 This Pamphlet, which appeared in the first weeks

126 of February, received a reply from my accuser towards

127 the end of March, in another Pamphlet of

128 48 pages, entitled, "What then does Dr. Newman

129 mean?" in which he professed to do that which I had

130 called upon him to do; that is, he brought together

131 a number of extracts from various works of mine,

132 Catholic and Anglican, with the object of showing

133 that, if I was to be acquitted of the crime of teaching

134 and practising deceit and dishonesty, according to

135 his first supposition, it was at the price of my being

136 considered no longer responsible for my actions;

137 for, as he expressed it, "I had a human reason

138 once, no doubt, but I had gambled it away," and I

139 had "worked my mind into that morbid state, in

140 which nonsense was the only food for which it

141 hungered;" and that it could not be called "a

142 hasty or farfetched or unfounded mistake, when he

143 concluded that I did not care for truth for its own

144 sake, or teach my disciples to regard it as a virtue;"

145 and, though "too many prefer the charge of insincerity

146 to that of insipience, Dr. Newman seemed

147 not to be of that number."

148 He ended his Pamphlet by returning to his original

149 imputation against me, which he had professed

150 to abandon. Alluding by anticipation to my probable

151 answer to what he was then publishing, he

152 professed his heartfelt embarrassment how he was

153 to believe any thing I might say in my exculpation,

154 in the plain and literal sense of the words. "I am

155 henceforth," he said, "in doubt and fear, as much

156 as an honest man can be, concerning every word Dr.

157 Newman may write. How can I tell, that I shall

158 not be the dupe of some cunning equivocation, of one

159 of the three kinds laid down as permissible by the

160 blessed St. Alfonso da Liguori and his pupils, even

161 when confirmed with an oath, because 'then we do

162 not deceive our neighbour, but allow him to deceive

163 himself?' ... How can I tell, that I may not in

164 this Pamphlet have made an accusation, of the truth

165 of which Dr. Newman is perfectly conscious; but

166 that, as I, a heretic Protestant, have no business to

167 make it, he has a full right to deny it?"

168 Even if I could have found it consistent with my

169 duty to my own reputation to leave such an elaborate

170 impeachment of my moral nature unanswered,

171 my duty to my Brethren in the Catholic Priesthood,

172 would have forbidden such a course. *They* were

173 involved in the charges which this writer, all along,

174 from the original passage in the Magazine, to the

175 very last paragraph of the Pamphlet, had so confidently,

176 so pertinaciously made. In exculpating myself,

177 it was plain I should be pursuing no mere personal

178 quarrel;—I was offering my humble service to

179 a sacred cause. I was making my protest in behalf

180 of a large body of men of high character, of honest

181 and religious minds, and of sensitive honour,—who

182 had their place and their rights in this world,

183 though they were ministers of the world unseen,

184 and who were insulted by my Accuser, as the above

185 extracts from him sufficiently show, not only in my

186 person, but directly and pointedly in their own.

187 Accordingly, I at once set about writing the

188 *Apologia pro vitâ suâ*, of which the present Volume

189 is a New Edition; and it was a great reward

190 to me to find, as the controversy proceeded, such

191 large numbers of my clerical brethren supporting

192 me by their sympathy in the course which I was

193 pursuing, and, as occasion offered, bestowing on me

194 the formal and public expression of their approbation.

195 These testimonials in my behalf, so important

196 and so grateful to me, are, together with

197 the Letter, sent to me with the same purpose, from

198 my Bishop, contained in the last pages of this

199 Volume.

200 This Edition differs from the first form of the

201 Apologia as follows:—The original work consisted

202 of seven Parts, which were published in series on

203 consecutive Thursdays, between April 21 and

204 June 2. An Appendix, in answer to specific allegations

205 urged against me in the Pamphlet of

206 Accusation, appeared on June 16. Of these Parts

207 1 and 2, as being for the most part directly controversial,

208 are omitted in this Edition, excepting certain

209 passages in them, which are subjoined to this

210 Preface, as being necessary for the due explanation

211 of the subsequent five Parts. These, (being 3, 4,

212 5, 6, 7, of the Apologia,) are here numbered as

213 Chapters 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 respectively. Of the

214 Appendix, about half has been omitted, for the

215 same reason as has led to the omission of Parts

216 1 and 2. The rest of it is thrown into the shape

217 of Notes of a discursive character, with two new

218 ones on Liberalism and the Lives of the English

219 Saints of 1843-4, and another, new in part, on

220 Ecclesiastical Miracles. In the body of the work,

221 the only addition of consequence is the letter which

222 is found at p. 228, a copy of which has recently

223 come into my possession.

224 I should add that, since writing the Apologia last

225 year, I have seen for the first time Mr. Oakeley's

226 "Notes on the Tractarian Movement." This work

227 remarkably corroborates the substance of my Narrative,

228 while the kind terms in which he speaks of me

229 personally, call for my sincere gratitude.

230 *May 2, 1865.*

231 I make these extracts from the first edition of my

232 Apologia, Part 1, pp. 3, 20-25, and Part 2, pp.

233 29-31 and pp. 41-51, in order to set before

234 the reader the drift I had in writing my Volume:—

235 I cannot be sorry to have forced my Accuser to bring out

236 in fulness his charges against me. It is far better that he

237 should discharge his thoughts upon me in my lifetime,

238 than after I am dead. Under the circumstances I am

239 happy in having the opportunity of reading the worst that

240 can be said of me by a writer who has taken pains with

241 his work and is well satisfied with it. I account it a gain

242 to be surveyed from without by one who hates the principles

243 which are nearest to my heart, has no personal knowledge

244 of me to set right his misconceptions of my doctrine, and

245 who has some motive or other to be as severe with me as

246 he can possibly be....

247 But I really feel sad for what I am obliged now to say.

248 I am in warfare with him, but I wish him no ill;—it is

249 very difficult to get up resentment towards persons whom

250 one has never seen. It is easy enough to be irritated

251 with friends or foes *vis-à-vis*; but, though I am writing

252 with all my heart against what he has said of me, I am

253 not conscious of personal unkindness towards himself. I

254 think it necessary to write as I am writing, for my own

255 sake, and for the sake of the Catholic Priesthood; but I

256 wish to impute nothing worse to him than that he has

257 been furiously carried away by his feelings. Yet what

258 shall I say of the upshot of all his talk of my economies

259 and equivocations and the like? What is the precise

260 *work* which it is directed to effect? I am at war with

261 him; but there is such a thing as legitimate warfare: war

262 has its laws; there are things which may fairly be done,

263 and things which may not be done. I say it with shame

264 and with stern sorrow;—he has attempted a great transgression;

265 he has attempted (as I may call it) to *poison the

266 wells*. I will quote him and explain what I mean....

267 He says,—

268 "I am henceforth in doubt and fear, as much as any honest

269 man can be, *concerning every word* Dr. Newman may write.

270 *How can I tell that I shall not be the dupe of some cunning

271 equivocation*, of one of the three kinds laid down as permissible

272 by the blessed Alfonso da Liguori and his pupils,

273 even when confirmed by an oath, because 'then we do not

274 deceive our neighbour, but allow him to deceive himself?' ...

275 It is admissible, therefore, to use words and sentences

276 which have a double signification, and leave the

277 hapless hearer to take which of them he may choose.

278 *What proof have I, then, that by 'mean it? I never said

279 it!' Dr. Newman does not signify*, I did not say it, but I

280 did mean it?"—Pp. 44, 45.

281 Now these insinuations and questions shall be answered

282 in their proper places; here I will but say that I scorn

283 and detest lying, and quibbling, and double-tongued

284 practice, and slyness, and cunning, and smoothness, and

285 cant, and pretence, quite as much as any Protestants hate

286 them; and I pray to be kept from the snare of them.

287 But all this is just now by the bye; my present subject is

288 my Accuser; what I insist upon here is this unmanly

289 attempt of his, in his concluding pages, to cut the ground

290 from under my feet;—to poison by anticipation the public

291 mind against me, John Henry Newman, and to infuse

292 into the imaginations of my readers, suspicion and mistrust

293 of everything that I may say in reply to him.

294 This I call *poisoning the wells*.

295 "I am henceforth in *doubt and fear*," he says, "as much

296 as any *honest* man can be, *concerning every word* Dr. Newman

297 may write. *How can I tell that I shall not be the dupe

298 of some cunning equivocation?*" ...

299 Well, I can only say, that, if his taunt is to take effect,

300 I am but wasting my time in saying a word in answer to

301 his calumnies; and this is precisely what he knows and

302 intends to be its fruit. I can hardly get myself to protest

303 against a method of controversy so base and cruel, lest in

304 doing so, I should be violating my self-respect and self-possession;

305 but most base and most cruel it is. We all

306 know how our imagination runs away with us, how

307 suddenly and at what a pace;—the saying, "Cæsar's wife

308 should not be suspected," is an instance of what I mean.

309 The habitual prejudice, the humour of the moment, is the

310 turning-point which leads us to read a defence in a good

311 sense or a bad. We interpret it by our antecedent impressions.

312 The very same sentiments, according as our

313 jealousy is or is not awake, or our aversion stimulated, are

314 tokens of truth or of dissimulation and pretence. There

315 is a story of a sane person being by mistake shut up in

316 the wards of a Lunatic Asylum, and that, when he pleaded

317 his cause to some strangers visiting the establishment, the

318 only remark he elicited in answer was, "How naturally

319 he talks! you would think he was in his senses." Controversies

320 should be decided by the reason; is it legitimate

321 warfare to appeal to the misgivings of the public mind

322 and to its dislikings? Any how, if my accuser is able

323 thus to practise upon my readers, the more I succeed, the

324 less will be my success. If I am natural, he will tell

325 them "Ars est celare artem;" if I am convincing, he will

326 suggest that I am an able logician; if I show warmth, I

327 am acting the indignant innocent; if I am calm, I am

328 thereby detected as a smooth hypocrite; if I clear up

329 difficulties, I am too plausible and perfect to be true. The

330 more triumphant are my statements, the more certain will

331 be my defeat.

332 So will it be if my Accuser succeeds in his manœuvre;

333 but I do not for an instant believe that he will. Whatever

334 judgment my readers may eventually form of me

335 from these pages, I am confident that they will believe me

336 in what I shall say in the course of them. I have no

337 misgiving at all, that they will be ungenerous or harsh

338 towards a man who has been so long before the eyes of the

339 world; who has so many to speak of him from personal

340 knowledge; whose natural impulse it has ever been to

341 speak out; who has ever spoken too much rather than too

342 little; who would have saved himself many a scrape, if he

343 had been wise enough to hold his tongue; who has ever

344 been fair to the doctrines and arguments of his opponents;

345 who has never slurred over facts and reasonings which

346 told against himself; who has never given his name or

347 authority to proofs which he thought unsound, or to testimony

348 which he did not think at least plausible; who has

349 never shrunk from confessing a fault when he felt that he

350 had committed one; who has ever consulted for others

351 more than for himself; who has given up much that he

352 loved and prized and could have retained, but that he

353 loved honesty better than name, and Truth better than

354 dear friends....

355 What then shall be the special imputation, against which I

356 shall throw myself in these pages, out of the thousand and

357 one which my Accuser directs upon me? I mean to confine

358 myself to one, for there is only one about which I

359 much care,—the charge of Untruthfulness. He may cast

360 upon me as many other imputations as he pleases, and they

361 may stick on me, as long as they can, in the course of

362 nature. They will fall to the ground in their season.

363 And indeed I think the same of the charge of Untruthfulness,

364 and select it from the rest, not because it is more

365 formidable but because it is more serious. Like the rest, it

366 may disfigure me for a time, but it will not stain: Archbishop

367 Whately used to say, "Throw dirt enough, and

368 some will stick;" well, will stick, but not, will stain. I

369 think he used to mean "stain," and I do not agree with

370 him. Some dirt sticks longer than other dirt; but no dirt

371 is immortal. According to the old saying, Prævalebit

372 Veritas. There are virtues indeed, which the world is not

373 fitted to judge of or to uphold, such as faith, hope, and

374 charity: but it can judge about Truthfulness; it can judge

375 about the natural virtues, and Truthfulness is one of them.

376 Natural virtues may also become supernatural; Truthfulness

377 is such; but that does not withdraw it from the jurisdiction

378 of mankind at large. It may be more difficult in

379 this or that particular case for men to take cognizance of

380 it, as it may be difficult for the Court of Queen's Bench at

381 Westminster to try a case fairly which took place in Hindostan:

382 but that is a question of capacity, not of right.

383 Mankind has the right to judge of Truthfulness in a

384 Catholic, as in the case of a Protestant, of an Italian, or of

385 a Chinese. I have never doubted, that in my hour, in

386 God's hour, my avenger will appear, and the world will

387 acquit me of untruthfulness, even though it be not while

388 I live.

389 Still more confident am I of such eventual acquittal, seeing

390 that my judges are my own countrymen. I consider,

391 indeed, Englishmen the most suspicious and touchy of mankind;

392 I think them unreasonable, and unjust in their

393 seasons of excitement; but I had rather be an Englishman,

394 (as in fact I am,) than belong to any other race under

395 heaven. They are as generous, as they are hasty and

396 burly; and their repentance for their injustice is greater

397 than their sin.

398 For twenty years and more I have borne an imputation,

399 of which I am at least as sensitive, who am the object of

400 it, as they can be, who are only the judges. I have not

401 set myself to remove it, first, because I never have had an

402 opening to speak, and, next, because I never saw in them

403 the disposition to hear. I have wished to appeal from

404 Philip drunk to Philip sober. When shall I pronounce

405 him to be himself again? If I may judge from the tone

406 of the public press, which represents the public voice, I

407 have great reason to take heart at this time. I have been

408 treated by contemporary critics in this controversy with

409 great fairness and gentleness, and I am grateful to them

410 for it. However, the decision of the time and mode of my

411 defence has been taken out of my hands; and I am thankful

412 that it has been so. I am bound now as a duty to

413 myself, to the Catholic cause, to the Catholic Priesthood,

414 to give account of myself without any delay, when I am so

415 rudely and circumstantially charged with Untruthfulness.

416 I accept the challenge; I shall do my best to meet it, and

417 I shall be content when I have done so.

418 It is not my present accuser alone who entertains, and

419 has entertained, so dishonourable an opinion of me and of

420 my writings. It is the impression of large classes of men;

421 the impression twenty years ago and the impression now.

422 There has been a general feeling that I was for years where

423 I had no right to be; that I was a "Romanist" in Protestant

424 livery and service; that I was doing the work of a

425 hostile Church in the bosom of the English Establishment,

426 and knew it, or ought to have known it. There was no

427 need of arguing about particular passages in my writings,

428 when the fact was so patent, as men thought it to be.

429 First it was certain, and I could not myself deny it, that

430 I scouted the name "Protestant." It was certain again,

431 that many of the doctrines which I professed were popularly

432 and generally known as badges of the Roman Church,

433 as distinguished from the faith of the Reformation. Next,

434 how could I have come by them? Evidently, I had certain

435 friends and advisers who did not appear; there was

436 some underground communication between Stonyhurst or

437 Oscott and my rooms at Oriel. Beyond a doubt, I was

438 advocating certain doctrines, not by accident, but on an

439 understanding with ecclesiastics of the old religion. Then

440 men went further, and said that I had actually been received

441 into that religion, and withal had leave given me

442 to profess myself a Protestant still. Others went even

443 further, and gave it out to the world, as a matter of fact,

444 of which they themselves had the proof in their hands,

445 that I was actually a Jesuit. And when the opinions

446 which I advocated spread, and younger men went further

447 than I, the feeling against me waxed stronger and took a

448 wider range.

449 And now indignation arose at the knavery of a conspiracy

450 such as this:—and it became of course all the greater

451 in consequence of its being the received belief of the public

452 at large, that craft and intrigue, such as they fancied they

453 beheld with their eyes, were the very instruments to which

454 the Catholic Church has in these last centuries been indebted

455 for her maintenance and extension.

456 There was another circumstance still, which increased

457 the irritation and aversion felt by the large classes, of whom

458 I have been speaking, against the preachers of doctrines,

459 so new to them and so unpalatable; and that was, that

460 they developed them in so measured a way. If they were

461 inspired by Roman theologians, (and this was taken for

462 granted,) why did they not speak out at once? Why did

463 they keep the world in such suspense and anxiety as to

464 what was coming next, and what was to be the upshot of

465 the whole? Why this reticence, and half-speaking, and

466 apparent indecision? It was plain that the plan of operations

467 had been carefully mapped out from the first, and

468 that these men were cautiously advancing towards its

469 accomplishment, as far as was safe at the moment; that

470 their aim and their hope was to carry off a large body with

471 them of the young and the ignorant; that they meant gradually

472 to leaven the minds of the rising generation, and to

473 open the gates of that city, of which they were the sworn

474 defenders, to the enemy who lay in ambush outside of it.

475 And when in spite of the many protestations of the party

476 to the contrary, there was at length an actual movement

477 among their disciples, and one went over to Rome, and

478 then another, the worst anticipations and the worst judgments

479 which had been formed of them received their justification.

480 And, lastly, when men first had said of me,

481 "You will see, *he* will go, he is only biding his time, he is

482 waiting the word of command from Rome," and, when

483 after all, after my arguments and denunciations of former

484 years, at length I did leave the Anglican Church for the

485 Roman, then they said to each other, "It is just as we

486 said: we knew it would be so."

487 This was the state of mind of masses of men twenty

488 years ago, who took no more than an external and common

489 sense view of what was going on. And partly the tradition,

490 partly the effect of that feeling, remains to the present

491 time. Certainly I consider that, in my own case, it is the

492 great obstacle in the way of my being favourably heard, as

493 at present, when I have to make my defence. Not only

494 am I now a member of a most un-English communion,

495 whose great aim is considered to be the extinction of Protestantism

496 and the Protestant Church, and whose means of

497 attack are popularly supposed to be unscrupulous cunning

498 and deceit, but how came I originally to have any relations

499 with the Church of Rome at all? did I, or my opinions,

500 drop from the sky? how came I, in Oxford, *in gremio Universitatis*,

501 to present myself to the eyes of men in that full

502 blown investiture of Popery? How could I dare, how

503 could I have the conscience, with warnings, with prophecies,

504 with accusations against me, to persevere in a path

505 which steadily advanced towards, which ended in, the religion

506 of Rome? And how am I now to be trusted, when

507 long ago I was trusted, and was found wanting?

508 It is this which is the strength of the case of my Accuser

509 against me;—not the articles of impeachment which he

510 has framed from my writings, and which I shall easily

511 crumble into dust, but the bias of the court. It is the

512 state of the atmosphere; it is the vibration all around,

513 which will echo his bold assertion of my dishonesty; it is

514 that prepossession against me, which takes it for granted

515 that, when my reasoning is convincing it is only ingenious,

516 and that when my statements are unanswerable,

517 there is always something put out of sight or hidden in

518 my sleeve; it is that plausible, but cruel conclusion to

519 which men are apt to jump, that when much is imputed,

520 much must be true, and that it is more likely that one

521 should be to blame, than that many should be mistaken in

522 blaming him;—these are the real foes which I have to

523 fight, and the auxiliaries to whom my Accuser makes his

524 advances.

525 Well, I must break through this barrier of prejudice

526 against me if I can; and I think I shall be able to do so.

527 When first I read the Pamphlet of Accusation, I almost

528 despaired of meeting effectively such a heap of misrepresentations

529 and such a vehemence of animosity. What was

530 the good of answering first one point, and then another,

531 and going through the whole circle of its abuse; when my

532 answer to the first point would be forgotten, as soon as I

533 got to the second? What was the use of bringing out half

534 a hundred separate principles or views for the refutation of

535 the separate counts in the Indictment, when rejoinders of

536 this sort would but confuse and torment the reader by

537 their number and their diversity? What hope was there

538 of condensing into a pamphlet of a readable length, matter

539 which ought freely to expand itself into half a dozen

540 volumes? What means was there, except the expenditure

541 of interminable pages, to set right even one of that series

542 of "single passing hints," to use my Assailant's own language,

543 which, "as with his finger tip he had delivered"

544 against me?

545 All those separate charges had their force in being illustrations

546 of one and the same great imputation. He had

547 already a positive idea to illuminate his whole matter, and

548 to stamp it with a force, and to quicken it with an interpretation.

549 He called me a *liar*,—a simple, a broad, an intelligible,

550 to the English public a plausible arraignment;

551 but for me, to answer in detail charge one by reason one,

552 and charge two by reason two, and charge three by reason

553 three, and so on through the whole string both of accusations

554 and replies, each of which was to be independent of

555 the rest, this would be certainly labour lost as regards any

556 effective result. What I needed was a corresponding antagonist

557 unity in my defence, and where was that to be

558 found? We see, in the case of commentators on the prophecies

559 of Scripture, an exemplification of the principle on

560 which I am insisting; viz. how much more powerful even

561 a false interpretation of the sacred text is than none at

562 all;—how a certain key to the visions of the Apocalypse,

563 for instance, may cling to the mind (I have found it so in

564 the case of my own), because the view, which it opens on

565 us, is positive and objective, in spite of the fullest demonstration

566 that it really has no claim upon our reception.

567 The reader says, "What else can the prophecy mean?"

568 just as my Accuser asks, "What, then, does Dr. Newman

569 mean?" ... I reflected, and I saw a way out of my

570 perplexity.

571 Yes, I said to myself, his very question is about my

572 *meaning*; "What does Dr. Newman mean?" It pointed

573 in the very same direction as that into which my musings

574 had turned me already. He asks what I *mean*; not about

575 my words, not about my arguments, not about my actions,

576 as his ultimate point, but about that living intelligence, by

577 which I write, and argue, and act. He asks about my

578 Mind and its Beliefs and its sentiments; and he shall be

579 answered;—not for his own sake, but for mine, for the

580 sake of the Religion which I profess, and of the Priesthood

581 in which I am unworthily included, and of my

582 friends and of my foes, and of that general public which

583 consists of neither one nor the other, but of well-wishers,

584 lovers of fair play, sceptical cross-questioners, interested

585 inquirers, curious lookers-on, and simple strangers, unconcerned

586 yet not careless about the issue,—for the sake of all

587 these he shall be answered.

588 My perplexity had not lasted half an hour. I recognized

589 what I had to do, though I shrank from both the task and

590 the exposure which it would entail. I must, I said, give

591 the true key to my whole life; I must show what I am,

592 that it may be seen what I am not, and that the phantom

593 may be extinguished which gibbers instead of me. I wish

594 to be known as a living man, and not as a scarecrow which

595 is dressed up in my clothes. False ideas may be refuted

596 indeed by argument, but by true ideas alone are they expelled.

597 I will vanquish, not my Accuser, but my judges.

598 I will indeed answer his charges and criticisms on me one

599 by one[1], lest any one should say that they are unanswerable,

600 but such a work shall not be the scope nor the substance

601 of my reply. I will draw out, as far as may be,

602 the history of my mind; I will state the point at which

603 I began, in what external suggestion or accident each

604 opinion had its rise, how far and how they developed from

605 within, how they grew, were modified, were combined,

606 were in collision with each other, and were changed;

607 again how I conducted myself towards them, and how,

608 and how far, and for how long a time, I thought I could

609 hold them consistently with the ecclesiastical engagements

610 which I had made and with the position which I held. I

611 must show,—what is the very truth,—that the doctrines

612 which I held, and have held for so many years, have

613 been taught me (speaking humanly) partly by the suggestions

614 of Protestant friends, partly by the teaching of

615 books, and partly by the action of my own mind: and

616 thus I shall account for that phenomenon which to so

617 many seems so wonderful, that I should have left "my

618 kindred and my father's house" for a Church from which

619 once I turned away with dread;—so wonderful to them!

620 as if forsooth a Religion which has flourished through so

621 many ages, among so many nations, amid such varieties of

622 social life, in such contrary classes and conditions of men,

623 and after so many revolutions, political and civil, could

624 not subdue the reason and overcome the heart, without

625 the aid of fraud in the process and the sophistries of the

626 schools.

627 [1] This was done in the Appendix, of which the more important parts are

628 preserved in the Notes.

629 What I had proposed to myself in the course of half-an-hour,

630 I determined on at the end of ten days. However,

631 I have many difficulties in fulfilling my design. How am

632 I to say all that has to be said in a reasonable compass?

633 And then as to the materials of my narrative; I have no

634 autobiographical notes to consult, no written explanations

635 of particular treatises or of tracts which at the time gave

636 offence, hardly any minutes of definite transactions or conversations,

637 and few contemporary memoranda, I fear, of

638 the feelings or motives under which, from time to time I

639 acted. I have an abundance of letters from friends with

640 some copies or drafts of my answers to them, but they are

641 for the most part unsorted; and, till this process has taken

642 place, they are even too numerous and various to be available

643 at a moment for my purpose. Then, as to the volumes

644 which I have published, they would in many ways serve

645 me, were I well up in them: but though I took great pains

646 in their composition, I have thought little about them,

647 when they were once out of my hands, and for the most

648 part the last time I read them has been when I revised

649 their last proof sheets.

650 Under these circumstances my sketch will of course be

651 incomplete. I now for the first time contemplate my

652 course as a whole; it is a first essay, but it will contain, I

653 trust, no serious or substantial mistake, and so far will

654 answer the purpose for which I write it. I purpose to

655 set nothing down in it as certain, of which I have not a

656 clear memory, or some written memorial, or the corroboration

657 of some friend. There are witnesses enough up and

658 down the country to verify, or correct, or complete it; and

659 letters moreover of my own in abundance, unless they have

660 been destroyed.

661 Moreover, I mean to be simply personal and historical:

662 I am not expounding Catholic doctrine, I am doing no

663 more than explaining myself, and my opinions and actions.

664 I wish, as far as I am able, simply to state facts, whether

665 they are ultimately determined to be for me or against me.

666 Of course there will be room enough for contrariety of

667 judgment among my readers, as to the necessity, or

668 appositeness, or value, or good taste, or religious prudence,

669 of the details which I shall introduce. I may be accused

670 of laying stress on little things, of being beside the mark,

671 of going into impertinent or ridiculous details, of sounding

672 my own praise, of giving scandal; but this is a case above

673 all others, in which I am bound to follow my own lights

674 and to speak out my own heart. It is not at all pleasant

675 for me to be egotistical; nor to be criticized for being so.

676 It is not pleasant to reveal to high and low, young and

677 old, what has gone on within me from my early years.

678 It is not pleasant to be giving to every shallow or flippant

679 disputant the advantage over me of knowing my most

680 private thoughts, I might even say the intercourse between

681 myself and my Maker. But I do not like to be called to

682 my face a liar and a knave; nor should I be doing my

683 duty to my faith or to my name, if I were to suffer it. I

684 know I have done nothing to deserve such an insult, and

685 if I prove this, as I hope to do, I must not care for such

686 incidental annoyances as are involved in the process.

CONTENTS.

4 CHAPTER I.

5 History of my Religious Opinions up to 1833

6 CHAPTER II.

7 History of my Religious Opinions from 1833 to 1839

8 CHAPTER III.

9 History of my Religious Opinions from 1839 to 1841

10 CHAPTER IV.

11 History of my Religious Opinions from 1841 to 1845

12 CHAPTER V.

13 Position of my Mind since 1845

NOTES.

7 Note A. On page 14. Liberalism

8 B. On page  23. Ecclesiastical Miracles

9 C. On page 153. Sermon on Wisdom and Innocence

10 D. On page 213. Series of Saints' Lives of 1843-4

11 E. On page 227. Anglican Church

12 F. On page 269. The Economy

13 G. On page 279. Lying and Equivocation

SUPPLEMENTAL MATTER.

10 1. Chronological List of Letters and Papers quoted in this Narrative

11 2. List of the Author's Works

12 3. Letter to him from his Diocesan

13 4. Addresses from bodies of Clergy and Laity

ADDITIONAL NOTES.

13 Note 1, on page 12. Correspondence with Archbishop Whately

14 in 1834

15 2, on page 90. Extract of a Letter from the Rev. E.

16 Smedley in 1828

17 3, on page 185. Extract of a Letter of the Rev. Francis

18 Faber about 1849

19 4, on pages 194-196. The late Very Rev. Dr. Russell

20 5, on page 232. Extract of a Letter from the Rev. John

21 Keble in 1844

22 6, on page 237. Extract from the *Times* concerning the

23 Author's visit to Oxford in 1878

24 7, on page 302. The oil of St. Walburga

25 8, on page 323. Boniface of Canterbury

MY RELIGIOUS OPINIONS.

16 (Texto do capítulo)

CHAPTER I.

19 (Texto do capítulo)

HISTORY OF MY RELIGIOUS OPINIONS TO THE YEAR 1833.

22 It may easily be conceived how great a trial it is to me to

23 write the following history of myself; but I must not

24 shrink from the task. The words, "Secretum meum

25 mihi," keep ringing in my ears; but as men draw towards

26 their end, they care less for disclosures. Nor is it the

27 least part of my trial, to anticipate that, upon first reading

28 what I have written, my friends may consider much in

29 it irrelevant to my purpose; yet I cannot help thinking

30 that, viewed as a whole, it will effect what I propose to

31 myself in giving it to the public.

32 I was brought up from a child to take great delight in

33 reading the Bible; but I had no formed religious convictions

34 till I was fifteen. Of course I had a perfect knowledge

35 of my Catechism.

36 After I was grown up, I put on paper my recollections

37 of the thoughts and feelings on religious subjects, which I

38 had at the time that I was a child and a boy,—such as had

39 remained on my mind with sufficient prominence to make

40 me then consider them worth recording. Out of these,

41 written in the Long Vacation of 1820, and transcribed with

42 additions in 1823, I select two, which are at once the most

43 definite among them, and also have a bearing on my later

44 convictions.

45 1. "I used to wish the Arabian Tales were true: my

46 imagination ran on unknown influences, on magical powers,

47 and talismans.... I thought life might be a

48 dream, or I an Angel, and all this world a deception, my

49 fellow-angels by a playful device concealing themselves

50 from me, and deceiving me with the semblance of a

51 material world."

52 Again: "Reading in the Spring of 1816 a sentence

53 from [Dr. Watts's] 'Remnants of Time,' entitled 'the

54 Saints unknown to the world,' to the effect, that 'there is

55 nothing in their figure or countenance to distinguish them,'

56 &c., &c., I supposed he spoke of Angels who lived in the

57 world, as it were disguised."

58 2. The other remark is this: "I was very superstitious,

59 and for some time previous to my conversion" [when I

60 was fifteen] "used constantly to cross myself on going into

61 the dark."

62 Of course I must have got this practice from some

63 external source or other; but I can make no sort of conjecture

64 whence; and certainly no one had ever spoken to

65 me on the subject of the Catholic religion, which I only

66 knew by name. The French master was an *émigré* Priest,

67 but he was simply made a butt, as French masters too

68 commonly were in that day, and spoke English very imperfectly.

69 There was a Catholic family in the village, old

70 maiden ladies we used to think; but I knew nothing about

71 them. I have of late years heard that there were one or

72 two Catholic boys in the school; but either we were carefully

73 kept from knowing this, or the knowledge of it made

74 simply no impression on our minds. My brother will bear

75 witness how free the school was from Catholic ideas.

76 I had once been into Warwick Street Chapel, with my

77 father, who, I believe, wanted to hear some piece of

78 music; all that I bore away from it was the recollection of

79 a pulpit and a preacher, and a boy swinging a censer.

80 When I was at Littlemore, I was looking over old copy-books

81 of my school days, and I found among them my first

82 Latin verse-book; and in the first page of it there was a

83 device which almost took my breath away with surprise.

84 I have the book before me now, and have just been showing

85 it to others. I have written in the first page, in my

86 school-boy hand, "John. H. Newman, February 11th,

87 1811, Verse Book;" then follow my first Verses. Between

88 "Verse" and "Book" I have drawn the figure of a solid

89 cross upright, and next to it is, what may indeed be meant

90 for a necklace, but what I cannot make out to be any thing

91 else than a set of beads suspended, with a little cross

92 attached. At this time I was not quite ten years old. I

93 suppose I got these ideas from some romance, Mrs. Radcliffe's

94 or Miss Porter's; or from some religious picture;

95 but the strange thing is, how, among the thousand objects

96 which meet a boy's eyes, these in particular should so have

97 fixed themselves in my mind, that I made them thus practically

98 my own. I am certain there was nothing in the

99 churches I attended, or the prayer books I read, to suggest

100 them. It must be recollected that Anglican churches

101 and prayer books were not decorated in those days as I

102 believe they are now.

103 When I was fourteen, I read Paine's Tracts against the

104 Old Testament, and found pleasure in thinking of the

105 objections which were contained in them. Also, I read

106 some of Hume's Essays; and perhaps that on Miracles.

107 So at least I gave my Father to understand; but perhaps

108 it was a brag. Also, I recollect copying out some French

109 verses, perhaps Voltaire's, in denial of the immortality of

110 the soul, and saying to myself something like "How

111 dreadful, but how plausible!"

112 When I was fifteen, (in the autumn of 1816,) a great

113 change of thought took place in me. I fell under the

114 influences of a definite Creed, and received into my intellect

115 impressions of dogma, which, through God's mercy,

116 have never been effaced or obscured. Above and beyond

117 the conversations and sermons of the excellent man, long

118 dead, the Rev. Walter Mayers, of Pembroke College, Oxford,

119 who was the human means of this beginning of

120 divine faith in me, was the effect of the books which he

121 put into my hands, all of the school of Calvin. One of the

122 first books I read was a work of Romaine's; I neither recollect

123 the title nor the contents, except one doctrine,

124 which of course I do not include among those which I

125 believe to have come from a divine source, viz. the doctrine

126 of final perseverance. I received it at once, and

127 believed that the inward conversion of which I was conscious,

128 (and of which I still am more certain than that I

129 have hands and feet,) would last into the next life, and

130 that I was elected to eternal glory. I have no consciousness

131 that this belief had any tendency whatever to lead

132 me to be careless about pleasing God. I retained it till

133 the age of twenty-one, when it gradually faded away; but

134 I believe that it had some influence on my opinions, in the

135 direction of those childish imaginations which I have

136 already mentioned, viz. in isolating me from the objects

137 which surrounded me, in confirming me in my mistrust of

138 the reality of material phenomena, and making me rest in

139 the thought of two and two only absolute and luminously

140 self-evident beings, myself and my Creator;—for while I

141 considered myself predestined to salvation, my mind did

142 not dwell upon others, as fancying them simply passed

143 over, not predestined to eternal death. I only thought of

144 the mercy to myself.

145 The detestable doctrine last mentioned is simply denied

146 and abjured, unless my memory strangely deceives me, by

147 the writer who made a deeper impression on my mind than

148 any other, and to whom (humanly speaking) I almost owe

149 my soul,—Thomas Scott of Aston Sandford. I so admired

150 and delighted in his writings, that, when I was an under-graduate,

151 I thought of making a visit to his Parsonage, in

152 order to see a man whom I so deeply revered. I hardly

153 think I could have given up the idea of this expedition,

154 even after I had taken my degree; for the news of his

155 death in 1821 came upon me as a disappointment as well

156 as a sorrow. I hung upon the lips of Daniel Wilson,

157 afterwards Bishop of Calcutta, as in two sermons at St.

158 John's Chapel he gave the history of Scott's life and death.

159 I had been possessed of his "Force of Truth" and Essays

160 from a boy; his Commentary I bought when I was an

161 under-graduate.

162 What, I suppose, will strike any reader of Scott's history

163 and writings, is his bold unworldliness and vigorous

164 independence of mind. He followed truth wherever it led

165 him, beginning with Unitarianism, and ending in a zealous

166 faith in the Holy Trinity. It was he who first planted

167 deep in my mind that fundamental truth of religion. With

168 the assistance of Scott's Essays, and the admirable work of

169 Jones of Nayland, I made a collection of Scripture texts

170 in proof of the doctrine, with remarks (I think) of my own

171 upon them, before I was sixteen; and a few months later

172 I drew up a series of texts in support of each verse of the

173 Athanasian Creed. These papers I have still.

174 Besides his unworldliness, what I also admired in Scott

175 was his resolute opposition to Antinomianism, and the

176 minutely practical character of his writings. They show

177 him to be a true Englishman, and I deeply felt his influence;

178 and for years I used almost as proverbs what I considered

179 to be the scope and issue of his doctrine, "Holiness

180 rather than peace," and "Growth the only evidence of

181 life."

182 Calvinists make a sharp separation between the elect

183 and the world; there is much in this that is cognate or

184 parallel to the Catholic doctrine; but they go on to say,

185 as I understand them, very differently from Catholicism,—that

186 the converted and the unconverted can be discriminated

187 by man, that the justified are conscious of their state

188 of justification, and that the regenerate cannot fall away.

189 Catholics on the other hand shade and soften the awful

190 antagonism between good and evil, which is one of their

191 dogmas, by holding that there are different degrees of

192 justification, that there is a great difference in point of

193 gravity between sin and sin, that there is the possibility

194 and the danger of falling away, and that there is no certain

195 knowledge given to any one that he is simply in a

196 state of grace, and much less that he is to persevere to the

197 end:—of the Calvinistic tenets the only one which took

198 root in my mind was the fact of heaven and hell, divine

199 favour and divine wrath, of the justified and the unjustified.

200 The notion that the regenerate and the justified

201 were one and the same, and that the regenerate, as such,

202 had the gift of perseverance, remained with me not many

203 years, as I have said already.

204 This main Catholic doctrine of the warfare between the

205 city of God and the powers of darkness was also deeply

206 impressed upon my mind by a work of a character very

207 opposite to Calvinism, Law's "Serious Call."

208 From this time I have held with a full inward assent

209 and belief the doctrine of eternal punishment, as delivered

210 by our Lord Himself, in as true a sense as I hold that of

211 eternal happiness; though I have tried in various ways to

212 make that truth less terrible to the imagination.

213 Now I come to two other works, which produced a deep

214 impression on me in the same Autumn of 1816, when I

215 was fifteen years old, each contrary to each, and planting

216 in me the seeds of an intellectual inconsistency which

217 disabled me for a long course of years. I read Joseph

218 Milner's Church History, and was nothing short of

219 enamoured of the long extracts from St. Augustine, St.

220 Ambrose, and the other Fathers which I found there. I

221 read them as being the religion of the primitive Christians:

222 but simultaneously with Milner I read Newton on the

223 Prophecies, and in consequence became most firmly convinced

224 that the Pope was the Antichrist predicted by

225 Daniel, St. Paul, and St. John. My imagination was

226 stained by the effects of this doctrine up to the year 1843;

227 it had been obliterated from my reason and judgment at

228 an earlier date; but the thought remained upon me as a

229 sort of false conscience. Hence came that conflict of mind,

230 which so many have felt besides myself;—leading some

231 men to make a compromise between two ideas, so inconsistent

232 with each other,—driving others to beat out the

233 one idea or the other from their minds,—and ending in

234 my own case, after many years of intellectual unrest, in

235 the gradual decay and extinction of one of them,—I do

236 not say in its violent death, for why should I not have

237 murdered it sooner, if I murdered it at all?

238 I am obliged to mention, though I do it with great

239 reluctance, another deep imagination, which at this time,

240 the autumn of 1816, took possession of me,—there can be

241 no mistake about the fact; viz. that it would be the will

242 of God that I should lead a single life. This anticipation,

243 which has held its ground almost continuously ever since,—with

244 the break of a month now and a month then, up to

245 1829, and, after that date, without any break at all,—was

246 more or less connected in my mind with the notion, that

247 my calling in life would require such a sacrifice as celibacy

248 involved; as, for instance, missionary work among the

249 heathen, to which I had a great drawing for some years.

250 It also strengthened my feeling of separation from the

251 visible world, of which I have spoken above.

252 In 1822 I came under very different influences from

253 those to which I had hitherto been subjected. At that

254 time, Mr. Whately, as he was then, afterwards Archbishop

255 of Dublin, for the few months he remained in

256 Oxford, which he was leaving for good, showed great

257 kindness to me. He renewed it in 1825, when he became

258 Principal of Alban Hall, making me his Vice-Principal

259 and Tutor. Of Dr. Whately I will speak presently: for

260 from 1822 to 1825 I saw most of the present Provost of

261 Oriel, Dr. Hawkins, at that time Vicar of St. Mary's; and,

262 when I took orders in 1824 and had a curacy in Oxford,

263 then, during the Long Vacations, I was especially thrown

264 into his company. I can say with a full heart that I love

265 him, and have never ceased to love him; and I thus preface

266 what otherwise might sound rude, that in the course

267 of the many years in which we were together afterwards,

268 he provoked me very much from time to time, though I

269 am perfectly certain that I have provoked him a great

270 deal more. Moreover, in me such provocation was unbecoming,

271 both because he was the Head of my College, and

272 because, in the first years that I knew him, he had been

273 in many ways of great service to my mind.

274 He was the first who taught me to weigh my words,

275 and to be cautious in my statements. He led me to that

276 mode of limiting and clearing my sense in discussion and

277 in controversy, and of distinguishing between cognate

278 ideas, and of obviating mistakes by anticipation, which to

279 my surprise has been since considered, even in quarters

280 friendly to me, to savour of the polemics of Rome. He is

281 a man of most exact mind himself, and he used to snub

282 me severely, on reading, as he was kind enough to do, the

283 first Sermons that I wrote, and other compositions which

284 I was engaged upon.

285 Then as to doctrine, he was the means of great additions

286 to my belief. As I have noticed elsewhere, he gave me

287 the "Treatise on Apostolical Preaching," by Sumner,

288 afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury, from which I was

289 led to give up my remaining Calvinism, and to receive the

290 doctrine of Baptismal Regeneration. In many other ways

291 too he was of use to me, on subjects semi-religious and

292 semi-scholastic.

293 It was Dr. Hawkins too who taught me to anticipate

294 that, before many years were over, there would be an

295 attack made upon the books and the canon of Scripture, I

296 was brought to the same belief by the conversation of

297 Mr. Blanco White, who also led me to have freer views

298 on the subject of inspiration than were usual in the Church

299 of England at the time.

300 There is one other principle, which I gained from Dr.

301 Hawkins, more directly bearing upon Catholicism, than

302 any that I have mentioned; and that is the doctrine of

303 Tradition. When I was an Under-graduate, I heard him

304 preach in the University Pulpit his celebrated sermon on

305 the subject, and recollect how long it appeared to me,

306 though he was at that time a very striking preacher; but,

307 when I read it and studied it as his gift, it made a most

308 serious impression upon me. He does not go one step, I

309 think, beyond the high Anglican doctrine, nay he does not

310 reach it; but he does his work thoroughly, and his view was

311 in him original, and his subject was a novel one at the

312 time. He lays down a proposition, self-evident as soon as

313 stated, to those who have at all examined the structure of

314 Scripture, viz. that the sacred text was never intended to

315 teach doctrine, but only to prove it, and that, if we would

316 learn doctrine, we must have recourse to the formularies

317 of the Church; for instance to the Catechism, and to the

318 Creeds. He considers, that, after learning from them the

319 doctrines of Christianity, the inquirer must verify them by

320 Scripture. This view, most true in its outline, most fruitful

321 in its consequences, opened upon me a large field of

322 thought. Dr. Whately held it too. One of its effects was

323 to strike at the root of the principle on which the Bible

324 Society was set up. I belonged to its Oxford Association;

325 it became a matter of time when I should withdraw my

326 name from its subscription-list, though I did not do so at

327 once.

328 It is with pleasure that I pay here a tribute to the

329 memory of the Rev. William James, then Fellow of Oriel;

330 who, about the year 1823, taught me the doctrine of

331 Apostolical Succession, in the course of a walk, I think,

332 round Christ Church meadow; I recollect being somewhat

333 impatient of the subject at the time.

334 It was at about this date, I suppose, that I read

335 Bishop Butler's Analogy; the study of which has been to

336 so many, as it was to me, an era in their religious opinions.

337 Its inculcation of a visible Church, the oracle of truth and

338 a pattern of sanctity, of the duties of external religion, and

339 of the historical character of Revelation, are characteristics

340 of this great work which strike the reader at once; for

341 myself, if I may attempt to determine what I most gained

342 from it, it lay in two points, which I shall have an opportunity

343 of dwelling on in the sequel; they are the underlying

344 principles of a great portion of my teaching. First,

345 the very idea of an analogy between the separate works of

346 God leads to the conclusion that the system which is of

347 less importance is economically or sacramentally connected

348 with the more momentous system[2], and of this conclusion

349 the theory, to which I was inclined as a boy, viz. the unreality

350 of material phenomena, is an ultimate resolution.

351 At this time I did not make the distinction between

352 matter itself and its phenomena, which is so necessary and

353 so obvious in discussing the subject. Secondly, Butler's

354 doctrine that Probability is the guide of life, led me, at

355 least under the teaching to which a few years later I was

356 introduced, to the question of the logical cogency of Faith,

357 on which I have written so much. Thus to Butler I trace

358 those two principles of my teaching, which have led to a

359 charge against me both of fancifulness and of scepticism.

360 [2] It is significant that Butler begins his work with a quotation from Origen.

361 And now as to Dr. Whately. I owe him a great deal.

362 He was a man of generous and warm heart. He was

363 particularly loyal to his friends, and to use the common

364 phrase, "all his geese were swans." While I was still

365 awkward and timid in 1822, he took me by the hand, and

366 acted towards me the part of a gentle and encouraging

367 instructor. He, emphatically, opened my mind, and

368 taught me to think and to use my reason. After being

369 first noticed by him in 1822, I became very intimate with

370 him in 1825, when I was his Vice-Principal at Alban

371 Hall. I gave up that office in 1826, when I became Tutor

372 of my College, and his hold upon me gradually relaxed.

373 He had done his work towards me or nearly so, when he

374 had taught me to see with my own eyes and to walk with

375 my own feet. Not that I had not a good deal to learn

376 from others still, but I influenced them as well as they me,

377 and co-operated rather than merely concurred with them.

378 As to Dr. Whately, his mind was too different from mine

379 for us to remain long on one line. I recollect how dissatisfied

380 he was with an Article of mine in the London

381 Review, which Blanco White, good-humouredly, only

382 called Platonic. When I was diverging from him in

383 opinion (which he did not like), I thought of dedicating

384 my first book to him, in words to the effect that he had

385 not only taught me to think, but to think for myself. He

386 left Oxford in 1831; after that, as far as I can recollect,

387 I never saw him but twice,—when he visited the University;

388 once in the street in 1834, once in a room in 1838.

389 From the time that he left, I have always felt a real affection

390 for what I must call his memory; for, at least from

391 the year 1834, he made himself dead to me. He had

392 practically indeed given me up from the time that he became

393 Archbishop in 1831; but in 1834 a correspondence

394 took place between us, which, though conducted especially

395 on his side in a friendly spirit, was the expression of differences

396 of opinion which acted as a final close to our intercourse.

397 My reason told me that it was impossible we could

398 have got on together longer, had he stayed in Oxford; yet

399 I loved him too much to bid him farewell without pain.

400 After a few years had passed, I began to believe that his

401 influence on me in a higher respect than intellectual

402 advance, (I will not say through his fault,) had not been

403 satisfactory. I believe that he has inserted sharp things

404 in his later works about me. They have never come in

405 my way, and I have not thought it necessary to seek out

406 what would pain me so much in the reading.

407 What he did for me in point of religious opinion, was,

408 first, to teach me the existence of the Church, as a substantive

409 body or corporation; next to fix in me those anti-Erastian

410 views of Church polity, which were one of the

411 most prominent features of the Tractarian movement. On

412 this point, and, as far as I know, on this point alone,

413 he and Hurrell Froude intimately sympathized, though

414 Froude's development of opinion here was of a later date.

415 In the year 1826, in the course of a walk, he said much to

416 me about a work then just published, called "Letters on

417 the Church by an Episcopalian." He said that it would

418 make my blood boil. It was certainly a most powerful

419 composition. One of our common friends told me, that,

420 after reading it, he could not keep still, but went on walking

421 up and down his room. It was ascribed at once to

422 Whately; I gave eager expression to the contrary opinion;

423 but I found the belief of Oxford in the affirmative to be

424 too strong for me; rightly or wrongly I yielded to the

425 general voice; and I have never heard, then or since,

426 of any disclaimer of authorship on the part of Dr.

427 Whately.

428 The main positions of this able essay are these; first that

429 Church and State should be independent of each other:—he

430 speaks of the duty of protesting "against the profanation

431 of Christ's kingdom, by that *double usurpation*, the

432 interference of the Church in temporals, of the State in

433 spirituals," p. 191; and, secondly, that the Church may

434 justly and by right retain its property, though separated

435 from the State. "The clergy," he says p. 133, "though

436 they ought not to be the hired servants of the Civil

437 Magistrate, may justly retain their revenues; and the

438 State, though it has no right of interference in spiritual

439 concerns, not only is justly entitled to support from the

440 ministers of religion, and from all other Christians, but

441 would, under the system I am recommending, obtain it

442 much more effectually." The author of this work, whoever

443 he may be, argues out both these points with great

444 force and ingenuity, and with a thorough-going vehemence,

445 which perhaps we may refer to the circumstance, that he

446 wrote, not *in propriâ personâ*, and as thereby answerable for

447 every sentiment that he advanced, but in the professed

448 character of a Scotch Episcopalian. His work had a

449 gradual, but a deep effect on my mind.

450 I am not aware of any other religious opinion which I

451 owe to Dr. Whately. In his special theological tenets I

452 had no sympathy. In the next year, 1827, he told me he

453 considered that I was Arianizing. The case was this:

454 though at that time I had not read Bishop Bull's *Defensio*

455 nor the Fathers, I was just then very strong for that ante-Nicene

456 view of the Trinitarian doctrine, which some

457 writers, both Catholic and non-Catholic, have accused of

458 wearing a sort of Arian exterior. This is the meaning of

459 a passage in Froude's Remains, in which he seems to accuse

460 me of speaking against the Athanasian Creed. I had

461 contrasted the two aspects of the Trinitarian doctrine,

462 which are respectively presented by the Athanasian Creed

463 and the Nicene. My criticisms were to the effect that

464 some of the verses of the former Creed were unnecessarily

465 scientific. This is a specimen of a certain disdain for Antiquity

466 which had been growing on me now for several years.

467 It showed itself in some flippant language against the

468 Fathers in the Encyclopædia Metropolitana, about whom

469 I knew little at the time, except what I had learnt as a

470 boy from Joseph Milner. In writing on the Scripture

471 Miracles in 1825-6, I had read Middleton on the Miracles

472 of the early Church, and had imbibed a portion of his

473 spirit.

474 The truth is, I was beginning to prefer intellectual

475 excellence to moral; I was drifting in the direction of the

476 Liberalism of the day[3]. I was rudely awakened from my

477 dream at the end of 1827 by two great blows—illness and

478 bereavement.

479 [3] Vide Note A, *Liberalism*, at the end of the volume.

480 In the beginning of 1829, came the formal break between

481 Dr. Whately and me; the affair of Mr. Peel's re-election

482 was the occasion of it. I think in 1828 or 1827 I had

483 voted in the minority, when the Petition to Parliament

484 against the Catholic Claims was brought into Convocation.

485 I did so mainly on the views suggested to me in the

486 Letters of an Episcopalian. Also I shrank from the bigoted

487 "two-bottle-orthodox," as they were invidiously called.

488 When then I took part against Mr. Peel, it was on an

489 academical, not at all an ecclesiastical or a political

490 ground; and this I professed at the time. I considered

491 that Mr. Peel had taken the University by surprise; that

492 his friends had no right to call upon us to turn round on a

493 sudden, and to expose ourselves to the imputation of time-serving;

494 and that a great University ought not to be bullied

495 even by a great Duke of Wellington. Also by this time

496 I was under the influence of Keble and Froude; who, in

497 addition to the reasons I have given, disliked the Duke's

498 change of policy as dictated by liberalism.

499 Whately was considerably annoyed at me, and he took

500 a humourous revenge, of which he had given me due

501 notice beforehand. As head of a house he had duties of

502 hospitality to men of all parties; he asked a set of the

503 least intellectual men in Oxford to dinner, and men most

504 fond of port; he made me one of this party; placed me

505 between Provost This and Principal That, and then asked

506 me if I was proud of my friends. However, he had a

507 serious meaning in his act; he saw, more clearly than I

508 could do, that I was separating from his own friends for

509 good and all.

510 Dr. Whately attributed my leaving his *clientela* to a wish

511 on my part to be the head of a party myself. I do not think

512 that this charge was deserved. My habitual feeling then

513 and since has been, that it was not I who sought friends,

514 but friends who sought me. Never man had kinder or

515 more indulgent friends than I have had; but I expressed

516 my own feeling as to the mode in which I gained them, in

517 this very year 1829, in the course of a copy of verses.

518 Speaking of my blessings, I said, "Blessings of friends,

519 which to my door *unasked, unhoped*, have come." They

520 have come, they have gone; they came to my great joy,

521 they went to my great grief. He who gave took away.

522 Dr. Whately's impression about me, however, admits of

523 this explanation:—

524 During the first years of my residence at Oriel, though

525 proud of my College, I was not quite at home there. I was

526 very much alone, and I used often to take my daily walk

527 by myself. I recollect once meeting Dr. Copleston, then

528 Provost, with one of the Fellows. He turned round, and

529 with the kind courteousness which sat so well on him,

530 made me a bow and said, "Nunquam minus solus, quàm

531 cùm solus." At that time indeed (from 1823) I had the

532 intimacy of my dear and true friend Dr. Pusey, and could

533 not fail to admire and revere a soul so devoted to the cause

534 of religion, so full of good works, so faithful in his affections;

535 but he left residence when I was getting to know

536 him well. As to Dr. Whately himself, he was too much

537 my superior to allow of my being at my ease with him;

538 and to no one in Oxford at this time did I open my heart

539 fully and familiarly. But things changed in 1826. At

540 that time I became one of the Tutors of my College, and

541 this gave me position; besides, I had written one or two

542 Essays which had been well received. I began to be

543 known. I preached my first University Sermon. Next

544 year I was one of the Public Examiners for the B.A. degree.

545 In 1828 I became Vicar of St. Mary's. It was to me like the

546 feeling of spring weather after winter; and, if I may so

547 speak, I came out of my shell; I remained out of it till 1841.

548 The two persons who knew me best at that time are still

549 alive, beneficed clergymen, no longer my friends. They

550 could tell better than any one else what I was in those

551 years. From this time my tongue was, as it were,

552 loosened, and I spoke spontaneously and without effort.

553 One of the two, Mr. Rickards, said of me, I have been told,

554 "Here is a fellow who, when he is silent, will never begin

555 to speak; and when he once begins to speak, will never

556 stop." It was at this time that I began to have influence,

557 which steadily increased for a course of years. I gained

558 upon my pupils, and was in particular intimate and affectionate

559 with two of our probationer Fellows, Robert Isaac

560 Wilberforce (afterwards Archdeacon) and Richard Hurrell

561 Froude. Whately then, an acute man, perhaps saw around

562 me the signs of an incipient party, of which I was not

563 conscious myself. And thus we discern the first elements

564 of that movement afterwards called Tractarian.

565 The true and primary author of it, however, as is usual

566 with great motive-powers, was out of sight. Having

567 carried off as a mere boy the highest honours of the University,

568 he had turned from the admiration which haunted

569 his steps, and sought for a better and holier satisfaction in

570 pastoral work in the country. Need I say that I am

571 speaking of John Keble? The first time that I was in a

572 room with him was on occasion of my election to a fellowship

573 at Oriel, when I was sent for into the Tower, to shake

574 hands with the Provost and Fellows. How is that hour

575 fixed in my memory after the changes of forty-two years,

576 forty-two this very day on which I write! I have lately

577 had a letter in my hands, which I sent at the time to my

578 great friend, John William Bowden, with whom I passed

579 almost exclusively my Under-graduate years. "I had to

580 hasten to the Tower," I say to him, "to receive the congratulations

581 of all the Fellows. I bore it till Keble took

582 my hand, and then felt so abashed and unworthy of the

583 honour done me, that I seemed desirous of quite sinking

584 into the ground." His had been the first name which I

585 had heard spoken of, with reverence rather than admiration,

586 when I came up to Oxford. When one day I was

587 walking in High Street with my dear earliest friend just

588 mentioned, with what eagerness did he cry out, "There's

589 Keble!" and with what awe did I look at him! Then

590 at another time I heard a Master of Arts of my College

591 give an account how he had just then had occasion to introduce

592 himself on some business to Keble, and how

593 gentle, courteous, and unaffected Keble had been, so as

594 almost to put him out of countenance. Then too it was

595 reported, truly or falsely, how a rising man of brilliant

596 reputation, the present Dean of St. Paul's, Dr. Milman,

597 admired and loved him, adding, that somehow he was

598 strangely unlike any one else. However, at the time

599 when I was elected Fellow of Oriel he was not in residence,

600 and he was shy of me for years in consequence of

601 the marks which I bore upon me of the evangelical and

602 liberal schools. At least so I have ever thought. Hurrell

603 Froude brought us together about 1828: it is one of the

604 sayings preserved in his "Remains,"—"Do you know the

605 story of the murderer who had done one good thing in his

606 life? Well; if I was ever asked what good deed I had

607 ever done, I should say that I had brought Keble and

608 Newman to understand each other."

609 The Christian Year made its appearance in 1827. It is

610 not necessary, and scarcely becoming, to praise a book

611 which has already become one of the classics of the language.

612 When the general tone of religious literature was

613 so nerveless and impotent, as it was at that time, Keble

614 struck an original note and woke up in the hearts of

615 thousands a new music, the music of a school, long unknown

616 in England. Nor can I pretend to analyze, in my

617 own instance, the effect of religious teaching so deep, so

618 pure, so beautiful. I have never till now tried to do so;

619 yet I think I am not wrong in saying, that the two main

620 intellectual truths which it brought home to me, were the

621 same two, which I had learned from Butler, though recast

622 in the creative mind of my new master. The first of those

623 was what may be called, in a large sense of the word, the

624 Sacramental system; that is, the doctrine that material

625 phenomena are both the types and the instruments of real

626 things unseen,—a doctrine, which embraces in its fulness,

627 not only what Anglicans, as well as Catholics, believe about

628 Sacraments properly so called; but also the article of "the

629 Communion of Saints;" and likewise the Mysteries of

630 the faith. The connexion of this philosophy of religion

631 with what is sometimes called "Berkeleyism" has been

632 mentioned above; I knew little of Berkeley at this time

633 except by name; nor have I ever studied him.

634 On the second intellectual principle which I gained from

635 Mr. Keble, I could say a great deal; if this were the place

636 for it. It runs through very much that I have written,

637 and has gained for me many hard names. Butler teaches

638 us that probability is the guide of life. The danger of this

639 doctrine, in the case of many minds, is, its tendency to

640 destroy in them absolute certainty, leading them to consider

641 every conclusion as doubtful, and resolving truth into

642 an opinion, which it is safe indeed to obey or to profess,

643 but not possible to embrace with full internal assent. If

644 this were to be allowed, then the celebrated saying, "O

645 God, if there be a God, save my soul, if I have a soul!"

646 would be the highest measure of devotion:—but who can

647 really pray to a Being, about whose existence he is

648 seriously in doubt?

649 I considered that Mr. Keble met this difficulty by

650 ascribing the firmness of assent which we give to religious

651 doctrine, not to the probabilities which introduced it, but

652 to the living power of faith and love which accepted it.

653 In matters of religion, he seemed to say, it is not merely

654 probability which makes us intellectually certain, but probability

655 as it is put to account by faith and love. It is

656 faith and love which give to probability a force which it

657 has not in itself. Faith and love are directed towards an

658 Object; in the vision of that Object they live; it is that

659 Object, received in faith and love, which renders it reasonable

660 to take probability as sufficient for internal

661 conviction. Thus the argument from Probability, in

662 the matter of religion, became an argument from Personality,

663 which in fact is one form of the argument from

664 Authority.

665 In illustration, Mr. Keble used to quote the words of the

666 Psalm: "I will guide thee with mine *eye*. Be ye not like

667 to horse and mule, which have no understanding; whose

668 mouths must be held with bit and bridle, lest they

669 fall upon thee." This is the very difference, he used to

670 say, between slaves, and friends or children. Friends do

671 not ask for literal commands; but, from their knowledge

672 of the speaker, they understand his half-words, and from

673 love of him they anticipate his wishes. Hence it is, that

674 in his Poem for St. Bartholomew's Day, he speaks of the

675 "Eye of God's word;" and in the note quotes Mr. Miller,

676 of Worcester College, who remarks in his Bampton Lectures,

677 on the special power of Scripture, as having "this

678 Eye, like that of a portrait, uniformly fixed upon us, turn

679 where we will." The view thus suggested by Mr. Keble,

680 is brought forward in one of the earliest of the "Tracts

681 for the Times." In No. 8 I say, "The Gospel is a Law of

682 Liberty. We are treated as sons, not as servants; not

683 subjected to a code of formal commandments, but addressed

684 as those who love God, and wish to please Him."

685 I did not at all dispute this view of the matter, for I

686 made use of it myself; but I was dissatisfied, because it did

687 not go to the root of the difficulty. It was beautiful and

688 religious, but it did not even profess to be logical; and

689 accordingly I tried to complete it by considerations of my

690 own, which are to be found in my University Sermons,

691 Essay on Ecclesiastical Miracles, and Essay on Development

692 of Doctrine. My argument is in outline as follows:

693 that that absolute certitude which we were able to possess,

694 whether as to the truths of natural theology, or as to the

695 fact of a revelation, was the result of an *assemblage* of concurring

696 and converging probabilities, and that, both according

697 to the constitution of the human mind and the

698 will of its Maker; that certitude was a habit of mind, that

699 certainty was a quality of propositions; that probabilities

700 which did not reach to logical certainty, might suffice for a

701 mental certitude; that the certitude thus brought about

702 might equal in measure and strength the certitude which

703 was created by the strictest scientific demonstration; and

704 that to possess such certitude might in given cases and to

705 given individuals be a plain duty, though not to others in

706 other circumstances:—

707 Moreover, that as there were probabilities which sufficed

708 for certitude, so there were other probabilities which were

709 legitimately adapted to create opinion; that it might be

710 quite as much a matter of duty in given cases and to given

711 persons to have about a fact an opinion of a definite

712 strength and consistency, as in the case of greater or of

713 more numerous probabilities it was a duty to have a certitude;

714 that accordingly we were bound to be more or less

715 sure, on a sort of (as it were) graduated scale of assent, viz.

716 according as the probabilities attaching to a professed fact

717 were brought home to us, and as the case might be, to entertain

718 about it a pious belief, or a pious opinion, or a religious

719 conjecture, or at least, a tolerance of such belief, or

720 opinion or conjecture in others; that on the other hand, as it

721 was a duty to have a belief, of more or less strong texture,

722 in given cases, so in other cases it was a duty not to believe,

723 not to opine, not to conjecture, not even to tolerate

724 the notion that a professed fact was true, inasmuch as it

725 would be credulity or superstition, or some other moral

726 fault, to do so. This was the region of Private Judgment

727 in religion; that is, of a Private Judgment, not formed

728 arbitrarily and according to one's fancy or liking, but conscientiously,

729 and under a sense of duty.

730 Considerations such as these throw a new light on the

731 subject of Miracles, and they seem to have led me to reconsider

732 the view which I had taken of them in my Essay in

733 1825-6. I do not know what was the date of this change

734 in me, nor of the train of ideas on which it was founded.

735 That there had been already great miracles, as those of

736 Scripture, as the Resurrection, was a fact establishing the

737 principle that the laws of nature had sometimes been suspended

738 by their Divine Author, and since what had happened

739 once might happen again, a certain probability, at

740 least no kind of improbability, was attached to the idea

741 taken in itself, of miraculous intervention in later times,

742 and miraculous accounts were to be regarded in connexion

743 with the verisimilitude, scope, instrument, character, testimony,

744 and circumstances, with which they presented themselves

745 to us; and, according to the final result of those

746 various considerations, it was our duty to be sure, or to believe,

747 or to opine, or to surmise, or to tolerate, or to reject,

748 or to denounce. The main difference between my Essay

749 on Miracles in 1826 and my Essay in 1842 is this: that in

750 1826 I considered that miracles were sharply divided into

751 two classes, those which were to be received, and those

752 which were to be rejected; whereas in 1842 I saw that they

753 were to be regarded according to their greater or less probability,

754 which was in some cases sufficient to create certitude

755 about them, in other cases only belief or opinion.

756 Moreover, the argument from Analogy, on which this

757 view of the question was founded, suggested to me something

758 besides, in recommendation of the Ecclesiastical

759 Miracles. It fastened itself upon the theory of Church

760 History which I had learned as a boy from Joseph Milner.

761 It is Milner's doctrine, that upon the visible Church come

762 down from above, at certain intervals, large and temporary

763 *Effusions* of divine grace. This is the leading idea of his

764 work. He begins by speaking of the Day of Pentecost, as

765 marking "the first of those *Effusions* of the Spirit of God,

766 which from age to age have visited the earth since the

767 coming of Christ." Vol. i. p. 3. In a note he adds that

768 "in the term 'Effusion' there is *not* here included the idea

769 of the miraculous or extraordinary operations of the Spirit

770 of God;" but still it was natural for me, admitting Milner's

771 general theory, and applying to it the principle of analogy,

772 not to stop short at his abrupt *ipse dixit*, but boldly to pass

773 forward to the conclusion, on other grounds plausible, that

774 as miracles accompanied the first effusion of grace, so they

775 might accompany the later. It is surely a natural and on

776 the whole, a true anticipation (though of course there are

777 exceptions in particular cases), that gifts and graces go

778 together; now, according to the ancient Catholic doctrine,

779 the gift of miracles was viewed as the attendant and shadow

780 of transcendent sanctity: and moreover, since such sanctity

781 was not of every day's occurrence, nay further, since one

782 period of Church history differed widely from another, and,

783 as Joseph Milner would say, there have been generations

784 or centuries of degeneracy or disorder, and times of revival,

785 and since one region might be in the mid-day of religious

786 fervour, and another in twilight or gloom, there was no

787 force in the popular argument, that, because we did not

788 see miracles with our own eyes, miracles had not happened

789 in former times, or were not now at this very time taking

790 place in distant places:—but I must not dwell longer on a

791 subject, to which in a few words it is impossible to do

792 justice[4].

793 [4] Vide note B, *Ecclesiastical Miracles*, at the end of the volume.

794 Hurrell Froude was a pupil of Keble's, formed by him,

795 and in turn reacting upon him. I knew him first in 1826,

796 and was in the closest and most affectionate friendship with

797 him from about 1829 till his death in 1836. He was a

798 man of the highest gifts,—so truly many-sided, that it

799 would be presumptuous in me to attempt to describe him,

800 except under those aspects in which he came before me.

801 Nor have I here to speak of the gentleness and tenderness

802 of nature, the playfulness, the free elastic force and graceful

803 versatility of mind, and the patient winning considerateness

804 in discussion, which endeared him to those to whom

805 he opened his heart; for I am all along engaged upon

806 matters of belief and opinion, and am introducing others

807 into my narrative, not for their own sake, or because I love

808 and have loved them, so much as because, and so far as,

809 they have influenced my theological views. In this respect

810 then, I speak of Hurrell Froude,—in his intellectual

811 aspect,—as a man of high genius, brimful and overflowing

812 with ideas and views, in him original, which were too

813 many and strong even for his bodily strength, and which

814 crowded and jostled against each other in their effort after

815 distinct shape and expression. And he had an intellect as

816 critical and logical as it was speculative and bold. Dying

817 prematurely, as he did, and in the conflict and transition-state

818 of opinion, his religious views never reached their

819 ultimate conclusion, by the very reason of their multitude

820 and their depth. His opinions arrested and influenced

821 me, even when they did not gain my assent.

822 He professed openly his admiration of the Church of

823 Rome, and his hatred of the Reformers. He delighted

824 in the notion of an hierarchical system, of sacerdotal

825 power, and of full ecclesiastical liberty. He felt scorn of

826 the maxim, "The Bible and the Bible only is the religion

827 of Protestants;" and he gloried in accepting Tradition as

828 a main instrument of religious teaching. He had a high

829 severe idea of the intrinsic excellence of Virginity; and he

830 considered the Blessed Virgin its great Pattern. He delighted

831 in thinking of the Saints; he had a vivid appreciation

832 of the idea of sanctity, its possibility and its heights;

833 and he was more than inclined to believe a large amount

834 of miraculous interference as occurring in the early and

835 middle ages. He embraced the principle of penance and

836 mortification. He had a deep devotion to the Real Presence,

837 in which he had a firm faith. He was powerfully

838 drawn to the Medieval Church, but not to the Primitive.

839 He had a keen insight into abstract truth; but he was

840 an Englishman to the backbone in his severe adherence to

841 the real and the concrete. He had a most classical taste,

842 and a genius for philosophy and art; and he was fond of

843 historical inquiry, and the politics of religion. He had no

844 turn for theology as such. He set no sufficient value

845 on the writings of the Fathers, on the detail or development

846 of doctrine, on the definite traditions of the Church

847 viewed in their matter, on the teaching of the Ecumenical

848 Councils, or on the controversies out of which they arose.

849 He took an eager courageous view of things on the whole.

850 I should say that his power of entering into the minds of

851 others did not equal his other gifts; he could not believe,

852 for instance, that I really held the Roman Church to be

853 Anti-christian. On many points he would not believe

854 but that I agreed with him, when I did not. He seemed

855 not to understand my difficulties. His were of a different

856 kind, the contrariety between theory and fact. He was a

857 high Tory of the Cavalier stamp, and was disgusted with

858 the Toryism of the opponents of the Reform Bill. He was

859 smitten with the love of the Theocratic Church; he went

860 abroad and was shocked by the degeneracy which he

861 thought he saw in the Catholics of Italy.

862 It is difficult to enumerate the precise additions to my

863 theological creed which I derived from a friend to whom

864 I owe so much. He taught me to look with admiration

865 towards the Church of Rome, and in the same degree to

866 dislike the Reformation. He fixed deep in me the idea

867 of devotion to the Blessed Virgin, and he led me gradually

868 to believe in the Real Presence.

869 There is one remaining source of my opinions to be

870 mentioned, and that far from the least important. In

871 proportion as I moved out of the shadow of that liberalism

872 which had hung over my course, my early devotion towards

873 the Fathers returned; and in the Long Vacation of 1828

874 I set about to read them chronologically, beginning with

875 St. Ignatius and St. Justin. About 1830 a proposal was

876 made to me by Mr. Hugh Rose, who with Mr. Lyall

877 (afterwards Dean of Canterbury) was providing writers for

878 a Theological Library, to furnish them with a History of

879 the Principal Councils. I accepted it, and at once set to

880 work on the Council of Nicæa. It was to launch myself

881 on an ocean with currents innumerable; and I was drifted

882 back first to the ante-Nicene history, and then to the

883 Church of Alexandria. The work at last appeared under

884 the title of "The Arians of the Fourth Century;" and

885 of its 422 pages, the first 117 consisted of introductory

886 matter, and the Council of Nicæa did not appear till the

887 254th, and then occupied at most twenty pages.

888 I do not know when I first learnt to consider that Antiquity

889 was the true exponent of the doctrines of Christianity

890 and the basis of the Church of England; but I

891 take it for granted that the works of Bishop Bull, which

892 at this time I read, were my chief introduction to this

893 principle. The course of reading, which I pursued in the

894 composition of my volume, was directly adapted to develope

895 it in my mind. What principally attracted me in the

896 ante-Nicene period was the great Church of Alexandria,

897 the historical centre of teaching in those times. Of Rome

898 for some centuries comparatively little is known. The

899 battle of Arianism was first fought in Alexandria; Athanasius,

900 the champion of the truth, was Bishop of Alexandria;

901 and in his writings he refers to the great religious

902 names of an earlier date, to Origen, Dionysius, and others,

903 who were the glory of its see, or of its school. The broad

904 philosophy of Clement and Origen carried me away; the

905 philosophy, not the theological doctrine; and I have drawn

906 out some features of it in my volume, with the zeal and

907 freshness, but with the partiality, of a neophyte. Some

908 portions of their teaching, magnificent in themselves, came

909 like music to my inward ear, as if the response to ideas,

910 which, with little external to encourage them, I had

911 cherished so long. These were based on the mystical or

912 sacramental principle, and spoke of the various Economies

913 or Dispensations of the Eternal. I understood these

914 passages to mean that the exterior world, physical and historical,

915 was but the manifestation to our senses of realities

916 greater than itself. Nature was a parable: Scripture was

917 an allegory: pagan literature, philosophy, and mythology,

918 properly understood, were but a preparation for the Gospel.

919 The Greek poets and sages were in a certain sense

920 prophets; for "thoughts beyond their thought to those

921 high bards were given." There had been a directly

922 divine dispensation granted to the Jews; but there had

923 been in some sense a dispensation carried on in favour of

924 the Gentiles. He who had taken the seed of Jacob for

925 His elect people had not therefore cast the rest of mankind

926 out of His sight. In the fulness of time both Judaism

927 and Paganism had come to nought; the outward framework,

928 which concealed yet suggested the Living Truth,

929 had never been intended to last, and it was dissolving

930 under the beams of the Sun of Justice which shone behind

931 it and through it. The process of change had been slow;

932 it had been done not rashly, but by rule and measure,

933 "at sundry times and in divers manners," first one disclosure

934 and then another, till the whole evangelical doctrine

935 was brought into full manifestation. And thus room

936 was made for the anticipation of further and deeper disclosures,

937 of truths still under the veil of the letter, and in

938 their season to be revealed. The visible world still remains

939 without its divine interpretation; Holy Church in her

940 sacraments and her hierarchical appointments, will remain,

941 even to the end of the world, after all but a symbol

942 of those heavenly facts which fill eternity. Her mysteries

943 are but the expressions in human language of truths to

944 which the human mind is unequal. It is evident how

945 much there was in all this in correspondence with the

946 thoughts which had attracted me when I was young, and

947 with the doctrine which I have already associated with

948 the Analogy and the Christian Year.

949 It was, I suppose, to the Alexandrian school and to the

950 early Church, that I owe in particular what I definitely

951 held about the Angels. I viewed them, not only as the

952 ministers employed by the Creator in the Jewish and

953 Christian dispensations, as we find on the face of Scripture,

954 but as carrying on, as Scripture also implies, the Economy

955 of the Visible World. I considered them as the real

956 causes of motion, light, and life, and of those elementary

957 principles of the physical universe, which, when offered in

958 their developments to our senses, suggest to us the notion

959 of cause and effect, and of what are called the laws of

960 nature. This doctrine I have drawn out in my Sermon

961 for Michaelmas day, written in 1831. I say of the Angels,

962 "Every breath of air and ray of light and heat, every

963 beautiful prospect, is, as it were, the skirts of their garments,

964 the waving of the robes of those whose faces see

965 God." Again, I ask what would be the thoughts of a

966 man who, "when examining a flower, or a herb, or a

967 pebble, or a ray of light, which he treats as something so

968 beneath him in the scale of existence, suddenly discovered

969 that he was in the presence of some powerful being who

970 was hidden behind the visible things he was inspecting,—who,

971 though concealing his wise hand, was giving them

972 their beauty, grace, and perfection, as being God's instrument

973 for the purpose,—nay, whose robe and ornaments

974 those objects were, which he was so eager to analyze?"

975 and I therefore remark that "we may say with grateful

976 and simple hearts with the Three Holy Children, 'O all ye

977 works of the Lord, &c., &c., bless ye the Lord, praise Him,

978 and magnify Him for ever.'"

979 Also, besides the hosts of evil spirits, I considered

980 there was a middle race, δαιμονια, neither in heaven, nor

981 in hell; partially fallen, capricious, wayward; noble or

982 crafty, benevolent or malicious, as the case might be.

983 These beings gave a sort of inspiration or intelligence to

984 races, nations, and classes of men. Hence the action of

985 bodies politic and associations, which is often so different

986 from that of the individuals who compose them. Hence

987 the character and the instinct of states and governments,

988 of religious communities and communions. I thought

989 these assemblages had their life in certain unseen Powers.

990 My preference of the Personal to the Abstract would

991 naturally lead me to this view. I thought it countenanced

992 by the mention of "the Prince of Persia" in the Prophet

993 Daniel; and I think I considered that it was of such intermediate

994 beings that the Apocalypse spoke, in its notice of

995 "the Angels of the Seven Churches."

996 In 1837 I made a further development of this doctrine.

997 I said to an intimate and dear friend, Samuel Francis

998 Wood, in a letter which came into my hands on his death.

999 "I have an idea. The mass of the Fathers (Justin,

1000 Athenagoras, Irenæus, Clement, Tertullian, Origen, Lactantius,

1001 Sulpicius, Ambrose, Nazianzen,) hold that, though

1002 Satan fell from the beginning, the Angels fell before the

1003 deluge, falling in love with the daughters of men. This

1004 has lately come across me as a remarkable solution of a

1005 notion which I cannot help holding. Daniel speaks as if

1006 each nation had its guardian Angel. I cannot but think

1007 that there are beings with a great deal of good in them,

1008 yet with great defects, who are the animating principles

1009 of certain institutions, &c., &c.... Take England with

1010 many high virtues, and yet a low Catholicism. It seems

1011 to me that John Bull is a spirit neither of heaven nor hell....

1012 Has not the Christian Church, in its parts, surrendered

1013 itself to one or other of these simulations of the

1014 truth?... How are we to avoid Scylla and Charybdis

1015 and go straight on to the very image of Christ?"

1016 &c., &c.

1017 I am aware that what I have been saying will, with

1018 many men, be doing credit to my imagination at the

1019 expense of my judgment—"Hippoclides doesn't care;" I

1020 am not setting myself up as a pattern of good sense or of

1021 any thing else: I am but giving a history of my opinions,

1022 and that, with the view of showing that I have come by

1023 them through intelligible processes of thought and honest

1024 external means. The doctrine indeed of the Economy has

1025 in some quarters been itself condemned as intrinsically

1026 pernicious,—as if leading to lying and equivocation, when

1027 applied, as I have applied it in my remarks upon it in my

1028 History of the Arians, to matters of conduct. My answer

1029 to this imputation I postpone to the concluding pages of

1030 my Volume.

1031 While I was engaged in writing my work upon the

1032 Arians, great events were happening at home and abroad,

1033 which brought out into form and passionate expression

1034 the various beliefs which had so gradually been winning

1035 their way into my mind. Shortly before, there had been

1036 a Revolution in France; the Bourbons had been dismissed:

1037 and I held that it was unchristian for nations to

1038 cast off their governors, and, much more, sovereigns who

1039 had the divine right of inheritance. Again, the great

1040 Reform Agitation was going on around me as I wrote.

1041 The Whigs had come into power; Lord Grey had told

1042 the Bishops to set their house in order, and some of the

1043 Prelates had been insulted and threatened in the streets of

1044 London. The vital question was, how were we to keep the

1045 Church from being liberalized? there was such apathy

1046 on the subject in some quarters, such imbecile alarm in

1047 others; the true principles of Churchmanship seemed so

1048 radically decayed, and there was such distraction in the

1049 councils of the Clergy. Blomfield, the Bishop of London

1050 of the day, an active and open-hearted man, had been

1051 for years engaged in diluting the high orthodoxy of the

1052 Church by the introduction of members of the Evangelical

1053 body into places of influence and trust. He had deeply

1054 offended men who agreed in opinion with myself, by an

1055 off-hand saying (as it was reported) to the effect that

1056 belief in the Apostolical succession had gone out with the

1057 Non-jurors. "We can count you," he said to some of the

1058 gravest and most venerated persons of the old school.

1059 And the Evangelical party itself, with their late successes,

1060 seemed to have lost that simplicity and unworldliness

1061 which I admired so much in Milner and Scott. It was

1062 not that I did not venerate such men as Ryder, the then

1063 Bishop of Lichfield, and others of similar sentiments, who

1064 were not yet promoted out of the ranks of the Clergy, but

1065 I thought little of the Evangelicals as a class. I thought

1066 they played into the hands of the Liberals. With the

1067 Establishment thus divided and threatened, thus ignorant

1068 of its true strength, I compared that fresh vigorous Power

1069 of which I was reading in the first centuries. In her

1070 triumphant zeal on behalf of that Primeval Mystery, to

1071 which I had had so great a devotion from my youth, I

1072 recognized the movement of my Spiritual Mother. "Incessu

1073 patuit Dea." The self-conquest of her Ascetics, the

1074 patience of her Martyrs, the irresistible determination of

1075 her Bishops, the joyous swing of her advance, both exalted

1076 and abashed me. I said to myself, "Look on this picture

1077 and on that;" I felt affection for my own Church, but not

1078 tenderness; I felt dismay at her prospects, anger and

1079 scorn at her do-nothing perplexity. I thought that if

1080 Liberalism once got a footing within her, it was sure of

1081 the victory in the event. I saw that Reformation principles

1082 were powerless to rescue her. As to leaving her, the

1083 thought never crossed my imagination; still I ever kept

1084 before me that there was something greater than the

1085 Established Church, and that that was the Church Catholic

1086 and Apostolic, set up from the beginning, of which

1087 she was but the local presence and the organ. She was

1088 nothing, unless she was this. She must be dealt with

1089 strongly, or she would be lost. There was need of a

1090 second reformation.

1091 At this time I was disengaged from College duties, and

1092 my health had suffered from the labour involved in the

1093 composition of my Volume. It was ready for the Press

1094 in July, 1832, though not published till the end of 1833.

1095 I was easily persuaded to join Hurrell Froude and his

1096 Father, who were going to the south of Europe for the

1097 health of the former.

1098 We set out in December, 1832. It was during this

1099 expedition that my Verses which are in the Lyra Apostolica

1100 were written;—a few indeed before it, but not more

1101 than one or two of them after it. Exchanging, as I was,

1102 definite Tutorial work, and the literary quiet and pleasant

1103 friendships of the last six years, for foreign countries and

1104 an unknown future, I naturally was led to think that some

1105 inward changes, as well as some larger course of action,

1106 were coming upon me. At Whitchurch, while waiting

1107 for the down mail to Falmouth, I wrote the verses about

1108 my Guardian Angel, which begin with these words: "Are

1109 these the tracks of some unearthly Friend?" and which

1110 go on to speak of "the vision" which haunted me:—that

1111 vision is more or less brought out in the whole series of

1112 these compositions.

1113 I went to various coasts of the Mediterranean; parted

1114 with my friends at Rome; went down for the second time

1115 to Sicily without companion, at the end of April; and got

1116 back to England by Palermo in the early part of July.

1117 The strangeness of foreign life threw me back into myself;

1118 I found pleasure in historical sites and beautiful scenes,

1119 not in men and manners. We kept clear of Catholics

1120 throughout our tour. I had a conversation with the Dean

1121 of Malta, a most pleasant man, lately dead; but it was

1122 about the Fathers, and the Library of the great church.

1123 I knew the Abbate Santini, at Rome, who did no more

1124 than copy for me the Gregorian tones. Froude and I

1125 made two calls upon Monsignore (now Cardinal) Wiseman

1126 at the Collegio Inglese, shortly before we left Rome. Once

1127 we heard him preach at a church in the Corso. I do not

1128 recollect being in a room with any other ecclesiastics,

1129 except a Priest at Castro-Giovanni in Sicily, who called

1130 on me when I was ill, and with whom I wished to hold a

1131 controversy. As to Church Services, we attended the

1132 Tenebræ, at the Sestine, for the sake of the Miserere; and

1133 that was all. My general feeling was, "All, save the

1134 spirit of man, is divine." I saw nothing but what was

1135 external; of the hidden life of Catholics I knew nothing.

1136 I was still more driven back into myself, and felt my

1137 isolation. England was in my thoughts solely, and the

1138 news from England came rarely and imperfectly. The

1139 Bill for the Suppression of the Irish Sees was in progress,

1140 and filled my mind. I had fierce thoughts against the

1141 Liberals.

1142 It was the success of the Liberal cause which fretted me

1143 inwardly. I became fierce against its instruments and its

1144 manifestations. A French vessel was at Algiers; I would

1145 not even look at the tricolour. On my return, though

1146 forced to stop twenty-four hours at Paris, I kept indoors

1147 the whole time, and all that I saw of that beautiful city was

1148 what I saw from the Diligence. The Bishop of London

1149 had already sounded me as to my filling one of the Whitehall

1150 preacherships, which he had just then put on a new

1151 footing; but I was indignant at the line which he was

1152 taking, and from my Steamer I had sent home a letter

1153 declining the appointment by anticipation, should it be

1154 offered to me. At this time I was specially annoyed with

1155 Dr. Arnold, though it did not last into later years. Some

1156 one, I think, asked, in conversation at Rome, whether a

1157 certain interpretation of Scripture was Christian? it was

1158 answered that Dr. Arnold took it; I interposed, "But is

1159 *he* a Christian?" The subject went out of my head at

1160 once; when afterwards I was taxed with it, I could say

1161 no more in explanation, than (what I believe was the

1162 fact) that I must have had in mind some free views of

1163 Dr. Arnold about the Old Testament:—I thought I must

1164 have meant, "Arnold answers for the interpretation, but

1165 who is to answer for Arnold?" It was at Rome, too,

1166 that we began the Lyra Apostolica which appeared

1167 monthly in the British Magazine. The motto shows the

1168 feeling of both Froude and myself at the time: we

1169 borrowed from M. Bunsen a Homer, and Froude chose

1170 the words in which Achilles, on returning to the battle,

1171 says, "You shall know the difference, now that I am back

1172 again."

1173 Especially when I was left by myself, the thought came

1174 upon me that deliverance is wrought, not by the many but

1175 by the few, not by bodies but by persons. Now it was, I

1176 think, that I repeated to myself the words, which had

1177 ever been dear to me from my school days, "Exoriare

1178 aliquis!"—now too, that Southey's beautiful poem of

1179 Thalaba, for which I had an immense liking, came

1180 forcibly to my mind. I began to think that I had a

1181 mission. There are sentences of my letters to my friends

1182 to this effect, if they are not destroyed. When we took

1183 leave of Monsignore Wiseman, he had courteously expressed

1184 a wish that we might make a second visit to Rome; I

1185 said with great gravity, "We have a work to do in England."

1186 I went down at once to Sicily, and the presentiment

1187 grew stronger. I struck into the middle of the

1188 island, and fell ill of a fever at Leonforte. My servant

1189 thought that I was dying, and begged for my last directions.

1190 I gave them, as he wished; but I said, "I shall not die."

1191 I repeated, "I shall not die, for I have not sinned against

1192 light, I have not sinned against light." I never have

1193 been able quite to make out what I meant.

1194 I got to Castro-Giovanni, and was laid up there for

1195 nearly three weeks. Towards the end of May I left for

1196 Palermo, taking three days for the journey. Before starting

1197 from my inn in the morning of May 26th or 27th, I

1198 sat down on my bed, and began to sob violently. My

1199 servant, who had acted as my nurse, asked what ailed

1200 me. I could only answer him, "I have a work to do in

1201 England."

1202 I was aching to get home; yet for want of a vessel I

1203 was kept at Palermo for three weeks. I began to visit

1204 the Churches, and they calmed my impatience, though I

1205 did not attend any services. I knew nothing of the Presence

1206 of the Blessed Sacrament there. At last I got off

1207 in an orange boat, bound for Marseilles. Then it was

1208 that I wrote the lines, "Lead, kindly light," which have

1209 since become well known. We were becalmed a whole

1210 week in the Straits of Bonifacio. I was writing verses the

1211 whole time of my passage. At length I got to Marseilles,

1212 and set off for England. The fatigue of travelling was

1213 too much for me, and I was laid up for several days at

1214 Lyons. At last I got off again, and did not stop night or

1215 day, (except a compulsory delay at Paris,) till I reached

1216 England, and my mother's house. My brother had arrived

1217 from Persia only a few hours before. This was on the

1218 Tuesday. The following Sunday, July 14th, Mr. Keble

1219 preached the Assize Sermon in the University Pulpit. It

1220 was published under the title of "National Apostasy."

1221 I have ever considered and kept the day, as the start of

1222 the religious movement of 1833.

CHAPTER II.

25 (Texto do capítulo)

HISTORY OF MY RELIGIOUS OPINIONS FROM 1833 TO 1839.

28 In spite of the foregoing pages, I have no romantic story

29 to tell; but I have written them, because it is my duty to

30 tell things as they took place. I have not exaggerated

31 the feelings with which I returned to England, and I have

32 no desire to dress up the events which followed, so as to

33 make them in keeping with the narrative which has gone

34 before. I soon relapsed into the every-day life which I

35 had hitherto led; in all things the same, except that a

36 new object was given me. I had employed myself in my

37 own rooms in reading and writing, and in the care of a

38 Church, before I left England, and I returned to the same

39 occupations when I was back again. And yet perhaps

40 those first vehement feelings which carried me on, were

41 necessary for the beginning of the Movement; and afterwards,

42 when it was once begun, the special need of me

43 was over.

44 When I got home from abroad, I found that already a

45 movement had commenced, in opposition to the specific

46 danger which at that time was threatening the religion of

47 the nation and its Church. Several zealous and able men

48 had united their counsels, and were in correspondence with

49 each other. The principal of these were Mr. Keble,

50 Hurrell Froude, who had reached home long before me,

51 Mr. William Palmer of Dublin and Worcester College

52 (not Mr. William Palmer of Magdalen, who is now a

53 Catholic), Mr. Arthur Perceval, and Mr. Hugh Rose.

54 To mention Mr. Hugh Rose's name is to kindle in the

55 minds of those who knew him a host of pleasant and affectionate

56 remembrances. He was the man above all others

57 fitted by his cast of mind and literary powers to make a

58 stand, if a stand could be made, against the calamity of

59 the times. He was gifted with a high and large mind,

60 and a true sensibility of what was great and beautiful; he

61 wrote with warmth and energy; and he had a cool head

62 and cautious judgment. He spent his strength and shortened

63 his life. Pro Ecclesia Dei, as he understood that

64 sovereign idea. Some years earlier he had been the first

65 to give warning, I think from the University Pulpit at

66 Cambridge, of the perils to England which lay in the

67 biblical and theological speculations of Germany. The

68 Reform agitation followed, and the Whig Government

69 came into power; and he anticipated in their distribution

70 of Church patronage the authoritative introduction of

71 liberal opinions into the country. He feared that by the

72 Whig party a door would be opened in England to the

73 most grievous of heresies, which never could be closed

74 again. In order under such grave circumstances to unite

75 Churchmen together, and to make a front against the

76 coming danger, he had in 1832 commenced the British

77 Magazine, and in the same year he came to Oxford in the

78 summer term, in order to beat up for writers for his publication;

79 on that occasion I became known to him through

80 Mr. Palmer. His reputation and position came in aid of

81 his obvious fitness, in point of character and intellect, to

82 become the centre of an ecclesiastical movement, if such a

83 movement were to depend on the action of a party. His

84 delicate health, his premature death, would have frustrated

85 the expectation, even though the new school of opinion

86 had been more exactly thrown into the shape of a party,

87 than in fact was the case. But he zealously backed up

88 the first efforts of those who were principals in it; and,

89 when he went abroad to die, in 1838, he allowed me the

90 solace of expressing my feelings of attachment and gratitude

91 to him by addressing him, in the dedication of a

92 volume of my Sermons, as the man "who, when hearts

93 were failing, bade us stir up the gift that was in us, and

94 betake ourselves to our true Mother."

95 But there were other reasons, besides Mr. Rose's state

96 of health, which hindered those who so much admired him

97 from availing themselves of his close co-operation in the

98 coming fight. United as both he and they were in the

99 general scope of the Movement, they were in discordance

100 with each other from the first in their estimate of the

101 means to be adopted for attaining it. Mr. Rose had a

102 position in the Church, a name, and serious responsibilities;

103 he had direct ecclesiastical superiors; he had intimate relations

104 with his own University, and a large clerical connexion

105 through the country. Froude and I were nobodies;

106 with no characters to lose, and no antecedents to fetter us.

107 Rose could not go a-head across country, as Froude had

108 no scruples in doing. Froude was a bold rider, as on

109 horseback, so also in his speculations. After a long conversation

110 with him on the logical bearing of his principles,

111 Mr. Rose said of him with quiet humour, that "he did

112 not seem to be afraid of inferences." It was simply the

113 truth; Froude had that strong hold of first principles, and

114 that keen perception of their value, that he was comparatively

115 indifferent to the revolutionary action which would

116 attend on their application to a given state of things;

117 whereas in the thoughts of Rose, as a practical man, existing

118 facts had the precedence of every other idea, and the

119 chief test of the soundness of a line of policy lay in the

120 consideration whether it would work. This was one of

121 the first questions, which, as it seemed to me, on every

122 occasion occurred to his mind. With Froude, Erastianism,—that

123 is, the union (so he viewed it) of Church and State,—was

124 the parent, or if not the parent, the serviceable and

125 sufficient tool, of liberalism. Till that union was snapped,

126 Christian doctrine never could be safe; and, while he well

127 knew how high and unselfish was the temper of Mr. Rose,

128 yet he used to apply to him an epithet, reproachful in his

129 own mouth;—Rose was a "conservative." By bad luck,

130 I brought out this word to Mr. Rose in a letter of my

131 own, which I wrote to him in criticism of something he

132 had inserted in his Magazine: I got a vehement rebuke

133 for my pains, for though Rose pursued a conservative line,

134 he had as high a disdain, as Froude could have, of a

135 worldly ambition, and an extreme sensitiveness of such an

136 imputation.

137 But there was another reason still, and a more elementary

138 one, which severed Mr. Rose from the Oxford Movement.

139 Living movements do not come of committees, nor

140 are great ideas worked out through the post, even though

141 it had been the penny post. This principle deeply penetrated

142 both Froude and myself from the first, and recommended

143 to us the course which things soon took

144 spontaneously, and without set purpose of our own. Universities

145 are the natural centres of intellectual movements.

146 How could men act together, whatever was their zeal,

147 unless they were united in a sort of individuality? Now,

148 first, we had no unity of place. Mr. Rose was in Suffolk,

149 Mr. Perceval in Surrey, Mr. Keble in Gloucestershire;

150 Hurrell Froude had to go for his health to Barbadoes.

151 Mr. Palmer was indeed in Oxford; this was an important

152 advantage, and told well in the first months of the Movement;—but

153 another condition, besides that of place, was

154 required.

155 A far more essential unity was that of antecedents,—a

156 common history, common memories, an intercourse of

157 mind with mind in the past, and a progress and increase

158 in that intercourse in the present. Mr. Perceval, to be

159 sure, was a pupil of Mr. Keble's; but Keble, Rose, and

160 Palmer, represented distinct parties, or at least tempers,

161 in the Establishment. Mr. Palmer had many conditions

162 of authority and influence. He was the only really learned

163 man among us. He understood theology as a science; he

164 was practised in the scholastic mode of controversial

165 writing; and, I believe, was as well acquainted, as he was

166 dissatisfied, with the Catholic schools. He was as decided

167 in his religious views, as he was cautious and even subtle

168 in their expression, and gentle in their enforcement. But

169 he was deficient in depth; and besides, coming from a

170 distance, he never had really grown into an Oxford man,

171 nor was he generally received as such; nor had he any

172 insight into the force of personal influence and congeniality

173 of thought in carrying out a religious theory,—a condition

174 which Froude and I considered essential to any true success

175 in the stand which had to be made against Liberalism.

176 Mr. Palmer had a certain connexion, as it may be called,

177 in the Establishment, consisting of high Church dignitaries,

178 Archdeacons, London Rectors, and the like, who

179 belonged to what was commonly called the high-and-dry

180 school. They were far more opposed than even he was to

181 the irresponsible action of individuals. Of course their

182 *beau idéal* in ecclesiastical action was a board of safe, sound,

183 sensible men. Mr. Palmer was their organ and representative;

184 and he wished for a Committee, an Association,

185 with rules and meetings, to protect the interests of the

186 Church in its existing peril. He was in some measure

187 supported by Mr. Perceval.

188 I, on the other hand, had out of my own head begun

189 the Tracts; and these, as representing the antagonist

190 principle of personality, were looked upon by Mr. Palmer's

191 friends with considerable alarm. The great point at the

192 time with these good men in London,—some of them men

193 of the highest principle, and far from influenced by what

194 we used to call Erastianism,—was to put down the Tracts.

195 I, as their editor, and mainly their author, was of course

196 willing to give way. Keble and Froude advocated their

197 continuance strongly, and were angry with me for consenting

198 to stop them. Mr. Palmer shared the anxiety of his

199 own friends; and, kind as were his thoughts of us, he still

200 not unnaturally felt, for reasons of his own, some fidget

201 and nervousness at the course which his Oriel friends were

202 taking. Froude, for whom he had a real liking, took a

203 high tone in his project of measures for dealing with

204 bishops and clergy, which must have shocked and scandalized

205 him considerably. As for me, there was matter

206 enough in the early Tracts to give him equal disgust; and

207 doubtless I much tasked his generosity, when he had to

208 defend me, whether against the London dignitaries or the

209 country clergy. Oriel, from the time of Dr. Copleston to

210 Dr. Hampden, had had a name far and wide for liberality

211 of thought; it had received a formal recognition from the

212 Edinburgh Review, if my memory serves me truly, as the

213 school of speculative philosophy in England; and on one

214 occasion, in 1833, when I presented myself, with some of

215 the first papers of the Movement, to a country clergyman

216 in Northamptonshire, he paused awhile, and then, eyeing

217 me with significance, asked "Whether Whately was at

218 the bottom of them?"

219 Mr. Perceval wrote to me in support of the judgment of

220 Mr. Palmer and the dignitaries. I replied in a letter,

221 which he afterwards published. "As to the Tracts," I

222 said to him (I quote my own words from his Pamphlet),

223 "every one has his own taste. You object to some things,

224 another to others. If we altered to please every one, the

225 effect would be spoiled. They were not intended as

226 symbols *è cathedrâ* but as the expression of individual

227 minds; and individuals, feeling strongly, while on the

228 one hand, they are incidentally faulty in mode or language,

229 are still peculiarly effective. No great work was done by

230 a system; whereas systems rise out of individual exertions.

231 Luther was an individual. The very faults of an individual

232 excite attention; he loses, but his cause (if good and

233 he powerful-minded) gains. This is the way of things;

234 we promote truth by a self-sacrifice."

235 The visit which I made to the Northamptonshire Rector

236 was only one of a series of similar expedients, which I

237 adopted during the year 1833. I called upon clergy in

238 various parts of the country, whether I was acquainted

239 with them or not, and I attended at the houses of friends

240 where several of them were from time to time assembled.

241 I do not think that much came of such attempts, nor were

242 they quite in my way. Also I wrote various letters to

243 clergymen, which fared not much better, except that they

244 advertised the fact, that a rally in favour of the Church

245 was commencing. I did not care whether my visits were

246 made to high Church or low Church; I wished to make a

247 strong pull in union with all who were opposed to the

248 principles of liberalism, whoever they might be. Giving

249 my name to the Editor, I commenced a series of letters in

250 the Record Newspaper: they ran to a considerable length;

251 and were borne by him with great courtesy and patience.

252 The heading given to them was, "Church Reform." The

253 first was on the revival of Church Discipline; the second,

254 on its Scripture proof; the third, on the application of the

255 doctrine; the fourth was an answer to objections; the

256 fifth was on the benefits of discipline. And then the

257 series was abruptly brought to a termination. I had said

258 what I really felt, and what was also in keeping with the

259 strong teaching of the Tracts, but I suppose the Editor

260 discovered in me some divergence from his own line of

261 thought; for at length he sent a very civil letter, apologizing

262 for the non-appearance of my sixth communication,

263 on the ground that it contained an attack upon "Temperance

264 Societies," about which he did not wish a controversy

265 in his columns. He added, however, his serious regret at

266 the theological views of the Tracts. I had subscribed a

267 small sum in 1828 towards the first start of the Record.

268 Acts of the officious character, which I have been describing,

269 were uncongenial to my natural temper, to the

270 genius of the Movement, and to the historical mode of its

271 success:—they were the fruit of that exuberant and joyous

272 energy with which I had returned from abroad, and which

273 I never had before or since. I had the exultation of health

274 restored, and home regained. While I was at Palermo

275 and thought of the breadth of the Mediterranean, and

276 the wearisome journey across France, I could not imagine

277 how I was ever to get to England; but now I was amid

278 familiar scenes and faces once more. And my health and

279 strength came back to me with such a rebound, that some

280 friends at Oxford, on seeing me, did not well know that it

281 was I, and hesitated before they spoke to me. And I had

282 the consciousness that I was employed in that work which

283 I had been dreaming about, and which I felt to be so momentous

284 and inspiring. I had a supreme confidence in

285 our cause; we were upholding that primitive Christianity

286 which was delivered for all time by the early teachers of

287 the Church, and which was registered and attested in the

288 Anglican formularies and by the Anglican divines. That

289 ancient religion had well nigh faded away out of the land,

290 through the political changes of the last 150 years, and it

291 must be restored. It would be in fact a second Reformation:—a

292 better reformation, for it would be a return not

293 to the sixteenth century, but to the seventeenth. No

294 time was to be lost, for the Whigs had come to do their

295 worst, and the rescue might come too late. Bishopricks

296 were already in course of suppression; Church property

297 was in course of confiscation; Sees would soon be receiving

298 unsuitable occupants. We knew enough to begin preaching

299 upon, and there was no one else to preach. I felt as

300 on board a vessel, which first gets under weigh, and then

301 the deck is cleared out, and luggage and live stock stowed

302 away into their proper receptacles.

303 Nor was it only that I had confidence in our cause, both

304 in itself, and in its polemical force, but also, on the other

305 hand, I despised every rival system of doctrine and its arguments

306 too. As to the high Church and the low Church,

307 I thought that the one had not much more of a logical

308 basis than the other; while I had a thorough contempt

309 for the controversial position of the latter. I had a real

310 respect for the character of many of the advocates of each

311 party, but that did not give cogency to their arguments;

312 and I thought, on the contrary, that the Apostolical form

313 of doctrine was essential and imperative, and its grounds

314 of evidence impregnable. Owing to this supreme confidence,

315 it came to pass at that time, that there was a

316 double aspect in my bearing towards others, which it is

317 necessary for me to enlarge upon. My behaviour had a

318 mixture in it both of fierceness and of sport; and on

319 this account, I dare say, it gave offence to many; nor

320 am I here defending it.

321 I wished men to agree with me, and I walked with them

322 step by step, as far as they would go; this I did sincerely;

323 but if they would stop, I did not much care about it, but

324 walked on, with some satisfaction that I had brought them

325 so far. I liked to make them preach the truth without

326 knowing it, and encouraged them to do so. It was a satisfaction

327 to me that the Record had allowed me to say so

328 much in its columns, without remonstrance. I was amused

329 to hear of one of the Bishops, who, on reading an early

330 Tract on the Apostolical Succession, could not make up

331 his mind whether he held the doctrine or not. I was

332 not distressed at the wonder or anger of dull and self-conceited

333 men, at propositions which they did not understand.

334 When a correspondent, in good faith, wrote to a

335 newspaper, to say that the "Sacrifice of the Holy Eucharist,"

336 spoken of in the Tract, was a false print for

337 "Sacrament," I thought the mistake too pleasant to be

338 corrected before I was asked about it. I was not unwilling

339 to draw an opponent on step by step, by virtue

340 of his own opinions, to the brink of some intellectual

341 absurdity, and to leave him to get back as he could. I

342 was not unwilling to play with a man, who asked me

343 impertinent questions. I think I had in my mouth the

344 words of the Wise man, "Answer a fool according to

345 his folly," especially if he was prying or spiteful. I was

346 reckless of the gossip which was circulated about me; and,

347 when I might easily have set it right, did not deign to

348 do so. Also I used irony in conversation, when matter-of-fact-men

349 would not see what I meant.

350 This kind of behaviour was a sort of habit with me. If

351 I have ever trifled with my subject, it was a more serious

352 fault. I never used arguments which I saw clearly to be

353 unsound. The nearest approach which I remember to such

354 conduct, but which I consider was clear of it nevertheless,

355 was in the case of Tract 15. The matter of this Tract was

356 furnished to me by a friend, to whom I had applied for

357 assistance, but who did not wish to be mixed up with the

358 publication. He gave it me, that I might throw it

359 into shape, and I took his arguments as they stood. In

360 the chief portion of the Tract I fully agreed; for instance,

361 as to what it says about the Council of Trent;

362 but there were arguments, or some argument, in it which

363 I did not follow; I do not recollect what it was. Froude,

364 I think, was disgusted with the whole Tract, and accused

365 me of *economy* in publishing it. It is principally through

366 Mr. Froude's Remains that this word has got into our language.

367 I think, I defended myself with arguments such

368 as these:—that, as every one knew, the Tracts were written

369 by various persons who agreed together in their doctrine,

370 but not always in the arguments by which it was to be

371 proved; that we must be tolerant of difference of opinion

372 among ourselves; that the author of the Tract had a right

373 to his own opinion, and that the argument in question was

374 ordinarily received; that I did not give my own name or

375 authority, nor was asked for my personal belief, but only

376 acted instrumentally, as one might translate a friend's book

377 into a foreign language. I account these to be good arguments;

378 nevertheless I feel also that such practices admit

379 of easy abuse and are consequently dangerous; but then,

380 again, I feel also this,—that if all such mistakes were to be

381 severely visited, not many men in public life would be left

382 with a character for honour and honesty.

383 This absolute confidence in my cause, which led me to

384 the negligence or wantonness which I have been instancing,

385 also laid me open, not unfairly, to the opposite charge

386 of fierceness in certain steps which I took, or words which

387 I published. In the Lyra Apostolica, I have said that before

388 learning to love, we must "learn to hate;" though I

389 had explained my words by adding "hatred of sin." In

390 one of my first Sermons I said, "I do not shrink from

391 uttering my firm conviction that it would be a gain to the

392 country were it vastly more superstitious, more bigoted,

393 more gloomy, more fierce in its religion than at present

394 it shows itself to be." I added, of course, that it would be

395 an absurdity to suppose such tempers of mind desirable in

396 themselves. The corrector of the press bore these strong

397 epithets till he got to "more fierce," and then he put

398 in the margin a *query*. In the very first page of the

399 first Tract, I said of the Bishops, that, "black event though

400 it would be for the country, yet we could not wish them a

401 more blessed termination of their course, than the spoiling

402 of their goods and martyrdom." In consequence of a passage

403 in my work upon the Arian History, a Northern dignitary

404 wrote to accuse me of wishing to re-establish the

405 blood and torture of the Inquisition. Contrasting heretics

406 and heresiarchs, I had said, "The latter should meet with

407 no mercy: he assumes the office of the Tempter; and, so

408 far forth as his error goes, must be dealt with by the competent

409 authority, as if he were embodied evil. To spare

410 him is a false and dangerous pity. It is to endanger the

411 souls of thousands, and it is uncharitable towards himself."

412 I cannot deny that this is a very fierce passage; but Arius

413 was banished, not burned; and it is only fair to myself

414 to say that neither at this, nor any other time of my life,

415 not even when I was fiercest, could I have even cut off a

416 Puritan's ears, and I think the sight of a Spanish *auto-da-fè*

417 would have been the death of me. Again, when one of my

418 friends, of liberal and evangelical opinions, wrote to expostulate

419 with me on the course I was taking, I said that we

420 would ride over him and his, as Othniel prevailed over

421 Chushan-rishathaim, king of Mesopotamia. Again, I

422 would have no dealings with my brother, and I put my

423 conduct upon a syllogism. I said, "St. Paul bids us

424 avoid those who cause divisions; you cause divisions:

425 therefore I must avoid you." I dissuaded a lady from attending

426 the marriage of a sister who had seceded from the

427 Anglican Church. No wonder that Blanco White, who

428 had known me under such different circumstances, now

429 hearing the general course that I was taking, was amazed

430 at the change which he recognized in me. He speaks bitterly

431 and unfairly of me in his letters contemporaneously

432 with the first years of the Movement; but in 1839, on

433 looking back, he uses terms of me, which it would be hardly

434 modest in me to quote, were it not that what he says of me

435 in praise occurs in the midst of blame. He says: "In this

436 party [the anti-Peel, in 1829] I found, to my great surprise,

437 my dear friend, Mr. Newman of Oriel. As he had

438 been one of the annual Petitioners to Parliament for Catholic

439 Emancipation, his sudden union with the most violent bigots

440 was inexplicable to me. That change was the first manifestation

441 of the mental revolution, which has suddenly

442 made him one of the leading persecutors of Dr. Hampden,

443 and the most active and influential member of that association

444 called the Puseyite party, from which we have those

445 very strange productions, entitled, Tracts for the Times.

446 While stating these public facts, my heart feels a pang at

447 the recollection of the affectionate and mutual friendship

448 between that excellent man and myself; a friendship,

449 which his principles of orthodoxy could not allow him to

450 continue in regard to one, whom he now regards as inevitably

451 doomed to eternal perdition. Such is the venomous

452 character of orthodoxy. What mischief must it create in

453 a bad heart and narrow mind, when it can work so effectually

454 for evil, in one of the most benevolent of bosoms, and one

455 of the ablest of minds, in the amiable, the intellectual, the

456 refined John Henry Newman!" (Vol. iii. p. 131.) He

457 adds that I would have nothing to do with him, a circumstance

458 which I do not recollect, and very much doubt.

459 I have spoken of my firm confidence in my position;

460 and now let me state more definitely what the position was

461 which I took up, and the propositions about which I was

462 so confident. These were three:—

463 1. First was the principle of dogma: my battle was with

464 liberalism; by liberalism I mean the anti-dogmatic principle

465 and its developments. This was the first point on which

466 I was certain. Here I make a remark: persistence in a

467 given belief is no sufficient test of its truth: but departure

468 from it is at least a slur upon the man who has felt so

469 certain about it. In proportion, then, as I had in 1832 a

470 strong persuasion of the truth of opinions which I have

471 since given up, so far a sort of guilt attaches to me, not

472 only for that vain confidence, but for all the various proceedings

473 which were the consequence of it. But under

474 this first head I have the satisfaction of feeling that I have

475 nothing to retract, and nothing to repent of. The main

476 principle of the movement is as dear to me now, as it ever

477 was. I have changed in many things: in this I have not.

478 From the age of fifteen, dogma has been the fundamental

479 principle of my religion: I know no other religion; I

480 cannot enter into the idea of any other sort of religion;

481 religion, as a mere sentiment, is to me a dream and a

482 mockery. As well can there be filial love without the fact

483 of a father, as devotion without the fact of a Supreme

484 Being. What I held in 1816, I held in 1833, and I hold

485 in 1864. Please God, I shall hold it to the end. Even

486 when I was under Dr. Whately's influence, I had no

487 temptation to be less zealous for the great dogmas of the

488 faith, and at various times I used to resist such trains of

489 thought on his part as seemed to me (rightly or wrongly)

490 to obscure them. Such was the fundamental principle of

491 the Movement of 1833.

492 2. Secondly, I was confident in the truth of a certain

493 definite religious teaching, based upon this foundation of

494 dogma; viz. that there was a visible Church, with sacraments

495 and rites which are the channels of invisible grace.

496 I thought that this was the doctrine of Scripture, of the

497 early Church, and of the Anglican Church. Here again,

498 I have not changed in opinion; I am as certain now on

499 this point as I was in 1833, and have never ceased to be

500 certain. In 1834 and the following years I put this ecclesiastical

501 doctrine on a broader basis, after reading Laud,

502 Bramhall, and Stillingfleet and other Anglican divines on

503 the one hand, and after prosecuting the study of the

504 Fathers on the other; but the doctrine of 1833 was

505 strengthened in me, not changed. When I began the

506 Tracts for the Times I rested the main doctrine, of which

507 I am speaking, upon Scripture, on the Anglican Prayer

508 Book, and on St. Ignatius's Epistles. (1) As to the

509 existence of a visible Church, I especially argued out the

510 point from Scripture, in Tract 11, viz. from the Acts of

511 the Apostles and the Epistles. (2) As to the Sacraments

512 and Sacramental rites, I stood on the Prayer Book. I

513 appealed to the Ordination Service, in which the Bishop

514 says, "Receive the Holy Ghost;" to the Visitation Service,

515 which teaches confession and absolution; to the Baptismal

516 Service, in which the Priest speaks of the child

517 after baptism as regenerate; to the Catechism, in which

518 Sacramental Communion is receiving "verily and indeed

519 the Body and Blood of Christ;" to the Commination Service,

520 in which we are told to do "works of penance;" to

521 the Collects, Epistles, and Gospels, to the calendar and

522 rubricks, portions of the Prayer Book, wherein we find

523 the festivals of the Apostles, notice of certain other Saints,

524 and days of fasting and abstinence.

525 (3.) And further, as to the Episcopal system, I founded

526 it upon the Epistles of St. Ignatius, which inculcated it

527 in various ways. One passage especially impressed itself

528 upon me: speaking of cases of disobedience to ecclesiastical

529 authority, he says, "A man does not deceive that Bishop

530 whom he sees, but he practises rather with the Bishop

531 Invisible, and so the question is not with flesh, but with

532 God, who knows the secret heart." I wished to act on

533 this principle to the letter, and I may say with confidence

534 that I never consciously transgressed it. I loved to act as

535 feeling myself in my Bishop's sight, as if it were the sight

536 of God. It was one of my special supports and safeguards

537 against myself; I could not go very wrong while I had

538 reason to believe that I was in no respect displeasing him.

539 It was not a mere formal obedience to rule that I put

540 before me, but I desired to please him personally, as I

541 considered him set over me by the Divine Hand. I was

542 strict in observing my clerical engagements, not only

543 because they *were* engagements, but because I considered

544 myself simply as the servant and instrument of my Bishop.

545 I did not care much for the Bench of Bishops, except as

546 they might be the voice of my Church: nor should I have

547 cared much for a Provincial Council; nor for a Diocesan

548 Synod presided over by my Bishop; all these matters seemed

549 to me to be *jure ecclesiastico*, but what to me was *jure

550 divino* was the voice of my Bishop in his own person. My

551 own Bishop was my Pope; I knew no other; the successor

552 of the Apostles, the Vicar of Christ. This was but a practical

553 exhibition of the Anglican theory of Church Government,

554 as I had already drawn it out myself, after various

555 Anglican Divines. This continued all through my course;

556 when at length, in 1845, I wrote to Bishop Wiseman, in

557 whose Vicariate I found myself, to announce my conversion,

558 I could find nothing better to say to him than that I

559 would obey the Pope as I had obeyed my own Bishop in

560 the Anglican Church. My duty to him was my point of

561 honour; his disapprobation was the one thing which I

562 could not bear. I believe it to have been a generous and

563 honest feeling; and in consequence I was rewarded by

564 having all my time for ecclesiastical superior a man, whom,

565 had I had a choice, I should have preferred, out and out,

566 to any other Bishop on the Bench, and for whose memory

567 I have a special affection. Dr. Bagot—a man of noble

568 mind, and as kind-hearted and as considerate as he was

569 noble. He ever sympathized with me in my trials which

570 followed; it was my own fault, that I was not brought

571 into more familiar personal relations with him, than it was

572 my happiness to be. May his name be ever blessed!

573 And now in concluding my remarks on the second point

574 on which my confidence rested, I repeat that here again

575 I have no retractation to announce as to its main outline.

576 While I am now as clear in my acceptance of the principle

577 of dogma, as I was in 1833 and 1816, so again I am now

578 as firm in my belief of a visible Church, of the authority

579 of Bishops, of the grace of the sacraments, of the religious

580 worth of works of penance, as I was in 1833. I have added

581 Articles to my Creed; but the old ones, which I then held

582 with a divine faith, remain.

583 3. But now, as to the third point on which I stood in

584 1833, and which I have utterly renounced and trampled

585 upon since,—my then view of the Church of Rome;—I

586 will speak about it as exactly as I can. When I was

587 young, as I have said already, and after I was grown up, I

588 thought the Pope to be Antichrist. At Christmas 1824-5

589 I preached a sermon to that effect. But in 1827 I

590 accepted eagerly the stanza in the Christian Year, which

591 many people thought too charitable, "Speak *gently* of thy

592 sister's fall." From the time that I knew Froude I got

593 less and less bitter on the subject. I spoke (successively,

594 but I cannot tell in what order or at what dates) of the

595 Roman Church as being bound up with "the *cause* of

596 Antichrist," as being *one* of the "*many* antichrists" foretold

597 by St. John, as being influenced by "the *spirit* of

598 Antichrist," and as having something "very Anti-christian"

599 or "unchristian" about her. From my boyhood and in

600 1824 I considered, after Protestant authorities, that St.

601 Gregory I. about A.D. 600 was the first Pope that was

602 Antichrist, though, in spite of this, he was also a great and

603 holy man; but in 1832-3 I thought the Church of Rome

604 was bound up with the cause of Antichrist by the Council

605 of Trent. When it was that in my deliberate judgment

606 I gave up the notion altogether in any shape, that some

607 special reproach was attached to her name, I cannot tell;

608 but I had a shrinking from renouncing it, even when my

609 reason so ordered me, from a sort of conscience or prejudice,

610 I think up to 1843. Moreover, at least during the

611 Tract Movement, I thought the essence of her offence to

612 consist in the honours which she paid to the Blessed

613 Virgin and the Saints; and the more I grew in devotion,

614 both to the Saints and to our Lady, the more impatient

615 was I at the Roman practices, as if those glorified creations

616 of God must be gravely shocked, if pain could be theirs, at

617 the undue veneration of which they were the objects.

618 On the other hand, Hurrell Froude in his familiar conversations

619 was always tending to rub the idea out of my

620 mind. In a passage of one of his letters from abroad,

621 alluding, I suppose, to what I used to say in opposition to

622 him, he observes; "I think people are injudicious who

623 talk against the Roman Catholics for worshipping Saints,

624 and honouring the Virgin and images, &c. These things

625 may perhaps be idolatrous; I cannot make up my mind

626 about it; but to my mind it is the Carnival that is real

627 practical idolatry, as it is written, 'the people sat down to

628 eat and drink, and rose up to play.'" The Carnival, I

629 observe in passing, is, in fact, one of those very excesses,

630 to which, for at least three centuries, religious Catholics

631 have ever opposed themselves, as we see in the life of St.

632 Philip, to say nothing of the present day; but this we did

633 not then know. Moreover, from Froude I learned to admire

634 the great medieval Pontiffs; and, of course, when I had

635 come to consider the Council of Trent to be the turning-point

636 of the history of Christian Rome, I found myself as

637 free, as I was rejoiced, to speak in their praise. Then,

638 when I was abroad, the sight of so many great places,

639 venerable shrines, and noble churches, much impressed

640 my imagination. And my heart was touched also.

641 Making an expedition on foot across some wild country in

642 Sicily, at six in the morning, I came upon a small church;

643 I heard voices, and I looked in. It was crowded, and the

644 congregation was singing. Of course it was the mass,

645 though I did not know it at the time. And, in my weary

646 days at Palermo, I was not ungrateful for the comfort

647 which I had received in frequenting the churches; nor

648 did I ever forget it. Then, again, her zealous maintenance

649 of the doctrine and the rule of celibacy, which I

650 recognized as Apostolic, and her faithful agreement with

651 Antiquity in so many other points which were dear to

652 me, was an argument as well as a plea in favour of the

653 great Church of Rome. Thus I learned to have tender

654 feelings towards her; but still my reason was not affected

655 at all. My judgment was against her, when viewed as an

656 institution, as truly as it ever had been.

657 This conflict between reason and affection I expressed in

658 one of the early Tracts, published July, 1834. "Considering

659 the high gifts and the strong claims of the Church of

660 Rome and its dependencies on our admiration, reverence,

661 love, and gratitude; how could we withstand it, as we do,

662 how could we refrain from being melted into tenderness,

663 and rushing into communion with it, but for the words of

664 Truth itself, which bid us prefer It to the whole world?

665 'He that loveth father or mother more than Me, is not

666 worthy of me.' How could 'we learn to be severe, and execute

667 judgment,' but for the warning of Moses against even

668 a divinely-gifted teacher, who should preach new gods;

669 and the anathema of St. Paul even against Angels and

670 Apostles, who should bring in a new doctrine?"—*Records*,

671 No. 24. My feeling was something like that of a man, who

672 is obliged in a court of justice to bear witness against a

673 friend; or like my own now, when I have said, and shall

674 say, so many things on which I had rather be silent.

675 As a matter, then, of simple conscience, though it went

676 against my feelings, I felt it to be a duty to protest against

677 the Church of Rome. But besides this, it was a duty, because

678 the prescription of such a protest was a living principle

679 of my own Church, as expressed not simply in a

680 *catena*, but by a *consensus* of her divines, and by the voice

681 of her people. Moreover, such a protest was necessary as

682 an integral portion of her controversial basis; for I adopted

683 the argument of Bernard Gilpin, that Protestants "were

684 *not able* to give any *firm and solid* reason of the separation

685 besides this, to wit, that the Pope is Antichrist." But

686 while I thus thought such a protest to be based upon truth,

687 and to be a religious duty, and a rule of Anglicanism, and

688 a necessity of the case, I did not at all like the work.

689 Hurrell Froude attacked me for doing it; and, besides, I

690 felt that my language had a vulgar and rhetorical look

691 about it. I believed, and really measured, my words, when

692 I used them; but I knew that I had a temptation, on the

693 other hand, to say against Rome as much as ever I could,

694 in order to protect myself against the charge of Popery.

695 And now I come to the very point, for which I have introduced

696 the subject of my feelings about Rome. I felt

697 such confidence in the substantial justice of the charges

698 which I advanced against her, that I considered them to

699 be a safeguard and an assurance that no harm could ever

700 arise from the freest exposition of what I used to call

701 Anglican principles. All the world was astounded at what

702 Froude and I were saying: men said that it was sheer

703 Popery. I answered, "True, we seem to be making straight

704 for it; but go on awhile, and you will come to a deep chasm

705 across the path, which makes real approximation impossible."

706 And I urged in addition, that many Anglican

707 divines had been accused of Popery, yet had died in their

708 Anglicanism;—now, the ecclesiastical principles which I

709 professed, they had professed also; and the judgment

710 against Rome which they had formed, I had formed also.

711 Whatever deficiencies then had to be supplied in the existing

712 Anglican system, and however boldly I might point

713 them out, any how that system would not in the process be

714 brought nearer to the special creed of Rome, and might be

715 mended in spite of her. In that very agreement of the

716 two forms of faith, close as it might seem, would really be

717 found, on examination, the elements and principles of an

718 essential discordance.

719 It was with this absolute persuasion on my mind that

720 I fancied that there could be no rashness in giving to the

721 world in fullest measure the teaching and the writings of the

722 Fathers. I thought that the Church of England was

723 substantially founded upon them. I did not know all

724 that the Fathers had said, but I felt that, even when

725 their tenets happened to differ from the Anglican, no

726 harm could come of reporting them. I said out what I

727 was clear they had said; I spoke vaguely and imperfectly,

728 of what I thought they said, or what some of them had

729 said. Any how, no harm could come of bending the

730 crooked stick the other way, in the process of straightening

731 it; it was impossible to break it. If there was any thing

732 in the Fathers of a startling character, this would be only

733 for a time; it would admit of explanation, or it might

734 suggest something profitable to Anglicans; it could not

735 lead to Rome. I express this view of the matter in a

736 passage of the Preface to the first volume, which I edited,

737 of the Library of the Fathers. Speaking of the strangeness

738 at first sight, in the judgment of the present day, of

739 some of their principles and opinions, I bid the reader

740 go forward hopefully, and not indulge his criticism till he

741 knows more about them, than he will learn at the outset.

742 "Since the evil," I say, "is in the nature of the case

743 itself, we can do no more than have patience, and recommend

744 patience to others, and with the racer in the Tragedy,

745 look forward steadily and hopefully to the *event*,

746 τω τελει

747 πιστιν φερων,

748 when, as we trust, all that is inharmonious

749 and anomalous in the details, will at length be practically

750 smoothed."

751 Such was the position, such the defences, such the tactics,

752 by which I thought that it was both incumbent on us, and possible

753 for us, to meet that onset of Liberal principles, of which

754 we were all in immediate anticipation, whether in the

755 Church or in the University. And during the first year of

756 the Tracts, the attack upon the University began. In November,

757 1834, was sent to me by Dr. Hampden the second

758 edition of his Pamphlet, entitled, "Observations on Religious

759 Dissent, with particular reference to the use of religious

760 tests in the University." In this Pamphlet it was maintained,

761 that "Religion is distinct from Theological

762 Opinion," pp. 1. 28. 30, &c.; that it is but a common

763 prejudice to identify theological propositions methodically

764 deduced and stated, with the simple religion of Christ,

765 p. 1; that under Theological Opinion were to be placed

766 the Trinitarian doctrine, p. 27, and the Unitarian, p. 19;

767 that a dogma was a theological opinion formally insisted

768 on, pp. 20, 21; that speculation always left an opening for

769 improvement, p. 22; that the Church of England was not

770 dogmatic in its spirit, though the wording of its formularies

771 might often carry the sound of dogmatism, p. 23.

772 I acknowledged the receipt of this work in the following

773 letter:—

774 "The kindness which has led to your presenting me

775 with your late Pamphlet, encourages me to hope that you

776 will forgive me, if I take the opportunity it affords of

777 expressing to you my very sincere and deep regret that it

778 has been published. Such an opportunity I could not let

779 slip without being unfaithful to my own serious thoughts

780 on the subject.

781 "While I respect the tone of piety which the Pamphlet

782 displays, I dare not trust myself to put on paper my feelings

783 about the principles contained in it; tending as they

784 do, in my opinion, altogether to make shipwreck of Christian

785 faith. I also lament, that, by its appearance, the first

786 step has been taken towards interrupting that peace and

787 mutual good understanding which has prevailed so long in

788 this place, and which, if once seriously disturbed, will be

789 succeeded by dissensions the more intractable, because justified

790 in the minds of those who resist innovation by a feeling

791 of imperative duty."

792 Since that time Phaeton has got into the chariot of the

793 sun; we, alas! can only look on, and watch him down the

794 steep of heaven. Meanwhile, the lands, which he is passing

795 over, suffer from his driving.

796 Such was the commencement of the assault of Liberalism

797 upon the old orthodoxy of Oxford and England; and it

798 could not have been broken, as it was, for so long a time,

799 had not a great change taken place in the circumstances of

800 that counter-movement which had already started with the

801 view of resisting it. For myself, I was not the person to

802 take the lead of a party; I never was, from first to last,

803 more than a leading author of a school; nor did I ever

804 wish to be anything else. This is my own account of the

805 matter; and I say it, neither as intending to disown the

806 responsibility of what was done, or as if ungrateful to those

807 who at that time made more of me than I deserved, and did

808 more for my sake and at my bidding than I realized myself.

809 I am giving my history from my own point of sight,

810 and it is as follows:—I had lived for ten years among my

811 personal friends; the greater part of the time, I had been

812 influenced, not influencing; and at no time have I acted on

813 others, without their acting upon me. As is the custom of

814 a University, I had lived with my private, nay, with some

815 of my public, pupils, and with the junior fellows of my

816 College, without form or distance, on a footing of equality.

817 Thus it was through friends, younger, for the most part,

818 than myself, that my principles were spreading. They

819 heard what I said in conversation, and told it to others.

820 Under-graduates in due time took their degree, and became

821 private tutors themselves. In their new *status*, they in turn

822 preached the opinions, with which they had already become

823 acquainted. Others went down to the country, and became

824 curates of parishes. Then they had down from London

825 parcels of the Tracts, and other publications. They placed

826 them in the shops of local booksellers, got them into newspapers,

827 introduced them to clerical meetings, and converted

828 more or less their Rectors and their brother curates. Thus

829 the Movement, viewed with relation to myself, was but a

830 floating opinion; it was not a power. It never would have

831 been a power, if it had remained in my hands. Years

832 after, a friend, writing to me in remonstrance at the excesses,

833 as he thought them, of my disciples, applied to me

834 my own verse about St. Gregory Nazianzen, "Thou couldst

835 a people raise, but couldst not rule." At the time that he

836 wrote to me, I had special impediments in the way of such

837 an exercise of power; but at no time could I exercise over

838 others that authority, which under the circumstances was

839 imperatively required. My great principle ever was, Live

840 and let live. I never had the staidness or dignity necessary

841 for a leader. To the last I never recognized the hold I had

842 over young men. Of late years I have read and heard that

843 they even imitated me in various ways. I was quite unconscious

844 of it, and I think my immediate friends knew too

845 well how disgusted I should be at such proceedings, to

846 have the heart to tell me. I felt great impatience at our

847 being called a party, and would not allow that we were

848 such. I had a lounging, free-and-easy way of carrying

849 things on. I exercised no sufficient censorship upon the

850 Tracts. I did not confine them to the writings of such

851 persons as agreed in all things with myself; and, as to my

852 own Tracts, I printed on them a notice to the effect, that

853 any one who pleased, might make what use he would of

854 them, and reprint them with alterations if he chose, under

855 the conviction that their main scope could not be damaged

856 by such a process. It was the same with me afterwards,

857 as regards other publications. For two years I furnished

858 a certain number of sheets for the British Critic from myself

859 and my friends, while a gentleman was editor, a man

860 of splendid talent, who, however, was scarcely an acquaintance

861 of mine, and had no sympathy with the Tracts.

862 When I was Editor myself, from 1838 to 1841, in my

863 very first number I suffered to appear a critique unfavorable

864 to my work on Justification, which had been published

865 a few months before, from a feeling of propriety, because

866 I had put the book into the hands of the writer who so

867 handled it. Afterwards I suffered an article against the

868 Jesuits to appear in it, of which I did not like the tone.

869 When I had to provide a curate for my new church at

870 Littlemore, I engaged a friend, by no fault of his, who, before

871 he had entered into his charge, preached a sermon,

872 either in depreciation of baptismal regeneration, or of Dr.

873 Pusey's view of it. I showed a similar easiness as to the

874 Editors who helped me in the separate volumes of Fleury's

875 Church History; they were able, learned, and excellent

876 men, but their after-history has shown, how little my choice

877 of them was influenced by any notion I could have had of

878 any intimate agreement of opinion between them and myself.

879 I shall have to make the same remark in its place

880 concerning the Lives of the English Saints, which subsequently

881 appeared. All this may seem inconsistent with

882 what I have said of my fierceness. I am not bound to account

883 for it; but there have been men before me, fierce in

884 act, yet tolerant and moderate in their reasonings; at least,

885 so I read history. However, such was the case, and such

886 its effect upon the Tracts. These at first starting were

887 short, hasty, and some of them ineffective; and at the end

888 of the year, when collected into a volume, they had a

889 slovenly appearance.

890 It was under these circumstances, that Dr. Pusey joined

891 us. I had known him well since 1827-8, and had felt for

892 him an enthusiastic admiration, I used to call him

893 'ο μεγας.

894 His great learning, his immense diligence, his scholarlike

895 mind, his simple devotion to the cause of religion, overcame

896 me; and great of course was my joy, when in the

897 last days of 1833 he showed a disposition to make common

898 cause with us. His Tract on Fasting appeared as one of

899 the series with the date of December 21. He was not,

900 however, I think, fully associated in the Movement till

901 1835 and 1836, when he published his Tract on Baptism,

902 and started the Library of the Fathers. He at once gave

903 to us a position and a name. Without him we should have

904 had little chance, especially at the early date of 1834, of

905 making any serious resistance to the Liberal aggression.

906 But Dr. Pusey was a Professor and Canon of Christ

907 Church; he had a vast influence in consequence of his

908 deep religious seriousness, the munificence of his charities,

909 his Professorship, his family connexions, and his

910 easy relations with University authorities. He was to

911 the Movement all that Mr. Rose might have been, with

912 that indispensable addition, which was wanting to Mr.

913 Rose, the intimate friendship and the familiar daily

914 society of the persons who had commenced it. And he

915 had that special claim on their attachment, which lies

916 in the living presence of a faithful and loyal affectionateness.

917 There was henceforth a man who could be the

918 head and centre of the zealous people in every part of

919 the country, who were adopting the new opinions; and

920 not only so, but there was one who furnished the

921 Movement with a front to the world, and gained for it

922 a recognition from other parties in the University. In

923 1829, Mr. Froude, or Mr. Robert Wilberforce, or Mr.

924 Newman were but individuals; and, when they ranged

925 themselves in the contest of that year on the side of

926 Sir Robert Inglis, men on either side only asked with

927 surprise how they got there, and attached no significancy

928 to the fact; but Dr. Pusey was, to use the common expression,

929 a host in himself; he was able to give a name,

930 a form, and a personality, to what was without him a sort

931 of mob; and when various parties had to meet together in

932 order to resist the liberal acts of the Government, we of

933 the Movement took our place by right among them.

934 Such was the benefit which he conferred on the Movement

935 externally; nor were the internal advantages at all

936 inferior to it. He was a man of large designs; he had a

937 hopeful, sanguine mind; he had no fear of others; he was

938 haunted by no intellectual perplexities. People are apt to

939 say that he was once nearer to the Catholic Church than

940 he is now; I pray God that he may be one day far nearer

941 to the Catholic Church than he was then; for I believe that,

942 in his reason and judgment, all the time that I knew him,

943 he never was near to it at all. When I became a Catholic,

944 I was often asked, "What of Dr. Pusey?"; when I said

945 that I did not see symptoms of his doing as I had done, I

946 was sometimes thought uncharitable. If confidence in his

947 position is, (as it is,) a first essential in the leader of a party,

948 this Dr. Pusey possessed pre-eminently. The most remarkable

949 instance of this, was his statement, in one of his

950 subsequent defences of the Movement, when moreover it had

951 advanced a considerable way in the direction of Rome, that

952 among its more hopeful peculiarities was its "stationariness."

953 He made it in good faith; it was his subjective

954 view of it.

955 Dr. Pusey's influence was felt at once. He saw that there

956 ought to be more sobriety, more gravity, more careful pains,

957 more sense of responsibility in the Tracts and in the whole

958 Movement. It was through him that the character of the

959 Tracts was changed. When he gave to us his Tract on

960 Fasting, he put his initials to it. In 1835 he published

961 his elaborate Treatise on Baptism, which was followed by

962 other Tracts from different authors, if not of equal learning,

963 yet of equal power and appositeness. The Catenas of Anglican

964 divines, projected by me, which occur in the Series

965 were executed with a like aim at greater accuracy and

966 method. In 1836 he advertised his great project for a

967 Translation of the Fathers:—but I must return to myself.

968 I am not writing the history either of Dr. Pusey or of

969 the Movement; but it is a pleasure to me to have been

970 able to introduce here reminiscences of the place which

971 he held in it, which have so direct a bearing on myself,

972 that they are no digression from my narrative.

973 I suspect it was Dr. Pusey's influence and example

974 which set me, and made me set others, on the larger and

975 more careful works in defence of the principles of the

976 Movement which followed in a course of years,—some of

977 them demanding and receiving from their authors, such

978 elaborate treatment that they did not make their appearance

979 till both its temper and its fortunes had changed. I

980 set about a work at once; one in which was brought out

981 with precision the relation in which we stood to the

982 Church of Rome. We could not move a step in comfort,

983 till this was done. It was of absolute necessity and a plain

984 duty from the first, to provide as soon as possible a large

985 statement, which would encourage and reassure our friends,

986 and repel the attacks of our opponents. A cry was heard

987 on all sides of us, that the Tracts and the writings of the

988 Fathers would lead us to become Catholics, before we were

989 aware of it. This was loudly expressed by members of

990 the Evangelical party, who in 1836 had joined us in

991 making a protest in Convocation against a memorable

992 appointment of the Prime Minister. These clergymen

993 even then avowed their desire, that the next time they

994 were brought up to Oxford to give a vote, it might be in

995 order to put down the Popery of the Movement. There

996 was another reason still, and quite as important. Monsignore

997 Wiseman, with the acuteness and zeal which

998 might be expected from that great Prelate, had anticipated

999 what was coming, had returned to England by

1000 1836, had delivered Lectures in London on the doctrines

1001 of Catholicism, and created an impression through the

1002 country, shared in by ourselves, that we had for our

1003 opponents in controversy, not only our brethren, but our

1004 hereditary foes. These were the circumstances, which led

1005 to my publication of "The Prophetical office of the

1006 Church viewed relatively to Romanism and Popular Protestantism."

1007 This work employed me for three years, from the beginning

1008 of 1834 to the end of 1836, and was published in

1009 1837. It was composed, after a careful consideration and

1010 comparison of the principal Anglican divines of the 17th

1011 century. It was first written in the shape of controversial

1012 correspondence with a learned French Priest; then it was

1013 re-cast, and delivered in Lectures at St. Mary's; lastly,

1014 with considerable retrenchments and additions, it was rewritten

1015 for publication.

1016 It attempts to trace out the rudimental lines on which

1017 Christian faith and teaching proceed, and to use them as

1018 means of determining the relation of the Roman and

1019 Anglican systems to each other. In this way it shows

1020 that to confuse the two together is impossible, and that

1021 the Anglican can be as little said to tend to the Roman, as

1022 the Roman to the Anglican. The spirit of the Volume is

1023 not so gentle to the Church of Rome, as Tract 71 published

1024 the year before; on the contrary, it is very fierce; and

1025 this I attribute to the circumstance that the Volume is

1026 theological and didactic, whereas the Tract, being controversial,

1027 assumes as little and grants as much as possible

1028 on the points in dispute, and insists on points of

1029 agreement as well as of difference. A further and

1030 more direct reason is, that in my Volume I deal with

1031 "Romanism" (as I call it), not so much in its formal

1032 decrees and in the substance of its creed, as in its traditional

1033 action and its authorized teaching as represented

1034 by its prominent writers;—whereas the Tract is written

1035 as if discussing the differences of the Churches with a

1036 view to a reconciliation between them. There is a further

1037 reason too, which I will state presently.

1038 But this Volume had a larger scope than that of

1039 opposing the Roman system. It was an attempt at commencing

1040 a system of theology on the Anglican idea, and

1041 based upon Anglican authorities. Mr. Palmer, about the

1042 same time, was projecting a work of a similar nature in

1043 his own way. It was published, I think, under the title,

1044 "A Treatise on the Christian Church." As was to be

1045 expected from the author, it was a most learned, most

1046 careful composition; and in its form, I should say, polemical.

1047 So happily at least did he follow the logical

1048 method of the Roman Schools, that Father Perrone in his

1049 Treatise on dogmatic theology, recognized in him a combatant

1050 of the true cast, and saluted him as a foe worthy

1051 of being vanquished. Other soldiers in that field he seems

1052 to have thought little better than the *Lanzknechts* of the

1053 middle ages, and, I dare say, with very good reason.

1054 When I knew that excellent and kind-hearted man at

1055 Rome at a later time, he allowed me to put him to ample

1056 penance for those light thoughts of me, which he had once

1057 had, by encroaching on his valuable time with my theological

1058 questions. As to Mr. Palmer's book, it was one

1059 which no Anglican could write but himself,—in no sense,

1060 if I recollect aright, a tentative work. The ground of

1061 controversy was cut into squares, and then every objection

1062 had its answer. This is the proper method to adopt in

1063 teaching authoritatively young men; and the work in fact

1064 was intended for students in theology. My own book, on

1065 the other hand, was of a directly tentative and empirical

1066 character. I wished to build up an Anglican theology

1067 out of the stores which already lay cut and hewn upon

1068 the ground, the past toil of great divines. To do this

1069 could not be the work of one man; much less, could it be

1070 at once received into Anglican theology, however well it

1071 was done. This I fully recognized; and, while I trusted

1072 that my statements of doctrine would turn out to be true

1073 and important, still I wrote, to use the common phrase,

1074 "under correction."

1075 There was another motive for my publishing, of a personal

1076 nature, which I think I should mention. I felt

1077 then, and all along felt, that there was an intellectual

1078 cowardice in not finding a basis in reason for my belief,

1079 and a moral cowardice in not avowing that basis. I

1080 should have felt myself less than a man, if I did not bring

1081 it out, whatever it was. This is one principal reason why

1082 I wrote and published the "Prophetical Office." It was

1083 from the same feeling, that in the spring of 1836, at a meeting

1084 of residents on the subject of the struggle then proceeding

1085 against a Whig appointment, when some one wanted

1086 us all merely to act on college and conservative grounds (as

1087 I understood him), with as few published statements as

1088 possible, I answered, that the person whom we were

1089 resisting had committed himself in writing, and that we

1090 ought to commit ourselves too. This again was a main

1091 reason for the publication of Tract 90. Alas! it was my

1092 portion for whole years to remain without any satisfactory

1093 basis for my religious profession, in a state of moral sickness,

1094 neither able to acquiesce in Anglicanism, nor able to

1095 go to Rome. But I bore it, till in course of time my way

1096 was made clear to me. If here it be objected to me, that

1097 as time went on, I often in my writings hinted at things

1098 which I did not fully bring out, I submit for consideration

1099 whether this occurred except when I was in great difficulties,

1100 how to speak, or how to be silent, with due regard

1101 for the position of mind or the feelings of others. However,

1102 I may have an opportunity to say more on this subject.

1103 But to return to the "Prophetical Office."

1104 I thus speak in the Introduction to my Volume:—

1105 "It is proposed," I say, "to offer helps towards the

1106 formation of a recognized Anglican theology in one of its

1107 departments. The present state of our divinity is as

1108 follows: the most vigorous, the clearest, the most fertile

1109 minds, have through God's mercy been employed in the

1110 service of our Church: minds too as reverential and holy,

1111 and as fully imbued with Ancient Truth, and as well

1112 versed in the writings of the Fathers, as they were intellectually

1113 gifted. This is God's great mercy indeed, for

1114 which we must ever be thankful. Primitive doctrine has

1115 been explored for us in every direction, and the original

1116 principles of the Gospel and the Church patiently brought

1117 to light. But one thing is still wanting: our champions

1118 and teachers have lived in stormy times: political and

1119 other influences have acted upon them variously in their

1120 day, and have since obstructed a careful consolidation of

1121 their judgments. We have a vast inheritance, but no

1122 inventory of our treasures. All is given us in profusion;

1123 it remains for us to catalogue, sort, distribute, select, harmonize,

1124 and complete. We have more than we know how

1125 to use; stores of learning, but little that is precise and

1126 serviceable; Catholic truth and individual opinion, first

1127 principles and the guesses of genius, all mingled in the

1128 same works, and requiring to be discriminated. We meet

1129 with truths overstated or misdirected, matters of detail

1130 variously taken, facts incompletely proved or applied, and

1131 rules inconsistently urged or discordantly interpreted.

1132 Such indeed is the state of every deep philosophy in its

1133 first stages, and therefore of theological knowledge. What

1134 we need at present for our Church's well-being, is not

1135 invention, nor originality, nor sagacity, nor even learning

1136 in our divines, at least in the first place, though all gifts

1137 of God are in a measure needed, and never can be unseasonable

1138 when used religiously, but we need peculiarly a

1139 sound judgment, patient thought, discrimination, a comprehensive

1140 mind, an abstinence from all private fancies

1141 and caprices and personal tastes,—in a word, Divine

1142 Wisdom."

1143 The subject of the Volume is the doctrine of the *Via

1144 Media*, a name which had already been applied to the

1145 Anglican system by writers of repute. It is an expressive

1146 title, but not altogether satisfactory, because it is at first

1147 sight negative. This had been the reason of my dislike to

1148 the word "Protestant;" viz. it did not denote the profession

1149 of any particular religion at all, and was compatible with

1150 infidelity. A *Via Media* was but a receding from extremes,—therefore

1151 it needed to be drawn out into a definite

1152 shape and character: before it could have claims on our

1153 respect, it must first be shown to be one, intelligible, and

1154 consistent. This was the first condition of any reasonable

1155 treatise on the *Via Media*. The second condition, and

1156 necessary too, was not in my power. I could only hope

1157 that it would one day be fulfilled. Even if the *Via Media*

1158 were ever so positive a religious system, it was not as yet

1159 objective and real; it had no original any where of which

1160 it was the representative. It was at present a paper

1161 religion. This I confess in my Introduction; I say,

1162 "Protestantism and Popery are real religions ... but

1163 the *Via Media*, viewed as an integral system, has scarcely

1164 had existence except on paper." I grant the objection,

1165 though I endeavour to lessen it:—"It still remains to be

1166 tried, whether what is called Anglo-Catholicism, the

1167 religion of Andrewes, Laud, Hammond, Butler, and Wilson,

1168 is capable of being professed, acted on, and maintained

1169 on a large sphere of action, or whether it be a mere

1170 modification or transition-state of either Romanism or

1171 popular Protestantism." I trusted that some day it would

1172 prove to be a substantive religion.

1173 Lest I should be misunderstood, let me observe that

1174 this hesitation about the validity of the theory of the *Via

1175 Media* implied no doubt of the three fundamental points

1176 on which it was based, as I have described them above,

1177 dogma, the sacramental system, and anti-Romanism.

1178 Other investigations which had to be followed up were

1179 of a still more tentative character. The basis of the *Via

1180 Media*, consisting of the three elementary points, which I

1181 have just mentioned, was clear enough; but, not only had

1182 the house itself to be built upon them, but it had also to

1183 be furnished, and it is not wonderful if, after building it,

1184 both I and others erred in detail in determining what its

1185 furniture should be, what was consistent with the style of

1186 building, and what was in itself desirable. I will explain

1187 what I mean.

1188 I had brought out in the "Prophetical Office" in what

1189 the Roman and the Anglican systems differed from each

1190 other, but less distinctly in what they agreed. I had

1191 indeed enumerated the Fundamentals, common to both, in

1192 the following passage:—"In both systems the same

1193 Creeds are acknowledged. Besides other points in common,

1194 we both hold, that certain doctrines are necessary to be

1195 believed for salvation; we both believe in the doctrines of

1196 the Trinity, Incarnation, and Atonement; in original sin;

1197 in the necessity of regeneration; in the supernatural grace

1198 of the Sacraments; in the Apostolical succession; in the

1199 obligation of faith and obedience, and in the eternity of

1200 future punishment,"—pp. 55, 56. So much I had said,

1201 but I had not said enough. This enumeration implied a

1202 great many more points of agreement than were found in

1203 those very Articles which were fundamental. If the two

1204 Churches were thus the same in fundamentals, they were

1205 also one and the same in such plain consequences as were

1206 contained in those fundamentals and in such natural observances

1207 as outwardly represented them. It was an Anglican

1208 principle that "the abuse of a thing doth not take away

1209 the lawful use of it;" and an Anglican Canon in 1603 had

1210 declared that the English Church had no purpose to forsake

1211 all that was held in the Churches of Italy, France, and

1212 Spain, and reverenced those ceremonies and particular

1213 points which were Apostolic. Excepting then such exceptional

1214 matters, as are implied in this avowal, whether they

1215 were many or few, all these Churches were evidently to be

1216 considered as one with the Anglican. The Catholic Church

1217 in all lands had been one from the first for many centuries;

1218 then, various portions had followed their own way to the

1219 injury, but not to the destruction, whether of truth or of

1220 charity. These portions or branches were mainly three:—the

1221 Greek, Latin, and Anglican. Each of these inherited

1222 the early undivided Church *in solido* as its own possession.

1223 Each branch was identical with that early undivided

1224 Church, and in the unity of that Church it had unity with

1225 the other branches. The three branches agreed together

1226 in *all but* their later accidental errors. Some branches

1227 had retained in detail portions of Apostolical truth and

1228 usage, which the others had not; and these portions might

1229 be and should be appropriated again by the others which

1230 had let them slip. Thus, the middle age belonged to the

1231 Anglican Church, and much more did the middle age of

1232 England. The Church of the 12th century was the Church

1233 of the 19th. Dr. Howley sat in the seat of St. Thomas

1234 the Martyr; Oxford was a medieval University. Saving

1235 our engagements to Prayer Book and Articles, we might

1236 breathe and live and act and speak, as in the atmosphere

1237 and climate of Henry III.'s day, or the Confessor's, or of

1238 Alfred's. And we ought to be indulgent to all that Rome

1239 taught now, as to what Rome taught then, saving our

1240 protest. We might boldly welcome, even what we did not

1241 ourselves think right to adopt. And, when we were obliged

1242 on the contrary boldly to denounce, we should do so with

1243 pain, not with exultation. By very reason of our protest,

1244 which we had made, and made *ex animo*, we could agree

1245 to differ. What the members of the Bible Society did on

1246 the basis of Scripture, we could do on the basis of the

1247 Church; Trinitarian and Unitarian were further apart

1248 than Roman and Anglican. Thus we had a real wish to

1249 co-operate with Rome in all lawful things, if she would

1250 let us, and if the rules of our own Church let us; and we

1251 thought there was no better way towards the restoration

1252 of doctrinal purity and unity. And we thought that Rome

1253 was not committed by her formal decrees to all that she

1254 actually taught: and again, if her disputants had been

1255 unfair to us, or her rulers tyrannical, we bore in mind

1256 that on our side too there had been rancour and slander

1257 in our controversial attacks upon her, and violence in our

1258 political measures. As to ourselves being direct instruments

1259 in improving her belief or practice, I used to say,

1260 "Look at home; let us first, (or at least let us the while,)

1261 supply our own shortcomings, before we attempt to be

1262 physicians to any one else." This is very much the spirit

1263 of Tract 71, to which I referred just now. I am well

1264 aware that there is a paragraph inconsistent with it in

1265 the Prospectus to the Library of the Fathers; but I do

1266 not consider myself responsible for it. Indeed, I have no

1267 intention whatever of implying that Dr. Pusey concurred

1268 in the ecclesiastical theory, which I have been now drawing

1269 out; nor that I took it up myself except by degrees in the

1270 course of ten years. It was necessarily the growth of time.

1271 In fact, hardly any two persons, who took part in the

1272 Movement, agreed in their view of the limit to which

1273 our general principles might religiously be carried.

1274 And now I have said enough on what I consider to have

1275 been the general objects of the various works, which I

1276 wrote, edited, or prompted in the years which I am

1277 reviewing. I wanted to bring out in a substantive form a

1278 living Church of England, in a position proper to herself,

1279 and founded on distinct principles; as far as paper could

1280 do it, as far as earnestly preaching it and influencing others

1281 towards it, could tend to make it a fact;—a living Church,

1282 made of flesh and blood, with voice, complexion, and

1283 motion and action, and a will of its own. I believe I had

1284 no private motive, and no personal aim. Nor did I ask

1285 for more than "a fair stage and no favour," nor expect

1286 the work would be accomplished in my days; but I

1287 thought that enough would be secured to continue it in

1288 the future, under, perhaps, more hopeful circumstances and

1289 prospects than the present.

1290 I will mention in illustration some of the principal

1291 works, doctrinal and historical, which originated in the

1292 object which I have stated.

1293 I wrote my Essay on Justification in 1837; it was aimed

1294 at the Lutheran dictum that justification by faith only was

1295 the cardinal doctrine of Christianity. I considered that

1296 this doctrine was either a paradox or a truism,—a paradox

1297 in Luther's mouth, a truism in Melanchthon's. I thought

1298 that the Anglican Church followed Melanchthon, and that

1299 in consequence between Rome and Anglicanism, between

1300 high Church and low Church, there was no real intellectual

1301 difference on the point. I wished to fill up a ditch,

1302 the work of man. In this Volume again, I express my

1303 desire to build up a system of theology out of the Anglican

1304 divines, and imply that my dissertation was a tentative

1305 Inquiry. I speak in the Preface of "offering suggestions

1306 towards a work, which must be uppermost in the mind of

1307 every true son of the English Church at this day,—the

1308 consolidation of a theological system, which, built upon

1309 those formularies, to which all clergymen are bound, may

1310 tend to inform, persuade, and absorb into itself religious

1311 minds, which hitherto have fancied, that, on the peculiar

1312 Protestant questions, they were seriously opposed to each

1313 other."—P. vii.

1314 In my University Sermons there is a series of discussions

1315 upon the subject of Faith and Reason; these again

1316 were the tentative commencement of a grave and necessary

1317 work, viz. an inquiry into the ultimate basis of religious

1318 faith, prior to the distinction into Creeds.

1319 In like manner in a Pamphlet, which I published in the

1320 summer of 1838, is an attempt at placing the doctrine of

1321 the Real Presence on an intellectual basis. The fundamental

1322 idea is consonant to that to which I had been so

1323 long attached: it is the denial of the existence of space

1324 except as a subjective idea of our minds.

1325 The Church of the Fathers is one of the earliest productions

1326 of the Movement, and appeared in numbers in

1327 the British Magazine, being written with the aim of introducing

1328 the religious sentiments, views, and customs of

1329 the first ages into the modern Church of England.

1330 The Translation of Fleury's Church History was commenced

1331 under these circumstances:—I was fond of Fleury

1332 for a reason which I express in the Advertisement;

1333 because it presented a sort of photograph of ecclesiastical

1334 history without any comment upon it. In the event, that

1335 simple representation of the early centuries had a good

1336 deal to do with unsettling me in my Anglicanism; but

1337 how little I could anticipate this, will be seen in the fact

1338 that the publication of Fleury was a favourite scheme

1339 with Mr. Rose. He proposed it to me twice, between the

1340 years 1834 and 1837; and I mention it as one out of

1341 many particulars curiously illustrating how truly my

1342 change of opinion arose, not from foreign influences, but

1343 from the working of my own mind, and the accidents

1344 around me. The date, from which the portion actually

1345 translated began, was determined by the Publisher on

1346 reasons with which we were not concerned.

1347 Another historical work, but drawn from original

1348 sources, was given to the world by my old friend Mr.

1349 Bowden, being a Life of Pope Gregory VII. I need

1350 scarcely recall to those who have read it, the power and

1351 the liveliness of the narrative. This composition was the

1352 author's relaxation, on evenings and in his summer vacations,

1353 from his ordinary engagements in London. It had

1354 been suggested to him originally by me, at the instance of

1355 Hurrell Froude.

1356 The Series of the Lives of the English Saints was projected

1357 at a later period, under circumstances which I shall

1358 have in the sequel to describe. Those beautiful compositions

1359 have nothing in them, as far as I recollect, simply

1360 inconsistent with the general objects which I have been

1361 assigning to my labours in these years, though the immediate

1362 occasion which led to them, and the tone in

1363 which they were written, had little that was congenial

1364 with Anglicanism.

1365 At a comparatively early date I drew up the Tract on

1366 the Roman Breviary. It frightened my own friends on

1367 its first appearance; and several years afterwards, when

1368 younger men began to translate for publication the four

1369 volumes *in extenso*, they were dissuaded from doing so by

1370 advice to which from a sense of duty they listened. It was

1371 an apparent accident, which introduced me to the knowledge

1372 of that most wonderful and most attractive monument

1373 of the devotion of saints. On Hurrell Froude's

1374 death, in 1836, I was asked to select one of his books as a

1375 keepsake. I selected Butler's Analogy; finding that it

1376 had been already chosen, I looked with some perplexity

1377 along the shelves as they stood before me, when an intimate

1378 friend at my elbow said, "Take that." It was the

1379 Breviary which Hurrell had had with him at Barbadoes.

1380 Accordingly I took it, studied it, wrote my Tract from

1381 it, and have it on my table in constant use till this

1382 day.

1383 That dear and familiar companion, who thus put the

1384 Breviary into my hands, is still in the Anglican Church.

1385 So, too, is that early venerated long-loved friend, together

1386 with whom I edited a work which, more perhaps than any

1387 other, caused disturbance and annoyance in the Anglican

1388 world,—Froude's Remains; yet, however judgments might

1389 run as to the prudence of publishing it, I never heard any

1390 one impute to Mr. Keble the very shadow of dishonesty or

1391 treachery towards his Church in so acting.

1392 The annotated Translation of the Treatises of St. Athanasius

1393 was of course in no sense of a tentative character;

1394 it belongs to another order of thought. This historico-dogmatic

1395 work employed me for years. I had made preparations

1396 for following it up with a doctrinal history of the

1397 heresies which succeeded to the Arian.

1398 I should make mention also of the British Critic. I was

1399 Editor of it for three years, from July 1838 to July 1841.

1400 My writers belonged to various schools, some to none at all.

1401 The subjects are various,—classical, academical, political,

1402 critical, and artistic, as well as theological, and upon the

1403 Movement none are to be found which do not keep quite

1404 clear of advocating the cause of Rome.

1405 So I went on for years up to 1841. It was, in a human

1406 point of view, the happiest time of my life. I was truly at

1407 home. I had in one of my volumes appropriated to myself

1408 the words of Bramhall, "Bees, by the instinct of nature,

1409 do love their hives, and birds their nests." I did not suppose

1410 that such sunshine would last, though I knew not

1411 what would be its termination. It was the time of plenty,

1412 and, during its seven years, I tried to lay up as much as I

1413 could for the dearth which was to follow it. We prospered

1414 and spread. I have spoken of the doings of these years,

1415 since I was a Catholic, in a passage, part of which I will

1416 here quote:

1417 "From beginnings so small," I said, "from elements of

1418 thought so fortuitous, with prospects so unpromising, the

1419 Anglo-Catholic party suddenly became a power in the National

1420 Church, and an object of alarm to her rulers and

1421 friends. Its originators would have found it difficult to

1422 say what they aimed at of a practical kind: rather, they

1423 put forth views and principles for their own sake, because

1424 they were true, as if they were obliged to say them; and,

1425 as they might be themselves surprised at their earnestness

1426 in uttering them, they had as great cause to be surprised

1427 at the success which attended their propagation. And, in

1428 fact, they could only say that those doctrines were in the

1429 air; that to assert was to prove, and that to explain was to

1430 persuade; and that the Movement in which they were

1431 taking part was the birth of a crisis rather than of a

1432 place. In a very few years a school of opinion was

1433 formed, fixed in its principles, indefinite and progressive

1434 in their range; and it extended itself into every part of

1435 the country. If we inquire what the world thought of it,

1436 we have still more to raise our wonder; for, not to mention

1437 the excitement it caused in England, the Movement and

1438 its party-names were known to the police of Italy and to

1439 the back-woodmen of America. And so it proceeded,

1440 getting stronger and stronger every year, till it came

1441 into collision with the Nation, and that Church of the

1442 Nation, which it began by professing especially to serve."

1443 The greater its success, the nearer was that collision at

1444 hand. The first threatenings of what was coming were

1445 heard in 1838. At that time, my Bishop in a Charge

1446 made some light animadversions, but they *were* animadversions,

1447 on the Tracts for the Times. At once I offered

1448 to stop them. What took place on the occasion I prefer

1449 to state in the words, in which I related it in a Pamphlet

1450 addressed to him in a later year, when the blow actually

1451 came down upon me.

1452 "In your Lordship's Charge for 1838," I said, "an allusion

1453 was made to the Tracts for the Times. Some opponents

1454 of the Tracts said that you treated them with undue

1455 indulgence.... I wrote to the Archdeacon on the subject,

1456 submitting the Tracts entirely to your Lordship's disposal.

1457 What I thought about your Charge will appear from

1458 the words I then used to him. I said, 'A Bishop's lightest

1459 word *ex cathedrâ* is heavy. His judgment on a book cannot

1460 be light. It is a rare occurrence.' And I offered to withdraw

1461 any of the Tracts over which I had control, if I were

1462 informed which were those to which your Lordship had

1463 objections. I afterwards wrote to your Lordship to this

1464 effect, that 'I trusted I might say sincerely, that I should

1465 feel a more lively pleasure in knowing that I was submitting

1466 myself to your Lordship's expressed judgment in a

1467 matter of that kind, than I could have even in the widest

1468 circulation of the volumes in question.' Your Lordship

1469 did not think it necessary to proceed to such a measure, but

1470 I felt, and always have felt, that, if ever you determined on

1471 it, I was bound to obey."

1472 That day at length came, and I conclude this portion of

1473 my narrative, with relating the circumstances of it.

1474 From the time that I had entered upon the duties of Public

1475 Tutor at my College, when my doctrinal views were very

1476 different from what they were in 1841, I had meditated a

1477 comment upon the Articles. Then, when the Movement

1478 was in its swing, friends had said to me, "What will you

1479 make of the Articles?" but I did not share the apprehension

1480 which their question implied. Whether, as time went

1481 on, I should have been forced, by the necessities of the original

1482 theory of the Movement, to put on paper the speculations

1483 which I had about them, I am not able to conjecture.

1484 The actual cause of my doing so, in the beginning

1485 of 1841, was the restlessness, actual and prospective, of

1486 those who neither liked the *Via Media*, nor my strong

1487 judgment against Rome. I had been enjoined, I think

1488 by my Bishop, to keep these men straight, and I wished

1489 so to do: but their tangible difficulty was subscription

1490 to the Articles; and thus the question of the Articles

1491 came before me. It was thrown in our teeth; "How

1492 can you manage to sign the Articles? they are directly

1493 against Rome." "Against Rome?" I made answer,

1494 "What do you mean by 'Rome?'" and then I proceeded

1495 to make distinctions, of which I shall now give

1496 an account.

1497 By "Roman doctrine" might be meant one of three

1498 things: 1, the *Catholic teaching* of the early centuries;

1499 or 2, the *formal dogmas of Rome* as contained in the later

1500 Councils, especially the Council of Trent, and as condensed

1501 in the Creed of Pope Pius IV.; 3, the *actual popular beliefs

1502 and usages* sanctioned by Rome in the countries in communion

1503 with it, over and above the dogmas; and these I

1504 called "dominant errors." Now Protestants commonly

1505 thought that in all three senses, "Roman doctrine"

1506 was condemned in the Articles: I thought that the

1507 *Catholic teaching* was not condemned; that the *dominant

1508 errors* were; and as to the *formal dogmas*, that some

1509 were, some were not, and that the line had to be drawn

1510 between them. Thus, 1. The use of Prayers for the dead

1511 was a Catholic doctrine,—not condemned in the Articles;

1512 2. The prison of Purgatory was a Roman dogma,—which

1513 was condemned in them; but the infallibility of Ecumenical

1514 Councils was a Roman dogma,—not condemned;

1515 and 3. The fire of Purgatory was an authorized and popular

1516 error, not a dogma,—which was condemned.

1517 Further, I considered that the difficulties, felt by the

1518 persons whom I have mentioned, mainly lay in their mistaking,

1519 1, Catholic teaching, which was not condemned in

1520 the Articles, for Roman dogma which was condemned;

1521 and 2, Roman dogma, which was not condemned in the

1522 Articles, for dominant error which was. If they went

1523 further than this, I had nothing more to say to them.

1524 A further motive which I had for my attempt, was the

1525 desire to ascertain the ultimate points of contrariety between

1526 the Roman and Anglican creeds, and to make them

1527 as few as possible. I thought that each creed was obscured

1528 and misrepresented by a dominant circumambient "Popery"

1529 and "Protestantism."

1530 The main thesis then of my Essay was this:—the Articles

1531 do not oppose Catholic teaching; they but partially oppose

1532 Roman dogma; they for the most part oppose the dominant

1533 errors of Rome. And the problem was, as I have said,

1534 to draw the line as to what they allowed and what they

1535 condemned.

1536 Such being the object which I had in view, what were

1537 my prospects of widening and of defining their meaning?

1538 The prospect was encouraging; there was no doubt at all

1539 of the elasticity of the Articles: to take a palmary instance,

1540 the seventeenth was assumed by one party to be Lutheran,

1541 by another Calvinistic, though the two interpretations were

1542 contradictory of each other; why then should not other

1543 Articles be drawn up with a vagueness of an equally intense

1544 character? I wanted to ascertain what was the limit of

1545 that elasticity in the direction of Roman dogma. But next,

1546 I had a way of inquiry of my own, which I state without

1547 defending. I instanced it afterwards in my Essay on

1548 Doctrinal Development. That work, I believe, I have not

1549 read since I published it, and I do not doubt at all I have

1550 made many mistakes in it;—partly, from my ignorance of

1551 the details of doctrine, as the Church of Rome holds them,

1552 but partly from my impatience to clear as large a range for

1553 the *principle* of doctrinal Development (waiving the question

1554 of historical *fact*) as was consistent with the strict Apostolicity

1555 and identity of the Catholic Creed. In like manner,

1556 as regards the 39 Articles, my method of inquiry was to

1557 leap *in medias res*. I wished to institute an inquiry

1558 how far, in critical fairness, the text *could* be opened; I

1559 was aiming far more at ascertaining what a man who subscribed

1560 it might hold than what he must, so that my conclusions

1561 were negative rather than positive. It was but a

1562 first essay. And I made it with the full recognition and

1563 consciousness, which I had already expressed in my Prophetical

1564 Office, as regards the *Via Media*, that I was making

1565 only "a first approximation to the required solution;"—"a

1566 series of illustrations supplying hints for the removal" of

1567 a difficulty, and with full acknowledgment "that in minor

1568 points, whether in question of fact or of judgment, there

1569 was room for difference or error of opinion," and that I

1570 "should not be ashamed to own a mistake, if it were

1571 proved against me, nor reluctant to bear the just blame of

1572 it."—Proph. Off. p. 31.

1573 I will add, I was embarrassed in consequence of my wish

1574 to go as far as was possible in interpreting the Articles in

1575 the direction of Roman dogma, without disclosing what I

1576 was doing to the parties whose doubts I was meeting; who,

1577 if they understood at once the full extent of the licence

1578 which the Articles admitted, might be thereby encouraged

1579 to proceed still further than at present they found in themselves

1580 any call to go.

1581 1. But in the way of such an attempt comes the prompt

1582 objection that the Articles were actually drawn up against

1583 "Popery," and therefore it was transcendently absurd and

1584 dishonest to suppose that Popery, in any shape,—patristic

1585 belief, Tridentine dogma, or popular corruption authoritatively

1586 sanctioned,—would be able to take refuge under their

1587 text. This premiss I denied. Not any religious doctrine

1588 at all, but a political principle, was the primary English

1589 idea of "Popery" at the date of the Reformation. And

1590 what was that political principle, and how could it best be

1591 suppressed in England? What was the great question in the

1592 days of Henry and Elizabeth? The *Supremacy*;—now,

1593 was I saying one single word in favour of the Supremacy

1594 of the Holy See, in favour of the foreign jurisdiction? No,

1595 I did not believe in it myself. Did Henry VIII. religiously

1596 hold Justification by faith only? did he disbelieve Purgatory?

1597 Was Elizabeth zealous for the marriage of the

1598 Clergy? or had she a conscience against the Mass? The

1599 Supremacy of the Pope was the essence of the "Popery"

1600 to which, at the time of the composition of the Articles, the

1601 Supreme Head or Governor of the English Church was so

1602 violently hostile.

1603 2. But again I said this:—let "Popery" mean what it

1604 would in the mouths of the compilers of the Articles, let

1605 it even, for argument's sake, include the doctrines of that

1606 Tridentine Council, which was not yet over when the

1607 Articles were drawn up, and against which they could not

1608 be simply directed, yet, consider, what was the object of

1609 the Government in their imposition? merely to get rid of

1610 "Popery?" No; it had the further object of gaining

1611 the "Papists." What then was the best way to induce

1612 reluctant or wavering minds, and these, I supposed, were

1613 the majority, to give in their adhesion to the new symbol?

1614 how had the Arians drawn up their Creeds? was it not on

1615 the principle of using vague ambiguous language, which

1616 to the subscribers would seem to bear a Catholic sense,

1617 but which, when worked out on the long run, would prove

1618 to be heterodox? Accordingly, there was great antecedent

1619 probability, that, fierce as the Articles might look

1620 at first sight, their bark would prove worse than their

1621 bite. I say antecedent probability, for to what extent

1622 that surmise might be true, could only be ascertained by

1623 investigation.

1624 3. But a consideration came up at once, which threw

1625 light on this surmise:—what if it should turn out that the

1626 very men who drew up the Articles, in the very act of

1627 doing so, had avowed, or rather in one of those very Articles

1628 themselves had imposed on subscribers, a number of

1629 those very "Papistical" doctrines, which they were now

1630 thought to deny, as part and parcel of that very Protestantism,

1631 which they were now thought to consider divine?

1632 and this was the fact, and I showed it in my Essay.

1633 Let the reader observe:—the 35th Article says: "The

1634 second Book of Homilies doth contain *a godly and wholesome

1635 doctrine, and necessary for* these times, as doth the former

1636 Book of Homilies." Here the *doctrine* of the Homilies is

1637 recognized as godly and wholesome, and concurrence in

1638 that recognition is imposed on all subscribers of the Articles.

1639 Let us then turn to the Homilies, and see what this

1640 godly doctrine is: I quoted from them to the following

1641 effect:

1642 1. They declare that the so-called "apocryphal" book

1643 of Tobit is the teaching of the Holy Ghost, and is Scripture.

1644 2. That the so-called "apocryphal" book of Wisdom is

1645 Scripture, and the infallible and undeceivable word of God.

1646 3. That the Primitive Church, next to the Apostles'

1647 time, and, as they imply, for almost 700 years, is no doubt

1648 most pure.

1649 4. That the Primitive Church is specially to be followed.

1650 5. That the Four first General Councils belong to the

1651 Primitive Church.

1652 6. That there are Six Councils which are allowed and

1653 received by all men.

1654 7. Again, they speak of a certain truth, and say that it

1655 is declared by God's word, the sentences of the ancient

1656 doctors, and judgment of the Primitive Church.

1657 8. Of the learned and holy Bishops and doctors of the

1658 Church of the first eight centuries being of great authority

1659 and credit with the people.

1660 9. Of the declaration of Christ and His Apostles and all

1661 the rest of the Holy Fathers.

1662 10. Of the authority both of Scripture and also of

1663 Augustine.

1664 11. Of Augustine, Chrysostom, Ambrose, Jerome, and

1665 about thirty other Fathers, to some of whom they give the

1666 title of "Saint," to others of "ancient Catholic Fathers

1667 and doctors, &c."

1668 12. They declare that, not only the holy Apostles and

1669 disciples of Christ, but the godly Fathers also, before and

1670 since Christ, were endued without doubt with the Holy

1671 Ghost.

1672 13. That the ancient Catholic Fathers say that the

1673 "Lord's Supper" is the salve of immortality, the sovereign

1674 preservative against death, the food of immortality, the

1675 healthful grace.

1676 14. That the Lord's Blessed Body and Blood are received

1677 under the form of bread and wine.

1678 15. That the meat in the Sacrament is an invisible meat

1679 and a ghostly substance.

1680 16. That the holy Body and Blood of thy God ought to

1681 be touched with the mind.

1682 17. That Ordination is a Sacrament.

1683 18. That Matrimony is a Sacrament.

1684 19. That there are other Sacraments besides "Baptism

1685 and the Lord's Supper," though not "such as" they.

1686 20. That the souls of the Saints are reigning in joy and

1687 in heaven with God.

1688 21. That alms-deeds purge the soul from the infection

1689 and filthy spots of sin, and are a precious medicine, an

1690 inestimable jewel.

1691 22. That mercifulness wipes out and washes away sins,

1692 as salves and remedies to heal sores and grievous diseases.

1693 23. That the duty of fasting is a truth more manifest

1694 than it should need to be proved.

1695 24. That fasting, used with prayer, is of great efficacy

1696 and weigheth much with God; so the Angel Raphael told

1697 Tobias.

1698 25. That the puissant and mighty Emperor Theodosius

1699 was, in the Primitive Church which was most holy and

1700 godly, excommunicated by St. Ambrose.

1701 26. That Constantine, Bishop of Rome, did condemn

1702 Philippicus, then Emperor, not without a cause indeed,

1703 but very justly.

1704 Putting altogether aside the question how far these

1705 separate theses came under the matter to which subscription

1706 was to be made, it was quite plain, that in the minds

1707 of the men who wrote the Homilies, and who thus incorporated

1708 them into the Anglican system of doctrine, there

1709 was no such nice discrimination between the Catholic

1710 and the Protestant faith, no such clear recognition of

1711 formal Protestant principles and tenets, no such accurate

1712 definition of "Roman doctrine," as is received at the present

1713 day:—hence great probability accrued to my presentiment,

1714 that the Articles were tolerant, not only of what I called

1715 "Catholic teaching," but of much that was "Roman."

1716 4. And here was another reason against the notion that

1717 the Articles directly attacked the Roman dogmas as declared

1718 at Trent and as promulgated by Pius the Fourth:—the

1719 Council of Trent was not over, nor its Canons promulgated

1720 at the date when the Articles were drawn up[5], so

1721 that those Articles must be aiming at something else?

1722 What was that something else? The Homilies tell us: the

1723 Homilies are the best comment upon the Articles. Let us

1724 turn to the Homilies, and we shall find from first to last

1725 that, not only is not the Catholic teaching of the first

1726 centuries, but neither again are the dogmas of Rome, the

1727 objects of the protest of the compilers of the Articles, but

1728 the dominant errors, the popular corruptions, authorized

1729 or suffered by the high name of Rome. The eloquent declamation

1730 of the Homilies finds its matter almost exclusively

1731 in the dominant errors. As to Catholic teaching,

1732 nay as to Roman dogma, of such theology those Homilies,

1733 as I have shown, contained no small portion themselves.

1734 [5] The Pope's Confirmation of the Council, by which its Canons became *de

1735 fide*, and his Bull *super confirmatione* by which they were promulgated to the

1736 world, are dated January 26, 1564. The Articles are dated 1562.

1737 5. So much for the writers of the Articles and Homilies;—they

1738 were witnesses, not authorities, and I used them

1739 as such; but in the next place, who were the actual authorities

1740 imposing them? I reasonably considered the authority

1741 *imponens* to be the Convocation of 1571; but here

1742 again, it would be found that the very Convocation, which

1743 received and confirmed the 39 Articles, also enjoined by

1744 Canon that "preachers should be *careful*, that they should

1745 *never* teach aught in a sermon, to be religiously held and

1746 believed by the people, except that which is agreeable to

1747 the doctrine of the Old and New Testament, and *which the

1748 Catholic Fathers and ancient Bishops have collected* from that

1749 very doctrine." Here, let it be observed, an appeal is

1750 made by the Convocation *imponens* to the very same ancient

1751 authorities, as had been mentioned with such profound

1752 veneration by the writers of the Homilies and

1753 the Articles, and thus, if the Homilies contained views of

1754 doctrine which now would be called Roman, there seemed

1755 to me to be an extreme probability that the Convocation

1756 of 1571 also countenanced and received, or at least did not

1757 reject, those doctrines.

1758 6. And further, when at length I came actually to look

1759 into the text of the Articles, I saw in many cases a patent

1760 justification of all that I had surmised as to their vagueness

1761 and indecisiveness, and that, not only on questions which

1762 lay between Lutherans, Calvinists, and Zuinglians, but on

1763 Catholic questions also; and I have noticed them in my

1764 Tract. In the conclusion of my Tract I observe: The

1765 Articles are "evidently framed on the principle of leaving

1766 open large questions on which the controversy hinges.

1767 They state broadly extreme truths, and are silent about

1768 their adjustment. For instance, they say that all necessary

1769 faith must be proved from Scripture; but do not say

1770 *who* is to prove it. They say, that the Church has authority

1771 in controversies; they do not say *what* authority.

1772 They say that it may enforce nothing beyond Scripture,

1773 but do not say *where* the remedy lies when it does. They

1774 say that works *before* grace *and* justification are worthless

1775 and worse, and that works *after* grace *and* justification are

1776 acceptable, but they do not speak at all of works *with*

1777 God's aid *before* justification. They say that men are lawfully

1778 called and sent to minister and preach, who are

1779 chosen and called by men who have public authority *given*

1780 them in the Congregation; but they do not add *by whom*

1781 the authority is to be given. They say that Councils

1782 called by *princes* may err; they do not determine whether

1783 Councils called in the name of Christ may err."

1784 Such were the considerations which weighed with me in

1785 my inquiry how far the Articles were tolerant of a Catholic,

1786 or even a Roman interpretation; and such was the

1787 defence which I made in my Tract for having attempted

1788 it. From what I have already said, it will appear that I

1789 have no need or intention at this day to maintain every

1790 particular interpretation which I suggested in the course

1791 of my Tract, nor indeed had I then. Whether it was

1792 prudent or not, whether it was sensible or not, any how I

1793 attempted only a first essay of a necessary work, an essay

1794 which, as I was quite prepared to find, would require

1795 revision and modification by means of the lights which I

1796 should gain from the criticism of others. I should have

1797 gladly withdrawn any statement, which could be proved

1798 to me to be erroneous; I considered my work to be faulty

1799 and open to objection in the same sense in which I now consider

1800 my Anglican interpretations of Scripture to be erroneous;

1801 but in no other sense. I am surprised that men

1802 do not apply to the interpreters of Scripture generally the

1803 hard names which they apply to the author of Tract 90.

1804 He held a large system of theology, and applied it to the

1805 Articles: Episcopalians, or Lutherans, or Presbyterians,

1806 or Unitarians, hold a large system of theology and apply

1807 it to Scripture. Every theology has its difficulties; Protestants

1808 hold justification by faith only, though there is

1809 no text in St. Paul which enunciates it, and though St.

1810 James expressly denies it; do we therefore call Protestants

1811 dishonest? they deny that the Church has a divine mission,

1812 though St. Paul says that it is "the Pillar and ground of

1813 Truth;" they keep the Sabbath, though St. Paul says,

1814 "Let no man judge you in meat or drink or in respect of ... the

1815 sabbath days." Every creed has texts in its

1816 favour, and again texts which run counter to it: and this

1817 is generally confessed. And this is what I felt keenly:—how

1818 had I done worse in Tract 90 than Anglicans, Wesleyans,

1819 and Calvinists did daily in their Sermons and their

1820 publications? how had I done worse, than the Evangelical

1821 party in their *ex animo* reception of the Services for Baptism

1822 and Visitation of the Sick[6]? Why was I to be dishonest

1823 and they immaculate? There was an occasion on

1824 which our Lord gave an answer, which seemed to be

1825 appropriate to my own case, when the tumult broke out

1826 against my Tract:—"He that is without sin among you,

1827 let him first cast a stone at him." I could have fancied that

1828 a sense of their own difficulties of interpretation would have

1829 persuaded the great party I have mentioned to some prudence,

1830 or at least moderation, in opposing a teacher of an

1831 opposite school. But I suppose their alarm and their

1832 anger overcame their sense of justice.

1833 [6] For instance, let candid men consider the form of Absolution contained in

1834 that Prayer Book, of which all clergymen, Evangelical and Liberal as well as

1835 high Church, and (I think) all persons in University office declare that "it

1836 containeth *nothing contrary to the Word of God*."

1837 I challenge, in the sight of all England, Evangelical clergymen generally, to

1838 put on paper an interpretation of this form of words, consistent with their

1839 sentiments, which shall be less forced than the most objectionable of the interpretations

1840 which Tract 90 puts upon any passage in the Articles.

1841 "Our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath left *power* to His Church to absolve all

1842 sinners who truly repent and believe in Him, of His great mercy forgive thee

1843 thine offences; and by *His authority committed to me, I absolve thee from

1844 all thy sins*, in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy

1845 Ghost. Amen."

1846 I subjoin the Roman form, as used in England and elsewhere: "Dominus

1847 noster Jesus Christus te absolvat; et ego auctoritate ipsius te absolvo, ab

1848 omni vinculo excommunicationis et interdicti, in quantum possum et tu

1849 indiges. Deinde ego te absolvo à peccatis tuis, in nomine Patris et Filii et

1850 Spiritûs Sancti. Amen."

1851 In the sudden storm of indignation with which the

1852 Tract was received throughout the country on its appearance,

1853 I recognize much of real religious feeling, much of

1854 honest and true principle, much of straightforward ignorant

1855 common sense. In Oxford there was genuine feeling

1856 too; but there had been a smouldering, stern, energetic

1857 animosity, not at all unnatural, partly rational, against its

1858 author. A false step had been made; now was the time

1859 for action. I am told that, even before the publication of

1860 the Tract, rumours of its contents had got into the hostile

1861 camp in an exaggerated form; and not a moment was lost

1862 in proceeding to action, when I was actually fallen into the

1863 hands of the Philistines. I was quite unprepared for the

1864 outbreak, and was startled at its violence. I do not think

1865 I had any fear. Nay, I will add, I am not sure that it

1866 was not in one point of view a relief to me.

1867 I saw indeed clearly that my place in the Movement

1868 was lost; public confidence was at an end; my occupation

1869 was gone. It was simply an impossibility that I could

1870 say any thing henceforth to good effect, when I had been

1871 posted up by the marshal on the buttery-hatch of every

1872 College of my University, after the manner of discommoned

1873 pastry-cooks, and when in every part of the country

1874 and every class of society, through every organ and opportunity

1875 of opinion, in newspapers, in periodicals, at meetings,

1876 in pulpits, at dinner-tables, in coffee-rooms, in railway

1877 carriages, I was denounced as a traitor who had laid his

1878 train and was detected in the very act of firing it against

1879 the time-honoured Establishment. There were indeed men,

1880 besides my own immediate friends, men of name and position,

1881 who gallantly took my part, as Dr. Hook, Mr.

1882 Palmer, and Mr. Perceval; it must have been a grievous

1883 trial for themselves; yet what after all could they do for

1884 me? Confidence in me was lost;—but I had already lost

1885 full confidence in myself. Thoughts had passed over me

1886 a year and a half before in respect to the Anglican claims,

1887 which for the time had profoundly troubled me. They had

1888 gone: I had not less confidence in the power and the

1889 prospects of the Apostolical movement than before; not

1890 less confidence than before in the grievousness of what I

1891 called the "dominant errors" of Rome: but how was I

1892 any more to have absolute confidence in myself? how was

1893 I to have confidence in my present confidence? how was I

1894 to be sure that I should always think as I thought now?

1895 I felt that by this event a kind Providence had saved me

1896 from an impossible position in the future.

1897 First, if I remember right, they wished me to withdraw

1898 the Tract. This I refused to do: I would not do so for

1899 the sake of those who were unsettled or in danger of unsettlement.

1900 I would not do so for my own sake; for how

1901 could I acquiesce in a mere Protestant interpretation of

1902 the Articles? how could I range myself among the professors

1903 of a theology, of which it put my teeth on edge

1904 even to hear the sound?

1905 Next they said, "Keep silence; do not defend the

1906 Tract;" I answered, "Yes, if you will not condemn it,—if

1907 you will allow it to continue on sale." They pressed on

1908 me whenever I gave way; they fell back when they saw

1909 me obstinate. Their line of action was to get out of me

1910 as much as they could; but upon the point of their

1911 tolerating the Tract I *was* obstinate. So they let me continue

1912 it on sale; and they said they would not condemn

1913 it. But they said that this was on condition that I did

1914 not defend it, that I stopped the series, and that I myself

1915 published my own condemnation in a letter to the Bishop

1916 of Oxford. I impute nothing whatever to him, he was

1917 ever most kind to me. Also, they said they could not

1918 answer for what some individual Bishops might perhaps

1919 say about the Tract in their own charges. I agreed to

1920 their conditions. My one point was to save the Tract.

1921 Not a line in writing was given me, as a pledge of the

1922 observance of the main article on their side of the engagement.

1923 Parts of letters from them were read to me, without

1924 being put into my hands. It was an "understanding."

1925 A clever man had warned me against "understandings"

1926 some thirteen years before: I have hated them ever since.

1927 In the last words of my letter to the Bishop of Oxford I

1928 thus resigned my place in the Movement:—

1929 "I have nothing to be sorry for," I say to him, "except

1930 having made your Lordship anxious, and others whom I

1931 am bound to revere. I have nothing to be sorry for, but

1932 everything to rejoice in and be thankful for. I have never

1933 taken pleasure in seeming to be able to move a party, and

1934 whatever influence I have had, has been found, not sought

1935 after. I have acted because others did not act, and have

1936 sacrificed a quiet which I prized. May God be with me

1937 in time to come, as He has been hitherto! and He will be,

1938 if I can but keep my hand clean and my heart pure. I

1939 think I can bear, or at least will try to bear, any personal

1940 humiliation, so that I am preserved from betraying sacred

1941 interests, which the Lord of grace and power has given

1942 into my charge[7]."

1943 [7] To the Pamphlets published in my behalf at this time I should add

1944 "One Tract more," an able and generous defence of Tractarianism and No.

1945 90, by the present Lord Houghton.

CHAPTER III.

31 (Texto do capítulo)

HISTORY OF MY RELIGIOUS OPINIONS FROM 1839 TO 1841.

34 And now that I am about to trace, as far as I can, the

35 course of that great revolution of mind, which led me to

36 leave my own home, to which I was bound by so many

37 strong and tender ties, I feel overcome with the difficulty

38 of satisfying myself in my account of it, and have recoiled

39 from the attempt, till the near approach of the day, on

40 which these lines must be given to the world, forces me to

41 set about the task. For who can know himself, and the

42 multitude of subtle influences which act upon him? And

43 who can recollect, at the distance of twenty-five years, all

44 that he once knew about his thoughts and his deeds, and

45 that, during a portion of his life, when, even at the time,

46 his observation, whether of himself or of the external

47 world, was less than before or after, by very reason of the

48 perplexity and dismay which weighed upon him,—when,

49 in spite of the light given to him according to his need

50 amid his darkness, yet a darkness it emphatically was?

51 And who can suddenly gird himself to a new and anxious

52 undertaking, which he might be able indeed to perform

53 well, were full and calm leisure allowed him to look

54 through every thing that he had written, whether in

55 published works or private letters? yet again, granting

56 that calm contemplation of the past, in itself so desirable,

57 who could afford to be leisurely and deliberate, while he

58 practises on himself a cruel operation, the ripping up of

59 old griefs, and the venturing again upon the "infandum

60 dolorem" of years in which the stars of this lower heaven

61 were one by one going out? I could not in cool blood,

62 nor except upon the imperious call of duty, attempt what

63 I have set myself to do. It is both to head and heart an

64 extreme trial, thus to analyze what has so long gone by,

65 and to bring out the results of that examination. I have

66 done various bold things in my life: this is the boldest:

67 and, were I not sure I should after all succeed in my

68 object, it would be madness to set about it.

69 In the spring of 1839 my position in the Anglican

70 Church was at its height. I had supreme confidence in

71 my controversial *status*, and I had a great and still growing

72 success, in recommending it to others. I had in the

73 foregoing autumn been somewhat sore at the Bishop's

74 Charge, but I have a letter which shows that all annoyance

75 had passed from my mind. In January, if I recollect

76 aright, in order to meet the popular clamour against myself

77 and others, and to satisfy the Bishop, I had collected

78 into one all the strong things which they, and especially

79 I, had said against the Church of Rome, in order to their

80 insertion among the advertisements appended to our publications.

81 Conscious as I was that my opinions in religion

82 were not gained, as the world said, from Roman sources,

83 but were, on the contrary, the birth of my own mind and

84 of the circumstances in which I had been placed, I had a

85 scorn of the imputations which were heaped upon me. It

86 was true that I held a large bold system of religion, very

87 unlike the Protestantism of the day, but it was the concentration

88 and adjustment of the statements of great Anglican

89 authorities, and I had as much right to hold it, as the

90 Evangelical, and more right than the Liberal party could

91 show, for asserting their own respective doctrines. As I

92 declared on occasion of Tract 90, I claimed, in behalf of

93 who would in the Anglican Church, the right of holding

94 with Bramhall a comprecation with the Saints, and the

95 Mass all but Transubstantiation with Andrewes, or with

96 Hooker that Transubstantiation itself is not a point for

97 Churches to part communion upon, or with Hammond

98 that a General Council, truly such, never did, never shall

99 err in a matter of faith, or with Bull that man had in paradise

100 and lost on the fall, a supernatural habit of grace, or

101 with Thorndike that penance is a propitiation for post-baptismal

102 sin, or with Pearson that the all-powerful name

103 of Jesus is no otherwise given than in the Catholic

104 Church. "Two can play at that," was often in my

105 mouth, when men of Protestant sentiments appealed to

106 the Articles, Homilies, or Reformers; in the sense that, if

107 they had a right to speak loud, I had the liberty to speak

108 out as well as they, and had the means, by the same or

109 parallel appeals, of giving them tit for tat. I thought that

110 the Anglican Church was tyrannized over by a mere party,

111 and I aimed at bringing into effect the promise contained

112 in the motto to the Lyra, "They shall know the difference

113 now." I only asked to be allowed to show them the

114 difference.

115 What will best describe my state of mind at the early

116 part of 1839, is an Article in the British Critic for that

117 April. I have looked over it now, for the first time since

118 it was published; and have been struck by it for this

119 reason:—it contains the last words which I ever spoke as

120 an Anglican to Anglicans. It may now be read as my

121 parting address and valediction, made to my friends. I

122 little knew it at the time. It reviews the actual state of

123 things, and it ends by looking towards the future. It is

124 not altogether mine; for my memory goes to this,—that

125 I had asked a friend to do the work; that then, the

126 thought came on me, that I would do it myself: and that

127 he was good enough to put into my hands what he had

128 with great appositeness written, and that I embodied it

129 in my Article. Every one, I think, will recognize the

130 greater part of it as mine. It was published two years

131 before the affair of Tract 90, and was entitled "The State

132 of Religious Parties."

133 In this Article, I begin by bringing together testimonies

134 from our enemies to the remarkable success of our exertions.

135 One writer said: "Opinions and views of a theology

136 of a very marked and peculiar kind have been extensively

137 adopted and strenuously upheld, and are daily

138 gaining ground among a considerable and influential portion

139 of the members, as well as ministers of the Established

140 Church." Another: The Movement has manifested

141 itself "with the most rapid growth of the hot-bed of these

142 evil days." Another: "The *Via Media* is crowded with young

143 enthusiasts, who never presume to argue, except against

144 the propriety of arguing at all." Another: "Were I to

145 give you a full list of the works, which they have produced

146 within the short space of five years, I should surprise

147 you. You would see what a task it would be to

148 make yourself complete master of their system, even in

149 its present probably immature state. The writers have

150 adopted the motto, 'In quietness and confidence shall be

151 your strength.' With regard to confidence, they have

152 justified their adopting it; but as to quietness, it is not

153 very quiet to pour forth such a succession of controversial

154 publications." Another: "The spread of these doctrines

155 is in fact now having the effect of rendering all other distinctions

156 obsolete, and of severing the religious community

157 into two portions, fundamentally and vehemently opposed

158 one to the other. Soon there will be no middle ground

159 left; and every man, and especially every clergyman, will

160 be compelled to make his choice between the two." Another:

161 "The time has gone by, when those unfortunate

162 and deeply regretted publications can be passed over without

163 notice, and the hope that their influence would fail is

164 now dead." Another: "These doctrines had already

165 made fearful progress. One of the largest churches in

166 Brighton is crowded to hear them; so is the church at

167 Leeds. There are few towns of note, to which they have

168 not extended. They are preached in small towns in Scotland.

169 They obtain in Elginshire, 600 miles north of

170 London. I found them myself in the heart of the highlands

171 of Scotland. They are advocated in the newspaper

172 and periodical press. They have even insinuated themselves